Finally, a Lebanese President with a Backbone, but Without Weapons

But the Americans refuse to sell weapons to the Lebanese Army (which it could use to defeat Iran's terrorist militia Hezbollah) because, according to Israel, those weapons might be later used against Israel. "Damned if you do and damned if you don't" for the past sixty years.

Trump is putting maximum pressure on the Lebanese to disarm Hezbollah by force (which they can't for lack of weapons) or face Israel's barbarity as it pretends to fight Hezbollah. In fact, Israel loves Hezbollah because it serves it as a pretext for endless colonial expansion and warmongering. 

Imagine what would the value of Israel be if there is genuine peace in the region. Israel thrives on presenting itself to the world as a victim of its own Palestinian victims, and thus uses this "victim" status to keep extorting a credulous West for its guilt in perpetrating the Holocaust and making it unnaturally support Israel's genocide of the Palestinians and its theft of Syrian and Lebanese lands.

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Exclusive: Lebanese president accuses Iran of using his country as a bargaining chip in peace talks with the US
Mostafa Salem, CNN
Sat, June 6, 2026


CNN - Christiane Amanpour interviewing Lebanese President Joseph Aoun

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun delivered a searing rebuke to Iran on Friday, accusing it of using his country as a bargaining chip against the wishes of the Lebanese people in the conflict with the United States and Israel.

In a rare and exclusive interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour, President Aoun declared that he is committed to doing "whatever it takes" to save his country from conflict, and that the Lebanese people are "fed up" with war between Israel and Hezbollah, a heavily armed Iranian-backed proxy that has built strong domestic support by portraying itself as the defender of southern Lebanon and the Palestinian people.

"We are fed up and we want to live in peace," Aoun said, adding "(Lebanese people) deserve to live in peace and in dignity, they deserve not seeing their homes being destroyed every five to 10 years."

Since its founding in the 1980s, Hezbollah has gone to war with Israel multiple times. This year, the group fired rockets at Israel in retaliation for a joint US-Israeli assault on Iran that killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and much of his senior military command. Israel's aggressive response has killed more than 3,500 Lebanese and displaced nearly a fifth of the population.

Weakened by decades of foreign meddling, sectarian strife and its repeated entanglement in wider wars, the Lebanese state had pledged to tackle the daunting task of disarming Hezbollah in an effort to dismantle the group's immense influence and halt Israel's advancement.

Despite a ceasefire between Tehran and Washington in April and subsequent negotiations, Beirut has found itself increasingly embroiled in the wider conflict after Iran conditioned an agreement to end the war with the US on Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon.

"It's not your country, it's our country," Aoun said addressing Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – the main backers of Hezbollah. "(Iran is) using Lebanon as a bargaining chip in their negotiation with US."

Addressing Iran, he said, "You are not trying to help us … the people of Lebanon are paying the price … for the sake of your own interest," adding, "our interests … do not coincide with your interests."

Following the interview, Iran's top diplomat pushed back on the remarks Aoun made regarding Tehran using Lebanon as a bargaining chip. Responding to the clip of the CNN interview, Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said: "Had Lebanon been a bargaining chip for Iran, we'd have a deal long ago."

"Save Lebanon from your real foe, Mr. President," Araghchi added, in an apparent reference to Israel.

'We are ready, we are willing'

Facing limited options and mounting desperation to weaken Iran's influence in Lebanon, the US-backed President Aoun has instructed his government to negotiate direct ceasefire agreements with its longtime adversary, Israel – an unprecedented move by a Lebanese government that appears to be designed to pile further pressure onto Hezbollah.

"We are ready, we are willing, we are committed (to negotiations to end the war)," Aoun told Amanpour at the presidential palace in Beirut. "If you are not, you will never live in peace, safety and security," he said addressing the Israeli people and government.

He added that Lebanon and Israel have a "great opportunity" to end the state of hostility and for both the Lebanese and Israeli people to live in safety and security.

"They are both fed up with war since 1948," he added. "This is a huge opportunity. They both have to choose: war or… diplomacy."

But the truces between Lebanon and Israel have barely taken hold as Hezbollah continues rejecting any disarmament without Israeli withdrawal from Lebanese territory.

In a statement on Thursday, Hezbollah's leader Naim Qassem slammed the Lebanon-Israel talks as a "surrender," saying the resulting truce was rejected in its "entirety by broad segments of the Lebanese people."

Aoun said he spoke to Lebanese people across different religious sects, including Shiites, who have told him they are "fed up" with Hezbollah's war with Israel.

"They are Lebanese people. They are not Naim Qassem's people," he said in a rare public criticism of the Iran-backed Shiite militant leader.

Still, the Lebanese president slammed the Israeli military strategy in dismantling Hezbollah, saying the group can only be "dealt with" by the Lebanese government after the Israeli military withdraws – and the conflict can only end through negotiations.

"They can invade the whole country, they can flatten the whole country, but they will never be able to achieve their objective," Aoun said on Israel. "Hezbollah is not an objective you can see… it's an idea."

Before becoming president, Aoun served eight years as army chief. He was wounded in battle and says he still carries shrapnel in his body, with his hearing damaged from close-quarters combat. Yet he says he hates war.

"I prefer negotiations over wars. I don't want my children … and I don't want the people in Lebanon to live the same hardship," he said. "The best way forward is diplomacy."

For almost three years, Israel and Hezbollah have been engaged in aggressive skirmishes. Israeli forces have occupied dozens of villages in southern Lebanon to clear Hezbollah's forces.

The Israeli government has conditioned their withdrawal from Lebanon on Hezbollah laying down its weapons – a step that the Lebanese government led by Aoun said it is committed to.

Yet, outside of vocal critique and a few symbolic steps of dismantling Hezbollah's capabilities, the former military commander has not taken concrete steps to disarm Hezbollah in fear of sparking what many observers believe is a direct clash with the heavily armed group, which could spark a repeat of a brutal 15-year civil war that tore the country apart.

Instead, Aoun has watched his presidential palace tremble under Israeli strikes as Israel widens its campaign in Lebanon. At the same time, Iran continues raising the price of any ceasefire with the US while refusing to release its grip on Lebanese sovereignty.

"I will try… to negotiate and reason with them," Aoun said in reference to Hezbollah and disarmament. "Eventually they will be persuaded, but the cost will be high."

Ami Kaufman contributed to this report.

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Daily Good Deeds of the Most Moral Army in the World

The idea is perhaps is to cull the Palestinian population and have less "indigenous savages" to ethnic cleanse when the time comes for the Messiah to finally show up and end 5,000 years of barbarity in his name.

It's just standard procedure on the part of foreign settlers who are simply obeying Yahweh's biblical commandments to kill every man, woman, child and animal. No big deal. It's all in the garbage torah-old testament. The most moral army in the world cannot be challenged on following standard barbarian procedures. 

The British crooks who started this entire charade of the colonial "return to the promised land" are "shocked and saddened" by the incident. 

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Israeli soldiers shoot and kill 7-month-old Palestinian baby in West Bank
Abeer Salman and Eyad Kourdi, CNN
Sat, June 6, 2026 


Fahd Abu Haikal, 41 displays a mobile photo of his seven month old Palestinian baby boy Sam, who was killed on Friday by Israeli soldiers who fired at the vehicle carrying him and his parents, in Tel Rumeida, at a hospital in the West Bank city of Hebron Saturday, June 6, 2026. - Mahmoud Illean/AP

Israeli soldiers shot and killed a 7-month-old Palestinian baby boy in the occupied West Bank on Friday and wounded his parents, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

Sam Fahd Abu Haykal was in a car with his parents when an Israeli soldier opened fire at the vehicle near the city of Hebron, the ministry said. The gunfire killed Haykal and injured both of his parents.

The boy's grandmother, Firyal Abu Haykal, told Reuters that one bullet struck their car, killing the baby. "The incident is unbelievable and unacceptable," she told Reuters. "We are being harmed just because we decided to stay at our homes."

Father and brother of Sam Abu Haykal, a 7-month-old Palestinian child who was killed by Israeli soldiers, carry his body during his funeral in Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, June 6, 2026. - Mussa Qawasma/Reuters

A bullet hole in the front window of a car of Palestinian father Fahed Abu Haykal after his seven-month-old baby was killed by Israeli forces, in Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, June 5, 2026. - Mussa Qawasma/Reuters

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement that soldiers "perceived" a vehicle accelerating toward them. A soldier fired a single shot at the vehicle, the IDF said, acknowledging that those injured were "uninvolved civilians."

The IDF said the incident is under review.

Such incidents have occurred before. In March, four members of the same Palestinian family, including two boys aged 5 and 7, who were out on a late-night drive after breaking the daily Ramadan fast, were shot dead by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank, Palestinian officials reported.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

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Israeli forces kill Palestinian baby in the West Bank: Health ministry
CBS/AP
Sat, June 6, 2026

How archaeology turns political in the West Bank 11:37

Israeli troops killed a seven-month-old Palestinian baby boy after firing at his parents' vehicle in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said.

Sam Fahd Abu Haikal was killed Friday evening, and his parents were wounded while driving in the Tel Rumeida area south of Hebron City, according to the ministry.

The official Palestinian news agency WAFA said the baby was critically wounded after being struck in the face by the same bullet that injured his mother. He later died of his injuries. His father, Fahd Abu Haikal, a lecturer at Bethlehem University, was shot in the hand. They were traveling from Bethlehem to visit family in Hebron when soldiers opened fire, the agency reported.

Photos from the Associated Press show that the baby's carseat was behind the driver's seat of the vehicle. Photos also show damage, including at least one bullet hole, in the car's windshield.

A man inspects the damaged family vehicle of seven month old Palestinian baby boy Sam Fahd Abu Haikal, onSaturday, June 6, 2026. / Credit: Mahmoud Illean/AP

Israel's military has scaled up military operations in the West Bank since the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack that killed some 1,200 people and took 251 people hostage, which triggered the war in Gaza. Israel's retaliatory military campaign has so far killed more than 72,900 Palestinians, according to Gaza's Health Ministry. The ministry, which is part of the Hamas-led government, is generally seen as reliable by United Nations agencies and independent experts.

A spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces told CBS News that soldiers "perceived a vehicle accelerating toward them" in the Hebron area. A soldier responded by firing single shots, the spokesperson said. The statement said three Palestinians were injured and evacuated for medical treatment, but did not confirm the age or gender of any of the injured.

An initial inquiry "found that those injured were uninvolved civilians," the IDF spokesperson said, adding that the incident is under review and that the IDF "expresses deep sorrow for any harm caused to uninvolved individuals."

At Al-Ahly Hospital in Hebron, the baby's father told Associated Press reporters that a bullet struck the car's windshield before piercing his hand, then his son and wife.

"It entered the child's face on the right side and exited on the left, then passed directly into his mother's face and exited on the other side, with shrapnel lodged near her heart," Abu Haikal said.

Fahd Abu Haikal, 41 displays a mobile photo of his seven month old Palestinian baby boy Sam. / Credit: Mahmoud Illean/AP

The mother is in critical condition because there's shrapnel close to her heart, he said. They haven't told her yet that her son, who turned seven months old on Friday, was killed.

The baby's grandmother, Feryal Abu Heikal, was in the car during the shooting and said they were driving near a checkpoint and stopped when they saw Israeli military vehicles and soldiers in the distance. As the forces fired at them, she initially thought it was warning shots before they were struck, she said.

"The scene was horrific to see a seven-month-old baby with a smashed face," she said. "What kind of army in the world does this? ... What happened to my grandson can't be easily forgotten."

The baby's funeral is expected later Saturday.

The British consulate in Jerusalem said it was "shocked and saddened" by the incident, saying on social media that it was calling for an "immediate and transparent investigation and accountability" and that "civilians must be protected."

Child care bag of seven month old Palestinian baby boy Sam Fahd Abu Haikal. / Credit: Mahmoud Illean/AP

The United Nations said last month that more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank and east Jerusalem since the war began. At least 240 of them children, according to the U.N. Forty-nine people have been killed since the start of 2026, it said.

In March, Israeli soldiers fired on a car carrying a family in the northern West Bank, killing four people, including two children, the Palestinian Authority's Health Ministry said at the time.

Israeli soldiers accused of harming Palestinians are rarely penalized and were indicted in fewer than 1% of cases based on 2,427 complaints alleging wrongdoing between 2016 and 2024, according to Israeli rights group Yesh Din.

More than 700,000 Israelis live in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem, territories captured by Israel in 1967 from Jordan and sought by the Palestinians for a future state.

Now That Greater Lebanon's "Coexistence, Consensual Democracy, etc." Experiment Has Failed....

Edmond Nicolas
June 4, 2026
From: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1CehjWXqm9/

If we think objectively—and acknowledge that the "Greater Lebanon" experiment, led by the Maronites, was a failed endeavor that proved incapable of securing the necessary peace between Muslims and Christians over the course of a century—then the optimal solution lies in a peaceful separation between Lebanon’s Christians and its Muslims. We ought to view the cause of this "divorce" between Lebanon’s religious communities as akin to the situation of a couple who have been bound to one another for a hundred years, yet have remained in perpetual conflict—literally over everything—since the very first day of their marriage. Furthermore—and above all else—they have no children, nor is there any compelling reason for them to preserve the unity of this "family."

This is our reality—as viewed with absolute objectivity and complete impartiality!

What, then, is wrong with them separating amicably, thereby allowing each party to live in peace within its own home?

I swear by God: there is no fault or shame in separation. In fact—and in accordance with the teachings of Christ—if we examine this matter of "divorce" from the perspective of religious differences, we find that it poses absolutely no threat to non-Christians. This is because Christian religious culture does not instill fear in the hearts of adherents of other faiths; the reason being that Christ’s own commandment to our Phoenician people—specifically in the cities of Tyre and Sidon—was crystal clear: it not only calls for unconditional love among all human beings, but also obliges Christians to pray even for their very enemies. This commandment rests upon theological pillars and principles that mandate the propagation of peace—thereby imposing upon the Christian, with even greater urgency, the duty *not* to create enemies for himself in the first place; lest he find himself compelled to pray for those who seek to kill him—simply for being a Christian.

Indeed, the conspiracy against the continued existence of my Phoenician-humanist identity in Lebanon shall not be repeated—nor shall I, as a Christian, stand idly by, contenting myself with prayer alone! Consequently, a separation grounded in love would serve to entrench peace rather than to create enemies—unless, of course, there exists a specific religious mindset that continues to harbor ill intentions toward the "Other," regardless of whether such a separation takes place or not. 

Let us now return to the heart of the matter: examining the path leading to a peaceful separation between Christians and Muslims in Lebanon. Quite frankly—and speaking as a Phoenician who once fought against Muslims in defense of Tripoli—I will not stand as an obstacle in the path of a million individuals from the Sunni community who choose to place themselves under the mantle of Syria's "Ahmad al-Sharaa, ak.a. al-Joulani." If this is truly what the people of Tripoli desire, then let the separation be amicable; the Christians would have absolutely no objection to it. What I mean is this: were you to ask me whether I—as a Phoenician—would consent to ceding "Phoenician Tripoli" to Syria, my answer would be "Yes." However, my acceptance is conditional upon Syria, in return, ceding those Christian-majority regions in the north known as "Wadi al-Nasara" ((The Valley of the Christians). As for the East, I advocate for expanding Lebanon’s borders to encompass Saydnaya and the adjacent Christian territories.

If such an amicable separation were to foster peace between Muslims and Christians, what possible objection could be raised against this concept? What, specifically, is wrong with the idea of ​​establishing a Christian state within Lebanon—modeled after the Jewish state currently existing in Israel, and just as we are surrounded by numerous Muslim states throughout the region? And what, then, is wrong with extending a hand of peace to our Jewish neighbors—precisely as we ask them to extend a hand of peace to us?

And what is wrong with extending a hand of peace to our Muslim neighbors—precisely as we ask them to extend a hand of peace to us?

Perhaps the time has come to abandon religious instincts as a basis for human interaction, and to allow reason to govern our human affairs!

The contradictory statements issued by Christian and Muslim religious leaders, following last week's "Spiritual Summit" between the heads of all the religious communities, confirm that the Lebanese people are left with no choice but to call for another gathering—one dedicated to discussing the optimal path toward an amicable separation. Or perhaps we should all simply go to sleep with our fingers on the triggers, poised for another round of violence—only to survive long enough to face yet another round of fighting.

China Asskisser Trump Afraid of Calling Taiwan President

Trump loves to hate our allies and is smitten with our adversaries and enemies. He bends over backwards to please and kiss ass to dictators like Putin, Xi JinPing, the Saudi Wahhabi Islamist rulers and others, while constantly berating our European and other traditional allies like Taiwan.

Xi has threatened Trump not to talk to the Taiwanese. So Trump starts putting down the Taiwanese to please the Communist dictator of China and declares that Taiwan has "stolen" chip making technology, implying that Taiwan is at fault for developing the best ever chipmaking technology. He now needs Communist China's approval before he can speak to the Taiwanese president. 

If you ever need to find a backstabbing coward weasel, go to the White Outhouse in DC.

Trump doesn't like honest people. He has pardoned thousands of criminals and gangsters, including the latest one, a former congressman who was caught in illegal insider stock trading. He himself has been milking the Iran War by manipulating the market: Make a declaration suggesting war, stocks drop, he and his family buy cheap... then a few days later, make a declaration suggesting peace, stocks rise, he and his family sell for a profit.


As a criminal convicted felon whose entire life has been built on backroom, Mafia-like deals and cheating every which way, he feels the pain of all these criminals like him. So he pardons them.

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Trump keeps the door open to a call with Taiwan's president even though China has warned against it
AAMER MADHANI AND MICHELLE L. PRICE
Fri, June 5, 2026


[Miserable-looking ] Donald Trump arrives to speak to reporters aboard Air Force One en route from Joint Base Andrews, Md., to Eau Claire, Wis., Friday, June 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)(AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)


ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE (AP) — President Donald Trump on Friday indicated that he may still speak with Taiwan's President Lai Ching-te — even after China has publicly urged him not to directly engage with the leader of the self-ruled island that Beijing claims as its own.

Trump first raised the idea last month on his way back from meeting President Xi Jinping in Beijing, saying that he intended to speak directly with Lai as he weighs whether to go ahead with a $14 billion arms sale for Taipei that Congress approved earlier this year.

The U.S. president on Friday suggested that a call with the Taiwanese leader is still in play. "I'll always talk to him," Trump told reporters when asked if he still intended on calling Lai.

Such a call would mark the first direct dialogue between sitting American and Taiwanese presidents in many decades, and Beijing has discouraged Trump against such an engagement.

The Chinese embassy in Washington in a statement to the Associated Press this week said that kind of phone call could undermine progress in the delicate U.S.-China relationship and urged the Republican administration to "handle the Taiwan question with utmost prudence" and "avoid sending wrong signals" to officials in the democratically run island that China views as a breakaway province.
It would be an unprecedented phone call

Trump raised China's ire when he took a congratulatory call from Taiwan's then-President Tsai Ing-wen after winning the 2016 presidential election but before taking office.

Trump has raised the idea of a direct engagement with Lai even as he's been more circumspect about whether he'll move forward with a major arms package for Taiwan after hearing concerns about it from Xi in Beijing. Congress greenlit the arms deal in January but it still needs Trump's approval,

The president said last month he sees arms sales with Taiwan as a "negotiating chip" in the administration's approach to Pacific policy.

At last month's Beijing summit, Xi warned Trump that the "Taiwan question" is the most important issue in ties between China and the U.S., and that the two nations will "have clashes and even conflicts" without proper handling of the matter, according to Chinese officials.

Trump had an unusual consultation on Taiwan during his Beijing visit

Trump's discussion with Xi about the arms sales to Taiwan seemed out of step with the U.S. policy principles known as the Six Assurances. The nonbinding principles, formulated in 1982 under President Ronald Reagan, have helped guide the U.S. relationship with Taipei, according to analysts.

The second of the Six Assurances states that the U.S. "did not agree to consult with the People's Republic of China on arms sales to Taiwan."

Secretary of State Marco Rubio during a series of congressional hearings earlier this week said that the United States' Taiwan policy has not changed.

But Trump's rhetoric has added a more foggy dynamic to the U.S.-Taiwan relationship, said Craig Singleton, a China expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

"Trump's comments about Taiwan arms sales as a negotiating chip, combined with uncertainty around a possible Lai call, have created more ambiguity than Taipei would like," Singleton said. "The real test is not the rhetoric. It is whether the pending arms package moves, and on what timeline."

Taiwan's president is ready for a Trump call

If the call were to happen, Lai has said he would emphasize to Trump that peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait are crucial for global security, and make the case that China was acting as the "destroyer" of the strait's peace.

Lai said he also would tell Trump that Taiwan's increasing defense budget was a response to threats, and purchases of U.S. arms would be an essential means to safeguard the strait's stability.

In 1979, Washington ended diplomatic ties with Taiwan as part of recognizing the People's Republic of China, and the Chinese have reacted strongly after other engagements by senior U.S. leaders with Taiwan's leadership.

After an August 2022 visit to Taipei by then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and five other Democratic lawmakers, China responded with large-scale military exercises that included launching short-range ballistic missiles over the island.

Trump repeats plans to call Lai despite Beijing pressure

The United States, under the "One China" policy, recognizes the Chinese position that Taiwan is part of China, while still allowing for informal U.S. relations with the self-governing island.

At the same time, the U.S. has long agreed to ensure Taipei has the resources to defend itself though Washington has remained ambiguous about how far it will go militarily to counter Beijing should it decide to take Taiwan by force.

After Trump's Friday comments, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in Washington reiterated its position that it intends to "maintain close contact" with the U.S. on arms sales and other issues.

"We will leave it up to the U.S. to announce if there's any arrangements for President Trump to speak with President Lai," the office said in a statement.

China would view a phone call between Trump and Lai as more provocative than moving forward with the proposed arms sale to Taiwan, said Edgard Kagan, a former U.S. ambassador to Malaysia and senior State Department official handling East Asia policy issues under Trump and President Joe Biden.

Kagan added that it was notable that Trump continues to publicly state that such a call is a possibility after China had warned the U.S. administration against a Trump-Lai engagement.

If Trump bypasses a phone call with Lai, he may create the space to move forward with a new arms sales for Taipei while dulling the blowback from Beijing, said Kagan, who is now the China Studies chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

"This could give him the room to announce an arms sale, defuse the criticism that the U.S. is turning its back on Taiwan, and do it in a way that leaves the Chinese feeling there was some respect for their views," Kagan added.

___

Madhani reported from Washington.

Hezbollah's 2006 Promise to Lebanese: No More Home Demolitions, Displacement, Dead Children

Poster in Beirut's Southern suburb (Dahiyeh) around the time of the July 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah. In it, Hezbollah's gonadal hero, feu Hassan Nasrallah, asserts to "his" people:

Our homes shall no longer be destroyed

Our children shall no longer be killed

Our people shall no longer be displaced

That era is over

Unfortunately today in 2026, twenty years later, "his" people are still in that era:

Lebanese people's homes are being razed to the ground

Lebanese people's children are being killed

Lebanese people are being displaced, this time perhaps to no return.

Granted that it is the Zionist barbarians doing all this destruction, killing and displacement. But Hezbollah is guilty of drawing the Israelis into an endless 50-year cycle of violence.

Instead of "liberating" the south from a non-existent Israeli occupation (a pretext for warmongering on behalf of Iran), Nasrallah has liberated the entire south of the country - south of the Litani-Zahrani rivers - from "his" people by giving the Zionist barbarians all the pretexts they needed to rape south Lebanon. Many Lebanese believe that Hassan Nasrallah is a double agent for the Mossad. 

"His" people are now, probably permanently, displaced and squatting by roadsides, in gutters, and other people's property. He and "his" Shiite people are masochists, and are more comfortable as victims. 

Some idiots, particularly the religious ones, never learn from their own history. When you use your gonads and your religious bullshit as your motivator for action, instead of your brains, you are condemned to repeating the same mistakes.

What follows is an overview of the background to the millionth wars that have been fought in this tormented Levant. It might help you understand the present war between the Great American Moron Donald Dumb, the savage Zionists, and the Ayatollahs of Iran. (Note: I reject the western colonial nomenclature of Near East, Middle East and Far East: They are all from the standpoint of western crooks and criminals lusting over other peoples and their lands. I wish we could start using the terms of Near West (Russia and Eastern Europe), Middle West (Central and western Europe), and Far West (Britain and the Americas).

The Zionist fundamentalists are the same as their Shiite enemies. They both dig into their Bronze Age fallacies and share an uncanny similarity in that they love to be victims. They thrive on their own made-up victimhood. Both continuously wallow in the false pretense of being eternal victims of others, bordering on paranoia.

From biblical times, Zionists claimed to be victims of the Amalekites, the Philistines, the Phoenicians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Canaanites, the Sea Peoples, the Romans and the Greeks, and in more contemporary times, the Europeans and the Arabs (who are their closest Semitic brethren) when they are the ones who committed genocide to steal the Promised Land, and are still committing genocide to re-seize said Promised Land which they had lost in succession to the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Christians, Arabs, Crusaders, Mamelukes, Ottomans, and finally the English crooks. Having converted to Christians (circa 300 AD) when the Roman empire became Christian, then to Muslims (when the Arabs invaded in the 600s), the Hebrews of biblical vintage became the Palestinians of today. Those Zionists claiming descent from the Semitic biblical Hebrews are European Indo-European con men who converted to Judaism in the relatively recent past and have no genetic or cultural connection with the biblical genociders other than sharing their religion. Which means that the Palestinians are the real authentic Jews who are being mass murdered by European fake Zionist Jews.

Zionist propaganda is art that may have been inspired by the German Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl. It has artificially elevated the status of Zionists as eternal victims of antisemitism simply to inflict guilt on the world and extort it for ownership of Palestine. Because of that ball-and-chain of antisemitism that they drag behind them, no one is allowed to have an opinion on them. Non-Zionists have no right to criticize Zionists. From their Nazi brethren in Germany, the Zionists learned their trade of racism, hatred, supremacy and warmongering, and consider themselves an infallible people endowed by supreme wisdom. 

This bizarre endowment they explain by claiming that their Bronze Age god Yahweh had run an experiment as they wandered the desert: Apparently Yahweh sampled specimens of all stinking Arabian desert-dwelling goat-herding nomads of the Stone and Bronze ages within a tiny geographic expanse of the Arabian desert between Mecca and Jerusalem. He ignored billions of other peoples in Asia, Europe, Africa, America, Australia, and focused his laser on Semitic nomads who probably bathed once a year, if at all, pitching tents and milking goats and camels in that narrow band of land. He undertook a thorough, detailed, exhaustive, in-depth analysis and comprehensive comparative study, and published his sublime results in a garbage publication known as the Torah-Old Testament without any peer-review by outside observers. 

Yahweh's conclusions? One Arabian desert tribe stood out, and he tried to make a deal with it: worship me exclusively and I'll increase your libidinal urges and your procreative abilities. But this tribe kept haggling and challenging their own god to milk him out of more favors, which he finally relented and gave them another people's land, that of the Palestinian Canaanites. That MVP tribe is the Hebraic-Jewish-Zionist tribe born of the womb of 100-year-old Sarah who miraculously got impregnated by Yahweh's aging and decaying buddy Abraham. Yahweh favored their newborn Isaac over his bastard Arab half-brother Ismael who was born from the adulterous fornications Abraham had with his Arab maid. Not a bad way to start a self-congratulatory religion based on reducing your other semitic brethren to the level of bastard children of the maid.

Yahweh was smitten with the Hebrew-Jewish-Zionist tribesmen, it seems, for reasons no one has been able to elucidate. Yahweh, presumably the equal of all other human-fabricated gods, like the English-American God, French Dieu, Arabic Allah, German Gott, Chinese Shàngdì, Japanese Kami, Korean Hananim, and many many others, callously preferred the Hebrew-Jewish-Zionist nomads to all other primitive goat-herding nomads, hunters and gatherers.

Similarly, Shiite Muslims, in addition to claiming like all other Muslims that theirs is the final sequel in the streaming desert-born monotheistic scourge to inflict humanity, claim to be victims of other Muslims and of everyone else. In Lebanon, even though they have become the wealthiest among the other Lebanese communities (with thriving Shiite colonies in Africa and South America), they continue to nag about being "disenfranchised" (محرومين) while warmongering and wreaking havoc in the country.

Shiite Muslims separated from mainstream Sunni Muslims for a number of reasons, none of them having to do with religious ideology.

1- The first leader of the Shiite Muslims was Ali Ibn Abi-Taleb, the cousin and and son-in-law of the prophet Muhammad. After the death of the latter, there was a bitter dispute over his succession. Those who sided with Ali to succeed Muhammad became the Shiites (Shiite in Arabic means "partisan", and their original name of Ali's Shiites, or Ali's partisans, was abridged to Shiite). Since the 600s, the Shiites continue to have a bone to grind with the other Muslims (Sunnis) on this account.

2- Moreover, the civil war that erupted out of that succession dispute between the mainstream Sunni Muslim Caliphs (Caliph means "successor") and the Shiites led to the killing in battles of Ali's two sons, Hassan and Hussein. To this day, Shiites mourn the death of Hassan and Hussein. 

3- During the Arab-Muslim empire (632 -1258 AD), the Persians (modern day Iranians) and the Arabs exchanged an ethnic and racial hatred to one another. Persians are Indo-Europeans, while Arabs are Semites. Since the Persians could not pronounce the holy language of Arabic properly, Arabs mocked them as "Ajam" (عجم) whom they deemed as inferior to the Arabs. Just like the Greco-Romans who deemed the Germanic tribes they could not subdue as "barbarians", an onomatopoeic qualifier of someone's language sounding like gibberish, or "ber ber ber". Hence, the Shiite rebellion for the most part found itself a safe haven in Persia (today's Iran) while the Sunni establishment settled in the Arabian peninsula and across the vast empire between conquered Spain and southeast Asia. The Shiites to this day continue to claim they are the true successors of Muhammad and want to control the capital of the Muslim world, the city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, and the two sides have been hating one another over this 1,300-year-old grudge. Imagine that former archenemies of WWII, the Japanese and the Americans, have become best friends today after a decade of warring, while Shiites and Sunnis cannot turn the page after 1,300 years of fighting.

4- Finally, when they were forcibly converted to Islam by the Arabs, the Persians integrated into Islam their older pre-Islamic beliefs and traditions that are considered heretical by the Sunni Arabs. Messianism is one of them. Shiites believe that the Mahdi (the equivalent of the Messiah) will one day return to earth and judge everyone. Somewhat like the Christian Jesus returning, or the Jewish Messiah who has yet to make his first appearance despite 5,000 years of mayhem, torment and suffering his people have caused the world while waiting for him. Shiites also have a lesser problem than the Sunnis with portrayal of divinity in art (paintings, statues, etc.).

In conclusion, what promises and pledges Hassan Nasrallah made to the Lebanese people in 2006 have turned out to be as hollow as all the monotheistic cults that are behind much of these barbaric wars. Unfortunately, our hopes for peace in the Levant rest on the shoulders of a sick, demented, senile ignoramus by the name of Donald Dumb. Frodo the Hobbit had a better chance against Sauron than Donald Dumb has against the Semites of the Levant.

White Racism in America: Minnesota GOP-MAGA Reps Pray for Killer Cop Derek Chauvin

Racism in America knows no legal or moral bounds. It's been encouraged and enabled by white trash president Donald Dumb whose Republican goons in Minnesota held a prayer for the cop (Derek Chauvin) who murdered George Floyd on the street by stepping on his neck for 9 long minutes, long enough to suffocate him as he cried "I can't breathe".

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Minnesotans whose loved ones were killed by police condemn state GOP for praying for Derek Chauvin

TERRY TANG
Updated Thu, June 4, 2026


In this photo made from a video, Courteney Ross, George Floyd's girlfriend, speaks to reporters on Thursday, June 4, 2026, in Minneapolis, about a moment of silence honoring former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin that was held at a state GOP convention. (AP Photo/Mark Vancleave)

Minnesota residents with loved ones who died at the hands of police spoke out Thursday about the state Republican Party holding a public prayer for Derek Chauvin, the former police officer in prison for murdering George Floyd.

"You all had the opportunity to honor fallen soldiers or children who lost their lives," said Courteney Ross, Floyd's girlfriend and who was visibly emotional through "tears of outrage." "Instead, you took precious time to purposefully hurt everyone who loved Floyd. And every other family who has lost a loved one to the police. "

Valerie Castile, the mother of Philando Castile, a 32-year-old school cafeteria worker who was shot and killed by a Minnesota police officer in 2016, echoed what Ross said, calling the act "the most hurtful thing you can do."

"You give a moment of silence to a murderer? Come on," Castile said.

The two women were among those who spoke at a news conference organized by Twin Cities Coalition For Justice.

What happened in Minnesota over the weekend

The Minnesota Republican Party nominating convention held a moment of silence last weekend for Chauvin.

When the action became public knowledge, it triggered intense backlash.

Racial justice groups, civil rights advocates and Democratic public officials swiftly condemned party officials, accusing them of blindly supporting law enforcement and disrespecting Floyd and his family.

Chauvin has been in federal prison since 2021, after he was convicted of murdering Floyd six years ago. Cellphone video of Chauvin putting his knee on Floyd's neck for over 9 minutes despite Floyd's pleas of "I can't breathe" sparked the numerous racial reckoning protests that dominated the latter half of 2020.

On the one-year anniversary of Floyd's death, people knelt in a moment of silence at the site, symbolizing the 9 minutes and 29 seconds Floyd was pinned down.

A delegate at the Minnesota GOP gathering in Duluth on Saturday proposed acknowledging Chauvin, according to reports from local news outlets. It occurred days after the sixth anniversary of Floyd's death.

"The moment of silent prayer was a spontaneous motion brought forward from the convention floor. It was not part of the official convention program, it was not proposed by Convention Chairman Danny Nadeau, and it was not a statement from party leadership," the Minnesota Republican Party said in a statement.

A spokesperson for the Minnesota GOP did not immediately return an email Thursday seeking additional comment.

The impact of honoring the police officer who killed — and not the person he killed

Castile said it didn't matter if only one person participated, it was still hurtful.

"I am proud of the ones who did not do the moment of silence," she said. "Those that did, they should be reprimanded in some fashion."

Ross urged those Republicans who did not take part to hold their peers accountable.

"I'm speaking to the few of you that thought it was wrong. Please stand up," Ross said. "You are public servants."

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, who led the state's prosecution of Chauvin, said in a statement this week he was "heartbroken and frankly shocked" by the prayer.

"This decision dishonors the memory of George Floyd and wounds his loved ones all over again. As the lead prosecutor whose team presented this case to a jury of twelve Minnesotans and then prevailed at every step of the appeals process, I am deeply troubled by what this says about the state of our politics," Ellison said.

Ben Crump and Antonio Romanucci, the attorneys who represented Floyd's family in a wrongful death lawsuit, were left "sickened by this lack of respect." They also demanded the Minnesota GOP retract their moment of silence and apologize to Floyd's family.

"The audacity of the Minnesota Republican Party to honor an individual who has both been convicted by a jury of his peers for the murder of a fellow human being, while at the same time (violating) a professional oath to protect and serve his community, is disgusting," they said in a statement.

Reached via text message on Thursday, Floyd's New York-based brother, Terrence Floyd, said he was "glad to see people are still fighting with us for complete justice."
How some conservatives support police officers

The moment of silence for Chauvin fits a pattern of flashpoints when conservatives reacted to police violence with "back the blue" initiatives. Long before 2020, when George Floyd's murder catalyzed the largest racial justice demonstrations since the Civil Rights Movement, some officers were symbols of "law and order" or anti-Black Lives Matter sentiment.

For example in 2014, after Darren Wilson — the former Ferguson, Missouri, police officer who is white — fatally shot 18-year-old Michael Brown, who was Black, a GoFundMe website raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the officer's family and legal defense. The amount dwarfed the total raised for Brown's family. Wilson ultimately did not face criminal charges or federal civil rights offenses.

Officers in the high-profile cases in which police killed Laquan McDonald in Chicago and Eric Garner in New York also drew sizable support from law enforcement unions that recast the criminal prosecution or discipline of officers as unjust and politically motivated.

Although legal outcomes vary a lot in these cases, most prominent examples of support for officers charged in killings do not result in overturned convictions.

___ Associated Press editor Aaron Morrison in New York City contributed to this report.

Can't Wait for ICE-GESTAPO Deployment to Red States Under a Democrat Administration

Donald Dumb is really dumb. His only reference to history is to leave of fake legacy of narcissistic grandeur. But he doesn't understand that all the laws he broke and all the norms he violated will come back to haunt the Republican party for generations to come, because he has created precedents that future Democrat administrations will use to justify their own free-wheeling lawlessness of they so choose.

For example, the deployment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers across the country by the Trump administration sets a precedent. "A different ruler could use this precedent in a very damaging way for our free society", said podcaster Joe Rogan on his podcast. "It's a very dangerous precedent," he added.

There were recent ICE deployments to Los Angeles, Chicago and the Minneapolis–Saint Paul area of Minnesota, among other parts of the country that generally vote Democrat. Suspicions are mounting that Trump wants to us his ICE-GESTAPO police to control the midterm elections this November by scaring voters from going to the voting booth. Since the deterred voters are more likely to be Democrat voters in blue states, the net effect of this move would be to favor Republican voters and their candidates.

Viral footage of officers clashing with protesters and — in some cases — using excessive force rapidly spread across social media, sparking debates about the Trump administration's tactics to remove and deter undocumented immigrants.

"It is a very slippery slope when you give people — and they're trained for seven weeks; they're not trained very long. They're trained for much less time than police officers, much less time than military," Rogan said.

"And then you have this militarized police force that has no identification, and they're on the streets. That's a precedent that you might like it when it's for a cause that you support, but that could easily be for a cause you do not support," he added.

Rogan, who endorsed President Trump in 2024, has begun a soft retreat from his pro-Trump positions by, for example, comparing ICE operations to the "Gestapo." And now, he is gently inserting into the political discourse his cowardly mutation into a less favorable opinion of Trump, as he knows the direction of the winds of change. Republican snakes like him, who wholeheartedly supported the criminal demented moron Trump, are all changing their tunes because they know what the electorate will do next November.

"I am very concerned with this dangerous precedent. That's my feeling on it. So, I just worry that people accept it because they want this result now, and they don't realize that this could set up this being a common occurrence," Rogan said.

Any Democrat who replaces Donald Dumb in 2028 will use the same tactics against his Republican opponents, rivals, and red states who enabled the criminal Trump from breaking laws, norms and the constitution. Can't wait!

Independents Have Already Deserted Trump. MAGA's Fate in Congress is Sealed

Simply put, American voters fall into three categories, regardless of age, gender, race...

Republican diehards, usually 40%.

Democrat diehards, usually 40%.

Independents, usually 20%.

As you can see, independents are the kingmakers. Yours truly always registered as an independent and voted republican at times and democrat at other times. I usually go by the character of the individual, and by no other criterion. I abhor party loyalty, ideological loyalty or personal cult loyalty. 

Last election, the Great Moron lied and lied and lied. He knew he was lying to lure dumb voters by promising them exactly what they wanted to hear, only to betray them once elected and go after his own personal (financial corruption) and ideological objectives (Project 2025). It worked because a majority of independent voters believed him. They judged him on his words, not his character which they knew was sourced in the gutters and sewers. 

Right now, all polls indicate that a vast majority of independents have turned against him, not to mention those outlier Democrats who were seduced by the criminal felon and who wouldn't repeat the mistake, as well as those Republicans who have now tired of the lies, the corruption, the racism, the narcissism, the vulgarity and the mismanagement of the country.

This simple calculation is compatible with Trump's current favorability down into the 30 percentile range. His MAGA minion candidates for Congress should obtain at best the 35% (not 40%) who will stick with him. Democrats on the other hand will retain the totality of their usual 40%, plus the 5% disgruntled dissatisfied Republicans who are de-MAGAfying, and 15% (not 20%) independents, totaling some 60% of voters.

Can't wait for the MAGA debacle in November. Of course, the criminal insurrectionist and convicted felon might try in despair to cheat, use Fascist methods to intimidate voters, claim fraud and other mafia tactics... We'll see. He is turning 80 next week and he is sinking further into dementia and old age. 

Ignorant White Trash Moron Trump Obsessively Envious of Constitutional Law Expert Obama

Barack Obama was a Senior Lecturer in US constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004, where he taught courses on constitutional law, voting rights, and race relations. He holds a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in Political Science (1983) from Columbia University and a Juris Doctor magna cum laude from Harvard Law School (1991), and served as the first Black president of the Harvard Law Review. He was offered a full-time tenure-track position as a professor in constitutional law at the University of Chicago, but he declined to become the best, most distinguished, and most decent president in contemporary American history.

In contrast, the vulgar white trash moron squatting in his tacky gilded White Outhouse these days barely finished a Bachelor of Science in economics from the University of Pennsylvania (1968) while dodging the Vietnam war draft for the five times he was selected, his father pulling strings, paying off doctors to say that his son had bone spurs which are normally associated with aging and osteoarthritis, not when someone is 20 years old. He keeps bragging about repeatedly passing the Montreal Cognitive Assessment Test (MoCA) which is given to older near-senile adults with memory loss and symptoms of cognitive decline. It is specifically designed to detect mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and early-stage dementia, all of which are symptoms that Donald Dumb has displayed for years and which explains why he's the only president to be subjected to this test so many times.

So, for reasons every one can understand, the cheap, vulgar ruffian, criminal mafioso bully and demented moron Donald Dumb is deeply and obsessively envious of President Barack Obama. You see, a White Trash racist bum like Donald Dumb cannot countenance the fact that a Black African-American like Barack Obama surpasses him in brains, education and presidential performance without the need for tacky-golden-laced faux prestige .

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Trump called the Obama Presidential Center a 'disaster.' It opens soon
Kinsey Crowley, USA TODAY NETWORK
Thu, June 4, 2026 

Donald Trump talks often about former President Barack Obama, who left office nearly a decade ago.

Trump has spent considerable time talking about the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool renovations as of late, saying that Obama failed to fix it. He's vowed that any upcoming deal to end the war in Iran would be different than Obama's nuclear deal. (Obama told Stephen Colbert be believed Trump said it was a bad deal because it was Obama's initiative, and it "seems to be a pattern.") [Many observers surmise that Trump's "deal" with Iran will end up either the same or worse than Obama's 2015 JCPOA].

Trump has also taken aim at the new Obama Presidential Center in Chicago. He posted a fabricated image on May 30 depicting a giant trash can in a parking lot under the headline, "The Obama Presidential Library." He has also called the Obama Presidential Center a "total disaster" in a Feb. 22 Truth Social post, saying it was over budget and delayed.

Obama Foundation CEO Valerie Jarrett responded to these remarks while speaking to USA TODAY at a June 3 media preview of the center.

"Judge for yourself," she said. "When our visitors come, they will see a spectacular campus...If (Trump) would like to come and visit it himself, we would welcome him and give him a tour."

The White House did not immediately comment on whether Trump planned to visit.

The center, which took about a decade and $850 million to complete, is set to open its doors to the public this month. Take a look:


The Obama Presidential Center towers over Jackson Park on May 15, 2026 in Chicago. The Center, built to commemorate the presidency of Barack Obama, sits on a 19.3 acre campus in the Hyde Park neighborhood and is scheduled to open to the public on June 19, 2026.(Scott Olson, Getty Images)

When does the Obama Presidential Center Open?

The Obama Presidential Center opens to the public on June 19, 2026.

As of June 3, tickets are sold out until the end of August.

Where is the Obama Presidential Center?

The museum and the surrounding campus are located on Chicago's South Side in Jackson Park. It is near the University of Chicago and the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry.

How much time and money went into the Obama Presidential Center?

The Obama Foundation announced in 2015 that the home of his presidential center would be in Chicago. The following year, it homed in on Jackson Park, prompting a years-long federal review process as Jackson Park is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

Protect Our Parks also sued to attempt to stop construction on the historic place, but the lawsuits were ultimately dismissed. The center also faced concerns from some local community groups that the center's presence would price out local residents. The foundation touts investment in the community through the estimated 750,000 campus visitors annually and 300 permanent jobs. The Chicago City Council also passed affordable housing ordinances in the nearby neighborhoods.

When the Obamas finally broke ground in 2021, they estimated the project would cost $500 million. Recent numbers from the foundation put the price tag at $850 million.

The center includes the ticketed museum, a civic center with a cafe and restaurant, an athletic center, a Chicago Public Library branch, and more.

Contributing: Grace Hauck, USA TODAY

Kinsey Crowley is the Trump Connect reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Reach her at KCrowley@usatodayco.com. Follow her on X (Twitter), Threads, Bluesky and TikTok.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Obama Presidential Center, opening soon, called a 'disaster' by Trump

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A first look inside the $850 million Obama Presidential Center
Jacqui Palumbo, CNN
Thu, June 4, 2026

At the top of the Obama Presidential Center, in its sunlit Sky Room is where you're meant to take it all in. The panoramic views are impressive: Surrounding the campus is Chicago's South and West Sides, as well as the ultramarine of Lake Michigan. But, more than that, it's a moment to pause after scaling several floors of history and Barack Obama's political legacy — not-too-distant memories for many.

Overhead, a monumental artwork by the artist Idris Khan gives the illusion of continued ascent. Words from President Obama's famed remarks in Selma, Alabama, are stamped and overlapping, sloping upwards as a swath of blue until they reach a rim of light. In Selma, and elsewhere, the former president often spoke about collectively shaping destiny. And that seems to be the final note as you climb up through the museum: the unwritten, wide-open future.

On June 19, coinciding with Juneteenth, the highly anticipated center will finally open to the public. It's been in the works for more than a decade, and cost $850 million to build — a number that kept growing, becoming by far the most expensive presidential library in history.

That's because it's not just a single building. Instead, it's an entire campus, designed by the architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, and featuring 28 new, site-specific installations from some of the most important artists today. The design shifts the traditional concept of an archival presidential library into a sprawling 19.3-acre campus that offers a museum, community events, a fruit and vegetable garden, NBA regulation-sized basketball court, and a new branch of the Chicago Public Library.

The Obama Presidential Center Museum offers views of Chicago and Lake Michigan. - Courtesy The Obama Foundation

Idris Kahn's artwork "Sky of Hope" tops the Obama Presidential Center museum in the Sky Room, which overlooks the campus and city from the 8th floor. - Courtesy The Obama Foundation

In the lead up, the former president has done a promotional gauntlet, playing Wordle with Stephen Colbert, squashing his beef with NBA star Anthony Edwards (for now); and wishing folks a Happy Star Wars day alongside Mark Hamill (who played Luke Skywalker) in front of the center — perhaps a sly response to one of its nicknames, the "Death Star." The museum's weighty granite design has also been called the "Obamalisk," sometimes disparagingly, other times fondly.

CNN got an early look at the center this week during its soft opening period, as it welcomed community members as its first guests. Already, the campus bustled with activity, even as final construction, landscaping, and art installations continued. School kids arrived on field trips and groups lined up for exhibitions, taking the escalators up past the abstract artist Julie Mehretu's vibrant, 83-foot-tall vertical window.

Tsien said it had been emotional to watch visitors fill the campus. "You have a sense when people walk in, they look up and they feel like it belongs to them, like it's theirs," she said during an interview at the center's Forum building.

Visitors on the escalator take in Julie Mehretu's painted vertical window, "Uprising of the Sun," which stretches up multiple floors. - Courtesy The Obama Foundation

Major transformations

Despite the colorful comparisons, Williams and Tsien based the museum's shape on a visual of four hands coming together, promoting the idea that many hands shape a place, according to the center. "I don't care about the names," Williams said. "I think we only care about what it is and what it does and what it will be in the future."

"We think of it as a 500-year building, so every decision that was made was really about making something that felt lasting and timeless," Tsien added.

Whatever you see in the Brutalist-esque building, the center is poised to become a major cultural institution and destination. Breaking with tradition, it's also run privately by the nonprofit Obama Foundation instead of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). The presidential archive itself, run by NARA, will be made fully digital for the first time, which meant digitizing some 30 million pages, per the Obama Foundation. Parts of the archive are on display at the museum.

The center has been nicknamed the "Obamalisk" because of its monolithic form. - Courtesy The Obama Foundation

But four hands joining together was one of the actual references for the shape of the museum's design. - Courtesy The Obama Foundation

Not all of these changes — nor the price tag — have been embraced. There have been ongoing concerns about its impact on gentrification on the South Side, and the location itself was in dispute as well. It is embedded within the city's historic Jackson Park, a decision that was met with legal battles as an environmental group sued the City of Chicago for allowing a private project to be built on public land. The lawsuit was eventually dismissed.

Though the center added a total of 3.7 acres to the park, parts of it also fell victim to the construction, including the removal of hundreds of trees and its historic Women's Garden from 1937, which was demolished but has been reimagined for the new campus. In a presentation at the center on Wednesday, Obama Foundation CEO Valerie Jarrett emphasized the outdoor recreational opportunities they've offered from the start, with an athletic field built before the main plazas and buildings, as well as the gardens and other green spaces (including a sledding hill) that they've cultivated since.

"We've had thousands of community meetings to ensure that this campus was going to blend into the urban fabric, that the people who live proximate to this center would feel the sense of ownership and participate with us in developing the plans for it," she said.
Markers of the Obama era

Inside the museum, there are exhibitions dedicated to the former president's political legacy, the former first lady's public initiatives, and historical movements, such as Civil Rights and Women's Suffrage, that shaped them both. Displays show campaign ephemera and memorabilia, from Shepard Fairey's iconic HOPE poster to children's drawings. A video that follows the grassroots efforts of the 2008 election cycle counts down to the transformative political moment with campaign trail footage capturing the efforts of volunteers.

But visitors will also see how the Obamas influenced design, style and culture. That includes some of Michelle Obama's iconic looks, such as the greenish-gold coat and dress designed for her by the late Isabel Toledo on Inauguration Day in 2009, and the gown she wore designed by Michelle Smith of the label Milly as she sat for Amy Sherald's painting in the National Portrait Gallery. (Not included was the former president's equally iconic tan suit, which Jarrett said he gave away).

A display of some of First Lady Michelle Obama's iconic looks on the 4th floor of the museum. - Courtesy The Obama Foundation

President Obama visiting the walk-in replica of the Oval Office as it appeared during his administration. - Courtesy The Obama Foundation

There's also a full-scale replica of the Oval Office where visitors can sit at the desk. While Obama is not the first to feature a replica of this kind in a presidential library, with George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter among others following the tradition, it does stand out at a time when today's Oval Office has dramatically shifted in taste and style. It's gone from understated to overgilded during the Trump presidency.

When the room was still under construction, the former White House interior designer Michael Smith got a teary-eyed first glimpse of it in March, in a video posted by the Obama Foundation.

"I did not think that would be emotional," he said, pausing to take it in.

Ambitious art everywhere

Across the campus, 30 artists have created an array of site-specific permanent works on a scale that would even be challenging for a leading contemporary art institution.

Curated by the former Arts in Embassies deputy director Virginia Shore, the collection brings both leading and lesser-known contemporary artists in conversation with each other, many with deep connections to Chicago. Numerous works are on a grand scale, including Mark Bradford's enormous tactile painting of the city, Nick Cave and Marie Watt's nearly two-story beaded and jingle-adorned tapestry; and Martin Puryear's arcing outdoor sculpture paying tribute to Martin Luther King Jr.

"City of the Big Shoulders" by Mark Bradford is one of the most prominent works in the museum, displaying a vibrant map of Chicago. But it also examines some of the inequitable practices, such as redlining, that have harmed the city. - Courtesy The Obama Foundation

Others are more serendipitous encounters, such as Richard Hunt's sculpture of a bird taking flight from a book in a quiet courtyard by the library, or a mosaic by Rashid Johnson of the center's Teaching Kitchen, next to a fruit and vegetable garden.

The artist Theaster Gates, who has paid tribute to Black life and Black beauty in the center's Forum building with a frieze of archival images from Ebony and Jet magazines, is also a neighbor to the center with his cultural revitalization projects through the Rebuild Foundation. In an exclusive interview late last year, he told CNN: "I hope that when people come to the center they come with an open heart about the future of democracy, collective imagining, collective storytelling and collective belief."

The artist Theaster Gates displays archival images of Black beauty and life in the Forum building, where visitors will gather for free programs. - Courtesy The Obama Foundation

Together, the artists "really help to tell a story about community, about convening, about the power of art to activate and energize people," said the museum's director, Louise Bernard.

"This has been an opportunity for them to really lift up a sense of hope that is embedded in their work, and so we see pieces that are truly captivating in their sensibility," she added. "They are about the power and place of Chicago. They're about the idea of different voices and practices coming together. They're about memory and place and the power of color to transport people."

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UFOs, Demons, Exorcism, Aliens... Catholic Church is a Voodoo Institution

How long will 21st century humans continue to fall for the religious bullshit we inherited from our tens of thousands of years of ignorant barbarian past?

Unfortunately for all the traditional and primitive religious institutions and creeds, they continue to lose in the standoff between reason and magic. Religion is magic. Faith is the suspension of reason. Contrary to those modern thinkers (Stephen J Gould, Francis Collins...) who can't let go of the religious magic, modern humans continue to slowly and inexorably abandon their primitive ignorance as they rely more and more on Reason to lead them away from the religious BS. Changes in humanity's view of the world and itself, and of its understanding of its own existence, are very slow, and modern religious institutions that are heirs to the village or tribe's priest, holy man, magician, medicine man, wizard, chiromancer, diviner, sorcerer, charlatan.... continue to inflict damage to our world by making ignorant people confuse tradition with faith. I cannot suspend my reason, therefore I have no faith and hate the very idea of "belonging" to a religion. But I like and respect the traditions of my society, regardless of the fact that they originated in ignorance long time ago.

It wasn't long ago when religious institutions burned people (mostly women) at the stake, accusing them of being heretics, witches and warlocks, when the religious institutions themselves are founded on equally weird and made-up stories, myths and legends: splitting oceans, gods with twelve arms and elephant heads, raining frogs, impregnating virgins and 100-year old women, immaculate conceptions, prophets with exclusive access to gods, Chosen people, self-anointment as the very last prophecy, virgin births, rising from the dead, miracles, ascending to heaven on a winged horse, casting demons out of mental patients and into pigs in a society that didn't consume pork... and promises that I will have eternal life as a ghost somewhere up in the clouds if only I follow the faith.

I recently heard a story, a joke that goes like this. An Asian (non-Christian) man opens the door of his apartment to someone knocking on it. Jehovah's witnesses were there telling him that if he doesn't know Jesus he's going straight to hell. He politely replies that there are billions of people in Asia that have never heard of Jesus, and so will they all be going to hell too? The Jehovah's witnesses respond that since these people never heard of Jesus, they are innocent and won't go to hell. The man sarcastically thanks them for, now that he knows of Jesus's existence he is going straight to hell. He was fine and going to heaven, he said, until they knocked on his door. 

I can't believe that the Catholic Church still has priests who specialize in exorcisms, now that it has admitted that the earth circles around the sun, that the earth is round and not flat, that Darwinian natural selection as a driver for evolution is a fact, that "scriptures" are more symbolic than factually real, that there is no "limbo" where babies who die before being baptized are parked (versus paradise for the wholly sin-free, and the purgatory where the Church condemns the sinful until they "purge" themselves of their sins). Why does it take the Church (and other religious sects and cults) centuries to admit that its primitive beliefs have become outdated?

I do think that the Church understands it is always trailing behind human development and progress. But it just can't admit it at the moment when it is confronted by the change. It drags its feet for decades, refuses to admit it for centuries to avoid appearing as a follower. By prolonging the time it takes it to publicly admit the evidence of the change, the Church extends its own lifeline and maintains millions of imbecile faithful in the illusion. It took the Catholic Church 360 years (1633 to 1993) to formally admit that it was mistaken on Galileo's scientific discoveries. Pope John Paul II exonerated him in 1992 during a speech to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, itself an incongruous creation of the Church with which to hypocritically pretend it is "modern": a religious cult that believes in reason-based science is oxymoronic.

How about marriage for priests? All other religions, including other Christian ones, allow their priests to marry. But not the Catholic Church. It will take it centuries before finally accepting it. The ordination of women is another one. The use of birth control too. And other issues over which ordinary humans have settled their minds, but for which the Church adopts a dilatory posture, never saying yes, continuously denying and rejecting, and dragging its feet because it knows that admitting such otherwise reasonable and logical new ideas would shorten the shelf-life of the Church itself: in other words, the Church cares more for its own survival as a fossil from an ancient age than for the welfare of humans in the here and now.
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Washington archbishop removes priest as exorcist after comments on UFOs and demons
DAVID CRARY
Updated Wed, June 3, 2026


FILE - Cardinal Robert McElroy of Washington attends a press conference at the North American College in Rome, Friday, May 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia,File)

The Catholic archbishop of Washington, D.C., Cardinal Robert McElroy, on Wednesday removed a well-known priest as an exorcist of the archdiocese after he made public comments suggesting that UFO sightings were the work of demons.

McElroy said the archdiocese also was cutting ties with the St. Michael Center for Spiritual Renewal, a Washington-based nonprofit headed by the priest, Monsignor Stephen Rossetti.

The archbishop said Rossetti's statements "linking UFOs to demonic presence and the Center's recent use of social media gravely undermine the Church's very precise teaching on the devil, demons and exorcism."

"There's a danger here," Rossetti said in a May 29 video posted on his Facebook page addressing UFO sightings and the existence of aliens. "As an exorcist I wanted to raise that danger. And that is that demons like to hide. ... They don't want us to know what they're doing because they're more effective when we don't realize it."

"They can kind of get into your head, you know, and manipulate things in the world to influence us to do evil."

"It's my personal belief that probably many if not most of these UFO sightings are in fact demons," Rossetti added.

Rossetti also said that people can be good Catholics and believe there's life on other planets, though he does not personally believe life exists elsewhere.

In a statement posted on the St. Michael Center website, Rossetti said he was saddened by the action of the archdiocese.

"I ask forgiveness for any ways that I have not been faithful to the teachings of the Church's Magisterium, particularly in the cited video on 'aliens and the demonic,'" he said. "I believe it is of the utmost importance to be obedient to the Church and I will continue to endeavor to subject all that I do and the Center to be thus obedient."

Rossetti, who has over 148,000 followers on Instagram, is a prominent psychologist as well as an exorcist. His center has specialized in offering spiritual healing for priests troubled by various difficulties.

In 2023, he told The Associated Press there was increasing and renewed appetite for information about demonic possession and exorcism.

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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP's collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

House to Trump: F - - k You on Iran War

MAGA Republicans have joined Democrats in the House of Representatives in banning Trump's Zionist-prodded war on Iran. The Senate is likely to follow suit, in which case the Great Moron will be isolated as he, again and again, breaks the law by continuing this disastrous war. His lackey Speaker of the House, an inbred white trash, bible thumping, teabagger waterbrain American from the swamps of Louisiana, has tried for the past several weeks to block the House floor from voting on the bill, but ultimately failed.

The senile old geezer is already regretting having fallen for the Zionist war criminal Ben-Yamin Netanyahu, whom he labeled yesterday as "crazy" and scolding him with "WTF are you doing?" The bamboozled white trash imbecile leading the US is one sorry sight because, just like those congressmembers who voted against his war, they are all wetting their panties at losing big time in November.

Not to exonerate the Great Moron in the Outhouse from his own responsibilities: As he trashed the US economy with tariffs and tax breaks for his billionaire buddies, and as he enriches himself at the expense of the country, his use of the standard Republican evasive tactic of starting a foreign war to rally the dumb American "patriots" behind the flag and forget about their degraded standard of living, the skyrocketing inflation, his blatant corruption and his major role as a close friend of the Mossad agent, the Zionist pedophile JEFFREY EPSTEIN and the notorious EPSTEIN FILES. 

It is pleasantly ironic that Zionism and warmongering will be the cause of MAGA's downfall.

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House approves war powers resolution to halt military action against Iran, in a rebuke of Trump

LISA MASCARO
Updated Wed, June 3, 2026

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House for the first time Wednesday approved a war powers resolution that would halt the U.S. military action against Iran, defying President Donald Trump as a handful of Republicans joined with Democrats to end the three-month-long conflict that has reordered politics at home and abroad.

House Speaker Mike Johnson had tried to prevent an outcome that would show the mounting opposition to the war, abruptly shutting down floor action two weeks ago when the resolution was on the verge of approval. But displeasure has only grown as the conflict drags on and as Trump struggles to negotiate a plan for peace.

"Enough is enough," said Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who led the effort.

"It is time for the president to do the right thing," he said. "The people are tired of suffering because of his war of choice — suffering at the gas pump, suffering at the supermarkets."

The roll call Wednesday was 215-208, but next steps are uncertain. Trump would likely reject any measure from Congress to limit his commander-in-chief authority. Still, the tally, with four Republicans joining Democrats, was a rebuke of the president's war strategy, and cheers erupted in the House chamber.

Opposition to war grows

It's the fourth time the House has tried to curb the U.S. war against Iran. The Senate advanced its own war powers resolution last month when a handful of GOP senators broke ranks with the Republican president in a rare show of political pushback from his party.

Each time Democrats have pushed forward the war powers resolution, the vote tallies have inched higher as political unease with the U.S. war swells. Trump had campaigned for the White House on a promise to end U.S. entanglements abroad and focus more on domestic issues, but the war has shifted attention back to the Middle East.

Johnson insisted Trump is "laser focused" on the domestic front, particularly ahead of the midterm elections that will determine control of Congress.

The speaker said he spent three hours at the White House with the president this week and Trump is calling on allies to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz and resume the flow of commerce.

Since the U.S. joined Israel in launching the Feb. 28 strikes on Iran, Americans have seen gas prices spike at the pumps, adding to inflationary pressure on consumer spending.

Iran has been able to interrupt shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital channel for a large segment of the world's oil, natural gas and related products such as fertilizer.

"We're working on that final piece," said Johnson, R-La. "The entire world has an interest in the Strait of Hormuz being reopen for commerce. That what he's working on."

While a ceasefire in the conflict was declared in April, it remains uneasy and uncertain. Talks for a more durable end to the fighting have dragged, increasingly complicated by Israel's broadening war with Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon. Meanwhile, military strikes between the U.S and Iran continue to flare.

Congress exerts its war powers authority

The war powers resolution from the House would not immediately stop the war, but it would provide a symbolic — if not legal — step against further military action.

The resolution next goes to the Senate, where four Republican senators last month joined Democrats in advancing a similar measure to curtail the U.S. campaign against Iran. The Senate has yet to take a final vote to approve or reject its own war powers resolution.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned Wednesday at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing that the Iranians would think that the administration's "hands are going to be tied" if Congress approved a war powers resolution. He said they would think "we won't be able to do anything to them, so why make a deal?"

It's not the only action Congress is taking in the national security arena as Democrats, in the minority, work to peel off Republican support for measures beyond the war against Iran.

The House also voted Wednesday on another Democratic-led effort, a procedural step toward a measure that would authorize U.S. support for Ukraine's military operations as it battles Russia and would help reconstruct the war-torn country. That vote is expected later this week. The House also expected to consider a war powers resolution to block U.S. action in Lebanon.

While Congress has the authority under the Constitution to declare war, the president also has power as the commander in chief to engage in military action, creating a legal dispute over which branch of government has ultimate say in matters of war and peace. If Senate joins the House to approve the resolution, it could set the stage for a fresh legal test of war powers.

Under the war powers act, the White House has a 60-day window to seek approval from Congress for military action. The administration, however, has indicated that because a ceasefire has been declared in the current conflict in Iran, the hostilities have ceased.
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Associated Press writer Ben Finley contributed to this report.