Welcome to Andy Worthington

26 photos from, and my report about the 39th monthly global vigils for the closure of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay, which took place across the US and around the world on and around April 1. In the article, I also provide a detailed analysis of how and why the great crimes of Guantánamo and the “war on terror” — imprisonment without charge or trial, including torture and other forms of abuse, and illegal wars in pursuit of regime change — have, through not being adequately challenged and repudiated, fed directly into the horrific atrocities of the last 30 months. The first of these is Israel’s ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip, and the torture, rape and murder in Israel’s prisons for Palestinians, while, over the last six weeks, the US, the staunchest supporter of Israel’s genocide, has become directly involved in the Israeli model of devastating, lawless warfare, focused on as much arbitrary civilian death and destruction as possible, via its joint war with Israel on Iran, while Israel also repeats its Gaza playbook in Lebanon.

Linking to and discussing my interview with Chuck Mertz for his weekly show “This Is Hell!”, a Chicago-based “long-form political interview program”, now in its 30th year. Chuck is a well-prepared and knowledgeable host, and the hour-long format is conducive to detailed analysis and commentary, so it was an absolute delight to have the opportunity to discuss my recent articles, “900 Days of Genocide in Gaza”, and, in particular, another recent article, “The Horrors of AI-Driven Military Targeting, From Gaza to Iran”, in a live setting, thinking out loud rather than writing in seclusion, which I always find exhilarating. I was particularly pleased to have been given the time to spell out in detail how Israel’s use of AI-driven military targeting was largely responsible for creating human carnage beyond imagining, as was revealed in the early months of the genocide by Israel’s +972 Magazine, whose reporters spoke to insiders who confirmed how AI was able to generate targets at a speed that was hundreds or thousands of times faster than humans could achieve — but only through sweeping definitions of who was a valid target, which were overbroad and error-strewn, and which, crucially, were subjected to almost no meaningful human oversight whatsoever. This model, eviscerating existing models regulating the conduct of warfare, to falsely justify colossal damage to civilian infrastructure and disproportionate civilian deaths, has now, of course, spread to Iran, with full US commitment, and also to Lebanon.

My analysis of the shameful decision yesterday, by Israel’s Knesset, to pass a new law making the death penalty mandatory for Palestinians convicted of killings in circumstances regarded as terrorism. The law, pushed in particular by Israel’s far-right security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, doesn’t apply retroactively, meaning that it cannot be applied to the 1,329 Palestinian prisoners currently serving prison sentences on “security” grounds, including Marwan Barghouti, “the Palestinian Mandela”, imprisoned since 2002 after a blatantly unfair trial, for whom Ben-Gvir has a particular hatred. At present, however, no one knows how many of the many thousands of other Palestinian prisoners currently undergoing legal proceedings, or held without charge or trial under various lawless states of “exception”, might end up being targeted for execution. It’s also important to recognize that, if this new law isn’t struck down by Israel’s Supreme Court, or via international pressure, it’s reasonable to assume that further laws will be passed extending the death penalty’s reach. It’s also crucial to note that forthcoming legislation — dealing with the “Prosecution of Participants in October 7 Massacre events” — passed its first legislative hurdle on March 24, and is intended to establish special military tribunals for those accused of involvement in the October 7 attacks. This bill, as Amnesty International has explained, “authorizes the tribunal to impose the death penalty on those convicted and allows it to significantly deviate from standard procedural rules and evidentiary laws if it is ‘deemed necessary for the clarification of the truth and performance of justice.’” While the passage of this legislation cannot even begin to overshadow the horrors of Israel’s genocide over the last two and a half years, or the unparalleled brutality of its prisons, where over 9,000 Palestinians are currently held — and where over a hundred have been murdered without even the pretext of a death penalty bill — it does seem to me that this particular gesture, with its specific contempt for so much of the world’s retreat from capital punishment as a brutal anachronism, ought to cement Israel’s status as a pariah state that must no longer be indulged.

Today marks 900 days since Israel began its genocide in the Gaza Strip, a sustained assault of such naked and self-glorifying depravity, shamefully supported by most of the west, that it has left billions of us struggling to cope with what the very notion of our humanity means. It also marks the first anniversary of Israel’s targeted assassination in Gaza of Hossam Shabat, one of over 270 Palestinian journalists murdered by Israel. To mark these grim anniversaries, I cycle though Israel’s atrocities, almost unbroken for two years, with the exception of a six-week ceasefire in January and February last year, noting how every red line regarding appropriate conduct in war has been eviscerated, and how Israel’s crimes are so numerous that it’s hard to even remember them all. I also update the story of Gaza since a supposedly permanent ceasefire was declared on October 10 last year. This brought to an end Israel’s relentless carpet-bombing, but in every other respect the genocide has continued, albeit more slowly. Crucially, humanitarian aid — and especially medical supplies — are still severely restricted, and Israel has retained complete control of 60% of the Gaza Strip, hemming the surviving Palestinian population into the remaining 40%, where they largely live in subsistence-level squalor. Crucially, I note how the template of Gaza’s extermination — the relentless killing of civilians and the destruction of civilian homes and infrastructure — has now expanded to Iran, since the US-Israeli “war” began three weeks ago, while Israel also seeks to replicate the Gaza model in Lebanon, and has also stepped up its violence in the West Bank. Where we go from here is still unknown. While Israel has very clearly descended into a psychotic mania that seeks the death of their “enemies” at every moment, I suggest that Trump’s supreme folly was allowing himself to be talked into joining Netanyahu in his deranged 40-year dream of destroying Iran, and wonder if there can be an “off-ramp” before he is held responsible for what, through the massive disruption to oil and gas supplies, is looking like a looming global economic crisis on an unprecedented scale.

My detailed analysis of a burning topic that ought to be of huge concern to us all — the rise of AI-driven targeting in warfare, which generates military targets hundreds or thousands of times faster than human analysts, but which is both unreliable, and dependent on parameters for targeting that are overly broad, and which, crucially, are generated so fast that, to secure “results”, the essential need for significant human oversight is being ignored. I trace the development of AI in warfare from its roots in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, as revealed through groundbreaking reports by Israel’s +972 Magazine, which showed how any sense of proportionality in wartime — avoiding the targeting of civilians in military actions, or their deaths as “collateral damage” — has been completely swept aside, along with almost all human checks on the AI’s targeting, leading to an unparalleled situation in which, according to the Israeli military, 83% of those killed in Gaza were civilians — although my own assessment is that it may be closer to 95%. I also examine the deep involvement of US tech and AI companies in Israel’s genocide — including Microsoft, OpenAI, Google, Amazon, Anthropic and Palantir — and bring the story up to date with the US’s direct participation in the genocidal Gaza model of AI targeting in its war on Iran, with inaccurate targeting exposed on the very first day of hostilities, when an elementary school in Minab, in southern Iran, was hit, killing at least 168 people, most of them children, girls aged seven to 12. I conclude by stating that none of the major tech and AI companies can be trusted, because they are all, to varying degrees, embedded within our governments, and are all complicit in implementing, or seeking to implement sweeping programs of surveillance and control, which, as I describe it, “redefine not only war, but also peace; a peace that will not exist unless everyone in the countries they control live lives of quiet and docile obedience, with no dissent allowed.”

25 photos from, and my report about the 38th monthly global vigils for the closure of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay, in which I also explain why the vigils remain important: firstly, because Guantánamo enshrined indefinite imprisonment without charge or trial, the hallmark of dictatorships, as US policy, echoing and drawing inspiration from Israel’s brutal, lawless prisons for Palestinians, and inspiring Donald Trump and Stephen Miller’s ever-expanding ICE detention facilities for US immigrants; and secondly, because, as the last bastion of the “war on terror”, it is also a powerful reminder of how that “war” led not only to the establishment of horrific, lawless prisons, but also, via the invasion of Iraq in particular, to the notion that the US could invade a sovereign nation based on lies, and, via Obama’s drone assassination program, to the notion that the US could extrajudicially murder anyone alleged to be a “combatant” without any form of due process, both of which helped Israel to seek to justify its genocide in Gaza, and are now being used by Trump to seek to justify his joint “war” with Israel on Iran.

As the illegal US-Israeli “war” on Iran continues, with, last night, horrific attacks on Tehran’s oil refineries that enveloped the city in a toxic, apocalyptic black fossil fuel cloud, I examine what has led to this point: the grotesque convergence of the two most malignant ideologies in the world today — Zionism, under the malignant leadership of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Christian Zionism, its absurd but deadly offshoot in the US, whose adherents believe that the re-establishment of Jewish sovereignty in Palestine and the wider Levant region is a prerequisite for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. In prayer meetings in the White House, Christian Zionists lay hands on Trump and worship him as though he is Christ reborn, but while the godless Trump gave the go-ahead for the US to join Israel in its deadly crusade, he is growing noticeably more incoherent, and it is Pete Hegseth, the woefully unqualified Secretary of Defense (rebranded as the Secretary of War), who has become the more prominent face of the “war”, embracing Christian Zionism, and delivering grotesquely vile and violent speeches at press conferences, enthusing about the genocidal slaughter of the entire Iranian people. Can anyone rein in these dark forces before they collapse the global economy, through the massive disruption to the production of, and distribution of the fossil fuels on which the entire edifice of global civilization depends, or are we witnessing an unprecedented manifestation of extreme evil, which, between Trump, the Zionists and the Christian Zionists, now exists solely to rain down apocalyptic genocidal extermination not only on Iran and the rest of the Middle East, but on the whole world?

Although the US and Israel’s illegal and unprovoked “war” on Iran has, understandably, been dominating everyone’s consciousness for the last week, I wanted to find the time to celebrate an extraordinary indicator of hope that I wrote about a week ago, but then delayed publishing because the attacks on Iran had begun. That extraordinary indicator of hope is the victory, in a by-election in Gorton and Denton, in Greater Manchester, of Hannah Spencer, a local plumber standing for the Green Party, who comfortably defeated both the discredited Labour Party, which had previously held the seat, and the far-right Reform Party, dashing their hopes of capitalizing on their disturbing rise in popularity over the last year. Spencer led a refreshingly honest campaign in which she attacked the culture of the super-rich immiserating the lives of ordinary hard-working people, and emphasized the shared humanity of the area’s mixed white and Muslim populations, building on the successful message of “eco-populism” by the Green’s inspiring new leader, Zack Polanski, whose revival of left-wing idealism is so successful that the Greens are now the most popular party amongst all voters under the age of 50. In my analysis, I not only praise the Greens for single-handedly reviving hope; I also condemn the Labour government for their thorough betrayal of their roots, their support for war and genocide, their authoritarianism, their slavish dedication to big business, and their sweeping contempt for the people they are supposed to represent. I also celebrate the downturn in the fortunes of Reform, under the leadership of the racist opportunist Nigel Farage, whose giddy rise to become, over the last year, the UK’s most popular party now seems to be in reverse. Polling after the by-elections shows them now on 23% (down from a high of 35%), with the Greens up to 21% and Labour and the Tories both languishing on 16%, and we must all hope that their decline continues, as they are a genuine menace, increasingly aping the vilest policies of Donald Trump, and especially his enthusiasm for the mass deportation of immigrants. Just this week, other polling revealed, shockingly, that a majority of Reform’s members support not just the deportation of recent immigrants, but also the notion that all “non-white British citizens born abroad should be deported or encouraged to leave.”

My analysis of how the US and Israel’s illegal and unprovoked “war” on Iran demonstrates extraordinary hubris on the part of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu — the Ancient Greek concept of fatal overreach through excessive pride and arrogance. For Netanyahu, this is the fulfilment of a dream he has cherished for 40 years, into which he has, one way or another, dragged Donald Trump, who has, increasingly, during his deranged second term, become deluded by his own self-importance. So blinded are both men by their own blinkered obsessions that they failed to take into account Iran’s size, its population, and its long and proud history, or how its first actions — assassinating Ayatollah Khameini and his family, as well as other senior officials — would make him a martyr and increase national solidarity, rather than encouraging regime change. So blinded are they by their hubris that they also failed to recognize that, since their 12-day war on Iran last June, the Iranians have been preparing for renewed attacks, stockpiling weapons and identifying targets in Israel and on US bases throughout the Middle East at least as assiduously as their enemies. They also failed to realize that their “war” would have unintended consequences — leading insurers to stop insuring vessels carrying essential oil and gas supplies through the Strait of Hormuz, and also leading countries in the Gulf to suspend production for safety reasons, causing an economic crisis that will bring misery to much of the world unless they can be prevailed upon to withdraw. Will they recognize their dangerous hubristic folly, or are they determined to do nothing but destroy, no matter the cost, even if it leads to their own destruction?

On day three of Donald Trump’s cataclysmically stupid decision to indulge Benjamin Netanyahu in his malignant 40-year dream of destroying Iran, I explain how, in some key respects, it’s starting to look as though it will backfire on him spectacularly. Firstly, Pentagon officials have stated that “Iran was not planning to strike US forces or bases in the Middle East unless Israel attacked Iran first”, undermining Trump’s claim that the joint US-Israeli attacks were aimed at “eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime”, leaving him particularly vulnerable because he neither sought nor received approval for his unprovoked attacks from either Congress or the UN Security Council. Secondly, US allies throughout the Gulf have, as I describe it, “discovered that their long-standing alliances with the US, in which they were offered protection in exchange for allowing the US to establish military bases on their soil, have turned out, when tested, to be nothing but a mirage.” And, thirdly, Trump’s indifference to US casualties, which he announced when the military operation began, and reiterated last night in a video message in which he breezily dismissed further US military deaths as “that’s just the way it is”, will not reassure the majority of US voters who are opposed to the attacks that Trump has any fundamental interest whatsoever in the lives of US military personnel. As the fallout from the US’s selfishness continues to test the strength of long-held alliances in the Gulf, perhaps the most burning question concerns the reasons for Trump’s support of Netanyahu’s long-cherished dream. Can it really be that this is the US’s first pedophile blackmail war, undertaken because Israel has evidence of Trump’s sexual crimes that were deliberately hidden in the recent release of millions of pages from the Epstein Files?