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Wednesday, March 11, 2026

The Republican Party as we knew it has ceased to exist
March 11, 2026
ALTERNET


Across Iran and the Caribbean, Donald Trump and his lickspittles delight in killing as if people were expendable scenery, not human beings with loved ones and families. Meanwhile, they ignore the death and destruction their fellow psychopath, Vladimir Putin, rains down on Ukraine every night.

India and America invite Iran to send an UNARMED ship to the Indian Ocean to participate in military exercises, and Trump and Whiskey Pete decided it would be fun to blow it out of the water, leaving more than 100 sailors miles from shore, desperate for a rescue. Instead of saving them, as international law requires, we simply left them to drown.

Whiskey Pete called it “quiet death.” In fact, there was a lot of screaming and sobbing, although the bombers couldn’t hear it from 20,000 feet any more than Hegseth could in his drunken haze.

Just like they blew up a boat in the Caribbean and then, when two fishermen survived clinging to a piece of debris and were desperately waving for help, came back with an illegally unmarked plane and blew them into bits of blood and gristle. Another clear violation of international and American law.

And then they bombed a girl’s school in Iran, killing at least 160 children, and then lied about it while also humble-bragging that “people will die” in their war of choice. As Stephen “Nosferatu” Miller gleefully announced after the little girls were slaughtered:

“What you’re seeing right now … is a military under President Trump’s leadership that is not fighting politically correct. That isn’t fighting with its hands tied behind its back.”

And Hegseth bragged:
“No stupid rules of engagement, no nation-building quagmire, no democracy-building exercise, no politically-correct wars.”


When he was asked about the six American soldiers who were killed because Putin is helping Iran target Americans in the region, his reply was disgusting:
“When a few drones get through or tragic things happen, it’s front-page news. I get it. The press only wants to make the president look bad.”

These are the ghouls who were delighted — thrilled — when masked ICE thugs in Minneapolis shot Renee Good in the face and Alex Pretti in the back. They then went on TV, giddy, and smeared them to the world. And killed dozens of people so far this year in their concentration camps while delighting in tearing children from their parents.

Russell Vought, the architect of Project 2025 who’s gleefully overseen the firing of hundreds of thousands of federal workers, shattering their lives and families while throwing the American government into crisis, apparently gets off on thinking of them crying themselves to sleep at night, worrying about getting thrown out on the street with their children because they can’t pay rent:
“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work, because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down … We want to put them in trauma.”

Yeah, trauma. It’s what today’s Republicans love, so long as it happens to other people. It’s their drug of choice.

Vought’s and Musk’s massive cuts to the federal workforce to pay for tax cuts for billionaires — in this case, laying off thousands from the National Weather Service — meant that families in Michigan had virtually no warning that tornadoes were bearing down on them this past weekend. Three people are now dead and a dozen more in the hospital clinging to life.

Of course they weren’t billionaires, so their lives don’t much matter, right? Like the millions who lost their health insurance when the Big Beautiful Bill redirected ACA subsidies and Medicaid revenue to tax cuts for the morbidly rich. Or the pregnant women across red states who are dying at more than twice the rate of women in blue states because of misogynistic GOP anti-abortion laws.

Trump, Hegseth, Vance, Miller, Leavitt, et al think this sort of thing makes them seem “macho” and “tough.” Nearly 90 percent of Republican voters agree with them.

What it really does is reveal them as psychopaths, the very human embodiment of evil. If they’d been born in a different time or place, they’d be Ted Bundys or Charles Mansons and their GOP followers would be “good Germans” watching with a smile and a salute as the boxcars roll by.

When those six U.S. service members were killed by Iranian retaliation, Trump refused to remove his $50 souvenir hat (available for sale on his website) or bow his head and shrugged, saying that “sadly, there will likely be more … That’s the way it is.”

Those soldiers are just suckers and losers, after all; they should have had the good sense of the Trump men to complain about bone spurs or simply flee the country to avoid the draft, like Grandpa Drumpf did when Germany kicked him out for refusing to serve.

“War Secretary” Hegseth — with his Crusader cross and Dius Vult slogan tattoos — brags that they’ve “only just begun” putting “narco‑terrorists at the bottom of the ocean,” with no interest in who is actually on board the boats they’re striking. After all, they’re not white people and they’re not rich.

This isn’t the language of leaders reluctantly using force as a last resort; it’s the rhetoric of psychopaths who see the rest of humanity as disposable, as dots in a video game, as objects whose death is entertainment, so long as their own luxury and power are secure.

Elon Musk throws a quarter-billion dollars into the 2024 election to put Trump in the White House and in turn is given an opportunity to kill over a million Black and brown children on the other side of the planet by gutting USAID. As Bill Gates noted, it was “the richest man in the world killing the poorest children.”

When a college Republican chat room devolved into a Nazi-loving, Black- and Hispanic-loathing festival of hate, conspiracy theories, and Hitler adoration last week it was just another Thursday. Like Musk giving the Nazi salute — twice — at a Trump rally.

My dad’s Republican Party — Eisenhower’s and Romney’s and McCain’s Republican Party — is long dead and gone, and in its place is a cult built on grievance, paranoia, white supremacy, and a love for authoritarian strongmen including Putin and Orbán.

They delight in death and destruction. They love the language of blood and gore. They’re monsters.
'Which one is it?' Fox News tires of Trump calling Iran conflict a 'war' and 'excursion'


David Edwards
March 11, 2026 
RAW STORY





U.S. President Donald Trump looks on during a visit at Thermo Fisher Scientific in Hebron, Kentucky, U.S., March 11, 2026. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy seemed to tire of President Donald Trump's doublespeak on the Iran conflict and pressed him to define the operation.

"And we did a little excursion. We had to take this little couple of weeks, a few weeks of excursion, but it's been incredible," Trump said while touring a factory in Ohio on Wednesday. "Our military is unbelievable, the job they're doing. I would say, to put it mildly, way ahead of schedule. We've knocked out their Navy, their military in it, all forms. We've knocked out just about everything there is, including their leadership, twice. We knocked out twice their leadership."

"Now they have a new group coming up," he continued. "Let's see what happens to them. But 47 bad years we suffered with them, not only us, the rest of the world. We're doing our jobs. So we had to take an excursion, but it's going well."

"You just said it is a little excursion, and you said it is a war," Doocy noted. "So which one is it?"

"It's both," Trump replied. "It's an excursion that will keep us out of a war. And the war is going to be, I mean, for them it's a war. For us, it's turned out to be easier than we thought."


"But think of it, they had thousands of missiles, 7, 8,000 missiles," he added. "We got many of them before they got to launch. They have drones all over the place. We got many now, we're knocking out the drone plants, as you know, going fast."




Journalists face restrictions, detention covering Mideast war


By AFP
March 10, 2026


Some of the tightest restrictions are in Iran and Israel
 - Copyright AFP/File YURIY DYACHYSHYN


Eric WISHART, with AFP's Middle East bureaus

Journalists covering the war in the Middle East are facing increasing restrictions and censorship imposed by governments and armed groups, with reporters being stopped and questioned or even detained, a survey of AFP bureau chiefs from the region showed.

Some of the tightest restrictions are in Iran and Israel, although Gulf monarchies, targets of unprecedented drone and missile attacks from Iran, have also imposed tighter controls.

Governments seem particularly concerned about images that disclose the location of missile and drone strikes, or that show projectiles being intercepted.

Obtaining independent information outside of official channels is particularly difficult in Iran, where media access to areas outside the capital Tehran is limited or non-existent.

AFP, one of the few international news outlets with a Tehran bureau, has been unable to visit the scene of the strike on a school in the southern town of Minab, where Iranian authorities say more than 150 people, many of them children, were killed.

With the Iranian internet barely functioning and security extremely tight, there is relatively little independent user generated content being posted from within Iran. This contrasts with the start of the war in Ukraine when journalists were allowed to travel freely and citizens posted images of Russian strikes.



– Tightly regulated –



To get an independent picture of what is happening outside of Tehran, AFP is relying heavily on interviews with people who have fled the country, including those who have crossed Iran’s borders into neighbouring countries, and on information provided by members of the Iranian diaspora with contacts inside the country.

With the phones barely functioning in Iran, a dedicated team based at AFP’s Paris headquarters has been using their contacts to speak to Iranians who have left the country and scour social media.

It is difficult for staff from the agency’s Tehran bureau to work freely on the ground, although the authorities are organising media visits to civilian sites that have been targeted, including homes, schools, sports stadiums and hospitals.

The Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, known as Ershad, regulates the press and usually must give its approval before coverage.

However, being given permission to work outside has not prevented journalists from being stopped and questioned by security forces, with the risk of detention.

Iranian state media is focusing on reporting civilian casualties and damage to civilian targets. It does not give military losses, although it does announce the launch of missiles and drones towards Israel and other targets in the region.

AFP’s Middle East photo chief Jewel Samad said Iran’s intelligence ministry warned: “If someone takes photos of sensitive places or damaged buildings and areas or records the locations of centres with a GPS device or mobile phone and marks the places, they could be an agent of the American-Zionist enemy.” It called on people to inform the authorities if they saw anyone doing that.

AFP’s Tehran team is managing to take images of strikes, mainly billowing smoke, from a distance. The bombing has also taken a physical and mental toll on journalists in Iran, whose sleep is constantly interrupted by nighttime air strikes.



– Forbidden –



Iran’s foe Israel has imposed strict military censorship of sensitive army operations for decades, but has tightened its restrictions as it faces strikes from Iran and the Iranian-backed Shia militia Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The army has banned live broadcasts of the Israeli skyline when alarms have been sounded to warn of incoming missiles or drones.

Images of air defences intercepting incoming missiles had been a major part of the coverage at the start of the war, and was a feature in the coverage of the June 2025 war between Israel and Iran.

However, this is now forbidden.

The army has also banned filming impacts at or near security sites, although it does allow coverage of civilian damage as long as exact locations are withheld.

In guidelines sent to media outlets in Israel, the army’s chief censor Brigadier General Netanel Kula listed a range of subjects and topics that could not be published without official clearance.

“Its primary purpose is to prevent assistance to the enemy during wartime, which constitutes a tangible threat to state security,” he said.

The guidelines bar journalists from disclosing information about military planning and preparations, air defences, and impact sites and locations.



– Lebanon and the Gulf –



In Israel’s northern neighbour Lebanon, the scene of heavy Israeli strikes in retaliation for Hezbollah missile and drone attacks, journalists are facing restrictions imposed by the pro-Iranian militia.

Reporters are forbidden by Hezbollah from freely accessing the group’s stronghold in Beirut’s southern suburbs, although the organisation does organise press trips.

Faced with unprecedented attacks from Iran, the Gulf monarchies have imposed tight restrictions on journalists.

“The operating environment for journalists is getting much harder in the Gulf generally,” said Talek Harris, AFP’s Dubai-based bureau chief for the Gulf and Yemen.

In Qatar, the interior ministry announced on Monday that more than 300 people had been arrested for sharing images and misleading information about Iranian attacks.

Those arrested, of various nationalities, “filmed and circulated video clips and published misleading information and rumours that could stir public opinion”, the ministry said.

The UAE attorney general Hamad Saif Al Shamsi has warned against photographing, publishing or circulating images that show damage where projectiles or shrapnel has fallen.

“Disseminating such materials or inaccurate information can incite public panic and create a false impression of the country’s actual situation,” Shamsi said.

The UAE authorities were also concerned about fake and AI-generated images being posted online, and Shamsi warned that those who do this will face being treated “without leniency”.

In Saudi Arabia, filming of energy installations and diplomatic areas — which have borne the brunt of Iranian attacks — was already highly restricted during normal times, with the war adding further pressure.

Saudi authorities regularly refuse to speak on the record outside of official statements, while the Royal Court’s media service has pressured reporters to disclose the identities of their anonymous sources.

Meanwhile, the Kuwaiti interior ministry said it had arrested two people who shared video clips that “mocked” the army, and a third person who used pictures of “banned terrorist organisations’ leaders on his profile”.

Bahrain’s interior ministry announced that four people had been arrested for filming and sharing footage of Iranian attacks and allegedly spreading false information, saying their actions amounted to “treason”.



– Threat of prosecution –



Jordan’s Media Commission has banned the publication of any videos or information related to the kingdom’s defence operations, warning that violators will face criminal prosecution.

In Iraq, AFP’s Baghdad bureau chief Roba El Husseini said authorities were only giving limited information about the conflict. Journalists are generally barred from filming around Baghdad International Airport and are not allowed access to border crossings to Iran.

In the Kurdish-controlled north of the country, authorities have said journalists cannot publish live videos of incoming missiles or rockets, reveal the time and location of an attack, or give details of any damage.

They must not shoot images around sensitive locations such as military and security sites, government buildings or diplomatic missions.

Journalists are also warned to be careful about sharing videos uploaded by citizens, as they might disclose sensitive positions or infrastructure.

On the US side, and unlike the 2003 Gulf War, the Pentagon has not invited international media such as AFP to join military embeds.

US and international news outlets including AFP, AP, Fox News and the New York Times were stripped of their Pentagon credentials late last year when they declined to sign new media rules.