Portside

The anniversary of the United States dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki compels us to think more deeply about the continued existence of nuclear weapons.

From London to Liverpool to Glasgow our cities are taking inspiration from Manhattan. Yet an ugly vision lies behind its new developments.

Under continuous Israeli shelling, Palestinians in south Gaza face a shortage of space and supplies to bury loved ones.

For Palestinians living in Gaza today, spending time in schools, mosques, hospitals or even their own homes has become deadly. The question "when does it become a legitimate military target?" is merely rhetorical. Its real meaning is: "All houses in Gaza are legitimate targets" since all houses are potentially non-homes.

Telecoms not-so-subtle use of lobbyists and lobby dollars to influence some Civil Rights organizations to oppose net neutrality and the best interest of constituents.

American and Russian officials always insist that their smallpox repositories, under WHO oversight, are well guarded. But experience tells us that scientists working in laboratories with the highest biosafety standards are still caught off guard by technical breakdowns, that their staffs make mistakes and break rules, and that a predictable institutional reflex is to cover up blunders.

Although severely concentrated disadvantage remains a predominantly urban phenomenon, suburbs now have nearly as many poor residents in high-poverty neighborhoods as cities. If these communities are ignored, they could become areas of concentrated poverty over time.

According to McClatchy Newspapers, the agency has also been spying on emails from whistle blower officials and Congress, "triggering fears the CIA has been intercepting the communications of officials who handle whistle blower cases."

Henry Siegman, former executive director of the American Jewish Congress, tells Democracy Now!, "I think that sending rockets that are going to kill civilians is a crime. But for Palestinians to try, in any way they can, to end this state of affair—and to expect of them to end their struggle and just focus on less than 2 percent to build a country is absurd. That is part of—that’s propaganda, but it’s not a discussion of either politics or morality."

When Israelis and Palestinians appear fated to fight more frequently and with ever-bloodier consequences, and when peace initiatives seem to be utopian pipe-dreams doomed to fail, the liberal Zionist faces something like an existential crisis. They will have to decide which of their political identities matters more, whether they are first a liberal or first a Zionist. And that is a choice they don’t want to make.