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Category: United States

  • 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.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • ‘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.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Aid as a Means to Commit Genocide

    It’s been apparent for some time that the Israeli government intends to expel or kill the population of Gaza and claim the territory. This has become so obvious that even the establishment press is belatedly beginning to notice. In an editorial, the world’s leading business journal, the Financial Times, observed that “each new offensive makes it harder not to suspect that the ultimate goal of Netanyahu’s far-right coalition is to ensure Gaza is uninhabitable and drive Palestinians from their land” (emphasis mine). I’m not quite sure what would need to happen before the Financial Times would consider its suspicions confirmed; the Israeli Prime Minister is much more assertive about his intentions, he identified the expulsion of Gazans to be among his “clear conditions” for ending his genocidal campaign; he speaks of emptying Gaza as one empties a dustbin, and with the same regard for its contents. However, because coverage from the corporate press has been so incommensurate with the scale of the horrors, even this tepid statement from the Financial Times is progress.

    The Israelis have sought to render Gaza uninhabitable, and then encourage what they’re perversely calling “voluntary emigration.” They’ve embraced the logic that someone fleeing a burning building has “volunteered” to leap from the window. This strategy has many components to it: tens of thousands (at least) of Gazans have been massacred by the Israelis, most of the buildings have been destroyed (the Israelis have begun a campaign to eliminate the ones that remain standing after previous assaults), the Gazan health care infrastructure has been repeatedly attacked, and the entire Gaza Strip has been subjected to a medieval siege, the consequences of which have left the population critically short of food and medicine. After reducing Gaza to starvation through months of total blockade, Israel turned aid distribution into another mechanism of murder or expulsion.

    An entity with the philanthropic-sounding name the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), whose name is so starkly at odds with its function that it might have been coined by a satirist, has been tasked with providing aid to the Gazan population. Anyone familiar with Orwell could likely guess the character of a group with such a crudely propagandistic name. Some organizations have demonstrated the competence to deliver aid and the desire to do so efficaciously, but GHF isn’t one of them. Credible humanitarian organizations were disregarded and the GHF empowered, for reasons that Israeli officials have been forthcoming enough to articulate.

    The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was clear about why he decided to slightly relax the siege that Gaza had been subjected to: Israeli allies were beginning to become squeamish about the forced starvation of the entire population of Gaza. These same allies have supported the Israeli campaign despite the International Court of Justice ruling that it’s plausible Israel is violating the Genocide Convention, and despite the International Criminal Court issuing arrest warrants for top Israeli leaders. The supporters of Israel have demonstrated a willingness to tolerate a great deal of savagery. But Israel’s “closest friends in the world,” as Netanyahu tells us, can’t “handle pictures of mass starvation,” so “minimal” aid deliveries must be allowed. There are no moral concerns about causing a famine in Gaza, only pragmatic considerations. Netanyahu said that “we cannot reach a point of starvation, for practical and diplomatic reasons.” Doing so may cross a “red line” that could cause Israel to lose the support of the United States. Starvation is not wrong—merely inconvenient, like a dinner guest who overstays his welcome.

    Another key objective is to force the Gazan population to the southern portion of the territory and then induce them to leave for other countries. The Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, speaking at a conference in the first week of May, said: “Within a few months we will be able to declare that we have won. Gaza will be totally destroyed.” He went on to say: “The Gazan citizens will be concentrated in the south. They will be totally despairing, understanding that there is no hope and nothing to look for in Gaza, and will be looking for relocation to begin a new life in other places.” Under the new scheme, the aid distribution sites were limited to only four locations (it was 400 locations when the United Nations was managing the dispersal of aid), and the sites were strategically located in the South of the Strip, which forces the population to congregate in these areas. They will reside under conditions that Israeli planners privately concede will be likened to “concentration camps.”

    But that’s only if the Palestinians reach the distribution sites. Kit Malthouse, a conservative member of parliament in the United Kingdom said that the aid distribution system the United Nations was managing was replaced with “a shooting gallery, an abattoir, where starving people are lured out through combat zones to be shot at.” The United Nations was less poetic when voicing its condemnation of the GHF scheme, it merely said that “aid distribution has become a death trap.” Every day brings news of another massacre at an aid distribution center. The public has been subjected to the standard Israeli deceptions about these incidents, but Israeli culpability becomes clear whenever the evidence is honestly interrogated. At the time of this writing, 245 Palestinian aid seekers have been killed by the Israelis and more than 2,152 were injured; the level of savagery is such that the number is certain to be greater within moments after being transcribed.

    Let us dispense with the fiction of ignorance. The evidence is not hidden, it is flaunted. The intent is not obscured, it is bragged about. The Israeli government, with the serene assurance of a state that knows its crimes will be subsidized, barely troubles itself with denials anymore. And the United States remains a participant in these crimes.

    The post Aid as a Means to Commit Genocide first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • LAPD Running Amok, Dishing out Numerous Injuries to Protesters and Journalists in LA

    Protesters confront police on the 101 Freeway near the Metropolitan Detention Center of downtown Los Angeles, Sunday, June 8, 2025, following last night's immigration raid protest. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

    On 11 June, the Substack, Closer to the Edge, penned a letter to the Los Angeles Police Department, and the opening graph says it all:

    You shot a journalist on live television. You struck another in the forehead while he was standing alone under a freeway. You sent one man into emergency surgery after punching a hole in his leg with a “less-lethal” round. You bruised a New York Times reporter’s ribcage. You gassed a foreign correspondent while she was wearing a press badge. You shot a 74-year-old woman in the back. You nailed a man in the chest with a 40mm grenade while he was holding a phone. And you left a woman bleeding from the skull in the middle of the street while people begged your officers to call an ambulance—and they didn’t.

    And now you’re “investigating.”

    Closer to the Edge maintains it has “completed a full, verified investigation of eight people injured by law enforcement during the protests in Los Angeles. Seven were journalists. One was a protester. All of them were harmed under your watch.”

    The Substack notes that it is “publishing” the stories of the victims of police violence “[w]ith verified quotes. With real names. With witness footage, medical updates, and your own damn statements when available. You told the public you’re investigating? Then we’ll do it faster, better, and with the one thing your officers seem allergic to: accountability.”

    Reuters is reporting that there has been over 30 incidents of police violence against journalists as tracked by the LA Press Club. According Reuters Helen Coster, “Journalists have been among those injured during protests” in recent days.

    Among the injured were Lauren Tomasi (Nine News Australia) who was struck by a rubber-bullet projectile; Toby Canham, freelance photojournalist for the New York Post, was hit in the forehead by a “hard rubbery” projectile; Nick Stern, a British photojournalist, was shot in the thigh with a projectile and required emergence surgery.

    The post LAPD Running Amok, Dishing out Numerous Injuries to Protesters and Journalists in LA first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • The Middle East is on Fire because Israeli and U.S. Imperialism Lit the Match

    Overnight, the Zionist entity of Israel escalated its war of aggression against Iran by launching unprovoked attacks on the Islamic Republic. The notion that a rogue ethnostate that is currently carrying out a genocide believes that it possesses the right to determine which countries can and cannot develop a nuclear weapon is both bizarre and egregious as well as brazenly hypocritical, and further demonstrates that the State of Israel operates firmly within the structures of white “supremacy” ideology, colonialism, and imperialism. Iran, like all sovereign nations, has the right to defend itself from aggression and uphold its security in the face of repeated threats and acts of war. This stands in stark contrast to Israel, which operates a settler colonial occupation of Palestine, as well as portions of Lebanon and Syria.

    The idea of Israel, the Zionist occupation, claiming a moral position is absurd. And the fact that the international community continues to give Israel any credibility is a dereliction of duty and forms a vacuum of morality for all of those who do not stand resolutely against its genocide in Palestine and its attacks on Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, and Iran. Israel’s immunity granted by Western colonial nations is a further reflection of the moral gulf between these states and the vast majority of humankind that subscribes  to values that uphold People(s)-Centered Human Rights, self-determination, and dignity.

    Israel’s unprovoked attack is another example of the lawlessness that is fully supported by the U.S. The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) rejects the notion that the U.S. was unaware of this attack. The U.S. had the ability to stop this attack if it was serious about containing Israel’s perpetual war crimes and disregard for international law, which is a  major threat to any form of true peace. The combination of Israel’s continued genocidal assaults and ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people, and its bombings and occupations of portions of the sovereign nations of Syria and Lebanon prove that Israel and the U.S. are the most dangerous nations in the world. Their power must be dismantled.

    To conflate Israel’s actions with Jewish values is the height of antisemitism. Zionism, an ideology of white “supremacy,” must be wholly separated from Judaism’s teachings of justice, human rights, and inclusivity. Israel is no more a “Jewish state” than the U.S. is a “Christian state.” Both are violent constructs of ethnonationalism. BAP firmly rejects the conflation of Judaism with the barbarism of Zionism, just as we denounce the antisemitic trope that equates Zionism with Judaism itself.

    Israel’s militarism further threatens global stability by spiking the price of oil by 8 percent in one night. This economic shockwave further demonstrates why we must continue linking the devastation of war with the devastation associated with the climate catastrophe that is fueled by capitalist war profiteering interests of fossil fuel cartels and the military industrial complex who both benefit from the Israeli war machine at the expense of human life and the ecosystems necessary to sustain it. Israel’s aggression is capitalism’s credit card with an unlimited spending limit.

    History will remember this moment and Israel’s barbaric acts as an indelible and ignominious stain on international “law” and cooperation, people(s)-centered human rights and the basic tenets of human dignity.

    In Response, BAP Demands that : 

    • The UN Security Council and European Union impose immediate sanctions and consequences for Israel’s illegal acts, and institute an arms embargo.
    • The international community must expel Israel from the United Nations. It has no place among fraternal nations.
    • The international community categorically reject Israel’s fraudulent claims to jurisdiction over Iran’s lawful nuclear energy program.
    • The IAEA investigate Israel’s unregulated nuclear program with the same rigor applied to others.
    • U.S. lawmakers enforce laws prohibiting military aid to human rights violators by cutting off all arms transfers to Israel or face prosecution at the ICC and ICJ for complicity in war crimes.
    • The ICC indict and prosecute Israeli and U.S. officials for continued war crimes throughout West Asia and the lawlessness of genocide perpetuated against the Palestinian people.
    • All anti-imperialist, anti-war, pro-peace movements and organizations support Iran’s right to sovereignty, self-defense, and self-determination against Israel’s murderous aggression.
    The post The Middle East is on Fire because Israeli and U.S. Imperialism Lit the Match first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Scott Ritter: “We are at war with Iran.”

    On Russia’s Sputnik News, Scott Ritter, who has honestly reported on this matter for over 25 years, said on June 13, that the Trump Administration worked with the Netanyahu Administration to plan this strike against Iran and is therefore already at war against Iran, and that almost certainly America will also become militarily engaged in it. He also says that the strike was devastatingly effective and was directed at and achieved three objectives: 1. decapitation; 2. eliminating air-defense; 3. greatly weakening Iran’s retaliatory capability.

    The decapitation was like what Israel had earlier achieved also against Hezbollah. Elimination of air-defense knocked out Iran’s Russian S-300 and S-400 air-defense systems, which perhaps had not been placed on high alert. Retaliatory capability was thus enormously weakened by the surprise attack taking-out much of Iran’s above-ground air force.

    Trump had participated by feigning to be negotiating with Iran and saying that Iran might experience a devastating Israeli invasion if Iran fails to accept Trump’s terms at the final talks that had been scheduled with Iran on Sunday June 15. Iran had carefully planned for that scheduled meeting. They trusted that Iran didn’t need to go undergound  yet (place all critical people and assets underground) until then. All of Iran’s leaders were to go to their bunkers, if needed, only on or after June 15 (if the alleged negotiations were to fail). The Trump-Netanyahu plan was for Iran’s top assets to be sitting ducks for this surprise attack. Iran fell for their con.

    Here are the sources:

    “Scott Ritter: US Lulled Iran to Sleep Using Nuclear Talks Deception, Allowing Israel to Strike”

    13 June 2025

    Israel has carried out an unprecedented attack on Iran, targeting its nuclear program, scientists, and senior military leaders. Sputnik asked veteran ex-Marine intelligence officer Scott Ritter what just happened, and what comes next.

    The months of Iran-US nuclear talks essentially gave “Israel the opportunity for maximum surprise to achieve maximum damage,” with the strikes effectively amounting to “a joint US-Israeli attack on Iran,” Scott Ritter said. … “This, by any definition of the word, was a joint US-Israeli attack on Iran.” … “We are at war with Iran,.” … “If the Iranians have the capabilities that they claim to have and the resilience they claim to have, we will see an escalation. We will see Iran retaliating in a way that is not sustainable for Israel. But this is part of the Israeli trap to create the perception of existential struggle so that the United States will be confronted with a choice, let the Israeli ally suffer and perhaps be defeated, or to intervene and administer the coup de grâce against Iran. So, you know, we are looking at a long, drawn-out process that ultimately, I believe, will result in the United States entering this conflict on the side of Israel directly.” …

    “Scott Ritter: US Used Nuclear Talks to Set Up Israeli Strike on Iran | APT”

    13 June 2025

    “I believe that Israel and the United States coordinated very closely on this attack. This attack was a surprise attack. The Iranians were lulled into a false sense of complacency by the American insistence on focusing on a 6th round of negotiations that was scheduled to take place on Sunday. Israel was working with the United States on that narrative, saying that if there wasn’t a deal reached Sunday, then Israel would be considering an attack. This was very closely coordinated in order to give Israel the maximum opportunity for surprise to achieve maximum damage. … This was … a joint Israeli-American attack on Iran. … This attack was initiated with a decapitation strike that found many of the Iranian leaders in their homes. Had Iran been on high alert, these leaders would have been in a bunker. …”

    *****

    Anyone who continues to think that Trump is ‘the peace candidate’ is just as misinformed or stupid as Iran’s Supreme Leader was to think that the U.S. Government is serious about achieving peace instead of using ‘negotiations’ ONLY as a ploy to fool and thus defeat the countries it has already decided to “regime-change.” The U.S. regime is bipartisanly neoconservative. The only path to peace would be to replace it. Replacing one Party by another can’t even possibly free the American people from this dictatorship (which America became on 25 July 1945).

    The post Scott Ritter: “We are at war with Iran.” first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Movement Against ICE Raids Spreads To Cities Across The US

    US President Donald Trump sent in the military to suppress anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles this past weekend, but instead of stopping the protest movement in its tracks, demonstrations have taken place in cities across the entire United States to reject Trump’s immigration policies and crackdown.

    Since protests erupted against immigration raids in Los Angeles on Friday afternoon, they have spread to cities throughout the US, including New York City, Chicago, Denver, Dallas, Boston, and Atlanta.

    As the Trump administration scrambles to meet mass deportations quotas, with officials ramping up the immigration enforcement arrest quota to 3,000 per day, ICE operations have escalated to new heights.

    The post Movement Against ICE Raids Spreads To Cities Across The US appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Punishing Progress: Washington Targets Social Achievements of Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela

    “We look for the poorest patients,” the Cuban doctor in charge of the eye clinic said. “Often we travel to remote rural areas and bring them to the clinic in a bus.” The clinic, located in Ciudad Sandino, Nicaragua, was part of Misión Milagro (Miracle Mission), a joint initiative run by the Cuban and Venezuelan governments. The larger mission has treated over seven million patients in 33 countries since 2004. Local Nicaraguan doctors, trained by the Cubans, are now in charge in Ciudad Sandino.

    Misión Milagro is despised by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Washington has imposed sanctions on officials in countries using this and other Cuban medical missions. Supposedly aimed at stopping the “trafficking” of medical staff, the real intent is to destroy services that have proved immensely popular for their free, high-quality treatment, often in remote areas with few health facilities. The US falsely demonizes Cuba’s aid as “forced labor,” which is also a source of income for the besieged country.

    Successes of Rubio’s “enemies of humanity”

    Rubio’s attack on medical brigades is only the most recent example of the hybrid warfare conducted by successive US administrations against Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. Already designated as “strategic threats” to US security, according to Rubio, these countries are now also labelled “enemies of humanity.” In reality, all three countries have made major advances in human development, albeit constrained (most heavily in Cuba’s case) by Washington’s attacks.

    Cuba’s medical brigades derive from its community-based health system, whose success is recognized in medical journals and affords Cubans a three-year greater life expectancy than people in the US. Health services in Venezuela and Nicaragua have learnt from this model. For example, Nicaragua’s 180 casas maternas, assisting women in the late stages of pregnancy, have drastically reduced maternal deaths.

    Venezuela leads Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) in building affordable housing; its Great Housing Mission, launched in 2011, handed over its five millionth home a year ago. Nicaragua is building more than 7,000 “social interest” homes annually.

    Cuba, sadly, has an ongoing housing crisis, primarily caused by the US embargo, which has produced a severe shortage of building materials. One-third of homes are unfit, while its 13,500 annual building program inevitably falls short.

    However, Cuba invested in its education system during the most prosperous years of the revolution, when it benefited from the international solidarity of the Soviet Union. Cuba’s schools serve the most remote communities, and attendance is close to 100%. ELAM, its medical school for internationals, has trained an astonishing 31,180 doctors from 122 countries.

    Venezuela invested heavily in education as a means of empowering the populace, building thousands of new schools in underserved barrios and rural areas. By 2005, illiteracy was eradicated using Cuban-developed methods. By 2008, four out of five young adults were enrolled in higher education, the highest rate in the region.

    All three countries guarantee free education at all levels, including university. Nicaragua, for example, has created new technical colleges training some 46,000 students.

    Cuba and Nicaragua are two of LAC’s safest countries. A common factor is that their police forces were completely reformed, post-revolution, and they have been able to limit drug trafficking and keep at bay the violent gangs that bedevil other countries.

    The Venezuelan revolution inherited chronically high crime levels, but in recent years has achieved a significant decrease in homicides, which has been publicized not only by Caracas but by the US president. However, Trump deceitfully claims Venezuela has achieved this by deliberately exporting its criminals to the US.

    In terms of national security, Nicaragua and Venezuela have among the lowest military spending levels in the LAC region; Cuba, subject to constant US threat, is among the highest. Nevertheless, its spending of around $130 million annually pales in comparison with that of over a trillion by the US.

    Socially conscious foreign policy

    Perhaps most challenging to the US has been the independent foreign policy and the championing of regional integration by the three countries striving for socialism.

    Back in 2004, Venezuela and Cuba successfully founded ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America), scuttling Washington’s neoliberal free trade FTAA initiative. Venezuela followed with PetroCaribe, supplying oil to Caribbean nations on favorable terms. The founding of CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) in 2010, again spearheaded by Venezuela, provides an alternative to the US-dominated OAS (Organization of American States) as a region-wide political forum, which explicitly excludes the US and Canada.

    The three leftist states have also been international leaders in support of Palestine. Cuba was the first country in the LAC region to formally sever diplomatic relations with Israel in 1973. Nicaragua severed relations in 1982. These were temporarily reinstated by the neoliberal government in 1993, only to be again severed in 2010 after the Sandinistas returned to power. Venezuela severed relations with the Zionist state in 2009. Also in 2009, fellow ALBA nation Bolivia severed relations with Israel. These were temporarily reinstated in 2019 by the Áňez coup regime but again severed by the current Bolivian President, Luis Arce, in 2023. Last year, Nicaragua filed a case against Germany at the International Court of Justice over its military and political support of the genocide by Israel.

    Human rights weaponized

    Washington disregards the achievements in these three countries that former Trump functionary John Bolton called the “troika of tyranny,” instead weaponizing “human rights” to characterize them as authoritarian dictatorships. This is hypocritical in two senses.

    One is that their human rights records, by any standards, are no worse than those of many other countries in the region, and in most respects, they are better than those of the US itself.

    The other is that the US has been the primary cause of tightened security in these countries. The alleged limits on political expression are a response to constant interference – military interventions, coup efforts, and assassination attempts. Biden, for instance, upped the bounty on the head of Venezuela’s president to $25 million.

    Washington leads the chorus of complaints when a demonstration in Cuba is suppressed or a political party in Venezuela or Nicaragua is banned. The US tries to act as if it were an impartial observer, rather than – as is invariably the case – the funder or supporter of whatever opposition group is being “victimized.”

    Washington’s concern about “human rights” is a charade, which disappears if the government in question is a US client state, e.g., El Salvador.

    If countries pose a “strategic threat” to US interests, it is because of their record in improving the most important human rights, which, according to the United Nations, are “the right to life, food, education, work, health, and liberty.” In respect of these wider rights, Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua show that huge progress can be made by progressive, revolutionary governments that have rejected the neoliberalism pursued in LAC countries favored by Washington.

    Sanctions on Venezuela have led to the deaths of over 100,000 Venezuelans by 2020. The blockade of Cuba, costing the country $13.8 million daily, is so destructive that nearly one in ten Cubans has left the country in the last three years. Nicaragua is losing $500 million in development funding annually because the US is blocking loans from the World Bank and other institutions.

    It could hardly be more obvious that Washington’s aim is to destroy each country’s social achievements and impoverish their people so that those who do not die, fall sick, or migrate eventually will rise up against their governments. And then the likes of Rubio make inane statements such as offering “unwavering support and solidarity for the Cuban people.”

    Washington’s endgame

    What do successive US administrations and the opposition groups that they support actually want to achieve in the targeted countries?

    Over 30 years ago, prominent Cuban exiles were calling for “a sudden, dramatic and, if necessary, convulsive shift to free-wheeling capitalism.” Twenty years ago, the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, established by President George Bush, outlined a broad neoliberal vision for the country. A trawl of recent statements by exile groups reveals many vague demands for “democracy,” “transparent institutions,” “support for youth,” and so on, with some limited, specific proposals such as “restitution of property rights” (for Cubans in Miami looking to cash in on potentially valuable property their families abandoned 60 years ago).

    The Nicaraguan opposition is profoundly divided between the left and the right, with the right seeking to exclude the left from power, while the marginal “left” opposition has never garnered significant political support (the Sandinistas successfully mobilized the progressive vote in elections). The UNAMOS party, some of whose members were formerly Sandinista officials in the 1980s, offers a program focused on restructuring the government with only vague objectives for social development.

    The far-right opposition in Venezuela, led by Washington’s darling Maria Corina Machado, promises a bloodbath with no amnesty for the Chavistas. Machado’s surrogate, Edmundo González Urrutia, ran for the presidency in 2024 on a platform calling for extreme neoliberal privatization of education, health care, housing, food assistance, and the national oil agency.

    Regardless of the expressed aims of opposition groups, the likely outcome if one or more of the three governments were to lose power is evident. The coup attempt in Nicaragua in 2018 was a foretaste: murders of police and of Sandinista sympathizers, uncontrolled availability of firearms, empowerment of local criminals, importing violent gang members from El Salvador, destruction of public buildings, and much more.

    The kind of anarchic chaos that exists in Haiti is a very possible outcome, possibly leading to a repressive, authoritarian regime – but Washington-friendly – like that in Bukele’s El Salvador.

    The often-overlooked accomplishments of Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela have been made despite enduring aggressive US interventions. Washington continues to hypocritically weaponize human rights, using hybrid warfare to erode these achievements and justify regime change as a democratic project.

    The post Punishing Progress: Washington Targets Social Achievements of Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela first appeared on Dissident Voice.

  • The Spectacle of a Police State: This Is Martial Law Without a Formal Declaration of War

    In Trump’s America, the bar for martial law is no longer constitutional—it’s personal.

    What is unfolding right now in California—with hundreds of Marines deployed domestically; thousands of National Guard troops federalized; and military weapons, tactics and equipment on full display—is intended to intimidate, distract and discourage us from pulling back the curtain on the reality of the self-serving corruption, grift, graft, overreach and abuse that have become synonymous with his Administration.

    Don’t be distracted. Don’t be intimidated. Don’t be sidelined by the spectacle of a police state.

    This is yet another manufactured crisis fomented by the Deep State.

    When Trump issues a call to “BRING IN THE TROOPS!!!” explaining to reporters that he wants to have them “everywhere,” we should all be alarmed.

    This is martial law without a formal declaration of war.

    This heavy-handed, chest-thumping, politicized, militarized response to what is clearly a matter for local government is yet another example of Trump’s disregard for the Constitution and the limits of his power.

    Political protests are protected by the First Amendment until they cross the line from non-violent to violent. Even when protests turn violent, constitutional protocols remain in place to safeguard communities: law and order must flow through local and state chains of command, not from federal muscle.

    By breaking that chain of command, Trump is breaking the Constitution.

    Deploying the military to deal with domestic matters that can—and should—be handled by civilian police, despite the objections of local and state leaders, crosses the line into authoritarianism.

    When someone shows you who they are, believe them.

    In the span of a single week, the Trump administration is providing the clearest glimpse yet of its unapologetic, uncompromising, corrupt allegiance to the authoritarian Deep State.

    These two events—the federalization of the National Guard deployed to California in response to protests and the president’s lavish, taxpayer-funded military parade in the nation’s capital—bookend the administration’s unmistakable message: dissent will be crushed, and power will be performed.

    Trump governs by force (military deployment), fear (ICE raids, militarized policing), and spectacle (the parade).

    This is the spectacle of a police state. One side of the coin is militarized suppression. The other is theatrical dominance. Together, they constitute the language of force and authoritarian control.

    Yet this is more than political theater; it is a constitutional crisis in motion.

    As we have warned before, this tactic is a familiar one.

    In times of political unrest, authoritarian regimes often invoke national emergencies as a pretext to impose military solutions. The result? The Constitution is suspended, civilian control is overrun, and the machinery of the state turns against its own people.

    This is precisely what the Founders feared when they warned against standing armies on American soil: that one day, the military might be used not to defend the people, but to control them.

    It is a textbook play from the authoritarian handbook, deployed with increasing frequency under Trump. The optics are meant to intimidate, broadcast control, and discourage resistance before it even begins.

    Thus, deploying the National Guard in this manner is not just a political maneuver—it is a strategic act of fear-based governance designed to instill terror, particularly among vulnerable communities, and ensure compliance.

    America is being transformed into a battlefield before our eyes.

    Militarized police. Riot squads. Black uniforms. Armored vehicles. Pepper spray. Tear gas. Stun grenades. Crowd control and intimidation tactics.

    This is not the language of freedom. This is not even the language of law and order.

    This is the language of force.

    This transformation is not accidental—it’s strategic. The government now sees the public not as constituents to be served but as potential combatants to be surveilled, managed, and subdued. In this new paradigm, dissent is treated as insurrection, and constitutional rights are treated as threats to national security.

    What we are witnessing today is also part of a broader setup: an excuse to use civil unrest as a pretext for militarized overreach.

    We saw signs of this strategy in Charlottesville, Virginia, where police failed to de-escalate and at times exacerbated tensions during protests that should have remained peaceful. The resulting chaos gave authorities cover to crack down—not to protect the public, but to reframe protest as provocation and dissent as disorder.

    Then and now, the objective wasn’t to preserve peace and protect the public. It was to delegitimize dissent and cast protest as provocation.

    It’s all part of an elaborate setup by the architects of the Deep State. The government wants a reason to crack down, lock down, and bring in its biggest guns.

    This is how it begins.

    Trump’s use of the military against civilians violates the spirit—if not the letter—of the Posse Comitatus Act, which is meant to bar federal military involvement in domestic affairs. It also raises severe constitutional questions about the infringement of First Amendment rights to protest and Fourth Amendment protections against warrantless search and seizure.

    Modern tools of repression compound the threat. AI-driven surveillance, predictive policing software, biometric databases, and fusion centers have made mass control seamless and silent. The state doesn’t just respond to dissent anymore; it predicts and preempts it.

    While boots are on the ground in California, preparations are underway for a military spectacle in Washington, D.C.

    At first glance, a military procession might seem like a patriotic display. But in this context, it is not a celebration of service; it is a declaration of supremacy. It is not about honoring troops; it is about reminding the populace who holds the power and who wields the guns.

    This is how authoritarian regimes govern—through spectacle.

    By sandwiching a military crackdown between a domestic troop deployment and a showy parade, Trump is sending a unified message: This is about raw, unchecked, theatrical power. And whether we, the people, will accept a government that rules not by consent, but by coercion.

    The Constitution was not written to accommodate authoritarian pageantry. It was written to restrain it. It was never meant to sanctify conquest as a form of governance.

    We are at a crossroads.

    Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. Strip away that consent, and all that remains is conquest through force, spectacle, and fear.

    As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, if we allow the language of fear, the spectacle of dominance, and the machinery of militarized governance to become normalized, then we are no longer citizens of a republic—we are subjects of a police state.

    The post The Spectacle of a Police State: This Is Martial Law Without a Formal Declaration of War first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Thank You for Your (Safe) Service

    As we have those great warriors leading our nation, let’s look at their military service. You know, the important things that so many love to thank them for. Let’s see, we have Donnie Trump, who supported the Vietnam War but just could not serve, due to 4 student deferments and then one medical for bone spurs in his foot. Yet, he stood tall in his salute to our boys in The Shit as the Nam was called. W Bush was one who served during the height of the Vietnam War, with the Texas Air National Guard. Now, for those who do not know or perhaps have forgotten, the Air Guard would be the LAST group to ever be called to leave our borders. By the way, W’s dad, Poppa Bush, was a Texas congressman at that time who vehemently supported the war, but made sure Junior would never go.

    Fast forward to today. We have JD Vance, who served in the Marines for four years but never had to see combat. JD was a public affairs officer — safe and sound, way behind the lines. His political counterpart, Captain Ron DeSantis, was another Iraqi War hero who served as a Navy lawyer… also never anywhere near the hornet’s nest. JD does love to talk tough now about China, our new enemy. Those damn Reds are making fortunes selling their shit to Wal-Mart, while they make deals with so many of our enemies worldwide — and yes, even our allies.

    As was spoken in the Groucho Marx film Duck Soup: “This means war!”

    Then we have little Marco Rubio, now a lieutenant for Trump Central. Marco was born in 1971, so could have served in the Iraq War in 2003 that he was proud to support wholeheartedly. Little Marco talks tough about our so-called adversary China, along with his great fervor for Israel’s genocide of Gaza (and that includes the West Bank).

    When all these great patriots walk by you or are on camera please stand up and salute them. For without them what would war really be?

    The post Thank You for Your (Safe) Service first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • Don’t Fund the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation: It’s a Genocidal Smokescreen

    Chaos at Gaza Humanitarian Foundation distribution site in Rafah. Photo: AP

    Recent reports say that US AID is considering giving $500 million to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF)—an “aid” initiative launched at Israel’s request. At first glance, that might sound like a generous effort to help desperate Palestinians in Gaza. But peel back even one layer, and you’ll find a deadly political scheme masquerading as humanitarian relief.

    This is not about helping hungry people. It’s about controlling them, displacing them, and starving them into submission.

    Let’s start with some basics. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is not a humanitarian organization. It’s a U.S.- and Israeli-backed scheme run by people with no track record in neutral aid work. Its first director Jake Wood, resigned on May 25, saying the organization failed to uphold humanitarian principles. Then the Boston Consulting Group, which had secretly helped design GHF’s aid operations, pulled out and apologized to staff who were furious about the firm’s complicity in a system that enabled forced displacement and sidelined trusted UN agencies.

    GHF’s brand new director is Johnnie Moore, an American evangelical PR executive best known for helping Donald Trump recognize Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem and push the U.S. embassy move there—a move that only fanned the flames of conflict.

    GHF’s entire premise is rooted in deception. It was launched with Israeli government oversight, without transparency, without independence, and—critically—without the participation of the United Nations or any respected humanitarian agencies. In fact, the UN has refused to have anything to do with it. So have groups like Doctors Without Borders, the Red Cross, and the World Food Programme, whose leaders have warned in no uncertain terms that GHF’s model militarizes aid, violates humanitarian norms, and places Palestinian lives at even greater risk.

    GHF has never been about delivering aid. It’s about using the illusion of aid to control the population of Gaza—and to give cover to war crimes.

    People in Gaza are starving because Israel wants them to. There are thousands of aid trucks, many loaded with supplies from the United Nations, that—for months—have been blocked from entering Gaza. They contain food, water, medicine, shelter materials—the lifeblood of a besieged civilian population. But instead of letting them through, the U.S. and Israel are pushing their own version of aid: a privatized, militarized operation. Armed U.S. contractors working with the GHF are reportedly earning up to $1,100 per day, along with a $10,000 signing bonus.

    The GHF plan is to make aid available only in the south, forcibly displacing people from the north—driving them toward the Egyptian border, where many fear a permanent expulsion is being engineered.

    From the very start of GHF’s operations, with the opening of two distribution sites in southern Gaza on May 26, the chaos turned deadly, with Israeli military shooting at hungry people seeking food. In its short time of operation, nearly 100 Palestinians have been killed and hundreds more wounded. These are not tragic accidents—they are predictable outcomes of militarizing aid.

    Let’s also address the fear-mongering claim that when the UN was in charge of aid delivery, food was being stolen by Hamas. There is no credible evidence of this and Cindy McCain, head of the World Food Programme, has publicly refuted this allegation, saying that trucks have been looted by hungry, desperate people.

    The real threat to aid integrity isn’t Hamas—it’s the blockade itself, which has created an artificial scarcity and fueled black markets, desperation, and chaos..

    To truly help the people of Gaza, here’s what needs to happen:

    • Shut down GHF and reject all militarized aid schemes.

    • Restore full U.S. funding to UNRWA and the World Food Programme—trusted, experienced agencies that know how to do this work.

    • Demand that Israel end the blockade. Let aid trucks in—UN trucks, Red Cross trucks, WFP trucks. Flood the strip with food, medicines, tents.

    • Demand an immediate ceasefire to stop the killing and create space for meaningful relief and political solutions.

    The starvation in Gaza is not a logistical failure. It is Israel’s political choice. And GHF is not a lifeline. It is a lie. It is complicity. It is diabolical. And U.S. taxpayers should not be forced to fund it.

    The post Don’t Fund the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation: It’s a Genocidal Smokescreen first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • Is There a Crack in Western Support for Genocide?


    Dorothy Shea, interim US representative to the UN, vetoed a resolution for a permanent ceasefire and unrestricted humanitarian aid for Gaza on June 5th, 2025 – Photo via US mission to the UN.

    After twenty months of horror in Gaza, political rhetoric in Western countries is finally starting to shift—but will words translate into action? And what exactly can other countries do when the United States still shields Israel from efforts to enforce international law, as it did at the UN Security Council on June 5?

    On May 30, Tom Fletcher, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, accused Israel of committing a war crime by using starvation as a weapon against the people of Gaza. In a searing interview with the BBC, Fletcher explained how Israel’s policy of forced starvation fits into its larger strategy of ethnic cleansing.

    “We’re seeing food set on the borders and not being allowed in, when there is a population on the other side of the border that is starving,” Fletcher said. “And we’re hearing Israeli ministers say that is to put pressure on the population of Gaza.”

    He was referring to statements like the one from Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who openly admitted that the starvation policy is meant to leave Palestinians “totally despairing, understanding that there’s no hope and nothing to look for,” so that they will submit to ethnic cleansing from Gaza and a “new life in other places.”

    Fletcher called on Prime Minister Netanyahu to stop this campaign of forced displacement, and insisted, “we would expect governments all over the world to stand for international humanitarian law. The international community is very, very clear on that.”

    Palestinians might wish that were true. If the so-called international community were really “very, very clear on that,” the United States and Israel would not be able to wage a campaign of genocide for more than 600 days while the world looks on in horror.

    Some Western governments have finally started using stronger language to condemn Israel’s actions. But the question is: Will they act? Or is this just more political theater to appease public outrage while the machinery of destruction grinds on?

    This moment should force a reckoning: How is it possible that the U.S. and Israel can perpetrate such crimes with impunity? What would it take for U.S. allies to ignore pressure from Washington and enforce international law?

    If impoverished, war-ravaged Yemen can single-handedly deny Israel access to the Suez Canal and the Red Sea, and drive the Israeli port of Eilat into bankruptcy, more powerful countries can surely isolate Israel diplomatically and economically, protect the Palestinians and end the genocide. But they haven’t even tried.

    Some are now making tentative moves. On May 19, the U.K., France, and Canada jointly condemned Israel’s actions as “intolerable,” “unacceptable,” “abhorrent,” “wholly disproportionate” and “egregious.” The U.K. suspended trade talks with Israel, and they promised “further concrete actions,” including targeted sanctions, if Israel does not end its offensive in Gaza and lift its restrictions on humanitarian aid.

    The three countries publicly committed to the Arab Plan for the reconstruction of Gaza, and to building an international consensus for it at the UN’s High-Level Two-State Solution Conference in New York on June 17-20, which is to be co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia.

    They also committed to recognizing Palestinian statehood. Of the UN’s 193 member states, 147 already recognize Palestine as a sovereign nation, including ten more since Israel launched its genocide in Gaza. President Macron, under pressure from the leftist La France Insoumise party, says France may officially recognize Palestine at the UN conference in June.

    Canada’s new prime minister, Mark Carney, claimed during his election campaign that Canada already had an arms embargo against Israel, but was swiftly challenged on that. Canada has suspended a small number of export licenses, but it’s still supplying parts for Israel’s 39 F-35s, and for 36 more that Israel has ordered from Lockheed Martin.

    A General Dynamics factory in Quebec is the sole supplier of artillery propellant for deadly 155 mm artillery shells used in Gaza, and it took an emergency campaign by human rights groups in August 2024 to force Canada to scrap a new contract for that same factory to supply Israel with 50,000 high-explosive mortar shells.

    The U.K. is just as compromised. The new Labour government elected in July 2024 quickly restored funding to UNRWA, as Canada has. In September, it suspended 30 out of 350 arms export licenses to Israel, mostly for parts used in warplanes, helicopters, drones and targeting. But, like Canada, the U.K. still supplies many other parts that end up in Israeli F-35s bombing Gaza.

    Declassified UK published a report on the F-35 program that revealed how it compromises the sovereignty of partner countries. While the U.K. produces 15% of the parts that go into every F-35, the U.S. military takes immediate ownership of the British-made parts, stores them on British air force bases, and then orders the U.K. to ship them to Texas for use in new planes or to Israel and other countries as spare parts for planes already in use.

    Shipping these planes and parts to Israel is in clear violation of U.S., U.K. and other countries’ arms export laws. British campaigners argue that if the U.K. is serious about halting genocide, it must stop all shipments of F-35 parts sent to Israel–directly or indirectly. With huge marches in London drawing hundreds of thousands of people, and protests on June 17 at three factories that make F-35 parts, activists will keep applying more pressure until they result in the “concrete actions” the British government has promised.

    Denmark is facing a similar conflict. Amnesty International, Oxfam, Action Aid and Al-Haq are in court suing the Danish government and largest weapons company, Terma, to stop them sending Israel critical bomb release mechanisms and other F-35 parts.

    These disputes over Canadian artillery propellant, Danish bomb-release mechanisms and the multinational nature of the F-35 program highlight how any country that provides even small but critical parts or materials for deadly weapons systems must ensure they are not used to commit war crimes.

    So all steps to cut off Israel’s weapons supplies can help to save Palestinian lives, and the full arms embargo that the UN General Assembly voted for in September 2024 can be instrumental in ending the genocide if more countries will join it. As Sam Perlo-Freeman of Campaign Against the Arms Trade said of the U.K.’s legal obligation to stop shipping F-35 parts,

    “These spare parts are essential to keep Israel’s F-35s flying, and therefore stopping them will reduce the number of bombings and killings of civilians Israel can commit. It is as simple as that.”

    Germany was responsible for 30% of Israel’s arms imports between 2019 and 2023, largely through two large warship deals. Four German-built Saar 6 corvettes, Israel’s largest warships, are already bombarding Gaza, while ThyssenKrupp is building three new submarines for Israel in Kiel.

    But no country has provided a greater share of the tools of genocide in Gaza than the United States, including nearly all the warplanes, helicopters, bombs and air-to-ground missiles that are destroying Gaza and killing Palestinians. The U.S. government has a legal responsibility to stop sending all these weapons, which Israel uses mainly to commit industrial-scale war crimes, up to and including genocide, against the people of Palestine, as well as to attack its other neighbors.

    Trump’s military and political support for Israel’s genocide stands in stark contradiction to the image he promotes of himself as a peacemaker—and which his most loyal followers believe in.

    Yet there are signs that Trump is beginning to assert some independence from Netanyahu and from the war hawks in his own party and inner circle. He refused to visit Israel on his recent Middle East tour, he’s negotiating with Iran despite Israeli opposition, and he removed Mike Waltz as National Security Advisor for engaging in unauthorized warmongering against Iran with Netanyahu. His decisions to end the Yemen bombing campaign and lift sanctions on Syria suggest an unpredictable but real departure from the neocon playbook, as do his negotiations with Russia and Iran.

    Has Netanyahu finally overplayed his hand? His campaign of ethnic cleansing, territorial expansion in pursuit of a biblical “Greater Israel,” the deliberate starvation of Gaza, and his efforts to entangle the U.S. in a war with Iran have pushed Israel’s longtime allies to the edge. The emerging rift between Trump and Netanyahu could mark the beginning of the end of the decades-long blanket of impunity the U.S. has wrapped around Israel. It could also give other governments the political space to respond to Israeli war crimes without fear of U.S. retaliation.

    The huge and consistent protests throughout Europe are putting pressure on Western governments to take action. A new survey conducted in Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy and Spain shows that very few Europeans–between 6% and 16% in each country–find Israel’s assault on Gaza proportionate or justified.

    For now, however, the Western governments remain deeply complicit in Israel’s atrocities and violations of international law. The rhetoric is shifting—but history will judge this moment not by what governments say, but by what they do.

    The post Is There a Crack in Western Support for Genocide? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • Trump’s Palantir-Powered Surveillance Is Turning America Into a Digital Prison

    Call it what it is: a panopticon presidency.

    President Trump’s plan to fuse government power with private surveillance tech to build a centralized, national citizen database is the final step in transforming America from a constitutional republic into a digital dictatorship armed with algorithms and powered by unaccountable, all-seeing artificial intelligence.

    This isn’t about national security. It’s about control.

    According to news reports, the Trump administration is quietly collaborating with Palantir Technologies—the data-mining behemoth co-founded by billionaire Peter Thiel—to construct a centralized, government-wide surveillance system that would consolidate biometric, behavioral, and geolocation data into a single, weaponized database of Americans’ private information.

    This isn’t about protecting freedom. It’s about rendering freedom obsolete.

    What we’re witnessing is the transformation of America into a digital prison—one where the inmates are told we’re free while every move, every word, every thought is monitored, recorded, and used to assign a “threat score” that determines our place in the new hierarchy of obedience.

    The tools enabling this all-seeing surveillance regime are not new, but under Trump’s direction, they are being fused together in unprecedented ways, with Palantir at the center of this digital dragnet.

    Palantir, long criticized for its role in powering ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) raids and predictive policing, is now poised to become the brain of Trump’s surveillance regime.

    Under the guise of “data integration” and “public safety,” this public-private partnership would deploy AI-enhanced systems to comb through everything from facial recognition feeds and license plate readers to social media posts and cellphone metadata, cross-referencing it all to assess a person’s risk to the state.

    This isn’t speculative. It’s already happening.

    Palantir’s Gotham platform, used by law enforcement and military agencies, has long been the backbone of real-time tracking and predictive analysis. Now, with Trump’s backing, it threatens to become the central nervous system of a digitally enforced authoritarianism.

    As Palantir itself admits, its mission is to “augment human decision-making.” In practice, that means replacing probable cause with probability scores, courtrooms with code, and due process with data pipelines.

    In this new regime, your innocence will be irrelevant. The algorithm will decide who you are.

    To understand the full danger of this moment, we must trace the long arc of government surveillance—from secret intelligence programs like COINTELPRO and the USA PATRIOT Act to today’s AI-driven digital dragnet embodied by data fusion centers.

    Building on this foundation of historical abuse, the government has evolved its tactics, replacing human informants with algorithms and wiretaps with metadata, ushering in an age where pre-crime prediction is treated as prosecution.

    Every smartphone ping, GPS coordinate, facial scan, online purchase, and social media like becomes part of your “digital exhaust”—a breadcrumb trail of metadata that the government now uses to build behavioral profiles. The FBI calls it “open-source intelligence.” But make no mistake: this is dragnet surveillance, and it is fundamentally unconstitutional.

    Already, government agencies are mining this data to generate “pattern of life” analyses, flag “radicalized” individuals, and preemptively investigate those who merely share anti-government views.

    This is not law enforcement. This is thought-policing by machine, the logical outcome of a system that criminalizes dissent and deputizes algorithms to do the targeting.

    Nor is this entirely new.

    For decades, the federal government has reportedly maintained a highly classified database known as Main Core, designed to collect and store information on Americans deemed potential threats to national security.

    As Tim Shorrock reported for Salon, “One former intelligence official described Main Core as ‘an emergency internal security database system’ designed for use by the military in the event of a national catastrophe, a suspension of the Constitution or the imposition of martial law.”

    Trump’s embrace of Palantir, and its unparalleled ability to fuse surveillance feeds, social media metadata, public records, and AI-driven predictions, marks a dangerous evolution: a modern-day resurrection of Main Core, digitized, centralized, and fully automated.

    What was once covert contingency planning is now becoming active policy.

    What has emerged is a surveillance model more vast than anything dreamed up by past regimes—a digital panopticon in which every citizen is watched constantly, and every move is logged in a government database—not by humans, but by machines without conscience, without compassion, and without constitutional limits.

    This is not science fiction. This is America—now.

    As this technological tyranny expands, the foundational safeguards of the Constitution—those supposed bulwarks against arbitrary power—are quietly being nullified and its protections rendered meaningless.

    What does the Fourth Amendment mean in a world where your entire life can be searched, sorted, and scored without a warrant? What does the First Amendment mean when expressing dissent gets you flagged as an extremist? What does the presumption of innocence mean when algorithms determine guilt?

    The Constitution was written for humans, not for machine rule. It cannot compete with predictive analytics trained to bypass rights, sidestep accountability, and automate tyranny.

    And that is the endgame: the automation of authoritarianism. An unblinking, AI-powered surveillance regime that renders due process obsolete and dissent fatal.

    Still, it is not too late to resist—but doing so requires awareness, courage, and a willingness to confront the machinery of our own captivity.

    Make no mistake: the government is not your friend in this. Neither are the corporations building this digital prison. They thrive on your data, your fear, and your silence.

    To resist, we must first understand the weaponized AI tools being used against us.

    We must demand transparency, enforce limits on data collection, ban predictive profiling, and dismantle the fusion centers feeding this machine.

    We must treat AI surveillance with the same suspicion we once reserved for secret police. Because that is what AI-powered governance has become—secret police, only smarter, faster, and less accountable.

    We don’t have much time.

    Trump’s alliance with Palantir is a warning sign—not just of where we are, but of where we’re headed. A place where freedom is conditional, rights are revocable, and justice is decided by code.

    The question is no longer whether we’re being watched—that is now a given—but whether we will meekly accept it. Will we dismantle this electronic concentration camp, or will we continue building the infrastructure of our own enslavement?

    As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, if we trade liberty for convenience and privacy for security, we will find ourselves locked in a prison we helped build, and the bars won’t be made of steel. They will be made of data.

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  • Law, Not Crime, Has Come from South of the Border

    Not so much criminals as the foundations of the rule of law — that is what has infiltrated the United States from Latin America. That seems to be a major thread running through Greg Grandin’s wonderful new history of the hemisphere, America, América: A New History of the New World. It’s a book you can dive back into repeatedly, not to mention fantasize about someone compacting it into a short slideshow for the benefit of the President of the United States.

    British settler colonists in North America had their preachers and writers, but those individuals had a tendency to pretend Native Americans were not real, did not exist, perhaps never had existed, or simply didn’t count for much on empty land, or didn’t count because they were to be pushed out or eliminated rather than lived with. Spain, in contrast, generated a tremendous raging debate between supporters and denouncers of its killing, robbery, theft, enslavement, and terrorizing of indigenous people. Spain broke new ground, according to Grandin, in producing criticism of its own atrocities as it conquered South America.

    In very rough terms, this is similar to the contrast between U.S. media noncoverage of the genocide in Gaza and Israeli media’s inclusion of denunciations of the same. It’s one thing to live where you can’t escape drunk country musicians singing about being free, and perhaps something else to live where you can hear voices saying some of the things that most need saying. In both cases, the brutal atrocities go on, but in one, there are seeds of some future change planted.

    Voices like those of Francisco de Vitoria and Bartolomé de Las Casas laid the foundations for modern international law, but did so very differently from Dutch and English writers. The Spanish tradition is at least as tied up in religion as the English, and has certainly needed to evolve during these past four or five hundred years. But Grandin identifies a basis for a future pluralistic society, even in the belief that populations were diverse yet all descended from Adam and Eve. One can also, I think, see in the tradition of public confessions something of a precursor of truth and reconciliation commissions. In Latin America, unlike the North, dying conquistadores in the sixteenth century commonly confessed their part in the Conquest and paid restitution. NB: They did not admit to having strayed from proper conquest behavior into illicit atrocities. Rather, they admitted to participation in a Conquest understood to have been wrong and evil in its totality.

    Seen from a perspective that includes Latin America, Las Casas — who went beyond Erasmus, Moore, or anybody else — begins to look like the father of international legal standards applied equally to all of humanity, not to mention of self-determination and governance by the consent of the governed. He got there first. He drew the logical conclusions, such as the abolition of slavery. And he acted on those conclusions to as great an extent and for as long as perhaps any other person who has lived.

    The world was not, even in the seventeenth century, strictly separated into different legal traditions. The English read Las Casas, but they often read him with an eye to understanding how evil the Spanish were, in contrast to the English, or to get ideas for how to be more evil toward the Irish themselves. Perhaps they could have read him more in order to do as Las Casas recommended, more in order to outgrow dehumanization and division. Defining certain people as not really people was a skill that increased in English culture as colonization and slavery expanded.

    Hugo Grotius read Vitoria, but — like Aquinas before him and like all “just war” theory — Grotius was after excuses for wars. War might be regulated, but not banned. John Locke drew heavily on Spanish writers like Juan de Mariana and José de Acosta, but he reached his own conclusions, including that land could be taken from anyone not farming it. For a great many years, Spanish writers denounced war and slavery as parts of the Conquest, whereas Locke, Smith, Hume, et alia, at best wrote rules to regulate such evils as war and slavery, leaving us to this day with a culture that hardly murmurs about the crime of war but chatters endlessly about “possible war crimes” — almost always only mysteriously “possible,” never verified.

    Francisco de Miranda (1750-1816) and Simón Bolívar (1783-1830) sought a confederacy of independent nations in Latin America. The United States served as a partial inspiration but was not of much actual help. Thomas Jefferson’s house, just down the road from mine, had numerous books by Las Casas and other Spanish writers in it, yet he flipped their views upside down, declaring that “white” nations had the right to control non-white peoples in lands they claimed and to deny access to other “white” nations. He called this “a kind of international law for America.” The United States has sought its own unique “international law” from that day to this.

    The Doctrine of Discovery — the idea that a European nation can claim any land not yet claimed by other European nations, regardless of what people already live there — dates back to the fifteenth century and the Catholic church, but it was put into U.S. law in 1823, the same year as Monroe’s fateful “Doctrine” speech. It was put there by Monroe’s lifelong friend, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall. The United States considered itself, perhaps alone outside of Europe, as possessing the same discovery privileges as European nations. Perhaps coincidentally, in December 2022, almost every nation on Earth signed an agreement to set aside 30% of the Earth’s land and sea for wildlife by the year 2030. The exceptions were only the United States and the Vatican, not the nations of Latin America.

    While the U.S. had broken free of British rule and thereby rid itself of a mother country that was moving rapidly toward the abolition of slavery, movements for independence from Spain in South America generally sought freedom from slavery as well as from foreign empire. The U.S. tradition of slave-owners like Patrick Henry making speeches about being metaphorically enslaved was a northern hypocrisy where revolution was a rich man’s game. Moves for independence in the South were, to some extent, more of a popular revolt. They were, at the very least, not a revolt to maintain slavery or to expand empire, and not to combine numerous colonies into one, at least not immediately. Rather, Bolivarianism amounted to a push to create simultaneously several free and independent nations, some through violence and some without it. By the early nineteenth century, there were nine of them, newly independent, or 10 counting Haiti.

    Latin America was not yet called Latin America and was not some sort of flawless paradise. Wealth extremes (greater than in the U.S. of that day, though not greater than the U.S. of this day) and all kinds of cruelty persisted. But, not only was slavery being abolished, but something else of great potential was being created. Numerous new nations jointly developed means of nonviolently and legally arbitrating boundary disputes, dealing with each other as equals and not enemies.

    Bolivar proposed a Congress in Panama among sister nations that would

    • agree to mutual defense,
    • condemn Spain for the suffering it had caused in the New World (has the U.S. done that yet with regard to England?),
    • promote the independence of Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Canary Islands, and the Philippines (the U.S. was supporting Spanish rule over Cuba as more likely to lead to later U.S. rule over Cuba),
    • repudiate the doctrines of discovery and conquest,
    • abolish slavery,
    • recognize Haiti, and
    • legalize agreed-upon borders.

    Here we see an early version of the League of Nations or the United Nations just beginning to come into being.

    Slavery had already been ended — and without a horrific U.S.-style Civil War — in Chile, Bolivia, and parts of Mexico. Central America ended it in 1824. Colombia and Venezuela were ending it, but it persisted in Peru and Brazil.

    In taking up such matters of domestic policy at an international gathering like the Panama Congress of 1826, something else — another grave evil in the world, one that afflicts the United States — was being prevented from ever being born in Latin America. This evil is the passionate aversion to anyone outside a nation having any say over what that nation does. When you read the Constitutions of various European nations today that describe transferring power to international institutions, you can just feel the veins bursting in the faces of outraged U.S. politicians. In 1826, vicious fury burst forth at the very idea that the United States would send anyone to a Congress in Panama to sit with potentially non-white people to decide anything about the sacred U.S. right to enslave human beings. In the words of Grandin, this “jolted the Age of Jackson into existence.” It hasn’t let up much since. The U.S. would later reject the League of Nations as one among equals and only join the United Nations over which it held a veto.

    By 1844, Latin American statesmen had been working on theories and plans for international law for decades, and Juan Bautista Alberdi gave the name “American International Law” to a set of principles that included rejection of the doctrines of discovery and conquest, equality of nations despite their size, non-intervention, usi possidetis, and impartial arbitration. Alberdi also wrote a book in 1870, available online for free in English, titled The Crime of War. This is a book filled with hundreds of pages arguing almost the identical arguments that war abolitionists use today. It’s an outlawry book a half century before the movement to outlaw war. It’s a book making the case for neutrality (see page 262), perhaps a century before the power of neutrality was widely appreciated and 150 years before it disastrously ceased to be. Latin American nations continued to push such a vision on the United States for years.

    At the Hague Peace Conference of 1907, 18 of the 44 nations represented were from Latin America, and it was there that Latin American ideas of multilateralism and sovereignty are thought to have really taken hold.

    Woodrow Wilson (U.S. president, 1913-1921) may look in retrospect like mostly a talk and not much action, a promising savior who didn’t save us, a warrior to end war who gave us more war, a Barack Obama of his day. But early Wilson, before World War I, had some substance, and some of the talk was well worth hearing, and a lot of it came from south of the U.S. border. Wilson was outraged by and sought to reverse his predecessor’s interference in Mexico. He also apologized to Colombia for the U.S. role in removing Panama from it, and paid Colombia $25 million for the loss. Wilson was unable to resolve crises in Mexico but did not make the usual U.S. move of reaching for larger weapons. Instead, he accepted a proposal from Chile for Argentina, Brazil, and Chile to meet with the U.S. and Mexico and work out a solution. They met for two months on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. The United States then joined Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Bolivia, Guatemala, Uruguay, Colombia, and Costa Rica in announcing a new joint policy toward Mexico. (Can you hear the Muricafirsters screaming in outrage?) When World War I got going, Latin American governments favored neutrality. The President of Mexico proposed a collective trade embargo on the belligerents. Wilson wasn’t wise enough to listen.

    Imagine if McKinley had listened when Spain had proposed neutral arbitration to resolve U.S. war lies over the U.S.S. Maine in Havana harbor!

    But Wilson did listen to Latin American advocates for international law, whose work increasingly influenced U.S. scholars. Wilson said that “Pan-Americanism” was what he wanted to model the world on, but only after the war.

    When the war had ended and the League of Nations was being planned and negotiated, Wilson had in mind a vision straight out of South America, and he wanted to apply it to the Earth. He had three barriers to face, however, and could not overcome them. One was that he was generally lying in bed, sick.

    The second was that he was a serious racist — as were others involved — or at least that he felt obliged to please racists back home. When Japan proposed that the covenant to create the League of Nations support “equality of nations and just treatment of their nationals,” the racists wouldn’t stand for it. As a result, some in Japan concluded that their best path forward was not the rule of law but the creation of an empire, or “an Asian Monroe Doctrine.” This was the same conference that viciously punished Germany, thereby laying the groundwork for the other “theater” of World War II as well, and the same conference at which Wilson refused to meet with Ho Chi Minh, just to pile on the future catastrophes being seeded.

    The third problem was U.S. exceptionalism. The U.S. insisted on putting the Monroe Doctrine into the League of Nations, giving itself the power to violate the basic premise of the League at will. This was enough to poison the whole project, but not enough to win support for it in the U.S. Senate.

    Latin American nations had pushed for a truly equitable League of Nations, and every last one of them joined it, such as it was. But when the League actively supported imperialism, Costa Rica, in 1925, was the first to leave it. Meanwhile, something was infiltrating Latin America from the north: weapons. The arms profiteers were pushing sales hard and encouraging conflicts to boost them. European debts to Latin America for crops and resources supplied during World War I were paid off in left-over weapons, which strikes me as the opposite of paying off a debt. And the United States was still plying its beloved Monroe Doctrine, but it was now joined by imitators in Japan, Italy, England, and Germany, all declaring their own Monroe Doctrines.

    President Franklin Roosevelt improved U.S. treatment of Latin America and took Latin American ideas to lay plans for the United Nations. Grandin sadly and typically switches into war supporter mode when it comes to World War II. The fact that Roosevelt was lying when he claimed to have in his possession Nazi plans to take over South and Central America, is relegated by Grandin to a footnote that itself avoids quite telling the story. The U.S. exploitation of Latin America for World War II is recounted quite positively. And then comes the post-war planning. FDR told Stalin and Churchill that Latin America should be the model. FDR’s advisor Sumner Welles drafted plans for the United Nations based on his experiences in Latin America. At the meeting in San Francisco, Latin American delegations pushed for the UN to ban war and create a court of arbitration, among many other positive steps.

    But Latin American nations also demanded something I see as far less helpful than Grandin seems to. They wanted to hold onto a regional alliance as a commitment to defend each other. While others rightly feared that this could break the world up into sections, the final UN Charter nonetheless put into Article 51 that nations could act “collectively.”

    This became an excuse for institutions seemingly at odds with the very purpose of the UN Charter, most notably NATO. Grandin quotes John Foster Dulles and Winston Churchill praising Latin America for this, and he argues that without this “compromise,” the United Nations might not have been created. But without Latin America demanding something at odds with the basic project, no compromise would have been needed.

    After World War II, the U.S. rebuilt Germany with the Marshall Plan. George Marshall took part in a meeting in Bogotá in 1948 at which the nations of Latin America essentially asked, “Where is our Marshall Plan?” Of course, there was none, but can you imagine if there had been, if nations of the whole globe had been aided instead of armed? The post-war U.S. government wanted little to do with laws, rules, morality, or cooperation. Coups, weapons, bases, and invasions would be the order of the day. Pretty much from that day to this, with the addition of demonization.

    And yet Latin America goes on showing the way. More than anywhere else in the world, Latin America is a nuclear-free zone, supports the International Criminal Court, opposes the genocide in Gaza, and refuses to support either side of the war in Ukraine. Wearing North American blinders makes it hard even to recognize that as leadership. I hope that such recognition, and appreciation of past efforts too, sets in before it is too late.

    The post Law, Not Crime, Has Come from South of the Border first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • Clearing the Way: Thailand and US Open Regional Demining Hub

    Thailand and the United States have opened a new Center of Excellence on Humanitarian Demining Missions in Ratchaburi. The Thailand Mine Action Center (TMAC), working with the US Department of Defense, will use the facility to train Thai and international teams in landmine clearance. The opening ceremony was attended by senior military leaders from both […]

    The post Clearing the Way: Thailand and US Open Regional Demining Hub appeared first on Asian Military Review.

    This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.

  • Fatal Decline of the Imperial Power

    A previous article, “Challenging China,” described the mixed and managed economy that enables China (PRC) to overcome the economic pressures posed by an overly contentious America. More to it.

    China’s mixed and managed economy is designed to match its stage of development and is well managed. The U.S. non-managed economy has no design and does not match its advanced stage of economic development. China uses exports to grow its economy and limit debt. The U.S. runs severe deficits in its trade balance and needs a growing debt to finance the trade deficit and to increase the GDP. The rapidly growing debt portends economic decline, and there is no certified way to escape the predicament. U.S. hegemony and world leadership appears doomed. The sooner the U.S. leaders recognize the dangers and readjust the economy, the less will be the slide. More on this later. Facts and statistics supply the proof that the PRC has successfully met the challenges.

    Overly contentious USA

    Using sanctions from legislative directives, rather than pursuing cooperative efforts to combat China’s rise to the world’s number one industrial power, the U.S motivates China to become self-sufficient in technological applications, temporarily interrupts China’s advances, and eventually causes havoc to American companies

    Citing security concerns, the U.S. Congress, in 2019, passed the National Defense Authorization Act and essentially banned use of telecommunication equipment from 5G network pioneer Huawei and smartphone manufacturer ZTE. In June 2020, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) designated ZTE a national security threat. The security concerns proceeded from a possibility that the Chinese government could demand the habits of American citizens, similar to the information that Google and a host of advertising firms gather from internet searchers.

    Huawei is of more major significance, but ZTE’s shrugging off the sanctions deserves mention. Its steady revenue growth until facing competition from other companies, relates its success.

    This telecom company entered the smartphone market in 2010 and now has the 12th spot in the listing of the Largest Smartphone Manufacturers & Brands in the World. ZTE is also the 6th largest supplier in the Global 5G Infrastructure Market.

    Huawei, global leader in development of 5G networks and China’s technology powerhouse, reeled from U.S. sanctions and stumbled as a boxer from an unaware punch. Predictions had Huawei barely surviving. Labelled as a company the U.S. could not do with, Huawei is now the company the world cannot do without. Refuting U.S. attempts to restrict its advances, Huawei expanded into new markets, into new industries, and developed unique alternatives to the denied technologies.

    After years of “barely surviving,” Huawei is a leading network company on the globe, having constructed approximately 30% of worldwide 5G base stations, and is fourth in global smartphone manufacturing. After losing access to Google’s Android and Oracle’s software, Huawei developed its own operating system, Harmony OS, which has become the second most popular mobile operating system in China and, by 2025, was installed in over 900 million devices.

    In 2022, the Commerce Department informed NVidia and AMD to restrict exports of AI-related chips to China, and informed chip equipment makers — Lam Research, Applied Materials and KLA — to restrict sending tools to the PRC for manufacturing advanced chips. China’s tech giant responded by challenging NVidia artificial intelligence dominance with its Ascend 910D AI processor chip, which “reflects China’s strategic push to develop indigenous semiconductor capabilities.” The U.S. did not respond to Huawei’s advance with its own technology advancements and again responded with threats. On May 15, 2025, the Trump administration warned that using Huawei’s AI chips might violate US export laws.

    Ignoring U.S. threats, Huawei expanded use of its chips into the automotive industry and set a new standard for smart driving and self-driving technology.

    Huawei’s ambitious undertaking includes the introduction of cutting-edge smart vehicles equipped with advanced autonomous driving technologies. The company is leveraging its prowess in artificial intelligence (AI) and big data to enhance vehicle performance and safety features. With a focus on seamless connectivity and user experience, Huawei is positioning itself as a significant player in the highly sought-after smart driving space, previously dominated by traditional automotive giants and tech firms like Tesla.

    In August 2023, President Biden issued an Executive Order “Addressing United States Investments in Certain National Security Technologies and Products in Countries of Concern.” The order prohibited U.S. investments in semiconductors and microelectronics, quantum information technologies, and artificial intelligence technologies in China. In November 2024, “The U.S. reportedly ordered TSMC to halt shipments of advanced chips to Chinese customers that are often used in artificial intelligence applications.”

    As a result, Xiaomi, a leading smartphone manufacturer, which has expanded into electric SUV car production, developed its 3-nanometre XRing O1 system-on-a-chip (SoC). Following Apple, Qualcomm, and MediaTek, Xiaomi became the fourth tech company in the world to design a 3-nanometer mobile SoC for mass production. A Chinese company can now compete with American companies in selling the unique chips, and Qualcomm, which has been a long-standing supplier of mobile chips to Xiaomi, might have its sales disrupted.

    Statistics tell the story

    What have all these underhanded means to stifle the Chinese economy accomplished? Statistics in the following table tell the story. The Chinese economy surpassed the U.S. economy in 2022 and is leaving Uncle Sam far behind.


    The table shows that China deserves consideration for the title of the world’s greatest economy. Start with the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), a favorite statistic for those who boast of America’s prominence.

    The U.S. has a higher GDP than China. China has a higher GDP/PPP. Unlike nominal GDP, which uses current exchange rates, GDP/PPP adjusts for differences in price levels between countries and provides a more realistic measure of the value of goods and services produced. Another consideration is the value given to components of the GDP. Capital, hard goods, and agriculture supply the most needed wants to a community, and their purchases play a more significant role in the economy. The service economy, a paramount feature of the U.S. economy, exaggerates its GDP. One dollar of purchase in goods production requires time for feedback to the manufacturer before other goods are replenished and additional purchases augment the GDP. Purchases in the service economy quickly pass the same money from one service provider to another and elevate the GDP. Industrial output, whether for domestic or foreign use, more appropriately demonstrates the robustness of an economy. China leads the United States in industrial output and demonstrated robustness by becoming the leading manufacturer and exporter of automobiles.

    A comparison between two dynamos of each nation, U.S. Tesla and China BYD, automobile manufacturers and innovators that rose rapidly against established competitors, complete the story. BYD, which started at about the same time as Tesla, has surpassed Tesla in automobile sales.

    BYD Revenue

    Tesla Revenue

    <

    More than that, BYD has accomplished what was never considered possible; with a fully charged battery and a full tank of gas, unbiased testing of its new hybrid auto technology showed a driving range of 1,305 miles before charge or fill up. Its fully electric models use advanced sodium ion batteries and, in 5 minutes, can be charged to obtain a 250 mile range. A vertically integrated company, which manufactures its parts and is a leading provider of electric car batteries, BYD sells its autos at the lowest prices in China.

    Revisions by BYD include paring the price of its Seagull hatchback to 55,800 yuan ($7,780), a 20% reduction to a model that was already the carmaker’s cheapest and one that had garnered global attention for its sub-$10,000 price tag. The Seal dual-motor hybrid sedan (direct competitor to the $37,000 Tesla Model 3) saw the biggest price cut at 34%, or by 53,000 yuan to 102,800 yuan ($14,333). (ED: These may be temporary price cuts.)

    Fatal Decline of the Imperial Power

    The U.S. cannot compete with or contain China. Using China as a scapegoat for its global economic decline has proved counterproductive. Better for the U.S. to cooperate with the PRC, realistically examine its economy, become aware of its limitations, and take decisive action to prevent a fatal decline.

    The hindrances to economic progress is fourfold:

    (1) Debt drives the economy and the debt has become unmanageable.
    (2) Manufacturers have established offshore facilities to open new markets and to compete more effectively.
    (3) Off shore production and having the dollar as an international currency has produced a high trade deficit.
    (4) U.S. markets in the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America have eroded.

    Debt drives the U.S. economy and, the two charts indicate that without increasing the exorbitant debt, the economy will stagnate.

    GDP/PPP

     

    All Sectors Debt

    Given a money supply to purchase goods and services, how can production and eventual sales of goods and services advance without increases in the money supply? One way is to increase the velocity of money, which occurred with on-time inventory, credit card purchasing, and computer speedup of financial transactions. These phenomena occurred during past decades and exploded the GDP. Another means is by having a positive trade balance; selling goods externally. If these means are not occurring, and they no longer are, increases in the money supply are required to increase production and sell additional goods.

    U.S. goods trade deficit increased in 2024 to a record $1.2 trillion, and, although many economists excuse the trade deficit, saying that,

    a trade deficit can only arise if foreigners invest more in the US than Americans invest abroad. In other words, a country can only have a trade deficit if it also has an equally sized investment surplus. The US is able to sustain a large trade deficit because so many foreigners are eager to invest here,

    is more a rationalization than a reality. The trade deficit arose because American industry found it more profitable to produce overseas and made the dollar the international currency. As an international currency, the dollar is in demand and its exchange rate is high compared to other currencies. The strong dollar raises the prices of U.S. goods, makes its exports expensive and its imports cheap. Yes, the balance of payments must be equalized, and the dollars return as either purchase of government securities ─ one principal reason for rise in government debt ─ or purchase of U.S. assets. The former has become unwieldly, leading to high interest rates and the latter gives foreign interests increased power in the American system. Having a positive balance of trade reduces government debt and foreign influence.

    Government debt is not the total problem. A system that exists by debt is the real problem. For a free wheeling and profit first economy that generates huge trade deficits to grow, the money supply must grow. Because money is created by either bank loans (debt) or Federal Reserve borrowings from the Treasury (debt), all money is debt. For the economy to continually grow, debt must continually grow. Soon, financing the debt and its increasing interest rates will be a difficult problem. Credit will freeze, loans will default, and the money supply will shrink. Boom will become bust. The United States has no choice but to have its economy more managed and align government and industry in common goals that correct the trend to a fatal decline.

    Tariffs as a government money raiser and incentive to produce locally will be another tax on the American consumer and will not stimulate private investment in internal production to replace foreign imports. So, why not maintain low priced imports and tax the consumer for another goal ─ government investment in competitive industries. Cooperation between government and industry, rather than free-wheeling economics will enable more rational decisions and predictable operations.

    The United States pioneered the global economy but globalization is no longer a perfect fit for the economically mature nation. Markets once lost are usually lost for a long time. Preserving present markets and finding niche markets for specialized goods, which the omnipresent U.S. economy has many, will stabilize exports.

    History shows that private industry has never been the source of solutions to economic lapses. Changes in life style and a return to the cohesion and social legislation that characterized the Franklin Delano Roosevelt era might solve the economic, social, and political declines predicted for America’s future. The democratic socialization of America is begging to begin.

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  • Does Israel Control America, or Does America Control Israel?

    On 23 May 2020, I headlined “Israel — an enemy of America” and documented that though U.S. taxpayers donate to Israel each year $3.8 billion, of which 3.3 billion goes to pay American weapons-producers such as Lockheed Martin to supply Israel with weaponry, Israel’s record has been as an enemy of the U.S. (or at least of the American people), NOT as a friend, and also not merely neutral. That article got me to thinking about whether the U.S. Government controls Israel’s Government, or instead vice-versa; and, now, I shall present my conclusion about this (that America’s Government is controlled by Israel’s Government) by first presenting what I think are the most relevant evidences in order to decide the matter.

    The evilness of the people who lead Israel has been blatant ever since Israel’s founding in 1948, but Israel has been heavily backed by the U.S. Government throughout the entire period. Albert Einstein was a prominent American when he was one of the signatories to a letter to the editor of the New York Times, on 4 December 1948, in which he and many other prominent American Jews condemned as “fascists” (but hadn’t Americans fought AGAINST fascists in WW II?) Menachem Begin and Yitzak Shamir and their gangs who slaughtered whole Arab villages in order to seize their land for Zionist Jews to take as ‘Israel’, and the letter’s signatories strongly condemned that movement — the movement which created this apartheid racist ‘Israel’ — as being “akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties,” against which America had waged World War II. But today’s American Government represents those “Nazi and Fascist parties,” against their victims (the Palestinians), even though during WW II, Americans had even died fighting against such evil people as the founders of Israel’s Government were. (Israel was created not merely by racist-fascist Jews such as Ben Gurion etc., but most especially by the Christian Harry Truman, who was America’s all-time-worst President; he started the Cold War, and started America on the imperialistic path that now is called “neoconservatism,” which produced also the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq and other such imperialistic global-conquest ventures that have destroyed many nations. Almost as soon as FDR died, Truman turned the Government to be and become what has since been consistently neoconservative — even decades before that term, “neoconservatism,” for America’s version of the racist-fascist-imperialist, or “Nazi,” ideology yet existed. Truman was the first neocon.)

    Had Americans been wrong in WW II to have fought against Nazis and Fascists, or are today’s Americans aware that the current U.S. Government is protecting Israel’s ideological Nazis and fascists against any rights for Palestinians — against rights for the descendants of the survivors of Jewish racist fascist imperialism, or “Nazism”? Does Israel represent American values, really — or does it represent instead the values of America’s enemies, such as the current U.S. Government itself is (as will be subsequently exemplified here)? Not only does Israel represent the ideology against which the U.S. under FDR went to war in WW2, but Israel has even been at war AGAINST the U.S.

    On 8 June 1967, Israel intentionally attacked and sank the USS Liberty, slaughtering 34 of our sailors, and injuring another 172. The official U.S. government inquiry by an independent study Commission headed by Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, found that, “after eight hours of aerial surveillance, Israel launched a two-hour air and naval attack against the USS Liberty, the world’s most sophisticated intelligence ship.” “Unmarked Israeli aircraft dropped napalm canisters on the Liberty’s bridge, and fired 30mm cannons and rockets into our ship.” “Israeli torpedo boats later returned to machine-gun at close range three of the Liberty’s life rafts that had been lowered into the water by survivors to rescue the most seriously wounded.” “There is compelling evidence that Israel’s attack was a deliberate attempt to destroy an American ship and kill her entire crew.” “Israel committed acts of murder against American servicemen and an act of war against the United States.” “The White House deliberately prevented the U.S. Navy from coming to the defense of the Liberty.” “Surviving crewmembers were later threatened with ‘court-martial, imprisonment or worse’ if they exposed the truth; and were abandoned by their own government.” “The White House deliberately covered up the facts of this attack from the American people.” “This attack remains the only serious naval incident that has never been thoroughly investigated by Congress; to this day, no surviving crewmember has been permitted to officially and publicly testify about the attack.” “There has been an official cover-up without precedent in American naval history.”

    The USS Liberty Veterans Association delivered to the Executive Agent for the U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, on 8 June 2005, their own 35-page study report backing this up and urging retaliation. It quoted from Richard Helms, the Director of Central Intelligence at the time of the USS Liberty attack. He supported, as Helms put it, “the board’s finding that there could be no doubt that the Israelis knew exactly what they were doing in attacking the Liberty. I have yet to understand why it was felt necessary to attack this ship or who ordered the attack.” The Veterans Association concluded that, “the fact that the Israeli government and its surrogates in the United States have worked so long and hard to prevent an inquiry itself speaks volumes as to what such an inquiry would find. The USS Liberty Veterans Association, Inc. respectfully insists that the Secretary of the Army convene an investigatory body to undertake the complete investigation that should have been carried out thirty-eight years ago.” Their study and urging were simply ignored (not only by ‘our’ Government but by its ‘news’-media including all of the ’top’ ones).

    The Palestinians’ cause is also the cause of the American people. The current American Government, bipartisanly in both of its political Parties, does not represent the American people — it is hostile against us, and does only what it must in order to fool us into thinking to the contrary of the ugly reality: that America is a dictatorship by only its billionaires (of both political Parties, and all religions).

    When Einstein and those other prominent American Jews in 1948 wrote condemning the individuals who had created Israel, here was the immediate historical context:

    The 452-page study, published in 1974, The Population of Israel, which was produced for the Demographic Center of the Prime Minister’s Office in Israel and by the Institute of Contemporary Jewry of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, mentions only in passing, on its page 401, that there were an “estimated 1,200,000 settled Arabs in Palestine at the end of 1947” and acknowledges there also that the total number of Arabs then “within the territory of Israel” was 777,700. The next page then mentions — also only in passing — that “The estimate of Non-Jews found in Israel in 1949 (including some returnees, during 1949) is about 160,000.” (That number included not only Arabs but all “non-Jews,” such as non-Arab Christians.) So: even Israel (though they never explicitly assert this, since it’s so damning) has acknowledged that over (777,700-160,000=) 617,770  of the 777,700 Arabs who were “within the territory of Israel” in 1947, or over 80% of them all, were gone in 1949. Though they never assert this elimination of 80%+ of that land’s Arabs, they give those numbers, from which any reader who can add and subtract will inevitably conclude that at least 80% of the Arabs disappeared from “Israel” during 1948, which happens to have been the year of Israel’s creation. 80+%. Only less than one-fifth of them were still in Israel. European Christians — not only Germans, and not only in Germany but in many countries — perpetrated the Holocaust against Jews, and those 80+% of “Israel”s Arabs got treated by these surviving Jews remarkably like European Christians had treated so many of these Jews. These Jews absorbed into themselves what had been the the worst majority-Christian culture (especially its prevalent anti-Jewish bigotry, though now having a different target) and then practiced it against the local Muslims in this part of Arabia. Whether or not they were practicing what they preached, they practiced what they had learned. And without the continuing and ongoing yearly support of the American people, this could not have happened and still be happening. It would not happen.

    On 29 April 2020, the great independent American investigative journalist Gareth Porter headlined “With apparently fabricated nuclear documents, Netanyahu pushed the US towards war with Iran”, and he reported that there is “little room for doubt that the documents introduced to Western intelligence [in] 2004 were, in fact, created by the Mossad.” Those are the documents upon the basis of which American sanctions were placed against Iran for its having a nuclear-weapons program (which Israel itself actually does have), which Iran did not have and was not even seeking — the documents were instead Israeli forgeries. “Netanyahu’s multiple levels of deception have been remarkably successful, despite having relied on crude stunts that any diligent news organization should have seen through. Through his manipulation of foreign governments and media, he has been able to maneuver Donald Trump and the United States into a dangerous process of confrontation that has brought the US to the precipice of military conflict with Iran” — instead of against Israel (which was warranted). Netanyahu has even lied to claim that Hitler didn’t initiate the idea of exterminating all of the world’s Jews, the leader of the Palestinians initiated that idea. Just as Hitler lied to ‘justify’ spreading his hatred, Netanyahu likewise does, and Pompeo also does, and Blinken does, and all U.S. international-affairs officials do — of all Presidencies ever since Truman. Maybe the biggest difference between Israel and America is that only the U.S. regime claims to be “upholding the rule of law” and “protecting human rights” while it flagrantly violates both. The brazenness of the U.S. regime’s hypocrisy is unprecedented and historically unique, but otherwise it’s a rather normal fascist — if not outright Nazi (like Israel’s) — government.

    American taxpayers spend $3.8 billion per year as a donation to Israel, of which $3.3 billion goes to Israel’s military. Every American (including all recent Presidents) who has participated in imposing that burden upon us is a traitor against America, and so too is every American who has hidden or tried to hide from the American public the reality, instead of to expose it and to prosecute it. This Government, by such liars, rapes the minds of the American people so as to have this ‘democracy’ of fooled voters.

    In 2024, that $3.8 billion donated to Israel’s Nazi Government was escalated to $18 billion in order to provide Israel the weapons, ammunition, and satellite intelligence to exterminate the Gazans (under the propaganda-cover of ‘defeating Hamas’) and also to escalate the thefts of land and property of the West Bank Palestinians.

    These evils are politically bipartisan in the U.S.: the billionaires who control BOTH of America’s political Parties want this; so, it is the policy of the U.S. regime and of its ‘news’-media.

    I used to think that America’s Government controls Israel’s Government, but now I believe that it’s instead vice-versa, because all of the evidences seem to point to America’s Government being controlled by Israel’s Government. Whenever the U.S. Government urges Israel’s to tone down its Nazism (for the sake of international appearances), the response of Israel’s Government has been to ignore the U.S. regime’s request to soften what it is doing; the U.S. Government’s request that Israel’s Government make Israel’s barbarism less obvious in order not to excessively blacken America’s international reputation, is denied, turned down. The U.S. regime will thus go down in shame because it — for whatever reason — refuses to declare Israel to be itself an enemy of the U.S., as Israel has always been. The record is clear that Israel embodies Jewish Nazism, which it calls “Zionism.” Of course, anyone can be a Zionist, just like, in Hitler’s time, anyone (except a Jew) could be a Nazi. And in America, there are many Christian Zionists, not ONLY Jewish ones. And, somehow, Zionists — in both Israel and the U.S. — have a virtual lock-hold over ‘our’ Government. And almost all the rest of our population are simply passive about it.

    That’s the reality. Is it acceptable? If not, will we accept it, or will we instead replace the regime that controls us? (In any case, that regime is our billionaires.) If so, how?

    The post Does Israel Control America, or Does America Control Israel? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • Science Decommissioned!

    “But truth’s a menace. Science is a public danger.” (Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, 1932). Huxley’s “World State” promotes stability and social harmony over scientific progress. According to the dystopian World State, science is a threat that challenges existing beliefs, which leads to “questioning the established order.”

    2025 – America Decommissions Science

     The decommissioning of government-funded science appears to be a directive calling for: “Decommission but leave just enough of a shell to make it appear to be operational.”

    In reaction to deep budget cuts, America’s most respected science journal, Nature, reports, “Trump Proposes Unprecedented Budget Cuts to US Science,” May 2, 2025: “Huge reductions, if enacted, could have ‘catastrophic’ effects on US competitiveness and the scientific pipeline.” Excusez-moi! What about Making America Great Again?

    Or is America’s premier science journal “making stuff up about competitiveness?” Here’s where science becomes a nuisance by exposing haphazard wussy illogical policy decisions that serve to diminish the economy, unless, of course, Nature is erroneously making stuff up, but nobody can Make America Great Again by undercutting ‘competitiveness’. That’s backwards, not forwards.

    Looking forward: “Federal funding for basic scientific research delivers demonstrable returns on investment. A recent economic impact study found that every dollar invested in federal biomedical research funding generated nearly $2.56 in economic impact, supporting more than 400,000 jobs and catalyzing nearly $95 billion in new economic activity nationwide in 2024. Economists have also found that government investments in scientific research and development have provided returns of 150% to 300% since World War II.” (The Science Coalition)

    Science Budget Cuts Will Target US GDP, Down!

    Over the past 50 years, science research and development (R&D) have contributed significantly to economic growth, with estimates ranging from one-quarter to one-half of the total growth (Source: Association of American Universities). Sorrowfully, the Trump administration budget cuts, as well as proposed additional cuts, to federally funded science research are certain to cut GDP growth, based upon 50 years of statistics.

    Indeed, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists picked up on the damage caused by outrageous, unnecessary budget-cuts to science: “Decommissioned, Retired, Paused: The Weather, Climate, and Earth Science Data the Government Doesn’t Want You to See,” May 20, 2025: “On May 12, the Unidata program paused most of its operations due to a lapse in funding from the National Science Foundation… Shuyi Chen, a professor of atmospheric and climate science, told the Bulletin that virtually any university faculty member who teaches oceanography, atmospheric science, or climate science uses Unidata for research and educational purposes. But it’s not just researchers, in the United States and abroad, who depend on Unidata. These are also tools used for weather forecasting and preparing for extreme events, like floods, winter storms, hurricanes, and wildfires. She also has had students go on to work in the insurance industry, many of whom use Unidata for risk analysis.”

    But Unidata is only one of many data sources vastly cut by the new administration. NOAA recently announced that it is retiring the Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters database, which has tracked the damage from floods, hurricanes, and other large disasters since 1980. Twenty-two other NOAA data products have likewise been retired or decommissioned over the past month.

    The DEI Sham

     The Trump administration has made radical reductions in staffing and funding in U.S. science-related agencies, including the National Institutes of Health (the nation’s crown jewel of healthcare research) and the Food and Drug Administration. The elimination of key NIH programs based on concerns about DEI will severely damage effective solutions for health research. It is bone-headed.

     “Over the past two decades, the NIH has, as the Trump administration decries, prioritized expanding the scope of populations considered in the research it funds. It did so for very good, evidence-based reasons.” (“The Trump Administration’s NIH and FDA Cuts Will Negatively Impact Patients,” Brookings, May 14, 2025).

    The key to effective healthcare research has universally moved away from discoveries and treatments based upon restricted, homogeneous sample populations that disregard diversity of populations; rather, recognizing DEI for its value proposition as previous discoveries/treatments based upon narrowly defined homogeneous samples once introduced to the real world proved to be inadequate, hence the term “efficiency effectiveness gap.” DEI makes research much more effectively broad reaching and profitable.

    “DEI is not some free-floating ideology that considers a range of backgrounds, treatment differentials, and geographical gaps as ends in themselves. In practice, the NIH infrastructure shifted toward a prioritization of conditions and approaches that evidence indicated were more likely to close the gap between technological development and effectiveness in practice,” Ibid.

    America’s Crippled Interior DoD

     Cuts to agencies within the United States Department of Health and Human Services such as FDA, CDC, and NIH are cuts to the “interior department of defense” much as the Pentagon is the Department of Defense against foreign attack. Yet, the Pentagon budget at $850 billion hasn’t seen a foreign invasion since Pearl Harbor (1941). Meanwhile. the department of interior defense, where budgets are being heavily slashed at FDA, CDC, NIH met the challenge of 103,000,000 Americans hit by Covid-19 with 1,200,000 deaths five years ago by performing a “medical miracle,” orchestrating/funding a vaccine within one year to save millions of lives. Previously, the record time to bring a vaccine to market was four years for the mumps outbreak in the 1960s

    Indeed, interior department of defense agencies should be on the same budgetary footing as the Department of Defense for the Pentagon. Yet the budget for the nation’s interior department of defense, NIH, FDA, CDC is unbelievably slashed. For example, the largest most important of the three agencies for internal defense, NIH’s budget for 2025 was/is $48.5billion but Trump proposes cutting to $27 billion for 2026. This is the “crown jewel” of biomedical research in America. Former NIH employees, anonymously, claim the next pandemic or epidemic will be the disaster of all disasters. Meanwhile, the Pentagon ($850 billion), twiddling its thumbs, patiently waits, and waits, and waits for the next “Pearl Harbor.”

    Repeating the obvious: That’s $850 billion to prevent the next Pearl Harbor versus $48 billion (soon dropping to $27 billion) for NIH interior defense against diseases.

    Already, the NIH has $2.4 Billion in canceled and frozen grants and contracts, fired 1,200 employees, plus induced retirement and resignations from a yet unspecified number. The Trump administration’s 2026 Budget proposes a 37% further cut to the agency. Meanwhile, over 3,500 jobs at the FDA have been eliminated, and the administration has hinted at further restructuring of the agency. The former head of the FDA claims the FDA ‘as we know it’ is gone for good.

    Eureka! Ninety-three years since Huxley’s epigram, “Truth is a menace. Science is a public danger” resurfaces in full living color in the year 2025, as America’s interior department of defense for healthcare is ironically crippled, and the country reverts to principles espoused in literature on the heels of the Roaring Twenties (1920-29) at the doorstep of the Great Depression (1929-39) in a time of indecisive decisions, once again, history repeating itself. How’d that work out?

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  • Chris Hedges Report: Shared Mythological History Of Israel And The US

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    The post Chris Hedges Report: Shared Mythological History Of Israel And The US appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

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  • Welcome to the Inquisition: Trump’s Christ Nationalist Brigades Aim to Gut Church-State Separation

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    The ghosts of Paul Weyrich, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, the OG’s (Old Guard) of the religious right are dancing these days. Since his inauguration, Trump has rewarded his religious right allies with executive orders creating a “Religious Liberty Commission” and a “Task Force to Eliminate Anti-Christian Bias.”

    “Together they will put the force of the federal government behind the conspiracy theories, false persecution claims, and reactionary policy proposals of the Christian nationalist movement, including its efforts to undermine separation of church and state,” Right Wing Watch’s Peter Montgomery recently reported.

    On May 1, members of the religious liberty commission were announced, and nearly all are ultra-conservative Christian nationalists with a huge right-wing agenda. The commission’s chair is Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, and its vice chair is Ben Carson.

    Right Wing Watch profiled several of the commission’s members:

    • Paula White, serving again as Trump’s faith advisor in the White House, has used her position to elevate the influence of dominionist preachers and Christian nationalist activists. A preacher of the prosperity gospel, White has repeatedly denounced Trump’s opponents as demonic. When Trump announced the Religious Liberty Commission, White made the startling assertion, “Prayer is not a religious act, it’s a national necessity.”
    • Franklin Graham, the more-political son of the famous evangelist Billy Graham, is a MAGA activist and fan of Vladimir Putin’s anti-gay policies who backed Trump in 2016 as the last chance for Christians to save America from godless secularists and the “very wicked” LGTBT agenda. After the 2020 election Graham promoted Trump’s stolen-election claims and blamed the Jan. 6 violence at the Capitol on “antifa.”
    • Eric Metaxas, a once somewhat reputable scholar who has devolved into a far-right conspiracy theorist and MAGA cultist, emceed a December 2020 “Stop the Steal” rally at which Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes threatened bloody civil war if Trump did not remain in power.
    • Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who helped lead U.S. Catholic bishops’ opposition to legal abortion and LGBTQ equality, was an original signer of the 2009 Manhattan Declaration, a manifesto for Christian conservatives who declared that when it comes to opposition to abortion and marriage equality, “no power on earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence.”
    • Kelly Shackleford, president of First Liberty, who works to undermine church-state separation via the courts; Shackleford has endorsed a Christian nationalist effort to block conservative judges from joining the Supreme Court if they do not meet the faith and worldview standards of the religious right.
    • Allyson Ho, a lawyer and wife of right-wing Judge James Ho, has been affiliated with the anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ equality religious-right legal groups Alliance Defending Freedom and First Liberty Institute.

    Other commission members include Bishop Robert Barron, founder of the Word on Fire ministry; 2009 Miss USA runner-up Carrie Prejean Boller; TV personality Dr. Phil McGraw; and Rabbi Meir Soloveichik.

    Montgomery noted that “Advisory board members are divided into three categories: religious leaders, legal experts, and lay leaders. The list is more religiously diverse than the commission itself; in addition to right-wing lawyers and Christian-right activists, it includes several additional Catholic bishops, Jewish rabbis, and Muslim activists.”

    Notable new advisory board members:

    • Kristen Waggoner, president of the mammoth anti-LGBTQ legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, which uses the courts to make “generational” wins like the overturning of Roe v. Wade, has been named as a possible Supreme Court Justice by the Center for Judicial Renewal, a Christian nationalist project of the American Family Association’s advocacy arm. The ADF is active around the world.  
    • Ryan Tucker, senior counsel and director of the Center for Christian Ministries with Alliance Defending Freedom.
    • Jentezen Franklin, a MAGA pastor, told conservative Christians at a 2020 Evangelicals for Trump rally, “Speak now or forever hold your peace. You won’t have another chance. You won’t have freedom of religion. You won’t have freedom of speech.”
    • Gene Bailey, host of FlashPoint, a program that regularly promotes pro-Trump prophecy and propaganda on the air and at live events. Bailey has said the point of FlashPoint’s trainings is to help right-wing Christians “take over the world.” FlashPoint was until recently a program of Kenneth Copeland’s Victory Channel.
    • Anti-abortion activist Alveda King, a niece of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., once dismissed the late Coretta Scott King’s support for marriage equality by saying , ‘I’ve got his DNA. She doesn’t.”
    • Abigail Robertson, CBN podcast host and granddaughter of Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson.

    Donald Trump claiming that he’s the front man for “bringing religion back to our country,” is as if the late Jeffrey Epstein claimed that he was working to end sex trafficking.

    The Freedom From Religion Foundation called Trump’s religious liberty commission “a dangerous initiative,” that “despite its branding, this commission is not about protecting religious freedom — it’s about advancing religious privilege and promoting a Christian nationalist agenda”.

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  • A Short Guide on How to Starve a Population to Death

    A short guide on how to engineer a genocide by starvation and ethnic cleansing:

    1. Choose your moment. Ok, you’ve been ethnically cleansing, occupying, oppressing, and killing your neighbours for decades. The international courts have ruled your actions illegal. But none of that will matter the moment your neighbours retaliate by attacking you. Don’t worry. The Western media can be relied on to help out here. They will be only too ready to pretend that history began on the day you were attacked.

    2. Declare, in response, your intention to starve your neighbours, treating them as “human animals”, by blocking all food, water, and power. You will be surprised by how many Western politicians are ready to support this as your “right to defend yourself”. The media will echo them. It is important not to just talk about blocking aid. You must actually do it. There will be no serious pushback for many, many months.

    3. Start relatively slowly. Time is on your side. Let a little bit of aid in. But be sure to relentlessly smear the well-functioning, decades-old aid distribution system run by the international community, one that is transparent, accountable, and widely integrated into the communities it serves. Say it is infiltrated by “terrorists”.

    4. Use that claim – evidence isn’t really necessary, the western media never ask for it – as the pretext to bomb the aid system’s warehouses, distribution centres, and community kitchens. Oh, and don’t forget to bomb all the private bakeries, destroy all the farmland, shoot all the animals, and kill anyone who tries to use a fishing boat, so that there are no other sources of food. You are now in control of the trickle of aid reaching what is rapidly becoming a severely malnourished population.

    5. Time to move into higher gear. Stop the international community’s aid from getting in altogether. You will need a humanitarian cover story for this bit. The danger, particularly in an age of social media, is that images of starving babies will make you look very bad. Hold firm. You can get through this. Claim – again, evidence isn’t really necessary, the western media won’t ask for it – that the “terrorists” are stealing the aid. You will be surprised how willing the media is to talk about babies going “hungry”, ignoring the fact that you are starving them to death, or speak of a “famine”, as though from drought and crop failure, not from your carefully laid plans.

    6. Don’t lose sight of the bigger story. You are blocking aid to “eradicate the terrorists”. After all, what is the worth of a baby, of a child – all one million of them – in the fight to eliminate a rag-tag army of lightly armed “terrorists” who have never waged their struggle outside of their historic homeland?

    7. Now that the population is entirely at your disposal, you can roll out a “humanitarian” alternative to the existing system you have been vilifying and wrecking. Probably best to have been working on this part of the plan behind the scenes from early on, and to have regularly consulted with the Americans on how to develop it. You may even find they are willing to fund it. They usually are. You can obscure their role by using the term “private contractors”.

    8. It’s time for implementation. Obviously, the point is not to really distribute aid. It is all about providing a cover story so that the starvation and ethnic cleansing can continue. Ensure that you provide only a tiny amount of aid and make it available only at a few distribution points you have set up with these “private contractors”. This has two advantages.

    9. It forces the population to come to the areas you want them in, like luring mice into a trap. Get them to the very edge of the territory, because from there you will be best positioned at some point to drive them over the border and get rid of them for good.

    10. Your system will lead to chaos, as desperate, starving people fight for food. That’s great for you. It makes them look like a swarming mass of those “human animals” you were talking about from the start. Don’t they deserve their fate? And it means that young, fit men – especially those from large, often armed, criminal families – will end up with most of the food. The stuff they can’t grab at the distribution points, they will ambush later as people try to return home laden with their heavy aid packages. That may seem counter-productive, given that you’re claiming to want to eliminate the “terrorists”. Won’t these fit, young men, as conditions degenerate further, provide a future source of recruits to the “terrorists”? But remember, the real goal here is to starve the population as quickly as possible. The young, the elderly, the sick, and the vulnerable are the ones who will die first. The more of them who start dying, the faster the pressure builds on everyone else to flee the territory to save themselves.

    You are nearly there. True, faced with the emaciated bodies of your victims, Western politicians will start making harsh pronouncements. But they have already given you a massive head start of 20 months. Be grateful for that. You don’t need much longer. While they dither, you can get on with the job of extermination. Leave it to the history books to judge what really happened.

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  • A Sketch of the Origins of Jiang Jieshi’s Relationship with the United States

    A public opinion poll in 2023 found that 64% of likely United States voters thought that our government should officially recognize the Island of Taiwan as an independent nation, while a poll this year found that 82% of them believe that Taiwan “is” independent. A few months ago the U.S. State Department removed a line from their website stating that the US does not support Taiwan independence, triggering a rebuke from Beijing that this “sends a seriously erroneous message to the separatist forces” in Taiwan. Consistent with such views among U.S. citizens and State Department officials, the number of U.S. military personnel on Taiwan has increased recently. It was previously known that the number stationed there was 41; now, according to the testimony of retired Navy Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery on 15 May, there are approximately 500.

    U.S. experts speak of war with China. The U.S. and China are apparently preparing for it (Peter Apps, “US Prepares for Long War with China that Might Hit Its Bases, Homeland,” Reuters, 19 May 2025). And according to opinion polls, a large percentage of Americans, if not the majority, do support using U.S. troops to defend Taiwan. Thus it is important in 2025 to understand Taiwan’s special status and U.S.-China relations.

    The civil war between the Nationalist Party (Guomindang) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continued intermittently from 1927 until 1949, when the Communists won control over mainland China. The war resulted in the premature deaths of millions of people, with a large portion of those non-combatants. In 1949 the head of the Guomindang, Chiang Kaishek (1887-1975), known today as “Jiang Jieshi” by most mainland Chinese speakers, retreated to the Island of Taiwan with the remnants of his forces and “established a relatively benign dictatorship” there, executing one thousand farmers, workers, intellectuals, students, labor union activists, and apolitical civilians during the White Terror in the 1950s. (Po Chien CHEN and Yi-hung LIU, “A Spark Extinguished: Worker Militancy in Taiwan after World War II [1945-1950],” Ivan Franceschini and Christian Sorace, eds., Proletarian China: A Century of Chinese Labour, Verso, 2022). The martial law that Jiang Jieshi imposed in 1949 lasted for nearly four decades, until 1987.

    Under his reign there were two Taiwan Strait crises in which a hot war between the Guomindang and the CCP almost broke out. The most dangerous, in terms of the prospects for decent human survival, was probably the second crisis, in 1958. It almost resulted in a nuclear war, according to the late Daniel Ellsberg. At a point in time when U.S.-backed Jiang Jieshi aspired to take back all of China, the U.S. had a secret plan to “hit every city in the Soviet Union and every city in China.” The U.S. military was prepared to annihilate 600 million people, a “hundred Holocausts,” Ellsberg explained. Today the Island of Taiwan may or may not be the “most dangerous place on Earth,” as the Economist called it (Justin Metz, “The Most Dangerous Place on Earth,” The Economist, 1 May 2021), but given the constant tension between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China (i.e., Taiwan) during the last three quarters of a century, the fact that the U.S. and the PRC are both nuclear powers, the fact that U.S. intelligence leaders have recently called the CCP the “most consequential threat” to U.S. national security, and the fact that the Trump administration is riddled with China hawks underscores how important it is, for our species as a whole, and especially for people in East Asia, that sincere agents of peace understand Taiwan.

    Over the course of nearly half a century, Jiang Jieshi and his party received constant diplomatic support, weapons, and billions of dollars in aid from the U.S.  Our government has recently even “quietly unfrozen about $870 million in security assistance programs for Taiwan.” With all this U.S. “support” for, or U.S. domination of, Taiwan, what does the word “sovereignty” mean in Taiwan’s case? And what does it mean for an island of 23 million people to prepare to fight with the PRC, with its population of 1.4 billion? How can Lai Ching-te say that they must prepare for war?

    To understand the fight between the Republic of China and the PRC, and the intervening/interfering role of the U.S., one must have a basic understanding of the nature of this fight. A little study of the historical context in which Jiang Jieshi first seized power a century ago might help. This month marks 100 years since the start of the May Thirtieth Movement, when Chinese workers stood up against the imperialism of the West and Japan, while at the same time taking on the greedy business class and the power-hungry warlords of China.

    Chinese Workers Struggle for Dignity in 1925

    Back in 1925, Shanghai was known as “the Paris of the East,” and like Paris, it was a place where the rich could have fun as they liked and the poor had to suffer as they must. The workers of Shanghai suffered the injustices of colonialism and racism. Rich Europeans and Japanese colonizer-parasites had carved up the city and set up their own “International Settlement,” that they, rather than the Chinese, governed. This Settlement allowed them to live among and exploit the local laborers even as they disrespected them with the pejorative “coolies.” Some Japanese said they were “worthless” and called them “foreign slaves” (S.A. Smith, Like Cattle and Horses: Nationalism and Labor in Shanghai, 1895-1927, Duke UP, 2002, page 163).

    Shanghai had been a frequent site of labor “unrest” for some time. It was not a coincidence that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had been founded there in 1921. Early in 1925 a Japanese company that owned a cotton mill had rejected an agreement made by the striking workers and a mediation board. The conflict reached a head on the 15th of May that year when the managers of the mill locked out the workers and stopped paying their wages. (Apo Leong, “From the May Thirtieth Movement to the Canton Strike,” Proletarian China: A Century of Chinese Labour). In this conflict, Japanese supervisors physically beat several workers and one foreman shot and killed a 20-year-old worker, a Communist, by the name of Gu Zhenghong.

    This was not the first time that foreign bosses had murdered Chinese workers, but it was said that “Japanese capitalists treat Chinese laborers like cattle and horses” (S.A. Smith, Like Cattle and Horses 164). Many people, not only workers and students but also Chinese business persons, were fed up that year, in 1925. On the 30th of May nearly 10,000 demonstrators marched through the streets of Shanghai to the International Settlement where the British, French, Japanese, and other privileged foreigners lived. It was guarded by foreign soldiers and police. (Leong, “From the May Thirtieth Movement…”). The British chief of police gave orders to fire on the protesting workers and students, and thirteen people were killed, shot at “point-blank range” (Working Class History, PM Press, 2020, page 111-12).  Dozens were injured. This triggered what is known today as the May Thirtieth Movement. Through the cooperation of workers, students, and many Chinese businesses, a general strike was organized in Shanghai. There were at least 135 solidarity strikes in other regions. (Leong, “From the May Thirtieth Movement…”).

    By one estimate, there were already 84,000 unionized workers in Shanghai at this time and many unions had contributed to building worker solidarity (Smith, Like Cattle and Horses 154). Up until the May Thirtieth Incident, the Shanghai Federation of Syndicates (SFS) had been a leading labor organization, if not the leading organization in Shanghai. It had been established in 1924, mainly by right-wing members, but also by many anarchists, such as Shen Zhongjiu (1887–1968), the editor of the anarchist journal Free Man (Ziyou ren) and later the chief editor of Revolution (Geming). Anarchism was the “central radical stream” in China after the First World War. And there had been a “long-standing indigenous libertarian tradition” in China (Peter Marshall, Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism, PM Press, 2010, page 519).

    Many SFS labor activists distrusted the Communist Party because they felt that CCP intellectuals tried to speak for the workers. The SFS had a “vaguely anarchist orientation,” but did not espouse federalism. (Smith, Like Cattle and Horses 155-59). Chinese anarchists in general, regardless whether they were members of SFS, had vocally opposed the CCP’s statist goals and promotion of “proletarian dictatorship” and “iron discipline.” But the fledgling CCP was on the ball. They “instantly launched a campaign calling for solidarity with the textile workers, a boycott of Japanese products, and a public funeral” for Gu Zhenghong (Leong, “From the May Thirtieth Movement…”).

    In the city of Guangzhou, already an industrial center near Hong Kong then, anarchists had established at least 40 unions by 1921, and had been collaborating since 1924 with the Guomindang labor leaders in the syndicalist movement. The Guomindang was founded in 1924 by Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925) in Guangzhou, and many anarchists and communists had collaborated with them for years.  In May 1925 the “Second National Labour Conference” was held in Guangzhou. The All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) was established, representing 166 trade unions and 540,000 members. It was a national umbrella organization that functioned as a platform to coordinate different forces among workers, including non-party actors. After the Shanghai Massacre, the ACFTU called for a demonstration on 2 June and a solidarity strike. In the wake of the Massacre, many more workers joined unions (Leong, “From the May Thirtieth Movement…”).

    Union leaders organized a strike in Guangzhou and in nearby Hong Kong. This strike began on 19 June. Soon, 250,000 workers hand had joined and many students in Hong Kong were also mobilized. In fact, half the labor force of Hong Kong was on strike, paralyzing the city. By the 21st of June, there was a full embargo against the foreign powers, and on the 23rd of June, a public procession in solidarity with the May Thirtieth Movement. The joint foreign security force with police from multiple countries opened fire on students and killed fifty-two people.

    1925 was the beginning of a period of very active worker resistance, that is sometimes called the “Revolution of 1925-1927.” It was a time of many large uprisings, often or usually very violent, and a time of dedicated labor organizing. Through this revolution, Chinese workers regained some dignity, but true liberation was put on the back burner. According to the historian Gotelind Müller, “the CCP worked on Comintern instructions in a united front with the Guomindang, an authoritarian party populist in rhetoric but tied in practice to defending the interests of China’s business groups and rural elites. The terms of the alliance required the CCP’s subordination to the Nationalist [i.e., Guomindang] leaders and the submersion of its membership.” She explains that, just as with anarchists elsewhere, “Chinese anarchists were at first sympathetic to the Bolsheviks but by the mid-1920s they saw the regime in Moscow as oppressive.”

    Meanwhile, Mao Zedong knew that something was happening, and he became very interested in this movement in the summer of 1925 (Rebecca Karl, Mao Zedong and China in the Twentieth Century World, Duke UP, 2010, page 29). In addition to labor unions in the city, peasant unions were also forming, appearing in Hunan and surrounding provinces. Mao saw revolutionary potential among them, even more than among workers in the cities. This put him in opposition to the orthodox Marxist approach.

    A Year of Strikes: 1926

    There were even more strikes in 1926 than in 1925, and some of the rulers of China resorted to violence to keep them down. “During 1926 in Shanghai there were, according to one official survey, 169 strikes affecting 165 factories and companies and involving 202,297 workers.” Half of them were “wholly or partially successful.” (Harold Isaacs, The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution, 1938). In May 1926 the Third Labor Congress was held in Guangzhou, with the participation of 699 labor organizations, who claimed to represent 1.24 million workers.

    And it was at this point, when things were going so well for the workers, that Jiang Jieshi started abandoning them and dismissed his Soviet advisors (Dennis Showalter, “Bring in the Germans,” The Quarterly Journal of Military History 28:1, page 60). It was the Soviets who had urged the Communists of China to work with the Guomindang.

    On 18 March, there was a massacre of anti-imperialist protesters in front of Beiyang Government headquarters. The Beiyang Government was run by warlords like Duan Qirui (1865-1936), who was tight with Japan. They were the main government of China between 1912 and 1928, and were based in Beijing.

    Among those injured during the 18 March massacre was the leader Li Dazhao (1889-1927), who had co-founded the CCP with Chen Duxiu (1879-1942). Chen Duxiu had also founded the progressive journal New Youth (Xin Qingnian) in 1916, advocating human rights, democracy, science, and even Esperanto. Influenced by the October Revolution, it was openly promoting communism in 1920.

    The great writer Lu Xun, who is often credited with modernizing Chinese literature, wrote about the March 1926 massacre in some detail in “In Memory of Miss Liu Hezhen.” Lu Xun wrote, “On March 18 in the fifteenth year of the Republic of China, Duan Qirui’s government ordered guards with guns and bayonets to surround and slaughter the unarmed protesters in front of the gates of the State Council, the hundreds of young men and women whose intent was to lend their support in China’s diplomatic dealings with foreign powers. An order was even issued, slandering them as ‘mobsters’!” (Lu Xun, “In Memory of Liu Hezhen,” Jottings Under Lamplight, Harvard UP, 2017, page 72).

    Meanwhile in June, Jiang Jieshi was put in charge of the Northern Expedition aimed at removing the warlords from power and unifying the country.

    Jiang Jieshi’s 1927 Slaughters

    In 1927 rich men slaughtered workers like never before. Early on, the CCP suspected that something was up. On 26 January an internal Party memo read, “The most important problem which requires our urgent consideration at the moment is the alliance of foreign imperialism and the [Guomindang] right wing with the so-called moderate elements of the [Guomindang], resulting in internal and external opposition to Soviet Russia, communism, and the labor and peasant movements” (Michael D. Wilson, United States Policy and the Nationalist Revolution in China, 1925-1928, UCLA dissertation, 1996, page 121). The Communists knew that the Guomindang was allied with the “Powers,” i.e., the empires of the West and Japan. Yet they still encouraged workers to trust the Guomindang.

    Around this time in early 1927, a powerful Communist-led union called the Shanghai General Labour Union (GLU) launched two insurrections. Their first insurrection was a general strike from the 19th to the 22nd of February, and their second was a strike supported by an armed militia from the 21st to 22nd of March. The strike in February “shut post offices, all cotton mills, and most essential services” (S.A. Smith, “The Third Armed Uprising and the Shanghai Massacre,” Proletarian China: A Century of Chinese Labour, and Working Class History 41). This contributed greatly to the popularity of both the Guomindang and the CCP in Shanghai.

    For their second insurrection in March, the GLU’s plan was “to take control of the city first and then welcome” Jiang Jieshi. But the British, the Americans, and the Japanese in Shanghai already knew the script. Written in 1938, Harold Isaacs’ historical account got to the heart of the matter:

    The prevailing attitude among them during those early weeks of 1927 seemed to be to hear and protect the evils they had rather than fly to others they knew not of. For to your foreign business man, banker, soldier, consul, and missionary, this incomprehensible unrest, these endless slings and arrows for which they were the quivering targets, seemed the blows of a universally outrageous fortune. They could not make out who were the hares and who the hounds. So they barricaded their settlements behind gates and barbed wire. From overseas came regiment after regiment and whole fleets to protect them against all contingencies. Only the keenest among them understood from the beginning that their bread was buttered on the same side as that of the Shanghai bankers and oriented themselves accordingly. They knew Chiang Kai-shek [Jiang Jieshi] as a politically-minded militarist who wore a coat of many colours. If the Shanghai bankers were ready to back him, they knew they could follow suit. Only the workers of Shanghai stood between them and the consummation of the deal. Chiang’s coming would remove this obstacle. Thus by February when Chiang’s troops advanced into Chekiang, the situation was vastly clarified for all concerned except the workers and the Communist leaders for whom Chiang still remained the hero-general of the revolution. (Harold Isaacs, The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution, 1938).

    But as evidenced by the quote from the CCP internal Party memo, the Communist leaders, too, knew what was happening, that Jiang Jieshi was not on their side.

    “On 21 March between 600,000 and 800,000 workers struck in demand for an end to militarist rule of the city. Among the workers who played key roles were the printers, postal workers, and mechanics. Several thousand radicals also formed an armed militia that occupied key sections of the city” (St. James Encyclopedia of Labor History Worldwide: Major Events in Labor History and Their Impact).

    On the same day that these Communist supporters of Jiang Jieshi launched their violent take-over of Shanghai, Guomindang troops took control of the City of Nanjing, attacked foreigners and looted foreign property there, “including the American, British, and Japanese consulates.” (Wilson, United States Policy and the Nationalist Revolution in China, 1925-1928, page 111). Foreigners were frightened by these attacks and they blamed it on communists, not on Jiang Jieshi. “Actually, however, the nationalists [i.e., Guomindang] were the perpetrators of this series of attacks on foreign civilians. Some foreign officials, such as the Japanese Consul General, thus advised [Jiang Jieshi] to crack down on the radical elements in the city” (St. James Encyclopedia…). This is remembered as the “Nanking Incident of 1927.”

    On 22 March, the stage was set for the great betrayal and a years-long bloodbath. On that day, a subordinate of Jiang Jieshi, called off the strike in Shanghai and ordered the suppression of the labor unions and other radical groups (Wilson 110). With thousands of soldiers in toe and at his command, Jiang Jieshi himself arrived on 26 March and began meeting with members of the local Guomindang, the Shanghai business community, and the gangsters. He was promised financial support “if he broke from the communists and pledged to ‘regulate’ the relationship between labor and capital” (St. James Encyclopedia…).

    April 1927: Let the Reign of Terror Begin

    Jiang Jieshi agreed with these parasitic foreigners that the changes being proposed by the workers and the Communists were too radical. “It should have come as no surprise to anyone that [Jiang Jieshi] decided to move against the radicals, as he had already done so in several other cities in late March” (St. James Encyclopedia…), but many Chinese workers as well as French, German, and Russian communists continued to believe in him.

    After the Guomindang’s attack on Westerners and Japanese in Nanjing (i.e., the Nanking Incident of March 1927), Jiang Jieshi started to seek support from Japan and the U.S. rather than the USSR and the CCP (Wilson 33, 72, 134).

    Jiang Jieshi viewed the success of the peasants and the workers as a threat to his party’s political, military, and social control, and this is one reason why he initiated the April 12th Shanghai Massacre, in which the Guomindang slaughtered communists in Shanghai and other places. According to Vincent Kolo, the “capitalist class and rural landowners whose sons were well represented in the officer corps of the [Guomindang] armies grew fearful of the increasingly radical demands of the working class (for shorter work hours and against the terror regime in many factories) and the peasantry (for land reform and against the crushing taxes of the landlord class)” (Kolo, “90 Years since Chiang Kai-shek’s Shanghai Massacre,” Chinaworker.info).

    On 5 April Jiang Jieshi “instituted martial law and ordered the disarming of all bearers of arms not properly registered with the Nationalist Army” (Wilson 123). On the 11th, Wang Shouhua [the President of the GLU] was thrown in a sack and “buried alive” (Smith, “The Third Armed Uprising”). By the morning of the 12th, the worker militias “had been crushed,” according to historian S.A. Smith. That day, Jiang Jieshi hired hundreds of armed gangsters to massacre labor leaders and communists (Wilson, page 124).

    Even so, the tenacious workers, led mainly by the GLU, called a general strike for the 13th of April. “240,000 workers walked out” (Smith, “The Third Armed Uprising”). Machine gunners opened fire on their parade. “Attackers” engaged in “stabbing, shooting, and clubbing the panic-stricken crowd.” One hundred were killed. But even on the 14th, the majority of striking workers did not give up.

    By the 15th, the GLU estimated that three hundred trade union activists had been killed. It is estimated that by the end of the year, two thousand “Communists and worker militants” had lost their lives. The Guomindang killed “thousands of worker activists” in Shanghai, Wuhan, and Guangzhou (Leong, “From the May Thirtieth Movement…”). “Over the following twelve months, more than three hundred thousand people would be killed in the Guomindang’s anti-communist purges” (Working Class History 80-81).

    The police of “Qingbang and Hongbang brutally executed the captured communist and union members by slaughtering them and putting them in the crater of a locomotive.” (“4.12 Shanghai Coup,” Namuwiki, 15 April 2025). Communists refer to the following years of Guomindang massacres as the “White Terror.” By one estimate, this White Terror resulted in the deaths of one million people (Karl, Mao Zedong and China in the Twentieth-Century World 33). Enabled by the governments of the U.S. and other countries, Jiang Jieshi began in 1947 another White Terror on the Island of Taiwan. It did not end until 1987.

    This is the way that Jiang Jieshi thanked the peasant and worker revolutionaries who had propelled his party to power. His rewards for this great achievement of “unifying” the nation included generous financial support from the business class of Shanghai (David Lowe, “Generalissimo,” The Weekly Standard 9:27:22, page 43), lots of help of various kinds from the Powers of the West and Japan, and recognition from the Empires that he was the legitimate ruler of China.

    With his solid track record of bullying into submission Chinese workers, the U.S. showered Jiang Jieshi with treasure for decades, until his death in 1975. The U.S. was the first foreign country to step forward and grant recognition to his new regime (in 1928), and soon the U.S. would begin supporting him financially and militarily, too, even when informed U.S. observers, such as John King Fairbank (1907-91) labeled his Party as “proto-fascist.” For Fairbank, the Guomindang were a “small political group holding tenaciously to power…with hopes of using industrialization as a tool of perpetuating their power and with ideas which are socially conservative and backward-looking” (Wilson 2).

    Yokomitsu Riichi, the Japanese ultra-rightist author who wrote the novel Shanghai (1931), presented in that story a surprisingly similar picture of the political and economic situation of China, a country where parasites of the West, Japan, and even China committed state violence against them and stole the fruits of their labor. For example:

    He [Sanki] fell silent. He had detected the strength of will of the authorities who had hired Chinese to kill Chinese.

    [Fang Qiu-lan, a woman to whom Sanki is attracted and a Communist who organizes workers in Japanese textile factories:]  “That’s right. The craftiness of the British authorities isn’t new. The history of the modern Orient is so filled with the crimes of that country that if you tried to add them up, you’d be paralyzed. Starving millions of Indians, disabling Chinese with the opium trade. These were Britain’s economic policies. It’s the same as using Persia, India, Afghanistan, and Malaysia to poison China. Now we Chinese must resist completely.” (Yokomitsu Riichi, Shanghai: A Novel by Yokomitsu Riichi, Dennis Washburn, trans., Center of Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 2001, page 153).

    Since 1950, the United States has sold Taiwan nearly $50 billion in “defense equipment and services, with a number of large sales during recent U.S. administrations.” Is this how we deliver “power to the people” and peace in East Asia? Were we promoting industrial democracy by increasing the wealth and power of Jiang Jieshi even after he committed massacres of Chinese workers with impunity? Don’t the people of Taiwan, the vast majority of whom are Han Chinese, deserve credit for sprouting democracy even under the sun-starved, U.S.-backed dictatorship of Jiang Jieshi? Where in the U.S. is there any recognition of the crimes that the U.S. committed against the Han Chinese and other ethnic groups of Taiwan and the rest of China? How solid is the foundation on which the current President Lai Ching-te stands, the man who called himself a “pragmatic worker for Taiwan independence” in 2017? When we spend 250 million U.S. dollars on an upgrade on our “informal,” 10-acre embassy in Taiwan, is that an example of how we adhere to our One China policy? Even merely with the foregoing brief exploration of the history of the obvious class struggle in China a century ago, and quick examples of U.S. support for Jiang Jieshi’s attacks on the working class of China, one can see that U.S. dollars were spent on death, destruction, and tyranny rather than on democracy and peace.

    The post A Sketch of the Origins of Jiang Jieshi’s Relationship with the United States first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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