Global
If you are not paying attention to the dramatic developments between China and the United States, you must understand that something consequential has just taken place.
The US government is backtracking—if not altogether retreating—from the trade war and broader escalation it launched against China. Unlike the hyped language and repeated threats by President Donald Trump to impose massive “reciprocal tariffs,” to “decouple” the US economy from China, and to correct “the greatest theft of wealth in the history of the world,” the retreat is happening in hushed tones and coded diplomatic language.
“I think both countries concluded that having an all-out global trade war between the United States and China would be deeply damaging to both sides and to the world,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on February 25.
He called this new phase one of “strategic stability.”
The latest location where Trump has given the orders to murder people is Iran.
Remember a couple of months back when establishment U.S. lawyers and human rights groups were admitting that Trump’s attacks on boats in the Caribbean and Pacific were nothing other than murder?
Murder doesn’t cease being murder because it’s further away or grander or provokes a more dramatic response or targets victims who speak a different language.
By all means hunt in the Epstein files for evidence of Trump raping or murdering, but don’t pretend we don’t already know.
America's Orange King suggested that Americans should support military action against Iran, claiming it was necessary to eliminate threats from the Iranian regime and protect the American people. We must not forget that the King is a pedophile, racist, misogynist, narcissist and a liar. In this case, the lie is that the American people were in any way threatened by Iran.
I am a patriotic American who despairs at the current state of affairs in America. I hope the American Empire is defeated because I yearn for a peaceful world.
America turned away from peace when the National Security State assassinated President Kennedy in 1963, five months after his American University peace speech. What followed was an effort to continue creation of the American Empire, but there was some restraint. After the fall of the Soviet Union, there was talk of a peace dividend as expressed by George H.W. Bush and Margaret Thatcher. America could finally move towards minimizing the enormous expense of Empire and make Kennedy's dream a reality.
Democracy is invoked as moral legitimacy in war, while Iran’s authority rests on layered political, religious, and historical foundations.
Democracy, however, is not the enemy. Its manipulation is.
For decades, Western political discourse has equated legitimacy with elections—numbers counted on a single day, certified by institutions that themselves operate within systems shaped by immense financial power. The result is a troubling reduction: legitimacy becomes procedural rather than moral.
In the United States, democracy functions within a political economy deeply influenced by corporate financing, lobbying structures, and concentrated media ownership. Public opinion is not merely informed; it is engineered. Electoral competition exists, but within boundaries drawn by wealth and institutional continuity.
The war on Iran has not merely opened a new military front in the Middle East. It has shattered long-standing myths that have shaped US policy and regional politics for decades. What has unfolded in the past days is not simply a battlefield confrontation; it is a historical rupture.
Several narratives that once appeared unassailable have collapsed under the weight of reality. At the same time, theories long dismissed as ideological or exaggerated have been confirmed with startling clarity.
The Myth of American Protection
For decades, Washington has portrayed itself as the ultimate guarantor of regional security. US military bases, aircraft carriers, air defense systems and bilateral security agreements were marketed as shields protecting allies from existential threats.
This war has exposed that promise as hollow.
Despite overwhelming US military presence across the Gulf, regional allies have faced missile alerts, drone incursions and maritime threats. American troops themselves have been killed. Energy infrastructure has been threatened. Shipping routes have been destabilized.
“So this is how we get rid of that madman Mossadegh.”
In the summer of 1953, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles reportedly held up a copy of a top-secret plan—Operation Ajax—and made that declaration. The operation, engineered by the United States and Great Britain, overthrew Iran’s democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh. In his place, Washington and London restored Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, a monarch whose rule would last 26 years and whose regime would become synonymous with repression, inequality, and dependency on Western power.
Dulles delivered the news in his characteristically brisk and forceful manner. Applause reportedly followed. President Dwight D. Eisenhower and senior policymakers regarded the coup as a triumph of American resolve against Soviet influence. In Washington, it was celebrated as strategic genius. In Iran, it planted the seeds of lasting resentment. For his service, Dulles would later receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom—America’s highest civilian honor.
History, however, has a long memory.
When Daniel Ellsberg died in 2023, the world lost a unique voice of sanity. Five decades earlier, as a “national security” insider, he had released the top-secret Pentagon Papers to expose the official lies behind the ongoing Vietnam War. From then on, he never stopped writing, speaking and protesting for peace, while explaining how the madness of nuclear weapons could destroy us all.
Now, Ellsberg’s voice is back via a compelling new book. “Truth and Consequence,” being published this week, provides readers with his innermost thoughts, scrawled and typed over a 50-year period. The result is access to intimate candor and visionary wisdom from a truly great whistleblower.
