Music: Steve Reich — ‘Electric Counterpoint: II. Slow’
‘We are dying slowly:’ Palestinians are eating grass and drinking polluted water as famine looms across Gaza
CNN reports: Hanadi Gamal Saed El Jamara, 38, says sleep is all that can distract her children from the aching hunger gnawing at their bellies. These days, the mother-of-seven finds herself begging for food on the mud-caked streets of Rafah, in southern Gaza. She tries to feed her kids at least once a day, she says, while tending to her husband, a cancer and diabetes patient. “They are weak now, they always have diarrhea, their faces are yellow,” El Jamara,…
Over 800 officials in U.S. and Europe sign letter protesting Israel policies
The New York Times reports: More than 800 officials in the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union released a public letter of dissent on Friday against their governments’ support of Israel in its war in Gaza. The letter is the first instance of officials in allied nations across the Atlantic coming together to openly criticize their governments over the war, say current and former officials who are organizing or supporting the effort. The officials say that it…
Domicide, the mass destruction of homes, should be identified as a crime against humanity
Balakrishnan Rajagopal writes: We all understand that killing can be a murder, a war crime, a crime against humanity or an act of genocide, depending on the gravity and intention of the act. The same should apply for the destruction of homes. In Gaza, we are witnessing destruction that is overwhelming in terms of its scale and impact, and far worse than what we saw in Dresden and Rotterdam during World War II, where about 25,000 homes were destroyed in…
How Broadway helped Irgun’s Zionist terrorists in their war against British rule
In a letter to the New York Times published on December 2, 1948, Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt and 26 other leading American Jews wrote: Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our times is the emergence in the newly created state of Israel of the “Freedom Party” (Tnuat Haherut), a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties. It was formed out of the membership and following of the…
The polling ‘disaster’ that’s starting to terrify Team Trump
Rolling Stone reports: In the middle of last year, several of Donald Trump’s closest advisers, including some of his 2024 campaign’s senior staff, started noticing an ominous trend in independent polling and in internal Republican survey data: A significant share of swing voters in key states — even some Republicans — say they would not want to vote for a freshly-convicted criminal. The trend spooked them enough that, in recent months, some of these officials and political allies have directly…
‘I will be a first minister for all’: Sinn Féin’s Michelle O’Neill marks historic moment for north of Ireland
The Observer reports: The chamber’s ornate ceiling remained blue, red and gold, and Portland stone still held up the Stormont edifice, but the beaming Sinn Féin faces declared this was a historic moment for Irish nationalism. Michelle O’Neill became Northern Ireland’s first nationalist first minister in a day of symbolism and pomp that restored devolved government and etched an epitaph on the tomb of what was once a unionist state. The union endured – Northern Ireland remains part of the…
Synchronization is one of the fundamental phenomena of nature
Any oscillator — a pendulum, a spring, a firefly, a human heart cell — wants to match up with its neighbors. Mathematicians recently showed that synchronization is inevitable in expander graphs, a type of network found in many areas of science. https://t.co/SM4cUWupJf pic.twitter.com/rINEz3lTuf — Quanta Magazine (@QuantaMagazine) February 3, 2024 Leila Sloman writes: Six years ago, Afonso Bandeira and Shuyang Ling were attempting to come up with a better way to discern clusters in enormous data sets when they stumbled…
Music: Steve Reich — ‘Electric Counterpoint: III. Fast’
A 6-year-old in Gaza City was calling to be rescued. Did anyone find her?
A 6-year-old in Gaza City was calling to be rescued. Did anyone find her? https://t.co/2FqcBPnT8I — Joe Catron (@jncatron) February 2, 2024 The Washington Post reports: The Hamada family was trying to get to safety. An order from the Israeli military had gone out earlier on Monday, ordering them to evacuate their neighborhood in Gaza City. Bashar, 44, and his wife Anam, 43, piled their children and their young niece, Hind, into the car. They would never reach their destination….
U.S. retaliatory airstrikes on targets in Iraq and Syria will not be the last
Julian Borger writes: US retaliation, when it came, was broad and deep, and telegraphed five days in advance. The White House, the Pentagon and state department had spent the best part of a week talking about the response to Sunday’s drone attack on a US base in northern Jordan, which killed three Americans and wounded more than 30. They warned that retaliation against the suspects, primary among those the Iran-backed Kataib Hezbollah militia, would be “multi-tiered” and continue over many…
A Palestinian posted a message on Oct. 7. Then came the death threats
The Washington Post reports: Dalal Abu Amneh insists she didn’t mean to take sides with her Facebook message on Oct. 7: “The only victor is God.” The Palestinian citizen of northern Israel — a neuroscientist and a folk singer renowned in the Arab world — was starting a silent retreat at a Christian monastery in Jerusalem when word of the Hamas massacre began to spread. She immediately checked in on Jewish friends in southern Israel, she said. At the request…
Trump allies plan to gut climate research if he is reelected
Climatewire reports: Former President Donald Trump’s second term could begin with a clear direction on climate policy: Trash it. Dozens of conservative organizations have banded together to provide Trump a road map — known as Project 2025 — if he prevails in November. It outlines a series of steps that the former president could take to reverse the climate actions taken by the Biden administration. Trump has already said that boosting fossil fuels would be one of his top priorities….
I prosecuted Watergate and never feared for our democracy — but Greg Abbott has me worried
Jill Wine-Banks writes: I am not an alarmist by nature. From my time as a prosecutor investigating the Watergate scandal, I have never doubted that justice would prevail or that democracy would survive. I never doubted that our union would last — until now. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s actions at the southern border and his reaction to the Supreme Court’s decision in favor of the federal government make me fear for the continued existence of the United States of America….
The long journey north from Guatemala
In the summer of 2022, Norvin made an excruciating but thrilling decision. After years of struggling to make ends meet for his family as a long-haul truck driver, life in his small rural town of La Maquina, Guatemala, had grown too lean. Gang violence and poverty were surging. So was chronic malnutrition, with more than 55% of children in rural Guatemala suffering from the condition. He wanted more for his young daughter and wife, more for the 10 members…
Can the government of Mexico bring the U.S. gun industry to book?
John Cassidy writes: The history of U.S. gun-control efforts is largely dispiriting. Yes, there have been some examples of progress, such as the spread of “red flag” laws, which allow state courts to temporarily disarm individuals who are considered a threat. At the federal level, though, the gun lobby has long exercised an effective veto. Just last month, Republicans in the Senate blocked a bill that would have banned assault weapons and introduced universal background checks for gun purchases. Over…