Can Iran’s New Reformist President Deliver?

Fariba Amini

July 9, 2024

 

Newark, Delaware (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Elections in Iran have predictable outcomes. The men picked by the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, engage in a quasi-debate on TV, but usually the hand-picked guy is bound to win. This year saw a minor upset.

Patriotism

What does patriotism mean?

میهن پرستی

 

میهن پرستی ، عرق میهنی، حُبّ وطن، و اصطلاحاتی از این قبیل چه معنی میدهند؟ فرهنگ وبستر میهن پرستی‌ را عشق به کشور و فداکاری معنی‌ کرده است. در ادامهٔ این تعریف، میهن پرستی‌ را کیفیت از خود گذشته بودن و حمایت شدید از کشور عنوان کرده است.ا

The Gaza Genocide: Who’s Complicit?

L. Michael Hager

July 8, 2024

Given the recent pro-Palestinian protests around the world and on many university campuses, it seems strange if not surprising that neither genocide nor the continuing flow of U.S. weapons to Israel were mentioned during the first (and maybe only) 2024 presidential debate. Nor did the New York Times Editorial Board see fit to cite complicity in genocide while calling for Biden to step down after his poor debate performance. 

Israel war on Gaza live: Nine months on, bodies pile up under Israeli raids

Mersiha Gadzo,Tamila Varshalomidze and Umut Uras

July 7, 2024

Israel’s Campaign of Starvation in Gaza Has Palestinians Eating Weeds to Survive

Tareq S. Hajjaj

July 6, 2024

Ahmad Abdulrahim, 38, strolled the remains of the markets in Gaza City with 150 Shekels in his pocket, the amount of money he used to feed his family of five for a week before the genocide. Today, that amount can hardly buy a single meal.

Reformist Pezeshkian wins Iran's presidential election

The Cradle

July 6, 2024

Reformist candidate Masoud Pezeshkian was elected Iran's ninth president on 6 July after winning a run-off election against conservative candidate Saeed Jalili, semi-official Tasnim News reported.

 

Six Supreme Court judges declare the U.S. a dictatorship

MR

July 6, 2024

Fifty years after Nixon was driven out of the White House, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed with the Watergate war criminal that presidents can commit any crime they want.

Stolen Land, Stolen Lives: Israel’s War on Palestine

M. Reza Behnam

July 5, 2024

Israeli Zionists have always lusted after Palestine, but loathed its people.  Today is no exception.

Largest West Bank Land Seizure in Decades

Largest West Bank Land Seizure in Decades – Israel Speeds Up Settlement Activity

July 4, 2024

The Israeli government has appropriated around 23,700 hectares of land in the occupied West Bank since the beginning of the year, the largest appropriation of land since the Oslo Accords in 1993, according to an Israeli settlement watchdog.

‘Hamas has never been stronger’: Israel is stuck in a war it can’t win

Elizabeth Blade

July 3, 2024

Through April, the IDF had targeted more than 32,000 military sites belonging to Hamas and its allies. In June, Israel announced that 15,000 of the group's militants  had been eliminated. But experts are certain those measures won’t eradicate the Islamic group that has been in charge of Gaza since 2007.

As Israel Refuses to End Genocide in Gaza, Threat of War With Hezbollah Looms

Daniel Falcone, Truthout

July 2, 2024

For the past eight months, Hezbollah has attacked the northern portion of Israel in an attempt to pull the Israeli army out from Gaza, reports Al Jazeera. Fears of a wider war have prompted international calls to deescalate the situation at the border between Lebanon and Israel. During a recent meeting with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters that the U.S. is “urgently seeking a diplomatic agreement that restores lasting calm to Israel’s northern border and enables civilians to return safely to their homes on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon border.” The U.S. is also preparing to be ready to evacuate tens of thousands of Americans who live in Lebanon in the event of war.

 

Preparing for a Middle East War

Mel Gurtov

July 1, 2024

Can Israel Be Restrained?

Reports from the Middle East these days have two things in common: All the parties wish to avoid a war, yet all the movement is toward one, centered in Lebanon.

 

Iran’s election runoff: two candidates, two worldviews

FereshtehSadeghi

July 1, 2024

Forty days after the passing of Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash, the Islamic Republic held snap elections on Friday, 28 June, to vote for a new head of the administrative branch. With no single candidate receiving a mandatory 51 percent of votes cast, however, the two leading candidates will now advance to a runoff poll on 5 July.

Israel war on Gaza live: Simultaneous ground assaults on Rafah, Shujayea

Urooba Jamal

June 30, 2024

• Heavy fighting between Israeli forces and Palestinian fighters continues in northern and southern Gaza with at least six civilians, including children, killed in a strike on a home in Rafah.
• No progress has been made in ceasefire talks but Hamas remains ready to “deal positively” with any proposal that includes a “permanent ceasefire”, a senior official says.
• The Arab League, the European Union, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Qatar slam Israel’s decision to legalise five settlements as an Israeli minister promised to bring “a million” new settlers into the occupied West Bank.
• At least 37,877 people have been killed and 86,969 wounded in Israel’s war on Gaza since October 7. The death toll in Israel from the Hamas-led attacks is estimated at 1,139 with dozens of people still held captive in Gaza.

 

Black Liberation and Palestinian Liberation Are Interconnected

Nina Turner andRashida Tlaib

June 17, 2024

From Detroit to Cleveland to Gaza, and everywhere in between, we must fight for a world built on equal rights, freedom from oppression, and human dignity for all people. In the words of civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer, “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.” The collective liberation of oppressed people everywhere is intertwined, and we must come together to fight for justice at home and around the world.

Israel Is Killing Gaza’s Medical Workers. This Doctor Saw the Results Firsthand.

Frances Madeson

June 29, 2024

On June 1, approximately 50 medical students from Washington University in St. Louis, Saint Louis University, and others interested in the topic gathered at a public library in St. Louis’s Central West End near both campuses to hear neonatal specialist Yassar Arain describe the medical apartheid he experienced while volunteering in a neonatal intensive care unit in Gaza this spring. Some openly wept as he recounted tragedies he’d witnessed but was powerless to avert.

Stories of survival and suffering: inside Gaza’s Al-Aqsa Hospital

Reem A. Hamadaqa

June 28, 2024

I arrived at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital on March 2 after surviving an attack that killed 14 members of my family. I was the sole survivor in my family. When I arrived at the hospital I was suffering from pelvic and acetabular fractures that kept me from walking or even standing.

Injured Palestinians are brought to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir El-Balah for treatment following the Israeli attacks in Khan Younis on March 8, 2024. (Photo: Ali Hamad/APA Images)

No Such Thing as a Small Nuclear War

Vijay Prashad

June 28, 2024

There was a time when calls for a nuclear-free Europe rang across the continent. It began with the Stockholm Appeal of 1950, which opened with the powerful words “We demand the outlawing of atomic weapons as instruments of intimidation and mass murder of peoples” and then deepened with the Appeal for European Nuclear Disarmament of 1980, which issued the chilling warning “We are entering the most dangerous decade in human history.” 

 

 Erik Bulatov, Soviet Union, “People in the Landscape,” 1976.

US funneled over $6bn to Israel since 7 October

News Desk

June 27, 2024

The US provided Israel with $6.5 billion in security aid since 7 October, according to a Washington Post report on 26 June.