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Gaza and the death of conscience

There are moments in history that strip away every illusion we carry about ourselves. Gaza is one such moment. For nearly two years, the world has witnessed a genocide live on its screens. We have seen children pulled from rubble, families starving in tents, hospitals turned to dust. We cannot say we did not know. Every image, every cry, every number has reached us in real time. And yet the killing goes on, the silence goes on, life goes on.

The truth is unbearable but undeniable: we have failed Gaza, and in doing so, we have failed ourselves as human beings.

Frantz Fanon once wrote that colonialism is not a machine but a human reality, and when confronted, it responds with naked violence. Gaza is the purest proof of this truth in our own time. Israel’s colonial war does not speak the language of justice or dialogue; it speaks through bombs, siege, and starvation. Genocide today does not come only with the slogans of hatred but with the bureaucratic jargon of “security,” “collateral damage,” “military necessity.” Western governments supply the bombs while speaking of peace. The United Nations counts the dead while doing nothing to stop the dying. Media outlets repeat official lines while children are buried under rubble.

As Talal Asad reminds us, secular modernity has perfected this art: to kill massively while convincing itself it remains moral. To dress violence in legality, to turn blood into statistics, to make atrocity look like policy. Gaza has become the stage where this moral corruption plays out openly.

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House Republican Group Wants Probe into ‘Force’ Behind Left-Wing Violence

A group of Republican lawmakers are calling for a select committee to investigate “the money, influence, and power behind the radical left’s assault on America and the rule of law” in response to the assassination of conservative advocate Charlie Kirk.

The group of 23 members, led by Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), made the request Thursday in a letter addressed to Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chair James Comer (R-KY), and House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH).

The letter argued:

In the wake of numerous attacks on our way of life, the destruction of the rule of law, and the murder of innocent Americans, prominent and unknown alike, we must take every step to follow the money and uncover the force behind the NGOs, donors, media, public officials, and all entities driving this coordinated attack.

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“Billions In Losses”: Retail Crime Has Surged 93% In Progressive Cities

America’s great cities once symbolized prosperity and culture. Now, many are paying a steep financial price as crime surges and businesses flee. As one line in a new op-ed piece put it, “Crime has a balance sheet. In poorly led cities, that balance sheet is bleeding red ink by the day.”

Retail is bearing the brunt, according to an op-ed by Ted Jenkin at Fox News. The National Retail Federation (NRF) reported U.S. retailers lost $112 billion in 2022 due to theft, up from $94 billion in 2021. Between 2019 and 2023, shoplifting incidents rose 93% and dollar losses climbed 90%. Major chains are pulling back: Target projected $500 million in additional losses this year, Walgreens has shut stores across San Francisco, and Nordstrom left downtown entirely.

“Does it seem insane to you that so many of these retail stores have to lock up much of the merchandise…knowing that they will never be arrested?” the piece asked. The fallout is visible in empty storefronts and shrinking city budgets. San Francisco’s downtown vacancy rate has hit 34.8%, erasing jobs, tax revenue, and foot traffic.

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Migrant who ‘beheaded’ boss escaped deportation despite gruesome criminal record

The suspect in a horrific beheading of a motel manager in Texas had been detained by federal immigration officials — only to be released despite his rampant history of crimes across three states.

Cuban Yordanis Cobos-Martinez, 37, allegedly decapitated his boss and later kicking the head across the parking lot ‘like a soccer ball’ before tossing it into a dumpster. 

He had previously been detained and released by Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE, according to the Dallas Fox station. 

‘The migrant had been detained on January 13 and later released, despite a removal order to kick him out of the country because there was ‘no significant likelihood for removal in the foreseeable future,’ ICE told WFAA.

‘This barbaric criminal was released because Cuba would not accept him because of his criminal history.’

However, the local outlet found found footage of deportation flights to the island nation in 2023.

Additionally, Cobos-Martinez was wanted for a probation violation in California, with an active warrant. 

It’s unclear why Trump immigration officials did not arrest him on his active warrant, despite their immigration crackdown promise to arrest the ‘worst of the worst.’ 

In another violent episode, Cobos-Martinez allegedly carjacked a woman in south Lake Tahoe, California while he was naked. 

Two years ago, he was convicted in that case and sentence to a year and a half in prison. He also had a record in Florida, according to Fox 4 TV.

More information is surfacing about victim, Chandra Nagamallaiah, 50 as well.

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COVID-19 Is No Longer A Top 10 Cause Of Death, CDC Report Says

COVID-19 is no longer a top 10 cause of death in the United States, according to a report released on Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The overall death rate dropped to 722 per 100,000 in 2024 from 750.5 per 100,000 people in 2023, the CDC said.

“Suicide replaced COVID-19 as the 10th leading underlying cause of death,” the agency said in its report.

According to data released by the CDC, the COVID-19 death rate appeared to peak in early 2021. Other significant peaks in COVID-19 deaths were observed in mid-2021 and in early 2022, as well as in April 2020 and August 2020.

In the report released this week, the CDC said that heart disease, cancer, and unintentional injury were the leading causes of death. COVID-19 had been ranked as the third-leading cause of death in the United States in 2020, when the pandemic first emerged, federal data show.

After heart disease, cancer, and unintentional injury, the other causes of death listed in the agency’s report were stroke, chronic lower respiratory diseases, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, kidney disease, chronic liver disease and cirrhosis, and suicide.

“The death rate decreased from 2023 to 2024 for all demographic groups except infants,” the CDC also wrote in the report, adding that “death rates also decreased for all race and ethnicity groups.”

A report released in May by the CDC shows that the national infant mortality rate dropped to about 5.5 infant deaths per 1,000 live births in 2024—from about 5.6 per 1,000 live births, where it had been the previous two years. Federal health data show that Mississippi has the highest infant mortality rate in the country.

In late August, Mississippi’s health department said it declared a public health emergency because of rising infant mortality rates in the state. Data released by the state show that the mortality rate increased to 9.7 per 1,000 live births last year, it said in a statement at the time.

Meanwhile, the U.S. suicide rate has steadily risen, increasing by 37 percent between 2000 and 2018, according to the CDC’s data. That rate dropped slightly between 2018 and 2020 before it returned to a peak rate of around 14.2 suicides per 100,000 people in 2022, the last available data.

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FEMA Official Caught on Undercover Video Laughing About Assassination of Charlie Kirk, Says He “Kind of Deserved It” – Update He’s FIRED!

The O’Keefe Media Group on Friday released undercover video of a FEMA official laughing about the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

FEMA Section Chief Sean Kelly laughed as he said Charlie Kirk “kind of deserved it.”

Conservative political activist and TPUSA founder was gunned down in cold blood this week during an event at Utah Valley University. Kirk left behind a beautiful wife and two young children and the FEMA official said he deserved it.

“Like, he’s [Charlie] a f*cking lunatic and awful, and kind of deserves in in his own way,” Sean Kelly said.

“So how does FEMA feel about, feel about Charlie Kirk getting shot?” the OMG undercover journalist asked Sean Kelly.

Sean Kelly replied, “Uh, everybody is kind of laughing.”

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Qatar Pressures Arab Allies To Close Embassies In Israel: ‘The Gloves Are Off’

Qatar is leaning on Arab countries who have embassies in Israel to close them, as diplomatic retaliation for this week’s brazen Israeli airstrikes on Doha, which killed several Hamas leaders – including Khalil al-Hayya – and a Qatari security official.

Specifically, the United Arab Emirates is being pressured to shutter its embassy in Tel Aviv. The UAE was an initial signer of the Trump-brokered Abraham Accords. It officially inaugurated its embassy in July of 2021 as part of the historic normalization deal.

Washington has been hoping to expand the accords to other Gulf states, especially Saudi Arabia, but with the Gaza war raging, this seems definitely off and nowhere on the horizon.

“The gloves are off,” a Gulf diplomat speaking with Haaretz said. The UAE has vehemently condemned the attack on Qatar, and  summoned the Israeli deputy ambassador, David Ohad Horsandi, to complain of “outrageous attack” which violated Qatar’s sovereignty. 

Haaretz has suggested that Qatar might even alter its security ties with the United States. “Qatar’s prime minister told the White House his country would now re-evaluate its security partnership with Washington,” Haaretz reported.

“From Doha’s perspective, accusing Qatar of hosting Hamas leaders is seen as a knife in the back and could affect continued cooperation with Mossad as well as other interactions between the emirate and Israel,” Haaretz added.

The oil and gas rich GCC countries had throughout the decade-plus long Syria proxy war cooperated closely with Israeli intelligence, past reports have said.

But the Gaza crisis has strained all of these past ties, which mostly focused on countering Iranian and Shia influence across the Middle East, and Assad became prime target number one for regime change – given his deep cooperation with the Iranians.

Yet even the Saudis have by and large mended relations with Iran. While the royal family pays lip service to defending Palestinians, it is the common populations of Gulf states which tend to be more hardline in the pro-Palestinian cause.

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14 Montana animal shelter workers hospitalized after FBI meth burn goes wrong

Fourteen workers at a Montana animal shelter were rushed to the hospital after breathing in meth-laced smoke from a botched FBI drug incineration in the same building, officials said. 

Staffers at the Yellowstone Valley Animal Shelter in Billings fell ill Wednesday when fumes from an FBI meth burn seeped through a shared ventilation system, according to city officials. 

The employees were treated in hyperbaric oxygen chambers at Billings Clinic after reporting dizziness, headaches and coughing, authorities told KRTV-TV. 

Shelter director Triniti Halverson said the smoke poured in within minutes of the crematorium fire, forcing workers to evacuate dozens of animals. 

“Then the little bit longer that I could smell it, I knew that it was something burning in the crematorium, like the incinerary,” Halverson told the outlet.

“Several of my staff were coughing, sweating, just dizzy, physically feeling ill.”

Izzy Zalenski, the community engagement coordinator, said the shelter’s HVAC system was not designed to handle chemical burns and quickly pulled contaminated air inside. 

“It’s never smelled like that before,” said Zalenski. “The HVAC system is the exact same as a typical office. It’s not made for an animal shelter.”

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6 more officers fired over handling of domestic violence-fueled triple homicide in South Florida

A South Florida sheriff’s office has fired six more deputies and disciplined 11 others for their handling of the case of Mary Gingles, a woman who investigators say was murdered by her estranged husband after she had warned officers for months that she feared he would kill her. Two officers had previously been dismissed for their role in the case.

An internal investigation found that multiple Broward Sheriff’s Office deputies failed to properly investigate Gingles’ reports of domestic violence perpetrated by her husband, Nathan Gingles, before he allegedly carried out the triple homicide of his wife, her father, David Ponzer, and her neighbor Andrew Ferrin, as the Gingles’ four-year-old daughter begged her father to stop.

Nathan Gingles has pleaded not guilty. If convicted, he could face the death penalty.

The killings – despite Mary Gingles’ repeated pleas for help – have shaken the South Florida community of Tamarac and ignited fresh scrutiny of officers’ failure to use the state’s red flag law to remove firearms from a person deemed a danger to themselves or others.

Following through on threats that Mary Gingles had repeatedly reported, on Feb. 16, 2025, Nathan Gingles fatally shot his father-in-law as he was drinking coffee on the back patio of the family’s home, before chasing Mary down the street and killing her and Ferrin, a neighbor whose home she fled to, according to investigators.

“We had multiple opportunities to protect Mary during the months preceding her death when she alerted us to the domestic violence she was experiencing. The deputies and detectives assigned to investigate these cases failed their training and, ultimately, failed to handle Mary’s repeated cries for help with the urgency required,” Broward Sheriff Gregory Tony said in a statement.

According to an investigation by the Miami Herald, in the year leading up to her murder, Mary Gingles had confided in friends, family and law enforcement officers that she feared her estranged husband would kill her.

He repeatedly violated restraining orders barring him from the family’s home, terrorizing his wife by putting a tracker on her car and leaving a backpack full of supplies like duct tape and zip ties in the garage, the investigation found.

Gingles’ alleged behavior in the months leading up to the killings was consistent with what experts say are known risk factors for further abuse, including deadly violence. More female intimate partners are killed by firearms than by all other means combined, according to a Department of Justice analysis of a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“One of the most crucial steps to prevent lethal violence is to disarm abusers and keep them disarmed,” the Justice Department’s report stated.

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Nuclear Startup Receives Funding To Bury Its Mini-Reactors A Mile Underground

Nuclear startup Deep Fission has received funding to bury its mini reactors a mile underground. 

The company has taken an unusual path to raise money, completing an alternative public offering (APO) that brought in $30 million at $3 per share — well below the $10 price typical of traditional IPOs. The company will retain its name and list shares on the OTCQB market, according to Interesting Engineering.

“This is a unique moment for the nuclear industry,” said Liz Muller, Co-Founder and CEO of Deep Fission. “Deep Fission has the right technology, at the right time, and in the right place. With this funding, we can begin building our pilot reactor, with the goal of completion in 2026.” She added the company aims to scale “rapidly and profitably to address the massive energy demand from AI data centers and other customers worldwide.”

Deep Fission’s design uses small cylindrical reactors lowered into mile-deep, 30-inch boreholes. Each generates 15 megawatts, cooled by proven pressurized water systems. Burying the reactors in bedrock provides shielding, containment, and a minimal surface footprint. The company says it can deliver power for 5–7 cents per kilowatt-hour using low-enriched uranium and off-the-shelf parts.

“By burying the reactors, the company hopes to solve several problems that plague current reactors, including concerns over meltdowns and potential terrorist attacks,” TechCrunch wrote.

The Interesting Engineering article says that the startup has already signed a deal with data center developer Endeavor for two gigawatts of capacity and was selected for the Department of Energy’s Reactor Pilot Program, which targets first criticality by July 4, 2026.

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