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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Savoy Brown

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features blues rock group Savoy Brown. Enjoy!

^{Savoy Brown - Hellbound Train}

"The "Powers That Be" are not smart enough to engineer Armageddon, but they may yet be stupid enough."

-- Stephen Hawking

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News and Opinion

The US War Machine Is Run By Deranged Armageddon Cultists

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth gave one of his signature “I don’t have a small penis” tirades at the Pentagon on Wednesday, ranting and raving about the big, powerful, masculine war machinery that’s currently raining death and destruction upon the people of Iran.

“We will fly all day, all night, day and night finding, fixing and finishing the missiles and defense industrial base of the Iranian military, finding and fixing their leaders and their military leaders, flying over Tehran, flying over Iran, flying over their capital, flying over the IRGC, Iranian leaders looking up and seeing only US and Israeli air power every minute of every day until we decide it’s over,” Hegseth bloviated, saying there will be “B-2s, B-52s, B-1s, Predator drones, fighters controlling the skies, picking targets, death and destruction from the sky all day long.”

“This was never meant to be a fair fight, and it is not a fair fight. We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be,” the War Secretary spouted.

U.S. Secretary of War Crimes:

“Flying over Tehran, flying over Iran, flying over their capital…Iranians looking up only seeing U.S.-Israeli air power. Death & destruction from the sky all day long.”

This is how Nazis talk. He is telling you the objective is DEATH. Believe him. pic.twitter.com/KJ9ayZSwvZ

— Power to the People (@ProudSocialist) March 4, 2026

This would be the same Pete Hegseth who was mentioned in a recent article by Jonathan Larsen titled “U.S. Troops Were Told Iran War Is for ‘Armageddon,’ Return of Jesus”, which reports that US military commanders are telling American soldiers that they are on a mission from God to fulfill a biblical prophecy and bring about the end of the world.

“Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has enshrined evangelical Christianity at the uppermost levels of the U.S. military, airing monthly prayer meetings throughout the Pentagon,” Larsen reports, saying that “Last year, the Pentagon confirmed to me that Hegseth attends a weekly White House Bible study. It’s led by a preacher who says God commands America to support Israel.”

Larsen reports that the Military Religious Freedom Foundation has been inundated with complaints from every branch of the US military that troops are being told by their leaders that President Trump has been “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth,” and similar statements.

Then you’ve got House Speaker Mike Johnson spouting religious war rhetoric, claiming Iranians have been led to evil by a “misguided religion”.

“The largest state sponsor of terrorism, Iran and its proxies, have killed more Americans than any other terrorist regime on Earth,” said Johnson on Wednesday. “They are dedicated to it. They have been, and they say the quiet parts out loud. They wanted to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth, and they’d like to take us out as well. We’re the great Satan in their analogy and their misguided religion.”

went from a “limited operation” to Crusades 2.0 in four days https://t.co/9pFNXuMZvv

— Amir (@AmirAminiMD) March 4, 2026

So as if we didn’t have enough problems to deal with, it turns out the world is ruled by a nuclear-armed Armageddon cult.

The US empire is the most evil, destructive and dangerous power structure on this planet. It is operated by psychopaths and guided by demented religious zealotry. These freaks wouldn’t be believable as villains in a children’s cartoon show.

These are the people claiming to have the moral authority to decide who should be the leader of a sovereign nation on the other side of the planet. These are the powerful individuals whose choices are determining the path our species will take into the future.

They are everything they accuse Iran of being. They are dangerous religious fanatics. They cannot be trusted with nuclear weapons. They are the tyrants. They are the monsters.

This is unsustainable. These guys gotta go. The US empire must fall. Humanity depends on it.

‘Iran is United’: Iranian Journalist Reports from Tehran

The farce of "representative" democracy continues...

US House rejects war powers resolution to end Trump’s hostilities with Iran

The US House of Representatives on Thursday voted down a Democratic-backed measure to halt hostilities with Iran, as Republicans cleared the way for Donald Trump to continue the conflict that has drawn in countries across the Middle East, but criticized as having unclear goals.

By a vote of 212-219, the House voted to reject a war powers resolution proposed by Thomas Massie, a Republican representative, and Ro Khanna, a Democratic representative, which would have forced the US to withdraw from the conflict until Congress authorized military action. The vote was largely along party lines, with two Republicans breaking with their party to support the resolution, and four Democrats voting against it.

The measure’s failure in the House came after the Senate GOP rejected a similar war powers resolution on Wednesday. Republicans control both chambers of Congress, and their leaders have made clear that they believe Trump was authorized to initiate the air and naval campaign that began over the weekend, prompting Tehran to launch drones and missiles across the Middle East. Six US troops have been killed, as well as 1,230 people in Iran.

Day 7: US Capabilities Strained, Iran’s Defense Continues + US is not Fighting Iran “For Israel”

Israel launches huge strikes against south Beirut after mass evacuation order

Israel has launched massive strikes against the southern suburbs of Beirut just hours after its military ordered the entire population of the area – more than 500,000 people – to evacuate immediately. The Israel Defense Forces had told all residents of the area to “save your lives and evacuate your homes immediately”, prompting an exodus of the Lebanese capital’s population in scenes of panic, before its warplanes launched strikes against what it claimed were Hezbollah targets in the area. The area covered by the order included several hospitals and government ministries.

The strikes marked a significant escalation in Israel’s growing offensive in Lebanon, which began after Hezbollah fired missiles and drones into Israel on Monday. Footage on Thursday evening showed smoke billowing over the neighbourhood of Dahiya. Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said that the strikes would make the Beirut suburb “look like [Gaza’s] Khan Younis”, a section of southern Gaza that has been almost entirely destroyed by Israeli bombs.

On the same day, Tehran launched retaliatory airstrikes against Israel and US bases across the region, and Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, promised a further escalation. “If you think you’ve seen something, just wait,” he said. At the White House, Donald Trump said that members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) would be given immunity if they threw down their weapons, but otherwise would face “guaranteed death”. He said the offer for immunity extended to Iran’s military and the police.

Trump claimed he should be involved in choosing Iran’s next supreme leader to replace Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in a US-Israeli airstrike on the first day of the war. The Israeli defence minister, Israel Katz, said on Thursday that the decision to assassinate Khamenei was made in November, far predating the breakdown in the nuclear programme negotiations that Donald Trump claimed led to the US launching a preemptive strike on Iran. The original timeline was for Israel to target Khamenei in the middle of 2026 but Netanyahu moved it up the schedule after riots broke out in Iran, Katz said.

At least 102 people have been killed and 638 injured in Lebanon by Israeli airstrikes, Lebanon’s ministry of health reported before Thursday night’s bombardment. The war, now in its sixth day, has also killed at least 1,230 people in Iran and about a dozen people in Israel. Six US soldiers have been killed.

Israel Brings ‘Gaza Doctrine’ to Lebanon: Rania Khalek Reports From Beirut

At least 13 hospitals and health facilities hit during attacks on Iran, WHO says

At least 13 hospitals and other health facilities have been hit during the US-Israel attacks on Iran, global health chiefs have said. The World Health Organization (WHO) said it was checking reports that four medics had been killed and 25 others injured.

At least 1,230 people have been killed in Iran, more than 100 in Lebanon and 13 in Israel since the war began, according to official statements. Thousands more have been injured across the region. Six US troops have also been killed. The death toll includes dozens of schoolchildren killed in a strike on Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Minab, southern Iran on Saturday.

The WHO warned that the conflict was jeopardising international humanitarian supply chains, and operations had been suspended at its global emergency logistics hub in Dubai. At a briefing on Thursday, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of WHO, said it had “verified 13 attacks on health care in Iran and one in Lebanon”. Ghebreyesus did not give further details, or attribute blame, but said: “Under international humanitarian law, healthcare must be protected and not attacked.”

Dr Hanan Balkhy, WHO’s regional director for the eastern Mediterranean, told the same briefing that four ambulances in Iran had been affected and that hospitals and other health sites suffered minor damage due to strikes nearby, citing Iranian authorities. Hospitals and clinics in Lebanon have been forced to close because of evacuation orders, she said. WHO had previously said a hospital in Tehran, Iran’s capital, was evacuated after explosions nearby.

Iran's Air Defense ACTIVE, Missiles POUND U.S. Bases + Hezbollah AMBUSHES Israel | Robert Inlakesh

Senators demand investigation after ninth American killed by Israeli settlers or soldiers in West Bank

More than 30 US senators have signed a letter demanding that the Trump administration open an independent investigation into the February killing of a 19-year-old American in the occupied West Bank, the ninth US citizen killed by Israeli soldiers or settlers since 2022.

The letter, led by Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and addressed to the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio; the US attorney general, Pam Bondi; and the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, asks for a US-led investigation and a full accounting of where all nine cases stand, and for the administration to brief Congress on the killing by 5 April. None of the cases have resulted in a criminal conviction. “This has now become a consistent pattern in which Americans are being killed in the West Bank by settlers or the [Israel Defense Forces (IDF)] without justice or accountability, despite promises from US officials,” the lawmakers wrote in the Wednesday letter, which was shared exclusively with the Guardian.

Nasrallah Abu Siyam, born in Philadelphia, was shot on 18 February in the West Bank village of Mukhmas during an attack on Palestinian farmers by a group of masked settlers. Witnesses said that Israeli soldiers present did not intervene, provide medical assistance or make any arrests.

Thursday’s letter was signed by 31 Democratic and independent senators, including senior figures such as the senate appropriations vice-chair, Patty Murray; the Democratic whip, Dick Durbin; the ranking member of the Senate armed services committee, Jack Reed; and the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders. Notably absent are both of Pennsylvania’s senators, the Democrat John Fetterman and the Republican Dave McCormick, despite Abu Siyam being a Philadelphia native. Fetterman has been one of Israel’s most vocal supporters in the Senate over the last few years and has not commented publicly on the killing.

The nine dead span a range of ages and circumstances. Shireen Abu Akleh, the renowned Palestinian American journalist, was shot in the head by an Israeli soldier in 2022 while clearly identified as press. Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, 26, from Seattle, was also shot in the head during a West Bank protest in 2024. Omar Assad, an elderly Palestinian-American, died of a stress-induced heart attack after being gagged, blindfolded, bound and left on the ground by IDF soldiers. Khamis al-Ayyada, 40, died of smoke inhalation in August after a fire was set by Israeli settlers in his village. Three of the nine were minors: a 14-year-old from New Jersey and two 17-year-olds killed in separate incidents. “For all nine of these killings, no one has yet been held accountable by the Netanyahu government,” the lawmakers wrote, “nor has the US government upheld its duty to protect Americans and secure justice and accountability for their deaths.”

Scott Ritter: IRAN WAR LIVE UPDATE

Ukraine to help US and its allies counter Iranian drones in Middle East, says Zelenskyy

The United States and its allies in the Middle East are seeking Ukraine’s expertise in countering Iran’s Shahed drones, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said. Various countries, including the US, have approached Ukraine for help in defending against the Iranian drones, Zelenskyy said late on Wednesday. He said he has spoken in recent days to the leaders of the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan and Kuwait about possible cooperation.

Ukrainian assistance in countering Iranian drones will be provided only if it does not weaken Ukraine’s own defences, the Ukrainian president said, and if it adds leverage to Kyiv’s diplomatic efforts to stop the Russian invasion. “We help to defend from war those who help us, Ukraine, bring a just end to the war” with Russia, Zelenskyy said. Later on Thursday, Zelenskyy said he had received a US request for support to defend against the drones in the Middle East and had given the order for equipment to be provided along with Ukrainian experts, without providing further details.

Ukraine has pioneered the development of cut-price drone-killing equipment that cost as little as $1,000, rewriting the air defence rulebook and making other countries take notice. Ukrainian manufacturers have developed low-cost interceptor drones specifically designed to hunt and destroy Shaheds, and its rapidly expanding drone industry is producing excess capacity.

Iran Rolls Out New Missiles As It Degrades U.S. Air Defences

US grants waiver to allow India to buy Russian oil amid Iran war

The US treasury issued a 30-day waiver on Thursday allowing India to buy Russian oil currently stuck at sea. “To enable oil to keep flowing into the global market, the treasury department is issuing a temporary 30-day waiver to allow Indian refiners to purchase Russian oil,” treasury secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement posted to social media.

“This deliberately short-term measure will not provide significant financial benefit to the Russian government as it only authorizes transactions involving oil already stranded at sea,” he continued. He called it a stopgap measure, as Washington expects India to eventually buy more US oil.

“This stopgap measure will alleviate pressure caused by Iran’s attempt to take global energy hostage,” Bessent said. Bessent’s announcement came after months of Washington pressuring New Delhi to avoid buying Russian barrels in an effort to reduce money flowing to Moscow’s war effort in Ukraine.

India is vulnerable to energy supply shocks, with crude stocks covering only about 25 days of demand. India gets about 40% of its oil imports from the Middle East through the Strait of Hormuz.

Jobs CRATER, Gas SKYROCKETS, Anti-War Vote FAILS

New York and other US states sue Trump over ‘illegal and reckless’ tariffs

A coalition of Democratic attorneys general and governors across 24 US states are suing Donald Trump to block his latest round of tariffs. The White House is planning to enact a new 15% tariff on all imports after the supreme court declared Trump’s “liberation day” tariffs illegal. The tariffs have yet to go into effect, though the White House said the new rate would start this week.

The lawsuit, led by New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, argues that Trump does not have the authority to impose these tariffs, and demands states are refunded for tariff costs. Attorneys general from 21 other states, along with the governors of Kentucky and Pennsylvania, are joined in the suit, which is expected to be filed on Thursday in the US court of international trade.

The attorneys filing the lawsuit argue that no president has ever issued tariffs under section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, which they say was created for outdated monetary balance problems. The law caps the tariff rate and time to 15% for a maximum of 150 days.

“Once again, President Trump is ignoring the law and the constitution to effectively raise taxes on consumers and small businesses,” James said in a statement. “The president is causing more economic chaos and expecting Americans to foot the bill. These tariffs will only drive up the cost of living, and I will continue to uphold the rule of law to protect New Yorkers.”

The New York governor, Kathy Hochul, in a statement called the tariffs “illegal and reckless” and demanded the federal government “refunds the $13.5bn taken from hard-working New Yorkers and end the economic chaos that these unlawful taxes have created”.

US judge orders refunds for more than $130bn in illegal Trump tariffs

A US trade court judge on Wednesday ordered the government to begin paying potentially billions of dollars in refunds to importers who paid tariffs that the supreme court said last month were collected illegally. Richard Eaton, a judge of the US Court of International Trade in Manhattan, ordered the government to finalize the cost of bringing millions of shipments into the US without assessing a tariff, according to a court filing. He ordered the refunds to be made with interest.

When merchandise is brought into the United States, an importer pays an estimated amount at entry which is then finalized around 314 days later, a process known as liquidation. Eaton directed Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to finalize the entry cost on shipments without the tariff being assessed, resulting in a refund. “Customs knows how to do this,” he told a court hearing on Wednesday, according to a recording on the court’s website. He said the agency should be able to program its system to issue refunds, which are regularly issued when an importer overpays on an estimated duty. “They do it every day. They liquidate entries and make refunds,” he said.

Eaton also set a hearing for Friday in which he asked for updates on CBP’s refund plans. He said in his order that the court’s chief judge indicated that Eaton is the only judge who will hear tariff refund cases.

CBP has said in court filings that the task of finalizing entry costs without assessing a tariff was “unprecedented” in scale and could require manual review of more than 70m entries. The agency had said in other court filings it wanted up to four months to assess its options for paying refunds.

The US government collected more than $130bn in illegal tariff payments, which were central to Donald Trump’s trade policy. The supreme court did not provide guidance for issuing refunds, creating confusion over how importers would be reimbursed.

ICE detainee in Arizona dies after not receiving ‘timely medical attention’

A man being held at a US immigration detention facility in Arizona died this week after reporting severe tooth pain and not receiving “timely medical attention”, according to a local official.

Emmanuel Damas, a Haitian asylum seeker, was being held at the Florence correctional center in Arizona when he began to feel a toothache in mid-February, a pain that weeks later led him to the hospital before he died on Monday.

“His reported struggle to receive timely medical attention before being transferred to a hospital raises serious and painful concerns about the quality of care provided to individuals in custody,” Christine Ellis, a Chandler city council member, said in an Instagram post.

According to Ellis, Damas was taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Boston in September 2025 and was later transferred to the facility in Florence, Arizona. The Arizona Daily Star reported that Ellis had called for an investigation into Damas’s death.

“He was complaining for almost two weeks straight, until he collapsed and got septic from the infection,” Ellis told the local news outlet. Ellis said Damas was transferred to a Scottsdale hospital sometime last week. At least 32 people died in ICE custody last year, marking the deadliest year for detainees of the federal immigration agency in more than two decades.

Kristi Noem FIRED

Trump fires homeland security secretary Kristi Noem

Donald Trump on Thursday announced he was replacing Kristi Noem as the homeland security secretary, capping weeks of bipartisan complaints about her leadership after immigration agents killed two US citizens and reports emerged that she was involved in a personal relationship with a top deputy.

Noem’s firing was the first major personnel shake-up of Trump’s second term. The president made it public in a post on Truth Social, in which he said Markwayne Mullin, a Republican Oklahoma senator, would take over from Noem starting on 31 March.

Noem, who Trump said “has served us well, and has had numerous and spectacular results (especially on the Border!)”, would become special envoy for “the Shield of the Americas”, a security initiative Trump said he planned to announce over the weekend.

“It’s humbling,” Mullin said to reporters on Thursday. “Because it happened quick, I had to call my dad, and it’s just pretty humbling when you start thinking about it, a little kid from west Oklahoma getting to serve in the president’s cabinet. That is pretty neat.”

In a statement on X, Noem thanked Trump for appointing her to the new role, while promoting her record leading the department. News of the firing broke just before she spoke to a group of police officials in Nashville, but Noem did not bring the subject up on stage.

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Vanuatu moves forward with UN climate resolution despite Trump opposition

The Trump administration’s attempt to sink a UN resolution demanding countries act on the climate crisis has caused cuts to the proposal but hasn’t entirely killed it, according to the tiny Pacific island country spearheading the effort. The US has demanded that Vanuatu, an archipelago in the south Pacific, drop its UN draft resolution that calls on the world to implement a landmark international court of justice (ICJ) ruling from last year that countries could face paying reparations if they fail to stem the climate crisis.

Vanuatu, one of several Pacific island countries that consider themselves existentially threatened by the climate crisis despite doing little to cause it, said it had to remove sections of its proposed resolution in the hope that a reduced version could be adopted at the UN in a vote later this month. “Having the Trump administration actively intervening in the market to stop the phase-out of fossil fuels is very frustrating, it’s beyond what you’d expect a government to do,” Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu’s minister for climate change adaption, said. “It’s going to have a huge harmful effect on the world and future generations.”

The resolution to fulfill the opinion issued by the ICJ is non-binding but “could pose a major threat to US industry”, the Trump administration said in guidance to American embassies and consulates last month. This opposition, alongside those of other major fossil fuel producers such as Saudi Arabia and Russia, has resulted in the proposed UN resolution being watered down.

The resolution previously called for countries to submit a registry of the “loss and damage” they suffer from the impacts of an overheating world, such as storms, floods and droughts. This accounting of damages was strenuously opposed by the US, the world’s second-largest carbon emitter, which has long feared legal liability for its pollution, and has now been dropped.

However, a new version of the resolution’s draft shared for debate this week still outlines that UN member countries “comply fully with their obligations under international law as they relate to climate change” consistent with the ICJ ruling, and restrain the global temperature rise to 1.5C above preindustrial times via “a rapid, just and quantified phase-out of fossil fuel production and use”. Regenvanu said: “The US asked us to withdraw the resolution, which is disappointing, and pushed back on the language.”

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Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

Prepare to Pay for the Despicable Cowardice of Pete Hegseth and Our Loathsome Masters

Hegseth Brags of Mass Killing in Iran

In Iran, Israel’s Morbid Military Cult Now Has the US Fully in Its Grip

How Liberals Support Trump's War Against Iran

While Cost of Living Soars and Healthcare Taken Away, Trump Spending $1 Billion Per Day in War of Choice With Iran

Israel Accused of Using AI to Pick Iran Targets ‘Without Any Human Oversight’—Just Like in Gaza

The U.S.-Iran War Of Attrition – A Global Depression To Counter Total Destruction

DAY 6 UPDATES: ATTACK ON IRAN

Trump Says He Must Have a Say in Picking Iran’s New Leader

Iran War: Systemic Risk of a Strait of Hormuz Closure, US Plan to Enlist Kurds, Hezbollah Unexpectedly Pounds Israel

‘What happened in Texas is a warning’: advocates say Republicans suppressed votes in the primaries

How Flightradar24 became the go-to platform for the world to watch global aviation crises unfold

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A Little Night Music

Savoy Brown Blues Band - I Ain't Superstitious

Savoy Brown - Shot In The Head

Savoy Brown - Money Can't Save Your Soul

Savoy Brown - She's Got A Ring In His Nose And A Ring On Her Hand

Savoy Brown - A Hard Way To Go

Savoy Brown - Howling For My Darling

Savoy Brown - Everybody Loves A Drinking Man

Savoy Brown - Made Up My Mind

Savoy Brown - Vicksburg Blues

Savoy Brown Blues Band - Shake 'Em On Down

Savoy Brown - Hernando’s Hideaway

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