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Anti-Imperialists Want To Improve The World; Liberals Just Want To Feel Good About Themselves

Ultimately what separates the anti-imperialist left from mainstream liberal “humanitarians” is whether you’re in it for humanity or for yourself.

For the liberal, wanting peace and justice is more of an abstraction than a desire to fight the concrete power structures responsible for the lack of peace and justice in our world.

If you’re a liberal you oppose the idea of children being killed and starved in the abstract, because thinking of yourself as a moral person allows you to feel nice feelings about yourself, but you have no interest in taking a well-defined stand against the empire which routinely kills and starves children via genocides, wars of aggression, and siege warfare.

You don’t want families living in poverty because it would make you feel like a bad person if you did, but you also don’t take a concrete stand against the capitalist system whose very existence depends on the perpetual creation of poverty and scarcity.

You kinda-sorta want everyone to have happy and plentiful lives free from fear and tyranny, but you don’t want to consider the possibility that your own country is responsible for abusing, terrorizing and exploiting the global south. Because that would make you feel uncomfortable feelings.

It’s not about wanting to actually help humanity and fix the world’s problems, it’s about you and your feelings.

Those who oppose the capitalist empire are actually interested in bringing health and harmony to our species. They do not shy away from uncomfortable truths about their own government’s abuses, the dystopian nature of western civilization, or the way their own creature comforts are built on the backs of workers in impoverished countries. Because for them it’s not about feeling nice feelings, it’s about creating a better world.

The western anti-imperialist has no problem recognizing that their own society is the main villain on the world stage, because they’re actually looking at the sources of the abuses and injustices in our world. The liberal “humanitarian” prefers to see evil only in foreign regimes, because being the bad guy doesn’t feel nice.

The western anti-imperialist recognizes that both mainstream political parties in their country promote the warmongering, militarism, capitalist exploitation and imperialist extraction which sustain the western empire, and they oppose the abuses of both parties whoever happens to be in office. The liberal “humanitarian” only recognizes wrongdoing in one mainstream political faction while proudly supporting and voting for the other, because this allows them to feel like they’re helping.

The western anti-imperialist accepts that standing on the morally correct side means eating loss after loss and receiving disappointment after disappointment, because the push for revolutionary change is swimming directly against the current imposed on every institution in our society. The liberal “humanitarian” feels nice feelings about their position because their side wins elections half the time, while smugly sneering at those to their left who never get their people into office.

The western anti-imperialist will stare unflinching into the carnage from Palestine, Lebanon and Iran, feeling all the anguish and rage from witnessing those atrocities supported by their own nation. The liberal “humanitarian” tries to avoid looking at those things, because their entire worldview is built upon psychologically compartmentalizing away from reality in order to prioritize their own feelings.

Basically it’s the difference between actually BEING a good person and just wanting to FEEL like you’re a good person. The former is hard, while the latter is easy.

Prof. John Mearsheimer : What Will a Panicked Trump Do Now?

The least the moron-in-chief could do is create a plausible lie at which he clearly failed here.

Trump claims, without proof, Iranians welcome US strikes on infrastructure

Donald Trump on Monday claimed that Iranian civilians were actively welcoming US strikes on their country’s infrastructure, saying they would be “willing to suffer” the loss of power and basic services in order to achieve freedom from the Islamic Republic. Speaking to reporters from the White House press room, Trump dismissed concerns that targeting Iran’s power grid and civilian infrastructure would punish ordinary Iranians rather than the regime, saying without evidence that US intelligence had intercepts of civilians near active bombing sites urging American forces to continue.

“Please keep bombing,” Trump quoted intercepted communications as saying, adding: “These are people that are living where the bombs are exploding.”

The claims came as some Democratic lawmakers accused the administration of preparing to commit war crimes by targeting bridges and power plants. Senator Chris Murphy posted on social media that Trump had told reporters he intended to commit “mass war crimes”. Iran’s mission to the United Nations said the threats constituted “clear evidence of intent to commit war crime”.

At the start of the press conference, Trump said that Iran “can be taken out in one night, and that might be tomorrow night”. He also reiterated a deadline of 8pm ET on Tuesday for the regime to reopen the strait of Hormuz or face a barrage of strikes on energy facilities and bridges.

Iran Defiant as Trump Threatens ‘A Civilization Will Die Tonight,’ w/ Mouin Rabbani

If I was him now I'd release all the Epstein files now to distract from how badly the war on Iran is going.

— Tehran Tadhg (@TadhgHickey) April 4, 2026

US Strikes Kharg Island As Gulf Oil Fields BURN

Talks to end Iran war appear to falter a day before Trump deadline

Diplomatic negotiations aimed at halting the war in the Middle East appeared to be faltering a day before a deadline imposed by Donald Trump with a threat to destroy Iran’s bridges and attack its power plants. Mediators from Pakistan, Egypt and Turkey want both sides to agree to a ceasefire and reopen the strait of Hormuz, to be followed by a period of detailed negotiations intended to reach a more complete peace agreement.

Iran, however, said it wanted a permanent end to the war, not a ceasefire. It submitted its own 10-point peace plan, according to the country’s Irna news agency, and called for a “permanent end to the war in line with Iran’s considerations, while rejecting a ceasefire”. Trump acknowledged Iran’s proposal as he spoke to reporters during an Easter egg event for children at the White House on Monday and said it was insufficient. “It’s a significant step. It’s not good enough,” he said.

The prospect of bombing power plants and bridges has been condemned by lawyers and experts as a likely war crime because its impact on civilians would be disproportionate to whatever notional military advantage is gained. Trump, however, said such an attack on Iran would not be a war crime because the country was led by “animals” who had given orders to shoot large numbers of protesters in the streets in January.

Iranian officials earlier told Reuters that they would not open the strait to merchant shipping as part of a temporary ceasefire. Another report, on the Axios news site, suggested that Iran did not want to be caught in a situation where there was an agreement on paper but the US and Israel periodically attacked anyway. Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Esmaeil Baghaei, said Tehran had responded privately, but added that peace negotiations were “incompatible with ultimatums and threats to commit war crimes”. The country’s central military command warned of a “much more devastating” retaliation should the US and Israel escalate.

CPT. Matt Hoh : Will US Troops Bomb Civilian Sites?

Trump threats cause dilemma for US officers: disobey orders or commit war crimes

Donald Trump’s threats to carry out mass bombing of civilian infrastructure in Iran present US military officers with a dilemma: disobey orders or help commit war crimes. It is an urgent matter for the US chain of command. ... There is little debate among legal experts that such an attack on the life-supporting infrastructure for 93 million Iranians would constitute a war crime.

“[Trump's] rhetorical statements – if followed through – would amount to the most serious war crimes – and thus the president’s statements place service members in a profoundly challenging situation,” two former judge advocate general (JAG) officers, Margaret Donovan and Rachel VanLandingham wrote on the website Just Security on Monday. “As former uniformed military lawyers who advised targeting operations, we know the president’s words run counter to decades of legal training of military personnel and risk placing our warfighters on a path of no return.”

They noted that Trump’s boast that he would bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages”, and the order by his defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, to show “no quarter, no mercy” were not just “plainly illegal” but they also represented a rupture from the moral and legal principles that US military personnel had been “trained to follow their entire careers”.

Charli Carpenter, a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said there were many historical examples of service-members questioning orders, refusing to obey, passively disobeying or even intervening to stop war crimes. She cited as an example US soldiers who refused to take part in the 1968 My Lai massacre in Vietnam, including a helicopter pilot who threatened to shoot the perpetrators. In his court martial, the officer who ordered his men to gun down hundreds of Vietnamese villagers, 2nd Lt William Calley, argued that he was only obeying orders, but the court ruled that was no defence as such orders were “palpably illegal”.

The question is whether officers who carried out orders to bomb Iranian power stations and bridges could argue that they did not know it was “palpably illegal”.

Trump Jail THREAT BACKFIRES After Israeli Journo Says He Was Leaker

Trump threatens to jail journalist to find source of second missing airman report

Donald Trump threatened to jail a journalist – or journalists – who reported that a second US airman was missing after being shot down by Iran on Friday in an effort to identify their source. The badly injured airman hid in a mountain crevice to avoid capture before being rescued by a US recovery team that received heavy fire. The US president announced on Sunday that the service member had been recovered.

During a press conference at the White House on Monday afternoon, Trump told reporters that his government was aggressively pursuing the “leaker” who revealed information about the missing airman to the media. He claimed that the news report put Iran on notice and put the airman in danger.

“They basically said that ‘we have one and there’s somebody missing.’ Well, they didn’t know there was somebody missing until this leaker gave the information,” Trump said. “So whoever it was, we think we’ll be able to find it out because we’re going to go to the media company that released it, and we’re going to say, ‘national security, give it up or go to jail.’

“And we know who – and you know who – we’re talking about. Because some things you can’t do, because when they did that all of a sudden the entire country of Iran knew that there was a pilot that was somewhere on their land that was fighting for his life.” Trump did not name the outlet, or the reporter, he was threatening.

Iran HITS Saudi Oil, RIPS Trump's Ultimatum – Apocalyptic War Begins | Sharmine Narwani

Rejecting Temporary Ceasefire Deal, Iran Demands Total End of US-Israeli Hostilities

As President Donald Trump escalated his threats to commit war crimes in Iran if its government does not reopen the Strait of Hormuz, Iranian officials on Monday rejected what they called an inadequate ceasefire proposal and insisted on a guarantee that the US and Israel will not only stop their attacks, but also refrain from future aggression.

“We only accept an end of the war with guarantees that we won’t be attacked again,” Mojtaba Ferdousi Pour, head of Iran’s diplomatic mission in Cairo, told The Associated Press, affirming his government’s rejection of a 45-day truce proposed by regional mediators led by Pakistan and including Egypt and Turkey. ...

Pour stressed that Iran can’t trust Trump, who Iranian officials and others have accused of using nuclear negotiations as a cover to impose demands and buy time to prepare for more war.

Just hours before Trump announced his decision to bomb Iran in February, Omani Foreign Minister Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi, the mediator of talks between the US and Iranian governments, said that a “peace deal is within our reach.”

Iran’s government was willing to make unprecedented concessions regarding its nuclear program up until the US and Israel began bombing the country on February 28. Every US administration since that of former President George W. Bush—including Trump’s—has concluded that Iran is not seeking to develop nuclear weapons.

The US and Israel also launched attacks on Iran in the summer of 2025 amid ongoing negotiations with Tehran.

A senior Iranian official speaking to Drop Site News Monday on condition of anonymity said that “it is our assessment that the Trump administration, owing to legal constraints within the United States concerning the prosecution of the war as well as the need to maintain control over financial markets, requires a short-term pause in the conflict.”

“Our assessment indicates that this proposal has been drafted solely on the basis of the mediators’ perception of the minimum demands of the parties for halting the war,” the official continued.

“Tehran does not consider a temporary ceasefire to be a logical course of action, inasmuch as the window for the United States’ exit from the conflict has already been delineated,” they added. “Should the requisite political will exist, the parties are in a position to establish a permanent ceasefire and thereafter concentrate their efforts on diplomacy.”

The standoff comes as Iranian officials said US and Israeli strikes killed at least 34 people, including 6 children, since Monday morning. Recent US-Israeli targets have included Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, a major petrochemical plant in Asaluyeh, and the B1 bridge in Karaj.

Around 2,000 Iranians have been killed over 37 days of intense US-Israeli bombardment, according to Iranian officials and humanitarian groups. This figure includes over 200 children, more than 100 of whom were killed in the February 28 US cruise missile attack on the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in Minab.

At least 13 US service members have been killed and hundreds more wounded by Iranian counterattacks, which have also killed at least 14 Israelis and more than two dozen people in Gulf Arab nations.

More than 1,400 people have also been killed by Israeli attacks on Lebanon, where over 1 million others have been displaced. Eleven Israeli soldiers have been killed in Lebanon.

All this is happening amid the backdrop of Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza, which has left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead or wounded.

Abby Martin Went To Israel. IT'S WORSE Than You Think

US-Israeli Strikes Hit Prestigious Iranian University

A US-Israeli strike hit the Sharif University of Technology in Tehran on Monday, an attack widely condemned by Iranians both inside and outside of the country, as the bombing campaign continues to hit civilian targets.

The university, known as the “MIT of Iran,” is a prestigious institution that attracts top medical and engineering students in the country.

“Disgraceful!” Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute, wrote on X in response to the bombing. “The US/Israel just bombed Sharif University in Tehran. This is not only Iran’s best university, but also a top 100 global university in the field of Civil Engineering.”

Scott Ritter: War Goes Horribly Wrong - U.S. Could Use Nuclear Weapons

Gas Prices in US Already Up 35% as Iranians Threaten to Close Another Strait Over Trump War

As President Donald Trump continues threatening to commit war crimes in Iran by bombing power plants, Iran is signaling that it could put a further squeeze on global oil prices by shutting down yet another strait used for transporting petroleum outside the Middle East.

Ali Akbar Velayati, a former Iranian foreign minister and a top adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, threatened in a Sunday social media post to close down the Strait of Bab al-Mandeb, a waterway adjacent to the coast of Yemen that is under control of Iran-backed Houthi militants.

“If the White House dares to repeat its foolish mistakes,” Velayati cautioned, “it will soon realize that the flow of global energy and trade can be disrupted with a single move.”

As Al Jazeera noted in a Monday report, the Houthis already shut down the strait during Israel’s war on Gaza, and doing so again at the same time Iran has shut down the Strait of Hormuz could send global energy prices to unprecedented highs.

“The strait is a vital route through which Saudi Arabia sends its oil to Asia,” Al Jazeera reported. “If Bab al-Mandeb and the Strait of Hormuz were both shut, that would block 25%... of the world’s oil and gas supply.”

Oil prices have shot up since Trump launched his illegal war with Iran more than a month ago, and on Monday the price of Brent crude oil futures was trading at $110 per barrel, while the average price for gas in the US rose to $4.12 per gallon, according to data from AAA.

Democratic members of the US Congress Joint Economic Committee (JEC) last week released a study estimating that, thanks to Trump’s war, Americans are paying 35% more to fill up their cars than they were paying a month earlier.

Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), a member of the JEC, pointed to the report in a Monday social media post and said Americans were getting hit with major price shocks because “President Trump decided to wage an illegal war against Iran with no plan or strategy.”

Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH), Ranking Member of the JEC, told WMUR that Trump’s Iran war took an already bad situation for American families and made it worse.

“Families are already being pushed to the brink,” Hassan said. “That was true before the war started, by the cost of everything from groceries to rent to healthcare insurance premiums and prescriptions and even more. But now they’re being forced to pay more at the pump.”

Seyed M. Marandi: Iran SLAMS Trump’s Ultimatum w/ COUNTER ULTIMATUM — War Headed DECIMATING Attacks

Israeli Attacks Pound Gaza, Killing at Least 12 Palestinians

Israeli attacks pounded targets across Gaza on Monday, killing at least 12 Palestinians since dawn, according to the Palestinian news agency WAFA.

One strike on Monday targeted a bicycle in Gaza City, killing one person and critically injuring a child, according to the Quds News Network. Another Israeli airstrike in central Gaza killed at least 10 people outside a school sheltering displaced Palestinians in the al-Maghazi refugee camp

According to eyewitnesses and medics speaking to Reuters, al-Maghazi came under attack by an Israeli-backed Palestinian militia based in the IDF-occupied side of Gaza when an Israeli strike was launched. “The residents tried to defend their homes, but the occupation forces targeted them directly,” one witness said.

There’s been no progress on implementing President Trump’s Gaza plan as Israel continues to occupy more than 50% of the territory. The US and Israel continue to demand that Hamas give up its weapons, but Hamas’s armed wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, said on Sunday that disarmament won’t be discussed until Israel fulfills its obligations under the ceasefire agreement.

House Democrats demand end to ‘cruel’ US energy blockade after visit to Cuba

Two Democratic US lawmakers on Monday called for an end to the “cruel collective punishment” of Cuba after they visited the island to witness the effects of an US energy blockade. The US House members Pramila Jayapal of Washington and Jonathan Jackson of Illinois met with the Cuban president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, and foreign minister, Bruno Rodríguez, as well as members of Cuba’s parliament during a five-day trip ending on Sunday.

“This is cruel collective punishment – effectively an economic bombing of the infrastructure of the country – that has produced permanent damage,” Jayapal and Jackson said in a statement released on Sunday. “It must stop immediately.”

Meanwhile Díaz-Canel wrote on X:“I denounced the criminal damage caused by the blockade, particularly the consequences of the energy siege decreed by the current US government and its threats of even more aggressive actions.” He said he had “reiterated the willingness of our government to sustain a serious and responsible bilateral dialogue, and to find solutions to the existing differences”.

Donald Trump has signaled a potential “friendly takeover” of Cuba while Díaz-Canel seeks economic cooperation without sacrificing sovereignty. The United States and Cuba have acknowledged that high-level talks are ongoing, led by Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state. Those talks follow a US oil blockade after the American president issued executive orders to threaten tariffs on nations supplying fuel to Cuba in January.

At the end of her and Jackson’s visit, Jayapal told reporters she believed that steps taken by Cuba – including opening the economy to certain investments by Cuban Americans living abroad and the announcement that more than 2,000 prisoners would be pardoned – “indicate that the moment is here for us to have a real negotiation between the two countries and to reverse the failed US policy of decades”. Jayapal called that policy “a cold war remnant that no longer serves the American people or the Cuban people” and called the [recent Russian] oil shipment – with a second expected soon – a temporary solution.

ICE agents reportedly detain wife of US soldier just days after their marriage

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents under the command of the Trump administration have reportedly detained the wife of a US army staff sergeant at his military base in Louisiana amid his preparations to deploy. The arrest of Annie Ramos, 22, took place last Thursday, just days after she married 23-year-old Matthew Blank, a soldier who has served for more than five years and previously deployed to the Middle East and Europe, the New York Times first reported on Sunday.

Ramos, a biochemistry student with no criminal history who also teaches Sunday school, had been subject to a deportation order issued in absentia in 2005 when she was an infant after her family missed an immigration court hearing, the New York Times reported.

With pathways available for undocumented immigrants to obtain legal permanent residency through marriage, and eventually apply for citizenship, Ramos and Blank had already hired a lawyer to begin the process before their wedding. “I knew she didn’t have status,” Blank told the New York Times. But, he added: “We were doing everything the right way.”

In 2020, Ramos had applied for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca), a federal program offering deportation protections to undocumented people who had entered the US as children. However, the New York Times reports that her application was never processed after the administration during Donald Trump’s first presidency stopped accepting new applicants.

Ramos’s plight is one of only several instances that contradict Trump’s initial claims that his ongoing immigration crackdown would prioritize deporting dangerous criminals. As it has sought to increase deportation numbers, the campaign has affected a growing number of military service members’ relatives or even veterans themselves – generally without consideration for their records of having defended the US.

War in Iran is boosting profits for oil and defense companies as US gas prices soar

Two weeks into the US-Israel war with Iran, the White House was fielding heavy criticism that the conflict would drive up gas prices and frustrate voters. Donald Trump turned to Truth Social to appease Americans about gas prices, which were slowly climbing toward $4 a gallon. “The United States is the largest Oil Producer in the World, by far, so when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money,” he wrote.

Now five weeks into the war, as Americans struggle with soaring gas prices and the threat of higher inflation, it is becoming clearer who is making “a lot of money”: defense contractors and oil companies.

The US defense department announced on Wednesday Boeing would join Lockheed Martin to help triple the US production of missile seekers, which boosted the aerospace manufacturer’s share price. Lockheed Martin, a key defense contractor with the US government, has seen its stock jump 25% since the start of the year.

Meanwhile, American-produced oil has shot up in value as Iran continues its blockade of the strait of Hormuz, where a fifth of the world’s oil and gas would typically pass through, and energy infrastructure in the Middle East remains vulnerable to attacks. US crude oil has nearly doubled since the start of the conflict, going from $65 a barrel to over $110 a barrel in a month. Gas prices at the pump have followed suit, rising past $4 a gallon for the first time since 2022.

The increase has been a boon for American oil companies, whose share prices have soared since the start of the year. Even as the overall US stock market has dipped down, share prices of companies including ExxonMobil, Shell and Chevron have all jumped by over 20% since the start of the year. US oil producers could be in for an additional $63bn in profit as oil has climbed past $100 a barrel, according to a report from the market research firm Rystad Energy.

‘A surrender to special interests’: alarm as Utah shields fossil-fuel companies

Utah has made it nearly impossible for residents to hold fossil fuel companies legally accountable for climate damages in a move one advocacy group described as putting “profits for the biggest polluters over communities”, with other states expected to follow suit. The new state legislation comes as part of a push from big oil and its political allies – including groups tied to rightwing impresario Leonard Leo – for legal immunity in red statehouses and Congress, with a goal of winning state and federal legal immunity similar to the liability waiver granted to the firearms industry in 2005.

Such policies would shield major fossil fuel companies from a wave of litigation they are facing from states, subnational governments, and individuals who claim the firms knew their products would cause climate damages, but sold them to the public anyway. Four other red states are considering laws similar to Utah’s – with two close to passage – and federal legislation is seemingly in the works.

Signed into law by the state’s Republican governor, Spencer Cox, late last month, Utah’s new legislation shields any person or entity from civil or criminal liabilities related to planet-warming emissions, unless a court finds that the defendant violated the specific “enforceable limitation” on a greenhouse gas or the “express terms of a valid permit”. Challengers would also have to provide “clear and convincing evidence that unavoidable and identifiable damage or injury has resulted or will result as a direct cause of the” violation. The language will make it virtually impossible to successfully sue polluters for climate damages, critics say.

“This is a surrender to wealthy special interests and an affront to the public good,” said Delta Merner, lead scientist at the science hub for climate litigation at the science advocacy group Union of Concerned Scientists. “Utah’s new law prioritizes profits for the biggest polluters over communities already suffering from climate impacts and constituents should be outraged.”

“To understand this bill you need to follow the coordination,” said Merner, noting that the Utah legislation closely mirrors a model policy called the Energy Freedom Act, circulated by the conservative group Consumers Defense. Consumers Defense has financial ties to a group linked to Leo, the architect of the far-right takeover of the supreme court who helped select Trump’s supreme court nominees. In recent years, groups tied to Leo have launched an unprecedented campaign to thwart climate accountability litigation.

Also of Interest

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

Trump and Netanyahu: Two Madmen Playing God

War On Iran: – Failed Special Operation – Threat Escalation – Added: Trump’s Victory Timeline

Trump Really Messes Up Smart People

Iran War: Trump Makes Even More Unhinged Threat as Details of F-15 Pilot Rescue Point to Much Bigger Plan, Say to Seize Enriched Uranium; Trump Legitimacy Crisis Grows as Battered Gulf States Pull Back on US Investment, Particularly AI

DAYS 35-37: WAR ON IRAN — And Now a Word From the President of the United States: ‘Open the Fuckin’ Strait, You Crazy Bastards’

Tech companies are cutting jobs and betting on AI. The payoff is far from guaranteed

‘Creepy surveillance’: why some cities are shutting down Flock cameras amid privacy concerns

Navajo Nation: the fight for cultural survival – photo essay

A Little Night Music

Sam Lay – Baby How Long

Sam Lay Blues Band - 1966

Paul Butterfield Blues Band - Driftin' Blues

Sam Lay – Asked Her For Water

Sam Lay Blues Band - Don't Mess With Me Baby

Sam Lay - Shoogie Woogie

Sam Lay - Sam Lay Shuffle

Sam Lay – Somebody Gotta Do It

Sam Lay – Got My Mojo Working

Sam Lay – Sloppy Drunk