Op-Ed

When deciding what to make for dinner, many of us think about how to balance making something affordable, delicious, and healthy. And we might consider ethical questions, like whether our food is locally sourced, our meat is humanely raised, or our meals have a low climate impact..

We probably don’t wonder whether child labor is involved. But unfortunately, that’s increasingly likely. In recent years, federal investigations have uncovered children working in dangerous conditions to create the food we eat.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu persistently declares his ambition to "change the face of the Middle East". Yet, his repeated assertions seem to clash with the unfolding reality on the ground.

 Netanyahu's opportunistic relationship with language is now proving detrimental to his country. The Israeli leader undoubtedly grasps fundamental marketing principles, particularly the power of strong branding and consistent messaging. However, for any product to succeed over time, clever branding alone is insufficient; the product itself must live up to at least a minimum degree of expectation.

 Netanyahu's "product," however, has proven utterly defective, yet the 75-year-old Israeli Prime Minister stubbornly refuses to abandon his outdated marketing techniques.

 But what exactly is Netanyahu selling?

On June 24, US President Donald Trump announced a truce between Israel and Iran following nearly two weeks of open warfare.

Israel began the war, launching a surprise offensive on June 13, with airstrikes targeting Iranian nuclear facilities, missile installations, and senior military and scientific personnel, in addition to numerous civilian targets. 

In response, Iran launched a wave of ballistic missiles and drones deep into Israeli territory, triggering air raid sirens across Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Beersheba and numerous other locations, causing unprecedented destruction in the country. 

What began as a bilateral escalation quickly spiraled into something far more consequential: a direct confrontation between the United States and Iran.

On June 22, the United States Air Force and Navy carried out a full-scale assault on three Iranian nuclear sites—Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan—in a coordinated strike dubbed Operation Midnight Hammer. Seven B-2 bombers of the 509th Bomb Wing allegedly flew nonstop from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri to deliver the strikes. 

The belief that all people are equal and want peace is comforting. But comfort does not make it true.

The 20th century offered a brutal lesson: whole nations can be reshaped by totalitarian rule until their populations lose the moral instincts of free societies. And unless force intervenes, they do not return to normal on their own.

We see this in the starkest form in North Korea. One bloodline, one culture, and one language split in two by ideology. The result? One half of Korea became a global democracy; the other became a dynastic death cult. Over decades, North Koreans have been deprived not just of material comforts, but of history, truth, even selfhood.

They have not simply been ruled by terror. They have been reprogrammed.

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When deciding what to make for dinner, many of us think about how to balance making something affordable, delicious, and healthy. And we might consider ethical questions, like whether our food is locally sourced, our meat is humanely raised, or our meals have a low climate impact..

Shouts and cheers, honking horns, people banging on drums. Oshkosh! No kings – at least not today. I’m with my si  ster and great nephew, attending the nearest national rally, about twenty miles south of their home in Appleton, Wisconsin. I’m up here with them because I’m getting cataract surgery (left eye tomorrow), but what the heck, Saturday is open. Let’s go to the No Kings rally.
   One of multi-thousands of rallies across the country. Oh, yes!
   More than a thousand people are crowded in the park in the center of town. Most of them are holding signs. The collective vibration is enormous. Honk! Honk! Save the country! But as we walk among them, as the cheers and claps reverberate, I can’t stop feeling small and cynical – by myself, a spectator among the participants. Does creating change amount to nothing more than joining the cheers?

For weeks, Congress has been wrapped up in passing President Trump’s big, brutal budget — the one that pays for tax cuts for the wealthy and a trillion-dollar Pentagon budget by taking food stamps and Medicaid away from people struggling to get by.

The GOP-controlled House of Representatives just barely passed this bill — it squeaked through by a single vote. Now the Senate is considering it.

Alongside trillions in tax cuts for the wealthy, the bill also gives big handouts to the Pentagon and the president’s plans to separate immigrant families. It would result in the country’s first-ever trillion-dollar Pentagon budget — and triple annual spending on the mass detention of immigrants.

https://worldbeyondwar.org/a-u-s-bank-closed-our-accounts-because-id-visited-cuba-six-months-ago/