‘We Won’t Die for Israel’: Military Members Seek a Way Out as U.S. War Expands
March 25, 2026, https://scheerpost.com/2026/03/25/we-wont-die-for-israel-military-members-seek-a-way-out-as-u-s-war-expands/
In recent interviews on Clearing the FOG, Margaret Flowers highlights a sharp rise in military personnel seeking conscientious objector status, speaking with Mike Prysner of the Center on Conscience and War and revisiting an earlier conversation with James Branum of the Military Law Task Force on legal alternatives available to active-duty troops. The interviews point to growing concern inside the ranks as the Trump administration deepens confrontation with Iran and expands military deployments across the region.
As the Trump administration deepens U.S. military involvement in the expanding war around Iran—with troop deployments growing, Marine Expeditionary Units moving toward the region, and military families bracing for escalation—another story is unfolding inside the ranks: more service members are actively searching for ways not to participate.
In this episode Prysner who says requests for conscientious objector assistance have surged dramatically since the latest attacks began. According to Prysner, many of those reaching out are not motivated by fear for their own safety, but by refusal to be tied to another war they view as unlawful, catastrophic, and morally indefensible.
The conversation also revisits legal guidance from James Branum of the National Lawyers Guild’s Military Law Task Force, who outlines what active-duty troops can legally do when confronted with potentially unlawful orders, including the right to question commands, seek counsel, and in some cases refuse participation.
Taken together, the interviews reveal something often hidden beneath official war messaging: beneath patriotic rhetoric and televised escalation, dissent is growing within the military itself. For soldiers, sailors, Marines, and their families, the question is no longer abstract—whether this conflict expands further may determine whether conscience becomes a battlefield of its own.
At the center of the interviews is a striking reality rarely acknowledged in official coverage: the resistance is not hypothetical. Prysner says the Center on Conscience and War has seen a more than thousand-percent increase in military personnel seeking information about conscientious objector status since the war expanded, with inquiries coming from across branches and ranks—including combat units, intelligence personnel, officers, reservists and active-duty troops already positioned near the conflict zone. Many, he notes, describe the killing of civilians, bombed hospitals, and the prospect of participating in another open-ended regional war as the breaking point that forced them to confront what military service now demands of them. Branum adds that troops ordered into volatile deployments face serious legal and moral dilemmas, especially when commands intersect with actions many believe may violate both constitutional protections and international law. Together, the interviews expose a deep fracture beneath Washington’s war posture: while political leaders speak in the language of deterrence and force, growing numbers inside the military are quietly asking how far obedience can go before conscience refuses to follow.
What emerges from both conversations is a picture of an administration escalating militarily while confronting uncertainty not only abroad, but within the very institution expected to carry out its orders. As troop movements continue and naval assets expand across the region, Prysner warns that many service members are already discussing refusal, discharge options, and legal avenues long before receiving direct deployment orders—an early sign that this conflict may generate internal resistance faster than previous wars. Branum, meanwhile, underscores that military law still recognizes limits: orders are not automatically lawful simply because they are given, and service members retain rights even inside a rigid command structure. That tension—between command authority and personal conscience—has historically surfaced only after wars become prolonged disasters. In this case, it is appearing at the opening stage, suggesting that memories of Iraq War and War in Afghanistan remain close enough that many inside uniform no longer accept official justifications at face value.
If history offers any lesson, it is that wars begin to unravel politically when dissent crosses the line between civilian protest and internal refusal. The significance of what Prysner and Branum describe is not simply that individual troops are questioning orders, but that a wider moral fracture is becoming visible between official war policy and those expected to enforce it. From legal hotlines to conscientious objector filings, from families contacting advocacy groups to veterans publicly warning against another catastrophic escalation, the infrastructure of refusal is already taking shape before this conflict has fully matured. For the antiwar movement, that matters profoundly: public opposition gains force when it is echoed by those in uniform who understand firsthand what escalation means—not in speeches, but in bodies, cities, and generations marked by war. Whether that dissent remains scattered or grows into something larger may help determine whether another regional catastrophe proceeds unchecked or encounters resistance strong enough to alter its course.
Sure, killing kids is fine, just don’t put American boots on the ground!
LBC has a report titled “Republicans ‘storm out’ of Iran briefing as they claim US ‘war machine’ is trying to put boots on ground” about MAGA lawmakers whining that Trump’s war looks set to turn into a land invasion.
LBC reports:
A number of usually loyal MAGA Republicans left the Iran briefing early — including US congresswoman Nancy Mace, who told the waiting media “we were misled” about the war after walking out of a Pentagon briefing.
Mace, a widely controversial lawmaker, was seen to urge President Trump to remove Lindsey Graham from the Situation Room — the White House’s round-the-clock command centre — as tensions rose.
The lawmaker claims Graham “brags about” advising the president and his aggressive war strategy
It comes as the US is reportedly considering a massive troop deployment that would include ‘infantry and armoured vehicles,’ according to the Wall Street Journal.
Tensions continue to rise from within Trump’s own party amid plans to put troops on the ground in Iran, as peace talks continue amid the constantly changing situation.
I get so tired of all this American hand-wringing about “boots on the ground”. It’s a symptom of a wildly sick dystopia that these people are fine with raining military explosives on a densely populated city but draw the line at putting American troops in the line of fire.
Sure, killing kids is fine, just don’t put boots on the ground!
Sure you can rain hellfire on hospitals, homes and schools for weeks, just make sure you do all your massacring from the sky where nobody can return fire.
Killing is okie dokie, so long as our troops aren’t the ones getting killed
These people have no compassion. No morality. No empathy. American conservatives are constantly wagging their fingers and bloviating puritanically about immorality and degeneracy, but they’re the least moral people in the country. Their positions aren’t driven by care for human life, no matter how hard they try to pretend otherwise. They are driven by blind loyalty to the empire and the groveling adoration of power.
If you only oppose mass military slaughter if it is carried out in a way that puts your own countrymen at risk, that makes you a piece of shit.
People should oppose the evil wars inflicted by their government and its allies because the wars are evil, not because they might impact someone you know. The people being murdered in Iran are no less human than Americans, and their lives don’t matter any less.
I want to live in a healthy world where self-evident statements like this don’t even need to be made. Instead I live in a world where the war on Iran is barely receiving any meaningful domestic opposition from the populations of the primary aggressor nations.
Pentagon Whistleblower Criticizes “Bloodthirst” of Iran War, Says Hegseth Is Enabling War Crimes
26 Mar 2026
As the United States mobilizes thousands more troops for deployment to the Middle East, we speak with retired U.S. Air Force Master Sergeant Wes Bryant, who criticizes the “bloodthirst” of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran. Bryant led the Pentagon office for civilian harm assessment from 2024 to 2025, before the unit was dissolved under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
The “wholly illegal war” has been “carried out recklessly from the start and with little regard for the innocent,” Bryant tells Democracy Now! “Pete Hegseth has already directed the committing of war crimes. And unfortunately, our senior military leadership is bending the knee and carrying out whatever he tells them to do.”
Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour that airs on over 1,500 TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. Watch our livestream at democracynow.org Mondays to Fridays 8-9 a.m. ET.
Secretive tech mogul Peter Thiel brings his Antichrist lectures to the Vatican’s doorstep | DW News
The American entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel has traveled to Rome to host a closed-door lecture series on the Antichrist, mixing theology with technology and politics. The event, held near Vatican City, drew criticism from Catholic figures and institutions, many of whom rejected his ideas as extreme. The visit has underscored tensions between his techno-libertarian worldview and the Church’s more cautious stance on AI and global governance. So what’s behind Thiel’s fascination with the antichrist? With analysis from Fritz Espenlaub, host of the six-part Deutschlandfunk podcast series Die Peter Thiel Story, and Vatican expert Massimo Faggioli from Trinity College Dublin.
Me and the Pope – but is he the Antichrist?
19 March 2026 Noel Wauchope, https://theaimn.net/me-and-the-pope-but-is-he-the-antichrist/#google_vignette
Following my recovery from Catholicism, I never imagined that I would become a fan of the Pope. Perish the thought that I would ever sink back into believing those weird dogmas, and agreeing to Catholicism’s punishing rules about sexuality and abortion, and so forth.
Well, I haven’t sunk back that far – yet, but I just have to applaud Pope Leo. Under the guidance of Pope Leo, Catholic spokesmen have acknowledged that artificial intelligence is a useful tool, but warn against AI “overloading us with information to the point of paralysis.” Pope Leo XIV has given a tactful, but unmistakable warning against AI taking over control of our thinking. He recently advised the priests of Rome to use “their brains more” rather than AI when preparing homilies.
I feel that Leo’s predecessor, Pope Francis, set the course for this trend, in the condemnation of military attack as a way to resolve conflicts, and urging for human discussion and negotiation.
All good – you think? But is there something sinister about Pope Leo’s attitude to AI? Well the squillionaire Peter Thiel thinks so. He’s just given a series of lectures on Pope Leo’s doorstep in Rome. A critique of Peter Thiel’s ideas has been supplied, beautifully explained, in Australian Independent Media by Ricky Pann, also supplying this video:
It’s too much of a coincidence, that Mr Thiel has decided to make Rome the centre of his lecturing activities. The Pope has a huge worldwide influence, and his views on artificial intelligence have an impressive forcefulness and clarity. It’s pretty obvious that Thiel finds this a threat to the technological empire that he leads. And the Church recognises this – ‘Agent of chaos’ Peter Thiel is lecturing on the Antichrist at the Vatican’s doorstep.
You didn’t know that the technological geniuses who run our world can be not only so very scientifically knowledgeable, but also extremely religious. Scarily religious – I think. Thiel predicts a possible Caesar-Papist fusion, in which a tyrant – the Antichrist, joins up with government, in a sort of anti-science domination of the world. Thiel doesn’t actually see Pope Leo as the Antichrist (the Antichrist has to be young), but certainly worries about Pope Leo’s teachings.
Pope Leo is the first Pope with a formal degree in mathematics, and has called on mathematicians to be ”prophets of hope” and to integrate ethical responsibility into their technological advancements, particularly regarding artificial intelligence.
Oh dear, that’s very persuasive. Is Pope Leo indeed the Antichrist, the supporter of the facilitator of the coming Antichrist. Or is Peter Thiel a dangerous nutter?
The Software Upgrade Australia Didn’t Need.
18 March 2026 AIMN Editorial, By Ricky Pann https://theaimn.net/the-software-upgrade-australia-didnt-need/
Palantir and the Digital Dictator’s Operating System
Australia is undergoing a system update. It didn’t pass through a referendum, nor was it meaningfully debated in Parliament. Arriving quietly under the guise of maintenance and safety, Palantir Technologies has embedded itself into the central nervous system of Australia’s financial and intelligence apparatus. Through AUSTRAC and the Fintel Alliance, data from banks, law enforcement, and government agencies are now integrated into a single “God view”. The Australian Government is in fact investing in Palantir through stocks held by our Future Fund.
An Upgrade Without an Uninstall
Palantir represents a new phase in Silicon Valley’s evolution, a shift from consumer platforms to sovereign infrastructure. From apps designed to distract us to systems designed to govern us.
Palantir’s software deployment in Australia comes ahead of a coordinated lobbying push to expand adoption of its systems, positioning them to become a de facto operating system for governments globally through sheer market dominance.
Australia is making an unspoken admission: that social democracy is now seen as too slow and inefficient for an AI-driven world, where speed is quietly replacing human judgment. This is the great deception of hasty AI adoption.
These are the quiet admissions of a society steered by populist fear: the myth that productivity driven growth is limitless, and the delusion that automating human empathy will not edge us toward autocracy.
So where do we stop?
Do we outsource judgment.
Do we automate trust.
Do we accept a black box view of reality in exchange for speed.
The result is a feedback loop. Data feeds the system. The system reshapes perception. Perception justifies more data. Slowly, the world begins to look exactly as the software expects it to.
There’s a familiar feeling after a software update.
Nothing looks different.
The icons are where you left them.
The system boots. The coffee still tastes the same.
But something subtle has shifted.
Menus rearranged.
Permissions altered.
A few options you used to have simply evaporated.
We’re expected to accept a system that doesn’t reason, doesn’t ask permission, operates without consent, and collapses the complexity of human context, nuance, and lived experience into binary outcomes.
No announcement. No apology. Just a new normal.
The quiet inversion Orwell warned about: not brute force, but soft machinery. Not the scream, but the hum.
A world where seeing everything replaces understanding anything, where speed outranks judgment, and probability passes for truth.
The system doesn’t need to lie.
It just decides what is perceived as real.
Palantir isn’t a surveillance scandal. It’s a design choice.
Who’s Watching the Watchers?
One day, sitting on a bench, watching light move through trees, you realise something small but irreversible.
You’re no longer being seen by people.
You’re being interpreted by infrastructure.
That’s not a crisis moment.
It’s an installation moment.
And installations, once embedded deeply enough, rarely come with an uninstall option.
Australia didn’t choose authoritarianism.
It chose efficiency
We didn’t suspend democracy.
We quietly routed around it.
You don’t lose freedom all at once. You outsource it, piece by piece, to systems that promise to manage burden for us.
The pitch is seductive to politicians and bureaucrats: efficiency, seamless integration, prevention over response. But this isn’t a routine upgrade. It’s a Trojan Horse, quietly ushering in a new era of global corporatocracy.
Palantir does not merely process data; it installs a proprietary “ontology” with a map of clusters of a calculated reality that dictates to a government what is considered relevant or risky.
It replaces the presumption of innocence with algorithmic probability, shifting justice from what you did to what you might do. Once a sovereign nation relies on such a system, it no longer acts as a customer but as a dependent, outsourcing responsibility and accountability.
Authors note: I don’t mean to be nasty but…
I’m not in the habit of playing the man/woman/person instead of the ball but, this is the age of disruption in a period of brazen populism that rewards narcissism.
People like Trump, Musk, Altman, Karp and Thiel routinely make statements that are disconcerting, extreme, misleading, and at times plainly unhinged.
They face little consequence because wealth and power insulate them, reinforcing the belief that billionaire status equates to insight – despite being far removed from the lived reality of the people most affected by the chaos caused by the systems they shape.
Buyer Beware: To understand the creeping authoritarianism we as Australians just installed, we must look at the radically unhinged ideologies of the architects who designed it.
Peter Thiel: The Sovereign Dream
Founder Peter Thiel has been unusually candid about his beliefs. He has stated that he no longer believes freedom and democracy are compatible.
His worldview, influenced by René Girard’s theory of mimetic conflict, treats human society as inherently unstable, something to be managed, contained, and overseen by a competent elite.
Thiel’s Zero to One philosophy celebrates monopolies. Competition, he argues, is wasteful. Governance by consensus is inefficient. The future belongs to singular systems operated by those smart enough to bypass friction.
This worldview is not theoretical. Thiel is now a New Zealand citizen and has publicly acknowledged preparing for large scale civilisational disruption.
He owns property on New Zealand’s South Island, widely reported as part of a network of fortified survival infrastructure intended to function during a catastrophic global event, often described in Silicon Valley as an H2 scenario, a hard reset moment involving systemic collapse.
This may sound like a dramatic interpretation of his intention however, considering the dots we are joining, Palantir is the practical expression of this thinking.
Its a monopoly on state intelligence designed to operate beyond the slow checks and balances of democratic process, resilient not just to crime or terrorism, but to political instability itself.
This is mostly true for all disruptive big tech firms. They grow and evolve so fast that the consequential fallout of the technology lags years behind legislation. They operate in the wild west at the expense of law, privacy, social cohesion, mental health, criminality and human rights till the sheriff arrives.
Alex Karp: The Dialectical Justifier
CEO Alex Karp presents differently. He speaks the language of philosophy, progress, and reluctant necessity. He frames Palantir through a dialectical lens, civil liberties on one side, a dangerous world on the other, resolved by a system powerful enough to neutralise chaos.
Alex Karp acts as the “dialectical justifier, using Hegelian philosophy to reframe total mass surveillance and the reduction of citizens to managed variables as a necessary, moral “synthesis” between civil liberties and global chaos.
In this framing, surveillance is not abuse but compromise.
Dominance becomes protection.
Efficiency becomes morality.
Karp has acknowledged that bad times are very good for Palantir. The company is built for crisis. It thrives on instability, on moments when societies are willing to trade uncertainty for control.
The contradiction is hard to miss. In claiming to prevent fascism by enforcing order, the system quietly adopts fascism’s core mechanism, total visibility, preemptive control, and the reduction of citizens to managed statistical variables.
It is not win lose.
It is domination.
It is founder Peter Thiel who pushes this idea of world domination into the realm of absolute madness.
Thiel delivered a series of private, unhinged lectures titled “The Antichrist”. Using cobbled-together 1st-century doomsday theology and pop-culture manga like One Piece, he attempted to frame himself and his fellow technocrats as heroic rebels holding back a demonic, stagnant global state.
If you strip away this ridiculous theatrical charade, you don’t find a philosopher. You find the Nero of Silicon Valley, a wanna be digital dictator actively engineering the end of inconvenient democracy.
Here is the actual plumbing behind the smoke and mirrors:
A: The Hypocrisy of the “Anti-Satanist” Thiel preaches that global governance and regulation are the “Antichrist” of our era. Yet, his primary engine of wealth, Palantir, is the ultimate weapon of the administrative state.
Palantir provides the data-mining backbone for ICE, the Pentagon, and global police forces. He decries the global surveillance state while acting as Big Brother’s lead software engineer.
He isn’t fighting the system as a small government libertarian; he just wants the monopoly on its operating system.
B: The Untruths of “Stagnation” In his lectures, Thiel claims the world is trapped in scientific “stagnation,” literally labelling anyone who advocates for climate change mitigation, environmental survival, or AI safety guardrails as a “Luddite” and a “legionnaire of the Antichrist”.
This is a blatant untruth used to mask regulatory capture. He doesn’t care about stagnation; he simply demands a world where his tech monopolies can operate without the friction of human empathy, environmental protection, or legal boundaries.
C: The Puppeteer Behind the Chaos Thiel presents a false binary choice between total “Armageddon” and a stagnant global state.
But he is not a prophet warning us of the fire; he is the arsonist selling the fire extinguisher.
Operating through dark money donor networks, Thiel is the primary financial engine behind figures like J.D. Vance and organisations such as the Heritage Foundation – the architects of the Project 2025 blueprint.
He is one of the chief puppeteers behind the Trump-era chaos. Thiel actively funds anti-establishment disruption to dismantle regulatory frameworks, intentionally manufacturing the very societal chaos he claims only Palantir’s mass surveillance can manage.
D: The Delusion of Superiority and Human evolution Driven by René Girard’s “Mimetic Theory,” Thiel views the general public as a mindless, moronic mob that must be controlled by elites like him.
Embracing the delusion of the Sovereign Individual, Thiel has no intention of fixing the democratic systems he helps break. Instead, he is hoarding fortified doomsday bunkers in New Zealand, actively preparing for an “H2 scenario” heralding a catastrophic, systemic global collapse.
This deep disregard for humanity culminates in an obsession with redesigning human evolution itself. Thiel treats human limitation and death as defects to be solved, pouring massive investments into transhumanism, cryonics, and young blood transfusions.
His endgame is a complete evolutionary split: engineering a future where the billionaire class achieves digital eternity as a sovereign, immortal species, leaving the masses to burn on an unregulated, collapsing planet.
This may be hard to grasp but thats the type of people Australia has entrusted their government data to.
The Verdict
Australia didn’t choose authoritarianism; it chose efficiency. We are quietly outsourcing our reality to an unaccountable technocracy.
Thiel’s lectures aren’t a warning about a coming digital dictator; they are a job application for the position.
He is the man who sells you the matches, then offers to build you a fireproof bunker for the price of your freedom.
Palantir isn’t just software. It is an installation moment. And installations this deep rarely come with an uninstall option.
Cardinals McElroy and Cupich denounce Iran war: ‘War now has become a spectator sport.’
“Our government is treating the suffering of the Iranian people as a backdrop for our own entertainment,”
by Edward DesciakMarch 9, 2026, https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/dispatches/2026/03/09/cardinal-mcelroy-cupich-iran-war/?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Cardinals%20McElroy%20and%20Cupich%20denounce%20Iran%20war%3A%20%20War%20now%20has%20become%20a%20spectator%20sport&utm_campaign=Daily%203%209%2026
Following the United States and Israel’s overnight missile barrage of Iran on Feb. 28 and the widening war across the Middle East, a number of U.S. bishops have spoken out in opposition to the war.
They underscored an urgent need for peace and a return to diplomacy, denounced as unjust American and Israeli military aggression and expressed deep concern for the millions in the region affected by the armed conflict.
“At this present moment, the U.S. decision to go to war against Iran fails to meet the just war threshold for a morally legitimate war,” Cardinal Robert McElroy of the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., said.
In an interview with the Catholic Standard on March 9, he explained that the U.S. offensive operations failed to meet at least three criteria of just war theory—the Catholic framework for evaluating the morality of military action—including the requirements for just cause, right intention and clarity that “the benefits of this war will outweigh the harm which will be done,” made impossible by the unpredictability of the region
Cardinal McElroy said: “Almost everyone rightly believes that the Khamenei regime has been for decades a brutal and repressive government that has spread terrorism throughout the world and should be replaced. But there is immense concern that this war will spiral out of control and embroil the United States in ever greater depth.”
The cardinal, who has also voiced opposition to the Trump administration’s mass deportation policy, mentioned particular concern for the military families he has spoken with who are worried about their loved ones’ safety.
“We must all work together to forbid this expansionism to lead us into an ongoing morass in Iran,” he said, expressing his “deepest concern” for the “deterioration of moral norms” in the United States and the world, signified by the growing willingness to turn to preventative war over diplomacy as a legitimate means of foreign policy.
Cardinal McElroy’s responses echoed comments from Cardinal Blase Cupich of the Archdiocese of Chicago, who criticized the war and the Trump administration’s mix of militarism and entertainment in a statement on March 7.
Cardinal Cupich cited a post from the official White House X account captioned “JUSTICE THE AMERICAN WAY” that spliced clips from popular action movies, cartoons and TV shows “with actual strike footage from their war on Iran.”
It was one of many edits the White House has posted over the last few days in which the account has similarly spliced together video footage of the war with NFL and MLB highlights and video game references.
“A real war with real death and real suffering being treated like it’s a video game—it’s sickening,” Cardinal Cupich said. “This horrifying portrayal demonstrates that we now live in an era when the distance between the battlefield and the living room has been drastically reduced.”
He noted that the social media post dishonored the six U.S. soldiers who had been killed at that point during the war (the death of another service member was confirmed on March 8) as well as the hundreds of others who have died across the Middle East, “including the scores of children who made the fatal mistake of going to school” the day a U.S. missile struck a naval base next to an elementary school in Iran, killing 175 people.
“The moral crisis we are facing is not just a matter of the war itself, but also how we the observers, view violence, for war now has become a spectator sport or strategy game,” Cardinal Cupich wrote, referencing a particularly macabre scandal involving the popular prediction market site Kalshi, where Americans can now gamble on matters of life and death. The company is the respondent in a $54 million class action lawsuit after it declined to pay out wagers on whether Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei would be ousted by March 1, citing a “death carveout.”
Cardinal Cupich also urged the American people not to “become addicted to the ‘spectacle’ of explosions.”
“Our government is treating the suffering of the Iranian people as a backdrop for our own entertainment,” he wrote, “as if it’s just another piece of content to be swiped through while we’re waiting in line at the grocery store.”
“I know that the American people are better than this. We have the good sense to know that what is happening is not entertainment but war, and that Iran is a nation of people, not a video game others play to entertain us,” he concluded.
The cardinals joined the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Archbishop Paul Coakley, who followed Pope Leo XIV’s lead and released a statement on March 1 condemning the hostilities: “We ask for a halt to the spiral of violence, and a return to multilateral diplomatic engagement that seeks to uphold the ‘well-being of peoples, who yearn for peaceful existence founded on justice.’”
Archbishop Coakley added: “I invite Catholics and all people of goodwill to continue our ardent prayers for peace in the Middle East, for the safety of our troops and the innocent, that leaders may seek dialogue over destruction, and pursue the common good over the tragedy of war.”
The Archdiocese of New York’s new archbishop, Ronald Hicks, also commented on the Iran crisis in a brief interview for 1010 WINS on March 5, calling for prayers and diplomacy. “We have to give some special prayers for our men and women in uniform and pray for their protection, too, and everyone involved,” he said. “It is absolutely heartbreaking.”
A Catholic guide to understanding the war with Iran
The primary international law that seems to have been violated by the United States and Israel is the U.N. Charter’s prohibition of the use of force except in self-defense. The United States, whose diplomats were among the founders of the United Nations just after the horrorshow of World War II, is a signatory to the U.N. Charter and presumably willingly governed by its prohibitions against wars of aggression or choice.
by Kevin Clarke, America, March 6, 2026
“…………………………… First of all, what do we call this thing that the United States and Israel have begun, which has so far cost more than 1,000 lives in Iran and 12 in Israel and taken the lives of six U.S. service members? In his declaration announcing the attack, Mr. Trump described the joint Israeli/U.S. air campaign as “major combat operations in Iran.”
Since the strikes began, members of Congress who support that “major combat operation” have struggled to classify it, reluctant to refer to it as a war, perhaps attempting to avoid the delicate problem of constitutional limits on the executive to engage in war-making. The framers of the American Constitution, concerned about the possibility of a renegade, unbound executive abusing this gravest authority, reserved that power to Congress under Article I, Section 8, Clause 11. You can look it up.
But like Congresses before them that demurred as former presidents began a “police action” in Korea, trudged deeper into the big muddy of the Vietnam War or cheerfully pronounced “mission accomplished” as the epic misadventure in Iraq unraveled, the current U.S. Congress has preferred to leave the authority to engage in this latest war (and perhaps ultimately the blame for it) to the Trump administration.
Some members of Congress have settled on “significant military campaign” to describe the conflict, too akin to the Putin-ish “special military operation” to my ears. Others argue that the attacks on Iran can’t be called a war until U.S. boots are on the ground—something not ruled out by the White House.
But I say if it looks like a war, bombs like a war, takes the lives of combatant and noncombatant alike like a war, it’s probably a war.
International humanitarian law, 19th- and 20th-century conventions and agreements meant to temper state tensions that lead to conflict as well as the behavior of warring parties, is likely to be further undermined by this new war. It may seem absurd to seek moral limitations on conduct in something as barbaric as war-making, but I.H.L. had notable practical successes over time in terms of the treatment of prisoners of war and the protection of noncombatants. In recent years it has included conventions abolishing land mines and chemical and biological weapons.
The primary international law that seems to have been violated by the United States and Israel is the U.N. Charter’s prohibition of the use of force except in self-defense. The United States, whose diplomats were among the founders of the United Nations just after the horrorshow of World War II, is a signatory to the U.N. Charter and presumably willingly governed by its prohibitions against wars of aggression or choice.
In the past, the United States has turned to the United Nations to provide a veneer of legitimate authority to its military actions in Korea, during the Gulf War, various Iraq incursions and other military campaigns in Kosovo, Haiti, Libya and Syria. The Trump administration this time did not bother to seek U.N. cover for its attack on Iran, extending its disdain for the United Nations to perhaps this ultimate conclusion. But U.N. officials should not feel especially slighted since the president similarly did not bother to seek an authorization from the U.S. Congress.
Self-proclaimed Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has made a point of mocking the niceties of international law as the United States continues an illegal campaign to kill alleged drug smugglers across the Caribbean Sea. He has, with alarming gusto, asserted that U.S. forces, or warriors as he prefers to call service members, will not be limited by international law or “woke” rules of engagement; they will instead be focused on victory, whatever the cost. He appears to be a man of his word in this regard.
A New York Times analysis points to U.S. forces as the likely author of a missile strike on an elementary school that claimed 175 lives, mostly schoolgirls, on Feb. 28. The U.S. military has so far not confirmed its role in the strike nor apologized for its gruesome outcome.
A Just War or just more war?
The church’s just war tradition has been challenged by contemporary theologians as insufficient and outdated, yet it remains a worthy filter through which to judge the moral defensibility of a turn to war-making. Jus ad bellum is the church’s tradition of moral instruction meant to guide discernment before making the decisions to begin an armed conflict. Jus in bello is the church tradition that governs behavior during armed conflict.
According to just war teaching, conflict can only be joined as an act of self-defense or in defense of an ally, though it may be engaged to protect the vulnerable or respond to a grave threat. Intention in choosing armed conflict cannot be darkened by a desire for vengeance or retribution but focused on preventing a greater evil and the restoration of peace.
War-making must be a last resort, all peaceful avenues of resolution having been exhausted. The use of force must be proportional, that is, the suffering it prevents must be greater than the misery it is likely to create. The conflict cannot be the cause of more disorder and evil than those it seeks to address. In conflict, belligerents must discriminate between combatant and noncombatant, taking all measures to protect the latter.
The administration seems to have ignored or violated a number of these preconditions and prohibitions in its decision to go to war with Iran………………………………………………………………………………….https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/weekly-dispatch/2026/03/06/iran-israel-united-states-catholic-just-war/?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=A%20Catholic%20guide%20to%20understanding%20the%20war%20with%20Iran%E2%80%8B&utm_campaign=Daily%203%206%2026
Good grief…Jesus freaks taking over military indoctrination
Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn IL, 6 Mar 26.
As a non-theist I both respect freedom of religion and demand separation of church and state.
Most violations of the latter concern relatively minor infractions such as school prayer or posting the 10 Commandments in the public square.
Never in my life could I imagine our government promoting America’s grotesque, criminal war on Iran by telling military personnel in all the services that this war is God’s plan to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth,”
This was not one-off insanity by a rogue military leader. The
Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) reports over 100 complaints from 30 military installations about their commanders’ instructions. One NCO complained their commander “urged us to tell our troop this was all part of God’s divine plan and supported it with numerous citations from the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ.”
While Christian nationalism has simmered on the back burner of the military for decades, under fanatical Christian Nationalist and War Secretary Pete Hegseth, it’s now official US military policy. Hegseth is egged on by irreligious President Trump, who cynically uses Christian nationalism to justify his warfare in the Middle East on behalf of Israel.
You do not have to be a non-theist to oppose this religious madness Trump and Hegseth infect our military with to promote endless war in the name of God. You just have to be a decent, morally centered person.
The US War Machine Is Run By Deranged Armageddon Cultists
Caitlin Johnstone, Mar 06, 2026, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-us-war-machine-is-run-by-deranged?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=189993154&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth gave one of his signature “I don’t have a small penis” tirades at the Pentagon on Wednesday, ranting and raving about the big, powerful, masculine war machinery that’s currently raining death and destruction upon the people of Iran.
“We will fly all day, all night, day and night finding, fixing and finishing the missiles and defense industrial base of the Iranian military, finding and fixing their leaders and their military leaders, flying over Tehran, flying over Iran, flying over their capital, flying over the IRGC,
Iranian leaders looking up and seeing only US and Israeli air power every minute of every day until we decide it’s over,” Hegseth bloviated, saying there will be “B-2s, B-52s, B-1s, Predator drones, fighters controlling the skies, picking targets, death and destruction from the sky all day long.”
“This was never meant to be a fair fight, and it is not a fair fight. We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be,” the War Secretary spouted.
This would be the same Pete Hegseth who was mentioned in a recent article by Jonathan Larsen titled “U.S. Troops Were Told Iran War Is for ‘Armageddon,’ Return of Jesus”, which reports that US military commanders are telling American soldiers that they are on a mission from God to fulfill a biblical prophecy and bring about the end of the world.
“Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has enshrined evangelical Christianity at the uppermost levels of the U.S. military, airing monthly prayer meetings throughout the Pentagon,” Larsen reports, saying that “Last year, the Pentagon confirmed to me that Hegseth attends a weekly White House Bible study. It’s led by a preacher who says God commands America to support Israel.”
Larsen reports that the Military Religious Freedom Foundation has been inundated with complaints from every branch of the US military that troops are being told by their leaders that President Trump has been “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth,” and similar statements.
Then you’ve got House Speaker Mike Johnson spouting religious war rhetoric, claiming Iranians have been led to evil by a “misguided religion”.
“The largest state sponsor of terrorism, Iran and its proxies, have killed more Americans than any other terrorist regime on Earth,” said Johnson on Wednesday. “They are dedicated to it. They have been, and they say the quiet parts out loud. They wanted to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth, and they’d like to take us out as well. We’re the great Satan in their analogy and their misguided religion.”
So as if we didn’t have enough problems to deal with, it turns out the world is ruled by a nuclear-armed Armageddon cult.
The US empire is the most evil, destructive and dangerous power structure on this planet. It is operated by psychopaths and guided by demented religious zealotry. These freaks wouldn’t be believable as villains in a children’s cartoon show.
These are the people claiming to have the moral authority to decide who should be the leader of a sovereign nation on the other side of the planet. These are the powerful individuals whose choices are determining the path our species will take into the future.
They are everything they accuse Iran of being. They are dangerous religious fanatics. They cannot be trusted with nuclear weapons. They are the tyrants. They are the monsters.
This is unsustainable. These guys gotta go. The US empire must fall. Humanity depends on it.
U.S. Military Leaders Tell Troops Trump Is Waging Iran War To Bring Forth Second Coming Of Jesus
Trump has been “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.”
Troops allege they’re being brainwashed with eschatological propaganda of “Judeo-Christian” design.
blueapples, DDGeopolitics Substack, Mar 05, 2026
As the Trump administration continues to grapple with the fallout from the betrayal of its core campaign promise to abandon the cycle of endless wars in the Middle East that have marred U.S. history since the dawn of the new millennium, the American public isn’t the only target of the barrage of propaganda it has unleashed in a hapless attempt to save face. The administration has undertaken the same tactics with the hopes of brainwashing its military in order to build support for Trump’s war in Iran. Instead of political rhetoric, the propaganda aimed at U.S. troops is rooted in a darker Messianic message that underscores the ulterior motives driving the conflict.
According to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (”MRFF”), a non-profit civil rights watchdog aimed at protecting the religious liberties of enlisted personnel, U.S. military commanders are accused of telling troops that Trump’s war in Iran is designed to be the apocalyptic catalyst that brings forth the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. According to the MRFF, it has received over 100 complaints from troops across 40 different units spanning 30 different military sites making this accusation. One complaint from a non-commissioned officer filed with the MRFF distilled the nature of these allegations by detailing how their combat-unit commander claimed that Trump has been “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.” The complaint goes on to read that “He [the commander] urged us to tell our troops that this was ‘all part of God’s divine plan,’ and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ.”
When confronted with the volume of complaints filed with the MRFF by U.S. military personnel, a White House official denied the accusation that commanders were invoking any end times prophecies to cultivate support for Operation Epic Fury. Instead, the White House official responded by reiterating the objectives the Trump administration has put forward: destroying Iran’s ballistic missile program, its munitions industry, and its navy. Pentagon officials did not respond to requests for comment regarding the complaints filed with the MRFF.
………………………………….. The eschatological narrative U.S. commanders are accused of conditioning troops with in complaints made to the MRFF follows a troubling tone instilled by senior officials of the Department of Defense. No official has been more vocal with this rhetoric than Secretary of Defense Hegseth, who has long echoed the views of conservative theologian Douglas Wilson in advocating for the restoration of guiding principles rooted in Christianity over U.S. governance and society.
However, like most members of the Trump administration, Hegseth’s version of Christianity is perverted by the contradictory belief in “Judeo-Christianity.” This corruption of Hegseth’s “Christian” worldview is evidence from remarks he made in 2018, when speaking during the Arutz Sheva conference at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. During his speech, Hegseth categorized the decision of the first Trump administration to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel as a miracle. Hegseth then proclaimed that “there’s no reason why the miracle of the re-establishment of the temple on the Temple Mount is not possible,” going on to proclaim that “a step in that process, a step in every process, is the recognition that facts and activities on the ground truly matter.” Years later after being appointed Secretary of Defense in the second Trump Administration, Hegseth now appears to be manifesting that vision by leading the U.S. assault on Iran.
Christian leaders aligned with the Trump administration have also amplified the message that war with Iran is a sign of the coming Apocalypse in an effort to cultivate support for the conflict…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
While remarks from Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Senator Mark Warner illustrate the Israel-driven interests behind entering into war with Iran, the speech made by Secretary Hegseth in 2018 reveals a deeper motive that goes far beyond the political realm, revealing the esoteric forces ultimately shaping it to do their bidding. The remarks made by Hegseth in 2018 center on the sacred tenet of the building of the Third Temple at the core of Jewish eschatology. Moreover, they highlight how the version of “Christian” nationalism shamelessly espoused by members of the Trump administration like him and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee is nothing more than a vehicle to further instill Zionism as the driving force behind U.S. policymaking. The complaints filed with the MRFF reveal how deeply that influence has corrupted the Trump administration, erasing any doubt that its decision to wage war on Iran is not a religious mission anointed by any Christian concept of God. Instead, it is one being done at the behest of its masters in Israel, who, as its actions show, the Trump administration has come to revere more than Christ. https://ddgeopolitics.substack.com/p/us-military-leaders-tell-troops-trump?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1769298&post_id=189851466&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
0
Iran Is Morally Superior To The United States
| Caitlin Johnstone, Mar 4 |
| Iran is better than the United States. The United States is worse than Iran. This is true not because Iran is especially good, but because the United States is especially evil. .Iran isn’t blanketing a major metropolis with military explosives, killing over a thousand people including hundreds of children. The United States is doing this with its partner in crime Israel. Iran isn’t continuously bombing and invading countries around the world, toppling governments, circling the globe with hundreds of military bases, targeting civilian populations with siege warfare and brandishing nuclear weapons at its enemies in the name of securing planetary domination. Only the United States is. The US empire is the single most murderous and tyrannical power structure on earth, by an extremely massive margin. No one else comes anywhere remotely close. Not Iran. Not anybody. Every government in the world is morally superior to the most evil government, and the most evil government is the United States. Whenever I say this I get US empire apologists going “We’re only the ones fighting the wars and dropping the bombs because we happen to be the ones with the power to do so!” But that’s false. The US isn’t the world’s most vicious government because it happens to be the most powerful, it’s the most powerful government because it’s the most vicious. It’s the power structure which was willing to do whatever it takes to rule the world, no matter how profoundly evil. Genocides. Starvation sanctions. Nuclear brinkmanship. Imperialist extraction. The deliberate creation of failed states and humanitarian catastrophes. Policies designed to keep entire regions in a continuous state of division and strife. The United States and the globe-spanning empire structured around it have inflicted depravities upon our species which cry out to the heavens for vengeance. If you could truly comprehend the scale of the suffering it has created over the years, even for a second, you would never stop screaming. Another objection I’ll encounter when I make these observations is “Well, I’d rather live in the US than Iran!” And it says so much about the western worldview that people think this is an argument. Sure it’s probably nicer to live in the United States than Iran, especially now, and certainly ever since the US has been deliberately strangling the Iranian economy with the explicitly stated goal of making its citizenry so miserable they wage a civil war against their government. But it’s so revealing that westerners see someone saying Iran is better than the United States and think it’s a statement about where they personally would prefer to live, because it shows how completely invisible US warmongering is in their worldview. Washington’s acts of mass military slaughter simply do not count as immoral or abusive behavior in their eyes, because they are being inflicted on foreigners overseas. So they automatically assume the comparison is asking which country would make your feelings feel nicer to live in as an individual. The fact that the US government happens to export the majority of its abusiveness to other countries outside its own borders doesn’t make it any less murderous and tyrannical, it just means the people bearing the brunt of its savagery happen to live in other places. Their lives don’t matter any less than American lives, and only a warped, American supremacist worldview would feel otherwise. The US government is quantifiably morally inferior to the Iranian government. It is quantifiably more tyrannical, more murderous, more destructive, and more megalomaniacal. It is the very last power structure on earth that should have any say in who leads Iran and how the Iranians ought to conduct their affairs. It is not morally qualified to be making those decisions. |
Pope Leo rejects Trump invitation to join Gaza ‘Board of Peace’
The Vatican flatly rejected a U.S. invitation to join the Trump-led “Board of Peace” for Gaza. The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem previously described the project as “a colonialist operation” focused on “others deciding for the Palestinians.”
Mondoweiss, By Jeff Wright February 20, 2026
Pope Leo XIV, the U.S.-born Pontiff, has formally declined U.S. President Trump’s invitation for the Vatican to join his so-called Peace Board for Gaza.
According to Trump, the board—which he will head—will oversee Gaza’s governance and reconstruction. Trump has said that the board may later address other global conflicts under his leadership.
But in delivering the Pope’s firm “no,” Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, insisted that “at the international level it should above all be the U.N. that manages these crisis situations,” not a U.S.-led board.
Responding to the Pope’s decision, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called the decision “deeply unfortunate.” In spite of the fact that not a single Palestinian has been invited to serve on the board, Leavitt said, “I don’t think that peace should be partisan or political or controversial.”
Earlier this month, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa was asked what he thought of Trump’s board. He said, “I think it is a colonialist operation: others deciding for the Palestinians.” Noting that Trump has said that permanent membership on the board carries a $1 billion price tag, Pizzaballa said, “I’ve never had a billion, but above all this is not the Church’s task: It is the sacraments, the dignity of the person.”
Asked by Mondoweiss to comment, Rifat Kassis, General Coordinator of Kairos Palestine—the broadest ecumenical movement of Palestinian Christians—echoed Pizzaballa’s charge. Kassis said, “The Pope’s rejection of the proposed council signals a clear principle: neither global powers nor global foreign institutions can claim to build peace while silencing the Palestinians whose land and future are at stake.”………………………………………………………………………………………….
As Trump prepared to host the Peace Board’s inaugural meeting in D.C. this week, Priests Against Genocide USA—an international network that includes 2,200 priests from 58 countries, along with 22 bishops and archbishops and two cardinals—penned an open letter to Paul Coakley, Catholic Archbishop of Oklahoma City, who is serving as the President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Citing the suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza, the network’s Steering Committee writes, “We humbly appeal to the Catholic leadership in the United State to speak with moral clarity and to bear courageous witness to peace and justice.”
The letter continues, “[T]he convening of President Trump’s so-called ‘Board of Peace’… underscores the urgent need for our Church’s prophetic witness.” They ask Archbishop Coakley “to help form the conscience of our nation regarding this so-called Board of Peace and to inspire all people of goodwill to become instruments of authentic peace. The Gospels teach that peace is the fruit of truth and justice. Yet any claim to peace becomes hollow when Palestinian voices are excluded from decision-making, when systemic injustice is normalized, and when fundamental rights of the oppressed are subordinated to profit-driven interests.” https://mondoweiss.net/2026/02/pope-leo-rejects-trump-invitation-to-join-gaza-board-of-peace/
Selective context: Why Isaac Herzog’s visit deepens Australia’s moral failure
It would be hard to imagine a more divisive guest in this country. The Jewish Council of Australia has expressed ‘outrage that the Albanese Government would fuel the flames of division by inviting Herzog to visit Australia, warning that his trip is completely inappropriate and offensive and will rightly spark mass protest’. Herzog, the Council said, ‘has played an active role in the ongoing destruction of Gaza, including the murder of tens of thousands of Palestinians and the displacement of millions’.
By Sue Wareham | 9 February 2026, https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/selective-context-why-isaac-herzogs-visit-deepens-australias-moral-failure,20660
Calls to ‘consider the context’ of President Herzog’s visit obscure Israel’s ban on dozens of NGOs in Gaza and the West Bank, writes Dr Sue Wareham.
AHEAD OF TODAY’S VISIT to Australia by Israeli President Isaac Herzog and the anticipated large protests against it, Foreign Minister Penny Wong asked us to ‘consider the context’ of the visit.
Part of that context is the horrific massacre of 15 Jewish Australians at Bondi in December and the deep sense of grief felt throughout Jewish communities and beyond.
However, the context also includes the destruction by Israel of practically every aspect of civilian society in Gaza, with over ten per cent of the population directly killed or injured since October 2023 and barely a soul alive who has not been traumatised in multiple ways, including bereavement, displacement, and deprivation of food, clean water, sanitation, shelter and other essentials.
Herzog is not an innocent bystander, as Israel’s breaches of international law in Gaza and the West Bank have become so commonplace as to be almost normalised. In September 2025, the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory accused him of inciting genocide, citing his statement that “It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible”, made soon after Hamas’ brutal attacks of 7 October 2023. The entire Palestinian population has been punished ever since.
That collective punishment has deeply affected very many Palestinian Australians, as they grieve the loss of loved ones in Gaza, and have watched helplessly as remaining loved ones have faced deprivation, multiple displacements and a dire humanitarian situation.
Despite the “ceasefire” that began in early October 2025 (a ceasefire which appears to mean fewer bombs rather than no bombs), the collective punishment continues.
Israeli authorities have now de-registered and are effectively banning 37 international humanitarian organisations (INGOs) from operating in Gaza and the West Bank. Unless the organisations comply with Israeli demands to provide personal data on all their staff – in a context where over 500 humanitarian workers have been killed in Gaza since 7 October 2023 – they will have to withdraw from all the Occupied Palestinian Territory by the start of March.
This poses an impossible choice for INGOs — to either compromise staff safety or to abandon people who are in desperate need. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), as one of the affected agencies, has made the extremely painful decision that it will not comply with Israeli demands for staff information. MSF’s statement of 30 January said that ‘despite repeated efforts, it became evident in recent days that we were unable to build engagement with Israeli authorities on the concrete assurances [regarding staff safety] required’.
MSF states that if the agency is expelled from Gaza and the West Bank, ‘it would have a devastating impact, as Palestinians face a brutal winter amidst destroyed homes and urgent humanitarian needs’ with basic services including food, water, shelter, healthcare, fuel and livelihoods largely destroyed, and a health system that is ‘nearly non-functional’.
Oxfam’s assessment of 3 January is similar, stating that ‘Despite the ceasefire, humanitarian needs remain extreme’. The removal of these services would ‘close health facilities, halt food distributions, collapse shelter pipelines and cut off life-saving care’.
Oxfam noted that INGOs already operate according to strict compliance and due diligence standards.
Setting aside any moral imperative to provide aid for fellow humans who are suffering, Israel’s actions in banning INGO access violate the nation’s legal obligations, as the occupying force, to ensure the health and welfare of the civilian population.
They also violate the January 2024 International Court of Justice ruling that Israel ‘must take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip’.
Far from complying with the law, Israel continues to actively block the delivery of essential aid to a population in urgent need, and is now enforcing INGO registration conditions that exceed routine oversight and undermine humanitarian neutrality and independence.
For the many Palestinian Australians and their loved ones in Gaza, Israel’s actions have devastating consequences. And yet their grief and distress are not part of Minister Wong’s selective “context” for the visit of President Herzog.
It would be hard to imagine a more divisive guest in this country. The Jewish Council of Australia has expressed ‘outrage that the Albanese Government would fuel the flames of division by inviting Herzog to visit Australia, warning that his trip is completely inappropriate and offensive and will rightly spark mass protest’. Herzog, the Council said, ‘has played an active role in the ongoing destruction of Gaza, including the murder of tens of thousands of Palestinians and the displacement of millions’.
Australia’s stance could have been very different. Apart from choosing our guests more sensitively and avoiding those accused of the most grievous crimes, Australia should long since have applied meaningful sanctions against Israeli individuals and the State of Israel itself.
Foreign Minister Wong has the power to determine that Israel’s ongoing deliberate obstruction of aid and its collective punishment of the Palestinian people meet the threshold of “serious violation or abuse” under Australia’s sanctions regime. She has chosen instead to insulate Israel from accountability, thus undermining the universality of international law and eroding Australia’s credibility as an independent nation.
The people of Palestine and their loved ones here pay a heavy price for Australia’s failure to act.
Sanctions against Israel are not likely to be announced in the coming days, but the need for them is only growing.
The Plutocrats Who Rule Our World Aren’t Even Enjoying Themselves
Caitlin Johnstone, Feb 07, 2026, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-plutocrats-who-rule-our-world?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=187153072&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
I saw a tweet by Elon Musk the other day, “Whoever said ‘money can’t buy happiness’ really knew what they were talking about.”
He put a sadface emoji at the end.
I personally do not feel the slightest bit sorry for Elon Musk and his feelings. But the fact that these billionaires aren’t even enjoying themselves as they poison our planet and rob us all says so much about the madness of the civilization we are living in.
I mean, think about it.
It’s not even making them happy. All that exploitation and extraction, all the parasiting and hoarding and manipulating politics and inserting themselves into governments, and it’s not even making them happy.
It would be terrible if these obscenely wealthy oligarchs were robbing everyone else of happiness in order to make themselves exponentially happier than all of us. But they’re not even making themselves happy. They’re fucking miserable. Everyone involved in this abusive dynamic is suffering from it — even the abusers.
And really, how could they not be?
Can you think of anyone less likely to be happy than someone who can’t be content simply retiring with a house and maybe twenty million dollars in the bank, ensuring that all their material needs will be cared for for the rest of their lives? Someone who must instead press on until they have obtained more money than they could reasonably spend in a thousand lifetimes?
Can you think of anything less conducive to happiness than becoming so much wealthier than everyone else that you have to isolate yourself from normal society, eventually surrounded only by people who are in your life because of your wealth? Never knowing how they truly feel about you or what they’d be doing with their lives if not for your vast fortune?
Can you think of a more surefire path to a lifetime of dissatisfaction than spending your years storing away wealth like some kind of fantasy dragon creature hoarding gold in a mountain, while people panicking over paying their bills look upon you with disdain?
Can you imagine a more miserable way to spend your days on this planet than becoming an oligarch and manipulating state power to ensure that your unfathomable wealth will never be redistributed to the needful and the struggling, and that ordinary people will forever remain trapped as powerless gear-turners whose labor exists solely to turn billionaires into trillionaires?
I know I can’t.
The plutocrats who control our society are not sincerely dedicated to the pursuit of happiness; if they were, they wouldn’t be plutocrats, and they wouldn’t be controlling our society. Happiness comes from contentment with one’s present experience, and those who keep compulsively amassing wealth for its own sake can never experience that contentment.
As Kurt Vonnegut wrote in his poem “Joe Heller”:
True story, Word of Honor:
Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer
now dead,
and I were at a party given by a billionaire
on Shelter Island.
I said, “Joe, how does it make you feel
to know that our host only yesterday
may have made more money
than your novel ‘Catch-22’
has earned in its entire history?”
And Joe said, “I’ve got something he can never have.”
And I said, “What on earth could that be, Joe?”
And Joe said, “The knowledge that I’ve got enough.”
Not bad! Rest in peace!
The Elon Musks of our world can never have the experience of having enough. They exist in a permanent state of lack. They’ve got a giant hole inside themselves that can never be filled, no matter how much money they throw into it, no matter how many private jets and private islands and media outlets and bought politicians they try to fill it with.
We are ruled by deeply wounded and dysfunctional emotional infants. The people who control our society are whipped about by primitive forces within themselves that they don’t understand. Their actions are motivated not by the pursuit of the common good, nor even their own good, but by psychological disorder and unconscious compulsion.
And yet we are assured this is the best possible way to run a society.
I kind of doubt that. I really don’t think that’s true.
1 This Month
of the week – Shut Down Drone Warfare!
Tell the Ukrainian Government to Drop Prosecution of Peace Activist Yurii Sheliazhenko
Petition to revoke the licensing of the Near Surface Nuclear Disposal Facility (NSDF) at Chalk River. https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-7247
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
-
Archives
- March 2026 (251)
- February 2026 (268)
- January 2026 (308)
- December 2025 (358)
- November 2025 (359)
- October 2025 (376)
- September 2025 (257)
- August 2025 (319)
- July 2025 (230)
- June 2025 (348)
- May 2025 (261)
- April 2025 (305)
-
Categories
- 1
- 1 NUCLEAR ISSUES
- business and costs
- climate change
- culture and arts
- ENERGY
- environment
- health
- history
- indigenous issues
- Legal
- marketing of nuclear
- media
- opposition to nuclear
- PERSONAL STORIES
- politics
- politics international
- Religion and ethics
- safety
- secrets,lies and civil liberties
- spinbuster
- technology
- Uranium
- wastes
- weapons and war
- Women
- 2 WORLD
- ACTION
- AFRICA
- Atrocities
- AUSTRALIA
- Christina's notes
- Christina's themes
- culture and arts
- Events
- Fuk 2022
- Fuk 2023
- Fukushima 2017
- Fukushima 2018
- fukushima 2019
- Fukushima 2020
- Fukushima 2021
- general
- global warming
- Humour (God we need it)
- Nuclear
- RARE EARTHS
- Reference
- resources – print
- Resources -audiovicual
- Weekly Newsletter
- World
- World Nuclear
- YouTube
-
RSS
Entries RSS
Comments RSS
nuclear-news 