Well, another week, with a few minor variations, but mostly the same old stories:
Israel is continuing its genocidal war on Gaza, with well over 30,000 direct kills, the destruction of most housing and infrastructure, and the imposition of mass starvation. This war is likely to escalate significantly next week, as Netanyahu has vowed to invade Rafah, which has until now been a relatively safe haven for over one million refugees from northern parts of the Gaza strip. Israel is also orchestrating increased violence in the occupied West Bank and along the Lebanon border, which risks drawing the US into the conflict (as has already happened in the Red Sea).
The United States remains supportive of and complicit in Israeli genocide, although we're beginning to see signs that the Biden administration is uncomfortable with such extremism. Public opinion favor an immediate cease-fire, which Israel and its fan club have been working frantically to dispel and deny.
Meanwhile, the war in Ukraine continues to be stalemated, with increasingly desperate and dangerous drone attacks. Putin is up for reelection this weekend, and is expected to win easily, against token opposition that also supports Russia's war, so any hopes for regime change there are very slim. On the other hand, the war is becoming increasingly unpopular in the US, where thus far Biden has been unable to pass his latest arms aid request. The only way out of this destructive and debilitating war is to open negotiations, where the obvious solution is some formalization of the status quo, but thus far Biden and Zelensky have refused to consider the need.
Biden's has secured the Democratic nomination for a second term, but he remains deeply unpopular, due to gross Republican slanders, his own peculiar personal weaknesses, and legitimate worry over wars he has shown little concern and/or competency at ending.
Meanwhile, Trump has secured the Republican nomination, but is mostly distracted by the numerous civil and criminal cases he has blundered into. He's lost two civil cases, bringing fines of over $500 million, but he has thus far managed to postpone trial in the four criminal cases, and he had several minor victories on that front last week. Meanwhile, the Republican Party is remaking itself in his image, defending crime and corruption, spreading hate, and aspiring to dictatorship. (At some point, I should go into more depth on how, while the Democrats remain pretty inept at defending democracy, the Republicans have gone way out of their way to impress on us what the destruction of democracy has in store for us.)
Due to various factors I don't want to go into, I got a late start on this, and lost essentially all of Saturday, so I expect the final Sunday wrap-up to be even more haphazard than usual.
Sorry I didn't mention this earlier, but we were saddened to hear of the recent death of Jim Lynch. He was one of the Wichita area's most steadfast peace supporters, and he will be missed.
Except, of course, that I didn't manage to wrap up on Sunday, so this picks up an extra day -- not thoroughly researched, but I am including some Monday pieces.
Initial count: 183 links, 9,145 words.
Israel:
Mondoweiss:
[03-11] Day 157: As Ramadan begins, Israel obstructs Palestinian entry to al-Aqsa Mosque: "Israel is preparing itself and its prisons for the arrest of thousands of Palestinians, Netanyahu says. Meanwhile, Israel has already begun obstructing access to the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, attacking worshipers on the first night of Ramadan."
[03-12] Day 158: Israel airstrikes continue to pummel Gaza during the holy month of Ramadan: "Israeli forces bombed Gaza on the first day of Ramadan, killing two fishermen. Israel's fortified highway has reached the Mediterranean coast, effectively splitting Gaza in two. Meanwhile, hundreds of settlers stormed the al-Aqsa Mosque compound."
[03-13] Day 159: Netanyahu vows to invade Rafah: "Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel "will finish the job in Rafah" despite growing international concern over an invasion, including from the U.S. Meanwhile, Israeli forces kill 5 Palestinians in the West Bank in the last 24 hours, including 3 children."
[03-14] Day 160: Israel kills 7 Palestinians waiting for aid, attacks UN distribution center: "Israel's Knesset approved a $19.4 billion budget increase to fund the ongoing Israeli genocide, while the Biden administration has indicated that it will greenlight the targeting of 'high-value Hamas targets in and underneath Rafah.'"
[03-15] Day 161: Hamas proposes new prisoner exchange deal, Netanyahu's office calls it 'unrealistic': "Thousands of Palestinian worshippers have been denied access to pray at al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem for Ramadan's first Friday prayers, while Israeli forces have committed another massacre against Palestinian aid-seekers in Gaza City."
[03-16] Day 162: Israel kills 36 Palestinians in strike on Gaza home as Netanyahu approves Rafah invasion: "An Israeli strike on a home in Nuseirat refugee camp kills 36 people as massacres continue across Gaza. Meanwhile, Israel approves plans for Rafah ground invasion despite warnings it will be 'catastrophic' for over 1.4 million Palestinians."
[03-17] Day 163: Top EU official says Israel failed to prove its accusations against UNRWA: "Netanyahu has vowed to invade Rafah despite the international red line. Meanwhile, the U.S. has sanctioned two illegal settler outposts in the West Bank for the first time."
[03-18] Day 164: Israeli army storms al-Shifa again, aid reaches Jabalia for first time in months: "Over a million people in Gaza face 'imminent' famine as UNRWA aid trucks arrive in northern Gaza for the first time in months. Meanwhile, the Israeli army's Chief of Staff says 'a long way to go' until Israel's military objectives are achieved."
AlJazeera: [03-18] Famine expected in Gaza between now and May: What to know? "A UN-backed report says the entire Gaza population is experiencing a food shortage as Israel is accused of provoking famine."
Ruwaida Kamal Amer/Ibtisam Mahdi: [03-14] With no safety in Rafah, Palestinians are fleeing back to Gaza's decimated center.
Hédi Attia: [03-11] Gaza & the legacy of Netanyahu's 'war on terror': "What happened on Oct. 7 represents the collapse of an erroneous doctrine the Israeli leader has consistently promoted throughout his career." One thing I clearly remember from watching TV on Sept. 11, 2001, as the World Trade Center was burning and collapsing, was Netanyahu's shit-eating grin as he was boasting about how good the attacks were for Israel, because now Americans will finally know what terrorism feels like. (Shimon Peres took the same line, perhaps a bit more soberly, as did John Major, who pointed out that Britain has more experience than anyone with "chickens coming home to roost" -- not his words, but most famously from Malcolm X.) Most people reacted to 9/11 and 10/7 with shock and horror. Netanyahu saw them as confirmation of his life's work, and a signal to move on to his Final Solution.
Samer Badawi: [03-16] 'Armchair humanitarianism': The problem with Gaza's maritime aid corridor.
Simon Speakman Cordall/Veronica Pedrosa: [03-13] Not just the UNRWA report; Countless accounts of Israeli torture in Gaza.
Tareq S Hajjaj: [03-13] Palestinians in Gaza face famine during Ramadan.
Shereen Hindawi-Wyatt: [03-14] What Israeli soldiers' display of Palestinian women's lingerie reveals about the Zionist psyche.
Najia Houssari: [03-16] Israel accused of 'scorched earth' tactics in southern Lebanon.
David Kattenburg: [03-11] UN expert: Israel is engineering famine in Gaza: Cites UN Special Rapporteur Michael Fakhri, who says: "We've never seen a civilian population made to go hungry so completely and so quickly." Also: "It's not just denying humanitarian aid. It's not just shooting at civilians trying to get humanitarian aid; It's not just bombarding convoys of humanitarian trucks, even though those humanitarian trucks are coordinating with them. They're destroying the food system." Chris Gunness adds: "This is not a natural disaster. This is a political choice which our governments are taking, and people of conscience all around the world need to tell their governments, tell their elected representatives, that they do not want to be complicit in genocide and starvation."
Rami G Khouri: [03-18] Watching the watchdogs: Piers, airdrops, and mediagenic spectacles in Gaza.
Elisha Ben Kimon: [03-11] IDF Gaza Division commander reprimanded for blowing up Gaza university: Brigadier General Barak Hiram.
Middle East Monitor: [03-18] Israeli settlers vandalise UNRWA's Jerusalem headquarters, threaten staff.
Mahmoud Mushtaha: [03-16] 'We scream, starve, and die alone': Life in the ruins of Shuja'iya: "Israel's month-long invasion of the Gaza City neighborhood left behind a trail of devastation. Still under siege, its Palestinian residents are risking death to get their hands on a bag of flour."
Adam Rasgon/Vivian Yee/Gaya Gupta/David Segal: [03-17] 'We're not a banana republic,' Netanyahu says, rejecting criticism from US: Sounds like he's working on his post-political, post-prison career, in stand-up.
Shira Rubin/Yasmeen Abutaleb: [03-14] Israel faces crisis of its own making as chaos and hunger engulf Gaza.
Ronen Tal: [03-17] 'Israeli settlers can now do whatever they please. They want to drive off those who live there': "Eella Dunayevsky, an Israeli activist in the West Bank for decades, has lost hope that the conflict can be solved. Her new book details countless incidents of harassment and violence in the South Hebron Hills."
David Zenlea: [03-09] This Israeli minister wants a full-on religious war. His proposals for Ramadan risked starting one. "Itamar Ben-Gvir has been sidelined for now. But his fulminations still deserve our undivided attention."
Israel vs. Biden: Israelis like to talk about the "multi-front war" they're besieged with, but for all the talk of Iranian proxies, they rarely point out that their main struggle since Oct. 7 has been with world opinion, especially as it became obvious that they had both the intent and means to commit genocide. For a long time, Biden and virtually the entire American political establishment were completely subservient to Israeli dictates, but that seems to be shifting slightly -- maybe those taunts of "Genocide Joe" are registering? -- so much so that Israel can add the US to its array of threats. Not a done deal, but increasingly a subject of discussion.
Daniel Boguslaw: FBI warns Gaza War will stoke domestic radicalization "for years to come".
Connor Echols: [03-13] Bombs, guns, treasure: What Israel wants, the US gives.
Liz Goodwin: [03-14] Schumer calls for 'new election' in Israel in scathing speech on Netanyahu: I'd be among the first to point out that's none of his business, just as it's none of Netanyahu's business to weigh in on American elections -- as he's done both personally and through donors like the Abelsons and lobbying groups like AIPAC. On the other hand, if Schumer wanted to cut off military aid and diplomatic support for genocide, that would clearly be his right. More on Schumer:
Jonathan Chait: [03-16] Why Chuck Schumer's Israel speech marks a turning point: "He tried to escape the cycle of violence and hate between one-staters of the left and right." That's a very peculiar turn of phrase -- one designed to depict "two-staters" as innocent peace-seekers who have been pushed aside by extremists, each intent on dominating the other. But the very idea of "two states" was a British colonial construct, designed initially to divide-and-rule (as the British did everywhere they gained power), and when they inevitably failed, to foment civil wars in their wake. (Ireland and India/Pakistan are the other prime examples, although there are many others.) The "two-state solution" isn't some long deferred dream. It is the generator and actual state of the conflict. Sure, it doesn't look like the "two states" of American propaganda -- a fantasy Israelis sometimes give lip-service to but more often subvert -- due to the extreme asymmetry of power between the highly efficient and brutal Israeli state and the emaciated chaos of Palestinian leadership (to which the PA is mere window dressing, as was much earlier the British-appointed "Mufti of Jerusalem"). The only left solution is a state built on equal rights of all who live there.
Borders may be abitrary, and one could designate one, two, or N states in the region, with various ethnic mixes, but for the left, and for peace and justice, each must offer equal rights to its inhabitants. It is true that some on the left were willing to entertain the two-state prospect, but that was only because we realized that Israel is dead set against equal rights, and saw their security requiring that most Palestinians be excluded. We expected that a Palestinian majority, left to its own devices, would organize a state of equal rights democratically. Meanwhile, an Israel more secure in its Jewish majority might moderate, as indeed Israel had done before the 1967 war, the revival of military rule, the settler movement, the debasement and destruction of the Labor Party, and the extreme right-wing drive of the Netanyahu regimes.
That the actually-existing Zionist state has become an embarrassment to someone as devoted to Israel as Schumer may indeed be a turning point. But heaping scorn on "left one-staters" while trying to revive the "two-state solution," with its implied "separate but equal" air on top of vast differences in power, is less a step forward than a desperate attempt to salvage the past.
EJ Dionne Jr: [03-16] Schumer said out loud what many of Israel's friends are thinking.
Murtaza Hussain: Outrage at Chuck Schumer's speech: The pro-Israel right wants to eat its cake too.
Fred Kaplan: [03-14] Why Chuck Schumer's break with Netanyahu seems like a turning point in the US relationship with Israel.
Halie Soifer: [03-15] Schumer spoke for the majority of American Jews: "Only 31% of American Jewish voters have a favorable view of the Israeli prime minister."
Caitlin Johnstone: [03-15] If Israel wants to be an 'independent nation,' let it be: "Israel knows it's fully dependent on the US and cannot sustain its nonstop violence without the backing of the US war machine."
Fred Kaplan: [03-15] There's a cease-fire deal on the table. Hamas is the one rejecting it. Israel doesn't need to negotiate with Hamas for a cease-fire. They can do that by themselves. You say that wouldn't get the hostages back? Someone else -- say whoever wants to run food and supplies into Gaza? -- can deal with that. The hostages are relatively useless just to swap for other hostages. Their real value to Hamas is to the extent they inhibit Israel from the final, absolute destruction of Gaza and everyone stuck there. Admittedly, that hasn't worked out so well, but trading them for time only helps if the international community uses that time to get Israel to give up on their Final Solution. Meanwhile, what Israel likes about negotiating with Hamas is they never have to agree to anything, because the one thing Hamas wants is off the table. And because Israel is very skilled at shifting blame to Hamas. They even have Kaplan fooled. I mean, consider this:
Netanyahu has rejected these conditions as "delusional." On this point, he is right. A complete withdrawal of troops and a committed end to the war would leave Israel without the means to enforce the release of hostages. It would also allow Hamas to rebuild its military and resume attacking Israel, whether with rocket fire or another attempted incursion.
But isn't the point of negotiation to get both sides to do what they committed. Why does Israel need a residual force to "enforce the release of hostages"? If Hamas failed to honor its side of the deal, Israel could always attack again. Can't we admit that would be a sufficiently credible Plan B? And how the hell is Hamas going "to rebuild its military and resume attacking Israel"? They never had a real military, and Gaza never had the resources and tech to build serious arms, and what little they did have has been almost completely demolished. I could see Hamas worrying that Israel could use truce time to bulk up so they could hit Gaza even harder, but the opposite isn't even projection; it's just plain ridiculous.
Joshua Keating: [03-14] How Biden could dial up the pressure on Israel -- if he really wanted to.
Mitchell Plitnick: [03-15] It isn't Netanyahu who is acting against the will of his people, it's Biden.
Richard Silverstein:
Adam Taylor/Shira Rubin: [03-14] Biden administration imposes first sanctions on West Bank settler outposts.
Kelley Beaucar Vlahos:
Philip Weiss: [03-17] Weekly Briefing: Now everyone hates Israel: "The unbelievable onslaught on a captive people in Gaza has at last cracked the conscience of the American Jewish community and sent American Zionists into complete crisis." Picture of Schumer, followed by Jonathan Glazer at the Oscars.
Israel vs. world opinion:
Michael Arria: [03-14] The Shift: Jonathan Glazer smeared by pro-Israel voices over Oscar speech: The director of the film The Zone of Interest said this during his acceptance speech after winning the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film:
All our choices we made to reflect and confront us in the present. Not to say 'look what they did then' -- rather, 'look what we do now.' Our film shows where dehumanization leads at its worst. It shaped all of our past and present.
Right now, we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people. Whether the victims of October 7 in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza -- all the victims of this dehumanization, how do we resist?
Also:
Juan Cole: [03-12] QZionism hits peak conspiracy theory with smears of Oscar-winning Jonathan Glazer.
PJ Grisar: [03-11] No, Jonathan Glazer did not 'refuse his Jewishness'.
Aja Romano: [03-11] No, the director of Zone of Interest did not disavow his Jewish identity at the Oscars: "Everybody is misquoting Jonathan Glazer's speech."
Naomi Klein: [03-14] The Zone of Interest is about the danger of ignoring atrocities -- including in Gaza. Starts with the speech, but also a very insightful review of the film, one that got much more out of it than I did at the time. I may have been slow because it offered very little of the drama one normally expects. Mostly just the set, juxtaposed against the other sets, never fully explained (because, I guess, you are expected to know).
Khalil Barhoum: [03-09] The real reason 'from the river to the sea' has garnered so much condemnation: "The false labeling of Palestinian liberation slogans like 'from the river to the sea' as calls for the elimination of Jews reveals an Israeli anxiety over its dispossession of the Palestinians from their land."
Daniel Beaumont: [03-15] Smoke and mirrors: How Israeli agitprop lies become fact.
Jonathan Cook:
[03-15] Torture, executions, babies left to die, sexual abuse . . . These are Israel's crimes.
Feminist Solidarity Network for Palestine: [03-11] Here's what Pramila Patten's UN report on Oct 7 sexual violence actually said: "The UN report on sexual violence on October 7 has found no evidence of systematic rape by Hamas or any other Palestinian group, despite widespread media reporting to the contrary. But there are deeper problems with the report's credibility."
Luke Goldstein: [03-14] AIPAC talking points revealed: "Documents show that the powerful lobby is spreading its influence on Capitol Hill by calling for unconditional military aid to Israel and hyping up threats from Iran."
David Hearst: [03-14] All signs point to a strategic defeat for Israel.
Kathy Kelly: [03-15] When starvation is a weapon, the harvest is shame.
Tariq Kenney-Shawa: [03-14] Israel Partisans' use of disinformation.
Jonathan Ofir: [03-12] Human rights groups sue Denmark for weapons export to Israel.
Roy Peled: [03-08] Judith Butler is intentionally giving Hamas' terror legitimacy: "In recent comments, the American Jewish gender theorist labeled the Oct. 7 attack as 'armed resistance.'" This is where I entered a cluster of related articles:
Mira Fox: [03-05] No, Judith Butler did not say they support Hamas: "The renowned theorist may be radical on gender, but not on Hamas."
Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib: [03-04] The left must stop apologizing for Hamas: "Since Oct. 7, the left has been increasingly supportive of Hamas's actions, despite its oppression of Palestinians."
There's an element of talking past each other here, and especially of assuming X implies Y when it quite possibly doesn't. "Armed resistance" is not in inaccurate description of what Hamas is doing in Gaza. Especially when they're firing back at invading IDF soldiers, one could even say that they're engaged in "self defense" (to borrow a term that Israelis claim as exclusively theirs). The left has some history of celebrating "armed resistance," but that's mostly from times and places where no better option presented itself. But the struggle for equal rights (which is the very definition of what the left is about) has a natural preference for democracy, nudged on by occasional nonviolent civil resistance -- a realization that has been encouraged by occasional success, but also by the insight that some acts of violence are self-damaging and self-defeating.
Oct. 7 is certainly an example of this. I think it's safe to say that most people who supported equal rights for Palestinians have condemned the Oct. 7 attackers, most often as immoral but also as bad political strategy. Why Hamas chose to launch that particular attack can be explained in various ways -- and please don't jump to the conclusion, which seems to be ordained in the Hasbara Handbook, that explaining = justifying = supporting = celebrating. The most likely is that Hamas felt that no other option was open, perhaps by long observation of other Palestinians pleading and protesting non-violently, only to find Israelis more recalcitrant than ever. Or one might argue that Hamas aren't a left group at all, but like the Zionists are dominating and reducing their enemies, and as such are enamored with violence, like the right-wing fascists of yore. Or you could imagine a conspiracy, where Hamas and Netanyahu have some kind of bizarre symbiotic relationship, where each uses the other as a wedge against their near enemies. (Even without an actual conspiracy, that does describe much of the dynamic.)
Still, there is another way of looking at "armed resistance," which is that it is the inevitable result of armed occupation, oppression, and repression -- something which Israel is uniquely responsible for. And because it's inevitable, it doesn't matter who is doing it, nor does it do any good to chastise them. The only way to end resistance is to end the occupation that causes it. So while we shouldn't celebrate armed resistance, we also shouldn't flinch from recognizing it as such, because we have to in order to clearly see the force it is resisting.
Andrew Perez/Nikki McCann Ramirez: [03-14] Israel lobby pushes lie that people are not starving in Gaza.
Reuters: [03-17] UE's Von Der Leyen says Gaza facing famine, ceasefire needed rapidly.
America's increasingly desperate and pathetic empire:
William Astore: [03-17] Cutting the Pentagon down to size.
Andy Corbley: [03-18] In Navalny and Guaido, Washington saw u seful pawns, not political paragons.
Steve Hendrix/Susannah George/Missy Ryan: [03-17] As Gaza war rages, US military footprint expands across Middle East.
Loveday Morris: [03-14] US-Hungary relationship reaches new low, with public rebukes and snubs.
Eve Ottenberg: [03-15] The evil of a permanent war economy.
Kevin Schwartz: [03-12] The enduring problem with proxies: "The US can't always keep its own foreign fighters on point. It's the same with the Houthis, who are flexing agency outside Iranian consent."
Election notes:
Robert Wright: [03-13] The real problem with the Trump-Biden choice.
Trump, and other Republicans:
Maggie Astor:
Aaron Blake:
[03-18] 'Bloodbath' aside, Trump's violent rhetoric is unambiguous: "Trump has already warned of 'riots,' 'violence in the streets' and 'death & destruction' if he's wronged. All of that context is vital."
Jamelle Bouie: [03-16] Kellyanne Conway has some weak advice for her party.
Chris Cameron: [03-18] Trump says Jews who support Democrats 'hate Israel' and 'their religion'.
Zak Cheney-Rice: [03-09] The normalization of Trump's alleged crimes: "His legal strategy is both buying him time and erasing the accusations against him." Noted last week, but worth noting again.
Chas Danner: [03-17] Why did Trump warn of postelection 'bloodbath' if he loses?
Chauncey DeVega: [03-15] Trump sneakers and the MAGA uniform: Merchandising fascism to the mainstream. This led me to a couple more pieces worth mentioning here:
Vanessa Friedman: [02-19] Those $399 gold Trump sneakers are about a lot more than shoes: "What is Trump really selling when he is selling footwear?"
Ed Kilgore: [03-17] The GOP's claim that we were better off in 2020 is so weird: "It takes a special kind of amnesia or insensitivity to look back fondly at the year COVID-19 struck and the economy imploded."
Chris Lehmann: [03-11] The MAGA aesthetic is beginning to rot: "The stable of imagery associated with the far-right insurgency no longer seems as fresh as it did when Trump first donned his red cap."
Igor Derysh: [03-13] Departure "blindsides" Boebert and GOP: Ken Buck (R-CO) already decided not to run for reelection in 2024, which may be attributed to not wanting to face primary flak after transgressing against Trump and his cadres -- even though, until recently, Buck had been firmly perched on the far-right wing of the party. But his decision last week to resign his seat and force an interrim election shows his pique with a more obvious target: Boebert, who facing an uphill campaign in her own district, which she just barely won in 2022, decided to switch to Buck's more heavily Republican district for 2024. Close reading suggests it's not quite a knockout blow, but makes her campaign a good deal more awkward.
Tim Dickinson: [03-14] Trump campaign ads are monetizing pro-Nazi content on Rumble.
Angelo Fichera: [03-16] Examining Trump's alternate reality pitch: "The war in Ukraine. Hamas's attack on Israel. Inflation. The former president has insisted that none would have occurred if he had remained in office after 2020."
Jessica M Goldstein: The right-wing war on abortion has nothing to do with babies: "This is a battle over body autonomy." I can't imagine who thinks that's a winning political slogan, or what the rationale is. Same for "bans off our bodies," per the signs in the pic, although that at least suggests that the war on abortion has something in common with rape. The war -- and I think you have to grant that it's being waged like one, with babies (both symbolically and literally) as pawns and hostages, with callous indifference to casualties (or sometimes giddy delight), and with a vast fog of propaganda -- is really just an assault on freedom, and not just on women. Just look at everything else the people waging this war are also working on.
Rebecca Gordon: [03-14] Trump showed us who he is the first time around: "Trump 2.0 would be even worse."
Ed Kilgore:
Eric Levitz: [03-12] Trump just opened the door to Social Security cuts. Take him seriously.
Eric Lipton/Maggie Haberman/Jonathan Swan: [03-17] Kushner deal in Serbia follows earlier interest by Trump.
Alexander Nazaryan: [03-14] Trump's cabinet of horrors: "Team Trump is doing something this time around that it didn't think to do in 2016: It's planning. And wait until you see what those plans include." Author wrote a 2019 book on Trump's first-term cabinet, The Best People: Trump's Cabinet and the Siege on Washington, but looks like he figured he could get an early jump on the sequel.
Toni Aguilar Rosenthal: [03-15] Ken Paxton, America First Legal, and premonitions of Project 2025: "Texas today is what America will look like if Trump wins. It's not pretty."
Jim Rutenberg/Steven Lee Myers: [03-17] How Trump's allies are winning the war over disinformation: "Their claims of censorship have successfully stymied the effort to filter election lies online."
Greg Sargent:
Trump's angry rant about Biden's speech showcases MAGA's ugliest scam.
Trump is the big loser as the GOP's impeachment farce implodes: "The case against Trump is based on things that actually happened, while the case against Biden is based largely on inventions."
Matt Stieb: [03-18] Trump says he can't find a $464 million bond. Now what? "Trump's lawyers want some leniency from the appeals court as Attorney General Letitia James gears up to possibly seize assets as early as next week."
Catherine Rampell: [03-18] Trump can't find anyone to spot him $464 million. Would you?
Lucian K Truscott IV: [03-12] The pure emptiness of Katie Britt.
Biden and/or the Democrats:
Perry Bacon Jr: [03-15] Biden is learning that being progressive is good policy -- and good politics.
Rachel M Cohen: [03-15] Why abortion politics might not carry Democrats again in 2024. It's not like abortion is the only issue Democrats have to run on. Nor is it an issue you can run away from, so make it work.
David Dayen: [03-05] The intra-Democratic battles kick off in California: "Millionaire self-funders, dirty-trick tactics, pro-Israel and crypto money everywhere. The ideological sparring within the party takes a back seat to campaign shenanigans."
Ed Kilgore: [03-15] Trump vs Biden polls: No State of the Union bounce for Joe: It's not like any significant number of people approached the speech with an open mind. The only really important thing he had to do was to convince Democrats that he wasn't a dead man walking, and he did a fairly good job of that.
Blaise Malley: [03-14] How Biden's 'A-team' squandered its foreign policy opportunity: "A lot has changed since the end of Alex Ward's The Internationalists[: The Fight to Restore American Foreign Policy After Trump]. Not much of it is good for the administration."
Nicole Narea: [03-13] Biden isn't advertising America's record oil boom: "Biden is not 'waging war' on American energy. He's boosting it."
Andrew Prokop: [03-12] Robert Hur's report exaggerated Biden's memory issues: "The ex-special counsel testified Tuesday, but a transcript of his interview with the president undercut his claims."
Jeremy Childs: [03-13] Bernie Sanders to push 32-hour work week bill. In other words:
Bernie Sanders: [03-15] The 32-hour work week is not a radical idea.
Legal matters and other crimes:
Kim Bellware: [03-14] Father of Oxford shooter found guilty of involuntary manslaughter: James Crumbley, whose son killed four students with guns and ammo provided by his parents. The mother, Jennifer Crumbley, was also convicted of involuntary manslaughter in an earlier trial.
Ben Brasch: [03-14] Police fatally shoot autistic 15-year-old who charged with garden tool, video shows.
Margaret Carlson: [03-16] Take a load off Fani: "A judge's ridiculous probe of Fulton County Prosecutor Fani Willis ends with a split decision and another Trump legal delay."
Ryan Cooper: [03-05] The corrupt Supreme Court bails out Trump once more: Another comment on the Colorado 14th Amendment case.
Elie Honig: [03-15] The failure of DOJ's special counsel system. And he barely mentions Kenneth Starr, who's still the obvious prime suspect.
Sarah Jones: [03-15] The Christian right's imaginary nation: Filed here because it starts with the lawsuit to ban mifepristone, but the topic is much broader.
Ruth Marcus: [03-18] Outlawing abortion is just the start for some conservative judges.
Ian Millhiser:
[03-12] Republicans will no longer get to handpick their judges when they sue Biden: "The federal judiciary's new rules target 'judge shopping.' That's terrible news for Matthew Kacsmaryk and other partisan judges." Also for:
Ryan Cooper: [03-15] Judge shopping ended -- by judges themselves: "Feral (and federal) district court judges attempted to seize control of national policy one too many times."
Natalie Jonas: [03-15] Mitch McConnell fumes after courts crack down on Republican "judge-shopping".
Dahlia Lithwick/Mark Joseph Stern: John Roberts just dropped the hammer on rogue, lawless Trump judges.
[03-12] The Supreme Court may let Texas get away with a totally unconstitutional deportation law.
[03-15] The Supreme Court's puzzling decision to allow the government to ban drag shows, explained: "This is a serious blow to the First Amendment and a victory for a notoriously anti-LGBTQ judge."
[03-18] Brett Kavanaugh rides to the Biden administration's defense in a big First Amendment case: "The Supreme Court's center right appears increasingly frustrated with the judiciary's far right."
Adam Rawnsley/Asawin Suebsaeng: [03-05] The Supreme Court is tilting 2024 in Trump's favor, one decision at a time.
Mark Joseph Stern: Even the Supreme Court's conservatives are fed up with the garbage coming out of the 5th circuit.
Matt Stieb: [03-14] Not only will Bob Menendez refuse to quit, he might run as an independent: Filed here because he's a criminal, and his claim as a Democrat is long gone. But clearly he understand the graft advantages of running for office, and he's no doubt studying Trump on how to use a pending election to snag up the wheels of justice.
Climate and environment:
Rebecca Burns: [03-12] Against the wind: "Climate science deniers, right-wing think tanks, and fossil fuel shills are plotting to foil the renewable-energy revolution."
Keren Landman: [03-13] 4 big questions about measles, answered.
Aaron Regunberg/David Arkush: The case for prosecuting fossil fuel companies for homicide: "They knew what would happen. They kept selling fossil fuels and misleading the public anyway." The title overreaches, probably just to get your attention, as I doubt anyone wants to blur the definition of homicide that much. As a practical matter, the case against gun companies is much more substantial, with many fewer mitigating factors, and look how far that's gotten. But prosecuting them for something? There may well be a case for that.
Brian Resnick: [03-13] Are we breaking the Atlantic Ocean? "The climate change scenario that could chill parts of the world, explained."
Dylan Scott: [03-14] The tropical disease that's suddenly everywhere: Dengue fever.
Economic matters:
Dean Baker: [03-16] Correcting the Washington Post's 11 charts that are supposed to tell us how the economy changed since covid: The piece is:
Rachel Lerman/Abha Bhattarai: [03-16] 11 charts that show how covid changed the US economy.
Oshan Jarow: [03-11] A utopian strand of economic thought is making a surprising comeback: "It was once normal for economists to imagine a world with less work. What happened?" Actual scarcity, and hypothetical post-scarcity. By the way, the section here on the psychology of starvation has immediate relevance to Gaza, reminding us that the effects of starvation don't vanish with your first decent meal.
Nicole Narea: [03-12] Biden's vs. Trump's economy, in 8 charts: "The gaps between perception of the economy and the reality, explained." The most striking chart to me is the one on credit card debt, which took a big drop during the pandemic, but has more than recovered past the already alarming 2017-2020 rise.
Leif Weatherby: [03-10] Think capitalism is terrible? This economist says it's already dead. Review of Yanis Varoufakis: Techno Feudalism: What Killed Capitalism.
War in Ukraine, an election in Russia:
Connor Echols: [03-15] Diplomacy Watch: The pope is (mostly) right about Ukraine: "It does Kyiv no favors to pretend that this war is going well."
Medea Benjamin/Nicholas JS Davies: [03-13] After Nuland, the chances for peace in Ukraine.
Giorgio Cafiero: [03-18] If Kyiv fell, would Moldova have been next? I'd caution that "domino theories" are usually false alarms, but the continued existence of a separatist Transnistria, like Abkhazia and South Ossetia (formerly parts of Georgia), as well as similar fragments of Yugoslavia, will remain as potential trouble spots that can blow up into major wars -- like Donbas. I blame the US and Russia both for for failing to try to find workable compromises, and maybe also less interested parties (like Turkey and the EU) that risk being sucked into disasters.
Robyn Dixon: [03-14] Why does Putin always win? What to know about Russia's pseudo election.
Marc Martorell Junyent: [03-18] A chat with the devil beats a lifetime in hell: "In a new book, Pierre Hazan gives an insider's account of the importance of peace talks." The book is: Negotiating with the Devil: Inside the World of Armed Conflict Mediation. The book deals with many examples beyond Ukraine.
Branko Marcetic: [03-15] Does Putin want to end the war? We should test him: "Ukraine war maximalists are portraying diplomacy as futile, pointing to a cherry picked quote from a recent interview with the Russian president."
Ishaan Tharoor: [03-18] Russia's farce election sums up a grim moment in global democracy.
Anton Troianovski/Nanna Heitmann: [03-17] With new six-year term, Putin cements hold on Russian leadership. Looks like he won, the term extending to 2030, with 87% of the vote. "Western governments were quick to condemn the election as undemocratic."
Around the world:
Chu Guofei: [03-15] The global south and the hyper-imperialist global north. Interview with Vijay Prashad.
Ellen Ioanes: [03-13] Haiti's prime minister is out. Here's how it got so bad. "How gang violence pushed out Ariel Henry -- and what allowed it to fester."
Brian Concannon: [03-08] US should let Haiti reclaim its democracy: "Haitians have a history of coming together to resolve crises -- Washington's meddling is just getting in the way."
Brian Osgood: [03-14] What is the history of foreign interventions in Haiti? "Questions swirl about whether a multinational task force will help -- or harm."
Boeing:
Marin Cogan: [03-15] How to think about Boeing's recent safety issues: "Flying is still extremely safe. But Boeing's safety issues are real."
Maureen Tkacik: [03-09] The strange death of a Boeing whistleblower
Li Zhou: [03-13] The shocking Boeing 737 Max incident, briefly explained.
TikTok: A bill to force, under threat of being banned, the Chinese owners of TikTok to sell the company has passed the House, with substantial bipartisan support. Despite the many links here, I have no personal interest in the issue, although I do worry about gratuitous China-bashing, and I'm not a big fan of any social media companies or their business models.
Jonathan Chait: [03-14] Explain to me why China has to control TikTok: "If it's just a great app, why can't somebody else run it?" Explain to me why China can't? That they might tilt the scales on political discourse shouldn't be a problem if political information is freely accessible elsewhere -- unless the point is specifically to suppress anything that might offer a specifically Chinese perspective on the news? And it's not as if companies owned by Americans, Brits, Israelis, or Rupert Murdoch don't tilt their own platforms to further their own national or personal interests. I'm not a fan of foreign capital coming to America and buying up real estate and companies and so forth, but then I'm not often a fan of the Americans who sell out their country, often to take their profits to buy up someone else's, then lobby for foreign policies that put the sanctity of their property ahead of peace and cooperation. I also doubt this would be happening unless there are financiers waiting in the wings to make a killing on the sale, as well as the arms lobbyists, who jump on any opportunity to increase tension with China, Russia, or anyone else who can be sold as some kind of threat.
David French: [03-17] What Trump's TikTok flip-flop tells America: "On yet another confrontation between American national security and an authoritarian foreign adversary, Biden sides with American interests and Trump aligns with our foe." French somehow imagines that complaint, along with his Reagan conservative cred, will get him invited to parties in DC. But that Trump seems able to get away with such apostasy testifies to how low the credibility of the Blob has sunk.
Minho Kim: [03-17] Khanna explains opposition to TikTok bill while Senators signal openness: Ro Khanna [D-CA] was one of 50 Democrats ("mostly from the progressive wing") and 15 Republicans who voted against the House bill.
Ken Klippenstein: [03-16] TikTok threat is purely hypothetical, US intelligence admits.
Taylor Lorenz: [03-16] The TikTok debate featured many disputed claims. Here are 7 of them.
Arwa Mahdawi: [03-16] Are progressive politics the real reason why US lawmakers are spooked by Tiktok? "Some users think the app has become a hub for progressive activism."
Nicole Narea: [03-14] TikTok could avoid a ban with a sale. Finding a buyer won't be easy. "Former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin is among those lining up to buy TikTok if Congress enacts a law that forces its Chinese owner to sell."
AW Ohlheiser: [03-14] Banning TikTok would be both ineffective and harmful.
Nathan J Robinson: [03-14] The plan to ban TikTok is outright xenophobia.
Michael Tracey: [03-15] The frenzy to ban TikTok is another National Security State scam.
Andrea Long Chu: [03-11] Freedom of sex: The moral case for letting trans kids change their bodies. I'm in no mood to wade into this issue, but note the article, which makes an honest and serious point, and backs it up with considerable evidence and thought. Also note the response:
Jonathan Chait: [03-16] Freedom of sex: A liberal response. Oh great, another epithet: TARL (trans-agnostic reactionary liberal), which Chait seizes on, probably because he's the very model of a "reactionary liberal" -- a term he's encountered in many other contexts, and not undeservedly (need we mention Iraq again?).
TJ Coles: [03-08] The new atheism at 20: How an intellectual movement exploited rationalism to promote war: The Sam Harris book, The End of Faith, came out in 2004, soon to be grouped with Daniel Dennett (Breaking the Spell), Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion), and Christopher Hitchens (God Is Not Great). While critical of all religions, they held a particular animus for Islam, at a time when doing so was most useful for promoting the American and Israeli wars on terror. Coles has a whole book on them: The New Atheism Hoax: Exposing the Politics of Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, and Hitchens. Coles is a British psychologist with a lot of recent books attacking media domination by special interests; e.g.:
Matt Kennard: [03-16] Last days of Julilan Assange in the United States: "The WikiLeaks publisher may soon be on the way to the US to face trial for revealing war crimes. What he would face there is terrifying beyond words."
Kathleen McClellan/Jesselyn Radack: [03-16] Our government's quiet war on press freedom: "It happened under Trump -- and under Obama: The US is using bad law to crack down on investigative journalism."
Rick Perlstein: [03-13] Social distortion: "On the fourth anniversary of the pandemic, a look at how America pulled apart as the rest of the world pulled together." Reviews Eric Klinenberg: 2020: One City, Seven People, and the Year That Changed Everything.
Scott Remer: [03-15] Pessimism of the intellect, pessimism of the will: Title is an obvious play on Gramsci, who even facing death in prison preferred "optimism of the will." But no mention of Gramsci here. The subject is self-proclaimed progressivism, keyed to this quote from Robert LaFollette: "the Progressive Movement is the only political medium in our country today which can provide government in the interests of all classes of the people. We are unalterably opposed to any class government, whether it be the existing dictatorship of the plutocracy or the dictatorship of the proletariat." (Presumably that was from 1924, when the Soviet Union was newly established.) That leads to this:
All this should sound familiar. It describes bien-pensant liberals of the Obama-Clinton-Biden persuasion to a tee: their aestheticization of politics, their fetishization of entrepreneurialism and expertise; their studied avoidance of polarization, partisanship, and partiality; their distaste for class conflict; their elevation of technocracy and science as beacons of reason; their belief in the pretense that politics can be reduced to interest-group bargaining and consensus seeking; their desire to keep the labor movement at a distance; their continued fealty to American exceptionalism even when looking to European models would be exceptionally edifying; and their general attitude of deference towards big business. Neoliberals' demography -- disproportionately white, upper middle class, professional, and college-educated -- also parallels the original Progressives.
I like bien-pensant here, as it's open to translations ranging from "right-thinking" to "lackadaisically blissful," each a facet of the general mental construct. The easiest way to understand politics in America is to recognize that there are two classes: donors and voters. Voters decide who wins, but only after donors decide who can run -- which they can do because it takes lots of money to run, and they're the ones with that kind of money. Republicans have a big advantage in this system: they offer businesses pretty much everything they want, and ask little of them beyond acceding to their singular fetishes (mostly guns and religion).
Democrats have a much tougher problem: voters would flock to them because Republicans cause them harm, but the only Democrats who can run are those backed by donors, who severely limit what Democrats can do for their voters. The Clinton-Obama types tried to square this circle by appealing to more liberal-minded business segments, especially high-growth sectors like tech, finance and entertainment. They were fairly successful at raising money, and they won several elections, but ultimately failed to make much headway with the problems they campaigned on fixing.
At present, both parties have backed themselves into corners where they are bound to fail. With ever-increasing inequality, the donor class is ever more estranged from the voting public. Normally, you would expect that when the pendulum swings too far left or right, it would swing back toward the middle, but the nature of capitalism is such that donors can never be satisfied, so will always push for more and more. But the policies they want only exacerbate the problems that most people feel, sooner or later leading to disastrous breakdowns (for Republicans) or severe dissolution (for Democrats, who while incapable of fixing things are at least more adept at delaying and/or mitigating their disasters).
Nathan J Robinson:
[03-12] Overwhelmed by feelings of complicity and paralysis: "In a world filled with horrors, where our actions feel useless, it can be hard to muster the energy to press on." This paragraph hit close to home:
As Americans see tens of thousands of Palestinians die, we know that our own government is responsible, through providing the weapons and blocking UN action to stop the war. But how can we actually affect government policy? Later this year, there will be an election, but the choices in that election will be between the intolerable status quo (Joe Biden) and a likely even more rabidly pro-Israel president (Donald Trump). I don't know how it felt to oppose the Vietnam war in 1967-68, but I suspect it must have felt similarly frustrating, with the Democratic incumbent responsible for the war and any Republican likely to escalate it further.
I do remember 1967-68, which spans the period from when my next door neighbor came home from Vietnam in a box to the government's first efforts to send me to the same fate. I knew people who went quite literally crazy back then. (Fortunately, I was already crazy then, and the Army decided they'd be better off without me.) So one thing I learned was to be fairly tolerant of people I don't agree with. Nearly everything is out of our control, so the only real task most of us face is just coping with it.
Also the section on critiquing political books ("I have never felt more ineffectual than at this moment"). Here's a bit:
Today, our public discourse seems to have gone off the rails entirely, and this sometimes makes me question what my approach should be as a political writer. Look, for example, though the top-selling political commentary books. No.1 at the moment is a book by Abigail Shrier, whose terrible polemic about trans kids I reviewed a while back. This one is about how we're ruining children by coddling them and is a broadside against mainstream psychology. I suspect its claims are just as dubious as those in the last book. Should I bother to go through and refute them? Will anybody care if I do?
What else do we have in the political commentary section? More stuff about how the left is crazy, from Jesse Watters, Christopher Rufo, Douglas Murray, Coleman Hughes, Alex Jones, Candace Owens, Ted Cruz, etc. Books about how there's a war on Christian America, a war on the West, and a battle to "cancel" the American mind. Most of the bestsellers are right-wing, and the ones that are liberal are mostly just attacks on Trump.
That list is generated by sales, so it's likely changed a bit since Robinson linked to it. One new add is Alan Dershowitz: War Against the Jews: How to End Hamas Barbarism. Aside from Jonathan Karl's Tired of Winning, the top-rated Trump book is also by Dershowitz, but defending him. The only remotely liberal (never mind left) book is Heather Cox Richardson's Democracy Awakening, where she is astonishingly naïve and blasé about the real effects of Biden's foreign policy.
[03-08] Why we need "degrowth": Interview with Kohei Saito, author of Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto.
[03-01] Why factory farming is a moral atrocity: Interview with Lewis Bollard, of Open Philanthrophy's farm animal program.
[02-26] It's time to break up with capitalism: Interview with Malaika Jabali, author of It's Not You, It's Capitalism: Why It's Time to Break Up and How to Move On, "reviewed here by Matt McManus."
[02-02] Astra Taylor on what 'security' really means: I'm pretty sure I've linked to this before, but I've nearly finished reading the book -- which, not for the first time, is very good, especially the section on education and curiosity -- so could use a review.
Aja Romano:
[03-13] The unanswered questions surounding the tragic death of Nex Benedict: "A trans teen is dead. The state he lived in made his life as hard as possible."
[03-14] Is JK Rowling transphobic? Let's let her speak for herself. I looked for a similar article on her views of Israel -- I was under the impression that she was a very militant supporter of Israel -- but couldn't find a comparable accounting. Curiously, I did find this, which is really just another way of framing her as anti-trans:
Mira Fox: [03-13] It wasn't just the goblins -- is JK Rowling doing Holocaust denial now?