Tag Archives: news

The Lesson of LA

Posted on by under activism, anarchism, cancel culture, Fatwas, Trump 2

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

Posted on by under activism, cancel culture, liberty and the left, moralism, Trump 2

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 →

PFS on Yechiel Leiter: A Response

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

I subscribe to an email list owned by a group called Princetonians for Free Speech (PFS), which just today put out an open letter to Christopher Eisgruber, President of Princeton University, in advance of tomorrow’s speech by Yechiel Leiter, Israel’s ambassador to the United States. I don’t ordinarily feel the need to respond to statements by PFS, but in this case, a brief comment is in order. Continue reading →

We Won’t Stop

Posted on by under activism, EVS Journal, Fatwas, Health Care Series, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine

The New York Times has yet another article on the Trump Administration’s attacks on higher education. As a former academic, I feel bad for higher education, but as an activist right now, I feel fine. Here’s my unapologetic comment in the comments section of the article:

When campus activists called for divestment, we were mocked. Now, as Defense Dept contracts are being canceled at those very universities, invoking our activism as a pretext, it’s our turn to mock. Don’t expect sympathy. It’s not forthcoming. You wanted us in jail. We want you broke. May the antagonist with the greatest moral endurance win.

My comment elicited a rejoinder from someone named Al Orin from New York City: Continue reading →

The Reporters that Didn’t Bark in the Night

Posted on by under Big Data, Trump 2

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 →

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 →

In Defense of Mahmoud Khalil

Posted on by under activism, cancel culture, Election 2024, Fatwas, General announcements, moralism, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine, Trump 2, Uncategorized

Letter from a Palestinian Political Prisoner in Louisiana March 18, 2025

My name is Mahmoud Khalil and I am a political prisoner. I am writing to you from a detention facility in Louisiana where I wake to cold mornings and spend long days bearing witness to the quiet injustices underway against a great many people precluded from the protections of the law. Continue reading →

Death Camps and Torture Chambers

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

An Addendum on Institutional Neutrality
I wanted to add a sort of postscript to my March 17 post on institutional neutrality, meant to clarify an inference that is slightly (but only slightly) more complicated than I made it in the original post. The post was already somewhat long, and I didn’t want to burden it with over-complications by addressing every possible objection, or chasing down every twist and turn in the argument. But I also don’t want to burden it with misunderstandings.

Continue reading →

No More Tears

Posted on by under Fatwas, Health Care Series, Trump 2

The Selena Gomez controversy may not be your idea of a top story right now, but I think it has a certain interest to it. As you may know, Gomez took to social media to post a video of herself sobbing about the recent ICE deportations. No sooner did she do so, but she was assailed for it. She tried to explain herself, only to invite further derision, then ended up deleting both the original post and one of her later explanations. 

Of particular interest to me is this riposte to Gomez from Thomas Homan, acting director of ICE during Trump’s first term, and now the White House “border czar.” 

We’ve got a quarter of a million Americans dead from fentanyl coming across an open border. Where’s the tears for them?

The border isn’t “open,” and the “quarter of a million” figure is phony. But I have a pretty direct answer to Homan’s question, and have special standing to answer it: If you want tears, look elsewhere.  Continue reading →