Shaban al-Dalou and his mother were burned to death when Israeli bombs struck the refugee hospital where he was a patient. Photo courtesy of the al-Dalou family.
The U.S. edges closer to hot war and continues aiding and abetting a genocide. Censorship and war propaganda are necessary tools when a rogue state chooses to silence its opponents.
The F-word of the moment is fascism. Establishment pundits, Democratic Party politicians, and corporate media are of one accord and agree that a Donald Trump presidency will bring fascism to the United States. All of them ignore the authoritarian nature of the state that already exists and the actions taken to date which can accurately be described as fascistic.
On October 13, the same day that the Israel Defense Force (IDF) bombed refugees at the Al-Aqsa Hospital and burned patients alive, the U.S. announced it was sending troops to Israel to man the THAAD missile system which will be used in the imminent attack on Iran. Congress has not approved such a deployment. Most citizens of the U.S. are unaware that their government has chosen to fulfill Israel’s long held fantasy of attacking Iran with U.S. help or that the repercussions could lead to a wider regional war with other nations.
Only avid social media users who know good sources of information were aware that the IDF incinerated sick refugees, including 19-year-old Sha'ban al-Dalou and his mother. Only defeated and soon-to-be former Congresswoman Cori Bush dared to say plainly what Israel had done, setting fire to people in hospital beds. Her colleague Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who once declared that Kamala Harris was working “tirelessly” on a ceasefire agreement, is now demanding that Biden and Harris begin an arms embargo on Israel. Of course, Harris has said she is opposed to an arms embargo. If the woman known as AOC was serious she would rescind her endorsement of Harris, but as she epitomizes the unserious politician, no such stance has or will be taken.
In order to prevent the public from reading or viewing or listening to independent media, the State Department has sanctioned Russian-based outlets such as Radio Sputnik. Its programs ceased to operate as of October 15. Secretary of State Blinken accused African Stream of being a “Russian asset” and the site was immediately banned from YouTube and Meta, had its Google account closed, and was prevented from using Stripe to conduct financial transactions. Even small audiences are too large when there is fog of war to be carried out and information to be hidden from the people.
Not only was Sputnik targeted but both the U.S. and Canada have sanctioned the organization Samidoun Prisoner Solidarity Support Network, making it unable to conduct any financial transactions and, in effect, ending its ability to operate. The trumped-up charge was that Samidoun is a “sham,” a “front” organization for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The setup doesn’t work unless a connection with an organization designated as “terrorist” is alleged. Now an internationally respected organization is destroyed so that opposition to Israeli war crimes can be silenced.
Like clockwork, the Russiagate scam has been dusted off and resurrected when needed at an opportune moment. Kamala Harris declared that, “We know there is foreign interference,” and added for good measure, “I was part of the Senate Intelligence Committee when we investigated Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. Black folks were targeted with misinformation.” For now, we have been spared her contention that Russian operatives were responsible for the controversy surrounding Colin Kaepernick’s protest, which brought attention to police killings in this country.
The giant elephant in the room is Palestine and now Lebanon and the bipartisan determination to support the zionist project after nearly 200,000 people have been killed by bombs, starvation, and illness in Palestine alone. Lebanon is the next target for regime change. The U.S. special envoy, Amos Hochstein, said as much in a Freudian slip: “Once we elect, select, once Lebanon selects a new president.” Hochstein’s title is Special Envoy and Coordinator for International Energy Affairs but he is Biden’s pointman who gave the go-ahead for the invasion of Lebanon. He also happens to have been born in Israel and served in the IDF himself. So much for impartiality.
The outcome of the presidential election hinges on whether or not Biden and Harris have the courage to even pretend that they will enforce a ceasefire or an arms embargo. Thousands of people, enough to change the outcome in battleground swing states, have vowed not to vote for Harris unless the killing stops. So far, she can only muster meaningless entreaties: “The UN reports that no food has entered northern Gaza in nearly 2 weeks. Israel must urgently do more to facilitate the flow of aid to those in need.” Israel is deliberately withholding food. Starvation is a weapon of war. For now, the Biden administration has given Israel 30 days to increase humanitarian aid with "... an implicit warning that the United States could curtail or halt those shipments." Of course, the deadline date is after the presidential election, which means the two countries are colluding, as Israel wants to use the time before Election Day to kill more people. Biden knows this and presents a ruse as some sort of breakthrough.
No one has to anticipate fascism should Trump win the election. It is the Democratic Party that has carried out a genocide, censored information about it, pressured the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice to ignore obvious war crimes, and indulged in pretense about ending the carnage. It is Joe Biden who is about to embroil the U.S. in a war with Iran and its allies. Biden has prevented U.S. citizens from accessing the information they choose to seek out, the way that dictatorships do. No one has to look abroad or wait for Trump to see an authoritarian state. It is staring us in the face and will continue regardless of who is the next president of this country unless the people stop them.
Margaret Kimberley is the author of Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents. You can support her work on Patreon and also find it on the Twitter, Bluesky, and Telegram platforms. She can be reached via email at margaret dot kimberley at blackagendareport dot com.
"City of Angels" is the latest from BAR's Poet-in-Residence.
From ICE courtroom ambushes to sheriffs' execution threats, America's domestic repression now openly wields the tools it honed in overthrowing foreign governments.
Homelessness isn’t policy failure—it’s policy. From 19th-century British 'clearings' to today’s police sweeps and Blackstone evictions, the playbook stays the same: displace the poor, privatize the…
To honor Kwame Ture is to condemn Zionism. Yet the lecture bearing his name platformed a speaker who calls anti-Zionism 'hate', erasing Ture’s clarity that Palestine’s liberation is inseparable from…
Decades of U.S. military aid and Israeli occupation created the conditions for the attack on Iran in an unbroken chain of imperial violence.
