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Michael Simms: A note to our readers concerning Vox Populi's coverage of the war on Gaza
I’ve received a number of complaints that Vox Populi’s coverage of the current conflict in Gaza is one-sided, and I have to admit that it’s true. Vox Populi’s articles, editorials and poems have presented only the viewpoint of the Palestinians who have suffered occupation, bombardment and invasion while we’ve ignored or discredited official statements from the Israeli and American governments…
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#activists#American news media#anti-war#Biden#Children in War#Columbia Univeristy#Gaza#genocide#Israeli-Palestinian conflict#Princeton University#United Nations#war-crimes
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Alexis Rhone Fancher: Night Sky
We’re arguing about the stars again. It’s midnight when he pulls/drags me outside into the frozen dark. Look up! he says. I throw back my head, search the sky, see only a cloud bank, a muffled moon. He grabs my shoulders, spins me around. Look! Don’t you see them? I squint my eyes. Where? Over there, he says, tilts my head back even farther. There’s a faint glimmer, like a starlight SOS.
It’s a…
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Brett Wilkins: Israel Kills Daughter, Infant Grandson of Slain Palestinian Poet Refaat Alareer
“I have beautiful news for you. I wish I could tell you in person. Do you know you have just become a grandfather?” Shaima Alareer wrote to her slain father before she, her baby, and her husband were killed.
A Palestinian woman carrying some belongings through a neighborhood devastated by Israeli bombing in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on April 25, 2024. (Photo: AFP via Getty…
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#Brett Wilkins#Gaza#genocide#IDF#If I must die#Israeli-Palestinian conflict#Palestinian#Refaat Alareer#US military
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Adrian Rice: Among the Lavender
Honeybees spend their busy dayhovering among the lavenderwith constant co-workers for company. Each a natural-born spacewalker,they lend the light leaves some swayas they drift from flower to flower. For them, perhaps, the pale purpleof the holy herb is justanother colour, and the beautiful fragrance may be only a wind-blownaroma-sugar aimed soley at us,but from sunup to sundown honeybees love…
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Jake Johnson: Leaked State Department Memo Says Israeli Assurances 'Neither Credible Nor Reliable'
“Today’s leak should mark a final end to this impunity. President Biden has no choice but to fully enforce the law and halt aid to Israel.”
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks to journalists in Beijing on April 26, 2024 (Photo: Johannes Neudecker)
A newly leaked internal memo shows that officials at four U.S. State Department bureaus don’t believe the Israeli government’s assurances…
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#aid to Israel#Antony Blinken#Biden#Gaza#genocide#Israeli-Palestinian conflict#State Department#US military
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Barbara Hamby: Ode on Killing Sadness
In the nursing home in Havana I can’t help but think of my mother, who would be 91,as I take each old woman’s hand and say “hola,” or “buenas tardes,” and I notice one ladywho is sitting off to the side with a look that says, “No one is going to say hello to me,”so I walk over and take her hand, and she sits up and kisses me on the cheek, a hard peckjust like the kamikaze kisses of my mother, and…
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Chris Hedges: Revolt in the Universities
University Students Across The Country, Facing Mass Arrests, Suspensions, Evictions And Expulsions Are Our Last, Best Hope To Halt The Genocide In Gaza.
NOTE: Chris Hedges, the former New York Times Middle East bureau chief, was speaking to a protest at Princeton University on Thursday when campus police came to lead him away.
Hedges sent the following statement to Consortium News:
“Princeton…
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#activism#Chris Hedges#Gaza#genocide#George Washington University#Israeli-Palestinian conflict#Peace movement#Princeton#Revolt in the Universities#Student Protest#US military
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Howard Zinn: Thoughts on Civil Disobedience
There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.~
To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity…
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Michael T. Young: Two Poems
Dispersing Dusk At the horizon behind us, shadowscome together to hold hands,imitating us, before night takes overcompletely covering us in its tightfolds and creases, like the rumpled sheetswhere we frolic in our unities of fleshand spirit. A last light dusts the air,and in the windows those shadowstuck into each other, the way we, nowin the dark, are aware of touchand being touched in a nest of…
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Julia Conley: Violent Arrest of Emory Professor Spotlights Brutality of Police Crackdown on Campus Protests
“To sustain this level of blind support for Israel, the U.S. must erode its own democracy,” said one foreign policy expert. “And that is what we see happening on U.S. campuses now.”
Emory University economics professor Caroline Fohlin was pushed to the ground and subdued by police officers on April 25, 2024 after asking an officer why a student was being arrested, in Atlanta. (Image:…
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#activism#Biden#Caroline Fohlin#democracy#Emory Univeristy#Gaza#genocide#Israeli-Palestinian conflict#Julia Conley#police brutality
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Laure-Anne Bosselaar: Brief
It happens so often: there — somewhere
in a line, waiting room or store — I see you,
& it’s something about your work-wrecked
hands, cow-lick, the perfect curl of your lips,
or grief nearly collapsing your face,
that make me quietly smile at you or nod
as I take you in — nameless companion
in this crammed commute of a life —
& whether you lower your eyes or smile
back, I now carry you along…
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Mel Duncan: There’s a better way to make communities safer — and it’s taking off around the world
A growing number of courageous and creative people are showing that unarmed civilian protection is far superior to any smart or dumb weapon.
The wars in Ukraine and Palestine continue to escalate as the U.S. bolsters them with billions more in weapons, feeding the insatiable military industries all in the name of security and stability. Yet, at the same time, a rapidly swelling undercurrent of…
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#Amnesty International#Burundi#civilian protection#crime#Mel Duncan#military#Nonviolent Peaceforce#Palestine#police#Ukraine
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Elizabeth Gargano: How Parables Teach Us Who We Are
Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler. (Seven Stories Press, 1993)
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In my contemporary fiction class at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, I often teach Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower, a classic dystopian futuristic novel. Written in 1993, Butler’s novel begins in what then seemed a distant future, our current year of 2024. Lauren Olamina, the novel’s protagonist,…
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#African American#Black writer#dystopian#Elizabeth Gargano#Fantasy#How Parables Teach Us Who We Are#Octavia Butler#Octavia E. Butler#Parable of the Sower#science fiction#speculative fiction
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Emily Cataneo: A New Chapter in the Quest for a Longer Life
Why We Die: The New Science of Aging and the Quest for Immortality
by Venki Ramakrishnan
William Morrow, 320 pages
In “Why We Die,” biologist and Nobel laureate Venki Ramakrishnan explores the science of aging and life extension.
IN 2023, tech mogul Bryan Johnson revealed that he had been receiving blood plasma exchanges from his 17-year-old son, in the hope that siphoning his son’s young…
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Al Maginnes: Lydia Loveless's X
She says fuck as many times as she wantswhen she talks between songs of flesh betrayedand reclaimed. And just over her heart, a tattooed X, a set of crossed sticks, stitchedinto the skin with a sewing needle and ink,jailhouse style. Maybe a first tattoo, something small and easy to hide, roadmapsfor the larger designs decorating her armsand shoulders, the way chords point to songs.The vine…
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Jake Johnson: UN Rights Chief Demands International Probe of Mass Graves Near Gaza Hospitals
“Hospitals are entitled to very special protection under international humanitarian law,” said Volker Türk, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights.
TEHRAN, Apr. 23 (MNA) – A mass grave with nearly 300 bodies were uncovered at a hospital in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, Gaza Civil Defense workers said Monday.
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The United Nations’ human rights chief on Tuesday called for…
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#al-Shifa#Gaza#genocide#human rights#IDF#Israeli-Palestinian conflict#Khan Younis#United Nations#Volker Türk#War Crimes
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Joan E. Bauer: Remembering Sanora Babb
Ray Bradbury knew Babb from a longtime workshop: The author of a promising Dust Bowl novel that editor Bennet Cerf shelved in ‘39, saying— What rotten luck! claiming her work ‘an anti-climax’ after Grapes of Wrath. Someone else, Bradbury recalls, would have stopped writing after such a blow. * In Oklahoma Territory, Babb learned to read from newspapers & The Adventures of Kit Carson. Dogged by…
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#Communist Party in America#Grapes of Wrath#Great Depression#Hollywood#James Wong Howe#Joan E. Bauer#John Reed Club#John Steinbeck#Ralph Ellion#Ray Bradbury#Sanora Babb#Their Names Were Unknown
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