Here’s what the mass violence in Gaza looks like to a scholar of genocide

Here’s what the mass violence in Gaza looks like to a scholar of genocide

Raz Segal writes: I cannot stop thinking about the dozens of Israeli children held in captivity by Hamas and the Islamic Jihad in underground tunnels in Gaza, while above them Israel’s attack has killed, so far, nearly 4,500 Palestinian children. Stopping the violence, and returning the hostages, is urgent for any person who values all lives. That it is very difficult to imagine how this happens tells a terrible truth: Those with the most power to effect change refuse to…

Read More Read More

Nakba generation relive trauma of displacement in Gaza

Nakba generation relive trauma of displacement in Gaza

The Guardian reports: Umm Ghadeer’s earliest memories are of the Nakba, or catastrophe, of 1948 in which about 700,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homeland after the creation of Israel. She was three years old. Last month she was forced to abandon her home all over again, fleeing Shejaiya, a neighbourhood of Gaza City, after the outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas. “I cried very hard because I relived the experience of displacement when we fled our homes in…

Read More Read More

I’m a climate scientist. I’m not screaming into the void anymore

I’m a climate scientist. I’m not screaming into the void anymore

Kate Marvel writes: Two and a half years ago, when I was asked to help write the most authoritative report on climate change in the United States, I hesitated. Did we really need another warning of the dire consequences of climate change in this country? The answer, legally, was yes: Congress mandates that the National Climate Assessment be updated every four years or so. But after four previous assessments and six United Nations reports since 1990, I was skeptical that…

Read More Read More

How the hillbillies remade America

How the hillbillies remade America

Max Fraser writes: On April 29, 1954, a cross section of Cincinnati’s municipal bureaucracy—joined by dozens of representatives drawn from local employers, private charities, the religious community, and other corners of the city establishment—gathered at the behest of the mayor’s office to discuss a new problem confronting the city. Or, rather, about 50,000 new problems, give or take. That was roughly the number of Cincinnati residents who had recently migrated to the city from the poorest parts of southern Appalachia….

Read More Read More

Bonobos, like humans, cooperate with unrelated members of other groups

Bonobos, like humans, cooperate with unrelated members of other groups

Science News reports: Humans regularly cooperate and share resources with other, unrelated humans in different social groups, often without any immediate, reciprocated benefits. The phenomenon has been considered unique to our species. But some bonobos appear to share this social trait, a study finds. This type of cooperation is thought to underpin human civilization. So bonobos’ ability to bond and cooperate with groups of nonrelatives across group boundaries, even when there’s no immediate payoff, may provide some insight into the…

Read More Read More

Israel has killed more children in Gaza than have died in all other conflict zones globally over the last year

Israel has killed more children in Gaza than have died in all other conflict zones globally over the last year

The New York Times reports: Barefoot and weeping, Khaled Joudeh, 9, hurried toward the dozens of bodies wrapped in white burial shrouds, blankets and rugs outside the overcrowded morgue. “Where’s my mom?” he cried next to a photographer for The New York Times. “I want to see my mom.” “Where is Khalil?” he continued, barely audible between sobs as he asked for his 12-year-old brother. A morgue worker opened a white shroud, so Khaled could kiss his brother one final…

Read More Read More

Israel could lose

Israel could lose

  Jon B. Alterman writes: Israel’s army has a remarkable record of winning. It won conventional wars in 1948, 1967, and 1973; it forced the Palestine Liberation Organization to give up armed struggle in 1996; and it has deterred Hezbollah since a 2006 campaign laid waste to the group. The military is strong not merely because of U.S. support, but also because everything about Israeli military—from its doctrine, organization, and training to its leadership and personnel—makes it by far the…

Read More Read More

These evangelicals are cheering the Gaza war as the end of the world

These evangelicals are cheering the Gaza war as the end of the world

Talia Lavin writes: On Tuesday, approximately 300,000 people gathered in Washington, D.C., to show their support for Israel in an ongoing war that has claimed the lives of thousands of people. The lineup of speakers at the March for Israel included Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Sen. Chuck Schumer, Jewish-American celebrities like Debra Messing and Tovah Feldshuh, as well as rabbis and cantors. It also included an evangelical Christian pastor from Texas, infamous for his fire-and-brimstone prophecies about the end of…

Read More Read More

An insurrectionist (rapist and fraudster too) isn’t disqualified from becoming president, judge rules

An insurrectionist (rapist and fraudster too) isn’t disqualified from becoming president, judge rules

The Daily Beast reports: Former President Donald Trump can appear on Colorado’s primary ballot despite his having engaged in an insurrection for his role in Jan. 6, 2021, a judge ruled Friday. The ruling came in response to a lawsuit seeking to remove Trump from the ballot on the grounds that Section III of the Fourteenth Amendment bars from public office anyone who has “taken an oath” but then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion.” The lawyers who filed the suit…

Read More Read More

Nikki Haley draws growing interest from deep-pocketed donors as GOP presidential field shrinks

Nikki Haley draws growing interest from deep-pocketed donors as GOP presidential field shrinks

CNN reports: Tim Scott’s loss appears to be Nikki Haley’s gain. Several of Scott’s financial backers have quickly pivoted to Haley in the days since the South Carolina senator ended his bid for the White House, as Haley jockeys with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to become the alternative to former President Donald Trump, the current front-runner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. In one sign of growing donor enthusiasm for her campaign, billionaire hedge fund founder Ken Griffin said this…

Read More Read More

The world is ‘woefully off track’ on dozens of climate goals, scientists find

The world is ‘woefully off track’ on dozens of climate goals, scientists find

The Washington Post reports: Among the many dramatic ways society must transform to limit the worst effects of climate change, the world is only moving fast enough on one of them — the uptake of electric vehicles, according to a new report from seven climate organizations looking at 42 indicators of climate progress. On the other 41 points of transformation, change is either too slow, too hard to measure, or going in the wrong direction. For example, the global rate…

Read More Read More

Earth facing dire sea level rise — up to 20m — even if climate goals met

Earth facing dire sea level rise — up to 20m — even if climate goals met

Global News reports: Capping global temperature rise at two degrees Celsius over baseline is no longer seen as enough to avoid a catastrophic rise in sea levels that would decimate the earth’s coastlines and displace hundreds of millions of people, climate scientists warn. A report released Thursday by the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative, compiled by more than 60 scientists and policy experts, is sounding the alarm on new modelling data that indicates the 2015 Paris Agreement is woefully out-of-date. The…

Read More Read More

Israel’s ludicrous propaganda wins over the only audience that counts

Israel’s ludicrous propaganda wins over the only audience that counts

Jeet Heer writes: On November 11, an Arabic-language Twitter account maintained by Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs posted a video purporting to be a selfie by a nurse in al-Shifa hospital in Gaza, a major battlefield in the current conflict that was taken over by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) a few days later. In the startling video, as bombs went off in the background, the tearful nurse warned Gazans to heed the call of the IDF to flee to…

Read More Read More

Trump’s plan for immigrant concentration camps points to a brutal 2024 reality

Trump’s plan for immigrant concentration camps points to a brutal 2024 reality

Greg Sargent writes: Donald Trump’s advisers have declared that if he regains the presidency, he will launch an extraordinarily cruel crackdown on immigration. Given that Trump lost reelection in 2020 after attempting a far tamer agenda, advertising such plans might seem like foolish political malpractice. But the politics of immigration can be peculiar. The public tends to turn on the president in power when the situation on the border goes wrong, leading voters to seek a diametrically different approach —…

Read More Read More