US War on Iran Is Not About Nuclear Threats. It’s About US Power and Domination.
The US and Israel’s war of aggression against Iran offers more proof that the “rules-based” world order has ended.
#WarOnTerror
Well folks, as you may have heard the Klepto Kaiser bombed Iran on Saturday night. This in turn means that we are now living in wartime America again; assuming we weren't already. As if on cue swarms of imperialist propagandists have dominated our mainstream discourse; rallying to justify both what Trump has just done, and further military action pointing towards an obvious regime change operation in Iran. I'm not a fortune teller, but everything I know about American culture and MENA wars tells me that the manufacturing consent machine is in full operation already and you're about to be buried in propaganda, bullshit, and motivated reasoning on the subject of US imperialism and military action against Iran; in fact, it's kind of already happening.
At this point, in what seems like the beginning to folks who don't know America's long history of attempting to control the political and economic fortunes of Iran, I thought I'd take a moment to review what just happened, how we got here, and why the American forever war on Iran is already older than almost everyone who might actually read this. Given that I do not have high hopes that the Pig Empire establishment is going to do anything to reign in our nazi president, I'm probably going to be writing a lot about US imperial violence in and against Iran going forward on this blog, and I feel like this essay is a good, concise version of where I stand, given the history of American imperial ambitions in the MENA.
https://www.ninaillingworth.com/2025/06/22/forever-at-forever-war-with-iran/
Forever At Forever War With Iran
"So, we’re clearly at war with Iran, right? Not according to the Kelpto Kaiser’s couch-curious Vice President JD Vance; who gifted Trump’s war in Iran with its first Bushism when he confidently informed NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” moderator Kristen Welker that we’re only at war with Iran’s nuclear program. Why that isn’t a difference without a distinction, remains unclear. This naturally won’t be the last lie the Trumpenreich regime utters to justify this illegal war, nor is it the first. After all, the entire premise of the attack, to shut down the nonexistent Iranian nuclear weapons program, is a lie. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been claiming Iran is on the verge of building a nuclear weapon without evidence for over thirty years. In March, Trump’s own Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard publicly told Congress that Iran wasn’t building a nuclear weapon and wouldn’t be capable of doing so for at least three years. This has put the United States in the precarious position of bombing a country we claim we’re not at war with, while simultaneously declaring we’re at war with a nuclear weapons program that does not exist; that faint clapping sound you hear is Dick Cheney applauding the Trump regime’s chutzpah."
#Imperialism #War #Iran #Israel #Trump #PigEmpire #RegimeChange #IllegalWar #WarCrimes #BenjaminNetanyahu #WarOnTerror #MohammadMosaddegh #1953 #CIA #MENA #ForeverWars #IraqInvasion #DickCheney #JDVance #Propaganda #ManufacturingConsent
There are of course, no circumstances "where you have to hand it to the Nazis" but I must confess that if Trump's stated goal is keeping everyone confused about what god awful shit he's trying to pull off in the war touched off by Israel's unprovoked attack on Iran, consider me successfully baffled. For example, the White House announced today that we can expect Trump to decide whether or not to attack Iran in the next two weeks. What does that mean? I have absolutely no idea; the White House is not a reliable narrator and even in this statement they're implicitly arguing the President has the power to drag us into a war with Iran without consulting Congress. Would that even matter? Somehow I doubt it, between the GOP majority and a whole lot of pro-genocide AIPAC-funded Blue Dog Democrats, I suspect the Swine Emperor would get his permission slip regardless, even after the fact.
So what's more reliable than the intentionally deceptive ravings of a septuagenarian nazi, or his latest Mouth of Sauron, Karoline Leavitt? How about leaks from inside the government that the US military has already drawn up a plan of attack for an assault on Iran, the Klepto Kaiser has already approved it, and the only thing the American war machine is waiting on is the order to launch from Trump himself. An order which Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has already stated the Pentagon would obey regardless of any actions taking by Congress.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-approves-iran-attack
Trump Reportedly Greenlights Plan for US Attack on Iran Without Congressional Approval
"President Donald Trump is set to meet with top advisers in the White House Situation Room Thursday morning in the wake of reports that he has privately approved plans for a U.S. attack on Iran, a development that comes after days of pressure from Israeli officials and Republican war hawks in Congress to intervene in the war that Israel launched last week.
The Wall Street Journal reported late Wednesday that Trump told senior aides that he "approved of attack plans for Iran, but was holding off on giving the final order to see if Tehran will abandon its nuclear program."
"While Trump weighed his decision, the U.S. military continued to move forces to Europe and toward the Middle East, including tanker planes to refuel aircraft in flight, warships capable of shooting down ballistic missiles, an aircraft carrier battle group, and advanced F-22 air-to-air fighters, which flew Wednesday to a base in Britain," the Journal observed.
CBS News also reported that Trump "approved attack plans on Iran Tuesday night."
In the interests of absolute transparency, I should note that Trump has directly denied the Wall Street Journal report this story is about in his typically charming way, but I see no particular reason to believe him at any time, let alone when he's openly admitting he's being cagey about a war with Iran to confuse his "enemies." The Journal's reporting seems far more consistent with the open movement of ships and materiel the American military is conducting, and it's very clear the information was coming from inside Trump's inner circle, or the Pentagon itself. This is almost certainly real, which regardless of what you or I may think Trump's ultimate intentions are, means we're a brainwormed sociopathic fascist's snap phone call away from dragging *ourselves* into another MENA forever war, this time in Iran.
Finally, in terms of trying to read the tea leaves coming out of the White House because that's literally all we can really do while Trump dangles the most powerful military apparatus on the planet on a string over our collective heads, don't sleep on the company Trump is reportedly keeping these days.
"Politico reported Wednesday that "Trump, who criticized his predecessor for allowing new wars to break out on his watch, is increasingly listening to a small group of Iran hawks who have been pushing to go tougher on Tehran."
"Trump has become more receptive to arguments by those advocating more military engagement, including Gen. Michael 'Erik' Kurilla, who leads Central Command, as well as Republican senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Tom Cotton of Arkansas," the outlet noted."
Please do keep in mind that while I detest the common style of "Trump-whispering" articles in the mainstream media about the Swine Emperor's thoughts and motivations, they have produced a lot of evidence that Der Leader is not exactly a bold independent thinker and thus watching which minions are in close proximity to him at a given moment, can often help you predict some of Trump's actions. I probably *could* think of a worse three people for Trump to be hanging around with right now for those of us who don't want more US imperial violence and endless war, but it would be difficult.
Analysis isn't prophecy, but a betting women would put her chips on war, given the available evidence.
#Trump #USPol #War #Iran #Israel #Imperialism #WarOnTerror #NoWar #GOP #Graham #Cotton
One of the lessons I learned from the War on Terror and US invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq, is that it's important to talk about the manufacture of consent for war in real time, no matter how obviously false, or rooted in motivating reasoning, the propaganda and arguments that manufacture that consent may seem to you. Long after we admit our imperial adventures are slaughterhouse catastrophes, everyone will remember the big lies, and sometimes even the big liars in the media who told them, but the reality is that the primary tool by which an always pro-war establishment manipulates public opinion to justify imperial violence is not the big lies, but an all pervasive environment of little lies, acts of framing, and the creation of a perceived mass consensus around "common sense" arguments for war rather than factual analysis. Colin Powell didn't convince Americans to support the invasion of Iraq by shaking around a vial at the UN, it was the thousands upon thousands of news stories, articles, and presentations in our discourse that portrayed Iraq as the source of all evil in the world, and the idea of *not* attacking Iraq as the unreasonable position, that did the deed in the end.
I mention this because as this article by Belén Fernández writing for media watchdog FAIR notes, imperialist corporate media in America is performing Olympic-level mental gymnastics to flip victim and aggressor in stories about Israel's completely illegal and unprovoked attack on Iran. A burgeoning war the US President is currently threatening to embroil America in despite the overwhelming wishes of its people.
https://fair.org/home/working-hard-to-justify-israels-unprovoked-attack-on-iran/
Working Hard to Justify Israel’s Unprovoked Attack on Iran
"Imagine for a moment that Country A launched an illegal and unprovoked attack on Country B. In any sort of objective world, you might expect media coverage of the episode to go something along the lines of: “Country A Launches Illegal and Unprovoked Attack on Country B.”
Not so in the case of Israel, whose special relationship with the United States means it gets special coverage in the US corporate media. When Israel attacked Iran early last Friday, killing numerous civilians along with military officials and scientists, the press was standing by to present the assault as fundamentally justified—no surprise coming from the outlets that have for more than 20 months refused to describe Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip as genocide."
I like to share the media studies FAIR publishes because they're generally well sourced, and extremely concise; this article is no exception. The author looks at three pro-Israel propaganda arguments in particular, woven throughout corporate American media stories about the unprovoked attack, which as I've mentioned before, is almost certainly a literal fucking war crime. Specifically she examines the argument that Israel's illegal attack on Iran was pre-emptive, that being attacked by Israel is actually saving Iranians somehow, and arguments that Israel's attack on Iran echoes its (also illegal) attacks on Lebanon, which are magically transformed into a good thing in this narrative.
Virtually all of these propositions are of course utterly absurd. A "pre-emptive" strike is literally just starting an illegal war, just like it was when Bush attacked Iraq under the same logic. The idea that Iranians are thanking Israel for killing civilians to punish their government is some jingoistic absurdity. And Israel's activities in Lebanon were themselves another illegal war and dare I say, terrorism. Literally none of this makes any sense unless you're high on Zionist propaganda released directly by the Netanyahu government, and yet Fernández found reporting in corporate mainstream media outlets like the Associated Press, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and ABC all making one or more of these absurd arguments to justify Israel's again, unprovoked, illegal attack on Iran.
My friends, please let me remind you that Israel is a US client state, and could not prosecute a war against Iran (or a genocide in Gaza) without American military hardware, funding, and diplomatic support. Manufacturing consent for a regime change war, by Israel, in Iran, is in fact just manufacturing consent for a US war in Iran. American media outlets are not talking this way, or pushing these pro-war, anti-Iran propaganda arguments because it makes them feel good; they're framing any potential conflict with Iran as unambiguously justified, morally virtuous, and entirely the fault of Iranians for not overthrowing their government on our behalf by now. This, is what the manufacture of consent for war in America looks like in real time; not one big lie, but a thousand voices telling you over and over that every "reasonable" person agrees Iran had it coming.
#USA #Imperialism #War #Israel #Iran #ManufacturingConsent #Media #WaPo #NYT #Propaganda #WarOnTerror #Gaza #Genocide
As Trump drives the US towards a seemingly inevitable direct attack on Iran, if not a full blown regime change war, it's worth asking an important question; who exactly is it that wants an American war with Iran? The simple answer to that question is "the American ruling class" and the long answer, which includes a vast network of wealthy donors, Christian Zionist political actors, and a military industrial complex that stands to make a literal killing off another forever war in the MENA, is somewhat beyond the scope of the post I'm making here. Perhaps the better question to ask right now is "who *doesn't* want a US war with Iran" and the answer to that is "literally everyone else in our society" - including a slim majority of Trump voters who presumably are not wealthy Zionists or arms manufacturers.
Not Just Progressives: Over Half of Trump Voters Oppose US War on Iran
"While it is widely known that American progressives overwhelmingly oppose the war on Iran at which President Donald Trump is increasingly hinting, new polling published Tuesday revealed that a thin majority of respondents who voted for the Republican president are also against U.S. involvement in the widening Israel-Iran war.
According to the Economist/YouGov survey of 1,512 U.S. adults conducted between June 13-16, 60% of all respondents oppose U.S. involvement in the war, while just 16% supported military action and 24% were unsure. Among those who voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris for president last year, 71% opposed war on Iran.
So did 53% of Trump voters. In fact, a majority of respondents across all gender, race, age, and income categories opposed military action against Iran."
Frankly, I don't really have a lot to add here. The article goes on to discuss other targeted polls, but they too show that literally nobody in the voting base, which is of course comprised primarily of labor class Americans, across virtually every possible category of voter, wants this war. If this happens, it's going to be because warmongers, rich people, and folks who would sacrifice the planet to preserve the Pig Empire colonial outpost that is Israel, want it to happen, and for no other reason.
I mention this because this is not my first rodeo kids. I know how the Pig Empire, and Amerikkka in particular manufacture consent for war, and I'm watching it happen all over again before my very eyes. If this goes as sideways as I fear it might, the Very Serious People TM are going to pretend that Americans were braying for war, and "we" are all in this homicidal shitshow together. It's not true, and you need to hold on to what is real in the barrage of lies and emotionally manipulative propaganda these folks are going to bombard you with, to convince you this is an "us against them" moment.
Nobody but our ruling class, wants a war with Iran.
#Trump #War #Imperialism #Iran #Israel #NoWar #USPol #WarOnTerror
It had been my hope that those of you too young to remember Mike Huckabee as Governor of Arkansas, would be spared from having to come to grips with the insane bullshit this sociopathic fundie fascist believes in any meaningful way. Unfortunately, because Trump makes everything shitty about American politics infinitely worse, Huckabee is now the US Ambassador to Israel at the exact time we're kinda maybe sorta already joining them in a war against Iran. This gives him a position of outsized importance right now, and provides him with an opportunity to advise President Trump at what may well be the most critical moment in American politics since Bush (disastrously) declared war on Iraq. What sage words of stately wisdom is Mike providing the Swine Emperor at this volatile moment? As it turns out flattery, messianic end times nonsense, and encouragement to fucking nuke Iran. No, really.
https://truthout.org/articles/huckabee-suggests-trump-should-nuke-iran-follow-guidance-from-heaven/
Huckabee Suggests Trump Should Nuke Iran, Follow Guidance From “Heaven”
"US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee has suggested to President Donald Trump that he should use a nuclear bomb against Iran, urging Trump to listen to the voice he will “hear from heaven” and follow its guidance in making decisions about Israel’s war on Iran.
In a post on Truth Social on Tuesday, Trump posted a screenshot of the lengthy text he says was sent to him by Huckabee, an evangelical and Christian Zionist who Trump praises as a “Great Person!”
In the text, Huckabee says Trump’s current decision on whether or not to involve the U.S. further in attacks on Iran is akin to the decision President Harry Truman faced in 1945 — when Truman dropped two atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people in Japan and decimating the cities."
Folks, I don't want to be accused of being a foot solider in the (totally made up) "War on Christianity" but perhaps it's not a great idea to put people who believe we need to herd all the Jewish People into Israel, and then blow it up so Jesus can come back and save white Christian nazis from eternal hellfire, in charge of anything important. And you're going to tell me that I'm being ridiculous because Huckabee is only the Ambassador to Israel, but I will respond by reminding you that this is what virtually all evangelical Christian Zionists believe and that includes powerful folks like Senator Ted Cruz, House Speaker Mike Johnson, and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, among many other influential fundie nutjobs in and around the Trump administration. All of which of course is to say nothing of Huckabee's apocalyptic vision of the future, or his attempts to cast Trump in the role of a literal messianic figure. I'm listening to folks on my TV talk about the evils of "fundamentalist clerics running Iran" and the US Ambassador to Israel is out here telling Trump that God himself is gonna tell him to turn Iran to glass at any moment. Are you people fucking kidding me? We're gonna take foreign policy advice from people who're big worried about Satanic possession and witchcraft in the year 2025?
Regardless of whether or not you accept my premise that Christian Zionism itself should be disqualifying for all government service, you have to admit that this is an absolutely fucking insane thing for an American diplomat to say while we're on the verge of a war with Iran that the Trump regime seems to actively preparing for; and for Lindsey Graham, a US Senator, to agree with him that we should fucking nuke Iran, is mind-numbing, War on Terror-level, xenophobic, imperial bullshit. All of these people should be removed from office fucking immediately; and that goes double for Mike Huckabee.
Why? Well I have some news for Mike. His job? Is to represent the UNITED STATES of fucking AMERICA in Israel. His job is not to represent Benjamin Netanyahu's case for making his war, our war, on the international stage. There are fucking governments that would consider what Huckabee just said here treasonous; and they would not be entirely wrong to do so. I do not give one flying fuck about American national security, but if my news is any indication, a great number of Very Serious People TM in our society do, and if that's the case our Ambassador to Israel needs to be reminded who he actually works for.
Of course, none of that is going to happen; indeed it barely even registered in mainstream Western media that Huckabee just called on Trump to literally nuke Iran at all. A bipartisan, mainstream American establishment that has wanted a regime change war in Iran every waking moment since 1979, is so close to what they desire that they can literally taste it - and if they have to put up with fundie end times prophecy, a little fascism, and some light treason to get it, so be it.
#Trump #War #Imperialism #Iran #Israel #USPol #MikeHuckabee #NuclearWeapons #ManufacturingConsent #Propaganda #EndTimes #Fundamentalism #ChristianZionism #WarOnTerror
Trump’s Military Birthday Parade Was a Gross Failure
The G7 has power. The G7 needs to demonstrate its power by ignoring the terror toddler and isolating it from the adult table. The other terror toddlers also sit at the toddler table if they also act out. Take away their air and make an example of them.
Today in deeply not at all fun Trump facts; did you know the Swine Emperor has currently deployed more troops to LA than the US military officially maintains in Syria and Iraq, combined? No, seriously:
Trump Has Deployed More Troops in LA Than Syria and Iraq, Per US Counts
"President Donald Trump’s latest deployment of thousands of National Guard troops and Marines to Los Angeles means that there are now more troops carrying out Trump’s anti-protest crackdown in southern California than in both Iraq and Syria, regions where the U.S. has executed some of its most intense and inhumane military campaigns in recent decades, according to official counts.
Trump has dispatched roughly 4,000 National Guard members and 700 Marines to respond to L.A.’s protests of his immigration raids, for a total of roughly 4,700 troops. Meanwhile, according to publicly reported Pentagon figures, the U.S. has roughly 2,000 troops deployed in Syria and 2,500 troops in Iraq, for a total of 4,500."
As the article goes on to note, a Pentagon still operating under War on Terror logic while occupying Iraq and purportedly fighting terrorism in Syria, may well be undercounting the troop levels in those two countries; they've certainly done so in the past.
Regardless, if we consider the *official* deployment of military personnel to be a de facto statement of the regime's policing priorities, that still means the Trumpenreich is arguing that unarmed domestic protesters inside very small pockets of the Los Angeles area are a greater threat than militarized terrorist militias in two countries US intervention has helped transform into semi-perpetual warzones. Please keep in mind that the LA protests are happening on livestream, and there are hundreds of eye witness accounts in the public discourse from Angelinos saying there is no widespread disorder for the troops to quell. There is not a man, woman, nor child in America who can't verify for themselves that Trump is lying about a “rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States” going on in Los Angeles, if they want to.
All of which of course leads us directly back to our ongoing discussion about what the Trumpenreich is trying to use its militarized invasion of LA to sanctify in practice, if not in US Law. Trump wants the power to permanently occupy US cities, while engaging the military in both domestic policing and assisting the Gestapo in the regime's ethnonationalist mass deportation project; including apparently providing detention facilities for caged migrants. Furthermore, as Zhang ominously notes, there are clear signs the regime is exploring how to scale up what they're doing in LA, to a much more national project.
"According to a report by ABC News, the Pentagon is considering a plan crafted by the Department of Homeland Security to deploy more than 20,000 additional National Guard troops to aid with Trump’s immigration raids.
This would cost $3.6 billion over the course of a year, and would represent roughly half of the number of troops deployed across the entirety of the Middle East. It would also be an escalation of the Trump administration’s use of the U.S.’s colossal military capacity to attack and subdue the American public."
Folks, I'm just going to be real with you; you don't martial up 20,000+ troops from all across the country in advance because ICE is going to raid a bunch of cities one by one to hunt down brown people Stephen Miller's shriveled conscience cannot abide existing in his county. We're definitely going to talk more about the ABC report the author mentions at a later point in time, but what you're looking at here is the opening steps the regime would need to take if they intended to militarily occupy the parts of the United States that didn't vote for Trump without meeting organized, violent resistance.
Like a lot of the fascist bullshit the Klepto Kaiser is doing right now, it's hard to tell if he's going to go "all the way." At some point however, the idea that Donald Trump is just accidentally stumbling in to all the steps he would need to enshrine a militarized fascist dictatorship under a perpetual state of quasi-martial law, strains credulity. If Trump gets away with transforming protests into an insurrection and soldiers into policemen in LA, you should bet on the idea that the nazis will soon be coming for a town near you in that very same way.
#Fascism #Trump #InvasionOfLA #Imperialism #WarOnTerror #USPol #LosAngeles #Protests #MENA #Syria #Iraq #PoliceState
The families of non-#American personnel killed in the #waronterror should have the right to kick #petehegseth in the balls.
Yesterday, I spent a little time on this account writing about the Trump regime, Project Esther, and the fascist American right's plan to use anti-terrorism laws to crush their political opposition. Unfortunately, I ran out of room to say everything I wanted to say so last night I expanded my thoughts over on NIDC and did the sourcing legwork.
https://www.ninaillingworth.com/2025/05/27/nina-bytes-trumps-cointelpro-looms-into-focus/
Nina-Bytes: Trump’s COINTELPRO Looms Into Focus
"This then brings us to the ominous reality so very few observers in the media seem to be grasping, namely that targeting the anti-genocide, pro-Palestine movement is merely the tip of the fascist spear in the Trump regime’s war on dissent and political opposition. The rhetoric, suppression techniques, and legal arguments that are being deployed against foreign anti-genocide student protestors as we speak are easy to replicate while targeting more or less the entire oppositional left in America, including milquetoast NGOs, aid groups, and likely even “liberal” political organizations like the Democratic Party. The broad and extremely vague nature of our terrorism laws leaves room for the Trump regime to label almost anyone a member of a terrorist organization, and define material support for that organization in any way they please. The authors of Project Esther are very clear that they consider opposition to capitalism, or the American state as embodied by the Trump administration, to be valid targets for those designations. If anti-genocide protest is “materially supporting Hamas,” then funding migrant support work is probably “materially supporting narco-terrorist gangs,” and speaking out against the US government can be “materially supporting” any group of “bad guys” around the globe that do the same. The possibilities for targeted, legalized repression are quite literally endless."
#Fascism #Trump #USPol #Gaza #Genocide #Israel #PoliceState #HeritageFoundation #ProjectEsther #Project2025 #GOP #Palestinians #StudentProtests #CivilRights #McCarthyism #COINTELPRO #WarOnTerror #Counterterrorism
As far back as the first Trump administration, I was writing about the way the president's absolute power over immigration policy and enforcement, combined with Trump's ethno-nationalist worldview, and ICE's disturbingly broad powers to act as a private army for the executive, ultimately made ICE Trump's literal "Gestapo." I'm old enough to have been for abolishing ICE from its inception as a federal agency back in 2003, but now that we've actually seen what happens when an authoritarian president trying to establish a Christian Nationalist ethnostate gets ahold of a poorly regulated security force full of white nationalists, I think it behooves everyone who isn't a fascist themselves to advocate for abolishing ICE as a matter of personal preservation. If that sounds radical to you, please let me remind you that immigration officials and ICE agents are *already* arresting judges and opposition party politicians on made up "obstruction" and "trespassing" charges to ram through illegal mass deportations without interference from folks who care about things like "the law," or "human rights."
As this excellent article by Mehdi Hasan points out, the need to abolish ICE entirely wasn't always a "radical" left wing position in American politics; as recently as 2018 even "centrist" Democrats like Kirsten Gillibrand and future Democratic Party presidential nominee Kamala Harris were both willing to publicly say the agency needed to be ripped down to the studs and "reimagined." So now that Trump has fully unleashed ICE to behave as his own private Gestapo, where is the Democratic Party on the subject of abolishing ICE today? As Hasan notes, nowhere at all; and that includes progressive firebrands like AOC and Bernie Sanders.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/13/democrats-abolish-ice-trump
Ice has become Trump’s private militia. It must be abolished
"So where are the Dems on this? Why aren’t they calling for an end to a lawless, violent, deadly, institutionally racist, sexually abusive agency, whose employees’ union endorsed Trump for president in both 2016 and 2020, and whose former acting director, Tom Homan, has become this administration’s gung-ho “border czar” and “the face of Trump’s cruelty”, to quote my Zeteo colleague John Harwood?
Forget about talk of “reform”. At this point, there is no way to improve or “fix” Ice. It has to be abolished. Shut down. Scrapped. To quote Gillibrand in 2018, the entirety of immigration enforcement in the United States must be “reimagined”.
Meanwhile, as some Democrats obsess over opinion polls and worry about looking “soft” on the border, the actual experts on authoritarianism are sounding the alarm. The political scientist Lee Morgenbesser has compared Ice to a “secret police” and says the agency “is fast becoming a key piece in the repressive apparatus of American authoritarianism”. Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat calls Ice the “foot soldiers” of the “fascists”. Even the “anti-woke” libertarians over at Reason magazine say Ice is on a “militaristic mission that effectively turns nonviolent immigrants into fugitives.”
On some level, it's mind-blowing to me that "we should dismantle the fascist regime's cracker supremacist secret police" is a controversial position in American politics, but here we are. I do not comprehend how anyone who has been watching the fascist activities of the Trump regime, and the operational centrality of the War on Terror era DHS (under which ICE operates) security structure to most of that fascist bullshit, can argue that an agency built to enforce American nativisim and "counterterrorism" police state repression, can be reformed somehow. Furthermore, even if it could be separated from the executive branch's far too broad immigration powers to reduce abuse, what would we be reforming it for? To hunt down brown people more "humanely?" That's absolute cracker nonsense, and while I know *why* the Democratic Party accepts that framework (they have rich racist donors who profit from the migrant carceral complex too), that doesn't make it any less nativist, or corrosive to our civil liberties when they do so. Hasan is right, the only politically and morally acceptable position here is "abolish ICE."
Even setting aside how strongly I agree with Hasan's argument, I'd like to note that this article is a wonderful work of evidentiary scholarship; there are no less than 56 source links documenting years worth of American political attitudes about ICE, the agency's numerous authoritarian abuses in the past month of the Trump 2.0 era, and why it's absolutely fair to describe them as Trump's personal (fascist) militia. Anytime you can spit so much truth "Very Serious People TM" don't want to hear that it requires your poor editor to spend an entire evening hunting down reference links, you're doing that work; game recognize game, Mr. Hasan.
#Fascism #Trump #USPol #ICE #DHS #WarOnTerror #Democrats #Gestapo #CivilRights #Nativism #WhiteNationalism #Ethnostate #TomHoman #Immigration #PoliceState
I'm sure it's technically possible for the GOP's "big beautiful" budget bill to be worse than it is, but damn would they have to try. In addition to slashing healthcare and fucking food stamps for the poorest people in America, it turns out the bill also contains the NGO-killer sidecar that aged out in the then Democrat controlled Senate last year. Under the provision, the Treasury Secretary will be able to strip the tax-exempt status of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) that the regime deems a “terrorist-supporting organization.” Who oversees that decision? Nobody who doesn't work for Trump. And what evidence do they have to produce to enact it? Absolutely nothing, just vibes.
https://theintercept.com/2025/05/12/trump-nonprofit-killer-tax-cuts/
Republicans Sneak Nonprofit Killer Bill Into the Tail End of Trump’s 389-Page Tax Plan
"The House Ways and Means Committee will meet Tuesday for a mark-up session of the 389-page draft plan, a massive bundle of draft amendments central to the Trump administration’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” that aims to cut trillions of dollars in government spending.
Among those amendments, buried on page 380 of the draft, is a section that would enable Trump’s secretary of the Treasury to denounce any nonprofit as a “terrorist-supporting organization” and strip it of its tax-exempt status.
“This seems to just give the president a tool to go after his political enemies and fulfill some of the darker elements of the Project 2025 agenda,” said Ryan Costello, policy director at the National Iranian American Council."
Readers with a good memory will recall that this exact same bill was passed in the House with resounding bipartisan support after the election, but before Trump was inaugurated, because Bidenite "Blue Dog" Democrats were very interested in punishing NGOs that spoke out against US. support for Israel and its ongoing US-backed genocide in Gaza. When it was (loudly) pointed out by numerous civil rights groups and activists that this meant giving the then-incoming President Trump the power to effectively censor NGOs by threatening their ability to operate and all he'd have to do is say the magic word "terrorism" to do so, cooler heads in the Senate prevailed and the bill didn't make it to a vote before Trump actually took office. All of which is to say that while the Democrats ultimately share in the responsibility for this idea even existing, even the most bloodthirsty pro-Zionist conservatives in the Dem Party, folks up to their eyeballs in AIPAC money, realized there is no way on this green earth a man like Trump should have that power because he will abuse it to violate civil rights, and target his enemies; now the GOP is trying to sneak that power onto the tail end of a class war budget bill that will literally murder disadvantaged Americans of all stripes to pay for obscene tax cuts for a wealthy ruling class that has more money than they can actually spend before they die.
Folks, I know you're tired of hearing me say it, but it is fundamentally impossible for you to understand how we got here, without factoring the unhinged security state authoritarianism the entire US political apparatus adopted to "keep us safe" from "terrorists" after 9/11. Without the War on Terror, we don't get to a place where Donald Trump and the GOP are trying to grant themselves the power to destroy aid organizations simply because they point out that bombing hospitals and refugee camps to murder children for the establishment of a Greater Israel is monstrous genocidal fuckery; which is to say nothing of the fact that Trump is absolutely going to use this power to target far more than pro-Palestinian NGOs, if it is granted to him. It may sound to you like I'm being hyperbolic when I say the state (and thus Trump) isn't required to prove anyone is an actual terrorist, before applying the terrorist label that allows them to unlock vast police state powers, but that is literally how it works and Americans were lead to believe this was necessary to protect us from "radical Islamic terrorism." Advocates warned that this was a grave threat to our civil liberties and would usher in an era of overt American fascism on a long enough timeline, and now here we are; with a fascist regime hinging its entire mass deportation program on a fake "invasion" that's only (legally) credible because Trump declared a gang with less than 1,000 members in the US a narco-terrorist organization working for the government of Venezuela. The US State department is using the word "terrorist" to revoke visas for student protestors, kidnap foreign students for exercising their free speech rights, and attempted deportations on behalf of Israel. Looking at the wreckage these policies have created in the hands of a government determined to abuse them, how can anyone at all think it's a good idea to expand those powers here in the Trump era? It's not; this bill must not pass.
#Fascism #Trump #Budget #Terrorism #911 #WarOnTerror #NGOs #GOP #Censorship #PoliceState
This is what the US and UK were doing for two decades in Iraq and Afghanistan, is it any wonder why they support Israels genocide of Palestinians today?
""They handcuffed a young boy and shot him," recalled one veteran who served with the SAS in Afghanistan. "He was clearly a child, not even close to fighting age."
"They'd handcuff them, then shoot them", before cutting off the plastic handcuffs"
@RonSupportsYou But you're missing the fact that #Republicans & #Democrats work hand in glove to maintain the facade we have a fair system.
Like #Dems play Good Cop: Lie to you & pretend to care about you, while the #GOP play Bad Cop: Act aggressive towards you violently.
The Dems throughout the years have did more to help the GOP with the Pied-piper Strategy and actively done more to stop us by rubber stamping what ever they do like the #NSA Spying, #ICE, #WarOnTerror, #War in #Iraq, etc.
Business Plot 2.0 started to accelerate around the time of the manufactured " #WarOnTerror". The grandfather of President #GeorgeWBush, Prescott #Bush, was involved in the first #BusinessPlot in 1933.
https://allthatsinteresting.com/the-business-plot
#Politics #Democrats #Republicans #Liberals #Conservatives #Vote #Election #DemocraticParty #DNC #RepublicanParty #RNC #GOP #DonaldTrump #Trump #JDVance #Vance #JoeBiden #Biden #KamalaHarris #Harris #TimWalz #Walz #Democracy #US #USA #ElonMusk #Musk #Fascism #Fascist
"Anti #terrorism" laws were created to #oppress, #suppress, control & surveil just like apartheid #Israel. The " #WarOnTerror" used taxpayer #money to murder people in the #MiddleEast, steal resources to further enrich #billionaires & create a #police state #surveillance apparatus over ordinary people.
#Politics #Democrats #Republicans #Liberals #Conservatives #Vote #Election #DemocraticParty #RepublicanParty #Trump #Biden #KamalaHarris #TimWalz #Democracy #US #USA #Musk #Fascism #Fascist
I just realised I misread … the Hebrew calender IS shorter, but has leap months? So that doesn't explain the "18" on Meir Feinstein's grave?
Whoever made the new stone in 1967, just rounded up to the nearest "kind of an adult… ISH"
Despite that being rather pivotal as to whether Begin's excuse to blow him up makes any sense, given every other 17 year old Irgun member sentenced to death for terrorism got their death sentence downgraded to prison.
The British did an early version of the #WarOnTerror but they at least didn't officially execute kids, it wasn't still the executions became "targeted killings" in the 21st century that being an adult stopped mattering.
Really, blowing up a 17½ year old on your own side is not much different to blowing up an 18 year old on your own side, but it IS different is your excuse was that the British were going to execute him anyway and they didn't execute any other 17½ year olds.
A great 4-pt series by #KenSilverstein of #WashingtonBabylon about the #MAGA-aligned #WarOnTerror grifter, security state profiteer, fabulist and likely domestic abuser, Florida Congressman #CoryMills. A portrait of a living lie.
https://www.washingtonbabylondc.com/p/congressman-cory-mills-incredible
https://www.washingtonbabylondc.com/p/gop-congressman-cory-mills-incredible
https://www.washingtonbabylondc.com/p/gop-congressman-cory-mills-incredible-56b
https://www.washingtonbabylondc.com/p/gop-congressman-cory-mills-epic-saga
#USpol #USpolitics #BeltwayBullshitters
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