MAY 12, 2025
CNN has reported that some people in Missouri are getting vaccinated in secret to avoid backlash from loved ones. And thus, Covid has offered up yet another way to demonstrate tribal loyalty. First it was face masks; now it’s vaccinations. Vaccine hesitancy has a range of underlying causes, from fears about side effects, to distrust in government, to skepticism over the risks. I have relatives who believe Covid-19 is a Continue Reading...
The BBC reports that a bitumen tanker, the MV Asphalt Princess, was boarded by nine men on Tuesday and hijacked. It cites unnamed “analysts,” presumably MI6, to the effect that the hijacking was the work of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps. The MV Asphalt Princess, owned by the United Arab Emirates (UAE), was about to exit the narrow Strait of Hormuz, heading from the Gulf into the Arabian Sea. Two years ago, Iranian forces hijacked Continue Reading...
Armageddon Then: Candid Doc Brings the War in the Pacific Home Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 feature Apocalypse Now depicted war crimes committed by U.S. troops against Vietnamese people: An unforgettable, operatic, bone chilling chopper air raid attacking a Viet Cong village set to Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” so a surfer whose name is initialed “LBJ” can ride the gnarly waves there (Ride of the Valkyries - Apocalypse Now (3/8) Movie CLIP Continue Reading...
Every time Israel bombs Gaza into smithereens, it is left to others to try to rebuild. The European Union, Qatar, and even the Biden administration are offering aid. (The US is giving a piddling $150 million; even tiny Qatar is pledging $500 million.) The Greek myths contain the story of Sysyphus, a trickster figure who ambushed Death when it came for him and chained it up. Ares ultimately freed Death, and when Sisyphus died he was Continue Reading...
Once upon a time, a man lived in an area with mosquitoes. No matter what the man did to contain the mosquitoes, the man was bitten. Frustrated by his inability to control the mosquitoes – and feeling humiliated because the mosquitoes were biting him – he sprayed the entire area around his house, killing hundreds of mosquitoes, many of which hadn’t even bitten him. He didn’t really care because they were mosquitoes. But he did justify himself to Continue Reading...
The new report on 2020 by the International Renewable Energy Agency reveals that the world’s renewable energy generation capacity increased by an astonishing 10.3% in 2020 despite the global economic slowdown during the coronavirus pandemic. It beats the previous record for an annual increase in this sector by a healthy 50%. The bad news for Americans is that most of this increase took place in Asia, especially China. In this Continue Reading...
The COVID-19 pandemic is teaching us many hard lessons. One is that flow – not just of money but of all sorts of things – is fundamental to a functioning society. On both the material and non-material level, life is enabled by circulation, by constant movement. One could even say that relentless movement is one of modernity’s main characteristics. Charlie Chaplin, frantically trying to keep up with his tasks on the factory assembly line in Modern Continue Reading...
On Friday, the International Criminal Court found that it had jurisdiction to consider war crimes and crimes against humanity and the crime of Apartheid in the Palestinian territories. Israeli politician Abba Eban once quipped that Palestinians never lost the opportunity to lose an opportunity. But Palestinians have carefully, methodically created this opportunity to be heard in an international tribunal. It is the ruling Israeli right wing Continue Reading...
Back in the USSR: Dear Red People When I was a student revolutionary, I attended a debate between a communist and liberal in Manhattan circa 1972. When the latter complained that workers didn’t strike in the socialist states one of the reds in the audience shouted out that this was because “The workers own them!” In Dear Comrades! seasoned Soviet/Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky poses the question: What does happen when the workers go Continue Reading...
Stop loving Israel to death If you are Jewish and living outside of Israel, what are you waiting for? Israel awaits you. What’s taking you so long? Uncle Bibi wants YOU! As a Palestinian living in Palestine, I anxiously await your arrival. I have spoken directly to thousands of you over decades about Israel and its actions. Most recently, I had a conversation with over 100 of you on Zoom. The conversation and audience questions were all too Continue Reading...
2020 was a monster of a year, leaving three million Americans dead (a record), probably nearly half a million of them of Covid-19 once everyone is counted. The fecklessness of the outgoing Trump administration was responsible for a good deal of this national catastrophe, one that did not strike our allies South Korea or Germany to nearly the same extent (what with their having competent, rational leaders and a funded health care system, and all). Continue Reading...
The Iranian newspaper Ettela’at reports that on Friday, what it called “armed terrorist elements” mounted an assault on the automobile carrying Dr. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who was badly wounded in the midst of the clash between his security team and the assailants and was transported to hospital, where he died of his injuries. Fakhrizadeh, an eminent nuclear scientist, was the head of the Research and Innovation Organization within the Iranian Continue Reading...
Forty-eight civilians, 1 fetus, and 10 pennies If your Palestinian neighbors and friends seem slightly on edge today, please excuse them. October 29 brings back horrific memories to Palestinians everywhere, young and old. It was 64 years ago today that a scene of cold-blooded murder fell upon the hill-top Palestinian village of Kafr Qassem (also written Kfar Kassim), located in Israel about 20 km east of Tel Aviv, near the Green Line (1949 Continue Reading...
Donald Trump held a press conference in the Oval Office with Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu on speaker phone in which he breathlessly announced that Sudan had agreed to normalize relations with Israel, following on Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates earlier this year. Egypt and Jordan had signed peace treaties with Israel decades ago. Except that as usual, Trump got over his skis. Here’s the wrinkle. The whole Sudanese government Continue Reading...
COVID-19’s multi-pronged attack Not only is the coronavirus assaulting our bodies, killing thousands, which is bad enough. It is also attacking our social and economic structures. Scientists have found that once it enters the body, COVID-19 is capable of attacking almost any organ, with devastating consequences. It is doing something very similar to our economic systems. Your money or your life During the spring and summer of 2020, Continue Reading...
