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By Abdul Bari Atwan

The fact that the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, appeared three times recently in open and public meetings—chatting with ordinary Iranians—has sent a shocking message to U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It demonstrates that Khamenei still has the first and final word in Iran and is not hiding in an underground bunker out of fear of assassination. Nor has he relinquished his leadership or spiritual authority, despite deliberate leaks and claims circulated by some Arab and Western media outlets as part of a psychological warfare campaign against Iran, coinciding with the U.S. military buildup in the region.

In contrast, top Israeli politicians and military officials are rushing to Washington, fearing that President Trump may back down from his aggressive threats and replace the military option with a peaceful, negotiated one—possibly reaching an accord that excludes Israeli demands and conditions. Israeli Chief of Staff General Eyal Zamir recently made a surprise visit to Washington, meeting senior U.S. military leaders and accompanied by top commanders, including the Israeli Air Force chief.

Frankly, Trump may have already lost this war—just as he lost face and credibility by failing to follow through on his threats or translate them into aggressive action on Iranian soil. Instead, he has resorted to sending mediators, the latest being his friend, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, to reopen negotiations with Iran. This comes after realizing that naval buildups and aircraft carrier deployments have failed to yield results or intimidate the Iranian leadership into surrender. Thus, he may be defeated either way: whether he goes to war or resorts to a political and diplomatic solution to the crisis.

The key to understanding this confusion—and perhaps the American retreat and postponement of military strikes—lies in the threatening message delivered by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during his meetings with large crowds of Iranians on the anniversary of the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Most notably, he asserted that “Iran does not initiate wars, but if it is subjected to aggression, it will confront it with all its might and inflict devastating blows on the enemy.” More importantly, he warned that any such war would be a broad regional conflict—neither swift nor decisive nor short-lived, nor “clean,” meaning free of casualties.

A “regional war” would mean the participation of all countries, movements, and military factions aligned with the so-called “axis of resistance,” beginning with Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq, and Ansar Allah in Yemen. American bases across the region—particularly on the Arabian side of the Gulf—would become legitimate targets, as would the more than 70,000 American soldiers stationed there.

What terrifies Israel most is not only Trump’s failure to proceed with aggression against Iran, but also the possibility of an agreement that contradicts Israel’s three core objectives.

First, preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons by halting all high-level uranium enrichment and compelling Tehran to surrender its existing stockpile—estimated at 480 kilograms—to a neutral country.
Second, stopping the development and deployment of Iranian missiles and dismantling all long-range systems, including hypersonic and multiple-warhead missiles capable of reaching deep into Israeli territory, particularly Haifa and Tel Aviv, as demonstrated during the 12-day war last June.
Third, completely ending all financial and missile support for resistance movements, especially Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iraqi factions within the Popular Mobilization Forces such as Harakat al-Nujaba, and Ansar Allah in Yemen.

A Reminder

It is worth recalling that the return of 5,000 American soldiers in coffins to Washington—killed by Iraqi resistance forces after the 2003 invasion—forced then-President Barack Obama to acknowledge defeat and withdraw 160,000 U.S. troops from Iraq in November 2011 in order to minimize losses. It is therefore no exaggeration to suggest that any aggression against Iran today could result in four times that number of American casualties, if not more, in the initial days alone. This is due to Iran’s resolve, advanced missile and drone capabilities, and other secret weapons that could deliver the biggest surprises of any future war.

Perhaps the recent decline in oil prices, the collapse of gold and silver values, and the dollar’s sharp depreciation in global financial markets are among the clearest indicators confirming this reality: the diminishing likelihood of war, Trump’s reluctant tilt toward diplomacy and negotiations, and his tacit admission of the impossibility of achieving a military victory without catastrophic losses or a prolonged regional war, as warned by Iran’s Supreme Leader. Time will tell.

This article is written by Abdul Bari Atwan, chief editor of the Arabic Al Rai Al Youm website, on 2 February 2026, on the eve of the increasing US military presence surrounding Iran. It is reprinted in Crossfirearabia.com.

4 February 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Gerry Condon

“Peace at Home, Peace Abroad” is the vision that has inspired Veterans For Peace for many years. We have watched as the racist violence we witnessed in US wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq has been reproduced in U.S. cities by militarized police using gestapo tactics. We are currently seeing simultaneous US wars abroad and at home.

Even as the US has attacked Venezuela, kidnapped its president and threatened to overthrow the governments of Cuba and Iran, thousands of “Homeland Security” troops have invaded and terrorized a major U.S. city, Minneapolis, even murdering two nonviolent protesters. Thousands of people, including veterans, are resisting these racist, violent attacks.

“The silver lining is that the community defense has brought everybody together,” says Dave Logsdon of Minneapolis Veterans For Peace. “People who never protested before are in the streets organizing, with yellow vests, whistles, and first aid kits. People are finding the camaraderie contagious and the community resistance fulfilling.”

City of Heroes Celebrated in Song
The community resistance in Minneapolis is being celebrated in song by leading singer/songwriters, including Bruce Springsteen, Tom Morello, Jim Page, Scared Ketchup (AI), Jesse Welles, Midnight Republic, Michael Shynes, and Billy Bragg.

In his song “City of Heroes,’ Billy Bragg sings:

When they came for the immigrants, I got in their face
When they came for the refugees, I got in their face
When they came for the five-year-olds, I got in their face
When they came to my neighborhood, I just got in their face
When they killed my sister, I got in their face!
When they killed my brother, I got in their face!

Minneapolis is definitely a City of Heroes, and that is exactly what they have been doing – getting in the face of heavily armed, masked, white supremacist storm troopers. Older folks and younger folks have stood together in the streets every day in the hundreds and in the thousands, in sub-zero weather!

Veterans Resisting Fascism
Veterans For Peace has also been in the streets of Minneapolis, standing with the most vulnerable communities. Younger Post-9/11 veterans have taken the lead. They have been patrolling in at-risk neighborhoods, monitoring for agitators, de-escalating situations at protests, and training people how to stop bleeding. At least four veterans have been arrested while peacefully protesting, but have been released without charges.

The heroic sustained resistance in Minneapolis has exposed the true nature of these ICE attacks before the entire world. They have put the Trump administration on the defensive. The calls to abolish ICE are now heard in many quarters. The War at Home will be a long one, however. Similar community resistance is taking place in many US cities that are also being subjected to racist ICE attacks, or who are preparing to defend their communities from the anticipated assaults of an increasingly fascist federal government.

To make matters that much worse, we are now bracing for the Trump Administration’s threatened war against Iran, one that could be a catastrophic for the region and possibly for the entire planet, causing global economic chaos and even risking nuclear war.

From Venezuela to Minneapolis: Standing Up to Stop US Terror
San Francisco Veterans For Peace has teamed up with the ANSWER Coalition for an indoor rally titled From Venezuela to Minneapolis: Standing Up to Stop US Terror. The rally will be on Saturday afternoon, Feb. 7, 3 pm at the Veterans Building, 401 Van Ness Ave. Room 210.

Refuse Illegal Orders
Veterans For Peace is currently putting up billboards with the message “Refuse Illegal Orders” near military bases around the U.S. We are reminding our brothers and sisters, sons and daughter and grandchildren who have joined the military that they have the right and the responsibility to refuse illegal orders, and that we will support them when they do.

Illegal Order would include:

Orders to unconstitutionally deploy to US cities in support of racist ICE attacks or to suppress peaceful protests;
Orders to participate in illegal regime-change wars, such as against Venezuela and Iran;
Orders to ship weapons to Israel while it is conducting a genocide.
Order to attack civilians or to torture and kill prisoners of war.
Trained counselors who can speak to concerned military members about their legal options can be reached by going to the Veterans For Peace website, www.veteransforpeace.org.

Veterans For Peace is welcoming new members – younger veterans, older veterans, active-duty members, family members and supporters. The Veterans For Peace eNews showcases the many ways that Veterans For Peace is organizing for Peace at Home and Peace Abroad.

Gerry Condon is Vietnam-era veteran and war resister who serves on the Veterans For Peace Board of Directors.

4 February 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Salim Nazzal

We in the East possess a religious mind, and even the most secular among us carries something of this mindset. Our everyday expressions Inshallah (God willing) and if God wills reflect this mentality. For this reason, many of our interpretations of events come from a religious perspective. What the criminal Zionist Jews are doing in Palestine, for example, we often explain as a test from God.

I believe this kind of interpretation also existed in medieval Europe .My grandmother used to say, whenever she heard news that contradicted traditions and what was considered normal:
“We are living in the end of times.”

My grandmother died in 1988. That means she did not live to see the age of the internet, or the globalization that came with it, and the limitless moral decline we now witness and hear about.

My grandmother passed away, and with her passed her simple world.

And I remember something a retired Danish doctor once told me. He was sitting next to me on the train to Copenhagen. As I spoke about freedom and scientific progress in the West, he said:
“All of this has come at a very high price.”

I asked him: What price?

He answered:
“Our value system is collapsing, and it has become difficult to stop this collapse.”

Then he gave me a sincere piece of advice:
“Remain Eastern, and do not imitate us.”

I explained to him that I do believe in progress, but through Eastern cultural references, not necessarily Western ones.

At the beginning of the Arab Renaissance in the late nineteenth century, the idea of progress became closely linked to adopting all Western values and models. This, in turn, contributed to the failure and abortion of the project of genuine progress in the Arab world, because modernization was detached from its own cultural and civilizational foundations.

I do not agree with this interpretation, because it is necessary to understand the causes of weakness and to confront and address them.

Absolute fatalistic belief, although I can understand the historical and social reasons behind its emergence, does not help in building inner strength or restoring the capacity for independent action.

Surrendering to the idea that everything is an unavoidable destiny may provide a certain psychological comfort, but at the same time it paralyzes the will, weakens responsibility, and postpones a true engagement with reality.

The real path toward renewal and progress lies in recognizing the sources of failure and working consciously to overcome them through knowledge, action, and confidence in one’s own strength.

I believe that one of the most important reasons behind the moral and civilizational collapse we are witnessing in the West today lies in the fact that Western Christianity was built upon the Christianity of the Roman Empire a form of Christianity that became almost completely separated from the original Palestinian Christianity.

That early Christianity was a simple, spiritual faith, born among peasants and ordinary people in Palestine, before it was transferred to the West and transformed into an imperial institution, far removed from its initial roots.

Salim Nazzal is a Palestinian Norwegian researcher, lecturer playwright and poet, wrote more than 17 books such as Perspectives on thought, culture and political sociology, in thought, culture and ideology, the road to Baghdad

4 February 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Arun Srivastava

The “New India” of the saffron ecosystem, particularly shaped by Narendra Modi, has virtually become the newest colony of imperialist USA in South Asia. Modi has exuberantly accepted the trade deal offered by his “best friend,” Donald Trump, the American President whose name prominently features in the infamous Epstein files. Undeniably, Trump—the modern face of global imperialism—has succeeded in his mission. Earlier, he reinforced the role of US imperialism by forcing Venezuela, home to the world’s richest known oil reserves, and Greenland, rich in rare earths, to fall in line. On February 2, he compelled Modi to compromise by accepting the Indo-US trade deal.

Trump’s design is reminiscent of the strategy of the East India Company, which transitioned from a trading body to a ruling power in India between 1757 and 1858. Initially entering India for commerce in 1600, the EIC gradually seized political control. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region—initially with the East Indies (including the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia), and later with East Asia.

That Modi’s “New India” is turning into a new American colony is ratified by the statement of US Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, who announced that India had agreed to open its market to American farm products. Rollins wrote:

“Thank you @POTUS for ONCE AGAIN delivering for our American farmers. New US-India deal will export more American farm products to India’s massive market, lifting prices and pumping cash into rural America. In 2024, America’s agricultural trade deficit with India was $1.3 billion. India’s growing population is an important market for American agricultural products, and today’s deal will go a long way toward reducing this deficit. America First victory… #FarmersWin #USIndiaTrade #RuralAmerica.”

Historically, when an imperialist power conquered a country in Asia, Africa, or the Caribbean, it completely dominated that nation—altering its administrative, social, and economic structures for imperial benefit. Imperialism led to the acquisition of colonies and colonial rivalries that ultimately resulted in the First World War (1914–1918) and the Second World War (1939–1945).

Imperialist nations amassed enormous profits by exploiting the resources of their colonies. Their primary target was the agrarian economy: forcing colonies to grow commercial crops and destroying rural self-sufficiency. Colonial rule rests on the complete domination of one country over another, leading to systematic exploitation of resources and labour, and often the suppression of indigenous cultures. Under colonialism, people lose sovereignty over land, resources, and political destiny.

Trump has explicitly directed Modi to commit to buying more than $500 billion worth of American goods. Indian government officials confirmed that these purchases would span multiple sectors, including defence and energy. India has reportedly agreed to stop buying Russian oil and reduce tariff and non-tariff barriers to zero, while Trump continues to impose an 18 percent tariff on Indian goods. This asymmetry reveals the coercive nature of the deal.

Rollins further clarified the commercial motive:

“India’s massive market will reduce America’s agricultural trade deficit.”

Clearly, it is not India’s interests but India’s market that matters to Trump and the US.

Seventy-nine years after liberation from British imperialism, it is uncertain how long India will take to free itself from US-led colonisation imposed by Modi. His audacity is evident in his statement:

“Big thanks to President Trump on behalf of the 1.4 billion people of India…”

How Modi could thank Trump on behalf of the Indian people is beyond comprehension.

As if this were not enough, Modi described himself as “delighted” by reduced tariffs and praised Trump’s leadership, despite Trump later stating that the tariff reduction was granted “out of friendship” and “at Modi’s request.” This exposes the hollowness of Modi’s claims of diplomatic strength—he could not even persuade Trump to waive tariffs entirely.

With US agricultural products entering India at lower prices, how can Indian farmers compete—especially when their produce is burdened by an 18 percent tariff? Trump’s insistence that India purchase $500 billion worth of US goods—when India’s total import bill itself is around $700 billion—amounts to blatant arm-twisting aimed at preventing India from trading with other nations.

Trump also announced the halt to Operation Sindoor on May 10, 2025, and later announced India’s acceptance of the US trade deal—on both occasions Modi maintained silence. The deal will make rice and wheat production costlier, forcing farmers toward cash crops and worsening rural distress.

Agriculture in India is already largely unprofitable, particularly for small and marginal farmers, due to rising input costs, climate uncertainty, low market prices, lack of storage, and exploitative intermediaries. Had agriculture been profitable, farmers would not have been driven to suicide.

Around 70 percent of India’s rural population depends directly or indirectly on agriculture. It contributed about 15 percent to GDP in 2023. According to NSSO, 45.5 percent of India’s labour force was engaged in agriculture in 2022. NCRB data shows that between 1995 and 2014, 296,438 farmers died by suicide. During Modi’s tenure (2014–2022), the figure stands at 100,474. In 2022 alone, 11,290 people from the farming sector died by suicide.

Yet these deaths have failed to move Modi. Farmers staged a year-long protest at Delhi’s borders from November 2020 to December 2021 demanding repeal of the three farm laws and legal MSP. While Modi repealed the laws, MSP remains unimplemented. Budget allocations for agriculture have steadily declined.

In the Union Budget 2026-27, allocation for Agriculture and Allied Activities fell to 3.04 percent from 3.38 percent the previous year. Even the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana saw reduced funding. These priorities reflect the government’s distancing from farmers.

While Rollins claims Modi promised not to compromise farmers’ interests, America simultaneously announces a massive surge in agricultural exports to India. How can these claims coexist?

The discriminatory nature of the deal explains why Modi avoided placing it before Parliament. Had Parliament been consulted, the truth would have been exposed. In this context, Rahul Gandhi’s allegation that Modi “compromised” India’s interests—possibly under pressure related to the Adani case in the US—appears politically valid.

Agriculture has long been the most contentious issue in trade negotiations, especially US demands to open India’s market to genetically modified crops. Modi’s sudden capitulation is deeply suspicious. The so-called “Mother of all deals,” signed after two decades of negotiations, threatens to further devastate India’s rural economy, which remains starved of meaningful revival.

Arun Srivastava is a senior journalist

4 February 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Bhabani Shankar Nayak

The hugging, hobnobbing, and digital display of friendship on social media between Mr. Narendra Modi and Mr. Donald Trump appear to be designed mainly for public consumption, without any substantial achievement for Indians or the Indian economy. The much-talked-about, so-called non-existent free trade deal between the US and India reflects unfair and unequal trade relations between the two countries. Mr. Trump reportedly promised to reduce US tariffs on Indian exports to 18 percent in return for India’s promise to reduce tariff and non-tariff barriers on US goods and services to zero. Such a trade arrangement is likely to undermine India’s productive capacities in various sectors and drain Indian wealth and human resources in favor of the American economy. The US ruling elites and their corporations seem to view India merely as a market, without any genuine friendship or commitment to stand together during times of crisis or need.

History reveals that the American ruling elites and their imperialist system have never truly stood with anyone. When it comes to India’s national interests, US power elites have consistently acted against India and Indian interests, seeking to undermine those interests and exploit crises by accelerating instabilities and promoting military conflicts. They have attempted to checkmate India’s industrial and technological progress while simultaneously using the technologically advanced and skilled Indian workforce to establish, shape, and develop Silicon Valley and advance their own technological dominance.

During periods of economic and military crisis, the United States has sought to contain India’s growth and development and weaken Indian sovereignty. The US has never been a genuine friend of India; instead, it has repeatedly used its imperial power to restrain India’s rise. American power elites are no one’s friend. Therefore, India must remain clear-eyed and realistic while developing alliances with the US. It is a strategic illusion to expect significant gains from an Indo-US alliance.

The US is attempting to bully, pressure and trap India in various ways to join US-led alliances like QUAD (Asian NATO) as a junior partner, not only to contain China but also to limit India itself. American imperialism seeks to control Asia and its resources to maintain dominance in the global economy, often at the expense of Asian peoples and their sovereignty. By falling into this US trap, the Modi government is not only undermining India’s independent foreign policy but also creating conditions that could weaken the Indian economy and pave the way for American dominance over Asia. Racial capitalism driven by American economic power is fundamentally exploitative and hostile toward the peoples of Asia, Africa, Latin America, and even parts of Europe.

The Indian government and the Indian people must remain vigilant against all American attempts in the form of trade deals and military alliances. The US has never stood with Indian or Asian peoples and their interests. One only needs to look at how American imperialism and its European allies have devastated Ukraine and then abandoned it in the midst of a military and humanitarian crisis, where Russians and Ukrainians are suffering directly and people across Europe are paying the price of the war on a daily basis. Similarly, American imperialism has destabiliSed Pakistan by using its military as a proxy to contain India, while also undermining the Pakistani people. The US is manufacturing conflicts and is currently involved in numerous wars and interventions around the world to sustain its imperialist system and maintain the dominance of American capitalism, which is increasingly weakening due to its own internal contradictions.

India and its current ruling regime must learn from history to understand the dangers of forming any kind of alliance with US imperialism and its capitalist system. This system is fundamentally designed to dominate, destroy, and create conditions of destitution for both people and the planet. There should be no illusions about this reality. India must revive and follow its time-tested non-aligned foreign policy strategies and its traditions to uphold its independence, while promoting internationalism based on solidarity with peoples and nations suffering under imperialist domination and exploitation.

The Modi government’s myopic attempt to engage with American imperialism is a strategic illusion. It will not protect and promote India’s economic, military, or global diplomatic interests. On the contrary, it is likely to prove disastrous for India and its people. American imperialism has often aligned itself with autocratic, reactionary, and undemocratic regimes while undermining liberal and secular democracies. The state-led, corporate-driven model of planned American capitalism and its market-centered democracy are not compatible with India’s aspirations for inclusive and democratic development. Therefore, it is essential to oppose unfair trade agreements and imperialist military alliances between India and the United States for the sake of India and Indians. India must not forget to celebrate—its historic struggles against imperialism, as well as its longstanding tradition of international solidarity with other anti-imperialist movements around the world.

Bhabani Shankar Nayak is a political commentator

4 February 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Prof. Junaid S. Ahmad

Pakistan’s military has always preferred its wars orderly: enemies legible, proxies pliable, violence narratively obedient. For decades, the western frontier complied. Militants were assets, Pashtuns were terrain, and Afghanistan was treated not as a polity but as strategic negative space — a hinterland to be shaped, managed, and periodically disciplined. What the generals never planned for — because they never do — is autonomy. Not from civilians, not from provinces, and certainly not from former clients expected to remain grateful, dependent, and silent.

What Rawalpindi now brands a security crisis is something far less dignified. It is the shock of lost control, disguised as resolve. A tantrum, armored and aerial.

The Taliban in Kabul were supposed to vindicate Pakistan’s long romance with proxy power: deferential, aligned, permanently conscious of who midwifed their rise. They were expected to outsource strategic imagination to Islamabad. Instead, they committed the unforgivable sin of client regimes everywhere. They behaved like a sovereign authority. Brutal, reactionary, and incompetent — yes — but independent. They refused instruction, rejected hierarchy, and declined the role scripted for them in Pakistan’s strategic theatre.

Nothing enrages a patron more than a proxy that stops asking permission.

Pakistan’s hostility toward Kabul is therefore not about terrorism in the abstract. Terrorism has always been negotiable. Militancy, when useful, has always been tolerable. What is intolerable is insubordination. The Afghan Taliban’s real offense is not harboring the Pakistani Taliban; it is refusing to accept that their political horizon should terminate in Rawalpindi. That refusal punctures the mythology of omnipotence on which Pakistan’s security state depends.

And so the gaze turns inward. Enter the Pashtuns — again.

Every authoritarian system eventually exhausts explanation and reaches for scapegoats. Pakistan’s establishment has chosen the population it has always known how to manage with force. Pashtuns, long racialized as suspect and governed as exception, are recast as the connective tissue between Kabul’s defiance and domestic instability. A strategic failure is collapsed into an ethnic security problem, and the remedy remains reassuringly familiar: bombard, displace, sanitize the language, repeat.

Military operations in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the former tribal districts are not counterterrorism in any meaningful sense. They are disciplinary performances. Villages are destroyed to restore hierarchy. Displacement is normalized as method. Civilian suffering is rendered administratively invisible through the antiseptic dialect of “kinetic actions” and “area clearance.” Violence is not merely inflicted; it is processed.

Pashtuns understand this grammar fluently. They have lived under it for generations.

What has changed is not their exposure to repression, but their tolerance for its alibis.

The Pakistani state prefers to pathologize Pashtun resistance as cultural reflex — atavistic militancy rather than political response. This fiction is convenient, because it absolves the center of responsibility. The reality is more corrosive. Pashtun regions have been subjected to a rolling experiment in securitized governance: collective punishment, economic abandonment, enforced disappearances, and episodic devastation marketed as stability. Loyalty is demanded as tribute, never cultivated as consent.

Yet political consciousness has evolved in ways the generals failed to anticipate. The appeal of Imran Khan in these regions is not sentimental; it is diagnostic. He opposed drone strikes when applauding them was elite consensus. He condemned military operations when silence was safer. He stated — without euphemism — that mass displacement is not counterterrorism, that bombing civilians manufactures militancy, and that dignity does not arrive by helicopter gunship.

This made him dangerous. Popularity among the governed is intolerable when it bypasses the governors.

The military’s resentment toward Pashtuns is therefore cumulative. It is anger at communities that refuse pacification through slogans. Anger at people who remember too much. Anger at a population that understands — perhaps more clearly than any other in Pakistan — that the language of security is often the vocabulary of domination. Pashtuns expose the limits of coercion. That exposure is intolerable.

The standoff with Afghanistan intensifies this fury. Cross-border strikes are framed as self-defense, but function politically as diversion. They convert internal legitimacy deficits into external threat narratives. Each missile becomes a press release; each funeral, a footnote.

Borders, however, are not abstractions in Pashtun life. They are colonial incisions cutting through kinship, commerce, and memory. The Durand Line has never been emotionally internalized by those who live across it, and successive Afghan regimes — monarchical, republican, Islamist — have treated it with studied ambiguity. The Taliban have not formally rejected the border, but they have refused to consecrate it. That ambiguity is deliberate, historical, and strategic.

Pakistan’s failure is not that Kabul questions the line. It is that Rawalpindi no longer has the leverage to enforce silence about it.

The Afghan Taliban no longer depend on Pakistani sanctuaries or sponsorship. They have alternatives: regional engagement, transactional diplomacy, calibrated flirtations with Pakistan’s rivals. This is not Taliban brilliance. It is Pakistani strategic exhaustion.

And exhaustion, when denied, curdles into aggression.

The Pakistani Taliban become the perfect instrument in this choreography. Their attacks justify operations; their persistence validates escalation. Cause and consequence collapse into ritual. Bomb, declare success, displace civilians, neglect reconstruction, wait for militants to return, repeat. This is not counterinsurgency. It is institutional inertia armed with airpower.

The human cost is vast and deliberately obscured. Families freezing in displacement camps are not policy failures; they are inconveniences. Children killed by errant fire are not moral ruptures; they are statistical residue. Accountability is deferred indefinitely because acknowledging it would require admitting that the strategy itself is the pathology.

What makes this moment volatile is that Pashtun grievance now intersects with national recognition. The repression unleashed after Imran Khan’s removal did not remain provincial. Punjab — long insulated from the full architecture of coercive governance — has begun to recognize familiar patterns: censorship, judicial farce, economic predation, intimidation dressed as order. What was once frontier experience is becoming national knowledge.

This convergence terrifies the establishment.

A Pashtun protest can be dismissed as peripheral. A national awakening cannot. The danger is not rebellion; it is translation. That Pashtun experience becomes legible to others. That the frontier is no longer treated as exception, but as forecast.

Hence the escalation. More operations. Harder rhetoric. Louder threats.

But each escalation reveals not strength, but panic. Each miscalculated strike exposes strategic hollowness. Each displaced family becomes evidence — not of necessity, but of collapse.

Strategic depth was meant to secure Pakistan’s future. Instead, it has produced strategic humiliation. The western frontier has become a mirror, reflecting decades of manipulation back at its authors.

And when a state begins to wage war on its own reflection, it is no longer defending sovereignty or order. It is staging a confession — armed, unrepentant, and increasingly desperate — that it has mistaken domination for durability, and force for foresight, and now lacks the imagination to do anything else.

Prof. Junaid S. Ahmad teaches Law, Religion, and Global Politics and is the Director of the Center for the Study of Islam and Decolonization (CSID), Islamabad, Pakistan.

31 January 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Ranjan Solomon

The renewed push for an EU–India Free Trade Agreement is being presented as a partnership between equals — a coming together of the world’s largest democracy and one of the most powerful economic blocs. The language is reassuring and familiar: sustainability, shared values, rules-based trade, ethical supply chains, green transitions. Yet behind this polished diplomatic vocabulary lies a far older structure of power. Strip away the technocratic veneer and what emerges is a trade framework tilted decisively in favour of Europe, carrying the unmistakable imprint of a colonial economic mindset — not through territorial control, but through regulatory domination.

This is not an argument against trade. It is an argument against unequal trade dressed up as cooperation.

Europe no longer rules colonies with gunboats or administrators. Its power today lies in exporting rules. The modern European Union exercises influence not through direct political control but through standards — environmental norms, labour regulations, intellectual property regimes, data protection frameworks and carbon accounting mechanisms. These are presented as neutral, universal and progressive. In practice, they operate as non-tariff barriers that favour economies already industrialised, capital-rich and technologically dominant. What scholars describe as regulatory imperialism is, in effect, colonialism without colonies — discipline without occupation.

India, still grappling with agrarian distress, informal labour, fragile manufacturing and deep inequality, is being asked to comply with standards designed for post-industrial Europe, without corresponding access to finance, technology or transition support. The historical imbalance is simply erased from the negotiating table.

The asymmetry at the heart of the EU–India FTA is impossible to ignore. Europe negotiates as a consolidated bloc of twenty-seven states, representing advanced capital, multinational corporations and entrenched control over global value chains. India negotiates as a single country with vast internal disparities, where millions survive at the margins of the formal economy. Free trade agreements are never neutral instruments; they reward those who already dominate capital flows, intellectual property, finance, logistics and technology. In this equation, India is not viewed as an equal partner but as a vast market to be accessed, regulated and disciplined.

Nowhere is this imbalance clearer than in agriculture. The European Union continues to protect its farmers through the Common Agricultural Policy, insulating them from market volatility with heavy subsidies. At the same time, Europe presses India to open its agricultural markets in the name of free trade. For India, agriculture is not merely an economic sector; it is a livelihood system sustaining hundreds of millions. Any dilution of protection exposes Indian farmers to subsidised European competition, price volatility and corporate capture of supply chains. The result is not efficiency but dispossession, not reform but rural distress. India’s caution here is not protectionism; it is an assertion of survival and food sovereignty.

Equally troubling are the demands around intellectual property. The EU insists on stronger patent protections, longer data exclusivity and stricter enforcement mechanisms, particularly in pharmaceuticals. India’s generic drug industry, however, is not just a national asset — it is a global public good. It supplies affordable medicines to much of the Global South and plays a critical role in combating diseases such as HIV, tuberculosis and cancer. Strengthening intellectual property regimes to suit European pharmaceutical giants would raise drug prices, weaken public health autonomy and undermine India’s ability to act in the public interest. This is not innovation; it is the enclosure of knowledge for profit — a familiar colonial logic of extraction rearticulated through legal instruments.

Labour mobility exposes another layer of contradiction. India’s comparative advantage lies in services — information technology, healthcare, education and engineering — and in the mobility of skilled labour. Yet the European Union remains resistant to meaningful concessions on movement of people, even as it demands liberalisation of Indian markets. Capital is allowed to move freely, goods are encouraged to circulate, but workers from the Global South are securitised and restricted. An agreement that liberalises markets without facilitating mobility entrenches hierarchy and reveals the real priorities of so-called free trade.

The EU also claims the moral high ground on sustainability and climate responsibility. Environmental clauses, labour standards and carbon accounting are framed as ethical imperatives. Yet this posture is marked by historical amnesia. Europe industrialised through centuries of colonial extraction, fossil fuel dependence and ecological destruction, externalising environmental costs onto colonised territories. India is now asked to decarbonise rapidly, without having benefited from that historical carbon space and without receiving adequate financial or technological support. Mechanisms such as the Carbon Border Adjustment threaten to penalise Indian exports while ignoring Europe’s historic emissions debt. Climate responsibility is thus transformed into climate discipline.

In the digital sphere, the pattern repeats itself. Europe seeks access to India’s growing digital markets while pushing regulatory frameworks that favour established European firms. India’s efforts — however imperfect — to assert data sovereignty and regulate Big Tech are treated as obstacles rather than legitimate expressions of policy autonomy. Locking India into restrictive digital trade regimes risks reproducing technological dependency rather than fostering innovation.

At its core, the EU–India FTA is not about tariff reduction. It is about shaping India’s development trajectory. Europe seeks integration without empowerment, access without parity. India is invited into the global economy, but only on terms that preserve European advantage. This is the essence of neo-colonialism: participation without sovereignty, inclusion without equality.

If India is to engage meaningfully, it must draw clear red lines. Public health safeguards cannot be diluted. Agriculture and food sovereignty must remain protected. Labour mobility must be treated as integral to trade, not peripheral. Technology transfer and climate finance must be real, not rhetorical. Above all, India must preserve policy space to support its farmers, workers and small enterprises. Without these safeguards, the agreement risks reducing India to a consumer market and a low-cost production base.

Trade can be mutually beneficial, but only when power asymmetries are acknowledged rather than concealed. The EU–India Free Trade Agreement, as currently envisioned, does the opposite. It reproduces historical hierarchies through the language of rules, ethics and sustainability. The colonial mindset has not disappeared; it has merely adapted to the age of contracts and compliance.

India’s choice is not between isolation and integration. It is between sovereign engagement and neo-colonial incorporation. History suggests that the cost of choosing wrongly is borne not by negotiators, but by people.

Dr. Ranjan Solomon has worked in social justice movements since he was 19 years of age. After an accumulated period of 58 years working with oppressed and marginalized groups locally, nationally, and internationally, he has now turned a researcher-freelance writer focussed on questions of global and local/national justice.

30 January 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Phil Pasquini

NOVATO, California (01-31) – On January 30, thousands of people across the Bay Area and in cities nationwide joined a major daylong Free America Walkout strike, by rallying, marching, and protesting to demand the abolition of ICE and in resistance to President Trump’s immigration crackdown calling for an end to all ICE operations that have led to the deaths of two peaceful protesters, Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota.

In the small northern Marin County town of Novato, students walked out of their classrooms to join the nationwide strike, in solidarity with “No work, no school, no shopping” to protest the killings and kidnappings of immigrants by ICE. Participants demanded an end to ICE’s ongoing violent abuses and unlawful actions, condemning its defiance of the U.S. Constitution and the widespread turmoil it has caused across the country.

The Novato Unified School District and others countywide granted students permission to peacefully participate in the strike during a two-hour window in a show of support and solidarity with Minnesotans. The school district supported students wishing to participate allowing them to do so without penalty. Student participation also served as a live civic lesson in exercising First Amendment Rights.

Rallying outside of City Hall, the large number of student protesters from elementary to highschoolers chanted and held signs calling for ICE Out. One student held his handmade sign saying that “My dog is a better president.” Several others questioned the “humanity” of ICE regarding the kidnappings and killings while one noted “I Like My country Like I like my water, No ICE.”

Regarding the many controversies surrounding ICE, Indivisible Novato, along with other concerned citizens and human rights activists, have mounted a campaign of protests and direct actions calling on the County Board of Supervisors to “Stop the Sheriff from working with ICE.” The Marin County Sheriff’s Office, through its voluntary participation in the federal grant program, State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP), has established a lucrative financial relationship by reaping a $1,000 payment for each “Captured Immigrant” who is turned over to ICE custody when released from jail.

SCAAP funding reimburses participating agencies in covering the costs incurred for salaries, training and incarceration of “undocumented criminal aliens.” To receive the funds, the personal information must be provided to the DOJ for each detainee. Many California cities have refused to cooperate in the program due to sanctuary policies that disallow such cooperation or on moral grounds.

According to activists, during the past three years the Marin County Sheriff’s Office has received $1.2 million for processing more than one thousand immigrants, while participating California law enforcement agencies statewide in 2024 collected $59.4 million according to a Congressional report released in 2025.

Report and photo by Phil Pasquini

31 January 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Medea Benjamin

When Senator Tim Kaine told Secretary of State Marco Rubio at a recent Senate hearing on Venezuela that the administration’s announcement of a new Monroe Doctrine “does not land well in the Americas,” he was putting it mildly.

I just returned from an emergency gathering in Bogotá on January 24-25 with about 90 delegates from 20 countries, where speaker after speaker denounced the open revival of this doctrine — and its companion, the so-called Trump Corollary or “Donroe Doctrine” based on raw coercion— as a blatant, illegal, and reprehensible interference in their internal affairs. The message from Latin America could not have been clearer: the future of the Americas must be decided by its peoples, not imposed by the U.S. empire.

The gathering, called Nuestra América and convened by Progressive International, brought together ministers, parliamentarians, diplomats, trade unionists, and grassroots movement leaders from across Latin America, the Caribbean, North America, and Europe. After two days of intense closed-door deliberations and public assemblies, we adopted the San Carlos Declaration, launching a new continental project to defend sovereignty, democracy, and peace.

Delegates spoke with urgency about the most egregious U.S. interventions shaping hemispheric affairs. Delegates from Argentina described how Trump openly backed right-wing president Javier Milei, including the announcement of a $20 billion loan during the presidential campaign — a brazen attempt to tilt the vote by offering a financial lifeline in exchange for political alignment. They also condemned the lawfare-driven persecution and unjust imprisonment of Cristina Kirchner, emblematic of how courts are being weaponized to crush leaders who challenge U.S.-aligned economic and political power.

Hondurans condemned electoral interference in their country, including Trump’s efforts to shore up the National Party, and his hypocritical pardon of former president and convicted narco-dictator Juan Orlando Hernández. Updating the old adage about Nicaragua’s strongman Somoza — “he might be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch” — he joked that Washington’s line on Juan Orlando Hernández is: “He might be a drug trafficker, but he’s our drug trafficker.”

The Venezuelan ambassador in Colombia denounced U.S. aggression against his country, including the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores and the bombings in Caracas that left more than 100 people dead. The Trump administration is offering sanctions waivers to U.S. oil companies amidst threats of further strikes should Venezuela defy its demands.

Colombians took aim at Trump’s arrogance, his reckless threats to bomb Colombia, and his offensive attacks on their democratically elected president, Gustavo Petro. Delegates spoke with a mix of hope and trepidation about Petro’s upcoming February 3 meeting with Trump, wondering whether it would mark a genuine attempt at reconciliation — or turn into a setup reminiscent of Ukrainian President Zelensky’s humiliating White House visit. They also voiced deep concern about U.S. interference in their upcoming May presidential elections, as Petro’s term comes to an end and left candidate Iván Cepeda faces an emboldened right. Many warned that the vote represents a pivotal moment not only for Colombia but for the entire region, which has already swung sharply to the right in recent elections.

A narcotics expert condemned strikes on civilian vessels in the Caribbean and Pacific carried out with absolutely no due process, resulting in the extrajudicial killing of more than 100 people, including fishermen. Delegates spoke of coastal communities paralyzed by fear, with many fishermen no longer daring to go out to sea, afraid their boats will be blown up. This sparked calls for a “Reclaim the Seas” campaign to defend the right to fish without fear — along with proposals to organize solidarity flotillas to Venezuela and Cuba.

The Cuban ambassador to Colombia denounced the unprecedented escalation of the economic blockade against Cuba, including efforts to cut off oil supplies, aimed at plunging the country into total economic crisis to force regime change. Delegates voiced strong solidarity with Cuba, and Progressive International announced that the next Nuestra América gathering will take place in Havana. Trump’s new order threatening tariffs on any country that “directly or indirectly” supplies oil to Cuba only heightens the urgency of building international solidarity — and finding concrete ways to break the siege.

Representatives from Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum’s Morena Party denounced Trump’s escalating attacks on Mexico — from branding the country a “narco state,” to threatening military action across the border, to using tariffs and migration enforcement as weapons — all aimed at destabilizing Mexico’s democratically elected government and undermining its project of social transformation.

Jana Silverman, one of three delegates representing Democrat Socialists of America, addressed the systematic violation of the rights of millions of migrants living in the United States — overwhelmingly from Latin America — who face detention, deportation, and repression by state authorities. She raised the powerful concept of the “right not to migrate”: the often overlooked human right to remain in one’s homeland with dignity, rather than being forced to flee due to poverty, violence or foreign intervention.

Taken together, delegates said, these attacks form a coherent U.S. strategy: a revived Monroe Doctrine asserting the hemisphere as an exclusive U.S. sphere of control, where sanctions replace diplomacy, coercion replaces cooperation, and military force lurks behind every negotiation.

The Trump administration thrives on division, betting that countries will confront Washington one by one. But the only way to withstand the world’s largest military and financial machine is through collective action — a task complicated by today’s political fractures across the region.While some governments align closely with Trump, others, like Venezuela and Cuba remain squarely in the crosshairs. Meanwhile, international institutions are largely paralyzed: the UN is constrained by U.S. vetoes, the Organization of American States functions as Washington’s echo chamber, and regional mechanisms (such as CELAC, ALBA and CARACOM) are fragile and must be revitalized.

Ultimately, the most decisive force against U.S. aggression is popular power–the power of social movements, trade unions, youth organizations, and community groups, backed by renewed solidarity in the Global North. Sovereignty, the delegates agreed, must be defended in the streets, workplaces, classrooms, and communities.

As Colombian Senator Gloria Florez told us, “The U.S. is on trial throughout the Americas, and people are answering with courage, solidarity, and dignity — from migrants to Afro-descendants, Indigenous peoples, and women. This is Our América, and it includes social movements in the United States. Together, we must bury the Monroe Doctrine, once and for all.”

Medea Benjamin is co-founder of Global Exchange and CODEPINK: Women for Peace. She is the co-author, with Nicolas J.S. Davies, of War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, available from OR Books in November 2022.

30 January 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Tom Engelhardt

Having reached a certain age and long been fascinated by obituaries, I sometimes think about both Donald Trump’s and my own. At 79, he’s just slightly less than two years younger than me, though of course I wasn’t the 45th president of the United States or the 47th one either. And eight chaotic years (or more?) as president (assuming he makes it that far) guarantee him a monster (and I do indeed use that word advisedly) set of obituaries when he dies, whereas almost a quarter-century at TomDispatch guarantees me nothing at all.

And I wouldn’t argue with that for a second. After all, Donald Trump has been (and continues to be) a truly one-of-a-kind president of the United States — though the word “kind” (as opposed to “king”) doesn’t actually apply to him, does it? Think of him, in fact, as the mad hatter of American presidents. If you remember, that Alice in Wonderland character was accused of “murdering the time.” And that, in its own strange fashion, seems like quite a reasonable description of at least one of the crimes of President Donald Trump.

The man who believes that climate change is a “green new scam” has tried, among other things, to shut down every major East Coast offshore wind power project in sight (though judges, including one he appointed to the bench, have so far denied him that right). Meanwhile, he’s been working to ensure that coal, the dirtiest of all fossil fuels, remains a major source of American energy. He and his crew aren’t even letting major coal-burning power plants whose days are all too literally past close.

Phew, that paragraph left me out of breath — so much for my wind power! — and I didn’t even get everything in. After all, he’s also had the urge to pull every last barrel of oil out of Venezuela (even if, once upon a time, he did all too accurately call that country’s petroleum the “worst oil probably anywhere in the world” and “garbage”). And in the process, he is indeed engaged in murdering time — at least, the time we humans have left to live reasonably decent lives on this planet, which is, it seems, no longer truly ours but, at least for now, significantly his.

In some sense, you might say that Donald Trump is hard at work trying to ensure not only that he’ll get a major obituary on his death, but that humanity will, too. In that sense, give him credit. He’s trying to put us all in the paper and give us all the experience he’s had of being “the news.”

And I wonder if someday, if not your obituary and mine, perhaps those of our children or grandchildren will start out something like this: “He/she died in his/her home in the midst of a blinding heat wave/a devastating storm/a historically unprecedented flood [or you name it] on a planet still growing hotter and more uncomfortable by the decade, if not the year.”

The U.S. Is an Increasingly Violent Petro State

When it comes to obituaries, don’t think it’s just the climate that’s the problem. We are living in a distinctly mad world of the living (and the dead). And OMG, it’s increasingly apparent that, on a planet where wars are still proliferating from Ukraine to Gaza to Sudan (and the burning of fossil fuels to fight them is already adding significantly to the devastation of the planet), things are unlikely to get better any time soon. As the Costs of War project reminds us: “The U.S. Department of Defense is the world’s single largest institutional consumer of oil — and as a result, one of the world’s top greenhouse gas emitters.”

And just to take one grim example, “my” president wants to take our tax dollars and apply them even more strikingly — in fact, in a blindingly record fashion — to the Pentagon budget, the thing that, once upon a time, was called, however inaccurately, the “defense budget.” It’s already at somewhere close to a trillion dollars a year and, give him credit, he only wants to raise it by another half-trillion dollars to $1.5 trillion.

And no, that is not a typo! Believe me, there’s no misprint there! That’s what he thinks he needs to do to create a “dream military,” which (at least in his mind) would undoubtedly ensure that Greenland will become the 51st state, Canada the 52nd, Cuba the 53rd, and Colombia the 54th. The 55th, then, could well be China. (Or so he might dream anyway. Or perhaps the phrase should be: so he might nightmare anyway.) And don’t fret. That increase in the military budget is only likely to mean a $6 trillion increase in our taxes over the next decade (or roughly $45,000 per family).

Oh, wait, this is already the nation with by far the largest military budget on Earth that, over all the endless decades since it emerged globally victorious from World War II, couldn’t win a single significant war — not in Korea, nor in Vietnam, nor Afghanistan, nor Iraq, nor even, possibly, in the weeks to come on the streets of Minneapolis. Nowhere. And count on this, another half-trillion dollars a year will ensure only one thing: that the United States won’t win yet more wars ever more extravagantly, whether in Greenland or somewhere else entirely, while never learning even the most obvious lessons from such a grim reality.

And no, for some reason, Donald Trump has never actually used the word “nightmare” either in relation to himself or his presidency, though he certainly did accuse the Democrats of being the party of “the socialist nightmare.” Nor did he use it in his recent interview with the New York Times when he was asked about whether there were any limits whatsoever on his own global power. Instead, he responded this way: “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”

So now, you can breathe a giant sigh of relief, right? Who could possibly worry about his mind? If Donald Trump’s “morality” is the only thing that stands between us and him doing more or less anything he wants, however destructively, on this planet of ours, then what could possibly go wrong?

And speaking of nightmares (or even obituaries), oil is Donald Trump’s dream liquid — and oil is hell. In the long run on this already overheating planet of ours, oil means war, not on this country’s potential enemies, or even Donald Trump’s, but on all of us. (And the U.S. is indeed an increasingly violent petro state, as Mark Hertsgaard has recently reminded us at the Nation magazine.)

The very decision to elect Trump to the presidency, not once, but twice, should be considered the popular equivalent of preparing an obituary not just for him but for this country, this planet, all of us. And it might read something like this. Or rather, let me just start it for you, since I know that you won’t have the slightest problem filling in the rest:

“Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States, died yesterday. Born in New York City on June 14, 1946, he would come to be known for many things from the TV show The Apprentice to pussy-grabbing. (“I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything… Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”) And that admission, which came just before his first presidential election contest against Hillary Clinton, didn’t do the trick. He still won, which certainly tells you something about the United States (if, that is, we were writing an obituary not of a president but of a country).

But perhaps his presidency was most significant not for grabbing this country’s pussy, but for murdering time. He was America’s first green-new-scam president, the “drill, baby, drill” candidate who proved all too ready to devastate not just a few women, or a pile of American voters, but the planet itself. Hey, if you happen to want to close down wind farms, but keep coal plants open, you know just the man to vote for (yet again).”

The Anything-Goes President

We don’t know yet what our future holds. Donald Trump could have a heart attack tomorrow and kiss this planet and the rest of us goodbye. But if he lasts the next three years, having already figured out how to largely ignore Congress — really, who needs Congress to blow up ships in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific Ocean, or invade Venezuela, or take Greenland? — and do whatever the hell he wants to do, the Constitution be damned, there’s always the distinct possibility that he’ll deal with the 22nd Amendment, which prevents any president from having a third term in office, in a similar fashion. When it comes to running for president yet again, he’s already said: “I would love to do it.” And perhaps the key line in any future obituary of Donald Trump could prove to be that he broke new ground by becoming the first president since Franklin D. Roosevelt to win (or do I mean seize?) a third term in office and so become the first true American autocrat.

There’s no question, he’s the man, and if he can’t do it, nobody can. And believe me, if he succeeds, he won’t be forgotten, not on a planet he’s lent such a hand to sending down, down, down. In some fashion, you might say, he’s put a tariff on all of us when it comes to life on Earth and that’s no small… well, I hesitate to say it… accomplishment.

If only we could put a tariff on him — call it the autocrat tariff — and make him pay us for the suffering he’s caused and will undoubtedly continue to cause. I mean, when you think about his “accomplishments,” it’s no small thing the second time around to have left Congress largely in the lurch and done whatever pleased him most, with only his “own morality” to stop him.

At 79, he gives old age new meaning. He’s the anything-goes president on a planet going down, down, down. The only thing, it seems, that doesn’t go down (not yet, at least) is Donald J. Trump.

Having reached this point, I now wonder if my task in this piece shouldn’t have been writing obituaries for Donald Trump and me but writing one for humanity and Planet Earth (at least as we’ve known it all these millennia). In some sense, here’s the extraordinary thing: in November 2024, a near majority of American voters, 49.8% of us, to be exact, voted yet again for him as president. Anybody can understand and even excuse making a mistake once in this strange world of ours. But twice? Really? When it comes not just to a president of the United States but to the very fate of this planet?

I have a feeling that, if Trump makes it to a third term, he — not Congress — would have to change the preamble to the Constitution of these (dis)United States of America to read this way:

“I, the Only Person Who Matters in the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Autocracy, establish Injustice, ensure domestic and global Chaos, provide for a common offensiveness, promote the general Poorfare, and secure the Blessings of Autocrcacy to myself and my Posterity (if they even make it), do ordain and establish this Constitution for the (Dis)United States of America and a world going to hell in a handbasket.”

And having done that, I suspect that we would then have to start preparing an obituary (which might be headlined “Murdering Time in the Age of Donald Trump”) for this planet of ours, at least as we humans have known it all these endless centuries.

Tom Engelhardt created and runs the website TomDispatch.com.

30 January 2026

Source: countercurrents.org