In a Sane and Compassionate World...

In a sane and compassionate world, would ordinary people be imprisoned, tortured, and ignored by their own government for attempting to deliver humanitarian aid to starving people? You decide.

In a sane and compassionate world, would American veterans be imprisoned and tortured (and ignored by their own government) for attempting to deliver food and medicines to starving people? First, a press conference for returned GSF hero Phil Tottenham, then a look a current events and how they tie together.

The Mask Is Off…

Veteran for Peace and Global Sumud Flotilla activist Phil Tottenham returned to his hometown of Toledo, Ohio, and gave a press conference Saturday, October 11. He said of his and other flotilla activists’ brutal treatment by the Israelis: “The mask is off and this has expedited their timeline.”

This gives credence to the old saying, “If your enemy is making mistakes, don’t stop them.” Phil is very concerned for the health and safety of his fellow activists who are still in captivity in Ktzi’ot Prison in the Naqab (Negev) desert. He revealed how American flotilla members received no help from US embassy officials, destroying yet another myth that somehow an American passport is highly respected and will get you needed assistance wherever you travel.

The flotilla activists were forced to kneel with their heads down in uncomfortable positions for many hours with tight zip ties around their wrists. Phil reports that some still have no feeling in their hands from the ordeal. Some flotilla members went without needed medicines for their heart problems and diabetes. The Americans were forced to drink the unclean water from their cell toilet/sink because US diplomats couldn’t be bother to give them bottled water and snacks like other embassies provided for their imprisoned citizens.

original photos by C.A. Matthews

Thirteen male activists were crowded into a cell that was supposed to hold only eight people. Phil said he’s still getting over sleep deprivation. The Veterans for Peace flotilla boat, the Ohwayla, was boarded around 4 AM and sleep deprivation is a favorite form of torture for the Israelis. According to Phil things are much worse for Palestinian prisoners and non-white flotilla members, but to hear captives singing and praying together lifted everyone’s spirits on the cell block.

When asked if he would go on another flotilla to deliver aid to Gaza soon, Phil stated that the safe sailing season on the Mediterranean is over for the year, but he hopes to see some concrete changes for the better before next spring when another flotilla could be attempted.

Direct action activities at home such as those taken by Palestine Action are always an option. A documentary based on Palestine Action’s recent direct actions in the UK, To Kill A War Machine, will premiere in Toledo at the Main Library branch on October 28 at 6 PM. It is free and open to the public. Please plan to attend if you’re in the area.

It’s time for us to take direct action against the War Machine. What are you willing to do to fight back against this insane and immoral world?

In a Sane and Compassionate World…

by C.A. Matthews

In a sane and compassionate world… one wouldn’t expect a Nobel Peace Prize winner to be actively working against her own people’s peace and her nation’s sovereignty. One wouldn’t expect a Nobel Peace winner to cooperate with a foreign plot to overthrow a popularly-elected president or cheer on an imperialist power happily bombing the boats of poor fishermen off her country’s coast in a lame attempt to steal what is the world’s largest reserve of oil. What’s world peace got to do with the massive petroleum reserves off the coast of Venezuela anyway?

But this is 2025, and if Donald Trump can’t win a peace prize for funding a genocide in Gaza one day while pretending to set up a permanent ceasefire there the next, then Maria Corina Machado is the Nobel committee’s next best choice. Because everybody loves a class traitor and opportunist like Maria, don’t they?

Read about Maria and her “peace making” at https://www.codepink.org/nobel_peace_prize_peace_has_lost_its_meaning

Sane? Compassionate? You decide.

In a sane and compassionate society… one wouldn’t have to spend billions of dollars on an outlandish propaganda campaign in order to convince the majority of the public that mass murdering innocent civilians (especially women and children) is “okay.” But this is 2025, and the apartheid state of Israel is paying upwards of $7,000 per post (not per day, week, or month but per post) to high-flying online influencers to convince their followers that the genocide of Palestinians is the best thing to happen since TikTok was invented.

Israel is also spending US taxpayer-provided dollars trying to re-convince Christian Zionists that starving babies is a fine pastime, provided said babies were born either Muslim or in another sect of Christianity that evangelical-fundamentalist Christian Zionists don’t particularly care for. Israeli propagandists will state for a fact that bombing the tents of homeless Gazans and killing as many Palestinian journalists, teachers, doctors and other medical personnel is exactly what Jesus would have wanted when he said, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

After all, Jesus was a blue-eyed blond from North America. He wasn’t born in Bethlehem, a small town in Roman-occupied Palestine like some book called The New Testament claims. You believe that, don’t you? See how well the hasbara works?

More on the Israeli propaganda war waged against the West: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20251002-israel-pays-influencers-up-to-7000-per-post-to-occupy-information-space/

One new group, Show Faith by Works, LLC, has just recently registered as a foreign agent present in the U.S. funded by the Israeli government. They are targeting Evangelical Christians with Zionist propaganda. https://needtoknow.news/2025/10/charlie-kirks-funeral-digitally-tracked-277000-americans-churches-are-being-paid-by-israel-to-track-you/

Sane? Compassionate? You decide.

In a sane and compassionate civilization… Do-gooders who have an overwhelming desire to provide humanitarian aid to those mythical starving people in Gaza (don’t forget the hasbara!) would be thought of as saints or heroes, not labeled as terrorists and meddlers. Their fans wouldn’t expect to be thrown into jail for demonstrating in the streets in support of these do-gooders, either, since they would have assumed feeding others is one of the most noble causes in the world.

But this is 2025, and ordinary people in a forced famine situation are expected to set up GoFundMe accounts and beg others for money in order to purchase food and medicines during a blockade. Ordinary people nowadays are expected to make dangerous crossings across the sea in small boats to deliver privately obtain humanitarian aid to the starving folks of Gaza. These ordinary people take on the added risk of having their boats blown up by drones or sunk by water cannons with skunk water directed at them by the Israeli Navy—but it’s par for the course, as they say.

In their attempt to get humanitarian aid to those in desperate need of it, these do-gooders should expect to be kidnapped in international waters, taken to prison, beaten, humiliated, and denied access to food, clean water, and their medicine. A person who tries to do good deeds such as end a forced famine in Gaza in the year 2025 should expect such horrific treatment because this is how our civilization operates. This is what humanity sees as “normal” and “good” nowadays.

(Read Humiliation and abuse: Flotilla activists speak out about treatment in Israeli prison, reiterate demand to end genocide https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/10/06/humiliation-and-abuse-flotilla-activists-speak-out-about-treatment-in-israeli-prison-reiterate-demand-to-end-genocide/ )

Sane? Compassionate? You decide.

At a sane and compassionate university... professors should be able to freely teach their topic of expertise without censorship, personal threats, or losing their job simply because those in power wish to silence them. But this is 2025, and the use of brainwashing tactics (hasbara/propaganda) to promote the genocidal political ideology of Zionism to impressionable students are now de rigueur at most Western universities. History is a topic that belongs to the victors—not the losers whom Zionists want to disappear off the face of the earth forever.

Because we can’t have our children learning things that are factually true but potentially embarrassing. You know, such things as the US government now spends more money on socialized health care for Israelis than it’s willing to spend on their own citizens. The fact that the US spends more on giving bombs to Israel than it’s willing to spend on its children’s education. A federal Department of Education? Who needs that? Junk it!

Those darn facts and the people who teach them need to go away. If they won’t, then the government will take steps to make the people who voice them go away. Just ask Charlie Kirk about having a difference of opinion with the current administration about putting Israel first. Oh, you can’t ask him because he’s dead? How convenient.

Read Inside America’s Academic Gulags (w/ Rashid Khalidi) | The Chris Hedges Report https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/inside-americas-academic-gulags-w

Sane? Compassionate? You decide.

In a sane and compassionate country, one would expect every government agency to follow the law of the land and protect the civil rights of all residents, no matter their immigration status. But this is 2025… If you’re American, you know the rest of the story.

You know that Army and National Guard troops are even now walking the streets of Chicago, Portland, and Los Angeles. It could be your city next. It could be your neighbor or your grandfather or your cousin snatched off the street by masked men and transported away to a foreign torture dungeon without even the benefit of a trial or a charge made against them other than the color of their skin or their foreign-accented English.

When did it become a crime to be an immigrant in a so-called “Nation of Immigrants”? It’s not like white people sprang from the earth in what is now North America and suddenly became the natives, did they? No, European colonizers landed on these shores and then committed genocide against the indigenous peoples and stole their lands. And the whites in power still have the audacity, the immorality, to discriminate against the Native Americans even to this day.

Ever been to an Indian reservation in the US? Not the trinket stands—the actual places where indigenous folks are forced to live. Probably not.

And when rich white American capitalists of the 18th century didn’t have enough muscle to work their plantation fields, they bought people from Africa and enslaved them. And when they didn’t have enough people in the West to build their railroads, they allowed Asians from China and Japan to come over and work, but they never allowed Asian-Americans to become full citizens until sometime after World War II. How “democratic” and “egalitarian” these Americans are!

Follow US immigration news and what ICE is up to at https://austinkocher.substack.com

Sane? Compassionate? You decide.

I’ve decided that I don’t live in a sane and compassionate world, society, civilization, or country. Some days I’m even glad that I attended university a while back. I truly fear for the safety and sanity of our young people (and others) who attend or teach at a university today. If new ideas and current events can’t be discussed freely and openly on a university campus, then where else can they be?

Don’t say we have perfect freedom to express ourselves fully on the internet. Haven’t you heard who owns TikTok in the US now? Have you ever been shadowbanned or blocked from a social media platform because you expressed an unfavorable opinion? I rest my case.

There’s nothing sane or compassionate about genocide and ethnic cleansing. There’s nothing sane or compassionate about treating others who are different from you as “less than” or “inferior”. There’s nothing sane or compassionate about denying any human being their right of due process before the law. There’s nothing sane or compassionate about labeling a person a “terrorist” when all they want to do is bring humanitarian aid to others in need like Phil and the other flotilla members were doing.

There’s nothing sane or compassionate about preventing people from teaching honest facts about the world of today and yesterday or discussing their implications for tomorrow. Just because you don’t like how the facts challenge your deeply held beliefs and keeps others from accepting your insane and immoral version of reality doesn’t make censorship right.

In a sane and compassionate world, we wouldn’t be having this conversation because people everywhere would have their basic needs met. We would be living in peace with each other in spite of our differences. That is why I’ll continue to fight for a sane and compassionate world. I want a world where I can live in harmony with others, knowing that the insane and immoral “problem children” have been put away in a safe place where they can heal from their insanity and perhaps learn what compassion truly is.

It is the only sane and compassionate thing we can do for them.

Information that can build a sane and compassionate world…

Why October 7 happened in 3 minutes https://thegrayzone.substack.com/p/why-october-7-happened-in-3-minutes

Trump’s Sham Peace Plan https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/trumps-sham-peace-plan

Thoughts On The Ceasefire News https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/thoughts-on-the-ceasefire-news

Hundreds of Palestinian Captives Released in Khan Younis From Israeli Detention https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/palestinian-captives-video-released-khan-younis-gaza-ceasefire-torture

Francesca Albanese Wins ‘Lay Down Your Arms’ Award https://consortiumnews.com/2025/10/09/francesca-albanese-wins-lay-down-your-arms-award/

UNICEF Urges End to ‘War on Children’ as 2 Years of Gaza Genocide Kills and Maims 64,000+ Kids https://www.commondreams.org/news/unicef-gaza-children

November 5th in DC, Refuse Fascism: https://refusefascism.org/events/the-time-has-come-for-the-fall-of-the-trump-fascist-regime/

Genocide two years on: It is the West, not Gaza, that must be deradicalised https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/genocide-two-years-on-it-is-the-west

Israel Doesn’t Yet Know It’s Over https://realleecamp.substack.com/p/israel-doesnt-yet-know-its-over

Israel Seizes Second Round of Flotilla Boats, Detaining 145 More Activists https://truthout.org/articles/israel-seizes-second-round-of-flotilla-boats-detaining-145-more-activists/

Israeli Occupation Continues Illegal Detention And Deportation Of Flotilla Volunteers https://popularresistance.org/israeli-occupation-continues-illegal-detention-and-deportation-of-flotilla-volunteers/

Whither Gaza? https://matthewhoh.substack.com/p/whither-gaza

Yemen’s Houthis To ‘Monitor’ Israel Compliance With Gaza Ceasefire Deal https://scheerpost.com/2025/10/11/yemens-houthis-to-monitor-israel-compliance-with-gaza-ceasefire-deal/

Everything Before AND After October 7 Explains Why October 7 Happened https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/everything-before-and-after-october

Samantha Power secretly colluded with Israel to enhance UN role, leaked emails show https://thegrayzone.substack.com/p/samantha-power-secretly-colluded

Trump Keeps Admitting That He Is Bought And Owned By The World’s Richest Israeli https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/trump-keeps-admitting-that-he-is

Secret Israeli military bunker located under Tel Aviv tower struck by Iran, analysis shows https://thegrayzone.substack.com/p/secret-israeli-military-bunker-located

Israeli army’s 7 Oct probe further confirms implementation of Hannibal Directive https://thecradle.co/articles-id/29125

Only Israelis Could Commit Genocide For Years And Then Demand Sympathy - And Other Notes https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/only-israelis-could-commit-genocide

Will the US Attack Venezuela? https://countercurrents.org/2025/10/will-the-us-attack-venezuela/

Supreme Court Lets Trump End Venezuelan Migrant Protections https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-10-03/supreme-court-lets-trump-end-venezuelan-migrant-protections

“I Don’t Want to Be Here Anymore”: They Tried to Self-Deport, Then Got Stranded in Trump’s America https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-self-deportation-cbp-home-app

ICE Is Sending People to a Prison in Africa’s Only Absolute Monarchy https://www.greensocialthought.org/thinking-politically/ice-is-sending-people-to-a-prison-in-africas-only-absolute-monarchy/

Italy’s Second General Strike for Gaza Brought 2 Million Workers into the Streets https://truthout.org/articles/italys-second-general-strike-for-gaza-brought-2m-workers-into-the-streets/

‘Red Flag’: Analysts Sound Major Alarms As AI Bubble Now ‘Bigger’ Than Subprime https://www.commondreams.org/news/artificial-intelligence-bubble

Tenants Launch US’s First Ever Rent Debt Strike Against Corporate Landlord https://truthout.org/articles/tenants-launch-uss-first-ever-rent-debt-strike-against-corporate-landlord/