Opinion

Unless the law prevails, and in most situations that involve Donald Trump, it doesn’t, there will be a coin issued by the United States Treasury Department with Donald Trump’s face on it.

What what now (I know there are two whats. Don’t email me about that)?

The Treasury Department is developing a one-dollar commemorative coin featuring Donald Trump's horrid face in celebration of America’s 250th birthday. This is not a joke. This is not a tacky meme coin. This is not a product of the Trump Campaign or the Trump Organization. This is being created by the federal government, despite the fact that Donald Trump is the worst of our presidents (sic) and has even attacked our nation. His face on a coin is almost as outrageous and absurd as him being returned to the White House. What’s wrong with you, America?

When we Ohioans trust a state treasurer with billions of public dollars, we expect integrity, transparency, and independence; what we have in Robert Sprague, however, is a career politician who has blurred the line between stewardship and self-interest. From his financial entanglements with Marathon Petroleum, to his role as a national promoter of Israel Bonds, Sprague has turned Ohio’s treasury into a political slush fund, at our expense.

Since 1993, Ohio treasurers from both major political parties have invested in Israel Bonds, but under Sprague, those investments have ballooned. In 2016, as a member of the Ohio House of Representatives, Sprague amended the anti-BDS bill, House Bill 476, to double the amount of funds that state and county treasurers can invest in Israel Bonds. 

Gaza is an occupied territory. Its borders, airspace, imports, exports, and even calories are controlled by Israel and its Western backers. Gaza does not need another flag flown above its ruins; it needs the right to rebuild on its own terms.

The Mirage of “Transition”

Western governments are preparing a plan for Gaza’s postwar administration. The proposal, advanced through quiet coordination between Washington, London, and Jerusalem, would establish a new international body called the Gaza International Transitional Authority to govern the territory for several years following the conflict. The concept, promoted as a stabilization effort, is said to draw inspiration from earlier foreign-led missions in Kosovo and Lebanon.

At the center of this “plan” was the risible suggestion that former British Prime Minister Tony Blair should lead the authority, overseeing Gaza’s reconstruction, policing, and governance on behalf of the self-proclaimed international community.

Gaza Governor Blair. “You What?!”

FIRST HOUR:
As Trump Attacks Portland We Greet A Maga Refugee

We open GREEP Zoom with our poet Laureate MIMI GERMAN.

Mimi reports on the “invasion of the soul snatchers” from the war zone in Portland, Oregon, whose “Kidnapper Cars” are patrolling the streets with ICE using a city-owned building for their command center..

The “heavy presence” of the US Military & its Black Hawk helicopters has manifested with airborne spotlights tracking activists as they walk home.

In support radio host LYNN FEINERMAN wonders aloud about the National Guard troops pouring into our cities.

Lifelong activist DOROTHY REIK comments on the ability of ICE to pick up anyone off the streets.

Legendary journalist DAVID SALTMAN reminds us of the tank in the streets of Berkeley, California, during the fight for People’s Park fifty years ago.

Co-convenor MYLA RESON warns of the rise of fascism.

VANG VIENG, Laos -- The Central Intelligence Agency's "secret war" in Laos ended 50 years ago, silencing Lima Site 6 and other isolated airstrips which helped the U.S. carpet bomb this tiny impoverished nation during the regional Vietnam War.

Lima Site 6, set among Vang Vieng's jagged karst mountain peaks, is now a deserted stretch of black asphalt speckled with squashed trash, 90 miles (150 kms) north of Laos' capital Vientiane.

Debris on the airstrip's gravelly surface includes empty plastic waterbottles, a dirt-stained cotton medical mask, and a faded Queen of Spades.

The strip resembles an empty urban parking lot stretched into the exaggerated rectangle which allowed Air America to land and take off amid the karst peaks.

During the 1961-1975 war, the CIA's Air America flew thousands of flights each day, lifting off from more than 200 scattered covert Lima Sites -- military code for unimproved "landing strips."

Those planes transported Americans, Thais, and U.S.-led minority tribal Hmong mercenaries alongside the dead and wounded, plus "hard rice" -- ammunition -- and refugees.

What is happening in Italy regarding Gaza is unprecedented in the history of solidarity between the country and any other international cause anywhere. A popular uprising is underway, the consequences of which are likely to alter, not only Rome’s position on the Israeli genocide in the Strip, but the country’s own political structure altogether.

To understand why such a conclusion is a rational one, we must consider two important factors: the popular mobilization throughout the country and the historical context of Italy’s political attitude towards Palestine and the Middle East.

When the Israeli genocide in Gaza started, the lnguage and political posturing of the far-right government of Giorgia Meloni were more or less consistent with the political positions adopted by other European leaders.