Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“So Israel held a bunch of Palestinians in concentration camps without charge just for being Palestinian, and then they not only starved and tortured them but actually made them wear a Star of David on their prison garments. But remember kids, it’s evil and wrong to compare Israel to Nazi Germany — no matter how cartoonishly blatant they make the similarities. … According to an Israeli media report, last May IDF troops strapped explosives to the neck of an 80 year-old Palestinian man in Gaza and used him as a human shield for hours. They then shot and killed him and his wife. When the Gaza holocaust first started I used to read headlines like this and go ‘Holy shit that must be an exaggeration’, and then I’d read up on it and go ‘Fuck, nope, that’s exactly what happened!’ Now I read them and sigh and just sort of wilt inside.” (02/17/25)
“The ‘steroid Olympics’ has clinched a ‘double-digit’ million-dollar cash infusion from investors led by Donald Trump Jr. as the controversial sporting event pursues an American debut, The Post has learned. The funding round closed last week, Australian businessman Aron D’Souza, president of the Enhanced Games, told The Post during a Monday interview. He declined to provide additional details on the fundraising. ‘Getting the Trump name behind the Enhanced Games was a monumental effort,’ D’Souza told The Post. ‘This is now a very American project.’ The first Enhanced Games will include events in track, swimming, weight lifting, ‘combat’ and gymnastics, and will likely take place later this year in a ‘warm’ US city ‘conducive to winter months,’ D’Souza said. ‘We wouldn’t have hosted the games in the United States if Biden was elected,’ he said, noting the company was previously considering host cities overseas.” (02/17/25)
Source: Association of Mature American Citizens
by Robert B Charles
“A recent study says we have 2000 federal agencies, departments and commissions – although they are not sure. Is that not government beyond control? What would our Founders say? Interestingly, the first thing they would say is that power without limit is tyranny. On this, they all agreed. If limits are not imposed, government is soon oppressive. ‘Our Constitution is an instrument for the people to restrain the government,’ wrote Patrick Henry. If one branch dominates, oppression follows. Wrote Madison, ‘Wherever the real power in a government lies, there is the danger of oppression.’ Nor are assaults on liberty – by bureaucrats or others – always noisy. Sometimes they are quiet. Rights are taken, authorities asserted, money spent imperceptibly.” (02/17/25)
“The Trump administration has begun firing hundreds of Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) employees, according to the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists (PASS) union, weeks after a fatal mid-air plane collision in Washington DC. Several hundreds of the agency’s probationary workers — who have generally been in their positions for less than a year — received the news via email late on Friday night, a statement from PASS’s head, Alex Spero said. It is a part of a cost-cutting drive, driven by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), that aims to drastically cut the federal workforce. Spero called the firings ‘shameful’ and said they ‘will increase the workload and place new responsibilities on a workforce that is already stretched thin.’ The BBC has contacted the FAA and department of transport for comment. ” (02/17/25)
“Newly appointed Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth claims his family was targeted by the outgoing Biden administration with an audit from the IRS. ‘Of course the outgoing Biden IRS rushed an ‘audit’ of the incoming SecDef. Total sham,’ Hegseth wrote on his official X account Monday, including a photo of an IRS document addressed to him and his wife. The document said the couple owes [sic] the government $33,558.16, which needs to be paid immediately to avoid further penalties. It’s unclear what year or years the document is addressing. ‘The party of ‘norms’ and ‘decency’ strikes again. We will never back down,’ Hegseth added in his tweet. He is not the first cabinet appointee to receive a letter from the IRS. In 2009, it was famously revealed that President Obama’s Treasury Secretary appointee, Timothy Geithner, owed [sic] the IRS about $35,000 in unpaid Social Security and Medicaid taxes.” (02/17/25)
“Back in 1997, in the dim pre-history of American Greatness, David King published a book entitled The Commissar Vanishes: The Falsification of Photographs and Art in Stalin’s Russia. In almost two hundred pages of photos, it demonstrated the ways that Stalin’s Soviet regime literally erased historical events and persons no longer considered to be consistent with the dictat of The Leader. Such efforts involved extensive censorship and coercion, typically requiring the removal not simply of images and documents but the people to whom they were attached, who often wound up in a Gulag if they were lucky or in a ditch if they were not. At the same time, as the book shows, even more insidious than the coercion was the regime’s wholly cynical attitude towards truth, an attitude so well analyzed by George Orwell’s 1984 that it has come to be described by the colloquialism ‘Orwellian.'” (02/17/25)
“The panic that gripped Europe’s political elites after JD Vance delivered some overdue home truths in Munich found expression back home in the most embarrassing question ever asked by a network anchor. Our vice president had accused smug Eurocrats at the Munich Security Conference of abandoning free speech and allowing unchecked migration to roil their countries, warned them to respect their voters and told them America should not bear the primary burden of funding Europe’s security. ‘If you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you. Nor, for that matter, is there anything that you can do for the American people who elected me and elected President Trump,’ he said. ‘You need democratic mandates to accomplish anything of value.’ Cue apoplexy here and abroad.” (02/16/25)
“As Americans prepare to file their taxes ahead of the April 15 deadline, two Democratic senators warned Monday that billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk’s arrival at the Internal Revenue Service raises serious privacy concerns and could significantly impact the tens of millions of people who count on their tax refunds each year to pay bills, pad their emergency savings, and afford other essentials. The Department of Government Efficiency( DOGE), the advisory body created by President Donald Trump and headed by Musk, has set its sights on the IRS as it works to gut agencies across the federal government — with the data of millions of ordinary taxpayers now among the troves of personal information DOGE is trying to seize. As The Washington Post reported, the IRS is considering a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to give DOGE employees access to agency systems and datasets including the Integrated Data Retrieval System (IDRS).” (02/17/25)
“Jack ‘Ziz’ LaSota, leader of a so-called ‘death cult’ linked to at least six deaths across the United States, is in custody after months on the run, officials in Maryland confirmed Sunday. Also in custody is Michelle Zajko, who is a person of interest in the double homicide of her parents in Pennsylvania, and Daniel Blank, another member of the cult. LaSota, 33, was taken into custody on Sunday evening in Allegany County in northwestern Maryland. According to county jail records, LaSota, who uses female pronouns, is being held on charges of trespassing on private property, obstruction and having a handgun in her vehicle. … The three have been on the run since 2023, when they were found by law enforcement officers enacting a search warrant on a Chester City, Pennsylvania hotel.” (02/17/25)
“As predicted, Republicans in Congress are going after a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) rule that protects consumers from predatory overdraft fees that can cost hundreds of dollars a year. Lawmakers introduced a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution of disapproval on Wednesday that, if passed and signed by the president, will reverse the rule and hand a win to banks. Because CRA resolutions cannot by stopped by a filibuster, they represent some of the most likely legislative actions of the early Trump term. The rule under challenge places a $5 cap on the overdraft fees that banks can charge their customers, a major decrease from the typical $35 fee. In the rulemaking process, the CFPB found that some banks scheme and scam to maximize overdraft fees, setting new rules without notifying customers or even engineering the order of transactions to generate more fees.” (02/17/25)
