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When I told my grandmother that I was going to visit Europe for the first time, she exploded, “Oy vey!” Raising her voice, she exclaimed: “There’s nothing there! NOTHING! Just poverty and filth.” Collecting herself, she added: “You like foreign food? There’s better in New York.”

For her generation of Jews, there was little nostalgia for the old country…and for good reason. She had been an involuntary participant in pogroms, violent riots massacring Jews. Fast forward to the present, the perpetrators are being rehabilitated. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, disregarding his religious heritage, honors the murderous Stepan Bandera as one of his “…

Israel’s dilemma has been how to construct a racially pure state and extinguish the Palestinian presence in the country without the world noticing the genocide. It has found the solution and the world takes no notice. The world can entertain another solution and the world takes no notice.

Want to rid the world of Hamas, rid the world of apartheid Israel. If apartheid Israel goes away assuredly Hamas will go away; after all, Israel says that Hamas’s only reason for existence is to eradicate apartheid Israel.

Want to stop the oppression and save the Palestinians from genocide, get rid of apartheid Israel; …

But these weren’t the kind of monsters that had tentacles and rotting skin, the kind a seven-year-old might be able to wrap his mind around—they were monsters with human faces, in crisp uniforms, marching in lockstep, so banal you don’t recognize them for what they are until it’s too late.

― Ransom Riggs, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

Enough already.

Enough with the distractions. Enough with the partisan jousting.

Enough with the sniping and name-calling and mud-slinging that do nothing to make this country safer or freer or more just.

We have let the government’s evil-doing, its abuses, power grabs, brutality, meanness, inhumanity, …

Excerpt of a Letter to the New York Times, December 4, 1948, from Albert Einstein and other prominent Jews.

Attack on Arab Village

A shocking example was their behavior in the Arab village of Deir Yassin. This village, off the main roads and surrounded by Jewish lands, had taken no part in the war, and had even fought off Arab bands who wanted to use the village as their base. On April 9 (THE NEW YORK TIMES), terrorist bands attacked this peaceful village, which was not a military objective in the fighting, killed most of its inhabitants —— 240 men, women, and …

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I’ve been arrested three times so far this year for nonviolent direct actions (nvda) on the climate crisis. I don’t think I’ve ever been arrested more than once in a single year before this year; since my first arrest in 1970 I’ve been arrested about 30 times.

I risked arrest with about 100 others a week ago in southwest Virginia, fighting the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP). Five of us—not me–were arrested, four on purpose after locking down to four pipeline construction vehicles at two different construction sites. Both sites were pretty much shut down for the whole day, the main objective …

I never thought I’d live to see a British prime minister warmly embracing a war criminal and genocidal thug like Netanyahu, go swanning around a hotel (the King David) which was used as the Jerusalem headquarters of the British Mandate aúthority and blown up by Jewish terrorists in 1946, killing 91 and wounding 45, then tell Netanyahu: “We want you to win.”

Win what, exactly? And who’s “we”? Certainly not the man-in-the-street in Britain. No, it’ll be that band of brainwashed …

So much space continues to be dedicated to the Hamas attack more than two weeks on. But this article from Mondoweiss is a rare attempt to try to piece together the events of October 7 without relying simply on Israel’s official, increasingly strained narrative.

The author explains the response of the Israeli army to Hamas’ incursion into Israel and capture of Israeli communities near Gaza in terms of Israel’s infamous “Hannibal directive”. That military directive compels the Israeli army to kill Israelis rather than let them be taken hostage. It …

Racism, in whatever form, is just so despicable.

The Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives secretly voted on Friday October 20 to prevent Donald Trump’s choice to become the leader of Republicans in the House, Rep. Jim Jordan, from leading Republicans in the House. The vote to block Trump’s choice was 122 to 86 against Jordan. The voting was held in secret so that the 122 against Jordan will not be known by their own electorate to have voted now so as to increase Biden’s chances to win in 2024. Here is why this …

Where? Everywhere the few live! But there is one land that is the most lawless ever in favor of the few from the beginning of time and evermore, the United States of America (US)! The few, of course, are the few thousand, the power elite of America’s corpocracy, its industry chieftains and subordinate poohbahs in government.[efn_note]Brumback, G.B. The Devil’s Marriage: Break Up the Corpocracy or Leave Democracy in the Lurch. Bloomington, IN, Author House, 2011.[/efn_note] The miniscule few rule and ruin the world and are slowly taking the billions of human beings to extinction later this century, so predict over …

If President Joe Biden were a pony, instead of a perennial warhorse (e.g., gung-ho for Bush/Cheney’s criminal destruction of Iraq), he would have his tail between his legs on his return from a one-day trip to Israel. He failed to achieve any immediate, critical objectives while the ongoing destruction of Gaza and the defenseless Palestinians continues.

Did Biden get Israel and Egypt to allow the exit of hundreds of American citizens fleeing the Gazan firestorm? No!

Did Biden open up corridors for humanitarian aid to the babies, children, women, elderly and other civilians in Gaza who had nothing to do with the October …

COVID style.

There has always been something impressive, if slightly idiosyncratic, about political ideas emanating from Pacific states.  In recent years, on the world’s largest body of water, the various island states seeing themselves as part of the Blue Pacific have tried to identify a set of principles by which to abide, forming an understanding of the environment that threatens to submerge them.  Some sixteen states and territories in the Pacific became the second grouping to establish a nuclear free zone in 1985 via the Treaty of Rarotonga, first proposed by New Zealand at the South Pacific Forum meeting in Tonga in …

France’s new Education Minister, Gabriel Attal, launched the 2023 school year with a thunderous announcement: “I decided it will no longer be possible to wear an abaya at school,” he said, in the name of a preposterous conception of secularism (or laïcité) adopted by President Emmanuel Macron.

This “abaya ban” is a serious violation of the fundamental rights of presumed Muslim (i.e., racialized) pupils, who are unfairly stigmatized and discriminated against.

Though he is the youngest Minister of the Fifth Republic, 34-year-old Attal used the oldest and dirtiest trick in the book, namely the politics of scapegoating an oppressed, defenseless minority. Just …

Bayer, which profits from various environmentally harmful and disease-causing chemicals like glyphosate, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) “to develop resource-efficient, climate-resilient solutions for crops, varieties, crop protection, weed and mechanization”. 

The ICAR, an apex public sector institution, is responsible for co-ordinating agricultural education and research in India. Predatory corporations like Bayer attempt to co-opt government agencies that can provide access to extensive networks in order to wield influence and market products. It’s a key business strategy. 

And this is not lost on the Peoples’ …