Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“War is the worst thing in the world. Westerners talk about it like it’s a fucking video game, like ‘hurr durr, we just go in there and achieve our objectives and win,’ when really war means shredding human bodies to bits. Children burning to death in front of their parents. People holding their own guts in their hands as their life slowly slips away. People getting trapped under rubble and dying excruciatingly slow deaths of suffocation or dehydration. People picking up pieces of their beloved family members. Westerners are able to hold this compartmentalized video game mentality about war because war isn’t something that happens to us. We’ve never had bombs dropped on our neighborhoods. We’ve never had the experience of seeing a severed hand on the ground after an explosion and trying to figure out who it belonged to.” (03/03/26)
“This week, French President Emmanuel Macron put his leadership legacy on the line, by explicitly offering to share the country’s nuclear defenses with key European allies. Speaking at the home port of France’s nuclear missile fleet in Brittany on Monday, Mr. Macron declared plans to increase France’s nuclear warhead stockpile (currently about 290) as well as place some of those in partner countries. His offer marks ‘the most important revision to France’s nuclear doctrine in a generation,’ the Financial Times wrote, calling it ‘indispensable for Europe’s defence.’ Since the days of Charles de Gaulle, who doubted the United States’ commitment to defend Europe from a Soviet nuclear attack, France has held to an independent stance on pursuing its own nuclear weapons development. ‘Would you trade New York for Paris?’ General de Gaulle famously demanded of President John F. Kennedy in 1961.” (03/03/26)
“Former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein has warned that the growing private credit market could lead to a financial crisis similar to the one in 2008, potentially affecting retail investors and the broader economy. In an interview on Bloomberg’s ‘Big Take’ podcast, the renowned moneyman said the $1.8 trillion private credit sector involves risks from hidden leverage, lack of liquidity and opaque assets. He compared the situation to the subprime mortgage crisis, noting that these investments are increasingly being offered to individual investors through retirement accounts. Blankein warned that he sees a possible financial crisis brewing in the private credit market. ‘We’re getting close to the end of the late stages of cycles on this, and we’re due for a kind of a reckoning,’ he said. He expressed concern that firms are promoting these products to retail clients just as risks are rising.” (03/03/26)
“When I was small my mother warned me never to approach a sick animal. The dying ones, she said, are the deadliest of all. That hasn’t been my experience; most of the dying creatures I’ve encountered just want a quiet place to pass their final hours. The source of my mother’s anxiety was closer to home than she had yet to recognize, but her fear was palpable. She was haunted by the vision of her curly-haired child falling prey to some sickly, snarling, yellow-eyed feral creature with nothing left to lose. That’s a mother’s worst nightmare. Flash forward to February 28, 2026. Dozens of schoolchildren were reported dead in ‘one of two strikes that appear to have hit schools since US and Israeli warplanes launched their attack on Iran around 10:00 a.m. local time’.” [editor’s note: Fog of war … Still being determined whether the deaths may have come from a misguided Iranian missile – SAT] [editor’s note: Do the people whose kids were murdered by one of two murderous regimes REALLY care which murderous regime it was? – TLK] (03/03/26)
“A top Pentagon official attempted to argue during a US Senate hearing on Tuesday that the Trump administration’s illegal war on Iran, which has included a massive bombing campaign and explicit calls from the president to topple and reshape the country’s government, does not constitute ‘interventionism’, ‘regime change’, ‘nation-building’, or ‘endless war’. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) started her questioning of Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon’s under secretary of defense for policy, by quoting from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s summary of his department’s 2026 National Defense Strategy, under which he said the Pentagon would no longer ‘be distracted by interventionism, endless wars, regime change, and nation-building.'” (03/03/26)
“Should the revenues made by big-time college athletics be ‘shared’ by all the schools? Do we want ‘revenue-sharing’ socialism to come to college football and basketball? Many in Congress are answering yes to that question. The NCAA isn’t the massive moneymaker the NFL and NBA are, but in many ways, the product is more exciting than the boring professional leagues. That’s especially true in this month of March, when the hoops madness begins. Even with the new ‘pay-to-play’ rules that have turned college football and basketball into semi-pro leagues, with some of the star athletes earning more to stay in college than ‘going pro’, the fan interest is higher than ever before. So is the money the big schools are making. There are a lot of legitimate complaints about these billions of dollars in TV contracts collected by the supposed ‘nonprofit’ colleges.” (03/03/26)
“A drug that has long been used to treat seizures has shown promise as a potential means of Alzheimer’s prevention, a new study suggests. The anti-seizure medication, levetiracetam, was first approved by the FDA in November 1999 under the brand name Keppra as a therapy for partial-onset seizures in adults. The approval has since expanded to include children and other types of seizures. Northwestern University researchers recently found that levetiracetam prevented the formation of toxic amyloid beta peptides, which are small protein fragments in the brain that are commonly seen in Alzheimer’s patients. The medication was found to prevent the formation of amyloid-beta 42 in both animal models and cultured human neurons, according to the study findings, which were published in Science Translational Medicine. The effect was also seen in post-mortem human brain tissue obtained from individuals with Down syndrome, who are at high risk for Alzheimer’s disease.” (03/03/26)
“The world’s largest acidic geyser is putting on a show again, erupting for the first time in six years after a quiet hiatus, officials at Yellowstone National Park say. The Echinus Geyser — located in the park’s famous Norris Geyser Basin — had been in slumber since 2020, and it’s unknown whether the eruptions will continue into the summer. Researchers say geysers can sometimes become active for a month or two before falling dormant again. ‘Geysers are always turning on and off. That’s Yellowstone being Yellowstone!’, the US Geological Survey wrote on X. A geyser is a spring of water which has been heated geothermally, and which erupts at various rates. It is formed from a tube-like hole that goes down into the Earth’s surface and is filled with water. When the water at the bottom, which is near molten rock called magma, heats in the tube it begins to boil and is forced upwards and erupts. After eruption, the water slowly goes back down into the tube. Then the process starts again.” (03/03/26)
“Nobody wants this. President Trump stands ready to expand his war against Iran, but the numbers already show how unpopular it is. Six out of ten Americans disapprove of U.S. military action against Iran, according to a new CNN survey. Fifty-six percent of Americans think the president is too willing to use military force, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll fielded over the weekend. If public opinion had a strong bearing on U.S. foreign policy, then this would be a blinking-red indicator that the new war is neither sustainable nor desirable, an all-around destructive campaign. That the president has failed to make a coherent argument in favor of the Iran strikes, to seek congressional approval, or to make any outreach to the public may well end up backfiring. This illegal war will undoubtedly have major unintended consequences that will be felt for decades in Iran, the Middle East, and across the world.” (03/03/26)
“The U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging conducted a hearing on February 26 to investigate why the FDA is holding up the approval of desperately needed new drugs for those with rare diseases. Many of the people suffering with these ailments are children with short life expectancies. Those with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD), which is progressive muscular deterioration, end up in a wheelchair at about age 11-12, and die in their 20s. Angelina Olivera, the mother of a 14-year-old son who has DMD, who also watched her brothers die at ages 20 and 22 of the disease, told me there is only one promising new treatment for DMD but the FDA won’t approve it for her son Ryu. A study was conducted on 1,200 patients using Elevidys from Sarepta Therapeutics and revealed promising results. The gene therapy slowed disease progression by 70-73 percent compared to untreated children.” (03/02/26)
