Fresh off a series of photo-ops and speeches in support of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, J.D Vance strolled confidently into a meeting to negotiate peace terms with Iranian officials in Islamabad. Pakistan.

Before his plane hit the tarmac, Donald Trump had already okayed a ruse to sneak two American warships through the Strait of Hormuz and take selfies to show the rest of the world the U.S. was victorious in releasing Iran’s stranglehold on the flow of international ships through the area.

The Iranians, however, spotted the ships and gave them 30 minutes to turn around or be blown out of the water—and they left.

Vance may, or may not have known about the plan when he was entrusted with such an important task, but I suspect he didn’t. Trump seems determined to set him up to fail at every opportunity and/or show how badly you can treat someone and still have them lick your boots. To make sure he was not successful, he also sent Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff as his back up.

In contrast, Iran came with approximately 70 people that included experts in banking, sanctions, policy, and the top leaders of their government who had the green light to make whatever agreements they deemed fair without having to get permission.

Even their flight to Islamabad was treated with great importance as all of the empty seats held either pictures and/or book bags of some of the close to 200 elementary-school girls killed during the February attack on Iran by the U.S. and Israel.

Meanwhile, Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio were chilling at a UHF fight in Miami, Florida.

Considering Witkoff and Kushner had already deceived the Iranians twice in the past year during separate negotiations that led to the bombing of their country and the assassination of several of their leaders, including the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, after a joint US-Israeli attack, it’s surprising the Iranians didn’t leave the room at the mere sight of them.

It was obvious the U.S. was not serious about negotiations and equally obvious they continue to have little respect for the Iranians.

Perhaps the two destroyers trying to sneak through the Strait of Hormuz, the USS

Frank E. Petterson and USS Michael Murphy, was the original plan all along and Vance was dangled as eye candy to sweeten the look of formality.

That is the Trump way of doing business. The blustering to intercept ANY ship that makes it through the area, and threatening to “blockade” the strait after the destroyers were forced to turn around and the talks had collapsed, is also typical Trump.

Before leaving Islamabad, Vance said the negotiations fell apart because Iran “wouldn’t accept our terms.”

Their terms?

Negotiation means two sides try to work toward a mutually agreeable conclusion that may not include everything everyone wants. It is not trying to force terms from one side onto the other.

The U.S. chose the same path of insincerity and deceit it’s been using over the past several months with Iran while planning all along to undermine the talks with aggressive bombings, assassinations and trying to sneak destroyers past a highly-monitored body of water no more 20 miles wide.

This was not only stupid, but cowardly and careless.

Suppose the Iranians had treated those ships the same way the U.S. has been blowing up fishing boats off the coast of Venezuela with a policy of shoot first and ask absolutely no questions?

It would’ve led to the deaths of hundreds of American service men and women on those ships whose lives had been deemed worthy of risk for essentially a photo opportunity for Trump to grift to the world that the Strait of Hormuz was now open for business.

It’s one thing to send The Three Stooges to try to strike an agreement to end the war, but it’s another to be cavalier about putting our sons and daughters in harm’s way so Trump can save face and declare a “victory” before walking away.

These talks were doomed before either country’s delegation stepped off the plane because the U.S., for some reason, is still not serious about making peace—just saving face.

Teachers and parents of young children know when they aren’t telling the truth by both body language and hear them protesting way too much.

The more passionate the claim of innocence, the more information comes out that only the perpetrator would know.

With that in mind, it was fascinating to see Melania Trump claim she is being attacked by the media and individuals seeking to defame her and sully her career by claiming she had a close relationship with both Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislane Maxwell.

Anyone with even a little knowledge of Epstein and his decades-old relationship with Donald Trump learned via court filings, Epstein’s emails, dozens of pictures and media investigations that she, her husband, and Maxwell, were indeed thick as thieves.

“The lies linking me with the disgraceful Jeffrey Epstein need to end today,” she said on Thursday during a quickly assembled press conference.

“The ‌individuals lying about me are devoid of ethical standards, humility and respect,” she added. “I do not object to their ignorance, but rather, I reject their mean-spirited attempts to defame my reputation. I never (sic) been friends with Epstein.”

Well alrighty, now.

First and foremost, and like her husband, she’s a grifter. Protesting any entity trying to “defame my reputation” begs the question: What reputation?

Outside of marrying Trump and hanging tough with the same people she now claims she didn’t know, her “reputation” was literally created in the same arena she is now denying.

Her “modeling career” was nowhere near that of a Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford or Linda Evangelista.

In fact, by the time she met Trump the shelf life of that career was already near its expiration date.

Grifters, politicians, and even preachers often deny, at first, crimes they committed, or lies they claim they never said.

Bill Clinton swore he never “had sex with that woman.”

Richard Nixon proclaimed “I am not a crook”.

Jimmy Swaggert, the famed Pentecostal “televangelist” and pastor, had millions of followers from around the world before confessing on television, tears flowing down his cheeks, that “I have sinned” after strongly denying for months that he had sex with numerous prostitutes.

Shortly after the murder of Charlie Kirk, Benjamin Netanyahu said he, nor the Mossad, had anything to do with the killing before anyone had a chance to ask.

As Melania read her protest statement, the world continues to be deeply distracted by the latest trauma caused by the madness of Trump and Netanyahu who started a war with Iran, a sovereign country posing zero threat to the U.S.

The collateral damage from this aggressive and cruel move came in its first onslaught as close to 200 children, their parents and teachers at a girls primary school in Minab, Southern Iran, were killed by a U.S. Tomahawk missile and classic “double tap” of follow-up missiles to make sure everyone was dead.

Then came the global financial and energy crisis caused by Iran’s closing of the Strait of Hormuz which halted shipments of oil and vital fertilizer needed by farmers across the world to grow crops to feed their people.

Nobody, however, has forgotten about the Epstein files.

Once things settle down (and it will) I am certain, to use a line from Melania’s protest speech that those “devoid of ethical standards, humility and respect”, like her husband, will be back under scrutiny as the Epstein horrors continue to unfold.

Finally, the ribbon she tried to awkwardly tie around this box of denial was her direct appeal to congress to intervene, and dig even deeper into the millions of files yet to be released

“I call on Congress to provide the women who have been victimized by Epstein with a public hearing specifically centered around the ⁠survivors,” she said.

“Give these ​victims their opportunity to testify under oath in front of Congress with the power ​of sworn testimony. Each and every woman should have her day to tell her story in public, if she wishes, and then her testimony should be permanently entered into the ​Congressional Record. Then, and only then, we will have the truth.”

The very thing her husband, the sycophants in his cabinet and Department of Justice as well as the majority of republican senators and congressmen have been doing backflips to avoid, she is now requesting on her own volition.

It’s possible that Melania, the grifter, is pulling herself away from the Epstein mess by claiming she was never a part of it, and has thrown her husband and her party friends under the bus.

Perhaps something is about to happen that will bring to light even more devastating information about Epstein’s deep ties to the wealthy, politicians, heads of state, and would-be models working in agencies that catered to them by any means necessary.

Or, she may think her husband’s deteriorating health is at a point he can no longer be manipulated by marionette strings with little strength left to hold up a body obviously rotting from the inside out.

Then again, it may all be as basic as a grifter simply doing what a grifter does in the face of exposure–they cut ties with anyone and anything that will shed light on their illegal activities and immoral acts.

This means betrayal, lies, delusions, and backstabbing are all weapons now available for use in the grifter arsenal and Melania seems to have fired the first shots in this grifter mass exit from a sinking ship.

The crowded ramp, however, can only hold so many bodies before it collapses and they will do anything to survive by any means necessary,

“Church on Sunday sleep and nod

Tryin’ to duck the wrath of God

Preachers fillin’ us with fright

They all tryin’ to teach us what they think is right

They really got to be some kind of nut

I can’t use it

Tryin’ to make it real compared to what?” “Compared to What” by Eddie Harris and Les McCann

Parts of America’s vast Christian community have been described as everything from “weird and whacky,” to “racist and self-absorbed.”

From so-called “Christian Nationalism” to right-wing evangelicals, it’s more like pieces of a shattered mirror that would require a miracle to glue enough pieces back together for a broader, more accurate reflection of love and brotherhood.

While covering religion for the Philadelphia Daily News for several years, I got to see the machinations of people who pieced together bits of everything from Zoroastrianism to Buddhism and the dietary teachings of Seventh Day Adventists to fit their particular view of the world.

Now, many so-called Christians are doing the same to accommodate lying politicians, racists, rapists, misogynists, and white boys looking for a purpose.

This is a long way from the then controversial positions of Billy Graham, the unquestionable Godfather of modern evangelism

During an interview with Graham in 1992 at one of his popular “crusades” in Philadelphia that drew more than 200,000 people over five days, he didn’t shy away from questions regarding his stand on homosexuality and his close relationships with corporate leaders as well as 13 sitting presidents including Richard Nixon and Barack Obama.

Called “God’s Ball of Fire,” by Look Magazine, Graham was congenial, kind, and even in his prayer of support for Desert Storm in 1991, he requested a quick ending to the war with as few casualties as possible.

No fire and brimstone. No bombing anyone “back to the stone age.”

None of the cherry-picked silliness delivered by Pete Hegseth who, on March 25th, called on God during a worship service at the Pentagon to help the U.S. and Israel in its war on Iran to “break the teeth” and kill the “wicked” enemies “who deserve no mercy” and should be “delivered to the eternal damnation prepared for them.”

That’s a lot. Even for Hegseth.

Calling for an Old Testament perspective to inflict pain and suffering is something even “God’s Ball of Fire” would’ve considered ridiculous and cruel.

This bargain-basement, ersatz mix of phrases and bastardized scripture is also peddled by Paula White-Caine, Donald Trump’s “spiritual advisor” who compared him to Jesus Christ saying “no one has paid the price like you have paid the price,” at an Easter Lunch on Wednesday at the White House.

“You were betrayed and arrested and falsely accused,” she said. “It’s a familiar pattern that our lord and savior showed us.”

Claiming Trump has “paid the price”, begs the question of how much Trump “paid” outside of being a convicted felon, grifter, war monger and liar?

How much for that religion in the window?

Perhaps the cost of pancakes and sausage at a Waffle House in Rome, Ga., where Gregg Phillips, the head of FEMA’s Office of Response and Recovery, says the “hand of God” transported him to in December for reasons he has yet to understand.

He also claims to have been teleported two other times from one spot to another in Georgia.

“Teleporting is no fun,” he said on a podcast called “Onward,” that’s hosted by a conservative activist.

“The word ‘teleportation’ was not mine,” he wrote recently on Dondald Trump’s Truth Social platform.

“It was used by someone else. . . reaching for language to describe something with no easy name. The more accurate biblical terms are ‘translated’ or ‘transported–not new ideas for people of faith,” he explained.

Were Phillips not in charge of more than 1,000 employees at FEMA and working with a $300 million budget of tax payer money in a role that is central to responding to natural disasters from earthquakes to forest fires, his claims of teleportation would be simply weird with no impact on anything other than himself.

The concern is not that God allegedly transported him to a Waffle House in Rome, Ga., but that an official whose quick response to a natural disaster may be hindered because he’s literally only God-knows-where at a time when people need him the most.

Whether it’s calling upon the wrath of God to destroy the heathens or the sad, baffling stories J.D. Vance tells about his conversion to Catholicism, or the nap Trump takes in the midst of a half-dozen ministers laying hands on him while in prayer, it’s all just window dressing on the set and an insult to those of any faith grounded in compassion, wisdom, honor, and belief in a higher entity that offers protection for the weak, kindness to the poor, and mercy to the besieged.

The bottom-shelf faith exhibited by the Trump administration is about as cheap and tawdry as it can get because it’s used to deceive, incite violence, and demonize countries based on the color of their skin and fervent unwillingness to take a knee to America.

How much is that religion in the window?

Make an offer–and no offer is too low.

“We the People of the United States. . .”

Those seven opening words to the Preamble of the Constitution introduced the world to a concept of governance based on equal rights, justice, and freedom from persecution. So powerful was the idea that over the next two centuries it influenced other fledgling nations to adopt a similar tone and language in Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean and even Viet Nam.

Written eleven years after the Revolutionary War, the Constitution was put together as a palatable and noble form of government that indeed represented “the People”, but the grander notion that all men “are created equal” was aborted before the ink dried on the paper as it left out any mention of the enslaved Africans owned by several of the “founding fathers” and gave barebones recognition of the indigenous peoples on whose land this nation would be built.

Now, a country founded on lofty ideas of honor and justice, murders people in small boats hundreds of miles away from its border; kills its own citizens for practicing their Constitutional right to free speech; and kicks off an aggressive war with Iran by making its first target a girls school, murdering close to 200 people, the bulk of which were children.

Did “the People” request this? Was this done to keep the “domestic tranquility?”

Are “the People” also the alleged followers of Christ who have for decades espoused a view of America and its promises being only for those who align themselves with Psalms of privilege, Acts of racism, and Genesis of ideology that calls for the round up and deportation of immigrants without due process, a supposedly Constitutional guarantee for everyone within U.S. borders?

Are “the People” the descendants of enslaved Africans whose survival depended less on the law of the land than a culture born in resistance that adjusted, re-adjusted, accommodated, and strategized its very existence to bend, but not break, under centuries of oppression and neglect?

On Wednesday, the U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution declaring the trafficking of enslaved Africans (the backbone of U.S. wealth) “the gravest crime against humanity” and called for reparations as “a concrete step towards remedying historical wrongs.”

The resolution had no legal standing and was described as a “safeguard against forgetting” by Ghanaian President John Dramani Mahama, a key architect of the resolution. It passed overwhelmingly with 153 votes for the resolution, 53 abstentions. Only three countries–the U.S., Israel, and Argentina voted against it.

Again, it was mostly symbolic, but even an ounce of recognition of “the People” of African descent was too much to carry for a huge portion of American citizens whose ancestors came here in chains.

Yet, “the People” does include such men as Elon Musk who took a sledgehammer to one government institution after another, destroyed safeguards that protected “the People” from men like him, forced hundreds of thousands from their jobs while gorging himself like a fat tick off of government contracts and tax breaks.

Does “the People” now consist of millions of white man-boys who follow racist, homophobic and Nazi-loving podcasters like Nick Fuentes, and keep the spirit and ignorance of Charlie Kirk alive by vowing to establish a club for children to learn his teachings in every high school in the country?

Can “the People” impacted by natural disasters be guaranteed relief and support from FEMA, which is under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security now headed by Markwayne Mullin, a Donald Trump sycophant who continues to claim the 2020 election was stolen and has ZERO experience in anything even remotely related to his job.

Perhaps “the People” portrayed in a marketing campaign from the Department of Labor are the new models for the rest of “the People”--blonde-haired, blue-eyed white men with broad shoulders and stern jaws who are being promoted as the individuals they need to roll up their sleeves and bring America’s farms, manufacturing, and production lines back to life.

This “colorlessness” as Ralph Ellison calls it, is a twisted end game for a nation now led by morally colorless men and women whose concerns have nothing to do with “the People” and everything to do with money, power, and the exploitation of a fantasy about justice, equality and “domestic tranquility” at the expense of all that is not colorless.

Until “We The People” figure out exactly what that means, we won’t recognize the next round of colorless clowns because they’ll be a bit smarter, less vile, quieter, but no less dangerous and evil.

Never strolled along the Malecon (Avenida de Maceo), a broad esplanade, roadway, and seawall that runs five miles along the coast of the Capital city of Havana to breathe in the mixture of sea, food, and warm air that stirs it all like a morning cup of coffee.

Couples walk hand-in-hand. Children laugh and play with their parents. Smiles and warmth everywhere.

He’s never had a conversation with a local artist showing their work in Old Havana, or chatted with an indulging waiter who proudly explains everything on the menu and even tells you about the local farm that supplied the ingredients for your Arroz congri, Ropa Vieja, or Cuban Imperial Rice (my favorite).

He knows next to nothing about the largest island in the Caribbean and views it through the same hostile lens he views countries like Venezuela, Iran, El Salvador, and Somalia.

Referring to Iran in particular, former British diplomat Alastair Crooke recently described America’s perception of the country as: “A tragedy of miscognition. They (U.S.) don’t understand. They view and treat the Iranians as sub-human.”

This also applies to countries whose people are neither white nor compliant.

What fills the ignorant void are the smelly whispers of Stephen Miller, Jared Kushner, Mike Huckabee and a host of other sycophants in Trump’s orbit with myopic and dangerous agendas based on zealotry, greed, and power.

Sitting front and center in this lust for a country that never made a hostile move toward the U.S. is Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was born in Miami, Florida in 1971. His parents arrived here of their own volition in 1956 and not, as Rubio has lied about so often, because they were fleeing the Cuban revolution led by Fidel Castro.

Rubio, whose only visit to the island was to walk around Guantanamo Bay long enough for a photo shoot, is the lead adviser to Trump who erased the lines of communication and detente established by President Barack Obama with Cuba and El Salvador, and included a personal visit to each as a show of respect.

(I’ve been to Cuba twice, El Salvador once, and it remains a toss-up as to which was more congenial and open.)

Despite the fact former ICE queen Kristi Nome pushed the image of El Salvador as a lawless land of murderers, rapists and gangsters while cos-playing in front of chained prisoners (wearing a prominently displayed Rolex on her left wrist), the U.S. is a strong trading partner and ally of El Salvador.

The demonization of both countries, even while friends with the latter, is disturbing at its best and dangerous at its worst because the true beauty of both is rarely shown in the American press.

All we get are the paranoid mumblings of an old, decaying Trump, a puppy killer (now dethroned) who blames the murders of American citizens by her former staff on the victims, and a lying chameleon (Rubio) who creates a past that never was in his lust for power and position.

Cuba has been under crippling sanctions and embargoes for approximately 60-years from its powerful neighbor 90-miles away.

Though extremely smart at sustaining themselves through natural resources and a few trading partners like Spain, China, and The Netherlands, it is a hard existence for many that could be swiftly relieved with fair trade and smarter, prescient politicians who foresee a strong ally in Cuba and not a demon in waiting.

According to The Lancet, an internationally-respected scientific/medical journal that published a study on the human costs of sanctions last year:

“Economic sanctions reduce people’s access to basic necessities of life by debilitating the economic situation, decreasing welfare and weakening the functions of the target country’s social systems. One of the most important areas affected through these boycotts is health. Due to the expansion of health scope, these limitations affect different parts of the health system itself and as a result endanger people’s lives.”

Before America bombs, sends troops, further undermines the Cuban government with CIA operatives launched from the shores of Miami, perhaps a visit to Old Havana for a meal; a horse ride on a tobacco farm that produces the finest cigars in the world; or simply watching a band playing in one of the numerous town squares, could add a new page to a playbook of violence, racism, and forced hatred to “help” its people.

Killing, purposely starving, threatening and trying to break the backs of a citizenry to get to a government you don’t like, is a longtime American recipe for disaster that is being played out in the here and now with Iran.

Cuba has felt the sting of the American lash for decades and its scars are deeply embedded in their culture.

Still, they are among the most well-educated people in the world and have managed to transform much of the pain into a defiant resilience that will last long after Trump and his class of clowns become nothing more than an embarrassing footnote in American history.

Stepping on the backs of nations to promote a policy, create a distraction, or start a war only adds more debt to a weakening American economy and another pound to the financial burden of most of its citizens living from pay check to pay check.

When clammy whispers control a crumbling leader for influence and money, we all suffer from the inevitable chaos and backstabbing.

A structure built by wealthy men thousands of miles away whose God was/is money, and created to accommodate the means and ways of extracting resources to keep the house strong and produce incredible wealth through generations.

The frame was reinforced with beliefs and traditions that ensured its survival, and laws were woven into the design as an aesthetic for the tenants, and a wall to keep them distanced from even a view of the top.

Rooms were let, apartments rented, and belief systems encouraged as long as tenants kept it within their living space.

The condition of the house was not to be addressed or even noticed. The designated space could be designed, dressed up (or down), in any style or fashion, as long as it was accompanied by the fantasy of it being a home that was sacred and untouchable–even by the landlord.

The original builders had several names for the tenants including chattel, serfs, indentured servants, sharecroppers, slaves, and white trash.

The designation, however, didn’t matter to the builders because it all related to the security and strength of the house, which extracted whatever profit it could from sweat, division, hatred, and selling the fantasy of God, country, and privilege.

Two icons of resistance–Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Harry Belafonte–got a whiff of the foul smell from the top shortly before their deaths, and began tracing the source.

The expanded vision led Dr. King to say: “I fear I am integrating my people into a burning house.”

In an interview about a year before his death, Belafonte responded to the question “was America capable of change” with a firm “no”, and added it must be torn down and rebuilt with an emphasis on human rights and not profit for the sake of profit.

The current landlords still revel in the latter and have taken on a civil war-like passion as the tech bros go head-to-head with the military industrial complex as both prostrate before the same Gods of money and power.

Former President Dwight Eisenhower gave the American people a stark warning about both in 1961 at the end of his second term.

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought,” he said, “by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted.”

In the same speech he gave an equally dire warning about emerging technology.

“Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades. ” said Eisenhower. “In this revolution, research has become central . . . formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government. Yet in holding scientific discovery…we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”

And here we are.

The new landlord(s) both want the house in place to continue extrapolating wealth from the government through taxes and services paid for by the renters they now consider so inconsequential their voices are muffled with real-time murders, unimaginable stealing, and lied to with impunity.

One seeks profits through selling weapons and keeping the stew of hatred and religious conflicts brewing across the globe, while the other yearns for a darker peace that depends on AI and technology tapping into every part of your life from choosing a nasal spray, to designing your own child, all for a cost.

The current war with Iran, the threatened war with Cuba, the saber-rattling with Canada and threats of confiscating Greenland, are all symptoms of a house in need of structural repairs before it collapses under the weight of its own greed and indifference to the tenants paying for it all.

Incompetence is always found on the path of least resistance.

As it strolls, it meets more incompetence of like thought and hubris, then continues, arms locked, with a haughty laugh and jaunty step as they take to the flatness of the road with the wind at its back.

If trouble is spotted in the distance it either hides, or takes on the problem with the paper-thin courage and intelligence that literally defines its existence.

Unchallenged long enough, incompetence slips into a false reality where it thinks it’s qualified to do whatever the position or assignment is because it’s here and wouldn’t be here unless it’s qualified. Right?

Recently, Pete Hegseth, the incompetent soldier/leader/defense secretary whose true talent is slipping fashionably into the myth of the handsome white man who guides you through dangers known and unknown, has grafted that fantasy to his soul.

If he were not in such a powerful position, his ramblings, over-moussed hair and practiced, piercing gaze that strikes fear in other incompetent people, would be both laughable and sad because incompetence without power or impact on anything other than a perception, is basically just an asshole with an opinion.

This makes his obsession with destroying anything that smacks of DEI in the military a telling irony that must shatter his mirror with shame.

Having your incompetence exposed, especially if you are white and in power, becomes a heavy weight that only gets heavier from the moment it’s revealed. Now you have to convince others you actually know what you’re doing. The burden of such a thing will either break you, or smash you. There is no in-between.

Unfortunately, all–not some–ALL of the people in the orbit of Donald Trump are just as incompetent and dangerous in their denial as the pressure of exposure continues to weigh on their belief they are worthy because they are white.

Now, the world is caught up in this nightmare of incompetence as it’s manipulated and managed with whispers of an even longer, more glorious time on the incompetence road if they just hang in there.

Forget the bombings, the murders and monumental costs of this foolish war. There is peace on the other side.

The dissolving mask however, reveals only a longer, wider road for more incompetence with enough weight to crush us all.

Saturday’s bombing of the Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Minab, southern Iran by the U.S. and/or Israel that killed dozens of girls aged 7-to-12 was madness in its rawest form displayed by mad men flexing their cruelty.

The school is miles away from any military target or threat to any of the perpetrators. This was no accident. Technology that enabled them, from miles away, to strike the very room in which the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed, is exact and deadly.

The school bombing was deliberate.

Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are, individually, insane. Together, they have become the mustard gas that killed and maimed hundreds of thousands during WWI; a Zippo cigarette lighter used to torch straw-built homes in Vietnam; and bombs that leveled Palestine, and killed an estimated 75,000 people. . . and counting.

Shortly after the bombing on March 1st, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) released a statement saying:

“The killing of pupils in a place dedicated to learning constitutes a grave violation of the protection afforded to schools under international humanitarian law.”

On March 2nd the outrage was neutered as Melania Trump, in an unprecedented hosting of a meeting of the U.N. security council, appealed to the assembly for “tolerance and world peace” literally as her husband dodged questions from reporters about the invasion of a country its own intelligence agencies have concluded poses no threat to the U.S.

That appeal should have been to her husband, who ordered the strikes along with Netanyahu as the U.S. negotiated with Iranian officials to ease tensions over its nuclear enrichment program.

As the 168 bodies (including teachers and parents) lay beneath the rubble of the school, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters “...the United States would not deliberately target a school.”

It will, however, allow ICE to deliberately kill citizens in protest of the indiscriminate rounding up of fellow citizens and immigrants for deportation with no due process and in defiance of several court orders calling for its cessation.

So, if the U.S. didn’t target the school, who, or what else is capable of issuing such an insanely cruel directive to drop bombs on a school for young girls at 10 a.m. in the morning?

Such things happen when madness leaks into the world via a demented, tired, and dying old man and his co-conspirator who’s charged with years of blatant corruption and stealing from his own government, and has been deemed a war criminal by the U.N. for his brutality against the Palestinians.

Depending on what the promised “investigation” reveals on what now appears a deliberate act, Trump may join that exclusive club.

Sadly, “mainstream” American news outlets paid scant attention to the dozens of murdered children on Saturday during Ramadan.

The Guardian however, (see link below), did manage to capture the event in a way that leaves little doubt that mad men in “utter darkness” will indeed “burn you just to see the light”.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/mar/03/minab-school-bombing-how-the-worst-mass-casualty-event-of-the-iran-war-unfolded-a-visual-guide

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“No, you didn’t have to stoop so low

Have your friends collect your records and then change your number

Guess that I don’t need that, though

Now you’re just somebody that I used to know.”--Gotye

Based on the unfiltered words and attitudes flowing lately from politicians, billionaires, Donald Trump’s Cabinet, and even nominees for tax payer paid positions, there must be a shortage of lipstick for pigs.

The latter, for example, features Donald Trump’s nominee for Surgeon General, Stanford Medical School graduate Dr. Casey Means, a non-practicing physician without a medical license, who left her residency because she claimed she wasn’t learning anything about preventive medicine.

So she decided to go it on her own and tell the masses what she didn’t learn in school by learning it without the school because the people really needed this knowledge.

In other words, she dropped out.

The lipstick she put on that pig, however, was good enough to launch a second career as a podcaster and pied piper of such revelations as people need a decent night’s sleep, healthy diet, less stress, and exercise.

The lipstick, however, was smeared at her nomination hearings on Wednesday when she was asked about the money she makes pitching products on her popular newsletter and podcast without telling followers of her financial ties.

She tried to hem, haw, and ‘oh shucks’ her way out of the question but the smeared lipstick had already revealed the pig beneath the makeup.

Same thing happened recently with Trump-appointed FBI Director Kash Patel who took a taxpayer owned plane and flew to the winter olympics in Milan to hang out with some ‘bros and celebrate with the U.S. Men’s Hockey Team after their victory over Canada.

His office claimed he had already planned to be in Milan at some sort of vague “security” meeting with law enforcement officials in Italy.

That lipstick initially hid some blisters, but it all came off as photos of him chugging down brews with the team in their locker room as if he had also played in the gold-winning game, went viral.

Attorney General Pam Bondi, failing billionaire Elon Musk, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, and Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, who in all fairness has yet to find a lipstick color to his liking, have all been appearing lately without a trace of the snout disguise.

Though Lutnick tries to hide his lies and deception with a jester’s smile, the others are looking more desperate and uncomfortable as they go without the makeup, or it melts so quickly it can’t be replaced fast enough.

They appear even more defiant, thuggish, grifterish, and scared than ever or, have simply lost respect for anyone who was fooled by the lipstick in the first place.

In a country where putting lipstick on a pig is so routine we see it everyday on the news (which is using an inordinate amount on itself lately) a good brand, shade, and easy-glide application is a must.

Without it, a pig is just a pig.

Perfect for a barbecue in the yard, but not as a leader of anything other than pigs.

No one was surprised when Nay-Nay shot Tyrone.

They were, however, mildly surprised she didn’t kill him.

He survived the flesh wound to his right buttock, which had already (metaphorically) been thoroughly kicked in her vestibule whose space Tyrone had violated because he thought he had been invited.

When she tired of the physicality of the confrontation, she pulled her “roscoe” from her purse and shot him as he tried to crawl back out the door and down the brownstone steps leading to her home.

Knowing the law, she pulled him back into the vestibule, called the police, then put on a pot of coffee and waited.

How Tyrone came to be there and why he chose to target Nay-Nay an ‘nem (she had a large family) was the end result of years of maneuvering, scamming, lying, cheating and befriending birds of a feather.

Tyrone was a “piece of work” from the day he slithered out of his house on the 1700 Block of Bambrey Street in North Philadelphia, and into a world that, to him, was just a field of suckers waiting to be harvested.

By the age of five, everyone on the block knew there was something unique and special about him, but not in a good way.

Two minutes after he learned to talk, he began telling everyone his parents refused to feed him and he couldn’t sleep at night due to the loud grumblings of his stomach.

His parents, Dorothy and John, were odd, but certainly not cruel.

They belonged to a storefront church in the neighborhood that espoused eating nothing but raw foods, including collard greens, turnips and onions.

They fed him, but not what he wanted to eat.

By elementary school he had developed a persona that had parents warning their children to limit their time with him in any situation. When invited to birthday parties (rarely) a member of the host family was given the responsibility of watching his every move, and monitoring his conversations.

After recess, he often cut ahead of students in the water line, and was known for selling and/or swapping his lunches of raw carrots, beets, or lettuce by touting them as ‘miracle food’ guaranteed to make your wishes come true.

By high school, Tyrone was full blown “special” and his teachers were decidedly split over his extraordinary gift of gab and some even considered it genius, while others thought he was a crime waiting to happen.

When he ran for class president, for instance, he had personally spread rumors that his opponent, Nay-Nay, was six months pregnant and had no idea who the father was.

Though an obvious lie, (Nay-Nay was thin as a reed and quite comely) enough of the weak-minded thought anything so outrageous had to be true, and Tyrone almost won the election. After losing, he continued to press the rumor about Nay-Nay’s pregnancy and began to claim the voting was rigged.

When confronted by then President Nay-Nay, Tyrone denied everything and even claimed he had voted for her to show his disgust over the nasty rumors–but refused to accept her winning as legitimate.

After graduating from high school Tyrone was accepted at a predominantly white, mediocre college in the mid-west where he majored in Political Science. One would’ve thought it would be quite a culture shock coming from Black North Philly to a rural town in Indiana where he would stand out like a pine tree in the desert.

Tyrone, however, took to the culture as if were manna from heaven.

Over four years he perfected his skills with people who seemed to be wired to believe anything that put them above any person of color, and Tyrone fed the beast at every opportunity.

“I love my people,” he would tell his fellow students as they sipped Pabst Blue Ribbon beer under the largest sycamore tree on campus ( where they also took refuge during thunder storms). “But they are mostly backward thinking and, sadly, kinda lazy. They don’t understand the strategy of politics and have no concept of how to win. It’s also why there are so few Black head coaches in the NFL”.

That type of narrative propelled Tyrone’s status and acceptance to a point he was one of the most popular people on campus. In fact, by the time he graduated, he even had a white girlfriend whom he never kissed in public.

Tyrone had carefully created a caricature of himself for use in multiple worlds that required, at the very least, his heart and mind–with an option on his soul.

After college he wandered in obscurity for a few years taking on jobs with far right politicians and wealthy businessmen who found his perspectives on his own people both refreshing and affirmative.

Meanwhile, Nay-Nay stayed in Philadelphia. Went to Community College, and on to Temple University where she supported herself by bartending on Saturday’s and watching the children of several of her cousins after classes during the week.

She became interested in politics after taking on the position of Block Captain and seeing how just a small amount of influence can bring major changes, including a neighborhood garden, basketball court, and playground for the children.

Recently, there had been several sightings of Tyrone back in the city who was indeed working, again, as a consultant for a wealthy, conservative businessman who was buying up property in predominantly poor communities.

Tyrone’s “consulting” duties included stepping into situations where a homeowner refused to sell. He would be sent to convince the owner to sell by accepting the carrot, or the stick, which was usually threats of inspections from the city, and fines for any outside improvements not approved by the city, all of which were both illegal and outright lies.

One particularly hard case was a woman named Lillie M. Thomas, who purchased her home in 1964, making her the first Black person on the block which, in turn, led to a white flight of such magnitude that by 1969, the entire community was Black.

Tyrone was discharged to the home and showed up at the door with no warning and nothing official other than the self he created for situations like this.

Banging loudly on the door (even though the bell was prominent) he was expecting a frail woman or older relative to answer, and was already mentally spending the bonus he would receive for convincing yet another person to give up their home.

Annoyed at the loud banging (usually done by police) Nay-Nay went to open her grandmother’s door whom she had been sitting with that afternoon, peeked through the blinds and saw Tyrone standing there in a black suit and tie looking like a low-budget funeral attendant.

After checking to make sure her grandmother was in a deep sleep, she opened the door and well, things escalated quickly from the opening crack, to the last shot.

Tyrone was still in denial over his election loss years ago and it continued to burn in his psyche like syphilis.

Nay-Nay, however, had written off the incident as something people like Tyrone just do, and considered it a lesson learned of just how vile folks can be when they don’t get their way.

She tried talking to him from the door but he became increasingly aggressive and so loud that he drew the attention of a few neighbors on the block, now watching with concern.

One of them recognized the loud man as Tyrone, the “special child”, and the concern shifted from the situation, to his personal safety.

Nay-Nay, still rail thin and comely, was always wise way beyond her years. When she saw enough people were watching she stepped back a few inches and invited Tyrone into the vestibule.

Feeling smug, Tyrone entered and closed the door behind him.

Nay-Nay then lifted from the corner the omnipresent baseball bat literally every homeowner in North Philly keeps near the front door and commenced to beat him as if he owed her money.

Once he was on his knees moaning from pain, she went back to the living, checked on grandmom, and pulled the registered “roscoe” from her purse.

By the time she returned, Tyrone had somehow managed to open the door and managed to crawl to the first outside step before Nay-Nay shot him and pulled him back into the vestibule.

An older neighbor and Auntie watching as Nay-Nay pulled the screaming Tyrone back into the house yelled from a few doors away: “Baby you need some help with that?”

Nay-Nay replied: “No thank you, Auntie. I’m good.”

When the police arrived, two were her cousins who actually grew up with Tyrone.

They checked the flesh wound, called an ambulance, one whispered to the semi-conscious Tyrone: “Bro, I don’t know what happened and I don’t care. If you come here again, you will never see another sunset.”

After taking a statement from Nay-Nay, she offered her cousin some coffee and he declined but did promise to be at the barbecue at another cousin’s house that weekend.

When the detective finally showed up for another statement, he hugged Nay-Nay at the door, gave the still sleeping grandmother a kiss on the check, then sat and had coffee with his first cousin because, you know, that’s how Nay-Nay an ‘nem roll.

Mess with one, you mess with all.

She (almost always a ‘she’) gave you a smile and a slim stack of green paper adorned with symbols I didn’t understand and dead white men I knew nothing about.

I did, however, appreciate the unique texture of the bills, and how it folded perfectly to fit in my wallet or pants pocket with nary a wrinkle.

Still living at home, I had my first ‘real’ job at 17 as an apprentice machinist and was making almost as much as my father after graduating from a public, technical high school that taught me the craft.

My first weekly expense (we got paid every Friday) was to give my mother money (she never asked) and I remember the personal pride that came with me being able to give something back to my family.

At 19, I moved into a one bedroom apartment that rented for $150 per month with no down payment necessary. By thenI had a higher paying job and was also driving a brand new Ford Gran Torino with a back seat larger than many modern couches. The total price was $3,800. My mother co-signed for me and my monthly payments were about $100 per month.

That was all in the early 1970’s.

Today, I seldom carry cash and haven’t seen any crisp, new paper money in months.

When I do need physical money, I get it from the ATM. No smile. No chat. No smell.

As an entity, money for the working-class was respected and treated as a character in your life whose physical presence determined your plans, set your mood, and allowed you to literally see its value diminish or appreciate with intimate exchanges of service for currency with other people, stores and vendors.

I’ve desperately tried–often with a notebook and pencil in hand–to understand what money has now become and who or what determines its true value.

The more I watch, read, and research, the more confused I’ve become as one explanation led you to a world view, while others talked about derivatives, treasury bonds, and gold reserves that weren’t really there but supported with a promissory note that said it could be real if you believed hard enough and waited long enough.

Then there is bitcoin, which I will never understand because it defies every rationale I’ve come to know about money as being tangible and its value based on something else equally tangible, like gold, silver, or a GNP that produces things of value another country would want other than financial services or data or AI, which most nations now seem capable of producing on their own.

It’s all starting to sound, talk, and walk like an enormous grift feeding off its own energy and slickness to create money out of thin air that benefits only those who understand the scam and how to profit from it.

I recently received a story a good friend sent me from the New York Times that’s attached below.

The writer is a conservative economist and pulls no punches calling out this complex financial mixture of hide and seek, deception, and straight out lies.

It smells bad.

Seems that the very nature of money as an exchange for something else has turned rotten over the years and whatever controls its value has also weaponized it in a way that steals from the bottom to support a top already dripping with scammed wealth.

Money, as I knew it, is dying or already dead, like the men who adorn it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/06/opinion/capitalism-industry-financialization.html?smid=url-share

Depending on what the conjurer needs to fix, destroy, or be led away from, determines the nature of the savior.

It could come in the form of a warrior, politician, commoner, or even a grifter.

Whether it’s the coldness of oppression, anxiety of poverty, misery of enslavement, or the threatened loss of identity tied to privilege based on the color of their skin, saviors match-up with a particular request like pieces of chocolate in a heart-shaped box.

They don’t seem to require any special training. No club or union requiring mandatory classes (like a carpenter) to earn certification, or an advanced degree in “saviorology.” All they have to be is what you want them to be.

History, however, has shown that whatever group requested this manifestation, it often causes physical and emotional harm to others who had nothing to do with the invite.

Donald Trump, who has often been referred to as both a ‘savior’ and a “flawed, but useful” servant of the lord by right-wing evangelicals, apparently was a preferred flavor in the box.

Though there was some initial grumbling about his strange taste, once their knees rested from praying all night, they seemed to be quite happy with the choice.

When others began to feel the sting of his savior machinations, they, in turn, prayed for another savior to rescue them from a savior who is now stepping on both requesters and deniers with equal alacrity.

(This includes those who were seeking a savior to save them from themselves).

Some argue the initial lamentations arose in response to a shifting demographic that threatened to level the playing field, and use its growing numbers to get at least a toe-hold on political power.

The woes over equality brought to mind Elmer Fudd who found his savior in a shotgun to satisfy his hunting needs and get rid of that pesky Bugs Bunny who was driving him insane with his wily ways and skills at avoiding Elmer’s buckshot.

The savior/gun worked well until the rabbit got a gun and it became, as my daughter says, “a whole ‘nother situation.”

Over the years I’ve interviewed the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela, Coretta Scott King, Bishop Desmond Tutu, Aretha Franklin and Dionne Warwick.

I expected to hear/see something ‘savior-ish’ from the first four and was surprised when they offered only deep humility and an unquenchable passion for justice instead of inspired hosanna’s on the human condition and evil itself.

Franklin and Warwick, however, spoke in tones that convinced me they walked on water after every song. When I told them they had “saved” me from the pain of several heartbreaks and a relentless grief over the death of a loved one, they just chuckled warmly as if they had heard this a thousands times before.

I saw them as personal saviors. They saw themselves as entertainers in love with their craft and the people it touched.

Trump showed up on the horizon with no song, no compassion, and no legacy of fighting for anything other than himself.

Still, he was given a title he took so seriously he began to autograph christian bibles as if he were a co-author.

Not every flicker on the horizon signals a coming salvation.

Sometimes it’s just a spark dying in the ashes that was brought to life with hollow, selfish prayers for a grifter/savior of like mind and spirit.

There was no need to rewind, watch from a different angle, slow down or speed up. What I saw was what I saw.

Same with the videos of the emotionless knee-on-the neck killing of George Floyd in 2020, the arm-around-the-neck murder of Eric Garner in 2014 by the NYPD and the near-death beating of Rodney King in 1991.

Their deaths and beating sparked both protests and riots/rebellions across the country and led to independent federal investigations and deep changes in police tactics regarding restraint.

Scrutiny of the deaths of Good and Pretti may be heightened because they were white but it also belittles the compassion and humanness that motivated them to put themselves in harm’s way.

The ICE thugs killed them as casually as opening a can of soda. If anything, it appears the color of their skin may have inflamed them even more as witnessed by Good’s murderer who called her a “bitch” as she sat bleeding to death in her car.

Neither left their homes thinking of martyrdom or believing their skin color would protect them from bullets and tear gas. They willingly walked into the fire because what burned inside them was hotter than the moment and loftier than being white.

There is no privilege in being shot dead on a cold sidewalk or inside your car after dropping your child off at school a few minutes earlier. ICE may pack up over the next few days and head to another city to spread terror, but their retreat was as much the result of the thousands of people protesting injustice as it was the two that paid the ultimate price for freedom.

I covered the 25th commemoration ceremonies of the deaths of civil rights workers James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman in Philadelphia, Mississippi in 1989.

Schwerner’s mother, Anne, in her short, powerful speech before dignitaries from across the globe said that had only Chaney, who was Black, been killed, none of them would be here and his murder would’ve been barely noticed by the press–and she was right.

She also warned that any elevation of her son over Chaney or the other dozens of people already murdered in the struggle because they were white gave credence to the same idea of racial superiority he was killed fighting against.

On May 4th, 1970, on the campus of Kent State University in Ohio, twenty-eight National Guard soldiers fired about 67 rounds over 13 seconds into a crowd protesting the Vietnam war, killing four white students and wounding nine others, one of whom was paralyzed for life.

Allison Krause, 19, Jeffrey Miller, 20, and Sandra Lee Scheuer, 20, all died on the scene. Wiliam Schroeder, 19, was pronounced dead at Robinson Memorial Hospital just hours later.

Eleven days later, two Jackson State College students–Phillip Lafayette Gibbs, 21, and James Earl Green, 17– were killed by Jackson, Mississippi police who unleashed approximately 400 rounds of gunfire on their dormitory, and injured 12 others after a day of protest against racial injustice and an end to the war in Vietnam.

Both incidents resulted in wide-spread moral outrage and lots of political blustering, but outside of the immediate heartbreak of millions of Americans seeing college students murdered on campus, the underlying system of inequality, greed, corrupt government and institutional racism didn’t move much further than a tick on the historical clock.

Today, the color of a person’s skin killed confronting injustice of any sort is becoming less and less relevant, and the sanctioned killings by ICE may slow down, but it will not stop.

Raising one death over another based on skin color plays into the warped philosophy of superiority of those who seek to lower the value and weight of Black and Brown people as ICE harvests and deports their bodies like bundles of wheat.

The people now shaping this dystopian zeitgeist are so steeped in corruption, drunken power, and the psychotic ramblings of a convicted felon and proven racist, that anyone who opposes them is a candidate for execution.

Anyone.

Don’t you leave my heart in misery

If you go, then I’ll be blue

‘Cause breaking up is hard to do.”--Neil Sedaka

It’s easy to fall in love with a grifter.

He/she whispers in your ear what you want to hear as their left hand slips into your wallet.

This is akin to the heroin, crack, or privilege promises of bliss and grandeur used to enrich the grifter by any means necessary.

It’s an easy sale for those who have been waiting for the clown show to pop a tent in their souls.

A welcome distraction from poverty, corrupt leaders, lack of medical care, and the feeling of uselessness that has come to define their lives.

The ultimate grifter-high is having the prey love them as much as the product because love is loyal, blind . . . and often stupid.

These purveyors of perfidy turn that affection into bales of hay to feed the next grift always waiting in the shadows.

This also happens internationally.

Witness the manifesto/speech delivered by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Tuesday for which he received a standing ovation from powerful politicians and business leaders feeling the sting of a grift that has become abusive.

After WWII they were sold the idea of a world economic order based on the U.S. dollar that depended on faith, loyalty and love for a nation that promised to never leave you, forsake you, or cause you harm.

The grift worked well…until it didn’t.

“Let me be direct,” Carney told the audience. “We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition. Over the past two decades a series of crises in finance, health, energy, and geopolitics laid bare the risks of extreme global integration. More recently, great powers began using economic integration as weapons. Tariffs as leverage. Financial infrastructure as coercion. Supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.”

He appealed to them to shake off the grift and cease to “live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination.”

Donald Trump’s attempts to do all the above is basically a clumsy, overlapping grift that uses coercion, fear, deceit, and saviour rhetoric to enrich himself and it appears to have worked . . . for a minute.

A favorite line from the movie “The Usual Suspects,” was chillingly delivered by a con man played by Kevin Spacey who told police during an interrogation: “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”

The new grift allows for the kidnapping of a leader of a sovereign nation for our protection; threatens to take Greenland for our protection; and imposes tariffs on the world for our economic protection.

Some see the evil in this but still adore the grifter because he was their first love and good or bad, you never forget your first. The whispers. The hugs. The promises. The feel of the ring slipping on your finger.

Breaking away, sings Sedaka, is “hard to do” because no one wants to be “left in misery.”

Though the illusions and made-up history that comes with a good grift is now the prevailing wind in America, the international community is swiftly moving away from the breath of its injustice, incompetence and absurdity.

As Carney put it: “Nostalgia is not a strategy.”

Still, the grifter makes that first kiss the most passionate and lingering because it gets him a key to your heart, and he knows there’s only one lock on the door.

It also provides the courage to take another step forward.

Growing up in a family with Gullah culture deep and thick in our veins, my mother told us every day to never forgot the past and to always pray for the “unborn” and a cessation of the institutional racism that batters us like a North Sea wind.

Many Black Americans, especially the elderly, interpret the recent murders of Renee Nicole Good and Keith Porter Jr. by ICE as both a warning and a promise there will be more of the same.

I vividly remember the first “riot/rebellion” that happened in my hometown of Philadelphia during the hot and sultry summer of 1963. For three days parts of the city were literally blocked off and evenings were a cacophony of sirens, screams, shattered glass, and gunshots.

It was also the first time I saw white men in military uniform (outside of television) with rifles at the ready as they patrolled my neighbourhood.

Young and obviously nervous, their steps were always deliberate and disciplined as they moved down streets littered with broken glass and newspapers tossed from honour boxes now used as barricades.

Three years later, Jimmy Ruffin’s “I’ve Passed This Way Before” was released as a love song but its haunting and prescient lines took on a different meaning as the riots/rebellions continued in earnest in cities across the country.

“Life lands a crushing blow. And once again our heart is broken. And as history repeats itself, these few words are sadly spoken; I’ve passed this way before. I’ve felt this pain before. A hurt that took so long to end, has found my poor heart again.”

As we continue to say the names of Renee Nicole Good, Keith Porter, Jr., Breonna Taylor, Trayvon Martin and George Floyd, we should also say the names of Bull Connor, George Wallace, Spiro Agnew, David Duke, Stephen Miller, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Kristi Noem, ad infinitum, who fed, bred, and grew the hate now sprinkled on the ignorant, racist and broken humans who believe your success is the reason for their failure.

They are part of the same structure that gave birth to ICE in its current form and an ideology that demonizes anyone who challenges it and justifies their murder based on rules created to fit the event.

ICE will continue to murder, kidnap, threaten and traumatise entire communities for the foreseeable future.

The state-sanctioned killings of Good and Porter and the ongoing suspension of due process as it rounds up immigrants like cattle, all originated in stereotypes and lies designed to make the victim look like the criminal and vice-versa.

Much of America is starting to see itself clearly both because, and in spite of ICE, which is now flexing in predominantly white communities and sacred spaces like schools, churches, and little league soccer fields.

Remembering is a vital part of resistance. Not only names, but the moment the veil was lifted and the evil revealed itself in your backyard.

Yes, say their names. Draw strength from their senseless deaths and, most importantly, understand this struggle is not a sprint, but a marathon.

We’ve been this way before.

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