Category: News / Information
The U.S.A. now, and then,
from Heather Cox Richardson. Though our current president has little respect for U.S. veterans, that is not true of anybody I know. Even anti-war I believe our current service people and our veterans are deserving of all benefits of their citizenship and especially added benefits of their service to the U.S. Many readers here are military veterans. My mother’s brother-in-law, my (favorite!) Uncle Jack, served as a U.S. Marine in WWII. My father served in the U.S. Army during the Korean conflict. All of us know and love someone who’s served us in this honorable and unique fashion. While our president doesn’t think to respect that, or even think about it at all, the rest of us do. I know we are thankful. And now, from Heather Cox Richardson, history expert,
June 5, 2025 by Heather Cox Richardson
Read on Substack
Today the U.S. political world was consumed today by a public fight between President Donald J. Trump and his former sidekick, billionaire Elon Musk. Musk invested about $290 million into the 2024 election, vowing to elect Trump in order to get rid of government investigations into his businesses he worried would “take [him] down.”
When Trump took office, Musk became a fixture in the White House, attending Cabinet meetings and heading the “Department of Government Efficiency.” That group set out to kill government programs by withholding congressionally approved funds at the same time that its staff sucked up information on Americans that could feed the training of artificial intelligence and killed the investigations into his businesses Musk had worried about.
In February, Musk posted on social media: “I love [Donald Trump] as much as a straight man can love another man.”
But Musk overstepped boundaries and overstayed his welcome even as his antics hurt sales of his signature car, the Tesla, inspiring Trump to do a car commercial for him on the White House grounds. Just a week ago, Musk officially left the White House on the same day that an article in the New York Times documented his heavy drug use on the campaign.
Then, on Tuesday, June 3, he took a public stand against the omnibus bill Trump desperately wants Congress to pass, posting on X: “I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.”
And with that, the falling out began.
This morning, Trump told reporters he was “disappointed” in Musk. Ron Filipkowski of Meidas followed the saga from there.
“Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House, and the Republicans would be 51–49 in the Senate,” Musk wrote. “Such ingratitude.”
Trump then suggested that “The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts. I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!”
Musk promptly said he would begin decommissioning SpaceX’s spacecraft, which supply the International Space Station.
The two men continued to go back and forth, with Musk saying that “Donald Trump is in the Epstein files,” a reference to the records compiled by convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, with whom Trump was friendly. Musk also said Trump’s tariffs will cause a recession, and agreed with another poster who suggested that Trump should be impeached and replaced with Vice President J.D. Vance.
Trump responded to that attack far more weakly than one would have expected, simply turning back to the omnibus bill and insisting it “is one of the Greatest Bills ever presented to Congress.”
Musk’s behavior is erratic in its own right, but if there is anything but pique behind it, it appears he is threatening Trump by making a play to control the Republican Party. In response to a post by conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer suggesting that Republican lawmakers are unsure if they should side with Trump or Musk, Musk wrote: “Oh and some food for thought as they ponder that question: Trump has 3.5 years left as President, but I will be around for 40+ years.”
It’s quite a gamble, since Trump controls the government contracts on which Musk’s fortune was built and on which he still relies. Some MAGA loyalists appear to see the fight as a victory for Trump and are thrilled to see Musk’s star fall. MAGA influencer Steve Bannon told Tyler Pager of the New York Times that he has advised Trump to cancel all of Musk’s federal contracts and launch a formal investigation of his drug use and his immigration status.
Kylie Robison and Aarian Marshall of Wired noted that TrumpCoin lost more than $100 million in value during the fight. Tesla stock lost $152 billion of value from its market capitalization, prompting Filipkowski to note that the total came to about $9 billion per tweet.
Economist Robert Reich had perhaps the best summary of the fight today when he noted, “That any of us have to care about the messy breakup of these two massive narcissists—and that they both individually wield such massive power—is an indictment of our political system and further proves the poisonous influence of Big Money on our democracy.”
Indeed, today’s White House and today’s America are very different from what they were eighty-one years ago.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave his twenty-ninth Fireside Chat on June 5, 1944, and had good news for the American people. The day before, on June 4, Rome had fallen to Allied troops. “The first of the Axis capitals is now in our hands,” Roosevelt said.
The president pointed out that it was “significant that Rome has been liberated by the armed forces of many nations. The American and British armies—who bore the chief burdens of battle—found at their sides our own North American neighbors, the gallant Canadians. The fighting New Zealanders from the far South Pacific, the courageous French and the French Moroccans, the South Africans, the Poles and the East Indians—all of them fought with us on the bloody approaches to the city of Rome. The Italians, too, forswearing a partnership in the Axis which they never desired, have sent their troops to join us in our battles against the German trespassers on their soil.”
This group of ordinary men from many different countries had worked together to defeat the forces of fascism.
But FDR warned Americans that the fall of Rome was only the beginning. “We shall have to push through a long period of greater effort and fiercer fighting before we get into Germany itself,” he said. [T]he victory still lies some distance ahead. That distance will be covered in due time—have no fear of that. But it will be tough and it will be costly.”
FDR knew something his audience did not. On the other side of the Atlantic, paratroopers, their faces darkened with cocoa, were already dropping into France, and the soldiers, sailors, and airmen of the Allies were on their way across the English channel.
The order of the day from their commander Dwight D. Eisenhower that day had read: “You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed people of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.
“Your task will not be an easy one,” it read, but it assured the troops that the Germans had suffered great defeats and Allied bombing had reduced German strength, while “[o]ur Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to Victory!”
Eisenhower’s public confidence did not reflect his understanding that the largest amphibious invasion in military history was a gamble. On June 5, in pencil on a sheet of paper, he had written a message to be communicated in case the invasion failed.
“Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops,” it read. “My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery and dedication to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.”
On the morning of June 6, 1944, five naval assault divisions stormed the beaches of Normandy. Seven thousand ships and landing craft operated by more than 195,000 naval personnel from eight countries brought almost 133,000 troops to beaches given the code names UTAH, OMAHA, GOLD, JUNO, and SWORD. By the end of the day, more than 10,000 Allied troops were wounded or killed, but the Allies had established a foothold in France that would permit them to flood troops, vehicles, and supplies into Europe. When FDR held a press conference later that day, officials and press alike were jubilant.
—
Notes:
https://catalog.archives.gov/id/186470?objectPanel=transcription
http://docs.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/04DD009.HTML
Donald J. Trump, Truth Social post, June 5, 2025, 2:37 p.m.
Donald J. Trump, Truth Social post, June 5, 2025, 4:06 p.m.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/05/elon-musk-donald-trump-recession-impeachment-00390762
https://substack.com/home/post/p-165259717
https://www.wired.com/story/musk-trump-breakup-tesla-stock-price/
X:
elonmusk/status/1929954109689606359
Bluesky:
rbreich.bsky.social/post/3lqviu2yptg2o
mehdirhasan.bsky.social/post/3lqvfy7tcx22n
kyledcheney.bsky.social/post/3lquxzrhire2y
I am going to be doing dishes so enjoy some The Majority Report clips I found informative. Hugs
Peace & Justice History for 6/6
(https://www.peacebuttons.info/)
June 6, 1936 First issue of Peace News published in England. PeaceNews home page (Peace News subscriptions are no longer available. See this blog entry. -A. There is still useful information on its home page, etc.) |
| June 6, 1949 George Orwell’s dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, was published. It described a world in which totalitarian government controls the behavior of all, including the way one thinks. This was summed up in the government’s slogans: War Is Peace, Freedom Is Slavery, Ignorance Is Strength.   George Orwell More about George Orwell |
| June 6, 1966 James H. Meredith, the first African American ever to attend the University of Mississippi, was shot by a sniper in the back and legs while on a lone “March Against Fear.”  He was walking the 220 miles from Memphis, Tennessee, to Jackson, Mississippi, to encourage others to stand up for their rights and self-respect, and to register to vote. Law enforcement officers and reporters following him witnessed the attack, and the shooter was arrested.  Read more |
June 6, 1968 Comedian Dick Gregory began a hunger strike in the Olympia, Washington, jail after his arrest with others at a fish-in, an act of civil disobedience in support of the fishing rights of the Nisqually Indian Tribe. See what happened after his arrest |
| June 6, 1971 40 members of the American Indian Movement camped in the sacred Black Hills, or Paha Sapa, atop Mount Rushmore; 20 were arrested. They were demanding the U.S. honor the terms of the 1868 treaty with the Sioux Nation granting them the Black Hills territory. Read more |
| June 6, 1989 The FBI and the Department of Energy, tipped off by plant workers, raided the Rocky Flats nuclear production facility. They found numerous violations of federal anti-pollution laws including massive contamination of water and soil. Rockwell International, the operator of the facility, was fined $18.5 million. |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjune.htm#june6
Peace & Justice History for 6/5
| June 5, 1851 Uncle Tom’s Cabin or, Life Among the Lowly began to appear in serial form in the Washington National Era, an abolitionist weekly. The novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe, a tear-jerking tale of the hardships of slavery, became a central reference point in the national debate over the issue.  Read more |
June 5, [since 1972] World Environment Day was established by the U.N. General Assembly to commemorate the opening of the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment in Sweden. The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) was established as a result of the conference. The 1972 Stockholm conference UNEP’s mission: To provide leadership and encourage partnership in caring for the environment by inspiring, informing, and enabling nations and peoples to improve their quality of life without compromising that of future generations. Each year World Environment Day adopts a different theme. |
| June 5, 1989 Just a few days before the first fission reaction was to be allowed at New Hampshire’s Seabrook Station nuclear power plant, hundreds breached the security fence, leading to 627 arrests. They carried signs reading, “In Mourning for the Late, Great State of New Hampshire,” and “Remember Chernobyl.” Led by the Clamshell Alliance, their concern was for the safety of local residents in the event of a nuclear accident, as well as environmental pollution and the unsolved problem of safe disposal of nuclear waste generated by the reactor. There were also concerns for increased electricity rates to cover the costs of the project. Repeated significant protests occurred as early as 1976 at the beginning of construction when sometimes more than a thousand would be arrested. Ron Sher, a Seabrook spokesman, termed the demonstrators “very vocal but a small minority . . . They don’t represent the millions of people in New England that recognize that nuclear energy is a viable energy option.” The plant was projected to produce up to 1.15 gigawatts, enough for one million homes. |
| June 5, 1993 Thousands marched to protest neo-Nazi violence against foreigners, particularly ethnic Turks, living in Germany. |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjune.htm#june5
We Know What To Do-
Some Clay Jones Work
Black Eye Clones by Clay Jones
There are a lot of weird things going on Read on Substack
There are other issues I should be drawing about, but how can I resist a second Biden Clone cartoon? This shit is cray-cray, yo? Do the kids still say “cray-cray?” Anywhosies, I drew a second Biden clone cartoon. The bad thing is, I have at least two more ideas on Biden Clones that I should at least sketch out for the Blog O’ Roughs, which is long overdue.
Since we talked about Biden Clones yesterday, we’re going to talk about the other shit in this cartoon.
Elon says he’s leaving Washington, and he’s taking Stephen Miller’s wife with him. Whaaaaat?
Katie Miller, the wife of Baby Goebbels, has left her position as adviser and spokesperson for the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to work full-time for Musk and his companies. I don’t know what position she’ll be assuming for Elon, but I heard she bought some knee pads. Wow, I’m a horrible person. But, Baby Goebbels doesn’t want to talk about it. (snip-MORE, and oh, do go read it!)
Biden Clone by Clay Jones
It’s extremely difficult to out-crazy the shit that comes out of the Trump White House Read on Substack
Late last night, around the time a person would tweet while on a bender or call up an ex-girlfriend for a booty call, Donald Trump posted to Truth Social that Joe Biden was executed in 2020 and replaced with clones and robots. (snip-MORE, and it’s also very good)
The Soylent Green Party by Clay Jones
Not to give the GOP any ideas Read on Substack
Republicans suck. They suck with compassion. They suck with empathy. Lord knows they suck with humor. And yet, voters believe the GOP connects more with average Americans than Democrats do, never mind that their leader craps in a golden toilet.
Iowa Senator Joni Ernst is a great example. She ignored Republican advice against holding town halls and learned the hard way that her constituents don’t like the current MAGA agenda. Probably because it sucks. You don’t need a think tank to run a bunch of surveys to know that the majority of voters don’t want to lose their Medicaid coverage or health insurance. And, they don’t want it to be more difficult with loops to jump through to keep their coverage.
During Joni’s town hall last Friday, she was grilled by her voters about the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which the House barely passed 215-214, and will cut Medicaid along with a lot of government health programs, along with SNAP, and make Medicaid tougher to keep, all so billionaires retain their huge 2017 MAGA tax cuts while adding trillions to the debt.
Grams might have to eat generic cat food, not even the good cat food, while your boss will get to purchase his fourth yacht, which Republicans are trying to make tax-deductible, along with private jets and trophy wives, like Melania. (snip-yes, MORE that’s good to read!)
Peace & Justice History for 6/4
| June 4, 1939 During what became known as the “Voyage of the Damned,” the SS St. Louis, carrying more than 900 Jewish refugees from Germany to the U.S., was turned away from the Florida coast. The ship, also denied permission to dock in Cuba, eventually returned to Europe; many of the refugees later died in Nazi concentration camps.  The reality of what happened The movie based on the history |
| June 4, 1972 Angela Y. Davis, a former philosophy professor at the University of California, outspoken black leader and self-proclaimed communist, was acquitted on charges of conspiracy, murder, and kidnapping by an all-white jury in San Jose, California.  More on Angela Davis  Angela Davis wearing a peace button from peacebuttons.info, speaking at The Grays Harbor Institute, Hoquiam, Washington April, 2007  |
June 4, 1987 New Zealand passed legislation declaring itself nuclear-free. In 1986, New Zealand had banned the entry of U.S. Navy ships from their ports in the belief that they were carrying nuclear weapons or were nuclear-powered. U.S. government protests of the policy led to breakup of the ANZUS (Australia-New Zealand-United States) defense alliance.The New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament and Arms Control Act of 1987 (which ratified the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) prohibits the: • manufacture, acquisition, possession, control of any nuclear explosive device • aiding, abetting or procuring any person to manufacture, acquire, possess, or have control over any nuclear explosive device • transport, stockpiling, storage, installation, or deployment of any nuclear explosive device. |
| June 4, 1989 Hundreds of civilians were shot dead by China’s People’s Liberation Army during a bloody military operation in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Students and workers had become part of a growing pro-democracy movement, gathering there continuously for weeks. The Chinese government still officially denies any deaths occurred; thousands who were arrested “disappeared” and remain unaccounted for. “… deaths from the military assault on Tiananmen Square range from 180 to 500; thousands more have been injured . . . thousands of civilians stood their ground or swarmed around military vehicles. APCs [armored personnel carriers] were set on fire, and demonstrators besieged troops with rocks, bottles, and Molotov cocktails.”*   *From a comprehensive overview prepared by the National Security Archive based on formerly classified U.S. Government documents |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjune.htm#june4
Everybody Get Together
Nationalism is wrong-headed. -A.
Genetic Study shows “Phoenicians,” like all “Nations” were a Multi-Ethnic Franchise
Juan Cole 06/01/2025
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Harald Ringbauer et al. writing in Nature report on a genetic study of the ancient Phoenicians that is really going to anger Lebanese Christian nationalists. In fact, it contains a profound lesson for nationalists and nationalism in general, which is that the whole thing is a scam thought up in the last 250 years.
The 19th century racist thinker Ernest Renan saw a racial distinction between “Aryans” and “Semites.” From that point of view, the Punic wars between Rome and Carthage had a racial element, since Phoenicians were classed as “Semites.” But it turns out it was all a tiff among people we would now class as Italians.
The Phoenicians had been thought to be a unified civilization that began in what is today Lebanon. Well, they did start off in what is today Lebanon. But the “unified civilization” bit turns out to be a misconception.
The Phoenicians developed an alphabet. Like most alphabets, the letters had originally been pictograms. The Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic, as well as the Greek and Roman alphabets (we still use the latter) derived from the Phoenician. For instance a picture of waves stood for water (ma’), and that became our M, which still looks like waves. Or a circle stood for eye (`ayn), which became our ‘o.’
Since the Phoenicians founded city-states all around the Mediterranean and left inscriptions in that alphabet, scholars had assumed that they were a related people. Phoenician settlements in the western Mediterranean were called “Punic,” but the language and customs were the same.
Regarding the Lebanese origins of this civlizational complex, Ringbauer et al. write, “We find that individuals from the Levantine Phoenician site of Akhziv in present-day Israel cluster together with previously published Bronze and Iron Age Levantine individuals, including from Megiddo in present-day Israel and the Phoenician cities of Sidon and Beirut in present-day Lebanon.” That is, they looked at ancient individuals from around the Levant and found that they all had shared haplotypes, i.e. they were Canaanites. Phoenicians, Hebrews, Nabataeans, etc. were all Canaanites culturally and genetically.
Now imagine the scientists’ astonishment when they looked at DNA from individuals who had lived in Phoenician cities such as Ibiza off Spain or Carthage in Tunisia to find that it did not display the ancient haplotypes or genetic sequences associated with Levantine peoples.
They write, “However, a mitochondrial genome from Carthage and whole-genome data from 12 individuals from the nearby rural Punic site of Kerkouane show substantial south European ancestry as well as indigenous North African ancestry. Partial North African ancestry was also found in genome-wide data from eight individuals from two Punic sites in Sardinia, combined with a broad eastern Mediterranean ancestry. Together with analysis of the whole-genome sequence of an individual from Ibiza, which was also interpreted to harbour eastern Mediterranean ancestry, this suggested that Punic people had complex ancestry.”
They observe of these “Phoenicians of the middle and western Mediterranean, “They are broadly distributed with a primary mode overlapping Bronze and Iron Age individuals from Sicily and the Aegean, regardless of sampled location.” There were only three exceptions: two persons from Sicily and one from Sardinia showed Canaanite genetic heritage.
In all the other 119 samples from “Punic” sites, the genetic heritage was mixed, showing patterns similar to those in ancient Greece and Sicily. After around 550 BC, when Carthage was founded by the “Phoenicians” in what is now Tunisia, some North African [Amazigh] genetic heritage starts to circulate among some of them. But this was a minority population. The authors observe, “Even in North Africa, 10 out of the 27 individuals from Kerkouane and 5 out of the 17 individuals from Carthage can be modelled with no indigenous North African ancestry, and 84% of individuals from these sites have more than 50% Sicilian–Aegean ancestry, making it the dominant ancestry component also in North African Punic sites.”
Also, the Iberians were mostly not Iberians. “Only two Iberian individuals, from Ibiza and Cádiz, had confidently high proportions of Bronze Age Iberian ancestry… Instead, Punic sites in the western Mediterranean share similar ancestry distributions of predominantly Sicilian–Aegean or North African origin.”
So how did all this happen? The authors hypothesize that Lebanese Phoenicians colonized Sicily, which had earlier had Greek colonies, and the Sicilians adopted Phoenician language, religion and culture. They they were the ones who struck out west, establishing Phoenician colonies in the central and western Mediterranean.
Ringbauer and his colleagues explain, “A critical question raised by our results is how and when Canaanite–Phoenician culture and language were adopted by people without any detectable Levantine ancestry. One hypothesis is that, after Levantine Phoenicians founded settlements in the central and western Mediterranean in the early first millennium bce, these communities continuously incorporated people with Sicilian–Aegean ancestry.”
Glass head pendant, Phoenician or Carthaginian, ca. 450–300 BCE. Metropolitan Museum. Public Domain.
Reporting on the study for a Nature briefing, Ewen Callaway quotes Ringbauer as asking how it was that many Mediterranean peoples abandoned their own local cultures for that of the Phoenicians. “Does this mean Phoenician culture was like a franchise that others could adopt? That’s one for the archaeologists.”
Of course they were a franchise. So were the ancient Greeks, whose culture was adopted by so many Egyptians in places like Alexandria. As late as the 200s and 300s, there are no Arabic or Aramaic inscriptions in and around Damascus, only Greek ones. Ashkenazi Jews in Europe were also a franchise, which was joined by many gentiles — especially but not only women.
Nineteenth century European theorists of nationalism confused language groups with kinship groups, assuming that people who spoke a language were a “race,” perhaps even a “pure” one.
Today many Lebanese Christians claim to be “Phoenicians,” as though it was a pure “race” unconnected to the “Arabs.” And they take pride in Carthage, a Phoenician city, and in the Phoenician outposts of Spain, imagining they were all “Lebanese.” Ringbauer has knocked that down.
There are no nations or races of that sort. There are no “Aryans” and “Semites.” This was a linguistic distinction that was stupidly racialized. Racial “nation” was all a fevered racist fantasy. Even modern genetics only traces two lines of ancestry, the Y chromosome and the mitochondrial DNA of the X chromosome, whereas we have millions of ancestors. We’re all mongrels, all mixed up, and people in the Mediterranean basin all have a common ancestor from not so long ago. All humans have one likely only 200,000 years ago.
Peace & Justice History for 6/3
June 3, 1900 The International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), a consolidation of seven smaller east coast needle trades unions, was founded. Read more  Herman Grossman, ILGWU president |
| June 3, 1946 In Irene Morgan v. Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation in interstate travel was unconstitutional as “an undue burden on commerce.”  The southern states refused to enforce it, however, and Jim Crow (the term for laws, local and state, that enforced segregation) continued as the way of life in the South. Eleven years before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama, a young woman named Irene Morgan rejected that same demand on an interstate bus headed to Maryland from Gloucester, Virginia. Read more about Irene Morgan Recovering from surgery and already sitting far in the back, she defied the driver’s order to surrender her seat to a white couple. Like Parks, Morgan was arrested and jailed. But her action caught the attention of lawyers from the NAACP, led by (future Supreme Court justice) Thurgood Marshall, and two years later her case reached the Court.  Headlines when Irene Morgan won out over Jim Crow (JC) segregation law |
| June 3, 1957 Thousands of scientists, led by Barry Commoner and Nobel laureate Linus Pauling, issued a call for banning nuclear weapons testing: “As scientists we have knowledge of the dangers involved and therefore a special responsibility to make those dangers known.” “…Then on May 15, 1957, with the help of some of the scientists in Washington University, St. Louis, I wrote the Scientists’ Bomb Test Appeal, which within two weeks was signed by over two thousand American scientists and within a few months by 11,021 scientists, of forty-nine countries….” –Linus Pauling  Linus Pauling at a disarmament demonstration photo: Robert Carl Cohen Read “An Appeal by American Scientists to the Governments and People of the World.” Pauling is the only person to win two unshared Nobel Prizes, for Chemistry in 1954; for Peace in 1962. Read his acceptance speech, “Science and Peace” |
| June 3, 1964 Conscientious objection, the refusal to bear arms in time of war on the grounds of moral or religious principles, became legally recognized in Belgium. A history of European conscientious objection |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjune.htm#june3
Scottie's Playtime 