World News

I was at work last Saturday when I heard the blast. Since that moment, the world has been turned on its head. The school called asking me to come and pick up my child. I rushed to the metro and headed north in a carriage filled with anxious people calling their loved ones to ensure their safety, melancholy etched on their faces, uncertainty metastasising from one to another as they checked the latest news on their mobiles.

This is the second time within a year that Israel has decided to go for a war of choice with Iran, but I suppose that is the new normal. Israel has long enjoyed a unique position of near-total impunity when it comes to harassing Palestinians, and now the green light to aggression seems to extend to its unending wars and spreading of terror across the region. And it feels different this time. The pretence that there is some level of precision in the strikes is gone. Instead, the attacks appear indiscriminate, with targets ranging from schools to hospitals, from police stations to urban amenities – all hit with a level of might that seems aimed at demolition, total destruction, the flattening of the city.

“Beirutification” should become a word if it is not already. By that, I mean the slow normalisation of periodic attacks on a city by a capricious and violent state, until blasts and death become woven into the fabric of urban life. It is urban death by a thousand knives. It is the suffocation of imagination and the thwarting of any civil attempt at a better life, and the gradual dilapidation of a nation to the point where it can no longer stand again, condemned instead to rot in exhausted silence. That is what years of war have done to Beirut. Now something similar is unfolding in Tehran.

Anonymous has really stepped up their writing game.

As missiles and drones curtail energy production across the Persian Gulf, analysts warn that water, not oil, may be the resource most at risk in the energy-rich but arid region.

On Sunday, Bahrain accused Iran of damaging one of its desalination plants. Earlier, Iran said a U.S. airstrike had damaged an Iranian plant.

Hundreds of desalination plants sit along the Persian Gulf coast, putting individual systems that supply water to millions within range of Iranian missile or drone strikes. Without them, major cities could not sustain their current populations.

In Kuwait, about 90% of drinking water comes from desalination, along with roughly 86% in Oman and about 70% in Saudi Arabia. The technology removes salt from seawater — most commonly by pushing it through ultrafine membranes in a process known as reverse osmosis — to produce the freshwater that sustains cities, hotels, industry and some agriculture across one of the world’s driest regions.

The things we do for false Christianity.

Sleeplessness, fear and exhaustion gripped residents of Tehran as successive waves of strikes struck the Iranian capital, judging from messages sent by people in the city after the latest overnight onslaught, which several described as the worst bombardment in six days of war.

With Iran imposing a near-total internet blackout, information emerging from inside the country is fragmentary and difficult to verify. But in a series of accounts sent through proxy connections, and calls with friends abroad, Tehranis described a night of intense explosions.

Zahra, a teacher and mother of one living in central Tehran, said the strikes, in what she said was the heaviest attack to date, had left her deeply worried for civilians who found themselves in danger not just from Iran’s attackers but from their own government.

“This is the first time since the war began that I am genuinely scared for my fellow Iranians,” said Zahra*. “We are trapped between the regime that is killing us with machine guns, and a foreign power has likely decided that we are collateral damage.”

Actually fun to read article.

Mojtaba Khamenei, the second son of the assassinated Ali Khamenei, is being heavily tipped to succeed his father as supreme leader of Iran, which would pitch a hardliner into the task of steering the Islamic republic through the most turbulent period in its 48-year history and offer a powerful signal that, for now, it has no intention of changing course.

No official confirmation has been given and the announcement may be delayed until after the funeral of Ali Khamenei, which was on Wednesday postponed.

His son is believed to have been the choice of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and the Israeli defence minister, Gideon Saar, has warned he will be assassinated.

Ayatollah Seyed Khatani, a member of the Assembly of Experts, the body that chooses the new supreme leader, said the assembly was close to selecting a leader.

Rigid in his anti-western views, Mojtaba Khamenei is not the candidate Donald Trump would have wanted. Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, said on Tuesday that Iran was run by “religious fanatic lunatics” – and Khamenei’s appointment is hardly likely to dispel that opinion.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/51743226

The Trump administration and its allies in Congress presented a shifting new justification Monday for the U.S. attack on Iran, with House Speaker Mike Johnson suggesting that the White House believed Israel was determined to act on its own, leaving the president with a “very difficult decision.”

Johnson said the attack on Iran was a “defensive operation” because Israel was ready to act against Iran, “with or without American support.” He said President Donald Trump and his team determined that Iran would immediately retaliate against U.S. personnel and assets.

The remarkable shift in the Trump administration’s stated rationale comes as the hostilities deepen and widen across the region. The president himself estimated the war could drag on for weeks. The administration plans to seek supplemental funds from Congress to support the effort.

The outcome and duration of the war in the Middle East may be decided by a grim calculus based on the size of Iran’s drone and missile stocks v vital air defence munitions held by the US, Israel and Gulf states, analysts and officials say.

Since Saturday, Iran and its proxies have sought to counter the intensive joint US and Israeli offensive with more than 1,000 strikes against targets across almost a dozen countries spread over 1,200 miles. With its antiquated air force unable to compete with those of Israel and the US, Tehran has relied on its arsenal of missiles and drones.

The geographical extent of Iran’s retaliatory attacks have made the conflict the widest in the Middle East since the second world war. Israeli and US aircraft and missiles have struck hundreds of sites across Iran, without losing a plane to hostile fire.

The US and Israel are seeking to destroy as much of Iran’s missile stockpile and infrastructure as possible, targeting launchers, stores and personnel.

Move over, Mona Lisa. There was a new “masterpiece” at the Louvre this week, and it didn’t involve a cryptic smile or centuries-old oil paint. ... Read More

https://archive.is/FoRO2

The final piece of the central tower of Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia has been laid in place, bringing the church to its maximum final height 144 years after work began.

After several days when it has been too windy to work, the upper section of the 17 metre-high four-sided steel and glass cross was winched into position at 11am on Friday, completing the tower dedicated to Jesus Christ. At 172.5 metres, the Sagrada Familia, to which the Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí devoted the later part of his life, is Barcelona’s tallest building and the world’s tallest church.

As the Catalan and Vatican flags were raised, Jordi Faulí, the chief architect for the project, said: “It’s been a joyful day, wonderful for all the people who have made it possible.”

A ceremony to mark the completion of the tower – the tallest of 18 conceived by Gaudí – is due to take place on the centenary of Gaudí’s death in 1926 on 10 June, 16 years after the church was consecrated by Pope Benedict XVI.

Nestlé is offloading the remainder of its ice cream assets as the world’s largest food company takes a larger review of its businesses in an aggressive push to turn around sales.

The CPG’s ice cream business outside the U.S. will be sold to Froneri “in a phased way,” Nestlé CEO Philipp Navratil said during an earnings call Thursday. Froneri, a joint venture created by the Swiss company and PAI Partners, acquired Nestlé’s U.S. ice cream business for $4 billion in 2019. Navratil said its remaining ice cream holdings are “strong but small,” adding that the segment is “a distraction for us” as the company chases larger growth opportunities.

Police have seized art posters from a Canberra music venue and bar that depict world leaders and others, including Donald Trump and Elon Musk, wearing Nazi uniforms, and are investigating whether new federal hate symbol laws were broken.

David Howe, the owner of Dissent Cafe and Bar in Canberra’s CBD, said his venue was shut down for about two hours on Wednesday night as police investigated a complaint about hate imagery relating to five posters in the window.

“I think it’s ludicrous to be perfectly honest,” he told Guardian Australia, describing the works as an “anti-fascist statement” and noting the shut down had caused the cancellation of an interstate band’s performance.

By Thursday afternoon, less than 24 hours later, the posters were placed back in the windows, with the contents covered with the word “CENSORED” in red. Howe said he hoped patrons appreciated their return, describing them “absolutely” as protest art.