Annie's New Letters (& notes)

The power of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is the power of ideas to change the world. It inspires us to continue working to ensure all people can gain freedom, equality and dignity...

2026-06-08T10:20:00.619-04:00

United Nations

In December 1948, the UN General Assembly met in Paris to adopt the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The principles laid out in this historic document have been key in helping guide humanity toward a world of greater freedom, equality & justice.

ohchr.org/en/universal-d

https://www.ohchr.org/en/universal-declaration-of-human-rights

[AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes or watch videos) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine]

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is a milestone document in the history of human rights. Drafted by representatives with different legal and cultural backgrounds from all regions of the world, it set out, for the first time, fundamental human rights to be universally protected.

Discover the Declaration

The power of the Universal Declaration is the power of ideas to change the world. It inspires us to continue working to ensure that all people can gain freedom, equality and dignity.

Read the Declaration
Discover the articles in social media
Listen to the Declaration
UDHR Audio/Video Project

The original records

The Declaration was adopted by the UN General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948 during its 183rd plenary meeting.

View the original resolution.
Explore the meeting record for the historic adoption.
Examine the voting record.
And for more information about the history of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, discover research guides and resources.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights Exhibit

We maintain a worldwide collection of materials on the Declaration, which is permanently based... READ MORE https://www.ohchr.org/en/universal-declaration-of-human-rights

Ali Louis Bourzgui dedicates Tony award to immigrants and Palestine ...Accepting the award, the 26-year-old dedicated it to "the people of Palestine who deserve to live a fruitful life, a free life, a full life without occupation", drawing applause from the audience...

2026-06-08T10:06:51.929-04:00

Ali Louis Bourzgui was born to a Moroccan-American father and an Italian-Irish mother [Getty/file photo]

Tony winner Ali Louis Bourzgui dedicates award to Palestinians

Tony winner Ali Louis Bourzgui dedicated his award to Palestinians and called for greater Arab representation in the arts.

Moroccan-American actor Ali Louis Bourzgui used his acceptance speech at the Tony Awards on Sunday night to speak out in support of Palestinians, immigrant communities and LGBTQ people after winning Best Featured Actor in a Musical for his role in Broadway's The Lost Boys.

Accepting the award, the 26-year-old dedicated it to "the people of Palestine who deserve to live a fruitful life, a free life, a full life without occupation", drawing applause from the audience.

His remarks come as Palestinians in Gaza continue to endure Israel's devastating military campaign, while Palestinians in the occupied West Bank face escalating attacks by Israeli settlers and military forces, alongside ongoing displacement linked to settlement expansion.

Bourzgui also paid tribute to immigrant families and LGBTQ communities in the United States, telling them they should not have to "audition for the empathy" they deserve.

Speaking about immigrant communities, he said the "beautiful tapestry" they create is what makes the United States special.

"May you one day not have to audition for the empathy that should be freely given by this country that benefits from your beauty," he said.

The actor also used the moment to celebrate Arab artists and theatre makers, calling for greater visibility and representation.

Addressing underrepresented Arab creatives, he said he hoped they would continue telling their stories and showing their faces so that "our humanity becomes undeniable, and our families can no longer be written off as merely collateral damage."

"May they know the beauty of our kisses upon each cheek and the romance of a language rooted in passion for love and life itself," he added in his speech.

https://www.newarab.com/news/tony-winner-ali-louis-bourzgui-dedicates-award-palestinians

"We live in an age saturated with Holocaust books, films, documentaries, and lessons that teach us how dangerous dehumanization can be. We are reminded time and again that before people can be mistreated, displaced, or killed on a mass scale, they are first stripped of their humanity through words and imagery. And yet, when similar language is used today to describe Palestinians, much of the world remains silent—or worse, offers its support. If history has taught us anything, it is that when human beings are reduced to weeds, thorns, insects, or any other nuisance, the groundwork is being laid for people to accept what would otherwise be unacceptable. That is why the language matters. And that is why the silence is so troubling." ~ Mike Odetalla

2026-06-08T08:26:09.405-04:00

Mike Hanini Odetalla

tspoSnerodf2f7m4000m15847f1l64fh32m5a97380l7tu1f0g4u14518m4f ·

Morning reflections regarding Gaza with coffee as I look over my yard:

6/08/26

I can't look at my lawn without thinking about the terminology that has been used over the years to describe military assaults on Palestinians.

"Mowing the lawn" was one such phrase used to describe repeated assaults on Gaza, reducing Palestinian men, women, and children to little more than blades of grass to be cut down.

More recently came "Field of Thorns," a term associated with the current Israeli leadership, where Palestinians are once again reduced to an unwanted nuisance that must be removed.

What I find most disturbing is not merely the language itself, but the world's reaction to it.

We live in an age saturated with Holocaust books, films, documentaries, and lessons that teach us how dangerous dehumanization can be. We are reminded time and again that before people can be mistreated, displaced, or killed on a mass scale, they are first stripped of their humanity through words and imagery.

And yet, when similar language is used today to describe Palestinians, much of the world remains silent—or worse, offers its support.

If history has taught us anything, it is that when human beings are reduced to weeds, thorns, insects, or any other nuisance, the groundwork is being laid for people to accept what would otherwise be unacceptable.

That is why the language matters.

And that is why the silence is so troubling.

~ Mike Odetalla

https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=10166147366441977&set=a.10150390714236977

Those who championed free speech in the UK and US now wage war on it. And here’s why: Palestine ...."How can any of this be justified in a democracy? No foreign government should be granted immunity from criticism. Not China. Not Saudi Arabia. Not Israel. And yet the self-proclaimed Jewish state occupies a uniquely and weirdly protected place in our political discourse. Criticism that would be considered routine in any other context – don’t bomb hospitals! Don’t kill kids! – is cynically rebranded as anti-Jewish bigotry."

2026-06-08T07:39:55.523-04:00

Supporters of Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil chain themselves to a fence at Columbia University, New York, 2 April 2025. Photograph: Kyle Mazza/NurPhoto/REX/Shutterstock

It was once an article of faith that even those who speak words we disagree with deserve protection. As regards Palestine, that’s now not true

Mehdi Hasan

Mon 8 Jun 2026

Remember the Satanic Verses controversy? Remember “Je suis Charlie”? Remember the constant invocations of Voltaire and Orwell? The great irony of our age is that many of the cadre of politicians who spent years anointing themselves as champions of free speech have become its most enthusiastic enemies when the subject turns to one issue: Palestine.

For decades, western governments lectured the world about liberal values. They declared freedom of expression the hallmark of a liberal democratic society. Protest was deemed patriotic while the right to offend was considered sacred. Then came Gaza. Suddenly, the principles that we were once told were non-negotiable became highly negotiable indeed...

.... The actions are opaque, the message unmistakable: there are political causes the British establishment welcomes but also political causes it very much fears.

This isn’t even about Uygur or Piker’s views. Whether one agrees with everything either man has ever said is irrelevant. Piker, for example, referred to some Orthodox Jews as “inbred” and once said the US “deserved” 9/11, both offensive comments for which he has since expressed regret. Defending free speech is most crucial when that speech is controversial. You cannot show your support for free expression only by defending opinions you already share.

In the US, where I now live and vote, the situation is even more alarming.

The Trump administration’s targeting of pro-Palestinian voices and, in particular, foreign students should be seen as one of the most severe assaults on free expression in modern American history... READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jun/08/uk-us-champion-free-speech-war-palestine

"I visited almost 200 locations. It was never intended to be a project — it was a journey to educate myself and to witness the Palestinian loss of 1948." A Palestinian photographer’s ‘search for what remained’ from 1948 When Nablus-based journalist Ahmad Al-Bazz received an Israeli travel permit, he rushed to visit nearly 200 villages depopulated in the Nakba. Five years later, his new book offers a powerful visual archive of erasure.

2026-06-07T09:32:35.041-04:00

Ahmad Al-Bazz | The Erasure of Palestine

How did the experience of documenting these depopulated villages shape the way you perceived and moved through the 1948 territories?

Once you cross the wall, everything feels very foreign. I knew that I was still in Palestine — I’m just crossing a wall that divides it — but what I saw on the ground felt very different from what I was used to. It looked Western, but not like any specific place. You might be standing in front of a very Western-looking city, yet know that it was built over a Palestinian one — like Tel Aviv, which was built on part of Al-Manshiyya and a few other villages. As a photographer, that pushed me to search for what remained and to photograph it. In that sense, the act felt like a form of visual decolonization.

It was also a weird feeling because you are suddenly among the settler community. They don’t know that you’re Palestinian, and you never feel completely okay about it. Yet architecture photography helped me connect with these sites. That was also the visual style of the book: you see the Palestinian layer and the Israeli layer in the background, and I wanted to show the contrast between the two.

As you said, many of your photographs show how closely these depopulated Palestinian villages lie beside new Israeli construction, fenced off with vegetation growing over and obscuring them. What did the condition of these villages tell you about Israeli society?

Palestinian sites take different forms today. Some are destroyed, completely erased, or reduced to rubble, sometimes in nature in the middle of nowhere. In other places, surviving structures are scattered between Israeli houses, as in Haifa, or in Ijzim [now the Israeli moshav Kerem Maharal) and Ein Hod, where wealthy Palestinian houses are inhabited by Israelis. Some sites are abandoned, while others are reused in strange ways: a Palestinian school may become an Israeli school, as in Al-Tira, or a mosque may be turned into an animal shelter, as in Kawfakha.

https://www.972mag.com/palestinian-destroyed-villages-nakba-photography/

"Homes can be demolished. Walls can be reduced to rubble. Entire families can be scattered across the world. But roots run deep... And sometimes, from beneath the wreckage, life emerges to remind us that memory, belonging, and hope refuse to die." Mike Hanini Odetalla

2026-06-06T15:03:33.842-04:00

Mike Hanini Odetalla

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All That Remains...Reflections on a rather sad day

5/31/26

After the death of my father-in-law (ay), his humble two-room home in the Kadoura Refugee Camp was torn down.

His family, like so many Palestinians, had been violently expelled from their homes and lands by Zionist forces in 1948 and forced into a life of exile and displacement.

Seven years later, in 2022, I took my grandson—his great-grandson—back to show him where his grandmother had grown up and to visit a place that I myself had always loved.

The house was gone.

The tiny garden that my father-in-law had tended with such tender loving care was buried beneath rubble. Yet among the destruction, something remarkable remained.

A magnificent grapevine once covered his patio, providing shade in the summer and producing the most exquisite grapes. As I stood there looking at the ruins, I noticed a small cluster of grapes protruding defiantly from the debris.

I took this photograph.

To some, it is merely a bunch of grapes growing from a collapsed structure.

To me, it is a symbol of Palestine itself.

Homes can be demolished. Walls can be reduced to rubble. Entire families can be scattered across the world. But roots run deep.

And sometimes, from beneath the wreckage, life emerges to remind us that memory, belonging, and hope refuse to die.

All that remains... and yet, somehow, it is enough to tell the whole story.

That image of grapes emerging from rubble carries a quiet symbolism that is difficult to ignore:

the house was destroyed, but the vine still remembered where it belonged.

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10166091777606977&set=a.10150390714236977

photo & essay copyright Mike Hanini Odetalla 2026

A tenured art therapy professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) was suspended from teaching and placed under investigation following a student’s complaint about an assigned case study that mentioned violence against Palestinians.

2026-06-05T12:09:04.431-04:00

Savneet Talwar. Photograph: Salome Chasnoff

We call it the P-word’: Chicago professor suspended after assignment mentions Palestinians

School of the Art Institute of Chicago professor put under investigation after a student complained about a case study

A tenured art therapy professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) was suspended from teaching and placed under investigation following a student’s complaint about an assigned case study that mentioned violence against Palestinians.

Savneet Talwar, a faculty member with the school’s art therapy and counseling program, assigned the case study in April to a class on the cultural dimensions of therapy. The assignment asked students to develop an ethical treatment plan for a hypothetical queer, Muslim woman living in the US.

The language of the assignment read: “While she was not particularly politically active in her home country, protests in support of Palestine resonated with her on a personal level. She felt deeply affected by the violence against Palestinian civilians and was critical of the home government’s limited response.”

The two-page assignment, which was reviewed by the Guardian, mostly focused on other elements of the client’s case, including her family history, relationships and status as an immigrant. It made no additional references to Palestine or Palestinians, and no mention of Israel. But Talwar’s department had already been mired in multiple complaints and investigations about alleged antisemitism involving the same student, and faculty had been required to take anti-bias training as the school sought to address the “climate” in the department.

The school was also sued in late 2023 by an Israeli student in the same program over alleged antisemitism, including an assignment for which students were asked to review images drawn by children depicting violence by Israeli soldiers against Palestinian civilians.

After Talwar’s student received the case study, the professor got a call from a dean asking whether she had assigned “anything with Palestine in it”. She was then called into an “urgent” meeting with the school’s provost, and her class for the following day was canceled. The following day, on 17 April, the school formally notified Talwar that she was being put on paid leave, and forbade her from speaking about the matter with students and colleagues... READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/05/professor-suspended-assignment-mentions-palestinians

"... Propaganda has proliferated: Israel has quintupled its PR budget to $730m to take control of the narrative. Criticizing Israel can now stop you from getting a green card in the US and, it would seem from the Piker decision, a visa to the UK. Despite all this, however, more people are coming to understand that what is happening to Palestinians is not complex; it is fundamentally wrong."

2026-06-05T06:55:13.310-04:00

Why is Hasan Piker ‘not conducive to the public good’? Because on Gaza, we punish the witness, not the crime

Arwa Mahdawi

The UK has banned Piker and Cenk Uygur from entry – but the objectionable things they’ve said are not more dangerous than Israel itself

This week, the British government banned Hasan Piker and Cenk Uygur, two leftwing US commentators with millions of followers, from entering the country on the grounds that their presence would not be “conducive to the public good”. It did not spell out what it meant by this very broad phrase, but Piker and Uygur have accused the government of denying them entry because of their prolific criticism of Israel. Some critics have accused the pair of antisemitism, which they deny.

A lot has been written about the Piker-Uygur ban, and I don’t think I need to litigate everything they have ever uttered here. They have undeniably said some objectionable things (Piker, for example, said some Orthodox Jews are “inbred”, which he later apologized for). What sort of speech crosses a line that makes you detrimental to the public good, is not clear, however. Conservative podcaster Ben Shapiro, for example, has said that “Arabs like to bomb crap and live in open sewage”. While he later apologized for this, he has repeatedly characterized Arabs as barbarians who “value murder”. The British government has never banned him from speaking in the UK.

Neither Piker nor Uygur have said anything that is more divisive or dangerous than former Israeli president Isaac Herzog’s declaration that all Palestinians were responsible for the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023. A UN commission of inquiry found that Herzog incited the commission of genocide with this statement and said that his later modifications of that utterance were an effort “to deflect responsibility for the initial statement”. Still, the British seem fine with that first statement: Herzog met with Keir Starmer in London in 2025. Clearly that meeting was deemed to be conducive to the public good.

But, again, I don’t want to pronounce on each of Piker or Uygur’s statements here. I don’t want to fall into the trap of making this a story about two American commentators or the limits of free speech. Because at its heart, the Piker-Uygur ban is about a far more insidious issue. It’s about what Britain, and the US and Israel, wants us to believe is “good” – about the way in which our fundamental sense of what is “good” and “bad” are being manipulated.

Wherever you live, whatever you believe, wherever you sit on the political spectrum, most of us have a shared understanding of basic moral concepts, of what is good and what is bad. We understand that children are innocent and should not be killed in the thousands. We understand that a region’s healthcare system should not be systematically wiped out and medics targeted. We understand that there should be laws around warfare to protect civilians. We understand that people should not be expelled en masse from their land, their homes replaced with luxury settlements. We understand that collective punishment is a crime, one that is very much not “conducive to the public good”.

None of the above is complex, no matter what some people would have you believe. I come back to the diaries of American peace activist Rachel Corrie often because they very eloquently show how there is no room for moral confusion when you are watching atrocities unfold in front of your own eyes. When Corrie went to Gaza in 2003, more than two decades before 7 October 2023, she wrote how nothing could have prepared her for what she was seeing, which she characterized as “a somewhat gradual – often hidden, but nevertheless massive – removal and destruction of the ability of a particular group of people to survive”. It terrified her, she said. “I just want to write to my mom and tell her that I’m witnessing this chronic, insidious genocide and I’m really scared, and questioning my fundamental belief in the goodness of human nature,” Corrie wrote. Not long after writing this, she was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer while trying to save a Palestinian home in Rafah from destruction. Now, of course, the entirety of Rafah, once home to 275,000 people, has been razed to the ground.... READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jun/04/uk-hasan-piker-ban-israel

UN experts warn about escalating Israeli settler terror and existential risk posed to Palestinian communities. “Attacks serve as instrument of coercion in the hands of the occupying power, facilitating ethnic cleansing.”

2026-06-04T18:47:53.248-04:00

UN Special Procedures

@UN_SPExperts

#Palestine: UN experts warn about escalating #Israeli settler terror and existential risk posed to Palestinian communities. “Attacks serve as instrument of coercion in the hands of the occupying power, facilitating ethnic cleansing.” ohchr.org/en/press-relea

https://x.com/UN_SPExperts/status/2061433883657146441

GENEVA – UN experts* today issued a stark warning about surging Israeli settler terror in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and the existential risk it poses to Palestinian communities’ presence on the land.

“Relentless attacks by the settler-colonial movement, carried out with the support and acquiescence of the Israeli State, have become a daily terror in Palestinian lives, sowing fear, uncertainty, and profound insecurity that inevitably compels the forcible displacement of the indigenous population,” the experts said. “The escalating violence, carried out with full impunity, serves as an instrument of coercion in the hands of the occupying power, facilitating ethnic cleansing.”

The experts noted a sharp increase in the number of Palestinians killed or injured in settler attacks in 2026. “Settler brutality has reached unprecedented levels this year, with at least thirteen Palestinians killed and close to five hundred injured in five months. Both fatalities and injuries are outpacing figures from previous years,” they said.

Whilst no part of the West Bank has been spared, the continued displacement of Palestinians would expose approximately 663 km² of land to further settlement expansion. Palestinian communities in Area C – which remains under full Israeli military and civil control – are disproportionately affected. This is particularly acute in the Jordan Valley and South Hebron Hills, where communities bear a heavy burden of violence and displacement. In communities such as Masafer Yatta, near-daily raids by Israeli settlers and occupying forces have become a pervasive feature of daily life.

“Violence is used as a calculated, targeted tool to deny Palestinians access to essential services, agricultural and grazing areas, with the ultimate aim of severing the people's connection to the land,” the experts said.

A stark example of this is the village of Umm al-Kheir in the South Hebron Hills. It is now encircled by the Carmel settlement and a new outpost, for which construction began in July 2025. The community has faced repeated water and electricity cuts, demolitions, and violent attacks by settlers. In July, a human rights defender from the community was shot and killed, allegedly by an armed, sanctioned settler, during protests against that construction.... READ MORE https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2026/06/occupied-palestinian-territory-un-experts-alarmed-escalating-settler-terror

The Palestine Industry: The Rats of Gaza and the Opportunists among Us: The struggle for Palestinian freedom must remain anchored in the soil of Gaza. The global solidarity movement must not be permitted to mutate into a careerist industry.- By Ramzy Baroud

2026-06-04T07:46:33.504-04:00

Volunteers in Gaza spray pesticides in an effort to combat rodents and insects. (Photo: via QNN)

By Ramzy Baroud

It all started with a call to my family in a displacement camp in northern Gaza.

Since internet lines rarely stay connected, I managed to send a message to the widow of my cousin—who was killed along with all of his sons during the ongoing Gaza genocide. I asked her a simple question: what do Gazans want?

My purpose was to gather raw testimonies from her neighbors to weave into a letter to a European official whose country is active in pursuing justice for Palestinians. I chose this approach to bypass clichéd political discourse and avoid the pitfall of speaking on behalf of those enduring genocide and famine. Palestinians in Gaza are entirely capable of speaking for themselves.

The responses, however, reframed my entire approach. While I am deeply tied to my community in Gaza, I had anticipated a direct focus on macro-political language—on statehood, rights, and global justice. Instead, I was met with the visceral reality of immediate physical survival.

“We want a life… we want a dignified life,” she said. “A dignified life with food, water, and even the ability to breathe. One feels so suffocated. We need so many things… so, so many things. We need psychological support, financial support, and moral support.”

Another neighbor said: “They (Israel) fight us with everything, absolutely everything; even when we are sleeping in our beds .. the mosquitoes drain us. Insects and rats are all around us, fleas, and the heat is killing us. There are no fans and there is no electricity.”

Yes, many spoke about Karameh (dignity), hurriye (freedom), and Haq al-Awda (the Right of Return), but these broad political and social rights were almost always tied directly to the everyday struggle for education, for water, for basic medical care, and—against rats.

The rats. This is the recurring nightmare in the minds of Gazan parents who find themselves unable to protect their children even from rodents. Nearly two million Palestinians remain displaced in horrific conditions, trapped in barely 40 percent of an already tiny, besieged Strip.

I spent the day trying to process the pain, grief, and humble expectations of these proud people.

Yet later that evening, a seemingly separate matter came to my attention. I learned of two characters—Aziz Abu Sarah, a Palestinian from the 1948 areas, and Maoz Inon, an Israeli—who have been touring for months, promoting what they call their ‘The Future Is Peace’ tour.

These two individuals have achieved global celebrity status, sitting down with the likes of famed US comedian Jon Stewart on The Daily Show and ultimately meeting with Pope Francis himself.

To the unexamined eye, the two are peddling a message of ‘peace’ and ‘forgiveness’, routinely staging a display where they forgive each other at the end of their talks. All of this serves as a promotional springboard for their week-long ‘peace tour’ inside Israel, sold commercially at the competitive price of $4,200 per person, air tickets excluded.

The sad truth is that this corporate approach to ‘peacebuilding’ is not unique; it is a symptom of a broader trend exploiting Palestine. Even more tragically, many individual Palestinians have capitalized on the well-intentioned but often misunderstood concept of ‘centering Palestinian voices’ to accumulate personal wealth, status, and prestige, while their own brethren cannot find drinkable water and teeter on the brink of starvation.

The Arabic maxim, famous in Palestine for generations, has long contended that “the revolution is a tree watered by the blood of the martyrs, and its fruits are plucked by the opportunists and the cowards.”

Shouldn’t mass extermination be a moral threshold that stops opportunists from feeding their pathological greed?

Desperate for solidarity, Palestinians in Gaza continue to hope that global efforts will eventually aid their raw struggle for freedom, dignity, clean water, and relief from the rats. And millions worldwide are indeed well-meaning; they care about Gaza in ways that no social media post can ever capture.

The crisis is that the balance between genuine solidarity and outright exploitation at times risks tipping in favor of the exploiters. We are witnessing the rise of a lucrative cult of personality, built on high speaker fees and business-class tickets, circumnavigating the globe under the guise of advocacy... READ MORE https://www.palestinechronicle.com/the-palestine-industry-the-rats-of-gaza-and-the-opportunists-among-us/

The real function of the so-called Board of Peace was not to stop the genocide, but to manage perceptions while it continues

2026-06-04T06:33:54.883-04:00

A Palestinian boy stands by the rubble of a residential building targeted overnight by an Israeli strike in Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on 24 May, 2026 (AFP)

Eid in Gaza was another bloodbath. The ceasefire is a lie

Soumaya Ghannoushi

3 June 2026

Eid has just ended. Across much of the Muslim world, families gathered around tables, children wore new clothes, and homes echoed with laughter and celebration.

While communities elsewhere marked the occasion with joy and togetherness, Gaza endured another season of grief, displacement and death.

The images that emerged from Gaza during Eid al-Adha were not isolated tragedies. They were a glimpse into the reality that continues every day behind the convenient fiction that the war has somehow ended.

One image showed a mother, Hidayah, taking her daughters shopping for Eid clothes. The girls entered the shop while she remained outside. Moments later, an Israeli strike hit. They rushed back out in panic only to find their mother lying dead in the street, soaked in blood.

Another clip lasted only seconds. Amid the ruins of a building destroyed by an Israeli air strike, a man held the body of a small girl in his hands. Her body was shattered, charred and covered in blood. As he lifted her from the rubble, he screamed: "This is the first day of Eid!"

A third image showed tents burning in the darkness of an Eid night. Even the makeshift shelters of the displaced are not spared. It is no longer enough that Palestinians have been driven from their homes; even the scraps of canvas under which they seek refuge have become targets.

A meaningless ceasefire

These scenes were not anomalies. According to the United Nations and humanitarian organisations, more than 26 Palestinians, largely women and children, were killed during the first days of Eid alone.

On the first day of Eid al-Adha, an Israeli strike in central Gaza City reportedly killed at least 10 people, including four girls, one boy and three women.

For the victims, the debate over whether there is a ceasefire is meaningless. They are dead either way.

That is the great deception at the heart of the current discourse on Gaza.

The United Nations reports that Israeli forces have killed around 1000 Palestinians since the October ceasefire was announced, bringing the overall death toll since October 2023 to nearly 73,000. Thousands more are missing and presumed dead under the rubble.

The reality is stark. Palestinians largely adhered to the ceasefire. Israel did not. Yet, Western governments, media organisations and political establishments continue to speak as though a ceasefire exists.

The new definition appears to be that Israel may continue carrying out air strikes, shooting civilians, demolishing homes and killing Palestinians on a near-daily basis, and the world will still describe the situation as a ceasefire. The moment a single bullet is fired from Gaza, however, headlines fill with accusations of violations and escalation.

This fiction serves an obvious purpose. It removes Gaza from the headlines, lowers public scrutiny and allows Israel to continue its assault while political leaders present themselves as peacemakers... READ MORE https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/gaza-eid-bloodbath-ceasefire-lie

"Between the Dome and the Sky" by Palestinian (Ramallah) Artist Wadeei Khaled (Born in Al-Arroub Refugee Camp in 1986)

2026-06-03T10:43:39.592-04:00

Amazing Painting "Between the Dome and the Sky" by Palestinian (Ramallah) Artist Wadeei Khaled (Born in Al-Arroub Refugee Camp in 1986)

GAZA, PALESTINE

This was a thriving nation with families, holidays, hopes, schools, hospitals and customs.

Brockovich AI Data Center Reporting- Community Awareness Initiative | Your voice matters. Report. Engage. Protect. ... Key Concerns with AI Data Centers USA "When residents and councils want time to study the impact before approving more data centers, they're enacting temporary pauses. These moratoriums vary in duration and scope, but they share a goal: don't let the buildout get ahead of the planning."

2026-06-03T09:51:27.205-04:00

AI Data Centers &
Our Communities

An initiative by Erin · Environmental Advocate

"The RACE to build AI infrastructures is unfolding town by town across America. In some places, data centers are welcomed. In others, they are delayed, contested or abandoned altogether. This MAP captures the real-world footprint of that race — revealing patterns of growth, conflict and uncertainty.

I am watching as YOU, the communities show up and speak out. In the famous words of Mark Twain … “The secret of getting ahead is getting started,” so let’s go!

— Erin" https://www.brockovichdatacenter.com/index.html

⚡

Energy Consumption

High energy usage contributes to significant environmental impact and escalating costs for surrounding communities.

💧

Water Usage

Cooling systems often require substantial water resources, straining local water supplies and ecosystems.

♻️

E-Waste

Frequent hardware upgrades and replacements generate significant volumes of electronic waste.

🌊

Location Risks

Natural disasters, flooding, or geopolitical instability can disrupt operations and impact local infrastructure.

📈

Scalability & Efficiency

Growing demand strains local resources and infrastructure, often outpacing community planning capacity.

🔊

Noise

Constant humming from cooling systems, generators, and substations can disrupt sleep, daily life, and wildlife in surrounding neighborhoods.

AI Data Centers Across the United States

A map of major AI data centers in the U.S. that are either operational or under construction, overlaid with locations where community members have emailed in concerns. Click any marker for details.

Operational

built & running

Under Construction

announced or building

Proposed

in pipeline / pending approval

3674

Community Reported

locations nationwide

Last updated: May 28, 2026

Not all DATA centers are on this map

There are over 4,000 data centers operating in the U.S., many built before the AI boom. This map isn't intended to show every data center. It's focused on locations where community members are actively voicing concerns.

https://www.brockovichdatacenter.com/index.html

Communities Making a Difference

Across the U.S., residents, town councils, planning boards, and lawmakers are organizing, voting, and litigating to shape how AI data centers come to their towns. Here are concrete examples of that work — drawn from the 2,971+ reports Erin has received from 49 states, and from coverage by reputable news outlets.

15+

Moratoria & Pauses

passed at the local, county, or state level

66%

Voter Approval

for Port Washington's nation-first referendum

Council Members Ousted

in Festus, MO after a data center vote

19%

Reports Citing Secrecy

of community submissions mention NDAs, secret deals, meetings, or no public voice

⏸️Moratoriums & Pausestowns and counties pressing the brakes

When residents and councils want time to study the impact before approving more data centers, they're enacting temporary pauses. These moratoriums vary in duration and scope, but they share a goal: don't let the buildout get ahead of the planning.

https://www.brockovichdatacenter.com/community-impact.html

DATA Center backlash grows

In perspective... the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms..

2026-06-03T08:44:12.756-04:00

A gold cup at the National Museum of Iran, from the first half of the 1st millennium BC

1776 Declaration of Independence USA National Archives

Cedar Tree of Lebanon

1920 With the end of World War I and the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the Allies give France a mandate over Greater Syria... France divides Greater Syria into Syria and Lebanon

1948 End of the Nazi Holocaust & the emergence of The United Nations, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and international law...

United Nations

Preamble

Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,

Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,

Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law,

Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations,

Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms... READ MORE https://www.unonline.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights.html

Golden Rule Thinking

FREEDOM OF & FROM RELIGION

Jesus Christ in Palestine AD 28-29 ancient mosaic from Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire

Palestine - A crossroads for religion, culture, commerce, and politics, Palestine was among the earliest regions to see human habitation, agricultural communities and civilization.

Iran 559 BC

America 1776 AD

Lebanon 1920 AD

Israel 1948 AD

Hezboullah 1982 AD

The Guardian view on Trump and Lebanon: civilians need lasting peace, not short-term patches. The US president seeks to curb Israel’s intensified offensive as he looks for an exit from war with Iran, but turmoil in the Middle East will not easily be ended

2026-06-03T07:00:40.586-04:00

The southern Lebanese port city of Tyre was targeted by Israeli airstrikes on 2 June 2026. Photograph: Marwan Naamani/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock

Editorial

“Let’s see how long that lasts,” Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social on Monday night, addressing his attempts to de-escalate in Lebanon following Israel’s intensified military campaign. Within hours, Israeli drone strikes had killed eight people in the south, including a father and his two children, and damaged a hospital. Hezbollah continued launching rockets and drones.

Anxious to escape the illegal war that he launched on Iran, and with Tehran threatening to suspend peace talks over the Israeli offensive, the US president reined in Benjamin Netanyahu – for now – in what was described as an expletive-laden phone call. Mr Trump’s post, despite its unusual admission of doubt, still oversold the agreement. He claimed that Hezbollah and Israel had agreed to “stop all shooting”. Lebanon’s presidency suggested a more limited deal: Israel would not strike Beirut’s southern suburbs if Hezbollah did not launch attacks against Israel.

That people are discussing de-escalation at all when a ceasefire is already supposed to be in place epitomises the cruelty of this conflict. The truce has not prevented Israel killing hundreds of people in Lebanon, including civilians, and it had intensified its offensive in late May. Mr Trump’s intervention appeared on Tuesday to have achieved – for however long – a return to a lower rate of death.... READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jun/02/the-guardian-view-on-trump-and-lebanon-civilians-need-lasting-peace-not-short-term-patches

"Thank God for Pope Leo. He’s the leader our world desperately needs. Even for nonbelievers like me, the pope has become a reassuring – and all too rare – voice of moral clarity " - Arwa Mahdawi in the Guardian

2026-06-03T06:22:22.261-04:00

‘He is still a mere mortal, he is not perfect, but he is proving to be a much-needed force for good.’ Photograph: Remo Casilli/Reuters

OpinionPope Leo XIV

Arwa Mahdawi

Do you remember the early 2000s, when Silicon Valley buzzed with idealism and tech bros told us they were going to save the world? “Don’t be evil” was Google’s unofficial motto; it’s 2004 IPO prospectus declared that doing “good things for the world” was more important than “short term gains”. Mark Zuckerberg similarly wrote in Facebook’s 2012 IPO letter that the social network was “built to accomplish a social mission – to make the world more open and connected”.

As was obvious to anyone paying attention, this was all performative bullshit. Nevertheless, it’s hard not to feel nostalgic about that period of time – which came to a definitive end in 2018, with the Cambridge Analytica scandal. By and large, billionaires and CEOs still cared what the hoi polloi thought of them. They were self-aware enough to realize that, even with all their billions, there’s a lot more of us than there are of them.

Now, however, there has been a seismic vibe shift. Donald Trump has made cruelty cool, and normalized greed and corruption. Tech titans, meanwhile, have lined up to kiss the ring – and extract as much money from his administration as they can. Elon Musk has gone from quirky rocketman to rightwing agitator. Zuckerberg is in his macho era, urging companies to unleash their “masculine energy” and saying he regrets apologizing so much in the past.

As for the mantra “don’t be evil”? Ha. Now tech companies are unapologetically fueling unimaginable evil. Project Nimbus, for example, a $1.2bn contract awarded by Israel to Google and Amazon, has been accused of playing a role in the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Sergey Brin, Google’s co-founder, meanwhile, has said using the term genocide in connection to Gaza, which scores of leading human rights organizations and scholars do, is “offensive”.

Amid this vibe shift, something odd has happened: the Vatican City has... READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jun/03/pope-leo-ai-technology

Mosab Abu Toha- My translation of a new poem by my friend Hamed Ashour, who is in Gaza and writing from there: And just like this, whenever you smile, I see sorrowful peoples migrating from one cheek to another, mistaking—while thirst is killing them— every dimple they encounter for a well of water.

2026-06-02T08:21:09.870-04:00

Mosab Abu Toha

@MosabAbuToha

My translation of a new poem by my friend Hamed Ashour, who is in Gaza and writing from there:

And just like this,

whenever you smile,

I see sorrowful peoples migrating

from one cheek to another,

mistaking—while thirst is killing them—

every dimple they encounter

for a well of water.

https://x.com/MosabAbuToha/status/2061653289687474377/photo/1

"They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks” (Is 2:4)... Vatican announces theme for 2026 World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation - traditionally SEPTEMBER 1

2026-06-02T08:07:36.326-04:00

Nature (AFP or licensors)

Vatican

Vatican announces theme for 2026 World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation

The Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development announces the theme chosen by Pope Leo XIV for the 2026 celebration of the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, held on September 1, as "They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks” (Is 2:4).

By Deborah Castellano Lubov

Pope Leo XIV has chosen “They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks” (Is 2:4) as the theme for the 2026 edition of the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, traditionally celebrated on September 1.

In the statement from the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development making the announcement, the Dicastery states that the Holy Father’s Message for the Day highlights the connection between armed conflict and environmental degradation.

Such degradation, it underscored, constitutes both a serious violation of our duty to care for creation, as well as a long-term threat to the lives of hundreds of millions of people.

Moreover, it said "the now widespread awareness of the impact of war on natural resources has not led to the creation of adequate institutions or to responsible decisions aimed at preventing conflicts and resolving disputes peacefully."

Finally, the statement concluded that the title, the passage in which the Prophet Isaiah prophesies the transformation of weapons into agricultural tools, "is an explicit invitation to prioritize development and sustainability over violence and destruction."

Thank you for reading our article. You can keep up-to-date by subscribing to our daily newsletter. Just click here

https://www.vaticannews.va/en/vatican-city/news/2026-06/vatican-theme-2026-world-day-of-prayer-for-the-care-of-creation.html

B'Tselem: "Israel is carrying out ethnic cleansing in East Jerusalem through discriminatory legislation, planning procedures, funding allocations and service provision, all designed to advance the Judaization of the area. "

2026-06-02T07:56:50.524-04:00

B'Tselem בצלם بتسيلم

@btselem

Immediately after occupying East Jerusalem in 1967, Israel annexed about 70,000 dunam (1 dunam = 0.1 hectares) from the West Bank to its territory in violation of international law. Parts of this area were added to Jerusalem’s municipal boundaries.

One third of the annexed territory was used to build settlements expressly designed to secure a Jewish majority and create a contiguous territorial bloc, while pushing Palestinian communities out of the urban space.

The Silwan area, located near the Old City, is home to about 20,000 Palestinians who suffer from systemic, criminal neglect in terms of public infrastructure and services the Jerusalem Municipality is obligated to provide: Many streets are unpaved, waste is left to pile up in the streets, and street lighting is limited.

On top of this neglect, residents face daily harassment and violence by both Israeli security forces and settlers.

Right now, about 1,800 Silwan residents are being forced out of their homes, which Israel is granting to settler families. This follows the past two years in which hundreds have already been uprooted and left homeless, as their houses are being demolished to make way for a national park and a parking lot.

Israel is carrying out ethnic cleansing in East Jerusalem through discriminatory legislation, planning procedures, funding allocations and service provision, all designed to advance the Judaization of the area. Read the full article >> btselem.org/jerusalem/2026

"Tech billionaires are plowing hundreds of millions into political campaigns, to fend off attempts at regulation and evade accountability lest their endeavors go awry. They want to make sure nobody butts in as they work to reshape society. And they are largely succeeding – for now, no one with the power to stop them is butting in."

2026-06-02T06:13:29.639-04:00

Our tech overlords are planning for conscious AI to conquer the cosmos. What could go wrong?

A new belief set is uniting some of the wealthiest men in the world around a ‘transhuman’ future – actual humanity be damned

Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, took to the Internet a few years ago to propose that homo sapiens would be the first species “to design our own descendants”. In his best case scenario, the “merge” between humans and artificial intelligence occurs at some point over the next 50 years. The alternative, where we remain simply human and the machines follow their own path, is more ominous. “If two different species both want the same thing and only one can have it – in this case, to be the dominant species on the planet and beyond – they are going to have conflict,” he wrote.

More recently, Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who at one point last year was granted the power to reconfigure the US federal government, argued on his social media platform, X, that “it increasingly appears that humanity is a biological bootloader for digital superintelligence” – our role in the history of the cosmos reduced to that of the low level code that boots up a computer before you can run sophisticated programs on it.

And Musk is on the tame side of the evolutionary proposition. According to Silicon Valley lore, he once pushed back against Google co-founder Larry Page’s claim that our next manifestation, to follow in the steps of the meat-and-bone humans you see walking about today, would necessarily have digital form in order to spread throughout the galaxy. (In fact, he recently testified in court that it was those concerns that prompted him to found OpenAI with Altman.) Meat and bones do not make for efficient interstellar travelers.

It would be a mistake to understand these weird worldviews as an ultimately harmless take by techies who grew up on a diet of dystopian science fiction. The notion that we are approaching the end of the homo sapiens, as defined since Darwin’s day, is coalescing into a durable body of belief among the elites at the helm of our technological future.

Their dreams are not all perfectly aligned. But like the folk stories and superstitions that have for ever revolved around more established religious traditions, the collection of far-fetched scenarios valley oligarchs are writing into our future exhibits the hallmarks of a religion in the making, a body of belief to confer a sense of cosmic transcendence and inevitability to their hi-tech project.... READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/may/31/transhuman-silicon-valley-ai

Imagine what we could have done to educate, inspire, and care for our children here instead of spending billions to bomb our children there... Whatever there you are thinking about right now, theey are our children, too. - MLK Jr Center

2026-06-01T19:32:06.455-04:00

The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center

@TheKingCenter

Imagine.

#OurChildrenEverywhere #BelovedCommunity #TheKingCenter #MLK #WorldHouse

https://x.com/TheKingCenter/status/2061508148167319806/photo/1

From Gaza to Iran, the pattern is the same: precision weapons, chosen blindness, and dead children. The cost of failing to regulate AI warfare is already too high:

2026-06-01T16:50:52.091-04:00

These aren’t AI firms, they’re defense contractors. We can’t let them hide behind their models

Avner Gvaryahu

Sun 15 Mar 2026

There is an Israeli military strategy called the “fog procedure”. First used during the second intifada, it’s an unofficial rule that requires soldiers guarding military posts in conditions of low visibility to shoot bursts of gunfire into the darkness, on the theory that an invisible threat might be lurking.

It’s violence licensed by blindness. Shoot into the darkness and call it deterrence. With the dawn of AI warfare, that same logic of chosen blindness has been refined, systematized, and handed off to a machine.

Israel’s recent war in Gaza has been described as the first major “AI war” – the first war in which AI systems have played a central role in generating Israel’s list of purported Hamas and Islamic jihad militants to target. Systems that processed billions of data points to rank the probability that any given person in the territory was a combatant.

The darkness in the watchtower was a condition of the terrain. The darkness inside the algorithm is a condition of the design. In both cases, the blindness was chosen. It was chosen because blindness is useful: it creates deniability, it makes the violence feel inevitable, it moves the question of who decided from a person to a procedure. The fog did not lift. It was given a probability score and called intelligence.

It may have been chosen blindness that led, at the start of the US-Israeli Iran war, to the strike at the Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab, in southern Iran. At least 168 people were killed, most of them children, girls aged seven to 12.

The weapons were precise. Munitions experts described the targeting as “incredibly accurate”, each building individually struck, nothing missed. The problem was not the execution. The problem was intelligence.... READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/mar/15/ai-defense-warfare-companies

Dear America- You can't win a modern war. You can destroy homes & families, you can usurp land & resources from the rightful owners, and you can undermine & destroy a free press and the fourth estate- but people worldwide have memories, as well as a sense of right and wrong that cannot be bombed into oblivion.

2026-06-01T13:07:34.366-04:00

Forget-me-not flowers- A symbol of PEACE

& Remembrance

Dear America,

When my children were little I taught them to admit when they were wrong and to apologize. It takes strength of character to do so. Strength of character shapes a good person, and a good person helps makes the world a better place.

Lead by example: Greed and corruption are wrong. Bully tactics are wrong. Insults are wrong. Lies are wrong... AND WAR IS VERY VERY WRONG.

We live in a world filled to the brim with stockpiles of both simple and sophisticated weaponry- all of it is polluting our shared planet earth. From the manufacturing to the deployment of lethal weaponry- bullets- bombs- bulldozers-missiles- jets- drones- molotov cocktails- war pollutes the land & air and war mongering pollutes minds as power hungry tyrants on all sides use bully tactics & bombs as if one can win a modern war.

You can't win a modern war. You can destroy homes & families, you can usurp land & resources from the rightful owners, and you can undermine & destroy a free press and the fourth estate- but people worldwide have memories, as well as a sense of right and wrong that cannot be bombed into oblivion.

We live in the information age. When our mainstream news failed to provide fair coverage of the full story for decades, our comics stepped up to say it in jokes, and the internet thrived as people reached out far and wide for more honest perspectives. Now tech billionaires want to capture it all in massive hyper-scale DATA Centers that they control and can easily infiltrate, manipulate, and fill with AI artificial information/misinformation to empower their favored projects and politicians.

STOP and THINK...

Golden Rule thinking is enlightening: Respect for real freedom and democracy. Respect for UNIVERSAL HUMAN RIGHTS and the rule of fair and just laws to shape the best way forward, for everyone. Respect for real history and heritage, respect for differences and diversity, respect for human dignity- and ALL our children.

We are in the wrong to arm Israel as it steals land, rights, and peace from the people of Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria.

And we are in the wrong to bomb Iran.

Sincerely,

Anne Selden Annab

NOTES https://anniesnewletters.blogspot.com/search/label/Notes

"The Israeli military’s choices of methods and means of conducting hostilities, along with other practices, involved gross violations of international human rights law and serious violations of international humanitarian law, which in many cases may have amounted to war crimes and other atrocity crimes..." UN Human Rights Palestine

"For ease and speed, we are degrading our ability to connect and to organise our societies. We must assert our trust in humans over machines" Nesrine Malik

NPR: Israel seizes medieval castle as it expands major offensive in southern Lebanon... "Israel must know that its scorched earth policy, collective punishment and expropriation of villages and towns will not achieve security and stability but will instead deepen the divide with the Lebanese people"

“I have never in my career witnessed the level of atrocities and targeting of my medical colleagues as I have in Gaza,” Adam Hamawy, The doctor who came back from Gaza and is leading a New Jersey congressional race

"Speaking to the Guardian, readers in the US echoed the pope’s concerns, describing AI as an “unregulated” industry increasingly being used to the “detriment of too many people”, while also raising fears about surveillance, labor displacement, war and environmental harm."

"... Nor do they have a moral conscience, since they do not judge good and evil, grasp the ultimate meaning of situations, or bear responsibility for consequences. They may imitate or even simulate, but they do not understand what they produce, for they lack the affective, relational, and spiritual perspective through which human beings grow in wisdom." Pope Leo XIV on AI Artificial Intelligence

"I was just a boy when I learned that my family would soon be leaving my beloved homeland of Palestine to begin a new life in America. To the adults, it was a practical decision—one made in search of opportunity and a better future, away from the suffocating Israeli occupation & oppression. But to me, it felt as though my entire world was being torn away. How could I explain what Palestine meant to a child? It was not merely a place on a map. It was the hills that encircled our small village of Beit Hanina and served as my endless playground. It was the olive and fruit orchards where I wandered freely beneath the sun. It was the caves hidden among the rocky slopes, the handmade kites dancing in the wind, and the familiar scent of earth after the rain. It was home." Mike Odetalla

"The chaotic, unique, beautiful Lebanon I knew has been reduced to rubble. When will it end? Suspected war crimes happen almost daily as Israel continues its bombardment, which Unicef estimates is killing nearly 14 children a day. We cannot write this off as just another war in a war-torn region"

"The first time I heard a song by Saint Levant, only three years ago, was in a world that does not exist any more. Gaza’s buildings were intact, as were its schools and roads and markets and mosques. My home city of Khartoum in Sudan was standing, as it had for centuries. Back then, I could scroll for fun, not in dread. I could stumble, say, in late 2022, upon an arresting clip on TikTok of a song by an Arab artist with a pun for a name..." Nesrine Malik

A network of fake academic journals masquerading as legitimate publications has published more than a hundred AI-generated papers in recent months, in some cases using the names of real professors at top universities without their knowledge- Online academic journals falsely attributed articles, likely written by AI, to several professors, who say the fiasco is a warning about the future of scientific knowledge.

Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt's 1948 letter to the New York Times: They saw the creation of a Jewish ethnostate in Palestine at the expense of its indigenous Muslim and Christian population as a profound injustice and moral catastrophe. Einstein and the other signatories explicitly compared Begin’s Herut (Freedom Party), born from the Irgun, to Nazis and Fascists, warning that their ideology of racial superiority and violent ethnic nationalism posed a grave danger to the moral and political future of the new state.

Ongoing Nakba in Gaza, Palestine: People inspect the remains of a residential building hit by an Israeli airstrike... Listen to the stories of Gaza’s women to fully grasp the horrors Israel is inflicting

"At a moment when Islam is framed as a source of division, it is worth recalling that on his pilgrimage to Mecca in 1964, Malcolm X encountered Muslims of all races, worshipping as equals together, an experience that transformed his understanding of race and human dignity. It revealed an Islam grounded not in fear, but universality, exposing the poverty of racial hierarchies and the distortions that sustain them." Kenneth Mohammed in The Guardian

TIME: The Solemn History Behind Nakba Day ... From 1947 to 1949, 531 towns were destroyed by Israeli militias- Of the 1.4 million-strong Palestinian population at the time, 800,000 were displaced; the massacres of families and towns left enduring scars on the survivors.

"Reducing inequality was “not only about fairness, but essential for the resilience of economies, the stability of democracies, and the viability of our planet”" .......Just 0.001% hold three times the wealth of poorest half of humanity, report finds- Data from World Inequality Report also showed top 10% of income-earners earn more than the other 90%

Dear Governor Shapiro- The word 'antisemitism' excludes Arabs and Muslims, and has come to mean criticizing Zionism which is a political movement that is shaping horrifically cruel policies and actions here and in Israel and Palestine. So maybe find a better word or phrase to use- like 'bigotry' or 'racist hate' or 'mental illness' to describe hate mongering violations and violence.

DEAR AMERICA

STOP THE BOMBS and the bigotry, and PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE stop accepting bribes & propaganda & bad advice from a very foreign country that seeks to destroy support for UNIVERSAL human rights and the rule of fair and just laws.

Along the way we learned that slavery is wrong. We learned that domestic violence is wrong. We learned that racist hate is wrong. SO WHY are we funding Israel and why are we bombing Iran for Israel!!!

Violence is a problem- not the answer

In 1945, 50 nations came together in San Francisco to create a new organization for peace, prosperity & human rights- the United Nations

"The United Nations is the only place on Earth where all the world's nations come together to discuss common problems and find shared solutions that benefit all of humanity. This intergovernmental organization born out of the ashes of the Second World War remains indispensable to the pursuit of world peace, justice, equality and sustainable development" https://www.un.org/en/

The right of refugees to return to homes and lands they were expelled from is an individual right and cannot be unilaterally abrogated by third parties. https://imeu.org/resources/resources/fact-sheet-palestinian-refugees-the-right-of-return-under-international-law/441

"Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world..." https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights

"The Israeli military’s choices of methods and means of conducting hostilities, along with other practices, involved gross violations of international human rights law and serious violations of international humanitarian law, which in many cases may have amounted to war crimes and other atrocity crimes..." UN Human Rights Palestine

2026-06-01T08:17:36.370-04:00

UN Human Rights Palestine

@OHCHR_Palestine

• Israel’s repeated choice to use heavy munitions in densely populated areas despite foreseeable outcomes led to a shockingly high rate of civilian casualties in Gaza, including women and children.

• Narratives that treat Palestinian men as inherently lawful targets or security threats are egregious, cause immeasurable harm, and violate the principle of distinction under international humanitarian law.

• Israel’s conduct involved committing war crimes and possible crimes against humanity.

Read Overview report covering 19 months from 7 October 2023 through the end of May 2025: ohchr.org/en/documents/c

https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/countries/opt/occupied-palestinian-territory-overview-report-east-jerusalem-practices-en.pdf

"...... 3. The Israeli military’s choices of methods and means of conducting hostilities, along with other practices, involved gross violations of international human rights law and serious violations of international humanitarian law, which in many cases may have amounted to war crimes and other atrocity crimes. The cumulative effects of Israel’s conduct in Gaza since 7 October 2023, which compounded the damaging effects of over 58 years of occupation and 18 years of blockade and closure of the strip, created conditions of life incompatible with Palestinians’ continued existence as a group in much of Gaza.2 Many of these trends and their impacts were present in the Israeli military’s large-scale siege and attacks on North Gaza between 6 October 2024 and 19 January 2025, which is analyzed as an emblematic case study in this report.

4. In parallel, the West Bank experienced an alarming surge in the unlawful use of force by Israeli security forces against Palestinians, including through the deployment of means and methods of the use of force designed for warfare. Coercive and discriminatory Israeli practices and legislative measures proliferated and intensified, deepening Israel’s near-total control over, and violation of, Palestinians’ political, civil, social, economic and cultural rights. These developments came amid intensified Israeli settlement activity, associated displacement, and administrative moves and rhetoric by Israeli officials promoting the application of sovereignty over the occupied West Bank – together consolidating Israel’s annexation of large parts of the territory.

5. The deleterious human rights situation was further compounded by the Palestinian authorities’ intensified unlawful use of force against Palestinians in the West Bank, practices of arbitrary detention, ill-treatment and torture, and a crack-down on civic space.

6. Considered together, Israeli Government’s measures and steps across Gaza and the West Bank reflected a concerted and accelerating practice of undermining the fabric of Palestinian life while consolidating the annexation of large parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territory and forcibly displacing Palestinians from much of their land and territory. The cumulative effect of the Israeli practices detailed in this report was to entrench Israel’s unlawful presence in the Palestinian territory and, in doing so, to render increasingly tenuous the prospect of the Palestinian people’s exercise of their right to self-determination, including the realization of an independent and sovereign State.4

Furthermore, an appraisal of the totality of Israel’s policies and practices raises serious concerns about its compliance with the International Court of Justice’s binding orders and its obligations to prevent the commission of acts within the scope of Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide...."

"For ease and speed, we are degrading our ability to connect and to organise our societies. We must assert our trust in humans over machines" Nesrine Malik

2026-06-01T08:01:28.552-04:00

OpinionAI (artificial intelligence)

AI is devoid of meaning and humanity. That’s why its vapid voice suits this political moment

Nesrine Malik

Here is a nightmare scenario for you. You are writing a book about how AI reshapes reality. You start using it as a research partner, confident that you are applying the right hygiene by not letting it actually write a sentence of the book. You think you’ll be careful, you will double check everything. And then your book comes out and it appears that it includes more than a half dozen misattributed or fake quotes. Steven Rosenbaum, the unfortunate writer, acknowledged that sometimes the output of AI was “staggeringly wrong”, but still, errors crept in.

There are others. A Commonwealth prize-winning short story became engulfed in claims that it carried the hallmarks of AI. And every time I see a story of a journalist caught out by fake AI quotes during research, I cross myself – there but for the grace of God go I. But to make sure it is not left up to grace alone, I never touch the thing. When AI results pop up as the default in a search engine, I reject them, rebuke them, as if they contained a dark sorcery that would through mere engagement creep into my synapses and take control.

This monastic, almost paranoid approach is not only because AI is a risky and unreliable research tool. It is a voice, a tone, a frequency. AI language haunts me in a million similar tinny chants from customer care to social media posts to press releases. I worry even as I write this column that it might sound like AI. That I have somehow through relentless exposure assimilated its blandness and excess. Its short declarative sentences. Its advertorial narration. Its informal mimicry of personhood. Hi there! Hope all is well. I thought you might be interested in a column about AI, an issue that is increasingly occupying thought leaders and writers. Would you like to learn more?

What are we losing in this fire? Writing is not just about rendering thoughts through words in a certain style: analysis, literary fiction, storytelling. It is about the particular alchemy of a single individual drawing on their own unique profile to construct an idea. It is about the way their brain works, the quirks they have picked up along the way, their politics, their history, their relationships, the very way they see the world. You can produce a thousand Dickenses and Rumis through AI, but you can’t create a new iconic writer. You can only draw on the chorus of styles that already exist. You can only derive, never create.

And then there is the atrophy. The loss of the ability to struggle for a word, to craft a verbal image. I could save precious minutes as a deadline approaches and ask AI to cook me up a nice line, or I could linger and conceptualise that resisting AI writing feels like trying not to inhale an airborne virus. It might not be a great simile, but it’s mine goddamit. And it helps me, in writing, to consolidate what I am thinking. Whether it’s a political text or an email, leaning on AI for everything from research to writing severs the connection between feeling and expression. It drains the colour from everything and suffocates one’s ability to channel and meet and be surprised by what is knocking about in your head. When tech becomes about reducing labour in every way, it ends up becoming an inhibitor of actual consciousness. Entirely unsurprising research shows that leaning on LLMs may reduce brain engagement.

Even more depressing is how well suited this cauterisation of the self is to the political moment, one of a glut of content and bad information. AI is rampant on social media, where accounts authoritatively post long texts on everything from the wars in the Middle East to dramatic personal experiences that didn’t happen in a sort of reality fan-fiction. And in politics, where... READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jun/01/ai-meaning-humanity-political-moment-trust-humans-over-machines

Annie's New Letters (& notes)

The power of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is the power of ideas to change the world. It inspires us to continue working to ensure all people can gain freedom, equality and dignity...

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Ali Louis Bourzgui dedicates Tony award to immigrants and Palestine ...Accepting the award, the 26-year-old dedicated it to "the people of Palestine who deserve to live a fruitful life, a free life, a full life without occupation", drawing applause from the audience...

Tony winner Ali Louis Bourzgui dedicates award to Palestinians

It was once an article of faith that even those who speak words we disagree with deserve protection. As regards Palestine, that’s now not true

"Homes can be demolished. Walls can be reduced to rubble. Entire families can be scattered across the world. But roots run deep... And sometimes, from beneath the wreckage, life emerges to remind us that memory, belonging, and hope refuse to die." Mike Hanini Odetalla

A tenured art therapy professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) was suspended from teaching and placed under investigation following a student’s complaint about an assigned case study that mentioned violence against Palestinians.

We call it the P-word’: Chicago professor suspended after assignment mentions Palestinians

Why is Hasan Piker ‘not conducive to the public good’? Because on Gaza, we punish the witness, not the crime

UN experts warn about escalating Israeli settler terror and existential risk posed to Palestinian communities. “Attacks serve as instrument of coercion in the hands of the occupying power, facilitating ethnic cleansing.”

The Palestine Industry: The Rats of Gaza and the Opportunists among Us: The struggle for Palestinian freedom must remain anchored in the soil of Gaza. The global solidarity movement must not be permitted to mutate into a careerist industry.- By Ramzy Baroud

The real function of the so-called Board of Peace was not to stop the genocide, but to manage perceptions while it continues

A meaningless ceasefire

"Between the Dome and the Sky" by Palestinian (Ramallah) Artist Wadeei Khaled (Born in Al-Arroub Refugee Camp in 1986)

AI Data Centers &Our Communities

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In perspective... the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms..

Cedar Tree of Lebanon

The Guardian view on Trump and Lebanon: civilians need lasting peace, not short-term patches. The US president seeks to curb Israel’s intensified offensive as he looks for an exit from war with Iran, but turmoil in the Middle East will not easily be ended

"Thank God for Pope Leo. He’s the leader our world desperately needs. Even for nonbelievers like me, the pope has become a reassuring – and all too rare – voice of moral clarity " - Arwa Mahdawi in the Guardian

"They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks” (Is 2:4)... Vatican announces theme for 2026 World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation - traditionally SEPTEMBER 1

Vatican announces theme for 2026 World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation

B'Tselem: "Israel is carrying out ethnic cleansing in East Jerusalem through discriminatory legislation, planning procedures, funding allocations and service provision, all designed to advance the Judaization of the area. "

Our tech overlords are planning for conscious AI to conquer the cosmos. What could go wrong?

A new belief set is uniting some of the wealthiest men in the world around a ‘transhuman’ future – actual humanity be damned

Imagine what we could have done to educate, inspire, and care for our children here instead of spending billions to bomb our children there... Whatever there you are thinking about right now, theey are our children, too. - MLK Jr Center

From Gaza to Iran, the pattern is the same: precision weapons, chosen blindness, and dead children. The cost of failing to regulate AI warfare is already too high:

These aren’t AI firms, they’re defense contractors. We can’t let them hide behind their models

"For ease and speed, we are degrading our ability to connect and to organise our societies. We must assert our trust in humans over machines" Nesrine Malik

AI is devoid of meaning and humanity. That’s why its vapid voice suits this political moment

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