Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Catherine Russell, the head of UNICEF, said this week that of the 600,000 children in Rafah, southern Gaza, all of them are either injured, or sick, or malnourished. Much of the Gaza population has been forced south to Rafah by the Israeli military, which had promised them it was a […]
Archives for May 2024
Plastic is Climate Change in a Bottle – So let’s put a Cap on It
By Jack Marley, The Conversation | – (The Conversation) – Plastic pollution and climate change have common culprits – and similar solutions. The penultimate round of negotiations for a global pact on plastic ended yesterday in Ottawa. Nearly 200 countries have agreed that a treaty must tackle plastic pollution at every stage of its existence, […]
Columbia Students are Sick at Heart, just as we were in ’68
Mark Rudd ( Waging Nonviolence ) – What is the ethical response to witnessing a great moral crime? Turn away and allow oneself to be distracted? Pretend it doesn’t exist? Or acknowledge the crime for what it is, and take some sort of action to try to stop it? Students at Columbia in 1968 understood […]
Top Ways MAGA and Right Wing Zionism Converge, and Why Smotrich is Embracing Trump
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Going back to the late nineteenth century, Zionism has had a complex and storied history, and there have been many strains of the ideology. Some early Zionists did not insist on colonizing Palestine, while others did (and colonizing it was the word they used). All agreed that the Jewish religion […]
Ukraine, Israel, and the Incoherence of U.S. Foreign Policy
( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – The process of crafting congressional legislation is often likened to sausage-making. Best not to look behind the scenes at the mechanics of the process, which is a bloody mess. But the analogy is not apt. Sure, sausage-making can be ugly. The end product, however, is presentable and usually […]
The Right is weaponizing Antisemitism to Distract from Israel’s Atrocities and Smear Campus Protests
By Helen Benedict ( Tomdispatch.com ) – Helicopters have been throbbing overhead for days now. Nights, too. Police are swarming the streets of Broadway, many in riot gear. Police vans, some as big as a city bus, are lined up along side streets and Broadway. Outside the gates of the Columbia University campus, a penned-in […]
I was Arrested at Columbia University in 1968: I am Cheering on the Students of Today
New York (Special to Informed Comment) – Earlier this week Columbia University started suspending the students who refused to leave the encampment they built to protest Columbia’s support of Israel’s war against Palestinians. The students had responded by occupying Hamilton Hall, mirroring the action that initiated the 1968 protests against the Vietnam War which ended […]
This is Why the Students are Protesting: Eyes on Israel’s Killing Fields in Gaza
Bayreuth, Germany (Special to Informed Comment- Feature) – Lisa Hajjar has compared what is happening in Gaza to the Killing Fields of Cambodia. Yet where she argues that “Unlike the Khmer Rouge, the Israeli government’s exterminationist policy is not fueled by an ideological vision to remake Gaza anew. Total destruction is the goal.” As has […]
Birding in Gaza amid a Nightmare of War
( Tomdispatch.com ) – He’s a funny little chap: a sharp dresser with a sleek grey jacket, a white waistcoat, red shorts, and a small grey crest for a hat. With his shiny black eyes and stubby black beak, he’s quite the looker. Like the chihuahua of the bird world, the tufted titmouse has no […]