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A national analysis of the impact of proximity to nuclear power plants on lung, breast and colon cancer mortalities in the U.S., 2000–2020

Significance

This national-scale analysis provides new evidence that proximity to nuclear power plants is associated with increased mortality from major cancers in the U.S. The magnitude and consistency of the findings highlight the importance of updated risk assessments, sustained surveillance, and strengthened public health planning for communities living near nuclear facilities.

Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology (2026) 20 May 2026, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41370-026-00922-2

Abstract

Background

Nuclear power plants emit low levels of ionizing radiation, an established risk factor for breast, colon, and lung cancers, yet the long-term effects of chronic environmental exposure in U.S. populations remain unclear.

Objective

To evaluate sex- and age-specific associations between proximity to nuclear power plants and mortality from the three most common cancers in the U.S.: breast, colon, and lung cancer.

Methods

We quantified county-level proximity to nuclear power plants using the sum of inverse distances from each residence county’s population-weighted center to all plants within 200 km, updated annually from 2000 to 2020. Cancer-specific mortality data (breast, colon, and lung) from the CDC were analyzed by sex and five age groups (45–54, 55–64, 65–74, 75–84, 85 + ). Relative risks (RRs) were estimated using generalized estimating equations with a Poisson link. Models were adjusted for sociodemographic factors, urbanicity, region, and temporal trends.

Results

Proximity to nuclear power plants was associated with elevated mortality from breast, colon, and lung cancers. From 2000 to 2020, an estimated 39,767 female deaths (95% CI: 9312–69,381), representing 2.01% (95% CI: 0.47–3.50%), and 38,124 male deaths (95% CI: 16,106–59,600), representing 2.33% (95% CI: 0.98–3.64%), were attributable to this proximity. Lung cancer accounted for the largest burden in both sexes, followed by breast and colon cancer in females and colon cancer in males. Mortality risks declined with increasing distance, becoming negligible beyond 50 km.

Significance

This national-scale analysis provides new evidence that proximity to nuclear power plants is associated with increased mortality from major cancers in the U.S. The magnitude and consistency of the findings highlight the importance of updated risk assessments, sustained surveillance, and strengthened public health planning for communities living near nuclear facilities.

Impact

  • This study provides the first national assessment of sex- and age-specific mortality from breast, colon, and lung cancers in relation to proximity to U.S. nuclear power plants, revealing consistent patterns not previously demonstrated. These findings fill a major gap in environmental epidemiology and underscore the need for cohort studies, refined exposure assessments, and pathway-specific analyses to strengthen causal interpretation. As nuclear power gains momentum in national energy planning, establishing clearer evidence on potential health impacts is increasingly essential for guiding research priorities and public health preparedness.

May 22, 2026 Posted by | health, USA | Leave a comment

As support for Israel declines in the U.S., the ‘Special Relationship 2.0’ is starting to take shape.

This can be presented as an investment in American jobs in partnership with Israel rather than as taxpayer assistance to a foreign government.

Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies in Congress have begun calling for an end to U.S. aid to Israel, but this won’t end the “special relationship” between the two countries. In fact, recent signs suggest it may only deepen U.S. military ties to Israel.

By Mitchell Plitnick  Mondoweiss, May 17, 2026 

This month, Israel and the United States are expected to begin negotiations on a new memorandum of understanding (MOU) that would outline the United States’ plans to support Israel after the current MOU expires in 2028. Chances are this will look like a very different conversation than in the past.

In recent months, there’s been a lot of noise around the idea of ending U.S. military aid to Israel. It’s an idea that has long been pursued by Palestine solidarity activists and, in the past, has also been floated by the Israeli right and their fellow travelers, who thought the aid wasn’t worth restricting Israel’s “freedom to act.” But surprisingly, the current proposal to end the annual grant of Foreign Military Financing (FMF) to Israel—which makes up most, though not all, of the annual aid package—comes from none other than Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and is championed in Washington by South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, the biggest hawk in the Senate. 

What explains this?

Back in January, the Institute for Middle East Understanding’s Policy Project published a timely and detailed backgrounder on what is actually going on here. 

What emerges is a plan to continue aid to Israel in a different form. Instead of sending money to Israel, which they have to spend with American corporations, Congress would appropriate money for joint development and production projects instead. This can be presented as an investment in American jobs in partnership with Israel rather than as taxpayer assistance to a foreign government.

The time to make such a move is now. Israel’s popularity has plummeted, and the once-certain annual military aid package is now up for debate. While the current Congress is still inclined to fund an unimpeded tidal wave of weapons and money to Israel, growing opposition in both parties makes even the near future of such aid uncertain………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. https://mondoweiss.net/2026/05/as-support-for-israel-declines-in-the-u-s-the-special-relationship-2-0-is-starting-to-take-shape/

May 22, 2026 Posted by | Israel, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Golden Dome or Golden Scam?

19 May 2026 – A report by the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War,
Back from the Brink, and Physicians for Social Responsibility

On May 19, PSR along with International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and Back From The Brink, released a new report on the proposed Golden Dome defense system. Organizations hosted a press conference in DC with the Up In Arms campaign, Senator Ed Markey, and Congressman Jim McGovern.

The false promise of strategic missile defense…………………………………….

Will the Golden Dome Protect us?

This brief report looks at what the United States would get from a $3.6 trillion
system that falls short of 100 percent effectiveness. Specifically, it considers what
would happen in a war with Russia if the U.S. had an 80% effective missile
defense system in place. The technology required to shoot down an
intercontinental ballistic missile is much more complex than that used to take out
the relatively primitive short-range rockets used in the current wars in the Middle
East. [3] Given the track record of the last 40 years, an 80% success rate is almost
certainly an unrealistically optimistic goal. But examining this “best case
scenario” sheds important light on the real value, or lack of value, of the Golden
Dome.

If the U.S. were to build a missile defense system that could shoot down 80% of
the current Russian nuclear arsenal, Russia could simply build many more
warheads and decoys to overwhelm this system, or redeploy some of the nearly
three thousand warheads it has put into storage. But for the purposes of this
scenario, we use the more conservative assumption that Russia is financially
unable to do so and simply retargets all its currently deployed warheads at U.S.
cities to exact an unacceptable price in any war with the U.S.

The current Russian nuclear arsenal contains an estimated 1718 deployed
warheads: 430 warheads with the destructive power of 800 kilotons (Kt)—50
times the explosive yield of the Hiroshima bomb, 200 warheads with the power
of 250 kilotons (Kt) , and 1088 100 kiloton (Kt) warheads. [4] There are many
different targeting scenarios Russia could choose to maximize damage with
this arsenal despite the existence ………………………….of the Golden Dome.
Let’s consider one of them.
If the US had the ability to shoot down 80% of all incoming Russian warheads,
then, in order to achieve a 95% probability of hitting a given population center,
Russia would have to target that city with 13 warheads. [5]…………………………………………………………………..

CONCLUSION

The Golden Dome will not protect
the American people. Even if the
system achieved an extremely
optimistic 80% success rate, it
would leave the 132 largest
population centers open to attack
with 75 million Americans in the
zones of total destruction. Such an
attack would also cause global
climate disruption and lead to
famine that would kill 1.4 billion
people worldwide

What the Golden Dome will do is to
squander $3.6 trillion creating a
dangerous, false sense of security.
This is money that could be spent on
education, housing, health care, and
food security– social services that
are currently being cut because we
are told we can’t afford them.

Developing and deploying the
Golden Dome will also exacerbate
the danger of nuclear war by
blocking progress towards nuclear
disarmament and further fueling the
new and destabilizing arms race as
Russia and China build more
weapons to overcome any ability the
Golden Dome has to intercept some
of their current warheads. This is not
a hypothetical concern. U.S.
determination to pursue Star Wars
during the 1980’s derailed the
attempt by Presidents Reagan and
Gorbachev to reach an agreement to
eliminate all nuclear weapons at the
Reykjavik Summit in 1986. [9]
There is no technical fix to the threat
posed by nuclear weapons

We have survived this far into the nuclear era

because, according to former
Defense Secretary Robert
McNamara, “We lucked out….It
was luck that prevented nuclear
war.” The United States cannot rely
on our luck lasting forever, and it
cannot rely on a mythical Golden
Dome to protect us. The only way to
confront the growing danger of
nuclear war and to guarantee that
our world is not destroyed by these
weapons is to eliminate them

The United States should enter
negotiations now with the other 8
nuclear armed states for a
verifiable, enforceable agreement
to eliminate all of their nuclear
arsenals according to an agreed
upon timetable. We cannot know
in advance if this effort will
succeed, but we do know what
will happen if we don’t eliminate
these weapons. So there is every reason to try

…………………………………………………….. https://psr.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/golden-dome.pdf

May 22, 2026 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The CIA’s Cuba Ultimatum: Regime Change With a Diplomatic Smile

create the crisis, punish the population, scare off investment, then demand political surrender from the government you have spent decades trying to brea. – — force Cuba to bend to Washington’s will.

 SCHEERPOST, May 19, 2026.

The CIA did not sneak into Havana this time. It landed in broad daylight.

Peter Kornbluh reports in The Nation that CIA Director John Ratcliffe led a high-level U.S. delegation to Cuba on May 14, delivering what amounted to a blunt Trump administration ultimatum: Washington is willing to “engage” on economic and security issues, but only if Cuba makes “fundamental changes.”

The message is hard to miss. After decades of sabotage, sanctions, assassination plots, covert operations and economic strangulation, the U.S. is now packaging regime-change pressure as diplomacy. Cuba is facing severe fuel shortages, blackouts and growing hardship — conditions Washington’s policy has helped intensify — while Trump officials tighten sanctions, target foreign investors and float military threats.

This is not diplomacy. It is submission politics.

Kornbluh’s piece lays out the old imperial script in its newest form: create the crisis, punish the population, scare off investment, then demand political surrender from the government you have spent decades trying to break. The CIA’s public trip to Havana may look different from Bay of Pigs secrecy or Operation Mongoose sabotage, but the goal remains painfully familiar — force Cuba to bend to Washington’s will.

The danger now is that economic warfare is being paired with open military signaling. Reports of increased U.S. intelligence flights near Cuba, threats involving aircraft carriers, possible indictments of Cuban leaders and leaked claims about Cuban drones all point toward a familiar pretext-building machine.

Once again, the United States claims to be defending freedom while tightening the noose around an island it has never forgiven for refusing to obey.

The CIA has spent decades trying to overthrow the Cuban government through covert operations, assassination plots, sabotage, and economic warfare — from the Bay of Pigs to Operation Mongoose and countless regime-change schemes. But now Washington isn’t even pretending anymore. CIA Director John Ratcliffe’s very public trip to Havana marks a dangerous new phase in the long U.S. campaign to force Cuba into submission politically and economically.

According to reports, Ratcliffe delivered what was essentially a “do or die” ultimatum from the Trump administration: either Cuba accepts Washington’s demands for change, or the window for diplomacy closes. He reportedly pointed to what happened in Venezuela after Maduro refused to bend to Trump’s threats, making clear the White House is prepared to “enforce its red lines” if Cuba refuses to capitulate.

The timing says everything. Ratcliffe arrived just one day after Cuba publicly admitted the country has effectively run out of fuel. “We have absolutely no fuel oil, and absolutely no diesel,” Cuba’s energy minister said on state television. That crisis didn’t happen in a vacuum. Cutting off Cuba’s access to fuel, electricity, and basic economic survival has become central to Trump’s pressure campaign against the island.

As one analyst put it, previous administrations tried to lure Cuba with carrots. Trump’s strategy is to beat Cuba with a stick until it collapses. And with U.S. military activity escalating around the region, it’s becoming harder to ignore the possibility that Washington is preparing for something even more dangerous if Cuba refuses to surrender to its imperial demands.

Read The CIA Goes to Cuba from Peter Kornbluh at The Nation

Trump Sends CIA Chief — Not Diplomats — To Deliver Cuba Threat

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………… https://scheerpost.com/2026/05/19/the-cias-cuba-ultimatum-regime-change-with-a-diplomatic-smile/

May 22, 2026 Posted by | politics international, SOUTH AMERICA, USA | Leave a comment

From Asia to the Middle East, US Bombs Are a Failed Foreign Policy Choice

The only reliable products of US airpower are devastated civilian populations and suppression of internal movements.

By Christine Ahn , Truthout, May 19, 2026

The U.S.-Israeli war on Iran opened not with a declaration, not with diplomacy exhausted, but with airstrikes.

Among the first confirmed casualties were more than a hundred schoolchildren killed in a strike on their elementary school in southern Iran. Within a month, 850 U.S.-made Tomahawk missiles were used to strike Iran. President Donald Trump has delivered on his promise to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages,” with U.S. and Israeli missiles targeting bridges, pharmaceutical and steel plants, and civilian infrastructure like schools and hospitals. The bombing campaign has struck civilian oil infrastructure in Tehran, engulfing a city of 10 million people in toxic black rain. Thousands of Iranians and Lebanese have been killed, and hundreds of thousands of workers have lost their jobs as factories and basic infrastructure have been destroyed.

Washington calls this national security. The historical record calls it something else entirely.

For more than 75 years, the United States has reached for airpower as its preferred instrument of foreign policy — a tool that promises decisive results without the political costs of ground occupation; the illusion that enough bombs, dropped with enough precision, can produce the outcomes that diplomacy did not. Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Iran: the targets have changed, the doctrine has not.

The Failure of U.S. Doctrine

As a Korean American, Cathi Choi of Women Cross DMZ knows this history personally. From 1950 to 1953, during the Korean War, U.S. forces dropped 635,000 tons of bombs and 32,000 tons of napalm, burning 80 percent of North Korean cities to the ground. One year into the war, U.S. Maj. Gen. Emmett O’Donnell testified in the Senate, “There are no more targets in Korea.” More than 4 million people were killed, the overwhelming majority of them Korean civilians. Choi, whose grandfather fled the north during the war, is among millions of Koreans from separated families. The division of the peninsula left an estimated 10 million Koreans cut off from relatives on the other side, unable to exchange phone calls or letters or reunite, with the exception of a few state-sponsored family reunions during periods of détente. Seventy-three years later, the war has only ended in a ceasefire, not a treaty, and the peninsula has remained in a stalemate ever since.

“The Korean War didn’t just leave its mark on the peninsula,” Choi explained. “It left deep scars among divided families, inaugurated the U.S. military-industrial complex, quadrupled the Pentagon budget in three years, and set a course from which Washington has never turned back.” Today, the Trump administration is proposing a $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget while slashing investments in diplomacy, development, and domestic programs like Medicaid and food stamps. Meanwhile, 1.2 million land mines are still buried across the world’s most militarized border, keeping Korean families — like Choi’s — separated, and both sides heavily militarized while on the precipice of nuclear war.

Danae Hendrickson, chief of mission advancement and communications at the advocacy group Legacies of War, has spent years documenting what the United States left behind in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam — not as history, but as present danger. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. https://truthout.org/articles/from-southeast-asia-to-middle-east-us-bombs-are-a-failed-foreign-policy-choice/?utm_source=Truthout&utm_campaign=0f6b169c87-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2026_05_19_09_10&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_bbb541a1db-0f6b169c87-650192793

May 22, 2026 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The President of Peace Makes War on the Planet

SCHEERPOST Tom Engelhardt TomDispatch, May 19, 2026 

“……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….  I almost forgot to mention one more Trumpian set of acts of war, undoubtedly by far the most important and devastating of all: those he’s launched against planet Earth itself. I mean, we’re talking about the president who has done his — and this word couldn’t be more appropriate — damnedest to shut down wind farms of any sort, cut solar energy projects, and expand the burning of fossil fuels in just about every way imaginable, including by opening up 1.3 billion acres (no, that is not a misprint!) of U.S. coastal waters to further oil and natural gas drilling.

New York Times reporter Maxine Jocelow caught this Trumpian moment on Planet Earth perfectly in a recent piece on the “triumphant resurgence in Mr. Trump’s Washington” of climate-change denial. She summed up the Trumpian viewpoint this way: “Climate change is a hoax perpetrated by ‘leftist politicians.’ Fossil fuels are the greenest energy sources. More carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will be harmless.”……………………………………………

There really can’t be any question that this president is distinctly intent on nothing less than making war not just on specific nations like Iran, or on ships in the Caribbean Sea, or on anyone in or near the Strait of Hormuz, but on this very planet in every way imaginable……………………….

Defeat on Land, at Sea, and Anywhere Else Imaginable

Once upon a time, such wildly futuristic madness would have been left to the most dystopian of science-fiction novels — and undoubtedly not very popular ones at that, since such a plot and such a president would (once upon a time) have seemed far too unrealistic even for fiction. But now, thanks to President Donald J. Trump, the United States of America, in addition to all its other warring acts of recent months, is distinctly at war — and there’s no other adequate word for it — with Planet Earth (at least as a habitable place for future versions of us).

Someday, if anyone is still making TV series (since by then they’ll all undoubtedly be AI-created), I wonder if there will be one that young people, along with their parents, would be able to catch called not Defeat at Sea, but something far larger and more definitive like Defeat on Planet Earth. After all, we now have a president of the United States who seems ready not just to make war on Iran, but on more or less everything…………………………………

 Trump and crew, while working as hard as they can to launch a thoroughly useless fleet of naval vessels, have also been doing their damnedest to heat this planet to the boiling point. He has literally decided to transform himself into a hell-on-earth president at a moment when renewable energy has beaten out coal as the primary source of energy globally for the first time ever. 

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. Donald Trump, of course, is distinctly intent on making war on planet Earth (including, by recently making war on Iran, pouring yet more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere). War, after all, may be the world’s most efficient producer of such gases and the U.S. military, even in peacetime (which, unlike during his first term in office, is no longer Trump time), remains the largest institutional emitter of greenhouse gases on this planet. In the process, he’s doing his damnedest to take both his country and the planet down with him.

All too sadly, if he’s successful, American children of tomorrow, when they turn on their machines (whatever they may be), could witness not Victory, but Defeat at Sea, on Land, and Anywhere Else You Might Imagine. https://scheerpost.com/2026/05/19/the-president-of-peace-makes-war-on-the-planet/

May 22, 2026 Posted by | environment, USA | Leave a comment

Mirrors of Greed: Elon Musk, OpenAI and the Tech Brat Battle

19 May 2026 Dr Binoy Kampmark , https://theaimn.net/mirrors-of-greed-elon-musk-openai-and-the-tech-brat-battle/

They are a disagreeable bunch, with disagreeable ideas to match. The querulous brats behind the drive for technological servility and plugged in stupidity were always going to scrap over which dystopian vision they most prefer. Elon Musk thought he was onto something hounding OpenAI and its current CEO Sam Altman for supposedly betraying one of those visions. In his $150 billion legal action, Musk alleged that Altman and OpenAI president Greg Brockman deceived him into investing in the company in its initial stages when salad green altruism was modish and humanity mattered. The litigation was a prong in a broader strategy to unseat Altman from OpenAI, sabotage the company’s $852 billion restructuring into a public benefit corporation and direct $134 billion to OpenAI’s non-profit foundation.

The deception centred on maintaining OpenAI as a non-profit entity and pursuing artificial intelligence (AI) ventures in ways beneficial to humanity. (When the tech brats have a stab at humour, they go in hard.) According to Musk, OpenAI had effectively stolen a charity. (Between 2015 and 2017, he had personally put $44 million into OpenAI, funds, he argues, that were essentially misappropriated when the company sloughed its non-profit skin.) In an introductory overview of the company from December 2015, the company badges itself a “non-profit artificial intelligence research company” with the object of advancing “digital intelligence in a way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return. Since our research is free from financial obligations, we can better focus on a positive human impact.”

How things change. On May 18, a mere two hours was needed for a nine-jury member in Oakland, California to unanimously find against Musk, basing their decision on that most technical of grounds: the statute of limitations. This left two civil claims – breach of charitable trust and unjust enrichment – untested. Having left OpenAI’s board in 2018, Musk dithered till February 2024 to file suit. Musk claimed to have only discovered the company’s abandonment of its non-profit mission in 2022, when Microsoft showed its interest with an investment of $10 billion. OpenAI’s legal team argued that the pertinent events – the creation of a for-profit subsidiary in 2019 for instance and Microsoft’s initial injection of $1 billion that same year, were already matters of common knowledge. Time on the statute of limitations was running well before 2022. US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers of the Northern District of California saw no reason to question the jury’s conclusion. “There’s substantial amount of evidence to support the jury’s finding, which is why I was prepared to dismiss on the spot.”

The trial was impressively ugly and amounted to an insult to the stout intelligence of the public whose welfare both parties claim to be protecting. The legal representatives from both sides jousted over respective views on AI and the credibility of the disputants. Musk’s lawyer, Steven Molo, pressed jurors to consider that several witnesses, including former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, doubted Altman’s candour, going so far as to find him mendacious. Altman had also conceded under cross-examination that he “told the occasional lie”. “Sam Altman’s credibility is directly at issue,” Molo crowed. “If you don’t believe him, they cannot win.”

OpenAI, Musk accusingly asserted, had wrongfully attempted to enrich investors and insiders at the expense of the non-profit. Along the way, it had failed to make AI safety a matter central to its operations. Microsoft, he further argued, had always known that OpenAI cared more about money than altruism. A personal journal entry penned by Brockman in November 2017 was also instructive, baldly revealing that OpenAI could not assert fidelity to its non-profit status if it intended becoming a benefit corporation months later. So it came to pass that Altman, Brockman and OpenAI were accused of the very same temptations, frailties and indifference to safety that could be found in Musk’s own conduct.

On the issue of safety and welfare, Musk’s own xAI, acquired by space and rocket company SpaceX, also part of the South African’s fiefdom of misrule, has drawn the attention of the European Commission and UK watchdog Ofcom over Grok, a product that has been used to create sexualised images. The combine arising from xAI and SpaceX could lead to an initial public offering that would surpass OpenAI in size, which sinks the scurrilous suggestion of altruism. Provided things go smoothly, the world’s first trillionaire might arise.

OpenAI was hardly going to leave Musk’s feeling of tech purity unchallenged. It was he, not OpenAI, who saw the shimmering dollar signs. Going back to 2017, he had floated the idea of a for-profit subsidiary with one caveat: he would have exclusive control. Failing this, he left the board in a huff. OpenAI’s attorney William Savitt suggested that Musk, having failed to “get his way at OpenAI,” filed his lawsuit only after establishing his own competing AI company in 2023. But most saliently, he waited too long to claim breaches of the founding agreement regarding the building of safe artificial intelligence for the benefit of humanity. “Mr Musk may have the Midas touch in some areas, but not in AI,” claimed Savitt.

OpenAI’s predatory reflexes will be boosted by the decision. The non-profit status in this field has been found wanting, and the scramble for profits given much encouragement in this most unprincipled of frontiers. “The decision is likely to reassure investors and the broader AI sector,” opines Sarah Kreps of the Tech Policy Institute at Cornell University, “because it avoids a potentially chaotic outcome that could have challenged OpenAI’s commercial structure, Microsoft partnership, and future fund-raising plans.”

This was by no means the first time Musk had taken to throwing a brief of anger against OpenAI. In March 2024, showing that intelligence can be authentically artificial, he filed a lawsuit citing a contract violation of a contract that did not exist.  Using the misguided legal offices of Irell & Manella – the same firm that erroneously claimed on behalf of PETA that a monkey could hold copyright – Musk pursued what Techdirt’s Mike Masnick appropriately called a “vibes based” action. “Elon doesn’t have a contract with OpenAI which the company could have breached. And that’s kinda a problem in a breach of contract lawsuit.” This insuperable logic led Musk to abandon the lawsuit in June that year.

For Musk, the wells of indignation run deep. This is a man in the habit of losing or settling claims, be it with former Twitter executives and employees of the social platform now known as X, losing to investors in that same company for misleading public statements made during his untidy, often chaotic takeover, or having his lawsuit promptly dismissed against advertisers that exited that troubled platform. While such behaviour should draw scorn, those drawing benefit from his litigious pathologies – lawyers, in the main – can only be grateful. “In a lot of ways, he is just another businessperson asserting his rights,” says a credulous Shubha Ghosh, lawyer and law academic at Syracuse University. “I don’t think he’s abusing the legal system. Whether he uses it effectively, I’m not sure.” Wrong, certainly, on the first count.

May 21, 2026 Posted by | Legal, USA | Leave a comment

Republicans should be worrying about millions of fools voting for treason and criminal war destroying the economy – Walt Zlotow.

Walt Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn IL, 18 May 26

It’s understandable the Chicago Tribune is concerned about the future of the Republican Party (Editorial: Republicans are preparing for the midterms. They should be worrying about the party’s future). Soon after its founding in 1847, the Trib championed creation of an anti-slavery party and its most eloquent spokesman, native son Abe Lincoln. Seven years later that led to founding of the Republican Party and eventual election of Trib favorite Lincoln in 1860.

One hundred seventy-two years on the Trib’s still favorite party is fundamentally opposed to every vestige of its historical legacy. The Trib urges Republicans to reflect on their party “whose historical brand is inextricably linked with patriotism” How did the Trib miss the Republican Party, under Donald Trump, destroyed every vestige of patriotism when it inspired an insurrection at the Capitol in 2021 to overturn the election. The tiny handful of Republican patriots like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger who dared call out Trump’s treason were systematically purged from Republican Party. Trump, cheered on by nearly every Republican congressperson, then pardoned his 1,500 coup brigade who injured over 150 patriotic cops, five of whom died shortly afterwards from injury or suicide, trying to save American democracy from Trump’s treason.

Besides now being the party of treason, Trump’s Republican Party is now the party of senseless criminal war in Iran that, besides being lost with no exit strategy, is systematically degrading the world economy including America’s.

The Trib is anxious to find something of value in the Republican wrecking ball controlling the entire government with no check whatsoever. Alas, it’s not in the claim “There are plenty of rational folks who voted for Trump; 44% of Illinoisans are not fools. “Plenty of rational folks” are not words that befit the 56% to 44 % Illinois blowout against Trump. Every one of Trump’s 2,449,079 Illinois voters in 2024 were fools to vote for the only presidential candidate in US history who sought to destroy American democracy. And when each now forks over an extra 20 or 30 bucks to fill their gas guzzler due to Trump’s criminal war on Iran with no end in sight, they’ll likely ponder the wise words of a 1958 Elvis hit…”Now and then there’s a fool such as I.”

The Chicago Tribune, by spending 1,500 words seeking to salvage the Republican Party without mentioning the Trump GOP treason and criminal war on Iran , may be the biggest fool of all.

May 21, 2026 Posted by | media, USA | Leave a comment

5 Stocks That Benefit From the Government’s $94 Million Spending Spree on Nuclear Reactors.

The Trump administration is giving out money to small
nuclear reactor projects, and a handful of public companies should benefit.
The Energy Department announced $94 million worth of cost-sharing grants to
build out America’s nuclear infrastructure.

The government will pay for
up to 50% of the projects. It’s the second such grant given out to
nuclear players. The first one went to the Tennessee Valley Authority, a
federally controlled utility, and Holtec, a privately held nuclear operator
that’s building small reactors. Holtec is expected to go public sometime
this year.

The government’s involvement is meant to fast-track a U.S,
nuclear renaissance, which has moved slowly so far because most private
companies don’t want to take the financial risk.

 Barrons 15th May 2026,
https://www.barrons.com/articles/nuclear-reactor-stocks-e23d92f1

May 21, 2026 Posted by | business and costs, USA | 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

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

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

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