Unexploded bombs, many U.S.-made, could make parts of Gaza uninhabitable

Unexploded bombs, many U.S.-made, could make parts of Gaza uninhabitable

The Washington Post reports: Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip has reduced entire neighborhoods to dust. The resumption of fighting and intensified airstrikes on southern Gaza after a week-long pause could mean that even more of the territory could meet the same fate. But the war, however long it continues, is only the beginning. Parts of a postwar Gaza could long be dangerous to inhabit, let alone rebuild. Riddled with hundreds if not thousands of unexploded ordnance, ranging from makeshift…

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State Department bypasses Congress to approve Israel’s order for tank ammunition

State Department bypasses Congress to approve Israel’s order for tank ammunition

The New York Times reports: The State Department is pushing through a government sale to Israel of 13,000 rounds of tank ammunition, bypassing a congressional review process that is generally required for arms sales to foreign nations, according to a State Department official and an online post by the Defense Department on Saturday. The State Department notified congressional committees at 11 p.m. on Friday that it was moving ahead with the sale, valued at more than $106 million, even though…

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Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are openly talking about conditioning U.S. aid to Israel

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are openly talking about conditioning U.S. aid to Israel

Business Insider reports: Over the last several weeks, members of Congress have openly discussed the idea of conditioning US aid to Israel. The conversation has been driven by the climbing death toll and worsening conditions for Palestinian civilians in Gaza, far-right policies pursued by the Netanyahu government, and a sense that Israel has not been interested in pursuing a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in recent years. Conditions aren’t likely to happen, at least in the near term. The…

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Where are all the anti-Trump Republicans?

Where are all the anti-Trump Republicans?

Jonathan Martin writes: At a Hoover Institution conference here last week, former Trump Defense Secretary Jim Mattis — who in 2020 denounced the former president as a threat to the Constitution — said retired generals “need to go silent during elections” and argued that the “American people do not need military officers telling them how to vote.” Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) was on the same panel with Mattis and said afterward that the former president is dominating the lead-off Iowa…

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Climate change is already forcing lizards, insects and other species to evolve – and most can’t keep up

Climate change is already forcing lizards, insects and other species to evolve – and most can’t keep up

Temperature sensitivity makes western fence lizards vulnerable to climate change. Greg Shine/BLM, CC BY By Michael P. Moore, University of Colorado Denver and James T. Stroud, Georgia Institute of Technology Climate change is threatening the survival of plants and animals around the globe as temperatures rise and habitats change. Some species have been able to meet the challenge with rapid evolutionary adaptation and other changes in behavior or physiology. Dark-colored dragonflies are getting paler in order to reduce the amount…

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The ‘darkest hour’ in the UN’s history as the U.S. vetoes a call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza

The ‘darkest hour’ in the UN’s history as the U.S. vetoes a call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza

This is how 'concerned' the USA is about Palestinians being killed in Gaza. They just vetoed a UN security council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire. pic.twitter.com/xBrORvQMJz — Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) December 8, 2023 The Guardian reports: The UN is at “breaking point” in Gaza, its most senior official has warned, as his colleagues described the “untenable” humanitarian catastrophe in the territory, with 700 people sharing a single toilet and people burning plastic to keep warm. One official said UN…

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Save the Children: We are failing the children of Gaza

Save the Children: We are failing the children of Gaza

Inger Ashing, Save the Children’s Chief Executive Officer,says: We are running out of words to describe the horror unfolding for Gaza’s children. Most of them have been forcibly displaced, squeezed into a tiny sliver of land that cannot accommodate them. Those who haven’t been forced from their homes are cut-off from the basics needed for survival, far away from the little amount of humanitarian assistance that can be delivered. Those who have survived the bombardment so far face the imminent…

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Inside Trump’s plot to corrupt the 2024 election with ‘garbage’ data

Inside Trump’s plot to corrupt the 2024 election with ‘garbage’ data

Rolling Stone reports: Of all the strange, conspiratorial, and potentially dangerous theories Donald Trump and his allies came up with in the days after the 2020 election, this was the strangest, the most conspiratorial, the most potentially dangerous. Millions of electronic ballots for Trump had been “deleted,” and hundreds of thousands more had been “switched” to Joe Biden, Trump and his cronies in media, political, and legal circles insisted — thanks to software designed at the behest of Venezuelan dictator…

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Why Christian fundamentalists love Trump

Why Christian fundamentalists love Trump

David French writes: I just finished reading Tim Alberta’s masterly new book, “The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism.” It’s a powerful and emotionally resonant account of the transformation in evangelical politics that has brought us to the current moment: A godless man, Donald Trump, may now possess more devoted support from white evangelical Christians than any other president in the history of the United States. And most worrisome of all, that support…

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How to stop the Trump dictatorship

How to stop the Trump dictatorship

Robert Kagan writes: If Nikki Haley is serious about trying to stop Trump […], there is only one way to cut into his mammoth majority, and that is by raising doubts about Trump’s electability. The way to do that is to warn those Republicans still capable of listening that a Trump presidency really does pose a risk to our freedom and democracy and the Constitution. That is what will be required to win over the small percentage of Republicans who…

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A military loyal to Trump

A military loyal to Trump

Tom Nichols writes: If Donald Trump wins the next election, he will attempt to turn the men and women of the United States armed forces into praetorians loyal not to the Constitution, but only to him. This project will likely be among his administration’s highest priorities. It will not be easy: The overwhelming majority of America’s service people are professionals and patriots. I know this from teaching senior officers for 25 years at the Naval War College. As president, Trump…

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How did Pentagon funding shape Chomsky’s thinking?

How did Pentagon funding shape Chomsky’s thinking?

Chris Knight writes: In a world where money talks, we’re often faced with a harsh choice – compromise on a point of principle or find ourselves out of work. One way or another, many of us have been there. To keep body and soul together, one version of ourselves colludes with the prevailing powers while another indignantly resists. In 1955, Chomsky found himself in just such a situation. He had a PhD in linguistics but was unable to get a…

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Israel is getting away with murder — with American support

Israel is getting away with murder — with American support

Avi Shlaim writes: On 7th January 2009, while Operation Cast Lead was in full swing, I wrote an article in the Guardian. “How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe”. This was Israel’s first major assault on the Gaza Strip after its unilateral withdrawal in 2005. Further major military offensives followed in 2012, 2014, 2021 and 2022, not counting minor flare-ups and nearly 200 dead during the border protests in 2018 known as the March of Return. By…

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UN Secretary-General invokes Article 99 in letter to Security Council on Gaza

UN Secretary-General invokes Article 99 in letter to Security Council on Gaza

Just Security reports: On Dec. 6, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres sent an urgent letter to the Security Council on the desperate humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip, using the seldom invoked authority in Article 99 of the UN Charter. In his letter, the Secretary-General reiterates his previous appeals for a humanitarian ceasefire and warns that public order in Gaza will “completely break down soon due to the desperate conditions.” A rarely used diplomatic tool, Article 99 allows the head…

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