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Suicide Should Not Be a Government Service

By Wendy McElroy | Brownstone Institute | March 30, 2026

On February 5, 2026, in the Canadian Parliament, Conservative MP Garnett Genuis tabled Bill C-260, which prohibits civil servants or others with authority from recommending assisted-suicide to anyone who has not asked about it.

Genuis cited “examples such as Canadian Armed Forces veteran David Baltzer…who was offered MAiD by Veterans Affairs Canada, as well as Nicholas Bergeron, a 46-year-old man from Quebec who was not interested in a medically facilitated death, but was ‘repeatedly’ pushed towards the option by a social worker.”

I can verify this government policy personally since a family member was encouraged without prompting to attend a seminar on how and why to kill himself.

Introduced in 2016, Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) is a federal program that can differ slightly from province to province. The core and constant concept: at the request of an eligible individual, the government administers death either by euthanasia through a lethal injection delivered by a clinician or by assisted suicide through self-administered medication that is facilitated by a clinician. An estimated 99% of MAiD cases involve euthanasia, not assisted suicide.

For one thing, the populous province of Quebec prohibits self-administration; in other provinces, health regions and care facilities perform only euthanasia or lean strongly in this direction. Perhaps government chose the acronym MAiD because Medical Euthanasia sounds jarring.

MAiD sets the extremely dangerous precedent of granting government the authority to kill an innocent person. The standard rebuttal to this argument is that the innocent person must request the “service” of suicide.

MAiD is not a uniquely Canadian issue. State-assisted suicide has spread quickly across the Western world. Currently (February 2026), over a dozen American states have legalized it in some form. In the UK, the Terminally Ill Adults Bill is at the Committee Stage in Parliament where it reportedly has 1,227 proposed amendments.

Some regions in Australia are also drawing up programs. The list of nations offering State-assisted suicide or euthanasia scrolls on and on, including Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Luxembourg, Austria, New Zealand…The same concerns and debates surrounding MAiD bear directly on these other programs, especially as MAiD is often referenced as a model or as a cautionary tale.

I view MAiD as a cautionary tale.

Medical personnel may have religious or other ethical objections to administering MAiD. Perhaps they view euthanasia as a violation of the Hippocratic Oath, which states, “First, Do No Harm.” For many, these 4 words form the backbone of medical ethics. Canada does not force doctors or nurse practitioners to administer MAiD, but the Canadian Association of MAiD Assessors and Providers (CAMAP) explains that “holding a conscientious objection to MAiD does not negate these obligations.

Rather, it activates alternative duties to discuss the objection with the patient and to refer or transfer the care of the patient to a non-objecting clinician or other effective information-providing and access-facilitating resource.” This forces the practitioners to participate in the MAiD system to which they may strenuously object. Equally, some taxpayers may consider MAiD to be a form of murder that is covered by tax-funded health care. They may be as repulsed by having to pay for MAiD as much as many pro-life advocates detest having to finance abortions.

All assisted-suicide nations will confront certain practical questions; for example, all programs need to answer “what constitutes consent, and how is it documented?”

A sketch of how these general practical problems surfaced in Canada gives insight.

The original 2016 legislation (Bill C-14) provided safeguards to ensure applicants were eligible for MAiD. An amendment in 2021 (Bill C-7) established a two-track system of qualifications: Track 1 and Track 2. What is now called Track 1 is for people with an advanced condition whose natural death is deemed to be “reasonably foreseeable.” To be accepted in MAiD, the applicant requires the approval of 2 clinicians; it used to require a mandatory waiting period but this was lifted by Bill-C7 in 2021.

Increasingly, the media and public have been asking whether the safeguards are being applied or are inadequate. A recent MAiD case has drawn particular attention to the question. A woman in her eighties, identified as Mrs. B. was handled as a Track 1 patient for whom 2 assessments are required. Mrs. B. received 3 because the first assessor reported that the elderly woman preferred palliative care which had been essentially denied. Mrs. B. also expressed religious objections to suicide.

The clinician believed this disqualified her as a candidate. Nevertheless, her husband complained of having “caregiver burnout” and secured additional assessments by 2 more obliging clinicians. MAiD was approved for Mrs. B. When the first assessor asked to re-interview Mrs. B, she was refused access. Mrs. B’s death was processed.

The case raises questions. The husband seemed to be present at all 3 assessments even though no one but the applicant can make a request or should influence the process. Did his presence silence her or otherwise alter the results? Were the husband’s hardships given priority over Mrs. B.’s? Why was she denied the palliative care she preferred? Was she given a chance to revoke her initial consent? And, if MAiD prioritized safeguards, why would it deny the 1st clinician’s request to re-interview?

An article entitled “Canadian Medical Assistance in Dying: Provider Concentration, Policy Capture, and Need for Reform” recently appeared in The American Journal of Bioethics (Volume 25, 2025 – Issue 5). The authors—Christopher Lyon of the University of York, Trudo Lemmens of the University of Toronto, and Scott Y.H. Kim M.D. of the National Institutes of Health—state, “there have been, and continue to be, a significant number of troubling cases of MAiD, including cases reported in the media where the requestor did not want to die but found MAiD far more accessible than basic, standard resources (their first choice) that would have offered treatment or made their suffering bearable.”

Canada’s allegedly ‘universal’ health care was unable or unwilling to render the standard services that Mrs. B. would have chosen life over death. The system may have been “unable” to do so because public health care tightly rations its scarce services, which means many people are turned away or left to die on a long waiting list. Private care is not always possible; if it is available, it can be very expensive, prohibitively far away and selective in the patients accepted. The system may have been “unwilling” to provide basic standard service because patients with serious chronic conditions are expensive in terms of treatment, time and money.

And, so, the medical professional decided she was not worth the trouble. Instead of easing and extending life—as the Hippocratic Oath instructs—the system offered death. Other nations with a degree of tax-funded health care—and this is most Western nations—suffer from similar problems. On January 25, 2026, Spiked Online (UK) ran an article entitled “The assisted-suicide bill is class warfare at its ugliest.” The author, Dan Hitchens inserted two unusually candid quotes:

In 2024, Matthew Parris cheerfully wrote in the Times that, ‘Our culture is changing its mind about the worth of old age.’ He rejoiced that while, ‘Your time is up,’ might ‘never be an order,’ he conceded that ‘the objectors are right,’ it ‘may one day be the kind of unspoken hint that everybody understands.’ We can’t afford to do anything else, Parris believes. Similarly, the New Statesman’s Oli Dugmore enthused last year that assisted suicide would bring down ‘the pensions bill, the NHS bill and the care bill,’ and would relieve us of the old folk who sit in care homes ‘unvisited by relatives who are preoccupied by the rhythm of their lives, or perhaps unable to summon the courage to witness the degeneration of the once totemic figures of their lives, their mum and dad. Let them die.’

Track 2 of MAiD is a further step toward freeing the Canadian health system and economy by extending MAiD to broader categories of people. Track 2 applies to individuals whose natural death is not reasonably foreseeable but who have a grievous and irremediable medical condition, including disabilities. This is a considerable expansion of governmental authority.

It may soon expand more. Today, mental illness alone does not make a person eligible for MAiD, although such eligibility is legally slated to be available in March 2027. It may come sooner, however, due largely to the successful and high-profile actress Claire Brosseau, 48, being part of a lawsuit against MAiD. The Plaintiffs accuse MAiD of discriminating against the mentally ill because they are currently excluded. As of February 2026, Brosseau’s suit is still pending.

This is an alarming ‘mission drift’ that introduces people who may be unable to make informed decisions—that is, the mentally ill—into MAiD. The aforementioned essay “Canadian Medical Assistance in Dying” states, “In more recent years… there have been well documented cases of people using MAiD as a way to end a life of poverty, a disability, social isolation, or mental illness.” These are problems that health care and social networks used to address through healing, education, drugs, therapy, or community involvement.

Inevitably, some people protest, “Trust government! Trust the health care system!” Why? Government officials are revealed repeatedly to be egregious liars, and the medical ‘science’ of Covid lockdowns revealed as dogma. Trust now seems to be clueless and self-destructive, especially when the topic at hand is literally a matter of life and death.

So far, a main obstacle to MAiD’s acquisition of credibility comes from the program itself. How can you judge if and to what extent MAiD has been abused when the data it releases is sparse and not informative? It is not as though there is a means of independent verification. In part, the non-transparency is due to the anonymity and privacy laws applying to medical records, which can prevent coming to an informed conclusion.

Consider just one small category of MAiD data to which the government has total access: federal inmates. In a December 29, 2025 article, The Post Millennial reports that at least 15 federal inmates had died by MAiD since 2018. The article comments on an Order Paper response—that is, an official, written government reply to a question submitted by a Member of Parliament or a Senator.

An Order Paper response confirmed by the Correctional Service of Canada shows the inmates died before completing their prison sentences. The records indicate two inmate deaths by MAiD in 2018, followed by one each in 2019, 2020, and 2021. The number rose to four in 2022, dropped to one in 2023, increased again to four in 2024, and one additional death has been recorded so far in 2025.

The data does not identify where the deaths occurred, the sex of the inmates, or the specific reasons for the requests. It also does not indicate whether the deaths fell under Track 1… or Track 2 cases…

It becomes impossible to know if these MAiD cases followed federal requirements or were a way to rid the prison system of expensive inmates.

The expansion of MAiD shows no signs of waning. In 2022, for example, the Quebec College of Physicians (CMQ) suggested including gravely ill or extremely deformed babies into people eligible for MAiD. This would sidestep the much-touted requirement of patient’s informed consent, of course, since newborns cannot understand or communicate. And, yet, the CMQ reaffirmed its position in 2025. Canada now permits only the withdrawal of life-support for critically ill infants, not the act of killing them. The CMQ assures the public that euthanasia of newborns would be rare, of course. But would it be? MAiD has grown so dramatically in the past decade that 1 in every 20 deaths in Canada are attributed to the aggressive program.

Quebec has also led the way in using advance requests for MAiD. This request is from a person who has an incurable illness that will lead to some form of incapacity; Alzheimer’s is often given as an example. The advance request is made when the person is still mentally competent; MAiD is administered when he becomes mentally incompetent. Again, this raises questions about consent; what if the person changes his mind? Will the clinician disregard an Alzheimer’s patient who resists at the final moment? Will a family member with medical guardianship be able to override MAiD?

Most of the concerns raised have been practical ones, which leaves open the door for reforming the system to prevent the abuses, errors, and overreach. I don’t think reform is possible. The economic incentives in a tax-funded health system are strongly in favor of MAiD; the system is already ‘overly burdened’ by the elderly and chronically ill whose absence would be welcomed.

Moreover, no one knows what the rates of abuse, error, and overreach are. Under what may be the guise of privacy, the government can indefinitely hide the evidence of such abuse, error, and overreach. Once tax-funded and rationed health care is coupled with a public acceptance of euthanasia that is conducted with next to no transparency, a bad outcome seems inevitable.

To complicate matters, MAiD is not merely a means of saving money; it may also be a significant means of making it. The Legal Insurrection website (January 13, 2026) notes that some of MAiD patient’s organs are harvested for ‘donation.’ Raising the topic of “organ tourism,” the Legal Insurrection continues,

I wasn’t the only one who noticed, either. The U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) leadership is now sharply criticizing Canada’s MAiD program, which is now linked to organ donation, with one top official calling it a ‘strange new horror’ and a cautionary example for other countries. U.S. Deputy HHS Secretary Jim O’Neill said that Canada’s permissive assisted-suicide regime has ‘crossed ethical boundaries’ by helping drive up organ donation rates from people who die via euthanasia.

The phrase “strange new horror” comes from a January 8, 2026 interview with the Washington Examiner in which O’Neill explained how disturbed he was “to learn that Canada’s physician-assisted suicide program… has enabled it to become a world leader in organ transplant policy from deceased donors.” Some consider O’Neill’s concerns about MAiD to be wildly exaggerated and attribute part of the increase in Canadian organ transplant to other sources. For example, Nova Scotia is an automatic organ donor province. If a person doesn’t explicitly opt out of organ donation then, his viable organs will automatically be harvested and sold to other provinces or other countries.

It is not technically permitted to sell organs in Canada, but Revenue Canada notes that the expense of providing organ transplants can be written off, which is a form of remuneration. These expenses include “reasonable amounts paid to find a compatible donor, to arrange the transplant including legal fees and insurance premiums, and reasonable travel, board and lodging expenses for the patient, the donor, and their respective attendants.” Clearly, money changes hands. This opens another Pandora’s box of ethical questions.

The only path back from the medical dystopia of MAiD is to remove government involvement. I would like to say that those who choose death-by-government are within their rights. I can’t because such people are enabling oppressive laws and a medical bureaucracy that threaten the rest of society.

MAiD is a sea change in one of Canada’s most important institutions—health care. Instead of extending life, hundreds of clinicians devote their skills to facilitating death. In turn, this causes a sea change in how many people view the health system.

As a Canadian, I am now unwilling to be candid with the doctors I visit or to answer all medical questionnaires. This is not paranoia. The last health survey I received had incredibly intrusive and unprecedented questions, including about my mental state. No one will keep this information away from the government that prepared the survey in the first place. How do I know it won’t be used against me in the future?

Of one thing, I am certain; government has no place in euthanasia or assisted-suicide. MAiD is not compassionate. It is not mercy killing. It is a cruel, uncaring bureaucracy looking after its own interests, as all bureaucracies do. Consider one more MAiD case. In March 2024, the quadriplegic Normand Meunier was administered MAiD as a result of a hospital visit in Quebec. “Before being admitted to an intensive care bed for his third respiratory virus in three months this winter,” the CBC explains. “Meunier was stuck on a stretcher in the emergency room for four days.”

Due to neglect, improper care surfaces, and inadequate repositioning, he developed such severe bedsores (pressure ulcers) that bone and muscle were exposed. The excruciating sores were deemed untreatable. Meunier, who had asked for help, decided not to live with the pain.

MAiD is a type of “Therapeutic Nihilism”—the belief that there is little hope of curing or significantly improving a patient’s condition and death is more appropriate. In Orwellian fashion, it redefines “Do no harm” into “It is best to kill the patient.” This nihilism ignores the common phenomena of misdiagnosis, the creation of breakthrough treatment, or the simple fact that many patients live for years and years beyond even a correct diagnosis. MAiD is the creation of a health system that cannot or will not provide “basic, standard” service.

Covid devastated the medical profession’s reputation. The shreds that remain will not survive MAiD. Nor should they.

Wendy McElroy is a Canadian individualist feminist and voluntaryist writer. McElroy is the editor of the website ifeminists.net.

March 31, 2026 Posted by | Timeless or most popular | , , | Comments Off on Suicide Should Not Be a Government Service

Rethinking America’s greatest threat: Iran vs. Israel-Firsters

By Jamal Kanj | MEMO | March 31, 2026

I filled my car tank this week and paid 40% more than I did just a month ago. That isn’t just an economic abstraction, but another indirect Israeli “surcharge” on American consumers. Meanwhile, Donald Trump spends another getaway weekend at his Mar-a-Lago golf course, a trip subsidized by the same taxpayers who are forced to choose between feeding their families or fueling their cars.

Trump’s campaign rhetoric against foreign wars had resonated with American voters who wanted their government to prioritize domestic economy over foreign intervention. He built his movement by criticizing past administrations, Republican and Democrat, for squandering American blood and money abroad. Nevertheless, here we are again: record-high gas prices at home, and thousands of miles away, American soldiers are once again in harm’s way, drawn into another made-for-Israel war.

“Drill, baby, drill,” Trump promised to lower oil prices. Reality, however, tells a different story. The U.S. is producing more oil than ever, and consumers are paying as never before. Why? Because “drill, baby, drill” was never about lowering prices, it was about maximizing profits.

During the 1973 oil crisis, the American Israeli-managed media blamed the higher prices on Arab “greed,” often resorting to racist and derogatory stereotypes. Today, U.S. companies produce enough oil to meet or exceed domestic consumptions, yet tax-subsidized oil corporations keep prices at record highs. Suddenly, it isn’t “greed” anymore, or “towelheads,” it’s just “market” prices. This is while Trump continues to claim that the U.S. is not impacted by oil moving through the Strait of Hormuz.

If so, what exactly is driving prices? If it’s neither production costs nor a supply-and-demand imbalance, then what is it? Profiteering from international crises 7,000 miles away. What’s the value of “drill, baby, drill” and boasting about “oil independence’” if American consumers pay international crisis prices for oil extracted from America’s backyard? The reality is a bitter irony: U.S. taxpayers subsidize the production of oil, but still pay a war premium “market” price.

None of this should come as a surprise. It is part of being dragged into a war planned in Tel Aviv, promoted by “Israel-first” loyalists in Washington, and disconnected from America’s national interest. It is the geopolitical equivalent of a reckless spender charging a credit card with no intention of footing the bill. The proxy dictates the strategy, while the American public is left to pay for the fallout.

It is a lopsided relationship, because in Washington, access is about money not representation. Israel-first policies are not discussed in town halls, but planned behind closed doors in donor circles. Take for instance, the late Sheldon Adelson who bought Trump’s policies: moving the U.S. embassy to occupied Jerusalem, and the illegal recognition of Israeli theft of the Syrian Golan Heights. Today, his widow, the Israeli/American, Miriam Adelson is pushing for wars on behalf of the country she “loves more” than America.

Trump promised to put “America First,” in actuality, it is Israel-first donor’s agenda: billionaires like Larry Ellison, Bill Ackman, Alex Karp, Miriam Adelson, Haim Saban, Michael Dell ,,, etc. Their Israel-first wish list, supersedes America First.

The contradiction becomes even sharper when rhetoric is measured against action. As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump repeatedly attacked Joe Biden for funding military support to help Ukraine fight its own war. Yet as president, he is now asking Congress to add $200 billion to an already swelling deficit and conscripting American soldiers to fight on behalf of another country. And to pay for it, Republican leadership is considering billing the American patient through cuts to domestic healthcare.

It’s beyond comprehension. Republicans suddenly discover their “fiscal conscience” willing to defund the health of their own citizens, when they can pay for it, at least in part, by trimming the massive annual aid to Israel and its military industrial complex.

Trump’s hypocrisy, falsehoods, and relentless projection are no longer just personal or political quirks, they have become normalized in Washington. For him, projection functions as a survival mechanism: attacking others to mask his own inadequacies. The ironies are as consistent as they are galling: Trump once mocked Barack Obama for playing too much golf, when he spends his weekends—even in a time of war—on his own greens. He branded Joe Biden as ‘Sleepy Joe,’ when it is Trump who now drifts off during high-stakes briefings and meetings. He does not merely criticize his opponents; he projects his own deficiencies onto them, displacing his reality to escape accountability.

Recent hyperbolic statements underscore those concerns. In five consecutive days, Donald Trump fired off at five shifting positions regarding the Strait of Hormuz. A frantic confusion that signals a policy sinking deeper into a foreign quagmire. This is the definition of a failed command: objectives that mutate by the hour, missions that expand without clarity, under a stewardship that reacts instead of leading.

Amid this uncertainty, Americans are justified in asking fundamental questions. Why is Trump hell-bent on attacking Iran, a country under the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) oversight, its program has been repeatedly certified as civilian, while Israel is permitted to maintain a secret nuclear arsenal, no IAEA supervision, and with zero accountability? Why would Washington demand absolute transparency from Tehran while enabling the total opacity of Tel Aviv.

Even more critical, how is a nuclear-armed Iran, equipped with a delivery mechanism, a credible threat to the U.S.? By what logic would it pose more of a risk than the nuclear arsenals of North Korea, China, or Russia? How does Iran rise above these in the hierarchy of existential risks? It does not, because this is less about the U.S. than it is about Israel.

America’s greatest threat is not Iran’s nuclear technology, it is rather the undue influence of Israeli firsters embedded in the U.S. media, Congress and the White House steering an Israel-first agenda that leverages American credibility, and channels U.S. resources to serve Israeli endless wars.

March 31, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Wars for Israel | , , , | Comments Off on Rethinking America’s greatest threat: Iran vs. Israel-Firsters

Iran accuses adversaries of false flags to strain Turkey ties

Al Mayadeen | March 31, 2026

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi categorically denied reports claiming that Iranian missiles had been launched toward Turkish territory, describing them as “completely baseless.”

During a phone call with his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan, Araghchi warned of attempts by regional adversaries to undermine the atmosphere of peace and friendship between the two neighboring countries.

Araghchi also discussed the repercussions of the ongoing US-Israeli aggression against Iran, reaffirming Tehran’s commitment to the principles of good neighborliness and respect for Turkey’s national sovereignty.

The Iranian foreign minister expressed his country’s full readiness to cooperate in verifying any such claims.

In his remarks to Fidan, Araghchi stressed the need for the international community to condemn US and Israeli aggression targeting schools, universities, energy infrastructure, and residential areas. He added that “the American rhetoric openly threatening to attack Iranian production facilities constitutes a criminal threat and a clear disregard for international law and humanitarian principles.”

He concluded by emphasizing that US violations require a decisive response from all states and governments to prevent further escalation and to stop aggressive powers from violating the resources of the region’s peoples and destroying their infrastructure.

It is worth noting that the Turkish president has repeatedly affirmed that his country will not be drawn into the ongoing US-Israeli war on Iran.

Araghchi calls on Caspian states to take a firm stance against aggression

In the same context, Araghchi told his Azerbaijani counterpart Jeyhun Bayramov that Iran is taking defensive measures against the aggressors’ military bases and installations located in countries across the region.

He further noted that the countries bordering the Caspian Sea must adopt a firm position regarding the recent aggression on certain coastal areas of the Caspian Sea.

Iran warns against potential false-flag attacks framing Iran 

The Islamic Revolution Guard Corps lately condemned the drone strike targeting the residence of the president of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region in Duhok, Nechirvan Barzani, describing it as an “act of terrorism” linked to recent attacks against Iranian officials.

Earlier, Iranian officials and sources repeatedly warned of false flag attacks, indicating that “Israel” and the United States have been intending to expand false flag operations to target regional actors and frame Iran for the attacks.

On March 15, late Iranian Secretary of the National Security Council Ali Larijani warned of a potential large-scale false flag attack on United States soil allegedly designed to frame Iran. In a post on X, Larijani claimed, “I’ve heard that the remaining members of Epstein’s network have devised a conspiracy to create an incident similar to 9/11 and blame Iran for it.”

Shahed-136 drone copied into LUCAS

Earlier on March 15, the spokesperson for Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters warned neighboring countries and Muslim populations in the region that Iran’s enemies have replicated the Shahed-136 drone, renaming it the LUCAS drone and using it to strike illegitimate targets across the region.

The statement accused “Israel” and the United States of resorting to deception after their failures on the military and political fronts against Iran. By copying the Shahed-136 drone, the spokesperson said the “enemy aims to carry out attacks while falsely attributing them to Iran.”

“This malicious tactic is designed to sow doubt, direct accusations at the Islamic Republic of Iran, and create division between Iran and its neighbors,” the statement said, adding that such actions seek to discredit what it described as the lawful defensive measures of the Iranian Armed Forces.

Larijani emphasized that Iran “fundamentally opposes such terrorist schemes,” underlining that the country has no conflict with the American people. “We have no war with the American people,” he wrote, asserting that Iran is merely defending itself against aggression launched by the United States and “Israel”. He added that Iran “stands tall in doing so in order to teach the aggressors a lesson.”

‘Israel’ working to expand false flag operations across Middle East 

On March 8, a regional security source told Al Mayadeen that “Israel” is working to expand false flag operations across West Asia and in several European countries, citing what the source described as confirmed intelligence information.

According to the source, recent attacks targeting Cyprus, Azerbaijan, and Riyadh were carried out by “Israel”.

The source also said there is “reliable information” suggesting that similar security and military operations could occur. These incidents, the source said, may be falsely attributed to Iran or to the Axis of Resistance.

Separately, an informed official in Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence warned on March 7 of a potential Israeli scheme to target the Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied al-Quds in an attempt to blame Iran and Resistance movements.

According to the Iranian Tasnim News Agency, the official said the alleged plan could involve a false flag operation using drones or missiles aimed at the mosque compound.

March 31, 2026 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism | , , , , , , | Comments Off on Iran accuses adversaries of false flags to strain Turkey ties

Poland rules out sending Patriot missiles to US/Israel amid war on Iran

Al Mayadeen | March 31, 2026

Poland will not provide the United States with its Patriot missile defense systems, Polish National Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said on Tuesday, rejecting a reported US request to transfer the batteries to the Middle East.

Earlier in the day, the Rzeczpospolita newspaper reported that the United States was demanding that Poland transfer one of its two Patriot batteries to the region, where the US-Israeli war on Iran has now entered its fifth week.

“Our Patriot batteries and their missiles are being used to protect Polish airspace and NATO’s eastern flank. In this regard, nothing has changed, and we do not plan to relocate them anywhere,” Kosiniak-Kamysz wrote on X.

Security first, Poland says

The United States understands the Polish position, the defense minister claimed. “Our allies know and understand how important missions we have here are. Poland’s security is our absolute priority.”

Kosiniak-Kamysz’s position was confirmed by Polish Deputy Defense Minister Cezary Tomczyk.

“Polish Patriots remain in Poland. They have their own tasks in the country: the protection of Poland and the eastern flank of NATO,” Tomczyk wrote on X.

A pattern of allied reluctance

Poland’s refusal is not an isolated incident. Since the US-Israeli war on Iran began on February 28, Washington has struggled to rally its NATO allies behind the campaign. Several member states have reportedly refused to send naval forces to the region or allow the US to use their military bases as launch points for strikes against Iran.

President Trump has openly criticized NATO allies over their stance. In a post on Truth Social, he accused them of being “cowards” and warned that “without the United States, NATO is just a paper tiger.” He claimed NATO countries were unwilling to assist in reopening the Strait of Hormuz, describing it as a “simple military maneuver,” while complaining about rising oil prices.

Trump’s frustration reflects a broader reality: the US-Israeli war on Iran has found little support among Washington’s traditional allies. Switzerland, citing its policy of neutrality, said it will not approve weapons export licenses to the US for the duration of the conflict. France reportedly gave a “no” to joining a US-led coalition to patrol the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has warned the UK that allowing the US to use its military bases constitutes “participation in aggression.”

Poland’s decision to keep its Patriots at home, then, is one data point in a larger trend. As the war enters its fifth week with no clear end in sight, the US is finding itself increasingly isolated, unable to secure the backing of its closest allies for a conflict Washington initiated and continues to escalate alone.

March 31, 2026 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , , | Comments Off on Poland rules out sending Patriot missiles to US/Israel amid war on Iran

Tehran approves new Hormuz plan with major restrictions

Al Mayadeen | March 31, 2026

An Iranian lawmaker confirmed the approval of a draft bill to manage the Strait of Hormuz, signaling a major shift in Tehran’s approach to one of the world’s most critical maritime chokepoints.

Mojtaba Zarei, a member of the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee in parliament, said lawmakers had endorsed a “project to manage the Strait of Hormuz,” according to Fars and Tasnim news agencies.

Zarei outlined that the bill includes comprehensive measures covering security arrangements, maritime navigation safety, and environmental considerations. It also introduces financial frameworks, including fee systems, to be conducted in Iranian currency.

The legislation further seeks to prevent American and Israeli-linked vessels from transiting the strait, alongside restricting passage for countries participating in unilateral sanctions against Iran.

Expanded sovereign and military role

The bill reinforces Iran’s sovereign authority over the strait, granting a central role to the country’s armed forces in its implementation.

It also emphasizes coordination with the Sultanate of Oman in shaping the legal framework governing the waterway.

Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref earlier stated that the management system of the Strait of Hormuz “has changed and will not return to what it was”, as Tehran works to convert recent gains into concrete economic and security guarantees that affirm its sovereign interests.

Iran could emerge stronger from the war, more dangerous to US: FT

Financial Times columnist Gideon Rachman argues that Iran is emerging from the US-Israeli war on it in a position of strategic strength, having demonstrated the capacity to close the Strait of Hormuz and impose a reported transit toll on commercial shipping, in a development that has exposed the limits of US military and diplomatic power in the region.

There is no question that the Islamic Republic has absorbed significant blows since the war began. Senior leadership, including the country’s leader, was martyred in the opening hours of the aggression, and missile launchers, ships, and command centres have been reportedly attacked.

Yet Iran has not merely held its ground. By effectively closing the strait and charging vessels a reported $2 million each for passage, Tehran has converted military pressure into economic leverage, and potentially into a permanent revenue stream.

With approximately 140 ships transiting the strait daily under normal conditions, the toll mechanism could generate billions of dollars per month for the Islamic Republic.

March 31, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Wars for Israel | , , , | Comments Off on Tehran approves new Hormuz plan with major restrictions

No Threat Can Force Iran’s Surrender /Trita Parsi & Lt Cl Daniel Davis

Daniel Davis / Deep Dive – March 30, 2026

March 31, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Video, Wars for Israel | , , | Comments Off on No Threat Can Force Iran’s Surrender /Trita Parsi & Lt Cl Daniel Davis

UK’s New Pandemic Plan Would Turn Big Tech Into a Mass Location Tracking Network

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | March 30, 2026

Britain’s new £1 billion ($1.3m) pandemic strategy treats a future outbreak as a “certainty” and proposes building a contact tracing system that would feed on real-time location data harvested with the help of Silicon Valley’s biggest companies.

The plan, published by the Department of Health and Social Care, also calls for PPE stockpiles, new emergency legislation, and a biosecurity research hub in Essex.

But the centerpiece that deserves the most scrutiny is the contact tracing proposal, which would create a surveillance architecture designed to track the movements of millions of people, ready to switch on at a moment’s notice.

The UKHSA will run the new system, which the strategy document says will use “live location data” and artificial intelligence to provide “a more rapid, large-scale detection and alert system during pandemics.”

The agency plans to “explore options to work with ‘big tech’” to build it, with deployment targeted for 2030. The government is pre-building a location surveillance system in partnership with companies whose entire business model depends on harvesting as much personal data as possible.

The strategy doesn’t name which companies, what data-sharing agreements would look like, or what happens to your location history once the pandemic ends.

The UK government has already tracked its own citizens through their phones without telling them. A 2021 report by the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviors (SPI-B) revealed that government-funded researchers tracked one in ten people in Britain via their mobile phones in February of that year, without the users’ knowledge or permission.

Researchers used cell phone mobility data to select over 4,200 vaccinated individuals, then monitored them through 40 call data records with corresponding location observations. The data was used for behavioral analysis, tracking radius of movement on vaccination day, whether people visited businesses during opening hours, and whether they went straight home afterwards. None of this was made public at the time.

When the tracking came to light, a spokesperson for Big Brother Watch said citizens would be “disturbed to discover they were unwittingly tracked and subjected to behavioral analysis via their phones.”

“No one expects that by going to get a vaccine they will be tracked and monitored by their own Government,” the spokesperson said. “This is deeply chilling and could be extremely damaging to public trust in medical confidentiality. Between looming Covid passports and vaccine phone surveillance, this Government is turning Britain into a Big Brother state under the cover of Covid. This should be a wake up call to us all.”

The government’s defense was that the data was collected at cell tower level, not the individual level, and that it was “GDPR-compliant” data provided by a company that “collected, cleaned, and anonymized” it.

A government spokesperson said “the mobile phone location data used is GDPR-compliant and has been provided from a company that collected, cleaned, and anonymized the data” and that “the data is at cell tower rather than individual level and the researchers were granted access to the dataset under a research contract with ethical approval provided to the researchers from the University of Oxford, working on behalf of SPI-B.”

That defense tells you everything about how the government thinks about location surveillance. It tracked millions of people and called it ethical because a private company “anonymized” the data first. It monitored the movements of vaccinated individuals and called it acceptable because the tracking happened at cell tower resolution rather than GPS precision. The distinction between “cell tower level” and “individual surveillance” is thinner than the government wants you to believe.

Cell tower data can still reveal where you live, where you work, and what you do on a given day, especially when cross-referenced with other datasets. The fact that a private company sat between the government and the raw data doesn’t change what happened: people went to get vaccinated, and their government secretly tracked where they went afterwards.

That history makes the new strategy’s contact tracing plans look less like pandemic preparedness and more like the next step in normalizing population-level location surveillance.

The 2021 tracking was done covertly, without legislation, using data purchased from a private company. The new strategy proposes formalizing this kind of capability, building it into permanent government systems, and enlisting “big tech” to run it at scale. What was done secretly during Covid is now being written into official policy.

During the pandemic, the UK’s first attempt at a centralized contact tracing app collapsed under its own privacy problems. The government’s original NHSX app tried to store user data on a central server, a design so invasive that Apple and Google refused to let it run properly on their operating systems.

March 31, 2026 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Comments Off on UK’s New Pandemic Plan Would Turn Big Tech Into a Mass Location Tracking Network