The lead story on last night’s NBC News was about the cease-fire in Gaza, and it showed Israelis celebrating the return of the hostages, and Gazan civilians celebrating the cessation of war. Even my Jewish friends in America are celebrating, though they’re properly wary of “stage 2” of the deal: will Hamas gives up its […]
Stuff reports: Celebration – tinged with anxiousness – has broken out in parts of Israel and Gaza after the announcement of a ceasefire deal between the warring parties. Israel has begun implementing the ceasefire deal in Gaza, after it reached an agreement with Hamas for the Palestinian militant group to release all the hostages it holds. Crowds in both […]
As readers no doubt recall, the BBC began producing partial coverage of the story of the latest flotilla publicity stunt soon after its second departure from Spain on the evening of September 1st: BBC NEWS KEEPS AUDIENCES IN THE DARK ABOUT LATEST FLOTILLA STUNT Days later the BBC promoted unproven allegations of ‘drone attacks’ made […]
On July 30th 2025 the BBC News website published an ‘explainer’ article by Paul Adams under the headline “What does recognising a Palestinian state mean?”. Since its initial publication, that article – which currently appears on the website’s ‘Middle East’ page – has been updated several times, including a recent amendment to its introduction: Original […]
Visitors to the BBC News website on the afternoon of September 24th found a report by Alys Davies headlined “Twenty injured in Yemen drone attack on Israel, rescuers and military say”. Notably, that report about a Houthi – rather than “Yemen” – UAV attack on the same day fails to note that it struck a […]
Steven Gaskell writes – Australia’s Labor government has made a historic move: it has formally recognised the State of Palestine. Foreign Minister Penny Wong framed the decision as a step towards peace and a two-state solution. The headlines blared “Australia recognises Palestine” but almost none of the mainstream outlets bothered to mention the fine print. […]
The exercise of US foreign policy (along with the European Union and the United Nations) has been increasingly characterized by the use (or threat) of trade sanctions. What do we know about how such sanctions work? Gabriel Felbermayr, T. Clifton Morgan, Constantinos Syropoulos, and Yoto V. Yotov review the evidence in “Economic Sanctions: Stylized Facts…
Here are two short (ca. 7 minutes each) clips from Friday’s “Real Time” show with Bill Maher; watch ’em before they take them down. They’re both good–and larded with humor. The first is his opening monologue about the censorship and fear of American media. Maher points out that Jimmy Kimmel’s firing occurred exactly 24 years […]
This has some relevance to today’s wars. Families and friends who ended up on opposite sides in the U.S. Civil War (1861–1865) experienced some of the most painful consequences of the conflict. The war was not just between North and South—it cut across states, towns, and even households. Here’s what happened in different situations: Families […]
Just War Theory is a moral framework for evaluating the resort to war, conduct in war, and responsibilities after war. It seeks a middle path between pacifism (which rejects war) and realism (which treats war as beyond morality), arguing that war, though tragic, can sometimes be morally justified and must always be morally constrained. Classically […]
As we wrote in a post last week, a Guardian article by their Beirut correspondent William Christou (“US imposes sanctions on Palestinians for requesting war crimes inquiry“, 5 Sept) included the following erroneous claim: In an interim judgment in January 2024, the ICJ ruled that the claim of genocide was “plausible”… As we’ve noted in communications […]
The concept of proportionality – or as it is more often presented, ‘disproportionality’ – has long been a theme that is widely used in BBC reporting on armed conflicts involving Israel. However, contrary to the narrative frequently advanced by the BBC, that concept does not relate to the relative numbers of people killed on either […]
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. - J Robert Oppenheimer.
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