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"An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war."

-- Baron de Montesquieu

News and Opinion

Chris Hedges: The Rise of the Global South

The humiliating defeat of Israel and the United States in their war on Iran, along with the savagery of the ongoing genocide in Gaza, are ushering in a new world order. This order is one where voices of reason and stability emanate not from the West — which spent tens of billions of dollars sustaining Israel’s genocide — but from the Global South, including China. It is an order where alliances are being rapidly reconfigured to protect countries from a rogue American state that lashes out like a wounded beast, as it spirals toward terminal decline.

The end of the U.S. Empire, led by an impetuous and clueless Donald Trump, is irreversible. The U.S. has lost its sixth war in the Middle East in 25 years.

Iran demands the removal of sanctions and an end to the naval blockade — which the Central Intelligence Agency concluded Iran can endure for months before it experiences severe economic hardship — in exchange for reopening the Strait of Hormuz. The proposed agreement makes no mention of Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal, which U.S. military and intelligence officials believe remains at 70 percent pre-war levels, according to The New York Times.

Iran, Pakistan, Turkey and Qatar — a lead negotiator with Hamas — are the new powerbrokers in the region. The war has enhanced the prestige and power of China, which compared to Washington is seen globally as embodying rational, prudent and stable leadership. Iran, in a sign of the new global order, permits Chinese and Pakistani tankers, along with other ships not allied with Israel and the U.S., to travel through the Strait.

Trump’s savagery and bluster – he threatened to “blow up” Oman if it fails to “behave” after reports of Oman jointly charging tolls with Iran for ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz – cannot mask the impotence of the U.S. The refusal by America’s allies to heed Trump’s call to help him reopen the Strait, along with the economic misery visited on nations struggling to cope with shortages and the rising costs of energy and fertilizer supplies, are stark evidence of Washington’s pariah status.

Empires, blinded by the myth of their own omnipotence and military superiority, blunder at the final stages into conflicts with little understanding of where they are headed. They alienate their allies. They stumble from one military fiasco to the next, as the U.S. has done for over two decades in the Middle East. This may not be the end of the American Empire, but it is the beginning of the end.

Col. Larry Wilkerson: Israel’s Grand Strategy Is Coming Apart – Here’s Why It Matters

Israel and Iran step back from renewed conflict after Trump calls for halt

Fears of a return to a full-scale regional war in the Middle East eased on Monday as Israel and Iran said they had halted attacks on each other after an appeal from Donald Trump to “immediately stop shooting”. Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, acknowledged the halt in fighting with Iran in a televised speech, but vowed to respond “with force” to future attacks.

“At present, the fire on this front has been halted, because after the terrorist regime in Tehran was struck, it stopped attacking us,” Netanyahu said. “If that terrorist regime makes the mistake of attacking us again, we will respond with force.”

The recent wave of Iranian ballistic missile attacks on Israel and retaliatory strikes by Israeli warplanes on Iran marked the most direct confrontation since an April ceasefire. Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi rebels also fired at Israel and warned they would target Israeli-affiliated ships in the Red Sea, further escalating tension.

Israeli officials have rejected repeated Iranian efforts to link any definitive ceasefire to Israel stopping its offensive in Lebanon against Hezbollah, which has close ties with Tehran. On Monday, Israel’s defence minister said Israel would continue to operate against Hezbollah in Lebanon and strike Beirut if the militant Islamist movement attacked Israel. “Any Iranian attempt to link Lebanon and Iran and attack Israel will be met with great force, as happened yesterday,” Israel Katz said. Iran also remained defiant. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s parliamentary speaker and most senior negotiator, said on Monday that Tehran would not tolerate what it called “repeated violation”. “So long as you lack a genuine willingness to build trust, Iran’s response will remain the same,” he posted on X.

Trump has leaned on Israel to stop its attacks in Lebanon to allow room for a deal to end the wider war with Iran, including an obscenity-filled rebuke of Netanyahu in a phone call last week, according to a report by Axios. The US website reported on Monday Trump’s claims that he had again scolded Netanyahu. “I said: ‘Bibi, you better be careful, or you will be on your own very soon,’” he was quoted as saying.

U.S. APACHE DOWNED AT HORMUZ, IRAN SUSPECTED – w/ Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski

Complex relationship between Trump and Netanyahu continues to undermine Middle East ceasefire

The latest eruption of hostilities between Iran and Israel appears to have been contained for now after Donald Trump insisted he called “all the shots” in the Middle East, but in a dangerously fragile region Benjamin Netanyahu has again shown he is ready to take shots of his own. The exchange of missiles on Sunday and Monday was ample demonstration of the inherent instability of the current limbo between war and peace, but it also shone a bright light on the complex and conflicted relationship between the US president and the Israeli prime minister, frenemies who could determine the fate of the current ceasefire.

Trump and Netanyahu went to war together against Iran on 28 February but fell out of step within days, as soon as it was clear that the quick victory and regime change promised by the Israelis was unlikely to materialise. From then on, their interests have increasingly diverged. Once Iran closed the strait of Hormuz, the spike in the oil price and the interruption in the flow of globally traded chemical products became a political threat to Trump. Despite Republican gerrymandering and voter suppression, Democrats have a plausible shot at capturing at least one chamber of Congress in November elections, undermining his authority.

The electoral pressure on Netanyahu pushes him in the opposite direction. Unless he can orchestrate a turnaround, his ruling coalition stands to lose in the vote, which must be held before the end of October. As things stand, for all the bombing of the past three years, he cannot claim to have fulfilled any of his pledges to neutralise Israel’s major adversaries: Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas. Persuading Trump to join the attack on Iran was the biggest victory of Netanyahu’s career, but that triumph is crumbling. The US-Iranian peace deal is being negotiated without Israeli participation, and in its current reported form, would leave the regime in power with a restricted but continuing nuclear programme. By Tehran’s insistence, any agreement would also tie Israel’s hands in dealing with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Netanyahu’s best bet for his political survival is that the peace talks will fail, and the US will be drawn back into the war on Iran. Officials in his government have consistently predicted that outcome in off-the-record briefings, and so far they have been right. For all his repeated claims that peace is almost at hand, Trump has clearly found it hard to stomach any deal that would compare to the nuclear agreement achieved by Barack Obama in 2015, especially if it involves anything as visually embarrassing as the delivery of unfrozen Iranian assets in the form of pallets of cash flown into Tehran. The weekend’s eruption of hostilities and their temporary resolution does not bring an exit from that limbo any closer.

Douglas Macgregor: New World - Israel Dying, NATO Dead & U.S. Defeated by Iran

Yemen’s Houthis Announce ‘Ban’ on Israeli Shipping in the Red Sea

On Monday, Yemen’s Houthis, officially known as Ansar Allah, announced a “ban” on Israeli shipping on the Red Sea, renewing a blockade that the US had previously failed to end with a bombing campaign.

“We declare a complete and total ban on Israeli maritime navigation in the Red Sea, and we consider all enemy movements to be legitimate military targets for our Armed Forces from the moment this statement is issued,” said Houthi military spokesman Yayha Saree.

Saree also announced a missile attack on Israel that was launched on Monday morning, and on Monday evening, Israeli media reported that the Israeli military had intercepted a drone fired from Yemen.

Any Yemeni attacks on Red Sea shipping are expected to have a much bigger impact on global energy markets than before due to the continued closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

In the U.S.-Israel War On Iran, More Escalation Is Inevitable

Gaza and its people may not survive this phase of ceasefire

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced late last month that he had ordered the Israeli military to seize 70% of the Gaza Strip. Under President Donald Trump’s 20-point ceasefire plan, Israeli forces were required to withdraw to a zone encompassing roughly 50% of Gaza’s territory, demarcated by the so-called Yellow Line, ahead of further withdrawals in the future. Instead of retreating, however, the Israeli army has steadily expanded its area of control, which now stands at roughly 60% of Gaza, while leveling the areas under its occupation to the ground.

Indeed, despite a so-called ceasefire, Israel continues to carry out near daily attacks on Gaza — at least 932 people have been called since the ceasefire was announced — while heavily restricting the entry of aid. So what does it mean to squeeze more than two million people into 30% of the already tiny Gaza Strip? It is a direct and deliberate policy of slow death, one that forces the population into an overcrowded and ever-shrinking open-air prison that lacks even the most basic conditions to sustain life. The plan Israel is implementing in Gaza is not the Trump Plan but a plan to make Gaza permanently uninhabitable.

What is being imposed now is the compression of an entire society into a space that can no longer support life, services, dignity, or social order. This is nothing short of demographic suffocation.

‘Schumer Is Far Out of Touch’: 80% of New York Democrats Oppose US Weapons Transfers to Israel

A poll released Monday shows that around 80% of Democratic voters in New York oppose US weapons transfers to Israel, putting Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer—a stalwart supporter of Israel—way out of step with his voter base.

The survey, conducted by Data for Progress and published by the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) Policy Project, found that 82% of New York Democrats—and 60% of the state’s voters overall—believe the US “should restrict taxpayer-funded weapons to Israel until it stops attacking civilians in Gaza.” The poll also found that 76% of Democratic voters in the state would favor the US Senate voting to halt the transfer of US bombs to Israel, which has repeatedly used American weaponry to commit grave war crimes.

The poll was conducted roughly a month after Schumer and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) broke with the overwhelming majority of their Democratic colleagues in voting against two resolutions aimed at blocking Trump administration sales of 1,000-pound bombs and bulldozers to the Israeli government.

The resolutions were spearheaded by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who polled more favorably than Schumer among New York voters overall—as did New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who has been floated as a possible primary challenger to Schumer in 2028.

“New York State voters, especially Democrats, aren’t being represented by their senators,” the IMEU Policy Project wrote on social media, adding that “Schumer is far out of touch with New York voters on funding Israel.”

A majority of New York voters (51%), and 70% of Democrats, believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, according to the new poll, a position that Schumer has rejected—putting him in conflict with both his own constituents and leading Holocaust scholars and human rights organizations.

“When Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand voted against blocking the bombs and bulldozers Israel is using to destroy Palestinian and Lebanese homes, they were not just voting against the vast majority of their own Senate caucus and Democratic voters, but they were voting against the majority of New Yorkers they’re elected to represent,” Margaret DeReus, the IMEU Policy Project’s executive director, said in a statement. “If current party leadership is unwilling to represent their own voters and the majority of Americans, then it is time for new leadership.”

Prof. John Mearsheimer : Middle East & Ukraine

The spectacular collapse of a case against ICE protesters: ‘It’s not justice, but it is a win’

Michael Rabbitt was 4,000 miles (6,400km) away from home last October, celebrating his 30th wedding anniversary in Portugal, when a pair of messages from the FBI brought news that would upend his life. He was under federal indictment, and was ordered to surrender by the next day. The month before, Rabbitt, 62, had been protesting at an ICE detention facility in the Chicago suburb of Broadview, during a period of tense daily demonstrations. Now, the federal government was accusing him and five others of felony conspiracy, saying they had illegally blocked an ICE vehicle.

Rabbitt and his five co-defendants, who became known as the “Broadview Six”, were suddenly the center of national attention. It was the highest-profile prosecution to emerge from Operation Midway Blitz, the Trump administration’s sweeping deportation campaign across Chicago. Yet just as Rabbitt and his co-defendants were headed for trial in late May, the case collapsed amid stunning allegations of prosecutorial misconduct, including grand jury manipulation. Later, the US attorney Andrew Boutros, the federal prosecutor who leads the US Department of Justice’s Chicago office, showed up personally to drop all charges.

The case has come to symbolize what critics view as the Trump administration’s efforts to recast constitutionally protected dissent as criminal conduct. In Trump’s second term, federal law enforcement has aggressively pursued protesters who oppose his immigration agenda. But in case after case, prosecutors have been largely dealt stinging defeats by judges and juries.

Meanwhile, the Broadview Six defendants say dismissing a case that should have never been brought does little to set things right. The co-defendants have endured months of stress, sleeplessness and isolation – including from one another, as their attorneys, out of caution, advised them not to speak with each other. Their jobs and personal lives have been strained. The government has not removed the October 2025 press release announcing their charges – and might never – despite recently having done so for several January 6 US Capitol rioters whose convictions were tossed out.

Collectively, the co-defendants also owe more than $1m in legal fees, according to co-defendant and former congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh. “That’s not a happy ending, it’s just an ending,” Abughazaleh, 27, said of the dropped charges. “It’s not justice, but it is a win.”

Trump’s border czar threatens to send ‘more ICE agents than you’ve ever seen’ to New York City

Donald Trump’s hardline border czar has again threatened to dispatch a surge of immigration agents to New York City, as the administration vows to press ahead with its controversial crackdown. Tom Homan said on Monday that he had reviewed a plan to expand Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) operations in New York and deploy “more ICE agents than you’ve ever seen” in the city.

Homan said in an interview on Fox News that he was making good on a promise he made to Kathy Hochul, the governor of New York, that he would increase ICE presence in New York if the state passed legislation barring state and local law enforcement from working with immigration in New York jails. Hochul signed the bill into law at the end of last month.

“I made her a promise: you’re going to see more ICE agents than you’ve ever seen in New York City, and it’s coming,” Homan said. “I just reviewed an operational plan.” Homan has repeatedly threatened to send more ICE personnel to New York, as well as to other Democrat-run sanctuary cities around the country that limit the cooperation between local agencies and federal immigration authorities.

Kennedy Center removes Trump’s name from its website after US judge’s order

The Kennedy Center has removed Trump’s name from its website after a US district judge’s order last month to remove the US president’s name from the performing arts venue. The removal of Trump’s name from the website on Monday came just days before a deadline instructed by the center’s general counsel to remove all references to the president by 12 June.

In a memo reported by the Washington Post last Thursday, the center’s general counsel referred to US district judge Christopher Cooper’s order to take down all references to a “Trump Kennedy Center”, telling employees: “To comply with this order, you must immediately change email signatures, letterheads, and other documents to reflect the name such as ‘The John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts,’ or ‘Kennedy Center’.

“Other changes, such as to templates and forms, signage, brochures and website pages, must be completed no later than Friday, June 12, 2026,” the memo added. The front of the performing arts venue in Washington DC still reads: “The Donald J Trump and The John F Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts” as of Monday afternoon. According to Cooper’s ruling, the venue cannot be renamed without an act of Congress.

Federal judge rules Trump’s $100,000 fee for H-1B visas unlawful

A US judge has invalidated Donald Trump’s $100,000 annual fee on H-1B visa applications, ruling it an unlawful tax that violated federal administrative law and the constitution. US district judge Leo Sorokin in Boston issued the 42-page ruling in a lawsuit filed by 20 Democratic state attorneys general challenging a fee Trump announced in September that dramatically raised the cost of obtaining H-1B visas.. The ruling vacated the sweeping fee, which was a 20-to-50 fold increase on existing rates, and the Trump administration is widely expected to appeal.

In his ruling, Sorokin’s found that the fee amounted to a tax, rather than a regulatory restriction. Since the constitution gives Congress, not the president, the exclusive power to levy taxes, Trump lacked the authority to impose it. Sorokin cited the 2026 supreme court case Learning Resources v Trump, which unraveled a key pillar of Trump’s aggressive tariff strategy, for his decision.

Trump imposed the charge last September via presidential proclamation, arguing the H-1B program had enabled the “large-scale replacement of American workers”.

Jacobin SMEARS Chris Smalls For DEFYING AOC in CRINGE Article

‘Severe’ stress on oceans as rate of sea level rise doubles in 10 years, UN warns

The world’s oceans are under “severe and accelerating” pressure from human activities, with the rate of sea-level rise double that of a decade ago, according to a damning assessment from the United Nations. The “intensifying” stressors, which include pollution and large-scale industrial fishing, are cumulative, said the report, resulting in widespread biodiversity loss and putting ocean systems under “severe strain”.

The UN’s third World Ocean Assessment, which reflects the work of nearly 600 scientists from 86 countries, looked at the oceans’ health from 2021-25. The previous report, that covered up to 2018, found persistent degradation of the marine environment.

Five years on, scientists know more about the cumulative impacts of anthropogenic pressures on the ocean, and the latest report shows just how much of the damage has been done in the past few years. The scientists’ key findings include:

Sea levels continue to rise at an increasing rate, from 2mm a year prior to 2015 to 4.3mm a year in 2023.

li>16% of the increase in global ocean heat since 1955 occurred after 2018.

The greatest relative warming has been observed in the Atlantic Ocean and the southern parts of the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

Large gaps in knowledge persist – with only 27% of the ocean floor mapped by 2025, deep-sea ecosystems remain poorly understood.

The ocean, which covers more than 70% of the planet, plays a central role in regulating climate, maintaining biodiversity and providing food, minerals and energy for humans. According to the report, it has already absorbed 90% of the excess heat and 30% of the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere by the burning of fossil fuels.

US confirms three new cases of flesh-eating screwworm in livestock

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) on Monday confirmed three additional cases of New World screwworm – two more in Texas and the other in New Mexico, according to the agency’s animal health arm. The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service said the two Texas cases affected a calf in La Salle county and a goat in Gillespie county. The service clarified that a fifth case reported earlier on Monday in a dog in Andrews county would be reclassified as the first case detected in New Mexico.

The veterinarian who reported the case is located in Texas, the agency said – but the dog resides at a household in Lea county, New Mexico, which borders Texas. “This situation is evolving, and we expect new information to emerge as our investigation continues,” said Dudley Hoskins, USDA under-secretary for marketing and regulatory programs, in the release.

Reuters reported in May 2025 that hundreds of veterinarians, support staff and lab workers at the animal health arm of the USDA had left after the Trump administration pushed for resignations, leaving fewer specialists to respond to animal disease outbreaks and adding to concerns about preparedness.

Majority of US’s new AI datacenters to be built on drought-hit land

A record-shattering drought has racked much of the US. But the artificial intelligence industry is pushing ahead regardless, with the majority of planned datacenters set to be built in drought-ridden locations, a Guardian analysis has found. About two-thirds of upcoming datacenters, which typically require a large amount of water to operate, are set to be built in places that have been among the driest in the country over the past year.

Of 809 planned datacenters, 517 are in locations that have been in drought conditions throughout the past year, according to data from Cleanview and the federal government, which grades drought across four levels of severity. A similar proportion of existing datacenters are already situated in drought-affected areas.

More than 60% of the contiguous US is currently at varying stages of drought, the largest expanse for spring in modern records, with a particularly severe lack of rain and snow in the south-east and west desiccating croplands and raising fears of a disastrous wildfire season.

A stampede of new datacenters are adding extra demands via their hefty energy and water requirements. Large datacenters, some the size of small towns, can require up to 5m gallons of water a day, equivalent to the water use of up to 50,000 people, in order to provide cooling to arrays of humming networked computers. Overall, the multiplying datacenters across the US are set to demand as much as 73bn gallons of water a year by 2028, up from about 17bn gallons in 2023. Each 100-word AI prompt uses up roughly one 500ml bottle of water due to the cooling needs of datacenters, researchers have estimated.

Companies such as Google, Meta, Microsoft and Amazon are pouring billions of dollars into new datacenters, with developers often drawn to dry, sparsely populated areas, due to the lower cost of land and generous tax breaks. Arid climates are also thought to cause the least amount of corrosion to equipment over time.

Also of Interest

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

Iran War: Iran Launches New Strikes on Israel After Netanyahu Humiliated Trump by Ignoring Demand to Stand Pat; Ansar Allah Attacks Israel and Saudi Base, Makes Red Sea Threat; South Korea Swoon Adds to AI Meltdown; BREAKING Bab el-Mandeb Closed?

War On Iran: – Iran Will Respond To Ceasefire Breaches Wherever Those Are

Iran Hits Israel Over Lebanese Attacks

A Little Night Music

Robert Lowery - Hobo Blues

Robert Lowery - Cold Weather Blues

Robert Lowery - Midnight Run

Robert Lowery & Virgil Trasher- Lowery's #2 Boogie

Robert Lowery - Mean old twister

Robert Lowery - They Call Me the Blues Man

Robert Lowery - Move on Little Girl

Robert Lowery - Sittin' On Top Of The World

Robert Lowery - Earthquake Blues

Robert Lowery - Little Boy Boogie