IN THE NEWS

Ethnic cleansing is an effort to render an ethnically mixed country homogenous by expelling a particular group of people and turning them into refugees while demolishing the homes they were driven out from.

-Ilan Pappé, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine

Former British and French diplomats urge action over Israel’s ‘erasure’ of Palestine

Patrick Wintour © The Guardian
August 22, 2026

More than 100 French and British former diplomats have said Palestine is being erased in front of the world’s eyes and called for urgent action including trade and arms sales bans to press Israel to accept a Palestinian state.

An unprecedented joint letter dispenses with diplomatic language by accusing Israel of ethnic cleansing and warning that the world no longer sees Israel as a genuine democracy.

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With compulsory transfer we would have a vast area for settlement… I support compulsory transfer. I don’t see anything immoral in it.

-David Ben-Gurion to the Jewish Agency Executive, June 1938

ICE Worked With Iranian Regime to Set Up Deportation Flights as Trump Laid Plans for War

Noah Hurowitz © The Intercept
August 18, 2026

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents appear to have worked directly with government officials in Iran to deport over 100 Iranian nationals as the United States prepared to bomb their home country, according to a newly released trove of internal emails from ICE.

In the process, immigration officials indicate they complied with an Iranian request to repatriate three specific people who were living in the United States.

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Destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal.

-E.O. Wilson

Trump administration to rescind rule protecting old-growth forests

Mark Oliver © The Guardian
August 18, 2026

The Trump administration said on Tuesday it plans to rescind the “roadless rule” that has protected old-growth forests in the US for 25 years, potentially opening up almost 45m acres of national forests to road construction, drilling and logging.

Conservationists had feared the announcement was coming since last summer after Brooke Rollins, Trump’s secretary of agriculture, targeted a rule brought in by Bill Clinton’s administration, describing it as “overly restrictive” and an “absurd obstacle” to development.

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We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Nature’s inexhaustible sources of energy – sun, wind and tide.

-Thomas A. Edison

Trump’s Mindless Rollback of Offshore Wind Has Screwed Over Thousands of Workers

Ajani Stella © Mother Jones
August 11, 2026

When Gerard Mullin decided to train in offshore wind, he didn’t know what to expect. But on his first long-term project in Massachusetts, he immediately relished the consistency of the work, the good pay, and the novelty of laboring at sea.

“I thought it was the best thing in the world,” he said.

In his first eight weeks working offshore, Mullin made more money than he had saved in the previous five years.

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