5
#000000
#FFFFFF
LIVE COVERAGE
Opinion
Climate
Economy
Politics
Rights & Justice
War & Peace
Further
On Witless Great Vengeance and Furious Anger
Seeking to rally the troops for his unholy war, Christian nationalist, TV-carnie and war fanboy Pete Kegseth just passed off some vengeful Gospel According to Tarantino as scripture at his (unconstitutional) Pentagon prayer service, and yes we have them now. Added to the "shameless blasphemy" of quoting - without credit - Samuel Jackson's homicidal hitman Jules as "prayer," Pete moronically misses the redemptive point: As he cites the "tyranny of evil men," he, unlike Jules, doesn't friggin' get that he is one.
With their calamitous illegal war continuing to spiral out of control, flailing regime officials are striking out in ever more erratic ways. Nursing his deranged feud with Pope Leo XIV, a vindictive Private Bonespurs - Suffer the little children to own the Pope - abruptly cancelled an $11 million contract with Catholic Charities in Miami to fund a vital, decades-long foster program for migrant children, aka small deadly illegals, who enter the U.S. alone. The result of "an incredibly psychologically harmful" move for already vulnerable kids: "They don't know who or where they are from day to day." Meanwhile, slimy, Bible-and-chest thumping braggadocio Pete is working hard to inflict his own fire-and-brimstone carnage.
Blithely pressing on with a serial slaughter based on evidently "entirely make-believe" grounds, Hegseth killed three more "narco-terrorists," likely fishermen, in the Eastern Pacific last week. It was the third boat bombing in three days - complete with giddy video - in the name of a "narco-trafficking" criminal conspiracy of which, experts say, there is "zero evidence"; they also say the murders have "no impact at all" on America's drug problems. Despite bogus legal theories scrounged up by the regime in an attempt to justify the deaths of at least 177 mostly innocent people, rights advocates note, “'Murder' is the general term for premeditated killings outside of armed conflict."
In the wake of those transgressions and many more, Democrats just filed six articles of impeachment against Hegseth; their lead sponsor, Iranian-American Arizona Rep. Yassamin Ansari, cited "high crimes and misdemeanors,” including war crimes, abuse of power, and other charges. The bill didn't mention Hegseth's clearly unconstitutional worship services (what separation of church and state?), part of a brazen Christian crusade that faces a lawsuit arguing, "The federal government’s role is to serve the public, not proselytize." Nor does it flag his bloody, unseemly prayers for U.S. troops to inflict “overwhelming violence against those who deserve no mercy."
The impeachment effort also fails to target the movie plagiarism and general dumbfuckery committed by cosplay Hegseth, one of a host of inept imposters in this awful Oceans 11 re-make, in his latest, lamest piece of performance art: Asking Pentagon officials and their families at last week's "Christian" service to bow their heads in prayer for a godless war as he recited scripture from the Book of Ezekiel, or maybe "Caesar" or Samuel or Snakes On A Plane, a prayer he claimed was delivered by the lead planner of the “Combat Search And Rescue” mission that earlier this month rescued two pilots downed in Iran."They call it 'CSAR 25:17,' which I think is meant to reflect Ezekiel 25:17," he blustered of "the Lord’s word about who we are and how we conduct ourselves...Pray with me please."
With his greasy smirk, he then launched into an almost word-for-word rip-off of the iconic speech by blood-stained hitman and aspiring philosopher Jules Winnfield, played indelibly by Samuel Jackson in Quentin Tarantino's 1994 black comic morality tale Pulp Fiction. Moments later, Jules point-blank executes hapless young Brett, not because he posed any threat or was allegedly developing nuclear weapons, but because Jules is just following orders. Because that's his job. Because each time he kills a stranger in cold blood, he likes to first recite that "prayer," which propitiously helps make him feel powerful, morally upright, cleansed of whatever guilt or grief or questions that might otherwise trouble his sleep.
"The path of the downed aviator is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men," Pete declaimed. "Blessed is he who, in the name of camaraderie and duty, shepherds the lost through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper, and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to capture and destroy my brother. And you will know my call sign is Sandy One when I lay my vengeance upon thee, and Amen." Some in the audience, presumably moviegoers, chuckled at the source; others looked dutifully, cluelessly solemn as their kids squirmed in boredom. Blessed be the hitmen. Let us prey, indeed.
In reality, of the three passages in Ezekiel 25:17, only the shortest comes close to Pete's/Jules' harangue: "I will execute great vengeance on them with furious rebukes, and they shall know that I am the LORD when I lay My vengeance upon them." Tarantino, a fan of Kung Fu flicks, lifted his own fake version from a 1973 Japanese martial arts film, Karate Kiba, about a Kung Fu vigilante who vows to eliminate the crime-infested drug business in Japan. Hegseth, the guy with Nazi tattoos who lectures people about "Christian values," didn't mention or credit Tarantino, a theft and sacrilege first caught by Baptist minister Brian Kaylor. But no harm no foul: In today's idiocracy, notes Mary Trump, "Who among us has not mistaken the holy words of Tarantino's Pulp Fiction for Biblical scriptures?"
Online, Pentagon shill Sean Parnell acknowledged the prayer was "obviously inspired by dialogue in Pulp Fiction"; of Pete's failure to note that, he argued, "Anyone saying the Secretary misquoted Ezekiel 25:17 is peddling fake news and ignorant of reality." The next day, at a briefing on the war, the thin-skinned Hegseth again went off and Biblical on the press, calling their accurate reports on an unpopular war "unpatriotic" and likening the media to the Pharisees: "They were there to witness (but) their hearts were hardened (in) pursuit of their agenda." The whining didn't go over well; America really seems to hate Pete. "The gospel according to St. Jack Daniels. What a dick," they griped, and, "Talibangicals' perverted take on Christianity - Hegseth is literally an anti-Christ. And a rapist."
Mostly, people were pissed at his ignorant appropriation of the much-loved Pulp Fiction for his own base and bloody purposes, declaring, "And you call yourself a white Christian nationalist?" and, "I'd take Samuel Jackson's character over Pete's any day." They wondered if, next time, Pete would add the famed Biblical parable, "You know what they call a quarter-pounder with cheese in Paris?” (Royale.) They argued Pete's "scriptures" should include more "Motherfucker"'s, they offered hilarious video of Jules meeting up with another quivering Brett, they marveled at the idiocy of Hegseth, a bellicose grandstander who didn't understand that, in Jules' bonkers, vengeful "prayer," the speaker is actually the bad guy.
In one of Pulp Fiction's two final scenes, in the diner where the film begins, Jules comes to a belated moral reckoning with himself. He has long justified his bloody past by telling himself (like Pete) he's taking righteous vengeance on the "bad." But earlier that day, after killing Brett, he's "miraculously" untouched by a barrage of gunshots - a survival he attributes to "divine intervention, a sign to re-evaluate his life. Of his ritual recitation, he tells the young thief, “I never gave much thought to what it meant...It was just some cold-blooded shit to say to a motherfucker before I popped a cap in his ass...The truth is, you’re the weak, and I’m the tyranny of evil men. But I'm tryin', Ringo, I'm tryin' real hard to be the shepherd." Drunken, unctuous, preening Pete, who keeps missing the point, should too.
"Woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic, and political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth - Pope Leo X1V
Apr 19, 2026
SEE ALL
News
US Supreme Court Hands Big Oil Major Win in Battle Over Destruction of Louisiana Coast
US fossil fuel giants have long sought to shift litigation over industry harms from state to friendly federal courts, and the country's top court unanimously handed polluters a big win on Friday, allowing such a move in a case centered on environmental damage in coastal Louisiana.
Cases can be removed from state court when they are against federal officers or persons "acting under" them, "for or relating to any act under color of such office." Although the US Supreme Court has previously rejected multiple removals requested by Big Oil, the justices sided with the industry in Chevron USA v. Plaquemines Parish.
The company argued that its challenged production was sufficiently related to its contractual duties to refine crude oil into aviation gasoline, or avgas, for the US military during World War II. A federal district judge and the US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit rejected Chevron's argument, but the high court bought it.
"Chevron has plausibly alleged a close relationship between its challenged conduct and the performance of its federal duties—not a tenuous, remote, or peripheral one," Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the majority. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson penned a concurring opinion.
Justice Samuel Alito recused himself shortly before arguments. As with some other cases involving Big Oil, he bowed out due to his stock in ConocoPhillips, whose subsidiary Burlington Resources Oil and Gas Company is involved in the case at the district court level.
This fight before the high court stemmed from dozens of cases filed over a decade ago. As NOLA.com detailed Friday:
In 2013, a group of local parishes and the state filed 42 lawsuits against energy companies whose predecessors sought and produced crude during World War II. They argued that the oil and gas companies damaged wetlands and failed to get or comply with the proper permits.
After a three-week trial, a Plaquemines Parish jury sided with the state in one of those cases and awarded a $745 million verdict against Chevron and two other companies.
But the companies challenged the verdict, saying the lawsuit should have been heard in federal court, not state court.
Thanks to the Supreme Court, the Plaquemines Parish case may now be retried in a US district court. Company spokesperson Bill Turenne said in a statement that "Chevron looks forward to litigating these cases in federal court, where they belong."
There are also potential implications for other legal battles involving the industry that is fueling the global climate emergency—as American Energy Institute CEO Jason Isaac, a former Republican state representative in Texas, celebrated in a Friday statement. He described the decision as "a critical step toward restoring sanity to our legal system and stopping the endless wave of politically motivated lawsuits designed to punish the very industry that powers our economy and national security."
The Supreme Court's decision notably came as the justices prepare to hear ExxonMobil and Suncor's request to move a 2018 lawsuit filed by the city of Boulder, Colorado—seeking financial damages for the companies' role in creating the climate crisis—from state to federal court. Alito has not yet recused himself from that case.
Fossil fuel companies largely have support from the Republican Party, which controls the White House and both chambers of Congress. President Donald Trump returned to power last year with help from the industry's campaign cash, and his administration has supported the companies being challenged in Louisiana.
As The New York Times noted Friday, the local communities' lawsuits "have gained support from Louisiana Republican leaders, including those who have otherwise endorsed President Trump's 'energy dominance' agenda. Gov. Jeff Landry and Attorney General Liz Murrill, both Republicans, have supported the legal challenges."
However, ahead of the November midterm elections, Republicans in Congress are working on shielding oil and gas companies from what they call "abusive state climate lawsuits." As Common Dreams reported Friday, US Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Congresswoman Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) introduced the Stop Climate Shakedowns Act this week.
"Big Oil companies have raked in massive profits at the pump while lying to the American people about the catastrophic harm of their products, and now they want to deny Americans their rightful day in court and stick taxpayers with the bill for the mess they made," said Center for Climate Integrity president Richard Wiles. "If fossil fuel companies have done nothing wrong, why do they need immunity?"
There are related legislative efforts at the state level. As the Times detailed earlier this month, Utah recently "became the first state to enact a law that shields companies from climate-related claims." Tennessee swiftly followed suit, and Republican lawmakers in states including Iowa, Louisiana, and Oklahoma are working on similar legislation.
Cassidy DiPaola, communications director for the Make Polluters Pay campaign, warned earlier this year that "a federal liability shield for fossil fuel companies would not lower energy prices or ease the cost of living. It would simply shift more of the financial burden onto working families and local governments while insulating one of the most profitable industries in history from accountability."
"Congress should not close the courthouse doors to communities seeking redress," said DiPaola. "Big Oil is not entitled to special immunity from the consequences of its conduct."
This article has been updated to include updates on state legislation and Common Dreams' reporting on a bill that would shield the fossil fuel industry from liability.
Apr 17, 2026
SEE ALL
News
'Decades in the Making': Antitrust Advocates Celebrate as Jury Rules Against Live Nation-Ticketmaster
Antitrust advocates celebrated on Wednesday after a jury found that Live Nation and is subsidiary Ticketmaster were illegal monopolies who for decades systematically overcharged customers for concert tickets.
As reported by The Associated Press, the verdict against Live Nation and Ticketmaster could cost the two entities "hundreds of millions of dollars, just for the $1.72 per ticket that the jury found Ticketmaster had overcharged consumers in 22 states," and they could be forced to sell off some of the venues they own.
The case against Live Nation, which was brought by 33 states and the District of Columbia, was initially led by the US Department of Justice. However, under President Donald Trump, the DOJ last month reached a last-minute settlement with the company that would not require it to be broken up.
The state attorneys general, however, vowed to see the case through and were rewarded with a big verdict in their favor.
New York Attorney General Letitia James celebrated the verdict, describing it as "a landmark victory to protect New Yorkers from harmful monopolies."
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison called the verdict "a win for everyone who thinks concert tickets are too damn expensive," and declared himself "proud to have brought this lawsuit."
District of Columbia Attorney General Brian Schwalb noted Live Nation "has raked in billions in profits from an illegal monopoly that coerces venues, restricts artists, and exploits fans," and called the verdict "a massive win in the fight for fairness for local venues, artists, and fans."
Lina Khan, former chair of the Federal Trade Commission under President Joe Biden, hailed the verdict, but said it was just "a key first step towards ending Live Nation’s monopolistic control and securing real relief for those it harmed."
Lee Hepner, senior legal counsel at the American Economic Liberties Project, said the verdict was "decades in the making," and he cited iconic Seattle band Pearl Jam's fight against Ticketmaster in the 1990s to illustrate just how long it's taken to hold the company accountable.
"Pour one out for Pearl Jam, who testified before Congress in 1993 about Ticketmaster's abuse of the live concert industry," he commented.
The Roosevelt Institute took a shot at the Trump DOJ for bailing on the case, and noted the verdict against Live Nation "only happened because state AGs kept pushing after a federal settlement that let the companies off the hook."
Apr 15, 2026
SEE ALL
News
'A New World Is Possible': NJ Voters Elect Progressive, Pro-Palestinian Organizer Analilia Mejia
Two months after her primary victory was declared a sign that progressive advocates for the working class can win elections "everywhere" in the US, organizer Analilia Mejia easily won a special election in New Jersey's 11th Congressional District on Thursday after a campaign dominated by big spending by the pro-Israel lobby.
Mejia, an organizer who worked on Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) 2020 presidential campaign and has served as executive director of the New Jersey Working Families Alliance, was outspoken in her support for expanding the Medicare program to the entire US population through the Medicare for All Act, abolishing US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, canceling student debt, and breaking up corporate monopolies.
“In one of the richest nations in the world, middle-class families, working-class families, should not find themselves falling behind in greater and greater debt, while billionaires consolidate their stranglehold on every aspect of our economy,” said Mejia in her victory speech.
The race was called by The Associated Press within minutes of polls closing Thursday night. With 94% of votes tallied as of early Friday afternoon, Mejia was nearly 20 points ahead of her opponent, Republican Joe Hathaway.
Despite the resounding victory, Hathaway insisted in his concession speech that the "broader electorate" is not enthusiastic about "the kind of far-left policies embraced by Ms. Mejia.”
Journalist Ryan Grim of Drop Site News noted that, as with other races in which progressives have challenged more moderate Democrats like former Rep. Tom Malinowski, whom Mejia ran against in the primary, "the argument was that candidates like Mejia couldn’t win this district."
Mejia is one of several progressive Democrats also running in the 2026 midterm elections, in which the Democratic Party is hoping to take control of at least one chamber of Congress to weaken President Donald Trump's grip on the federal government.
In Maine, political newcomer Graham Platner, a combat veteran and advocate for a billionaire's minimum tax, is running against Democratic Gov. Janet Mills in the primary; Mills was pushed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to join the race. In Michigan, a new poll from Emerson College this week showed Medicare for All advocate Abdul El-Sayed statistically tied with state Sen. Mallory McMorrow (D-8); El-Sayed was eight points ahead of where he was in the same survey in January, following sustained attacks by McMorrow and a centrist group over his decision to campaign with an outspoken critic of Israel.
The result in New Jersey's 11th Congressional District, said Grim, "suggests a new world is possible."
In addition to pushing for policies to improve the lives of working New Jersey families, Mejia was the only candidate in the Democratic primary election in February who publicly stated that Israel's US-backed assault on Gaza is a genocide.
Journalist Zaid Jilani noted that—with public support for Israel plummeting, including among Jewish voters, as it wages war on Gaza, Iran, and Lebanon—Mejia's position didn't prevent largely Jewish communities in the 11th District from supporting her.
Hathaway accused Mejia of being antisemitic over her criticism of Israel's assault on Gaza, an allegation she vehemently rejected during a debate.
“As a member of Congress, I would use every legislative power at my disposal to protect the rights of Jewish constituents and convene spaces to educate and to fight antisemitism, because I know it’s real,” she said.
During the primary, the United Democracy Project, a super political action committee aligned with the powerful pro-Israel lobby group the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, focused its attention on Malinowski, attacking the longtime supporter of Israel for his criticism of far-right Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The group's spending against Malinowski appeared to backfire, benefiting Mejia, who has been more outspoken in her objections to Israel's violent policies.
Mejia was elected to fill the seat left vacant by Gov. Mikie Sherrill, also a Democrat, for the next eight months. She has already entered the race for the November election, and Hathaway has signaled he plans to run as well.
The progressive advocacy group Our Revolution said that by electing Mejia to represent the 11th District, voters "chose people over corporations."
"They chose to send an organizer to Congress," said the group, "to fight for radical change and build a better Democratic Party."
Apr 17, 2026
SEE ALL
News
'Shameful': Outrage Over UK Universities Hiring Security Firm to Spy on Pro-Palestinian Students
A dozen universities in the UK are facing criticism after a joint investigation by Al Jazeera English and Liberty Investigates revealed they hired a security firm run by former military intelligence agents to spy on pro-Palestinian student demonstrators.
Specifically, Al Jazeera English and Liberty Investigates reported they have "uncovered evidence that Horus Security Consultancy Limited trawled through student social media feeds and conducted secret counterterror threat assessments on behalf of some of Britain’s most elite institutions," including the University of Oxford, Imperial College London, University College London.
The investigation found that Horus has been paid $594,000 by the universities since 2022, and it has been asked to monitor targets ranging from a Palestinian academic giving a guest lecture at Manchester Metropolitan University to entire groups of pro-Palestinian organizations at the University of Bristol.
Many of the universities implicated in the investigation declined comment. Imperial College London, however, denied that it paid Horus to spy on its students, and said it merely wanted to "help identify potential security risks to its community, which might include protest activity within the vicinity of its campuses."
This rationale failed to satisfy critics, however.
Gina Romero, the United Nations special rapporteur for freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, told Al Jazeera English and Liberty Investigates that “the use of AI to harvest and analyze student data under the guise of open-source intelligence raises profound legal concerns.”
Romero expressed particular concern that Horus is not accountable to any public scrutiny, and that students have no way to know how the data collected from them will be used in the future.
Lizzie Hobbs, a PhD student at the London School of Economics who has taken part in pro-Palestinian protests, said it was "deeply scary" to see universities invest money in surveilling their own students.
"We knew surveillance was happening by the university," she said, "but it is shocking to see how systematized it is."
Jo Grady, general secretary for the University and College Union, slammed the schools' "shameful" actions and said they had "wasted hundreds of thousands of pounds spying on their own students."
Journalist Mushahid Hussain Sayed also described the universities' actions as "shameful," adding that they discriminated "against students and academics on the basis of their peaceful political beliefs/activism in support of Palestine and against Israel!"
Apr 20, 2026
SEE ALL
News
$2 Billion Per Day Spent by US on Iran War Could Have Saved 87 Million Lives, Says UN Humanitarian Chief
US President Donald Trump’s war in Iran is costing nearly $2 billion per day, according to a Harvard analysis based on estimates from the Pentagon. The head of the United Nations’ humanitarian agency said the money could instead be used to save more than 87 million lives around the world.
Tom Fletcher, the undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator at the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), spoke at Chatham House on Monday about a “cataclysmic” funding crisis for the UN, in large part due to the termination of billions of dollars in funding from the US and other major powers such as the UK. Fletcher said his agency has seen its budget cut by around 50%.
"We're already overstretched, underresourced, and literally under attack," Fletcher said, citing the more than 1,000 humanitarians who have been killed in conflicts around the world over the past three years.
The Iran war, launched at the end of February by the US and Israel, Fletcher said, has stretched UN budgets even further, both by causing chaos within Iran and Lebanon—where more than 5,000 people in total have been killed, including thousands of civilians, and more than 4 million displaced collectively—but also by creating economic upheaval that has exacerbated crises elsewhere.
"You have the [Strait] of Hormuz—fuel prices up 20%, food prices up almost 20%, our humanitarian convoys blocked," Fletcher said. "We've had to take those convoys by air and by land. And the impact, which I think we'll be feeling for years, of those price rises on Sub-Saharan and East Africa, pushing way more people into poverty."
Fletcher said that just a fraction of what the US has spent waging the war could have been used to provide a full year of funding for a plan he laid out in January to provide lifesaving food, water, medicine, and shelter to those in dozens of countries facing war and poverty.
“For every day of this conflict, $2 billion is being spent. My entire target for a hyper-prioritized plan to save 87 million lives is $23 billion," he said. "We could have funded that in less than a fortnight of this reckless war. Now, of course, we cannot.”
Beyond the financial toll, he said, US actions may have done irreparable damage to the authority of international humanitarian law and to UN bodies tasked with enforcing it.
He noted the dramatic increase in the number of humanitarian workers killed around the world over the past three years. According to a UN report earlier this month, of the more than 1,010 of them who were killed in the line of duty, over half were killed during Israel's genocide in Gaza and escalating attacks in the West Bank.
"A thousand dead humanitarians in three years," Fletcher said. "When did that become normal?"
He called out the UN Security Council, where the US is one of the permanent members with veto power, for its weak responses to the killing of humanitarians and other flagrant violations of the laws of war.
"Don't just give us a generic statement where you say humanitarian workers should be protected," he said. "Make the phone call, call out the people killing us, stop arming those who are doing it."
He said "big powers" view geopolitics in a highly "transactional" way and do not use the Security Council as a mechanism for defending international humanitarian law.
"I wouldn't have thought I'd need to say that a couple of years ago, that the Security Council should be defending international humanitarian law, and yet here we are," he said.
He said that Trump’s recent violent rhetoric toward Iran—which again verged into outright genocidal territory over the weekend when he pledged to “blow up the entire country” with overwhelming attacks on civilian infrastructure—has only further corroded international law.
“The idea that suddenly it’s okay to say, ‘We’re going to blow stuff up,’ ‘We’re going to bomb you back to the Stone Age,’ ‘We’re going to destroy your civilization,’ that kind of language is really dangerous,” Fletcher said. “It gives more freedom to all the other wannabe autocrats around the world to use that sort of language.”
But he said the aggression of the US and its allies has also made the world more warlike and less "generous," leading countries to put more money into defense that could otherwise go toward alleviating global suffering.
"Whether you're making the cuts [to UN funding] for ideological reasons or because you're too busy bombing someone else or because now you feel more insecure at home and so you have to invest more of your money in defense and less in generosity," he said, "all of that ultimately has an impact on the over 300 million people that we're here to serve."
Apr 21, 2026
SEE ALL
LATEST NEWS
With Help From Platner, Former Top Obama Official Admits 'Forever War Has Been Destroying America From Within'
"We like to frame our wars as virtuous, but they are not," says Ben Rhodes.
Apr 22, 2026
Ben Rhodes, who served deputy national security advisor under former US President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2017, has done a fair number of mea culpas in the years since he left government service. But a New York Times op-ed published Wednesday punctuates with a fresh admission: "We like to frame our wars as virtuous, but they are not."
Rhodes comes to this statement circuitously as he writes about recent time spent with Graham Platner, the US Army and Marine veteran who served tours in both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars as an infantryman who is now running as a Democrat for the US Senate in Maine to unseat Republican Sen. Susan Collins.
Platner, who has recently opened up a double-digit lead against his primary rival, two-time Maine Gov. Janet Mills, has been an outspoken anti-war voice since putting his hat in the ring for elected office and Rhodes, who cut his teeth defending the forever wars during the Obama years, says Democratic Party leaders—and voters wherever they are—would be wise to listen to what he has to say.
"The forever war has been destroying America from within, like an organism that must keep growing to survive, filling us with fear of outsiders and contempt for one another," writes Rhodes.
Most Democrats, observes Rhodes, don't talk about war the way Platner does, and that's not just a feature of his wartime experience compared to those in positions of power or paid to pontificate for think tanks or on the corporate news networks.
After traveling around with Platner on the campaign trail in Maine, Rhodes concludes that "Americans must change their relationship to war itself."
"One reason we have a hard time reckoning with the forever war is that it undermines our own story," he continues. "We like to think of America as a force for good, acting out of enlightened self-interest, our military fighting for freedom around the globe. Is that really what’s been happening?"
In their conversation, Platner explained that "most people get it," suggesting those who live and work in the real world, outside of DC or within media echo chambers, understand the costs of the nation's endless wars. “Do you think this country should spend more on schools and hospitals and less on bombs?" asked Platner rhetorically. "A lot of people are like, yeah, that’s pretty obvious.”
When Platner had his epiphany that the wars he fought in Iraq and Afghanistan were a mistake, Rhodes said he, still working for the White House in those years, was exactly the kind of person the soldier was thinking of when he said that the "people running the war didn’t even seem to know the point of the war," calling it "a self-licking ice cream cone" that could not admit its failures.
"Listening to [Platner] talk, I knew intuitively what he was saying," writes Rhodes. "I would have been one of those people back in 2011, believing that what we were doing was helping Afghans."
For someone so enmeshed in the politics of US war-making and defending the foreign policy of past US governments from criticism, Rhodes confesses the pitfalls of American exceptionalism and where it can lead. And again, he quotes Platner:
We are so broken emotionally when it comes to our politics that we’ve literally created this story that it’s inherent in being a competent political leader to kill civilians. If you’re not willing to do some hard things and drop some bombs, then you’re not up to the task of power. I think it’s the opposite. You’re not up to the task of being in power if you do not think about the cost of violence. If that’s not at the front of your mind, then I don’t think you are morally in the right place to be in positions of power.
Such an argument directly implicates not just past presidents, but certainly US President Donald Trump, currently waging a new war of choice against Iran, as well as his Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who openly celebrates the killing prowess ("lethality") of the US military while characterizing the laws of war as impediments.
Contextualizing why he has come to conclude that contemporary US wars lack virtue, Rhodes writes that the conflicts we have been waging abroad for most of this century have also done tremendous and lasting damage here at home. "They resemble," writes Rhodes, "a declining empire sowing chaos along its periphery as a matter of strategy: Economic and political elites profit while the Americans who fight suffer along with the places they attack."
As Platner told Rhodes, such admissions must be spoken about publicly in order for them to lead to meaningful change in the country. And voices like Platner's, argues Rhodes, must be listened to because the "visceral and moral reckoning he advocates is the only way to truly dismantle the forever war, change our priorities and detoxify our country."
"To save ourselves, we must stop this cycle of violence," Rhodes concludes. "We must find meaning not in our capacity to kill or control others, but in each other."
Keep Reading
Show Less
Trump Promised 'Cleanest Air.' Report Shows Half of All US Children Live Amid Dangerous Pollution
The president of the American Lung Association said President Donald Trump's Environmental Protection Agency has "rolled back rules that would have protected kids from power plant and vehicle pollution."
Apr 22, 2026
Close to half of the children in the United States—more than 33 million kids—live in counties with dangerously high levels of toxic air pollution, according to the American Lung Association's annual air quality report out Wednesday.
The 27th iteration of the ALA's report examines "two of the most widespread and dangerous air pollutants"—fine particles and ground-level ozone, commonly known as smog—and assigns grades to counties and cities based on pollution levels, both daily and annually. In what the report describes as a "grim indication of the deterioration of air quality nationwide," just one city—Bangor, Maine—was "ranked on all three cleanest-cities lists by earning an 'A' for ozone and short-term particle pollution and being listed among the 25 cities with the lowest year-round particle levels."
"Last year, there were two (the other metro area being San Juan-Bayamón, Puerto Rico)," the report notes. "Past reports have been graced by as many as half a dozen metro areas meeting these criteria."
The report, which uses air quality data collected between 2022 and 2024, estimated that 46% of all children in the US live in counties that received a failing grade on at least one measure of air pollution analyzed by the ALA. More than 7 million children—10% of all kids in the country—live in an area with failing grades for all three of the ALA's measures.
Harold Wimmer, president and CEO of the ALA, said at a time when the federal government should be strengthening air quality standards, President Donald Trump's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) "is doing the opposite," despite Trump's campaign promise to deliver "the cleanest air."
"In the last year, EPA has weakened enforcement and rolled back rules that would have protected kids from power plant and vehicle pollution," said Wimmer. "Children need clean air to grow and play, and communities need clean air to thrive. Leaders at every level must act to improve and protect America’s air quality."
For the seventh consecutive year, Bakersfield, California ranked as the US metropolitan area with the worse year-round particle pollution. Fairbanks, Alaska ranked as the city with the worse short-term particle pollution, while Los Angeles topped the list of cities with the worst ozone pollution.
The Trump administration has gleefully taken an ax to climate regulations—including air pollution standards—and the legal finding underpinning environmental rules while aggressively promoting the oil, gas, and coal industries, threatening decades of progress toward cleaner air and water.
The Guardian noted Wednesday that "since returning to office last year, the Trump administration has initiated at least 70 actions to roll back environmental and climate protections. Among them is the loosening of regulations on power plants that limit mercury and other hazardous air toxins."
"Other rollbacks include overturning limits on major air pollution sources, disbanding EPA advisory committees on air quality, and ending the practice of estimating the monetary value of lives saved by limiting fine particulate matter and ozone while still calculating costs to companies," the outlet added.
Keep Reading
Show Less
Boat Strike Survivors Say They Were Captured, Tortured by US Forces
"They treated us like animals," said an Ecuadorian fisher who survived an attack on the Don Maca.
Apr 21, 2026
President Donald Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and US Southern Command have repeatedly taken to social media to brag about deadly boat bombings supposedly targeting drug traffickers in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean for nearly eight months. On Tuesday, survivors of some alleged US strikes on fishing boats accused American forces of torture.
The Ecuadorian fishing boat La Fiorella "went up in smoke" on January 20, and "the eight fishermen aboard have not been seen since," Camila Lourdes Galarza reported for Drop Site News on Tuesday. "Now, 36 survivors of two Pacific attacks fitting a similar profile alleged that they were abducted and tortured by American forces and taken by boat all the way to El Salvador before being returned to Ecuador."
The journalist spoke with attorneys, relatives, and survivors, including Hernán Flores, captain of La Negra Francisca Duarte II, which was bombed by a drone with a yellow cylinder on March 17. Flores said: "A lot of us had wounds all over our bodies from the explosion. One young man was bleeding so much he filled the floor of our lifeboat with blood... The drone had flown through our cabin window, torn my nephew's foot so bad you could see flesh and bone, and made the boat's roof cave in on the back of my neck. A few seconds later, an explosion shook the boat, causing a terrible ringing in our ears. Out of exasperation, the guys threw themselves into the water, some without life jackets, even the ones who don't know how to swim."
The survivors made their way to a blue boat with "spear" on the hull, full of armed, blond, English-speaking men in camouflage uniforms—who drew their guns, handcuffed the fishers, put hoods over their heads, and held them on the vessel's "scorching metal deck for over 24 hours, blistering their skin," Galarza reported. They were only given a bottle of water, and "all but one fisherman were denied medical attention, despite the severity of what they had just endured."
They were eventually returned to Ecuador, where Trump has recently deployed US forces for a joint campaign targeting "narco-terrorists." However, first, they were turned over to El Salvador's Coast Guard—which, on April 3, also intercepted 20 more Ecuadorian fishers with "vision and hearing loss, bruised limbs, and perforated arms."
According to Galarza, those fishers had been aboard the Don Maca, and "they reported a strikingly similar account of an alleged attack by US soldiers: a bombarded boat, a round of bullets, and no due process." Sebastián Palacios, one of the survivors allegedly held hostage for eight days, said that "they treated us like animals."
⚡️New from @dropsitenews.com: Rare Survivors of Pacific Boat Strikes Allege US Forces Kidnapped & Tortured ThemAs airstrikes & reports of torture under Ecuador’s US-backed military regime continue to mount, fishermen tell Drop Site...By Camila Lourdes Galarzawww.dropsitenews.com/p/rare-survi...
[image or embed]
— Drop Site (@dropsitenews.com) April 21, 2026 at 2:50 PM
Galarza noted that US SOUTHCOM directed questions about all three incidents to Ecuador, whose Port Authority hung up after hearing that a phone call requesting comment was from journalists.
Harriet Barber got a similar response from SOUTHCOM for her Tuesday reporting on the Don Maca attack in The Guardian. The journalist spoke with survivors, including Palacios, as well as an attorney representing the crew, Fernando Bastias Robayo of the Human Rights Council.
"A US vessel intercepted them and forced them aboard. Once they were detained, their fishing boat was blown up," said the lawyer. "They were arbitrarily hooded and later abandoned on the Salvadorian coast. Any apprehension followed by incommunicado detention constitutes an enforced disappearance."
"It was a form of psychological torture, not knowing what's really going to happen to your life and having your face covered," he added.
Palacios told Barber that "I get scared in the middle of the night. I can't sleep well. My ears still hurt... I think that's it for me. I'm done with fishing. Going back out there is impossible. I thought they were going to kill us."
“If there were no drugs aboard those boats, it’s a hugely embarrassing ‘false positive’ for US intelligence at a time when that intelligence is being used to kill people, no questions asked.”
[image or embed]
— Adam Isacson (@adamisacson.com) April 21, 2026 at 10:23 AM
Tuesday's reporting came just two days after SOUTHCOM announced on social media that "Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by designated terrorist organizations... along known narco-trafficking routes in the Caribbean," killing three alleged "male narco-terrorists."
Sunday's strike brought the death toll from Trump's boat-bombing campaign to at least 180, according to The New York Times. The Intercept's tally is 181, while the Washington Office on Latin America believes 182 people are dead. Critics of the campaign have accused the US administration of "war crimes, murder, or both."
Responding to Trump's latest confirmed attack, Amnesty International USA on Monday condemned "three more murders at sea" and declared that "Congress must act to stop these bombings."
So far, both chambers of the Republican-controlled Congress have refused to pass war powers resolutions aimed at halting Trump's boat strikes. Similar measures targeting his aggression toward Venezuela and Iran have also failed to advance.
Keep Reading
Show Less
Most Popular
Progressive Newswire
Data center growth threatens air quality and progress toward cleaner energy grid
Apr 22 2026 · 07:25am EDT
April’s Beige Book Reveals Trump’s War in Iran Is Devastating Economy At Home
Apr 21 2026 · 10:58am EDT