Deluge: Gaza and Israel from Crisis to Cataclysm In the last six months of the war by Israel against the Palestinian population of Gaza, a truth has become quite clear: The war is not one of self-defense. And moreover, the October 7 attack by Hamas in southern Israel is being used by the Netanyahu government as a pretext for ethnically cleansing the 2.2 million Palestinians who live there, and get them out of the Gaza Strip. Israel, like America, is a colonial settlers state. It was built on top of an indigenous population whose removal was necessary to establish the new state of Israel. The ..read more

Sexting Among Teens, A Felony Because teenagers spend a good deal of their time online and on social media platforms, awareness has risen about related risks such as cyberbullying, shaming, and online predation. But then there’s sexting, the sharing between teens of explicit images. A study in the Journal of American Medical Association revealed that sexting is common among adolescents, with at least 1 in 4 teens receiving explicit texts and emails. What we don’t hear much about are the legal consequences of such communications. In half of the states in this country, criminal laws classify th ..read more

Chris Hedges: Israel’s Trojan Horse The Israeli military is the fourth most powerful military in the world. In the last six months it has turned the Gaza Strip into a howling wilderness. Most of us 2.2 million inhabitants have been driven into a tiny corner in the south in the city of Rafa where they face an invasion planned by Israel with American support. Israel sent a delegation to Washington last week. The story spun by the Biden administration is that they are working with Israel to try to “moderate” Israel. This is perception management. Meanwhile, in another PR move, the United States ..read more

I Dare Say: A Gerald Horne Reader Angela Davis once stated “radical simply means grasping things at the root.” This makes understanding possible. What are the roots of our present dilemma? Where did capitalism come from? And what accounts for its great success? Where did racism come from? When was it implanted? Why are alternatives to the capitalist Democratic and Republican parties so feeble? What did Malcolm X really stand for and what did he try to accomplish before he was assassinated at age 39, the same age that his contemporary Martin Luther King was assassinated five years later? How ..read more

SCOTUS Oral Arguments Social Media Platforms Earlier this month, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments about two different state laws that would regulate how large tech companies control what content can appear on their sites. The laws would compel companies to carry all users’ viewpoints and would preclude them from de-platforming political candidates. The Florida law at issue in Moody v. NetChoice and its Texas counterpart in NetChoice v. Paxton represent challenges by tech lobbying groups, NetChoice and the Computer and Communications Information Association. The plaintiffs claim the laws ..read more

Legal Analysis Of Recent Supreme Court Decisions The U.S. Supreme Court, securely under the control of a Super Majority of 6 conservative Republican justices, three of whom were appointed by Donald Trump, continues to play a decisive role in undermining our constitutional democracy.  This ominous trend continues based on three recent key cases, which we’ll be talking about today. In one, the Court on March 4 rejected a lower court ruling that Trump was ineligible to run for president; in April the court will hear oral arguments on Trump’s claim of absolute immunity from criminal liabilit ..read more

The Trillion Dollar Silencer: Why There Is So Little Anti-War Protest in the United States As the notion of perpetual war and a militarized society are normalized, notably absent are antiwar protests by faith-based organizations, civil rights groups, academics, and others. The Trillion Dollar Silencer details this absence while laying bare the devastation wrought in the United States and abroad by the military industrial complex. Author Joan Roelofs delves into the pervasive role of military contractors and bases that have come to be economic hubs of their regions. She discusses how state an ..read more

  The World Supports Julian Assange In the past few days, the case of imprisoned journalist Julian Assange, the co-founder of WikiLeaks, who published the truth about the multitude of war crimes committed by United States and its allies, in the course of their wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, was back in court in London, where Assange is fighting extradition back to the United States. He is charged in the U.S. under an obscure section of the 1917 U.S. Espionage Act. As Megan Specia, writing in the New York Times put it, the two-day hearing “will determine whether he has exhausted his right t ..read more

Disqualification Clause In Trump v. Anderson On February 8, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Trump v. Anderson. The Colorado Supreme Court had held that Donald Trump’s participation in the January 6 insurrection makes him ineligible to be president, under the Disqualification Clause in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. At issue is whether the Colorado court erred in holding that Donald Trump is disqualified from the office of the presidency. During the arguments, with the exception of Sonia Sotomayor, all of the members of the Supreme Court – many of whom identify ..read more

Unflagging Support For The Military Siege Against Palestinians In Gaza Several months ago, various Palestinian human rights groups and individuals in Gaza and in the U.S., filed a lawsuit in a U.S. federal court, against President Biden, Secretary of State Blinken, and Secretary of Defense Austin, for their failure to prevent, and their complicity in, the Israeli government’s unfolding genocide against them, their families, and the 2.2 million Palestinians living in Gaza. They were represented by the attorneys at the famed Center for Constitutional Rights in New York City. After a hearing tha ..read more