“There’s class warfare, all right. But it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”- Warren Buffet
Author: Scottie
I am an older gay guy in a long-term wonderful relationship. My spouse and I are in our 36th year together. I love politics and news. I enjoy civil discussions and have no taboo subjects. My pronouns are he / him / his and my email is Scottiestoybox@gmail.com
Democrats’ ‘Impotent’ Response to Trump’s Deportation Campaign
Mehdi moderates a panel with YouTube star Brian Tyler Cohen, LA city council member Nithya Raman, and podcaster Van Lathan, LIVE in Los Angeles!
Mehdi and Zeteo concluded our one-year anniversary tour last week, with a final stop in the city that has made headlines in recent days and weeks, after the Trump administration deployed the National Guard against protesters.
Yes, Los Angeles. Political commentator and YouTuber Brian Tyler Cohen: “If it was happening in another country… We would not hesitate for a single second to call it autocracy, authoritarianism, or a dictatorship”
In this special live recording, Mehdi sits down with Cohen, as well as LA City Council member Nithya Raman and “Higher Learning” co-host Van Lathan for a conversation on President Donald Trump’s targeting of LA protesters and immigrants, Democrats’ response, and the media’s handling of Trump 2.0.
LA Councilmember Nithya Raman: “There is an incredible amount of fear right now,” Raman tells Mehdi. “They’re [ICE] showing up at workplaces. They’re showing on street corners. They’re showing up taking street vendors who are selling outside of a Home Depot…
They showed up outside of an elder care facility in Santa Monica and took workers from there. I mean these are kidnappings.” Mehdi asks Lathan, who frequently appears on CNN, about whether he believes the media is meeting the moment right now when it comes to covering Trump’s second term.
Van Lathan: “The legacy media right now is made to serve a commercial break ‘I’m mad on the left,’ ‘I’m on the right,’ ‘I am the host, you two stop fighting! We’ll be right back,’ ‘Proctor & Gamble.’” Did you like this video? It was published on zeteo.com several days ago.
If you would like early access to more exclusive content like this, then do consider becoming a paid subscriber. It costs as much as a single coffee a month, gives you early access to all our fearless, independent reporting, and goes a long way in supporting our mission of bringing the best of journalism to YOU our subscribers. So what are you waiting for?
Germany sees anti-Pride events and restricts rainbow flags ahead of LGBTQ+ parties
The minority groups trying to push hate on the LGBTQ+ are well funded by billionaires like J.K. Rowling and the Christian church. They are using every media they can to turn young people against the LGBTQ+ using the most misinformation they can generate. And as much as they want / demand society return to their fantasied Christian 1950s pro white cis straight only country it was not true then and can’t be true now. Their goal is the total erasure of the LGBTQ+ and also any rights for those gained in the civil rights act. Below is a quote from the article. Hugs.
“I’m almost 40 and have seen so much progress like equal marriage,” Kelly says. “But something is changing. Hatred towards people like me is becoming mainstream again.”
Demonstrators participate in an event called “Show the flag: For queer visibility in the Bundestag!” in front of the Reichstag building that houses Germany’s lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, in Berlin, on July 8. The conservative president of the Bundestag said the rainbow flag would no longer be raised on top of the parliament building during Pride month, which in Germany runs from June 28 until July 27.
Odd Andersen/AFP via Getty Images
The tree-lined neighborhood near Nollendorfplatz square in central Berlin is as gay today as it was a century ago.
It’s where Christopher Isherwood wrote novels chronicling the rise of the Nazis amid the city’s rich queer nightlife that inspired the musical Cabaret.
Every summer, the neighborhood throws its own smaller-scale LGBTQ+ Pride event separate from the city’s main annual parade taking place this weekend.
It’s just one of more than 200 Pride events taking place in Germany this year. But with far-right extremist groups staging anti-Pride protests, many Pride attendees fear for their safety.
Sipping on a cocktail as the street party gets underway, 62-year-old Georg Schmidt says he’s relieved that this event is a relaxed affair. He says he attended a different local pride parade last month across town in the district of Marzahn and the mood there was tense.
“There was a massive police presence to shield us from anti-Pride protests. We only felt safe because the police kept us apart,” Schmidt says.
The counter demonstration was organized by far-right groups designated by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency as violent and extremist. It’s one of 17 extreme-right anti-Pride demonstrations that have taken place so far this year, according to the Center for Monitoring, Analysis and Strategy — an organization that monitors extremism. Some cities have even canceled pride because of threats.
Revelers march down the Leipziger Strasse street during a Pride parade in Berlin, July 23, 2022.
Markus Schreiber/AP
Sabine Volk, a researcher at the Institute for Research on Far Right Extremism at the University of Tübingen, says these groups attract young men who promote what they call traditional family values — a kind of pride that has little to do with rainbow flags.
“The key slogan is that the German flag and Germany itself is already colorful enough,” Volk says. “And the overall message is that queer life does not have a place in Germany.”
But it’s not just far-right extremists who are exacting about flags.
The new president of the German parliament, Julia Klöckner — who is a member of Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservative party — says the rainbow flag will no longer be raised on top of the legislature building during Pride month, which runs every year in Germany from June 28 until July 27. She has also prohibited parliamentary public servants from attending Pride in an official capacity and lawmakers have been asked to take down rainbow flags and stickers from office doors.
President of German Parliament Bundestag Julia Klöckner speaks to the media on July 8 in Berlin.
Thomas Trutschel/Photothek via Getty Images
Speaking on public broadcaster ARD, Merz signaled his support for the rule at Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag, with the words, “the Bundestag is not a circus tent” — a remark to which many have taken umbrage.
Merz backs his colleague’s argument that the lower house must maintain neutrality and cannot support events with a political agenda.
Nyke Slawik speaks during a parliamentary debate on queer hate crime in the Bundestag. Photo: Carsten Koall/dpa (Photo by Carsten Koall/picture alliance via Getty Images)
Carsten Koall/picture alliance via Getty Images
Opposition Green Party lawmaker Nyke Slawik criticized the move. “Declaring the rainbow a political symbol is highly problematic” stressing that “queer people are not an ideology; they are people!” Slawik told public broadcaster ZDF.
Slawik argues they are people increasingly in need of protection. Germany’s federal police report an almost tenfold increase in reported queerphobic hate crimes since 2010 and they believe the majority of cases go unreported.
The issue is not divided by party political lines; criticism of Merz’s choice of words has come from within his own party. Sönke Siegmann, the chair of the Christian Democrats’ LGBTQ+ Association, says some within his party are still catching up on terminology.
“If you say queer in my party, most people take a deep breath and say: ‘Oh, that’s a left-wing term,’ ” Siegmann observes. He says he has spoken with Merz since he made his “circus tent” comments.
“We explained to him what queer really means and two days later when asked in Parliament about LBGTQ+ hate crimes and what his government will do about them, Merz actually used the term queer,” Siegmann says.
Back in the Nollendorfplatz area, rainbow flags fly every month of the year. But local resident Chris Kelly says the mood here is not as “live and let live” as it once was. He recently opened a boutique that sells high-end garments made from industrial strength rubber. He says business is good and he has a broad customer base, but it was almost impossible trying to find premises for the boutique.
“We found plenty of suitable spaces to rent and our finances are solid, but a lot of landlords rejected us, saying they didn’t want people like us,” Kelly remembers. “Real estate agents had warned us, but I was flabbergasted to encounter such prejudice in Berlin’s queerest, gayest neighborhood.”
Kelly’s store is located just down the street from Romeo and Romeo, a gay bar whose owner was attacked last month. Kelly says he too gets more verbal abuse than he used to and he hears again and again of attacks on members of the LGBTQ+ community.
“I’m almost 40 and have seen so much progress like equal marriage,” Kelly says. “But something is changing. Hatred towards people like me is becoming mainstream again.”
Kelly points out that a few doors down in the other direction is where the legendary nightclub Eldorado stood until the Nazis closed it down in 1933, eventually sending its queer clientele to concentration camps.
A commuter walks down the steps of Berlin’s Bundestag subway station, decorated with rainbow colors, the symbol of the LGBTQ+ community, on July 24.
John MacDougall/AFP via Getty Images
As preparations for Berlin’s main Pride parade get underway, the city police say they’ve received a permit request for a counterdemonstration protesting “against Pride terror and identity disorders.”
In reaction to the Bundestag president’s decision not to fly the rainbow flag on top of parliament this year, Berlin’s transport authority has decorated its Bundestag subway station stop in rainbow colors, writing on Instagram: “So our Bundestag is ready for Pride.”
Kelly urges people to attend Pride and stand up to a new generation of the far-right. He has no desire to say Goodbye to Berlin and the neighborhood around Nollendorfplatz, as Isherwood was forced to do.
Let’s talk about Trump taking money from Nuke programs for his plane….
Over 60,000 Palestinians have died in the 21-month Israel-Hamas war, Gaza’s Health Ministry says
This is not a war it is a genocide. It is shooting at captured prisoners, it is shooting trapped people who can not escape because Israeli soldiers control all the borders. It is not a war because Hamas has no way to fight back as they have rifles and Israel has fighter jets, bombs, missiles, and tanks. Pretty one sided, especially with Israel deliberately targeting aid facilities and providers. Hugs
Over 60,000 Palestinians have died in the 21-month Israel-Hamas war, Gaza’s Health Ministry says
Best Wishes and Hugs,
Scottie
Russia kills 22 civilians in Ukraine as the Kremlin remains defiant over Trump threats
Russia kills 22 civilians in Ukraine as the Kremlin remains defiant over Trump threats
Best Wishes and Hugs,
Scottie
Political cartoons / memes / and news I want to share. 7-29-2025
NPR: His name is Mohammad Al-Motawaq. He is 18 months old. And he is starving in Gaza
His name is Mohammad Al-Motawaq. He is 18 months old. And he is starving in Gaza
Hidaya Al-Motawaq’s son is a year and a half old and weighs less than 10 pounds. Doctors warn of permanent damage to children’s health due to chronic malnutrition from Israel’s earlier blockade.
Read in NPR: https://apple.news/AqUYLXux9TPiheASoKuHl_w
Shared from Apple News
Best Wishes and Hugs,Scottie
ICE deported teenagers and children in immigration raids. Here are their stories.
Check out this article from USA TODAY:
ICE deported teenagers and children in immigration raids. Here are their stories.
Best Wishes and Hugs,
Scottie
With Famine, No Electricity, Fuel, Water, No Family, How Are You Going To Survive?’ in Gaza
After over 21 months of Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza, the humanitarian crisis in the Strip has reached its worst point yet. 94% of Gaza’s hospitals have been destroyed or damaged. Dozens of children have died from malnutrition. And Israeli troops continue to kill scores of Palestinians as they try to receive food from the so-called “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.”
In this second part of Zeteo’s live ‘Unshocked,’ Dr. Yasser Khan – a Canadian ophthalmologist and plastic surgeon who has traveled twice to Gaza since October 7, 2023 – describes to Mehdi and Naomi how Israel’s humanitarian assault on Gaza has turned injuries and disabilities in Gaza into, “a death sentence.”
Dr. Yasser Khan: “It was horrific, the most horrific things that I’ve ever seen.”
In the interview, Dr. Khan shares the stories of his many patients, the vast majority of whom he says were women and children.
Dr. Khan also discusses how upon returning from Gaza, many of his colleagues in the medical field refused to believe such stories, with some even going out of their way to tell him that, “‘he’s done nothing to be a hero.’”
Dr. Khan explains how he came to the conclusion that what he was seeing in Gaza was indeed a genocide and why he takes so much inspiration from the people in Gaza. Mehdi, Naomi, and Dr. Khan also take questions from a live audience.
Do consider becoming a paid subscriber so you can get early access to exclusive content like this.
Also, if you are interested in learning more about Israel’s assault on Gaza’s healthcare system, check out Zeteo’s most recently acquired documentary, ‘Gaza: Doctors Under Attack.’
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