While the dress blacks looked suspiciously close to uniforms worn by Adolf Hitler’s SS, explanatory text that accompanied the mock-up made the Verhoeven homage explicit. If “Starship Troopers” was just the sci-fi schlock many contemporary critics took it to be, this wouldn’t be a big deal. Trump loves campy things, after all, and his administration has bent pop culture to fit their agenda many times over, unmoved by how often the creators ask them to stop.
But Verhoeven’s Hollywood films are all satires of one aspect of American life or another. “RoboCop” took on Ronald Reagan’s hyperpolicing of urban areas when it was released in 1987. Eight years later, “Showgirls” poked fun at the entertainment industry and America’s cultural prudishness. “Starship Troopers” was the Dutch director’s joke about how quickly the U.S. could slide into unwitting fascism, using author Robert Heinlein’s unironic authoritarian bent as the set-up to his punchline.
[...]
“I don’t know whether or not the actors realised — we never discussed it,” Verhoeven said of playing his propaganda relentlessly straight. “I thought Neil Patrick Harris arriving on the set in an SS uniform might clear it up.”
With this in mind, the underlying question raised by the Space Force’s uniforms is whether Trump was tying the military branch he created to the Nazis by accident or on purpose. An intentional allusion wouldn’t be unprecedented for the administration. In 2025, Trump shared explicit fascist agitprop that accompanied a Washington Times op-ed about military recruitment in his second term and a shift away from messages of inclusivity. The header image was an upside-down pink triangle surrounded by a red “no” symbol. The upside-down triangle was used to identify gay men in Nazi concentration camps.
[...] The “fashwave” aesthetics of the online right and sloganeering around reclaiming “the homeland,” a term used to great propaganda effect by the Nazis, have regularly appeared in posts from the Homeland Security and Labor departments.
As a thought experiment, that uniform, picture it in your mind on Trump.
With that image in mind, Hegseth might want to give the commander in chief a body mas index calculator test. To check his BMI leves, since he's over 30. Not that he'd need any body mass supplementation.
Also, HAARETZ, Sept 8 -- one TOI report linked to this as originating source
Revealed: Netanyahu Received an Explicit Warning Days Before Oct. 7. He Didn't Brief Israel's Security Chiefs
In September '23, UAE President bin Zayed called Netanyahu to deliver a harsh warning. Netanyahu did nothing. An extensive investigation, conducted for a new book, reveals the PM's failures surrounding Oct. 7. Netanyahu: 'This is an absolute lie'
These were the final days of September 2023. Terrorist attacks inflamed the West Bank, masses of Gazans regularly protested at the border fence, and the country was reeling from internal conflict over the judicial coup laws. Anyone watching the events with clear eyes could sense that an escalation was lurking around every corner.
Investigations and reporting that change the story
Yes, the paywall cuts off the main text. But how about what's not paywalled?
With the Israeli election upcoming, that old nagging question gets asked again. It, like Epstein, will just not die. Bibi is the sort where such questioning cannot be easily dismissed (contra to how Charlie got easily dismissed). Haaretz is a more left oriented Israeli outlet, i.e., not shining love on Bibi.
It would be nice if the paywall were not there because Crabgrass knows of no more progressive Israeli site than Haaretz. Indeed, no other english language Israeli site known to Crabgrass even comes close.
UPDATE: One TOI item, the first linked to above provides a lengthy report of Haaretz contents, and context -
In month before massacre, Sinwar said to convey message via UAE he was ready to launch ‘earthquake’ amid moribund talks with Israel, PM didn’t inform Shin Bet of Emirati president’s warning; Bennett: Report is true
[... image omitted here and elsewhere in excerpting]
Some 10 days before Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was personally warned by the leader of the United Arab Emirates that Hamas was planning a major offensive move against Israel, but did not update Israeli security leaders and did nothing with the information, according to a report on Tuesday.
The Haaretz newspaper report cited a new book, “Kidnapped: 843 Days of Abandonment,” by journalists Shlomi Eldar and Ruth Yuval, based on interviews with dozens of sources including senior officials in Israel and around the world. It said three senior foreign officials were updated on the contents of the 45-minute phone call at the end of September, and it cited a Palestinian adviser to Emirati President Mohammed bin Zayed who emigrated from Gaza to the UAE and had direct knowledge of the conversation.
It said Mohammed bin Zayed (known as MBZ) warned Netanyahu that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was planning major action against Israel that would lead to bloodshed, unsettle the region and potentially harm the Abraham Accords.
[...]
The Haaretz report said MBZ’s awareness of a Hamas threat had come from Sinwar himself, who in mid-2023 was frustrated by the lack of progress in negotiations for a Palestinian prisoner release deal with Israel.
The contacts for a potential agreement began in 2023. A senior Fatah interlocutor referred to as “Coal Eyes” would exchange messages with Sinwar representative Ghazi Hamad, a Hamas politburo member fluent in Hebrew, so that it would seem that there was no direct contact between Israel and the terror group, Haaretz said.
In reality, conversations, focused on easing the blockade on Gaza and improving conditions in Strip, were “virtually direct.” Hamad and Coal Eyes would sit in a former Palestinian Authority official’s home in Gaza, with a Shin Bet official phoning in.
Hamas at the time held Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed, who had wandered into Gaza of their own accord, as well as the bodies of two IDF soldiers, Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul.
According to Haaretz, a deal was on the verge of completion by the summer of 2023. After backing away from a demand that 500 prisoners be released in exchange for hostages, Sinwar was willing to accept the release of 50, while the Shin Bet was leaning toward accepting the release of 30, 20 of them serving life sentences, which Netanyahu approved.
The report said a Hamas official involved in the talks said Coal Eyes would emerge optimistically from meetings.
However, the prime minister repeatedly delayed convening the ministerial committee for hostages and missing persons, which needed to approve the release of prisoners, according to an Israeli security source.
Haaretz suggested Netanyahu’s hesitancy could have come from fear of reaching a deal with the terror group and backlash from the hardline members of his government, while Shin Bet officials managing the talks said the prime minister would express fear of leaks to the media.
Amid the breakdown in progress, Sinwar cut off contact with negotiators in early September 2023. A senior Shin Bet official told Haaretz that the terror leader “vanished from our radar, evaporated.”
But Sinwar held two private meetings with Coal Eyes, in which he told the Fatah official to warn the Israelis of the consequences if they did not move forward on a deal.
“Tell the Israelis if they don’t advance, I’m preparing a huge surprise for them,” Sinwar was quoted as saying in a conversation with Coal Eyes. “Tell them to expect a zilzal, an earthquake.”
Coal Eyes was “agitated” after the meeting, MBZ’s Palestinian adviser said, according to the book.
[...] “If he says zilzal, he means war,” the adviser reportedly told the Emirati ruler, saying it was his own and Coal Eyes’ interpretation of the comment.
“If we are not sure, we will not convey any warning to the Israelis for now. We will investigate the matter thoroughly until we are certain,” MBZ decided.
In a second meeting in mid-September, Sinwar told Coal Eyes he was preparing “a formidable operation.”
After Coal Eyes told Sinwar he had not informed the Israelis of what he had said at their previous meeting, the terror leader demanded that Coal Eyes send a message that he was readying “the mother of all surprises. A terrifying operation. Something extraordinary,” again reportedly using the word zilzal.
The Fatah official again informed MBZ’s adviser of the details of the meeting, and MBZ took the warning to mean Hamas was intending to launch a war.
Haaretz said the Fatah official and the adviser did eventually convey the warning directly to the Shin Bet in mid-September. Israeli security officials held deliberations about the warning in the following days, but did not understand it as a threat of an assault from Gaza, and no concrete decisions were reached.
“Why did Sinwar send us a warning?” a senior intelligence official rhetorically asked after the fact, according to the report.
“Either it was because he grew tired of Israel’s foot-dragging, wanting to pressure us into an arrangement and not so eager to start a war. Or, as we prefer to think, it was part of his ‘Great Deception’ plan, and he wanted to test the IDF’s readiness,” he added.
MBZ himself was so concerned by the lack of reaction that he then held a direct phone conversation with Netanyahu, who was apparently dismissive of the threat.
“The emir explained that, in his assessment, Sinwar was preparing for a major event,” the adviser, who was present, said, according to Haaretz. “He told Netanyahu that Israel should be ready. Concurrently, he recommended trying to find an economic solution for the Strip and calming the West Bank to prevent escalation.”
The report said MBZ also shared his warning with CIA Director William J. Burns, and said that he had tried to convince Netanyahu that “something there is about to explode.”
The report said that the emir hoped that despite his apparently calm response, Netanyahu would take the warning seriously and act upon it.
Haaretz noted the phone call was similar to another conversation held between Netanyahu and Egyptian spy chief Abbas Kamel, who also spoke to Netanyahu only 10 days before the massive attack, that Gazans were likely to do “something unusual, a terrible operation.” The conversation, reported by the Ynet news site days after the massacre, was denied by the premier.
Haaretz noted that on October 1, then-Shin Bet head Ronen Bar once again proposed proactive action against Hamas, including the assassination of top officials, but that Netanyahu made no decision on the matter, saying only that the agency should present its proposals and he would consider them. He made no mention of his talk with MBZ, the report said.
“If we had known about the warnings, there’s a chance it would have given much greater weight to the initial message that reached us from Sinwar,” a senior Shin Bet official told the paper.
[...] In a response to the paper, the Prime Minister’s Office called the report “a total lie! Prime Minister Netanyahu did not speak with the president of the United Arab Emirates during the period in question and received no warning from him.”
Bar and then-IDF chief of staff Halevi told Haaretz they had not been informed of MBZ’s warning, while the Emirati ruler did not comment.
Bennett: ‘The report is true’
In a post on X, former prime minister Naftali Bennett, the leader of the B’Yachad party, said he knew the Haaretz report was correct.
“The report published this morning that Netanyahu was warned 10 days before the October 7 massacre about Sinwar’s intentions is true,” Bennett said. “Netanyahu bears personal and direct responsibility for the failure that led to the deaths of thousands of Israelis on his watch.”
Bennett did not say how he knew the report to be true.
He said Netanyahu’s “disregard for the warnings amounts to criminal negligence, which is why he is doing everything he can to prevent the establishment of a state commission of inquiry that would expose the truth.”
He added: “He did not go down to the field. He did not alert the heads of the security establishment. He did not prepare Israel for an attack. And he did not convene the cabinet.
“What did he do in those days? He kept Hamas well supplied to stop the demonstrations it was allowing along the border fence, transferred additional funds to buy a little quiet, promised additional work permits for Palestinian workers in response to Hamas threats, and, as usual, dismissed all the warnings from the heads of the security establishment.”
In response to the report, Netanyahu’s main challenger in the election, former IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot, wrote on X: “More and more signs point to the same conclusion: Netanyahu led Israel blindly into the October 7 disaster.”
“Who failed to wake whom?” the Yashar party leader wondered, referring to the premier’s claims about the morning of October 7. “Those around him are echoing the pathetic conspiracy theory about betrayal, inventing the most ridiculous line a leader could possibly cling to — ‘I wasn’t woken up’ — for two reasons: He knows the truth; he is terrified of it and is trying to evade responsibility.
“Netanyahu received dozens of warnings about October 7 and ignored them all. He is unfit for office. As soon as the next government is formed, we will establish a state commission of inquiry that will investigate the previous decade, clarify what Netanyahu knew and did not know, get to the truth, and prevent the next disaster,” Eisenkot wrote.
The Democrats leader Yair Golan, who rescued multiple people on October 7, wrote on X that “Netanyahu is unfit and illegitimate. His place is in prison for his crimes against the State of Israel.”
“The stories about ‘I wasn’t woken up’ are over. He knew. He was warned,” Golan said.
Earlier this week, Netanyahu denounced Israel’s security chiefs for purportedly choosing not to wake him in the hours before the attack when, he said, “all the signs were there” that Hamas was about to invade, and claimed he would have immediately mobilized the IDF and taken other steps necessary to ensure that October 7 “would not have taken place.”
However, according to a Channel 12 report on Friday, Netanyahu took at least two hours to leave his Caesarea home and head to the IDF’s Kirya military headquarters in Tel Aviv after being told immediately that Hamas-led terrorists were attacking Israel at 6:29 on the morning of October 7, 2023.
He did not contact the heads of the IDF and Shin Bet in that time, or en route to the Kirya, the TV report further said, asserting an inexplicably sluggish and limited initial response by Netanyahu to the Hamas onslaught.
According to his own published schedule, the prime minister only ordered the Gaza border closed and a full IDF mobilization at 9:55 a.m.
The thread of the story is long and readers should go to the TOI item. Excerpting was hard.
The line between gross negligence, and cooking the plan of let them misstep, then the rage of hell upon them, is a circumstantial line. Some may think one thing, others the other thought.
An unclear thing, normal Shin Bet, IDF, and Netanyahu patterns. Also, unclear, the false alarm frequency in the months leading up to the September warnings. Patterns do matter.
UPDATE: Charlie Kirk Podcast - Dec. 4, 2023, expanding upon earlier contemporary Oct 7 + remarks. Noting the effectuation of the Jericho Wall plan was on the 50th anniversary of start of the Yom Kapur War. As if the 50th Annirversary was not a noteworthy thing to Bibi.
And they were negligent in waking him up from sleep.
Note that the Yom Kipur War was a situation in which the Israelis knew what was brewing, but on Kissinger advice avoided a preemptive strike, as it would look as if Israel had started hostilities.
Twelve European nations (Canada being North American but European in Spirit and in trade evolution) have reacted to Israeli settlement excesses, and West Bank generic excess.
The headline is the first paragraph of the Canadian press release.Next three:
“Today,Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the UK confirm their intention to introduce national and/or support European restrictions on trade in goods with settlements which are illegal under international law, or that they are actively considering these and other measures, in accordance with their national procedures. In this regard, the UK, France and Canada welcome the important action already taken by Ireland, Spain, the Netherlands, Norway and Belgium and will bring forward national measures to ban trade in settlement goods.
“Together, we are resolute: the two-state solution must be protected, and we will take action in pursuit of a just and lasting peace, based on the principles enshrined in the New York Declaration adopted one year ago. We firmly oppose actions tantamount to the annexation of Palestinian land and forcible displacement of the Palestinian population.
“The Government of Israel must immediately halt the expansion of settlements and civilian administrative powers, ensure accountability for settler violence, and investigate allegations against Israeli forces.
This is not near to a full BDS over West Bank and something additional, Gaza, but a signal to two nations, Isreael, obviously, but also to the U.S., which is Israel's enabler, and hence complicit.
Also, AJ reports an extensive crime spree by Israel in the West Bank.
Israeli army kills four in a day in the occupied West Bank
As global focus on the war on Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz grows, Israeli settlers’ violence across the occupied West Bank shows no sign of decreasing.
In the past 24 hours, the Palestinian Health Ministry that four Palestinians were killed by Israeli gunfire and attacks in Qalqilya, Nablus, and Tulkarem.
The latest casualties bring the total number of those killed in the Palestinian territory to 100 since the beginning of this year.
The Israeli government now in place are insufferable bigots. Once the election votes get counted, will the Israeli general population express approval and encouragement of the ethnic cleansing? If so, cutting them all lose and wholly alone would serve as sane U.S. policy. They in toto would have earned international score, including from sanity possibly running a bit in the U.S., despite the unified Biden - Trump stance. With Obama having committed to long term annual multi-billion arms subsidy.
There is still time to call foul, and to punish. There always will be.
UPDATE: The UK appears to have moved first, TOI reports Rubio disavows the blockade.
One of the first pro-Paxton ads from MAGA Inc. casts the Republican as confronting the rising costs Texans face with proposals to reduce their tax bills.
“High Tax Talarico wants to take money out of Texans’ pockets,” MAGA, Inc. spokesman Alex Pfeiffer said in a statement on Saturday. “MAGA Inc. is going to ensure Texas knows about Talarico’s radical policies and elects Ken Paxton to the U.S. Senate.”
Talarico’s campaign shot back, [...] “Billionaire-backed dark money groups are lying about James Talarico because they’re scared of the people-powered movement we’re building to fix this broken, corrupt political system,” campaign spokesperson JT Ennis said in a statement later on Saturday. “James was proud to vote for the largest property tax cut in Texas history and has consistently voted to cut taxes for working Texans.”
Together with new spending from a super PAC aligned with billionaire Elon Musk, a wave of Republican cash to aid Paxton could change the contours of a race critical to the GOP’s hopes of retaining control of the chamber after November’s midterm elections. Democrats need to net just four seats to win the Senate majority.
[...] Trump’s decision earlier this year to back Paxton over incumbent Sen. John Cornyn in the primary election had raised concerns about the high price of making the controversial Paxton more appealing to voters in the general election.
[...] CNN previously reported that the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the Senate Leadership Fund, both of which strongly backed Cornyn in the primary, had looked to MAGA Inc. to take the lead in backing Paxton in the general election.
Trump backed Paxton because Cornyb bucked Trump. JD and the rest of the Cabinant each owns a share.
And that CNN story did say Elon Musk. Can't wait for the chance to buy a BYD in the USofA. No hard feelings, mind you. Just more car, less price. Hell, hard feelings too, actually.
I will be doing that. Not that the pretense will be active in Texas, but in Minnesota where I vote my Dem ballot will echo the man's pretense wish. Just, not really on the ballot will mean a cleaner ballot. Smelling better. And JD and Hegseth will own their share of the pretense. Cornyn was a zero, but superior to Paxton, who's trash. If I may repeat.
