Six weeks after being abducted on her way home from school in the occupied West Bank, 14-year-old Malak al-Khatib was released on Friday from the jail where she was being imprisoned by Israeli occupation forces. The youngest Palestinian girl ever to be incarcerated, Malak is one of hundreds of children to be prosecuted through the Israeli military court system each year.
You may have noticed that nearly every essay or article emerging from the underfunded ghettos of leftist thinking in this country in the wake of a terrorist atrocity immediately offers a firm and frequently hysterical disclaimer that the author does not approve of the terrorist atrocity he will now discuss. This is necessary because the intelligentsia has conflated any form of self-criticism with condoning terror. It may be perfectly apt to reflect on “how good we are,” as George W. Bush once mumbled.
The Sinai Peninsula has moved from the margins of Egyptian body politic to the uncontested center, as Egypt’s strong man – President Abdul Fatah al-Sisi – finds himself greatly undercut by the rise of an insurgency that seems to be growing stronger with time.
Please allow me to introduce myself
I’m a man of wealth and taste…
– “Sympathy for the Devil,” The Rolling Stones
To the first: the end of the anti-colonial era was followed immediately by the not so rosy dawn of neoliberalism. Quickly, Arab nationalism gave way to Gulf capitalism; the always bourgeois PLO gave way to the neoliberal Palestine Authority. Simultaneously, the Arab working-class suffered a set of quintessential neoliberal losses compounded by what might be called the economic shock doctrine brought on by the likes of World Bank and IMF that came with the end of colonialism and the beginning of the neoliberal era.
I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because the Republican Congress leaves me no other choice. I join you in this meeting because I am in partial yet profound agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us together: Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietghanistan. The recent statement of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart, if not my brain, and I found myself in sympathy with your desires when I read its opening lines: “A time comes when silence is betrayal.” That time has not come for us in relation to Vietghanistan.
It is still not about Islam, even if the media and militants attacking western targets say so. Actually, it never was. But it was important for many to conflate politics with religion; partly because it is convenient and self-validating.
First, let’s be clear on some points. Islam has set in motion a system to abolish slavery over 1,200 years before the slave trade reached its peak in the western world.
Question One. In 1990, twenty percent of all children in the US lived in poverty. What percent of the children in the US live in poverty today?
A: Ten percent
B: Fifteen percent
C: Twenty percent
Question Two. The median wealth of black households in the US is $11,000. What is the median wealth of white households?
A: $22,000
B: $62,000
C: $141,000
Diana Johnstone asks the rhetorical question at CounterPunch, “What to Say When You Have Nothing to Say?” in regard to the I Am Charlie “terror” attack in Paris. Hers is an emotional response, exasperation; there is plenty to say that is quite rational.
