Maeve, maeve@altmedia.house

And this weekend, the United States and Israel crossed a line that I believe will echo through history. In a coordinated strike on Tehran, they assassinated Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran. They killed him, members of his family and, according to initial reports, dozens of other civilians in the process. This is nothing less than a brazen act of state terrorism designed to decapitate a sovereign nation’s leadership and plunge the region into chaos. And now, as the smoke rises over Tehran, the Western media machine is whirring into action, performing its familiar, dutiful role. The narrative is already being crafted: that Iranians are celebrating, that the people are rising up to greet their ‘liberators’, that this assassination is the opening act of a long-awaited revolution. But it is a lie. A dangerous, manipulative, and deeply cynical lie.

Palestinian political prisoners in Ofer prison, near Ramallah in the West Bank, have been brutally abused by the Israeli occupation’s repression units. This happened under the instruction and in the presence of criminal far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir.

Crosspost from https://news.abolish.capital/post/26677

US and EU sanctions have killed 38 million since 1970 Far from a peaceful tool, these measures weaponise hunger and deprivation to enforce Western dominance. The United States and Europe have long used unilateral sanctions as a tool of imperial power, to discipline and even destroy Global South governments that seek to shake off Western domination, chart an independent path, and establish any kind of meaningful sovereignty. During the 1970s, there were, on average, about 15 countries under Western unilateral sanctions in any given year. In many cases, these sanctions sought to strangle access to finance and international trade, destabilise industries, and inflame crises to provoke state collapse. For instance, when the popular socialist Salvador Allende was elected to power in Chile in 1970, the U.S. government imposed brutal sanctions on the country. At a September 1970 meeting at the White House, U.S. President Richard Nixon explained the objective was to “make [Chile’s] economy scream”. The historian Peter Kornbluh describes the sanctions as an “invisible blockade” that cut Chile off from international finance, created social unrest, and paved the way for the U.S.-backed coup that installed the brutal right-wing dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Since then, the U.S. and Europe have dramatically increased their use of sanctions. During the 1990s and 2000s, an average of 30 countries were under Western unilateral sanctions in any given year. And now, as of the 2020s, it is more than 60 — a strikingly high proportion of the countries of the Global South. Sanctions often have a huge human toll. Scholars have demonstrated this in several well-known cases, such as the U.S. sanctions against Iraq in the 1990s that led to widespread malnutrition, lack of clean water, and shortages of medicine and electricity. More recently, U.S. economic warfare against Venezuela has resulted in a severe economic crisis, with one study estimating that sanctions caused 40,000 excess deaths in just one year, from 2017 to 2018. Until now, researchers have sought to understand the human toll of sanctions on a case-by-case basis. This is difficult work and can only ever give us a partial picture. But that has changed with new research published this year in The Lancet Global Health, which gives us a global view for the first time. Led by the economist Francisco Rodriguez at the University of Denver, the study calculates the total number of excess deaths associated with international sanctions from 1970 to 2021. The results are staggering. In their central estimate, the authors find that unilateral sanctions imposed by the U.S. and EU since 1970 are associated with 38 million deaths. In some years, during the 1990s, more than a million people were killed. In 2021, the most recent year of data, sanctions caused more than 800,000 deaths. According to these results, several times more people are killed by sanctions each year than are killed as direct casualties of war (on average, about 100,000 people per year). More than half of the victims are children and the elderly, people who are most vulnerable to malnutrition. The study finds that, since 2012 alone, sanctions have killed more than one million children. Hunger and deprivation are not an accidental by-product of Western sanctions; they are a key objective. This is clear from a State Department memo written in April 1960, which explains the purpose of U.S. sanctions against Cuba. The memo noted that Fidel Castro — and the revolution more broadly — enjoyed widespread popularity in Cuba. It argued that “every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba,” by “denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government”. The power of Western sanctions hinges on their control over the world’s reserve currencies (the U.S. dollar and the Euro), their control over international payment systems (SWIFT), and their monopoly over essential technologies (e.g. satellites, cloud computation, software). If countries in the Global South wish to chart a more independent path towards a multipolar world, they will need to take steps to limit their dependence in these respects and thus insulate themselves from backlash. The recent experience of Russia shows that such an approach can succeed. Governments can achieve greater independence by building South-South trade and swap lines outside the core currencies, using regional planning to develop necessary technologies, and establishing new payment systems outside Western control. Indeed, several countries are already taking steps in this direction. Importantly, new systems that have been developed in China (e.g. CIPS for international payments, BeiDou for satellites, Huawei for telecom) now provide other global South countries alternative options that can become a pathway out of Western dependence and the sanctions net. These steps are necessary for countries that wish to achieve sovereign development, but they are also a moral imperative. We cannot accept a world where half a million people are killed each year to prop up Western hegemony. An international order that relies on this kind of violence must be dismantled and replaced.

Rupert Murdoch–style journalism comes to California with a front-page call (California Post, 2/1/26) to arrest “violent” ICE protesters. (No injuries were mentioned in the accompanying article about the “downtown carnage.”) Last week, Rupert Murdoch launched the California Post*,* a West Coast counterpart to his New York Post*.*

Centrist Democrats led by Cheri Bustos, a corporate lobbyist who previously headed her party’s campaign arm in the US House, are launching a policy and advocacy organization aimed at pressuring Democrats to embrace the kind of “pro-growth” deregulatory agenda associated with the so-called “abundance” movement. The new organization, named Next American Era, was formed “with an eye toward 2028” as Democrats work to recover from their crushing defeat to President Donald Trump in the 2024 elections, Axios reported Sunday, noting that the group describes itself as a “hub for center-left policy and advocacy.” Bustos, whose lobbying client list in 2025 included OpenAI and Larry Ellison’s Oracle, said Next American Era plans to “air issue-focused ads during the midterm elections and the 2028 presidential campaign, but it won’t endorse candidates,” Axios reported. Bustos said the founders of Next American Era share “many of the same principles as the Abundance movement,” a loose assortment of organizations and individuals—including large corporations and prominent billionaires—broadly supporting views expressed by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson in their 2025 book Abundance. “She said cutting red tape, streamlining regulations, and supporting workforce training are among the top policy goals of her group, which is structured as a 501(c)(4) political nonprofit,” Axios reported. Lindsay Owens, executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive think tank, called those proposed objectives “some of the weakest economic policies we’ve polled in the last 18 months.” “Not sure why you’d want to put ads out on these for candidates unless it’s an opp,” Owens added. Abundance takes aim at what Klein and Thompson characterize as an overly burdensome regulatory approach that is purportedly hindering progress toward more affordable housing, public transportation systems, and a renewable energy revolution. Critics, such as antitrust advocate Zephyr Teachout, have criticized the so-called abundance agenda as far too ambiguous. “I still can’t tell after reading Abundance whether Klein and Thompson are seeking something fairly small-bore and correct (we need zoning reform) or nontrivial and deeply regressive (we need deregulation) or whether there is room within abundance for anti-monopoly politics and a more full-throated unleashing of American potential,” Teachout wrote in her review of the book for Washington Monthly. Critics have also noted the enthusiasm with which corporations and billionaires have glommed onto the abundance narrative. “The ambiguity of the abundance agenda’s policy proposals, strategic or otherwise, allows private interests to leverage ‘abundance’ as a Trojan Horse for their preferences,” the Revolving Door Project observed last year. “The growing abundance movement has institutional support from fossil fuel and Big Tech affiliates, including the sprawling Koch network and crypto and AI industry players.” Axios observed that Next American Era is one of “several center-left groups” that “have popped up or expanded in the past 18 months, including the think tank Searchlight Institute, Majority Democrats, and WelcomePAC.” “Just one more billionaire front group. Just one more neoliberal policy shop,” reporter and political analyst Austin Ahlman wrote mockingly on social media in response to the launch of Next American Era. “Just one more polling outfit cooking the numbers on behalf of corporate interests and we’ll win bro, I promise.”

According to a source familiar with the project, “the goal is for the facilities to house as many as 10,000 people each, and are expected to be built in Louisiana, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Utah, and Kansas.” Those are for you. And me.

💀🌟

In other words, the government is building a sociological profile of political discontent. The bulletin notes that these protests are “perception-driven”—meaning they are motivated by “generalized concerns about rights” rather than specific incidents. In the logic of national security, a lack of a specific trigger makes the public more unpredictable and therefore calls for “situational awareness.” But it’s the granularity of the monitoring that is most absurd. To determine the “threat” posed by Budget-Chicken-2425, analysts didn’t just look at the protest call; they scoured the user’s entire digital footprint. The bulletin notes that Chicken “frequently participates in various community discussions,” listing their interests in r/Texans (comparing the team to the Cleveland Browns), r/movies (discussing the film Almost Famous), r/stephenking (sharing book collections), and r/FuckImOld (reminiscing about 1970s television production logos). 🤣🌎

Thousands of Iraqis have signed a pledge to help defend Iran in the event of a US attack on the Islamic Republic. According to a statement, almost 5,000 people in Iraq’s Diyala province gathered to declare their intent to defend both Iraq and its eastern neighbour, as well as Iran-backed armed groups, “without any compensation”. “We announce our readiness to volunteer to support our security forces, the Popular Mobilisation Forces, and the Islamic Republic of Iran, and we categorically reject American intervention in the Islamic Republic,” the statement read.

Philosopher | Cultural Critic | Director of the Critical Theory Workshop | Author “Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism?” https://monthlyreview.org/9781685901363/

Crossposted from https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/7719391

Argentina entrega todo y no recibe nada: qué dice la letra chica del acuerdo con Estados Unidoswww.pagina12.com.ar La Cancillería, que ni siquiera publicó el texto en español, emitió un comunicado destacando logros que no aparecen en el documento oficial. Argentina and the United States signed a trade agreement in which Argentina assumes 113 obligations, while only 8 are mutual obligations and 2 are solely the responsibility of the U.S. The official document, published in English by the U.S. Embassy itself , does not include the benefits promised by the Argentine Foreign Ministry. US controls will be sufficient to import Argentina must allow goods originating in the United States that comply with its technical regulations and evaluation procedures to enter the country without additional inspections. In this way, approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) , the US equivalent of ANMAT, will be sufficient for the importation of medicines, food, and chemicals, among other things . The same applies to the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) , the equivalent of the local SENASA . Meat, poultry, and dairy products will only be allowed entry with FSIS authorization. Even agriculture is not spared: the sectors in which Argentina is opening up to the United States The agreement does not establish significant benefits for Argentine agriculture in exchange for importing industrial goods; rather, it opens Argentina up in both sectors . The agreement establishes annual quotas for food products produced in the United States that will enter the country duty-free , such as: * 1000 tons of cheese * 870 tons of almonds * 80 tons of pistachios * 1100 tons of potatoes * 80,000 liters of wine * 10,000 cars The National Government announced a supposed quota of 100,000 tons of Argentine meat that would enter the United States without tariffs, but not only does that not appear in the agreement, it is the opposite. “It is a decision by the United States government that is not included within the agreement,” said Pablo Quirno, Minister of Foreign Affairs, in a recent television interview. “It doesn’t seem like there was a negotiation, but rather a concession on the part of Argentina . The only thing that was defended was the current preference of a government, not national interests,” Juan Gabriel Tokatlian, PhD in International Relations, told Página|12. “One would have thought it would be an agreement to bring more agricultural products into the United States , which wouldn’t have generated jobs either, because it’s a sector that’s not very labor-intensive. But it’s not even that; this is even more unequal ,” warns Guido Bambini, an economic researcher at the Center for Argentine Political Economy (CEPA). At the same time, import duties are eliminated for laptops, fiber optic cables, and other technological items, without quotas. No taxes can be levied on software or streaming platforms either . This point is reciprocal, but in practice it benefits the United States, as it is the world’s leading power in these sectors. Preferential treatment for US companies Argentina will permit and facilitate US investment in its territory for the exploration and exploitation of critical minerals and energy resources and to provide power generation, telecommunications, transportation and infrastructure services. “US companies must be the first notified when oil and mining tenders are opened ,” emphasizes Eduardo Martínez, an international and geopolitical analyst. The agreement adds that Argentina must not impose new barriers on US suppliers or treat them less favorably than domestic companies or those from any other country. At the same time, the country commits to “addressing unfair trade practices by companies from third countries,” a clear reference to China. The United States will monitor Argentina’s industrial and foreign trade policy On the one hand, Argentina will not be able to impose taxes that “discriminate against U.S. companies.” On the other hand, it urges that if the United States imposes border or trade measures to defend its national security, our country should immediately take the same measures “when appropriate.” It also pledges to cooperate with the United States “in a consistent manner” to ensure compliance with the sanctions and international trade controls that the United States applies to different countries. In the field of nuclear and energy, the purchase of nuclear reactors, fuel rods or enriched uranium from certain countries will be prohibited , with a focus on China and Russia . Argentina will not be able to subsidize its public companies “in a manner that distorts international trade” and, if requested by the United States, must provide information on all assistance it provides to domestic manufacturing companies . What does Argentina gain from the agreement? Argentina gains little to nothing from the agreement. Products such as tea, yerba mate, mangoes and tropical fruits, some juices and coffee , among a few others, will enter the United States duty-free . On animal products, pharmaceuticals, and steel and aluminum , provided they are for civil aviation and not for other industrial purposes, the United States promises not to impose extra tariffs, meaning they remain at the standard 10% . “The benefits for Argentina are very limited. In some cases, it only proposes eliminating additional tariffs that Trump imposed in April; there is no improvement. Furthermore, it includes many goods that Argentina does not export, such as inputs for aircraft construction or for the pharmaceutical sector ,” adds Julieta Zelicovich, PhD in International Relations and researcher at Fundar. For his part, Tokatlian asserts that “the Argentine government indulged itself by not consulting business leaders, workers, and politicians about the progress of its meetings .” “The social and political actors potentially affected by the agreements never demonstrated even the slightest capacity for collective action,” he reflects. “The only argument they throw at us is that the U.S. eliminates tariffs on products they don’t have. It’s a deficit in everything, it’s tailor-made for the United States ,” says Martínez. When does the agreement come into effect? While the agreement must be approved by both chambers, the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate , the text states that it “will enter into force 60 days after the parties have exchanged notifications certifying compliance with applicable legal procedures.” Either party may terminate the agreement, but must give at least six months’ notice.

As Kurt Vonnegut wrote in his poem “Joe Heller”: True story, Word of Honor: Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer now dead, and I were at a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island. I said, “Joe, how does it make you feel to know that our host only yesterday may have made more money than your novel ‘Catch-22’ has earned in its entire history?” And Joe said, “I’ve got something he can never have.” And I said, “What on earth could that be, Joe?” And Joe said, “The knowledge that I’ve got enough.” Not bad! Rest in peace!

Every woman and girl with starry-eyed romantic dreams needs to wake up.

When “Israel” enters into ceasefire agreements, it does so with the next round of conflict already in mind. In the cases of Lebanon and Gaza, this strategy goes even further: ceasefires are used as opportunities to actively pursue military and political objectives, while the opposing side is left trapped in a dilemma. In the short term, the Zionist regime views its ceasefire agreements as a net positive. This is evident in both the timing of these agreements and the manner in which they are implemented—or, in some cases, not implemented at all. So far, “Israel” has violated the Gaza ceasefire around 3,000 times officially. As for in Lebanon, we are now rapidly approaching the 10,000 violation milestone…