First up, Ralph welcomes the co-founders of Doctors Against Genocide, Dr. Karameh Hawash-Kuemmerle and Dr. Nidal Jboor, to discuss their dedication to succeeding where global governments have failed in confronting genocide—particularly the acute genocide in Gaza. Then, Ralph speaks to Marcus Sims, who turns felled and fallen trees into sustainable-harvested lumber with his company Treincarnation. Finally, Ralph has co-written an open letter to Barack Obama, urging him to step up and do his part to fight against Donald Trump.
Dr. Karameh Hawash-Kuemmerle is a clinical pediatric neurologist who specializes in traumatic brain injury and epilepsy at Boston Children’s Hospital. Dr. Nidal Jboor is a doctor of internal medicine and geriatrics working in Michigan. They are co-founders of Doctors Against Genocide.
We think: as American people, we are good people. We don't stand for these crimes. We don't accept that any child, any mother, any father, any elderly in the world will be starved to death—no matter where they are, no matter who they are, no matter who is committing this crime. And we are especially appalled to know that all these crimes are being done in our name, with our tax money. They are cutting the funding from our basic programs here, from our neighborhoods, to send more billions to mass slaughter children. So that's why we're going to DC. We're going to talk to the people who are enabling this. We think they already failed their constituents, they failed their country, they are putting our country on the wrong side of history.
Dr. Nidal Jboor
Anyone who did not call this a genocide yet—and did not demand full accountability for genocide, both for the United States and for Israel—is enabling and allowing this crime to continue further.
Dr. Nidal Jboor
We are committed to having our eyes open whenever and wherever there is a genocide or there are war crimes, crimes against humanity—no matter who commits them. And it's very important for us to stand with the victims, with the community that is suffering, and never take the side or give a platform for the perpetrators.
Dr. Karameh Kuemmerle
Our focus on the situation in Gaza comes from the simple fact that our country is complicit. And because of that, we actually have the moral obligation and the practical obligation to speak up. So it is not because we think that other genocides are not happening or are not important. We actually think every genocide should never happen. It's anti-human to commit genocide. And we always ask our colleagues to come to us to help uplift the voices of the communities of genocide and hopefully we will have more bandwidth to do a lot more. But the situation in Gaza is unique because there is almost a collusion of all these powerful players to complete this genocide in Gaza and basically oppress every resistance to it. There are many things that make what is happening in Gaza unique—for example, the inability to leave, using food as a weapon, having complete siege on the population, having a major superpower supported by another major superpower bombing a population of two million people in a very small area, constantly, nonstop for two years.
Dr. Karameh Kuemmerle
All professions have their own specialized civic duties…And I want to tell the listeners that the people who are peace-loving all over the world vastly outnumber, vastly outnumber the warmongers and the cruel and vicious interests that have taken advantage of the situation.
Ralph Nader
Marcus Sims is the owner of Treincarnation, which creates sustainably-harvested lumber and builds custom furniture from trees felled by storms or removed to make way for development.
I think there's a lot of support for what I'm doing, but my work is contrasted to the industrial lumber system, which is “chop them down and cut them up,” a lot of it done by huge machines. So it takes a lot more attention and care to do the kind of work that I'm doing. And of course the finances—as you know, finances play a big part in any kind of industry and how they can manage to make money. So I'm certainly making a living, a good living with what I'm doing. I don't know exactly how we can get from the current system into one that was probably used in the past, where the intelligence of human beings is more engaged and we're not slaves to industrial processes.
Marcus Sims
News 7/25/25
This week, Israel shelled the Holy Family Church in Gaza. During the last months of his life, Pope Francis was in constant communication with this church and its pastor, Father Gabriel Romanelli, calling them every single night. Three people were killed in this strike and Father Romanelli was injured, as were other congregants. In a speech after the strike, Pope Leo called for an immediate ceasefire and decried the “barbarity of war,” Reuters reports. He added, "I appeal to the international community to observe humanitarian law and respect the obligation to protect civilians as well as the prohibition of collective punishment, of indiscriminate use of force and forced displacement of the population.” According to the National Catholic Reporter, Pope Leo XIV spoke with Palestinian president Mahmood Abbas following this attack and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu called to “express Israel's regret for what he called an accidental attack.”
2. In Belgium, the Hind Rajab Foundation – named for the five-year-old girl in Gaza killed along with six of her family members and the paramedics coming to her rescue – reports, “Belgian federal police have arrested and interrogated two Israeli soldiers credibly accused of war crimes in Gaza. The action came in response to an urgent legal complaint filed by the Hind Rajab Foundation and the Global Legal Action Network (GLAN) earlier this week.” The soldiers, who had come to Belgium to attend the Tomorrowland music festival were, “formally interrogated and released. The Belgian Federal Prosecutor’s Office has confirmed that a criminal investigation is now underway.”
3. In a shameful, undemocratic move, the Executive Committee of the National Education Association has voted to reject the member-approved resolution to boycott materials promulgated by the ADL, Axios reports. This helps keep the ADL entrenched as the arbiter of what is and is not antisemitism, a charge they have weaponized and used as a cudgel again and again to silence any criticism of the state of Israel.
4. In New York, disgraced former Governor Andrew Cuomo continues to campaign in his increasingly long-shot independent bid for Mayor of New York City. Recently, Cuomo held a campaign breakfast attended by 450 at the Hampton Synagogue, where he said, “I would wager that in the primary, more than 50% of the Jewish people voted for Mamdani.” If true, this would be a stunning victory not only for Zohran himself but for the pro-Palestine movement, which has been maligned in bad faith as antisemitic. Cuomo added that many younger Jewish voters are, “pro-Palestinian, and they don’t consider it being anti-Israel.” This from the Forward.
5. Another intra-ethnic cleavage is emerging among voters in New York City – this time, Italian-Americans. While Mamdani visited Uganda, the country of his birth, anti-Zohran Italians rallied in front of his Assembly district office in Queens. The New York Times reports this protest, “ostensibly led by the Italian American Civil Rights League, a group that took its name from but had no apparent ties to a defunct organization founded by [Mafia boss] Joseph A. Colombo Sr,...until recently, when Mr. Colombo’s grandson, Anthony E. Colombo Jr….joined the group’s board in May.” As the Times notes, this protest was held in response to a, “recently resurfaced social media photo from 2020 showing Mr. Mamdani giving the middle finger to a Columbus statue.” However, a large group of pro-Zohran Italian-American counterprotestors rallied across the street, carrying signs that read “Paisans for Zohran!” and “You Eat Jar Sauce!”
6. In Minneapolis, many are drawing parallels between Mamdani and insurgent Democratic Socialist candidate Omar Fateh, who won the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party’s endorsement for the mayoralty over incumbent Jacob Frey. Fateh, a state senator, won “at least 60% of the Minneapolis DFL delegate vote Saturday…in the party’s first endorsement of a mayoral candidate in 16 years,” per the Minnesota Star Tribune. This endorsement gives Fateh a major boost in his campaign and indicates that the Zohran phenomenon is not confined to New York City.
7. Last week, Paramount – one of the largest media conglomerates and parent company of CBS – canceled The Late Show with Stephen Colbert less than 48 hours after Colbert called CBS News’s $16 million settlement with Trump a, “big fat bribe,” implying it would help curry favor with the administration regarding the proposed merger between Paramount and Skydance. Incensed, the Writers Guild of America East issued a statement calling on New York State Attorney General Letitia James, to, “launch an investigation into potential wrongdoing at Paramount…[and for]…our elected leaders to hold those responsible to account…demand answers about why this beloved program was canceled and to assure the public that Colbert and his writers were not censored due to their views or the whims of the President.”
8. At the same time, CNN reports Paramount’s “owner-in-waiting,” David Ellison is in talks to acquire Bari Weiss’s publication The Free Press. According to the Financial Times, Weiss is seeking over $200 million for the purchase. However, this goes further than a potential acquisition. Puck reports that if brought in, Weiss would serve as an “ideological guide” for CBS News. This, paired with the recent piece in the Hollywood Reporter stating that Skydance “promised to eliminate all diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives,” at Paramount, gives a fuller picture of the “anti-woke” direction CBS would take under the new leadership. With news Thursday that federal regulators have approved the merger, it seems fair to conclude that these moves mollified the president.
9. Turning to Latin America, AP reports the U.S., Venezuela and El Salvador have successfully concluded an intricate tripartite prisoner exchange. This deal includes the release of 10 Americans jailed in Venezuela and 252 Venezuelans held in El Salvador’s notorious and dystopian CECOT prison complex. The freed Americans include some who were accused of participating in a U.S.-backed coup attempt against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in 2024 and one who was convicted of a triple homicide in Madrid, according to EL PAÍS. All parties seem satisfied with this agreement, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio saying “Every wrongfully detained American in Venezuela is now free and back in our homeland,” while President Maduro pronounced the occasion “a day of blessings and good news…the perfect day for Venezuela.”
10. Finally, prominent British tech writer Ed Zitron is out with “The Hater's Guide To The AI Bubble.” In this piece, Zitron – a noted critic of AI writ large – details tech companies' expenditures on AI as compared to the revenues, and the numbers are stark. Microsoft has reaped $13 billion, with $10 billion from OpenAI, sold at “a heavily discounted rate that essentially only covers costs for operating the servers," while expenditures total $80 billion. Amazon AI revenues In 2025 amount to $5 billion, while capital expenditures total $105 billion. Google AI revenue stands at $7.7 billion, with capital expenditures standing at $75 billion. Meta AI revenue in 2025 is a paltry $2-3 billion. Their capital expenditures: $72 billion. Perhaps most deliciously, while Tesla has spent around $11 billion on AI in 2025, the company “Does Not Appear To Make Money From Generative AI” at all. Hopefully these numbers serve as a wakeup call for companies to stop dumping money down the AI drain, since clearly the immense adverse impact on the environment is not dissuading them.
This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven’t Heard.
Share this post