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Feature Articles

Cop Cities, Borders, and Bombs

Deadly Connections in the Desert

Last month, organizers and activists from around the United States gathered in Tucson, Arizona for a nationwide summit to Stop Cop City—or, more accurately, Cop Cities. As new research has revealed, there are at least 69 militarized police training facilities in the works across the country. Each was put in motion in or after 2020, clearly a direct response to the Black Lives Matter uprisings that dominated city streets for months to condemn racialised police violence and demand the defunding of police. It's important to note that the police have definitely not been defunded. In fact, in most US cities, police budgets have actually increased since 2020. The Cop Cities now under construction or in the planning stages are part of this shored-up investment in police violence. Each facility is projected to cost between $1 million and $415 million. The military compounds, euphamistically called “public safety training centers” or other similar titles, are meant to train police to repress social movements and engage in urban warfare.

Why Should We Give All Our Money to Landlords?

Who decided we should give all our money to landlords? Did you vote for that? I didn’t. You didn’t, either. And if you have thoughts of leaving renting behind to buy, the costs of mortgages are, not surprisingly, rising dramatically as well. As far as I know, no landlord has been recorded as holding a literal gun to the head of tenants to sign a lease. But then there is no need for them to do so, as “market forces” do the work for them. At bottom, the problem is that housing is a capitalist market commodity. As long as housing remains a commodity, housing costs will continue to become ever more unaffordable. To put this in other words: As long as housing is not a human right, but instead something that has to be competed for and owned by a small number of people, the holders of the good (housing) will take advantage and jack up prices as high as possible.

It Can Happen to You

The Scourging of Gaza: Diary of a Genocidal War

The greatest tribute the Academy Awards made to Zone of Interest was to reenact its basic premise for nearly four hours, wrapping itself in a cocoon of distraction and self-infatuation, amid the horrors taking place outside, a swirl of superficiality only briefly interrupted by the unsettling sound of Jonathan Glazer’s trembling voice bringing an urgent message from the dead and dying to those who have retreated into a simulation of innocence.

The New York Times’ Bret Stephens, Hasbarist

On October 15, 2023, a week after Hamas’s attack on Israel and in the early days of an indiscriminate Israeli response, New York Times editorialist Bret Stephens wrote a column titled “Hamas Bears the Blame for Every Death in This War.” After allowing that “[r]easonable people can criticize Israel for not allowing enough time for civilians to get out of harm’s way,” Stephens, having rhetorically covered himself, endorses the impending ground invasion and arrives at the conclusion inscribed in the column’s title. “The central cause of Gaza’s misery is Hamas,” he writes. “It alone bears the blame for the suffering it has inflicted on Israel and knowingly invited against Palestinians.” After five months of war, at least 30,000 Palestinians dead (12,000 children, certainly an undercount), innumerable documented atrocities, a partial indictment for genocide, and the prospect of a spiraling Middle East conflagration, you might think his tune would have shifted, even a little. After all, even Tom Friedman has managed to squeeze out some criticism of Israel.