Global

Americans place a high value on freedom of speech, often considering it more important than other rights. Some American would fight to death to defend their foes right to speak, but not the Zionist lobby, better known as the "Jewish lobby" in America. Case in point, platforms affiliated with the Israeli lobby are now waging a widespread incitement campaign targeting Palestinian American writer and playwright Najla Said by distorting her political statements and cherry-picking her stances against the occupation.

This attack followed her participation in the student solidarity encampment at Columbia University, where she asserted that accusing protesters of "antisemitism" is merely a tactic to intimidate free voices, emphasizing that defending an entity committing genocide reflects a moral and humanitarian failing.

This is nothing more than a coordinated effort by Israel and the powerful Israeli lobby groups, with the intention of suppressing those who shed light on the reality in Palestine and Lebanon in order to downplay the plight of Palestinians and Lebanese while portraying the perpetrators as victims.

Who is Najla Said?

Is war simply part of human nature? It’s been absurdly “ordinary” throughout my lifetime, and continually expanding its power and psychological reach.

And unless you’re in the middle of it – unless you’re digging for a dead child beneath a bombed building – war  is just an abstract horror. It’s necessary. It’s what keeps us safe. Glory, glory hallelujah.

“You ask: What is our policy? I will say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us: to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer with one word: Victory – victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.”

Hmmm . . .

Ten years ago, friend Willis E. Brown, and my two young sons piled into my van in the early morning hours of Friday, June 10, 2016, and set out for Louisville, Kentucky, the birthplace of Muhammad Ali. Two hours later we stopped in Cincinnati and picked up my former student, Kevin L. Brooks, PhD, who was there visiting friends and family. The weather cooperated making for a rather uneventful trip. 

“Zeldin’s EPA To Relax Drinking Water Rules” was the headline last week in the daily newspaper Newsday on Long Island, New York—from which Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is from.

The subhead: “Plans to rescind PFAS limits, delay removal deadline.”

The article on two pages began with telling how the EPA is proposing “to rescind federal limits on certain toxic ‘forever chemicals’ in drinking water—established two years ago by the Biden administration….The Trump administration plans to roll back restrictions on four types of these chemicals, known as PFAS. Another proposed rule would allow water suppliers to request two more years to comply with limits on two other PFAS compounds, PFOS and PFOA. Water suppliers were initially given until 2029 to meet the standards under the Biden-era plan, but they will now be eligible for an extension to 2031.”

In the shifting sands of the Middle East, the conflict we must now identify as the “Epstein War”—or what many observers are increasingly calling the “Bankers War”—is rarely about the rhetoric broadcast on mainstream news. Behind the curtain of geopolitical maneuvering and military posturing lies a simple, brutal reality: there is immense profit to be made in instability. ​

While the public is distracted by the volatility of energy markets and the constant churn of diplomatic summits, we must ask: who is really getting rich? ​We are watching a profound convergence of interest between political power and private financial gain. The mechanisms of this war are not just ideological; they are commercial. When we analyze the current landscape, we see clear evidence of a “pay-to-play” ecosystem that spans from Washington D.C. to the world's most lucrative investment firms. ​

Solar + Storage bring reliability to the grid this summer

A new reliability assessment from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) states that the U.S. grid appears to be in relatively good shape to handle the summer heat this year.

The report contradicts the Trump administration's claims that keeping aging fossil-fueled plants open is needed in order to prevent blackouts. Over the last year, the Department of Energy has forced five coal plants and one oil- and gas-fired power plant to stay online past their planned retirements, citing an energy emergency that grid experts say simply does not yet exist.

However, it's not the presence of expensive old fossil-fueled power plants that has put the grid in a relatively good position heading into the summer — it's the rapid expansion of solar and energy storage. Data shows that approximately 75 GW of new solar and storage have been added to the grid since this time last year.

Few Americans know the history of how Israel’s “wag the dog” relationship with the United States developed. Israel’s 1967 successful war against its neighbors demonstrated to military planners in Washington how a qualitative edge in weapons could enable a small country to resist much larger and seemingly more powerful adversaries. Israel was largely supplied with French weapons at the time that reportedly out-performed the Russian equipment in the hands of Syria and Egypt. As a consequence, in 1968, with strong support from a heavily lobbied Congress, Zionist influenced US President Lyndon B Johnson approved the hitherto blocked sale of F-4 Phantom fighters to Israel, establishing the precedent for continuing US support of Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge, generally referred to by the acronym QME, over its Arab and Christian neighbors. Five years later, in the aftermath of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the United States and Israel came to an understanding whereby they tacitly adopted the doctrine of active US maintenance of Israel’s QME.