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"Nonviolent protest against a genocide that’s being backed by the western empire: Terrorism. Banned. Nobody’s allowed to support this.

Being actual, literal Al Qaeda but aligning with the interests of the western empire: Not terrorism. Okie dokie. This is fine."

-- Caitlin Johnstone

News and Opinion

Imperial Hypocrisy About “Terrorism” Hits Its Most Absurd Point Yet

The US has removed Syria’s Al Qaeda franchise from its list of designated terrorist organizations just days after the UK added nonviolent activist group Palestine Action to its own list of banned terrorist groups.

The western empire will surely find ways to be even more hypocritical and ridiculous about its “terrorism” designations in the future, but at this point it’s hard to imagine how it will manage to do so.

Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp writes the following:

“Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on Monday that the Trump administration is revoking the Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) designation for Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the al-Qaeda offshoot that took power in Damascus in December 2024.

“HTS started as the al-Nusra Front, which was the official al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria until the group’s leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, who is now Syria’s de facto president, rebranded. In 2016, Sharaa, who was known at the time as Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, announced he was disassociating from al-Qaeda, and thanked the ‘commanders of al-Qaeda for having understood the need to break ties.’

“Sharaa renamed his group HTS in 2017 and ruled Syria’s northwestern Idlib province until he led the offensive that ousted former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad at the end of last year. The US has embraced the new Syrian leader despite his al-Qaeda past, which included fighting against US troops in Iraq.”

US Revokes Terror Designation for HTS, the Al-Qaeda Offshoot That Took Over Syria
by Dave DeCamp@DecampDave #Syria #HTS #AlQaeda https://t.co/1uNEYYWAD0

— Antiwar.com (@Antiwarcom) July 7, 2025

This move comes as Sharaa holds friendly meetings with US and UK officials and holds normalization talks with Israel, showing that all one has to do to cease being a “terrorist” in the eyes of the empire is to start aligning with the empire’s interests.

So that was on Monday. The Saturday prior, the group Palestine Action was added to the UK’s list of proscribed terrorist groups under the Terrorism Act of 2000, making involvement with the group as aggressively punishable as involvement with ISIS.

The “terrorism” in question? Spraying red paint on two British war planes in protest against the UK’s support for the Gaza holocaust. A minor act of vandalism gets placed in the same category as mass murdering civilians with a car bomb when the vandalism is directed at the imperial war machine in opposition to the empire’s genocidal atrocities.

Even expressions of support for Palestine Action are now illegal under British law, leading to numerous arrests over the weekend as activists expressed solidarity with the organization. Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters, who is British, has been formally reported to UK counterterrorism police by UK Lawyers for Israel following the musician’s public statement saying “I support Palestine Action. It’s a great organisation. They are non-violent. They are absolutely not terrorist in any way.”

Roger Waters reported to counter-terror police after declaring support for Palestine Action

This is the ridiculousness of the country, it borders on the absurdhttps://t.co/W0p5FUlQ1k

— Esheru (@EsheruKwaku) July 7, 2025

So let’s recap.

Nonviolent protest against a genocide that’s being backed by the western empire: Terrorism. Banned. Nobody’s allowed to support this.

Being actual, literal Al Qaeda but aligning with the interests of the western empire: Not terrorism. Okie dokie. This is fine.

These hypocrisies and contradictions of the empire are worth drawing attention to because they clearly show that the empire does not stand where it claims to stand. For decades we’ve been told that western military explosives are falling from the sky in the middle east and Africa because there are terrorists there who need to be stopped, but it turns out “terrorism” is just a meaningless label that means whatever the empire needs it to mean at a given time and place.

Iran’s IRGC is labeled a terrorist group because the Iranian military is not aligned with the US empire. Israel’s IDF is not labeled a terrorist group despite its constant use of violence upon civilian populations in order to advance political goals. Palestine Action is labeled a terrorist group because it opposes the empire’s genocidal atrocities. Al Qaeda in Syria is no longer a terrorist group because it’s making nice with Israel and doing what the empire wants.

“Terrorist” just means “anyone who inconveniences the empire in any way.” It really is that simple.

Max Blumenthal : What Netanyahu Expects From Trump

Netanyahu vows to combat what he calls ‘vilification against Israel’ online

Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that he’s vowed to combat an orchestrated social media campaign of “vilification and demonization” that he says is responsible for a drop in support for Israel among US voters, especially Democrats.

“I think there’s been a concerted effort to spread vilification and demonization against Israel on social media,” the Israeli prime minister told journalists on Capitol Hill after being asked to respond to opinion polls showing a move away from the historic trend of strong backing for Israel.

“It’s directed, it’s funded. It is malignant. We intend to fight it, because nothing defeats lies like the truth, and we shall spread the truth for everyone to see once people are exposed to the facts, we win hands down. That’s what we intend to do in the coming months and years.”

Netanyahu’s comments came during a visit to Congress, where he met the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson. ...

A Gallup poll in March showed less than half of the US public sympathized with Israel’s position, the lowest figure recorded since the organization started taking surveys on the issue. Among Democrat voters, 38% sympathize with the Palestinians over the Israelis, a reversal of a 2013 Gallup survey, which saw Democrats sympathizing with Israelis by a margin of 36%. Other polls have shown similar trends, raising concerns for the future of the traditional strong bipartisan US support for Israel.

Qatar dashes hopes of rapid Gaza ceasefire, saying talks ‘will need time’

Progress towards a ceasefire in Gaza has been slow, officials in Qatar say, dashing hopes of a rapid end to hostilities in the devastated Palestinian territory. The new round of indirect talks between Israel and Hamas began on Sunday, after both sides accepted a broad US-sponsored outline of a deal for an initial 60-day ceasefire that could lead to a permanent end to the 21-month conflict.

“I don’t think that I can give any timeline at the moment, but I can say right now that we will need time for this,” Majed al-Ansari, Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesperson, said on Tuesday, the third day of negotiations in Doha. A Palestinian official familiar with the talks said “no breakthrough has been achieved so far”.

The admission that immediate agreement is unlikely may mean Donald Trump will not be able to announce a deal during this week’s visit to Washington by Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, as Trump appeared to have hoped.

On Monday, Trump expressed confidence a deal could be reached soon, telling reporters “things are going along very well” and that Hamas “want to have that ceasefire”. However, Ansari suggested the negotiations were still in relatively early stages. “What is happening right now is that both delegations are in Doha. We are speaking with them separately on a framework for the talks. So talks have not begun, as of yet, but we are talking to both sides over that framework,” he said.

"Netanyahu Is the Problem": Ex-Bernie Adviser Matt Duss on Why Gaza Ceasefire Remains Elusive

Center for Constitutional Rights Demands Info from Trump Admin on Funding for Aid Group Behind “Death Trap” in Gaza

The Center for Constitutional Rights yesterday submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Bibi Wants MORE Iran War In Trump Meeting

Iran’s President Says the US Pledged Israel Wouldn’t Attack During Previous Nuclear Negotiations

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian told Tucker Carlson in an interview released on Monday that the US said it wouldn’t give permission to Israel to launch an attack on Iran during recent negotiations.

“We were told during the process of these negotiations and talks that as long as we (the US) don’t give permission to Israel, they’re not going to attack you, and we were going to have the next round of talks very soon, but suddenly, in the middle of it, Israel torpedoed the negotiating table,” Pezeshkian told Carlson through an interpreter.

Israel launched its war on Iran with airstrikes on June 13, two days before the US and Iran were set to hold another round of negotiations. Pezeshkian’s comments align with recent reporting that said the US and Israel engaged in a deception campaign ahead of the attack to keep Tehran off guard. ...

Pezeshkian said that Iran was willing to restart negotiations with the US, but it needed assurances that an attack wouldn’t occur during the next round of talks. “I’m of the belief that we could very much, easily resolve the differences and conflicts with the United States through dialogue and talks,” the Iranian leader said. “There’s a condition for restarting the talks: how are we going to trust the United States again?”

COL. Lawrence Wilkerson : Does The Deep State Control Trump?

Germany summons Chinese envoy over laser-targeting of surveillance plane

The German foreign ministry has summoned the Chinese ambassador in Berlin after a Chinese warship used a laser to target a German aircraft taking part in an EU operation helping to protect shipping in the Red Sea. “The endangerment of German personnel and disruption of the operation are completely unacceptable,” the ministry said on X.

A German defence ministry spokesperson said the aircraft involved in the incident earlier this month was a multi-sensor platform plane. Known as a “flying eye” for its wide-range surveillance capabilities over the sea, it is piloted by civilians with military personnel on board. ...

Der Spiegel, a German news outlet, reported that the incident off the coast of Yemen involved a German reconnaissance plane stationed in Djibouti that had been chartered for the operation. It can carry up to four soldiers.

According to the report, the laser incident occurred when the aircraft approached a Chinese frigate. Breaking with common practice, the crew of the Chinese ship allegedly did not establish contact via a distress frequency.

It was not immediately clear whether the German plane sustained any damage and it was being inspected, according to Der Spiegel. The incident has meant there is little air traffic in the region.

Russian Drones/Missiles Swamp Ukraine Biggest Ever Strike; Trump Boils Over Patriots At 25% US Needs

Trump criticises Putin and promises to send Ukraine 10 Patriot missiles

Donald Trump has voiced his frustration with Vladimir Putin and promised to send 10 Patriot missiles to Ukraine, after announcing on Monday that US weapons deliveries would resume days after they were halted by the Pentagon, according to an official familiar with the matter.

Speaking at a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Trump said he was getting increasingly frustrated with the Russian leader. “We get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth. He’s very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless,” he said.

Asked if he wanted to see further sanctions against Russia, Trump replied: “I’m looking at it.” On Monday he said he was “disappointed” with Russia’s president and would send “more weapons” to Ukraine.

“We’re gonna send some more weapons we have to them. They have to be able to defend themselves. They’re getting hit very hard now,” Trump said, alongside a US and Israeli delegation.

Ukrainian officials said on Tuesday they were grateful for the US president’s U-turn but described the number of Patriots being supplied to Kyiv as “minuscule”. Ukraine’s defence ministry said it was seeking to clarify the details.

Copper Prices SPIKE As Trump Tariff CHAOS Continues

Pentagon provided $2.4tn to private arms firms to ‘fund war and weapons’, report finds

A new study of defense department spending previewed exclusively to the Guardian shows that most of the Pentagon’s discretionary spending from 2020 to 2024 has gone to outside military contractors, providing a $2.4tn boon in public funds to private firms in what was described as a “continuing and massive transfer of wealth from taxpayers to fund war and weapons manufacturing”.

The report from the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and Costs of War project at Brown University said that the Trump administration’s new Pentagon budget will push annual US military spending past the $1tn mark. That will deliver a projected windfall of more than half a trillion dollars that will be shared among top arms firms such as Lockheed Martin and Raytheon as well as a growing military tech sector with close allies in the administration such as JD Vance, the report said.

The report is compiled of statistics of Pentagon spending and contracts from 2020 to 2024, during which time the top five Pentagon contractors (Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman) received $771bn in contract awards. Overall, private firms received approximately 54% of the department’s discretionary spending of $4.4tn over that period. Taking into account supplemental funding for the Pentagon passed by Congress under Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act”, the report said, the US military budget will have nearly doubled this century, increasing 99% since 2000.

The rapid growth in military spending that began under the Bush administration’s post-9/11 and the “global war on terror” has now been continued on spending to counter China as the US’s main rival in the 21st century, as well record foreign arms transfers to Israel and Ukraine.

“The US withdrawal from Afghanistan in September 2021 did not result in a peace dividend,” the authors of the report wrote. “Instead, President Biden requested, and Congress authorized, even higher annual budgets for the Pentagon, and President Trump is continuing that same trajectory of escalating military budgets.” That contradicts early indications from Trump in February that he could cut military spending in half, adding that he would tell China and Russia that “there’s no reason for us to be spending almost $1tn on the military … and I’m going to say we can spend this on other things”. Instead, the spending bill pushed by Trump through Congress included a $157bn spending boost for the Pentagon.

US supreme court clears way for Trump officials to resume mass government firings

The US supreme court has cleared the way for Donald Trump’s administration to resume plans for mass firings of federal workers that critics warn could threaten critical government services. Extending a winning streak for the US president, the justices on Tuesday lifted a lower court order that had frozen sweeping federal layoffs known as “reductions in force” while litigation in the case proceeds.

The decision could result in hundreds of thousands of job losses at the departments of agriculture, commerce, health and human services, state, treasury, veterans affairs and other agencies.

Democrats condemned the ruling. Antjuan Seawright, a party strategist, said: “I’m disappointed but I’m not shocked or surprised. This rightwing activist court has proven ruling after ruling, time after time, that they are going to sing the songs and dance to the tune of Trumpism. A lot of this is just implementation of what we saw previewed in Project 2025.” ...

In its brief unsigned order on Tuesday, the supreme court said Trump’s administration was “likely to succeed on its argument that the executive order” and a memorandum implementing his order were lawful. The court said it was not assessing the legality of any specific plans for layoffs at federal agencies.

Ketanji Brown Jackson, the liberal justice, was the sole member of the nine-person court to publicly dissent from the decision, which overturns San Francisco-based district Judge Susan Illston’s 22 May ruling. Jackson wrote that Illston’s “temporary, practical, harm-reducing preservation of the status quo was no match for this court’s demonstrated enthusiasm for greenlighting this president’s legally dubious actions in an emergency posture”.

MAGA World Turned UPSIDE DOWN by Epstein Case Betrayal

Worth a full read:

‘Could become a death spiral’: scientists discover what’s driving record die-offs of US honeybees

Bret Adee is one of the largest beekeepers in the US, with 2 billion bees across 55,000 hives. The business has been in his family since the 1930s, and sends truckloads of bees across the country from South Dakota, pollinating crops such as almonds, onions, watermelons and cucumbers. Last December, his bees were wintering in California when the weather turned cold. Bees grouped on top of hives trying to keep warm. “Every time I went out to the beehive there were less and less,” says Adee. “Then a week later, there’d be more dead ones to pick up … every week there is attrition, just continually going down.”

Adee went on to lose 75% of his bees. “It’s almost depressingly sad,” he says. “If we have a similar situation this year – I sure hope we don’t – then we’re in a death spiral.” It developed into the largest US honeybee die-off on record, with beekeepers losing on average 60% of their colonies, at a cost of $600m (£440m).

Scientists have been scrambling to discover what happened; now the culprits are emerging. A research paper published by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), though not yet peer-reviewed, has found nearly all colonies had contracted a bee virus spread by parasitic mites that appear to have developed resistance to the main chemicals used to control them. Varroa mites – equivalent in size to a dinner plate on a human body – crawl and jump between worker bees. If there are no infections present, they do not typically damage the bee. But if diseases are present, they quickly spread them.

While varroa typically infects honeybees, not wild bees, the diseases that they spread can kill other pollinators – research has shown that the viral outbreaks among honeybees often spill over to wild colonies, with potential knock-on effects on biodiversity. All beekeepers in the USDA screening used amitraz, a pesticide widely used in the sector to get rid of mites. But the research showed all mites tested were resistant to it: after years of heavy use, amitraz no longer appears to be effective. This discovery underscores “the urgent need for new control strategies for this parasite”, researchers say. ...

But the discovery of amitraz-resistant mites in hives does not mean they alone were responsible for all of last year’s record die-offs. A combination of factors is likely to be causing successive colony deaths among US bees, including the changing climate, exposure to pesticides, and less food in the form of pollen and nectar as monocrop farming proliferates. Many US beekeepers now expect to lose 30% of their colony or more every year. These wider combined factors are also devastating for wild pollinators and native bee species – and honeybees, which are closely monitored by their keepers, may be acting as a canary in the coalmine for pressures affecting insects more generally.

Deadly floods could be new normal as Trump guts federal agencies, experts warn

The deadly Texas floods could signal a new norm in the US, as Donald Trump and his allies dismantle crucial federal agencies that help states prepare and respond to extreme weather and other hazards, experts warn. More than 100 are dead and dozens more remain missing after flash floods in the parched area known as Texas Hill Country swept away entire holiday camps and homes on Friday night – in what appears to have been another unremarkable storm that stalled before dumping huge quantities of rain over a short period of time, a phenomenon that has becoming increasingly common as the planet warms.

It remains unclear why the early warning system failed to result in the timely evacuation of Camp Mystic, where 700 girls were camped on a known flood plain on the Guadalupe River, but there is mounting concern that the chaos and cuts instigated by Trump and his billionaire donor Elon Musk at the National Weather Service (NWS) and Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) may have contributed to the death toll.

“This is the exact kind of storm that meteorologists, climate scientists, emergency management experts have been talking about and warning about for decades at this point, and there’s absolutely no reason that this won’t happen in other parts of the country. This is what happens when you let climate change run unabated and break apart the emergency management system – without investing in that system at the local and state level,” said Samantha Montano, professor of emergency management at Massachusetts Maritime Academy.

“It takes a lot of money, expertise and time to eliminate risk and make sure that agencies are prepared to respond when a flood situation like in Texas happens. And if you eliminate those preparedness efforts, if you fire the people who do that work, then the response will not be effective.”

Also of Interest

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

Trump’s Admin Claims the Epstein Files Don’t Exist, Why?

Ukraine - Drone Mass Production Lets Russia Gain Upper Hand

West admits military production defeat to Russia

Will Russia Greatly Accelerate Its Ukraine Tempo to Facilitate Responding to Turkiye-Azerbaijan Threat to Iran?

Trump bullied Canada over ‘digital taxes’ – and Ottawa submitted

New York Times Joins a White Supremacist In Attacking Zohran Mamdani

A Little Night Music

Mose Allison – Wild Man On The Loose

Mose Allison - That's The Stuff You Gotta Watch

Mose Allison – Seventh Son

Mose Allison – Stop This World

Mose Allison – Parchman Farm

Mose Allison - Everybody Cryin' Mercy

Mose Allison – I Feel So Good

Mose Allison – Young Man's Blues

Mose Allison - Your Molecular Structure