Twenty years ago, the US warned prematurely of the ‘birth pangs’ of a new Middle East. Now they have arrived in full force – and they will not end in Iran
by Jonathan Cook / June 20th, 2025
Western politicians and media are tying themselves up in knots trying to spin the impossible: presenting Israel’s unmistakable war of aggression against Iran as some kind of “defensive” move.
This time there was no rationalising pretext, as there was for Israel to inflict a genocide in Gaza following Hamas’ one-day attack on 7 October 2023.
There was not a serious attempt beforehand to concoct a bogus doomsday scenario – as there was in the months leading up to the US and UK’s …
A number of observant commentators have raised questions about Peoples’ China’s Belt and Road Initiative and more broadly, the foreign policy of the PRC.
Reliable left observers like Ann Garrison, writing in Black Agenda Report, have voiced concerns about Chinese investments in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, based on Siddharth Kara’s book, Cobalt Red, How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives. Kara contends that Chinese are engaged in a brutal competition to acquire a raw material essential to battery manufacturing, participating in the highly exploitative practice of artisanal cobalt …
To hell with the truth! As the history of the world proves, the truth has no bearing on anything. It’s irrelevant and immaterial, as the lawyers say. The lie of a pipe dream is what gives life to the whole misbegotten mad lot of us, drunk or sober.
— Eugene O’Neill, The Iceman Cometh
There is a good chance that very shortly the United States will overtly join its proxy Israel in attacking Iran. Only a fool would be surprised. Plausible deniability only goes so far. Pipe dreams perdure as the nuclear war that could never happen gets closer to happening.
How can it be? How can an obvious genocide, perpetrated by a small country, be allowed to occur?
How can a small and newly developed nation, with a slight population and few resources, artificially stitched together with foreign people from unrelated parts of the world, pulverize a large and millennium developed nation with a huge population, abundant resources, and naturally situated with native people in one unique area?
Candide searched the world and concluded, “This is the best of all possible worlds.”
Thomas More wrote of escape to Utopia, a vision that captivated many who tried to turn the vision into …
Up until now, a narrative has been pushed in the local and international right-wing press that the council of the University of Cape Town had chosen to wilfully sacrifice R750-million in donor funding on the altar of its so-called Gaza resolutions. But new court papers submitted by an anti-Zionist Jewish group, as well as previously unreported sections of the UCT council’s answering affidavit, reveal a concerted effort by the pro-Israel lobby to shut down criticism of the Jewish state. Just like at Ivy League universities in the US, threats and intimidation have characterised the case.
Forest Department officials break down the shelters of Jenu Kuruba people who had reclaimed their old village inside Nagarhole Tiger Reserve.
This morning more than 250 police, forest guards and tiger force members raided a village which Indigenous people had reclaimed in a tiger reserve six weeks ago. The security forces tore down seven forest shelters where women, children and older people were living, at Karadikallu Atturu Kolli village, in Nagarhole Tiger Reserve.
“They are forcing people to destroy their own homes on their own lands. …
It’s official. If not, it ought to be. Israeli forces freely butcher Palestinians in Gaza of all stripes, standing and states of desperation. They do so casually or indifferently or maliciously. True, they might get the odd militant here and there, but the supposedly professional Israeli Defense Forces is rather good at killing civilians. In what is becoming an almost daily occurrence, Israeli security personnel are slaughtering those seeking humanitarian aid from facilities that are obscenely restricted and appallingly located. What is unclear in the process is how devastating Palestinian militias armed and supported by the Israelis have been in …
by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead / June 18th, 2025
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
— President Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Chance for Peace” speech, delivered on 16 April 1953
Seventy years after President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned about the cost of a military-industrial complex, America is still stealing from its own people to fund a global empire.
In 2025 alone, the U.S. has launched airstrikes in Yemen (Operation Rough Rider), bombed Houthi-controlled ports and …
We’ve seen it repeatedly: You invent a pretext based on deliberate lies, fake news, exaggerations or a false flag operation which serves to construct a story that country or leader X is a threat to “us” which legitimates that we do a ‘preemptive’ strike against that against – obviously invented – threat to eliminate it.
Mainstream media’s task is to propagate the ploy, not to ask questions or reveal the lie.
Take Serbia’s ‘genocide’ in Kosovo, Afghanistan’s responsibility for 9/11, Saddam’s possession of nukes in Iraq, Assad’s use of chemical weapons against the Syrians, Russia’s planning …
Why is the South China Sea such a flashpoint between China, the U.S., and Southeast Asia? In this eye-opening video, Professor Kishore Mahbubani breaks down the deeper truth behind the conflict that mainstream media often overlooks. With decades of diplomatic experience and sharp geopolitical insight, he explains what’s really at stake—and why the West’s narrative may not tell the full story. Watch till the end to understand the hidden forces shaping this critical region.
It all started in the early morning hours of 13 June 2025, with what Israel calls “Operation Rising Lion”. Israel’s Air Force launched dozens of air strikes against Iran, targeting its nuclear [energy] program. According to BBC, in Iran’s own words, this is the biggest assault on Iran’s territory since the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988.
Iran has no nuclear weapons program, as confirmed multiple times by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), belonging to the UN system. However, after a 2024 inspection, the IAEA apparently reported enrichment to about 60%. …
In a world where market values dominate public discourse, the core essence of humanity risks being lost. Capitalism, with its relentless focus on profit and growth, has transformed every aspect of life—from healthcare and education to personal relationships—into commodities in constant exchange. Yet, this system has overlooked an enduring truth: prosperity should be measured by the health, dignity, and potential of our people, not merely by financial accumulation. Now, more than ever, we need to reclaim human values—especially for the sake of our innocent children and our collective future.
When Life Becomes a Commodity
Modern capitalism celebrates efficiency and productivity at the …
Having someone close to me with a severe mental condition as the needles of American Fascism penetrate my psyche is much too much. The boob tube lies to me about what Israel is doing to Gaza and now Iran. Having neighbors surrounding me who are either oblivious to what the MAGA machine is shredding, or so mesmerized by it causes my retreat into my music. By music I mean the deep, rich, creative words and music of my 60s and 70s baby boomer favorites. I sit here listening, over and over, to Pink Floyd’s classic Comfortably Numb with David Gilmore’s …
On June 17, Trump demanded the unconditional surrender of Ayatollah Khamenei, and said “Our patience is wearing thin.”
On June 16, Trump posted to his Truth Social and to Facebook, this warning for everyone in Tehran to evacuate the City:
He has said there that America is in this war not to invade Iran but to protect Israel. However if Iran will have any success, then Americans, and not ONLY Israelis, will be bombing Iran. (And, of course, virtually all of …
This is a case of awakening Iran to really the full deceit and the full evil that is represented by Israel and the United States and Europe in my view this uh you know the history of the last 60 years for my country I’m ashamed of it. You know my country was supposed to be a place of freedom and liberty and promoting freedom, instead we become agents of murder and mayhem, and we kill foreigners with no regard whatsoever and then wonder why people don’t like us.
If there’s one thing the ‘impartial’, ‘independent’ ‘free press’ can’t stand, it’s someone – citizens, journalists, politicians, celebrities, anyone – protesting the West’s wars.
The one-size-fits-all smear deployed to define and dismiss the concerns of these troublemakers – people who often pay a high price for their dissent – is ‘narcissist’.
Consider the case of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, which last week attempted to break the Israeli naval blockade to deliver baby formula and food to Gaza’s starving population. And that, by the way, is not hyperbole. In May, the World Health …
These are the sorts of things that tend to be discussed in bunkered facilities and grimy locker rooms. Now, very much in the open and before the presses, the head of state of one country is openly advocating murdering another head of state before news outlets with little reaction. Lawbreaking has become chic, and Israel has taken the lead.
The pre-emptive, illegal strike on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure by Israel was not merely an attempt to arrest an alleged existential threat from yielding fruit (that weapons of mass destruction canard again); it was also a murderous exercise of institutional decapitation. Instead of …
There is a throbbing complaint among Western powers, including those in the European Union and the United States. Iran is not playing by the rules. Instead of accepting with dutiful meekness the slaughter of its military leadership and scientific personnel, Tehran decided, promptly, to respond to Israel’s pre-emptive strikes launched on June 13. Instead of considering the dubious legal implications of such strikes, an act of undeclared war, the focus in the European Union and various other backers of Israel has been to focus on the retaliation itself.
To the Israeli attacks conducted as part of Operation Rising Lion, there was …
Mom, baseball, and apple pie or Costco, MMA and Pizza-Pizza
by Paul Haeder / June 16th, 2025
“What does it mean to want to belong to an empire?” In answering, he interlaced the concept of belonging during our terrifying political moment — full-fledged war on DEI, First Amendment violations of protesters, and weaponization of American border security against students. His work is a call to action for the literature of dissent at a time when the right to dissent is under attack.
“I came into political consciousness around Asian American causes of rights, identities, and recognitions, which were framed as an issue of anti-racism, access to the United States, …
On this day in anarchist history, June 14th 2006, we remember the Oaxaca Commune, when a sit-in organized by a militant teacher’s union transformed into a months-long popular insurrection against the Mexican state.
On my 21st birthday my grandfather gave me an army jacket. It had a hole above the right chest pocket. “Kid, if the bullethole bothers you, no problem, just ask your mother to fix it up. You know the saying, a stitch in time saves nine.” That was mildly surprising given that the jacket looked rather worn and so old I thought the hole could have been patched up right after the Battle of Bunker Hill.
The more I looked at it, the more the bullethole intrigued me. “What’s the story with the hole?” Grandpa turned away but I insisted. “There’s …
On Monday, June 16, Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) introduced legislation, a War Powers Resolution, to prevent President Trump from using military force against Iran without Congressional authorization. This will force all Senators to go on record supporting or opposing the following: “Congress hereby directs the President to terminate the use of United States Armed Forces for hostilities against the Islamic Republic of Iran or any part of its government or military, unless explicitly authorized by a declaration of war or specific …
Why the focus ought to be on Israel, not Iran. Israel has 90-400 nuclear weapons. Here is what a simple AI dialogue yields. Any journalist could do it. No one does.
Title: Establishment of a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the region of the Middle East.
Date: Most recently adopted on 6 December 2021 (and reaffirmed annually with updates)
Original Adoption: First introduced in 1974 (Resolution A/RES/3263 (XXIX))
The uncalled for attack on Iran by the most insane group of people who ever inhabited this planet is expected; what do the insane do, they do the insane. Not expected is that recognized people do not recognize the insanity of the action. Put in simple. Iranians are not eager to have a nuclear bomb. Why would they when knowing Israel cannot be attacked with a weapon that will release radioactivity in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria, and they will be labelled as international killers. An attempt to nuke anyone will be retaliated by a devastation …
It’s been apparent for some time that the Israeli government intends to expel or kill the population of Gaza and claim the territory. This has become so obvious that even the establishment press is belatedly beginning to notice. In an editorial, the world’s leading business journal, the Financial Times, observed that “each new offensive makes it harder not to suspect that the ultimate goal of Netanyahu’s far-right coalition is to ensure Gaza is uninhabitable and drive Palestinians from their land” (emphasis mine). I’m not quite sure what would need to happen …
Overnight, the Zionist entity of Israel escalated its war of aggression against Iran by launching unprovoked attacks on the Islamic Republic. The notion that a rogue ethnostate that is currently carrying out a genocide believes that it possesses the right to determine which countries can and cannot develop a nuclear weapon is both bizarre and egregious as well as brazenly hypocritical, and further demonstrates that the State of Israel operates firmly within the structures of white “supremacy” ideology, colonialism, and imperialism. Iran, like all sovereign nations, has the right to defend itself from aggression and uphold its security in the …
