One Example of the Zionist Hold on Hollywood and Everything American

They'll cancel you if you speak out for basic decency, moral clarity and justice in Palestine. As we speak, the colonial Zionists are completing the rape of Palestine (with mass killings, starvation and land theft) that began some 100 years ago when British colonial crooks literally "sold" Palestine - over which they were given a fiduciary League of Nations mandate - to European Zionist bankers and their terrorist groups like the Jewish Agency, Haganah, Stern Gang, Lehi Group, Irgun and others. [https://www.trtworld.com/article/15767166]

The genocide and ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinian population began in earnest then and continues unhindered to our day, with the international community unable to put an end to the worst crime of the 20th and 21st centuries. Unlike all other anti-colonial resistance movements (Algeria, Vietnam, South Africa...), Palestinian resistance has been permanently equated with terrorism. The Zionist rape of Palestine is so insidious that the world community has been brainwashed to accept the canard that the colonial Zionist rapist needs protection from its raped Palestinian victim.
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Susan Sarandon Says Hollywood Roles Dried Up After She “Spoke Out About Gaza”, Praises Spanish Government For “Moral Clarity”
Andreas Wiseman
Sat, February 28, 2026


Getty

Oscar-winning actress Susan Sarandon is in Spain this weekend to collect a career achievement prize at the 40th Goya awards.

Speaking at a press conference in Barcelona today, the decorated star discussed her support for Palestine — a cause close to the heart of the Spanish government — and recent career challenges, which she said had come about because of that support.

The Thelma And Louise star was dropped by UTA in 2023 after attending several rallies in support of Palestine and at one point telling a crowd: “There are a lot of people afraid of being Jewish at this time, and are getting a taste of what it feels like to be a Muslim in this country.” She later apologized for those comments.

Sarandon told media today that her actions and words had led to her being shunned by Hollywood: “I was fired by my agency, specifically for marching and speaking out about Gaza, for asking for a cease fire, and it became impossible for me to even be on television. I don’t know lately if it’s changed, but, I couldn’t do any major film, anything connected with Hollywood.”

The actress said she found new agents in the UK (United Agents) and Italy (Do MGMT) and has largely worked outside the U.S. since then.

“I just did a film in Italy, and I did a play at the Old Vic [in London] for a number of months. An Italian director just hired me, but he was told not to hire me. So, right now I kind of specialise in tiny, independent films with directors who have never directed before, and films that are in Europe or in Italy. So, that’s the main reason I haven’t been been working as much.”

The actress is in post on Italian production The Echo Chamber with Alicia Vikander and U.S. indie movie The Accompanist, which marks the directorial debut of actor Zach Woods.

Sarandon became emotional, and wiped away tears, as she discussed the “strength and moral clarity” of Spain’s government, which has been among the most supportive of Palestine during the Gaza war.

“To see Spain and the President’s support for Gaza, and to have actors like Javier Bardem come forward with such a strong voice, is so important to us in the United States. I can’t tell you, when you turn on the TV and you see how strong Spain is, and how clear that you are morally about these issues, it makes you feel less alone, and it makes you feel that there is hope, because you just don’t hear that on TV in the U.S.”

She continued: “When a nation stands up, and I include Ireland in this too, I can’t tell you how very important it is to those of us who are trying — in an atmosphere that is very difficult — when we see that kind of strength and moral clarity, how much it means to us.”

She added: “I personally feel very strongly that the annihilation of the Palestinian people is a horrible crime, and I’m very ashamed to be paying for that.”

Sarandon also described ICE in the U.S. as “unconstitutional” and “doing all kinds of illegal things, particularly to Black and brown people”.

She added: “I’m very proud of the communities that have managed to find a way to fight against ICE, and I think that’s what it’s going to take, because no one at the top is going to save us from any of these things.”

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Susan Sarandon is speaking out about her current film and television career, saying that after she spoke out and called for a ceasefire in Gaza that she was unable to take on roles in the United States.

“I was fired by my agency, specifically for marching and speaking out about Gaza, for asking for a ceasefire,” Sarandon said. “It became impossible for me to even be on television. I don’t know lately if it’s changed. I couldn’t do any major film or anything connected with Hollywood. I found agents ultimately in England and in Italy, and I work there. I just did a film in Italy, and I did a play at the Old Vic for a number of months. I know this Italian director that just hired me — he was told not to hire me, so that’s still recently. He didn’t listen, but they had that conversation. Right now, I kind of specialize in tiny films with directors who have never directed, in independent films.”

The “Thelma and Louise” star also said that Spain has more intellectual freedom than the United States.

“In a place where you feel repression and censorship, to see Spain and to see the president and what he says and the support that he’s giving about Gaza, and to have actors like Javier Bardem come forward with such a strong voice, is so important to us in the United States,” she said.

Her comments came during a Feb. 27 discussion ahead of receiving the International Goya award in recognition of her career, including “Dead Man Walking” and “Atlantic City.” The Spanish Film Academy’s Goya Awards ceremony is set to take place on Feb. 28 in Barcelona.

In 2023, Sarandon was dropped by UTA after she spoke at a pro-Palestine rally in New York City.

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Mark Ruffalo, Diego Luna, Susan Sarandon & Riz Ahmed Get Behind Philistine Films & Watermelon Pictures ‘Talking Palestine 36’ Season
Melanie Goodfellow
Mon, December 8, 2025

Stars like Mark Ruffalo and Susan Sarandon are supporting a conversations series inspired by the film Palestine 36, exploring the 1936-39 Arab Revolt against British colonial rule.



EXCLUSIVE: Mark Ruffalo, Diego Luna, Susan Sarandon, Riz Ahmed, Ava Duvernay, Mira Nair, Julie Delpy, and Ramy Youssef are among a raft of stars lending their support to a conversations season taking inspiration from and in support of Annemarie Jacir’s Palestine 36.

Entitled ‘Talking Palestine 36’, the conversations are a joint initiative between Philistine Films, Jacir’s company with Ossama Bawardi, and the film’s U.S. distributors Watermelon Pictures.

The feature, which is Palestine’s official submission to the 98th Academy Awards, explores the rarely explored story of the 1936-39 Arab Revolt in which Palestinians rose up against Britain’s colonial rule.

“We created this series to open space for deeper, nuanced conversation about Palestine and its history,” said Bawardi. “Palestine 36 is not just a film – it is a cultural moment. These talks aim to broaden that moment into a sustained dialogue.”

The ‘Talking Palestine 36’ series will roll out across multiple cities and online to ensure global accessibility. It will run throughout the film’s global theatrical release, with additional guests and event dates to be announced

The series will feature conversations, panels, and special appearances by Jacir alongside artists known for their commitment to human rights and social equity.

Each instalment in the series will spotlight a different facet of the film from creative expression under constraint to the global role of cinema in documenting the lived experience of Palestinians, at the same time as examining the roots of Palestinian resistance against occupation.

Palestine 36 stars Saleh Bakri, Hiam Abbass, Jeremy Irons, Yasmine Al Massri, Liam Cunningham, Karim Daoud Anaya, Yafa Bakri, Billy Howle, Robert Aramayo and rising names from across Palestine and the diaspora.

Palestine 36 world premiered in September and has since won the Grand Prix at the Tokyo International Film Festival, the Audience Award at the São Paulo International Film Festival and the Arab Film Festival in San Francisco, as well as the Special Jury Prize at the Asian World Film Festival.

The film made its official MENA premier at Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Film Festival on Monday evening.

White Pennsylvania Americans Caught Torturing Children

According to the American Immigration Council and Stanford Uuniversity, immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than U.S.-born individuals. In fact, as the immigrant population has increased, the overall crime rate in the U.S. has decreased significantly. (https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/fact-sheet/debunking-myth-immigrants-and-crime/)

Therefore, on a pro-rata basis, US-born Americans commit far more crimes than immigrants, which means that Trump and his racist, xenophobic MAGA morons are lying, and they are using this lie to try and maintain the WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) grip on the country. WASPs are projected to lose their demographic majority some time this century, and are slated to becoming the largest minority of the US population. That is why JD Vance and Pete Hegseth and other Trump lackeys want white Americans to have more babies. They think they can somehow buck the inexorable trend. But what they want to ignore is that the brains that have built this country (during the 20th century) are all immigrants, and that the white stock of the pre-19th century population remains largely rural, peasant, illiterate and incapable to maintaining America's leadership.

Just like Muslim fundamentalists, Trump's Christian fundamentalists think that "quantity" (having more stupid white ignorant babies) will counter "quality" (more brainy educated, skilled immigrants). Good luck with that.

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Family Members Allegedly Tortured Children, Forced 1 to Stay in ‘Crib Cage’ at Pennsylvania Home
Julia Marnin
Thu, February 26, 2026


Courtesy of Newberry Township Police Department

[These are the fine high-quality white-trash Americans on whom Trump, Vance and Hegseth hope to build America's "white-bleached" greatness. In fact, I can see God and Jesus on their faces.]

A mother, grandmother and uncle are accused of abusing and neglecting three Pennsylvania children so severely that a medical professional found the abuse met the “definition of child torture,” according to police.

Following a two-year investigation, officers arrested Newberry Township residents Ashley Cardona, Lori Cardona, and Michael Cardona on Wednesday, February 25, the Newberry Township Police Department said in a news release issued the same day.

York County District Attorney Tim Barker identified Ashley, 29, as the children’s mother, Lori, 53, as their grandmother, and Michael, 27, who is Ashley’s brother, as their uncle during a news conference on their arrests, WGAL reported.

Ashley and Lori are facing charges including aggravated assault, unlawful restraint, false imprisonment, endangering the welfare of children, and criminal conspiracy, according to authorities.

Michael faces charges including criminal conspiracy to commit unlawful restraint, criminal conspiracy to commit false imprisonment, and endangering the welfare of children.

Information on their legal representation was not listed in court records viewed by Us Weekly on Thursday, February 26.

In March 2024, authorities began investigating alleged child abuse involving Ashley’s children, ages 5, 6 and 10, at her family’s Newberry Township home, police said.

The investigation revealed that for two years, her 6-year-old son, who is now 8, was forced to stay in a “crib cage” surrounded by urine and feces while her 5-year-old daughter, who is now 6, was regularly restrained in a car seat for nearly 24 hours each day, Barker said at the news conference, according to WGAL.

While describing the crib cage the boy was confined to, Barker said it was "a homemade caged crib constructed with stacked cribs, ratchet straps, zip ties, locking mechanisms” and that the boy “was restrained” to it “with a wrist device connected to a leash.”

Michael told police that he built the cage, according to authorities, FOX43 reported.

A third child, now 12, told police that Ashley “hates” the children “and doesn’t care what happens” to them, according to a criminal complaint viewed by the TV station.

The boy kept in the alleged crib cage and the girl often confined to a car seat were both extremely malnourished, had developmental delays and had not been trained to use the bathroom, Barker said at the news conference, WGAL reported. The girl also had major tooth decay, according to Barker.

All of the children have been taken out of the home and were placed in “alternative living arrangements,” police said in the release.

A Penn State Health physician who is a member of the medical center’s Child Protective Team ultimately decided that the abuse the children endured was “child torture,” according to police.

While addressing the conclusion, Barker said at the news conference that it is “a very specific medical definition,” according to FOX43.

“It involves a longitudinal pattern of physical abuse combined with two or more forms of psychological maltreatment,” Barker added. “Unlike isolated incidents of physical abuse, child torture is premeditated, pervasive and impacts all aspects of a child's daily life, resulting in physical, emotional and developmental harm."

If you or someone you know is experiencing child abuse, call or text Child Help Hotline at 1-800-422-4453.

Western Colonialism Nostagia: Good Old Racist Dehumanizing Thieving Days

ALJAZEERA 

Opinion
What is really behind the West’s colonial nostalgia
There is concerted effort to rehabilitate the colonial past to usher in a new order.

Suspected members of the Mau Mau are questioned by members of British colonial forces in Gilgil, Kenya, on January 8, 1953 [AP]

By Patrick Gathara
Published On 23 Feb 2026

For many years, the global “rules-based order” was presented as a benign system of global governance established by the West. True, its origins went back to the colonial world and many of its systems reflected colonial racial inequalities, but it was held up as the harbinger of global prosperity and order. In it, the West had magically transformed from a colonial villain to a saviour.

But for much of the Global South, the era looked very different. It was experienced as genocide, plunder and displacement. Across Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, colonial administrations disrupted and suppressed local systems and industries, engineered cash-crop economies vulnerable to global price shocks, and redrew political authority to prioritise imperial control.

Eventually, demands grew for a more accurate accounting of the catastrophe the West inflicted on the rest, for acknowledgment of its historic crimes from extermination to enslavement, and for recompense. That coincided with a reordering of global power that left the West increasingly unsure of itself – no longer the saviours of us, the good guys of history they had long pretended to be.

There was some mealy-mouthed acknowledgment of this. In Kenya’s case, revelations of the existence of British torture camps during the 1950s fight for independence produced expressions of regret without apology from the British government, and penny-pinching compensation.

Similarly, Germany accepted that it committed a genocide against the Ovaherero and Nama peoples in Namibia in the first decade of the 20th century, but continues to refuse to pay any compensation, instead offering $1.3bn to be paid through aid programmes out over 30 years as “a gesture of reconciliation”.

These were just crumbs, but marked an important turning point. Movements around the world from Black Lives Matter in the United States to Rhodes Must Fall in South Africa pushed to reconstruct historical narratives about white supremacy and Western domination. Critical anti-colonial thought and discourse spilled from academia into popular culture.

But the backlash came soon enough. In some quarters, there was outright rejection of “white guilt”, which was picked up by politicians and included in political campaigns. Colonial revisionism proved popular and electable. It has also quickly made it to international forums.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s recent speech at the Munich Security Conference is a case in point. He spoke of the pre-1945 imperial order with praise. For him, it was a time when “the West had been expanding – its missionaries, its pilgrims, its soldiers, its explorers pouring out from its shores to cross oceans, settle new continents, build vast empires extending out across the globe.”

Rubio framed Western dominance as an era of prosperity and moral leadership, arguing that the West should not be ashamed of its past. Colonialism, in this telling, was not racial hierarchy and extraction but stewardship, order, and civilisation. Its decline, implicitly, is something to regret.

What Rubio and the likes of him are calling for is for the West to fully embrace its role as the villain. Not rhetorically, of course – bad guys rarely proclaim themselves as such – but practically, by rehabilitating empire and abandoning guilt and shame for historical wrongs. They see historical reckoning as weakness, even self-hatred. And rather than address the wrongs of the past, they propose to use power to suppress remembrance.

This is a clear attempt at redemption through the conquest of memory. This is not about merely debating the past. It is about shaping the moral vocabulary of the present. It is also about moving away from the current “rules-based order” and towards a reality where there are no rules for “might makes right”.

If empire is benevolent, then contemporary hierarchies can be reframed as responsible leadership. Unequal trade regimes become stability. Military pressure becomes guardianship. Interventions become stewardship. Colonialism, as we have seen in the case of US President Donald Trump’s so-called “Board of Peace”, is rebranded not as domination, but as necessary order and a prelude to prosperity. 

Multipolarity is framed not as structural adjustment, but as destabilising decline.

This is politically useful in a moment when Western dominance faces challenges from rising powers and shifting alliances. Nostalgia for uncontested supremacy offers clarity and replaces discomfort with pride. It transforms demands for justice into accusations of ingratitude. And its grammar mirrors the familiar pattern. Empire harms but ultimately saves. It errs but redeems itself. Its centrality remains unquestioned.

There is no need for structural reckoning or restitution. The focus shifts from the material consequences of colonial rule to the emotional burden of Western shame. The story becomes about restoring confidence rather than confronting inequality.

Rubio’s speech was meant for a Western audience, but for the rest of us, it should set off alarm bells. It is tempting to treat such rhetoric as the moral failing of a few bad men – easily caricatured and just as easily ignored. That would be a grave error.

We must recognise that they are reconstituting the architecture of colonialism: a legal, economic and epistemic system designed to privilege Western interests, its oppression codified in law, its dictates enforced through coercion, and its benefits distributed along racial lines.

Thus, the rehabilitation of empire is not nostalgia. It is preparation. It is the construction of a moral framework in which the hierarchies of the present need no justification because the hierarchies of the past have been absolved. And while the past cannot be undone, it can be misremembered.

We have been living with the terrible consequences of doing so in our economies, within our borders and in our bodies, and just as we start to discard the scales from our eyes, there is an attempt to blind us again. We must not acquiesce to the revisionism, but rather actively resist it by speaking our truth, insistently and without apology, until it cannot be drowned out.

Memory is not passive. It is a choice made every day, and the choice belongs to us as much as to anyone.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Trump: Jared Kushner is "Some Schmuck Whose Father Just Got out of Prison"

Yet, the senile demented cretin squatting in the Outhouse has appointed Jared Kushner, now his son-Schmuck-in-law, as envoy to all negotiations (Russia, Gaza, Iran etc.) simply making him strike lucrative business deals under the cover of "making peace".

Similary, the schmuck's ex-criminal father (2005 conviction of tax evasion and witness tampering), Charles Kushner, was appointed by the Outhouse cretin as US ambassador to France - no need bringing up the cronyism accusation - where he is undiplomatically misbehaving, leading the French government to bar him from meeting with French officials. He's a sort of "lame duck ambassador".

One more incompetent criminal doesn't change much the broad corrupt outline of the Trump administration. I think Trump sympathizes with former criminals because he feels empathy and compassion for criminals like him. He has been pardoning every other criminal he can find. Maybe he's trying to save money - that's where All-Things-Trump converge - by freeing jail spaces.
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Newsom reveals the insult Trump threw at Jared Kushner when he found out he and his daughter were dating
Mike Bedigan
Thu, February 26, 2026


Newsom reveals the insult Trump threw at Jared Kushner when he found out he and his daughter were dating

Gavin Newsom has revealed how Donald Trump first reacted when he found out that his daughter Ivanka was dating his now-son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

In his new book, Young Man In A Hurry, the California Governor recalled a trip taken by the president in 2018 after the state was ravaged by wildfires.

While sitting on Marine One, Trump allegedly recounted a story about trying to set his daughter up with NFL legend Tom Brady, only to find out that she was “already dating some schmuck whose father got out of prison,” according to a review of the memoir in The Atlantic.

The president was referring to Jared Kushner, whose father Charles Kushner was convicted of tax evasion and witness tampering in 2005, and who happened to also be sitting on the aircraft with Trump and Newsom and former California Governor Jerry Brown.

“In front of the governor and future governor of California, Trump was making his son-in-law feel two feet tall,” Newsom writes, per the review. “And Kushner just let him do it.”

Gavin Newsom has revealed how Donald Trump first reacted when he found out that his daughter Ivanka was dating his now-son-in-law Jared Kushner (left) (Getty Images) 

[Notice in the picture above the "stern-frown-with-raised-eyebrow-and-oral-commissures" look that both Trump and Jared generally bear to convey importance, greatness and seriousness, when the reality behind the marketing look is very different. Remember, in America, perception is everything. So all you have to do to garner a former great president's aura is to slap your name next to his like a beggaring parasite].

Charles Kushner received a pardon from Trump at the back end of his first term in the White House, and was announced as the U.S. ambassador to France in a Truth Social post in 2024, following Trump’s second victory.

Kushner, who married Ivanka Trump in 2009, himself has no official role in Trump’s second administration but has reportedly been privy to multiple negotiations in the Middle East, including working alongside special envoy Steve Witkoff to help broker peace between Israel and Hamas.

The two businessmen have raised eyebrows amongst critics due to their sizable roles in foreign policy, having little experience with foreign leaders and the apparent conflicts of interest presented by their various overseas enterprises.

Kushner’s private equity firm, Affinity Partners, was launched in 2021 after he left his role as senior advisor to the president during his first term. The business has since profited by billions of dollars that are tied to some of the geopolitical crises that Kushner now works on in his unofficial capacity.

Meanwhile, Newsom, who is hotly tipped to be eyeing a Democratic presidential run in 2028, continues to spar with Trump regularly and intensely.

Most recently, the California Governor blasted the president’s State of the Union address Tuesday night, suggesting it was boring after labeling it the “State of the Snooze.”

Not even Done with Iran, Zionists Find New Enemy in Turkiye

To play the eternal victim and milk the victim status to the last drop of moral indecency, you need enemies. And when you have enemies, you can wail, nag, complain and sometimes flail, while waging atrocious genocidal wars. Occasionally, you have to create the enemy and sustain it so it is a "viable" enough pretext to wage said wars. Once it was Syria, Jordan and Egypt. Then it was the PLO. Then it was the Palestinian Authority. Now it is Hamas and Iran behind it. It seems that the Zionist colonial settlers of Palestine have checked off, perhaps prematurely, the Iranian entry on their list in their rush to discover a brand new enemy.

Iran is not yet off the "enemies" list of the Zionist colony in Palestine that a new enemy is being groomed, namely Turkiye.

But have the Zionists ever asked themselves why do they have so many enemies in the region? Even those that signed fake peace agreements like Egypt and Jordan, and those that signed the ridiculous "normalization" Abrahamic accords like the UAE and others. Have the Zionists lost all their senses in assuming that accords signed with barbarian, dictatorial, autocratic, repressive regimes are sufficient for their peace of mind? Have the Zionists ever wondered about what lies beneath these regimes, populations that will never forget and never forgive the rape of Palestine?

Have the Zionists ever asked themselves why 180 countries out of 200 around the world consistently vote against its brutal ethnic cleansing of Palestine? To be determined is one thing, but reckleness and impetuous arrogance are another. I can only think of the only precedent we have in the history books: The Crusades which, one thousand years ago, tried the same "return" to the miserable Holy Land, succeeding initially for some 200 years, only to be dumped like unrecyclable refuse into the trashbin of history. And the arrogance of those American so-called "Christian Zionists" who endorse the mass murder and land theft was recently expressed by the inbred imbecile moonshine-damaged southern moron from Arkansas, one Mike Huckabee: He just declared that Israel should expand and seize the entire region because the Hebrews (the dubious Semitic ancestors of the modern Indo-European Zionists), some 3,000 years ago, wrote in the garbage torah that Yahweh-God gave them other people's lands. A very credible assertion for religious imbeciles, since who can argue with Yahweh-El-God? Not unlike, by the way, the fanatic Islamists who too claim that their violence is Allah-God-mandated because "its says so in the Quran" which they themselves wrote some 1,300 years ago.

Ok, so Turkiye is now the new enemy. It is even more incredible that the Zionist rapists of Palestine keep choosing bigger and nore powerful enemies as the years go by. From the indigenous "Arabs" of Palestine (the Zionists deliberately deny the Palestinians their national identity by labeling them a generic "Arabs"), to Syria, Jordan and Egypt, to Iran.... One day soon, they will designate Kazakhstan or Indonesia or Malaysia or Nigeria, as their new enemy. Hubris is very dangerous.

I often have arguments with those who espouse the "Greater Israel" as some sort of Jewish conspiracy to control the entire region and by extension the world. The fact that a moron like Huckabee repeats the bullshit doesn't necessarily make it credible or true. There are 500 million Arabs and 2 billion Muslims around the world. Compared to the 15 million Jews, half of whom are against Zionism, I cannot conceive of a situation in which 8 million can dominate 2 billion. The question therefore remains: What do the Zionists ultimately want? A "homeland", as promised them by Yahweh 3,000 years ago and then again by the English colonial crooks some 100 years ago? They already have a homeland (by raping and expelling the original owner) and they have all the power to defend it. What more do they want? 
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Turkish ‘threat’ talked up in Israel as Netanyahu focuses on new alliances
Simon Speakman Cordall
Mon, February 23, 2026


Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett told a conference last week that Turkiye was 'the new Iran' [File: Ronen Zvulun/Reuters] [He looks like a clone of Stephen "Rasputin" Miller]

With the likelihood increasing of a United States attack on Iran, Israeli politicians are already turning their attention to another regional rival: Turkiye.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who is expected to run and do well in the country’s elections this year, was the latest prominent politician to declare Turkiye a threat to Israel.

Speaking at a conference last week, Bennett said that Israel must not “turn a blind eye” to Turkiye, accusing it of being part of a regional axis “similar to the Iranian one”.

“A new Turkish threat is emerging,” Bennett said. “We must act in different ways, but simultaneously against the threat from Tehran and against the hostility from Ankara.”


Other Israeli politicians have said similar things in the past few months, with Turkiye a strong critic of Israel’s actions towards the Palestinians and its genocidal war on Gaza, and also getting closer to regional powers such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

The tone indicates that while the Iranian government remains in power in Tehran, Israel is already looking for a new regional nemesis, with a network of like-minded states around it.

On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while announcing the forthcoming visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, declared his intention to forge a new “hexagon” of alliances that would outflank a so-called “emerging radical Sunni [Muslim] axis”, and cement Israel’s regional influence.

Included in that alliance would be countries like Greece and Cyprus, which have historically had antagonistic relations with Turkiye.

According to Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli ambassador, the timing of the apparent campaign against Turkiye may not be strange, even if it is being made simultaneously with the push for war against Iran.

“Politicians like Naftali Bennett and Benjamin Netanyahu rely on the perpetual threat of war,” Pinkas told Al Jazeera. If it wasn’t Turkiye, it would be Iraq. If it wasn’t Iraq, it would be Hezbollah. If it wasn’t Hezbollah, it would be the Muslim Brotherhood. It doesn’t matter who. There just always needs to be a threat.”

Worsening relations

Israel has existed in a heightened state of war since the attack led by Hamas on October 7, 2023. Since then, Israel has carried out a genocide in Gaza, invaded Lebanon, bombed Yemen, occupied parts of Syria, launched a war against regional power Iran, and most recently defied global opinion and international law by moving closer to annexing territory in the occupied West Bank.

Against this background, analysts explained, talk of more threats – such as the one from Turkiye – and fresh alliances are cast from the same mould. Despite being political opponents, Netanyahu and Bennett are both right-wing Israelis who are completely opposed to a Palestinian state, and who share similar beliefs on pushing for Israeli regional hegemony.

“This has always been what Naftali Bennett has been about,” political analyst Ori Goldberg said.

“Liberal [Israelis] have been projecting their own hopes onto him for years, simply because he was an opponent of Benjamin Netanyahu. That’s to miss the point,” he said, referencing both men’s apparent contempt for Palestinians. “He isn’t even pretending now. He’s just trying to overtake Netanyahu on his right.”

But a focus on Turkiye as a threat is both complicated – the two countries have a decades-long relationship, and Turkiye is a member of NATO – while also an understandable objective for an Israeli right keen to ensure that a new bogeyman exists.

While Israel has had an antagonistic relationship with Iran since the latter’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, Israel-Turkiye relations have been more pragmatic, with Israel’s continued repression of Palestinians historically often a point of negotiated dispute, rather than open threats spurring aggressively hostile rhetoric.

However, since coming to power in the early 2000s, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been increasingly critical of Israel.

Israel’s attack on a flotilla travelling to Gaza in 2010, ultimately killing 10 Turkish activists, was one of the defining moments in the relationship’s downturn, with fierce political rhetoric and diplomatic downgrades following.

Subsequent Israeli military operations in Gaza and Syria have further fuelled public and government anger in Turkiye, with Ankara adopting an increasingly confrontational stance to Israel’s genocide and territorial ambitions, leaving bilateral ties strained and the suggestion of Turkiye’s involvement in Gaza’s proposed interim security force politically toxic in Israel.

But beyond their clear opposition to Israel, comparisons between Ankara and Tehran border upon the ludicrous, analysts said.

“Israel has worked alongside Turkiye numerous times,” said Pinkas. “It wasn’t all that long ago that policymakers in Israel talked of the Middle East being overseen by two superpowers, Israel and Turkiye, in opposition to Iran. And now they’re trying to supplant Iran with Turkiye? What are they talking about, armed conflict? Turkiye is a NATO power.”

Pinkas noted further points of difference. “Has the leadership in Turkiye ever denied Israel’s right to exist, or threatened to wipe it from the map?” he asked.

“No,” he said. “It’s ridiculous.”

Hexagonal alliances

While the alliance with the US is ultimately Israel’s biggest protection, it has also sought to broaden its network.

At the forefront of this, Netanyahu explained, would be the support of India’s Modi and what he described as a “hexagon” of allied states, including India, the aforementioned Greece and Cyprus, and various unspecified Arab, African, and Asian nations.

“The intention here is to create an axis of nations that see eye to eye on the reality, challenges, and goals against the radical axes, both the radical Shia axis, which we have struck very hard, and the emerging radical Sunni axis,” Netanyahu said, without specifying the “radical” states he was referring to.

Netanyahu stressed that his proposed new hexagon of alliances was intended to complement, rather than replace, Israel’s typical reliance on the US. But some believe – as support for Israel is becoming more politically toxic in the US – that Tel Aviv now needs to hedge its bets.

Political analyst Goldberg called the moves by Netanyahu “desperate”.

“All of this because we’ve burnt through past alliances with Russia and now the United States, so we’re [now] claiming that India will be leading this hexagon of ‘moderate states’,” Goldberg said. “Not even people in Israel, not even the most deluded, have any belief that Israel might still be a moderate state.”

And the talk of the Turkish threat and hexagonal alliances was evidence that Israel is not as central to decision-making on any US attack on Iran, said Yossi Mekelberg, an expert with Chatham House.

“It’s all deflection; there just isn’t any honesty, and it just gets worse and worse,” Mekelberg said of Netanyahu’s framing of events. “The big issue is Iran. [That is] what they’re interested in. Turkiye is just so much noise.”

While the intention may be to distract by talking up the Turkish threat, it still carries risks, Mekelberg cautioned.

“Most leaders, at least the devious ones, can separate rhetoric and reality, so there’s no real chance of one spilling over into the other,” he said. “The risk is that as Israel ramps up its rhetoric against Turkiye, it risks making it a genuine opponent."

You Can Make the Orangutan Dance. But Can you Make him Commit Suicide?

Despite the big-balls declarations of the Criminal-in-Chief, the US may have lost its will to power despite Mr. Big Balls in the Outhouse, and that is not because of a metamorphosis in its genetic material but because it knows it can no longer win wars like they used to during colonial times.

How many wars has the US won since 1945? 

One. Exactly one, namely the 1991 walk-in-the-park of liberating oil-drenched decadent ultra-Islamic State of Kuwait, a long-time residue of British colonialism carved out of Iraq to ensure oil flows unimpeded from the Arabia desert to the West. Access to oil has been very costly in blood and treasure to the West in general and to the US in particular over the decades. It's also been costly in terms of poor adherence to stated principles, as the US continues to be led on a leash by the Zionist custodians of US politics. In Palestine, all the lofty principles that were set by the US in the aftermath of WWII have been violated by the US itself as it continues to arm and back its Zionist terror militia in the Jewish colony in Palestine. 

If Donald Trump is sidelining the UN with his derisive "Piss Board", it is simply because the laws of averages never support outliers. The US has been an outlier when it comes to seeking and implementing real justice in Palestine, and since the US is numerically a tiny minority at the UN it can only rely on its rogue and malfeasant veto to keep defending the indefensible. But that doesn't shield it from the shame it feels at raping every principle over which it itself lectured the world since WWII. 

That is why it took a dumb idiot like Trump to expose the cognitive dissonance in US foreign policy on Palestine. He couldn't coutenance the opprobrium of the international community, and especially of his oily fake friends in the Arabian Gulf region, every time the US imposed a veto on the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people and the erasure of Palestine from the maps that his encumbering Zionist master is forcing him to agree to. 

He's caught between the leash holders - the Zionists who threaten his hold on power in the US and who are shoving a garbage prophecy from humanity's bronze Age down the throat of a slightly more modern and rational humanity - and the oil-barrel attendants, the Muslim Arabs of the Gulf who threaten his access to oil, who remain rabid Islamic enemies of the West, and who, in all likelihood, won't agree to the disappearance of Palestine at the hands of Trump's Zionist friends.

Right now, Trump is still caught between 1- his lack of 'will to power' in Iran. He campaigned on never involving the US in foreign wars and he is, as we speak, withdrawing his troops in shame from Syria, while beating his chest like a gorilla to scare off rivals and enemies, and 2- his Zionist handlers egging him on to bomb Iran and risk inflaming the entire region.

Do not confuse Raymond Aaron's (~1980s) statement that the US has lost its "will to power" with unevolved humanoid Trump's fake will to power which disguises a more pedestrian "will to vanity and fame". Trump doesn't want war with Iran. He's been pushed into one by the Zionist settlers of Palestine. 

As stated earlier, how many wars has the US won since 1945? One. Exactly one.

How many has it lost? All save the aforementioned one. Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Lebanon.... And every time it's a gut-wrenching soup of insipidly stupid and misplaced patriotism that is strong on vapid slogans and short on genuine understanding of empire. All these wars start with a campaign of lies and misinformation to rally behind them the largely ignorant and disgustingly credulous American people, then no sooner has the blood started running down the sewers that the said patriotic imbeciles lose interest and return to their nativist isolationist nature, and the enterprise ends up in debacle and retreat.

Trump is an idiot. And that is the scariest part of it all. He can be easily swayed by his retinue of Zionist lawyers, financiers, lobbyists and political pundits to go along a disastrous campaign in Iran. Iran is not Iraq. Iran is not Afghanistan. It is far more problematic than either of these two wars. Trump may have been advised against a land invasion and for a sustained-but-short (which is a contradiction of sorts) intensive campaign of bombing in the hope that the Ayatollahs regime will fall. And all of this while naively excluding any other players, regional or otherwise, and also ignoring the unintended consequences that often replace the original problem.

António Guterres, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, said yesterday that there is a global rise in the rule of force across the world. It's as if humanity never learns from its own history. Deranged "great men" like Trump, Putin, Jinping and others, all born after WWII, believe they can succeed where others before them (Hitler, Mussolini, Staline, Mao) back in the 1930s failed. 

US military leaders are terrified of a war on Iran that is being shoved down the throat of America by Netanyahu and his ultra-religious fanatic fundamentalist Zionist land thieves and war criminals. Will Trump heed their message? Will he finally tell his Zionist handlers to back off? They may convince him to let Israel initiate the hostilities then ask for American assistance. This way, Trump will have the deniability he needs to tell the American electorate - already exhausted by his senile demented antics - that he never wanted a war against Iran but that he is obligated to assist the western Jewish implant and Anglo-American bastard child Israel? 

Colonialism succeeded for centuries because colonial powers invaded with boots on the ground and dispatched administrators to organize the pilfering of the colonized country's resources under the threat of violence. Americans thought they could do the same and succeed - because of their self-proclaimed "uniqueness" - where others failed. Slogans like "nation-building", "white man's mission", "converting the heathens", "civilizing the savages", "importing democracy".... are artefacts of the past. But Trump's imbeciles - Rubio, Hegseth, et al. - who may have read a chapter once in their freshman intro university course about those nostalgia-resonating slogans, and in their mentality of urbanized riffraff, thought they could bring these fantasies back from the Stone Age and down to Middle Earth. 

Will Trump succumb to the supplications of his Middle America morons and his Zionist handlers and embark on war against Iran? If he does, he will lose the 2026 AND 2028 elections and he would be scarring the world far deeper than his chaotic policies so far have.
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By Al Jazeera Staff

 

Published 24 Feb 2026

United States President Donald Trump has lashed out at media reports stating that General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned him of potential risks of attacking Iran, including becoming entangled in a prolonged conflict and the possibility of US casualties.

Trump responded to the reports in a social media post on Monday, stating that Caine believes a war with Iran, which the president has threatened with a military attack if it does not accept a series of demands, could be “easily won”.

The Washington Post newspaper reported earlier in the day that Caine had told Trump during a meeting last week that a lack of critical munitions and support from regional allies could hinder US efforts to contain a possible Iranian retaliation in the event of an attack by the US.

US munitions stockpiles, including those used in missile defence systems, have been stretched thin by their use in support of allies such as Israel and Ukraine, according to the report.

“Caine also has raised concerns about the scale of any Iran campaign, its inherent complexity and the possibility of US casualties,” the newspaper reported, citing a person familiar with “internal discussions” on the matter.

Caine’s office responded to The Washington Post article by stating that he is tasked with providing “a range of military options, as well as secondary considerations and associated impacts and risks, to the civilian leaders who make America’s security decisions”.

The online news outlet Axios, which also reported on Caine’s concerns in discussions with Trump, said in an article on Monday evening that Caine has been the sole military figure briefing Trump on Iran for several weeks.

The outlet reported that the US Central Command (CENTCOM) chief, Admiral Brad Cooper, tasked with overseeing US military operations in the Middle East, has not been invited to meetings or spoken with Trump since January.

A ‘reluctant warrior’ on Iran

Axios, citing two sources, reported that while Caine “was all-in on the Venezuela operation” to abduct President Nicolas Maduro in January, “he has been more cautious in the discussions around Iran”.

“Citing that contrast, one source described Caine as a ‘reluctant warrior’ on Iran. Caine sees the stakes of a major operation in Iran as higher, with a greater risk for entanglement and American casualties,” Axios reported, citing two sources privy to high-level meetings in the US administration.

Trump hit back on his social media platform against what he called “fake news media” and reports that “General Daniel Caine… is against us going to War with Iran”.

“He has not spoken of not doing Iran, or even the fake limited strikes that I have been reading about. He only knows one thing: how to WIN and, if he is told to do so, he will be leading the pack,” Trump said.

“Everything that has been written about a potential War with Iran has been written incorrectly, and purposefully so,” the president said.

Trump has been mulling an attack on Iran for weeks, concentrating an enormous array of US forces in the Middle East in preparation for a possible war that could spread chaos and conflict across the region.

Iran offers little discernible threat to the US, and an unprovoked attack would likely violate international law.

Iran has expressed hope that negotiations can bear fruit, but it has rejected what it says are a series of maximalist US demands on issues such as nuclear enrichment, ballistic missiles, and support for regional proxies.

Analysts have noted that many of Washington’s demands on Tehran align with Israeli priorities.

As his End Nears, we Reckon that Trump Has Killed the Gold-Laying Goose

 
The MAGA Criminal-in-Chief as his soul torments him till the bitter end. Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty

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Like Robert de Niro said, "Trump will not leave without a fight" even as the whole country begins to spit him out into the filthiest spittoon of history. But the country needs to take a good look at itself after the Orangutan is gone: He was merely a manifestation of a deeply troubled, still very primitive and adolescent country that the US is. Whereas the US was once a beacon, albeit superficial and a master at covering up its distateful and violent history thanks to pernicious deceitful marketing, Trump has exposed its real repulsive substance to the world.

Thanks to Trump, the US will never again be a leader. The world now knows that there are at least 77 million racist xenophobic American mini-Trumps imbibed with an unearned unwarranted Folie des Grandeurs. The US now has become just another Russia or China... powerful but felonious, rich but parasitic, dictatorial enterprises run by Gestapo-like police led by tyrants. Yes, democracy never ceased wavering; it was never perfect: To wit, Trump's election has amply demonstrated that democracy can bring unadulterated mediocrity to power. But it's the best we have had so far: One-man tyrannies have never been successful. They may give us stability as they take away our liberty, but is this what we really want? To be safe in a giant laboratory cage, rather than be prancing out in the fields?

 

I don't think that democracy will survive Trump, even after he's long gone. We had a goose laying golden eggs for close to 80 years despite the occasional rotten ones. But Trump has strangled the goose. Trust has died. No one can revive, ressurect or resuscitate it. America was the last man standing. It no longer is.
===============================================


Opinion: Trump’s Unhinged Tantrum Is Just the Beginning. Buckle Up
David Rothkopf
Sat, February 21, 2026

Donald Trump on Friday attacked the Supreme Court majority that ruled against him in a landmark decision on tariffs with a venom and ferocity he has never directed against America’s foreign enemies. He suggested they were disloyal to the country, under the sway of other nations. The entire performance was unhinged, an old man’s tantrum about an affront to his manhood. He called the three Republican appointed justices who voted against him “fools and lapdogs.”

Just imagine him using that kind of language about, say, a war criminal like Vladimir Putin.

The president seemed to miss the entire point of the Supreme Court ruling—that the power to levy tariffs lay with the Congress—as well as the nuance in the majority opinion, such as a footnote by Chief Justice John Roberts that suggested while there were may be other ways by which he could seek to put tariffs in place, those “contain various combinations of procedural prerequisites, required agency determinations and limits on the duration, amount and scope of the tariffs they authorize.”

In other words, he could not behave like a king. He could no longer go around the world threatening other leaders whenever it suited him. He could no longer ignore the law, existing U.S. treaties, or the role Congress is assigned by the Constitution. He said he could—he said he didn’t need Congress to impose the new types of tariffs he mentioned during his press conference. But that was either denial or ignorance or a special Trumpian combination of both.

Because it will be very difficult for Trump to recreate the tariffs of the past year. Should he attempt to put some in place, and should he get the Congress and government agencies to work with him on this, the process is going to be more complex, require periodic renewals, and be far more limited in scope.

But watching Trump, it was clear that the thrust of his remarks had nothing to do with the letter of the law. With him, it seldom does. His feelings were hurt. Someone told him “no.” And he was going to lash out until he felt better.

The outburst was notable, then, because it revealed just how battered, exhausted, and at wits’ end the president is after weeks and weeks of similar experiences, of serial defeats and embarrassments, and of the prospect of many more such humiliations in the months ahead in a world that is finally learning how to say “no” to him.

With pressure building on him because of a soft economy, public anger at his immigration policies, fears of spiking healthcare costs for millions of Americans, the Epstein scandal and a looming massive defeat in the November midterms, Trump has returned regularly to the authoritarian playbook in the hopes that it would make him feel more powerful, less enfeebled by age, more like the kind of leader the slavering courtiers in his daily retinue say he is.

But the results have not been good.

He tried to deflect attention from Epstein with a “wag the dog” foray into Venezuela. But once the brief operation was completed, it was clear he had no next steps towards stability. Oil would be stolen and revenue pumped into his accounts, yes, but he could not force changes in Venezuela.

At Davos, he said he would take over Greenland, but America’s allies united in opposition to him, forcing him to back off. He left the Swiss ski village with his tail between his legs.

He sent his Gestapo into Minnesota to round up illegal aliens and to intimidate his opponents. The people rose up—even as his thugs gunned innocent Americans down in the streets—and he was forced to withdraw again. He put up banners with his face on them and attempted to deface everything in sight with a blank wall long enough to fit his last name. But his takeover of the Kennedy Center became another catastrophe, and he had to shut it down. He launched legal cases against his opponents, but they were rejected by grand juries who saw them for the shams they were.

New scandals have been cropping up across his administration, from DHS to the Department of Labor. The “bribeumentary” that Jeff Bezos conjured up about his wife was a flop. Major allies rejected his “Board of Peace.” He can’t stay awake in meetings. People keep talking about him slurring his words, about his bruised hands and ballooning cankles.

And now the Supreme Court, which has treated him oh-so-gently in the past, has slapped him down for overreach. He’s had a big tantrum, but it is already clear that it is not going to help. It may make matters even worse. Trump is going to face further legal challenges as he tries to sidestep the constraints placed on his role by the Constitution, the law, and the country’s highest court.

He is losing.

And he is losing it.

As he denounced the court and its decision and its members in his rager of a press conference, he dodged questions from real journalists and took only softballs from potted plants in the crowd. Now he’s talking about another distraction, a strike on Iran. But he also knows he tried that before, and it didn’t have the results he asserted it did. His threats now appear fairly hollow as the Iranian’s have announced they are ready if that is the path he chooses to take. And Trump knows he cannot achieve what he wants to by attacking Iran. It won’t make Epstein go away. It won’t make him younger. It won’t hide the fact that he is failing as president.

That’s no way to lay the groundwork for next week’s State of the Union. Nor is it a good start to a year that could end calamitously with massive defeats for the GOP. He will try more distractions during the address. He will try more lies. Indeed, smart money is betting he will break his own world records for lying during such a speech. He will announce more good news is just around the corner.

But 2026 will only get worse for him. And while some may take some satisfaction from seeing him humbled by the Supreme Court, we should all recognize that his anger and frustration and flailing about should also be seen as a warning. Wounded, he will be more dangerous. Unable to play within the rules, he will work harder to cheat come election time. And, worryingly, the Supreme Court and the Congress may both give him more power to do so through pending decisions and the possibility of passing the extremely dangerous and misleadingly named “SAVE Act”—the most pernicious voter suppression legislation this country has seen in the modern era.

The tension between the fact that the public and foreign leaders and some of our own institutions are learning how to stand up to Trump and his fury at their success in doing so will be defining for us in the year ahead.

Challenged as he has been, Trump is now likely to see his only path forward is to seek to effectively end free and fair elections in America. For the voters of the US, our only hope is that we maintain the resolve and clarity of all those worldwide who have finally, belatedly, but increasingly effectively, learned how to say “no” to America’s man who would be king.

Couldn't Resist: Flagrancy of "United Scams of America" Corporate Filth

They brainwash you with "American way of life", "American Dream", "Land of Opportunity (for criminals) and Hope (for fools)" and other marketing slogans that work on dim-witted ignorant illiterate populations who end up voting for the "genius" criminal who is tormenting them in their daily lives and is enriching himself while promising them flatulent hot air.

Untethered Capitalism can bring as much despair and ruin as Communism does. The truth always seems to be in the middle, which in this case is Socialism: A balance between the two extremes. But the rabid corporate thieves of American Capitalism hate it because its common sense clashes with their radical greed, so they have demonized it in the brainless skulls of most Americans. 

The facts are that virtually all American allies are countries with Socialist governance. Yet the American Radical Right demonizes their systems even though their people say they are by far happier than we are (good affordable healthcare, social protections, free higher education, etc...). Then, where the American supreme deity - MONEY - is at stake, the filthiest of Capitalists (e.g. Donald Dumb) throw decency in the trash and make best friends with - and is soon visiting - Communist, authoritarian, anti-liberty, repressive, expansionist human-rights rapist China. 

We fought for 20 years, killed 50,000 of our own soldiers and millions of Vietnamese people, to prevent Vietnam from becoming a socialist country: We lost, Vietnam won, and today we are best friends with the Socialist country of Vietnam. In retrospect that was the dumbest and costliest foreign policy ever. Donald Dumb is pushing the US down the same rabbit hole. After withdrawing form the hard-negotiated JCPOA agreement with Iran in 2015 (because the Zionists have a permanent squeeze on US brains and balls), I wonder whether any agreement Trump thinks he can now make with Iran will be any different from Obama's. He did the same thing with NAFTA - reject it then accept it again, essentially unchanged. 

The alternative to a neo-JCPOA with Iran is a war that may well end up like the Vietnam debacle (1953 Republican Eisenhower), the Lebanon debacle (1983 Republican Ronald Reagan), the Afghan debacle (2001 Republican George W Bush), the Iraq con job (2003 Republican George W Bush), etc. The record is clear: Republican presidents make foreign wars for two reasons: 1- to drive the economy and 2- distract a largely ignorant American people from their own chronic domestic failures with hot-air fake patriotism. But they almost always lose them. Will they ever learn?

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

Welcome to the ‘annoyance economy’: Americans are paying over $165 billion a year as companies waste their time to drive revenue

Catherina Gioino

Thu, February 19, 2026

Customer service wait times have increased by 60% over the last two decades. (Liubomyr Vorona—Getty)

Your time, money, and patience might be valuable to you, but they mean so much more to the company’s bottom line.

A new study by the Groundwork Collaborative reveals that Americans are dealing with longer customer service wait times, paying billions in junk fees, and losing even more to healthcare hassles, setting the stage for what the group dubs the “annoyance economy.”

Junk fees for concerts, hotels, and food deliveries are costing Americans over $90 billion a year, the study found. By assigning a dollar cost to studies estimating the hours consumers spend on hold, researchers found Americans cough up over $21.6 billion in wasted time due to healthcare administrative hassles.

Companies are also getting a premium for your time. The time Americans spend on the phone with customer service has spiked by 60% over the last 20 years as companies pare back on customer service and make processes like getting a refund more difficult in the name of driving revenue.

These bogus fees and frustrating ordeals are part of the “vibes-based” tax companies are charging Americans to make every consumer interaction harder. Companies are relying on the lack of competition and onerous cancellation polices to trap consumers into services.

“We became very interested in how specifically a tax on time translates into both dollars and cents,” said Alex Jacquez, Groundwork Collaborative’s Chief of Policy and Advocacy. Jacquez said the report shows a “vibes-based analysis of the economy” in which “every consumer interaction is just harder than it used to be.”

Using existing studies to measure how much time consumers spend on frustrating tasks like staying on customer service or trying to cancel a subscription, researchers converted those times into dollars and cents. Calculating both direct financial losses and the monetary value of wasted time, researchers found Americans fork over $165 billion annually in the “annoyance economy.”

Wasting your time and money

Corporations are intentionally turning simple tasks into lengthy procedures to extract more profit, most obviously by renting services rather than outright ownership.

“One thing we want to talk more about is how the economy is becoming increasingly subscriptionalized,” Jacquez told Fortune. Driving a car means “you’re paying monthly to be able to unlock the full features of your car. It just feels like they’re trying to shift you into models that are guaranteed revenue streams, rather than just kind of buying and owning things.”

Making these subscriptions difficult to cancel can boost corporate revenue by more than 200%, the report found.

Healthcare costs and administrative hassles are no stranger to the annoyance economy either, with the study detailing nearly 80% of Americans report frustration over paperwork and coordination for insurance and medical appointments.

Companies also rely on roundabout AI-powered chatbots to create “headaches” to discourage consumers from seeking refunds or solving problems. Customer service, Jacquez says, is a field “where artificial intelligence is certainly going to” as one of the jobs that could be replaced. Customer service scores in 2024 hit a record low, and the “Consumer Rage Survey” found that 74% of customers reported a problem in the last year—double the rate recorded in 1976.

“As a human being, you don’t want to be sitting in a call center all day,” Jacquez said. “Maybe it is good that AI could potentially take over a customer service role, but I think if you look at how firms are actually implementing these solutions, it is almost always to extract more money out of their consumers, and to make these experiences more of a headache for them.”

The downsides of bad customer service

By reviewing suits filed with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the Groundwork Collaborative found that some banks used a “heavy queue” policy to intentionally drop calls before customers reached a representative. “The anticipation is that not 100% of these people would call back, and that if they did so, the process to get to an actual human being and somebody who could solve their problems would be more onerous and make them less likely to do so in the future.”

“There’s just really not a lot of downside to providing bad customer service, particularly in these chatbots and these automated kind of AI situations,” Jacquez said.

AI is also used in customer service settings—consumers are now being charged randomized, optional pricing to extract greater profits. Companies like Instacart are using AI software to randomize prices to find the optimal price point consumers are willing to pay for goods. Delta recently floated this idea for personalizing airline seat pricing.

AI has also disrupted the spam calling industry. Americans receive 130 million scam calls a day and over 20 billion spam texts a month. Over 85 percent of consumers report frustration with spam and scams, making it the “most annoying” issue.

Jacquez and the report do offer a solution: more government regulation. Polls show 68 percent of voters want Congress to prioritize addressing these annoying business practices. One proposal calls for federal regulators to impose monetary fines directly tied to the time consumers spend on hold or dealing with hurdles, making “annoyance” a liability for the company.

Won't Be Posting for a While. Farewell.

 Forgive my weakness. I am posting again. 

MAGA Moron Buyers Regret Votes for Trump Because they are Losing Money

This is how unprincipled and selfish MAGA morons are as they regret their vote for Trump. It's all about money and the bottom line. It's not about making American great. It's not about genuine patriotism. It's all about racism. They thought Trump would remove ALL the migrants, except those they hire to do their menial work. It's like you are anti-slavery, on condition they let you keep your own slaves. 

Many of the MAGA racist morons below knew Trump was going to clean up the country of all those dark-skinned immigrants they hate, but they didn't think (stupid as they are) it would affect them personally especially in their purses. 

They were not offended by Trump's racism, sexism, vulgarity, his creepy adulterous life, his attempt to topple the government, his sending a mob of criminals to attack the Congress, his alliance with the Russian dictator.... Oh no, none of these things bothered them. 

The fact that illiterate ignorant white americans ignore a man's filth simply because he's white should give you an idea of how American democracy allows mediocrity and criminality to rise to power. These illiterate ignorant white Americans from the boonies hate smart educated people. They prefer a moron like them, and only then realize they voted for a moron only because it hurts their money-making obsession.

How pathetic. 
================================================
This MAGA supporter regrets their vote now that it's affecting their employeers and therefore their business.
"Let me start by saying I voted for Trump," the business owner shared in a recent rant online. "He was the best option on the ballot. I didn't agree with all his ideas but over all I was hoping he would be the a vast improvement over the past administration. In a lot of ways I think he has been."

vsandrei / reddit.com

"However, this hellbent notion of deporting all illegal aliens is wrong in my opinion."
"Yes there are many bad illegal immigrants here, and they need to be deported. I'm all for it. That is the exception not the norm."
"I'm a 67 year old white small business owner," they continued. "We are a concrete construction company. I have Hispanic finishers and carpenters that have worked for me for years. A couple for over 20 years."       THE ASSHO-- KNEW THEY WERE ILLEGALS BUT HE HIRED THEM ANYWAY.  HE SHOULD BE FINED AND SENT TO JAIL.

"They are not employees to me. They are family. There's nothing I wouldn't do for them. They are honest hard working, dependable guys who exceed expectations. They care, take pride in what they do. A couple of them have their sons help on occassion." "They don't even have family in Mexico now. If they were to get deported they would have nowhere to go or family."

"If you have never been to Mexico, before you judge these people, you need to experience Mexico for yourself. These people come from poverty. Backbreaking work for $70 a week."
"I realize the majority of people don't get it or probably care," they concluded. "This is not what America should be about. Shame on Trump and anyone who thinks this is the right thing to do."

"It breaks my heart to see these fine families getting separated and having to live in fear here, when all they want is to make a honest living. They don't live extravagent lives, because they send money to help there parents and loved ones get by so they don't have to work for the cartel."

THE ASSH--- TURNED INTO A BLEEDING HEART DEMOCRAT NOW THAT HE HAS TO HIRE US CITIZENS FOR $500 A WEEK INSTEAD OF THE SLAVE WAGES OF $70 A WEEK HE WAS GIVING HIS BELOVED ILLEGAL SLAVES.
A screenshot of the full post went viral on Reddit:

vsandrei / reddit.com

Commenters granted all of their sympathy to the employees affected, but certainly held nothing back when it came to their boss. Here's what they're saying:
"'There's nothing I wouldn't do for them.' Except vote in their best interests (and my own)."
—SmellGestapo

"He was willing to do anything except sponsor, fund, or take any action whatsoever to protect their status in this country. They were such family to him, yet he decided to exploit them for the fact they were not naturalized citizens, and is now just fucking gutted that he's no longer able to exploit his family for another two decades."
—TheDevil-YouKnow

"What part of 'deport the illegals' did this guy not understand?" —southofakronoh

"Best option? He means Trump was a better option than a Black woman?"
—Sucksmaga

"Ding ding ding. To him, Trump was clearly the white choice." —GhostofZellers

"You should’ve voted for the well-educated woman of color, instead of the clueless angry white guy, lol. If you can listen to a former president ramble on for hours and not take every single thing he said at face value, then shame on you." TravelerMSY


20th Television  —contude327

"Hope he has to work until he dies and can never retire. Fuck that guy."—vonhizzle

"So it affects his bottom line and he’s not fine with that. Everything else👍"
—PhoenixCogburn

Behind America's Obsession with China and Venezuela

Must watch: 

https://www.tiktok.com/@jeffrey1012v2/video/7580611030284520725 

An insight from a former IMF (International Monetary Fund) official into what is behind the US calling  China an "enemy" and the US harassing and possibly regime changing in Venezuela: Paper money vs real wealth (e.g. oil) and debt vs empire? The dollar economy imposed by Washington is in collapse mode.

Bottom line: US is no longer the sole power in a new multipolar world. It can no longer control the world with the paper dollar it has imposed since 1945. The BRICs are no longer using the dollar - they do their exchanges in Yuan, Rand, Yen, Rupee, etc.

US debt to China is in the tens of trillions of dollars, and it is literally begging the Chinese to buy more US dollars. The US needs 3 trillion dollars just to keep the country going. The US spends trillions more than it taxes.

In Venezuela, the US is literally begging Maduro for his oil to save the dollar. They made an outlaw of Maduro, sanctioned his oil so that the world stops buying it. But the world (China, India and others) kept buying Venezuela's oil but not paying in US dollars. In desperation, the US now want a regime change in order to seize Venezuela's oil.

Scandinavians & South African Whites: Emigrate to US. Trump Wants You

The deranged senile Simian in the White House is stopping all immigration from the "Third World", and he wants only whites from northern Europe and South Africa to immigrate to the US. His plan is to bleach the melting pot.

It's you chance for the American Dream. You should all apply to move to the US and leave your countries for the migrants and immigrants from filthy countries. He says Europe is finished. 

 

It's Gonna Be a Democrat Landslide Next November

The country is done with Trump's garbage.

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Former Trump Official Already Waving the White Flag: ‘You Gotta Favor the Democrats in the Midterms’
Willa Pope Robbins
Sat, December 13, 2025 

Former Trump White House official Marc Short told Politico’s Dasha Burns that the Democratic Party will likely dominate the 2026 midterms.

In an appearance on CSPAN’s Ceasefire alongside Democratic strategist Adrienne Elrod, Short said that the Republican Party is already set to endure heavy losses in the upcoming elections.

“I think it’s going to be a really steep climb, Dasha,” said Short, in relation to GOP midterm efforts. “The reality is that Americans like divided government. They don’t want one party in control. Each time there’s been one party in control, there’s been a backlash.”

The once chief of staff to former Vice President Mike Pence noted that in previous midterms, the incumbent party is much more vulnerable to losing Congressional seats.

“And so, just like in the 2018 midterms when Republicans had control of everything, Democrats had a big year. In 2022, when Democrats are in control of everything, Republicans had a big year,” he said. “So, I think you’re going to see likely a Democrat year in the midterms.”

Short said that due to recent gerrymandering efforts that have decreased the number of contested districts, a Democratic sweep may be smaller than in past years, if still significant.

“The reality is that so many of our house districts are drawn today to gerrymander for each side that there’s fewer really districts that are really competitive,” he said.

“And potentially more that are going to be gerrymandered, right?” asked Burns.

“Potentially more that are going to be gerrymandered. So I do think there’ll be a swing,” he said. “But the question is, you know, I remember being, to date myself, a hill staffer in 2010 when after the Obamacare passage, there was 63 seats the Republicans picked up. I think it’s hard to think you’re going to have that kind of a swing or even 40 in the 2018 midterms. But I still think that the margins, as tight as they are of potentially one or two seats by that point, that you got to favor the Democrats in the midterms.”

Short is not the only prominent Republican who’s voiced fears about the party’s chances in the upcoming election cycle.

Republican National Committee Chairman Joe Gruters was at the center of an internet firestorm on Friday after an unearth audio recording heard him describe the GOP as “facing almost certain defeat” in the midterms.

Fox News host Jesse Watters similarly predicted that the GOP would lose control of the House of Representatives come November, telling his co-hosts on Wednesday that the party’s lack of focus on affordability was at the root of the problem.

“They have no credibility at all on any domestic policy,” said Watters, referring to Republicans. “And it’s fresh in everyone’s head. And they’re running on fixing a problem they created, and they won’t tell you how they’re gonna fix it.”

The post Former Trump Official Already Waving the White Flag: ‘You Gotta Favor the Democrats in the Midterms’ first appeared on Mediaite.

The Only Conclusion to be Drawn from the so-far-released Epstein Files

 

He once sold condoms bearing his name to fellow pedophiles. Now he sells $1,000-a-pop bible to MAGA morons. Which of the two products best describes Donald Trump? 

The undeniable fact from the Epstein Files so far released is that Epstein was close to BOTH DEMOCRACTS and REPUBLICANS. 

The conspiracies long peddled by Trump and his MAGA morons of an exclusively Democrat pedophile ring are only half true, for we now know that many diehard Republicans were also involved with Epstein. Most notable is the disgusting, disheveled, unshaven, unshowered slob called Radical Right extremist Steve Bannon who now appears to have been very very close to Epstein, and who remains very close to Trump himself. I haven't mentioned Trump because we all know by now how "close" was Trump with Epstein, sharing "wonderful secrets" with him.

 

So my message to Trump's MAGA morons is that the guilty in the conspiracy are THE ELITES, regardless of whether they are democrats or republicans. THE ELITES are the ultra-wealthy, the billionaires, the powerful and corrupt, the newspaper magnates, the Hollywood and Netflix and Paramount executives, those who run every detail of your lives as if you were sheep led to the slaughter. 

Instead of taking sides over the dividing line between Democrats and Republicans, instead of defending Trump blindly because he lies to you every time he opens his mouth blaming everything on the Democrats, hoax this hoax that... stop being morons believing him. TRUMP IS AS MUCH PART OF THAT CORRUPT ELITE AS ANY DEMOCRAT MIGHT BE.

The dividing line is not between Democrats and Republicans. It is not between Christians and non-Christians. It is not between Blacks and Whites. It is not between natives and immigrants....It is between decency and indecency. It is between character and integrity on one side, and villainy, dishonesty and bigotry on the other side. Now perhaps you can see that Trump is not really a republican. He is not really a Christian. He has no decency or integrity. He lies, he manipulates, he kills, he cheats, ... and he duped you to vote for him, only then to turn around and do whatever corrupt stuff he wants to do. 

TRUMP IS PART OF THE ELITE YOU DECRY. His children and Steve Witkoff's children are running around the planet supposedly making peace between "filthy sh--hole" countries but really making billions and billions in deals with every unsavory dictator out there.

And what are YOU getting out of Trump? Nothing of real value, an economy in shambles, warfare against another country, violence erupting all around a world on the verge of a third world war....All of this is Trump's own doing while claiming the exact oppposite. He says he is going to war with Venezuela to fight drug trafficking just as pardons and liberates a major druglord who smuggled 400 tons of cocaine into the country. He is sacrificing our long-standing European allies for the sake of an alliance with a criminal dictator like him, Vladimir Putin. With Trump, you are getting a cheap violent movie about cleansing the country out of ordinary people who are just like you, struggling to survive a world of ELITIST rapists and thieves... except they have darker skin, while he and his family engage in shady, corrupt enrichment schemes. Is that the decency you really want to see? Is that what you voted for? Is that what your Christian faith tells you to trust?

There is no shame admitting to having been suckered like fools by a convicted criminal and his convicted pedophile friends. It takes courage inside of yourself and with yourself - and not out publicly on social media - to admit your error. Next time you listen to a politician, Democrat or Republican, trying to scam you into voting for them, don't listen to the words because they may be just lies and promises they know they won't keep. Don't listen to the policies they are promising, they may be just a smokescreen. Watch for the character of the individual. Because he/she may have to face unprecedented situations he/she could not have foreseen during the campaign and for which he had no "ready-to-go" policies. At that moment, it will be his integrity and character that determine his conduct, not his campaign promises.

Trump is Buying Your "Loyalty" for $2,000. Are you This Easy and Cheap?

Up to $2,000/household, says Scott Bessent, as he tries to buy your loyalty to the billionaire crooks like him Trump and himself. They are raking billions for themselves and their elite families with deals around the world and are trying to keep you on their leash with an "up to $2,000" crumb. "Up to" means many of you will get nothing or much less, if Trump and Bessent actually act on this promise. They otherwise are telling you to tighten your belt by buying less gifts, less pencils, and are forcing you to buy less food, less medical care.... 

Only suckers will fall for this trick. I wouldn't mind getting $2,000, but that will not make me vote for criminal bilionaires.

Financial crooks are applauding Bessent's promise that says, "Working Americans will soon see a sizable financial boost — all thanks to changes tied to President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill". TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS is NOT A SIZABLE BOOST. It's a pathetic bribe. The financial and business crooks will be hounding you with commercials to try and sucker you into a scam and rip off the $2,000 out of your bank account.

Bessent said that Trump has fought harder than anyone for his signature initiatives in the One Big Beautiful Bill, pointing to provisions such as no tax on tips, no tax on overtime and auto deductibility. But he failed to mention higher crime rates, higher medical insurance costs, higher taxes/tariffs on food and groceries....