Shameful fact: the plight of U.S. retirees is a global exception. In their pursuit of lower taxes, America’s wealthiest individuals support policies that make it extremely difficult for seniors to manage the increasing costs of healthcare, housing, and basic necessities. Not so in other rich countries like Germany, France, and Canada, where robust public pensions and healthcare systems offer retirees stability and dignity. After a lifetime of hard work, older citizens in the U.S. find their reward is merely scraping by, as savings diminish under the weight of soaring medical costs in the most expensive healthcare system in the developed world.

The solution from America’s elites? Suck it up and work longer.

An example of this mindset appeared in a New York Times op-ed by C. Eugene Steuerle of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center and Glenn Kramon, a Stanford Business School lecturer. The two accused older folks of robbing economic resources from the young through Social Security and Medicare—never mind that workers fund these programs with their own lifelong payroll contributions. They paint a picture of 65-year-old Americans jauntily playing “pickleball daily” and jet-setting “far and wide,” proposing to increase the age to collect Social Security and Medicare benefits, essentially forcing future retirees to work longer. (Curiously, they overlook how this move robs young people—too young to vote—of future retirement years. This echoes 1983, when the Reagan administration and Congress pushed the Social Security age from 65 to 67, impacting Gen X before they could even vote on it).

Steuerle and Kramon prop up their plan with studies that extol the health and wellbeing perks of working into old age, adding that “each generation lives longer” and therefore, it’s a patriotic duty for the elderly to stay on the job.

Are we all really living longer? Let’s first point out that Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton, noted for their research in health and economics, recently showed that many Americans are not, in fact, enjoying extended lives. As they stated in their own New York Times op-ed, those without college degrees are “scarred by death and a staggeringly shorter life span.” According to their investigation, the expected lifespan for this group has been falling since 2010. By 2021, people without college degrees were expected to live to about 75, nearly 8.5 years shorter than their college-educated counterparts.

Overall life expectancy in America dropped in 2020 and 2021, with increases in mortality across the leading causes of death and among all ages, not just due to COVID-19. In August 2022, data confirmed that Americans are dying younger across all demographics. Again, the U.S. is an outlier. It was one of two developed countries where life expectancy did not bounce back in the second year of the pandemic.

So the argument that everyone is living longer greatly stretches the truth—unless, of course, you happen to be rich: A Harvard study revealed that the wealthiest Americans enjoy a life expectancy over a decade longer than their poorest counterparts.

Could the idea that working into our seventies and beyond boosts our health and well-being hold true? Obviously, for those in physically demanding roles, such as construction or mining, prolonged work is likely to lead to a higher risk of injury, accidents, and wearing down health-wise. But what about everybody else? What if you have a desk job? Wouldn’t it be great to get out there, do something meaningful, and interact with people, too?

Perhaps it’s easy for people like Steuerle and Kramon to imagine older people working in secure, dignified positions that might offer health benefits into old age – after all, those are the types of positions they know best.

But the reality is different. Economist Teresa Ghilarducci, a professor at the New School for Social Research, focuses on the economic security of older workers and flaws in U.S. retirement systems in her new book, Work, Retire, Repeat: The Uncertainty of Retirement in the New Economy. She calls those praising the health perks of working longer “oddballs” – those fortunate folks in cushy positions who have a lot of autonomy and purpose. Like lawmakers or tenured professors, for example.

She points out that academic researchers often base their theories about the benefits of working longer on a hypothetical person who just tacked on a few extra years in the same position, noting that researchers often make the faulty assumption that people are not only living longer, but can also easily choose to work longer, keep their jobs without facing pay cuts, and continue stacking up savings into later life.

That’s not really how it plays out in real life for most folks. Ghilarducci found that most people don’t actually get to decide when they retire, noting that “the verb ‘retire’ isn’t a verb that really belongs to the agency of the worker – it’s the employers’ choice.” Retirement often means somebody above you telling you it’s time to go. You’re ousted—laid off or pushed out because your productivity’s slipping or your skills are aging like last year’s tech. Or simply because of biases against older workers. Age discrimination is a huge issue, with two-thirds of job seekers aged 45 to 74 reporting it. In fact, people trying to find a job say they encounter significant biases as early as age 35. For the high-tech and entertainment industries, this is particularly true.

So there’s that.

There’s also the fact that continuing to work in an unfulfilling job might be hazardous to your health. The reality is, a lot of us are grinding in jobs that are stressful and insecure, and that constant stress ties into a whole host of health issues — hypertension, heart problems, messed up digestion, and a weaker immune system, not to mention it can kickstart or worsen mental health troubles like depression and anxiety.

Many are stuck in what anthropologist David Graeber memorably dubbed “bullshit jobs” — roles that feel meaningless and draining. Graeber described these jobs as a form of ‘spiritual violence,’ and found them linked to heightened anxiety, depression, and overall misery among workers. His research found strong evidence that seeing your job as useless deeply impacts your psychological well-being.

The link between job dissatisfaction and poor health has been found to be significant in study after study. Unrewarding work can demotivate people from staying active, eating well, or sleeping regularly, potentially leading to obesity, type 2 diabetes, and other health issues. In contrast, retiring from such a job could free up time and energy for wellness activities, enjoyable hobbies, and a healthier lifestyle overall.

Ghilarducci points out that reward-to-effort ratios, crucial for job satisfaction, are declining due to factors like stagnant real wages. She also highlights the problem of subordination, explaining that it can be “lethal” to remain in a job where you lack control over the content or pace of your work. According to her, such factors can lead to higher morbidity and lower mortality rates.

Okay, what about social engagement? That’s crucial for seniors, right? True, but demanding or unfulfilling jobs can make it hard to find the time and energy to socialize, leading to isolation and loneliness, which are major factors in declining mental health and quality of life for the elderly.

Also, when talking about delaying retirement, we can’t ignore cognitive decline. Sure, working longer might keep your mind sharp if the job is stimulating. However, research indicates the opposite for dull jobs. Florida State University researchers found that not only can tedious work accelerate cognitive decline, leading to increased stress and reduced life satisfaction, but “dirty” work does as well. They show that jobs in unclean environments with exposure to chemicals, mold, lead, or loud noises significantly impact brain health as we age.

Even university professors can suffer the effects of dirty jobs: North Carolina State University has recently come under fire for knowingly keeping faculty and staff working for decades in a building contaminated with PCBs, resulting in dire health consequences, including nearly 200 cases of cancer among those exposed.

Finally, it’s not a coincidence that those talking about raising the age for Social Security and Medicare are usually white men. They would suffer less from it than women, especially women of color. Women typically outlive men but earn less over their lifetimes, which already means smaller Social Security checks. It’s even tougher for Black women who often earn way less than their white peers and are more likely to have unstable jobs with skimpy benefits. Plus, women frequently take breaks from their careers for caregiving, shaving off years of paid work and further slicing their Social Security benefits. Pushing the retirement age higher forces women, especially Black women, to either toil longer in poor-quality jobs or retire without enough funds, making them more vulnerable to poverty and health problems as they get older.

Ghilarducci observes that for women in low-paying jobs with little control and agency, “working longer can really hasten their death, and the flip side of that is that retirement for these women really helps them.”

Bottom line: The whole “work longer, live healthier” spiel doesn’t fly for most. In the U.S., the well-off might be milking the joys of extended careers, but lower-income folks, particularly women and people of color, often endure the slog of thankless jobs that negatively impact their health and well-being. Elites shout from their comfortable positions that we need to push retirement further back as if it’s the magic fix to all economic woes. But when such people fantasize about happy seniors thriving at work, they’re missing the harsh reality many face—painful, boring, insecure jobs that speed death.

The myth that we’re all living longer and healthier is just that—a myth belied by life expectancy stats showing not everyone’s in the same boat. What America desperately needs is a beefed-up, fair Social Security and Medicare system that serves all Americans, not just the ones who can afford to retire without a worry. No one should be stuck choosing between a crappy job and retiring into penury.

Yet Republicans are on the warpath against Social Security and Medicare. Senator Mike Lee has explicitly stated his goal to completely eliminate Social Security, aiming to “pull it up by the roots, and get rid of it.” His fellow Republicans are enthusiastically getting the ball rolling: House Republicans have released a new proposal to weaken Social Security by raising the retirement age. For his part, former and possible future president Donald Trump indicates a willingness to consider cuts to Medicare and Social Security, despite previously criticizing his primary rivals on the issue, who were almost wall to wall demanding drastic cutbacks.

Democratic lawmakers typically show more support for Social Security and Medicare in public, though their track record has not fully alleviated concerns about the present and future vulnerability of these programs. In his recent State of the Union speech, President Biden advocated for the expansion and enhancement of Social Security and Medicare, declaring that “If anyone here tries to cut Social Security or Medicare or raise the retirement age, I will stop them!” But it’s important to keep in mind that he supported raising the retirement age during the 1980s and again in 2005.

Polling shows that voters, whether Democrats or Republicans, do not want to cut these programs. Actually, they want to expand Social Security and Medicare. That’s because those who face the realities of daily life understand that working endlessly is a cruel and unreasonable – not to mention unhealthy — expectation that no society should endorse. The idea that America can’t afford to do this is outlandish when the evidence is so clear that American billionaires pay historically low tax rates that are now lower than those for ordinary workers.

What America can’t afford is the super-wealthy and their paid representatives working the rest of us to death.

This year, over a 12-month period, for the first time, global heating has exceeded temperatures of 1.5 degrees Celsius. While this doesn’t break the landmark Paris climate agreement, it is a clear warning sign that we need to act fast.

As the world grapples with runaway climate chaos, widespread cost of living increases, geopolitical instability, and violent conflict, it is time for a collective wake-up call: The climate crisis is unraveling against a backdrop of deeply ingrained systems of power that influence which politics and policies move forward.

While these decisions are often made at a level not accessible to everyday people, the implications of these decisions impact our communities, families, and individual lives every day. That’s why it’s important to look critically at the systems that are in place and decide whether they are working in the interest of those bearing the brunt of these crises or just continuing business as usual and making the uber-rich, even richer.

When we scale up renewable energy solutions, we must not replace one broken energy system with another.

First of all, we cannot help fix the climate crisis if the money that we need to fix it is still funding its cause, fossil fuels.

This is especially true since wind and solar energy initiatives are producing record amounts of clean electricity year after year, and getting cheaper every day. Paradoxically, while many claim that money is the missing piece to tackle the climate crisis, the truth is that the money to fund the renewable transition already exists, but we need to redirect it from the fossil fuel industry, and significantly scale up financing for renewable energy projects across the Global South.

While finance seems to be the greatest barrier to the renewables revolution, it also happens to be its greatest opportunity.

The fossil fuel companies who have polluted our planet are still reporting record profits while communities are struggling to keep up with rising temperatures, seas and energy prices, impacting every single aspect of lives. It is the responsibility of our leaders to hold them accountable, impose taxes on their profits, remove subsidies for the production of more fossil fuels, and spend this money on the communities they purport to represent by investing in a future that serves everyone, not just the privileged few.

The reality is also that countries that are historically not responsible for the climate crisis are experiencing the worst climate impacts. It is only fair that historically responsible countries and major polluters like the US, UK and the European Union, for instance, pay their climate debt to climate-vulnerable countries that are at the forefront of climate impacts without the necessary funds for adaptation and renewables development.

We have everything we need — including money — to make this transition come to life for communities everywhere.

Currently, most countries in the Global South spend a lot more money repaying their foreign debts than on addressing the impacts of the climate crisis. Financial arrangements that further entrench debt and dependency are not real solutions and do not address the historical injustices leftover from colonialism and imperialism.

When we scale up renewable energy solutions, we must not replace one broken energy system with another. Renewable energy solutions must uphold the rights of frontline communities and should be produced close to them while not threatening the land rights of Indigenous Peoples and their livelihoods. Investing in renewable energy projects that are community-centered and led and owned by communities, which don’t require kilometers of pipelines, long-distance planning and centralized management, like solar and wind, for instance, will help move us away from the unequal control, access and wasteful use of energy by the rich and privileged.

What we must hold at heart is that when we talk about an equitable energy transition and the resources we need for that, we are talking about more than just arbitrary numbers in the billions and trillions. We’re talking about the bridge that will take us from a world facing climate chaos coupled with extreme inequality, to one in which communities around the world have equitable access to clean, reliable and affordable energy. On top of that communities must get the necessary infrastructure to adapt to the climate impacts we are already facing, and equitable opportunities to thrive economically, and peacefully.

The world we need doesn’t have to be imaginary, we can make it a reality. We have everything we need — including money — to make this transition come to life for communities everywhere, but we must demand more from our governments and they must urgently act in the best interest of the global majority.

The United States ups the ante in its legal clash with Mexico over genetically modified (GMO) corn. Last month, a trade panel released the US’s latest legal filing. It essentially doubts the science Mexico offers and claims Mexico violates obligations from the USMCA trade pact.

This regards Mexico’s Decree from April 2023 banning GMO corn for human consumption. The ban cites harms from genetic manipulation of corn seeds and cancer risks from herbicides like glyphosate, needed by GMO farms. A USMCA panel will hold hearings on American complaints in June.

The U.S. position is not as strong as it claims—far from it. Observers analyze why Mexico’s scientific justifications are on solid ground. As a law professor, I explain how the U.S. overstates its legal case, at times severely so, when it comes to the ban on GMOs in tortillas and masa (dough).

Put simply, the U.S. gets it wrong when it comes to trade rules on food safety, called sanitary and phytosanitary measures (SPS) and covered in USMCA Chapter 9. Weaknesses regard two aspects of food safety: protection levels and health risks. In a recent journal article, I offer detailed examinations of these and other obstacles.

American faults involve established international law. The USMCA is three years old and this case raises its first SPS controversy. Fortunately, there are long-settled understandings in international law specific to SPS and trade obligations. For decades, panels have interpretated the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) SPS Agreement. This will inform the USMCA panel.

SPS Agreement obligations are central to the USMCA. In the new trade pact, the U.S., Mexico and Canada expressly agreed to affirm “rights and obligations” from the SPS Agreement. Numerous tribunals have ruled on disputes about the SPS Agreement. They’ve examined food safety measures and impacts on trade in food and agriculture, similar to gripes concerning Mexico’s Decree.

Both sides refer to panel reports from SPS cases. Reports are like court opinions. The U.S. cites over 40 reports, including 16 from the highest level, the WTO’s Appellate Body. Mexico references nearly50 and 23 from the highest level. The U.S. problem : it excludes important legal aspects from these reports.

One omission regards what is called the “appropriate level of protection” (ALOP). The USMCA uses the WTO definition for ALOP: the “level of protection deemed appropriate” by the country establishing a measure to protect human life.

The U.S. gets it wrong in terms of what this level can be and who determines it, to then say Mexico inadequately defines it. Mexico is clear that for human consumption of GMO corn, its ALOP is “zero risk.”

The U.S. may not like this, but it is legal under trade rules. This is irrefutable. In 1998, the Appellate Body found “zero risk” is permitted for an ALOP. This comes from a controversy between Australia and Canada over salmon imports. In the corn dispute, the U.S. refers to the case but not to its sections approving “zero risk” levels.

This is forgetful lawyering. Trade law treatises describe “zero risk” as a settled option and interpreted as such by later trade panels. Like legal encyclopedias, treatises summarize how legal doctrine develops, based on new rulings. Attorneys and judges use them to identify how courts and panels interpret legal rules. For ALOP, American lawyers fail with the basics.

The US underplays who actually determines the ALOP. Mexico does, according to the USMCA. Trade rules are explicit that countries in situations like Mexico have wide discretion to determine the ALOP. This is “unambiguous.”

Prior cases are clear. In 2008, the Appellate Body said a country employing a food safety measure has the “prerogative” to determine the ALOP. This involved an American challenge to European Union (EU) controls of hormones in beef.

Second, the US exaggerates requirements in evaluating food safety, called “risk assessment.” Risk assessments are “evaluation[s] of the potential for adverse effects on human health.” This definition comes from the SPS Agreement and is incorporated by the USMCA. Mexico’s assessment is titled the “Scientific Record on Glyphosate and GM Crops” published in 2020 and available since then online from the National Council of Humanities, Sciences and Technologies (CONAHCYT).

The U.S. overstates what is legally needed, to then characterize Mexico’s assessment as “incoherent and inadequate.” WTO cases find that risk assessments must only establish a “potential” for adverse effects. The Appellate Body confirmed this standard in the US’s first challenge of EU controls for hormones in beef in 1998.

The standard has staying power. Ten years later, the tribunal re-affirmed this requirement in the U.S.’s second trade case against beef hormone regulations.

The standard is a fixture of SPS doctrine. Recent treatises explain that for risks in human food, trade rules are deferential to SPS measures since “protection of public health is at stake.”

In its legal filing, the U.S. demands far more than is legally necessary. It calls for excessive proof. This includes “estimates of hazard, exposure, or risk” and “levels that can cause” adverse effects when eating corn. It faults Mexico for not proving that imported GMO corn “presents unsafe levels of glyphosate residue.” These are a few examples that veer from what international trade law actually requires.

SPS cases on risk assessments further undercut American positions. In the first beef hormone controversy, the Appellate Body explained that food safety measures must have a “rational relationship with the risk assessment” and that risk assessments must “reasonably support” this food safety measure. This U.S. must have missed these trade rules, since it asks for significantly more from Mexico.

Emotionally, the U.S. presents criticisms of GMOs as fringe and unacceptable. The filing says that scientific evidence provided by Mexico only “distract[s] from prevailing scientific opinion.” This is demeaning.

Trade rules are more based on reason. They do not require SPS measures to reflect majority scientific opinion. Lawyers for the U.S. should know this. In the first fight over beef hormones, the report explained that assessments do not need to “embody” the “view of a majority” of the scientific community. Then with a second American try, the Appellate Body added that scientific support is acceptable as long as it is “considered to be legitimate science.”

Where does this take us? With legal lapses in several areas, the U.S. should try to resolve its gripes with Mexico versus pursuing fruitless disputes. The commercial reality is U.S. corn exports to Mexico have dramatically increased since the Decree.

Be careful what you ask for, when it comes to trade rulings. It is 2024 and trade lawyers for the U.S. eerily face the same legal questions from 1998 and 2008. Then they concerned American beef exports. U.S. lawyers should re-read those rulings. Trade law is clear on ALOP and risk assessments. American farmers don’t need another trade loss, they need better legal advice.

The last time my wife took one of our pets to the vet, there was a cute little dog running around the clinic as if he owned the place. She asked about him, and it turned out that somebody had brought him in for a medical problem but then wasn’t able to pay the vet’s bill; they simply left the dog behind.

The cost of veterinary medicine has been exploding since 2020, in large part because that was the year private equity firms began buying up vet clinics across the country. Once acquired, the clinics and pet hospitals are drained of assets by some of America’s most morbidly rich individuals. The simple result: higher prices for pet care.

Most people think private equity is essentially the same as venture capital, the business/investment model you see on TV shows like Shark Tank. Venture capitalists invest their own (or their company’s) money in startup companies so the recipient company can use that money to bring a new product to market, expand operations, and generally grow the business. The venture capital investors make their return by the company growing and thus increasing the value of its stock.

Private equity, however, is an entirely different animal, borne out of Reagan era deregulation, lowering of capital gains taxes, and lobbying — facilitated by five Republicans on the Supreme Court legalizing billionaires buying legislation from members of Congress — that even created an entirely new income tax loophole called “carried interest” just for private equity managers.

In the truest sense, private equity represents capitalism run amok; what I’ve referred to in several books as “the cancer stage of capitalism.” The business model is somewhat complex, so most Americans have no idea what private equity is or how it works. I’ve tried to make it simpler with a somewhat imperfect but hopefully clarifying analogy.

Imagine this:

— Your next-door neighbor lives in a house worth a half-million dollars.
— Over his objection (in this imagination he can’t refuse), you buy the house for its half-million-dollar value, and then legally force him to borrow an additional half-million dollars.
— You then force him to give you the half-million bucks, so your investment in his house is now entirely paid off, but he is the one who’ll have to pay back the new half-million dollar mortgage.
— You also force him to pay you a “fee” of 20% of the value of the house for the “work” you did buying his house and forcing him to load himself up with debt to give to you.
— And you force him to pay you an annual management fee of, say, $50,000 a year.
— On top of that, you tell him that since you now own the house, he has to start paying you rent of $30,000 a year. But, because his name is still also on the deed, he bears all the responsibility for the place; if somebody is injured, for example, he gets sued, not you.
— As a result of the financial burden he now has (responsibility for a loan, his recurring rent, and the annual fee payments to you), he stops all maintenance on the house, lets the grass grow to weeds, and the electric and water get shut off because he can’t afford to pay them.
— You then use his failure to maintain the house as a legal excuse to force him to declare the kind of bankruptcy (Chapter 11) where all his assets are sold off and the debt is erased.
— He sells the house for a half-million, screws the bank for the $500,000 mortgage (ruining his credit, but not yours), and gives the entire half-million from the sale of the house to you, since you’re technically the owner.
— You’ve now more than doubled your money (while financially ruining him) so Republicans in Congress give you your very own special tax bracket; you don’t have to pay anything close to the capital gains or other taxes that a normal business transaction would generate.

Sounds nuts, right?

Here’s an actual example, documented by Brendan Ballou in The New York Times:

“Consider the case of the Carlyle Group and the nursing home chain HCR ManorCare. In 2007, Carlyle — a private equity firm now with $373 billion in assets under management — bought HCR ManorCare for a little over $6 billion, most of which was borrowed money that ManorCare, not Carlyle, would have to pay back.

“As the new owner, Carlyle sold nearly all of ManorCare’s real estate and quickly recovered its initial investment. This meant, however, that ManorCare was forced to pay nearly half a billion dollars a year in rent to occupy buildings it once owned. Carlyle also extracted over $80 million in transaction and advisory fees from the company it had just bought, draining ManorCare of money.

“ManorCare soon instituted various cost-cutting programs and laid off hundreds of workers. Health code violations spiked. People suffered. The daughter of one resident told The Washington Post that “my mom would call us every day crying when she was in there” and that “it was dirty — like a run-down motel. Roaches and ants all over the place.”

“In 2018, ManorCare filed for bankruptcy, with over $7 billion in debt. But that was, in a sense, immaterial to Carlyle, which had already recovered the money it invested and made millions more in fees.”

The laws that allow this were created by the very people benefiting from it: they simply bought the legislation, using the legalization of bribery brought to us by five Republicans on the Supreme Court in 1978 and 2010.

The barons of private equity have spent nearly a billion dollars ( over $900 million) buying federal lawmakers since the end of the Reagan administration, when the so-called Reagan Revolution’s deregulation frenzy legalized the practices just described.

Private equity firms have run this same scam hundreds (perhaps thousands) of times in dozens of industries. I saw it up close and personal when Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital bought Clear Channel, the national radio station chain that Air America was leasing stations from in 54 major markets. I was broadcasting my program from a Clear Channel station in Portland, KPOJ, part of a five-station “pod” that included a rightwing talk station, a sports station, and two music stations.

When I first started broadcasting from the KPOJ studios, the pod of stations shared about, as I recall, thirty employees including a robust local news operation with, as I recall, about a dozen reporters and on-air talent. Bain bought Clear Channel and then forced the network to borrow enough money to pay back Bain their investment cost, then put the squeeze on the stations themselves to pay off that new debt.

Clear Channel eventually buckled under the debt load and reinvented itself as iHeartMedia, which then declared a $10 billion bankruptcy: Mitt Romney put millions into his money bin while shutting down Air America stations just in time for the presidential election he was running in.

The Portland pod KPOJ was part of was, by then, down to a handful of employees, the news operation was gutted, and most of the on-air talent had been replaced with national programming, much of it computerized via what’s called in the industry “voice tracking” (pre-recorded DJ’s announcing songs that are then played by a computer: no humans needed).

It’s not, of course, just radio stations. The private equity industry is, as you’re reading this, actively working to buy up and drain dry mobile home parks, healthcare in our prisons, hospital Emergency Rooms, and even apartment buildings. And, of course, those veterinary offices.

The consequences of this business model can be deadly. Private equity acquisitions of nursing homes led to an estimated 20,000 premature deaths (and made private equity managers billions) by bleeding them of resources, leading to deep cuts in patient care and facility upkeep.

Because they’ve been able to buy all the legislation they need to legalize their predatory practices — thanks to five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court and Reagan’s initial deregulation of the investment and banking industries — it’s all entirely legal.

In 1996, there were about 8,000 companies listed on the various public stock exchanges; today there are around 4,000. A big part of the reason why that number has shrunk so dramatically is that private equity firms have been buying publicly traded companies, loading them with debt, stripping them for parts, and then bankrupting them when there’s no blood left to squeeze out.

Brendan Ballou’s book Plunder: Private Equity’s Plan to Pillage America lays out in damning detail how this has come about. He notes that just the three largest US private equity groups now control so many companies they’d collectively be the third largest employer in America behind Walmart and Amazon.

Most of the businesses they own and have saddled with debt and fees probably won’t survive the plunder over the long term, he writes:

“Consider the following: J.Crew. Neiman Marcus. Toys “R” Us. Sears. 24 Hour Fitness. Aeropostale. American Apparel. Brookstone. Charlotte Russe. Claire’s. David’s Bridal. Deadspin. Fairway. Gymboree. Hertz. KB Toys. Linens ’n Things. Mervyn’s. Mattress Firm. Musicland. Nine West. Payless ShoeSource. RadioShack. Shopko. Sports Authority. Rockport. True Religion. Wickes Furniture.
“The list goes on. All these companies went bankrupt after private equity firms bought them. Some were restructured, often by firing workers or abandoning retirees’ pension obligations. Many simply no longer exist.”

Democrats in Congress are beginning to pay attention to these modern-day pirates, and several proposals are in the works to deal with them. The first, proposed in 2019 but yet to pass either the House or Senate, is the Stop Wall Street Looting Act, put forward by Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.), and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), along with Representatives Mark Pocan (D-Wisc.), and Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.).

In a press release, they noted that the Act is:

“[A] comprehensive bill to fundamentally reform the private equity industry and level the playing field by forcing private equity firms to take responsibility for the outcomes of companies they take over, empowering workers, and protecting investors.”

In Ballou’s book, he suggests that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Treasury Department, and Federal Reserve all have significant abilities to regulate private equity but have all failed to exercise those powers.

The Biden administration has taken some tentative steps (the first to do so in 40 years), but even a weak proposal to end the carried interest passthrough loophole that private equity owners use to cut their own taxes was diluted to the point where it vanished in the last budget Congress passed. The provision ending that tax loophole was, instead, replaced with a new and larger tax loophole for small and medium-sized businesses owned by private equity companies, giving them a whole new range of targets for acquisitions.

The last area being targeted by progressives in a few states and discussed at the federal level is to end the immunity private equity firms have from liability for actions the companies they’ve stripped take because of budget and staffing cuts.

When a group of nursing home patients tried to sue private equity managers for the death of their relatives caused by neglect in facilities that had been looted by those private equity firms, federal courts killed the lawsuits because technically the private equity firms didn’t “own and operate” the facilities. This obscenity also reflects post-Reagan changes in federal liability law put into place by on-the-take (mostly Republican) legislators.

Back in 1966 there was a hit song by Dr. West’s Medicine Show titled The Eggplant that Ate Chicago. The opening verse lays out exactly where America is today with private equity:

“You’d better watch out for the eggplant that ate Chicago,
“For he may eat your city soon.
“You’d better watch out for the eggplant that ate Chicago,
“If he gets hungry, the whole damn country’s doomed.”

Fully one-fifth of the entire American business landscape is now largely or entirely controlled by private equity, which is draining billions out of our economy every week to stash in the money bins of its morbidly rich owners. The CEO of Blackstone, the country’s largest at over $900 billion in assets, is Stephen Schwartzman, who took home $896.7 million in pay and dividends last year and $1.26 billion in 2022. Just one guy.

And, predictably, he's a GOP mega-donor and willing to repeat Trump lies (“We’ve got open borders with 8 million people coming over!”) while trash-talking President Biden.

Because of Citizens United, he’ll be able to help Republican candidates, including Trump, in ways that are almost as unlimited as the cash he drains from the companies he oversees. Generally, the industry loves Republicans (who take their millions and love them back) and hates Democrats (who want to regulate them to protect American companies and workers).

A recent analysis found that private equity acquisitions have led to over a million job losses in America during the past decade. More come day by day.

This has gone way beyond just making it more expensive to get your dog’s rabies shot, although private equity’s role in buying up and bleeding dry vet clinics is now one of the most in-our-faces examples of how private equity screws consumers to make its owners richer than a pharaoh.

Seventy percent of Americans are pet owners, so the echoes of private equity’s latest raids are now bouncing around the US media landscape with headlines like “ Vets fret as private equity snaps up clinics, pet care,” “Why Your Vet Bill Is So High,” and “Private Equity Vets Are Coming for Your Kitten.” One could argue that the industry has caused more puppy deaths than Kristi Noem.

Private equity has grown to become one of the major forces driving income and wealth inequality in America; they are actively making it harder for small and medium sized business to start, grow, and prosper; and they corrupt our tax code via legalized bribes to mostly-Republican members of Congress.

It’s beyond time their abuses are ended.

We owe an ironic debt of gratitude to Israel’s UN Ambassador Gilad Erdan for advancing the cause of the State of Palestine at the United Nations. By delivering a speech to the UN General Assembly that was so unhinged, absurd, vulgar, insulting, undignified, and undiplomatic, Erdan helped to secure a lopsided vote of 143 to 9 in favor of Palestine’s UN membership (the rest abstained or did not vote). But more than that, Erdan helped to clarify Israel’s tactical approach—and why it is doomed to fail.

Let us briefly consider the content of Erdan’s speech. Erdan claimed, in short, that Palestine equals Hamas and Hamas equals Hitler’s Nazi Reich. Erdan told the UN delegates that their nations support a state of Palestine because “so many of you are Jew-hating.” He then shredded the UN Charter at the podium, claiming that the delegates were doing the same by voting for Palestine’s UN membership. All the while, on the very same day as his speech and UN vote, Israel was amassing its forces for yet more slaughter of innocent civilians in Rafah.

Erdan’s rant rose to the level of venomous hatred and absurdity. Palestine would enter the UN as a peace-loving state, a commitment stated firmly and eloquently by the Palestinian Ambassador to the UN, Riyad Mansour (here at 23:44). “We want peace,” Ambassador Mansour declared unequivocally. Moreover, the two-state solution will of course not happen in a diplomatic vacuum. According to the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002, and reaffirmed by the Arab and Islamic countries in Riyadh last November, the Arab and Islamic countries have repeatedly pledged to support peace and the normalization of relations with Israel as part of the two-state solution.

Contrary to Erdan’s slander, the governments of UN General Assembly are of course not Jew-haters. Rather, they detest the Israeli government’s assault in Gaza, a carnage so vast that Israel is in the dock at the International Court of Justice on the charge of genocide. The same false charge has been made against student protestors who aren’t anti-Jewish but rather anti-Apartheid and anti-genocide.

The question then is what Erdan was actually doing making a speech that was so over-the-top that it could only serve to bolster, not reduce, the overwhelming worldwide vote for Palestine. Of course, he was doing what all politicians do in the social media age. He was grandstanding for his adoring 157K followers on X (formerly Twitter) and for supporters in Israel’s right-wing Likud Party.

Contrary to Erdan’s slander, the governments of UN General Assembly are of course not Jew-haters. Rather, they detest the Israeli government’s assault in Gaza, a carnage so vast that Israel is in the dock at the International Court of Justice on the charge of genocide.

At first, when listening to Erdan, I simply thought that the man was deranged, suffering from post-Holocaust trauma and seeing a Hitler lurking in every shadow. Yet such a view is naïve. Erdan is a highly experienced political figure, well-educated and well trained, and was in full control of a carefully prepared speech (which included a poster and shredder as props). My initial mistake was to think he was speaking to the rest of the UN ambassadors and to viewers of the proceedings such as myself.

The great difference of broadcast-era politics of yesteryear and the social-media era politics of today is that politicians no longer speak to the broad public. They now communicate almost entirely with their base and “near base.” Each person today receives a personalized flow of “news” that is jointly constructed by individual choices (which websites we visit), networks of digital “followers,” algorithms of platforms such as Facebook, X and TikTok, and hidden forcers that include the Intelligence agencies, government propagandists, corporations, and political operatives. As a result, politicians mobilize and motivate their base, and little beyond.

Erdan the politician, and his Likud party, have been fighting against Palestinians for far longer than Hamas has dominated the politics of Gaza, indeed for longer than Hamas has existed. Erdan grew up inside the party, from its youth wing onward, in a movement that has always stood stridently against a Palestinian state and the two-state solution. In fact, Likud has long treated Hamas as a political prop, a ploy to divide the Palestinians and thereby to fend off international calls for the two-state solution. As even the Israeli media report, Likud leaders worked with Arab nations over the years to keep Hamas funded, so that it would pose a continuing competition to the Palestinian authority.

On the one side, American voters, especially young American voters, are aghast at Israel’s brutality. On the other side, America’s geopolitical position is crumbling.

What, then, is Likud’s strategy as Israel increasingly isolates itself from the rest of the world? Here too, Erdan’s own political past ploys offer a clue. Erdan has been one of the Israel’s shrewdest and most successful politicians in building Likud’s alliance not only with the wealthy America’s Jewish community but with America’s Christian Evangelical community as well. The Christian Zionists ardently back Israel’s control over the Holy Land, albeit as a prelude to their Armageddon, not exactly Likud’s longer-term agenda.

Likud’s tactical belief is that the US will always be there, thick or thin, because the Israel Lobby (Jewish and Christian Evangelical alike) and the US military-industrial complex will always be there. Likud’s bet has always worked in the past and they believe it will work in the future. Yes, Israel’s violent extremism will cost Biden the support of America’s young voters, but if so, that will just mean Trump’s election in November, so even better for Likud.

Likud’s strategy relies entirely on the U.S. for Israel’s security, as the sole blocking force in a world community that is increasingly united and aghast at Israel’s massive war crimes, and in favor of imposing the two-state solution on an utterly recalcitrant Israel. Yet U.S. core interests—economic, financial, commercial, diplomatic, and military—are at odds with becoming isolated with Israel within the international system.

The Israel lobby will be hit by a pincer movement. On the one side, American voters, especially young American voters, are aghast at Israel’s brutality. On the other side, America’s geopolitical position is crumbling. Shortly, many European countries, including Spain, Ireland, and Norway, are expected to recognize Palestine and welcome its U.N. membership. Erdan may end up at the top of the heap of the Likud party, but Likud and its extremist and violent partners in the coalition are likely soon to hit the limits of their arrogance, violence, and cruelty.

I’ve been watching global trends for a few decades, and have never before seen so many warning lights flash at once. That’s just one reason I’ve concluded that, as of 2024, humanity is at a make-or-break crossroads in its economic, social, and environmental history.

Let’s take a quick look at those warning lights, and see if we can grasp why so many risks are converging at once.

Things Are Deteriorating Fast

Nearly everyone knows that the climate is heating up. But a flurry of alarming recent studies about rapidly warming oceans, climate feedbacks, and tipping points suggest that the rate of warming is suddenly accelerating. Last year was the warmest on record “by far” according to NASA, with the global average temperature leaping above the next-warmest year, 2016, by an unprecedented 0.27 degree F (0.15 degree C). And it’s been revealed that the international community of climate experts, rather than fear-mongering, has actually downplayed the severity of the crisis.

Democracy globally is on life support, most notably in the U.S., but also Britain, Europe, and India.

For years the oceans have been devastated by plastics pollution, overfishing, and the expansion of “dead zones” resulting from fertilizer runoff. But oceans also absorb most of the energy from global warming. Just within the past few months, ocean heating has accelerated dramatically, with temperature records being shattered literally every day.

At the same time, armed conflicts have erupted in Europe and the Middle East. Far from showing signs of resolving themselves, these wars now threaten to intensify, drawing in more countries and combatants. Old alliances are fraying and shifting, make this one of the most perilous moments for global geopolitics in decades.

The global economy is also on a precipice. It’s always volatile, because it rests on an inherently unsteady foundation of shifting relations between natural resource extraction, energy, technology, investment, and labor. The modern economy has come to depend on perpetual growth in order to repay debt, and growth has been enabled primarily by the use of fossil fuels. Those fuels now typically require more extraction effort, due to the ongoing depletion of high-quality conventional resources. The economy has made up for the declining efficiency of its main energy sources by increasingly using debt to fund growth. Recently, total global debt, public and private, has hit a new record, both in terms of dollar amount and (for less industrialized nations) as a percentage of GDP. Meanwhile, the economy faces extraordinary headwinds, including climate impacts, energy challenges inherent in efforts to decarbonize industries, and a new tech revolution centered on artificial intelligence (AI). Technology revolutions are always transformative, but AI is potentially a wrecking ball for both industries and jobs. Tech entrepreneurs love the word “disrupt”; however, disruption on this scale and speed is treacherous.

One of the likely impacts of both AI and climate change is increasing economic Inequality. Over the past few decades, income inequality has risen in wealthy economies and rapidly industrializing economies, which together account for about two-thirds of the world’s population and 85 percent of global GDP. This increase in wealth disparity has been particularly acute in the United States, China, India, and Russia.

A typical macrosocial effect of rising inequality is the destabilization of governance institutions. In democratic societies, extreme inequality erodes trust in leadership and paves the way for takeovers by authoritarian regimes. Political polarization is also driven by conspiracy theories and lack of consensus among major news outlets about basic facts such as election results. As AI begins to ramp up the volume and sophistication of fake news, public consensus may become ever harder to achieve or maintain. Altogether, democracy globally is on life support, most notably in the U.S., but also Britain, Europe, and India. Even in already authoritarian countries like Russia and China, rulers face new challenges from persecuted ethnic minorities, popular dissent, and rival political factions.

We’re also seeing a sea change in the relatively slow-moving realm of demographics. For decades, world population has increased. The percentage rate of growth peaked in the 1970s, but the absolute number of people added per year has continued to hover at around 80 million. The number of humans alive is probably still increasing. But fertility rates are now falling rapidly nearly everywhere—not because everyone has suddenly realized that the world is overpopulated, or because most people have gotten rich (the “demographic transition”), but increasingly because young would-be parents around the world fear for the future and don’t expect to be able to afford to raise children.

Humanity has seen dramatic changes in the past century—world wars, pandemics, the introduction of new technologies, and the growth of new industries. Human population more than doubled, and the world’s geopolitical map was redrawn several times. However, the developments described above, taken together, suggest that the pace of change is about to explode; that change will, in many instances, be destructive to bedrock human institutions; and that change will increasingly elude human efforts to direct or control it. Longstanding growth trends will reverse themselves, making past experience a poor guide for adaptation to unexpected and often frightening ecological, political, and economic events.

And it’s all coming to a head now—i.e., roughly in the period from 2024 through 2030.

We’re Not the Only Ones Who See It This Way

The word “polycrisis” became a buzzword in 2023, and, during the last couple of years, a network of think tanks has sprung up to study the confluence of worrisome global trends. Post Carbon Institute is part of that network, and we’ve contributed to the literature on the polycrisis (in a long-form report and a shorter summary article, as well as other articles and podcasts).

However, we do see things a little differently from some who use the term. Many seem to think the polycrisis is just a rough patch in the inevitable evolution of larger, more powerful, and more technologically sophisticated societies. Human groups have always had problems, say these macro-optimists, but eventually challenges are overcome. In this view, the source of the polycrisis has a lot to do with increasing human connectivity: old problems (geopolitical rivalries, financial panics, and ecological issues) are rebounding on each other faster than before. Humanity just needs to find ways to speed up its responses.

I try to maintain both a systems-oriented view and a deep historical view of the world situation. From these perspectives, the growth trends of the past century are inherently unsustainable. They arose from a series of prior developments (innovations in metallurgy and finance, the introduction of fuel-burning technologies like heat engines, and European colonialism)—but especially the increasing use of fossil fuels. The early results of growth, in the forms of increased wealth and mobility, expanding food production, and rising population numbers, appeared miraculous. However, fuel-based growth is intrinsically self-limiting because of the finite size of nature’s resource base and waste sinks. Increasing consumption and population merely accelerates our overshoot of Earth’s long-term environmental carrying capacity for humans.

I try to maintain both a systems-oriented view and a deep historical view of the world situation. From these perspectives, the growth trends of the past century are inherently unsustainable.

The most important pioneering work in global systems analysis was the “Limits to Growth” computer-based system dynamics project undertaken at MIT in the early 1970s and updated several times since (most recently in 2023). The goal of the project was not to produce a forecast of future events, but to provide a set of scenarios showing likely interactions between resource depletion, pollution, industrial output, food production, and population. The actual evolution of these societal growth drivers, inputs, and outputs has generally followed the “standard run” scenario, in which growth trends continue until the early-to-middle decades of 21st century, but then reverse themselves, initiating decades of decline.

From my perspective, the polycrisis can be seen as an expected foreshock of peaks in resource availability, industrial output, population, and food production. As growth sputters, economic, ecological, and political events will present disturbing surprises on a nearly daily basis.

One of the defining characteristics of a polycrisis, by all accounts, and one of the sources of its surprises, is the increasingly chaotic interactions between system drivers and outputs. For example, as the climate heats up and triggers worsening droughts, heat waves, and storms, resulting waves of refugees will seek to move to places less affected. But rising immigration sometimes leads to more political polarization in host nations, which in turn makes consensus on climate action harder to achieve.

Another example: many efforts to reduce the severity of climate change involve building more renewable energy generation capacity while electrifying industries. The amount of new infrastructure that would be needed in order to phase out fossil fuels altogether, while providing the same energy services as today, would be vast. Building that infrastructure will take energy and raw materials, which will in turn entail mining and transport. So, ironically, efforts to solve one environmental problem (climate change) will likely worsen others (resource depletion and habitat destruction).

These sorts of complex interactions make for wicked problems—i.e., ones whose solution requires sacrificing something that society currently holds dear, or ones that generate still more problems.

The polycrisis marks a historic inflection point in the story of civilization. Once we’re past a rapidly approaching moment, society won’t be able to maintain business as usual, even with significant reforms. The economy will behave according to new rules. Solutions will backfire. And few people will understand why all of this is happening.

New Context, New Strategies

Understanding is vital if we are to avert the worst likely outcomes and lay the groundwork for sustainable societies in the future. Preventing harm requires us to anticipate coming shocks to our communities as much as we can, both so that we can protect ourselves and our loved ones, and so we can promote and model more sustainable ways of living.

Given the momentum of events, it’s easy to become fatalistic, and to conclude that nothing we do matters. But, in fact, there’s much we can do to adapt positively to the polycrisis. More than ever before, it’s important to undertake strategic efforts to save nature and culture. We can do that by identifying and pursuing “no regrets” (or “multisolving”) strategies such as restoring nature as a way to capture and store carbon.

Given the momentum of events, it’s easy to become fatalistic, and to conclude that nothing we do matters. But, in fact, there’s much we can do to adapt positively to the polycrisis.

At the core personal level, we all yearn to find meaning in what’s happening, and to make our lives a contribution to others, rather than a burden. That requires finding our place within the networks of restorative thinkers and activists around the world, and finding our unique voice.

Sometimes it means learning more about what’s going wrong, without jumping immediately to the first “solution” that presents itself. As Donna Haraway puts it, we must “stay with the trouble.” That’s often uncomfortable, and it’s why many people merely seek escape—which usually takes the form of either fatalism or techno-optimism.

Fatalism is certainly no help. It just leads to depression and irrelevance.

More people take the route of techno-optimism, but that’s typically just a path to delusion, since it rests on a mis-diagnosis of the polycrisis. Our essential human problem is not that we’ve somehow chosen the wrong (i.e., fossil-fuel based) set of technologies, while another set (that’s renewable-energy based) will fix everything. Our problem is that a momentary energy bonanza has enabled humanity to grow its population and consumption levels far beyond what’s sustainable long-term. The only real solution will be for humanity to inhabit the planet differently. That will require vision, persuasion, and time; and the adaptation process will have to proceed in the context of societal and ecological breakdown.

We’re here for the journey, like it or not, so let’s stay with the trouble, understand as much of the situation and its possible remedies as we can, and do what we can to minimize the suffering of humanity and other species now and throughout the period of polycrisis and adaptation.

On May 8, 2024, as Israel escalated its brutal assault on Rafah, President Biden announced that he had “paused” a delivery of 1,700 500-pound and 1,800 2,000-pound bombs, and threatened to withhold more shipments if Israel went ahead with its full-scale invasion of Rafah.

The move elicited an outcry from Israeli officials (National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir tweeted “Hamas loves Biden”), as well as Republicans, staunch anti-Palestinian Democrats and pro-Israel donors. Republicans immediately prepared a bill entitled the Israel Security Assistance Support Act to prohibit the administration from withholding military aid to Israel.

Many people have been asking the U.S. to halt weapons to Israel for seven months, and of course Biden’s move comes too late for 35,000 Palestinians who have been killed in Gaza, mainly by American weapons.

Lest one think the administration is truly changing its position, two days after announcing the pause, the State Department released a convoluted report saying that, although it is reasonable to “assess” that U.S. weapons have been used by Israeli forces in Gaza in ways that are “inconsistent” with international humanitarian law, and although Israel has indeed delayed or had a negative effect on the delivery of aid to Gaza (which is illegal under U.S. law), Israel’s assurances regarding humanitarian aid and compliance with international humanitarian law are “credible and reliable.”

Today, the United States is instead, shamefully, the Arsenal of Genocide, providing 70% of the imported weapons Israel is using to obliterate Gaza and massacre its people.

By this absurd conclusion, the Biden administration has given itself a green light to keep sending weapons and Israel a flashing one to keep committing war crimes with them.

In any event, as Colonel Joe Bicino, a retired U.S. artillery officer, told the BBC, Israel can “level” Rafah with the weapons it already has. The paused shipment is “somewhat inconsequential,” Bicino said, “a little bit of a political play for people in the United States who are… concerned about this.” A U.S. official confirmed to the Washington Post that Israel has enough weapons already supplied by the U.S. and other allies to go ahead with the Rafah operation if it chooses to ignore U.S. qualms.

The paused shipment really has to be seen in the context of the arsenal with which the U.S. has equipped its Middle Eastern proxy over many decades.

A Deluge of American Bombs

During the Second World War, the United States proudly called itself the “Arsenal of Democracy,” as its munitions factories and shipyards produced an endless supply of weapons to fight the genocidal government of Germany. Today, the United States is instead, shamefully, the Arsenal of Genocide, providing 70% of the imported weapons Israel is using to obliterate Gaza and massacre its people.

As Israel assaults Rafah, home to 1.4 million displaced people, including at least 600,000 children, most of the warplanes dropping bombs on them are F-16s, originally designed and manufactured by General Dynamics, but now produced by Lockheed Martin in Greenville, South Carolina. Israel’s 224 F-16s have long been its weapon of choice for bombing militants and civilians in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria.

Israel also has 86 Boeing F-15s, which can drop heavier bombs, and 39 of the latest, most wastefully expensive fighter-bombers ever, Lockheed Martin’s nuclear-capable F-35s, with another 36 on order. The F-35 is built in Fort Worth, Texas, but components are manufactured all over the U.S. and in allied countries, including Israel. Israel was the first country to attack other countries with F-35s, in violation of U.S. arms export control laws, reportedly using them to bomb Syria, Egypt and Sudan.

As these fleets of U.S.-made warplanes began bombing Gaza in October 2023, their fifth major assault since 2008, the U.S. began rushing in new weapons. By December 1, 2023, it had delivered 15,000 bombs and 57,000 artillery shells.

The U.S. supplies Israel with all sizes and types of bombs, including 285-pound GBU-39 small diameter glide bombs, 500-pound Mk 82s, 2,000-pound Mk 84s and BLU-109 “bunker busters,” and even massive 5,000-pound GBU-28 bunker-busters, which Israel reportedly used in Gaza in 2009.

General Dynamics is the largest U.S. bomb manufacturer, making all these models of bombs. Most of them can be used as “precision” guided bombs by attaching Raytheon and Lockheed Martin’s Paveway laser guidance system or Boeing’s JDAM (Joint Direct Attack Munitions) GPS-based targeting system.

Little more than half of the bombs Israel has dropped on Gaza have been “precision” ones, because, as targeting officers explained to +972 magazine, their Lavender AI system generates thousands of targets who are just suspected rank-and-file militants, not senior commanders. Israel does not consider it worth “wasting” expensive precision munitions to kill these people, so it uses only “dumb” bombs to kill them in their homes—obliterating their families and neighbors in the process.

In order to threaten and bomb its more distant neighbors, such as Iran, Israel depends on its seven Lockheed Martin KC-130H and seven Boeing 707 in-air refueling tankers, with four new, state-of-the-art Boeing KC46A tankers to be delivered in late 2025 for over $220 million each.

Ground force weapons

Another weapon of choice for killing Palestinians are Israel’s 48 Boeing Apache AH64 attack helicopters, armed with Lockheed Martin’s infamous Hellfire missiles, General Dynamics’ Hydra 70 rockets and Northrop Grumman’s 30 mm machine guns. Israel also used its Apaches to kill and incinerate a still unknown number of Israelis on October 7, 2023—a tragic day that Israel and the U.S. continue to exploit as a false pretext for their own violations of international humanitarian law and of the Genocide Convention.

Israel’s main artillery weapons are its 600 Paladin M109A5 155 mm self-propelled howitzers, which are manufactured by BAE Systems in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. To the layman, a self-propelled howitzer looks like a tank, but it has a bigger, 155 mm gun to fire at longer range.

Israel assembles its 155 mm artillery shells from U.S.-made components. One of the first two U.S. arms shipments that the administration notified Congress about after October 7 was to resupply Israel with artillery shell components valued at $147.5 million.

Israel also has 48 M270 multiple rocket launchers. They are a tracked version of the HIMARS rocket launchers the U.S. has sent to Ukraine, and they fire the same rockets, made by Lockheed Martin. U.S. Marines used the same rockets in coordination with U.S. airstrikes to devastate Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq, in 2017. M270 launchers are no longer in production, but BEA Systems still has the facilities to produce them.

Israel makes its own Merkava tanks, which fire U.S.-made tank shells, and the State Department announced on December 9, 2023, that it had notified Congress of an “emergency” shipment of 14,000 120 mm tank shells worth $106 million to Israel.

U.S. shipments of artillery and tank shells, and dozens of smaller shipments that it did not report to Congress (because each shipment was carefully calibrated to fall below the statutory reporting limit of $100 million), were paid for out of the $3.8 billion in military aid that the United States gives Israel each year.

In April, Congress passed a new war-funding bill that includes about $14 billion for additional weapons. Israel could afford to pay for these weapons itself, but then it could shop around for them, which might erode the U.S. monopoly on supplying so much of its war machine. That lucrative monopoly for U.S. merchants of death is clearly more important to Members of Congress than fully funding Head Start or other domestic anti-poverty programs, which they routinely underfund to pay for weapons and wars.

Israel has 500 FMC-built M113 armored personnel carriers and over 2,000 Humvees, manufactured by AM General in Mishawaka, Indiana. Its ground forces are armed with several different types of U.S. grenade launchers, Browning machine-guns, AR-15 assault rifles, and SR-25 and M24 SWS sniper rifles, all made in the USA, as is the ammunition for them.

For many years, Israel’s three Sa’ar 5 corvettes were its largest warships, about the size of frigates. They were built in the 1990s by Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Mississippi, but Israel has recently taken delivery of four larger, more heavily-armed, German-built Sa’ar 6 corvettes, with 76 mm main guns and new surface-to-surface missiles.

Gaza Encampments Take On the Merchants of Death

The United States has a long and horrific record of providing weapons to repressive regimes that use them to kill their own people or attack their neighbors. Martin Luther King called the U.S. government “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world,” and that has not changed since he said it in 1967, a year to the day before his assassination.

In addition to demanding a ceasefire, an end to U.S. military aid and weapons sales to Israel, and a restoration of humanitarian aid to Gaza, the students occupying college campuses across our country are right to call on their institutions to divest from these merchants of death, as well as from Israeli companies.

Many of the huge U.S. factories that produce all these weapons are the largest employers in their regions or even their states. As President Eisenhower warned the public in his farewell address in 1960, “This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry” has led to “the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.”

So, in addition to demanding a ceasefire, an end to U.S. military aid and weapons sales to Israel, and a restoration of humanitarian aid to Gaza, the students occupying college campuses across our country are right to call on their institutions to divest from these merchants of death, as well as from Israeli companies.

The corporate media has adopted the line that divestment would be too complicated and costly for the universities to do. But when students set up an encampment at Trinity College in Dublin, in Ireland, and called on it to divest from Israeli companies, the college quickly agreed to their demands. Problem solved, without police violence or trying to muzzle free speech. Students have also won commitments to consider divestment from U.S. institutions, including Brown, Northwestern, Evergreen State, Rutgers and the Universities of Minnesota and Wisconsin.

While decades of even deadlier U.S. war-making in the greater Middle East failed to provoke a sustained mass protest movement, the genocide in Gaza has opened the eyes of many thousands of young people to the need to rise up against the U.S. war machine.

The gradual expulsion and emigration of Palestinians from their homeland has created a huge diaspora of young Palestinians who have played a leading role in organizing solidarity campaigns on college campuses through groups like Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). Their close links with extended families in Palestine have given them a visceral grasp of the U.S. role in this genocide and an authentic voice that is persuasive and inspiring to other young Americans.

Now it is up to Americans of all ages to follow our young leaders and demand not just an end to the genocide in Palestine, but also a path out of our country’s military madness and the clutches of its deeply entrenched MICIMATT (military-industrial-congressional-intelligence-media- academia-think-tank) complex, which has inflicted so much death, pain and desolation on so many of our neighbors for so long, from Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan to Vietnam and Latin America.

Because of the full-scale war against Ukraine, the EU is now actively seeking to reduce its reliance on Russian LNG suppliers, including Novatek. However, some vested corporations with continued interests in doing LNG business with Russia propel the scare that supposedly China can save Novatek from US/EU sanctions if the Western export route for Russian LNG is closed. This is categorically false and misleading for several economic and political reasons.

From a superficial first glance, China, undeniably a major LNG consumer, might seem like a natural savior for Novatek among impeding Western sanctions. However, unlike Europe’s historically high gas prices in 2022, which benefited Novatek, the Chinese market is known for being fiercely competitive, with much lower average gas/LNG prices. Unlike Europe where Russians could in the past act in a seller's market, China has always ensured that it has a plethora of piped and LNG suppliers (Central Asian states, Burma, various LNG suppliers ranging from the US, Australia to Qatar and many others).

China imports LNG from more than 20 countries and Russia’s share is marginal. Australia ranks as the largest supplier with a 40% market share, followed by Qatar with 11%. Looking at the long-term LNG contracts announced by Chinese companies analyzed by Nikkei, Russia will not be one of the main suppliers either. It appears Beijing is more prone to sign long-term LNG deals with countries other than Russia to win some favors from Washington D.C., Doha, Canberra, and Kuala Lumpur based on balanced considerations geopolitically and energy-security-wise.

Billions of euros and dollars continue to flow to the Kremlin via Novatek as it still sends LNG to Europe and China. This hard currency provides a lifeline for Russia’s war machine and hybrid warfare which is now waged not only against Ukraine, but indirectly against Europe.

China’s National Energy Administration (NEA) has set the goal of ensuring that the self-sufficiency of natural gas supply should be no less than 50% in its annual policy papers. NEA and its officials have emphasized on numerous occasions that a sufficiently high rate of natural gas self-sufficiency is crucial for China's energy security and that it is a long-standing principle that will be upheld. This means that China's appetite for imported gas (whether piped or LNG) will not be big in the medium to long term. According to the China Natural Gas Development Report 2023, the country’s natural gas consumption was 364.6 bcm in 2022, while 217.8 bcm of it came from domestic production. This means that China's natural gas self-sufficiency rate was close to 60%.

If one just looks at the map, one could also see a problem with logistics. Shipping LNG to Europe from Russia’s Arctic projects is a relatively short journey compared to the vast distances involved in reaching China. These longer distances translate to higher transportation costs for Novatek, further squeezing profit margins.

Regardless of choosing the Red Sea or taking the Arctic route, the logistical and time costs of getting Russian LNG into China are much higher than for pipeline gas. This makes China inherently less interested in Russian LNG. Last summer, Gazprom made the first delivery of LNG to China from a port near St. Petersburg via the Arctic Northern Sea Route as receding ice sheets rendered the route more viable, but it still took nearly a month.

China’s LNG infrastructure is concentrated along its eastern coast, far from the major gas consumption centers in the north and central regions, making the journey longer for LNG tankers even when they reach China’s territorial waters. This necessitates additional pipelines or costly coastal transportation, again adding to Novatek’s LNG price tag. That is another reason why China has traditionally preferred to get mostly Russian piped gas rather than LNG as the gas fields that feed Russian export pipelines to China are much closer than Novatek’s LNG production sites.

In fact, all past track record for piped and LNG gas shows that China is using Russia as a sort of a swing supplier, on a residual basis and structures deals with the Russian counterparts from a position of strength, exploiting Russian logistical, political, and economic limitations and exposures. Moreover, for both oil and gas Beijing has always acted from a position of strength vis-a-vis Russian suppliers even at the time of China’s rising demand, combining commercial logic with security and political interests.

Which brings us to the point that not only China is skillfully using the market environment (buyer’s market) to its advantage, it is also carefully weighing its political and security needs which leave Novatek and Russians in general in a poor negotiating position. Unlike Europe, which was historically a seller’s market, keeping the upper hand and commercial rationale in negotiations is always following first and foremost Communist Party's line. Despite all the rhetoric on friendship, China has always preferred to keep all Russian energy suppliers—Gazprom, Rosneft, and Novatek—on a short leash where they had to agree to much worse prices and other conditions then they could get in Europe.

Meanwhile, China has developed much stronger gas relations with established LNG suppliers like Qatar, the U.S., and Australia not only because it makes sense commercially but also because the Chinese government wants to diversify their supply sources and routes of delivery and they see a benefit in having mutually beneficial projects in this strategic industry. These non-Russian players have well-developed infrastructure, cutting edge technology, and long-term contracts with Chinese buyers, making it extremely difficult for Novatek to gain a significant and long-term foothold. And importantly for Beijing, what these players don't have are massive western sanctions, technological lag, and harsh Arctic conditions with production centers on the other side of Eurasia.

At the end of the day big binding long term contracts—not verbal assurances of friendship by Chinese officials or Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) by Chinese energy companies—talk volumes of China’s actual scale of interest in Novatek’s LNG supply. The interest is there but as to a residual supplier, one of many “backup” options. According to recent Russian figures derived from the Chinese customs Russian LNG supply to China increased last year to 8 million tons from 6.5 year-on-year. Even if that is true, the way Russian propaganda is spinning it is an exaggeration, these are still small volumes for China (given its import requirements of around 90 millionn tons) and not a way to diversify from Europe. Thus, it is counterproductive and misleading for Western stakeholders to help Russia spin this as a successful ability for Novatek "to substitute the West for the East."

As for frequent exaggerated projections of Chinese future demand for Russian LNG from 2030, they are mostly not taken seriously by any independent and commercially minded investors in energy majors or other gas market players who mostly do not place their financial commitments beyond the 3–5-year horizon. The overwhelming number of long-term projections for supposed big demand for Russian gas have been traditionally exaggerated by select western corporate or institutional analysts. There are many reasons for that, but most important is a constant desire to exaggerate Russia's energy importance either by vested corporate and partisan interests in the West or by gullible but not knowledgeable outsiders or lobbyists in the press.

Given real limitations of the Chinese market for Novatek’s LNG and the potential for further sanctions, a full Western embargo on Russian LNG emerges as a much more effective strategy for both European energy security and crippling the Kremlin’s war chest. Full embargo does not require overly complicated measures. Industry analysis by Razom We Stand and Uregwald shows targeted sanctions against ice-class Russian LNG tankers and sanctions against the provision of shipping services, insurance, and any other financial services for the export of Russian LNG can alone choke all Novatek’s LNG exports. The past two years of reduced Russian gas imports to Europe already showed that the EU can easily survive without Novatek’s LNG and not upset its energy supply in any dramatic way.

Meanwhile, billions of euros and dollars continue to flow to the Kremlin via Novatek as it still sends LNG to Europe and China. This hard currency provides a lifeline for Russia’s war machine and hybrid warfare which is now waged not only against Ukraine, but indirectly against Europe. The EU is literally subsidizing the Kremlin via Novatek LNG to undermine its own security and democratic institutions. A complete embargo would not give breathing space for Novatek in China but in Europe it would positively accelerate EU’s diversification efforts away from Russian gas altogether. It would incentivize investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency projects and would significantly reduce income stream to the Kremlin, making it harder for Russia to sustain its aggressive actions against Ukraine and Europe. A full Western embargo sends a clear message: Europe will not be a party to Russia’s aggression, and it is willing to pay the price for its freedom and security.

When wildfires began erupting in the Texas Panhandle in February, Laurie Ezzell Brown, the editor and publisher of the Canadian Record, was in Houston on a panel discussing ways in which losing local newspapers represents a danger to democracy. Running the once-a-week Record from the Panhandle town of Canadian, she certainly knew something about the rise of “news deserts” in this country. While she was meeting with other journalists concerned about disappearing local newspapers, Brown kept an eye on reports about ignitions sparking wildfires west of her town and posted updates from afar so that her readers would remain informed.

“Those fires never stay in the next county,” Brown said grimly. And indeed, as the flames galloped through fallow fields and approached her hometown, she began a desperate drive back to Canadian with a friend. In and out of cell coverage, traveling through black-ash smoke, she saw distinctly apocalyptic scenes of torched trees and powerlines dangling from still-burning poles. As she went, she posted every scrap of information she could get for the scattered and distraught readers of her paper. How else would they know about the houses that were being torched ever closer to their own homes?

In the days that followed, as that historic nightmare of a blaze just grew and grew, finally burning through more than a million acres of the Texas Panhandle, Brown continued to keep Canadian Record readers informed about crucial matters like how to apply for financial assistance, where to take fire debris, and when the next embattled town meeting would be held. It was part of what she’s been doing since 1993: keeping an eye on Canadian’s Hemphill County commissioners, investigating economic salvation schemes, and posting high school sports scores as well as local obituaries.

“There’s no one else to do this and people need to know what’s happening. It’s what I do. It’s what I’ve always done,” she told me.

It’s what I do, too. Like Canadian, my adopted hometown of Greenville in Plumas County, California, was hit by a climate-driven wildfire in 2021 that devastated 800 homes and left the downtown smoldering on its Gold Rush-era dirt foundations. Two years into rebuilding, the only local online publication announced that it was shuttering. So, I set aside my freelance journalism career, joined a team of like-minded citizens, and launched The Plumas Sun.

Like Brown and hundreds of journalists across the country, we’re reporting from the intersection of news deserts and climate disasters. As floods, fires, and tornadoes surge, and daily as well as weekly publications collapse, local journalism maintains an all-too-slender lifeline in devastated rural communities like mine. Local journalists remain after the Klieg lights go dark and the national media flee our mud-strewn, burned-out Main Streets. We continue to report as our friends and neighbors face the challenge of rebuilding (or not).

Somehow, along with flattened towns and shattered lives, disaster sometimes even breeds innovation. Among the ruins left by walls of water and towering flames, bootstrapped publications like mine do their best to keep the news alive in communities now struggling just to survive.

Nowhere Will Be Spared

If there’s one overarching message from the Fifth National Climate Assessment, released in November 2023, it’s that, in this era of climate change, nowhere will be spared disaster. As the burning of fossil fuels warms the world ever more radically, conditions are created that only exacerbate a Pandora’s box of extreme weather events. Scientists predict more intense hurricanes and the storm surges they generate, more frequent and intense wildfires throughout the calendar year, an elevated risk for flooding, and so much else in the new era of global warming.

Still, as the climate scientists report, the impacts of such disasters aren’t landing equitably. Blacks, Indigenous Americans, and other people of color are bearing the brunt of them along with the rural poor. They are “disproportionately exposed to environmental risks and have fewer resources to address them,” as the assessment puts it.

For Laurie Ezzell Brown and her newspaper, that bureaucratese translates all too simply into hardship. The town of Canadian, perched on the high plains near the Oklahoma border, had suffered an economic hit to both its ranching and its oil and gas industries even before the panhandle fires. The Canadian Record was struggling. Launched in 1893, the weekly newspaper that Brown now owns spent half its life in her family’s hands. Ben and Nancy Ezzell, her parents, became its publishers in 1947. Brown took over in 1993. In March 2023, 30 years later, unable to find a buyer for it, she suspended publication of the Canadian Record.

It didn’t go well. Brown, who has lived in Canadian most of her life, got an earful. And she took it personally. “I had to see all these people who I’d let down every day. And hear them tell me how much they missed the paper, how much they needed it, how they didn’t know what was going on. I guess it just got to me.” She and a skeleton staff are, however, maintaining an online version of the paper while she continues to hunt for a buyer.

It’s a tough sell. After all, most disaster-struck rural towns are already on the economic edge. Lacking the resources that might shield them from some of the impacts, they now face the Herculean task of rebuilding from scratch with scratch. After a town is demolished, said Mary Henkel Judson, editor of the Port Aransas South Jetty, people leave and many simply never come back.

Judson faced disaster in 2017 when Hurricane Harvey blew the roofs off homes and tore businesses from their foundations in that island community off the Texas coast near Corpus Christi. Compared to Canadian, Port Aransas is affluent. The South Jetty enjoys the support of second-home owners and tourists, many of them birders visiting the island’s five sites on the Great Texas Birding Trail. So Port Aransas did rebuild.

It’s a simple fact that the majority of the newspapers that have folded nationwide are in economically disadvantaged areas. In Texas, they are also in the least populous areas, Judson said. Canadian is among them. When businesses are struggling to make ends meet, paying for advertising is an expense that can be postponed. That makes it rough on publications like the Canadian Record.

“Laurie Brown is one of the best journalists in the world as far as I’m concerned. And one of the hardest-working. That community knows what she does for them and supports her as best they can, but it’s tough,” Judson told me.

She knows what can happen without a newspaper — and not just in times of disaster. City councils, school boards, and special government districts meet regularly. Most elected officials are honorable, she adds, “but you’re looking at the opportunity for corruption to raise its ugly head. You put a kid in a candy store when nobody’s watching and things happen.”

Teaching Disaster Communities to Do Journalism

Local reporters and paper owners like Brown and Judson are now an increasingly vanishing breed. Since 2005, in fact, 2,900 American newspapers, mainly smaller weeklies and local dailies, have ceased publication, according to the State of Local News Project 2023 (produced by researchers at Northwestern University’s Medill School). One-third of them were in small counties. Today 195 of those mostly rural counties have no local newspaper at all or any other source of local news. An additional 1,387 counties have only one local news source.

As in so many other economic sectors, the trend is toward consolidation. Fewer and fewer corporations now own more and more publications. Brown describes it as “gobbling up all the newspapers, spitting them out, and firing the real writers.” The result leaves nearly 200 communities without a reliable source of information for everything from political scams to cribbage tournaments. And there’s more bad news ahead. Based on the higher-than-average poverty rates and the population size of those mostly rural counties, the 2023 report determined that an additional 33 communities are at elevated risk of losing their sole remaining source of news.

When Lyndsey Gilpin started Southerly in 2016, her goal was to fill a growing gap in reporting in Southern states. She was particularly interested in providing a regional outlet to cover environmental justice and climate issues. The decline in newspapers in the rural South is worse than anywhere else in the country. After all, 108 counties were already without a local newspaper in 2020. Yes, reporters from the national media sometimes “parachute” in to cover special events like fierce storms or raging tornadoes, but they tend to leave as quickly as they come.

Gilpin wanted to cover climate and energy issues in a more consistent way. Local news institutions are trusted sources of information in a community, often the only source. “We wanted to build deeper relationships with local news outlets, residents and community members who were living this day to day and doing the work to get information out,” she told me.

Southerly’s inaugural year coincided with a startling series of natural disasters. The United States suffered 15 devastating weather and climate events, each causing at least a billion dollars in damage, the second-highest number ever recorded. The South, in particular, was hit with tornadoes, wildfires, hurricanes, and three different major floods. Over the next five years, Southerly became increasingly focused on just such climate disasters.

Gilpin soon discovered personally what the assessment scientists asserted in their 2023 document: Disasters do not inflict damage equally. And adding insult to literal injury, the most ill-equipped communities when it comes to climate disasters are almost always ones without newspapers. “Folks were already struggling and now they don’t know where to turn, who to talk to,” she said. “That leaves a huge, huge hole for industries or politicians or other players to feed them misinformation or accidentally give inaccurate information.”

In response to the growing prevalence of climate-driven disasters, Southerly began developing tools that would help communities do their own disaster coverage. Gilpin built templates that outlined how to apply for aid and navigate paperwork, processes that are nearly the same for hurricanes, floods, or fires. “We morphed into a place that could train people to learn how to do journalism — to do storytelling in more creative ways,” she told me.

As those journalists began to focus on recovery efforts in places repeatedly hit by hurricanes like southern Louisiana, they reported on the effects of such disasters ranging from the disabling of the voting process to damaging disruptions in education. They also tracked disparities in disaster funding by neighborhood, economic class, and race.

As Gilpin put it to me: “The way journalism can do the most good is by making sure people are equipped to do that work. By understanding the process, they can feel confident about knowing what’s happening around them.”

Sadly, however, Southerly ended operations in May 2023, thanks to a lack of funding and fundraising exhaustion. As Gilpin summarized the situation: “The nicest way I can put it is the nonprofit journalism world is difficult. It’s not fair that all the money goes to a few places and not to other places.”

Covering Recovery

Even as the larger newspaper world is suffering blow after blow, the situation could be changing if ever so slightly for local papers. Growing public attention to America’s news deserts has, in recent years, been attracting at least some philanthropic funding. Press Forward and the American Journalism Project are among the efforts to rebuild local news platforms. The State of Local News Report celebrates 17 new local outlets at least five years old and identifies 164 others that are just getting started. All are providing their communities with reporting essential to democracy while searching for stable, sustainable business models.

It was certainly not the lure of foundation funding that gave life to The Plumas Sun. The driver was utter fear of living without a newspaper in a community in the throes of disaster recovery. The local century-old newspaper in my area, The Feather River Bulletin, had folded early in the Covid pandemic, even though it continued to maintain an online presence until July 2023. When it announced it was shutting down, shock reverberated through the small mountain towns in California’s northern Sierra Nevada where I live.

We had already lost so much: Our timber-dependent economy was declining and the spread of Covid had only exacerbated our isolation. But the most profound blow was the devastating 2021 Dixie fire, a climate-change-induced nightmare that scorched an area of the West the size of Rhode Island. It quite literally incinerated most of my town of Greenville and three other local communities. Nearly a million acres of the conifer forests that had once drawn so many of us to this rural outpost were reduced to charred specters. Now, we were losing the only source of local news that had kept us from feeling utterly disconnected from the rest of America and one another during such traumatic times.

The Plumas Sun was conceived in that hapless moment. One urgent phone call led to another until we had mustered a core team of seven with the skills to mount an online news publication. Just days before we launched it, we still didn’t have a name for it.

The two-year mark after a disaster event is a pivotal moment for community recovery, says Sue Weber, an ex-nun who served as coordinator of the Dixie Fire Collaborative, formed after that fire as a voice for the community. State and federal money starts to disappear. Victims begin to move on. That’s when local newspapers play a critical role in keeping places like Greenville invigorated and part of the rebuilding process. “For communities,” Weber told me, “it’s all about where we go from here. Nobody else is paying attention.”

Disaster trauma often shows up in ways that seem unrelated to the torching of entire towns. In the first months of covering county government, The Plumas Sun reported on a sheriff’s dispatcher charged with embezzling from a needy children’s Christmas fund and a county official filing a hostile work environment complaint against the district attorney. It has also posted news on local community suppers and library book giveaways, while offering kudos to people around the county doing extraordinary work. And, of course, obituaries.

“Connecting people is healing,” Weber points out. “Newspapers do that, too.”

Laurie Brown and Canadian are still in the early trauma stage in the scorched Texas Panhandle. Whether her Canadian Record or The Plumas Sun or any of the startups nurtured by Southerly survive depends not just on the whims of funding but on the grit and guts of local reporters. Brown, who is living on Social Security, shows no signs of quitting, despite all too many misgivings about the future.

“I’ve seen good things that didn’t happen because they weren’t encouraged. I’ve seen bad things that didn’t happen because they were exposed,” she says. “And I just keep thinking, you know, you can make a difference. And that still seems worth doing to me.”

The brilliant Palestinian Fayez Sayegh once wrote that when pro-Israel groups appeared to be at their strongest, they were only masking the fact that they were at their weakest. This is clear in the contrast of Israel’s sharp decline in standing among many demographic groups of American voters and the actions and statements by Congress and pro-Israel groups, particularly in evidence during the past week.

It’s an established fact that Israel has been losing ground in American public opinion since well before October 7th. Polls have shown that young people, Black, Latino, and Asian Americans hold somewhat more negative views of Israelis coupled with a rise in support for Palestinians. While Israel, in general, has retained support among Americans, the policies of the state are strongly opposed by majorities among all demographics, with most saying they want to cut US aid to Israel because of settlement construction and other violations of human rights.

During the past decade, in an effort to confront this, pro-Israel groups launched a multi-pronged offensive, components of which included: targeting and smearing both pro-Palestinian activists and members of Congress; passing laws in over two dozen states that penalized supporters of efforts to boycott or sanction Israel and in another dozen states to equate criticism of Israel with antisemitism; and a massive multi-million dollar “hasbara” campaign to improve Israel’s image in the US.

It’s clear that change is afoot. And so, in the face of their rapidly deteriorating position, pro-Israel groups have embarked on an all-out campaign not to make their case, but to stomp out their opponents. Their efforts are both ruthless and a threat to our democracy.

In the aftermath of the Hamas attack, Israel might have experienced sympathy for their tragic losses and made up some ground in lost support, but they squandered that opportunity with the sheer brutality and the wanton disregard for Palestinian lives they demonstrated in the months that followed. The results have only served to further weaken Israel’s standing among many groups of Americans, especially Democrats and key demographic groups that form its core base of support.

Still, Israel has been able to count on continued support from the White House, leaders in both parties in Congress, mainstream media outlets, and a majority of commentators and “analysts” who have remained receptive to the Israeli narrative of ongoing events. Biden administration officials have persistently defended Israeli behaviors, even when attempting to shift gears by suggesting that Palestinian civilians should be protected. There have been “leaks” from executives of major US television networks and newspapers telling their staff how to cover stories—what must be said and what may not be said—in ways that echo Israel’s positions. And statements by leaders in Congress have been especially shameful in their defense of Israeli actions.

Despite this top-down advantage, trouble is percolating from below. Israel continues to lose support from key Democratic constituents—young and “minority” voters—with that decline now also impacting support for the President. Much has been made of the precipitous decline in Arab American support and the more than one-half million voters who have so far voted for the Arab American-led “uncommitted” campaign in Democratic primaries. The problem is deeper. For example, a recent Washington Post poll shows a significant drop in President Biden’s support among Black voters, with his backing for Israel being cited by respondents as one reason for that decline.

The changing mood among voters toward Israel has taken an activist bent. Massive demonstrations have been held in most major cities. More than 200 local governments and major institutions, including major unions, have issued strong statements criticizing Israeli actions and calling for an immediate total ceasefire. Publicized statements by over one thousand leading Black clergy, another by the same number of Catholic leaders, most of the major Protestant churches, and prominent groups of young progressive Jews have also called for a ceasefire and for conditions to be placed on military aid to Israel. Sustained anti-war demonstrations on over 200 college campuses and, more recently, protest encampments at more than 50 colleges and universities have been led by students calling for an immediate permanent ceasefire and demanding that their universities divest from US companies supporting Israel.

Congress has also been impacted. While the leadership in both parties remain lockstep in support of Israel, a higher than ever number of Senators and Representatives have either signed letters calling for conditions be placed on aid to Israel or voted against pro-Israel legislation.

It’s clear that change is afoot. And so, in the face of their rapidly deteriorating position, pro-Israel groups have embarked on an all-out campaign not to make their case, but to stomp out their opponents. Their efforts are both ruthless and a threat to our democracy.

One pro-Israel lobbying group has earmarked $100 million to defeat members of Congress who have supported Palestinian rights. To understand the magnitude of this expenditure, note that at the high end a congressional election costs about $5 million. The $20 million they are committing to defeat Rep. Jamaal Bowman is obscene by comparison.

In Congress they are pushing national legislation that would equate opposition to Israel with antisemitism and result in colleges and institutions being denied federal funding if they don’t pass the test of pro-Israel purity. Legislation has also passed the House (but not yet the Senate) removing the tax-exempt status of institutions deemed supportive of terrorist organizations—with “support” being so loosely defined that it can include simply advocating for Palestinian rights.

Congressional leaders have also threatened the International Criminal Court with stepped up sanctions should they charge any Israeli leader with crimes. And they’ve expanded the ban on any US funding to support UNWRA.

Congressional leaders and pro-Israel groups have also been echoing the rhetoric of Israel’s Prime Minister in smearing the protesting students calling them antisemites (even though a disproportionately large number of them are Jewish) and equating their protest with the Nazi antisemitic campaigns that led up to the Holocaust.

Finally, these same pro-Israel groups are “exposing” and smearing foundations supporting the progressive Jewish groups opposing Israel, calling for them to be shunned by the Jewish community.

The ability of pro-Israel groups to push the Administration, Congress, and major media outlets to take one-sided positions, pass repressive laws, smear and damage the reputations of members of Congress or students who oppose them may appear to demonstrate strength. In reality, it’s a function of their weakness and the weakness of their case. Their far-reaching efforts to police speech and to penalize and crush those who criticize Israel and its policies are reminiscent of the McCarthy era. But because Israeli behaviors will not change, the critics, especially those within the Democratic Party, will not “go quietly into the night.” Instead, their resolve will harden—and may ultimately damage President Biden’s bid for reelection.

A common refrain from those who dislike student debt cancellation is, “Pay what you owe! You took out the loans; you should pay them back!” As a borrower and an expert on the student loan system, I am trying to do just that and failing. The student loan system is broken beyond repair and student debt cancellation is the only viable path forward left. Here's why.

After the pause on federal student loan payments ended in August and payments came due in October, I, along with tens of millions of people across the country, was forced to find a way to refit paying my student loan bills back into my monthly budget. It wasn't easy.

Our student loan laws are supposed to ensure that someone like me has a very easy time paying back my student loans. Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) assures that monthly federal student loan bills will be pegged to income and, then in theory, is affordable. Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) promises that if a borrower dedicates their career to the public good, their student debt will be relieved after ten years.

In what other consumer contract can one party mischarge the other party by an error margin in the thousands of dollars and get away with it?

Unfortunately, these solutions—IDR and PSLF—rely on profit-driven servicing companies and do not work in practice. Admittedly, President Biden has been working hard to improve these programs. When he first took office, PSLF had a 98% denial rate. Now, through broad program fixes, the president has already improved access to PSLF by nearly ten times. Similarly, adjustments he’s made to IDR have given millions more borrowers access to affordable payments and relief. Most recently, the president instituted the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan to make repayment even more affordable to more borrowers and stop ballooning loan balances.

Again, in theory, these system fixes should guarantee that someone like me who works in public service (and who happens to have specific expertise in student debt relief programs), should be able to repay my loans without problems. But as anyone who has ever engaged with the student loan system knows, there are always bumps in the road.

When it comes to dealing with the company currently tasked with managing the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, MOHELA, those bumps often turn into mountains.

Since repayment started back up, I’ve spent countless hours on the phone with MOHELA just trying to get enrolled in SAVE. MOHELA sent me scary notices threatening to increase my payments to $1100 a month if I didn’t recertify my income, even though the Department of Education explicitly stated that borrowers would not have to recertify until March 2024. Then MOHELA sent me two inaccurate bills for $1500, which should’ve been $268. Even worse, MOHELA tried to withdraw $1500 from my account even after they told me I was on an administrative forbearance. A new bill arrived with $2600 due in June 2024 since I “missed” my May payment, and when I called they finally agreed that until they could process my account I would be placed on an administrative forbearance until the end of July 2024. Now, apparently, my servicing company has changed, and I still haven’t received any notification from my new servicer that this change is taking place.

Meanwhile, ED just announced that it’s transferring the PSLF program away from MOHELA, and there will be a months-long pause on PSLF for processing. To prepare borrowers for this massive transfer, MOHELA told borrowers to “take screenshots” of their PSLF progress because the company does not intend to save their records. In other words, borrowers should expect mistakes and data losses during this process, and screenshots are our only suggested safeguard.

As college prices have skyrocketed, so has the lie that borrowing to get a higher education—no matter the cost—will pay off.

In what other consumer contract can one party mischarge the other party by an error margin in the thousands of dollars and get away with it? Because I help borrowers navigate the student loan system for a living, I knew to laugh at my $1500 bill and demand a correction. Most borrowers don’t have this advantage and too many pay the bill fearing the consequences.

As college prices have skyrocketed, so has the lie that borrowing to get a higher education—no matter the cost—will pay off. Maybe it once did, but it no longer does. Accessing the American Dream without a college degree is even more far-fetched. We’re being forced into a Catch-22 and then held captive to a profiteering, broken student loan industry with no way out. The fact is that lawmakers and policymakers have turned debt-financed higher education into a logical fallacy propped up by a very broken system. And borrowers pay the price.

Student debt cancellation is the way out.

Countless borrowers like me are still blocked from financial stability because of loans we took out decades ago based on false promises and outright lies. If I, an expert on the student loan system, have struggled this much to pay off my loans, the system is far too broken to be fixed with programs like IDR and PSLF. To reconcile the decades now of failures and lies, we must wipe the slate clean for the borrowers suffering today and cancel student debt.

Most Americans do not suffer from historical amnesia. The violent and repressive responses we are witnessing to antiwar college protesters are reminiscent of previous chapters of violence in America’s history. The American establishment has a long history of responding to calls for political change with violence and repression.

If our U.S. elected officials think we have forgotten what their predecessors did to Blacks, Jews, Japanese and other minorities in the country, we have not forgotten. We have not forgotten how people spat on a six-year-old black girl, Ruby Bridges, unleashing their rage, permanently withdrawing their kids from William Frantz Elementary or refusing to allow their kids to sit in a classroom with her for an entire year, simply because of her God-gifted darker skin color.

We have not forgotten how the American establishment treated black Americans when they simply asked to be treated like human beings in their own country. We have not forgotten how the American establishment unleashed dogs, billy clubs, whips, and tear gas on peaceful black protesters and their allies in Selma, Alabama in 1965, when they simply demanded their legal right to vote.

We have not forgotten how the University of Alabama suspended its first black student, Autherine Lucy, when a mob of white students physically assaulted her with rotten eggs, gravel, and pellets, while shouting “Lynch the ni**er!” and “Keep Bama white!” Citing safety concerns, the university first suspended her and then expelled her when she attempted to legally contest the suspension.

Irrespective of their party affiliations, the response of many elected officials to antiwar college protesters today is characteristic of a historical pattern of bending to the political will of those with power and wealth, even if it means brutally repressing American citizens for demanding that black and brown bodies be treated like human beings. These brutal responses conform to historical precedent; they are a manifestation of the way people of privilege behave when they are asked to share their privilege with others.

Words carry power, the power of inciting violence against innocent American citizens. The passing of time does not diminish the gravity and racism of the words of Alabama’s Governor, George Wallace, who infamously stated in his 1963 inaugural address, "In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw a line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say, segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever." In the days following Wallace’s speech, which was broadcast on all major news networks that day, the police began to beat down on black protesters and people began to night-ride and burn crosses.

The rhetoric of dehumanization and othering to justify domestic and foreign policies is endemic to U.S. history. During the height of the Holocaust, U.S. government officials played on anti-Jewish stereotypes to deny thousands of German Jews refuge into the United States. By hyper-focusing on one exceptional case, that of a German spy disguised as an asylum seeker to the U.S., government officials falsely characterized Jewish asylum seekers as a potential threat to national security. Although the case of 28-year Herbert Karl Friedrich Bahr was an exception, government officials, from the FBI and State Department to President Franklin Roosevelt, exploited this case to amplify existing fears and stereotypes of the Jewish people as a fifth column. At a press conference, President Roosevelt stated, “It is rather a horrible story, but in some of the other countries that refugees out of Germany have gone to, especially Jewish refugees, they found a number of definitely proven spies.”

The old-age tactic of playing on Americans’ fears and xenophobia continues today. Repeating an old playbook, U.S. officials are resorting to fear tactics to bypass Americans’ moral conscience on the Israel-Gaza war. On April 23, 2024, twenty-four male Republican Senators and three female Republican Senators released a letter that defamed and mischaracterized student protests as antisemitic and pro-Hamas. Instead of addressing antiwar protesters’ concerns about the use of American tax dollars to support a war that has resulted in the deaths of 34,000 people and undermined America’s standing in the world, elected officials have defamed and smeared antiwar college students as a dangerous fifth column, a security threat who warrant “deportation” for supporting terrorists. Despite the diverse religious and ethnic makeup of the antiwar protesters, which include Jewish students and professors, and despite the protesters’ repeated calls for an end to war and violence, the Senators’ provocations have incited real violence on the bodies of peaceful, American college students.

In the last few weeks, at Emory, UT, NYU, Columbia, OSU, USC, UNC, UCLA and other universities, we have seen state troopers and police savagely unleash violence on peaceful human beings simply for asking that Palestinians stop being murdered in the thousands. We have witnessed police officers body-slam professors, students and even journalists to the ground, using tear gas, and arresting students for “trespassing” on their own college campuses. At UCLA, police stood by and watched while pro-Israeli counter-protestors assaulted antiwar protesters, beating some with metal poles and launching fireworks, resulting in broken ribs, concussions, and other injuries. Worse, police fired rubber bullets at some UCLA students, injuring a few, and arresting more than 200 protesters.

In Texas, police and state troopers showed up in riot gear and on horseback and violently repressed a peaceful student demonstration at the University of Texas at Austin, arresting 57 individuals, including a Fox 7 News reporter. At Emory, police officers body slammed a female professor, flipped her upside down and shoved her head onto the cement ground, simply for standing up for students’ right to free speech. At Ohio State University, a sniper aimed a military-grade assault rifle at students from the rooftop of their own college campus. How are snipers on college campuses conducive to making students feel safe?

There is no room for antisemitism or any form of hatred or racism on college campuses. Yet, as one Jewish student at Yale wrote, framing the protests as “supposedly antisemitic pro-Palestine activists” against “Jewish pro-Israel activists” is misleading and inaccurate. These students and professors have repeatedly stated that they are sick and tired of seeing brown Arabs murdered on the screen, picking up their children’s body parts, losing body parts and starving to death. They reject that racist principle that the horrific deaths of 1,200 Israelis justify the deaths of 34,000 Palestinians. They stand for the patriotic and American value that every human being has an equal right to life, security, and freedom, irrespective of where they were born.

After Chicago police violently broke down a student encampment at the University of Chicago, one student protester summarized the purpose of their protests with the following statement, “There are limits to when we continue following orders. When you’re talking about a genocide visited upon a colonized population of 2 million people trapped in a ghetto that is long as a marathon and 6 miles wide, when that ghetto is being systemically starved, slaughtered, every hospital bombed, every university bombed, 70% of homes destroyed, 40,000 people murdered, 15,000 children murdered, the entire population at the brink of starvation, if our government and academic institutions are complicit in this, there comes at a point when we say we aren’t following orders…because there are principles and human lives that matter more than our careers and our futures.”

How can any genuine human being mischaracterize calls for an end to war as antisemitic? Those who frame American students’ call for a cessation of violence in Gaza as antisemites betray a racist logic. Their logic assumes that violence and war are endemic to Judaism or that Jewish people are safer as a collective by continuing the war on Gaza, which is farthest from the truth. Judaism has a long history of standing with the oppressed and marginalized, a reason why many Jews are leading the antiwar protests in the U.S. today.

A historically conscious discourse averts the scapegoating and fearmongering reflected in the GOP’s letter on April 23. Instead, we should ask ourselves as Americans, how do we avoid repeating the mistakes of our predecessors? How do we build upon the successes of those before us, who courageously dismantled structures of oppression and inequality? When do we recognize that violence destroys those who perpetrate it as much as those on the receiving end of violence? Because those who don’t lose their lives or body parts end up losing something even more valuable: their souls.

About forty-five years ago, at a social gathering, I asked an executive of a Minneapolis-based large food processing company if he fed heavily sugared cereals to his children. He smiled as he shook his head. Smart person. His and other major companies producing what is now called Ultraprocessed Foods (UPFs) had scientists and labs. They knew that ever higher doses of sugars, fats, and salts were being poured into nutritionally stripped foods and deceptively promoted to youngsters on kiddy television. They profitably ignored the serious damage they were causing!

These companies’ marketeers succeeded in getting these children, as my mother would say, to turn their tongues against their brains. The children were also shown how to nag their parents into buying junk food and drink. In fact, Madison Avenue advertising firms would give high ratings for ads “with a high nag factor.”

It was about 1980 when obesity rates started rising at alarming rates. Now about 30% of adults are obese, another 35% are overweight. Recently, a Goldman Sachs study estimated that by 2028 up to 70 million Americans will be taking the new weight-loss drugs, whose longer-term effects are yet to be known. Their apparent present success in suppressing extra food intake is already worrying the fast-food chains like McDonald’s that thrive on selling huge cheeseburgers.

It was also about 1980 when the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) staff and its leader, Dr. Michael Jacobson, were appearing in the mass media and on major national talk shows. They graphically showed the public the large amounts of fat, sugar, and salt that were in the hot dogs, potato chips, and soft drinks they consumed. Millions of Americans started changing their food purchases toward multi-grained breads and more fresh fruits and vegetables. Many people became vegetarians. But most consumers remained wedded to misleadingly promoted and greatly diluted UPFs, short on nutrition and long on harm to their health.

During recent decades there has been an increase in peer-reviewed scientific studies showing that certain foods you can easily buy in the markets can increase your life expectancy while others reduce your longevity. Long-time medical and science reporter/author Jean Carper boiled down these findings into a highly usable new little book titled, “100 Life or Death Foods: A Scientific Guide to Which Foods Prolong Life or Kill You Prematurely.” (See my recent column New Book: Choosing Regular Food to Extend Longevity, April 12, 2024).

On May 8, 2024 – the New York Times defined Ultraprocessed Foods (UPFs) as “using industrial methods and ingredients you wouldn’t typically find in grocery stores – like high-fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils and concentrated proteins like soy isolate. They often contain additives like flavorings, colorings or emulsifiers to make them appear more attractive and palatable. Think sodas and energy drinks, chips, candies, flavored yogurts, margarine, chicken nuggets, hot dogs, sausages, lunch meats, boxed macaroni and cheese, infant formulas and most packaged breads, plant milks, meat substitutes and breakfast cereals.”

The Times continued: “In a large review of studies that was published in 2024, scientists reported that consuming UPFs was associated with 32 health problems, with the most convincing evidence for heart disease-related deaths, Type 2 diabetes and common mental health issues like anxiety and depression.” Caution, not all UPFs are associated with these problems.

UPFs make up two-thirds of the calories consumed by children and teenagers in the United States. Still, the giant food companies are getting away with little regulation, especially for their heaviest advertising that pushes their profitable ultraprocessed foods. Have you ever seen TV ads for fresh carrots, radishes, celery, lentils, spinach, kale and asparagus? Unlikely. The mass merchandising ads go for foods, described by a report in the journal BMJ, as “designed by manufacturers to achieve a certain ‘bliss point,’ which causes us to crave and overeat them. They also tend to be low in nutrients, such as fiber, vitamins and minerals.”

We are behind other governments in our official dietary guidelines. Canada and Mexico recommend avoiding or limiting UPFs while the U.S. guidelines make no mention of them. Such is the dominance of giant agribusiness corporations over the indentured U.S. Department of Agriculture and the mostly bought members of the Senate and House Agriculture Committees.

This corporate interference also extends to constantly putting such UPFs into school lunch programs.

Absent taking over the 535 members of corporate Congress by 250 million eligible voters, we are left with parents and their children availing themselves of publications such as CSPI’s Nutrition Action newsletter to become smart buyers and consumers of safer, healthier, nutritious food. If you can, add a home garden to your food supply.

Some of these simple recipes, often called a Mediterranean diet, are in my “Ralph Nader and Family Cookbook,” (2020) with an introduction on how my mother educated us very early on to want to eat nutritious foods prepared to be delicious as well. She baked her own bread, cooked “from scratch” and avoided processed foods with unknown ingredients, such as hot dogs.

Our snacks were fresh fruits and vegetables, including chickpeas, munched while walking to school. For a sweet taste, we were treated to honey and maple syrup. We were taught not to whine because it wasn’t smart and didn’t get us anywhere.

Parents are protectors of their children. They have to be especially on guard to protect their children from pervasive direct mass marketing, using influencers, peer groups, and abduction of their youngsters into the Internet Gulag. The earlier in their child’s life that parents do their job, the easier it will be. Children so liberated can become active allies of Mom and Dad, showcasing their special knowledge. (See, “You Are Your Own Best Teacher! Sparking the Curiosity, Imagination, and Intellect of Tweens” by Dr. Claire Nader).

In the aftermath of Hamas militants' vicious attack in Israel last fall, anyone who wished could access video from Gaza, in real time, and watch avalanche after avalanche of American-made bombs, launched by Israel, killing hundreds of Palestinian citizens at a clip. More recently, one could live stream the opening salvo of what Israeli leaders hope will be the final phase of their operation to erase Palestine once and for all through a siege of Rafah and its already famine-weakened occupants.

Those nightmarish spectacles are disturbingly reminiscent of the massive U.S.-led, aerial assaults of Baghdad that kicked off the 1991 Gulf War and the 2003 Iraq War, respectively. Both were also televised around the globe. The 2003 broadcast, which came replete with a breathless "pre-game" show, may still be the most grotesque, slickly-produced prime-time-special ever aired. You could almost hear the cheers from fans of the "winning" side.

A bookend to this madness has been playing out on college campuses across America this spring, where students—many of them Jews of conscience—protesting against their U.S. government's subsidizing of mass murder in Palestine have been vilified by the mainstream press, much to the delight of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a disheartening percentage of both Israeli Jews and their diaspora, as well as a swath of jingoistic (and/or racist) Americans. Thousands of anti-genocide undergrads have been arrested, often heavy handedly; expelled from school; or both. Others have been savagely beaten by so-called counter-protesters—sometimes in full view of police. The small contingent of America's elected officials who've lent their voice to the students' cause have been roundly denounced by their peers. Some have faced death threats.

How does one account for the current celebrations of a growing body count of innocents and the accompanying rage directed toward people trying to end the bloodbath in Palestine? Here's a partial list: religious mythology, Zionism, the weaponization of anti-semitism, prejudice, a bastardized version of patriotism, politics, greed, self-interest, lack of accurate information, disinformation, and willful ignorance.

Those factors have been callously woven together. What follows is a summary, beginning with religion.

I was raised Catholic, but long ago aligned myself with the teachings of Buddhism and Jainism. Happenstance is the only explanation for why half my friends, colleagues, and family members are Jewish. Over the years, I've participated in dozens of their holiday gatherings, including sacred Passover dinners known as seders. For the uninitiated, seders are centered around the Biblical story of the Jews' arduous escape from slavery en route to their God-given destiny: their miraculous arrival at an (allegedly) available plot of desert land, on which they would make their home. During those reflective evenings, solidarity with all who've been subjected to oppression is expressed. Conspicuous by their absence, the words Palestine or Palestinians were never uttered.

While researching this piece, faithful attendees of those seders with whom I spoke not only confirmed my observation, they also stated that no such references were made during any seder they'd ever been to, dating back to their childhood. The formal establishment of Israel, which began with the impossibly hypocritical and violent evacuation of 750,000 Palestinians in 1948, was also neither mentioned nor taught.

How survivors and descendants of centuries-long oppression culminating in the Holocaust could choose ethnic-cleansing as a means of establishing their self-declared homeland, implement apartheid to sustain it, then top it off with genocide to solidify it—all while refusing to acknowledge, let alone condemn, any part of this hideous sequence—is beyond the scope of my understanding. So much for the credo "Never Again."

Another layer of religious influence, and one which is woefully underreported, is the tenacious backing of Israel by ardent Evangelicals, who fervently believe the shortest path to the long-awaited Second Coming is Armageddon. The best way to hasten the fulfillment of their doomsday prophecy, they surmise, is to foment an Israeli-Arab cataclysm.

One might reasonably expect that the persistence of antisemitism in the U.S. would diminish the nation's support for Israel. It might, if those with hearts already stained by prejudice didn't harbor an exponentially greater level of animosity toward people of color. Mix in the post 9/11 rise of anti-Arab/Muslim sentiment—lit anew by a certain ex-President—and the glorification of America's military, and you have the perfect elixir to recruit a "U.S.A.! U.S.A.!"-chanting militia hellbent on making life miserable for protesters asking for peace.

America's politicians, of course, play an important role in this perversion. Many still believe that, when it comes to choosing sides between the Israelis and the Palestinians, their grasp on power is largely contingent upon placating the former's special-interest groups. So, much like their shotgun marriage to the National Rifle Association, the bulk of them make nice with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

Nothing, however, has misshapen public perception more than the mainstream media. And there's no better example of this than its collusion to suppress the most accurate analysis to date of Israel's criminal acts—Francesca Albanese's report to the UN Human Rights Council, appropriately titled: Anatomy of a Genocide.

Stunningly comprehensive, the paper prepared by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories details Israel's decades-long, systematic destruction of Palestine. Among her painstakingly researched findings is that during the past seven months, Israel has committed at least three of the the five elements of genocide: (1) killing members of the group; (2) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; and (3) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part. Keep in mind, a party need only perform one of these unspeakable acts to be found guilty of the worst crime imaginable.

Given that Palestinian women and children make up the vast number of casualties, and that incessant attacks by Israel have effectively left survivors without medical care or adequate nutrition, a determination that Israel has violated a fourth element of the Convention—imposing measures intended to prevent births in the group—may also be forthcoming.

To the surprise of no one, conventional news outlets are financially incentivized to maintain cozy relationships with people in high places, satisfy corporate advertisers, and, when it comes to viewers/listeners, appeal to the lowest common denominator. So bastions of speaking truth to power they will never be. Rather, they'll continue to present whatever false narratives suit them best, which, in this case, looks something like this:

"The carnage in the Middle East is nothing more than a War between Israel and Hamas."

"They're not anti-genocide activists, they're Pro-Palestinian demonstrators (i.e., code for terrorist sympathizers)."

"Americans are more concerned with the disruption or cancellation of college graduation ceremonies than they are a mounting death toll half-a-world away."

Just to be clear, the news and information outlets constantly shoveling disinformation your way aren't only the ones resting on what some perceive to be the lower and mid-level tiers. The New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times have also been taking you for a ride in this life and death matter by dramatically skewing their coverage in favor of Israel.

If you're as mortified by all of this as I am, there are some things within your control. First, while trying to make sense of the world, always, always, always employ your critical thinking skills—especially when consuming content from the mainstream media. Next, if you don't already do so on a regular basis, make it a practice to avail yourself of information researched and delivered by independent news sources. Compare notes. It won't be long before you discover an array of reliably credible entities who unfailingly come down on the side of nonviolence, equity, justice for all, and journalistic integrity. Support them.

More immediately, if you truly wish to see an end to the bloodshed in Palestine, summon the courage to shout from the rooftop the truth about this genocide. Failure to do so is akin to engraving your name alongside those of the genocidaires on every American-made bomb that is launched and bullet that is fired.

The choice—one with which you will forever live—is yours.

Over the seven months of Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza, the United States has worked vigorously to offer maximum support for Israel while trying to give the impression that it is concerned about the massive loss of Palestinian life. The performance has been difficult to maintain, as virtually every American action contradicts the occasional words of concern for the devastation being fully abetted and enabled by American policy.

In recent weeks, political pressures have forced President Joe Biden to try to take more concrete steps to deter what he considers “excessive” Israeli actions. Such Israeli actions—which apparently do not include killing over 35,000 people; wounding over 78,000 more; completely destroying the health, education, and civic infrastructure in Gaza; and a daily flow of war crimes—raise concerns in the White House that Israel’s image around the world is becoming one of a genocidal regime and that image is reflecting on its American patron.

Rafah has become the focal point of this concern. Biden was prepared to support the horrors of the past seven months, but with some 1.4 million people stuffed into Rafah (an area that was crowded when it was home to 275,000 people before Israel’s onslaught), he realizes that a full-scale ground invasion of the kind that we witnessed in most of Gaza will cause a horror show that even Americans and Europeans—most of them, anyway—will not be able to abide.

Israel’s closing of the Rafah crossing; its assault that has forced over 100,000 Palestinians, who had already been displaced, many multiple times, to flee once again; and its devastation of an already devastated area does not meet the American standard of a “major ground operation.”

So Biden made a statement. “Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they go after population centers,” Biden told CNN’s Erin Burnett. “I made it clear that if they go into Rafah—they haven’t gone in Rafah yet—if they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities—that deal with that problem.”

Those words, in typical Biden fashion, were as clear as a muddy lake and left massive amounts of wiggle room for the White House to continue to arm Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. They also provided a roadmap for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to follow if he wishes to continue his genocidal campaign and not risk harming the one aspect of Israel’s relationship with the U.S. that Netanyahu cares about: the inexhaustible supply of arms.

Biden’s words are the latest in a series of statements and actions meant less to deter Netanyahu than to deter protesters and the voters who have been abandoning him in large numbers over his genocidal policy in Gaza. As we have seen over the past seven months, these words have, at best, pressed Israel to slow its genocidal attacks just a little and occasionally relent in some small, largely symbolic way, in its staunch efforts to block humanitarian aid from reaching the people in Gaza.

Problematically, those results may give the impression that Biden is trying to rein Israel in, at least in a limited way, but actually, they help support Israel’s genocidal program. By occasionally allowing a small amount of aid in for a brief period, Israel has a tool with which to fend off half-hearted Western criticism. And, by proceeding more slowly, Israel continues to move inexorably toward its genocidal goal, but because moving slower means slightly less horrific images, or at least fewer of them, Israel again keeps a debate going over its actions rather than making defending it completely impossible.

False Promises, but Consistent Policy From Biden

Months ago, the pressure was already starting to build. Democratic thinkers and pundits were wringing their hands over the “divisions” in the party. In the Senate, as many as 18 Democratic senators were pushing a bill that would have required all counties receiving U.S. military aid to abide by American and international law and included a regular reporting requirement.

The bill was specifically aimed at Israel, though it applied to all aid recipients, and Biden desperately wanted to avoid a vote that would show stark divisions among Democrats, even though the bill had no chance of passing into law. The man who had sold himself in 2020 as a “unifier” did not want such damning evidence of his inability to even keep his own party unified.

So, Biden issued a directive that required written assurances from recipients of U.S. military aid that they would only use the weapons in accordance with U.S. and international humanitarian law, and also included a reporting requirement. The key difference is that the White House would control this process.

We’re seeing the result of that key difference right now.

The memorandum Biden issued—National Security Memorandum 20, or NSM-20—was greeted with some cautious optimism and a good deal of skepticism. It did nothing to actually change U.S. law regarding the use of American military aid, but the specific reporting requirement might be hoped to bring the sort of scrutiny on how that aid was used that Israel has always avoided.

But with Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken driving the process, the prospects for real pressure were dubious. Israel fulfilled the first part of the memo, which was to submit written assurances about how it would use the aid. No need to tell the truth there. The proof would, ostensibly, be in its report two months later. That would be the test both for what could be done with the report politically by Israel’s critics and, more importantly, whether the White House was going to abide by its own laws regarding aid to Israel. Hopes for the latter were not high.

The report on Israel’s compliance was due to be presented to Congress on May 8. That day came and went with no report. State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller said, when asked about it, “It will not be transmitted today. We continue to work to finalize the report. We expect to deliver it in the very near future, in the coming days.”

The vague timing of the report is noteworthy, considering the State Department knew from the day Biden issued NSM-20 when it would be due and they’ve been able to make definitive statements about Israeli behavior pretty consistently ever since, including some minor criticism and objections.

The delay was even more notable as the due date was the very same day that Biden decided to talk to CNN and announce that he intended to withhold certain offensive weapons if Israel launched a “full-scale” invasion of Rafah.

Finally, the report saw the light of day just after five o’clock on Friday. This is what government agencies do when they need to release something publicly but want the least possible attention drawn to it. Unsurprisingly, according to initial reports, Israel was found to have “likely” violated international law and, therefore, U.S. law in its use of American-supplied weapons; Israel was also found to have been less than forthcoming with the required information; but Israel wouldn’t be punished since “Israel does have a number of ongoing, active criminal investigations pending and there are hundreds of cases under administrative review.”

Israel routinely opens investigations but, with exceedingly rare exceptions, those cases either remain unresolved or, more usually, they are simply closed with no action taken.

Performative Reports While Rafah Starves

The affair feels very choreographed. Last week, Biden held up a shipment of heavy bombs of the type that Israel has routinely been using to annihilate civilian sites in Gaza. After Hamas accepted a cease-fire and hostage exchange proposal, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stepped up both his threats toward Rafah and his ongoing attacks there, both in the air and on the ground.

That context tends to be missing from reports about Biden threatening Israel if it should invade Rafah. Israel has already begun its invasion of Rafah, but it has not yet stepped up that invasion to the horrific levels that have been seen in other cities in Gaza. It would seem that this level of firepower, killing “only” dozens every day rather than hundreds, is perfectly tolerable for Biden.

Israel has seized the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing and shut it down, cutting the area off from its leading source of aid. It also seals in critically ill and injured patients, who can only seek the medical care that is now unavailable in Gaza by going to Egypt. Rafah is the main access point for fuel supplies and most aid for the south, where the vast majority of Gazans are packed in. In other words, Israel is escalating its killing by other means, a tactic which also has the side effect of killing people who don’t get counted in the death toll statistics.

None of this rises to the point of stopping the flow of weapons to Israel, in the estimation of the United States government. When the State Department finally revealed its report on Israeli human rights abuses, it could not avoid being damning without completely fabricating Israeli behavior, something which isn’t possible given how many State Department staff members are already furious about Biden’s policy and the administration’s refusal to listen to anyone with actual knowledge of the region.

But the secretary and president cannot be totally ignored, and thus the report made excuses and found that, while Israeli soldiers and officers engaged in human rights abuses, they did not amount to sufficient grounds to suspend military aid.

Biden has laid out the framework, and it will work out just fine for Netanyahu. Israel’s closing of the Rafah crossing; its assault that has forced over 100,000 Palestinians, who had already been displaced, many multiple times, to flee once again; and its devastation of an already devastated area does not meet the American standard of a “major ground operation,” according to White House mouthpiece John Kirby.

That means Israel can continue these actions indefinitely as far as Biden and Blinken are concerned. This allows Netanyahu to wage a prolonged war, and, crucially, to massively increase the already considerable number of fatalities among Palestinians from curable disease, malnutrition, starvation, lack of access to medical care for chronic conditions, and other causes that are not included in death tolls.

This also illustrates the danger of the credulity of too many in the foreign policy community who were so quick to applaud Biden for changing his policy. It’s true the public pressure is having an effect, but it has not yet forced Biden to change his policy in a material way that would affect Israel’s behavior. His statement this week did not represent that shift, though it was at least an indication that sufficient pressure and enough Israeli obnoxiousness could bring it about eventually. The pressure must continue and increase, a fact that, while it may be lost on some in the D.C. foreign policy bubble, has not escaped those brave students and other protesters.

This Mother’s Day, children around the country are celebrating their mothers with cards, flowers, and brunch. But few likely remember that Mother’s Day originally started as a day for mothers to call for peace.

In 1870, in the aftermath of the bloody American Civil War, Julia Ward Howe, a prominent American abolitionist, feminist, poet, and author of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” gathered mothers to issue the Mother’s Day Proclamation, appealing to moms across national boundaries to take action toward achieving world peace.

On this Mother’s Day, as students across the country protest U.S. support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza, where two-thirds of all Palestinians killed and injured are women and children, women must revive the anti-war origins of Mother’s Day and take a stand against more war and violence.

One thing American mothers can do now is to call on President Joe Biden and Congress to urge Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept terms for a cease-fire, and withhold any more military aid to Israel until the fighting ends.

As a creative force, mothers must speak out now to counter the destructive force of war and violence. Mothers teach their children to be courageous, to speak up when there is injustice, to care for one another, and to resolve interpersonal conflicts with their words, not their fists. We insist now, as then, that our children were not born to fight and die in wars.

According to a May 6 United Nations report by the U.N. Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, of the nearly 35,000 Palestinians killed since the war on Gaza began, 14,500 have been children and 9,500 women. Three out of four of the 77,000 injured are women, 17,000 Palestinian children have been orphaned, and each day since the start of the war, an estimated 37 Palestinian mothers have been killed. As feminists, we must say enough is enough.

One thing American mothers can do now is to call on President Joe Biden and Congress to urge Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept terms for a cease-fire, and withhold any more military aid to Israel until the fighting ends. Every F-16 fighter jet, every Apache helicopter, every bomb that is dropped on Palestinian civilians is American-made and financed with U.S. taxpayer dollars. As Biden speaks of a “red line” around an Israeli invasion of Rafah—an invasion that, in fact, has already begun—American women must unite across race, class, and religion to insist an end to this carnage against Palestinians.

Women have long played a vital role in peace movements. During the height of the Cold War, Women Strike for Peace mobilized 50,000 women to march in 60 cities across the United States to protest nuclear weapons and the Vietnam War. Led by feminist firebrands Bella Abzug and Dagmar Wilson, they pressured the Kennedy administration to sign a nuclear test-ban treaty with the Soviet Union. In 2015, on the 70th anniversary of Korea’s division by Cold War powers, I marched hand in hand with Nobel Peace laureates Mairead Maguire and Leymah Gbowee, renowned feminist Gloria Steinem, and 10,000 Korean women on both sides of the demilitarized zone to call for a peace agreement to end the Korean War.

For many mothers today, their children are college students protesting the assault on Palestinians much like youth did during the Vietnam War and apartheid in South Africa. Today, thousands of university students have formed over 120 encampments on college campuses across the country to call on their universities to divest from Israel and weapons manufacturers. Students today are risking suspension, expulsion, and arrest to awaken us to the atrocities that our government is backing by continuing to send military aid and weapons to Israel.

At these encampments—racially and religiously diverse gatherings—students provide mutual aid, conflict resolution, and share stories from all over the world about liberation and democracy. What they have learned in the classroom has called them to take action. They are protesting the hypocrisy of their academic institutions preaching human rights while remaining silent on the war, and directly investing in companies that are enabling Israel to kill Palestinian children.

“This is not about Columbia,” Rashid Khalidi, Columbia University Professor of modern Arab history, reminded us, after students were forcefully detained by police. “This is the conscience of a nation speaking through your kids.” When Columbia University students occupied Hamilton Hall, as they did during the Vietnam War and South African apartheid, they renamed it Hind’s Hall in honor of six-year-old Hind Rajab, a Palestinian girl whose entire family was killed in a car by Israeli tanks, and who Israel willfully killed despite international cries for her protection.

As Israeli planes drop seemingly endless American-made bombs on Palestinian civilians, we should all be haunted by the words of seven-year-old Kareem, a Palestinian boy in Rafah who, when asked in an Instagram video why he wrote his name on his arm, replied: “So that when we are bombed, they will know who I am.”

At a time when the U.S. can send $95 billion more to Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan for more militarization and war but can’t seem to come up with $85 billion for the Child Tax Credit Act, which lifted half of our nation’s mothers and their children out of poverty during the Covid-19 pandemic, what message are we sending about whose lives are worth making more secure? Our young people are deeply wise as they scream for Palestinian freedom. They have learned the lessons of the civil rights and anti-war movements, and now it is our turn to listen.

Just as 154 years ago women anti-war activists gathered in churches, social halls, and each other’s homes to call for a Mother’s Peace Day, today we must return to the 1870 Mother’s Day Proclamation with the clarion call: “Disarm, Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.”

Identity is fluid, because concepts such as culture, history and collective self-perceptions are never fixed. They are in a constant state of flux and revision.

For hundreds of years, the map of the Roman Empire seemed more Mediterranean and, ultimately, Middle Eastern than European - per the geographic, or even geopolitical demarcation of today's Europe.

Hundreds of years of conflicts, wars and invasions redefined the Roman identity, splitting it, by the end of the fourth century, between West and East. But, even then, the political lines constantly changed, maps were repeatedly redrawn and identities fittingly redefined.

This applies to most of human history. True, war and conflict have served as drivers of change of maps - and of our collective relationship with these maps - but culture is also shaped and remodeled by other factors.

The permeation of the English language, for example, as a main tool of communication in the post-Cold War era, resulted in an invasion by US, and to a lesser extent, British entertainment - films, music, sports, etc. – of many parts of the world. This incursion has disrupted the natural cultural development of many societies, widening the generational gap and redefining social conceptions, values and priorities.

Currently, there are signs of a new world that is emerging.

Such a sudden change in cultural flow is hardly conducive to the health of a nation, whose sense of self is the outcome of hundreds, if not thousands of years of social conflicts, struggles and, often, growth.

Thus, identity, as a permanent political signifier, cannot be trusted, since this vague concept is in a constant state of motion and because of the unprecedented connectivity among peoples all over the world. While such connectivity can lead to slow ethnocide, which is difficult to detect, let alone avoid, it can also help beleaguered, oppressed nations fight back.

Once upon a time, such self-serving theories as that of an impending ‘clash of civilizations,’ was all the rage among many US-western academics.

Samuel Huntington's division of the world into "major civilizations" whose relationships will be defined by conflict was a convenient addition to a history of such racist tropes, going as far as the early phases of western colonialism.

Such thinking was propelled forward by political expediency, not rational thought, as it was marketed heavily following the collapse of the Soviet order, the first Iraq war and the emboldened western militarism across Asia, the Middle East and the rest of the Global South.

Linking violent endeavors with such lofty words as civilizations – some driven by universal values, while others, supposedly by extremism – was a mere reintroduction of old mantras as Europe's ‘mission civilisatrice’ and the American 'manifest destiny'.

All of it failed, anyway, or, more accurately, could not produce the desired outcome of keeping the world hostage to the west's definition of civilization, identities and human relations, thus the supposedly inevitable ‘clash’.

Currently, there are signs of a new world that is emerging. It is not one that is shaped by civilizational quests or impulses, but by the same old historical paradigm: those who are seeking power that can widen and protect their economic interests, and those fighting back, seeking freedom, justice, equality, rule of law and the like.

Those pursuing power can, and are uniting beyond their supposed civilization inclinations, religious values, racial orientations and geography.

Even prior to the Russia-Ukraine war, a new cold war was already emerging, between a declining empire, the US, and a rising one, China.

Both countries, according to Huntington, would serve as textbook examples of 'western civilization' vs. the 'Sinic civilization' - lumped with others under the 'Eastern world'.

Yet, neither the refined approach of Barack Obama nor the populist style of Donald Trump succeeded in deepening this presumed civilizational clash. The rest of the world's relations with China continue to be governed by economic interests.

Even Washington's European allies, who rely heavily on Chinese trade and technological advancements, are not entirely persuaded in joining the trade war on Beijing in the name of common western values and other such rhetoric.

As for those fighting back, the war on Gaza was an unexpected rallying cry for unity. Indeed, the war has resulted in a whole new formation of international relations that hardly existed prior to October 7.

Those speaking out for the Palestinians are neither governed by religious, racial, geographic or even cultural boundaries. From Namibia to South Africa, from Brazil and Colombia to Nicaragua, and from China, to Russia to the Middle East, solidarity with Gaza is hardly defined from a narrow ‘civilizational’ perspective.

This includes the mass protests across the world, including throughout Europe and North America, where people from every color, race, age group, gender, religion and more are united in a single chant: ceasefire now.

Of course, there will always be those invested in dividing us, around whatever lines that may serve their political agendas, which are almost always linked to economic interests and military might.

Yet, the global resistance to such delusional academics and chauvinistic politicians is stronger than ever before. Gaza has proven to be the ultimate unifier, as it has drawn a line that bonds all of Huntington’s civilizational groups, not around imminent conflict, but global justice.

At an age when many children are learning their ABCs, my father was a farmworker in Mexico. His job was to plant seeds with his small hands while chasing away crows that threatened to eat the freshly buried grain. I imagine him, a child, spending his days toiling behind the ox as it plowed the soil. My mother’s childhood was similar: She worked as a housekeeper and seamstress. Their meager earnings were needed for their families’ survival and as a result, neither was able to go to school.

When they were in their 20s, mom and dad immigrated to the United States, determined that my siblings and I would get an education. They believed in an American dream where prosperity was the reward for anyone who worked hard, and they did everything they could to make it come true.

Today, the belief “that anyone who works hard can get ahead” has diminished. A November 2023 poll by The Wall Street Journal/NORC found that only 36% of U.S. voters believe in the American dream, a number that has steadily declined over the past few decades.

We can reclaim the American dream and reimagine it as the freedom to thrive for all of us.

It’s not hard to understand why. The federal minimum wage of $7.25/hour has not increased since 2009, despite increases in inflation in every consumer category. Full-time workers earning minimum wage do not earn enough to pay for a two-bedroom rental anywhere in the country. Half of U.S adults struggle with healthcare costs, and 66.5% of bankruptcies are due to medical expenses. Forty-four percent of us are not prepared to pay for a $1,000 emergency. Student loan debt totals $1.74 trillion. Poverty and hunger have increased despite generations of unprecedented economic growth. By all accounts, many Americans are struggling to do impossibly more with increasingly less.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The original American dream, coined in 1931, was a vision of our collective prosperity as a society, and “a happier life” for us all. In The Epic of America, James Truslow Adams described “a dream of a social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”

In other words, the freedom to thrive for all of us—no matter how much money we have, what we look like, or where we were born.

By the 1970s, my parents were both working in factories, earning minimum wage. They bought a house and raised nine children. We had health insurance, went to school, and lived in a relatively safe community. We were far from wealthy, but society’s promise of upward mobility in exchange for hard work was kept. Then came “trickle-down economics” and decades of policy decisions that transferred wealth away from working families in favor of corporations and the highest earners.

As a result, the U.S. has experienced an “uninterrupted increase in (economic) inequality since 1980.” According to a March 2024 report, the wealth of the top 1% in our country now exceeds $44 trillion, an increase of $2 trillion over the previous quarter. To conceptualize this, if you or I spent $1 million per day, it would take us 3,000 years to spend $1 trillion.

To make matters worse, opportunistic politicians distract us with divisive rhetoric and dehumanizing attacks on immigrants striving for a better life, scapegoating the very people who, like my parents, believe in the potential of our nation and work hard to make that belief a reality. People like the six men from Central America and Mexico who perished the night of the Baltimore bridge collapse as they worked filling potholes while many of us slept.

States like Texas and Georgia have moved to deputize local law enforcement to serve as federal immigration agents, resulting in racial profiling and instilling fear in local communities. Governors in Florida and Texas have played dangerous political games with human beings, shipping them like cargo to “liberal” areas in a cynical ploy that erodes our shared humanity. The governor of Texas has signaled plans to challenge the right of all children to receive an education, despite established precedent set by Plyler v. Doe. This mix of political and economic pressures robs us of the opportunity for meaningful dialogue and results in a society that is increasingly politically polarized, instead of joining together to ensure our country fulfills its promise.

These ongoing attacks on the humanity of immigrants pose a threat to all of us, and we lose sight of our nation’s abundance and the promise upon which it was built.

It’s no wonder so many Americans have lost faith in the American dream.

But there is a different perspective worth considering. It’s a perspective that motivates millions of immigrants to call this country home.

In 2023, my colleagues traveled the country and met with hundreds of immigrants to hear their stories and explore the lens through which immigrants view the country. We heard optimism about the abundance of our nation. A vision of belonging, and a desire to live with self-determination. A place where true prosperity includes a sense of community, joy, love, safety, dignity, inclusion, and purpose.

We are a nation that has yet to live up to its potential. But if we dare to collectively view our country through this lens, we can reclaim the American dream and reimagine it as the freedom to thrive for all of us.

The freedom to thrive will be possible when every one of us can see a doctor without facing financial ruin. When all workers are paid fairly, have safe working conditions, and can comfortably afford a place to live. When all children have access to an education and no one goes hungry. When our full humanity is recognized, embraced, and our interconnectedness celebrated. When we are free to love and to worship in ways that align with our experiences and beliefs, and when we each have the power to live our lives meaningfully. For immigrants, this also means the safety, inclusion, and dignity that comes with citizenship, and the recognition that we are a stronger nation because of the contributions of immigrants.

This will require policy choices that once again leverage our country’s wealth in favor of the many, instead of consolidating it among the few, and policies that are inclusive and rooted in our shared humanity. It will require us to envision a society that is radically different from our current reality. And it will require all of us—including the millions of immigrants who call our country home—working together to bring it to fruition.

My father, mother, and siblings were in attendance when I graduated with my master’s degree. It was a moment of immense joy and pride for my family, and the fruition of my parents’ humble dreams. For me it was a moment of profound gratitude for their vision and belief in what was possible, and a powerful reminder that the freedom to thrive is indeed worth fighting for.

“It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.” — Henry David Thoreau

Thousands of students, many of them people of color, have in recent weeks gathered in encampments staked out on college greens across the country.

They will tell you, many of them — and their protest signs will convey — that they are acting in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, who are now being systematically annihilated by the nation of Israel’s war machine.

The students are clear in their goals, asking, among other things, that their respective universities divest from entities, such as military contractors, that feed the Israeli war machine; and likewise insisting that the U.S. government cease shipping munitions to the Israeli government that are helping to pulverize Gaza — where millions of Palestinians are now trapped and which has been described as the world’s largest open-air prison.

We are asked to believe the innocent in Gaza are not the targets of the Israeli war machine by those who seek to justify the mass killing underway. The defenders of that carnage are quick to hurl accusations of antisemitism against critics who merely question the Israeli government’s commitment to human rights. They fortify their justification of the looming Palestinian oblivion by invoking the memory of a vicious mass killing of Israeli citizens carried out last year by the militant group Hamas. Never mind that the number of Palestinians now dead as a result of the Israeli military’s assault on Gaza far exceeds by multiples of ten the number of Israelis slaughtered by Hamas.

In short, it appears the critics want us to turn a blind eye to the escalating cycle of carnage and destruction in Gaza as the price of future Israeli security — and an ill-defined peace in the region. It is simply flawed reasoning that leads to an unacceptable outcome. More hatred and death.

The only path to ending the violence is through the creation of a new peace, with justice and dignity. And that process starts with once again humanizing those in the path of the blind destruction underway in Gaza.

Impossible, some will say. And these students are only making matters worse with their antics and agitating, their disturbing of some supposed peace.

Well, maybe it’s time for such critics to actually visit a student encampment in the spirit of peace, instead of demonizing them from afar, labeling them antisemitic or a threat to public safety, or fermenting public pressure to unleash heavily armed police on them.

What they will see if they take the time to walk among the students in these encampments, at least what I saw after visiting the student encampment at the University of Washington-Seattle, is a real community of hundreds of people camping out under the cherry-blossom trees on campus. It’s not unlike a musical festival, although with a far more important, engaged focus.

Winding through the cluster of student tents is a pathway that remains unblocked and open to all on campus. There also is a medical tent; a food-supply tent; press tent; crafts and art; a library, protest signs (some inspiring, some not so clever, but information is everywhere); and an intricate system in place to deal with community needs, such as disposing of garbage and personal hygiene.

Again, most of the folks I encountered in and around the UW encampment were young (compared to me, anyway) and the majority were students of color. Their views of the world are still taking shape on these campuses, both in and out of the classroom, and those world concepts will surely continue to evolve. Those of us a bit longer in the tooth have all been there ourselves, whether we went to college or not.

Importantly, in the case of this student movement, however, it should not be lost on anyone that part of the reason it has been so easily attacked by ill-intentioned critics and demonized in the media and elsewhere is because it is largely composed of and led by people of color. Until we see racism through the prism of power, we will never fully get it.

From my experience with these students, they already know right from wrong in this world, and they are clearly willing to take a stand for their convictions. After all, they are merely invoking their First Amendment rightsto freedom of speech and assembly — rights that apply under the U.S. Constitution to all who inhabit this land, whether born here or not. Remember that the next time the words “foreigners” or “outside agitators” are thrown around with McCarthyistic glee by pundits and politicians — both foreign and domestic.

And, most importantly, if you visit many of these student encampments, you will find both Jewish and Palestinian students in tents next to each other, sharing bread, conversation, ideas and hope — along with a diverse cohort of protesters across race, gender, and class lines. And they are discussing the issues that matter in this world today, listening to speakers, creating art, and planting seeds of hope and action for their future.

What I did not see is a single antisemitic sign nor did I hear such a slur. (Note to the media: Provocateurs, crazies and racists of all kinds attach themselves to social movements to feed off the energy, or to advance their own warped visions of reality, or to disrupt and spy. But that does not mean those outsiders and hangers-on define the social movement or are to be considered part of it. For example, a man with a bullhorn shows up at the UW student encampment occasionally to preach the gospel — according to him.)

Overall, there was a spirit of peace and caring in the encampment I visited. There also was a real sense in talking with students and professors from UW-Seattle that they had a deep commitment to the struggle for justice with dignity for the innocents in Gaza — who are being disappeared by the thousands in the name of a senseless bloodlust that has no prospects of making the nation of Israel safer, nor the world.

If peace can be achieved in these student encampments among Jewish and Palestinian students, even while they are under the threat of expulsion and police action, there is the hope, the model even, for peace to be achieved on the grand field of the Mideast among the peoples inhabiting the lands where war now rages.

No peace born of war is ever easy. It must start with building relations, not only among official leaders, but as importantly from the bottom up, with a quest for trust, with a vision for the future that offers hope — not perpetual fear, hatred and death.

It starts by giving peace a chance.

That’s what I saw and heard at the student encampment I visited recently. I entered a skeptic and left a believer. These students are organized and united in a spirit of expanding the range of the possible. Time will tell if they can remain united, with their strategies and tactics flexible enough yet aligned and focused effectively on accomplishing their goals. But those goals are achievable.

For the sake of the human race and this planet, peace in the Mideast must be achieved as well. So, don’t demonize these students, don’t reduce them to stereotypes and two-dimensional cartoon characters and, most importantly, don’t underestimate the power of a social movement to achieve victory.

Instead, ask yourself what you can do to make the world a more tolerant, peaceful place for all of us, and then do it.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered herself of some ahistorical and distorted remarks about Palestine on Morning Joe, maintaining that the young people protesting the Gaza atrocities do not know history.

— (@)

Ms. Clinton’s self-serving description of the 2000 Camp David process has been debunked by many historians. In fact, her husband Bill Clinton promised in the Oslo Accords in 1993 that Israel would withdraw from Gaza and the West Bank by 1997. He then allowed Benjamin Netanyahu to sabotage that process and allowed the Israelis to double the number of squatters they sent in to the Palestinian West Bank to steal property and terrorize people. When Netanyahu went out and Ehud Barak came in, Clinton sponsored negotiations, but Barak was maddeningly vague about what he would offer and never produced a text that Yasser Arafat could sign. It is not clear why Arafat needed to sign anything more; he already signed the Oslo treaty, which should have resulted in an Israeli withdrawal that never came. Soon thereafter Barak lost to Ariel Sharon, who was as determined to sabotage any land for peace deal as Netanyahu had been, and he wrecked the whole process.

Her placing of all the blame on the Palestinians is typical of inside-the-Beltway Goy Zionism, and is profoundly ahistorical. The young people can’t be fooled by these glib words. They see what they see.

I have also never understood the trope that Israel made generous offers to the Palestinians (it never did) but that the Palestinians rejected them, and therefore the Palestinians should be deprived of all their basic rights forever. What is this, an Original Sin doctrine? If the negotiations of 2000 fell through, why couldn’t they have been picked back up in 2001? It is because the Israelis wouldn’t pick them back up, and went on to steal vast swathes of private Palestinian property and to brutalize the occupied population.

That is, in understanding these events, values as well as historical understanding are important, and I fear the Clintons have never had much of either.

In contrast, Irish American rapper Macklemore (Benjamin Hammond Haggerty, b. 1983) dropped his single, “Hind’s Hall,” on May 10. He is donating the proceeds to United Nations relief work in Gaza.

It may be the most powerful anti-war statement in music since Bob Dylan’s protest songs in the early 1960s against the nuclear arms race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. And the song displays a firm knowledge of what exactly has been done in history to the Palestinians.

— (@)

The reference is to Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall, which students occupied briefly and renamed “Hind’s Hall.”

Hind Rajab was a Palestinian little girl who got into her uncle’s car in northern Gaza on January 29, along with her aunt and four cousins, to head south, which the Israeli military said was a “safe zone” (that was a lie). Under the shockingly inhumane Israeli rules of engagement, unlike anything in any civilized democracy, the car was fair game just because it was in motion out in the open. Israeli pilots and tank and artillery commanders appear to make no effort at all to avoid killing civilians, explaining why they have murdered over 40,000 people from the air (over 34,000 confirmed and thousands more under the rubble). The car was hit, and everyone was killed but the five-year-old Hind. Her cousin had tried calling the Red Crescent rescuers, but then she died of her wounds. Hind called them back herself, in an incredible feat for a wounded child surrounded by the corpses of her loved ones. She was asked by the operator, what about your relatives. “They’re dead,” Hind replied.

The call went like this:

HIND RAJAB: [translated] Come take me. You will come and take me?
RED CRESCENT DISPATCHER: [translated] Do you want me to come and take you?
HIND RAJAB: [translated] I’m so scared. Please come. Please call someone to come and take me.

The Red Crescent Society, the Middle Eastern branch of the Red Cross, got permission from the Israeli military to send two rescuers. They appear, however, to have been hit by an Israeli tank shell not far from Hind’s position. She spent the last four hours of her life bleeding out.

There are no Hamas operatives in this story. It is a tale not just of reckless disregard for civilian life but of the deliberate targeting by the Israeli army of civilians. The Red Crescent ambulance was clearly marked, and the society had gotten Israeli permission to rescue Hind, but they were murdered anyway. This is not an error. It is systematic sadism.

So the student protesters at Columbia University named Hamilton Hall after Hind (rhymes with “wind”), who did not live to celebrate her sixth birthday. She joined some 15,000 dead Palestinian children casually wiped off the face of the Earth by Israeli war criminals. The student protesters were themselves assaulted by police and arrested.

Macklemore’s lyrics celebrate the bravery and determination of the campus demonstrators:

The people, they won’t leave
What is threatenin’ about divesting and wantin’ peace?
The problem isn’t the protests, it’s what they’re protesting
It goes against what our country is funding
(Hey) Block the barricade until Palestine is free
(Hey) Block the barricade until Palestine is free

The first stanza implicitly contrasts the threats issued by campus administrators and municipal authorities with the peaceful demands of the students. It also highlights the hypocrisy of the U.S. government, which proclaims itself a supporter of liberty, in keeping Palestinians stateless and unfree.

The second stanza slams the role of the police in protecting property rather than persons, on behalf of a system of white supremacy. Macklemore here implicitly draws a parallel between the Black Lives Matter movement and these protests for Palestinian rights:

Actors in badges protecting property
And a system that was designed by white supremacy (Brrt)
But the people are in the streets

He goes on to slam Meta (Facebook and Instagram) for having been “paid off” to suppress news about Palestine. (I actually don’t think Meta was paid off to do this, it is just something management wanted to do.) He then criticizes the politicians who take money from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which serves Israeli interests in shaping the U.S. government.

The so-called “land of the free,” he complains, is beset by fear-peddling. The new generation, however, is not taking it. Nothing, not banning TikTok and not using algorithms to hide the atrocities, can now make the youths unsee what they saw.

But it’s too late, we’ve seen the truth, we bear witness
Seen the rubble, the buildings, the mothers and the children

He insists on the frame of white supremacy for the denial to Palestinians of the right to resist being occupied and subjected to ethnic cleansing. That right is granted only depending on “dollars” and “the color of your pigment,” he says.

He blasts the claim that it is antisemitic to be anti-Zionist, saying

I’ve seen Jewish brothers and sisters out there and ridin’ in
Solidarity and screamin’ “Free Palestine” with them
Organizin’, unlearnin’ , and finally cuttin’ ties with
A state that’s gotta rely on an apartheid system
To uphold an occupyin’ violent

He agrees with many Palestinians that the Israeli project of ethnic cleansing—that began with the Nakba or catastrophic expulsion of over half of Palestinians from their homeland in 1948—has never really ended.

History been repeating for the last seventy-five
The Nakba never ended, the colonizer lied (Woo)

He wonders if it is really more of a challenge to law and order for students to set up tents on a campus lawn than for Israel to commit genocide, a set of war crimes in which the president of the United States is deeply entangled:

Where does genocide land in your definition, huh? (Hey; hey)
Destroyin’ every college in Gaza and every mosque
Pushin’ everyone into Rafah and droppin’ bombs
The blood is on your hands, Biden, we can see it all
And fuck no, I’m not votin’ for you in the fall (Woo)
Undecided

He also calls out his colleagues in the music industry:

Yet the music industry’s quiet, complicit in their platform of silence (Hey, woo)

He acknowledges that if he was on a label he might well be dropped, but he says he would be fine with that.

What you willin’ to risk? What you willin’ to give?
What if you were in Gaza? What if those were your kids?
If the West was pretendin’ that you didn’t exist
You’d want the world to stand up and the students finally did, let’s get it (Woo)

Macklemore’s historical understanding runs rings around that of Ms. Clinton.