Global

I tried to cross into Jerusalem today (where I used to be a highschool
teacher) and was denied by the apartheid colonizers. My wife too. Our US
passports notwithstanding. This is a clear violation of the agreement
reached with the US State Department that allowed Israelis to enter the US
on a visa waiver program. US citizens are not treated with respect agreed
to. Over the weekend we were stopped from doing our field work in the
Jordan valley by these apartheid regime forces. This was not the first
time. On so many occasions we are harassed and prevented from having any
normalcy.  In other parts of Palestine, the situation is much worse. In
Gaza Strip alone over the past nine months 186,000 Palestinians were killed
by bombing them, by denial of food, water, medicine and by destroying their
infrastructure etc.  As I am in touch with many families in Gaza by phone I
hear horror stories including literally starving to death and if there is a
food it is only bread or only rice (no proteins, vegetables, milk, fruits
etc). And what worries me more are families we lost touch with (no phones).

During this past week, more evidence has emerged that Israel allowed the attacks of October 7th to happen, that Israel military enacted the Hannibal directive which allows them to kill their own soldiers and citizens rather than allow them to be taken hostage, and that the propaganda regarding dead babies and rape stories are not true.

Additionally, the Lancet reports that by “applying a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death to the 37396 deaths reported, it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186 000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza”. This is 8% of the population.

(The Lancet is a weekly peer-reviewed general medical journal and one of the oldest of its kind. It is also one of the world's highest-impact academic journals.[1][2] )

I love Bernie Sanders. By most measures, he’s the greatest senator in the last 50 years. I was very glad to be a Sanders delegate to the 2016 and 2020 Democratic National Conventions. But when Bernie screws up, his progressive base should say so.

Rulings by the conservative majority on the Supreme Court favor Trump and right-wing, anti-democratic interests and values, threatening to upend an already weakened American democracy. The right-wing bias of the court goes back to Trump’s successful nominations of three reactionary justices to the court while he was president. As it stands now, there are six right-wing justices on the court and 3 “liberals.” 

In one of its most disturbing recent rulings on June 2022 the court overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 law that gave women the right to an abortion. The story of this ruling is told in masterful detail by Elizabeth Dias and Lisa Lerer in their book, “The Fall of Roe, The Rise of a New America” (publ. 2024). 

In this post, the contention about the court’s right-wing bias is exemplified by three recent Supreme Court rulings dealing with expanding gun ownership rights, deregulation, and presidential immunity.

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Bump Stocks

Supreme Court Rejects Ban on Gun Bump Stocks

The United States tax code allows exemptions from federal taxes for certain categories of nonprofit organizations or groups that frequently serve either an educational or charitable purpose. Such organizations are categorized as 501(c)(3) and exempt from Federal income taxes while the donors who contribute to their support can deduct the total donations up to the limits imposed by their own overall tax liability. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) recognizes more than 30 types of nonprofit organizations but only those that qualify for 501(c)(3) status can say that donations made to them are tax deductible.

When Joe Biden’s ABC News interview aired on Friday night, it made clear that he should not be running for re-election. Rather than reduce the concerns sparked by his abysmal debate performance eight days earlier, the interview underscored that the president is in denial about his current political standing and unable to offer reassurance that his mental capacities are unimpaired.

 Notably, Biden kept dodging and refusing to reply in the affirmative when journalist George Stephanopoulos asked whether he has had “a full neurological and cognitive evaluation” and if he would “be willing to have the independent medical evaluation.”