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....
In the middle of rising geopolitical tensions and the Iran–U.S. conflict, a powerful new AI model quietly emerged—one that may reshape cybersecurity, financial systems, and the global economy.
Built by Anthropic, the model—Claude Mythos—was reportedly considered too dangerous to release publicly. Instead, it is being tested under Project Glasswing by major tech companies like Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and cybersecurity leaders like CrowdStrike and Palo Alto Networks.
The model has demonstrated the ability to detect and exploit software vulnerabilities across operating systems, web infrastructure, and critical digital systems—raising serious questions about cyber warfare, financial security, and national defense.
With involvement from U.S. institutions like the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve, this may represent a major shift in how governments approach artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and global power competition.
As AI capabilities accelerate, the real question is no longer just innovation—but control.
The numbers don’t lie: energy infrastructure is burning across the planet at a pace that defies coincidence.
In the space of just a few weeks we’ve seen major hits and mysterious explosions on refineries, export terminals, power plants and LNG complexes from Russia to the Gulf, Australia to Mexico, India to Texas. Russian crude distillation units and export terminals lit up under Ukrainian drone strikes.
Australia’s Geelong refinery turned into a war zone with an “unprecedented” inferno. Mexico’s Olmeca complex at Dos Bocas caught fire again. Romania’s power grid took a blow. India’s boiler explosions and refinery incidents piled on. Even Texas saw another refinery related blast.
And that’s before you get to the Gulf. South Pars and Asaluyeh in Iran were struck hard in March. Then came the retaliatory wave: Kuwait’s Mina Al-Ahmadi, Qatar’s Ras Laffan, Saudi Arabia’s Ras Tanura, the UAE’s Ruwais all taking direct or debris damage from Iranian strikes and counter-strikes.
Some are openly admitted drone and missile attacks in the active wars with Iran and Russia. Others arrive wrapped in the polite language of mysterious industrial accidents or equipment failure.
Either way, the timing is curious and suspect. These facilities are catching fire and exploding right as the Iran war has already doubled fuel prices and tightened global supply lines to breaking point.
The empire that launched this round of chaos is now watching its own energy arteries and those of its proxies bleed at the exact moment it needs them most. Whether it’s hybrid sabotage or simply natural, one thing is clear: the world’s energy backbone is taking hits it cannot absorb.
One could ask this question. Are the global zionist oligarchs determined to shut most everything down? Outfits like Blackrock own half of the world already it seems.
If there is a complete collapse, a return to feudalism and fascist governments, what will the people own? How will they live?
The Native Americans said 'Put your ear to the RR tracks and hear the train coming'.
Ronald Reagan’s budget director, David Stockman, spoke candidly years ago about why Republicans like tax cuts so much. In his 1986 book, The Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolution Failed, he confided that tax cuts served the purpose of creating budget deficits that could then be used to justify spending cuts on government programs.
Typically, administrations had only cut spending for a program if it was no longer necessary, and the resultant surplus would then be used as a tax cut to stimulate the economy. However, Stockman turned this on its head by using the tax cuts to create a budgetary crisis that would then require cuts in spending regardless of whether the programs were necessary or not.
In other words, Stockman used tax cuts to create a revenue problem that the Reagan administration could then mask as a spending problem. This is known as “starving the beast.” The administration starves the beast—important government services—of important tax revenues in order to then justify slashing government spending.
Stockman himself admitted the failure of this strategy, since budget deficits during the Reagan administration did not bring down public spending in a meaningful way. This failure, however, didn’t stop the next generation of conservatives from making it a key part of their larger political project. In 2001 and 2003, for instance, George W. Bush pushed through massive tax cuts meant to impose a “fiscal straitjacket” on Congress. This then prompted Bush’s Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 to gut government programs.
Republican lawmakers attempted this again after they took control of the House of Representatives during the Obama administration in 2010. At the time, the U.S. economy was struggling through the Great Recession, which congressional Republicans blamed on government profligacy and “out of control spending.”
Not only did they hold the debt-ceiling hostage to prevent future spending, but they urged more tax cuts to stimulate the economy. In general, starving the beast has become a more common, and outright underhanded, strategy by which lawmakers have gone about cutting federal spending.
This strategy has also functioned as a form of class politics: Wealthy elites are often the main beneficiaries of the tax cuts financed by cuts in social services on which the average American is more likely to depend. For instance, Reagan’s 1981 Economic Recovery Tax Act slashed top marginal tax rates from 70% to 50%, a rate that only the top 2% of Americans paid (those rates dropped even further to 28% in 1986).
This cut was largely paid for with reductions in Aid to Families with Dependent Children, food stamps, Medicaid funding, student loans, and other social services. The Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 served the same agenda. According to research by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, the richest 20% received 65% of the benefits of those tax cuts, while the top 5% received 38%. Spending was then cut under the Deficit Reduction Act by targeting Medicaid, Medicare, the Migrant and Season Farmworkers Program, literacy programs, and others.
The American public is now far more aware of who has, and who has not, benefited from cuts in taxes and spending, and public opinion makes it harder for lawmakers to starve the beast. New polling shows that only 19% of Americans support the idea of cutting taxes on the wealthy, while 58% say the wealthy should be paying more (this number rises to 63% when asked about large businesses and corporations).
At the same time, the majority of Americans want the government to maintain spending on the kinds of programs that are usually targeted, such as Medicaid and food stamps, medical and cancer research, federal childcare programs, or the arts in public schools. In other words, Republican lawmakers are going to have a harder time gutting these programs by further cutting top marginal tax rates.
That is why they are finding new ways to starve the beast. The latest strategy has been to leverage the heavy cost of national security issues.
Nowhere is this more evident than through the U.S. and Israel’s joint war with Iran. The bombing of Iran has proven to be even more expensive than the initial stages of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, with the daily burn rate averaging around $1-2 billion a day. Shortly after launching the war in late February, President Trump sought an additional $200 billion from Congress to fund it. The GOP is now using that price tag to plan massive cuts to important government programs.
In early April, for instance, Republicans proposed a reconciliation bill they claim would save $30 billion but would also drive up the out-of-pocket premium costs and increase the number of people without health insurance. Later that week, Trump candidly spoke of his intentions to slash government spending against the backdrop of a budgetary crisis caused by the war:
“We’re a big country. We have 50 states. We have all these other people, we’re fighting wars […] Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things. They can do it on a state basis. You can’t do it on a federal [level]. We have to take care of one thing: military protection—we have to guard the country. But all these little things, all these little scams that have taken place, you have to let states take care of them.”
Trump’s claim that the United States can’t afford these programs are patently false. Programs like Medicare and Medicaid are planned spending that are not responsible for budget deficits.
However, the president’s comments make sense when contextualized against his longer-term plans to rein in federal spending. Through the creation of DOGE, Trump attempted to usher in an era of “government efficiency,” which included sharp reductions in several programs including Medicare and Medicaid. Although technically still operational, DOGE is largely seen as a failure, as it never achieved its goal of major spending cuts (in fact, government spending increased 6% in 2025).
The Iran war can complete the job that DOGE couldn’t. Trump is currently asking for a $1.5 trillion military budget—a 64% increase in military spending since last year—which provides the budgetary pressure needed to justify gutting necessary programs that have been on the books for decades. In doing so, Trump is essentially reviving the starve the beast strategy by fitting it into a large military project.
Although the strategy to starve the beast has changed, the class politics remains the same. Those affected will be those most reliant on programs designed to provide healthcare, education, and food. However, in this case, the consequences are no longer restricted to the U.S. taxpayer. The increase in military expenditures will be used to inflict harm upon vulnerable populations abroad. The strikes in Iran have already killed thousands of people and displaced over a million civilians.
The horrifying reality is that this carries the very real danger of becoming a common finance strategy. What happens when conservative lawmakers want to cut more government spending in healthcare or education? Will they manufacture a national security crisis to justify cuts in those social programs? Trump’s war in Iran establishes just such a dangerous precedent. For this reason, the American people must realize that their livelihood at home requires placing greater controls on what a president can do abroad.
~ Ben Luongo is an assistant professor of political science at Union Commonwealth University in Barbourville, Kentucky. His research focuses on issues of international human rights and political economy.
Israeli newspaper Haaretz published a list of atrocities committed by the IDF in Gaza, and the details fully cement their place in history as a modern SS:
▪️ Soldiers pissing on a bound, blindfolded detainee while laughing and joking about October 7 ▪️ Interrogators torturing detainees by tying cable ties around their genitals ▪️ An officer executing an unarmed Palestinian who had surrendered with hands up, then covering it up as if they had killed an “armed terrorist” ▪️ Widespread excitement in units over “special means” used to kill people in tunnels, while one soldier said it reminded him of the Holocaust ▪️ A tank gunning down five Palestinians crossing a line, followed by a D9 bulldozer burying the bodies in sand ▪️ Countless instances of IDF terrorists opening fire on unarmed civilians, including those seeking food during the man-made famine caused by the blockade ▪️ Looting Palestinian homes, burning photos, and pissing on personal belongings for fun
The issue, though, is that Haaretz published this article from the perspective that Israeli soldiers are suffering from severe trauma and expecting us all to feel sorry for them now that they realized just how morally depraved and inhumane they were during Israel’s genocidal rampage in Gaza.
However, these IDF terrorists do not get even the slightest bit of sympathy from me. They deserve to be tormented for life by the souls of the Palestinians they mass slaughtered in the same manner that Nazi Germany did to the victims of the Holocaust and the Soviet people.
In a just world, every Israeli, American and European politician who waged and materially supported this war, along with every single IDF soldier in Gaza, would be facing war crimes trials and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. I couldn’t care less about their pitiful sob stories and their “trauma.”
Eight of us for our weekly hourly vigil at the busiest intersection in Brunswick, Maine today. Nine of the big-rig truckers honked or waved which is a rarity. The cost of diesel fuel is rising.
Secretary of the Navy John Phelan has been forced out as Navy secretary after clashes with Hegseth. Phelan was a wealthy Trump donor and businessman with zero military experience, exactly the kind of loyalist the administration loves to install. He lasted 13 months. He and Hegseth 'didn't get along'. Neither of them know how to fight a war.
The Lebanese government will not sign any agreement with Israel as part of negotiations unless it includes a "full withdrawal" of the Israeli troops from its territory, the Washington Post reported on Thursday, citing Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam. "We cannot live with a so-called buffer zone … an Israeli presence where Lebanese displaced people are not allowed to return, where destroyed villages and towns cannot be rebuilt," Salam was quoted as saying by the newspaper.
Testimonies from Israeli soldiers and commanders indicate that troops operating in southern Lebanon have been looting civilian property on a wide scale, taking items such as motorcycles, TVs, furniture, and other belongings from homes and businesses, according to Haaretz. This is a photo posted of a female Israeli soldier in a house in southern Lebanon whose owners had responded to an illegal “evacuation order” by fleeing to save their lives. They’re cooking vegetables from the garden, in an immaculate, well-stocked kitchen, all while working for a military that claims it is fighting Hezbollah. There’s no Hezbollah in this house; it’s just naked theft, stealing a home from civilians, as Israel has been doing since this abominable nation’s founding.
U.S. forces boarded and seized a sanctioned, stateless oil tanker carrying Iranian oil in the Indian Ocean.
Yemen Leader Al-Houthi: "Israel killed one Palestinian woman every half hour in Gaza for two years. With American weapons, American funding, American partnership. Where are the women's rights they crow about?"
Trump’s White House just told DNI Tulsi Gabbard she has until the midterms to resign. She was reportedly frozen out of the Situation Room meeting where the president greenlit Operation Epic Fury — the latest round of strikes on Iran. This is the same Tulsi Gabbard who, as Director of National Intelligence, told Congress in plain English that the intelligence community’s assessment was clear: Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not reauthorized the program he suspended back in 2003. She should resign today and not in six months and tell the American people exactly what she knows.
The International Energy Agency just dropped its most alarming oil demand forecast since the COVID lockdowns. Global oil demand is now projected to contract in 2026, with a steep 1.5 million barrels per day drop expected in Q2 alone — the deepest quarterly plunge since the pandemic. The empire wanted to strangle Iran at the behest of Israel. Instead it’s strangling global energy markets and punishing the very producers who placed their bets on American gunboats and the petrodollar protection racket.
The U.S. has started using Ukrainian counter-drone tech at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia after repeated Iranian drone attacks damaged aircraft and infrastructure. Makes sense - three of the leading global terrorist nations now working together.
New York Times: 308 ships linked to Iran have passed through the Strait of Hormuz since the start of the US-Iran war.
Is Trump waiting for the arrival of the USS George H.W. Bush aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea before launching a strike against Iran? It is expected to arrive in the Middle East within 3 to 4 days. This will be the third carrier strike group deployed to the region, joining the USS Abraham Lincoln and the USS Gerald R. Ford.
Former EU Foreign Policy Chief: The Iranians are extremely skilled negotiators, both technically and diplomatically. Pressure and threats alone cannot achieve an effective result against Iran.
Iranian military says they are ready for the next stage of the war. “During the lull, our speed in updating missile and drone launch platforms is even higher than before the war. The enemy is unable to create similar conditions and is forced to transport ammunition drop by drop from the other side of the world. They have lost this stage of the war,” the statement said.
British Prime Minister Starmer: The Iranian conflict is causing serious economic damage to the United Kingdom.
Iran just made American fighter jets obsolete in its skies and a retired U.S. Army Colonel explained why. Colonel Gagnon, speaking on ABC News, laid it out cold: 'Iran has shifted to passive infrared detection systems that don’t emit radar signals. They track heat signatures instead. The F-35 and F-15 — the crown jewels of U.S. air power were never built to face this. Stealth means nothing when the hunter is silent and staring straight at your engines. Iranian airspace is no longer safe for U.S. fighter jets.'
Article 3(c) of UN General Assembly Resolution 3314 (the Definition of Aggression) goes straight to the point: “The blockade of the ports or coasts of a State by the armed forces of another State” qualifies as an act of aggression. Hence, it is a straightforward violation of the ceasefire. Iran has not blockaded any foreign ports, or declared a blanket blockade. It has imposed a tollbooth on hostile vessels transiting a Strait that runs through its own territorial waters.
Washington Post: Clearing mines from Strait of Hormuz could take 6 months, Pentagon tells Congress. The Pentagon assessment, shared in a classified briefing for lawmakers, suggests gasoline and oil prices could remain elevated through the midterm elections in November. (Trump looking for any excuse to keep US forces on Iran's doorstep.)
Marta Kos is excited by the prospect of laundering another €90 Billion EU loan to crumbling, corrupt and terroristic Ukraine. Don't expect to be repaid. There are still far too many sea-side homes in South Florida that the former Nazi 'warriors' from Ukraine are buying and selling thanks to EU & US cash. Why stop this war? It's far too lucrative for the mobsters inside NATO.
Somalia says it imposed a ban on the passage of Israeli-linked ships through the Bab al-Mandeb Strait.
(Above) Vinnitsa, Ukraine: Despite the best efforts of the woman, the military body snatchers condemned another ‘Ukrainian patriot’ to a certain death sentence. (Below) In Volyn on the roof another Ukrainian patriot was ‘convinced’ to die for Zelensky. They will get a week's training, taught to fire a machine gun, and then be packed off with other very 'reluctant recruits' to the front lines to help force Moscow to spend more money and lives in order to stop the US-UK-NATO war on Russia. The western colonizers want Russia's vast resource base.
The United States is withholding Arab Funds. The U.S. is delaying the release of money belonging to several Arab sovereign funds. These funds come from the oil and gas revenues of wealthy Arab states and are deposited in American banks. Officials from these countries are currently in Washington, attempting to persuade the US administration to allow the withdrawal of part of these assets. The U.S. Treasury recently blocked the delivery of a cash shipment worth roughly $500 million in US banknotes. This money originates from Iraqi oil revenues held in accounts at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Colombia just paid off its entire debt to the IMF — nearly $5.3 billion. No more IMF conditions. No more austerity strings attached. This is what financial sovereignty looks like. Other nations should be paying attention.
Fire breaks out aboard identity-fluid $8 billion USS Zumwalt destroyer built at Bath Iron Works in Maine. Three sailors were injured aboard the Navy’s problem-plagued stealth destroyer undergoing a hypersonic makeover while the stealth destroyer was sitting pier-side at Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Mississippi, undergoing a costly modernization meant to give the ship a whole new identity. One sailor was taken to a local hospital in stable condition, while two others were treated at the scene. The troubled vessel has never participated in any combat mission and has become a byword for Pentagon overreach: flashy, fantastically expensive, and still trying to figure out what exactly it wants to be when it grows up.
Trump's fiscal year 2027 budget request was made public with the largest Pentagon raise in history at $1.5 trillion. "We are delivering on President Trump's commitment to expand American military dominance for decades to come," said Secretary of War Hegseth. "Previous administrations under invested in our military while our enemies grew stronger and more dangerous, so we are now changing the game. This budget builds this arsenal without compromising readiness that will ensure we remain the world's premier fighting force." "This is a generational investment in the US military— the arsenal of freedom, Jules W. Hurst III, the War Department comptroller said. This 42% increase will supercharge our defense industrial base by expanding production of major weapon systems, while strengthening supply chains and supporting tens of thousands of small and medium-sized businesses. It secures our homeland and military advantage through investments in the Golden Dome missile defense system, drone dominance and space superiority."
The lights are back on in Cuban homes and hospitals. Russian oil saves lives.
Iran will not blink. Whatever it takes. The responsibility for destroying the global economy relies entirely on the US. Tehran is very clear: no lifting of the naval blockade, no negotiating.
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.
