CARTOON: G-Man
“You are open and honest, like a thug in the ‘Sopranos!’” — George Galloway, to Donny Trump
“We must learn to treat the demagogue and aspirant dictators in our midst … with the weapon of ridicule. The demagogue himself is almost incapable of humor of any sort, and if we treat him with humor, he will begin to collapse.”
— Joost Neerloo
(An earlier version of the above cartoon had a misspelling, which has been corrected.)
Cartoon by Mark Taylor / DeMOCKracy.ink
“I don’t want to be cute. I don’t want to be a wise guy, but — the Riviera of the Middle East. This could be so magnificent …The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it, too. We’ll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site. Level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings. Level it out.” …When asked who would live there, he said: “I envision the world’s people living there.”
— Donald Trump, “Trump Proposes U.S. Take Over Gaza, Level It and Build Resorts
"Gaza's waterfront property, it could be very valuable, if people would focus on building up livelihoods," Kushner, who once described the entire Arab-Israeli conflict as "nothing more than a real-estate dispute between Israelis and Palestinians" said at an event in Harvard in February 2024.
"It's a little bit of an unfortunate situation there, but I think from Israel's perspective, I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up.”
— Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, “Trump's Gaza Riviera' Echoes Kushner Waterfront Property Dreams”, Reuters (1/5/25)
“I thought we voted for America First. We have no business contemplating yet another occupation to doom our treasure and spill our soldiers blood.”
— Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) (2/5/25)
DEPRAVITY: Only 3% Of Jewish Israelis Think Trump's Ethnic Cleansing Plan For Gaza Is Immoral
Three percent. If that isn’t a sign of a morally diseased society, I don’t know what would be. … This is the depraved entity the entire western world is being told it must support unconditionally. An apartheid state which twists its own people into monsters so that they will participate in monstrous deeds.
4-minute video
By Caitlin Johnstone
Caitlin’s Newsletter (1/5/25)
A poll by the Jewish People Policy Institute has found that “more than eight out of ten Jewish Israelis support the plan” proposed by President Donald Trump to ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip of Palestinians by resettling them in Egypt and Jordan.
The poll also found that among the minority of Israelis who did not support Trump’s plan, only 13 percent opposed it because they viewed it as immoral. Among Jewish Israelis specifically, the number who oppose the ethnic cleansing of Gaza for moral reasons is just three percent.
Three percent. If that isn’t a sign of a morally diseased society, I don’t know what would be.
To be clear, we are talking about permanently driving an indigenous population off of their homeland at mass scale so that their territory can be claimed by settlers. This is the sort of crime that even a half-formed conscience would immediately recognize as deeply immoral, but among Jewish Israelis, that figure is just three percent.
Moral degeneracy and rape culture
The moral degeneracy which makes such a large-scale lack of basic human empathy possible is the natural consequence of everything the state of Israel is and always has been. Jewish Israelis are indoctrinated from birth to view Palestinians as less than human, because otherwise modern Israel makes no sense. It makes no sense for an apartheid state where one group receives preferential treatment over others to have been dropped on top of a pre-existing civilization whose land, rights and dignity were then violently stolen from them — if you view all the parties involved as equal. So they are trained not to view them as equal.
This systematic poisoning of conscience has knock-on effects in all sorts of other areas, though. A 2011 poll published by Haaretz found that 61 percent of Israeli men don’t view forced sex with an acquaintance as rape, and that only seven percent believe marital rape is a real thing. Rape is abundant in the Israeli military and is almost never punished ; in 2022 The Jerusalem Post reported that 1,542 incidents of sexual assault complaints were received by the IDF in the year 2020, and that of these, only 31 indictments were filed.
One need only listen to Israelis discuss values unique to their culture like “shitat hamatzliah” (just walking all over people and doing whatever you want to see if you get away with it) or the sin of being a “freier” (someone who plays by the rules and misses opportunities to cheat others) to understand that this is a nation of sociopaths.
And it has to be. If Israelis were a deeply moral people with well-formed consciences, there would be no Israel, because the abuses necessary to maintain its existence as a state would never be democratically supported by its people. Israel cannot exist without nonstop violence, tyranny and injustice, so it is vital to the interests of the state that Israelis be the sort of people who would support these things.
Universal immorality
And in case anyone is confused, this immorality isn’t actually about Jews or Judaism. Any group who is pervasively indoctrinated into believing a neighboring group must be treated abusively will be shaped into cruel and ignorant people — anyone of conscience who’s ever interacted with white South Africans above a certain age has likely had a taste of this. It’s got nothing to do with anyone’s religion or ethnicity, it’s just how the abuses of apartheid are upheld.
This is the depraved entity the entire western world is being told it must support unconditionally. An apartheid state which twists its own people into monsters so that they will participate in monstrous deeds.
Link to story and 4-minute video
MAGA Gets Suckered Again!
Hey, Donny, When Did ‘America First’ Become ‘Israel First’?
“I thought we voted for America First. We have no business contemplating yet another occupation to doom our treasure and spill our soldiers blood.”
— Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) (2/5/25)
Donald says he’s ready to go to war to take over…
Greenland
Canada
Mexico
Panama
Palestine
And maybe war with Denmark and Iran! Really?
So, who’s more likely to be drafted to go fight in such wars? Donald Trump Jr. … or your son? But, hey, if you support Donald’s manic plans, drive your kid down to the recruiting office tomorrow so he can get trained up and ready to go when Donald gives the word!
“You are open and honest, like a thug in the ‘Sopranos!’”
— George Galloway, to Donny Trump
“I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of freedom of the people by the gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpation.”
— James Madison
“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
— James Baldwin
“I envision the world’s people living there.”
By "world's people" I believe Mr. Trump means everyone EXCEPT: the native Palestinians, anyone of color (unless they're a coconut like Obama), anyone of any religion, ethnicity or sect we don't like, and in particular ALL poor people. We can't have the poor dirtying up the Riviera of the Middle East, now can we? UGH.
I can see one of those huge and garish Disney or Princess cruise ships sailing in and out of a newly constructed port in the new and improved Gaza, can't you?
This was posted on Substack earlier ladt month by Saralyn Fosnight:
From a friend. I think this encapsulates everything I’ve ever felt about Donald Trump.
From 2020:
‘“Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?” Nate White, an articulate and witty writer from England wrote the following response:
A few things spring to mind. Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed. So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief.
Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever. I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman. But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.
Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers. And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness.
There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface. Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront. Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul. And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist. Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that. He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat. He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege.
And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead. There are unspoken rules to this stuff – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards – which a gentleman should, would, could never do – and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless – and he kicks them when they are down.
So the fact that a significant minority – perhaps a third – of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think ‘Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:
• Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are.
• You don’t need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man.
This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss. After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum. God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart. In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws – he would make a Trump.
And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish: ‘My God… what… have… I… created?' If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set.”
Can’t beat that.