Note: I’ve been listening to reports on Trump’s War of Mass Distraction from the Epstein files. Apparently, Trump lied when he said negotiations with Iran failed. Surprise, surprise! He will stop at nothing to prevent his probable child-molesting depravity. How many innocent people will be killed in this, yet another, war of opportunity? Our nation is now a boligerent, autocratic (if his rigging of the mid-term elections succeeds) oligarchy−a rogue state.
Excerpt:
Despite this litany of complaints and his characterization of Iran’s government as “evil”, Trump sent his envoys to Geneva to negotiate with Tehran about its nuclear program. After three rounds, Trump tired of diplomacy and blamed the Iranians for refusing to say the magic words: Iran will not become a nuclear weapons state. In fact, senior Iranian officials have done so time and again. “Iran will under no circumstances ever develop nuclear weapons,” Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi tweeted on 24 February. Beyond that, Iran made significant concessions at the talks. Oman’s foreign minister, Badr Albusaidi, who mediated the Geneva talks, said that Iran agreed to reduce uranium enrichment to below 3.67% – the ceiling stipulated in the deal Tehran struck with the Obama administration in 2015 – and allow international nuclear inspectors back into the country with full monitoring powers. The Iranians went even further by agreeing not to accumulate and store any enriched uranium.
Beyond that, Iran made significant concessions at the talks. Oman’s foreign minister, Badr Albusaidi, who mediated the Geneva talks, said that Iran agreed to reduce uranium enrichment to below 3.67% – the ceiling stipulated in the deal Tehran struck with the Obama administration in 2015 – and allow international nuclear inspectors back into the country with full monitoring powers. The Iranians went even further by agreeing not to accumulate and store any enriched uranium. (Bold mine)
*Note from Max T. Furr, owner of this blog. I read The Guardian every morning and trust it for three reasons: 1. It is funded mostly by subscribers; 2. The Guardian is a British news source and has no dog in the US political fight; 3. I have vetted enough news reports to know that The Guardian is trustworthy.
‘Our family feels deep distress’: Renee Good’s brothers plead for Democrats’ help at hearing
No Republicans attended Capitol Hill forum of US citizens detailing their experiences being harmed by federal agents (Bold mine)
Democrats on Capitol Hill offered apologies and promises of accountability on Tuesday amid often harrowing testimony from people who had experienced violent encounters with federal agents engaged in Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
With Republicans conspicuously absent, the forum of senators and representatives heard from Luke and Brent Ganger, the brothers of Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother of three who was shot dead by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer in Minneapolis on 7 January as she tried to drive away from agents.
Luke Ganger said he and his brother were there “to ask for your help” and suggested the sense of loss his family felt had been deepened by subsequent events in Minneapolis, where Alex Pretti, also aged 37, was shot dead by two border patrol agents on 24 January.
“The deep distress our family feels at Renee’s loss in such a violent and unnecessary way is complicated by feelings of disbelief, distress and desperation,” he said.
“In the last few weeks, our family took some consolation, thinking that perhaps [Renee’s] death would bring about change in our country. It has not. The completely surreal scenes taking place are beyond explanation.
“This is not just a bad day or a rough week or isolated incidents. These encounters with federal agents are changing the community and changing many lives, including ours. I still don’t know how to explain to my four-year-old what these agents are doing when we pass by.”
His daughter, Ganger added, “knows that her aunt died and that somebody caused it to happen”.
He said the death of his sister had brought his family closer, although they had different political viewpoints.
The brothers’ testimony was followed by that of Marimar Martinez, Aliya Rahman and Martin Daniel Rascon, three US citizens who each described traumatic experiences at the hands of agents while they were in their cars.
Martinez, from Chicago, recalled how she was shot five times by a border patrol agent, who later circulated images as she lay wounded in hospital to colleagues as “trophy” pictures. The agent then accused her of assaulting a federal agent and of ramming his vehicle with her car, resulting in criminal charges that were subsequently dismissed.
The agent who shot Martinez was identified in the hearing as Charles Exum. Texts that he sent to colleagues were shown to the assembled gathering in the Dirksen Senate office building. One read: “I fired 5 rounds and she had 7 holes. Put that in your book, boys.” Members of Congress at the hearing called for him to be arrested and prosecuted.
Ro Khanna, a Democratic representative from California, told Martinez: “The entire country needs to hear your story. I am angry on your behalf, Miss Martinez.”
Rahman, who said she suffers from autism and a traumatic brain injury, described how agents violently pulled her from her car after she was caught in a traffic jam caused by ICE vehicles as she tried to reach a medical appointment at the Hennepin county brain injury center in Minneapolis on 13 January.
“I yelled ‘I’m disabled’ at the hands grabbing me. One of them said ‘too late’,” she said.
“An agent pulled a large combat knife in front of my face, which I thought was for cutting me, and later learned was used to cut off my seat belt.
“Shooting pain went through my head, neck and wrists when I hit the ground face-first and people leaned on my back. I was carried facedown through the street by my cuffed arms and legs while yelling that I had a brain injury and was disabled.
after newsletter promotion
“I now cannot lift my arms normally. I was never asked for my ID and never told I was under arrest.”
She was later taken to a detention center, where – she said – agents referred to those being detained as “bodies”.
Later in the hearing, Rahman put her arm around her fellow witness Rascon, from San Bernardino California, as a comfort as he struggled to deliver testimony describing his experiences at the hands of ICE and the border patrol after an agent opened fire on the car he was traveling in with family members last August.
Robert Garcia, a California representative who is the top Democrat on the House of Representatives oversight committee, said the nature of the testimony was difficult to hear.
“I’m so sorry that the stories are horrific, and I promise you that every single one of us, whether it’s the House or the Senate, we will hold all of those that caused you harm accountable,” he said. “You all deserve justice and you deserve peace. And it’s horrific that anyone in our country has to go through what you have all been.”
Richard Blumenthal, a senator for Connecticut, who led the hearing along with Garcia, called the testimony “a defining moment and a moral moment”.
He used words once aimed at Joseph McCarthy, the 1950’s red-baiting Republican senator for Wisconsin, to excoriate Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, and other administration members involved in the immigration raids. “Have you no sense of decency?” he said. “Have you no sense of shame?”
Alex Padilla, a senator for California who was wrestled to the ground and handcuffed by two federal agents last year when he tried to ask Noem a question at a press conference, lamented the absence of Republicans from the forum. “Why is it just Democrats?” he asked. “Let’s not let our Republican colleagues off the hook. Under normal circumstances, regardless of who’s in the majority, when a tragedy has happened, congressional committees conduct our job to provide oversight. The Republican colleagues refused to.”
The Crucifixion of Liberty, created by Max T. Furr on 7/18/2024
I am reminded of a quote from George Orwell’s classic novel, Animal Farm: “All Animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
As it turns out, Animal Farm may be the perfect allegory for the USA if the Trump-Vance team assumes the “throne” in November. Non-Christian Americans may be facing the darkest future of all—the return of inforced anti-blasphemy laws across the nation.
According to an editorial today in The Guardian by Sidney Blumenthal, “Earlier this month, the Republican National Committee endorsed the party platform, a document that contained a plank pledging to create a new federal agency to defend Christian nationalism: ‘To protect Religious Liberty, Republicans support a new Federal Task Force on Fighting Anti-Christian Bias that will investigate all forms of illegal discrimination, harassment, and persecution against Christians in America.’”
When far-right Christians speak of religious freedom, they do not mean religious freedom for all, because they’ve never accepted the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment which guarantees freedom of conscience for every citizen in matters of religion. They want Christian dominance in American society, i.e., a theocracy.
Therefore, the only way to prevent such an occurrence is for either a Democratic President to win in November or for congressional Democrats to gain a supermajority in Congress.
Who, among the Democratic presidential hopefuls, has the best policies?
This video interview was made in 2004. Elizabeth Warren has not wavered from this position—she is every corrupt corporation’s worst nightmare! She has the policies that will, if we give her a progressive Congress, reverse the neoconservative, trickle-down economics the economic system that, for the past four decades, has been (and still is) redistributing the collective wealth of the working class upward to the already wealthy while suppressing wages.
This is by far the BEST NONPARTISAN video about how to end government corruption and dysfunction in our government ON BOTH SIDES. We ALL need to get behind this. STOP the heated arguments back and forth and join to get this accomplished! Most Americans, right and left, agree to the points in this video:
Many folks have already read or heard about the Alabama poop train, but the whole story hasn’t been told until now and it tracks stinkingly directly to the White House. The level of corruption in our highest positions of government is truly astonishing. Who would have ever thought that our nation’s leadership would have come to this?
Watch at least this first segment of Rachel Maddow’s exposé.
An Evil Demigod in the White House 
Recent Comments