Trump is in deep trouble. Look at the photo. Those are the 800 generals and admirals Hegseth and Trump summoned from all over the world to meet together and be admonished. Look at their faces. They are angry.
Hegseth called them weak, unmanly and fat. He told them they would have compulsory physicals every six months and would be fired if they were overweight.
Trump spoke next. He arrived twenty minutes late and nobody clapped. He said it was the most silent room he had ever been in. He told them to applaud. No one applauded. Those senior officers sat and listened to the silence. No one applauded. They now all know where they stand.
No authoritarian right winger insults all their senior generals and admirals together. Pinochet did not do it. Putin doesn’t do it. Modi would not dream of it. Mussolini did not do it. Netanyahu hasn’t done it. Hitler never did it. It’s mad.
Trump cannot have a coup if all the generals and admirals have learned that they all hate you. And with luck this means this road to a dictatorship is closed to Trump.
We have been watching the suffering on our phones and screens for almost two years. Now famine is here. Far from the horror, it seems obscene and unbearably self-indulgent to say that Gaza is upsetting. But certainly, many of the rich and powerful of this world seem to want us to feel that way. And perhaps the for them the real point of our distress is to make us feel helpless and fearful.
For many Israelis the point of this vast theatre of cruelty is the extermination, genocide, torture and breaking of the Palestinians. But for the powerful of the world, what matters most is the example and the creation of a new normal. They are showing all the rest of us what can be done to those of us who, even by our very presence, resist. And they think that in future they will have need of this example.
None of the cruelty is new. But easy availability of the images on our phones is new. And the direction global politics is taking is also new.
We are writing this in Massachusetts, sitting at a window looking out over a river in the dawn, safe and warm, two miles from the town of Mashpee. In 1665 the white English settlers of Massachusetts, the pilgrim fathers, went to war with the native people, the Wampanoag. They destroyed every Wampanoag community but the two bands who had converted to Christianity. Mashpee was one of those two communities, and the natives here survive, and are now proud and organized.
There is an account of the burning of a native fortress where people of the Narragansett tribe had offered refuge to fleeing Wampanoag. The white settlers set fire to the wooden fortifications and killed the people one by one as they ran from the flames. The settlers who survived remembered how they had to pray together at the top of their voices to drown out the screams of the burning natives.
Cruelty, conquest, racist wars and genocide are not new. These are old stories. We know people are saying Gaza is not a war, it’s just a one-sided massacre. But many colonial wars have been mostly one-sided massacres.
Children also died in the Nazi holocaust. Children died when the US Air Force created the firestorm over Tokyo and dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
But the photos and videos we see on our phones are new.
Phones are everywhere now. In Afghanistan they say that the 5G coverage is so good that every shepherd in the mountains has a phone. Of course, they are exaggerating a bit, and many people in many countries try hard not to look at the horrors happening in real time. But in another sense, the whole world is watching Gaza now.
And one thing people in Gaza have been saying over and over is that the people of the world have deserted them.
The photo is of the heroic journalist Julie K. Brown
NANCY LINDISFARNE and JONATHAN NEALE report:
This article says four important things about the Epstein files.
First, though all the talk is about conspiracy theories, this case is of a piece with the cover-ups of the abuse of gymnasts by Larry Nasser; the cover-ups of generations of abuse in residential schools for indigenous children in Canada, the consistent cover-ups by the Catholic Church; the cover-up of the Smythe case by the Archbishop of Canterbury; and hundreds and thousands of other cover-ups by institutions all over the world. This is not some bizarre conspiracy. It is what the rich and powerful do.
Second, this is not just about Donald Trump. This cover up started way before Trump, and it goes way beyond Trump. Third, the liberal and centre mainstream media are unable to talk sensibly about any of this because the Democratic Party has been part of the cover-up. Fourth, as with almost other every abuse and Me Too case, this one came to light because brave survivors fought back.
Nancy Lindisfarne and Jonathan Neale, a 6 minute read. Let’s clear up some confusions. Trump and Putin are not negotiating with each other. They are on the same side. So Putin is not manipulating Trump. And Trump is not weaker than Putin. They are two of the most important leaders of a global alliance of far-right racists.
A 6 minute read by Nancy Lindisfarne and Jonathan Neale. This is our second post about the wall of silence that has long protected sexual abusers in Britain. Our first post was about how the Archbishop of Canterbury and dozens of other church officials covered up gruesome physical and sexual abuse. We argued there that the protection of sexual abusers in British institutions is not a glitch in the system. It is how the system works. This post tells the story of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, several police forces and dozens of managers protected Jimmy Savile over several decades.
There were two huge Gaza demonstrations in London in October, and after the enormous one in early November, 2023, I started wearing my Palestinian kefiya scarf or my big Free Palestine badge, or both, whenever I went out.
TAKIS GEROS writes: From January 2006 to January 2007, I worked for a Greek NGO which provided aid to the health sector in the Palestinian territories. The following paper was delivered to an international conference at Panteion University in Athens in November 2008. The continuities between 2006 and Biden’s “humanitarian airdrops” today are important, sobering and have a series of serious implications for the Gazan survivors in the future.
Nancy Lindisfarne and Jonathan Neale write: Sooner or later, there will be a ceasefire in Gaza. When it comes, it will be a defeat for Israel. After all, the main goal of Gazans, Palestinians and the global solidarity movement has been a ceasefire. And the ceasefire will come about because of solidarity, resistance and a global mass movement from below.
Anne Bonny Pirate 