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In the first hours of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, up to 175 young children and school staff were blown to pieces at an elementary school. Others were maimed and burned, and will be suffering from their injuries for the rest of their lives. Even any comparatively fortunate ones with minimal injuries will surely experience permanent trauma from having witnessed something so horrific. Witnesses describe scenes of unfathomable horror, with limbs and blood strewn across classrooms. "People were pulling out children's arms and legs. People were pulling out severed heads," said a woman whose child was killed. The Guardian cites verified videos that show "children's bodies lying partly buried under the debris":
In one video, a very small child's severed arm is pulled from the rubble. Colourful backpacks covered with blood and concrete dust sit among the ruins. One girl wears a green dress with gingham patches on her pockets and the collar, her form partly obscured by a black body bag. Screams can be heard in the background.
Drop Site News spoke to the father of a six-year-old girl, Sara Shariatmadar, who was killed in the attack. "I cannot understand how a place where innocent children learn can be bombed like this," he said. "We are talking about small children who knew nothing of politics or wars. And yet they are the ones paying the highest price."
The United States and Israel have not denied responsibility for the attack, although it is still unclear which country fired the missile. The U.S. said that it does not "target" schools, which does not mean that it does not bomb them. ("We take these reports seriously," a spokesman said.) Israel's spokesperson said the government was not "aware" of such an attack, which does not mean its military did not carry one out. Photos supposedly showing that a misfired Iranian missile caused it were debunked, although they spread widely online among Americans and Israelis desperate to believe that only the Bad Guys do things like this.
Domestic coverage of this horrible crime against humanity has been muted. U.S. media has a policy of not showing gruesome images of violence---the Guardian explicitly stated that it was concealing the photos and videos it had "due to their graphic nature." As a result, war is always sanitized, so that Americans can read that 150+ schoolgirls were killed without having to confront the full horror of what it means for their country to drive a missile into a crowded school in the middle of the day. (Saturday is a school day in Iran, a fact that the U.S. government would easily have been able to know when deciding how to time its attacks, but Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has been open about the fact that he regards such niceties as rules of engagement and international law as meddlesome hindrances that can be ignored, lambasting those who "wring their hands and clutch their pearls, hemming and hawing about the use of force.")
I suspect that this attack is also difficult for U.S. media to cover because the basic facts of the situation are so twisted, so depraved, so evil, that they shatter the comforting narrative that the U.S. has the moral high ground over the Ayatollah. In fact, the U.S. government is on the moral level of the Sandy Hook school shooter, a fact that even president Trump's critics may have a hard time fully accepting.
And this was not the only massacre carried out by the U.S. and Israel in a war that has been going on just a few days. The Human Rights Activists News Agency reports that there have already been over 1,000 civilian deaths in Iran, including 181 children under the age of ten, with thousands more civilians injured. Drop Site reports on the nauseating scene in a middle-class Tehran neighborhood following a "double tap" strike (dropping one bomb first, and then dropping another on the survivors and emergency responders, a favorite war crime of the U.S. and Israel). Warning, the following description is extremely graphic and may undermine any love you may have for your country:
Videos of the immediate aftermath of the attack showed several individuals dead and wounded as well as massive destruction on the street outside. In Cafe Ahla, next to the square, blood and debris soaked the floors. Several patrons who had been sitting there when the attack struck could be seen dead on the floor or with their mutilated bodies still sprawled across their seats. "We were sitting here around 8:00-8:30 p.m. and suddenly there was the noise and explosion. We got up and a few people ran away. We turned around to get our belongings and we saw that blood was spraying everywhere. Someone's hand had fallen on the floor, a head had fallen on the floor," said Shahin, a witness who had been at the cafe and asked to be identified by first name only. "There were scalps torn off, hands severed, a few people were laying here all cut up and two people were martyred."
I will get to the many ways in which the Iran war is illegal, making us less safe, founded on lies, strategically insane, unbelievably costly, etc. But let us dwell for a moment on what we are doing to these people. The right-wing Telegraph newspaper reports that in Tehran, "millions of civilians are trapped under relentless bombardment as food and medical supplies dwindle and the death toll mounts," and the city is an "'apocalypse' of hospitals in flames and children buried beneath rubble." The paper records a total humanitarian disaster, with sick people lacking medicine, children going hungry, diabetics running out of insulin, and the repeated bombing of residential areas. While Americans pat themselves on the back for assassinating Iran's repressive head of state, everyday Iranians (even those with little love for their theocratic government) are facing the prospect of being killed at any moment, or watching their children be ripped to pieces. I realize that in the U.S., the devaluation of Middle Eastern lives means that little Iranian girls will receive a fraction of the compassion and concern that has arisen around, say, Nancy Guthrie. But if we apply our morality consistently, I cannot see how we can be anything other than completely revolted by the carnage our president is choosing to inflict (and will apparently soon be further escalating, according to Marco Rubio, who is promising an increased use of force to come, and Pete Hegseth, who is salivating about delivering "death and destruction all day long").
We are all complicit. If you are an American, you paid your government to murder those little girls and those Tehran cafe-goers. Money was withdrawn from your paycheck in the form of federal income taxes. If the attack was conducted with a Tomahawk missile (of which 400 were fired in 72 hours), that money would have been paid to the RTX Corporation (formerly Raytheon). Each missile fired costs somewhere between $1.3 million and $2.2 million, of which approximately $200,000 would be pure profit. Thus the killing of the Iranian schoolgirls, which left their bloody backpacks and tiny severed limbs scattered across classroom floors, transferred hundreds of thousands of dollars from us (the American taxpayers) into RTX's bank accounts. It also boosted the GDP. And the stock market.
Stock price of RTX (formerly Raytheon)
It is hard for me to write about this war, because I am so sickened every time I contemplate the full dark reality of the country I live in. I realize that not only are there people who will drop a bomb on a school without losing a wink of sleep, but there are people who get rich when we bomb schools, who have a direct financial stake in ensuring we keep dropping as many bombs as possible. (And that's just the weapons companies. Others are getting rich from betting on the atrocities on prediction markets.) The fact that many Congressional Democrats implicitly or explicitly supported this war (whether by outright goading Trump into it, as Chuck Schumer did, dragging their feet on opposing it, or raising meek procedural objections) further adds to my disgust. Many Democrats apparently declined to try to stop the war, reasoning that if it achieved U.S. foreign policy goals it would be embarrassing to have opposed it, but if it went south Trump would own it anyway. When I open the New York Times op-ed page, and I find resident foreign policy guru Thomas Friedman cautioning against adopting any "black and white narrative" about what goes on in "a complicated, kaleidoscopic region," I want to vomit. The moment calls for moral clarity: our country is engaged in a mass murder campaign. It must be stopped. It is depressing to see so many debates around strategic end-goals, congressional authorization, or the consistency of the justifications. They take us away from the basic fact that our president, with the blessing of his party and many members of the so-called opposition, is gruesomely murdering children by the dozen. Every day this continues, we are paying our government to commit some of the worst crimes humans are capable of.
Of course, the war is also based on a pack of lies. The Trump administration can't even get its story straight on why the war is being waged and has produced no justification beyond vague invocations of National Security. (Trump says Iran was a "bad seed.") Some Republicans won't even admit that this is a war. (Perhaps they might want to borrow a phrase from Vladimir Putin: "special military operation.") House Speaker Mike Johnson is trying to have it both ways, saying that while the Iranians "have declared war on us," we're "not at war right now." Others are tying themselves in pretzels trying to explain how this differs from the "regime change" wars that Trump has so vocally opposed. (Pete Hegseth: "This is not a so-called 'regime change war.' But the regime sure did change.") Sometimes there are direct self-contradictions within a single sentence, as with Tom Cotton declaring that "Iran has been an imminent threat to the United States for 47 years." This was too much for right-wing commentator Matt Walsh, who accused Republicans of "gaslighting" for suddenly discovering that Iran has been waging a half-century of war against the U.S. Even leading Iraq war hawk Bill Kristol is confused about the reasoning behind the war, saying there is "no coherent rationale." (Of course, Kristol's own favorite Middle East war was equally illegitimate, but that's an argument for another day.)
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. attacked because it knew Israel was going to attack, and needed to defend itself against the inevitable Iranian retaliation for Israel's attack---perhaps the most tortured and unpersuasive case for self-defense ever made. Perhaps because this seemed like an admission that Israeli choices dictate U.S. policy, Trump subsequently denied that Israeli decision-making had anything to do with the attack, although it's clear that Benjamin Netanyahu lobbied heavily for this, as he has been salivating at the prospect of a major war with Iran for decades, and has been scheming for a way to get the U.S. involved.
The idea that Iran was a threat to the United States was always laughable. U.S. intelligence has consistently assessed that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon. The Trump administration itself declared that it had destroyed Iran's nuclear program with last year's bombings. Iran has in fact consistently shown itself very reluctant to engage in military confrontation with the U.S., often carefully limiting its retaliation after U.S. provocations. To the extent that Iran did want to become a nuclear threshold state, with at least the capacity to pursue a weapons program if it wanted to, credible analysts believe that Iran mainly wanted an insurance policy against potential U.S. and Israeli attacks. North Korea has shown that the possession of nuclear weapons is enough to make the U.S. think twice about forcible regime change, and there is a good argument that it would have been rational for Iran to pursue nuclear weapons for the sake of its own self-protection. As Israeli military historian Martin Van Creveld observed, the world "witnessed how the United States attacked Iraq for, as it turned out, no reason at all. Had the Iranians not tried to build nuclear weapons, they would be crazy." (Van Creveld is wrong that Iraq was attacked for "no reason," however. It was attacked for the same reason Iran is being attacked: the establishment of U.S.-Israeli dominance over the Middle East.) While U.S. commentators often talk as if Iran would pursue nuclear weapons mainly in order to destroy the U.S. or Israel (which would, of course, be suicidal given both countries' superior nuclear forces), there's no evidence that Iran would want nuclear weapons for any reason beyond deterring potential external attacks. (A fear that recent events have proven to be well-founded.)
In fact, the entire prevailing narrative about Iran is completely backwards. It's the U.S. that has been a threat to Iran, not the other way around. It was the United States and Britain that overthrew Iran's legitimately elected leader, Mohammad Mosaddegh, in 1953. (The New York Times was elated by the coup, commenting that "underdeveloped countries with rich resources now have an object lesson in the heavy cost that must be paid by one of their number which goes berserk with fanatical nationalism.") Since 1979, when the Iranians ousted the dictator (the Shah) that the U.S. had helped install and maintain in power, the U.S. has had a virtually unremittingly hostile attitude toward Iran. This is not because of the government's (very real) human rights abuses, since the U.S. is happy to support human rights abusing states that are pliant and servile (see, e.g., Saudi Arabia and Egypt). But Iran is viewed as a threat to U.S. dominance in the Middle East. Thus, in the 1980s, the U.S. supported Saddam Hussein as he waged a ruthless war of aggression against Iran, killing hundreds of thousands of Iranians including with chemical weapons. (The U.S. concealed evidence of Hussein's chemical weapon use from the UN, because it wanted him to go on killing Iranians.) More recently, the U.S. and Israel have tried to destabilize the country through devastating cyberattacks, economy-wrecking sanctions, and assassinations. The sanctions have been explicitly aimed at harming civilians, with Mike Pompeo boasting in 2019 that "things are much worse for the Iranian people" thanks to sanctions and hoping that their suffering would lead them to overthrow their government.
Importantly, while U.S. policymakers in both the Republican and Democratic parties constantly affirm that "Iran must not be allowed to have nuclear weapons," they rarely state their implicit corollary to this proposition, which is that Israel must be allowed to have nuclear weapons. As it happens, Iran actually agrees that it shouldn't be allowed to have nukes, and has long supported turning the entire Middle East into an official nuclear weapons free zone, much as Africa and Latin America have done. The problem is that the U.S. and Israel demand a double standard, with Israel refusing to contemplate giving up its nuclear weapons. The entire nuclear disagreement, then, is not about whether Iran should have nuclear weapons, but about whether Iran should hold itself to a different standard to Israel. (Amusingly, Chuck Schumer recently accidentally declared that "no one wants a nuclear Israel," and had to correct himself, because he does want a nuclear Israel.)
Anyone who values human life should treat war as an absolute last resort, to be engaged in only once every diplomatic option has been exhausted. In this case, it was the Trump administration that sabotaged diplomacy. First, even though asking Iran not to pursue nuclear weapons means imposing an unfair double standard that imperils Iran's national security, Iran had agreed under the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action to severely constrain its development of nuclear technology, and agreed to a detailed monitoring and compliance regime. It was confirmed to be adhering to that agreement until Donald Trump ripped it up in 2018, subsequently criticizing Iran for failing to adhere to the agreement that he himself had destroyed. Joe Biden declined to pursue the revival of that agreement, even though Iran signaled that it was open to it. But to this day, Iran has shown that it is willing to consider even highly unfavorable agreements in order to avoid war---it has never shown any sign of launching an unprovoked strike, only deploying military action in response to violence by others, such as an Israeli attack on its embassy or the assassination of its allies' leaders.
Iran has long wanted to keep a war with the U.S. from breaking out, which is why its responses to U.S. and Israeli attacks have previously been notably measured and cautious. (This time around, Iran reasons that unless it inflicts major damage, it will be perceived as weak and attacked further, since previous restraint only encouraged the U.S. and Israel to press their advantage.) Diplomatic talks between the U.S. and Iran were ongoing, and Oman, mediating talks, saw "the most promising diplomatic opening in years" and thought "diplomacy was producing tangible results and that a negotiated settlement was imminent." The U.S. and Israel decided to sabotage diplomacy and assassinate the Iranian head of state, possibly because they felt they just couldn't forgo the opportunity to kill as many high-ranking Iranians as possible in one fell swoop. (They killed so many Iranian government officials that Donald Trump admitted the U.S. had killed all of the people who had been considered likely candidates to take Khamenei's place.) Iran professed itself baffled as to why the U.S. attacked. "I do not know why the U.S. administration insists on beginning a negotiation with Iran and then attacking Iran in the middle of talks," said the country's foreign minister. He told NBC: "We were able to address serious questions related to Iran's nuclear program. We obviously have differences, but we resolved some of those differences, and we decided to continue in order to resolve the rest of [the] questions."
Because mass civilian casualties are a predictable consequence of intense airstrikes, to choose to unnecessarily end diplomatic engagement and start bombing is unconscionable depravity. But it's clear that the Trump administration didn't really care whether Iran was genuinely willing to engage in diplomacy, because Trump's position is that Iran should simply do what we say, period. There is nothing to negotiate, because for Trump, the only choice is whether a country is willing to comply with U.S. demands, or whether we will have to use force to ensure their compliance.
I haven't even gotten to the illegality of the war. Leaving aside the ridiculous Republican denials that this is a war (if a country assassinated our head of state and bombed our cities, would anyone doubt that they were waging war?), it's plain that all of this is unconstitutional. The Constitution vests the power to declare war in Congress, not the president. Congress didn't declare war, therefore the war is illegal. Case closed. I know presidents have stretched their powers as far as possible (Obama's drone strikes, etc.) but if a president has the power to wage a relentless bombing and assassination campaign without Congressional approval, the Constitution simply ceases to mean anything. Congress has plainly failed in its responsibility to ensure that Trump complies with the Constitution, but the failure of our politicians to enforce the law doesn't change what it says.
Of course, it virtually goes without saying that the war violates international law. The UN Charter prohibits the use of force (or even the threat of force) except in response to an armed attack. Iran had not attacked the U.S., nor was there any evidence Iran was going to attack the U.S. Propagandists assert that Iran (and its "proxies") have killed "hundreds" of Americans over the years, but they decline to specify who these Americans are or discuss the Iranians killed by the U.S. and our own "proxies." There's no real point discussing international law, because Trump has made it clear he simply doesn't care about it, saying he doesn't need it and is unconstrained by it. Unfortunately, other countries have been just as pathetically weak as members of the U.S. Congress, with countries like Britain and France issuing statements that were de facto supportive of the assassination of a foreign head of state. (Canada issued a supportive statement and then appeared to regret it after noticing that letting the U.S. and Israel tear up the last vestiges of international law might be unwise.) Germany's chancellor has even made the stunning statement that Iran shouldn't be protected by international law, waving away the obvious illegality of the attacks by saying that "now is not the time to lecture our partners and allies." The killing of a head of state is a major crime, the normalization of which would open a horrible Pandora's box of lawless state action, and the world should be unified in condemning U.S.-Israeli lawlessness, but even among the Arab states there is a reluctance to antagonize the U.S.
None of the long-term consequences of this war will be good. The Trump administration does not appear to have any kind of strategic plan for what will happen next in Iran. (Lindsey Graham says it's "not [Trump's] job" to have a plan for what happens to the country's government next.) We could see the country's collapse into civil war, Libya-style. (Obama adviser Ben Rhodes recently admitted that Obama's decision to topple Libya's dictator without a plan for the country was a major error.) We could simply see the hard-line theocrats be replaced by more hard-line theocrats who are more convinced than ever that there can be no negotiating with the U.S., that the only language this country understands is force, and that the best thing for Iran's safety would be for it to obtain a nuclear weapon as quickly as possible. What we are unlikely to see is a pro-American government emerging, and this war puts Americans everywhere in considerable danger. (Ask yourself: if what happened to Sara Shariatmadar happened to someone you love, would you see the country that carried out the bombing as a liberator? Or would you want revenge?) Although plenty of Iranians are justly celebrating the end of the Ayatollah's rule, like the Iraqis who celebrated in 2003, they will soon find out that the U.S. has no interest in their well-being, and will happily watch their country slide into civil war if this serves America's perceived "national security" interest.
Six Americans have already died in addition to the 1,000 Iranians. Because this is a war of choice, totally unnecessary and unjustifiable, their blood is on Donald Trump's hands, and he (as well as Congress) should be treated no differently than we would treat someone who murdered these Americans with their bare hands. But the costs to this country are only just beginning. Of course, if you're an RTX shareholder this may be a bonanza, but the rest of us are likely to see major economic disruption, in addition to all the resources that are put into the production of weapons. Eisenhower famously tried to warn Americans that war spending is an act of "theft" from the public, because it's money not spent on schools and hospitals, and the "opportunity cost" is therefore enormous. But Eisenhower's warning has largely been ignored.
Worse, as Abby Martin notes in the terrifying and important new film Earth's Greatest Enemy, military action has catastrophic climate consequences, since the U.S. war machine is the world's biggest polluter and the carbon emissions of our vast, brutal empire are driving us toward ever-worsening climate catastrophe. Unfortunately, that's just fine with some in the administration and the military---terrifying recent reporting suggests that some evangelical Christian officers are celebrating the war as hastening the apocalypse, claiming Trump was "anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth." These people would sacrifice the rest of us to the inferno to fulfill their delusional prophecies.
Of course, the war reveals that Trump and his coterie were complete frauds when they pledged to keep the U.S. out of senseless Middle East wars. Trump fooled a lot of people with this stuff, although hopefully their illusions will now be hard to maintain. (Former hardcore MAGA types like Alex Jones and Nick Fuentes are now admitting they were duped.) If there is one silver lining here, amid all of the horror, it is that because this war is deeply unpopular and Trump has no idea how to deal with its consequences, perhaps we will finally see the MAGA movement collapse politically. Trump's approval rating was already in the toilet, and while I sadly have no illusions that public opinion will be especially moved by the bombing of a school, when the fallout in cost, lives, and global chaos begins to come home, perhaps Americans will turn once and for good against their warmongering president.
But it is hard for me to think hopefully right now, as I see pictures of the remnants of former schoolchildren, schoolchildren whose lives were brutally extinguished with the help of my tax dollars. All I can feel is horror and rage at the sociopaths willing to do such things, who claim to want peace while ensuring that humanity will be consigned to a future of endless, senseless conflict.
PHOTO: Graves being dug for the elementary school girls killed in the bombing of the Minab school. Iran Foreign Ministry.
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I don’t believe you can be a good Zionist anymore than I believe someone can be a decent Nazi. The ideology itself describes a major character flaw.
I cannot take seriously the idea that some ethnicities or religious groups are inherently prone to nefarious behavior; it goes against everything I’ve learned about the human condition over the course of my strange adventures on this planet. I absolutely do believe, however, that there are political ideologies whose adherents are universally dogshit people.
If you’ve been watching the incineration of the Gaza Strip and thinking it’s good, or thinking it’s complicated, or thinking it’s an unfortunate development that can be blamed on a few bad apples in the Israeli government but doesn’t reflect Israel’s nature as a whole, then you’re a piece of shit. You’re a horrible human being. It really is that simple.
If you can look at Israel starting all these wars, bombing the fuck out of Iran and Lebanon and Palestine, passing laws to execute Palestinians exclusively while sparing Jews from the same sentencing for the same crimes, and still fail to recognize that the Israel experiment must be aborted, then you have not developed a functioning conscience. You have wasted your time on this planet. You have not managed to mature into a morally healthy human in all these years you’ve been alive.
There are Zionists who are vegetarian, who are nice to their pets, who give money to charity — but there are no Zionists who are actually good people. John Wayne Gacy did charity clown shows for hospitalized children, but he was still a serial killer and a very bad man. His abusiveness eclipsed any other kindness he may have performed, and became his defining characteristic as an individual.
Being a supporter of the Israel project is exactly the same. It doesn’t matter what else you do with your life if you stand on the side of a man-made murder machine which is fueled by the blood of the innocent. You’re just plain awful.
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Israel’s Knesset has passed its notorious bill to execute Palestinians convicted of “terrorism” in bogus military court show trials. The law is explicitly crafted to exclude Jews and solely target Palestinians, which is about as strong a sign you’re looking at apartheid as you could possibly imagine.
As The Times of Israel explains, “The law effectively enshrines capital punishment for Palestinians alone, as it explicitly excludes Israeli citizens or residents, and Palestinians alone are tried in military courts. Israelis are tried in civilian courts.”
For years Israel apologists have been admonishing me for calling Israel an apartheid state. For years liberal “moderates” have been saying it’s extreme for me to call Zionism a fundamentally racist and murderous ideology. And yet, here we are. Can’t wait to hear the hasbarists try to spin this one.
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On Monday US Secretary of State Marco Rubio slammed Iran for spending its money on weapons instead of investing it toward the benefit of the Iranian people, saying “Imagine if instead of spending billions of dollars supporting terrorists or weapons, Iran had spent that money helping the people of Iran. They would have a much different country.”
Again, this is an official from the United States of America saying this. Literally the funniest country that could possibly utter this criticism of another country’s military spending.
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Violence in the middle east spiraled into a hot war with Iran because the world didn’t have the sense to tell Israel it got what it deserved on October 7.
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As Trump threatens to blow up Iranian desalination plants and US-Israeli attacks on civilian targets get more and more egregious, an article from Middle East Eye titled “Iranian livelihoods are being blown apart by US and Israeli bombs” paints a picture of the way people’s lives are being ruined even among those who are fortunate enough to survive the onslaught.
“They [the US and Israel] said they were bringing us freedom. Is this what freedom looks like?” says a 40 year-old man in Tehran after his small optical store was obliterated despite no military targets being located in the area.
And yet the next time the US wants to bomb a country to topple its government we’re going to see its diaspora cheerleading the attack and telling everyone this time it really is about bringing freedom and democracy to the victims of a tyrannical regime. There are suckers in every country.
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It’s hilarious that there are billionaires poisoning every facet of our society and making everyone miserable and starting insane wars and incinerating the biosphere and there are people trying to tell me I should be angry at Muslims.
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MLAs and representatives of the community and voluntary sector are among those who have slammed the Labour government for the decision to push ahead with funding cuts to charities in the north of Ireland. As a result of post-Brexit expenditure changes, on April 1 Westminster will replace the UK Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF) with the Local Growth Fund (LGF). The UKSPF supplied money previously provided by the EU. The move will result in a loss of £16m per year for the community and voluntary sector, going from £25 million to just £9 million.
People Before Profit MLA Gerry Carroll was among those who condemned the decision, saying:
From Wednesday, Westminster will reduce funding for community support programmes by a staggering 64%. This will leave 11,000 people without employment support, and equates to roughly 400 job losses in the sector. It’s particularly cruel that on the same day hundreds of charity workers are handed redundancy notices, a £14,000 pay increase for MLAs will come into effect.
Politicians to get 27% pay rise as charities have funds slashed
The independent remuneration board confirmed last month that MLAs would be receiving the obscene salary uptick, taking salaries up to £67,200. Part of their reasoning was that it will be combined with penalties in the event of another Stormont shutdown. There will be 10% cuts on each of weeks 6, 12 and 18 in the event of a collapse. This seems like curious logic, given the whopping pay boost gives MLAs a buffer that makes financial penalties much easier to absorb.
Carroll called on Stormont to fix the problem through transfer of moneys from corporate rates relief:
Rather than begging Westminster for help that clearly isn’t coming, the Executive must step in today. It is entirely within their remit to provide the £15.8 million to keep these services afloat. The five big parties found £1.2 million for a 27% pay hike and handed over £76 million in rates breaks for the likes of Moy Park and Coca Cola last year alone. It’s time they cough up for people who need it most.
England, Scotland and Wales have all long since abolished these corporate handouts. Carroll also criticised Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) education minister Paul Givan for “overseeing a slow-motion collapse of youth services“. He concluded:
Working class communities didn’t create this crisis and they shouldn’t be made to pay for it.
The cuts will primarily affect employment support programs. The Northern Ireland Council for Voluntary Action (NICVA) represents charity and community groups across the Six Counties (a decolonial term to refer to the north of Ireland). Earlier in March their CEO Celine McStravick highlighted the effect cuts will have on already marginalised groups:
This drastic reduction in funding for Local Growth will strip away vital services for people furthest from the labour market – including young people, those with disabilities or returning to work after long‑term illness and those with caring responsibilities. These are precisely the groups most in need of targeted, sustained intervention and support.
Disabled people to lose crucial support
The Chief Commissioner for the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland Geraldine McGahey had previously highlighted the support needed by disabled people to assist them into employment. She said:
Recent figures report that the disability employment rate here remains stubbornly low at 43.4%, while the disability employment gap is most recently reported as 40.3 percentage points and remains the largest of any of the UK regions.
Ultimately Northern Ireland simply cannot afford cuts to the very limited budgets that currently exist for this important and often life changing work.
NICVA’s McStravick contrasted the support Westminster provides other nations under its control with that granted to the North of Ireland:
Today’s announcement from the Prime Minister highlights a growing disparity between the opportunities being created elsewhere in the UK and the shrinking support available for those most acutely in need across Northern Ireland. While England is benefitting from billions in new investment to tackle youth unemployment and expand apprenticeships, Northern Ireland is witnessing its core employability infrastructure being hollowed out.
Secretary of state for Northern Ireland Hilary Benn has said he expects Stormont to cover the gap in funding itself. However, multiple Northern Ireland Executive ministers have already said they are unable to cover the bare minimum for their departments as it is.
The first day of April is offering fresh opportunities for Westminster to once again show it is populated by fools. Labour continues its trend of being penny wise and pound foolish, as it fails to cough up tiny sums that would pay off many times in the long run.
Featured image via the Canary
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Iran has threatened to attack facilities owned by US tech giants and other companies in the Middle East, starting 1 April, in retaliation for US-Israeli assassinations on its soil.
A list from Iran’s military names Apple, Microsoft, Google, Meta, Tesla, Nvidia, Boeing and IBM among “terrorist companies” that are at risk of attacks, according to several pro-government news sites in Iran.
“For every assassination in Iran, these companies must expect the destruction of their related units, starting at 8pm on Wednesday, 1 April (Tehran time),” the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said in a statement on Tuesday.
It added: “You have ignored our repeated warnings to stop terrorist activities, and today several Iranian citizens were killed in terrorist attacks carried out by you and your Israeli allies.
“Since the main element in designing and tracking assassination targets are American ICT and AI companies, in response to this terrorist operation, from now on the main institutions involved in terrorist operations will be considered legitimate targets.”
Employees of these companies should “leave their workplaces immediately to save their lives”, the IRGC said, adding that residents living within a one-kilometre radius of the companies should “move to a safe place”.
The other companies on the list are: Cisco, HP, Intel, Oracle, Dell, Planit, JPMorgan, GE, Spire Solutions and G42.
Early last month, Iranian drones struck Amazon Web Services data centres in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. Some major banks, including HSBC and Citi, have closed their branches or evacuated their offices in the region following threats from Iran.
From Novara Media via This RSS Feed.
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Seeking $56 Million, Legal Migrant Claims ICE Intentionally Sent Him to Salvadoran Prison
(www.commondreams.org)
A Utah law firm said Tuesday that it plans to sue the US government for its allegedly unlawful detention and deportation of a Venezuelan immigrant who was sent to a maximum security prison in El Salvador known for its torture and abuse of inmates.
“Our client is a young Venezuelan man who came into the US legally to escape threats of violence by the Venezuelan government against his family for their opposition to the Maduro regime," said Brent Ward, an attorney at Parker & McConkie, referring to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who was kidnapped by US forces during a January invasion of his country.
Ward said that the client—identified by the pseudonym "Johnny Hernandez"—is seeking $56 million in damages and "has no criminal record either in the US or in Venezuela."
A man entered the U.S. legally, had no criminal record, and was still sent to one of the world's most dangerous prisons for four months. Parker & McConkie is pursuing $56 million in justice on his behalf.www.parkerandmcconkie.com/blog/parker-...#CivilRights #JusticeForJohnny #Immigration #CECOT
[image or embed]
— Parker & McConkie | Personal Injury Law (@parkermcconkie.bsky.social) March 31, 2026 at 2:40 PM
Hernandez was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers and subsequently deported to the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) in Tecoluca, central El Salvador, where he allegedly suffered torture and other abuse.
“The Trump administration knowingly and unlawfully locked up an innocent person for four months in a concentration camp-like prison where he suffered torture, shooting, beatings, and solitary confinement," Ward stated. "When the US government knowingly and purposefully violates the law by detaining and deporting innocent individuals on false charges and is not held responsible, the individual rights of not just legal immigrants but all Americans are placed in jeopardy."
"Our client suffered catastrophic injuries in CECOT from which he will never fully recover," the lawyer said. "Failing to demand accountability now places all Americans in jeopardy in the future.”
The impending lawsuit comes as ICE proposes to literally warehouse up to 10,000 arrested immigrants in a "megacenter" in Salt Lake City, Utah. Opponents have compared the 833,000-square foot facility to a concentration camp akin to the Topaz War Relocation Center, a harsh, desolate desert prison where Japanese Americans and Japanese people living in the Western US were forcibly interned during World War II.
The case also follows last week's filing of a lawsuit by Neiyerver Adrián León Rengel, one of the Venezuelans sent to CECOT. Like Hernandez, León Rengel—who is seeking $1.3 million in damages—was in the US legally when he was arrested by federal immigration authorities.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) recently said on the one-year anniversary of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation of Salvadorans, Venezuelans, and others that, of the 9,000 Salvadorans expelled from the US since the beginning of last year, “only 10.5% had a conviction in the United States for a violent or potentially violent crime.”
The Salvadoran investigative journalism outlet El Faro—which, along with its staff, has been the target of sweeping government persecution—last year published a report on CECOT, citing one former prisoner who said that inmates are “committing suicide out of desperation.”
At least one deported Salvadoran—longtime Maryland resident Kilmar Ábrego García—was wrongfully expelled due to what the Trump administration called an “administrative error.”
The Trump administration deported hundreds of Venezuelans to CECOT under a multimillion-dollar agreement between the Trump administration and the government of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele.
While Trump claimed—often without evidence—that the Venezuelan deportees were members of the Tren de Aragua gang, only about 3% of them had violent criminal convictions in the United States, and Department of Homeland Security records show that the Trump administration knew it.
In July 2025, El Salvador released 252 Venezuelans imprisoned at CECOT and sent them to Venezuela in a prisoner swap that saw Maduro's government free 10 US citizens and permanent residents whom it jailed. Many of the repatriated Venezuelans said they suffered torture, sexual assault, severe beatings, and other abuse at CECOT.
Last December, Judge James Boasberg of the US District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the Trump administration broke the law by deporting the Venezuelans without due process.
From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.
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Conversion Therapy Gets Speech Protections — But Trans Kids’ Existence Gets No Protection At All
(theintercept.com)
A protester demonstrating for trans rights in New York City on Feb. 3, 2025. Photo: Charly Triballeau/AFP via Getty Images
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court marked International Trans Day of Visibility with yet another ruling that puts the lives of trans people at risk. The justices ruled that Colorado’s statewide ban on conversion therapy for young people likely violates a Christian counselor’s First Amendment rights. The decision threatens conversion therapy bans nationwide, which are currently on the books in nearly half of all U.S. states.
The eight-to-one ruling has far-reaching, terrifying potential consequences. And not only for trans youth: It indicates that speech delivered by licensed health care practitioners in a professional capacity, no matter harmful and debunked the claims, cannot be banned as illegal conduct, because it counts as protected speech.
Only Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the one dissenting judge, appeared to appreciate the grave stakes of this ruling.
“Before now, licensed medical professionals had to adhere to standards when treating patients.”
“Before now, licensed medical professionals had to adhere to standards when treating patients: They could neither do nor say whatever they want,” Jackson wrote in a blistering dissent. “Largely due to such State regulation, Americans have been privileged to enjoy a long and successful tradition of high-quality medical care. Today, the Court turns its back on that tradition.”
The dangers of conversion therapy to trans and queer youth cannot be overstated. According to the Trevor Project, a non-profit suicide-prevention organization for LGBTQ+ young people, “LGBTQ+ youth who experienced conversion therapy are more than twice as likely to attempt suicide and more than 2.5 times as likely to report multiple suicide attempts in the past year.”
Conversion therapy, however, may not be the only potentially harmful intervention the ruling would apply to. As Jackson added in her dissent, the ruling “might make speech-only therapies and other medical treatments involving practitioner speech effectively unregulatable—not to be reached via licensing standards, medical-malpractice liability, or any other means of state control.”
It is a ruling, then, completely in line with our Trumpian moment of decimated medical care standards and eliminationist assaults on trans people. Indeed, it was done with support from President Donald Trump’s Justice Department.
As journalist and trans rights advocate Erin Reed wrote, the court’s logic in the ruling holds that “any medical treatment delivered through words rather than instruments could now carry First Amendment protection—a framework that could shield a doctor who encourages a patient to commit suicide, a dietician who tells an anorexic patient to eat less, or a therapist who deliberately steers a vulnerable client away from life-saving treatment.”
Reed noted that the decision risks extending constitutional protections to “speech-based professional conduct” in other fields, like a lawyer giving knowingly harmful legal advice.
Speech as Medicine
The crux of the majority’s opinion rests on the contested line between speech that is protected against government interference, and conduct, which can be regulated.
“Her speech does not become ‘conduct’ just because a government says so or because it may be described as a ‘treatment’ or ‘therapeutic modality,’” wrote Justice Neil Gorsuch in the majority opinion, referring to the speech of Christian counselor Kaley Chiles, who sued the state of Colorado over the conversion therapy ban with representation from the right-wing legal giant, the Alliance Defending Freedom.
Gorsuch’s opinion draws an extraordinary conclusion about the role of certain speech acts in professional health care settings.
The Colorado law did not ban Chiles from holding and expressing Christian views; the law, like regulations in over 20 other states, banned conversion talk therapy – that is, speech acts delivered with the specific aim to “change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity, including efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attraction or feelings toward individuals of the same sex.”
It is precisely professional conduct that the law regulates.
As Jackson noted in her dissent, “The Constitution does not pose a barrier to reasonable regulation of harmful medical treatments just because substandard care comes via speech instead of a scalpel.”
Every major medical and mental health association has condemned the practice of conversion therapy.
Other Liberal Justices?
Given the danger posed by the court’s decision, it may seem surprising that the two other liberal justices, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, sided with the far-right majority. Their decision, according to their concurring opinions, related to the fact that Colorado’s law was not written in sufficiently “viewpoint-neutral” language.
“We need not here decide how to assess viewpoint-neutral laws regulating health providers’ expressions because, as the Court holds, Colorado’s is not one,” wrote Sotomayor.
[
Related
Executive Lawlessness: Leah Litman on the Supreme Court Enabling Presidential Overreach](https://theintercept.com/2025/07/18/litman-scotus-executive-overreach/)
With this far-right super majority Supreme Court, however, even cautiously worded conversion therapy bans may not survive the conservative justices. In the last year alone, the court has bucked precedents and ignored medical expertise, not to mention basic humanity, in previous anti-trans decisions like banning trans youth health care and ejecting trans people from the military.
The court’s Tuesday decision did not in itself strike down the Colorado law, but in siding with conversion therapy, the justices returned the case to the Tenth Circuit, where the highest form of judicial scrutiny will be applied. The law will almost certainly be struck down.
If existing bans are invalidated, those seeking to stop a further proliferation of conversion therapy may now have to use “creative methods,” Reed wrote, like tort law and malpractice law.
This is the grim legal terrain forged by the Trump regime and bigoted groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom, aided by too many negligent or complicit liberals. Medical malpractice and harmful speech acts are protected, whereas trans kids’ existence gets no protection at all.
The post Conversion Therapy Gets Speech Protections — But Trans Kids’ Existence Gets No Protection At All appeared first on The Intercept.
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Islamophobic chants by Spanish fans during a friendly football match against Egypt have sparked outrage. Stadium management were forced to intervene repeatedly to halt the racist behavior.
During the first half, some fans chanted offensive phrases, most notably “If you don’t jump, you’re a Muslim,” and booed during the Egyptian national anthem. The chants were repeated on several occasions.
Islamophobic chants
Observers at Espanyol’s stadium in Barcelona reported that organizers displayed a warning message on the stadium screens during half time, which was also read aloud by the stadium announcer, urging fans to stop the Islamophobic chants. The warning was repeated at the start of the second half, amidst continued booing from attendees.
In its first official response, the Spanish Football Federation condemned the incident, emphasizing in a statement published on its official social media accounts its categorical rejection of such behavior. The statement read:
The Spanish Football Federation stands against racism in football and condemns any act of violence within stadiums.
And Spanish coach Luis de la Fuente called the chants “intolerable” and said those responsible:
must be removed from society, identified, and kept as far away as possible.
The match was part of both teams’ preparations for the 2026 World Cup, scheduled to be held in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, for which both teams have already qualified.
The match saw the participation of Lamine Yamal, a player of Moroccan descent and a Muslim, in the Spanish national team’s starting lineup. Observers considered the chants to have implications beyond the realm of sports, reigniting the debate about the rise of hate speech in European stadiums.
Featured image via the Canary
By Alaa Shamali
From Canary via This RSS Feed.
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FIFA President Gianni Infantino has confirmed the organization’s commitment to Iran’s participation in the 2026 World Cup finals, emphasizing that there is no alternative plan to exclude them despite the political complexities surrounding the tournament.
ESPN quoted Infantino as saying during an interview with the Mexican channel N+ Univision:
We want Iran to play… they will play in the World Cup. There is no Plan B, C, or D; there is only one Plan A.
Infantino explained that FIFA remains committed to holding the tournament as scheduled, with the participation of all qualified teams, stressing that the organization seeks to “build bridges” through football, far removed from political tensions.
These statements come amid escalating geopolitical tensions, particularly with the United States, along with Canada and Mexico, hosting the next World Cup. This has raised questions about Iran’s potential participation or the possibility of moving its matches to another country, given the escalating US-Israeli conflict with Iran.
According to the agency, the Iranian Football Federation had proposed playing its matches outside the United States, but FIFA has not yet shown any inclination to amend its organizational plans.
The 2026 World Cup is scheduled to take place between June 11 and July 19, marking the first edition to feature 48 teams and be held across three countries.
Featured image via the Canary
By Alaa Shamali
From Canary via This RSS Feed.
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A heroic activist alleged to have been one of three people who spray painted a US military warplane at Ireland’s Shannon airport has said Palestine campaigners need to escalate beyond “marches, speeches and rallies”.
Conan Kavanagh has been charged with:
…criminal damage of the main body of a Boeing 737-700 belonging to the US Navy Reserve at Shannon airport on November 22nd.
Police say he and his comrades crashed through an airport barrier before making their way to the warplane used by the United States military for its global terror campaigns. They are then alleged to have used a “modified fire extinguisher” to douse the offensive object with green spray paint. Showing the extent to which the Irish government will go to protect its US master, Irish soldiers aimed guns at the non-violent activists.
Speaking to Al Jazeera, Cavanagh said:
I took part in the action out of a general frustration with the Irish establishment and society.
He continued:
For a country that prides itself on a shared history of colonialism and resistance, I think we’re incredibly limited in how we express support for the Palestinian people.
A lot of Palestinian activism in Ireland is centred around marches, speeches and rallies, which while good needs to be escalated upon with more actively disruptive protests if we hope to actually force the hands of the state.
Palestine direct action: Shannon hit several times, but more needed
There have been four incursions into the genocide-enabling airport since March 2024, including three in the last year. In the first one on the 30th of that month, three activists got on the runway with a banner which read “US military out of Shannon”. On 1 May 2025, three activists are alleged to have again used a van to breach the airport perimeter, though a trench prevented further progress. 16 days later, another trio got into the facility and spray-painted a US military-contracted Omni Air International Boeing 767 with red paint.
More must be done to match the scale of criminality, however. The airport has for years been a key refuelling point for the US empire*.* Shannon Watch details this feeble surrender to American militarism, stating that:
Since 2002 close to 3 million US troops have gone through Shannon Airport.
Shannon is also used as a means to ferry munitions across the world. The Irish government has to grant exemptions for overflights or landing at the airport. Shannon Watch show that 1354 of these were issued in 2024. Al Jazeeraquote Irish senator Alice Mary Higgins saying:
…it is known that the largest number of exemptions have been sought by Germany and the United States.
The Ditchhas reported the Irish government admitting that Shannon has been used to ferry munitions – the tools of genocide – from the US to so-called ‘Israel’. Lately, warplanes have been landing at Shannon before heading on to Germany’s Ramstein Air Base. It is the main US staging post for its illegal assault on Iran.
The Irish government has been unwilling to carry out inspections of planes to see if they are carrying weapons likely to be used to carry out war crimes. This is unsurprising for a government determined to completely end Ireland’s always imperfect position of neutrality. Taoiseach Micheál Martin has been enthusiastically covering for Trump’s mass murder, including during a truly pathetic display at the White House on St Patrick’s Day.
Promising escalation against Collins and GAA
Al Jazeera also spoke to Aine Ni Threinir, who was arrested following the March 2024 action. She agreed with Kavanagh, saying opposition to the US military presence at Shannon:
…should be something that we all mobilise strongly around.
Ni Threinir said people “absolutely could do more”. She acknowledged the risks when the criminal Irish state is determined to invert reality by prosecuting activists attempting to uphold international law.
The South of Ireland has seen increasing use of direct action in the last year. Activists have repeatedly targeted the Cork offices of Collins Aerospace. The company transferred munitions to the Zionist entity via Shannon. On March 30 campaigners from Palestine Action Éire improved the premises’ facade with the use of a hammer and spray paint can. Two activists from the group are alleged to have caused £100,000 of damage during an action on 13 October 2025. In the supposedly more radical North, those backing Palestine are yet to hit equivalent targets such as Aldergrove airport or the companies Act Now named as helping manufacture F35 warplanes.
The effectiveness of direct action was seen again when campaigners took over a Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) conference at Croke Park. They were opposing the continued use of Allianz as a sponsor, who help insure Zionist land thieves taking Palestinian territory. The pressure resulted in GAA boss Jarlath Burns being provoked into making tone-deaf comments comparing the occupation of the GAA building to the occupation of Palestine.
The sporting organisation’s continued resistance to dropping Allianz suggests direct action will be needed again. Similarly, the Football Association of Ireland must be shown they face a cost if they continue with their plan to play the Nations League match against the genocidal apartheid pseudo-state.
Featured image via the Canary
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The US has denied that it’s planning a ground invasion of Iran. Despite this, there have been signs that the US is preparing for what will undoubtedly be another catastrophic land war. One of the latest is that US troops are telling strippers that deployment is imminent:
AMERICA DECIDES ‘26: Who do you trust when it comes to whether the troops are getting deployed?
OSINT strippers or manifesto-publishing access journos? pic.twitter.com/BBsIw5Z4Po
— ParaPower Mapping (@KlonnyPin_Gosch) March 29, 2026
Iran ground invasion signs
In the video above, influencer Charm Daze says:
So I work at a strip club next to several military bases and something I have noticed lately is all the military guys are coming in and they’re spending all their money… It’s sad. They’re like kind of depressed, and they’re like just coming in like ‘oh yeah, we’re gonna have fun like we’re getting’ – what is it called? Deployed? – ‘like we’re getting deployed next week…
I don’t want to spread misinformation or anything, but it’s just like, a lot of them are really kind. And to see these young guys that look like my pinky toe, they’re so – they’re like fetuses – coming in and then dancing with them and then being like, bye.
It’s actually making me emotional.
It’s fucked up.
In response to the above, a military commenter advised troops not to tell their secrets to their strippers, barbers, etc:
This stripper has singlehandedly caused an OPSEC crisis and panic amongst ex-military careerists.
OSINT strippers, hold the line! Double your Army brass seduction efforts! https://t.co/iA8g88pIFL pic.twitter.com/8jI0OScRDr
— ParaPower Mapping (@KlonnyPin_Gosch) March 30, 2026
The problem, of course, is that many of these troops will feel like their lives are being thrown away for the benefit of oil executives and Jeffrey Epstein associates. As such, why should they care about keeping the empire’s secrets?
Featured image via Charm Daze (Instagram)
By Willem Moore
From Canary via This RSS Feed.
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KKE MEPs denounce Israel’s death penalty law for Palestinians, submit question to European Commission
(www.idcommunism.com)
The European Parliament Group of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) denounces the new crime against the heroic Palestinian people—the imposition of the death penalty by the State of Israel — through a question submitted to the European Commission by the Party’s MEPs, Kostas Papadakis and Lefteris Nikolaou-Alavanos.
In their question, they state:
“The occupying State of Israel has proceeded with yet another crime against the Palestinian people, who are waging a heroic struggle. The Israeli parliament (Knesset) has enacted a law approving the death penalty for Palestinians convicted of ‘terrorist attacks’ by military courts. This includes, among others, Palestinians whom Israel has arbitrarily imprisoned for years without even being formally charged, under the unacceptable regime of ‘administrative detention’.
This law openly challenges the right of Palestinians to live on their own land and establishes legislation whereby, in the 21st century, human beings are sentenced to death because their right to live freely is labeled a ‘terrorist’ act.
This abhorrent law constitutes a further escalation of Israel’s criminal policy, perpetuating the genocide against the Palestinian people. It continues a long line of laws and repressive measures adopted by some of the most brutal and oppressive regimes against peoples engaged in struggle.
The result of this policy is thousands of dead and injured Palestinians, along with the inability to meet basic needs in the occupied territories, such as access to water, food, and medicine.
No matter how much the EU, its governments, and the bourgeois media attempt to portray their ally Israel as the ‘only democracy in the Middle East’, reality itself refutes them, as the peoples of the region experience first-hand the ongoing crimes committed on a daily basis.
For years, the EU and the European Parliament have systematically instrumentalized the issue of the ‘death penalty’ in relation to countries whose interests conflict with those of the EU, posing as ‘defenders of human rights’ in order to advance the EU’s strategic agenda. Yet, when similar inhumane laws are imposed by their own allies—such as the monarchical regime in Saudi Arabia or the State of Israel—they limit themselves to expressions of cheap concern, applying a blatant double standard.”
Based on the above, the KKE MEPs submitted the following questions:
“What is the position of the High Representative/Vice-President of the EU regarding:
– The monstrous law passed by the Knesset providing for the death penalty against Palestinians who resist the genocide carried out by the State of Israel?
– The demand for the immediate suspension of the EU–Israel Association Agreement, as well as the imposition of an immediate embargo on the sale of arms and dual-use goods by EU Member States to Israel, which has adopted this disgraceful law?”.
From In Defense of Communism via This RSS Feed.
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If the above headline makes no sense to you, it’s because you’re unfamiliar with the tradition of egg rolling. This is a game played around Easter in which children roll hard-boiled eggs down a big hill. The reason you’ve never heard of it is because it’s localised to Scotland and the Lancashire city of Preston.
It’s hitting the news now, because PETA have stepped in to ask that we use potatoes instead of eggs. And as a Prestonian myself, I want to say this is the worst thing to ever happen to someone in the Easter period (barring the crucifixion, of course).
PETA is urging a city council to "modernise" their famous Easter egg roll – by swapping traditional hens' eggs for dyed potatoes.https://t.co/pdCFY6vRaE
— ITV Granada Reports (@GranadaReports) March 31, 2026
The spud, the bad, and the eggly
Wikipedia notes the following about egg rolling:
In Lancashire there are annual egg rolling competitions at Holcombe Hill near Ramsbottom and Avenham Park in Preston. Egg rolling has been a tradition at Avenham Park for hundreds of years, but in recent years chocolate eggs have been used.
We were already using chocolate eggs when I grew up in the 90’s, so this is nothing new. If it rained, we used to roll them down the stairs at home. When I grew up, I was baffled to learn that most people eat their chocolate eggs without first rolling them down some sort of incline.
Wikipedia adds:
Traditionally, the eggs were wrapped in onion skins and boiled to give them a mottled, gold appearance (although today they usually are painted), and the children competed to see who could roll their egg the farthest. There is an old Lancashire legend that says the broken eggshells should be crushed carefully afterward, or these would be stolen and used as boats by witches.
No one believes the above now, of course, because it’s well known Preston witches build their boats from fiberglass.
Getting to the story at hand, Blog Preston reported:
An animal rights organisation has urged Preston City Council to swap eggs for dyed potatoes for the annual tradition of egg-rolling.
People have been visiting Avenham Park to roll eggs down the hill for more than 150 years and thousands of people attend every year.
But PETA has written to Preston City Council urging them to switch eggs for dyed ‘Easter potatoes’ – despite the majority of people now rolling chocolate eggs rather than boiled eggs.
In PETA’s own words:
Children love animals and would be sad to learn that the eggs used for fun and games at Preston’s egg rolling event come from tormented hens who live miserable lives on Britain’s farms.
Easter should be a time of renewal and joy for all sentient beings – and that means hens, too.
There are a couple of problems with PETA’s stance. The first is they’re several decades too late, because people mostly use chocolate eggs now. The second is there are no inspectors checking attendees’ eggs to ensure they’re up to code. People just rock up and roll; it’s incredibly informal like that.
As Preston City Council said:
The event does not prescribe the type of egg to be rolled, and visitors have the choice as to what they roll down the hill.
This isn’t the first time that PETA has attached itself to a baffling campaign anyway:
Dear @peta
As the parent of a child with Autism, kindly get in the bin.
What is your issue with people who are neurodivergent?
This is next level ableism and flat out lies. pic.twitter.com/G8gvVgsRhE
— Alex Tiffin (@RespectIsVital) January 5, 2021
If you’ve read this and would like to know more about Preston, our other big controversy is that historians keep asking our promoters stop claiming Toto wrote their smash hit Africa in one of our nightclubs. We’re also the birthplace of R2-D2 actor Kenny Baker (RIP).
Featured image via Visit Preston
By Willem Moore
From Canary via This RSS Feed.
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New analysis has raised growing concerns about energy market volatility and its impact on the global economy. 350.org is urging governments to go further and tackle the root cause of rising costs: fossil fuel profiteering.
The organisation’s intervention follows a communiqué written by G7 Energy and Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors. The G7 group recently held a meeting online, which reaffirmed the need to closely monitor the impact of surging energy prices on households and markets. But without action being taken on extraordinary corporate profits, these efforts risk falling short.
Profiteering impacts the cost of living
Recent market activity highlights the scale of the issue. Energy giant Total is reported [paywall] to have monopolized crude shipments from the UAE and Oman last month, securing around 70 shipments. By stockpiling oil during escalating tensions in the Gulf, the company is estimated to have made $1 billion in profit in just one month, as Murban crude prices surged from $70 to $170 per barrel.
The analysis by 350.org shows that $100 billion has been siphoned from ordinary people to oil and gas companies due to soaring energy prices. With less oil available on the market, companies like TotalEnergies are able to exert outsized control over supply, selling to the highest bidder, likely overseas markets, rather than helping ease pressure on energy bills for households already struggling with the cost of living.
Fanny Petitbon, France Team Lead, said:
It is obscene that companies like TotalEnergies are making enormous profits from war, while ordinary people’s lives are being shattered and the world faces a spiraling economic crisis. At a time of such profound human suffering, no company should be allowed to exploit chaos and conflict for financial gain. The G7’s deafening silence on these windfall profits speaks volumes, signaling a failure to hold corporate greed accountable while the rest of the world pays the price.
Coordinated international action is needed
Advocates are calling for coordinated international action to introduce windfall taxes on fossil fuel companies benefiting from crisis-driven price spikes. Revenues raised could be used to support vulnerable households, accelerate the transition to renewable energy, and fund recovery efforts in regions affected by conflict.
Petitbon added:
The principle is clear: extraordinary profits made in times of crisis should be redirected for the public good, not concentrated in the hands of a few.
This intervention follows the submission of a letter by 40 UK civil society organisations, who are similarly calling on the government to introduce new domestic levies across various war-profiteering industries.
By The Canary
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By Sinde Astraea, North East Scotland CND – Campaigning for Peace, April 1, 2026
Early on the morning of 14 March we scrambled onto our bus and travelled from Aberdeen to Faslane, stopping at Dundee, Perth, and Stirling to welcome aboard an enthusiastic bunch of peace protestors.
The rain began to pelt down as we arrived at the Faslane nuclear submarine base to join the mass protest. Undeterred, we stood at the North Gate with our banners and flags, cheering the many inspiring speakers and performers. Notably, Sophie Bolt from UK CND and Coll McCail from Stop the War Scotland gave fiery and informative speeches about the threat of increasing nuclearization. JC Bigfoot from our own group performed an energising rap called TikTok on the theme of the Doomsday Clock.
We drove to a lookout point to see the layout of the base where the Trident nuclear submarines are stationed. One of these submarines at any moment is patrolling the North Atlantic, posing the threat to Russia of a first strike. The nuclear weapons based at Faslane and Coulport don’t “deter” any potential attackers – they put Scotland in MORE danger of being attacked.
Nuclear weapons underwrite the aggression of the countries that possess them. At this moment in History, abolishing nuclear weapons and working towards global peace is more urgent than ever.
Our group arrived back in Aberdeen even more determined to support the campaign to get the government to remove nuclear weapons and sign up to the International Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, and to work towards long term peace.
The post Protest Held At Faslane Nuclear Submarine Base appeared first on World BEYOND War.
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Western media is busy salivating over the decapitation of leaders in the Middle East
(www.thecanary.co)
Western media’s reporting of the Anglo-American-Zionist strategy of decapitation of leaders in the Middle East is so prolific that one might think they don’t see a problem with it.
As ever, a central element of settler colonialism and imperialism is cognitive dissonance. After all, imagine the absolute uproar in the West if a political leader was beheaded. But for leaders from the Global South, suddenly beheading is a genius military manoeuvre ripe with incisive intelligence operations.
Western media salivates
Greg Miller of the Washington Post, describing what amounts to state terrorism by Israel, uses words like “tactics,” “honed,” and “capable.”
How Israel tracks and targets Iran’s leaders – with an expanding role from AI. A story from Tel Aviv. https://t.co/tGSd54V9CU
— Greg Miller (@gregpmiller) March 30, 2026
He says:
Israel’s targeted killing tactics — bombs planted months before being detonated, drones capable of slipping into apartment windows and supersonic missiles fired from stealth fighter jets — have been honed by years of conflict in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran.
“Years of conflict” is a funny way of saying ‘belligerent invasions from a rogue state,’ but okay Greg.
The assassination of Khamenei is described a “singular intelligence breakthrough.”
Even when Miller offers criticism, it is not of the terrorism or extrajudicial killings, but because the goals of the decapitation strategy are “elusive” or the AI is not “foolproof.”
There are many such cases.
‘A whiff’
The FT asks whether the killing of a sovereign state’s leader can ever be justified.
When, if ever, is it an appropriate tactic of war or foreign policy to engage in a ‘decapitation strike’ — the intentional targeted killing of the leaders of another state?
Martin Sandbu reports: https://t.co/wGDMLpIRlh pic.twitter.com/YQOcSCgzWW
— Financial Times (@FT) March 28, 2026
To the FT’s defence, at least it concludes that there is “more than a whiff of racism or imperialism” about this strategy. We’d call it an unbearable, rancid stench – but there we are.
Sandbu says:
And it is not a coincidence that when heads of state or government have been targeted, it has usually been in what used to be known as the third world. There is more than a whiff of racism or imperialism in the selective respect the norm enjoyed in the first place, of the same type as has been called out in the International Criminal Court for tending to pursue the leaders of poor countries.
The whole essay, nevertheless, is an ice-cold bucket of imperialism. The essay worries about “what we lose when we lose the norm.” The “we” is unmistakably Western.
And, the framing Iran’s ability to survive decapitation is also replete with racist innuendos.
The hydra at the core of Iran’s regime built to survive decapitation https://t.co/AT708WPILP
— The Times and The Sunday Times (@thetimes) March 27, 2026
The Times, for instance, somehow calls Iran’s government a hydra. Calling a sovereign government a mythical beast strips it of legitimacy before the analysis even starts. It frames Iran not as a country with people, laws, and a history, but as a monster that needs killing.
State terrorism
Across Western media, the killing of leaders is often framed as a strategy.
Iran’s UN ambassador, Amir Saeid Iravani, in a letter to the Security Council, called the US-Israeli policy of “assassination lists” as state terrorism.
He said the promotion of such lists is no different from the terrorist actions that have deliberately bombed and killed hundreds of schoolchildren, targeted hospitals, and destroyed cultural heritage sites.
The Wall Street Journal has reported that Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Iran’s Speaker of Parliament Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf were on the US-Israeli assassination target lists.
Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the head of the Supreme National Security Council, Ali Larijani, are among those killed by US and Israeli strikes.
Norman Finkelstein said in a recent interview that the assassination of Khamenei on February 28 was “the most brazen, flagrant, outrageous breach of the UN Charter ever.” He specifically pointed to Article 2 and Article 51 of the UN Charter.
He pointed to Article 2 of the UN Charter, which requires states to exhaust diplomatic means before resorting to war. The Omanis were mediating between the US and Iran. Oman confirmed that talks were moving forward.
Secondly, he pointed to Article 51, which allows self-defence only in the event of an armed attack.
Finkelstein explained that there is a narrow exception for a preemptive strike, like if missiles were already in the air or planes were on route and couldn’t be turned back. “None of those applied in this situation,” he said.
So let’s ask Western media: why is state terrorism called “strategy,” and why are UN violations treated as a “dilemma”?
Featured image via the Canary
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