Leveraging Terrorism

The Utility of 'Terrorism' versus 'Warfare', from Ground Zero to Gaza

by Seth Meldon / March 28th, 2025

No person can calculate the greatness of the evil to transform the citizens of a peaceful, industrious republic into a band of furious soldiers; and yet the unhappy policy of nations is to cultivate a martial spirit that they may appear grand, powerful, and terrific, when in fact they are kindling flames that will eventually burn them up root and branch.

— David Low Dodge, American activist and theologian, War Inconsistent with the Religion of Jesus Christ (1815)

The term “terrorism” has long assumed a role in political discourse just as useful for its slippery definition as it is for its geopolitical utility. The lack of a single, authoritative definition of terrorism—political scientist Alex Schmid compiled over one hundred working definitions of the term for a research paper in 1984— allows for its strategic application by various actors.

Defining terrorism necessitates a comparison with other forms of political violence, such as war and guerrilla warfare. Schmid has offered the definition of terrorism as the “peacetime equivalent of war crimes”. While international conventions for the suppression of terrorism further define it as acts intended to cause death or serious injury to civilians or damage to infrastructure for political purposes, the UN general assembly in 1982 “reaffirm(ed) the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and foreign domination and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle.”

The practical impact of those who cause terror to a population is to induce fear in that population—the better defined the identity of a terrorist or group of terrorists, the better defined and constrained who the terrorized population will fear. Traditional warfare legally requires identifiable state or non-state belligerents. The ‘War on Terror’ framework cleverly circumvented this by naming a diffuse, vaguely defined adversary (‘Terror,’ often implicitly or explicitly linked to groups like Islamists or Arabs), allowing for broad military action without the constraints of targeting a specific, delineated enemy.

This approach to defining the enemy as existing in such undefined bounds has an inherent propensity to cause civilian casualties. Civilian casualties in counterterrorism operations often serve as a catalyst for radicalization by fostering grievances, delegitimizing governing authorities, and providing extremist groups with powerful recruitment narratives. This cycle of violence perpetuates instability, as affected populations increasingly turn to insurgent or terrorist organizations in response to perceived injustice and lack of security.

War on Terror

Our job was all about keeping the focus on national security and specifically the war on terrorism, which would become the central theme of the president’s reelection campaign.

— Scott McClellan, George W. Bush Press Secretary 2003-2006, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception (2008)

The day after the attacks on the twin towers on September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush, despite no knowledge of perpetrators’ identity, “The deliberate and deadly attacks which were carried out yesterday against our country were more than acts of terror. They were acts of war.”

Framing 9/11 as ‘war’ rather than a crime was crucial. It allowed the President to assume expanded Commander-in-Chief powers, bypass normal legal frameworks (domestic or international), and set precedents for future power grabs.

Being a war, the US could ignore the pretense of solving a crime. As the late author and professor, Graeme MacQueen points out in his book The 2001 Anthrax Deception:

The Taliban, who formed the de facto government in Afghanistan, indicated they would be willing to cooperate in a legal proceeding. When Osama Bin Laden [the head of Al Qaeda who operated out of Afghanistan] was accused of the deed by the U.S. government, they offered at various times to hand him over for trial if the U.S. would supply some evidence of his guilt. From the perspective of law this was an entirely reasonable request. No credible evidence had been presented. Bin Laden had not been formally charged with the crime by the FBI (nor, for that matter, would he ever be charged for the crime of 9/11).

Instead, the crime was principally investigated by starting with a known perpetrator. Secretary of state Condoleezza Rice explained in a 2002 interview with Frontline that the afternoon of September 11, the National Security Council met and—”Everybody assumed that it was Al Qaeda, because the operation looked like Al Qaeda, quacked like Al Qaeda, seemed like Al Qaeda.” Such ornithological certainty apparently settled the matter. The US declared war on Afghanistan on October 7.

In the same meeting late on September 11, according to journalist Bob Woodward, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld suggested, “Part of our response maybe should be attacking Iraq. It’s an opportunity.”

It was an opportunity not to be wasted for mere lack of evidence or relevance.

Indeed, the administration would speak into existence a close relationship between Al Qaeda and Iraq in spite of all evidence. Above all, this connection was based upon Iraq’s supposed implications in the Anthrax attacks of 2001.

The narrative connecting Iraq to terrorism, especially bio-terrorism, was actively shaped in the media during the Fall 2001 Anthrax scare (infecting 22, killing 5). Judith Miller, a high-profile New York Times reporter whose book “Germs: Biological Weapons and America’s Secret War” had just been published, played a notable role.

Her articles during this period would consistently lend credence to potential Iraqi links, for instance, by quoting experts who insisted the “Baghdad thesis… should not be dismissed as a desperate reach for a casus belli against Iraq” even as forensic evidence pointed squarely toward a domestic origin.

The actual evidence remained stubbornly uncooperative, but the War on Terror—helpfully abstract and geographically unbound—required no such inconvenient specifics.

Leading up to the 2003 Iraq invasion, she became a primary conduit for the administration’s claims and reports from questionable Iraqi exile groups alleging Saddam Hussein possessed active WMD programs. After the invasion failed to uncover such weapons, Miller’s reporting methods and reliance on compromised sources ultimately led the New York Times to concede in a May 2004 editor’s note that its coverage had been insufficiently critical and relied too heavily on sources pushing for war.

Amidst this fallout and further controversy regarding source protection, Miller resigned from the Times in 2005. Her work exemplifies how media can amplify official narratives, particularly concerning ambiguous threats like terrorism, with significant geopolitical consequences.

The Anthrax attacks led to a significant increase in homeland security measures and the passage of legislation like the USA PATRIOT Act, which broadened government surveillance and investigative powers in the name of counterterrorism.

Still absent any connection between anthrax and foreign actors, or between Iraq and Afghanistan, Bush announced in October 2002 he had run out of patience waiting for a rationale to go to war Lacking a smoking gun, Bush invoked the specter of one, warning Congress, “Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof – the smoking gun – that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”

There would be no evidence uncovered to provide the casus belli against Iraq or Afghanistan. But the war was on terror—an enemy as well defined as the evidence against it. The casualties were more quantifiable— according to the Cost of War Project, the war in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2021 killed about 176,000 individuals, with civilians representing at least a quarter of the count. During the 20 year intervention in Iraq between 2003 and 2023, casualties numbered about a quarter million, more than 2/3 of whom were civilians. [Some would call this an extremely low-ball estimate, as John Hopkins epidemiologists estimated in a 2006 Lancet paper that there were 655,000 excess mortalities — not casualties — due to war  in Iraq. In 2007, Opinion Research Business put the number at 1.2 million Iraqi deaths. — DV ed]

By framing a group or activity as terrorism, governments can invoke a different set of legal and strategic frameworks, allowing for the use of military force, which typically has fewer legal constraints and a higher threshold for intervention than domestic law enforcement. This shift in framing can lead to the militarization of issues that might be more appropriately addressed through other means.

Gaza

Defenders of Israeli actions frequently argue that the Palestinian education system incites hatred towards Jews and violence, denies Israel’s right to exist, and thus perpetuates the conflict:

Palestinians are taught to hate. They are educated to murder. They are told that martyrdom and Jihad is the only way.
— Gilad Erda, Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations (UN), Speech to the United Nations Security Council, June 27, 2023

By that date, at least 137 Palestinians in the West Bank alone had been killed in 2023 by Israel, compared with 24 Israelis.

In many cases, they are literally being taught to hate at the same time that they are being taught reading, writing, and arithmetic.

— Brian Mast, US Congressman for Florida, Speech during House Foreign Affairs Committee meeting, Oct 20, 2023

By that date, at least 3,785 Palestinians had been killed since October 7^th by Israel, compared with 1,400 Israelis.

We have known for decades that Palestinian children are taught from a young age to hate Israel and the Jewish people. Despite robust international discussion about these concerns, reports by nongovernmental organizations continue to show that Palestinian schoolchildren are being indoctrinated with deeply disturbing violent imagery.

— Mike Lawler, US Congressman for New York, Speech in support of House Motion, the “Peace and Tolerance in Palestinian Education Act”, November 1, 2023

By that date, at least 8,600 Palestinians had been killed since October 7^th by Israel, compared with 1,400 Israelis.

And then the second thing is to change the education so that a new generation of murders [sic] is not trained to be murderers.

— Elon Musk, Live chat with PM Netanyahu, November 23, 2023

By that date, at least 14,500 Palestinians had been killed since October 7 by Israel, compared with 1,400 Israelis.

While casualty counts escalated, international attention, amplified by various officials, often remained sharply focused on Palestinian textbooks. This narrative conveniently portrays Palestinian education as a primary driver, justifying Israeli security measures as necessary responses to ingrained animosity.

The Israeli government published a 5,000 word—36 of them being the word ‘terrorist’— report on this allegation at the end of 2024, focusing on the year 2023. In 2023 alone, Israel killed more than 20,000 Palestinians, primarily after the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023 in which 1,139 people in Israel were killed, 695 of them Israeli civilians.

Notably absent from the report’s analysis of Palestinian attitudes is any consideration of the potential impact of Israeli military actions and resultant casualties during the period examined.

The swift and widespread labeling of the October 7 attack as terrorism provided significant strategic utility for Israel. It offered a justification for Israel’s extensive military response in the Gaza Strip, framing it as a necessary act of self-defense against a recognized terrorist threat. This “terrorism” label helped to garner international sympathy and support for Israel’s military operations, portraying them as a legitimate response to an unprovoked act of terror.

The characterization of the subsequent conflict as a “war” initiated by a terrorist attack suggests a strategic move to invoke the laws and norms of warfare, allowing for a broader range of military actions against Hamas.

Designating groups as terrorist organizations creates the cognitive space for increased military action–often bypassing established legal or diplomatic friction—even when existing legal tools might be sufficient. The terrorism label shifts the perception of a threat from a criminal matter to an act of war, creating the justification for military intervention and the deployment of armed forces in situations that might otherwise be handled by law enforcement agencies.

The 2001 Anthrax attacks and the October 7 attack on Israel demonstrated notable similarities in the immediate and strategic exploitation of the “terrorism” label. Both events, despite their distinct contexts and perpetrators, were rapidly categorized as acts of terrorism by governments, media, and international organizations. This swift and widespread adoption of the “terrorism” label suggests a well-established and readily invoked framework for understanding attacks on civilians that are perceived to have political motivations.

The ambiguity inherent in the definition of terrorism allows for its flexible application, often expedited in the aftermath of civilian attacks, especially when these events occur within contexts of heightened security concerns or ongoing conflict. The immediate labeling of both the 2001 Anthrax attacks and the 2023 October 7 attack on Israel as terrorism demonstrates this pattern. In both instances, the label was swiftly adopted and subsequently utilized to justify expanded security measures and military responses, highlighting the utility of “terrorism” framing for broadening the scope of acceptable retaliation.

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Seth Meldon writes independently about issues in tech, intelligence, and international politics. He publishes his other work on Substack and dusts off old political cartoons on Instagram. He resides in Massachusetts. He can be reached at: sethmeldon@pm.me. Read other articles by Seth.

 

Creative Antagonism Unfolds the Folded Lies of the Profiteers of Destruction and Death

“All fashionable vices pass for virtue”

by Phil Rockstroh / March 28th, 2025

Frans Verbeeck – The Mocking of Human Follies (detail)

Super storms of wind, rain, and fire rage across the planet.

For eons, before us, wind scattered seeds and the world was fructified. Rain the great thirst of life and cleansed, warmed and illuminated.

Yet now the elements admonish us for humankind’s planet-poisoning folly. Men, shallow ones, claim, industry created civilization; the poetic voice of nature is now poised to reduce their noxious worldview to rubble and ash.

All too many among us insist this is normal. Nature rages, how can you be such a soul-banishing banality and yearning-for-pain fool?

Frans Verbeeck – The Mocking of Human Follies

“[A]ll fashionable vices pass for virtue.” —Jean-Baptiste Moliere (2015), “Tartuffe and Other Plays”

The most propitious help one can provide to a pathological culture is to act as a creative antagonist to its heart-diminishing, soul-sucking agenda.

A force within compels me to search over the horizon-line of the everyday, to seek out dialog with rivers and stars and poets on city stoops and philosophers on interstate buses. The silence of stones enchants. But also, within, blood and bone speak. As I age, I’m attempting to devote my hours to the greatness of existence by which I’m enlarged within, and laugh at what diminishes one’s love of life and thus renders a person small of heart.

The thoughts of the heart resonate through one’s being and create one’s character thus bestowing one with a sense of destiny and the things of the world with resonance and meaning; yet, we are induced by the present day, dry landscape of the commercial mind to embrace the contrived dreams of media grifters as our own. Thus the culture does not have a collective destiny, other than a continued decline into meaninglessness.

André Masson, There Is No Finished World

Despite the hagiography affixed to heroism, war, as a general rule, is an act of plunder. Withal, the plundering and attendant destruction of the earth by corporate greed should be regarded as an act of war. The profiteers of which should be in docks of war criminal tribunals.

In diametrical opposition, the life purpose of the artist/poet/human being, compelled by the instruction of the heart, is to remind those who have lapsed, by mindless reflex, into crackpot functioning within a sick, conformist society of the veritable existence of a raging flame and cooling breeze within that is their humanity. It is not to hypnotize their fellow humans to march into a cultural wasteland toward a mirage oasis of their comfort zones. How else could the societal mass remain so indifferent to the suffering of the living earth inflicted by greed?

All too many spend their days anesthetized by perpetual and love-lacking distractions. The contrived spectacle inflicts mortification on a worldview defined by the heart. Conversely, the heart thrives when in ardor and when in the thrall of resonant engagement. The shallow compulsions induced by the profiteers of corporate despotism are anathema to the soul of the living moment.

“But the loneliness, oh Architect Of Desire, the loneliness,” I have cried out. Yet, through it all, I have had visitations by ebullient guides who made suspension bridges constructed of woven ropes of living light across the darkest nights to sanctuaries devoted to renewal. There, I was instructed that acquiescence to the sanctified insanity of a death-enamored society would tear my heart to tatters, and I was called to resist conformist madness by the libido delivered by imagination. “Never be boring or they win,” I was counseled.

Salvador Dali: Liquid Desire

A social milieu should allow for the eros freighted within social engagement to be conducive to forging friendships, for coming upon mentors, and for grappling with antagonists…whereby one is destroyed by catastrophic victories and enlarged by propitious failures.

My heart has been wounded by cruelty; my mind buffeted by stupidity and banality; my soul sickened by cynicism. The sorrow of it all brought me to my knees. Yet when I stood and faced the world, I experienced a sense of renewal. I had endured. There was grace hidden in the ordeal.

Yet an abyss howls between the lexicon of one who has experienced renewal and those who profit by acting as exploiters and destroyers.

Although every individual arrives at a fate uniquely their own, soul-making is a collaborative effort. Destiny only appears to be a solo act. The most noxious insanity manifests in a culture, mirrored by its government, that promotes the lie of the mind: we are singular entities not interconnected to the natural order of living earth.

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! — T.S. Eliot, “The Hollow Men”

The Hollow Men, circa 1949, Anne Lyman Powers

Moreover, a lack of, even refusal to make resonant connections, creates a raging, nearly seemingly unendurable inner emptiness, both on a personal and cultural basis. Insofar as the citizenry of The Republic Of Emptydom, the solution is consumption of MORE. MORE and we must have it right NOW! Yet the elites at the top of the present system delude themselves that they can maintain an economy dependent on unfettered, infinite consumption while residing on a planet with finite resources. The extreme levels of denial, mendacity and manic activity evinced by the mindset is exhausting. Hence, the cultural-wide pandemic of depression will coalesce into governmental/societal collapse.

Trump, Musk et al. are the living-in-the-flesh emblems of a cultural delusion i.e., the remedy for inner hollowness is manic acquisition of MORE. To state the glaring and tragic in nature obvious, these two fools of fortune could not be MORE wrong. If we possess a world of technology but we lack a dominion ruled by the heart’s verities, we have become a threat to ourselves and a scourge to the earth.

Greedheads and technocrats are driven by a convenient delusion: the world belongs to them. When they belong to the earth. Thus they are obliged to be in its service and not manically devoted to the exploitation of earth’s bounty…that was not intended to be theirs in the first place. With that in mind, we discover the reason they lie with such obsession-borne force.

Regarding the rest of us, we are obliged: “to undo the folded lie”. The complete verse:

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die. — September 1, 1939, W. H. Auden

Joseph’s Bloody Coat Brought to Jacob, 1630, Diego Velázquez

Captured by cultural lies, we die, and drift through the world as a ghost of oneself. Historical lies. Familiar lies. Societal and governmental lies…once accepted take up residence in the psyche and kill our better selves. Henceforth, one shuffles through the living world as a shade.

The fantasy of lost “greatness” haunts the mind of the MAGA nation. Mania persists as true vitality is sapped. The old, bloodless beliefs do not course with libido nor love. One can hardly engage in dialog with MAGA true believers without angry ghosts surging from their mouths. While the Democrats have locked themselves within a collapsing-from-corruption House Of Usher.

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red […]
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like wither’d leaves to quicken a new birth!’ — Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Ode to the West Wind”

When belief systems burn to ash, a phoenix rises. Life beckons us to return to the realm of the living.

Take in the beauty and terror of existence. Nature rises as an inexorable force. Notice: Nature persists by renewal. Allow in its vitality. Ghosts dissipate with the dawn. The architecture of a new day stands within.

All things fall and are built again,
And those that build them again are gay — William Butler Yeats, Lapis Lazuli

Fire, Adriaen Collaert after Maerten de Vos, 1580-1584.

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Phil Rockstroh is a poet, lyricist, and essayist. His poems, short fiction, poetry and essays have been published in numerous print publications and anthologies; his political essays have been widely posted on the progressive/left side of the internet. Visit and subscribe to  Phil’s Substack newsletter at https://substack.com/@philrockstroh. Read other articles by Phil.

Trump’s Star Wars Revival: The Golden Dome Antimissile Fantasy

by Binoy Kampmark / March 25th, 2025

Bad ideas do not necessarily die; they retire to museums of failure and folly, awaiting to be revived by the next proponent who should know better. The Iron Dome shield vision of US President Donald Trump, intended to intercept and destroy incoming missiles and other malicious aerial objects, seems much like a previous dotty one advanced by President Ronald Reagan, known rather blandly as the Strategic Defense Initiative.

In its current iteration, it is inspired by the Israeli “Iron Dome” multilayered defensive shield, a matter that raised an immediate problem, given the trademark ownership of the name by the Israeli firm Rafael Advanced Defense Systems. Given the current administration’s obsession with all things golden, the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) has dubbed this revived endeavour “Golden Dome for America”. The renaming was noted in a February 24 amendment to request for information from industry. Much sniggering is surely in order at, not only the name itself, but the stumbling.

Reagan, even as he began suffering amnesiac decline, believed that the United States could be protected by a shield against any attack by Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles. The technology intended for that endeavour, much of it requiring a space component, was thin on research and non-existent in development. The envisaged use of laser weapons from space and terrestrial components drew much derision: the President had evidently been too engrossed by the Star Wars films of George Lucas.

The source for this latest initiative (“deploying and maintaining a next-generation missile defense shield”) is an executive order signed on January 27 titled “The Iron Dome for America”. (That was before the metallurgical change of name.) The order asserts from the outset that “The threat of attack by ballistic, hypersonic and cruise missiles and other advanced aerial attacks remains the most catastrophic threat facing the United States.” It acknowledges Reagan’s SDI but strikes a note of disappointment at its cancellation “before its goal could be realized.” Progress on such a system since the US withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002 had been confined to “limited homeland defense” efforts that “remained only to stay ahead of rogue-nation threats and accidental or unauthorized missile launches.”

The Secretary of Defense is also directed, within 60 days, to submit to Trump “a reference architecture, capabilities-based requirements, and an implementation plan for the next-generation missile defense shield.” Such a shield would defend the US from “ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles and the other next-generation attacks from peer, near-peer and rogue adversaries.” Among some of the plans are the accelerated deployment of a hypersonic and ballistic tracking space sensor layer; development and deployment of proliferated space-based interceptors and the development and deployment of capabilities that will neutralise missile assaults “prior to launch and in the boost phase”.

The original SDI was heavy on the intended development and use of energy weapons, lasers being foremost among them. But even after four decades, US technological prowess remains unable to deploy such weapons of sufficient power and accuracy to eliminate drones or missiles. The Israelis claim to have overcome this problem with their Iron Beam high energy laser weapon system, which should see deployment later this year. For that reason, Lockheed Martin has partnered with Israeli firm Rafael to bring that technology into the US arsenal.

To date, Steven J. Morani, currently discharging duties as undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, has given little away about the herculean labours that have been set. “Consistent with protecting the homeland and per President Trump’s [executive order],” he told the McAleese Defense Programs Conference in Washington earlier this month, “we’re working with the industrial base and [through] supply chain challenges associated with standing up the Golden Dome.” He admitted that this was “like the monster systems engineering problem” made even more difficult by being “the monster integration problem”.

The list of demerits to Golden Dome are many, and Morani alludes to them. For one, the Israeli Iron Dome operates across much smaller territory, not a continent. The sheer scale of any defence shield to protect such a vast swathe of land would be, not merely from a practical point but a budgetary one, absurd. A space-based interceptor system, a point that echoes Reagan’s Star Wars fantasy, would require thousands of units to successfully intercept one hefty ballistic missile. Todd Harrison of the American Enterprise Institute has offered a calculation: a system of 1,900 satellites would cost somewhere between US$11 and US$27 billion to develop, build and launch.

A study for Defence and Peace Economics published this year goes further. The authors argue that, even if the US had appropriate ballistic missile defence technology and a sufficient number of interceptors to be distributed in a two-layer defence with an efficiency return of 90%, 8 times more would have to be spent than the attacker for a bill between US$60 and US$500 billion. If it was assumed that individual interceptor effectiveness was a mere 50%, and the system could not discriminate against decoys, the cost would be 70 times more, with a staggering bill of US$430 billion to US$5.3 trillion.

The most telling flaw in Golden Dome is one long identified, certainly by the more sober members of the establishment, in the annals of defence. “The fundamental problem with any plan for a national missile defense system against nuclear attack,” writes Xiaodon Liang in an Arms Control Association issues brief, “is that cost-exchange ratios favor the offense and US adversaries can always choose to build up or diversify their strategic forces to overwhelm a potential shield.” As Liang goes on to remark, the missile shield fantasy defies a cardinal rule of strategic competition: “the enemy always gets a vote.”

Monster system; monstrous integration issues. Confusion with the name and trademark problems. Strategically misguided, even foolish. Golden Dome, it would seem, is already being steadied for a swallow dive.

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Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com. Read other articles by Binoy.

CODEPINK Statement Regarding The Recent Defamation of Peace Activists and Unconstitutional Attacks on Students

by Codepink / March 28th, 2025

Trump Administration allies, along with their bipartisan co-conspirators in Congress, are actively undermining and rendering useless the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. This week alone, they have repeatedly defamed our women’s peace organization, claiming we are funded by or take orders from foreign governments or groups like Hamas. The false accusations, given under oath, that claim CODEPINK and other organizations are funded by a foreign government are laying the groundwork for shutting down civil society organizations – and not just ours. CODEPINK is in Congress every single day, calling for peace, elevating the popular demands of the American people, and educating the public on war and militarism. Because we are loud and effective, they are attacking and trying to silence us with smears and intimidation. We do not believe they will stop at us.

These attacks come as the Trump administration target students who’ve spoken out against the genocide in Gaza. Secretary Rubio and President Trump are extrajudicially revoking student visas and attempting to deport any student they wish, without any due process. Their crime? Disagreeing with the U.S. government’s support for genocide. Students are being kidnapped by masked officers in broad daylight – that should sound the alarm for every American who might openly disagree with President Trump.

These gestapo-like tactics and McCarthyist smears of peace organizations are leading the country down a dark path of unchecked fascism and dictatorship. Between the intimidation of peace groups and blatant attacks on students,every person in the U.S. should stand against this repression – or prepare to face it themselves down the line. Individuals may not like CODEPINK or our messaging around Palestine or China, but that doesn’t exclude them from repression if they let the Trump Administration set this precedent. If they disagree with him on anything at all, they may face the same smears and repression we have. After the groundwork is laid, it’s only a matter of time.

To be clear: CODEPINK is not funded by any foreign government. Protesting war and genocide is not supporting terrorism. Not only are they lying, they are defying the U.S. Constitution to muzzle the burgeoning student movement.

The slanderous statements made by elected officials can have immediate and dangerous consequences for those being lied about, as well as their friends and family. It appears that the United States government is not only committed to waging war abroad, but it is also intent on waging war domestically against U.S. citizens and non-citizens, both of which are also protected by the Constitution.

It is not a coincidence that both Senator Cotton and Secretary Rubio referred to peace activists and students as “lunatics” – they have clearly received their talking points. However, what is actual lunacy is how those elected to serve the American people are ignoring the fact that a majority of Americans do now want wars or war crimes being carried out in our name.

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Codepink is a women-led grassroots organization working to end U.S. wars and militarism, support peace and human rights initiatives, and redirect our tax dollars into healthcare, education, green jobs and other life-affirming programs. Read other articles by Codepink, or visit Codepink's website.

Senate Intelligence Committee Hearing on Global Threats

Turns into a McCarthy Hearing of Lies about CODEPINK:

 Women for Peace

by Ann Wright / March 26th, 2025

Yesterday, in the US Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on global threats with the five heads of intelligence agencies of the US government, Senator Tom Cotton, accused on national TV a group I have worked with for over 20 years, CODEPINK: Women for Peace, of being funded by the Communist Party of China.

During the hearing CODEPINK activist Tighe Barry stood up following the presentation of the Director of National Security Tulsi Gabbard’s lengthy statement about global threats to US national security and yelled ‘Stop Funding Israel,’ since neither Intelligence Committee Chair Tom Cotton and Vice Chair Mark Warner had mentioned Israel in their opening statement nor  had Gabbard mentioned the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza in her statement either.

As Capitol police were taking Barry out of the hearing room, in the horrific style of the McCarthy hearings in the 1950s, Cotton maliciously said that Barry was a “CODEPINK lunatic that was funded by the Communist party of China.”  Cotton then said if anyone had something to say to do so.

Refusing to buckle or be intimidated by Cotton’s lies about the funding of CODEPINK, I stood up and yelled, “I’m a retired Army Colonel and former diplomat. I work with CODEPINK, and it is not funded by Communist China.”  I too was hauled out of the hearing room by Capitol police and arrested.

After I was taken out of the hearing room, Cotton libelously continued his McCarty lie, “The fact that Communist China funds CODEPINK which interrupts a hearing about Israel illustrates Director Gabbard’s point that China, Russia, Iran and North Korea are working together in greater concert than they ever had before.”

Senator Cotton does not appreciate the responsibility he has in his one-month-old elevation to the chair of the Senate’s intelligence committee.

Senator Cotton does not seem to care that his untruthful statements in a US Congressional hearing aired around the world can have immediate and dangerous consequences for those he lies about, their friends and family.  In today’s polarized political environment we know that the words of senior leaders can rile supporters into frenzies as we saw on January 6, 2021 with President Trump’s loyal supporters injuring many Capitol police and destroying parts of the nation’s capitol building in their attempt to stop the Presidential election proceedings.

CODEPINK members have been challenging in the US Congress the war policies of five presidential administrations, beginning in 2001 with the Bush wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, long before Senator Cotton was elected as a US Senator in 2014.  We have been in the US Senate offices and halls twice as long as he has. We have nonviolently protested the war policies of Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden and now Trump again.

After getting out of the Capitol Hill police station, a CODEPINK delegation went to Senator Cotton’s office in the Russell Senate Office building and made a complaint to this office staff.

We are also submitting a complaint to the Senate Ethics Committee for the untrue and libelous statements Senator Cotton made in the hearing.

The abduction and deportation of international students who joined protests of U.S. complicity in the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and ethnic cleansing of the West Bank, the scathing treatment of visitors who have wanted to enter our country and now the McCarthy intimidating tactics used by Senator Cotton in a Senate intelligence committee hearing of telling lies about individuals and organizations that challenge U.S. government politics, particularly its complicity in the Israeli genocide of Gaza must be called out and pushed back against.

And we must push back against US Senators who actually receive funding from front groups for other countries.  Senator Cotton has received $1,197,989 from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) to advocate for the genocidal policies of the State of Israel.

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Ann Wright served 29 years in the U.S. Army/Army Reserves and retired as a Colonel.  She was a U.S. diplomat for 16 years and served in the U.S. Embassies in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia.  She resigned from the U.S. Department of State in March 2003 in opposition to the U.S. war on Iraq.  She is the co-author of Dissent: Voices of Conscience. Read other articles by Ann.

 

The Woman Who Defied an Empire

Kimpa Vita, A Prophetic Woman

by Friends of the Congo / March 27th, 2025

To this day, she’s remembered as one of the first anti-colonial revolutionaries in Africa. After you’ve read this story of Kimpa Vita, you’ll never forget her name, her commitment to her people, and her uncompromising valor.

Kimpa Vita was just a teenager when she began to challenge the powers that ruled her world.

Born in 1684 in the Kingdom of Kongo, Kimpa Vita grew up in the growing shadow of colonial devastation. Once a mighty African kingdom, the Kongo her people once knew had been torn apart by European encroachment and the transatlantic slave trade. Portuguese invaders had fueled civil wars, pitted leaders against their own people, and turned the kingdom into a battleground.

But Kimpa Vita saw a different future.

Trained in Kongo’s traditional spiritual practices as a healer and a medium, Kimpa Vita once fell gravely ill; and as she laid on her would-be death bed, she experienced a profound vision: a unified Kongo, free from war and foreign control.

When she recovered from her illness, she declared herself a prophet and founded the Antonian Movement—a powerful religious and political uprising. Kimpa Vita preached that Kongo’s people were divinely chosen, that Christ was not a European figure but an African one, and that the kingdom must cast off European rule and reclaim its sovereignty to preserve its future and the security of its people.

Through her teachings, Kimpa Vita reinterpreted Christianity from an African perspective, rejecting the European missionaries’ version of the faith that justified slavery and European domination.

Her message spread like wildfire. Within a few short years, thousands followed her call, including soldiers and exiled leaders. She led her followers back to their abandoned capital, São Salvador, and began rebuilding what the Portuguese had destroyed. But her defiance came at a cost. Branded a heretic and a rebel by European Catholic authorities, she was captured by Kongo’s ruling elite—who were aligned with the Portuguese—and burned at the stake in 1706.

She was just 22 years old.

Her execution was meant to extinguish her movement, but her legacy endured. Over three centuries later, the struggle she embodied continues. Today, Congolese women lead movements for justice, self-determination, and liberation from the modern forces of imperialism—corporations, foreign powers and local elites that still exploit Congo’s seemingly inexhaustible wealth.

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The Friends of the Congo (FOTC) is a 501 (c) 3 tax-exempt advocacy organization based in Washington, DC. The FOTC was established at the behest of Congolese human rights and grassroots institutions in 2004, to work together to bring about peaceful and lasting change in the Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly Zaire. FOTC can be contacted at: info@friendsofthecongo.org. Read other articles by Friends, or visit Friends's website.

Exclusive-How Syria's sectarian violence spread to capital, terrorizing Alawites

Maya Gebeily, Timour Azhari and Feras Dalatey
Thu, March 27, 2025

AP 

A wall painted with a damaged drawing of ousted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is pictured in the al-Qadam neighbourhood' in Damascus

A man riding a motorcycle passes next to a wall painted in the colours of the new Syrian flag and a Syrian flag under Bashar al-Assad rule

Yaser Farhan, spokesperson of the Syrian investigation committee responsible for investigating the violence on the Syrian coast, holds a press conference

A man sits in front of a wall painted with a Syrian flag under Bashar al-Assad's rule in an al-Qadam neighbourhood in Damascus

DAMASCUS (Reuters) -Close to midnight on March 6, as a wave of sectarian killings began in western Syria, masked men stormed the homes of Alawite families in the capital Damascus and detained more than two dozen unarmed men, witnesses said.

Those taken from the neighbourhood of al-Qadam included a retired teacher, an engineering student and a mechanic, all of them Alawite - the minority sect of toppled leader Bashar al-Assad.

A group of Alawites loyal to Assad had launched a fledgling insurgency hours earlier in coastal areas, some 200 miles (320 km) to the northwest. That unleashed a spree of revenge killings there that left hundreds of Alawites dead.

Syria's interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa told Reuters he dispatched his forces the next day to halt the violence on the coast but that some fighters who flooded the region to crush the uprising did so without defence ministry authorisation.

Amid fears of wider sectarian conflict across Syria, Sharaa's government took pains to emphasize in the wake of the violence that the killings were geographically limited. It named a fact-finding committee to investigate "the events on the coast".

According to accounts from 13 witnesses in Damascus, however, the sectarian violence spread to the southern edges of Syria's capital, a few kilometres from the presidential palace. The details of the alleged raids, kidnappings and killings have not been previously reported.

"Any Alawite home, they knocked the door down and took the men from inside," said one resident, whose relative, 48-year-old telecoms engineer Ihsan Zeidan, was taken by masked men in the early hours of March 7.

"They took him purely because he's Alawite."

All the witnesses who spoke to Reuters requested anonymity out of fear of reprisals.

The neighbourhood of al-Qadam is well-known to be home to many Alawite families. In total, the witnesses said, at least 25 men were taken. At least 12 of them were later confirmed dead, according to relatives and neighbours, who said they either saw photographs of the bodies or found them dead nearby.

Four of the witnesses said some of the armed men who came to al-Qadam identified themselves as members of General Security Service (GSS), a new Syrian agency comprising former rebels.

A spokesperson for the interior ministry, under which the GSS operates, told Reuters the force "did not target Alawites directly. The security forces are confiscating weapons from all sects."

The spokesperson did not respond to further questions, including why unarmed men were allegedly taken in these operations.

Yasser Farhan, spokesman for the committee investigating the sectarian violence, said its work has been geographically limited to the coast, so it had not investigated cases in al-Qadam. "But there may be deliberations within the committee at a later time to expand our work," he told Reuters.

Alawites comprise around 10% of Syria's population, concentrated in the coastal heartlands of Latakia and Tartus. Thousands of Alawite families have also lived in Damascus for decades, and in provincial cities such as Homs and Hama.

CYCLE OF IMPUNITY

Human Rights Watch researcher Hiba Zayadin called for a thorough investigation of the alleged raids, in response to Reuters' reporting.

"Families deserve answers, and the authorities must ensure that those responsible are held accountable, no matter their affiliation," she said. "Until that happens, the cycle of violence and impunity will continue."

Four of the men confirmed dead in Damascus were from the same extended family, according to a relative who escaped the raid by hiding on an upper floor with the family's young children.

They were Mohsen Mahmoud Badran, 77, Fadi Mohsen Badran, 41, Ayham Hussein Badran, a 40-year-old born with two fingers on his right hand, a birth defect that disqualified him from army service, and their brother-in-law Firas Mohammad Maarouf, 45.

Relatives visited the Mujtahid Hospital in central Damascus in search of their bodies but staff denied them access to the morgue and referred them to the GSS branch in al-Qadam, the witness said.

An official there showed them photographs on a phone of all four men, dead. No cause of death was given and none could be ascertained from the images, the relative said.

The official told the family to collect the bodies from the Mujtahid hospital but staff there denied they had them.

"We haven't been able to find them, and we're too scared to ask anyone," the relative told Reuters.

Mohammad Halbouni, Mujtahid Hospital's director, told Reuters that any bodies from al-Qadam were taken directly to the forensic medicine department next door. Staff there said they had no information to share.

The interior ministry spokesperson did not respond to questions about whether the forces at al-Qadam station were linked to the deaths.

Sharaa has announced the dissolution of all rebel groups and their planned integration into Syria's restructured defence ministry. But full command-and-control over the various, sometimes rival, factions remains elusive.

Four other men seized the same night were found in an orchard near al-Qadam, with gunshot wounds indicating they were killed "execution-style," according to a second resident, who told Reuters the family swiftly buried the bodies.

Reuters was unable to confirm independently the details of her account.

Another set of four men were confirmed dead by their relatives, who received photographs of the bodies on messaging platform WhatsApp on Thursday, nearly three weeks after they were taken.

The pictures, reviewed by Reuters, depicted four men on the ground with blood and bruises on their faces. One of them was identified by the relative as Samer Asaad, a 45-year-old with a mental handicap who was taken on the night of March 6.

Most of those seized remain missing.

They include university student Ali Rustom, 25, and his father Tamim Rustom, a 65-year-old retired maths teacher, two relatives told Reuters. "We have no proof, no bodies, no information," one said.

'ALL I WANT IS TO LEAVE'

A relative of Rabih Aqel, a mechanic, said his family had inquired at the local police station and other security agencies but were told they had no information on Aqel's whereabouts.

She drew parallels with forced disappearances under Assad, when thousands vanished into a labyrinthine prison system. In many cases, families would learn years later their relatives had died in detention.

She and the other witnesses said they have not been approached by the fact-finding committee.

Farhan, the committee spokesman, told reporters on Tuesday its members had interviewed witnesses in several coastal districts and had two more cities there to visit.

All the witnesses said they felt under pressure to leave al-Qadam specifically because they were Alawite. Some already had.

One young resident said armed men had come to his home several times in the weeks after Assad's ouster, demanding proof the family owned the house and had not been affiliated to the ousted Assad family.

He and his family have since fled, asking Sunni Muslim neighbours to look after their home.

Others said they had stopped going to work or were only moving around in the daytime to avoid possible arrest.

Another woman in her sixties said she was looking to sell her house in al-Qadam because of the risks her husband or sons would be taken. "After what happened, all I want is to leave the area."

(Reporting by Maya Gebeily, Timour Azhari and Feras Dalatey; Editing by Daniel Flynn)