2025 Is Off To A Wild Start For The Empire

2025 Is Off To A Wild Start For The Empire

Jan. 3, 2025

U.S. and ISRAEL IMPERIALISM - FOLLOW THE MONEY

Caitlin Johnstone

The new year has kicked off with some truly bizarre and highly suspicious major news events. A U.S. military veteran killed 14 people when he drove a pickup truck into a crowd in New Orleans early New Year’s Day and was then killed in a shootout with police. Hours later, another U.S. military veteran reportedly blew himself up in a Tesla Cybertruck outside of the Trump International Hotel in Nevada.

Both men had worked at Fort Bragg (now called Fort Liberty), a large North Carolina military base which has become notorious for mysterious homicides, an epidemic of drug overdoses, and rampant child sex abuse. Both had also participated in the US occupation of Afghanistan, and both used the same app to rent their vehicles.

The New Orleans attacker Shamsud-Din Jabbar, pictured above, reportedly had an ISIS flag on his truck at the time of the incident. The Intercept has published an interesting report noting the high correlation between extremist crimes and past US military service.

One of the weirdest things about this case is the fact that a virulent Israel apologist named Jenny Taer was apparently allowed by the FBI to walk through Jabbar’s home and shoot footage for a New York Post report despite it being a crime scene in an active investigation. There Taer shows viewers Jabbar’s “bomb-making station”, along with multiple Qurans and Islamic literature. In her report the camera conspicuously pauses on a keffiyeh, a traditional Arab headdress which has become associated with support for Palestinian liberation.

I don’t pretend to know what’s going on with all this. All I know is that as the U.S. prepares to inaugurate a new president whose cabinet has been packed full of Iran hawks, it’s probably a good idea to remain intensely skeptical of any and all narratives which might be used to manufacture consent for more aggression in the middle east.

Reading by Tim Foley

Article with supporting links: https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2025/01/04/2025-is-off-to-a-wild-start

Original: https://youtu.be/smUR_JkGzEw

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I write about the end of illusions. 100% reader-funded writer. All works co-authored with my American husband Tim Foley.

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