Dear America- Golden Rule Thinking IS GOOD

PEACE, JUSTICE, AND STRONG INSTITUTIONS: The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 16, promotes just, peaceful, and inclusive societies.

 Dear America,

The rule of fair and just laws IS GOOD: Corporate greed and corruption ARE BAD. Criminal acts are bad. 

ICE did not have to be, but right now IS BAD.  

Murder IS BAD.

Home invasions and kidnapping ARE BAD.   BOMBS are BAD and war's toxic pollution IS VERY VERY BAD!!

Military spending for this year is supposed to be an astronomically high ONE TRILLION dollars- but the current administration wants it to be raised to 1.5 trillion, and does not want to spend a single penny on health care for we the people.

Fattening up the already massive military-industrial complex, the ravenous corporations, and the corrupt politicians that profit from funding endless war and state sponsored terrorism IS BAD!!

Today's America is leading a global arms race by aggressively undermining international law, sovereign territorial rights, and respect for human dignity at every turn.

Bully tactics and lies ARE BAD.  VIOLENCE is very VERY BAD!!!

Leading by good example IS GOOD.  Compassion and caring for people in need IS GOOD.  Feeding the hungry IS GOOD.

Golden Rule Thinking IS GOOD.

Funding and arming American OR Israeli bigotry, injustice, tyranny, racist hate and state sponsored terrorism IS BAD.  So are data centers, computer programs, and "security" scams deploying AI to track, target, impoverish and destroy innocent people. 

POVERTY IS BAD. Poverty convinces vulnerable people to do horrible things just to survive.

Our economy needs people and peace based jobs for everyone's sake.  No one should be forced to chose between being overworked & underpaid wage slaves to major corporations and billionaire's whims... or risk bankruptcy by medical bills. 

Furthermore, no one any where in the world should have their home, land, job, and security taken away from them because American or Israeli invaders want more land, resources, and/or reasons to wage more AND MORE WAR.  

And shame on American leadership that decides to sanction and punish those who object to racist Israel's escalating violence and cruelty.

Do you really think Israel cares if America survives the Zionist quest to be the new Uber Alis... We are pawns in their deadly game of take take take.

Sincerely,

Anne Selden Annab

NOTES https://anniesnewletters.blogspot.com/search/label/Notes

United Nations experts strongly condemn the large-scale #US military action against #Venezuela & forcible abduction of President Nicolas Maduro & his wife, warning that such actions set a dangerous precedent & risk destabilising the entire region & the world.

ICE’s New-Age Propaganda With its string of “wartime recruitment” ads, often featuring pop songs and familiar meme formats, the agency has weaponized social media against itself. by By Brady Brickner-Wood

Israel pushes ahead with vast illegal settlement in heart of West Bank: Tender posted for construction of 3,401 homes in [ILLEGAL] settlement designed to ‘bury idea of a Palestinian state’... “We said there will be no Palestinian state, and indeed there will be no Palestinian state! This place is ours,” Netanyahu said.

On this day in 1948, the Haganah zionist militia bombed the Semiramis Hotel in Jerusalem at 1 am, killing 26 people & injuring 60. The victims were mostly Palestinian Christians. Entire families were eliminated. The Spanish vice-consul was also among the dead... 77 years later, the pattern remains unchanged: terrorizing indigenous populations to clear land for settlement. From Qatamon in 1948 to Gaza today, zionism operates as what it has always been—a settler-colonial project built on displacement, dispossession, and destruction.

Displaced children from Gaza express the scenes of war they have lived through in an artwork, under the supervision of artist Murad Al-Assar

"This is where things get tricky: I’m not sure what I’m allowed to say about Palestine Action in this column without getting chucked in jail myself. Last July, you see, the British government took the extraordinary, and hugely criticized, step of terming the group a terrorist organization on the same level as the Islamic State militant group. This is despite the fact that Palestine Action has killed nobody; its efforts are focused on trying to shut down weapons manufacturers enabling the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Even the government’s own intelligence assessment, a declassified version of which was obtained by the New York Times, undercut its condemnations of the group, finding that most of their activities “would not be classified as terrorism” under Britain’s legal definition. Still, the British government has been very busy arresting thousands – many of whom are elderly activists – for the “crime” of peacefully holding up a sign saying: “I support Palestine Action.” "

Greta Thunberg came to stay – and my kid may have inadvertently helped her get arrested- Arwa Mahdawi in The Guardian

Military Industrial Complex Infographics

Military spending worldwide hits record $2.7 trillion in 2024 amid intensifying wars and rising geopolitical tensions worldwide... “The world is spending far more on waging war than in building peace,”

“When people’s lives improve, when they have access to education, healthcare, economic opportunities and when they can live lives of dignity and self determination, we will have more peaceful societies and a more peaceful world.”

Nuclear weapons are ‘one-way road to annihilation’ warns Guterres

1940s, Nazareth, Palestine 🇵🇸 Palestinian girl-scouts.

January 2026's supermoon over the Nuseirat area of Gaza Photograph by Anadolu/Getty Images

Families are struggling to survive amid the devastation. Israel’s ban on international NGOs will worsen this disaster: The Guardian view on Gaza’s winter [ISRAEL'S WAR ON PALESTINIANS]... the world must take heed as Palestinian suffering deepens again

"... What other ethnic group would be treated with such indifference or ignorance or bias? Especially a devastated population, with the heaviest casualties among babies and children, by U.S.-made weapons. " Ralph Nader

"The media’s continued indifference to the massive under death count of Palestinians in Gaza at the hands of the genocidal Netanyahu—embraced for the 5th time this year at the White House—by Dictator Trump. The total death count coming from the most intense bombardment and starvation (food, water, medicine and healthcare) of a human population in military history in the tiny enclave is not nearly 70,000. It’s about 600,000—or slightly over a quarter of the civilian population."- Ralph Nader, author of Civic Self-respect

✝️ Hosh Al-Syrian | Bethlehem, Palestine. 🇵🇸 It says in Arabic: “In the month of July, 1883 God is the guardian and the guide, and the house built by the Lord shall not shelter the wicked.”

Israel has banned 37 aid organisations from working in Gaza from January 1, severing access to lifesaving aid for Palestinians, as its genocide continues... & [NOTICE UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) is not on this list- UNRWA was already blocked by Israel earlier last month] UNRWA Commissioner-General on New Anti‑UNRWA Legislation Passed by the Israeli Parliament

[NOTICE  UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) is not on this list- UNRWA was already blocked by Israel earlier last month]

" "Our home is dear to us, the memories are dear to us, the family, the neighbors, and the good people are dear to us," said Motaz Mohor, whose home was set to be destroyed as he watched the bulldozers. "The first time our grandparents were displaced, and this is the second time." His grandparents had moved to Nur Shams after their original displacement from the cities of Jaffa and Haifa during the 1948 war surrounding Israel's creation, when some 700,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes by forces of the nascent state or fled as troops advanced, an event Palestinians call the Nakba, or "catastrophe." "

Palestinians watch as Israeli bulldozers claw down their West Bank homes

"The deregistration of 37 INGOs undermines principled humanitarian action, endangers staff and communities, and compromises effective aid delivery." "Ensuring access to humanitarian aid is a legal obligation, not a discretionary choice.”

‘Data is control’: what we learned from a year investigating the Israeli military’s ties to big tech Our reporting revealed a symbiotic relationship between the IDF and Silicon Valley – with implications for the future of warfare By Noa Yachot

Dear America, Our land and resources are being gobbled up for AI data centers for what purpose? Is it for the greater good of tax paying citizens- or is it to feed the greed of corporations and companies that already use our data to charge us as much as they can at every turn.

Real freedom, justice, and democracy are being embezzled by corporate greed and political corruption to empower Israel and war.

"ISRAEL SAYS" is not God talking.

Israel has a right to exist, but Israel has no right to starve and displace the men, women and children of historic Palestine.

The vast majority of Americans are not wealthy & the taxes that We The People pay are being diverted into funding religious bigotry and terror via Israel's cruel war on the native non-Jewish men, women, and children of historic Palestine. HAMAS cruelty and stupidity echoes Zionist cruelty and stupidity and on and on it goes. Neither approach will build peace or security.

The weapons industry and a global war machine- AND INJUSTICE- burgeon with American tax payer funds.

Violence is a problem- not the answer.

STOP THE SIEGE- stop funding crazy cruel Israeli schemes & the forced displacement, imprisonment, starvation, torture, and killing of human beings in Gaza and Palestine

"Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world..."   https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights

United Nations experts strongly condemn the large-scale #US military action against #Venezuela & forcible abduction of President Nicolas Maduro & his wife, warning that such actions set a dangerous precedent & risk destabilising the entire region & the world.

UN Special Procedures

@UN_SPExperts

 

UN experts strongly condemn the large-scale #US military action against #Venezuela & forcible abduction of President Nicolas Maduro & his wife, warning that such actions set a dangerous precedent & risk destabilising the entire region & the world.

https://x.com/UN_SPExperts/status/2008923414241915342 

 

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 https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2026/01/un-experts-condemn-us-aggression-against-venezuela

07 January 2026

Press releases Special Procedures

GENEVA – United Nations experts* today strongly condemned the large-scale military action carried out by the United States against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, the bombardment of Caracas and other cities and the forcible abduction of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife.

“These actions represent a grave, manifest and deliberate violation of the most fundamental principles of international law, set a dangerous precedent, and risk destabilising the entire region and the world,” the experts said.

They stressed that the unprovoked use of armed force on Venezuelan sovereign territory is a clear breach of Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, which unequivocally prohibits the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State. It may also constitute the international crime of aggression attributable to the individual political and military leaders involved.

These actions reportedly caused the loss of an unknown number of lives. They are further aggravated by the preceding array of unilateral coercive measures against Venezuela, including a naval blockade and the armed seizure of tankers as well as the extrajudicial killing of at least 115 civilians allegedly linked to drug trafficking. “All of these measures are contrary to international and humanitarian law, including the non-derogable right to life,” the experts said.

UN experts noted that, under customary international law, sitting heads of state are immune from the criminal jurisdiction of foreign courts – not from the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court –, while in office. This is a principle affirmed by the International Court of Justice in its 2002 'Arrest Warrant' ruling, and it is applicable regardless of diplomatic recognition or political considerations.

“This unprecedented attack on Venezuela must not be viewed as an isolated incident, but rather as part of a broader and deeply troubling pattern of systematic disregard for peace, international law and multilateral institutions,” the experts said. “This return to gunboat diplomacy includes repeated acts of military aggression, including extrajudicial killings and coercive diplomacy, the imposition of sanctions against judges and prosecutors of the International Criminal Court and a UN Special Rapporteur for work carried out under a mandate entrusted by the UN Human Rights Council.”

“Taken together, these practices signal a deliberate challenge to the international legal order and to the very principle that power should be constrained by law,” they said. “If tolerated, such actions would normalise lawlessness in international relations and would fatally undermine the global order.”

The experts expressed grave concern about subsequent public statements by the President of the United States, in which he asserted that the US would “rule the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition” and that “we’re going to be taking out a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground”.

They warned that such declarations amount to a flagrant disregard for the right of peoples to self-determination and their associated sovereignty over natural resources, cornerstones of international human rights law enshrined in Article 1 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which the United States has been a party since 1992.

“Venezuela’s vast natural resources, including the largest proven oil reserves in the world, must not be cynically exploited through thinly veiled pretexts to legitimise military aggression, foreign occupation, or regime-change strategies,”... READ MORE  https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2026/01/un-experts-condemn-us-aggression-against-venezuela

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ICE’s New-Age Propaganda With its string of “wartime recruitment” ads, often featuring pop songs and familiar meme formats, the agency has weaponized social media against itself. by By Brady Brickner-Wood

Infinite Scroll

Kyle Chayka on the people and platforms that are shaping digital culture.  https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll

 For this week’s Infinite Scroll column, Brady Brickner-Wood is filling in for Kyle Chayka.

Illustration by Ariel Davis

Late last year, the White House’s social-media team lauded ICE’s torrential deportation efforts with a string of memes seemingly engineered to go viral. In one video posted to Instagram, the song “all-american bitch,” by Olivia Rodrigo, provides a soundtrack to a montage of deportees being forced onto buses and planes; in another, Sabrina Carpenter’s “Juno” plays as ICE agents accost people in the streets, the lyric “Have you ever tried this one?” repeating each time a new person is detained. Another video uses the satirical song “Big Boys,” from a “Saturday Night Live” skit featuring SZA, as agents handcuff people in parking lots. A line from the song—“It’s cuffing season”—flashes in all caps across the screen. Rodrigo, Carpenter, and SZA have denounced the videos as “hateful,” “evil,” and “peak dark,” respectively. (In response to Carpenter, the White House doctored a video promoting her own “S.N.L.” appearance to make it seem as if she said she would “arrest” the cast member Marcello Hernández for being “too illegal.”) Unlike other cases of Trump using musicians’ songs, against their will, at rallies or in campaign materials—Beyoncé, Adele, and Jack White, among them—these videos are not one-off inanities or easily ignorable promotional assets. Instead, they are part of a hundred-million-dollar “wartime recruitment” effort, according to an internal document obtained by the Washington Post, aimed at hiring thousands more deportation officers in the new year, a propaganda crusade intended to portray ICE as a team of Avengers valiantly defending American soil from a malevolent foreign terror. By splicing pop songs and familiar meme formats into cruel detainment footage, ICE strains to attract a younger demographic, hoping to convince people that the agency is a vibrant—and trollishly funny—organization engaged in the noble work of putting away bad guys. Oh, the pop stars got mad? Joke’s on them. Now even more people know ICE is hiring.

The Trump Administration has pledged to deport a million immigrants each year during the President’s second term—even, it appears, if the immigrants have not committed crimes or are lawfully residing in the U.S. This past summer, as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Congress increased ICE’s budget to more than a hundred and seventy billion dollars across the next four years, netting out to an annual allocation that is more than the combined yearly budgets of all local and state law-enforcement agencies in the country. ICE has used some of this money to go on a hiring spree; the agency recently announced that it had signed up twelve thousand new officers and agents—a hundred-and-twenty-per-cent increase to its workforce... READ MORE  https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/ices-new-age-propaganda

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Israel pushes ahead with vast illegal settlement in heart of West Bank: Tender posted for construction of 3,401 homes in [ILLEGAL] settlement designed to ‘bury idea of a Palestinian state’... “We said there will be no Palestinian state, and indeed there will be no Palestinian state! This place is ours,” Netanyahu said.

The separation wall next to the Arab neighbourhood of al-Eizariya, near where the Israeli government says housing units will be built as part of the E1 settlement development project. Photograph: Ohad Zwigenberg/AP

Emma Graham-Harrison and Quique Kierszenbaum in Jerusalem

Tue 6 Jan 2026

Israel is moving to start construction on a vast illegal settlement in the heart of the West Bank, designed to “bury the idea of a Palestinian state”.

The Israel Land Authority in mid-December quietly posted a tender for construction of 3,401 homes in the “E1” project, which will effectively sever the north and south of the occupied West Bank for Palestinians, and further cut off East Jerusalem.

The tender, which has not been reported previously, lays out terms for companies to bid for part of the work, with a deadline for submissions in mid-March.

It “reflects an accelerated effort to advance construction in E1”, said Yonatan Mizrachi, a co-director of Settlement Watch with the advocacy group Peace Now, which found the document online.

“This timeline suggests bulldozers could start work in less than a year,” he added. The construction work would seal a land grab the British government has described as “a flagrant breach of international law”.

Building settlements in this area is a decades-old idea with cross-party backing in Israel, mooted initially in the 1990s by Yitzhak Rabin, the Labor prime minister and Nobel peace laureate who was assassinated in 1995 by a rightwing nationalist.

For years, construction was blocked by the US and the country’s European allies... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/06/israel-vast-illegal-settlement-west-bank

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On this day in 1948, the Haganah zionist militia bombed the Semiramis Hotel in Jerusalem at 1 am, killing 26 people & injuring 60. The victims were mostly Palestinian Christians. Entire families were eliminated. The Spanish vice-consul was also among the dead... 77 years later, the pattern remains unchanged: terrorizing indigenous populations to clear land for settlement. From Qatamon in 1948 to Gaza today, zionism operates as what it has always been—a settler-colonial project built on displacement, dispossession, and destruction.

On this day in 1948, the Haganah zionist militia bombed the Semiramis Hotel in Jerusalem at 1 am, killing 26 people & injuring 60. The victims were mostly Palestinian Christians. Entire families were eliminated. The Spanish vice-consul was also among the dead.

Good Shepherd Collective

@Shepherds4Good

 

On this day in 1948, the Haganah zionist militia bombed the Semiramis Hotel in Jerusalem at 1 am, killing 26 people & injuring 60. The victims were mostly Palestinian Christians. Entire families were eliminated. The Spanish vice-consul was also among the dead.

The Semiramis Hotel bombing was part of a campaign to force Palestinians from the Qatamon neighbourhood. Despite British denial that the hotel was any kind of military target, Haganah operatives planted TNT at the building's foundation and detonated it while families slept. 

77 years later, the pattern remains unchanged: terrorizing indigenous populations to clear land for settlement. From Qatamon in 1948 to Gaza today, zionism operates as what it has always been—a settler-colonial project built on displacement, dispossession, and destruction.  

https://x.com/Shepherds4Good/status/2008264210443358590 

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Displaced children from Gaza express the scenes of war they have lived through in an artwork, under the supervision of artist Murad Al-Assar

Displaced children from Gaza express the scenes of war they have lived through in an artwork, under the supervision of artist Murad Al-Assar.

 

Displaced children from Gaza express the scenes of war they have lived through in an artwork, under the supervision of artist Murad Al-Assar.

Sameh Ahmed 𓂆

@PalPress24

 https://x.com/PalPress24/status/2008328560017059917/photo/1

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"This is where things get tricky: I’m not sure what I’m allowed to say about Palestine Action in this column without getting chucked in jail myself. Last July, you see, the British government took the extraordinary, and hugely criticized, step of terming the group a terrorist organization on the same level as the Islamic State militant group. This is despite the fact that Palestine Action has killed nobody; its efforts are focused on trying to shut down weapons manufacturers enabling the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Even the government’s own intelligence assessment, a declassified version of which was obtained by the New York Times, undercut its condemnations of the group, finding that most of their activities “would not be classified as terrorism” under Britain’s legal definition. Still, the British government has been very busy arresting thousands – many of whom are elderly activists – for the “crime” of peacefully holding up a sign saying: “I support Palestine Action.” "

 AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine, or at least fair and just laws and policies] 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jan/06/greta-thunberg-palestine-action-arrest 

Greta Thunberg came to stay – and my kid may have inadvertently helped her get arrested

Arwa Mahdawi

 

The activist had held a sign written with my daughter’s crayon. Try explaining that to a four-year-old 

 

Tue 6 Jan 2026 05.00 EST

 

‘I’m back in the US now and I can’t quite fathom what Britain, under the leadership of a former human rights lawyer, has become.’  Photograph: Prisoners for Palestine/AP

 

It was 6am. London. A few days before Christmas. My four-year-old is singing at the top of her lungs and charging around my parents’ house on a hunt for the perfect crayon. There is nothing particularly unusual about this scene except for the fact that the crayon in question was for Greta Thunberg. The world’s most well-known activist needed a writing tool and my daughter, O, was on the case. (Remember this crayon: it’s going to be important later on.)

O, I should note, had absolutely no idea who Greta was. We’re not longtime chums or anything like that. Rather Greta was in London to support the Palestine Action-linked hunger strikers. She needed somewhere to stay and my dad, who is a Palestinian refugee, and appreciative of anyone speaking up about the place where he was born but can’t return to live in, keeps an open house for activists who need a bed or a meal. When the visit had been hastily arranged by a friend of a friend of my sister a couple days earlier, we’d tried to explain to O that Greta was a famous activist who tried to help people and the environment.

“Does famous mean beautiful?” my princess-obsessed child asked. Oh dear, I thought, I have failed as a parent and a feminist.

“No, it doesn’t. And remember being beautiful is not important – what’s important is being kind,” I said, trying to redeem some feminist points.

“How dare you!” O replied. This has been her favourite catchphrase for a while now. I have no idea where she picked it up; probably from a kid’s show. I had thought nothing of it until the surprise Greta visit.

“Please don’t say that while Greta is here,” I told O. I didn’t want her to think we were making fun of her memorable rebuke. But once again, I failed at parenting: everyone knows that the best way to get a kid to keep doing something is to suggest they stop doing it.

While Greta may be famous, the hunger strikers she was coming to support are definitely not; they have had very little mainstream media attention. Indeed, if you are reading this in the US, you may not have heard about them at all. So, in brief, eight activists awaiting trials for alleged offences relating to Palestine Action have been on hunger strike since 2 November, the anniversary of the Balfour declaration.

This is where things get tricky...  READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jan/06/greta-thunberg-palestine-action-arrest

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