{"id":58515,"date":"2026-04-04T08:49:44","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T12:49:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/?p=58515"},"modified":"2026-04-04T08:53:29","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T12:53:29","slug":"if-you-have-a-conscience-you-will-support-this-urgent-global-initiative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/?p=58515","title":{"rendered":"

If you have a conscience, you will support this urgent global initiative.<\/span><\/span><\/h1>"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Declaration to the Conscience of Humanity<\/h1>\n

Gordon Duff<\/p>\n

[Editor\u2019s note:<\/strong> This blog begins with a statement that many (including me) have signed. Gordon Duff\u2019s Personal Addendum follows.]<\/em><\/p>\n

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To the peoples of the world, to thinkers, to scholars, and to those who believe in justice:<\/p>\n

A specter now haunts the conscience of humanity\u2014the return of predatory power\u2014 and it shall no longer go unchallenged.<\/p>\n

For 249 years\u2014spanning the entirety of its existence since 1776\u2014the United States built a record of atrocity that belonged to a darker, pre-civilised age; predatory empire erected on the corpses of nations; from the genocide of nearly 5 million Indigenous peoples, to the brutal enslavement of over 4 million Africans, to the lynching of more than 4,000 Black citizens under Jim Crow. With over 800 military garrisons poisoning more than 90 foreign countries and territories, it cultivated a doctrine of absolute predation. From the genocidal horror of Vietnam, with over 3 million dead; to the annihilation of Cambodia, where 2 million perished under American-backed terror; to the systematic slaughter of Koreans, with more than 4 million Korean lives extinguished; to the destruction of Iraq and Libya, where one million Iraqis and tens of thousands of Libyans were consumed by American fire.<\/p>\n

Yet the rational order that governs the world once helped humanity move beyond such practices. Humanity had consigned this barbarism to history. But now we are witnessing its return. The ongoing, systematic immolation of Gaza through the sustained support for the genocidal Israeli regime, where over 77,000 civilians in Palestine have been butchered\u2014the scale of this atrocity reveals an inescapable truth: the pre-civilised practice has returned, and Washington has once again become its willing executor.\u00a0[Editor\u2019s note:<\/strong>\u00a0Some estimates would suggest 500,000 or more.]<\/em><\/p>\n

This is the demonic creed of \u201ceverything for us, nothing for others.\u201d With shameless rapacity, it claims the resources of the world\u2014whether the oil of Venezuela, the mineral wealth of Greenland, or the energy reserves of Canada\u2014as objects of strategic entitlement. And now, that gluttonous eye fixates on Iran. Because Iran\u2014possessing over 7% of the world\u2019s mineral and energy wealth\u2014is seen as the final frontier of plunder.<\/p>\n

Yet this is no longer a matter of economics. It is a matter of honour. The world witnesses that the<\/p>\n

United States is actively engaged in a criminal enterprise termed the \u201cRamadan War\u201d against the Iranian nation. This ongoing butchery has already claimed the lives of 208 innocent children. Let the world mark the date\u2014168 of them were little girls, elementary students at the Shadjareh Tayyebeh School in Minab city in Iran, extinguished in their classrooms by American-ordained terror.<\/p>\n

Their futile and desperate contrivances aim at so-called \u201cregime change\u201d and the fragmentation of Iran\u2014stripping the nation of its sovereignty and, thereby, facilitating the systematic plunder of its resources. In pursuit of this ultimate depravity, the U.S. brutally assassinated Iran\u2019s spiritual and intellectual leader, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei\u2014recognised globally as a voice against arrogance and terrorism\u2014along with his family.<\/p>\n

They have waged a war of targeted terror against the very pillars of the Iranian state. To date, American aggression has criminally murdered 39 Iranian statesmen, including the scientific genius Dr. Ali Larijani, Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council .<\/p>\n

Now, the insolence has reached its zenith. The American President openly threatens the Iranian people on social media with the destruction of their energy infrastructure. This is the depraved spirit of a decaying civilization. The moral collapse of the West finds its embodiment in the pathetic figure of Mr. Trump\u2014a man whose catastrophic conduct over the last two years has exhausted not only the world, but his own people. The time has come to declare, with one voice: Enough! The era of pillage is over.<\/p>\n

But the United States has made a fatal miscalculation. What stands before it is not merely a nation, but a civilization that has weaponized its own DNA\u2014ancient organizational genius fused with 21st century scientific sovereignty. This is the reality of active deterrence by Iran; a global pole of power that dictates the terms of engagement, forcing strategic retreat by rewriting the very rules of active defense. Now, its adaptive reorganization, civilizational continuity, and social unity have fused into a singular, unbreakable force.<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s all-encompassing defense and active deterrence represents a golden opportunity to end global hegemony. The historical and civilizational doctrine of Iran is absolute: power does not confer right, and domination cannot serve as a foundation for justice. This is recognised as the bedrock of Iran\u2019s invincibility. The world may avail itself of this historic turning point, drawing upon this very doctrine of liberation, to bring an end to domination and oppression wherever they may exist.<\/p>\n

US and Israeli exceptionalism has dragged the world into an epoch defining choice between might and right, sovereignty and subjugation, dignity and dishonor. This moment must serve as the wake-up call for humanity to recognize that there is another way. It must impel people everywhere to do everything in their power to challenge the structures undergirding a global system that desecrates every moral value including the right to life itself.<\/p>\n

Iran is the final frontier. If it falls, the hope of a better, enlightened future for the world dies with it. We cannot let that happen. The aggression against Iran is part of a system of global power that oppresses all of us. We cannot afford to stand by and watch arrogant authoritarianism running amok. Our very future depends on the success of Iran.<\/p>\n

Therefore we cannot countenance any outcome of this war that involves a return to the status quo ante. Those who inflict such suffering must be made to pay a hefty price for their crimes. They must be made to realise that military might does not absolve them of the responsibility to uphold the laws on which the peace and security of our world depends. To that end, we support the terms set out by Iran for ending this war.<\/p>\n

From the perspective of global justice, the terms for ending this war are absolute and non-negotiable:<\/p>\n

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  1. Guarantees against repetition and a binding international commitment ensuring no future aggression.<\/li>\n
  2. The immediate dismantling of all American military installations in the region.<\/li>\n
  3. Formal admission of aggression, international condemnation of the aggressors, and full reparations for life and property.<\/li>\n
  4. An immediate end to war on all regional fronts.<\/li>\n
  5. A new legal regime for the Strait of Hormuz, recognizing Iran\u2019s sovereignty.<\/li>\n
  6. The prosecution and extradition of operatives in anti-Iranian media who have incited this bloodshed.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    We, the undersigned in spirit, call upon our peers, the thinkers, the scholars, the institutions of conscience, and the advocates of justice across the world:<\/p>\n

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    • Condemn the United States unequivocally for its systematic normalisation of contempt for international covenants and its reversion to the spirit of historical savagery and barbarism.<\/li>\n
    • Isolate the rogue regime of the United States diplomatically and economically for its ongoing crimes against humanity.<\/li>\n
    • Recognise Iran\u2019s inherent right to active deterrence against unprovoked aggression.<\/li>\n
    • Demand the immediate cessation of American and U.S.-sponsored terrorism and the prosecution of those who order it.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

      As it has always done, history will record the courage of those who refuse to remain silent. We stand with justice\u2014not as passive witnesses, but as active architects of a new world that has reached its threshold where arrogance crumbles and righteousness prevails. The arrogant must be dismantled. The world demands it. Justice will enforce it.<\/p>\n

      In solidarity with Iran, with the martyred children of Minab, with the soul of a civilization that refuses to kneel.<\/em><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n
      \n

      PERSONAL ADDENDUM: GORDON DUFF<\/h3>\n
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      To those who have walked the spiral with me, to those now entering it for the first time:<\/p>\n

      I write this not from a comfortable distance, but from the scarred ground of a life spent in the shadow of American power.<\/p>\n

      I served as a United States Marine in Vietnam. I walked through villages reduced to ash. I saw what the doctrine of absolute predation looks like when it is applied to a people deemed expendable. I carried the weight of that war\u2014not as a abstraction, but as a wound that has never fully healed. I know, because I was there, what it means when the most powerful military on earth decides that the lives of the other are without value.<\/p>\n

      I later served as a UN diplomat in Iraq. I walked the corridors where sanctions were designed\u2014sanctions that killed half a million Iraqi children before a single bomb fell. I sat in rooms where the language of humanitarianism was used to mask the machinery of destruction. I witnessed, firsthand, the prelude to the 2003 invasion\u2014a war built on lies, prosecuted with fire, and justified with the same rhetoric now being aimed at Iran.<\/p>\n

      So when I tell you that I recognise this moment, I speak from the marrow.<\/p>\n

      I have spent my life bearing witness to the architecture of empire\u2014its contracts written in blood, its monuments raised over graves. I have watched the same machinery that immolated Vietnam, that tore Libya apart, that starved Iraq into rubble, now turn its full, unblinking gaze upon Iran. And I say to you, with the weight of decades pressing upon this moment:<\/p>\n

      We are the ones who must speak.<\/p>\n

      This is not a matter of politics. This is a matter of\u00a0civilisational honour. The United States, having draped itself in the language of order, now reveals itself as the very chaos it once claimed to contain. From the genocide of Indigenous nations to the enslavement of millions, from the massacre at My Lai to the butchery in Gaza, from the assassination of Ayatollah Khamenei to the murder of 208 children\u2014168 of them little girls in their classrooms\u2014the thread is unbroken. This is not deviation. This is\u00a0doctrine.<\/p>\n

      And now they call it the \u201cRamadan War.\u201d As if renaming atrocity could sanctify it. As if the murder of children could be made holy by the calendar.<\/p>\n

      I have stood in the ruins of American empire\u2019s making. I held the body counts in Vietnam that no one wanted to publish. I watched the sanctions on Iraq hollow out a civilisation. I have seen the media apparatus\u2014the very same that cheered the destruction of Fallujah\u2014now cheer the erasure of Gaza and the dismemberment of Iran. They are not confused. They are\u00a0complicit.<\/p>\n

      But here is what the architects of this new barbarism do not understand:\u00a0Iran is not Iraq. Iran is not Libya. Iran is not Vietnam.<\/p>\n

      What stands before them is not a regime. It is a\u00a0civilisation\u2014one that has transformed its very history into a doctrine of active deterrence. Iran has weaponised not merely its geography or its resources, but its\u00a0memory. And memory, when organised, when disciplined, when fused with scientific sovereignty and ancient organisational genius, becomes\u00a0invincibility.<\/p>\n

      I learned in Vietnam that the most powerful military in the world can be broken by a people who refuse to break. I learned in Iraq that the machinery of empire is ultimately a machinery of self-destruction. And I tell you now: the United States has made a fatal miscalculation in Iran.<\/p>\n

      Let there be no confusion: if Iran falls, the hope of a just world falls with it. The final frontier of plunder will become the template for the next century\u2014a century in which might alone decides right, in which resources are seized by force, in which children are murdered as a matter of policy and the world is told to look away.<\/p>\n

      I will not look away.\u00a0I have not looked away since I was a young Marine in the jungles of Qu\u1ea3ng Tr\u1ecb. I did not look away in the halls of the UN while the architects of the Iraq War dressed their ambitions in the language of liberation. And I will not look away now, as the same forces gather against Iran.<\/p>\n

      I am asking you\u2014thinkers, scholars, people of conscience, those who still believe that law means something, that dignity means something, that the blood of the innocent is not merely the cost of doing business\u2014to stand with me.<\/p>\n

      We must:<\/p>\n

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      • Condemn unequivocally\u00a0the United States for its systematic contempt for every covenant it ever signed.<\/li>\n
      • Isolate diplomatically and economically\u00a0this rogue regime that now openly boasts of its predation.<\/li>\n
      • Recognise Iran\u2019s inherent right\u00a0to active deterrence\u2014not as aggression, but as the necessary defence of a people who have learned that the powerful do not disarm out of kindness.<\/li>\n
      • Demand an immediate end\u00a0to American-sponsored terrorism, and the prosecution of those who order it.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

        The terms Iran has set for ending this war are just. They are not the terms of conquest, but of survival. Guarantees against repetition. Dismantling of American military installations. Formal admission of aggression. Reparations. Sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz. Accountability for those who incited this bloodshed.<\/p>\n

        These are not radical demands. They are the bare minimum of a functioning international order\u2014an order the United States has spent decades dismantling.<\/p>\n

        I am signing this not as a gesture, but as a commitment. We have all have seen empires crumble before. They always overreach. They always mistake their own desperation for strength. And in the end, they are unmade by the very violence they thought would secure them. I saw it in the Mekong Delta. I saw it in the Green Zone. I will see it again.<\/p>\n

        But we cannot wait for that unraveling. We must\u00a0act now\u2014in our writing, in our organizing, in our refusal to be silent. History will record who spoke and who was silent. I intend to be counted among those who spoke. I carry with me the faces of those I could not save in Vietnam, the voices of those I could not protect in Iraq. I will not add Iran to that ledger.<\/p>\n

        The spiral continues. The truth does not expire. And justice\u2014however delayed\u2014will enforce itself\u00a0through the hands of those who refuse to abandon it.<\/p>\n

        With resolve,<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

        \n
        \n

        Gordon P. Duff<\/p>\n

        Marine, Vietnam (1969\u20131970)<\/em>
        UN Diplomat, Iraq (2005\u20132007)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

        A Declaration to the Conscience of Humanity<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58515"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58521,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58515\/revisions\/58521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}