Princeton’s Genocide

Posted on by under activism, cancel culture, Fatwas, moralism, MTSP Discussion: George Sher's Desert, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine

In October 2024, after several years of activism (most recently spearheaded by Princeton Israeli Apartheid Divestment, or PIAD), the Council for the Princeton University Community (CPUC) invited written comments from members of the Princeton University community weighing in for and against divestment from Israel. The CPUC rejected the bid for divestment about a month ago.

What follows below is my written statement to the CPUC, which essentially speaks for itself–and likewise speaks to the title I’ve given this post.  I will, in the near future, be posting some supplementary material, including screen shots from The Daily Princetonian of Meir Kahane’s two appearances at Princeton advocating ethnic cleansing and genocide (April 1984 and February 1988), the written version of my follow-up question to the CPUC about the issue of complicity, and the transparently evasive “response” to my question offered by Hilary A. Parker, Vice President and Secretary of Princeton University. I’ll also be posting a written response here to John Groves, chair of CPUC’s Resources Committee. Both Parker and Groves refused my repeated requests to offer a candid disclosure of the facts concerning the University’s investments, opting for concealment and evasion. Continue reading →

Naftali Bennett at Princeton

Posted on by under activism, cancel culture, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine

What follows are screenshots of a long message from the Instagram page of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) of Princeton University (with the Princeton/Palestine Liberation Coalition and SJP’s national and state affiliates), regarding the forthcoming visit to campus on April 7th of Naftali Bennett. I’ll write up a longer comment this weekend, but for now, suffice it to say that I agree with SJP, and wanted to amplify its message. If you click the first thumbnail to enlarge, you should be able to click directly through the whole series. Otherwise, click each thumbnail to enlarge, reading them left to right across the page.

Continue reading →

By Diverse Means

Posted on by under activism, anarchism, cancel culture, moralism, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine, Trump 2

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

Posted on by under Big Data, Health Care Series, Palestine, Trump 2

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 reading →

Journey of a Thousand Miles

Posted on by under activism, cancel culture, character based voting, moralism, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine, Trump 2

“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 →

Those Corpses in Yemen

Posted on by under Uncategorized

Just to state the painfully obvious: The “Signalgate” controversy broke this past Monday, March 24th. It’s now Friday, so five full days have gone by since it began. In five days, I think it’s safe to say that 99.44% of mainstream discussion on this controversy has focused on the Trump Administration’s inappropriately having used Signal to discuss war plans, stupidly having mistakenly put Jeffrey Goldberg on the chat, and then immorally having lied about it. Not even 1% of the remainder has focused on any deeper question of moral substance: Why are we bombing Yemen? Is it justifiable to do so? Continue reading →

First World Problems

Posted on by under activism, Trump 2

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 →

Hegseth and the Houthis

Posted on by under Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine, Trump 2

As usual in American politics, everyone’s talking the Hegseth and the Houthis story to death, but almost no one’s focused on the right part of it. The story, of course, is that Hegseth and Co had planned to bomb Yemen, and did. They discussed their war plans on the Signal app, but accidentally put Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of The Atlantic, on the chat. That was a gigantic breach of protocol, but Hegseth et al didn’t notice Goldberg’s presence. A big national controversy has now arisen about what to do. Investigate Hegseth? Force him to resign? Prosecute him? Continue reading →

Gaza: Tod Macht Frei

Posted on by under activism, moralism, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine

Some friends of mine associated with Jewish Voice for Peace of North Jersey (along with Peace Action and Pax Christi) have taken out a paid ad in the Star-Ledger this morning (Newark, New Jersey), condemning Israel’s violation of the ceasefire agreement signed January 17th (see below, under the fold). You might not, by reading legacy (“mainstream”) media, have grasped the blatantly obvious fact that Israel had violated the ceasefire, but if you hadn’t, here’s a primer by Jonah Valdez at The Intercept. Continue reading →