Forgotten in the mainstream media’s coverage of the Israeli assault on Gaza—if it was ever known by the correspondents—is the long history of Netanyahu and Likud in the creation and support of Hamas. Despite the flood of reports and commentaries in the mainstream media no mention is ever made of Israeli’s complicity in creating and […]
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On Tuesday, Stacy Gilbert, a 20-year veteran of the State Department, resigned in protest, after charging that Biden’s State Department falsified a report on whether Israel was restricting the flow of humanitarian goods into Gaza. Gilbert had been one of the Department’s experts helping to assemble the NSM-20 report to Congress assessing Israel’s compliance with US law in its military operations in Gaza. But she charges the report was removed from the experts before it was completed and its conclusions adulterated by the leadership of the department.
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Image by Marcel Strauß.
As always when a representative of the right wing tells you he or she is campaigning to bring “freedom,” be afraid. Very afraid. For “freedom” in these cases means freedom for the richest financiers and industrialists to do whatever they want.
For them, “Freedom” is for capital, not for human beings without capital to invest. Today’s exhibit is the offensive against working people that is taking place in Argentina, where the new extreme right president, Javier Milei, is determined to see how far capitalist ideology can be pushed. So far, Argentines have pushed back but Milei, cheered on by domestic and international big business leaders, is nothing if not determined to ram through his austerity packages. And he has shown no inclination to allow mere democracy to stand in his way.
Nonetheless, there is no surprise here. President Milei ran on a program of extreme austerity, brandishing a chainsaw at his election rallies. Unfortunately, enough Argentines bought his siren songs, or were desperate enough to try anything given the country’s punishing inflation, to elect him, ending a one-term period in executive office by the ordinarily dominant Peronists. Alas, doing something new for the sake of doing something new, when it is aimed at you, rarely works. And here there is actually nothing new. President Milei simply promoted standard hard right ideology, albeit promoting it with unusual vigor. Snake oil is snake oil, as Argentine working people are already finding out.
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Image by Ed Rampell.
From The New York Post to The Wall Street Journal, right-wing pundits have lined up to malign students across the United States who have rightfully criticized their schools for supporting the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza. As the genocide continues to unfold — claiming the lives of 35,562 Palestinians, including 15,000 children, according to Al Jazeera at the time of this writing — students, faculty and staff have brought overdue scrutiny to the complicity of their universities, whose endowments are altogether valued at more than $839 billion per the National Association of College and University Business Officers and invested extensively in the Israeli economy, including weapons manufacturers profiting directly from Palestinian death. Rather than accept that students oppose their tuition dollars being spent to kill Palestinians, right-wing pundits have instead accused them of being “paid protesters” in the employ of philanthropist George Soros.
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This was the week of rebukes for Israel: On Monday, the ICC requested arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant, on Wednesday three European nations, Ireland, Spain and Norway, recognized Palestinian statehood and on Friday the ICJ ordered Israel to halt its military operations in Rafah, open the border crossings for humanitarian aid and allow international investigators into Gaza. Has the international community finally run out of patience with Israeli intransigence?
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When I was a young child, I would sometimes stay a weekend in the summer holidays with my cousins – who were of a similar age – on their farm. I grew up in north London: all concrete and cars, and fumes and arcades, and long black railings and grey school playgrounds, and rising tower blocks […]
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Image by Jon Tyson.
I am beyond tired of writing and reading about Trump, his minions Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon, and the evils they plan to inflict upon the world. Reading or watching the news is a daily exercise in dread, self-torment, and exhaustion. The return of spring notwithstanding, things are grim these days. The Trumpist menace seems of a piece with a far-right axis on the march in India, Russia, Israel, China, and Hungary. Of course, it’s futile to wring one’s hands and lament Trumpian aspirations to authoritarianism without taking concrete action to prevent them. Yet despite nearly eight years of experience confronting the Trumpian specter, the answer to the traditional, eminently practical leftist question “What is to be done?” remains elusive, and the sense of burnout and political defeat—with the concomitant, complicated welter of emotions —is a specter difficult to vanquish.
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Ilan Pappé is 70 years old. He’s Jewish. His parents fled persecution in Hitler’s Germany. He’s an Israeli and served in the IDF. He hasn’t been radicalized by TikTok. He is, in fact, one of Israel’s most celebrated historians. None of that stopped Pappé from being detained by Biden’s TSA in Detroit, interrogated by the agents from the Department of Homeland Security about whether he’s a supporter of Hamas, and having his phone data copied. This crackdown isn’t about protecting Jews or Israelis or preserving the exceptional nature of the Holocaust.
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USC Pro-Palestine encampment, YouTube screengrab.
The encampments have gone. Tall metal riot fences ring USC. Underpaid security hovers nervously at metal detectors. They paw through your bag when you enter, past the receipts, gum, phone, AirPods, and the overdue library book you never even opened. They’re searching for something. A tent? A Palestinian flag? A keffiyeh? A signed declaration of your commitment against genocide? What they are searching for is unclear, and it’s apparent they themselves don’t even know. The result is not the point; the display is. Like most college campuses, USC is invested in the performative, the circus act in all its summer and acrobatics and glory, something to distract us, for the moment, from the mundanity of reality. The mundanity that college campuses are really just another business: meaningless, archaic, and invested only in its commodification and profit.
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China has considerable appeal in the Pacific as it offers market and donation benefits that are unencumbered by the regulatory millstones of Western countries, which are also offering deals like Australia’s “Step Up” initiative and development aid, and the US “Pacific Partnership Strategy” on diplomatic engagement and security. These projects have bigger geopolitical agendas than aid projects and are mainly concerned with countering China and undermining Pacific Island autonomy by setting up a donor-recipient dynamic.
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By Friday, at least 110,000 Palestinians had been forced to flee Rafah, which is now under bombardment. Many of them have already been displaced two or three times. But all of them know nowhere is safe in Gaza now. There’s no refuge, no place free of bombs and tank shellings and sniper fire, no tent camp or temporary shelter with a reliable source of water or working toilets or beds or food, no mosque to pray in as death hovers all around.
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In November of last year, the Tonawanda Seneca Nation sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) over its illegal approval of a wastewater disposal pipeline that would service STAMP. According to the Tonawanda Seneca Nation, the USFWS approved the Genesee County Economic Development Center’s (GCEDC) construction of the 9.5-mile pipeline without conducting a sufficient environmental review and without a government-to-government consultation with the Nation—in direct violation of their sovereign rights.
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Had she not been murdered in Rafah protecting Palestinian homes from demolition, Rachel Corrie could have become the mother of today’s protesters on US campuses. They’re certainly the inheritors of her fierce moral spirit and unflinching courage…
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Image by stefan moertl.
One of the two major-party candidates for the presidency of the United States has allowed an decades-long ethnic cleansing to morph into a genocide, a horror that could be stopped with one phone call; has escalated the drilling of oil and gas despite the existential threat of global warming; forced railroad workers to swallow a bad contract by breaking their strike; and spent his Senate career as an errand boy for banks. And that’s the lesser evil!
Joe Biden really is the lesser evil in this dismal race for the White House, and that such an office holder is easily not the worst candidate is surely sufficient to illustrate the decline of the world’s still extraordinarily dangerous superpower. Out of more than 300 million people, this is the best the country can do? Given the quite understandable reluctance (to put it mildly) for the types of folks who are reading these words to contemplate voting either for President Biden or Donald Trump, what do we do when the lesser evil is so evil that he has the sobriquet “Genocide” attached to his name?
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It isn’t easy, being a liberal mainstream reporter these days, what with big news stories about “the Israel-Hamas war” passing you by, as you wrestle fecklessly with your two major journalistic goals: (a) to objectively document evil by exposing corruption; and (b) to keep your job and get everybody to like you. I’ve investigated pro-Palestine […]
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+ Jonathan Greenblatt, the president of the ADL, posted a video outside of the Columbia University campus which included a call to “bring in the National Guard.” Three of the four students fatally shot on May 4, 1970, by the Ohio National Guard at Kent State University were Jews: Allison Krause, Sandra Lee Scheuer, and […]
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Shai Davidai.
After throwing a foot-stomping tantrum earlier this morning, Shai Davidai, an untenured Columbia University business professor, was denied access to campus.
A self-proclaimed Zionist, Davidai is an Israeli-American who served in the IDF (“proud of it”) and has continually harassed Pro-Palestine protestors at Columbia, labeling them as anti-semitic, pro-Hamas “terrorists.”
On several occasions, Davidai called for the National Guard to be brought in to brutalize pro-Palestine students. He’s even gone so far as to characterize Columbia protestors as “Hitler-youth.”
Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine have started a petition to get him fired.
There is a laundry list of complaints lodged against Davidai, most recently by the 15 Jewish students at Columbia who were arrested and suspended last week during their occupation protest, calling on the school to divest funds from Israel.
In a Jewish Voice for Peace Instagram post, the students called out Davidai directly, writing:
“Futhermore, the disgraceful Shai Davidai publically called us Judenrat Kapost, and told us we would be on ‘the last train to Auschwitz.’ We do not feel safe with this professor still teaching on campus, having access to the Jewish community spaces we cherish, much less portraying himself as a valiant protector and spokesperson of Jews on campus while insulting our ancestors’ memory. Almost every suspended Jewish student los family members in the Holocaust.”
Davidai comes from a long line of assholes. His father, Eli Davidai, is an Israeli business executive who has served as General Manager of ARC, which describes itself as a “leading global advanced manufacturing service provider.”
According to ARC’s 2018 SEC filing:
“Eli Davidai, [ARC’s] General Manager of Operations as of May 2017, has been a Managing Director at QMI [Quadrant Management Inc.] since 1992, where he is responsible for making investments and overseeing companies at the firm. Additionally, Mr. Davidai was elected to the Company’s Board of Directors on June 5, 2018.”
Among other things, ARC manufactures weapons parts, including “polymer magazine for NATO Compatible weapons,” “triggers and hammers,” “precision guided munitions components,” and more.
In 2016, ARC won an award for an AR-15 component and, in 2010, scored a prize for an “explosive device made for a Department of Defense application.”
ARC also makes parts for MCX and MPX rifles, which are used by the Israeli military.
As you probably guessed, Shai’s parents are extremely wealthy. Eli and his wife, Zohara Davidai, have sponsored the Arrhythmia Center in Tel Hashomer, Israel, where Benjamin Netanyahu was fitted for a pacemaker last year.
Interestingly, as @cholent_lover exposed on X, Eli Davidai has had a long business relationship with Alan Quasha, CEO of Quadrant Management, who also serves on the Board of Directors of ARC. Quasha is an interesting character—an international businessman and venture capitalist who is worth billions.
Quasha has been involved in everything from Harken Energy (where George W. Bush was accused of insider trading as he sat on Harken’s Board) to his dealings with the Saudis, US intelligence, and even the Clintons.
Quasha is also the founder of Quadrant Security Strategies, which “makes equity investments in innovative and emerging private companies that support US National Security.”
To top it off, Shai Davidai’s grandfather, Benny Davidai (a founder of El Al Airlines), was a notorious strikebreaker.
The apple doesn’t fall far, as they say.
Meanwhile, as pro-Palestine protests spread across US campuses, Columbia faculty walked out this afternoon in a massive show of solidarity with student protestors.
Image by Columbia University, Associate Professor Hiba Bou Akar.
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Australian Nuclear Free Alliance gathering, March 2024. Image by Ray Acheson.
AUKUS is the awkward-sounding acronym for “Australia-United Kingdom-United States”—a trilateral military alliance that stands poised to waste billions of dollars, proliferate high-level radioactive material and impose its safekeeping on First Nations communities for hundreds of thousands of years, increase global militarism and potentially provoke a nuclear war. If this doesn’t sound like a good investment to you, you’re not wrong. The deeper one digs into the details of this deal, the more one becomes flummoxed by cascading levels of absurdity. It is strikingly disadvantageous for Australia, yet other countries including Canada, Japan, and New Zealand/Aotearoa, have expressed interest in collaborating. Australian activists have been mobilizing to stop AUKUS for several years; it’s past time those living in other AUKUS states or those clamouring to partner with the alliance get informed and active, too.
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Image by Erin Testone.
Though Utah’s state government has failed to pull the Great Salt Lake from the verge of collapse, on March 20, 2024, Utah Governor Spencer Cox signed a law that prohibits the state and local governments from granting legal personhood to animals, plants, or major ecosystems like the Great Salt Lake. The law is a reaction to a growing rights of nature movement in Utah seeking to secure legal personhood for the Great Salt Lake. By passing this law, Utah joins Ohio and Florida in banning rights of nature as a response to popular, grassroots campaigns seeking to secure rights-based protections for the ecosystems all life depends on. Because rights of nature laws would disrupt corporate exploitation of the natural world, these legislative efforts to squash the rights of nature movement are entirely predictable and similar to historical efforts to squash other rights-based movements like the civil rights and women’s suffrage movements. Instead of giving up in the face of setbacks like these, rights of nature advocates must learn how to enforce rights of nature outside of courtrooms and the legislative process along with adapting tactics and strategies for the long game of transforming the legal system into one with a rights of nature framing.
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Columbia students were right in 1968. History proved it. Columbia students are right today. The university has no good answers to their demands that the school stop investing in genocide. Calling in the NYPD proves it.
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A still from director Alex Garland’s film “Civil War.” (Courtesy A24)
My derriere still hurts from sitting on the edge of my seat at an IMAX theater while gawking at London-born director Alex Garland’s Civil War, which draws its inspiration from the USA’s contemporary red-state-versus-blue-state zeitgeist. Civil War marks the second time in US history – since Major-General Robert Ross’ British soldiers invaded the White House on August 24, 1814 – that the Executive Mansion has been attacked by Brits. But although this chilling movie’s director is indeed an Englishman, the armed invaders in the provocative Civil War are actually Americans engaged in this insurrectionary, incendiary fable that has the ring of truth.
In Civil War Garland brings the war home with his stark, startling dramatization of the type of fierce combat Americans are used to watching from afar on screens – and from their perches in imperialist cockpits and tank turrets – but are being fought right here in the homeland. As armed rebels march on Washington, D.C. – not on some hapless Third World country du jour – we witness shocking scenes of the Lincoln Memorial and White House, as well as the heartland, under attack in Civil War. (However, a closeup of machine gun nests in the Statue of Liberty’s torch, which is depicted in posters, does not seem to actually appear per se onscreen.)
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Imagine yourself in Taiwan—living a nightmare of epic proportions. The Chinese People’s Liberation Army, two million strong, invades Taipei in the dead of winter. Within hours, it assumes control over the island’s other major cities, steadily moving south. Technologies enabled with artificial intelligence (AI) help China’s military synchronize its air, sea, and land forces. The […]
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Since Nancy Pelosi put her name on a letter calling on Biden to halt “offensive” weapons sales to Israel, she’s been frantically rounding up votes for a bill that would give Israel $14 billion in weapons, with no restrictions at all on their use.
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Image by Markus Spiske.
Published in 1936, “Shooting an Elephant” remains one of George Orwell’s most celebrated essays. In it, the English writer recounts an incident from his time as a police officer in modern day Myanmar, then known as Burma, part of the British Empire. Responding to calls of a rampaging elephant, Orwell finds the animal docile, but nevertheless feels compelled to kill it, rather than appear weak before the crowd who has gathered to watch. In allowing his conscience to be overwhelmed, he experiences how colonialism dehumanizes not just the colonized, but the colonizers as well.
“I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys,” writes Orwell. “He becomes a sort of hollow, posing dummy …. He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it.”
Although Orwell is writing specifically of the British Empire, he quite clearly intends for his essay to be read more broadly, as applicable to contemporary fascism in Europe as British colonialism in Asia. And so too does his insight extend to today in the ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestine.
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Japan’s right-wing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP, 自由民主党, Jiyū-Minshutō) is in trouble. Following the assassination of PM Shinzo Abe in 2022, voter abstention and a corruption scandal have eroded the Party’s credibility. The LDP was founded with help from the CIA in 1955 as a weapon against the left. It ruled uninterrupted until 1993 and continues to dominate Japanese politics.
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The Israelis calling the drone strike that killed 7 Western aid workers a “mistake” is like a correction in the New York Times. They both serve the purpose of wanting you to believe everything else was perfectly fine–in the Times’s case, that all of the other stories printed in the paper are true; in Israel’s case, that the airstrikes that have killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, including 14,500 kids, were totally legit.
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Image by Annie Spratt.
Every day, journalists like myself receive dozens, if not hundreds, of emails from publicists pitching their respective clients as sources to consider for this or that story in the current newscycle. It’s not every day, however, that you’re pitched an apologist for genocide.
That is, in essence, the email I received last month from Joshua Steinreich, a publicist with the Steinreich Communications Group, who was pitching Avi Melamed, a former Israeli intelligence official, as a source on the yet-impending Israeli invasion of Rafah, the potential next phase of Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. Despite the Israeli military having killed 31,726 Palestinians, including more than 13,000 children and 8,400 women, according to Al Jazeera at the time of this writing, the Israeli military “seeks to minimize civilian casualties,” while Hamas “gains from the loss of life,” in Melamed’s estimation.
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