Tag: perpetual war

 Actresses Susan Sarandon and Hannah Einbinder Handcuffed While Protesting Netanyahu’s UN Speech

Actresses Hannah Einbinder and Susan Sarandon were taken into custody Thursday outside the United Nations in New York during a protest against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to the General Assembly.

Jewish Voice for Peace organized the protest, which took place a few blocks from the UN headquarters on Thursday.

Protesters wore matching shirts that read “Fund people not bombs” and carried banners including “Stop Arming Israel” and “End the Genocide.”

Chants captured on video included “Netanyahu, you can’t hide! We charge you with genocide,” “Let Gaza live,” and “Stop arming Israel.”

An NYPD spokesperson said Community Affairs officers warned the crowd to leave.

“They continued to block the intersection. Multiple individuals who didn’t comply were taken into custody,” the spokesperson said, without giving a final headcount.

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Yemen Is Unraveling as the War Spreads Across the Red Sea

The situation in Yemen is deteriorating by the day. The United Nations now says more than 130,000 people have been driven from their homes this month as fighting intensifies following the Houthi advance along the Red Sea coast. Another 100,000 could be displaced over the next three months. More than 3,000 people have already escaped Yemen by boat toward Africa, primarily Djibouti, and the UN is preparing for that number to reach 10,000 as calmer seas make the crossing possible.

Families are abandoning everything and crossing the Red Sea on whatever vessels they can find. Reuters documented families fleeing barefoot after bombardments reached displacement camps where some had already sought refuge from earlier fighting. This is what politicians sitting comfortably thousands of miles away never comprehend. War becomes a statistic to them. To the people trapped inside it, your home, savings, possessions, livelihood, and sometimes your family can disappear overnight.

Yemen was already one of the poorest nations in the Middle East before this latest escalation. Some 22 million people require humanitarian assistance. Now the infrastructure required to provide that assistance is itself being disrupted. Roads have been damaged, telecommunications have been interrupted, movement is restricted, and damage to the port of Mokha has complicated humanitarian logistics. UNHCR says its response plan was less than 20% funded even before this latest wave of fighting exploded.

This is precisely how regional wars expand. Everyone looks at Yemen as though it is some isolated civil war between the Houthis and the Saudi-backed government. It is not. Yemen sits beside one of the most strategically important pieces of geography on Earth. The Houthis’ advance along the Red Sea coast has placed them astride the Bab el-Mandeb, while Iran sits beside the Strait of Hormuz. Saudi Arabia is caught between both chokepoints.

Now even Vladimir Putin and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman are publicly calling for safe passage through BOTH Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb. That alone tells you the seriousness of the situation. Saudi Arabia has already been forced to redirect oil through Egypt’s Suez Canal because of disruptions affecting its traditional export routes.

The humanitarian crisis cannot be separated from the economic crisis. The same waters desperate Yemenis are crossing to escape the fighting are among the most important commercial shipping lanes in the world. UNHCR warns that further deterioration around Bab el-Mandeb could force humanitarian cargo to travel around the Cape of Good Hope, adding 25 to 30 DAYS to delivery times. That means higher freight rates, more fuel, higher insurance premiums, delayed food and medicine, and eventually higher prices.

Djibouti is now being dragged directly into the consequences. It has fewer than 1.2 million people and already hosts tens of thousands of refugees and asylum seekers. The Markazi refugee facility has room for only around another 5,000 people while authorities are preparing for more than 10,000 arrivals from Yemen. More than 60% of the initial arrivals identified by UNHCR were women, children, and elderly people. The pressure on food, water, shelter, schools, and medical services will rise rapidly if this becomes a genuine mass exodus.

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Iran Vows To ‘Paralyze’ Regional Airports Which Prevent Its Flights From Landing

Facing crippling US sanctions against its aviation sector as part of the Trump/Bessent Economic D-Day initiative, Iran is warning that if regional countries join the sanctions action, their own airports could be targeted.

Iran’s Supreme National Security Council has on Wednesday put neighboring states who are allies of Washington on notice. The statement warned their airports will be “paralyzed” if they cooperate with US attempts to prevent the landing of Iranian airliners.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent declared on Monday that by Wednesday. Sept. 23, “all the Iranian airlines will be shut down around the world.“

He warned that any airports or companies providing fuel, landing, and ticketing for sanctioned Iranian entities risk dollar-system exclusion.

Already Turkey has taken the dramatic action of canceling all flights in the foreseeable future for various Iranian carriers.

According to more of the Iranian Supreme National Security Council statement, delivered via its chief, Mohsen Rezaei, “We ask all the countries of the region not to join America’s adventure. If they do not allow Iranian aircraft to travel, their own airports will not be able to have flights either.”

“You are our friends, but you should not join America’s ranks. You should prevent the war from spreading,” he added. Throughout the prior seven months of war with the US, Iran has shown a willingness to target major civilian hubs, particularly in neighboring Kuwait.

Iran is defiantly planning to press forward with its commercial airline operations. While some countries are complying with the US order, China is clearly not…

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Despite UN Diplomacy, the US and Iran Are Still Headed Toward More War

Just a few thoughts on the three-hour indirect meeting yesterday at the UN between US and Iranian officials, facilitated by the indefatigable Qataris.

It is undoubtedly a good thing that the two sides have resumed contact again, even though we are now back to Qatari mediators shuttling messages between them rather than the two sides talking directly to each other.

But it is also true that the two sides remain very far from each other. The positive manner in which Trump, in particular, described the meeting, as a result, leaves the impression that this was more performative than substantive. That is, yet another effort to calm the markets and reduce further negative impact on the upcoming elections. Why else would Trump insist that a deal will be reached after the midterms? That specificity gives the game away.

Indeed, part of the calculation on the American side is to make moves now to reduce the likelihood of an Iranian escalation before the midterms. As I have written before, Round 3 of the war is very likely, and from the US standpoint, the preferred timing is after the midterms. But the Iranians are no longer in a reactive mode; if war is coming, they may take preemptive action to deprive Trump of the luxury of choosing the timing of the next round. The most optimal moment to preempt a US attack would be a week or two before the midterms, which is why some limited diplomacy now with the partial aim of reducing the likelihood of such a preemption is deemed useful. And why its achievement is overstated.

To go beyond this, real concessions from both sides are needed. But right now, the key blockage is Trump’s refusal to lift the naval blockade on Iran, even if Tehran agrees to open the Strait of Hormuz. The US side fears that lifting the blockade would enable Iran to refill its coffers and provide it with much more time. Tehran would use this reprieve not to strike a deal with Washington, but to prolong the conflict for teh purpose of destroying Trump’s presidency.

Tehran, in turn, is unlikely to give any concessions of significance unless Trump lifts the blockade. Trump’s refusal to do so is interpreted by the Iranians as a reflection of his desire to overthrow the Islamic Republic or force it to surrender.

To break such a deadlock, small steps like the meeting in New York may prove useful, if not necessary. But thus far, while the resumption of (indirect) talks is a breakthrough of sorts, it is not course correction: The US and Iran are unfortunately still headed toward another round of war.

I am also linking to my conversation with Glenn Diesen from earlier this week. It quickly went to very dark places. But the situation in the Middle East/US/Iran is unravelling, and measures and scenarios that were unthinkable just a few months ago are increasingly being discussed at the government level. So we had to have an honest conversation about these previously unthinkable scenarios.

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Russia Guts Ukraine’s Drone Industry Overnight — And NATO Scrambles – What They Won’t Tell You

Russian precision strikes on Ukrainian drone manufacturing facilities were carried out in a massive overnight operation to destroy a significant part of Ukraine’s drone production capacity, while NATO fighter jets were scrambled in Poland and Romania.

The Russian Ministry of Defense reported that its armed forces delivered a massive strike using ground and air precision weapons against Ukraine’s military-industrial complex, telecommunications centers, logistics hubs in Kyiv and the Odessa region, and naval vessels supporting Ukrainian forces.

Among the confirmed targets: an industrial facility manufacturing long- and medium-range UAV components and ground robotic systems; the Pegasus Arms LLC workshop, which stored and produced fixed-wing drones; and the Element UA LLC facility producing Hornet strike drone components. A Kyiv transport and logistics center for distributing long-range UAVs was also struck, as were the Kievstar and Parkovy telecommunications centers providing communications and computing support to Ukrainian forces.

In Odessa, two military logistics centers and two Ukrainian naval vessels were hit.

Ukraine reported Russia launched 161 strikes overnight — 82 jet-powered drones and an unknown number of Banderol cruise missiles. Air defenses intercepted 119 drones and three cruise missiles, with impacts recorded across 18 locations.

Poland scrambled fighter jets after Russian strike drones operating in western Ukraine approached its airspace. The alert lasted approximately an hour; no violations were recorded. Romania scrambled two F-16s to respond to an aerial target maneuvering near its Ukrainian border — also with no incursions confirmed.

The NATO scrambles have become nearly a nightly occurrence. Russian drones have previously crossed into NATO member airspace and crashed on NATO territory.

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This is Why CNN is Fake News – Appalling

CNN is absolutely no longer news, it is a propaganda organization for war. Not a single word has been fact-checked—not even by simply Googling the facts. This nonsense that Russia is trying to take all of Ukraine and that the Ukrainian people are fighting for their freedom is so outrageous that it amounts to plain propaganda, which only leads to war. There is no rational discussion here. There is no solution but war, because no matter what, Europe will simply NEVER accept peace with Russia, and people are too stupid to realize that this Finnish politician cannot possibly be this stupid and uninformed.

Since the AfD won two elections and the CDU was below 5%, so they did not even get a seat, Brussels and NATO are in a state of panic. They are pushing for all-out war because they fear that if the AfD takes Germany, they are anti-war and anti-Brussels. The only way to retain power is to start a war as soon as possible.

The Ukrainian people want an election. Zelensky lied and promised peace, and has been doing nothing but carrying out his personal hatred of Russians. Reliable sources from Ukraine report that (1) the factories are being run by women since men are sent to the front line, and (2) they are actually handcuffing men in transport to the front line to prevent them from fleeing. My discussions with members of Congress know that Zelensky is the problem and that Putin has agreed to peace.

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Five Years Later, Media Blame Afghans for US-Engineered Disaster 

Last month marked five years since the US withdrew its military forces from Afghanistan and the Taliban returned to power. The US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, and the resultant war, directly killed more than 176,000 Afghan people, including more than 46,000 civilians. Yet major US media outlets have covered the anniversary by muddying the US’s role in the country’s hardships—writing as though Afghanistan’s history began in August 2021.

A CNN article (8/15/26) by Kara Fox offered an egregious bit of historical revisionism:

In the five years since the chaotic US withdrawal from Kabul and the Taliban’s return to power, Afghanistan has become home to one of the world’s worst human rights and humanitarian emergencies.

Afghanistan hasn’t “become” a human rights and humanitarian emergency “since” the US troop withdrawal. It was a disaster during—and in no small part because of—the US war and occupation.

For instance, in November 2019, towards the end of the US occupation, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) estimated that approximately 2.44 million Afghan were in an “emergency situation” in terms of food insecurity. The next year, Amnesty International noted that four million Afghans were internally displaced and facing widespread problems of “inadequate housing, food insecurity [and] insufficient access to sanitation.”

Both years, the International Rescue Committee put Afghanistan in its top 10 “crises the world should be watching.” Evidently such conditions don’t meet CNN’s threshold for a “humanitarian emergency.”

In terms of rights, a 2019 Human Rights Watch (HRW) report documented Afghan strike forces that were “recruited, trained, equipped and overseen by the CIA” committing

serious abuses between late 2017 and mid-2019. They are illustrative of a larger pattern of serious laws-of-war violations—some amounting to war crimes—that extends to all provinces in Afghanistan where these paramilitary forces operate with impunity.

In 2020, HRW would go on to criticize the US-installed Afghan government for “fail[ing] to prosecute senior officials responsible for sexual assault, torture and killing civilians.” One can debate what constitutes a human rights “emergency,” but it’s clear that rights violations were a defining feature of the US occupation.

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Burnham Announces ‘Ministry of Truth’ to ‘Defend Democracy’ From ‘Russia-Amplified Far-Right Narratives’

The belief that the United Kingdom is experiencing decline, the view that there are negative elements to modern life, and the feeling of unrest after terror attacks are among “far-right narratives” pushed by Russian intelligence that bear “no resemblance to reality,” Prime Minister Andy Burnham declared as he announced plans for a new National Centre for Information Defence.

The UK has more experience than most Western countries in being attacked with information warfare and will establish a new government body to disrupt “hostile state information attacks”, Andy Burnham said during his address to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, while tipping that this model could be exported to other countries to protect them from unwelcome information as well.

Though the wide-ranging speech touched on a series of issues, the lion’s share of the new British Prime Minister’s speaking time was spent explaining how narratives contrary to his view of modern Britain not only bear “no resemblance to reality”, but are engineered by foreign powers to undermine national security.

The country’s deeper experience in this sort of warfare goes back ten years, Burnham said — not naming the defeat of progressive sentiment in the Brexit referendum ten years ago in 2016, but tacitly implying this was the first battle in this shadow war against information — stating British elections had also been targeted by Russia.

Because there is “no national security” without a cohesive society to build it on, Burnham said the level of threat he intended to fight justified extraordinary reach for this new information control body, stating:

The Kremlin spends about £1.3 billion each year on manipulating information. We’re talking about an insidious campaign that reaches into people’s homes and twists what they feel about their own country and community, creating a narrative of decline, stoking division, and sowing despair… we are going to help our people to strengthen their resilience, because faced with their information warfare, security starts in every home.

The variety of opinions being forced on unsuspecting Britons by Russia was, the Prime Minister said, considerable, and conveniently aligns reasonably neatly with practically everything his Labour Party stands against.

This “industrial-scale assault by hostile actors on the information environment in the UK” by “Russian agencies” includes spreading disinformation to prey on ordinary people’s fears, he said, and amplifying “far-right narratives” by stoking “tensions and unrest in the wake of horrific events”, terror attacks.

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‘Survival Mode’ – Farmers Crushed As Trump’s War On Iran Sends Diesel Cost Soaring

As Donald Trump’s war on Iran nears the seven-month mark, the economic damage is reverberating all over the world, and all across the United States. Among the Americans who are feeling the most pain from a war their federal legislators never declared are the nation’s farmers, who are growing increasingly desperate under the weight of rising costs for diesel, fertilizer and equipment.

It’s a demographic that leans hard to the right, but now feels let down by Trump and others in Washington. “It’s his war that caused this, this war in Iran. We’re not winning that war. And many farmers feel like we shouldn’t be there,” farmer John Boyd, Jr told CNN. Trump says the war in Iran is necessary to prevent the country from building a nuclear weapon. However, going back to 2007 and up to the eve of the war, the US intelligence committee has repeatedly assessed that Iran was not building one. 

“I’ve done this 34 years. I have never worried and stressed like I have the last year,” North Carolina farmer Matt Bell told CBS News. “We’ve cut everything we can cut.” Trying every option he can think of to improve his cash flow, Bell has put off replacing equipment, produced some of his own fertilizer, and opened a pumpkin patch and hayride business for the fall. The rising costs come after a difficult period had already weakened his operation’s financial security. 

“The last several years in agriculture have been terrible, and we have just cut the fat anywhere we could. But we’re just getting to the point now there’s nothing left to cut. You cannot run without fuel. You cannot run without fertilizer. You have to have that,” Bell said. 

As a result of a major reduction in oil exports from the Persian Gulf, the nationwide average cost for a gallon of diesel hit $6.49 this week, up 75% from a year ago, according to the AAA. Lately, the price volatility has led Bell’s diesel distributors to offer price quotations that are only good for a matter of hours. He’d budgeted $35,000 for fuel in 2026, but blew past that number in August. “Every piece of equipment on this farm runs on diesel,” he emphasized. 

In an interview with Sky News, Texas cattle rancher Lynn Fleming said her August outlay for few was almost double what she’d paid in recent years. “Obviously the main [factor] is what we’re facing everyday with the Iranian situation,” Fleming said. Her husband, Robert, said he felt blindsided by the war. “We had no idea that he was going to pull the prank with the Strait of Hormuz. He didn’t tell us … he was going to go do the military maneuvers and try to control the oil supply over there. We had no warning of what was going to happen.” A major cornerstone of Trump’s 2024 campaign was his pledge to be a “peace president” who would refrain from starting any new wars.    

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Pay Up, Shut Up, and Cheer: How Washington Gaslit America Into Netanyahu’s Forever War

The cost of diesel that hauls every loaf of bread, every pallet of medicine and every bag of fertilizer in this country just set an all-time record. The national average hit $6.44 a gallon, up 71 percent since the United States and Israel attacked Iran on February 28. Gasoline sits at $4.46, at least six states are already above $5, and Californians are paying $6.11. Shipping giant CMA CGM just slapped an emergency fuel surcharge on its cargo, and the Congressional Budget Office projects the war will add half a percentage point to inflation in early 2027.

But at least Iran doesn’t have a nuke, right?

The president’s response to this infuriating perpetuation of a new forever war sure seems like that’s his stance entirely as he tells you to pay up and smile. Last week Trump said Americans are “going to have to pay some extra for gas” to keep Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and called it “a very inexpensive price to pay.” Back in March he was blunter, declaring that anyone who objected to the price spike was a fool: “ONLY FOOLS WOULD THINK DIFFERENTLY!” This is the same man who campaigned on two-dollar gas and who is still promising it will fall “below Two Dollars a gallon” once we “WIN.”

The problem is that you are being asked to pay for stopping a weapon that, according to most of the world, including Trump’s own intelligence community, Iran was not building. In March 2025, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told the Senate that the intelligence community “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon” and that Khamenei had not reauthorized the program he suspended in 2003. When reporters asked Trump about that testimony, he replied, “I don’t care what she said.” Days later he bombed Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan and told the nation the sites had been “completely and totally obliterated.” This blatant lie would then set the nefarious stage for an endless conveyor belt of lies that would run for well over a year down the throats of Americans.

If the program was obliterated in June 2025, what exactly were we bombing in February 2026? Trump claimed that without the strikes Iran would have had a bomb within two weeks, while the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said there was no evidence Iran was building one. Gabbard’s own 2026 testimony stated that the intelligence community assessed Iran was not rebuilding its enrichment capability after the 2025 attacks. As he said on our podcast, the nation’s top counterterrorism official, Joe Kent, resigned rather than support a war on a country that posed “no imminent threat to our nation.”

Gabbard’s own path tells the story of how Washington swallows people whole and how that assembly line of lies fills their worlds with half-truths and deceptions designed to keep Americans in the dark. In 2019 she warned that a war with Iran would make Iraq “look like a cakewalk,” and in Congress she introduced the No More Presidential Wars Act to require congressional authorization before any attack on Iran. In 2024 she told voters that a vote for Trump was a vote to end wars. Then, after Trump publicly dismissed her, she posted that the “dishonest media” had taken her out of context and that Iran could build a weapon “within weeks to months.” Shameful indeed. When Senator Jon Ossoff asked her point blank whether the intelligence community had assessed an imminent nuclear threat, she answered that only the president can make that determination. Her spine, like that of an earthworm, as she slipped away back to Hawaii, having betrayed all those who supported her.

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