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August 1, 2025

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Last chance to get on the right side of history in Gaza – while it still exists

Gaza is almost gone. We are responsible. If you ever told yourself you’d oppose atrocities of the past, now’s your chance to prove it.

After decades of oppression and 21 months of sustained bombings, mass shootings, and forced starvation, the people of Gaza are on their last leg. Reports of the famine there are as horrific as anything in modern history. Images of children and babies emaciated to the bone pour out of the region every day, and the situation is only getting worse.

All of this is intentional, imposed on Gaza by the state of Israel and supported throughout the US government. Israel has completely obliterated the region’s infrastructure and land and is now deliberately preventing aid from getting in. Even more despicably, when aid does manage to enter the strip, Israeli soldiers slaughter the hungry people trying to reach it. This kind of massacre, one of the most depraved things anyone can imagine, is now routine.

Only now are some Western leaders and talking heads coming around. Among others, The New York Times, a longstanding and defiant supporter of Israel even through the worst atrocities, is gradually growing more critical. But plenty of observers have known for a long time that this latest flare-up between Israel and Palestine was different from previous skirmishes. This time, from the beginning, the intent and the actions have been purely genocidal.

If you’re just waking up to the horror now, then welcome aboard. It’s time to speak up. And if you haven’t woken up yet, you have precious little time left to do so. Gaza may not last much longer. And when the people there are all gone, when we’re realizing the extent of the horror we have perpetrated, you won’t be able to say you weren’t told. This is a US atrocity as much as it is an Israeli one, and every American who looked the other way shares in the responsibility. 

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June 23, 2025

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More lies, more war: Americans fall for it again

In 2015, during the Republican presidential primaries, Donald Trump stood on stage with Jeb Bush and said to his face, “The war in Iraq was a big, fat mistake… We spent $2 trillion, thousands of lives… We should have never been in Iraq… We have destabilized the Middle East… They lie. They said there were weapons of mass destruction, there were none, and they knew there were none.” 

At the time, the establishment Republican audience booed, but a star was born. Jeb Bush’s political fortunes soon crumbled. A new narrative took hold of the party. Gone would be the neoconservatives and the Bush family, replaced by a more isolationist, nationalist, “America First” movement led by Trump.

Now, with his attacks on Iran just a few months into his second presidential term, Trump is on the verge of making a catastrophic foreign policy move that threatens to dwarf the illegality, murderousness, and destabilization of the Bush Administration’s crime of the century.  

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August 23, 2024

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Madame Vice President, Do the Right Thing on Gaza

The coronation and ascent up the polls of Democratic Presidential Candidate Kamala Harris has been remarkable to witness. From out of nowhere, a person widely considered a relative dud of a Vice President, who received zero delegates during her primary bid in 2020 and zero votes in the 2024 primary (during which, of course, she was not a candidate), is now the woman chosen to beat Donald Trump. And if vibes and momentum are any indication, she may be well on her way to doing it. She has galvanized Democratic enthusiasm and is being celebrated by multiple factions of her party.

But it hasn’t all been smooth sailing for Harris and the liberal coalition. While the Republican opposition is flailing, unable to build a meaningful counter-narrative and falling back on their usual canard of hysterically painting every minimal reform as communism, on her left is a potentially more disruptive force: Americans who want their country to stop arming and funding Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

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May 1, 2024

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Can A Genocide Supporter Be the Lesser Evil?

If you’re on the left, despite any disappointments and misgivings you may have with the Democratic Party, you may conclude that they are the lesser evil and vote for them in most elections. This is not normally a difficult case for Democrats to make. Indeed, “not as evil as Republicans” has almost become the party’s tagline. It’s their primary selling point.

In 2024, however, President Joe Biden is struggling to make that case. He’s done a lot wrong during his years in office and a few things right. But his present support for Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza is so monstrous and criminal that no moral nation could allow him to remain president.

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January 24, 2024

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In Gaza, a Genocide by Any Other Name

A crowd gathers around bodybags of all sizes laid out in Gaza.

For more than 100 days, Israel has been relentlessly bombing, starving, dehumanizing, and denying aid to the people in the Gaza Strip. In terms of scale and proportionality, it’s one of the most brutal assaults in memory. It’s being done in broad daylight with funding from the American taxpayer and the full support of the American political and media class.

On January 11, South Africa presented a genocide case against Israel at the United Nations’ International Court of Justice at the Hague. Their case was persuasive, outlining a long list of war crimes and genocidal rhetoric from top Israeli officials.

Despite this flurry of negative attention, Israel has carried on undeterred and Western governments have maintained their support. America and the Biden Administration continue to fund the assault and have even supported it with direct military action.

The situation feels helpless. It’s a tragedy unfolding in real time, with live updates from victims and reporters. Every day brings a new horror, and the supposed moral arbiters of the free world are looking humanity in the eyes and saying, “We’re doing this, and there isn’t a thing you can do about it.”

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October 18, 2023

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Context and Moral Perspective to Understand Israel/Palestine

Tensions between Israel and Palestine have erupted anew, reaching perhaps their most dangerous escalation yet. Things kicked off when Hamas, the leading political authority in the Palestinian territory of Gaza, slaughtered some 260 people at a music festival in Israel. Since then, all the world’s eyes have been on the region as reports of war crimes and atrocities on both sides – some exaggerated or made up, but far too many true – filter out daily. Political leaders, pundits, and ordinary people have responded to the horror with vengeful, even genocidal rhetoric.

Discussing the situation is difficult. Emotions are high, and the sheer scale of violence makes level-headedness feel almost inappropriate. Disinformation and propaganda make it hard to know the truth even for those who seek it out, and there are numerous misunderstandings about the region’s politics and history in general. Add organized religion to the mix and all the bigotries, atrocities, and accusations that entails, and it’s not hard to imagine things quickly going off the rails.

Still, it’s more important now than ever to not get carried away – though the powers that be are already well on their way to doing horrific, irreversible, history-staining crimes.

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February 10, 2023

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Pink Floyd feud becomes microcosm of broader war debate

The former members of Pink Floyd have had a long-running and highly public feud ever since Roger Waters, the principal writer of the band’s best-known material, left the group in 1984. His former chief collaborator, lead guitarist David Gilmour, carried on using the band’s name, leading to bitter legal battles. Aside from a couple momentary reunions, the two showed no interest in burying the hatchet, let alone working together again.

Recently the feud exploded, going well beyond the confines of the band and bleeding into issues of geopolitics, war, and peace. On February 6, Gilmour’s wife, writer Polly Samson, tweeted, “Sadly @rogerwaters you are antisemitic to your rotten core. Also a Putin apologist and a lying, thieving, hypocritical, tax-avoiding, lip-synching, misogynistic, sick-with-envy, megalomaniac. Enough of your nonsense.” Shortly after, Gilmour concurred, tweeting, “Every word demonstrably true.”

Samson’s tweet was a shocking, vitriolic series of epithets that paint Waters as a complete and total scumbag. This is no mere difference of opinion. Plenty of people disagree with Waters, but Samson apparently sees him as an irredeemable, worthless human being who contributes nothing but evil to the world.

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September 1, 2015

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Washington hypocrisy and warmongering jeopardizes breakthrough nuclear deal with Iran

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, second-left, stands on stage with diplomats in Switzerland, including US Secretary of State John Kerry, far right.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, second-left, stands on stage with diplomats in Switzerland, including US Secretary of State John Kerry, far right.

As diplomats from the US, UK, Russia, China, France and Germany move closer to reaching a historic deal with Iran that would temporarily block it from pursuing certain nuclear ambitions in exchange for relaxation of sanctions, Republicans are vowing to do all they can to scuttle the deal. It’s remarkable that, at a time when the first modern meaningful international agreement between the US and Iran is about to go through, Republicans are rattling sabers as aggressively as ever.

Wisconsin governor and Republican presidential candidate Scott Walker called the deal “one of America’s worst diplomatic failures.” “Instead of making the world safer,” Walker alleges, “this deal will likely lead to a nuclear arms race in the world’s most dangerous region.” In keeping with the lockstep obstructionism that has defined the GOP throughout Obama’s presidency, other Republicans have protested the deal, citing Iran’s untrustworthiness and existential threat to world peace.

For years, Washington and the news media have portrayed Iran as the most dangerous national power on the planet. That opinion is not widely shared by the global community, however, which by a significant margin places the United States at the top of a list of the biggest threats to world peace. Despite the abundance of negative public opinion on Iran in the US, the question of what exactly makes the country such a threat is rarely meaningfully explored.

A brief history of US/Iranian relations reveals everything about who should be distrustful of who. Continue reading →