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"The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return."

-- Gore Vidal

News and Opinion

Trump Exposes the Elite Classes

Institutions led by members of the ruling class theoretically have the power to oppose anyone who should dare to confront them, even if the confrontation in question is led by the president of the United States. Actions taken by Columbia University and the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison (known as Paul, Weiss), were stunning as they obsequiously met Trump administration demands to stifle protest and to provide pro bono legal services to conservative causes. Closer inspection of how these supposedly august institutions operate should end any questions about why they responded as they did.

Columbia University donors include billionaires such as Robert Kraft and Mort Zuckerman. The university’s endowment is valued at $14.8 billion . One would think that heavy hitters with resources would consider fighting back when Donald Trump threatened to withhold $400 million in federal funding from that ivy league school. Yet there was no fight back, none whatsoever. Columbia acceded to Trump’s demands that the school give the president power to expel students who engage in protests, ban masks, adopt a definition of anti-semitism that includes prohibition of “double standards applied to Israel”, and change in the leadership of the departments of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African studies. The decision to go along with Trump was met with great consternation both within and outside of the school but those opinions availed little with $400 million on the line.

Columbia’s lack of fortitude should not have been surprising to anyone. Many donors were already in sync with the Trump administration’s demands. When Palestine solidarity protests began in 2024, donors such as Kraft began to question their financial commitments. Their actions went further, as many wealthy Columbia donors and other New Yorkers used a Whatapp chat group to push mayor Eric Adams to send police to the campus and arrest demonstrators. Not only did Adams do as they asked in sending the New York Police Department to end the protest, but his Deputy Mayor for Communications accused the Washington Post of promoting an “antisemitic trope” for reporting on the story.

Recently a former Columbia graduate student named Mahmoud Kahlil was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and sent to a detention facility in Louisiana. A group calling itself Columbia Alumni for Israel has been demanding such actions for many months as they too operate in a Whatsapp messaging group. They are unsatisfied with the easy punishment of demanding the revocation of student visas and even deporting green card holders such as Khalil. They also have U.S. citizens in their sights. “If anyone can trace any of their funding to terror organizations, not a simple task, they can be arrested on grounds of providing ‘material support’ for terror organizations. That is the key to getting these U.S. citizen supporters of Hamas, etc. arrested.” The writer of this missive is a former Columbia professor.

The capitulation at Paul Weiss shocked many in the legal profession who expected their profession to be vigorously defended. Like Columbia, Paul Weiss is doing quite well, with $2.6 billion in revenue in 2024. A dubious Executive Order required Paul Weiss to provide pro bono legal services to conservatives in exchange for keeping security clearances and the ability to access federal buildings. The shakedown succeeded however, and made the possibility that other targeted firms would also comply more likely.

How shocking is it really when the ruling classes rule over the institutions they control? White shoe law firms and ivy league schools depend on money, big money, in order to operate. The individuals in question may be republicans or democrats but at the end of the day money is the determining factor in how they make decisions. It is time to end the naivete about the elites who run universities and powerful law firms. They take the path of least resistance, which is always the path of placating politicians and the rich and the powerful. Both Columbia and Paul Weiss have the resources to take on the president and both had good chances of winning their disputes with the Trump administration yet neither was prepared to take the risk. ... The reality is that the ruling classes do not represent the people. They wouldn’t be the ruling classes if they did. We may be taken in by notions of prestige and elitism but that means the people and the institutions in question will behave like the proverbial cheap lawn chair and fold up without any resistance because they either fear losing their positions or happily ask, “How high?” when a president orders them to jump.

Greenwald BURIES Megyn Kelly in Mahmoud Khalil Debate

At least 27 killed in Israeli bombing of shelter in Gaza City, rescuers say

An Israeli bombing of a school turned shelter in Gaza City has killed at least 27 people, rescuers said, and hundreds of thousands in the Rafah area are fleeing in one of the biggest mass displacements of the war amid Israel’s newly announced campaign to “divide up” the Gaza Strip. Three missiles hit Dar al-Arqam school in the al-Tuffah neighbourhood on Thursday afternoon, the civil defence agency spokesperson Mahmoud Bassal said, killing several children and wounding 100 people.

The building was being used as a shelter for Palestinians displaced from their homes. In a statement, the Israeli military said it had taken precautions to avoid civilian casualties in the bombing of what it described as a control centre for the militant group Hamas. Another 20 people were killed in a dawn airstrike on the Shejaia suburb of Gaza City, bringing the total number of casualties reported by the local health ministry to 97 in the past 24 hours.

The intense wave of Israeli bombing comes amid a major expansion of Israel Defense Forces (IDF) aerial and ground operations in the besieged Palestinian territory following Israel’s decision to abandon a two-month-old ceasefire two weeks ago. The Israeli military said on Thursday it had struck more than 600 “terror targets” across the strip since resuming large-scale airstrikes on 18 March. Gaza’s health ministry, which the UN relies on for casualty data, says 1,163 people have been killed in bombings since the ceasefire collapsed. ...

On Thursday, local media footage showed hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fleeing the southern city of Rafah and surrounding areas, as Israeli ground troops advanced to create Netanyahu’s newly announced security corridor. Movement was impeded, however, by at least three Israeli strikes on the two main roads leading north.

Larry C. Johnson: Iran Stands Firm! Yemen’s Missiles Rock the US Navy

‘I heard them take their last breath’: survivor recounts Gaza paramedic killings

A survivor from a massacre of Palestinian paramedics and rescue workers in Gaza has said he saw Israeli troops open fire on a succession of Red Crescent ambulances and rescue vehicles and then use a bulldozer to bury the wreckage in a pit.

Munther Abed, a 27-year-old Red Crescent volunteer, was in the back of the first ambulance to arrive on the scene of an airstrike in the Hashashin district of Rafah before dawn on 23 March, when it came under intense Israeli fire. His two Red Crescent colleagues sitting in the front were killed but he survived by throwing himself to the floor of the vehicle.

“The door opened, and there they were – Israeli special forces in military uniforms, armed with rifles, green lasers and night-vision goggles,” Abed told the Guardian. “They dragged me out of the ambulance, keeping me face down to avoid seeing what had happened to my colleagues.”

He was beaten, detained with his hands tied and made to lie on the ground, from where he was able to see some of what happened as other friends and colleagues arrived on the scene in ambulances and fire trucks, each one running into a hail of gunfire. In all, eight Red Crescent ambulance crew members and paramedics, six civil defence rescue workers and a UN employee were killed. Their bodies were found alongside their crushed vehicles last weekend in a sandy pit that Abed watched the troops dig. Other witnesses have told the Guardian that some of the dead had had their hands or feet tied.

A Red Crescent ambulance officer, Assad al-Nassara, remains unaccounted for, but Abed said he saw him alive and in Israeli detention in the vicinity of the killings. Nassara has not been seen since. So far, Abed is the only one to return alive and tell his story.

Trump; Oil sanctions, minerals deal and ceasefire obstacles

Berlin promises Kiev billions more and deploys combat troops in Lithuania

After the federal election and the approval of the largest war credits since the Nazis, Germany’s ruling class is systematically pursuing its war offensive. This centres on military expansion to the east and war preparations against the nuclear power, Russia. On Tuesday, acting Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens) travelled to Kiev. There she assured the Ukrainian regime, which is riddled with right-wing extremists, of further German and European support for the NATO war against Russia.

While deceitfully claiming that Kiev was “ready for a ceasefire without preconditions,” she declared threateningly: “Putin, on the other hand, is playing for time and continuing his war of aggression in violation of international law. Putin cannot be trusted in this situation.” Under these conditions, she said, there could be no “lifting of sanctions.” Coming from Baerbock, any references to “international law,” “democracy” or “human rights” are hypocritical provocations. She is one of the most aggressive supporters of Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians and openly justifies Israeli strikes against civilian sites that regularly kill hundreds of civilians, including many women and children. ...

On the same day that Baerbock visited Kiev, the planned German combat brigade in Lithuania was formally put into service. According to a press release from the German Army, the unit was “transitioning to the regular brigade staff with a military roll-out at the duty station in Vilnius.” This meant that the new Panzerbrigade 45 “has been officially established as a major military unit of the German Army.” In addition, the brigade’s medical centre in Rokantiskés and a staff support and communications company in Nemenciné have been set up. Now the German units are to grow quickly.

According to the army, “around 500 members of the brigade will be serving in Lithuania” by the end of the year. Then “more and more troops will gradually be relocated from Germany until the target size of 4,800 soldiers and 200 civilian employees is reached.” The army’s press release leaves no doubt that the first deployment of German combat troops to Eastern Europe since the end of World War II is part of a comprehensive preparation for war against Russia. In the summer of 2023, Defence Minister Pistorius (Social Democrat, SPD) had decided “to permanently station a German combat brigade in Lithuania,” it states. This meant that “Germany is taking responsibility within NATO.” ...

Eighty years after the fall of the Third Reich and the most horrific crimes in human history—the Holocaust of 6 million Jews and Hitler’s war of annihilation against the Soviet Union—nothing less than the complete unleashing of German militarism, including nuclear armament, is on the agenda once again.

Prof. Gilbert Doctorow : Why Trump Is In a Rush

Pentagon launches investigation into Pete Hegseth’s use of Signal app after sensitive information leak

The inspector general of the Department of Defense (DoD) is launching an investigation into Pentagon secretary Pete Hegseth’s use of the encrypted messaging app Signal to discuss sensitive information about military operations in Yemen.

The investigation, announced on Thursday, follows a bipartisan request from the Senate armed services committee after allegations emerged that highly precise – and most likely classified – intelligence about impending US airstrikes in Yemen, including strike timing and aircraft models, had been shared in a Signal group chat that included a journalist.

Investigators will also review compliance with classification and records retention requirements – which appear to have been defied by a timer set on the channel.

The investigation will “determine the extent to which the Secretary of Defense and other DoD personnel complied with DoD policies and procedures for the use of a commercial messaging application for official business”, the memo by acting Pentagon inspector general Steve Stebbins reads. ...

The Republican senate armed services committee chair, Roger Wicker, and Democrat ranking member, Jack Reed, requested the investigation after learning that Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of the Atlantic, had been included in a Signal group chat with national security council members discussing Yemen operations.

Clare Daly & Mick Wallace Go To Yemen: ‘It’s Heroism, Not Terrorism’

Global markets in turmoil as Trump tariffs wipe $2.5tn off Wall Street

Global financial markets have been plunged into turmoil as Donald Trump’s escalating trade war knocked trillions of dollars off the value of the world’s biggest companies and heightened fears of a US recession.

As world leaders reacted to the US president’s “liberation day” tariff policies demolishing the international trading order, about $2.5tn (£1.9tn) was wiped off Wall Street and share prices in other financial centres across the globe. Experts said Trump’s sweeping border taxes of between 10% and 50% on the US’s traditional allies and enemies alike had dramatically added to the risk of a steep global downturn and a recession in the world’s biggest economy.

World leaders from Brussels to Beijing rounded on Trump. China condemned “unilateral bullying” practices and the EU said it was drawing up countermeasures. While Trump timed his Wednesday evening Rose Garden address to avoid live tickers of crashing stock markets, that fate arrived when Asian exchanges opened hours later.

Drawing comparisons with the market crashes at the height of the coronavirus pandemic and the 2008 financial collapse, the sell-off swept the globe, sending exchanges plunging in Asia and Europe. The UK’s FTSE 100 index of blue-chip companies closed the day down 133 points, or 1.5%, to 8,474 after suffering its worst day since August. ...

Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Trump said: “I think it’s going very well. It was an operation like when a patient gets operated on and it’s a big thing. I said this would be exactly the way it is … We’ve never seen anything like it. The markets are going to boom. The stock is going to boom. The country is going to boom.” Trump later said: “Every country is calling us. That’s the beauty of what we do. If we would have asked these countries to do us a favour they would have said no. Now they will do anything for us.”

MASSIVE Market CRASH! Trump Doubles Down On Tariffs As Wall St. Sees Biggest Losses In 3 Years

US stock markets see worst day since Covid pandemic after investors shaken by Trump tariffs

US stock markets tumbled on Thursday as investors parsed the sweeping change in global trading following Donald Trump’s announcement of a barrage of tariffs on the country’s trading partners.

All three major US stock markets closed down in their worst day since June 2020, during the Covid pandemic. The tech-heavy Nasdaq fell 6%, while the S&P 500 and the Dow dropped 4.8% and 3.9%, respectively. Apple and Nvidia, two of the US’s largest companies by market value, had lost a combined $470bn in value by midday. Meanwhile, the US dollar hit a six-month low, going down at least 2.2% on Thursday morning compared with other major currencies, and oil prices sank on fears of a global slowdown.

Though the US stock market has been used to tumultuous mornings over the last few weeks, US stock futures – an indication of the market’s likely direction – had plummeted after the announcement. Hours later, Japan’s Nikkei index slumped to an eight-month low and was followed by falls in stock markets in London and across Europe. ...

The tariffs also appear unpopular among voters. A poll released on Wednesday before Trump’s announcement found that just 28% of Americans believe tariffs help the economy, while 58% believe the impacts will be damaging. But in his speech yesterday, Trump appeared ready to be defiant against any criticism.

“In the coming days, there will be complaints from the globalists and the outsources and special interests and the fake news,” he said. “This will be an entirely different country in a short period of time. It’ll be something the whole world will be talking about.”

Trump’s Impoverishing Tariffs

U.S. President Donald Trump is trashing the world trade system over a basic economic fallacy. He wrongly claims that America’s trade deficit is caused by the rest of the world ripping off the U.S., repeatedly stating things such as, “Over the decades, they ripped us off like no country has ever been ripped off in history…”

Trump aims to close the trade deficit by imposing tariffs, thereby impeding imports and restoring trade balance (or inducing other countries to end their rip-offs of America). Yet Trump’s tariffs will not close the trade deficit but will instead impoverish Americans and harm the rest of the world.

A country’s trade deficit (or more precisely, its current account deficit) does not indicate unfair trade practices by the surplus countries. It indicates something completely different. A current account deficit signifies that the deficit country is spending more than it is producing. Equivalently, it is saving less than it is investing.

America’s trade deficit is a measure of the profligacy of America’s corporate ruling class, more specifically the result of chronically large budget deficits resulting from tax cuts for the rich combined with trillions of dollars wasted on useless wars. The deficits are not the perfidy of Canada, Mexico, and other countries that sell more to the U.S. than the U.S. sells to them.

To close the trade deficit, the U.S. should close the budget deficit. Putting on tariffs will raise prices (such as for automobiles) but not close the trade or budget deficit, especially since Trump plans to offset tariff revenues with vastly larger tax cuts for his rich donors. Moreover, as Trump raises tariffs, the U.S. will face counter-tariffs that will directly impede U.S. exports. The result will be lose-lose for the U.S. and the rest of the world.

Trump’s fossil-fuel donors to profit from data-center boom and green rollbacks

Oil and gas barons who donated millions of dollars to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign are on the cusp of cashing in on the administration’s support for energy-guzzling data centers – and a slew of unprecedented environmental rollbacks. Energy Transfer, the oil and gas transport company behind the Dakota Access pipeline, has received requests to power 70 new data centers – a 75% rise since Trump took office, according to a new investigation by the advocacy non-profit Oil Change International (OCI) and the Guardian.

The fossil-fuel gold rush threatens to unleash massive amounts of pollution and greenhouse gases while undermining the renewable energy industry. “Given Energy Transfer’s extensive natural gas infrastructure, we continue to believe that we are in the best position to capitalize on the anticipated rise in natural gas demand,” the company told investors in February.

The positive shareholder forecast came as Energy Transfer’s legal team was in a North Dakota court suing Greenpeace, claiming the environmental group had orchestrated the Indigenous-led Standing Rock protests – in what has been widely condemned as an attack on free speech by advocates and experts.

Energy Transfer, among the largest pipeline companies in the US, was the 13th-biggest corporate funder of Trump’s Make America Great Again Super Pac last year, according to OpenSecrets, donating $5m, while its executive chair, Kelcy Warren, has been a major Republican donor since 2016.

The firm is part of the powerful fracked-gas industry set to use its influence on Trump and the Republican party to make billions in profits from cryptocurrency mining, AI and other data centers – which look likely to proliferate rapidly amid a slew of new incentives and regulatory rollbacks.

Silver lining?

Climate crisis on track to destroy capitalism, warns top insurer

The climate crisis is on track to destroy capitalism, a top insurer has warned, with the vast cost of extreme weather impacts leaving the financial sector unable to operate.

The world is fast approaching temperature levels where insurers will no longer be able to offer cover for many climate risks, said Günther Thallinger, on the board of Allianz SE, one of the world’s biggest insurance companies. He said that without insurance, which is already being pulled in some places, many other financial services become unviable, from mortgages to investments.

Global carbon emissions are still rising and current policies will result in a rise in global temperature between 2.2C and 3.4C above pre-industrial levels. The damage at 3C will be so great that governments will be unable to provide financial bailouts and it will be impossible to adapt to many climate impacts, said Thallinger, who is also the chair of the German company’s investment board and was previously CEO of Allianz Investment Management.

The core business of the insurance industry is risk management and it has long taken the dangers of global heating very seriously. In recent reports, Aviva said extreme weather damages for the decade to 2023 hit $2tn, while GallagherRE said the figure was $400bn in 2024. Zurich said it was “essential” to hit net zero by 2050.

Thallinger said: “The good news is we already have the technologies to switch from fossil combustion to zero-emission energy. The only thing missing is speed and scale. This is about saving the conditions under which markets, finance, and civilisation itself can continue to operate.”

‘Potentially historic’ flooding threat looms after almost 100 tornadoes hit US

A prolific tornado outbreak will give way to a rare and widespread flooding threat across the midwest and southern US this week, stressing the nation’s short-staffed weather forecasting and disaster response efforts. At least seven people have reportedly died so far as nearly 100 tornadoes struck on Wednesday.

A critically short-staffed National Weather Service (NWS) appeared to issue a near-record number of tornado warnings for a single day. The combined 284 tornado warnings issued on Wednesday was exceeded only by April 2011, the biggest tornado outbreak in modern records. At times, there were so many tornado warnings that they formed a nearly continuous line stretching nearly 1,000 miles from Arkansas to Michigan.

The cold front that helped spark Wednesday’s tornadoes will slow down over the next few days, causing lines of thunderstorms to stall near the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers creating a “life-threatening, catastrophic, and potentially historic flash flood event”, according to the NWS.

Rainfall near Memphis, Tennessee, is expected to exceed 12in over the next three days, a total that is expected to recur less than once in a thousand years under a stable climate, according to a Guardian analysis of available forecast data. According to a NWS forecast bulletin: “Communities in the region should prepare for possible long duration and severe disruptions to daily life.”

In southern Illinois, the Ohio River is predicted to crest at 47ft this weekend – the fifth-highest level in the past 25 years. Near-record flooding is also expected on smaller streams and rivers from eastern Arkansas to southern Ohio. To make matters worse, the flooding will occur in many of the same regions affected by Wednesday’s tornadoes.

Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

Trump’s Liberation Day: This Boy Could Fuck Up Boiling Water

White House Lacks Financial Literacy - 'Tariffs' Show

Trump Deploys His Tariff Wrecking Ball; How Much Will the US Suffer Along with Most of the Rest of the World?

‘Nowhere on Earth is safe’: Trump imposes tariffs on uninhabited islands near Antarctica

Trump Is Wielding Tariffs to Help Billionaires, But They Can Be a Tool for Fair Trade, Too

Donald Trump ordered to pay £626,000 legal costs after Steele dossier lawsuit

What Will Tech Moguls Do With Their Wealth?

Bonobos may combine words in ways previously thought unique to humans

Matt Taibbi Baselessly Attacked During Censorship Hearing

A Little Night Music

Koko Taylor - I' m a Woman

Koko Taylor – Come To Mama

Koko Taylor – Spoonful

Koko Taylor – Fire

Koko Taylor – If You Got A Heartache

Koko Taylor – I Got What It Takes

Koko Taylor – Cut You Loose

Koko Taylor - The Devil's Gonna Have A Field Day

Koko Taylor And The Blues Machine – Wang Dang Doodle

Koko Taylor - Live in Chicago 1985 (Complete Bootleg)