Richard Flanagan has done us a favour. His recent book, Question 7, takes us back to the creation of atomic bombs, and to their use against people, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those bombs played an indirect but pivotal role in Flanagan’s family. They are directly pivotal in humanity’s story. After many decades of habituation to Continue reading »
World Affairs
Suppose the United States State Department was tasked during World War II to assess whether Adolf Hitler’s extermination camps violated international humanitarian law (IHL). Suppose the State Department used the same Orwellian language as was displayed regarding Israel in its May 9, 2024, Report to Congress under Section 2 of the National Security Memorandum on Continue reading »
The move comes as Australia, in a significant break from Israeli and US policy, voted yes in the UN General Assembly to upgrading Palestine’s UN membership status. The resolution passed with 143 countries voting in favour, nine voting against, and 25 abstentions. International Court of Justice press release follows. Application of the Convention on the Continue reading »
Like the previous Vietnam generation of baby boomers, US university students are waking up to the atrocities their government commits or helps its client states to commit around the world. In a classic scene that has become a popular internet meme in the first Matrix movie, Morpheus, the rebel leader, offers his protégé Neo the Continue reading »
The stars do not exactly seem to be aligning for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi as he bids for a third term in office with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police charging three Indians living in Edmonton with the assassination of Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in June last year. Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper quoted Continue reading »
“But… did he say it on a college campus? Otherwise, it’s just not news. Sorry, them’s the rules,” said one journalist sardonically. In just the latest example of a top Israeli official openly calling for the elimination of Gaza and the 2.3 million Palestinians who live there, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Tuesday demanded the destruction of Continue reading »
In this quiet hour, I summon words, a humble man amidst shadows long, To speak of wounds not my own, to voice a plea so loud and strong. For streets that haunt with harried silence, for whispers in the dark, For the women who carry nightmares in the hollows of their hearts, I say, not Continue reading »
Lies and impunity paved the way for the worst time in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Hanan Ashrawi says Gaza is “worse than even the Nakba, because it is a wilful, deliberate, total genocide”. Continue reading »
The non-violence training to join the Freedom Flotilla Coalition’s ships to Gaza has been intense. As hundreds of us from 32 countries gathered in Istanbul, we were briefed about what we might encounter on this voyage. “We have to be ready for every possibility,” our trainers insisted. The best scenario, they said, is that our Continue reading »