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1 week ago | 
counterpunch.org | Jeffrey St. Clair |Julie Wark
The increasing issuance by Israeli Forces of “evacuation orders” – which are, in effect, displacement orders – have resulted in the forcible transfer of Palestinians in Gaza into ever-shrinking spaces where they have little or no access to life-saving services, including water, food and shelter, and where they continue to be subject to attacks. Since 18 March, Israel has issued 21 “evacuation orders”.
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Jan 16, 2025 | 
counterpunch.org | Julie Wark
This biography by Jonathan Watts, The Many Lives of James Lovelock, could just as well be titled “A Life of the Many James Lovelocks”. Everyone liked one or another James Lovelock. He was widely—too widely—liked. Watts quotes former Guardian journalist Tim Radford: “I’m not surprised people who might consider themselves in political enmity also liked him so much” (256).
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Dec 15, 2024 | 
counterpunch.org | Julie Wark
Extremely dangerous ground which requires the most scrupulous prudence and caution, language also constitutes a powerful weapon through which the success of any enterprise can be guaranteed … [T]he art of oratory in ancient China tends to be identified with the art of war and of strategic intelligence. – Albert Galvany Half a millennium before […] To read this article, log in here or subscribe here.
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Nov 22, 2024 | 
counterpunch.org | Julie Wark
Sugar-cane planting ceremony in Merauke, West Papua, July 2024.
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Oct 13, 2024 | 
counterpunch.org | Julie Wark |Jeffrey St. Clair
We belong to nature, we are one flesh and one blood with nature, we are one brain with nature. – Friedrich Engels, Dialectics of Nature, 1883. A year ago, the Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant probably said more than he meant to: “We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly … We are imposing […] To read this article, log in here or subscribe here.
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Sep 11, 2024 | 
counterpunch.org | Julie Wark
The night of 17-18 September 2024 will mark the 63rd anniversary of the death in a plane crash near Ndola, Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) of the second United Nations Secretary-General, Dag Hammarskjöld and fifteen other people, UN staff and the plane’s crew.
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Aug 21, 2024 | 
counterpunch.org | Julie Wark
More often than not, the dead do not return to rejoin the living but rather to lead them into some dreadful snare, entrapping them with disastrous consequences [… What] haunts are not the dead, but the gaps left within us by the secrets of others. – Nicolas AbrahamI was about six when I learned the word decapitated. Behind one of the two hotels in the main street of my hometown, Angaston, there was an abandoned quarry with a cave where two men lived.
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Aug 18, 2024 | 
counterpunch.org | Julie Wark
But for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, appearance to essence, … truth is considered profane, and only illusion is sacred. Sacredness is in fact held to be enhanced in proportion as truth decreases and illusion increases, so that the highest degree […] To read this article, log in here or subscribe here.
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Jul 5, 2024 | 
counterpunch.org | Julie Wark
The Dutch colonisers of West Papua thought the island of New Guinea looked like a bird, so called its northwestern tip Vogelkop (Bird’s Head). In what is now Indonesian-occupied West Papua, Paniai, an area of 6,525.25 km2 with a population of about 220,410, is nestled with its lakes in the middle of the “bird’s” shoulder girdle. It’s not a place that hits headlines although it ranks high in the annals of human tragedy.
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Jun 30, 2024 | 
counterpunch.org | Julie Wark
“You do a massacre in an isolated rural village where no one will ever know about it” Prabowo Subianto, President of Indonesia I’m not going to mince words. Prabowo Subianto must be one of the evilest men who ever stained this bumi manusia (earth of humankind), to cite the title of the marvellous, novel by […] To read this article, log in here or subscribe here.
