Israel is a paper tiger. What was it? Three days of Iran going through first gear before Tel Aviv was pleading for a ‘coalition of the willing’ to step in and join in with their targeting of Tehran?
How revolting.
But let’s go back to the playground for a moment.
Benjamin Netanyahu: the playground bully
The feared school bully, a thuggish kid named Benjamin, — known for targeting small and often weak pupils — picked a very public, middle-of-the-playground fight with a kid that was actually capable of defending themselves.
This is where the phrase a “schoolboy error” must come from.
Benjamin, somewhat shocked by the other kids’ resistance, took no more than a few swift-but-decisive uppercuts before screaming for back up from his gang. Donny came rushing to Benjamin’s aid, Keith scratched his head and called for calm, and Manny is still looking under the stairs for his white flag.
Benjamin’s friends were shocked by just how easy it was to land a hefty blow on their leader’s chin, particularly with his reputation for an impenetrable defence.
Benjamin the bully’s reputation as the toughest kid in the school was shattered, made worse by the undeniable fact that he actually started this fight in the first place.
A well-deserved kicking
But what lots of onlookers never realised was while everyone was watching Benjamin get a bit of a well deserved kicking, the rest of his thugs were still picking on the poor, starving and defenceless kids gathered elsewhere.
You see, while global mainstream media had all of us looking towards Tehran and Tel Aviv, genocidal Israel has stepped up its killing spree of the Palestinian people, in Gaza.
Hundreds and hundreds of innocent civilians — suffering from starvation and patiently waiting for food rations for their families — have been callously slaughtered by Israel, in just the last few days.
While the tit-for-tat exchange between Israel and Iran, and the bizarre intervention from the (barely) human cheesy Cheeto in Washington may well have provided something for the world’s media to fixate upon, it also provided a perfect distraction for Benjamin, butcher of Gaza.
Israel will fight tooth and nail to ensure the Middle East is riddled with instability because without it, Israel cannot claim victimhood, and without victimhood, Israel is nothing.
Starmer: callous at home and abroad
Keir the capitulator, a gormlessly loyal servant of Zionist Israel, has had a shocker of a week.
Labour has made no secret of their utter contempt for disabled people. If you think that is a controversial statement, why the hell are you even reading this?
When they’re not snooping through your bank account, stripping away your support, slashing your pitiful benefits, they’re looking for new and imaginative methods to kill off the disabled people of Britain in ways that not even Iain Duncan Smith dared to dream.
I am absolutely sick to death of hearing about “concessions”, “rebels”, and “significant revisions”, because it’s entirely fucking meaningless media speak designed to convince you into believing that we have a functioning democracy where the powerful are held to account by elected representatives.
They’re not. Not under this government, the one before, the one before that, or any government stretching back throughout my lifetime.
There are no “concessions” to be made. A two-tier benefits system for disabled people to match the two-tier policing and the two-tier healthcare provision just doesn’t sit well with me an nor should it with any person with a single shred of moral fibre.
There are very few “rebels” because the “concessions” they have made for weak Keir Starmer will still see millions of disabled people being unfairly punished by a callous and inhumane government, hellbent on satisfying its shadowy string-pullers and appealing to enough knuckle draggers to see them over the line at the next general election.
The Welfare Bill
Labour’s Welfare Bill is set to sully the party’s already-battered public image even further. There are no positive optics when you’re shafting poor, disabled, and vulnerable people in broad daylight.
Labour’s Welfare Bill is a stunning masterclass in miscalculation, self-sabotage and moral failure. The bastards are robbing billions of pounds from disabled people and dressing it up as ‘pragmatic reform’, while claiming that they are magically fixing a broken system.
Can you believe the brass neck of this remorseless, red Tory scum?
Labour’s Welfare Bill is a deliberate choice to target the most vulnerable to plug an apparent budget hole. Nobody really believes it is fiscally responsible to push 400,000 disabled households in the direction of Food Banks, do they?
Before I go and hide somewhere cold for the next few days, can I make a radical suggestion?
And a heatwave, just to finish us off. Thanks, Starmer.
The weather forecast for the next few days will undoubtedly be enjoyable for some people. Personally, I cannot stand it, and I know lots of Fibromyalgia sufferers struggle to keep cool, particularly when they’re stuffed to the eyeballs with anti-depressants like Pregablin.
These extremely rare weather events are no longer rare, but undoubtedly extreme.
If we think it is a good idea to help people to heat their homes during cold weather spells in the winter, why aren’t we talking about warm weather payments for people, young and old, that need additional financial support to help them keep their homes cool during the summer months?
Perhaps a Freedom of Information Act request would tell us how many MPs have public-subsidised air conditioning in their offices, both in Westminster and their constituencies?
I’m sure they, the pampered elite, wouldn’t expect you to work in extreme heat on a building site, or in a kitchen, or a hospital, or a call centre, while they’re sat in their offices with their private bits slowly turning to ice, would they?
That night, US President Donald Trump, flanked by his vice-president and two state secretaries, told the world: “Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace”.
There is something chilling about how bombs are baptised with the language of diplomacy and how destruction is dressed in the garments of stability. To call that peace is not merely a misnomer; it is a criminal distortion.
But what is peace in this world, if not submission to the West? And what is diplomacy, if not the insistence that the attacked plead with their attackers?
In the 12 days that Israel’s illegal assault on Iran lasted, images of Iranian children pulled from the wreckage remained absent from the front pages of Western media. In their place were lengthy features about Israelis hiding in fortified bunkers.
Victimhood serving narrative
Western media, fluent in the language of erasure, broadcasts only the victimhood that serves the war narrative.
And that is not just in its coverage of Iran. For 20 months now, the people of Gaza have been starved and incinerated. By the official count, more than 55,000 lives have been taken; realistic estimates put the number at hundreds of thousands.
Every hospital in Gaza has been bombed. Most schools have been attacked and destroyed.
Leading human rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have already declared that Israel is committing genocide, and yet, most Western media would not utter that word and would add elaborate caveats when someone does dare say it live on TV.
Presenters and editors would do anything but recognise Israel’s unending violence in an active voice.
Despite detailed evidence of war crimes, the Israeli military has faced no media censure, no criticism or scrutiny. Its generals hold war meetings near civilian buildings, and yet, there are no media cries of Israelis being used as “human shields”.
Israeli army and government officials are regularly caught lying or making genocidal statements, and yet, their words are still reported as “the truth”.
Bias over Palestinian deaths
A recent study found that on the BBC, Israeli deaths received 33 times more coverage per fatality than Palestinian deaths, despite Palestinians dying at a rate of 34 to 1 compared with Israelis. Such bias is no exception, it is the rule for Western media.
Like Palestine, Iran is described in carefully chosen language. Iran is never framed as a nation, only as a regime. Iran is not a government, but a threat — not a people, but a problem.
The word “Islamic” is affixed to it like a slur in every report. This is instrumental in quietly signalling that Muslim resistance to Western domination must be extinguished.
Iran does not possess nuclear weapons; Israel and the United States do. And yet only Iran is cast as an existential threat to world order.
Because the problem is not what Iran holds, but what it refuses to surrender. It has survived coups, sanctions, assassinations, and sabotage. It has outlived every attempt to starve, coerce, or isolate it into submission.
It is a state that, despite the violence hurled at it, has not yet been broken.
And so the myth of the threat of weapons of mass destruction becomes indispensable. It is the same myth that was used to justify the illegal invasion of Iraq. For three decades, American headlines have whispered that Iran is just “weeks away” from the bomb, three decades of deadlines that never arrive, of predictions that never materialise.
Fear over false ‘nuclear threat’
But fear, even when unfounded, is useful. If you can keep people afraid, you can keep them quiet. Say “nuclear threat” often enough, and no one will think to ask about the children killed in the name of “keeping the world safe”.
This is the modus operandi of Western media: a media architecture not built to illuminate truth, but to manufacture permission for violence, to dress state aggression in technical language and animated graphics, to anaesthetise the public with euphemisms.
Time Magazine does not write about the crushed bones of innocents under the rubble in Tehran or Rafah, it writes about “The New Middle East” with a cover strikingly similar to the one it used to propagandise regime change in Iraq 22 years ago.
But this is not 2003. After decades of war, and livestreamed genocide, most Americans no longer buy into the old slogans and distortions. When Israel attacked Iran, a poll showed that only 16 percent of US respondents supported the US joining the war.
After Trump ordered the air strikes, another poll confirmed this resistance to manufactured consent: only 36 percent of respondents supported the move, and only 32 percent supported continuing the bombardment
The failure to manufacture consent for war with Iran reveals a profound shift in the American consciousness. Americans remember the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq that left hundreds of thousands of Afghans and Iraqis dead and an entire region in flames. They remember the lies about weapons of mass destruction and democracy and the result: the thousands of American soldiers dead and the tens of thousands maimed.
They remember the humiliating retreat from Afghanistan after 20 years of war and the never-ending bloody entanglement in Iraq.
Low social justice spending
At home, Americans are told there is no money for housing, healthcare, or education, but there is always money for bombs, for foreign occupations, for further militarisation. More than 700,000 Americans are homeless, more than 40 million live under the official poverty line and more than 27 million have no health insurance.
And yet, the US government maintains by far the highest defence budget in the world.
Americans know the precarity they face at home, but they are also increasingly aware of the impact US imperial adventurism has abroad. For 20 months now, they have watched a US-sponsored genocide broadcast live.
They have seen countless times on their phones bloodied Palestinian children pulled from rubble while mainstream media insists, this is Israeli “self-defence”.
The old alchemy of dehumanising victims to excuse their murder has lost its power. The digital age has shattered the monopoly on narrative that once made distant wars feel abstract and necessary. Americans are now increasingly refusing to be moved by the familiar war drumbeat.
The growing fractures in public consent have not gone unnoticed in Washington. Trump, ever the opportunist, understands that the American public has no appetite for another war.
‘Don’t drop bombs’
And so, on June 24, he took to social media to announce, “the ceasefire is in effect”, telling Israel to “DO NOT DROP THOSE BOMBS,” after the Israeli army continued to attack Iran.
Trump, like so many in the US and Israeli political elites, wants to call himself a peacemaker while waging war. To leaders like him, peace has come to mean something altogether different: the unimpeded freedom to commit genocide and other atrocities while the world watches on.
But they have failed to manufacture our consent. We know what peace is, and it does not come dressed in war. It is not dropped from the sky.
Peace can only be achieved where there is freedom. And no matter how many times they strike, the people remain, from Palestine to Iran — unbroken, unbought, and unwilling to kneel to terror.
Ahmad Ibsais is a first-generation Palestinian American and law student who writes the newsletter State of Siege.
Science is under attack throughout the world. Meanwhile, there’s substantial scientific evidence that the planetary system is turning unstable. This may not strike most people as a big problem because ‘life goes on,’ an attitude that’s more, and more, prevalent and one of the factors behind anti-science attitudes. But, if in fact the planetary system is becoming unstable, if it is true, life will be hell.
Johan Rockström, joint director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research/Germany, internationally recognized for his work on global sustainability, recently gave a 30-minute speech that specifically addresses stability of the Earth system. This is a synopsis of his remarks, including some editorial comment.
“We are facing, undoubtably, in all forms of risk assessment, a decisive moment for humanity’s future on planet Earth… I’m talking about for the first time in human history on planet Earth that we are forced to seriously consider the risks we are destabilizing the stability of the entire planet.” (Johan Rockström, Potsdam Institute speech Publica 25: Decisive Decade: From Global Promises to Planetary Action)
“We are hitting the ceiling of the biophysical processes, the hardwired process that regulates the very functioning of the Earth’s system,” Ibid.
All parameters of planetary health for human well-being have similar trajectories, sharply upwards. Until the 1950s we had a linear system (relatively stable and predictable but unsustainable exploitation) and starting in 1955 with 3.5 billion people, and going forward, an exponential rise suddenly took off with overexploitation of biodiversity, and acid rain, and massive deforestation. All forms of pressure on the planet took off to the point where today we are in an entirely new geological epoch, and it’s happening within only one generation, remarkably, in the context of a stable planetary system ever since humans first huddled together around fires. It’s potentially the most momentous happening in all of human history, period!
Civilization is exiting the Holocene, entering the Anthropocene. Humans are now the dominating “force of change.” This is too new, too quick for a 4.5-billion-year-old planet system accustomed to old-fashioned ways. In fact, we’re already hitting the ceiling of stable planetary processes and starting to push through. For example. for the first time, last year was a full year to exceed 1.5°C pre-industrial, the warmest temperature on Earth over the last 100,000 years. We’re starting to feel it, see it, smell it, and taste it, record wildfires, record floods, record hurricanes, record tornados, record coral bleaching, record glacial melt, record droughts, record sea level rise, record dry riverbeds, record heat deaths, record ocean acidification, record insect loss, and record marine loss. Humans are the only gainers.
The 2023 Watershed Year
According to Rockström: “We are already outside of the Holocene range of variability… let me bring you to why we are so nervous today. Why we have over the past 12 months heard scientific language that I’ve never experienced in my whole career, mind-boggling, shocking data, observations that we never thought was possible, that we would never be able to predict in our models… it’s the observation of air temperature and sea surface temperatures”:
“We have a global climate crisis.”
“We are in a situation of dire need of change.”
In 2023, a 0.3° C jump in global temperature occurred. The planet experienced a sudden 10-times increase in only 12 months; it’s unheard of.
Under normal circumstances, with the 2023 watershed year, when global temperature suddenly spikes up, it stabilizes for a period of time, but it demonstrated an alarming change in behavior and serious cause for concern because El Niño (natural warming phase) and La Niña (natural cooling phase) cycles that always influence the climate system are not having any impact, none!. This has never happened before.
Rockström: “There is something wrong. What is happening?” Honest answer: “We do not know yet.”
The rapid escalation of planetary instability has sparked unprecedented concern as the interplay of human activity with natural systems has created a volatile environment, thunderstorms become more severe, rainstorms more powerfully destructive as atmospheric rivers suddenly bring flash floods, and droughts longer, hotter.
Increasingly, feedback mechanisms include the accelerated release of methane from thawing permafrost, which is a potent greenhouse gas, and the retreat of polar ice, which diminishes the planet’s reflection of solar radiation and further intensifies warming. The urgency of the situation has led to calls for systemic change, not only in reducing greenhouse gas emissions but also in restructuring economies and societies to prioritize sustainability over short-term gains. Yet, global emissions continue, and international agreements fall short of binding commitments or fail altogether in implementation.
The risks are glaring, for example, the latest data on the Brazilian Amazon rainforest tells the story, as Earth’s richest ecosystem, the Brazilian portion of the rainforest, which is the largest part, has already tipped. It’s no longer a carbon sink. It’s a carbon source. This has ominous warning signs written all over it. For the first time, we are seeing signs of the planet losing its resilience, losing its buffering capacity, which the science community refers to as “climate sensitivity.”
We now have the evidence of what occurs as certain limits are exceeded. For example, coincident with 1.5°C, “we’ve never before seen the frequency, amplitude, and strength of droughts, fires, floods, heat waves… There’s been a 60% increase in droughts.” The signs are everywhere. The planet is leaving the all-important “corridor of life.” The planet, for over one million years, never exceeded +2°C during warm interglacial and never below -5°C deep ice age. It’s the biogeochemical system that we depend on. It is threatened.
It’s already approaching the high end of that range. There are 16 tipping elements that regulate the Earth system. Six of those are in the Arctic, which is ground zero for Earth: 1) Greenland ice sheet 2) boreal forest 3) Arctic winter ice 4) permafrost system 5) connected by North Atlantic and AMOC. Also impacting, the Amazon rainforest, all three big systems, Antarctica, and tropical coral reef systems. These regulate the stability of the climate system.
Risk of Domino Effect
Temperatures at which a system tips from a state that helps us survive to a state of self-amplified warming include threats to the Greenland Ice Sheet, West Antarctica Ice Sheet, abrupt permafrost thawing, tropical coral systems, collapse of Labrador Sea ice and collapse of Barren Sea ice. These are all at risk. There is strong evidence that these systems interact with each other, meaning, there’s a risk of cascading impacts. Where one system triggers several others. These six systems are already outside the boundary of safe space. This is an extremely significant development for the first time in human history.
We’re at a point where we need to buckle up for a challenging journey. The probability of not exceeding 1.5°C on a sustained 10-yr basis is no longer possible. No matter what course is taken going forward, “it will get worse before it gets better.” And every tenth of a degree warming has big impact going forward. Along those lines, science has identified big costs to the global economy based upon current economics with up to 20% costs over the next decades as a result of loss of planetary stability.
The amount of time remaining to take mitigation measures is running short. Based upon analyses by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), we only have 200 Gt CO2 remaining in the global carbon budget to achieve a 50/50 chance of holding to 1.5°C, after an expected upcoming overshoot to 1.7°C. That’s five years of global emissions. Five years to accomplish “decades of work” to hopefully hold the line.
Positive Signs Within a Narrow Window of Opportunity
Efforts are being made to harness innovative technologies and traditional ecological knowledge to mitigate. From reforestation projects aimed at sequestering carbon to advancements in renewable energy, the pathways for resilience are there. However, time is running out; incremental progress will no longer suffice to prevent catastrophic outcomes. A lot needs to squeeze into the next five years, or all bets are off.
There are some favorable signs, for example, renewables are on a strong pathway in parts of the world economy, 90% of vehicle sales in Norway today are fully electric. In Denmark the EV market share is almost 60%.
Rockström: “As of today, we are in a danger zone. But we still have an opportunity to turn this around.”
Or does the strong anti-science political movement, emanating throughout the world from the United States, throw a wet blanket on the crucial five years ahead?
Setting aside any thoughts I may have about theocratic rulers (whether they be in Tel Aviv or Tehran), I am personally glad that Iran was able to hold out against the US-Israeli attacks this month.
The ceasefire, however, will only be a pause in the long-running campaign to destabilise, weaken and isolate Iran. Regime change or pariah status are both acceptable outcomes for the US-Israeli dyad.
The good news for my region is that Iran’s resilience pushes back what could be a looming calamity: the US pivot to Asia and a heightened risk of a war on China.
There are three major pillars to the Eurasian order that is going through a slow, painful and violent birth. Iran is the weakest. If Iran falls, war in our region — intended or unintended – becomes vastly more likely.
Mainstream New Zealanders and Australians suffer from an understandable complacency: war is what happens to other, mainly darker people or Slavs.
“Tomorrow”, people in this part of the world naively think, “will always be like yesterday”.
That could change, particularly for the Australians, in the kind of unfamiliar flash-boom Israelis experienced this month following their attack on Iran. And here’s why.
US chooses war to re-shape Middle East Back in 2001, as many will recall, retired General Wesley Clark, former Supreme Commander of NATO forces in Europe, was visiting buddies in the Pentagon. He learnt something he wasn’t supposed to: the Bush administration had made plans in the febrile post 9/11 environment to attack seven Muslim countries.
In the firing line were: Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, the Assad regime in Syria, Hezbollah-dominated Lebanon, Gaddafi’s Libya, Somalia, Sudan and the biggest prize of all — the Islamic Republic of Iran.
One would have to say that the project, pursued by successive presidents, both Democrat and Republican, has been a great success — if you discount the fact that a couple of million human beings, most of them civilians, many of them women and children, nearly all of them innocents, were slaughtered, starved to death or otherwise disposed of.
With the exception of Iran, those countries have endured chaos and civil strife for long painful years. A triumph of American bomb-based statecraft.
Now — with Muammar Gaddafi raped and murdered (“We came, we saw, he died”, Hillary Clinton chuckled on camera the same day), Saddam Hussein hanged, Hezbollah decapitated, Assad in Moscow, the genocide in full swing in Palestine — the US and Israel were finally able to turn their guns — or, rather, bombs — on the great prize: Iran.
Iran’s missiles have checked US-Israel for time being Things did not go to plan. Former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia Chas Freeman pointed out this week that for the first time Israel got a taste of the medicine it likes to dispense to its neighbours.
Iran’s missiles successfully turned the much-vaunted Iron Dome into an Iron Sieve and, perhaps momentarily, has achieved deterrence. If Iran falls, the US will be able to do what Barack Obama and Joe Biden only salivated over — a serious pivot to Asia.
Could great power rivalry turn Asia-Pacific into powderkeg? For us in Asia-Pacific a major US pivot to Asia will mean soaring defence budgets to support militarisation, aggressive containment of China, provocative naval deployments, more sanctions, muscling smaller states, increased numbers of bases, new missile systems, info wars, threats and the ratcheting up rhetoric — all of which will bring us ever-closer to the powderkeg.
Sounds utterly mad? Sounds devoid of rationality? Lacking commonsense? Welcome to our world — bellum Americanum — as we gormlessly march flame in hand towards the tinderbox. War is not written in the stars, we can change tack and rediscover diplomacy, restraint, and peaceful coexistence. Or is that too much to ask?
Back in the days of George W Bush, radical American thinkers like Robert Kagan, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld created the Project for a New American Century and developed the policy, adopted by succeeding presidents, that promotes “the belief that America should seek to preserve and extend its position of global leadership by maintaining the preeminence of US military forces”.
It reconfirmed the neoconservative American dogma that no power should be allowed to rise in any region to become a regional hegemon; anything and everything necessary should be done to ensure continued American primacy, including the resort to war.
What has changed since those days are two crucial, epoch-making events: the re-emergence of Russia as a great power, albeit the weakest of the three, and the emergence of China as a genuine peer competitor to the USA. Professor John Mearsheimer’s insights are well worth studying on this topic.
The three pillars of multipolarity A new world order really is being born. As geopolitical thinkers like Professor Glenn Diesen point out, it will, if it is not killed in the cradle, replace the US unipolar world order that has existed since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Many countries are involved in its birthing, including major players like India and Brazil and all the countries that are part of BRICS. Three countries, however, are central to the project: Iran, Russia and, most importantly, China. All three are in the crosshairs of the Western empire.
If Iran, Russia and China survive as independent entities, they will partially fulfill Halford MacKinder’s early 20th century heartland theory that whoever dominates Eurasia will rule the world. I don’t think MacKinder, however, foresaw cooperative multipolarity on the Eurasian landmass — which is one of the goals of the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organisation) – as an option.
That, increasingly, appears to be the most likely trajectory with multiple powerful states that will not accept domination, be that from China or the US. That alone should give us cause for hope.
Drunk on power since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US has launched war after war and brought us to the current abandonment of economic sanity (the sanctions-and-tariff global pandemic) and diplomatic normalcy (kill any peace negotiators you see) — and an anything-goes foreign policy (including massive crimes against humanity).
We have also reached — thanks in large part to these same policies — what a former US national security advisor warned must be avoided at all costs. Back in the 1990s, Zbigniew Brzezinski said, “The most dangerous scenario would be a grand coalition of China, Russia, and perhaps Iran.”
Belligerent and devoid of sound strategy, the Biden and Trump administrations have achieved just that.
Can Asia-Pacific avoid being dragged into an American war on China? Turning to our region, New Zealand and Australia’s governments cleave to yesterday: a white-dominated world led by the USA. We have shown ourselves indifferent to massacres, ethnic cleansing and wars of aggression launched by our team.
To avoid war — or a permanent fear of looming war — in our own backyards, we need to encourage sanity and diplomacy; we need to stay close to the US but step away from the military alliances they are forming, such as AUKUS which is aimed squarely at China.
Above all, our defence and foreign affairs elites need to grow new neural pathways and start to think with vision and not place ourselves on the losing side of history. Independent foreign policy settings based around peace, defence not aggression, diplomacy not militarisation, would take us in the right direction.
Personally I look forward to the day the US and its increasingly belligerent vassals are pushed back into the ranks of ordinary humanity. I fear the US far more than I do China.
Despite the reflexive adherence to the US that our leaders are stuck on, we should not, if we value our lives and our cultures, allow ourselves to be part of this mad, doomed project.
The US empire is heading into a blood-drenched sunset; their project will fail and the 500-year empire of the White West will end — starting and finishing with genocide.
Every day I atheistically pray that leaders or a movement will emerge to guide our antipodean countries out of the clutches of a violent and increasingly incoherent USA.
America is not our friend. China is not our enemy. Tomorrow gives birth to a world that we should look forward to and do the little we can to help shape.
Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He contributes to Asia Pacific Report and Café Pacific, and hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
It’s been three years since Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, an odious Supreme Court ruling that has unleashed a veritable crisis of rights, health, and safety for people who can become pregnant.
Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 and sent abortion’s legality back to the states, abortion bans have spread widely across much of the U.S. As of June 2025, 16 states have enacted a total or near-total abortion ban, rendering the entire Southeast a legal abortion desert. Other states, like North Carolina, Nebraska, and Utah, have banned abortion at 12 or 18 weeks, which would have been unconstitutional under Roe just a few short years ago. In 2023 alone, the first full year after Dobbs, 171,000 people were forced to travel out of state to access abortion care in the U.S.
Traveling, especially out of state, isn’t just a logistical burden; it also means added cost. Plane tickets, lodging, gas money, child care, food — so much is needed to make abortion accessible when someone is forced to travel for care. The Brigid Alliance, which provides financial and logistical assistance to people forced to travel for abortion care, estimates that the average cost per abortion travel itinerary now exceeds $2,300, despite the fact that a first trimester procedure costs only a quarter of that.
Dobbs doesn’t just hurt people seeking abortion care. If a pregnant person in a state with an abortion ban has a different outcome other than a live birth, including a miscarriage or stillbirth, they can face serious prison time. People like Serena Maria Chandler-Scott of Georgia, who miscarried at 19 weeks, and Brittany Watts of Ohio, who miscarried at 22 weeks, have been charged under their respective states’ restrictive anti-abortion laws. And the net of criminalization also extends beyond pregnant people to providers and doctors, creating a network of fear for pregnant people, their families, and the health care providers they entrust to care for them.
That’s bad enough and a crisis in its own right. But the ramifications of Dobbs are far broader than hindering abortion access.
Dobbs is, quite literally, killing people.
Doctors are afraid to provide basic care to pregnant folks in states where abortion bans are in effect, unsure if they will be charged with murder.
At least two Black women in Georgia, Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller, died because of the ramifications of Dobbs. Georgia has a strict, six-week abortion ban. Thurman died after being denied basic care because she was pregnant and past the six-week point in her pregnancy in 2022: she had an infection related to fetal tissue that hadn’t been fully expelled from her body, but the hospital delayed performing a routine dilation and curettage due to Georgia’s restrictive laws. Miller, afraid of possible prosecution, refused to go to the hospital after complications from a self-managed abortion in the fall of 2022. Thurman and Miller were, essentially, killed by the state instead of receiving the basic, life-saving care to which they were constitutionally entitled just a few months before.
And then there’s the abhorrent case of Adriana Smith, a Black woman diagnosed with brain death who has been forcibly kept alive by the State of Georgia — against her family’s wishes — because she was nine weeks pregnant. She was taken off life support on June 17 this year after her fetus was delivered via C-section. That the state can force a Black woman’s body to be used as a literal incubator is a direct result of the Dobbs decision.
Because of Dobbs, to be pregnant in a state with an abortion ban, even if it isn’t an outright total abortion ban, is to risk your life.
But Dobbs has also wrought a different shift, one unexpected to just about everyone: It made abortion rights politically popular.
Abortion has won in nearly every election in which it’s been on the ballot since the Dobbs decision came down in June 2022, including conservative states like Ohio, Montana, and Kansas. Even when the ballot initiative failed, like in Florida, it was only because the state required a 60 percent threshold. (The initiative was approved by 57 percent of voters.) Support for abortion rights is a winning issue, and it is currently more politically popular than it has been since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973.
Unfortunately, that popularity doesn’t automatically translate into legality, and legality doesn’t translate into access. For example, in November 2023, Missouri voted to enshrine the right to reproductive freedom into the state constitution, which should override the state’s total abortion ban and make abortion legal to Missourians once again. However, the Missouri Supreme Court has, so far, refused to allow the change to take effect. Before Dobbs, Missouri only had a single clinic left, and it’s been shuttered for three years. If the state ever does allow abortion to become legal, reopening a clinic will require a significant expense and effort.
One of the most important lessons that the tragedy of Dobbs can teach us is that a right is hard to retrieve once it’s lost. It’s not impossible, and we cannot afford to stop this fight because it isn’t just about abortion. Trans rights, immigrant justice, freedom for Palestinians — all of these are about our most sacred and fundamental rights.
Bodily autonomy isn’t an empty catch phrase; it’s a worldview, one predicated on everyone’s shared humanity. Dobbs, like many egregious Supreme Court rulings that came before it, is a great injustice, done by the state to the people. To undo that injustice, we cannot simply wait for the state to change hands. Instead, we must do it ourselves.
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Over the past few years, the Europeans’ confidence in the current governments of the EU countries has been plunging. This trend is foremost caused by the unpopular policy of the ruling circles. They have made it clear to the population that total militarization requiring unprecedented $800 billion from the already shaky budget of the EU, as well as enhancing military and financial aid to Ukraine at the expense of the European taxpayers are now their top priorities. Earlier this year, the Netherlands and Sweden announced their aid packages of $400 million and $501 million, respectively, in addition to the billions of dollars already sent to Kyiv for the years of the conflict.
This policy raises many questions as the economic situation in Europe is on the verge of a disaster. All countries of the EU are suffering from migration crisis, inflation rate there has hit record highs, unemployment keeps growing, and the economy as a whole is in a gradual recession. It is most acute in Germany, where the world-famous factories that for many years have been a source of national pride, are forced to curtail production. Nevertheless, despite numerous appeals of the population to change the policy and focus on the internal problems of the Union, the current governments keep pushing their agenda, totally ignoring those, who brought them to power several years ago.
That is why the rise of the far-Right, that put the interests of their states first and promote isolationism unlike liberal globalists, is quite natural and predictable. Thus, in 2022 the party of far-Right Giorgia Meloni, which the centrists tried to serve up as a fascist and never considered to be a worthy opponent, won the general elections in Italy. In 2023, the party of anti-centrist Robert Fico, who strongly opposed Ukraine funding, came to power in Slovakia. Fico’s autonomous policy interfered with the European elites so much, that they launched a large information campaign against the Slovak leader, which among others resulted in the assassination attempt. However, it was just the very beginning of the imminent far-Right tilt in the European society. In 2025, the world witnessed the unprecedented victory of the far-Right party “Alternative for Germany” that gained the record number of votes in the eastern part of the country, thus, taking the historic second place in German elections losing only 8,5% to the CDU/CSU.
This course of events, that has become a bombshell for the liberals, reluctant to drop the reins of government, make them fuss and take any measures, including those verging on illegitimacy. Thus, in 2024, after the victory of far-Right Calin Georgescu in Romania, the results of the elections were simply annulled under the pretext of foreign interference and vote rigging without any compelling proofs. Moreover, Georgescu was later arrested for attempted “incitement to actions against the constitutional order” that made his participation in new elections impossible. Marine Le Pen suffered the similar fate as she was deprived of the right to take part in any election campaigns. Left-liberal ruling circles don’t hesitate to use all available instruments from discrediting information campaigns to alteration of laws that interfere with implementing their ideas.
However, despite all efforts, they are unlikely to stay in power for a long time. Today the far-Right Eurosceptics are not just the parties opposing the current liberal governments, they are the force aimed at solving internal problems of the state, ready to serve the interests of the people and act on their behalf.
It’s high time for Europe to admit that the far-fight is the voice of the people, whose numerous attempts to get through to the acting governments by ordinary means proved to be unsuccessful. Anti-centrists are the only force able to save the Europeans and Europe itself from the imminent direct participation in war in Ukraine, promoted by the current ruling circles, as it will bring nothing but woes, destructions and even more sufferings.
It is my opinion that Palestine Action has the moral right to protest against genocide using non-violent direct action.
That simple sentence will soon make me criminally culpable for supporting a terrorist organisation.
Section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000 makes it criminal offence to “expresses an opinion or belief that is supportive of a proscribed organisation.”I could go to jail for fourteen years.So could you if you ‘like’ this on social media.
Of course, no one in the current government would consider a ‘like’ as support for a proscribed organisation.Would they? That would be as ridiculous as barring an elected politician from running for office for talking to a film maker about films at an event about films.
Palestine Action strike
No one was hurt by Palestine Action’s red paint. The fact is that no one in the RAF even knew the action took place until afterwards. Palestine Action had to take videos of themselves on electric scooters. They are not a threat to life and limb. They are opposed to war, war crimes, and war mongering.
Home secretary Yvette Cooper’s statement justified the proscription on grounds on national security, saying Palestine Action “put that security at risk.”Yet the RAF said that no planned flights or operations were affected.
The use or threat of serious violence against a person or serious damage to property where that action is:
designed to influence the government or an international governmental organisation or to intimidate the public or a section of the public; and
for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause.
The Israeli Defence Force is certainly using serious violence against non-combatants to achieve political and ideological aims. They have killed at least 62,000 civilians. How are they not terrorists?
Starmer the terrorist
In the UK, the 1989 Prevention of Terrorism Act defined terrorism as “the use of violence for political ends.” It was the Blair government that changed it in 2000, to include “serious damage to property” and creating “a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public.” By that final definition, this Labour government’s plans to plunge 250,000 disabled people into poverty through stripping Personal Independence Payments (PIP) makes Keir Starmer a terrorist. And, the water companies pumping sewage into our rivers and beaches are terrorists too.
That might sound like a satirical argument. It’s not. I’m making a serious point. We have legislation that is so vague that a Home Secretary can criminalise anyone who says non-violent protesters might have a point. We are not functioning as a democratic state protected by universal human rights.
Cooper says Palestine Action have a “long history” of criminal damage.She claims that since 2024 “its activity has increased in frequency and severity”. But we already have laws for dealing with criminal damage.If they’ve trespassed on an RAF base, charge them with that if you must.
‘Clear moral case’
In fact last year, members of Palestine Action were tried for disrupting the operation of Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit. Their six day rooftop protest injured no one at the drone making plant near Leicester.They mostly sprayed red paint.The jury acquitted them on the grounds that their actions were necessary to save lives.Most reasonable people would conclude that engaging in actions necessary to save lives sounds like the opposite of terrorism.
We find ourselves sliding towards an Orwellian world. Keir Starmer has said that “there is a clear moral case” for cutting welfare payments for disabled people. But, it’s his own government’s own analysis shows 250,000 people will be plunged into poverty, including 50,000 children.
This is the weapons of mass destruction debacle all over again. In the novel 1984, George Orwell introduced Newspeak. This was the deliberate simplification and corruption of words. Iraq never had nuclear weapons. It never had biological weapons. The chemical weapons it had were destroyed years before the 2003 invasion.However, the phrase “weapons of mass destruction” was used to manufacture consent for the invasion of Iraq.
We have found ourselves in a country where those using non-violence to prevent killing are now proscribed terrorists, while those arming and defending genocide claim to uphold the “rules based order”.
Embarrassment
Some context, here. I’m not a pacifist. I never have been. I’m a black belt in jiu jitsu. I paid my way through university working as a night club bouncer. My Dad was a tank driver. My brother was in the Royal Navy when the Falklands war took place. I have no moral difficulty using force in an emergency if it will prevent greater suffering. I do object to authoritarian governments and war mongering. That includes the Iranian government and Hamas. But killing civilians in the name of regime change is terrorism.
It’s all connected. The truth is Palestine Action caused embarrassment. We’re being bombarded by messages that we are at war with Russia. That Iranians are a threat. That China is…, hmm, well they’re okay this week because we might have a trade deal in the pipeline. But if that falls flat, they’re a threat too. Yet, the aircraft at RAF Brize Norton were protected by nothing but a six foot high wire fence.
NATO General Secretary Mark Rutter has said unless we spend 5% of GDP on the military, “British people had better learn to speak Russian” is just one example. He’s wrong. Russia will not invade Britain by sailing a nuclear submarine up the River Tyne. Our freedom is imperilled by dodgy money influencing politics. The allies of warmongers are funding authoritarian political parties in Britain.
The government says it will spend 1.5% of GDP on “resilience and security”. Well, let’s spend that £39 billion a year insulating homes and generating clean energy then. Let’s end the need for food banks too.
It’s just as president Dwight D. Eisenhower warned in 1961:
we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence by the military industrial complex… Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
The conflict between Israel and Iran over the past 12 days has redefined the regional chessboard. Here is a look at their key takeaways:
Israel: Pulled in the US: Israel successfully drew the United States into a direct military confrontation with Iran, setting a significant precedent for future direct (not just indirect) intervention.
Boosted political capital: This move generated substantial political leverage, allowing Israel to frame US intervention as a major strategic success.
Iran: Forged a new deterrence: Iran has firmly established a new equation of deterrence, emerging as a powerful regional force capable of directly challenging Israel, the US, and their Western allies.
Demonstrated independence: Crucially, Iran achieved this without relying on its traditional regional allies, showcasing its self-reliance and strategic depth.
Defeated regime change efforts: This confrontation effectively thwarted any perceived Israeli strategy aimed at regime change, solidifying the current Iranian government’s position.
Achieved national unity: In the face of external pressure, Iran saw a notable surge in domestic unity, bridging the gap between reformers and conservatives in a new social and political contract.
Asserted direct regional role: Iran has definitively cemented its status as a direct and undeniable player in the ongoing regional struggle against Israeli hegemony.
Sent a global message: It delivered a strong message to non-Western global powers like China and Russia, proving itself a reliable regional force capable of challenging and reshaping the existing balance of power.
Exposed regional dynamics: The events sharply exposed Arab and Muslim countries that openly or tacitly support the US-Israeli regional project of dominance, highlighting underlying regional alignments.
Dr Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story (Pluto Press, London). He has a PhD in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter (2015) and was a Non-Resident Scholar at Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, University of California Santa Barbara. This commentary is republished from his Facebook page.
In the final strike before the ceasefire, Iranian missiles caused extensive destruction, killing and injuring several Israelis in the city of Beersheba. pic.twitter.com/b25fHPw2yD
— The Palestine Chronicle (@PalestineChron) June 24, 2025
This story originally appeared in Mondoweiss on June 21, 2025. It is shared here with permission.
Violence has a paralyzing power. What is the power of the word in the face of the planes that sow destruction and death, and the flying ballistic missiles? When I see people around me paralyzed or going crazy with fear in the face of the destruction that the Iranian missiles have sown, I cannot help but think of the resilience of the residents of Gaza, who go through seven circles of hell every day with no relief in sight.
But the missiles and planes are the continuation of politics by other means. Many words have been spoken, and many agreements have been concluded to create and set in motion the instruments of destruction and death. As far removed from reality as it may seem now, it is important to speak out today in order to understand the roots of the war and how we can resist and stop the looming disasters.
In Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iran—it’s the same war
During the first year of the “war,” the Israeli public overwhelmingly supported the genocide in Gaza, with no significant reservations. But in recent months, we have seen doubts and disillusionment on the part of large sections. Now, when we stand in protest vigils demanding an end to the killing, the feeling is that most of the public on the streets of Haifa supports us. More and more Israelis, including established media outlets, former senior politicians, and generals, have begun to speak out about the war crimes that Israel is committing. An Israeli and international consensus has begun to form that the Israeli government deliberately avoids striving to end the war, and is working to expand and perpetuate it, for reasons of narrow political and personal interests or out of messianic extremism.
But suddenly, when Israel initiated the expansion of the war into an all-out attack on Iran, which will inevitably bring further death and destruction in both Iran and Israel, we began to see again the power of violence to take over the human psyche and paralyze thought. Suddenly, the automatic Israeli consensus stiffened again, with the media and the public celebrating the spilled Iranian blood. Even a sinking Europe, which had begun to show remorse in its support of the genocide in Gaza, became enthusiastic again, with Germany, France, and Britain literally begging for their share of the pound of flesh and blood.
The root of the evil here, and the source of all the current wars, is the role that Zionism has assumed as the crushing force of imperialist control in the Middle East. This is the declared strategy of the United States: to ensure Israel’s military superiority over any regional coalition. To secure Israel’s place as a military power that can strike at anyone who threatens American hegemony, the United States must keep Israel in a state of constant conflict and constant danger.
This strategy paid off on a colossal scale for the United States in the wake of the Six-Day War in 1967, when the crushing Israeli victory over three Arab states led, within a few years, to the collapse of the dreams of independence and Arab socialism of the Nasserists and the left wing of the Ba’ath Party, and the establishment of reactionary and submissive dictatorships.
Since then, much water has flowed through the region’s rivers, hundreds of millions of residents have been added, there has been progress in education and the economy, and the equation that relies on the fortress of Jewish Sparta to maintain imperialist supremacy in the region is becoming less and less sustainable. The United States itself paid a heavy price for its military adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq and emerged from them without any real achievement. Israel failed twice in its wars over Lebanon, in the Eighteen Years’ War (1982-2000) and in its brief adventure in the summer of 2006.
Meanwhile, the wider regional picture has also changed. Instead of pro-Western dictatorships in Turkey and Iran, populist Islamist governments have risen in the two regional powers, which are more responsive to public opinion in their countries and tend to identify with Palestinian suffering and resistance and to denounce Israel’s aggression.
For a long time, imperialist politics in the region were based on the principle of “divide and rule.” The main axis of nurtured conflict among the Muslim population was between Sunnis and Shiites. The grand idea was, within the framework of the “Abraham Accords,” to establish a defense alliance under Israeli-American auspices that would protect the oil kings and emirs of the Arabian Peninsula from the “Iranian threat” (and from their own people), in exchange for continued effective American control over the region’s natural resources and economy.
Even as the Palestinians did not receive massive support that would allow them to exercise their human and national rights, the Palestinian struggle was and remains a central axis that challenges the system of imperialist control in the region. The identification with the Palestinians by both Sunnis and Shiites, and, more recently, the shock of the unbridled violence perpetrated by Israel since October 7, and the exposure of the racist Pavlovian instinct of all Western powers in supporting the genocide in Gaza, all of which have changed and are still changing the map of the region for the long term.
Meanwhile, Israel has become embroiled in war on many fronts, struggling to achieve a decisive victory and reap the fruits of its military superiority. In Six Days in 1967, Israel militarily defeated three Arab countries and occupied vast areas. Now, for more than 600 days, it has been unable to defeat Palestinian resistance to the occupation of the Gaza Strip, which had been under a suffocating siege for many years before the current genocidal war.
The only arena in which Israel has achieved a military and political victory is its struggle against Hezbollah in Lebanon, due to a combination of tactical failures on the part of Hezbollah and the fact that, as a representative of the oppressed Shiite minority, it had no full Lebanese legitimacy to intervene in the war. However, in Lebanon too, Israel’s insistence on continuing to hold occupied territory within Lebanon, with constant offensive military activity all over the country, keeps this front in the context of a violent conflict that has not ended and with no end in sight.
In Yemen, the government that came to power in Sanaa on the waves of the Arab Spring, and survived an all-out war by Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the Emirates, continues to try and pressure an end to the attack on Gaza through a naval blockade and repeated attacks. Even before the conflict with Israel, Yemen was the poorest country in the region and is still torn by civil war. Despite its limited capabilities, repeated attacks by a coalition of Western countries led by the United States and Israeli attacks on economic infrastructure have failed to change Yemen’s position.
The expansion of the war into Syria after the fall of the Assad regime adds another layer to the logic of the conflict. The new Syrian regime, which emerged after 14 years of revolution and civil war at the cost of about a million lives and immense destruction, declared from the moment it was established that it was committed to the 1974 armistice agreements and that it did not want conflicts with any neighboring country. Despite this, and despite the military erosion of the multi-front war, Israel decided to open another front against Syria, conquering additional territories (in addition to the Syrian Golan Heights captured in 1967), bombing all over Syria, and threatening the new regime. This completely exposed the logic of the “villa in the jungle”: in order for the villa to remain a villa, it must ensure that the jungle remains a jungle, and any attempt to build a normal society and state in the region is an existential threat to it.
The attack on Iran took this logic a step further. Israeli strategic superiority must be guaranteed not only against four hundred million Arabs but also against all other countries of the region. The Israeli method of killing Iranian scientists, which did not begin with the latest attack, brutally presents the concept of how the colonialist “local branch of Western culture” will be able to maintain its technological superiority.
On the nuclear question
As a university student, I took a course on “International Relations After World War II,” that is, the Cold War between the Western powers and the Soviet Union. The lecturer always talked about how Western leaders planned to confront “The Soviet Threat.” In “Operation Unthinkable,” which was to begin as early as July 1945, Churchill planned to mobilize the surrendered Wehrmacht troops to attack the Soviet Union and drop (American) atomic bombs on Moscow, Stalingrad, and Kiev. In 1949, the US planned a larger operation (“Operation Dropshot“) that involved the use of 300 atomic bombs and the destruction of 100 cities and towns in the Soviet Union.
In 1949, the Soviet Union conducted its first nuclear weapons test, which cooled America’s enthusiasm for a direct confrontation with it. Following the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, after the Soviet Union had proven that it could create a real nuclear threat to the U.S., talks began between the parties, and the Cold War gradually moved into the “détente” phase.
In my naivete, I asked the lecturer: According to what you taught us, as long as nuclear weapons were only in the hands of the West, we were on the verge of a nuclear war. Only when a “balance of terror” was created did the tension subside. How does this fit in with saying that the problem was “The Soviet Threat”? It seems the opposite is true…
He replied that from the perspective of the sequence of events, what I said made sense, but “no one in political science would agree” with my conclusion…
As far as is known (“according to foreign sources”), Israel possesses a large number of nuclear weapons, which the Western powers helped it develop. To this day, they defend Israel’s “right” to violate the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in all international forums. Israeli politicians and various experts have said that Israel has already considered using nuclear weapons against Arab countries several times, in moments of crisis. The climax came during the latest attack on Gaza, when lunatic extremist politicians fantasized about using an atomic bomb to annihilate Gaza as “revenge.” And, please, don’t tell me that the lunatic extremist right is far from the center of decision-making in Israel. As long as nuclear weapons are in the hands of one side in the region, there is a temptation to use them, thus creating an existential threat to the residents of the entire region. Clearly, the best situation is to have the entire region free of nuclear weapons. But history has proven that a nuclear balance of terror can also guarantee that nobody uses these weapons.
The West’s position on the Iranian nuclear issue is, on a regional scale, a repetition of its position on the denial of legitimacy of the Palestinian resistance. No matter how much Israel occupies and oppresses Palestinians, robs their land, destroys their homes, and kills them. Israel always “has the right to self-defense” and the Palestinian who defends his rights is always the “terrorist”. The ultimate way to ensure Israel’s “strategic superiority” in the region is to allow it, in a “time of need,” to wipe out millions of the inhabitants of the region using atomic weapons. This is the essence of the “Western Values” that they claim to stand for.
The Gulf states, which grovel to the rulers of the United States and Europe, thought they were buying their favor, so that they would stop the massacre in Gaza. They also hoped to prevent the war with Iran, which endangers the security of all the countries in the region. Instead, surprise, surprise, it turns out that the money they gave to the U.S. continues to fund the genocide against Palestinians and the bombings of Lebanon and Syria. Furthermore, they are effectively paying the United States for the privilege of being on the receiving end of a future nuclear annihilation.
Where are we going from here?
As the saying goes: It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.
It is difficult to know what will happen, but there are many things that are unlikely not to happen. At the beginning of the current “war” in Gaza, the American administration’s emissaries used to ask Netanyahu what were his plans for “the day after.” What is your end game?
To this day, they have not received an answer, and this is not by chance. Israel lives from war to war and is unable to imagine a different reality, let alone take action to create it. The historical logic was that Israel attacks in order to impose the American “day after” on the Arabs. For this equation to hold, there should be an American administration that is capable and willing to stop Israel’s aggression and force concessions on it. In the meantime, the Americans have fallen in love with Israel’s aggression. Even more importantly, the United States really has nothing to offer the region these days.
We are living at the end of “the American era.” Today, China is the main economic partner for trade and development for the countries of the region, as well as elsewhere. The United States still retains its military superiority, at the price of huge military investment. To benefit from this superiority, it is inclined to militarize international politics, as is evident in Ukraine and East Asia, just like in our region. Israel’s military and political power is a reflection of American superiority.
The U.S. military advantage is eroding as it loses its economic and technological leadership. When it uses military force to try to preserve or restore its world hegemony, it is not advancing itself but trying to push others backward. Humanity is paying an awful cost, but the U.S. decline is also accelerating.
The current war in the Middle East is part of a desperate effort to preserve the remnants of colonialism and Western superiority over the peoples of the Third World. The Palestinian people are paying a terrible, unbearable price for this. But the future will not be determined by the politicians of the West or the corrupt rulers of the region who grovel to them, but by the peoples who will stand up for their right to determine their own destiny.
Israel whingeing about war crimes – give us a break
These whingeing Israeli hypocrites are even bleating about war crimes. Can you believe the nerve of the genocidal junkies?
Israel wants you to weep for its dead. It wants you to denounce Iran for using Tel Aviv for target practice. It wants you to believe it didn’t start this.
In the simplest of terms, the bully got a black eye, and the bully wants your pity.
I don’t want anyone to die – Israelis, Iranians, or Palestinians – and I don’t want anyone to lose their home under the weight of a ballistic missile. Be in no doubt of that. The only winners in war are the manufacturers of weapons.
But if you want me to feel overwhelming sympathy for a state that is bang-to-rights on the charge of genocide and people that callously mocked Palestinian children while they were slain in their thousands by a government that is hell bent on clearing the way for Greater Israel, you will be waiting a long time.
Never forget, most Israeli people supported and endorsed the genocide of Gaza, even more so when it became apparent that the rest of the family could move over from the United States.
Never forget, some Israeli people would take to the hilltops with a glass of wine to enjoy the mass murder of fellow human beings. This is a societal illness. Who in their right mind would take pleasure from watching men, women, and children being vaporised in front of their eyes?
Never forget, it was Israeli people who closed down numerous checkpoints to stop vital humanitarian aid reaching the people of Gaza. Food, clean water, hygiene products, and medical supplies — all heading to the besieged enclave — stopped by hateful, radicalised Israelis for no other reason than the spiteful extremism that they have been spoon-fed since birth.
We do not forget, Israel. The receipts are real. Your army kill, maim, and rape the innocent. Children are assassinated, tortured, and evaporated. Starving humans, waiting for some flour, remorselessly gunned down by trigger-happy Israelis whose only previous military experience was playing Call of Duty on their PlayStation back home, in New York.
You want *us* to mourn for a blown up Mossad building, but you have displaced two fucking million people and slaughtered more than 50,000 humans and left children eating sand to survive.
So you, Israel, can get fucked.
Israel only has itself to blame for the bombs now raining down
The only thing we can thank Zionism for is the spectacular downfall of the colonial superpower that is ‘the West’.
I hear so much talk of ‘regime change’, but has anyone ever considered regime change in Israel?
Netanyahu has been warning of Iran’s nuclear ambitions since 1995 while Israel builds up its own stockpile and refuses to let anyone inspect it.
This is entirely consistent with the way Israel conducts itself. It considers itself above international law and only believes international law should apply when it is its own pariah state that is under attack.
Tough shit. That’s not how it works.
The often-expressed sentiment ‘fuck Israel’ no longer has the meaning that it once did because the state of Israel has fucked itself.
My sorrow is spared for the countless victims of Israel’s relentless aggression. You may argue that Israeli people are victims of their own government’s criminality and violence, but they are not forced into supporting some of the most heinous crimes against humanity in our lifetimes, are they? (Kudos, of course, to the small minority that has been resisting.)
False antisemitism smears are not going to wash
The ultra-aggressive online Zionists confuse disdain for Israel with support for Iran. Don’t be silenced by their lies, and do not stand for their false antisemitism smears.
The entire world has witnessed Israel parading its immorality across the Middle East with zero accountability for way too long.
We had the same nonsense argument in Britain. How many times were you labelled a ‘Tory enabler’ for criticising Keir Starmer’s then-opposition? I couldn’t scroll through my mentions without being called ‘Boris Johnson’s biggest supporter’, or something equally unimaginative.
Again, if you voice your disapproval of the Zelensky regime in Ukraine, you must be a Kremlin asset. The comedy guy with just the one T-shirt might float your boat, but I’m not a fan of anyone that teams up with neo-Nazis.
If you are wondering when Britain will get involved in Israel’s reign of terror and death, don’t. We have been entirely complicit in Israel’s extreme violence since 1948, and that isn’t going to come to an end any time soon.
As the U.S. moves huge amounts of military assets within striking distance of Iran, preparing to create another conflagration and initiate World War III, let’s contemplate the slaughterfest which resulted from World War II. Look at this chart.
Like so many of the recent military conflicts, most of them instigated by the U.S. in its pursuit of world domination, the coming war on Iran is unnecessary, illegal, and totally unjustified.
Anyone who is paying attention knows where all this is going. The drums of war beat out a very simple rhythm that even a child can understand.
Anyone who is paying attention also knows why this is taking place.
Anyone who is paying attention knows that yet again, we citizens are the helpless pawns of pointless power games, and will be required to make the ultimate sacrifice of our precious lives, in the name of imperial plunder and greater riches for the corporate plutocrats.
The problem is very few are paying attention.
No, there’s not much time to worry about all that stuff happening over there, or sufficient calm to think clearly and consider productive alternative plans, with all the hysterical cries of the warmongers relentlessly poisoning the airwaves and opeds, shouting down the few voices of sanity who attempt a balanced, coherent analysis and constructive conversation.
I still have to wonder …
In terms of the few isolated individuals who might actually be paying attention, yet still go along with this march to madness, and the neocon psychopaths themselves who can’t wait to chase their self-sabotaging and bankrupt delusions of world conquest and American imperial rule, what are they thinking?
Didn’t we learn anything from Vietnam?
Didn’t we learn anything from Afghanistan?
Didn’t we learn anything from Iraq?
Aren’t we learning from our humiliation in Ukraine?
I never hear a timidly tendered, “Oops.”
Not a chagrin-tinged, “Sorry about that.”
Not even a mildly rueful, “Hmm.”
Evidently reflection and apologies are for girly-boys or the zombies of the liberal class.
Many of our most respected think tanks now appear to be staffed with students of history equipped with no memory and no conscience.
Jingoistic cheer leading driven by testosterone-fueled delusions of empire spews simplistic black-hat/white-hat bumper stickers. The public swoons in Orwellian silence.
Russia bad … America good … Russia bad …
China bad … America good … China bad …
Iran bad … America good … Iran bad …
What’s another 87,000,000 bodies?
How about a 1,000,000,000 bodies?
Or if this thing goes nuclear … 8,000,000,000 bodies?
YEAH! Now we’re talking
Actually it’s kind of the perfect ending.
With horror on this scale, there is no one left to feel any shame.
Rooted in nostalgia, fried eggs, and meat-laden menus, breakfast chains like Denny’s have remained stubbornly traditional. But Denny’s recently rolled out its first-ever, fully plant-based breakfast entrée to more than 1,300 US locations—no customization needed, no side-eye from the server, just a stack of multigrain pancakes served with hash browns and fruit.
The Plant-Based Pancake Slam is a nationwide move from a legacy brand at a time when many fast-food giants are retreating from plant-based investments. Panda Express ghosted its Beyond Orange Chicken. Dunkin’ all but erased its Beyond Breakfast Sandwich. Carl’s Jr. quietly dropped its Beyond Burger. And yet, in a reversal that no one quite expected, Denny’s doubled down on its 2021 commitment to plant-based progress—and actually followed through.
A surge in health‑ and eco‑aware consumers is behind this momentum, and breakfast is emerging as the next frontier. Between 2020 and 2024, plant‑based claims on breakfast cereals grew 22 percent, outpacing other categories. What makes this move particularly strategic is its timing. While retail plant‑based sales in the US reached $8.1 billion in 2024, the category experienced a four percent decline in dollar sales—signaling a potential plateau in grocery aisles. Meanwhile, vegan fast‑food is on the upswing: projected to balloon from $24.1 billion in 2023 to more than $70 billion by 2033. “As more people become aware of the many health benefits associated with a plant-based diet, there is a growing preference for vegan fast-food options,” reports market research firm Spherical Insights.
Last year, nearly half of Americans indicated intentions to increase plant-based consumption, with 34 percent actively reducing their meat intake. That’s not the fringe: it represents a critical mass of mainstream diners. Importantly, breakfast has become the fastest-growing meal occasion for plant-based experimentation. A 2020 survey found more than 80 percent of respondents were open to trying a vegan breakfast once a week, with over 60 percent frequently purchasing plant-based grocery items—even preferring them to animal-based counterparts.
Denny’s
Complementing this, consumer segmentation data shows that flexitarians—a group comprising around 25 percent of US consumers—are the most frequent users of plant-based meat alternatives. Additionally, 65 percent of Americans consumed plant-based meat alternatives in the past year, with 40 percent doing so weekly or daily . Public appetite is growing, and it points to a breakfast market primed for more diverse plant-based offerings. Against this backdrop, it makes strategic sense for a legacy breakfast chain like Denny’s to stake a claim. This isn’t a fad, it’s a booming vertical.
So, of course, I had some thoughts when I heard the news.
Wait—Denny’s? Like actual Denny’s? The same Denny’s that once served bacon as a condiment?
I’m trying to picture the executive meeting where someone said, “Let’s go all in on vegan pancakes. And call out the flaxseeds.”
I’m also trying to picture the last time I ate anything at Denny’s. I think it was a plate of parsley. 2004. Road trip.
Seriously, though, why are they promoting the flaxseed like it’s a flavor? 2025 is so weird.
Pancakes AND hash browns? GLP-1s be damned.
Is Denny’s now utopia or dystopia?
Did I manifest this while crying into a plate of Just Egg scramble last year?
Fast-food pancakes without eggs? We do live in a society!
Especially when you consider this is the same chain that once leaned hard into bacon milkshakes.
Wait, did I miss a 3am “woke pancakes” Truth Social rant from Donald Trump?
The most self-care thing I’ve done this year is emotionally process the phrase “Multigrain Pancake Slam.”
Honestly, the bar for fast-food innovation has gotten so low that this rollout kind of feels like a Michelin moment.
Denny’s serving fully vegan breakfast while Starbucks still can’t make a vegan breakfast sandwich work? That’s not shade, that’s just math.
The pancake apparently debuted in March without fanfare. Quiet excellence.
Other fast-food executives should be taking notes. Especially *cough* Dunkin’ and Krispy Kreme *cough.*
The fact that this doesn’t require modifications is everything.
But is this a novel “breakfast” or really just “late-stage capitalism having a gentle nervous breakdown with a side of hash browns?” Asking for a friend.
If you told me in 2010 that Denny’s would go flaxseed before Congress went electric, I wouldn’t have believed you.
Pancakes now, tofu scrambles next?
Also, not to be too high-touch, but is that maple syrup pure?
But if we’re grading on a diner curve, this is an A-minus with bonus points for effort.
2025 be like: Tom Cruise defies death one last time, Denny’s defies dairy. Both iconic.
I wouldn’t call Denny’s the face of vegan innovation, but it might be the most surprising player of 2025.
Plant-based breakfast in a red booth under fluorescent lighting? Waiting for Morpheus.
I’m not saying these pancakes are a love language, but … they’re soft, warm, and make me feel safe.
Long live the Slam.
This post was originally published on VegNews.com.
The surprise US-Israeli attack on Iran is literally and figuratively designed to unleash centrifugal forces in the Islamic Republic.
Two nuclear powers are currently involved in the bombing of the nuclear facilities of a third state. One of them, the US has — for the moment — limited itself to handling mid-air refuelling, bombs and an array of intelligence.
If successful they will destroy or, more likely, destabilise the uranium enrichment centrifuges at Natanz and possibly the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant, causing them to vibrate and spin uncontrollably, generating centrifugal forces that could rupture containment systems.
Spinning at more than 50,000 rpm it wouldn’t take much of a shockwave from a blast or some other act of sabotage to do this.
There may be about half a tonne of enriched uranium and several tonnes of lower-grade material underground.
If a cascade of bunker-busting bombs like the US GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators got through, the heat generated would be in the hundreds, even thousands, of degrees Celsius. This would destroy the centrifuges, converting the uranium hexafluoride gas into a toxic aerosol, leading to serious radiological contamination over a wide area.
The head of the IAEA, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, warned repeatedly of the dangers over the past few days. How many people would be killed, contaminated or forced to evacuate should not have to be calculated — it should be avoided at all cost.
Divided opinions Some people think this attack is a very good idea; some think this is an act of madness by two rogue states.
On June 18, Israeli media were reporting that the US had rushed an aerial armada loaded with bunker busters to Israel while the US continued its sham denials of involvement in the war.
Analysts Professor Jeffrey Sachs and Sybil Fares warned this week of “Israel bringing the world to the brink of nuclear Armageddon in pursuit of its illegal and extremist aims”. They point out that for some decades now Netanyahu has warned that Iran is weeks or even days away from having the bomb, begging successive presidents for permission to wage Judeo-Christian jihad.
In Donald Trump — the MAGA Peace Candidate — he finally got his green light.
The centrifugal forces destabilising the Iranian state The other — and possibly more significant — centrifugal force that has been unleashed is a hybrid attack on the Iranian state itself. The Americans, Israelis and their European allies hope to trigger regime change.
There are many Iranians inside and outside the country who would welcome such a development. Other Iranians suggest they should be careful of what they wish for, pointing to the human misery that follows, as night follows day, wherever post 9/11 America’s project to bring “democracy, goodness and niceness” leads. If you can’t quickly think of half a dozen examples, this must be your first visit to Planet Earth.
Iranian news presenter Sahar Emami during the Israeli attack on state television which killed three media workers . . . Killing journalists is both an Israeli speciality and a war crime. Image: AJ screenshot APR
Is regime change in Iran possible? So, are the Americans and Israelis on to something or not? This week prominent anti-regime writer Sohrab Ahmari added a caveat to his long-standing call for an end to the regime. Ahmari, an Iranian, who is the US editor of the geopolitical analysis platform UnHerd said: “The potential nightmare scenarios are as numerous as they are appalling: regime collapse that leads not to the restoration of the Pahlavi dynasty and the ascent to the Peacock Throne of its chubby dauphin, Reza, but warlordism and ethno-sectarian warfare that drives millions of refugees into Europe.
“Or a Chinese intervention in favour of a crucial energy partner and anchor of the new Eurasian bloc led by Beijing . . . A blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and attacks on the Persian Gulf monarchies.”
Despite these risks, there are indeed Iranians who are cheering for Uncle Bibi (Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu). Some have little sympathy for the Palestinians because their government poured millions into supporting Hamas and Hezbollah — money that could have eased hardship inside Iran, caused, it must be added, by both the US-imposed sanctions and the regime’s own mismanagement, some say corruption.
As I pointed out in an article The West’s War on Iran shortly after the Israelis launched the war: the regime appears to have a core support base of around 20 percent. This was true in 2018 when I last visited Iran and was still the case in the most recent polling I could find.
I quoted an Iranian contact who shortly after the attack told me they had scanned reactions inside Iran and found people were upset, angry and overwhelmingly supportive of the government at this critical moment. Like many, I suggested Iranians would — as typically happens when countries are attacked — rally round the flag. Shortly after the article was published this statement was challenged by other Iranians who dispute that there will be any “rallying to the flag” — as that is the flag of the Islamic Republic and a great many Iranians are sick to the back teeth of it.
Some others demur:
“The killing of at least 224 Iranians has once again significantly damaged Israel’s claim that it avoids targeting civilians,” Dr Shirin Saeidi, author of Women and the Islamic Republic, an associate professor of political science at the University of Arkansas, told The New Arab on June 16. “Israel’s illegal attack on the Iranian people will definitely not result in a popular uprising against the Iranian state. On the contrary, Iranians are coming together behind the Islamic Republic.”
To be honest, I can’t discern who is correct. In the last few of days I have also had contact with people inside Iran (all these contacts must, for obvious reasons, be anonymous). One of them welcomed the attack on the IRGC (Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps). I also got this message relayed to me from someone else in Iran as a response to my article:
“Some Iranians are pro-regime and have condemned Israeli attacks and want the government to respond strongly. Some Iranians are pro-Israel and happy that Israel has attacked and killed some of their murderers and want regime change, [but the] majority of Iranians dislike both sides.
They dislike the regime in Iran, and they are patriotic so they don’t want a foreign country like Israel invading them and killing people. They feel hopeless and defenceless as they know both sides have failed or will fail them.”
Calculating the incalculable: regime survival or collapse? Only a little over half of Iran is Persian. Minorities include Azerbaijanis, Kurds, Arabs, Balochis, Turkmen, Armenians and one of the region’s few post-Nakba Jewish congregations outside of Israel today.
Mossad, MI6 and various branches of the US state have poured billions into opposition groups, including various monarchist factions, but from a distance they appear fragmented. The Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) armed opposition group has been an irritant but so far not a major disruptor.
The most effective terrorist attacks inside Iran have been launched by Israel, the US and the British — including the assassination of a string of Iranian peace negotiators, the leader of the political wing of Hamas, nuclear scientists and their families, and various regime figures.
How numerous the active strands of anti-regime elements are is hard to estimate. Equally hard to calculate is how many will move into open confrontation with the regime. Conversely, how unified, durable — or brittle — is the regime? How cohesive is the leadership of the IRGC and the Basij militias? Will they work effectively together in the trying times ahead? In particular, how successful has the CIA, MI6 and Mossad been at penetrating their structures and buying generals?
Both Iran’s nuclear programme and its government — in fact, the whole edifice and foundation of the Islamic Republic — is at the beginning of the greatest stress test of its existence. If the centrifugal forces prove too great, I can’t help but think of the words of William Butler Yeats:
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Peace and prosperity to all the people of Iran. And let’s never forget the people of Palestine as they endure genocide.
Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He contributes to Asia Pacific Report and Café Pacific, and hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz
If the headline didn’t give it away, please note that the following article is a piece of satire written by Glenn Liddle from Majority – ed.
There’s been an unexpected surge in backbone production over the past week. Early reports suggest up to 170 Labour MPs have placed last-minute orders. Happily, their spines are set to arrive just in time for the upcoming debate on Personal Independence Payments. UK suppliers, Spines R Us, say they’re working around the clock to fulfil demand.
However, rumours abound that some MPs have requested removable models, with one of them telling us that it’s, “just in case Keir changes his mind again.” But in response to such concerns, the supplier has issued a stark warning:
It’s moral integrity or moral bankruptcy—take your pick.
Labour revelations
Interestingly, a new WhatsApp group, Vertebrae for Victory, has been set up by wavering backbenchers. One recent message reads
We’re all done bending over for austerity. It’s high time we stood tall.
Another MP announced:
I’d forgotten what it felt like to stand up for something.
Of course, these procedures aren’t always straightforward. One of the installation surgeons admitted that the most difficult part is often locating where the spine should have been in the first place, such is the jelly-like demeanour of many MPs.
Spines R Us has also warned that some MPs may experience temporary clarity of thought, and even sudden urges to oppose unjust policy. One backbencher allegedly burst into tears after voting against something for the very first time since joining the Starmer leadership, whispering:
I felt… whole.
But, satire aside, the reality is far more alarming. Labour’s proposed overhaul of Personal Independence Payments—which completely ignores compassion and moral clarity—is a total disgrace. If passed, it could wipe out life-saving support for over a million people. That’s not to mention the undoubtedly increased anxiety, distress and the worsening of existing mental health conditions.
So, what do we do?
If only there were a solution—like, say, taxing extreme wealth.
Charities including Scope, Mind, and the Disability Benefits Consortium have described the proposals as “devastating“, warning that these changes will deepen inequality and push already vulnerable people into even greater hardship. DPAC (Disabled People Against Cuts) has been raising the alarm for months, predicting a fresh wave of poverty and social exclusion if these changes go ahead.
Maybe it’s time Labour started listening to them. When fairness is used as a codename for cuts, and sustainability becomes a shield for the wealthy, something is seriously amiss.
At Majority, we believe fairness and dignity must sit at the heart of employment rights and social welfare. Because there is no dignity in asking disabled people to pay the price of ‘fiscal rules.’ And, there is nothing fair about ‘balancing the books’ on the backs of the most vulnerable.
Britain should be run in the interests of the people who do the work; including those in unpaid work, those unable to work, or those retired from a lifetime of work.
Had Israel not launched its unprovoked attack on Iran on Friday night, in direct violation of the UN Charter, Iran would now be taking part in the sixth round of negotiations concerning the future of its nuclear programme, meeting with representatives from the United States in Muscat, the capital of Oman.
Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu claimed he acted to prevent Iran from building a nuclear bomb, saying Iran had the capacity to build nine nuclear weapons. Israel provided no evidence to back up its claims.
On 25 March 2025, Trump’s own National Director of Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, said:
“The IC [Intelligence Community] continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorised the nuclear weapons programme he suspended in 2003. The IC is monitoring if Tehran decides to reauthorise its nuclear weapons programme”
Even if Iran had the capability to build a bomb, it is quite another thing to have the will to do so.
Any such bomb would need to be tested first, and any such test would be quickly detected by a series of satellites on the lookout for nuclear detonations anywhere on the planet.
It is more likely that Israel launched its attack to stop US and Iranian negotiators from meeting on Sunday.
Only a month ago, Iran’s lead negotiator in the nuclear talks, Ali Shamkhani, told US television that Iran was ready to do a deal. NBC journalist Richard Engel reports:
“Shamkhani said Iran is willing to commit to never having a nuclear weapon, to get rid of its stockpiles of highly enriched uranium, to only enrich to a level needed for civilian use and to allow inspectors in to oversee it all, in exchange for lifting all sanctions immediately. He said Iran would accept that deal tonight.”
Inside Iran as Trump presses for nuclear deal. Video: NBC News
Shamkhani died on Saturday, following injuries he suffered during Israel’s attack on Friday night. It appears that Israel not only opposed a diplomatic solution to the Iran nuclear impasse: Israel killed it directly.
A spokesperson for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Esmaeil Baghaei, told a news conference in Tehran the talks would be suspended until Israel halts its attacks:
“It is obvious that in such circumstances and until the Zionist regime’s aggression against the Iranian nation stops, it would be meaningless to participate with the party that is the biggest supporter and accomplice of the aggressor.”
On 1 April 2024, Israel launched an airstrike on Iran’s embassy in Syria, killing 16 people, including a woman and her son. The attack violated international norms regarding the protection of diplomatic premises under the Vienna Convention.
It is worth noting how the TheNew York Times described the occupation of the US Embassy in November 1979:
“But it is the Ayatollah himself who is doing the devil’s work by inciting and condoning the student invasion of the American and British Embassies in Tehran. This is not just a diplomatic affront; it is a declaration of war on diplomacy itself, on usages and traditions honoured by all nations, however old and new, whatever belief.
“The immunities given a ruler’s emissaries were respected by the kings of Persia during wars with Greece and by the Ayatollah’s spiritual ancestors during the Crusades.”
Now it is Israel conducting a “war on diplomacy itself”, first with the attack on the embassy, followed by Friday’s surprise attack on Iran. Scuppering a diplomatic resolution to the nuclear issue appears to be the aim. To make matters worse, Israel’s recklessness could yet cause a major war.
Trump: Inconsistent and ineffective In an interview with Time magazine on 22 April 2025, Trump denied he had stopped Israel from attacking Iran’s nuclear sites.
“No, it’s not right. I didn’t stop them. But I didn’t make it comfortable for them, because I think we can make a deal without the attack. I hope we can. It’s possible we’ll have to attack because Iran will not have a nuclear weapon.
“But I didn’t make it comfortable for them, but I didn’t say no. Ultimately I was going to leave that choice to them, but I said I would much prefer a deal than bombs being dropped.”
— US President Donald Trump
In the same interview Trump boasted “I think we’re going to make a deal with Iran. Nobody else could do that.” Except, someone else had already done that — only for Trump to abandon the deal in his first term as president.
In July 2015 Iran signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) alongside the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and the European Union. Iran pledged to curb its nuclear programme for 10-15 years in exchange for the removal of some economic sanctions. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) also gained access and verification powers.
Iran also agreed to limit uranium enrichment to 3.67 per cent U-235, allowing it to maintain its nuclear power reactors.
Despite clear signs the nuclear deal was working, Donald Trump withdrew from the JCPOA and reinstated sanctions on Iran in November 2018. Despite the unilateral American action, Iran kept to the deal for a time, but in January 2020 Iran declared it would no longer abide by the limitations included in JCPOA but would continue to work with the IAEA.
By pulling out of the deal and reinstating sanctions, the US and Israel effectively created a strong incentive for Iran to resume enriching uranium to higher levels, not for the sake of making a bomb, but as the most obvious means of creating leverage to remove the sanctions.
As a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Iran is allowed to enrich uranium for civilian fuel programmes.
Iran’s nuclear programme began in the 1960s with US assistance. Prior to the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Iran was ruled by the brutal dictatorship of the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahavi.
American corporations saw Iran as a potential market for expansion. During the 1970s the US suggested to the Shah he needed not one but several nuclear reactors to meet Iran’s future electricity needs. In June 1974, the Shah declared that Iran would have nuclear weapons, “without a doubt and sooner than one would think”.
In 2007, I wrote an article for Peace Researcher where I examined US claims that Iran does not need nuclear power because it is sitting on one of the largest gas supplies in the world. One of the most interesting things I discovered while researching the article was the relevance of air pollution, a critical public health concern in Iran.
In 2024, health officials estimated that air pollution is responsible for 40,000 deaths a year in Iran. Deputy Health Minister Alireza Raisi said the “majority of these deaths were due to cardiovascular diseases, strokes, respiratory issues, and cancers”.
Sahimi describes levels of air pollution in Tehran and other major Iranian cities as “catastrophic”, with elementary schools having to close on some days as a result. There was little media coverage of the air pollution issue in relation to Iran’s energy mix then, and I have seen hardly any since.
An energy research project, Advanced Energy Technologies provides a useful summary of electricity production in Iran as it stood in 2023.
Iranian electricity production in 2023. Source: Advanced Energy Technologies
With around 94.6 percent of electricity generation dependent on fossil fuels, there are serious environmental reasons why Iran should not be encouraged to depend on oil and gas for its electricity needs — not to mention the prospect of climate change.
One could also question the safety of nuclear power in one of the most seismically active countries in the world, however it would be fair to ask the same question of countries like Japan, which aims to increase its use of nuclear power to about 20 percent of the country’s total electricity generation by 2040, despite the 2011 Fukushima disaster.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi stated that Iran’s uranium enrichment programme “must continue”, but the “scope and level may change”. Prior to the talks in Oman, Araghchi highlighted the “constant change” in US positions as a problem.
Trump’s rhetoric on uranium enrichment has shifted repeatedly.
He told Meet the Press on May 4 that “total dismantlement” of the nuclear program is “all I would accept.” He suggested that Iran does not need nuclear energy because of its oil reserves. But on May 7, when asked specifically about allowing Iran to retain a limited enrichment program, Trump said “we haven’t made that decision yet.”
Ali Shamkhani, an adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said in a May 14 interview with NBC that Iran is ready to sign a deal with the United States and reiterated that Iran is willing to limit uranium enrichment to low levels. He previously suggested in a May 7 post on X that any deal should include a “recognition of Iran’s right to industrial enrichment.”
That recognition, plus the removal of U.S. and international sanctions, “can guarantee a deal,” Shamkhani said.
So with Iran seemingly willing to accept reasonable conditions, why was a deal not reached last month? It appears the US changed its position, and demanded Iran cease all enrichment of uranium, including what Iran needs for its power stations.
One wonders if Zionist lobby groups like AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) influenced this decision. One could recall what happened during Benjamin Netanyahu’s first stint as Israel’s Prime Minister (1996-1999) to illustrate the point.
In April 1995 AIPAC published a report titled ‘Comprehensive US Sanctions Against Iran: A Plan for Action’. In 1997 Mohammad Khatami was elected as President of Iran. The following year Khatami expressed regret for the takeover of the US embassy in Tehran in 1979 and denounced terrorism against Israelis, while noting that “supporting peoples who fight for their liberation of their land is not, in my opinion, supporting terrorism”.
The threat of improved relations between Iran and the US sent the Israeli government led by Netanyahu into a panic. The Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz reported that “Israel has expressed concern to Washington of an impending change of policy by the United States towards Iran” adding that Netanyahu “asked AIPAC . . . to act vigorously in Congress to prevent such a policy shift.”
Twenty years ago the Israeli lobby were claiming an Iranian nuclear bomb was imminent. It didn’t happen.
Netanyahu’s Iran nuclear warnings. Video: Al Jazeera
The misguided efforts of Israel and the United States to contain Iran’s use of nuclear technology are not only counterproductive — they risk being a catastrophic failure. If one was going to design a policy to convince Iran nuclear weapons may be needed for its own defence, it is hard to imagine a policy more effective than the one Israel has pursued for the past 30 years.My 2007 Peace Researcher article asked a simple question: ‘Why does Iran want nuclear weapons?’ My introduction could have been written yesterday.
“With all the talk about Iran and the intentions of its nuclear programme it is a shame the West continues to undermine its own position with selective morality and obvious hypocrisy. It seems amazing there can be so much written about this issue, yet so little addresses the obvious question – ‘for what reasons could Iran want nuclear weapons?’.
“As Simon Jenkins (2006) points out, the answer is as simple as looking at a map. ‘I would sleep happier if there were no Iranian bomb but a swamp of hypocrisy separates me from overly protesting it. Iran is a proud country that sits between nuclear Pakistan and India to its east, a nuclear Russia to its north and a nuclear Israel to its west. Adjacent Afghanistan and Iraq are occupied at will by a nuclear America, which backed Saddam Hussein in his 1980 invasion of Iran. How can we say such a country has no right’ to nuclear defence?’”
This week the German Foreign Office reached new heights in hypocrisy with this absurd tweet.
Iran has no nuclear weapons. Israel does. Iran is a signatory to the NPT. Israel is not. Iran allows IAEA inspections. Israel does not.
Starting another war will not make us forget, nor forgive what Israel is doing in Gaza.
From the river to the sea, credibility requires consistency.
I write about New Zealand and international politics, with particular interests in political economy, history, philosophy, transport, and workers’ rights. I don’t like war very much.
Joe Hendren writes about New Zealand and international politics, with particular interests in political economy, history, philosophy, transport, and workers’ rights. Republished with his permission. Read this original article on his Substack account with full references.
Having someone close to me with a severe mental condition as the needles of American Fascism penetrate my psyche is much too much. The boob tube lies to me about what Israel is doing to Gaza and now Iran. Having neighbors surrounding me who are either oblivious to what the MAGA machine is shredding, or so mesmerized by it causes my retreat into my music. By music I mean the deep, rich, creative words and music of my 60s and 70s baby boomer favorites. I sit here listening, over and over, to Pink Floyd’s classic Comfortably Numb with David Gilmore’s guitar artistry in his solo near the end. Sometimes one needs not marijuana to flavor the ear.
Perhaps the mentally ill person I love is correct, unintentionally, in evading the effects of this government’s lunacy, and that of the Israelis. Marines and National Guard troops sent into LA because the public demands to be heard in peaceful symphony. A President and his inner sanctum that intend to transform us into Germany circa 1930s. They replace the ‘Jew vermin’ with the ‘Illegal alien vermin’. The one constant is that all who oppose the MAGA MACHINE are just as Red as those who opposed the Nazi juggernaut.
I guess some things never change. The support for this dangerous Israeli government is congruent with Trump’s support for our Military Industrial Empire, feeding that beast with more of our tax dollars. His assault on everything vital, from Medicaid, food for the elderly and infirm delivered to their abodes, labor unions or labor organizing, daycare, public education… and pretty soon the big scissor on our cherished Medicare and Social Security.
I once interviewed a man who was tortured in captivity. After hearing of all the terrible things they did to his body, and his mind, I asked him how did he survive. He said that after awhile he just became numb to it all, both physically and mentally. Uncomfortably Numb!
As I wrote for TRNN back in February, mega-billionaire Jeff Bezos is now completing the full ideological take over of the US’s second-most influential newspaper’s opinion section. But, like all good right-wing takeovers, it’s important for those engaging in said right-wing takeover that you not think of it as right-wing, or them as agents of right-wing ideology but, instead, above such petty, small-minded, and worldly matters. They are not only not right-wing—they really, really need you to know they exist above and outside of ideology.
On Wednesday, the Washington Post named the Economist’s Washington correspondent Adam O’Neal as its next opinion editor. In his announcement on Twitter, O’Neal parroted his new boss’ words from last February almost verbatim, telling Post readers in a chummy front-facing camera announcement that:
[Washington Post opinion page writers and editors are] going to be stalwart advocates of free markets and personal liberties. We’ll be unapologetically patriotic too. Our philosophy will be rooted in fundamental optimism about the future of this country. What we won’t be are people who lecture you about ideology or demand you think certain ways about policy.
(This phrasing is copy and pasted from Bezos’ announcement five months ago that the Post opinion section will work in “support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets.”)
To recap: Post opinion section writers will be “stalwart advocates of free markets” and be “unapologetically patriotic” but also not “lecture [us] about ideology.” The obvious flaw in this plan, of course, is that advocating for “free markets,” e.g. capitalism and patriotism, e.g. advocating for US supremacy, is very much an ideological position.. One may think they are inarguably cool and self-evidently awesome but they, nonetheless, are ideological conceits requiring ideological production and reproduction.
Despite the second-richest person in the world and his new mercenary mouthpiece’s implied claims to the contrary, “free markets” and “patriotism” are not organic features of reality like gravity or the cosmological constant, but ideological constructs. And requiring opinion writers embrace these ideological constructs, as slippery and vague as they may be, is an ideological litmus test for writing for Bezos’ publication. The Post opinion page revamp is thus an explicitly right-wing project designed to advance the ideologies of capitalism and US hegemony.
In a country of 330 million self-perceived free-thinking rebels––including, most gratingly, all of our mega-billionaires––all ideological formations must therefore present as edgy and subversive, as speaking truth to the powerful, even those openly marionetting for the world’s second-richest person.
So the question is: why is someone working for Toyota, walking around a Toyota car lot wearing a Toyota polo shirt walking up to me on the showroom floor and giving me a speech about how they don’t like cars, car companies, or driving? Why are right-wingers so concerned about not being perceived as such, but instead presenting themselves as post-ideological arbiters of “open debate” indifferent to the very thing they’ve been hired to do?
There are many reasons—some cynical, some psychological—but before we detail these, let’s examine the long, strange history of right-wing media personalities suspiciously insisting to their audiences, over and over again, that they are, in fact, ideology-free truth-tellers. It’s a subject I’ve long been fascinated with, having done twopodcast episodes on this and related topics. Since the 1990s, it’s been a consistent feature of conservatives to lay claim to post-ideology. Bill O’Relly insisted he wasn’t conservative or Republican. “I’m not a political guy in the sense that I embrace an ideology… I’m an independent thinker, I’m an independent voter, I’m a registered Independent,” he told NPR’s Terry Gross in 2003. “I basically look at the world from the point of view of let’s solve the problem, right? Whatever the problem is, let’s find the best solution to it. And if the solution is on the left, I grab it. If it’s on the right, I grab it.”
Glenn Beck made this his whole schtick as well. “You’ve lived your whole life in a responsible way,” the former Fox News huckster told his audience in 2009 while promoting the GOP’s Tea Party rebrand. “You’ve been concerned about this country through the last administration, in this administration. If you’re like most people, both administrations, it’s not about politics, you actually believe in something, and you thought for a while there, your politicians did as well.”
It’s not about going after Democrats, it’s about going after both parties. But then Beck, like O’Rielly and dozens before them, invariably proceeded to go after Democrats 98% of the time. It’s a popular posture. Everyone from Bill Maher to Andrew Yang to Bari Weiss to Republican Senator Rand Paul—who wrote a book called “Taking a Stand: Moving Beyond Partisan Politics to Unite America,” in which he claimed to go “beyond the left-right paradigm kind of thinking,”—has embraced this branding: I don’t do ideology, they consistently remind us, I’m a political actor unmoored from your oppressive labels—a maverick, a rogue, an independent iconoclast.
The most infamous recent example of this phenomenon is Elon Musk who—while openly promoting white nationalist bile on social media, bashing minorities, trans people and women, doing nazi salutes during Trump’s inauguration––continued to insist he wasn’t right or left wing, but instead a secret third thing. “I’m probably left of center on social issues and right of center on economic issues,” the sage-like enlightened centrist Musk claimed in late 2023, right before he dumped $250 million into successfully reelecting Donald Trump.
Obviously, the type of right-wing of each right-winger who claims They Don’t Do Ideology varies. There are differences between Fox News MAGA nationalism, Musk’s internet-addled neonazism, Maher’s glibertarian Zionism, Yang’s Silicon Valley techno-authorianism, neoconservatism, and what will likely be Jeff Bezos’ preferred flavor of right-wing—Club for Growth Republicanism promoting low taxes and generic Bush-era patriotism. But the new Washington Post op-ed section will no doubt be welcoming to all of the above while excluding those on the left, e.g. those who think “free markets” and “patriotism” are fraught concepts worthy of critique rather than mantras to mindlessly embrace or, at the very least, empty buzzwords that are the intellectual equivalent of Gerber apple-chicken pouches.
Interestingly, this is not, for the most part, a pathology on the left. I am a leftist, I write for left-wing outlets. I say so openly. Just the same, liberals are almost always openly liberal, openly Democrats. They wear their ideological preferences on their sleeve. Of course they’re ideological, because to do politics at all is inherently ideological. To be human is to be ideological. To deny this obvious fact, outside of being, say, a ‘neutral’ reporter who has to fake neutrality for professional reasons, isn’t just dishonest, it’s insulting to everyone’s intelligence.
Alas, being conservative is to be on the side of the establishment, of the powerful, of the billionaire class who O’Neal is literally parroting. It’s both inherent in the American cultural self-image, but also a necessary component of media branding, to perceive one’s self and one’s media project as not on the side of power. In a country of 330 million self-perceived free-thinking rebels—including, most gratingly, all of our mega-billionaires—all ideological formations must therefore present as edgy and subversive, as speaking truth to the powerful, even those openly marionetting for the world’s second-richest person.
It’s impossible to conceive of someone worth $250 billion taking over a publication and re-making it into his own image and telling the public, “I am a very rich person who wants to produce content that reinforces the ideology that permitted and continues to permit my obscene wealth and power.” This would be cartoonishly evil and undermine the efficiency of said ideological output. So, instead, we must continue to play this bizarre game where open promoters of right-wing ideology, of oligarchical power and control, of US global hegemony, are presented as free-thinkers allergic to ideology rather than public relations agents working on behalf of the most banal and ubiquitous of ideologies—American conservatism—in open service of their corporate and billionaire patrons.
As monied control over our media and the platforms required for their distribution grows tighter and tighter, this post-ideological “open debate” schtick grows more and more tedious and insulting to everyone’s intelligence. Advocating for “free markets” is obviously ideological. Promoting American “patriotism” is obviously ideological. If the super-rich are going to use media and social media as their ideological play toys, to promote their preferred worldview, the least they can do is have the decency to be honest about this fact, rather than smothering their right-wing rebrands in faux neutral, above-the-fray smarm.
The recent series of high-level agreements between Papua New Guinea and France marks a significant development in PNG’s geopolitical relationships, driven by what appears to be a convergence of national interests.
The “deepening relationship” is less about a single personality and more about a calculated alignment of economic, security, and diplomatic priorities with PNG, taking full advantage of its position as the biggest, most strategically placed island player in the Pacific.
An examination of the key outcomes reveals a partnership of mutual benefit, reflecting both PNG’s strategic diversification and France’s own long-term ambitions as a Pacific power.
A primary driver is the shared economic rationale. From Port Moresby’s perspective, the partnership offers a clear path to economic diversification and resilience.
But many in PNG have been watching with keen interest and asking: how badly does PNG want this?
While Prime Minister James Marape offered France a Special Economic Zone in Port Moresby (SEZ) for French businesses, he also named the lookout at Port Moresby’s Variarata National Park after President Emmanuel Macron drawing the ire of many in the country.
The proposal to establish a SEZ specifically for French industries is a notable attempt to attract capital from beyond PNG’s traditional partners.
Strategically coupled
This is strategically coupled with securing the future of the multi-billion-dollar Papua LNG project.
Macron’s personal undertaking to work with TotalEnergies to keep the project on schedule provides crucial stability for one of PNG’s most significant economic ventures.
For France, these arrangements secure a major energy investment for its national corporate champion and establish a stronger economic foothold in a strategically vital region between Asia and the Pacific.
In the area of security, the relationship addresses tangible needs for both nations.
PNG is faced with the immense challenge of monitoring a 2.4 million sq km Exclusive Economic Zone, making it vulnerable to illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing.
The finalisation of a Shiprider Agreement with France provides a practical force-multiplier, leveraging French naval assets to enhance PNG’s maritime surveillance capabilities. This move, along with planned defence talks on air and maritime cooperation, allows PNG to diversify its security architecture.
For France, a resident power with Pacific territories like New Caledonia and French Polynesia, participating in regional security operations reinforces its role and commitment to stability in the Indo-Pacific.
Elevating diplomatic influence
The partnership is also a vehicle for elevating diplomatic influence.
Port Moresby has noted the significance of engaging with a partner that holds permanent membership on the UN Security Council and seats at the G7 and G20.
This alignment provides PNG with a powerful channel to global decision-making forums. The reciprocal move to establish a PNG embassy in Paris further cements the relationship on a mature footing.
The diplomatic synergy is perhaps best illustrated by France’s full endorsement of PNG’s bid to host a future UN Ocean Conference. This support provides PNG with a major opportunity to lead on the world stage, while allowing France to demonstrate its credentials as a key partner to the Pacific Islands.
This deepening PNG-France partnership does not exist in a vacuum.
The West’s view of China’s rapid emergence as a dominant economic and military force in the region has reshaped the strategic landscape, prompting traditional powers to re-engage with renewed urgency.
increased diplomatic footprint
The United States has responded by significantly increasing its diplomatic and security footprint, a move marked by Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to Port Moresby to sign the Defence Cooperation Agreement.
Similarly, Australia, PNG’s traditional security partner, is working to reinforce its long-standing influence through initiatives like the multi-million-dollar deal to establish a PNG team in its National Rugby League (NRL), a soft-power exercise reportedly linked to security outcomes.
This competitive environment has, in turn, created greater agency for Pacific nations, allowing them to diversify their partnerships beyond old allies and providing a fertile ground for European powers like France to assert their own strategic interests.
A strong foundation for the relationship is a shared public stance on environmental stewardship. The agreement on the need for rigorous scientific studies before any deep-sea mining occurs aligns PNG’s national policy with a position of environmental caution.
This common ground extends to broader climate action, where France’s commitment to conservation in the Pacific resonates with PNG’s status as a frontline nation vulnerable to climate change.
This alignment on values provides a durable and politically important basis for cooperation, allowing both nations to jointly advocate for climate justice and ocean protection.
For the Papua New Guinea economy, this deepening partnership with France is critically important as it provides high-level stability for the multi-billion-dollar Papua LNG project and creates a direct pathway for new investment through a proposed SEZ for French businesses.
Vital economic resource
Furthermore, by moving to finalise a Shiprider Agreement to combat illegal fishing, the government is actively protecting a vital economic resource.
For Marape’s credibility in local politics, these outcomes are tangible successes he can present to the nation as he battles a massive credibility dip in recent years.
Securing a personal undertaking from the leader of a G7 nation, gaining support for PNG to host a future UN Ocean Conference, and enhancing national security demonstrates effective leadership on the world stage.
This allows him to build a narrative of a competent statesman who, through “warm, personal relationships”, can deliver on promises of economic opportunity and national security while strengthening his political standing at home.
“What does it mean to want to belong to an empire?” In answering, he interlaced the concept of belonging during our terrifying political moment — full-fledged war on DEI, First Amendment violations of protesters, and weaponization of American border security against students. His work is a call to action for the literature of dissent at a time when the right to dissent is under attack.
“I came into political consciousness around Asian American causes of rights, identities, and recognitions, which were framed as an issue of anti-racism, access to the United States, and belonging to this country. Over the last couple of decades, I’ve [begun seeing] all those things as subsidiary to a greater cause of decolonization. If we recognize that the political struggles that we’re engaging in should be around decolonization, then we can recognize how these seemingly disparate identities and histories are actually really connected. To connect the causes of civil rights and minority empowerment in the United States to the cause of anti-genocide and pro-Palestinian advocacy reveals how colonization deploys all these things in order to exploit and separate us.” – Viet Thanh Nguyen
Going from last back, the concert. Yachats Community Presbyterian Church: “Keith Greeninger paints masterful portraits of humanity using powerful images that come alive with his engaging guitar rhythms and husky vocals. $20 in advance or $25 at the door. 7 pm, 360 W 7th Street. FMI, go to kyaq.org.”
*****
So, these liberals, and the gray hair and droopy eyes, man, and the tie-dye and hippy hats and just that weird old person disheveled look of the sort of Obama- loving “liberal,” well, I was the only keffiyeh-wearing fuck of the day.
I was with a client, one of my other jobs, people with developmental or intellectual disabilities. High functioning, but alas, many of my clients of past always have a simple belief in prayer, a higher male god, America the Beautiful, respect of all laws, and so on.
But these people! No talking about genocide, no talking about more Jewish American/American Jewish-Directed War. Nope. I did hear a few goofy comments about how “cool it was” participating in No Kings Day, and it brought tears to their eyes to be part of that beautiful event.
The revolution will not be in a free speech zone.
Ain’t going to do a fucking thing.
Oh, the Ukraine Nazis:
Costco? That dirty stain is now infecting China:
“We’d like to apologise for the inconvenience caused to our members on our warehouse opening day in Shanghai,” Costco said in a statement posted on WeChat, the Chinese social media platform.
Do you feel that we are doomed? Yep, Israel and their tactical (sick) nuclear weapons have been reportedly used in Middle East**, and they have hundreds more and hundreds more missiles, and here we are, the Chinese so messed up by AmeriKKKa’s run on gigantic quantities of stuff, Costco, well, they are now getting close to the Story of Stuff just like the AmeriKKKans?
*****
In 2021, a scientific report in the prestigious journal Nature confirmed what I had been saying since 2006. “Israel” has, since its attacks on Lebanon in 2006 and those on Gaza in 2008 and 2014, used a new nuclear weapon, one which kills with a high-temperature radiation flash and with neutrons. This weapon, which leaves an identification footprint, but no fission products like Caesium-137, we now know was also employed by the USA in Fallujah, Iraq in 2003, and previously in Kosovo also.
The residues, inhalable Uranium aerosol dust, together with the neutron damage to tissues, cause a range of serious and often fatal health effects that puzzle doctors and defy treatment. Without knowing what caused such effects, which often mimic other illnesses or result in fungal infections that kill, doctors are powerless to help and just watch the exposed individuals die. (Source)
So, this guitar player, Keith, man, it was the same “white guy folk music,” but again, white guy with Christian allusions, you know, all that spirituality, and his song about a woman, yeah.
But … BUT. He fucking yammered on and on and on with Crocodile Tears (just like a Scott Ritter or Joe Biden or George Bush gushes about America the Beautiful) about”this great nation, this day when, yes, we have a great country with two opposing sides today, and whichever person you voted for, well, just shows how great America is and how we all can still agree that there are many great things about this nation, and today, we celebrate our uniformed military, our brave men and women, who have sacrificed in Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan to protect our freedoms.”
D-O-N-E. Here is the song somewhere else, and he said almost the same spiel here in Yachats, except he had to deal with the No Kings Day, and he actually thanked the country for the parade, Trump’s orgasmic clown show, thanked our country for celebrating 250 years of our military, though, that is the US Army, man, this is sickness of Chlamydia Capitalism under the glare of the former hippies and their clapping and swaying to the music of the muscle man.
Yeah, I had a choice, man, and here I am with a client next to me, and again, here I am with fellow programmers and the president of the community radio station, and, well, in any other circumstance without the client, hmm, I would have stood up and turned my back on him, at least.
And I have been in that situation before, not standing for the pledge of murder and the national war anthem, and well, I have spoken out at events, and asked the tough questions, and, yep, younger versions of yesterday, berating me.
We left, as it was easy to prompt my client to leave since it had been a long day, 6 am to 8 pm, and he was tired.
The Congress of the Confederation created the current United States Army on 3 June 1784. The United States Congress created the current United States Navy on 27 March 1794 and the current United States Marine Corps on 11 July 1798. All three services trace their origins to their respective Continental predecessors.
Nothing to be proud of, Sicarios!
Grenade launchers using this technology include the XM29, XM307, PAPOP, Mk 47 Striker, XM25, Barrett XM109, K11, QTS-11, Norinco LG5 / QLU-11, and Multi Caliber Individual Weapon System. Orbital ATK developed air burst rounds for autocannons.
You all like those colors?
Northrup Grumman received a contract from the U.S. Army’s Project Manager for Maneuver Ammunition Systems (PM-MAS) to develop the next generation airburst cartridge for the 30mm XM813 Bushmaster® Chain Gun®. The gun and ammunition function as a system and will provide greater capability for the Army’s up-gunned Stryker Brigade Combat Team fleets.
The 30 mm x 173 mm airburst cartridge will feature a contact set fuze design with three operational fuze modes: Programmable Airburst; Point Detonation; and Point Detonation with Delay. The initial contract will fund the completion of the engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) phase and final qualification by the Army.
Northrop Grumman will also begin deliveries this year of the first airburst type cartridge to support the U.S. Army’s Germany-based, 2nd Cavalry Regiment’s Stryker Infantry Carrier Vehicle (ICV) fleet that were recently ‘up-gunned’ with the company’s 30mm Bushmaster® Chain Gun®. The new airburst cartridge in development also will support additional U.S. Army platforms to include, but not limited to, the future Stryker Brigade Combat Teams.
The newly fielded gun system nearly doubles the range of the platform’s current .50-caliber machine gun. The addition of an airburst cartridge provides a complete family of ammunition that arms the crew to meet the challenges posed by peer and near-peer adversarial threat systems.
U.S. Air Force aircraft drops a white phosphorus bomb on a Viet Cong position in 1966.
The GBU-39, which is manufactured by Boeing, is a high-precision munition “designed to attack strategically important point targets,” and result in low collateral damage, explosive weapons expert Chris Cobb-Smith told CNN Tuesday. However, “using any munition, even of this size, will always incur risks in a densely populated area,” said Cobb-Smith, who is also a former British Army artillery officer.
Trevor Ball, a former US Army senior explosive ordnance disposal team member who also identified the fragment as being from a GBU-39, explained to CNN how he drew his conclusion.
“The warhead portion [of the munition] is distinct, and the guidance and wing section is extremely unique compared to other munitions. Guidance and wing sections of munitions are often the remnants left over even after a munition detonates. I saw the tail actuation section and instantly knew it was one of the SDB/GBU-39 variants.”
Ball also concluded that while there is a variant of the GBU-39 known as the Focused Lethality Munition (FLM) which has a larger explosive payload but is designed to cause even less collateral damage, this was not the variant used in this case.
“The FLM has a carbon fiber composite warhead body and is filled with tungsten ground into a powder. Photos of FLM testing have shown objects in the test coated in tungsten dust, which is not present [in video from the scene],” he told CNN.
Every war has an iconic and powerful image. The Marines raising the American flag on Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima boosted U.S. morale in World War II. A nine-year old girl burned by napalm during the Vietnam War became a potent anti-war image.
In the Hamas-Gaza War the image has become premature Palestinian babies struggling to live without incubators.
Some of this rant is precipitated by one of my Substack Subscribers, Bob Enough, his handle, and he’s from the UK:
“Just wanted to comment on the quote by Lawrence – “America is neither free nor brave, but a land of tight, iron-clanking little wills, everybody trying to put it over everybody else, and a land of men absolutely devoid of the real courage of trust, trust in life’s sacred spontaneity. They can’t trust life until they can control it.” – the rest is spot on.
Fortunately or unfortunately, I have been to the US many times on business and pleasure… and whilst there are beautiful places etc. to visit; the whole “culture !!??” and the brainwashed people are absolutely baffling to me. Just a few examples:
1. Met a UK mate over there with his girlfriend. Anyway, whilst talking away, she stated that she was Mexican. Intrigued I asked her “where from” ?, she told me and went on how wonderful it was.
I asked her, “how often she went “home” or back to visit relatives or friends etc….” …. her reply was “I have never been to Mexico” . !!!??????? WTF. She was born and bred by her parents in Houston, Tx.
2. Same bar as 1. above, looked around, US flags EVERYWHERE. Went for a smoke, close to a main road and every shop had a US flag on, even the cars and vans driving past had US flags or US flag bumper stickers on.
Same as Biden, gobbing off he is Irish.
3. Most have no idea of the World outside the US. Stated I was from England to 1 barmaid – she was lost, tried UK, Great Britain, Manchester everything… NO recognition at all … ended up shamefully saying “London” … where her brain popped open and she stated ” OH !!, on the other side of the Hudson river” … I mean.. what can you say to that ?.
4. You can see how they have been divided by their designations like – African Americans, Latino-Americans, Irish Americans etc etc.
Brainwashed, uneducated creatures – the most of them. Continuous wars = “The US has been at war 225 out of 243 years since 1776” … based on 2022 and the relatives and friends are proud when their loved ones are killed in battle for the great US of A…. Mad !
Ahh, the Ph.D’s, Bob, and even the diplomats and ambassadors, Bob, have been dumb-downed and lobotomized.
You have a fat happy (sic) un-Culture in the USA, and the place is huge compared to InBred UnUnited QueeDom. The land of great tribes was illegally and unethically and criminally invaded by the rubble of UK and EuroTrash, mostly, and so that is what is spinning in their DNA, that group of fucking freaky group.
Jonathan Kozol studied this, the functional illiteracy of Americans — and I have taught college since 1983 and been a newspaperman since 1976, and so my thumb has been on the pulse of that disaster of 40 percent up to 50 percent of folk not able to read a Time magazine article and discuss it, talk about main points, look at the rhetorical steps in the writing, so, then, here we are in 2025.
Few read books, and while there is traveling, cruise ships and eating and drinking tours, Americans have been McDonaldsified, Walmartified, Disneyfied, NASCARified.
Homo Consumopethicus.
Take a map of the world, and leave in the demarcations, and ask Americanos to at least put down 20 countries, and you will get some bad results. Same with the US map, really bad results. They can’t even put down a dot for their own towns, with that same blank map.
Not sure why you are looking at African Americans and Mexican-Americans as the target here. There are many Latinos who know their national origin, and same with Blacks, but again, dumb-downing is across all ethnic and racial lines.
As Lawrence says — We Americans need to follow the red man’s path, understand the depth of the red man’s cultures.
*****
While the scum buckets of the Trump’s Minyan watched the belching machines of death on the ground and in the air, the belching monsters of Jewish Israel were utilizing those aspirational machines of death:
Two months ago, on April 16, the New York Times provided detailed coverage of Israel’s close collaboration with the U.S. military in developing elaborate plans and scenarios to attack Iran. The plans required U.S. help “not just to defend Israel from Iranian retaliation but also to ensure that an Israeli attack was successful. The United States was a central part of the attack itself.” (tinyurl.com/47p3jyn3)
The Times reported that Gen. Michael E. Kurilla, with the blessing of the White House, began moving military equipment to West Asia. A second aircraft carrier, Carl Vinson, was moved to the Arabian Sea, joining the carrier Harry S. Truman in the Red Sea. Two Patriot missile batteries and a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system (THAAD) were repositioned to West Asia. B-2 bombers, capable of carrying 30,000-pound bombs, essential to destroying Iran’s underground nuclear program, were dispatched to Diego Garcia, an island base in the Indian Ocean.
The U.S. quietly delivered around 300 Hellfire missiles to Israel just days before Tel Aviv’s unprecedented attack on Iran, Middle East Eye has revealed. The transfer took place on June 10 while Washington was publicly signaling readiness to re-engage Tehran in nuclear talks, suggesting prior knowledge and coordination. Two U.S. officials, speaking anonymously, confirmed the shipment and said it marked a significant weapons resupply effort in anticipation of the strike.
The Hellfire delivery had not been previously reported. Meanwhile, U.S. forces were directly involved in intercepting Iranian retaliatory missiles aimed at Israel on June 13, according to Reuters. The scale and timing of the arms transfer now raise serious questions about Washington’s covert support for Israeli escalation, despite diplomatic posturing to the contrary.
In summary, the U.S. military would supply bombs, jet aircraft, intelligence and political cover, as they have for the past 20 months of Israel’s genocidal campaign against the people of Gaza. This is the same essential support the U.S. has provided to Israel for 75-plus years to carry out continuing attacks on surrounding Arab countries.
Bob Enough — Look at the USA Today propaganda crap above, and there are dozens of photos of those in the deplorable blob loving that dirty dirty rat Trump and Company.
Costco, Machine Guns, and LAWS anti-tank weapons:
Ahh, not as real as the Jews in Israel?
Then, and now:
Army veteran dubbed Queen of Guns reveals firearms are the ‘love of her life’ and feels ‘huge excitements’ every time she pulls the trigger
Ahh, this is fucking absurd. Vietnam?
You don’t hold a military parade to intimidate other countries. You hold a military parade to impress the people who are supporters and intimidate the people who are the opposition.You also hold a military parade to overcompensate for the fact that a lot of your own people hate you. — Viet Thanh Nyugen
Iran’s security establishment still does not understand where they are.
This is an existential regime change war, not a bit of light evening sparring to be conducted in rounds of orderly missile salvos on select military targets.
If they do not switch to a more dynamic and expansive approach which has the possibility of rendering the Zionist entity inoperable, in concert with a wide-ranging assassination programme, the Republic will simply cease to exist in what is to come.
They seem, as has been the case since 2007, fundamentally incapable of even recognising Zionist military strategy, let alone beginning to match it. — David Miller, June 14
Jewish State (Occupied Palestine) even goes after the rappers.
In today’s show, we’ll be exposing the lengths to which Israel and its Western-based assets have gone to cancel critics of the genocidal Zionist colony.
In our first report, Latifa Abouchakra highlights how Kneecap, the Irish hip-hop band, has found itself in the crosshairs of these underhand tactics for speaking out against genocide.
Our next report reveals the duplicitous actions of the long-time music business executive, Paul Samuels, who in 2002 was a co-founder of Love Music Hate Racism.
Iran’s security establishment still does not understand where they are.
This is an existential regime change war, not a bit of light evening sparring to be conducted in rounds of orderly missile salvos on select military targets.
If they do not switch to a more dynamic and expansive approach which has the possibility of rendering the Zionist entity inoperable, in concert with a wide-ranging assassination programme, the Republic will simply cease to exist in what is to come.
They seem, as has been the case since 2007, fundamentally incapable of even recognising Zionist military strategy, let alone beginning to match it.
*****
No nations? It’s an all-too-easy event to mock. It’s hard to keep a straight face when the world’s rich arrive annually in their private jets to the luxury ski-resort of Davos to express their deep concern about growing poverty, inequality and climate change
Less well known is the fact that WEF since 2009 has been working on an ambitious project called the Global Redesign Initiative(external link), (GRI), which effectively proposes a transition away from intergovernmental decision-making towards a system of multi-stakeholder governance. In other words, by stealth, they are marginalising a recognised model where we vote in governments who then negotiate treaties which are then ratified by our elected representatives with a model where a self-selected group of ‘stakeholders’ make decisions on our behalf.
In the famously public-school-suppressed fifth verse of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land,” he fired a shot across the bow of the very concept of private property:
“As I went walking I saw a sign there/And on the sign it said ‘No Trespassing’/But on the other side it didn’t say nothing/That side was made for you and me.”
John Lennon asked the world to “Imagine there’s no countries,” because “it isn’t hard to do.”
And in the Dead Kennedys song “Stars and Stripes of Corruption,”
Jello Biafra sang, “Look around, we’re all people/Who needs countries anyway?”
Budgets, Autumn Statements, Spending Reviews, we may as well just have a date put on the calendar each month for the government of the day to set out its ‘scribbled down on the back of a fag packet’ electoral bribes for the next thirty days.
Getting a kicking from the populist right? Just throw a few more foreigners under the Brexit bus. The left on your case because you stole £300 from pensioners last winter? Perform another screeching U-turn while refusing to admit you actually got it wrong the first time.
Whenever this useless shambles of a government think a certain part of the electorate are sharpening their knives, they will try and defend themselves with an off-the-hoof policy that tends to create far more questions than it actually answers.
Austerity by stealth
Let’s have a monthly state-of-finances thing with Kid Starver and Rachel Thieves. We can all gather around our TV sets and be thankful for the crumbs that are nonchalantly brushed from the briefing room table.
Rachel from accounts, or the pretend economist if you prefer, insisted her review wouldn’t see a return to the days of Tory austerity.
But this is, surprise surprise, entirely dishonest because the review imposes austerity-by-stealth through real-terms cuts to eight government departments.
The £39bn for affordable and social housing is to be welcomed, of course, but just how many council estates is that going to buy?
The last government allocated £37bn for a flawed two-year Covid test-and-trace scheme with god only knows how much ending up in private pockets. More than half-a-billion was spent treating just 272 inpatients at those Nightingale hospitals, which are now most likely B&M bargain outlets or hand car washes.
£39bn is a drop in the ocean.
Reeves had a golden opportunity to deliver the bold, transformative change that the country so desperately needs. But she prioritised her self-imposed and entirely unnecessary fiscal rules over social needs.
A real Labour government should be wholeheartedly committed to addressing structural inequalities, not bringing in austerity-by-stealth, and certainly not behaving like Temu Tories.
Where’s the debate and scrutiny?
The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, better known as the Assisted-Suicide Bill has been up for discussion once again this past week.
The more I read about it, the more testimonies I hear and see, the less scutiny the proposed legislation seems to be receiving, and the more it appears to be built upon coercion rather than the compassion it purports to provide.
Don’t get me wrong, the Assisted-Suicide Bill has drastically raised the level of debate surrounding an incredibly challenging and important matter. I am a democrat, and I believe this deeply sensitive matter should be debated.
But every debate — particularly one that ultimately results in state-sanctioned suicide — should listen to the people who are most likely to be affected this hideous and ghoulish legislation.
Some shockingly-misguided MPs may well be swayed by a few insignificant tweaks to the bill, but the end result doesn’t change, does it?
Why didn’t Chancellor Reeves use her spending review to announce a bit of help with assisted living? Capital investment doesn’t put a penny in your pocket NOW.
State coercion from a government death cult
The Assisted-Suicide bill will utterly erode societal norms of compassion for vulnerable and disabled people. Let’s not pretend otherwise. This is unprecedented coercion on a state level.
The Assisted-Suicide bill will normalise the idea that the lives of disabled people are less worth living. We can’t just be okay with that. Marginalised groups must be protected from the Labour death cult.
The Assisted-Suicide bill will put an end to any hope of the massive financial bolstering that is already needed in social and palliative care.
Hospices are already facing a dire shortage of funding, having suffered real-terms cuts to their funding for the previous two years. A proper Labour government would put this right, not legislate to speed up the process of death.
Hospices receive around 30% of their funding from the government, with the rest coming through tireless fundraising and generous donations.
One hospice, St Giles in Lichfield, receives just 17.7% of its funding from government sources.
The campaigners in favour of state-sanctioned suicide want to lecture us about dignity? I don’t fucking think so.
Where’s the bill for assisted living?
I will say it again: we must have a bill for assisted living.
I’ll be absolutely honest with you. I used to agree (in principle) with the idea of assisted dying. I was too naive to consider the safeguarding implications, I hadn’t done any research, and I certainly hadn’t listened to the people that were at the front of the discussion, which is exactly where the Labour leadership are right now as they finalise their plans for state-sanctioned suicide.
Skip forward a decade and I couldn’t be any more opposed to this frightening piece of legislation, and the government of the day, if I tried.
War is good for business and geopolitical posturing.
Before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in Washington in early February for his first visit to the US following President Donald Trump’s inauguration, he issued a bold statement on the strategic position of Israel.
“The decisions we made in the war [since 7 October 2023] have already changed the face of the Middle East,” he said.
“Our decisions and the courage of our soldiers have redrawn the map. But I believe that working closely with President Trump, we can redraw it even further.”
How should this redrawn map be assessed?
Hamas is bloodied but undefeated in Gaza. The territory lies in ruins, leaving its remaining population with barely any resources to rebuild. Death and starvation stalk everyone.
Hezbollah in Lebanon has suffered military defeats, been infiltrated by Israeli intelligence, and now faces few viable options for projecting power in the near future. Political elites speak of disarming Hezbollah, though whether this is realistic is another question.
Morocco, Bahrain and the UAE accounted for 12 percent of Israel’s record $14.8bn in arms sales in 2024 — up from just 3 percent the year before
In Yemen, the Houthis continue to attack Israel, but pose no existential threat.
Meanwhile, since the overthrow of dictator Bashar al-Assad in late 2024, Israel has attacked and threatened Syria, while the new government in Damascus is flirting with Israel in a possible bid for “normalisation“.
The Gulf states remain friendly with Israel, and little has changed in the last 20 months to alter this relationship.
According to Israel’s newly released arms sales figures for 2024, which reached a record $14.8bn, Morocco, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates accounted for 12 percent of total weapons sales — up from just 3 percent in 2023.
It is conceivable that Saudi Arabia will be coerced into signing a deal with Israel in the coming years, in exchange for arms and nuclear technology for the dictatorial kingdom.
An Israeli and US-assisted war against Iran began on Friday.
In the West Bank, Israel’s annexation plans are surging ahead with little more than weak European statements of concern. Israel’s plans for Greater Israel — vastly expanding its territorial reach — are well underway in Syria, Lebanon and beyond.
Shifting alliances On paper, Israel appears to be riding high, boasting military victories and vanquished enemies. And yet, many Israelis and pro-war Jews in the diaspora do not feel confident or buoyed by success.
Instead, there is an air of defeatism and insecurity, stemming from the belief that the war for Western public opinion has been lost — a sentiment reinforced by daily images of Israel’s campaign of deliberate mass destruction across the Gaza Strip.
What Israel craves and desperately needs is not simply military prowess, but legitimacy in the public domain. And this is sorely lacking across virtually every demographic worldwide.
It is why Israel is spending at least $150 million this year alone on “public diplomacy”.
Get ready for an army of influencers, wined and dined in Tel Aviv’s restaurants and bars, to sell the virtues of Israeli democracy. Even pro-Israel journalists are beginning to question how this money is being spent, wishing Israeli PR were more responsive and effective.
Today, Israeli Jews proudly back ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza in astoundingly high numbers. This reflects a Jewish supremacist mindset that is being fed a daily diet of extremist rhetoric in mainstream media.
There is arguably no other Western country with such a high proportion of racist, genocidal mania permeating public discourse.
According to a recent poll of Western European populations, Israel is viewed unfavourably in Germany, Denmark, France, Italy and Spain.
Very few in these countries support Israeli actions. Only between 13 and 21 percent hold a positive view of Israel, compared to 63-70 percent who do not.
The US-backed Pew Research Centre also released a global survey asking people in 24 countries about their views on Israel and Palestine. In 20 of the 24 nations, at least half of adults expressed a negative opinion of the Jewish state.
A deeper reckoning Beyond Israel’s image problems lies a deeper question: can it ever expect full acceptance in the Middle East?
Apart from kings, monarchs and elites from Dubai to Riyadh and Manama to Rabat, Israel’s vicious and genocidal actions since 7 October 2023 have rendered “normalisation” impossible with a state intent on building a Jewish theocracy that subjugates millions of Arabs indefinitely.
While it is true that most states in the region are undemocratic, with gross human rights abuses a daily reality, Israel has long claimed to be different — “the only democracy in the Middle East”.
But Israel’s entire political system, built with massive Western support and grounded in an unsustainable racial hierarchy, precludes it from ever being fully and formally integrated into the region.
The American journalist Murtaza Hussain, writing for the US outlet Drop Site News, recently published a perceptive essay on this very subject.
He argues that Israeli actions have been so vile and historically grave — comparable to other modern holocausts — that they cannot be forgotten or excused, especially as they are publicly carried out with the explicit goal of ethnically cleansing Palestine:
“This genocide has been a political and cultural turning point beyond which we cannot continue as before. I express that with resignation rather than satisfaction, as it means that many generations of suffering are ahead on all sides.
“Ultimately, the goal of Israel’s opponents must not be to replicate its crimes in Gaza and the West Bank, nor to indulge in nihilistic hatred for its own sake.
“People in the region and beyond should work to build connections with those Israelis who are committed opponents of their regime, and who are ready to cooperate in the generational task of building a new political architecture.”
The issue is not just Netanyahu and his government. All his likely successors hold similarly hardline views on Palestinian rights and self-determination.
The monumental task ahead lies in crafting an alternative to today’s toxic Jewish theocracy.
But this rebuilding must also take place in the West. Far too many Jews, conservatives and evangelical Christians continue to cling to the fantasy of eradicating, silencing or expelling Arabs from their land entirely.
Pushing back against this fascism is one of the most urgent generational tasks of our time.
“Just do it, before it is too late,” US President Donald Trump said.
The Western media described Trump’s and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s threats after the first wave of attacks on Iran as “warnings”. They were, in fact, expressions of genocidal intent.
“The United States makes the best and most lethal military equipment anywhere in the World, BY FAR, and Israel has a lot of it, with much more to come.
“And they know how to use it. Iran must make a deal, before there is nothing left, and save what was once known as the Iranian Empire … JUST DO IT, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.”
As Pascal Lottaz and a number of other analysts pointed out on Friday, preemptive war or just war theory requires imminent threats not conceptual ones. As I also pointed out on Friday, the United States’ own intelligence agencies have consistently determined that Iran does not have an active nuclear weapons programme and there has been no change to the regime’s position since the Grand Ayatollah issued a fatwa against such weapons in 2003.
Israel and the US may now have forced a change in that theology or calculus.
What we are witnessing is a war of aggression designed to trigger regime change and destroy Iran — to reduce it to the kind of chaos that Israel and the US have inflicted on Iraq, Libya, Lebanon and many other countries.
This is only possible because of the collusion of the Collective West. At the core of this project of endless violence towards non-white people is racism: contempt for people who are not like us.
Nearly half of Israelis support army killing all Palestinians in Gaza, poll finds. Today an overwhelming majority of Israelis want to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians — one of the very definitions of genocide — not just from Gaza but from Israel itself. Nearly half of Israelis support the army killing all Palestinians in Gaza, a recent US Penn State University poll finds.
Genocide has been normalised in Israel. Yet our political leaders and much of our media tell us we share values with these people.
One of the sickest, most profoundly tragic ironies of history is that the long suffering of the Jewish people at the hands of Western racism has culminated in a triumphalist Jewish State doing to the Palestinians what the Plantagenets and the Popes, the Medicis and the Russian boyars, the Italian Fascists and the Nazis did to the Jews.
Europeans perpetrated the Holocaust not the Palestinians or the Iranians. Israel, dominated as it is by Ashkenazi Jews, has now been incorporated into the Western project to maintain global hegemony.
They are today’s uber Aryans lording it over the untermenschen. It is the grim fulfillment of what the Israeli scholar Yeshayahu Leibowitz warned back in the 1980s was Israel’s incipient slide into what he termed “Judeo Nazism”.
‘We, the Israelis, are the victims’ Isn’t it time we woke from our deep slumber? Generations of people in Western countries were lied to for generations about the Zionist project. We were bombarded with propaganda that the Israelis were the victims, the plucky battlers; the Palestinians were somehow a nation of terrorists in their own land.
So too, the propaganda goes, are pretty much all of Israel’s neighbours, particularly Iran.
The propaganda shredded our minds, particularly people of my generation. It made most of our populations and all of our governments totally indifferent to the constant killing, repression and land thieving by generations of Israelis.
“We, the Israelis, are the victims.” They weep for themselves as they rape Palestinian prisoners — and call themselves heroes for doing so. In researching stories like this I had the unpleasant experience of watching videos of both the rape of Palestinians prisoners at Sde Temein (gloatingly shared by the perpetrators) and the repellent sight of Benjamin Netanyahu’s rabbi blessing one of these rapists and praising him for his work.
We are repeatedly told we share values with these people. I believe our governments really do share those values. I do not.
‘Hath not a Palestinian eyes? If you prick an Iranian do they not bleed?’ I’m a student of Shakespeare and have spent hours every month reading, watching and studying his plays. The Merchant of Venice, a complex play with highly contested interpretations, can be viewed as a masterful exploration of a dominant society enforcing its own double standards on a Hated Other.
The last time I watched it was a Royal Shakespeare Company performance with Palestinian actor Makram Khoury in the role of Shylock (the Jew).
Over the centuries Shylock had morphed from a pantomime villain, to an arch-villain to, in the 19th Century, a figure of pathos, dignity and loss, through to 20th Century interpretations of him as a powerful, albeit highly flawed, figure of resistance in the face of a supremacist society.
Palestinian Makram Khoury’s performance capped this transition and was an eloquent plea to see our common humanity whether we be Jewish, Muslim, Christian or any other slice of humanity.
“Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”
How would our reading of this passage change if we changed “Jew” to “Palestinian” or “Iranian”?
Only an utterly incoherent and damaged mind can continue to believe the propaganda coming out of the White House, the Pentagon, and out of the mouths of psychotic madmen like Netanyahu, Smotrich and the rest of Team Genocide.
It’s time to wake up. If not, we ourselves become victims. Only a hollowed-out heart and mind could content themselves with turning a blind eye to genocide, to turn a blind eye to the war of aggression just launched against Iran.
How will this end?
Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He contributes to Asia Pacific Report and Café Pacific, and hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz.
Note: In polite company or in public arenas or in schools and conferences, what have you, what is it to be anti-semitic according to the Israel Occupation Forces legions of facilitators like the ADL, AIPAC, and a list of tens of thousands of Jewish controlled non-profits and foundations?
Pro-Israeli circles often try to invent an anti-Semitic element behind every legitimate criticism of Israel.
But this is a cheap and increasingly exposed exploitation and manipulation of true anti-Semitism a morbid form of racism that ought to be denounced.
However the behaviors of the shipyard dogs of Zionism would have us believe that true anti-Semites are no longer those who hate Jews for being Jewish but rather those Zionist fanatics criticize for criticizing Israel for being criminal murderous and evil.
Well we are supposed to be living in a moral universe where no people should have more rights than the rest of mankind.
Proceeding from this timeless basic logic if criticizing Israel including questioning the moral legitimacy of Israel’s very existence amounts to anti-Semitism then humanity has a moral obligation to be anti-Semitic.
Opponents of Israel it must be proclaimed loudly don’t hate Israel because Israel is Jewish; they hate Israel because Israel happens to be a gigantic crime against humanity a virulent practitioner of ethnic cleansing and apartheid which is committed to the national destruction of another people the Palestinian people.
Yes anti-Judaism is wrong and should be rejected. However if Judaism especially Jewishness can not maintain a decent and peaceful existence outside the realm of racism apartheid and genocidal supremacy then people will have second thoughts about Judaism. — effing 2012 Op-Ed, The absurdity of equating opposition to Israel with anti-Semitism
No lover of ANY POTUS, especially Truman, but, that broken white psychosis can get it right once in a blue moon:
In 1948 President Harry Truman was infuriated by Jewish terrorism which was nothing in comparison to Israel’s terror these days angrily wrote in a letter to Eleanor Roosevelt: “I fear very much that the Jews are being like all underdogs. When they get on top they are just as intolerant and cruel as the people were to them when they were underneath.” (Eleanor and Harry: The Correspondence of Eleanor Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman Eleanor Roosevelt, [Scribner/Drew, 2002] p.187.)
No fan of Stanley, as he calls the American University the most Jewish of institutions; however,
Jason Stanley, a philosophy professor who recently decided to leave Yale to go teach in Canada, recently explained on PBS’ Amanpour & Company why he thinks the Trump administration’s efforts are actually boosting antisemitic tropes:
This is reinforcing antisemitic tropes all across the political spectrum. … What are the most toxic antisemitic tropes? Well, “Jews control the institutions.” This is absolutely reinforcing this. Any young American is going to think: Remember what happened when they took down the world’s greatest university system on behalf of Jewish safety? And this will go down in history books — the history of this era will say that Jewish people were the sledgehammer for fascism. So if we don’t speak out, if we American Jews do not speak out against this, this will be a grim chapter in our history as Americans. It’s the first time in my life as an American that I have been fearful of our status as equal Americans — not because of the protests on campus, which, as I said, had a lot of Jewish students in them. But because we are suddenly at the center of U.S. politics. It’s never good to be in the crosshairs for us. And we are being used to destroy democracy.
So, this following little doozy would be put on the targets for IOF and others loving the Jewish Raping Murdering Starving Displacing Poisoning Polluting Occupied State of “Israel”/Palestine.
Over an effing billion of these Goy-ionists?
Days later, India launched Operation Sindoor, a wave of air strikes, describing them as “non-escalatory” in nature. Yes, that is the face of Judaism in that part of the world, where Benzion Mileikowsky works wonders on the Jewish Population where 84 percent plus want all Palestinians wiped from lower Greater Israel.
Many of the drones used in the operation were Israeli-made.
Among the systems deployed was the Harop, a “suicide drone” developed by Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI). Designed to hover above a target area before diving for impact, the Harop carries a 10-kilogram warhead and can remain airborne for nearly six hours.
Since acquiring the Harop, India has increasingly relied on it.
Oshrit Birvadker, a fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, toldThe Times of Israel that India’s use of Harop drones reflects “Israel’s growing footprint in Indian defense.”
That’s fourth globally in arms sales, Jewish State of Murdering Maiming Raping Starving Poisoning Polluting Displacing Israel (sic).
Marching to get into the Katz’s and Benzion Mileikowsky’s heads? For fuck’s sake!
Chris Hedges: This is the end. The final blood-soaked chapter of the genocide. It will be over soon. Weeks. At most. Two million people are camped out amongst the rubble or in the open air. Dozens are killed and wounded daily from Israeli shells, missiles, drones, bombs and bullets. They lack clean water, medicine and food. They have reached a point of collapse. Sick. Injured. Terrified. Humiliated. Abandoned. Destitute. Starving. Hopeless.
In the last pages of this horror story, Israel is sadistically baiting starving Palestinians with promises of food, luring them to the narrow and congested nine-mile ribbon of land that borders Egypt. Israel and its cynically named Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), allegedly funded by Israel’s Ministry of Defense and the Mossad, is weaponizing starvation. It is enticing Palestinians to southern Gaza the way the Nazis enticed starving Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto to board trains to the death camps. The goal is not to feed the Palestinians. No one seriously argues there is enough food or aid hubs. The goal is to cram Palestinians into heavily guarded compounds and deport them.
Some bulwarks across international community would stop this. Fuck, it is a Jewish project across all DNA-lines.
Given Britain’s continued support for Israel, from refusing to implement a full arms embargo to continuing to send RAF spy flights over Gaza from the British base at RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus, Ahmed questions whether efforts have indeed been enough.
Israeli drones sprayed the Madleen with a white substance and an Israeli boat rammed the aid vessel before commandos boarded it, all because it contained things like baby food, medicine and prosthetics. Israel must defend itself from those things, apparently.
Is this a certain brand of Jewish Inspired, Supported, Financed death and murder cult? Is the question antisemitic?
Dirty dirty Sweden:
The Temporary Protection Directive (2001/55/EC) (commonly referred to as collective temporary protection) was activated in March 2022, granting Ukrainians seeking refuge temporary protection in EU countries, including Sweden. This directive provides residence permits, access to work, education, and limited social benefits without requiring individuals to go through the standard asylum process.
However, the practicalities of the Directive’s use differed significantly between countries. Sweden, despite its, until recent, reputation of being relatively liberal in its migration policies, has at times, lagged behind its Scandinavian neighbors in supporting Ukrainian displaced people. To illustrate this, it is useful to compare the Swedish approach to that of other Nordic states, as well as Poland.
Bizarrely, Israel’s act of piracy was described by the BBC as “diverting” the Madleen. In what universe was this a diversion? When you capture people in international waters who have committed no crime, you have not diverted them, you have kidnapped them. The crew of the Madleen are hostages, and not only that, Israel is already bragging about how it plans to abuse them.
The crew of 12, who the media describe as “activists”, comprised of journalists, politicians, and a doctor. They are to be taken to the port of Ashdod where they will be psychologically tortured by the IDF/IOF.
Israel Katz says he has given the order to make the crew watch footage of October 7th to show them “exactly who the terrorist organization they came to support and for whom they work is”. Presumably, they will only watch the killings carried out by Hamas and not the enactment of the Hannibal Directive killing hundreds of Jews by Jews.
Pointing out the non-Jews and Jews involved, is that antisemitic?
Remember this Jewish guy?
1992 document published by the US Department of Defense, known as the Wolfowitz Doctrine (because it was co-written by Paul Wolfowitz, who then served as US undersecretary of defense for policy, before later returning as Secretary of Defense under George W. Bush).
Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power. These regions include Western Europe, East Asia, the territory of the former Soviet Union, and Southwest Asia.
The Trump administration’s foreign policy is still consistent with much of the Wolfowitz Doctrine. Although Trump has de-prioritized Western Europe and the territory of the former USSR, he has dedicated significant resources to US military operations in East Asia and Southwest Asia (also known as the Middle East).
Yep, even CIA-drenched Wikipedia advances Ratner’s Judaism:
Ely Ratner, who served as the assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs in Biden’s Pentagon, wrote approvingly on X/Twitter, “Rhetoric aside, on actual defense policy Secretary Hegseth’s speech was near total continuity with the previous administration”.
“That’s good, but we’ll need heightened urgency, attention, and resources to address the China challenge”, Ratner added.
This fellow for years advanced his Jewishness for sure Zyklon or Final Solution Blinken:
Biden’s neoconservative Secretary of State Antony Blinken had also maintained a hardline anti-China position.
“We cannot rely on Beijing to change its trajectory. So we will shape the strategic environment around Beijing”, he said.
Blinken added, “The scale and the scope of the challenge posed by the People’s Republic of China will test American diplomacy like nothing we’ve seen before”.
Tucker Carlson has posted an extraordinary article on X that could potentially stop a war with Iran. As everyone knows, Carlson’s political views are admired by President Donald Trump who sees the former Fox commentator as a blunt, but fair-minded analyst who sees the world in similar terms as himself. And while there’s no evidence that the two men communicate regularly, a number of pundits believe that Carlson has influenced Trump’s thinking, particularly on matters related to foreign policy. That said, it is entirely possible that Trump will read Carlson’s June 4 post on Iran, and see that—once again—influential neocons are making every effort to drag the US into another bloody conflict in the Middle East to achieve Israel’s ambition of becoming the preeminent power in the region. Here’s Carlson:
Mark Levin was at the White House today, lobbying for war with Iran. To be clear, Levin has no plans to fight in this or any other war. He’s demanding that American troops do it. We need to stop Iran from building nuclear weapons, he and like-minded ideologues in Washington are now arguing. They’re just weeks away.
If this sounds familiar, it’s because the same people have been making the same claim since at least the 1990s. It’s a lie. In fact, there is zero credible intelligence that suggests Iran is anywhere near building a bomb or has plans to. None. Anyone who claims otherwise is ignorant or dishonest. If the US government knew Iran was weeks from possessing a nuclear weapon, we’d be at war already.
Iran knows this, which is why they aren’t building one. Iran also knows it’s unwise to give up its weapons program entirely. Muammar Gaddafi tried that and wound up sodomized with a bayonet. As soon as Gaddafi disarmed, NATO killed him. Iran’s leaders saw that happen. They learned the obvious lesson.
So why is Mark Levin once again hyperventilating about weapons of mass destruction? To distract you from the real goal, which is regime change — young Americans heading back to the Middle East to topple yet another government. Virtually no one will say this out loud. America’s record of overthrowing foreign leaders is so embarrassingly counterproductive that regime change has become a synonym for disaster. Officially, no one supports it. So instead of telling the truth about their motives, they manufacture hysteria: “A country like Iran can never have the bomb! They’ll nuke Los Angeles! We have to act now!” Tucker Carlson (tuckercarlsonliveshowpodcast)
*****
Back to the death spiral of the Jewish Controlled Palestine:
Should a drone vaporize some nameless soul on the other side of the planet, who among us wants to make a fuss? What if it turns out they were a terrorist? What if the default accusation proves true, and we by implication be labeled terrorist sympathizers, ostracized, yelled at? It is generally the case that people are most zealously motivated by the worst plausible thing that could happen to them. For some, the worst plausible thing might be the ending of their bloodline in a missile strike. Their entire lives turned to rubble and all of it preemptively justified in the name of fighting terrorists who are terrorists by default on account of having been killed. For others, the worst plausible thing is being yelled at.
You cannot decimate a people, carry out saturation bombing over 20 months to obliterate their homes, villages and cities, massacre tens of thousands of innocent people, set up a siege to ensure mass starvation, drive them from land where they have lived for centuries and not expect blowback. The genocide will end. The response to the reign of state terror will begin. If you think it won’t you know nothing about human nature or history. The killing of two Israeli diplomats in Washington and the attack against supporters of Israel at a protest in Boulder, Colorado, are only the start.
Chaim Engel, who took part in the uprising at the Nazis’ Sobibor death camp in Poland, described how, armed with a knife, he attacked a guard in the camp.
“It’s not a decision,” Engel explained years later. “You just react, instinctively you react to that, and I figured, ‘Let us to do, and go and do it.’ And I went. I went with the man in the office and we killed this German. With every jab, I said, ‘That is for my father, for my mother, for all these people, all the Jews you killed.’”
Does anyone expect Palestinians to act differently? How are they to react when Europe and the United States, who hold themselves up as the vanguards of civilization, backed a genocide that butchered their parents, their children, their communities, occupied their land and blasted their cities and homes into rubble? How can they not hate those who did this to them?
What message has this genocide imparted not only to Palestinians, but to all in the Global South?
It is unequivocal. You do not matter. Humanitarian law does not apply to you. We do not care about your suffering, the murder of your children. You are vermin. You are worthless. You deserve to be killed, starved and dispossessed. You should be erased from the face of the earth.
“To preserve the values of the civilized world, it is necessary to set fire to a library,” El Akkad writes:
To blow up a mosque. To incinerate olive trees. To dress up in the lingerie of women who fled and then take pictures. To level universities. To loot jewelry, art, food. Banks. To arrest children for picking vegetables. To shoot children for throwing stones. To parade the captured in their underwear. To break a man’s teeth and shove a toilet brush in his mouth. To let combat dogs loose on a man with Down syndrome and then leave him to die. Otherwise, the uncivilized world might win.
There are people I have known for years who I will never speak to again. They know what is happening. Who does not know? They will not risk alienating their colleagues, being smeared as an antisemite, jeopardizing their status, being reprimanded or losing their jobs. They do not risk death, the way Palestinians do. They risk tarnishing the pathetic monuments of status and wealth they spent their lives constructing. Idols. They bow down before these idols. They worship these idols. They are enslaved by them.
At the feet of these idols lie tens of thousands of murdered Palestinians.
In today’s Ethiopia, ruled by a US backed gangster named Abiy Ahmed, things are falling apart. To start with 75% of the country is out of the government’s control as insurgencies rage. “Prime Minister” Abiy is, in reality, only the Mayor of the capital Addis Ababa with rebel armies ringing the city only 30 miles from its outskirts.
On one side of Addis Ababa is the ethnic Amhara FANO (patriot) fighters. On the other side of Addis Ababa is the Oromo rebels. Being that these two ethnic groups, nations really, are the two largest in Ethiopia you can get an idea of just how desperate the situation the gangster regime of Abiy Ahmed finds itself in.
Inflation is raging with electricity rates having just doubled with food shortages, runaway prices and corruption ruling the roost.
Its not a good time to get seriously sick in Ethiopia because all the doctors have gone on strike demanding enough salaries to survive on. 165 of the top doctors in the country have been arrested with dozens of the top leadership of the medical profession having had to skip town, one jump ahead of the secret police, many taking refuge in next door Eritrea.
All the teachers have also gone on strike, demanding wages that some of them have never received, ever. That’s right, the gangsters who are running what’s left of the Ethiopian government, stopped paying the teachers quite a while back with new hires having never been paid.
Owing billion$ and with little in the way of foreign currency earnings (coffee is he number one income generator) the Abiy gangster regime can’t pay its bills, all too typical of Ethiopia over the decades since 1991. The western banksters at the IMF just promised another “emergency loan” for $260 million, adding on to the many billion$ already owed.
The banksters in the west are talking about having to hold another conference on “debt reduction for Africa” knowing all to well just how impossible it is for those African countries still in their debt bondage to make even their interest payments. As in the past, Ethiopia “debt reduction” is at the top of the forgiveness list, bailing out, once again, their gangster on the beat.
These financial bloodsuckers have been borrowing from their central banks for almost 20 years at little more than 0% interest while making tens of billion$ of “high risk loans” to Ethiopia at interest rates of 7-8% so its hard to feel sorry for them if they have to write of a few billion$ after deducting their “losses” from their tax bill.
The only thing keeping the Abiy regime afloat, able to continue to stave off the growing rebel army’s surrounding it, is the military largess of the United Arab Emirates, whose supply of Chinese drones and bombers leave a trail of death and destruction. But even these, mostly used against civilians, have been unable to stem the tide of rebellion and the circle around Addis Ababa continues to tighten.
You could be excused for being a little doubtful about what I write for almost none of this is making its way into the MSM in the west, or internationally. Hey, its the Horn of Africa, right, about which the world has grown weary of tales of famine, plagues and bloodshed. Even the so called “alternative” media has had little coverage of how things are falling apart in Ethiopia.
So don’t be surprised when, not if, the western backed gangster regime of Ethiopia’s Abiy Ahmed collapses. It could be a lot sooner than most of us expect.
What comes next looks more and more like the original Abyssinian Empire, only renamed “Ethiopia” in the mid-20th century, will tear itself apart into new African nations with names like Oromia, Amhara, Tigray, Afar and several others. We are talking about 120 million people in today’s Ethiopian empire, with the Oromo’s, 50+million strong, Africa’s largest nation and second largest language, being a major part of these changes.
At the forefront of this revolution against Africa’s largest indigenous empire are the Amharas and their army of “FANO/Patriots”, who have recently combined their regional militias as well as their political leadership into one unified force. Amhara nationalism has become so strong the Ethiopian army has stopped training Amhara units because once they have completed their military training they desert en masse with their weapons, slipping of to join the growing FANO armed forces.
The one bright light in this darkness is the role what I have called “the oasis of Africa”, Eritrea, has and will be playing in helping advise and mediate the perils to come. As the saying goes “All roads to peace in the Horn of Africa run through Asmara, Eritrea”, once again. Eritrea will do its duty to its fellow Horn of Africans and continue to shoulder its responsibilities to establish a peace based on mutual respect and cooperation between people in this up to now blighted part of the world. One thing the west doesn’t want is a strong, united, independent Horn of Africa, a strategically critical part of the world. So don’t be surprised when Eritrea starts to bring order to all this chaos the banksters in the west and their minions in the media start to rant and rave, once again spewing vile lies and slanders about Eritrea and trying to make sure that no good deed in Africa goes unpunished.
I have visited Iran twice. Once in June 1980 to witness an unprecedented event: the world’s first Islamic Revolution. It was the very start of my writing career.
The second time was in 2018 and part of my interest was to get a sense of how disenchanted the population was — or was not — with life under the Ayatollahs decades after the creation of the Islamic Republic.
I loved my time in Iran and found ordinary Iranians to be such wonderful, cultured and kind people.
When I heard the news today of Israel’s attack on Iran I had the kind of emotional response that should never be seen in public. I was apoplectic with rage and disgust, I vented bitterly and emotively.
Then I calmed down. And here is what I would like to say:
Just last week former CIA officer Ray McGovern, who wrote daily intelligence briefings for the US President during his 27-year career, reminded me when I interviewed him that the assessment of the US intelligence community has been for years that Iran ceased its nuclear weapons programme in 2003 and had not recommenced since.
The departing CIA director William Burns confirmed this assessment recently. Propaganda aside, there is nothing new other than a US-Israeli campaign that has shredded any concept of international laws or norms.
I won’t mince words: what we are witnessing is the racist, genocidal Israeli regime, armed and encouraged by the US, Germany, UK and other Western regimes, launching a war that has no justification other than the expansion of Israeli power and the advancement of its Greater Israel project.
This year, using American, German and British armaments, supported by underlings like Australia and New Zealand, the Israelis have pursued their genocide against the Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza, and attacked various neighbours, including Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Iran.
They represent a clear and present danger to peace and stability in the region.
Iran has operated with considerable restraint but has also shown its willingness to use its military to keep the US-Israeli menace at bay. What most people forget is that the project to secure Iran’s borders and keep the likes of the British, Israelis and Americans out is a multi-generational project that long predates the Islamic Revolution.
I would recommend Iran: A modern history by the US-based scholar Abbas Amanat that provides a long-view of the evolution of the Iranian state and how it has survived centuries of pressure and multiple occupations from imperial powers, including Russia, Britain, the US and others.
Hard-fought independence
The country was raped by the Brits and the Americans and has won a hard-fought independence that is being seriously challenged, not from within, but by the Israelis and the Western warlords who have wrecked so many countries and killed millions of men, women and children in the region over recent decades.
I spoke and messaged with Iranian friends today both in Iran and in New Zealand and the response was consistent. They felt, one of them said, 10 times more hurt and emotional than I did.
Understandable.
A New Zealand-based Iranian friend had to leave work as soon as he heard the news. He scanned Iranian social media and found people were upset, angry and overwhelmingly supportive of the government.
“They destroyed entire apartment buildings! Why?”, “People will be very supportive of the regime now because they have attacked civilians.”
“My parents are in the capital. I was so scared for them.”
Just a couple of years ago scholars like Professor Amanat estimated that core support for the regime was probably only around 20 percent. That was my impression too when I visited in 2018.
Nationalism, existential menace
Israel and the US have changed that. Nationalism and an existential menace will see Iranians rally around the flag.
Something I learnt in Iran, in between visiting the magnificent ruins of the capital of the Achaemenid Empire at Persepolis, exploring a Zoroastrian Tower of Silence, chowing down on insanely good food in Yazd, talking with a scholar and then a dissident in Isfahan, and exploring an ancient Sassanian fort and a caravanserai in the eastern desert, was that the Iranians are the most politically astute people in the region.
Many I spoke to were quite open about their disdain for the regime but none of them sought a counter-revolution.
They knew what that would bring: the wolves (the Americans, the Israelis, the Saudis, and other bad actors) would slip in and tear the country apart. Slow change is the smarter option when you live in this neighbourhood.
Iranians are overwhelmingly well-educated, profoundly courteous and kind, and have a deep sense of history. They know more than enough about what happened to them and to so many other countries once a great power sees an opening.
War is a truly horrific thing that always brings terrible suffering to ordinary people. It is very rarely justified.
Iran was actively negotiating with the Americans who, we now know, were briefed on the attack in advance and will possibly join the attack in the near future.
US senators are baying for Judeo-Christian jihad. Democrat Senator John Fetterman was typical: “Keep wiping out Iranian leadership and the nuclear personnel. We must provide whatever is necessary — military, intelligence, weaponry — to fully back Israel in striking Iran.”
We should have the moral and intellectual honesty to see the truth: Our team, Team Genocide, are the enemies of peace and justice. I wish the Iranian people peace and prosperity.
Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He contributes to Asia Pacific Report and Café Pacific, and hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz.
Owen Ensor, co-founder and CEO of British cultivated pet food startup Meatly, on why political bans shouldn’t deter investors from the alternative protein ecosystem.
There is a dark cloud of local bans in the US and labelling disputes alongside this exciting industry progress. However, we need to have a perspective on these and look at what is actually going on.
In the last few years, many governments have funded, approved, or supported cultivated meat. By contrast, cell-cultivated meat has been banned in a handful of right-wing US states. The balance of debate is clear – there is great technical progress, and almost all governments are backing this innovative product.
So we need to ask ourselves: why are we giving these bans so much attention?
Even the meat industry is against the bans
Courtesy: Meatly
This negative coverage is driven largely by right-leaning political factions, attempting to cast this innovative food technology as the latest battleground in the ever-escalating culture wars. Alarmist language, such as accusations of “global elite authoritarianism“, has been deployed to fuel opposition, particularly in ultra-conservative strongholds.
To date, six US states have banned cultivated meat. At the same time, bans in other regions have been attempted, including Romania, where the bill is stuck in the legislature and is unlikely to proceed, and Italy, where a proposed ban contravenes EU law.
To my knowledge, cultivated meat is the first food ever to be banned before even being on sale, and for political reasons. These bans are purely to appeal to a hard right-wing electorate in certain states. The US meat lobby doesn’t even want cultivated meat banned.
The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association recently stated: “Telling Americans what they can and cannot buy at the grocery store does not align with NCBA’s policy book or our conservative values… and setting a precedent that the federal government can remove a product from the shelves completely is not wise for the cattle industry, when we have no idea who might be sitting in the White House or in Congress 10 years from now.”
The global excitement for cultivated meat
Courtesy: Meatly
Looking beyond these bans, we get a clearer, more genuine understanding of the development and excitement of this industry.
Globally, there is a growing consensus in some of the world’s largest economies that cultivated meat and other cell-cultivated food solutions hold the keys to bolstering food security and creating a food system which supports sustainable farming.
Several markets across the globe – including the US, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Austria, and Singapore – have already granted regulatory clearance for cultivated meat for either human or pet consumption. A Trump appointee has also signed off on the most recent US approvals.
These nations and regions, spanning diverse political landscapes and geographical locations, have undertaken rigorous safety assessments and concluded that cultivated meat is a viable and safe food source. This crucial step of regulatory approval signals a fundamental acceptance of the technology and paves the way for its integration into a sustainable food system.
But that’s not all. The financial backing for cultivated meat research and development paints an even broader picture of commitment to this new food industry. A remarkable 22 countries, encompassing virtually every major global economy, have actively funded cultivated meat initiatives.
This extensive list includes nations such as Canada, China, Norway, Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Israel, France, Germany, Poland, Spain, India, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Brazil, in addition to those with regulatory approvals.
It’s clear that while a handful of regions grapple with politically motivated bans, the overwhelming global direction of travel points firmly towards acceptance and support.
A trillion-dollar opportunity
Courtesy: Jack Lawson/Meatly
Such widespread investment and attention underscore a deep-seated understanding of the potential benefits that cultivated meat offers across a spectrum of critical areas, beyond just tackling the substantial emissions behind industrial animal agriculture.
The biggest benefit is an economic one. The global meat market is worth $1.55T, and global demand for meat continues to grow. Countries that can get ahead on cultivated meat and other cellular agriculture technologies are looking at a major economic win, creating local industries that can feed people sustainably while creating jobs and generating revenue.
Cultivated meat will also boost food security, not threaten it. This innovation can help produce sustainable meat in high volumes, while farmers can focus on high-quality, high-value regeneratively farmed meat. These proteins can also shorten supply chains and make nations less dependent on imported meat. This will have knock-on benefits for human health, where a reliance on industrial agriculture will limit the use of antibiotics and the risk of spread of zoonotic diseases such as avian flu.
That’s why, when a handful of conservative US states push back with politically motivated bans, it feels increasingly out of sync with this broader global momentum and more like an attempt to stifle innovation and limit consumer choice. The sole outcome of this is that the future of food is passed from the US to Europe and Asia.
It’s clear that by focusing on these bans, we obscure the significant progress being made globally, the substantial investments being channelled into the sector, and the growing recognition of its crucial role in building a more sustainable and secure food future.
What this means for the industry
Graphic by Green Queen
For cultivated meat companies, the advice is simple: stay focused.
The world is vast, and almost all regions actively support and encourage the development and commercialisation of cultivated meat. Direct your attention, resources, and efforts towards these receptive markets. Engage with governments and regulatory bodies that understand the value proposition and are committed to fostering innovation. The long-term trajectory is undeniably positive, and short-term political noise should not derail strategic goals.
For investors, the message is equally resolute: recognise the global landscape.
The commitment to cultivated meat is not confined to a few progressive enclaves; it has widespread support, embraced by major economies and forward-thinking governments worldwide. We’ve had VCs say they will not invest because of the ‘geopolitical debate’. It’s really staggering to hear a global VC fund is making investment decisions based on what a provincial hard-right legislator is doing.
Let’s be very clear: you can build an exceptionally profitable, high-return business outside of Alabama… in fact, you can build an exceptional business outside of the US.
The potential for significant returns and the opportunity to contribute to a more sustainable future remains, with the global support for cultivated meat providing a robust foundation for long-term growth and success. Now is actually the ideal time to be investing, given the suppressed valuations that the current debate has created.
The direction of travel is clear. Governments around the world realise the environmental, health, economic, security, and ethical potential of cultivated meat, as well as the value in allowing consumers and the free market to decide which safe products should be sold. It’s time we started having this define the political conversation around cultivated meat.
NZ must immediately expel the Israeli Ambassador for this unprovoked attack on Iran.
As moral and ethical people, we must turn away from Israel’s new war crime, they have started a war, we must as righteous people condemn Israel and their enabler America.
This is the beginning of madness.
We cannot be party to it.
Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh, reporting from Amman, Jordan, said the Israeli army radio was reporting that in addition to the air strikes, Israel’s external intelligence service Mossad had carried out some sabotage activities and attacks inside Iran.
“There are also several reports and leaks in the Israeli media talking not only about the assassination of the top chief of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard but rather a very large number of senior military commanders in addition to prominent academics and nuclear scientists,” she said.
“This is a very large-scale attack, not just on military installations, but also on the people who could potentially be making decisions about what Iran can do next, how Iran can respond to this attack that continues as we speak.”
It’s been an anxious and uneasy few months for disabled people, with threats of drastic cuts to our benefits on the horizon. As always with the government, there’s been a distinct lack of clarity, even around when the legislation will be announced and debated – though we expect it to be before the actual consultation has ended, which tells you everything you need to know.
Here to not ease our minds in any way, is Rachel Reeves with the government’s spending review.
There was much speculation leading up to the spending review that DWP cuts could be softened and the reading of the welfare reform bill delayed, as the labour government is facing mass rebellion within it’s ranks from those who actually care. However there was no indication of this in the spending review- in fact there was no indication they’d considered disabled people at all.
There was a great deal promised in the spending review, and I use the word promised as I don’t believe all of it will come to fruition. More funding for schools, more housing, a big injection to the NHS and a more comprehensive and joined up transport system across the country. Support for young people, more funding to deprived communities, backing the high street and more British business for run down communities.
However there was one thing missing- there was absolutely no mention of disabled people, not just the cuts we face but absolutely no reference to us in any of the exciting new plans.
The spending review: everything but disabled people
In the housing announcement, whilst there was a commitment to social and affordable homes, there was no guarantee of how many of these homes would be accessible to disabled people. There are currently 104,000 disabled people on council waiting lists for accessible and adaptable homes, but Reeves has not announced how much will be earmarked to ensure disabled people are housed too. In fact her line that these will be “homes built for working people” pretty much cemented it.
There was huge support in the chamber for the spending review announcement that work will be done to make transport more joined up across the country. As someone living in the north east I’m always angry that it takes me longer to get to parts of Yorkshire by public transport than it does to get straight to London, which of course has a direct line.
However, despite growing awareness of how inaccessible public transport is thanks to Tanni Grey-Thompson and other campaigners, we were of course missed from the transport overhaul. It’s ironic that Labour is forcing disabled people into work, while with the state of public transport its impossible for many of us to actually get there.
It’s of course great that there will be more funding for school and the free school meals programme will be expanded. But again with disabled people left out of the equation there are some very obvious holes here.
‘Renewing’
I’m never going to be against free school meals, because they’re going to be needed more than ever if cuts come in and disabled parents cant afford to feed their kids- it could be the only meal a day they get.
Prior to the spending review in Prime Ministers Questions, Starmer was asked what he’d do to ensure SEND students didn’t fall through the cracks and that parents wouldn’t be prosecuted if their kids didn’t attend school as a result. His response was wishy washy as ever but he affirmed “I do think we are striking the right balance”, whatever that means.
There was a huge promise to inject more cash into the NHS, which its going to need when thousands of disabled people suddenly become a whole lot sicker as a result of DWP benefit cuts. Support for young people to get into work, but no mention of how young disabled people, who Kendall previously said were “Taking the mickey” would be supported.
The part I found the most insulting was the commitment to supporting deprived communities. Reeves said:
We are renewing Britain but I know too many people in too many parts of this country are yet to feel it.
This is very true and especially in working class communities, but contrary to what she believes this will not be made better by Labour policy, in fact working class communities are only going to struggle more if benefits are cut and the fall out will be pushed onto local councils who already have tighter budgets.
It’s all well and good promising to back the high street and bring more British business to the communities that need it, but when you’re pushing disabled people into further poverty, their local community will be hit hard.
Even the Tories slammed the spending review
Reeves punctuated her announcement by repeatedly stating that Labour was a government for working people, and that just says it all. At one point she affirmed “Priorities of this spending review are the priorities of working people.” Despite the fact that many disabled people do work, the government have made it clear that disabled people on benefits will be shut out of society.
As if all of this wasn’t horrendous enough, the opposition to Reeves speech was an even bigger windbag. Enter Mel Stride, former DWP Wet Wipe and now Shadow Chancellor.
Stride was loving every fucking second of how ridiculous Reeves’ announcement was, but unfortunately a lot of his retorts made sense. He bellowed:
Instead of proper reforms to PIP, their own plans are a rushed cost cutting exercise so rushed they even had to change them after they announced them and their own backbenchers are in full revolt.
It’s worth pointing out here though that Strides own welfare plans involved making PIP vouchers and socially prescribing loneliness support groups, whilst also cutting benefits.
The next Stride shit nugget made me feel sick at how much I agreed with him:
The drumbeat for U-turns pounding in her ears yet her tone today suggests all is well.
Because, as much as it pains me, Stride is right here (sick noises).
The spending review exposed Labour’s cruelty
Whilst there is rebellion brewing with Labour about benefit cuts, Reeves yesterday decided to present a perfect rose tinted plan of how much Labour was going to save Britain – as long as you completely disregard disabled people.
All in all Reeves spending review felt like putting a sticking plaster on a knife wound when the knife is still being twisted. No amount of extra funding for essential service will matter when the government are preparing to plunge hundreds of thousands of disabled people into poverty that will kill many of us.
The Labour government are trying their hardest to prove how much they will make lives better, but for disabled people their cruelty is all too clear.
COMMENTARY:By Steven Cowan, editor of Against The Current
The New Zealand Foreign Minster’s decision to issue a travel ban against two Israeli far-right politicians is little more than a tokenistic gesture in opposing Israel’s actions.
It is an attempt to appease growing opposition to Israel’s war, but the fact that Israel has killed more than 54,000 innocent people in Gaza, a third under the age of 18, still leaves the New Zealand government unmoved.
Foreign Minister Peters gave the game away when he commented that the sanctions were targeted towards two individuals, rather than the Israeli government.
Issuing travel bans against two Israeli politicians, who are unlikely to visit New Zealand at any stage, is the easy option.
It appears to be doing something to protest against Israel’s actions when actually doing nothing. And it doesn’t contradict the interests of the United States in the Middle East.
Under the government of Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, New Zealand has become a vassal state of American imperialism.
New Zealand has joined four other countries, the United States, Britain, Australia and Norway, in issuing a travel ban. But all four countries continue to supply Israel with arms.
Unions demand stronger action
Last week, the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions demanded that the New Zealand government take stronger action against Israel. In a letter to Winston Peters, CTU president Richard Wagstaff wrote:
“For too long, the international community has allowed the state of Israel to act with impunity. It is now very clearly engaged in genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza.
“All efforts must be made to put diplomatic and economic pressure on Israel to end this murderous campaign.”
THE CTU has called for a series of sanctions to be imposed on Israel. They include “a ban on all imports of goods made in whole or in part in Israel” and “a rapid review of Crown investments and immediately divest from any financial interests in Israeli companies”.
The CTU is also calling for the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador.
This article was first published on Steven Cowan’s website Against The Current. Republished with permission.
By 2027, your water bills will be up. Your rivers will still stink. And two American credit funds will be quietly sailing off with the profits via Thames Water.
Thames Water: KKR looked inside – and ran
In June 2025, KKR – one of the world’s most aggressive private equity firms – circled Thames Water.
This is a firm that’s happily turned collapsed retailers, energy firms, and hospitals into gold mines. It sent in consultants. Built the models. Briefed Whitehall. And then?
Nothing.
No bid. No press release. Just silence. Because inside Thames, it didn’t find a turnaround story; it found a corpse in a pinstripe suit:
£19bn in debt, hidden across offshore holding companies and synthetic
structures
£20bn+ in required upgrades – just to stop raw sewage spilling into rivers
A regulator too timid or captured to act
No ability to raise prices
Criminal investigations in motion
Even KKR – who survived Toys “R” Us, TXU, Envision, and worse – walked. Quietly. Completely.
That left a vacuum. And in finance, vacuum equals opportunity.
They didn’t buy shares. They bought the debt stack.
And when the covenants broke – they took control.
No fuss. No delay. Just a clean corporate coup.
Silver Point: the scalpel
Founded by two ex-Goldman Sachs partners, Silver Point is a distress-focused credit shop with a surgical approach to broken companies.
What it does:
Buy distressed bonds at deep discounts
Wait for covenant breaches
Use creditor rights to seize control
Replace boards, restructure debt
Strip the business for value
Exit – fast
It doesn’t run utilities. It doesn’t fix them. It takes them apart like stolen cars in a chop shop.
It works quietly, surgically, and without PR. When Silver Point shows up, management disappears – and the spreadsheet becomes law.
Elliott Management: the hammer
Elliott isn’t just a hedge fund. It’s a legal and financial enforcement machine.
Run by Paul Singer, Elliott is infamous in sovereign debt circles – and feared in corporate boardrooms.
It has:
Sued Argentina and seized a navy frigate as collateral
Blocked Dell’s $25bn buyout
Forced out Twitter’s CEO
Targeted Samsung, SoftBank, AT&T – and won
Its strategy isn’t “turnaround.” It’s value extraction through pressure and law. It doesn’t negotiate. It files motions.
At Thames, it watched the covenants crack – and pulled the trigger. All legal. All silent. All done.
How they took control
There was no buyout. No regulator resistance. No shareholder vote. Just covenants – those fine-print clauses in debt contracts that shift power when things go south.
New Thames will be sold or floated by 2027. OldCo? Buried offshore. Written off. Forgotten.
It has already happened elsewhere:
TXU
PG&E
Mallinckrodt
Debenhams
Carillion
Same model. Same silence. Same result.
The real cost
This isn’t just about Thames.
It’s a template for distressed UK infrastructure:
Load it with debt
Strip it for yield
Wait for collapse
Let the creditors in
Repackage the remains
Sell it on
Behind every utility bill is a financial scheme no one voted for – and no one was meant to understand.
This is not regulation. It’s not public service. It’s structured extraction.
Final word
By 2027, you’ll be invited to invest in ‘New Thames’ – a gleaming ESG-brochured success story.
But here’s what they won’t tell you:
£40bn in liabilities buried offshore
Rivers still choked with effluent
A regulator who folded
Water bills still rising
This wasn’t a rescue. It was a re-branding – for profit, not repair.
Britain’s water. The public’s bill. Their exit. Their payday. Their yacht.
The logical take on Thames Water
This is not the behavior of a functioning society stewarding its vital systems. It’s economic cannibalism in a tailored suit.
What we’re watching isn’t innovation. It’s late-stage finance cosplay – where parasitic capital masquerades as stewardship, while asset-stripping the infrastructure that makes civilisation possible.
Water. Energy. Rail. Health. All of it up for sale. All of it mortgaged to funds who see rivers, pipes, and people as line items on a cap table.
And the irony?
The state could take this asset back today. It could restructure the debt, raise the tariffs, and reinvest the proceeds for the public – keeping the upside, strengthening the economy, modernising the system.
But it won’t.
Because our governments are either:
Too financially illiterate to understand the instruments
Too ideologically captured to challenge the system
Or too cowardly to do anything but watch as public goods are auctioned off and bled dry.
So instead, we privatise the gains and socialise the sludge. Again.
We are not managing a modern economy. We are administering its slow and gleaming liquidation.
Denny’s
