Tag Archives: news

Resistance in Action (5)

Posted on by under activism, anarchism, migrant defense

A Response to John Heilner

Toward the end of the August 11 Princeton Council meeting at which Princeton’s ITA Resolution was adopted, John Heilner, a Princeton resident, offered a comment that has now been transcribed in the August 13 issue of TapInto Princeton and in the August 13 issue of Town Topics (updated on August 18). Though Mr Heilner’s comment has not to my knowledge elicited very much public comment, I think it demands comment. To put the matter bluntly, I regard his comment as both incoherent and irresponsible, and am amazed that a Council that has spent the better part of the last six months lecturing us about matters of facticity and tone has received it with such apparent equanimity. Continue reading →

Resistance in Action (4)

Posted on by under activism, anarchism, migrant defense

More Botched Reporting from Town Topics 

In an earlier post here, I took issue with Town Topics’s defective reporting on the ITA municipal resolution campaign in Princeton. In quoting exclusively from members of the Princeton Council in its reporting on the July 28 Council meeting, I argued, the paper functioned essentially as a PR mouthpiece for the Council rather than as an expression of bona fide journalism. I sent a shorter version of that post as a letter to the editor of Town Topics, but it wasn’t printed. The paper’s most recent reporting on the August 11 meeting makes an attempt of sorts to remedy the problem, but still falls woefully short.  Continue reading →

Statement to Princeton Town Council

Posted on by under activism, migrant defense

Statement Urging Passage of a Municipal Resolution in Favor of the Immigrant Trust Act
Princeton Town Council
Princeton Municipal Building
400 Witherspoon St
Princeton, New Jersey
July 28, 2025

My name is Irfan Khawaja, I’m a resident of Princeton, and I support a municipal resolution in favor of the Immigrant Trust Act. I’ll be forwarding written statements to the Council from Flemington Borough Council member Trent Levitt, Bloomfield mayor Jenny Mundell, and former New Jersey state representative Sadaf Jaffer, all urging passage of such a resolution. I’ve asked several other mayors and local officials to weigh in, and my hope is that they will. 
Continue reading →

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 →