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.’
Category: Food
The Mass Starvation Of Gaza Is A Disgrace To Humanity
These were the words used by the King Of Belgium recently and every day things are getting worse, as starvation starts to run rampant across the area. And all of this was man made. We cannot be silent about this.
These are difficult and traumatic times and, to help us navigate them, my team and I will be producing a regular stream of books to enable people to better understand the psychology of our leaders and the world around us, as well as ourselves. You can buy these self-help ebooks at http://www.RussellsBooks.com
Also, if you like my videos, please like, subscribe, comment and also JOIN MY NEWSLETTER to stay in touch and up to date with all my content: https://razzaque.short.gy
Trump’s DEATH TRAP Leaks… and CHAOS ERUPTS
$ informative shorter clips from The Majority Report
Priorities
(This is here in part because clicking through to read on Substack for free is good for her numbers, and she deserves all the numbers. -A)
My Thoughts on the ‘Gen Z Stare’ by Charlotte Clymer
And I do have thoughts. Read on Substack
Legacy media is very concerned with the ‘Gen Z Stare’
In the past week, there’s been robust discourse in legacy media about the so-called ‘Gen Z Stare’ and the bursts of generational conflict it reportedly captures.
It’s gotten write-ups by The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, The Boston Globe, NBC News, ABC News, CNBC, Newsweek, Indy100, Axios, Fortune, Vox, Vice, Business Insider, The Independent, Forbes, Buzzfeed, Slate, HuffPost, Glamour, People, and Marie Claire, among others.
As a millennial, I am apparently urged to be concerned about this phenomenon of Gen Z folks supposedly failing to appropriately interact with me through sufficiently pleasant facial expressions, so I thought it might be helpful to offer my thoughts:
The sitting president of the United States is currently covering up a massive sex trafficking operation that targeted children and likely implicates a number of powerful people who are currently out in the world and free to continue preying on children.
The sitting president of the United States just successfully pressured Paramount and CBS to cancel the #1 late-night talk show on broadcast television as part of what appears to be a blatant bribery deal because the host has been critical of him.
The sitting president of the United States just got the extremist Republican majority in Congress to strip 11 million Americans of health care coverage by the end of 2026 and upwards of 17 million Americans when you account for new federal work requirements. (snip-MORE; it’s succinct and quick, and it’s all good facts for grocery/other places lines, for discussion.)
Some clips from The Majority Report dealing with Racism in the US and Israel and ICE.
Please Join Me!
Writting and calling the US Senators about this. We’ve already paid for this money to be disbursed, with the understanding that it will be. This recission is UnAmerican.
Rescission Package Would Sabotage Recent Funding Deal, Cripple Future Ones
July 15, 2025, 1:47 pm
President Trump’s proposal to rescind $9.4 billion in previously approved spending, which the Senate is expected to vote on this week, is a bad idea for several reasons, as noted in a recent CBPP report. The rescission package would significantly damage life-saving global health programs, peacekeeping efforts, and economic development abroad, and would hurt domestic community TV and radio stations supported by the Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio. It also builds on the Administration’s broader effort to illegally impound funds, which includes withholding for months the spending that was ultimately included in the rescissions package prior to the formal request and unlawfully delaying or blocking billions of dollars for other programs from going out.
What’s less obvious but no less important, the package — combined with the Administration’s broader campaign of illegally impounding funds — could also make it far more difficult for Congress to fund the government in a bipartisan way in the future.
Here’s why:
Most of the funds in the rescission package were enacted in March legislation that was passed by Congress — including on a bipartisan basis in the Senate — and signed into law by the President to fund the government for the rest of fiscal year 2025. To provide the 60 votes required to avoid a Senate filibuster, at least eight Democratic senators needed to join with 52 Republican senators to invoke cloture on the funding bill.
But presidential rescission requests operate under different rules and require only 51 votes to pass the Senate, so no Democratic votes are needed. If the Senate approves the package (which passed the House on a party-line vote), this would show that Republicans could quickly revise on a partisan basis, with merely 51 votes in the Senate, a bipartisan funding agreement reached only a few months earlier that required support from no fewer than 60 senators.
Nothing has changed about the provisions in the package since the funding was approved in March. They are simply policies President Trump has long opposed and doesn’t want to carry out. But that is not a justification for a rescissions request. After all, it’s typical in an appropriations deal that no one gets everything they want. That means congressional negotiators may get more or less funding than they prefer for a given agency; it also means the Administration may be required to implement programs it does not support.
But if Senate Republicans go along with the Administration’s efforts to simply remove spending they had earlier agreed to as part of the March deal, this would undermine the ability to strike future deals. Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought has also indicated that the Administration “will strongly consider” sending further rescissions requests to Congress. And of course, the trust needed to make these deals is further undermined when the Administration also chooses to withhold money illegally without even submitting a rescissions package.
The result would likely be lasting damage to our ability to fund the government in a bipartisan way, and the consequences will become clearer in just the next few months. Enacting appropriations for fiscal year 2026, which starts October 1, will require Democratic senators to join with Republicans to reach the needed 60-vote threshold. This Democratic support may not materialize if Democrats believe the President and congressional Republicans will later undo, by rescission or impoundment, any agreement they sign onto.
More generally, there’s little reason for the minority party in Congress to agree to a deal when the Administration and the majority party can strip away funding they don’t like in a purely partisan way, or if the Administration may attempt unilaterally — and illegally — not to implement it at all, with no pushback from the majority party in Congress. As a result, it would be far more difficult to reach the bipartisan agreements necessary to fund the government on time and with the resources required to serve the country’s needs.
Senators should keep those consequences in mind as they consider the President’s current rescission request.
Topics:
‘They’re killing us’: Immigrants complain of inhumane conditions inside NYC holding site
Immigrants without criminal backgrounds have been among the fastest-growing groups of ICE detainees. Less than a third of ICE detainees, 28.5%, are convicted criminals, according to the data. Another quarter have pending criminal charges and the rest have no criminal histories.
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Immigrants being detained in federal holding rooms in Lower Manhattan have complained of being unable to bathe or change clothes, cramped conditions, sometimes being provided just one meal a day, and sleeping on concrete benches or the floor.
Some immigrants staying at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding rooms at 26 Federal Plaza also report stays lasting days at a time — as many as 10 days in one case referenced in a court filing.
“ There’s no room to sit down – standing room only,” said Rebecca Rubin, an immigration attorney for the New York Legal Assistance Group, who has had at least three clients detained in the cells.
The allegations came in court papers filed by lawyers representing immigrants held at the Lower Manhattan facility and in interviews with immigrants who said they were detained there.
Congressmembers, who for weeks have been refused entry at the site on the ground that the facilities are not “detention centers” but rather off-limits “processing centers,” have also raised concerns.
“Do not go treating people subhumanly — treating immigrants, simply because they are not born here — as if they are second class, as if they are not human,” Rep. Dan Goldman, a New York Democrat, told reporters Tuesday in a press conference outside the facility. “That is not what this country’s about.”
DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin, in a statement, dismissed the complaints in their entirety: “Any claim that there is overcrowding or subprime conditions is categorically false. All detainees are provided with proper meals, medical treatment, and have opportunities to communicate with their family members and lawyers.”
She added: “As we arrest and remove criminal illegal aliens and public safety threats from the U.S., ICE has worked diligently to obtain greater necessary detention space while avoiding overcrowding.”
In a previous statement, McLaughlin said, “26 Federal Plaza is not a detention center. It is a Federal building with an ICE law enforcement office inside of it.”
The holding areas are guarded rooms on the 10th floor of the federal government office building, just steps away from state and federal courthouses and City Hall. Those being detained include immigrants taken into custody after immigration court hearings in the same building.
The rooms used to be temporary holding areas where immigrant detainees were held for a few hours before being transferred to larger, more permanent and resourced detention centers, according to local immigration attorneys. But the lawyers said in recent months, detainees have been sleeping overnight in overcrowded facilities, some for days.
“In the past… it was sort of understood that (detainees) weren’t going to be spending any sort of meaningful time there,” said Harold Solis, co-legal director of Make the Road New York, the local chapter of the national immigrants’ rights advocacy group. “This is definitely a different reality that people are experiencing there.”
S. Michael Musa-Obregon, a New York-based immigration attorney, added, “It used to be a holding pen, like a central booking. Now it’s becoming a temporary jail.”
Several members of New York’s congressional delegation, including Reps. Nydia Velázquez, Adriano Espaillat, Jerry Nadler and Goldman, all Democrats, have tried in recent weeks to inspect the holding areas but were denied entry.
Federal law allows lawmakers to inspect detention facilities, with no notice needed. But in a conversation with Nadler and Goldman, ICE Deputy Field Office Director William Joyce said the site was a temporary “processing center,” not a detention facility and not subject to inspection.
In the June 18 exchange with the two lawmakers, recorded by Gothamist in a hallway at 26 Federal Plaza, Joyce said the holding areas were “approaching capacity.”
He added that detainees were being held overnight, but that claims of migrants staying for a week or more were “an exaggeration.”
‘These conditions are inhumane’
Immigration lawyers contend, based on ICE’s public detainee tracking system, that a detainee named Joselyn Chipantiza-Sisalema had been detained inside the facility for 10 days.
Make the Road NY filed a lawsuit on July 3 against the federal government, advocating for her release.
Lawyers for Chipantiza-Sisalema, a 20-year-old high school student, wrote in a court filing, “She has told her parents that her conditions of confinement are extremely distressing: she is sleeping on the floor, she is in the same clothes she was detained in and the food she is provided is inadequate.”
Chipantiza-Sisalema wasn’t allowed to call or visit with a lawyer, she wasn’t allowed to call anyone but her parents and she had spoken with her family only three times, for a minute each time, according to the court filing.
Chipantiza-Sisalema was transferred to another detention facility on Friday, according to Solis.
“These conditions are inhumane as individuals detained do not have access to beds, regular meals, or communication with loved ones or counsel,” lawyers wrote in Chipantiza-Sisalema’s case. “Detainees also report that they are not able to bathe or change clothes; that the temperature can be extremely hot or cold; and that medical care is not provided.”
Another detainee, Derlis Snaider Chusin Toaquiza, a 19-year-old high school student, was fed one to two meals a day and “forced to sleep sitting up for lack of space,” his attorneys wrote in a lawsuit demanding his release from ICE detention. Toaquiza was held for two days in a small room with over 60 people, according to the filing.
“The room was so crowded that he could not lie down and he had to sleep sitting up,” the filing said.
Enrique, 52-year-old former detainee from Peru who asked not to share his last name for fear of retaliation against his family still living in the United States, said he slept in a holding cell at 26 Federal Plaza for six days in late June.
Enrique said that when he first entered the roughly 5 by 10 meter room, there were about 30 people. Guards gave him an aluminum blanket to stay warm.
By the time he was transferred to another detention center, six days later, he said there were 100 people and not enough blankets to go around.
“We were on top of each other,” Massamba Gueye, a 29-year-old detainee from Senegal, told Gothamist. He said he was detained with about 30 men in a room for one night in early June. Gueye said while he was there, another man fainted, hit his head and started bleeding — but guards didn’t respond.
“Nobody was bothered to even try to help him,” Gueye, who has since been transferred to another ICE facility, said in a phone interview.
‘They’re killing us. My liver is killing me.’
Immigrants detained at 26 Federal Plaza and their relatives also complain about lack of medical care.
Samara Simone de la Cruz Gooden, 22, said her husband Joan Paul Alcivar de la Cruz, a 27-year-old from Ecuador, was detained at 26 Federal Plaza for at least four to five days in late June. Gooden said most of her husband’s liver had been removed before his detention and he requires a special diet, which he didn’t receive while staying in the holding cell.
“He broke down,” Gooden said. “He was like, ‘They’re killing us. My liver is killing me. I’m pooping out a lot of blood. I’m so scared.’”
De la Cruz didn’t receive any medical help while he was detained at 26 Federal Plaza, Gooden said. Eventually, he was rushed to the hospital, she said, where she wasn’t allowed to speak with him.
De la Cruz was eventually transferred to a facility in Louisiana, where he is currently being held. Attorneys at the New York Legal Assistance Group have filed a lawsuit advocating for his release.
Concerns have arisen about ICE detaining immigrants for days in short-term holding facilities elsewhere across the country.
A lawsuit filed last week in California claims that ICE is holding immigrants in another “processing center” in a basement in downtown Los Angeles — in what the lawsuit describes as “dungeon-like facilities,” with overcrowded, windowless rooms holding dozens of detainees.
Some rooms are so cramped that detainees can’t sit or lie down for hours at a time, the lawsuit alleges. The lawsuit also alleges that detainees lack necessary food, medical care and access to legal counsel. New York Attorney General Letitia James and attorneys general for 17 states filed a brief in support of that lawsuit.
More detention space is coming
On Tuesday, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and Goldman observed immigration court hearings and arrests inside 26 Federal Plaza.
While speaking to members of the press outside afterward, Goldman shared testimonies of migrants he said had been detained inside, who complained of overcrowded conditions and insufficient food and water.
Lander and Williams urged New Yorkers and elected officials to visit the building and observe immigration court hearings and subsequent ICE arrests. Lander was arrested last month while escorting a man away from his immigration court hearing.
Under President Donald Trump, ICE has ramped up immigration arrests, while at once contending with a shortage of detention space. As of the end of June, nearly 58,000 people were being held in ICE detention centers, according to the latest agency data — far exceeding ICE’s current detention capacity of 41,000 beds.
Immigrants without criminal backgrounds have been among the fastest-growing groups of ICE detainees. Less than a third of ICE detainees, 28.5%, are convicted criminals, according to the data. Another quarter have pending criminal charges and the rest have no criminal histories.
Trump’s signature “big, beautiful” domestic policy bill, recently signed into law, includes about $170 billion to support the administration’s immigration crackdown. That includes about $45 billion for immigration detention centers, which the American Immigration Council estimates will allow ICE to expand its detention capacity to 116,000 beds.
Jessica Gould contributed reporting.
This story was updated with comment from the Department of Homeland Security.
It’s Bastille Day in France! & More, In Peace & Justice History for 7/14
| July 14, 1789 Bastille Day in France: Parisian revolutionaries and mutinous troops stormed and dismantled the Bastille, a former royal fortress converted to a state prison, that had come to symbolize the tyranny of the Bourbon monarchy. This dramatic action was proof that power no longer resided in the King as God’s representative, but in the people, and signaled the beginning of the French Revolution and the First Republic.  Bastille Day for kids |
| July 14, 1798 A mere 22 years after the Declaration of Independence, Congress passed the Sedition Act, making it a federal crime to “. . . unlawfully combine or conspire together, with intent to oppose any measure or measures of the government of the United States . . . or to excite any unlawful combinations therein, for opposing or resisting any law of the United States, or any act of the President of the United States . . . .” The Declaration: “…whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends [life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness], it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government….” “An act for the punishment of certain crimes against the United States” |
| July 14, 1887 Adrian C. “Cap” Anson, both manager and captain of the Chicago Whitestockings (National League), refused to let his baseball team take the field as long as the Newark Little Giants included their starting pitcher, George Stovey, an African-American, in the lineup. “Get that nigger off the field!” Anson was heard to say. Newark refused to allow Anson to dictate the use of their personnel, but the game was ruled a forfeit to Chicago. At the time there were only 20 black players in all of professional baseball. The same day, the directors of the International League (which included Newark) barred any of their teams from hiring black players in the future. By the following year there were only six black players left on all the teams in four leagues. All-black teams were formed, but the last of them, the Acme Colored Giants from Celeron, New York, of the Iron and Oil (I&0) League, stopped playing in 1898. No African-American would play in white organized baseball again until Jackie Robinson nearly 50 years later. |
| July 14, 1955 The Air Pollution Control Act of 1955 became law, the first in a series of laws that ultimately became the Clean Air Act in 1963. This first law simply provided funding to the Public Health Service to conduct research.  History of the Clean Air Act |
July 14, 1958 King Faisal II A group of Iraqi army officers staged a coup in Iraq and overthrew the monarchy of King Faisal II (who had ascended to the throne at age four). The new government, led by Abdul Karim el Qasim, was ousted in 1963 by a coup helped by the CIA and led by the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party—later dominated by Saddam Hussein. Read more |
YOU HAVE THE LEGAL AUTHORITY, F*****G USE IT
One voice was yelling he was a US citizen. The conditions are horrible. They get their drinking water from the toilet. Maxwell Frost is a progressive treasure. Hugs
Scottie's Playtime 