Pope Leo said on Sunday that he is following events after US-Israeli strikes against Iran with “deep concern” and made an impassioned appeal to stop what he called a “spiral of violence”.

“I address a heartfelt appeal to the parties involved to assume the moral responsibility to stop the spiral of violence before it becomes an irreparable abyss,” said the pope.

“Stability and peace are not built through mutual threats or through weapons … but only through reasonable, genuine, and responsible dialogue,” the pope said during his weekly address to pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square after a Sunday prayer.

Overnight, Tehran confirmed the death of the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, following US and Israeli strikes on his residence early on February 28. In strategic terms, this marks a watershed moment in the architecture of the Middle East conflict. This was not a tactical raid or a calibrated show of force, but a decapitation strike at the very apex of Iran’s state system.

The confrontation between Iran on one side and the United States and Israel on the other has now entered a qualitatively new phase. The elimination of a state’s highest political and religious authority during an ongoing military operation is, from Tehran’s perspective, a textbook casus belli. This is no longer a limited exchange of blows. It is a shift toward a far broader and potentially systemic confrontation.

The Golden Bough scandalized the British public when first published, as it included the Christian story of the resurrection of Jesus in its comparative study. Critics thought this treatment invited an agnostic reading of the Lamb of God as a relic of a pagan religion.

For the third edition, Frazer placed his analysis of the Crucifixion in a speculative appendix — while discussion of Christianity was excluded from the single-volume abridged edition.[6][7]

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In 1931, the Institute for Intellectual Cooperation invited Albert Einstein to a cross-disciplinary exchange of ideas about politics and peace with a thinker of his choosing. He selected Sigmund Freud, whom he had met briefly in 1927 and whose work, despite being skeptical of psychoanalysis, the legendary physicist had come to admire. A series of letters followed, discussing the abstract generalities of human nature and the potential concrete steps for reducing violence in the world.

Introduction: Freud and Einstein on War

[GUSNOTE: BOLD HIGHLIGHTED TEXT BY GUS as underlined by "unknown" in book]

Our leaders are not wise or insightful. They’re not even particularly intelligent. Our society is led by plutocrats who only know how to make more money, by unelected empire managers who only know how to dominate and control, and by elected politicians who only know how to say the right words and make the right bargains in order to get themselves elected.…

Our leaders are not going to fix the worst problems in our world. They couldn’t if they wanted to. And they don’t want to.

Our Leaders Couldn’t Fix Our Problems If They Wanted To (And They Don’t Want To)

BY CAITLIN JOHNSTONE

The NSW government is creating a heavily resourced policing unit of around 250 officers, prioritising hate crimes above other violence. Andrew Brown asks why.

Every four minutes in New South Wales, police respond to a domestic violence incident, a relentless cycle of harm that rarely makes front-page news.

Chris Minns’ stormtroopers. Guns for graffiti, silence for the dead

by Andrew Brown

Two women are killed every week in Australia, and hundreds more are assaulted, often behind closed doors, often without the attention or urgency that accompanies other forms of crime.

There is no 250 officer task force for that, no permanent, centralised unit standing ready to respond.

As the Russia–Ukraine war enters its fifth year, hard questions are overdue. In Part 1 of a two-part series, Michael McKinley examines the strategic history behind the conflict and Australia’s uncritical alignment with a US-led approach that offered Ukraine little prospect of victory.

Michael McKinley

Former US President Bill Clinton has reportedly told congressional investigators that he did not have sex with a woman photographed with him in a jacuzzi, and does not even know her name, according to CNN and NBC sources familiar with the testimony about his links to late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Clinton’s closed-door deposition before the House Oversight Committee on Friday lasted roughly six hours and concluded without the former president or his legal team addressing the press. The former president chose to manage the public response through social media, asserting in his opening statement that he “saw nothing” and “did nothing wrong.”

The US has suffered 200 casualties in Iranian retaliatory strikes on bases across the Middle East, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has claimed.

Backed by the US, Israel launched what was described as a preemptive operation against Iranian military and nuclear-related targets in the early hours of Saturday, claiming the strikes were aimed at neutralizing threats posed by the Islamic Republic in the region.

US President Donald Trump later confirmed that the White House had supported West Jerusalem in conducting the strikes, citing the failure of nuclear diplomacy as a direct trigger for the move.

Israeli army has initiated a strike against Iran "to remove threats against the State of Israel", the nation’s Defense Minister Israel Katz announced, adding a special and immediate state of emergency has been declared across the country.

"'As a result, a missile and drone attack against the State of Israel and its civilian population is expected in the immediate timeframe," the Israeli authorities add.

https://sputnikglobe.com/20260228/israel-launches-preemptive-strike-against-iran--defense-minister-1123707463.html

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There’s a pet peeve of mine that throws me into a rage whenever I hear it.

I hear it again and again, from some of the otherwise best commentators on geopolitics, who are otherwise pretty incredible when it comes to international matters. Libertarian-Adjacent people and Foreign Policy Critics I’ve been following for almost a decade Like the Andrew Neapolitano Crowd, John Mearsheimer, Col Douglas MacGregor and the Wider Antiwar Libertarian space: Tom Woods, Dave Smith, Scott Horton, and most recently Daryl Cooper. 

Discrimination is a Right

BY KULAK

NOV 25, 2025

People I grew up listening to and who first introduced me to the nature of the regime… and who for a decade or more I’ve considered amongst the best commentators around…

As the Donald Trump administration attempts to push through its ambitious plans for the “reconstruction” of Gaza, a tragedy is unfolding in the Middle East that is forever changing the face of the region. The numbers released by the enclave’s health authorities have already become incomprehensible: 72,070 Palestinians killed, with 171,738 wounded since October 7, 2023. Since the ceasefire agreement in the Gaza Strip took effect last October alone, 612 Palestinians have been killed and 1,640 wounded. That is the price of the so-called Trump ceasefire deal!

The Federal Reserve has appointed longtime Wall Street lawyer Randall Guynn as its new director of supervision and regulation – a move critics say risks entrenching industry influence at the heart of financial oversight, a move that one critic said was worse than “putting the fox in charge of the henhouse.”

Jake Johnson

“This is like appointing a lifelong arsonist as a fire chief,” Dennis Kelleher, president and CEO of Better Markets, said in response to the Fed’s decision to put Randall Guynn in a position to regulate the industry he has long represented.

Financier Jeffrey Epstein spent just 13 months in jail for soliciting an underage girl for prostitution in 2008 in a plea bargain
During plea negotiations, his lawyers had emphasized his close relationship with Bill Clinton
A 2007 letter to the Florida State Attorney's office claims that Epstein helped set up the Clinton Foundation's Clinton Global Initiative
But the former president credited longtime assistant and Foundation director Doug Band with the idea for the Initiative
Epstein is not listed as a director or founder on the non-profit's documents but did give $25,000 through his Swiss bank account
The convicted sex offender's lawyers also mentioned Clinton had been a guest on his jet during a charitable trip to Africa
Foundation also came under scrutiny as critics question how much of the donations goes towards the causes