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Will there be global war over Taiwan? – Sociology matters

19 May 2026 Noel Wauchope, https://theaimn.net/will-there-be-global-war-over-taiwan/

Will there be global war over Taiwan? Ask a sociologist.

Having never actually studied sociology, I am indeed prepared to be shot down in flames, for my audacity in pronouncing opinions on sociology. But that thought has never stopped me, as I believe that anyone and everyone can have opinions, and should be taken seriously.

Britannica says:

“Sociology, a social science that studies human societies, their interactions, and the processes that preserve and change them… the processes that preserve and change human societies.”

What prompted me to consider this, is the news coverage of Donald Trump’s visit to China, and his interaction (accompanied by business moguls) with President Xi Jinping. Was this the first part of a process that might preserve and change the global society? The general theme of most articles is that not much was achieved in this meeting, and particular concerns were not resolved. The main concern was about Taiwan. Will the USA come to the defence of Taiwan if China were to take it over? There was the need to open up the Strait of Hormuz  There were trade concerns, particularly about China’s near monopoly of the rare earths market, about USA’s plan to to sell Taiwan $US14 billion more in weapons, and China’s to send weapons to Iran.

Other touchy topics like climate change and human rights were avoided.

It all looks as if there wasn’t any process, and it all came out with the same stalemate, and the same ambiguity about Taiwan. So we’re back into the old dilemma – will there be global war over Taiwan? But there was an interaction. Whatever we all think of Donald Trump, or of Xi Jinping, they had a courteous and cordial meeting, and Trump is the first American President to visit Beijing twice.

So, I’m thinking that this is the start of something new. Not because these powerful men might have altruistic ideas and plans, but because of another consideration. This was highlighted in an insightful article by ABC journalist Bang Xiao, who wrote:

“This week in Beijing, both Donald Trump and Xi Jinping quietly admitted something the rest of the world has been slow to grasp. Neither of them can afford the collision… Two structurally interdependent superpowers who have decided, for now, to manage their rivalry rather than let it manage them.“

It’s some kind of a comfort to realise that financial realities might now be prioritised over glorious ideals of national pride, the heroism of war, patriotic sacrifices and all those noble ideals which, with modern warfare, are becoming ecocidal. Neither the USA nor China can now afford a global war. Xi Jinping referred to the “Thucydides Trap.” In the 5th century, Greek historian Thucydides described this situation where a rising power challenges an established one, usually leading to a prolonged war.

The significant thing here is that China is no longer seen as a “rising power” – and this really is all about sociology. SL Kanthan writes that: “The Thucydides Trap is no more,” and gives a powerful explanation of China’s debts and its slowing economy. There have been recent articles on China’s current economic decline, but this is not really a new development, but more of a steady decline over years. China’s GDP growth has been decelerating – “the slowing empire, the tired dragon.”

The sociological facts come in here. There’s been quite a dramatic fall in China’s birth rate. With a dwindling population, and with the median age rising, it’s a poor forecast for China’s working-age proportion of the population. The fall in what was a booming real estate industry has resulted in a rapid decline in construction and related industries and the loss of employment opportunities. This job loss has been exacerbated by the loss of jobs for college graduates, with robots now taking over much of their work. China has severe and seemingly intractable debt problems. Finally, China’s military is in some trouble, and not ready for war.

With all the chest-thumping and the rush for new weaponry amongst the military-industrial complex, there’s a lack of concern for sociological realities such as those now affecting China. And China is not the only country affected by population change, economic problems, public and private debt – all factors that dampen enthusiasm for war. I sometimes ponder on what was the greatest scientific achievement of our age. Was it the atomic bomb, rockets, the digital revolution, medical breakthroughs?

I’m thinking that the most influential one might be effective contraception. That is certainly a huge factor in China’s slowdown, and its leadership’s reluctance about war, and its readiness to co-operate, while still competing with the West.  The economic realities on both sides are there, on a background of sociological changes that make war look financially unappealing. And we all know that Trump, despite his bombast, is more interested in money than in anything else.

May 20, 2026 Posted by | Christina's notes, politics international | Leave a comment

Trump Describes Executions to Kids, While MAGA Bans Lessons Causing “Discomfort” 

Trump’s performance of masculine bravado and attacks on transgender athletes were not separate from his broader message — they were central to it. Trump has presented the revival of the Presidential Fitness Test not simply as a health initiative, but as part of rebuilding a “tougher,” more militaristic national character. Within that worldview, rigid masculinity becomes a political ideal associated with aggression, control, and toughness, while vulnerability, peace, or gender nonconformity are treated as signs of weakness and decay.

Trump’s lesson to children was to fear difference, obey power, and treat vulnerable people as threats.

By Jesse Hagopian , Truthout, May 16, 2026, https://truthout.org/articles/trump-describes-executions-to-kids-while-maga-bans-lessons-causing-discomfort/?utm_source=Truthout&utm_campaign=fcdf48b92f-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2026_05_16_02_57&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_bbb541a1db-fcdf48b92f-650192793

Seated behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office in early May, Donald Trump delivered a disturbing lecture to a group of children huddled around him — most of them not yet even teenagers. They had been brought to the White House for what was supposed to be a celebratory event marking the reinstatement of the Presidential Fitness Test, dressed in brightly colored T-shirts bearing the government emblem of the rebooted program.

Flanked by a group including cabinet secretaries Linda McMahon, Pete Hegseth, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump turned the White House into his schoolhouse. Casting himself as a master teacher, he launched into an improvised lesson — part contemporary issues, part history, part geography, and all MAGA mythology.

During his lesson, Trump exposed a central contradiction at the heart of his politics. States and school districts across the country have enacted MAGA education policies — such as the Florida Stop WOKE Act — that prohibit teaching content that might cause students “guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress.” But Trump himself showed no such restraint. During what amounted to an advanced course in authoritarian education, he immersed children in a grotesque curriculum of graphic executions, nuclear annihilation, and the threat of entire societies being wiped out — paired with nationalist triumphalism and the scapegoating of transgender people.

The premise of the event itself rested on the fear that the U.S. has become weak and soft, which could only be remedied by making the country aggressively masculine again. Trump framed the return of the Presidential Fitness Test not merely as a health initiative, but as part of a broader struggle for national strength and power. Warning in a statement to the press that declining youth fitness weakens “our economy, military readiness, academic performance, and national morale,” he cast physical toughness as a prerequisite for a nation prepared for war.

This is not education. It is spectacle, coercion, indoctrination, and the normalization of violence.

Teaching Fear

In one of the most disturbing moments of the event, a reporter asked Trump whether Iranian protesters, with U.S. support, could topple their government. He answered by explaining, in vivid detail, how those protesters might be massacred: “You can have 200,000 people protesting … and when they start shooting them right between the eyes, and you see a guy fall, and another one fall…”

Then Trump raised his hand to his face, pressing his index finger between his brows, marking the place where the bullet would strike. Recalling protests led by Iranian women, he described a demonstrator being shot by snipers as “a woman dropped dead with a bullet right there,” repeatedly pointing between his eyes to show where the bullet struck. He described the panic that could spread through the crowd as “another woman dropped” and protesters began to flee. A boy to his right pursed his lips as Trump narrated the murders. A girl to his left appeared visibly jarred — her eyes widened, her expression tense — as the adults around her stood by silently.

Educators and child psychologists have long warned that exposing children to graphic violence without context or emotional grounding can create anxiety, confusion, and fear. The National Association of School Psychologists advises adults discussing violence with children to keep explanations “developmentally appropriate” and avoid exposing them to “vengeful, hateful, and angry comments.” Trump did the opposite. Rather than helping children process violence with care and understanding, he used graphic imagery to normalize brutality and reinforce the logic of power.

Trump did not stop at describing executions. He escalated from scenes of political murder to warnings of nuclear catastrophe.

He did briefly acknowledge the inappropriateness of his comments, saying, “You might be too young for this,” before warning the children that “you can’t let a bunch of lunatics have a nuclear weapon or the world will be in a lot of trouble.” As Desi Lydic quipped on “The Daily Show”: “No, they’re not too young. I’m sure they’ve already seen the ‘Paw Patrol’ episode where they drop a ballistic missile on Humdinger.”

Organizations focused on child development emphasize that young people need guidance and context when confronting frightening world events. Child advocacy organization Defending the Early Years (DEY) notes that young children “hear headlines and snippets of conversations and are often left to make sense of confusing situations without proper guidance or facilitation.” Rather than ignoring difficult events — or exposing children only to the most disturbing fragments — DEY emphasizes the need for “age-appropriate conversations … so they can understand what is happening.”

A responsible lesson on nuclear weapons, for example, might begin by asking students what they already know and what questions they have. It might include a brief, factual explanation of what nuclear weapons are, paired with age-appropriate historical context — such as the global movements that have worked to limit or eliminate them. Students might examine how ordinary people have organized against nuclear war, or consider what actions communities can take to reduce the risk of these weapons being used.

Rather than helping children process difficult realities, Trump took it even further: “Iran with a nuclear weapon … maybe we wouldn’t all be here right now.”

He amplified the dread by asking the kids to imagine a world in which entire regions are destroyed, and where they themselves would not survive: “I can tell you, the Middle East would have been gone. Israel would have been gone. They would have trained their sights on Europe, first, and then us.”

Counselor Nathaniel N. Ivers notes that fear of nuclear devastation can have a lifelong impact on children. During the Cold War, studies found that children and caregivers often experienced heightened anxiety about nuclear threats — and that when adults expressed more fear, their children tended to become more anxious as well.

Beyond inflicting psychological trauma, Trump’s discussion of nuclear apocalypse also lacked the historical context students would need to understand how the past shapes present conflicts. The United States remains the only country to have ever used nuclear weapons in war — dropping atomic bombs on both Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II, killing more than 200,000 civilians. Trump, of course, was not interested in allowing students to consider why many around the world fear the U.S. use of nuclear weapons more than any other country.

Nor did Trump mention the long history of U.S. intervention in Iran itself. As historian Stephen Kinzer explains, after World War II, the people of Iran rose up to achieve a brief period of democracy and “They did something that the United States never likes: They chose a leader who wanted to put the interests of his own country ahead of the interests of the United States.” The leader they elected was Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, who moved to nationalize the country’s oil industry. In response, the United States and Britain orchestrated the 1953 coup that overthrew him. As Kinzer put it, “this was not just an attack on one person, but an attack on democracy.”

But Trump didn’t teach these truths that could help children understand how those in power have misused it. And just as Trump taught children to fear “enemies” abroad, he also taught them to view transgender people at home as threats to the social order he was trying to defend. Railing against gender-affirming care for trans youth, Trump invoked “transgender mutilization” — mangling the word he was trying to weaponize — in an apparent attempt to frighten the children before abruptly catching himself and saying, “Don’t listen to this, kids.” Then, reversing his decision to have the children disregard him, Trump looked into the eyes of the youth and declared, “I’ve never had one person say it’s important we allow women to be challenged by men in women’s sports…”

Moments later, he resumed the lesson. Turning to one of the boys beside him and slapping him on the arm, Trump said, “I don’t think we are gonna have to worry about you.” He then asked, “Are you a strong person?” When the boy replied yes, Trump followed up: “Do you think you can take me in a fight?”

Again, aggression was the lesson.

Trump’s performance of masculine bravado and attacks on transgender athletes were not separate from his broader message — they were central to it. Trump has presented the revival of the Presidential Fitness Test not simply as a health initiative, but as part of rebuilding a “tougher,” more militaristic national character. Within that worldview, rigid masculinity becomes a political ideal associated with aggression, control, and toughness, while vulnerability, peace, or gender nonconformity are treated as signs of weakness and decay.

Trump’s rhetoric drew on a long bipartisan tradition in U.S. politics in which organized sports and physical fitness were treated not as recreation, but as training grounds for masculine discipline, war, and imperial power. Theodore Roosevelt’s celebration of “The Strenuous Life” warned against national “softness” and argued that athletics cultivated the “virile virtues” needed by a colonizing nation. As sports historian Dave Zirin wrote in A People’s History of Sports in the United States, Roosevelt saw “masculinity and Muscular Christianity as symbiotic with a nation poised to conquer.”

Decades later, Democratic President John F. Kennedy echoed similar fears in his essay “The Soft American,” arguing that the U.S.’s “struggles against aggressors throughout our history have been won on the playgrounds and corner lots and fields of America,” and that military victories “only come from bodies which have been conditioned by a lifetime of participation in sports.” Kennedy’s expansion of the Presidential Fitness program, established under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, was explicitly tied to Cold War anxieties about national decline, military readiness, and the U.S.’s ability to compete with global rivals. Trump’s revival of the Presidential Fitness Test tapped directly into that tradition — one that links fears of national decline to nationalism, militarism, and rigid ideas about masculinity.

“Everyone Is Welcome Here” vs. MAGA Hypocrisy

Taken together, Trump’s lesson was about teaching children who and what to fear — foreign enemies overseas and vulnerable communities at home — while deflecting from the real dangers of war, bigotry, and oppression. As Rethinking Schools argues, education should help students “see injustice, imagine possible remedies, and develop the tools to enact them.” Trump’s lesson taught the opposite: fear difference, obey power, and treat vulnerable people as threats.

For years, Trump and his allies — especially writer Christopher Rufo — have argued that schools should avoid teaching material that is “divisive,” “negative,” or emotionally distressing. Trump and his allies have described lessons on racism and slavery as “toxic,” even likening such teaching to “child abuse.”

The hypocrisy is rank.

In Idaho, middle school teacher Sarah Inama was ordered in January 2025 to take down a classroom poster that read, “Everyone is welcome here.” That demand was the result of Idaho’s 2021 “divisive concepts” law, which restricts how teachers can discuss race, identity, and inequality in schools. In that environment, a message affirming the lives of all children was recast as subversive indoctrination meant to sow division. Across the country, teachers have been reprimanded for displaying Pride flags, forced out of their jobs for acknowledging systemic racism, or warned against teaching that slavery was wrong, for fear that it might make students uncomfortable.

But describing people being shot “right between the eyes” is comforting? Imagining nuclear annihilation prevents psychological distress? Celebrating bombing campaigns is reassuring?

In this upside-down moral universe, empathy is dangerous, human dignity is controversial, and truth itself is suspect. What is condemned is not harm, but the effort to understand and end it.

And yet, there is resistance.

At first when Sarah Inama was told to take down her classroom poster, she complied. But after a student asked if taking it down meant that not all students were welcome, the meaning of the order became undeniable — and she put the poster back up.

After rehanging it, she wrote to her principal that the request “goes against everything that we work towards and the type of community that we dream to have at our school.”

“We (help students learn) by making them feel safe,” she continued. “We do that by making sure they have food. We do that by building relationships with them. And, most importantly, we do that by making sure that they know that they are all welcome there and we want them here … With that being said, I have put my sign back up.”

In putting the sign back up in her classroom, Inama posed a challenge to us all: Will we insist that students deserve classrooms that tell the truth, nurture their humanity, and equip them to challenge injustice — or will we allow fear and violence to become the curriculum

Jesse Hagopian is a Seattle educator, the director of the Zinn Education Project’s Teaching for Black Lives Campaign, an editor for Rethinking Schools, and the author of the book, Teach Truth: The Struggle for Antiracist Education. You can follow him at IAmAnEducator.com, Instagram, Bluesky or Substack.

May 20, 2026 Posted by | Education, USA | Leave a comment

128 years of US exploitation, degradation of Cuba continues on steroids – Walt Zlotow


Walt Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn IL, 16 May 2026, https://theaimn.net/128-years-of-us-exploitation-degradation-of-cuba-continues-on-steroids/

One must go back to 1898 for the last time the US was not exploiting Cuba and its people to benefit rapacious US capitalism and organized crime. That year the US cooked up fairy tale about Spain blowing up the US Maine, sent to Havana Harbor to intimidate Cuba’s Spanish ruler. The Maine did blow up but from an accidental internal explosion, not a Spanish mine. Those 261 sailors could not to die in vain so President McKinley and his war party blamed Spain in order to declare war, kick Spain out of the Americas and take over Cuba for US exploitation.

But nothing in the previous 126 years compares to the diabolical cruelty, including death, the US has inflicted upon Cuba by President Trump and his bloodthirsty Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

This is not exaggeration. Need a lifesaving operation in Cuba under the Trump, Rubio oil blockade? Faggedaboudit. Much medical care is unavailable in oil starved Cuba when the lights go dark. Food and life sustaining supplies are becoming scares as farmers and merchants cannot get their wares to the people with a transport system largely shut down. Nearly a fifth of Cubans have fled the Trump, Rubio regime change operation.

Trump glories in their death and destruction he’s unleased. “THERE WILL BE NO MORE OIL OR MONEY GOING TO CUBA – ZERO! I strongly suggest they make a deal, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.” Trump is simply expanding in more grotesque terms US policy to degrade Cuba into submission going back to 1960. A secret State Department memo back then under Eisenhower promoted overthrowing Castro thru “a line of action, while adroit and inconspicuous as possible, denies money and supplies to Cuba to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of the Castro government.” Trump simply dropped the “adroit and inconspicuous” fig leaf.

Ironically, the first US embargo in Cuba was good for the Cuban people. In April, 1958, Eisenhower imposed an arms embargo on the Batista regime. The US had been supporting Batista’s murderous rule for 25 years to insure his support of US economic control, both legal and criminal that enriched US capitalists and Mafia enterprises to the detriment of the Cuban people. Eisenhower didn’t have an epiphany to help the Cuban people. He simply saw the inevitable triumph of Castro’s revolution and sought to curry favor with its eventual rulers.

Twenty months later Castro prevailed, Batista fled and Cuba finally ended 62 years of US cruelty and exploitation. Not quite. Within year the US imposed Cuban embargo 2.0 designed not to facilitate the inevitable revolution but to destroy it. Sixty-six years on, with the entire world community except Israel voting year after year in the UN for the US to stop, America’s endless lust to crush the Cuban revolution continues apace. And under the depraved Trump, Rubio oil embargo, it has become a monumental war crime against the 11 million sorrowful Cuban souls.

May 20, 2026 Posted by | politics international, SOUTH AMERICA, USA | Leave a comment

After Offering ‘No Tangible Concessions’ in Iran Peace Talks, Trump Issues Latest Violent Threat

“The only realistic path to a diplomatic breakthrough would require Washington to engage more directly with the structure and substance of the Iranian proposal itself,” said a national security expert.

Julia Conley, May 17, 2026, https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-iran-nuclear-talks

With the economic impact of the war on Iran linked to President Donald Trump’s plummeting approval rating, the president issued his latest threat to destroy the Middle Eastern country Sunday as he demanded negotiators “get moving, FAST” to end the conflict the US and Israel began by choice in February.

“For Iran, the Clock is Ticking,” said the president in a Truth Social post, adding that if a peace deal is not reached soon, “there won’t be anything left of them. TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE!”

Trump rejected Iran’s latest peace proposal last week; the country has reportedly offered significant concessions on its uranium enrichment, but seeks to have separate nuclear talks after achieving peace and reaching a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which the Iranians effectively closed in retaliation for the US-Israeli attacks.

Since launching the conflict, Trump has demanded the dismantling of Iran’s missile arsenal as well as its nuclear program, which Iran has said is not for military purposes, and has called for the country to cut ties with its regional allies.

Iran’s Mehr news agency said Sunday that Trump had offered “no tangible concessions” in his response to the Iranians’ latest proposal.

“The United States,” said the news outlet, “wants to obtain concessions that it failed to obtain during the war, which will lead to an impasse in the negotiations.”

Trump told Fox News in Beijing over the weekend that the Iranians are “crazy, and you know what? Because of that, they cannot have a nuclear weapon,” explaining why he viewed it as “unacceptable” for nuclear talks to take place separately after a peace deal is brokered.

Trump reportedly spoke to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Sunday about the possibility of renewing strikes on Iran, which would break a ceasefire that was reached more than a month ago.

Danny Citrinowicz, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies, said Sunday that “the only realistic path to a diplomatic breakthrough would require Washington to engage more directly with the structure and substance of the Iranian proposal itself.”

“Iran’s priorities remain consistent: ending what it views as economic siege conditions, reopening maritime access and reducing pressure in the Gulf, negotiating an end to the broader conflict, and only afterward addressing the nuclear issue,” said Citrinowicz. “At the present moment, it is difficult to see the Iranian leadership agreeing to any framework that does not meaningfully engage with those core demands

As with Trump’s earlier threats of violence, including one in April in which he declared that Iran’s entire civilization would die, “never to be brought back again,” Iranian officials said the president’s latest comments—which followed his posting of an image of himself on a military ship accompanied by the words, “It was the calm before the storm”—would not be tolerated.

A spokesperson for Iran’s armed forces, Abolfazl Shakarchi, told Mehr that “repeating any folly to compensate for America’s disgrace in the Third Imposed War against Iran will result in nothing but receiving more crushing and severe blows.”

Reporting for Al Jazeera, correspondent Almigdad Alruhaid said that the “kind of language” displayed by Trump on Sunday “is not acceptable here in Tehran. They are projecting defiance rather than [giving] an immediate response to this kind of rhetoric.”
“Behind all of this rhetoric, there is awareness that the diplomatic window right now is narrowing,” said Alruhid.

Meanwhile, US Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) urged Trump to “hurt them more” in order to force a deal, calling on the president to go through with bombing Iran’s energy infrastructure as he’s threatened to in recent months.

“The reason why Trump didn’t do this during the war—despite threatening it—was because he realized Tehran would retaliate and take out the energy infrastructure in the [Gulf Cooperation Council] states,” said Trita Parsi, executive vice president at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. “This would lead to a far worse oil crisis—one rooted in production problems, not just a bottleneck in the Persian Gulf.”

“The global economy would be thrown into a deep recession. Fuel shortages would lead to food shortages worldwide. Trump’s presidency would be destroyed,” he said. “None of this matters to Lindsey. He’ll burn the entire planet as long as he gets his war. Trump’s biggest mistake has been to listen to Lindsey and his allies.”

May 20, 2026 Posted by | Iran, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Pete Hegseth “War Crimes Secretary” Called Out

 May 18, 2026 ScheerPost Staff, https://scheerpost.com/2026/05/18/pete-hegseth-war-crimes-secretary-called-out/

As the Trump administration’s war on Iran spirals deeper into civilian bloodshed and media complicity, activists with CODEPINK are demanding answers that Washington and corporate media seem determined to avoid. In this explosive conversation with ScheerPost, CODEPINK organizing director Danaka Katowicz lays out the movement’s growing campaign to force Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to answer for the bombing of a girls’ school in Minab, Iran — an attack that reportedly killed more than 168 people, most of them children.

But this interview goes far beyond one atrocity. It exposes a collapsing media system where billionaires, mergers, propaganda, AI warfare, and state violence increasingly operate hand-in-hand. From the Pentagon’s alleged use of AI targeting systems to CNN’s responsibility to confront war crimes instead of sanitizing them, Katowicz argues that ordinary people can no longer afford to remain spectators. As Gaza burns, Iran bleeds, and dissent is criminalized, CODEPINK says the answer is not despair — it’s organizing.

“Put Him on the Hot Seat”: CODEPINK Demands Answers for Iran School Bombing

The anti-war group CODEPINK is escalating its campaign against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth after the bombing of a girls’ school in Minab, Iran reportedly killed over 168 civilians — many of them children — during the opening phase of the Trump administration’s war on Iran.

Speaking with ScheerPost, CODEPINK organizing director Danaka Katowicz accused Hegseth and the Pentagon of evading accountability while major media institutions normalize mass civilian death.

According to Katowicz, Congress immediately demanded answers after the strike: Was AI used to select the target? What civilian mitigation procedures existed? Why was a girls’ school bombed in the first place? But instead of transparency, she says the administration stonewalled.

“Hegseth dodged those questions. He never answered them.”

That refusal sparked CODEPINK’s “Put Hegseth on the Hot Seat” campaign — a public push demanding that major outlets use their access to confront the defense secretary directly on-air.

Katowicz blasted the growing consolidation of corporate media, arguing that mergers and billionaire influence are turning news outlets into extensions of state power rather than institutions of accountability.

“The news is not even the news anymore. It’s just propaganda explaining why all these bad things are happening and why it’s actually fine.”

Throughout the interview, the conversation returned repeatedly to the alleged role of AI-assisted warfare. Joshua Scheer noted that similar targeting systems used in Gaza appear to have migrated into the Iran war — systems critics argue remove human judgment from life-and-death decisions.

The result, he argued, has been “war crime on top of war crime.”

Katowicz said CODEPINK’s disruptions inside congressional hearings are designed not only to confront power directly, but to show ordinary people that resistance is still possible.

“People see that power is being challenged in their face. And that means a lot to people.”

The organization says its long-term strategy goes beyond Washington. Through local chapters, labor organizing, coalition work, and direct action, CODEPINK hopes to build a broader anti-war movement capable of challenging what Scheer described as a “billionaire fascist ecosystem” where media, tech, finance, and militarism increasingly operate together.

Katowicz emphasized that activism cannot remain confined to Congress or social media outrage.

“The revolution isn’t just going to happen in D.C.”

The interview also highlighted CODEPINK’s expanding campaigns around Gaza, Palestine solidarity, labor organizing, and demands for the release of detained Palestinian doctor Hussam Abu Safiya.

As public opposition to endless war grows, CODEPINK argues the real battle may now be over whether Americans can still distinguish journalism from propaganda — and whether ordinary people are willing to move from outrage to organized resistance.

CODEPINK is demanding that CNN “put Hegseth on the hot seat”

After Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth refused to answer congressional questions about the bombing of a girls’ school in Minab, Iran that reportedly killed 168 people, most of them children. The campaign accuses both the Pentagon and corporate media of shielding war crimes from public accountability while demanding journalists confront Hegseth directly on-air about civilian deaths, AI targeting systems, and America’s expanding wars.

As the death toll from America’s war on Iran continues to rise, CODEPINK activists are escalating direct confrontations with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, accusing the Trump administration of enabling war crimes while corporate media looks the other way. During a fiery disruption of a congressional hearing, activists denounced Hegseth as a “War Crimes Secretary,” demanding answers for the Minab school massacre, alleged AI-assisted targeting of civilians, and what they describe as a criminal war machine operating with total impunity.

I end with Hegseth’s own words and hypocrisy

“If you’re doing something completely unlawful and ruthless, there is a consequence for that. That’s why the military says it will not follow unlawful orders from the commander-in-chief. There’s a standard, an ethos, a belief that we are above the kinds of actions carried out by our enemies.”

May 20, 2026 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

UAE blames Iran or proxies for strike near nuclear plant, as Trump tells Tehran ‘clock is ticking’

Abu Dhabi denounces ‘dangerous escalation’ as Iran war ceasefire grows more precarious, and US president voices impatience at stalemate

Julian Borger in Jerusalem, 18 May 26, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/17/uae-blames-iran-or-its-proxies-for-drone-strike-fire-near-nuclear-plant

The United Arab Emirates has blamed a fire near its nuclear power plant on a drone launched by Iran or one of its proxies in what the UAE called a “dangerous escalation”.

The fire was just outside the Barakah nuclear plant and caused no injuries or radiation alerts, with the emirate’s nuclear regulator saying there was no radioactive leak or risk to the public.

But it came at an extremely tense moment in the sixth week of a ceasefire in the Iran war, with peace talks stalled and Donald Trump voicing impatience at the deadlock.

“For Iran, the Clock is Ticking, and they better get moving, FAST, or there won’t be anything left of them. TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE!” the US president wrote on his Truth Social site.

According to Axios, Trump met national security advisers on Saturday at his golf course in Virginia and is due to meet his national security team on Tuesday to discuss options.

Trump also spoke to Benjamin Netanyahu before an Israeli security cabinet meeting to discuss Iran, Lebanon and Gaza, amid widespread speculation in Israel that the Iran war will restart in the absence of signs of compromise.

According to state media, the UAE foreign minister, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, held talks with other states in the region, including Saudi Arabia with which it has had a strained relationship recently. Riyadh condemned the attack.

The minister also informed the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, of the details of the drone strike. He told Grossi that his country had the full right to respond to such “terrorist attacks”.


The IAEA said in a social media post that Grossi expressed “grave concern about the incident and says military activity that threatens nuclear safety is unacceptable”.

The UAE is reported to have retaliated for earlier Iranian attacks on its oil infrastructure with airstrikes on Iranian facilities. It has tightened its partnership with Israel over the course of the war and has been the most hawkish of the Gulf states over military action against Iran.

The UAE’s defence ministry said the drone that targeted the Barakah plant was one of three that “entered the country from the western border direction”.

It said the unmanned aircraft had hit “an electrical generator outside the inner perimeter of the Barakah nuclear power plant in the Al Dhafra area”.

“Investigations are ongoing to determine the source of the attacks, and updates will be disclosed upon completion of the investigations,” the ministry added.

Anwar Gargash, an Emirati presidential adviser, made clear that he believed Iran or a regional proxy were the perpetrators.

“The terrorist targeting of the Barakah clean nuclear power plant, whether carried out by the principal perpetrator or through one of its agents, represents a dangerous escalation,” Gargash wrote on X.

Gargash called the incident “a dark scene that violates all international laws and norms”, and accused those responsible of having a disregard for civilian lives.

May 20, 2026 Posted by | Iran, United Arab Emirates, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The Spoiled Prince of Kiev: Zelensky has deceived and ruined his country with Western help

An ex-aide lays bare the corruption, lies and coercion in Ukraine’s leadership – while Western backing keeps the system alive

16 May, 2026 , https://www.rt.com/news/640073-zelensky-ruined-ukraine-west/

Rudyard Kipling, a modern classic of the Western literary canon, was both a champion of British imperialism and too honest not to know its very sordid underpinnings of greed, lies, and sheer selfishness.

That’s why the same man who extolled the “white man’s burden” also wrote ‘The Man Who Would Be King,’ a story of two lowlife, ambitious adventurers who manage to swindle their way to becoming kings as well as rich in a remote country on the fringes of the empire, then at its late-nineteenth-century zenith of global primacy. Until, that is, one of them makes the mistake of messing with the wrong woman, who ends up biting him in public. Seeing him bleed, his subjects realize he is a mere mortal and mercilessly dispense with the two imposters.

Ukraine’s ruler – and de facto king (of the old-fashioned, non-constitutional kind) – Vladimir Zelensky is a social climber, too. In his formative years, his native Krivoy Rog was a provincial post-Soviet rustbelt town with a lively gangster scene, a “bandit city” in his own words. Zelensky is also an expert in make-believe by profession, a cynically profane showman of the ‘give-them-whatever-they-want-as-long-as-it-pays’ variety, the cruder and smuttier the better.

Indeed, Zelensky even has a sidekick, who, as in Kipling’s dark story, has shared in the scheme of power-grabbing and plunder: Andrey Yermak, his former chief of staff and very intimate friend, making headlines (again) for being so corrupt and sinister that he stands out, even in Kiev.

And now Zelensky, the man who, it seems, would be Ukraine’s president forever, has just been bitten in public by a woman. Judging by the fierce, clearly orchestrated reaction of his media propagandists in Ukraine and the fact that the Western mainstream media are largely pretending not to have noticed, he must be bleeding, too.

The woman is his former press secretary Yulia Mendel. And she has been able to draw (metaphorical) blood because Tucker Carlson, American alternative-media heavyweight and conservative dissident from Trumpism, has interviewed her for his show.

That has made it a very public bloodletting indeed. What Mendel has had to say is one thing, her ability to reach breathtaking numbers of Americans and other inhabitants of the West is at least as important and, from Kiev’s point of view, frustrating: Across various platforms, shows of the Tucker Carlson Network (TCN) are watched by, on average, over 55 million viewers, dwarfing, for instance, Fox News (Carlson’s former employer) with its prime time rating of 3.2 million.

Recently, the Israeli-US war against Iran has further undermined public confidence in the mainstream media and boosted TCN. “Explosive growth” in the two first months of the war has produced over 1.5 billion “views across social media and podcast platforms.” Indeed, TCN is on such a roll that Carlson is now rumored to be a contender for the presidency, and he has not ruled out a run.

This is the amplifier for Mendel’s harsh memo to the US and the West. It is hard to think of a bigger one. And what a message she had to deliver.

Consider a few highlights: Speaking, she underlined, as “an insider,” from her own close experience with Zelensky and the inner circle of his regime, Mendel has told us all that she believes Zelensky personally “stands behind many schemes of money laundering” and that he has always remained an “amazing actor” whose image “on camera” is “very different” from his real self.

For instance, while he is posturing as not merely some democrat but a shining epitome of democracy as well as everything else that is good and beautiful, such as rule of law, freedom of speech, civil society, and national unity, his real view, relentlessly repeated behind closed doors, is, as we learn from Mendel, that “Ukraine is not ready for democracy” and “dictatorship is an order,” too.

So much, by the way, for those Zelensky propagandists in Ukraine and the West who habitually smear every critic of his devastating regime as diminishing Ukraine or not trusting ordinary Ukrainians with “agency.” The one really despising his compatriots as too backward to rule themselves and in need of a strong – namely, his – hand, is, it turns out, Vladimir Zelensky. And as Mendel rightly points out, that also means that he does not symbolize or provide unity; he abuses it.

Zelensky’s profound hypocrisy permeates his private life and politics. Mendel reveals, for instance, that he was still going on trips to Crimea – to have fun with friends and drugs – while it was already under Russian control. In December 2019, he privately told Russian President Vladimir Putin that Ukraine would never join NATO. While Zelensky’s public poll ratings are steadily declining, the polls produced for internal use are so bad that even some of his fixers privately admit that he is “unelectable.”

With no respect for the truth, Zelensky’s attitude to reality itself seems broken, even deranged. From her own conversations with him, Mendel reports that Ukraine’s leader believes that “it doesn’t matter what is [actually] happening.” Things, he has argued behind closed doors, become real when they are said often enough by enough propagandists or, as she quotes him, by “thousands of talking heads.” Considering this bizarre outlook, it is revealing and revolting but also somehow, sadly consistent that Zelensky, who is Jewish, has literally demanded “Goebbels”-type “propaganda” from his communications team.


Beyond a ruthless and deliberate regime of lying and manipulation, there also is pressure and compulsion. Again, Mendel’s catalogue of Zelensky’s dictatorial strong-arm methods is depressing and plausible: from threats to perfectly illegal “sanctions” imposed via Zelensky’s personal fiat, to lawfare and process-as-punishment to long and open-ended jail terms to sending critics to the frontline as a punishment to very odd lethal accidents – Zelensky and his regime have, as Mendel puts it, “no limits.” Their rule has established a situation that is “inhuman.”

Mendel is believable. Zelensky regime propagandists, in Ukraine and the West, have, unsurprisingly, smeared her as, in effect, a Russian asset, as reproducing “Russian narratives” and, worst sin of them all, sharing Kiev’s very dirty secrets with the West. Because – this seems to be the underlying logic – the West must share hundreds of billions with Zelensky and his ultra-corrupt cronies, but no one has a right to share the truth about them with the West.

In reality, Mendel’s biography proves that she is what she claims to be: an insider who has had enough. She has had an exemplary “national” career and if she had not broken with Zelensky a few years ago, she would still be part of the eager cadre who once caused scandals for physically shoving away journalists to protect her former boss.

Even in the interview with Tucker Carlson, Mendel has made a point of carefully distinguishing between what she has seen herself and what she knows from – extremely strong – circumstantial evidence, for instance, that Zelensky has a long-standing cocaine habit.

And yet, by now Mendel – who displays no favor at all to Russia – considers Zelensky an evil and the key obstacle to peace for Ukraine. This peace, she warns, is the only alternative to what she calls being “on the verge of extinction.” She means it quite literally: There are far fewer Ukrainians left in the country than official statistics admit, perhaps 25 million, including 11 million impoverished pensioners. The only way to really support Ukraine, Mendel insists, is to “push for peace.”

Yet this is where, unfortunately, Ukraine’s would-be king is different from Kipling’s adventurers. They at least had no support from the empire on the fringe of which they ran their scheme of mass manipulation and self-enrichment. When their subjects lost their illusions, they fell.

Zelensky and his crew, however, still enjoy massive, cynical support from the West, even if it is now Germany and no longer the US that is in the lead. Perhaps Zelensky’s rule and its mistreatment of Ukraine and ordinary Ukrainians can only end when he loses his last Western backers. Until then, Mendel can make them bleed, but Ukrainians alone, it seems, will find it hard to shake them off.

May 20, 2026 Posted by | PERSONAL STORIES, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Epic Interruptus: The Iranian Snare and American Defeat

13 May 2026 Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.net/epic-interruptus-the-iranian-snare-and-american-defeat/

On May 10, Robert Kagan, the high priest of neoconservative thought, the bell ringer for muscular interventionism and general American meddlesomeness, lamented in The Atlantic that the United States had suffered a unique defeat in its efforts to subjugate Iran. The article says much about Kagan’s own identification with the obvious, some feat given the military fancy and fantasy that continues to blot the current Trump administration.

Be that as it may, he finds the Iran War dishing out a defeat to the United States of unique quality, one that “can neither be repaired nor ignored.” No ultimate American triumph could emerge, and nothing would “undo or overcome the harm done” to “return to the status quo ante.” The Strait of Hormuz would not be “open” as it was prior to February 28. Iran’s regional position, far from being blunted, had improved. China and Russia had been strengthened; the US “substantially diminished.” “Far from demonstrating American prowess, as supporters of the war have claimed, the conflict has revealed an America that is unreliable and incapable of finishing what it started.”

This prompting was undoubtedly due to the claim made by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on May 5 in the White House Press Briefing Room that Operation Epic Fury had concluded, though US President Donald Trump, ever keen to keep an iron in the fire, huffed that Iran had to “agree to give what has been agreed to.” (The “what” is always the problem in Trumpland.) Not doing so would result in bombing “at a much higher level and intensity than it was before.” The President had also “paused” Project Freedom, that massive prop of wishful thinking involving the use of the US military to escort commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. The pause – effectively a breezy termination – had been induced, in no small part, by the grumpiness of Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman, worried that adventurism in the Strait would incite yet another round of Iranian attacks on Gulf states. To show his disapproval, the Crown Prince had refused to permit the use of the Prince Sultan Airbase for US operations.

Iran’s airstrikes had also shown far more bite than was initially reported, at least in the Western media stable. Some of this can be put down to the restrictions on the release of satellite imagery supplied by commercial providers Vantor and Planet. Both have been compliant with the Pentagon’s request to either limit, delay or indefinitely withhold the publication of timely imagery covering the region. The Iranians, through state-affiliated news outlets, felt no such restraint.

On May 6, The Washington Post, after examining Iranian satellite imagery, reported that some 228 structures of pieces of equipment at US military sites across the Middle East since February 28 had been damaged and destroyed. Hangars, barracks, fuel depots, aircraft, vital radar, communications and air defence equipment had been struck by Iran’s forces. The dangers posed by Iranian strikes had been so formidable as to force some US bases in the region to relocate personnel out of missile range.

In its analysis, the paper claims to have verified some 109 images, aided by a comparison with lower-resolution imagery obtained from the European Union’s Copernicus satellite system, and any high-resolution images at hand from Planet. The Iranian images also confirmed previously reported damage or destruction inflicted on a number of US military assets: the radomes at Camp Arifjan and Ali al-Salem Air Base in Kuwait and at the 5th Fleet Headquarters; the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defence radars and equipment located at Jordan’s Muwaffaq Salti Air Base and two sites in the United Arab Emirates; a second satellite communications site located at al-Udeid Air Base, and an E-3 Sentry command and control aircraft and a refuelling tanker at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia.

The analysts roped in to examine the images were impressed. Mark Cancian, a former Marine Corps colonel and senior advisor to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), found the strikes to be “precise.” “There are no random craters indicating misses.” William Goodhind of the open-access research project Contested Ground, in addition to noting the destruction of equipment, fuel storage and air base infrastructure, found damage to “soft targets, such as gyms, food halls and accommodation.”

To add stinging insult to burgeoning injury, the defences used to cope with Iranian strikes proved staggeringly draining and disproportionately costly. The CSIS estimates the use of at least 190 THAAD interceptors and 1,060 Patriot interceptors between February 28 and April 8, running down inventories of both at 53% and 43% respectively. And just to improve the mood in Washington, Tehran, according to an analysis by the US intelligence community, retains roughly 75% of its prewar inventories of mobile launchers and roughly 70% of its pre-war missile stockpile. Vague as they are, that’s another objective of Operation Epic Fury dashed.

While the childish pantomime of non-diplomacy continues (Trump rages that the ceasefire with Tehran, given the latest “piece of garbage” of a counter proposal, is on “life support”), Washington is banking on a strangulation policy through yet another project of dubious merit: Economic Fury. “As Iran’s military desperately tries to regroup, Economic Fury will continue to deprive the regime of funding for its weapons programs, terrorist proxies, and nuclear ambitions,” tooted the Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent on May 11. “Treasury will continue to cut the Iranian regime off from the financial networks it uses to carry out terrorist acts and to destabilize the global economy.”

Economic Fury, still in its swaddled infancy, also risks early retirement. Iranian stubbornness and stout resilience continues to trouble analysts in the intelligence community. A CIA analysis circulated this month concluded that Tehran could withstand the US naval blockade for between 90 to 120 days before experiencing dramatic economic deterioration. Iran’s economy may be in a wretched state, but parochial determination has a certain staying power. Bureaucratic bickering, however, often finds its way, and a senior US intelligence official (that could be anyone) has surfaced to counter the claims of the assessment. Genuine, extensive and rapid economic damage is being inflicted. The US remains in the ascendant.

These varied intelligence assessments of decorative astrology cannot escape the dunderheaded reasoning that undergirded the war, along with the failure to appreciate the shocks caused, not merely by Iran’s closure of the Hormuz Strait but its systematic shredding of the US security guarantee for Gulf states. Unlike the fumbling, inventive antics shown prior to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the CIA and allied intelligence services were well aware that a campaign against Iran was freighted with terrible risk. Ensnared and trapped, Trump will find it hard to avoid using the good offices of China’s President Xi Jinping to lean on Beijing’s ally. If so, it is bound to come at an exacting price.

May 20, 2026 Posted by | Iran, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The children who learn war before they learn the world

When a child begins to fear the sky, something fundamental has already been lost

24 April 2026, By Noorudeen Veetykadan. https://globalvoices.org/2026/04/24/the-children-who-learn-war-before-they-learn-the-world/

It was the end of 2023 when images from Gaza began to fill our television screens. I found myself returning to them again and again: the ruins, the sirens, the unbearable stillness of small bodies wrapped in white.

The scale of destruction was immense. But what lingered were the faces of children — some gone, others injured, many too young to understand why their world had collapsed overnight. News reports spoke in numbers — casualties, statistics — but behind those numbers were stories that refused to leave the room even after the television was switched off.

This is no longer a reality confined to conflict zones. In an age of constant connectivity, children across the world are being exposed to war in real time, through screens, conversations and the ambient anxiety of the adults around them. This article argues that such exposure is quietly reshaping childhood, even for those far removed from the battlefield.

I would often sit with my wife, discussing what we had just seen, trying to process a grief that did not belong to us, yet somehow did.

And in all of this, I missed something important.

I have two daughters. My elder one is nearly 15, old enough to understand the language of conflict. My younger one, just six, still lives in a world where questions are simple, and answers are expected to reassure. They were in the room more often than I realized — watching, listening, absorbing.

At first, their reactions were subtle. A question here, a glance there. “Why are they crying?” my younger one once asked, pointing at the screen. I offered an answer that felt safe, something incomplete, something designed to protect. But children do not just hear words; they read faces, tones and silences. What I thought I had softened, they had already understood in their own way.

Then, more recently, the distance between “there” and “here” began to collapse.

As tensions involving the United States, Israel and Iran intensified, the tone of the news shifted. It was no longer just about another place. Reports mentioned the Gulf. Alerts flashed across screens. Words like “missiles” and “drones” entered everyday conversation, not as distant vocabulary, but as possibilities.

Schools closed. The rhythm of daily life paused.

And then came the moment that altered everything: the realization that Qatar, where we live, along with other Gulf countries, could itself be at risk. The headlines I had once consumed with a degree of separation were now unfolding uncomfortably close to home.

I saw the fear before it was spoken.

My elder daughter tried to remain composed, but her questions returned, faster this time, sharper. “Will it happen here?” “Are we safe?” There was no easy way to answer without confronting a truth I myself did not fully know.

My younger one did not ask. She held on.

A sudden sound made her flinch. A notification drew her attention instantly. The sky, once just an open expanse, had become something to watch carefully as if it could change without warning.

It was then I understood what I had failed to see all along.

War does not need to reach your doorstep to enter your home. It arrives quietly, through a screen, through a headline, through conversations not meant for young ears. And by the time it feels real, it has already settled into the minds of children, shaping fears they do not yet have the words to explain.

Research in child psychology has long shown that repeated exposure to violence, whether direct or mediated, can influence how children perceive safety and stability. In today’s 24-hour media environment, where graphic images and breaking alerts are constant, the boundary between distant conflict and personal reality is increasingly blurred. What was once filtered now arrives unmediated, often without the emotional tools needed to process it.

We often measure war in terms of territory, power and political outcomes. But there is another cost, less visible and far more enduring. It is carried in the questions children begin to ask, in the silences they grow into and in the way they start to see the world, not as a place of possibility, but as something uncertain.

Childhood is meant to be a time of discovery — when the sky is just the sky, not something to fear. When loud sounds are moments of excitement, not signals of danger. When the world feels large, but safe.

For many children today, that sense of safety is being quietly eroded.

Some lose it in the direct shadow of conflict. Others lose parts of it from a distance, through repeated exposure, through unanswered questions, through a growing awareness that the world is not as secure as it once seemed.

This raises difficult questions for parents, educators and media institutions alike. How much exposure is necessary for awareness, and when does it become overwhelming? Are we equipping children to understand what they see, or simply expecting them to absorb it? In trying to stay informed, we may be underestimating how deeply these moments settle in young minds.

We cannot shield children from reality forever. Nor should we pretend that the world is untouched by conflict. But somewhere between awareness and exposure, there is a line we are failing to draw, a line between informing and overwhelming, between preparing and frightening.

Because when a child begins to fear the sky, something fundamental has already been lost.

The sky was never meant to be a source of anxiety. It was meant for clouds that change shape, for birds that cross without borders, for stars that arrive quietly at night.

Not for missiles. Not for drones.

And yet, for many children today, the sky is no longer a place of wonder, but a question mark, something they look at not with curiosity, but with caution.

And perhaps that is the most lasting damage of all — not what war destroys in the moment, but what it quietly rewrites for the future.

Because long after the noise fades, these children will remember one thing:

They learned to be afraid of the sky before they ever learned to fully understand the world beneath it.

May 20, 2026 Posted by | PERSONAL STORIES | Leave a comment

On Iran war he opposed then supported, Secretary of State Rubio channeled wrong predecessor – Walt Zlotow.

Don’t expect Marco Rubio to ever apologize for helping bring on what will likely become the most disastrous war in America’s 250 years. Rubio has been a fervent, lifelong promoter of senseless, endless US wars and US exceptionalism. He has always demonstrated the exact opposite of what a decent, peace promoting Secretary of State should be.

13 May 26, Walt Zlotow, https://theaimn.net/on-iran-war-he-opposed-then-supported-secretary-of-state-rubio-channeled-wrong-predecessor/

Marco Rubio is America’s 72nd Secretary of State going back to John Jay in 1789. While serving as the President’s top foreign affairs advisor, overseeing diplomatic missions, managing international relations, promoting human rights, Job One for every Secretary of State is to champion peace, not war.

Predecessors in this prestigious post include Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster and William Jennings Bryan.

What an as astonishing cast of noble Secretaries that Rubio could have chosen from to respond to Trump’s decision to blow up Iran and now possibly the world economy beginning 75 days ago. Reports indicate Rubio argued against the invasion, not on moral grounds it was a criminal war, but on practical grounds it would fail. When Trump brushed asides Rubio’s concerns and pulled the trigger, dutiful Rubio hopped off the Peace Train and grabbed a First Class seat on Trump’s War Train.

Once started, Rubio offered one of the most disingenuous, disgusting rationales for war in American history. Rubio said the US had to attack Iran first. Why? Because we knew Israel was going to attack Iran and if they did, Iran would attack their best buddy America. By attacking first, the US would suffer less casualties. Of course, Rubio omitted that all along the US and Israel planned a one, two sucker punch on Iran while in peace negotiations with them.

Rubio sadly followed up on what till then had been the worst precedent in US history of a Secretary of State abdicating his job responsibility promoting peace to support his President’s rush to criminal war. On February 5, 2003, George W. Bush’ Secretary of State Colin Powell shamelessly told the UN a blizzard of lies Iraq had WMD, intended to use them, and time was running out for the world to stop them. Forty-four days later Bush launched his war that Powell, with his enormous but fake credibility, made possible. The belief was, ‘If Colin Powell says war is necessary, then war it is.’

Alas, Rubio should have gone back 88 years earlier than Powell’s disgrace to channel instead predecessor William Jennings Bryan. On June 9, 1915, President Woodrow Wilson’s Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan resigned. After the British liner Lusitania was sunk May 7, Bryan sent Germany a conciliatory note requesting restraint and high level diplomacy to keep the European war from drawing in the US. Bryan was mindful Germany neither attacked nor threatened America far across its Atlantic mote. Wilson was furious and penned a much stronger note that Bryan refused to sign out of conscience, resigning instead.

Bryan’s principled plea for peace did not prevent Wilson’s disastrous declaration of war on Germany 22 months later. But had Rubio bluntly told Trump he would resign and go public with his opposition to a clearly unwinnable war, Trump might have pulled back from the catastrophe he’s unleashed.

It took two and a half years for Colin Powell to admit his perfidy in enabling America’s horrific Iran war that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and over 5,000 US and allied troops. “I, of course, regret the U.N. speech that I gave, which became the prominent presentation of our case. I never saw evidence to suggest a connection between the September 11, 2001 terror attacks in the United States and the Saddam regime. I’m the one who presented it on behalf of the United States to the world, and (it) will always be a blot on my record. It was painful. It’s painful now.”

Don’t expect Marco Rubio to ever apologize for helping bring on what will likely become the most disastrous war in America’s 250 years. Rubio has been a fervent, lifelong promoter of senseless, endless US wars and US exceptionalism. He has always demonstrated the exact opposite of what a decent, peace promoting Secretary of State should be.

May 20, 2026 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Latvia prime minister resigns over “straying” Ukraine drones

Comment: There’s a lot more to the story than a Baltic chihuahua’s inept defense system. Ukraine has been hitting targets so far from itself that there is no way they could reach their objective, UNLESS, the munitions were flown over (or from?) NATO-controlled airspace.

The Straits Times, Thu, 14 May 2026 , https://www.sott.net/article/506352-Latvia-prime-minister-resigns-over-straying-Ukraine-drones

Latvia’s Prime Minister Evika Silina resigned on May 14 after a key party in her coalition withdrew support in a row over Ukrainian drones that strayed into the Baltic nation.

The drones were on an attack mission across the border in Russia, and Ukraine said they crashed into Latvian territory on May 7 after being electronically diverted by the Russian military.

One caused a fire at a disused oil storage site in eastern Latvia.

Ms Silina on May 10 sacked her Defence Minister Andris Spruds over the affair.

She said Latvia’s anti-drone systems had not been deployed quickly enough to counter the drone intrusions.

Mr Spruds’s sacking prompted nine of his allies, fellow members of the left-wing Progressive party, to quit Ms Silina’s ruling coalition, alleging she had made him a scapegoat.

Mr Spruds formally resigned on May 11 and Ms Salina proposed a military officer as his replacement but the Progressive party rejected him.

Their withdrawal left her government with just 41 seats in the 100-seat Parliament and opposition parties said they would call a vote of confidence just five months out from legislative elections.

In a further blow on May 14, Mr Armands Krauze, Minister for Agriculture, from the Union of Greens and Farmers, was briefly detained as part of ongoing enquiries by anti-corruption body KNAB into state aid to firms in the forestry sector.

Ms Silina, from the Unity party, had been prime minister since September 2023.

Announcing her resignation, she told a press conference: “The most important thing for me is the well-being of Latvians and the security of our country.”

She added: “We are fully aware of the times we are all living in. The brutal war waged by Russia in Ukraine has changed the security situation throughout Europe.”

President Edgars Rinkevics has said he will meet party leaders on May 15 for talks on a new government.

Several Russian and Ukrainian drones have crashed in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

A Ukrainian drone fell in Latvia on March 25.

Ukraine has stepped up attacks on Russian ports and energy facilities in the region in recent months.

The drone intrusions have not caused victims but they have exposed weaknesses in the Latvia’s air defence system.

Following talks with Mr Rinkevics at a summit in Bucharest on May 13, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said he would send experts to Latvia to help with their air defences.

Ukraine would also work with Latvia “to build a multi-layered air defence system against different types of threats”, he said.

Mr Rinkevics said a “long-term” air defence accord would be prepared.

Comment: There’s a lot more to the story than a Baltic chihuahua’s inept defense system. Ukraine has been hitting targets so far from itself that there is no way they could reach their objective, UNLESS, the munitions were flown over (or from?) NATO-controlled airspace.

How 🇱🇻 Latvia and 🇪🇪 Estonia organized the passage of Ukrainian strike drones to the borders of Russia through their airspace

❗️The facts have been established that official closure (restriction) of the airspace over the eastern part of the Latvian and Estonian Republics was organized for the unimpeded flight of Ukrainian UAVs to strike Russia.

🇱🇻In Latvia, the “Aeronautical Information Supplement (AIP SUP 005/2026)” about the establishment of a temporary flight restriction zone EVR444 EVENTIDE has been published. The airspace is closed from 19.02.2026 to 31.12.2026 on the initiative of the Ministry of Defense of Latvia. The boundaries of the zone are from the surface of the earth (GND) to the FL195 flight level (about 5950 meters). The restrictions are in effect daily from 18:00 to 05:00, and in the summer – from 17:00 to 04:00 according to UTC.

🇪🇪In Estonia, a similar notice (AIP SUP 04/2026) about the establishment of the EER2615 zone has been published. According to the document, the closure of the airspace is in effect from 28.03.2026 to 31.12.2026 around the clock (H24 mode) at altitudes from 500 feet above ground level (AGL) to the FL095 flight level.

It is also worth noting that the Estonian side has closed access to previously published notifications on airspace restrictions, which indicates a desire to hide its involvement in providing airspace for the flights of Ukrainian UAVs.

✨According to our experts, these actions are part of a systematic strengthening of airspace control on the eastern border of NATO. The Latvian documents directly confirm that this is a continuation of restrictions along the borders with the Russian Federation and Belarus🇧🇾.

The zone is a long line along the State border of Latvia with Estonia, Russia, Belarus and Lithuania. It includes an internal side buffer of 5 nautical miles and a vertical top buffer of 1000 feet. It works as a single mass without gaps between military and border sections. Flights are prohibited for any non-participating aircraft.

assive attacks on the seaports of the Leningrad region in February and March of this year became possible with the direct participation of Latvia and Estonia

▪️One of the Ukrainian drones, by the way, hit right into the oil refinery in Rezekne – this is 40 km from Russia, when the UAVs attacked the Leningrad region, but in the end, four tanks of the oil depot in Latvia burned.

Due to the direct involvement of the governments of these countries in the military activity of Ukraine against Russia, the negative consequences for the population of the Baltic states will only increase.

Russia has been warning for weeks now that Ukrainian drone attacks had been using Baltic airspace to hit targets in Russia’s northern regions, directly involving European states in the fight directly against Russia. This reportedly crossed redlines in Moscow that other Russian voices claim has led them to decide to take action against military factories in the West, even risking an Article 5 trigger.

The Defense Minister of Latvia resigned after two Ukrainian drones coming from Russia struck oil storage facilities.

The Defense Minister of Ukraine stated that the drones were intentionally diverted from their targets by Russian electronic warfare systems and redirected toward Latvia instead of targets inside Russia.

May 20, 2026 Posted by | politics international, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Reactor to be halted after radioactive steam detected in northeastern Japan nuclear plant

CGTN, 16th May 2026,
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2026-05-16/Japan-s-nuclear-reactor-to-be-halted-after-radioactive-steam-detected-1NbFXtkebzG/p.html

The operator of the Onagawa nuclear power station in Miyagi Prefecture, northeastern Japan, said Friday that it will halt the facility’s No. 2 reactor after radioactive steam was detected within its turbine building.

Tohoku Electric Power Co. said a small amount of radioactive steam was found in the reactor unit’s turbine building at around 5:10 p.m. local time on Friday, adding no radioactive materials had leaked into the environment and that the halt was for inspection purposes.

The company also dismissed any link between the incident and a 6.4-magnitude earthquake that struck northeastern Japan on Friday night.

The No. 2 reactor at the plant had previously been taken offline for a regular inspection and was only brought back online on Monday, with commercial operations scheduled to resume on June 9.

May 20, 2026 Posted by | Japan, safety | Leave a comment