Global

The problem is that those folks who are looking nervously at what President Donald Trump is doing to reshape the Middle East to the benefit of Israel are not looking deeply enough into the US domestic policy changes that are also being promoted that will strip Americans of fundamental rights like freedom of speech or association in any situation in which Israel or Jewish groups are involved, even marginally. It is as if the United States is fully engaged in two major tasks simultaneously. The first consists of supporting Israel uncritically no matter what it does or how many civilians it seeks to kill without necessarily overtly endorsing all the policies embraced by the monstrous Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his cutthroat colleagues. This is the way President Joe Biden ran things aided by his Zionist Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

As a former chair of a congressional investigative subcommittee, I witnessed and uncovered significant waste, fraud and abuse inside the government and in private sector contractual relations with the United States. But, through 16 years in Congress, I also witnessed countless federal workers who love this country, have dedicated their lives and worked long and hard to be of service to the people of the United States. They honorably did their duty and delivered when people needed help.

My excellent Congressional staff handled at least 11,000 requests for service, yearly. Our office was engaged with federal workers in dozens of agencies on an hour-by-hour basis to make government work for the people.

Over a period of sixteen years, diligent federal workers have intervened in all these cases and as a result changed the lives of hundreds of thousands of my constituents for the better.

Anne Garrels (1951 – 2022) was a US journalist who worked for National Public Radio during the Iraq war and authored of Naked in Baghdad.

 Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism students were mostly in high school when National Public Radio (NPR) correspondent Anne Garrels endured the “shock and awe” bombing of Iraq, chronicling her experiences in the book Naked in Baghdad. 

 But when she spoke at the university in 2008, that didn’t curtail their questions about the Abu Ghraib scandal, the dubious government contactor Blackwater, government censorship, reporters embedding with the active military operations and war reporting as a female when Garrels.

 Casually dressed in a leotard, flowered skirt, ballet flats and bare legs, Garrels discussed the progression of the war, the effect of escalating violence and kidnappings on reporting and everyday life in Iraq and her personal experiences as a reporter and a woman.

Donald Trump & Elon Musk (he/himmler) have built their political power base on a retro white male “Christian” constituency that lives in total terror of strong women & people of color.

Here's the appropriate historic root “Southern Strategy” quote from Lee Atwater, George H.W. Bush’s very own Josef Goebbels, with [DEI] subbed in where it belongs:

"You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” 

"By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. 

"So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, [DEI] and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. 

"Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes [and DEI], and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks [and women] get hurt worse than whites [and men].… 

“We want to cut this [DEI] ,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”

We start with a beautiful statement from Grammy-winner ALICIA KEYS on the power of diversity.

We explore the real culpability of the White House—NOT diversity—for the air crash that has (thankfully) not had an equal in 25 years.

Radio Host LYNNE FEINERMAN tells us that the fiscal sponsorship for her non-profit radio show has disappeared.

From Minnesota’s frozen tundra we hear HEDY TRIPP reports from a DEI conference on the anxiety being imposed on women on people of color.

MYLA RESON reports that there are massive demonstrations in Los Angeles and elsewhere against ICE actions targeting immigrants.

Co-convenor MIKE HERSH urges an end to the circular firing squad.

Our Alabama heart doctor RUTH STRAUSS questions Trump’s comprehension of tariffs.

Health Justice Monitor’s DON MCANNE terms the attack on USAID as “catastrophic.”

We get a warning on DEI and the DC helicopter crash from NICOLE UNG.

“Where are the Democrats?” asks New York’s JULIE WEINER, a truly great election protection activist.

Election expert RAY LUTZ gives us many of the ins/out about how the 2024 election was conducted and tabulated.

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Thaksin Shinawatra enters 2025 as purportedly the most powerful politician in Thailand, the billionaire who could not be stopped even after two coups and juntas, 15 years in self-exile, and a stack of prison sentences against him.

Mr. Thaksin is now so larger-than-life that many allege he manipulates Thailand's government through his seemingly timid daughter Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra, 38, who was elected by Parliament in August and appears to eagerly agree with his advice.

Mr. Thaksin, a two-time ex-prime minister who currently holds no political office, is this year's man to watch. 

Unfortunately, he began 2025 grappling with allegations that he voiced racist views.

"African people, who have black skin and flat noses that make it difficult to breathe, are hired for millions of baht [Thai currency] to be models," Mr. Thaksin said during a campaign rally in Chiang Rai city on January 6.

"Thai people look much better," Mr. Thaksin, 75, said. "There is no need for [our people to get] nose, jaw, or breast augmentation.

In this chaotic news cycle, America’s worst plane crash in a generation already feels a generation old.

But the administration’s response to the tragic January collision that killed 67 people over the Potomac is worth revisiting. Not only because the loved ones of those lost deserve answers, but because it highlights a MAGA playbook we’ve seen repeatedly now — and we’ll see again very soon.

The return of one million Palestinians from southern Gaza to the north on January 27 felt as if history was choreographing one of its most earth-shattering events in recent memory.

 Hundreds of thousands of people marched along a single street, the coastal Rashid Street, at the furthest western stretch of Gaza. Though these displaced masses were cut off from each other in massive displacement camps in central Gaza and the  Mawasi region further south, they sang the same songs, chanted the same chants, and used the same talking points.