Sliman Mansour (Palestine), The Sea Is Mine, 2016. 7 October 2025 will mark the second anniversary of Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. The World Health Organisation’s data page on Palestinian casualties, regularly updated using figures from the Palestinian Health...
It’s always comforting to hear politicians reveal wisdom and novel notions long known to those who vote for them. This tendency endears the dim rascals to you, showing an ignorance that remains, for the most part, unblemished. If we get democracy, as H. L. Mencken...
Matt Haig’s The Humans (2013) uses sci fi, ‘speculative fiction’, for what it does best: reveal to us how lethal human beings are and how we need to control technology before it turns us into monsters and reduces planet Earth to … Gaza. This time it’s a simple tale of...
This is from Wikipedia: 12 Angry Men is a 1957 American legal drama film directed by Sidney Lumet in his feature directorial debut, adapted by Reginald Rose from his 1954 teleplay.[6][7] A critique of the American jury system during the McCarthy era,[8][9] the film...
When Jay Janson declared, “You’re writing history with your breath,” I recognized the profound truth in his words. For Jay speaks not in ephemeral metaphors, but in potent mandates, each utterance a call to profound moral engagement. He is more than a historian; he is...
Lately, I’ve had lyrics to ‘I’ve Got No Idols,’ by 1990s indie-darling Juliana Hatfield running through my head, particularly the line, “But I am a liar, that’s the truth, go home and think it through.” Why is this song, especially that particular lyric, taking up so...
Note added 1 October 2025: This alert was originally published on 14 August 2025. However, a technical problem prevented it from being shared via our usual email lists. This has now been fixed. Apologies for the delay in sending this out. Late last Sunday, a targeted...
Factual information about Israel and Palestine may soon be outlawed in the California K-12 school system. Assembly Bill 715 is currently on Governor Newsom’s desk. The legislation was recently rushed through the California legislature, amended just days before...
He had moments of discomfort and embarrassment – pressed into calling the Qatari Prime Minister by his host to apologise for striking Doha and made to pay lip service to the prospect of a Palestinian state – but Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu had many reasons to be...
I retired from the University of Texas at Austin journalism school eight years ago, but I can’t stop thinking like a teacher. So when I read the Texas Tech University chancellor’s memo instructing employees to comply with state and federal dictates that “recognize...
The news that hate had been finally eliminated was well received by the Well People: the well-born, well-informed, well-educated, well-heeled, well-known and well-intentioned. The Wells pretty much owned the entire world but only made up a fraction of the total...
So, we are being subjected to the latest bout of verbal gymnastics as analysts bend themselves to the futile task of inferring logic from Donald Trump most recent effusions on matters Ukraine. Futile because the man possesses no approximation of a mind capable of...