Will We Finally See a Persian Renaissance?
Posted By: Mercedes44, 6/18/2025 8:25:25 AM
Back in 2007 I received a mysterious call at the New York Sun from a man who said he was referred to me from someone at the New York Times. He said he needed to meet with me on an issue too important to speak about on the phone. The Times reporter had told him that her paper was not the one to cover the story. Cloak and dagger are not my forte and seemingly against my better judgment, I met with the gentleman who turned out to be an Iranian dissident. He filled me in on what was happening in his native country.
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Mercedes44"
NTSB reveals excruciating final 3 minutes
before Air Canada plane’s deadly LaGuardia crash 7 replies
before Air Canada plane’s deadly LaGuardia crash 7 replies
Doomed Air Canada Flight 8646’s cockpit recorder has revealed how the trip turned from routine to tragic within 3 minutes on Sunday.
Both the pilot and co-pilot were killed and more than 40 other people sustained injuries when the jet crashed into a fire truck at LaGuardia Airport in New York City around midnight.
National Transportation Safety Board senior aviation investigator Doug Brazy shed some light on the plane’s harrowing final minutes Tuesday, providing a detailed timeline starting with the flight crew contacting the air traffic control tower up until the moment of the deadly crash:
Meta failed to protect kids from sexual predators and misled users about its platforms’ safety, violating New Mexico law, a jury found Tuesday in a landmark case.
The tech giant was ordered to pay $375 million in civil penalties.
The verdict came after six weeks of testimony from witnesses that included ex-Meta executives, teachers and online safety experts.
New Mexico prosecutors argued that Meta hid the extent of safety issues that kids faced on Facebook and Instagram and failed to enforce its claimed minimum age limit of 13 – even as its algorithms allegedly made it easier for creeps to target kids for online harassment and even sex trafficking.
Viral video of a woman being nabbed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers at San Francisco International Airport sparked mass online fear-mongering about Trump’s deployment of immigration agents to help ease the TSA security crisis.
Video captured the moment ICE agents began handcuffing a crying woman on Sunday at around 10 p.m. inside the airport’s Terminal 3.
The officers were met with backlash from multiple passengers who filmed the scene and yelled at them, as the woman continued to cry with a young girl standing beside her, also sobbing.
“This is un-American,” one passenger is heard yelling.
“What is your badge number? What is your name?”
Israeli PM Netanyahu: Potential Iran Deal
Raised by Trump Would Protect Israel’s
‘Vital Interests’ 5 replies
Raised by Trump Would Protect Israel’s
‘Vital Interests’ 5 replies
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that any potential deal with Iran would “protect our vital interests,” after speaking with President Donald Trump, who he said believes there is a chance to reach an agreement as negotiations to potentially end the conflict move forward.In a video statement, Netanyahu said Trump believes there is “a chance to leverage the massive achievements of the IDF and the U.S. military in order to achieve the goals of the war through an agreement — an agreement that protects our vital interests.”
Controversy is again raging over the fate of the Salt River wild horses, protected under state law as a natural treasure, after the Arizona Department of Agriculture awarded a new management contract requiring the removal of more than half the herd — despite a state law that authorizes removals only for humane reasons related to the health and safety of individual horses. It didn't have to be this way. In 2016, Arizona Republicans did something Washington rarely manages to do. They solved a problem.
When the U.S. Forest Service moved to round up and remove every one of the Salt River wild horses from the Tonto National Forest,
We’re dealing with legislative terrorists right now. The Democratic Party is too foolish, irrational, and immature to negotiate a deal on DHS funding. To be honest, they’re making compelling arguments not only for eliminating the legislative filibuster, which even I have been hesitant to do, but also for dissolving the legislature and canceling all elections until these radical progressive forces are put down like the rabid dogs they are (politically). I don’t care. Those on the Hill are comfy, connected, and uninterested in the pain they’ve inflicted on TSA agents, scores of whom have quit.
Democrats Rattled After California Sheriff
Seizes 650,000 Ballots in Election Integrity Crackdown 11 replies
Seizes 650,000 Ballots in Election Integrity Crackdown 11 replies
Riverside County Sheriff and California gubernatorial candidate Chad Bianco has seized more than 650,000 ballots from last November’s election as part of an investigation into potential discrepancies in the county’s vote count.
The probe follows allegations from the Riverside Election Integrity Team that the county’s tally may have been inflated by more than 45,000 votes.
“This investigation is simple: Physically count the ballots and compare that result with the total votes recorded,” Bianco said at a Friday press conference.
He said the review will determine whether the results are accurate.
As we enter the fourth week of the Iran war (or “excursion”), here are two great ideas about how to deal with some of the consequences — both from outside the Beltway.
In fact, right in New York.
One idea, unusually, is from longtime President Trump critic and former swamp creature Richard Haass, now back in his hometown.
The other is from Wall Street guru Larry Kudlow, Trump’s great friend and former economic advisor.
Both ideas are elegantly unconventional.
In his Substack last week, Haass took a moment from trashing the president to suggest an alternative to boots on the ground for the prickly problem of opening the Strait of Hormuz,
Trump threatens attacks on Iranian power
plants if Tehran fails to open the Strait
of Hormuz 8 replies
plants if Tehran fails to open the Strait
of Hormuz 8 replies
Iran responded Sunday with threats of its own, a day after President Donald Trump warned the United States will “obliterate” Iran’s power plants if Tehran fails to fully open the Strait of Hormuz in 48 hours and Iranian missiles struck two cities near Israel’s main nuclear research center, injuring dozens and shattering apartment buildings.
The developments signaled the war in the Middle East, now in its fourth week, was moving in a dangerous new direction.
Sirens blared across Israel as Iran launched new barrages Sunday. In the country’s south, residents faced the devastation in the cities of Dimona and Arad. In northern Israel,
Prior to the era of post-1965 mass immigration, America was not a “diverse” country by modern standards. White and black Americans averaged 87 percent and 12 percent of the population, respectively, from the founding of Jamestown until the 1970s—more than 300 years of uninterrupted demographic stability. There was some internal diversity in the white American population, though this diversity was largely dealt with by rapid integration that often took less than a generation—two generations at most. By the 1970s, when the foreign-born population was under 5 percent, America was a very cohesive nation. The “natural diversity” of the United States was found not in its inherent demography but —
President Nayib Bukele has transformed El Salvador from one of the most dangerous places in the world—a tropical hellhole with a murder rate fit for a Middle Eastern warzone—to one of the safest countries in the Americas. He did it by applying one basic principle: lock up the most violent people in society, then throw away the key.
Bukele was aided by the fact that most crime in his country was committed by members of ultra-violent gangs like MS-13 and Barrio 18, who conveniently advertise their allegiance and their crimes with lurid tattoos all over their bodies.
Alongside the claim that you should love mosquitos and wasps, the Guardian’s Environment Correspondents opinion section carries three attempts to turn the Iran crisis into an opportunity for the UK’s green agenda. Environmentalism is, I have long claimed, an opportunistic infection: its adherents are unable to make a case for a perfect world on its own terms, and so their argument for a radical and urgent reorganisation of society, requiring the suspension of normal politics, must capitalise on a sense of crisis to advance their agenda. And so it is that the Grauniad’s eco-hacks rush to Ed Miliband’s rescue with some tall tales.
Most Active Articles (last 48 hours)
President Donald Trump’s tariffs on imported goods suffered a Supreme Court legal rebuke in late February, but they’re not doing much better in the court of public opinion. As the latest I&I/TIPP shows, a plurality of voters don’t believe the economy will get a boost from tariffs, which win strong majority support only from Republicans.
It was once the case that most conservatives and many moderates rejected tariffs on imported goods as an unwanted distortion of free trade. Meanwhile, liberals embraced tariffs as a welcome tool of government “industrial policy.”
But President Trump has flipped the script.
California governor debate canceled after
criticism of criteria that excluded candidates
of color 15 replies
criticism of criteria that excluded candidates
of color 15 replies
A California gubernatorial debate was canceled just hours before it was set to occur on Tuesday after mounting criticism that only white candidates in the crowded field had qualified for the event. The criteria to participate in the debate, which was set to be co-sponsored by the University of Southern California and the Los Angeles TV station KABC, had emerged in recent days as a source of controversy in the wide-open race to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom. The sprawling field includes eight prominent Democrats and two major Republicans, as well as several other lesser-known candidates. USC had faced condemnation for
Maryland Dems mocked for prioritizing
tampons in men’s bathrooms amid state
deficit: 'Nonsense' 13 replies
tampons in men’s bathrooms amid state
deficit: 'Nonsense' 13 replies
Maryland Del. Kathy Szeliga, R-Baltimore County, is calling out Maryland Democrats for backing a bill that would stock tampons in men’s bathrooms in state-owned buildings — an idea she says is emblematic of Annapolis’ misplaced priorities. Szeliga said that after she was made aware of HB 941, she took to the House floor to question which public buildings would be impacted. In particular, she wanted to know if the state's professional sports facilities, such as where the Ravens and Orioles play, would be impacted. During her remarks, the GOP Maryland lawmaker also questioned language in the bill ordering "appropriately sized tampons"
Stop Kids from Killing Themselves
12 replies
Last month, 12-year-old Ava Little committed suicide. Apparently, she did so because she was being chronically bullied at Byron Middle School, Peach County, Ga.
According to Little’s family, none of the school’s anti-bullying measures or guidelines was implemented, even as “other students targeted her over and over again.” The bullying began in fifth grade and intensified this year. According to Paige Day, Ava’s aunt, her parent’s tried to get the school to intervene, but Peach schools were “consistently underwhelming. They failed her 100%.”
Chicago Mayor Pulls Unbelievably Cruel
Anti-ICE Stunt Mocking the Murder of Sheridan Gorman 11 replies
Anti-ICE Stunt Mocking the Murder of Sheridan Gorman 11 replies
It has been a few days since an Illinois Democrat has pulled a cheap political stunt that essentially mocks the murder last week of 18-year-old college student Sheridan Gorman, allegedly at the hands of an illegal alien, so Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson decided to step up and fill the void.
In an unbelievably cruel and tone-deaf maneuver, Johnson on Wednesday held a big press conference to gleefully unveil a new city snowplow that will be clearing city streets while bearing a sign reading, "Abolish ICE," which is apparently the winning entry of a plow-naming contest.
"This name derives from our city’s legacy of standing up for justice, dignity,
Iran is ramping up its threats as negotiations to end the war appear to be faltering and a U.S. ground operation becomes more likely.
Iranian state media outlet Tasnim News Agency, citing a "military source," indicated that Tehran was prepared to close the Bab al Mandeb, a critical waterway linking the Red Sea to the Arabian Sea, in the event of a U.S. ground op.
“If the enemy wants to take action on land in the Iranian islands or anywhere else in our lands or to inflict costs on Iran with naval movements in the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman,
Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner is on Team Soros. He’s a devout Soros-ist. He belongs to the Soros Tribe of globalist politics. By the way, he’s a Democrat, too. He may as well have introduced himself this way on March 24, when he held a grandstanding presser on site at the Philadelphia International Airport to make it clear that he does not take orders from President Donald Trump.
The Soros-sponsored lawyer told the press that, if U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents now on site at the airport step out of line by breaking the law, “I will put you in handcuffs, and I will put you in a courtroom,
A CNN reporter was left stunned after security checkpoint wait times dropped from hours to minutes at a major Atlanta airport following President Trump’s deployed ICE agents to assist unpaid TSA agents. Senior National Correspondent Ryan Young reported in disbelief that the presence of unmasked immigration agents at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport sparked a dramatic shift, with travelers zipping through security after weeks of grueling lines amid the partial government shutdown. “Wolf, I almost can’t believe I’m able to say this, the times have dropped off tremendously this morning,” Young told anchor Wolf Blitzer Tuesday morning from inside the major
The “tolerant” left is at it again, and this time, it’s coming from the “Golden Years” crowd.
Two elderly leftists in Arlington Heights, Illinois, have been arrested and charged after a months-long investigation into the disgusting vandalism of the Republicans of Wheeling Township headquarters.
According to the Arlington Heights Police Department, 72-year-old Brock McNerney and 69-year-old Moisette McNerney were taken into custody on Monday in connection with the defacement of the headquarters last January.
The pair now face misdemeanor charges of criminal damage to property and criminal defacement of property under Illinois law.
Orange man is sooooo bad that Foreign Policy Magazine's columnist and (of course) Columbia University Professor Howard French argues that America should lose the war to Iran.
No, I am not kidding. It's not that French is arguing that Iran is the good guy. He concedes that they are not. It's just that America under Trump is so, so horribly bad that his winning the war is unthinkable.
Better that a regime that murders its citizens by the gross, rapes and mutilates young women for not wearing a hijab, and that executes people for being gay survive than have Donald Trump be the author of its demise.
CNN on Wednesday interviewed a TSA union representative who blasted Congress for failing to reach a funding deal for the Department of Homeland Security, leaving TSA agents and other federal employees without pay for more than 40 days.
The representative described how she and her colleagues are scraping by, skipping meals, stretching every dollar, and explained why many TSA agents are no longer showing up for work. [Tweet, video]
"My in-laws also work for the agency. So even the people that we could have probably asked for some sort of money or some sort of help, they're also on the same position where they cannot help,"
Meta failed to protect kids from sexual predators and misled users about its platforms’ safety, violating New Mexico law, a jury found Tuesday in a landmark case.
The tech giant was ordered to pay $375 million in civil penalties.
The verdict came after six weeks of testimony from witnesses that included ex-Meta executives, teachers and online safety experts.
New Mexico prosecutors argued that Meta hid the extent of safety issues that kids faced on Facebook and Instagram and failed to enforce its claimed minimum age limit of 13 – even as its algorithms allegedly made it easier for creeps to target kids for online harassment and even sex trafficking.