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"The mob is the mother of tyrants."

-- Diogenes

News and Opinion

Assaults On Free Speech Go Into Hyperdrive After Charlie Kirk Killing

It’s amazing how aggressively free speech in the United States is being torn apart in the wake of the Charlie Kirk killing.

Jimmy Kimmel was fired after President Trump’s FCC threatened ABC when the late night comic suggested that Kirk’s killer was a Trumper. I personally dislike Kimmel, but this is about as naked a government assault on free expression as you could possibly imagine.

Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil has been ordered deported to Syria or Algeria after the Trump administration targeted him for political speech critical of Israel.

Trump has brokered a deal allowing TikTok to be purchased by a consortium that includes his billionaire buddies Larry Ellison and Marc Andreesen. US officials have acknowledged that Washington’s push to grab control of TikTok was because of the opposition to the Gaza holocaust that was circulating on the platform.

Larry Ellison -- the Oracle mega-billionaire who has donated millions to the IDF -- just had his kid buy Paramount/CBS to have Bari Weiss run, is trying to buy CNN, and now will buy TikTok (with Andreessen Horowitz).

Lucky break for Israel as its support collapses in the US. pic.twitter.com/W3fFYHGKPK

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) September 17, 2025

Oracle co-founder Ellison is a fanatical Zionist oligarch who has expressed support for the idea of a massive surveillance network to control all of society, and his son David just purchased Paramount, which owns CBS News. The younger Ellison has reportedly installed pro-Israel propagandist Bari Weiss to a senior leadership position within the network.

Trump says he has asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to look into bringing “criminal RICO charges” against Code Pink activists who chanted anti-genocide slogans at him while he was dining at a restaurant. Like pro-Palestine demonstrators are mafia kingpins or something.

Bondi said during a podcast that the Trump administration is going to start prosecuting “hate speech” against conservatives, alleging that such speech was responsible for Charlie Kirk’s assassination.

When asked by the press about Bondi’s comments, Trump said “We’ll probably go after people like you, because you treat me so unfairly. It’s hate. You have a lot of hate in your heart. Maybe I’ll come after ABC.” Again, ABC was the network Jimmy Kimmel was fired from.

To be clear: It's not "ABC pulls Jimmy Kimmel after comments about Charlie Kirk," it's "ABC pulls Jimmy Kimmel after threats from Trump FCC chair"

The distinction matters here.

— Theo Baker (@tab_delete) September 17, 2025

Trump henchman Stephen Miller said on a podcast that the White House is going to start targeting leftist “terrorist networks”, claiming on no basis whatsoever that Kirk’s assassination was the fault of a “vast domestic terror movement” which foments the kind of violence which led to Kirk’s death. Trump himself said that “a lot of people that you would traditionally say are on the left … [are] already under investigation,” and that he plans to designate Antifa as a terrorist organization.

Vice President JD Vance has publicly been encouraging Trump supporters to try to get ordinary members of the public fired for saying mean things about Charlie Kirk, saying, “When you see someone celebrating Charlie’s murder, call them out, and hell, call their employer. We don’t believe in political violence, but we do believe in civility.”

Trump’s Truth Social account recently shared a video calling for state censorship of media outlets and online influencers who share “propaganda”, falsely framing this authoritarian notion as a reboot of the Smith-Mundt Act and suggesting that it should be called the “Charlie Kirk Act”.

For chanting at him and inflicting “harm and terror” on his dinner, Trump and his Deputy Attorney General say they can charge activists with RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) crimes. All week, the administration has floated designating activist groups as… pic.twitter.com/WABtedBCwR

— BreakThrough News (@BTnewsroom) September 18, 2025

When you see me refusing to play along with the campaign to canonize Charlie Kirk or respect the emotional hysteria around his killing, this is the main reason why. His death is already being used to manufacture consent for sweeping acts of tyranny, and it was clear from day one that it would be.

The empire managers are always seeking excuses to suppress free speech, crush the left, and stomp out opposition to Zionism and the US war machine. They’ll use any chance they get to advance these goals, which are all ultimately about expanding power and control.

Many pre-existing agendas are being shoved forward by those in power, as always happens when emotions run hot over a traumatic event. I’ve said it many times before and I’ll surely say it many times again: it’s precisely when we are most tempted to abandon rationality and play along with the emotionality of the moment that we need to be thinking most clearly and critically.

Francesca Albanese on Gaza: "The Shame of Our Time"

IDF tries to force civilians out of Gaza City as ground offensive continues

Israeli troops pressed ahead with a ground offensive into Gaza City on Wednesday, making further efforts to force more people to flee their homes and travel to overcrowded and unsafe areas in the south of the devastated territory. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said on Wednesday they had carried out 150 air and artillery strikes ahead of the ground operation that began early on Tuesday morning. Two army divisions are working their way slowly towards the city centre and are expected to be joined by a third in the coming days.

Several of the airstrikes brought down apartment blocks in the midst of tented camps inhabited by displaced people. Israel claims the buildings were being used by Hamas for surveillance. On Tuesday night Gaza City’s al-Rantisi children’s hospital was hit. According to the Gaza health ministry, half the hospital’s 80 patients managed to flee the building but the rest, including four children in intensive care and eight premature babies, remained.

Overnight strikes killed 16 people, according to local hospitals, bringing the total Palestinian death toll in two years of war to 65,000. On Tuesday, a UN human rights commission published a report concluding that Israel has been committing genocide in Gaza.

The coast road leading south from Gaza City has been packed with families trying to flee the offensive. On Wednesday, the IDF announced the opening of a second route, through the middle of the Gaza Strip, for two days to try to encourage the exodus. ...

Of the million Palestinians living in and around Gaza City, the Israeli military estimates 350,000 people have left and moved south over the past month. The UN estimate is 238,000, including about 50,000 in the last 48 hours.

Boeing, Lockheed, Palantir Among Firms Enabling & Profiting from Israel's Genocide in Gaza: Amnesty

Probe Reveals Nearly 3,000 Gaza Aid-Seekers Killed by Israeli Forces

An investigation published Wednesday revealed that Israeli forces have killed nearly 3,000 Palestinian aid-seekers and wounded almost 20,000 others over 23 months of Israel’s US-backed genocidal annihilation of Gaza.

The New Humanitarian‘s open-source investigation chronologically documents the killing of 2,957 Palestinian aid-seekers and the wounding of 19,866 others.

These figures include nearly 1,000 Palestinians who United Nations human rights officials say have been killed at or near aid sites run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Israeli soldiers have admitted to receiving orders to fire live bullets and artillery shells into crowds of civilians at GHF distribution points.

"Over the past 23 months, Israeli forces have killed nearly 3,000 people attempting to get aid in the Gaza Strip and wounded almost 20,000 others," according to an open-source analysis, suggesting a deliberate policy. https://t.co/0YViQBpxVj

— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) September 16, 2025

The New Humanitarian noted that these numbers represent approximately 4.6% of the more than 65,000 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza, most of them women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, whose figures are likely a vast undercount.

“These are not isolated incidents. They’re not just similar incidents. They are a pattern, and reflect policy and an acceptance on the part of the state that this should continue indefinitely,” Adil Haque, an international law professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey, told The New Humanitarian.

Haque and other experts interviewed for the investigation called Israeli attacks on Gaza aid-seekers “grave violations of international humanitarian law that likely amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and acts of genocide.” ...

The New Humanitarian‘s investigation identified “clearly discernible patterns... showing how Israel has used attacks on people seeking aid as a tool for different purposes at different points in the war: deadly crowd control, forced displacement, and the destruction of the collective ability of Palestinians in Gaza to survive.”

Haque said that “if Israeli leaders were simply indifferent to the killing of so many Palestinian aid-seekers, not caring one way or the other, then international condemnation and potential liability for war crimes should be enough to lead them to change their policies to prevent or repress such killings.”

“Their willingness to bear such costs is some evidence that they intend for these killings to continue,” he added.

The New Humanitarian‘s investigation comes as Israeli forces ramp up their assault on Gaza City during Operation Gideon’s Chariots 2, a campaign to conquer, occupy, and ethnically cleanse the Palestinian exclave. Israeli leaders have publicly backed a proposal by US President Donald Trump to empty Gaza of Palestinians and transform the coastal strip into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”

COL. Douglas Macgregor : How Long Can Israel Keep Killing Innocents?

Smotrich Calls Gaza a ‘Real Estate Bonanza,’ Says US and Israel Discussing Dividing the Land

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Wednesday described Gaza as a “real estate bonanza” and said that the US and Israel are in talks about dividing the land, the Israeli news site Ynet has reported.

Smotrich referenced what he called a “business plan” that Ynet said was similar to a plan being circulated within the Trump administration. According to a recent report from The Washington Post, the plan involves removing the Palestinian population and placing Gaza under the control of a US-administered trusteeship for 10 years as it is turned into a tourist resort and advanced technology manufacturing hub. The plan is modeled on Trump’s calls for a US takeover of Gaza.

The Post report said the removal of Palestinians from Gaza could be “temporary,” but Smotrich, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and other Israeli officials have made clear that their vision for Gaza involves the ethnic cleansing, or permanent removal, of the Palestinian population. ...

Smotrich said that he was personally involved in the negotiations with the US on dividing up the Palestinian territory. “I’ve begun negotiations with the Americans, and I’m saying this seriously, because we paid a lot of money for this war. We need to work out how we share percentages on the land. The demolition phase, the first stage of urban renewal, we’ve already done. Now we need to build,” he said.

"Real Estate Bonanza" Israel MASK OFF On Gaza Plans

Sanders finally relents and admits the obvious:

Bernie Sanders becomes first US senator to say Israel committing genocide in Gaza

Senator Bernie Sanders said on Wednesday that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, calling the conclusion “inescapable” and becoming the first US senator to use the term. “Over the last two years, Israel has not simply defended itself against Hamas,” Sanders wrote. “Instead, it has waged an all-out war against the entire Palestinian people.”

Sanders had long received flak from supporters and protesters alike for avoiding the term, which he previously said made him “queasy” when protesters chanted it last year during a speech in Ireland. On Monday, an independent UN commission of experts concluded that Israel’s actions “meet the criteria set forth in the Genocide convention”. “I agree,” Sanders wrote in a statement on his Senate webpage titled, “It Is Genocide. The intent is clear.”

Sanders cited the casualty figures: at least 65,000 Palestinians killed and 164,000 wounded out of a population of 2.2 million, with figures from an Israeli military database suggesting that 83% of those killed were civilians. He also pointed to Israeli officials’ statements as proof of intent, quoting defense minister Yoav Gallant calling Palestinians “human animals” and finance minister Bezalel Smotrich vowing “Gaza will be entirely destroyed”.

Prof. John Mearsheimer : Is US Democracy In Danger Of Collapse?

Venezuela starts days of military and ‘electronic warfare’ drills after US strikes on alleged drug boats

Venezuela says it has begun three days of military exercises on its Caribbean island of La Orchila as tensions soar amid US military activity in the region. Forces deployed for what Washington called an anti-drug operation have blown up at least two Venezuelan boats and a combined 14 people allegedly transporting drugs across the Caribbean this month – a move slammed by UN experts as “extrajudicial execution”.

The strikes and a deployment of US warships in the region have raised fears of an invasion in Venezuela, whose president, Nicolás Maduro, has been accused by Washington of being a cartel leader.

The exercise ordered by Maduro as commander-in-chief was baptised “Sovereign Caribbean”, said the defence minister, Vladimir Padrino López. “There will be air defence deployments with armed drones, surveillance drones, submarine drones ... We are going to implement electronic warfare actions,” he said on Wednesday, citing the “threatening, vulgar voice” of the US.

Public television showed images of amphibious vessels and warships deployed off La Orchila, where Venezuela has a military base. The armed forces said the exercises would involve 12 ships, 22 aircraft and 20 small boats from the “special naval militia”. La Orchila island is close to the area where the US intercepted and held a Venezuelan fishing vessel for eight hours over the weekend.

Credit Scores PLUMMET Faster Than Great Recession

Federal Reserve cuts US interest rates for first time since December

The US Federal Reserve cut interest rates on Wednesday, its first rate cut since December, as the central bank moved to stabilize a wobbling labor market even as Donald Trump’s tariffs continue to push up prices.

Rates are now at a range of 4% to 4.25% – the lowest since November 2022. But the decision is unlikely to satisfy Trump, who has lambasted the Fed for acting “too late” and called for a far bigger cut.

“Job gains have slowed and the downside risks to unemployment have risen,” Fed chair Jerome Powell said during a closely watched press conference. At the same time, he warned, inflation has picked up.

It is “reasonable” to expect Trump’s tariffs will lead to “a one-time shift” in prices, Powell suggested. “But it is also possible that the inflationary effects could instead be more persistent, and that is a risk to be assessed and managed,” he said. “Our obligation is to ensure that a one-time increase in the price level does not become an ongoing inflation problem.”

Richard Wolff & Michael Hudson: Trump WRECKING the US economy

Well, what did you expect from Jeffrey Epstein's best bud?

Trump administration retreats on combating human trafficking and child exploitation

The Trump administration has aggressively rolled back efforts across the federal government to combat human trafficking, a Guardian investigation has found. The sweeping retreat threatens to negate decades of progress in the drive to prevent sexual slavery, forced labor and child sexual exploitation, according to legal experts, former government officials and anti-trafficking advocates. They say the administration’s moves are impeding efforts to prosecute perpetrators and protect survivors in the United States and around the world.

“It’s been a widespread and multi-pronged attack on survivors that leaves all of us less safe and leaves survivors with few options,” said Jean Bruggeman, executive director of Freedom Network USA, a national coalition of service providers, researchers and trafficking survivors.

Under Trump, key initiatives for fighting human trafficking have been cut back at the US Department of State, Department of Justice, Department of Labor, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Guardian found. Senior officials and other staffers have been forced out, workers shifted to other priorities and grants delayed or cancelled.

At DHS, Trump has ordered agents formerly dedicated to investigating and arresting human traffickers to focus on deporting immigrants. Current and former DHS staffers interviewed by the Guardian confirmed that these investigators’ day-to-day work has been broadly shifted toward deportations and away from investigating “major crimes” with “real victims”.

At the state department, the Trump administration slashed more than 70% of the workforce at the agency’s office to monitor and combat trafficking in persons (Tip office), which is responsible for leading anti-trafficking efforts across the US government. The department has also held up grants for nonprofit organizations fighting trafficking around the world, putting their operations and services at risk.

This Charlie Kirk BOMBSHELL Devastates Israel, Netanyahu FURIOUS | Patrick Henningsen & Alex Krainer

US justice department removes study finding far-right extremists commit ‘far more’ violence

The US justice department has scrubbed a study from its website concluding that far-right extremists have killed far more Americans than any other domestic terrorist group, just days after a gunman fatally shot the prominent conservative activist Charlie Kirk. The report, now archived, titled What NIJ Research Tells Us About Domestic Terrorism, vanished from the Department of Justice website between 11 and 12 September, according to Jason Paladino, an independent investigative reporter who first wrote the story. Kirk, the 31-year-old Turning Point USA founder and Trump ally, was gunned down while speaking at Utah Valley University on 10 September.

The vanished study opened with: “Since 1990, far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left or radical Islamist extremists, including 227 events that took more than 520 lives. In this same period, far-left extremists committed 42 ideologically motivated attacks that took 78 lives.”

Tyler Robinson, 22, has been charged with Kirk’s murder and prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. In the aftermath of the shooting, Donald Trump and other Republican leaders have blamed “radical left” elements for the attack.

The National Institute of Justice study, which was based on research spanning three decades, represented one of the most comprehensive government assessments of domestic terrorism patterns. It found that “militant, nationalistic, white supremacist violent extremism has increased in the United States” and that “the number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism”. Where the report once appeared, the justice department wrote it was “reviewing its websites and materials in accordance with recent executive orders”, according to 404Media, though the page is now unavailable.

NO ONE Is Buying The FBI’s “Evidence” Against Tyler Robinson!

ABC says late-night show will not air for foreseeable future after Kimmel accused Republicans of ‘doing everything they can to score political points’ from Kirk’s killing

Jimmy Kimmel Live! will be suspended “indefinitely” after the late-night host’s comments about the killing of Charlie Kirk, ABC has announced, hours after the Trump-appointed chair of the US broadcast regulator threatened to take away the broadcaster’s license. The network, which Disney owns, announced on Wednesday night that it would remove Kimmel’s show from its schedule for the foreseeable future. ...

Donald Trump later called the move “Great news for America” and congratulated ABC for its “courage” in a social media post. “That leaves Jimmy and Seth, two total losers, on Fake News NBC,” he added, in an apparent threat to the shows of NBC late-night hosts Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers, after the cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s show.

ABC’s decision to suspend Kimmel came just minutes after one of the biggest owners of TV stations in the US, Nexstar Media, announced it would preempt any episodes of Jimmy Kimmel Live! set to air on the stations it owns across the country due to his comments.

“Nexstar’s owned and partner television stations affiliated with the ABC Television Network will preempt Jimmy Kimmel Live! for the foreseeable future beginning with tonight’s show,” Nexstar said. “Nexstar strongly objects to recent comments made by Mr Kimmel concerning the killing of Charlie Kirk and will replace the show with other programming in its ABC-affiliated markets.”

Before Nexstar took action, the Federal Communications Commission chair, Brendan Carr, had urged local broadcasters to stop airing the show, saying they were “running the possibility of fines or licensed revocation from the FCC” during an appearance on the rightwing commentator Benny Johnson’s podcast.

Kimmel OUT After Trump FCC Threats

Trump DoJ seeks to kill Vermont law that makes big oil pay for climate harm

Donald Trump’s justice department has asked a judge to shut down a Vermont law which holds major polluters financially responsible for climate damages. In a brief filed on Monday in a federal court in Burlington, the administration said the policy was “unlawful on its face” and pushed the court to “end Vermont’s lawless experiment”.

“The Court should deny the motions to dismiss, grant the United States’ motion for summary judgment, declare the Superfund Act unconstitutional and unenforceable, and permanently enjoin Defendants from taking any actions to implement or enforce it,” Riley Walters, counsel to an acting assistant attorney general, wrote in the motion.

Passed in 2024, the Vermont policy – known as the Climate Superfund Act – requires major polluters to pay for their carbon emissions, which have warmed the planet and increased the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events, such as the floods which wreaked $1bn in damage on the state last year. New York passed a similar measure in December.

“This law is about holding big oil accountable for a portion of the damage it has already brought to Vermont’s farms, businesses, homeowners and communities,” said Paul Burns, executive director of the Vermont Public Interest Research Group, one of the organizations that helped to pass Vermont’s Climate Superfund law. “Vermont is well within its rights to protect its people in this way.”

The filing comes four months after the Department of Justice and Environmental Protection Agency sued Vermont and New York over the laws. In August, the state and two non-profits who were granted intervenor status, the Conservation Law Foundation and the Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont, asked the judge to dismiss the lawsuit.

Scotland should have known that if they let Trump in that he would stink up the place.

Trump golf course in Scotland accused of breaching sewage limits

Donald Trump’s Aberdeenshire golf course has breached sewage contamination limits 14 times since 2019, documents reveal. The 36-hole golf course, one of two that Trump owns in Scotland, also has a five-star hotel, a whisky bar and two restaurants. Trump International Golf Links, Scotland has a private sewage system that treats wastewater before releasing it into the ground by soaking it through gravel beds in raised filter mounds.

According to documents released from the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (Sepa) to the investigative journalism outlet Unearthed, however, groundwater samples of discharges at the course breached contamination levels on a number of occasions, including four times in 2024 and once in the first half of this year. These samples exceeded limits for biomechanical oxygen demand – a measure of the amount of oxygen required by microbes to digest organic matter – suspended solid particles and ammoniacal nitrogen. These are all contaminants from human waste that has not been properly treated.

The agency categorised eight of the 14 incidents as “upper tier”, which it describes as “extreme events which have the potential to cause immediate and serious environmental harm” and can trigger enforcement action.

Also of Interest

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

Israel’s Destruction of Gaza City Intensifies

The Obvious Is Now Official - Israel Commits Genocide

Israel’s Qatar Attack Rattles the Gulf

A Symbol of Global Resistance: Why Israel Fears Gaza Flotillas

Netanyahu Depicts Grim Economic Future for Israel, Need to Become an Autarky, “Super Sparta” Due to Isolation; Are There More Meanings?

Trump Brokering Deal to Hand TikTok Over to Right-Wing Billionaires Andreessen and Ellison

‘Stop This Carnage’: Irish President Slams EU Nations for Silence as Israel Inflicts ‘Atrocious’ Harm on Gaza

Are Israel and Türkiye on a Collision Course or Parallel Tracks?

American Billionaires Are Competing To Be King Shit of Turd Island

Sonia Sotomayor says Americans may not know difference between presidents and kings

Kupiansk falling. Russia attrition war accelerates

A Little Night Music

Carla Thomas - I've Got No Time to Lose

Carla Thomas - I Like What You're Doing

Carla Thomas - A Woman's Love

Carla Thomas - A Love Of My Own

Carla Thomas - I'll bring it on home to you

Carla Thomas - You'll lose a good thing

Otis Redding & Carla Thomas - Tramp

Carla Thomas - Pick Up The Pieces

Carla Thomas - Where Do I Go

Carla Thomas - He's Beating Your Time