NB: The phrase above is the title of a paper by Professor Julia Annas, published in 2005. Reference details are available here: Wickedness as Psychological Breakdown; those interested may obtain the full text via institutional channels. I post it as the title for a few reflections on the tidal wave of revengeful mania sweeping through… Read More Wickedness as Psychological Breakdown
Trump’s lewdly playful face now fills our screens as Biden’s frail visage recedes. Not forever; there will always be a Jekyll impersonator in America’s political repertory Mukul Kesavan Donald Trump’s triumph doesn’t show us a ‘polarised’ America. This lazy metaphor for division obscures America’s shapeshifting oneness. When pundits pointed out that Trump’s success in 2016… Read More Exit Jekyll, enter Hyde: America isn’t polarised; Trump victory shows US is bipolar
Israel has been accused by multiple human rights groups and UN investigators of military conduct that could amount to war crimes over the past year, which it has vociferously denied. Hamas has also been accused of war crimes. In October, a UN inquiry said Israel had a “concerted policy” of destroying the health care system in Gaza… Read More Human Rights Watch accuses Israel of mass displacement in Gaza amounting to a war crime
All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory: Viet Thanh Nguyen ‘Americans liked seeing people eye to eye, the General had once told me, especially as they screwed them from behind’ – (From Chapter One of The Sympathizer) From the author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The… Read More Nothing ever dies: Vietnam and the memory of war / Viet Thanh Nguyen and Michael Vann in conversation
Juan Cole Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Palestinian Ministry of Education released a report this week detailing that 11,923 students in Gaza have been killed by Israel’s total war in the past year. In addition, 19,199 have been wounded, many with life-altering injuries. A physician working in Gaza last summer reported to HRW, “We are talking about… Read More Israel’s Scholasticide and the Irrelevance of US Politics: 11,923 Palestinian Students didn’t Go Back to School this Fall because Israel Killed them
GAZA casualties, live statistics Israeli ground forces are getting closer to “the complete evacuation” of northern Gaza and residents will not be allowed to return home, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has said, in what appears to be the first official acknowledgment from Israel it is systematically removing Palestinians from the area. In a media briefing on… Read More Palestinians will not be allowed to return to homes in northern Gaza, says IDF
First posted June 07, 2020 Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society’s future, we – you and I, and our government – must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the… Read More President Eisenhower’s Speech on the American Military Industrial Complex, January 17, 1961
I have no idea who will win the US election. (This was written before the results began to arrive). But there are many of us who have had enough hypocrisy from the American establishment, whether led by Democrats or Republicans. We are now witnessing the decline of the US dominated post Cold War global order.… Read More The freedom bubble
By Francisca Marques and Elizabeth Wells Mosab Abu Toha’s voice is smooth and melodic when he recites his poetry from his new home in New York. But when the Palestinian poet describes the people and the moments that inspired his writing, it turns raw with emotion. “We are breathing on the outside, but inside, we are… Read More ‘This is what it means to be from Gaza’: Poet captures people’s stories of life, love and loss
NB: Israeli depravity has equaled Belsen, Maidanek and Auschwitz. Do Israelis not know what ‘the most moral army in the world’ is doing in Gaza? How can you make your young soldiers run over fleeing Palestinians with tanks and think it a good thing to do? Is not this akin to what the Waffen SS… Read More Settler Colonial Contagion: A Long Simmering Plague / Gaza Catastrophe — Checking Israeli and Western Elites
After the truth-shower 