Iran: A Declaration to the Conscience of Humanity: 6 Non-Negotiable Terms from International Scholars and Former Officials from 30 Countries to End the U.S. War on Iran Amid Trump’s Threat of War Crimes

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From Global Research
April 10, 2026

The conscience of humanity resists “everything for us, nothing for others,” the creed of the predatory empire erected on the corpses of nations. The shameless rapacity and insolence have reached their zenith, and Trump’s threats illustrate the depraved spirit of a decaying civilisation. We must not be passive witnesses, but active architects of a new world where arrogance crumbles and righteousness prevails.

A large transnational group of prominent voices—including former UN officials, Retired career diplomats, former ministers, scholars and intellectuals, political figures and former parliamentarians, military and security professionals, artists, lawyers as well as journalists, activists, and antiwar leaders, from 30 countries—has released an open letter sharply criticising the global role of the United States and calling for a new international order centered on sovereignty and resistance to what they describe as Western domination.

Most of the signatories are from Western countries, alongside participants from Asia, Latin America, and Africa. The declaration, titled “A Declaration to the Conscience of Humanity,” was signed by over 170 signatories from countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, France, Portugal, Belgium, Italy, Scotland, Ireland, Australia, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Sweden, Serbia, Poland, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Lithuania, Russia, China, Malaysia, India, Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, Mexico, South Africa, Lebanon, Turkey, and Iran. 

In this fact-based public letter, the authors deliver a sweeping critique of American foreign policy and historical conduct. The letter states that for “249 years—spanning the entirety of its existence since 1776—the United States built a record of atrocity that belonged to a darker, pre-civilised age,” describing the country as “a predatory empire erected on the corpses of nations.”

The signatories, including current and former professors affiliated with 52 universities and academic institutions worldwide, accuse Washington of maintaining global military dominance through an extensive overseas presence. They state that the United States operates “over 800 military garrisons poisoning more than 90 foreign countries and territories” and has cultivated what the signatories call “a doctrine of absolute predation.”

The declaration also condemns U.S. involvement in major wars of the 20th and 21st centuries, referring to what it calls “the genocidal horror of Vietnam,” “the annihilation of Cambodia,” and the “systematic slaughter of Koreans,” as well as the destruction of Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Afghanistan.

A central focus of the document is the ongoing confrontation involving Iran. These public figures argue that the current situation reflects what they describe as an expansionist U.S. strategy aimed at dominating global resources. According to the statement, the United States government is driven by “the demonic creed of ‘everything for us, nothing for others’,” which they say seeks control of global resources ranging from “the oil of Venezuela” to “the mineral wealth of Greenland” or “the energy reserves of Canada”.

The undersigned further assert that U.S. policy now “fixates on Iran” because the country possesses “over seven percent of the world’s mineral and energy wealth,” which they describe as “the final frontier of plunder.”

The document also criticizes contemporary American leadership, arguing that the “moral collapse of the West finds its embodiment in the pathetic figure of Mr. Trump,” and calling for what they describe as an end to “the era of pillage.”

Beyond its criticism of U.S. policy, the announcement proposes several demands that the signatories say are necessary to end the current war on Iran. These include guarantees against future aggression, the dismantling of U.S. military installations in the region, formal international condemnation of acts of aggression, reparations for damages caused by war, the establishment of a new legal framework for the Strait of Hormuz, recognising Iran’s sovereignty, and the prosecution and extradition of operatives in anti-Iranian media who have incited this bloodshed.

The authors also call on intellectuals, scholars, institutions, and civil society organizations worldwide to condemn what is described as the normalization of violations of international law and to challenge the global  structures that sustain domination and military intervention.

In conclusion, the signatories argue that the present moment represents a decisive historical turning point. “We stand with justice—not as passive witnesses, but as active architects of a new world,” the letter states, emphasizing that the international community must confront what it calls the return of predatory power in global politics.

Among the signatories are prominent scientists and figures representing a wide array of expertise and leadership, including philosophers, economists, historians, sociologists, jurists, theologians, Islamologists, reverends, biologists, physicians, musicians, filmmakers, songwriters, singers, entrepreneurs, engineers, novelists, theorists, as well as a physicist, a psychologist, an anthropologist, and a comedian. This diverse coalition reflects the global conscience of humanity, uniting professionals, scholars, and advocates from multiple disciplines in a shared call against U.S. exceptionalism.

The full text of the declaration, along with the complete list of signatories, has been released publicly in more than ten languages.

A Declaration to the Conscience of Humanity

To the peoples of the world, to thinkers, to scholars, and to those who believe in justice:

A specter now haunts the conscience of humanity—the return of predatory power— and it shall no longer go unchallenged. 

For 249 years—spanning the entirety of its existence since 1776—the United States built a record of atrocity that belonged to a darker, pre-civilised age; the predatory empire erected on the corpses of nations; from the genocide of nearly 5 million Indigenous peoples, to the brutal enslavement of over 4 million Africans, to the lynching of more than 4,000 Black citizens under Jim Crow. With over 800 military garrisons poisoning more than 90 foreign countries and territories, it cultivated a doctrine of absolute predation. From the genocidal horror of Vietnam, with over 3 million dead; to the annihilation of Cambodia, where 2 million perished under US-backed terror; to the systematic slaughter of Koreans, with more than 4 million Korean lives extinguished; to the destruction of Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Afghanistan, where one million Iraqis and tens of thousands of Libyans were consumed by US fire. 

Yet the rational order that governs the world once helped humanity move beyond such practices. Humanity had consigned this barbarism to history. But now we are witnessing its return. The ongoing, systematic immolation of Gaza through the sustained support for the genocidal Israeli regime, where over 77,000 civilians in Palestine have been butchered—the scale of this atrocity reveals an inescapable truth: the pre-civilised practice has returned, and Washington has once again become its willing executor.

This is the demonic creed of “everything for us, nothing for others.” With shameless rapacity, it claims the resources of the world—whether the oil of Venezuela, the mineral wealth of Greenland, or the energy reserves of Canada—as objects of strategic entitlement. And now, that gluttonous eye fixates on Iran. Because Iran—possessing over 7% of the world’s mineral and energy wealth—is seen as the final frontier of plunder.

Yet this is no longer a matter of economics. It is a matter of honour. The world witnesses that the United States is actively engaged in a criminal enterprise termed the “Ramadan War” against the Iranian nation. This ongoing butchery has already claimed the lives of 208 innocent children. Let the world mark the date—168 of them were little girls, elementary students at the Shadjareh Tayyebeh School in Minab city in Iran, extinguished in their classrooms by US ordained terror.

Their futile and desperate contrivances aim at so-called “regime change” and the fragmentation of Iran—stripping the nation of its sovereignty and, thereby, facilitating the systematic plunder of its resources. In pursuit of this ultimate depravity, the U.S. brutally assassinated Iran’s spiritual and intellectual leader, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei—recognised globally as a voice against arrogance and terrorism—along with his family.

They have waged a war of targeted terror against the very pillars of the Iranian state. To date, US aggression has criminally murdered 39 Iranian statesmen, including the scientific genius Dr. Ali Larijani, Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council.

Now, the insolence has reached its zenith. The US President openly threatens the Iranian people on social media with the destruction of their energy infrastructure. This is the depraved spirit of a decaying civilisation. The moral collapse of the West finds its embodiment in the pathetic figure of Mr. Trump—a man whose catastrophic conduct over the last two years has exhausted not only the world, but his own people. The time has come to declare, with one voice: Enough! The era of pillage is over.

But the United States has made a fatal miscalculation. What stands before it is not merely a nation, but a civilisation that has weaponised its own DNA—ancient organisational genius fused with 21st-century scientific sovereignty. This is the reality of active deterrence by Iran; a global pole of power that dictates the terms of engagement, forcing strategic retreat by rewriting the very rules of active defence. Now, its adaptive reorganisation, civilisational continuity, and social unity have fused into a singular, unbreakable force.

Iran’s all-encompassing defence and active deterrence represents a golden opportunity to end global hegemony. The historical and civilisational doctrine of Iran is absolute: power does not confer right, and domination cannot serve as a foundation for justice. This is recognised as the bedrock of Iran’s invincibility. The world may avail itself of this historic turning point, drawing upon this very doctrine of liberation, to bring an end to domination and oppression wherever they may exist. 

US and Israeli exceptionalism have dragged the world into an epoch defining choice between might and right, sovereignty and subjugation, dignity and dishonour. This moment must serve as the wake-up call for humanity to recognize that there is another way. It must impel people everywhere to do everything in their power to challenge the structures undergirding a global system that desecrates every moral value including the right to life itself. 

Iran is the final frontier. If it falls, the hope of a better, enlightened future for the world dies with it. We cannot let that happen. The aggression against Iran is part of a system of global power that oppresses all of us. We cannot afford to stand by and watch arrogant authoritarianism running amok. Our very future depends on the success of Iran.

Therefore we cannot countenance any outcome of this war that involves a return to the status quo ante. Those who inflict such suffering must be made to pay a hefty price for their crimes. They must be made to realise that military might does not absolve them of the responsibility to uphold the laws on which the peace and security of our world depend. To that end, we support the terms set out by Iran for ending this war.

From the perspective of global justice, the terms for ending this war are absolute and non-negotiable:

  1. Guarantees against repetition and a binding international commitment ensuring no future aggression.
  2. The immediate dismantling of all US military installations in the region.
  3. Formal admission of aggression, international condemnation of the aggressors, and full reparations for life and property.
  4. An immediate end to war on all regional fronts.
  5. A new legal regime for the Strait of Hormuz, recognising Iran’s sovereignty.
  6. The prosecution and extradition of operatives in anti-Iranian media who have incited this bloodshed.

We, the undersigned in spirit, call upon our peers, the thinkers, the scholars, the institutions of conscience, and the advocates of justice across the world:

  • Condemn the United States unequivocally for its systematic normalisation of contempt for international covenants and its reversion to the spirit of historical savagery and barbarism.
  • Isolate the rogue regime of the United States diplomatically and economically for its ongoing crimes against humanity.
  • Recognise Iran’s inherent right to active deterrence against unprovoked aggression.
  • Demand the immediate cessation of American and U.S.-sponsored terrorism and the prosecution of those who order it.

As it has always done, history will record the courage of those who refuse to remain silent. We stand with justice—not as passive witnesses, but as active architects of a new world that has reached its threshold where arrogance crumbles and righteousness prevails. The arrogant must be dismantled. The world demands it. Justice will enforce it.

For a list of signatories
https://www.globalresearch.ca/six-non-negotiable-terms-end-us-war-iran/5921902

‘Attempted assassination’: Tucker Carlson extensive interview of RT correspondent on Israeli attack and actions in Lebanon, journalism, and more

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From RT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3z8GwKz-7U
Video

Steve Sweeney and cameraman Ali Rida narrowly survived a missile strike last month while filming in southern Lebanon
4-10-26

American journalist Tucker Carlson has said an Israeli strike targeting RT correspondent Steve Sweeney in Lebanon was an “attempted assassination,” as he spoke with the reporter about the attack and his work in conflict zones.

Sweeney and cameraman Ali Rida Sbeity were injured last month when an Israeli aircraft fired a missile at their filming position near the Al-Qasmiya Bridge in southern Lebanon, close to a local army base. The crew, who were wearing clearly marked press gear, said the jet “deliberately attacked” them, with Rida’s camera capturing the moment the blast struck less than 10 meters behind Sweeney as he ducked for cover.

In the interview, released by Carlson on Friday, he told viewers that the strike was “an attempted assassination.” Sweeney said they “were incredibly lucky to come out of that situation alive.”

Sweeney said the munition, which he identified as a GBU-38 bomb fired from an F-16 fighter jet, passed through a hole in the bridge which was already destroyed, arguing that there was “no military objective” in striking it again. He described the attack as “an assassination attempt by Israel to silence the voices on the ground, to silence the truth.”

Carlson asked why a British citizen and former reporter for the Morning Star chose to work for RT. Sweeney quipped that MI5 “would never clear” him to work for the BBC, while arguing that the space for challenging official narratives in the Western media, particularly over the Ukraine conflict, has “completely disappeared.”

“I have complete freedom to report exactly what I want, and nobody tells me what to say,” Sweeney said regarding his work at RT. He noted that RT is banned in the US and EU, while Western broadcasters are still allowed to operate and question officials inside Russia.

See also
https://www.rt.com/news/621612-uk-police-rt-journalist/
https://www.rt.com/news/635531-rt-crew-injured-lebanon/

UK counterterrorism police detained and interrogated Sweeney at Heathrow Airport last July over his work for RT and his reporting from Donbass and Lebanon, and he told Carlson that he is currently being investigated for potential terrorist activity “based on my journalism” alone.

Sweeney told Carlson that despite the near-fatal strike in Lebanon, he has “no intention of leaving” the country or stopping his work.

https://www.rt.com/news/637991-carlson-sweeney-lebanon-israeli-attack/

Belgian court decides on criminal trial against Bilderberg’s Étienne Davignon for role in 1961 Lumumba assassination

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From RT

The Bilderberg titan on trial: This murder waited 65 years for justice
By moving from a ‘moral apology’ to criminal liability, the Lumumba family is forcing a global reckoning with the mechanics of regime change

April 4, 2026
Mustafa Fetouri

The Council Chamber of the Brussels Court of First Instance last month made the historic decision, subject to appeal, to open a criminal trial against Étienne Davignon, a former Belgian diplomat, for his alleged role in the abduction and transfer of Patrice Lumumba.

This March 17 ruling delivers a blow to decades of Western legal immunity, challenging the long-standing practice of burying the 1961 assassination under the vague ‘moral responsibility’ of diplomatic apologies. The court must now decide if this will finally be prosecuted as a war crime. It is a live-wire legal precedent that connects the ‘Decapitation Doctrine’ – the strategic removal of a head of state to induce systemic national collapse.

This pattern stretches from the 1953 ousting of Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran and Jacobo Árbenz in Guatemala in 1954 to Lumumba’s Congo in 1961 – directly to the 2011 destruction of Libya, the kidnapping of the Venezuelan president, and the current open war to topple the Iranian regime. By framing these actions not as isolated incidents but as a calculated shortcut to engineer state failure, the Lumumba case threatens to dismantle the very architecture of modern external intervention.

In a statement, the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), acting as legal counsel for the Lumumba family, described the ruling as one of “major legal significance.” This is because the court “went beyond the submissions of the Federal Prosecutor” by extending the scope of the trial to include the assassinations of Maurice Mpolo and Joseph Okito, Lumumba associates who were executed alongside him on January 17, 1961.

After six decades of impunity, Étienne Davignon, the last living alleged perpetrator. must finally answer for these war crimes.

At 93, Étienne Davignon stands as the last surviving link between that colonial execution and the modern Western establishment. A former diplomat in the Belgian Congo and a titan of the Bilderberg Group – an informal, off-the-record gathering of political and business leaders – and the EU, Davignon embodies the “colonial administrative mind”: a mindset that didn’t vanish with independence but was rebranded into the very international organizations which fail to protect sovereign nations today.

By shifting the legal threshold from a 2002 “moral apology” to the 2026 criminal trial (a judicial battle the family ignited in 2011), the Lumumbas are forcing a global reckoning with the mechanics of regime change.

This dismantling begins with the “decapitation doctrine.” The elimination of Patrice Lumumba was never an isolated act of colonial cruelty; it was the birth of a strategic blueprint. This doctrine operates on a simple, lethal premise: When a sovereign leader refuses to serve as a Western proxy, the intervention disintegrates the state’s institutional core. In 1961, the removal of Lumumba served to paralyze the Congo, ensuring its vast mineral wealth remained accessible to Belgian and American interests.

Exactly fifty years later, this same script was dusted off and deployed against Libya. The 2011 NATO intervention followed the Congolese model to the letter – justifying “regime change” under the guise of humanitarianism, only to leave behind a vacuum of governance and a shattered national identity. This is the recurring nightmare of the Global South: a cycle of manufactured crises where the “civilizing mission” of the 20th century has evolved into the “democratization” invasions of the 21st.

This trial, whose specific start date is yet to be set, represents a violent collision between two versions of history, the sanitized “moral apology” offered by Belgium in 2002, and the cold, criminal liability demanded in 2026. For a quarter-century, the Western establishment has hidden behind the veil of “institutional failure” and “unfortunate excesses,” treating the assassination of Lumumba as a tragic footnote of history.

However, Étienne Davignon cannot plead the passage of time as a defense against the charge of war crimes. By elevating this case from a diplomatic grievance to a criminal prosecution, the Lumumba family, through the Lumumba Foundation, is effectively putting the entire colonial era on the stand. They are arguing that the destruction of a nation’s leadership is not a political maneuver protected by sovereign immunity, but a foundational crime that continues to bear bitter fruit – from the streets of Kinshasa to militia-dominated Tripoli.

The legal battlefield in Brussels is no longer a debate over historical “regrets,” but a forensic dissection of command responsibility. At the heart of the 2026 trial lies a cache of declassified cables and administrative records that strip away the veneer of “local tribal conflict” that has long shielded Belgium. These documents suggest that the execution of Patrice Lumumba was not a meticulously choreographed operation directed from the highest levels of the Belgian colonial office.

As the court examines the role of a then-junior diplomat named Étienne Davignon, it is forced to confront the “Bureaucracy of Assassination.” This is the moment where the colonial administrative mind meets the criminal dock, challenging the long-held Western legal defense that high-ranking officials are immune to the blood shed by their strategic directives.

This is the shift that terrifies the architects of modern interventionism. By treating Lumumba’s death not as a closed domestic coup, but as a war crime, the case has, effectively, stripped away the expiration date on colonial accountability. If Étienne Davignon can be held criminally liable for a telex he sent in 1961, the implications are seismic. What does this mean for the French officials who choreographed the “dirty wars” in Algeria, or the NATO commanders who signed the directives that turned Tripoli into a playground for militias in 2011, or the Trump administration who orchestrated the kidnap of sitting president Nicolas Maduro?

The Brussels ruling is a direct threat to the “immunity of the directive.” It forces Belgium, as a former colonial power, to face its dark history and the deeds of its cruel colonial officials.

For decades, the Western establishment has relied on procedural dead ends to ensure that the mechanics of regime change remain a matter of historical debate rather than criminal liability. The ruling shatters the 65-year-old shield of “moral responsibility,” transforming a hollow diplomatic apology into a live prosecution. It is a test of whether modern international legal frameworks can ever truly hold their own architects accountable, or if the blueprints of state-dismantling, from the Congo to Libya, will remain legally untouchable.

This is the “Aussaresses Precedent” that continues to haunt the Global South. Much like the unrepentant French General Paul Aussaresses, who admitted to horrific torture and summary executions in Algeria only to boast that he “slept fine” afterward, the architects of colonial violence have long relied on a legal suit of armor. Aussaresses died in 2013 at the age of 95, shielded by amnesty laws that ensured he was only ever fined for “justifying” war crimes rather than being prosecuted for committing them.

The March 17 ruling in Brussels represents a definitive crack in this armor; it is a refusal to let Étienne Davignon follow the Aussaresses path into a comfortable, legally shielded grave. By securing this criminal referral, the Lumumba family is fighting to ensure that “doing one’s duty” is no longer a valid legal defense for the clinical destruction of a sovereign people.

The trial of Étienne Davignon is the first tremor of a continental tectonic shift. This was reinforced on March 25, 2026, when the UN General Assembly, led by a historic resolution from Ghana, formally designated the transatlantic slave trade as the “gravest crime against humanity,” a move that directly challenges the institutional architecture of Western states.

This global momentum aligns with the African Union’s transition from the 2025 ‘Year of Reparations’ to the 2026 adoption of the Algiers Declaration. As the AU moves toward the active implementation of this blueprint, the ‘immunity of the directive’ is collapsing. By designating November 30 as a continent-wide day to honor the martyrs of colonialism and moving to codify these historical atrocities into international law, Africa is signaling that the era of the ‘moral apology’ is over. The blueprints of state-dismantling, from the Congo to Libya, are no longer a matter of historical debate – they are now a matter of criminal accountability.

https://www.rt.com/africa/636836-lumumba-case-blow-to-western-legal-immunity/

Trump’s Doomsday clock: “A whole civilization will die tonight” — Tuesday April 7, 8 p.m. EDT (0000 GMT). Impeachment forum convenes Wednesday

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Reuters’ summary of events

As Trump’s deadline nears, last-ditch effort seeks Iran ceasefire
Parisa Hafezi and Trevor Hunnicutt
April 6, 2026
with video

Excerpt:
U.S. President Donald Trump warned Iran on Tuesday that “a whole civilization will die tonight” if Tehran refuses to reopen the critical Strait of Hormuz shipping lane by his evening deadline, while Pakistan proposed a two-week ceasefire in a last-ditch attempt at ​mediation.

“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will,” ​Trump wrote on Truth Social.

“However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS?”

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was “deeply troubled” by Trump’s statement, his spokesperson said. Pope Leo ‌said threats against ⁠the population of Iran are “unacceptable.”

Brian Finucane, ⁠a former U.S. State Department legal adviser now with the International Crisis Group, said Trump’s remarks “could plausibly be interpreted as a threat to commit genocide” under U.S. and international law.

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/iran-defiant-eve-trumps-ceasefire-deadline-2026-04-07/

Expert Legal Symposium on Impeachment and the Meaning of “Bribery, or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors”

https://nader.org/2026/04/02/expert-legal-symposium-on-impeachment-and-the-meaning-of-bribery-or-other-high-crimes-and-misdemeanors/

Wednesday April 8th, 2026
9 AM to 1:30 PM
Rayburn House Office Building, Room 2044

Please observe the following to enter the Rayburn Building.

Livestream link via The Real News Network.

Ralph Nader and Bruce Fein Present: 

Expert Legal Symposium on Impeachment and the Meaning of “Bribery, or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors” 

9:00 am – 9:10 am: OPENING REMARKS BY RALPH NADER
 Consumer advocate, lawyer, and author.

9:15 am – 10:25 am: Panel 1 – President Trump’s usurpation of the congressional war power conferred by Article I, section 8, clause 11 exemplified by his gratuitous, ongoing, criminal war of aggression against Iran.

Moderator: Theresa Amato (Opening statement, 10 minutes) Principal, Amato PLLC

Panelists (15 minutes each):

Dennis Kucinich Member of the U.S. House of Representatives 1997–2013, Mayor of Cleveland 1977–79 
Doug Bandow Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, specializing in foreign policy and civil liberties 
Jeffrey Sterling Lawyer, former CIA officer and whistleblower 

Open Q&A (remaining time, approx. 15 minutes)

10:30 am – 11:25 am: Panel 2 – The credible fear that President Trump will obstruct, interfere with, or outright cancel the 2026 midterm elections unless impeached and removed from office.

Moderator: John Bonifaz (Opening statement, 10 minutes) 
John Bonifaz is a constitutional attorney and the Co-Founder and President of Free Speech For People.

Panelists (15 minutes each): 

Bruce Fein Constitutional Lawyer and scholar, former Assistant Deputy Attorney General and general counsel of the Federal Communications Commission
Oliver Hall: Founder, Executive Director and  General Counsel for the Center for Competitive Democracy

Open Q&A (approx. 15 minutes)

11:30 am – 12:25 pm: Panel 3 – President Trump’s industrial scale bribery and extortion exemplified by auctioning pardons, demanding free legal services to escape government retaliation, and conferring government favors or benefits in exchange for donations to Mr. Trump’s sprawling business empire or pet projects like the White House ballroom.

Moderator: Jack Rakove (Opening statement, 10 minutes)
Pulitzer Prize-winning Stanford Professor of History and American Studies, political science and law

Panelists (15 minutes each): 

Alan B. Morrison Former Associate Dean for Public Interest & Public Service and professor of civil procedure and constitutional law at GW Law. 
Rob Weissman Co-president of Public Citizen, public interest advocate and activist 

Open Q&A (approx. 15 minutes)

12:30 pm – 1:15 pm: Statements by Public Scholars, Civic Leaders, Activists and Writers

Moderator: Mark Green (Opening statement, 10 minutes) 
Author, Lawyer, and first New York City Public Advocate

Presenters (5 minutes each):

John R. MacArthur Publisher Harper’s Magazine
Andy Shallal CEO and Founder, Busboys and Poets
David Kelley Political Policy Advisor & Writer
Ellen Barfield Co-founder of the Veterans For Peace Women’s Caucus 
Jessica Denson Founder of the Removal Coalition
Ben Cohen Co-Founder, Ben & Jerry’s 
John Koskinen Former Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS)

This event is co-sponsored by RootsAction, Free Speech For People, and Essential Information. 

From Dennis Kucinich
April 7, 2026

No matter what happens tonight, Congress must return to DC immediately. The President must be impeached and removed from office

There is an unprecedented urgency for Congress to return to DC immediately to consider an impeachment resolution and begin the process of removing the President from office.

Tomorrow, I will join constitutional scholars in Congress to present the case for the impeachment and removal of the President, a responsibility I have taken up before in defense of the Constitution.

Since that meeting was announced, Donald Trump has stated that if Iran does not accede to his demands, “a whole civilization will die,” at his direction and instance.

This statement alone underscores the unprecedented urgency of Congress returning to full session immediately to consider an impeachment resolution and begin the process of removing the President from office.

Victor Davis Hanson, in his book The End of Everything: How Wars Descend into Annihilation, offers a sweeping historical account of how civilizations collapse through war driven by human passion. In a 2024 review in Law & Liberty, Graham McAleer writes: “The historical record shows, Hanson argues, that no matter how sophisticated a great power is, there is always the risk of annihilation when a strategy relies on hope, stokes vengeance, overstates prowess, and displays arrogance.” We must ask plainly: Are we checking those boxes now?

The President cannot commit cultural homicide against Iran without committing cultural suicide on behalf of so-called Western civilization, changing forever how America and Americans are seen across the world. We are not immune from the consequences of this misuse of power. This path risks both the end of Iran, and the end of America as we know it. It propels the world to war.

The President must be brought to account for his threat to unlawfully unleash violence, or every American will be stained by actions already taken. Thousands of innocent Iranian civilians have been killed, including 180 children in the February 28 missile strike on an elementary school in Minab, Iran.

The destruction of Persian civilization is already underway. The President and his Secretary of War have usurped unto themselves the authority to direct assassinations of educators, philosophers, and scientists, and to order the bombing of universities, hospitals, and mosques. We have seen this pattern before in the pulverization of Gaza and Lebanon. Now it extends to Iran. World treasures of antiquity are being destroyed.

A President associated with the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, rooted in the exploitation of children, now presides over the killing of children abroad. This is a gigantic moral collapse.

The President has repeatedly threatened that this evening, at 8 p.m. Eastern, 3 a.m. Tehran time, he will misuse the power of his office to attempt the destruction of a civilization, through means that could surpass even the devastation inflicted upon the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

If such a plan proceeds, the consequences will not be confined to Iran. The unleashing of destruction upon countless millions of innocent people will reverberate across the world and across generations.

We now find ourselves watching the clock, 8 p.m. Eastern, 7 p.m. Central, 6 p.m. Mountain, 5 p.m. Pacific, as if counting down to a new year. But this is not a celebration. It is a doomsday clock, driven by one man’s will.

No matter what happens tonight, Congress must act. The President must be impeached and removed from office, for the sake of our nation and for the sake of the world. Silence is complicity.

https://kucinichreport.substack.com/p/no-matter-what-happens-tonight-congress

The Iran War and PFAS

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From Military Poisons

Part 1 of a 2-part series

Pat Elder
March 21, 2026

Israeli warplanes set Iran’s South Pars gas field ablaze on March 18, 2026.

On March 18, 2026, Israeli warplanes struck Iran’s South Pars gas field, igniting fires across one of the most critical energy complexes on Earth. The attack targeted infrastructure at the heart of the global natural gas system, sending flames through facilities that underpin a significant share of the world’s fertilizer production.

The South Pars strike is not just an energy story—it is also a story about the global food supply. Modern agriculture is fundamentally dependent on natural gas, which is used to produce ammonia and urea fertilizers. The Persian Gulf region supplies a substantial share of the world’s nitrogen fertilizers, so disruptions to this system reverberate immediately through global markets, agricultural production, and ultimately the food supply.

Countries most exposed to fertilizer shocks—particularly Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and import-dependent nations across Southeast and South Asia—are increasingly turning to wastewater sludge as a substitute nutrient source, a shift that risks transferring industrial PFAS contamination from urban waste streams directly onto agricultural soils. We will examine that shift in Part 2.

Here, we’ll examine the contamination unfolding from the widespread use of aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF) across the war theater.

Fires at gas fields, refineries, tank farms, and export terminals are not fought with water. Hydrocarbon fires require foam. At petroleum and gas installations, fire suppression systems have long been built around aqueous film-forming foam, or AFFF, a firefighting agent designed to spread across fuel surfaces, suppress flammable vapors, and prevent re-ignition. Foam smothers the fires. Its active ingredients are made of carcinogenic PFAS compounds.

For decades, AFFF has been the global standard for fighting liquid fuel fires in the military, at airports, and throughout the oil and gas sector. Most refineries and LNG plants in the Gulf were built long before the recent push toward fluorine-free alternatives. Their systems were designed around fluorinated foams.

Even where fluorine-free foams are beginning to enter the market, the transition is spotty, especially in high-risk petroleum settings where operators remain reluctant to abandon legacy systems. Often, an “environment be damned” mentality prevails while putting out petroleum fires.

In Iran, it is likely that older, deadlier AFFF stockpiles remain in use. Sanctions have tortured the Iranians on many fronts, constraining access to newer technologies and replacement equipment.

AFFF is a delivery system for PFAS, linked to cancer, immune dysfunction, endocrine disruption, and developmental harm. The compounds travel with firefighting runoff, infiltrate soil, enter drainage systems, contaminate surface water, and move into wastewater streams. In a war involving repeated fires at petroleum and gas facilities, PFAS contamination will become a defining legacy of the conflict.

The image shows a foam system used for dike protection in oil and gas facilities. While the specific foam type shown here cannot be determined visually, such systems in the Gulf region have historically been designed around PFAS-based foams. 
https://gulffire%5Bdot%5Dcom/meeting-the-challenges-of-transitioning-to-fluorine-free-foam-agents/

Calculating the scale

Exact volumes of foam used in the current war are not publicly reported, but industry standards make clear the likely scale. Large hydrocarbon fires at refineries and tank farms can require sustained foam application over wide surface areas for hours or even days. A single major dike or tank fire can consume thousands of gallons of foam concentrate.  

Across multiple simultaneous fires involving storage tanks, pipelines, refineries, and gas-processing infrastructure, cumulative use can rise into the hundreds of thousands of gallons of concentrate, producing millions of gallons of finished foam solution.

A large fuel storage tank fire can require thousands of gallons of 3% AFFF concentrate and hundreds of thousands of gallons of finished foam solution to extinguish. The concentrate is typically mixed at a ratio of 3% foam concentrate to 97% water and then aerated to produce the firefighting foam.

AFFF-type foams require approximately 1 gallon per minute  liquid concentrate flow for every 10 square feet of burning surface on a hydrocarbon-type fuel.

A large storage tank in the South Pars Gas Complex may contain a 78-meter diameter. This is 4,778 square meters, which converts to about 51,434 square feet.

This tank would require 5,143 gallons of liquid foam concentrate per minute.  It may require from 10 to 30 minutes to extinguish the flame in a single tank.

AFFF Requirements for a single 78-Meter Diameter Tank Fire  (3% Solution)

Time applied       Gals. Conc.           Gals. Foam

10 minutes             1,543                    51,430                 
20 minutes             3,086                   102,860               
30 minutes             4,629                   154,290  

===========             

Israeli strikes on Iran’s South Pars gas field and the Asaluyeh processing hub on March 18 triggered a wave of retaliatory attacks across the Gulf that hit refineries, gas plants and export terminals in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. Reuters, March 20, 2026

Following is a list of locations where missiles and drones have ignited blazes that have likely been doused with AFFF:

  • South Pars gas field, Iran
  • Asaluyeh, Iran
  • Shahran fuel tanks, Tehran, Iran
  • Ras Laffan Industrial City / LNG facilities, Qatar
  • Pearl gas-to-liquids plant, Ras Laffan, Qatar.
  • Mina al-Ahmadi refinery, Kuwait
  • Mina Abdullah refinery, Kuwait
  • Ras Tanura refinery / export complex, Saudi Arabia
  • SAMREF Refinery, Yanbu, Saudi Arabia
  • Ruwais refinery complex, UAE
  • Fujairah oil industry zone / export terminal , UAE
  • Bapco Sitra refinery / oil refinery complex, Bahrain
  • Haifa  Oil Refinery, Israel
  • Lanaz refinery, Erbil
  • Two fuel tankers in Iraqi waters near Basra
  • Oil tanker off Oman’s Musandam peninsula
  • Habshan gas processing complex, UAE
  • Bab oil field, UAE
  • Ashdod refinery, Israel

In multi-site, simultaneous attacks like those unfolding on our TV screens, total AFFF use can top  millions  of gallons, injecting venomous poisons into the earth throughout the Middle East.

From Fire Suppression to Environmental Contamination

When thousands of gallons of concentrate are deployed in a single incident, the result is the runoff of significant quantities of persistent fluorinated chemicals into the environment. At coastal facilities, which describe many of the sites now burning across the Persian Gulf, this runoff often moves quickly into marine environments. The Gulf is a semi-enclosed body of water with limited circulation, making it particularly vulnerable to the accumulation of persistent contaminants.‍ ‍

In the Gulf states, where a substantial portion of food is imported, the most immediate pathway of exposure is not through local agriculture but through the marine environment itself. Fisheries in the Persian Gulf, along with those in the waters of the Arabian Sea, the Red Sea, and the eastern Mediterranean, are susceptible to contamination as PFAS move through food webs.‍ ‍

Unlike hydrocarbons, which burn off or degrade over time, PFAS do not break down under environmental conditions. They bind to sediments and accumulate in living organisms rather than remaining dissolved in open water. Instead of dispersing harmlessly, they are taken up by soils, sediments, and biological tissues, where they persist and concentrate over time.‍ ‍

The result is a shift in how the environmental impact of war should be understood. Oil fires have long been associated with air pollution and visible ecological damage. The widespread use of AFFF introduces a hidden, more persistent hazard, one that does not dissipate when the flames are extinguished. ‍ ‍

The contamination is also largely unmeasured. There are no coordinated monitoring programs tracking PFAS releases during wartime fire suppression, no public accounting of the volumes used, and no framework for post-conflict remediation. What is being dispersed across the region is effectively invisible in real time, even as it establishes a chemical legacy that may persist for centuries or longer.‍ ‍

There is no robust, systematic body of studies on PFAS in marine fish from the Arabian Sea or Persian Gulf.  A host of global studies show that PFAS readily accumulate in seafood and can be transported across regions through both ocean currents and migratory species.‍‍‍‍ ‍

Lesson from Brunswick, Maine

‍On August 19, 2024, a malfunctioning fire suppression system at the former Brunswick Naval Air Station released approximately 1,450 gallons of AFFF concentrate mixed with 50,000 gallons of water, marking one of the largest accidental PFAS foam spills in history.

‍1,450 gallons pales in comparison to the millions being unloosed in the war, although it poisoned the region forever. The state analyzed the composition of the foam concentrate and published the shocking results, shown below. PFOS levels that drained into the grass topped 3.78 billion parts per trillion. PFOS is highly mobile in soil and groundwater.

The US EPA had committed to keeping groundwater that is used for drinking water under 4 parts per trillion of PFOS and PFOA, although actual enforcement has been pushed back to 2031 by the Trump Administration.

‍Results below are shown in ng/L or parts per trillion. ‍‍‍ ‍

Alpha Analytical  – 08/23/24. PFOA at levels less the 1 part per trillion in drinking water is linked to pancreatic cancer.  At Brunswick PFOA was recorded at 69,000,000 parts per trillion in liquids that seeped into the ground.
https://www.maine%5Bdot%5Dgov/dep/bep/Brunswick%20Airbase.pdf

In the conflagration that is the Persian Gulf, the disparate PFAS compounds in AFFF do not combine into a single new chemical. Instead, they are released as a complex mixture: some persist in their original form, some gradually transform into terminal compounds such as PFOS and PFOA, and all of them partition differently among seawater, sediments, wastewater, and living organisms. The result is not one contaminant, but a shifting, perpetual fluorinated burden that can intensify over time as precursor compounds degrade into more stable end products.

While black smoke fills the sky and headlines focus on oil prices, a chemical catastrophe is unfolding across the Middle East. The same war that is destabilizing global energy and food markets is coating landscapes, drainage systems, industrial wastewater streams, and coastal waters with deadly and  persistent fluorinated  compounds. The public hears about flames and airstrikes. It is not hearing about the highly carcinogenic foams sprayed to extinguish them.

://www.militarypoisons.org/latest-news/the-iran-war-and-pfas

Argo vs. Waking up in Tehran — what happened in 1979? Hollywood propaganda vs. historical reality

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Posted on War is a Crime.org, January 11, 2013
Waking up in Tehran
by David Swanson

According to one theory, U.S.-Iranian relations began around November 1979 when a crowd of irrational religious nutcases violently seized the U.S. embassy in Iran, took the employees hostage, tortured them, and held them until scared into freeing them by the arrival of a new sheriff in Washington, a man named Ronald Reagan.  From that day to this, according to this popular theory, Iran has been run by a bunch of subhuman lunatics with whom rational people couldn’t really talk if they wanted to.  These monsters only understand force.  And they have been moments away from developing and using nuclear weapons against us for decades now.  Moments away, I tell you!

According to another theory — a quaint little notion that I like to refer to as “verifiable history” — the CIA, operating out of that U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1953, maliciously and illegally overthrew a relatively democratic and liberal parliamentary government, and with it the 1951 Time magazine man of the year Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, because Mossadegh insisted that Iran’s oil wealth enrich Iranians rather than foreign corporations.  The CIA installed a dictatorship run by the Shah of Iran who quickly became a major source of profits for U.S. weapons makers, and his nation a testing ground for surveillance techniques and human rights abuses.  The U.S. government encouraged the Shah’s development of a nuclear energy program.  But the Shah impoverished and alienated the people of Iran, including hundreds of thousands educated abroad.  A secular pro-democracy revolution nonviolently overthrew the Shah in January 1979, but it was a revolution without a leader or a plan for governing.  It was co-opted by rightwing religious forces led by a man who pretended briefly to favor democratic reform.  The U.S. government, operating out of the same embassy despised by many in Iran since 1953, explored possible means of keeping the Shah in power, but some in the CIA worked to facilitate what they saw as the second best option: a theocracy that would substitute religious fanaticism and oppression for populist and nationalist demands.  When the U.S. embassy was taken over by an unarmed crowd the next November, immediately following the public announcement of the Shah’s arrival in the United States, and with fears of another U.S.-led coup widespread in Tehran, a sit-in planned for two or three days was co-opted, as the whole revolution had been, by mullahs with connections to the CIA and an extremely anti-democratic agenda.  They later made a deal with U.S. Republicans, as Robert Parry and others have well documented, to keep the hostage crisis going until Carter lost the 1980 presidential election to Ronald Reagan.  Reagan’s government secretly renewed weapons sales to the new Iranian dictatorship despite its public anti-American stance and with no more concern for its religious fervor than for that of future al Qaeda leaders who would spend the 1980s fighting the Soviets with U.S. weapons in Afghanistan.  At the same time, the Reagan administration made similarly profitable deals with Saddam Hussein’s government in Iraq, which had launched a war on Iran and continued it with U.S. support through the length of the Reagan presidency.  The mad military investment in the United States that took off with Reagan and again with George W. Bush, and which continues to this day, has made the nation of Iran — which asserts its serious independence from U.S. rule — a target of threatened war and actual sanctions and terrorism.

Ben Affleck was asked by Rolling Stone magazine, “What do you think the Iranians’ reaction is gonna be?” to Affleck’s movie Argo, which depicts a side-story about six embassy employees who, in 1979, avoided being taken hostage.  Affleck, mixing bits of truth and mythology, just as in the movie itself, replied:

“Who the FUCK knows – who knows if their reaction is going to be anything? This is still the same Stalinist, oppressive regime that was in place when the hostages were taken. There was no rhyme or reason to this action. What’s interesting is that people later figured out that Khomeini just used the hostages to consolidate power internally and marginalize the moderates and everyone in America was going, ‘What the fuck’s wrong with these people?’ You know, ‘What do they want from us?’ It was because it wasn’t about us. It was about Khomeini holding on to power and being able to say to his political opponents, of which he had many, ‘You’re either with us or you’re with the Americans’ – which is, of course, a tactic that works really well. That revolution was a students’ revolution. There were students and communists and secularists and merchants and Islamists, it’s just that Khomeini fucking slowly took it for himself.”

The takeover of the embassy is an action virtually no one would advocate in retrospect, but asserting that it lacked rhyme or reason requires willful ignorance of Iranian-U.S. relations.  Claiming that nobody knew what the hostage-takers wanted requires erasing from history their very clear demands for the Shah to be returned to stand trial, for Iranian money in U.S. banks to be returned to Iran, and for the United States to commit to never again interfering in Iranian politics.  In fact, not only were those demands clearly made, but they are almost indisputably reasonable demands.  A dictator guilty of murder, torture, and countless other abuses should have stood trial, and should have been extradited to do so, as required by treaty.  Money belonging to the Iranian government under a dictatorship should have been returned to a new Iranian government, not pocketed by a U.S. bank.  And for one nation to agree not to interfere in another’s politics is merely to agree to compliance with the most fundamental requirement of legal international relations.

Argo devotes its first 2 minutes or so to the 1953 background of the 1979 drama.  Blink and you’ll miss it, as I’m betting most viewers do.  For a richer understanding of what was happening in Iran in the late 1970s and early 1980s I have a better recommendation than watching Argo.  For a truly magnificent modern epic I strongly encourage getting a hold of the forthcoming masterpiece by M. Lachlan White, titled Waking Up in Tehran: Love and Intrigue in Revolutionary Iran, due to be published this spring.  Weighing in at well over 300,000 words, or about 100,000 more than Moby Dick, Waking Up in Tehran is the memoir of Margot White, an American human rights activist who became an ally of pro-democracy Iranian student groups in 1977, traveled to Iran, supported the revolution, met with the hostage-takers in the embassy, became a public figure, worked with the Kurdish resistance when the new regime attacked the Kurds for being infidels, married an Iranian, and was at home with her husband in Tehran when armed representatives of the government finally banged on the door.  I’m not going to give away what happened next.  This book will transport you into the world of a gripping novel, but you’ll emerge with a political, cultural, and even linguistic education.  This is an action-adventure that would, in fact, make an excellent movie — or even a film trilogy.  It’s also an historical document.

There are sections in which White relates conversations with her friends and colleagues in Iran, including their speculations as to who was behind what government intrigue.  A few of these speculations strike me as in need of more serious support.  They also strike me as helpful in understanding the viewpoints of Iranians at the time.  Had I edited this book I might have framed them a little differently, but I wouldn’t have left them out.  I wouldn’t have left anything out.  This is a several-hundred-page love letter from a woman to her husband and from an activist to humanity.  It is intensely romantic and as honest as cold steel.  It starts in 1977.

Continue reading →

U.S. Commanders Want War With Iran to Bring About Biblical Armegeddon, Officers Report

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From Common Dreams

US Commanders Want to Make War With Iran as ‘Bloody’ as Possible to Bring About Biblical End Times, Officers Report

One noncommissioned officer said he was directed to tell his troops that Trump was “anointed by Jesus” and that war with Iran was “all part of God’s divine plan” to bring about Armageddon.

Stephen Prager
3-3-26

In less than a week, the US and Israel’s war has rendered unfathomable suffering upon the people of Iran. Over 180 schoolgirls and staffers were killed in a massacre this weekend, and several hospitals have reportedly been struck, amid numerous other attacks on civilians.

But some US troops are being told the bloodletting is all a part of God’s plan.

At a briefing on Monday, as President Donald Trump unleashed what has been called a “carpet bombing” of Tehran, a combat-unit commander reportedly told noncommissioned officers (NCOs) that the commander-in-chief was “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.”

The complaint, sent by one of those noncommissioned officers, was just one of at least 110 similar reports received by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) since Trump first launched strikes on Saturday.

In compliance with the First Amendment, the Department of Defense has long adopted rules against proselytizing within the armed forces. But under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, an evangelical Christian who has said the West must wage a “crusade” against Islam, Christian nationalist invocations in the military have become commonplace.

Mikey Weinstein, the president and founder of MRFF and an Air Force veteran who served in the White House of former President Ronald Reagan, told independent journalist Jonathan Larsen that the group has been “inundated” with complaints from NCOs since Saturday, which all have “one damn thing in freaking common.”

“Our MRFF clients report the unrestricted euphoria of their commanders and command chains as to how this new ‘biblically-sanctioned’ war is clearly the undeniable sign of the expeditious approach of the fundamentalist Christian ‘End Times’ as vividly described in the New Testament Book of Revelation,” Weinstein said.

“Many of their commanders,” he added, “are especially delighted with how graphic this battle will be, zeroing in on how bloody all of this must become in order to fulfill and be in 100% accordance with fundamentalist Christian end-of-the-world eschatology.”

According to Larsen, who first reported on the MRFF’s findings on Monday, the message has been spread far and wide as US troops rained missiles down upon Iran.

Larsen reported that the “complaints came from more than 40 different units spread across at least 30 military installations,” and have involved commanders in every branch of the US military.

One noncommissioned officer, who did not identify himself out of fear of retaliation, said his commander “urged us to tell our troops that this was ‘all part of God’s divine plan’ and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ.”

The NCO added that his commander “had a big grin on his face when he said all of this, which made his message seem even more crazy.”

“Our commander would probably be described as a ‘Christian First’ supporter,” he said. “He has been this way for a very long time and makes it clear that he desires all of us under him to become just like him as a Christian. But what he did this morning was so toxic and over the line that it shocked many of us in attendance at the ops readiness briefing.”

The NCO identified himself as a Christian, but emailed MRFF on behalf of 15 of his troops, which included at least one Muslim and one Jewish person.

He said that their commanders’ remarks “destroy morale and unit cohesion and are in violation of the oaths we swore to support the Constitution.”

Christian nationalism has long simmered just under the surface of US military culture and has been invoked by presidents of the past, including George W. Bush, who referred to his War on Terror as a “crusade.”

But Hegseth, who regularly hosts Christian prayer services at the Pentagon during work hours, rails against “secular humanism” and the “godless left,” and has hosted the notorious fundamentalist pastor Doug Wilson—who opposes the right of women to vote and calls for the US to be a Christian theocracy—at the Pentagon, has dropped any pretenses of religious pluralism.

“While America’s relationship with Iran is influenced by all the typical geopolitical factors of oil, culture, and nuclear weaponry, there is a part of American foreign policy that is influenced by apocalyptic evangelical theology,” wrote Josh Olds, a pastor and theologian, on Monday for Baptist News Global.

Christian fundamentalists, some of whom have the ear of the White House, he said, view an Iranian war with Israel as central to triggering Armageddon, during which God will miraculously strike down Israel’s enemies, Jesus will return to Earth, and Christians will be raptured to Heaven, according to Biblical teachings.

He said that while Iran’s Muslim leaders are often accused of being dangerously irrational out of blind religious fundamentalism, “it is increasingly clear that American actions are shaped by it as well.”

In just over three days, US and Israeli strikes have killed at least 787 people in Iran, according to a Tuesday report from the Iranian Red Crescent Society, including hundreds of civilians. In addition to schools and hospitals, attacks have been reported against crowded residential buildings, a radio and TV broadcast center, and a sports complex.

“Donald Trump partnered with Israel to bomb Iran because of the influence of an eschatology that sees conflict with Iran as setting the stage for fulfilled prophecy,” Olds said. “The irony is profound: A faith centered on loving enemies and making peace becomes a framework that welcomes and advocates violence. The result is not the advance of God’s kingdom but its irrevocable damage in the eyes of the world.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/iran-armageddon-military

Additional references at original article at link.

Statement on the Unlawful Use of Force against Iran and on the Defence of the International Legal Order

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From the ELDH European Association of Lawyers for Democracy & World Human Rights
EJDM Europäische Vereinigung von Juristinnen & Juristen für Demokratie und Menschenrechte in der Welt
EJDH Asociacion Europea de los Juristas por la Democracia y los Derechos Humanos en el Mundo
EJDH Association Européenne des Juristes pour la Démocratie & les Droits de l’Homme
EGDU Associazione Europea delle Giuriste e dei Giuristi per la Democrazia e i diritti dell’Uomo nel Mondo

STATEMENT ON THE UNLAWFUL USE OF FORCE AGAINST IRAN
AND ON THE DEFENCE OF THE INTERNATIONAL LEGAL ORDER

The European Association of Lawyers for Democracy and Human Rights in the World (ELDH)
unequivocally condemns the recent air strikes carried out by the United States and Israel against
the territory of Iran. In the current context of escalating regional tensions and repeated unilateral
uses of force, these actions constitute a new grave breach of international law and further
accelerate the erosion of the multilateral legal order established under the Charter of the United
Nations.

1.The Absolute Prohibition of the Use of Force

Article 2(4) of the UN Charter enshrines the prohibition of the threat or use of force as a
foundational norm of the international legal system. This rule is widely recognized as possessing
peremptory (jus cogens) character and admits of only narrow exceptions.

Absent authorization by the Security Council, the sole exception is the inherent right of self-defence
under Article 51, triggered only “if an armed attack occurs.” The jurisprudence of the International
Court of Justice has consistently interpreted this exception restrictively, requiring the existence of
an actual armed attack or, at most, an attack that is imminent in a strict and demonstrable sense,
subject to the conditions of necessity and proportionality. No such threshold appears to have been
met.

2.Uranium Enrichment and the Illegality of “Preventive” Force

References to Iran’s alleged uranium enrichment programme—even if assumed to raise compliance
concerns under non-proliferation regimes—do not constitute an armed attack, nor do they
automatically amount to an imminent armed attack within the meaning of Article 51.

Disputes regarding nuclear activities are governed by specific treaty regimes, including the
framework of the International Atomic Energy Agency, inspection mechanisms, and diplomatic
processes. Alleged non-compliance with nuclear obligations, however serious, does not create an
open-ended legal entitlement to unilateral military force.

The doctrine of “preventive self-defence,” premised on neutralizing potential future capabilities,
has no clear basis in positive international law. To accept that the mere development or possession
of technological capacity—without the occurrence of an armed attack—justifies bombing sovereign
territory would radically dilute Article 2(4) and transform the exception of self-defence into a
discretionary instrument of power.

The invocation of an “existential threat” cannot displace legal standards with political rhetoric.
International law does not recognize subjective threat perception as a substitute for the objective
criteria of armed attack, necessity, and proportionality.

3.A Dangerous Pattern in the Conduct of Aggressive Military States

These strikes cannot be viewed in isolation. They reflect a broader and deeply troubling pattern in
which aggressive military states increasingly rely on expansive interpretations of self-defence,
unilateral threat assessments, and force-first approaches that bypass or marginalize multilateral
institutions.

In the present context, the conduct of the United States and Israel illustrates a continued
willingness to resort to unilateral military action in circumstances where the legal threshold for selfdefence has not been demonstrably met. Such practices aim to destroy the collective security
architecture established in 1945.

If powerful states assert the authority to determine unilaterally when preventive force is lawful, the
prohibition of the use of force becomes contingent rather than binding. The result is not enhanced
security, but systemic instability and the weakening of the rule of law at the international level.

International law cannot survive as a selective instrument invoked when convenient and
disregarded when constraining.

4.A Call to the International Legal Community

In these grave circumstances, silence is not a neutral position. The integrity of the international
legal order depends not only on formal institutions but on the principled engagement of jurists,
scholars, judges, practitioners, and civil society.

We call upon the international legal community to:

  • Reaffirm unequivocally the binding nature of Article 2(4) of the UN Charter;
  • Reject the legal validity of preventive or pre-emptive uses of force absent an armed attack in the
    strict sense required by international law;
  • Defend the authority of multilateral mechanisms for dispute settlement and non-proliferation
    compliance;
  • Insist on accountability consistent with the law of State responsibility.

These are difficult and dangerous times. Precisely for that reason, fidelity to international law is
imperative. The erosion of foundational norms through silence or acquiescence would carry
consequences far beyond any single crisis. The defence of the Charter system is not optional; it is a
collective legal responsibility.

https://eldh.eu/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Legal_Statement_Iran_Strikes.pdf

Will Trump Use Chemical Weapons on Iran? Will the US attack Iran on March 2 or 3?

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From Global Research
February 24, 2026

By Helena Glass

Why is President Trump sending a military hospital flotilla to Greenland?

Why is he saying it is to help the sick people of Greenland?

Are there no hospitals or doctors in Greenland?

Quite simply, Trump is anticipating American soldier casualties when we initiate war with Iran and is afraid of the backlash this admission would have on the people.

Iran – the means of distracting from the demise of America. Now that Huckabee has given the Middle East due notice that Israel is planning on taking over more territory than believed, the boundary lines shift. Saudi Arabia is awakening from its slumber. Qatar sees the duplicity. And the remaining pro-Trump trying to shift blame to the UK Black Nobles is falling flat.  And HHS antisemitism gulags look more like concentration camps.

Iran hosts upwards of half a million Christians. Three destroyers, two submarines, 100 fighter jets, and now a hospital to put soldiers back together, if not mentally, physically. When I was in college, one of my friends was a Vietnam veteran. He used to joke about being blown up. The surgeons didn’t know what he was supposed to look like, so he woke up with a completely different face.

My oldest brother was a Green Beret. He deployed to Vietnam as a parachuter three times. The number of casualties in a war is always an ‘estimate.’ Imagine being so nothing that no one remembers your existence. An estimate. Millions dead. Millions wounded. 250,000 perished at sea trying to escape. Toxic herbicides sprayed across the jungle.

Trump just legalized phosphorus and glyphosate for national security. Translation: Iranians and American troops will be doused in these toxic chemicals, their agriculture land forever destroyed. Their ability to procreate decimated. Saving the youth?

In Vietnam it was Agent Orange. Over 19 million gallons were sprayed, causing severe, long-term cancers, birth defects, and chronic health issues in veterans and Vietnamese citizens.

  • Cancers: Non-Hodgkin lymphoma, B-cell leukemia, prostate cancer, respiratory cancers, and soft tissue sarcoma.
  • Diseases: Type 2 diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, ischemic heart disease, and peripheral neuropathy
  • Reproductive Issues: Severe birth defects, miscarriages, and developmental issues in children of exposed veterans.
  • Skin Condition: Chloracne, a severe acne-like rash.

Has Hegseth schooled the troops and informed them they will never be able to have children? Do they know the effects of phosphorous and glyphosate? Are they ready to die for the Greater Israel?

In an effort to appease Saudi Arabia, Trump recently told them he would allow Bin Salman to proceed with uranium enrichment for a nuclear bomb. Last year, after Israel bombed Qatar, Pakistan declared they would share the means for the Saudis to obtain nuclear weapons. To deter Israel. Perhaps too little, too late. The Iran war will draw sides.  It could also be the final straw for Ukraine as Putin continues to avoid civilian casualties. No more. Two simultaneous wars – not viable.

Losing patience with the MAGA platform claiming this is all 5D chess played and controlled by Trump to eliminate the Deep State. War on Cuba, Venezuela, Lebanon, Russia, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, Syria, Palestine, and Iran is NOT 5D chess, it is death and chaos. Dousing humans, wildlife, and the environment with toxic chemicals is not 5D chess. Sending American troops into this mess is NOT 5D chess.

It is the beginning of the Dark Ages II. The collapse of the Roman Empire. It is theorized that this is the goal of the Khazarians who call themselves Jew. The American Empire is a re-creation of the Roman Empire which isolated and expelled and displaced Huns, Goths and Franks. It is speculated that the Khazars came from the Huns. The Khazarian Turks rose in power during this later part of the Dark Ages from the 6th to 10th centuries wherein all literature, all historical knowledge, all astrological knowledge and ancient wisdom had perished. Later rewritten by scribes from the 11th thru 17th centuries. The Dark Ages ended with the sacking of the Khazars by Sviatoslav I, Prince of Kyiv, in the 10th century.

The hospital flotilla is supposed to reach its destination this week. USNS Comfort is a Mercy-class hospital ship of the United States Navy. Comfort’s duties include providing emergency, on-site care for U.S. combatant forces deployed in war or other operations. While various posts indicate that the USNS Comfort is dry-docked in Alabama since June 2025 for routine maintenance, it is also notable the ship can be activated for duty within five days. When day one began is unknown.

The wild card for Iran is China. While both China and Russia have assisted bolstering Iran’s weapons cache, it is a coin flip whether either of them will risk entering the war. IF Israel deploys one of its 200 nukes, the Middle East will respond.

A White House insider states the Plan is for first strike Monday or Tuesday.

– – –

Helena Glass is Former CPA & Series 7, with emphasis in Real Estate and Financial Planning. Two brains in one: former Bronze Sculpter and Danseuse. Visit the author’s blog. She is a regular contributor to Global Research.Helena Glass is Former CPA & Series 7, with emphasis in Real Estate and Financial Planning. Two brains in one: former Bronze Sculpter and Danseuse. Visit the author’s blog. She is a regular contributor to Global Research.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/trump-use-chemical-weapons-iran/5916834

Michael Parenti: “1918”

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January 25, 2026

Michael Parenti, who died on Saturday at 92, wrote for Consortium News what appears to be his last article on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the end of WWI. 

Michael Parenti, a giant on the American left, who influenced generations of activists, scholars and ordinary Americans, died on Saturday in Berkeley, California. He was 92. Parenti wrote for Consortium News what is believed to be his last article, about the horrors of World War I. It appeared on U.S. Memorial Day, May 28, 2018, and we republish it here ahead of a tribute Consortium News is preparing.  

On Memorial Day 2018, in the year marking the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, Michael Parenti contemplates the trenches and the oligarchs who caused so much unnecessary misery.

During World War I Battle of the Somme, East Yorkshire regiment marching to the front line, June 28 , 1916. ( Ernest Brooks, Imperial War Museums, Public domain, Wikimedia Commons)

Now comes a different conflict. We have enemies at home: the schemers who trade our blood for sacks of gold, who make the world safe for hypocrisy, safe for themselves, readying themselves for the next “humanitarian war.” See how sleek and self-satisfied they look, riding our backs, distracting our minds, filling us with fright about wicked foes…

May 28, 2018
Special to Consortium News

Looking back at the years of fury and carnage, Colonel Angelo Gatti, staff officer of the Italian Army (Austrian front), wrote in his diary: “This whole war has been a pile of lies. We came into war because a few men in authority, the dreamers, flung us into it.”

No, Gatti, caro mio, those few men are not dreamers; they are schemers. They perch above us. See how their armament contracts are turned into private fortunes—while the young men are turned into dust: more blood, more money; good for business this war.

It is the rich old men, i pauci, “the few,” as Cicero called the Senate oligarchs whom he faithfully served in ancient Rome. It is the few, who together constitute a bloc of industrialists and landlords, who think war will bring bigger markets abroad and civic discipline at home. One of i pauci in 1914 saw war as a way of promoting compliance and obedience on the labor front and—as he himself said—war, “would permit the hierarchal reorganization of class relations.”

Just awhile before the heresies of Karl Marx were spreading among Europe’s lower ranks. The proletariats of each country, growing in numbers and strength, were made to wage war against each other. What better way to confine and misdirect them than with the swirl of mutual destruction.

Then there were the generals and other militarists who started plotting this war as early as 1906, eight years before the first shots were fired. War for them means glory, medals, promotions, financial rewards, inside favors, and dining with ministers, bankers, and diplomats: the whole prosperity of death. When the war finally comes, it is greeted with quiet satisfaction by the generals.

Moguls and Monarchs Prevail

But the young men are ripped by waves of machine-gun fire or blown apart by exploding shells. War comes with gas attacks and sniper shots: grenades, mortars, and artillery barrages; the roar of a great inferno and the sickening smell of rotting corpses. Torn bodies hang sadly on the barbed wire, and trench rats try to eat away at us, even while we are still alive.

Farewell, my loving hearts at home, those who send us their precious tears wrapped in crumpled letters. And farewell my comrades. When the people’s wisdom fails, moguls and monarchs prevail and there seems to be no way out.

Fools dance and the pit sinks deeper as if bottomless. No one can see the sky, or hear the music, or deflect the swarms of lies that cloud our minds like the countless lice that torture our flesh. Crusted with blood and filth, regiments of lost souls drag themselves to the devil’s pit. “Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate.” (“Abandon all hope, ye who enter” as our Dante delivered his painful message).

Meanwhile from above the Vatican wall, the pope himself begs the world leaders to put an end to hostilities, “lest there be no young men left alive in Europe.” But the war industry pays him no heed.

Finally the casualties are more than we can bear. There are mutinies in the French trenches! Agitators in the Czar’s army cry out for “Peace, Land, and Bread!” At home, our families grow bitter. There comes a breaking point as the oligarchs seem to be losing their grip.

At last the guns are mute in the morning air. A strange almost pious silence takes over. The fog and rain seem to wash our wounds and cool our fever. “Still alive,” the sergeant grins, “still alive.” He cups a cigarette in his hand. “Stack those rifles, you lazy bastards.” He grins again, two teeth missing. Never did his ugly face look so good as on this day in November 1918. Armistice embraces us like a quiet rapture. 

Not really a quiet rapture with smiling sergeants. Many troops on both sides continued killing to the bitter end, with a fury that had no mercy. In one day, November 11, the last day of war, some 10,900 men were wounded or killed from both sides, a furious rage in the face of peace, years of slaughter; now moments of vengeance.

The Fall of Eagles

A big piece of the encrusted aristocratic world breaks off. The Romanovs, Czar and family, are all executed in 1918 in Revolutionary Russia. That same year, the House of Hohenzollern collapses as Kaiser Wilhelm II flees Germany. Also in 1918, the Ottoman empire is shattered. And on Armistice Day, November 11th, 1918, at 11:00 a.m.—the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month—we mark the end of the war and with it the dissolution of the Habsburg dynasty.

Four indestructible monarchies: Russian, German, Turkish, and Austro-Hungarian, four great empires, each with millions of bayonets and cannon at the ready, now twisting in the dim shadows of history.

Will our children ever forgive us for our dismal confusion? Will they ever understand what we went through? Will we? By 1918, four aristocratic autocracies fade away, leaving so many victims mangled in their wake, and so many bereaved crying through the night.

Back in the trenches, the agitators among us prove right. The mutinous Reds standing before the firing squad last year were right. Their truths must not be buried with them. Why are impoverished workers and peasants killing other impoverished workers and peasants? Now we know that our real foe is not in the weave of trenches; not at Ypres, nor at the Somme, or Verdun or Caporetto. Closer to home, closer to the deceptive peace that follows a deceptive war.

Now comes a different conflict. We have enemies at home: the schemers who trade our blood for sacks of gold, who make the world safe for hypocrisy, safe for themselves, readying themselves for the next “humanitarian war.” See how sleek and self-satisfied they look, riding our backs, distracting our minds, filling us with fright about wicked foes. Important things keep happening, but not enough to finish them off. Not yet enough.

Michael Parenti is an internationally known, award-winning author and lecturer. He is one of the nation’s leading progressive political analysts. His highly informative and entertaining books and talks have reached a wide range of audiences in North America and abroad. His books include Profit Pathology and Other Indecencies; Inventing Reality, The Politics of News Media; Make-Believe Media: The Politics of Entertainment; Democracy for the Few; Land of Idols: Political Mythology in America; History as Mystery; The Assassination of Julius Caesar, A People’s History of Ancient Rome and the first part of his memoir, Waiting for Yesterday: Pages from a Street Kid’s Life.

https://consortiumnews.com/2018/05/28/1918/

https://consortiumnews.com/2026/01/25/michael-parenti-1933-2026-1918/