When the S-it Hits the Fan, Pimp Trump's Arab Gulf Girls will Drop Dollar for Yuan

Trump's imbecilic policies, particularly the one that Zionists poked his ass with a cattle prod to push him into, are hurting the US far more than any other Quixotic windmill he says he is fighting.
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UAE officials reportedly warned they may be forced to use yuan or other currencies if they run low on dollars amid the Iran war
Jason Ma
Mon, April 20, 2026 

The United Arab Emirates apparently dropped a hint the dollar’s dominance isn’t assured in the global oil trade if fallout from the Iran war gets worse.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the UAE’s central bank chief raised the idea of a currency-swap line with Treasury Department and Federal Reserve officials during meetings in Washington, D.C., last week.

To be sure, the UAE has plenty of money, including $270 billion in foreign-exchange reserves and trillions of dollars across its sovereign wealth funds.

But while the UAE isn’t in a crisis, Iran has damaged its energy infrastructure and has blocked oil exports by closing off the Strait of Hormuz, weighing on dollar-denominated revenue.

If the Iran war triggers a deeper economic downturn, a swap line with the U.S. would provide the UAE’s central bank with a cheap supply of dollars that could back the dirham, which is pegged to the greenback, or beef up foreign-exchange reserves in the event liquidity runs low, the report said.

UAE officials also pointed out the U.S. started the Iran war and said they may be forced to use China’s yuan or other currencies for oil transactions if the availability of dollars gets tight, sources told the Journal.

The UAE’s central bank didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Any pivot away from the dollar by a top oil producer would represent a major threat to the currency’s supremacy. Saudi Arabia’s decision in 1974 to price its exports in dollars helped establish the dollar as the standard across the global oil trade.

And because oil is a core input to manufacturing and transport, supply chains elsewhere dollarized, reinforcing the greenback’s dominance in payments.

But the Iran war could worsen some cracks that had already been forming in the so-called petrodollar regime, analysts at Deutsche Bank warned last month.

“Damage to Gulf economies could encourage an unwind in their foreign asset savings,” they said. “In this context, reports that the passage for ships through the Strait of Hormuz may be granted in exchange for oil payments in yuan should be closely followed. The conflict could be remembered as a key catalyst for erosion in petrodollar dominance, and the beginnings of the petroyuan.”

Any loss of the dollar’s “exorbitant privilege” would also ripple through other areas of global finance, including the bond market. Thanks to the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency, the federal government has long been able to issue debt at rates lower than investors would otherwise allow.

But Dan Alamariu, chief geopolitical strategist at Alpine Macro, isn’t buying predictions of a U.S. decline. In a note earlier this month, he acknowledged if Iran’s regime is left standing while retaining some control over the strait, it would represent a “strategic setback” for the U.S. and humiliation for President Donald Trump.

But the Gulf Cooperation Council, which includes the UAE and Saudi Arabia, has even more reason now to maintain close ties with the U.S., given China’s links with Iran, Alamariu added.

“The idea of a petroyuan or petroeuro replacement remains far-fetched,” he said.

Even if the petrodollar weakens, dollar dominance still rests on other factors that other currencies can’t match, according to Paul Blustein, a scholar with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Those include the depth, breadth, and liquidity of U.S. financial markets as well as the freedom to move money across U.S. borders virtually unimpeded, he wrote in a Fortune op-ed last month.

“It accounts for well over half of foreign currency reserves held by central banks, and a similar share of export invoices for cross-border trade, as well as international bank loans and bond issuance,” Blustein explained. “Network effects entrench its status; everybody has an incentive to use the dollar because so many others do.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Muslim American Immigrant Saves Child Kidnapped by US-Born Christian Rapist

This is a piece of news that Trump's FUCKs-NEWS won't talk about.

Abohatem, the girl's savior, will now be hunted down by ICE.
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Detroit gas station clerk saved teenage girl from man after she mouthed 'help' to him
Corky Siemaszko
Updated Mon, April 20, 2026

The young Yemeni immigrant manning the cash register at a Sunoco gas station in Detroit struggles at time with his English, but police say he immediately understood when the 16-year-old girl seeking to buy cigarettes silently mouthed the word “help.”

Now Abdulrahman Abohatem is being hailed as a hero for saving that teenager from a suspected rapist who allegedly abducted her at gunpoint last week. And the local Yemeni-American business community is showing its appreciation by raising money to help him defray the costs of his upcoming wedding.

“We are all very proud of him,” said Mohammed Alsanai, principal of the Frontier International Academy in Hamtramck, which is where the teenager attends school.

Alsanai on Monday said the school recently hosted a ceremony where Abohatem was awarded a “Knight Medal” for his quick-thinking response.

Abohatem told local reporters that being able to help a teenager in danger was reward enough.

“I feel good when you save somebody,” he told the ABC News affiliate WXYZ-TV. “Sixteen years old — she is a child.”

The suspect, 48-year-old Donald James Joseph Arthur Fields of Hamtramck, has been charged with two counts of criminal sexual conduct first degree, kidnapping, one count of felonious assault, three counts of felony firearm and one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm, according to the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office.

Fields is being held without bond in the Wayne County Jail, Hamtramck Police Chief Hussein Farhat said after Fields was arrested last Monday, the day of the incident.

The suspect is “a criminal who had a history of rape charges, and we will make sure he gets what he deserves,” Hamtramck Mayor Adam Alharbi said after Fields' arrest.

Fields, according to available records, was charged in February 2024 by authorities in Michigan with criminal sexual conduct/second-degree assault.

There are also two arrests on his rap sheet for first-degree home invasion in Michigan.

The Hamtramck Police Department did not immediately respond to an inquiry seeking more details about Fields' previous arrests.

The 16-year-old was waiting for a bus to school when Fields forced her at gunpoint into his van and drove away, police said. But this did not go unnoticed. Another female student who saw what happened immediately called 911.

While police were responding to the reported kidnapping, Fields allegedly assaulted the teenager in his van and then drove with her to the gas station across the city line in Detroit.

Meanwhile, officers arriving at the school encountered several students who were already using their cellphones to track the missing girl through a social media app, police said and Alsanai confirmed.

“The whole room froze when we realized we knew where she was,” the principal said.

Armed with that information, police headed for the Sunoco, as well.

By then, Fields and the teenager were already inside the gas station’s convenience store.

When the suspect told the 16-year-old girl to pay for the cigarettes, Abohatem told WXYZ-TV he was immediately suspicious.

“I stop and go, 'There’s something wrong,'” he said. “And she mouthed talked to me, like with no sound, ‘Help.'”

Abohatem said he stepped out from behind the store’s protective glass and stepped in between Fields and the teenager.

“I go out, I kick him out,” Abohatem said of the suspect. “I ask the girl, ‘Go behind me.'”

Fields quickly fled and was heading back to his van with Abohatem hot on his heels when Hamtramck police officers arrived and took the suspect into custody.

“I see the police outside. I point to him. I go, ‘That’s the guy,'” Abohatem said.

Police quickly handcuffed Fields and then confiscated his van and a handgun.

Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said the teenager was the victim of a seemingly random attack and praised her for keeping her cool even after she was assaulted.

“Our young survivor in this case was simply walking in broad daylight when she was viciously attacked and sexually assaulted,” Worthy said in a statement. “Despite what she had just gone through, her quick thinking and mental toughness saved her life. We cannot reverse what happened to her, but we can work hard to bring justice to her. “

Sound Opinion on What Trump's Next Step Should be

Resignation is Trump’s last chance at redemption
William S. Becker, opinion contributor
Mon, April 20, 2026



Donald Trump’s presidency is a morality lesson. He is a living example of what happens when a man is given power that far exceeds his character. It is time for America to acknowledge the lesson and move on.

Trump is engaged in a constant struggle for respect, seeking affirmation to maintain his facade of respectability. In reality, he seems to have starved his soul in pursuit of material wealth, power and fame.

This facade is as unstable as a Jenga tower. Trump fears that someone will pull out the piece that makes it topple, so he relentlessly punishes anyone who might try. 

The real estate mogul constructs monuments not to great Americans or moments in history, but to himself. They include resorts, hotels, golf clubs and skyscrapers. Now, they include a Trump ballroom at the White House and a prospective Arc de Trump imposing itself on the Lincoln Memorial. His portrait hangs throughout the capital like Caesar’s adorned Rome. Soon, Trump’s likeness will appear on U.S. currency and commemorative gold coins.

He doesn’t understand, or perhaps will not admit, that he is memorializing a decade in which he caused decay, division, degradation, degeneration and disgrace. Once Trump leaves office, the plaques on his monuments will explain how the government failed America and nearly allowed the world’s continuing democracy to slip away.

Trump has imposed his will on the nation’s cultural institutions, dictating what the Smithsonian museums should exhibit and what the renamed Donald J. Trump-John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts should host. Once he is gone, a permanent exhibit at the National Museum of American History should teach schoolchildren how easily tyrants can mislead the people and fill the void left by a passive citizenry.

The Trump decade should be remembered as a period when a president commandeered every news cycle by creating fresh controversies. As his power crumbled, he escalated his outrages so that each one distracted national attention from the last.

Many theorize that he even launched a war to divert persistent attention from the most sordid scandal in American history: the Epstein affair. His badly conceived attack has so far cost the lives of 15 U.S. soldiers, wounded 400, and killed or injured nearly 30,000 Iranians while pushing the world economy to the brink of recession and imposing economic costs on people around the world.

The diversion has worked — at least, for now. Epstein has been pushed off the front pages, even though the Justice Department has unlawfully refused to release 2.5 million pages of evidence.

While two members of Congress have just resigned because of alleged sexual misconduct, Trump has been accused by at least 19 other women of sexual misconduct. He has so far been shielded from accountability in the Epstein scandal by his own Justice Department. But detailed accounts of Trump’s alleged predation are already part of the public record, including in documents filed as part of civil lawsuits.

The stench of scandal has characterized the Trump White House. The president and his Cabinet have repeatedly violated the Constitution, engaged in profitable conflicts of interest, abused his pardon power, deployed the military against the civilian population, ignored citizens’ constitutional rights, withheld public funds from states that didn’t vote for him, and used the threat of legal action and the denial of federal funds to extort private corporations and universities into conformance with his policies.

Trump has turned the U.S. Justice Department into his personal goon squad with specious investigations of his perceived enemies. Now, as they watch Trump’s support slipping among voters, his allies are reportedly working to rig this year’s elections and the presidential election in 2028.

That is the presidency to which Trump is building monuments.

Not all of America’s presidents have been paragons of virtue. But they have generally understood that their legacy would not be enshrined in white marble or gold coins, or in awards designed to bribe them. A president’s legacy is defined by deeds. It is enshrined in policies that make America stronger, democracy healthier, life better, justice more equal, and citizens more secure.

The voting public has twice given Trump the opportunity to redeem his legacy. Each time, he has only made it worse. His last chance is to resign now, citing health reasons.

If he doesn’t, then the challenge of redemption will pass to Congress. History will remember its current members more kindly if they do their jobs by removing Trump from office before he does irreparable damage to the country.

William S. Becker is co-editor of and a contributor to “Democracy Unchained: How to Rebuild Government for the People,” and a contributor to Democracy in a Hotter Time, named by the journal Nature as one of 2023’s five best science books. He previously served as a senior official in the Wisconsin Department of Justice. He is currently executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project.

Message from Vietnam Vets (Live Suckers and Losers) to Draft Dodger Moron

Vietnam vets sue Trump over 250-foot ‘Triumphal Arch’ set to tower over Arlington National Cemetery where veterans rest
AnnaMarie Houlis
Mon, April 20, 2026


shutterstock.com / Jonah Elkowitz (left) - envato.com / ToastedPictures (right)

Three Vietnam War veterans and an architectural historian are suing Donald Trump, according to 9News (1). They argue that his plans to build a 250-foot "triumphal arch" near the Arlington National Cemetery's main entrance lacks congressional approval, violates federal law, and would be disrespectful of those buried there.

If erected, the triumphal arch — inspired by [the] Arc de Triomphe in Paris — would be the largest in the world. And critics worry that the sheer size of it alone would dominate the landscape, leaving nearby landmarks like the Lincoln Memorial — and our veterans — in its shadow.

"What has happened here is that the president has decided that he can just unilaterally go ahead and erect this monument," Wendy Liu, who represents the veterans who feel personal ties to the cemetery, told 9News. "The thought of being buried in the shadow of what they have described as a vainglorious arch is profoundly disrespectful."

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has said that the monument is meant to commemorate the country's 250-year history — "outfitted with artwork celebrating the success of the American people," a design for which the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts has given initial approval. Still, further federal approvals are required to advance the project.

While the lawsuit is ongoing, the Triumphal Arch is not Trump's only controversial plan to concretely change some of the country's most important places. Nor would it become the first time he moves forward with debatable decisions without the appropriate approval.

Trump is currently pushing to renovate the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which used to be one of D.C.'s few apolitical spaces — before he made the disputatious decision to emblazon his own name on the building in December of last year (2).

Trump secured almost $257 million (2) from Congress to close the Kennedy Center for immediate repairs, which critics argue should — like all other major projects in the country's capital — go through the standard review process.

Nonetheless, in March 2026, the board decided to temporarily pause operations to allow for "the most comprehensive" renovation effort. Roma Daravi, Vice President of Public Relations said in a press release (2) that the project will "transform the Center into a world-class destination worthy of the nation's legacy and future," making it a place "where every American is welcome to experience artistic excellence and premiere entertainment."

An anonymous Kennedy Center employee confirmed to The New York Times (3) that ticket sales and subscription revenue have dramatically fallen since Trump made himself chairman and vowed to make the institution "hot" again, purging the previously bipartisan board appointed by President Joe Biden.

In addition to The Kennedy Center, the Trump administration has also started work on the White House itself.

Beyond redecorating the Oval Office with self-portraits, his administration has begun demolishing the East Wing, which has historically been the base of operations for the first lady. Instead, Trump is planning a $250 million 90,000-square-foot ballroom, despite the lack of approval from the National Capital Planning Commission — the federal agency that oversees construction on government buildings in Washington.

According to the Associated Press (4), Will Scharf, White House Staff Secretary, said during a public meeting of the National Capital Planning Commission in 2025, that "demolition and site preparation work can certainly occur, but … actually building anything … should go through [the] approval process."

L. Preston Bryant Jr. — who President Barack Obama appointed to chair the commission in 2009 — reportedly added that there are four stages of approval. Proposed projects typically begin with an early consultation, when most of them are still "very much conceptual." But Trump's ballroom seems to have skipped at least some of those steps.

And Trump is not stopping there.

Most recently, he has begun putting plans in place to paint the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

The gray "eyesore" — which sits across the street from the White House's West Wing — does not "align visually with the surrounding architecture" and "lacks any symbolic cohesion," according to the project proposal (5) submitted to the Commission of Fine Arts. Trump prefers that it be painted white.

This article originally appeared on Moneywise.com under the title: Vietnam vets sue Trump over 250-foot ‘Triumphal Arch’ set to tower over Arlington National Cemetery where veterans rest. Article sources shown as bracketed numbers can be checked in the original article on Moneywise.com.

America's Arab Gulf Girls Uncomfortable with Trump's War. Want US Bases Out

 

Trump's got it coming. He may get what he wished for.

He's constantly nagging about spending money on defending other countries. In Europe and elsewhere. He's harassed these countries to increase their defense spending, and that for two reasons: 1- He says they are ripping the US off by depending on US protection, but also 2- Because he thinks he can sell them weapons and make money out of not protecting them.

He's a jackass, to be sure, because he doesn't understand that the US is defending itself by spreading its bases wherever it can to counter potential enemies. The US doesn't build a military base in the Arab Gulf countries because it, as a pimp, wants to protect its decadent girls there. It has bases there because it is defending its interests, which is a vague term that often boils down to things like access to oil, protection of oil and gas fields it wants and needs, projecting power (i.e. scaring off rivals), establishing military highways between various geopolitical positions on the globe, etc.

That was working fine until the jackass became president. He handles the presidency as a grocery store owner, counting every penny at the end of the day and oblivious to any higher-level considerations such as marketing, client maintenance, building neighborliness, etc. By reducing the presidency to counting beans (not mentioning the self-glorification - his faith advisor bimbo blonde just announced that syaing no to the dumb imbecile is saying no to God), the jackass is losing all the fine-thread relationships that the US has built to maintain its preeminence.

And now his Arab Gulf girls, despondent at losing all the glamour and lipstick they slapped on their shimmering desert shantytowns because their pimp is jeopardizing all their clients, are beginning to say to themselves: We don't need a pimp. We can play around dangerous games by ourselves. We've grown up. We don't need protection. Just like the European allies. In so doing, the jackass has demolished everything the US had built since WWII: the trust in partnerships with the US. It might take a while for all these countries to adjust, but they will eventually adjust, either by going solo or by forging deals with alternate pimps, particularly cool-headed ones like China. 

I thought Trump would be street-smart because of his vulgarities and mob-like persona. But he isn't even that. He's just a dumb and stupid bully with one single neuron in his decaying brain that fires only self-ingratiating impulses. It really is that simple.
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UAE Professor Says It’s ‘Time to Think About Closing the American Bases’ After Trump’s Iran War: ‘They Are a Burden’
Charlie Nash
Mon, April 20, 2026 


UAE University professor Abdulkhaleq Abdulla suggests closing American bases in the country due to its capability to defend itself and the burden the bases pose. X/@Abdulkhaleq_UAE & Staff Sgt. Chris Thornbury/U.S. Air Force via AP

United Arab Emirates (UAE) University professor Abdulkhaleq Abdulla declared on Sunday that it was “time to think about closing the American bases” in the country after President Donald Trump pulled the region into a war with Iran.

“This is what I told Reuters today: The UAE no longer needs America to defend it, as it has proven during the Iranian aggression that it is capable of defending itself with distinction,” Abdulla, a former adviser to the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, said in a statement. “What the UAE needs is to acquire only the best and latest weapons that America has. Therefore, it is time to think about closing the American bases, as they are a burden and not a strategic asset.”

The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that the UAE was in talks with the Trump administration about a potential currency swap, which would protect the nation’s economy should the war against Iran continue to drag on.

“The talks highlighted the U.A.E.’s concern that the war could inflict major damage on its economy and its position as a global financial hub, depleting its foreign reserves and scaring away investors who once saw it as a stable and secure place for their money,” the Journal reported, adding that “Emirati officials told the U.S. officials that if the U.A.E. runs short of dollars, it may be forced to use Chinese yuan or other countries’ currencies for oil sales and other transactions.”

Since the outbreak of Trump’s war against Iran, many U.S. military bases in the region have been struck by Iranian missiles and drones.

UAE oil facilities have also been damaged during the war.

Last month, the Trump administration forced through more than $23 billion in weapons sales to Middle Eastern allies currently under attack by Iran, including the UAE.

According to the New York Times, the UAE is set to receive Patriot missile systems, drones, Chinook helicopters, air-to-air missiles, and a missile defense radar.

The Demented Senile Great Moron is Ready for the Asylum for the Insane

80-year old madman looking divinely moronic

‘Not Well’ Trump’s Wild Tantrum Sparks Call for Drastic Action
Vic Verbalaitis
Mon, April 20, 2026

President Donald Trump’s behind-the-scenes meltdown in the White House is prompting further calls to invoke the 25th Amendment.

New York congressman Dan Goldman shared his response on Sunday evening to a Wall Street Journal report from Saturday night that alleged Trump, 79, threw an hours-long tantrum over a rescue mission for two downed airmen.


“The commander-in-chief was excluded from commanding a military operation because he was acting so crazy. Think about that,” Goldman, 50, wrote in a post from his personal X account. “Trump is not well. We need the 25th amendment before something really bad happens on US soil.”

The Daily Beast reached out to the White House for comment.

White House insiders told the newspaper that Trump was banished from a briefing on a rescue mission for two American airmen who were missing in Iran, with aides opting to update the president at intervals instead of having him in the room.

The president, screaming at aides about gas prices and the 1979 Iran Hostage Crisis, was reportedly worried a failed rescue could signal the end of his presidency.

Goldman echoed others in his party in their sentiments that the president is unwell. / Samuel Corum / Getty Images

“If you look at what happened with Jimmy Carter…with the helicopters and the hostages, it cost them the election,” Trump had said in March, according to the outlet. “What a mess.”

Goldman’s call to remove Trump from office echoes a group of House Democrats who introduced an effort to invoke the 25th Amendment on Tuesday following a string of “erratic behavior” from the president, which includes his feud with the pope, his doomsday threats on Truth Social, and his posting an AI photo of himself as Jesus Christ.

The bill, released by House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin, establishes a Commission on Presidential Capacity to Discharge the Powers and Duties of Office.

“Public trust in Donald Trump’s ability to meet the duties of his office has dropped to unprecedented lows as he threatens to destroy entire civilizations, unleashes chaos in the Middle East while violating Congressional war powers, aggressively insults the Pope of the Catholic Church and sends out artistic renderings online likening himself to Jesus Christ,” the Maryland rep said in a statement.

Raskin, 63, added that the country is at a “dangerous precipice, and it is now a matter of national security for Congress to fulfill its responsibilities under the 25th Amendment to protect the American people from an increasingly volatile and unstable situation.”

Trump’s approval among Americans has plummeted throughout his second term, primarily due to his handling of the war he started with Iran.

An NBC News poll published on Sunday found that 63 percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s overall performance, with 50 percent saying they strongly disapprove.

The poll also found that only a third of Americans think Trump has done a good job handling the war in Iran, which has resulted in the confirmed deaths of 13 American service members and hundreds more injured.

[updated] Israel's War Against Christians Continues in South Lebanon

 [Update]: And now the crocodile tears and the hypocritical promises of punishing the settler soldier who used an axe to smash a statue of Jesus in the Lebanese Maronite Catholic village of Debel in south Lebanon. Imagine what lies behind this one soldier. Imagine his fellow settler terrorists laughing and chanting as they filmed him. Imagine the tenor of his superiors' orders of the day: brutal and racist Jewish fanaticism that disguises itself as a force for good to keep convincing a credulous and guilty West to support the Zionist cancer in the Near East. Ever since Israel was created per a 3,000 year old fanatic self-glorification that has been unrelenting and barbaric for all these millennia and that seems unable to let go of an antiquated racist and supremacist ideology.

I would like to put war criminal Netanyahu on notice: Tell us WHEN, WHERE AND HOW this criminal settler terrorist will be punished. Not one settler soldier of the Israel Death Forces militia has ever been punished for egregious acts of crimes against humanity and war crimes. Not one. 

I still wonder how can the dumb Maronites and their Lebanese American tails in the US (they should change their name to MORONITES) continue to think Israel is their savior and not see what is underneath this violation of their most sacred symbols and not react with repulsion. Those Maronites of the diaspora and the homeland are so stupid that they can only react to events. They never propose anything that simply emanates from their own thinking and planning. No. They just wait for others, usually dumb assholes from the US Republican party that never ceased to stab them in the back, to solve their problems for  while they bend and kiss the hand of anyone who promises them salvation while screwing them in the back: Syrians, Arabs, Saudis, American, Egyptians, Israelis, Emiratis... Anyone who can buy their loyalty, just as Trump is doing right now. But for them to sit together like one people, like one nation, and unite behind a plan of their own for how they are going to survive as a minority surrounded by extremist Jews and Muslims, that is beyond their stupefied brains. They practice politics exactly as they do back in the old country: Vassals of feudal lords, with clientelism and corruption up to their eyeballs. 

Here is the Zionist militia statement. Reading it, you'd think you're dealing with a tolerant and civilized bunch of people. But far from it. The systematic persecution of all indigenous non-Jews in occupied Palestine and those people that are being bombed, killed and displaced and their lands stolen by the foreign settlers is a policy of the artificial Zionist colony in Palestine. (Note: Initial is underlined because the next statement, in a few months of "investigation", will accuse the local Maronites of having diguised themselves as a Zionist terrorist to impunge the "most moral army on earth". 

“Following the completion of an initial examination regarding a photograph published earlier today of an IDF soldier harming a Christian symbol, it was determined that the photograph depicts an IDF soldier operating in southern Lebanon,” said the military organization in a post on X. “The IDF views the incident with great severity and emphasizes that the soldier’s conduct is wholly inconsistent with the values expected of its troops. The incident is being investigated by the Northern Command and is currently being addressed through the chain of command. Appropriate measures will be taken against those involved in accordance with the findings. Furthermore, the IDF is working to assist the community in restoring the statue to its place The IDF is operating to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure established by Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, and has no intention of harming civilian infrastructure, including religious buildings or religious symbols.” 

Then, to add insult to injury, here is the creepy statement by war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu who uses the same language he and his ilk have been using for decades to dehumanize the very people they are raping while pretending to be a western outpost in a barbaric Muslim and Christian Near East. Netanyahu has been telling the West that his brutality is necessary to uphold Western values and bring civilization to this primitive part of the world. 

No one believes him anymore, except the dumb morons of America. Netanyahu claims that Israel "is the only country in the region that protects Christians ..." BULLSHIT. At the very moment he is lying to the American public (his targeted audience), he is bombing churches and Christian villages across Lebanon because those Christians have had to shelter hundreds of thousands of their fellow Lebanese that have been displaced by Israeli savagery. Not one Christian church or school or maternity or shelter is standing in Gaza. There are no Christians being slaughtered in Syria and Lebanon. How can that be when the Lebanese president and half of his cabinet are Christians? How could the "slaughtered" Christians of Lebanon be negotiating with this Zionist asshole in Washington DC?

For a century now, the Lebanese have chosen the diffficult path of accommodation and power-sharing between Christians and Muslims. It has been a tortuous journey but one that is based on a genunine desire to find common ground and teach the world the values of coexistence. What has Israel done over the same past century? It has chosen the opposite path: That of foreign imported Jewish fanaticism, supremacy, violence, racism and hatred against the native indigenous Muslims and Christians. Wasnt he, the same war criminal asshole Netanyahu, who recently declared Israel is a "democracy-for-Jews-only" that excludes all others from the bounties of democracy? How can that be a democracy? 

To my American readers: When are you going to stop being so foolish and dumb as to believe these Zionist lies?  

"As the Jewish state, Israel cherishes and upholds the Jewish values of tolerance and mutual respect between Jews and worshippers of all faiths. All religions flourish in our land and we view members of all faiths as equals in building our society and region.

Yesterday, like the overwhelming majority of Israelis, I was stunned and saddened to learn that an IDF soldier damaged a Catholic religious icon in southern Lebanon. I condemn the act in the strongest terms. Military authorities are conducting a criminal probe of the matter and will take appropriately harsh disciplinary action against the offender.

While Christians are being slaughtered in Syria and Lebanon by Muslims, the Christian population in Israel thrives unlike elsewhere in the Middle East. Israel is the only country in the region that the Christian population and standard of living is growing. Israel is the only place in the Middle East that adheres to freedom of worship for all. We express regret for the incident and for any hurt this has caused to believers in Lebanon and around the world."

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Israeli settler soldier in south Lebanon films himself smashing a statue of Jesus in the Maronite Catholic majority village of Debel.

Is it the same continuing Zionist policy of persecuting Christians in occupied Palestine? Not too long ago, back at Easter, Zionist settler soldiers forbade the Catholic senior clergy of Jerusalem from holding their Easter procession. Not to mention the incessant harassment of Catholics and Orthodox Palestinian Christians, as well as the Armenians of the Armenian Christian quarter of Jerusalem, with the objective of dispossessing them of their homes and churches to make way for brand new foreign Zionist settlers.

Is it to poke the Pope in the eye because of his opposition to the Iran war?

Is it to demonstrate the Zionist preference for Evangelical colonialist pro-Zionist rapists of Palestine? If the Zionists claim Yahweh has chosen them as his perfect people, they in turn have chosen Evangelical so-called Christians as their favorite Christians. This is a practice long embedded in the Hebrew-Zionist mindset. Remember how Yahweh preferred carnivorous Abel over vegan Cain? Yahweh definitely loved Abel's red meat and was not impressed with Cain's lentils and barley. In making this preference so evident and blatant,  the capricious scheming Yahweh incited Cain to kill his brother Abel. No wonder criminals like Trump, Netanyahu and others claim they are doing God's will by killing tens of thousands of innocent people. 

Now, war criminal Netanyahu keeps parotting that Israel is all about defending freedom of religions and promoting western values. But the Zionist child killer lies, like his buddy Trump. They say one thing and do its oppotite.
 
A Zionist settler terrorist is seen in this screenshot from an X Post smashing a statue of Jesus in southern Lebanon in the Christian Maronite Catholic village of Debel on April 19, 2026. Like the fanatic Taliban of Afghanistan who smashed the Buddhas of Bamiyan in 2001 or the primitive ISIS-Al-Qaeda-Daesh fanatics who set out to destroy the antiquities of the Iraqi museums or the antique city of Palmyra in Syria (2016). Religious fanaticism can only win by destroying other religions. Pagan Rome itself converted to Christianity and switched from persecuting Christians to persectuing pagans: in Lebanon it proceeded to destroy every Phoenician temple and statue or convert the statues from Ishtar to Mary, from Adonis to Jesus, and Phoenician temples to churches. 

Now, per their inborn legacy as students of Joseph Goebbels's Nazi propaganda, the Zionists in Israel say they have launched an investigation after several accuracy checkers determined the picture was authentic and not AI-maufactured. 

Let me ask you: How many times in the past have you read Israeli military investigation reports on crimes committed by Israeli settler soldiers? Rampages, rapes and burning villages in occupied Palestine? Zionist settler soldiers dumping bodies of Palestinians they just killed from the rooftops? Deliberately shooting Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu-Akleh in the neck, the only exposed part of her body amply labeled as PRESS, by an Israeli Zionist settler; first investigation said it was a Palestinian who shot her; second investigation said it was random fire by Zionist settler soldiers; third investigation said it was indeed a settler soldier who had made a mistake. Bottom line: When the rare occasion of an investigation is conducted under intense world pressure, the results are only lies and obfuscations. 

The "most moral army in the world" - in War Criminal and Prophet Netanyahu's words inspired by the self-declared status of God's most favorite pet people - says it views the Zionist settler soldier desecrating a Christian representation with "great severity and emphasizes that the soldier's conduct is wholly inconsistent with the values expected of its troops". Sounds civilized, but barbarity can disguise itself until a conclusive report is issued and the settler soldier punished, which is NEVER.

You see, Zionists claim to be bringing tolerance and civilization to the "barbaric" Middle East, with "barbarity" implicitly and laregly pointing to Muslim practices, but rarely expressed against Christians (out of fear of alienating the fallacy of a united "Judeo-Christian" western civilization against Muslim barbarity.) But the facts speak otherwise. How can fools accept the Judeo-Christian concept when the history of western civilization, ever since the Roman empire, is pregnant with hatred of Jews because "they murdered Jesus". Antisemitism is a western notion. It does not exist in Muslim lands and other non-western lands. The very hypothetical notion of a "Jewish people" is itself a charade in which various races and ethnicities are buried under the barbaric religion of Judaism, which has over millennia spawned equally barbaric cults of christianity and islam. In fact, Islam itself continues to promote the canard of a "Muslim people" or "Muslim Umma" (Nation of Islam) gathering within its hordes people of all ethnicities and races. The Christians did for many centuries promote a "Christian people" but has long ago abandoned that religious identity falsehood in favor of national identities, though there are barbarians out there who want to revive it (like the American moron Evangelicals) or are still attached to it out of a primitive mindset (like the Lebanese Maronite neanderthals).

"The IDF [Israel Death Forces] views the incident [Zionist settler soldier smashing a statue of Jesus in Christian Lebanon] with great severity and emphasizes that the soldier’s conduct is wholly inconsistent with the values expected of its troops," the settler military declared, using grand words like, "The incident is being investigated by the Northern Command and is currently being addressed through the chain of command. Appropriate measures will be taken against those involved in accordance with the findings." How un-Arab. How un-Muslim. How civilized Jewish. How rational. How detached. So western civilization-like! 


Christians pray on Good Friday in Cathedral St. Thomas church, amid escalating hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, as the U.S.-Israel conflict with Iran continues, in Tyre, Lebanon, April 3, 2026. (credit: REUTERS/ADNAN ABIDI)

Now the Evangelical American poodles of the Zionists see no problem with the settler soldier conduct. They hate Catholics and all non-Evangelical Christians, and see with a favorable eye attacks like this one.  According to the witnesses among the Maronite community in the village of Ain Ebel in southern Lebanon, the incident took place in Debel, a Maronite Christian village about six kilometers to the northwest and roughly five kilometers northeast of the Israeli border community of Shtula.

Per Netanyahu and his horde of Zionist barbarians hailing from the desolate wilderness of Eastern European steppes, Israel is a "democracy-for-Jewsonly", even if the population of historic Palestine is about half indigenous Palestinian, half foreign invading settlers. And the Maronite idiots of the American-Lebanese community in the US (Walid Phares, Atef Harb and other tails of Trump's MAGA) and their leaders in Lebanon proper aspire to emulate Israel: They want a "democracy-for-Maronites-only" in a Lebanon that used to be Maronite majority in the 1920s and 1930s, but was slowly swamped by an influx of Syrian Muslim citizens whose regions were annexed to Lebanon by the Maronite Church (against advice by the French mandatory power) to create the ungovernable Greater Lebanon filthy monstrosity. 

While in Israel Zionists come together despite their vitriolic internecine hatreds, the Maronites in Lebanon are disorganized, quarrelsome, corrupt and lack any sense of governance based on rational planning and objective-setting. Even though they are wealthy (from either domestic corruption or from diaspora generosity), they generally drift from one crisis to another, beset by incessant internal disputes of feudal and medieval warlord vintage, incapable of unity against the fellow Lebanese Muslim threat. The Maronites in Lebanon are a tragic community that keeps losing ground to all their enemies around them, while dispatching candidates for beatification and sanctification to Rome like a Ford car assembly chain. Even the Vatican has tired of all the applications for sainthood coming out of Lebanon. 

I think the Lebanese Maronite per-capita rate of sanctification is the highest by far around the world. The Maronites even sanctify mass murderers and criminals like Saint Elias, a Christian convert and Palestinian warlord usually pictured with a sword slaying innocent Phoenicians who refused to convert to the new and sublime Christian religion. I do not doubt that, given enough distance of time between his brutal existence on earth (1970s-1980s) and a fast approaching future, Bashir Gemayel (who was a warlord and briefly a president of the country before his assssination) will be some day beatified and sanctified by the Maronite Church. All it takes is a puny "miracle" that is manufactured around him for a beatification and sanctification dossier to be submitted to the Vatican.

In essence, when a barbarian Jew desecrates an equally barbaric Christian representation of Jesus, while both claim they are victims of Muslim barbarity, the only conclusion one can logically draw is that the Supreme Zombie in the Sky, a.k.a. El, Yahweh, God, Dieu, Allah, Gott, etc...is a blood-thirsty sadistic schemer who spends his eternal time mucking around with his imbecile monotheistic followers who, in turn, are masochistic addicts who enjoy pain and humiliation while claiming they are killing their fellow monotheists because the Supreme Zombie in the Clouds loves them more than the others.

The Cruel Revenge of the Evangelical Moron: Cut off Funding for Catholic Charities

Trump team cancels million-dollar contract with Catholic charity amid president’s feud with Pope Leo
Graig Graziosi
Thu, April 16, 2026


Trump team cancels million-dollar contract with Catholic charity amid president’s feud with Pope Leo.

President Donald Trump has cancelled an $11 million federal contract with the Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Miami, jeopardizing the charity's ability to provide housing and assistance to migrant children.

President Donald Trump has ended a multimillion-dollar contract for a Catholic charity serving migrants amid his ongoing feud with Pope Leo XIV. The Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Miami provides housing and assistance to migrant children and has done this work for 60 years. Without the funding provided by the $11 million federal contract, the charity may cease to exist by the year's end, according to the Daily Beast.

Thomas Wenski, the archbishop of Miami, wrote in the Miami Herald that he found it "baffling" that the government would cut off funding to a service that has provided help to children for more than half a century. The archbishop predicted the center would only last another three months without the funding.

The funding came through the Department of Health and Human Services and a spokesman said the cut happened because the number of kids under the archdiocese's care dropped, according to the Daily Beast. It was at 1,900 under Trump, down from around 22,000 under former president Joe Biden. The cancellation was first discussed in March, according to the report.

The contract's cancellation comes at a time when the Trump administration and the Vatican are at odds.
The Trump administration has cancelled an $11 million contract with the Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Miami. The charity has served migrant children since the 1960's and may close due to lack of funding.

The American-born Pope Leo has been vocally critical of the Trump administration, both for the way it treats immigrants and because of its warmongering. During the Pope's annual address to the Vatican diplomatic corps — sometimes referred to as his "state of the world" address — he called for peace and rebuked world leaders who sought out conflict.

That criticism did not sit well with Trump.

In January, apostolic nuncio Cardinal Christophe Pierre — serving as Pope Leo's U.S. representative — was called to the Pentagon to meet with U.S. officials.

A report by The Free Press claims that Pierre was dressed down by Pentagon officials over the Pope's anti-war comments and that he was told that "the United States has the military power to do whatever it wants" and that the Vatican should side with the U.S.

The Department of Defense acknowledged that the meeting happened but said in a statement that the Free Press's reporting was "exaggerated and distorted" and later said on X that Secretary of State Pete Hegseth's deputy, Elbridge Colby, "had a substantive, respectful, and professional meeting" with the cardinal.

Since then, Pope Leo has pushed back on Trump's now-infamous Truth Social post threatening to destroy Iran's entire civilization and has indirectly rebuked Hegseth's call for Americans to pray for the downfall of his enemies.

The relationship has become more strained since. Trump shared an AI image of himself as Christ healing the sick — he tried to claim he thought the image was showing him as a doctor — and Vice President JD Vance, a recent Catholic convert, made comments questioning the Pope's grasp on Catholic theology.

The relationship by Trump and the Pope grew even more strained in recent weeks. Trump also posted an AI image on social media of himself as Jesus (@realDonaldTrump/Truth Social) [With demonic angels hovering overhead]

Trump made the baffling claim that the Pope was soft on crime and then later told reporters directly that he doesn't like the head of the Catholic church.

“We don’t like a pope that’s going to say that it’s OK to have a nuclear weapon. … He’s a man that doesn’t think that we should be toying with a country that wants a nuclear weapon so they can blow up the world,” Trump told reporters while referencing Iran. “I’m not a fan of Pope Leo.”

The president's disapproval does not trouble Pope Leo.

“I have no fear of the Trump administration or speaking out loudly of the message of the Gospel, which is what I believe I am here to do, what the church is here to do,” Pope Leo told reporters this week.

He continued, saying his job wasn't to be a politician, but a peacemaker.

“We are not politicians, we don’t deal with foreign policy with the same perspective (as) [Trump] might understand it,” the Pope said. “But I do believe in the message of the Gospel, as a peacemaker.”

The Independent has requested comment from the White House.

The Achivements of the Great Moron

As the polling keeps pointing, Donald Dumb's poll numbers seem to have no bottom. Why? Because of his achievements:

Tourism to US is in free fall (https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/2026/04/17/less-international-visitors-united-states-global-travel/89644570007/)

Tariffs have wrecked the economy

War with Iran is in its 7th week, though the Moron keeps telling us the end is around the corner

His haphazard tariff policies has been struck down by the Supreme Court

He has to refund billions to American importers

His disastrous and cruel immigration policies have frozen many parts of the US economy

He is playing the market with his posts on TruthSocial: Sell on bad and buy on good. He's doing it so his family and friends make billions in profits.

His MAGA herd of morons is in revolt over the Moron's broken promise of “no new wars”

The Epstein Files remain hanging over his head. Too many pieces of evidence show him as a very close friend of the notorious pedophile with whom he shares many "wonderful secrets".

The Moron's promise to usher in an American “Golden Age” was never more than a mirage he dangled before his imbecile and credulous backwoods supporters. Inflation remains high, gas prices continue to rise, and Americans cannot catch up with rising grocery prices.

The Moron has cut down significant funds to research and development, a pillar of American supremacy. The Moron doesn't like the science that propels American innovation. He thinks that greatness comes from stupid machismo, bigoted expressions of religiosity, looking serious (high-brow, pursed lips and frowning) to those watching him at the zoo.

The Moron has picked fights with universities, banks, NATO allies, the Pope, and God himself (Jesus, as far as I know, is His only son, unless the great zombie in the sky has a hidden second life!). The MAGA horde of brainless racist idiots patted him on the back for being so manly and Messiah-like.

In launching his war on Iran, the Moron was bamboozled by the Zionists who told him "it'll be over in three days". Now he's stuck. He, as usual, doesn't think ahead, doesn't research the issues, listens only to his deranged advisors, and consults his own gut feeling (i.e. no brain involved, but lots of BigMacs and giant cokes) and his own ethics (Hahahahahahaha!!!).

The Moron is clearly declining in mental health. As an 80-year old geezer, his actions and his words are erratic and increasingly angry. When you add senility and old-age anger to prexisting stupidity, you get a dangerous mix. Plus, cankles, obesity, skin blotches, forgetfulness....

No one can predict the outcome of the upcoming midterms. Polls, and we, have been wrong in the past. But if Americans are comparing their country before 2025 and the present, things are looking rather terrifyingly unstable right now, which could translate into a serious drubbing for the GOP-MAGA-Evangelical neanderthal cavemen peasants of America.

There are fears that, with his mental instability and the prospects of a defeat in the November 2026 elections, the Moron might attempt another coup like the one of January 6, 2021. He could cheat in the elections, terrify voters at polling places with his GETSPAO-ICE police, cast doubt on results, challenge the courts, etc. if defeated.... He just watched his Hungarian twin, the Orban Moron of Europe, get severly beaten last weekend in hius country's elections, and Trump is looking at what could happen to his infallible greatness.

Suddenly, the MAGA herd of imbeciles has been contaminated with the Trump Derangement Syndrome, as many are peeling off their tattoos, ditching their MAGA hats, and drinking themselves to deep depression as they regret having voted for the Moron.

No Shame Nepotism in Trump's World: Profiteering from Wars he Starts

 

Yes, the Moron-in-Chief says he is running the country like he runs his businesses - scams, fraud, cheating, extortion, sweetheart deals with friend and foe, profiteering.... doesn't matter, as long as he makes money for himself and his family and friends. Making money the way Trump does is not smart, it is smartass Mafia style.

Cheating runs across the Trump universe. You can say it's a way of life. For instance, Jared Kushner's father, Charles, was rewarded by Trump with the ambassadorship to France, even though - or perhaps because - Charles Kushner is a real estate developer (like Trump, like Witkoff and all the sleazebags around Trump) and a convicted felon (also like Trump. He once paid a prostitute to sabotage his brother-in-law's marriage, and was previously convicted of illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion, and witness tampering). 

Evidently, in his compassionate heart Trump "feels" the pain of these criminals because, as a criminal-minded convicted felon himself, he identifies with them. So, as president, he pardons them and gives them lucrative posts. As a real estate moron, Charles Kushner was a rare US ambassador to France to be called and reprimanded by the French government for interfering in the country's internal affairs.

Everyone by now knows that the criminal-in-chief plays the financial markets by yo-yo'ing positive and negative statements on wars he starts, during which he and his cronies and family buy cheap stocks (after Trump makes negative comments on war), then sell these stocks two days later at their high (after Trump makes positive statements that a "deal is near"). People say he contradicts himself because he's a moron. That's true, but underneath this innate stupidity, there's a criminal mind at work.

This is only a slice of the nepotism and cronyism his high-end Mafia gang is profiteering from, as they unleash miseries (wars, tariffs, taxes, access fees...) on people around the world while claming to be making peace.
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Trump Admin Hands Mega-Deal to Company Backed by Jared Kushner’s War-Profiteer Brother
Will Neal
Fri, April 17, 2026 


Photo Illustration by Eric Faison/The Daily Beast/Getty Images

The Trump administration just handed a huge deal to a defense firm backed by the brother of the president’s son-in-law.

The Defense Department has announced a new contract with Anduril Industries, Inc.—which counts Joshua Kushner, younger brother of Jared Kushner, among its major funders—to provide up to $20 billion in military equipment and systems.

Large portions of the full contract notice, reviewed by the Daily Beast, are redacted. It nevertheless shows the Pentagon has now effectively agreed to treat Anduril as a go-to resource for computer systems, military hardware, and data infrastructure, as well as support and training for those services, over the next decade.

Hegseth’s department has granted a contract worth up to $20 billion to Anduril Industries, Inc., a defense group backed by Joshua Kushner. / Alex Wong/Getty Images

Joshua Kushner, who at 40 is five years younger than his elder brother Jared, is one of the wealthiest venture capitalists of his generation, boasting an estimated net worth of $5.2 billion. He is married to supermodel Karlie Kloss, with whom he has three children. They share space in at least three luxury properties in Manhattan, Miami, and Malibu.

Joshua holds stakes in Anduril, a private tech company valued at upward of $60 billion, through his New York venture capital firm, Thrive Capital, which he founded in 2009. Thrive has not publicly disclosed its exact holding in Anduril, but co-led a $4 billion funding round for the group just days before the Pentagon announced the new deal earlier in March.

Joshua Kushner, younger brother of Jared Kushner, is a multi-billionaire who is married to supermodel Karlie Kloss. / Daniele Venturelli / WireImage

Jared, who is married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka, previously held a stake in Thrive, but sold his shares following the 2016 election to avoid potential conflicts of interest while serving as a senior adviser during the president’s first stint in the White House.

The elder Kushner holds no official position in the second Trump administration. Trump has, nevertheless, repeatedly tapped him to help with negotiations in areas related to defense, including the wars between Russia and Ukraine, Israel and Hamas, and the U.S. and Iran.

Jared Kushner, Joshua’s elder brother, is married to the president’s daughter, Ivanka Trump. / REUTERS / Reuters

At the heart of the deal appears to be the group’s Lattice OS, a cutting-edge AI command system that works at high speed to detect and respond to real-world threats without requiring any human input. Other products manufactured by the company include interceptor and surveillance drones, sentry towers, and loitering munitions, capable of autonomously hunting down and eliminating targets across hundreds of miles.

The Pentagon awarded the contract to the Kushner-backed group under what’s known as a “sole source” framework, allowing the department to sidestep normal requirements for open competition among potential contractors if it determines that only one company can do the job.

Trump has repeatedly leaned on Jared Kushner, who holds no formal role in his administration, to conduct war negotiations and other diplomatic talks related to defense. / Alex Wong/Getty Images

Officials did post a public notice in December, inviting vendors to come forward and discuss the opportunity, but gave them just three weeks to respond over the holiday period. Only one of the four companies that got in touch replied to the DOD’s follow-up queries, confirming it could not match Anduril’s offerings. The Pentagon says it took silence from the remaining three, one of which turned out not to be a defense contractor at all, as a sign they couldn’t either.

The Kushners are not Anduril’s only link to the White House. Palmer Luckey, who co-founded the group in 2017, has hosted high-value fundraisers for Trump, one of which charged $100,000 per ticket, and donated to dozens of Republican candidates and committees. His co-founder, Trae Stephens, served on Trump’s transition team ahead of the president’s first term, and was reportedly being considered for a top Pentagon job in the run-up to his second.

Palmer Luckey, co-founder of Anduril Industries, attends the UFC 324 event on Jan. 24, 2026, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Luckey is a major Republican donor. / Chris Unger / Zuffa LLC via Getty Images

Trump’s son-in-law, in addition to his informal role as the president’s mediator in war negotiations, has also been keenly involved in broader diplomatic talks across the Middle East. His sizable interests in the region have raised alarm among critics, given that he is not subject to the transparency or oversight requirements typically applied to formal government roles.

Jared Kushner is currently facing a congressional inquiry after Democrats accused him of soliciting billions from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund and other Gulf monarchies while leading diplomatic negotiations with both Russia and Iran. The White House has called that probe the “same, tired narrative,” and said the extended Trump family member was “generously volunteering his time to advance the president’s agenda.”

It follows reports that officials in Qatar, whose royal family gifted Trump a $400 million Boeing 747 jetliner last year, feared they would receive unfavorable treatment from any future MAGA administration if they did not invest in Kushner’s private equity firm, Affinity Partners. Qatar had initially declined when the firm launched in 2021, but ultimately poured in around $200 million ahead of Trump’s re-election.

Trump’s own sons, Eric and Donald Jr., have also significantly expanded their footprint in the region during the president’s second term. Dar Global, a London firm with ties to the Saudi royal family, has pumped more than $20 million into the Trump Organization over the past year in licensing fees alone for two Trump towers in Saudi Arabia.

Donald Trump’s sons, Eric and Donald Jr., have been accused of leveraging their father’s presidency for personal profit. / Spencer Platt / Getty Images

A government ethics watchdog noted in February that the family’s foreign property income now looks set to “explode,” potentially doubling in Trump’s second term alone the more than $430 million already earned from overseas developments over the prior decade, with much of that income from real estate developments in the Gulf region.

The Anduril deal also comes amid a string of accusations that figures close to the Trump administration have sought to profit from the president’s increasing aggression on the world stage, such as reports that Trump’s sons have made hefty investments in the drone industry over the past few weeks as his war in the Middle East ramps up demand in the sector.

Other members of Trump’s orbit, even his Cabinet, are accused of cashing in on the president’s war in the Middle East. / Reuters

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth faced allegations last month that one of his financial brokers had inquired about defense sector investments in the weeks before Trump launched his attacks on Iran, raising concerns of possible insider trading. The Pentagon dismissed those reports as “entirely false and fabricated.”

The Daily Beast has further revealed that Senator Markwayne Mullin, Trump’s pick to replace Kristi Noem as Homeland Security Secretary, purchased substantial stocks in defense contractors and oil giants just five days before the president’s lightning invasion of Venezuela earlier in January.

Mullin was a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee at the time, which receives classified briefings on U.S. military operations. He is likely to have made up to $35,000 from those investments, which will only have climbed further following the outbreak of war with Iran.

More broadly, multiple reports suggest patterns of suspicious trading activity around Trump’s war-related decisions, including $580 million in oil futures flooding the market roughly 16 minutes before the president announced a pause in strikes on Iranian power plants, as well as unusual surges in wagers on Polymarket, a cryptocurrency betting platform, ahead of attacks against both the Islamic regime and Venezuela.

A spokesperson for the Trump administration previously denied that there was anything untoward behind those bets, stating “the only special interest guiding the Trump Administration’s decision-making is the best interest of the American people.”

The White House declined to comment on the Anduril deal. Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson said the department “awards contracts based on merit, partnering with U.S.-based companies to equip our warfighters with the world’s most advanced and reliable capabilities.”

Anduril, Thrive Capital, and Jared Kushner’s representatives have been approached for comment, but did not respond in advance of this story’s publication.

We Knew it: Two Real Estate Idiots Negotiating Peace for Money is Very Bad Idea

 

These two idiots would be fun to watch if they were not involved in decisions of life and death. 

Trump's Laurel and Hardy just want to build buildings and sell them. When the Great Moron of American History tasked them with negotiating peace over a war he stupidly launched because Rasputin Netanyahu told him to, he believed that so-called "businessmen" could succeed in "making deals" (business talk that means steal money any which way you can) in long-standing hundreds-of-years-long wars.

Many fools out there, smitten with worshipping rich men as great men, believed him. Fools from around the world, including in the US, Lebanon and across the Arabian peninsula, rode Trump's hypotehtical gravy train because he is rich, although they knew he was not that smart. But idiots equate wealth with intelligence, when wealth generally should be equated with either old money mentally-challenged children inherit from their rich parents (like Trump) or with illegitimate Mafia-inspired scams glorified as "business deals" (also like Trump).

From now, dumb American parents are advising their children to go get a silly real estate broker's license instead of challenging academic pursuits because they watch Trump's Laurel and Hardy jetsetting across the rich Middle East trying to scam oil-wealthy decadent Arab sheikhs in the Gulf, all of it disguised as "peacemaking".

===============================================  


'It's Not Working': Diplomats Fear Trump's Iran Envoys Are Making Things Worse
Philip Wang
Thu, April 16, 2026 


Jared Kushner, left, and Steve Witkoff, Special Envoy for Peace Missions stand at a news conference after meeting with representatives from Pakistan and Iran, April 12, 2026 in Islamabad, Pakistan. —Jacquelyn Martin—Pool/Getty Images

As the Trump administration weighs a second round of U.S.-Iran talks, the failure of negotiations in Pakistan is fueling concern about whether its envoys can deliver a deal.

Former diplomats tell TIME that Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, who led the Iran negotiations with Vice President JD Vance, lack the expertise and diplomatic experience needed to secure an agreement. That, they warn, risks prolonging the war and further destabilizing the global economy.

“Iran and the U.S. under Kushner and Witkoff? Failure. They get an F in diplomacy,” said Aaron David Miller, a former US State Department Middle East negotiator who served six secretaries of state.

Miller pointed to Kushner and Witkoff’s track record, citing failed negotiations between Russia and Ukraine and stalled negotiations between Israel and Hamas as Israel continued its strikes in Gaza. He argued that while even the most experienced negotiators would face steep challenges in such conflicts, Kushner and Witkoff failed to convey to either side the sense of urgency that a desirable deal was within reach—an essential condition for pushing negotiations forward.

“You accept the notion that a successful negotiation, if you have urgency, is based on finding some balance of interest between the parties. If you want out of this, I think they're going to have to come up with something that allows the Iranians to say they won something,” Miller said, while suggesting that one possible concession could be giving Iran a pathway to resume uranium enrichment at a much later date.

Doubts over Kushner and Witkoff's diplomatic experience

Asked about Kushner and Witkoff’s future roles in the Iran discussion, a White House official told TIME that Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Witkoff and Kushner “have been working together on these discussions and will continue to do so.”

If talks resume, veteran diplomats say the U.S. delegation must recognize the importance of “doing their homework” and setting clearly defined goals.

David Satterfield, a former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey and a career diplomat for four decades, warned that if the administration cannot clearly articulate a set of strategic goals—both internally and publicly—the chance of reaching a deal with Iran will diminish.

“Not only does the U.S. need to make clear what its goals were, and to know internally where it was prepared to concede, and where it was not prepared to concede, where the line would be held, the red lines, but to have a realistic sense of what the other side was bringing with it,” Satterfield said.

Before joining the Trump administration, both Kushner and Witkoff were real estate businessmen with no government experience. Kushner, who serves the White House as a Special Envoy for Peace, has touted his diplomatic approach centered on finding shared interests.

“Make deals and not lecture the world,” Kushner explained in a joint interview with Witkoff in 2025. “Focus on interests over values sometimes, and figure out where we have joint interests with other countries and pursue those joint interests.”

He has also been accused of downplaying the importance of historical context in negotiations. During the Israel-Hamas war in 2023, Kushner said in an interview with Lex Fridman that he had told previous envoys in the Middle East, “I don't need a headache, and I don't need a history lesson.”

“I want a very simple thing…what's the outcome that you would accept?” Kushner said.

At a summit hosted by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund two weeks ago, Kushner said that “peace is not that different from business,” and that he had been able to leverage business relationships in diplomacy.

That view is now drawing skepticism. “How could he say that?” Miller said. “He's comparing leasing an apartment building on Fifth Avenue to negotiating a historic conflict driven by security, pain, and trauma.”

“I'm not saying you need to be a diplomat to be a good negotiator. Henry Kissinger was not a diplomat. My former boss, James Baker, was not a diplomat. But you need to have some sense of history, and you need to know geography,” he added.

Lack of nuclear expertise complicates negotiations

Robert Einhorn, former senior State Department official who participated in the Iran nuclear negotiations from 2009 to 2013, said that unlike business deals—where negotiators may have authority to close an agreement on the spot—diplomatic negotiations on issues like denuclearization are constrained by domestic politics on both sides.

“The negotiator at the table has to think about how the domestic audiences will affect the outcome,” Einhorn said. “And I think the negotiator on a nuclear issue is more constrained by his or her government bureaucracy and by public opinion.”

Einhorn also noted that earlier Iran nuclear talks were a “methodical, deliberative interagency process that operated at all levels” of government, and that expert input is critical to achieving goals such as “no enrichment of uranium,” as President Trump demanded in a Truth Social post.

“What does it mean, zero enrichment?” Einhorn asked. “Does it mean no infrastructure supporting enrichment? Does it mean that already existing enriched uranium, including the 440 kilos of highly enriched uranium, would have to be exported or diluted? You have to have experts that understand the various dimensions of the problem.”

Key sticking points unresolved

The question of how to verifiably limit Iran's nuclear capabilities is understood to have become the main obstacle in the peace negotiations. During talks over the weekend, the U.S. pushed for Iran to remove all highly enriched uranium from the country. Iranian officials would only agree to a “monitored process of downblending,” Axios reported.

The duration of the moratorium on Iran’s uranium enrichment was another sticking point. The U.S. proposed a 20-year moratorium on Iran’s uranium enrichment, while Iranian officials countered with a shorter “single digit” period.

That disconnect echoes earlier rounds of indirect talks in Muscat and Geneva in February, according to several news reports. Iranian officials were understood to be confused when the White House again sent Kushner and Witkoff, neither of whom has a background in nuclear policy. According to UK-based outlet Amwaj, citing unnamed Iranian sources, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi explained the stages of nuclear fuel production and the difference between an enrichment facility and a reactor to Witkoff on several occasions during the negotiation in Muscat.

More importantly, Miller added, the advisors must be willing to confront the president on the potential consequences of his decisions—something current administration officials have not done since the Iran War began on Feb. 28, according to Bloomberg.

“There is a discussion in which the president's advisors talk truth to power and basically say to him…‘You've got the ultimate control. But if you're going to do this, this is exactly what is likely to happen. And in my judgment…if you do this, you might fail,’” Miller said.

Such frank internal debate, he argued, depends on advisers willing to risk the consequences.

“Trump had four secretaries of defense in his first term. He had six national security advisors [during his two terms]. They know what happens if they embarrass the president or they become a problem.”

Responding to the criticism from former diplomats, White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in a statement to TIME: "These ‘diplomats’ did nothing to curb the grave threat posed by a nuclear Iran... only President Trump and his national security team have done anything to address [it.]"

"Experienced dealmakers Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner have successfully ended the war between Israel and Hamas, established the Board of Peace, brought home Americans detained abroad, and more. Their results speak for themselves," the statement continued.

Hear Joe Kent, National Counterrorism Center Director, Telling on the Iran War

 

 ...and hear Donald Dumb, president of the most vulgar administration in US history, replying to Kent.

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Trump Makes Vile Dig at New MAGA Enemy in Tasteless Post
Catherine Bouris
Fri, April 17, 2026

President Donald Trump posted a scathing attack directed at the National Counterterrorism Center director who quit over the Iran War.

Joe Kent became the most senior official within the Trump administration to resign over his opposition to Trump’s war with Iran when he quit last month. In his resignation letter, shared to social media, Kent wrote that he could not “in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran.”

“Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”

Donald Trump as he departs the White House for Las Vegas on Thursday. / Jessica Koscielniak/Reuters

Still stewing over Kent’s departure a month later, President Trump lashed out in a Truth Social post on Thursday night.

“Who’s dumber, Tucker Carlson or Joe Kent?” the 79-year-old asked. Kent sat down for an interview with Carlson shortly after announcing his resignation.

The president then described meeting Kent at Dover Air Force Base after his wife, Shannon Mary Kent, was killed while serving as a cryptologic technician for the U.S. Navy.

“I said hello to all of the families,” Trump wrote. “Kent, horribly, lost his wife,” he continued, before making an unnecessarily personal jab at Kent. “Her casket was being brought to Dover, along with the rest, although he married again, quite quickly, in my opinion.”

Shannon was killed by a suicide bomber during a military operation in Syria in 2019. Kent met visual artist Heather Kaiser a year after Shannon’s death, and the pair married in 2023. In 2024, Kent published a book about Shannon’s life titled Send Me: The True Story of a Mother at War.

Kent mentioned Shannon’s death in his resignation letter, writing, “As a veteran who deployed to combat 11 times and as a Gold Star husband who lost my beloved wife Shannon in a war manufactured by Israel, I cannot support sending the next generation off to fight and die in a war that serves no benefit to the American people nor justifies the cost of American lives.”

Joe Kent denies that there was an imminent threat posed by Iran. / Elizabeth Frantz / REUTERS

Trump then described “feeling sorry” for Kent after his failed congressional campaigns, and claims that he told his aides to find a role for him within the White House. Kent ran for Congress in Washington in 2022 and 2024, losing to Marie Gluesenkamp Perez both times.

“Hire him for the White House. Give him a job, make him feel good, he lost his wife and two Elections,” Trump quoted himself as saying.

“They did so and, while I rarely saw him, I certainly didn’t expect disloyalty, but that’s what I got,” Trump ranted. “He was really a SLEAZEBAG, and some would say, on top of it all, A LEAKER!”

Shortly after Kent announced his departure, Semafor reported that the 46-year-old was being investigated for allegedly leaking classified information. The FBI claims that the investigation predates Kent’s resignation. Kent has denied any wrongdoing.

“I don’t know whether or not that was true, but next time, NO MORE MR. NICE GUY!” Trump continued, before mentioning several other prominent right-wing commentators who have criticized his war with Iran.

“Kent is a LOSER, just like Tucker, Candace, Megyn, and the rest of them are LOSERS — You’re born that way, LOW IQ, and there’s not a damn thing they’re going to be able to do about it!”

The Daily Beast has contacted Kent for comment.

Donald Trump/Truth Social

Trump had previously posted about Kent on Truth Social following his resignation, sharing a message Kent had posted on X for the president in 2020, seemingly supporting intervention in Iran.

“We should not sit and wait for the next attack, wipe Iran’s ballistic capability out and get our troops out of Iraq - they are only targets now,” Kent wrote at the time, adding, “No US WIA/KIA is a tribute to the professionalism of our military and intel professionals not Iranian restraint.”

He also authored an opinion piece for Fox News making the same argument, expressing concern about the possibility of an “endless war” in the Middle East and calling it “a war we don’t need.“

Despite being concerned about the “full weight of the FBI and the government” being brought down on him, Kent has continued to criticize the president’s war, which has resulted in thousands of Iranian casualties as well as the deaths of 13 U.S. service members.

“The American people didn’t have the full story and our country did not have a vital national interest in this current fight,” Kent said at the annual Catholic Prayer for America gala last month.

“I will not, in good conscience, send young men and women off to die in foreign battlefields,” he told attendees to loud applause.

Breaking News: Trump and Netanyahu Want Lebanon Civil War

The Israelis have, it seems, reluctantly [See: https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/trumps-lebanon-ceasefire-takes-israel-225605289.html] agreed to a10-day ceasefire between them and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Just as Netanyahu and his ultra-religious radical Zionist terrorists believed that the regime in Iran would collapse within 3 days, they also believe that by maintaining an incessant bombing campaign against Hezbollah targets, either Hezbollah would surrender, or the Lebanese government's army would turn its own weapons against Hezbollah, or that the anti-Hezbollah Lebanese population (broadly Sunni Muslims and Maronite Christians) would take up arms and fight a civil war against the pro-Iranian Shiite terror organization.

For months, the Americans and the Zionists were giving the Lebanese army two options:

- fight Hezbollah to disarm it, in other words a civil war, or

- Israel would forcibly disarm Hezbollah

It now looks like Lebanon will get the double wammy of both an Israeli war and a civil war.

The thing that people must understand is that the Lebanese government and its army are incapable of fighting Hezbollah, and that for several reasons:

- The Lebanese army has been prevented from acquiring sufficient firepower to overcome Hezbollah in any fighting scenario. For years, the Americans refused to arm the Lebanese army because their Zionist whisperers were telling them that a strong Lebanese army would be a threat to Israel. The same old pretext to maintain instability and give Israel a free hand to intervene whenever it chooses. Peace in Lebanon is unacceptable to the Israelis because a strong and stable Lebanon would take the lead in trade relations with the Arab world and thus disadvantage the Israelis who seek a preferential position in such relations. And the dumb Americans obliged, sending the Lebanese army military scarp and forbidding it from acquiring weapons in non-American markets.

- In 1976, when it was the Sunni Muslims of Lebanon who mounted a sedition against the Lebanese government (using the Palestinian PLO as their militia and backed by a secretly pro-US, pro-Israel Syrian regime), the Sunni soldiers of the army deserted to join the Syrian-manufactured Arab Army of Lebanon led by Lieutenant Ahmed Khatib. It was this deserter who managed with Syrian help to separate the Lebanese south (of the Litani) from the central government, forcing the army contingents posted in the south to open the border with Israel to receive food, medical services, schools etc.) That cooperation between these isolated Lebanese army units and the Israelis eventually grew into an alliance when the Israelis invaded the south in 1978. The South Lebanese Army (allied with Israel) was created to stand up to the Arab Army of Lebanon (allied with Syria). The Sunni Muslim soldiers of the Lebanese army deserted and created their own units with loyalty only to Syria and not to their own government in Beirut. In other words, the Lebanese army fractured along sectarian lines into loyalist Maronite brigades and rebel Muslim brigades.

The fear today is that something similar could happen, but this time with the Shiite units of the Lebanese army. All it takes is for Hezbollah to call on all Shiite soldiers to desert their units, and the army breaks apart again. Even if those Shiite soldiers are individually against Hezbollah, they cannot refuse because their families would be in grave danger of retaliation by Hezbollah which essentially holds the Shiite community hostage.

- The Lebanese government has no control over Hezbollah. When it negotiates with the Americans and the Zionists, everyone knows that its words, pledges and assurances are void and null. This has been the case for decades. The government agrees to a UN resolution, but Hezbollah (and the PLO before it) refused to abide by the resolution. I do not understand why the Americans and the Israelis keep this masquerade going on. They know that whatever the Aoun government (now negotiating in Washington) does and says has no impact on, and is non-binding to the pro-Iranian Shiites of Lebanon.

The bottom line is what I have always argued: Hezbollah will NEVER depose its weapons willingly. It is not motivated by land or by assurances or by guarentees or by any real-world elements. Hezbollah is motivated by a radical Islamic fundamentalist ideology based in Tehran; its entire existence, funding and arming comes from Iran. Its 40+ years of existence has nothing to do with so-called Israeli-occupied land in the south. Liberation is just a pretext. Even if ISrael withdraws tomorrow from all areas under dispute in the south, Hezbollah will find another pretext to remain extant. Hezbollah and Iran are motivated by the real or perceived colonial rape of Palestine by anglo-saxon enemies, and is dedicated to avenging the rape.

Therefore all the choreography in Washington about "firsts", like direct negotiations between Lebanon and Israel or a possible peace deal, are propaganda destined to elevate Donald Dumb as a peacemaker when he is no more than an imbecile warmongering vassal of the Zionists. Lebanon and Israel went through the exact same scenario in the early 1980s. Like Hezbollah today, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was "liberating" stuff in the south. After years of cross-border skirmishes, the Israelis invaded in 1982, pushed the PLO out, and made a deal with the government of then-president Amin Gemayel - a deal known as the May 1983 Accord. Problem is this Accord was never implemented. There are many theories as to why it was never implemented. Some say Syria, which had a tacit agreement with the Americans over control of Lebanon in exchange of peace on the Golan, rejected it. Other say that Gemayel was a coward who refused to sign, fearing for his life after his brother Bashir was assassinated by the Syrians. Others claim that the Americans (who sponsored the negotiations) decided to walk out of the May 1983 Accord at the end because the Israelis convinced them that the Accord was globally more in favor of the Lebanese side. 

We are at a similar juncture, with Aoun replacing Gemayel, Hezbollah replacing the PLO, while radical terrorist Zionists remain in control of the Israeli government (Sharon in 1982 and Netanyahu in 2026), and a moronic Trump administration replacing the equally moronic Reagan administration. In 1983, the US MArines, French paratroopers, as well as Italian and British military contingents were in Beirut backing the Gemayel government. Israel was occupying half the country and the Syrian occupier did not fight the Israeli occupier because of the 1974 understanding that Henry Kissinger enacted with Syria's Assad: Keep quiet on the Golan and take Lebanon in exchange. The Lebanese population was mostly for the agreement, and a pro-US president was in charge. All the stars were aligned for a successful completion and implementation of the May 1983 Accord. Today, a rather similar scenario is in place. Everyone, except Hezbollah and Iran, want an agreement. But the Americans and the Zionists are setting a trap for the Aoun government whereby they will blame it for the failure they are planning. 

I do think that the Lebanese government is being bamboozled into negotiating an agreement that both the Israelis and the Americans plan on scuttling, while declaring that they exerted goodwill for peacemaking but that it was the Lebanese who failed to go through with it. Yes, the Lebanese government will NOT go through any deal they reach with the Zionists simply because it can't materially overcome Hezbollah, and it won't confront Hezbollah because history will blame the Aoun government for starting a civil war. 

How can the Lebanese government negotiate an agreement as a sovereign state while it has no sovereignty, thanks to the Iranian occupation (i.e. Hezbollah) and the Israeli occupation in the south.

Trump apparently forced Netanyahu's hand into accepting the ceasefire. In so doing, Trump plays the good cop and Netanyahu the bad cop to fool the Lebanese into accepting Israel's terms. Alternatively, Trump may have announced the ceasefire to poke Netanyahu in the eye for having drawn him into this war.

The ceasefire of 10 days will not be extended. War will resume. Hezbollah, per Shiite mythology, is suicidal. Like Zionists, Shiites love to be victims because it stirs the pity and sympathy of fools. Hezbollah will ONLY depose its arms by either 

1- direct invasion like the 1982 invasion got rid of the PLO, which would take several months and cause lots of casualties on both Lebanese and Israeli sides, or 

2- a very very long (measured in years) bombing campaign that will cripple Lebanon, lead to a civil war and conflict over power (Christian vs. Muslim), and cause many Lebanese casualties, while not ensuring a definitive end to the 50-year-long torment of Lebanon by Israel, Syria and Iran, and behind them the US and regional Arab powers.

==================================================


Sectarian fears increase as a Beirut area says no to displacement centre
Justin Salhani
Thu, April 16, 2026


A boy sits next to a fire outside his family's tent at a temporary encampment for displaced people in Beirut, Lebanon, April 1, 2026 [File: Adnan Abidi/Reuters]

Beirut, Lebanon – In late March, a government-planned centre in Beirut’s Karantina neighbourhood for people displaced by Israel’s war was cancelled after a public outcry.

A number of politicians and protesters were opposed to setting up the centre, citing a number of reasons, including increased traffic to the area near Beirut’s port and health concerns. But there were also sectarian motivations with some of Karantina’s Christian population leading objections to housing the displaced, who are predominantly Shia Muslims, citing demographic concerns and using sectarian slogans reminiscent of language used during the 1975-1990 Lebanese Civil War.

A major source of tension is that Israel has targeted displaced Lebanese, leading many to fear that hosting their compatriots may bring increased danger to their own homes and families. There is also extreme polarisation over the war inside Lebanon. Supporters of Hezbollah, the Shia armed group that has been fighting Israel, say it avoided war for 15 months while Israel repeatedly violated a November 2024 ceasefire while its critics accuse it of giving Israel an excuse to invade by launching attacks on Israel on March 2, leading to the forced displacement of 1.2 million people.

As Israel’s war on Lebanon exacerbates disputes within Lebanon, some people are afraid the violence may push Lebanese communities into a confrontation or even civil war – even as a 10-day ceasefire is set to begin.

Fear and discrimination

On March 2, Israel intensified its war on Lebanon for the second time in less than two years. After more than a year without responding to Israel’s continued attacks, Hezbollah fired rockets across the border after Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed on the first day of the US-Israeli war on Iran on February 28.

Israel moved fast, pouring troops across the border and demolishing entire towns. Areas across southern Lebanon and Beirut have been devastated by air strikes, drone strikes and attacks from Israeli warships.

And as the war continues, so too does the fear that Israel is trying to reopen old wounds. The cancellation of the planned displacement centre in Karantina in particular is significant because of the area’s history during Lebanon’s Civil War.

Before the Civil War, Karantina, which gets its name from the French word for Quarantine, was one of Beirut’s poorer districts. It was home to a mix of communities, including Christians and Sunni Muslims, but also Armenian, Kurdish, Syrian and Egyptian labourers, and many from southern Lebanon or the Bekaa Valley who had come to the capital seeking work.

In the early days of the war, the right-wing Phalange movement waged a campaign to rid the area of Muslim communities that eventually culminated in the 1976 Karantina massacre. Diala Lteif, a research fellow at the Margaret Anstee Centre for Global Studies who is writing a book on Karantina, told Al Jazeera that the exact number of victims is still unknown but thought to be 1,000 to 3,000. Many of the victims who weren’t killed were expelled to areas in what became known during the war as the predominantly-Muslim West Beirut.

Sources familiar with the planned displacement centre, including an aid worker with an international charity who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the controversy over it was part of a campaign that started on social media and was then picked up by Lebanese media and right-wing Christian political parties.

The rhetoric currently being directed towards displaced people in Karantina, Lteif said, is reminiscent of the civil war. “This foundational logic that areas need to be segregated is the logic that motivated the [Karantina] massacre,” she said. “It brings back this trauma from this time.”

The civil war pitted communities against one another, and each committed massacres and had massacres committed against them. Today, Karantina is home to mostly Lebanese citizens from Christian and Sunni Muslim faiths. But the trauma of the war is still present among the population.

A further factor complicating matters is that many in Lebanon associate displaced populations from southern Lebanon and Beirut’s southern suburbs with Hezbollah. While support for the group is not universal among Shia Muslims, the party draws the vast majority of its support from that religious community. Hezbollah and its ally Amal also often claim to be the sole legitimate representatives of Lebanon’s Shia Muslims.

“The political sectarian system in Lebanon lends itself to that association [between Shia Muslims and Hezbollah] and [so does] the sectarian rhetoric of basically every single political party, not just Hezbollah, but all of them in Lebanon,” Lara Deeb, an anthropologist at Scripps College in Claremont, California, told Al Jazeera. “The problem then is that a lot of people don’t see the line between the political party or a political perspective and the person and the people, and it all kind of becomes blurred into one.”

Some are welcoming

The Disaster Risk Management Unit, which reports to the Lebanese prime minister’s office, told local media that the site of the displacement centre was being prepared as a precaution but there were no plans for it to be put in use.

Not far away from that site is another displacement centre in the same Karantina district. It has taken in about 1,000 displaced people from southern Lebanon, Beirut’s southern suburbs and the Bekaa Valley.

On Wednesday, children played football while adults sat on plastic chairs around the property and chatted. This site, run by a Lebanese charity called Offre Joie, first opened in 2024 to receive a number of displaced people who were sleeping in tents in downtown Beirut.

When war returned in 2026, many of those people also returned. Marie Daou, a volunteer with the charity, told Al Jazeera that the centre has had no problems with the local community. Some of the displaced also work with the charity to help manage themselves. Daou said the charity knows the identities of all the displaced and security forces closely monitor the centre’s data to make sure they know who is on site.

Daou said the centre has ample hot water and its residents get decent meals, which is better than many other centres around Beirut and the country. In some of those other locations, displaced people have found conditions so difficult that they decided to return to their homes in areas under blanket evacuation orders from the Israeli military. But Daou said that in the Offre Joie centre, no one has left despite more than 40 days of displacement and war.

Outside Daou’s office, Nadine, 30, corralled a group of children. She was displaced on March 2 from her home in Burj al-Barajneh in Beirut’s southern suburbs and came to the centre in Karantina with her five siblings. She wants to return to her home, she said, but if the war is prolonged, she has little other choice.

“For now, we’re staying here. You can’t go back there [to her home] because there is danger, but now, of course, nowhere is safe,” she said. “But some places are better than others. We’ll be patient. We’ll endure.”