This week, we are sharing articles on the burning issues of now that you may not see from other sources.
The New York Times Insists on Support for War Crimes—When They Are “Our” War Crimes
By Bob Avakian
The New York Times has criticized the way Donald Trump has waged the war against Iran—while, at the same time, the “Times” insists that it is wrong to hope that Trump fails in this war, because that would supposedly make things worse! Let’s get this straight: The launching of this unprovoked and unjust war against Iran, by the U.S., as well as Israel, is—according to international law, and by any meaningful definition—a major war crime. (Among other outrages, the U.S. and Israel launched this war against Iran while Iran was engaged in negotiations with the U.S., and “neutral forces” involved in these negotiations had made clear that progress was being made). In the waging of this war, the U.S. and Israel have committed further war crimes on a massive scale, with the deliberate bombing of civilian targets (and, on top of this, Trump has committed yet another, depraved war crime with clearly genocidal implications: threatening to wipe out Iranian civilization).
Yet, according to the New York Times, it is somehow wrong to want these war crimes to fail!
Because, you see, these monstrous war crimes are carried out by “us”—that is, by U.S. imperialism… Read all of it.
🔶 Urgent Appeal from Women Activists Inside Iran
A group of women from [the cities of] Tehran and Karaj in Iran, April 21, 2026, described the dual threats on their lives from war and repression, in a statement posted in Farsi by the left-leaning newspaper Akhbar Rooz and excerpted below (read in English on IEC website):
For many of us (especially women and others who have long faced repression under a repressive system) what was already clear was proven in practice: bunker-busting bombs, missiles, and drones bring nothing but more killing, displacement, poverty, unemployment, inflation, and a deeper climate of fear and suffocation… This has created the conditions for the regime to impose its harshest forms of repression, censorship, and control. Hardly a day passes without long lists appearing in tightly controlled domestic media—lists of those arrested, sentenced to death, or stripped of their property under the false accusations of “espionage,” across different parts of the country…
People who are being kidnapped or sent to the gallows in the current climate of silence and repression are the very forces that could shape future movements, and the current criminal regime is trying to eliminate them to further entrench its authoritarian rule…
Nothing is more urgent than saving the life of a human being whose most basic right to live is stripped away by placing a noose around their neck and kicking away the stool beneath their feet. Let’s be the voice of the prisoners! Let’s unite against the executions and for the release of political prisoners.
Bearing Witness to Unending Injustice: The 40th Global Monthly Close Guantánamo Vigils, May 6, 2026
By Andy Worthington
What I have grown to love about our vigils is how they stand as a still point in time, repeated every month, as the ever-changing chaos of the world swirls around them.
In sun, rain and snow, under Joe Biden and Donald Trump, we have, mostly quietly, but sometimes with song, and always with outreach to passersby, borne witness to the ongoing crimes of Guantánamo — endless imprisonment, mostly without charge or trial, of Muslim men seized mostly in an arbitrary manner, in a prison founded on a depraved notion that the entire world can legitimately be considered a battlefield.
Our vigils regard Guantánamo both in isolation — as a specific, geographically fixed ongoing crime scene, the last bastion of the “war on terror” — but also as a bleak beacon of profound injustice and lawlessness that has been contaminating the whole of the world ever since.
Please, if you can, share a moment to think about the 15 men still held, who are all held in varying states of fundamental lawlessness, and who have almost all been deprived of their liberty, or of anything resembling justice, for between 20 and 24 years, mostly at Guantánamo, but previously, in some cases, in the network of “black site” torture prisons that the CIA established around the world.
** From Stephanie: We think also of the Guantanamo Naval Base being on Cuban land without the permission of the Cuban government. Meanwhile, the U.S. has tightened its 60-year blockade of the country, refusing to allow any fuel into the country causing dreadful shortages there that are having dire consequences for the health and well-being of the Cuban people. In addition, Trump recently stated threateningly, “We may stop by Cuba after we’ve finished with this” (referring to the war on Iran).