First posted December 29, 2011 The Third George J. Wittenstein Lecture: Hitler’s Assault on the Golden Rule To ‘resist’, from the Latin resistere, means to stand fast, to uphold principles against pressure to abandon them Claudia Koonz discusses the appeal of the Nazis’ mandate to ‘Love only the neighbour who is like thyself’ Using examples… Read More Claudia Koontz: Hitler’s Assault on the Golden Rule
This statement on the Middle East was dated 31st January, 1970, and was read on 3rd February,the day after Bertrand Russell’s death, to an International Conference of Parliamentariansmeeting in Cairo. See/hear on YouTube. The latest phase of the undeclared war in the Middle East is based upon a profoundmiscalculation. The bombing raids deep into Egyptian… Read More Bertrand Russell’s Last Message on Israel and Palestine
Gaza has become a graveyard. A graveyard for children and for mothers. But Gaza has also become a place where the conscience of the world is being buried, alongside the failure of the world’s institutions to protect civilians. Gaza is the graveyard of human rights. Ghada Ageel Over the past week, I attempted to reach… Read More Messages arrive from Gaza with news of dead children. It has become a graveyard for humanity’s conscience
Israel’s genocidal attacks, which are killing hundreds of Palestinians a day, including some 160 children, have expanded to shelling the remaining hospitals in Gaza… There are no words to express what we are witnessing. In the five weeks of horror this is one of the pinnacles of horror. The indifference of Europe is bad enough. The active complicity… Read More Chris Hedges: The Horror, The Horror
500 years of global dominance by the Euro–American culture, the Atlantic culture, has come to an end… What we are seeing at the moment in Palestine is the end of settler colonialism. Settler colonialism is a phenomenon of the last two centuries or so, and it is always accompanied by genocide… But we are watching… Read More Patrick Lawrence: ‘The Hinge of History’
NB: Delhi police have warned imams in mosques not to pray for Palestine. Not only are they ill-informed (they think Palestine = Hamas); they also have no idea Gaza and the West Bank are occupied territories. And they now have the license to enter our consciences. Our prayers are now state property. DS There can’t… Read More We are Spartacus
When his 13-year-old daughter stumbled home six years ago and told her father that she had been gang-raped, Ranjit embarked on a mission to get justice in a manner that is almost unheard of in rural India. Going against the wishes of the entire village in the eastern state of Jharkhand, and challenging India’s highly patriarchal culture,… Read More How a father’s love for his daughter challenged India’s ‘rape culture’
Hani Almadhoun I keep waiting for someone to wake me up. As I witness the surreal and staggering devastation on the streets of Gaza, where my parents live, and the tragic loss of more than 10,000 Palestinian lives unfolding in real time, my heart keeps sinking. I hold on to the hope that something, or someone, can… Read More Do Palestinian lives matter to the world?
There is a time for judgment, a time for love, and even a time for silence. Livatino knew when and how to practice each… he saw the duty to promote justice as a personal call. A visible sign of this call was the acronym used by Livatino in many of his texts: S.T.D, standing for… Read More Rosario Livatino: the judge killed by mobsters who is on his way to sainthood
Amrit Dhillon in New Delhi Mahua Moitra is a misfit in Indian politics. She rejects the notion that a woman must ideally be married, and if she happens to be divorced, single or widowed, should not openly date or be seen to be in a relationship. Nor should she drink or smoke in public or be… Read More Grit and glamour: how Mahua Moitra shook up the misogyny and hypocrisy of Indian politics
After the truth-shower 