Category Archives: Palestine

Masters of the Universe

Posted on by under Human Shields, Neutrality and Complicity, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine, War with Iran

The Times “Covers” the Iran War
Here’s The New York Times describing recent developments in the US-Israeli war against Iran and Lebanon:

The June memorandum of understanding was widely seen as a boon for Iran, granting the regime badly needed sanctions relief even as talks over tough concessions like nuclear enrichment were postponed for later. But Iranian leaders opted to escalate again rather than consolidate their gains from the deal, according to Nate Swanson, an Iran expert at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based research group.

Ships could move through the Strait of Hormuz freely before the war. Iran’s insistence that the deal’s vague language on the issue gave it control over the waterway led to the deal falling apart. Iran began firing on ships that transited in channels outside Iranian waters, and American forces retaliated by bombing southern Iran, prompting a cycle of attacks and counterattacks across the Middle East.

In other words, according to the Times, “expert” opinion tells us that the failure of the ceasefire is to be chalked up to Iranian belligerence and irrationality. In fact, what it actually tells us is that the “experts” are full of shit. Every claim made in this passage is factually challenged nonsense. 

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Getting in the Way

Posted on by under activism, cancel culture, Human Shields, Neutrality and Complicity, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine

“…Jesus did get in the way of empire…”
–Mary Anne Grady Flores, Ithaca Catholic Workers Movement

As I’ve mentioned here a few times (May 26, May 28, July 1), I support the direct-action activist effort to block weapons shipments from the United States to Israel. These shipments conscript our complicity in Israeli aggression, occupation, and war crimes, and also conscript (and are embedded in) civilian commercial networks that are exploited for military purposes. They turn all of us into accomplices of and human shields for wars of aggression and brutality, a status that I think we’re obligated to resist and refuse.

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Port Elizabeth 4 On Trial (CANCELED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE)

Posted on by under activism, cancel culture, General announcements, Neutrality and Complicity, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine

I‘VE JUST GOTTEN WORD THAT THE COURT HAS, WITH LESS THAN 24 HOURS’ NOTICE, CANCELED TOMORROW’S TRIAL FOR THE SECOND TIME. APPARENTLY, A JUDGE AND PROSECUTOR COULD NOT BE AVAILABLE TOMORROW. THERE IS, TO MY KNOWLEDGE, NO RE-SCHEDULED DATE.
–Irfan Khawaja, August 4, 6 pm.

Port Elizabeth 4 Face Trial for Blocking the Shipment of Weapons to Israel’s Genocide 

Press Contacts: Mary Anne Grady Flores, gradyflores08@gmail.com (607)-280-8797
                          Haqq Sankara, haqqsankara@tuta.com (interviews available)

August 5; press conference: 9:30 am; trial scheduled to begin 10 am (CANCELED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE)
1 Police Plaza
Elizabeth Municipal Court
Elizabeth, New Jersey 07201

July 30th.  Four activists known as the Port Elizabeth 4, face trial on Wednesday, August 5th at 10 am at 1 Police Plaza, Elizabeth, NJ (press conference at 9:30 am) for blocking the main roadway to the Port of Elizabeth on October 3, 2025. They were part of an autonomous coalition of 100 protestors who stopped trucks delivering military cargo to the Port of Elizabeth bound for Israel on the Maersk Sentosa vessel. By August 5th, the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza will have gone on for 1,028 days, beyond three years.

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Institutional Neutrality, Coeducation, and History

Posted on by under activism, Neutrality and Complicity, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine, Princeton University, War with Iran

Since my first post here on institutional neutrality in 2025, Heterodox Academy has, predictably, re-affirmed its commitment to the doctrine by way of the same tired “arguments” for it, and done its fair share of bragging about the latest institutions to have signed on to it. For all their talk about “viewpoint diversity” and the burdens of rational discourse, the defenders of institutional neutrality seem pretty oblivious to the arguments that have been made against it. I haven’t, for instance, seen any serious attempts to deal with the complicity-based objections I’ve raised to it over the last year. I’ll take that as my cue to deploy yet another of the (literally) dozens of counter-examples I have to institutional neutrality, if only for the fun of piling them up. Continue reading →

A(nother) Reductio for Institutional Neutrality

Posted on by under activism, Neutrality and Complicity, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine, pedagogy, Princeton University

And a challenge to its defenders
Imagine a university whose administration passes what it takes to be a procedurally neutral rule–a “time, manner, place” restriction–prohibiting all protests on campus that take place either on grass or on thoroughfares. Protests inside university buildings are prohibited as well. Protests on grass, admin says, damage the grass, and protests on thoroughfares are a traffic hazard. Obviously, protests inside university buildings are too disruptive of university business to be permitted. All neutral considerations.

Now suppose that 99% of campus consists either of grass, thoroughfares, or buildings. It follows that large scale protests will be made impossible on such a campus. 

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The Wokeness Threat is a Right-Wing Scam

Posted on by under activism, cancel culture, moralism, Neutrality and Complicity, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine, Princeton University, slices of life, War with Iran, West Orange

I did my annual DEI certification at work the other day. It’s the same one I’ve done here since 2022. The training video is produced by a company called KnowBe4, which specializes in workplace risk reduction: “15+ years of behavior data, 70,000 global customers, 12-in-production security awareness agents…1 of 3 full time US workers has been trained by us.” Not a fly-by-night operation, and not unrepresentative of corporate DEI training. Just the reverse. The norm.

The training took all of 15 minutes. What did I learn? Six woke lessons.

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All Roads Lead from Rome

Posted on by under Palestine, slices of life

I was walking down the street wearing a bright red keffiyeh when a police officer stopped and pointed directly at me. Before I could react, she broke into a broad smile, singled out the keffiyeh, and gave it a thumbs up. You know times have changed when the police have become pro-Palestine.

All roads, they say, lead to Rome. Well, the same roads lead away from it.

Port Newark Activists on Trial

Posted on by under activism, Human Shields, Neutrality and Complicity, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine, War with Iran

On May 26th and 28th, I mentioned a group of activists who’ve put their bodies on the line at Port Newark/Elizabeth, not far from Delaney Hall, to stop military shipments through those ports to Israel. These activists are part of a little-discussed worldwide effort–spanning Italy, France, Spain, Morocco, Denmark, the UK, Canada, and the U.S. (Newark, Norfolk, Houston, Seattle, Tacoma, Oakland, Los Angeles) to block the flow of military hardware to Israel.

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‘New Brunswick Today’ Under Attack

Posted on by under activism, Activist Interviews, cancel culture, Neutrality and Complicity, Palestine

I’ve praised both New Brunswick Today and its editor Charlie Kratovil on this blog before. If, as I’ve put it elsewhere, “New Brunswick politics is an education,” Charlie Kratovil deserves an endowed chair.

New Brunswick Today was the newspaper that published the most extensive expose, back in 2024, of the outrageous scheme by Edison township officials (and the Edison Police) to intimidate Spanish-speaking migrants stopped at the Edison rail station, following their expulsion by Governor Greg Abbott from Texas. Kratovil was the only reporter to go out and sue to get body cam video of the entire incident, publish it in its entirety, and make explicit that what it showed was an extended civil rights violation. Subtract his reporting from the record, and the event falls between the cracks and vanishes.

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From Big Tech to Mass Grave

Posted on by under Human Shields, Neutrality and Complicity, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine, War with Iran

Here’s an item from Business Insider of the sort you see just about every day in that publication, at least if you read it every day, as I do. It’s so common that its implications seem to go in one ear and out the other. “More big tech execs are joining the Army Reserve as senior officers,” we’re told.

  • The Army has added three more tech executives to its special Detachment 201 reserve unit.
  • Det 201 members join as lieutenant colonels, advising the service on AI, cyber, and modernization.
  • The new troops come from places like Cloudflare, a major private equity firm, and Facebook AI Research.
  • A second crop of tech executives entered the Army Reserve last week, expanding the service’s ties with Big Tech as it continues a dramatic effort to modernize its equipment and systems and better prepare for modern warfare.

Those who recently joined include Dane Knecht, the chief technology officer of Cloudflare; Sam Pullara, managing director and CTO of Sutter Hill Ventures, a Palo Alto investment firm; and Serkan Piantino, a former Reddit executive and co-founder of Facebook AI Research.

The executives have joined a unit known as Detachment 201, a special unit “designed to bridge the gap between private-sector innovation and military modernization,” the Army said in a press release, reflecting the Pentagon’s push to leverage private-sector technical expertise to address complex national security and defense challenges.

Members are reservists, can work remotely, and must complete a minimum of 112 hours of service annually.

“Their primary role is to serve as senior advisors to help drive the Army Transformation Initiative, concentrated on high-level technological strategies in areas such as cyber, AI and machine learning applications, and other data-driven capabilities,” Army spokesperson Lt. Col. Orlando Howard said in an email to Business Insider.

They join four other tech leaders who entered the Army Reserve one year ago: Shyam Sankar, the chief technology officer of Palantir; Andrew Bosworth, the chief technology officer of Meta; Kevin Weil, former chief product officer at OpenAI; and Bob McGrew, an advisor at Thinking Machines Lab and former chief research officer at OpenAI.

All entered the Army as lieutenant colonels, a rank that takes most officers over a decade to reach. The senior entry, known as a “direct commission,” is not unheard of, though. Most military medical providers, chaplains, and veterinarians join at slightly more senior ranks, though they undergo their own version of boot camp, while Det 201 does not.

“The program selects applicants who are highly skilled civilian technology professionals at the executive or C-suite level to serve as part-time strategic advisers,” Howard said. “These officers use their advanced expertise in commercial tech and private industry to offer a different perspective and advise senior Army leaders on solving military problems.”

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