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Showing posts with the label enmity

Professor Jodi Dean Has Been Placed on Leave Over a Pro-Palestine Essay

For this a leading American professor has been placed in leave. “Who could not feel energized seeing oppressed people bulldozing the fences enclosing them, taking to the skies in escape, and flying freely through the air? Imperialists and Zionists reduce October 7 to a list of horrors not simply to block from view the history and reality of colonialism, occupation, and siege. They do it to prevent the gap of the disruption from producing the subject that caused it. Hamas wasn’t the subject of the October 7 action; it was an agent hoping that the subject would emerge as an effect of its action, the latest instantiation of the Palestinian revolution. More often than not, though, left intellectuals echo the condemnations that imperialist states make the condition for speaking about Palestine. In so doing, they take a side against the Palestinian revolution, giving a progressive face to the repression of the Palestinian political project, and betraying the anti-imperialist aspirations of a...

Natural Disasters Did Not Create Peace

Although many countries rushed to offer co-operation and aid to Turkey and Syria in the immediate aftermath of the quakes, Ilan Kelman, professor of disasters and health at University College London was not optimistic. His research on “disaster diplomacy” suggested that natural disasters did not create peace. “Aside from the logistical challenges of humanitarian aid amid places of violence, experience demonstrates that, sadly, previous enmity tends to supersede saving lives and stopping war over the long term,” Kelman said . ‘Natural’ disasters are not wholly natural and the word natural should be in inverted commas. Disaster-related activities do and do not influence conflict and cooperation