IN THE NEWS
Categorical condemnation is the hatred of the mob. It makes cowards brave. And there is nothing more fearful than a religious mob, a mob overflowing with righteousness – as at the crucifixion and before and since. This can happen only after we have made a categorical refusal to kindness: to heretics, foreigners, enemies or any other group different from ourselves.
A New Documentary Follows Doctors Into Gaza
August 29, 2026
Poh Si Teng couldn’t bear the silence as the Israeli government killed hundreds of Palestinian journalists in Gaza. Some were her former colleagues at Al Jazeera, where Teng had been a documentary commissioner—yet the American news media remained, as she put it, “pin-drop” silent.
So Teng emptied her life savings to make American Doctor, which follows three American physicians— Mark Perlmutter, Feroze Sidhwa, and Thaer Ahmad—a Jewish, Zoroastrian, and Palestinian Muslim trio. They set out to Gaza in March 2025, though Ahmad is turned away by Israeli border guards and never gets in.
... full articleWhen men are engaged in war and conquest, the tools of science become as dangerous as a razor in the hands of a child of three. We must not condemn man because his inventiveness and patient conquest of the forces of nature are being exploited for false and destructive purposes. Rather, we should remember that the fate of mankind hinges entirely upon man’s moral development.
Free Speech Groups Sound Alarm on “Red Scare” Repression of ICE Watch Activists
August 29, 2026
Free speech groups across the country are sounding the alarm over the Trump administration’s surveillance of social movements in Minnesota and the prosecution of the Minnesota 15, a group of activists from Minneapolis-St. Paul who face federal conspiracy charges after organizing protests against brutal immigration sweeps earlier this year.
President Donald Trump and his allies in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Justice Department have targeted the First Amendment-protected expression of protesters, civil society groups, journalists, universities, and the lawyers representing them at a scale that has “not been seen since the Second Red Scare,” according to an amicus brief filed with a federal court in Minnesota on August 25 by Protect Democracy and other groups.
... full articleWhat really frightens and dismays us is not external events themselves, but the way in which we think about them. It is not things that disturb us, but our interpretation of their significance.
Ratko Mladić, the ‘Butcher of Bosnia’, could not escape death. But his fascist ideas and ideology live on
August 30, 2026
Men age and die, but in the Balkans, time stands still and is stuck. General Ratko Mladić, who died in prison in The Hague on Thursday aged 84, remains a hero in the Republika Srpska statelet – the Serbian half of dismembered Bosnia that he carved out with a hurricane of violence between 1992 and 1995 – and in Serbia itself.
... full articleDo not wait for the last judgment. It comes every day.
How Many Fascist Cronies Can One Republican Have?
August 28, 2026
Not for the first time, Republican Georgia congressman and Senate nominee Mike Collins is having to fend off questions about a former staffer’s florid public embrace of racism. On Thursday, The Washington Post reported that “a former staffer for Representative Mike Collins (R-Georgia) shared images in June and July on his X account of a swastika and one that depicts himself in Ku Klux Klan robes.”
... full article