We hear so much about the IDF being the “most moral army in the world.” Often this is in connection with their practice of dropping flyers, and now in our modern age, sending mass text messages, before knowingly and intentionally bombing civilians. Or they’re moral because sometimes instead of executing Palestinian children and teenagers, they instead put them in military prisons, to be raped, and brutally beaten, on perpetual administrative detention without charges. Or they’re moral because they shoot and kill the children throwing stones because they were future terrorists, obviously.

But the US military, partners in Israel’s genocidal rampage across the region, has a long racist, immoral history of its own. Because there is no moral war. You can enter a war for moral reasons. Maybe in theory, two armies facing off in a vacuum, you could argue one side is acting morally. But war cannot be moral in reality. Because as soon as the first bomb kills a child, or the first sniper’s bullet strikes a baby or a toddler, or the first newborn dies of starvation or lack of medical access, any morality has been fully burned away.

Dropping leaflets, or in 2026, calling specific civilians and telling them they can either die with their family in their house or flee to be executed alone is not a moral behavior. The Israeli ethnic cleansing of Southern Lebanon is no different than the Trail of Tears in the US. The systemic rape of Palestinian prisoners is no different than the systemic rape of the enslaved during the US period of slavery nor the systemic rape and trafficking by the Epstein class. The Nakba, all the way through ongoing Israeli occupation of the West Bank, shares so much (ideology, training, tactics, and weapons) with the ICE occupation in Minnesota, LA, and Chicago.

While Israel tries, and ultimately will fail, to erase Palestinians, in the US, folks like Rep. Josh Gottheimer try to erase opposition and dissent.

There should be one response to those who express hatred toward any American: condemnation. Hate is hate. It doesn’t get a pass because it comes from your side of the aisle.

Rep. Josh Gottheimer in the NY Times

I don’t seem to remember Rep. Gottheimer ever speaking out when the IDF or Israeli religious zealots and settlers not only express hate toward Palestinian Americans, but execute them in the streets. Or when pro-Israel counter protestors attack pro-Palestinian protestors sparking violence at peaceful protests in the US. He hasn’t denounced Americans Jews cheering on a genocide who yell at their fellow Jews that they are self-hating, fake Jews, or kapos. Is that not antisemitic hate? Or American Jews screaming at their Arab neighbors that they should be deported or killed. So where is the condemnation, Congressman? I thought hate was hate?

His objections to the Iran war seem to be that the President hasn’t done enough to spread anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, anti-Persian hate speech to Congress and the American people, not that we shouldn’t have started an illegal war of aggression, to protect and facilitate ongoing ethnic cleansing and genocide.

The Congressman has plenty of time to call out Iran, spread falsehoods about the Iranian people, and call anyone who criticizes Israel antisemitic. But has he put out a single statement about Iranian girls being executed by the US? Americans killed in the West Bank without offense, or charge, much less trial and sentencing? Of course not. Rep. Gottheimer is the worst kind of politician: a hypocrite.

Acting

Watching

‘We’re Not Mad Enough’ - Hannah Einbinder, Isabella Hammad, and Mahmoud Khalil LIVE in NYC by Simone Zimmerman

Reading

‘Your homes will be destroyed, your family killed’: the US has dropped millions of war propaganda leaflets – but do they work? by Moustafa Bayoumi

“Dehumanization is at the core of this shit,” Khan says. “Thinking that you can drop shit on people like this and think that they will change their mind. It’s the same idea [with the Americans] in Iran. You will assassinate all these people and then [believe that] people will come out for freedom and liberty? There’s racism in this. That is interesting to me.”

Khajistan’s exhibit doesn’t directly answer the question of whether such leaflets can help achieve battleground success, but it comes close. “These leaflets are just trash, like on the floor,” Khan says. “Are they even effective?” he asks, before answering his own question. “They’re dropped so that, after the war, in Congress, when they summon the guy, he’[ll say]: ‘we dropped the leaflets before [we bombed them].’” Khan pauses. “This is self-serving for Americans, like how America bombs and then sends non-profits. It’s part of that system.”

‘Your homes will be destroyed, your family killed’: the US has dropped millions of war propaganda leaflets – but do they work? | US military | The Guardian

An exhibit of psyops leaflets released in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya finally shows American people the messages that were made in their name

Letter with 300 signatures describes 'torture' ICE detainees face in Newark by Michael Sol Warren

There’s just no two ways about it. These are concentration camps. These are no different from Japanese Internment Camps. If we want to talk about rule of law, let’s talk about all of the violations of constitutional rights, going around the legal contracting processes, illegally moving detainees to prevent court interventions, deporting people to countries they have no connection to or violating their right to asylum by sending them back to countries where they face threats.

Garcia said it seemed detainees were able to organize across units, because no single unit in Delaney Hall is big enough to house everyone that signed. About 50 of the signees are women, according to advocates.

“To get 300 people to sign a letter in conditions in which you don't really have access to each other or materials, it’s a feat of its own,” Garcia said. “It's a testament to the amount of organizing and amount of bravery that, you know, exists within these detention facilities.”

Advocates got the letter weeks ago from a family member of Bryan’s. Garcia said it was shared with Sen. Andy Kim and Rep. Rob Menendez’s offices in hopes of pressuring ICE to improve conditions in the facility.

Menendez, in a statement, said the letter "confirms what we have heard during each one of our visits" to Delaney Hall, but did not directly address whether his office received the letter ahead of its broader release. Kim's office said it received the letter upon its public release.

"This letter is a continuation of the organizing that's happening inside, and the organizing of people who are trying to free themselves," said Kathy O’Leary — coordinator of Pax Christi New Jersey, another member of the coalition. "We often see people trying to free themselves. It's a little more unusual to see people join together like this."

The letter describes the people inside Delaney Hall as detained without judicial warrants and at scheduled appointments with immigration officials. It states they are without adequate legal representation, that their cases are being heard by immigration judges whose caseloads are too heavy to give full consideration to each individual and that their assigned courts sometimes do not have translators or interpreters.

“Many hearings are canceled, leaving detainees waiting months for a court date,” the letter reads.

The mental stress of detention is amplified by inadequate food inside Delaney Hall, the letter states.

“We feel vulnerable and, in a way, kidnapped — detained without justification — not to mention that we are being tortured physically and psychologically due to the poor food resources provided,” the letter reads.

Letter with 300 signatures describes 'torture' ICE detainees face in Newark - Gothamist

It's appears to be an escalation of detainees' efforts to organize at a facility where an uprising last year resulted in multiple escapes.

"Homelessness is not just a problem for those without homes" by Jordana Rosenfeld

This perfectly encapsulates the problem. A private equity douchebag, whose shady investment practices drive our economic and homelessness polycrisis complains about the inevitable outcome of his actions, and tries to sic the police state on his victims.

All of these stories, Gaza and the West Bank, US wars, ICE occupation and concentration camps, homelessness and private equity, share a common core: dehumanization to undermine our shared humanity.

A guy whose LinkedIn says he is a “private equity CFO,” typified the legion of property owners who spouted off in city officials’ inboxes. He insisted that he cares about the “genuinely unhoused (people who want and need help)” yet somehow not a single person he sees living in a tent or shitting in the alley or waiting outside a church for a meal falls into the mythical category of those deserving his compassion. 

“Where my empathy ends is with the “voluntarily homeless” – those who could to defoul our city and insist upon living on the streets [sic].” He singled out a particular couple living in a tent – “cave dwellers” he called them – near his property as an example of the latter.  

“We, as residents, don’t want them feeling at home and comfortable,” the CFO wrote. “Rather, we want them removed from places near our actual neighborhoods.” 

In a follow-up email not including the CFO, the city’s homeless outreach chief explained to the deputy mayor that that particular couple was evicted by their landlord who chose to stop offering subsidized housing in order to sell his building to a developer.

...

A few months later, Ed Gainey, our first Black mayor, who, like most supposed progressive mayors around the country was actually rather aggressive on homeless sweeps, lost the Democratic primary to Corey O'Connor, a center-right challenger who capitalized on perceptions that the incumbent was soft on homelessness and crime. “Public safety is not a statistic,” O’Connor said at his inauguration. “It is a feeling that you have as you walk down the street."

And then we threw the biggest football party in human history.

We don’t want them feeling at home and comfortable we want them removed

People who have the audacity to exist as poor in public

What We Can Learn from New Jersey's Fight Over the World Cup by Pat Garofalo

Specifically, FIFA is aggrieved that New Jersey Transit, which among other things connects northern New Jersey with New York City, reportedly intends to charge more than $100 for a trip between Manhattan and MetLife Stadium in New Jersey’s Meadowlands, which will host several tournament games, including the final. FIFA has warned that such costs will have a “chilling effect” on tournament attendance.

(This is the point at which I am morally obligated, as someone who grew up in New Jersey, to note that though “New York” is named as a host in the tournament’s materials, no World Cup soccer is actually being played anywhere in the Empire State, with all the “New York” games actually taking place in New Jersey.)

New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill has defended those high prices saying she refuses to foist the cost of hosting the tournament — including for security and running extra transportation — onto New Jersey taxpayers. "FIFA is making $11 billion off this World Cup," Sherrill said. "FIFA should pay for the rides, but if not, I'm not going to let New Jersey commuters get taken for one."

…

Ample research shows that the World Cup specifically — and major sporting events such as the Olympics or the Super Bowl, generally — don’t boost local economies. The academic consensus regarding the World Cup is that “the observed impact of the World Cup has been a fraction that touted by the event boosters, and frequently the observed impact has actually been negative.” Indeed, the last time the U.S. hosted the men’s version of the tournament, in 1994, host cities saw drops in income that totaled billions of dollars.

That effect occurs because of the costs associated with hosting, including the aforementioned transit and security costs, as well as the economic effects I detailed here and here, which boil down to World Cup tourists replacing some pre-existing percentage of tourism activity rather than adding only new spending, as well as simply redirecting entertainment spending that would have occurred under normal circumstances.

The fact that the World Cup will be an economic dud seems to be sinking in on some level not just in New Jersey but across the country, as there’s been a slew of reporting in recent days about an impending World Cup “bust” for host cities.

https://open.substack.com/pub/boondoggle/p/what-we-can-learn-from-new-jerseys

A data center drained 30M gallons of water unnoticed — until residents complained about low water pressure by Arianna Skibell

This is such a weird story. The data center claims this was just construction related water usage. But 44 swimming pools for construction? The most water usage in the entire water service area? The water company saying they have to play nice with their largest customer, who claims they’ll use 4 houses worth of water going forward? Something doesn’t add up.

When the county utility investigated, officials discovered two industrial-scale water hookups feeding a data center campus located 20 miles south of downtown Atlanta. One water connection had been installed without the utility’s knowledge, and the other was not linked to the company’s account and therefore wasn’t being billed.

All told, the developer, Quality Technology Services, owed nearly $150,000 for using more than 29 million gallons of unaccounted-for water. That is equivalent to 44 Olympic-size swimming pools and far exceeds the peak limit agreed to during the data center planning process.

DOJ considers settling Trump’s IRS lawsuit which could send taxpayer money directly to the president’s pockets: report by Rachel Dobkin

Love that the release of tax documents, the things that you, famously, can’t lie about your wealth on, and that Presidential candidates have released voluntarily for decades, would somehow negatively affect or embarrass Trump. Not to mention the sitting President shaking down the government to pay him directly, instead of just charging the government when he requires people to stay at his properties. Capitalism!

The tax record leak caused “reputational and financial harm, public embarrassment, unfairly tarnished their business reputations, portrayed them in a false light, and negatively affected President Trump, and the other Plaintiffs’ public standing,” the lawsuit alleges.

…

The judge in the case has ordered Trump’s personal lawyers and the DOJ, which represents the IRS, to submit briefs by May 20 explaining whether they are in conflict, according to The NYT.

This is a novel case given that Trump oversees the IRS, and two parties in a lawsuit must be on opposite sides.