Bruce Gagnon is coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space.
He offers his own reflections on organizing and the state of America's declining empire....
Park is being sent by Washington to empower Yoon’s insurrectionists and risk turning Korea into “another Ukraine.” It looks like Yoon is back—this time wearing the title of U.S. Ambassador.
According to historian Bruce Cumings, “U.S. containment strategy rests on two main pillars: containing enemies and pressuring allies.
At its core, the essence of U.S. containment policy is that even after a conflict ends, U.S. troops and military bases do not return home. The installations established in Japan and Germany in 1945, and in South Korea in 1953, remain in place to this day.”
For now, let’s set aside U.S. policy toward North Korea, which consists primarily of sanctions and threats—classic “containment.” But what about the U.S. “ally,” South Korea?
Following Cumings’s view, the policy is simple: pressure, pressure, and more pressure. This perspective is arguably more accurate and realistic than the mythical notion many Koreans and Americans hold regarding the U.S.–Korea “alliance.” From Washington’s perspective, it seems, the more pressure, the better.
A case in point is Trump’s latest nominee for U.S. Ambassador to South Korea.
The “Mini-Me” Nominee
President Donald Trump has nominated Michelle Steel, a former California congresswoman and outspoken advocate for North Korean human rights, to serve as the next U.S. Ambassador to Seoul.
According to a recent op-ed in The Washington Post, President Trump tends to appoint “mini-Trumps” as ambassadors—figures who closely mirror his worldview and demonstrate fierce personal loyalty. In that sense, Michelle Park Steel fits the “mini-me” mold perfectly.
The problem lies in how Steel is being packaged. She is presented as the first Korean American woman to hold the post—a daughter of parents who fled North Korean communism and a proud American patriot fighting for freedom.
A Disconnect in Identity
Personally, as a Korean, I find nothing to identify with in her. While she is ethnically Korean American, she was raised in Japan and appears quite removed from the historical experiences, cultural roots, and political sentiments of the Korean people.
Though she looks Korean, her orientation is that of a “mini-Trump,” packaged in a style reminiscent of Yoon Suk-yeol—the executor of illegal martial law and recently impeached former president. Her political alignment mirrors South Korea’s far-right People Power Party and the “Taegeukgi-aligned” movements.
Consider the following associations:
Campaign Financing: Deep ties to strong pro-Israel lobbying networks.
Foreign Policy: Hardline anti-North Korea and anti-China positions.
Domestic Alignment: Vocal support for the disgraced former President Yoon.
It is striking that a Korean American could be so out of touch with the realities, interests, and sentiments of the Korean people. In essence, she is being sent by Washington to empower Yoon’s insurrectionists and risk turning Korea into “another Ukraine.” To many observers, it looks like Yoon is back—this time wearing the title of U.S. Ambassador.
The Silver Lining?
There is, perhaps, one possibility for an “excellent” outcome. Given her absolute loyalty to Trump, if the President were ever to make a historic decision to pursue a peace treaty with North Korea (a slim 0.1% chance, perhaps), she would likely follow his lead without hesitation.
However, regardless of who is appointed, the Republic of Korea—strengthened by the “Revolution of Light” and the leadership of Lee Jae Myung—will have no problem handling her and defending Korea’s sovereignty.
As Madam Steel prepares to come to Seoul to apply “pressure,” one can only hope she views this as an opportunity to actually learn about and educate herself on the true state of Korea.
Many people are saying that Donald Trump is insane. He may be. So too Benjamin Netanyahu. But if so, it is a form of insanity that includes the calm sanity of Adolf Eichmann and Harry Truman as they went about their business of mass extermination.
Crazy, to use the vernacular, is an elusive word nearly impossible to define, especially when an entire society can be crazy, as Erich Fromm, the German-American social-psychologist, has argued. Obedience is a much touted virtue, not only in overt police regimes but in so-called democracies – but obedience to whom? To mass murderers?
Obedience can be imbibed through osmosis. I remember Regis, my Jesuit high school’s motto – Deo et Patriae, for God and country – and how it linked obedience to God with obedience to the United States. I am certain that such a linkage would be denied by school authorities, but of course the Jesuits are known for their guile. So it didn’t surprise me when I was applying for a discharge from the Marines during the Vietnam War and was being questioned by a group of Marine Officers and one starting screaming at me: “What the hell kind of God are you talking about? I’m a Catholic, too, and my God supports the Marines and the war in Vietnam.” It was hard not to laugh sardonically, especially as he gesticulated with his large cigar for emphasis. I was then sent to a psychiatrist for evaluation who told me, to my great surprise, that he agreed with me and that the country’s leaders were insane.
Adolf Eichmann was declared “perfectly sane” by a psychiatrist who examined him when he went on trial for his routine daily tasks of carrying out Hitler’s orders to exterminate Jews. It was just another day at the office for Eichmann.
Harry Truman was not examined after he ordered the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; he was assumed to be sane in committing these satanic crimes of mass murder. Just another state executive doing his duty by carrying out the orders of his puppet masters.
Those were the good old days when everyone knew who was sane and who was nuts. Now we seem very confused. Perhaps Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Gaza, Ukraine, Iran, etc. have discombobulated many minds about who is sane or not, who is a mass murderer, who evil and who good, depending on which functionary is in the White House. Perhaps not.
If Trump is insane, how did he twice become the president of the United States? Do “sane” people – the well-adjusted ones? – not realize that Trump is the nominal head of an immense system whose history is one of mass murder from Wounded Knee to the recent U.S. slaughter of hundreds, mostly young girls, at the elementary school in Minab, Iran.
Trump gave the orders, but he did not launch those missiles. Nor did Netanyahu massacre Palestinians with his own hands. These fat boy killers prefer to keep their dainty hands clean of blood – to have their functionaries do the killing. I think of other functionaries and the names they gave to the atomic bombs they dropped on Japan: “Fat Man” and “Little Boy.” And we talk about sanity.
The “sane” obedient ones do the killing; the soldiers who carry out orders. As the Trappist monk Thomas Merton wrote in his profound book of essays, Raids on the Unspeakable, in 1966:
It is the sane ones, the well-adapted ones, who can without qualms and without nausea aim the missiles and press the buttons that will initiate the great festival of destruction that they, the sane ones, have prepared. What makes us so sure, after all, that the danger comes from a psychotic getting into position to fire the first shot in a nuclear war? Psychotics will be suspect. No one suspects the sane, and the sane ones will have perfectly good reasons, logical, well-adjusted reasons, for firing the shot. They will be obeying sane orders that have come sanely down the chain of command. And because of their sanity they will have no qualms at all. When the missiles take off, then, it will be no mistake. We can no longer assume that because a man is “sane” he is therefore in his “right mind.” The whole concept of sanity in a society where spiritual values have lost their meaning is itself meaningless.
Our problem, as the historian Howard Zinn once said, is civil obedience, surely not civil disobedience, that people everywhere are so submissive to authority that they will dutifully obey the orders of people like Trump and Netanyahu. Such obedience, all false rhetoric to the contrary, is drilled into us from birth through overt and covert methods of fear inculcation.
My dear departed mother’s father was a New York City cop. When she was young, he made her and her mother, trembling with fear, sit at the kitchen table, upon which he put his revolver, and warned them to obey him or else. Such tyrannical behavior was slightly mitigated decades later when he and my grandmother lived with us. When he heard that any of us eight kids were misbehaving, he, old, feeble, and long retired, would don his police uniform and stomp down the stairs waving his long baton to frighten us. I never got to ask my mother why she tolerated this. Such is the long life of fear.
There are reports that by April’s end the U.S. will have 60,000 troops in Iran’s vicinity. If Trump gives the orders to invade Iran, how many will refuse? How many will refuse to send missiles into more Iranian schools and homes? If Trump gives orders for a nuclear strike, can we expect military individuals with consciences to disobey? Will any heed Pope Leo’s voice about this war? That it is immoral.
It takes a system to wage war, and civil and military obedience to support it. That system – what former CIA analyst Ray McGovern has adroitly named MICIMATT: The Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank system – is so deeply woven into American society and therefore the hearts and minds of its citizens and military personnel that one can only hope against hope that Trump’s orders will be disobeyed by many. It is a desperate hope, I realize.
War Is A Racket, as Marine Major General Smedley Butler once put it. It is waged for the tyrannical oligarchs and always kills mostly civilians. Over ninety percent now, probably more. Innocent people, little girls at school, babies in their mothers arms – it is organized state terror. War is immoral. It is not complex. It is simple. Like the gospel message the Pope is conveying.
Like all tyrants, Trump is surrounded by sycophants, fearful little people like Karoline Leavitt, JD Vance, Marco Rubio, Peter Hegseth, Robert Kennedy, Jr., et al. The whole crew groveling at his feet are implicated in his war crimes. To hear Kennedy defend Trump’s war on Iran, his Ukraine and other policies, by claiming his father, Senator Robert Kennedy, and his uncle, President Kennedy, would agree with Trump is to pass through the looking glass. Kennedy, also a staunch defender of Israel and its savage policies, makes me shake my head in wonder. Was his political conversion, like St. Paul’s, from a light from heaven that sent him to the ground where Trump’s divine voice asked him to hop on the MAGA train? Or was the voice more insidious and subtle, a quiet call from someone else late in the night? However it happened, it is complete, and he is now fully marching to the drums of war along with Trump’s ass-kissing entourage. I, once Bobby Kennedy, Jr.’s ardent supporter when he announced his run for the presidency, feel like a fool.
Let me recommend an important film – Terence Malik’s A Hidden Life – about a different type of man, Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian peasant farmer from an isolated small mountainous village who refuses to take an oath to Hitler and fight in the German army. He knew that his refusal would not stop Hitler; but he also knew his conscience came from God and not the state. So he said no. NO! I will not follow orders, despite everyone telling him to do so. For his refusal, he suffered terribly and was beheaded. In my review of this film which I wrote six years ago as Joseph Biden was three weeks into his presidency, I said:
While Franz is eventually put on trial by the German government, it is we as viewers who must judge ourselves and ask how guilty or innocent are we for supporting or resisting the immoral killing machine of our own country now. Hitler and his Nazis were then, but we are faced with what Martin Luther King called ‘the fierce urgency of now.’
Many Americans surely ask with Franz, ‘What has happened to the country that we love?’ But how many look in the mirror and ask, “Am I a guilty bystander or an active supporter of the United States’ immoral and illegal wars all around the world that have been going on for so many years under presidents of both parties and have no end? Do I support the new cold war with its push for nuclear war with its first strike policy? Do I support, by my silence, a nuclear holocaust?’
The questions still linger. Let first Thomas Merton and then the twenty-two years-old Bob Dylan have the last words:
For since man has decided to occupy the place of God he has shown himself to be by far the blindest, and cruelest, and pettiest and most ridiculous of all the false gods. We can call ourselves innocent only if we refuse to forget this, and if we also do everything we can to make others realize it.
This brings me back to that interview with Vladimir Putin where he said that he had spoken to multiple US Presidents who come in with new ideas and campaign on things like ending the permanent war economy or reining in deep state power, and then the people who are wearing dark suits and carrying briefcases arrive to explain how everything is done and I will add that in most cases, threats are made against the President’s life, family, reputation, etc.
We can also look back to Cold War history when John F. Kennedy first fired the hysterical anti-communist war hawk Allen Dulles, who was very popular within the ranks of the national security state, and beyond that was looking at potentially abolishing the CIA after the Bay of Pigs fiasco and the Operation Northwoods proposal.
I think we all know that it was very likely that US intelligence services and special ops – in league with the military-industrial complex – were responsible for Kennedy’s assassination. And what most probably signed his death warrant was his decision not to go to war with the Soviet Union over the Cuban Missile Crisis and his intentions to withdraw from Vietnam and normalize with Fidel Castro.
The fact of the matter is that in the case of Donald Trump and the Middle East, he has Netanyahu and the Israelis making demands in one ear and Miriam Adelson, who donated $100 million to his campaign and previously donated to Marco Rubio, in another ear. The Adelson family, Jared Kushner, and Steve Witkoff in particular have been instrumental in shaping Trump’s Middle Eastern policy from the Abraham Accords to Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.
And beyond that, at a DC summit just before the start of the war in Iran, oil lobbyists from Exxon, Chevron, Shell and more declared that Iran was a far better investment opportunity than Venezuela and they are in fact benefitting because the higher oil and gas prices caused by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz are bringing in greater revenues while the American people reap the costs at the gas pump.
The permanent war state and the corporate oligarchy/foreign lobbyists that pull the strings are the ones who make the major political decisions no matter who the President is or which party is in power. And it’s these same interests that seek to profit and enrich themselves through an economy based on financializaton, resource plunder, debt slavery and arms contracts, while industrial manufacturing collapses at home.
And it’s this dynamic that has also caused Trump to fully commit himself to NATO’s war agenda against Russia and supporting Zelensky’s corruption in Ukraine, as well as American domination of Latin America and initiating trade conflicts with China over Rare Earth Minerals.
This child bid farewell to his father, who was killed by the occupation in 2019. Yesterday, the boy joined his father after he was killed by Zionist settlers in the West Bank.
Washington Post: Trump extends ceasefire indefinitely as Iran says it won’t join talks now. The announcement came as negotiations scheduled to take place between U.S. and Iranian delegations in the Pakistani capital were postponed amid uncertainty about the broad strokes of a deal. US operations against Iran expand to Indian Ocean with tanker capture.
Iran’s Armed Forces to the US: In light of the repeated threats by Trump & its invading terrorist commanders we warn them. Our capable & powerful forces have long been at a state of 100% readiness, with their fingers on the trigger so that in the event of aggression or any action against Iran, we will immediately and forcefully strike pre-designated targets and deliver another lesson, harsher than before, to the US aggressor & the child-killing Zionist regime.
Iran’s Tasnim News: Continuing the naval blockade amounts to continued hostility. As long as the blockade persists, Iran will at the very least not re-open the Strait of Hormuz, and if it deems necessary, it will break the blockade by force.
Iran just drew the line in the sand for its southern neighbours. The IRGC delivered a crystal clear warning: if any Gulf state aids or abets attacks on Iranian territory, they can wave goodbye to their oil production.
The Iran War and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz have taken Qatari energy supplies completely off the market.
Russian natural gas fields were shut out of Europe beginning in 2022, and energy companies there invested massively into new pipelines to Asia. China was a ready buyer for Russian oil and natural gas, and also invested heavily into huge strategic stockpiles of crude and natural gas storage. With Russian energy production flowing East, China is now well-supplied. Liquefied Natural Gas of Russian origin is offered at 40% discount to spot, to induce long-term supply relationships. As a result, Asian economies are shifting their supply chains from the Persian Gulf to Russia-China. Meanwhile, EU countries have cut themselves off from Russian oil and natural gas and are in a bind.
Iran’s Parliament Speaker Ghalibaf says Iran won't let Trump turn the negotiating table "into a table of surrender.” He also warned that Iran will reveal new fighting capabilities when war breaks out again.
The US military intercepted a crude oil laden China-bound ship, ‘TIFANI’ in the Indian ocean. It's piracy. This could have severe consequences. Already China has sold off about half of their US Treasury bonds and bought gold.
Kremlin reacts to report that France and Poland plan to hold joint nuclear exercises. This once again demonstrates Europe’s aspirations for further militarization and war in hopes of grabbing Russia's vast resource base. This is something that does not contribute to stability on European continent.
Japan makes major shift in arms export rules under PM Takaichi, expands weapons sales abroad. Tokyo opens door to missiles, jets and warships, broadens defense reach overseas; parliament only notified after approval as the opposition warns of weaker oversight and risk of fueling arms races.
Russia just sent Israel a message that’s impossible to misread. 40 Israeli citizens stepping off a Tel Aviv flight to Moscow were pulled aside by security, held for five hours, questioned about their links to Israel’s war on Iran, and told point-blank: Iran is our ally — its enemies are ours too. No charges filed. No drama in the Russian headlines. Just a quiet, methodical reminder that in 2026 the rules have changed. This wasn’t random harassment. It was deliberate. Moscow doesn’t waste time or resources on routine airport checks unless it wants the world to notice. And the world has noticed. Israel’s “blue passport” is finding more closed doors than open ones. Now it’s triggering extra scrutiny in countries that once rolled out the red carpet. The era when Tel Aviv could bomb, invade, and destabilize without blowback is over.
The terrorist Abu Muhammad al-Julani (so-called new leader of Syria) has arrived in Saudi Arabia, the country that supports the largest and most powerful terrorist cells around the world.
Russia will likely cut oil production in April by about 300,000–400,000 barrels per day, marking its sharpest monthly drop in six years. The decline is mainly due to Ukrainian terrorist drone attacks on key refineries, ports in the Baltic and Black Seas, and pipeline infrastructure, including the still-shut Druzhba route to Europe.
Germany’s Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul: 'We consider sanctions against Israel a thing inappropriate'.
Israel’s latest land grab is dashing Lebanon’s hope of tapping offshore gas to solve its persistent energy shortage. Maritime energy prospects were the focus of a 2022 deal on a disputed border between the two nations. In 2022, US-mediated talks between Israel and Lebanon ended a long-time row over their maritime border, driven to a large degree by the potential presence of offshore natural gas fields in the disputed area. Unlike Israel, Lebanon is yet to tap into those riches. However, the IDF’s move makes prospecting by a Euro-Qatari conglomerate, announced in January, highly unlikely.
Systematic destruction in Mis al-Jabal, southern Lebanon. The Zionist occupation is erasing the entire eastern neighborhood under the cover of a ceasefire and official silence. History, heritage, and livelihoods are being destroyed.
British Foreign Secretary: The use of our military bases by the US is for defensive purposes only. We have confirmed with the US that they will not strike civilian infrastructure in Iran with their war planes. (Total BS from London.) A B-52 bomber at RAF Fairford earlier Tuesday, loaded with ammunition for offensive ops.
Russia and North Korea have linked a new bridge across the Tumen River, connecting the two countries by land for vehicle traffic for the first time. The bridge (opening around mid-2026) will enhance trade, transport, and cooperation, adding to the existing rail link between them.
A severe jet fuel crisis is gripping European airports. In the coming weeks, airports could begin experiencing fuel shortages, with London among the most vulnerable. European airlines are expected to start rationing fuel and prioritizing long-haul transatlantic flights over shorter domestic routes. Costs of travel will rise dramatically. Lufthansa will cancel 20,000 flights due to a shortage of aviation fuel as prices soar.
Two Americans killed in a crash in Mexico were CIA members. They died returning from an anti-drug operation targeting meth labs. The incident raises questions about U.S. intelligence involvement in Mexico’s cartel war. The president of Mexico is furious about CIA operating inside their country.
Israeli army soldiers drew numbers on the hands of displaced Palestinian women from Jenin in the West Bank.
Senior Pentagon officials have held preliminary talks with executives from GM, Ford, GE Aerospace, and Oshkosh about using their factories, equipment, and workforce to increase output of missiles, drones, and other tactical military systems. The idea is to let commercial manufacturers complement or back up traditional weapons contractors, especially as endless war in Ukraine and Iran have drawn down US stockpiles.
Artificial intelligence is now running the battlefield. Palantir's Maven smart system has become an officially registered program at the Pentagon—a central digital backbone for modern warfare. It combines classified and commercial data, runs AI-powered computer vision models on it, and delivers real-time targeting solutions for military assets. It appears that AI has been used for the tracking of Russian assets in Ukraine from the very get-go of 2-24-2022. It confirms that the US and the West have been pouring all their resources, particularly of the AI-variety, into destroying Russia from the opening moments of the Ukrainian conflict. As such, Russia’s weariness of the West’s provocations, seen boiling over now with the latest Finland & Baltics-related incidents, becomes clearly justified.
Bint Jbeil is no more, erased from the map by the Zionist war machine.
Look at the aerial footage. What was once a living town — the beating heart of southern Lebanon is now a grey moonscape of rubble stretching to the horizon. Entire neighbourhoods reduced to pulverised concrete, roofs caved in like broken skulls, roads buried under mountains of debris. This is systematic annihilation, not "war".
And it’s part of a bigger crime. While they were flattening Bint Jbeil house by house, Israel was busy severing the entire south from the rest of the country. Between March and mid-April they systematically bombed every major bridge over the Litani River, at least nine crossings hit, some repeatedly, roads cratered, supply lines turned to dust.
Then, on April 16, they took out the Qasmiyeh Bridge, the very last operational link between Tyre, Sidon and Beirut. One final strike and southern Lebanon was cut off completely. Nearly 100,000 people trapped. No food convoys, no medicine and no escape. A whole region turned into an open air prison and Lebanese starving while the bombs kept falling.
At the same time they were carving up the south, they unleashed hell on Beirut.
On April 8 alone, wave after wave of Israeli jets pounded the densely packed southern suburbs including Dahiyeh killing over 300 in a single day across the capital and its outskirts. Neighbourhoods like Haret Hreik, Ghobeiri, Burj al-Barajneh and Hay al-Sellom were smashed. Residential blocks, markets, civilian life, all turned to smoke and screams. The message was as brutal as the craters they left behind... we will punish the entire country for daring to resist.
This is the same playbook they ran in Gaza, only now scaled up and exported north. Isolate, starve, bomb, demolish, repeat — until nothing that could ever challenge their supremacy is left standing. They call it “targeting infrastructure.” The rest of us call it what it is and that is collective punishment on an industrial scale. Another chapter in the ongoing genocide against any people who refuse to bow to the greater Israel project.
But you can blow up every bridge, flatten every town, and still the idea of Resistance refuses to die. Bint Jbeil lies in ruins, but the spirit that made it legendary is alive in every Lebanese heart watching the smoke rise. The south is cut off, yet the will to fight remains unbroken.
They can destroy every Lebanese settlement. They will never kill the soul.
Around 120 U.S. military veterans from the anti-war group 'About Face: Veterans Against the War' yesterday staged a protest against the war with Iran inside the Cannon House Office Building in Washington, D.C.
The two-week US/Iran ceasefire is set to expire on Wednesday, April 22. Media says that Witkoff, Kushner and JD Vance are on their way to Islamabad. So far we hear that Iran has not taken a decision to attend.
The Hebrew newspaper Maariv quotes the commander of the Nahal Brigade: "We didn't dare raise our heads in our area of operations in southern Lebanon during the battle because of the drones and anti-tank missiles."
Saudi Finance Minister Mohammed Al-Jadaan reveals the harsh truth about oil prices: The gap is enormous! In the commodities markets, there is a significant gap between the price displayed on the screen and the actual price of the asset. If you see a price of $90 per barrel on the screen, and you try to buy oil at that price, I can only wish you luck. The actual prices in recent weeks have ranged between $120, $130, $140, $150, and even $160 per barrel.
A Zionist soldier destroys a statue of Christ in southern Lebanon, while Hezbollah was protecting these landmarks with its blood.
The Zionist occupation army destroys houses on the Bint Jbeil-Aitaroun road in southern Lebanon.
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan: Israeli expansionism is not just Türkiye’s problem, nor only the region’s; we are talking about a security issue that has become a global concern, driven by a fundamentalist government there. Everyone knows that Israel’s original aim—depopulating Gaza, whether by killing its people or forcing them to leave—has not changed.
Argentina's so-called leader Milei (who is paving the way for 300,000 zionists to move into Patagonia) has arrived in Israel to embrace the genocidal Netanyahu. They made a deal for regular Israeli airline flights to Argentina. Wonder why? Two of a kind they are.
Pepe Escobar via X channel: Iran bombed the secret center for cloud seeding, cloud pulling, fog, and radars in the UAE. Suddenly the climate in Iraq and Iran changed, and now there’s rain every week, and temperatures shifted dramatically by 5 degrees. Floods returned to Iran after it had suffered from severe drought, to the point that the Iranian government was considering moving the capital from Tehran to southern Iran due to the drought. The goal of this center was to destroy the agricultural sector in Iran and Iraq, as well as causing a drought and desertification disaster. The UAE is even more infidel and hypocritical.
NBC News: A new poll shows that 74% of Generation Z sympathize more with Palestinians than with Israelis. That's why the zionists bought TikTok and other social media outlets. They're losing the info war.
IRGC spokesman Ebrahim Zolfaghari put Washington on notice immediately after the cargo ship seizure: Iran “will soon respond to this armed piracy and retaliation by the US navy.” Hours later, IRGC forces launched drone strikes on US military vessels in the area, according to Tasnim News Agency. This is not escalation by Iran. This is the inevitable reply of a sovereign power that refuses to let foreign gunboats turn its coastal waters into an American no-go zone. Washington sails halfway around the planet, opens fire on a commercial hull trying to reach its own port, then screams “violation” when the inevitable response arrives. The Strait belongs to those who live beside it. The empire can issue all the threats it likes from 7,000 miles away — power plants, bridges, “killing machines” but the Persian Gulf has a very long memory and the means to enforce its own rules.
Retired CIA analyst Larry Johnson dropped a whopper on the Judge Napolitano show. He cited reports from inside the White House during an emergency meeting this past Saturday. Donald Trump wanted the nuclear codes against Iran and was stopped cold by General Dan Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Johnson didn’t mince words. “There is seriously something wrong with Trump,” he said.
Former President Rumen Radev and his left-wing Progressive Bulgaria alliance won the parliamentary elections with an outright majority. Here are the key stances of the new Bulgarian Prime Minister: Opposed to financing NATO/EU’s war time adventures in Ukraine, arming the Kiev Nazi regime, and imposing sanctions on Russia. Supports closer diplomatic and economic ties with China and Iran. Strongly condemns Israel’s genocidal actions against the people of Gaza.
Israeli media: Israel is preparing for a new opening strike against Iran.
The US empire just packed up and left Syria with a straight face. After 11 years of “fighting terrorism,” the last U.S. troops rolled out of Qasrak air base in Hasakah yesterday. Syrian army units and SDF fighters moved in together while American convoys torched equipment on the way out — the classic imperial exit: burn what you can’t steal. The man now running Syria as president is Ahmed al-Sharaa or better known to the world as Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, the former leader of al-Qaeda’s Syrian branch (Jabhat al-Nusra/HTS). Yes, the same guy the U.S. once put a $10 million fake bounty on. The same networks Washington spent over a decade pretending to bomb, sanctioning, and calling an existential threat. Now they hand the country over to him and call it mission accomplished. Eleven years of bases, drones, and endless “counter-terror” talk… only to leave the keys with a rebranded Salafist jihadist who was literally once on their own terrorist list.
Lebanese civil defense teams begin diving under the Qasmiyeh bridge in search of bodies of those missing as a result of Israeli airstrikes on the bridge.
The US continues to move large quantities of additional munitions and equipment to the Middle East ahead of a possible new phase of Operation Epic Wrath. Between 15-20 transport aircraft are arriving at air bases in Qatar (Al Udeid), Jordan (Muwaffaq Salti), and Kuwait every 24 hours. In addition to munitions, the aircraft are transporting elements of air defense systems and equipment to ensure the security of the bases, which may be targeted starting Tuesday.
Iranian President: "Keeping promises is the foundation of any dialogue. In addition to the deep-seated historical distrust in Iran regarding the behavior and actions of the US government, the unconstructive and contradictory approach taken by US officials in recent days carries a bitter message: they want Iran to surrender, and the Iranian people will not be forced to do so."
Iran just reminded the empire exactly who holds the master key to the world’s oil lifelines.
While Washington’s gunboats play pirate in the Gulf of Oman and Trump screams about knocking out power plants, Tehran has drawn the real red line.
Tasnim — the voice of the IRGC put it plain: if this war restarts in earnest, Bab al-Mandeb, Saudi Aramco’s Yanbu export hub, the UAE’s Fujairah terminal, and the entire Red Sea route all enter the battlefield. No vague warnings. No diplomatic theatre. Just cold, calculated deterrence.
Hit those three targets and yes you devastate the Gulf monarchies but more importantly, you gut roughly a third of global oil flows in a single afternoon. Yanbu is now Riyadh’s main bypass artery, pumping millions of barrels a day around the closed Strait of Hormuz. Fujairah is the UAE’s emergency valve on the open Indian Ocean. Bab el-Mandeb is the choke point those tankers must cross. Shut them all down and the world loses 30+% of its daily supply overnight.
Gas prices? They’ll detonate. Economies already teetering on the edge of the last round of sanctions and blockades? They scream, then collapse.
This isn’t some empty flex from a desperate regime. This is the IRGC spelling out the obvious: push Iran into a corner and the entire global energy system pays the price.
The Gulf monarchies spent decades building these fragile bypass pipelines, Indian ocean terminals, and Red Sea routes precisely to escape the reality of Iranian sovereignty over Hormuz. Now those same escape hatches are in the crosshairs.
Tehran is telling Washington and its Gulf clients the simple truth that you don’t get to wage war on Iran and keep your oil flowing like nothing happened.
Buckle up for more natural and predictable consequences.
The Trump administration put two things on a fast track to destruction: the illegal war in Iran and a proposed uranium mine in the sacred Black Hills of South Dakota. Both being pushed on the public through manufactured crises. Both bypassing and short-changing democratic oversight.
Congress voted four times to stop the Iran war, each time overruled by slim MAGA majority. Now, Dewey-Burdock uranium extraction, 50 miles from Pine Ridge in the aquifer above our reservation, is on a federal fast-track based on trumped up "energy emergency" executive orders straight out of Project 2025 and overriding decades of Native objections over safety and sovereignty.
Authoritarian war and authoritarian mining. Two fast tracks. Two manufactured emergencies. This regime has decided the consent of the governed is an inconvenience. Our consent, as tribal nations, as American sovereigns, is the only backstop left on this runaway train.
We are calling on Interior Secretary Burgum to do three things:
1) Reverse the Pe' Sla graphite mining permit
2) Pull Dewey-Burdock uranium mining off the fast-track program
3) Suspend all extractive permits on treaty lands until real consultation and a full legal review are done
Take action step one: Tell Secretary Burgum: Stop the Extraction.https://lakotalaw.org/pesla(Anyone can send this message)
Step two: Send public comment against Dewey-Burdock to the Bureau of Land Management. Deadline May 14, 2026 → here
In this episode of 51/49, James investigates the chilling exposé of Sam Altman’s "OpenAI" empire, digging into Ronan Farrow's reporting of how secret whistleblower memos, a $50 billion military pivot, and a "consistent pattern of lying" reveal the true nature of the "King of Cannibals" — a sociopathic pursuit of power hidden behind an altruistic mask and a "house of cards" built on corporate deceit.
Julius Malema, the leader of South Africa’s Economic Freedom Fighters, was sentenced to five years in prison for simply firing a rifle into the air.
Malema and his party have previously been frequent targets of the Trump Administration and billionaires like Elon Musk because he was a major advocate of land reform inside the country. He had previously also drawn ire from the US and Europe due to his support for Palestinian freedom from Israeli occupation, Russian efforts to denazify Ukraine and prevent NATO expansion, and China’s territorial integrity regarding Taiwan province.
One of the EFF’s key political goals is dismantling the economic structures of apartheid that dominate South African society long after the 1994 abolition of racial segregation and political disenfranchisement.
Back during the apartheid era, Elon Musk’s father Errol was a major property developer and landowner so Elon and Trump have falsely accused the EFF and even the South African state of trying to carry out genocide against the white population.
This of course is despite the fact that whites make up only seven percent but own as much as seventy to eighty percent of the wealth, land, and industrial and agricultural output through British corporations through the De Beers Group, Anglo-American plc, Mondi Group and Associated British Foods.
The Afrikaners became the greatest beneficiaries of this new post-apartheid democracy because the economic sanctions that came as a result of the Soweto massacre were lifted and they were no longer considered international pariahs.
After the dissolution of the apartheid state, Nelson Mandela was only allowed to become President as long as the economic structures of apartheid were not touched and as a result, South Africa became a debt colony for the World Bank. And none of the demands of the African revolutionaries, including those of Mandela himself prior to his imprisonment, were met.
Furthermore, those from the apartheid regime guilty of crimes against humanity were never punished. The officers of the South African security police who kidnapped and murdered African children in the Soweto massacre in 1976 were promised that they wouldn’t face legal accountability so long as they confessed and testified before Nelson Mandela’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Mandela was ultimately released from prison and allowed to become President, after the CIA had been responsible for his 1962 capture, only if he submitted to American imperialism. And a major reason was Julius Malema was targeted is because he was what Nelson Mandela used to be before his release from prison.
And it’s almost a certainty that Malema’s imprisonment was a result of the pressure campaigns of Elon Musk and the Trump Administration and their ridiculous theatric acting as the victim when they’re not.
