Archives: Articles

By Juan Cole

Under President Donald J. Trump, the United States has now become an engine for the promulgation of White nationalism. Not since the 1930s has such an ideology, which exalts those ethnic groups it codes as “White,” while denigrating all others, underpinned the domestic and foreign policies of a major world power. Typically (for our moment), Trump’s recent National Security Strategy (NSS) depicted Europe as in distinct “civilizational decline” because of the European Union’s commitment to multiracial democracy and international humanitarian law. These days, thanks to its racial policies, the Trump team even finds a way to inject racial hatred into dry economic statistics, complaining that “Continental Europe has been losing share of global GDP [gross domestic product] — down from 25 percent in 1990 to 14 percent today.”

A Mayor Named Khan

As it happens, though, on a per-person basis, Europeans are more than twice as wealthy today in real terms as they were 36 years ago. The dictum once cited by Mark Twain that there are “lies, damned lies, and statistics” is exemplified in Trump’s National Security Strategy. In 1991, just two years before the European Union (EU) was first formed, the per-capita GDP there was $15,470 (in today’s dollars). In 2024, that figure was $43,305. What changed since then wasn’t that Europe began decaying, but that the well-being of the people in the global South, in what Trump dismisses as “shithole countries,” has actually also improved significantly, whether he likes it or not, changing Europe’s share of global GDP.

In his National Security Strategy, Trump admits, however, that Europe’s supposed economic degradation doesn’t bother him nearly as much as another issue: “This economic decline is eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure,” thanks to Europe’s migration policies. In short, Trump’s government has now adopted a modernized version of the Nazi Great Replacement ideology, slamming “migration policies that are transforming the [European] continent and creating strife,” along with “cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence.”

Trump claims that he’s no longer sure Europeans will even remain European. He supposedly worries that, two decades from now, the continent will be unrecognizable and EU countries no longer capable of being Washington’s “reliable allies.” That barb is, of course, clearly aimed at Muslim immigrants to Europe, even though they are a distinct minority of those arriving there. In an interview about his NSS, Trump snidely remarked, “If you take a look at London, you have a mayor named Khan.” And he then went on to exclaim in horror that immigrants aren’t just coming from the Middle East, “they’re coming in from the Congo, tremendous numbers of people coming from the Congo.” In other words, the only thing that outstrips Trump’s Islamophobia is his horror of Black people.

Of course, he’s completely misinformed about immigration to Europe, which means his NSS is as well. As a start, the largest influx of people into the EU in recent few years has been 4.3 million Ukrainians. The major sources of immigration to Germany in 2024 were Ukraine, Romania, Turkey, Syria, and India. For Spain, it was Colombia, Morocco, Venezuela, Peru, and Argentina. As for Europe’s future reliability, Trump has already said that he “can’t trust” Denmark, no matter that its population is solidly Lutheran and predominantly blond, because that country won’t give him Greenland. And since the president has expressed a willingness to break up the NATO alliance, if necessary, to add 57,000 Greenlanders to his feudal domains, his doubting of European dependability should be considered richly ironic.

Aryan Reliability

The underpinnings of Trump’s reasoning can (or at least should) be described as Nazi in style. After all, he’s assuming that the immigrants he loathes are inherently incapable of becoming Europeans and will make those countries intrinsically untrustworthy as allies of the United States. Of the EU countries, he recently asserted that “they’ll change their ideology, obviously, because the people coming in have a totally different ideology.” Yet British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, born in Southampton to an immigrant Indian-East African family of Hindu faith, was widely viewed as having restored British-U.S. diplomatic relations after years of strain.

In reality, studies show that socio-economic status, not national origin, best predicts how immigrants will vote. In Germany, the better-off Russian-Germans, who far outnumber largely working-class Turkish-Germans, tend to vote for right-of-center parties. Both groups, however, seem happy to participate in European politics in accordance with local norms. If, for Trump, the term “immigrants” in this context is a dog whistle for Muslims, it might be noted that nine of the 22 countries, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, that have been formally designated by Trump as “major non-NATO allies” are Muslim-majority.

His foreign policy reasoning in that NSS eerily mirrors the crackpot logic of Adolf Hitler, who saw France as an enemy of Germany’s because it had allegedly fallen irretrievably under non-Aryan Jewish influence, and who held out hope in the 1920s and early 1930s that Aryan elements would prevail over Jewish ones in Britain, a country he preferred as a strategic partner because of the Germanic ancestry of part of its population. In Trump’s NSS, immigrant Europeans from Africa and the Middle East play the role that Jews did in Hitler’s thinking — that is, non-Aryan underminers of national integrity. Hitler’s conspiratorial racism was, of course, all too grimly insane, and so, too, is that of Trump’s NSS.

“Mongols and Negroes”

Central to the NSS is the Great Replacement. The idea, though not the phrase, goes back to 1900 when the French nationalist parliamentarian and novelist Maurice Barrès wrote, “Today, new French have slipped in among us… who want to impose on us their ways of feeling.” He warned of Jewish, Italian, and other immigrants. “The name of France might well survive,” he commented, but “the special character of our country would nevertheless be destroyed.” Amid a political crisis over the wrongful conviction of Captain Alfred Dreyfus (of Jewish and Alsatian heritage) for supposed espionage for the German embassy, Barrès denounced the famed French novelist Émile Zola, a supporter of Dreyfus, as “not French” but a rootless cosmopolitan from a Venetian background.

Fifty years later, the French Nazi René Binet (1913-1957) coined the phrase “Great Replacement.” An ex-Communist, he had served as a Nazi collaborator during World War II in the Waffen Grenadier Brigade of the Charlemagne paramilitary Protection Squadron (Schutzstaffel or SS). After the war, in his 1950 book Theory of Racism, he wrote in dismay about how Western Europe had been invaded by “Mongols and Negroes” — that is, by the Soviets and the Americans. He lamented that Jewish-dominated capital also supposedly controlled Europe (it didn’t, of course) and falsely alleged that Jewish CEOs were bringing in immigrants in a deliberate attempt to replace civilized White Europeans.

Sadly enough, Binet’s ideas have been revived in this century by French thinkers and politicians. Renaud Camus published his twenty-first century version of the theory in 2010, entitling his book The Great Replacement. Such falsehoods were echoed in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, when American Nazis chanted “Jews will not replace us” (and President Trump called the assembled protestors, as well as those who opposed them, “very fine people”). Camus came around to supporting like-minded politicians in the far-right French National Rally (formerly the National Front) party, led by Marine Le Pen, who also became a Trump ally. When a French court convicted her of embezzlement in 2025 and excluded her from politics for five years, Trump denounced the verdict and launched the slogan, “Free Marine Le Pen.” Holding Le Pen, a far-right racist politician, accountable to the rule of law is part of what Trump was complaining about in his NSS when he cited European “censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition.”

Marine Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, had been a paratrooper in the ruthless Algerian War (1954-1962) that killed between half a million and a million Algerians in a bid to keep that country under French colonial domination. The elder Le Pen came to lead the newly founded National Front in 1972 and was surrounded by far-right figures who had collaborated with the Nazis. While the party reinvented itself under Marine Le Pen in 2017 as the National Rally and has moved slightly toward the center, many of its supporters harbor neo-Nazi ideas about racial purity, now typically aimed at Arab and Amazigh Muslims.

Forget 1776 and All That

The central concerns of that National Security Strategy now animate the Trump administration’s foreign policy. At the annual Munich Security Conference in early February, for instance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio took up what the Victorian jingoist writer Rudyard Kipling once termed the White Man’s Burden, crowing that “for five centuries, before the end of the Second World War, the West had been expanding.” He neglected to mention all the massacres, destruction, and looting that European colonialists perpetrated over those centuries. Belgium’s King Leopold II alone, for instance, instituted policies in the Congo from 1885 to 1908 that may have killed as many as 10 million people. That bloody episode inspired Joseph Conrad’s novel The Heart of Darkness, in the final sentence of which the protagonist utters, “The horror! The horror!“

After the end of World War II in 1945, Rubio lamented, a Europe in ruins contracted. “Half of it,” he added, “lived behind an Iron Curtain and the rest looked like it would soon follow.” He mourned that “the great Western empires had entered into terminal decline, accelerated by godless communist revolutions and by anti-colonial uprisings that would transform the world and drape the red hammer and sickle across vast swaths of the map in the years to come.”

He also displayed a striking mixture of White nationalism and colonial nostalgia — and with it, an ignorance of the history of decolonization, which neither occurred only after 1945, nor was in the main Communist-led. After all, the United States launched its anti-colonial struggle in 1776. Most of Latin America was liberated from the Spanish Empire in the early nineteenth century by Simón Bolívar and other fighters who would have been characterized at the time as liberals. As for the post-World War II liberation movements, most leaders of former colonialized countries, including India, Kenya, Malaysia, Morocco, Pakistan, Senegal, and Sudan, among other places, tilted either to capitalism or to social democracy.

Marco Rubio’s mixing of White nationalism and colonial nostalgia is, of course, nothing new. A return of German colonies in Africa, lost in World War I to Britain and France, was among the Nazi regime’s most insistent demands in the late 1930s, and dreams of a new version of German imperialism in Africa were part of what was meant by the Third Reich.

Rubio has depicted decolonization as a failure of the European will to power. Most historians, on the other hand, point to the way their colonies mobilized for independence. Political scientists point to two crucial kinds of mobilization. The first was “social mobilization,” which involved urbanization, industrialization, and increased literacy. By 1945, ever more Asians and Africans were no longer illiterates living in small, disconnected villages. As for political mobilization, parties, chambers of commerce, and labor unions put millions of the previously colonized in the streets. New social classes of entrepreneurs, professionals, and workers demanded the right to control their own destinies.

And in the wake of World War II, attitudes were changing even among the colonial powers. The British public, for instance, could no longer be persuaded to spend money in an attempt to quell an India where the Congress Party of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru had brought millions into the streets demanding independence. And while the Netherlands did fight viciously to roll back Indonesia’s declaration of independence in 1945 (despite having itself been occupied by Germany during World War II), after four years of massacres, it was forced out. The impoverished French had no choice but to give up most of their African possessions, but in a sanguinary failure attempted to keep their colonies in Algeria and Vietnam by military force. American President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a wiser man than Rubio, twisted French President Charles De Gaulle’s arm to get him out of Algeria lest the revolutionaries there turn to Moscow and Communism.

Kinder, Küche, Kirche

Given that history, the advice of President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio to the European Union to adopt a White nationalist domestic and foreign policy and attempt to initiate a new round of European colonialism in the global South is monstrous indeed, both morally and in practical terms. Without immigration today, Europe would soon face Japan’s dilemma of rapid population loss, along with the loss of international economic and political power.

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez had it right when he said that Spain faces a choice between “being an open and prosperous country or a closed and poor one.” As for the White nationalist pronatalist dream of keeping women barefoot and pregnant in accordance with the old German slogan, Kinder, Küche, Kirche (children, kitchen, church), it’s a chimera given the electoral power of women in today’s Europe (and the United States).

Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s cruel, heavily ICED anti-immigrant campaign has already hurt the American economy and Europeans would be deeply unwise to emulate it in any way, including colonially. The neoconservative project of rehabilitating American colonialism crashed and burned in this country’s disastrous twenty-first-century wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (and won’t be aided by the present assault on Iran either) for reasons similar to those that made European colonialism impossible in the post-World War II period.

In reality, the European Union’s project of multicultural democracy has yielded enormous prosperity, while expanding and deepening human rights. Trump’s White nationalism, on the other hand, is a formula for division, poverty, and mass violence, as was demonstrated in the 1930s and 1940s when a form of that ideology was last tried in Europe.

And count on this: Trump and crew are going to give the phrase “the White man’s burden” a grim new meaning.

Juan Cole, a TomDispatch regular, is the Richard P. Mitchell collegiate professor of history at the University of Michigan.

13 March 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Gideon Polya

Careful and systematic analysis reveals Trump’s direct responsibility as US president for the deaths of 25.6 million people, many of them children, and a detailed and documented charge sheet has been drawn up here. However just as Nixon and Clinton evaded justice for huge war crimes but were brought down by victimless lying to Congress, so Trump goes unpunished for killing 25.6 million people in 5.25 years as president but may well be brought down by the Epstein Files and the alleged rape of a 13-year old girl.

Donald Trump was elected to office as a convicted felon, albeit convicted for a victimless technical crime. However while Trump is the first convicted felon elected as US president, 45 other war criminal US presidents remain un-convicted for their war crimes, variously from the 3-century American Indian Genocide (5 million Indigenous American deaths) to the 2001-2021 Afghan Genocide (7 million Afghan deaths from violence and imposed deprivation in gross violation of Articles 55 and 56 of the Fourth Geneva Convention) (for a detailed and documented analyses of US war crimes see [1-6]).

Richard Nixon (US president 1969-1974) was not arraigned for direct involvement as US president in the following horrific war atrocities (deaths from violence and deprivation in brackets): the 1969-1998 Cambodian Genocide (6 million), 1955-1975 Laotian Genocide (1 million) and the 1945-1975 Vietnamese Genocide (15 million) [1-6]. However he was finally forced to resign in 1974 for deceiving Congress over the Watergate and cover-up crimes [7].

Similarly Bill Clinton (US president 1993- 2001) was not arraigned for direct involvement as US president in the following atrocities (deaths from violence and deprivation in brackets): 1992 onwards Somali Genocide (2 million), the 1990-2003 Sanctions and Gulf War part of the Iraqi Genocide (1.9 million), 1979 onwards Sanctions-related Iran Genocide (3 million), and non-intervention in the 1994 Rwanda Genocide (0.9 million) [1-6]. Clinton also bombed Serbia in 1995 and in 1999. However Clinton was impeached – but thence acquitted – over lying to Congress over his affair with an intern Monica Lewinsky [8].

It would seem extremely unlikely that Trump – nor indeed any other US president – will be prosecuted for killing 25.6 million non-Europeans in the Global South and particularly in the Muslim world [1-6]. Thus US Presidents George W. Bush (2001-2009), Barack Obama (2009-2017), Donald Trump (2017-2021), Joe Biden (2021-2025) and Donald Trump (2025 onwards) have not been arraigned for their direct responsibility for the 2001-2021 Afghan Genocide and Afghan Holocaust (7 million Afghan deaths from violence and from imposed deprivation in gross violation of Articles 55 and 56 of the Fourth Geneva Convention that state that an Occupier is obliged to provide its Conquered Subjects with life-sustaining food and medical requisites “to the fullest extent of the means available to it” ) [1-6, 9-11]. Indeed no US presidents have been tried for their part in the century-long, 1916-2026 and ongoing Palestinian Genocide and Palestinian Holocaust (3.1 million Palestinians killed by violence, 0.3 million, and imposed deprivation, 2.8 million) [12-15], noting that the WW2 Jewish Holocaust was associated with 5-6 million Jewish deaths due to Nazi-imposed violence and deprivation [16-18].

(A). Unpunished for killing 25.6 million people (many of them children), Trump is threatened by alleged sexual crimes against females, and particularly the alleged rape of a 13-year old girl.

While Trump goes for unpunished for killing 25.6 million people (as detailed in (B) below), he is threatened by the huge volume of Epstein files and his close connections to Jeffrey Epstein, that are being examined by media and Congress. In particular the alleged rape by Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein of a 13-year old girl is presently being reported by just a few Mainstream media, although most Western Mainstream media exhibit their extraordinary and entrenched mendacity by ignoring this hugely important story.

Thus the leading UK newspaper The Telegraph (6 March 2026): “US authorities have released new details of a sexual assault allegation against Donald Trump in the middle of their war on Iran. The trio of interviews were previously flagged as missing from the Epstein files and were released on Thursday night after pressure on the White House. The unidentified woman told FBI agents in 2019, shortly after Jeffrey Epstein was arrested on sex trafficking charges, that she had been sexually assaulted by the paedophile and Mr Trump while she was a teenager in the 1980s” [19].

Further respected media have reported this matter. Thus Common Dreams (24 February 2026): “The top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee announced Tuesday that an investigation will be opened into the US Department of Justice’s withholding of Epstein files related to an alleged sexual assault on a 13-year-old girl committed by President Donald Trump decades ago” [20].

Yahoo News (31 January 2026): “An allegation of rape against President Donald Trump involving a 13-year-old girl is part of an explosive new tranche of documents released by his own Justice Department into the crimes of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The bombshell claim, which the White House says was “unfounded and false,” was made in an FBI file dated from August last year” [21].

Yahoo News (9 March 2026): “The woman who accused Donald Trump of sexually abusing her when she was 13 provided several verifiable details about her life in interviews with the FBI, according to a new report. The woman detailed her alleged abuse by Trump and convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein over four interviews in 2019, the Epstein files revealed. The interviews were initially kept secret by the DOJ” [22].

Wikipedia: “As of October, 2024, since the 1970s, at least 28 women have accused Donald Trump of various acts of sexual misconduct, including rape, assault, kissing and groping without consent, looking under women’s skirts, and walking in on naked pageant contestants… In April 2016, an anonymous woman using the pseudonym “Katie Johnson” filed a lawsuit in California accusing both Trump and Jeffrey Epstein of forcibly raping her when she was 13 years old at underage sex parties at Epstein’s Manhattan residence in 1994” [23].

As reported on YouTube members of Congress have demanded release of all the relevant FBI files and demanded Trump’s appearance before the Congressional Oversight Committee investigating the voluminous Epstein files [24].

Indeed astonishingly in highly censored Australia, presenter David Marr indignantly raised the subject of the alleged Trump rape of the 13-year old girl on the progressive Late Night Live radio program of the important but “conservative” ABC (the taxpayer-funded Australian equivalent of the UK BBC). David Marr’s US correspondent stated that this matter would become a “bombshell” for Trump if the woman decides to come forward again [25].

As outlined above, a Google Search for “13-year old girl” plus the word Trump presently brings up only a couple of reports by respected media and AI Overview says: “Newly released FBI interviews from the “Epstein files” (February/March 2026) contain allegations from an unidentified woman claiming Donald Trump assaulted her in the 1980s-90s when she was 13–15 years old. Trump has denied these allegations, which officials labeled unverified and “sensationalist”” . However nearly all Western Mainstream media are conspicuous by their absence (with presently just several exceptions) from reporting this extremely topical and important matter that could end the Trump presidency – an extraordinary example of pervasive “Mainstream media lying” to protect the US establishment [26].

(B). Trump is directly responsible for the deaths of 25.6 million people, many of them children, but has yet to face a court for these horrific mortal crimes.

In January 2016 Trump boasted that : “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK? It’s, like, incredible” [27]. Trump is responsible for the deaths of 25.6 million people, many of them children, but will only be held accountable to American voters if gas prices and the inflation rate go too high or if the Epstein child abuse scandal really explodes.

Documented below are estimates of the 25.6 million people who have died due to Trump’s actions as president of the US, actions for which he has not yet been held accountable under the US Constitution or under International Law.

(1). 57,000 US heroin-related deaths (2017-2021).

The Taliban banned Afghan opium production in 2000 for religious reasons. According to the UN Drug Control Program (UNDCP): “An estimated 185 metric tonnes (MT) of raw opium was produced in Afghanistan in 2001. This would suggest a large reduction in opium production of 94% from the 2000 total of 3,276 MT and a reduction of 96% from the record high of 4,582 MT reported by the 1999 survey”[28]. Thus the 2000 Taliban ban on Afghan opium production caused a 94% drop in output in 2000-2001. However the US invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 and by 2002 US occupation had restored Afghan opium production to more than the 2000 level and to 76% of world market share in 2002 and to 92% of world market share by 2006 [29-31]. For the world and Afghan opium production statistics from 1980 to 2009 see [32].

US heroin-related deaths peaked under the first Trump Administration (20 January 2017- 20 January 2021), totalled about 57,000 [33], and coincided with the peak period of US-protected Afghan opium production before the US withdrew in 2021 and the Taliban imposed a ban in April 2022 on the cultivation, transportation, trade, and selling of all drugs. By 2023 and 2024 Afghan opium production was only about 5% of that in 2022 [34]. Global annual opium production (mainly in Myanmar, Mexico and elsewhere in 2023 and 2024) was only about 20% of the peak global production of 10,000 tons in 2017 (the first year of the first Trump presidency) [34].

War criminal Trump’s excuses for America’s illegal invasion of Venezuela were alleged Venezuelan involvement in drug smuggling to the US and alleged Venezuelan terrorism. However documented reality links Trump to 57,000 heroin-related deaths in his first presidency due to US backing of the Afghan opium industry. Trump was also complicit in 6.8 million Occupied Afghan deaths from violence and deprivation under US Occupation and US state terrorism [35].

(2). 1.36 million Afghan deaths from violence and deprivation (2017-2020).

Occupied Afghan “deaths from violence and deprivation” (Google this phrase) totalled 6.8 million in the 20 year Occupation period of 2001-2021 [9-11]. Occupied Afghan deaths during Trump’s first 4 -year term (2017-2020) can be crudely estimated as (6.8 million deaths x 4 years)/20 years = 1.36 million. Under-5 year old children are about 70% of avoidable deaths from deprivation in impoverished countries [2].

(3). 1.16 million global opiate-related deaths (2017-2020).

Global drug deaths totalled about 0.2 million in 2001 and about 0.6 million in 2019, and accordingly the average of annual drug deaths in this period was 0.4 million per year. Assuming that 90% of these drug deaths were opioid-related, that of these about 90% were due to opiates (such as opium and heroin, as opposed to synthetic opioids such as fentanyl and tramadol), and that of these opiate-related deaths 90% were linked to Afghan opium production [36], then the average global death rate from Afghanistan-derived opium in the last 2 decades would have been about 290,000 million deaths per year – or a total of 5.8 million since 9-11 (11 September 2001)[37]. The first Trump Administration (2017-2020) ruled Occupied Afghanistan for 4 years and thus was responsible for (5.8 million deaths x 4 years)/20 years = 1.16 million global opiate-related deaths.

In stark contrast US Government-beholden Western Mainstream media continue to turn reality on its head by ignoring this US-imposed carnage of 290,000 per year x 20 years = 5.8 million opiate drug-related deaths world-wide linked to US restoration of the Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry from about 6% of world market share in 2001 to 93% in 2007. Further, Western Mainstream media ignore the reality that Iran was the world leader in combating this deadly, 2-decade scourge of US-protected Afghan opiate drugs and instead beat the drums of war against Iran by the nuclear terrorist and serial invader countries of the US, Apartheid Israel, the UK and France – and all this against a country that does not have nuclear weapons, denies any intention of building them, repeatedly declares that it wants a nuclear weapons-free Middle East, and that has not invaded another country for 1,500 years (except for recent targeted retaliation against Gulf States supporting the unprovoked and illegal US-Israeli attack on Iran by hosting US military bases).

According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), in about 2018 Iran accounted for 74% of the world’s opium seizures and 25% of the world’s heroin and morphine seizures. However Iran’s role as a world leader in the War on Drugs and in combating opiate drugs from US-occupied Afghanistan came at a heavy price. Thus Iran has a 900 kilometer border with the formerly US-occupied Afghanistan that produced about 90% of the world’s opium under US Alliance protection. Iran has spent about $700 million policing its borders against drug movement. About 2.5 million Iranians are drug users with opium accounting for 67% of drug use. 4,000 Iranian police have been killed protecting Iran and the World from US-protected opiate smugglers. The US Alliance restored the Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry from about 6% of world market share in 2001 to 93% in 2007. Drought reduced the Afghan share of the world opium production in 2018 to 82% [36-39].

In my own country, fervently US-beholden, Zionist-perverted and resolutely “look-the-other-way” Australia, people are aware of 3,000 people being killed on 9-11 and possibly that about 40 Australian solders have died in the US War on Terror. However they are utterly unaware that since 9-11 there have been 5.8 million global opiate drug-related deaths linked to US-protected Afghan opium production in US-occupied Afghanistan, that in the 2 decades since 9/11 about 1.6 million Australians have died preventably from “lifestyle choice” or “political choices” reasons, that tens of thousands of Australians have died from drug-related causes (mostly opiate-related), or that that 1,400 Australian veterans of US Alliance wars have suicided [37]. Interestingly, in 2008 the Australian PM Kevin Rudd suggested to a NATO meeting on Afghanistan that the US Coalition should destroy the Afghan opium crop that presently kills about 290,000 people each year. His suggestion was, of course, rejected [40], notwithstanding the glaring reality that unlike Afghan combatants fighting the US and NATO Alliance, plants are sessile, cannot run away, and accordingly elaborate a huge array of chemical defences (including opiates) [41]. In June 2010 the popularly-elected PM Rudd was removed in a US- , Apartheid Israel- and Zionist-backed overnight coup [42, 43]. Despite dishonest denials, Australia vocally, materially and diplomatically backs the US-Israeli regime-change attack on Iran (Australia’s Pine Gap spying base targets US and Israeli strikes, 3 Royal Australian Navy sailors were aboard the US submarine that sank an Iranian warship off Sri Lanka, and Australia has dispatched key military forces to the UAE) . Indeed Australians have been involved in 8 US-backed coups, namely in Laos (1960), Indonesia (1965), Cambodia (1970), Chile (1973), Australia (1975), Fiji (1987), Fiji (2000) and Australia (2010), with the last 3 involving serial war criminal and genocidally racist Apartheid Israel [42, 43].

(4). 14 million people will die globally by 2030 from Trump’s abolition of USAID.

Daniella Medeiros Cavalcanti et al in The Lancet (19 July 2025): “USAID funding has significantly contributed to the reduction in adult and child mortality across low-income and middle-income countries over the past two decades. Our estimates show that, unless the abrupt funding cuts announced and implemented in the first half of 2025 are reversed, a staggering number of avoidable deaths could occur by 2030.…Forecasting models predicted that the current steep funding cuts could result in more than 14, 051, 750 (uncertainty interval 8, 475, 990–19, 662, 191) additional all-age deaths, including 4, 537, 157 (3, 124, 796–5 ,910 ,791) in children younger than age 5 years, by 2030… USAID funding has significantly contributed to the reduction in adult and child mortality across low-income and middle-income countries over the past two decades. Our estimates show that, unless the abrupt funding cuts announced and implemented in the first half of 2025 are reversed, a staggering number of avoidable deaths [14 million] could occur by 2030” [44]. Under-5 year old children are about 70% of avoidable deaths from deprivation in impoverished countries [2].

(5). 875,000 Gaza deaths from violence and deprivation in 2 years of the US-backed Gaza Genocide, 325,000 of them children. .

In the first 2 years of the Trump-backed and Zionist Israeli-imposed Gaza Genocide there were 875,000 Gaza “deaths from violence and deprivation” (Google this phrase) including the deaths of 325,000 children, 207,000 women and 342,000 men [12-15]. Trump provided the weapons, bombs, multiple UNSC vetoes [45], operational military cooperation and over $16 billion in military funding [46] for Apartheid Israel’s Gaza Genocide.

Expert epidemiologists published in the leading medical journal The Lancet estimated that 64,260 Gazans had died violently by 30 June 2024 (Day 269 of the killing) [47] and hence that 175,000 Gazans had died violently by 7 October 2025 (Day 731) i.e. after 2 years of killing. The wartime ratio of indirect deaths from imposed deprivation to direct, violent deaths ranges from 3 (the Iraq War, 1990-2011) to 16 (the Afghan War, 2001-2021) [2-6, 9]. Epidemiologists “conservatively” estimated 4 deaths from imposed deprivation in Gaza for every violent death [48-50], this indicating 700,000 non-violent deaths and 875,000 Gazans in total killed by violence and imposed deprivation by 7 October 2025 (i.e. in 2 years). Assuming (in the absence of other data) that the relative proportions of child, women and men deaths are the same for indirect (non-violent) deaths and for violent deaths reported by the Gaza health authorities, then the 875,000 Gazan deaths by 7 October 2025 are conservatively estimated to include the deaths of 325,000 children, 207,000 women and 342,000 men [13-15]. However this underestimates child deaths because it ignores the high vulnerability of under-5 year old infants who represent about 70% of avoidable deaths from deprivation in impoverished countries (see Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” [2]).

(6). 8.1 million avoidable deaths: Trump’s “share” of 1950 onwards avoidable deaths from deprivation in countries variously occupied by the US since World War 2.

Whether a child dies from deprivation or is killed by bombs, bullets or bashing, the death is just as final and the perpetrators just as guilty. Indeed an Australian farmer who deliberately starves his livestock to death is prosecuted and goes to jail. Such avoidable deaths from deprivation can be determined as the difference between actual deaths in a country and deaths expected for a peaceful, decently governed country with the same demographics (birth rate, children as a proportion of population). Using UN Population Division demographic data I determined avoidable mortality for every country in the world from 1950 onwards, with the results published in 2007 and 2021 editions of my huge book “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” [2]. This book also includes an avoidable mortality-related history of every country in the world from neolithic times. The results are utterly shocking. In particular, under-5 year old children are about 70% of avoidable deaths from deprivation in impoverished countries [2].

Importantly, poor countries threatened by colonial or hegemonic powers need to divert precious resources from life-preserving social purposes to defence, with a consequent effect on avoidable mortality from deprivation. I determined that 1950-2005 avoidable deaths from deprivation in countries variously occupied by the US in the post-WW2 era totalled 82.2 million. We could crudely estimate that the 1950-2025 figure would be (82.2 million x 76 years)/56 years = 111.6 million. Trump has been US president for 5.25 years. We can accordingly calculate Trump’s “share” of this carnage as (116.6 million deaths x 5.25 years)/76 years = 8.1 million deaths.

(7). Trump actions variously linked to increased avoidable mortality in the short-term and long-term but to a presently uncertain and unquantified extent.

(a). Trump bombed 7 countries in 14 months (Venezuela, Nigeria (government-invited bombing), Somalia, Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Iran) as well as destroying “alleged drug boats” in international waters in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific [51]. In addition in the last circa 2.5 years US-backed Apartheid Israel has catastrophically bombed Yemen, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Iran. Further, the US and Apartheid Israel unilaterally declared the independence of Somaliland from Somalia. Over 78 years Germany- and US-armed and Germany- and US-backed Apartheid Israel has attacked 18 countries [52, 53]. Like the Zionist-perverted US, Apartheid Israel subverts all countries in the world, and exports high technology arms and surveillance systems to dictatorships and democracies alike, with Apartheid Israeli weapons supporting genocidal atrocities including the Myanmar Rohingya Genocide, the Sri Lanka Tamil Genocide, the Guatemala Mayan Indian Genocide, the Iraqi Genocide, the war- and sanctions-based Iran Genocide, and the ongoing Sudan Genocide [54-57]. Trump’s “share” of responsibility for the consequently increased avoidable mortality is not clear.

This horrendous ongoing global atrocity is enabled by Zionist subversion of the US and US Alliance countries [58] and of US-dominated Western Mainstream media in particular [58, 59]. While numerous anti-racist Jewish activists are resolutely critical of the ongoing Palestinian Genocide, Western Mainstream Media variously censor or white-wash the nuclear terrorist, genocidally racist, and grossly human rights-abusing conduct of Apartheid Israel. A part explanation for this huge moral discrepancy is that the American 60% of the world’s 30 biggest media companies have a disproportionately high Jewish Zionist Board membership. Jews and females represent 2% and 51%, respectively, of the US population but average 33% and 19%, respectively, of Board members of the top 18 US media companies [59].

(b). There obviously have been deadly consequences from illegal US-Israeli bombing and devastation of 93 million Iranians, with consequent retaliatory bombing of Gulf States hosting US bases, closure of the Straits of Hormuz, and billions impacted globally through supply chain interruption, elevated oil prices, fertilizer prices, and inflation. However the killing and destruction continue and the magnitude of the consequent excess mortality is not clear.

(c). Who’s next? In addition to bombing 7 countries, destruction of boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, sanctioning and now blockading Cuba, and backing genocidal Apartheid Israel, Trump has threatened to invade and variously annex Colombia, Panama, Mexico, Canada, and Greenland (Denmark). Narcissist, racist and serial war criminal Trump could invade any non-nuclear-armed state at any time in this new might-is-right Trumpist world with huge consequent excess mortality.

(d). Trump and Trump-backed Apartheid Israeli violation of major International Conventions (most notably the Genocide Convention and the Fourth Geneva Convention) is predicted to encourage other countries to do likewise with huge consequent excess mortality.

(e). The world is existentially threatened by nuclear weapons and climate change. A nuclear exchange would generate a nuclear winter that would decimate Humanity and the Biosphere [60]. The Paris Agreement’s target of no more than plus 1.5C of warming was attained in the last 3 years in a row, and a catastrophic plus 2C of warming is only a decade or so away [61]. One of the world’s greatest minds, the theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking: “We see great peril if governments and societies do not take action now to render nuclear weapons obsolete and to prevent further climate change” [62]. However anti-science idiot Trump resumes nuclear testing, allows fully autonomous AI weapons (despite the ethical stance of Anthropic and similar science-informed objections [63, 64]), and regards climate change as a “hoax”.

(f).1.7 million Americans die preventably each year from “life-style choice” and “political choice” reasons. The major killers are smoking, air pollution, obesity and adverse hospital events (for a breakdown see [65]). An average of 1.7 million Americans will die preventably each year under a 2-term Trump presidency or about 14 million in total [65]. However while Trump’s anti-science and anti-equity positions contribute to this American Holocaust of preventable deaths, it is ultimately smoking, drinking, polluting and overweight Americans who are committing slow suicide [65].

Final comments and conclusions.

Reported by just 4 major Western Mainstream media (MS) but ignored by the rest , Trump’s power is threatened by the Epstein Files and the alleged rape of a 13-year old girl. Similarly ignored by Western MSM is Trump’s direct responsibility as US president for the deaths of 25.6 million people, many of them children.

The world is acutely threatened by this out-of-control, ignorant, stupid, anti-science, racist, mendacious, warmongering, and child-killing narcissist. The only hope for the long-suffering Americans is release of all the Epstein Files relating to Trump and particularly those relating to the alleged rape of a 13-year old girl. Americans must use this to go all out to defend America from this dangerous psychopath via the justice system.

What can the world do? Decent folk around the world must (a) inform everyone they can (so far most Western Mainstream media are squibbing this) and (b) urge and apply Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Trump-backed Apartheid Israel and all people, politicians, parties, collectives, companies and countries supporting this serial war criminal and child-killing rogue state, notably Trump America and its perverted Trumpist allies. Decent America must unite to demand impeachment of child-killing Trump. Thou shalt not kill children.

References.

[1]. Gideon Polya, “Trump First Convicted Felon Former US President But 45 War Criminal US Presidents Remain Un-convicted”, Countercurrents, 6 June 2024: https://countercurrents.org/2024/06/trump-first-convicted-felon-former-us-president-but-45-war-criminal-us-presidents-remain-un-convicted/ .

[2]. Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”, 2nd edition, Korsgaard Publishing, 2021.

[3]. Gideon Polya, “Post-9/11, US-imposed Muslim Holocaust & Muslim Genocide”, Korsgaard Publishing, 2020.

[4]. Gideon Polya, “Racist Mainstream Ignores “US-Imposed Post-9/11 Muslim Holocaust & Muslim Genocide””, Countercurrents, 17 July 2020: https://countercurrents.org/2020/07/racist-mainstream-ignores-us-imposed-post-9-11-muslim-holocaust-muslim-genocide/ .

[5]. Gideon Polya, “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History”, 3rd edition, Korsgaard Publishing, 2022.

[6]. “Report genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/reportgenocide/ .

[7]. “Richard Nixon”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Nixon .

[8]. “Bill Clinton”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton .

[9]. Gideon Polya, “Afghan Holocaust – The Awful Truth Versus US Alliance Lies”, Countercurrents, 22 August 2021: https://countercurrents.org/2021/08/afghan-holocaust-the-awful-truth-versus-us-alliance-lies/ .

[10]. Gideon Polya in Soren Korsgaard, editor, “The Most Dangerous Book Ever Published: Deadly Deception Exposed!”, Korsgaard Publishing, 2020.

[11]. “Geneva Convention relative to the protection of civilian persons in time of war” (Fourth Geneva Convention): https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.33_GC-IV-EN.pdf .

[12]. Gideon Polya, “Free Palestine. End Apartheid Israel, Human Rights Denial, Gaza Massacre, Child Killing, Occupation and Palestinian Genocide”, Korsgaard Publishing, 2024.

[13]. Gideon Polya, “Unforgivable 2-Year Gaza Massacre, Gaza Genocide & Gaza Holocaust By 50 Appalling Numbers”, Countercurrents, 14 October 2025: https://countercurrents.org/2025/10/unforgivable-2-year-gaza-massacre-gaza-genocide-gaza-holocaust-by-50-appalling-numbers/ .

[14]. Gideon Polya, “Gaza Holocaust: Details Of Trump & His Criminal Appointees Illegally Ruling Genocide-Devastated Gaza”, Countercurrents, 24 January 2026: https://countercurrents.org/2026/01/gaza-holocaust-details-of-trump-his-criminal-appointees-illegally-ruling-genocide-devastated-gaza/ .

[15]. Gideon Polya, “Zionist-perverted Australian Labor Government Invites War Criminal Apartheid Israeli President Herzog To Australia”, Countercurrents, 4 January 2026: https://countercurrents.org/2026/01/zionist-perverted-australian-labor-government-invites-war-criminal-apartheid-israeli-president-herzog-to-australia/ .

[16]. Gideon Polya, “UK Zionist Historian Sir Martin Gilbert (1936-2015) Variously Ignored Or Minimized WW2 Bengali Holocaust”, Countercurrents, 19 February 2015: https://countercurrents.org/polya190215.htm .

[17]. Martin Gilbert, “Jewish History Atlas”, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1969.

[18]. Martin Gilbert “Atlas of the Holocaust”, Michael Joseph, London, 1982.

[19]. Poppy Wood, “Trump ‘sex abuse’ files released in middle of war”, The Telegraph, 6 March 2026: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/03/06/trump-sexually-abused-13-year-old-girl-epstein-files-allege/ .

[20]. Brett Wilkins, “DOJ Under Fire for Withholding Epstein Files Related to Alleged Trump Child Sex Assault”, Common Dreams, 24 February 2026: https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-sex-assault-child .

[21]. Farrah Tomazin, “Woman Told FBI Trump Abused Her at 13, Epstein Files Reveal”, Yahoo News, 31 January 2026: https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/woman-told-fbi-trump-abused-205916091.html .

[22]. Erkki Forster, “Key Details of 13-Year-Old Trump Accuser’s Accounts Are Verified”, Yahoo News, 9 March 2026: https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/key-details-13-old-trump-033732373.html .

[23]. Wikipedia, “Donald Trump sexual misconduct allegations”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_sexual_misconduct_allegations .

[24]. “Demands for release of missing FBI files and Trump to testify before Congressional Oversight Committee ”, YouTube, 1 March 2026: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Be7_IwpilcQ .

[25]. “Bruce Shapiro’s USA, Christian rhetoric in the US military, and Vanuatu’s lost numbering system”, Late Night Live, ABC Radio National, 10 March 2026: https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/latenightlive/late-night-live-bruce-shapiro-mikey-weinstein-matthew-spriggs/106366328 .

[26]. “Mainstream media lying”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammedialying/home .

[27]. Colin Dwyer, “Donald Trump: ‘I Could … Shoot Somebody, And I Wouldn’t Lose Any Voters’” , NPR, 23 January 2016: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/23/464129029/donald-trump-i-could-shoot-somebody-and-i-wouldnt-lose-any-voters .

[28]. UN Drug Control Program (UNDCP) “ Afghanistan . Annual opium poppy survey 2001”: http://www.unodc.org/pdf/publications/report_2001-10-16_1.pdf ; page iii.

[29]. UNODC, Executive summary, UNODC World Drug Report 2010: http://www.unodc.org/documents/wdr/WDR_2010/Executive_summary.pdf .

[30]. UNODC World Drug Report 2009: http://www.unodc.org/documents/wdr/WDR_2009/WDR2009_Opium_Heroin_Market.pdf ; page 34.

[31]. Gideon Polya, “One Million Post-9-11 US- & UK-Complicit Opiate Drug Deaths, Countercurrents, 27 June 2011: https://countercurrents.org/polya270611.htm .

[32]. UNODC, “Addiction, crime and insurgency””: http://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/Afghanistan/Afghan_Opium_Trade_2009_web.pdf .

[33]. National Institute on Drug Abuse, “Drug Overdose Deaths: Facts and Figures ”: https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/trends-statistics/overdose-death-rates#Fig5 .

[34]. UNODC World Drug Report 2025: https://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/WDR_2025/WDR25_B1_Key_findings.pdf .

[35]. Gideon Polya, “Trump’s Venezuela Excuse, Protection Of Afghan Opium & Complicity In Afghan Holocaust & 57,000 US Heroin Deaths”, Countercurrents, 9 January 2026: https://countercurrents.org/2026/01/trumps-venezuela-excuse-protection-of-afghan-opium-complicity-in-afghan-holocaust-57000-us-heroin-deaths/ .

[36]. UNODC, Executive Summary, World Drug Report 2019 : https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2019/prelaunch/WDR19_Booklet_1_EXECUTIVE_SUMMARY.pdf .

[37]. Gideon Polya, “US-imposed Opiate Holocaust – US Protection Of Afghan Opiates Has Killed 5.2 Million People Since 9-11”, Countercurrents, 10 August 2019: https://countercurrents.org/2019/08/us-imposed-opiate-holocaust-us-protection-of-afghan-opiates-has-killed-5-2-million-people-since-9-11/ .

[38]. UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Annual Report 2017: https://www.unodc.org/documents/AnnualReport/Annual-Report_2017.pdf .

[39]. UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) – statistics and data: https://dataunodc.un.org/drugs .

[40]. Louise Yaxley, NATO commits to “substantial” increase in Afghanistan troops”, ABC News, 4 April 2008: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2008-04-04/nato-commits-to-substantial-increase-in/2392926 .

[41]. Gideon Polya, “Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds”, Taylor & Francis, 2003.

[42]. Gideon Polya, “AUKUS & Quad In Context: Australia Violates All Indo-Pacific countries”, Countercurrents, 9 December 2021: https://countercurrents.org/2021/12/aukus-quad-in-context-australia-violates-all-indo-pacific-countries/ .

[43]. Gideon Polya, “Australia violates all Indo-Pacific countries”, Stop state terrorism, 9 December 2021: https://sites.google.com/site/stopstateterrorism/2021-12-09-australia-violates-all-indo-pacific-countries .

[44]. Daniella Medeiros Cavalcanti et al, “Evaluating the impact of two decades of USAID interventions and projecting the effects of defunding on mortality up to 2030: a retrospective impact evaluation and forecasting analysis”, The Lancet, volume 406, Issue 10,500, 19 July 2025: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(25)01186-9/fulltext .

[45]. Michelle Nichols, “US casts 6th veto at United Nations over war in Gaza”, Reuters, 19 September 2025: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-vetoes-un-demand-ceasefire-aid-access-gaza-2025-09-18/ .

[46]. Council for Foreign Relations, “U.S. Aid to Israel in Four Charts”, 7 October 2025: https://www.cfr.org/articles/us-aid-israel-four-charts .

[47].Zeina Jamaluddine, Hanan Abukmail, Sarah Aly, Oona M R Campbell, and Francesco Checchi, “Traumatic injury mortality in the Gaza Strip from Oct 7, 2023, to June 30, 2024: a capture–recapture analysis”, The Lancet, 9 January 2025: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)02678-3/fulltext .

[48]. Rasha Khatib, Martin McKee and Salim Yusuf, “Counting the dead in Gaza: difficult but essential”, The Lancet, Volume 404, Issue 10449, p237-238, 10 July, 2024: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)01169-3/fulltext

[49]. Devi Sridhar, “Scientists are closing in on the true, horrifying scale of death and disease in Gaza”, The Guardian, 5 September 2024: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/sep/05/scientists-death-disease-gaza-polio-vaccinations-israel.

[50]. Gideon Polya, “The Lancet: 64,260 Gaza Violent Deaths Indicating 257,000 Indirect Deaths In 9 Months”, Countercurrents, 14 January 2025: https://countercurrents.org/2025/01/the-lancet-64260-gaza-violent-deaths-indicating-257000-indirect-deaths-in-9-months/ .

[51]. Simon Elvery, “Iran strikes are Donald Trump’s ninth foreign military action in 14 months”, ABC News, 8 March 2026: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-08/donald-trump-iran-military-actions-australia-response/106411630 .

[52]. Gideon Polya, “Israeli State Terrorism & Qatar: US-backed Apartheid Israel Has Now Attacked 18 Countries”, Countercurrents, 22 September 2025: https://countercurrents.org/2025/09/israeli-state-terrorism-qatar-us-backed-apartheid-israel-has-now-attacked-18-countries/ .

[53]. Gideon Polya, “Unrepentant Neo-Nazi Germany Complicit In Palestinian Genocide & Ongoing Gaza Massacre”, Countercurrents, 11 April 2024: https://countercurrents.org/2024/04/unrepentant-neo-nazi-germany-complicit-in-palestinian-genocide-ongoing-gaza-massacre/ .

[54]. Apartheid Israeli state terrorism: (A) individuals exposing Apartheid Israeli state terrorism, and (B) countries subject to Apartheid Israeli state terrorism”: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/apartheid-israeli-state-terrorism .

[55]. Antony Loewenstein, “The Palestine Laboratory. How Israel exports the technology of occupation to the world”, Scribe 2023.

[56]. Gideon Polya, “Review: “The Palestine Laboratory” By Antony Loewenstein – Apartheid Israel Exports Surveillance Nightmare”, Countercurrents, 29 August 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/08/review-the-palestine-laboratory-by-antony-loewenstein-apartheid-israel-exports-surveillance-nightmare/ .

[57]. Apartheid Israeli state terrorism: (A) individuals exposing Apartheid Israeli state terrorism, and (B) countries subject to Apartheid Israeli state terrorism”: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/apartheid-israeli-state-terrorism .

[58].Gideon Polya, “Australia must stop Zionist subversion and join the World in comprehensive Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Apartheid Israel and all its supporters”, Subversion of Australia, 15 April 2021: https://sites.google.com/site/subversionofaustralia/2021-04-15 .

[59]. Gideon Polya, “Zionist Subversion, Mainstream Media Censorship”, Countercurrents, 9 March 2018: https://countercurrents.org/2018/03/zionist-subversion-mainstream-media-censorship/ .

[60]. “Nuclear weapons ban, end poverty & reverse climate change”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/nuclear-weapons-ban .

[61]. Gideon Polya, “Climate Crisis, Climate Genocide & Solutions”, Korsgaard Publishing, 2020.

[62]. Stephen Hawking, “Brief Answers to the Big Questions”, John Murray, UK, 2018.

[63]. Kali Hays, “Big Tech backs Anthropic in fight against Trump administration” BBC News, 12 March 2026: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g7k7zdd0zo .

[64]. International Committee of the Red Cross, “What you need to know about autonomous weapons” , 26 July 2022: https://www.icrc.org/en/document/what-you-need-know-about-autonomous-weapons .

[65]. Gideon Polya, “Over 14 Million Americans Will Die Preventably Under A 2-Term Trump Administration”, Countercurrents, 22 March 2017: https://countercurrents.org/2017/03/over-14-million-americans-will-die-preventably-under-a-2-term-trump-administration/ .

Dr Gideon Polya taught science students at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia over 4 decades.

13 March 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By People’s Union For Civil Liberties

To

Shri Narendra Modi,

Hon’ble Prime Minister,

Government of India,

New Delhi.

Through:

Principal Secretary to Prime Minister @ connect@mygov.nic.in

Dear Sir,

We at the PUCL write this letter to you expressing our shock at the unprovoked and illegal bombing of Iran by the United States and Israel which commenced on 28th February, 2026. As of 12th March, 2026 the bombing has spread death and devastation across Iran, with over 1200 civilian deaths, including over 200 children, and the destruction of Iran’s infrastructure in about 200+ cities. The bombing also resulted in the targeted assassination of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

This unprovoked campaign of terror by Israel and the United States is a violation of international law and it is disturbing that the Government of India did not issue an immediate and unequivocal condemnation.

The Indian Government’s silence on violations of international law by the powerful nations seems to be a matter of policy. The Government of India did not condemn the kidnapping of the Nicolas Maduro, President of Venezuela on 3rd January, 2026 or the previous unprovoked aggression against Iran in June, 2025. The Government has also not condemned the continuing genocide in Gaza from 2023 till date.

It is even more concerning that the Indian government chose to remain silent on 4th March, 2026, when an unarmed Iranian warship, the IRIS Dena, was torpedoed by the United States when it was within Sri Lankan waters, close to the Indian coast. The ship was returning to Iran after the Milan multinational naval exercise hosted by India in Vishakhapatnam between 15th and 25th February, 2026. In fact India’s President, Droupadi Murmu, had participated in the event. Despite being our country’s honoured guests, the young Iranian naval officers were murdered. India till date has failed to condemn the attack. This speaks to India’s abdication of leadership of the global south, and India’s betrayal of both its constitutional vision as well as the abandonment of its oft declared sovereignty over the Indian Ocean.

The only way one can read this silence is as a decision to subordinate our interests to the actions of the United States. This has implications for the core constitutional principle of sovereignty. The cat was out of the bag when the US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced on 6th March that Washington issued a temporary 30-day waiver to allow Indian refiners to buy Russian oil already on vessels. The question rightly being raised across the country is, does India need US permission to import Russian oil? Is this not an infringement of India’s sovereignty?

Our position as a leader of the global south has been tarnished by your decision to visit Israel just 2 days before the bombing began on 28th February, and your declaration to the Israeli Parliament that ‘India stands with Israel firmly, with full conviction, from this moment and beyond.’ Does this mean that the Government of India implicitly supports the bombing of Iran? Or does this mean that it doesn’t stand anymore in solidarity with the Palestinian people? Or does it mean that the arrest warrant issued against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – who, incidentally, you have described as your ‘friend’ – by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Gaza, is of no significance? Any which way, it is a betrayal of India’s role as a leading voice of the global south countries against imperialism. This is a path the government seems to have consciously eschewed. It is very painful – but we are constrained to point out that the current India-US relationship seems to be one of a master and a vassal.

Foreign policy as conducted by the Indian government has shown itself to be purely transactional and bereft of values. The values which should underpin our foreign policy must derive from our Constitution. The Directive Principles of State Policy, under Article 51(c) oblige India to ‘foster respect for international law’ and under 51(a) require the State to ‘promote international peace and security’, under 51(b), ‘to maintain just and honourable relations between nations’ and under 51(d) ‘encourage settlement of international disputes by arbitration’.

It is further the fundamental duty of every citizen and by extension, every high constitutional functionary, to ‘abide by the Constitution’ and ‘respect its ideal and institutions under Article 51-A (a), to ‘cherish and follow the noble ideals which inspired our national struggle for freedom’ under Article 51-A (b) and to ‘uphold and protect the sovereignty, unity and integrity of India’ under Article 51-A (c). Your own oath of office requires you to ‘do right to all manner of people in accordance with the Constitution and the law, without fear or favour, affection or ill-will.’

As early as in 1946 itself, even before India formally and officially gained independence on 15th August, 1947, the drafters of the Indian Constitution very much envisioned a contribution of a future independent India to global peace. The `Objectives Resolution’ adopted by the Constitutional Assembly on 22nd January, 1947 – which later became the Preamble to the Constitution – very clearly emphasised in sub-point 8 that, ‘this ancient land attains its rightful and honoured place in the world and make its full and willing contribution to the promotion of world peace and the welfare of mankind.’

As Nehru said in the Constituent Assembly, in the famous ‘Tryst with Destiny’ speech, our ‘dreams are for India, but they are also for the world, for all the nations and peoples are too closely knit together today for any one of them to imagine that it can live apart. Peace has been said to be indivisible; so is freedom; so is prosperity now; and so also is disaster in this one world that can no longer be split into isolated fragments.’

The idea of India in the world was also articulated powerfully by Rabindranath Tagore who invoked the ideal of a people who were not ‘afraid’ and a context where ‘the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls.’

India’s foreign policy in the past has derived from these constitutional values of promoting peace, upholding the UN-based international order and defending the sovereignty of nation states, in particular from the global south. In fact, India has had a proud history of opposing aggression by imperial powers drawing from the values of the Indian Constitution.

If these values give a constitutional compass to India’s foreign policy, then the bombing of Iran and the assassination of her Supreme Leader should be condemned as a violation of your oath of office to uphold the Constitution.

The defence of international law is not only a constitutional imperative but also in the self-interest of a middle power like India. As the Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney put it, ‘the middle powers must act together, because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu. When middle powers only negotiate bilaterally with a hegemon, we negotiate from weakness. We accept what’s offered. We compete with each other to be the most accommodating. This is not sovereignty. It’s the performance of sovereignty while accepting subordination. In a world of great power rivalry, the countries in between have a choice – compete with each other for favour, or to combine to create a third path with impact.’

In a rapidly changing world where re-colonisation by the most powerful countries has become the norm, India must act in its self-interest. Cosying up to the hegemon is not in India’s self-interest. India should aim, as Carney indicated, for something larger. It should aim to bring together the middle powers and to constrain the hegemony of the most powerful. It cannot stay silent when President Trump has bombed eight countries in one year laying waste to the principle that even the powerful are subject to international law.

The invasion of Iran has no legal, moral, or ethical justification and must be condemned in the strongest possible terms. This is the mandate of both international law as also the Indian Constitution. If this armed aggression is not condemned by the world’s largest democracy, it becomes one more nail in the coffin of the international legal order. Each time such violations pass without condemnation, the principle of impunity of the powerful gets sanctified.

In this context of a willingness to tear down the rules based order by the powerful nations, India’s silence highlights a dangerous backsliding from our historically pre-eminent position as a non-aligned power. India had stood for an international rules based order based on resolving disputes through dialogue and discussion.

India should therefore have clearly and unequivocally condemned the unprovoked war against Iran, drawing her position both from India’s anti-colonial heritage as well as her Constitution.

We call upon the government of India, to unequivocally condemn the bombing of Iran by US and Israel and the attack on the Iranian warship in the Indian Ocean, in the strongest terms and make a case that India stands in defence of the UN Charter and the right of all nations not to be subjected to wanton attacks.

The Indian government must also return to the constitutional imperative to promote peace and work towards building rapprochement between all parties and bring an end to this needless war. This is vital especially as there is the possibility of the war turning nuclear. This would be a devastating catastrophe which India must work towards preventing.

This is the heart of the idea of India sanctified in the Indian Constitution.

Yours sincerely,

Kavita Srivastava Dr. V. Suresh

President General Secretary

People’s Union for Civil Liberties

13 March 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Nilofar Suhrawardy

Communication strategies being exercised by the most powerful, US and Israel in their war against Iran appear to have been totally miscalculated. This is marked by a few key facts. They had apparently expected that Iran- with its “limited power”- would not be able to display much strength against the power of their strikes. This assumption has collapsed as Iran is displaying no chance of giving up. They were also not prepared for Iran’s attacks on Israel and US bases in the Gulf. Neither were probably Gulf allies of US. Paradoxically, Iran’s attacks have also exposed the limitations of so-called multi-layered “security” arrangements prepared by US and Israel. The impact of Iran’s attacks on US bases in Gulf and in Israel also seems to have shocked the two powers and apparently greater part of the world. They weren’t probably prepared for this nature of response. The war has exceeded 12 days. Last year, the war against Iran lasted 12 days. US was moved to call for a ceasefire when it stretched for this period. There is no knowing as to how long will the present war last.

There is yet another angle to this ongoing war/crisis which has probably not been totally deliberated upon. Some importance has certainly been given to role of US and Israeli intelligence agencies which led to assassination of Iran’s Supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. This has been viewed by certain sections as due to decades spend by Israeli secret services (Mossad) and around six months by US intelligences services, including CIA. This point can certainly not be questioned. But whether it is the question of decades, months or simply weeks/days spend by these intelligence services, it remains puzzling as to how did they fail to give substantial importance to missile-power of Iran, that has certainly stunned the whole world. Where did these “intelligence agencies” err? Or perhaps they chose not to give enough importance to this strength of Iran?

The preceding point only suggests that they chose to bank on the strength of their power by giving it substantial importance and without choosing to adequately gauge the striking potential of Iran. The latter point also suggests that they presumed Iran to be too “weak” to give them a strong fight. In other words, their communication strategies seem to have banked only on their own strength and not on adequately studying that of Iran. Or perhaps they may have given some or even substantial importance to deliberating on this aspect but definitely fell short of judging its power adequately. The impact of Iranian strikes on US bases in the Gulf and in Israel certainly indicates this.

It is also possible, over-confidence of US and Israel in achieving total victory against Iran blinded them from adequately considering the retaliation that they may have to face. Over-confidence speeded by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s desire to rush against Iran also seems to have prevented them from taking into full account the aftermath of what they were heading for. In other words, they appear to have fallen short of estimating the retaliatory strength of Iran because of several reasons.

The assumption that Iran was too weak for them was also assumed as probably key contributor to their easy “victory” which still doesn’t seem within their easy reach. Iran is showing no chances of yielding as and when desired by US. Undeniably, US President Donald Trump has not failed to keep claiming the degree of success achieved by US and Israel against Iran. And yet, he has failed to take any specific stand on whether the war is going to end soon or not. The longer the war lasts also indicates the capability of Iran to withstand strikes of US and Israel. In addition, the hard fact- as pointed earlier- that Iran is not refraining from striking at Israel and US bases cannot be ignored. This simply also suggests that Iran has not collapsed as yet. Now, with recent reports pointing to Iranian forces striking against Israel in coordination with militant groups in the region is an indicator of their being in an aggressive posture which was probably not even considered by Trump and Netanyahu.

Give a thought, US chose to strike against Iran while being engaged in negotiations with it hardly suggests the kind of policy of Washington was considering towards Tehran. The explanation is simple. Trump had no option but to yield to what Netanyahu desired. Considering Netanyahu’s limited diplomatic credibility – which he seems to measure only by Israeli strikes in the region- Trump has apparently erred in assuming that his stand against Iran would also have similar impact. In other words, Iran was probably expected to weaken as have Syria and Lebanon in the past.

US and also Israel erred by not giving at least some importance to communication strategies of Iran and Gulf nations in the region. Iran has certainly not been caught ill-prepared by decision of US and Israel to start war against it. This had to begin sooner or later. Recent years have also been witness to Iran given importance to improving its diplomatic ties with countries in the region. Undeniably, Arab/Gulf allies of US are extremely angry at US, for their diplomatic stand being virtually ignored by Trump. They were against war with Iran. But now that it has begun, they are also not pleased by Iranian strikes in their land. At the same time, chances of their being dragged into an open conflict with Iran are practically non-existent. Trump appears to have lost their trust. The question of their ever trusting Israel apparently doesn’t prevail. The question is not that of simply war coming to an end but also that of Trump’s “diplomacy” being considered seriously. It may be, but chances of their being any stability and seriousness in Trump’s “diplomacy” and/or “diplomatic trap/illusion” are limited. US-Israel-Iran war appears to have severely punctured communication diplomacy of Washington in the region!

Nilofar Suhrawardy is a senior journalist and writer with specialization in communication studies and nuclear diplomacy.

13 March 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Ram Puniyani

The joint attack by Israel and the United States on Iran has been very devastating. Like most wars, it is brutal to the core. The pretext for the war has been that the Ayatollah Khamenei regime has been very brutal, particularly regarding women’s rights, and that it has been preparing nuclear weapons. Iran, in turn, was willing to come to the negotiating table and concede some of the points emerging from the talks. However, in the middle of these negotiations, the Israel–America (I-A) axis decided to launch the war, and in its initial phase it inflicted severe damage on Iran. One was the killing of Khamenei along with some of his family members, and the other was the bombing of a school in which 165 young girls lost their lives. Many civilians have also been targeted by the I-A axis. In addition, an Iranian naval ship that had arrived in India on India’s invitation for naval exercises was torpedoed by a US submarine, killing a large number of sailors on board. Iran bravely retaliated and caused huge damage to the I-A axis.

During these developments, India’s role has been a great eye-opener regarding its evolving foreign policy. India began with a policy of non-alignment and had very amicable relations with Iran. Cultural and economic exchanges between the two countries were excellent. Now we see that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Israel just before the war. The goal of the visit was not disclosed to the country. He did receive the highest honour of Israel and pledged that India would stand with Israel through thick and thin. The very next day, the I-A axis attacked Iran. Mr. Modi did not tweet about the demise of Iran’s supreme leader and issued a vague statement equating the aggressor and the aggrieved country. The transition of India from being neutral to embracing the American–Israel axis came out loudly through the acts of commission and omission of the Indian Prime Minister.

Coming back to the American story, we have been watching the role of the United States particularly since the 1950s. Its role has often been one of interfering in other countries’ affairs for political and economic goals. Earlier, “saving the world from communism” was its major plank for unleashing wars, beginning with the Vietnam War. The French had colonised Vietnam, and Ho Chi Minh’s communist forces overthrew the French. A long and complicated political process led to the division of Vietnam along the 17th parallel into communist North Vietnam and capitalist South Vietnam. America launched a horrific war against Vietnam, spending millions of dollars. The Americans used chemical weapons such as napalm (jellied petrol) and Agent Orange (a powerful defoliant). These were used to clear jungle foliage that served as natural cover for the Viet Cong (the Vietnamese resistance forces). Napalm cleared much of the undergrowth, but it also stuck to human bodies and caused horrific injuries. Agent Orange killed many innocent civilians; farms were destroyed, crops were lost, and animals were killed.

The Vietnamese people largely supported Ho Chi Minh. The Viet Cong, through guerrilla tactics, eventually emerged victorious, and America, for once, had to face defeat. Its army—over five lakh strong—retreated with its morale crushed by defeat at the hands of a young nation. The Vietnam War demonstrated abundantly that America would spare no effort to defeat those who opposed its interests, often framed under the ideology of the “Free World.”

This pattern became clearer over time as America attacked country after country on one pretext or another. The second major case was Iran. With its strategic location and vast oil reserves, Iran was of special interest to Western powers, particularly the United States and the United Kingdom. Britain had a major presence in Iran during the Second World War. After the war, Britain continued to retain control over Iran’s oil through the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, exploiting Iran’s resources for its own interests. This arrangement changed abruptly in 1951 when the Iranian parliament, led by the nationalist and democratically elected government of Mohammad Mossadegh, voted to nationalize the country’s oil industry. From that point, Britain began opposing the Mossadegh regime and attempted to foment opposition against him. Britain enlisted American support, and a coup was staged in Iran that overthrew the democratically elected government and installed Reza Shah Pahlavi, a stooge of the United States. Western oil interests remained secure.

The story of Salvador Allende’s elimination and the overthrow of a democratic government in Chile is fairly similar. Allende, a Marxist and a member of the Socialist Party, was sworn in as President of Chile on November 3, 1970. He decided to nationalize copper companies controlled largely by American interests. The U.S. spent about $8 million on covert actions between 1970 and the 1973 coup. According to a 1975 Senate report, U.S. officials also backed economic measures to squeeze Allende’s government. In a CIA-supported coup, the military dictator Augusto Pinochet came to power. He ruled ruthlessly and wrought havoc on Chile’s democracy and potential prosperity.

The harm inflicted on West Asia has been even more dangerous. After the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, America supported certain madrasas in Pakistan and helped train mujahideen fighters. From these networks, the Taliban and Al-Qaeda eventually emerged. America funded them to the extent of $8 billion and supplied them with about 7,000 tons of armaments (Mahmood Mamdani’s book Good Muslim, Bad Muslim). After the events of 9/11, America used this as a pretext to attack Afghanistan, where about 60,000 people were killed. To dominate the region further, it invoked the pretext of “weapons of mass destruction” to attack Iraq. Soldiers were told that Iraq’s people were being oppressed by Saddam Hussein and that the war was necessary. They were also told that Iraqis would welcome them as liberators with bouquets and chocolates. The reality was very different. Iraq was dismantled, and the rise of the Islamic State followed. Neither were weapons of mass destruction found nor were American soldiers welcomed.

Colonialism and imperialism leave dangerous marks on victim countries and on the world as a whole. In India, British policies of “divide and rule” strengthened communal forces, the consequences of which we continue to suffer today. The American media’s coining and popularisation of the phrase “Islamic terrorism” has contributed to the global demonization of Muslims. Both colonialism and imperialism lie at the roots of many of the major problems the world faces today. One can only hope that peace may be promoted by recognizing the destructive impact of imperialism.

13 March 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By B.R. Bapuji

It is well known that on February 28, the governments of Israel and the United States, acting together, began bombing Iran and have continued the attacks.

Many articles are being written discussing this war from different angles. Such discussions explain how this war violates international legal principles and how Israel, in pursuit of regional dominance, and the United States, in pursuit of global dominance, are conducting this war with great aggression. Examining these issues from various perspectives is certainly useful for readers.

In this article, my aim is to show that the root cause of war lies in the competition over the sale of commodities.

In any society, the production of goods mainly occurs in two sectors. First: The sector that produces the means of production required to produce commodities. Machines, raw materials, and similar items are produced in this sector. Second: The sector that produces commodities necessary for people’s maintenance, such as food, clothing, housing, healthcare, and education.

However, in a capitalist society, there is another type of production that serves neither as a means of production nor as a means of the necessities of life. That is the production of weapons. Why are these produced? To enable one class to suppress another class, or for the government of one country to keep another country under its control.

The immediate objective of the aggressive war currently being waged by the United States and Israel is to establish dominance over Iran. Through that dominance, they aim to seize not only the vast oil reserves in Iran but also valuable minerals and metals, including zinc, copper, iron, gold, coal, and lithium.

Another important point is that whenever wars occur between two countries or between two alliances, the ones who benefit the most are the capitalists who produce war equipment as commodities. Weapons are produced not only by private capitalists. Governments themselves, acting as capitalists, also undertake this production.

In the present war, news reports say that hundreds and thousands of weapons are being used, leading to shortages of military supplies. According to Reuters, the U.S. Department of Defense recently summoned representatives of major arms companies and placed orders three to four times larger than before. Furthermore, the United States has decided to sell 27,000 bombs worth 660 million dollars to Israel.

Leaders of both the ruling and opposition parties in the United States—and even their spouses—hold large amounts of shares in these arms manufacturing companies.

Two days before the United States and Israel began the war against Iran—on February 26—the U.S. State Department website published details of the weapons the United States had sold to various countries and the supplies still pending.

According to orders issued on February 6, the document listed details for nearly 40 countries: the types of weapons they required, their power levels, the number of units needed, and the delivery schedule.

Among those 40 countries are several U.S.-allied countries surrounding Iran, such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar. This means those countries must purchase weapons from the United States by spending billions of dollars. Where does that enormous amount of money come from? It comes from the millions and millions of dollars in surplus value extracted from working people by their masters through the exploitation of labour.

And it is not spent on essentials like education, healthcare, or employment. Instead, soldiers are sent to foreign countries where people and soldiers there are killed, while people and soldiers here are also killed by the other side. It becomes nothing but mutual bloodshed. About such horrific situations, the Urdu poet Sahir Ludhianvi, who had communist leanings, wrote in 1965 in an anti-war song titled “O Good People”:

“Whether it is our blood or the blood of others/in the end it is the blood of humanity. /Whether war takes place in the East or in the West/ it is ultimately the blood of world peace./Whether bombs fall on homes or on borders/the soul of creation is wounded. /Whether our fields burn or the fields of others/life trembles with hunger./Whether tanks move forward
Or retreat/the womb of the earth becomes barren.
Whether there is a celebration of victory
Or sorrow of defeat/life weeps over corpses.
War itself is a problem/how can it provide solutions to problems?”

The poet Sahir does not stop with this observation; he also shows a path of struggle:

“Therefore, O good people/come—let us spread the light of thought in this unfortunate world./Let us begin struggles that strengthen peace/A struggle against politics that harvests death. A struggle against poverty and slavery./A struggle against misguided leadership./A struggle against capitalism./A struggle against the ideology of war/Peace—for a peaceful life!

Therefore, what we must do, as Sahir suggests, is struggle against the capitalist system. The first step toward that struggle is to understand how far this system is willing to go—how cruel and immoral it can become—in pursuit of profit.

Karl Marx, in his work “Capital,” quotes a trade union leader who described the nature of capital very well: “Money, they say, comes into the world with a bloodstain on one cheek; but capital comes into the world dripping from head to toe, from every pore, with blood and dirt. If there is sufficient profit, capital becomes very bold. With a guaranteed 10 percent profit, it will engage in any business. With a 20 percent profit, it becomes enthusiastic. With a 50 percent profit, it becomes daring. With 100 percent profit, it is ready to trample on all human laws. With 300 percent profit, there is no crime it will hesitate to commit, nor any risk it will avoid—even if it means the possibility of its owner being hanged.”

B.R. Bapuji is a former Professor, University of Hyderabad

13 March 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Michael K Smith

“If America attacks . . . Iranians will unite, forgetting their differences with their government, and they will fiercely and tenaciously defend their country.”

—–Shirin Ebadi, Iran’s 2003 Nobel Peace Prize laureate

The only thing truly epic about the current U.S.-Israeli war on Iran is the chasm between the facts on the ground and the media spectacle put forth by President Trump and his fawning aides.

Folly is the best term to capture the reality of a president who until very recently presented himself as uniquely qualified to bring peace to the world via his “Art of the Deal” genius, then turned on a dime to endlessly repeat that the U.S. would inflict maximum damage and suffering on Iran, a country he had said would be a particularly bad place to try and carry out regime change, not to mention a policy he claimed to have rejected no matter where it might be recommended, wisdom he allegedly learned from the disastrous U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

After steady coaching from Benjamin Netanyahu, however, he changed his mind, becoming convinced that a quick decapitation of Iran’s leadership would lead Iran’s suffering masses to topple the mullahs and install an American-friendly government. He claimed that Iran’s clerical regime would fall in 48 hours.

That prediction failed so fast it didn’t even allow time for a G.W. Bush style “Mission Accomplished” declaration to whet the appetite for the inevitable anti-climax of disintegration and civil war a few months later. In this as in so many other areas Trump is a prodigy, failing almost as fast as he can dream up fresh lunacies to aggravate the world with. As the Ugly American, he’s way overqualified.

Since February 28 we have been treated to desperate, ever-changing, and contradictory attempts to justify the unjustifiable initiation of war, and an equally desperate, ever-changing, and contradictory attempt to define its objectives and limits, something that has proven impossible for an administration that was counting on ending the war with a single massive blow. Hence the ever-lengthening list of childish inventions: “bring the Iranians back to the negotiating table,” “obliterate the Iran nuclear program,” “liberate the people,” “strike a deal Venezuelan style,” “complete regime change,” etc. etc. None of it has anything to do with reality.

For Trump and his henchmen, where reality is not merely tinged with fantasy but subsumed by it, “nothing is impossible” is a necessary watchword. For them, thoughtlessness is a virtue, as shown by Trump’s nonchalance in admitting that they hadn’t found a replacement yet for the murdered Iranian head of state because the U.S.-Israeli attacks were so successful that all the potential replacements had also been killed. No need for woke nonsense like knowing what you’re doing.

With gas prices soaring and Americans already coming home in body bags, an obviously desperate Trump yearns to declare victory and withdraw, but he cannot do so, because the Iranian government is still very much in place. Lacking an exit strategy, his war doctrine is “flexible,” by necessity, since he has no idea how he fell into the current trap, let alone how to get out of it. Ever the narcissist, however, he gives himself an “A” for effort, assessing the initial phase of the U.S. war as a 15 on a scale of 10.

In other words, we’re watching another reality TV episode, full of kitsch and cliches, with Pete Hegseth comparing the mass killing to a football game. Iranian leaders knew the first few “plays,” said the war secretary, because they had been scripted before the war started, but once the “game” was underway they didn’t “know what plays to call, let alone how to get in the huddle.” Filled with adolescent pride at unleashing massive waves of lethality, he claimed the U.S. was “fighting to win,” even as Trump showed eagerness to negotiate a way out, an option that Teheran flatly rejected.

Badly conceived, sloppily improvised, and based on the repetition of past errors and disasters, the Trump and Bibi war moves from tragedy to farce and back again, only this time on a vaster scale and with potentially far graver consequences.

It’s difficult to recall a greater folly.

Michael K Smith blogs at www.legalienate.blogspot.com

13 March 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Ilan Pappé

Here is a conundrum. While stock exchanges across the world react nervously to the onslaught on Iran, the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange is booming. Here is another: while millions of people in the region dread the US-Israeli military operation and its consequences, Israeli society is jubilant. According to the latest polls, 93 per cent of the Jewish population support the war. Writing in Yedioth Ahronoth, one journalist captures the euphoric mood:

While we are getting rid of the monstrous Iranian Octopus, I walk down the street, the shops are open, Wolt couriers are rushing to deliver sushi, shawarma and overpriced chocolate cakes to Israeli citizens, people are jogging in the park, and at home I have electricity, hot water and internet. The Pilates studio is open, and the Israeli stock exchange is breaking records. And at this very moment, over my head in the lowlands, Air Force fighter jets take off for another sortie . . . They destroy with impossible precision another home of a mid-ranking officer in the Revolutionary Guards . . .

This is what the most critical war since the founding of the state looks like? This is what it looks like because the State of Israel is a miracle that cannot be explained.

He goes onto suggest that Israel has the great leadership of Netanyahu to thank, along with the exceptional qualities of its people and divine assistance. In Israel Hayom, another prominent journalist offers another jingoistic encomium to Israel’s Prime Minister. Even Netanyahu’s detractors must admit that he is possessed of ‘patience, cunning, determination and unwavering focus’ in his steady destruction of the enemy – total war on Hamas, then Hezbollah, now Iran – and curtailment of Trump’s foolish attempts to negotiate with the Mullahs and devise a peace plan for Gaza.

The strategy certainly seems to be one shock and awe campaign after another. Iran is currently in the crosshairs, but the message is directed at all Middle Eastern states: do not dare challenge Israel’s bid for regional hegemony or ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Achieving the first would give Israel the immunity it needs for the second: rectifying the mistake the historian Benny Morris lamented when he criticized Ben Gurion for not expelling all the Palestinians in 1948. As Bezalel Smotrich said to Palestinian members of the Knesset in 2021, ‘you are here because Ben Gurion did not finish the job’. In the eyes of the government, and the political elite in general, the moment seems to have arrived to finish the job.

This marks a break from the pre-state Zionist strategy and then Israeli regional policy, which was based on covert operations combined with crypto-diplomacy. I am often asked whether the current war is aimed at implementing what is known as the Yinon Plan. Oded Yinon was an adviser to Sharon, and in 1982 he co-authored an article outlining a strategy of divide and rule of the Arab world. Sectarianism serves Israel well, he argued, and should be promoted. This was at the time when Sharon sought to sow division in the ranks of the Palestinian resistance, including by encouraging Islamist forces in Gaza. When that failed, Sharon launched a direct assault on the PLO in Lebanon, which was widely criticized in Israel as a strategic mistake. The recent news about an attempt to facilitate a Kurdish land invasion from Iraq to complement the aerial bombardment of Iran may seem to confirm that these tactics are still in operation. But this is not the case. The old strategy was far less dramatic: clandestine intervention in the domestic politics of other states is not policy that is boasted about; nor is it based on dragging the region into a war.

Evidently, this is no longer the modus operandi of the state of Israel. Ironically, the best interpretative schema here may be that which orientalists have typically applied – not always very accurately – to the Islamic Republic: that this is a power not acting according to a ‘Western’ rational and humanist approach to politics but a fanatical ideology. Those determining the present Israeli strategy are explicit about its roots in the teaching of messianic Zionism and their vision of the present war as divine fulfilment. Netanyahu may be less ideological than his allies, and more narrowly concerned with his own political survival, but there is little doubt he accepts his glorification as both a strategic genius and messenger of God. For this camp, Israeli society itself needs to become far more theocratic. It is not yet, laments Smotrich, the ‘state of the Cohanim’, but is on its way to being ruled by a harsh biblical version of the Halachic law: ‘The State of Israel, the country of the Jewish people, with God willing, will go back to operating as it did in the days of King David and King Solomon.’ Much of the government’s domestic legislation is devoted to pursuing this end. Second, there is a need to resolve the Palestine question. Gaza is the model. Smotrich again: ‘There are no half-measures. Rafah, Deir al-Balah, Nuseirat – total destruction. “Thou shalt blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven. There is no place for them under heaven.”’

Speaking in October 2024, Smotrich declared that ‘once in a generation, there is a rare opportunity to change history, to change the balance of power in the world and reshape the future. Soon we will have to take fateful decisions that will lead to a new and better Middle East.’ For most Western political commentators, messianic proclamations – unless by Islamists – sound irrelevant to politics. But these are not hollow statements. This is a worldview that now dominates both the political and military establishments, which provides the underpinning for much of the present jubilation and unconditional endorsement by the media. The war against Iran is also supported by those with a more secular – and allegedly more rational – approach to politics, in the Mossad and academia, as well as the only politicians who can potentially defeat Netanyahu in October’s elections, Avigdor Liberman and Naftali Bennet. The justification is that Israel had to act because it faced an existential threat – a claim as plausible as Colin Powell’s justifications to the UN of the invasion of Iraq. Even more absurd is the argument that a state which systematically violates the rights of the Palestinians is fighting a war for the sake of human rights.

Judged from an economic perspective, despite the exuberance of the Israeli stock market, the course of the Israeli state is highly questionable. It costs a great deal of money – two billion NIS a day in direct expenditure and five to six billion indirectly – and will require significant continued American financial aid. The government’s logic is that this will be balanced by the economic dividends: sky-rocketing profits from arms sales, now that cutting-edge Israeli weapons are being showcased on the battlefield, not to mention the prospect of Iranian oil reserves and greater access to those of the Gulf states, as they come to realize they need Israel’s protection. Yet there is no certainty this will make up for the financial strain; the same goes for money spent on settlements and the promotion of messianic Judaism in lieu of healthcare and other social priorities.

There are further reasons why Israel will struggle to pursue its strategy over the long term. Campaigns like this in the past were abandoned the moment they faced difficulties. Loss of American life, pressure from other countries in the region, public opinion in the US, the potential resilience of the Iranian regime and continued resistance of the Palestinians may all shift the balance. An invasion of Lebanon, judging by past attempts, will benefit no one. Much depends on the global coalition that fortifies Israel’s wars: the arms industry, multinational corporations, megalomaniac leaders of powerful states, Christian and Jewish Zionist lobbies, the timid governments in the global north as well as corrupt Arab regimes in the Middle East. What is certain is that before this fiasco ends, Israel will inflict a great deal of suffering – on the Iranians, the Lebanese and the Palestinians.

Ilan Pappé is an Israeli historian and socialist activist. He is a professor of history at the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, director of the university’s European Centre for Palestine Studies, and co-director of the Exeter Centre for Ethno-Political Studies.

13 March 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Paul Krugman

It becomes clearer with each passing day that the people who took us to war with Iran had and have no idea what they’re doing — that they’re adolescents who think they’re playing video games while thousands die and the world careens toward economic crisis. The New York Times reports that Trump officials dismissed warnings that attacking Iran could disrupt world oil supplies. Among other things, the Times reports that

Mr. Trump, both publicly and privately, has been arguing that Venezuelan oil could help solve any shocks coming from the Iran war.

In 2024 Venezuela produced 900,000 barrels of oil per day; normally 20 million barrels a day transit the Strait of Hormuz. But arithmetic has a well-known woke bias.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports that the Pentagon has barred press photographers from briefings about the war after they published photos of Pete Hegseth that his staff considered “unflattering.” Priorities!

Amid the bloody shambles, one big question is, who put The Gang That Couldn’t Think Straight in power? In an immediate sense, Trump was put over the top by low-information voters — defined by G. Elliott Morris as voters who don’t know which party controls Congress. But the groundwork for the MAGA takeover was laid well before by the Roberts Supreme Court and by right-wing billionaires that the court enabled.

A few weeks ago I wrote about Billionaires Gone Wild, the extraordinary influence acquired by a tiny group of ultra-wealthy men. I shared this chart on campaign contributions, based on estimates from Americans for Tax Fairness:

[https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!JHBB!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F21a23d6d-f703-4f9f-abc7-2af1d0649237_1431x869.png]

On Monday the Times published a deeply reported story about billionaires’ influence that, among other things, found that the chart above somewhat underestimates their role in campaign finance: According to the Times, they accounted for 19 percent of contributions in 2024, not 16.5 percent.

The Times also pointed out that the big money swung hard right in the 2024 election. The magnitude of the largesse showered on Republicans is clear in OpenSecrets data on the top 100 donors in different cycles:

[https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!TSML!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbaef67aa-de05-4062-b432-357cfbec7703_1240x934.png]

Moreover, the Times presents numbers that are even more extreme than the Open Secrets data:

In past elections, as ultrawealthy donors became more active, both major parties reaped rewards. But there was a stark divergence in 2024, with less money flowing directly to Democrats and a sharp increase in the amount donated to Republicans.

For every dollar donated by billionaires and their immediate families to a candidate or committee associated with Democrats, five dollars went to Republicans.

Much of that was a result of ultrawealthy people in the tech industry, who aligned with Mr. Trump’s tax and deregulation policies. More than a dozen billionaires were awarded roles in his administration.

And these explicit money flows don’t capture the immense effect of other deployments of billionaires’ wealth, notably the subversion of both conventional and social media. Elon Musk purchased Twitter in 2022 and quickly began converting it into the Nazi-friendly cesspool it is today — and no, that’s not hyperbole. How much did this contribute to the degradation of public discourse? Paramount, controlled by Larry Ellison and run by his son, has taken over CBS News — which is rapidly going downhill — and is on the verge of taking over CNN too. And Jeff Bezos is gutting The Washington Post, although kudos to the remaining reporters who are still trying to do their jobs.

There is, however, something that is still puzzling me: To a large extent billionaires bought themselves a government friendly to their interests. Trump and company have granted many items on the tech broligarchy wish list, from tax breaks to deregulation to promotion of crypto and unregulated AI. But why the abject incompetence? Couldn’t billionaires find political allies who wouldn’t plunge the country into a potentially disastrous and historically unpopular war without considering the risks?

I have two tentative answers.

One is that no, competent allies weren’t available. Money buys a lot of influence, but to actually take over the U.S. government requires more than money — it requires politicians who are utterly corrupt. In his first administration, Trump learned that hiring people who were even modestly competent eventually presented barriers to his authoritarian instincts – for example, his former Vice President Mike Pence. Hence Trump learned that in choosing his political hires the more incompetent, the more venal, the more bigoted, and the more cruel, the better.

You might think that presidential pardons for scammers, money launderers and outright crooks are unrelated to the ill-advised war on Iran. But corruption is a key feature of a billionaire-installed regime, and corruption and incompetence go hand in hand.

My second answer is that the vast wealth of tech billionaires has made many of them unconcerned with the little people’s lives — and deeply unpatriotic. If Americans are being brutalized and murdered by rogue ICE agents…well, that’s not their problem. If the Justice Department and the FBI are totally subverted and operate as Trump’s enforcers, they know that vindictive, unlawful tactics will never touch their lives. If Republican budget cuts decimate rural hospitals and deprive hundreds of thousands of health insurance…well, they have their own private doctors and clinics. If Trump starts an ill-conceived war that doubles the price of oil…well, they can certainly afford the higher gasoline bills for their limousines and yachts. And it won’t be their kids hunkered down in a bunker in the Middle East.

So if you want to understand how this country has degenerated to such a state, how we can be spending nearly $2 billion a day attacking Iran without a clear endgame in sight, while children go without healthcare, nursing homes are understaffed because their workers have been deported, home electricity bills skyrocket due to data centers, consider who benefits and who isn’t hurt.

This is a billionaire’s war, waged at everyone else’s expense.

MUSICAL CODA

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89Oc1UE7SS4]

Paul Krugman is an American economist who is the Distinguished Professor of Economics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

13 March 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark

“The geopolitical genie is out of the bottle: by capitalizing on geography to disrupt global trade, countries can strengthen their strategic position at relatively low cost.”

Alex Mills, The Atlantic Council, March 12, 2026

With each day of glorified actions against Iran, with each cloudy press session claiming supreme success through sheer force, the Trump administration is struggling to keep up appearances. Through an approach of existential attrition, the clerical regime in Tehran is now causing shocks and tingles in the global market, striking where influence is strongest: the petrol pump, the cash register, the hip pocket. Its missiles, drones or projectiles may not be able to reach the United States or Australia, but a note of panic is setting in.

Even before shipping was attacked (threats sufficed), the Strait of Hormuz was already being emptied of traffic. Fearing losses, major shipping firms such as Maersk, Hapag-Lloyd and CMA CGM ceased transiting cargo through the waterways. Since the war commenced on February 28, transits through the Strait have virtually stopped. This putative closure imperils the transfer of a fifth of the world’s oil supply, a fifth of the global trade in liquified natural gas, and some 13% of the global share in chemicals, including essential fertilisers. Freight rates for oil tankers, war risk insurance premiums and costs of marine fuel are all rising steeply.

A social media post from Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi brimming with satisfaction captured the mood: “9 days into Operation Epic Mistake, oil prices have doubled while all commodities are skyrocketing. We know the US is plotting against our oil and nuclear sites in hopes of containing huge inflationary shock. Iran is fully prepared.” He also promised that Iran had “many surprises in store.”

On March 11, a spokesperson for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)’s Khatam al-Anbiya Headquarters resolutely declared that any vessel linked to Israel, the United States or their allies would be “considered a legitimate target”. He also rejected the effectualness of efforts to suppress price rises. “You will not be able to artificially lower the price of oil. Expect oil at $200 per barrel,” he warned. “The price of oil depends on regional security, and you are the main source of insecurity in the region.”

An effort to halt the rise of the oil price was made with a decision by 32 member states of the International Energy Agency (IEA) to release 400 million barrels of oil. “This is a major action aiming to alleviate the immediate impacts of the disruption in markets,” IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol explained in his address. “But to be clear, the most important thing for the return to stable flows of oil and gas is the resumption of transit through the Strait of Hormuz.”

Over March 11 and 12, in what seemed to be an effort to counter this move, the IRGC made good its word, attacking some six vessels, using projectiles and explosive-laden unmanned surface vessels. Targets included the Marshall Islands-flagged Safesea Vishu and the Malta-flagged Zefyros, both carrying fuel cargoes from Iraq. The Thai-flagged Mayuree Naree dry bulk vessel was hit by what was described as “two projectiles of unknown origin”. Mines have also been deployed to further complicate the prospect of transit.

The response from President Donald Trump and his officials to the price rises has been one of unrelenting fantasy. “The recent increase of oil and gas prices is temporary,” stated White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, “and this operation [attacking Iran] will result in lower gas prices in the long term”. Energy Secretary Chris Wright was also unjustifiably confident that the price shocks would endure for a matter of “weeks, not months”.

After attending a classified and seemingly confused briefing on the war on March 10, Democratic Senator Chris Murphy from Connecticut was left unimpressed. “I can’t go into more detail about how Iran gums up the Strait,” he revealed, “but suffice to say, right now, they don’t know how to get it safely back open.” This was “unforgivable, because this part of the disaster was 100% foreseeable.” The primary war goal of the administration, as Murphy understood, was “destroying lots of missiles and boats and drone factories.” Such visionaries.

The Trump credo of estranged reality ignores the growing and enduring consequences of the strait’s closure and the war. A backlog of tankers on both sides of the waterway is growing. Ports are becoming congested with overstaying vessels. Production of oil and gas, impaired by Iranian attacks and continued closure, will have to resume in such states as Qatar, Bahrain, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Anas Alhajji, a global energy markets boffin, offers a grim analysis: “Ending the war does not mean ending the crisis. We have countries that literally shut down production because their storage is full. To bring back that oil to a pre-crisis level takes time. For [liquified natural gas] in particular, it takes a very long time.”

Asked on whether vessels should still brave the journey through the Strait of Hormuz, Trump spoke with unfounded optimism. “I think they should. I think you’re going to see great safety”. The new round of strikes on shipping by Iran, initiated at a fraction of the cost of the US-Israel campaign against it, coupled with the inexorable rise of prices, suggests otherwise. In this regard at least, economics may well prove to be destiny.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.

13 March 2026

Source: countercurrents.org