For almost 20 years, U.S. drone warfare was largely one-sided. Unlike Afghans and Yemenis, Iraqis and Somalis, Americans never had to worry about lethal robots hovering overhead and raining down missiles. Until, that is, one appeared in the skies above Florida.

But that's a story for later. For now, let's focus on a 2017 executive order issued by President Trump, part of his second attempt at a travel ban directed primarily at citizens of Muslim-majority nations. It begins: "It is the policy of the United States to protect its citizens from terrorist attacks."

That sentence would be repeated in a January report from the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), "Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States." Meant to strengthen the president's case for the travel ban, it was panned for its methodological flaws, pilloried for its inaccuracies, and would even spur a lawsuit by the civil rights organization, Muslim Advocates, and the watchdog group, Democracy Forward Foundation. In their complaint, those groups contend that the report was "biased, misleading, and incomplete" and "manipulates information to support its anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim conclusions."

To bolster the president's arguments for restricting the entry of foreigners into the United States, the DOJ/DHS analysis contained a collection of case summaries. Examples included: the Sudanese national who, in 2016, "pleaded guilty to attempting to provide material support to ISIS"; the Uzbek who "posted a threat on an Uzbek-language website to kill President Obama in an act of martyrdom on behalf of ISIS"; the Syrian who, in a plea agreement, "admitted that he knew a member of ISIS and that while in Syria he participated in a battle against the Syrian regime, including shooting at others, in coordination with Al Nusrah," an al-Qaeda offshoot.

Such cases cited in the report, hardly spectacular terror incidents, were evidently calculated to sow fears by offering a list of convicted suspects with Muslim-sounding names. But the authors of the report simply looked in the wrong places. They could have found startling summaries of truly audacious attacks against the homeland in a collection of U.S. military documents from 2016 obtained by TomDispatch via the Freedom of Information Act. Those files detail a plethora of shocking acts of terrorism across the United States including mass poisonings, the use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and that "People's Armed Liberation (PAL) attack on U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM) headquarters in Tampa, Florida, [by] a drone-launched missile."

That's right! A drone-launched missile attack! On CENTCOM's Florida headquarters! By a terrorist group known as PAL!

Wondering how you missed the resulting 24/7 media bonanza, the screaming front page headlines in the New York Times, the hysterics on Fox & Friends, the president's hurricane of tweets?

Well, there's a simple explanation. That attack doesn't actually happen until May 2020. Or so says the summary of the 33rd annual Joint Land, Air, and Sea Strategic Special Program (JLASS-SP), an elaborate war game carried out in 2016 by students and faculty from the U.S. military's war colleges, the training grounds for its future generals and admirals.

PALing Around with Terrorists

The 2016 edition of JLASS-SP was played out remotely for weeks before culminating in a five-day on-site exercise at the Air Force Wargaming Institute at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama. It involved 148 students from the Air Force's Air War College, the Army War College, the Marine Corps War College, the Naval War College, the Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Strategy, the National War College, and the National Defense University's Information Resources Management College. Those up-and-coming officers -- some of whom will likely play significant roles in running America's actual wars in the 2020s -- confronted a future in which, as the script for the war game put it, "lingering jealousy and distrust of American power and national interests have made it politically and culturally difficult for the United States to act unilaterally."

Here's the scene as set in JLASS-SP: while the U.S. is still economically and militarily powerful into the next decade, anxieties abound about increasing constraints on the country's ability to control, dictate, and dominate world affairs. "Even in the military realm... advances by others in science and technology, expanded adoption of irregular warfare tactics by both state and non-state actors, proliferation of nuclear weapons and long-range precision weapons, and growing use of cyber warfare attacks have increasingly constricted U.S. freedom of action," reads the war game's summary.

While the materials used are "not intended to be an actual prediction of events," they are explicitly meant "to reflect a plausible depiction of major trends and influences in the world regions." Indeed, what's striking about the exercise is how -- though scripted before the election of Donald Trump -- it anticipated many of the fears articulated in the president's December 2017 National Security Strategy. That document, for instance, bemoans the potential dangers not only of regional powers like Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, but also of "transnational threats from jihadist terrorists and transnational criminal organizations," undocumented immigrants, "drug traffickers, and criminal cartels [which] exploit porous borders and threaten U.S. security and public safety."

The JLASS-SP scenario also prefigured themes from that 2018 DOJ/DHS report supporting the travel ban in the way it stoked fears of, above all, a major "foreign-born" -- especially Muslim -- terror threat in the United States. A 2017 Government Accountability Office report would, however, conclude that, of "the 85 violent extremist incidents that resulted in death since September 12, 2001, far right-wing violent extremist groups were responsible for 62 (73 percent) while radical Islamist violent extremists were responsible for 23 (27 percent)."

Two years after the war game was conducted, in a time of almost metronomic domestic mass killings, President Trump continues to spotlight the supposedly singular danger posed by "inadequately vetted people" in the U.S., although stovetops and ovens, hot air balloons, and burning pajamas are far more deadly to Americans. Indeed, since 9/11, terrorism has been a distinctly low-level risk to the American public -- at least when compared to heart disease, cancer, car crashes, fires, or heat waves -- but has had an outsized effect on the perceptions and actions of the government, not to mention its visions of tomorrow.

Tomorrow's Terror Today

An examination of the threats from international and domestic terror groups, as imagined in JLASS-SP, offers unique clues to the Pentagon's fears for the future. "Increasingly," reads the war game's summary, "transnational organizations, businesses, non-governmental organizations, and violent extremist organizations challenge the traditional notions of boundaries and sovereignty."

That drone-launching terror group, PAL, for instance, is neither Islamist nor a right-wing terror group, but an organization supposedly formed in 2017 in hopes of defeating "globalism and capitalism throughout the world by rallying the proletariat to orchestrate the overthrow of capitalist governments and global conglomerates." Its ideology, an amalgam of increasingly stale leftist social movements, belies its progressive ranks, a rainbow coalition consisting of "most of the globe's ethnicities and cultures," all of whom seem to be cyber-sophisticates skilled in fundraising, recruiting, as well as marketing their particular brand of radicalism.

As of 2020, the audacious drone strike on CENTCOM's headquarters was PAL's only terror attack in the tangible world. The rest of its actions have taken place in the digital realm, where the group is known for launching cyber-assaults and siphoning off "funds from large global corporations, banks, and capitalist governments around the world."

Even though PAL went from a gleam in the eye of its founder, the Bond-villain-esquely named Otto Cyre, to terrorist power-player in just a few short years, the pace of its operations didn't please its hardest core members who, the war game scenario says, broke away in late 2020 to form yet another organization devoted to even more rapidly eroding "confidence in governmental and institutional bodies by staging events that demonstrate the 'impotency' of the establishment." That splinter group, United Patriots Against International Government (UPAIGO) -- in this war game all terror groups have Pentagon-style acronyms -- concentrates on "spectacular but deniable actions," a scattershot campaign of often botched but sometimes lethal efforts that include:

November 2021: a cyber-attack on the Angarsk Refinery in the Russian Federation, which resulted in a two-week shutdown causing a sharp rise in the price of oil and gas just prior to the 2021-2022 winter heating season.

April 2022: a failed attempt to assassinate, by IED, the chief of U.S. Pacific Command. Two members of the commander's security detail and the command's political advisor were killed in the attack while others, including civilians, were injured.

January 2022: a failed plot to detonate a dirty [radioactive] bomb, employing medical waste and homemade explosives, at Philadelphia International Airport.

2023 fire season: as fires raged in the western United States, UPAIGO established relief efforts designed to compete with the U.S. government's response, in order to "undermine confidence in government agencies."

June 2024: an attack, in coordination with members of the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA), on a U.S. flagged air carrier transporting U.S. military personnel at Shannon Airport in Ireland. Militants fired two surface-to-air missiles at the aircraft, which was damaged but managed to land successfully."

PAL and UPAIGO are, however, hardly the only terror threats facing the United States in the 2020s, according to JLASS-SP 2016. PAL's fellow travelers, for example, include the fictional versions of the real Irish National Liberation Army and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). There's also the Environmentalists Against Capitalists Organization, or EACO, "a lethal environmental anti-capitalist terrorist group with global connections." Formed in 2010 (though not in our actual world), EACO, according to the war gamers, evolved into an increasingly violent organization in the 2020s, carrying out not just cyberattacks on corporations but also a full-scale bombing campaign "targeting executive board meetings of large corporations, particularly in industries such as oil, coal, natural gas, and logging." The group even took to planting IEDs on logging roads and employing tainted food as a weapon. By 2025, EACO was implicated in more than 400 criminal acts in the U.S. resulting in 126 deaths and $862 million in damages.

Also included among domestic terror groups is Mara Salvatrucha 13 or MS-13, the Los Angeles street gang, born of the American-fueled Central American civil wars of the 1980s, that was transplanted to El Salvador and has since returned to the United States. This violent American export -- the product of deportations in the 1990s -- has paradoxically become a key justification for President Trump's crackdown on immigration. "MS-13 recruits through our broken immigration system, violating our borders. And it just comes right through -- whenever they want to come through, they come through," said Trump earlier this year during a White House roundtable focused on the gang. "We've really never seen anything quite like this -- the level of ferocity, the level of violence, and the reforms we need from Congress to defeat it."

In the real world, the U.S. branch of MS-13 operates in loose local cliques under a franchised name, dabbling in small-time drug dealing, gun-running, prostitution, and extortion (primarily of recent immigrants). Many of its crimes are committed against its own affiliates or members of other gangs. The president nonetheless baselessly claimed that MS-13 has "literally taken over towns and cities of the United States." He also continues to portray the gang, which reportedly makes up less than 1% of the estimated 1.4 million gang members in the U.S., as a sophisticated international cartel.

And that's precisely how MS-13 was also portrayed in the fantasy world of JLASS-SP. In that war game, Mara Salvatrucha has developed "the resources to wage full-scale insurgent campaigns in Central America and the capability to cause serious disruption in the United States and Canada," while rumors swirl of contacts between its members and foreign militants. "If cooperation between foreign terrorist groups and MS-13 ever blossomed, the potential for terrorist attacks within the borders of the United States would increase significantly," the war game scenario warns.

President Trump has been accused of conflating members of MS-13 with undocumented immigrants (and referring to both groups as "animals"). Regardless, there's no question that he kicked off his presidential run in 2015 by disparaging Mexicans. "They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people," he infamously declared. The JLASS-SP documents reverse Trump's formula by first noting that "most illegal immigrants crossing into the United States are just trying to make a better life for themselves," only to suggest that the U.S.-Mexican border also "serves as an infiltration point for terrorists."

Unlike in the real world, where such fears circulate primarily as a conspiracy theory, in the Pentagon's future fantasy there is "substantial evidence... that terrorists from the Middle East and North Africa transit the Mexican-U.S. border." Worse yet, radical Islamists even "camouflage themselves as Hispanics" to cross the border. The military's fantasists point to "a flood of name changes from Arabic to Hispanic and the reported linking of drug cartels along the Texas border with Middle East and North Africa terrorism."

That represents a Trumpian-style nightmare-cum-fantasy even the president hasn't yet dreamed up -- a Hispanic-surnamed, cartel-supported group of Islamist terrorists. But by the 2020s, according to the Pentagon's futurists, such worries are well-founded. And this will occur at the same time that Mexican and South American drug gangs have grown so rich and powerful they can regularly buy protection from U.S. government officials.

"Popular opinion in the United States is beginning to believe the 'Narco-corruption' is affecting the 'rule of law' north of the border," according to their scenario, with the cartels spending $20 billion in 2022 alone to buy off U.S. officials or get candidates of their choice elected. That same year, allegations of election tampering in mayoral races across the American South come to light and the number of corruption convictions of U.S. Border Patrol agents and law enforcement officials skyrockets. Perhaps most shocking is the discovery of a "vast irrigated grow site" (evidently a massive marijuana farm) tended by "a dozen Mexican farmers armed with AK-47's" in -- wait for it! -- "remote areas of Illinois."

Mexican farmers, El Salvadoran gang members, Islamists masquerading as Hispanics, eco-terrorists, and anti-globalization militants aren't the only threats foreseen by the military's futurists. Much-ballyhooed reports of the defeat of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, like the much-hyped defeat of its predecessor, al-Qaeda in Iraq, turn out to be premature. In the 2020s, the re-re-branded group, now known as the Global Islamic Caliphate, or GIC, draws "support from Sunni-majority regions in Syria and Iraq; refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey; and internally displaced persons in Syria and Iraq," while continuing to launch attacks in the region.

Meanwhile, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has grown in reach, size, and might. By 2021, the group has 38,000 members spread across Algeria, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger with bases reportedly located in Western Sahara. On May 23, 2023, AQIM carries out the most lethal terror attack in the U.S. since 9/11, detonating massive truck-bombs at both the New York and New Jersey ends of the Lincoln Tunnel, killing 435 people and injuring another 618. The bombing prompts President McGraw -- you remember him, Karl Maxwell McGraw, the independent Arizona senator who rode his populist "America on the Move" campaign to victory in the 2020 election -- to invade Mauritania and become mired in yet another American forever war that shows every indication of grinding on into the 2030s, if not beyond.

The Age of Terrorism

In the real world, the lifetime odds of an American dying from "walking" are one in 672. The chance of being killed by a foreign terrorist? One in 45,808. By an illegal immigrant terrorist? One in 138 million. And the odds of being killed by a "chain migration" immigrant sometime this year? One in 1.2 billion! In other words, you have a far greater chance of being killed by a dog, a shark, lightning, or the government via legal execution.

In their dystopian war-game future, more than two decades of fighting "them over there so we do not have to face them in the United States of America" (as former President George W. Bush put it in 2007) proves unequivocally futile.

This is not to say terrorism isn't a major threat to others around the world or that terror groups are not proliferating. Since 9/11, the number of terrorist organizations recognized by the U.S. State Department and battled by the Pentagon -- from Africa to the Middle East to Asia -- has grown markedly.

"States are the principal actors on the global stage, but non-state actors also threaten the security environment with increasingly sophisticated capabilities," reads an unclassified synopsis of the Pentagon's 2018 National Defense Strategy. "Terrorists, trans-national criminal organizations, cyber hackers and other malicious non-state actors have transformed global affairs with increased capabilities of mass disruption."

While it may be "the policy of the United States to protect its citizens from terrorist attacks," as President Trump's 2017 executive order declares, the Pentagon envisions a future in which such policies are increasingly ineffective. In their dystopian war-game future, more than two decades of fighting "them over there so we do not have to face them in the United States of America" (as former President George W. Bush put it in 2007) proves unequivocally futile. In this sense, the Pentagon's fantasies bear an eerie resemblance to the actual present. In the dystopian scenario used by the Pentagon to train its future leaders, today's forever wars have proven ineffective and future threats are to be met with new, similarly ineffective, forever wars.

In his State of the Union address earlier this year, President Trump declared that we're living in the "age of terrorism." His solution: wielding "unmatched power," loosening the rules of engagement, and establishing an unfettered ability to detain, question, and "annihilate" terrorists.

All of these tactics have, however, been part of the Pentagon's playbook since 2001 and, according to the military's best guess at the future, will lead to an increase in terror groups and terror attacks while terror networks and terrorist ideologies will grow in strength, resilience, and appeal. Almost two decades in, it seems we're still only in the opening days of the "age of terrorism" and, if the Pentagon's war-gamers are to be believed, far worse is yet to come.
(c) 2018 Nick Turse is the managing editor of TomDispatch and a fellow at the Nation Institute. An award-winning investigative journalist, he has written for The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and The Nation, and is a contributing writer for The Intercept. His latest book is Next Time They'll Come to Count the Dead: War and Survival in South Sudan. His website is NickTurse.com.

WE ALL know the picture from the books and the movies: a gambler sits at the roulette table in a casino. He has luck. A lot of luck.

In front of the gambler the pile of chips is growing. Higher and higher. Every spin of the roulette wheel adds to the heap.

When the heap reaches the level of his eyes, he could just get up, exchange the chips for money and go home. He winnings are enough to keep him in luxury for the rest of his life.

But the man cannot get up. Just cannot. He is glued to his place at the roulette table. And then his luck abandons him. The heap of chips starts to shrink.

He could still get up and save a part of his winnings. But he cannot. He is glued to his seat. Until he loses the last chip.

In the movies, the man gets up and puts a pistol to his head.

BINYAMIN NETANYAHU resembles this man. He has luck. A lot of luck. It is uncanny.

The whole country sees the luck. His popularity rises to the heavens.

The economy is flourishing. There is practically no unemployment. More and more Israeli start-up companies are being bought abroad for astronomical sums.

In the international sphere, Israel marches from victory to victory. The president of the world's most important country behaves as if he were Bibi's abject slave. The US has recognized undivided Jerusalem as the capital of Greater Israel. The transfer of the American embassy there turned into a national festival, on the same day as another festival took place in Tel Aviv, an outburst of popular joy over Israel's triumph at the Eurovision song contest. The masses are overcome, as if it was a victory in war.

The world press mentions Trump, Putin and Netanyahu in the same breath. Three giants.

INSIDE ISRAEL, Netanyahu has unlimited power. Emperor Bibi and his wife look like a royal pair.

He has no competitors. Every possible competitor was purged from the ruling party long ago. The remaining Likud functionaries look like dwarfs compared to Giant Bibi. The coalition partners are a miserable lot of small factions, whose leaders know that they have no chance against Bibi. The "opposition" is pitiful, at best.

The institutions of democracy, whose duty it is to safeguard the democratic system from becoming a dictatorship, are being destroyed, one after the other, while the masses shout encouragement. The Supreme Court, the Attorney General, the State Comptroller, the Police Chief - those who do not surrender are crushed.

The corruption cases against both Binyamin and Sarah Netanyahu, which could be wound up within a month, drag on for years, with no end in sight.

ON THE most important front - the Arab - Netanyahu's luck has reached incredible heights.

The Arab world has always been disunited. But in the past it was a hidden disunity. The lack of coordination between Egypt, Jordan and Syria enabled us to win the 1948 war.

Now the disunity has become open and extreme. Something is happening that in the past was but a dream: Saudi Arabia almost openly cooperates with Netanyahu in the fight against Iran, and so does Egypt.

Two weeks ago, on Black Monday, unarmed Palestinians in Gaza were slaughtered wholesale. Yet not in a single Arab country did stormy demonstrations break out. Not even in the West Bank. Nor in East Jerusalem. Only a tiny Arab demonstration in Haifa, in which a policeman broke the leg of a shackled demonstrator after his arrest.

The entire world witnessed the hideous connection: the victory celebration of Netanyahu at the new US embassy in Jerusalem, while thousands were wounded or killed on the Gaza border. And just a few hours later - the mass outbreak of joy in Tel Aviv's central square over the victory of an Israeli songstress at the Eurovision contest.

The world saw and remained silent. The international reaction to the massacre in Gaza was even less than the usual hypocritical minimum prescribed for such occasions. The only serious reaction came from the Turkish ruler and was buried under a heap of derision in Israel.

During Israel's 70 years of existence, its governments have pretended to long for peace with the Arab world, and before that the Zionist leadership did the same. Since the Oslo agreement, the government also pretended to seek peace with the Palestinian people, whose very existence it denied until then.

During Netanyahu's reign even this pretense has evaporated. At the beginning, Bibi uttered a few words which were construed as advocating the two-state solution. They have been forgotten long ago. Now even the hypocrisy has been swept away. No more peace offers, no "painful concessions", no nothing. Total ignoring of the Saudi Peace Plan (long forgotten).

Why? Simple: there is no possibility of peace without the creation of a Palestinian state. Such a peace necessitates the giving up of parts of the "Land of Israel". Netanyahu knows this well. He does not dream of doing so.

> Does this hurt him in the national arena? On the contrary. Does this hurt him in the international arena? Not at all. Perhaps the opposite is true. The further the chances of peace move away, the higher his popularity rises.

A leader with such luck, who will stand up to him? Which politician, which journalist, which billionaire? Everybody flatters him. Everybody wants to serve him. All except a few idealists and other idiots.

WHAT WILL happen when the incredibly lucky gambler starts to lose, after all?

History is full of heroes who had legendary luck. Who conquered countries and continents, until the bitter day arrived. Napoleon, for example. Or his German successor, whose name had better not be mentioned in this context.

A person who is too successful will inevitably become a megalomaniac. Their mental equilibrium will be upset.

They will go one kilometer too far and fall into the abyss.

And when they fall, they will take the entire country with them.

Perhaps Netanyahu's luck will continue for some time. Perhaps he will still have more and more successes. Until it stops.

Where will Netanyahu move on from the dizzy height of his successes?

Wisdom would say: he should now exchange the chips he has won, which lie before him on the table, the table of the country, and offer the Palestinians and the whole Arab world a generous peace, which would assure Israel peace for generations to come. It is always wise for a country to make peace while it is at the height of its strength.

But Netanyahu is not wise enough to do so. He will continue on his present path.

Perhaps he will be able to restrain himself and not lead us into a war with Iran - a war which will be lost by both sides. It would be a destructive, a catastrophic war. Perhaps Bibi is clever enough to avoid this trap. Unless the criminal investigations against him come too close to trial and his future becomes too endangered. War is always the last refuge of a nationalist ruler.

Even without war, Bibi's course is leading towards an apartheid state. There is just no other possibility. The "Jewish Nation-State" from the Mediterranean Sea to the desert, with an Arab majority that will inexorably grow, until the balance of power within the state turns, the international situation changes, and the willpower of the herrenvolk weakens.

That has happened in history again and again, and that will happen to us. The Jewish State will turn into a bi-national state, with a shrinking Jewish minority, since Jews will not want to live in such a country.

When? In fifty years? In a hundred years? At the end of the glorious Zionist chapter, the Jews will again disperse throughout the world.

I DON'T like to be a prophet of doom. My heart aches when I see the masses captivated by his charisma and following him to perdition.

It reminds me of the legend of the Pied Piper.

In Hamelin, a small town in Germany, there was a plague of rats. In despair, the burghers summoned a renowned rat-catcher and promised him a generous reward.

The rat-catcher took his flute and started to play. The melody was so sweet that all the rats came out of their holes and followed him. The Pied Piper led them into the river, where all the rats perished.

Having got rid of the rats, the burghers refused to pay the agreed price.

So the Pied Piper took up his flute again and started to play. The melody was so sweet that all the children of the town left their homes and followed him. He led them into the river, where all of them drowned.

The "Russiagate" hysteria is only the latest reason to conclude that the Democratic Party is the greatest institutional impediment to creation of mass "resistance" to onrushing war and never-ending austerity under late-stage capitalism. Last week's vote on the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2019 showed, by the numbers, that any legislative "resistance"depends, not on Democratic victory in November of this year, or in 2020, or the cycle after that, but on the formation of an entirely new party. Only 59 Democrats voted against the $717 billion Pentagon spending bill, whose passage guarantees, not only more war, but new waves of privatization and a painful spiral of doom for what's left of the social safety net in the United States-an ultimate outcome that is fully understood by the perpetrators on both sides of the corporate duopoly.

The lopsided vote reveals that there really is no "left wing" of the Democratic Party, just a tiny, ill-defined faction that can be brushed aside even on "bright line" issues of war and peace, guns or butter, and social justice versus police repression. Since it is the Democratic half of the duopoly that claims the allegiance of the vast demographic consisting of virtually all the components of a "progressive" social base in the U.S. -- components representing large majorities of the American people and the near-totality of the Black population -- it is the Democrats that are to blame for the strangulation of the majority's aspirations for a more just, equal, and peaceful society. Republican gerrymandering of legislative districts concentratesDemocrat-leaning voters, but it is the Democratic Party that turns these voters' progressive notions into mush and dust. Donald Trump didn't make the Democrats betray the solid progressive majority of their constituents; Nancy Pelosi did, on behalf of the party's masters on Wall Street. No rescue of "the people" is conceivable under budgets burdened with such military outlays, yet there is only token "resistance" to military spending from the Democrats, and even those that voted against the authorization still scream for war against the Russians, daily.

The 59 Democrats that opposed the Pentagon bacchanalmake up just 30 percent of the 192-member Democratic Caucus in the House -- a smaller group than the 78-member, and wholly bogus, Congressional Progressive Caucus. Only thirteen Black Representatives voted "Nay," composing exactly the same 30 percent proportion of the Congressional Black Caucus. Yet Black people are the most anti-war, pro-peace and social justice, left-leaning ethnic constituency in the nation, as shown by public opinion polls going back generations. According to a Zogby poll taken weeks before the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, only 7 percent of Blacks supported an invasion "that would kill thousands of Iraqi civilians," while majorities of whites were willing to countenance such an outcome. Polls also show Blacks are, in the majority, a "socialist"-friendly demographic, and Black millennials are even more socialist-leaning than that. But the Democratic Party reflects none of that demographic political sentiment, because it snuffs it out at the source.

The Democratic Party is a people-suppression mechanism. It is, therefore, even more harmful to the Black polity, since Blacks are more left-wing than whites. Overwhelming majorities of Blacks are anti-war, and huge super-majorities of Black people favor a revival of social and economic development spending. But, because of the corporate electoral duopoly system offers only a choice between the White Man's Party (GOP) and the Democrats, the Democratic Party has infested every nook and cranny of Black society. That's why only 30 percent of the Black Caucus -- a pitiful 13 members -- voted against a monstrous Pentagon-funding measure that will starve the social arms of government and prime the pumps for more war. Here's the result of the roll call:

"Yeas" (29)

Alma Adams (NC); Sanford Bishop (GA); Lisa Blunt Rochester (DE); Anthony Brown (MD); G.K. Butterfield (NC); Andre Carson (IN); Wm. Lacy Clay (MO); James Clyburn (SC); Elijah Cummings (MD); Danny Davis (IL); Val Butler Demings (FL); Dwight Evans (PA); Marcia Fudge (OH); Al Green (TX); Alcee Hastings (FL); Sheila Jackson Lee (TX); Johnson, E. B.(TX); Robin Kelly (IL); Brenda Lawrence (FL); Al Lawson (FL); Donald McEachin (VA); Gregory Meeks (NY); Cedric Richmond (LA); Bobby Rush (IL); David Scott (GA); Bobby Scott (VA); Terri Sewell (AL); Bennie Thompson (MS); Marc Veasey (TX)

"Nays" (13)

Karen Bass (CA); Joyce Beatty (OH); Yvette Clarke (NY); Emanuel Cleaver (MO); Keith Ellison (MN); Hakeem Jeffries (NY); Hank Johnson (GA); Barbara Lee (CA); Gwen Moore (WI); Donald Payne (NJ); Maxine Waters (CA); Bonnie Watson Coleman (NJ); Frederica Wilson (FL)

Not Voting (1)

John Lewis (GA)

"Bright Line" Issues

The effectively "progressive" faction in the Black Caucus is even tinier than the 13 "nay-sayers" that opposed the Pentagon super-budget. On the other "bright line" issues of police repression and militarization of local cops, the Black Caucus' voting record is damnable -- and the best proof that the Party is the main impediment to Black dignity, safety and political empowerment.

The week before, an even smaller number of Black House members pried themselves away from Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi's grip to vote against the Protect and Serve Act , which makes any assault on a police officer (a charge that is attached every time the cops beat you up) a "hate crime." Only 11 Black Caucus members opposed treating the police as a "protected class." They were: Karen Bass (CA); Yvette Clarke (NY); Wm. Lacy Clay (MO); Alcee Hastings (FL); Johnson, E. B.(TX); Barbara Lee (CA); Gwen Moore (WI); Donald Payne (NJ); Bobby Scott (VA); Maxine Waters (CA); Bonnie Watson Coleman (NJ)

Black Democrats have learned nothing from the grassroots movement that emerged after Mike Brown was shot down by a cop in Ferguson, Missouri, in August, 2014. Two months prior to Brown's killing, on June 14, the full House voted on the Grayson amendment to halt the Pentagon's transfers of weapons and equipment to local police departments. Only 8 Black Caucus members voted for the amendment and against continued militarization of the police. They were:

John Conyers (MI); Donna Edwards (MD); Keith Ellison (MN); Hank Johnson (GA); Barbara Lee (CA); John Lewis (GA); Bobby Scott (VA); Maxine Waters (CA)

80 percent of the Black Caucus, 30 of the full-voting members, opted to continue the Pentagon program, or abstained, which amounted to the same thing.

So, how tiny is the dependably "progressive" faction in the Black Caucus, as revealed by votes on such "bright line" issues? If we take the 13 "Nays" against last week's Pentagon measure as a base, and then subtract those members that voted the wrong way on the two key police issues, we are left with even less than a faction -- hardly a grouplet -- that can be depended on to reflect fundamental Black political sentiments. Of the group of 13 from last week's vote, Karen Bass (CA), Joyce Beatty (OH), Yvette Clarke (NY), Emanuel Cleaver (MO), Hakeem Jeffries (NY), Gwen Moore (WI), Donald Payne (NJ), and Frederica Wilson (FL) all voted to continue the militarization of police in 2014, and therefore fail the "bright line" test as dependable Black progressives (or decent human beings). Some of them also voted this month to make police a protected class, as did Keith Ellison (MN), and Hank Johnson (GA).

That leaves standing only three Black Caucus members: Barbara Lee (CA), Maxine Waters (CA), and Bonnie Watson Coleman (NJ), who was not a member of Congress when the 2014 vote on militarization of police occured.

Michigan's John Conyers, a reliable progressive vote on such issues, has resigned after 53 years in the House. Donna Edwards has been replaced in her Maryland district by Anthony Brown, a Pelosi-sucking hack. The entire Black Caucus class of 2017 and 2016 is worthless: Dwight Evans (PA); Lisa Blunt Rocherster; Val Butler Demings (FL); Al Lawson (FL); A Donald McEachin (VA).

This is not a generational issue. The thoroughly corporate nature of the Democratic Party is the reason that only three Black Caucus members are minimally worthy of the term "progressive" (and, of course, if slavish support for Israel is made a "bright line" issue, then none of the Caucus qualifies.)

The Democratic Party grossly distorts, mangles the political aspirations and sentiments of all the Americans it purports to represent, but especially Black people, who are effectively stripped of any real say in government by the only corporate party the duopoly provides for them.

On May 26, Cyclone Mekunu, the most powerful storm ever to strike Salalah, Oman, made landfall, killing at least 13 people.

Cyclones are uncommon in the Arabian Sea and off the Eastern African Coast, but that is changing, thanks to human-caused climate disruption. Their frequency and strength is increasing dramatically with each passing decade as the atmosphere continues to warm due to human fossil fuel emissions.

Cyclone Mekunu deluged Salalah, Oman's third-largest city, with more than two years' worth of rainfall in 24 hours. Salalah normally gets five inches of rain per year.

The storm, which packed gusts of up to 124 miles per hour (mph), tore apart buildings, downed street lights and turned normally bone-dry creek beds into raging rivers. Scenes of the devastation are apocalyptic.

Unfortunately, science shows us that this region must prepare for more of this to come, as climate disruption continues to shift planetary weather patterns in increasingly dramatic ways.

The Science

Over the last two decades, the intensity of storms across the Arabian Sea has increased notably. As the already very warm waters of that area are warmed further (this year they are 2 degrees Celsius above normal), the amount of evaporation increases, which lends larger downpours and increasing strength to the cyclones.

While no single weather event can ever solely be attributed to human-caused climate disruption, science shows that higher ocean heat provides more energy for storms. Given that oceans have absorbed nearly all of the heat humans have generated in the atmosphere, the impact is obvious.

And this has been made clear in just the last few years. In 2015, Hurricane Patricia in the North Atlantic set a record (at that time) for the strongest winds at sea at 215 mph. The very next year, Winston became the strongest storm ever recorded in the Southern Hemisphere.

Hurricanes and cyclones function as a sort of relief valve of energy as they remove heat from tropical oceans in the form of moisture being drawn into the atmosphere where it is radiated back out into space. This keeps the oceans cooler, and no other phenomenon plays this role as hurricanes do.

Experts with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration believe human-caused climate disruption will cause stronger storms.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has long since shown that there has been an increase in hurricane activity across the North Atlantic since the 1970s. While other areas of the globe may not necessarily see more hurricanes and cyclones, the strength of storms everywhere is highly likely to increase.

For example, storms with precipitation levels like Hurricane Harvey that deluged the Houston area in 2017 with record-breaking rainfall are expected to increase,/A> in strength, and also in frequency. That type of storm has already evolved to be expected once every 16 years instead of once every century.

IPCC research also already shows that there has been an increase in hurricane activity over the last four decades.

Hence, while overall around the globe the number of storms is not dramatically increasing, the strength of storms clearly is, given the fact that the oceans have absorbed nearly all of the increase in the planet's energy between 1971 and 2010.