Global
Gaza is an occupied territory. Its borders, airspace, imports, exports, and even calories are controlled by Israel and its Western backers. Gaza does not need another flag flown above its ruins; it needs the right to rebuild on its own terms.
The Mirage of “Transition”
Western governments are preparing a plan for Gaza’s postwar administration. The proposal, advanced through quiet coordination between Washington, London, and Jerusalem, would establish a new international body called the Gaza International Transitional Authority to govern the territory for several years following the conflict. The concept, promoted as a stabilization effort, is said to draw inspiration from earlier foreign-led missions in Kosovo and Lebanon.
At the center of this “plan” was the risible suggestion that former British Prime Minister Tony Blair should lead the authority, overseeing Gaza’s reconstruction, policing, and governance on behalf of the self-proclaimed international community.
Gaza Governor Blair. “You What?!”
FIRST HOUR:
As Trump Attacks Portland We Greet A Maga Refugee
We open GREEP Zoom with our poet Laureate MIMI GERMAN.
Mimi reports on the “invasion of the soul snatchers” from the war zone in Portland, Oregon, whose “Kidnapper Cars” are patrolling the streets with ICE using a city-owned building for their command center..
The “heavy presence” of the US Military & its Black Hawk helicopters has manifested with airborne spotlights tracking activists as they walk home.
In support radio host LYNN FEINERMAN wonders aloud about the National Guard troops pouring into our cities.
Lifelong activist DOROTHY REIK comments on the ability of ICE to pick up anyone off the streets.
Legendary journalist DAVID SALTMAN reminds us of the tank in the streets of Berkeley, California, during the fight for People’s Park fifty years ago.
Co-convenor MYLA RESON warns of the rise of fascism.
VANG VIENG, Laos -- The Central Intelligence Agency's "secret war" in Laos ended 50 years ago, silencing Lima Site 6 and other isolated airstrips which helped the U.S. carpet bomb this tiny impoverished nation during the regional Vietnam War.
Lima Site 6, set among Vang Vieng's jagged karst mountain peaks, is now a deserted stretch of black asphalt speckled with squashed trash, 90 miles (150 kms) north of Laos' capital Vientiane.
Debris on the airstrip's gravelly surface includes empty plastic waterbottles, a dirt-stained cotton medical mask, and a faded Queen of Spades.
The strip resembles an empty urban parking lot stretched into the exaggerated rectangle which allowed Air America to land and take off amid the karst peaks.
During the 1961-1975 war, the CIA's Air America flew thousands of flights each day, lifting off from more than 200 scattered covert Lima Sites -- military code for unimproved "landing strips."
Those planes transported Americans, Thais, and U.S.-led minority tribal Hmong mercenaries alongside the dead and wounded, plus "hard rice" -- ammunition -- and refugees.
What is happening in Italy regarding Gaza is unprecedented in the history of solidarity between the country and any other international cause anywhere. A popular uprising is underway, the consequences of which are likely to alter, not only Rome’s position on the Israeli genocide in the Strip, but the country’s own political structure altogether.
To understand why such a conclusion is a rational one, we must consider two important factors: the popular mobilization throughout the country and the historical context of Italy’s political attitude towards Palestine and the Middle East.
Words fail me – but they’re all I have, or so it seems as I sit here at a table in my new apartment. They ain’t enough! Not as I read the news and feel . . . something . . . rise, politically and socially, and presume to be the American future.
Is this the rise of fascism? I use this word with uncertainty. I have never lived within its brutal purview and do not live within it now, as I write about the increasingly bizarre – and terrifying – presidency of Donald Trump. I feel no constraint as I write, no need to be cautious with my words. I feel no eyes on me, ever-assessing the loyalty of the opinions I express. I feel no fear, only outrage, as the snarky and bumbling “supreme leader” wannabe tells us who our enemies are. Can’t someone shut this fool up?
But then I read the news and, often enough, learn there’s a further Trump transgression today, a further grab for authoritarian dominance. And I have to look deeply at this freedom I think I have and acknowledge that it’s vulnerable. If others – other Americans, other human beings – can lose it, so can I. I can become the enemy.
