“The Pentagon and the Federal Aviation Administration agreed to conduct anti-drone laser tests in New Mexico after the military’s deployment of the lasers led the FAA to suddenly close airspace in Texas twice in the last month. The newly announced testing was being carried out to ‘specifically address FAA safety concerns’, the military said Friday in a statement. It was to take place Saturday and Sunday at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. Lawmakers were concerned about an apparent lack of coordination after the Pentagon allowed U.S. Customs and Border Protection to use an anti-drone laser in early February without notifying the FAA. The federal agency that ensures safety in the skies decided to close the airspace over El Paso for a few hours, stranding many travelers. The Trump administration said it was working to halt an incursion by Mexican cartel drones, which are not uncommon along the southern border.” (03/07/26)
“The war Israel and the United States launched against Iran on February 28, with the ‘decapitation’ of the country’s leadership and the bombardment of hundreds of military and civilian sites (including a girls’ school in Minab where at least 165 children and staff were massacred), has quickly transformed into a regional conflagration with incalculable consequences. While already weakened by the Israeli-U.S. ’12-Day War’ in June 2025 (which President Donald Trump declared had ’obliterated’ Iran’s nuclear capabilities) and despised by many Iranians for its murderous repression of civilian protest, the Iranian regime has not yet been undermined by the loss of key government figures, including supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the minister of defense and the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).” (03/06/26)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“Secretary of War Pete Hegseth gave one of his signature ‘I don’t have a small penis’ tirades at the Pentagon on Wednesday, ranting and raving about the big, powerful, masculine war machinery that’s currently raining death and destruction upon the people of Iran. ‘We will fly all day, all night, day and night finding, fixing and finishing the missiles and defense industrial base of the Iranian military, finding and fixing their leaders and their military leaders, flying over Tehran, flying over Iran, flying over their capital, flying over the IRGC, Iranian leaders looking up and seeing only US and Israeli air power every minute of every day until we decide it’s over,’ Hegseth bloviated, saying there will be ‘B-2s, B-52s, B-1s, Predator drones, fighters controlling the skies, picking targets, death and destruction from the sky all day long.'” (03/06/26)
“The Trump administration has joined Israel in launching large-scale attacks across Iran. The strikes mark the beginning of ‘major combat operations’, according to President Donald Trump, and in response Tehran has reportedly launched retaliatory attacks in Middle Eastern countries that host US military bases. With hundreds of Iranians already killed and the war threatening to spiral out of control, here are five things Americans need to know: 1) Trump says he’s trying to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, but it’s the United States and its allies that are the greatest nuclear threat. … 2) Trump is contributing to the suffering of ordinary Iranians, not rescuing them. … 3) The United States is an unreliable negotiator. … 4) The United States has been threatening Iran, not the other way around. … 5) Trump’s war with Iran [is] unpopular with Americans.” [editor’s note: I leave it to the readers to sort the facts out of this screed – SAT] (03/05/26)
“California progressives’ single-payer health care fever dream is back. This time, the cost could hit half a trillion dollars a year. Single-payer means the government pays, for everything. Several candidates for governor are promising just such a government takeover of the state’s health insurance system. Billionaire Tom Steyer says, ‘Bernie Sanders was right. We need single-payer health care’. His campaign ads place a single-payer system at the center of his agenda. Betty Yee, Xavier Becerra, and Tony Thurmond are on board, too. Meanwhile, California State Assemblyman Ash Kalra, D-San Jose, has reintroduced legislation to create ‘CalCare’ (a bid to bulldoze private health insurance and replace it with a state-run health insurance monopoly). These are bold plans. They’re also complete fantasy. The California Legislative Analyst’s Office previously pegged the annual cost of CalCare at up to $552 billion — more than the entire state budget.” (03/04/26)
Source: Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting
by Belen Fernandez
“The United States and Israel launched attacks on Iran on February 28, propelling the entire region into a predictable cataclysm of unprecedented proportions. This puts paid to the alleged ‘peacemaking’ project of US President Donald Trump, who was supposed to be keeping the country out of international wars rather than actively seeking to expedite the end of the world. The attacks put an abrupt end to the negotiations underway between the US and Iran—to the delight of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has always viewed as anathema anything remotely resembling diplomacy or the pursuit of peace. Three days before the joint strikes, a Politico exclusive (2/25/26) reported that ‘senior advisers’ to Trump ‘would prefer Israel strike Iran before the United States launches an assault on the country’.”
“War is the use of arms to settle differences – tribal, political, religious, cultural, and material – between organized groups. It is unchanging. The general laws of armed conflict stays immutable, given the constancy of human nature. However, the manner in which war is conducted remains fluid. New weapons, tactics, and strategies elicit counterresponses in an endless cycle of tensions between defensive and offensive superiority. That said, has President Donald Trump introduced a novel way of waging Western war against America’s foreign enemies? We saw glimpses of it during his first term, when he eliminated Iranian general and terrorist kingpin Qassem Soleimani and ISIS terrorist grandee Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. In the former case, he preferred hitting the cause rather than the effects of Iranian terrorism in Syria and Iraq, while making it clear that he had no intention of striking the Iranian mainland and entering into a tit-for-tat ‘forever war’.” (03/04/26)
“Millions of Nepalis have voted in the country’s first general election since violent youth-led protests toppled the government last September. Corruption, economic stagnation and inequality were the main issues in the vote. They sparked the uprising in which 77 people died, many of them protesters shot by police. The election represents a crossroads for Nepal, pitting the establishment against a new generation of politicians advocating for angry, young Gen Z voters hungry for change. Counting the votes cast for the Nepalese parliament’s 275 seats is expected to take several days, and results are not expected before next week. Nepal’s mountainous terrain makes it slow and difficult to transport ballots, which are tallied by hand.” (03/05/26)
“A social media post from James Talarico about his ‘white skin’ giving him ‘immunity’ from the ‘virus of racism’ has left the Democratic US Senate nominee from Texas wide open to attacks from Republicans and other pundits, who attacked his message as ‘peak woke’ and openly racist. GOP Gov. Greg Abbott said the pro-Black Lives Matter post is proof that Talarico ‘is toast’ in the Nov. 3 contest, in which Democrats are seeking to win one of Texas’ two US Senate seats for the first time since 1988. Talarico, a state legislator who triumphed over US Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) in Tuesday’s primary, suggested in an X post on May 8, 2020, that he was as ‘contagious’ as any white American in spreading systemic racism. The message merged the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic with the headline-making murder of Ahmaud Arbery while jogging in Georgia.” (03/05/26)
“President Donald Trump’s illegal, unconstitutional war on Iran is not only a moral and humanitarian disaster, but also the latest assault on our way of life. Trump and his enablers count on us to endure their ever escalating egregious abuses of power that imperil our democracy, potentially fatally. We must prove them wrong. We can and must overcome these clear and present threats to our lives, liberty, and way of life. Our Constitution cannot defend or protect itself. Not when Trump and his administration keep violating their oath to defend and protect it. It’s up to us to do that. We the People must not fail to meet this crisis. We must not let these abuses of power go unchecked. The Congress and the American people must hold Trump and all those complicit in the Trump administration accountable for their escalating attacks on the rule of law.” (03/05/26)
