Author: Anonymous
Pascal Lottaz
Pascal’s Substack

The role of Ayatollah Khamenei's Fatwa against nuclear weapons is an open question that merits attention. In an anonymous letter, an Iranian colleague analyses the situation.

The question of whether Ayatollah Khamenei’s stance on nuclear weapons constitutes a formal fatwa (Islamic legal ruling) or merely a political statement has long been debated. Officially, the Iranian government—including the Supreme Leader’s office and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs—refers to this position as a fatwa prohibiting the production and use of nuclear weapons. This claim has also been presented in communications with international bodies such as the IAEA. In public speeches, Khamenei has stated: “We do not seek nuclear weapons, because we consider them forbidden—haram.”

Yet the supposed nuclear fatwa is absent from his formal compendia of legal opinions online. It exists primarily in speeches and official statements. Critics contend that without a documented legal opinion grounded in Islamic jurisprudence, this position operates more as a political or moral pronouncement than a juridical fatwa.

That said, in Shi’a legal tradition, a fatwa need not appear in book form to be valid—any public statement by a qualified authority declaring a normative judgment can be considered a fatwa. Thus, the status of Khamenei’s declaration depends on interpretive framing: to the Islamic Republic, it is a binding ruling; to skeptics, it remains a strategic assertion with limited doctrinal weight.

Pascal Lottaz
Pascal’s Substack

Despite the mass-dying in the world's largest death-camp, western cameras still turn away from the blood and toward the same old Zionist script to justify genocide.

How many times over the past decades have we been told that journalism is meant to “speak truth to power”? Oh, sweet, sweet lies and lullabies. Narrative opium for the masses. In fact, today, as always, mainstream journalism obviously protects power from truth. As Gaza is turned into rubble and its people starved in front of all our eyes on social media, the mainstream—especially in the West’s settler colonies like New Zealand, Australia, and the U.S.—acts as an accomplice to genocide.

A few days ago, I hosted a panel of New Zealand-based journalists—Eugene Doyle, Jeremy Rose, and Ramon Das—to discuss just that. The three explained in detail how state media like Radio New Zealand (RNZ) washes the sins of its complicity away by absolving itself from all guilt. How do they do it? Well, RNZ just wrote a report about its own coverage and declared that all is well! It’s really that simple for these media outlets that constantly shower each other (and in this case themselves) with praise.

So, in addition to the lies like the “40 beheaded babies” and other BS that they report on when spoon-fed by western officialdom, they add to this strategic silence, soft language, and selective storytelling to whitewash the currently ongoing crime of crimes. Of course ,this is not just a New Zealand problem but the story of how the West launders genocide through the language of journalism.

Pascal Lottaz
Pascal’s Substack

In an unprecedented and unprovoked military attack, Israel kills several top leaders of the Iranian military, targets the country's nuclear facilities and commits yet another blatant crime.

Overnight, the terrorist regime in Tel Aviv added another crime of aggression to its nearly endless list of the worst of all international crimes. This time, by attacking Iran in a massive bombing campaign, which Netanyahu says will continue until he judges that what he calls a “threat” from Iran’s non-existent nuclear weapons has subsided.

This is, of course, utter rubbish and reminiscent of the United States’ excuse in 2003 to commit the same crime against Iraq under the pretext of Saddam’s WMDs posing an “imminent threat” to the USA and the whole world. Netanyahu is conjuring up exactly the same phantom—even using the terminology of this being a “preemptive” strike—but with even less reason. Not only is it a verified and accepted truth, even by Israel and the USA, that the Iranians currently have no nuclear weapons, but the Americans were in active negotiations with them and scheduled to hold another meeting on Sunday, when Israel decided to commit this blatant act of war.

Thomas Fazi
Thomas Fazi'a Substack

"There is no freedom of speech whatsoever in Ukraine", says dissident journalist Vasyl Muravytskyi

Pascal Lottaz, Associate Professor for Neutrality Studies at Kyoto University’s Faculty of Law and Hakubi Center, whose YouTube channel I strongly recommend you follow, has published a fascinating video interview with a Ukrainian dissident journalist in exile, Vasyl Muravytskyi.

Muravytskyi, who had written several critical reports of the post-Euromaidan Ukrainian regime and its handling of the civil war in Ukraine, was arrested in August 2017 by Ukrainian law enforcement and charged with high treason, threatening the territorial integrity of Ukraine, inciting hatred, and even participating in a terrorist organisation. He spent 11 months in prison.

During that time, he received support from several international human rights and journalist organisations. The Swiss human rights organisation Solidarity Network recognised him as a prisoner of conscience, while the US-based Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders in France demanded his release. Amnesty International also recognised him as a prisoner of conscience.