Today's Liberal News

Gaza Takeover: Mouin Rabbani on Israel’s “Indefinite, Genocidal Military Campaign”

Israel’s security cabinet has announced the approval of a plan to occupy Gaza City, moving its ongoing military offensive north and displacing hundreds of thousands of civilians to camps in central Gaza. Middle East analyst Mouin Rabbani emphasizes that the new strategy is simply “the first phase of a larger plan” for the permanent displacement, occupation and annexation of the entire Gaza Strip, as confirmed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a recent interview with Fox News.

The Global Plastic Threat: Research Finds Plastics Can Lead to Disease, Disability & Premature Death

Negotiations are underway in Geneva on a legally binding Global Plastics Treaty that has been in the works for several years, as the crisis of pollution from plastics worldwide has grown more acute. An estimated 8 billion metric tons of plastic waste now pollute the planet. Without changes, the production of plastic is expected to triple by 2060 — much of it driven by single-use plastics.

Surface Support

For the man getting home late to the line. He calls calling with a
miniaturist’s awareness (cold to touch), though somewhere still on
fire. He couldn’t write to save the monsoon in his eye. Twinkling
cities in competing moats. Louchely entering together the lesser gulf
as it hammers down like fibers
in a cut card mill
before the shower.

The Judgments of Muriel Spark

The novelist Muriel Spark died almost 20 years ago, but she still regularly appears on lists of top comic novelists to read on this subject or that. Crave more White Lotus–level skewering of the ridiculous rich? Try Memento Mori, The New York Times suggests. An acerbic take on boring dinner parties? Symposium.

Trump Invites Putin to Step Foot in America

Vladimir Putin is coming to America, despite the international warrant for the Russian president’s arrest, despite his years of hostile threats against NATO, and despite him showing no remorse for his invasion of a sovereign nation.
None of that matters to President Donald Trump, who announced Friday night that he would meet the globally shunned leader this Friday in Alaska.

Literature’s Enduring Obsession With Strange Sisters

Something is rotten in the village of Little Nettlebed. There isn’t enough rain. A sturgeon of ungodly proportions has been beached on the bank of the Thames. Worse, five sisters have tried to save its life, defying both the mysterious beneficence that brought the fish to shore and local norms dictating that it must be killed for food. In the glow of the late-afternoon sun, the world is no longer beautiful.

Yes, a Moon Base

No one can say that the Trump administration is entirely against alternative energy. In his first bold policy stroke as NASA’s interim head, Sean Duffy has directed the agency to put a 100-kilowatt nuclear reactor on the moon by decade’s end. This is not a lark. If humanity means to establish a permanent settlement on the moon, nuclear power will almost certainly be essential to its operation.