Tuesday, May 31, 2022
Wednesday, May 25, 2022
Tuesday, May 3, 2022
Thursday, April 28, 2022
Wednesday, April 20, 2022
Monday, April 18, 2022
Thursday, April 14, 2022
Wednesday, April 13, 2022
DOCUMENTS SHOW HOW POLLUTING INDUSTRIES MOBILIZED TO BLOCK CLIMATE ACTION
https://theintercept.com/2022/04/12/ipcc-report-global-climate-coalition/
Tuesday, March 29, 2022
Sunday, March 27, 2022
Will war in Ukraine Hasten the End of Fossil Fuels?
https://theconversation.com/will-war-in-ukraine-hasten-the-end-of-fossil-fuels-179980
Tuesday, March 15, 2022
Thursday, February 24, 2022
Monday, February 21, 2022
Tuesday, October 26, 2021
Tuesday, October 12, 2021
Thursday, October 7, 2021
Tuesday, October 5, 2021
Another editorial in Haaretz out yesterday, echoes our conversation on dehumanization and racism, and on the current situation of the Palestine-israel question: Gideon Levy: When the Israeli general met the Palestinian farmer | Opinion
When the Israeli general met the Palestinian farmer | Opinion
Gideon Levy, Haaretz. Oct. 4, 2021
"When oppressors don’t bother to meet with the oppressed leadership or its people, the dehumanization process is complete. Cruelty becomes more comfortable, and nothing remains of humanity."
Here’s some good news: The head of the army’s Central Command, Yehuda Fuchs, visited the village where the pogrom took place, Khirbet al-Mufkara.
Granted, the visit was very short, about a quarter of an hour. Granted, every time the residents said the word “settlers” in Arabic, the head of Israel’s Civil Administration for the Hebron area, Salim Saadi, was careful to translate it for the major general as “residents.” And granted, the general parroted the hollow phrase that “the army’s job is to protect the security of all the residents,” even though the army doesn’t do anything of the sort.
Nevertheless, it’s rare for a general to visit Palestinian residents and talk with them – not just in this remote, battered village in the South Hebron Hills, but throughout the occupied territories.
Maj. Gen. Fuchs deserves praise for this hasty visit.
He reminded us, even if only implicitly, of the minimum the occupation is obliged to do but has never actually done – to see the people under it as human beings. Fuchs met Palestinians for a rare moment and saw human beings, perhaps for the first time in his life. Most of his colleagues on the General Staff have never even done that.
Once upon a time, the two peoples still mingled with each other, even if they never did so as equals. Even the Israel Defense Forces knew its subjects. Israeli politicians and officers met Palestinian politicians and fighters. Moshe Dayan, a former chief of staff and defense minister, even met of his own initiative with the poet of devouring Israeli soldiers’ livers, Fadwa Tuqan; Israeli poet Dahlia Ravikovitch met with her as well.
There were people who listened to the Palestinians, people who were interested in their fate. People who weren’t Shin Bet security service agents knew them personally. There were people who saw them as human beings.
The fact that a general’s visit to a Palestinian village has generated an op-ed is testimony to how incredible such an event is today. It almost never happens.
At that very same moment, a boy named Mohammed Hamamda was lying in Soroka Medical Center in Be’er Sheva after being hit in the head with a rock thrown by the scum from the settlement outposts of Havat Maon and Avigayil. But in reality, it was the IDF that threw those stones. Fuchs’ soldiers stood idly by, as usual, and did nothing to stop the pogrom.
Mohammed lay there all alone. Until Mossi Raz, the MK who fights the occupation, intervened, the IDF wouldn’t even let his parents be with him.
Defense Minister Benny Gantz, who visits every soldier who gets a scratch, didn’t visit this boy.
The head of Central Command didn’t visit the other members of the Hamamda family – an elderly couple and the wife’s disabled sister – whom the IDF has denied access to water and electricity. Maybe if Fuchs had met with them as well, the criminal conduct that takes place under his orders would have ended. Or maybe not.
All of these are trivialities that wouldn’t change the reality of the occupation. But without them, not even a trace of humanity remains in this domain of evil. Such steps would have told soldiers that they’re dealing with human beings, at a time when the IDF trains them to think that, actually, Palestinians aren’t human beings.
Everything starts from the top. Israel’s leadership doesn’t recognize the Palestinians. Not at all. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett knows them only from his army unit. Gantz knows them only through his gunsights. Foreign Minister Yair Lapid knows them only as the waiters in the hummus joint or the workers who renovated his house. Almost the first Arabs Lapid ever met were in the corrupt palaces of the Persian Gulf.
He and his colleagues have never met Palestinians and never listened to them. None of them has ever visited a refugee camp or a herding community. They have no idea how the people whose fate they decide actually live or what they look like.
When oppressors don’t bother to meet with the oppressed leadership or its people, the dehumanization process is complete. Cruelty becomes more comfortable, and nothing remains of humanity.
Thanks to this disconnect, halfway decent people like Gantz can tout the Palestinian body count, deprive bereaved relatives of a grave to visit, prevent the parents of a wounded child from being with him, order snipers to shatter demonstrators’ skulls and make elderly people go thirsty in the summer heat.
In Israel, good people do horrific things every day. If they could see the people they are abusing, perhaps they would act a little differently.
Maybe when Maj. Gen. Fuchs met with the farmer also named Mohammed Hamamda at the latter’s home, he was reminded for a moment of his own father. It’s hard to expect more than that from him.
Gideon Levy is a Haaretz columnist and a member of the newspaper's editorial board. His new book, The Punishment of Gaza, has just been published by Verso Publishing House in London and New York
Thursday, September 30, 2021
Wednesday, September 29, 2021
Monday, September 27, 2021
Thursday, September 23, 2021
The Corruption of the Afghan Presidency
The Corruption of the Afghan Presidency
Part of the reason the Taliban have popular support is because the guy we propped up was so corrupt. (Like most of the regimes we prop up)
The Profits of War | Costs of War
The Profits of War | Costs of War
Weapons manufacturers make more money from the US government than the budgets of the State Department and US Agency for International Development combined
Wednesday, September 22, 2021
Expanding the Military Draft Is Not Feminism. Abolishing Draft Registration Is.
Expanding the Military Draft Is Not Feminism. Abolishing Draft Registration Is.
In the past year alone, nearly 3 million women in the United States have been forced out of the workforce due to coronavirus-related issues. Across the country, women are being pushed into crushing poverty as homelessness and mass incarceration rise among women and children at alarming rates, and health care, voting and reproductive rights continue to be under assault.
What’s the government’s response? Passing expanded paid family leave? No. Continuing expanded unemployment benefits? Absolutely not. Unwilling to provide solutions to the very real issues that everyday people are facing, Congress has instead found a way to suck more resources into the war machine: expanding the draft to include women.
In a nation that has the world’s largest military budget and more than 800 overseas military bases, we refuse to let our bodies be a source of endless cannon fodder and exploitation: One in four women in the U.S. military have reported experiencing sexual assault and more than half have experienced some form of harassment. Requiring women to register for the draft would endanger them in more than one way should they ever need to be selected.
Tuesday, September 21, 2021
Kayaking to Cut Coal Fired Power Plants: 2,341 Miles Down the Missouri River
Kayaking to Cut Coal Fired Power Plants: 2,341 Miles Down the Missouri River
One of the plants is at Labadie, just west of St Louis. Coal fired electricity plants are bad for air, humans, and water. Natural gas fired plants are not the answer. The answer is wind and solar.
Sunday, September 19, 2021
Friday, September 17, 2021
Great interview with Spencer Ackerman, author of "Reign of Terror: How 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump" in Jewish Currents
Read the whole interview here: Mainlining Fear and Hatred
Birtherism, for instance—which was how Trump really launched his political ascension—was not just anti-Black racism; it was also part of the culture of the War on Terror. It said Barack Obama was America’s enemy not just because he was supposedly secretly Kenyan, but specifically because he was supposedly a Kenyan Muslim, and that people like him were responsible for the attacks. The atmosphere of emergency post-9/11 allowed these things to fuse together and grow in intensity. I wrote Reign of Terror because I had grown frustrated with how all of the other explanations for Trump left out how by 2016 we had experienced 15 years of an agonizing, inconclusive war against a non-white enemy, from a religion that most Americans are unfamiliar with and regard as something to be feared. That was present in Trump’s own words, and he surrounded himself with some of the most vicious and exploitative proponents of that culture—including Mike Flynn, John Kelly, Erik Prince, Jeff Sessions, and Rudy Giuliani, among others.
Now we have all this gauzy bullshit rhetoric about how America was united, which it never truly was. America was mobilized against an enemy, both internally and abroad. That’s not unity or solidarity, it’s predation. We need to always remember that. Unfortunately, as we can see from how so much of the media and the Washington establishment responded to Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, no lessons have been learned."
"SA: I’m very grateful for the opportunity. In the book I try to explain that the forces defining the post-9/11 era were nothing new in American history—that 9/11 was a circumstance that gave the most violent, nativist, and racist aspects of American history a new rationale in an era of righteous, patriotic urgency. The War on Terror was an inflection point, and it had yet to be properly contextualized that way. We’ve had so many explanations on offer for Trump, many of which are very good and persuasive. My close friend Adam Serwer, for instance, has demonstrated how rooted Trump is in white supremacy and nativism that have been present throughout US history. But I wanted to demonstrate that the War on Terror is crucial context for all of the other explanations.
Birtherism, for instance—which was how Trump really launched his political ascension—was not just anti-Black racism; it was also part of the culture of the War on Terror. It said Barack Obama was America’s enemy not just because he was supposedly secretly Kenyan, but specifically because he was supposedly a Kenyan Muslim, and that people like him were responsible for the attacks. The atmosphere of emergency post-9/11 allowed these things to fuse together and grow in intensity. I wrote Reign of Terror because I had grown frustrated with how all of the other explanations for Trump left out how by 2016 we had experienced 15 years of an agonizing, inconclusive war against a non-white enemy, from a religion that most Americans are unfamiliar with and regard as something to be feared. That was present in Trump’s own words, and he surrounded himself with some of the most vicious and exploitative proponents of that culture—including Mike Flynn, John Kelly, Erik Prince, Jeff Sessions, and Rudy Giuliani, among others.
Now we have all this gauzy bullshit rhetoric about how America was united, which it never truly was. America was mobilized against an enemy, both internally and abroad. That’s not unity or solidarity, it’s predation. We need to always remember that. Unfortunately, as we can see from how so much of the media and the Washington establishment responded to Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, no lessons have been learned."
Thursday, September 16, 2021
Wednesday, September 15, 2021
Tuesday, September 14, 2021
Monday, September 13, 2021
Who do they think they are? Israel tells US to ease off Saudi, Egypt human rights – Responsible Statecraft
Who do they think they are? Israel tells US to ease off Saudi, Egypt human rights – Responsible Statecraft
also:
https://apnews.com/article/iran-asia-afghanistan-dubai-middle-east-b6aaf30d689d0a8e45901e51f0457381
https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2021/09/chinese-operated-port-opens-israel-despite-american-concerns
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/fbi-releases-first-911-document-after-biden-order-cnn-2021-09-12/
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/04/the-obama-doctrine/471525/
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-officials-cautioned-biden-against-heavy-criticism-of-egypt-saudi-arabia/
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