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By destroying universities, museums, libraries, and archives, Israel seeks to make our memory, whether it’s collective or institutional, inaccessible. It’s an assault on continuity. They want to force people out of Gaza but they also want to make sure if people return to Gaza they find nothing and dwell for eternity in this limbo of nothingness, in this void. Israel is trying to impose a rupture between the present and the past and the future.

— Jehad Abusalim, executive director of the Institute for Palestine Studies

For the past few months, we had the opportunity to collaborate with the talented data storytellers …

Photo credit: Muhammad Mahdi Karim, Wikimedia Commons

Each new week brings new calamities for people in the countries neighboring Israel, as its leaders try to bomb their way to the promised land of an ever-expanding Greater Israel.
In Gaza, Israel appears to be launching its “Generals’ Plan” to drive the most devastated and traumatized 2.2 million people in the world into the southern half of their open-air prison. Under this plan, Israel would hand the northern half over to greedy developers and settlers who, after decades …

For some critics, if one firm tops a league table for anti-people, anti-nature business practices, it is Bayer (although there are many other worthy candidates). Nevertheless, the Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR) signed a memorandum of understanding with Bayer in September 2023.  

Bayer’s approach to agricultural development involves promoting a model of industrial agriculture dependent on corporate products, including its toxic chemicals and genetically modified crops, and advocating for precision, data-driven agriculture that relies heavily on its proprietary technologies and software. 

Simon Wiebusch, Country Divisional Head of Crop Science for Bayer South Asia, …

South Korean novelist Han Kang has won the Nobel Prize for Literature, beating short-listed literary heavyweights like Thomas Pynchon, Haruki Murakami, Salman Rushdie, Gerald Murnane, and the all-odds-favorite, Chinese author Can Xue.  Han Kang was as shocked as anyone else after receiving the call notifying her that she had won. When asked what she would do next, she said she would quietly “have tea with her son”.

She has refused a press conference, saying that “with the wars raging between Russia and Ukraine, Israel and Palestine, with deaths being reported every day, she …

Dr. Frances Conley, 83, died recently. She was a professor at Stanford and one of the country’s only female neurosurgeons in the 1990s. For decades she dealt with male colleagues fondling her, propositioning her, and calling her “hon,” among other demeaning behavior—even in the operating room. She felt it was the cost of success in a male-dominated field. But at age 50 she’d had enough of being told her opposing opinion was due to her PMS, and of never being taken seriously. She resigned from her position, and it made the news. Dr. Conley regretted not speaking out when she …

What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security… And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.

— Historian Milton …

(Full article …)

For initiating a petition denouncing the French CGT Confederation’s stance on Palestine after October 7, Salah was defamed and expelled from the union. This troubling case, part of a global witch-hunt against supporters of Gaza, deserves some attention.

The Haiti/Americas Team of the Black Alliance for Peace strongly denounces the UN Security Council’s vote to extend the U.S. funded, Kenya-led Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission in Haiti. We assert that any U.S./UN-led armed intervention in Haiti is not only unjustifiable but also unlawful. We stand with the Haitian people and civil society groups who have consistently opposed foreign armed intervention, arguing that Haiti’s issues stem from ongoing and long-standing interference by the U.S., the UN, and the Core Group.

On Monday, September 30, the UN Security Council unanimously  adopted  a  resolution extending …

There are other issues I would prefer to write about; all are affected by the Middle East crisis.

Economics

Economics is a “dismal science” that has a postulate ─ all money is debt. This postulate leads to the realization that the capitalist economy grows and survives with mounting debt and only the government can carry the debt burden. Debt forces the government to manage the economy and a more managed economy continually develops. U.S. Middle East policy generates constant wars, promotes an arms race, and is partly responsible for the continually increasing debt and managed economy.

Foreign Policy

Establishing hegemony by making the world …

The United Nations is an easy body to hate.  At times, it seems to be effusion without substance, body with no backbone.  It was conceived in a fit of post-war idealism, when egos were humbled and hatred briefly stemmed.  Over the ruins of the Second World War, the builders were favoured over the destroyers and mischief makers – at least for a time.

On its establishment, the UN became a hostage to the political intrigues and power blocs that have continued to plague it for its duration.  Of particular concern was the body’s pursuit of international law protocols – formulation, drafting …

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of Georgia Tech, the US Air Force, Department of Defense, or the US Government.

Somewhere around the age of 20, I sat in a large auditorium at the United States Air Force Academy with a thousand other cadets and cheered at footage of real drone strikes on real people, laughing along with everyone else as we watched little, pixelated figures run for cover that we all knew was futile. When I look back on that event, I wonder what part of me I had to sacrifice to find …

The Israeli plan calling for the forceful emptying of northern Gaza and starving to death whoever remains behind is being aggressively promoted since its launch, including by prominent media figures.

BREAKING: California Reinstates Mask Mandates Until Spring! with Dr. Joseph Mercola

Emmanuel Macron and the macaron have many similarities. Both the French President and the French dessert are airy and insubstantial and are loved by the rich elite. For these reasons, it was a surprise to many when Macron announced his support for an end to arms deliveries to the Israeli terrorist regime. For a neoliberal following in the footsteps of interventionists such as George Bush and Tony Blair, such a declaration is nigh unthinkable. Not even Vice-President Kamala Harris, a nominal progressive, has called for an arms embargo. In fact, Harris has made it emphatically that she does …

Can they see things that the majority can’t see?