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Elizabeth Vos on the social-media suppression of information that could help U.S service people refuse to join the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran as fears grow that Trump will send ground troops into the conflict.

As the U.S. and Israel’s deeply unpopular war with Iran enters its second week, social media platform X is censoring the accounts of people providing information to military servicemembers on how they can refuse to serve. This is particularly relevant as fears have grown that U.S. ground troops may enter the conflict.

The Center on Conscience & War, an 80-year-old nonprofit that, according to its website, “advocates for the rights of conscience, opposes military conscription, and serves all conscientious objectors to war,” was banned on X for 12 hours. The center’s executive director, Mike Prysner, shared a notice that the center received from X which labeled their posts as having “violated X rules” against “illegal and regulated behaviors.”

X has just suspended @CCW4COs for informing service members of their legal rights. pic.twitter.com/joNYvW9E2w

— Mike Prysner (@MikePrysner) March 7, 2026

Prysner wrote: “This is the post @CCW4COs was suspended for, informing service members of their legal right under DoDI 1332.14 to report “failure to adapt” within first 365 days of service and receive an entry-level discharge.”

This is the post @CCW4COs was suspended for, informing service members of their legal right under DoDI 1332.14 to report “failure to adapt” within first 365 days of service and receive an entry-level discharge https://t.co/PLPQslEz6x

— Mike Prysner (@MikePrysner) March 7, 2026

It remains legal to conscientiously object to military service. The only conceivable way that the post could be framed as encouraging illegal or irregular behavior would be to recast such objections as mutiny, which is exactly what pro-Israeli voices on social media have been frantically doing in the last few days.

In response to conservative commentator Candace Owens also encouraging those in the U.S. military to conscientiously object to serving in Iran, pro-Israel journalist Emily Schrader wrote on X:

“This is illegal. She is literally advocating mutiny. Under 18 U.S.C. § 2387 (Advocating overthrow or disloyalty in the armed forces). It is a crime for any person, including civilians, to willfully advocate or attempt to cause:
• insubordination in the armed forces
• disloyalty among service members
• mutiny or refusal of duty
It also criminalizes distributing materials intended to encourage those outcomes.
The penalty can be up to 10 years in prison and fines.”

Other pro-Israel voices like Bill Ackman, the billionaire hedge-fund manager, reposted Shrader’s sentiments.

The social media ban on the Center for Conscience and War came less than 24 hours after its executive director, Prysner, also wrote via social media regarding anecdotal evidence of troops being readied for combat:

“I just spoke with the mother of a service member in this unit. They were given one last call home before having to turn in their phones. He told his mom they were going ‘boots on the ground’ tonight.”

I just spoke with the mother of a service member in this unit. They were given one last call home before having to turn in their phones. He told his mom the were going “boots on the ground” tonight. pic.twitter.com/3OCupSfp9Q

— Mike Prysner (@MikePrysner) March 7, 2026

As noted by The Cradle,

“Mike Prysner … said in posts on X that his office has been overwhelmed with requests for guidance from service members seeking to dodge deployment…. ‘Phone has been ringing off the hook,’ he wrote … adding that many troops had not been told the mission involved combat until the last moment and were initially informed they were heading to training.”

As veteran Greg Stoker said via X: “Service members knowing their rights is a direct threat to both the secular imperialists who own these apps and the rapturous evangelicals trying to bring about Armageddon.”

Service members knowing their rights is a direct threat to both the secular imperialists who own these apps and the rapturous evangelicals trying to bring about Armageddon.

You don’t want to be fighting for either. https://t.co/hMzq96xSir

— Greg Stoker (@gregjstoker) March 7, 2026

Some X users have also been anecdotally reporting the apparent mobilization of troops:

“Spoke to a family member tonight — a Marine stationed in California. He said half\ the troops on base have disappeared in the past couple days and that the situation is chaos with those still remaining.”

Despite official denials that troops on the ground are part of the current plan, President Donald Trump has not ruled out the possibility. Democrats expressed alarm over the possibility following a March 4 classified briefing.

Democracy Now! noted that Sen. Richard Blumenthal said, “I just want to say I am more fearful than ever, after this briefing, that we may be putting boots on the ground.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren also stated after the briefing:

“I just left a classified briefing on Iran, and here’s what I can say. It is so much worse than you thought. You are right to be worried. The Trump administration has no plan in Iran. This illegal war is based on lies, and it was launched without any imminent threat to our nation. Donald Trump still hasn’t given a single clear reason for this war, and he seems to have no plan for how to end it, either.”

The censorship of an account sharing information for troops regarding how to conscientiously object is particularly relevant now as thousands of U.S. troops are facing the potential for imminent deployment in the escalating conflict with Iran: a war largely unsupported on the home front.

Breaking news: The Army abruptly canceled a major training exercise, officials said, fueling speculation within the Defense Department that soldiers specializing in ground combat and a range of other missions may be sent to the Middle East. https://t.co/1nuTFn8acH

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) March 6, 2026

According to The New York Times, support for U.S. intervention in Iran is incredibly low, having “ranged from 27 percent in a Reuters/Ipsos poll to 41 percent in a CNN survey, far below the level of public backing that Mr. Trump’s predecessors initially enjoyed when they used force overseas.”

Many see the intervention as a war waged overwhelmingly for Israel, especially in light of broad daylight comments from figures like U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who said:

“The president made the very wise decision: We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action, we knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties.”

Other veteran activists have also been speaking out against the war, and urging servicemembers to refuse to serve. As reported by Breakthrough News, at a Chicago rally on Saturday, veteran Daniel Lakemacher urged U.S. soldiers to “refuse this illegal and immoral war” on Iran.

“To all those who are not yet deployed: Now is the time to resist.”

At a Chicago rally on Saturday, veteran Daniel Lakemacher urges U.S. soldiers to “refuse this illegal and immoral war” on Iran.

The rally was part of a “Stop the War on Iran!” national day of action. The… pic.twitter.com/ukeY6Sci3i

— BreakThrough News (@BTnewsroom) March 8, 2026

This negative sentiment was also voiced by former U.S. Marine Sgt Brian McGinnis, a Green Party candidate for U.S. Senate for North Carolina, who was dragged out of a recent congressional hearing after shouting that “America does not want to send its sons and daughters to war for Israel.”

Sen. Tim Sheehy and police officers reportedly broke McGinnis’s arm as they struggled to remove him from the room. McGinnis was then charged with multiple counts of assault.

Former US Marine Sgt Brian McGinnis as he’s dragged out of Congress:

“No one wants to fight for Israel!”

Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-AIPAC) can be seen helping cops manhandle the veteran

Expect to see much more of this as the Zionist war drags on pic.twitter.com/itHaOkexf2

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) March 4, 2026

The violent repression of a former service member’s speech against U.S. intervention in Iran, like the social media suppression of information that might help military members use legal methods to refuse to serve in that war, demonstrates how desperate the government is to preserve its ability to force Americans to fight for Israel.

The president and his supporters seem increasingly confused when justifying the U.S. involvement to the press. When asked about U.S./Israeli strikes on Iran’s water desalination plants, Trump rambled about beheaded babies and referenced Oct. 7. This behavior is stoking public resistance to the war, including amongst members of the military.

At a time when a dangerous war of America’s own making is escalating dangerously out of control, it cannot be acceptable to censor or render it illegal for members of the U.S. military to have a conscience.

Original article:  consortiumnews.com

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A “Uniting for Peace” resolution in the UN General Assembly can counter the Security Council’s failure to act.

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Already 555 Iranians — including 180 students at a girls’ elementary school in Minab — have been reported dead in the war of aggression launched February 28 by President Donald Trump and his accomplice, accused war criminal Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, against Iran.

“Operation Epic Fury involves the largest regional concentration of American military firepower in a generation,” U.S. Central Command said in a statement.

This aggression has destabilized the region and triggered Iran’s legitimate exercise of self-defense.

The U.S.-Israeli aggression against Iran violates the United Nations Charter, which requires that all states settle their disputes peacefully and refrain from the use of armed force except in self-defense under Article 51 after an armed attack against a UN state by another state, or when the Security Council authorizes it.

Before February 28, Iran had not mounted an armed attack against any country, nor did it pose an imminent threat to the U.S., Israel, or another UN member state. And the Security Council had not authorized the use of military force against Iran.

The timing of the U.S.-Israeli attacks undermines the pretext that the U.S. and Israel had been engaging in good-faith negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program.

Netanyahu Convinced Trump to Withdraw From the Iran Nuclear Deal in 2017

Trump claimed he attacked Iran to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons.

The negotiations preceding the February 28 attack must be examined in the context of the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal, or the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), that was negotiated by France, Britain, Russia, China, Germany, the U.S., and Iran during the Obama administration.

In the JCPOA, Iran agreed to restrict its uranium enrichment and other nuclear activities. In return, the U.S. unfroze billions of dollars in Iranian assets to provide relief from punishing sanctions. Until Trump pulled the U.S. out of the deal during his first administration, the JCPOA had been working to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

“Iran has gotten rid of all of its highly enriched uranium,” Jessica T. Mathews wrote in an 2017 article in The New York Review. “It has also eliminated 99 percent of its stockpile of low-enriched uranium…. All enrichment has been shut down at the once-secret, fortified, underground facility at Fordow.… Iran has disabled and poured concrete into the core of its plutonium reactor — thus shutting down the plutonium as well as the uranium route to nuclear weapons. It has provided adequate answers to the [International Atomic Energy Agency’s] long-standing list of questions regarding past weapons-related activities.”

Nevertheless, in 2017, Netanyahu convinced Trump to withdraw the U.S. from the Iran nuclear deal. “I asked [Trump] to leave the JCPOA,” Netanyahu bragged. “It was me who made him to depart from the deal.”

Had the JCPOA remained in force, the current U.S.-Israeli aggression would almost certainly not have happened.

Negotiations Were Bearing Fruit But U.S. and Israel Attacked Anyway

Before the February 28 U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran, the country of Oman had been brokering negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. The U.S. and Israel insisted that Iran stop enriching uranium, limit its ballistic missile program, and end support for its “proxies” Hezbollah and the Houthis.

On February 27, Oman’s foreign minister said on CBS News that the negotiations had made significant progress and Iran had agreed to more concessions than those contained in the JCPOA. A nuclear agreement was “within our reach,” he stated.

Nevertheless, Trump maintained that diplomacy had been exhausted. The U.S. and Israel began bombing Iran the next day.

In his videotaped announcement, Trump misleadingly stated that the Iranian government has “rejected every opportunity to renounce their nuclear ambitions.”

Citing no evidence, Trump declared that the Iranian regime “has built nuclear weapons.” This contradicted his declaration in June 2025 after his bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites that the U.S. had “obliterated” its nuclear program.

Israel erroneously stated that Iran is armed with nuclear weapons. For the past two decades, Israel has claimed that Iran was on the verge of acquiring a nuclear weapon.

Trump said that in order to avoid a war, Iran would have had to say “those secret words: ‘We will never have a nuclear weapon.’” But Iran has stated this several times. In fact, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a fatwa banning nuclear weapons in 2004.

The Trump administration has admitted it has no evidence Iran is weaponizing its uranium enrichment program, or even that it has restarted enriching uranium since last June. Iran has always maintained that it enriches uranium for peaceful purposes, as permitted by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

There is also no evidence that Iran is developing intercontinental ballistic missiles that could hit the United States.

The purpose of the joint U.S.-Israeli operation, Netanyahu said, was “to remove the existential threat posed by the terrorist regime in Iran.”

“Netanyahu’s agenda has always been to prevent a diplomatic solution, and he feared Trump was actually serious about getting a deal, so the start of this war in the middle of negotiations is a success for him, just like it was last June,” Jamal Abdi, president of the National Iranian American Council, told Al Jazeera.

U.S.-Israeli Aggression and Iran’s Self-Defense

The U.S.-Israeli use of force against Iran violates its sovereignty and territorial integrity and thus constitutes illegal aggression, which was considered the “supreme international crime” at Nuremberg.

Article 2 (4) of the UN Charter says that “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”

Aggression is inconsistent with the purposes of the UN. An “act of aggression” is “the use of armed force by a State against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of another State, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Charter of the United Nations,” under the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court. Aggression includes “the invasion or attack by the armed forces of a State of the territory of another State.”

A “preemptive” strike (purportedly to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons) violates the UN Charter and constitutes aggression.

Professor Ben Saul, UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, posted on X: “I strongly condemn the Israeli & US aggression against Iran, in violation of the most fundamental rule of international law — the ban on the use of force. All responsible governments should condemn this lawlessness from two countries who excel in shredding the international order.”

Article 51 of the Charter says, “Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.”

After the U.S. and Israel mounted these armed attacks, Iran was permitted to act in self-defense.

When the UN Security Council Drops the Ball, the General Assembly Can Act

The UN Security Council met on February 28 but it did not pass a resolution addressing the U.S.-Israeli bombing of Iran.

If the U.S. prevents the Security Council from acting to restore international peace and security, the General Assembly can convene under “Uniting for Peace,” a resolution passed by the General Assembly to bypass the Soviet Union’s veto during the Korean War.

The General Assembly can recommend that its member states impose arms and trade embargoes on the U.S. and Israel. The General Assembly could also suspend the U.S. and Israel from its ranks. These decisions would require a vote of two-thirds of the 193 General Assembly member states.

An Illegal Effort to Engineer Forcible Regime Change in Iran

Both Trump and Netanyahu have made it clear that they seek regime change in Iran, and their killing of Khamenei is consistent with that goal. Forcible regime change is illegal.

The UN Charter, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights all guarantee the right of peoples to self-determination. The two covenants have the same first sentence of Article 1: “All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right, they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.”

This isn’t the first time the U.S. has engaged in forcible regime change in Iran.

In 1953, the CIA covertly orchestrated the overthrow of the democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, who had nationalized Iran’s oil industry, against British oil interests. The U.S. then installed the vicious Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, who ruled Iran with an iron fist for 25 years.

But the chickens came home to roost. The Shah was overthrown in the 1979 Iranian Revolution and replaced with the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s theocracy.

When Khomeini died in 1989, he was succeeded by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was assassinated on February 28 by U.S. and Israeli strikes. This time, U.S. regime change in Iran is overt.

“For decades, the United States has sought to destabilize Iran, a critical Asian power situated at the intersection of three major continents and multiple waterways,” the Committee of Anti-Imperialists in Solidarity with Iran (CASI) said in a statement.

Since 1953, “Iran has weathered both the direct and indirect effects of U.S. imperialism, culminating in a brutal devastating eight-year military aggression (1980-88) and a devastating sanctions regime that has denied Iranians’ access to basic medical supplies, infrastructure, foodstuffs, and led to astronomical inflation,” the CASI statement said. “Over the last few decades, Iran has suffered assassinations of its scientists and generals, bombings of critical infrastructure, and repeated violations of its sovereignty and attacks on its national development.”

Now the U.S. and Israel are touting U.S. resident Reza Pahlavi, son of the notorious Shah of Iran, as a puppet to run Iran’s government. Media outside Iran “has been used a lot to try to project an image of an immense popularity, much more than it actually is,” Negar Mortazavi, senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, said on Democracy Now! “He does enjoy a base in the diaspora. He does have a growing base inside Iran. We see his name being chanted by people, as far as the protests. But there’s also sort of an authoritarian and undemocratic movement of people around him.”

In fact, “[t]he Trump administration appears to have no long-term plan, no sense of what the U.S. ultimately aims to achieve, and no answer to what happens after the American-Israeli assault,” Nicholas Grossman wrote at LiberalCurrents. “The president is talking about regime change, and missiles are flying at government targets, but there’s no ground force ready to take control if it fails.”

Countries Can Prosecute Under Universal Jurisdiction

How can the leaders of the U.S. and Israel be held accountable for their crimes in Iran?

The U.S., Israel, and Iran are not parties to the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court (ICC). So the ICC would have no jurisdiction to prosecute U.S. and Israeli leaders for war crimes.

But under well-established principles of international law, the crimes prosecuted by the ICC — including war crimes — are crimes of universal jurisdiction.

The doctrine of universal jurisdiction allows any country to try foreign nationals for the most atrocious crimes, even without any direct relationship to the prosecuting country. That means other nations can prosecute U.S. and Israeli leaders for the war crime of targeting civilians.

Indeed, the United States has taken jurisdiction over foreign nationals in anti-terrorism, anti-narcotics trafficking, war crimes, and torture cases. The U.S. government tried, convicted, and sentenced Charles “Chuckie” Taylor Jr. to federal prison for torture committed in Liberia. Israel tried, convicted, and executed Adolph Eichmann for his crimes during the Holocaust.

The War Powers Resolution

In addition, U.S. participation in the war on Iran violates U.S. statutory law.

The U.S. War Powers Resolution permits the president to introduce U.S. armed forces into hostilities or imminent hostilities only (1) after Congress has declared war; (2) in “a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces”; or (3) when there is “specific statutory authorization.” None of those three conditions was met before the U.S. attacked Iran.

Trump launched a major war against Iran without seeking congressional approval.

The Senate will vote this week on the War Powers Resolution that Senators Tim Kaine (D-Virginia) and Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) co-sponsored. It says, “Congress hereby directs the President to remove the United States Armed Forces from hostilities within or against Iran, unless explicitly authorized by a declaration of war or a specific authorization for use of military force.”

There is little or no chance that this resolution will pass, however, as the majority of U.S. legislators, including some Democrats, support Trump’s war of aggression on Iran.

Meanwhile, the United States has the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons in the world, and it is the only country ever to have used them. Israel also possesses nuclear weapons, in spite of Security Council Resolution 687, which was a step toward the goal of creating a weapons-of-mass-destruction-free zone throughout the Middle East.

Former UN human rights official Craig Mokhiber referred to “[t]he US-Israel Axis” as “the greatest threat facing humanity today.” He posted on X:

A murderous bombing campaign in Iran, continuing genocide in Palestine, serial aggression abroad, belligerent occupation of several countries, acts of transnational terrorism, repression at home, schemes to profit from murder and colonization, systematic coverup of the Mossad-Epstein operations, massive corruption of the public and private sectors across the West, sanctions against human rights defenders and international courts, attacks on international institutions, the dismantling of international law, mass surveillance of the rest of us, and a growing trail of blood and destruction around the globe.

The International Association of Democratic Lawyers issued a statement on February 28, in which it urged “all states to immediately implement an arms embargo on Israel and the U.S., withdraw their ambassadors, and pursue legal actions to hold their military and political officials accountable.”

An overwhelming majority of people in the United States oppose U.S. perpetration of the war in Iran. They must make their views known to their congressmembers and take collective action in opposition to Trump-Netanyahu’s dangerous aggression against Iran.

Original article:  truthout.org

By Larry C. JOHNSON

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I believe that one of the major OPE efforts is to convince the US public that the overwhelming majority of Iranians despise the Islamic Republic and want it overthrown. In my opinion, a major player in this OPE is a polling outfit known as GAMAAN. GAMAAN (Group for Analyzing and Measuring Attitudes in Iran) collaborates with Psiphon VPN, which is widely used across Iran. GAMAAN findings have been consistent in painting a picture of massive opposition to the Iranian regime:

According to GAMAAN polls taken prior to 2025, a significant majority of Iranians — around 70% — oppose the continuation of the Islamic Republic. The highest level of opposition, 81%, occurred during the “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising in late 2022. Support for “the principles of the Islamic revolution and the Supreme Leader” has decreased from 18% in 2022 to 11% in 2024. Opposition to the Islamic Republic is higher among the youth, urban residents, and the highly educated. An overwhelming majority of Iranians (89%) support democracy. Gamaan

Only about 20% of Iranians support the continuation of the Islamic Republic. When asked about preferred alternatives, about 26% favor a secular republic and around 21% support a monarchy. For 11%, the specific form of the alternative system doesn’t matter. About 22% report lacking sufficient information to choose an alternative system.

But what are the funding sources for GAMAAN and Psiphon VPN? Let’s start with GAMAAN. GAMAAN describes itself as an independent, non-profit research foundation registered in the Netherlands. It emphasizes its academic credentials (e.g., founded by scholars at Dutch universities like Tilburg and Utrecht) and innovative online methods (e.g., anonymity sampling via VPNs like Psiphon) to overcome self-censorship in authoritarian contexts.

GAMAAN operates under the supervision of a board including Dr. Ammar Maleki (founder and director), assistant professor of comparative politics at Tilburg University, and Dr. Pooyan Tamimi Arab, associate professor of secular and religious studies at Utrecht University. Maleki is an assistant professor of Comparative Politics and a self-described activist for democracy in his native Iran. Tilburg University Critically, he does not hide his political stance — his Tilburg University profile explicitly states that he is “a pro-democracy activist and political analyst of Iranian politics” and that he tries “to have an impact on political debates around democratization of Iran.”

This is where the picture becomes more contested. GAMAAN has relied on US government-funded VPN provider Psiphon to disseminate its surveys; collaborated with the USAID-funded Tony Blair Institute; and collaborated with and received funding from historian Ladan Boroumand, co-founder of the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran, which is in turn supported by the US government-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

Psiphon is owned and operated by Psiphon Inc., a Canadian corporation based in Ontario. Psiphon was originally developed by the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, with version 1.0 launching on December 1, 2006, as open-source software. In early 2007, Psiphon, Inc. was established as a Canadian corporation independent of the Citizen Lab and the University of Toronto.

It has a notable funding history. In 2008, Psiphon, Inc. was awarded sub-grants from the US State Department Internet Freedom program, administered by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. In 2010, Psiphon began providing services to the Broadcasting Board of Governors (US), the US Department of State, and the BBC. More recently, in April 2024, the Open Technology Fund (OTF) announced increased long-term funding for Psiphon, with subsequent OTF awards totaling US$18.54 million for 2024 and US$5.87 million for 2025.

The Open Technology Fund (OTF) is administered by the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), an independent federal agency of the US government. USAGM provides OTF with its primary funding through annual grants, which originate from Congressional appropriations under the Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs budget. OTF operates as an independent nonprofit corporation (since 2019) but remains a grantee under USAGM’s oversight and governance, as authorized by Congress (e.g., via the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act).

So while Psiphon Inc. is technically an independent Canadian company, it has historically been substantially funded by the US government and other Western institutions — a fact worth noting given its role as the methodology partner for the GAMAAN polling inside Iran. In other words, it is a cut out that, in my opinion and based on my experience, is supporting a CIA information operation to portray Iran as a country on the precipice of overthrowing the Islamic Republic.

There is an alternative polling database that paints a radically different picture of the mood in Iran with respect to the Islamic Republic… The Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland has conducted a separate series of surveys using phone-based methods, which show more moderate results. Their findings from 2023 and 2024 found that about 75% of respondents expect Iran’s constitution and political system to be about the same in ten years, and only 17% agreed with protesters’ calls for the Islamic Republic to be replaced. However, three in five now think the government should not be strict in enforcing Islamic laws, distinctly up from 2018, and support for demands that the government fight corruption has been consistently near-unanimous since 2018.

On the protests themselves, asked in 2024 to think about waves of demonstrations over the past ten years, two thirds say their main objective was to demand that officials pay greater attention to people’s problems, while only one in five think their main objective was to demand greater freedoms or bring about change in Iran’s system of government.

President Pezeshkian, based on the polls from 2024, was viewed favorably by 66% of those polled at the start of his term… and 70% expressed confidence that he would be an honest and trustworthy president, though only a quarter were very confident. Majorities expressed some confidence that he can improve relations with neighboring countries and protect citizens’ freedoms, notably women’s rights, but majorities are not confident that he can lower inflation or improve relations with the West.

There have been no new polls in the wake of Israel’s surprise attack on June 13, 2025. Based on my conversations with both Nima and Professor Marandi, the reaction in Iran has been similar to what happened in the United States in the aftermath of the 9-11 attacks… National unity increased.

The failed color revolution launched on December 28, 2025 by the United States and Israel has reinforced support for the Islamic Republic. President Pezeshkian has openly admitted his government’s failures on the economic front and he has taken some steps to institute reforms. A more important development was the signing of the Trilateral Security Agreement with Russia and China at the end of January. Those two countries are now providing more resources and support to stabilize the Iranian government and improve the economic lives of the Iranian people.

Donald Trump’s threats to attack Iran are backfiring among the majority of the population in Iran. Yes, there are some Iranians who still want to bring an end to the Islamic Republic, but they are dramatically outnumbered. Remember the boost in popularity that George W Bush enjoyed in the aftermath of 9-11? He even picked up support from Democrats who had previously despised him. That same phenomena has happened in Iran. Prior to the June 13, 2025 attack, Iranians under the age of 50 had no vivid memory of Iran/Iraq war — where Iran was attacked with the encouragement and support of the United States. The June 2025 attack, coupled with the foreign instigated late December 2025 protests and violence, have awakened a new sense of nationalism among the Iranian public that has strengthened support for the Islamic Republic.

The belief in the West that Iran is more vulnerable now than at anytime in the last 46 years is the creation of a US funded propaganda campaign that relied on an ideologically biased pollster to produce results that have been used to convince most Americans that Iran is yearning to breath free… All we have to do is kill off the leadership in Iran.

Original article:  sonar21

Pedro Pablo AGUILERA

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La crisis de valores que atraviesa la sociedad cubana, no nació de la nada ni cayó del cielo como un ciclón inesperado. Se gestó lentamente, aula por aula, examen tras examen, acto político tras acto político. No es una crisis de «ausencia», sino de «distorsión»: valores que se dicen defender mientras se practican sus contrarios.

Hannah Arendt advirtió que el totalitarismo no se conforma con gobernar acciones: necesita administrar conciencias. En Los orígenes del totalitarismo (1951), explicó que el verdadero triunfo del poder absoluto ocurre cuando las personas dejan de pensar, no por censura directa, sino por hábito.

El problema educativo no es únicamente lo que se enseña, sino lo que se vuelve impensable. El currículo escolar, cargado de épica congelada y lealtades obligatorias, funciona como vitrina de museo: héroes inmóviles, verdades sin fecha de caducidad, preguntas que nunca llegan al mostrador. Arendt llamaría a esto una antesala de la «banalidad del mal», desarrollada más tarde en su obra Eichmann en Jerusalén (1963): no hacen falta monstruos, basta con funcionarios obedientes que «cumplen orientaciones».

La ironía es amarga: se habla de «formar valores revolucionarios», pero se educa para la suspensión del juicio. Y cuando el juicio se atrofia, la moral se convierte en trámite administrativo y retardatario.

En Pedagogía del oprimido (1970), Paulo Freire explica que la educación bancaria —esa en la que el docente deposita contenidos y el alumno los memoriza— no solo empobrece el aprendizaje; legitima la desigualdad simbólica entre quien sabe y quien obedece.

En el contexto cubano, esta pedagogía adquiere una dimensión casi trágica. Se pide ejercitar el pensamiento crítico, pero solo dentro de ciertos márgenes autorizados. Se habla de participación, pero se penaliza la disidencia. Freire advertía que esta contradicción genera sujetos «adaptados», no sujetos «libres». De tal modo, la educación deja de ser camino de emancipación y se convierte en entrenamiento para la supervivencia ideológica. La antítesis es clara: se invoca la dignidad humana mientras se castiga la autonomía. Como si se pudiera enseñar libertad a condición de no usarla.

Desde Educación para la autonomía (1966) Theodor W. Adorno, un autor obligado en estos temas, dada la experiencia del nacional socialismo hace una pregunta recurrente que es incómoda para la dictadura cubana de hoy: ¿qué tipo de educación permite que el horror sea posible? La respuesta a tal interrogante resulta incómoda para la comprensión de todo autoritarismo: una educación que priorice la obediencia sobre el juicio.

Cuba no es la Alemania nazi, pero la psicología autoritaria no necesita campos de concentración para prosperar. Basta con aulas donde disentir tenga consecuencias, donde repetir garantice estabilidad y donde el silencio sea una forma de inteligencia práctica. Adorno advertía que la personalidad autoritaria se forma temprano, en la escuela y la familia, cuando la autoridad no se discute, sino que se «introyecta».

Aquí, la crisis de valores no es una rebelión juvenil contra normas antiguas; es el agotamiento moral de un sistema que pidió lealtad infinita a cambio de promesas cada vez más frágiles, que hoy se saben falsas.

Para entender la tragedia de la educación cubana hay que acudir asimismo a un autor como Michel Foucault. Sin referirse directamente a Cuba, parece que lo hace en su obra Vigilar y castigar (1975), pues percibe a la escuela como una institución disciplinaria que no necesita policías en cada aula: le basta con evaluaciones, expedientes, informes y ese gesto aprendido de «mejor no decir».

En el sistema educativo cubano el control no siempre es explícito; es atmosférico. Se sabe qué temas evitar, qué palabras usar, qué silencios respetar. El estudiante aprende rápido que el problema no es equivocarse, sino «salirse del guion». El panoptismo pedagógico funciona como una bruma: no se ve, pero sanciona, margina, condena, excluye. Así, los valores se redefinen sin anunciarlo. La verdad deja de ser correspondencia con la realidad y pasa a ser coherencia con el discurso oficial. La justicia se confunde con disciplina. La ética se reduce a fidelidad.

Como bien demuestra Martha Nussbaum en Sin fines de lucro (2010): sin empatía, no hay ciudadanía. Y sin ciudadanía, la educación es solo adiestramiento. En Cuba, el otro —el que piensa distinto, el que se fue, el que duda— ha sido progresivamente expulsado del relato educativo. No se le estudia, no se le escucha, no se le imagina. La escuela no enseña a comprender al diferente, sino a clasificarlo. Nussbaum llamaría a esto la muerte de la «imaginación narrativa».

La consecuencia es una sociedad desdoblada entre realidad oficial y no oficial; una sociedad hipócrita, cansada, desconfiada, donde la historia mutó en autocensura cotidiana; no por maldad, sino por aprendizaje. La Cuba de 2026 no es un derrumbe súbito, es una erosión paciente. La educación autoritaria no destruyó los valores; los «reprogramó». La obediencia se volvió virtud. El silencio, prudencia. La duda, peligro.

Pero no todo es terrible. Hoy, en las grietas del sistema educativo cubano, aparece algo nuevo: estudiantes que preguntan sin levantar la mano, docentes que insinúan más de lo que dicen, familias que ya no creen del todo. El cambio no vendrá; ya está aquí, aún sin los cambios curriculares que serán necesarios, sino con algo más modesto y radical: la existencia de una duda ante la realidad. Y ahí están el 11 de julio y las mil y una protestas de estos tiempos para probarlo.

Como escribió Arendt, «la educación es el punto en el que decidimos si amamos el mundo lo suficiente como para asumir la responsabilidad de él». Cuba está en ese punto. Y la escuela, quiera o no, será escenario del desenlace.

Publicado originalmente por  Cuba x Cuba

Alastair CROOKE

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Después de «Epstein», nada puede seguir como antes: ni los valores del «nunca más» de la posguerra, que reflejan el sentimiento al final de guerras sangrientas, ni el deseo generalizado de una sociedad «más justa»; ni la economía bipolar de las extremas desigualdades de riqueza; ni la confianza, tras la venalidad desenmascarada, las instituciones corruptas y las perversiones que los expedientes de Epstein han demostrado ser endémicas entre algunas élites occidentales.

¿Cómo hablar de «valores» en este contexto?

En Davos, Mark Carney dejó claro que el «orden de las reglas» no era más que una fachada ostentosa, al estilo Potemkin, que todos sabían que era falsa, pero que se mantenía de todos modos.

¿Por qué? Simplemente porque el engaño era útil. La «urgencia» era la necesidad de ocultar el colapso del sistema en un nihilismo radical y antivalores. Ocultar la realidad de que los círculos de la élite —en torno a Epstein— operaban más allá de los límites morales, legales o humanos, para decidir entre la paz y la guerra, basándose en sus mezquinos apetitos.

Las élites habían comprendido que, una vez que la total amoralidad de los gobernantes fuera conocida por el hoi polloi [la plebe], Occidente perdería la arquitectura de las historias morales que anclan precisamente una vida ordenada.

Si el establishment es conocido por rehuir la moralidad, ¿por qué debería comportarse de otra manera el resto de la gente? El cinismo se extendería como una cascada. ¿Qué mantendría entonces unida a una nación?

Bueno, muy probablemente solo el totalitarismo.

La «caída» posmoderna en el nihilismo finalmente se estrelló en su inevitable «callejón sin salida» (como predijo Nietzsche en 1888).

El paradigma «ilustrado» se ha convertido finalmente en su contrario: un mundo sin valores, sin sentido y sin propósito (más allá del enriquecimiento personal codicioso). Esto también implica el fin del concepto mismo de Verdad que ha estado en el centro de la civilización occidental desde Platón.

El colapso también pone de relieve los fracasos de la razón mecánica occidental:

Este tipo de razonamiento a priori, en círculo cerrado, ha tenido un efecto mucho mayor en la cultura occidental de lo que podríamos imaginar… Ha llevado a la imposición de reglas que se consideran irrefutables, no porque hayan sido reveladas, sino porque han sido científicamente probadas, y por lo tanto no hay recurso contra ellas, observa Aurelien.

Esta forma de pensar mecanicista ha desempeñado un papel importante en el tercer nivel de la «ruptura de Davos» (tras el declive intelectual y el colapso de la confianza en el liderazgo). El pensamiento mecanicista, basado en una visión pseudocientífica y determinista del mundo, ha dado lugar a contradicciones económicas que han impedido a los economistas occidentales ver lo que tenían delante de sus narices: un sistema económico hiperfinanciarizado, al servicio exclusivo de los oligarcas y los iniciados.

Ningún fracaso de sus modelos económicos, por grave que fuera,

ha debilitado el férreo control de los economistas matemáticos sobre las políticas gubernamentales. El problema es que la ciencia, en ese modo binario de causa-efecto, no ha sido capaz de hacer frente ni al caos ni a la complejidad de la vida (Aurelien).

Otras teorías —distintas de la física newtoniana—, como la teoría cuántica o la del caos, han quedado en gran medida excluidas de su forma de pensar.

El significado de «Davos» (seguido de las revelaciones sobre Epstein) es que el Humpty-Dumpty de la confianza se ha caído del muro y ya no se puede reconstruir.

Lo que también es evidente es que los círculos de Epstein no estaban compuestos solo por individuos perversos; «Lo que se ha descubierto apunta a prácticas sistemáticas, organizadas y ritualizadas». Y esto lo cambia todo, como señala el comentarista Lucas Leiroz:

Las redes de este tipo solo existen cuando cuentan con un profundo respaldo institucional. No existe la pedofilia ritual, ni la trata de seres humanos a escala transnacional, ni la producción sistemática de material extremo, sin la cobertura política, policial, judicial y mediática. Esta es la lógica del poder.

Epstein emerge de la miríada de correos electrónicos como un pedófilo y, sin duda, como un inmoral, pero también como un personaje extremadamente inteligente y un serio protagonista geopolítico, cuyas intuiciones políticas eran apreciadas por personalidades de alto nivel en todo el mundo.

Era un maestro de la geopolítica, como describió Michael Wolff (ya en 2018, así como en una correspondencia por correo electrónico publicada recientemente) incluso en la guerra entre el poder judío y los gentiles.

Esto sugiere que Epstein era menos un instrumento de los servicios secretos que un «igual» de ellos. No es de extrañar que los líderes buscaran su compañía (y también por razones gravemente inmorales, que no podemos ignorar). Y está claro que el Estado profundo (monopartidista) maniobraba a través de él. Y al final, Epstein sabía demasiado.

David Rothkopf, exasesor de asuntos políticos del Partido Demócrata, reflexiona sobre lo que Epstein significa para Estados Unidos:

[Los jóvenes estadounidenses] se dan cuenta de que sus instituciones les están abandonando y que tendrán que [salvarse]… hay decenas de miles de personas en Minneapolis que dicen que ya no se trata de cuestiones constitucionales, ni del Estado de derecho o la democracia, lo cual puede parecer una buena idea, pero es algo lejano para la persona media sentada a la mesa de su cocina.

La gente dice que el Tribunal Supremo no les protegerá; que el Congreso no les protegerá; que el presidente es el enemigo; que está desplegando su ejército en sus ciudades. Los únicos que pueden protegerles son ustedes mismos.

«Son los «millonarios estúpidos»» [referencia al viejo amorfismo: «Es la economía, estúpido»].

Rothkopf explica:

Lo que intento destacar es que, si no se dan cuenta de que la igualdad y la impunidad de las élites son cuestiones fundamentales para todos, que la gente piensa que el sistema está amañado y no funciona para ellos… ya no creen que el sueño americano sea real y que el control del país ha sido robado por un puñado de superricos, que no pagan impuestos y se hacen cada vez más ricos, mientras que el resto de nosotros nos quedamos cada vez más atrás, [entonces no pueden entender la desesperación actual entre los menores de 35 años].

Rothkopf sostiene que el episodio de Davos/Epstein marca la fractura entre el pueblo y las clases dominantes.

Las sociedades occidentales se enfrentan ahora a un dilema que no puede resolverse mediante elecciones, comisiones parlamentarias o discursos. ¿Cómo se puede seguir aceptando la autoridad de instituciones que han protegido este nivel de horror? ¿Cómo se puede mantener el respeto por las leyes aplicadas selectivamente por personas que viven por encima de ellas?, afirma Leiroz.

Sin embargo, la pérdida de respeto no resuelve el problema. Ningún partido político convencional tiene una respuesta al fracaso de la economía «de mesa»: la falta de puestos de trabajo razonablemente bien remunerados, el acceso a los servicios sanitarios, la educación y la vivienda cara.

Ningún partido tradicional puede dar una respuesta creíble a estas cuestiones existenciales porque, durante décadas, la economía ha estado precisamente «amañada», es decir, reorientada estructuralmente hacia una economía financiarizada basada en la deuda, en detrimento de la economía real.

Esto requeriría que la actual estructura de mercado liberal anglosajona fuera completamente erradicada y sustituida por otra. Pero se necesitaría una década de reformas, y los oligarcas se opondrían abiertamente.

Lo ideal sería que surgieran nuevos partidos políticos. Sin embargo, en Europa, los «puentes» que podrían ayudarnos a salir de nuestras profundas contradicciones estructurales han sido deliberadamente destruidos en nombre del cordón sanitario diseñado para impedir el surgimiento de cualquier pensamiento político que no sea «centrista».

Si la protesta no tiene ningún efecto en cambiar el statu quo y las elecciones siguen siendo entre los partidos Tweedle Dee y Dum del orden existente, los jóvenes concluirán que «nadie vendrá a salvarnos» y podrían llegar a la conclusión, en su desesperación, de que el futuro solo puede decidirse en las calles.

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Western officials seized on a dubious death toll of 30,000 protesters to escalate against Iran. The number originates with a single, clearly compromised source. But a zealously pro-war Guardian reporter is doing her best to legitimize it.

The claim of “30,000 killed” during two days of protests and rioting across Iran appears to be based largely on a single anonymous source, who admitted extrapolating that figure by assuming without evidence that “officially registered deaths related to the crackdown likely represent less than 10% of the real number of fatalities.”

That quote was attributed by The Guardian to an alleged doctor whose real name the newspaper refused to publish, but whose identity it claimed to have verified.

Originating in TIME Magazine on January 25th, the dubious “30,000” claim was quickly amplified by The Guardian, a key voice of left-liberal London respectability. From there, European officials seized on the death toll to justify designating Iran’s IRGC as a terrorist organization – essentially green-lighting another US-Israeli military assault on Iran.

The author of The Guardian’s article is a former fashion blogger named Deepa Parent, who has become the paper’s go-to source for Iran war propaganda, churning out over a dozen pieces for The Guardian driving the regime change narrative against the Islamic Republic since violent riots engulfed the country on January 8 and 9.

Parent has emerged as the face of The Guardian’s attacks on Iran despite having no apparent ties to the country and not appearing to speak its language. Farsi is not listed among the half-dozen languages in which she claims to be bilingual or speak in some functional professional capacity.

Before adopting the surname Parent around 2019, The Guardian’s go-to Iran reporter wrote under the name Deepa Kalukuri. Her journalistic output was largely limited to fashion reviews in Indian media. A typical piece published in India’s Just For Women magazine in 2016 was headlined: “Samantha Is Setting Some Serious Fashion Goals! Check Them Out!”

“What’s better than a Little Black Dress for a weekend party? Samantha pairs her LBD with these killer stilettos! We are loving it!!! Have a fashionable weekend!!!!”

Elsewhere, in an article informing Indian housewives that “understanding stocks is not [as] difficult as the news shows” suggested, she explained that investing was actually quite simple: “like a playing a video game but only your favorite batman is replaced with that stock broker who gives you the right advice to invest at the end of the bell.”

Published by The Guardian, sponsored by Omidyar

When the “Women, Life, Freedom” protests kicked off in September 2022 following the death of a young woman in Iranian custody, the improbable Parent suddenly materialized as The Guardian’s point woman on civic unrest in a nation with which she had no apparent professional or personal experience.

Much of Parent’s work at The Guardian’s so-called “Rights and Freedom” section has been funded by an NGO called Humanity United, which was founded by tech billionaire Pierre Omidyar and his wife, Pam.

As The Grayzone reported, Omidyar has partnered with US intelligence cutouts like USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy to promote regime change from Ukraine to the Philippines, while advancing various “counter-disinformation” efforts aimed at suppressing anti-establishment viewpoints.

A channel for pro-war regime change activists in Tehran

As the violence in Iran continues to dominate the headlines, Parent has all but admitted to functioning as a channel for foreign-backed regime change activists inside Iran. On January 30, she took to Twitter/X to announce that she’d received “permission” to publicize a message from a “student” in Tehran who declared: “We are all getting ready to take to the streets and seize important centers as soon as America attacks.”

As critical observers began to suggest the 30,000 death toll was likely inflated, Parent took to social media to declare that despite being a journalist, she was under no obligation to prove the claims she had printed. The only thing that mattered, she insisted, was that “decision makers” were moved to take action.

“We don’t need to convince anyone about the massacre the IR [Islamic Republic] has carried out on innocent civilians in Iran,” she wrote, since, “decision makers don’t see trolls’ tweets, they see verified accounts and reports.”

Just a day later, however, Parent apparently had a change of heart, and produced an “anonymous doctor” who she claimed had confirmed the figure after all. This person, who Parent referred to by the pseudonym “Dr Ahmadi,” had somehow “assembled a network of more than 80 medical professionals across 12 of Iran’s 31 provinces to share observations and data,” she insisted. Lo and behold, the number calculated through this murky network coincided perfectly with the guesstimate put forward by an Iranian monarchist operative in Germany who had been the lone source for the figure of 30,000 dead.

The ‘big lie’

Since TIME Magazine published its January 25 article asserting without clear evidence that Iran killed 30,000 protesters in two days, the figure has become an article of faith among regime change activists and their journalistic backers. Co-authored by a Persian contributor to the Times of Israel, Kay Armin Serjoie, the TIME article’s dubious data reverberated throughout corporate media. TIME claimed to have received this number from “two senior officials of [Iran’s] Ministry of Health.”

Though the outlet admitted it could not verify the figure, TIME claimed to have confirmed the death toll by insisting it “roughly aligns” with a count prepared by a German eye surgeon named Amir Parasta.

TIME did not inform its readers, however, that Amir Parasta was a hopelessly compromised source. Indeed, Parasta is a close associate of and lobbyist for the self-described “Crown Prince” Reza Pahlavi – the son of Iran’s deposed Shah. Based in Potomac, Maryland, Pahlavi urged Iranians to carry out violence across their country this January. When that campaign failed, he clamored for “anyone” to launch a military assault on the country he left as a young boy with millions of dollars in stolen wealth.

Parasta openly serves as an advisor to NUFDI, the main US-based lobbying group working to realize Pahlavi’s dream of re-establishing himself and his family as Iran’s monarchs.

In much of the Western world, the ‘big lie’ appears to be working as intended. On January 28th, as the massive new purported death toll was being dutifully disseminated by mainstream media, a European outlet wrote that it had been informed that the revised body count had been enough to convince Italy and Spain to finally agree to sanction Iran’s IRGC.

“The brutality of what we see has made ministers and capitals reconsider their positions,” an anonymous senior European diplomat reportedly told Euro News.

The official described the decision by Italy and Spain – the last two major holdouts on EU sanctions against the IRGC – as “an important signal towards the Iranian government and an expression of support for the Iranian diaspora,” who the diplomat noted “have called for this for a long time.”

As The Grayzone has reported, mainstream outlets have relied virtually exclusively on Iranian diaspora groups closely tied to the US government for the ever-growing death toll they attribute to Tehran.

Parent was no different, frequently citing one of the organizations The Grayzone profiled, which operates under the name “Human Rights Activists in Iran.” The group receives extensive funding from the National Endowment for Democracy, a CIA cutout created under the Reagan Administration to distance Washington’s covert regime change efforts from discredited US intelligence agencies.

The Guardian’s Parent relies on State Dept-funded “fact checker”

Parent relied on a similar source for her claim that Iran had killed “30,000” citizens during the unrest in January, when she claimed The Guardian had obtained photographs showing “bodies with close-range gunshot wounds to the head that had been transferred from hospital morgues while still attached to catheters, nasogastric tubes or endotracheal tubes.” Though Parent freely acknowledged The Guardian had “not independently verified the photographs,” she nevertheless claimed they had been “verified by [an] Iranian factchecking organisation” known as “Factnameh.”

By its own admission, however, Factnameh is not Iranian. On its website, Factnameh describes itself as a subsidiary of “ASL19, a private company registered in Toronto, Canada.”

More importantly, Factnameh is not actually a neutral factchecking organization, but instead another node in the vast network of US government-sponsored entities seeking to depose the government in Iran. Public records show that between 2022 and 2023 alone, Factnameh received nearly $2.9 million from the US State Department.

While Parent launders her regime change advocacy behind The Guardian’s reputation, she has been more unguarded about her views on social media. Challenged on Twitter/X on whether Iranians who disagree with their government actually want to be bombed by Israel, she fired back: “They prefer freedom from the Islamic Republic & they were being killed by the regime’s forces already.”

Original article:  thegrayzone.com

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Momenti di alta tensione al di là dell’Atlantico: la polizia di frontiera statunitense è coinvolta per la seconda volta – nel giro di sole due settimane – in un caso di cronaca che vede un cittadino statunitense (un infermiere trentesettenne) abbattuto per strada a colpi di arma da fuoco da agenti in servizio. Si tratta dunque della seconda vittima in un lasso di tempo molto breve, dopo quella di una giovane donna – ugualmente uccisa mentre era a bordo della propria autovettura –  quindi un caso che rischia di innescare grandi proteste, oltre che profonde riflessioni, su più temi che vanno a costituire le basi di una tormentata identità americana nella contemporaneità.

Vediamo di precisare il come e perchè gli eventi in questione non rappresentano semplice cronaca, bensì potenzialmente la miccia di qualcosa di molto più grande, partendo dalla basilare dinamica dei casi in questione. Il luogo dell’azione è lo stato del Minnesota, come si sa, importante zona di passaggio al confine col Canada, mentre i protagonisti della vicenda sono gli agenti dell’ICE (Immigration Customs and Enforcement), ossia un’agenzia di polizia che si occupa della lotta all’immigrazione illegale. A tale merito bisogna precisare innanzitutto come esistano negli USA due agenzie di sicurezza che si occupano del medesimo campo: la prima è la più nota US Border Patrol ovvero la polizia di frontiera vera e propria che vigila sugli ingressi clandestini, operando la maggior parte degli arresti nei pressi delle zone limitrofe ai confini, mentre invece l’ICE ha compiti di carattere maggiormente investigativo che si estendono fino a centinaia di km di distanza dal confine in questione. In sintesi, la polizia di frontiera ha compiti prevenzione del crimine più immediati e circoscritti alle zone di passaggio strettamente dette, mentre l’ICE ha una natura più sottile e di lungo termine, estendendo la propria area di operatività anche in profondità del territorio statunitense (fino a 160 miglia secondo la legge, ma nella prassi assai di più): in pratica ha la facoltà di perseguire e fare indagini sui migranti illegali anche molto all’interno del paese, godendo della facoltà – rara nell’ordinamento legale americano – di effettuare perquisizioni nelle case anche senza un mandato del tribunale. Una situazione questa, che mette giocoforza la suddetta agenzia anti-immigrazione a diretto contatto con la popolazione statunitense, con normali cittadini non coinvolti nella questione (o con migranti illegali che tuttavia nel frattempo hanno trovato modo di integrarsi efficacemente nel tessuto sociale), il che rende l’operato della polizia più invasivo e maggiormente soggetto a creare situazioni di violenza fuori controllo. Situazioni come quelle che hanno guadagnato le prime pagine dei quotidiani negli ultimi tempi, ed evocano domande latenti nell’opinione pubblica, quali i limiti legali di azione delle agenzie di sicurezza, il diritto o meno di portare armi da parte di cittadini statunitensi ed infine – tema più critico in assoluto – in merito all’immigrazione stessa.

Il diritto di effettuare controlli senza un mandato del giudice in effetti aggira il 4° emendamento della costituzione americana – fondamentale nella civiltà giuridica e sociale statunitense – che assicura il fondamentale diritto all’inviolabilità della propria dimora, salvo decisioni del tribunale stesso (in altre parole il concetto di innocenza fino a prova contraria); come se questo non bastasse viene aggirato anche il 2° emendamento che garantisce la facoltà di portare armi da fuoco: l’ultima vittima è appurato portasse una pistola con sè e questo è stato l’argomento con cui la polizia ha giustificato il proprio operato (cioè affermando che il soggetto fosse un pericolo dal quale occorreva difendersi: la cosa tuttavia viene messa in dubbio dalle prove emerse al momento). Il punto di tutto è che il caso del giorno, pur nella sua apparente semplicità, è in realtà molto complesso per la sua portata potenziale nello scuotere l’opinione pubblica, nel far emergere domande di fondo su quella che è l’identità politica e sociale americana, soprattutto durante un’amministrazione così divisiva come quella di Donald Trump.

Al di là dei punti sopramenzionati, lo spettro più profondo che si evoca è quello rappresentato dalle stesse agenzie di polizia protagoniste del caso, delle quali si chiede il ritiro ora dalla città di Minneapolis dove è il tutto è avvenuto: il punto è la posizione della società statunitense in merito al tema migratorio, con tutto quello che esso comporta.

Non è chiaramente necessario ricordare il grado di criticità di tale tematica nella vita del gigante a stelle e strisce e la misura in cui influenza la sua politica, interna in primo luogo e sul lungo termine anche estera. Il punto di fondo è che le sparatorie di Minneapolis in questi giorni, mettono in luce come il problema migratorio sia divenuto un vero e proprio conflitto, non più limitato alle zone di frontiera, così come tradizionalmente lo si concepiva, ma un qualcosa che investe il paese in profondità fin nei suoi angoli, non lasciando alcuna area realmente al sicuro di tutto questo. In altre parole, uno dei tanti segnali di una grande guerra che sta gradualmente deflagrando nel corpo dell’intero paese.

Ricordiamo che gli Stati Uniti, nell’ultima generazione hanno incassato un flusso migratorio tale da ridisegnarne i connotati culturali ed etnici: la statistica di base dice che tra il 1980 e il 2025 la popolazione statunitense è passata da 226 a 345 milioni, vale a dire un salto di oltre 100 milioni di abitanti nel giro di meno di 50 anni di tempo. Qualcosa di mai visto per proporzioni e rapidità del fenomeno: cifre che indicano una radicale metamorfosi in atto del volto della nazione americana, delle sue abitudini e mentalità, fissate sin dai suoi esordi storici. In concreto la popolazione “bianca” – secondo i dati dell’american census bureau, dipendente dal ministero degli interni – sarebbe pari al 57% dell’intera popolazione residente: questo rispetto al 79% del 1980 o al 90% del 1960, ovvero un calo di oltre 30 punti percentuali nell’arco di 60 anni (o di 20 punti se consideriamo solo gli ultimi 40). Approssimativamente, ogni decennio vede svanire un segmento dell’identità statunitense così come essa è considerata essere dalle fasce più conservatrici della società: la nazione anglosassone sorta gradualmente nei secoli dell’età moderna ed affrancatasi dall’alveo imperiale britannico con la rivoluzione del 1776 (e tutto sommato sopravvissuta per buona parte del 900, sino alla generazione del secondo dopoguerra) sta gradualmente “evaporando” – generazione dopo generazione, complice l’inverno demografico che affligge tutte le società post industriali – lasciando posto ad una nuova, i cui connotati sono difficili persino da immaginare. Gli Stati Uniti quali “nazione anglosassone” – come si è abituati a definirli per antonomasia – vengono sempre più rapidamente sostituiti da una “nazione globale”: un superamento storico dovuto a meccanismi socioeconomici di grandissima scala derivanti al sistema di fondo di cui Washginton è alfiere da oltre un secolo (liberalismo), che se da un lato ne fanno la prima potenza finanziaria sul pianeta, dall’altro determinano un inesorabile processo di “sostituzione etnica” al suo interno (nella misura cioè in cui la società, oramai prospera, necessita di un flusso demografico costante che garantisca la presenza di classi subordinate, mantenendo l’equilibrio di base della piramide socioeconomica tradizionale). In parole altre è proprio il liberalismo – ontologicamente connesso alla mentalità anglosassone d’oltreoceano – a determinare la sua stessa estinzione (cioè dell’elemento etnico da cui nasce): questo è naturale, poichè il modello capitalistico è del tutto indifferente alla preservazione delle identità, trattando essenzialmente la società che governa secondo un meccanismo atto esclusivamente a produrre ed entro il quale gli individui sono pedine (non importa se le pedine cambiano, basta che seguitino ad esistere nella loro funzione produttiva).

Senza addentrarci troppo nel campo della filosofia e della sociologia, possiamo affermare che questo è l’autentico enigma americano – se così vogliamo chiamarlo – le cui radici sono state poste molto tempo fa, nei secoli passati, ma che vedrà la massima manifestazione nel secolo in corso, lungo il quale dovrà affrontare quindi 2 temi capitali: il primo concerne la politica estera e vede l’eventuale sorpasso del gigante cinese nell’arena globale, mentre il secondo – il tema del giorno – concerne la vita interna del paese e potrebbe vedere la scomparsa della nazione americana (in senso tradizionale) con tutte la gamma di potenziali conseguenze – fenomeni di disgregazione sociale, conflitti, potenziali scissioni territoriali  – che ciò può generare.

Come ovvio, impossibile formulare previsioni precise per processi di lungo termine, estremamente complessi, che occuperanno i 50 anni a venire: a prescindere dagli esiti che saranno, è tuttavia chiaro che nei casi di cronaca odierna si possono cogliere le prime avvisaglie di un grande confronto che vedrà contrapposta la società al il proprio stesso stato, o per meglio dire ancora, governanti e governati (per l’ennesima volta). Le elite, mosse dall’imperativo di preservare lo status quo a prescindere dallo stato d’animo delle masse e queste ultime, viceversa, nel tentativo di difendersi da poteri alti che non più le rispecchiano. Il dilemma che evocano le sparatorie di Minneapolis è anche questo, sebbene sia soltanto l’inizio di un dramma che si svilupperà per le generazioni a venire e non soltanto negli USA, ma in tutto l’occidente.

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I have long maintained that one of the big obstacles libertarians face in the achievement of a genuinely free society is the fact that most Americans honestly believe they are free.

 When people are convinced they are free, they have no reason to want to join up with us libertarians in our effort to establish a genuinely free society. Instead, they simply view libertarianism as a “weird” philosophy that purports to achieve what we already have — a free society.

One can only hope that the recent killings of 37-year-old Renée Good and 37-year-old Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, both of whom were regular American citizens, will enable at least some Americans to break through the inches-thick indoctrination that has encased their minds and that has convinced them that they live in a free society. After all, how can a society genuinely be considered free when the government wields the omnipotent power to kill anyone it wants?

And make no mistake about it: As we have seen, U.S. officials have the omnipotent power to kill any American they want. That’s a harsh reality that so many Americans still do not want to accept. They’d rather remain convinced that they live under the same governmental structure on which our nation was founded, one in which the federal government’s powers were limited and restricted by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

So many Americans do not want to face reality — that this is a very different type of government — one that is every bit as brutal and ruthless as totalitarian-like regimes throughout history and one that wields such omnipotent powers as killing, torture, and indefinite detention without due process and trial by jury.

Consider the drug war, one of the most tyrannical powers that any totalitarian-like government, even one whose officials are democratically elected, can wield against its own citizens. Look at how many people they have killed over the years with this aberrant governmental program.

Indeed, just look at those 100-plus people they’ve just killed in cold blood on the high seas using the drug war as their justification. That’s what’s called the exercise of brutal and ruthless omnipotent power. No one is ever going to be prosecuted or convicted for killing those people.

But Americans have let them get away with drug-war ruthlessness and brutality, year after year, decade after decade. Never mind that U.S. officials never get even close to “winning” their drug war. What matters is that U.S. officials be permitted to continue waging it, even if that has meant the destruction of our very own freedom at the hands of our very own government.

A dark irony in the destruction of our freedom is the fact that the federal government oftentimes creates the problem that it then uses as the excuse to further destroy our freedom. For example, take drug cartels. They don’t exist in a genuinely free society because drugs are legal in a genuinely free society. Thus, in a free society, drugs are sold by pharmacies and other reputable businesses, and drug cartels and drug gangs simply do not exist.

Seizing on drug addiction as a societal problem that the government supposedly needs to resolve (but never can do so), the government declares the sale of drugs to be illegal. Immediately, the drug cartels come into existence as part of the black-market effort to meet the demand of drug consumers. Rather than repeal the drug laws that bring this black market into existence, the government instead uses the existence of the drug cartels to expand its powers, including, as we have seen, the omnipotent power to kill people who the government suspects are violating its drug laws.

If anyone thinks that the government’s omnipotent power to kill drug-war suspects on the high seas is limited to foreigners, he is living in a world of hyper-naiveté and delusion. With those killings in cold blood on the high seas, the U.S. government, especially the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA, are sending a powerful message to the American people: “We are in charge. What we are doing here on the high seas, we can do anywhere and to anyone, including Americans, and there isn’t anything anyone can do to stop us. Get used to it.”

In 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr., pointed out that the U.S. government had become the greatest purveyor of violence in the world. What so many Americans do not wish to confront is that nothing has changed and, in fact, the problem has only gotten worse and worse. Over the years, it has been foreign citizens who have borne the brunt of the ruthlessness and brutality of the U.S. regime, but what so many Americans have simply blocked out of their minds is the fact that the power to exercise that ruthlessness and brutality against Americans has always been there, like a sword ever ready to be unsheathed when necessary.

We are now witnessing this phenomenon in the war on illegal immigration. ICE agents and the Border Patrol have the power to kill any American protestor they want. No one can stop them. No one can prosecute them. No one can convict them. The killers are fully protected, even if that means lies, cover-ups, pardons, defense, and support. Just get used to it. Even if the ICE and Border Patrol killings (of both immigrants and Americans) subside, the power to kill with impunity and immunity will continue to be wielded, ready to be exercised again whenever necessary.

From time to time, the American people need to be reminded (e.g., Waco and Ruby Ridge) who is the boss. The boss is the U.S. government. The citizenry are the serfs, the servants, the subordinates. The job of the citizenry is to work and produce wealth so that there are alway sufficient tax revenues to support the masters. The job of the federal government is to rule and govern. That sometimes entails ruthlessness and brutality, but that’s just the way it is. Get used to it.

The easiest thing for people who are breaking free of the “we are free” indoctrination that has encased their minds is to assume that the problem is Donald Trump, ICE, the Border Patrol, the DEA, or military or CIA “overreach.” They are mistaken. The problem is not the people running the illegitimate systems. The problem is the systems themselves, including drug prohibition and America’s socialist system of border controls, that have attached themselves to the federal government, much as a malignant cancer attaches itself to a person’s body.

To achieve a genuinely free society, it is necessary for a critical mass of Americans to come to the realization that the solution lies not in reforming these malignant systems or in getting “better” people to run them. The solution lies instead in fully and completely excising all of the wrongful, destructive, and malignant systems that have attached themselves to the federal government.

Original article:  www.fff.org

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It shouldn’t fall to armed Americans to take on the White House militia because the governor can’t use the National Guard to force ICE out of Minnesota, writes Joe Lauria.

After the second execution of a U.S. citizen by the White House militia in the streets of Minneapolis, the governor of Minnesota demanded ICE agents leave the state. But the U.S. Constitution leaves him with few options to make it happen.

Though the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that a governor, and not the White House, controls National Guard troops operating inside a state, the Constitution’s so-called Supremacy Clause means that Gov. Tim Walz cannot deploy Minnesota’s 13,000 troops to stop the 3,000 ICE agents from terrorizing the population.   

Such a dramatic move by a disciplined force to arrest or disarm the ragtag ICE agents would of course risk civil conflict if ICE did not back down.

After the second ICE murder this month, Walz demanded: “The President must end this operation. Pull the thousands of violent, untrained officers out of Minnesota. Now.”

But according to the Constitution, all he can do is plead directly with the White House, which he did in a phone call with Donald Trump on Tuesday; or ask a federal judge to temporarily halt the ICE deployment, which Minnesota has done, arguing that it has become an illegal federal occupation of the state in violation of the 10th amendment.

Otherwise, under the Constitution’s Article 6, Clause 2 — the so-called Supremacy Clause — federal agents can operate in any state without the consent of state or local government.  All the locals have been able to do so far is refuse to cooperate with ICE.

Since ICE is a paramilitary force controlled by the civilian Department of Homeland Security and not the Pentagon, the Posse Comitatus Act, which bans the military from domestic law enforcement, cannot be invoked to evict ICE from Minnesota. 

These legal protections have emboldened White House officials to continue the operation and to investigate the mayor and governor rather than the shooters, as well as condemn the victims of ICE’s brutality instead of the ICE agents inflicting it.

After the deaths of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, Trump officials like Stephen Miller, the deputy chief of staff, and DHS Director Kristi Noem accused the murdered of being “terrorists.”

Miller also accused Pretti of being an “assassin” because he brought a legally obtained handgun to the protest against ICE agents. Citizen videos shot of the killing clearly show Pretti being disarmed of his pistol before he is murdered execution style by two agents as other agents pin him defenselessly to the ground. Several bullets were pumped into him after he became motionless.

Vilifying Pretti as an assassin because he was legally carrying a gun has upset a group normally 100 percent behind Republican governments: the gun lobby.

If the Constitution bars the governor from using his troops to repel an invading paramilitary army, it allows the citizenry to be armed and to take action only in self-defense, a not far-fetched development that would be best avoided.

Local police arresting ICE agents would not only invite altercation, but federal prosecutors are withholding evidence in the Good case, making it difficult for the state to charge an agent. A federal judge has ordered DHS to preserve evidence in the Pretti killing.

The egregiousness of these murders, especially of Pretti pinned to the ground — disarmed of his legally-owned gun — is a massive test for the identity of the United States. What kind of a country will it allow itself to become?

How far will it tolerate a federal authority waging war on the population? Is there a line government can cross to trigger a response from elected leaders? (Such a line was never crossed in their support for an allied nation committing genocide.)

The way to stop ICE is not to resort to vigilante violence, but for Congress to defund it and for public pressure, especially from his gun-loving base, to get Trump to back down. Already we see some Democratic lawmakers saying they won’t vote to fund ICE — and may shut down Congress to achieve that — and Republican Senators like Ted Cruz are asking for an investigation into Pretti’s death.

It is a moment of truth for the United States.

Original article:  consortiumnews.com

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L’aggressione militare sferrata dagli Stati Uniti contro il Venezuela, culminata nel rapimento del presidente legittimo Nicolás Maduro e di sua moglie Cilia Flores, non rappresenta soltanto un atto di forza contro uno Stato sovrano, ma un messaggio politico destinato a tutto il Sud globale. Un segnale brutale che mira a ristabilire, con i mezzi della violenza e della propaganda, la vecchia logica coloniale secondo cui l’emisfero occidentale sarebbe il “cortile di casa” di Washington. Eppure, se l’obiettivo della Casa Bianca era precipitare il Paese nel caos, spezzare la coesione del Partito Socialista Unito del Venezuela (PSUV) e costruire un vuoto di potere utile a legittimare nuove ingerenze, l’effetto immediato è stato l’opposto: un risveglio nazionale, una compattezza istituzionale e una mobilitazione popolare che hanno dimostrato la persistenza e la profondità del consenso di cui ancora gode l’esperienza bolivariana.

Nei momenti di crisi, la storia recente dell’America Latina ha mostrato spesso due scenari possibili. Da un lato, la frammentazione, la destabilizzazione, la nascita di governi fantoccio e la guerra civile a bassa intensità, alimentata dall’esterno con “aiuti” selettivi, sanzioni e campagne mediatiche. Dall’altro, la ricomposizione, la risposta collettiva, l’emersione di un fronte interno capace di resistere e rilanciare la propria sovranità. È in questa seconda traiettoria che si colloca il Venezuela dopo l’attacco. La narrazione secondo cui Caracas sarebbe sprofondata nell’incertezza istituzionale è stata rapidamente smentita dagli eventi e dalle dichiarazioni ufficiali: il Paese ha reagito come un corpo politico che, pur colpito duramente, conserva direzione, strumenti e capacità di risposta.

Il primo elemento decisivo è la continuità istituzionale. In Venezuela non si è aperta alcuna fase di “vacanza del potere”, come invece molti centri mediatici occidentali avrebbero voluto far credere. È stata attivata una soluzione eccezionale ma coerente con il principio di tutela dell’ordine costituzionale: Delcy Rodríguez ha assunto le funzioni presidenziali “in qualità di presidente incaricata”. Significa che Nicolás Maduro resta, anche se sequestrato, il presidente costituzionale della Repubblica, e che l’incarico di Rodríguez ha natura di supplenza operativa in un quadro di emergenza, finalizzata a garantire la continuità amministrativa e la difesa nazionale. La legittimità non viene trasferita agli aggressori, né viene “azzerata” per costruire un’operazione di cambio di regime con abiti giuridici fasulli. Il potere dello Stato rimane ancorato alla sua legalità interna e alla volontà popolare espressa nelle urne.

È proprio qui che si misura il fallimento politico della strategia statunitense. Washington non ha semplicemente colpito obiettivi militari e infrastrutture, provocando centinaia di vittime tra civili e militari: ha tentato di imporre una percezione internazionale di inevitabile “fine del chavismo” e di imminente transizione forzata. Il fatto che, nelle stesse ore, siano circolate campagne di disinformazione online, caricature e persino tentativi di presentare Donald Trump come autorità venezuelana, dimostra quanto la guerra contemporanea sia anche guerra psicologica. Ma Delcy Rodríguez ha risposto chiaramente, mettendo a fuoco la realtà politica: in Venezuela c’è un governo che governa, c’è una presidente incaricata che esercita le funzioni, e c’è un presidente ostaggio negli Stati Uniti. Questa formula ha un valore potente perché rovescia la propaganda: non esiste un vuoto, esiste un crimine.

Alla compattezza istituzionale si è sommata quella popolare. Le cronache parlano di un Paese che non è scivolato nella resa o nella paralisi, ma che ha reagito con disciplina e organizzazione. Da Caracas agli altri territori colpiti, la risposta non è stata la frammentazione ma la presenza: mobilitazioni, assemblee, iniziative comunitarie, sostegno alla linea costituzionale e richiesta di liberazione immediata della coppia presidenziale. Tutto questo dimostra come la dimensione popolare non sia un’appendice folcloristica del processo bolivariano, ma uno dei suoi pilastri strutturali. È nelle comunas, nel potere organizzato dal basso, nei circuiti di approvvigionamento solidale e nelle reti sociali che la Rivoluzione ha costruito negli anni la propria resilienza. Quando l’aggressione esterna colpisce, queste strutture diventano strumenti di stabilità.

La scelta di Delcy Rodríguez di mantenere un profilo di governo operativo e “produttivo”, anche nel pieno dell’emergenza, è stata politicamente significativa. Non limitarsi alla denuncia, ma mostrare che lo Stato continua a funzionare, che l’approvvigionamento alimentare resta garantito, che le politiche sociali proseguono, che il lavoro delle comunità non si arresta, è un modo concreto per impedire che l’imperialismo realizzi uno dei suoi obiettivi principali: la costruzione del caos come pretesto di intervento. In questo senso, le iniziative di controllo dei prezzi e la promessa di strumenti legislativi contro la speculazione sono atti di sovranità, una dichiarazione che il Venezuela non accetta di essere ricattato né dalla guerra militare né dalla guerra economica.

Ma, come abbiamo avuto modo di affermare in altre occasioni, l’attacco al Venezuela non è soltanto un attacco a un Paese, ma un tentativo di ridisegnare con la forza l’equilibrio geopolitico dell’America Latina e del Caribe. La richiesta, avanzata in sede CELAC, di un ritiro immediato delle forze militari statunitensi dalle acque caraibiche, è coerente con l’idea di America Latina e Caribe come Zona di Pace. E mostra un punto decisivo: Caracas non risponde solo in termini difensivi nazionali, ma inserisce la crisi in un quadro di sicurezza regionale, chiedendo un’assunzione di responsabilità collettiva. Perché, se oggi l’aggressione colpisce il Venezuela, domani può colpire chiunque non si allinei.

La diplomazia, in questa fase, si muove su un doppio binario. Da un lato, la denuncia netta delle violazioni del diritto internazionale e l’esigenza di accountability, con il ricorso agli organismi multilaterali e la richiesta di condanna. Dall’altro, la consapevolezza che, in un mondo in cui la forza tende a sostituire le regole, la deterrenza politica passa anche dalla costruzione di alleanze e dal rafforzamento dei legami con governi che riconoscono la legittimità venezuelana. I dialoghi con leader come Lula, Petro e Sánchez, e persino la telefonata con Trump in un contesto di altissima tensione, vanno letti come parte di una manovra complessa: difendere la sovranità senza concedere l’immagine di un Paese isolato o incapace di iniziativa.

È importante comprendere che l’imperialismo non si alimenta solo di bombe, ma anche di narrazioni: “narcoterrorismo”, “salvataggio della democrazia”, “intervento umanitario”, “ordine regionale”. Sono etichette che servono a trasformare la violenza in moralità e la rapina in missione. Il Venezuela ha risposto smascherando la sostanza: l’interesse per le risorse strategiche, il controllo politico del continente, la volontà di punire l’esempio di una nazione che rivendica un modello non subordinato. Non a caso, mentre l’aggressione colpisce, si tenta anche di rilanciare figure dell’estrema destra come strumenti di pressione psicologica e politica, nel tentativo di presentare una “alternativa” che non ha radicamento popolare, ma che gode della sponsorizzazione esterna.

Oggi, dunque, la Rivoluzione Bolivariana appare ancora come un processo vivo, non come un residuo del passato. Il consenso popolare non nasce da un’astrazione ideologica: si alimenta di identità nazionale, memoria storica, orgoglio di indipendenza, e di un tessuto sociale che in anni di blocchi e aggressioni ha imparato a organizzarsi. Non significa negare le difficoltà, né idealizzare l’emergenza. Significa riconoscere che l’elemento decisivo, oggi, è la capacità di un popolo di non lasciarsi riscrivere dall’esterno.

L’attacco statunitense e il rapimento di Nicolás Maduro dovevano essere un colpo mortale, l’atto finale di un teatro geopolitico in cui Washington pretende di decidere chi governa e chi deve essere “eliminato” politicamente. Ma la reazione venezuelana, compatta e organizzata, ha mostrato un fatto che l’imperialismo continua a sottovalutare: la sovranità non è solo una formula giuridica, è una coscienza collettiva. E quando un popolo possiede quella coscienza, anche la violenza più spudorata rischia di produrre l’effetto opposto: rafforzare l’unità, legittimare la resistenza, rendere ancora più evidente che l’aggressore non porta democrazia, ma dominio.