The previous generation had their own Left Behind series – another mega-bestseller (28 million copies) futurist geopolitical fiction mapping Darby’s doctrines on to the 1970s it was called The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsay. Lindsay’s genius was to update versions of the book as America’s enemies changed. In 1970, the threat to Israel came from Russia; by the 1990s, it was a joint Russia-Muslim operation; by 1999, China was in there too. “It is amazing, is it not”, wrote Lutheran critic of Christian Zionism Joseph Neuberger in his Master’s thesis, “that the great enemies of God’s people just happen to coincide with the national enemies of America at any given moment?” In the Christian Zionist reading of the bible, unlike non-Zionist Christian readings, “Israel” means the state of Israel – this is to be read literally. But Israel’s enemies in the bible are tribes (Canaanites, etc.) that don’t exist any more – these enemies have to be read figuratively and flexibly, which the Lindsay and the Left Behind authors do.
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It is apparent that God’s will coincides perfectly with joint US/Israel geopolitical ambitions.
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The murder of literature teacher Refaat Alareer, the target had been put on his back by social media figure Bari Weiss (Refaat had said, after the death threats started pouring in, that if he died he held Weiss responsible), looks like it was a targeted assassination. He had apparently “received an anonymous phone call from someone who identified himself as an Israeli officer and threatened Refaat that they knew precisely the school where he was located and were about to get to his location with the advancement of Israeli ground troops.”
Max Blumenthal writes: “According to EuroMed’s report, he then returned to his sister’s apartment to avoid endangering others in the school/shelter. There, he was killed by a “surgical” strike by the Israeli military.” Refaat Alareer’s murder was celebrated online by many pro-Israel people, “publicly, under their own names celebrating and cheering the killing of Refaat Alareer and his family which includes children”, as one tweeter noted. His poem, “If I must die”, is being translated into many of the languages of the earth in this twitter thread.
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On one of the telegram channels where Israelis watch the carnage, one poster expressed concern about how the glee would be seen from the outside.
“It’s fun to watch and all,” wrote ben, “but these videos reach social media and portray us as psychopaths who commit genocide while smiling and laughing. I don’t know if it’s wise or not, but I’ve come across a lot of posts like this that are used by the enemy.”
This was supposed to be the year that the Biden administration took a first swing at the laborious process of refilling America’s energy backstop, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR).
While most observers believe the budget will not pass through Congress in its current form, budgets depict an administration’s priorities and vision for the country. Some within the oil industry have lobbied for years to drain the SPR, created in the aftermath of the 1973 oil crisis.
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Exxon, as well as the American Petroleum Institute (API) and the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA), have long lobbied for a drawdown of SPR‘s supply, according to lobbying disclosure records reviewed by DeSmog. They supported two key bills, proposed but never passed by Congress: H.R. 4136 in 2012 and S. 1231 in 2015.
H.R. 4136, lobbied for by Exxon, API, and IPAA**, says that the Strategic Petroleum Reserve can only be tapped if more federally owned public lands and waters were leased to the oil and gas industry. S. 1231, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve Modernization Act of 2015, called for a Department of Energy study of the SPR “to determine options available for [its] continued operation,” to be completed 180 days after the bill’s passage.
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“[T]he SPR is unnecessary in the first place. Private inventories and reserves are abundant, and open markets will respond more efficiently to supply shocks than federally controlled government stockpiles,” wrote Loris, who began his career as an associate for the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation. “Congress should authorize the Department of Energy to sell the entire inventory, using the revenues solely for deficit reduction.”
CORE staff complained that they were forced to work 18-hour days, six days a week, without the opportunity to take breaks. Responding to the staff concerns, Penn excoriated the employees, writing in an email that “in every cell of my body is a vitriol for the way your actions reflect so harmfully upon your brothers and sisters in arms”. Penn suggested that employees leave their work instead of complaining about conditions.[16] In October 2021, the National Labor Relations Board issued a complaint that Penn and CORE violated federal labor law. According to the charge, Penn “impliedly threatened” his employees with reprisals.[17] A 2021 California lawsuit sought civil damages, claiming that CORE failed o pay overtime and minimum wges, provide rest periods, reimburse for business expenses, provide detailed wage statements, and timely pay employees. [18]
In 2022, a former CORE worker who provided support during COVID relief efforts in Georgia sued CORE for unpaid wages. According to the complaint, CORE deliberately misclassified staff as contractors to avoid paying overtime. CORE’s contracts require binding arbitration, which prevents a collective action by multiple employees and keeps the proceedings private.
A study by the American Sociological Association in 2016 found that while massive top rate tax hikes might cause some millionaires to move from their high-tax state to a low-tax state, the amount of them doing so for this reason was negligible. Millionaires moved for tax purposes around 2.2% of the time. Indeed, in any event the rate of inter-state migration generally was lower for millionaires, at 2.4%, than it was for the general population, at 2.9%.
Migrant workers face unsafe labor conditions and wage theft—not to mention the threat of violence and deportation. We spoke to the director of the Resilience Force, which advocates to protect these workers.
According to the Institute of Energy Research, the SPR is expected to shrink to a 40-year low by the end of October, with inventories then at 358 million barrels, compared to 621 million barrels a year ago.
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 
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