The release of three Israeli women held captive in Gaza on Sunday attracted significant global media attention. However, there was comparatively limited coverage of the freed Palestinian women, who had been kidnapped and detained by Israel without charge. This disparity reflects the normalization of the dehumanization of Palestinians, perpetuating a narrative that enables Israel to More
The UK’s decrepit first-past-the-post electoral system virtually guarantees a two-party grip on parliamentary power. Since WW2 the two parties in question have been the Conservatives and Labour, with the Conservatives enjoying 3 long spells in power,1950-64, 1979-1997, and 2010-2024, countered only by Labour’s Blair/Brown ascendency in 1997-2010. Labour’s single term in power from 1945-1950, however, saw the momentous creation of the UK’s welfare state, which started to erode as a policy choice when Margaret Thatcher became prime minister in 1979– a phase that was also coterminous with the onset of the neoliberalism of which she was a devotee. More
Over three score years ago, President Dwight Eisenhower had a warning for America. “We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex,” Eisenhower exhorted in his 1961 farewell address as president. “The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” “We must never let the weight of this combination,” Ike continued, “endanger our liberties or democratic processes.” More
Trump’s demeanor during the run-up to the inauguration under the dome was that of a southern prison warden grimacing in the presence of a Peter, Paul, and Mary sing-along. If you could have written dialogue into a bubble over his combed-over perm (a color Farrow and Ball might call Perp Prawn?), it might have read: “Wait until Pam Jo Bondi puts about half of you people in jail.” More
