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“When a majority of people in any society share the same array of illusions and cling passionately to them, they will encourage one another until illusion becomes delusion, until delusion becomes mass insanity. Whole societies do go mad. History is filled with chilling examples”

-- Dean Koontz

News and Opinion

Expect A Huge Fuss About The October 7 Anniversary As The World Turns Against Israel

Israel apologists are probably going to make a much, much bigger deal about the second October 7 anniversary than they did about the first anniversary, because they kind of have to. The world is turning against Israel in unprecedented ways in 2025, and yelling about October 7 is all they’ve got left.

They’ve already got a scripted October 7 series coming out on Paramount+, and another, separate scripted October 7 series coming out on HBO Max for the anniversary. There are probably numerous news media segments and articles scheduled. Maybe some new “revelations” about alleged October 7 atrocities which have been just waiting in the wings this whole time for some reason.

The hasbarists are going to be so obnoxious. They’ll be babbling about Hamas beheading babies and then cooking the beheaded babies in the oven and then having sex with the beheaded babies and then eating the beheaded babies and then playing soccer with the baby heads while singing about how much they love Adolf Hitler.

They’re so insanely desperate to maintain the propaganda line as the legitimacy of the colony continues to erode that we’re seeing multiple October 7th related films/docuseries come out concurrently. The goal is clear: maintain support long enough to intensify the genocide. https://t.co/qvKtgz3EfM

— James (@GoodVibePolitik) September 26, 2025

They’ll need to do this, because what else do they have? All the attention has long ago moved from October 7 to the genocide in Gaza, because Israel is the victimizer in literally every news story that’s come out about Palestine since that one day. Every relevant humanitarian institution on earth is saying that Israel is committing genocide and starving civilians, and we’ve been watching the evidence of this on our screens for two years.

In 2023 you had westerners saying “How could Hamas do such a thing??”, but in 2025 everyone’s looking back and going “Ehh, I kinda get it.” There are only so many horrific atrocities you can witness before you stop seeing Israel as the poor widdle Bambi-eyed victim. There are only so many times you can hear Israeli officials stating their plans to ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip of all Palestinians, only so many Israeli soldiers you can see mockingly dressed in the undergarments of the dead and displaced Palestinian women they’ve been genociding, only so many hospital bombings you can read about, only so many accounts of IDF troops massacring starving civilians at aid sites you can listen to, before you start thinking to yourself that Israel probably had it coming.

So they’ve got to try and reignite that initial shock and horror Israel’s western allies experienced on October 7, using whatever tools of emotional manipulation they can. Try to take us all by the hand and lead us back to that naive time when the mainstream narrative was that Israel had just been attacked by a bunch of hateful savages who wanted to murder Jews simply because they are Jewish.

Absolutely staggering public opinion polling on Israel's collapse among young Americans.

Though this was utterly unthinkable even 5 years ago, it's now reflected in poll after poll, and is so entrenched it's hard to imagine it can be reversed, no matter what Larry Ellison buys. https://t.co/nKAl6SU1Wz

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) September 29, 2025

It won’t work, though. We’ve seen too much. What has been seen cannot be unseen. No matter how much they moan about October 7, no matter how much control they shore up over TikTok and other social media platforms to silence criticism of Israel, no matter how loudly they concern troll about a pretend epidemic of antisemitism, what has been seen will never be unseen.

We see what Israel is. We see what Israel is doing. We see what the western governments who support Israel are. There is nothing anyone can say or do that will cause us to unsee what we have seen and un-know what we now know.

And we will never, ever forgive them.

Trump's Gaza Plan Is Mere "Repackaging of Genocide" for Israel's Benefit: Diana Buttu

Trump and Netanyahu to Hamas: accept Gaza peace plan or face consequences

Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, have delivered an ultimatum to Hamas, warning the militant group to accept their 20-point peace plan for Gaza or face the consequences. The two leaders met at the White House in Washington on Monday then held a joint press briefing in which they hailed their proposal as a historic breakthrough and new chapter for the Middle East.

But it was clear that Hamas had not been consulted and its position on the terms remained uncertain. Mahmoud Mardawi, a Hamas official, said the group had not even received the plan, the Reuters news agency reported. It was later briefed that Qatari and Egyptian mediators met with Hamas on Monday evening to provide the group with the peace plan.

Both Trump and Netanyahu made clear that they were not offering Hamas a choice in the matter. If the group refused, Trump told reporters, “Israel would have my full backing to finish the job of destroying the threat of Hamas. ... The Israeli prime minister said ominously: “If Hamas rejects your plan, Mr President, or if they supposedly accept it and then do everything to counter it, then Israel will finish the job by itself. This can be done the easy way or it can be done the hard way, but it will be done.”

Trump said: “If accepted by Hamas, this proposal calls for the release of all remaining hostages immediately, but in no case more than 72 hours … The hostages are coming back.” The plan also demands that Hamas lay down its arms and renounce governance in the strip. Hamas members who commit to peaceful coexistence would be given amnesty to remain in Gaza or they would be granted safe passage to receiving countries. Trump’s plan would also establish a temporary governing board that would be headed by Trump himself and include Tony Blair, the former British prime minister.

Breaking Down Trump’s 20-Point Gaza Proposal

Trump-Netanyahu Joint Remarks Ripped as ‘Litany of Lies... Not a Promising Foundation for Peace’

US President Donald Trump announced on Monday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had agreed to a peace plan to end the war in Gaza—but many critics were skeptical that anything good would come from it.

The plan, which the White House released on Monday, requires Hamas to return all remaining Israeli hostages it took in the October 7, 2023 attacks in exchange for the release of nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners currently held in Israeli custody.

The plan also mandates that Hamas have no role in governing Gaza after the war, as responsibility for running the exclave would be handed over on a temporary basis to “a technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee, responsible for delivering the day-to-day running of public services and municipalities for the people in Gaza.”

Notably, the Trump proposal dropped previous demands he’d made about expelling Palestinians from their land, and it stated that “no one will be forced to leave Gaza, and those who wish to leave will be free to do so and free to return.” The plan also says that ”Israel will not occupy or annex Gaza,” even though Netanyahu and his government for months have said they intend to take full control of Gaza.

The plan drew some immediate criticism from skeptics, however.

Matt Duss, executive vice president at the Center for International Policy and former foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), attacked the Trump plan for not being a serious proposal to achieve peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

“Trump and Netanyahu’s remarks today were a litany of lies about the last 30 years, not a promising foundation for peace,” Duss said. “Despite his claim of being close to a deal, Trump’s statement that Israel will have ‘full US backing’ to ‘finish the job’ in Gaza if his plan is not agreed to stood out most clearly. This would be more of what we have seen not only the last nine months, but the last two years, as the United States has unconditionally armed and subsidized a genocide in Gaza.”

Duss welcomed Trump seemingly taking the forced expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza off the table as part of his plan, but added that it also “contains numerous opportunities for Netanyahu to renege on his commitments, as he has repeatedly done in the past.”

Drop Site News’ Ryan Grim appeared equally skeptical that the Trump plan would hold up, and he wrote in a post on X he’s waiting to see “what Netanyahu does to scuttle the deal once he leaves the White House.”

Trita Parsi, the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, observed in a social media post that Trump had successfully pressured Netanyahu to apologize to the government of Qatar for launching an attack against Hamas leaders on its soil earlier this month.

“That Netanyahu was forced to apologize to the emir of Qatar by phone from the White House with Trump in the room shows the leverage that the US has over Israel when it chooses to,” he wrote. “Too often it chooses otherwise. It could’ve chosen not to support the genocide in the first place.”

Drop Site News reported shortly after the deal was announced that the governments of Qatar and Egypt have given it to Hamas, which said it would study the proposal.

Max Blumenthal at DC's Busboys & Poets on Israel's 8-front war

Israeli Forces Kill 198 Palestinians in Gaza Over Three Days

Israeli attacks have killed at least 198 Palestinians and wounded 786 in the Gaza Strip over 72 hours, according to death toll updates released by Gaza’s Health Ministry, as Israel continues its US-backed genocidal war despite growing global outrage.

In that same time period, another five bodies of Palestinians killed in previous Israeli attacks were also recovered. “A number of victims are still under the rubble and in the streets, where ambulance and civil defense crews are unable to reach them at this time,” the ministry said in its latest update on Sunday.

Throughout the weekend, the Israeli military continued its destruction campaign in Gaza City, where it aims to forcibly displace the entire civilian population and reduce every single building to the ground. A report published by The New York Times on Friday detailed how the IDF has been razing block after block as it pushes further into the city.

Aaron Maté : Al Qaeda Visits the US

Gaza aid flotilla set to head east from Greece despite Israeli warnings

An international aid flotilla was set to leave Greek waters and head towards Gaza on Friday, organisers said, defying warnings from Israel that it would use any means to block the boats' access to the war-torn enclave.

The Global Sumud Flotilla is using about 50 civilian boats to try to break Israel's naval blockade of Gaza, an initiative Israel strongly opposes.

Its passage across the Mediterranean has raised international tensions, especially after it said it was attacked by drones this week.

No one was hurt, but Italy and Spain have dispatched naval ships to provide assistance to their and other European citizens on the flotilla.

Greece said it would guarantee the safe sailing of the flotilla off Greece, but Friday's launch will take the flotilla back into international waters in the eastern Mediterranean. Organisers said the boats aim to arrive early next week. Israel, which has imposed a naval blockade on Gaza, said the flotilla will not pass and that the project will only assist Hamas.

Trump, Vance, Kellogg test Putin's restraint and Russia's Red Line

ANOTHER European Country Just Rigged Their Election & Used Russia As Excuse!!

Wife of Man Aboard Venezuelan Ship Bombed by Trump Says Husband Was a Fisher

A woman who identified herself as the wife of one of the at least 17 people extrajudicially murdered by US military strikes on boats off the coast of Venezuela said her slain husband was a fisher, contradicting the Trump administration’s claim that the vessels were trafficking cocaine and other drugs.

The New York Times reported Sunday that the unnamed woman said her husband left one day and never returned to her and their four children. The US has attacked at least two Venezuelan boats this month, prompting allegations of criminality.

The Trump administration has offered no hard evidence—such as drugs or weapons recovered from the targeted boats—to support its assertion that the vessels were smuggling narcotics. While the area where the boats were bombed is a notorious drug-running route, it is also frequented by migrants, human traffickers, and people selling subsidized Venezuelan gasoline in nearby Trinidad and Tobago.

Stephen Miller, President Donald Trump’s deputy chief of staff who reportedly once pushed for drone strikes on unarmed migrants, played a key role in directing the strikes on the boats, according to reporting by The Guardian.

The attacks on the boats came amid the US deployment of numerous US warships and thousands of sailors and Marines off the coast of Venezuela, a country Trump has repeatedly threatened with regime change in the face of defiant anti-imperialist resistance from Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. The US has a more than century-long history of meddling in the affairs of Venezuela, one of the world’s leading oil producers.

Portland braces for deployment of 200 national guard troops to city

Portland is bracing for the deployment of 200 national guard troops as Donald Trump moves ahead with plans to bring the US military into another Democratic-run city. Oregon filed a lawsuit to block the deployment, which the state has warned will escalate tensions and lead to unrest when there is “no need or legal justification” to bring federal troops into Portland.

Trump on Saturday claimed Portland is “war ravaged” and that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) facilities there are under attack, but there is no evidence of that and protests outside Ice sites have been small.

It is the latest development in Trump’s years-long fixation on the Pacific north-west city of 635,000 that extended through the president’s first term in the White House. The president has frequently sought to paint the city as out of control and, as he described in September, like “living in hell”. ...

Earlier this month, the president suggested he would send troops to Portland after watching a TV news report that showed footage from a 2020 protest, which was incorrectly said to have taken place over the summer.

Trump-GOP Hiding Federal Data So Nobody Will Know the Depth of the Destruction They Are Sowing

In recent weeks, efforts by the Trump administration to conceal statistics and data from the public have made headlines—from the US Department of Justice’s decision to delete a 2024 study that showed right-wing extremists are behind the vast majority of ideologically driven killings in the US, contrary to the White House’s repeated claims about violence from the left, to President Donald Trump’s firing of a top economist after an unfavorable jobs report that he said was released to hurt him politically.

In a new report Monday, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) detailed how Trump’s overt politicization of data has combined with funding cuts to make it harder for experts—and the public that’s impacted by the Trump administration’s agenda—to see how those very policies are impacting households across the country.

“Without sufficient funding and freedom from political interference, the federal statistical system as we know it—and our ability to make economic and policy decisions based in reality—are in jeopardy,” said CBPP bsenior research analyst Victoria Hunter Gibney and vice president for housing and income security Cara Brumfield.

The report warns of “disappearing federal data”—both information that has been surreptitiously yanked from public view and data that the administration has announced will no longer be available, like the US Department of Agriculture annual Household Food Security reports.

As Common Dreams reported last week, the agency called the survey “redundant, costly, politicized, and extraneous” and claimed they have “failed to present anything more than subjective, liberal fodder,” as it said it would stop publishing the data—the federal government’s main source of information on hunger.

The decision followed the Republican Party’s passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), which includes the biggest-ever cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) at a time when more than 47 million Americans—including 1 in 5 children—are facing food insecurity.

In addition to preemptively rejecting research that would have shown the impact of the GOP’s SNAP cuts, the administration has shown no interest in tracking weather disasters via its Billion Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters database, which was discontinued in May; the effects of crime on LGBTQ+ Americans via National Crime Victimization Survey; and even the existence of LGBTQ+ communities via the National Health Interview Survey.

The administration has also stopped the federal government from collecting data by overseeing mass layoffs across the public servant workforce, with the Department of Health and Human Services placing researchers with the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System on administrative leave in April—ending the government’s accounting of maternal mortality numbers. HHS also laid off the analysts who worked on federal poverty guidelines that are used to calculate eligibility for parts of Medicaid as well as nutrition and home energy assistance.

In a multitude of ways, the CBPP said, the administration is “suppressing data that would reveal the harmful effects of the Republican megabill’s deep cuts and leaving families’ struggles harder to track.”

The report also warns that “brain drain” is worsening the US Census Bureau’s ability to collect population data that helps determine communities’ representation in Congress, federal funding allocation, and plan community services. Former Census Bureau Director Robert Santos left halfway through his five-year term shortly after Trump took office in January. Santos spearheaded efforts to make the survey more inclusive and emphasized rebuilding trust with immigrant and Latino communities after Trump, during his first term, pushed to include a citizenship question on the survey.

A top economist at the Census Bureau, Ron Jarmin, was also replaced this month by Trump appointee George Cook, who has “no prior government experience and no advanced training in statistical methods,” the CBPP said.

The Republican Party is currently pushing to further weaken efforts to count the population of the US, with the House Appropriations Committee reporting out legislation this month to officially designate the decennial census as voluntary and drastically limit efforts to follow up with nonrespondents. Mandatory participation is not enforced, but the Census Bureau has found that response rates plummet when the survey is officially designated as voluntary.

The proposed change would “seriously exacerbate risks to data quality from nonresponse bias,” said the CBPP.

The same bill reported out by the House committee proposed slashing $40 million from the Census Bureau budget, impacting the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), which collects data on a number of economic well-being indicators and “enables policymakers to understand how proposed laws will change eligibility and costs.”

The reduced version of SIPP that would be funded by the bill “is unlikely to provide the uniquely rich content (such as month-by-month income data) and structure (such as following children as they move between different caregivers’ homes) that allow the current SIPP to answer policymakers’ questions about families, their needs, and the programs that serve them,” said the group.

The CBPP released its analysis as Liza Featherstone wrote at The New Republic that the president is “waging a catastrophic war on data” that is “fundamental to Trump and his authoritarian regime.”

Trump’s destructive cuts to agencies and surveys that collect crucial data have been paired with numerous baseless claims by the president and his allies—that Tylenol taken in pregnancy causes autism, that violence is surging in cities where he plans to deploy federal troops, and that transgender people disproportionately commit mass shootings and violence.

“It will be increasingly hard for correctives on such points to get traction, however, since Trump’s administration has greatly reduced its own ability to collect and disseminate accurate information about crime,” wrote Featherstone.

“Without data, it is also going to be hard not only to fact-check Trump and his cronies but to measure the (most likely horrific) impact of Trump’s policies,” she added. “That too is almost certainly intentional—or at least very convenient for him.”

David Dayen: The Government Has Been Shut Down Since Trump Took Office

Trump talks with Democrats fail to yield breakthrough as US shutdown nears

A high-stakes meeting between Donald Trump and top congressional Democrats on Monday resulted in no apparent breakthrough in negotiations to keep the government open, with JD Vance declaring afterwards: “I think we are headed into a shutdown.”

Democrats, who are refusing to support the GOP’s legislation to continue funding beyond Tuesday unless it includes several healthcare provisions, struck a more optimistic tone following the Oval Office encounter, which also included the Republican leaders of the Senate and House of Representatives.

Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer said he had outlined his concerns about the state of healthcare in the country to Trump, and said: “He seemed to, for the first time, understand the magnitude of this crisis. “We hope he’ll talk to the Republican leaders and tell them, we need bipartisan input on healthcare, on decisions into their bill. Their bill does not have these – they never talked to us.”

But there was little sign that Republicans had shifted from their demands that Senate Democrats vote for their bill that would keep the government open through 21 November, so that long-term funding talks may continue. The GOP passed that bill through the House on a near party-line vote earlier this month, but it needs at least some Democratic support to advance in the Senate.

Trump administration spending $625m to revive dying coal industry

The White House will open 13.1m acres (5.3m hectares) of public land to coal mining while providing $625m for coal-fired power plants, the Trump administration has announced. The efforts came as part of a suite of initiatives from the Department of the Interior, Department of Energy, and Environmental Protection Agency, aimed at reviving the flagging coal sector. Coal, the most polluting and costly fossil fuel, has been on a rapid decline over the past 30 years, with the US halving its production between 2008 and 2023, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA).

“This is an industry that matters to our country,” interior secretary Doug Burgum said in a livestreamed press conference on Monday morning, alongside representatives from the other two departments. “It matters to the world, and it’s going to continue to matter for a long time.”

Coal plants provided about 15% of US electricity in 2024 – a steep fall from 50% in 2000 – the EIA found, with the growth of gas and green power displacing its use. Last year, wind and solar produced more electricity than coal in the US for the first time in history, according to the International Energy Agency, which predicts that could happen at the global level by the end of 2026. Despite its dwindling role, Trump has made the reviving the coal sector a priority of his second term amid increasing energy demand due to the proliferation of artificial intelligence data centers.

“The Trump administration is hell-bent on supporting the oldest, dirtiest energy source. It’s handing our hard-earned tax dollars over to the owners of coal plants that cost more to run than new, clean energy,” said Amanda Levin, director of policy analysis at the national environmental non-profit Natural Resources Defense Council. “This is a colossal waste of our money at a time when the federal government should be spurring along the new energy sources that can power the AI boom and help bring down electricity bills for struggling families.”

Also of Interest

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

Craig Murray: What Fresh Hell Is This?

‘No Doubt They Will Attack’: Max Blumenthal Meets Iran’s President In NYC

Moldova’s Pro-EU Party Wins Vote Due To Manipulation And EU Interference

Whitewashing Germany & Japan’s WWII Crimes

"End the Siege": Nelson Mandela's Grandson Speaks from Gaza Aid Flotilla

The Pro-Israel War To Replace Charlie Kirk

Epstein Brokered KEY Israeli Security Agreement

AMB. Chas Freeman : Trump Stumbles at the UN

A Little Night Music

Johnny Otis - Telephone Baby

Johnny Otis - Rock Me Baby

The Johnny Otis Show - Goin' Back To L A

Johnny Otis - Castin’ My Spell

Johnny Otis - Shake It

The Johnny Otis Show - Cold Shot

Johnny Otis with Marie Adams and the Three Tons of Joy - Ma (He's Making Eyes At Me)

Johnny Otis & Lionel Hampton - It's You

Johnny Otis - Willie And The Hand Jive