Israel released
183 Palestinian detainees in exchange for three Israeli captives on 1 February
as part of the fourth prisoner swap under the ceasefire agreement underway in
Gaza.
.................RATIONAL THINKING.................. مرا جهل در کامِ دیو میبَرَد.............از آن دوستی میکنم با خِرَد
Saturday, February 1, 2025
Rebuilding our homes and ourselves
Noor Alyacoubi
It’s been almost
two weeks since the ceasefire came into effect in Gaza City, yet I haven’t
adjusted to the calm we were deprived of for so many months.
A Palestinian man surveys the rubble of destroyed buildings in the
al-Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City on January 30, 2025. (Photo: Omar
Ashtawy/APA Images)
Friday, January 31, 2025
The Israelis Left behind in 50 mn. Tons of Bomb-Infested Rubble in Gaza, as Hundreds of Thousands Stream Home
Juan Cole
Ann Arbor
(Informed Comment) – The Israeli systemic destruction of civilian building
infrastructure in Gaza generated over 50 million tons of debris by 1 December
2024.
“Unexploded Munitions,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3 / Clip2Comic, 2024
Trump's Big, Bad, Destructive, and Unpeaceful Imperialism
Phyllis Bennis
Even as Donald
Trump and his MAGA movement have seized virtually complete control of the
Republican Party, there remain at least two factions competing for dominance of
foreign policy: an isolationist gang and a warmongering interventionist cabal.
The strains between them seemingly remain unresolved, and there are real
strategic debates and disagreements about what direction Trump’s foreign policy
should take.
U.S. President Donald Trump (looks on as
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks about the mid-air crash
between American Airlines and a military helicopter, at the White House
on January 30, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chen Mengtong/China News Service/VCG via Getty Images)
Thursday, January 30, 2025
A Fools Paradise: Thomas Friedman and the Middle East
Melvin Goodman
Thomas Friedman,
the New York Times’ most influential columnist, has comprehensively recorded
his dreamscape for the Middle East. It
tells Donald Trump that “you have a chance to reshape this region in ways that
could fundamentally enhance the peace and prosperity of Israelis, Palestinians
and all the region’s people, as well as the national security interests of
America.” Friedman believes that
Benjamin Netanyahu is “ready to complete Israel’s withdrawal and finalize the
border” with Lebanon, and that the United States has an “enormous opportunity
to truly end the civil war [in Lebanon] and put the country back
together.” Finally, he produces a
threat: Iran’s nuclear program and malign regional strategy need to be eliminated,
and if Trump can’t do this through “peaceful negotiations,” it needs to be
“done kinetically.” That’s right:
Friedman is willing to commit the United States to a war against Iran.
Trump lays out blueprint to deport pro-Palestinian foreign nationals
Umar A Farooq
US President
Donald Trump on Wednesday issued a new executive order that aims to deport any
international students on university campuses who have expressed
pro-Palestinian sentiments or participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations.
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators rally in front of the University of
Southern California campus, a day before commencement ceremonies, on 7
May 2024 in Los Angeles, California (Mario Tama/AFP)
Passenger plane with 64 on board collides with US Army helicopter
A regional
passenger plane carrying 60 passengers and for crew collided midair with a US
military helicopter near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) on
Wednesday night, prompting the suspension of all flights from the airport and a
large-scale emergency response.
Wednesday, January 29, 2025
Gaza Hospitals Receive 48 More Bodies, Raising Death Toll
Dave DeCamp
Gaza’s Health
Ministry said Tuesday that over the previous 48-hour period, hospitals in the
Strip received 48 more bodies of Palestinians who were killed by “Israeli
aggression,” raising the recorded death toll.
What Sultan Erdogan is really up to
Pepe Escobar
ISTANBUL – The scene is a Circassian
restaurant off fabled Istiklal street in historic Beyoglu. On the table, a
geopolitical banquet – served by some of the best independent analytical minds
from Bursa to Diyarbakir. The menu, apart from a meze feast, is simple: only
two broad questions about Sultan Erdogan’s approach to BRICS and to Syria.
7 Reasons Why Age and Alcohol Don’t Mix
Sonya Collins
As you add more
candles to your birthday cakes, you may notice that your organs don’t work as
efficiently as they once did. Your balance might not be as good, and your
response time may not be as quick. Perhaps you have more aches and pains than
you did last year.
Neofascism in the White House
John Bellamy Foster
This piece was originally published in
the April 2017 issue of Monthly Review.
Tuesday, January 28, 2025
Memo to Trump: How Dumping 2.2 Million more Palestinians on Jordan would Destabilize the Middle East even More than the Iraq War Did
Juan Cole
Ann Arbor
(Informed Comment) – First, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his
cabinet proposed ethnically cleansing Gaza of its Palestinian inhabitants in
the fall of 2023, following many years of such calls from the Israeli
equivalent of neo-Nazis.
What a 20th-century revolutionary can teach us about resisting genocide today
Dana Miles
On Jan. 12,
thousands joined an annual commemorative march in Berlin to honor the memory of
Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht — two revolutionaries murdered 106 years ago
on Jan. 15, 1919 by centrist-backed proto-fascists. For decades, the march has
taken place on the second Sunday of January, bringing together activists, trade
unionists, feminists, and others who make up the German radical left. Among the
marchers, those who perhaps best embodied Luxemburg’s spirit of
anti-imperialism were a bloc of pro-Palestinian demonstrators who walked
through the streets chanting, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be
free,” before being attacked by German police officers.
Rosa Luxemburg addressing a crowd during the International Socialist Congress, in Stuttgart, 1907. (Wikimedia Commons)
Palestine Through the Lens
Jamal Kanj
This is a review
of an exceptional photobook, Images of Palestine (1898-1946). The book is a
collection of photographs that spans nearly five decades, captured in the
period leading up to the Palestine Nakba. Together, these black-and-white
images chronicle a vibrant and diverse Palestinian society, highlighting its
connection to the land, its achievements in commerce, architecture, and civil
society, and its development into a modern socio-political entity chafing to
break free from colonial domination.
Monday, January 27, 2025
Auschwitz’s hierarchies of villains and victims
Declan Hayes
When I visited
Kraków for some dental treatment in late January 2022 just before Putin sent
his peace-keeping forces into Ukraine, I made a point of not visiting either
Auschwitz or Schindler’s factory for the same reason I did not visit
Jerusalem’s Holocaust Museum on the two occasions I visited Zion. Quite
frankly, not only have I a gut full of hearing about Anne Frank, the boy in the
striped pyjamas and Holocaust survivors who, like the old soldiers that they
are, refuse to die, but I hate having propaganda of any sort rammed down my
neck.
PFP statement on Los Angeles wildfires of 2025
The tragic
wildfires that have taken place since Tuesday, January 7, 2025, have destroyed
thousands of homes and structures across Los Angeles, leaving tens of thousands
homeless. The death toll continues to rise as bodies are discovered under the
ashes of homes. While the corporate mainstream media spotlights the rich who
have been impacted, Peace & Freedom Party members have been on the ground,
day after day, providing aid and relief to the thousands of working-class
families who have lost everything.
Could the Carrington Event happen again?
Laura Baisas
On a hot and
humid Florida night in late August 1859, the sky suddenly lit up. But it was
not from fireflies or a fireswamp. Instead, it was the Northern Lights–or
aurora borealis. The aurora is usually seen in far more northern latitudes, but
it had somehow reached the subtropics and danced across the night sky. Reports
of the aurora came in from as far south as Central America and some in the
Rocky Mountains even believed it was morning because the sky was so bright.
لوستر
هوشنگ فاضلی
نزدیک به پنجاه سال پیشدر
خانهای دو طبقه در قیطریه شمیران سکونت داشتم. طبقهٔ بالا در اختیار خانوادهام
بود و طبقهٔ پائین را اجاره داده بودم. یکبار مستاجر جدیدی از طریق آژانس املاک
مراجعه، و خود را مهندس وحدتی، مدیر یک شرکت ساختمانی معرفی نمود. قرار شد که وی
و همسر و یک دخترش در این طبقه سکونت نمایند. در مورد میزان اجاره هم حساسیتی نشان
نداد و گفت میتواند اجارهٔ شش ماه را هم یکباره پرداخت نماید.ا
Sunday, January 26, 2025
LIVE BLOG: Israel Closes Netzarim | Mobilization on Lebanese-Israeli Border – Day 478
Israel continues to maintain a closure around Netzarim despite earlier commitments to withdraw.
Meanwhile, heightened military mobilization along the Israeli-Lebanese border is accompanied by Israeli forces opening fire on civilians attempting to return to their towns.
Thousands of displaced Palestinians seek to return to northern Gaza. (Photo: via social media, QNN)
Saturday, January 25, 2025
Female Israeli soldiers 'wave and smile' during release by Hamas in Gaza
The Palestinian
resistance movement Hamas released four female Israeli soldiers on 25 January,
while Israel is releasing some 200 Palestinians as part of a ceasefire
agreement aimed at ending Israel's war on Gaza.
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