Global
Rima Hassan, 33, was born in the Neirab Palestinian refugee camp near Aleppo, Syria. Her family hails from the village of al-Birwa—depopulated in 1948—located south of Acre. She immigrated to France with her mother and five siblings at the age of nine, and at eighteen she obtained French citizenship. She later studied law at the Sorbonne University, where her thesis focused on apartheid in South Africa and Israel.
In June 2025, she joined the Freedom Flotilla bound for Gaza, sailing aboard the vessel Madeleine. She was accompanied by eleven others, including climate activist Greta Thunberg. The vessel was intercepted by the Israeli Navy in international waters about 200 kilometers (124 miles) from the Palestinian coast as they attempted to deliver food, children’s prosthetics, and other urgently needed supplies to Gaza’s besieged population. Hassan stated that she was beaten while in Israeli custody.
NASA got through the Artemis II mission last week with a few minor “anomalies,” as NASA calls problems, but in 2028 it plans to launch a nuclear-powered rocket to Mars as an initial step to using nuclear-powered rockets in space.
An accident involving a nuclear-powered rocket could be no small anomaly.
The NASA plan was heralded in a section titled “America underway on nuclear power in space” in a NASA announcement on March 24th headed “NASA Unveils Initiatives to Achieve America’s National Space Policy.”
It said that “after decades of study and in response to the National Space Policy, NASA announced a major step forward in bringing nuclear power and propulsion from the lab to space. NASA will launch the Space Reactor-1 Freedom, the first nuclear-powered interplanetary spacecraft, to Mars before the end of 2028, demonstrating advanced nuclear electric propulsion in deep space.”
Is DJT God, or just Jesus? Don’t ask the Pope. In either case, it hasn’t helped his Iran fiasco, which is opposed by a majority, especially over at Truth Social. His deportations aren’t going so great either, necessitating the firing of judges. And citizen participation in democracy is under attack by mis-representatives in state governments…who’da thunk?!
Dr. Bob Fitrakis and Dan-o Dougan interview friend and musician Steve Caruso, a local activist who is known to have worked behind the scenes at the Philadelphia Folk Festival.
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The naval blockade around Iran exposes something modern war talk tries to hide: coercion no longer needs to look like war to function as war. It only needs to control the systems people depend on to live.
The Strait of Hormuz is not a symbolic chokepoint. It is one of the most important energy arteries on the planet. The current U.S.-enforced blockade operates through inspections, interdictions, and the constant threat of force against shipping tied to Iranian ports. In practice, this means delays to tankers, rising insurance premiums, rerouted vessels, and heightened risk for even third-party shipping. What this produces is not clean “pressure” on a state. It is friction injected into global systems—fuel flows, insurance markets, shipping routes, and civilian supply chains that extend far beyond any military target.
This is the first myth that needs to go: that blockades are a restrained alternative to violence. They are not. They are violence administered through systems instead of explosions.
Dear Mr. Colbert, your take-down of Trump’s #2 at FEMA, Gregg Phillips, who claims he was tele-transported to a Waffle House was so hilarious I spit my milk out through my nose.
But I’m not laughing anymore. Mr. Colbert, Phillips may choose our next president, he’s that powerful. In fact, he chose our current one.
Donald Trump asked Republicans to pass the SAVE Act “for Jesus.” He’d have been better calling out George Wallace and Strom Thurmond. The debate has focused on the bill’s many dangerous aspects, and the next steps to trying to pass it are unclear. But the SAVE Act builds on voter suppression that Republicans have been carrying out for the past 25 years. The Democrats need to talk about this history, because whether or not this bill passes, there will be others like it to come.
The bill attacks voting rights in multiple ways:
A ceasefire in Lebanon was announced on Thursday by US President Donald Trump, but its reality tells a very different story. The ceasefire was not the product of American diplomacy, nor Israeli strategic calculation. It was imposed—largely as a result of sustained Iranian pressure.
Washington, Tel Aviv, and their allies—including some within Lebanon itself—will continue to deny this reality. Acknowledging Iran’s role would mean admitting that a historic precedent has been set: for the first time, forces opposing the United States and Israel have succeeded in imposing conditions on both.
This is not a minor development. It is a strategic rupture. But it is not the only fundamental shift now underway: Israel’s very approach to war and diplomacy is itself changing.
After failing to secure victory through overwhelming violence, Israel is increasingly relying on coercive diplomacy to impose political outcomes.
