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Winter Wunderland

A bitterly cold winter, the people of Minneapolis are battling snow and ICE.

It turns out we libs have been afraid of the wrong bogeyman. We have feared MAGA, when the real blackguard is the Department of Homeland Security being converted into a domestic thugocracy.

There are 3,000 Department of Homeland Security agents deployed across Minnesota at this time, some from CBP, Customs and Border Protection, and others from ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement. They are making daily arrests and sometimes they shoot people.

What surprises me is the lack of discipline among the ICE troops. When I see a video of an ICE agent approaching a vehicle, exclaiming “Open the door! Open the door! Open the fucking door!” I am appalled. This angry profanity is not standard police procedure. I have been yelled at by a police officer for exiting my vehicle at a traffic stop, but I have never been cussed out.

When a fellow ICE officer on that icy street in Minneapolis then unholstered his pistol and shot Ms. Renée Good dead, this strikes me as an unnecessary escalation of a situation which— had cooler heads prevailed— could have been resolved in a very different fashion.

Once upon a time, I was a U.N. peacekeeper. We encountered annoying sniper fire and constant disappointment, which got on our nerves. We were sent to carry out a specific mission and we never seemed to reach our goal. Occasionally in our brigade, one of my fellow soldiers would spit out a hate-filled rant over one or another of the combatants whom we had been sent to pacify. It always caught me off-guard to encounter so much anger, but professional soldiers, we never let our emotions color our actions. That may sound like a categorical denial of human nature, but it’s true: Angry and disgruntled, we still treated our contact with the locals with utmost caution. The last thing we wanted to do was get in a firefight with those people.

In Minneapolis, seventeen days after the Renée Good debacle, there was a second killing. This time it was a dude named Alex Pretti, a male intensive care nurse employed by the Veterans Administration. When he went to help a female demonstrator who had been knocked to the ground, a hodgepodge of agents from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency and ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations unit piled atop 37-year-old Alex. Disarming him of his legally licensed handgun, two agents of the Border Patrol then fatally shot him, firing ten or more rounds within five seconds.

Gaslighting the voters, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller claimed Pretti was an assassin who tried to murder the federal agents. A half dozen videos taken from various angles show something completely different. A scrum in rugby perhaps.

“I don’t know of any peaceful protester that shows up with a gun and ammunition rather than a sign,” said Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, defending the actions of the government agents. Noem blames Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey for using inflammatory rhetoric to fan protest in the state. She also claims that Renée Good committed an “act of domestic terrorism.” The videos show Renée was driving away in her car at 5 mph, her wife Becca next to her in the front seat and her dog in the back, which makes it hard to understand exactly what kind of terrorism Kristi Noem has in mind.

According to mainstream media, Department of Homeland Security officers have fired shots 16 times since July, either while making arrests or at people protesting their operations.   

ILHAN OMAR, member of the House of Representatives from Minnesota’s 5th district, has called for Kristi Noem to be impeached and for ICE to be abolished.   

Since everybody and his brother is writing reams about ICE in Minnesota, I want to raise two issues that seldom get mentioned. Where are the ICE agents housed? Barracks bitching often leads to gross public behavior. Angry soldiers don’t exit the airplane angry, their frustration and anger is a boots-on-the-ground reaction to daily confrontation with an unruly public. The antisemites of my youth got infected with that attitude every evening at the family dinner table. Hearing their fathers badmouth the Jews, they felt empowered to beat the crap out of us Jewish kids.

The ICE agent jumping in his van in the morning has spent an evening listening to complaints from his fellow ICEmen, stoking his anger and giving him a very negative view of his urban environment. At what motel or National Guard depot are these people staying? Where do these people go to eat? What kind of leadership are they being given around the dinner table and what are they being told regarding the day’s events? Is a total trainwreck being met with a pat on the back and a reminder that DHS agents have total immunity from prosecution while carrying out their duties?

Noem complains that ICE agents are being harassed at their hotels and in local restaurants. She also claims that their families have come under threat. Well d’uh? You run around all day in masks, carrying guns, arresting people, then you find the locals have a negative view of your activities? Gee, I wonder why.

My second question regards the protesters. Who are these people and how do they have so much time on their hands? We had a major snowfall in the Washinton, DC area last Sunday. Even worse, the snow was followed by rain and sleet, forming a crust of ice atop the snow. This makes for great “snowcrete,” blocks of ice perfect for building an igloo. Unfortunately, they weigh a ton. Hacking these ice blocks on my driveway into manageable chunks and piling them in my yard, my back is killing me. Listen, any of you demonstrators in Minneapolis are welcome to grab a snow shovel or an axe, jump a plane and join me here in Maryland! I’ll supply the hot coffee and the overnight stay.

Yes, I understand why the demonstrators are recording the ICE agents’ nefarious activities. I applaud their civic engagement. They are providing an invaluable record of the heinous b.s. being perpetrated by ICE. I am just curious about their domestic situation. How do they manage to free up time in the middle of the day to engage in civil disobedience? They can’t all be nepo babies or night workers.

Without wading into the debate about fascist brown shirts within ICE or whether Kristi Noem is a danger to American democracy, I will simply say that 90% of ICE activity in Minneapolis looks suspiciously unconstitutional. If the video record is any indication, the right to gather in public protest, the right to free speech, constitutional protection against illegal search and seizure as well as the sanctity of the home are all being violated. The Trump administration’s smoke and mirrors pseudo-justifications do not change the facts on the ground: White American protesters are getting shot dead by federal agents in a hail of bullets.      

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“Back in the Pandemic”

No way is this “Best of…” A total train wreck, it has curiosity value. Released in June of 2020, recorded live in the Uppsala studio, the boys were joined by wailing guest guitarist Björn B., guest drummer Micki Lightstream, and a guest producer— who shall remain nameless. Also, their audio engineer had issues. This is take 9 of 16 takes recorded over a three-day period. By the last take, all the noisy blemishes had been cleaned up, Björn’s impossible guitar had been tamed and the Chinese gong no longer blew out the walls. Unfortunately, the song was no longer any fun.

Boring.

Despite the coronavirus, realPfft’s business manager at the time was visiting from the States. He had gotten a good price on his plane ticket. Now he was unhappy. Insisting on his right to listen to all sixteen takes, he came to take number 9 and said “There it is. That’s the song! What have you dudes been doing the last day and a half?” Like, there went mucho hours of Herculean effort flushed down the toilet.

Bands have broken up over less, but these are Swedes and they like one another. Agreeing that take 9 needed more treble, that’s all they added, leaving everything else alone. Unrefined, with a nod to the Beatles, a punk rock sense of rebellion and singer Clive Flatenbad channeling Joy Division, here is realPfft’s messy but fun “Back in the Pandemic.”

The cover art, from Clive’s personal archive, shows how our boy looked as a punk singer in the steamy 1980’s.

Back in the Pandemic

[ Sound of an airplane landing ]

Here’s a piece of concrete art:                                             

Crushed out promises, a broken heart

Face up to truth wherever it finds you

Face up to love whenever it blinds you

Ten more years

And we’re all still here.

Escalating germs off of the plane                               

My brain’s cookin’, I’m goin’ insane

Time is measured in a crystal ball

The time clock sits at the end of the hall

She’s no friend, no, no friend…

You pretend… but she’s gone!

Patriotic songs by a patriotic fool                               

Gun-toting protesters think that it’s cool

Circles on the grass at the edge of the park

I wear a mask and a broken guitar

It’s your country, my country…

All our countries… gone.

Retail apocalypse, empty malls                                           

Unemployment and the Stock Market falls

On the TV, the— evening— news

Happy talk by the prez just gives me the blues                            

Trump’s your man… lies all he can…

Until… he’s… gone!                                                                                 

Irreduceable summation                                             

Of this once proud nation!

I hide behind my thumb

And eat up all of my ration!

Rocket ships leaving for outer space

Desert us to live in the same old waste

They’re gone… ten more years…

Of fear… Will we still-l-l… be here?

Open a packet of biscuits and a packet of beef        

My light is waning, I’m not a thief

Church bell country ringing the changes

The Virus— Task— Force plans and arranges

Clueless… they’re a joke…

One more press conference… Then they’re… pzzzzzzt!

Parking lot examinations for Covid-19                       

I dig the vibe but dislike the routine

Trump says— the coronavirus

Will disappear by the end of the year

In quarantine, both you and me

People complain… this is tyranny!

“Social distancing?” you— may— well— ask            

Six feet apart behind a mask

Everybody comes with the same old chant

“Wash your hands with soap and disinfectant”

It smells awful… Life’s no fun…

People crowd the boardwalk…Then, they’re… gone!

A blackout Sunday and I’m sleeping late         

My parents died early but my brother can wait

March to the Capitol with all the other guys

Everything Trump tweets cannot be lies 

Lonely funerals, dead rock stars…                                                          

And it’s all… they’re all gone!                                                                  

My country, ‘tis of thee                                                

It’s happening to you

It’s happening to me

You’re the one, I’m the one

Ten more years

And we’re all… all go-o-one

Lonely funerals, dead rock stars…                            

Then it’s all… we’re all gone!

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Storming the Capitol da capo

It’s a rainy Wednesday in November and it occurs to me that I am remiss in serving fans of the Swedish rap duo realPfft. You want more songs. I’ve asked the boys, Mutte and Clive, “What’s cookin’?” They have two biscuits in the oven, but Mutte wants to add musical breaks and bridges before they release these monsters onto an unsuspecting world.

As their music publisher and band manager, I have access to their entire catalog. Why not showcase their best work while they labor on new material in their virtual studio?

“Storming the Capitol” is a great rainy day hit. A terrific riff, lots of bass, their usual fascination with sound effects.

On January 6, 2021, a crowd of rowdy, armed Trump supporters met on the mall in Washington, DC to hear a speech by their leader. After losing the 2020 presidential election, Trump called on them to take back their country. By interrupting the Congressional counting of electoral ballots in the U.S. Capitol, the insurrectionists hoped in some vague way to swing the election to Trump. Overrunning police barricades and beating up the police, they broke into the Capitol, where they did a lot of damage and threatened lawmakers who ran for their lives or took shelter behind locked doors. It was a wild, upsetting afternoon with colored smoke wafting through the air and the future of American democracy very much in question. Returning to the White House, President Trump watched the pageant unfold on television. He waited hours to call the whole thing off.

Two weeks later, on January 20th, Joseph Biden was sworn in as America’s 46th president.

The insurrectionists were charged with unlawful entry, destruction of property, violence against the police and other assorted charges. No one, however, was accused of treason. Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the Proud Boys militia, was convicted instead of seditious conspiracy and sentenced to 22 years in prison, the longest prison term given to a January 6th insurrectionist.

From June to December 2022, Congresswoman Liz Cheney and the United States House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol held a series of hearings into the violence at the Capitol. Although never charged, the video record made it pretty obvious that President Trump incited the mob to attack the Capitol. For her courage in pinpointing this truth, Ms. Cheney was drummed out of the Republican Party!

Once elected to a second term, President Trump immediately pardoned all the January 6th defendants.

Rap band realPfft released the instrumental “Storming the Capitol” on January 8th, 2021, exactly two days after the actual event. How in the world did they do that?!

They had already spent two weeks working on the instrumental. A Russian-influenced emotional rollercoaster with roots in classical music, it has a soaring, pining melody and a male choir. Adding diverse crowd sounds and the occasional explosive percussion, the boys fine-tuned the finished product.

The only thing missing was the cover artwork. They turned to their Old World collaborator Kuny who listened to the music, watched footage of the rioters on TV and sketched the 1920’s style German Expressionist agitprop cover art in a single inspired all-nighter. They then delivered the product to TuneCore for almost instantaneous release.   

In a January 2021 blog post, I provided a link to the track on YouTube. Five years later, we revisit this musical gem, one of the best things that realPfft has ever done.

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Tariff Hell

While Elon Musk chainsaws the federal bureaucracy, firing people left and right, “saving” the American taxpayer millions, Trump’s policies are going to raise the national debt by trillions. Penny wise and pound foolish.

A trade war with America’s most prolific trading partners isn’t going to end well for America. “They’re ripping us off,” complains the president, but when he took office, unemployment was at 4% and we had a robust economy. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Trump has experienced multiple bankruptcies, only this time, when he bankrupts America, there won’t be any small claims court to bail us out.      

Maybe Trump is just playing with us and isn’t really going to place 25% tariffs on foreign auto parts. He has the playfulness of a child and follows his instincts, so we never know what to expect from one week to the next.

Americans in the heartland love their automobiles. They are not going to be happy when tariffs drive up auto prices, adding $10,000 in sticker shock to new cars. Most dealerships have enough stock on hand to cover sales for 60 to 90 days, but after that, we’ll be living in a world of tariff autos.   

As soon as prices fly through the roof, the American people are going to be furious.

I call most Trump supporters “kitchen table Republicans,” people who sit at the kitchen table in the evening and try to get the household budget to add up. Perennially strapped for cash, they cannot afford to have inflation reduce their purchasing power. These are the voters who blamed the Dems for the rising cost of gasoline and groceries.  

If they were furious with Biden over higher gas prices, just wait while Trump screws up trade with Canada and Mexico. The pendulum is going to swing. Violently.

This is what happens when you populate the highest echelons of government with billionaires. They couldn’t care less about ordinary people who are struggling to make ends meet.

God have mercy on America. Trump won’t.

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American Roulette

Happy February!

In recent weeks, the Trump Administration has laid off tens of thousands of federal employees across numerous agencies. Lacking constitutional authority, Elon Musk and his assistants at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) continue their effort to dismantle the federal workforce without any clear analysis of the impact. Federal agencies and the American people will suffer devastating consequences.

Since more than 80% of federal employees live outside of the Washington DC area, the effects of these “large-scale reductions in force” will be felt in communities across the country and reduce the effectiveness of government operations.

These layoffs follow a 77,000-person reduction in the size of the federal workforce via acceptance of Musk’s “deferred resignation” offer: Employees who signed the agreement will receive pay until September, while no longer being required to work.

There are timebombs.  

Musk and his U.S. DOGE Service have fired 400 federal workers at the Department of Homeland Security. Two hundred of those cuts are Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) employees. Good luck when the next hurricane floods the South, the next snowpocalypse snarls the East Coast, California burns to the ground or terrorists blow up our cities.

What will happen to our food and medicine when Trump hollows out the Food and Drug Administration?

Where will we get vaccine to fight the next pandemic when Trump/Musk terminate research funding by Executive Order?

Layoffs at the Federal Aviation Administration make flying that much more dangerous.      

Awaiting a tax return? With tax season looming, the IRS has cut nearly 6,000 newly hired employees, representing about 7% of its workforce.

DOGE has dismissed dozens of probationary federal employees at the Department of Education. Considering how MAGA supporters attack the curriculum at our schools and libraries, these turbulent times bode ill for our children’s education.

DOGE has reduced the Small Business Administration staff by 720 employees— approximately 20% of its workforce— while inflation rises and bird flu sends egg and chicken prices skyrocketing. Since February 2022, over 150 million chickens have been killed to stop the spread of the H5N1 epidemic. No longer profitable, many restaurants have been forced to close.

While Musk and his minions chainsaw their way through a supposedly bloated bureaucracy, more than 10,000 United States Agency for International Development (USAID) staff have been placed on administrative leave, abandoning aid programs around the world. With USAID funds frozen, $500 million in food has been left rotting in ports and warehouses.

No longer a beacon of democracy, America can expect foreign adversaries to attack. How will America defend itself when Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has fired the career leadership at the Pentagon?

More than 1,000 Department of Veteran Affairs employees have been dismissed, including some working at the Veterans Crisis Hotline, leaving soldiers and military veterans like me who are suffering from PTSD to fend for ourselves, always a ticking timebomb.

The good news is that north of the border, 250,000 Canadians have signed a petition demanding that their government rescind Elon Musk’s Canadian citizenship. Shazam!     

On its website, DOGE has claimed savings to date of $65 billion, but offered no explanation for why some previous items have been removed or how it had arrived at this total. A “wall of receipts” is the only public ledger the organization has produced to document its work. Riddled with errors, this “wall” calls into question the veracity of DOGE’s claim. Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, has said in a written statement that the cost-cutting initiative “has already identified billions of dollars in savings.” Do tell.

Buzzing chainsaw DOGE axed roughly 2,000 Department of Energy employees, including those who worked for the critical National Nuclear Security Administration. The Trump Administration quickly reversed the layoffs, after learning how critical those jobs are to the security of our nuclear arsenal. D’oh?

It’s amateur night at Trump casino. Good luck!

This blog post is based partly on data from NARFE, the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association.

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Biden Pardons Hunter

This is the THIRD TIME since its creation in November 2019 that my blog showcases the realPfft chestnut “Influence Peddling?”

God help us! The Biden clan strikes again. Whenever anyone during the next four years criticizes the Trump administration for being a cesspool of corruption— blah blah blah— they’ll get a side-eye and the two-word response “Hunter Biden.”

A real piece of work, President Joe Biden— the gift that keeps on giving— has pardoned his son Hunter, a major league screw-up who pleaded guilty to nine federal tax charges and was convicted of three felony counts for lying on a federal firearms application.

Ouch!

To quote Google: “In the U.S. criminal tax case against Hunter Biden, prosecutors allege he accepted payments from Romanian businessman Gabriel Popoviciu to influence U.S. government agencies regarding a criminal probe in Romania. Hunter Biden has pleaded guilty on September 5, 2024 to tax evasion and related charges.”

Why the president has the power to grant pardons has always been a total mystery to me. Yes, Article II, Section 2, Clause 1 of the Constitution assigns the president the power to “grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment,” but it just invites cronyism and corruption.

Even making allowances for the questionable paintings which Hunter created and sold for $1.5 million or the $6.5 million in loans which he received from Joe Biden buddy Kevin Morris, the smell of corruption hangs heavy over Hunter’s actions.  

And now his daddy has pardoned him! Well, fuck me! Yes, Joe is a doddering old cuss, but he does have a staff— and his wife Jill— who one assumes are reasonably clear-headed. The optics are so effing terrible, there are no words strong enough to express the public disgust and condemnation.

I know that Joe is vain and wants his place in the history books, but I don’t know if “hopelessly corrupt old geezer” is the label he most desires.

Congrats to the Demoncrats as they hit still another stinkeroo outta the ballpark! 

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Why Trump?

This election wasn’t really about Donald Trump. He was always there, a storm cloud rumbling anger and grievance, but at least everyone knew who he is and what he represents. There were few surprises. Call it the white backlash.

If you are unhappy with Trump’s election, I blame the Democrats’ inability to field a decent candidate.

Loyalty and laziness.

Out of loyalty, the Democrats kept hidden the fact that Biden should be in an Old Folks Home where he can get the care he needs.

Out of laziness, they adopted the old saw that a sitting vice president should get the chance to run for president if the incumbent withdraws from the race.

The Biden-Trump debate took place at the end of June. The Democratic Convention was held in Chicago in the middle of August. Biden insisted he would not withdraw, but I expected the party leadership to investigate alternatives and have an open convention.

The problem was finding a blemish-free candidate. All nice people and dyed-in-the-wool Democrats, each came with baggage. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer is terrific, but America is not going to elect a woman president. Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro is a gem, but America is not going to elect a Jewish president. A dozen others lacked sufficient name recognition for such a short campaign. So everybody fell in line behind Kamala Harris.

A Hail Mary Pass, she had three strikes against her from the outset. A woman. A black. A California lib. We see that clearly because Trump won both the Electoral College and the popular vote by a wide margin. The voters rejected the candidacy of Kamala Harris. Period.

America is not racist, but after eight years of being under Obama’s spell, Americans were still smarting over a black president.

Bad timing, this was the wrong election for the Dems to go into the laboratory and cook up a hybrid candidate.

God have mercy on the USA!

     

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The Wasteland

There’s a pertinent backstory to the situation in Gaza. In the June 1967 Arab-Israeli war, Israel occupied the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula. Fifteen years later, Israel returned the Sinai to Egypt. In 2000, in conjunction with negotiations brokered by the USA, the Palestinians began a lobbying effort to get Israel to relinquish control of Gaza. “Oh,” claimed the Palestinians in Gaza, “if only the yoke of Israeli oppression is lifted from our necks, we shall make of Gaza a Garden of Eden.” The Israelis left Gaza in 2005, bodily dragging protesting settlers back across the border.

Remember that the Gaza Strip lies alongside the Mediterranean Sea, a very beautiful, idyllic location for beach resorts. Members of the Palestinian diaspora in the USA envisioned creating of Gaza their very own Palestinian resort city with luxury hotels, pristine beaches, swimming pools and casinos. A splendid competitor to Monte Carlo, the gambling alone could finance the whole shebang. But these visionaries and dreamers hadn’t reckoned with their brothers and sisters on-site in Gaza.

As soon as the Israelis withdrew, the very first thing the Gazans did was to angrily dynamite the greenhouses, generators, guard barracks, police stations and any other infrastructure left behind by the Israelis. “We’ll show you!” they shouted across the border.

Next they elected a pious religious leadership who issued edicts based on the Holy Quran: Unmarried men and women cannot bathe together, so hotel swimming pools and pristine beaches are forbidden. Dancing, drinking and socializing between unmarried men and women is strictly forbidden. Gambling is a grave sin, absolutely forbidden and punishable by banishment!  

There was a family Tivoli down by the beach, with a Ferris Wheel, a Merry-Go-Round, some other rides for kids. “Certainly you cannot forbid us the pleasure of a family afternoon outing between a man, his wife and their children!” demanded less pious Gazans. With great reluctance and a lot of grumbling, the clerics agreed not to dynamite the Tivoli. They didn’t. Instead, one night, men wearing black hoods showed up with wire cutters, kerosene, dynamite and fuses. Breaking down the gate, they blew up the Tivoli.

A Palestinian-American arrived. Informed of these previous goings-on, he applied very carefully for a permit to build a water park. A simple green park with sprinklers, maybe a water slide. All very low-key. A high wall down the middle with identical facilities, including bathhouses, on both sides, one side for women, one side for men. Strict decorum. Financed by the rich, returning Palestinian out of his own pocket. So, of course, the authorities said “yes.” There was wiggle room for some baksheesh, and if this project went well, “the American” was willing to build apartment houses with financing from fellow émigrés in the diaspora. And it came to pass that he built the water park! And it was good. After several weeks, the clerics called him to their office and told him, “There are reports of unmarried men and women socializing at the entrance to the water park. Such activity is strictly forbidden by the Quran. We are retracting your permit and destroying this den of iniquity!” End of the water park.

All of this comedy took place in the first few years after emancipation.

The Israelis have a relationship with the Palestinians that has been in existence since before the State of Israel. Israeli technology and Arab labor. Whether in agriculture or industry, factory or street-cleaning, the Israelis have always been willing to hire Arabs and pay them well enough to make it worth their time and effort. This cross-border employment has been a feature of the West Bank and Gaza Strip right up until October 2023. Every morning, Palestinians with authorized employment documents traveled into border towns and agricultural collectives in Israel and put in a full day’s work, returning across the border in the evening with their pay in Israeli shekels, a strong currency with a lot of buying power.

There were still angry, frustrated Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank. While the Gazans are wildly emotional in their seething hatred, it is the Palestinians of the West Bank who are most deadly, declaring a First Intifada or Uprising in December 1987 and then a Second Intifada between 2000 and 2005. There were Palestinian suicide bombings in Israeli towns and cities, stabbings, drive-by shootings of Israeli soldiers at bus stops and other signs of Palestinian fury. In recent years, the Gazans would arrive at the border fence every Friday afternoon and burn automobile tires, blackening the sky.

For their part, the Israelis tried to solve the Palestinian problem. They elected left-wing politician Ehud Barak as Prime Minister on a party platform that focused on peace with the Palestinians. Barak tried. The Americans tried. In the year 2000 at Camp David, they offered Yasser Arafat land for a State of Palestine, the proverbial two-state solution, brokered by the White House to show good faith. Each day began with a recitation of the previous day’s agreements, each of which Arafat saw as a stepping stone to even further concessions. “We want our land back,” he bleated endlessly and who could blame him? Nothing was ever going to be enough because, after all, Yasser was holding out for the entire State of Palestine as it was in 1946, from Nahariyya in the north to Aqaba in the south, from Tel Aviv by the Mediterranean Sea to Jerusalem and the Jordan River. “If I sign this, when I get back to Ramallah, I am a dead man,” he is reported to have said on the last day, at which point President Clinton had steam coming out of his ears.

“Fuck it!” said the Israelis when Ehud Barak came home empty-handed. Forsaking endless, worthless peace initiatives, the Israelis elected Binyamin Netanyahu of the right-wing Likud Party as Prime Minister and began expanding settlements into the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The Gazans elected Hamas over rival political party Fatah in January 2006. They elected Hamas. Their choice. In June 2007, Hamas took control of the enclave, chasing the last Fatah officials out of Gaza. Remember that the Gazans chose Hamas, a point worth considering when 6,000 of their shock troops breached the border fence on October 7, 2023, raped, burned, beheaded, pillaged and massacred 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped another 240. Not your usual political activity.    

Imagine for a moment how Gaza would look today if all the billions of dollars that Hamas has spent on tunnels and arms had instead been used to facilitate the existence of ordinary people. Decades of lament, “Boo hoo hoo, we have no bread, our children are starving, it’s the fault of the Israelis!” finally have a plausible explanation. The aid money has been used to build the 450 miles of tunnels under Gaza and stockpile the thousands of missiles and weapons in their arsenal.

The Gazans are suffering, their towns and cities flattened. Famine and disease run rampant. They brought it all upon themselves. 

    

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BAM! Goes America 

It’s a fact, I get zero pleasure out of an assassination attempt on Donald J. Trump. As a concept, it sucks. Totally. Ever since the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, political violence has cast a shadow over my view of America. This is a violent country with too many guns. The courts do this, the courts do that, okaying bump stocks and finding gunmen acted in self-defense, but that doesn’t change the reality on the ground: School shootings and festival massacres lurk like a backdrop to our daily lives. Even with my military background, I find that every single one of these shootings makes me feel sick to my stomach.

I don’t wish to fuel conspiracy theories, but I do want to point out that there is a pattern among the perpetrators. Why should this lone-wolf shooting be any different from the others that preceded it? I expect that we will find:

The gunman acted alone.

The neighbors found the gunman to be quiet and withdrawn, hardly making a ripple in the social life of the neighborhood.

The gunman was white.

The gunman’s parents say he had become angry and depressed.

The gunman purchased his weapon at a gun show within the last three weeks.

When the authorities check his abode, they will find notebooks filled with angry rants.

The authorities will find angry rants online which the gunman posted on dark sites, but no one noticed as a tragedy unfolded.

Right now, the gunman’s motive remains unclear. We’ll see what the investigation reveals.

A typical speculation which I am already hearing is that Trump did this to himself to garner sympathy and votes. I disagree. Watching the video, you see how shocked the former president was. Getting shot came as very unwelcome news to him. It’s a hell of a note, but the raw drama of an assassination attempt will kick the Trump campaign into high gear.

 Looking at the photos, Trump now has his “Washington Crossing the Delaware” moment. Blood on his face, surrounded by Secret Service agents, an American flag waving in the background, he defiantly shakes his fist at his enemies. It’s a classic photo.

The press will focus on the gunman, while the real story is the reaction of Trump’s supporters. At the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, the crowd immediately turned their fury on the reporters and television crews, blaming their coverage for this act of political violence.

When judging the level of an armed conflict, gunfire is an inflection point, leading to clear “before” and “after” scenarios. With the first shot fired, there is no putting the evil genie back in the lamp.

Even during the melee and destruction of the January 6th storming of the U.S. Capitol, there was no gunfire. No shots were fired outside the Capitol, among the crowd. Police explained that they purposely avoided gunfire, since they knew that the demonstrators were armed and a gunfight would lead to a bloodbath.

This craven act in Pennsylvania could be the first shot in an escalating series of politically violent occurrences, as America struggles with its Wild West heritage.                     

Naturally, Trump and his supporters are angry. You don’t poke a stick at a tiger. There is the risk of violent reprisals.

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essay, Politics

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Worry Wart

Sweden’s rap duo realPfft churns out another hit!

Poetry for grown-ups, “Worry Wart” marries soul music with comic memories, before relentlessly veering into current events.

If you like playlists and similar tunes, Worry Wart’s genres are Philly Soul, Amapiano and Lo-Fi Hip Hop. Finally, some interesting genres!

A reaction to the dramatic female singers currently dominating the charts, at 72 BPM, the track features a calm male vocal and his peppy girlfriend. Who finishes his sentences.

A throwback to Ed Ames’s “Who Will Answer?” and Johnny Sea’s “Day for Decision,” the track fills a void in today’s pop music scene. Or maybe that’s aiming a little high.

 

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music, Politics

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