Sunday song

U.S.-Israel up to old dirty tricks in West Asia

Status of the end-of-war MoU — Day 8

War & occupation in Lebanon and Palestine continue. Violation of Clauses 1 and 13.

• The Strait of Hormoz is open free of charge.

• Iranian ships are passing through the blockade.

• So far, Iran’s frozen funds have not been made available. Violation of Clause 11.

• The suspension of oil sanctions was announced, but it has not yet been implemented.

• Threats against Iranian officials and Iran’s territorial integrity continue. Violation of Clause 3.

• Anti-Iranian statement by the US and its regional partners. Violation of Clauses 1 and 3.

• The communication line between CENTCOM and the IRGC, which had been approved in Switzerland contrary to the content of the MoU, was annulled.

• US attacked targets inside Iranian soil. Violation of the entire MoU. 

• The IRGC issued a statement after US attacked Sirik, southern Iran. 'Following the Zionist regime’s violation of the ceasefire in southern Lebanon, a few hours ago the treaty-breaking American regime also, as always, violated its commitments. Under various pretexts related to the movement of a violating ship through an unauthorized route in the Strait of Hormoz, it launched an air attack on the coasts of Iran. In response to this aggression, the IRGC-Navy struck the US military positions in Bahrain. According to Clause 5 of the Islamabad MoU, the arrangements for controlling passage and traffic in the Strait of Hormuz are under the authority of the Islamic Republic of Iran. However, America, by provoking various sides, sought to violate this commitment, and the necessary response was given. From now on, it will be the same. If the aggression is repeated, our response will be broader than this.'

• In a Wall Street Journal report, the extent of the damage inflicted on US Navy’s Fleet base (NSA) in Bahrain following Iranian attacks, carried out between late February and June, was far more severe than what has so far been officially announced. According to the report, repeated attacks caused damage to its command building, at least a dozen other buildings, as well as two satellite communications stations. The cost of rebuilding the Bahrain base alone is estimated at around $400 million. This figure does not include the costs of debris removal, strengthening fortifications, or replacing equipment. The value of each of the two destroyed satellite communications stations is also estimated at around $20 million.
• Hebrew Israeli news website: The agreement between Israel, Lebanon, and the US grants official recognition from the Americans and the Beirut government of the presence of the Israeli army in the security zone, until Hezbollah is disarmed.

• Yedioth Ahronoth: Unlike the agreement concluded in November 2024, this time the agreement will be closely monitored by the US Army, which will also train the Lebanese Army.
• Hezbollah is preparing for possible civil war after the so-called negotiations with Lebanon, Israel and the US, assuring that Israel may stay in Lebanon. What was actually signed? Lebanon commits to fully disarming Hezbollah and every other non-state armed group on its own soil, in exchange for a gradual, “verified” IDF withdrawal carried out in stages through so-called pilot zones, with the US overseeing the whole process. Israel, for its part, signs nothing binding beyond a vague promise to eventually leave once it’s satisfied the disarmament is complete, on its own timeline, by its own verification. People in Lebanon are out on the streets to protest against the US-brokered deal signed between Lebanon and Israel. Footage circulating now shows Beirut’s government Serail surrounded by furious crowds after the Lebanese regime signed the agreement with Israel.

• Protesters have laid siege to the Serail, the seat of the Lebanese government, after news broke that Beirut formally signed the framework with Israel. Popular anger is spreading fast across the capital. The Lebanese western controlled puppet government appears to have deployed the military against protesters. There are reports of troops firing tear gas at crowds on the road to Beirut airport.
• Journalist Patrick Lawrence: I have been preoccupied with what I will call the quality of defeat for some years. By this I mean those benefits a people can derive from accepting loss when it comes to them: They can self-reflect, they can learn, fate has given them an opportunity to begin again. On the other side of this same moon, the darker side, a people or a nation that refuses to acknowledge defeat when they have been vanquished or otherwise turned back are self-condemned to a world of illusion and delusion. In this they lose all connection to the world around them. This question now lies before us once again. The US, led by an incompetent president and the prime minister of a viciously barbaric nation [Israel], a nation I judge to suffer a collective psychosis at this point, started a war with the Islamic Republic and lost it in a matter of a couple of months. Defeat, once again, makes opportunities, providing America is prepared to grasp them.
• Congresswoman casual reading of the Epstein files. 

• Politico: NATO expects the biggest disputes at the summit in Ankara, Turkey to be related to Ukraine. It is expected that at the NATO summit in Ankara in July 2026, issues of military aid to Ukraine will become a source of disagreement, with European countries planning a commitment to funding in the amount of €70 billion without US participation. Internal disputes also concern the fair distribution of the financial burden, Donald Trump's demands on Europe, and differences in approaches to the production of long-range weaponry.

• Human Rights Watch denounced Turkey’s arrest of over 200 people ahead of the NATO summit in Ankara, saying it showed a “ruthless intolerance” of freedom of speech and assembly. The NATO summit takes place in Ankara on July 7-8. One was shot dead during a confrontation with police about 100 kilometers south of Ankara, security sources told Turkish media. Environmental NGO Tema Foundation also said some of its staff and volunteers had been arrested following a visit to a bird sanctuary, with the Medyascope news website saying the sweep included an unspecified number of birdwatchers in their 60s. On the eve of the raids, the Ankara governor’s office banned all public demonstrations and activities for 13 days from midnight on June 28, putting up large billboards along roads leading to the airport to hide poorer rundown areas from view, an AFP journalist and Turkish media reports said.
• After losing against Iran in 3 months, Trump says he can "finish the job" in Iran in less than a week. 

• The Israeli army kidnapped 4 civilians at the Majidiya-Ain Arab triangle in south Lebanon after they advanced into the area.
• Stars & Stripes: An Army base in southern Germany is investigating whether past firefighting exercises are to blame for toxic chemicals found in fish samples taken from area waterways. US Army Garrison Bavaria suspended fishing in five lakes and streams in the Grafenwoehr Training Area earlier this month after elevated levels of PFAS were discovered in the samples. PFAS, or human-made per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are long-lasting chemicals used to make products resistant to heat, oil, stains, grease and water. They are also found in firefighting foam historically used at US military bases around the world. PFOS and PFOA are two common types. 

• Human Cost of War: Gaza: 1.027 killed since the beginning of Trump's Gaza plan (Palestinian Ministry of Health); at least 3,201 Israeli violations of Trump's Gaza plan (Gaza Government Media Office); 73,008 killed during Israel's genocide (Palestinian Ministry of Health). Iran: 3,468 killed (Iran Ministry of Health). Lebanon: 4,175 killed (Lebanon Ministry of Public Health); 1.1 million displaced (UN).

• Story by Mohamed Ahmed and Abdel Qader Sabbah from Gaza. Eleven-year-old Ahmed Al-Raqab was playing outside his family tent pitched on Gaza’s sandy coastline in Al-Mawasi, west of Khan Younis, on Wednesday when an Israeli missile struck, killing him and severely wounding several others. “The children were playing and they fired a missile directly on them,” Ahmed’s father, Sabri Al-Raqab, said, sobbing as he knelt on the floor of Nasser hospital with his arms across his son’s dead body in a final embrace. “He was carrying a watermelon. What was this child’s crime? He picked up a watermelon and they fired at him. Is he a fighter? He’s not a fighter. He’s a child.” The latest Israeli attacks on children came a day after a UN Commission of Inquiry released a report that concluded, “Israeli authorities and security forces have deliberately targeted Palestinian children, resulting in genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in the Gaza Strip.” The UN inquiry said that during the first two years of the Israeli assault, over 20,000 children were killed and more than 44,000 injured.  https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/israel-bombs-gaza-coastline-tents-beach-displaced-palestinians

• Washington Post: Nursing homes, factory owners and immigrants brace for fallout from Supreme Court ruling. The high court’s decision to strip Haitians and Syrians of their protections from deportation had immediate ripple effects for immigrants and their employers.
• Global Ocean Watch: Months of sustained pushback from global environmental activists and Indigenous communities have failed to halt a controversial US deep-sea mining advance. On May 29, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) quietly approved an exploration license for The Metals Company USA, authorizing seabed survey activities within the parcel of the South Pacific’s Clarion–Clipperton Zone. Critically, the targeted exploration area lies in international waters, outside US territorial jurisdiction and beyond the formal oversight of the International Seabed Authority, the UN body mandated to govern deep-sea resource activities on the global commons. The administrative approval represents a calculated geopolitical and economic maneuver by the Trump administration. By invoking “national security” and critical mineral supply chain resilience, Washington has empowered domestic private firms to stake unilateral operational claims in unregulated international maritime territories. The move enables corporations to extract valuable deep-sea mineral resources while bypassing unified global environmental governance and multilateral resource-sharing frameworks. This precedent-setting deep-sea mining signals a broader US strategy to expand privatized resource exploitation beyond Earth’s boundaries, including space and lunar resource initiatives led by SpaceX and Amazon-affiliated aerospace entities.

• A groundbreaking federal lawsuit has been filed against Palantir Technologies, its founder Peter Thiel, and CEO Alex Karp, alleging the company has crossed a constitutional Rubicon. The complaint accuses Palantir of deploying its powerful AI surveillance tools, normally used by the Pentagon, against the American public to monitor citizens, harvest biometric data, and censor speech. Plaintiffs claim the company is developing "synthetic intelligence" to predict human behavior, a pre-crime system that violates "cognitive liberty" by trespassing into the human mind. 

• North Korea refuses to respond to FIFA and broadcasts World Cup matches for free to its people. North Korean media reports: This is a global tournament, and you have no right to charge for watching it. It is worth noting that Pyongyang is broadcasting all World Cup matches live and free of charge, disregarding all other parties.

'Silent Friend': Official Trailer

Original title: Stille Freundin

In the heart of a botanical garden in a medieval university town in Germany stands an ancient ginkgo tree. From 1908 to 2020, this tree has stood as a silent witness to limitless things, including how nature has profoundly impacted three human lives. 

Through this point-of-view, we see their stories – each one of them deeply rooted in their own present, as they are transformed by the quiet, enduring, and mysterious power of nature. 

A fascinating exploration of how humans exist as part of a larger world of life on Earth.  

A Film by Ildikó Enyedi 

the funnies

Brunswick peace vigils: Tourists are arriving in Maine

Yesterday we had six of us at our weekly 'endless war vigil' in Brunswick, Maine. We stood for an hour at the busiest intersection in town - right where vehicles heading north turn onto US Hwy 1. This time of year we are getting loads of tourists coming to our state so we are able to reach people from all over the country and around the world.

Weekly peace protests in Brunswick actually began right after 9-11-2001. Through all seasons the vigils continue. The original vigils are held right along the downtown green every Friday at 5:00 pm. 

Our Thursday noon time vigils in Brunswick began in February 2022 and are now held at this busy intersection by the Hwy 1 entrance.

Here is a small sample of the traffic we saw today.

We've noticed over the years that the public mostly tries to avoid reacting to us. It was like they didn't want to think about all these war$. Or maybe they are depressed. Or annoyed at us for reminding them that the U.S. is a 'killing nation, we can kill them fast, or we can kill them slow". Those are the words Sister Ardeth Platte (Dominican nun) seared into my mind long ago when she spoke at one of our Global Network annual meetings held in Berkeley, California. 

But since Trump's screw-ball attacks on Iran things have changed quite dramatically. Now we get a sustained positive response which has been confirmed by the polls that show 70% of the public being opposed to this illegal and immoral war.

No matter the numbers though we keep steady on the ball with our weekly vigils here in Brunswick.

We know we are ignored by mainstream media. Increasingly even social media is blocking many of us since the fat-cat zionists began buying up the key outlets that we have long used to share information.

But at least for now we can still stand on a street corner with a sign. And you know what? Rich, working class, even the poor drive or walk by and read our signs. No matter who they are they can't avoid our messages. And it doesn't cost us anything except our time. 

If you see us please give us a honk!

Bruce

~ Photo and video by MB Sullivan

PS Join us on Saturday, July 11 at 9:00 am for a protest at the former naval air base in Brunswick to protest the 'Blue Angels' airshow and kid recruiting extravaganza. It's another time when we will have a huge captive audience as the traffic snarl slows the thousands of entering vehicles so they can't escape our many peaceful messages. 

Trailer: Power that is always inherent in the people

In May 2021, a U.K. Home Office dawn raid triggers one of the most spontaneous and successful acts of civil resistance in recent memory.

In Scotland’s most diverse neighborhood, hundreds of residents rush to the streets to stop the deportation of their neighbors.

The morning in Glasgow, the first day of Eid, started as any other. However, when neighbors heard through community message networks that two local men were snatched up for deportation, hundreds of people left their breakfast tables, work Zoom calls, and daily lives to rush down to Kenmure Street to save them by putting their bodies on the line. 

Though mostly strangers, and with almost no planning, this extremely diverse group organized themselves, taking on essential roles to allow the collective to achieve their goal: protecting their own from government forces going after the weakest among them. 

An inspiring and profoundly moving portrait of what “normal” citizens are capable of in the face of injustice, Everybody To Kenmure Street reminds us of the power that is always inherent in the people. 

Sundance Film Festival 

Trump denies U.S. killed Minab school kids

Jeju Island, South Korea activists connecting the dots

• Washington Post: Under pressure from Trump, US Senate reverses course on Iran. The chamber rejected a resolution to force the president to end the war after he criticized Republicans for undermining his administration’s negotiations.

• Fox News: The Trump administration is seeking $672 million to help "eliminate Iran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon”. The funding would support the removal or disposal of Iran’s enriched uranium and other sensitive nuclear materials, as well as inspections and verification efforts by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The proposal is part of a larger $80 billion supplemental funding request tied to the recent Iran conflict. [Trump still trying to get his dirty hands on Iran's uranium.]

• Trump has the audacity to deny the murders of the Iranian schoolgirls at Minab school in Iran.

• Ukraine is currently winning the US-NATO proxy war against Russia claims Jeremy Lewin, US Deputy Secretary of State for Foreign Assistance during a Pinchuk Foundation event in Gdańsk, Poland. “At this point, we are in a position where Ukraine is winning the war,” Lewin said.  [We've been hearing that Ukraine was winning for a long time. If so why do they have to daily attempt to grab new recruits by force off the streets?] 

• NATO’s European hawks have spent years pushing a concocted "Russia threat" to justify massive rearmament, but in reality, their defense industry is quietly imploding. Defense stocks are tanking because investors are terrified an end to the Ukraine proxy war might expose that cash-strapped governments can't afford their own war rhetoric without a convenient bogeyman to sell, reports Bloomberg. Russia has repeatedly dismissed the imaginary “threat” narrative, insisting that it does not threaten NATO member states. It has also long expressed valid concern over unprecedented activity of the NATO alliance near its western borders.
• German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Third Reich descendant and lowlife, once again begs for ceasefire. 

• Trump's so-called 'Board of Peace' is continuing to try to chisel away at any possibility of Palestinian statehood through a 15-point “roadmap” it first presented to Hamas and other Palestinian resistance factions in April. Drop Site News obtained two documents from the latest round of negotiations between the Palestinians and Trump’s board. The first is the full text of the Palestinian negotiators’ proposed amendments to the board’s roadmap for addressing a range of issues, including the demand that Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and their allies submit to total disarmament. The revised document was delivered to the board on June 13. The second document is the response delivered to the Palestinian side last week by Nickolay Mladenov, the BoP’s “High Representative.” Taken together, the two versions of the roadmap offer detailed insights into the extent to which Trump’s board is trying to erode Palestinian insistence that any long term deal must include a clear path to statehood, that Gaza and the occupied West Bank be treated as a single Palestinian territory, and that the rights of the Palestinian people to resist Israeli occupation and annexation be preserved. “What we’re seeing is an attempt, in the shadow of a genocide, to dismantle the Palestinian resistance through all of these kinds of preconditions,” said Abdullah Al-Arian, an associate professor of history at Georgetown University in Qatar. “The interpretation of this agreement is in the hands of actors who are, for the most part, beholden to prioritizing Israel’s security.” https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/internal-proposals-palestine-hamas-gaza-trump-mladenov-israel-board-peace  

• In 2025, Britain spent £9.6 billion on its nuclear weapons programme, a 17% increase on the previous year.  The British government is driving nuclear dangers at a time when the risk of them being used in war has never been higher. Meanwhile, public services remain under pressure and millions continue to struggle with the cost of living. Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament is campaigning to expose the true costs of Britain's nuclear expansion and to make the case for investment in what really keeps us safe: health, education, climate action and public services.
• France is escalating measures against pro-Palestine student movements with arrests, fines, and legal prosecutions, coinciding with ongoing protests rejecting the war in Gaza. What is Macron afraid of?  Does he work for Israel?

• Preparations by the Iranian Red Crescent to assist earthquake victims in Venezuela: Following two devastating and deadly earthquakes with a magnitude of over 7 on the Richter scale in Venezuela, the head of the Red Crescent Society in Iran sent a message to the head of the Red Cross in that country, expressing his condolences to the families of the victims, and announced his full readiness to send specialized relief and treatment teams to the affected areas. At least 164 dead as powerful earthquakes hit Venezuela.
• Iranian Oil Minister: The only way to achieve stability in West Asia lies in dismantling American bases and allowing regional countries to take charge of their own security.

• Civil liberties defenders sounded the alarm Tuesday over the draconian prison sentences imposed on a group of activists falsely accused by the Trump administration of being members of a non-existent “North Texas Antifa Cell” — including a 30-year term for a man convicted of moving a box containing leftist literature. In what the US Department of Justice (DOJ) called “the first sentencing of defendants affiliated with Antifa following President Trump’s executive order designating the group as a Domestic Terrorist Organization in September 2025,” the defendants were sentenced in the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas in Fort Worth to between 30-100 years imprisonment for actions in connection with a July 4, 2025 protest at the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, an ICE lockup run by prison profiteer LaSalle Corrections. https://www.commondreams.org/news/prairieland-ice-trial

Have a laugh over Trump

Dave Chappelle explores the unconventional nature of the Trump presidency through a series of observations and anecdotes. 

From international diplomatic interactions to internal White House operations, this routine examines the administration's decision-making process and communication style from a comedic perspective.