I was born in Poonch (Kashmir) and now I live in Norway. I oppose war and violence and am a firm believer in the peaceful co-existence of all nations and peoples. In my academic work I have tried to espouse the cause of the weak and the oppressed in a world dominated by power politics, misleading propaganda and violations of basic human rights. I also believe that all conscious members of society have a moral duty to stand for and further the cause of peace and human rights throughout the world.
Iranian military personnel take part in an exercise titled “Smart Control of the Strait of Hormuz”, launched by the Naval Forces of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, is being carried out in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz on February 16, 2026. [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – Anadolu Agency]
Iranian state television has broadcast footage it said showed ballistic missile attacks on a US aircraft carrier and destroyer, as Iran and the United States exchanged strikes on military and oil-related targets in and around the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said the two US warships were targeted with Iranian-made Qasem Basir ballistic missiles, alleging that the vessels had participated in a naval blockade of Iranian shipping.
The IRGC claimed the missiles damaged both vessels and forced them to withdraw from the area. The footage broadcast by Iranian state media was presented as documenting the attacks, but the claims of direct hits and damage could not be independently verified.
The Iranian military described the strikes as retaliation for US attacks on three Iranian oil tankers.
The US military said on Saturday that it had targeted three tankers linked to the Revolutionary Guard, permanently disabling two and destroying a third. It described the vessels as part of a network generating funds for the IRGC and Iran-aligned groups in the region.
According to the US military, one tanker was targeted off Kharg Island, the site of Iran’s largest oil export terminal, another near the Strait of Hormuz, and the third in the Gulf of Oman.
The Revolutionary Guard confirmed that three Iranian tankers had been attacked and subsequently announced retaliatory operations against US naval assets.
In a separate statement on Sunday, the IRGC said its naval forces had targeted a US unmanned surface vessel that it claimed was attempting to enter a restricted area of the Strait of Hormuz. The outcome of that attack was not independently confirmed.
Iranian authorities also said their forces had targeted three oil tankers that were allegedly transiting the strait without authorization, as well as several US warships in other locations.
The exchanges come amid heightened military tensions between Washington and Tehran and stalled diplomatic efforts to end the conflict. The United States has also intensified economic pressure on Iran through sanctions and restrictions targeting Iranian oil revenues and entities linked to the Revolutionary Guard.
Israel launched a brutal and deadly escalation against south Lebanon on 6 September, killing four people and injuring at least 20 while destroying a medical facility with its strikes.
Airstrikes hit areas including Nabatieh al-Fawqa, Arab Salim, and Kfar Rumman.
At least two were killed in Nabatieh al-Fawqa, while another two were killed and six injured in Arab Salim, including two children, the Lebanese Health Ministry said in a statement.
In Nabatieh’s Rahibat neighborhood, eight were wounded, including a woman and a child. Meanwhile, four women were injured in Kfar Rumman, the ministry added.
Israel’s brutal attacks directly targeted and destroyed in its entirety the Ghandour Hospital in Nabatieh al-Fawqa. According to Lebanese media reports, no patients or medical staff were inside the hospital at the time of the attack.
A Lebanese Finance Ministry building was damaged in Israel’s latest wave of violence.
“With the renewed Israeli attacks on the city of Nabatieh, the ministry’s building in the city was damaged at dawn today as a result of shelling that targeted the area,” Lebanon’s Finance Ministry said in a statement.
Israel continued detonation operations on Sunday as well, blowing up more homes as part of its illegal campaign of ethnic cleansing, which has resulted in the destruction of tens of thousands of homes and civilian buildings.
The violent wave of deadly Israeli strikes came after Tel Aviv said Hezbollah launched drones at its occupation troops in south Lebanon.
“Hezbollah terrorists launched two explosive drones toward our forces in the security area,” the Israeli army said in a statement, referring to the so-called security zone that remains inhabited by resistance fighters despite months of bombing.
“This constitutes a blatant violation by the Hezbollah terrorist organization.” The statement added that Israeli forces began striking Hezbollah targets in response.
Just two days ago, Israel claimed operational control over the strategic Ali al-Taher Hill in south Lebanon.
The sensitive area is believed to host a key underground Hezbollah facility. Hezbollah has been resisting Israeli operations in the area for months.
“If Israel had fully captured Ali al-Taher, it would have raised its flag there … and released footage from inside the hills showing the installations it claims are there,” said retired Lebanese army general Mounir Shehadeh.
“No Lebanese party can confirm that the hills have fallen,” he added. “The Israeli fire cordon is preventing anyone from advancing to verify what has happened. The Lebanese army cannot move forward, nor can anyone else.”
Hezbollah MP Ihab Hamadeh asked, “How can the Israeli enemy claim to have captured Ali al-Taher while it continues to bombard and strike it?”
Since 2 March, over 4,000 Lebanese have been killed and over a million displaced. Entire southern villages have been erased by the Israeli army.
Israeli occupation forces have faced heavy losses in south Lebanon since starting their latest ground operation and campaign to expand Israeli occupation, admitting to the deaths of 38 soldiers as well as a civilian contractor who was helping destroy homes.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced on Wednesday, September 2 that it had set a record for the number of arrests of immigrants for the third straight month. The department, which includes Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), claimed it kidnapped 50,925 people in August, exceeding the nearly 50,000 the month before and the 49,000 in June.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents make an arrest during an early morning operation in Park Ridge, Illinois, Sept. 19, 2025. [AP Photo/Erin Hooley]
“For the third straight month, ICE set a new record for the highest number of illegal aliens arrested in a single month, nearly 51,000,” Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin gloated in a DHS press release.
DHS claims over 3 million people have left the country since Trump returned to the White House. This includes those who were deported, illegally renditioned to a third country, or, under threat of being kidnapped and held in a for-profit concentration camp, “voluntarily” left the country.
While the Trump administration scapegoats immigrants for all the problems created by the capitalist system—from rising home prices and stagnant wages to every form of criminality—ICE arrest data analyzed by Cato Institute immigration analyst David Bier showed that 79 percent of those arrested had no criminal conviction. Fifty-five percent had neither a conviction nor a pending criminal charge, while only 4 percent had been convicted of a violent offense. Bier testified before the House Judiciary Committee last week.
The assault on immigrants is part of a broader attack by the ruling class directed against the entire working class. Under conditions where the national debt has soared past $40 trillion and workers and young people are increasingly interested in socialist politics, the US government is criminalizing opposition and making people “illegal” who had lived legally in the country for years.
In July, the Trump administration terminated Temporary Protected Status for some 350,000 Haitian immigrants, and TPS protection is scheduled to end for roughly 170,000 Salvadorans on September 9.
In Springfield, Ohio, some Haitian immigrants have gone underground while more than 100 have been fitted with GPS trackers, typically reserved for violent felons under criminal supervision. ICE has imposed restrictions on many Haitians as to where they can travel or if they can leave the state.
One of the Haitians fitted with the equivalent of a modern-day yellow star, Wright State University college student Pierre Damas Bel, died August 31 in what his family calls a suicide, when he was struck by a tractor trailer on Interstate 70 near Springfield.
“After my son was outfitted with an ankle monitor, he felt like he was treated like an animal,” his father, Pierre Ronal Bel, said in a written statement. “He took two trips to Cincinnati and Westerville to plead with the officers to remove the bracelet since he’s a soccer player and he felt embarrassed and humiliated. When he’s among his classmates at the university—he’s a student at Wright State—he was bullied a lot with a lot of people telling him he’s a criminal.”
In a July 30 Instagram carousel post, Pierre Damas Bel highlighted his accomplishments and spoke in defense of immigrants and Haitians.
“I came to this country to pursue my education. I didn’t come here to commit a crime or hurt anyone,” he wrote.
Yet now I’m walking through the streets of the United States with a GPS monitor on my leg, carrying a feeling of shame and humiliation that I never imagined I would experience. I came here to study, to build my future and to live a better [life], not to be treated like a criminal. So now, how am I supposed to play college sports with a GPS monitor on my leg?
Screenshot of Pierre Damas Bel’s July 30 Instagram post describing the shame and humiliation of being forced to wear an ICE GPS ankle monitor.
On Thursday, the Trump administration carried out its third consecutive weekly deportation flight to Haiti since TPS ended, and at least the 11th flight this year. The flight originated in Alexandria, Louisiana and landed in Cap-Haïtien with 101 deportees aboard, according to a Haitian Foreign Affairs Ministry official.
In a fascistic post celebrating the deportation, DHS Secretary Mullin shared an image on X featuring black men in chains, with the caption, “Good morning, America. Today’s deportation destination: HAITI.”
DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin’s September 3 post on X gloating over a deportation flight to Haiti, accompanied by an image of men in chains waiting to board a plane.
Haiti remains under a State Department Level 4 “Do Not Travel” advisory due to “crime, kidnapping, terrorism, unrest and limited healthcare.” As the World Socialist Web Site previously reported, war criminal and Trump ally Erik Prince’s private military company Vectus Global is carrying out an undeclared drone war with Haitian government forces against the population, which has resulted in over 1,000 deaths.
As ICE is increasing its kidnapping operations, resistance is growing among workers, students and community members throughout the country.
Last Wednesday, September 2, more than 1,000 people protested against ICE kidnapping operations in Danbury, Connecticut. In the week prior, Connecticut Mirror reported that ICE had taken over 100 people in the state, a majority from Danbury. The town is located about 50 miles north of New York City and is home to just under 90,000 people.
Danbury, Connecticut residents gather outside a courthouse to protest ICE kidnappings in the area, Thursday, August 27, 2026. [AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey]
Residents report that ICE thugs have been going after immigrants at work, while shopping for groceries and even while dropping off their kids at school bus stops. Juliana Soares, a lead organizer of the group “Danbury Unites for Immigrants,” told NBC that at least 65 families in the community had been impacted by ICE operations.
Speaking with Amy Goodman on “Democracy Now!,” Soares surmised that Danbury was being targeted by ICE because “Danbury is a diverse city, it’s one of the most diverse cities in the country.” Roughly one third of the city’s population is Latino, according to the US Census Bureau, including a large Brazilian population.
Describing the police terror, Soares said, “The streets were empty, kids stayed home from practice, kids stayed home from school, kids were seeing [their parents taken] from inside the bus, as agents, masked agents often, would shut down the street to just abduct people.”
In Colorado on Friday, September 4, students from more than 200 high schools throughout the state walked out of class to protest attacks on immigrants. Walkouts featuring dozens to hundreds of students occurred in Denver, the surrounding suburbs, Colorado Springs and, significantly, Greeley, where some 3,800 meatpacking workers went on strike earlier this year in the largest meatpacking struggle in decades.
A majority of the workers at the JBS plant in Greeley are immigrants, with dozens of languages spoken inside the plant. During the strike, a worker at the plant told WSWS reporters, “We represent the immigrants and all the people of color. That’s us, that’s the people that are doing these jobs.
“Without immigrants, there is no food, there is no work.”
Video from Friday’s protest in Greeley shows students marching while chanting, “Get ICE out!” Students carried handmade signs that read, “Immigrants make America great!” and “Abolish ICE.”
In an interview with the Greeley Tribune, Greeley Central High School student Josely Vazquez said, “People shouldn’t be scared to leave their houses.” Vazquez is originally from Mexico and moved to Greeley when she was 9.
The students marched to Lincoln Park. Along the way, drivers honked in support and flew flags from many countries, including Mexico and Palestine.
In Denver, hundreds of students rallied at La Alma-Lincoln Park to protest ICE kidnapping operations. In an interview with ColoradoNewsline, 15-year-old student Macy Brown said, “I think human rights are really important, and I think we all need to speak up against injustices that are happening right in front of us.”
Naya Ferguson, a 16-year-old student at Bear Creek High School in Jefferson County, said she drove to the park to attend the protest after seeing students walking out of her school. She told ColoradoNewsLine, “What ICE is doing is just unconstitutional, unlawful. It’s inhumane, and I just don’t want to sit back and just watch it happen. It’s not who I am.”
On Friday, on the other side of the country, in Fredrick, Maryland, ICE thugs, with police watching, bludgeoned and assaulted non-violent protesters who had formed a human chain around a house targeted by the immigration Gestapo. Residents and local reporters claim ICE began menacing residents in Fredrick on Monday, August 31, and specifically in the Taskers Chance neighborhood beginning on Wednesday.
Residents reported seeing SUVs with tinted windows and masked and armed men on street corners and parked outside houses. In response, residents began organizing shifts to observe the agents and their activities.
On Friday night, after agents had occupied a section of the neighborhood for more than 40 hours, ICE thugs lined up several vehicles and began to surround a house. Observers on the sidewalk were forced to move out of the path of the ICE vehicles, which drove onto the sidewalk, nearly striking several observers.
César Díaz, Frederick City Council president, told the Baltimore Banner he witnessed Katie Nash, vice president of the Frederick City Council, nearly run over by an ICE agent. “People had to move or risk getting run over,” he said, identifying Nash as a person at risk. “I had to step back to avoid from getting hit by the car.”
In front of the home, several community members and anti-ICE protesters were seated with locked arms to prevent ICE officers from entering. It is unclear if ICE agents ever presented a warrant of any kind, judicial or administrative.
With local police watching, ICE goons began attacking the nonviolent protesters in front of the house. Video taken by bystanders shows ICE agents swinging batons at people seated on the ground.
After clearing a path to the door, ICE agents entered the house but left without making any arrests.
The Trump administration is able to carry out the mass deportation operation only because of the collaboration of the Democratic Party. Last week the House, in a resounding bipartisan 370-48 vote, passed legislation to fund the federal government, including DHS, through December 11.
The bill, which was supported by Trump, had already cleared the Senate. It was signed by Trump on September 2.
The necessity of building an independent movement in the working class against both parties and the capitalist system they represent could not be any clearer. While posturing against Trump’s fascistic regime, the Democrats do everything in their power to ensure that his legislative and police state agenda moves forward.
The protests against ICE in Colorado, Maryland and throughout the country point the way forward. But protesting is not enough. The protests must become the starting point for uniting the working class, immigrant and native-born, and mobilizing its social power independently of both capitalist parties on the basis of a socialist perspective.
There is a point in the decline of republics when the problem is no longer that government breaks its own laws. Governments will always behave unlawfully. The deeper problem comes when the constitutional machinery designed to prevent those acts stops functioning — when spending becomes detached from arithmetic, presidential power becomes detached from law, and Congress and the courts become detached from the Constitution.
That’s where America is today.
The fiscal warning could hardly be clearer. The government’s debt has now passed $40 trillion. The Congressional Budget Office projects a $1.9 trillion federal deficit for fiscal year 2026, with annual deficits rising to $3.1 trillion by 2036.
Worse, borrowing itself is becoming more expensive. Ten-year Treasury yields recently reached 4.6% and 30-year yields 5.2%, as investors demand greater compensation for lending money to Washington. The July 2026 deficit alone reached $432 billion.
The uniparty government in the past 110 years has produced a vicious circle: It spends more than it collects, borrows the difference, pays interest on the borrowing and borrows still more to pay the interest. Eventually, arithmetic becomes destiny.
But fiscal insolvency is only half the story. What is more frightening is the simultaneous deterioration of constitutional norms.
The president increasingly acts as though his personality is the source of his legal authority.
The United States has gone to war without the congressional authorization that the Constitution was designed to require. And the U.S. has attacked speedboats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, with more than 220 people murdered and no legal basis for killing and dispensing with due process.
In January, the United States military killed 47 persons in Venezuela during its violent kidnapping of President Nicolas Maduro and his wife. Whatever one’s opinion of Maduro, the fundamental question remains: By what constitutional authority does an American president decide that a foreign head of state may be violently seized by the United States? None.
This is not a defense of Maduro. It is a defense of the principle that American presidents do not possess a roving commission to decide whom the United States may depose, kidnap or kill.
The distinction matters because constitutional government is supposed to stand between political power and its targets. The president is supposed to enforce the law, not create it. Congress is supposed to write the laws, not ignore them. The courts are supposed to enforce the Constitution, not evade it.
Yet Congress increasingly behaves as though presidential power is someone else’s problem.
Members of Congress complain loudly when the other party occupies the White House and become remarkably accommodating when their own party holds it. The result is an informal bipartisan transfer of power from the legislative to the executive. Every president inherits the precedents accumulated by his predecessor and then adds a few of his own. The next president inherits those precedents and stretches them further.
Eventually, there are no meaningful limits.
The same disease infects the courts. Judicial review remains theoretically formidable, but judicial intervention often comes after the government has already exercised power unconstitutionally. A constitutional right that can be violated first and litigated later is a fragile right. The person who has been silenced, imprisoned, deported, injured or killed cannot be restored to his previous condition merely because a court eventually announces that the government acted unlawfully and awards damages. Nor can a half-built, never-congressionally-authorized, $1 billion ballroom-for-billionaires be feasibly demolished.
The central question should be: What are the government’s legal authorities and what are their limits?
Instead that question has become: What can the president get away with?
A free people should not have to depend upon the temperament of the person occupying the Oval Office. The Constitution was designed precisely because the founders understood that limited government cannot depend upon a few good people. They assumed that presidents would sometimes be venal and unscrupulous, Congress sometimes pliant and cowardly, and judges sometimes wrong. So they constructed competing institutions, with divided authorities and checks and balances, making governing difficult.
That difficulty was intentional.
A government that can spend without limit, wage war without Congress, kill without trial, kidnap without consequence and employ overwhelming force without due process is a government behaving outside the Constitution.
And the financial numbers make the constitutional deterioration even more ominous. A government approaching $40 trillion in debt cannot endlessly promise every constituency that someone else will pay.
This is how great powers decline — not necessarily with a dramatic explosion, but through accumulated exemptions, exceptions and evasions.
The president says the Constitution permits whatever he wants to do because the national security demands it. Congress permits the president to do what he wants because confronting him is politically inconvenient. The courts intervene only after it is too late to undo the damage and strain at a gnat to avoid hard decisions. The Treasury borrows another trillion dollars because balancing the books would be a nightmare.
The public becomes accustomed to extraordinary government power because yesterday’s outrage becomes today’s precedent.
Then, one morning, people wake up and discover that the constitutional republic they inherited exists mostly on paper.
But the night before this realization — at twilight’s last gleaming — the nation that once possessed protections for personal freedoms, opportunities for wealth, and a unique cultural environment sees its former fidelity to the first principles that made those things possible slipping away.
A republic survives only when the passionate among us light brushfires of freedom by insisting that the U.S. stays out of other countries’ business, presidents obey the law, Congresses exercise constitutional powers, courts enforce constitutional limits, war is a last resort, and governments acknowledge that borrowed money is not free money.
The alternative is gradual normalization of unlimited debt, unlimited executive discretion and unlimited rationalizations.
The twilight of our constitutional republic has not arrived because the sun suddenly disappeared. It has arrived because, little by little, nearly everyone became accustomed to the darkness.
Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel. Judge Napolitano has written seven books on the US Constitution. The most recent isSuicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Lethal Threat to American Liberty. To find out more about Judge Napolitano and to read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2025 ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO – DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM
Vessels have begun international port-to-port voyage to Gaza.
The Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC) today announced that a new international mission to challenge Israel’s illegal and deadly blockade of Gaza is underway.
The violence and torture that Israel inflicted on hundreds of flotilla volunteers this past spring, including severe beatings, repeated tasering, and sexual assault, has not deterred the FFC, just as Israel’s murder of 10 flotilla activists aboard the Mavi Marmara, in 2010 did not stop the movement. If anything, action is needed now more than ever. While much of the world has moved on from Gaza, believing a supposed “ceasefire” has ended the genocide, Israel continues to kill Palestinians in Gaza at will; use its blockade to restrict and manipulate the entry of the food, medicine, and fuel that a besieged population depends on to survive; and deny Palestinians their fundamental right to freedom.
The new mission involves a port-to-port voyage throughout Europe, bringing together human rights advocates, union activists, elected representatives, journalists, medical professionals, and other supporters of Palestinian freedom. In June and July 2026, FFC vessel, Handala II, sailed around Scandinavia, making stops at ports in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. Earlier this month, the vessel, Kate, launched from Bristol, UK and has made port calls in Ireland, Germany, and France. Upcoming stops include ports in Spain, Portugal, and Italy, before the flotilla continues on to Gaza. At every stop, the flotilla will stand with local communities to press their own governments to end their complicity in genocide by blocking weapons and energy shipments that arm Israel’s aggression, ending diplomatic and military cooperation, and imposing real sanctions. The journey will build public support and international pressure ahead of the flotilla’s planned attempt to reach Gaza in October 2026.
“The Freedom Flotilla sails again because our governments continue to fail to uphold their obligations,” said Zohar Chamberlain Regev, FFC Steering Committee member. “At every port, we will carry the demand that Palestinians be free to live with dignity. In October, we intend to carry that demand and the solidarity of people around the world to Gaza’s shores.” Throughout the port-to-port journey, FFC and its local partners will organize public welcomes, community gatherings, media events, and opportunities for supporters to visit the vessels. Details of port calls and public events will be released as arrangements are confirmed. Since 2010, the Freedom Flotilla Coalition has brought together civil-society organizations and grassroots campaigns from around the world to challenge the blockade by sea. Its work continues the precedent established by the Free Gaza Movement, whose vessels began sailing to Gaza in 2008.
The FFC calls on governments to:
Demand safe, unimpeded passage of the flotilla to Gaza, including by making clear that any attack, seizure, or unlawful detention will have consequences;
Demand immediate and unrestricted access to Gaza and an end to Israel’s obstruction of food, water, medicine, and other essential no
Defend the freedom of navigation by declaring that any attack, boarding, seizure, diversion, or other use of force against flotilla vessels will trigger immediate diplomatic action;
Use diplomatic, economic, legal, and other available measures to end Israel’s unlawful blockade and prevent further violations of Palestinians’ fundamental rights and international humanitarian law; and Commit publicly to holding accountable any state or actor responsible for attacking, unlawfully detaining, or otherwise endangering flotilla participants.
“We know that sailing toward Gaza carries serious risks,” said Edward Digilio, an engineer from Maryland, United States. “But silence and inaction carry a much greater cost for Palestinians and the world. This mission is an expression of shared humanity and a refusal to accept the destruction of an entire people as normal.”
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Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) speaks during the Senate Budget Committee hearing titled Should Taxpayer Dollars Go to Companies that Violate Labor Laws?” in Dirksen Building on Thursday, May 5, 2022.
(Photo by Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
We face an unprecedented fascist and imperialist threat from the Trump administration; mealy-mouthed centrist imperialism just won’t do the trick.
On Friday, the Trump administration announced a “deal” handing the United States65 billion barrels of Venezuelan crude oil, roughly a fifth of the country’s total reserves (the largest on Earth), on leases running up to 100 years. They would give $200 billion, or just about $3 a barrel (just 3% of market value) to Venezuela. If this was a fair “deal,” following market value, it should be over $6 trillion. That may be the biggest fraud in human history.
Marines have openly occupied the streets of Caracas since, doing numerous muscle-flexing helicopter raids across the city. The administration has said Venezuela is “not ready yet” for elections, despite running their own elections for decades—plus, why does the US get to dictate when and if countries can have elections, anyway?
The Pentagon itself reportedly holds a 35% stake in the venture set to extract the oil, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio runs the country as its de facto “viceroy,” according to The New York Times. The whole scheme was backed by neocons like the Vandenberg Coalition and the Florida lobby.
Would the US accept it if China, Russia, Iran, or Mexico kidnapped a US president, bombed American fishermen, seized American oil fields, and installed a puppet government because officials in Beijing or Tehran deemed it “in the national interest”?
I guess they’ve stopped pretending this was ever about democracy or drugs (the original bogus reason). It is now even being sold as the cure-all for a worsening recession and a pre-midterm buy-off, even as the affordability crisis worsens.
President Donald Trump and the neocons’ message seems to be: It’s fine to steal trillions from other countries, kidnap their leaders, kill civilians, and install puppet governments, for profit. We skipped the Cold War and went straight back to old-school imperialism.
As almost always, most of the windfall from this “deal” will go to the super rich. Gas prices keep climbing, but oil majors are hitting record highs on Wall Street. Chevron’s stock sits near an all-time high as it committed $7 billion to the new venture. Canada’s largest oil investor also hit an all-time high in the stock market the day of the news.
You may ask yourself, how have Democrats responded to all this depravity and barbarism? Well, would it shock you if I said most Democratic politicians have attacked Trump from the right, and legitimated his warmongering? Unfortunately, it probably won’t.
My home state’s senator, the ever-boring Tim Kaine (D-Va.), joined by Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), filed a war-powers resolution to block what they called an “illegal war” with Venezuela. “Illegal” is the operative word. Their objection is that Congress never voted on this, not that invading, bombing, and looting a sovereign country is morally wrong.
In a Tweet, quoting the right-wing oil-funded Wall Street Journal, Kaine added that Trump had “Invaded Venezuela, Removed the dictator Maduro but… Kept his VP in power While blocking opposition leader and Nobel laureate Maria Corina Machado from returning home and delaying all talk of elections,” ending on “So the US could control Venezuelan oil in violation of its constitution!”
He’s basically saying, “We want to coup foreign governments to put in a far-right puppet and take their oil, LEGALLY.” We don’t need Mickey Mouse anti-imperialists.
If Congress had passed a resolution approving all of it, the way it did for the wars in Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan, would that make it morally acceptable? Of course not. Torture under the Bush administration was legal, as was the US colonization of the Philippines, and even the Transatlantic Slave Trade, for that matter.
But for Democratic leadership, this was never about principle, or backing a truly progressive foreign policy vision; they just care about opposing Trump for its sake, and respecting the oh-so-perfect process. Though legislating morality is the purpose of law, legality and morality are not the same—and in this case, legal approval means nothing.
This is nothing new. Democrats have spent decades backing a hawkish, neoliberal Venezuela policy. During the 2002 coup that briefly ousted democratically elected president Hugo Chávez, then-Sen. Joe Biden dodged the question on television before pivoting, months later, to demand Washington “ratchet this up” against Chávez. By 2006 he was warning of an “axis of oil” led by Venezuela, echoing talking points from neoconservatives like Iraq War architect John Bolton.
Washington-aligned opposition forces also waged the 2002-2003 PDVSA oil lockout meant to strangle Chávez’s government economically. In 2019, when Trump anointed the unelected Juan Guaidó as president, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) recognized him, and most congressional Democrats stayed silent or lined up behind her.
Now, with the Pentagon routinely bombing fishing boats off Venezuela’s coast for months, which it says, without evidence, are narco boats, killing hundreds of civilians, Democrats’ loudest objection was, again, that Congress hadn’t authorized it.
They wanted to see “proof” of these being narco boats, rather than focusing on the more important point: Are we okay with just murdering any suspected criminal? This is the kind of logic that leads to right-wing politicians arguing to kill thieves and petty drug peddlers, like in Brazil and the Philippines.
Hillary Clinton, of all people, said more than many elected Democrats would. Now Democrats are lining up behind Delcy’s far-right replacement-in-waiting, María Corina Machado. Even the Central Intelligence Agency thought she was too extreme and alienating to be Maduro’s replacement. Yet, Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) met with Machado months before she shamefully won the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize (before giving it to Trump). Durbin later co-sponsored a resolution honoring her alongside far-right Republican Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas) and Rick Scott (Florida). Most Democrats have been backing her as the next president, calling her a “champion of democracy,” among other ridiculous stolen valor.
Machado, backed by the Bush administration and US intelligence agencies, backed the 2002 coup; relentlessly pushed for and defended the sanctions that starved her own country; wants to privatize PDVSA and hand away her country’s, in her own words, “trillions of dollars of natural resources” to the US on Donald Trump Jr.’s podcast; and has praised autocrats like Daniel Noboa, Javier Milei, and Nayib Bukele.
Machado is “completely aligned,” historian Greg Grandin told Democracy Now!, “with the most militarist and darkest face of US imperialism. She was the main force lobbying for the coup against Maduro, and has supported the boat strikes on fishermen, her own fellow citizens. She has been supported by neocon war criminals like John Bolton, Elliott Abrams, and Mike Pompeo—does that sound like someone the Democrats should be backing?
There are, still, some exceptions worth naming. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) has made the actual moral case, not just the legal one, calling Trump’s approach a return to “the era of gunboat diplomacy where might makes right” and saying plainly, “It’s not just that it’s strategically wrong. It’s morally wrong.” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) has also warned against letting “control of the world’s most powerful military” rest in one man’s hands, and called out Trump’s imperialism plainly.
Expanding the anti-war coalition, libertarian Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) has repeatedly co-sponsored bipartisan war-powers resolutions with Democrats Rep. Jim McGovern (Mass.) and Joaquin Castro (Texas), arguing, “This is not about drugs; this is about oil and regime change… our troops are not pawns to be risked for the profits of oil companies and investment bankers.” A real transpartisan anti-war bloc is possible, it just needs bold politicians to lead it.
We face an unprecedented fascist and imperialist threat. Washington is using its world-bending power to expand its territory, remove leaders who won’t play ball with US crony and intelligence interests, and turn sovereign countries into de facto American possessions. Venezuela, as even the often-disappointing New York Times has reported, has effectively become a US colony.
Mealy-mouthed centrist imperialism just won’t do the trick. A legal invasion is still an invasion. Pursuing “US interests” doesn’t give any official carte blanche to roam the world like rogue thugs. Would the US accept it if China, Russia, Iran, or Mexico kidnapped a US president, bombed American fishermen, seized American oil fields, and installed a puppet government because officials in Beijing or Tehran deemed it “in the national interest”? They might nuke them within the hour.
All empires end at some point. When it does, no power will grant the US the mercy it denied the countries it pillaged.
Democrats, and American officials generally, should recognize their precarious position in a world increasingly turning toward rivals like China, and finally build that coalition in earnest. Thankfully, there are now constituencies challenging Washington’s neo-imperial consensus, in academia, in think tanks, at the State Department, and even in Congress, that are growing too significant to ignore.
A view of a body as several people are killed and others are injured in an Israeli airstrike targeting a group of Palestinians on Al-Thawra Street in Gaza City, Gaza, Palestine, on September 3, 2026. [Ali Jadallah – Anadolu Agency]
The UN said on Thursday that 24 Palestinians, including four children and a woman, were killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza over five days, warning that civilians remain unsafe nearly a year after a ceasefire was announced.
The statement was issued by the UN Human Rights Office in the Occupied Palestinian Territory amid continued Israeli violations of a ceasefire that has been in effect since 10 October 2025.
“There is no safe place, nor safe person, in Gaza,” the office said, despite the passage of nearly a year since the ceasefire was announced.
It said “24 Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks between 28 Aug and 1 Sept, including four children and a woman, with 21 of whom were killed in air strikes.”
The office also said that operations carried out by Palestinian armed groups, reportedly backed by Israeli forces, were causing harm to civilians.
Preliminary information indicated that on 1 Sept, the Israeli military carried out a raid in the Al-Katiba area west of Gaza City, accompanied by Palestinian armed groups and under the cover of air strikes. The raid killed a three-year-old girl, a 13-year-old boy and a 31-year-old man, the office said.
The fourth victim was a 49-year-old woman who was killed while Israeli forces were arresting her husband, 51-year-old Muein al-Arbid.
The UN office said al-Arbid holds the rank of colonel in the Internal Security Service of the de facto authorities in Gaza.
![Iranian military personnel take part in an exercise titled "Smart Control of the Strait of Hormuz", launched by the Naval Forces of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, is being carried out in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz on February 16, 2026. [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps - Anadolu Agency]](https://i0.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/AA-20260216-40574970-40574965-IRAN_LAUNCHES_MILITARY_EXERCISE_IN_THE_STRAIT_OF_HORMUZ_AGAINST_SECURITY_THREATS.jpg?fit=920%2C613&ssl=1)
(Photo credit: AFP)
![A view of a body as several people are killed and others are injured in an Israeli airstrike targeting a group of Palestinians on Al-Thawra Street in Gaza City, Gaza, Palestine, on September 3, 2026. [Ali Jadallah - Anadolu Agency]](https://i0.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/AA-20260903-42378548-42378534-ISRAEL_LAUNCHES_DEADLY_AIRSTRIKE_ON_GAZA_DESPITE_CEASEFIRE-scaled-e1788509529592.jpg?fit=920%2C613&ssl=1)
