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"It took the US 20 years to replace the Taliban with the Taliban, but only 9 days to replace Khamenei with Khamenei"

-- Curt Mills

News and Opinion

The US Soldiers Killed In This War Were Not Heroes

The US soldiers who are getting killed in the war with Iran were not heroes. They did not die defending their country. They did not die fighting to protect Americans. They died advancing the geostrategic agendas of oligarchs and empire managers which benefit ordinary Americans in no way.

It’s important not to valorize these people for two reasons. Firstly, it assists US military recruitment by falsely portraying these imperial stormtrooper careers as noble and heroic. Secondly, it falsely frames the war they died in as a righteous cause which is making the world a better place, rather than as a war of aggression against a nation that posed literally zero threat to their homeland.

These are not harmless little white lies. They are extremely destructive propaganda narratives which facilitate acts of mass military slaughter on real human beings.

Don’t assist the warmongers in circulating these lies. Don’t pretend they are true to help people feel nice feelings about the dead soldiers. People should not be feeling nice feelings about the dead soldiers. People should be angry and upset, and they should be demanding that this horrific war end immediately.

Those soldiers did not die for any noble reason. They died for money, for power, and for Israel. They wasted their lives, and they died for stupid, unworthy reasons. Don’t let anyone claim otherwise.

The US and Israel Liberate Iran by Setting it on Fire, Poisoning the Air, Bombing Schools

Trump says Iran war is ‘very complete, pretty much’ as economic toll rises

Donald Trump has said that the war in Iran is “very complete, pretty much”, as the economic toll of the joint US-Israeli operation has risen, disrupting global oil trade and threatening to engulf the Middle East in a regional war. Trump made the comments before a speech and press conference in Florida where he sought to emphasise that the US military campaign would be ending soon amid concerns from Republican allies that the US was being dragged into another long-term conflict in the region. “I think the war is very complete, pretty much,” he said in a phone call with CBS News. “They have no navy, no communications, they’ve got no air force.”

Addressing Republicans on Monday afternoon, he said: “We took a little excursion because we felt we had to do that to get rid of some evil. I think you’ll see it’s going to be a short-term excursion.” But he also indicated he was not yet declaring the US mission accomplished in Iran. “We’ve already won in many ways, but we haven’t won enough,” he said.

US and Israeli warplanes launched new waves of strikes on targets across Iran on Monday, as large crowds took to the streets in Tehran in a defiant show of support for Mojtaba Khamenei, the country’s newly appointed supreme leader. The conflict, now in its second week, continued to escalate, with fresh Iranian missile and drone attacks targeting Israel, US bases across the Middle East and energy infrastructure in the Gulf.

In Tehran’s Enghelab Square on Monday, thousands gathered to offer allegiance to Iran’s new supreme leader, hours after the appointment was formally announced. Chanting “Death to America, Death to Israel,” and “God is Great,” some waved Iranian flags, others banners bearing the portrait of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the new leader’s father, who was killed after 37 years in power by an Israeli airstrike in the first moments of the war. Armoured vehicles lined nearby roads and security personnel were stationed on the rooftops of surrounding buildings.

The defiant rhetoric in Tehran and the appointment of Khamenei, who is seen by analysts as a hardliner with close ties to the Revolutionary Guards, intensified fears that the conflict could last for weeks or even months and leave deep instability in its wake. Stock markets across the world fell sharply on Monday after oil prices surged.

Col Douglas Macgregor: NO, the IRAN WAR is NOT OVER

Russia's Lavrov meets with Arab ambassadors in Moscow who request that he pressure Iran to de-escalate.

Lavrov rejects their requests and points out that they have not condemned the bombing of the girls' school in Iran, and that Bahrain reportedly is seeking to introduce a… pic.twitter.com/PhvR8wVQSi

— Trita Parsi (@tparsi) March 8, 2026

Iran's Missile Program EXPLAINED (w/ Alastair Crooke)

Trump ally Lindsey Graham issues threat to Saudi Arabia over Iran war

Senator Lindsey Graham on Monday questioned whether the United States should honor a long-sought defense agreement with Saudi Arabia, saying the kingdom’s refusal to join military operations against Iran made the partnership difficult to justify given that Americans were dying in a war Graham himself helped push the Trump administration to start.

In a post on X, Graham said the American embassy in Riyadh was being evacuated due to sustained Iranian attacks on Saudi soil, and expressed frustration that Riyadh had declined to participate militarily despite what he described as a shared interest in defeating Iran.

“Americans are dying and the US is spending billions to dislodge the terrorist Iranian regime,” he wrote. “Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia seems to be issuing statements and doing things in the background that are marginally helpful.” He extended the pressure to the broader region: “Hopefully Gulf Cooperation Council countries will get more involved as this fight is in their backyard.” The post ended with a veiled threat: “If not, consequences will follow.”

Riyadh has been on the hunt for a formal US security guarantee modeled on Washington’s treaty with Japan that would commit the United States to help defend the kingdom against external attack. In May 2025, the Trump administration described a $142bn arms package with Riyadh as the largest defense cooperation agreement in US history, and in November it granted the kingdom major non-Nato ally status. A broader, binding mutual defense pact, however, remains unsigned.

The Saudi foreign ministry issued a response to the Iranian strikes earlier on Monday, condemning the attacks as unjustifiable and stating that Riyadh retains “its full right to take all necessary measures to safeguard its security, sovereignty, and the safety of its citizens”. It made no mention of joining US military operations, and the embassy did not return a request for comment.

Prof. John Mearsheimer : Evaluating Human Cost of This War - Can Anyone Justify So Much Violence?

There's nothing like a war to bring out the usual war hawks in one party to tar the other in a struggle for political supremacy.

Democrats file new war powers resolutions and call for public hearings on Iran strikes

Democratic senators have filed a wave of new war powers resolutions as they call on Republicans to convene public hearings into the US hostilities with Iran or be forced to vote on continuing a conflict that polls show majorities of Americans do not support.

Late last week, Democrats Cory Booker of New Jersey, Tim Kaine of Virginia, Adam Schiff of California, Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and Chris Murphy of Connecticut filed resolutions under the War Powers Act that would force the US military to withdraw from the war with Iran unless Congress votes to authorize the engagement.

The GOP-controlled Senate and House of Representatives blocked similar resolutions last week, largely along party lines, as Republican leaders argued that Donald Trump was acting within his authority when the United States attacked Iran alongside Israel at the end of February.

Aides to the Democratic senators say the goal of these latest resolutions is to push the Senate majority leader John Thune into convening public hearings with cabinet secretaries involved in the war effort, or the chamber will be forced to debate and vote on the resolutions in the following weeks.

“Now is the time for Democrats to use all the leverage we have to try to stop this unnecessary war. [Defense secretary] Pete Hegseth and [secretary of state] Marco Rubio must immediately come before Congress for a public hearing and explain why we’re in this war, how it will end, and why they are prioritizing billions of dollars on an open-ended war instead of lowering costs for American families.”

Ret. Col. Lawrence Wilkerson: Netanyahu Could Turn to Nuclear Bombs If Iran War Escalates

Pete Hegseth says ‘there will be more casualties’ in US war with Iran

Pete Hegseth, the US defense secretary, has said “there will be more casualties” in the US military from the Trump administration’s war in Iran after officials confirmed on Sunday that the number of US service members killed had climbed to seven.

Hegseth made the statement during an appearance Sunday night on CBS’s 60 Minutes, during which he portrayed Donald Trump’s decision for the US to join Israeli attacks on the Middle East country as essential “to advance American interests, and protect American lives”.

Asked about the deaths of six army reservists in a retaliatory Iranian drone strike on a US base in Kuwait a week ago, Hegseth said: “The president’s been right to say there will be casualties. Things like this don’t happen without casualties. There will be more casualties. No one is, I mean, especially our generation knows, knows what it’s like to see Americans come home in caskets. But that doesn’t weaken us one bit. It stiffens our spine and our resolve to say this is a fight we will finish.”

As the self-branded “secretary of war”, Hegseth – a former Fox News host – has been the bellicose public face of what the US military has dubbed Operation Epic Fury. He has received criticism for allegedly revelling in the carnage of a conflict that, as of Monday, had already cost hundreds of lives in a matter of nine days.

Hegseth at one point promised “death and destruction from the sky all day long”. Those comments were made four days after Iranian officials said at least 175 people were killed in an airstrike on an Iranian girls’ school that military investigators believe was carried out by US forces.

Will US/Israel Consider Nukes On Iran

US Nuclear War Plane Flown to Mideast

Two U.S. E-6B Mercury aircraft — known as the “Doomsday plane”— are now deployed in the Middle East. This unarmed plane is an airborne command post and communications relay station to maintain survivable links between U.S. national leaders and U.S. nuclear forces — ballistic missile submarines, ICBMs and bombers — in case ground-based command centers are destroyed.

Aaron Maté : The Long U.S. Hatred of Iran - The Deep Politics Behind U.S.–Iran Hostility

US stock markets close on high after Iran war drove oil prices above $100 a barrel

US stock markets closed on a high after oil prices swung wildly on Monday, reaching a four-year high in the morning that rattled Asian and European markets before settling down once Donald Trump said the US-Israel war with Iran is “very complete”.

After surging past $100 a barrel on Monday morning, oil prices came down to $85 a barrel by the time that US stock markets closed in the afternoon. US stocks leaped at a report from a CBS News reporter that Trump thinks “the war is very complete, pretty much” because “they have no navy, no communications, they’ve got no air force”.

The Dow closed at a 230-point jump, while the S&P and Nasdaq closed at 0.83% and 1.38% up – a wild turnaround after a tough morning for US stocks.

Earlier in the day, oil prices were propelled to their highest level in four years after a weekend of escalating violence in the Middle East intensified concerns around a sustained supply crunch, triggering a deep stock market sell-off.

Brent crude, the international benchmark, climbed as high as $119.50 (£89.40) a barrel – up 29% – as the new week’s trading began in the Asia Pacific markets, the first time market prices have soared above the key psychological $100 threshold since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Sheinbaum tells Trump: stop illegal arms trade from the US to Mexico

Claudia Sheinbaum has responded to Donald Trump’s description of Mexico as the “epicenter of violence,” by calling on the US government to step up efforts to combat gun trafficking.

“There is something that the US can help us a lot with: stop the trafficking of illegal weapons from the US to Mexico,” the president of Mexico said. “If they stopped the entry of illegal weapons from the United States into Mexico, then these groups wouldn’t have access to this type of high-powered weaponry to carry out their criminal activities.”

Sheinbaum noted that 75% of guns used by cartels come from the United States. Mexico has repeatedly called on the US government to halt arms trafficking and in 2021 sued several American gunmakers, accusing them of “negligent marketing, distribution and sales”, though the suit was tossed out by the US supreme court last year.

Sheinbaum’s comments responded to a speech made by Trump during a gathering of Latin American leaders at his Miami-area golf club on Saturday to establish what he called a “counter-cartel coalition”.

“The epicenter of cartel violence is Mexico,” Trump said during his Shield of Americas summit with Latin American leaders on Saturday. “The Mexican cartels are fueling and orchestrating much of the bloodshed and chaos in this hemisphere and the United States government will do whatever is necessary to defend our national security.”

Video Suggests Trump’s ICE Lied About Its First Known Killing of a US Citizen Last March

Materials released over the weekend by the Texas Department of Public Safety regarding a homeland security officer’s killing of 23-year-old Ruben Ray Martinez last March in Texas appeared to provide the latest evidence that federal agents have misled the public about the circumstances surrounding fatal shootings.

American Oversight, a government watchdog group, revealed last month that nearly a year before the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis, Martinez was the first known US citizen to be killed by an agent of the Trump administration who was carrying out official duties.

Since then, a grand jury has declined to indict the accused officer, Homeland Security Investigations agent Jack C. Stevens, and American Oversight as well as Martinez’s family and lawyers have demanded that state authorities release the findings of their investigation into the killing, with the watchdog filing a Freedom of Information Act request.

The body camera footage released on Saturday called into question statements that were made by the Department of Homeland Security after Martinez’s killing was publicly revealed, when a DHS spokesperson said the young man “intentionally ran over” an agent.

Internal documents also claimed officers commanded Martinez to get out of his car after he approached the scene of a vehicle accident and that he “accelerated forward, striking a HSI special agent who wound up on the hood of the vehicle.”

The video that was released came from a body camera worn by a South Padre Island, Texas police officer who was one of a number of local, state, and federal agents securing an area after a car accident.

South Padre Island, TX

Ruben Ray Martinez - ICE

•According to the passenger, Ruben was worried about being arrested for DUI & panicked

Ruben accelerated his vehicle towards an officer.
The officer fired 3 shots…killing Ruben.

Was the officer in imminent… pic.twitter.com/YtgS66fAc1

— police.law.news (@policelawnews) March 7, 2026

About 21 minutes into the officer’s footage, someone can be heard saying, “Keep going” as Martinez’s car approaches the scene. The car briefly stops for some pedestrians, and officers soon appear to become concerned, running toward the vehicle and shouting, “Stop him” and, “Get him out.”

Martinez’s car appears to be moving slowly, with the brake lights on, as three gunshots are heard and just after.

The video then shows an officer removing Martinez from the car and throwing him on the ground while his friend who was in the car with him, Joshua Orta, is taken into custody.

The internal DHS documents said a second HSI agent Hector Sosa, was struck by the car in his legs, falling over the hood. The footage is taken from behind the car, making it unclear whether Sosa was hit—but it does not show Martinez accelerating.

If an officer was hit, University of South Carolina criminal justice professor Geoffrey P. Albert told the Washington Post, based on the footage of the car it would have been a case of “officer-created jeopardy.”

“The contradictory orders are confusing and may have been a strong influence,” Alpert told the Post. “The speed is slow and doesn’t appear threatening. Could the officer have moved away? At worst, all he has to do is step aside.”

He added that the body camera video raises “a lot of red flags.”

Lawyers for Martinez’s family, Charles M. Stam and Alex Stamm, said in a statement that the videos confirm the 23-year-old’s car “was barely moving when he was shot.”

“He was shot at point-blank range through his side window by an ICE agent who was in no danger,” said the attorneys.

Orta, who was killed last month in an unrelated vehicle accident in San Antonio, provided a witness statement after Martinez was killed, saying “I state clearly and without hesitation that Ruben did not hit anyone,” Orta wrote. “The trooper seemed to be trying to get in front of the car, like he wasn’t moving out of the way when we tried to turn around and leave like the police officer told us to do.”

More than a dozen people have been killed by federal immigration officers since President Donald Trump took office for his second term in January 2025.

New Mexico authorities launch search of ranch previously owned by Epstein

New Mexico authorities launched a search of a ranch previously owned by Jeffrey Epstein, state officials announced on Monday.

The late convicted sex offender and financier’s so-called Zorro Ranch was the site of numerous alleged abuses, according to civil and criminal proceedings. But the location was not subject to the same scrutiny as other Epstein properties, and a Guardian investigation in February revealed that federal authorities apparently never searched the New Mexico ranch.

The New Mexico department of justice said Monday it had “initiated a search” of the Zorro Ranch, with state police and the Sandoval county sheriff’s office assisting. The search was carried out at the direction of New Mexico attorney general, Raúl Torrez.

There has been renewed attention on Zorro Ranch since the US Department of Justice’s recent disclosure of roughly 3m investigative documents related to Epstein. The search comes several weeks after Torrez announced the state would reopen its 2019 investigation into claims of illegal activity at Epstein’s ranch. The state said it had put that case on hold at the request of federal prosecutors in New York, who were carrying out the second investigation into Epstein’s sex-trafficking scheme, which led to his arrest.

The sprawling 10,000-acre (4,000-hectare) ranch is located outside Santa Fe, New Mexico, and for years, Epstein allegedly abused teenage girls and young women there with impunity, according to testimony from several women. Survivors detailed a range of horrors that they said unfolded at the isolated plot of land, according to court proceedings. It was a location where powerful men allegedly visited, including a former New Mexico governor, and it was also the proposed setting for Epstein’s reported plans to spread his DNA across the human race by impregnating as many women as possible.

Trump threatens not to sign any bills until Congress approves strict voter ID act

Donald Trump renewed his push Monday for the Save America Act, a curtailment of voting access, after threatening on Sunday not to sign any bills until Congress approves the legislation. “All voters must show proof of citizenship in order to vote,” Trump said during remarks on Monday at a Republican event in Miami. “No mail-in ballots, except for illness, disability, military or travel.”

He claimed that, if the bill were to pass, Democrats “probably won’t win an election for 50 years and maybe longer”.

The president, fixated on unsubstantiated claims that noncitizens are stealing US elections ahead of midterm elections that are expected to be bruising for Republicans, said on Truth Social Sunday that the Save America Act “must be done immediately” and “supersedes everything else”.

“MUST GO TO THE FRONT OF THE LINE. I, as President, will not sign other Bills until this is passed, AND NOT THE WATERED DOWN VERSION – GO FOR THE GOLD,” he wrote.

He laid out a list of what he wanted in the bill, much of which is not currently in the proposal: showing voter ID and proof of citizenship, banning mail ballots except for a few instances, and, unrelated to voting, a ban on transgender people participating in women’s sports and gender-affirming surgeries for minors.

Billionaires Gave Nearly 20% of Donations in 2024 US Federal Elections

Billionaires exerted an unprecedented amount of influence over the 2024 US federal elections, accounting for almost one-fifth of the nearly $16 billion spent to elect candidates during that cycle, according to a New York Times analysis published Monday.

Just 300 billionaires and their immediate families poured an unprecedented $3 billion into the election, either giving directly to candidates or through political action committees.

These individuals represent just about 0.0087% of the 3.46 million people who donated more than $200 to one or multiple candidates during the election cycle.

And yet, with an average donation of $10 million apiece—equivalent to what 100,000 typical donors would give—they amounted to about 19% of all spending, allowing their interests to be pushed to the center of major races.

How the ‘Galápagos of west Africa’ is plundered by floating fish factories

Wooden canoes are the only fishing boats allowed among the cluster of 88 islands that make up the archipelago in west Africa’s Guinea-Bissau. Its shallow waters are a rich breeding ground for silver flat sardinella, which Pedro Luis Pereira, racing the tropical heat, sells fresh for 250 CFA francs (£0.33) a kilo at the market in Bissau, the capital of this tiny west African republic. The tides dictate when fishers can navigate the shallow waters of the archipelago. Its sandbars are a nursery for countless species, leading some scientists to refer to it as “the Galápagos of west Africa” for its populations of endangered turtles and manatees. It is also why the area has been designated as protected from everything but small-scale fishing.

Like Pereira, many of these creatures in this area rely on sardinella, a small oily fish. It is a vital food source for migratory birds such as terns that winter in Bijagós in their tens of thousands, as well as for barracudas and jacks, and whales and dolphins further out to sea. But the shoals of this pelagic fish draw another, more voracious predator: industrial boats fishing the boundary of the marine protected area, which in theory they cannot enter.

Among the vessels circulating here in 2025 was the Hua Xin 17. At 125 metres, it is longer than a football field. It is listed as a cargo ship in maritime databases, but a new investigation by the Guardian and DeSmog can reveal that the Chinese-owned boat is in fact a floating factory that turns fresh sardinella into fishmeal and oil by the tonne. Eyewitness accounts, exclusive video footage and satellite records show that a group of Turkish boats that supply the Hua Xin 17 appear to have routinely fished sardinella illegally inside Bijagós. The factory is one of two ships anchored in the open sea that have illicitly processed up to hundreds of thousands of tonnes of freshly caught sardinella into fishmeal and oil.

Aliou Ba, an oceans campaigner at Greenpeace, says the Bijagós archipelago is among west Africa’s most ecologically significant marine areas – and one of the last relatively intact coastal ecosystems on the continent. “Any illegal fishing within its marine protected area is not only a violation of Guinean law, but a direct threat to biodiversity, and local communities’ food and livelihoods,” he says.

A relatively new boat to these waters, the Hua Xin 17 was anchored for a total of 157 days in 2025 about 50km off the coast of Orango island, which is famous as the home of rare saltwater hippos. Its discovery by the Guardian adds fresh evidence of the expansion in Guinea-Bissau of offshore processing factories, which are turning over hundreds of tonnes of fresh fish a day. Another offshore fishmeal factory, the Tian Yi He 6, spent 244 days moored at sea in 2025, belching out black smoke about 60km from Orango island. The Tian Yi He 6 has been operating as a fishmeal factory near Bijagós for more than five years, and has a history of infringing Guinea-Bissau’s laws.

Also of Interest

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

America & Israel Don’t Get To Choose When The War Ends

War On Iran – Oil Prices Lag Supply Deficit – Arab’s Won’t Fight Iran – Khamenei Son Succeeds Father

Israeli Strikes Kill 394 in Lebanon in One Week, Including 83 Children

Iran War: Oil Rises to Nearly $120, Stays Above $100 Despite G7 Plans for Reserves Release; Foreign Markets Swoon; Iran Increasing Intensity of Strikes, Targeting More Assets in the Gulf

DAY 9: ATTACK ON IRAN

Israel Googling Real Names of Anonymous X Users

Live Nation reaches surprise settlement with justice department in antitrust case

A Little Night Music

Jesse Fuller – Runnin' Wild

Jesse Fuller – Memphis Boogie

Jesse Fuller - John Henry

Jesse Fuller - Ninety Nine Years And One Dark Day

Jesse Fuller - High Sheriff From Baltimore

Jesse Fuller – The Monkey And The Engineer

Jesse Fuller – Raise A Ruckus

Jesse Fuller – Beat It On Down The Line

Jesse Fuller – Cincinnati Blues