It’s the machine that some admire. It’s the machine some look up to.
It’s the machine many consider an ally.
It’s also the machine that mass murders children.
“By going to the morgue in person and seeing their children or mostly their clothes, their school bags, for example, their socks or shoes, they were able to identify them.
The incident was so bad that many of the bodies were dismembered. They found a hand, a leg, half of a body. This is how some of the remains were identified.”
I just watched an interview with the legendary journalist Jeremy Scahill where he described what he learned as he was interviewing people in Iran about the Minab school massacre. You might remember that it took place on the first day of the U.S.-Israeli illegal war on Iran, on February 28, 2026, killing 120 schoolchildren.
Even if you remember it (and a crime like this would be difficult to forget), I invite you to watch the interview. I also invite you to stay with the same grief and rage that Jeremy himself spoke with. To my mind, he spoke exactly how journalists with a moral compass should speak about a crime of this scale and depravity.
I also invite you to read the article he has co-authored.
But most importantly, I invite you never to forget what we are up against and why: because the U.S. war machine, a tool for U.S. imperialism, has been maiming, starving, and directly murdering children for decades, including in 2026.
That machine, operated by high-ranking psychopaths in power, swallows children.
It swallows their bodies.
It exterminates them.
It disposes of them.
Just as it has swallowed children in Vietnam, Laos, Nicaragua, or Iraq, we see what it does to the bodies of children these days.
Children’s bodies, in pieces, in plastic bags in Gaza, blown apart by U.S.-manufactured bombs.
Children’s bodies with cancer withering away in Cuba since the beginning of the complete oil embargo.
Children’s bodies in mass graves in Minab.
It cannot be clearer that this machine is operated by those for whom human lives, including children’s lives, are of no importance. Or, rather, those lives matter only as much as they can be used to manipulate, enforce, and violently achieve political ends.
The machine doesn’t discriminate – because it’s simply instructed not to. The drones, the bombs, the Tomahawk missiles swallow the bodies of different shapes and sizes. In Minab, the machine swallowed 120 children, spewing body parts for parents and first responders to pick up.
In the end, this ever-expanding machine is run by people. Machines can’t be held accountable. But people can.
And if we claim we care about the safety and wellbeing of children, and if we believe that children should be given an opportunity to grow up, then we must see the criminality of those in power; we must point to it, we must demand accountability and justice, and we must be as loud and unapologetic as possible.
There’s simply no other way forward in a world where this machine exists and does this to children. And if we choose not to speak out, it will swallow our humanity, too.
As always, stay strong, check on others, and keep your heart open.
❤️💔❤️
Justina
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