solo

Our guest is the Haaretz correspondent Amira Hass, the only Israeli Jewish journalist to have spent 30 years living in and reporting from Gaza and the West Bank. She is the recipient of the 2024 Columbia Journalism Award, and on Wednesday she addressed the graduating class of the Columbia Journalism School in New York City. Hass discusses the ongoing Israeli war on Gaza, why journalists should “resist the normalization of evil and injustice,” Israel’s recent censorship of Al Jazeera, its maintenance of a strict apartheid system, its complete rejection of the prospect of Palestinian statehood and more. “Israel took Palestinian life, liberty and freedom as hostage for the past 75 years,” says Hass. “You go to Tel Aviv, you think you are in New York or you are in London — and 40, 50 kilometers away, Palestinians live in cages.” We also play an excerpt from the student and faculty-led “People’s Graduation” held Thursday at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City in response to Columbia University’s crackdown on student protest, which culminated in the administration’s cancellation of university-wide commencement. Centering Palestinian solidarity, the People’s Graduation featured speakers including the Pulitzer Prize-winning data journalist and illustrator Mona Chalabi, who praised the work of student journalists. While “our institutions have failed us these past seven months, … we listened to your radio stations if we wanted the truth,” she said.

The imprisoned PKK leader has urged for resistance against Isis militants in Syria.

Mr Ocalan, who is serving a life sentence on a prison island near Istanbul, issued the call to arms through his lawyer Mazlum Dinc.

“I call on all Kurdish people to start an all-out resistance against this high-intensity war,” he declared.

“Not only the people of Rojava (Syrian Kurdistan) but also all people in the north (Turkey) and other parts of Kurdistan should act accordingly.”

The Isis offensive against the northern Syrian city of Kobane, defended by the YPG Kurdish local self-defence forces, has driven 130,000 refugees to seek safety in Turkey in the last few days.

[...]

A realistic understanding of their costs and risks is critical.

What are SMRs?

1. SMRs are not more economical than large reactors.

2. SMRs are not generally safer or more secure than large light-water reactors.

3. SMRs will not reduce the problem of what to do with radioactive waste.

4. SMRs cannot be counted on to provide reliable and resilient off-the-grid power for facilities, such as data centers, bitcoin mining, hydrogen or petrochemical production.

5. SMRs do not use fuel more efficiently than large reactors.

[Edit: If people have links that contradict any the above, could you please share in the comment section?]

Nuclear power leaves a long and toxic legacy.

Mr Ruskell said: “There is nothing safe, secure or green about nuclear energy, and many people across Scotland will be dismayed and angry to hear that the Secretary of State is seeking to open a new reactor in Scotland.

“Aside from the brazen entitlement and the message this sends, it ignores that people in Scotland have long rejected nuclear energy. I hope that all progressive parties will unite in condemning this environment wrecking overreach.

“A new reactor would not only be unsafe, it would be extremely costly and would leave a toxic legacy for centuries. It would also distract from the vital work we need to do to boost clean, green and renewable energy.

“That is why I hope all progressive parties can rule out any return to nuclear power once Torness has been decommissioned.

“The Hinkley point shambles has exposed the UK government’s total inability to deliver nuclear programmes on budget or on time. We would be far better investing in the huge abundance of renewable resources that we already have here in Scotland.”

An exhibition in the West Bank attempts both to capture and counteract the erasure of Palestinian life and culture in Gaza, even as its artists are killed.

“This is Not an Exhibition,” which runs until August, showcases some 300 artworks by Gazan artists. Walking around the hall is something of a sensory overload, pulling visitors between visual and auditory stimuli. Paintings crowd around each other in no particular order on the museum’s darkened indigo walls, evoking the chaos of the ravaged Palestinian art scene in Gaza.

Companies are becoming ever craftier in their efforts to pose as more climate-friendly than they are

The name of the ruse: a taxonomy of greenwashing

Mechanism

• Misleading information
• Attention deflection
• Attention reduction (absolute)
• Attention reduction (peer-overshadowed)
• Attention timing

Classic application

• Misleading claims made by firms themselves
• Greenshifting of blame on to demanding consumers
• Limited disclosure of worthy ambitions
• Decent disclosure but substandard vis à vis peers
• Delayed disclosure

Sophisticated application

• Greenlabelling by third parties, which certify firms’ performance
• Greenlighting of good-news case studies
• Fuller disclosure, but with greenhushing of details
• Greencrowding: substandard disclosure en masse
• Greenrinsing: headline-grabbing targets get gradually diluted

Archive link

That toll is more than three times the number of Palestinians killed in the West Bank in 2022.

Israelis have now killed at least 502 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since October 7.

The latest killings came on Thursday when three youths – Mohamed Youssef Nasr Allah, 27, Ayman Ahmed Mubarak, 26, and Hossam Emad Deabes, 22 – were killed by Israeli forces raiding Tulkarm.

More than 230 Palestinians were killed during Israeli raids, while at least 20 are reported to have been killed by settlers from illegal settlements and outposts. [...]

Altogether, 14 journalists from seven countries analysed the most up-to-date EU figures and created an interactive map of Europe’s aquifers. The conclusion is that our water is disappearing and what remains is facing near-irreversible pollution. Over 15% of the aquifers mapped are in poor condition — dangerously overexploited, contaminated or both. This figure represents 26% of the aquifers by surface area. And the worst affected are important crop-producing countries, like Spain, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands.

But the picture is incomplete. The EU requires all member states and Iceland and Norway to give data on the state of their aquifers. Out of these 29 countries, 16 submitted full, publicly accessible data, with Germany’s and Portugal’s only partially accessible. Eleven countries are not included in the map at all [...]

The US state department has moved a $1bn package of weapons aid for Israel into the congressional review process, two US officials said on Tuesday.

The latest weapons package includes tank rounds, mortars and armored tactical vehicles, one of the officials told Reuters. [...]

Israel was founded with the Nakba, a series of atrocities that ethnically cleansed Palestinians from their homeland. Today we are witnessing Israel engage in ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza on an even larger, more violent scale.

The Second Nakba

While Palestinians have always feared the prospect of a second Nakba, which several Israeli officials have threatened over the years, most never imagined that it would unfold before their eyes in broad daylight, believing that ethnic cleansing belonged in the past century.

They were wrong. For eight months since last October, Israel has massacred and displaced more than three times as many Palestinians in Gaza as it did in all of Palestine during the Nakba. [...]

Archive link

CEO of state-controlled oil major leaves job less than a year-and-a-half after being appointed by leftist leader

It comes after 13 students were arrested for trespassing late last month during a protest.

Twelve students committed to not eating in response to university administrators who barred a group of students from the university for participating in a sit-in that occurred in late April.