Image by Scottsdale Mint.
Donald Trump was elected as president and soon transformed the office into a dictatorship, ignoring the rule of law, the US Constitution, freedom of speech, and the checks and balances of the judicial and legislative branches. His strategy has been one of organized, planned chaos. One of constantly throwing shit on the wall and seeing Read more
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Courtesy of Mizue Aizeki
Social justice activist Mizue Aizeki worked for years at the Immigrant Defense Project in New York City. There, she challenged the criminalization of city residents in what came to be known as the “police-to-deportation pipeline.” After the 9/11 attacks, these New Yorkers were increasingly targeted by the newly created Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Agents […]
Image by Planet Volumes.
Although any country that challenges domination by United States corporate or military power will inevitably be the target of a sustained demonization campaign, the lies consistently issued in a torrent against Venezuela are beyond the usual level of invective. Venezuela is the most lied-about country in the corporate press of the Global North, especially in U.S. corporate media outlets. That Venezuela has sought to align its economy to benefit its own people, instituting an impressive array of social services, health programs and political structures to facilitate grassroots participation, has drawn the consistent ire of U.S. authorities. An unrelenting cascade of lies is necessary to generate public support for the unrelenting campaign targeting the Bolivarian Revolution.
Palestinian woman amputee. Photo: Palestinian Center for Human Rights.
+ Hossam Shabat, a young (23) Palestinian reporter for Al Jazeera, whose vivid dispatches from Gaza over the last year and a half I’ve quoted numerous times here in Gaza Diary, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in what appears to be a targeted assassination. (The Committee for the Protection of Journalists considers his killing […]
As students worldwide head back to school this fall, in Gaza, there are no schools left. The U.N. considers the systemic obliteration of the education system by the Israeli military to be a “scholasticide” — all universities, over 80% of schools, the Central Archives of Gaza, and at least 13 libraries have been destroyed, as of April 2024, in Israel’s relentless bombing campaign. Almost 10,000 students are dead and 16,000 wounded, many killed in attacks on schools being used as sites of refuge.
Academics and university administrators in Gaza released an open letter asking for solidarity and resistance from the rest of the world: “We call upon our colleagues in the homeland and internationally to support our steadfast attempts to defend and preserve our universities for the sake of the future of our people, and our ability to remain on our Palestinian land in Gaza. We built these universities from tents. And from tents, with the support of our friends, we will rebuild them once again.”
As a graduate student, an aspiring professor, and the child of a Jewish academic, I take this call for solidarity seriously. Where and how do we learn ideologies of resistance, radicalism, and revolution? Once we have inherited a radical idea, what do we do with it? And how do we choose what ideas not to inherit? More
Image by Alex Shuper
This quotation usually attributed to Thomas Jefferson, “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,” is a watchword that investigative reporter Greg Palast lives by. Since the contested 2000 presidential election, Palast’s voting vigil has probed America’s electoral system and abuses of it. The journalistic detective chronicled purported purging of mostly Black citizens from Florida’s voter rolls in his landmark 2002 book The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and a 2016 documentary version updated for the Trump era with the same title. Now this steadfast watchdog of voters’ rights is back with a new nonfiction cinematic inquiry wherein the reportorial gumshoe is vigilant about Vigilantes Inc.: America’s New Vote Suppression Hitmen, and Georgia is on Palast’s mind.
Last week, the Department of Energy, which oversees the aging nuclear site in Hanford, Washington, reported that a tank containing high-level radioactive waste was leaking. This is currently the third tank we know of that’s releasing deadly nuclear waste into the soil above the groundwater that feeds the nearby Columbia River. This is not a new problem for Hanford, which has 177 of these huge underground tanks that contain 55 million gallons of radioactive leftovers from the US’s nuclear weapons operation. These waste tanks were only supposed to hold up twenty-thirty years, and we’re now going on six decades. Below is an excerpt from my book Atomic Days, which details the site’s sordid history and its extremely problematic future. Sadly, leaks at Hanford are nothing new, nor are the lies surrounding them. It’s a looming nuclear danger that’s bubbling in our own backyard, and I’m scared. You should be too. More
Image by Levi Meir Clancy.
Last week, Israel murdered two prominent Palestinian journalists who had been documenting the genocide in Gaza, and the same day, kidnapped and detained the Oscar-winning Palestinian documentary filmmaker Hamdan Ballal in the West Bank. On Thursday, it was discovered that Israel had kidnapped, executed and buried at least fourteen Palestinian medics from the Red Crescent […]
Screengrab from a video posted to X of the Israeli bombing of the Jabalia Refugee Camp in northern Gaza.
+ They call it a double-tap: bomb a place with lots of people, say a school filled with kids and their parents, then when the ambulances, medical workers, and nearby civilians come to rescue the wounded, bomb it again. This disgusting scenario has played out time and time again in Gaza, most recently at the […]
Image by Duncan Shaffer.
A crucial requirement for a dictatorship to take hold is widespread acquiescence. That is being put to test as the United States slides toward right-wing dictatorship with a real possibility of going beyond ordinary dictatorship to outright fascism. With grassroots activists still gaining their bearings after two months of relentless, unprecedented attacks by the Trump régime […]
