Totally predictable that a New York Times account of an Islamophobic attack on a mosque would lead with the killer‘s parents searching for their children. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/18/u...

Driving from the airport to Duke a few years ago, chatting with the driver about the fact that I’m an archaeologist. He expressed doubts about the discipline: “You can’t tell me that archaeologist aren’t hiding secrets from the rest of us. I grew up in Long Island, and I’ve seen some weird shit.”

When a cover is better than the original. youtu.be/eGbFD5dZbWY

Interesting that this report was written by Nicholas Kristof and is in the Opinions section, rather than coming from the Jerusalem bureau of the NYT. Presumably because their reporters wouldn’t touch a topic that would reflect so badly on the Israeli administration. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/11/o...

My reporting finds that sexual violence against Palestinians by Israeli authorities is widespread. I'm grateful to these assault victims for sharing with me the brutality they endured. Whether we're pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian, we should unite in being anti-rape. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/11/o...

Totally predictable that Nigel Farage is being invited to this rally but not Zack Polanski… who is the only Jewish leader of a UK political party. If your central preoccupation is being a good Likudnik, a little juvenile sieg-heiling isn’t going to be a big problem.

Weekend reading: I wrote about why Reconstruction is such a key historical reference - and about the lessons from the way America’s first attempt at biracial democracy was drowned in ostensibly “race-neutral” laws and white supremacist violence. This week’s piece:

It’s telling that Alabama took 14 years to implement Brown (you MUST desegregate) and < 14 days to implement Callais (you CAN eliminate Black districts if you call them Democratic, but you don’t HAVE to).

Hitting peak Starmer here: “If we generate just enough bigotry and hatred toward migrants… not too much, that would be unseemly… then racists will listen to what we have to say on economics and climate policy.”

Sharing, without comment, British newspapers’ depictions of the only Jewish person currently leading a UK political party . Times. Mail. Telegraph. Sun.

A controversial statement in American higher ed, so much so that some Michigan regents are calling for a tenured professor to be put on leave without pay. The regents might earlier have been called ‘snowflakes’, but that epithet is only used for people and causes universities don’t care about.

*** CROWDFUNDING *** If you can, please donate in the link below! The #EAA is crowdfunding to support the 'Heritage for Peace' programme which will allow 10 to 12 young archaeologists from conflict affected regions in attending and presenting their work in a Special Round Table at #EAA2026. 1/

Tucker Carlson:“Race is important. Race is real… It’s a biological reality. There are racial differences, real racial differences.” @lulugn.bsky.social **crickets** As usual at the NYT: antisemitism on the American right is real and important, but right-wing racism is not even worth remarking upon.

So Sen. Lindsey Graham did tell Karim Khan that the ICC is "is for Africa and thugs like Putin, it is not for democracies like Israel and the United States." Watch the ICC chief prosecutor's full and exclusive interview with me: zeteo.com/p/karim-khan...

It’s the 250th year of American independence, and the Pope and the King of England are reminding Americans of their revolutionary values, principles, and ideals Somewhere, John Adams is confused as fuck

The Journal of Irreproducible Results, but in China. mp.weixin.qq.com/s/yMQWjZm38D...

Today’s headlines…

“Once the men were on the patrol boat, the US personnel boarded the fishing boat and stole the crew’s food and the beer, Palacios said.” An account of a fishing crew that actually survived one of America’s illegal attacks on boats in the Caribbean and Pacific www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

I presume this means that the perpetrator was White? “Police say the incident… was not being treated as terrorism-related.” www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

Besides the civilian death toll, the story indicates that US Central Command actively lies about the strikes it makes, is so incompetent it can’t tell its own missiles from Iranian missiles, or both. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/10/w...

finally, free speech and academic freedom have returned www.statnews.com/2026/04/07/b...

“While high in the sky above us tonight The bombers are heading the other way - south and east Into the blood red crimson sunrise of another Imperial day” New Model Army www.theguardian.com/world/2026/a...

It would be useful if the NYT explicitly stated that the pilot, if captured, would be a POW, that there are laws governing how POWs can be treated, that respect for international law on war shapes how the enemy approaches it, and this is why the US conduct of this illegal war has been so dangerous.

Leadership that would be totally incomprehensible in the United States today. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/04/w...

Always useful to remind ourselves of the typology.

The implication here is that, besides the antitank mines that have been seen, there are a lot of antipersonnel mines scattered in the same area.

“Senator Tuberville is the latest in a long line of American politicians who see bombs as a way of shortening Muslim women’s hemlines.” www.nytimes.com/2026/03/25/o...

There has been a dramatic decline in institutional autonomy in higher education in the United States over the last 10 years. In Canada, it remains unchanged. academic-freedom-index.net

It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Netanyahu’s government goal in Lebanon and Iran is as in Gaza: disorganized populations with their cultural heritage, history and educational facilities erased, perpetually being displaced by the threat of bombing of civilians. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/11/w...

“It falls down and blows things up.” Always nice to get more incisive reporting from the New York Times. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/11/b...

We often see objections to the return of the remains of Indigenous people from museums as mere ‘political correctness’. I wonder what the objectors would say about the remains of Canadian soldiers that have been sitting in a US museum for the past century. www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/artic...

I’m Canadian. It’s pretty funny at this point to be happy that we don’t have a king. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/03/o...

Angela Gschwend wants to kill because she loves. “I believe in peace and love…. But sometimes you have to fight when you’re attacked. They want to kill because they hate, and that’s the opposite of my worldview.” www.nytimes.com/2026/03/02/u...

Which just illustrates how screwed-up the party is. “Labour MPs have said for weeks that the outcome they most feared at the Gorton and Denton byelection was a Green party victory.” www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Always good to have a functioning memory www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Exactly this.

It appears that the IDF bulldozed the graves of 23 Canadian UN peacekeepers in Gaza. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/f...

Whoopsie. ‘The report quoted an official, saying: “Our estimate is that roughly 70,000 Gazans were killed in the war, not including missing persons.”’ www.theguardian.com/world/2026/j...

“Sandi Lipinski went to church on Sunday, and after a sermon and prayerful consideration concluded that the guy shot in the back had it coming.” www.nytimes.com/2026/01/27/u...

Let’s see if this gets any reaction in the United States, which has a case of collective amnesia about NATO forces in Afghanistan. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

“It’s not surprising, I don’t think, that in the midst of this indiscriminate killing, many of the Westerners doing the most active work in opposing genocide are Jews. Here is love born of pain, of the past century’s most horrific crime, love of one’s own spread outward into love of another….“

Easily the most important columnist at the New York Times at this point. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/04/o...

Was wondering if there would be any acknowledgment of this in Canadian national media. On recent evidence, the United States will constitute an increasing threat to Canadian sovereignty in the coming years. www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/edit...