I'm extremely preoccupied with other work, so don't expect anything more than the occasional for-future-reference link here. Of course, if I did have time, I could write much about these pieces (but, especially re Gaze, refer to recent weeks. Meanwhile, look for links to Sarah Jones below.
PS: I've added a couple more links and/or comments since this was originally published Sunday afternoon. They are marked with a red right-border, like this one:
Israel:
Mondoweiss:
[12-11] Day 66: Israel attacks ambulances, medics in Gaza; people across the world join strike for Palestine.
[12-12] Day 67: Israeli forces storm Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia.
[12-14] Day 69: Reports of Israeli soldier shooting women and children execution style in Gaza.
[12-15] Day 70: A deteriorating public health crisis in Gaza, raids across the occupied West Bank.
[12-16] Day 71: Al Jazeera journalist killed in Gaza, protests in Tel Aviv after Israel kills own hostages.
[12-17] Day 72: Israeli forces kill Palestinians in church, UNRWA warns of mass flight to Egypt.
Yuval Abraham: [12-17] 'The hostages weren't our top priority': How Israel's bombing frenzy endangered captives in Gaza. I suspect most Israeli authorities would prefer all the hostages dead, as that would shift them from being an inhibition against genocide into a martyred cause for.
Jehad Abusalim: [12-15] Refaat Alareer was a brilliant poet and intellectual -- he was also my teacher: And he's dead now -- one of the few casualties of Israel's genocide with a name others can relate to.
Miriam Berger/Hajar Harb: [12-17] Gaza, smashed by Israeli strikes, sees new threat: Disease.
Ranjani Chakraborty: [12-13] Why Israel has so many Palestinian prisoners: "Inside Israel's dual criminal justice system."
Jonathan Cook:
[12-05] How Israel uses AI genocide programme to obliterate Gaza.
[12-15] Why is the media ignoring evidence of Israel's own actions on 7 October? They "fail to report on growing evidence that Israel killed its own citizens."
Tareq S Hajjaj: [12-15] The cost of freedom: "Many in Gaza are faced with difficult choices that aren't choices at all."
Jeff Halper: [12-15] Why Biden's 'day after' means two-state apartheid.
Chris Hedges: [12-17] The death of Israel: "Settler colonial states have a terminal shelf life. Israel is no exception."
David C Hendrickson: [12-13] Hawks pushing for more fronts in Israeli military operations: "Supporting Netanyahu may mean accommodating actions against Hezbollah, Iran, West Bank, and more."
Gideon Levy: [12-13] Israel's first unanimous war: "We've never before had a war like this, a war of complete consensus, a war of total silence, a war of blind support; a war without objection, without protest, without refusal to serve, without opposition, neither in the beginning or in the middle. . . . The brainwashing by the media is at fire-hose intensity, spraying forth from the TV news studios day and night, and even those in whom doubt may be starting to stir do not dare to raise them publicly. . . . As far as Israelis are concerned, it's possible to keep this war going forever, to kill all the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip and destroy it entirely for good."
Eyal Lurie-Pardes: [12-12] Why Israel's top court is greenlighting a civil rights crackdown.
Adam Miyashiro: [12-14] How racist discourse fuels Israel's settler colonial genocide.
Mouin Rabbani: [12-15] Quick thoughts; Ongoing post on the war on Gaza: Ongoing commentary, latest update December 16.
Nathan J Robinson: [12-13] There is no good reason to oppose a ceasefire in Gaza: "The rest of the world sees what the United States still does not: Israel's actions in Gaza can only succeed in producing an endless cycle of violence and suffering."
Mina Sadi: [12-15] Israel's attack on the Freedom Theatre in Jenin camp is part of a cultural genocide.
Jeremy Scahill: [12-11] This is not a war against Hamas: "The notion that the war would end if Hamas was overthrown or surrenders is as ahistorical as it is false."
Richard Silverstein:
Nadia Taha: [12-12] It's time for Gaza's journalists to be treated like the heroes they are.
Jeff Wright: [12-14] The hope of ending 'Israel's fever dream': An interview with Craig Mokhiber: Former Director of the Ne York Office of the UN's High Commissioner of Human Rights after he stepped down in protest over the UN's failure to prevent a 'textbook case of genocide' in Gaza."
Zi Zhou: [12-14] The growing global support for a Gaza ceasefire, explained: "Why the US and Israel are becoming 'increasingly isolated.'" Uh, because they're excusing, defending, and committing genocide?
Also note that the New York Times has run a collection of articles under the title What is the path to peace in Gaza? The dumbest is "Let NATO nations send troops," by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, although not by a huge margin over Bernard Avishai and Ezzedine Fishere's "The answer lies with Biden." The closest to my thinking is Jerome M Segal's "Grant Gaza statehood." He's much more tentative than my proposals (from recent weeks, shouldn't be hard to look them up), as he misses one key component: that Israel should have absolutely no say in or direction over the territory of Gaza and its people. Israel has proven, beyond any doubt, its incompetence as well as its inhumanity as what used to be called a "mandate" power. The other key point of my plan is that it separates Gaza off from Israel's more general, deeper, and intractable problem with the Palestinians still under its power. While a more general solution is still desirable, the case for separating Gaza off has become extraordinarily more urgent, not just for the people suffering there but also for those who realize the grave peril Israel and the United States are causing to their reputation and standing in the world.
US, Israel, and a decaying empire:
Christine Ahn: [12-15] More sanctions and military pressure won't improve North Korean human rights.
Andrew J Bacevich: [12-15] Israel is not America's responsibility.
Daniel Brumberg: [12-16] Are Israel and the United States on a collision course? "For Washington, Netanyahu's singular and relentless focus on military tactics represents a strategic nightmare."
Eli Clifton: [12-15] US lawmaker: Backing Israel is the 'path of least resistance'.
Ryan Grim: [12-14] State Department stuns Congress, saying Biden is not even reviewing Trump's terror designation of Cuba.
Robert E Hunter: [12-11] Biden needs to stop coddling Bibi: "The US must press for a ceasefire and then get serious about resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."
Daniel Larison: [12-12] Keep US troops out of post-war Gaza: Incredibly, someone actually proposed such a thing. Anyone with the slightest recollection of the US "peacekeeping" force in Lebanon will instantly recoil from the thought. Robert Fisk's Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon (1990) should be mandatory reading. Even without the overhead of serving as Israeli proxies, the US military has a terrible track record as "peacekeepers."
Jon Schwarz: [12-12] How Biden's state department conceals its "human rights black hole" in the Middle East.
Sarang Shidore/Dan M Ford: [12-15] Mapping it: striking US isolation in UN vote.
Robert Wright: [12-15] Biden's Israel impotence: "The frequency and directness with which Israeli officials convey to the world that they don't care about Biden's opinion is getting embarrassing."
Zionism, Antisemitism, and Palestinian rights:
Michael Arria: [12-12] The Shift: Misleading U.S. headlines on Palestine activism.
Zack Beauchamp: [12-12] The return of liberal Zionism?: "For many Jews, the October 7 attacks discredited both the Zionist right and the anti-Zionist left -- paving the way for the resurrection of a seemingly dead political tradition."
Peter Beinart: [12-11] Harvard is ignoring its own antisemitism experts: "The university's new advisory group on antisemitism elevates political concerns over academic integrity."
Tim Dickinson: [12-16] Turning Point USA's AmericaFest is infested with antisemitism.
Emma Green: [12-15] How a student group is politicizing a generation on Palestine: "Activists with Students for Justice in Palestine have mobilized major campus demonstrations in support of Gaza -- and provided an intellectual framework for protesters watching what's happening in the Middle East."
Donald Johnson: [12-10] Anti-Palestinian racism is inherent in Zionism and you're not allowed to talk about it.
Sarah Jones: [12-12] Don't lose sight of Gaza.
Eric Levitz: [12-11] How bad is antisemitism in America, really? If you more or less align liberal and/or left, and are still seriously concerned about the rise of antisemitism, this is for you, and provides a fair and judicious appraisal of the situation.
Nicole Narea: [12-15] What elite universities -- and their critics -- get wrong about campus antisemitism.
Katha Pollitt: [12-15] Why have feminists been so slow to condemn the Hamas rapes? Maybe because the charges are wrapped up in a propaganda campaign meant to promote genocide? One fallback position seems to be that "of course, Hamas committed rapes -- all armies rape." But wouldn't that also apply to the army that's 10 times as large, with 100 times the budget for death-dealing arms? It's been some times since anyone proclaimed the IDF as "the most moral army in the world" -- I can't recall hearing that since Sharon became Prime Minister. (You should have seen his face when Bush called him "a man of peace.")
Ishmael Reed: [12-15] To shame Dr. Gay, the media had to shield Representative Stefanik.
Jen Wieczner: [12-12] How Bill Ackman's campaign to oust Harvard's president failed.
Trump, and other Republicans:
Eric Adelson/Patricia Mazzei: [12-17] Florida Republicans strip powers of embattled party chairman: Christian Ziegler, "who faces a criminal investigation and has resisted calls to resign."
Isaac Arnsdorf: [12-16] Trump quotes Putin condemning American democracy, praises autocrat Orban.
John Cassidy: [12-12] What Trump's civil trial tells us about his upcoming criminal cases.
David Gilbert: [12-14] Moms for Liberty is tearing itself apart: "One of the Republican Parlty's most successful grassroots organizations is being torn apart by scandal, including accusations of sexual assault."
Maggie Haberman/Shane Goldmacher/Nicholas Nehamas/Jonathan Swan: [12-16] Jeff Roe, top strategist for star-crossed DeSantis Super PAC, resigns.
Margaret Hartmann: [12-13] Trump spent legal defense fund money at Mar-a-Lago.
Kelly McClure: [12-16] Trump recirculates Hitler rhetoric at campaign event in New Hampshire.
Ally Mutnick/Burgess Everett: [12-17] Senate GOP enters critical stretch for fending off bad candidates.
Adam Rawnsley/Asawin Suebaeng: [12-14] 'Dictator' Trump plans to deploy massive number of troops on U.S. soil.
Luke Savage: [12-14] Nikki Haley is an anti-worker fanatic, not a "moderate".
Ian Ward: [12-15] The crazy conservative scheme to make Trump look normal: Rehabilitate Nixon.
Li Zhou: [12-13] Why Republicans are pursuing an unfounded impeachment inquiry into Biden.
Biden and/or the Democrats:
Kevin Breuninger: [12-15] 'Good one, Donald': Biden flaunts stock market record highs, mocks Trump for predicting 'collapse'.
David Marchese: [12-15] Rep. Ro Khanna has a reminder for Democrats: Americans love money.
Nicole Narea: [12-09] Can Democrats overcome their deep divisions over Gaza? "The party is fractured over President Joe Biden's unequivocal support for Israel as it continues its military campaign in Gaza ahead of 2024."
Andrew Prokop:
[12-13] Republicans' thin corruption case against Joe Biden, explained.
[12-14] Why Biden may give in to Republican demands on immigration: "It's partly about Ukraine aid. But the politics of immigration have also changed for Democrats."
Michael Tomasky: This impeachment will do more to reelect Biden than anything Biden could do himself.
Li Zhou: [12-13] Why Republicans are pursuing an unfounded impeachment inquiry into Biden.
Legal matters and other crimes: Also see the Sarah Jones article in the main section, which relates to the Kate Cox abortion case but goes much deeper. I've moved other pieces on Cox down there.
Justin Elliott/Joshua Kaplan/Alex Mierjeski/Brett Murphy: [12-16] A "delicate matter": Clarence Thomas' private complaints about money sparked fears he would resign.
Matt Ford: America's most corrupt mayors have a friend in the Supreme Court.
Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling:
How a Supreme Court leak helped conservative justices unite to overturn Roe.
Broke Giuliani must pay up $148 million for defaming Georgia election workers. Also:
Charles Bethea: [12-15] Watching Rudy Giuliani self-destruct at a defamation trial in Washington.
Andrew Rice: [12-13] Rudy Giuliani can't resist digging himself a hole at his defamation trial. Also: [12-15] The women Rudy Giuliani tried to destroy, and [12-15] Why Rudy Giuliani lost so big.
Ian Millhiser:
[12-11] l The Supreme Court hands down a small but unexpected victory for LGBTQ people.
[12-13] The Supreme Court will hear its biggest abortion case since it overruled Roe v. Wade: "The justices will decide whether to ban mifepristone, a drug used in half of US abortions."
[12-14] The Supreme Court case that could shut down Trump's election theft trial, explained: "Trump claims that when the president tries to steal an election, it's not illegal."
Climate, environment, and COP28: Isn't the latter supposed to do something about the former?
Umair Irfan:
[12-11] Pledges to slash methane pollution at COP28 are leaving out one big thing: "Cows."
[12-11] The severe El Niņo in South America is a preview of a climate-changed world: "Dengue, drought, and floods are hammering Peru and Bolivia this year."
Benji Jones: [12-14] Welcome to the extinction capital of the world: "Our planet faces a mass extinction. I visited ground zero." Hawaii.
Elizabeth Kolbert: [12-13] What did COP28 really accomplish?
Eric Levitz: [12-14] The new global climate deal is mostly hot air.
Kate Morgan: [11-11] How to detox coal country.
Paige Vega: [12-13] Don't be satisfied with a pledge to end fossil fuels.
Aarhus University: [12-14] People, not the climate, found to have caused the decline of the giant mammals.
Economic matters:
John Cassidy: [12-15] The Federal Reserve is trying to catch up with falling inflation.
Emily Stewart: [12-13] Starbucks has lost $11 billion market value, and not because of boycotts: "Starbucks's messy December, explained."
Ukraine War:
Joshua Keating: [12-16] What happens in Ukraine if US aid disappears?
Anatol Lieven: [12-13] Biden says Ukraine has already won. He's right.
Charles P Pierce: [12-13] Republicans in Congress stiffed Ukraine, but gave Zelensky some unsolicited advice: How's this for snark? "Their stance on military aid made Neville Chamberlain look like Charlemagne." Related here:
EJ Dionne Jr: [12-17] Ukraine shouldn't have to pay the price of the GOP's wedge politics: I fear that Democrats are making a grave error treating growing Republican opposition to funding endless war in Ukraine to "wedge politics." They're setting themselves up as the War Party, while more and more Americans are growing weary of war abroad. And who are they to Ukrainians would be "paying the price" by not extending a war that is already costing them dearly?
Paul Sonne/Rebecca R Ruiz: [12-17] How Putin turned a Western boycott into a bonanza.
David Atkins: [12-13] Conservatives have lost the culture war: Which is why it works for them: it gives them an endless source of complaints, a fount of anger to ride to power on, with nothing they can actually do.
Kyle Chayka: [12-07] The terrible twenties? The assholocene? What to call our chaotic era.
Elise Craig: [12-10] Resilience is invaluable in tough times. Here's how to build it.
Tom Engelhardt: [12-13] Keeping TomDispatch alive: In deeply troubled times: Bills itself as "A regular antidote to the mainstream media." For 23 years, one of the world's most important sources of critical thought and fine writing on the world's really big issues. Only thing I can think of to make it better would be if they took an interest in publishing little old me.
Trip Gabriel: [12-16] Paul Chevigny, early voice on police brutality, dies at 88: "An eminent civil rights lawyer, he was one of the nation's foremost experts on abusive policing. He also successfully challenged New York's Cabaret Law." I remember his book, Police Power: Police Abuses in New York City (published in 1969).
Masha Gessen: [12-09] In the shadow of the Holocaust: I cited this article last week. It has since become news controversy in its own right.
Calder McHugh: {12-16] Masha Gessen kicks the hornet's nest on Israel and the Holocaust: Interview.
Jeet Heer: [12-15] The 2 Murrays and the age of pretend anarchy: "The strange global influence of anarcho-capitalism." Bookchin and Rothbard: I've noted the name they share before, as I've been fascinated with both.
Jordan Heller: [12-14] An oral history of the George W Bush shoe throwing, 15 years later.
Sarah Jones: [12-14] The anti-abortion movement is anti-human: Read this one:
Abortion opponents try to hide their authoritarian tendencies. In victory, though, their motives are clear, and so is the movement's true character. Forced birth is not an accidental outcome of the end of Roe v. Wade, but rather the primary goal -- no matter the consequences. A woman's needs become secondary to fetal requirements. The viability of a fetus does not seem to matter, nor does the woman's health. Just ask Kate Cox. . . .
These women have revealed a crucial truth: Abortion bans weren't written for human beings. As written, they strip women of their humanity and reimagine them as vessels. A vessel is not a person. A vessel has no rights. A vessel is only useful as long as it is functional. When it is no longer fit for purpose, it is cast aside; there are plenty more where it came from.
Also on abortion and the Cox case:
Greer Donley: [12-17] What happened to Kate Cox is tragic, and completely expected.
Maureen Dowd: [12-16] Supreme contempt for women.
Ian Millhiser: [12-12] The sinister court decision denying Kate Cox an abortion, explained: "The court's opinion reads like something out of Franz Kafka, or maybe something out of Jim Crow."
Alexandra Petri: [12-15] GOP baffled that 'We don't care if you die' is not a winning slogan. Which, in turn, links to:
Li Zhou: [12-12] One Texas case shows why women can't rely on legal exceptions to abortion bans: The Kate Cox case.
Inkoo Kang: [12-10] The best TV shows of 2023: Having almost totally lost my appetite for movies, and having given up reading fiction decades ago (never any time), streaming TV series has become my only respite from the long work day. Still, I've only seen four of these: Reservation Dogs; Somebody Somewhere; Barry; and Succession (of course). More TV links:
Inkoo Kang: [11-21] Why can't we quit The Morning Show?
Inkoo Kang: [12-14] The Crown ends with a whimper. "Without a living protagonist fit to carry it, The Crown is increasingly populated by ghosts."
Matthew Gilbert: [12-01] The 10 best TV shows of 2023: Boston Globe piece, so no way I can read the details, but add Bear and Poker Face to the list we've watched, and Fargo from the HMs (which we're in the middle of, same for Slow Horses, and Shetland -- which has taken a very Fargo-ish turn this year). Year End Lists have more lists I should check out, like this one from Playlist, where numbers 20-16 are Full Circle, Slow Horses, Shrinking (which I didn't like, but there's something to it), Justified: City Primeval, and Fargo.
Vikram Murthi: [11-21] How Reservation Dogs changed the TV landscape.
Josh Katz/Aatish Bhatia: [12-17] Seven things we learned analyzing 515 million Wordles.
Joshua Keating: [12-13] Why we still underestimate what groups like Hamas are capable of: "Two decades after 9/11l, extremist groups continue to pull off surprise attacks. Why?" Article quotes Erik Dahl: "We have too much information and not enough understanding of what's going on in the world."
Matt McManus: [12-12] It's time to break up with our exploitative political and economic system: Review of Malaika Jabali's book, It's Not You, It's Capitalism: Why It's Time to Break Up and How to Move On.
Charles P Pierce: [12-14] Andre Braugher was one of the greatest actors of his generation.
David Remnick: [12-10] Are we sleepwalking into dictatorship? Liz Cheney has a book to sell you.
Norman Solomon:
[12-14] Unilateral sanity could save the world: What Daniel Ellsberg understood, especially in his 2017 book: The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planer.
[12-15] Noam Chomsky at 95: Still speaking hard truths, still ignored by mainstream media.
Jeffrey St Clair/Alexander Cockburn: [12-15] The sinister career of Ariel Sharon: From Sabra and Shatila to Gaza: Old piece from 2001, when Sharon had just become Prime Minister, so this misses his most politically toxic years, as he systematically demolished the Oslo Accords and the Palestinian Authority. Baruch Kimmerling wrote a good book about Sharon's rule, for which he coined the term Politicide. That's still a pretty accurate term for Israel's plan, although it never fully masked a hope for genocide. Despite the title, the piece does go back before 1982, mentioning the 1951 massacre at Qibya that did so much to establish Sharon's reputation as a war criminal.
Rick Sterling: [12-15] From Dallas to Gaza: How JFK's assassination was good for Zionist Israel.
George Varga: [12-13] Lester Bangs at 75: Legacy of 'America's greatest rock critic' endures 4 decades after his death.
Joan Walsh: [12-14] I finally left Xitter because of Alex Jones. Lots of complicated reasoning can go into deciding whether or not to engage in a social media platform, but the marginal difference of Alex Jones being on or off it is infinitesimally small. Of course, the point could simply be that Jones and Musk are each so bad they deserve each other, but if that were the point, why does Walsh make it about herself?