“He’s out of ideas, a mind running on empty. Increasingly, he is also short of reason, zapped by geopolitical addling and meddling. Now that US President Donald J. Trump has reached an uneasy understanding with Teheran that a two-week ceasefire should apply to the warring parties (Israel, as usual, has its own elastic interpretation as it continues attacking Lebanon), it is worth considering the warring language he has been using since February 28. Of note is the shrill wording of various ultimata he has directed at Iran.” (04/10/26)
“For a nation that dominates the seas, the United States now faces a critical crossroads. Its commercial shipyards — once the envy of the world — have fallen into near collapse. The Trump administration’s 2026 Maritime Action Plan aims to reverse this decline with sweeping fees on foreign-built ships and subsidies to revive domestic production and rebuild the maritime industrial base. Yet rather than confronting the structural causes of decline, Washington has turned to familiar tools: protectionism, subsidies, and penalties on foreign competition. America’s shipbuilding troubles did not begin with foreign rivals — and they will not be solved by taxing them.” (04/10/26)
“US president Donald Trump says that his war in Iran — currently in a supposed ceasefire — resulted in ‘total and complete victory. 100%. No question about it.’ The Iranian regime, via a statement from its Supreme National Security Council, also claims ‘great victory.’ If the war is really over (I’m skeptical), who actually won? Well, not you.” (04/09/26)
Source: CounterPunch
by John W Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead
“Every bomb dropped abroad is a bill sent home. Every war waged in the name of ‘security’ is paid for by Americans who go without — without affordable healthcare, without stable housing, without a government that prioritizes their well-being. As the U.S. pours trillions into endless wars and military expansion, Americans are left paying the price — not just in dollars, but in lost freedoms and eroded constitutional protections. This is not national defense. This is organized theft.” (04/09/26)
“The president’s fiscal 2027 budget is out, and I have two reactions. The first will sound familiar: Like so many budgets before it, this is not a serious effort to put America’s government on a sustainable path. The second is more important: It would be a mistake to dismiss it as just another unserious document. That is exactly how we got here.” (04/09/26)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“Israel is already aggressively sabotaging the Trump administration’s two-week ceasefire with Iran by slaughtering huge numbers of civilians in Lebanon …. The US and Israel are trying to claim that Lebanon is not part of the ceasefire agreement, but Pakistan, whom the US appointed to mediate the agreement, says this is false. The New York Times reports that the White House took part in Pakistan’s public messaging which explicitly included Lebanon in the ceasefire conditions, before changing its tune after Israel attacked. Iran has reportedly responded to these violations by again halting traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. This serves as yet another reminder that the world can have peace or it can have Israel — but it cannot have both. Israel is a genocidal apartheid state whose entire existence is premised upon a strategy of unceasing violence and abuse in the middle east.” (04/09/26)
Source: Independent Institute
by K Lloyd Billingsley
“‘No Kings’ protests have been breaking out all over California, even in the quaint village of Cambria on the central coast. In effect, for nearly three decades, that town was ruled by the closest equivalent of a monarch since the days of Spanish colonialism. As King Arthur (Graham Chapman) noted in the Monty Python Holy Grail film, ‘you don’t vote for kings,’ and that was true of Peter Douglas. Born in Germany in 1942, Douglas came to the United States in the early 1950s and earned undergraduate and law degrees from UCLA. In 1972, three years after the Santa Barbara oil spill, Douglas co-authored Proposition 20, the ballot initiative that created the California Coastal Commission (CCC), a temporary 15-member commission to impose land-use regulations along the state coastline. … Douglas ruled the California coast for 26 years without ever facing the voters.” (04/09/26)
“A few weeks before the 2020 presidential election, I wrote ‘An Open Letter to My Old Tribe’, urging ‘every reporter who is covering this election at any level’ to focus on a crucial question — whether the public would trust the election procedure and the losing candidate would accept the result as legitimate. ‘It does not seem an exaggeration,’ I wrote then, ‘to say that the future of American democracy, perhaps its very survival, depends on the answer.’ More than five years later, with less than seven months to go before the midterm elections, that question is before us again, but in far starker terms than I could have imagined in 2020. So, here’s an updated letter to the media tribe I once belonged to, with suggestions broadly similar to those I made five years ago, but with a far sharper sense of urgency, even fear.” (04/09/26)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“Who won the Iran War, at least so far? The answer turns on what metrics for success one uses. If one uses military battles, bombings, death, and destruction, there is no question but that the United States won the war. … Yet, consider the following: The U.S. had the following war aims: (1) an unconditional surrender of the Iranian regime; (2) regime change in which pro-U.S. Iranian dissidents would take control of the Iranian government; and (3) the destruction of Iran’s nuclear materials.” (04/09/26)
