
On March 4, the “First Wednesday” monthly global vigils for the closure of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay took place in Washington, D.C., New York City, Detroit, London and Brussels, with former prisoner Mansoor Adayfi holding a solo vigil in Belgrade, and with campaigners in Cobleskill, NY joining us on Saturday March 7, when Gavrilah Wells, an Amnesty campaigner from San Francisco, also sent photos from AIUSA’s Human Rights Conference and AGM in Washington, D.C.
These were the 38th successive monthly vigils for the prison’s closure, after I initiated them in February 2023, following the example established by campaigners in London five months before, securing the support of friends and colleagues across the US, and in Brussels and Mexico City, who, ever since, have shown an implacable commitment to keeping Guantánamo and its many injustices visible, in defiance of the tendency of politicians and the mainstream media to behave as though it no longer exists.
I’m hugely impressed that so many vigils took place given the proximity of the date to the all-encompassing horror of the launch of the illegal and unprovoked joint US-Israeli “war” on Iran just four days before, which, like a black hole of injustice, has understandably swallowed up almost everyone’s time and energy.

It’s worse than we thought.
While dirty, demented grandpa Donald, increasingly unhinged, keeps failing asleep and then waking up and indulging in bouts of incoherent ranting, he has already accomplished what his minders always intended: to bring together the two most twisted, delusional, genocidal, pseudo-religious movements in modern history — Zionism and Christian Zionism — and to launch an apocalyptic war on their behalf.
Donald Trump, of course, as a malignant narcissist, has no God but himself, and the same is true of his chief Zionist manipulator, the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, a slippery devil of a being who has dominated Israeli politics for much of the last 40 years, and who has, over the last 29 months, finally emerged in his true colours, as the bearer of nothing but mass murder and destruction without restraint.
Using the Palestinian resistance movement’s attacks on southern Israel on October 7, 2023 as an excuse, Netanyahu, leading a political establishment and a population that are almost entirely supportive of his bleak vision, has drawn on violent Iron Age religious texts to finally manifest the true apocalyptic intent of the genocidal Zionist settler-colonial cult whose first victory was the blood-soaked establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.

When Ancient Greek thinkers first began analyzing and categorizing the world around them, the role human beings play in it, and the workings of the human body and the human mind, one enduring concept they came up with was hubris, conceived as a dangerous revolt against the natural order, whereby those who became so caught up in their own sense of self-importance — via “extreme or excessive pride or dangerous overconfidence and complacency, often in combination with arrogance” — would be punished by the gods.
Last October, in a post on Medium, Manfred Kets de Vries, a Dutch psychoanalyst, described how, for the Greeks, hubris “wasn’t just poor judgment. It was a serious moral failing, a kind of arrogant blindness that led people to overstep human boundaries. Those caught in the grip of hubris begin to believe that the world should conform to their view of it. They overestimate what they can do, ignore the consequences, and often reject criticism entirely. Even when things go wrong, they remain convinced they were right all along.”
As the world reels from the decision by the United States and the State of Israel to launch an illegal and unprovoked “war” on Iran on Saturday, everything about the attacks screams ”hubris” at the highest amplification imaginable.

On day three of Donald Trump’s cataclysmically stupid decision to indulge Benjamin Netanyahu in his malignant 40-year dream of destroying Iran, it’s starting to look as though it will backfire on him spectacularly.
Today, it’s been reported that Pentagon officials told Congressional staff yesterday that “Iran was not planning to strike US forces or bases in the Middle East unless Israel attacked Iran first”, undercutting Trump’s fatuous claims, as “Operation Epic Fury” was launched, that the US’s attacks on Iran, in conjunction with Israel, were aimed at “eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime.”
It was already screamingly apparent that Trump’s claims of legitimacy were tenuous, because he had, typically, refused to seek approval from Congress, even though only Congress can approve US military action, and had also failed to seek approval from the UN Security Council.

Beware the sick old men with hate in their hearts. As their earthly virility fades, they may well decide to take the whole world down with them.
As Israel and the US this morning launched massive and entirely unprovoked attacks on Iran, which has already led to retaliation against both the aggressors, and which may well destabilize the whole of the Middle East, both Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump — sick, old and full of perpetual rage against the dying of the light — may well have decided that, as their power fades, they will take vengeance on life itself.
23 years ago, it took many long months for George W. Bush and Tony Blair to manufacture a false case for the illegal invasion of Iraq. Dodgy dossiers were compiled, and Congress and the UN Security Council had to be convinced to approve an illegal war on the fictional basis that Iraq posed an existential threat to the west.
in the new world order of Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump, however, none of these complicated webs of lies and deception are even needed anymore.
Investigative journalist, author, campaigner, commentator and public speaker. Recognized as an authority on Guantánamo and the “war on terror.” Co-founder, Close Guantánamo and We Stand With Shaker, singer/songwriter (The Four Fathers).
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