This year Eid Al-Fitr, marking the end of Ramadan, and NoRuz, marking the first day of spring and the Iranian New Year fall on the same day. The people of Iran, Gaza, Lebanon, the Arabian Peninsula, and Sudan are marking these days under the dark clouds of conflict. May peace and justice prevail.

A brilliant & perceptive critic. He wrote one of the best profiles on Iranian American artist Siah Armajani www.newyorker.com/magazine/199...

AP follows the @notus.com report on how the Trump administration had already gutted the State Dept’s staff of Middle East policy experts — and “eliminated the dedicated Iran office ..” @apnews.com apnews.com/article/iran...

This year my sabzeh is quite pathetic, but it fits the mood of this Noruz.

Trump: "Some of this weaponry is unthinkable. You don't even want to know about it. Oh, you could end this thing in two seconds if you wanted to."

We analyzed atmospheric conditions using NOAA’s HYSPLIT model to track smoke dispersion over Tehran, simulating how particles from the fires spread under recorded wind conditions.

MERIP provides succinct, insightful series of articles & interviews on the regional impact of Israel & US' war on Iran www.merip.org/2026/03/war-...

Outrageous. Stripping Liam Conejo Ramos and his family of asylum is beyond cruel and indefensible. This decision must be overturned. Shame.

Academic freedom doesn't mean you HAVE to hire race scientists, especially not one who says "In a meritocracy… Black people would disappear from virtually all high-ranking positions, with the exception of sports and entertainment"

“The farmworker movement has always been bigger and far more important than any one individual. … I have kept this secret long enough. My silence ends here.” Read Dolores Huerta's statement on Cesar Chavez in full:

The credible allegations against Cesar Chavez for rape and sexual abuse are horrific. My heart is with the survivors who, for decades, have seen their abuser lauded as a hero. As one of them says: “The movement — that’s the hero.” www.nytimes.com/2026/03/18/u...

In the early morning, residents were given an hour warning to evacuate before their homes were bombed apnews.com/video/israel...

Ugh

It’s 90F. Simone went outside, quickly took care of business, ran back inside & parked herself in front of the AC. #CaliHeatWave

A proposed radical re-making of Charlottesville's Robert E. Lee monument, the melted-down remnants of which are now in MOCA's "Monuments" exhibition, may be the most radical re-making of US national symbols and our civic narrative that I've ever seen. www.instagram.com/p/DV_GOyXkQu...

Cuba’s electrical grid has collapsed. The island-wide blackout comes amid a harsh U.S. oil blockade and recent comments from Trump that he wants to “take” Cuba. No oil shipments have reached the country in three months, compounding a humanitarian crisis caused by decades of severe U.S. sanctions.

A blockade that causes a national power grid to collapse would be a crime against humanity. www.cnn.com/2026/03/16/a...

Israel says it killed Ali Larijani and Gholamreza Soleimani, the highest profile assassinations since the targeting of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on the first day of the war. n.pr/4bvxtMs

UK security adviser attended US-Iran talks and judged deal was within reach. One diplomat with knowledge of the talks said: “We regarded Witkoff and Kushner as Israeli assets that dragged a president into a war he wants to get out of.”

The fact that neither “It Was Just an Accident” nor “The Secret Agent” won anything at the Oscars “is a reminder of the Academy’s cultural myopia,” Justin Chang writes. newyorkermag.visitlink.me/67xQmu

The growing human toll of Trump's Middle East "excursion."

Today I got my 93 year old dad away from war in CNN for a bit. We went to a local market & stocked up on Persian treats. A bit of normalcy amidst all of it.

NEW: The Trump administration is seeking to oust the president of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel, in its talks with Cuban political leaders. It plans to allow the Castro family to keep power if they agree to economic changes, creating a client state for the US. Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2026/03/16/w...

just plainly evil.

This is a lie on a scale of Elon Musk saying he would cut the deficit to zero. Just insane. Not just untrue, but the opposite of the truth, which is that immigrants are lowering the deficit. www.cato.org/white-paper/...

Tears your heart into pieces. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/15/w...

ABC: Can you say why we're sending 5,000 Marines and sailors? TRUMP: Shhhhh. You're a very obnoxious person

“legally evacuated to the U.S. after the fall of Kabul”

“With all newspapers in Germany being told what to publish and how to write the news and editorials, it was inevitable that a deadly conformity would come over the nation’s press.” - William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, p. 406

It’s crystal clear now that Trump has lost control of this war. He badly misjudged Iran’s ability to retaliate. The region is on fire. 1/ I’m going to explain to you in this🧵what I’ve learned - in part from closed door briefings - about the four biggest current crises.

Americans are dying so that Kushner can make money

I cannot adequately explain how fucked up the World Cup situation is wihen the president of a host nation *threatens the safety* of one of the participants (Iran). The USA should be removed as a host nation and if it's not, the games shoud be boycotted and ANYONE WITH A MORAL CENTER should see that.

FCC Chair Brendan Carr threatens broadcast licenses over Iran War coverage

Entire families wiped out and towns emptied as Israel’s war on Lebanon intensifies

⚫ Le philosophe allemand Jürgen Habermas est mort, a indiqué à l'AFP samedi une porte-parole de sa maison d'édition, Suhrkamp Verlag ⤵️

ICE recently announced that Pejman Karshenas Najafabadi, a 59-year-old Iranian man who has lived in the U.S. since 1991, died while in the agency’s custody. Najafabadi was incarcerated for nearly a year in a rural Louisiana prison despite suffering from chronic heart disease.

Funny you should ask

Trump: "We're being nice. I could take out things within the next hour, power plants that create the electricity, that create the water, they have desalinization all over the place. We could do things that would be so bad they could literally never rebuild as a nation again. We're trying to be nice"

Trump on Iranians.

Is “end the war” one of the ways

Was in a meeting today when I got first word since Day 2 of this war that my family in Iran are safe. Burst into tears of relief. Trying to balance the quotidian with the unimaginable isn't always easy.

Empire decline, In one image

"We started a war of aggression for no reason & commenced it by accidentally bombing an elementary school & killing over 100 kids." That simple fact is so horrific that it's just kind of bouncing on the surface of our collective consciousness. We can't absorb its full implications & significance.

Israel’s targeting of sports facilities first in Gaza and now in Iran follows a cruel logic, writes @edgeofsports.bsky.social: Destroy the sources of play, hope, and imagination, and you destroy the will to resist. https://bit.ly/3Pvptne

Iran attacked commercial ships on Wednesday across the Persian Gulf and targeted Dubai International Airport, escalating a campaign of squeezing the oil-rich region as global energy concerns mounted and American and Israeli airstrikes pounded the Islamic Republic.

"It feels like we're not human." 1,100 Afghan refugees, mostly women & kids, are trapped on a disused military base w/ Iranian missiles raining down overhead after Pres.Trump froze refugee visas. We secretly spoke w/ them; they have no shelters & are begging to be rescued www.pbs.org/newshour/sho...

I was in a 2 hour briefing today on the Iran War. All the briefings are closed, because Trump can't defend this war in public. I obviously can't disclose classified info, but you deserve to know how incoherent and incomplete these war plans are. 1/ Here's what I can share:

The documents describe interviews with a woman who said she was sexually assaulted by Donald Trump in the 1980s, when she was between 13 and 15 years old.