Sticks and stones
Someone in the White House seems to have put the word out: Stop talking about a free and prosperous Iran, and start talking about pulverizing Iran until you can sift the rubble through a tennis racket. On Wednesday, Donald Trump vowed to bomb Iranian targets hard enough to send them “back to the Stone Ages where they belong.” Pete Hegseth also tweeted “back to the stone age,” a military cliché so lazy and flabby that if it were one of his generals, it would be frog-marched to an elliptical machine and forced to melt away its belly fat until its abs showed through. The messaging shift over the past couple of weeks reflects a change in plans, after Iran’s resistance proved more vigorous than expected. If Iran will not change its regime’s intentions, America will reduce it to resisting American imperial aggression with sticks and stones.
The Atlantic; April 3, 2026
A dispute about war crimes
The long-running war of words between George Clooney and the White House has ignited again after the Oscar-winning actor criticised Donald Trump’s threat to Iran that “a whole civilization will die tonight”.
On Wednesday (April 8), in a speech to 3,000 high school students in Cuneo, Italy, Clooney said the US president had committed a war crime with his threat.
“Some say Donald Trump is fine,” the 64-year-old told the students at an event organised by the Clooney Foundation for Justice. “But if anyone says he wants to end a civilization, that’s a war crime. You can still support the conservative point of view but there must be a line of decency, and we must not cross it.”
In response, the White House communications director, Steven Cheung, told the Independent: “The only person committing war crimes is George Clooney for his awful movies and terrible acting ability.”
The Guardian, 9 April 2026
