People like to say that Near East politics is complex, but the war on Iran is blindingly simple. Aggression is immoral, as is participation in it. Israel’s war on Iran is a blatantly obvious, incontestable act of aggression, as is US participation in the war so far, along with any further participation. No one has bothered to provide even a semi-plausible justification for this war, no one can, and no one will. The whole thing is insane.
Continue readingCategory Archives: Trump 2
The Lesson of LA
A typical discussion of what’s happening right now in LA:
It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the Trump administration is spoiling for a fight on America’s streets. On Saturday, after a protest against Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests degenerated into violence, the administration reacted as if the country were on the brink of war.
The violence was unacceptable. Civil disobedience is honorable; violence is beyond the pale.
You want to know what’s “unacceptable”? It’s bullshit writing of this sort. Continue reading
Resistance in Action
I’ve previously mentioned my work with Resistencia en Acción, a migrant defense group based in Princeton and Trenton, New Jersey. Much of what Resistencia does is to face down ICE whenever the need arises. And to put it bluntly: ICE has to be faced down. It’s less a law enforcement agency than a glorified group of thugs–an American Gestapo–intent on solving, by brute force, problems that they themselves have confabulated. Continue reading
May Day in Princeton
One of the activist groups I work with, Resistencia en Acción, is putting on a May Day march and celebration this Thursday, May 1st, in Princeton, New Jersey, starting at 6 pm. The event begins at the “Fountain of Freedom” at Washington Rd and Prospect St on the Princeton University campus. We’ll march through town, circle back, and hear from local activists and members of the community in both English and Spanish. This is a march in solidarity with and defense of all migrants, documented or not, “legal” or not, and against the arbitrary harassment, detentions, and deportations engaged in by the “Department of Homeland Security,” among others. We’re expecting some 800 participants, from Newark to Trenton and points in between. Join us if you want to stand up for justice, and have a good time doing it. And click the Instagram below to listen to Princeton’s own Chris Hedges while you’re at it: Continue reading
The Reporters that Didn’t Bark in the Night
The New York Times is the paradigm of mainstream legacy reporting, but its business reporting is so fucking bizarre–so outlandish and downright weird in its selectivity–that you can understand why people who work in business resort to conspiracy theories to explain what its reporters are doing.
It’s widely been reported in tech news that Oracle’s Cerner data has been hacked, and that while Oracle is trying hard to downplay the hack, it is in fact a big deal. CloudSEK has called it “the biggest supply chain hack of 2025,” adding that six million records have been exfiltrated from Oracle Cloud, affecting over 140,000 clients. According to CloudSEK, the hacker was active for several weeks across January and February before being detected. Feel free to Google “Oracle hack,” and read the dozens of articles that come up. All of them have scooped legacy media by weeks. Continue reading
By Diverse Means
I saw a news item the other day that wasn’t funny, but still made me laugh. “Trump Pauses Dozens of Federal Grants to Princeton,” read the headline:
The Trump administration moved this week to suspend dozens of federal grants to Princeton University, the fourth Ivy League school that has seen its financial support from Washington reduced or explicitly threatened since March.
Christopher L. Eisgruber, Princeton’s president, told the university community in an email late Tuesday morning that “several dozen” grants had been suspended. …
Mr. Eisgruber said that the university had been told on Monday and Tuesday that it was losing at least some research support from the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy and NASA.
You don’t see the humor? Let me explain. Continue reading
The Oracle Speaks
OK, so let’s get this straight. TikTok had to be sold because given its Chinese ownership, it was a danger to our privacy, and on top of that, a danger to national security. But no worries, because according to business guru and data analyst Donald Trump, all-American Oracle had the technical capacity to “handle” the TikTok acquisition and handle TikTok itself. Nothing that a $100 billion Trump-inspired AI initiative couldn’t solve.
Meanwhile, back in 2022, Oracle acquired Cerner, the healthcare data company. It has now managed, as of just a few weeks ago, to get precisely its Cerner data hacked. So while Oracle could, at least in Donald Trump’s mind, handle TikTok, it couldn’t, in fact, manage to handle Cerner.
Continue readingFear of the Dark
This ridiculous letter to the Wall Street Journal is making the rounds in certain quarters as though it enunciated some profound “gotcha”-level truth.
Journey of a Thousand Miles
“A journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step.”
–Lao Tzu (supposedly)
From my March 22 post on recent events at Columbia:
What’s not a question is that strategic planners who couldn’t see this coming do not deserve to be employed. In a just world, these overpaid, over-hyped, preening incompetents would be thrown unceremoniously out of their plush offices directly into the streets of Morningside Heights.
From The New York Times, less than a week later: Continue reading
First World Problems
I was at a migrant defense demonstration Thursday evening in Elizabeth, a small city in northern New Jersey. The man pictured below spoke to the crowd; unfortunately I didn’t catch his name.* He told the story of how he was detained by ICE for four years, shuttled around detention facilities and jails in Essex and Bergen Counties. His “crime”? Being undocumented. No country recognizes his existence or identity, and none will take him in. Continue reading
Policy of Truth 