At a time of great crisis for American democracy, when oligarchy, authoritarianism and billionaire corruption have run rampant, there are a few signs of hope.

Thousands of business leaders nationwide are signing the Business for Democracy Pledge, calling on our federal government to ensure free and fair elections and seating of newly-elected lawmakers without interference or violence.

Groups like the Center for Popular Democracy and May Day Strong are calling on businesses large and small to sign the pledge.

We will never agree with everything that banks and bankers say and do. But we’ll be in New York City today to demand that they do the right thing...

Renowned economist and educator Gabriel Zucman and his colleagues have issued a groundbreaking call for a worldwide minimum 2% wealth tax on billionaires to address pressing human needs and reduce extreme inequality and oligarchy.

Unions and organizing groups are pushing for state billionaire taxes in California, Illinois and New York, while working to elect members of Congress who will pass a federal law in the United States.

Now it’s time for corporations and billionaires to decide where they stand.

It’s not enough for the ultra-rich to merely fund charitable causes. That doesn't cut it when the political and economic systems they’ve created leave millions of Americans struggling to afford healthcare, put food on the table, and keep their families together.

It’s time for something new.

There’s a real opportunity for these powerful institutions to use their influence differently.

And growing public pressure, all across the country and all around the world, is making it harder for corporations and billionaires to remain on the sidelines.

Will they double down on authoritarianism and runaway inequality?

Or will they recognize that America works best when it works for all of us, when democracy functions fairly, when our voices are heard and counted, when our government builds prosperity for all rather than the fortunes for a few.

Tech billionaires like Elon Musk and hedge fund managers like Ken Griffin have made their positions clear, with hundreds of millions in campaign cash to Trump’s MAGA Republicans and attacks on efforts to fairly tax wealth in California and New York.

In New York City today, JP Morgan Chase and the Robin Hood Foundation are bringing nine billionaires, the head of public policy at Meta, and President Donald Trump’s handpicked Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to their annual “investors conference” —and we will be there to confront them.

We will demand that JPMorganChase CEO Jamie Dimon and the billionaire fund managers associated with the Robin Hood Foundation stand for democracy and fairness.

These leaders should reject the path to more authoritarianism and more government corruption.

They should all sign the Business for Democracy pledge, and they should all agree to support fair and progressive tax policies to reduce extreme inequality and prevent oligarchy.

There’s reason to hope that they will.

Dimon has opposed Trump before, resigning from Trump’s business council after Charlottesville, closing Trump’s accounts after the January 6 coup attempt, and speaking out against Trump on tariffs and on the independence of the Federal Reserve.

And Robin Hood donors have supported poverty-fighting policies and organizations opposed by Trump and MAGA Republicans, demonstrating some understanding of solidarity and the common good.

We will never agree with everything that banks and bankers say and do. Today, we’ll be in New York City to demand that they do the right thing—we call on all New Yorkers to join us.

It’s becoming clear that one of the most potent political issues of this election cycle is the debate over artificial intelligence and the massive data centers powering this rapidly evolving technology. Polling consistently shows that Americans overwhelmingly oppose the rapid buildout of polluting and disruptive AI data centers and are increasingly concerned about AI safety. Despite this, President Donald Trump and national Republicans have embraced Big Tech’s AI agenda, giving Democrats a popular advantage served up on a silver platter. Democrats should seize the opportunity by supporting a moratorium on AI data centers and a ban on AI “superintelligence” across the board.

For the last several years, with little public discussion or debate, AI data centers have invaded communities across the country with devastating consequences. Electricity prices are spiking, water resources are dwindling, the air is being polluted, and lives are being disrupted. In the past year, the backlash has greatly intensified. Since our partner organization Food & Water Watch became the first national group in the country to call for a full national moratorium on data centers, more than 500 organizations have joined the call. Responding to the popular demand, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) recently introduced moratorium legislation.

Public polling shows overwhelming opposition to data centers. According to a September 29 poll from Quinnipiac, 85% of Democrats, 76% of Independents, and even 55% of Republicans oppose new data centers in their communities, and 79% of all voters think safety is more important than innovation when it comes to AI. These staggering numbers reflect a level of consensus almost unheard of in America these days.

Big Tech is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to elect sympathetic members to Congress who will continue to do its bidding, but elections across the country have already shown people are seeing through the propaganda.

Yet Republican leadership shockingly continues to publicly embrace Big Tech and its AI data center push—most recently with Trump’s White House gathering of CEOs that produced nothing more than “promises” of voluntary self-regulation from the profit-blinded industry. Still, the response from national Democrats has been mixed at best. While Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez, Reps. Frank Pallone (D-NJ), Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), and others have called for an AI data center moratorium, most have continued to dither. House Democrats, for example, overwhelmingly supported the so-called Ratepayer Protection Act—more like the Ratepayer Deception Act—which included nothing more than nonbinding suggestions for local and state governments to consider. Meanwhile, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) has yet to organize a caucus position as he continues taking meetings with AI executives.

Similarly, at the state level, several ambitious governors continue to embrace the AI industry, and resist calls for a moratorium. In Pennsylvania, longtime industry supporter Josh Shapiro recently announced a regulatory package that continues to allow data center expansion in the state. In California, Gavin Newsom recently signed regulatory bills that also allow for continued industry buildout—and mostly won’t even kick in until 2028.

Fortunately, there are signs of hope. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) this week blasted the Ratepayer Protection Act as a “fraud” and successfully rallied Democrats to kill it. An increasing number of congressional candidates are now calling for a national AI data center moratorium. In New York, following the passage of legislation earlier this year, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced a one-year moratorium on data centers. Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek recently halted state permits for data centers while calling for a longer-term moratorium. Democratic gubernatorial candidates in Kansas and Michigan have pledged to institute moratoria, and in Texas, Gina Hinojosa has made data centers such an electric issue that it forced industry ally Gov. Greg Abbot to temporarily pause new permits.

Big Tech is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to elect sympathetic members to Congress who will continue to do its bidding, but elections across the country have already shown people are seeing through the propaganda. Throughout the primary season, voters chose to elect anti-data center candidates despite industry spending. Some communities even voted out local officials who allowed data centers in their communities.

Democrats have a golden opportunity to capitalize on this issue, win big in November, and take real action on AI data centers to protect people and the environment. They must stand up to Big Tech, strongly support data center moratoria and a ban on artificial superintelligence, and then work to implement these policies as a top priority in the new year.

I was in the classroom for enough years to spot a bully from a mile away. At first glance, Mike Rogers doesn’t seem too threatening, but as you get closer, you realize that he’s just another Donald Trump wannabe. Rogers has been actively working to disenfranchise and demean Black Detroiters for decades.

Folks across the city are fed up over the conditions of our schools; closures due to excessive heat are now regular. These conditions can be traced back to the mismanagement that unraveled when Mike Rogers served as the state Senate majority floor leader and PA 10 became law, the legislation that allowed the takeover of Detroit schools. He bears responsibility as an architect of this educational breakdown.

I started my career in 1998 teaching second and fifth grades at John Lynch Elementary School on the east side. It was just before the Detroit public school system changed dramatically; the democratically elected school board had their power taken from them while the state installed unaccountable bureaucrats to make decisions on behalf of Detroit families’ futures. The result? Our votes and voices got ignored, while a $100 million operating surplus turned into a $200 million deficit.

We don’t need another leader representing us in Washington who is trying to trample over our rights as Black folks.

Rogers’ disregard for Black Detroiters didn’t stop there. He’s no moderate; he’s a radical whose campaign has numerous ties to Christian Nationalists while parroting Trump’s racist attitudes about our city.

His record is all there. In just the past few years alone, Rogers fundraised with a former state legislator who made racist remarks about African Americans, had someone on his student outreach team who defended a group chat filled with praise of Hitler and slurs, and defended Trump making the city of Detroit a scapegoat. Not to also mention that one of his largest financial backers is a Texas oil tycoon’s PAC associated with white nationalist Nick Fuentes.

They say you are the company you keep. And what does that say about Mike Rogers?

Rogers has long stood in the way of Black Detroiters’ full participation in democracy, and that started when he was first a state legislator in the nineties. Some argue he was just a standard, Bush-era neoconservative back in the day who supported DeVos school voucher schemes, but today he’s transitioned into a full-on MAGA mouthpiece.

Consider how Rogers has changed his tune on the Big Lie. We all remember how in 2020 Trump claimed the election was rigged partly based on conspiracies around ballot counting in Detroit. At the time, Rogers tried to distance himself from the soon-to-be impeached president, so much so that he wrote a Washington Post opinion piece on the eve of the January 6 insurrection urging Republican lawmakers to uphold the will of the people.

Now, Rogers is a full-on election denier. Not only has Rogers claimed that his loss in the 2024 US Senate race was “stolen” despite an audit confirming it was completely fair, he’s now promoting the worst of Trump’s voter intimidation tactics against Black voters.

At an April 17, 2026 Kalamazoo County GOP meeting, Rogers described recruiting off-duty or retired police officers as poll watchers in Detroit, saying, "Try to intimidate them, please," and, "All you got to do is open your jacket and you see the badge on the belt.” Not only is voter intimidation a federal crime, but calling for this in the largest majority-Black city in the country reeks of racism.

Mike Rogers would be a reliable vote for Donald Trump’s agenda if he’s elected. That means Republicans will be closer to passing the SAVE Act, which are plainly Jim Crow-like tactics that disenfranchise voters by requiring people to show documents like a birth certificate or passport to vote that are inaccessible for many.

Mike Rogers was willing to give up any ounce of principles he may once have had to stand up to Trump’s lies just to get cool with the MAGA crowd. If you think he has the best interests of Black Michiganders in mind, I have a bridge to Canada to sell you.

We don’t need another leader representing us in Washington who is trying to trample over our rights as Black folks. Now, it’s on us to show up to the polls on or before November 3 to make our voices heard.

What do you tell a child attending public school when her teacher singles out and disparages her religion?

That is the question parents of Muslim children in Texas schools might soon confront. The Texas State Board of Education has approved new social studies standards taking effect in 2030 that require teachers to denigrate the religion of Islam with biased, ahistorical, and offensive characterizations.

One of the most controversial edits would require students to study "the Prophet Mohammed’s brutal military campaigns against Jewish and Christian tribes, the normalization of slavery, and the taking of female captives as harem slaves.”

All students have a right to attend public school without being singled out, stereotyped, or silenced because of their faith.

None of these claims stand up to a neutral reading of history.

Even prominent secular historians recognize that the Prophet and many of the Muslim leaders who followed him protected Jews, Christians, and other religious minorities under their governance; that Islamic law outright banned most forms of slavery and never permitted the type of race-based enslavement practiced in the West; and the Prophet was a married man who never had a so-called "harem."

The new curriculum’s characterization of warfare in Muslim history as "brutal" is also deeply dishonest.

All wars are inherently brutal, yet the new Texas curriculum does not require teachers to describe wars undertaken by the United States, European powers, Israel, Protestant and Catholic empires, the Greeks, the Romans, the Mongols, ancient Israelites, and other historical actors as “brutal.”

“Brutal” is not a historical fact; it is a judgment. Presenting that judgment as objective history crosses a line that public schools should never cross.

For a Muslim child attending public school, the new curriculum's misleading claims about Muslim history and its negative characterization of the Prophet strike directly at her faith, her identity, and the values she holds dear. It tells her that the historic figure her family reveres as a model of mercy, compassion, justice, and dignity is someone her own government has chosen to portray as “brutal."

That is not neutral instruction, and the harm caused by this biased curriculum can extend far beyond the classroom.

The anti-Muslim sentiment expressed by a teacher can follow a student from the classroom, to the cafeteria table, and into conversations with her classmates in the locker room. Imagine being a Muslim teenager when your teacher introduces a lesson that denigrates Islam. Imagine your classmates looking at you and asking, “But you're Muslim. What do you think about that?”

No child should have to sit at a desk while the adult entrusted with teaching her is required to pass judgment on the religious figure she loves or her faith. Muslim students should not be asked to absorb that message in silence, to manage the discomfort of their classmates, or to wonder whether their teacher sees their faith as something dangerous or inferior.

They should not have to listen politely while their most sacred figure is reduced to a state-mandated mischaracterization, then be expected to return to homework, group projects, and hallway conversations as if nothing happened.

A classroom lesson should not become a moment where a Muslim child feels targeted, isolated, or forced to choose between respecting the classroom environment and honoring her own religious identity.

These new standards do more than shape what students learn. They risk increasing anti-Muslim sentiment among non-Muslim students, silencing Muslim students, placing teachers in an extraordinarily difficult position, and creating classrooms where children may feel that their faith and the people they love are subjects of suspicion or contempt.

Texas teachers should teach historical facts about Islam and all religions accurately, fairly, and in their proper context.

Students can learn about the development of Islam; the civilizations it shaped; its contributions to math, science, art, and culture; and the positive and negative events in Muslim history, without reducing an entire faith to biased, dishonest characterizations.

Texas public school teachers have a responsibility to teach about the religion followed by one-fourth of the world’s population with the same fairness, accuracy, and respect it owes to every other faith discussed in their classrooms. No teachers should institutionalize hate or force students to defend, much less denigrate, their own faith

A Muslim student should be able to sit in a Texas history classroom and learn about the past without being forced to agree with the denigration of Islam, her Prophet, or her family’s beliefs. She should not have to listen to the person standing at the front of the room pass judgment on her faith and then be expected to carry that wound quietly through the rest of the school day. She should not have to prove that her faith is worthy of respect, that her family is good, or that she is American enough to belong.

All students have a right to attend public school without being singled out, stereotyped, or silenced because of their faith. Their faith belongs here. Their dignity belongs here. And their classrooms belong to them, too.

When confronted with an outrageous act of violence by their government, many Americans complain by saying that it’s “un-American” and “not who we are.” By definition, however, whatever we actually let our government do is exactly who we are.

The post Who We Are appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

The war in Ukraine can be ended permanently on terms that protect Ukraine's statehood, meet Russia's security concerns, and lay the foundation for a durable European security order. As another round of negotiations gears up in Norway, I propose a settlement concluded as a single package, signed by Ukraine and Russia, adopted by a vote of the United Nations Security Council under Chapter VII of the Charter, and guaranteed jointly by the five permanent members of the Council together with other states that choose to join. The proposal rests on the principle of indivisible security set out in the Helsinki Final Act and the Charter of Paris.

The package would have four core commitments.

The first is Ukraine's permanent neutrality, adopted in a constitutional law on the model of Austria's law of 1955, which would return Ukraine to the founding choice of its Declaration of State Sovereignty of 1990. Ukraine would join no military alliance and host no foreign bases or forces, whether of NATO, the European Union, their member states, or Russia. Neutrality would not mean disarmament, and Ukraine would retain armed forces for its own defense.

The second is that Ukraine would pursue its candidacy for membership in the European Union as a permanently neutral state, with a neutrality protocol in its accession treaty on the model of Ireland's, and Russia would affirm that Ukraine's membership in the EU is consistent with Russia's security.

The third is an armistice line drawn along the line of contact on the date of signature. Each side would exercise de facto jurisdiction on its side of the line, neither would recognize the other's territorial claims, and both would renounce force in any future adjustment. This formula is compatible with both countries' constitutions, which bar or severely restrict the cession of territory.

The fourth is the end of NATO enlargement eastward. At signature the North Atlantic Council would declare that NATO will not admit Ukraine or other new members in Eastern Europe or the South Caucasus, withdrawing the Bucharest pledge of 2008.

The settlement would take effect as a permanent end of hostilities on signature, not as a temporary ceasefire, and its provisions would be implemented in stages under international verification. No element would be negotiated in isolation, and no party would be asked to make a concession in advance of signature.

The territorial arrangements are designed to address the concerns and claims of both sides. Ukrainian forces would withdraw from the part of Donetsk region that Ukraine now controls, which would become a demilitarized special zone. Russian forces would not enter it, the existing local civil administration would continue to function, and its final status would be left to negotiation. Russia would withdraw from the areas it holds in Dnipropetrovsk region and from the Kinburn Spit. A Northern Security Zone would be demilitarized on both sides of the Russian-Ukrainian border, and Russian forces would leave the areas they hold in Kharkiv and Sumy regions as Ukrainian forces withdraw from their side. The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant would remain under Russian control with IAEA safety oversight and would sell an agreed share of its electricity to Ukraine at cost.

A demilitarized belt would run along both sides of the armistice line, with heavy weapons and long-range strike systems withdrawn to agreed distances, and mutual ceilings on forces would apply in the border regions on both sides. In the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, commercial navigation would be free for all Ukrainian and Russian ports, and attacks on shipping and ports would be prohibited.

The settlement in Ukraine should also begin the repair of European security as a whole. NATO and Russia would agree on a moratorium on ground-launched intermediate-range missiles in Europe, refrain from deploying nuclear weapons in any additional state, and restore the NATO-Russia Council. Normal diplomatic relations would be restored on both sides. The parties would convene the first summit of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe since 2010 to entrust the OSCE with monitoring the settlement, verifying arms limits, and overseeing the provisions on rights.

Questions of language, education, culture, and religion would be resolved according to European standards, with the Russian language treated on the same basis as Ukraine's other minority languages, and Russia would accept the same obligations toward Ukrainian speakers and religious communities on its side of the line. All obligations concerning extremism and incitement would be mutual and monitored by the OSCE. Prisoners of war would be exchanged on an all-for-all basis, detained civilians released, and separated children reunited with their families.

Sanctions would be lifted during 2027. Russia's immobilized sovereign assets would also be released, and private property seized or immobilized on both sides would be restored. An international reconstruction fund administered by the European Investment Bank would finance reconstruction on both sides of the line, with contributions from all parties, Russia included, in a common effort rather than as reparations. Gas transit through Ukraine could resume wherever there are willing buyers, without any commitment by the European Union to purchase Russian gas.

A report of serious violation by an OSCE monitoring mission of unarmed observers from states outside NATO would trigger consultations among the guarantors and referral to the Security Council. Ukraine would lift martial law and hold elections under OSCE observation, and the newly elected Verkhovna Rada would ratify the settlement and adopt the constitutional law on neutrality, while the Russian Federal Assembly would ratify it at the same stage.

This proposed settlement addresses the causes of the war rather than only its symptoms. Europe has been largely absent from the design of the peace. By putting forward such a framework, European governments can take the lead in building Europe’s indivisible security and help end a war that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives and carries a continuing risk of confrontation between nuclear powers.

It struck me the other day that ‘peace’ is a word we’re not using much at present. Our war in Iran is unpopular, for sure, but there’s not really a ‘peace movement’ to end it (though the midterm elections are in some measure a proxy for that). When we talk about it, it’s in the context of "forever wars," as in "what a pain for us to have to fight," or it’s about the way that war has raised prices. We seem barely to have noticed that we have attacked another country, killed its leaders, bombed its schools, made life as impossible as we can for its citizens, not to mention billions of other humans who are dealing not with higher prices at the pump but with no access to fertilizer or fuel.

But actually this is the perfect moment for a revival of the peace movement—because it’s easier now than ever before to imagine the rapid transition to a more peaceful world. That’s because all of a sudden we have an alternative to oil, and if you look around us, oil is the cause, the weapon, and the casualty of our current round of conflicts. More than at any point in our past, oil has become inextricably bound up in warfare, which means we could in short order move past it, in ways that I don’t think we’ve focused on clearly enough.

I’m thinking about all this because I’ve taken a day off of the campaign trail to come to Independence, Missouri (just a stone’s throw from the Kansas Senate race!). The town is best known as Harry Truman’s home, but it’s also the headquarters of a denomination, the Community of Christ, that had been unknown to me until they asked me if I’d accept their annual International Peace Award, which had gone in previous years to some of my real heroes: Dolores Huerta, Rev. James Lawson, Terry Tempest Williams, Jane Goodall.

As people in these nations endure horrific lives, and the world edges closer to truly unspeakable catastrophe, the fact that it’s all connected to oil suggests a way out: which is to make oil less important.

As it turns out, the Community of Christ is an interesting group—they’re descended from the Mormons who didn’t follow Brigham Young to Utah but instead stayed in the Midwest with the family of Joseph Smith after he was killed by an armed mob. Over the years they drifted apart from their Utah brethren, until in the last generation they’ve become much closer to the Protestant mainline, indeed an avowedly progressive church, led by a woman, committed to LGBT participation, and very focused on peace. As I write this, I’m looking out on a Japanese garden, planted with a sister community in that country, in recognition of the complicated role that Independence and its most famous son played in the planet’s nuclear history; I’ve just come from a daily Prayer for Peace service. If I had to describe this group, I’d say: Imagine Unitarians, except that they believe in Jesus and are earnestly Midwestern in their manners and customs. I like them very very much; they’ve built something special.

Anyway, the fact that I needed to give a talk as part of this awards ceremony got me more focused than I usually am on questions of peace, and the more I thought, the simpler my task seemed. The world is obviously at war right now; in fact, one Times columnist mused last month that World War III may already be in its early stages. Russian President Vladimir Putin is hammering civilian infrastructure across Ukraine, as his ongoing and unprovoked attack nears the five-year mark. The US, having attacked Venezuela and then Iran, finds itself running short of missiles and interceptors, bad news for the Saudis who are suddenly facing strikes from renegade Yemenis. There are plenty of other conflicts around the world, some military and some for the moment just running on intimidation and coercion—the US siege of Cuba, for instance, which is killing silently. (In 2018, infant mortality on the island was 4 per 1,000 births, lower than in the US. Now, thanks to us, it’s more than double that).

War, of course, has many causes—ethnic and religious supremacy, personal ambition—but it is very simple to see the degree to which oil plays a crucial part in so many of these conflicts, as cause, as weapon, and increasingly as vulnerability.

Consider. We attacked Venezuela, holder of the world’s second-largest oil reserves—as far as I can tell there’s been no effort by our leaders to explain this in terms of human rights or democracy, but only as an effort to secure its oil supplies. Read the “fact sheet” the White House put out this summer about our purposes there:

In the biggest oil deal in world history, President Donald J. Trump has secured US majority control of more than 65 billion barrels of proven oil reserves in Venezuela—vastly expanding our current US territorial proven reserves of roughly 46 billion barrels. This deal secures our energy dominance for the next century—all at zero cost to the United States. The deal, signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, gives the US government powerful governance rights, economic ownership, and guaranteed low-cost off-take from a new private Venezuelan oil champion, which will be the second-largest private oil company by reserves in the world.

Our attack on Iran was somewhat more complex, clearly affected by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s desire to cripple the Tehran regime (and stay out of jail) but also clearly driven by Trump’s fascination with the world’s third-largest oil and gas reserves. In March, for instance, Trump said in a social media post that

the US would hit Iran "VERY HARD TONIGHT" and would "assume total control" of Iran's oil and gas industries, including the key Kharg Island oil terminal, in the "not too distant future."

As he explained to the Financial Times:

To be honest with you, my favorite thing is to take the oil in Iran but some stupid people back in the US say: "Why are you doing that?" But they’re stupid people.

And whatever the cause, oil has clearly become the weapon in this ugly and stupid war, with each side trying to close off the other’s crude traffic, in hopes of forcing economic capitulation. Trump may be in the harder place here, because he’s facing an election soon, and despite his best attempts to render the electorate impotent, it appears we will actually be allowed to vote somewhat freely, and that $6 diesel may be coming close to “mutilization of our children” as a campaign issue.

Trump’s clever response to this dilemma has been to betray the people of Ukraine. Remember, Putin was able to attack them because of his country’s oil wealth (John McCain’s classic line: “a gas station with nukes”), and he used his hydrocarbons to try and win the war early on, cutting off the supply to Western Europe in an effort to get them to abandon the defense of Kyiv. Now he’s using his supply of diesel (and the lure of lots of “deals” with Trump associates) to get America to walk away from its one-time ally; Trump on Saturday suspended the Lindsay Graham Act sanctioning Russian oil, in an act that even at this late date left diplomats speechless.

In particular Putin wants Trump to get Ukraine to stop attacking his oil refineries, the tactic that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has hit on during the past six months, and which is causing endless pain (and spiking EV sales) in Russia. Trump, of course, has obliged, and his main satrap (or is it the other way round?) Elon Musk has apparently literally sabotaged his Starlink system so as to endanger Ukrainians. It is oil top to bottom—cause, effect, weapon. As it is in the Gulf, where the Houthis and the Iranians target pipelines and pumping stations in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, who in turn use their oil wealth to hit back. As it is in Cuba, where our main weapon is an oil blockade.

Here’s how Trump put that one back in January

THERE WILL BE NO MORE OIL OR MONEY GOING TO CUBA—ZERO! I strongly suggest they make a deal, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

And in March:

They have no money, they have no oil, they have no nothing. They have nice land. They have nice landscape.

And Marco Rubio, in June:

For decades, the regime has stolen and hoarded available fuel—using it for the Castros’ private jet, the security services forces used to repress the Cuban people, to keep empty tourist hotels lit up, and to bus people in for fake protests and political stunts.

Mostly, of course, they used it to run hospitals and schools and a power grid for people’s homes. But no more. As The Associated Press reported in August:

A 20-minute burst of electricity is a small miracle in Havana nowadays—a miracle that sometimes comes at 3 am.

That’s when 72-year-old Leidis Rodríguez frantically cooked beans after the lights switched on this week following hours of uninterrupted blackouts.

“The power has come back on, everyone go!” Rodríguez shouted.

Public transportation and cultural events have come to a standstill. So has tourism, the country’s economic engine, especially as tourism companies have withdrawn, leaving 25,000 hospitality jobs vacant. Flights to the island are regularly canceled and workdays have been shortened to adjust to the new reality of a Cuba without power. Medicine shortages have worsened and food rots in fridges without power.

“If there’s no electricity, there’s no water because it doesn’t get pumped to the tank. When there’s water, there’s no electricity,” Rodríguez lamented.

Anyway, as people in these nations endure horrific lives, and the world edges closer to truly unspeakable catastrophe, the fact that it’s all connected to oil suggests a way out: which is to make oil less important.

And there’s really exactly one way to do that, which everyone with a heart or a mind (or a calculator) is edging toward: replacing it with clean, cheap, far-less-vulnerable power from the sun and wind. That’s what Cuba is doing, installing solar panels faster than anyplace else on Earth. It’s what Ukraine is trying to do, with leadership from heroes like Svitlana Romanko and Razom We Stand. (I was unsurprised to see that she’d given up on Trump this week: “Europe must now lead, closing every remaining Russian energy loophole this month, and proving that the democratic world will keep starving Putin's war machine even when the White House will not."). And it’s what all the bystanders to these wars are trying to do, as they move decisively toward clean energy and EVs to cope with the fallout of events they did not initiate.

Since Trump likes plaques, we should give him one as EV salesman of the decade. We will look back on 2026 as the year that it became entirely clear the Internal Combustion Engine was a relic—sales of electric cars are soaring everywhere. Six hundred thousand electrics were sold in Europe in September, up 39% from the year before. As Michelle Lewis reports:

The UK, France, Spain, Portugal, and Finland all posted their highest monthly EV sales ever. France’s sales climbed 78% year over year to almost 80,000, while Germany’s rose 61% to 117,000.

Look: Every EV sold drops the demand for oil. Every heat pump sold cuts the demand for natural gas. Every solar system that goes up on a roof or balcony produces clean energy with no need for hydrocarbons. And all of it not only helps take some pressure off the climate, it helps—really, far more quickly—to rein in the siege of warfare now underway. If we lived on a planet that ran mostly on wind and solar power, war would be less likely. It’s hard to fight over sunshine. I’ve heard often from people over the years, asking if the climate movement and the peace movement could be more united, and it seems to me that this is the key.

The solar panel is the new peace symbol. Pass it on.

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• Join Ted and Jamarl for a timely conversation with Prof. Gideon Rahat, leading expert on the Israeli election system. With Israel’s elections days away, Rahat—political scientist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute—brings deep knowledge of how the country’s electoral rules, party dynamics, and voting mechanics actually function. Rahat’s expertise offers a clear look at the mechanics of one of the world’s most closely watched contests.

Prof. Gideon Rahat is a political scientist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute.⁠ He specializes in electoral systems, political reform, parties, candidate selection, and the personalization of politics. He co-edits The Elections in Israel series and co-edited The Oxford Handbook of Israeli Politics and Society. Key books include Democracy Within Parties (with Reuven Hazan) and The Politics of Regime Structure Reform in Democracies.⁠ Rahat is a leading expert on Israel’s proportional, nationwide closed-list system and the politics of reforming it.

Conflict reporter/writer/cartoonist Ted Rall and political analyst Jamarl Thomas deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM ET.

Today we also discuss:

• The Justice Department charges 28 green-card holders in California with voting crimes and races to block the state from counting ballots of alleged noncitizens, intensifying a clash over election integrity.⁠

• ICE detains a U.S. citizen in Long Beach; officers find him bleeding and handcuffed after ICE deliberately ran over him and his bike, then rush him to the hospital as his family says agents tased and pinned him.⁠

• Saudi Arabia cancels its flagship 2026 “Davos in the Desert” investment summit and shifts it to 2027 as Houthi strikes hammer the kingdom and force Riyadh officials to work from home.⁠

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I have sat in the room for every congressional hearing on Medicare for All since Congress held its first one in 2019. I am one of very few people, and even fewer healthcare providers, who can say that. I was there at the beginning, alongside representatives from organizations including National Nurses United and Physicians for a National Health Program, invited by Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal to witness and advocate for that historic moment. That first hearing centered on H.R. 1384, the Medicare for All Act of 2019, introduced by Jayapal and championed alongside Congresswoman Debbie Dingell. It was the first time in history that Congress held a hearing specifically on Medicare for All legislation.

I watched Ady Barkan testify through a computerized voice as ALS took away his ability to speak on his own, telling Congress what it costs a family to fight a terminal illness in a country that treats healthcare as a commodity. Then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) appeared at the start of the hearing, a sign of how significant the moment was even to Democratic leaders who were not prepared to embrace the policy. Outside, advocates and reporters crowded the hallways because the room could not hold everyone who wanted to witness what was happening.

That room does not exist anymore. From the unique vantage point of someone who has been present at every congressional hearing on Medicare for All, the shift is impossible to miss.

The Math Has Broken

Employers are projected to face another 9.5% increase in healthcare costs in 2027, pushing average employer-sponsored healthcare costs above $19,000 per employee and marking a fourth consecutive year of near-double-digit increases. Employees are projected to spend about $5,300 themselves in 2026 through payroll contributions and out-of-pocket costs, up 7.9% from the year before.

From where I have sat through every congressional Medicare for All hearing since 2019, the most important change is not that opposition has disappeared. It has not. It is that the old political assumptions no longer fit the evidence.

At some point, the status quo becomes the disruption. A new Yale-led preprint estimates that a national single-payer system modeled on the Medicare for All Act could reduce annual health spending by $1.04 trillion, nearly 20%, while averting roughly 114,000 deaths each year.

Washington Is Underestimating the Support

A national Data for Progress survey found 65% of voters support a Medicare for All system, including 78% of Democrats, 71% of independents, and 49% of Republicans. After voters heard competing arguments both for and against the policy, 58% still supported it. Two-thirds of voters say the government does too little to help Americans afford healthcare, while nearly two-thirds hold unfavorable views of private insurers and pharmaceutical companies.

It is increasingly difficult to describe a policy with numbers like these as politically fringe.

Democrats Are Behind Their Own Voters

For years, Democratic leaders treated Medicare for All as something the party's progressive wing might demand but broader electorates would punish. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) changed that conversation more than perhaps any other national political figure. He made Medicare for All a defining issue in two presidential campaigns and introduced the Senate Medicare for All Act.

One image from the 2020 Democratic presidential primary captures how politically risky support for the policy still seemed. During the first Democratic debates in 2019, candidates were asked whether they were willing to replace private health insurance with a government-run plan. On this night, only Sanders and Kamala Harris raised their hands, and Harris later said she had misunderstood the question. Even on a Democratic debate stage, fully embracing Medicare for All was something most candidates were reluctant to do.

Six years later, Democratic candidates can hardly raise their hands fast enough.

The party's electorate is moving toward, not away from, a policy Washington still too often treats as politically dangerous.

In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed won the Democratic nomination for US Senate while championing Medicare for All. I met El-Sayed at the Senate's first Medicare for All hearing in 2022, where he testified as a physician and public health leader in support of the policy. Sanders chaired that hearing. Four years later, El-Sayed won the Democratic nomination for Senate in Michigan. In Illinois, Juliana Stratton won the Democratic Senate primary while pledging to fight for Medicare for All. In New Jersey, physician and combat surgeon Dr. Adam Hamawy won a crowded congressional primary while campaigning on Medicare for All and rejecting corporate PAC money.

Medicare for All was part of the fundamental economic argument these candidates made about affordability, corporate power, and what Democrats should stand for. Their success is evidence that the party's electorate is moving toward, not away from, a policy Washington still too often treats as politically dangerous.

Democrats should also pay attention to what has happened with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. The Washington Post has documented how AIPAC's brand has become increasingly politically toxic in Democratic primaries. Health insurance and pharmaceutical money could be headed down a similar path. As anger toward the healthcare industry grows, accepting money from companies profiting from the system voters want changed becomes harder to explain. A candidate running on Medicare for All might not need a complicated attack line when an opponent is taking money from the very industry they are promising to confront.

The Tide Has Turned

From where I have sat through every congressional Medicare for All hearing since 2019, the most important change is not that opposition has disappeared. It has not. It is that the old political assumptions no longer fit the evidence. Healthcare costs are rising faster than workers can absorb them. A majority of voters still support Medicare for All after hearing arguments against it. Candidates are winning major Democratic primaries while running openly on the policy.

Democrats have spent years asking whether supporting Medicare for All is too politically risky. They should now be asking whether opposing it is becoming the greater risk.

The tide isn't turning. It has turned. Democrats can recognize it and build around it, or they can be the last ones standing on the beach wondering what happened.

Imagine if we decided to stop fighting wars and spent that money on healthcare instead. What if we watched one less hour of TV or doomscrolling and dedicated the same amount of time to exercising every day? Every minute we waste on something stupid could be redirected to productive activity; every dollar we squander can be invested wisely.

I am reminded that the passive decision to yield to inertia has as much impact as the active move to change direction, when I read about the prodigious amount of money and time we pour into electoral politics. More than $10 billion has been spent on ads for the 2026 midterms so far, with the full cycle projected to reach about $11.6 billion.

This already exceeds the final ad totals for 2020 and 2022 and is on track to surpass the $11.2 billion spent in the 2024 presidential election. The 2022 midterms saw ad spending of about $8.9 billion.

Americans who have been around a while know that, regardless of November’s results, nothing will get significantly better for the average person. The system will remain about the same. Wages will continue to decline, prices will still rise, we’ll always be at war, there will never be high-speed rail or free college or universal healthcare, the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer.

Only two political events could significantly improve America’s bleak trajectory: revolution or radical reform. Violently overthrow the state, or leverage the existing system by elevating one or more “third” parties outside the Democrats and Republicans.

Most Americans—62%—tell Gallup that the Republican and Democratic parties “do such a poor job” representing Americans that a third major party is needed. Only 30% say the two major parties do an adequate job.

Yet voters do nothing to turn a minor third party into a major one. They don’t donate money to them. They don’t volunteer to work for them. They don’t vote for them. “Overall, 55% of U.S. adults say they are very or somewhat likely to vote for a third-party or independent candidate in an election for president, Congress or governor,” Gallup reports. “However, just 15% of Americans say they are very likely to do so. Ongoing frustrations with one or both of the two major parties make the idea of a third party sound appealing…However, the prospects of a viable third party are dampened by soft support for third-party candidates, likely because Americans want their vote to matter in elections.”

It’s time to stop focusing on whether your vote will go to the winner, or even if it will count.

Your major-party vote will count insofar that it will probably be tallied. But, under this two-party system, it probably won’t matter.

Imagine what a party like the Greens or Libertarians could do with even a fraction of the $11 billion spent on 2026 midterm ads.

Imagine if a third of the millions of people who attended the October 17th “No Kings: Vote Early” rallies—events organized by Democrats to encourage voter turnout for Democrats—came together instead to canvass for a small party, or took a page from French students and workers and raised hell for the next month.

Imagine if no one turned out to vote for either the Democrats or the Republicans—the parties that most Americans despise—this November.

Money, energy, time, and votes are finite. We’re wasting them on a corrupt system that does nothing for us. Why don’t we spend those precious resources more wisely?

Media propaganda cons citizens into thinking that voting matters. America’s history of crushed outsider movements and third parties signals that another attempt at real change would likely be doomed too. Lesser-evilism is seductive: this election is important, this election is now, we can’t allow the even-worse major party to win, we can build a minor-party alternative at some point in the future, not now in this very important election of our lifetimes.

The main psychological block to escaping the two-party trap, I think, is FOMO—fear of missing out. News media coverage of electoral horse races and all those ads transform the red-vs-blue BS into sports-like contests that everyone talks about. Not unlike that left-out feeling of living in a city whose major-league team is in the World Series or Super Bowl when you don’t follow sports, deciding not to care about an election and telling your friends and family members that you don’t care entails risk: exclusion, being insulted as apathetic, being considered unintelligent and/or unengaged. That goes double if you explain that you’re working to overthrow or reform the system entirely, and that supporting Democrats or Republicans diverts the energy, time, and money needed to actually change things.

(Ted Rall, the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, is the author of “Never Mind the Democrats. Here’s What’s Left.” Subscribe: tedrall.Substack.com. He is co-host of the podcast “DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas.”)

 

The post A Vote Is Such a Waste appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

This week, a student—a former US Marine—approached me at the end of a class to ask, "But don’t you think Iran, Russia, or China might invade us?”

“No,” I replied. “That’s another fear instilled by the merchants of death. It is the empires that invade; everyone else must resist them. If China ever invades us, it will be because this country has insisted that it do so: those at the top, because wars and conflicts are their best business and strategy; those at the bottom, because of their vocation as slaves and their lack of class consciousness.”

It is an old superstition, promoted by the mercenary media, that empires fall because an external enemy invades them. “Rome fell due to barbarian invasions,” history textbooks repeat, as if a handful of Germanic tribes could have overcome the military machine that had crushed Carthage and Attila himself in present-day France.

Every time a dumpster burns or a storefront window is smashed on the streets of France, the mercenary media suddenly discover “violence.”

Empires do not fall because they are invaded; they are invaded because they fall. If one day China establishes a military base in the United States, it will be because this society passionately accepted not only 800 bases in other countries but also a collective suicide: obscene inequalities; exploitation and demonization of workers (both its own and others’); marginalization of the dispossessed; racial, religious, and class-based hatreds; divisions instilled by the feudal lords… The perfect formula for large-scale civil conflict. As long as the prosperity born of imperial bloodsucking lasts, patriotic fanaticism masks internal colonization. Then come the demagogues peddling nostalgia and more hatred—not to delay the fall, but to hasten it.

How is this absurdity possible? Through the concentration of power, accelerated according to the formula of compound interest: the legal mafias of sects and lobbies. Resistance lies in the very same thing: in the unity of the peoples.

Around 1830, when its ships dominated the seas, Great Britain produced about 5% of the world’s wealth. China still produced 30%. An island with an economy six times smaller imposed opium, “free trade treaties,” and a campaign of evangelization that left 30 million dead upon the greatest civilization of its time.

It wasn’t GDP, that obsession of modern economists. It was the capacity to concentrate. London concentrated capital, fleets, trading companies, and, above all, an idea of itself. China was rich, but its wealth was scattered, its state worn down, its court divided. When the “civilizing” cannons arrived, the giant was already wounded from within. Later, the Taiping Christian Rebellion would kill more Chinese than all the Opium Wars combined.

Wealth follows empires, but empires rise through fanatical centralization. The first to fragment falls. The discussion must center on the type of union: the union Hitler achieved in Germany, or the union the Iroquois achieved through their radical democracy, which survived for centuries as the Great Law of Peace?

Power has never resided in individuals, no matter how much liberalism has built its mythology around the entrepreneur and the dogma that “my selfishness is good for others.” It has resided in unions: lobbies, sects, corporations, unions, churches. A thousand people organized under a single conviction can accomplish more than a million scattered individuals.

Wages and arguments alone are not enough to mobilize a society. Faith is required. The Puritans who believed themselves to be the chosen people, the settlers of Manifest Destiny, the missionaries who accompanied slave traders with the Bible under their arms—all of them, too. Not to mention the Zionists.

There is nothing more powerful than shared madness. When the fanatic wins, any genocide becomes civilization. Plunder becomes the free market. Attacks are self-defense. Great Britain did not impose opium: It opened markets. The United States did not invade: It liberated. Israel does not massacre children: It defends itself. Narrative is not merely an embellishment of power; it is one of its most effective weapons, because it convinces even its own victims.

But the faith that unites during times of ascent divides during times of decline. When the promise of prosperity ceases to be fulfilled, fanaticism turns inward, and tribes begin to view one another as enemies. This is what we are seeing in the United States. The dollar—Washington’s exorbitant privilege for 80 years—is losing ground in central bank reserves. Gold, the age-old witness to mistrust, is breaking records. The debt exceeds $39 trillion, and interest payments on it drain more resources than the Pentagon’s budget. Half the country views the other half as an existential threat. Militias, walls, distrust of elections and the courts. These are not isolated symptoms. It is the dissolution of that union born to conceal its deep divisions (state-based, racial, class-based) and which functioned as long as the fiction yielded enormous dividends—such as slavery.

Washington needs a new external enemy to continue privatizing fortunes and socializing debts. Now it’s China’s turn, then Iran’s… But neither Iran nor China would even dream of invading the United States. It’s enough for them to wait: If your enemy is making a mistake, don’t interrupt them.

Meanwhile, the new “banana republic” Europe is being militarized under Washington’s orders. To do so, it must defund its socialist institutions. As in Argentina, every time a dumpster burns or a storefront window is smashed on the streets of France, the mercenary media suddenly discover “violence.” They speak of vandalism, of radicals, of a threat to democratic order. They never “discover” it when a government eliminates labor rights won over generations; when a reform, decided in distant offices, forces millions to work longer for less; when the value produced by workers is transferred to VIP shareholders (hedge funds) and creditors; nor when their retirement savings are invested in the death industry. That violence doesn’t shatter windows. It shatters lives, and that’s what they call “liberal democracy,” capitalism’s master scam.

In the last 30 years alone, Western empires have bombed, invaded, and financed massacres that left millions dead, from Iraq to Libya, from the Sahel to Palestine. How many of those responsible have been held accountable in any court? None. The very same people who demand order on the streets of Paris have decreed chaos, slavery (today in Libya and Congo), hunger, and death in dozens of countries. Impunity is not a flaw in the system; it is its raison d’être.

By comparison, the violence of popular protests is minimal. It is the response of those who have exhausted the ballot box, the demands for justice, and the marches against endless wars and genocides. History confirms this with irrefutable regularity: No right was granted out of the generosity of the powerful. All were wrested through the pressure and violence of those below.

As the center fragments, the periphery learns the lesson that empires forget. The scattered peoples, humiliated by the organized force of a few, are beginning to recognize themselves in a common cause. The catalyst has been Gaza. We are on the path to a global intifada. The global power elites are investing fortunes in repression, propaganda, and elections to delay it. They may be able to postpone it for a few years. They will not be able to prevent it. The powder keg will continue to dry out, and a spark will do the rest.

We have all seen the horror movie where the villain or monster seems to be dead but somehow manages to come back to life and terrorizes its potential victims. Well, this is how we felt when we saw the signs “No Tax on Social Security” at President Donald Trump’s campaign rallies in Arizona and Georgia, proudly carried by supporters. This myth has long been discredited.

Back in May, for this publication, we pointed out that contrary to the claims of the Trump administration, the “One Big Beautiful Bill” did not end taxes on Social Security. Instead, what it did was establish a temporary tax break for some senior citizens that expires in 2028.

The Brookings and Urban Institute pointed out back in July 2025 that:

President Trump proposed eliminating taxes on Social Security benefits as part of his 2024 campaign. And one provision of the budget bill does reduce income taxes for older adults on all their income, including their Social Security benefits. But the measure includes no direct tax cut on Social Security. The budget measure includes a temporary $6,000 deduction for taxpayers over age 65, starting this year. But that tax reduction would benefit fewer than half of older adults, the Tax Policy Center estimates.

On October 1 of this year, the PBS News Hour fact-checked the “no tax on Social Security” claim and concluded:

The bill falls short of a full repeal of Social Security taxation. The bill gives an additional $6,000 tax deduction to people ages 65 and older. This does not mean all Social Security beneficiaries receive a tax cut (because some of them are under 65). Some people get the tax break without receiving Social Security (if they are over 65 and not collecting benefits yet). These deductions come on top of existing tax deductions for Americans over 65 years old—$2,000 if married or $1,600 if unmarried and not a surviving spouse.

This is not one of the many times when fact-checking political ads reveals misleading context or exaggeration. The “no tax on Social Security” claim is just factually incorrect or, in plain language, a lie. There is no way around this statement.

In addition to misleading on the Social Security provisions of the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” the Trump administration is hiding the fact that it hurt the solvency of the Social Security Trust fund. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget pointed out in June of 2025:

The Social Security and Medicare Trustees estimated in their 2025 annual reports on the programs that the retirement and hospital trust funds will become insolvent in 2033—only eight years from today. We estimate the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) would accelerate Social Security and Medicare insolvency by a year, to 2032. That’s when today’s 60-year-olds reach the full retirement age and when today’s youngest retirees turn 69.

So, how do we kill the myth that the “One Big Beautiful Bill” ended taxes on Social Security? We are not characters in a horror movie, but we have a sure way of getting rid of the no tax on Social Security monster. On Election Day, vote for candidates who will stand up for the truth about Social Security.

One of the really likeable things about Canada, along with public health care and politeness, is our penchant for reasoned debate as a way to settle our political differences.

So it’s been jarring to see the level of vitriol recently directed toward Avi Lewis, federal leader of the New Democratic Party, who has been an outspoken critic of Israel’s assault on Gaza and Palestinians.

Lewis, who is Jewish, has come under harsh attack from several prominent critics, especially in response to a recent social media post on the eve of Yom Kippur.

Globe and Mail columnist Robyn Urback accused Lewis of engaging in “antisemitism,” and public finance economist Jack Mintz denounced Lewis at an award ceremony, saying that anti-Israel critics “soon turn to antisemitism.”

Most unsettling however was an article in the National Post, written by Yoni Goldstein, former editor of the Canadian Jewish News, which accused Lewis of “endanger(ing) Jews everywhere in Canada,” and insisting that “(w)hen the community is endangered from the inside, reasoned debate and private conversations are no longer options.”

Instead of reasoned debate, Goldstein suggests Biblical law provides guidance for handling the threat allegedly posed by Lewis. Under the headline “Jewish law tells us how to deal with Avi Lewis,” Goldstein’s article recounts the story of God punishing the Biblical dissenter Korach, burning him and his followers alive, after Korach endangered the Jewish community.

While the article doesn’t directly call for violence against Lewis, it certainly hints at it.

Surely, any suggestion that religious law justifies bloodshed against political dissenters — or anyone else — is completely out of sync with Canadian values, no matter what the religion.

Lewis enraged some in the Jewish community by writing on the eve of a Jewish holy day: “For Jewish people, the personal has always been political and the political always personal. This year I’m reflecting on the fact that we failed to do our part to stop an ongoing genocide committed in our name.”

When accused of suggesting some sort of collective responsibility, Lewis clarified: “I spoke as a Jewish Canadian from a place of profound sadness. … Many Jews have said that we have not done enough as Jewish people, among a family of faiths and communities around the world.”

In The Breach, Judy Rebick pointed out that Lewis’ comment was reminiscent of the conscientious men who created the White Ribbon campaign (which opposed violence against women) because they felt a special responsibility as men to address such violence.

Lewis says that, as a Jew, he feels particularly strongly about Israel’s actions against Palestinians, since Israel sometimes claims to act on behalf of the Jewish people.

As a political leader with a megaphone, Lewis really does represent a danger — namely, to the fiercely pro-Israel voices that have long managed to suppress criticism of Israel both inside and outside the community.

The response in some quarters has been extreme, not only smearing Lewis, but even hinting at violence against him.

Lewis comes from an honourable tradition of dissent within the Jewish community. He’s proud that his great-grandfather, Moishe Losz, was a leader of the Jewish Labour Bund, a trade union and political movement that battled antisemitism in Poland, while strongly resisting Zionist calls to solve the problem of Jewish dispossession by taking land from Palestinians.

The struggle between the Bund and the Zionists was bitter, with Zionists ultimately triumphing and managing to establish the state of Israel on land formerly occupied by Palestinians. However, the plight of the Palestinians has remained a central focus for a segment of the Jewish community.

Lewis’s track record of defending Palestinian rights reverberates with this segment of Jewish opinion, and with many other Canadians. His stand for Palestinian justice is a principled one — and all the more laudable given the ferocity — and occasional menace — of his critics.

Donald Trump loves to put his name on things, and when it comes to the recent burst of inflation, it’s totally deserved. Trump and Republican politicians are doing their best to try to make a simple story complicated. But there is no doubt that Trump is the lead and almost sole author of the inflation we are now seeing.

Just to quickly clear away the stupid: We did have a large burst of inflation under Biden, just like the rest of the world. We were hit with a worldwide pandemic in Trump’s first term, which he apparently can’t remember. The pandemic led to a massive fall in output in 2020, while Trump was president.

When Biden took office in January of 2021, we were still down more than 10 million jobs from the pre-pandemic level. Biden’s recovery package quickly got back the lost jobs and got the unemployment rate down to 4.0 percent by the end of the year, far faster than anyone expected.

The reopening of the economy from the pandemic recession led to a burst of inflation in the United States, as it did in Germany, France, and everywhere else. Suddenly people were buying lots of things, and it took a while for businesses to ramp up production.

If Biden had cared less about getting people back to work, the recovery package could have been smaller, and the peak inflation rate might have been 1-2 percentage points lower. But the important part of the story is that inflation quickly came down.

Year-over-year inflation peaked at 9.0 percent in June of 2022. A year later, it was down to 3.1 percent. It was down to 2.6 percent by the election in November of 2024. Inflation was generally expected to continue to fall and to be at or near the Fed’s 2.0 percent target by the end of 2025.

But then Trump turned everything around. Inflation began to rise even before he took office, as households and businesses stocked up on imported goods in anticipation of Trump tariffs. Durable goods prices, which had been falling since early 2023, stopped falling and began to rise. The Consumer Price Index also stopped falling and started to rise. Year-over-year inflation hit 3.0 percent in September 2025 but then slowed to 2.7 percent by the end of the year.

It likely would have continued to slow through 2026. After all, Trump’s tariffs were primarily a one-time event. If he didn’t keep imposing new ones (a big “if”), it was reasonable to think that inflation would settle back down to its pre-tariff pace.

But we never got to test that theory. Trump decided to go to war with Iran at the end of February. As we all know, the stated rationale was crazy. Iran was not close to having nuclear weapons, and Trump himself had boasted about destroying the country’s nuclear program in a bombing strike the prior summer.

Logic doesn’t mean much to Donald Trump. He and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wanted to attack Iran, and whatever story they came up with was secondary.

Anyhow, regardless of their motives, they apparently did not expect that the Iranian government would both survive and retaliate by blocking oil from going through the Strait of Hormuz. This sent oil prices soaring, which is the biggest element in the current burst of inflation. However, since oil is not just gas for our cars, but also diesel, which is needed for transporting just about everything, the price hikes are spreading throughout the economy. Also, since much of the world’s fertilizer production takes place in the Gulf countries, fertilizer prices are also soaring. This had some effect on crops already but will be a much bigger deal next year.

The broad impact of Trump’s war on inflation can be clearly seen in the Producer Price Index. The latest year-over-year figure was 6.3 percent for September. Since this is inflation at the wholesale level, it will be showing up at the consumer level in the next few months. To be clear, the impact is not one-to-one, so this doesn’t mean that consumer inflation will be rising to 6.3 percent, but it means that the direction of change in future months will likely be higher, not lower.

This is very far from a number consistent with the Fed’s 2 percent target. And this is all Trump’s doing. One important difference from the 1970s inflation is that, unlike the 1970s, wages are not rising in step with inflation. The pace of wage growth slowed from 4.0 percent in 2023 and 2024 to 3.0 percent in the most recent data. This means that workers are falling further behind as prices accelerate. The higher prices are going to profits, not covering higher labor costs. That might be good news for Trump’s billionaire donors, but not for the rest of us.

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• France erupts in its biggest riots in years as education and living-cost protests explode into deadly chaos. Hooded rioters torch buildings and loot hundreds of shops while police blast tear gas; over 2,000 face arrest amid two deaths. President Macron vows accountability as unrest threatens to ignite Europe. Meanwhile, America’s “No Kings” rallies are subdued and hyperlocal, zeroing in on early voting, yet many Democratic candidates skip them.

Conflict reporter/writer/cartoonist Ted Rall and political analyst Jamarl Thomas deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM ET.

Today we also discuss:

• Israeli police arrest 10 suspects after masked settlers brutalize a Washington Post photojournalist and European diplomats during West Bank olive-harvest attacks. Levine suffers broken bones; international outrage mounts as violence surges ahead of Israel’s election. Trump delivers an unprecedented public endorsement of Netanyahu just nine days before Israel’s election, praising him as a “Great Warrior” and essential partner against Iran. Polls show Netanyahu’s coalition struggling. Is this election interference?

• Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov visits Tehran after Gulf states ask Moscow to use its influence at the UN to press Iran to halt attacks on regional neighbors.

• Putin proposes a November summit with Trump and Xi to forge a Ukraine War deal, excluding Zelensky. The idea, floated in an Oct. 9 call that also sealed a Russian diesel deal, alarms Kyiv and Europe amid warming Trump-Putin ties.

• Trump’s WaPo approval poll crashes to a record-low 33%, with 66% disapproving, as a new poll hands Democrats a clear midterm edge two weeks from Election Day. Inflation and an angry voter mood fuel the GOP’s bleak outlook.

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The 17th meeting of the Conference of the Parties, or COP17, to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, or CBD, is a major upcoming international summit focused on global measures to protect, restore, and sustainably manage nature.

It serves as the global review of collective progress on implementing the 2023-2030 Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF), adopted at COP15, evaluating whether countries are on track to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030.

This year's official theme is “Taking Action for Nature,” aiming to turn high-level commitments into concrete delivery.

This triple COP year brings together the three UN Rio Conventions for their Conferences of the Parties in quick succession to tackle the interconnected crises in climate (UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC, COP31), biodiversity (CBD COP17), and land (UN Convention to Combat Desertification COP17).

The KMGBF features four 2050 long-term goals and 23 2030 global targets to halt and reverse nature loss.

The four long-term goals are:

1. Protect and Restore: Focus on ecosystem integrity and connectivity, and halt human-induced extinctions of known threatened species.
2. Prosper with Nature: Ensure that biodiversity is sustainably used and managed and nature’s contributions to people, including ecosystem functions and services, are valued, maintained, and enhanced.
3. Share Benefits Fairly: Ensure equitable sharing of benefits from genetic resources and traditional knowledge, especially with Indigenous peoples and local communities.
4. Invest and Collaborate: Close the $700 billion per year biodiversity finance gap and align financial flows.

The State Of Biodiversity

The world is off track to meet most of its 2030 targets under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.

• Although 85% of parties have revised or updated their National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs), delivery on the ground is far too slow.
• We are currently on track to meet only 1 of the framework's 23 global targets for 2030. This is Target 8: Minimising the impacts of climate change and ocean acidification on biodiversity.
• The central goal of protecting at least 30% of global land and sea areas by 2030 requires urgent acceleration.
• A global biodiversity financing gap of an estimated $700 billion per year remains to support the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Financial flows that subsidise or drive nature loss continue to outpace conservation investments.
• In positive news, more than 130 major global businesses and financial institutions have stepped forward to actively lobby governments for subsidy reforms.
• The UN Desertification Summit delivered a milestone $1.2 billion investment for the Rangelands Initiative, which will also benefit biodiversity goals.
• Leading the way, the European Union has remained on track to double its international biodiversity financing. It also became the first official party to submit its comprehensive 7th National Report under the Convention on Biological Diversity, setting a transparent benchmark for other nations.

Biodiversity Is A Planetary Issue: What Must We Do?

(Image by FAO | CC BY-SA 3.0)

Managing the biodiversity crisis within political borders is impossible; we must prioritize a global approach that manages Earth’s interconnected systems.

The health of Earth’s living systems quite literally determines the long-term survival and stability of human civilization.

Biodiversity is the physical fabric that regulates the planet’s biogeochemical cycles (carbon, water, nitrogen). Losing biodiversity degrades the Earth system’s resilience and, with it, its capacity to absorb shocks like climate change, pollution, and extreme weather.

Climate change and biodiversity loss are twin crises driven by the same systemic roots. Healthy ecosystems act as essential carbon sinks and natural buffers, helping stabilize the climate.

We simply must safeguard our planet's natural boundaries. An important consideration is whether national commitments are scaling up fast enough to pull humanity back from irreversible tipping points (such as the destruction of the Amazon rainforest and widespread coral reef collapse).

To maintain a stable, habitable planet, humanity must not cross these thresholds. By shifting from extraction to regeneration, we can reduce humanity’s demands through industrial agriculture, mining, overfishing, and urban expansion. Days like Earth Overshoot Day remind us that humanity consumes more resources than the planet can regenerate annually.

Nature must be treated as a finite resource and respected as such. Harmful subsidies (like those backing fossil fuels or intensive industrial monocultures) must be redirected toward regenerative land and water use.

Youth At COP17

Young people participate in the Global Climate Strike in London on March 15, 2019. (Photo by Garry Knight)

Children and young people are disproportionately affected by climate change and biodiversity loss; therefore, their voices are particularly important at major climate and biodiversity conferences.

Today's decisions have long-term consequences for their health, education, well-being, and future opportunities. Intergenerational justice looks at how present generations affect past and future people. Protecting ecosystems today is seen as a matter of securing a healthy, habitable future.

This COP17 recognizes children and young people as important stakeholders and constituencies. Official mechanisms have been established to support youth participation:

• YOUNGO: The official children and youth constituency of the UNFCCC. It brings together over a million young members worldwide and helps train young advocates to participate in international negotiations, coordinate regional chapters, and ensure youth voices are heard inside the official rooms
• Global Youth Biodiversity Network (GYBN): The official youth coordination platform recognized by the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity. It unites young people and youth organisations from over 170 countries to represent the global youth voice for halting biodiversity loss.

Both groups have access to official COP processes; they monitor government commitments, participate as observers in the diplomatic Blue Zones, and have the opportunity to speak during plenary sessions.

The Green Zone is a public area open to students, activists, and young researchers attending events in Yerevan, Armenia. The COP17 Green Zone will provide open spaces for workshops, cultural events, and collaborative problem-solving.

NGOs At COP17

People demonstrate at COP15 in Montreal, Canada on December 7, 2022. (Photo by UN Biodiversity | CC BY 2.0)

Non-governmental organisations, civil society coalitions, research bodies, and observer groups play a critical role at COP conferences. They serve as watchdogs, technical advisers, and advocates for groups that might not otherwise have a direct seat at the negotiating table.

NGOs bring local, grassroots priorities into global policy spaces, ensuring that community-level perspectives help shape international biodiversity decisions.

They provide scientific data, policy recommendations, and track national progress on targets.

Key non-state and civil society players actively shaping the discourse and engagement at COP17 include the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and Conservation International.

Business for Nature is a major coalition that rallies global companies and commercial organisations to push governments for stronger nature policies, arguing that voluntary corporate action isn’t enough without systemic regulatory backing.

The Finance for Biodiversity Foundation is an accredited observer network representing financial institutions, banks, and investment funds. They focus heavily on resource mobilization, aligning financial flows with global biodiversity goals, and operationalizing funding mechanisms like the UN Cali Fund.

Indigenous Peoples’ and Local Communities’ Caucuses represent Indigenous stewards who work closely with civil society allies to ensure traditional ecological knowledge and land rights are protected in the global review process.

The CBD Women’s Caucus is an active network focused on gender-responsive biodiversity data and ensuring women, major stewards of local agriculture and ecosystems, are fairly represented in monitoring and policy systems.

After years of slow progress, these groups will push for greater accountability and real change. They will also advocate for greater biodiversity financing, ensuring it is mobilized and reaches vulnerable frontline projects where it is needed most.

COP17: Critical Stress Test For Governments

The President-Designate of COP17 is Hambardzum Matevosyan, Armenia's Minister of Environment.

COP17 will be the biggest event the country has ever held. He has already acknowledged the “many challenges and gaps” identified in the draft Global Biodiversity Framework report and even said they had to nudge leaders to submit their reports by the February deadline.

Matevosyan is adamant that “we are not changing the goals,” but rather “we are making a realistic assessment of where we stand and what is needed to achieve them. It is a course correction.”

The minister is also working on introducing environmental protection into the Armenian constitution.

As for the other government delegates, they are responsible for turning international environmental goals into domestic law, national budgets, and enforceable policies.

Key priorities include:

• The Global Stocktake and Accountability: Ministries of Environment must submit national reports and show tangible evidence of how they are working to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030. They must balance strict conservation targets with economic realities.
• Financing and Resource Mobilization: They simply must close the funding gap. Developed nations must track international aid and private-sector investments, and redirect subsidies that unintentionally harm ecosystems toward nature-positive initiatives. Developing nations must push for adequate, predictable financial support from global funds.
• Holistic Government Approach: Biodiversity policy cannot be handled by environmental ministries alone. There must be close coordination across ministries of finance, agriculture, fisheries, urban planning, and foreign affairs. They must ensure that domestic policies on water security, food systems, and climate resilience support biodiversity
• Diplomatic Positioning and Consensus: Delegations work within geopolitical blocs to negotiate final treaty language. Ministers must commit to ambitious global goals while ensuring that the final agreed text does not demand targets that their domestic legislatures or industries cannot practically achieve.

Better World Info provide a valuable platform to help NGOs, young people, and all other participants and observers prepare for the events of COP17. Stay tuned as we follow key developments and report back on whether our hopes for real tangible progress were realized.

As a side note, all UN member states, except the US, have ratified the Convention on Biological Diversity. While this means US funding is absent and the framework may carry less weight, it also means progress is not constrained by its historical blocking of consensus.

As the first official global review of collective progress since the landmark GBF was signed four years ago, hopes are high that this COP will be a COP of implementation in preparation for the 2030 moment of truth.

As Astrid Schomaker, executive secretary of the CBD, said: “Armenia’s vision for COP17 is a beautiful one. It aims to inspire us all to see that transformation is possible, that nature is worth protecting, that implementation is happening and that we all have an important and active role to play."

Before his nitrogen execution last year, Anthony Boyd wanted to figure out a way to help people understand the horror he was about to experience. He told me to watch his legs. When he couldn't go any further, he was going to lift up his legs one final time. Once and for all, he wanted to settle that nitrogen executions were neither quick nor humane.

The State of Alabama controlled the gas, the mask, the restraints, the room. Boyd had nothing left to control but himself... his legs.

At approximately 5:57 p.m., the nitrogen began flowing. Boyd clenched his fist. He raised his head. Then he lifted his legs several inches, exactly as he had promised me. By my watch, he fought for his life for at least sixteen minutes, maybe even closer to nineteen depending on when the gas actually entered the mask. He was not pronounced dead until 6:33 p.m. Afterward, officials had the audacity to call his movements involuntary and insignificant. They all wanted to talk about the justice that was just done. I knew better. The lies and misdirections of government are always endless.

The cameras became the problem... not the killing itself. This should send chills down the spine of our country.

The primary thing that these executions produce is more horror.

As a spiritual advisor to men on death row throughout the nation, I have witnessed fourteen executions in five states, which is more than any other spiritual leader in the nation. Repeatedly, I have watched a condemned man's body tell the witnesses what the official statement would later explain away. I know what the government's descriptions and language of procedure can conceal.

I carry that knowledge into what is coming at Fort Hood. On December 3, the United States Army intends to execute Nidal Hasan by firing squad. President Donald Trump approved the death sentence in early October. It will be the first firing squad carried out under federal authority since the Army shot Private Eddie Slovik for desertion in a French courtyard in January 1945. The country went 81 years without doing this. Of course, it is Trump who is bringing it back.

Don't think for a second I am going to skip the horrors of Nidal Hasan's actions. Indeed, Hasan was convicted of killing 13 people and wounding 32 others in the 2009 Fort Hood shooting. The people he killed had families and futures. The survivors have carried 17 years of consequences. Their suffering must never become an afterthought. Opposing this execution does not require anyone to shrink the horror of what came before it. But those deaths do not make the killing of Hasan an automatic act of justice. They also do not lift the moral responsibility from the president who has authorized the shooting.

Who deserves to die and who deserves to live? The rifles at Fort Hood will not go back to the armory when it is over. They will be cleaned, racked and kept ready for whoever is next.

The Army's own announcement lays out the chain. The president alone can approve a military prisoner's death sentence. Trump exercised that authority. He does not have to pull the trigger to own what happens when the rifles are raised. Other people will fire. The directive to shoot an unarmed paralyzed man will come straight from the Oval Office.

Of course, if the horror wasn't horrific enough. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth proposed livestreaming the execution so the world could watch America kill Hasan. Trump argued that streaming it might be a strong deterrent. On October 15, after widespread criticism from all sides of the political spectrum, Trump backed down. Hasan would be shot to death behind closed doors. He seems to glow each time he makes such a pronouncement.

So, the cameras became the problem... not the killing itself.

This should send chills down the spine of our country. The government considered turning a human death into a demonstration of national power. When the demonstration met resistance, the administration dropped the audience while keeping the shooting. The only difference between a public execution and a private one is the number of witnesses.

Consider whose hand is on the order. This is a president whose own defense secretary, Mark Esper, wrote that during the protests of 2020 Trump asked whether the people in the streets could simply be shot in the legs. This is a president who entertained broadcasting a man's death as a warning to the world. He is now being handed rifles, a chair and a legal pathway to use them against a prisoner who cannot stand.

Anyone who thinks that Trump is going to be comfortable stopping at Hasan, has not listened to those who have worked closest with him.

The only difference between a public execution and a private one is the number of witnesses.

A firing squad is a capability before it is a sentence. Once a government has built the chair, qualified the shooters, written the protocol and fired on one man, it owns that capability for good. It will not retire with Hasan. South Carolina shot three men in 2025. In one of those executions, an outside pathologist who reviewed the state's autopsy found the bullets largely missed the man's heart. Meaning, he bled out for an extended period of time. Idaho spent more than $1.2 million building a firing squad it has not used. Those who think this is an inexpensive, certain, or quick enterprise are sorely mistaken. The federal government is about to join the blunders that have always plagued the firing squad, and human executions in general for that matter. Who deserves to die and who deserves to live? The rifles at Fort Hood will not go back to the armory when it is over. They will be cleaned, racked and kept ready for whoever is next.

Hasan is where that question begins. He is not where it ends.

I do not want this president to have the power to shoot an unarmed person. Not Hasan. Not a drug dealer. Not a protester. Not anyone. Unchecked power does not know the difference between them. It only knows the hand that holds it. A man who once asked about shooting Americans in the legs is about to find out what it feels like to give the command for a volley.

Once a soldier learns to fire on a bound prisoner on command, the distance to the next bound prisoner gets shorter.

I think of the soldiers who may be ordered to take part. They entered an institution that asks them to protect human life, sometimes at terrible cost. They should not have to pretend that shooting a restrained man is another administrative duty. Once a soldier learns to fire on a bound prisoner on command, the distance to the next bound prisoner gets shorter. Once a president learns he can order it, the list of people he might order it for gets longer.

I do not want the families of the Fort Hood victims forgotten. Their loss deserves more than a government telling them that another death settles the account. One murder will never offset another murder.

Besides, isn't Donald Trump the last person on earth you would trust with a rifle?

Journalism is experiencing one of its worst crises when it’s needed the most.

Overall, news consumption is dropping. And it’s worse among young people, who largely get their news through social media, not news outlets. People under 30, more than any other age group, trust social media sources of news.

The problem is that it’s hard to tell if your favorite social media source is a citizen journalist or a paid promoter. In a recent in-depth report, The New York Times revealed that social media platforms are rife with accounts that are paid to promote campaigns parading as personal opinion.

Study after study proves that journalism fuels and promote a strong democracy.

Rather than hire well-known influencers with huge followings, politicians and organizations are now hiring huge numbers of accounts with smaller followings. “Functioning more like birdshot than a single bullet,” the Times explained, “these high-volume social media campaigns represent the new vanguard of modern political influence, saturating the internet with a topic until it is all but unavoidable.”

A perspective that appears popular online may well be the result of this digital “astroturfing.” A decade ago, many Americans blamed the Russian government for insidious meddling in American politics using armies of paid content pushers. Now the same tactic is being deployed by campaigns and nonprofits.

This disturbing trend goes hand-in-hand with a shocking decimation of journalism. A June 2026 study found that the number of journalists per capita in the United States fell by more than 80 percent since 2002, and those jobs that remain are increasingly focused on sports and crime rather than public policy, government, or other issues.

As out-of-work journalists turn to freelancing, the situation for piecemeal work is equally grim. The National Writers Union recently found that freelance pay remains stagnant even as the cost of living has more than doubled.

Desperate to make ends meet, some independent journalists might attempt to garner large enough followings on social media to monetize their work—only to find that they have to play to algorithms designed to lift up rage bait and polarizing content.

If our views are shaped by paid content creators, and there are fewer than ever journalists to investigate issues of concern, we face a future where opinions are bought and paid for by those with the deepest pockets.

We cannot continue this way. Democracy will die if we have no good answer for funding journalism that is hard-hitting and trustworthy.

To address the crisis in journalism, California Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed AB 2222 to strengthen local journalism. Under the law, qualifying news outlets in California will receive $20,000 per journalist, capped at five journalists, plus $15,000 for every additional journalist.

This might cover pay raises in a state where $100,000 a year is considered a “low-income” wage—and where the median salary for journalists is under $53,000. But while the bill’s intentions are laudable, this is too little too late. Thousands of journalists have already left their field.

For decades, the federal government diverted a minuscule sliver of the national budget to publicly fund broadcast media through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. President Donald Trump took a sledgehammer to that modest and very limited source of funding, ending it in July 2025.

What then, is the answer? If New York City Mayor Mamdani can open city-run grocery stores, can localities do something similar for newsrooms, while preserving the critical editorial independence necessary for good journalism?

The answer is “yes.” Media expert Victor Pickard has touted an ambitious and innovative plan for “Public Media Centers” in local communities around the country that are “federally guaranteed but locally owned and controlled.”

Study after study proves that journalism fuels and promote a strong democracy. It’s no wonder that authoritarianism is rising at the same time that journalism is dying. If we want to save our democracy, we must save journalism.

President Donald Trump has been less than coy about possibly ramping up his illegal war of aggression against Iran after the midterm elections, and now states the United States would not use a nuclear weapon, but possibly the “Mother of All Bombs,” MOAB for short—with apologies to that lovely town in Utah—officially the GBU-43-B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb. The target would supposedly be Iran’s energy infrastructure and nuclear facilities, which were supposedly obliterated by US and Israeli attacks over a year ago.

A few reminders are in order. The US-Israeli war on Iran is illegal under domestic and international law, lacking authorization from Congress and the United Nations Security Council. Combined with ongoing attacks on Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen, the region is in flames, and putting out the fire with gasoline would be a stupendously bad move. There are indirect diplomatic talks underway, and those need to succeed, and quickly, to end this disaster harming the people of Iran, the region, and the US and global economy. Unfortunately, Trump, ever the statesmen, quipped, “I don’t know who the hell we are negotiating with.”

Iran does not have nuclear weapons, and was verifiably in compliance with its obligations under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), foolishly abrogated by Trump in his first term (and former President Joe Biden, who as vice president was part of the Obama Administration that negotiated that agreement, inexplicably failed to renew while in the White House). Yet Iran still does not have nuclear weapons, and the US (thousands) and Israel (hundreds) do.

Moreover, the US plans to send more conventional weapons to Israel (the latest proposed shipment being 40,000 one-ton bombs) and Saudi Arabia, and to conclude a nuclear technology deal with the latter, which cannot help but put Iran and other countries in the region even more on edge.

The war is not just illegal, but massively unpopular with the US public, and Trump and his Republican enablers may take a deserved shellacking, in no small part because of the war, at the polls in November.

Voting is crucial, but not sufficient. On Tuesday, October 20, just two weeks before the midterms, peace advocates will hold dozens of rallies across the country to demand Peace with Iran NOW! A coalition of nearly 100 national and local organizations, including the National Iranian American Council; Action Corps; Peace Action; and veterans, faith-based, peace, and human rights organizations, are holding rallies at congressional offices to demand the following of Congress:

• Cut off funding for the war;
• Enforce the Iran War Powers Resolutions passed by Congress (which make clear the illegality of Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war of aggression);
• Demand accountability for the Minab elementary school bombing on the first day of the war, which reportedly killed 120 children as well as teachers and staff AND investigate the bombing of the civilian wedding party in Kuhestak. The public deserves a full accounting, and the victims’ families deserve truth and accountability; and
• Support diplomacy, sanctions, and a peace agreement to end the war.

Looking longer term, a Middle East Weapons of Mass Destruction-Free Zone was first proposed by Iran and Egypt over five decades ago, and establishing such a zone was included in the UN Resolution that ended the first US war on Iraq. It remains to be established, but still could be a useful part of the solution to the current mess started by the US and Israel.

We need lasting solutions, including the following:

• End this war now, via diplomacy, or Congress refusing to fund it;
• End the sole authority for any president to initiate a nuclear attack, especially when Congress has not declared war;
• Dramatically reduce the War Budget, especially for nuclear weapons and Golden Dome; invest in human needs and addressing climate catastrophe; and
• Support a Middle East Weapons of Mass Destruction-Free Zone, and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

For now, the immediate priority is to demand Congress do its job, and we have the opportunity to say so, loud and clear, at pro-peace rallies on Tuesday, October 20.

Nearly two years ago, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International released in-depth reports documenting that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza. Months later, Israeli human rights groups did likewise. Support for Israel has declined steeply among Americans, but its defenders continue to maintain a siege of buzzwords against Palestinian rights.

As historian Rashid Khalidi emphasized in his book Brokers of Deceit: How the U.S. Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East, “language matters.” Standard terms and tropes “are the essential building blocks of a lofty and solid edifice of denial of an entire narrative, of the existence of an entire people, which is basic to the affirmation of a formidable counterreality.”

Prominent groups, notably the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, AIPAC and Christians United for Israel—along with allies in Congress, the Executive Branch and the punditocracy—rely on the same buzzwords to defame critics of Israel and deny its systematic crimes against Palestinian people. For instance:

“Antisemitic”

At the top in the rhetorical toolbox, a blunt instrument for smearing Israel’s critics no matter how true their accusations—and no matter the absence of evidence of bigotry against Jewish people.

“Blood libel”

A high-dudgeon epithet for equating valid condemnations of Israel with 900-year-old antisemitic craziness.

“Held to a higher standard”

A catchphrase to evade realities of Israel’s ongoing large-scale crimes against humanity and the fact that Israel uses enormous US military aid to impose apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and genocide as matters of policy.

“Homeland for the Jewish people”

In other words: Palestinians will not replace us.

“Indigenous”

So, even Jewish Americans who recently moved to Israel are indigenous, unlike Palestinians whose ancestors have been living in Palestine for hundreds of years.

“Jewish and democratic state”

It can’t be oxymoronic just because it’s an oxymoron.

“Peace process”

The process of Israeli expansion that has brought war and more war, with the US government functioning as “Israel’s lawyer” while arming Israel with massive quantities of weapons and continuing to make Israel (in the words of a recent Congressional Research Service report) “the largest cumulative recipient of US foreign assistance since World War II.”

“Self-defense”

A term reserved for Israelis but certainly not Palestinians.

“Terrorism”

When Palestinians kill Israeli civilians but not when Israelis kill Palestinian civilians in vastly greater numbers.

“Renounce violence”

A demand routinely made of Palestinian organizations but not of the Israeli government.

“Israel’s right to exist”

The standard gotcha question “Do you believe Israel has a right to exist?” can be answered with clear questions: “Do you think apartheid South Africa had a right to exist?” . . . “Do you think ethnic cleansing has a right to exist?” . . . “Do you think genocide has a right to exist?” . . . “Do you think the tens of thousands of Palestinian children killed by the Israeli military had a right to exist?”