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"Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority."

-- Lord Acton

News and Opinion

Know Them By Their Fruits

They’re doing it right in front of us. Right in front of us.

So many people have dedicated their entire lives working to expose the criminality of the empire, and then the empire comes right out and commits a live-streamed genocide right in front of us.

Whistleblowers. Investigative journalists. Authors. Documentarians. Conspiracy analysts. Peace activists. Their whole lives devoted to the task of uncovering the crimes of the undeclared empire we live under and drawing attention to them, saying “Look! See?? We really are ruled by monsters!” Only for the monsters to come right out and intentionally starve children to death on all our screens all around the world.

I have never felt so shaken.

Children are dying of hunger. Falling one after another, like petals of a dying flower. Under our watch.

How do you sleep, Presidents, Foreign Ministers, political leaders, diplomats, civil servants - doing nothing to stop Israel’s starvation… https://t.co/MqExfWysHk pic.twitter.com/okWRk7iIbU

— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) July 24, 2025

People like me are almost redundant at this current point in history. I’ve been writing about the depravity of the empire for years, thousands of articles and millions of words, and I’ve never said anything that illuminates the reality of our situation nearly as well as the fact that western governments and media have openly colluded with Israel to exterminate a group of innocent people because they’re the wrong ethnicity.

I mean, what could I possibly say about that that they’re not already saying themselves? The message is already there, fully baked. Perfect. Complete. They’re telling us everything we could possibly need to know. There’s nothing I could add.

I don’t have much use for scripture, but if I had to pick a favorite line from the Bible it would be “You will know them by their fruits.” Those seven little words cut through all the lies and distortions of life under the western empire, because they tell us to stop paying attention to all the spin and PR and justification and excuses we hear from the imperial propaganda machine, and just look at the products of the empire on their own. Ignore their words, and watch the results of their actions.

Those tiny skeletal bodies you’re seeing on your social media feed are the fruits of the empire. The shredded, eviscerated, decapitated children you’ve been seeing in footage from Gaza since 2023 are the fruits of the empire. This is known now, and it can never be unknown.

As Maya Angelou said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time. People know themselves much better than you do. That’s why it’s important to stop expecting them to be something other than who they are.”

This is one of those images you instantly know will appear in history books of the future. And people will wonder how we allowed this to happen. pic.twitter.com/CKcwJK8e7A

— Barry Malone (@malonebarry) July 23, 2025

This is who they are. This is who our leaders are. This is who our complicit news media are. This is what Israel is. This is what Zionism is. This is what the empire is. This is what western civilization is. We know that now. We know them by their fruits.

This is who they are, and it’s who they’ll always be. That’s why it’s important never to forget what they’ve shown us about themselves in Gaza, and to never, ever forgive them.

Our rulers have shown us that they must not be allowed to rule any longer. The empire has shown us that it should not be allowed to dominate our planet any longer. The apartheid state of Israel has shown us that it should not be allowed to exist any longer. Western supremacism, Zionism, racism and imperialism have shown us that these things must be eradicated from our world.

They have planted seeds of knowledge inside you about who they are and the status quo we’re being asked to consent to. Let those seeds sprout and grow. Tend to them with care. Help them to flourish.

Someday the tree that they planted in us will bear fruit of its own.

"Target Practice": Doctor Just Returned from Gaza Says Aid Site Injuries Indicate Deliberate Shots

‘Hungry aid staff fainting’ as starvation spreads in Gaza and truce hopes fade

The head of the main UN agency serving Palestinians has said his frontline staff are fainting from hunger, as the number of people dying of starvation in Gaza continued to rise and hopes for a ceasefire faded as negotiations collapsed. “This deepening crisis is affecting everyone, including those trying to save lives in the war-torn enclave … when caretakers cannot find enough to eat, the entire humanitarian system is collapsing,” Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (Unrwa), said on Thursday.

At least 45 people have died of hunger in the last four days. The UN and aid groups blame Israel’s blockade of almost all aid into the territory for the lack of food. Lazzarini said in a statement that a colleague in the territory had told him: “People in Gaza are neither dead nor alive, they are walking corpses.”

He said Unrwa had the equivalent of 6,000 loaded trucks of food and medical supplies waiting in Jordan and Egypt and urged Israel to allow “humanitarian partners to bring unrestricted and uninterrupted humanitarian assistance to Gaza”. Reports of people fainting and dropping dead of hunger have emerged in recent days. Civil defence workers have released photographs of gaunt bodies with little more than skin covering their bones.

Medical sources in Gaza said two more people had died of hunger on Thursday, both of whom had been ill and had not eaten for days. ...

Israel and the US announced they were recalling their negotiators from Doha, where peace talks were being held. The US envoy, Steve Witkoff, accused Hamas of not acting in good faith. “We have decided to bring our team home from Doha for consultations after the latest response from Hamas, which clearly shows a lack of desire to reach a ceasefire in Gaza,” he wrote on X. He said the US would consider “alternative options” to recover the hostages and “create a more stable environment for the people of Gaza” without elaborating on what those alternatives might be.

Far-right Israeli politicians and settlers discuss luxury ‘Gaza riviera’ plan

A group of far-right Israeli politicians and settlers met in parliament this week to discuss a plan to displace Palestinians from Gaza, annex the territory and turn it into a hi-tech, luxury resort city for Israelis.

The scheme, titled “The master plan for settlement in the Gaza Strip”, envisions the construction of 850,000 housing units, construction of hi-tech “smart cities” that trade cryptocurrency, and a metro system that runs across the territory. It took its inspiration from an idea shared by the US president, Donald Trump, in February, when he pledged to turn Gaza into the “riviera of the Middle East”.

The text of the plan, which boasts of the economic benefits to Israel, said: “The right of the people of Israel to settle, develop and preserve this land is not just a historical right – it is a national and security obligation.”

The plan, seen by the Guardian, would require Gaza’s existing population of about 2 million to be emptied out. Legal experts warn that forcible displacement on such a scale would be tantamount to ethnic cleansing.

Michael Sfard, one of Israel’s leading human rights lawyers, said: “This is a plan for ethnic cleansing. Under international law, this would amount to a crime against humanity because deportation is a war crime when committed on a small scale and a crime against humanity when it is committed on a massive scale.”

Pontiff departure

France to recognise Palestinian state at UN general assembly, Macron says

France will recognise a Palestinian state in September at the UN general assembly, Emmanuel Macron has said. The French president announced the decision on X on Thursday evening, saying he hoped it would bring peace to the region. Macron published a letter sent to the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, confirming France’s intention to become the first major western power to recognise a Palestinian state.

“True to its historic commitment to a just and lasting peace in the Middle East, I have decided that France will recognise the State of Palestine,” Macron said. “I will make this solemn announcement at the United Nations general assembly next September.” Macron said the “urgent priority today is to end the war in Gaza and rescue the civilian population”.

“We must finally build the State of Palestine, ensure its viability and enable it, by accepting its demilitarisation and fully recognising Israel, to contribute to the security of all in the Middle East,” he wrote on social media.

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said France’s decision “rewards terror” and “risks creating another Iranian proxy, just as Gaza became”, which would be “a launch pad to annihilate Israel – not to live in peace beside it”.

Israeli Forces Kill 79 Palestinians Over 24 Hours, Including 23 Attempting To Reach Aid

Gaza’s Health Ministry said on Thursday that Israeli attacks killed at least 79 Palestinians and wounded 453 over the previous 24-hour period as US-backed Israeli strikes continue to pound the Strip and IDF troops are gunning down people seeking aid.

The Health Ministry said that the bodies of another 10 Palestinians killed in previous Israeli attacks were recovered from the rubble. “A number of victims are still under the rubble and on the streets, where ambulance and civil defense crews are unable to reach them at this time,” the ministry wrote on Telegram.

Among the dead were 23 Palestinians who were killed by Israeli forces while attempting to get aid, and another 68 aid seekers were wounded. The Health Ministry said that since the US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) began operating at the end of May, 1,083 aid seekers have been killed and 7,275 have been injured.

Larry C. Johnson & Col. Larry Wilkerson: Trump Sinks in Endless Mistakes - Russia & Iran Redraw Map

‘Extortion’: Columbia University’s deal with White House met with mixed reactions

Columbia University’s long anticipated deal with the Trump administration after months of negotiations has drawn both condemnation and praise from faculty, students, and alumni – a sign that the end of negotiations will hardly restore harmony on a campus profoundly divided since the beginning of Israel’s war in Gaza. The deal will reinstate $400m in federal funds the administration cut from the university after it accused it of allowing antisemitism to fester on campus. But it will cost Columbia some $220m in legal settlements, as well as a host of new measures that critics warn significantly restrict the university’s independence and will further repress pro-Palestinian speech.

The agreement – the government’s first with one of dozens of universities it has accused of enabling antisemitism and threatened with funding cuts and other measures – is likely to have major repercussions on academic freedom in the US and future relations between higher education institutions and an administration that has described them as “the enemy”.

David Pozen, a professor at Columbia Law School, slammed the deal as giving “legal form to an extortion scheme”, he wrote. “The means being used to push through these reforms are as unprincipled as they are unprecedented. Higher education policy in the United States is now being developed through ad hoc deals, a mode of regulation that is not only inimical to the ideal of the university as a site of critical thinking but also corrosive to the democratic order and to law itself,” Pozen continued.

Not all Columbia affiliates were as critical. The Stand Columbia Society, a group of alumni, students and faculty that have for months championed some of the same reforms demanded by the Trump administration, welcomed the announcement. ... Another group, Columbia Faculty and Staff Supporting Israel, wrote in a statement that they were “extremely happy that federal funding is restored and will be reading the agreement carefully to verify that it addresses antisemitism and anti-Israeli hate”.

Ukraine War Will Now Be Resolved on Battlefield John Mearsheimer, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen

666 times wasn't enough.

Starbucks’ CEO made 6,666 times more than his workers in 2024

Starbucks’ CEO, Brian Niccol, made 6,666 times more than his average worker last year, according to a report on the growing gap between top executives and their workers. The inequality gap between CEOs’ pay and that of their median workers rose in 2024 to 285 to 1 from 268 to 1 in 2023, according to a report released this week by the largest federation of labor unions in the US, the AFL-CIO.

CEO pay rose 7% in 2024 among S&P 500 companies, an increase of $1.24m from 2023.

Niccol, who joined the company in September 2024, received more than $97.8m in total compensation in 2024. The typical Starbucks worker’s pay was less than $15,000.

“The median Starbucks worker would have had to start working for Starbucks in 4643 BC (during the Stone Age!) just to earn what Starbucks’ CEO earned in 2024 alone,” the report stated. The report notes Trump’s “big, beautiful” reconciliation bill passed this year will hand the average CEO of an S&P 500 company a $489,118 tax cut, 639 times more than the median US worker.

US justice department officials interview Ghislaine Maxwell

The Jeffrey Epstein files scandal swirling around Donald Trump and his administration continued to escalate on Thursday as officials from the Department of Justice met with the late sex offender’s longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell, whose lawyer said she “answered every question … honestly and to the best of her ability”. Todd Blanche, the US deputy attorney general, arrived on Thursday morning at the office of the US attorney in Tallahassee, Florida, ABC News reported. The state prosecutor’s office is based in the federal courthouse in the Florida capital and Maxwell’s lawyers were also seen entering the building.

Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking and other crimes at a federal prison in Florida, after being convicted in New York in late 2021. On Thursday afternoon, Maxwell’s attorney David Markus said his team had a “very productive day”with Blanche, who will meet with Maxwell again Friday, Reuters reported.

The meeting comes amid growing political and public pressure on the Trump administration to release more details about the Epstein investigation – something that Trump and members of his administration had promised. Mark Epstein, the brother of the disgraced financier, told the Guardian in an interview that if he had the opportunity he would ask Maxwell “what she and Jeffrey might have known what the dirt was on Donald Trump”.

“Because Jeffrey said, he said he had dirt on Trump,” Mark Epstein said. “I don’t know what it was, but years ago he said he had dirt on Trump.” He added that he wasn’t “particularly worried” for Maxwell, adding: “There’s a lot of people on this planet.” Maxwell’s brother Ian Maxwell, meanwhile, told the New York Post that his sister had been preparing “new evidence” before her meeting with justice department officials.

“She will be putting before [a] court material new evidence that was not available to the defense at her 2021 trial, which would have had a significant impact on its outcome,” her brother told the outlet in an email.

A fifth of California homes are investor-owned as state’s affordability crisis deepens

One in five homes in California is owned by investors, new data reveals, in the latest sign of an affordability crisis that shows no end in sight. The figures, which come from the data tracker BatchData and were analyzed by the Orange County Register, show that California’s overall percentage of investor home ownership sits at 19%.

The rate is higher in the state’s mountain regions such as Sierra county, which has an 83% share of its homes owned by investors, compared with coastal Ventura county, at just 14%. In seven California counties – Sierra, Trinity, Mono, Alpine, Plumas, Modoc and Calaveras – investors owned more than 50% of homes.

California’s most urban counties, featuring some of its most prized and expensive real estate, had lower shares of investor-owned homes, with Los Angeles county at 15% and San Francisco, San Diego and Orange counties at 16%.

While the trend is not unique to California – the state ranks 36th in the country, and just a shade under the 20% national average – it comes as the state is experiencing an acute housing shortage. Home prices in the Golden state are among the most expensive in the nation, and have jumped 50% in the past six years. The US Chamber of Commerce estimates that the US is short roughly 4.5m homes.

The share of investor-owned homes is rising as well, accounting for 26.8% of all national residential property sales in the first quarter of 2025. While this indicated the highest percentage in five years, BatchData attributed the number less to increasing investor activity, and more to rising costs of home ownership serving as a barrier for homebuyers. The doubling of mortgage rates in 2022 significantly cut homebuyer purchases, thus increasing investors’ share.

Trump order pushes local officials to clear unhoused people from streets

The federal government is seeking to crack down on homelessness in the US, with Donald Trump issuing an executive order to push local governments to remove unhoused people from the streets.

The order the US president signed on Thursday will seek the “reversal of federal or state judicial precedents and the termination of consent decrees” that restrict local governments’ ability to force people into treatment for mental health, and redirect funds to support rehabilitation and treatment. The order aims to “restore public order”, saying “endemic vagrancy, disorderly behavior, sudden confrontations, and violent attacks have made our cities unsafe”, according to the order.

The action comes as the homelessness crisis in the US has significantly worsened in recent years driven by a widespread shortage of affordable housing. Last year, a single-day count, which is a rough estimate, recorded more than 770,000 people experiencing homelessness across the country, the highest figure ever documented.

Cities and states have adopted an increasingly punitive approach to homelessness, seeking to push people out of parks and city streets, even when there is no shelter available. The supreme court ruled last year that cities can impose fines and even jail time for unhoused people for sleeping outside after local governments argued some protections for unhoused people prevented them from taking action to reduce homelessness. Trump’s action seeks to move unhoused people to “long-term institutional settings for humane treatment through the appropriate use of civil commitment”, according to the order.

The National Homelessness Law Center condemned the order, which it said “deprives people of their basic rights” and would ultimately worsen the problem. “Today’s executive orders, combined with Maga’s budget cuts for housing and healthcare, will increase the number of people forced to live in tents, in their cars, and on the streets. This order does nothing to lower the cost of housing or help people make ends meet,” said Jesse Rabinowitz of the National Homelessness Law Center.

Air pollution raises risk of dementia, say Cambridge scientists

Exposure to certain forms of air pollution is linked to an increased risk of developing dementia, according to the most comprehensive study of its kind. The illness is estimated to affect about 57 million people worldwide, with the number expected to increase to at least 150m cases by 2050.

The report, which was produced by researchers at the Medical Research Council’s epidemiology unit at the University of Cambridge involved a systematic review of 51 studies. It drew on data from more than 29 million participants who had been exposed to air pollutants for at least a year.

Although air pollution has already been identified as a risk factor for dementia, the research, which is the most comprehensive study of its kind to date, found there to be a positive and statistically-significant association between three types of air pollutant and dementia.

The pollutants were: PM2.5, which comes from vehicle emissions, power plants and woodburning stoves and fireplaces; nitrogen dioxide, which arises from the burning of fossil fuels; and soot, which comes from sources such as vehicle exhaust emissions and burning wood.

When inhaled, these pollutants can penetrate deep into the lungs and are associated with various respiratory diseases and an increased risk of certain heart problems. More specifically, the study found that for every 10 micrograms per cubic metre of PM2.5, an individual’s relative risk of dementia would increase by 17%. Using equivalent figures for soot, the risk rose by 13%.

Trump effort to ditch greenhouse gas finding ignores ‘clearcut’ science

One of the architects of a landmark 16-year-old finding on pollution’s impact on health that the Trump administration now wants to eliminate says that doing so would ignore “clearcut” science that has only become clearer today because of extreme weather. The Trump administration plans would sweep away the US government’s legal authority to limit greenhouse gases in order to address the climate crisis.

A proposed rule from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would rescind the so-called “endangerment finding”, the federal government’s 2009 conclusion that carbon dioxide, along with five other greenhouse gases, harm the health of Americans.

The finding has underpinned the US government’s legal authority to deal with the climate crisis under the Clean Air Act and its removal would effectively dismantle limits on the pollution coming from cars, trucks and power plants that is dangerously heating the world. Several sources confirmed the draft plan, which was first reported on by the New York Times.

A former EPA official who oversaw the crafting of the endangerment finding said there was little doubt among government scientists about the harm caused by greenhouse gases, with their findings borne out by escalating temperatures and disasters since 2009. “The science and the impacts were clear then and are only more clear today,” said Jason Burnett, who was associate deputy administrator of the EPA during George W Bush’s administration. “The science is clearcut, the impacts are clearcut and the law is clearcut. The challenge should be how we reduce emissions rather than debate whether there’s a problem.”

Donald Trump, who as president has moved to squash pollution rules, stymie clean energy and boost fossil fuel production, had ordered a review of the endangerment finding. Lee Zeldin, Trump’s EPA administrator, said in March of the review that the administration “will not sacrifice national prosperity, energy security, and the freedom of our people for an agenda that throttles our industries, our mobility and our consumer choice while benefiting adversaries overseas”.

Also of Interest

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

Iran’s President Says Tehran Is Ready for More Israeli Attacks, Not Optimistic About Ceasefire

Israeli Troops Raid Southern Lebanon, Search Homes and Detain Workers

Trump Launched Nearly as Many Airstrikes in Five Months as Biden Did in Four Years

Ukraine - Zelenski's Backtracking Shows Fatal Weakness

Ending Resource Separatism in Alberta and Canada

Satyajit Das: Parsing President Trump’s Real Agenda

Venezuelans deported by Trump to El Salvador describe ‘horror movie’ mega-prison

It is one of the deadliest chemicals on Earth – but even Mexico’s cartels can’t resist the lure of mercury

Doctors EXPOSE Israeli TORTURE: “Naked, cuffed, blindfolded, and beaten” | Useful Idiots

Rep. Rashida Tlaib on Gaza Siege, American Killed by Israeli Settlers & Epstein’s Financial Network

A Little Night Music

Anson Funderburgh And The Rockets – Keep What I've Got

Anson Funderburgh on Night Music

Anson Funderburgh & Sam Myers - Let the good times roll

Little Charlie & Anson Funderburgh - Side Tracked

Sam Myers And Anson Funderburgh – Everything's Gonna Be Alright

Anson Funderburgh And The Rockets – She Knocks Me Out!

Little Charlie Baty & Anson Funderburgh - Hideaway

Anson Funderburgh - I was fooled

Anson Funderburgh & Sam Myers - Looking the world over

Anson Funderburgh & The Rockets Feat. Sam Myers - Live in Bremen