Although my respect for MLK is enduring, when it comes to that upward-trending curve connecting past to present, his view of human history has proven to be all too hopeful. At best, history’s actual course remains exceedingly difficult to decipher. Some might say it’s downright devious (and, when you look around this embattled planet of ours today, from the Ukraine to the Middle East, deeply disturbing).

Let’s consider a specific, very recent segment of the past. I’m thinking of the period stretching from my birth year of 1947 to this very moment. An admission: I, too, once believed that the unfolding events during those long decades I was living through told a discernible story. Although not without its zigs and zags, so I was convinced once upon a time, that story had both direction and purpose. It pointed toward an ultimate destination — so politicians, pundits, and prophets like Dr. King assured us. In fact, embracing the essentials of that story was then considered nothing less than a prerequisite for situating yourself in the ongoing stream of history. It offered something to grab hold of.

Sadly enough, all of this turned out to be bunk.

That became abundantly clear in the years after 1989 when the Soviet Union began to collapse and the U.S. was left alone as a great power on Planet Earth. The decades since then have carried a variety of labels. The post-Cold War order came and went, succeeded by the post-9/11 era, and then the Global War on Terror which, even today, in largely unattended places like Africa, drags on in anonymity.

In those precincts where opinions are manufactured and marketed, an overarching theme informed each of those labels: the United States was, by definition, the sun around which all else orbited. In what was known as an age of unipolarity or, more modestly, the unipolar moment, we Americans presided as the sole superpower and indispensable nation of Planet Earth, exercising full-spectrum dominance. In the pithy formulation of columnist Max Boot, the United States had become the planet’s “Big Enchilada.” The future was ours to mold, shape, and direct. Some influential thinkers insisted — may even have believed — that History itself had actually “ended.”

Alas, events exposed that glorious moment as fleeting, if not altogether illusory. For several reasons — Washington’s propensity for needless war certainly offers a place to start — things did not pan out as expected. Assurances of peace, prosperity, and victory over the foe (whoever the foe it was at that moment) turned out to be false. By 2016, that fact had registered on Americans in sufficient numbers for them to elect as “leader of the Free World” someone hitherto chiefly known as a TV host and real estate developer of dubious credentials.

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The seemingly impossible had occurred: The American people (or at least the Electoral College) had delivered Donald Trump to the pinnacle of American politics.

It was as if a clown had taken possession of the White House.

Shocked and appalled, millions of citizens found this turn of events hard to believe and impossible to accept. President Trump promptly proceeded to fulfill their worst expectations. By almost any of the measures habitually employed to evaluate political leadership, he flopped as a commander-in-chief. To my mind, he was an embarrassment.

Yet, however inexplicably, Trump remained to many Americans — growing numbers, it would turn out — a source of hope and inspiration. If given sufficient time, he would redeem the nation. History had summoned him to do so, so his followers believed, fervently and adamantly.

In 2020, the anti-Trump Establishment did manage to scratch out one final chance to show that it was not entirely bankrupt. Yet sending to the White House an elderly white male who embodied the politics of the Old School merely postponed Trump’s Second Coming.

No doubt Joe Biden was seasoned and well-intentioned, but he proved to possess little or nothing of Trump’s mystifying appeal. And when he stumbled, the remnant of the Establishment quickly and brutally abandoned him.

So, four years on, Americans have reversed course. They have decided to give Trump — now elevated to the status of folk hero in the eyes of many — another chance.

What does this head-scratching turn of events signify? Could History be trying to tell us something?

The End of the End of History

Allow me to suggest that those who counted History out did so prematurely. It’s time to consider the possibility that all too many of the very smart, very earnest, and very well-compensated people who take it upon themselves to interpret the signs of our times have been radically misinformed. Simply put: they don’t know what they’re talking about.

Viewed in retrospect, perhaps the collapse of communism did not signify the turning point of cosmic significance so many of them then imagined. Add to that another possibility: Perhaps liberal democratic consumer capitalism (also known as the American Way of Life) does not, in fact, define the ultimate destination of humankind.

It just might be that History is once again on the move — or simply that it never really “ended” in the first place. And as usual, it appears to have tricks up its sleeve, with Donald Trump’s return to the White House arguably one of them.

More than a few of my fellow citizens see his election as a cause for ultimate despair — and I get that. But to saddle Trump with responsibility for the predicament in which our nation now finds itself vastly overstates his historical significance.

Let’s start with this: Despite his extraordinary aptitude for self-promotion, Trump has shown little ability to anticipate, shape, or even forestall events. Yes, he is distinctly a blowhard, who makes grandiose promises that rarely pan out. (If you want documentation, take your choice among Trump University, Trump Airlines, Trump Vodka, Trump Steaks, Trump Magazine, Trump Taj Mahal, and even Trump: the Game.) Barring a conversion akin to the Apostle Paul’s on his journey to Damascus, we can expect more of the same from his second term as president.

Yet the yawning gap between his over-the-top MAGA rhetoric and what he’s really delivered should be instructive. It trains a spotlight on what the “end of history” has actually yielded: lofty unfulfilled promises that have given way to unexpected and often distinctly undesired consequences.

That adverse judgment hardly applies to Trump alone. In reality, it applies to every president since George H.W. Bush unveiled his “new world order” back in 1991, with his son George W. Bush’s infamous 2003 “Mission Accomplished” claim serving as its exclamation point.

Since then, at the national level, American politics, especially presidential politics, has become a scam. What happens in Washington, whether in the White House or on Capitol Hill, no more reflects the hopes of the Founders of the American republic than Black Friday and Cyber Monday express “the reason for the Season.”

In that sense, while Trump’s return to the White House may not be worth celebrating, it is entirely appropriate. It may well be History’s way of saying: “Hey, you! Wake up! Pay attention!”

The Big Enchilada No More

In 1962, former Secretary of State Dean Acheson remarked that “Great Britain has lost an empire and has not yet found a role.” Although a bit snarky, his assessment was apt.

Today, one can easily imagine some senior Chinese or Indian (or even British) diplomat offering a similar judgment about the United States. America’s imperial pretensions have run aground. Yet the loudest and most influential establishment voices — Donald Trump notably excepted — continue to insist otherwise. With apparent sincerity, President Biden all too typically clung to the notion that the United States does indeed remain the planet’s “indispensable nation.”

Events say otherwise. Consider the arena of war. Once upon a time, professing a commitment to peace, the United States sought to avoid war. When armed conflict became unavoidable, America sought to win, quickly and neatly. Today, in contrast, this country seemingly adheres to an informal doctrine of “bomb-and-bankroll.” Since three days after the 9/11 attacks (with but a single negative vote), when Congress passed an Authorization for the Use of Military Force, or AUMF, war has become a fixture of presidential politics, with a compliant Congress issuing the checks. As for the Constitution, when it comes to war powers, it has become a dead letter.

In recent years, U.S. military casualties have been blessedly few, but outcomes have been ambiguous at best and abysmal — think Afghanistan — at worst. If the United States has played an indispensable role in these years, it’s been in underwriting disaster, spending billions of dollars on catastrophic wars that were, from the moment they were launched, of distinctly questionable relevance to this country’s wellbeing.

In his inconsistent, erratic, and bloviating way, Donald Trump — almost alone among figures on the national stage — has appeared to find this objectionable and has proposed a radical course change. Under his leadership, he insists, the Big Enchilada will rise to new heights of glory.

To be clear, the likelihood of the incoming administration making good on the myriad promises contained within its MAGA agenda is close to zero. When it actually comes to setting basic U.S. policy on a more sensible course, Trump is manifestly clueless. Buying Greenland, taking the Panama Canal, or even making Canada our 51st state will not restore our ailing Republic to health. As for the team of lackeys Trump is assembling to assist him in governing, let us simply note that there is not a single figure of Acheson’s stature among them.

Still, here we may find reason for at least a glimmer of hope. For far too long — all my life, in fact — Americans have looked to the White House for salvation. Those expectations have met with repeated, seemingly endless disappointment.

Vowing to Make America Great Again, Donald Trump has, in his own strange fashion, vaulted those hopes to a new level. That he, too, will disappoint his followers, no less the rest of us, is, of course, foreordained. Yet his failure might — just might — bring Americans to rethink and renew their democracy.

Listen: History is signaling to us. Whether we can successfully interpret those signals remains to be seen. In the meantime, brace yourself for what promises to be a distinctly bumpy ride.

Copyright 2025 Andrew Bacevich

Tomdispatch.com

For the last year and a half, as students at Columbia University and across the globe have protested against the Israeli government’s genocidal assault on Palestinians after the October 2023 attacks, a response that has resulted in horrendous devastation in Gaza, I have ardently defended students’ right to peaceful protest on our campus and across the country. I truly believed that student engagement with the rights and dignity of Palestinians continued a celebrated tradition at Columbia University of student protest. Instead, the University has allowed its own disciplinary process to be weaponized against members of our community, including myself. I have been targeted for my support of pro-Palestinian protesters – by the president of Columbia University, by several colleagues, by university trustees, and by outside actors. This has included an unjustified finding by the University that my public comments condemning attacks against student protesters violated university non-discrimination policy.

I have come to the view that the Columbia University administration has created such a toxic and hostile environment for legitimate debate around the war in Israel and Palestine that I can no longer teach or conduct research. Effective today, I have reached an agreement with Columbia University that relieves me of my obligations to teach or participate in faculty governance after serving on the Columbia law faculty for 25 years. While the university may call this change in my status “retirement,” it should be more accurately understood as a termination dressed up in more palatable terms. In exchange for my agreement to step down as an active member of the Columbia faculty, the university demanded that I surrender significant rights and privileges that are provided to all retired faculty as a matter of policy. To describe my change in status with the university as a “retirement” is both misleading and disingenuous. Last January I spoke out publicly, defending Columbia students’ right to protest in favor of a ceasefire in the Israeli military assault in Gaza and for Columbia University to divest from Israel, a country that is widely regarded to be engaging in a genocide against Palestinians.

In my statements, including an interview on Democracy Now! on January 25, 2024, I condemned the spraying of pro-Palestinian protesters on our campus with a toxic chemical that caused such significant injuries that several students were hospitalized. In those statements I noted that the parties that sprayed our students with a chemical were Israeli students who were currently enrolled in Columbia’s joint degree program with Tel Aviv University, and who had recently performed military service in Israel. These facts were confirmed both by Columbia University and the Israeli students themselves. I also noted that there had been a history of attacks against Palestinian students and their allies on our campus by Israeli students who had recently completed military service, and that Columbia University was not taking this pattern of harassment seriously enough. I have long had a concern that the transition from the mindset required of a soldier to that of a student could be a difficult one for some people, and that the university needed to do more to protect the safety of all members of our community. Numerous students at Columbia have verified this history of harassment and that they had consulted me about it over the years.

2

In February 2024, two Columbia colleagues filed a complaint against me with the university’s Office of Equal Employment and Affirmative Action, charging that one sentence in my comments on Democracy Now! amounted to harassment of Israeli members of the Columbia community in violation of university policies. As the investigation of these complaints progressed, I insisted that Columbia University could not serve as a neutral investigator or judge of this matter since it was irretrievably biased against me. For example, in April 2024 during a congressional hearing, Congresswoman Elise Stefanik asked then-President Minouche Shafik what disciplinary actions had been taken against “Professor Katherine Franke from Columbia Law School, who said that ‘all Israeli students who have served in the IDF are dangerous and shouldn’t be on campus.’” President Shafik responded, “I agree with you that those comments are completely unacceptable and discriminatory.” President Shafik was aware at that time that Congresswoman Stefanik’s summary of my comments was grossly inaccurate and misleading, yet she made no effort to correct the Congresswoman’s deliberate mischaracterization of my comments. After much insistence, Columbia agreed to appoint an outside investigator of the charges against me, and in late November 2024, the university issued a determination, based on the investigation, that my one sentence of comments on Democracy Now! violated EOAA policies because I referenced a history of harassment of Palestinians and their allies on our campus, and further found that I had retaliated against the complainants in this case by confirming their names to a reporter last summer.

Katherine M.Franke, via her Columbia Law School web page, where she is listed as “retired.”

I filed an appeal of that determination of guilt, and should the determination be upheld, the matter would go to my Dean to impose a sanction. Upon reflection, it became clear to me that Columbia had become such a hostile environment, that I could no longer serve as an active member of the faculty. Over the last year I have had several people posing as students come to my office to seek my advice about student protests while they were secretly videotaping me and then edited versions of those recordings were published on right-wing social media sites. After President Shafik defamed me in Congress, I received several death threats at my home. I regularly receive emails that express the hope that I am raped, murdered, and otherwise assaulted on account of my support of Palestinian rights. I have had law school colleagues follow me from the subway to my office in the law school, yelling at me in front of students that I am a Hamas-supporter and accusing me of supporting violence against Israeli women and children.

Colleagues in the law school have videotaped me without my consent and then shared it with right wing organizations outside the law school. And I have had students enroll in my classes with the primary purpose of creating situations in which they can provoke discussions that they can record, post online, and then use to file complaints against me with the university. I have come to regard Columbia Law School as a hostile work environment in which I can no longer enter the classroom, hold office hours, walk through the campus, or engage in faculty governance functions free from egregious and unwelcome harassment on account of my defense of students’ freedom to protest and express views that are critical of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, treatment that is widely regarded by the most prominent human rights organizations nationally and globally as a genocide.

3

I have also come to regard Columbia University as having lost its commitment to its unique and important mission. Rather than defend the role of a university in a democracy, in fostering critical debate, research, and learning around matters of vital public concern, and in educating the next generation with the tools to become engaged citizens, Columbia University’s leadership has demonstrated a willingness to collaborate with the very enemies of our academic mission. In a time when assaults on higher education are the most acute since the McCarthyite assaults of the 1950s, the University’s leadership and trustees have abandoned any duty to protect the university’s most precious resources: its faculty, students, and academic mission. As Columbia’s Board of Trustees has become constituted largely by hedge fund managers, investment bankers, and venture capitalists, the university has become more of a real estate holding concern than a non-profit educational institution. With this degradation of the university’s leadership has come, in some cases, an inability to resist pressures placed on the university by outside entities carrying a brief for the destruction of higher education, and in other cases, a shared commitment to a right-wing, and pro-Israel, ideology. My commitment to defending the university and our students rendered me an attractive target for the university’s opponents, and they weaponized the EOAA process to chill and punish my advocacy on the students’ behalf. I walk away from an active role on the Columbia teaching faculty now – and at some significant cost – not because this tactic has won, but rather because I aim to refocus my efforts on fighting for the rights and dignity of Palestinians, resisting the pull of a disingenuous distraction at Columbia. I will always be a teacher, and am always learning.

—

Katherine Franke was the James L. Dohr Professor of Law at Columbia University, and Founder/Director of the Center for Gender & Sexuality Law. She serves on the Executive Committees of Columbia’s Institute for Research on Women, Gender and Sexuality, and the Center for Palestine Studies. She is among the nation’s leading scholars writing on law, sexuality, race, and religion drawing from feminist, queer, and critical race theory.

Professor Franke also founded and served as faculty director of the Law, Rights, and Religion Project, a think tank based at Columbia Law School that develops policy and thought leadership on the complex ways in which religious liberty rights interact with other fundamental rights. In 2021, Professor Franke launched the ERA Project, a law and policy think tank to develop academically rigorous research, policy papers, expert guidance, and strategic leadership on the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the U.S. Constitution, and on the role of the ERA in advancing the larger cause of gender-based justice.

Professor Franke also led a team that researched Columbia Law School’s relationship to slavery and its legacies.

Reprinted with the author’s permission.

( Middle East Monitor ) – Israel’s use of artificial intelligence (AI) funded by European Union research programmes to target civilians is attracting a lot of criticism. Since the Israeli attacks on Gaza began on 7 October, 2023, the EU has provided over €238 million ($246m) to Israeli institutions for research and innovation. The funds are believed to have supported the development of AI-driven “location and killing” technology used by Israel against Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

Nozomi Takahashi, a member of the board of directors of the European Coordination of Committees and Associations for Palestine (ECCAP), told Anadolu that they are aware of allegations about EU funds aiding AI technologies targeting civilians. Takahashi said that they had addressed the issue in letters to high-level EU officials, including former EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell.

She pointed to AI-based systems used by the Israeli army called “Habsora” (The Gospel), “Lavender” and “Where is Daddy?” She said that these systems are used “to identify, locate and kill the targets in the current genocide in Gaza.”

Emphasising that these systems are used indiscriminately against civilians, Takahashi noted that, “Such extrajudicial killing is prohibited by international law. The scale and frequency of civilians killed in Gaza using such AI systems are devastating.”

The ECCAP official highlighted the EU’s particular focus on AI development, and said that Israeli research institutions are also involved in various EU-funded projects in this field. However, identifying which EU-funded project underpins those used by the Israeli army is impossible due to confidentiality and secrecy. “The potential high risk associated with such technology in the hands of a government that has a record of human rights violations should raise the alarm.”

Only civilian projects, added Takahashi, are eligible for funding through the Horizon Europe programme. “The development of such AI technology further blurs the border between civil and military applications.” She criticised the EU for its “narrow focus” when evaluating the goals of the projects that it funds, with insufficient monitoring and overlooking the potential for their use in the military.

Takahashi highlighted that Horizon Europe’s ethical principles require funded projects to uphold “respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and human rights, including the rights of minorities.” However, the research entity’s history with military activities or human rights violations is “neither questioned nor required” during ethics reviews, she claimed.

According to Eman Abboud, a lecturer at Trinity College Dublin, it has been demonstrated that EU funds have financed arms companies under the guise of civil security and tech research. She said that the EU is “culpable” by supporting the military industry in Israel — the state is currently facing genocide charges at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) — through its funding programmes.

“Israeli companies such as Elbit Systems Ltd. and Israel Aerospace Industries, which profit from and are deeply complicit in Israel’s long-term violent oppression and apartheid, as well as the current genocide of the Palestinian people, have received funding for security research from European funding programmes,” explained Abboud.

Criticising the ability of organisations contributing to human rights violations and the undermining of international humanitarian law to benefit from EU funds, she said, “The EU has refused to sever its trade links with Israel or ban them from Horizon Europe,” despite the ongoing ICJ case against the occupation state.

“Lavender Genocide Bot,” Digital, Midjourney, 2024

She referenced EU-GLOCTER, a “counter-terrorism” project involving Israeli institutions, noting the links to Israel’s military and intelligence, including Reichman University’s International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT), which was co-founded by a former intelligence chief. “We must understand that institutions like these provide the means to create the intelligence apparatus that is used to target specific civilians in Gaza and in Lebanon. We cannot separate them, given the strategic dual use of academic research funding and military research funding.”

The AI technology developed within the Israeli military named Habsora, generating automated and real-time targets, frequently strikes civilian infrastructure and residential areas, with the number of civilian casualties always being known in advance.

The Lavender technology analyses data collected on approximately 2.3 million people in Gaza using ambiguous criteria to assess the likelihood of an individual’s connection to the Palestinian resistance group Hamas.

Sources told Tel Aviv-based +972 and Local Call that, early in the Gaza attacks, the military was “completely reliant” on Lavender, automatically targeting males it flagged, without oversight or specific criteria. Lavender has marked approximately 37,000 Palestinians as “suspects”.

Using the AI-based system called “Where is Daddy?” Israel simultaneously tracks thousands of individuals and when they enter their homes targeted individuals are bombed, with no regard for the presence of civilians, including women and children.

These AI technologies are known to make computational errors frequently and disregard the principle of “proportionality”. They have played a significant role in the killing of over 45,850 Palestinians since 7 October, 2023.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

Via Middle East Monitor

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Donald Trump jumped to the conclusion that the New Orleans attacker, who killed 15 people and wounded three dozen more, was a career criminal and recent immigrant. In fact, he was an African-American veteran, born and bred in Beaumont, Texas. His conversion to Islam must have happened before 2004, when he tried to enlist in the Navy under that name. Instead, he ended up in the army, and deployed for a year to Afghanistan (2009-2010), as well as getting the training to become an IT specialist. He remained a reservist after his honorable discharge.

He was, in short, a patriotic American who did his part in fighting the war on terror. He was not an immigrant or a member of a foreign criminal gang.

That Mr. Trump persists in deploying the politics of hate and bigotry is a bad sign for the U.S. Even if Jabbar had been a immigrant, his actions would have said nothing about immigrants, who have low rates of criminality compared to the native-born population and whose productivity has been one key to American economic success. They don’t take jobs from the native-born on the whole, but do jobs that the latter typically won’t do.

Nor is Jabbar’s religion a reason to engage in Muslim-hatred. The NY Post‘s insidious and Islamophobic reporting ominously says that one of his neighbors in the trailer park in which he ended up only spoke Urdu. If that were true it would be because poor people live in trailer parks, including immigrants with limited English. However, it sounds fishy to me, since even poor Pakistanis of the sort who come to the United States tend to know English. It was the colonial language and still an essential language, like French in Tunisia. Then they say ominously that there was a mosque in the area. So what? Mosques are houses of worship where people go for solace when facing rough times.

The Post says ominously that Jabbar referenced the Qur’an, the Muslim scripture. D’oh. He was a Muslim. He also referenced the Qur’an when he was in Afghanistan as part of the US army’s fight against the Taliban.

The Qur’an forbids murder and urges believers to forgive and do good to their enemies. See my study of these peace themes in the Muslim holy book at academia.edu.

If this guy had been a white Proud Boy found with guns and explosives, would the newspapers imply that it is suspicious that he quoted the Bible and that there is a Baptist church near his house? It is 2024, New York Post. Islamophobia is a disgusting form of racism. (Yes, Muslims are racialized in this country.)

I admire the hell out of veterans. I grew up in an army family, just as Jabbar’s children did. Most veterans are admirable citizens who come back and contribute to their communities, building businesses and providing key services. But the job undeniably can lead to trauma and stresses that a small minority deal with in dysfunctional ways. The suicide rate is tragically high. I’ve lost people I knew that way. Some end up homeless. Some are radicalized. It is not an accident that the leadership of the Proud Boys, convicted of sedition, were disproportionately veterans.

Jacqueline Sweet was able to screenshot some of Jabbar’s postings at Twitter / X:

In the first posting, from 2021, he says that a “scarcity mindset” is unhealthy in an environment of abundance, and that if you can’t turn off that scarcity mindset it becomes a kind of trauma. In the second, from the same year, he complains about the lack of Black protagonists in films after Marvel’s The Black Panther (2018) who are not “submissive, immoral or immature/ silly.”

pic.twitter.com/ZpOQlLVupU

— Jacqueline Sweet (@JSweetLI) January 1, 2025

Then in 2022, everything went to hell. His wife divorced him, he went deeply into debt, and The Post says he ended up living in a trailer home with chickens and sheep in the lawn.

Everybody goes postal in their own way. White nationalists try to invade the capitol and hang the vice president. Kahanaist Jews in Israel shoot up mosques and commit atrocities in the Occupied Territories. A handful of Muslim Americans have declared themselves ISIL (ISIS, Daesh), even though that organization barely exists and has no command and control. It is like a white supremacist declaring that he is acting in the name of Adolf Hitler even though the Nazi army was long ago defeated and Adolf died in his bunker.

It should go without saying that the fact that a tiny number of disturbed individuals act this way does not reflect on the four or five million Muslim Americans, who are our physicians, accountants, and local business people. Tarring a whole group with the actions of a few is the definition of prejudice. Likewise, the Proud Boys don’t reflect on all white people.

I’m not a psychiatrist and don’t play one on television. I therefore cannot pronounce on Jabbar’s state of mind. But I do know that if a white guy lost his family and his business, went tens of thousands of dollars into debt, and ended up living in a trailer home with livestock in his yard, and then went postal, sympathetic white reporters would be eliciting regrets from his white parents that he was suffering from mental problems. As I pointed out over a decade ago, however, the US media treat white terrorists differently.

French Quarter, New Orleans, February 2024. © Juan Cole.

As a reminder, here are my Top Ten Differences between White Terrorists and Others:

1. White terrorists are called “gunmen.” What does that even mean? A person with a gun? Wouldn’t that be, like, everyone in the US? Other terrorists are called, like, “terrorists.”

2. White terrorists are “troubled loners.” Other terrorists are always suspected of being part of a global plot, even when they are obviously troubled loners.

3. Doing a study on the danger of white terrorists at the Department of Homeland Security will get you sidelined by angry white Congressmen. Doing studies on other kinds of terrorists is a guaranteed promotion.

4. The family of a white terrorist is interviewed, weeping as they wonder where he went wrong. The families of other terrorists are almost never interviewed.

5. White terrorists are part of a “fringe.” Other terrorists are apparently mainstream.

6. White terrorists are random events, like tornadoes. Other terrorists are long-running conspiracies.

7. White terrorists are never called “white.” But other terrorists are given ethnic affiliations.

8. Nobody thinks white terrorists are typical of white people. But other terrorists are considered paragons of their societies.

9. White terrorists are alcoholics, addicts or mentally ill. Other terrorists are apparently clean-living and perfectly sane.

10. There is nothing you can do about white terrorists. Gun control won’t stop them. No policy you could make, no government program, could possibly have an impact on them. But hundreds of billions of dollars must be spent on police and on the Department of Defense, and on TSA, which must virtually strip search 60 million people a year, to deal with other terrorists.

(The Conversation) – After the fall of the al-Assad regime in Syria, large stockpiles of the illicit drug captagon have reportedly been uncovered.

The stockpiles, found by Syrian rebels, are believed to be linked to al-Assad military headquarters, implicating the fallen regime in the drug’s manufacture and distribution.

But as we’ll see, captagon was once a pharmaceutical drug, similar to some of the legally available stimulants we still use today for conditions including attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Captagon was once a pharmaceutical

Captagon is the original brand name of an old synthetic pharmaceutical stimulant originally made in Germany in the 1960s. It was an alternative to amphetamine and methamphetamine, which were both used as medicines at the time.

The drug has the active ingredient fenethylline and was initially marketed for conditions including ADHD and the sleeping disorder narcolepsy. It had a similar use to some of the legally available stimulants we still use today, such as dexamphetamine.

Captagon has similar effects to amphetamines. It increases dopamine in the brain, leading to feelings of wellbeing, pleasure and euphoria. It also improves focus, concentration and stamina. But it has a lot of unwanted side effects, such as low-level psychosis.

The drug was originally sold mostly in the Middle East and parts of Europe. It was available over the counter (without a prescription) in Europe for a short time before it became prescription-only.

It was approved only briefly in the United States before becoming a controlled substance in the 1980s, but was still legal for the treatment of narcolepsy in many European countries until relatively recently.

According to the International Narcotics Control Board pharmaceutical manufacture of Captagon had stopped by 2009.

“Bashar as Dealer,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3, 2024

The illicit trade took over

The illegally manufactured version is usually referred to as captagon (with a small c). It is sometimes called “chemical courage” because it is thought to be used by soldiers in war-torn areas of the Middle East to help give them focus and energy.

For instance, it’s been reportedly found on the bodies of Hamas soldiers during the conflict with Israel.

Its manufacture is relatively straightforward and inexpensive, making it an obvious target for the black-market drug trade.

Black-market captagon is now nearly exclusively manufactured in Syria and surrounding countries such as Lebanon. It’s mostly used in the Middle East, including recreationally in some Gulf states.

It is one of the most commonly used illicit drugs in Syria.

A recent report suggests captagon generated more than US$7.3 billion in Syria and Lebanon between 2020 and 2022 (about $2.4 billion a year).

What we know about illicit drugs generally is that any seizures or crackdowns on manufacturing or sale have a very limited impact on the drug market because another manufacturer or distributor pops up to meet demand.

So in all likelihood, given the size of the captagon market in the Middle East, these latest drug discoveries and seizures are likely to reduce manufacture only for a short time.

Nicole Lee, Adjunct Professor at the National Drug Research Institute (Melbourne based), Curtin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Jewish oral tradition, developed after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, often interprets allegorically the Biblical verses that mention the instruments of war. Thus, the sword and the bow used by Jacob the Patriarch against his enemies (Genesis 48:22) become prayer and supplication (Bereshit Rabbah 97:6); the victory of Benaiah over Moab (2 Samuel 23:20) now stands for Torah study (BT Berakhot, 18b). Tradition locates Jewish heroism in the house of study, not on the battlefield. This partly explains the refusal of thousands of observant Jews to enroll in Israel’s military.

Yet, Hanukkah, which, incidentally, is not mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, but can be found in the Christian one, seems to be a story of war. A comparison of Hanukkah with another popular Jewish holiday – Purim – reveals something important about traditional Jewish attitudes to collective threats, spiritual and physical.

The holiday of Purim, related in the Book of Esther, provides a peaceful model for conflict resolution. The story is as simple as it is prophetic. Haman, the Persian vizier, has planned a total massacre: “to destroy, to kill, and to annihilate, all Jews, both young and old, little children and women, in one day” (Esther 3:13). The response of the Jews was to proclaim a fast of repentance, but at the same time to find a way to influence the king and thereby circumventing the vizier and his decree. Queen Esther intervened, revealed to the king her Jewish origins, and convinced him to stop the planned genocide. But it did not occur to any of the Jews to organize self-defence units against Haman. And the violence of the Jews against their enemies mentioned in the finale has been explicitly authorized by the king who only recently acquiesced to his vizier’s idea of exterminating the Jews.

But the resolute recourse to force is central in the story of Hanukkah, which, like Purim, also celebrates deliverance from a collective threat. The difference between the two threats to the Jews explains the differing relationship to force expressed in the stories. Haman’s threats of physical destruction induced the Jews to fast and repent. However, when King Antiochus outlawed Judaic practice and forced the Jews into idolatry, he sought their spiritual destruction. Under such a threat the use of force becomes legitimate: a Jew is duty-bound to sacrifice his or her life rather than worship idols.

This history of the Maccabees is often used to draw political conclusions. According to a contemporary commentary, clearly at odds with the traditional vision of the event : “For any thinking Jew, Hanukkah is nothing more than the day of commemoration of the heroes of Jewish self-defence. No miracle fell from the sky…. But the sword had created one: a dead people had been resurrected. The Torah could not save from the fist; it was the fist that saved the Torah. The sword, and not the skullcap, will protect the Jew in the blood-soaked lands of his enemies.” Today, this lesson resonates with many Jews who believe in the primacy of might.

Ironically, such glorification of force reverses the significance of the holiday, which celebrates allegiance to the Torah against Hellenistic influence. What is the Judaic reference to Hanukkah? A passage from the daily prayer reveals its meaning:

“Maccabees,” Digital, Midjourney, 2024

“In the days of Mattisiahu, the son of Yochanan, the High Priest, the Hasmonean, and his sons — when the wicked Hellenistic kingdom rose up against Your people Israel to make them forget Your Torah and compel them to stray form the statutes of Your Will — You in your great mercy stood up for them in the time of their distress. You took up their grievance, judged their claim, and avenged their wrong. You delivered the strong into the hands of the weak, the many into the hands of the few, the impure into the hands righteous, and the wanton into the hands of the diligent students of Your Torah.” (Complete ArtScroll Siddur)

The war that the advocates of the use of force tend to invoke turns out to have been, in Jewish ritual, a victory of God and not of humans. Tradition emphasizes that the decisive factors were loyalty to the Torah and moral purity, rather than the number of soldiers and the fighting strength of the army. With regard to Hanukkah, the Talmud relegates the hostilities to a secondary position and emphasizes that the strong were the Hellenizers and the weak Jews loyal to their religion. Tradition focuses instead on the miracle of the oil that burned for eight days in the Temple that the Maccabees had liberated and purified. It links the purity of the oil untouched by the Hellenizers and the purity of heart all Jews must keep in order to fight idolatry.

Thus, even when violence is legitimate, as in the case of Hannukah, it is definitely downplayed in rabbinic Judaism. “Who is the mightiest of the mighty? One who turns an enemy into a friend.” (Avot de rabbi Nathan, 23) Conversely, new values, promoted by some followers of National Judaism (dati-leumi) as the Torah of the Land of Israel, encourage reliance on the use of force. The eight days of Hannukah should allow us to ponder the issue of recourse to violence, which has undergirded the Zionist settlement in the Holy Land for over a century. While it has led to death, dispossession and dislocation of hundreds of thousands of people, it has failed to ensure peace and tranquility.

Reprinted from The Times of israel with the author’s permission.

(The Conversation) – Climate and environmental protest is being criminalised and repressed around the world. The criminalisation of such protest has received a lot of attention in certain countries, including the UK and Australia. But there have not been any attempts to capture the global trend – until now.

We recently published a report, with three University of Bristol colleagues, which shows this repression is indeed a global trend – and that it is becoming more difficult around the world to stand up for climate justice.

This criminalisation and repression spans the global north and south, and includes more and less democratic countries. It does, however, take different forms.

Our report distinguishes between climate and environmental protest. The latter are campaigns against specific environmentally destructive projects – most commonly oil and gas extraction and pipelines, deforestation, dam building and mining. They take place all around the world.

Climate protests are aimed at mitigating climate change by decreasing carbon emissions, and tend to make bigger policy or political demands (“cut global emissions now” rather than “don’t build this power plant”). They often take place in urban areas and are more common in the global north.

Four ways to repress activism

The intensifying criminalisation and repression is taking four main forms.

1. Anti-protest laws are introduced

Anti-protest laws may give the police more powers to stop protest, introduce new criminal offences, increase sentence lengths for existing offences, or give policy impunity when harming protesters. In the 14 countries we looked at, we found 22 such pieces of legislation introduced since 2019.

2. Protest is criminalised through prosecution and courts

This can mean using laws against climate and environmental activists that were designed to be used against terrorism or organised crime. In Germany, members of Letzte Generation (Last Generation), a direct action group in the mould of Just Stop Oil, were charged in May 2024 with “forming a criminal organisation”. This section of the law is typically used against mafia organisations and had never been applied to a non-violent group.

In the Philippines, anti-terrorism laws have been used against environmentalists who have found themselves unable to return to their home islands.

Criminalising protest can also mean lowering the threshold for prosecution, preventing climate activists from mentioning climate change in court, and changing other court processes to make guilty verdicts more likely. Another example is injunctions that can be taken out by corporations against activists who protest against them.

3. Harsher policing

This stretches from stopping and searching to surveillance, arrests, violence, infiltration and threatening activists. The policing of activists is carried out not just by state actors like police and armed forces, but also private actors including private security, organised crime and corporations.

In Germany, regional police have been accused of collaborating with an energy giant (and its private fire brigade) to evict coal mine protesters, while private security was used extensively in policing anti-mining activists in Peru.

4. Killings and disappearances

Lastly, in the most extreme cases, environmental activists are murdered. This is an extension of the trend for harsher policing, as it typically follows threats by the same range of actors. We used data from the NGO Global Witness to show this is increasingly common in countries including Brazil, Philippines, Peru and India. In Brazil, most murders are carried out by organised crime groups while in Peru, it is the police force.

Protests are increasing

To look more closely at the global picture of climate and environmental protest – and the repression of it – we used the Armed Conflicts Location Event database. This showed us that climate protests increased dramatically in 2018-2019 and have not declined since. They make up on average about 4% of all protest in the 81 countries that had more than 1,000 protests recorded in the 2012-2023 period:

This second graph shows that environmental protest has increased more gradually:

We used this data to see what kind of repression activists face. By looking for keywords in the reporting of protest events, we found that on average 3% of climate and environmental protests face police violence, and 6.3% involve arrests. But behind these averages are large differences in the nature of protest and its policing.

A combination of the presence of protest groups like Extinction Rebellion, who often actively seek arrests, and police forces that are more likely to make arrests, mean countries such as Australia and the UK have very high levels of arrest. Some 20% of Australian climate and environmental protests involve arrests, against 17% in the UK – with the highest in the world being Canada on 27%.

Meanwhile, police violence is high in countries such as Peru (6.5%) and Uganda (4.4%). France stands out as a European country with relatively high levels of police violence (3.2%) and low levels of arrests (also 3.2%).

In summary, while criminalisation and repression does not look the same across the world, there are remarkable similarities. It is increasing in a lot of countries, it involves both state and corporate actors, and it takes many forms.

This repression is taking place in a context where states are not taking adequate action on climate change. By criminalising activists, states depoliticise them. This conceals the fact these activists are ultimately right about the state of the climate and environment – and the lack of positive government action in these areas.

Oscar Berglund, Senior Lecturer in International Public and Social Policy, University of Bristol and Tie Franco Brotto, PhD Candidate, School for Policy Studies, University of Bristol

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

This essay is part of my project on Islamic Peace Studies, an extremely neglected but very important field. Peace practices and movements have been very important in history, but they have been very little written about, as I pointed out recently in The Oxford Handbook of Peace History .

One of the morally more complex passages in the Qur’ān is Distinguished 41:33-35. It advocates responding to harmful actions with virtuous ones, suggesting that this approach can turn adversaries into allies or supporters. This passage echoes themes found in the Sermon on the Mount in the New Testament. Despite its significance, this and other verses promoting peace in the Qur’ān have not been critically examined by scholars, and little focus has been given to their reception in later Muslim commentaries. In this context, I investigate the commentaries on this passage by a renowned medieval Sufi scholar, who devoted particular attention to Qur’anic ethics and the spiritual growth these verses inspire.

I translate the passage as follows: “Whose discourse is more beautiful than one who calls others to God and performs good works and proclaims, ‘I am among those who have submitted to God’’ The good deed and the evil deed are not equal. Repel the latter with what is best, and behold, it will be as though your enemy is a devoted patron. Yet to none is this granted save the patient, and to none is it granted save the supremely fortunate.” The moral agent capable of carrying out this exceptional act toward harmful adversaries acquires the power to transform them into allies and supporters. This transformation is attainable only by those who possess boundless patience and are endowed with great good fortune. Responding to wrongdoing with acts of kindness is emphasized here as an extraordinary accomplishment for the faithful. The Qur’ān presents the idea that responding to hostility with kindness has a transformative effect. Some commentators have pointed out that the Christian teaching of “love your enemies” is less reciprocal, addressing only one side of the relationship.

The mystic Abū al-Qāsim ʿAbd al-Karīm Qushayrī (d. 1072) of Nishapur was a leading Sufi authority of his time. Britannica defines Sufi Islam this way: “Sufism, mystical Islamic belief and practice in which Muslims seek to find the truth of divine love and knowledge through direct personal experience of God.” His family, originating from Khorasan, claimed Arab lineage and provided him with an education in literature and martial arts. At the age of 15, he moved to Nishapur to study practical matters in hopes of reducing taxes in his village. However, he instead became a disciple of the spiritual teacher Abū ʿAlī Daqqāq. Alongside conventional Islamic studies, such as law, Qushayrī ultimately dedicated himself to the Sufi path. He later succeeded Daqqāq as the head of his seminary.

Qushayrī became entangled in the conflicts between the Ḥanafī and Shāfiʿī legal schools in Seljuk-era Nishapur around 1038. These disputes led to his exile, possibly to avoid imprisonment by Ḥanafīs, as Nishapur faced violent clashes between supporters of the two schools. He returned only after stability was restored. Some mystics envisioned Sufism as a spiritual movement that could transcend the divisions of legal schools, offering a unifying Muslim identity to end the sectarian strife. Qushayrī gained renown as the author of a significant Qur’ān commentary, The Subtleties of the Allusions.

He addresses Q. 41:34, “The good deed and the evil deed are not equal. Repel the latter with what is best . . .” He asserts that the verse counsels repelling the evil deed by the traits of character that are best, that is, by giving up on revenge and overlooking the past moral mistakes of others. Regarding “and behold, it will be as though your enemy is a devoted patron,” Qushayrī explains that this practice exemplifies proper spiritual conduct. It involves demonstrating patience and forbearance toward His creation out of devotion to God. Additionally, he highlights that in your interactions with others, it reflects a noble character to refrain from seeking personal revenge and instead to choose to forgive your adversary.

From the early eleventh century, Sufi lodges began to appear in Khorasan, initially funded by affluent Sufis or private patrons. Figures such as Sulamī, Abū ʿAlī Daqqāq, and Qushayrī were closely connected to these establishments, which served as spaces for spiritual retreats and accommodations for visitors. By the mid-eleventh century, Seljuk officials began extending state support to these centers.

“Dancing Dervishes”, Folio from a Divan of the poet Hafiz (1325–1390), attributed to Bihzad (Iranian, Herat ca. 1450–1535/36 Herat) ca. 1480. Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art . Creative Commons Zero (CC0).

Lloyd Ridgeon argues that the emergence of the Sufi center created a social venue for Sufis to engage in their rituals while also welcoming “lay affiliates” who sought to interact with more dedicated practitioners. These institutions often served charitable purposes, providing meals for the needy and lodging for travelers. Lay affiliates included a broad range of people, from peasants to urban laborers. According to Ridgeon, this environment fostered an expanded understanding of Sufi ethical conduct, aimed not only at training initiates but also at shaping the behavior of the general populace. Among those drawn to Sufism were urban trades guilds and groups adhering to a code of chivalry.

Qushayrī turns to Q. 41:35, “Yet to none is this granted save the patient, and to none is it granted save the supremely fortunate.” He emphasizes that these qualities of character can only truly be attained by those who are strengthened by patience and capable of transcending trivialities to embrace lofty moral virtues. Only those who endure hardships and challenges with perseverance can ascend to the highest levels of excellence.

These sentiments also resemble the medieval Muslim conception of chivalry. One principle of chivalry that Qushayrī mentions is “It means that you do not care whether the guest that you entertain at your table is a friend of God or an unbeliever.” A passage by this author in another work exemplifies the principle:

“I heard one learned man say: ‘A Magian [Zoroastrian] asked hospitality from Abraham, the Friend of God – peace be upon him. Abraham told him: “Only if you embrace Islam!” The Magian walked away. At that moment, God Most High revealed to him the following: “For fifty years I have fed him despite his unbelief. Couldn’t you have offered him a morsel without asking him to change his religion?” On hearing this, Abraham – peace be upon him – rushed after the Magian until he caught up with him. He then apologized before him. When the Magian asked him about the cause [of his change of heart], he explained what had happened to him, whereupon the Magian embraced Islam.’”

“Declaring faculty members as persona non grata appears tantamount to a summary suspension…. The AAUP has long considered denying faculty members the right to carry out their key duties as a major sanction, second only to dismissal in severity. An administration should take such a step only after demonstrating adequate cause in an adjudicative hearing of record before an elected faculty body. No such hearing has taken place [at NYU]. These actions by NYU administrators are part of a pattern of college and university administrations responding to protests by imposing harsh and broadly chilling restrictions and sanctions. As the AAUP warned at the start of the fall semester, such severe limits on speech and assembly discourage or shut down expressive activity of faculty, students, and other members of the campus community and undermine the academic freedom and freedom of speech and expression that are fundamental to higher education.”