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WASHINGTON — Five peace activists were arrested today as CODEPINK and other organizations disrupted the House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing titled “UNRWA Exposed: Examining the Agency’s Mission and Failures.” The protest aimed to draw attention to the urgent need for humanitarian aid in Gaza.

The disruption comes in the wake of the International Court of Justice’s recent ruling, which found South Africa’s charge of genocide against Israel to be credible. The court issued provisional measures demanding that Israel cease the killing of Palestinians and restore the flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza. Despite these urgent calls, Israel has retaliated by accusing …

During the evening of January 25, Kenneth Eugene Smith, having failed to convince the US Supreme Court to delay his execution, became yet another victim of judicial, state-sanctioned murder.  A previous, failed effort, using lethal injection, had been made in 2022.  On this occasion, it was the state of Alabama which sought to bloody (or gas, in this instance) its copybook at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore.  The method of execution: nitrogen hypoxia.

Smith was convicted in 1989 for murdering Elizabeth Sennett, the wife of a preacher’s wife, in a murder-for-hire killing.  His life, taken in turn, succumbed …

An old friend with years in the purchasing department of a leading consumer products conglomerate once told me that the active ingredient in washing powder is actually a minuscule component in those huge boxes of famous brand soap powders from which US daytime television dramas derived their sobriquet. The rest, he said mockingly, is just to make suds (foam). His point was that the consumer pays for the suds.

I retorted that although the deception did not surprise me, he underestimated the importance of foam. Although I am no chemist, unlike my friend I have been washing my own clothes for …

Cognitive warfare is no longer science fiction. Cognitive warfare is a fact of the modern age and everyone, whether civilian or military, is a potential target. Cognitive attacks are aimed at exploiting emotions rooted in our subconscious, bypassing our rational conscious mind. This is achieved by exploiting biases, fallacies, emotions and automatisms, but also through nanotechnology, biotechnology and information technology.

— Commander Cornelis van der Klaauw, Royal Netherlands Navy and Strategic Communications

The five domains of warfare are land, sea, air, space and cyberspace. The core technical components of Fifth Dimension …

This month, the world watched South Africa initiate International Court of Justice (ICJ) hearings on the genocidal acts Israel committed in Gaza. In a two-day session on January 11 and 12, the court heard the extensive evidence the South African legal team had gathered to support their case against Israel, and the rebuttal by the Israeli team.

The hearings were historic for two reasons. First, this was the first time that Israel’s decades-long aggression against the Palestinians was articulated in detail for the world to hear, without having to pass through the distorting lens of Western …

Illustration: Liu Xidan/GT

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) on Wednesday kicked off “Exercise Steadfast Defender 2024,” its largest military drills since the Cold War. Approximately 90,000 troops from NATO’s 31 members and Sweden are participating, with the associated exercises running until May 31. Russian media said NATO has openly admitted for the first time that the exercise is in response to a “Russian attack” and aims to convey to Western populations that “this war is inevitable.”

The exercise comes at two crucial junctures – the Russia-Ukraine …

Even the smallest of towns can see sparks of radicalism. Solidarity movements exist in several forms, from honoring the picket lines of striking workers to anti-war protests in solidarity with the innocent civilians caught in the crossfire. Student movements all throughout history have been characterized as displays of both solidarity and resistance, acting against wars, egregious abuses of power, and other entities characterized as unjust and disagreeable. In the village of West Winfield, New York, anything in the news focusing on students primarily relates to school sports, homecoming weekend, graduation, and similar events. In the mid-1930s though, students from the …

In a case that has captured the attention of both legal experts and the public, Willie Jerome Manning stands convicted of a crime that he did not commit. The conviction of Mr. Manning who was sentenced to death for the murders of two Mississippi State students, now faces scrutiny due to newly discovered evidence pointing toward his wrongful conviction. This isn’t the first time evidence has been presented to the court based on untruthful testimonies about Willie Manning by witnesses eager to cut deals with the state by providing false testimonies.

Exonerated for the Elderly Mother and Daughter Murders

Mr. Manning was …

On January 26, legal experts, policy wonks, activists and the plain curious waited for the order of the International Court of Justice, sitting in The Hague. The topic was that gravest of crimes, considered most reprehensible in the canon of international law: genocide. The main participants: the accused party, the State of Israel, and the accuser, the Republic of South Africa.
Filed on December 29 last year, the South African case focused on its obligations arising under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of …

The International Court of Justice has ruled that Israel must cease its warmaking in Gaza — cease committing and inciting genocidal acts — and that the case charging Israel with genocide must proceed.

This was a make or break moment for international law, or rather a break or make-a-first-step moment. There is hope for the idea and reality of international law, but this is only a beginning.

The president of the International Court of Justice, who read the ruling, is Judge Joan Donoghue, former top legal advisor under Hillary Clinton …

The lessons of the South African nuclear weapons program are deep, profound and largely ignored by non-proliferation dogmatists.  They show that a regime, even one subject to sanctions and exiled to the diplomatic cold room, can still show aptitude and resourcefulness in creating such murderous weapons.  The white regime of Apartheid South Africa was marginalised, the globe’s notorious pariah, yet managed to chug along, developing a formidable arsenal with external aid and local resourcefulness.  Where there is a pathological will, there will be a way.

The South African example also shows that members of the nuclear club are an easily rattled …

​The 2023 German film Paradise went virtually unnoticed by commentators on the socialist left. Yet, it is amongst the best dystopian anti-capitalist films produced in the decade.

The film follows the life of Max, an employee of Aeon, a company that buys life years from the poor to give them to the rich. Yes, you read that correctly, the life of the working poor (especially the large migrant populations – a phenomenon, as Immanuel Ness shows, integral to modern imperialism) is literally sold to the rich. Max is one of these salesmen. He is exceptional …

Luis Felipe Noé (Argentina), La naturaleza y los mitos II (‘Nature and Myths II’), 1975.

‘The West is in danger’, warned Argentina’s new president, Javier Milei at this year’s World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos, Switzerland. In his dangerously appealing style, Milei blamed ‘collectivism’ – that is, social welfare, taxes, and the state – as the ‘root cause’ of the world’s problems, leading to widespread impoverishment. The only …

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The struggle of organized labor in Upstate New York and more specifically Central New York is one that has typically gone unnoticed on both a national and historical scale. This of course can be said about numerous regions throughout the United States among other sections of the global socialist movement for the enfranchisement of the working class and the fight against backwards reactionary culture. Lessons can be drawn from organized struggle regardless of where in the world they take place. This lack of attention paid to the struggles in this region of New York State is depriving socialists, communists, and …