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Iran declares ‘historic victory’ over the U.S., says enemy forced to accept its proposal
(www.workers.org)
The following statement issued by Iran’s Supreme National Security Council in response to the MAGA president’s two-week “ceasefire” was published by Press TV on April 7. “Good news to the dear nation of Iran! Nearly all the objectives of the war have been achieved. * “The noble people of Iran . . .
From Workers World via This RSS Feed.
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In the first hours of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, up to 175 young children and school staff were blown to pieces at an elementary school. Others were maimed and burned, and will be suffering from their injuries for the rest of their lives. Even any comparatively fortunate ones with minimal injuries will surely experience permanent trauma from having witnessed something so horrific. Witnesses describe scenes of unfathomable horror, with limbs and blood strewn across classrooms. "People were pulling out children's arms and legs. People were pulling out severed heads," said a woman whose child was killed. The Guardian cites verified videos that show "children's bodies lying partly buried under the debris":
In one video, a very small child's severed arm is pulled from the rubble. Colourful backpacks covered with blood and concrete dust sit among the ruins. One girl wears a green dress with gingham patches on her pockets and the collar, her form partly obscured by a black body bag. Screams can be heard in the background.
Drop Site News spoke to the father of a six-year-old girl, Sara Shariatmadar, who was killed in the attack. "I cannot understand how a place where innocent children learn can be bombed like this," he said. "We are talking about small children who knew nothing of politics or wars. And yet they are the ones paying the highest price."
The United States and Israel have not denied responsibility for the attack, although it is still unclear which country fired the missile. The U.S. said that it does not "target" schools, which does not mean that it does not bomb them. ("We take these reports seriously," a spokesman said.) Israel's spokesperson said the government was not "aware" of such an attack, which does not mean its military did not carry one out. Photos supposedly showing that a misfired Iranian missile caused it were debunked, although they spread widely online among Americans and Israelis desperate to believe that only the Bad Guys do things like this.
Domestic coverage of this horrible crime against humanity has been muted. U.S. media has a policy of not showing gruesome images of violence---the Guardian explicitly stated that it was concealing the photos and videos it had "due to their graphic nature." As a result, war is always sanitized, so that Americans can read that 150+ schoolgirls were killed without having to confront the full horror of what it means for their country to drive a missile into a crowded school in the middle of the day. (Saturday is a school day in Iran, a fact that the U.S. government would easily have been able to know when deciding how to time its attacks, but Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has been open about the fact that he regards such niceties as rules of engagement and international law as meddlesome hindrances that can be ignored, lambasting those who "wring their hands and clutch their pearls, hemming and hawing about the use of force.")
I suspect that this attack is also difficult for U.S. media to cover because the basic facts of the situation are so twisted, so depraved, so evil, that they shatter the comforting narrative that the U.S. has the moral high ground over the Ayatollah. In fact, the U.S. government is on the moral level of the Sandy Hook school shooter, a fact that even president Trump's critics may have a hard time fully accepting.
And this was not the only massacre carried out by the U.S. and Israel in a war that has been going on just a few days. The Human Rights Activists News Agency reports that there have already been over 1,000 civilian deaths in Iran, including 181 children under the age of ten, with thousands more civilians injured. Drop Site reports on the nauseating scene in a middle-class Tehran neighborhood following a "double tap" strike (dropping one bomb first, and then dropping another on the survivors and emergency responders, a favorite war crime of the U.S. and Israel). Warning, the following description is extremely graphic and may undermine any love you may have for your country:
Videos of the immediate aftermath of the attack showed several individuals dead and wounded as well as massive destruction on the street outside. In Cafe Ahla, next to the square, blood and debris soaked the floors. Several patrons who had been sitting there when the attack struck could be seen dead on the floor or with their mutilated bodies still sprawled across their seats. "We were sitting here around 8:00-8:30 p.m. and suddenly there was the noise and explosion. We got up and a few people ran away. We turned around to get our belongings and we saw that blood was spraying everywhere. Someone's hand had fallen on the floor, a head had fallen on the floor," said Shahin, a witness who had been at the cafe and asked to be identified by first name only. "There were scalps torn off, hands severed, a few people were laying here all cut up and two people were martyred."
I will get to the many ways in which the Iran war is illegal, making us less safe, founded on lies, strategically insane, unbelievably costly, etc. But let us dwell for a moment on what we are doing to these people. The right-wing Telegraph newspaper reports that in Tehran, "millions of civilians are trapped under relentless bombardment as food and medical supplies dwindle and the death toll mounts," and the city is an "'apocalypse' of hospitals in flames and children buried beneath rubble." The paper records a total humanitarian disaster, with sick people lacking medicine, children going hungry, diabetics running out of insulin, and the repeated bombing of residential areas. While Americans pat themselves on the back for assassinating Iran's repressive head of state, everyday Iranians (even those with little love for their theocratic government) are facing the prospect of being killed at any moment, or watching their children be ripped to pieces. I realize that in the U.S., the devaluation of Middle Eastern lives means that little Iranian girls will receive a fraction of the compassion and concern that has arisen around, say, Nancy Guthrie. But if we apply our morality consistently, I cannot see how we can be anything other than completely revolted by the carnage our president is choosing to inflict (and will apparently soon be further escalating, according to Marco Rubio, who is promising an increased use of force to come, and Pete Hegseth, who is salivating about delivering "death and destruction all day long").
We are all complicit. If you are an American, you paid your government to murder those little girls and those Tehran cafe-goers. Money was withdrawn from your paycheck in the form of federal income taxes. If the attack was conducted with a Tomahawk missile (of which 400 were fired in 72 hours), that money would have been paid to the RTX Corporation (formerly Raytheon). Each missile fired costs somewhere between $1.3 million and $2.2 million, of which approximately $200,000 would be pure profit. Thus the killing of the Iranian schoolgirls, which left their bloody backpacks and tiny severed limbs scattered across classroom floors, transferred hundreds of thousands of dollars from us (the American taxpayers) into RTX's bank accounts. It also boosted the GDP. And the stock market.
Stock price of RTX (formerly Raytheon)
It is hard for me to write about this war, because I am so sickened every time I contemplate the full dark reality of the country I live in. I realize that not only are there people who will drop a bomb on a school without losing a wink of sleep, but there are people who get rich when we bomb schools, who have a direct financial stake in ensuring we keep dropping as many bombs as possible. (And that's just the weapons companies. Others are getting rich from betting on the atrocities on prediction markets.) The fact that many Congressional Democrats implicitly or explicitly supported this war (whether by outright goading Trump into it, as Chuck Schumer did, dragging their feet on opposing it, or raising meek procedural objections) further adds to my disgust. Many Democrats apparently declined to try to stop the war, reasoning that if it achieved U.S. foreign policy goals it would be embarrassing to have opposed it, but if it went south Trump would own it anyway. When I open the New York Times op-ed page, and I find resident foreign policy guru Thomas Friedman cautioning against adopting any "black and white narrative" about what goes on in "a complicated, kaleidoscopic region," I want to vomit. The moment calls for moral clarity: our country is engaged in a mass murder campaign. It must be stopped. It is depressing to see so many debates around strategic end-goals, congressional authorization, or the consistency of the justifications. They take us away from the basic fact that our president, with the blessing of his party and many members of the so-called opposition, is gruesomely murdering children by the dozen. Every day this continues, we are paying our government to commit some of the worst crimes humans are capable of.
Of course, the war is also based on a pack of lies. The Trump administration can't even get its story straight on why the war is being waged and has produced no justification beyond vague invocations of National Security. (Trump says Iran was a "bad seed.") Some Republicans won't even admit that this is a war. (Perhaps they might want to borrow a phrase from Vladimir Putin: "special military operation.") House Speaker Mike Johnson is trying to have it both ways, saying that while the Iranians "have declared war on us," we're "not at war right now." Others are tying themselves in pretzels trying to explain how this differs from the "regime change" wars that Trump has so vocally opposed. (Pete Hegseth: "This is not a so-called 'regime change war.' But the regime sure did change.") Sometimes there are direct self-contradictions within a single sentence, as with Tom Cotton declaring that "Iran has been an imminent threat to the United States for 47 years." This was too much for right-wing commentator Matt Walsh, who accused Republicans of "gaslighting" for suddenly discovering that Iran has been waging a half-century of war against the U.S. Even leading Iraq war hawk Bill Kristol is confused about the reasoning behind the war, saying there is "no coherent rationale." (Of course, Kristol's own favorite Middle East war was equally illegitimate, but that's an argument for another day.)
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. attacked because it knew Israel was going to attack, and needed to defend itself against the inevitable Iranian retaliation for Israel's attack---perhaps the most tortured and unpersuasive case for self-defense ever made. Perhaps because this seemed like an admission that Israeli choices dictate U.S. policy, Trump subsequently denied that Israeli decision-making had anything to do with the attack, although it's clear that Benjamin Netanyahu lobbied heavily for this, as he has been salivating at the prospect of a major war with Iran for decades, and has been scheming for a way to get the U.S. involved.
The idea that Iran was a threat to the United States was always laughable. U.S. intelligence has consistently assessed that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon. The Trump administration itself declared that it had destroyed Iran's nuclear program with last year's bombings. Iran has in fact consistently shown itself very reluctant to engage in military confrontation with the U.S., often carefully limiting its retaliation after U.S. provocations. To the extent that Iran did want to become a nuclear threshold state, with at least the capacity to pursue a weapons program if it wanted to, credible analysts believe that Iran mainly wanted an insurance policy against potential U.S. and Israeli attacks. North Korea has shown that the possession of nuclear weapons is enough to make the U.S. think twice about forcible regime change, and there is a good argument that it would have been rational for Iran to pursue nuclear weapons for the sake of its own self-protection. As Israeli military historian Martin Van Creveld observed, the world "witnessed how the United States attacked Iraq for, as it turned out, no reason at all. Had the Iranians not tried to build nuclear weapons, they would be crazy." (Van Creveld is wrong that Iraq was attacked for "no reason," however. It was attacked for the same reason Iran is being attacked: the establishment of U.S.-Israeli dominance over the Middle East.) While U.S. commentators often talk as if Iran would pursue nuclear weapons mainly in order to destroy the U.S. or Israel (which would, of course, be suicidal given both countries' superior nuclear forces), there's no evidence that Iran would want nuclear weapons for any reason beyond deterring potential external attacks. (A fear that recent events have proven to be well-founded.)
In fact, the entire prevailing narrative about Iran is completely backwards. It's the U.S. that has been a threat to Iran, not the other way around. It was the United States and Britain that overthrew Iran's legitimately elected leader, Mohammad Mosaddegh, in 1953. (The New York Times was elated by the coup, commenting that "underdeveloped countries with rich resources now have an object lesson in the heavy cost that must be paid by one of their number which goes berserk with fanatical nationalism.") Since 1979, when the Iranians ousted the dictator (the Shah) that the U.S. had helped install and maintain in power, the U.S. has had a virtually unremittingly hostile attitude toward Iran. This is not because of the government's (very real) human rights abuses, since the U.S. is happy to support human rights abusing states that are pliant and servile (see, e.g., Saudi Arabia and Egypt). But Iran is viewed as a threat to U.S. dominance in the Middle East. Thus, in the 1980s, the U.S. supported Saddam Hussein as he waged a ruthless war of aggression against Iran, killing hundreds of thousands of Iranians including with chemical weapons. (The U.S. concealed evidence of Hussein's chemical weapon use from the UN, because it wanted him to go on killing Iranians.) More recently, the U.S. and Israel have tried to destabilize the country through devastating cyberattacks, economy-wrecking sanctions, and assassinations. The sanctions have been explicitly aimed at harming civilians, with Mike Pompeo boasting in 2019 that "things are much worse for the Iranian people" thanks to sanctions and hoping that their suffering would lead them to overthrow their government.
Importantly, while U.S. policymakers in both the Republican and Democratic parties constantly affirm that "Iran must not be allowed to have nuclear weapons," they rarely state their implicit corollary to this proposition, which is that Israel must be allowed to have nuclear weapons. As it happens, Iran actually agrees that it shouldn't be allowed to have nukes, and has long supported turning the entire Middle East into an official nuclear weapons free zone, much as Africa and Latin America have done. The problem is that the U.S. and Israel demand a double standard, with Israel refusing to contemplate giving up its nuclear weapons. The entire nuclear disagreement, then, is not about whether Iran should have nuclear weapons, but about whether Iran should hold itself to a different standard to Israel. (Amusingly, Chuck Schumer recently accidentally declared that "no one wants a nuclear Israel," and had to correct himself, because he does want a nuclear Israel.)
Anyone who values human life should treat war as an absolute last resort, to be engaged in only once every diplomatic option has been exhausted. In this case, it was the Trump administration that sabotaged diplomacy. First, even though asking Iran not to pursue nuclear weapons means imposing an unfair double standard that imperils Iran's national security, Iran had agreed under the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action to severely constrain its development of nuclear technology, and agreed to a detailed monitoring and compliance regime. It was confirmed to be adhering to that agreement until Donald Trump ripped it up in 2018, subsequently criticizing Iran for failing to adhere to the agreement that he himself had destroyed. Joe Biden declined to pursue the revival of that agreement, even though Iran signaled that it was open to it. But to this day, Iran has shown that it is willing to consider even highly unfavorable agreements in order to avoid war---it has never shown any sign of launching an unprovoked strike, only deploying military action in response to violence by others, such as an Israeli attack on its embassy or the assassination of its allies' leaders.
Iran has long wanted to keep a war with the U.S. from breaking out, which is why its responses to U.S. and Israeli attacks have previously been notably measured and cautious. (This time around, Iran reasons that unless it inflicts major damage, it will be perceived as weak and attacked further, since previous restraint only encouraged the U.S. and Israel to press their advantage.) Diplomatic talks between the U.S. and Iran were ongoing, and Oman, mediating talks, saw "the most promising diplomatic opening in years" and thought "diplomacy was producing tangible results and that a negotiated settlement was imminent." The U.S. and Israel decided to sabotage diplomacy and assassinate the Iranian head of state, possibly because they felt they just couldn't forgo the opportunity to kill as many high-ranking Iranians as possible in one fell swoop. (They killed so many Iranian government officials that Donald Trump admitted the U.S. had killed all of the people who had been considered likely candidates to take Khamenei's place.) Iran professed itself baffled as to why the U.S. attacked. "I do not know why the U.S. administration insists on beginning a negotiation with Iran and then attacking Iran in the middle of talks," said the country's foreign minister. He told NBC: "We were able to address serious questions related to Iran's nuclear program. We obviously have differences, but we resolved some of those differences, and we decided to continue in order to resolve the rest of [the] questions."
Because mass civilian casualties are a predictable consequence of intense airstrikes, to choose to unnecessarily end diplomatic engagement and start bombing is unconscionable depravity. But it's clear that the Trump administration didn't really care whether Iran was genuinely willing to engage in diplomacy, because Trump's position is that Iran should simply do what we say, period. There is nothing to negotiate, because for Trump, the only choice is whether a country is willing to comply with U.S. demands, or whether we will have to use force to ensure their compliance.
I haven't even gotten to the illegality of the war. Leaving aside the ridiculous Republican denials that this is a war (if a country assassinated our head of state and bombed our cities, would anyone doubt that they were waging war?), it's plain that all of this is unconstitutional. The Constitution vests the power to declare war in Congress, not the president. Congress didn't declare war, therefore the war is illegal. Case closed. I know presidents have stretched their powers as far as possible (Obama's drone strikes, etc.) but if a president has the power to wage a relentless bombing and assassination campaign without Congressional approval, the Constitution simply ceases to mean anything. Congress has plainly failed in its responsibility to ensure that Trump complies with the Constitution, but the failure of our politicians to enforce the law doesn't change what it says.
Of course, it virtually goes without saying that the war violates international law. The UN Charter prohibits the use of force (or even the threat of force) except in response to an armed attack. Iran had not attacked the U.S., nor was there any evidence Iran was going to attack the U.S. Propagandists assert that Iran (and its "proxies") have killed "hundreds" of Americans over the years, but they decline to specify who these Americans are or discuss the Iranians killed by the U.S. and our own "proxies." There's no real point discussing international law, because Trump has made it clear he simply doesn't care about it, saying he doesn't need it and is unconstrained by it. Unfortunately, other countries have been just as pathetically weak as members of the U.S. Congress, with countries like Britain and France issuing statements that were de facto supportive of the assassination of a foreign head of state. (Canada issued a supportive statement and then appeared to regret it after noticing that letting the U.S. and Israel tear up the last vestiges of international law might be unwise.) Germany's chancellor has even made the stunning statement that Iran shouldn't be protected by international law, waving away the obvious illegality of the attacks by saying that "now is not the time to lecture our partners and allies." The killing of a head of state is a major crime, the normalization of which would open a horrible Pandora's box of lawless state action, and the world should be unified in condemning U.S.-Israeli lawlessness, but even among the Arab states there is a reluctance to antagonize the U.S.
None of the long-term consequences of this war will be good. The Trump administration does not appear to have any kind of strategic plan for what will happen next in Iran. (Lindsey Graham says it's "not [Trump's] job" to have a plan for what happens to the country's government next.) We could see the country's collapse into civil war, Libya-style. (Obama adviser Ben Rhodes recently admitted that Obama's decision to topple Libya's dictator without a plan for the country was a major error.) We could simply see the hard-line theocrats be replaced by more hard-line theocrats who are more convinced than ever that there can be no negotiating with the U.S., that the only language this country understands is force, and that the best thing for Iran's safety would be for it to obtain a nuclear weapon as quickly as possible. What we are unlikely to see is a pro-American government emerging, and this war puts Americans everywhere in considerable danger. (Ask yourself: if what happened to Sara Shariatmadar happened to someone you love, would you see the country that carried out the bombing as a liberator? Or would you want revenge?) Although plenty of Iranians are justly celebrating the end of the Ayatollah's rule, like the Iraqis who celebrated in 2003, they will soon find out that the U.S. has no interest in their well-being, and will happily watch their country slide into civil war if this serves America's perceived "national security" interest.
Six Americans have already died in addition to the 1,000 Iranians. Because this is a war of choice, totally unnecessary and unjustifiable, their blood is on Donald Trump's hands, and he (as well as Congress) should be treated no differently than we would treat someone who murdered these Americans with their bare hands. But the costs to this country are only just beginning. Of course, if you're an RTX shareholder this may be a bonanza, but the rest of us are likely to see major economic disruption, in addition to all the resources that are put into the production of weapons. Eisenhower famously tried to warn Americans that war spending is an act of "theft" from the public, because it's money not spent on schools and hospitals, and the "opportunity cost" is therefore enormous. But Eisenhower's warning has largely been ignored.
Worse, as Abby Martin notes in the terrifying and important new film Earth's Greatest Enemy, military action has catastrophic climate consequences, since the U.S. war machine is the world's biggest polluter and the carbon emissions of our vast, brutal empire are driving us toward ever-worsening climate catastrophe. Unfortunately, that's just fine with some in the administration and the military---terrifying recent reporting suggests that some evangelical Christian officers are celebrating the war as hastening the apocalypse, claiming Trump was "anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth." These people would sacrifice the rest of us to the inferno to fulfill their delusional prophecies.
Of course, the war reveals that Trump and his coterie were complete frauds when they pledged to keep the U.S. out of senseless Middle East wars. Trump fooled a lot of people with this stuff, although hopefully their illusions will now be hard to maintain. (Former hardcore MAGA types like Alex Jones and Nick Fuentes are now admitting they were duped.) If there is one silver lining here, amid all of the horror, it is that because this war is deeply unpopular and Trump has no idea how to deal with its consequences, perhaps we will finally see the MAGA movement collapse politically. Trump's approval rating was already in the toilet, and while I sadly have no illusions that public opinion will be especially moved by the bombing of a school, when the fallout in cost, lives, and global chaos begins to come home, perhaps Americans will turn once and for good against their warmongering president.
But it is hard for me to think hopefully right now, as I see pictures of the remnants of former schoolchildren, schoolchildren whose lives were brutally extinguished with the help of my tax dollars. All I can feel is horror and rage at the sociopaths willing to do such things, who claim to want peace while ensuring that humanity will be consigned to a future of endless, senseless conflict.
PHOTO: Graves being dug for the elementary school girls killed in the bombing of the Minab school. Iran Foreign Ministry.
From blog via This RSS Feed.
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9
Voters Think Candidates Who Won’t Stand Up To AIPAC Won’t Fight On Other Issues, Either: New Poll
(www.dropsitenews.com)
U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed campaigns at Blazin Wade Cuts in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Saturday, Feb. 21, 2026. Photo by Evan Cobb for The Washington Post via Getty Images.
Michigan’s Democratic primary for U.S. Senate is a three-way dead heat, according to a new poll conducted for Drop Site News and Zeteo.
The poll from Data for Progress found that 22% of likely Democratic primary voters support Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, endorsed by Bernie Sanders and a vocal critic of Israel; 23% support Haley Stevens, a pro-Israel Democrat who is being backed by party leaders in Washington, D.C.; and 22% support Mallory McMorrow, the J Street-endorsed candidate positioning herself in between Stevens and El-Sayed.
Notably, a third of voters were undecided—and a majority (64%) said they are less likely to support a Senate candidate who receives donations from AIPAC and other pro-Israel groups, while 10% said they are more likely.
Data for Progress polled 515 likely Democratic primary voters in Michigan, from April 2-8. The poll tested what would happen in a two-way race, and found McMorrow would benefit more from El-Sayed dropping out than vice versa: His voters are more likely to consider McMorrow their second choice, whereas McMorrow’s are more likely to call Stevens their second choice, suggesting that McMorrow and El-Sayed are not simply splitting the more progressive vote.
However, in all of the scenarios that were polled, a plurality of likely Democratic primary voters remained unsure as to whom they would support—suggesting that the race remains fully up for grabs with three-and-a-half months left before the August 4 primary election.
And, the poll indicates, Michigan primary voters appear to be far more concerned about the influence of AIPAC, America’s top pro-Israel lobby, than that of Hasan Piker, the leftist Twitch streamer who campaigned with El-Sayed at two Michigan universities last week.
This is second poll Drop Site and Zeteo have run together. If you want to see more like this, upgrade your subscription and put “more polls” in the subscriber note.
The poll found 62% of Michigan Democratic primary voters agreed that they are less likely to trust a candidate would stand up for Michiganders in general if they won’t stand up to AIPAC; 13% disagreed with this sentiment.
Stevens has long been an AIPAC favorite. AIPAC’s political action committee raised over $340,000 worth of direct campaign donations for Stevens in early 2025, just before she announced her bid for Senate, though it has not raised money directly for her Senate campaign. Last month, Stevens taped a promotional video for AIPAC, which in 2022 helped her oust former Michigan Democratic Rep. Andy Levin, a progressive who was supportive of Israel but argued for Palestinian rights.
El-Sayed and McMorrow have both been critical of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, though McMorrow has been reluctant to describe it this way—and has instead complained that the word “genocide” has become some kind of “political purity test.”
As Drop Site News previously reported, McMorrow privately drafted a “position paper” for AIPAC, according to one of her supporters, before publicly demanding a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and saying that “this violence needs to stop.”
McMorrow has been endorsed by the liberal pro-Israel lobby J Street.
Meanwhile, voters did not come to the poll concerned about El-Sayed’s decision to hold rallies with Piker—despite the aggressive anti-Piker cancellation campaign led by the centrist think tank Third Way, which was egged on by both McMorrow and Stevens.
Per the poll, 13% of likely Democratic primary voters in Michigan view Piker favorably, while 7% view him negatively. The vast majority of them say they don’t know enough about Piker to have an opinion about him.
The poll then gave voters more context on the controversy to assess whether it would influence their vote. They were told that El-Sayed’s opponents had criticized him for planning rallies with Piker, accusing Hasan Piker of antisemitism and highlighting past controversial remarks, and that El-Sayed has argued that criticism of Israel should not be confused with antisemitism.
Asked then whether they approve or disapprove of El-Sayed inviting Piker to join his rallies on college campuses, 40% said they approve, 30% said they disapprove, and 30% said they weren’t sure.
The full poll results are available here.
From Drop Site News via This RSS Feed.
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As we’ve reported, Donald Trump and vice president JD Vance have been laying into Pope Leo. This is because the Pope made the case that the US and Israel’s war on Iran goes against the teachings of Christ – an argument which is demonstrably obvious to everyone.
Now, a heckler has targeted Vance during the middle of his latest rant against the Pope:
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JD Vance gets schooled
The above video begins with a heckler shouting:
You’re killing children.
You’re bombing children.
Because he’s a disgusting human being with no morality, Vance smirked at this. He later argues that the warmongering US is more righteous than the Pope on the topic of States’ latest illegal war:
There are certainly things that the Pope has said in the last few months that I disagree with. Let me just take one very concrete example related to this conflict in Iran.
So the Pope said something where he said, and I’m going to try to remember the exact quote, but he said that God is never on the side of those who wield the sword. God is never on the side of those who wield the sword.
I’m pretty sure that he said that exact statement.
For clarity, this is precisely what Pope Leo said:
God does not bless any conflict. Anyone who is a disciple of Christ, the Prince of Peace, is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs. Military action will not create space for freedom or times of #Peace, which comes only from the patient promotion of coexistence and dialogue among peoples.
He didn’t say it’s a sin for people to defend themselves; he said conflict is not blessed.
Back to Vance, he continued:
Now, on the one hand, again, I like that the Pope is an advocate for peace. I think that’s certainly one of his roles.
On the other hand… How can you say that God is never on the side of those who wield the sword?
Was God on the side of the Americans who liberated France from the Nazis? Was God on the side of the Americans who liberated Holocaust camps and liberated those innocent people from those who had survived the Holocaust?
I certainly think the answer is yes
In World War 2, it was the expansionist Nazis who started the war. Now, in 2026, the expansionist fascists running the US and Israel are dragging the world into another godforsaken conflict.
The reason Vance is going all the way back to the 1940s is because America itself has acted as the aggressor in the decades since.
In response to what Vance said, a heckler shouted:
Jesus Christ does not support genocide.
Vance said he agrees with this.
The problem is the US supported Israel’s genocide in Gaza, so clearly Vance and his government are not on the path of Christ.
Blessed be
Lest we forget, Pope Leo said that “God does not bless any conflict”. This is not the same thing as saying God condemns those who defend themselves.
Clearly there is an obvious difference between an action being justified and an action being blessed.
Raising the sword to attack Iran clearly wasn’t needed, and it certainly isn’t holy.
Featured image via Edgar Beltran (Wikimedia)
By Willem Moore
From Canary via This RSS Feed.
5
Keir Starmer has written some drivel about the future of UK security post-Iran. Published in the No. 1 paper of imperialist liberals, the Guardian, Starmer’s essay named some of the crises of recent years. Yet despite his article’s warlike undertones, various hawkish pro-war figures have slammed him since.
Why?
Well at the heart of this is a debate on war spending which has a familiar dynamic: it’s a row between members of the British establishment about how cutting welfare is justified to wage war. Starmer, who embodies middle class managerial politics, complained about middle class managerial politics in his 9 April article [emphases added]:
Britain has been buffeted by crises for nearly two decades now. And from the 2008 financial crash, through austerity, to Brexit, Covid, the Ukraine war and Liz Truss, the response from Westminster has always been the same. Manage the crisis, find a sticking plaster and then desperately try to reassert the status quo.
He added:
The war in Iran must now become a line in the sand, because how we emerge from this crisis will define all of us for a generation. And instead of hoping to return to the world of 2008, we will forge a new path for Britain – one that strengthens our energy, our defence and our economic security in a new age.
He was clearly teeing up his big plan to militarise the UK, which the legacy media duly picking up on 10 April 2026.
Starmer missing the basics
Several things stand out here. Firstly, Labour’s disastrous War on Terror interventions are missing from Starmer’s assessment. Secondly, it sounds like Starmer is teeing up a rejection of the status quo he represents. He then proceeds to accept the status quo more or less entirely under that favorite professional managerial class/NGO PowerPoint buzzword: resilience.
He said:
That’s why resilience has been at the heart of my government’s approach – our approach to the conflict in Iran, yes, but also our approach to preserving the national interest at home.
Needless to say ‘resilience’ is not an answer to the issues he has outlined. Focusing on building resilience is to accept that the problems of today are unchangeable. They are certainly not. And, in any event, the essay has done nothing to stave off criticism from his own party, former generals, and others.
‘Malnourished’ navy
Former British army general Richard Barrons was quick to put the boot in, saying that US defence secretary Pete Hegseth has been right to mock the Royal Navy recently:
Hegseth had said on 31 March:
Last time I checked, there was supposed to be a big, bad Royal Navy that could be prepared to do things like [clear the strait of Hormuz] as well.
Clearly Hegseth was smarting from the total failure of the US to beat Iran in it’s ridiculous war of choice. Nevertheless, Barrons said:
Like many others I hung my head in sorrow. But I couldn’t argue with him because although the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force and the army are, in their bones, outstanding institutions, they are simply too small and too undernourished to deal with the world that we we now live in. And the review says this.
Interestingly, Barrons recently told an audience at the establishment thinktank Chatham House that increased US belligerence would now be the pattern in world affairs:
We’ve been wondering for a while what sort of world we were now living in because we understood we were not in the comfortable world of the post-cold war era and what we used to call the rules-based international order.
This US government, he added, would “do what it thinks it can” on the basis that it has “the power to do it”.
And there really aren’t too many other complications around that.
Former NATO chief
An ex-Labour defence minister and NATO boss is also taking a swipe at Starmer’s war spending habits – or lack of them. Lord George Robertson is said that Starmer is:
not willing to make the necessary investment.
And where, according to Robertson, should the money come from? You guessed it:
We cannot defend Britain with an ever-expanding welfare budget.
The BBC said Robertson pronounced:
There is a corrosive complacency today in Britain’s political leadership. Lip service is paid to the risks, the threats, the bright red signals of danger – but even a promised national conversation about defence can’t be started.
He also accused “non-military experts in the Treasury” of “vandalism”. Which sounds like a pitch for more military control of the economy.
The BBC reported:
Lord Robertson’s apparent suggestion that the government could find money by reducing the welfare bill may be one that is shared by the Chancellor Rachel Reeves.
Barron, Robertson and Dr Fiona Hill – a British-born former advisor to US presidents – whose comments are doing the rounds today were the joint authors of Starmer’s 2025 Strategic Defence Review (SDR).
There’s no doubt that the world is a dangerous place today. That is primarily because of the increasing belligerence of a fading US empire and its allies. But those problems are not impossible to solve. It will just take a bit more imagination than corporate waffle about ‘resilience’. And, this argument is one within the British establishment. It is about how – and to what degree – workers can be made to pay for war and military projects. And it should be seen as such.
Featured image via the Canary
By Joe Glenton
From Canary via This RSS Feed.
6
A police official in Arizona has been placed on administrative leave after showing up armed to a student-led protest and provoking an altercation that led to the arrest of a teenage girl. The officer told fellow police who arrived on the scene that he attended the students’ immigration rights protest with the intent of acting as an agent provocateur, according to a news report
Dusten Mullen, a sergeant with the Phoenix Police Department, has been suspended with pay pending an internal review of his conduct at a protest at Hamilton High School in Chandler, Arizona, on January 30, according to Phoenix Police Chief Matthew Giordano.
“As law enforcement professionals, we are held to higher standards of conduct — both in and out of uniform,” Giordano said. “When we fall short, we must be accountable, and we will not tolerate actions which undermine the trust the community has placed in the Department.”
Fox 10 Phoenix, the outlet to first identify Mullen, reported that Mullen told Chandler Police Department officers on the scene that he was there in the hopes of getting a rise out of the kids that would then allow the local cops to cuff them.
“My plan is legitimately to just let them all assault me and you guys arrest them all and I’ll keep it on film,” Mullen said, according to a police report obtained by the local TV news site. “I also have other people filming from a distance.”
The protest at Hamilton High School was one of dozens of student-led walkouts that took place across the greater Phoenix area that day, coming just over a week after the killing of Alex Pretti by Customs and Border Protection officers in Minneapolis. At Hamilton High, several hundred students walked out and rallied along a thoroughfare, chanting and holding signs decrying U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Mullen, who in 2025 drew a salary of $336,518, is suspended with pay and was required to surrender his badge and gun pending the outcome of the investigation, according to a spokesperson for the department.
Steve Serbalik, an attorney representing Mullen, said his client was within his rights as a member of the public to voice his disagreement with the students.
“Placing Sgt. Mullen on administrative leave and issuing a media advisory that suggests misconduct based solely on his lawful, off-duty expressive activity appears to chill the exercise of constitutionally protected speech and risks violating both federal and state constitutional guarantees,” Serbalik wrote in a letter sent Monday to Giordano and shared with The Intercept. “I respectfully urge you to immediately reconsider and lift the administrative leave, withdraw or correct the media advisory, and ensure that any ongoing review fully respects Sgt. Mullen’s constitutional rights.”
Gun at Teenagers’ Protest
Mullen’s appearance at the protest sent a wave of fear through some attendees. Megan Craghead, whose 18-year-old son attends Hamilton High School, showed up that day because her 13-year-old daughter wanted to take part in the protest. Craghead told The Intercept it was a peaceful, upbeat scene, and most passersby honked in support of the rally.
Mullen concealed his face with a neck gaiter and wore a handgun, along with several extra magazines on his hip.
That changed suddenly when a pair of girls came running toward her yelling about a man with a gun.
“He was just walking up and down the sidewalk, talking kind of smugly and yelling at the kids,” Craghead recalled. “It felt like something that could easily escalate into something that’s going to be traumatic for all of these teenagers.”
As soon as she heard about an armed man on the scene, Craghead sent her daughter away with Craghead’s sister.
“We had no idea why he was there, he’s wearing a mask, and even if he did not plan to use his gun, we still don’t know what’s going to happen, right?” Craghead said. “We had all just witnessed the shooting of Alex Pretti, where he was at a protest with a gun and he ended up getting shot and killed. And so even if this armed person did not touch his gun, we still don’t know what’s going to happen.”
In a TikTok video from the scene, Mullen was seen in a T-shirt emblazoned with an American flag and the words “Trump 2024” and “We took the country back.” He concealed his face with a neck gaiter and wore a handgun, along with several extra magazines on his hip.
Surrounded by young people jeering at him, he told a Chandler Police Department that he had been assaulted as he appeared to record the scene on a cellphone.
“Nobody assaulted you,” one person told Mullen.
“Grown-ass man, out here with a gun crying about a little kid,” another person said.
In the wake of the incident, the Chandler Police Department told reporters that a girl was arrested for throwing a water bottle at Mullen, but video of the incident published by Fox 10 appears to show just water — no bottle — hitting him. The charges against the girl were later dropped by the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office.
A spokesperson for the Chandler Police Department did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Department With a History
Chandler, a city of about 275,000 people, lies in an area known as the East Valley, and its deep-purple electorate is not particularly known for progressive activism. Amid the deadly immigration crackdown in Minneapolis and heightened border tensions in Arizona, however, many students could see a direct impact on their own lives or those of their friends, according to Craghead.
[
Related
ICE Held an NYC Child Incommunicado at Secret Hotels, Then Deported Him](https://theintercept.com/2025/08/18/ice-children-hotel-detention-nyc-deported/)
“They’re seeing a lot of their friends that are immigrants or have immigrant families feeling really scared right now,” she said. “There’s a lot of things happening in politics that are not directly affecting the lives of teenagers, but this is one of those things that they can see has a direct impact on their own lives.”
Bill Moore, a defense attorney in Phoenix, said he was pleased to see Mullen placed on administrative leave, citing the department’s history of frequently failing to hold its personnel accountable — part of a pattern of misconduct and impunity severe enough to trigger a civil-rights probe by the Justice Department in 2024.
“The ‘blue line’ thing is still very much a thing here,” Moore said, referring to an unwritten code where police look out for one another instead of pursuing complaints about misconduct. “That they took this action tells me that their internal investigation must be fairly damning.”
The revelation that the armed man who showed up to the protest in January was actually a cop sent ripples of anger through the community, according to Brandy Reese, a co-leader of the local Indivisible chapter for Chandler and the neighboring city of Gilbert.
“I find it especially upsetting that he went there armed,” said Reese, who was observing the protest that day from the sidelines. “Why did he feel he needed to do that? I think the whole situation is unfortunate and upsetting.”
Craghead, the mother of the protest attendees, said her opinion of what should happen to Mullen has gone back and forth in the days since she learned that a police sergeant was the masked, armed man who she had seen trying to pick a fight with the kids at the rally. After an initial reaction of wanting his immediate termination, she wondered if he wasn’t within his First and Second Amendment rights to show up, off-duty and armed.
“He went there with the purpose of agitating children to get them to break the law so that they could be arrested, or worse.”
The more she’s thought about it, she said, the more she’s felt anger at his conduct.
“We have a duty to hold our public safety officers to a higher standard. If this was a regular person that had come to counter-protest and they happened to bring their gun, that would be one thing,” she said. “The issue is that he went there with the purpose of agitating children to get them to break the law so that they could be arrested, or worse. So now I’m back to thinking he should be fired.”
The post Armed Off-Duty Cop Tried to Incite Violence at a High School Anti-ICE Protest appeared first on The Intercept.
From The Intercept via This RSS Feed.
7
Keir Starmer has surpassed Tony Blair. After butcher of Baghdad Blair’s landslide victory in 1997, he went on to lose voters at each subsequent election. This saw him securing the following vote shares:
- **1997:**43.3%.
- **2001:**40.7%.
- **2005:**35.2%.
This slide demonstrated that Blair’s re-heated Thatcherite politics didn’t resonate with the British public. Bad as this was, however, it was nowhere near as dramatic as what Starmer has achieved:
Labour have lost half of their voters since the 2024 general election, and the Tories and Lib Dems have lost over a third each.
All the major parties have seen a fall in voter retention compared with 4 months ago. pic.twitter.com/xOUjaBvJs7
— cez (@cezthesocialist) April 14, 2026
Starmer breaking records
The two-party system of British politics has broken down. As this recent YouGov poll shows, we now have five parties within 10 percentage points of one another:
POLL | Reform lead by 5pts
Ref: 24% (=)
Con: 19% (=)
Grn: 18% (+2)
Lab: 17% (+1)
Lib: 13% (=)
Res: 4% (=)
YP: 0% (-1)
— Seats —
SNP: 47
Poll: @YouGov, 12-13 Apr (+/- vs 7 Apr) pic.twitter.com/m0PQxoBh26
— Stats for Lefties
(@LeftieStats) April 14, 2026
Starmer clearly bears responsibility for this, because he’s the man at the top. At the same time, Starmer didn’t introduce dishwater neoliberalism to the Labour Party; he simply ran with it.
Sooner or later, the public were going to wake up and realise there was no difference between the underlying politics of Labour and the Tories. Now that’s happened, Labour are losing voters, and they’re particularly losing them to the left:
According to the most recent YouGov poll, 40% of Labour voters are switching to further left parties and just 10% are switching to Reform. pic.twitter.com/NL8Wsvq2s0
— Stats for Lefties
Labour have bent over backwards to appeal to Reform voters, and this is the end result of that.
Predictable
The Canary and others warned Labour that copying the far-right wouldn’t help, but they wouldn’t listen.
For some voters, they saw Labour agreeing with Reform, and they decided this meant Nigel Farage was right along.
For many more, they saw Labour gleefully talking about deporting human beings, and they thought ‘fuck this‘.
Lab is now losing far more votes to Greens (7.4pts) than to Reform (3.6pts).
Overall, a majority of 2024 Lab voters are now backing other parties, and a whopping 70% of those are fleeing leftward.
Lab’s collapse is not the result of a right-wing surge, but of left-wing dissent. pic.twitter.com/OpdGfeLzw2
— Stats for Lefties
Starmer clearly can’t come back from this.
The question is whether the Labour Party can launch a comeback once he’s gone.
Featured image Cez the Socialist
By Willem Moore
From Canary via This RSS Feed.
8
19
'Enough Is Enough': Sanders Moves to Force Votes Against Trump Arms Sales to Israel
(www.commondreams.org)
US Sen. Bernie Sanders plans to force votes Wednesday on a pair of resolutions that, if enacted, would block the sale of roughly half a billion dollars of weaponry to the Israeli government, citing its bombardment and invasion of Lebanon, continued assault on the Gaza Strip, and accelerating annexation of the West Bank.
In a statement previewing the Senate votes, Sanders (I-Vt.) said that "US taxpayers have spent tens of billions of dollars in support of the racist, extremist Netanyahu government. Enough is enough."
"The United States must use the leverage we have—tens of billions in arms and military aid—to demand that Israel ends these atrocities," the senator continued.
Sanders' two resolutions would bar the sale of over $150 million worth of 1,000-pound gravity bombs and related support services, as well as the sale of nearly $300 million of Caterpillar bulldozers, which Israel uses to demolish homes in the illegally occupied Palestinian territories, Lebanon, and Syria.
"The arms sales in question violate the criteria laid out in the Foreign Assistance Act and the Arms Export Control Act," Sanders' office said Tuesday. "Secretary [of State] Marco Rubio signed an emergency determination just six days into the war with Iran in an attempt to bypass the statutory congressional notification period and immediately transfer these weapons."
The resolutions face long odds in the Republican-controlled US Senate. But last year, a majority of the Senate Democratic caucus backed Sanders-led resolutions aimed at blocking earlier Trump administration sales of 1,000-pound bombs, assault rifles, and other military equipment to Israel.
"Polls show that over 70% of Democratic voters want to halt arms sales to Israel," noted Dylan Williams, vice president for government affairs at the Center for International Policy. "Lawmakers should not be in positions of party leadership—or hope to be its presidential nominee—if they vote against their base to give Israel the bombs and bulldozers it uses to commit war crimes."
Elizabeth Rghebi, Middle East-North Africa advocacy director at Amnesty International USA, urged Americans to call their senators at 202-224-3121 and demand that they support the new Sanders resolutions.
"Amnesty International has documented a clear and ongoing pattern by Israeli forces committing serious violations of international law, including war crimes, genocide, and apartheid," Rghebi wrote Tuesday. "This includes evidence that Israeli forces have repeatedly carried out war crimes in Lebanon and Iran and the crime of genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip. Amnesty has also been able to identify the use of US-origin weapons, including a 1,000-pound bomb, in the occupied Gaza Strip."
"All senators must take urgent action to ensure that the U.S. immediately suspends the supply, sale, or transfer to Israel of all weapons, munitions, and other military and security equipment, including the provision of training and other military and security assistance," Rghebi added. "Supporting measures such as the Joint Resolutions of Disapproval is essential to stopping genocide and ensuring that the U.S. is not providing arms and equipment to Israel that can be used to carry out war crimes and genocide."
Sanders' resolutions have also received support from the pro-Israel liberal advocacy group J Street, which said in a policy memo earlier this week that "the United States should phase out direct financial support for arms sales to Israel and treat Israel as it does other wealthy US allies" rather than giving the country "unquestioning, blank-check support."
In a social media post endorsing Sanders' resolutions, J Street wrote that "at a moment of fragile ceasefires and continued violence across the region, approving these transfers would be seen as an American endorsement of the US and Israeli war with Iran and Israeli actions in Lebanon, Gaza, and the West Bank."
"The weapons transfers being voted on include 1,000-pound bombs and D-9 bulldozers, which have been used by the Israeli government in ways that raise serious legal and moral concerns," the group wrote. "Congress has a clear responsibility to ensure that US-supplied weapons are not contributing to civilian suffering or undermining the chances for diplomacy, de-escalation, and peace."
From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.
10
11
Fascist Meloni more principled than Starmer: Italy suspends military cooperation with Israel
(www.thecanary.co)
Fascist Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni has announced Italy’s ‘defence’ agreement with Israel will be suspended.
Meloni attributed the decision to Israel’s continued aggression against its regional neighbours, particularly Iran.
She said:
In view of the current situation, the government has decided to suspend the automatic renewal of the defence agreement with Israel.
Italy says its ‘Israeli counterparts’ have been informed
The pact is outlined in a military cooperation framework signed in April 2016 and usually renews automatically every five years. Italy’s defence minister Guido Crosetti said that his ministry had informed Israeli counterparts.
Keir Starmer, meanwhile, continues to provide Israel and its US enablers with access to UK military bases and airspace. Meanwhile, the UK navy and RAF support Israel’s war on Lebanese civilians and continue to provide it with defensive cover against Iran’s retaliation for US-Israeli aggression.
The UK ministry of defence is even boasting about fast-tracking new anti-drone “interceptor missiles” to help ‘Gulf partners’ — weasel words that will certainly include Israel.
He condemns Iran’s justified closure of the Hormuz Strait and plans to try to break it but is silent on the US’s and Israel’s crimes.
Italy’s fascist PM is way ahead of the supposedly ‘centrist’, but in reality, ethno-supremacist Starmer on human rights and Israel, again.
Featured image via Reuters/ Vincenzo Livieri
By Skwawkbox
From Canary via This RSS Feed.
11
12
13
1
Stop the Global War Bank: Launch of an Open Letter Condemning Canada’s Plan to Lead and Host the DSRB
(worldbeyondwar.org)
By World BEYOND War, April 14, 2026.
Today World BEYOND War was proud to bring together civil society organizations across sectors and across the country in denouncing the DSRB war bank and Canada’s plans to host and lead it. This new financial institution, the first of its kind, is designed to fund and accelerate a global arms race and funnel public money directly to arms manufacturers.
The letter is available for download here and included below.
Individuals and organizations are invited to learn more, sign on to the letter, and take action at: linktr.ee/stopthedsrb
Prime Minister Carney is currently vying for Canada to play a leadership role in a brand new international war bank, the DSRB, with Toronto poised to host the global headquarters. The proposed Defense, Security and Resilience Bank (DSRB) would provide a steady flow of public and private funds to weapons manufacturers to facilitate a rapid expansion of military production.
We, the undersigned, strongly oppose this new financial institution, the first of its kind, designed to fund and accelerate a global arms race and funnel public money directly to arms manufacturers. We say NO to Canada joining the DSRB and NO to Toronto hosting the global headquarters of this war bank.
The DSRB would redirect public money away from urgent social and environmental needs to the bloated revenues of weapons companies and their shareholders. By funneling public money to war instead of funding public services and our social safety net, this bank would prioritize short-term profits of corporations over the needs of our communities. This isn’t the agenda that Carney ran on or that Canadians voted for.
Financing war won’t bring us peace. The DSRB’s mandate – to fund the ever-increasing manufacture and procurement of weapons – is fundamentally at odds with hopes for a peaceful world. It’s undeniable that the world is becoming a less stable place and that major powers – including the US under President Trump – are showing new levels of disregard for diplomacy and international law. The solution to these failures of peace-building, however, does not lie in massively increasing our investment in weapons of war.
The DSRB would be able to sidestep regulations and democratic oversight. It would also be a way to bypass public pressure and divestment campaigns. DSRB leadership even goes so far as to pitch the bank as a solution to the “challenge” of Canadians prioritizing spending on healthcare, education and public infrastructure over defence. While the financial sector might see public interests as a challenge, elected representatives must stand up for the interests of their constituents. The last thing Canada needs is a new institution that not only facilitates a historic increase in weapons investment but also gives even more opportunities for arms dealers and the financial sector to profit from war and steer government policy.
This bank dedicated to weapons and war would all but guarantee a war-filled future and escalating climate crisis. We reject Canada’s commitment to profiteering from perpetual war in the guise of economic development. We refuse to let arms dealers prosper in our cities while people around the world suffer.
We reject the DSRB war bank. Not in Toronto, not in Canada, not on this planet. Signed,
350.org
8th Fire Rising
Arab Canadian Lawyers Association
Canadian Association of Professional Employees
Canadian BDS Coalition and International BDS Allies
Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
Canadian Federation of Students Ontario
Canadian Friends of Sabeel
Canadian Voice of Women for Peace
Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East
Common Frontiers
Community Peacemaker Teams
Council of Canadians
Greenpeace Canada
Independent Jewish Voices
International League of People’s Struggle in Canada
Iranian Canadian Congress
Jews Say No to Genocide
Just Peace Advocates
Justice For All Canada
Labour Against the Arms Trade
Labour for Palestine – Canada
Law Union of Ontario
Mennonite Action Canada
Migrant Workers Alliance for Change
MiningWatch Canada
Palestinian Canadian Community Association
Palestinian Youth Movement
Resource Movement
Rights Action
Science for Peace
United Jewish People’s Order Canada
World BEYOND War
Le Premier ministre Carney s’efforce actuellement de faire en sorte que le Canada joue un rôle de premier plan au sein d’une toute nouvelle banque internationale dédiée à la guerre, la BDSR, dont le siège mondial pourrait être établi à Toronto. La « Banque de la défense, de la sécurité et de la résilience » (BDSR), telle que proposée, fournirait un flux constant de fonds publics et privés aux fabricants d’armes afin de faciliter une expansion rapide de la production militaire.
Nous, signataires, nous opposons fermement à cette nouvelle institution financière, la première du genre, conçue pour financer et accélérer une course mondiale à l’armement et acheminer directement l’argent public vers les fabricants d’armes. Nous disons NON à l’adhésion du Canada à la BDSR et NON à l’implantation du siège mondial de cette banque de guerre à Toronto.
La BDSR détournerait les fonds publics destinés à répondre à des besoins sociaux et environnementaux urgents pour les affecter aux revenus déjà colossaux des fabricants d’armes et de leurs actionnaires. En canalisant l’argent public vers la guerre au lieu de financer les services publics et notre système de protection sociale, cette banque ferait passer les profits à court terme des entreprises avant les besoins de nos communautés. Ce n’est pas le programme sur lequel Carney a fait campagne ni celui pour lequel les Canadiens ont voté.
Financer la guerre ne nous apportera pas la paix. La mission de la BDSR – qui consiste à financer la fabrication et l’acquisition d’armes, en constante augmentation – est fondamentalement en contradiction avec l’espoir d’un monde pacifique. Il est indéniable que le monde devient un endroit moins stable et que les grandes puissances – y compris les États-Unis sous la présidence de Trump – font preuve d’un mépris sans précédent pour la diplomatie et le droit international. La solution à ces échecs en matière de consolidation de la paix ne réside toutefois pas dans une augmentation massive de nos investissements dans les armes de guerre.
La BDSR serait en mesure de contourner les réglementations et le contrôle démocratique. Ce serait également un moyen d’échapper à la pression publique et les campagnes de désinvestissement. Les dirigeants de la BDSR vont même jusqu’à présenter la banque comme une solution au « défi » auquel sont confrontés les Canadiens, qui accordent la priorité aux dépenses de santé, d’éducation et d’infrastructures publiques plutôt que la défense. Si le secteur financier peut considérer les intérêts publics comme un défi, les élus doivent défendre les intérêts de leurs électeurs. La dernière chose dont le Canada a besoin, c’est d’une nouvelle institution qui non seulement facilite une augmentation historique des investissements dans les armes, mais offre également encore plus d’opportunités aux marchands d’armes et au secteur financier de tirer profit de la guerre et d’orienter la politique gouvernementale.
Cette banque dédiée aux armes et à la guerre ne ferait que sceller un avenir marqué par les conflits et une crise climatique qui ne cesse de s’aggraver. Nous rejetons la volonté du Canada de tirer profit d’une guerre sans fin sous le prétexte du développement économique. Nous refusons de laisser les marchands d’armes prospérer dans nos villes alors que des populations souffrent partout dans le monde.
Nous rejetons la banque de guerre de la BDSR. Pas à Toronto, pas au Canada, pas sur cette planète.
350.org
8th Fire Rising
Arab Canadian Lawyers Association
Canadian Association of Professional Employees
Canadian BDS Coalition and International BDS Allies
Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
Canadian Federation of Students Ontario
Canadian Friends of Sabeel
Canadian Voice of Women for Peace
Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East
Common Frontiers
Community Peacemaker Teams
Council of Canadians
Greenpeace Canada
Independent Jewish Voices
International League of People’s Struggle in Canada
Iranian Canadian Congress
Jews Say No to Genocide
Just Peace Advocates
Justice For All Canada
Labour Against the Arms Trade
Labour for Palestine – Canada
Law Union of Ontario
Mennonite Action Canada
Migrant Workers Alliance for Change
MiningWatch Canada
Palestinian Canadian Community Association
Palestinian Youth Movement
Resource Movement
Rights Action
Science for Peace
United Jewish People’s Order Canada
World BEYOND War
The post Stop the Global War Bank: Launch of an Open Letter Condemning Canada’s Plan to Lead and Host the DSRB appeared first on World BEYOND War.
From World BEYOND War via This RSS Feed.
14
15
Understanding the true essence of the current conflict in South West Asia requires grasping the geopolitical ambition of the Axis of Resistance, which aims for decolonisation and ‘the end of the colonial era’.
This process of decolonisation is only completed by uprooting the usurping entity as a settler colony and dismantling its ‘Siamese twins’ – the dynastic entities and sheikhdoms planted by colonialism in the Arabian Peninsula to safeguard its interests.
The geopolitical premise: decolonisation
Anyone who imagines that this historical objective of decolonisation can be achieved easily, quickly, or without a heavy price, is ignorant of historical and contemporary realities.
We are effectively discussing the undermining of a millennium-old empire, the roots of which trace back to 1095, when Pope Urban II called for the First Crusade.
This crusade established settler colonies on the eastern Mediterranean coast, forming the foundation for the second colonial phase at the end of the 15th century, which persists in various forms today.
The three-front strategy
The Axis of Resistance wages its battle on three integrated fronts:
- The Military Front: Focuses on seizing control of strategic straits – Hormuz first and Bab al-Mandab second – to exert total control over energy flows and vital derivatives (such as chemical fertilisers, helium, and sulphuric acid) from the Arabian Peninsula. This positions the Axis as the primary player in the global economy.
- The Economic Front: Utilises a mechanism of ‘precision calibration’ of supply flows to trigger structural socio-economic crises in target nations, specifically Western systems. This policy of ‘selective strangulation’ targets the economic stability and livelihoods of Western societies.
- The Psychological Front: Aims to inflict the necessary pain on the adversary to impose a new geopolitical reality. It seeks to force global societies and political leaderships to accept the demise of the old order.
Unlike previous wars (such as Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, or Ukraine), the majority of humanity will not merely watch from behind screens. Instead, they will feel the direct consequences in their daily lives – a necessary step towards the acceptance of this major geopolitical shift.
The time factor and the necessity of steadfastness
Time is the most fundamental element in this war, with its rhythm controlled by the intensity of field escalation and the pace of energy flow.
Strategically, this confrontation must continue until it achieves:
- A collapse of Western stock markets exceeding 70%.
- Inflation rates surpassing 15%.
- The imposition of forced energy and food rationing in Western countries.
These scenarios are unlikely to mature before the winter season of 2026–2027. Discussions of a ceasefire or ‘peace’ are merely public-relations manoeuvres to manage time and present the Axis as a seeker of stability to its people and allies.
Imperial erosion vs. Axis deepening
Doubting the Axis’s ability to withstand the ‘Empire’ is a form of intellectual folly.
If Gaza – with its limited area and suffocating siege – has stood firm for over two years, the Axis, with its expansive bases, can endure for decades. Conversely, the Empire’s ability to persist is questioned due to:
- Strategic Failure: The Western military system has proven incapable, trapped in a ’20th-century mindset’ while the Axis wages a ’21st-century war’.
- Industrial Base Erosion: Western armies lack the industrial capacity required for wars of attrition.
- Depleted Reserves: There is an acute exhaustion of air defence and, more importantly, long-range offensive missiles like TOMAHAWK and JASSM-ER.
- Structural Crises: Worsening economic and political problems within the Empire’s entities, from America and Europe to the usurping entity.
Strategic Balance of Power: Reflections on Phase One
The first phase of this confrontation has revealed a radical shift in global military doctrine.
Analysts acknowledge the superiority of Iran’s ‘Hybrid Warfare Strategy‘ over the structural flaws of the US strategy, which appeared prepared for a war of the past.
- The Winners’ Camp
- Iran: Achieved ‘comprehensive deterrence’ by neutralising US air and naval power. Its precision missiles shattered the myth of Western technical superiority. Economically, it leveraged high oil revenues and imposed ‘procedural sovereignty’ over the Strait of Hormuz. Politically, it became a global hub, with countries like France, Italy, Japan, and India seeking direct channels with Tehran.
- China: US failures against Iran confirmed the validity of Beijing’s strategy in East Asia, rendering US bases a strategic burden. Guaranteed energy security from Iran provides Chinese industry with a competitive edge over European and Asian rivals.
- Russia: The depletion of Western missile stocks in the south weakened support for Ukraine and curbed NATO’s recklessness against Moscow. Russia has converted global energy shortages into direct political influence over European capitals.
- The Impacted Camp
- The US and the West: Suffered the fall of military prestige alongside an economic earthquake of runaway inflation and unemployment.
- The Zionist Entity and Functional Sheikhdoms: The US-guaranteed security umbrella has collapsed, leaving the Zionist entity isolated and militarily deficient. For the dynastic sheikhdoms, they have lost their role as ‘rhythm keepers’ of the energy markets, becoming marginal players facing heavy economic losses.
Conclusion
The balance of steadfastness tilts towards those with the stamina and capacity for military and political innovation.
While the Empire suffers from strategic obsolescence and industrial decay, the Axis is seizing its sovereignty by controlling the artery of energy. The question is no longer ‘Will geopolitical change occur?’ but rather ‘When will economic collapses and social crises force the West to accept its defeat and recognise the new reality in South West Asia?’
From Canary via This RSS Feed.
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Apple Maps has drawn condemnation over its satellite software displaying vast blank areas across Lebanon and missing most Lebanese settlements.
Although apparently not a new feature, the discovery comes as Lebanon faces repeated Israeli bombings, ground invasions and an expanded genocidal assault on its civilian populations.
Apple: ‘rotten to its core’
A viral X post by American Christian “Truth Seeker”, Ethan Levins, claiming that “Apple has removed Lebanese village names in Southern Lebanon” sparked outrage.
Levins wrote:
As Israel invades, they are already setting the state to justify occupation. I’ve never seen something like this.
Apple has removed Lebanese village names in Southern Lebanon.
As Israel invades, they are already setting the state to justify occupation.
I’ve never seen something like this. pic.twitter.com/gKRcsmUjO3
— Ethan Levins
(@EthanLevins2) April 12, 2026
Levins’ remarks quickly spread and were reshared, gaining more than 15 million views between just two accounts. While two substantive aspects of this story appear untrue that doesn’t mean there’s no story.
Firstly, it’s not only the south of Lebanon that’s empty on Apple Maps: none of the country’s place names appear, regardless of zoom level.
Secondly, the names of towns, villages and streets haven’t been removed recently, according to Apple. They were actually never there to begin with.
Apple never featured most of Lebanon’s villages and towns on its Maps platform, making their suspected duplicity arguably more of a structural complicity.
Zionist crimes unfold in Lebanon
The Zionist imagination of West Asian territory, dating back to long before Israel existed, was of “a land without a people [Palestine], for a people without a land [diaspora Jews]”.
Now it appears that Zionist-aligned corporations like Apple are replicating this template as another Nakba-scale event sees more than a million Lebanese people displaced, and thousands murdered by Israel since 2023.
In one of the worst atrocities committed in decades, Israeli bombings of Beirut killed more than 350 civilians in under 10 violent minutes of bloodshed. As far as Apple is concerned, they weren’t there.
Lebanese officials dubbed the massacre “Black Wednesday” and multiple human rights organisations have condemned it among many Israeli war crimes.
Now, Israeli politicians are openly stating their plans to indefinitely occupy southern Lebanon, right up to the Litani River, in yet another flagrant violation of numerous international laws.
Zionist settlers are already sharing plans, based on purported “God-given” right, to settle southern Lebanon just as they’ve violently settled Occupied Palestine, the West Bank and Syria’s Golan Heights.
Rather than removing southern Lebanese villages from Maps specifically to aid Israel’s murderous 2026 assault on the country, the US mega-corporation arguably laid the groundwork long ago.
Instead, Apple did so by deciding never to host Lebanon’s civilian life on its platform in the first place.
The Israeli settlement of Shomera has less than 500 inhabitants, it appears on Apple maps. The Lebanese town of Ayta al-Shab, 5 kilometers away, has 5000 inhabitants, it does not appear on Apple maps. https://t.co/q291kqHXCE pic.twitter.com/1vAKCH2dZG
— B.M. (@ireallyhateyou) April 12, 2026
Apple’s bullshit ‘on background’
Journalist Carole Cadwalladr, who covers US tech oligarchy extensively at the Nerve, provided a stern rebuttal to Apple’s denial of the viral online story.
Cadwalladr reached out to Apple for comment on the story. Apple offered not a quote per se, but rather an ‘on background,’ non-quotable response to the circulating story.
‘On background,’ according to Apple, means that “information is provided on a non-attributable basis and should not be directly quoted or attributed to Apple”.
Cadwalladr described this ‘on background’ method as “tech PR bullshit”.
Is Apple deleting place names from its map of southern Lebanon?
I emailed Apple to fact check this viral claim & I’m publishing its bullshit response in full as a teachable moment.
This ‘on background’ crap is how tech companies avoid accountability.
1/ https://t.co/7VRCNSNdUj pic.twitter.com/jUuO0dovN3— Carole Cadwalladr (@carolecadwalla) April 13, 2026
‘On background,’ apparently, allows companies to launder corporate narratives through unscrupulous hacks, without journalists stating where their analysis or ideas originate.
Cadwalladr is scrupulous, however, and took the opportunity to expose Apple’s “bullshit” PR meandering with a direct screenshot of their otherwise unaccountable statement.
Fire engulfs the Kimberly-Clark distribution center in Ontario, California
A 29-year-old California man has been arrested for allegedly causing $500 million in damage when he set fire to a Kimberly-Clark warehouse to protest the cost of living and the Iran War.
“All you had to do was pay us enough to live,” the Justice Department’s indictment alleges he said in video posted to Instagram. “[T]hey had it coming … fucking eight hours, six days … stuck paying rent on a bullshit ass apartment that I can’t afford to fucking live … pedophiles out here fucking children, profiting off … fucking wars.”
In a press conference, Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli went out of his way to stress that the defendant had “compared himself to Luigi Mangione” in a comment to a witness.
No one was injured in the early morning fire, but Justice wants to make a point: Chamel Abdulkarim’s target was the system of capitalism itself.
Arson, and admittedly a serious case (if the government is correct); and politically motivated, given the remarks Abdulkarim made.
But Mangione? The FBI and the national security machine is going to jump on this, affirming for them that a “copycat” terrorist points to a bigger trend lurking in society.
That fact is at the very center of NSPM-7 — national security presidential memorandum 7 — signed by President Trump last September, that identifies “anti-capitalism” as a so-called indicator of domestic terrorism. The directive opens with a section that mentions “the 2024 assassination of a senior healthcare executive” — i.e. Luigi Mangione — as indicative of a growing threat.
Take a look at what the federal indictment focuses on, alleging Abdulkarim said:
- “[S]hould have paid us enough to fucking live.”
- “1% is a fucking joke.”
- “If you’re not going to pay us enough to fucking live or afford to live, at least pay us enough not to do this shit.”
- “Billionaires profiting off of war ...”
- [Y]ou know, we may not get paid enough to fucking live, but these bitches dirt cheap”
- “All you had to do was pay us enough to live. Pay us more of the value WE bring. Not corporate. Didn’t see the share holders picking up a shift.”
- “[T]hey had it coming … fucking eight hours, six days, [unintelligible] stuck paying rent on a bullshit ass apartment that I can’t afford to fucking live … pedophiles out here fucking children, profiting off [unintelligible] fucking wars.”
Federal indictment
898KB ∙ PDF file
US Attorney Essayli goes on to cast the arson attack as a sign of anti-capitalist sentiment, promising to “aggressively” pursue anyone who attacks capitalism — or “our way of life,” as he put it:
“Look, America is founded on free enterprise and capitalism. Anyone who attacks our values, our way of life, our system, which provides the best goods and services to the most people, we’re gonna come after aggressively.”
Get used to stuff like this. As I reported in January, a leaked draft copy of the Department of Homeland Security’s upcoming annual Homeland Threat Assessment introduced a new “extremism” threat category: “class-based or economic grievances.”
Screenshot of leaked Homeland Threat Assessment
By contrast, state authorities did not portray the crime as some sort of threat to capitalism. In fact, San Bernardino County District Attorney Jason Anderson seemed to not understand it at all.
“Arson, to me, is a real head scratcher; I do not understand that somebody who is suspected of arson does something where they get no value out of it,” Anderson said at the press conference.
They still don’t get it.
While reporting on this, when I tried to figure out what exactly the suspect’s job entailed while working for Kimberly-Clark — the company whose 1.2 million square foot facility he allegedly set on fire — I realized that he didn’t actually work for them, but for a third-party contractor, something called “NFI Industries.”
The dreary name reminds me of reporting on Amazon warehouses and hearing one worker after another bitterly refer to its much-hyped $15 minimum wage as not applying to them because they worked for similar subcontractors. This two-step is also how Amazon can claim it’s not them but rather the contractors responsible for the infamous practice of workers having to pee in bottles to meet their punishing quotas.
NFI has been accused of similar practices and was sued in 2015 by New Jersey port and warehouse truckers who said the company systematically misclassified them as “independent contractors” while exercising full employer‑style control. In 2022, a federal judge ruled in the driver’s favor, ordering NFI to pay them over $5 million in a class action settlement.
The obscene price of gasoline as a result of the Iran war (part of our hallowed “way of life,” which allows oil companies to price gouge even in emergencies) has once again thrust the cost of living into the spotlight. Millions of Americans resonate with Mangione and Abdulkarim.
Isn’t anyone in power curious why that is?
As a friend told me today when I brought up the Kimberly-Clark fire: Who that’s worked a shitty job hasn’t fantasized about burning it all down? (This is literally the plot of the cult classic movie Office Space!)
Democrats and Republican politicians alike mouth “affordability” but do nothing. Civil government is also starved, bled of resources by our national security colossus that devises more and more ways to spy on anyone opposed, or drowns out their voices by flooding the media with security-speak.
There are basically two ways the government can respond to things like the Kimberly-Clark fire: (1) treat them as national security threats to be monitored and preempted forever; or (2) address the underlying grievances causing them.
Sounds like a real “head-scratcher.”
Subscribe if you would’ve left Milton’s stapler alone
— Edited by William M. Arkin
From Ken Klippenstein via This RSS Feed.
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Paglagak ng gamit-militar ng US sa CDO at paggamit ng mga sibilyang pasilidad, napakamapanganib sa mga Pilipino
(philippinerevolution.nu)
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'They Profit, We Pay': Coalition Says End Mideast Wars, Tax Fossil Fuel Giants
(www.commondreams.org)
As the Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank Group were held in Washington, DC during a two-week ceasefire between the United States, Israel, and Iran, over 130 civil society groups this week urged global governments to "secure a permanent end to the wars in South West Asia and break the chains of fossil fuel dependence."
The joint statement was coordinated by Fight Inequality Alliance and 350.org, which has been advocating for a windfall profits tax on oil and gas giants since the US and Israel launched their illegal war on Iran in late February, and the Iranian government responded by restricting traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, which sent fossil fuel prices soaring worldwide.
"While people struggle to afford food, fuel, and basic necessities, fossil fuel companies are profiting massively from the chaos. The IMF itself has warned of the risk of a global recession," said 350.org managing director Savio Carvalho in a statement.
"Governments gathering in Washington have a clear responsibility: End this illegal war, stop the flow of destruction, and make the profiteers pay," Carvalho argued. "Taxing windfall oil and gas profits could provide immediate relief to families and invest in the clean, affordable energy systems we urgently need. They profit, we pay. It's time to fix it now: no bombs, no barrels."
A permanent end to the war—which has killed people across the region—is the first demand of the open letter. The second is a windfall profits tax on fossil fuel giants, with the revenue being used "to guarantee public services, and provide immediate support to families and precarious workers hit hardest by soaring food and fuel prices."
Martha Tukahirwa, Fight Inequality Alliance's Africa coordinator, explained that "while thousands are killed in the war in Iran, millions of people across Africa are being crushed by soaring fuel prices that have made even the simplest meal unaffordable. In Nigeria, diesel has surged over 60%. In Malawi, the poorest households are forced to choose between cooking and eating."
"In Zimbabwe, the cost of public transport has soared, making it impossible for working people to earn a living," Tukahirwa continued. "This is no accident—fossil fuel companies and commodity traders are reaping massive profits from this crisis while our governments stand idle. Tax these obscene profits and redirect the money to shield our people from hunger and hardship. The time for half measures is over, the time for bold action is now."
The letter's third demand is to "make food and energy secure for all." The war has impacted the availability of not only fuel but also fertilizer. The coalition called on governments to "invest public money in sustainable local farming and homegrown renewable energy, and stop harmful handouts to weapons, fossil fuels, and fossil fertilizer."
The groups—which also include ActionAid International, Corporate Europe Observatory, Council of Canadians, Friends of the Earth International, GreenFaith, Greenpeace Japan, Make Polluters Pay, Oxfam in the Pacific, War on Want, and more—called for urgently rolling out "renewable energy solutions for farms, homes, schools, and clinics to protect them from this and future energy crises."
Rev. Fletcher Harper, executive director of GreenFaith, said that "our faiths call us to make peace with people and the planet alike, and to hold the powerful to account. Letting fossil fuel giants pocket windfalls while families struggle is a moral failure. Taxing windfall profits to provide energy relief is not radical. It is basic justice."
The fourth and final demand is to cancel debt payments for Global South countries, and agree to fairer debt rules. The coalition stressed that "after paying interest to Wall Street lenders, bankers, and rich governments, many Global South countries have no money left over to protect their people from this crisis."
As part of the debt demand, the coalition also urged governments to "support informal workers, farm laborers, women, and older people, and guarantee universal access to healthcare, education, and public transport."
David Archer, head of programs and Influencing at ActionAid, pointed to civil society's push for a United Nations treaty for restructuring sovereign debt.
"Billions of people across the Global South are living in countries already facing a debt crisis. This war will make their lives even harder, leading to rising prices and rising interest rates," Archer said. "We need urgent action to cancel debt and to take the power over debt away from the IMF and rich countries—through developing a UN Framework Convention on Sovereign Debt."
From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.
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Democratic Maine Gov. Janet Mills is facing pressure to sign what would be the nation's first statewide moratorium on artificial intelligence data centers after state legislators passed the bill on Tuesday.
The Maine House of Representatives approved the bill 79-62, and then the state Senate sent it to Mills' desk with a 21-13 vote.
"The bill, LD 307, would create a limitation on data centers with electric loads of at least 20 megawatts by preventing the state, local governments, and quasi-governmental agencies from issuing permits or other approvals until November 2027," according to the Portland Press Herald. "In the meantime, a new Data Center Coordination Council—also created in the bill—would get time to study the centers' potential impact in Maine and issue policy recommendations."
In addition to calling for a national moratorium on constructing new AI data centers, the advocacy group Food & Water Watch (FWW) has fought for related proposals in not only Maine but also California, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
"Great credit to the people and state legislators of Maine for being at the forefront of a large and swelling national movement to put a halt to the reckless, unchecked explosive growth of hyperscale AI data centers," Mitch Jones, FWW's managing director of policy and litigation, said in a Tuesday statement.
"These massive facilities suck up unimaginable amounts of water and electricity, and wreak havoc on the everyday Americans in nearby communities that are forced to foot the bills for this irresponsible, profit-hungry industry," Jones stressed. "Gov. Mills should listen to the people and legislators of Maine, and sign this smart, nation-leading bill into law immediately."
However, as Maine Public detailed on Monday:
Mills has said the measure needs to have an exemption for a proposed $550 million project at the former Androscoggin paper mill in Jay to get her support.
"The people of Jay need those jobs, with appropriate guardrails on preserving water resources, electricity resources, local generation and all those things," Mills told reporters during an event in Bangor last week.
Mills' office did not respond to an email Monday asking if the governor intends to veto the bill.
After the votes on Tuesday, The Washington Post similarly noted that legislators had rejected an amendment for the exception sought by Mills, and a spokesperson for the governor "did not immediately respond to a query about whether she plans to approve the legislation."
Mills is locked in an intense US Senate primary race with combat veteran and oyster farmer Graham Platner, who has been leading her in various polls. While the governor has released attack advertisements targeting her opponent, Platner has largely focused on his platform—which prioritizes the needs of the working class—and Sen. Susan Collins, the Republican trying to keep her seat in November.
From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.
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