Global
Amal Khalil, a 43‑year‑old Lebanese journalist and correspondent for the Beirut-based daily newspaper Al‑Akhbar, was known for her decades of fearless reporting from southern Lebanon. Her name, Amal (meaning “hope” in Arabic), became tragically symbolic when she was killed in an Israeli airstrike.
Born in 1984 in al‑Baisariyah in the Sidon District, Khalil grew up during the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. According to publicly available biographical sources, she later became a prominent voice documenting Israeli demolitions, occupation, and human rights abuses in the region. Colleagues described her as generous, courageous, and deeply knowledgeable about the south, often sharing contacts and resources with other journalists. Reporting from outlets such as Middle East Eye highlighted her commitment to truth‑telling and the impact repeated attacks had on her worldview.
Career and Reporting
Khalil began her career covering the 2006 Israeli war on Lebanon, which resulted in:
War is often explained through a familiar set of causes: competition for power and security, economic interests, nationalism, ideology, and state weakness. These factors remain useful, but applied uncritically, they risk becoming formulaic—describing conflict in general without explaining this conflict in particular. The 2026 war involving the United States, Israel, and Iran exposes the limits of these standard explanations and demands a sharper, more critical analysis centered on power, strategy, and intentionality.
Sometimes a seemingly insignificant story tells one more about what is going on than the attempts being made to perceive the larger reality. When Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon with his army the big developing story was the Roman Republic’s impending Civil War pitting Caesar against the country’s Senate and Pompey the Great, but the Rubicon was particularly revealing in that it indicated that Caesar was willing to defy the Senate’s political control in pursuit of his own ambitions. Caesar understood the significance when he commented “Alea iacta est!” meaning “The die is cast!” and there was no going back on his decision which eventually led to his defeating Pompey and becoming Dictator for Life before he was assassinated by Brutus and Cassius on the Ides of March in 44 BC.
Amidst global suffering caused by the Witkoff/Hegseth cabal, the military continues its campaign against America's most formidable adversary: woke mind virus. (This turns out to have preceded Trump Derangement Syndrome.) Israel honors a rabbi for his pledge to flatten Gaza—not the land, of course, just the society. Yet another analysis of What’s Eatin’ Trump Voters reveals that the destruction of our society is exactly what they voted for. Prove me wrong, T-voters.
If the objective of the U.S. war upon Iran is to ensure that that country does not develop nuclear weapons, that goal was attained more than a decade ago through a far different approach than the one now being followed by the Trump administration.
Iran, as a signer of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty of 1970, had agreed to forgo the development of nuclear weapons. Even so, fears grew during the early 21st century that Iran’s uranium enrichment program, used for peaceful purposes, might be diverted to the development of the Bomb, thereby throwing the volatile Middle East into yet another crisis, including a frenzied nuclear arms race.
I don’t know much about the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Sure, I’ve gotten their fundraising solicitations, but that just makes me the same as most Americans this side of Attila the Hun. Visiting Montgomery, Alabama, some years ago with my son, I was surprised to see their big, fancy building, but more than anything else, because I worry about what a comrade had called the trend among labor and the left, to join the “edifice complex” in a clever pun on the Oedipus complex of Freudian practice.
With the announcement that the Justice Department is going after them, I can’t help but scratch my head and be sympathetic, even while bracing myself for the barrage of mail from them that will burdening my letter carrier soon. The acting Attorney General and the head of the FBI, soberly announced an indictment, which was a bit hard for me to follow. They claimed the SPLC was guilty of…
According to the Council on Foreign Relations, the United States has provided more than $300 billion in total economic and military assistance to Israel since 1948, when adjusted for inflation. That breaks down to roughly $10 million a day—money that could have gone toward programs like Head Start or food assistance for Americans in need, such as veterans and homeless. Instead, we are being asked to tighten our belts for the sake of a foreign nation.
In 2015, the U.S. Congress cut $5 billion from the Food Stamps Program. At the same time, lawmakers approved $488 million in aid to Israel. Syndicated columnist Patrick Buchanan once remarked that Congress is “Israeli‑occupied territory,” a comment he made after serving as a political advisor in the Nixon, Ford, and Reagan administrations.