Tag: Politics

  • A Clubbable Admission: Palestine’s Case for UN Membership

    I find it rather difficult to make it clear to my children why we are not eligible, for from one point of view it isn’t quite clear to me. X, “The Jew and the Club,” The Atlantic, October 1924. It must surely make certain ethnic and religious groups reflect, notably those languishing in minority status […]

  • A Modest Proposal: The UN General Assembly and Palestinian Recognition

    Despite being described in some circles as such, the latest vote in the United Nations General Assembly on Palestine’s status is hardly extraordinary.  For one, it does not vest the Palestinian territories with statehood but burnishes its credentials to join the club.  It pushes those scrappy, desperate entities so despoiled and abused into deeper involvement […]

  • Are We Having an Election in November?

    With an important US presidential election — we are told — only months away, but one posing two repugnant, disheartening choices, it may be a good time to explore where we are and how we got here. What we can agree is that most of us, when asked, believe that things are going badly: an […]

  • Israel’s Battle Against Free Speech: The Shuttering of Al Jazeera

    “Politics,” as the harsh, albeit successful German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck claimed, “is the art of the possible, the attainable – the art of the next best.”  To that hould be added the stark awareness of being prudent, gingerly wise, appropriately cautious.  Mind how you go in avoiding any foolishness on the way. Going after […]

  • Veterans Support Students Protesting Genocide in Palestine

    Veterans For Peace applauds the students who are protesting against the US/Israeli genocide in Palestine.  These courageous young students are doing the right thing at the right time. “The students are absolutely right, and they may actually be saving our humanity,” said Veterans For Peace president Susan Schnall. “Peace-loving people should applaud them, help them […]

  • Forces of Impunity: The US Threatens the International Criminal Court

    The International Criminal Court is a dusty jewel, a creation of heat, tension and manufacture in the international community.  Various elements have gone into its creation.  As with any international institution which draws its legitimacy from nation states and the like, its detractors are many, the invective against it frequent.  Some 124 countries have signed […]

  • Empathy or Anthropomorphism

    Empathy or Anthropomorphism

    Words don’t mean anything, people do. Much of the conflict we experience, observe or imagine arises from the problem every human and arguably most other mammals confront from the moment they become distinct beings—animals. While I never studied classical languages, I believe the very term “animal” designates a being, an entity, endowed with a soul. […]

  • Why the media have failed Gaza

    Why the media have failed Gaza

    [This is a transcript of my full speech for the Bristol Palestine Alliance’s March Against Media Bias at College Green, Bristol, on Saturday May 4.] Yesterday was World Press Freedom Day, and it is fitting we mark it by highlighting two things. First, we should honour the brave journalists of Gaza who have paid a […]

  • Nesting in Australia: Indian Spy Rings Take Root

    In his 2021 annual threat assessment, the director-general of ASIO, the Australian domestic intelligence service, pointed to an active spy ring operating in the country, or what he chose to call a “nest of spies”.  The obvious conclusion drawn by information-starved pundits was that the nest was filled with the eggs and fledglings of Chinese […]

  • How Hamas Changed the World

    In a June, 2023 article, The Fall of the West, I named 2023 as the end date of a half millennium of Western domination of world power. Although neither the start nor the end of the era can be entirely discrete, the key indicator for that year was the failure of the combined might of […]

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