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Category: United States

  • Mamdani’s Win in NYC Transforms America’s Mid-Term Political Contests

    A typical initial take on the totally unexpected landslide win, by the self-declared socialist Zohran Mamdani, of the Democratic nomination for (and thus almost certainly) the Mayoralty of NYC, was Eric Levitz’s June 25 Vox News article “What Democrats can (and can’t) learn from Zohran Mamdani’s triumph,” which said that

    Some on the left have suggested that Mamdani’s victory proves Democrats do not need to moderate their party’s image to compete for national power. This argument does not make much sense. To secure a Senate majority in 2026, Democrats will need to win multiple states that backed Donald Trump over Kamala Harris by double digits. And even if Democrats give up on winning Senate control next year and shoot for doing so in 2028, they will still need to win in states that voted for Trump all three times he was on the ballot.

    According to some political scientists, pollsters, and pundits, doing this will require Democrats to moderate their national reputation, since modern voters tend to judge candidates less by their own idiosyncratic positions than by their party’s general image. In this analysis, acquiring the power necessary for advancing even incremental progressive change federally requires the Democratic leadership to observe strict ideological discipline. So long as the party’s brand is toxic to the median voter in Ohio — who backed Trump every single time he’s been on the ballot — Democrats will have no prayer of passing ambitious federal legislation or confirming liberal Supreme Court justices.

    This theory could very well be wrong. But a socialist winning 43.5 percent of the vote in a Democratic primary in New York City does not tell us much about its validity one way or another.

    However, that was 43.5% of the voters in a four-candidate race, in which 36.4% went to the overwhelming favorite by ‘the experts’, Andrew Cuomo, 11.3% went to another candidate, and 4.3% went to the corruption-scandal-plagued current incumbent Mr. Adrienne Adams. So, even if Mr. Mamdani won’t receive the donations or endorsements of ANY of NYC’s billionaires and their media, New York City is going to have its first socialist and anti-Wall-Street Mayor in 2025, and all of those “political scientists,  pollsters,  and pundits” will be proven wrong; and here is why:

    All indicators are that currently Americans are very dissatisfied with both Parties; the public sentiment in favor of a new Third political Party to become formed is at an all-time-high; and the public’s polled trust in America’s institutions and especially in its governmental and media institutions is at an all-time low.

    Nonetheless the ‘experts’ overwhelmingly predict upon the basis of the assumptions that worked for them in the past. When voters have been asked by pollsters what their POLICY-preferences are, their answers are remarkably as they were in the past. However, this does NOT say anything about the public’s policy-PRIORITIES, which have recently changed RADICALLY. I have several times stated this, but it is the most-meaningful polling result so far this year, and is extremely relevant to the Mayoralty contest in NYC, so I shall repeat it again:

    On February 14, the AP headlined “Where US adults think the government is spending too much, according to AP-NORC polling,” and listed in rank-order according to the opposite (“spending too little”) the following 8 Government functions: 1. Social Security; 2. Medicare; 3. Education; 4. Assistance to the poor; 5. Medicaid; 6. Border security; 7. Federal law enforcement; 8. The Military. That’s right: the American public (and by an overwhelming margin) are THE LEAST SUPPORTIVE of spending more money on the military, and the MOST SUPPORTIVE of spending more money on Social Security, Medicare, Education, Assistance to the poor, and Medicaid (those latter five being the functions the Republican Party has always been the most vocal to call “waste, fraud, and abuse” and try to cut — but those 5 were the most-favored by the American public). Meanwhile, The Military, which actually receives 53% (and in the latest year far more than that) of the money that the Congress allocates each year and gets signed into law by the President, keeps getting, each year, over 50% of the annually appropriated federal funds. Furthermore, the U.S. Defense Department is the only Department of the federal Government so corrupt, so intensely corrupt, that it has never been audited.

    Trump is increasing the military and border security, and decreasing education, assistance to the poor, Medicaid, federal law enforcement, and even Social Security and Medicare (the latter two by laying off many of the people who staff those bureaucracies). This Government’s policy-priorities are like the public’s turned upside-down — in other words: are the REVERSE of the public’s — and therefore the U.S. Government right now is a perfect example of a dictatorship. One might say that this is so in only the Executive branch, but it’s not necessarily true: As always when one political faction (regardless whether it it is one Party or a coalition of Parties) has control over both the Executive and the Legislative branches of the Government — as now the case in the U.S. — these two branches (Executive and Legislative) function as one, and there then will even be a totalitarian dictatorship if they can get the Judicial branch or Supreme Court to call it “Constitutional.” Currently, the U.S. is slipping from a dictatorship towards a totalitarian dictatorship; but America has been a dictatorship ever since at least 1980. And that is a dictatorship by the super-rich.

    As the liberal (Democratic Party) wing of America’s aristocracy said, in the person of its Warren Buffett, “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” (He told this to the conservative Ben Stein, reporting in the aristocracy’s New York Times, under the headline “In Class Warfare, Guess Which Class Is Winning”.)

    To see the empirical evidences proving that there IS class-warfare in America, and that the billionaire-class is ruling this country and (behind the scenes) writing and executing its laws, click here. That’s the situation as it had been since at least 1980, but the current trend away from that is toward even more of a dictatorship (by the super-rich) in America.

    Between now and November 4 — the upcoming NYC Mayoralty election — there is plenty of time for a rip-roaring campaign that will either rip the Democrat to pieces, or else rip the Republican nominee to pieces. The likelihood that Mamdani will get ripped to pieces by the Republicans seems low to me because he is the son of academic Mahmood Mamdani and filmmaker Mira Nair. Click on those and you will see a personal background that explains his politics; and, so, the likelihood of scandal being found by Republican opposition researchers against him is just about as low as it can go, though freakish exceptions do exist to contradict any generality.

    The BIG issue in politics, which will be coming increasingly to the fore during all of the political contests throughout Trump’s second term, will be TRUST (honesty). Levitz’s article misses this fact entirely when he says “4) The odds of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez winning in 2028 look higher. Finally, it is easier to picture Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez winning the Democratic Party’s 2028 presidential nomination today than it was yesterday.” She has been enough of a disappointment to progressive voters (such as on the the U.S.-funded Israeli genocide against Gazans, regarding which, she has continued to speak only in platitudes, knowing that she can climb her way up ONLY if she can get the Party’s billionaires to back her), as to make Levitz’s analogy of Cortez to Mamdani an unintended and false insult to Mamadani. So, Levitz’s comparing her to Mamdani is so very far off-base that Levitz’s throw there might as well have been into the stands, as to the baseman, trying to stop the base-runner.

    Mamdani’s win of the Democratic nomination will probably turn out to have been a major turning-point in American politics. The Democratic Party’s billionaires will have lots of difficulty dealing with it, and might even lose their grip-hold of the Party. All of them turning toward the Republican Party would end the hoax of their saying we have a democracy because we give you the choice: it’s between arsenic and cyanide. That’s what they’ve done to our ‘democracy’.

    The post Mamdani’s Win in NYC Transforms America’s Mid-Term Political Contests first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • NATO’s 5% Pledge: An Obscene Betrayal of Global Needs

    No to NATO protest at The Hague, June 22, 2025. Photo credit: Xinhua News

    At this week’s NATO summit in The Hague, leaders announced an alarming new goal: push military spending to 5% of nations’ GDP by 2035. Framed as a response to rising global threats, particularly from Russia and terrorism, the declaration was hailed as a historic step. But in truth, it represents a major step backward—away from addressing the urgent needs of people and the planet, and toward an arms race that will impoverish societies while enriching weapons contractors.

    This outrageous 5% spending target didn’t come out of nowhere—it’s the direct result of years of bullying by Donald Trump. During his first term, Trump repeatedly berated NATO members for not spending enough on their militaries, pressuring them to meet a 2% GDP threshold that was already controversial and so excessive that nine NATO countries still fall below that “target”.

    Now, with Trump back in the White House, NATO leaders are falling in line, setting a staggering 5% target that even the United States—already spending over $1 trillion a year on its military—doesn’t reach. This is not defense; it’s extortion on a global scale, pushed by a president who views diplomacy as a shakedown and war as good business.

    Countries across Europe and North America are already slashing public services, yet they are now expected to divert even more taxpayer money into war preparations. Currently, no NATO country spends more on the military than on health or education. But if they all meet the new 5% military spending goal, 21 of them would spend more on weapons than on schools.

    Spain was one of the few to reject this escalation, with Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez making clear that his government would not sacrifice pensions and social programs to meet a militarized spending target. Other governments, including those of Belgium and Slovakia, quietly pushed back as well.

    Still, NATO leaders pressed on, cheered by Secretary-General Mark Rutte, who fawned over Donald Trump’s demand that Europe boost defense spending. Rutte even referred to Trump as “Daddy,” a comment that—while dismissed as a joke—spoke volumes about NATO’s subservience to U.S. militarism. Under Trump’s influence, the alliance is shedding even the pretense of being a defensive pact, embracing instead the language and logic of perpetual war.

    Just before NATO leaders were gathering at the Hague, protesters took to the streets under the banner “No to NATO.” And back in their home countries, civic groups are demanding a redirection of resources toward climate justice, healthcare, and peace. Polls show that majorities in the U.S. oppose increased military spending, but NATO is not accountable to the people. It’s accountable to political elites, arms manufacturers, and a Cold War logic that sees every global development through the lens of threat and domination.

    NATO’s expansion, both in terms of war spending and size (it has grown from 12 founding members to 32 countries today), has not brought peace. On the contrary. The alliance’s promise that Ukraine would one day join its ranks was one of the triggers for Russia’s brutal war, and instead of de-escalating, the alliance has doubled down with weapons, not diplomacy. In Gaza, Israel continues its U.S.-backed war with impunity, while NATO nations send more arms and offer no serious push for peace. Now the alliance wants to drain public coffers to sustain these wars indefinitely. NATO is also surrounding its adversaries, particularly Russia, with ever more bases and troops.

    All of this demands a radical rethink. As the world burns—literally—NATO is stocking up on kindling. When healthcare systems are crumbling, schools are underfunded, and blazing temperatures are making large swaths of the planet uninhabitable, the idea that governments should commit billions more to weapons and war is obscene. Real security doesn’t come from tanks and missiles—it comes from strong communities, global cooperation, and urgent action on our shared crises.

    We need to flip the script. That means cutting military budgets, withdrawing from endless wars, and beginning a serious conversation about dismantling NATO. The alliance, born of the Cold War, is now a stumbling block to global peace and an active participant in war-making. Its latest summit only reinforces that reality.

    This is not just about NATO’s budget—it’s about our future. Every euro or dollar spent on weapons is one not spent on confronting the climate crisis, lifting people out of poverty, or building a peaceful world. For the future of our planet, we must reject NATO and the war economy.

    The post NATO’s 5% Pledge: An Obscene Betrayal of Global Needs first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Ruling from Houses of Clay: Regime Change for Washington and Tel Aviv

    “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.” — The Book Of Proverbs, 16:18

    “CEASEFIRE IS IN EFFECT!” Trump shouts in upper case impotent rage into the pixel abyss.

    To bring about and sustain peace, the leaders of empires must surrender the illusion that they can maintain control of people and events in far-flung places. It is imperative, an empire’s elites let go of their domination compulsions and live by the principles inherent to compassion. Hopeless and risible fantasy, huh?

    Trump, who cannot quote a single line of scripture, hero to Christian evangelicals, might fall from his golf cart, stricken by a Paul On The Road to Damascus experience, and renounce his past behavior, defined by cruelty and greed, then call Bibi Netanyahu, and advise him to fall to his knees, as did King David, and repent and beg for forgiveness to The Creator for the massive amount of blood he has been responsible for spilling.

    According to scripture (hello, Ted Cruz): Jesus posited regarding John the Baptist: “For I say unto you, Among those that are born of women there is not a greater prophet than John the Baptist: but he that is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he?” – Luke 7:28

    What is meant by the word, “least”?

    In Matthew 25:40: “The ‘least’ among us” is clarified: To wit, Jesus proclaims, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

    One must be willfully deaf and blind to not grasp that to avoid earthly life becoming Hell on Earth: empathy must reign; the outsider must be bestowed with kindness; the poor must be lifted up; the sick must be attended to; and those imprisoned should be granted compassion.

    Does any of the above sound like the policies of the current administration – whose most loyal supporters claim to be Christians? Yes, the mindset of Trump et al. is so at odds with the Gospel Of Jesus that a pentecost of derisive laughter should descend from Heaven that would shake the Earth and awaken the dead who would rise due to an apocalypse of hilarity.

    No photo description available.
    King David On His Knees: “Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God” — Psalm 51-14

    Yet another image arises: In Death’s Grand ballroom: The War Party’s dance of death with Christian Zionists proceeds as the capitalist media plays on.

    In 1 Samuel 15, the God of Israel orders the first King of Israel, Saul, to carry out a genocidal rampage on the Amalekites (a semi-nomadic people inhabiting the edges of southern Canaan).

    Old Testament Samuel said unto Saul, (1) “I am the one the Lord sent to anoint you king over his people Israel; so listen now to the message from the Lord. (2) This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. (3) Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’”

    The unforgivable trespass committed by the Amalekites: A number of generations back, their ancestors had refused to be in alliance with the Israelites in their land-seizing, atrocity-inflicting wars to establish nationhood. Yet, later, King Saul was condemned by God, The Lord Of Hosts, for not slaughtering every person and all of the creatures within reach of his sword dwelling in Amalek. (Saul had spared The Amalekites’ King, Agag and a smattering of the land’s most valuable livestock.) Hence, Samuel, the prophet, channeling the command of the God Of Israelites, reported to Saul, due to his disobedience to a divine command, he must be dethroned.

    Let’s think this through, Samuel hears voices in his head insisting on mass murder. King Saul, unquestioningly, follows the directions proffered by the prophecy – but not to the very blood-drench letter, thus he is disgraced and loses his kingship.

    To say the least, this is a parcel of problematic mythos … if taken literally. And many in the present day Zionist state, evidence suggests, have done just that.

    George W. Bush also heard the voice of The Lord Of Host (FYI: Lord Of Hosts (Geta Yeserawit) translates from the original biblical era Amharic as: “Lord of Armies” thus places emphasis on the God of Israel’s role as a warrior).

    Donald Trump believes he was spared from assassination by a divine intervention and, thereby, has been called to fulfill a destiny of biblical scale.

    May be an image of 1 person
    John 1:29, where John the Baptist proclaims, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who [bombs] away the sin of the world!”

    Therefore, The Sermon On Mar Largo follows verily:

    The Sermon On Mar-a-Lago follows verily:

    Beat farm equipment into the weapons of war. Blessed are the war machine propagandists. The grifters will inherit the (nuclear-scorched) earth.

    Blessed are the sycophants who kiss The Donald’s Most High’s ass and call it holy communion. Blessed are those who pursue and prosecute powerless outsiders, for bullies are made in the image of dear leader, The Lord Of The Downward Punch.

    Blessed are the pussy-grabbers for they will sojourn into the Land Of Epstein and be granted earthly immunity. Blessed are the on-bended knee media for they will inherit a diminishing viewer share yet be not cursed with self-awareness.

    Blessed are those who hunger for the Holy Emperor Don’s approval and crave more and more for they will be seated at The Table Of Mendacity and eat and eat more of their own corruption and call it manna. Rejoice and revel in your spite, blood-lust, and war propaganda because your prophecy will be rewarded by high-dollar, donor-class funded think tanks.

    Do not think that Donald J. Christ has come to abolish the Law Of Profiteers. He has not come to abolish human folly but to bloat it into such grotesque form that those possessed of a mustard seed-size of righteousness will finally and at long last rise up and whose cry of outrage will shake the unholy air and restore the land to sanity.

    Speaking of the insanity of leadership:

    In the Book Of Daniel, the prophet Daniel, during a period of exile and Jewish captivity in Babylon interpreted a dream for Babylon’s King, Nebuchadnezzar, involving a tall, magnificent tree, its expansive bough capable of bestowing succor to man and beast. But a messenger from Heaven commands the tree cut down to a stump. Daniel, going all Jungian on Nebuchadnezzar’s royal ass, interprets the dream thus: The tree is a representation of Nebuchadnezzar insofar as both the reach of his kingdom and the massive extent of his pridefulness. The Angel Of God commands, Nebuchadnezzar will fall prey to madness.

    “He was driven away from people and ate grass like an ox. His body was drenched with the dew of heaven until this hair grew like the feathers of an eagle and his nails like the claws of a bird” –Daniel 4:33.

    The symbol of the stump represents: The mad king will only recover when his humiliation, delivered by a power greater than his pride, causes him to repent thus cease attacking neighboring lands and slaughtering, deporting, imprisoning the inhabitant of the lands he occupies. The story goes, Nebuchadnezzar’s madness lasted seven years during which time he walked on all fours like a wild animal and grazed on grass in the manner of a bovine in the field.


    William Blake, Nebuchadnezzar, 1795

    It follows, only by their fall can the pride-bloated be lifted up. The splendor of empire will be reduced to a stump when it is built on the backs of the poor and watered in the blood of the innocent.

    The present day embodiment of power-maddened, pride-bloated leadership struts, preens and boasts his bombing campaign was a thing of glory to behold under heaven. One does not require an Old Testament seer nor angel dispatched from a wrath-gripped God to apprehend the astounding degree of folly evinced by Trump and the parallels to the hubristic actions of the Zionist state.

    In closing and in stark contrast, from The Book Of Proverbs:

    16:7: When a man’s ways please the Lord, he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him:

    8 Better is a little with righteousness than great revenues without right.

    9 A man’s heart deviseth his way: but the Lord directeth his steps.

    10 A divine sentence is in the lips of the king: his mouth transgresseth not in judgment.

    11 A just weight and balance are the Lord’s: all the weights of the bag are his work.

    12 It is an abomination to kings to commit wickedness: for the throne is established by righteousness.

    13 Righteous lips are the delight of kings; and they love him that speaketh right.

    14 The wrath of a king is as messengers of death: but a wise man will pacify it.

    15 In the light of the king’s countenance is life; and his favour is as a cloud of the latter rain.

    16 How much better is it to get wisdom than gold! and to get understanding rather to be chosen than silver!

    17 The highway of the upright is to depart from evil: he that keepeth his way preserveth his soul.

    18 Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.

    19 Better it is to be of an humble spirit with the lowly, than to divide the spoil with the proud.

    If the verses above were taken to heart, regime change of the mind would come to be, and, in Washington and Tel Aviv, the political ground would shake, its corrupt leadership would be deposed in disgrace and relegated to crawl on their bellies through the dust of history, and peace might become a possibility.

    O’ Ye of little faith…you have been proven right all too many times for your jaundiced opinion to be healed by a laying on the hands of faith alone. Yet, history reveals, overreaching tyrants find they are grasping a handful of dust.

    “How much more those who dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, who are crushed like the moth.” — Job 4:19

    Marc Chagall Daniel, 1956
    Marc Chagall, Daniel, 1956

    The post Ruling from Houses of Clay: Regime Change for Washington and Tel Aviv first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The Ceasefire With Iran Reveals The Limits Of Israel’s Power

    Much of the current crop of commentary on Israel’s war of aggression on Iran has adopted the familiar tone of breathless admiration: praise for its targeting precision, the elegance of its intelligence-gathering, the almost clinical efficiency with which it eliminates not only combatants but scientists, technicians, and — under the now-naturalized euphemism — “sites and infrastructure.”

    Israel’s opening salvo in the war was, by most conventional metrics, effective. The Iranians, caught off guard, scrambled to recalibrate. Though they gradually recovered some measure of initiative, their response bore the marks of persistence and attrition rather than dominance.

    The post The Ceasefire With Iran Reveals The Limits Of Israel’s Power appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Tulsi Gabbard: Another Lesser Evilist Offering

    On 20 June 2025, Galloway spoke about his dream team for the next presidential race: “Tulsi Gabbard, Tucker Carlson, president and vice president of the United States of America.”

    He advised Gabbard to “resign if Trump joins the war and should make plain that she intends to run for president.” She hasn’t.

    Given the public rebukes of her by Donald Trump, speculation had emerged of her doing just that: resigning. However, Gabbard has instead attempted to win her way back into Trump’s good book.

    Two years ago, George Galloway, who served five-terms as a UK MP, and now hosts the popular Mother of all Talk Shows came across as a Gabbard fanboy,

    I have come to the view that the best possible president for the United States in 2024 is Tulsi Gabbard. I think she’s got the looks. I think she’s got style. I think she’s got the eloquence. And most of her politics, but by no means all, are as good as you’re going to get from anyone with a chance of winning the presidency of the United states. So there’s quite a few hedges and qualifications in there, but I have come to the view that Tulsi Gabbard for president is our best bet.

    Horrors that looks, sartorial, and eloquence should be enounced as foremost considerations — or even being considerations at all — for a political leader. A consideration not mentioned by Galloway was intelligence.

    When one scrutinizes Gabbard on her record, support for her would again be an appeal to lesser evilism. She may, however, be one of the best among so many regressivist politicians.

    Gabbard, in particular, comes to the fore on militarism and foreign affairs. What is part of her record here?

    Gabbard is regressivist on Palestine and Israel

    Gabbard seems not to realize that Palestine is state, unrecognized as such by the United States, that is under siege, occupation, theft of resources, and an ongoing genocide (sped up greatly since 7 October 2023). Moreover, Gabbard does not call what Israel has been carrying out since 7 October as a genocide.

    She focuses her ire on Hamas’s “evil” actions. In a 10 October 2023 interview on Fox News Tonight (hosted by Brian Kilmeade filling in for Tucker Carlson), Gabbard stated: “Israel has not only the right but the responsibility to defend itself against these terrorists who slaughtered innocent civilians.”

    On 10 October 2023, Gabbard posted on X: “Hamas is responsible for this war. They could end it now by surrendering, releasing hostages, and laying down their arms.” In other words, Gabbard denies Palestinians the inalienable right to resist occupation, an occupation that is rooted in killing, racism, humiliation, and brutality.

    Gabbard also rejected calls for a ceasefire, implying that she backs the continued Israeli military operations in Gaza. (The Tulsi Gabbard Show, Ep. 45)

    While Gabbard has never referred to Israel’s genocidal actions, she does make this accusation of Hamas. In an X post on 10 October 2023, she stated: “Hamas is a genocidal terrorist group. They must be defeated.”

    Gabbard took aim at those Democrats who are

    accusing Israel of committing a genocide. It it is the height of hypocrisy because they’re apologists and supporters of these Islamist Hamas terrorists who are calling for a genocide the extermination of all Jews not just in Israel but around the world and we’re seeing this being carried out by these violent mobs and threats and other things that are happening against Jewish people literally uh around the world.

    By Gabbard’s logic, she could be criticized as an apologist and supporter of these Israeli Zionist terrorists.

    Gabbard also opines, “This is not a ‘resistance’ movement. Hamas is a jihadist terrorist group funded by Iran, whose goal is the destruction of Israel.” (The Tulsi Gabbard Show, Ep. 45)

    She accuses Hamas of using human shields, but she does not criticize Israel using Palestinian children as human shields. Even the Zionist friendly BBC reports this.(“Hamas uses Palestinian civilians as human shields, knowing Israel will retaliate. They provoke war, then exploit the suffering for propaganda.” Cited by Deepseek as “Tulsi Gabbard on Israel-Palestine Conflict,” CNN, 7 May 2019.)

    Gabbard criticizes the ICERD Genocide Case (2024): “South Africa’s case at the ICJ is a propaganda stunt. Hamas is the real war criminal here.” (Twitter/X)

    Gabbard is regressivist on Iran

    Gabbard has called for regime change in Iran: “The Iranian people deserve freedom from this oppressive, theocratic dictatorship.” (Fox News, 2023)

    She was also against Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal: “The JCPOA gave Iran billions while allowing them to keep terror networks intact.” (CNN, 2019)

    Of course, all the talk about Iran and its purported nuclear weapons program has now had a wrench thrown into the works as the US launched an illegal and unannounced war on Iran. Gabbard fell into line behind Trump on this illegal attack (contrary to the UN Charter and without Congressional approval). The repercussions from that US attack will become clearer as time passes.

    Galloway’s Lesser Evilism

    Back to Galloway. Is this really, as Galloway claims about a future Tulsi Gabbard presidential candidacy: “As good as it is going to get”? Have pity on the world, if that is true.

    Can Gabbard represent the conscience of a nation? Surely there are better progressivist choices.

    Right away a courageous woman of integrity such as Medea Benjamin comes to mind.

    The post Tulsi Gabbard: Another Lesser Evilist Offering first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Unrelenting Bolivarian Resistance against Stubborn US Aggression


    On the eve of Venezuela’s presidential election on 29 July 2024, Guardian correspondents, Tiago Rogero (based in Rio de Janeiro) and Sam Jones (based in Madrid) predicted the vote “could end 25 years of socialist rule.” It did not. The following, 30 July, another group of Guardian correspondents gave prominent coverage to far-right wing Venezuelan politician Maria Corina Machado, quoting her claim that “Maduro’s exit was inevitable.” Yet, Nicolas Maduro was inaugurated as the re-elected president for the 2025-2031 term on 10 January 2025.

    The July 2024 presidential election was followed by the election for National Assembly deputies and all 24 governorships of Venezuela’s federal structure on 25 May 2025. Venezuela’s US-funded far-right opposition, led by Machado boycotted the vote. Corporate media outlets –including the New York Times, the Washington Post, Le Monde, El País, the BBC, and others – framed their coverage by labelling the election “divisive” and extensively quoting Machado’s claim that “85% of the electorate did not obey the regime and said no.” In reality, she falsely portrayed the opposition’s boycott as a political victory, implying widespread voter rejection.

    Unlike the July 2024 presidential election –when the far-right factions instigated street violence resulting in 27 deaths at the hands of armed thugs, including two armed attacks on the presidential palace –, the 25 May 2025 legislative and gubernatorial elections (Venezuela’s 32nd electoral process), proceeded calmly and peacefully. However, the far-right’s boycott was never merely a peaceful protest against an election organized by a government they refuse to recognise. Their actions went far beyond that.

    On 28 May, Venezuela’s Interior Minister, Diosdado Cabello, reported the arrest of over 70 individuals of various nationalities (Venezuelan, Colombian, American, Argentine, Spanish, Ecuadorian, Serbian, Albanian and others). Several foreign-funded ‘NGOs’ appeared implicated in the plot. Authorities seized explosives, assault rifles, and other military equipment intended for attacks on foreign embassies, hospitals, emergency services, electricity substations, police stations, and high-profile political figures – particularly those from the opposition who participated in the election. The suspects had entered Venezuela via Colombia. Cabello also revealed that Venezuela’s armed forces had thwarted nearly 60 attacks on oil installations in the preceding ten days. Evidence indicated the terrorist group was led by Venezuela’s far-right leaders.

    This was not their first attempt. The government has also reported the arrest of mercenaries coming from Trinidad and Tobago with ties to a broader network trained in Ecuador – a country now reportedly a hub of cocaine exports. A glance at a map reveals Venezuela’s encirclement by US-aligned hostile forces: Guyana, Ecuador, Colombian narcotraffickers, and SOUTHCOM to its north and beyond.

    Machado’s boycott strategy backfired, fracturing her already divided coalition further when several former boycotters decided to stand as candidates and urged their supporters to vote. The result? Chavismo secured 253 of 285 for the National Assembly and 23 of 24 governorships, including the election of a governor for Guayana Esequiba –a territory Venezuela claims. The sole governorship not won by Chavismo, Cojedes, went to Alberto Galíndez, an opposition politician who recognises Maduro’s legitimacy and accepted the overall results. Moreover, Chavismo gained 1.3 million more votes than in the 2021 elections, demonstrating growing support. With this victory, President Maduro and the Bolivarian Revolution now hold not only the presidency until 2031, but also commanding majorities in the National Assembly and among governorships.

    The May 2025 election results marked a resounding triumph for the Bolivarian government and a stinging defeat for the Trump administration –particularly with the election of Chavista, Admiral Neil Villamizar as governor for Guayana Esequiba. On 23 May, the Guardian quoted Guyana’s president Irfaan Ali,  who denounced the election in this state as an “assault on Guyana’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.” Yet, the report conveniently omitted any mention of the 1966 Geneva Agreement, which underpins Venezuela’s claim.[2]

    In collusion with Guyana, the US has transformed Guyana into a military enclave, using it as a base for regular military provocations against Venezuela since 2021. Strangely, just one day after the election, on 26 May 2025, the Guardian wrote an exhaustively researched feature with stunning photographs –not on Venezuela’s election, but on…the Orinoco crocodile.

    Beyond their self-defeating abstentionism, Machado and the far-right further eroded their credibility by enthusiastically endorsing U.S. sanctions –effectively advocating for Venezuela’s economic strangulation – and cheering Trump’s brutal deportation policies targeting Latin Americans, especially Venezuelans whom he falsely labels as “government-controlled criminals.

    When asked whether she supported Trump’s deeply unpopular policy of deporting Latino and Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador’s CECOT prison –a facility notorious for torture– Machado replied “Absolutely!” –uncritically parroting Trump’s baseless claims.

    The record of Venezuela’s far-right opposition is simply appalling. Not only have they been heavily involved with Colombian narco-traffickers to carry out terrorist acts against their own country, but their leader, Juan Guaidó, even proclaimed himself “interim president” on a Caracas street in 2019. Worse still, this claim was recognized by the U.S.-led Collective West. They colluded with Western powers to facilitate the confiscation of Venezuelan assets—including gold, bank accounts, and property—in actions that amount to nothing less than high treason.

    With the backing of the Collective West, they prolonged the farce of the 2015 National Assembly’s legitimacy—where they once held a majority—long after its mandate expired in 2020. In fact, they still falsely claim legitimacy in 2025, five years after the end of their constitutional term, while continuing to pay monthly U.S. dollar “emoluments” to their obsolete lawmakers.

    Under the guise of a humanitarian effort to bring food by force across the Colombian border, they even attempted a military incursion with Colombian paramilitaries, aiming to seize control of a Venezuelan city and install a “provisional government” to be recognized by the U.S. and the Collective West.

    The Venezuelan opposition’s actions are indefensible. They have been linked to multiple assassination attempts against President Maduro, including plots to decapitate Venezuela’s political and military leadership using explosives. They organized a mercenary incursion aimed at violently overthrowing the Bolivarian government, with the explicit goal of assassinating Maduro and as many Bolivarian leaders as possible. They have enthusiastically supported the U.S. blockade’s economic asphyxiation—which remains in place—while sabotaging every election since 2013 through violent disruptions.

    Repeatedly, they have called on the military to revolt, urging the overthrow of Venezuela’s democratically elected governments (under both Chávez and Maduro). Their tactics include systematic infrastructure sabotage, consistently timed to coincide with elections. They have exacerbated U.S. sanctions by promoting hoarding, artificially inflating prices, and engineering shortages of basic goods—deliberately inflicting severe hardship on the population. Even worse, they manipulated Venezuela’s currency crisis through DolarToday, a platform that daily published inflated exchange rates to fuel hyperinflation.

    The opposition’s transgressions go even further. On multiple occasions they have enlisted the services of mercenary Erik Prince, even launching a crowdfunding campaign (Ya Casi Venezuela) to finance his proposed violent overthrow of President Maduro’s government. They are currently under FBI investigation for large-scale corruption, accused of embezzling nearly US$1 billion in humanitarian aid meant for Venezuelans abroad – of which mere 2% as properly allocated). Worse still, they have fraudulently managed over US$40 billion in Venezuelan assets through shady contracts with Miami-based firms, exchanging national resources for personal bribes. Their attempt to replicate the DolarToday scheme was swiftly  crushed by the government, which acted decisively to shut it down.

    This brazen subversion aligns with broader U.S. imperial ambitions. In a blatant reaffirmation of the Monroe Doctrine, SOUTHCOM commander Admiral Alvin Holsey declared before the Senate Armed Services Committee (13 February 2025) that the U.S. must prevail in the “strategic competition with China in the Western Hemisphere” and counter “Russia’s malign agenda” – naming Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua as their conduits. Thus Washington now openly frames its assault on Bolivarian Revolution as part of its geopolitical competition with China and Russia. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth underscored this stance on 6 June 2025, bluntly stating “We are preparing for war with China.”

    Yet, despite 12 years of relentless aggression since Comandante Chávez’s passing, the Venezuelan people have shown extraordinary resilience, defying predictions of inevitable collapse. The government’s response? Deepening democracy. Ahead of upcoming municipal and mayoral elections (27 July 2025), Venezuela is intensifying its participatory democracy model, empowering the comunas –grassroots, self-managed councils where communities directly decide and implement projects to improve their living standards: direct democracy.

    President Maduro has announced the “creation of the Communal Portfolio Fund of the national budget” that will directly allocate resources to projects developed by local communities. These funds will be managed through communal circuits, with spending priorities democratically decided by commune inhabitants themselves.

    In revealing interview (7 June 2025), Jesús Faría, PSUV Vice Minister of Productive Economy of the PSUV, emphasized the urgent need to accelerate the expansion of Communal direct democracy and consolidate people’s power. Faría made a critical observation: the PSUV must take the lead in advancing the commune system. With tens of thousands of grassroots organizations across Venezuela, the PSUV maintains a Gramscian hegemony –not by imposition but by organically articulating this vibrant social ecosystem into a cohesive for socialism. Its structural bonds with them enable it to harmonize and mobilize this rich social universe towards socialist construction.

    Thus, even as U.S. imperialism doubles down on its fanatical crusade to destroy the Bolivarian Revolution, Venezuela is fortifying its socialist foundations. By empowering communes, deepening participatory democracy, and strengthening the PSUV’s vanguard role, the revolution is building unshakable resilience—proving that people’s power, not imperial aggression, will shape Venezuela’s future.

    ENDNOTES:

    [1] If we take December 1999 as the start, of the Bolivarian Revolution is 25 years old; the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign was founded on 25 May 2005, thus making 20 years old. We pay homage to the Bolivarian process for keeping alive and fulfilling humanity’s dream of a better world.

    [2] On the details of the Venezuela-Guyana dispute.

    The post Unrelenting Bolivarian Resistance against Stubborn US Aggression first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Bombs Away

    “Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace. If they do not, future attacks will be far greater and a lot easier,” said President Trump as he addressed the American people shortly after announcing he was bombing Iran. I was too young to watch my political leaders spiral themselves into the war in Iraq – I was only old enough to be able to comprehend the final toll: one million Iraqis died because my country couldn’t help itself from another power grab in the Middle East. I can’t help but feel that the same thing is happening all over again.

    Myself, and countless other Americans, are ashamed at how many people have been killed in our name or with our tax dollars. The comfy politicians in Washington condescend to us — that our concern for human life actually goes against our own interests — as if Palestinians and Iranians do more to hurt Americans than the politicians and billionaires who gutted out industry, automated our jobs, privatized education, and cut social services. In our daily life, the people who actually hate us only become more obvious.

    Last week before it was absolutely clear that the US would formally enter the war, public opinion polls came out that a vast majority of Americans did not want the US to go to war. This was not the case in the lead up to the war in Iraq. Times and opinions have changed amongst the masses, but that didn’t seem to matter to anyone in the White House yesterday.

    In the aftermath of 9/11, our leaders were awfully good at convincing Americans that they needed revenge for what happened. Even if it wasn’t logical, even if it didn’t make sense — we invaded two countries that had nothing to do with 9/11. Revenge is often carried out in a blind rage, and I would say that characterized US actions in Iraq, given the barbaric nature of how the war was carried out, how many civilians died, and with a fallout that’s done very little for “strategic security interests”. I would say that it was a “blind rage” if its violence wasn’t so calculated — specifically to enrich a handful of Americans. It did succeed in that endeavor, and American families had their sons and daughters sent home in body bags so Haliburton’s stock could skyrocket. The Iraqi people, with unsolicited promises to be “liberated” from Saddam, got nothing but grief and trauma that continues twenty years later. It was perhaps hard to justify all of that to the public; American public opinion has changed a lot, and so has US-led warfare as a result of that shift.

    So, Donald Trump has made it obvious (in case it wasn’t before) that the consent of the governed doesn’t hold any weight in the United States of America. However, it’s still an interesting thing to examine in our current context. Despite a barrage of lies about nuclear weapons (like Saddam’s WMDs) and images of scary, oppressive mullahs (like the ‘dictator Saddam’) Americans still opposed a US war on Iran. If Americans were to leverage this public opinion against war in a meaningful way, by taking some sort of step past having a stance in their heads, what would it challenge? What would it look like? Will Americans oppose – at a large enough scale, US warfare that looks slightly different than it did in 2003?

    US warmaking is more subtle to the American public, but not less deadly to the countries we impose it on. Trump insisted in his address to the nation that he has no plans to keep attacking Iran as long as they “negotiate”. This is after Israel killed Iranian negotiators with US approval, and after Iran had made clear their terms of negotiating that the US just couldn’t accept. There’s no definition about what Iranian compliance would look like, setting the stage for further bombing campaigns whenever Trump decides. There might not be troops on the ground or a US military occupation, but a war they refuse to call one is still functionally a war. It still kills people. It still destabilizes countries.

    The US fights wars with money, private contractors, and “offensive support”. Only pouring into the streets to oppose sending troops to fight on behalf of Israel against Iran might not be the demand that becomes most pressing in the coming days and weeks. For example, will Americans oppose a war with Iran if it’s primarily conducted from the air?

    There’s also a large sector of the American public that still morally supports Israel’s military in one way or another, whether it be overtly or with silence on the subject. Some of them might also make up the large portion of society that opposes the US going to war. For the last two years, as Israel has carried out its genocide campaign against Palestinians in Gaza, the US has been building up Israel’s military, sending off billions of our tax dollars to make sure Israel was perfectly poised for the moment it decided to kill Iranians. Whether the public who opposes war with Iran likes it or not, their support for Israel as a military ally will directly contradict their opinion opposing war with Iran. You can’t have your cake and eat it too, if we want to put it simply.

    On the other side, Israel’s war crimes in Gaza also might have something to do with why opposition to the war on Iran is so prevalent. Because the back-up justification for attacking Iran, made by the ruling class, in case the nuke lies didn’t work, was portraying Iran’s leaders as scary, irrational, and evil boogeymen. The ruling class, decrying an evil Hitler-esque foreign leader in Iran, is now the boy crying wolf. We were told the same things about the leaders in Libya and Iraq to justify our country bombing of theirs. The result was Libyan, Iraqi, and to a lesser extent, American blood pooling in the streets. On top of that collective memory, we’ve seen our government entrench itself with Netanyahu — a commander of a military that’s killed countless Palestinians and a handful of Americans without any condemnation from our government. If there are murderous and unjust dictators in the Middle East, one of them is named Benjamin Netanyahu, and we are told he’s our greatest ally, and acting on behalf of Israel is acting in the best interest of Americans. Now, even if the US wanted the war on Iran all along, it appears to the world that Israel pulled us into the war – people do not like that, rightfully so.

    If Americans who are against the war can reject these new forms of hybrid warfare as much as they reject the traditional forms of warfare, and the sectors of the public still sympathetic to Israel see the blatant contradictions in front of their eyes — then perhaps this public opinion could mean something real. Furthermore, it’s been made clear that the American ruling class will not change course solely because the people they “serve” oppose what they are doing. They’ve also demonstrated that they are willing to jail and deport people who disagree with them and their foreign policy escapades. The genocide in Gaza has made it clear that Americans standing against the actions of their government do so at great personal risk. Do Americans disagree with US involvement in the war enough? Do they disagree to the point where they are willing to experience threats, jail time, repression, physical harm, or other forms of violence? In the case of a war that could turn nuclear with an untethered Israel and Trump Administration at the helm, I sincerely hope so. 

    The post Bombs Away first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The Century of the Jew is Hot Hot Wars

    Binoy Kampmark | The Mandarin

    Dr Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He writes extensively for various publications, including CounterPunch, Dissident Voice, and Eureka Street. He is currently lecturing at the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies at RMIT University.

    I just interviewed Binoy two hours ago, USA time, 3 PM PST, Sunday, 8 am Australia time.

    It’s extraordinary. The reasoning that led up to the attack on Iran was remarkable because the language and the terminology used is very creepily reminiscent, in fact,of the kind of language that was used in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq by the US-led so-called Coalition of the Willing. And it featured for example uh the reasoning that supposedly a country has a certain capacity — either has the capacity or has the inventory —  of weapons of mass destruction um is an imminent threat let’s not forget the sexed up dossier as it was called then uh supposedly showing that Saddam Hussein’s army have the capacity to, building up this case, padding it up, and making the case that a preemptive attack was necessary, which, of course, is totally ludicrous. Article 2, paragraph 4, makes it very clear in the UN Charter that the use of force is really strictly rationed.

    You know, you cannot violate the sovereignty of states willy-nilly. There is, of course, that self-defense proviso in Article 51 and so on. But to preempt this in this way is remarkable because you have to demonstrate sovereignty. .. that there is this imminent sense of destruction, irreparable damage and so on, and Israel in no way managed in any of its assessments to demonstrate that to be the case.

    We talked about the growing Jewish Semitism, this attack on all humanity, and the disgusting lack of values Western Media have displayed, and Binoy attributes much of that lack of concern for Gazan Humanity, or Iranian Humanity, or Lebanese Humanity, to the GUILT of that so-called Holocaust.

    Using words like Israel + Rogue Nation; Israel + Genocide; Jewish State of Israel + Mass Murder; Judaism a la Israel + White Supremacy; Jews in Israel + Psychopaths; Judaism Now + DIseased — all those combinations and MORE will get your ass in jail or worse.

    But he and I talked for an hour, and that was before I scoured the mainstream news and Telegram channels to see the latest in the President of the USA’s declarations of murdering Iranians, in a much more overtly direct way, though everything about West Asia, the wars, the Jewish Supremacist State, all of the trillions given to Jews in Israel and all the other trillions extracted by Jews in and out of Israel from the global economies, it’s still directed by the Jewish State of Our White Man’s House.

    Here’s our Interview on a Podcast-Substack — Paulo’s.

    So Adolph Bibi and Himmler Trump, working on the Greater Israel.

    Patrick Henningsen sums up the Trump regime,

    His entire cabinet has been bought by a foreign lobby. This is a low point in American history, and this is probably the weakest president politically […] The irony of this is it’s a billionaire Donald Trump, supposedly a genius of business. He doesn’t need the money […] He just doesn’t have the courage to basically be America first. He’s stuck being Israel first.

    Fun stuff over at Postcards from the End:

    Jews funding Trump are Americans, though, so it’s misleading to call them a “foreign lobby.” Like everybody else, Henningsen can’t say “his entire cabinet has been bought by Jews.” Trump is not getting billions from Israel. Bought and blackmailed by domestic Jews, he’s sending tons of American taxpayers’ money to foreign Jews. These righteous genociders are getting a fantastic return, plus countless laughs, on their investment.

    Trump’s enabling of Albert Bourla’s Jewjabs was cheered by all prominent Jews, plus gadfly Ron Unz.

    Binoy and I didn’t get deep into the dementia of the West, of Australia, NZ, the other QueenDumb colonies, and especially the lobotomized AmeriKKKa, but in Australia, it’s the same playbook of PR spin, a la Hasbara, a la Edward Bernays on Growth Hormones and Steroids.

    Binoy is articulate and was willing to go into my house to discuss things, with my bombast and all: We attempted to humanize the suffering, the mass murdering, the maiming, but alas, historians and journalists and political scientists have to keep on keeping on.

    Unlike the New York Times:

    The criminality is advanced in its cancerous stage:

    Donald Trump has carried out direct US air strikes on Iran, bombing what he said were three major nuclear sites.

    “We have completed our very successful attack on the three Nuclear sites in Iran, including Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan”, Trump boasted, in a post on his website Truth Social on 21 June.

    “A full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordow”, he wrote.

    I am sure the Aussies like the Brits like the EuroTrashLandians are all celebrating:

    We are all stuck with this VP Vance and the Jews Running the Minyan in Trump’s Cabal:

    An hour after announcing that he had directly bombed Iran, Trump posted a jpeg of a US flag.

    So, Binoy and I talked about Iran and the Illegal invasion of Iran by the Dirty Demented Sicarios of Isra-Hell, but this was barely on our tongue tips before the 60 minute interview stopped:

    Greater Psychopathic Israel, and so, this sort of Substack will soon get me disappeared or violently handcuffed into the night:

    Facts:

    This strategy was itself based on Israel’s 1996 policy document A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm. In this document Israel’s strategy for regional security included destabilizing and weakening key nations seen as threats. The document explicitly called for efforts to undermine and topple the regimes in Iraq and Syria. It proposed supporting internal opposition within Iraq to weaken Saddam Hussein’s regime, particularly due to concerns over Iraq’s military capabilities and potential weapons of mass destruction, while Syria was viewed as a major regional threat because of its alliance with Iran and its support for Hezbollah. Although not directly calling for military action, the strategy also outlined efforts to counter Iran’s growing regional influence, especially its nuclear ambitions. The overarching aim was to reshape the Middle East by destabilizing these nations to reduce the perceived threats to Israel’s security.

    Jews: [Former United States Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle was the “Study Group Leader,” but the final report included ideas from Douglas Feith, James Colbert, Charles Fairbanks Jr., Jonathan Torop, David Wurmser, Meyrav Wurmser, and IASPS president Robert Loewenberg.]

    *****

    I’ll let the interview stand here, and I’ll be interviewing Binoy with a more traditional Q & A format.

    Cheers, to Binoy, in his land’s dead of Winter.

  • How the US and Israel Used Rafael Grossi to Hijack the IAEA and Start a War on Iran

    IAEA Director General Grossi discusses Iran with former Israeli PM Bennett, June 3, 2022  (GPO)

    Rafael Grossi, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), allowed the IAEA to be used by the United States and Israel—an undeclared nuclear weapons state in long-term violation of IAEA rules—to manufacture a pretext for war on Iran, despite his agency’s own conclusion that Iran had no nuclear weapons program.

    On June 12, based on a damning report by Grossi, a slim majority of the IAEA Board of Governors voted to find Iran in non-compliance with its obligations as an IAEA member. Of the 35 countries represented on the Board, only 19 voted for the resolution, while 3 voted against it, 11 abstained and 2 did not vote.

    The United States contacted eight board member governments on June 10 to persuade them to either vote for the resolution or not to vote. Israeli officials said they saw the U.S. arm-twisting for the IAEA resolution as a significant signal of U.S. support for Israel’s war plans, revealing how much Israel valued the IAEA resolution as diplomatic cover for the war.

    The IAEA board meeting was timed for the final day of President Trump’s 60-day ultimatum to Iran to negotiate a new nuclear agreement. Even as the IAEA board voted, Israel was loading weapons, fuel and drop-tanks on its warplanes for the long flight to Iran and briefing its aircrews on their targets. The first Israeli air strikes hit Iran at 3 a.m. that night.

    On June 20, Iran filed a formal complaint against Director General Grossi with the UN Secretary General and the UN Security Council for undermining his agency’s impartiality, both by his failure to mention the illegality of Israel’s threats and uses of force against Iran in his public statements and by his singular focus on Iran’s alleged violations.

    The source of the IAEA investigation that led to this resolution was a 2018 Israeli intelligence report that its agents had identified three previously undisclosed sites in Iran where Iran had conducted uranium enrichment prior to 2003. In 2019, Grossi opened an investigation, and the IAEA eventually gained access to the sites and detected traces of enriched uranium.

    Despite the fateful consequences of his actions, Grossi has never explained publicly how the IAEA can be sure that Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency or its Iranian collaborators, such as the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (or MEK), did not put the enriched uranium in those sites themselves, as Iranian officials have suggested.

    While the IAEA resolution that triggered this war dealt only with Iran’s enrichment activities prior to 2003, U.S. and Israeli politicians quickly pivoted to unsubstantiated claims that Iran was on the verge of making a nuclear weapon. U.S. intelligence agencies had previously reported that such a complex process would take up to three years, even before Israel and the United States began bombing and degrading Iran’s existing civilian nuclear facilities.

    The IAEA’s previous investigations into unreported nuclear activities in Iran were officially completed in December 2015, when IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano published its “Final Assessment on Past and Present Outstanding Issues regarding Iran’s Nuclear Program.”

    The IAEA assessed that, while some of Iran’s past activities might have been relevant to nuclear weapons, they “did not advance beyond feasibility and scientific studies, and the acquisition of certain relevant technical competences and capabilities.” The IAEA “found no credible indications of the diversion of nuclear material in connection with the possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program.”

    When Yukiya Amano died before the end of his term in 2019, Argentinian diplomat Rafael Grossi was appointed IAEA Director General. Grossi had served as Deputy Director General under Amano and, before that, as Chief of Staff under Director General Mohamed ElBaradei.

    The Israelis have a long record of fabricating false evidence about Iran’s nuclear activities, like the notorious “laptop documents” given to the CIA by the MEK in 2004 and believed to have been created by the Mossad. Douglas Frantz, who wrote a report on Iran’s nuclear program for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2009, revealed that the Mossad created a special unit in 2003 to provide secret briefings on Iran’s nuclear program, using “documents from inside Iran and elsewhere.”

    And yet Grossi collaborated with Israel to pursue its latest allegations. After several years of meetings in Israel and negotiations and inspections in Iran, he wrote his report to the IAEA Board of Governors and scheduled a board meeting to coincide with the planned start date for Israel’s war.

    Israel made its final war preparations in full view of the satellites and intelligence agencies of the western countries that drafted and voted for the resolution. It is no wonder that 13 countries abstained or did not vote, but it is tragic that more neutral countries could not find the wisdom and courage to vote against this insidious resolution.

    The official purpose of the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, is “to promote the safe, secure and peaceful use of nuclear technologies.” Since 1965, all of its 180 member countries have been subject to IAEA safeguards to ensure that their nuclear programs are “not used in such a way as to further any military purpose.”

    The IAEA’s work is obviously compromised in dealing with countries that already have nuclear weapons. North Korea withdrew from the IAEA in 1994, and from all safeguards in 2009. The United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France and China have IAEA safeguard agreements that are based only on “voluntary offers” for “selected” non-military sites. India has a 2009 safeguard agreement that requires it to keep its military and civilian nuclear programs separate, and Pakistan has 10 separate safeguard agreements, but only for civilian nuclear projects, the latest being from 2017 to cover two Chinese-built power stations.

    Israel, however, has only a limited 1975 safeguards agreement for a 1955 civilian nuclear cooperation agreement with the United States. An addendum in 1977 extended the IAEA safeguards agreement indefinitely, even though the cooperation agreement with the U.S. that it covered expired four days later. So, by a parody of compliance that the United States and the IAEA have played along with for half a century, Israel has escaped the scrutiny of IAEA safeguards just as effectively as North Korea.

    Israel began working on a nuclear weapon in the 1950s, with substantial help from Western countries, including France, Britain and Argentina, and made its first weapons in 1966 or 1967. By 2015, when Iran signed the JCPOA nuclear agreement, former Secretary of State Colin Powell wrote in a leaked email that a nuclear weapon would be useless to Iran because “Israel has 200, all targeted on Tehran.” Powell quoted former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad asking, “What would we do with a nuclear weapon? Polish it?”

    In 2003, while Powell tried but failed to make a case for war on Iraq to the UN Security Council, President Bush smeared Iran, Iraq and North Korea as an “axis of evil,” based on their alleged pursuit of “weapons of mass destruction.” The Egyptian IAEA Director, Mohamed ElBaradei, repeatedly assured the Security Council that the IAEA could find no evidence that Iraq was developing a nuclear weapon.

    When the CIA produced a document that showed Iraq importing yellowcake uranium from Niger, just as Israel had secretly imported it from Argentina in the 1960s, the IAEA only took a few hours to recognize the document as a forgery, which ElBaradei immediately reported to the Security Council.

    Bush kept repeating the lie about yellowcake from Niger, and other flagrant lies about Iraq, and the United States invaded and destroyed Iraq based on his lies, a war crime of historic proportions. Most of the world knew that ElBaradei and the IAEA were right all along, and, in 2005, they were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, for exposing Bush’s lies, speaking truth to power and strengthening nuclear non-proliferation.

    In 2007, a U.S. National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) by all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies agreed with the IAEA’s finding that Iran, like Iraq, had no nuclear weapons program. As Bush wrote in his memoirs, “…after the NIE, how could I possibly explain using the military to destroy the nuclear facilities of a country the intelligence community said had no active nuclear weapons program?” Even Bush couldn’t believe he would get away with recycling the same lies to destroy Iran as well as Iraq, and Trump is playing with fire by doing so now.

    ElBaradei wrote in his own memoir, The Age of Deception: Nuclear Diplomacy in Treacherous Times, that if Iran did do some preliminary research on nuclear weapons, it probably began during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, after the US and its allies helped Iraq to manufacture chemical weapons that killed up to 100,000 Iranians.

    The neocons who dominate U.S. post-Cold War foreign policy viewed the Nobel Prize winner ElBaradei as an obstacle to their regime change ambitions around the world, and conducted a covert campaign to find a more compliant new IAEA Director General when his term expired in 2009.

    After Japanese diplomat Yukiya Amano was appointed as the new Director General, U.S. diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks revealed details of his extensive vetting by U.S. diplomats, who reported back to Washington that Amano “was solidly in the U.S. court on every key strategic decision, from high-level personnel appointments to the handling of Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program.”

    After becoming IAEA Director General in 2019, Rafael Grossi not only continued the IAEA’s subservience to U.S. and Western interests and its practice of turning a blind eye to Israel’s nuclear weapons, but also ensured that the IAEA played a critical role in Israel’s march to war on Iran.

    Even as he publicly acknowledged that Iran had no nuclear weapons program and that diplomacy was the only way to resolve the West’s concerns about Iran, Grossi helped Israel to set the stage for war by reopening the IAEA’s investigation into Iran’s past activities. Then, on the very day that Israeli warplanes were being loaded with weapons to bomb Iran, he made sure that the IAEA Board of Governors passed a resolution to give Israel and the U.S. the pretext for war that they wanted.

    In his last year as IAEA Director, Mohamed ElBaradei faced a similar dilemma to the one that Grossi has faced since 2019. In 2008, U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies gave the IAEA copies of documents that appeared to show Iran conducting four distinct types of nuclear weapons research.

    Whereas, in 2003, Bush’s yellowcake document from Niger was clearly a forgery, the IAEA could not establish whether the Israeli documents were authentic or not. So ElBaradei refused to act on them or to make them public, despite considerable political pressure, because, as he wrote in The Age of Deception, he knew the U.S. and Israel “wanted to create the impression that Iran presented an imminent threat, perhaps preparing the grounds for the use of force.” ElBaradei retired in 2009, and those allegations were among the “outstanding issues” that he left to be resolved by Yukiya Amano in 2015.

    If Rafael Grossi had exercised the same caution, impartiality and wisdom as Mohamed ElBaradei did in 2009, it is very possible that the United States and Israel would not be at war with Iran today.

    Mohamed ElBaradei wrote in a tweet on June 17, 2025, “To rely on force and not negotiations is a sure way to destroy the NPT and the nuclear non-proliferation regime (imperfect as it is), and sends a clear message to many countries that their “ultimate security” is to develop nuclear weapons!!!”

    Despite Grossi’s role in U.S.-Israeli war plans as IAEA Director General, or maybe because of it, he has been touted as a Western-backed candidate to succeed Antonio Guterres as UN Secretary General in 2026. That would be a disaster for the world. Fortunately, there are many more qualified candidates to lead the world out of the crisis that Rafael Grossi has helped the U.S. and Israel to plunge it into.

    Rafael Grossi should resign as IAEA Director before he further undermines nuclear non-proliferation and drags the world any closer to nuclear war. And he should also withdraw his name from consideration as a candidate for UN Secretary General.

    The post How the US and Israel Used Rafael Grossi to Hijack the IAEA and Start a War on Iran first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Lessons from Vieques: Resisting U.S. Militarism, Building Unity


    Around two years ago, I watched a puppet show, created by a group of eight to 16-year-olds at the summer camp where I worked, about the eviction of the U.S. Navy from the island of Vieques. After I conducted a few brief workshops reviewing the island’s history of military occupation and contamination, the campers immediately grasped the importance of the decades long struggle to evict the U.S. Navy, which they represented with a puppet of a venomous snake; on the other hand, they used the iconic native Puerto Rican frog, the coquí, to depict participants in the popular uprising against the U.S. military.

    This May marked 22 years since the US Navy was evicted from the island of Vieques. The story of Vieques should be understood by us organizers, just as it was by these campers through their puppet show, as we seek to build an anti-militarist climate movement that breaks down silos between supposedly separate organizing spaces. As we seek to build an anti-militarist climate movement and shape the global narratives in upcoming events, looking at Vieques’ past and present history is crucial.

    Vieques is an island off the coast of mainland Puerto Rico, a U.S. colony since 1898, in a state of limbo where Boricuas (Puerto Ricans) have U.S. citizenship but cannot vote, and at the same time, are unable to pursue self-determination through independence. Vieques was long exploited by wealthy landowners and the U.S. mainland’s economy for sugar production. In 1941, the Navy seized Vieques, with the goal of creating a colonial outpost in the Atlantic Ocean to mirror its base occupying Hawai’i, Pearl Harbor, in the Pacific. The island’s population of 10,000 was then forced to relocate to a small area of the island. Some wealthy landowners sold their land, while the U.S. government confiscated other plots of land for “public” use.

    For over 60 years, the U.S. Navy used Vieques as a bomb testing site, scorching the crust of the island by dropping around three million pounds of napalm, depleted uranium, and other toxic chemicals onto the land. Many of these bombs would then go on to be used on the people and soil of Palestine, itself a deadly testing ground for the U.S. war machine. Despite the extraordinary levels of chemical pollution, there was no hospital on the island. Additionally, the 1920 Jones Act restricted Puerto Rico to importing only U.S.-built, U.S.-owned, U.S.-operated, and U.S.-crewed cargo. This stranglehold continues to make any resources for the island extremely expensive.

    These were clear-cut conditions. The U.S. empire was poisoning the island and cutting it off from necessary goods, demonstrating Puerto Rico’s broader colonial status. In 1999, Daniel Sanes Rodriguez, a civilian employee of the naval base, was killed by an accidental off-target bomb. This was the spark of a protest movement made up of tens of thousands of people demanding the U.S. military leave the island. Protest tactics included encampments in the bomb range, graffiti, destruction of military property, and marches that included every sector of society, including religious leaders, fishers, environmental activists, students, and labor leaders. It also included leaders who were independence activists, statehood advocates, and advocates for commonwealth status.

    In 2001, President George Bush announced that the naval base would be closed. In May 2003, the U.S. Navy left the island and, ironically, converted the former base into a nature reserve. While the U.S. government has stalled for two decades in its promises of clean-up, this was a moment of victory. This monumental achievement was brought about by as wide an array of groups as the base impacted. By uniting in a popular struggle against U.S. militarism, the people of Vieques showed the world that the naval base had absolutely no business continuing to occupy their land. This moment was also considered a massive touchstone in the fight for a free and independent Puerto Rico.

    This isn’t to say that these tactics, this moment, or this rubric for what constitutes victory can be applied to every situation. But we can learn a lot about movement building and breaking out of what can appear to be separate organizing spaces. This was a win for independence, environmentalists, survival, and sovereignty. It’s pretty simple: wherever the U.S. war machine is active, the fight against it and for sovereignty is the fight for the land.

    So why isn’t this mirrored within the belly of the beast? Sometimes it is, in the examples of protests to stop the building of Cop City in Atlanta and in protests against the construction of new prisons. But when we discuss “the climate movement” and “the anti-war movement,” we must address why they’re institutionally separated through organizations, slogans, and targets. It’s no mystery – we can go down the list: funding, “pragmatism,” societal conditioning, greenwashing, internalized racism.

    With COP, the U.N. Climate Conference, less than six months away, it’s time to clarify our targets and identify the flashpoints of struggle. However toothless, co-opted, and irredeemable the annual “diplomatic” event is, with countries around the world cyclically refusing to take any meaningful action to address the climate crisis, it is also an event where the world’s climate movement plays a large role in shaping narratives, either in the conference itself or in people’s counter-conferences.

    We must call attention to  Puerto Rico – how it has been used for NATO training to continue escalation in the environmentally catastrophic Ukraine war, and how it has served the U.S.’s claim of Latin America and the Caribbean as its so-called backyard through its role in the U.S. Southern Command. Just as U.S. militarism in Hawai’i and the Philippines has been used to claim the Asia-Pacific in its escalation against China. We must trace the deadly supply chain of the bombs tested on Vieques, which have since been used to decimate entire communities in  Palestine, destroying the local and global environment. And we must highlight the poisoning of the soil in Vieques, where residents are 27% more likely to be fighting cancer than the rest of Puerto Rico, and 280% more likely to be fighting lung cancer specifically. The same empire that poisoned Vieques now strangles Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela with sanctions, blocking their ability to address the climate crisis effectively. These sites of struggle for national sovereignty are just as much about our collective survival.

    This year, at COP and in every climate space, our only hope is to learn from and center the past and present struggle in Vieques and everywhere else bearing the brunt of U.S. militarism, to clearly understand where our enemies converge, and to act accordingly because one thing that we can learn from Vieques and from the eight to 16-year-old campers telling Vieques’ story is that it’s clear when something is a venomous snake.

    The post Lessons from Vieques: Resisting U.S. Militarism, Building Unity first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Thanksgiving Challenge

    Sooner or later, all of us will have to face this question from a young child over Thanksgiving dinner:
    “Dad, Mom, Grandpa, Grandma – why did we have all those fights with other countries back then?”

    VIETNAM? “We fought them there so that we didn’t have to fight them on Wiltshire Boulevard!”

    CAMBODIA: “So that we didn’t have to fight them in Saigon!”

    LAOS? “So we that we didn’t have to fight them in Danang!”

    GRANADA? “So that we didn’t have to fight them in Saint Thomas!”

    NICARAGUA? “So that we didn’t have to fight them in El Paso!”

    EL SALVADOR? “So that we didn’t have to fight them in Nogales!”

    GAUTEMALA? “So that we didn’t have to fight them in Yuma!”

    HONDURAS? “So that St. Louis wouldn’t be ranked as the Murder Capital of North America!”

    All of CENTRAL AMERICA? “So that the indigenes are kept in peonage – providing law-abiding, tax-paying, God-fearing Americans with an abundance of nutritious bananas at a price they can afford!”

    COLOMBIA? “So that we wouldn’t have to fight them in Peru or Ecuador!”

    LEBANON? “So that we wouldn’t have to fight them in Dearborn!”

    IRAQ in 1990? “So that we wouldn’t have to walk to work or to school!”

    KOSOVO? “So that we didn’t have to fight them in Albania!”

    AFGHANISTAN? “So that we didn’t have to fight them in Washington, New York or MacLean!”

    WHY for 20 YEARS? “So that our generals could fight for honors over in Bagram rather than in the Pentagon!”

    IRAQ – the second time? “So that George W. Bush would stop fighting with his father!”

    LIBYA? “So that Barack Obama wouldn’t have to fight with Hillary!”

    SYRIA? “So that Barack Obama wouldn’t have to fight with Bibi Netanyahu!”

    SOMALIA? “So that we didn’t risk running out of places to train our soldiers and hone their counter-insurgency techniques in order to protect us from them!”

    YEMEN? “So that Crown Prince Mohammed bin-SALMAN would remain our loyal partner and keep inviting our Presidents to bashes in Riyadh with those terrific sword dances!”

    CONGO? “Because Barack Obama was enthralled by Conrad’s Heart of Darkness!”

    MALI? “So that we wouldn’t have to fight then in Niger!”

    NIGER? “So that we wouldn’t have to fight them in Chad!”

    CHAD? “So that we wouldn’t have to fight then again in Burkina-Faso!”

    BURKINO-FASO? “So that we wouldn’t have to fight them again back in MALI!”

    TUNISIA? “So that we wouldn’t have to fight them in Algeria!”

    PANAMA? “So that we wouldn’t have to collar Noriega in South Beach!”

    CUBA: “AULD LANG SYNE!”

    VENEZUELA? “So that we wouldn’t have to fight them in CITGO gas stations!”

    IRAN: “So that we wouldn’t have to fight them in Tel Aviv!”

    RUSSIA – in Ukraine? “So that we wouldn’t have to fight them in the Fulda Gap!”

    NORDSTROM II PIPELINE?: “So that we wouldn’t be haunted by nightmares of Vladimir Putin and Olaf Schulz having a friendly plaudern in Deutsch in Kaliningrad over a beer at the Kropotkin on Teatralnaya!”

    CHINA? “So that we could twirl our index finger in the air shouting – USA! USA!!”

    Dad/Mom: Who is ‘THEM’? “I see that the pumpkin pie is ready. Let’s talk some more after dessert!”

    The post Thanksgiving Challenge first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • US Bombs Have Impacted Foundation of Global Security Order

    Destroying peace. Illustration: Liu Rui/GTDestroying peace. Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

    On Saturday local time, the US announced that it had launched airstrikes on three nuclear facilities in Iran. This marks the first time the US has officially intervened militarily in this round of the Iran-Israel conflict, drawing widespread shock from the international community. UN Secretary-General António Guterres said on social media that the move was “a dangerous escalation in a region already on the edge – and a direct threat to international peace and security.” China’s Foreign Ministry also strongly condemned the US attacks on Iran. US action, which seriously violates the purposes and principles of the UN Charter and international law, not only heightens tensions in the Middle East but also risks triggering a wider crisis.

    Attacking nuclear facilities is extremely dangerous. Due to their unique nature, damage to such sites could lead to severe nuclear leaks, potentially resulting in humanitarian disasters and posing grave risks to regional safety. The tragic past lessons of the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear accidents already showed that the consequences of nuclear leaks don’t pose a threat to a single country – they impact neighboring nations and the global security environment.

    By using “bunker-buster” bombs to “accomplish what Israel could not,” the US has deliberately escalated the level of weaponry used, pouring fuel on the flames of war and pushing the Iran-Israel conflict closer toward an uncontrollable state.

    What the US bombs have impacted is the foundation of the international security order. By attacking nuclear facilities under the safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Washington has set a dangerous precedent. This action, in essence, bypasses both the UN Security Council and the IAEA framework, attempting to unilaterally “resolve” the Iranian nuclear issue through force. This is a serious violation of the purposes and principles of the UN Charter and international law, as well as a rejection of the principled position of the international community, including China and the European Union, which has dealt with the Iranian nuclear issue through multilateral negotiations for many years. Washington’s boast of close cooperation with Israel “as a team” confirms its nature of dragging its ally against international morality and multilateralism.

    For Iran, the strike is a blatant provocation. After responding that it “reserves all options to defend its sovereignty, interests and people,” Tehran on Sunday launched the powerful Kheibar Shekan missile targeting Israel for the first time. According to media reports, Ismail Kowsari, a member of the National Security Commission of the Parliament in Iran, said the country’s parliament voted to approve the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s Supreme National Security Council is expected to weigh in and make a final decision on the matter. Iran is located in the choke point of the Strait of Hormuz, which around one-fifth of the world’s total oil and gas consumption transits through. Once this channel is blocked by the war, international oil prices are bound to fluctuate dramatically, while global shipping security and economic stability will face serious challenges.

    The US military’s “direct involvement” has further complicated and destabilized the Middle East situation, drawing more countries and innocent civilians into the conflict and forcing them to face a loss. Even the Associated Press called the airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities a “perilous decision,” while the New York Times warned that US military action against Iran would “bring risks at every turn.” What is also receiving a lot of attention is that due to US strike on Iran, Yemen’s Houthis announced it would resume attacks on US ships in the Red Sea. The region is already entangled in a complex web of sectarian divisions, proxy wars and external interventions. The facts show that US involvement is causing the Iran-Israel conflict to spill over. Within just one day, international investors rushed to sell off risk assets, and discussions of a “sixth Middle East war” surged across media platforms, reflecting the global community’s growing anxiety over the region’s spiraling instability.

    China has consistently opposed the threat and abuse of using force. It advocates resolving crises through political and diplomatic means. In a recent phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping put forward a “four-point proposal” regarding the Middle East situation: promoting a cease-fire and ending the hostilities is an urgent priority; ensuring the safety of civilians is of paramount importance; opening dialogue and negotiation is the fundamental way forward; and efforts by the international community to promote peace are indispensable. This proposal reflects China’s long-standing and farsighted security vision. History in the Middle East has repeatedly shown that external military intervention never brings peace – it only deepens regional hatred and trauma. The false logic behind US coercion by force runs counter to peace. Hopefully, the parties involved, especially Israel, will implement an immediate cease-fire, ensure the safety of civilians and open dialogue and negotiation to restore peace and stability in the region.

    The post US Bombs Have Impacted Foundation of Global Security Order first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Directive to Iran: Retaliation Bad; De-Escalation Good

    De-escalation has become one of those coarse words in severe need of banishment, best kept in an index used by unredeemable hypocrites. It is used by the living dead in human resources, management worthies and war criminals. It’s almost always used to target the person or entity that exerts retribution or seeks to avenge (dramatic) or merely overcome (mildly) a state of affairs imposed upon them.

    You might be bullied in the workplace for being fastidious and conscientious, showing up your daft colleagues, or reputationally attacked by a member of the establishment keen to conceal his corrupt practices. When contemplating retaliation, the self-appointed middle ground types will call upon you to “de-escalate” the situation, insisting that you appeal to the better side of your bruised nature. After all, you know it was your fault.

    The joining of the United States in the war against Iran made Washington a co-conspirator to soiling international law and profaning its salient provisions. The US was in no immediate danger, nor was there any imminent threat, existential or otherwise, to its interests vis-à-vis Tehran. Yet President Donald Trump, having had the poison of persuasion poured into his ear by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, had succumbed. His will annexed to that of the Israeli premier, Trump ordered the US Air Force on June 22 to conduct bombing raids on three Iranian nuclear facilities: Isfahan, Natanz and Fordow. They were recipients of that hefty example of phallocratic lethality known as the bunker buster, the GBU-57A Massive Ordnance Penetrator. With his usual unwavering confidence, Trump declared in an address to the nation that all the country’s “nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.”

    In violating international law and desecrating that important canon injuncting states from committing crimes against peace, Israel and the United States are not the ones being told to restrain their violence and acknowledge breaching the United Nations Charter, risking yet another conflagration in the Middle East. It is their targeted state, the Republic of Iran, whose officials must “de-escalate” and play nice before the diplomatic table, abandoning a nuclear program, civil or military. “Iran, the bully of the Middle East,” Trump directs, “must now make peace.”

    With suddenness, the advocates and publicists for international law vanished across the broadly described West. In Europe, Canada, the US and Australia, the mores and customs observed by states could be conveniently forgotten and retired. In its place reigned the logic of brute force and unquestioned violence. Provided such violence is exercised by that rogue combine of Amerisrael, deference and dispensation will be afforded. The same could never be said for such countries as China and Russia, abominated for not accepting the “rules-based order” imposed by Western weaponry and force.

    The lamentable, plaintiff responses from Brussels to Canberra tell a sorry tale: pre-emptive war waged against a country’s nuclear and oil facilities is just the sort of thing that one is allowed to do, since the rotter in question is a theocratic state of haughty disposition and regional ambition. You can get away with murdering scientists in their sleep, along with their families, liquidating the upper echelons of their military leadership and killing journalists along the way.

    The approved formula behind these responses is as follows. From the outset, mention that Iran must never acquire a nuclear weapon. If possible, underline any relevant qualities that render it ineligible to any other state that has nuclear weapons. Instruct Tehran that diplomacy is imperative, and retaliation terrible. Behave and exercise restraint.

    Here is Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer of the UK, speaking from his Chequers country retreat: it was “clear Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon”, which was “why our focus has been on de-escalating, getting people back around to negotiate what is a very real threat in relation to the nuclear program.” If one was left in any doubt who the guilty party was, UK Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds helped dispel it, calling Iran “a threat to this country, not in an abstract way, not in a speculative way”.

    The German Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, after convening his security cabinet on the morning of June 22, conveyed his views through German government spokesperson Stefan Kornelius: “Friedrich Merz reiterated his call for Iran to immediately begin negotiations with the US and Israel and to find a diplomatic solution to the conflict.”

    French President Emmanuel Macron similarly got on the de-escalation bandwagon with gusto, giving a teacherly warning to Iran to “exercise the greatest restraint” and dedicate itself to renouncing nuclear weapons. It was the only credible path to peace and security for all. The president conveniently skipped past the huge elephant in the room: Israel’s illicit possession of nuclear weapons, undeclared, unmonitored and extra-legal, as a factor that severely compromises the issue of stability in the Middle East.

    From the European Union, the attackers and the attacked were given equal billing. “I urge all sides to step back, return to the negotiating table and prevent further escalation,” urged Kaja Kallas, Vice-President of the European Commission. The obligatory “Iran must never be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon, as it would be a threat to international security” followed. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also thought it perfectly sensible to matronly instruct the Iranians on the next step: “Now is the moment for Iran to engage in a credible diplomatic solution. The negotiating table is the only way to end this crisis.”

    All these comments are deliciously rich given that Israel has never entertained negotiations on any level with Iran, dismissive of its nuclear energy needs, while the first Trump administration sabotaged the diplomatically brokered Joint Plan of Comprehensive Action that successfully diverted Tehran away from a military nuclear program in favour of a lifting of sanctions. Talk from Amerisrael and their allies would seem to be heavily discounted, if not counterfeit. The glaring, coruscating message to Iran: retaliation bad; de-escalation good.

    The post Directive to Iran: Retaliation Bad; De-Escalation Good first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • Skewed Diplomacy: Europe, Iran and Unhelpful Nuclear Nonsense

    Farce is a regular feature of international relations. It can be gaudy and lurid, dressed up in all manner of outfits. It can adopt an absurd visage that renders the subject comical and lacking in credibility. That subject is the European Union, that curious collective of cobbled, sometimes erratic nation states that has pretensions of having a foreign policy, hints at having a security policy and yearns for a cohering enemy.

    With its pre-emptive attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities and much civilian infrastructure besides, Israel is being treated as a delicate matter. Condemnation of its attacks as a violation of Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter, which prohibits the threat or use of force against independent, sovereign states, should have been a formality. Likewise, the violation of the various protocols dealing with the protection of civilian infrastructure and nuclear facilities.

    Rather than chastise Israel for committing a crime against peace, Iran was chided for exercising a retaliatory right that arose the moment Israeli weaponry started striking targets across the country on June 12. A villain had been identified, but it was not Israel.

    With this skewed and absurd assessment of self-defence, notably by the Europeans and the US, French President Emmanuel Macron could only weakly declare that it was “essential to urgently bring these military operations to an end, as they pose serious threats to regional security.” On June 18, he gave his foreign minister Jean-Nöel Barrott the task of launching an “initiative, with close European partners, to propose a […] negotiated settlement, designed to end the conflict.” The initiative, to commence as talks on June 20 in Geneva, would involve the foreign ministers of France and Germany, along with Iran’s own Abbas Araghchi and relevant officials from the European Union.

    Not much in terms of detail has emerged from that gathering, though Macron was confident, after holding phone talks with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, of a “path” that would “end war and avoid even greater dangers”. To attain that goal, “we will accelerate the negotiations led by France and its European partners with Iran.”

    It has been reported that the E3 countries (France, Germany and the UK) felt that Israel would refuse to accept a ceasefire as things stood, while the resumption of negotiations between Tehran and Washington seemed unlikely. With these factors in mind, the proposal entailed conducting a parallel process of negotiations that would – again, a force of parochial habit – focus on Iranian conduct rather than Israeli aggression. Iran would have to submit to more intrusive inspections, not merely regarding its nuclear program but its ballistic missile arsenal, albeit permitting Tehran a certain uranium enrichment capacity.

    It was clear, in short, who was to wear the dunce’s hat. As Macron reiterated, Tehran could never acquire nuclear weapons. “It is up to Iran to provide full guarantees that its intentions are peaceful.”

    A senior Iranian official, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, saw little to impress him. “The discussions and proposals made by the Europeans in Geneva were unrealistic. Insisting on these positions will not bring Iran and Europe closer to an agreement.” Having given the proposals a cold shower, the official nonetheless conceded that “Iran will review the European proposals in Tehran and present its responses in the next meeting.”

    The European proposals were more than unrealistic. They did nothing to compel Israel to stop its campaign, effectively making the Iranians concede surrender and return to negotiations even as their state is being destabilised. While their command structure and nuclear scientific establishment face liquidation, their civilian infrastructure malicious destruction, they are to be the stoic ones of the show, turning the other cheek. With this, Israel can operate outside the regulatory frameworks of nuclear non-proliferation, being an undeclared nuclear weapons state that also refuses to submit to inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

    The European proposition would also do nothing to stop what are effectively war crimes happening, and being planned, in real time. The EU states have made little of the dangers associated with Israel’s striking of nuclear facilities, something they were most willing to do when Russia seized the Zaporizhzhia plant from Ukraine in March 2022. During capture, the plant was shelled, while the ongoing conflict continues to risk the safety of the facility.

    The International Committee for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) has also drawn attention to the critical risks associated with attacking nuclear facilities. “The use of force against nuclear facilities,” it stated in a media release, “violates international law and risks radioactive contamination with long-term consequences for human health and environment.” That same point has been made by the director general of the IAEA, Rafael Marino Grossi. “Military escalation,” stated Grossi on June 16, “threatens lives, increases the chance of radiological release with serious consequences for people and the environment and delays indispensable work towards a diplomatic solution for the long-term assurance that Iran does not acquire a nuclear weapon.”

    US President Donald Trump’s own assessment of the EU’s feeble intervention was self-serving but apposite. “Nah, they didn’t help.” The Iranians did not care much for the Europeans. “They want to speak to us. Europe is not going to be able to help on this one.” In fact, the European effort, led unconvincingly by Macron, is looking most unhelpful.

    The post Skewed Diplomacy: Europe, Iran and Unhelpful Nuclear Nonsense first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • On Being Trump’s Director of National Intelligence

    On 17 June, a member of the media asked Trump: “Tulsi Gabbard testified in March that the intelligence community said that Iran wasn’t building a nuclear weapon.”

    Trump brusquely responded, “I don’t care what she said. I think they are very close to having one.”

    This is just another instance of the rudeness, arrogance, and imbecility of Trump. First, Trump chose Gabbard to be his director of national intelligence.

    Second, the assessment of Iran having a nuclear weapon program or not is not Gabbard’s assessment. It is, as she testified, on the “Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community”: “the collective assessment of the 18 U.S. intelligence elements making up the U.S. Intelligence Community and draws on intelligence collection, information available to the IC from open-source and the private sector, and the expertise of our analysts.”

    During the 25 March threat assessment, Gabbard testified:

    The IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamanei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.

    Third, since Gabbard, the messenger, was belittled by Trump as “wrong,” then the U.S. Intelligence Community must likewise be held by Trump to be wrong. People are then left with Trump’s uncertainty, revealed by his “I think…,” as to Iran working on developing nuclear weapons. That begs the question of whether Americans want to see their sons and daughters go to war based on what Trump thinks over the assessment of 18 intelligence agencies?

    Nonetheless, Gabbard has tried to regain Trump’s good graces by, like Trump, discrediting the media. She posted on X.com:

    However, if one watches the linked source above, it corroborates that the media, in this case, accurately reflected the intelligence community’s assessment as related by Gabbard. Thus, Gabbard’s X post makes her come across as sycophantic. Not a good look for a politician or non-politician.

    If the ins and outs of politics is Gabbard’s bag — and it certainly seems to be — then she is in a tough spot. She already was forced, more-or-less, to leave the Democratic Party. And besides the Republican Party, there is no other major party to join in the United States,

    Part 2: Nonetheless, Tulsi Gabbard still has her supporters in some independent media circles.

    The post On Being Trump’s Director of National Intelligence first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • Echoing The 2006 ‘Day Without An Immigrant,’ Call For Mass ‘Sickout’

    As the Trump administration continues to ramp up its regime of mass deportations, grassroots organizers are growing the immigrant rights movement in opposition.

    Last week, Trump promised to pause some ICE raids at workplaces over concerns from employers in the farming and hospitality industries. However, this week, Trump’s border czar Tom Homan confirmed that the raids will in fact continue.

    “We’re going to continue to do worksite enforcement operations, even on farms and hotels, but based on a prioritized basis. Criminals come first,” Homan told reporters on June 19.

    The post Echoing The 2006 ‘Day Without An Immigrant,’ Call For Mass ‘Sickout’ appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Why Do We Hate Iran?

    Because they deserve it? Because we’re told to? Or because, in truth, we play dirty given the slightest excuse.

    Britain and America would like everyone to believe that hostilities with Iran began with the 1979 Islamic Revolution. But you have to go back over 70 years to find the root cause in America’s case, while Iranians have endured more than a century of British exploitation and bullying. The US-UK Axis don’t want this important slice of history resurrected to become part of public discourse. Here’s why.

    William Knox D’Arcy, having obtained a 60-year oil concession to three-quarters of Persia and with financial support from Glasgow-based Burmah Oil, eventually found oil in commercial quantities in 1908.  The Anglo-Persian Oil Company was formed and in 1911 and completed a pipeline from the oilfield to its new refinery at Abadan.

    Just before the outbreak of World War 1 Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, wanted to convert the British fleet from coal. To secure a reliable oil source the British Government took a major shareholding in Anglo-Persian.

    In the 1920s and 1930s, the company profited hugely from paying the Persians a miserly 16% and refusing to renegotiate terms. An angry Persia eventually cancelled the D’Arcy agreement and took the matter to the Court of International Justice in The Hague. A new agreement in 1933 provided Anglo-Persian with a fresh 60-year concession but on a smaller area. The terms were slightly improved but still didn’t amount to a square deal.

    In 1935 Persia became known internationally by its other name, Iran, and the company was re-named Anglo-Iranian Oil. By 1950 Abadan was the biggest oil refinery in the world and the British government, with its 51% holding, had affectively colonized part of southern Iran.

    Iran’s tiny share of the profits had long soured relations and so did the company’s treatment of its oil workers. 6,000 went on strike in 1946 and the dispute was brutally put down with 200 dead or injured. In 1951 while Aramco shared profits with the Saudis on a 50/50 basis Anglo-Iranian handed Iran a miserable 17.5%.

    Hardly surprising, then, that Iran wanted economic and political independence. Calls to nationalise its oil could no longer be ignored. In March of that year the Majlis and Senate voted to nationalize Anglo-Iranian, which had controlled Iran’s oil industry since 1913 under terms frankly unfavourable to the host country.

    Social reformer Dr Mohammad Mossadeq was named prime minister by a 79 to 12 majority and promptly carried out his government’s wishes, cancelling Anglo-Iranian’s oil concession and expropriating its assets. His explanation was perfectly reasonable:

    Our long years of negotiations with foreign countries… have yielded no results thus far. With the oil revenues, we could meet our entire budget and combat poverty, disease, and backwardness among our people.

    Another important consideration is that by the elimination of the power of the British company, we would also eliminate corruption and intrigue, by means of which the internal affairs of our country have been influenced…. Iran will have achieved its economic and political independence. (M. Fateh, Panjah Sal-e Naft-e Iran, p. 525)

    Britain, determined to bring about regime change, orchestrated a worldwide boycott of Iranian oil, froze Iran’s sterling assets and threatened legal action against anyone purchasing oil produced in the formerly British-controlled refineries. The Iranian economy was soon in ruins… All sounds very familiar, doesn’t it?

    Churchill (prime minister at the time) let it be known that Mossadeq was turning communist and pushing Iran into the arms of Russia just when Cold War anxiety was high. That was enough to bring America’s new president, Eisenhower, onboard and plotting with Britain to bring Mossadeq down.

    So began a nasty game of provocation, mayhem and deception. Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, in exile, signed two decrees, one dismissing Mossadeq and the other nominating the CIA’s choice, General Fazlollah Zahedi, as prime minister. These decrees were written as dictated by the CIA. The coup by MI6 and the CIA was successful and in August 1953, when it was judged safe for him to do so, the Shah returned to take over.

    For his impudence Mossadeq was arrested, tried, and convicted of treason by the Shah’s military court. He was imprisoned for 3 years then put under house arrest until his death. He remarked: “My greatest sin is that I nationalized Iran’s oil industry and discarded the system of political and economic exploitation by the world’s greatest empire… I am well aware that my fate must serve as an example in the future throughout the Middle East in breaking the chains of slavery and servitude to colonial interests.”

    His supporters were rounded up, imprisoned, tortured or executed. Zahedi’s new government reached an agreement with foreign oil companies to form a consortium to restore the flow of Iranian oil, awarding the US and Great Britain the lion’s share, with 40% going to Anglo-Iranian.

    The consortium agreed to split profits on a 50-50 basis with Iran but refused to open its books to Iranian auditors or allow Iranians to sit on the board.

    The US massively funded the Shah’s government, including his army and his hated secret police force, SAVAK. Anglo-Iranian changed its name to British Petroleum in 1954. Mossadeq died in 1967.

    Smouldering resentment for more than 70 years

    The British-American conspiracy that toppled Mossadeq, reinstated the Shah and let the American oil companies in, was the final straw for the Iranians. It all backfired 25 years later with the Islamic Revolution of 1978-9, the humiliating 444-day hostage crisis in the American embassy and a tragically botched rescue mission.

    If Britain and America had played fair and allowed the Iranians to determine their own future instead of using economic terrorism to bring the country to its knees Iran might today be “the only democracy in the Middle East”, a title falsely claimed by Israel which is actually a repulsive ethnocracy. So never mention the M-word MOSSADEQ – the Iranian who dared to break the chains of slavery and servitude to Western colonial interests.

    Is Britain incapable of playing fair? During the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88) the US, and eventually Britain, leaned strongly towards Saddam and the alliance enabled Saddam to more easily acquire or develop forbidden chemical and biological weapons. At least 100,000 Iranians fell victim to them.

    This is how John King, writing in 2003, summed it up. “The United States used methods both legal and illegal to help build Saddam’s army into the most powerful army in the Mideast outside of Israel. The US supplied chemical and biological agents and technology to Iraq when it knew Iraq was using chemical weapons against the Iranians. The US supplied the materials and technology for these weapons of mass destruction to Iraq at a time when it was known that Saddam was using this technology to kill his Kurdish citizens.

    “The United States supplied intelligence and battle planning information to Iraq when those battle plans included the use of cyanide, mustard gas and nerve agents. The United States blocked the UN censure of Iraq’s use of chemical weapons. The United States did not act alone in this effort. The Soviet Union was the largest weapons supplier, but England, France, and Germany were also involved in the shipment of arms and technology.”

    The company I worked for at that time supplied the Iranian government with electronic components for military equipment and we were mulling an invitation to set up a factory in Tehran when the UK Government announced it was revoking all export licences to Iran. They had decided to back Saddam. Hundreds of British companies were forced to abandon the Iranians at a critical moment.

    Betraying Iran and throwing our weight behind Saddam went well, didn’t it?

    Saddam was overthrown in April 2003 following the US/UK-led invasion of Iraq, and hanged in messy circumstances after a dodgy trial in 2006. The dirty work was left to the Provisional Iraqi Government. At the end of the day, we couldn’t even ensure that Saddam was dealt with fairly. “The trial and execution of Saddam Hussein were tragically missed opportunities to demonstrate that justice can be done, even in the case of one of the greatest crooks of our time”, said the UN Human Rights Council’s expert on extrajudicial executions.

    Philip Alston, a law professor at New York University, pointed to three major flaws leading to Saddam’s execution. “The first was that his trial was marred by serious irregularities denying him a fair hearing and these have been documented very clearly. Second, the Iraqi Government engaged in an unseemly and evidently politically motivated effort to expedite the execution by denying time for a meaningful appeal and by closing off every avenue to review the punishment. Finally, the humiliating manner in which the execution was carried out clearly violated human rights law.”

    In 2022 when Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian, was freed after five years in a Tehran prison it transpired that the UK had owed around £400m to the Iranian government arising from the non-delivery of Chieftain battle tanks ordered by the Shah of Iran before his overthrow in 1979. Iran had been pursuing the debt for over four decades. In 2009 an international court in the Netherlands ordered Britain to repay the money. Iranian authorities said Nazanin would be released when the UK did so, but she suffered those years of incarceration, missing her children and husband in the UK, while the British government took its own sweet time before finally paying up.

    Now we’re playing dirty yet again, supporting an undemocratic state, Israel, which is run by genocidal maniacs and has for 77 years defied international law and waged a war of massacre, terror and dispossession against the native Palestinians. And we’re even protecting it in its lethal quarrel with Iran.

    It took President Truman only 11 minutes to accept and extend full diplomatic relations to Israel when the Zionist entity declared statehood in 1948 despite the fact that it was still committing massacres and other terrorist atrocities. Israel’s evil ambitions and horrendous tactics were well known and documented right from the start but eagerly backed and facilitated by the US and UK. In the UK’s case betrayal of the Palestinians began in 1915 thanks to Zionist influence. Even Edwin Montagu, the only Jew in the British Cabinet at that time, described Zionism as “a mischievous political creed, untenable by any patriotic citizen of the United Kingdom”.

    Sadly, the Zionist regime’s unspeakable cruelty and inhumanity against unarmed women and children in Gaza and the West Bank — bad enough in the decades before October 2023 but now showing the Israelis as the repulsive criminals they’ve always been — still isn’t enough to end US-UK adoration and support. UK prime minister Starmer much prefers to talk about “the malign influence of Iran”

    The excuse this time is that Iran’s nuclear programme might be about to produce weapons-grade material which is bad news for Israel. There’s a blanket ‘hush’ over Israel’s 200 (or is it 400?) nukes. The US and UK and allies think it’s OK for mad-dog Israel to have nuclear weapons but not Iran which has to live under this horrific Israeli threat. Then there’s America’s QME doctrine which guarantees Israel a ‘Qualitative Military Edge’ over its Middle East neighbours.

    Then consider that Israel is the only state in the region not to have signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It hasn’t signed the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention either. It has signed but not ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty, similarly the Chemical Weapons Convention. Yes, it’s quite evident that the Zionist entity, not Iran, is the ultimate “malign influence” in the Middle East.

    The post Why Do We Hate Iran? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Turning Political Repression into Movement Building

    My first years of progressive activism and organizing took place during the presidency of Richard Nixon, who, without a doubt, led one of the most repressive presidential administrations we have experienced in the United States in the modern era, prior to this Trump regime. It was under Nixon that the Republican Party, with its “southern strategy,” began to move toward becoming the kind of regressive entity that allowed pathological liar, racist, and convicted sexual abuser Donald Trump to be elected president in November 2016 and again in 2024.

    During Nixon’s first term, from 1969 to 1973, he oversaw the use of government agencies to attempt to destroy groups like the Black Panther Party, the American Indian Movement and the Young Lords, including armed attacks by police that resulted in deaths. Newly enacted conspiracy laws were used to indict leaders of the peace movement and other movements. An entirely illegal and clandestine apparatus was created to sabotage the campaigns of his political opponents in the Democratic Party, leading to the midnight break-in at the Watergate Hotel that eventually led to the exposure of this apparatus and Nixon’s forced resignation from office in 1974.

    I learned several things during those Nixon years about how to deal with government repression. Unfortunately, given Trump/MAGA’s attempts to replace US democracy with a fascist regime, those are very relevant lessons for today.

    One critical lesson is that there is a disparity in the government treatment of people of color—Black, Latino/a, Indigenous and Asian—compared with the treatment of people of European descent—white people. The historical realities of settler military aggression, broken treaties, slavery, Jim Crow segregation, assumed white dominance, and institutionalized racism continue to have their negative, discriminatory impacts.

    We are seeing this play out right now with the Trumpist arrests of Brown and Black immigrants, over 90% of whom, according to AI, have no criminal record. There can be little doubt that the intention is to use this racist campaign to establish a wholly new “justice” system which will increasingly come after not just immigrants but anyone who is consistently resisting their efforts to overturn democracy and install an authoritarian, repressive regime.

    Those of us of European descent must be conscious of these realities and act accordingly, prioritizing right now the defense of immigrant rights. Very big numbers of us are stepping up, demonstrating and engaging in nonviolent action, risking and getting arrested, in opposition to what is happening with ICE in particular.

    Government repression can’t be allowed to paralyze or divide organizations or movements. This is one of the objectives of an unjust government trying to repress those who challenge its policies and practices. That is one of the reasons why we need to be about the development of a movement culture that is respectful and healthy. Such a supportive cultural environment can help us weather this storm we are in and emerge from it stronger and better both as individual activists and organizers and as a mass progressive movement.

    This is one of the necessary elements for successful resistance to government repression.

    When I say “successful” I don’t mean that there won’t be casualties on our side, people behind bars, some for months or years, or people physically attacked and injured or worse, or deportation, job losses or greater economic hardship. It is clear that under a Trump/MAGA regime this is already happening and will continue and likely get worse, particularly for immigrants, people of color and low-income people generally.

    Other things which can defend our rights and our movements are these:

    -effective legal representation in court. It is good to see the way that many lawyers and progressive legal organizations are stepping up to defend immigrants and challenge the Trump executive orders issued so far;

    -broad community support when repression happens. There are instances when ICE has attempted to arrest people and, on the spot, neighbors and others have prevented those arrests or, by their actions, have brought media attention to what is being attempted and, over time, have gotten people released from jail. It is a fact that there is a strong and extensive network of organizations nationally which is having an impact.

    All of this can immediately or over time serve to undercut support for the Trumpists, strengthen our justice movement and hasten the time when the power of the organized people overcomes them on the way to the worldwide social, economic, environmental and cultural changes needed for humanity and all life forms to avoid ecosystem and societal breakdown.

    Ultimately, what I have learned is that government repression can have a disruptive impact on our work, but we can turn a negative into a positive. The extent to which we can creatively, intelligently, and fearlessly demonstrate the truth of what we are about when responding to what they are doing to us is the extent to which we can have confidence that yes, we will win. Si, se puede!

    The post Turning Political Repression into Movement Building first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Scuttling International Humanitarian Assistance

    Since the return of Donald Trump to the White House, he and his Republican allies have worked to destroy the U.S. government’s overseas humanitarian aid programs.

    This action flies in the face of the U.S. government’s lengthy record of humanitarian assistance to people of other nations whose lives had been blighted by war, poverty, and illness. From the Marshall Plan to rebuild war-devastated Europe, to Senator George McGovern’s Food for Peace project to feed the hungry, to massive international public health campaigns to eradicate global diseases, U.S. aid programs have played an important role in alleviating human suffering around the world.

    Of course, these actions were not unique. Other wealthy nations also developed overseas humanitarian aid programs. In 2023, when the U.S. government allocated 0.24 percent of its gross national income to humanitarian aid, Britain allocated 0.58 percent and Norway allocated over 1 percent.

    Behind the support for the U.S. international aid program lay two key factors―a desire to reduce human misery and a desire to win friends for the United States in foreign lands.

    But such concerns were ignored by the Trump administration. On January 20, 2025, the day of his return to the White House, Donald Trump ordered a 90-day freeze on U.S. foreign assistance. Three days later, the State Department issued a “stop work” order while the aid program received what it called a “comprehensive review.”

    Elon Musk, the arrogant, eccentric, and drug-addled multibillionaire, took the lead in this review process. Unleashing his DOGE minions on the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which administered most of the federal government’s humanitarian aid programs, Musk proclaimed that the agency was a “viper’s nest of radical-left Marxists who hate America.” USAID, he announced, “is a criminal organization. Time for it to die.”

    Trump apparently shared this warped perspective and, consequently, most of USAID’s vital signs rapidly plummeted. In response to the president’s orders, its staff was decimated, its website was shut down, and its budget was slashed. After USAID’s shattered remains were transferred to the State Department, Secretary of State Marco Rubio cut 83 percent of its international humanitarian programs, reducing them from 6,200 to about 1,000.

    As the distinguished historian Alfred McCoy reported this May, when USAID’s “skilled specialists in famine prevention, public health, and governance stopped working, the pain was soon felt around the world, particularly among mothers and children.” In Asia, the end of USAID’s funding forced the World Food Program to cut by half the pathetic food rations it provided to a million Rohingya refugees residing in miserable camps in Bangladesh, with food support shrinking to $6 a month per person.

    In Africa, as McCoy noted, departing USAID officials estimated that the aid cuts would likely produce a 30 percent spike in tuberculosis, a disease that kills over a million people worldwide every year, and that 200,000 more children would probably be paralyzed within a decade. In the Congo, 7.8 million war refugees were likely to lose food aid and 2.3 million more children were predicted to suffer from malnutrition. Thanks to cutbacks in USAID health programs, a half-million AIDS patients were projected to die in South Africa, while, in the Congo, an estimated 15,000 could die within a month. In West Africa, the end of USAID’s Malaria Initiative virtually ensured that, within a year, there would be 18 million more malaria infections and 166,000 more likely deaths.

    Malnutrition, as journalist Nicholas Kristof recently reported, already “leaves more than one-fifth of children worldwide stunted, countless millions cognitively impaired, and vast numbers … weak from anemia. Malnutrition is a factor in 45 percent of child deaths worldwide.”

    Nevertheless, in early June, the Trump administration and its Republican allies took further action toward dismantling U.S. overseas humanitarian aid programs. In response to a request by the President, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted to claw back billions of dollars Congress had already appropriated for such aid. This included $500 million for activities related to infectious diseases and child maternal health, $400 million to address the global HIV epidemic, and $800 million for a program providing emergency shelter, water and sanitation, and family reunification for people forced to flee their countries.

    Before the House vote, the president of Oxfam America, a leading humanitarian aid organization, appealed to the assembled legislators, arguing that the measure “would do irreversible harm” to millions of people. “We are already seeing women, children and families left without food, clean water and critical services after earlier aid cuts,” she declared, “and aid organizations can barely keep up with rising needs.” Nevertheless, despite unanimous Democratic opposition, the House Republican leadership pushed the bill through by a vote of 214 to 212.

    Applauding GOP passage of the measure, Mike Johnson, the Republican Speaker of the House, promised “more of this in the days to come.” John Thune, the Republican Senate Majority Leader, pledged Senate action on the House bill this July.

    As the United States, the world’s wealthiest nation, is the largest financial contributor to the United Nations, the drastic reductions in U.S. humanitarian aid are already having a devastating impact on UN assistance programs that provide life-saving food, medicine, and shelter to the world’s poorest, most desperate people. In mid-June, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said that it was being forced to drastically scale back these programs due to “brutal funding cuts.” The UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief commented gloomily: “We have been forced into a triage of human survival.”

    Calling for aid “to help 114 million people facing life-threatening needs across the world,” the UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs said that “this isn’t just an appeal for money―it’s a call for global responsibility, for human solidarity, for a commitment to end the suffering.”

    Thus far, there’s no indication that the Trump administration has that commitment.

    The post Scuttling International Humanitarian Assistance first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • To Fight For Full Liberation, We Need To Recognize That We’re Not Free

    Amid the chaos of mass protest of Trump administration policies, such as the systematic targeting of immigrant communities, the drive towards potential catastrophic war with Iran, and attacks on free speech, this year marks the 160th anniversary of Juneteenth, a holiday celebrated by Black communities that marks the end of slavery in the US.

    To mark this day, Peoples Dispatch spoke to Rachel Domond, a young Black organizer and visual artist, who for years has organized Black communities and is a part of the movement for socialism, as a member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation.

    The post To Fight For Full Liberation, We Need To Recognize That We’re Not Free appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Why Washington Targets Iran and Venezuela

    Venezuela and Iran hold the largest and third-largest petroleum reserves in the world, respectively. Both have also been targeted for regime change by Washington. The two commonalities are not unrelated.

    Of course, the world’s hegemon would like to get its hands on all their oil. But it would be simplistic to think that would be only for narrow economic reasons. Control over energy flows – especially from countries with large reserves – is central to maintaining global influence. Washington requires control of strategic resources to maintain its position as the global hegemon, guided by its official policy of “full spectrum dominance.”

    For Venezuela and Iran, sovereign control of vast hydrocarbon assets is a precondition for exercising a modest level of independence and even some regional and global influence in a geopolitical landscape dominated by the US and its allies.  But their drive for self-determination is animated by a third and essential shared characteristic. That is, the political one; both are led by revolutionary administrations.

    The Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela and the Islamic Revolution in Iran were both of necessity anti-imperialist. And it for this political reason, even more than the economic, both have earned Washington’s hostility. Conversely, the Iran-Venezuela political relationship is rooted in mutual support against US aggression and a commitment to sovereignty and non-interference.

    Venezuela-Iran relations

     Venezuela has been at the forefront of Iran’s engagement in Latin America. The two nations were founding members of the OPEC alliance of oil-producing countries in 1960.

    Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez made his first visit to Iran in 2001. Since then the two countries have forged close relations, especially regarding energy production, industrial cooperation, and economic development. Chávez awarded visiting Iranian President Mohammad Khatami with the Order of the Liberator, praising him as an anti-imperialist. Venezuela and Iran “are firm in the face of any aggression,” said Chávez.

    With Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s election as Iran’s president in 2005, he and Chavez visited each other multiple times forming a self-described “axis of unity” against US imperialism. Hundreds of bilateral agreements were executed between the two oil-producing states. Chavez supported Iran’s nuclear program, pledging in 2006 to “stay by Iran at any time and under any condition,”

    In a prescient address at Tehran University, Chávez admonished: “If the US empire succeeds in consolidating its dominance, then humankind has no future. Therefore, we have to save humankind and put an end to the US empire.” With the passing of Chávez and the election of Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela-Iran relations continued to consolidate.

    In 2015, US President Barack Obama declared Venezuela an “extraordinary threat” to US national security as an excuse to impose unilateral coercive measures on Caracas. By 2017, US President Donald Trump intensified the hybrid war against Venezuela with a “maximum pressure” campaign.

    Amid crippling US sanctions, Iran dispatched multiple tanker shipments in 2020 to help stabilize Venezuela’s fuel supply. Iran, along with China, also sent technicians to help repair refineries. It is no exaggeration to say that Iran’s assistance was been a lifeline for Venezuela.

    Joint projects have included ammunition plants, auto assembly (Venirauto), a cement factory, the Venirán Tractor Factory, and refinery upgrades. An Iranian supermarket chain even opened stores in Venezuela.

    Then Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi signed a 20-year cooperative agreement with Venezuela in 2020. Besides tourism, food production, and opening airplane routes, the agreement addressed mutual defense, including the continued transfer of drone-making technology. Raisi complemented Caracas for “exemplary resistance against sanctions and threats from enemies and imperialists.”

    In 2022, agreements were signed to restore Venezuela’s El Palito refinery and explore nanotech collaboration. This year, the two countries established a fiber optic factory. Plus, there have been extensive cultural and educational exchanges.

    In Washington’s crosshairs

     The refusal of Venezuela and Iran to align with the US geopolitical agenda is a key factor in Washington’s coercive strategy. It reflects the hegemon’s broader pattern of targeting resource-rich, independent states that resist integration into its “world order.”

     Both countries have rejected Western dominance and have nationalized their considerable oil sectors. Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh established NIOC in Iran in 1951, precipitating the CIA/M16 coup that disposed him. Venezuelan President Carlos Andrés Pérez established PDVSA in 1976, later expanded and reoriented by President Chávez after 2002.

    Current US sanctions on Iran and Venezuela reduce their ability of to sell oil freely. This limits alternative energy markets that could compete with US-aligned suppliers such as the Gulf states. It also reduces petrodollar diversification. Both countries have tried to trade oil outside the dollar system, including via a system of barter with allies.

    Moreover, Venezuela and Iran have been targeted for their non-aligned foreign policy. Central has been Iran’s pivotal position in the resistance to Zionism. Iran supports Hezbollah, the former government in Syria, Ansar Allah (Houthis), and above all the Palestinian struggle. Likewise, Venezuela has been among the foremost supporters in Latin America of the Palestinian’s right to self-determination, having severed relations with Israel in 2009. Caracas has also opposed US-backed regional blocs and supports socialist and anti-neoliberal movements (e.g., ALBA, ties with Cuba and Nicaragua).

    Confronted by aggressive hostility by the US and its allies, both Iran and Venezuela have pivoted toward China, Russia, and the BRICS+ coalition as alternatives. Sanctions from the US and its partners have accelerated the creation of alternative financial, logistical, and diplomatic systems that bypass Washington’s control (e.g., INSTEX, barter, crypto, regional banks).

    In a recent interview, Iranian diplomat Ali Faramarzi affirmed that Venezuela and Iran are bound by profound affinities. They have significantly deepened what TeleSUR calls their “symbiotic” relationship, forging an alliance that spans political solidarity, economic cooperation, military collaboration, and shared ideological stances. Both nations, facing intense pressure and sanctions from the US, have found common cause in resisting Western hegemony and promoting a multipolar world order.

    Regime change in Iran could have major negative consequences for Venezuela. Reestablishment of a US client-state, as it was under the Shah of Iran, would mean the loss of diplomatic support for Caracas, the probable end to energy cooperation, greater defense vulnerabilities, and cascading adverse economic and trade repercussions.

    The post Why Washington Targets Iran and Venezuela first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Playing and Being Played on the Road to Nuclear War

    To hell with the truth! As the history of the world proves, the truth has no bearing on anything. It’s irrelevant and immaterial, as the lawyers say. The lie of a pipe dream is what gives life to the whole misbegotten mad lot of us, drunk or sober.

    — Eugene O’Neill, The Iceman Cometh

    There is a good chance that very shortly the United States will overtly join its proxy Israel in attacking Iran. Only a fool would be surprised. Plausible deniability only goes so far. Pipe dreams perdure as the nuclear war that could never happen gets closer to happening.

    That Donald Trump is a diabolic liar and his administration is composed of depraved war criminals is a fact.

    That those who bought his no foreign wars bullshit were deluded is a fact.

    That Trump fully supports the genocidal lunatic Netanyahu is a fact.

    That the U.S.A. is already supporting Israel’s unprovoked war on Iran is a fact.

    That the American electorate is always fooled by the linguistic mind control of its presidents is a fact.

    “Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun, that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud,” George W. Bush said at a staged pseudo-event on October 7, 2002 as he set Americans up for the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.  It was all predictable, blatant deception.  And the media played along with such an absurdity.  Iraq obviously had no nuclear weapons or the slightest capability to deliver even a firecracker on the U.S. The same is true for Iran today.

    Trump is, after all, a United States President. The job’s requirements insist that he be a war criminal at the head of a terrorist state, and that he support the apartheid state of Israel’s killing regime, as the United States has done since its founding – actually long before.

    The CIA and its ilk provide the shifting propaganda narratives that take many forms: smooth, blustery, halting, etc., but they are all aimed at creating two minds in the American population by sending mixed messages (a Trump specialty), creating mental double-binds, and using various techniques to mystify people’s experience of reality and truth. The CIA always liked to attract literary types to its propaganda efforts. Their objective is to create through verbal contradictory word usage a sense of schizoid confusion in the population. To provide pipe dreams for those who feel that their politician will set things right next time around. Or to provide ex post facto justifications for the last president’s innocence.

    Think of the bullshit media headlines such as “Trump is weighing his options” or “Trump weighing Involvement” about attacking Iran.  As I wrote about Trump and Iran in June 2019 – “The War Hoax Redux – in a repeat of what I wrote about Bush and Iraq in February 2003 by simply substituting names:

    As in 1991 and 2003 concerning Iraq, the MSM play along with Trump, who repeatedly says, or has his spokespeople say, that the decision hasn’t been made [to attack Iran] and that the U.S. wants peace. Within a few hours this is contradicted and confusion and uncertainty reign, as planned. Chaos is the name of the game. But everyone in the know knows the decision to attack has been made at some level, especially once the propaganda dummies are all in place. But they pretend, while the media wait with baited breath as they anticipate their countdown to the dramatic moment when they report the incident that will “compel” the U.S. to attack.

    Now that Biden has made sure a terrorist runs Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon is rendered weak, allowing Israel full control over their air spaces, and Gaza pulverized and genocide well underway, the pieces are in place for Trump to bomb Iran.

    Commentators often blame the actions – like Trump’s vis-à-vis Iran – on pressure from the so-called “deep state.” Excuses abound. But there is no deep state. The official American government is the “deep state.” The use of the term is a prime example of the efficacy of linguistic mind control. The use of words that have contradictory meanings – contronyms – to create untenable double-binds that result in mental checkmate. Create false opposites to frame the mind control.

    Innocence – give a sardonic laugh! These are the men who have waged endless wars, overt and covert, for decade upon decade, have dispatched special forces and CIA death squads throughout the world, and support genocide in Gaza and the destruction of Russia as their bosses require. Those who seek the office know this. Only those who are known to pledge allegiance to American imperialism and the love of war are allowed anywhere near the U.S. presidency. The present war on Iran has been long in the making, as has the destruction of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Russia, China, etc.

    These bloodthirsty hyenas with polished faces come in all varieties, from Slick Willy to Dumb Georgie to Smiling Barack to Gross Don to Malarkey Joe and around and around we go again and again. Each is cast to perform the script – to speak the lingo – appropriate to his actor’s ability and his looks (let’s not forget this), but to serve the same ends. If it were not so, the U.S. would have stopped waging non-stop wars long ago. It’s simple to understand if one retains a smidgeon of logic.

    If you think otherwise, you are deluded. I will not waste much time explaining why. The historical facts confirm it.

    The U.S.A. is a warfare state; it’s as simple as that.  Without waging wars, the U.S. economy, as presently constituted, would collapse.  It is an economy based on fantasy and fake money with a national debt over 36 trillion dollars that will never be repaid.  That’s another illusion.  But I am speaking of pipe dreams, am I not?

    And whether they choose to be aware of it or not, the vast majority of Americans support this killing machine by their indifference and ignorance of its ramifications throughout the society and more importantly, its effects in death and destruction on the rest of the world.  But that’s how it goes as their focus is on the masked faces that face each other on the electoral stage of the masquerade ball every four years. Liars all.

    But they all speak the double-speak that creates pipe-dreams on the road to nuclear war.

    Will we ever stop believing them before it is too late?

    The post Playing and Being Played on the Road to Nuclear War first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Endless Wars, Failing Infrastructure, and a Dying Republic

    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.

    — President Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Chance for Peace” speech, delivered on 16 April 1953

    Seventy years after President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned about the cost of a military-industrial complex, America is still stealing from its own people to fund a global empire.

    In 2025 alone, the U.S. has launched airstrikes in Yemen (Operation Rough Rider), bombed Houthi-controlled ports and radar installations (killing scores of civilians), deployed greater numbers of troops and multiple aircraft carriers to the Middle East, and edged closer to direct war with Iran in support of Israel’s escalating conflict.

    Each of these “new” fronts has been sold to the public as national defense. In truth, they are the latest outposts in a decades-long campaign of empire maintenance—one that lines the pockets of defense contractors while schools crumble, bridges collapse, and veterans sleep on the streets at home.

    This isn’t about national defense. This is empire maintenance.

    It’s about preserving a military-industrial complex that profits from endless war, global policing, and foreign occupations—while the nation’s infrastructure rots and its people are neglected.

    The United States has spent much of the past half-century policing the globe, occupying other countries, and waging endless wars.

    What most Americans fail to recognize is that these ongoing wars have little to do with keeping the country safe and everything to do with propping up a military-industrial complex that has its sights set on world domination.

    War has become a huge money-making venture, and the U.S. government, with its vast military empire, is one of its best buyers and sellers.

    America’s role in the Russia-Ukraine conflict has already cost taxpayers more than $112 billion.

    And now, the price of empire is rising again.

    Clearly, it’s time for the U.S. government to stop policing the globe.

    The U.S. military reportedly has more than 1.3 million men and women on active duty, with more than 200,000 of them stationed overseas in nearly every country in the world.

    American troops are stationed in Somalia, Iraq and Syria. In Germany, South Korea and Japan. In Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Oman. In Niger, Chad and Mali. In Turkey, the Philippines, and northern Australia.

    Those numbers are likely significantly higher in keeping with the Pentagon’s policy of not fully disclosing where and how many troops are deployed for the sake of “operational security and denying the enemy any advantage.” As investigative journalist David Vine explains, “Although few Americans realize it, the United States likely has more bases in foreign lands than any other people, nation, or empire in history.”

    Incredibly, America’s military forces aren’t being deployed abroad to protect our freedoms here at home. Rather, they’re being used to guard oil fields, build foreign infrastructure and protect the financial interests of the corporate elite. In fact, the United States military spends about $81 billion a year just to protect oil supplies around the world.

    America’s military empire spans nearly 800 bases in 160 countries, operated at a cost of more than $156 billion annually. As Vine reports, “Even US military resorts and recreation areas in places like the Bavarian Alps and Seoul, South Korea, are bases of a kind. Worldwide, the military runs more than 170 golf courses.”

    This is how a military empire occupies the globe.

    For 20 years, the U.S. war machine propped up Afghanistan to the tune of trillions of dollars and thousands of lives lost. When troops left Afghanistan, the military-industrial complex simply shifted theaters—turning Yemen, Iran, and the Red Sea into new frontlines.

    Each new conflict is marketed as national defense. In reality, it’s business as usual for the Pentagon’s global footprint, with American soldiers used as pawns in the government’s endless quest to control global markets, prop up foreign regimes, and secure oil, data, and strategic ports—all while being told it’s for liberty.

    This is how the military-industrial complex, aided and abetted by the likes of Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and others, continues to get rich at taxpayer expense.

    Yet while the rationale may keep changing for why American military forces are policing the globe, these wars abroad aren’t making America—or the rest of the world—any safer, are certainly not making America great again, and are undeniably digging the U.S. deeper into debt.

    War spending is bankrupting America.

    Although the U.S. constitutes only 5% of the world’s population, America boasts almost 50% of the world’s total military expenditure, spending more on the military than the next 19 biggest spending nations combined.

    In fact, the Pentagon spends more on war than all 50 states combined spend on health, education, welfare, and safety.

    The American military-industrial complex has erected an empire unsurpassed in history in its breadth and scope, one dedicated to conducting perpetual warfare throughout the earth.

    Since 2001, the U.S. government has spent more than $10 trillion waging its endless wars, much of it borrowed, much of it wasted, all of it paid for in blood and taxpayer dollars.

    Add Yemen and the Middle East escalations of 2025, and the final bill for future wars and military exercises waged around the globe will total in the tens of trillions.

    Co-opted by greedy defense contractors, corrupt politicians and incompetent government officials, America’s expanding military empire is bleeding the country dry at a rate of more than $32 million per hour.

    In fact, the U.S. government spent more money every five seconds in Iraq than the average American earns in a year.

    Talk about fiscally irresponsible: the U.S. government is spending money it doesn’t have on a military empire it can’t afford.

    Even if we ended the government’s military meddling today and brought all of the troops home, it would take decades to pay down the price of these wars and get the government’s creditors off our backs.

    As investigative journalist Uri Friedman puts it, for more than 15 years now, the United States has been fighting terrorism with a credit card, “essentially bankrolling the wars with debt, in the form of purchases of U.S. Treasury bonds by U.S.-based entities like pension funds and state and local governments, and by countries like China and Japan.”

    War is not cheap, but it becomes outrageously costly when you factor in government incompetence, fraud, and greedy contractors. Indeed, a leading accounting firm concluded that one of the Pentagon’s largest agencies “can’t account for hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of spending.”

    Unfortunately, the outlook isn’t much better for the spending that can be tracked.

    A government audit found that defense contractor Boeing has been massively overcharging taxpayers for mundane parts, resulting in tens of millions of dollars in overspending. As the report noted, the American taxpayer paid:

    $71 for a metal pin that should cost just 4 cents; $644.75 for a small gear smaller than a dime that sells for $12.51: more than a 5,100 percent increase in price. $1,678.61 for another tiny part, also smaller than a dime, that could have been bought within DoD for $7.71: a 21,000 percent increase. $71.01 for a straight, thin metal pin that DoD had on hand, unused by the tens of thousands, for 4 cents: an increase of over 177,000 percent.

    The fact that such price gouging has become an accepted form of corruption within the American military empire is a sad statement on how little control “we the people” have over our runaway government.

    Mind you, this isn’t just corrupt behavior. It’s deadly, downright immoral behavior.

    Americans have thus far allowed themselves to be spoon-fed a steady diet of pro-war propaganda that keeps them content to wave flags with patriotic fervor and less inclined to look too closely at the mounting body counts, the ruined lives, the ravaged countries, the blowback arising from ill-advised targeted-drone killings and bombing campaigns in foreign lands, or the transformation of our own homeland into a warzone.

    The bombing of Yemen’s Ras Isa port by U.S. forces—killing more than 80 civilians—is just the latest example of war crimes justified as national interest.

    That needs to change.

    The U.S. government is not making the world any safer. It’s making the world more dangerous. It is estimated that the U.S. military drops a bomb somewhere in the world every 12 minutes. Since 9/11, the United States government has directly contributed to the deaths of around 500,000 human beings. Every one of those deaths was paid for with taxpayer funds.

    With the 2025 escalation, those numbers will only rise.

    The U.S. government is not making America any safer. It’s exposing American citizens to alarming levels of blowback, a CIA term referring to the unintended consequences of the U.S. government’s international activities. Chalmers Johnson, a former CIA consultant, repeatedly warned that America’s use of its military to gain power over the global economy would result in devastating blowback.

    The 9/11 attacks were blowback. The Boston Marathon Bombing was blowback. The attempted Times Square bomber was blowback. The Fort Hood shooter, a major in the U.S. Army, was blowback.

    The U.S. military’s ongoing drone strikes will, I fear, spur yet more blowback against the American people.

    The war hawks’ militarization of America—bringing home the spoils of war (the military tanks, grenade launchers, Kevlar helmets, assault rifles, gas masks, ammunition, battering rams, night vision binoculars, etc.) and handing them over to local police, thereby turning America into a battlefield—is also blowback.

    James Madison was right: “No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” As Madison explained, “Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes… known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.”

    We are seeing this play out before our eyes.

    The government is destabilizing the economy, destroying the national infrastructure through neglect and a lack of resources, and turning taxpayer dollars into blood money with its endless wars, drone strikes and mounting death tolls.

    The nation’s infrastructure is in shambles. Public schools are underfunded. Mental health care is collapsing. Basic needs like housing, transportation, and clean water go unmet. Meanwhile, government contractors drop bombs on third-world villages and call it strategy.

    This isn’t just bad budgeting. It’s moral bankruptcy. A country that can’t care for its own people has no business policing the rest of the world.

    Bridges collapse, water systems fail, students drown in debt, and veterans sleep on the streets—while the Pentagon builds runways in the desert and funds proxy wars no one can explain.

    Clearly, our national priorities are in desperate need of overhauling.

    We are funding our own collapse. The roads rot while military convoys roll. The power grid fails while the drones fly. Our national strength is being siphoned off to feed a war machine that produces nothing but death, debt, and dysfunction.

    We don’t need another war. We need a resurrection of the republic.

    It’s time to stop policing the world. Bring the troops home. Shut down the military bases. End the covert wars. Slash the Pentagon’s budget. The path to peace begins with a full retreat from empire.

    At the height of its power, even the mighty Roman Empire could not stare down a collapsing economy and a burgeoning military. Prolonged periods of war and false economic prosperity largely led to its demise. As historian Chalmers Johnson predicts:

    The fate of previous democratic empires suggests that such a conflict is unsustainable and will be resolved in one of two ways. Rome attempted to keep its empire and lost its democracy. Britain chose to remain democratic and in the process let go its empire. Intentionally or not, the people of the United States already are well embarked upon the course of non-democratic empire.

    This is the “unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex” that President Dwight Eisenhower warned us not to let endanger our liberties or democratic processes.

    Eisenhower, who served as Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Europe during World War II, was alarmed by the rise of the profit-driven war machine that emerged following the war—one that, in order to perpetuate itself, would have to keep waging war.

    We failed to heed his warning.

    As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, war is the enemy of freedom.

    As long as America’s politicians continue to involve us in wars that bankrupt the nation, jeopardize our servicemen and women, increase the chances of terrorism and blowback domestically, and push the nation that much closer to eventual collapse, “we the people” will find ourselves in a perpetual state of tyranny.

    In the end, it’s not just the empire that falls. It’s the republic it hollowed out along the way.

    The post Endless Wars, Failing Infrastructure, and a Dying Republic first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Prediction with the Main Reasons: The US Will Bomb Iran to Bring about a Regime Change

    We’ve seen it repeatedly: You invent a pretext based on deliberate lies, fake news, exaggerations or a false flag operation which serves to construct a story that country or leader X is a threat to “us” which legitimates that we do a ‘preemptive’ strike against that against – obviously invented – threat to eliminate it.

    Mainstream media’s task is to propagate the ploy, not to ask questions or reveal the lie.

    Take Serbia’s ‘genocide’ in Kosovo, Afghanistan’s responsibility for 9/11, Saddam’s possession of nukes in Iraq, Assad’s use of chemical weapons against the Syrians, Russia’s planning to occupy and administer not only Ukraine but also a series of European countries thereafter, Hamas’ attack on Israel – that Israel knew everything about before it happened – and now you have the blatant lie about Iran’s being just about to become a nuclear power.

    Basic facts about Iran that we are not hearing

    Just a few facts you almost never hear but which are extremely important no matter what you think of the Iranian theocracy: It was the US/CIA and UK that made a regime-change in 1953 that deposed the democratically elected Dr. Mossadegh. The US installed the Shah – at the time the most ruthless and militarist leader in the world, and gave him nuclear technology.

    Since 1979, when the Iranian revolution sent him running and occupied the US Embassy in Tehran, the US has done nothing – nothing – but harass Iran and its 90 million innocent Iranian citizens with the hardest sanctions thinkable (that have destroyed the middle class that could, if any, have changed the country’s leadership). The US and other NATO countries have systematically been building up Israel militarily – knowing full well that Netanyahu’s 30-year-old pathological dream is to eliminate Iran.

    The leading actors in this drama are therefore “USrael” and not Iran.

    Furthermore, Iran does not have nuclear weapons; Israel has – estimates state up to 400. Iran is a member of the NPT, the Non-Proliferation Treaty; Israel is not. Iran has been under constant inspection by the IAEA, but Israel has never accepted that. Around 2003, the present Supreme Leader, Khamenei, issued a fatwa against nuclear weapons, which is considered by some to be consistent with Islamic tradition.

    More recently, in 2015, the JCPOA Agreement was concluded, which was rightly considered a major diplomatic victory for all involved parties. It led Iran to significantly decrease its uranium enrichment. Iran kept itself within the limits of that agreement, but the boastful, grumpy Donald Trump cancelled the US’ participation in 2018, and Iran has since used its enrichment as a bargaining chip while never getting near the level that would permit it to produce a nuclear weapon. In March, Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s director of national intelligence, confirmed that there was no indication that Iran was nearing the threshold. On June 17, Trump said that he did not care about what she said; he knew that Iran was ‘very close.’ More information on these matters can be found in my article from yesterday, available here.

    This will do as a broader background to the prediction in the headline. The West’s stockpile of lies, misinformation and media deception seems to me to be way more fateful than any Iranian military fact or activity.

    Specific reasons for the prediction and the laws of war

    Now to the more specific reasons, which point in one direction, only: A larger war on Iran with aim of changing the Iranian regime.

    According to media reports, Netanyahu had told Trump that Israel could kill the Supreme Leader, and Trump said he would not accept that. Israel has bombed civilian areas and the Iranian IRIB broadcasting complex in Iran, and Israeli agents have blown up cars inside Iran. None of that would be necessary to destroy nuclear research facilities. Trump left the G7 meeting early and stated that he was not working on a ceasefire between Iran and Israel but working on an “end, a real end,” and he has called for Iranian “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER” and demanded that Tehran’s population leave the city.

    He also talked about something bigger to come and that Iran better accept his demands before there would be nothing left of it. In the afternoon, US time today, he had a meeting in the White House Situation Room with his national security team. He talks about knowing exactly where the Supreme Leader is hiding, but that he has no plans to kill him – “at least not now.” (I leave aside at this point what to think about these international law-violating, fascist statements. Trump would have no qualms about killing Iranian top leaders, remember the 2020 liquidation of Qassem Soleimani).

    There are, while I write this, movements of huge US and British naval vessels to the region and talk about B52’s delivering bunker busters.

    There is no doubt that the Trump Regime gave the green light to the Netanyahu Regime’s unprovoked and fake-preemptive attack on Iran. Trump said that he knew “everything” about it well in advance. This, in my view, means that he has also faced the possibility that the US will be drawn in if the Iranian response over time would be too hard for Israel – already in war with several neighbouring states – to handle alone.

    This time, Iran has responded more forcefully than before, and it probably sees the USraeli threat as existential. If Iran continues to respond to Israeli attacks, this would drag in the US – and sooner rather than later. Trump would simply have no choice. He also knows that NATO allies in Europe will remain supportive of both him and Netanyahu if he goes down that slippery slope: A repetition of the Iraq war.

    Some may object here that Trump is just bluffing. First, bluffing whom? If Iran perceives this as a threat to its very existence, it is, of course, not going to unconditionally surrender. It will fight to the last Iranian, and the idea that the Iranians would stand along the roads when the US and Israeli forces roll into Tehran is as delusional as it was in the case of Iraq. (After one day in Baghdad in 2002, I understood that there would be no one, no matter what they thought of Saddam).

    No, there is another dynamic that is both much more powerful and relevant: the escalation of conflicts and violence, up to the outbreak of wars, pretty much follows its own dynamics and laws. If you’ve said “A” you have to move on and say “B” and do tit-for-tat – “C”… to the end of the alphabet, or the world.

    De-escalation is extremely difficult, but phoney/pious statesmen love to advocate de-escalation because they have nothing else to suggest and because they themselves caused the escalation in the first place by pumping in weapons, supporting one side and demonise the other in a conflict and have no clue about conflict-resolution, mediation, peace-making, reconciliation and that sort of – to them totally irrelevant – professional knowledge. Simply put, they are conflict and peace illiterates.

    Given what has already happened, I do not have the imagination to see how Trump and Netanyahu can now back down from their words and deeds without losing face, and that is not exactly what they are known for. They will soon be guided less by their own decisions than by the laws of militarism, escalation and eventually full warfare: warfare for regime-change in Iran.

    De-nuclearise Israel and have both under NPT and IAEA

    To some extent, the nuclear issue is a pretext. To some extent, it is a real issue too. The tragedy is that it is impossible for anyone to destroy nuclear technology facilities and equipment, perhaps 100 meters down in massive mountains. Secondly, if they could succeed, Iran is capable of re-establishing its capacity and will likely have become convinced by the USrael policies that it has, against its will, to acquire nuclear weapons.

    Since Israel has nuclear weapons and thereby violates all the non-binding UN resolutions about the Middle East as a zone free of weapons of mass destruction, the simple, effective solution would be for the international community to deprive Israel of its nuclear weapons and place both countries in the NPT and under IAEA surveillance. The West’s stupid insistence that Israel shall have nuclear weapons while Iran shall not is simply illogical, conflict- and war-promoting as well as morally unsustainable and discriminatory.

    The dissolution of the messianic West: Evil, exceptionalism, escalation and eschatology

    None of these decision-makers is burdened with ethics, long-term thinking or analyses of the consequences of their actions. They are driven by emotions, groupthink, lack of basic security knowledge, hubris, hate (of an Iran they do not know as anything but ‘mullahs’), of self-aggrandisement and a belief that they are exceptionalist. After all, the US and Israel are the two exceptionalist states par excellence. They see themselves as standing above the laws, ethics, and norms that the rest of the world feels obliged to respect at least to some extent.

    In their delusional omnipotence, they seem to accept a kind of modern-day eschatological paradigm supplemented with the catharsis that the use of nuclear weapons may seem to promise: The birth of a new world in which Evil – that of the ‘others’ has been eradicated. That that evil is merely a psycho-political projection of their own evil system, such as militarism, and personalities, is of course, an unthinkable thought. However, it is an end-time view that is deeply embedded in Western Christian and Jewish social cosmology, which probably steers more in situations such as this than any rational thought, analysis, or prudent statesmanship.

    Macro-historically, it belongs to a civilisation, an Empire, in rapid decline, decay and dissolution. And at the micro-level, it would be foolish to underestimate Trump’s and Netanyahu’s messianic zeal in times of their systems’ decay. I fear weapons, yes. But I fear these types of people more.

    The post Prediction with the Main Reasons: The US Will Bomb Iran to Bring about a Regime Change first appeared on Dissident Voice.


    This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Jan Oberg.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Professor Reveals the Truth behind South China Sea Conflict

    Why is the South China Sea such a flashpoint between China, the U.S., and Southeast Asia? In this eye-opening video, Professor Kishore Mahbubani breaks down the deeper truth behind the conflict that mainstream media often overlooks. With decades of diplomatic experience and sharp geopolitical insight, he explains what’s really at stake—and why the West’s narrative may not tell the full story. Watch till the end to understand the hidden forces shaping this critical region.

    The post Professor Reveals the Truth behind South China Sea Conflict first appeared on Dissident Voice.


    This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Rise of Asia.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Israel Attacks Iran: The Turning of the Tables

    It all started in the early morning hours of 13 June 2025, with what Israel calls “Operation Rising Lion”. Israel’s Air Force launched dozens of air strikes against Iran, targeting its nuclear [energy] program. According to BBC, in Iran’s own words, this is the biggest assault on Iran’s territory since the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988.

    Iran has no nuclear weapons program, as confirmed multiple times by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), belonging to the UN system. However, after a 2024 inspection, the IAEA apparently reported enrichment to about 60%. This is not enough to make an atomic bomb, requiring at least 90%.

    But for Israel which has a nuclear warheads arsenal of several hundred, this justified an unprecedented attack on Iran – a clear declaration of war. Israel’s nuclear bomb stockpile is outside of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Agreement, all quietly tolerated by the west led by the United States.

    Only with the explicit backing of the White House, Israel would dare such an assault on a country with a military power that could by far exceed that of Israel.

    As these lines are written, the situation on the Israel-Iran war is constantly changing.

    The latest state of affairs is that within the last 48 hours the tables have turned by 180 degrees.

    According to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ – 13 June 2025), on Monday, 9 June 2025, Prime Minister Netanyahu raised the possibility of strikes against Iran in a phone conversation with President Trump, confirmed by two U.S. officials. Trump responded that he would like to see diplomacy run its course before turning to military options. In an alert to the world, and short-circuiting diplomacy, on Wednesday 11 June, the U.S. pulled some non-essential personnel out of the region in case of an attack.

    On Thursday, before the Israeli strike, Trump said he would not describe an attack as imminent, “but it is something that could very well happen.” Clearly, Trump has given Israel green light for an assault, before diplomacy could run its course. Thereby he was betraying not only Iran, but the entire Middle East, or better called Western Asia, but also the entire world, since by doing so he gave Israel carte blanche to potentially start WWIII.

    Since Israel’s “surprise” air raid in the darkest early morning hours of Thursday, 13 June, the situation has changed dramatically. Iran has launched hundreds of high-speed warheads most of which penetrated unharmed Israel’s Anti-Ballistic Missile systems. The Iranian missiles could not be stopped by the US THAAD missile defense. See this.

    Watch on X.

    See also this from Fox News – 14 June 2025:

    Watch on X.

    Other dramatic headlines point to “All of Israel is under fire!” Blasts and smoke as Iran launches hundreds of missiles | ITV NEWS, as “Iran launched hundreds of missiles towards Israel; only few were intercepted.” Question: Does Iran have enough missiles and rockets to overwhelm and outlast Israel? The next 72 hours will be crucial.

    Iranian missiles have hit key locations in Tel Aviv and other major cities in Israel, also targeting Israeli nuclear arsenal and military sites, leaving untold casualties and massive destruction of infrastructure. To what extent Israel’s nuclear stockpiles were affected, may never be known.

    President Putin, while supporting Iran’s defense, has called on both parties to instantly stop aggressions.

    He offered Russia’s good services for mediation. Once upon a time, when Switzerland was still neutral, Bern could have offered Switzerland’s diplomacy to mediate for Peace. No longer, as Switzerland drifts towards NATO, an enemy of Iran – and everything not considered the west.

    Mr. Putin most likely warned President Trump to make sure Israel does not retaliate Iran’s response with nuclear weapons. If not Trump, then his Pentagon advisors, must know and understand what this means.

    At the behest of Israel, Trump had started negotiations with Iran to reduce their enrichment program to zero, i.e. destroy their enriched uranium which Iran planned to use for civilian purposes. He warned or blackmailed Iran – you agree, or else – which meant you will be assaulted. He gave Iran five days to respond, but Israel launched her attack after day three, certainly not without Trump’s agreement, which meant a flagrant betrayal by the US on Iran and the world.

    President Trump entered his second term on 20 January 2025 as a so-called “Peace President,” but resulted instead as a war-President; as one of the biggest deceptions not only for US citizens, but for the world at large.

    Instead of making good on his promise, stopping the horrendous bloodshed and genocide caused by Israel in Gaza and now also in the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria, Trump supports Netanyahu with more weapons to continue his ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza and in all of Palestine.

    In the proxy war Ukraine-Russia, Trump is far from reaching an agreement. After this unprecedented US-supported assault by Israel on Iran – a Peace Agreement with Russia has slipped away farther than ever.

    Israel also targeted military facilities in Teheran, as well as throughout Iran, killing what is reported dozens high-ranking military officers, including Iran’s top two commanders.

    Iran confirmed that the attacks killed Major General Hossein Salami, commander of the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and Major General Mohammad Bagheri, chief of staff of the Iranian Armed Forces, along with several nuclear scientists. Iran’s envoy to the UN, Amir-Saeid Iravani, stated that 78 people were killed and 320 others injured.

    This totally illegal, devastating large-scale attack pushed the Middle East into a new war, if not into a deep abyss. Images on Iranian state television said the Natanz site in central Iran, one of the country’s two main nuclear [energy] plants, was struck around 4.15 AM on Thursday, 13 June.

    Trump hails Israel’s airstrike (RT 13 June 2025), as “excellent” and warned that there is “more to come.” He warns Iran, “either make the nuclear deal (zero uranium enrichment) or face slaughter” – see this US President Donald Trump has called Israel’s strike on Iran “excellent” and warned that there is “more to come”.

    On the other hand, President Putin (RT – 13 June 25) holds phone conversations with Israeli’s PM and the Iranian President. Mr. Putin condemned the Israeli attack and extended his condolences to Iran, according to the Kremlin press service.

    Some of Iran’s nuclear facilities are 800-plus meters below the ground and cannot be reached by Israel’s missiles. It is not clear how much of Iran’s nuclear energy program has been destroyed. It may never be known.

    Trump’s green-lighting Israel’s attack, makes him complicit in this new Israel-initiated Middle East conflict, that might possibly degenerate into a WWIII scenario.

    The Financial Times (FT – 13 June 2025) reports that President Trump warned Teheran on his Truth Social Platform, that the next “already planned attacks” on Iran would be “even more brutal,” adding that “Iran must make a deal [on its nuclear program], before there is nothing left.” “No more death, no more destruction, JUST DO IT, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE,” he wrote. Yes, the deal-maker has spoken again.

    Trump added that the US “makes the best and most lethal military equipment anywhere in the World, BY FAR, and that Israel has a lot of it, with much more to come — and they know how to use it.” The usual megalo-ego-centric rhetoric which is typically not substantiated, and ever less believable, but ever more provoking a sad smile.

    Mr. Trump’s notion of negotiations refers to the recent US-imposed reduction of Iran’s nuclear enrichment program to zero, when in earlier accords – the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) negotiated in 2013 to 2015 with the US Obama Administration and their western allies plus China and Russia, Iran was allowed to enrich uranium to no more than 5%. For 15 years, Iran agreed to enrich uranium only up to 3.67% and not to build heavy water facilities. They complied with the 15-year condition.

    Nevertheless, the Israeli Air Force barrage on Iran follows a months-long stand-off over Iran’s nuclear program. Tehran insists and has always done so, its nuclear program is for peaceful civilian purposes, mostly nuclear energy. The UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is closely following Iran’s nuclear program and has never found any evidence that Iran was attempting to build an atomic bomb.

    Please NOTE and be reminded that Israel has hundreds of nuclear warheads, outside of the Non-Proliferation Agreement, tolerated by the west, led by the US of A.

    The IAEA, like most UN agencies, is following politically the “mandate” of the west. So, it does perhaps not come as a surprise that on Thursday, 12 June, the day before the Israeli attack on Iran, the agency declared that Iran was in breach of its non-proliferation obligations, the first such censure in two decades. It may have been the ultimate justification for Israel’s devastating air raid.

    Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said,

    Israel “Should expect a severe punishment. The Zionist regime, through this crime, has created a bitter and painful fate for itself — one it will certainly face,” he said. “With God’s permission, the powerful hands of the Islamic republic’s armed forces will not leave it unpunished.”

    For more details see FT 13 June 2025

    This new Middle Eastern war is in a constant state of change, possibly escalating and putting the world in danger, once more the works of the Zionist elite, attempting to control the globe, and achieving Greater Israel which would ideally expand their current map to also include Iran.

    Peace in the Middle East or better Western Asia would be a great step towards world Peace – an engine for socioeconomic prosperity.

  • First published on Global Research. You may read it here.
    • The post Israel Attacks Iran: The Turning of the Tables first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Trump (Like Biden) is Simply Evil

    On June 17, Trump demanded the unconditional surrender of Ayatollah Khamenei, and said “Our patience is wearing thin.”

    On June 16, Trump posted to his Truth Social and to Facebook, this warning for everyone in Tehran to evacuate the City:

    He has said there that America is in this war not to invade Iran but to protect Israel. However if Iran will have any success, then Americans, and not ONLY Israelis, will be bombing Iran. (And, of course, virtually all of Israel’s weapons do already come from America.)

    The U.S. Government, and not ONLY Israel’s, actually invaded Iran on June 13 and had co-planned that aggression together.

    So, this invasion of Iran IS the policy of the U.S. Government, and not (as the propaganda describes it) ONLY the policy of Israel’s Government.

    And here was Trump’s Truth Social post on that day:

    In that post, he unintentionally made clear that he never actually “negotiated” with Iran; he ORDERED Iran to do Netanyahu’s bidding. And, NOW, he and Netanyahu intend to forcibly (militarily) regime-change Iran, simply because Iran refused to comply with Netanyahu’s (and Trump’s, and Biden’s) DEMAND (that Iran be subordinated to Israel).

    This is now heading into WW3. On June 16, the excellent news-site, which analyzes international-policy issues of protecting Russia from the U.S. empire’s constant aggressions to weaken or replace Russia’s Government, en.topcor.ru/news/, headlined “CRINK Air Force Could Help Iran Stand Up to Israel,” and here was its grim but entirely realistic analysis:

    The military defeat of Iran, if it also leads to the beginning of the process of disintegration of the Islamic Republic into a number of quasi-states, will become the gravest geopolitical defeat [that the] informal anti-Western alliance CRINK led by Russia and China [have faced]. The ally [member, actually: Iran is the “I” in “CRINK”] must be saved, but how, exactly?

    At the moment, the war between Israel and Iran is characterized by a remote exchange of air strikes using aircraft, ballistic missiles and kamikaze drones, as well as sabotage and terrorist attacks by Israeli special services in the Iranian rear.

    Given that they have no common border and the US’s stated non-interference, large-scale ground operations are out of the question, so sending international brigades of Russian, North Korean or Chinese volunteers to help the Persians makes no sense. However, Tehran would certainly not refuse help in the fight against Israeli aviation, so it is worth remembering that something similar has already happened in modern history.

    “Flying Tigers”

    Let us recall that even before the start of World War II, a war between the Chinese Republic and the Japanese Empire that had attacked it had already begun in the European theater of operations in Southeast Asia on July 7, 1937. At the same time, the Japanese were taking out the poorly prepared Chinese aviation with one hand. However, in that historical period, China enjoyed support not only from the USSR, but also from the USA.

    Retired US Air Force Major Claire Lee Chennault, sent there as a military adviser, proposed creating a special air unit in which the pilots would be American volunteers flying American planes. And that was done. President Roosevelt officially allowed US Air Force pilots to take leave and fight on a purely volunteer basis on the side of China against Japan.

    A special aviation unit called the Flying Tigers was then created, consisting of three fighter squadrons flying American aircraft purchased under Lend-Lease. Its pilots signed a contract with the Chinese private firm CAMCO (Central Aircraft Manufacturing Company), under the terms of which they received $500 for each enemy aircraft destroyed.

    American volunteers successfully fought on the side of the Chinese Republic until 1942, after which the Flying Tigers were withdrawn from the Chinese Air Force and included in the 23rd Fighter Group of the 10th Air Force of the US Army, and in 1943 it was transformed into the 14th Air Force of the US Army, consisting of 60 bombers and more than 100 fighters. Their commander, Claire Lee Chennault, became a general.

    Legion “Condor”

    Around the same time, the Condor Legion, created in Nazi Germany to help the future Franco regime in Spain, was operating in the European theatre of military operations. The number of this “volunteer” unit was relatively small, reaching 5,5 thousand people.

    However, in the Third Reich, Condor was seen as a training ground for personnel, a testing ground for modern weapons, and a source of up-to-date combat experience. In addition to four bomber squadrons and four fighter squadrons, the legion included anti-aircraft and anti-tank defense units, an armored group of four battalions, transport sections, anti-tank artillery, and flamethrower units.

    During the Spanish Civil War, the German army trained its best future aces and tested the latest aircraft that later fought in World War II. The Europeans intend to do something similar today, sending a so-called fighter coalition to Ukraine to help the Zelensky regime, which will protect Kyiv and the right bank from Russian missile and air strikes.

    CRINK Air Army?

    Returning to the topic of Iran, one must ask why, in fact, Russia, the DPRK and China should be interested in Tehran not losing and not following the path of Syria, which lost its sovereignty and turned into a terrorist enclave?

    Our country needs Iran as a friendly partner, covering the southern flank and providing access to the Indian Ocean through the Caspian Sea. The oil fields that Israel threatens to bomb already belong to Beijing, which has invested huge amounts of money in the Iranian oil and gas sector. And for Pyongyang, Tehran has long been a technological partner in the development and production of various weapons.

    What could the CRINK alliance actually do to help its ally, who has been dealt a vile blow and is being prepared to be destroyed by “Western partners” at the hands of Israel? Based on the above, there are two possible paths.

    The first is the creation of an international volunteer unit of Russian, North Korean and Chinese “vacationers” who would receive modern fighters and air defense systems purchased by Iran under Lend-Lease and would go to gain real combat experience in air battles against the ultra-modern Israeli aviation.

    Bearing in mind that the Russian Federation is facing a direct conflict with NATO, which has placed its bets on aviation, the DPRK has South Korea right next door, and the AUKUS alliance has already been created against China and a military operation against Taiwan is looming, such relevant experience in air combat would be, to put it mildly, not superfluous. Taking it into account, the Russian and Chinese defense industries could appropriately modify their aircraft and create a center for joint training of pilots from Iran, the DPRK, the Russian Federation and China.

    The second path is a little less demonstrative and involves the creation of a hypothetical aviation PMC, for the needs of which Tehran could buy modern aircraft from Russia and China and hire vacationing pilots from the Russian Federation, China and, possibly, North Korea, who would be ready to cover Iran from Israeli air strikes.

    There are options, if there is a desire.

    All of the propaganda in The West PRESUMES that The West has decency and international law on its side and that all OTHER countries are inferior to it — less good, less decent, than are the U.S.-and-allied nations. The reality is the exact opposite.

    For example, the CIA-edited and written Wikipedia (which blacklists — blocks from linking to — sites that aren’t CIA-approved) article on “CRINK” redirects the reader to their article “Axis of Upheaval”, which opens:

    “Axis of Upheaval” is a term coined in 2024 by Center for a New American Security foreign policy analysts Richard Fontaine and Andrea Kendall-Taylor and used by many foreign policy analysts,[1][2][3] military officials,[4][5] and international groups[6] to describe the growing anti-Western collaboration between Russia under Vladimir Putin, Iran, China, and North Korea beginning in the early 2020s. It has also been called the “axis of autocracies“,[7][8][9] “quartet of chaos“,[10][11][12] the “deadly quartet“[4] or “CRINK“.[13][a]

    The loose alliance generally represented itself in diplomatic addresses and public statements as an “anti-hegemony” and “anti-imperialist” coalition with intentions to challenge what it deemed to be a Western-dominated global order to reshape international relations into a multipolar order according to their shared interests. While not a formal bloc, these nations have increasingly coordinated their economic, military, and diplomatic efforts, making strong efforts to aid each other to undermine Western influence.[1]

    Central to its opening paragraph is the Center for a New American Security (CNAS); and, as is made clear at one of the CIA’s NON-approved sites, the “Militarist Monitor”, their article “Center for a New American Security” (which thus is not used as a source by Wikipedia) makes clear that CNAS is totally neoconservative (a marketing-arm of the U.S. weapons-manufacturing industry), but even that site (MM) says nothing about who funds it. Another CIA-banned site, “WSWS”, has a far more comprehensive article about CNAS, titled “Democratic think tank plots war against Russia and China: What is the Center for a New American Security?”, and it makes explicit that CNAS’s main donors are “Defense contractors” (which sell ONLY to the U.S. Government and its allies) and secondarily “High tech” (which sell both to those Governments and to the public). In other words: the CIA represents the billionaires who are heavily invested in those two industries — as well as in the ‘news’-media (such as Wikipedia) that propagandize for America’s armaments companies in their ‘news’, editorials, and ads. (For example: even if a pharmaceutical company is simply advertising in these billionaires’ ‘news’-media, it is thereby funding the necon operation.) In 1922, Walter Lippmann invented the phrase “manufacture of consent” to refer to this then-new type of ‘democracy’; but it became big-time only after Truman started the Cold War and the U.S. global-hegemonic empire, on 25 July 1945.

    The hegemonic (or “hegemoniacal”) global empire that U.S. President Truman started on 25 July 1945, needs now, finally, to be defeated decisively. This means without reaching the stage of a nuclear war against Russia, because that could end ONLY in the defeat of both sides and the end of all human civilization. However, I am personally inclined to think that The West have become SO desperate to rule the entire world, so that Russia — and perhaps all of the CRINK — need now to announce publicly that they will NOT allow Iran to be defeated, and that this means that they ARE willing to go nuclear against America and Israel, in order to PREVENT Iran’s defeat — if that’s what would be needed in order to PREVENT the U.S. from providing such backup to Israel’s invasion of Iran.

    Trump (like Biden) never planned for that possibility. If there is to be a WW3, then the most evil empire in all of history, America’s empire, must be prevented from starting it (e.g., by extending Israel’s war against Iran into becoming fully a U.S.-Israel invasion of Iran). It must instead be started by their main targets — CRINK — if it MUST start, at all. The initiator of a war (such as Israel and the U.S. are, in regard to their joint war against Iran) always has the advantage of surprise (such as on June 13th), and thus the higher likelihood of eliminating the other side’s central command (as Israel has largely done). That way (by CRINK’s joining with Iran on this war), if there will be any future afterwards, it WON’T be dominated by the world’s most evil nations — the U.S.-empire nations. Planning for a post-WW3 world has now become important, because of Trump’s commitment now of greatly increased U.S. backup of Israel’s war to conquer Iran. Post-WW3 would be hell in any case, but simply allowing the U.S.-Israel-UK empire to take the entire world would LIKEWISE be hell. And that’s what we all are now heading toward.

    The post Trump (Like Biden) is Simply Evil first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Apply the NPT to All Nations Equally

    This is a case of awakening Iran to really the full deceit and the full evil that is represented by Israel and the United States and Europe in my view this uh you know the history of the last 60 years for my country I’m ashamed of it. You know my country was supposed to be a place of freedom and liberty and promoting freedom, instead we become agents of murder and mayhem, and we kill foreigners with no regard whatsoever and then wonder why people don’t like us.

    — Larry Johnson, “IRAN STRIKES ISRAEL: Rockets Rain Down on Tel Aviv, Haifa, Eilat & More!” Dialogue Works, 16 June 2025

    Because of nuclear weapons, and because a lot of countries have a lot of them, we [the United States] can’t defeat those countries. So the world is intrinsically multipolar in the sense: don’t mess with another nuclear superpower [it] can really wreck your day.

    — Jeffrey Sachs, “Washington has the delusion it still runs the show,” Al Jazeera.

    Columbia University economics professor Jeffrey Sachs restates an often heard and obvious maxim that speaks to nuclear deterrence. Military analyst Scott Ritter seems to dissent from the maxim of nuclear deterrence. In a video dated 15 July 2025, Ritter says, “Developing A Nuclear Weapon Will Be THE END Of Iran!”

    “I’ll tell you, the quickest way to get America to drop nuclear bombs on Iran is for Iran to develop a nuclear weapons program. Iran will not be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. That will not happen. No matter how much people think it’s justified, and all this. it won’t happen uh the United States has made it clear that, it’s uh, it’s red line for it using nuclear weapons against Iran is an Iranian nuclear weapon.”

    “I turn to the Iranians and say: why then do you want to posture as a nuclear threshold state knowing that if you ever cross that line you bring about your inevitable destruction as a nation [by the US] …”

    Yet, in a subsequent video, on 16 July 2025, Ritter seems to contradict himself, saying: “The Iranians are ready for what the United States can bring to bear.”

    Ritter also admits, “The Israelis know that the Iranians don’t have a nuclear weapons program. They know it.”

    Ritter complains, “Iran is being grossly irresponsible for going beyond that which is necessary for um doing its legitimate peaceful [nuclear] program.”

    Providing one’s nation, a nation which is constantly threatened, with an effective military deterrence is irresponsible? Ritter ignores that Israel has been biting at the bit for several decades to attack Iran on the pretense that it is acquiring nuclear weapon capability… a similar trajectory that Israel undertook to acquire its nuclear weapons capability.

    Ritter is flummoxed as to why Iran would pursue enrichment beyond 20% calling it “waving the red flag in front of the Israeli bull.” Well, that Israeli bull did not need a red flag to launch an illegal war, a cowardly war, and that is what a war is when you just sneak up to attack without the courage to first declare war.

    Ritter’s argument is regressivist unless he applies the nuclear standard to all countries.

    A US nuclear attack on a nuclear armed Iran would also threaten the end of the US as a self-preening beacon on the hill — if it isn’t already in the eyes of people around the world.

    Why doesn’t an intelligent analyst like Ritter argue for every nuclear-armed nation to accede to Article 6 of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty instead of focusing his ire solely on a perpetually targeted Iran. If not, it comes across as prejudiced and discriminatory.

    The post Apply the NPT to All Nations Equally first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • ‘Freedom Ride’ Caravan Launched In Defense Of Immigrant Rights

    This past weekend, dozens of artists, activists, and faith leaders hit the road with the “Freedom Ride” caravan in response to the Trump administration’s broad attacks on democratic rights, including ICE raids that have sparked nationwide protests.

    The caravan departed on Sunday, June 8, from the controversial Delaney Hall ICE detention center in Newark, New Jersey, and has since made stops in Washington, DC as well as Durham and Charlotte in North Carolina.

    In the next few days, the caravan convened by IFCO/Pastors for Peace, the Interfaith Center of New York, the People’s Forum, and the Riverside Church, will continue onto Atlanta, Georgia and Birmingham, Alabama, to finally end up in Jena, Louisiana – outside of the ICE detention facility where pro-Palestine activist and Columbia graduate Mahmoud Khalil has been detained for months.

    The post ‘Freedom Ride’ Caravan Launched In Defense Of Immigrant Rights appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Israel’s Strikes on Iran Spark Growing Dissent in Congress

    Photo credit: CODEPINK

    On Monday, June 16, Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) introduced legislation, a War Powers Resolution, to prevent President Trump from using military force against Iran without Congressional authorization. This will force all Senators to go on record supporting or opposing the following: “Congress hereby directs the President to terminate the use of United States Armed Forces for hostilities against the Islamic Republic of Iran or any part of its government or military, unless explicitly authorized by a declaration of war or specific authorization for use of military force against Iran.”

    Sen. Kaine, a longtime advocate for exerting congressional authority over war, blasted Israel for jeopardizing planned U.S.-Iran diplomacy. “The American people have no interest in another forever war,” he wrote.

    When Israel launched a surprise military strike on Iran last week, it did more than risk igniting a catastrophic regional war. It also exposed long-simmering tensions in Washington—between entrenched bipartisan, pro-Israel hawks and a growing current of lawmakers (and voters) unwilling to be dragged into another Middle East disaster.

    “This is not our war,” declared Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), a Republican and one of the House’s most consistent antiwar voices. “Israel doesn’t need U.S. taxpayers’ money for defense if it already has enough to start offensive wars. I vote not to fund this war of aggression.” On social media, he polled followers on whether the U.S. should give Israel weapons to attack Iran. After 126,000 votes (and 2.5 million views), the answer was unequivocal: 85% said no.

    For decades, questioning U.S. support for Israel has been a third rail in Congress. But Israel’s unprovoked attack on Iran—coming just as the sixth round of sensitive U.S.-Iran nuclear talks were set to take place in Oman—sparked rare and unusually direct criticism from across the political spectrum. Progressive members, already furious over Israel’s war on Gaza, were quick to condemn the new offensive. But they weren’t alone.

    Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) called Israel’s strike “reckless” and “escalatory,” and warned that Prime Minister Netanyahu is trying to drag the U.S. into a broader war. Rep. Chuy García (D-IL) called Israel’s actions “diplomatic sabotage” and said, “the U.S. must stop supplying offensive weapons to Israel, which also continue to be used against Gaza, & urgently recommit to negotiations.”

    Rep. Summer Lee (D-PA) was even more blunt. “The war criminal Netanyahu wants to ignite an endless regional war & drag the U.S. into it. Any politician who tries to help him betrays us all.”

    More striking, however, were the critiques from moderate Democrats and some Republicans.

    Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), Ranking Member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, warned that strikes “threaten not only the lives of innocent civilians but the stability of the entire Middle East and the safety of American citizens and forces.”

    Some pro-Israel Democrats are feeling comfortable speaking out on this conflict because it fits their anti-Trump critique. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) said: “We are at this crisis today because President Trump foolishly walked away from President Obama’s Iran nuclear agreement under which Iran had agreed to dismantle much of its nuclear program and to open its facilities to international inspections, putting more eyes on the ground. The United States should now lead the international community towards a diplomatic solution to avoid a wider war.”

    Adding to this diverse chorus of opposition are some Republicans from the party’s non-interventionist wing. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) declared, “War with Iran is not in America’s interest. It would destabilize the region, cost countless lives, and drain our resources for generations.” Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH) lamented that “some members of Congress and U.S. Senators seem giddy about the prospects of a bigger war.”

    And in a rare show of agreement with progressive critics, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) blasted the hawks in both parties. “We’ve been told for the past 20 years that Iran is on the verge of developing a nuclear bomb any day now. The same story. Everyone I know is tired of U.S. intervention and regime change in foreign countries. Everyone I know wants us to fix our own problems here at home, not bomb other countries.”

    Of course, many in Congress rushed to support Israel. Senate Republican leader John Thune said, “Israel has determined that it must take decisive action to defend the Israeli people.” Democratic Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) voiced full support for the strike and urged the U.S. to provide Israel “whatever is necessary—military, intelligence, weaponry.” The most crass was Senator Lindsey Graham, who posted: “Game on. Pray for Israel.”

    But these crude pro-war responses, once guaranteed to go unchallenged, are now being met with resistance–and not just from activists. With public opinion shifting sharply–especially among younger voters, progressives, and “America First-ers” – the political calculus on unconditional support for Israel is changing. In the wake of Israel’s disastrous war in Gaza and its widening regional provocations, members of Congress are being forced to choose: follow the AIPAC money and the old playbook–or listen to their constituents.

    If the American people continue to raise their voices, the tide in Washington could turn away from support for a war with Iran that could plunge the region into deeper chaos while offering no relief for the suffering people of Gaza. We could finally see an end to decades of disastrous unconditional support for Israel and knee-jerk support for catastrophic wars.

    The post Israel’s Strikes on Iran Spark Growing Dissent in Congress first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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