Donald Trump

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.

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?

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?

My analysis of the shameful launch, this morning, of unprovoked military action against Iran, undertaken in joint attacks by the US and Israel, which were defended by Donald Trump, in a pre-recorded video message on social media, as “eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime”, even though no “imminent threats” exist, and this is blatantly a “war” of choice. Amongst the most sickening aspects of this unprovoked war are Trump’s complete sidelining of Congress, even though no war can legally be launched without Congressional approval, his disturbing suggestions that US military personnel might be killed, and fundamental questions about why he is so willing to support attacks that are a long-cherished dream of Benjamin Netanyahu, but that have no evident upside for the US. Is it because he has been bought? Is it because of blackmail, based on the Israelis’ possession of incriminating evidence from the Epstein Files? Or is is, as I suggest, because, like Netanyahu, Trump is a vile old man, nearing the end of his wretched existence, who clings to life solely to deliver as much death and misery as he can to as many people as possible?

My report about the inaugural meeting of Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace” in Washington, D.C. last week, the day after Ramadan began, when the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip sought to bring their devastated homeland back to joyful life with lanterns, lights and celebrations. The meeting of Trump’s would-be alternative to the UN — whose newly-recruited members include autocrats, those seeking to curry favor with Trump, and the Gulf and Muslim countries determined to maintain influence over the “peace process” — was notable for its expansion of the vile, heartless and profit-obsessed techno-futuristic plans for a “New Gaza” that Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, unveiled at Davos last month, dressed up as opportunities for peace and stability. Of particular concern was the revelation that the entire plan had originated in the earliest days of Israel’s genocide in Gaza by Yakir Gabay, an Israeli-Cypriot real estate billionaire, who, with the help of his good friend Kushner, had then sought out similarly-minded opportunists to make his grotesque plan a reality. Also deeply troubling was a presentation by the former Israeli intelligence official Liran Tancman, for the development, in Gaza, of a “cashless society” of total digital control, from which, of course, as I describe it, “anyone regarded as unwanted, for whatever reason, could be completely cut off from all economic activity — a scenario of ‘blackmail and pacification’, as described by the Palestinian political analyst Muhammad Shehada”, and one that numerous governments worldwide will be keeping a close eye on, as they seek to replicate it on their own populations. While Israel’s voracious hunger to resume its genocide is still largely being kept at bay, it continues to push against the rosy visions of the billionaire developers, but all their hopes require the disarmament of Hamas and the other Palestinian factions, which Israel has failed to achieve, and which Hamas itself has wisely refused to contemplate, offering only to hand over political control — and its weapons — to a Palestinian body empowered to establish autonomy; in other words, the Palestinian technocratic committee that is part of the peace process, but which everyone involved wants to keep sidelined. As I explain, however, “No other solution can bring the peace that all parties claim to want, and any alternative course of action will only expose the truth behind their masks: on the one hand, on Israel’s part, the most grotesque enthusiasm for genocide that any of us have seen in our lifetimes, and, on the other, the repulsive greed of the western investors who only ever see the world through the prism of dollar signs.”

My detailed analysis of Trump’s mass detention and deportation after its first year, as an increasing number of news reports focus on appalling conditions in ICE’s detention facilities, including children held in the Dilly detention center in Texas, and as ominous news emerges of a massive expansion of detention facilities. This follows the unprecedented seven-fold increase in ICE’s budget via last summer’s shamefully-named “One Big Beautiful Bill”, which provided the scandal-wracked agency with $75 billion — $45 billion for the expansion of detention capacity, and $30 billion for immigration enforcement. In recent weeks, ICE has spent over $500 million buying seven empty warehouses in several states, with some intended to hold between 7,500 and 10,000 immigrants, causing consternation and anger in the local communities, who were largely not consulted, and who face a significant loss of tax revenues and as well as a colossal strain on local resources via the new facilities. The expansion comes despite widespread revulsion at ICE’s activities, following the execution of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, and the increasing awareness that, over the last year, the number of ICE facilities and the number of immigrants held have doubled, even though almost three-quarters of those held have no criminal records, refuting the administration’s claims that it is only targeting “heinous criminal illegal aliens” for deportation. I also focus on the role of Stephen Miller, the profoundly racist driver of the mass deportation program, whose relentless target-driven approach to deportation has directly led to the massive overcrowding in ICE facilities, concerted efforts to broaden the scope of those who can be deported, and relentless assaults on the courts. Miller’s malignant obsession is such that, as I describe it, what he has been creating over the last year “is not so much a detention and deportation system, as a sprawling detention system in which deportation is largely a mirage, and the United States will end up holding vast numbers of people, never convicted of a crime, in a gulag of brutal and lawless prisons for years, if not indefinitely, at a cost that is almost unimaginable both economically and morally.” The only solution, I suggest, is that “Miller needs to be removed, and the entire detention and deportation system overhauled to resemble something that meaningfully recognizes that, while there may be problems with a small number of undocumented migrants with violent criminal records, most immigrants are, unreservedly, not the enemy, and have as much of a right to work and live unmolested in the United States as US citizens.”

My reflections on the execution, by immigration enforcement officials, of two US citizens — Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti — on the streets of Minneapolis, both captured in videos recorded on cellphones, and the extraordinary and unforgivable decision by senior Trump administration officials to deny the evidence, blaming the victims, and seeking to exonerate their killers, made by Trump himself, Vice President JD Vance, Trump’s senior adviser Stephen Miller and Homeland Security director Kristi Noem. Faced with unprecedented condemnation of its actions, and of the violent impunity of ICE and Border Patrol agents, Trump has finally started to recognize that the tide is turning against him, but because his brutal, arbitrary mass deportation program is at the heart of his second presidency, it seem unlikely that he will do what is required, and shut the entire malignant operation down. I trace the history of the deportation program over the last year, including the “invasions” of major US cities, an extraordinary increase in funding for ICE’s operations, and the proliferation of new prison facilities, where torture, abuse and “disappearances” are rampant, and where, last year, 32 “detainees” were killed. At the heart of this nationwide malevolence is Miller, Trump’s Homeland Security Adviser and White House Deputy Chief of Staff, who is so obsessed with stopping and reversing immigration to the US that it is reasonable to assume that, for him, the claimed focus on deporting undocumented migrants with criminal records was only ever useful to provide cover for his real aim, which has always been to ethnically cleanse the US of as many immigrants as possible while similarly destroying all opposition to his plans; hence, his description, in August, of the entire Democratic Party as “a domestic extremist organization”, and the demonization and disposability of, essentially, anyone who opposes him; Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, for example, both of whom he described as “domestic terrorists.” In pursuing his malignant vision, Miller is clearly implementing fascism in the US. Of course, he works for Trump, who is clearly supportive of his vile racism, which reflects his own dark hatreds, but, as opposition grows, will Trump support a vision of “racially pure” America that not only requires terror on the streets and an expanding network of torture prisons, but also the ruthless and continuing suppression — up to and including executions on the streets of US cities — of everyone who dares to dissent, or will he step back from the abyss? The very future of the United States depends on his decision.

In my latest analysis of the situation in the Gaza Strip, I look at how the surviving Palestinians are caught between, on the one hand, Israel, which still occupies 58% of Gaza, and still hopes to actively resume its genocidal assault, and a US-led colonial project, which claims to want to bring peace, but is disturbingly led by mostly US politicians and businessmen who only seem interested in its future as a real estate and business opportunity, in which the Palestinians are regarded as either peripheral or irrelevant. Although some hope must rest with the appointment of the Palestinian National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), the technocratic committee charged with the day-to-day running of Gaza, it is alarming that, above it are not one, but two largely US-led organizations — the Board of Peace, led by Trump, and featuring only Americans, apart from the inclusion of Tony Blair, and the Gaza Economic Board, which also, at least, includes representatives of the Gulf and Middle Eastern countries who have played a major part in the long negotiations for peace. In addition to doubts about the sincerity or ability of these organizations to bring peace, questions also remain about the extent to which Israel has been excluded, and how much, if at all, it will seek to insist that it has the right to put its own security first, and to press ahead with efforts to resume its genocidal assault on Gaza. More than anything, this, in particular, must not be allowed.

Celebrating a significant court ruling last week, in the District Court in Washington, D.C., in which Judge Sparkle Sooknanan, a Biden appointee, ruled definitively that the Trump administration’s use of Guantánamo to hold migrants with final deportation orders flown from ICE detention facilities on the US mainland was and is completely illegal under immigration law (the Immigration and Nationality Act), and is also “impermissibly punitive” as a violation of the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. It’s been ten months since Trump began using Guantánamo to hold migrants, and five months since lawyers with the American Civil Liberties Union (the ACLU), the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) submitted a lawsuit on behalf of two Nicaraguan nationals held at Guantánamo at the time, and also on behalf of every other migrant in “a similarly situated class.” It’s unknown as yet if the Trump administration will appeal, but it’s abundantly clear from Judge Sooknanan’s ruling that there are absolutely no grounds for doing so. The use of Guantánamo to hold migrants was a vile example of performative cruelty, meant to terrify all migrants in the US, and would-be migrants elsewhere, and its demise is long overdue.