United States | News & Politics

Shocking this is how the US allows its citizens to live

Biden and Democrats are complicit in genocide.

New reporting from Israel's Channel 13 just further proves how little the US did to stop Israel, and how much they went out of their way to protect them. Any liberal still defending this genuinely has nothing to cling on to anymore.

Despite the disagreements, the top Biden officials professed devotion to Israel’s security, explaining that this dedication was what made attacks by Netanyahu and his supporters, who accused them of abandoning Israel, particularly stinging.

“Having the prime minister of Israel question the support of the United States after all that we did — do I think that was a right and proper thing for a friend to do? I do not,” said former national security adviser Jake Sullivan. “[However], I will always stand firm behind the idea that Israel has a right to defend itself and that the United States has a responsibility to help Israel, and I’ll do that no matter who the prime minister is, no matter what they say about me or the US or the president that I work for.”

[...]

Former Israeli ambassador to the US Michael Herzog acknowledged that “political considerations” were clouding the decision-making process. He told “Hamakor” that Israeli officials held in-depth discussions regarding the so-called day-after in Gaza. But they repeatedly ended with no decisions being made.

“If they’re never going to do this, it doesn’t matter what the outcome is, Hamas is still going to control Gaza,” Goldenberg lamented. “You’re just killing and destroying for the sake of killing and destroying. But you’re not building an alternative.”

Amid the intransigence, Goldenberg said there were discussions held in Washington about having Biden give a speech that would force a reckoning in Israel about how to move forward.

The idea of the speech was for Biden to present Israelis with two paths — one that saw the government aim for a hostage deal that ends the war followed by a normalization deal with Saudi Arabia, and one that continued the current trajectory of endless war and increasing international isolation — and ask the public to decide which they prefer.

The Times of Israel first revealed this ultimately shelved plan last year.

The goal was to “scramble Israeli politics and see if you can trigger elections,” Goldenberg said.

“There was a real debate about that, but at the end of the day [Biden] was uncomfortable with the idea of going out that directly against Netanyahu,” he said.

Despite all the talk liberal talk about how it's just Netanyahu we need to get rid of, Biden refused to take the option of pressuring for an election.

The death toll in Gaza had crossed 30,000, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, and Biden announced in early May that he was withholding a US shipment of 2,000-lb bombs for Israel due to concerns that they might be used in densely populated areas.

In mid-June, though, Israel’s Defense Ministry and the Pentagon were on the verge of an agreement that would have allowed the shipment to move forward, with Israel providing assurances that the high-payload bombs wouldn’t be used in Gaza, Dan Shapiro, who served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East at the time, told “Hamakor.”

Just before the deal was finalized, Netanyahu released a video accusing the US of not just withholding the single shipment of 2,000-lb bombs but of a much broader weapons freeze — something that the Biden administration adamantly denied.

The brewing agreement to release the 2,000-lb bombs subsequently fell apart.

Biden officials fumed at Netanyahu, who they felt was being ungrateful for the support that the US had been providing.

Weeks earlier, the White House had pushed a $19 billion supplemental security assistance package for Israel through Congress.

“Yes, we had a disagreement over one shipment, [but] to go out and attack us that way was particularly infuriating,” Goldenberg said.

“We missed an opportunity to solve a problem — one that we very much wanted to solve,” Shapiro said.

The holding back of one shipment of 2,000 lb bombs that some liberals clinged to as proof the US was doing something was going to be released and let into Israel anyway if Israel hadn't annoyed the US by accusing them of a weapons freeze. That was a a problem they "very much wanted to solve". Fuck you.

Facing pressure from progressives in his party, Biden signed a memo early last year requiring the State Department to draft a report certifying whether recipients of US weapons were using them according to international law and not blocking humanitarian aid from reaching civilians.

Stacy Gilberg, who served as a senior adviser in the State Department, was among those involved in compiling that report. Shortly before it was released on May 10, she and her colleagues were boxed out of the process and the final conclusions of the report were written by higher-level officials, Gilbert told “Hamakor.”

The report concluded that while Israel did not fully cooperate with efforts to ensure aid flowed into Gaza, Jerusalem’s actions did not amount to a breach of US law that would require a halt on US weapons.

“I had to read the report twice because I couldn’t believe what it said. It was just shocking in its mendacity. Everyone knows that is not true,” she said, explaining her decision to resign in protest shortly thereafter.

Straightforwardly falsifying a report to cover for Israeli war crimes.

But now out of office, and with the May 2024 framework partially implemented, the Biden officials acknowledged that there were times when Netanyahu played the role of spoiler in negotiations.

They pointed to the premier’s decision in August 2024 to launch a public campaign regarding the importance of Israel remaining in the Philadelphi Corridor border stretch between Egypt and Gaza, which Washington felt was disingenuous and designed to tank the negotiations at a critical point.

“It became clear pretty quickly that minister Gallant did not really see that as a military necessity, and he would have been willing to withdraw the IDF from the Philadelphi Corridor as part of a hostage deal that would release all hostages, so we took seriously what our main counterpart in the Israeli system said,” Shapiro said.

[...]

Goldenberg was more definitive, even though he acknowledged being in the minority. “I would get a lot of whispers from old Israeli friends [who said] all the security people are coming out and saying [Netanyahu’s] undercutting it every step of the way. I start to believe [it] when there’s so much coming out [saying] that he’s clearly a problem. Whereas some of my colleagues didn’t quite see it.”

[...]

Herzog, too, made a point of summarizing Biden’s perilous term positively.

“God did the State of Israel a favor that Biden was the president during this period, because it could have been much worse. We fought [in Gaza] for over a year and the administration never came to us and said, ‘ceasefire now.’ It never did. And that’s not to be taken for granted,” the former Israeli ambassador said.

“Hamakor” anchor Raviv Drucker mused on whether that was the Biden administration’s flaw — that it was too loyal and pro-Israel to ever fully pressure Netanyahu. The Israeli premier, he posited, understood this and chose to drag his feet on making key decisions throughout the war, to buy time until Trump returned to office.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/29301489

By MEE staff
Published date: 28 April 2025 19:13 BST

"New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced on Sunday that he has launched an investigation into two physical attacks by a pro-Israeli mob that took place as Israel's far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, visited a city neighbourhood last week."

""Initial reports indicate that one female protester was isolated from her group, harassed by counter-protesters, and suffered injuries. In another incident, a second woman was surrounded and subjected to vile threatening by counter-protesters", he wrote. "

"The walls are closing in" every day in your youtube/podcast feed but it's now 2025 and Trump disappearing US citizens and arresting judges but this latest gaffe is definitely for real gonna sink him this time.

The “MeidasTouch” political podcast has rapidly become the most successful in the United States. As the Wall Street Journal writes, “downloads and views of MeidasTouch on platforms including YouTube, Spotify, and Apple, more than doubled over the past month to top 115 million.” This is more than twice what Joe Rogan had during the same period. MeidasTouch is run by three brothers: Ben, Brett, and Jordy Meiselas. Ben, a lawyer, got his start interning for Sean “Diddy” Combs at Bad Boy Records before working in the offices of Hillary Clinton and Rep. Steve Israel. He later became a business partner and attorney for Colin Kaepernick, playing a key role in the quarterback's lawsuit against the NFL. Brett is a producer and editor who previously worked at The Ellen DeGeneres Show, while Jordy was an advertising executive before joining his brothers to launch MeidasTouch.

The show offers itself as an alternative to the right-leaning “manosphere” epitomized by Rogan. According to the New York Times, its Substack has more than 500,000 subscribers, some 40,000 of whom pay at least $8 a month to get ad-free and exclusive content, meaning the project makes over $320,000 per month from Substack alone. The analytics website Social Blade concludes that their YouTube channel earns millions of dollars per year from ads. As a result of dethroning Rogan, MeidasTouch has been receiving a lot of favorable press recently. The Times reports that “they are fast becoming power brokers in Democratic politics and—party faithful hope—finally replicating the influential media ecosystem that Republicans have built over the past decade.” They are described as the “independent” “progressive media network” that is “reshaping the progressive media landscape.” They have 12 full-time employees and 30 regular contributors, including former Trump fixer Michael Cohen and former Trump associate Lev Parnas.

[...]

The world of MeidasTouch, by contrast, starts and ends with Donald Trump’s presidency. What stupid thing did Donald Trump say today? How did he embarrass himself? Who gave him a brutal rhetorical smackdown? Even though it is targeted at viewers who think Trump is dumb, the content is remarkably shallow, by which we mean that it doesn’t dive seriously into topics like health care, criminal punishment, foreign policy, and inequality. It’s the National Enquirer for Trump-haters.

MeidasTouch is also constantly offering Democratic viewers reassurance that Donald Trump is imploding. (“IT’S ALL UNRAVELING!!” “SPINNING OUT OF CONTROL!!” “FOX IS PANICKING!!!”) Indeed, Ben Meiselas himself says the channel is “providing a comforting place.” In doing so, they might be offering a false sense of security. Note that many of the podcast’s videos on Trump “implosions” and “humiliations” were published before he defeated Kamala Harris in November, such as “WOW! Trump CRUMBLES During DISASTROUS Arizona Speech” (Aug. 22, 2024, 2.1 million views) “Trump HUMILIATED in Michigan as REAL CROWD Is EXPOSED” (Aug. 31, 2024, 2.1 million views) “Trump Makes CATASTROPHIC MOVE in SUNDAY PANIC ATTACK” (Oct. 12, 2024, 2.1 million views). Today, after all this catastrophe for Trump, the right controls all three branches of government. Public opinion of the Democratic Party is still very low. Donald Trump’s presidency may yet implode, but his approval rating has not cratered so far, and the country is still basically evenly divided on him. Furthermore, Democrats cannot rely on the “Carville strategy” of simply waiting for Trump to destroy himself while doing nothing to build a popular movement.

[...]

In fact, while MeidasTouch is devoted to nonstop criticism of Trump, the categories of criticism it offers are quite narrow. MeidasTouch actively avoids major left-wing concerns. In addition to the absence of discussion on environmental issues (perhaps the most crucial way in which Trump endangers the future of the human species), they rarely cover Gaza. On the podcast, there is little on Trump’s horrific plans to ethnically cleanse Gaza and turn it into the next piece of his real estate empire, his crackdown on pro-Palestinian speech, and his threatening of universities that fail to quell Palestine protests.

The decision to avoid Palestine by Democratic-aligned media seems to be deliberate, and it goes beyond MeidasTouch. MeidasTouch is part of a broader universe of content creators that are aligned with the Democratic Party, which include Brian Tyler Cohen (4 million YouTube subscribers) and David Pakman (3 million YouTube subscribers) among others. Notably, last March, according to a source with the events, Pakman attended a private, off-the-record meeting with Kamala Harris on the day of Joe Biden's State of the Union address. During the trip, he met with Cohen, the Meiselas brothers, and dozens of other so-called “independent progressive” media figures. In an internal email, Pakman later told his staff that the content creators at the White House had talked among themselves and everyone had admitted that they deliberately avoid producing Gaza coverage in order to prevent controversy. One could argue that this is probably a big reason why these particular influencers were invited to the White House in the first place. Pakman, for his part, has previously asserted that Israel would never “waste ordnance” on Palestinian civilians and that he views Congressman Ritchie Torres, who is perhaps best known for being one of AIPAC’s top recipients of funding, as the kind of person who he would like to see lead the “progressive movement.”

These influencers consciously avoid Gaza not because they don’t have an opinion, but because they know that some of their audience won’t like what they have to say. In a way, their silence is preferable to outright pro-Israel propaganda—but the fact that their entire media strategy revolves around ignoring difficult topics speaks volumes. One might imagine that, had these media outlets been around in the 1960s, they wouldn’t have talked about the Vietnam War or the Civil Rights Movement. Even when they obsessively cover Trump, their selective focus is telling. As of this writing, neither MeidasTouch, Cohen, nor Pakman has produced a YouTube video on Trump’s attempt to deport pro-Palestine protester Mahmoud Khalil—a major escalation in the crackdown on dissent. If Trump had tried to illegally deport a pro-Ukraine protester, there’s no question that these influencers would be covering it. Their silence exposes an unwillingness to challenge the Democratic Party’s bipartisan complicity in suppressing pro-Palestinian voices.

Likewise, the existence of the left is virtually shut out on these channels. Brian Tyler Cohen, who calls himself an “independent progressive political host” (he previously worked part-time for MSNBC), has been regularly covering news and politics on YouTube since 2018. But a review of his channel shows that during the 2020 election cycle, he never once featured Bernie Sanders in a video title or thumbnail—despite posting daily content and racking up millions of views. While Cohen has eagerly platformed establishment Democrats like Nancy Pelosi, Jaime Harrison, Pete Buttigieg, Adam Schiff, Kamala Harris, and Joe Biden, he ignored the only independent progressive candidate in the 2020 Democratic primary. The New York Times and CNN also participated in the “Bernie blackout,” but even they couldn’t erase Sanders entirely. Yet Cohen did—until it became politically convenient for him to feature Sanders on his show in November 2022, the first time Sanders was ever even mentioned in one of his YouTube titles. For some reason, Sanders now appears on his show semi-regularly. Why would he reward this behavior rather than use his influence to elevate any of the independent outlets that have tirelessly promoted him? For a channel that claims to represent the progressive movement, it’s astonishing that Bernie Sanders was treated as a nonentity while centrists were endlessly elevated. This wasn’t an oversight. It was a deliberate editorial choice, one that reveals Cohen’s real political priorities.

According to Semafor, Brian Tyler Cohen was involved in launching Good Influence (originally known as AtAdvocacy), a digital consulting firm which says it creates “meaningful impact for causes and campaigns through our network of powerful online messengers.” Former Vice President Kamala Harris has been one of the firm’s top clients, as a search of Federal Elections Commission data shows that the Harris campaign spent more than $600,000 on “digital consulting” and “licensing fees” from Good Influence between July and November 2024. Good Influence has also received money from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and from Vote Save America, among other contributions. Good Influence's founder, Stuart Perelmuter, has publicly documented visits to the White House alongside prominent liberal influencers such as Cohen, Pakman, Luke Beasley, and Lindy Li (who has since left the Democratic Party and is now fundraising for Donald Trump). One of Good Influence’s featured influencers, Kenny Walden (who goes by the name 2RawTooReal online), has taken his loyalty to the Democratic establishment to even more grotesque extremes, hurling vile, misogynistic attacks at progressive lawmakers like Rashida Tlaib and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. He has also creepily taunted Bernie Sanders with images of caskets and a dead body—behavior that, far from being disavowed, has been rewarded with a visit to the Oval Office and insider status within the Democratic Party’s influencer network.

https://archive.ph/vyh51

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/4729539

Across the country, a troubling trend is accelerating: the return of institutionalization – rebranded, repackaged and framed as “modern mental health care”. From Governor Kathy Hochul’s push to expand involuntary commitment in New York to Robert F Kennedy Jr’s proposal for “wellness farms” under his Make America Healthy Again (Maha) initiative, policymakers are reviving the logics of confinement under the guise of care.

These proposals may differ in form, but they share a common function: expanding the state’s power to surveil, detain and “treat” marginalized people deemed disruptive or deviant. Far from offering real support, they reflect a deep investment in carceral control – particularly over disabled, unhoused, racialized and LGBTQIA+ communities. Communities that have often seen how the framing of institutionalization as “treatment” obscures both its violent history and its ongoing legacy. In doing so, these policies erase community-based solutions, undermine autonomy, and reinforce the very systems of confinement they claim to move beyond.

Take Hochul’s proposal, which seeks to lower the threshold for involuntary psychiatric hospitalization in New York. Under her plan, individuals could be detained not because they pose an imminent danger, but because they are deemed unable to meet their basic needs due to a perceived “mental illness”. This vague and subjective standard opens the door to sweeping state control over unhoused people, disabled peopleand others struggling to survive amid systemic neglect. Hochul also proposes expanding the authority to initiate forced treatment to a broader range of professionals – including psychiatric nurse practitioners – and would require practitioners to factor in a person’s history, in effect pathologizing prior distress as grounds for future detention.

This is not a fringe proposal. It builds on a growing wave of reinstitutionalization efforts nationwide. In 2022, New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams, directed police and EMTs to forcibly hospitalize people deemed “mentally ill”, even without signs of imminent danger. In California, Governor Gavin Newsom’s Care courts compel people into court-ordered “treatment”.

Full Article

Rachel Leingang
Sun 27 Apr 2025 10.00 EDT

"A 50501 subreddit remains an active organizing space, where people discuss ideas for local protests, messages they should put on posters, strategies for getting more people involved. The movement is active on nearly all social media channels, and local offshoots have their own pages as well.

The group is planning its next day of mass protest on 1 May, which will be focused on workers’ rights and immigrant rights. 50501 is far from the only group organizing around May Day, a frequent day of action for labor groups around the world."

https://archive.ph/F0i4m

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/4713217

A forthcoming Supreme Court decision is poised to weaken a bedrock law that requires federal agencies to study the potential environmental impacts of major projects.

The case, Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, Colorado, concerns a proposed 88-mile railroad that would link an oil-producing region of Utah to tracks that reach refineries in the Gulf Coast. Environmental groups and a Colorado county argued that the federal Surface Transportation Board failed to adequately consider climate, pollution, and other effects as required under the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, in approving the project. In 2023, the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the challengers. The groups behind the railway project, including several Utah counties, appealed the case to the highest court, which is expected to hand down a decision within the next few months.

Court observers told Grist the Supreme Court will likely rule in favor of the railway developers, with consequences far beyond Utah. The court could limit the scope of environmental harms federal agencies have to consider under NEPA, including climate impacts. Depending on how the justices rule, the decision could also bolster — or constrain — parallel moves by the Trump administration to roll back decades-old regulations governing how NEPA is implemented.

Full Article

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/4706639

By yuvaltheterrible

Of course, true violent crime rates against indigenous communities are likely much higher, because the overwhelming majority of it goes completely unreported. When your assailants have been given a get out of jail free card, why would you even bother?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/29169586

Anna Betts
Fri 25 Apr 2025 13.02 EDT

"A group of high-profile Democratic lawmakers has called on the Donald Trump administration to immediately release the Tufts University graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk, praised her “unwavering spirit” and warned that the White House is engaging in “repression”."

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/28713320

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/37237712

Great powers often decline through self-inflicted blows. By starting a trade war he was unable to follow through on, Donald Trump may have just dealt a severe one to the United States.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/4684644

The Trump administration signaled last week it intends to approve a land transfer that will allow a foreign company to mine a sacred Indigenous site in Arizona, where local tribes and environmentalists have fought the project for decades and before federal courts rule on lawsuits over the project.

Western Apache have gathered at Oak Flat, or Chi’chil Biłdagoteel in Apache, since time immemorial for sacred ceremonies that cannot be held anywhere else, as tribal beliefs are inextricably tied to the land. The tribe believes the landscape located outside present-day Superior, Arizona, is a direct corridor to the Creator, where Gaan — called spirit dancers in English, and akin to angels — reside. The site allows the Western Apache to connect to their religion, history, culture, and environment, tribal members told Inside Climate News.

But beneath the ground at the site of Oak Flat lies one of the world’s largest untapped copper deposits. Resolution Copper, a subsidiary of two of the biggest mining companies in the world, Rio Tinto and BHP, has worked for decades to gain access to the location to utilize what’s called “block cave mining.”

Three lawsuits against the project are still working their way through the courts. Apache Stronghold v. United States, decided by a federal appeals court in favor of the mine, was appealed by plaintiffs more than a year ago to the Supreme Court, which has not yet decided whether to take it up. That case argues the destruction of Oak Flat violates the Apache’s religious freedom, and is a threat to other religions.

Full Article