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Trump’s ‘Golden Dome’ offers ‘limited’ shield against ballistic missiles: Defense official

Press TV – April 29, 2026

A recent US Senate hearing has exposed mounting concerns that America’s homeland missile defenses are dangerously misaligned with modern warfare, according to a report.

Assistant Secretary of Defense Marc Berkowitz, speaking before the US Senate Committee on Armed Services during the hearing on the next-generation Golden Dome missile defense system on Tuesday, said that the US relies on a “very limited” ground-based, single-layer defense system designed specifically to counter a small-scale rogue ICBM attack from North Korea.

He emphasized that this architecture provides only “very limited capability” against other ballistic missile threats. Most critically, Berkowitz warned that the US currently has “no defense against hypersonic weapons or cruise missiles today.”

According to a report by Asia Times, Data from the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance indicates that between 1999 and 2023, 21 Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) tests were conducted, resulting in just 12 hits and 8 misses, a success rate of only 57 percent.

A February 2025 American Physical Society report noted that despite more than $400 billion spent since 1957, no missile defense system is effective against realistic ICBM threats.

The Asia Times report said that intercepting even a single nuclear-armed ICBM is “extremely challenging” given short engagement windows and the difficulty of distinguishing warheads from decoys.

The Trump administration’s “Golden Dome” project aims to build a layered “system of systems” integrating space-, air-, ground- and sea-based defenses.

However, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reports that Golden Dome faces severe timing constraints: sensors cannot confirm an ICBM trajectory until about 75 seconds after launch, leaving only 25-35 seconds to decide and engage.

Estimates suggest roughly 40,000 space-based interceptors would be required to counter even a limited salvo of 10 ICBMs.

Costs are projected at about $185 billion for initial deployment, with total costs potentially reaching $3.6 trillion over 20 years.

A May 2025 Scientific American article argued that Golden Dome is “fantasy” rooted in the belief that the US can buy its way out of nuclear vulnerability.

As even relatively unsophisticated missiles and drones have shown in the recent US-Israeli war on Iran, advanced defenses can be saturated and penetrated when attacked in sufficient numbers.

The evidence points to a reality that a US-made defense architecture that must be nearly perfect to work is inherently vulnerable to failure.

The Asia Times report concludes that absent a shift toward fundamentally different technologies, the current US approach to missile defense remains a losing proposition, one that can mitigate risk but not eliminate it.

April 29, 2026 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | | Comments Off on Trump’s ‘Golden Dome’ offers ‘limited’ shield against ballistic missiles: Defense official

Monroe Doctrine 2.0: ‘Great Reset’ for US Imperialism?

Sputnik – 29.04.2026

“The United States is a declining power worldwide. It needs to reassert its powers,” Brazilian economics and international affairs scholar Vinicius Vieira told Sputnik, commenting on recently approved Monroe Doctrine 2.0 strategy and the Senate’s refusal to block the president’s power to invade Cuba.

For Washington, establishing greater control over Latin America, especially Mexico, the Caribbean and Central America, may seem like an opportunity to start afresh in reasserting its great power status, Dr. Vieira says.

Regime change in Cuba, for example, would not mean independence or democratization for the island nation, “but a return to the status prior to the Cuban Revolution – a protectorate de facto, US territory de facto.”

The problem is, the neighborhood is not what it was 150-200 years ago. Washington’s neighbors “want a relationship based on equal respect and mutual recognition,” and controlling South America may prove “too ambitious” entirely, given linkages they’ve established with other members of the Global South.

What’s more, “the costs for the US to implement this type of policy are quite high…because it depends on coercion, on sticks, no carrots at all,” Vieira stressed. Speaking of carrots, the US has “lost leverage” in this domain vis-à-vis China and its development projects, according to the scholar.

Ultimately, Monroe 2.0 could prove “too costly,” and “rather than bringing the United States to its golden days of hegemony…may just accelerate its decline because of its very high costs in terms of money and reputation,” Vieira summed up.

April 29, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , , | Comments Off on Monroe Doctrine 2.0: ‘Great Reset’ for US Imperialism?

“Trump’s presidency is at risk of being destroyed” Col Douglas Macgregor

ANI News | April 28, 2026

April 28, 2026 Posted by | Militarism, Video, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Comments Off on “Trump’s presidency is at risk of being destroyed” Col Douglas Macgregor

Iran has legal right to act in Hormuz, holds US responsible for disruptions: UN mission

Press TV – April 28, 2026

Iran, which is not a party to the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, asserts its legal right to take “necessary and proportionate measures” in the Strait of Hormuz, and holds the United States responsible for any disruptions to maritime transport in the vital waterway, the country’s permanent mission to the United Nations said.

The mission said on Tuesday that US actions in the Strait of Hormuz have severely compromised international maritime safety. The mission made the remarks in two posts on X, a day after Iran addressed at a meeting of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) on Maritime safety.

The mission pointed out that Iran is not a party to the 1982 Convention on the Law of the Sea and therefore does not regard its provisions as binding.

As the principal coastal state, Iran retains the legal authority to implement necessary measures within the Strait of Hormuz to address security threats and to prevent any military or hostile exploitation of this vital passage, it said.

Iran’s mission further noted that the Islamic Republic reserves the right to ensure safe passage in the Strait of Hormuz and to protect its national interests against hostile activities.

It further asserted that the US has engaged in unlawful actions that disrupt maritime transport, such as the imposition of a maritime blockade, the illegal seizure of Iranian vessels, and the detention of their crews.

Such actions not only violate international law and the UN Charter but also constitute acts of piracy.

As tensions escalate in the region, the Iranian government says that the US’s aggressive maritime policies pose a direct threat to international navigation and regional stability.

The Iranian mission further called for accountability regarding US transgressions.

Tensions have been running high over a so-called naval blockade the US has enforced on Iranian ports and ships, as well as American attempts to conduct mine-sweeping operations in the Strait of Hormuz.

Iranian officials have said the blockade is unlawful and a breach of a two-week ceasefire that took effect on April 8 and was again unilaterally extended by US President Donald Trump hours before it was set to expire on April 22.

April 28, 2026 Posted by | Militarism, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , | Comments Off on Iran has legal right to act in Hormuz, holds US responsible for disruptions: UN mission

How Cognitive Science Explains Our Looming Nuclear Crisis

By Thomas Karat | The Libertarian Institute | April 28, 2026

Bombs have been falling on Iran for fifty-nine days. As of now a ceasefire is holding, just barely, brokered under pressure from Pakistan. But before it came, a girls’ primary school in the southern city of Minab was hit on the first day of the war, at least 170 dead, most of them girls aged seven to twelve, killed by a U.S. Tomahawk missile that President Donald Trump initially denied firing. Thirty universities struck since February 28, including Iran’s equivalent of MIT. Over 2,000 Iranians killed by American-Israeli strikes. Thirteen U.S. service members confirmed dead. An American F-15E shot down over Iran. The Strait of Hormuz—20% of the world’s oil and gas—effectively closed, with China and Russia vetoing the United Nations resolution to reopen it. Gas prices heading for $4.30 a gallon and rising. Trump promising to bomb Iran “back to the stone ages.”

And underneath all of it, the detail that should be dominating every front page but isn’t: on March 21, Iranian ballistic missiles landed fourteen kilometres from Dimona— Israel’s undeclared nuclear weapons facility, the one running for six decades on the fiction that it doesn’t exist, estimated to hold 800 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium. The reactor at Bushehr has been struck three times since the war began. The Arms Control Association has warned explicitly of radiological contamination risk across the region.

This is where we are. Now ask the question nobody in mainstream media is asking: how did we get here? Not the geopolitical answer—you can get that anywhere. The deeper answer. What made this war politically possible? What narrative ran so deep in enough Americans that a conflict of this scale, this risk, this cost, could be launched mid-negotiation—Pakistan’s foreign minister confirmed publicly that the United States and Iran were close to a diplomatic settlement when Israel launched its February 28 strikes—without triggering mass domestic revolt?

The answer is a single talking point. You have heard it thousands of times, probably without noticing its structure: forty-seven years of Iranian aggression, forty-seven years of American patience, forty-seven years of failure by every president in both parties to solve the Iran problem. It dates the conflict from the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the 444-day hostage crisis that followed—Americans held in the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, the nightly TV count, the humiliation. It frames the entire subsequent history as a story of American victimhood and Iranian intransigence. And it has been in my estimation the most effective piece of war propaganda in modern American history—not because it is true, but because of the specific cognitive architecture it exploits, which this article is going to name precisely, because naming it is the only thing that can stop it from working the next time.

The history starts not in 1979 but in 1953, when the CIA and British intelligence jointly overthrew Mohammad Mosaddegh, Iran’s elected prime minister, because he had nationalized his country’s oil. The CIA’s own declassified documents confirm the coup was “carried out under CIA direction.” Britain has still not released its files. For twenty-six years after that, the Shah’s government—sustained by American weapons and CIA training of his secret police, SAVAK—ran one of the region’s most efficient torture and imprisonment systems. The 1979 revolution was not irrational. It was direct blowback from a quarter-century of CIA-managed client state. And the hostage crisis that anchors the “forty-seven years” narrative was itself, per Gary Sick—the Iran expert on Jimmy Carter’s own National Security Council—possibly extended deliberately by Ronald Reagan’s campaign manager William Casey, who multiple witnesses say negotiated with Tehran to hold the hostages past election day in exchange for a promise of arms. The foundational American wound of this conflict may have been kept open, on purpose, for electoral advantage, by the political faction most loudly demanding Iranian accountability four decades later.

Then in 1988 the USS Vincennes, operating inside Iranian territorial waters, shot down Iran Air Flight 655—a commercial Airbus on a Dubai run—killing all 290 people aboard including 66 children. The Pentagon issued false statements about the aircraft’s flight profile. The captain was decorated. Nobody was prosecuted. This event does not appear in the “forty-seven years of Iranian aggression” narrative. It belongs to a parallel account—forty-seven years of American aggression—that the talking point is specifically engineered to prevent you from thinking about.

Here is where the cognitive science becomes urgent, because it explains not just how the talking point spreads but why correcting it with facts—including everything in the preceding three paragraphs—fails so consistently, even with audiences that are already skeptical of government. The political psychologist Jonathan Haidt established in his moral foundations research that human moral reasoning runs on several distinct evolutionary systems and critically, that libertarians score measurably lower on the Sanctity foundation, the disgust-and-contamination system that codes out-groups as morally polluted. You are, if you read this publication, statistically more resistant than the average American to the “Iran is evil, the mullahs are fanatics” framing. That part of the propaganda largely didn’t work on you. But the “forty-seven years” talking point doesn’t primarily run on disgust. It runs on three other systems that are universal and for which the libertarian movement has built almost no intellectual defense.

The first is loss aversion: Kahneman and Tversky’s finding that humans feel losses roughly twice as intensely as equivalent gains. “Forty-seven years of failure” is a pure loss narrative—not a promise of future benefit, but an open wound, a thing taken and not returned. It activates the loss-detection system before rational evaluation can engage. The second is the sunk cost mechanism: the longer the conflict, the more the accumulated investment—of attention, of sanctions, of covert operations, of proxy wars—makes the brain read escalation as rational rather than reckless. Half a century of failure becomes, neurologically, an argument for drastic action rather than against it. The third is dominance signalling: primates, including humans, carry a hard-wired system that reads unanswered challenges from rivals as weakness inviting further challenge. Forty-seven years of Iranian defiance of American authority, narrated as a sequence of inadequate responses, activates this system viscerally. Crucially, the libertarian principle of non-aggression reads inside this frame not as principled restraint but as submission. Your correct position sounds, to your neighbour’s dominance-monitoring system, like fear.

George Lakoff showed in Don’t Think of an Elephant that political frames operate below the threshold of conscious reasoning and that facts introduced into the wrong frame bounce off rather than dislodging it. The “forty-seven years” frame installs a strict father moral logic: the nation as a family whose authority must not be defied without punishment. Once that frame is active, every historical correction—the 1953 coup, the Vincennes, the October Surprise—arrives as information the brain is not structured to receive. The frame stays. The facts leave.

This is the machine that produced the war you are watching right now. The school in Minab. The missiles over Dimona. The Bushehr reactor taking strikes. The Strait of Hormuz closed while the LSE warns that bombing a country out of its desire for a nuclear deterrent is not possible and that every strike makes eventual acquisition of a weapon not less likely but more. The former director of the National Counterterrorism Center resigned and told Libertarian Institute Director Scott Horton that he had watched Israeli officials mislead Trump about the Iranian nuclear threat to manufacture the justification for this war. Pakistan’s foreign minister stated in parliament that diplomacy was actively progressing when Israel launched its surprise attack and derailed it. A Reuters/Ipsos poll found only one in four Americans supports the strikes.

The talking point has done its work. It ran for forty-seven years, activating loss detectors and dominance monitors and sunk cost accumulators and strict father frames in enough of the population to make a war with genuine nuclear escalation risk feel not just permissible but long overdue. Now fourteen kilometres separates us from a direct strike on a reactor that has been producing weapons-grade plutonium for sixty years under a policy of official denial—and the IAEA, which Iran has now suspended from cooperation, has no inspectors inside to tell us what is actually there.

The ICAN nuclear abolition campaign noted that striking nuclear installations is explicitly banned under international law. Both sides are now doing it. The International Atomic Energy Agency has called for maximum military restraint near nuclear sites. Both sides are ignoring it. The ceasefire this morning is the third since the war began, and both sides have violated the previous two.

The talking point got us here. Understanding how, at the neurological level, through the specific cognitive systems it exploited, is not an academic exercise while bombs are falling. It is the precondition for building an antiwar argument that can actually break through the frame, rather than bouncing off it for the forty-eighth year running.

The state built a machine over forty-seven years. You are watching it run. The machine works in the dark. This is the light.

April 28, 2026 Posted by | Deception, Militarism | , , | Comments Off on How Cognitive Science Explains Our Looming Nuclear Crisis

Have the US and Israel killed non-proliferation?

Ashes of Pompeii | April 28, 2026

The United Nations has elected Iran as one of the thirty-four vice presidents of the 2026 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, proceeding despite formal objections from the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Australia, and the United Arab Emirates. Rather than a mere procedural footnote, this appointment signals a pronounced structural realignment and underscores the increasing diplomatic isolation of Western capitals within multilateral governance.

For decades, nuclear restraint was widely regarded as a stabilizing imperative, a framework endorsed by practically all nations, including Iran, who consistently endorsed this through state doctrine and a longstanding religious fatwa explicitly prohibiting the pursuit of atomic armaments. The Iranian prohibition was the foundation of the JCPOA agreement allowing internation inspection of Iranian nuclear sites. It is important to note that it was the USA who withdrew from the JCPOA agreement and not Iran, and Iran seems to have respected the terms even after this withdrawal.

This is the context for the current situation. Iran has been attacked by the USA and Israel because of the perceived threat that Iran might, despite the inspections and the conclusions of the American intelligence agencies, cross the nuclear threshold. Please note the contrast: Iran was attacked because it might develop nuclear weapons, whereas North Korea enjoys relative security precisely because it has nuclear weapons. That is to say, non-proliferation treaty compliance would seem to correlate with heightened vulnerability.

Whatever one might think of Kim Jong Un, the caricatures propagated regarding North Korea’s leadership as erratic, epitomized by the “Rocketman” epithet, are increasingly untenable when subjected to rigorous strategic analysis. Evaluating outcomes rather than rhetoric, it becomes evident that Pyongyang’s leadership was methodically positioned ahead of other global policymakers. While other regimes face coercive diplomacy or military intervention, North Korea’s deterrent has insulated it from external operations. We can assume other countries have noticed this, that non-proliferation or strategic ambiguity offer far less protection than verified atomic capability.

And this realization is coming at a time when America itself is coming to be seen as more erratic, and potentially a less reliable partner than it was perceived to be in the past. Can America’s allies still feel secure under America’s nuclear umbrella? Is an “America First” America going to risk nuclear conflageration to defend its allies? Many will have calculated that it might not.

Washington and Jerusalem have long justified their confrontational posture toward Tehran by citing the purported threat of an Iranian breakout, even as Israel maintains an arsenal that, though officially unacknowledged, is universally understood by all. If the recent campaigns against Iranian military and energy infrastructure were to be assessed through a deterrence lens, it can be argued that the absence of an atomic shield rendered Tehran strategically exposed. Had Iran possessed a credible second-strike capability, those operations would likely have been deemed too escalatory to execute.

Consequently, the international community can probably anticipate a quiet reassessment of nuclear thresholds. Governments are not yet explicitly announcing an intention to seek atomic weapons, but it does seem evident that more will be seriously considering it, whether because they no longer trust America as ally or because they see that nuclear deterrance has been successful for North Korea. For now, it seems likely that these nuclear intentions will remain under wraps, but who can doubt that, at the very least, multiple feasability studies will have been undertaken across the world.

The strategic calculus advanced by the Trump administration and the Netanyahu government has effectively engineered an environment where non-proliferation is, at best, a diminishing paradigm, and at worst, an existential error for a sovereign state. Therefore, the eventual deployment of tactical or strategic nuclear assets across multiple countries becomes increasingly probable.

The profound irony, of course, is that given the stated justifications for the launch of the US/Israeli war on Iran, that Israel will be a highly plausible future target within the very security vacuum it helped to normalize.

April 28, 2026 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Comments Off on Have the US and Israel killed non-proliferation?

Putting Nukes in Finland Won’t Make Country Safer, Finnish Politician Cautions

Sputnik – 27.04.2026

Stationing nuclear weapons in Finland will not make the country safer, Armando Mema, a member of the Freedom Alliance party, told Sputnik on Monday in response to the government’s plans to allow the import and storage of such weapons on Finnish soil.

“Changing the law and allowing the import of NATO countries’ nuclear weapons will not make Finland safer,” Mema said.

The politician added that NATO, which had promised “not to expand an inch to the east,” is now beefing up its military presence in Finland and wants to place nuclear weapons there.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has described Finland’s plans to allow the import of nuclear weapons into the country as a “concentrated confrontation.”

On April 23, the Finnish government submitted to parliament a proposal to amend the Nuclear Energy Act and the Criminal Code, which would lift the current ban on the import, manufacture, storage and use of nuclear weapons within the country.

April 27, 2026 Posted by | Militarism | , | Comments Off on Putting Nukes in Finland Won’t Make Country Safer, Finnish Politician Cautions

US pension fund invests hundreds of millions in weapons firms supplying Israel

The Cradle | April 27, 2026

The Virginia Retirement System (VRS), which manages pension benefits for the US state of Virginia’s public sector workers, holds a staggering $394 million in investments linked to weapons makers and shipping companies supporting Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and wars on Lebanon and Iran, according to a 23 April report released by a coalition of Palestinian advocacy groups.

The report was prepared by the VRS Divest from Weapons & War campaign, the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), and the People’s Embargo for Palestine. It draws on publicly available financial data and records obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests.

The report presents a detailed accounting of the VRS’s investments in many of the world’s largest weapons makers as part of its $122 billion portfolio.

Lockheed Martin is the VRS’s single largest holding at $94.8 million. The firm produces the F-35 fighter jet and AGM-114 Hellfire missiles. Both have been used extensively by the Israeli military during its more than two-year Genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

The Virginia pension system is also invested in Boeing, which manufactures precision-guided munitions, known as JDAMs, that are used to kill and maim children in Gaza.

Other investments include General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Maersk, and Thyssenkrupp, all of which either manufacture or ship weapons for use by the Israeli military in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran.

“These companies are critical in maintaining the weapons supply to Israel and the resulting massacres of thousands of people across the Middle East,” Bana Husseini, an organizer with the VRS Divest campaign and the Palestinian Youth Movement, told TRT World. 

Husseini and other activists are lobbying the VRS to divest from companies supporting Israel’s military and its genocide and wars. A petition calling for divestment has gathered nearly 4,500 signatures.

However, the pension system has continued to express its support for Israel.

“The VRS has responded by dismissing the campaign’s demands, arresting a firefighter for delivering the petition, inviting a notorious war criminal to their yearly retreat, and further collaborating with war profiteers,” Husseini explained.

Joelle Rudney, a retired teacher from Virginia, told TRT World she was upset to learn her pension was invested “in the bombings of hospitals, schools, and houses in Gaza in attacks that have killed nearly 70,000 people, mostly civilians.”

In response, she has helped lobby the VRS Board of Trustees to divest from the companies supporting Israel’s war crimes.

Casey Rosales, a county public servant who has worked in mental health services, was also angered to learn how her pension contributions are being invested.

“It’s difficult to reconcile the fact that while I dedicate my career to supporting and strengthening communities, the money I earn may be contributing to harm elsewhere,” Rosales stated.

A Virginia public utilities employee said she felt betrayed to learn the money she contributes to her retirement fund is supporting genocide.

“It is profoundly sad that while doing work to help men, women, and children with health care services and resources here in Virginia, my tax money goes to buying and owning shares in companies contributing to genocide,” the employee stated.

“I demand the VRS Board of Trustees divest from these companies and commit to never again invest our future into the manufacturing of death,” the employee told TRT World.

Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza has killed over 72,000 Palestinians, the majority women and children. Tens, if not hundreds, of thousands more will likely die due to the indirect effects of years of Israeli bombing that has destroyed the basic health, electricity, and water infrastructure in the strip and displaced nearly 90 percent of the population.

April 27, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, War Crimes | , , , , , , | Comments Off on US pension fund invests hundreds of millions in weapons firms supplying Israel

US bill to grant Americans serving in Israeli army same rights as US troops

MEMO | April 27, 2026

US lawmakers push to grant American soldiers serving in the Israeli army the same legal protections as US troops, in a move without precedent for any other foreign army. The bill would place some 20,000 dual citizens fighting for Israel on a legal par with Americans serving the US.

Details of the Israel first carve out was reported in Military.com. The legislation passing through Congress would, for the first time in American history, treat service in a foreign army as legally equivalent to service in the US armed forces — but only where that foreign army is Israeli occupation army.

House Resolution 8445, tabled by Republican Congressmen Guy Reschenthaler of Pennsylvania and Max Miller of Ohio, would amend Title 38 of the US Code so that Americans who fight for Israel are treated “in the same manner as service in the uniformed services” of the US. Over 20,000 American citizens serving in the Israeli military are expected to benefit if the changes come into effect.

US veterans’ benefits and military protections are, under existing law, tied to service in the American armed forces. The Bill departs from that principle by extending two of the most consequential US protections to Americans fighting for a foreign state. The Servicemembers Civil Relief Act caps interest rates on debt during active service and halts evictions and foreclosures. The Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act compels American employers to hold open the jobs of those called to service.

Under H.R. 8445, an American returning from a tour with the IDF could demand their old job back from a US employer, halt a foreclosure on a US home, and benefit from interest-rate caps on US debt  on the basis of foreign military service.

Americans have served in foreign militaries for as long as the US has existed — in the French Foreign Legion, in the Australian and New Zealand armed forces, and, since 2022, in the International Legion for the Defence of Ukraine. No comparable legislation has ever been seriously advanced for any of those forces. The State Department’s standing position is that Americans who fight abroad do so at their own risk and should not expect support from the US government.

H.R. 8445 is therefore not part of a broader policy trend. It is exclusive to the IDF.

IDF personnel, meanwhile, are already compensated by Israel through stipends, housing assistance, post-service educational grants and access to the national healthcare system, all funded by the Knesset. The Bill nevertheless asks American employers, banks, and courts to treat Israeli military service as if it had been performed for the US.

The legislation is being pursued at a moment when American sentiment toward Israel has shifted decisively in the opposite direction. A Pew Research Center poll published last month found that 60 per cent of Americans now hold an unfavourable view of Israel, up nearly 20 percentage points since 2022. The proportion holding a “very unfavourable” view has tripled in that period.

Among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, the figure has reached 80 per cent. Even within the Republican coalition championing the Bill, 57 per cent of Republicans aged 18 to 49 hold an unfavourable view of Israel.

Critics have pointed out that American veterans’ protections were built on a simple covenant: those who serve the United States have a claim on the US. Extending those protections to Americans serving a foreign government, and only one foreign government, establishes that the relevant criterion is no longer service to the country, but the identity of the country being served.

H.R. 8445 has been referred to the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs.

April 27, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism | , , | Comments Off on US bill to grant Americans serving in Israeli army same rights as US troops

‘An entire nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership’: Merz

Al Mayadeen | April 27, 2026

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Monday that Iran’s leadership is effectively “humiliating” the United States amid the ongoing war.

Speaking publicly, Merz argued that Washington does not seem to have a coherent plan and raised doubts about how the US intends to bring its involvement to a close.

“The Iranians are clearly stronger than expected and the Americans clearly have no truly convincing strategy in the negotiations either,” Merz said during a school visit in Marsberg, located in his native Sauerland region.

He emphasized the difficulty of disengaging from such wars, noting, “The problem with conflicts like this is always: you don’t just have to get in, you have to get out again. We saw that very painfully in Afghanistan for 20 years. We saw it in Iraq.”

Merz continued, “At the moment, I do not see what strategic exit the Americans will choose, especially since the Iranians are clearly negotiating very skillfully — or very skillfully not negotiating.”

He further stated that “an entire nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership,” particularly by Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC).

Economic fallout for Germany

Addressing the domestic impact, Merz said tensions in West Asia are now weighing heavily on Germany’s economy.

“It is at the moment a pretty tangled situation,” he said. “And it is costing us a great deal of money. This conflict, this war against Iran, has a direct impact on our economic output.”

He claimed that Berlin continues to “offer support in securing global trade routes“, including the potential deployment of minesweepers to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a key passage for international oil shipments.

However, Merz alleged that such a move would depend on a cessation of hostilities.

April 27, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , | Comments Off on ‘An entire nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership’: Merz

IRGC says to reverse engineer 15 undetonated US missiles uncovered in southern Iran

Press TV – April 26, 2026

The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) says it has discovered 15 undetonated US missiles in the southern Iranian province of Hormozgan and thousands of bomblets in the northern province of Zanjan, less than a month after a US-Israeli aggression on Iran halted with a ceasefire.

The IRGC’s Imam Sajjad Corps, based in the provincial capital of Bandar Abbas in Hormozgan, said in a Sunday statement that its bomb disposal teams had successfully neutralized more than 15 heavy American missiles in the province.

The statement said the missiles were mostly of the GBU and BLU types and other advanced models, adding that the weapons had been transferred to technical and research units of the IRGC for reverse engineering.

It said the Imam Sajjad Corps had neutralized or destroyed more than 60 missiles and drones, including bunker busters, cruise missiles, and advanced drones, since the beginning of the US-Israeli aggression in late February.

The force said that it had successfully concluded bomb disposal operations related to the recent war of aggression in all areas of Hormozgan province.

Meanwhile, IRGC’s Ansar al-Mahdi Corps, based in the provincial capital of Zanjan, also issued a statement on Sunday, saying that its bomb disposal teams had recovered more than 9,500 bomblets in various parts of the province.

The statement said that the small munitions had been dropped during the US-Israeli aggression through the use of cluster bombs as part of aerial mining operations, with the purpose of contaminating critical and sensitive locations across the province.

It said IRGC bomb disposal teams in Zanjan had also neutralized or destroyed some 55 rockets and missiles during the recent US-Israeli aggression, including a GBU-57 bunker buster, which was successfully defused and handed over to qualified authorities.

April 26, 2026 Posted by | Militarism | , | Comments Off on IRGC says to reverse engineer 15 undetonated US missiles uncovered in southern Iran

Liberation From War

By Manlio Dinucci | Global Research | April 26, 2026

Italy is experiencing an economic slowdown: this is confirmed by the fact that in 2025 public debt stood at 37% of GDP and that the situation has worsened since then. The Italian Minister for the Economy and Finance, Giancarlo Giorgetti, attributes the crisis largely to the “energy shock” caused by the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, blamed on Iran, which led to a rise in the price of oil and natural gas. Giorgetti seems to have forgotten that the “energy crisis” began before the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz due to the halt in Russian natural gas imports. These imports have fallen from 40% of Italy’s total gas imports in 2021 to 2% in 2026.

During this period, Italy’s imports of liquefied natural gas from the United States have risen from 13% to 33%, despite the much higher price. By waging war against Russia and Iran alongside NATO, Israel and other allies, the United States has succeeded in making Italy and Europe increasingly dependent on its energy supplies.

After triggering the war that has torn Europe apart with the coup in Ukraine in 2014, the United States has succeeded in making its European allies bear an ever-increasing share of the cost.

They have now approved the 20th “sanctions package” against Russia and granted Ukraine a further “loan” of 90 billion euros. At the same time, the United States has succeeded in driving up the military spending of its European allies sharply. Between 2015 and 2025, Italian military spending has more than doubled, rising in 2025 to €45.3 billion annually – equivalent to over 2% of GDP, or an average of €124 million a day. Italian military spending is set to continue rising, reaching 3.5% of GDP – equivalent to €198 million a day – and subsequently 5%, equivalent to over €280 million a day.

Following the war against Russia, Italy is becoming increasingly involved in the conflict against Iran.

US drones and aircraft are stationed at the Sigonella base in Sicily, from where they carry out missions in the Middle East to identify targets in Iran and guide US missile and bomber strikes. For the war against Iran, US forces are also using other bases in Italy, such as Aviano and Camp Darby. The Italian government has now decided to send two military ships to the Strait of Hormuz, even without a UN mandate, officially for mine clearance. As these ships would be in a war zone, including within Iranian territorial waters, should they be threatened with attack or attacked by Iranian forces, they would be flanked by Italian Navy strike units, officially “for protective purposes”.

Italy would thus effectively enter the war alongside the United States. The US is using its warships not only to block the Strait of Hormuz and cut off Iranian ports, but also to attack and seize ships in the Indian Ocean that are carrying (or are said to be carrying) Iranian oil to China and other Asian countries.

The US military blockade of shipping lanes is triggering an economic crisis that could soon spread from Asia across the globe. In Vietnam, rice mills have cut production due to soaring electricity costs and the difficulties faced by farmers following rises in fuel and fertiliser prices. In the Philippines, many farmers have decided not to harvest their crops, leaving them to rot, as they would have to sell them at a loss due to the rise in transport fuel costs. In Indonesia, nickel mines are closing because, due to the US blockade of Iran, they no longer have the gas and sulphur needed for extraction. In Bangladesh, clothing production is falling due to the disruption of import-export chains. All this – warns a UN report – could cost the Asia-Pacific region up to $300 billion, as the region relies on imported energy. Pressure is mounting on households, small businesses and public finances, with around 9 million people at risk of falling into extreme poverty.

This shows that war causes carnage not only through weapons such as bombs and missiles, but also through economic weapons such as the blockade of ports and shipping lanes, which can result in even greater loss of life. The dramatic images of war – that of an Israeli soldier destroying a statue of Christ on the cross in the Christian village of Debel in Lebanon, that of Israeli settlers in the West Bank preventing Palestinian children from going to school by blocking their path and attacking them with tear gas grenades – demonstrate the vital need to continue the struggle for liberation, freeing ourselves from war once and for all.

April 26, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , | Comments Off on Liberation From War

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