cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/47279906

"I do not intend to allow any country to wage a diplomatic war against us without paying an immediate price."

https://streamff.com/v/52c98a87

April 9, 2026

As a fragile cease-fire takes hold, Iran is sorting through the wreckage from U.S.-Israeli strikes, which have exacted a heavy toll on its civilian infrastructure. The New York Times has verified damage to 22 schools and 17 health care facilities, a fraction of the devastation in the war so far.

The scale of devastation is likely far greater than The Times’s analysis. The Iranian Red Crescent Society, the country’s primary humanitarian relief organization, said on April 2 that at least 763 schools and 316 health care facilities had been damaged or destroyed in the war.

The UK flew a drone over Baalbek, Lebanon as Israel massacred 18 people and injured 28 others there on Wednesday, flight data shows.

The flight, first reported on by independent journalist Matt Kennard, left the RAF Akrotiri airbase in Cyprus at 8:22am local time, just hours before Israel’s massive and intense bombardment of civilian areas across Lebanon, which killed at least 303 people, including many children.

The General Atomics Protector RG1 drone circled in the sky near Baalbek for hours, data from AirNav Radar shows. The model is equipped with missiles and bombs and can be used for “surveillance, search and rescue, and armed operations”, according to the RAF’s website.

Prime minister Keir Starmer has repeatedly, and falsely, claimed that the UK’s only involvement in the war in the Middle East since 28 February is defensive.

Wednesday’s drone flight appears to mirror a pattern first seen at the height of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, when Starmer’s government flew numerous surveillance flights over the enclave on behalf of the apartheid state.

Those flights led many observers to conclude that he was directly complicit in the atrocities in Gaza.

Wednesday’s attacks on Lebanon violated a ceasefire agreement reached just hours earlier between the US and Iran and prompted accusations of state-led terror by Israel.

The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention updated its Red Flag alert for Lebanon after the killings. The alerts serve as warnings for potential genocide in a given region.

“Today’s attacks on Lebanon were a clear atrocity crime no matter how Israel tries to justify it,” the institute said on Wednesday.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/45742878
Duration - 24:50

[a video about Cuba from the news collective Belly Of The Beast]

“NeuralCIM is so effective as a new drug, this should change the narrative.”

Colorado-based physician Dr Bill Blanchet has spent years researching Cuba’s biopharmaceutical industry. He says its latest product, NeuralCIM, a breakthrough treatment for Alzheimer’s disease, could change the lives of millions of people in the United States, but is blocked by the same embargo that is claiming Cuban lives.

Over the past year, 52 of Dr Blanchet’s patients have gone through La Pradera International Clinic in Havana to receive the treatment, and he’s been monitoring their progress. The drug was approved by Cuba’s Ministry of Health in 2025 for the treatment of mild to moderate Alzheimer’s, free for Cuban citizens.

In this interview, Dr Blanchet explains the science behind the medication, how it was trialed, its potential in helping with Parkinson’s disease and traumatic brain injuries, and his outrage at how U.S. foreign policy is punishing ordinary Cubans and crippling Cuba’s healthcare system.

Watch our report on NeuralCIM here: https://youtu.be/mKHvyi1MyuA

An upcoming Belly of the Beast documentary, Teresita’s Dream, tracks the research and development of NeuralCIM. It meets the Cuban scientists behind it, focusing on Dr Teresita Rodríguez, who was driven by her mother’s battle with Alzheimer’s.

Watch the trailer here: https://youtu.be/a2Y5FBR0pnU

Help shift the conversation on Alzheimer’s - for press inquiries or to host an early screening of the film visit the Teresita’s Dream section on our website: https://www.bellyofthebeastcuba.com/teresitas-dream

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/45434604

"Other recent departures have included global head of creators, Kim Farrell, who left earlier this year after almost six years, and Blake Chandlee, who departed in 2025 after leading advertising and marketing for six years.

Michael Beckerman, a public policy executive who helped lead TikTok’s fight against a U.S. ban, also exited last year, as did music chief Ole Obermann. And Erich Andersen, who served as U.S.-based general counsel for TikTok and its Chinese parent ByteDance Ltd., left that role in 2024."

Did they quit or did they DeTikTok? ;)

https://archive.ph/9izBk

As a ceasefire was declared in the Middle East, Volodymyr Zelenskyy sought to draw attention to the war in his own country, posting on social media that Ukraine had consistently pushed for a ceasefire in the war “being waged by Russia here, in Europe”.

Efforts to end the war in Ukraine have largely stalled since the Iran war began, with trilateral talks between Kyiv, Moscow and Washington, which had already yielded little, frozen since February 2026. The war, meanwhile, has continued, with air attacks on Ukrainian cities and heavy fighting on the battlefields as Russia launches a spring offensive.

A possible visit to Kyiv this month by the White House envoy Steve Witkoff and Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, which would be their first since negotiations began, may help to reboot talks to end the conflict. But the war in Iran has exposed divisions between Washington and its European allies more starkly than at any point since Russia’s full-scale invasion in early 2022 and fuelled concerns in Europe over the depth of US commitment to any potential peace deal.

One European official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: “You can see Trump’s team is running out of patience in Ukraine and wants a quick solution.”

The Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) has categorically denied carrying out reported drone and missile strikes on facilities in countries along the southern edge of the Persian Gulf, stressing that Iranian forces carried out no such operations during the ceasefire hours.

A historic synagogue in Tehran, originally built in 1958, was destroyed on the Jewish holiday of Passover by Israeli airstrikes on April 7th.

The Rafi-Nia Synagogue, located in central Tehran, was one of the longstanding institutions serving Iran’s Jewish community. Constructed in 1958, it stood as both a place of worship and a symbol of the deep historical roots of Judaism in Iran, which stretch back more than two millennia.

“We are Iranian Jews and we are always ready to sacrifice our lives for our homeland,” Bihdad Mikhail, managing director of the Tehran Jewish Association, told MintPress News as he held back his tears while carrying Jewish books that were destroyed by Israeli airstrikes.

The Mikhail told MintPress that the Jewish community in Iran is vehemently anti-Zionist and have vowed their loyalty to their Iranian homeland against Israeli attacks.

The Mikhail told MintPress that the Jewish community in Iran is vehemently anti-Zionist and have vowed their loyalty to their Iranian homeland against Israeli attacks.

Raw video footage and interviews with the synagogue director however show that the building was completely leveled, with religious materials, including Torah scrolls, buried beneath the rubble. Israel denies deliberately targeting the historic synagogue, with Israeli officials describing the damage as “collateral”.

Raw video footage and interviews with the synagogue director however show that the building was completely leveled, with religious materials, including Torah scrolls, buried beneath the rubble. Israel denies deliberately targeting the historic synagogue, with Israeli officials describing the damage as “collateral”.

The strike has been condemned not only by Iranian officials but also by members of Iran’s Jewish community who told MintPress that “Israel is an ominous Zionist regime”.

Representatives of the community have emphasized that the synagogue was a purely religious space, with no military function, underscoring the broader implications of the attack.

The destruction of the Rafi-Nia Synagogue highlights the often-overlooked reality of Iran’s Jewish population. Contrary to common perceptions, Iran is home to one of the largest Jewish communities in the Middle East outside of Israel, with more than 10,000 Jews and approximately 100 active synagogues across the country. These communities have maintained religious life and cultural traditions for generations.

Judaism is one of the main recognized religions by the Iranian government providing religious protection to this community.

For many, the attack raises troubling questions about the widening scope of the conflict.

Religious and cultural sites have historically been protected under international law, yet recent weeks have seen increasing reports of damage to UNESCO heritage sites across Iran, either directly or through nearby strikes.

The timing of the strike has also intensified outrage. Reports indicate that the attack occurred during a period of religious observance, amplifying concerns that places of worship are no longer being treated as protected spaces in the expanding war.

Beyond the immediate destruction, the loss of the synagogue represents a deeper cultural blow. Sites like the Rafi-Nia Synagogue are not only places of worship but also repositories of history, identity, and communal memory. Their destruction erases physical links to longstanding minority communities that have coexisted within Iran for centuries.

While Israel claims to be a “Jewish State”, this latest attack against an Iranian synagogue shows Israel’s actions are rooted in destruction, genocide and an attempt to sow chaos.

Source: MintPress News https://www.mintpressnews.com/iranian-jewish-association-describe-israel-as-ominous-zionist-regime-after-israeli-strikes-destroy-historic-synagogue-on-passover/290836/

At least a dozen US military sites across the Gulf region have been so badly damaged by Iran's retaliation to US and Israeli attacks that their presence now creates significantly more vulnerabilities than it does benefits, a slate of Middle East experts argued on Thursday.

The original revelation about the state of the bases was first reported in The New York Times last month, in which they were described as "all but uninhabitable".

The Trump administration has yet to acknowledge the extent of the damage sustained.

"This is the physical architecture of American primacy, and Iran has essentially rendered it useless in the span of a month," Marc Lynch, director of the Project on Middle East Political Science at George Washington University, said at the Arab Center Washington DC's annual conference.

From independent Australian journalist Caitlin Johnstone:

Israel is already aggressively sabotaging the Trump administration’s two-week ceasefire with Iran by slaughtering huge numbers of civilians in Lebanon, a nation which is explicitly off-limits for any attack under the ceasefire conditions agreed to by Tehran.

The US and Israel are trying to claim that Lebanon is not part of the ceasefire agreement, but Pakistan, whom the US appointed to mediate the agreement, says this is false. The New York Times reports that the White House took part in Pakistan’s public messaging which explicitly included Lebanon in the ceasefire conditions, before changing its tune after Israel attacked.

Iran has reportedly responded to these violations by again halting traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.

This serves as yet another reminder that the world can have peace or it can have Israel — but it cannot have both. Israel is a genocidal apartheid state whose entire existence is premised upon a strategy of unceasing violence and abuse in the middle east. As long as that state continues to exist in its present iteration, peace will never be attainable.

Democrats in the House and Senate are finally moving on a War Powers Act to stop the US president from going to war with Iran, and I’d say better late than never but at this point that would barely even be true.

Democrats like Chuck Schumer and Chris Murphy are currently slamming the president not for his horrifying mass atrocities in Iran but for losing the Strait of Hormuz and failing to achieve objectives like completely disarming their conventional missile program.

As I have said here previously, it’s clear that the reason the Democratic Party failed to oppose Trump’s warmongering with Iran was because they supported it too.

The actual, official 2024 Democratic Party platform accused Trump of “fecklessness and weakness” for failing to go to war with Iran during his first term. Kamala Harris labeled Iran the #1 enemy of the United States. In their 2024 debate, Harris repeatedly slammed Trump for being too soft on America’s enemies and announced that she “will always give Israel the ability to defend itself, in particular as it relates to Iran and any threat that Iran and its proxies pose to Israel.”

I’ve seen a lot of people trying to argue that Trump’s depravity in Iran proves everyone should support Democrats, but it’s clear the Democratic Party is just the more polite-looking face on the same evil power structure.

The Grayzone’s Wyatt Reed has an article out about a freakish BBC article which cited an anonymous Iranian who allegedly told them he supports the US and Israel “hitting energy infrastructure, using an atomic bomb, or leveling Iran.” Following public outcry, the quote was removed and replaced with completely different words — initially without any editor’s note of any kind.

Reed documents how the BBC reporter behind the story, Ghoncheh Habibiazad, is a London-based Iranian monarchist with an extensive history of agitating for regime change war against her home country, including with the US government propaganda operation Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

Last month The Times ran an article titled “Some Iranians say one thing’s worse than bombs: no bombs”. Western powers are always aggressively pushing this self-evidently false claim that people in empire-targeted countries want bombs dropped on them, in much the same way slavery proponents argued that Africans were happiest as slaves because God made it their nature to serve.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: it’s impossible to have enough disdain for the western press.

https://substack.com/home/post/p-193682839

https://thegrayzone.com/2026/04/07/senior-bbc-iran-reporter-opposition-activist/

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/45714503

[a video about Cuba from the news collective Belly Of The Beast]

Hundreds of Cuban women gathered at Mariana Grajales Park in Havana to denounce the Trump administration’s intensification of the U.S. government’s 60-year economic war on Cuba.

According to Teresa Amarelle Boue, Secretary General of the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC, for its acronym in Spanish), women are among the sectors of the population most directly affected by U.S. sanctions.

For women, the impact is felt both in their professional and personal lives, as many bear the primary responsibility for running households and caring for children and the sick, tasks that have become increasingly difficult under the tightened embargo. This is the case of Cecilia Valdés, a caregiver daughter who explains that her mother has been unable to access medication due to restrictions caused by the embargo.

Tuesday’s gathering also paid tribute to the 96th anniversary of Vilma Espín, the late leader of the organization, who devoted much of her life’s work to the empowerment of women within the Cuban Revolution.

Attacks on Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline knocked out 700,000 barrels per day (bpd) of the kingdom’s oil capacity, or roughly 10 percent of its current exports, according to a statement by the kingdom’s energy ministry on Thursday.

“These attacks included a pumping station on the vital East-West pipeline, leading to a loss of approximately 700,000 barrels per day of pumped volume through the pipeline, which is the main route for supplying global markets during this period,” the energy ministry said.

The statement marked the first official confirmation that Saudi Arabia’s energy facilities have suffered damage as a result of Iranian strikes, and comes just as the US and Iran gear up for high-profile peace talks in Islamabad, Pakistan.

Alternative video upload: https://files.catbox.moe/4qzjqk.mp4

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/45713810

In a series of Situation Room meetings, President Trump weighed his instincts against the deep concerns of his vice president and a pessimistic intelligence assessment. Here’s the inside story of how he made the fateful decision.

April 7, 2026

I giornalisti e i comunicatori di Borghi d'Europa hanno inserito l'Oleificio Andreassi nel progetto L'Europa delle scienze e della cultura (Patrocinio IAI-Iniziativa adriatico ionica, Forum Intergovernativo per la cooperazione regionale nella regione adriatico ionica).

L'incontro con il comm. Matteo Andreassi all'Oasi La Brussa in Caorle (Ve), in occasione di VinoCalciando, ha ribadito una scelta che Borghi d'Europa aveva maturato fin dal 2015.

Poggiofiorito è un comune italiano di 798 abitanti della provincia di Chieti in Abruzzo.

Fa parte dell'Unione dei comuni della Marrucina.

I giornalisti e i comunicatori di Borghi d'Europa lo hanno conosciuto grazie alle degustazioni dell'olio e del vino dell 'Oleificio Andreassi e lo hanno così inserito nella rete dei Borghi del Gusto.

Matteo Andreassi,Mastro Oleario, sarà presente alla edizione del 25 maggio di VinoCalciando a Caorle, presso la Trattoria Agli Alberoni, della serata di degustazione e prodotti enogastronomici.

L'evento nasce ad Udine da una idea di tre amici Dante Mauro e Claudio, di voler giocare una partita a calcio (cuochi contro camerieri) e degustare ottimi vini e prodotti a fine match.

VinoCalciando oggi conserva il nome (nato dopo una serata eroica a Fagagna), ma sopratutto lo spirito.

La serata di degustazione viene rinnovata di anno in anno e parte del ricavato è sempre devoluto in beneficenza.

L'incontro di Caorle servirà anche a raccontare l'inserimento dell'Oleificio Andreassi nella rete di iniziative giornalistiche che accompagnano dal 1° giugno il turno di Presidenza italiana alla IAI (Iniziativa adriatico ionica, Forum Intergovernativo per la cooperazione regionale nella regione adriatico ionica).

Nel giugno del 2025 Borghi d'Europa aveva inserito l'Azienda di Poggiofiorito all'interno delle manifestazioni che avevano ricordato il 25° della nascita della IAI, a giugno 2026 inizierà il Percorso informativo che coprirà dieci Paesi Europei e diverse regioni italiane sulle qualità dell'olio abruzzese.

Accanto alla produzione di ottimo olio, il comm. Matteo Andreassi ha unito la produzione di vino.

E' nata così Fattoria Andreassi, grazie all'acquisizione di cinque ettari, salvati da una sicura perdita d'identità.

'Volti di un territorio' recita la linea dei vini MUSA : due IGT,Pecorino Terre di Chietie Passerina Terre di Chieti e due DOC (rossi), il Montepulciano d'Abruzzo e il Cavaliere, Montepulciano d'Abruzzo Riserva.

" Il Pecorino Terra di Chieti – osserva Alessio Dalla Barba, giornalista e sommlier AIS di Milano-, ha un colore giallo paglierino con riflessi verdognoli. Risulta al naso intenso, con note di frutta a polpa bianca/gialla (pesca e albicocca) e più tropicali come mango e kiwi, sentori minerali. Denota una grande freschezza, che si trova al palato, sapido e piacevole ma possiede un buon potenziale evolutivo : perfetto con molluschi e crostacei o con un cous cous con pesce e verdure in ottica estiva"