“Executive Orders”

“Empires collapse. Gang leaders

Are strutting about like statesmen. The peoples

Can no longer be seen under all those armaments.

So the future lies in darkness and the forces of right

Are weak.” Bertolt Brecht (1941-1947)

 

1

Their war will soon come

like rain falls for all of us

weary and hungry to be

free from fear

 

a war as subtle and endless

as a deluge in

a murderous monsoon

 

from small greedy steps

giant armies plague and poison

our soft-sweet planet.

 

2

The names and numbers of our dead,

we see, are now likewise superfluous,

swiftly cut-down and soon erased

 

uncountable, too, as if we had brought

to birth

only an excess of bone and brains

 

and always the rotting guts spread

like fertiliser, faceless and serene

on the Empire’s brutal battlefields.

 

3

i still cannot shut my eyes at night

at the terror of it,

the ruthless noise of its wretched

awakenings, its crudity, its lies

 

and the smell of hypocrisy

that should sicken even the sadistic

stomachs of these naked emperors and

their mass murder-machines.

 

Enough said…

 

4

…for now we live in a time where

even the pen has been beaten into a sword,

and this paper is now digitally transformed

into more proclamations of mass destruction

 

and see, one last deadly plague descend,

as this fool, he wields his dumb ‘sharpie”

and a whole world will soon collapse under

an army of Orders

 

cities under siege by bureaucrats

and bombs, by bullies and buffoons

with their armada of armed threats

and false promises

 

and always, and everywhere

the silenced cry of their exterminated victims…

 

5

Such power…in

the hands of hoodlums!

 

as if these masked and demented delinquents,

these well-armed, well-dressed and dangerous thugs,

these crooks, criminals and con-men

had not accomplished or stolen enough

 

on their monotonous and marauding march

across the inhuman yet still faceless face

of our own bloody History.

 

séamas carraher

7, february – 4, march, 2026

 

Image

President Donald Trump signing executive orders (January 20, 2025)

“Trump holding up a presidential proclamation he signed on the first day of his second term in office, January 20, 2025. The document Trump is holding is numbered Proclamation 10887 and titled “Granting Pardons and Commutation of Sentences for Certain Offenses Relating to the Events at or Near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.” It lists the names of 14 people whose sentences are to be commuted and orders a blanket pardon for all others convicted of crimes related to that event. It also instructs the Department of Justice to cease any ongoing prosecutions of January 6-relayed offenses.”

Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

 

Note

How did Trump order Iran attack without Congress approval? Here’s what the law says

Gulf News – March 3, 2026

 

Quote

On the Suicide of the Refugee WB

 

I’m told you raised your hand against yourself

Anticipating the butcher.

After eight years in exile, observing the rise of the enemy

Then at last, brought up against an impassable frontier

You passed, they say, a passable one.

Empires collapse. Gang leaders

Are strutting about like statesmen. The peoples

Can no longer be seen under all those armaments.

So the future lies in darkness and the forces of right

Are weak. All this was plain to you

When you destroyed a torturable body.

 

Bertolt Brecht, from: American Poems 1941-1947 in Bertolt Brecht Poems – Edited by John Willett and Ralph Manheim – First published in 1976, Eyre Methuen Ltd.

 

References (& Context)

List of executive orders in the second Trump presidency

“On his first day in office, Trump issued 26 executive orders, the most of any president on their first day in office. The executive orders rescinded many of the previous administration’s executive actions,

[1] began the withdrawal process from the World Health Organization and Paris Agreement,

[2] rolled back federal recognition of gender identity,

[3] founded the Department of Government Efficiency, reaffirmed the existing constitutional right to free speech, reversed the withdrawal of Cuba’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism, reversed sanctions on Israeli settlers, rolled back policy on artificial intelligence, reversed the Family Reunification Task Force,

[4] pardoned over 1,500 January 6 rioters,

[5][6] designated Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, attempted to end birthright citizenship for new children of illegal immigrants and immigrants legally but temporarily present in the U.S. (such as those on student, work, or tourist visas), delayed the government’s ban of TikTok, and declared a national emergency on the southern border, triggering the deployment of the U.S. military…”

Wikipedia – Donald Trump’s Eecutive Orders and actions – 2025-2026

“As of February 19, 2026, President Donald Trump (R) had signed 241 executive orders, 57 memoranda, and 127 proclamations in his second presidential term, which began on January 20, 2025.”

Ballotpedia – Donald Trump’s executive orders and actions – 2025-2026

Federal Register: 2026 Donald J. Trump Executive Orders view all Presidential Documents

US Government – Archives – Executive Orders

 

References (Text)

as this fool, he raises his ‘sharpie”

See: USA Today – “Trump & Sharpies”

 

Thanks, also, to Osip Mandelstam (1891 –1938) one of Josef Stalin’s many victims, probably because of the poem – The Stalin Epigram  (“The Kremlin Highlander” )– written in November, 1933

 

“We are living, but can’t feel the land where we stay,

More than ten steps away you can’t hear what we say.

But if people would talk on occasion,

They should mention the Kremlin Caucasian.

 

His thick fingers are bulky and fat like live-baits,

And his accurate words are as heavy as weights.

Cucaracha’s moustaches are screaming,

And his boot-tops are shining and gleaming.

 

But around him a crowd of thin-necked henchmen,

And he plays with the services of these half-men.

Some are whistling, some meowing, some sniffing,

He’s alone booming, poking and whiffing.

 

He is forging his rules and decrees like horseshoes –

 Into groins, into foreheads, in eyes, and eyebrows.

 Every killing for him is delight,

And Ossetian torso is wide.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalin_Epigram

 

and a whole world will soon collapse under

an army of Orders

“The U.S. launched strikes on Iran without Congress’ approval because Trump said the attacks are military actions, not an act of war.

“Congress has the sole power to declare war under the Constitution. But the president can authorize military actions through their power as commander in chief, according to the War Powers Act of 1973. Even though the U.S. carried out major military strikes against Iran, the United States has not formally declared war…”

USA Today

 

countless, too, as if we had brought to birth

only an excess of bone and brains

“As of 10 February 2026, at least 75,196 people (73,158+ Palestinians  and 2,038+ Israelis) have been reported killed in the Gaza war according to the Gaza Health Ministry (GHM) and Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, including 248 journalists and media workers…120 academics, and over 224 humanitarian aid workers, a number that includes 179 employees of UNRWA. A study by OHCHR, which verified fatalities from three independent sources, found that 70% of the Palestinians killed in residential buildings or similar housing were women and children.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Gaza_war

Also:

https://www.axios.com/2024/11/08/un-report-70-gaza-dead

Also:

In Gaza, One Man Is Searching for the Remains of His Family With a Flour Sifter

“A week later, on February 4, Israel unexpectedly handed over the bodies of 54 Palestinians along with 66 boxes of body parts through the Red Cross. The boxes contained only skulls and bones, while some of the returned bodies showed signs of severe mutilation, including severed hands and abdomens surgically opened and subsequently re-stitched, according to Dr Mohammed Abu Salmiya, director of Al-Shifa, in an interview on Al-Araby TV.”

Allam Abu Wadi,  at Al-Shifa Hospital, on February 4] continued:

“Over the past two years, we went to Nasser Hospital, we went to Al-Aqsa, and today we came here to Al-Shifa. We are trying as much as we can just to identify the bodies of our children. But there is no evidence—any evidence, anything—to prove that these are our children. These are decomposed remains, decomposed organs. There is nothing.”

In Gaza, One Man Is Searching for the Remains of His Family With a Flour Sifter

Drop Site News – February, 10, 2026

 

and always, and everywhere

the silenced cry of their exterminated victims…

US and Israeli attack on Iran: At least 63 girls killed in strike on school

“At least 63 people, almost all of them young girls, have been killed in an air strike on a primary school in southern Iran, local authorities said.

 

The attack on Saturday morning hit Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Minab city in the southern Hormozgan province as the United States and Israel began launching strikes on targets across Iran.”

Middle East Eye (in Teheran) – 28, February, 2026

 

“Small Children Who Knew Nothing of Politics or Wars”

A scene of devastation in Minab, Iran, as parents waited to know the fate of their young daughters after the bombing of a girls’ elementary school killed over 100.

“I cannot understand how a place where innocent children learn can be bombed like this,” Shariatmadar told Drop Site. “We are talking about small children who knew nothing of politics or wars. And yet they are the ones paying the highest price.

“Some 170 students were inside the building attending morning classes when the missile struck. At least 108 people were killed, according to the public prosecutor’s office in Minab, many of them schoolgirls between seven and 12 years old.”

Dropsite News – February 28, 2026

Update:

Death toll in Israeli strike on southern Iran school rises to 165

“Officials reported the death toll from the attack on the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in Minab.”

Al Jazeera – 28 February, 2026

 

Finally: Hope for the future?

Alternative “Executive Order”

Zohran Mamdani announces anti-ICE executive order

“If faith offers us the moral compass to stand alongside the stranger, government can provide the resources. Let us create a new expectation of city hall where power is wielded to love, to embrace, and to protect. We will stand with the stranger today, tomorrow, and all the days that are still to come.”

Daily Kos – February 2026

 

Slavoj Žižek:

“Let me begin by admitting my role in the global spread of Antonio Gramsci’s remark from his Prison Notebooks:

“The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms [fenomeni morbosi] appear.”

Indeed, I am responsible for a slightly shorter, and, dare I say, pithier iteration:

“The old world is dying and the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters.”

…Whether you ask Blue Labour thinkers or lazy journalists or Robert Jenrick, they all agree on one thing – we are living in Gramsci’s interregnum. We should therefore accept that our aspirations and beliefs should be focalised around a single figure, much in the way that Trump has done for the right: the left also need charismatic leading voices like Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez or Mamdani. Did something similar not happen after Luigi Mangione was arrested in December 2024 and charged with murder in the fatal shooting of the UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson?”

How the left misread Gramsci

We are living in the Italian Marxist thinker’s interregnum

The New Statesman – November, 2025

 

#MakeAntiFascismGreatAgain

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