Tell me again - who are the antisemites?

 

And here you can see what gives them ammunition...

DNI Counterterrorism Director resigns!

 

That's pretty amazing.  But I'm not at all convinced Trump will even read it.

Typical Trump response:

UPDATE 03/19/2026:  I didn't realize Joe is so young.  Maybe there's hope for his future, but I'm a little discomfitted by the fact someone of this age was put in charge of counterterrorism.

This should come as no surprise to anyone who has been watching Trump 2.0.  I hope he had prepared himself for it.

In case you were wondering...

 

Hell on earth

 Courtesy US and Israel.

And Israel continues genocide in Gaza

 

Helping Gaza

 

Thoughts and prayers

 

People walking,  Carrying nothing.  Going back to destruction.

You can't trust Israel.

UPDATE 10/14/2025:  As I was saying...

Oh good, now they can start building Trump Tower Gaza

 

He ended his 8th war!  All hail the Orange God King!  Give that man a Nobel Prize.

Any bets on how long Israel will honor the peace?

UPDATE 10/14/2025:  That didn't last long.  No surprise here.

Speaking of Israel

Trump met with Arabs in a closed-door UN meeting

 

Can't wait to hear Bibi's response.

Politico story

Netanyahu will meet with President Donald Trump at the White House on Monday.

[...]

Special envoy for peace missions Steve Witkoff provided some details on the proposal on Wednesday. “We presented what we call the Trump 21-point-plan for peace in the Mideast in Gaza,” he said at the Concordia summit in New York. “I think it addresses Israeli concerns and as well, the concerns of all the neighbors in the in the region.” Witkoff did not mention any comments about the West Bank.

Trump told reporters ahead of his sit-down with eight Arab and Muslim countries at the United Nations headquarters that it was his “most important” of the day, but he left without speaking to reporters and the participants have yet to issue any official readout about the substance of their conversation.

[...]

[Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan] and Trump are scheduled to meet again at the White House on Thursday.

[...]

The decision by a number of top U.S. allies to recognize a Palestinian state has prompted calls inside of Israel on Netanyahu to annex all or parts of the West Bank. Some of the far right members of his government see the current moment as an opportunity to realize the Israeli right’s long sought goal of absorbing the territory. With Israeli elections taking place next year, Netanyahu may see an opportunity in doing something on this to appeal to hard line supporters.

[...]

Arab and European officials have warned that formal annexation of the West Bank would all but destroy any last hopes for a two state solution.

  Politico

Who still has hopes for that?

The goal has always been the same

 

Trump/Israel sleeze and corruption

 

On Aug. 6, Tom Artiom Alexandrovich, a bigwig in Israel’s cybersecurity apparatus, was arrested in Las Vegas alongside seven other men during an FBI-backed sting for allegedly trying to canoodle with an undercover agent posing as a 15-year-old child. He promptly paid his $10,000 bail and jetted home to Israel.

  Zeteo

Why wasn't his passport taken?

Alexandrovich, who reportedly told police he thought he was chatting with an 18-year-old, was charged with luring or attempting to lure a child to engage in sexual conduct, a felony carrying some 10 years in prison upon conviction. Given the severity of the crime, the fact that he (especially as a foreign national) was released without stringent bail conditions, including GPS monitoring and travel restrictions, is highly unusual.

[...]

Last week, acting US Attorney for Nevada Sigal Chattah – a far-right, anti-Palestinian Trump appointee who was born in Israel – asserted on social media, “the individual who fled our country should have had his passport seized by state authorities. He must be returned immediately to face justice.” Chattah further claimed to have spoken with Attorney General Pam Bondi about the matter, and that America’s top cop was “outraged.”

Yeah, sure.

The president could loudly, publicly demand that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu return Alexandrovich tomorrow.

But he won't.

Forget a gift horse; this is a gift unicorn grazing in Democrats’ backyard, just waiting to be weaponized.

I won't hold my breath waiting.

When she's right, she's right

 

Fascism is a global threat

 

Israel is a beacon for democracy in the Middle East

 Right?

Don't bother exclaiming the illegality of this

 UPDATE 08/05/2025:

[A]fter sharp backlash, [DHS] denied they had any such policy while quietly deleting any mention of it from the Department of Homeland Security website.
  Raw Story

Even Candace Owens objected to the policy.  The Trump regime is finding it can go too far even for its most loyal cultists.

Release the Epstein files.

Trump hates the ICC - "his" judges aren't on the bench

The Trump administration is slapping sanctions on four judges at the International Criminal Court over the tribunal’s investigation into alleged war crimes by Israel in its war against Hamas in Gaza and in the West Bank.

The State Department said [...] that it would freeze any assets that the ICC judges, who come from Benin, Peru, Slovenia and Uganda, have in U.S. jurisdictions.

[...]

The new sanctions target ICC Judge Reine Alapini-Gansou, who is from the West African country of Benin and was part of the pre-trial chamber of judges who issued the arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last year. She also served on the bench that originally greenlit the investigation into alleged Israeli crimes in the Palestinian territories in 2021.

The 69-year-old was also part of the panel of judges who issued the arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2023. Last year, a court in Moscow issued a warrant for her arrest.

[...]

From Slovenia, Beti Hohler was elected as a judge in 2023. She previously worked in the prosecutor’s office at the court, leading Israel to object to her participation in the proceedings involving Israeli officials. Hohler said in a statement last year that she had never worked on the Palestinian territories investigation during her eight years as a prosecutor.

Bouth Luz del Carmen Ibáñez Carranza, from Peru, and Solomy Balungi Bossa, from Uganda, are appeals judges at the ICC. Each woman has worked on cases involving Israel.

  AP

All women. Huh.

    

    

And, here's your "national emergency"...

I am willing to bet Trump never read this whole thing (or probably any part of it), but if you would like to read it, click here.

We've been here before.  It's not just Trump who hates the court.

The United States never joined the ICC and has consistently opposed the empowerment of an international court that could try U.S. military and political leaders under international law.

That's largely because of concerns that U.S. soldiers and civilian leaders might be put on trial, without U.S. constitutional protections, by an anti-American prosecutor in a court with non-American judges.

  Radio Free Europe

To be perfectly clear, there are very real concerns as regards US soldiers and civilian leaders being put on trial. After all, they have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in more than one or two countries.

During the 1990s, before the ICC was established, negotiators from U.S. President Bill Clinton's administration sought to give the UN Security Council the power to screen ICC cases. Such a safeguard in the Rome Statute would have given the United States and other permanent Security Council members the ability to veto cases they opposed.

But other countries refused to agree to those measures.

[...]

President George W. Bush's administration actively sought to keep the ICC from attaining jurisdiction over the United States or its citizens.

It did so by negotiating bilateral agreements with about 100 other countries to ensure U.S. citizens would have immunity from prosecution by the ICC.

President Barack Obama's administration took steps to engage with the ICC by participating with that court's governing bodies and providing support for its ongoing prosecutions.

In Trump's first term, John Bolton threatened sanctions on the court if it proceeded with an investigation into US war crimes in Afghanistan.

The ICC in 2016 said members of the U.S. military and the CIA may have committed war crimes by torturing detainees in Afghanistan.

In November 2017, ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda announced she would request authorization from ICC judges for an investigation into the situation in Afghanistan.

Since Afghanistan is a state party of the ICC, the court can claim jurisdiction over any war crimes, genocide, or crimes against humanity committed in Afghanistan after May 1, 2003.

[...]

But the government in Kabul has not asked for such an investigation, nor has the UN Security Council.

That means the only way for a formal probe to go ahead is for the ICC prosecutor to receive authorization from the ICC's pretrial chamber.

[...]

Alex Whiting, a Harvard Law School professor who worked in the ICC prosecutor's office in 2010-13, says the ICC has "extremely limited investigative powers and is almost entirely dependent on cooperation" from member states to gather information. In his Just Security blog, Whiting says ICC investigators will receive "no cooperation from the Afghan government, the Taliban, or the United States."

So, what happened at that time?

Under ICC rules, the court can open an investigation if a member country requests it, if the United Nations Security Council refers a case, or if it believes that one of the crimes that fall under its jurisdiction were committed within the territory of a member state or by nationals of a member state operating in another country. It was under that third category that the court claimed authority over the conduct of U.S. nationals in Afghanistan, as well as in Romania, Lithuania, and Poland, where the CIA operated black sites.

[...]

But U.S. officials unequivocally warned the court that opposition to the investigation of American crimes was bipartisan. With political opposition from the strongest party to the conflict, the preliminary inquiry in Afghanistan dragged along for a decade. In 2017, with President Donald Trump newly in office, Bensouda finally moved to formally request the court’s permission to launch an official investigation. In 2019, the ICC’s pretrial chamber, the body tasked with authorizing a formal investigation, denied such authorization — an unprecedented decision that cited, among other things, the “political climate” surrounding the probe.

[...]

ICC prosecutors and representatives of victims successfully appealed the denial from pretrial chambers, and the ICC’s appeals chambers authorized a formal investigation in Afghanistan on March 5, 2020. In response, the Trump administration issued an executive order condemning the ICC and imposed sanctions [...] the first time the U.S. had ever taken such action against officials of an international body.

The administration also stepped up its pressure on the Afghan government, which was eager to maintain U.S. support and made a last-minute request to testify before the ICC in opposition to the appeal. When that effort failed, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo flew to Kabul; a day after his visit, the Afghan government petitioned to “defer” the ICC investigation in Afghanistan in order to allow a national investigation to take place instead. As a court of last resort, the ICC is required to give precedence to national processes — but it’s unclear whether the Afghan government was actively pursuing one. (The deferral also meant a pause of ICC investigations into U.S. torture at CIA black sites across Eastern Europe, even though those were crimes that the Afghan government was not in a position to investigate.)

[...]

The deferral essentially put a stop to the ICC investigation in Afghanistan before it could start. It also relieved ICC prosecutors of their pledge to push through with an investigation that faced powerful opposition without having to publicly capitulate to the U.S. When the administration of President Joe Biden lifted the sanctions on the ICC officials[...], it did so with the tacit understanding that the court’s probe on U.S. crimes wouldn’t resume.

[...]

[T]he new chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court — the only international body with the authority to prosecute individuals over genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes — sought to reopen a previously suspended investigation in Afghanistan but with a caveat. The probe would not include conduct by the United States and its allies, including the U.S.-backed former Afghan government, all of which have committed crimes that fall squarely within the court’s jurisdiction.

The court’s prosecutor, Karim Khan, who has been on the job for just over three months, wrote in a statement that his office would focus exclusively on crimes committed by the Taliban and by the Islamic State Khorasan Province, or IS-K, the Islamic State group’s affiliate in Afghanistan.

[...]

The announcement dealt a blow to victims, human rights advocates, and those who had placed in the ICC their last hope to see the crimes committed by U.S. personnel and officials prosecuted in a court of law.

[...]

“This decision reinforces the perception that these institutions set up in the West and by the West are just instruments for the West’s political agenda.”

[...]

The International Criminal Court, which is based in the Netherlands, began operating in 2002, just as the U.S.-led war on terror was ramping up. Afghanistan ratified the Rome Statute, the ICC’s founding treaty, in 2003, shortly after the U.S. defeated the Taliban and installed a transitional government.

[...]

In 2002, one month after the court began operating, the U.S. enacted the American Service-Members’ Protection Act, which sought to protect U.S. personnel from international prosecution. U.S. officials also pursued dozens of bilateral agreements to pressure other countries not to collaborate with the court.

“From the very beginning, they were trying to shield themselves from responsibility,” Raquel Vázquez Llorente, the International Federation for Human Rights’ permanent representative to the ICC, told The Intercept. “They were very scared that the court would bring their people to the Hague.”

  The Intercept

Day four - US attack on Iran

Praise Dear Leader!

Not so fast, little lady.

Donald Trump's joy and expectation of a Nobel Prize evaporated within hours of his announcement that Israel and Iran had agreed to a ceasefire.  I know, you're surprised.  Bibi can't have peace.  He's trying to stay out of jail. If he has to destroy the planet to do it.

A tentative truce faltered Tuesday when Israel accused Iran of launching missiles into its airspace after the ceasefire was supposed to take effect and vowed to retaliate.

Iran’s military denied firing on Israel, state media reported — but explosions boomed and sirens sounded across northern Israel midmorning, and an Israeli military official said two Iranian missiles were intercepted.

U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House before departing for the NATO summit at The Hague that in his view, both sides had violated the nascent agreement he had announced earlier.

“They violated it but Israel violated it too,” Trump said. ”I’m not happy with Israel.”

  Chicago Tribune

Apparently, Trump gives orders to Israel via social media.

LOL.

And then...

"We" made the deal?  

By "unload" he means bombed Iran.  "Right after" the deal was made.  He's stupid, and Israel poked him in the eye.

100%.

"When I say 12 hours [of ceasefire], you don't go out in the first hour and drop everything you have on them," Trump said.

  Axios

Not everything.  They didn't drop everything they have.

And, frankly, at least from his bleat, that 12 hour business was confusing.

1) If it's a ceasefire for ONLY 12 hours, how will the war be considered "ENDED"?

2) Iran will start the ceasefire, and, "upon the 12th hour," Israel will start the ceasefire. Israel gets 12 hours free fire before they have to start the ceasefire? "During each ceasefire, the other side will remain PEACEFUL and RESPECTFUL."  So, no free fire.  Two individual ceasefires, but the other side has to cease fire, too, so...  What the fuck?

At least he has a name for the war.

A White House source said Trump spoke to Netanyahu in "an exceptionally firm and direct way" about his objections to the Israeli strike.

"The president told Netanyahu what needed to happen to sustain the ceasefire. The prime minister understood the severity of the situation and the concerns President Trump expressed," the source said.

[...]

A senior Israeli official said Netanyahu told Trump that he could not cancel the strike completely and that some response was needed to Iran's ceasefire violation.

"In the end, it was decided to significantly scale back the strike, cancel the attack on a large number of targets and strike only one radar system outside of Tehran," the Israeli official said.

  Axios

So, at least Trump can say it would have been worse without his input. I wonder why he didn't. Perhps because he jumped the gun and shot from the hip. He'll get there eventually.

100%.

The prime minister's office said in a statement that during the call Trump "expressed his deep appreciation for Israel — which achieved all of the war's objectives. He also expressed his confidence in the stability of the ceasefire."

Misplaced confidence, I guess you could say.

fter the call with Netanyahu, Trump posted again to Truth Social to say he had convinced Israel to abort its mission.

That was the "friendly 'Plane Wave'" post. But, he was wrong. And now he's mad.

It doesn't appear Trump's entrance into the fray is actually pushing things the right way.

Is one of them Don Jr?  

Wait. What?

YWA will be here for it.  In the meantime, further insanity today on the "12 Day War" will be updated below.

UPDATE 02:20 pm:

Possible.  But I would say it's more likely that he's just being himself trying to claim total success in everything he ever does.

Is that even what happened?  Bombs dropped perfectly on their targets?

The assessment [...] was produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s intelligence arm. It is based on a battle damage assessment conducted by US Central Command in the aftermath of the US strikes.

[...]

The analysis of the damage to the sites and the impact of the strikes on Iran’s nuclear ambitions is ongoing, and could change as more intelligence becomes available.

[...]

One of the people said the centrifuges are largely “intact.”

“So the (DIA) assessment is that the US set them back maybe a few months, tops.”

[...]

[DOD Secretary Pete Hegseth] told CNN, “Based on everything we have seen — and I’ve seen it all — our bombing campaign obliterated Iran’s ability to create nuclear weapons. Our massive bombs hit exactly the right spot at each target and worked perfectly. The impact of those bombs is buried under a mountain of rubble in Iran; so anyone who says the bombs were not devastating is just trying to undermine the President and the successful mission.“

[...]

[But according to the assessment,] the impact to all three sites — Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan — was largely restricted to aboveground structures.

  CNN

So much for bunker busting.

Also...

Iran has several other sites in its nuclear program.

  PBS

While Trump and Hegseth have been bullish about the success of the strikes, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine said Sunday that while the damage assessment was still ongoing it would be “way too early” to comment on whether Iran still retains some nuclear capabilities.

Earlier on Tuesday, classified briefings for both the House and Senate on the operation were canceled.

The all-Senate briefing has been moved to Thursday, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

Two separate sources familiar told CNN the briefing for all House lawmakers has also been postponed. It was not immediately clear why it was delayed or when it would be rescheduled.

  CNN

They need a little time to gather up some "evidence". And for Pete Hegseth to memorize what he's supposed to say.  They know if they hold it now, they'll even get some Republican resistance.

[T]here have long been questions about whether the US’ bunker-buster bombs, known as Massive Ordnance Penetrators, would be able to fully destroy Iran’s highly fortified nuclear sites that are buried deep underground — particularly at Fordow and Isfahan, Iran’s largest nuclear research complex.

Well, now they know.

Notably, the US struck Isfahan with Tomahawk missiles launched from a submarine instead of a bunker-buster bomb. That is because there was an understanding that the bomb would likely not successfully penetrate Isfahan’s lower levels, which are buried even deeper than Fordow, one of the sources said.

Oh.

US officials believe Iran also maintains secret nuclear facilities that were not targeted in the strike and remain operational, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

Oh.

There's going to be some intense scrutiny of the people who had access to that report.  Kristi Noem, Pete Hegseth, and Tulsi Gabbard may all be on the hot seat for not preventing the leak.

 UPDATE 06/25/2025:  The shake-up has begun.

These are the guys who are supposed to be better than Kristi Noem.