Last night’s clean sweep for Zohran Mamdani-endorsed candidates in New York’s Democratic primary sent a clear message to not only the citizens and the establishment of the United States but the entire world: we do not want corporate money in politics; we don’t want fascism on our streets; we don’t want wars; and we don’t want our tax money funding Israel, a state committing genocide and ethnic cleansing of their neighbors and the people they occupy.

I love this breakdown by ABC Eyewitness News:

“New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani flexed his political muscle Tuesday, getting a clean sweep as his three endorsed congressional candidates advanced to November’s general election, ousting two incumbent Democratic congressmen.

The mayor said it was a question of electing “better Democrats” who would “put working people back at the heart of politics.” The approach consternated some in Democratic leadership, but the outcome showcased Mamdani’s rising influence.”

Flexed his political muscle.

You got that right. The people of New York have had enough of establishment Democrats offering absolutely nothing but — we aren’t Trump. Consistently not having a policy, not working for the benefit of your constituents, blasting MAGA and Trump in public while being the kinder, more “progressive” partner of the uniparty ruling this country.

In New York’s 7th Congressional District, Mamdani-backed state Assemblywoman Claire Valdez won over Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso.

In the 10th District, another Mamdani-backed candidate, former city comptroller Brad Lander, beat incumbent Rep. Dan Goldman.

In the 13th District, the mayor’s candidate, community advocate Darializa Avila Chevalier, beat incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat.

For State Senate, Aber Kawas, a Palestinian organizer and democratic socialist fighting for affordable housing, immigrant rights, and no money for war, also won.

A sweep.

It’s one of the biggest upsets in a New York House primary. These victories mean three Mamdani allies will step into Congress in January.

And Zionists are shaking in their boots.

AIPAC is livid.

Do you remember this?

Pro-Israel and dark money groups spent a collective $8.4 million across the three races against Mamdani’s endorsed candidates and lost all three!

Democracy is the vehicle to end democracy?

Check out this tweet below, this reaction, and this coping from pro-genocidal, Islamophobic folks who know support for Israel is collapsing at lightning speed.

Check out Politico:

“Progressives who ran hard against the war in Gaza swept a trio of congressional primaries Tuesday in America’s most heavily Jewish city, turbocharging the Democratic Party’s yearslong shift away from Israel.

The results paint a picture of a Democratic Party rapidly shifting on an issue that was once considered a bipartisan prerequisite for success in the Big Apple and beyond.

Progressives’ victories show that harsh criticism of Israel is now not only politically survivable, but can be advantageous in New York City’s dominant party.

“In a Democratic primary, the people who are against the war in Gaza have a massive political advantage in 2026,” said Jon Paul Lupo, a longtime Democratic strategist in New York who served as an adviser to former Mayor Bill de Blasio.

In New York, progressives’ tour de force indicate the Israel criticism that powered Mayor Zohran Mamdani last year remains ascendent. Mamdani boosted Lander, Valdez and Avila Chevalier to victory on Tuesday.

“This signals a substantial shift in policy toward Israel,” said veteran New York-based Democratic strategist Basil Smikle.

“Unfortunately, democratic socialism and anti-Israel Democrats are going to have a stronger footing than ever before,” said Alex Hoffman, a Democratic strategist and donor adviser who wasn’t involved in these campaigns.

“For pro-Israel groups, there really needs to be a rethink of the strategy, the people involved and how money gets spent. Otherwise it’s going to hurt Democrats nationally.”

And you still thing organizing doesn’t work? People cannot make a change? Voting cannot make a difference?

Well, think again!

Jennifer Welch of the I’ve Had It Podcast did a spot-on breakdown of the historic nature of last night’s sweep:

“What happened in New York last night was the citizens standing up against corporations, against fascism, against MAGA, against corporate Democrats, against establishment Democrats. And this is hopefully going to sweep the entire country.

And people go, "Oh my god, they're so radical.” They're really not.

Not wanting to kill kids, not wanting to fund a country that intentionally targets children is not radical in the least. It is radical, homicidal, and genocidal to kill kids. And then to call the people who oppose that anti-Semitic assholes; this is the biggest bunch of gaslighting, and fuckery on the planet. And good on Zohran for standing up and believing in something and calling these corporate packs out for being the monsters that they are.

And shame on every Democratic politician that takes money from the same fascists that are funding the dismantling of the United States of America and who willfully smile and fund the intentional targeting of kids.”

People have had enough.

Jennifer continues:

“The Democratic Party is now built by corporations. The Democratic Party abandoned Americans, and they're just a MAGA lite, a masterclass in gaslighting. You should be fighting for the American people and listening to what they're saying. They want fighters. You want to go fight for corporations and fight for these lobbyists. The same big tech, the same AIPAC, the same big oil, the same big pharma that fund MAGA also fund the Democratic Party.

And our base just isn't as dumb as the Republican base.

That's what you're dealing with. You're dealing with a high-information voter base. Zohran has proven in the biggest, most capitalistic experiment on the planet, New York City, that you can take on the Democratic establishment, you can take on billionaires, you can take on Trump, you can do all of it, and you can still win. You can endorse three Democratic socialist candidates, not taking any corporate money, and you can still win.

The assholes in this situation are the corporations. The corporations took over the Democratic Party. They are the parasites. What happened in New York City last night is liberation. the first steps of liberation of the Democratic Party back to being a party that delivers materially for the people.

People are sick to death of being lied to. And the Democratic establishment is finding out right now. Your voter base is not nearly as dumb as the corporations that fund you want them to be.”

Truly great analysis by Jennifer, give it a watch when you have a chance!

Congrats, New York! Revolution starts HERE.

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Seeing the images of Israel pounding the ancient city of Tyre in the past week, as well as ordering the evacuation of the entire city on Tuesday, got me reeling. I grew up in the Balkan War of the 90s—bombing historic sites, churches, mosques, harbors, and civilian infrastructures is uncomfortably familiar to me.

My hometown is built around an ancient Roman palace—1,800 years old, called Diocletian’s Palace. If you’ve watched Game of Thrones, you’ve seen the ancient walls of Split. Like historic sites in Tyre, Diocletian’s Palace is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Diocletian's Palace is what the entire identity of the citizens of Split is built on. During the Balkan War, the Yugoslav Army and Navy launched a heavy artillery naval attack on the city. The Yugoslav Navy destroyer Split—ironically bearing the city's name—opened fire on Split, hitting the city center and the port, with Diocletian's Palace among its targets.

The Yugoslav Navy specifically targeted civilian infrastructure, the harbor, and historic parts of Split, all protected under UNESCO World Heritage status, causing widespread panic. Luckily, the naval shell landed just a few yards outside the Golden Gate of Diocletian's Palace. Hitting the palace offered no military advantage. It was personal. It was an attempt at erasure.

After the Battle of the Dalmatian Channels resulted in a major Croatian Navy victory that broke the Yugoslav naval blockade of Split, it forced the Yugoslav Army and Navy to retreat south.

Furious over this naval setback, their inability to take Split, and the ass-whooping they received from a Croatian Navy that had been barely pieced together from civilian vessels, captured equipment, and defecting personnel, Yugoslav forces turned their wrath on the undefended city of Dubrovnik, another UNESCO World Heritage Site. Another Game of Thrones location—yes, the King's Landing.

The blockade and siege of Dubrovnik lasted eight months. The most infamous bombardment, known as the Black Friday Attack, consisted of artillery, naval, and air assaults directed at the UNESCO-protected Old Town.

From. All. Sides. Imaginable.

The city was pounded with such zeal, such fury, making it clear the objective was not military victory or a simplistic land grab, but an attack on culture, heritage, and identity.

More than 11,000 historic buildings were damaged. The Old Town was looted and burned. Monuments, palaces, and churches were engulfed in flames. The entire city of Dubrovnik was left without electricity or water for three months. 194 Croatian military personnel were killed. 88 civilians lost their lives.

The unprovoked, deliberate targeting of a globally celebrated demilitarized zone shocked the world. Dubrovnik had no active military bases, heavy artillery, or soldiers stationed inside the old walls. Its status as an open, undefended cultural sanctuary is why the international community was so deeply shocked by the bombardment.

Attacking such a high-profile cultural landmark without any strategic military objective was an attack on the Croatian people’s morale—a deliberate assault on culture, history, and identity. All while the Yugoslav Army, under Serbian leadership, claimed its actions were defensive.

Every war is built on the same principle: the aggressor claims to be protecting its own security while seeking to expand its territory, blaming the people whose land it covets for resisting and portraying them as a threat to its survival—with the help of a compliant media.

Lebanon

If endless, wholesale slaughter in Gaza wasn’t enough to crush your will for existence, this is what Israel bombed in Lebanon just this past week:

Ancient & Historic Sites

• Beaufort Castle (Qalaat al-Chakif), UNESCO Enhanced Protection:

  Directly hit by airstrikes and heavy artillery. Massive plumes of smoke engulfed the 12th-century Crusader structure, causing severe structural degradation to the surrounding ridge and defensive masonry.

• Tyre Ruins & Hippodrome, UNESCO World Heritage:

  Missiles detonated meters from the core UNESCO World Heritage area. The blast completely leveled two adjacent apartment buildings, sending heavy shockwaves through the ancient Roman hippodrome.

Cities, Towns, & Villages

• Beirut:

  A massive overnight bombardment flattened residential apartment complexes, tore down commercial shopfronts, and pulverized critical civil infrastructure across the southern suburbs and Choueifat.

• Tyre, UNESCO World Heritage:

  Broad air raids systematically crushed a major commercial sector and residential block within the central city. Direct hits also tore through sections of the nearby Al-Rashdieh camp, leaving families trapped under rubble.

• Baalbek:

  The ancient city, famed for some of the world’s best-preserved Roman temples, remains under extreme threat. While the core Roman Acropolis has miraculously avoided a direct hit, nearby strikes have leveled several historic, Ottoman-era protection sites just meters from the main UNESCO temples.

• Sidon:

  Aerial strikes collapsed multi-story apartment buildings and fractured essential water and electricity networks.

• Nabatieh:

  Targeted air strikes completely hollowed out downtown civic buildings and pulverized neighborhoods surrounding the Ali al-Taher hill.

Southern Villages & Border Regions

• Adloun:

  A single, unannounced airstrike completely flattened a sheep farm, killing an entire displaced Syrian family consisting of a father, his pregnant wife, and their six children.

• Ansar:

  Intense air raids struck a localized residential zone, killing three civilians.

• Ebba (Ebba-Nabatieh Road):

  A targeted drone strike blew apart a transit vehicle, severely wounding two Lebanese army soldiers.

• Burj al-Shemali:

  Relentless overnight bombardments leveled an entire neighborhood, killing five civilians (including two children and three women) and wounding 40 others.

• Yohmor & Zawtar El Gharbiyeh:

  Advancing Israeli ground forces deployed heavy armor and bulldozers, systematically demolishing and leveling homes along the Litani River.

• Arnoun al-Shqeef:

  Artillery barrages tore up agricultural land, fractured regional roads, and damaged civic buildings surrounding the Beaufort ridge.

• Kfar Chouba & Kfar Hamam:

  Precision drone strikes cratered the asphalt, permanently severing the main arterial road connecting the two towns.

• Al-Mansouri & Al-Hanniye:

  Coordinated artillery shelling blasted coastal farmland, killing livestock and setting orchards ablaze.

• Al-Zrariyeh:

  Precision missiles destroyed a vocational school building and adjacent civilian garages.

• Toura:

  Airstrikes tore through a civilian residential center, causing heavy infrastructure damage and multiple casualties.

• Haris, Beit Yahoun, Al Ghandouriya, Jibsheet (Jibchit), Tebnine, Byout al-Siyyad, Majdal Zoun, Hallousiyyeh, Tayr Felsay, Deir Qanoun Ras al-Ain, Chaaitiyeh, Maarakeh, Aaitit, Al-Abbasiyyeh, Al-Nmairiyeh, Al-Sultaniyah, Touline, and Safad al-Batikh:

  Warplanes deployed heavy munitions across these southern villages. The bombardments collapsed multi-family homes, blasted cratered gaps into roadways, tore down power lines, and inflicted widespread collateral damage to adjacent property.

Eastern & Beqaa Valley Regions

• Labaya (Outskirts):

  Heavy warplane munitions struck the city fringes, tearing apart rural infrastructure and creating massive craters.

Sources: Inquirer Global Nation, UNESCO Official Statements, Tyre Ruins & Hippodrome, UNESCO Satellite Monitoring, Tyre, Middle East Institute Analysis, Wikipedia Cultural Heritage Damage Ledger, Associated Press / Rutland Herald, Alarabya English, Middle East Eye Live Updates, Saba News Agency, The Journal World Reports.

Israel is not defending itself in Lebanon. It is carrying out a campaign of cultural erasure aimed at Lebanon's history, heritage, and identity.

International legal fallout

Recent Israeli military strikes heavily endangering several globally recognized, UNESCO-protected ancient heritage sites in Lebanon prompted widespread international condemnation.

Anything else? Or will we constantly live under a permanent condemnation without any action ever being taken?

Let’s talk legal. UNESCO World Heritage sites, alongside the “Provisional Enhanced Protection” status from UNESCO, grant high-level immunity from military attacks under the 1954 Hague Convention.

Lebanese authorities and global archaeological groups have strongly condemned these bombardments. Because Tyre and Beaufort Castle were recently granted enhanced protection statuses, UNESCO warns that failing to respect these boundaries constitutes a serious breach of international law and can be prosecuted as a war crime.

UNESCO warns.

Lebanese authorities condemn.

Are those the same authorities that keep condemning Hezbollah while attending negotiations with their own aggressor in Washington?

You negotiate with Israel, who bombs your historic site, and you condemn Hezbollah for being the only force protecting those sites and its citizens? Who exactly is protecting these people? Non-existent Lebanese Army that stands down while Israel is pummeling its citizens and erasing their entire identity?

Israel’s excuse

How does Israel justify all these war crimes they have committed in the past week? The Times reports:

The precision strike on an apartment building in the Choueifat area, reported to have been targeting a Hezbollah-aligned missile unit commander, came after reported US requests for Israel to avoid hitting the Lebanese capital. The Israeli army claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it had carried out “a precise strike in the Beirut area”.

One of the world’s oldest continuously inhabited cities, Tyre is home to refugees from across southern Lebanon. The Israeli military issued a fresh evacuation order for Tyre early on Thursday, claiming it was “compelled to take forceful action” against Hezbollah.

A similar order has been issued for Nabatieh, just north of Zawtar al-Sharqiyah. On Thursday, the Israeli army said it had struck more than 135 alleged Hezbollah targets in the previous 24 hours in southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley, including ten rocket launch sites.

The Lebanese government said children were among the victims of Israeli strikes on Sidon.

On Wednesday, the Israeli military declared all areas south of Lebanon’s Zahrani River, which flows north of Tyre and south of Sidon about 25 miles north of the border, as “combat zones” and told residents to leave. The head of the Israeli army, Eyal Zamir, said: “We are intensifying our operations in order to strike ever more severe blows to the Hezbollah organisation.”

Again, and again, and again, and again.

Note: During the several hours of the Israel parade in New York City, attended by war criminal Bezalel Smotrich, supported by Chuck Schumer and Kathy Hochul, Israel killed 41 people in Lebanon. Last week, Benjamin Netanyahu ordered attacks on Beirut. No Western governments offered their condemnation or took any action against this blatant violation of an international law.

Spillover

Western media keeps describing Israel’s assault on Lebanon, which has claimed the lives of 3,637 people and injured 11,188 people since the beginning of March, as a “spillover.” This word is doing a lot of political work. It appears in every headline about Lebanon: spillover violence, spillover attacks, spillover conflict. It suggests something accidental, unintended—violence that, oops, spilled from one place into another.

Israel has been living by the sword since before they were officially recognized as a state. And the assault on Lebanon was never a spillover from Gaza or a result of Iran supporting the resistance to Israeli occupation and belligerence.

Lebanon was never a spillover or collateral. It was built into the architecture of the Israeli conquest from day one. The framing of "spillover" is a linguistic trick, much like calling people defending their land "terrorists" or labeling them "proxies" of the only country willing to help them.

This verbiage the corporate media is using is deceptively suggesting Israel didn’t mean to strike Lebanon. They were forced. It brainwashes the reader into believing Israel is merely reacting, containing, and preventing escalation. It gaslights us into thinking the violence is a regrettable extension of a war taking place somewhere else.

Please.

Target

Israel’s violence against Lebanon is not a spillover, accidental, or reactive; it is historical. And the history, funny thing, is researchable. Lebanon has always been a target, long before Gaza:

• 1948: Israeli forces expel Palestinians into Lebanon, creating a refugee population the country still hosts.

• 1978: Israel invades southern Lebanon.

• 1982: Israel invades again, this time occupying the capital, Beirut, the only Arab capital under full Israeli military control in modern history.

• 1996: Operation Grapes of Wrath, Qana massacre.

• 2006: 34-day war, over a thousand civilians killed, cluster bombs still littering the south.

• 2010s onward: Near-weekly violations of Lebanese airspace.

• 2023–2024: Systematic attacks across the South stretching deeper each month.

• 2025–2026: Persistent aerial campaign, 10,000 Israeli ceasefire violations during this window, destroyed approximately 10,000 buildings, and killed hundreds of Lebanese civilians.

Hezbollah

Israel’s military doctrine has always included Lebanon. Israeli officials have described Hezbollah as the greatest strategic threat in the region. Entire military budgets, missile defense systems, and war simulations have been built around the “northern front.” Israeli generals do not hide this, and their language is clear: “The northern front is inevitable; we cannot end this war without addressing Lebanon.”

Gaza

The Israeli assault on Gaza post-October 7th only provided the pretext for a war on Lebanon that was pre-planned. When Israel launched its attack on Gaza, Hezbollah responded with limited and measured strikes, not escalation, aimed at relieving pressure on Gaza and deterring a northern invasion. Israel used their control of the media narrative to frame these as unprovoked aggression.

But viewed chronologically, Israel’s attacks on Lebanon intensified even when Hezbollah held back. Israeli leadership saw the Gaza war as a strategic opportunity to test weapons, conduct cross-border assassinations, degrade Hezbollah positions, displace Lebanese civilians, and expand the zone of destruction.

Classic parallel warfare.

Instability as a tool

If Western outlets admit Lebanon is a deliberate front, not collateral, the entire Western narrative about Gaza collapses. Because then, Israel isn’t responding but expanding. It stops being “the defense” but an opportunity.

Western media needs the spillover myth to protect Israel, to gaslight readers that Israel is only reacting, defending, and preventing further instability. In reality, Israel is creating instability as a strategic tool.

Deterrence

Israel frames Hezbollah as the aggressor, but Hezbollah’s role is inseparable from Lebanon’s geopolitical position. Lebanon cannot be separated from the history of Palestinian displacement, regional anti-colonial movements, and Israeli attempts to redraw borders.

Lebanon is part of the war not because Hezbollah intervened, but because Hezbollah exists as the only force capable of deterring Israeli regional domination.

Economic warfare

Do you know why Israel is pounding Lebanon like there’s no tomorrow and hitting its iconic cultural sites?

Historically known as the “Paris of the Middle East,” Beirut is home to a highly educated, multilingual population, a thriving arts scene, and a growing technology and startup sector. Initiatives like the LEAP project aimed to transition the country into a regional AI and fintech competitor.

Critics of Israel, or let’s just say anyone with a functioning logical mind, argue that by repeatedly bombing commercial districts, infrastructure, and urban areas, the military operations trigger massive “brain drain,” forcing engineers, creatives, and entrepreneurs to flee the country indefinitely.

Continuous instability due to continuous warfare ensures that Lebanon never structurally recovers or competes with regional tech hubs, effectively keeping it economically crippled.

This has nothing to do with Hezbollah. Hezbollah exists only to prevent this from being fully realized.

De-development

Independent analysts often point to what is known as “de-development” or the deliberate creation of a failed state.

A prosperous, technologically advanced Lebanon with a booming economy would naturally develop a stronger, more centralized government and a well-funded national army. By keeping Lebanon in a constant state of economic crisis and physical destruction, it ensures the Lebanese state remains too weak to govern effectively or secure its own borders.

Cultural erasure

Legal scholars, historians, and local authorities increasingly connect these events to explain how targeting heritage goes far beyond physical collateral damage.

Urban planning research groups, such as the Beirut Urban Lab, emphasize that looking at this strictly as “accidental collateral damage” ignores the strategic utility of cultural destruction. In both the Balkans in the 1991 war and Lebanon today, the destruction achieves several functional, destructive objectives:

                  ┌──────────────────────────────────────────────┐
                  │   TACTICS OF SYSTEMIC CULTURAL ERASURE       │
                  └──────────────────────┬───────────────────────┘
                                         │
         ┌───────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┐
         ▼                               ▼                               ▼
┌─────────────────────────────────┐ ┌─────────────────────────────────┐ ┌─────────────────────────────────┐
│     PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE       │ │      INFRASTRUCTURE DENIAL      │ │    ERASING THE MULTI-ETHNIC     │
│ Target landmarks to dismantle   │ │ Flatten historical centers to   │ │ Erase architectural proof of   │
│ regional pride, morale, and     │ │ prevent populations from ever   │ │ diverse, shared historic       │
│ the community's link to past.   │ │ returning to rebuild society.   │ │ coexistence in the Levant.     │
└─────────────────────────────────┘ └─────────────────────────────────┘ └─────────────────────────────────┘

Legal Accountability

The most vital link between Split, Dubrovnik, and the destruction of Lebanon’s heritage lies in international accountability. Following the Balkan wars, the ICTY successfully prosecuted Yugoslav military commanders for the war crime of “destruction or willful damage done to institutions dedicated to religion, charity and education, the arts and sciences, historic monuments, and works of art and science.”

Under the Second Protocol of the 1954 Hague Convention, the ongoing attacks on Lebanon’s enhanced-protection sites carry the exact same weight. Legally, if a state attacks a site marked with enhanced immunity without an extraordinary, proven case of absolute military necessity, it constitutes a severe violation and serves as explicit grounds for individual war crimes prosecutions at the international level.

Enforcement Loophole

When a treaty like the 1954 Hague Convention fails to stop bombs from falling on 2,000-year-old structures, it exposes a massive, painful gap between international law on paper and geopolitical power in reality.

The UN Security Council enforces, not UNESCO. UNESCO is an educational and cultural agency, not a military or governing body. It has zero power to enforce its own treaties. If a country violates a UNESCO “Enhanced Protection” zone, UNESCO can only issue statements of condemnation, strip titles, or document the damage for future court cases.

The only body under international law that can forcefully punish a country (via economic sanctions, military intervention, or peacekeepers) is the UN Security Council. Because the United States holds a permanent veto on the Council, it consistently blocks any binding, punitive resolutions against Israel, paralyzing the only mechanism that could legally enforce the Hague Convention.

Geopolitical priorities

In the calculus of global foreign policy, world powers prioritize military alliances and strategic objectives over the preservation of history. Geopolitical priorities over cultural heritage.

Western allies (such as the U.S., Germany, and the UK) view Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah as a vital geopolitical objective to counter Iranian influence in the region.

Because Israel asserts that its targets are underground Hezbollah tunnels or launchers near these ancient sites, Western governments accept the defense of “military necessity.” They treat the destruction of Roman or Ottoman heritage as an unfortunate, unavoidable byproduct of war rather than an intentional crime, giving Israel diplomatic cover to continue.

Mainstream media complicity

Coverage of Middle Eastern conflicts in mainstream Western media usually, and deliberately, lacks historical, cultural, or archaeological context. A strike on a 2,000-year-old Roman ruin in Tyre or an Ottoman-era quarter in Baalbek is reported by the mainstream media merely as a generic explosion in a specific geographical location, stripping the event of its civilizational and identity significance for the Lebanese people.

Media analysts point out a hypocrisy in how cultural destruction is covered depending on the geopolitical alignment of the perpetrator. For example, when ISIS destroyed ancient temples in Palmyra, Syria, or when Russian forces damaged cultural sites in Ukraine, international media dedicated extensive, front-page coverage to condemning the acts as “barbaric” assaults on human heritage.

When a Western-aligned military causes similar destruction, the coverage is restrained, passive, and focused on tactical military justifications.

Documentation efforts

Because mainstream media marginalizes these aspects of the war, the task of properly documenting and condemning cultural erasure has shifted to alternative channels.

Organizations like the Beirut Urban Lab, alongside international archaeological watchdogs, rely on satellite imagery and ground-verified open-source data to bypass mainstream media filters. They publish real-time maps and technical reports detailing exactly how many protected monuments have been struck, creating a permanent, untarnished digital record of the damage.

I write about it to add to those efforts: to keep a record, to document, to bear witness in real time, and to stand inside history as it unfolds. Given Israel's impunity, the only thing we can do is be a living, breathing account of what they have committed.

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Iran’s delegation departed for Islamabad today for negotiations with the United States. This sounds hopeful, one might think, after all, no one wants WW3 to interfere with our summer plans, the World Cup, and gas prices. Yes, this was sarcasm. I’m at my wits’ end.

Negotiations are good. Talks and agreements matter when there’s a credible partner. Traveling to negotiate with terrorists who, on the first day of an unprovoked aggression against your nation, double-tapped your elementary school with a Tomahawk cruise missile, killing 168 schoolgirls, is not diplomacy; it’s futility.

Even the mafia has rules. The United States and Israel have none.

Why would you travel to negotiate with the terrorists who bombed 800 of your schools, over 30 universities, healthcare facilities, and other civilian infrastructures?

Why would you travel to negotiate with the terrorists who openly brag about assassinating your leaders?

Why would you travel to negotiate with the terrorist…

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This Friday, on the first Good Friday of his pontificate, Pope Leo XIV entered the Colosseum in Rome to begin the Via Crucis. The new 70-year-old pope decided to carry the cross through all 14 stations of the Way of the Cross, holding it up in front of his face for nearly two hours as he prayed “for victims of war, the defense of human dignity, the despairing, and the lonely.”

A chilling sight, seeing the new Pope walking the Way of the Cross where early Christians were martyred.

Talk about a powerful moment. For Christianity? Humanity?

This marks the first time a pope carried the cross for every station in more than three decades. Pope John Paul II was the last pope to do so, carrying the cross from 1980 to 1994.

When asked about his decision to carry the cross for all 14 stations, Pope Leo told reporters he saw it as a sign the world needed right now:

“I think it will…

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I wrote an International Women’s Day poem in 2024, and I’ve been posting it every year since. It’s always current, always fitting — nothing seems to change. The world has descended into a permanent state of imperial stupor, so it always applies. It goes like this:

This year, I feel like expanding it, given the sheer Western arrogance of this moment — Women, Life, Freedom in action. “Help is on the way, Iran,” claim US and Israeli politicians, activists, influencers, and Iranian diaspora hasbarists; liberation underway, one bomb at a time, war openly marketed as feminism, and the liberation of the Iranian people.

Over the past two years, we watched Palestinian and Lebanese women face levels of violence, displacement, and trauma unimaginable to the rest of us. Entire families wiped out. Mothers and daughters buried under rubble. Hospitals and maternity destroyed.

Yet these women rarely appear in the speeches of the same politicians or social media posts of the p…

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In case you haven’t already figured this out, Hollywood isn’t innocent in creating the dystopian world we live in. In fact, it’s an active participant — a creator, an accomplice, an extended hand.

American arrogance doesn’t stop at geopolitics or failed diplomacy; it seeps into culture, cinema, music, entertainment — into the narratives that teach the world how to perceive power. Hollywood is not simply complicit in the global power structure. It’s one of the most morally corrupt cultural institutions of our time.

In a country overwhelmed by political dysfunction, cultural fragmentation, and ideological chaos, people pointed to an actor. A talent emerged in the American landscape, seemingly out of nowhere, and he made people feel something that felt clean, grounded, and human.

Connor Storrie.

I was scrolling through Threads the other day when I came across a post asking, “Is there one good thing about America?” A surprising number of people gave the same answer: “Connor Storrie.”

It’s si…

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The Berlinale stage is not a neutral living room. It’s one of the most visible cultural platforms in the world, where silence is not accidental. Also, a tiny reminder — there is no such thing as “apolitical art.”

Every film, every performance, every red-carpet moment, every acceptance speech carries the fingerprints of the political world that produced it.

This year’s Berlin Film Festival is a parade of spineless, apolitical cowards posing as artists. It’s hard to comprehend the pile of nonsense that came out of so many mouths over the past couple of days.

Being an artist, standing on one of the world’s largest stages, at one of the most political festivals, backed by a government funding an ongoing genocide — while living through deadly ICE protests in the U.S., the Epstein scandal, a livestreamed genocide in Gaza, genocide in Sudan, human rights violations and sexual violence in Congo, and the rise of fascism in the UK, the U.S., and Germany…

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Angelina Jolie, Louis Garrel, and the cast of Couture attended the film’s premiere at Pathé Palace in Paris. Louis and Angelina are rumored to be dating. The comments on social media flooded in: “She could be his mother.” “She’s too old for him.” “He should run.”

Angelina is 50 years old, Louis is 42.

I’ve been seeing this kind of commentary for years on the posts of many famous women over 45 — Kate Beckinsale, Sienna Miller, Heidi Klum, Sam Taylor-Johnson, and others. These comments are usually made by very young women, often sounding angry about how these women dress, how active they are on social media, how playful they are in their posts — but especially when they date younger men.

When I see men leaving these comments, I don’t flinch. They’re so obviously bitter and pathetic — a statistic that doesn’t deserve our time, no matter how ridiculous they sound.

But when women do this, it hurts me.

How can we do this to eachother, given everyt…

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For the past two years, like anyone with a talent for words and a functioning conscience, I wrote about power. I wrote about wars, genocides, cruelty, violence, and the cost of bearing witness. That cost was high for me. I lost myself in the process. I became a shell of a human being — waking up every day to frantically research the latest atrocity that had happened while I slept, taking notes, consuming, sourcing, reliving it in my bones so I could put it on paper and pass the information on. I haven’t slept properly in two years; I was napping, researching, writing — rinse, repeat.

I stopped writing about myself, and in doing so, I stopped examining myself. I stopped caring for myself. I stopped examining the world; the art, music, and craft I had loved and written about for most of my life.

Live genocide, streamed daily on our phones, paralyzed me.

How do you write about your life, culture, movies, film, books, relationships, love, and tell all these beauti…

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Hi, folks. Three weeks into 2026, and wow. Checking in on you, and myself in the process. The first few days of the new year, along with the 2025 holiday season, felt promising.

What a beautiful thing it was to wake up on New Year’s Day and celebrate the inauguration of Mayor Mamdani — the joy, the hope, the inclusivity, the clarity of both the man and the message, all sprinkled with confetti as the final words were spoken, coming right after the high of a Heated Rivalry Christmas.

The year started strong, and we’ll hold on to that hope no matter what. Anything else would be capitulating to power — and we’re not the bending kind. Unless we choose to bend for things far more pleasurable than letting the government fuck us in the ass.

Did anyone truly believe we’d get a whole week into the new year without state violence, lightly seasoned with yet another breach of international law? I did. I was riding the high on my Mayor / Cottage crossover, and I foolish…

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As soon as I saw Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams sign with CAA this past week, I had a feeling of dread overcome me. Am I insane? These two were waiters three months ago, I hear your inside voice, they deserve this! Not insane quite yet, I’m afraid. Experienced in Hollywood shitfuckery, very much yes.

These two men are talented, chill, beautiful, enjoyable, and glorious. They are not a Hollywood product. You might be too excited for their rise in this industry to realize they are a threat to that same industry. To the façade that is Hollywood, the most corrupt industry, probably right after our government.

Let’s unpack the Globes, their first awards show, ever. Connor and Hudson looked majestic on the red carpet. Literally every single media outlet published their faces, over and over again, from every possible angle. Images. Videos. My entire scroll was just them. I saw no one else.

Their red-carpet interviews wer…

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Did anyone truly believe we’d get a whole week into the new year without state violence, lightly seasoned with yet another breach of international law? I did. I was riding the high of Heated Rivalry Christmas, followed by the historic Mamdani inauguration, and I foolishly believed there were still so many joys in this world — joys our government works relentlessly to suffocate.

And after two years of struggling to find my own sense of meaning, living in a country in perpetual decline, I was determined not to let 2026 be taken from me the same way.

No can do, said the crime syndicate, pretending to be your government.

Only three days into the new year, and it’s already Grand Theft Venezuela. We’re snatching presidents of sovereign foreign countries to steal their resources — or, more precisely, to stockpile oil before attacking another sovereign nation, Iran, in a matter of weeks.

As you already know, the US military attacked Venezuela over the weekend and abducted President Nicholas Maduro

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“My fellow New Yorkers — today begins a new era. I stand before you, moved by the privilege of taking this sacred oath, humbled by the faith that you have placed in me, and honored to serve as either your 111th or 112th Mayor of New York City. But I do not stand alone. I stand alongside you, the tens of thousands gathered here in Lower Manhattan, warmed against the January chill by the resurgent flame of hope.”

It was a long way to here — a year, to be exact — since I joined the new media team of Mayor Mamdani (I cannot stop saying those two words together), helping him reach this moment, standing in –10°C weather, limbs numb by the time he came out to address us all — and the New Yorkers watching at home.

It’s strange, my mother says, the amount of energy and persistence I have, in the middle of so much exhaustion and sleep deprivation — the kind that comes with life in New York — that I’m still able to find it in my body to rally for this man.

It almost feels subhuman, all the canvassi…

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