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Empire Without Guardrails: The Global Toll of U.S.-Israel Arrogance

Imperial systems historically fall by the weight of their insatiable greed, reckless wastefulness and institutional hubris. Today, the United States stands as the sole imperial power, with Israel – the last remaining colonizing state – serving as its vanguard in West Asia. Both are showing the first signs of fundamental decline. A single miscalculation can forge a new reality.  Driven by imperious delusions, the US and Israel launched deadly wars of choice against Iran in June 2025 and again in February 2026.  The folly of their acts was believing that Iran, a civilizational nation, could be easily defeated. Instead of a swift victory, the flawed assumption has triggered a wider regional quagmire and undermined America’s global power and credibility. After eight months of military and economic turmoil, the ongoing war is an existential crisis for both Iran and the United States. For 47 years, the United States and Israel have been a threat to Iran.  Tehran is mindful that Washington and Tel Aviv are bent on destroying the country, and that the war is an existential fight it must win. The start of Operation Epic Fury, on February 28, was the Islamic Republic’s 9-11. Iran also knows that it cannot continue to live with America’s threatening regional presence (40,000 to 50,000 U.S. soldiers stationed across at least 19 bases) and with the crippling economic sanctions that have hindered development. In addition, after a long track-record of betrayals, Iranian leaders are keenly aware that the U.S. is not interested in honest negotiations or peaceful coexistence. By starting an unprovoked war that violated international law, destroyed vital infrastructure, and killed 3,468 Iranians – including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, members of his family and senior leadership – Washington proved it cannot be trusted. Concurrently, the United States is desperately trying to hold onto its military and economic supremacy.  Both Washington and Tel Aviv had little idea when they started the war that they had set in motion a revolutionary shift, regionally and globally. The unrestrained devastation has shattered the illusion of U.S.-Israeli political, economic and military invincibility, that has remained unchallenged for 81 years. Since emerging as the strongest economy following World War II, the American empire has maintained its prosperity and hegemony through resource exploitation, global militarization, strategic partnerships with merciless regimes, the promise of trickle-down wealth and subtlety-managed domestic indoctrination. American supremacy has relied heavily on dollar hegemony. By making the U.S. dollar the default currency for global commerce, Washington secured an exaggerated structural advantage that has underpinned its wider geopolitical leverage. This is particularly true in West Asia, where the dollar, pegged to petroleum  – the currency used worldwide in the oil trade since the 1970s – has been employed to exert control over countries in the region. In July 1944, at Bretton Woods, a new international financial system, centered around the dollar, was established by the United States.  Countries agreed to link the value of their currency to the greenback, and institutions like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank were created under U.S. leadership, governance and control. Because financial transactions are typically processed through U.S-dominated institutions, like SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication), an electronic interbank payment platform, dollar dominance gives Washington expansive power to impose far-reaching sanctions against other countries and to freeze them out of the global economy. The United States has weaponized its currency by imposing sanctions and blocking perceived adversaries, like Iran, from SWIFT, using economic isolation to achieve economically what it has failed to do militarily. As the U.S. and Israel witness their historic chokehold over global resources and defense capabilities slip away, they have reacted with fierce ruthlessness against Palestinian resistance, Iran, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Ansar Allah in Yemen, who are fearlessly contesting their hegemony. For decades, the United States has preserved its global power through unholy alliances with Israel and through military and economic partnerships with authoritarian Arab regimes, tasked with containing regional opposition. The Zionist colony was originally embedded in West Asia to protect British imperial interests.  Following Britain’s decline, Israel secured another willing benefactor.  It has served America as a projection of U.S. power in the region for decades. Paradoxically, Tel Aviv’s long-sought war against Iran might actually trigger its own ruin, topple Arab dictators, and shatter America’s regional and global supremacy. The coordinated U.S.and Israeli attacks on Iran set off long-standing anti-imperialist sentiments across the region.  These revolutionary undercurrents emerged in 1979 when Iran rejected foreign domination, overthrew the U.S.-backed Pahlavi monarchy, and asserted its independent sovereignty. For 47 years, the U.S. has been conducting economic warfare against the Islamic Republic through comprehensive economically destructive sanctions. In 2008, Iran was cut off from CHIPS (Clearing House Interbank Payments System); and in 2012, all Iranian banks were disconnected from SWIFT. To counter the devastating effects of being cut off from the international financial network, Iran has been forced to change strategies and to seek alternative partners, specifically Russia and China. In an effort to overcome the impact of U.S. sanctions, Iran became a full member of China-led BRICS, joining Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa in January 2024. Tehran has been urging the bloc to adopt alternative payment systems and national currency settlements to bypass the U.S. dollar and mitigate Western sanctions. The U.S.-Israel plan for reshaping the region was laid out long ago. In a 1996 policy document titled, “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,”  senior national security officials, neoconservative hardliners, argued that Israel’s security would be best served, not through the pursuit of peace, but through “regime” change in surrounding countries, starting with Iraq, then Syria and finally Iran. The enduring geopolitical campaign to restructure West Asia by crushing resistance and establishing absolute U.S. and Israeli dominance finally reached its peak in 2026 with the Iran war. The urgency of “securing the realm” was reflected in a nativist speech by Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivered in the shadow of the Parthenon in Athens; significantly on October 7 (anniversary of the Palestinian rebellion in Gaza). In addition to extolling its virtues, Rubio stated that Western civilization was at a critical “inflection point” in which the U.S. and Europe must rediscover the values of exploration and conquest that once drove centuries of expansion or face decline or irrelevance. One passage in particular reveals the jingoistic and arrogant path the United States has been on in West Asia for decades:

“And now, today, we find ourselves at a crossroads. Because the next decade and the decision we make will write the story of the next century.  The course we take will determine whether the West maintains its place at the head of the world or resigns itself to a future of atrophy and servitude or decline.  We will either choose to act now or lose the choice to act at all….We choose the unapologetic pursuit of national power: to take back control of our critical supply chains (translated as the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf and Bab al-Mandeb in the Red Sea), to reindustrialize our economy…to rebuild our defense, to fight for dominance of the technologies and industries of the future.”

The U.S. and Israel have chosen the “unapologetic pursuit of national power” in the resource-rich region.  Only now have they met their asymmetrical military match in the Islamic Republic, Ansar Allah and Hezbollah, and in the determination of Palestinians to resist subjugation. The United States has demonstrated that it is incapable of equality; of being one nation among many. It irrationally insists on “maintaining its place at the head of the world,” no matter the cost in lives and treasure.

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Alaska’s Senate Decoy Candidate Dan Sullivan Refuses to Go Under Oath as DOJ Issues Flurry of Subpoenas in Expanding Criminal Investigation

Alaska’s Senate decoy candidate Daniel J. Sullivan refused to go under oath during the initial investigation, Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy revealed on Thursday.

News of the criminal investigation comes after The New York Times confirmed that Mary Peltola’s campaign recruited the decoy Dan J Sullivan to confuse Alaska voters.

Democrat operatives in Mary Peltola’s campaign worked to register a man named Daniel J. Sullivan as Dan S. Sullivan (the incumbent Senator’s name) as a GOP challenger.

The Times reported that the plan involved traveling to “far-flung Alaskan communities and the appearance of a mysterious Midwestern operative, who traversed the state using a fake name and made his pitch to would-be candidates over beers at brew pubs.”

“The plan worked. This spring, a retired teacher from a tiny fishing village along the Alaska Panhandle, reachable only by air and sea, announced his candidacy for Senate. His name was Dan J. Sullivan,” the New York Times reported.

On Thursday, it was reported that the Justice Department ramped up its investigation into how Daniel J. Sullivan appeared on the Alaska ballot as a spoiler and issued a flurry of subpoenas in the last 24 hours. According to Fox News, more than 30 subpoenas have been issued.

It was also revealed on Thursday that the decoy Dan Sullivan hasn’t even done any campaign events.

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How Ukraine Was Pieced Together

As we indicated in Part 1, even by the end of the 18th century, the nation of “Ukraine” was nowhere to be seen on the maps of the era. And shortly thereafter the greatest map-making assemblage of nations that the world had ever seen only confirmed its non-existence within the maws of an expanding Russian Empire.

We are referring to the Congress of Vienna in 1814-1815, which was the diplomatic mechanism by which the victors over Napoleon – Russia, Austria, Prussia, and Great Britain – reordered the political geography of Europe. Their purpose was to restore monarchical legitimacy after a quarter-century of revolution and war, to prevent the re-emergence of French hegemony, and to compensate themselves for the costs of the struggle.

Under the guiding influence of Austria’s Prince Metternich, Russia’s Tsar Alexander I, Britain’s Viscount Castlereagh, and Prussia’s Prince Hardenberg, the powers rejected both the popular sovereignty associated with the French Revolution and also any simple reversion to the pre-revolution map of 1789.

Instead they fashioned a conservative settlement grounded in dynastic right, a workable balance among the great powers, and mutual territorial swaps and boundary adjustments. These rearrangements extended across the continent and into the adjacent Eurasian borderlands.

Thus, France was confined to its frontiers of 1792 and surrounded by reinforced buffer states. The German lands were consolidated into a confederation dominated by Austria, while Italy was left divided among restored or compensated rulers. In northern Europe, territorial exchanges strengthened Sweden and created a united Kingdom of the Netherlands.

But it was the settlement in the east that is material to what was the still missing map of Ukraine at the end of the Congress. In fact, its handiwork went in the opposite direction by confirming and enlarging the late 18th century gains and colonization projects of the Russian Empire.

Alexander I of Russia received most of the former Duchy of Warsaw, reconstituted as the Kingdom of Poland under the Russian crown, and obtained formal recognition of the extensive territories Russia had already acquired through the eighteenth-century partitions of Poland and through earlier wars. Those acquisitions encompassed the greater part of the territories that constitute modern Ukraine: the Right Bank and the Left Bank of the Dnieper River, as well as the region then known as Novorossiya, and the Crimean Peninsula.

At that point in time, Galicia, including the city of Lviv, remained under Habsburg rule, a secondary consequence of the partitions that the Vienna powers left undisturbed. Prussia obtained more limited Polish districts to the west.

In none of these allocations did an independent Ukrainian state appear. The peacemakers regarded the region as imperial territory to be distributed among the victorious monarchies, not as the patrimony of a distinct nation entitled to sovereignty. British and Prussian acquiescence in Russia’s share formed part of the larger bargain that contained France and preserved the conservative equilibrium; neither power had an interest in promoting a Ukrainian polity that would have unsettled the eastern settlement they had helped to construct.

The Concert of Europe that issued from Vienna therefore placed the Czarist empire’s control over the Ukrainian lands under the collective sanction of the anti-Napoleonic coalition. Territories that had been absorbed through Russian conquest, partition, and colonization in the preceding century were now underwritten by the authority of the principal European powers.

For the remainder of the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth, therefore, the territories of today’s Ukraine continued to be governed as provinces of the Russian and Austrian empires. Their inhabitants remained subjects of those states rather than citizens of a Ukraine that the statesmen of 1814 had not had reason to reject because as of yet it had not even been envisioned.

Needless to say, the 1814 map below speaks for itself. The current line of contact in the Ukraine War, which is just east of the Dnieper River has seen the slaughter of upwards of 400,000 soldiers on both sides of the trenches. Yet when the modern map of Europe was fixed at the Congress of Vienna their forebears had all been subjects of the same Russian Empire; most were adherents of the Russian Orthodox confession; and the mother tongue of many was Russian, as well.

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Texas Republican Cites Little-Known Rule That Could Stop DSA Radicals From Being Sworn Into Congress

Texas Republican Rep. Keith Self believes he knows a way to keep DSA radicals from being sworn in to Congress, if they win their races. He should reach out to Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee, who is also looking into this.

Rep. Self believes these candidates cannot swear an oath to protect and defend the Constitution because their own platform describes their desire to destroy it.

How can they swear to protect something that they want to destroy?

FOX News reports:

Little-known rule could stop socialists from being sworn into Congress

A little-known congressional maneuver could block members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) from being sworn in as members of the House of Representatives next year, even if they win their elections on Tuesday.

Members-elect must swear an oath to uphold the Constitution before they can become full members of the House. At the beginning of a new Congress, that oath is typically taken en masse by all 435 members, led by the House speaker.

But an argument circulating in conservative circles posits that any member-elect can challenge another member-elect’s right to be sworn in, provided they have compiled evidence that that person would not uphold their oath. That would then lead to House-wide deliberations followed by a vote on whether that member-elect has a right to be sworn in.

In the case of DSA members, one potential argument could be the group’s platform calling to scrap the current U.S. Constitution and draft a new one. Several DSA members and self-proclaimed democratic socialists have already won primaries across the country.

Rep. Keith Self, R-Texas, suggested to Fox News Digital that he could invoke the maneuver.

“You cannot swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution while actively working to destroy it. The oath of office is not just words you say at a ceremony. It is a belief. It is an oath to our country and our fellow countrymen,” Self told Fox News Digital.

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Teachers Unions Spent More Than $930 Million On Political Activism & Lobbying Over Decade, Watchdog Finds

Two of America’s largest teachers unions spent more than $930 million on political activism, lobbying and progressive advocacy over the past decade, raising questions about how union dues are being used beyond traditional education priorities.

According to investigations by the North American Values Institute (NAVI), the National Education Association (NEA) spent at least $547 million on political activities and advocacy between fiscal years 2016 and 2025.

The spending included $458.9 million officially reported as political activity and lobbying, along with another $88.2 million directed toward progressive advocacy organizations.

The NEA, which represents more than 3 million members, also directed $116.9 million to its super PAC, the NEA Advocacy Fund, according to the watchdog.

NAVI identified another $80.2 million distributed among political intermediaries, including the State Engagement Fund, Strategic Victory Fund and State Victory Fund LLC. The organization warned that such arrangements make it difficult for dues-paying teachers to determine where their money ultimately goes.

The report also found that the NEA contributed $30.1 million to Education International, a global teachers federation that includes a Palestinian teachers union NAVI describes as affiliated with the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Meanwhile, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the nation’s second-largest teachers union, reported $383.2 million in political activity and lobbying expenditures during the same period.

According to NAVI, the AFT directed $123.35 million to outside political organizations and committees, including $45.7 million to four national partisan political committees.

The union also spent millions supporting ballot initiatives and judicial elections, including campaigns involving redistricting, taxation and Wisconsin Supreme Court races.

NAVI concluded that both unions have expanded their political operations well beyond traditional education issues, financing campaigns involving elections, tax policy and ideological advocacy.

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Trump cut their climate jobs. This secretive network found them new ones.

Last year was a tough time for anyone who studies climate change for a living. The United States, once respected around the world for its sprawling investments in science, suddenly reversed course. Shortly after President Donald Trump began his second term in office, his administration set to work slashing funds for America’s scientific institutions, scrapping billions of dollars in research grants and firing thousands of federal employees at agencies ranging from the Environmental Protection Agency to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

People were “in shock,” said Aparna Shrivastava, who was a senior climate official in the Biden administration. In private chats, she found herself in conversation with dozens of experts who had recently lost their jobs or funding, but who wanted to continue studying the rapidly warming planet or trying to prevent its worst effects. But the sudden cuts left many with few options.

All of them were trying to figure out, “What could we possibly do to address this?” Shrivastava said. Eventually, the conversations started happening in person. At a workshop convened by the Aspen Global Change Institute in Colorado last July, a group of more than 30 climate experts landed on a possible solution — one that would help fund new jobs for laid-off colleagues across the country. Today that idea is a full-fledged initiative, backed by tens of millions of dollars, with Shrivastava at the helm. They call themselves the Climate Reserve, and they’re just now taking their operation public.

Climate Reserve functions through a network of experts with a mission to identify the most critical climate work left in limbo and find a place where it can continue, even without federal support. Sometimes that means placing a climate researcher with an organization focused on the environment or climate; other times that means finding a new home for projects that the government cut from its budget, Shrivastava said.

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ICE Arrests Kenyan Illegal Alien Working at Washington’s Department of Children, Youth, and Families

ICE’s Seattle office arrested Stanley Robert Kungu Muthee, a Kenyan national who overstayed a tourist visa, during a traffic stop on Monday while he was wearing a jacket from his job at the Washington State Department of Children, Youth, and Families.

Bill Melugin reported that ICE confirmed Muthee entered the United States on February 6, 2019, on a B-2 tourist visa, never left, and remained in the country illegally.

During the arrest, he admitted he worked for the agency and was carrying a DCYF identification card.

ICE quoted Melugin’s scoop on X and stated that American taxpayer dollars should never pay the salaries of illegal aliens or be responsible for the safety and well-being of American children.

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Why is the research council paying $75,000 for AI agents that optimize EDI?

The National Research Council of Canada (NRC) lists a $75,000 contribution to a Montreal company, under an agreement starting April 13, 2026, to develop artificial intelligence agents for equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) in scientific research, the federal grants disclosure shows. The recipient is Scikoop inc., and the contribution’s title is “ARP – Development of AI Agents to Optimize Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) in Research.” Its stated purpose: “This project will help democratize EDI best practices within the Canadian scientific ecosystem.”

The money comes from the NRC’s Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP), which exists, in its own words, to help small firms “grow through innovation and stimulate wealth creation for Canada.” Scikoop says it helps health research teams with “data representativity and community engagement,” offers “representativeness AI tools” and sells “research certification.” Its about page lists “Making EDI Work for Science” as one of three things it does, names Adèle Salin-Cantegrel as executive director and shows “CNRC PARI,” the French name of IRAP, among its supporters. The ODISÉ research network lists Scikoop under “EDI-A research support,” with a “Scikoop Certification” for teams showing “responsible and inclusive research practices.”

The grant runs to March 31, 2027. On September 21, 2026, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Science and Research tabled a report recommending that the three federal granting agencies remove all references to EDI from the awarding of research funding and ban demographic quotas and proportionality targets; the report also backed EDI training for applicants, and does not address IRAP or this contribution.

At a February 23 meeting, members had asked whether EDI requirements affect perceptions of merit. The NRC, which reports to Parliament through the Minister of Industry, told the committee on March 12 that “funding decisions are merit-based and guided by clear eligibility and assessment criteria,” while reducing its grants and contributions under the expenditure review and adding funding to IRAP.

The record does not name who approved the contribution. NRC President Mitch Davies was appointed for five years from January 3, 2024, announced by Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne on December 20, 2023; IRAP is run by acting vice-president Laural Porth-Jones; the Minister of Industry is Mélanie Joly.

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US Journalist and Activist Detained After Israeli Settler Attack in West Bank

An American journalist and an activist who reportedly suffered a concussion from being beaten by armed Israeli settlers remained in detention Wednesday night, hours after Israeli police arrested them following the attack.

Adele Shoko, a Russian activist, reported that settlers had attacked her, Israeli-Russian activist Andrey Khrzhanovskiy, and US journalist Jasper Nathaniel late Wednesday in the Palestinian village of Umm al-Khair, in the Masafer Yatta area of the occupied West Bank.

“They beat us, threatened to shoot us, stole Andrey’s phone and my glasses, and pepper-sprayed Jasper,” Shoko said on the social media platform X.

According to Shoko, Khrzhanovskiy was denied medical treatment after losing consciousness “several times in front of police.” He and Nathaniel were taken to a police station, where they remained hours later.

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