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The Architecture of Extermination: Why the Gaza Genocide Is Premeditated and Repeatable

Suppose we accept the fiction that none of us expected Israel to launch a full-scale genocide in Gaza – a premeditated campaign to erase the Strip and exterminate a significant portion of its inhabitants. Let us pretend that nearly eighty years of relentless massacres were not a prelude to this moment, and that Israel had never before sought the physical destruction of the Palestinian people as outlined by the 1948 Genocide Convention.

If we go so far as to accept the sterile, ahistoric claim that the Nakba of 1948 was “merely” ethnic cleansing rather than genocide – ignoring the mass graves and the forced erasure of a civilization – we are still left with a terrifying reality. Having witnessed the unmasked extermination that began on October 7, 2023, who can dare to argue that its perpetrators lack the intent to repeat it?

The question itself is an act of charity, as it assumes the genocide has actually stopped. In reality, the carnage has merely shifted tactics. Since the implementation of the fragile ceasefire on October 10, Israel has killed over 400 Palestinians and wounded hundreds more. Others have perished in the frozen mud of their tents. They include infants like eight-month-old Fahar Abu Jazar, who, like others, froze to death. These are not mere tragedies; they are the inevitable results of a calculated Israeli policy of destruction targeting the most vulnerable.

During this two-year campaign of extermination, more than 20,000 Palestinian children were murdered, accounting for a staggering 30% of the total victims. This blood-soaked tally ignores the thousands of souls entrapped beneath the concrete wasteland of Gaza, and those currently being consumed by the silent killers of famine and engineered epidemics.

The horrifying statistics aside, we bear witness to the final agonies of a people. We have watched their extermination in real-time, broadcast to every handheld screen on earth. No one can claim ignorance; no one can claim innocence. Even now, we watch as 1.3 million Palestinians endure a precarious existence in tents ravaged by winter floods. We share the screams of mothers, the hollowed-out faces of broken fathers, and the haunted stares of children, and yet, the world’s political and moral institutions remain paralyzed.

If Israel resumes the full, unrestrained intensity of this genocide, will we stop it? I fear the answer is no, because the world refuses to dismantle the circumstances that permitted this slaughter in the first place. Israeli officials never bothered to hide their intent. The systematic dehumanization of Palestinians was a primary export of Israeli media, even as Western corporate outlets worked tirelessly to sanitize this criminal discourse.

The record of intent is undeniable. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir openly championed the “encouragement of migration” and demanded that “not an ounce of humanitarian aid” reach Gaza. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich argued that the starvation of two million people could be “just and moral” in the pursuit of military aims. From the halls of the Knesset to the pop charts, the refrain was the same: “erase Gaza,” “leave no one there.” When military leaders refer to an entire population as “human animals,” they are not using metaphors; they are issuing a license for extermination.

This was preceded by the hermetic siege – a decades-long experiment in human misery that began in 2006. Despite every Palestinian plea for the world to break this death grip, the blockade was allowed to persist. This was followed by successive wars targeting a besieged, impoverished population under the banner of ‘security,’ always shielded by the Western mantra of Israel’s ‘right to defend itself.’

In the dominant Western narrative, the Palestinian is the eternal aggressor. They are the occupied, the besieged, the dispossessed, and the stateless; yet they are expected to die quietly in the world’s ‘largest open-air prison‘. Whether they utilized armed resistance, threw rocks at tanks, or marched unarmed toward snipers, they were branded ‘terrorists’ and ‘militants’ whose very existence was framed as a threat to their occupier.

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‘Policies are totally unclear’: Judge berates Trump admin over its sharing of Medicaid data with ICE, but allows certain information to be given

The Trump administration may soon share certain Medicaid information about suspected undocumented immigrants with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a federal judge ruled.

In a 7-page order issued on Monday, U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria found that sharing “citizenship and immigration status, address, phone number, date of birth, and Medicaid ID” is “clearly authorized by law” and that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) sufficiently explained to the court why they made the “abrupt departure from their past policies of not sharing or using Medicaid data for immigration enforcement purposes.”

The agency had reasoned that President Donald Trump issued multiple executive orders demanding that agencies, among other things, carry out immigration laws and “secure our borders.”

Chhabria’s opinion is a victory for the administration to that end. Beginning on Jan. 6, DHS and HHS may share the data with ICE about suspected undocumented immigrants who receive public health insurance, opening up another avenue for immigration law enforcement officers to track down those they believe are here illegally. However, what data they can give is limited.

Chhabria, a Barack Obama appointee, was responding to a motion for a preliminary injunction filed by California Attorney General Rob Bonta on behalf of his state and 21 others, which sought to stop the sharing of additional information, which Chhabria granted.

Bonta and the other states filed a lawsuit on July 1, targeting HHS’s Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) handing over of “a trove of individuals’ protected health data” to other federal agencies, including DHS, “without their consent.” Chhabria proceeded to bar the administration from sharing Medicaid data “obtained from the plaintiff states for immigration enforcement purpose” while the case played out and the agencies explained their actions.

The judge determined the Trump administration may not share information beyond “basic biographical, location, and contact” because the federal government’s “new policies are totally unclear about what that information would be, why it would be needed for immigration enforcement purposes, and what the risks of sharing it with DHS would be.”

Such reasoning would rule out the government acting “arbitrarily” in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, the statute governing federal agencies’ behavior. And so while Chhabria opined in the recent order that DHS and HHS adequately explained their actions, allowing for the sharing of certain data, he also found that significant questions remain.

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US Reaches 30th Strike In Boat Bombing Campaign Ahead Of New Year

As the world gets ready to usher in a new year, the US military campaign against Venezuela has reached another grim milestone. American forces carried out their latest airstrike on a vessel accused of drug trafficking in Latin American waters on Monday.

The operation announced by US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) represents the 30th strike since the campaign began on September 2

The official US announcement indicated the boat was struck in the eastern Pacific Ocean – so the ‘other side’ opposite the Caribbean, which is certainly not the first in this area.

Officials claimed the strike resulted in the deaths of two individuals labeled as “narco-terrorists” – which has been used of the Trump administration to defend lethal actions at sea carried out without judicial proceedings, or so much as a warning.

Analysts have tallied that the number people killed by US military actions at sea connected to the Venezuela campaign has risen to 107 with this latest strike.

Meanwhile the NY Times has begun documenting the “Grim Evidence of Trump’s Airstrikes” which has “Washed Ashore a Colombian Peninsula”:

A thunderous boom rang out through the windless late-afternoon air. Seconds later, smoke began rising out of the sea as if the horizon were on fire.

Watching from the shore on Nov. 6, Erika Palacio Fernández whipped out her phone, she said, unwittingly recording the only verified and independent video known to date of the aftermath of an airstrike in the Trump administration’s campaign against what it calls “narco-terrorists.”

Two days later, on that same shore, a scorched 30-foot-long boat itself would wash up. Then, two mangled bodies. Then charred jerrycans, life jackets and dozens of packets that were observed by The New York Times and were similar to others that have been found after anti-narcotics operations in the region. Most packets were empty, though traces of a substance that looked and smelled like marijuana were found in the lining of a few.

A $30 million Reaper drone launched from a $1 billion navy frigate… all to take out a little wooden boat lined with marijuana packets?

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Biden-era rental assistance included payments to dead tenants and noncitizens, new HUD report reveals

A report by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) recently revealed billions in taxpayer funds that went to “questionable” rental assistance recipients under former President Joe Biden.

The recipients included approximately 30,000 deceased tenants and thousands of potential non-citizens, according to a copy of HUD’s “Agency Financial Report” for fiscal year 2025 obtained by the New York Post.

HUD officials told the Post that a “large concentration” of the funds went to New York, California and Washington, D.C., with deceased recipients getting funds in all 50 states.

The department conducted an automation that compared a U.S. Treasury database to HUD’s records. The process uncovered 30,054 deceased tenants who were either actively enrolled in rental assistance programs or had received assistance after they passed, according to HUD’s report. The department found the possibly problematic payments through its own internal financial review and analytics, according to the report.

“A massive abuse of taxpayer dollars not only occurred under President Biden’s watch, but was effectively incentivized by his administration’s failure to implement strong financial controls resulting in billions worth of potential improper payments,” HUD Secretary Scott Turner said in a statement provided to the Post.

“HUD will continue investigating the shocking results and will take appropriate action to hold bad actors accountable,” he said. “Additionally, the Department is advancing efforts made under President Trump’s first administration to strengthen program integrity and ensure taxpayer-funded assistance serves the vulnerable communities it was intended for.”

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Woke Oregon city hires MURDERER who executed teenage girl to its police review board

A convicted murderer who gunned down a 19-year-old girl has sparked community outrage after being voted back onto the city’s police review board. 

Kyle Hedquist, 47, was jailed for life without parole for murdering Nikki Thrasher in 1994. 

The Oregon native led Thrasher down a remote road and shot her in the back of the head to prevent her from telling people about a burglary spree he had embarked on. 

Hedquist was released in 2022, with former governor Kate Brown arguing that he was 17 at the time of the crime, which means ‘he shouldn’t be locked up for life.’

Now, the Salem City Council has reappointed Hedquist in a five-to-four vote on December 8, despite his 27-year sentence for the execution-style killing.

The Board reviews police conduct complaints and makes policy recommendations to the enforcement.

The 47-year-old was also appointed to the Citizens Advisory Traffic Commission and the Civil Service Commission, an advisory board that oversees traffic and fair employment issues, according to KATU2.

Board members also train with police and participate in ride-alongs to understand how officers operate. 

Backlash has erupted in the blue-state city, with rising concerns voiced by the Salem Police Employee’s Union and other council members. 

‘To think that we’re providing education on kind of how we do what we do to someone with that criminal history, it just doesn’t seem too smart,’ the association’s president Scotty Nowning told KATU2.

Nowning emphasized that the concerns stem from fixing the city’s oversight structure and are not necessarily about Hedquist. 

‘If you move him off there, if you don’t change your guardrails or what the requirements are to be on there, you could just put someone else on there with you know equal criminal history or worse,’ he told the outlet.

Salem Professional Fire Fighters Local 314 even created a website to slam the decision. 

‘As police and fire professionals in the Salem community, we are asking Salem residents to stand with us,’ the site read in part.

‘Tell [the council] to reconsider this decision and fix the mess that they created.’

Other committee members opposed Hedquist’s reappointment, but Councilor Mai Vang approved it.

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The U.S. Is Stealing From Millennials and Gen Z To Make Boomers Even Richer

For years, pointing out the obvious was considered impolite: America’s biggest, most distortionary transfer of wealth does not flow from elites to the working class. Nor does it show up as corporate welfare. It flows from the relatively young and poor to the relatively old and wealthy. It’s the defining injustice of our fiscal regime, the largest driver of our government debt, and the quiet engine behind the malaise of Millennials and Gen Z.

More than a decade ago, Reason editor at large Nick Gillespie and I wrote a piece arguing that Social Security and Medicare had together become the great cause of America’s generational inequity. We noted that senior households were wealthier than ever while young households still working to make ends meet had to prop them up further.

We also warned of the threat to a genuine social safety net. Treating every elderly person, no matter how well off, as a member of a protected class entitled to increasingly unaffordable benefits will eventually destroy a system that progressives in particular cherish.

Around that time, “Occupy Wall Street” protesters were railing against “the 1 percent.” I offered the tongue-in-cheek suggestion that they also consider occupying the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), the most powerful lobby defending the largest intergenerational wealth grab in American history.

As such, I greatly appreciated seeing Russ Greene, managing director of the Prime Mover Institute, join the fight and coin the term “Total Boomer Luxury Communism” in an important article over at the American Mind. The name sounds like a joke, but the math is sound.

American heads of households younger than 35 now have a median net worth of about $39,000 and an average net worth of more than $183,000. Those over 75 have a median net worth of roughly $335,000 and an average net worth exceeding $1.6 million. As a group, today’s seniors are the wealthiest we’ve ever had.

Many own their homes outright in markets younger families cannot afford to enter. Seniors enjoy higher rates of stock ownership and have benefited enormously from decades of rising asset values. Meanwhile, younger Americans face soaring housing costs, student loan debt, delayed family formation, and a labor market shaped by slower growth and higher federal indebtedness.

Some of this reflects natural wealth accumulation over time, and there is nothing wrong with that. But why does the modern welfare state magnify the disparity? As Green explains, “retired millionaires have become the greatest recipients of government aid,” as Social Security can redistribute up to $60,000 a year to an individual and $117,000 to a household. “Meanwhile,” Green notes, “Medicare programs are paying for golf balls, greens fees, social club memberships, horseback riding lessons, and pet food.”

Younger Americans are also on the hook for about $73 trillion in unfunded obligations projected over the next 75 years, making now the time to act. Some defenders of the status quo argue that higher taxes will fix the problem, but it would again fall on younger earners to continue redistributing benefits to the same affluent seniors, worsening the generational imbalance. The problem is not a lack of revenue; it’s a benefit structure that ignores modern demographics, modern wealth patterns, and basic fairness. Paying less to seniors who don’t need the money is the only fair reform to this dilemma.

Every time someone points these facts out, defenders respond reflexively: “But seniors paid in. They earned it.” No, not all of it. Not in any meaningful, actuarial sense.

We’ve known for decades that the system is wildly unbalanced. As Andrew Biggs of the American Enterprise Institute points out, a typical average-wage retiree in the 2030s will receive 37 percent more in Social Security benefits than they paid in taxes. Medicare is even more lopsided: Seniors routinely receive three to five times the amount they contributed.

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CIA Drone Carried Out First Known Land Strike On Venezuela 

The CIA is reported to have carried out a bombing operation within Venezuelan territory, CNN and The New York Times report in follow-up to President Trump touting that the US had knocked out “a big facility”.

CNN while citing unnamed sources, reports that the CIA conducted a drone strike on a remote dock along Venezuela’s coastline, after the US suspected the site was being used to store and transport illegal drugs, and which were supposedly bound for America.

Reports indicate the location was unoccupied at the time of the strike, which occurred earlier this month. The New York Times published a similar account based on anonymous sources, specifying that the operation took place last Wednesday.

As we detailed, President Trump had on Friday in a radio interview disclosed something which missed the attention of the US and global media. He let slip that a large land site had been knocked out by a strike from US forces in the Caribbean.

Trump may have actually assumed the attack which he disclosed publicly for the first time was already being reported on, but it had not. He was being interviewed by John Catsimatidis, the Republican billionaire who owns the WABC radio station in New York on his The Cats & Cosby Show, and the two were talking about the Venezuela campaign. 

“They have a big plant or a big facility where the ships come from,” Trump said, though he did not explicitly identify the exact location or even country attacked. “Two nights ago we knocked that out.”

Interestingly, the remarks generated almost no headlines for much of that weekend. But by Monday he expanded on those remarks during a press conference, saying the target was located on Venezuela’s coast and that a “major explosion” occurred at a dock where boats were supposedly loaded with drugs.

“There was a major explosion in the dock area where they load the boats up with drugs,” he told reporters at Mar-a-Lago, his club and residence in Florida.

“They load the boats up with drugs. So we hit all the boats, and now we hit the area. It’s the implementation area, that’s where they implement, and that is no longer around.”

But even after this, neither CIA, nor White House, nor Pentagon would comment. Even more strange was that Venezuelan officials themselves have also remained silent, issuing no public statements regarding the alleged attack. It is perhaps the case they don’t want the population to panic, or else don’t want to give acknowledgement of a successful land strike by Washington.

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Ohio Activists Submit Signatures For Referendum To Block Lawmakers’ Move To Roll Back Marijuana Legalization And Restrict Hemp

Ohio activists announced on Monday that they’ve met an initial signature requirement to launch a campaign aimed at repealing key components of a bill the governor recently signed to scale back the state’s voter-approved marijuana law and ban the sale of consumable hemp products outside of licensed cannabis dispensaries.

Ohioans for Cannabis Choice said they’ve submitted a batch of 1,000 signatures to get the referendum process started. If the signatures are certified by the secretary of state, the campaign will then need to submit a total of about 250,000 signatures to make the ballot.

The proposed referendum would repeal the first three core sections of SB 56, a controversial bill that Gov. Mike DeWine (R) signed into law earlier this month that he says is intended to crack down on the unregulated intoxicating hemp market. But the legislation would do more than restrict the sale of cannabinoid products to dispensaries.

The law also recriminalizes certain marijuana activity that was legalized under the ballot initiative voters approved in 2023, and it’d additionally remove anti-discrimination protections for cannabis consumers that were enacted under that law.

The governor additionally used his line-item veto powers to cancel a section of the bill that would have delayed the implementation of the ban on hemp beverages.

“We’re saying no to SB 56 because it recriminalizes the cannabis industry,” Wesley Bryant, a petitioner with the referendum campaign who owns the cannabis company 420 Craft Beverages, said. “SB 56 is a slap in the face to voters who overwhelmingly voted to legalize cannabis in 2023.”

Advocates and stakeholders strongly protested the now-enacted legislation, arguing that it undermines the will of voters who approved cannabis legalization and would effectively eradicate the state’s hemp industry, as there are low expectations that adults will opt for hemp-based products over marijuana when they visit a dispensary.

The pushback inspired the newly filed referendum—but the path to successfully blocking the law is narrow.

If activists reach the signature threshold by the deadline three months from now, which coincides with the same day the restrictive law is to take effect, SB 56 would not be implemented until voters got a chance to decide on the issue at the ballot.

“In filing our petitions today, we are taking a stand for Ohioans against politicians in Columbus and saying no to the government overreach of SB 56,” Bryant said.

A summary of the referendum states that “Sections 1, 2, and 3 of Am. Sub. S. B. No. 56 enact new provisions and amend and repeal existing provisions of the Ohio Revised Code that relate to the regulation, criminalization, and taxation of cannabis products, such as the sale, use, possession, cultivation, license, classification, transport, and manufacture of marijuana and certain hemp products.”

“If a majority of the voters vote to not approve Sections 1, 2, and 3 of the Act, then the enacted changes will not take effect and the prior version of the affected laws will remain in effect,” it says.

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New Year’s Eve Conspiracy Theories? Government Agency Issues Statement On Low-Flying Helicopters Spotted Over Las Vegas

In anticipation of the potential spread of conspiracy theories, the United States Department of Energy (DOE) has alerted the public to its plans to fly DOE helicopters over the Las Vegas Strip, as it plans to search for nuclear radiation leading up to this year’s New Year’s Eve celebration.

Part of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA’s) Nuclear Emergency Support Team (NEST), the Aerial Measuring System (AMS) will monitor the strip and surrounding areas for signs of background radiation that could point to a potential threat to the over 400,000 visitors expected to crowd the street during the annual holiday gathering.

“NNSA is making the public aware of the upcoming flights so citizens who see the low-flying aircraft are not alarmed,” the agency explained in June.

DOE Helicopters Create Radiation Map to Spot Anomalies

In a statement detailing the operation, the agency said that the flights, which began on Monday, will continue through Wednesday night’s New Year’s Eve celebrations. During each flight, the agency’s equipment-packed helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft fly directly over the 4.2-mile-long stretch of Las Vegas Boulevard, often referred to as “The Strip.”

“The public may see a Leonardo AW-139 helicopter, which is equipped with radiation-sensing technology,” the agency previously explained, adding that the helicopter will fly at “relatively low levels.”

During the Wednesday evening New Year’s Eve event known as “America’s Party,” Las Vegas authorities will close down The Strip to all vehicle traffic. At its peak, authorities will be responsible for the safety of hundreds of thousands of people as they watch an eight-minute-long firework show and an extended LED drone show.

According to the agency’s website, the DOE helicopters fly in a grid-like pattern at low altitudes of 150 to 300 feet and at an average speed of 80 miles per hour. The agency also noted that all flights of the DOE helicopters are conducted during daylight hours “to identify any unexpected radiation sources that might pose a threat during the event.”

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‘Her legs turned blue’: Nuclear plant radiation led to 12-inch blood clot in teen’s hip and deadly complications after she played in nearby creek, lawsuit says

An Ohio teenager died from complications of a bone marrow transplant after developing a “rare” genetic condition caused by radiation from a nuclear plant she lived by, her mother says in a lawsuit. The teen was diagnosed with a 12-inch blood clot in her hip and blood clots in her lungs before she died.

“Cheyenne Dunham, from birth until she was a teenager, regularly consumed food grown in a garden within close proximity to [the nuclear plant], including corn, tomatoes and beans,” lawyers for Cheyenne’s mother say in a 52-page legal complaint. “Cheyenne Dunham lived from age 4 or 5 until she was a teenager … in close proximity to [the nuclear plant]. At this home, Cheyenne Dunham played in a creek and ingested creek water.”

Cheyenne’s mother, Julia Dunham, is suing Centrus Energy in a wrongful death case for her 19-year-old daughter’s death in 2015. Julia became the administrator of Cheyenne’s estate in October and filed her complaint against Centrus Energy in late November. She says radiation from the company’s Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, referred to as PORTS, led to Cheyenne’s condition and health problems.

Officials shut down the plant in 2001 due to environmental concerns, including the proximity of a school just two miles away and numerous nearby homes.

On May 13, 2019, Zahn’s Corner Middle School in Piketon was “suddenly closed” after “enriched uranium” was detected inside the building, according to Julia Dunham’s complaint. Cheyenne was a student there for three years, from fourth through sixth grade.

“While at Zahn’s Corner, Cheyenne was exposed to radionuclides in excess of federal regulatory limits,” the complaint alleges. “She was also exposed to radionuclides in the Piketon community.”

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