Note: This piece is also cross-posted at
Notes on Everyday Life. I originally posted it there first, in
hopes of generating some preliminary discussion. If keeping them in
sync proves difficult, this one should probably be authoritative.
Two questions need to be addressed before we get down to detailed
arguments. The first is why vote at all? I'd say first, because it
is your right as a citizen, but must be secured by your exercise of
it. People in America may have a very limited say in how the country
is organized and run, but you do have the vote, and using it shows
your willingness to engage in the responsibility for setting the
nation's direction.
The second question is whether you should limit your vote choice
to the two major political parties, or consider voting for a third
party should you prefer that candidate's platform? History shows us
that America gravitated into a two-party system almost immediately
after the Constitution was ratified, and quickly returned to a two
party system on the two instances where one major party disbanded
(replacing the Federalists with the Whigs, and replacing the Whigs
with the Republicans). No subsequent third party has been able to
sustain significant followings, with third-party votes often
dropping to under 5% in recent elections.
So from a practical standpoint, third parties are ineffective
and unpromising.One might nonetheless consider voting for a third
party candidate if: neither major party nominated a candidate you
can stand, and there is no significant difference between the two
candidates that can direct your choice. I can understand if you
feel that both Trump and Harris should be shunned for their rote
support of Israeli genocide, although I suspect that even there
the nature of their positions differs enough to favor a vote for
Harris.
One other possible consideration is whether one party offers a
better chance for future improvement, based on the composition of
the party, how open-minded its members are, and how democratic its
processes are. The current two-party system is quite possibly the
most polarized ever, which has led most people to select one party
or the other. Moreover, both major parties have primaries that are
open to all members, and as such are amenable to reform. If, like
me, you are primarily concerned with "left" issues of peace and
equal rights, you may have noticed that most of the people most
likely to agree with you are currently Democrats. If your goal is
to build a majority around your ideals, you need to establish a
bond of solidarity with the Democrats, which often means voting
for a candidate you don't totally agree with. You are, after all,
hoping that other Democrats, even ones that disagree with you,
will vote for your candidate should that person win a primary.
The last third party candidate I voted for was Ralph Nader in
2000. I don't feel bad about that vote, especially as I'm convinced
that the Gore-Lieberman ticket would have been as gung-ho starting
the "war on terror" after 9/11 as Bush-Cheney was. But I did learn
one lesson from that election, which is that even in Kansas, where
the Gore campaign was practically non-existent, 90% of the anti-Bush
votes cast went to the Democrat. Since then, I vowed to work within
the Democratic Party, such as it as, as best I could. (I did lapse
once since, to vote against a particular Democrat I've hated what
seems like all of my life, but there I went with the Republican, as
I really wanted that Democrat to lose.)
Having narrowed the choice down to Harris vs. Trump, arguments
that one candidate is better and/or one candidate is worse are
equally valid. This being American politics, "one candidate is
worse" arguments predominate. Lest you imagine there might be any
suspense here, Harris is the better option, while Trump is much
the worse.
And while the future is impossible to predict, the margins
overwhelm any imaginable uncertainty. Trump is especially known,
as we've actually experienced him as President. This doesn't
mean a second term will be just like his first: it could easily
be worse, for reasons we'll get into. Harris is harder to read.
Although she has much relevant experience, presidency offers
powers and temptations that she's never faced before, as well
as situations she's never had to deal with. This raises doubts,
which I will deal with in a separate list, following the "top
ten."
So, here are my top ten reasons to vote for Harris vs. Trump:
Donald Trump is a truly odious human being.
That's a personal, not a political judgment: sure, virtually all
of his political views stink, but most of the people who share
his political views have personal traits one can relate to,
respect, even appreciate. As far as I can tell -- and while
I only know what's been reported, I've been exposed to a lot
of that -- he has none. He seems totally miserable. If he's
ever laughed, it's been at someone else's expense. He lacks
even the slightest pretense of caring for anyone, even for
his wives or children (the prenups should have been a clue).
He's not unique in this regard, but most similar people are
easily ignored. The only way to free ourselves from Trump's
ever-present unpleasantness is to vote him off (like in the
"reality TV" shows he's a creature of).
Harris, on the other hand, can listen, and respond appropriately.
She has a generous and infectious laugh. And while I've never seen
her cry, she is at least cognizant of situations that call for a
show of concern and empathy. I don't particularly like the idea of
president as "handholder-in-chief," but it's better to have someone
who can feign that than someone who utterly cannot.
Such personal failings drive most people to
despair, which at least could be pitied, but Trump's inherited
wealth has provided him with an armor of callousness, which has
long elicited the warm glow of supplicants and sycophants. From
this, he has constructed his own mental universe where he is
adored and exalted. This has produced extraordinary hubris --
another of his distasteful traits -- but more importantly, his
narcissism has left him singularly unprepared to deal with reality
when it so rudely intrudes on his fantasy life (as happens all too
often when you're President).
I should note here that the collective embarrassment we so often
felt when witnessing Trump's failed attempts at addressing events
has dulled somewhat since he left office (need I remind you of
Hurricane Maria? -- just one of dozens of examples, ranging from
his staring into the eclipse to the pandemic). The only things that
have affected him that way since have been his indictments, but even
there he's been sheltered like no one else ever. There is no reason
to think that Harris wouldn't respond to events at least as well as
a normal politician, which is to say, by showing palpable concern
and deliberation. Trump's disconnect from reality is unprecedented.
(Good place to mention his election denialism.)
There is some debate as to whether Trump's wealth
is real, but even as it seems, that should be reason enough to disqualify
him. Only a few Presidents have come from the ranks of the rich, and
those who did -- like Washington, Kennedy, and the Roosevelts -- took
pains to distance themselves from their business interests. Back in
2016, Trump suggested he would give up his business ties, insisting
that his wealth made him more independent of corrupt influences, but
after he won, he backtracked completely, and ran an administration
that was outrageously corrupt -- especially at the top, where his
son-in-law's diplomacy netted him a billion-dollar private equity
fund, but his administration hired lobbyists to peddle influence
everywhere. One might argue that Trump's business was so large that
he couldn't possibly disentangle himself, but that's just part of
the reason why people like him shouldn't be allowed in politics.
Their inability to relate to ordinary Americans is another.
Aside from his abuse of executive power to staff
government with corporate agents, pack with courts with right-wing
cronies, and pardon numerous criminals in his circle, his record
for delivering on his 2016 campaign promises is remarkably thin: he
lost interest in things that might have been popular (like building
infrastructure, or "draining the swamp"). He also lucked out, when
a couple Republican defections saved the ACA, and then when Democrats
took Congress back in 2018. The only positive bill he signed was the
pandemic relief act, which he wanted desperately to save a flagging
stock market, but had to accept a mostly Democratic bill that helped
pretty much everyone.
Also, the full impact of many policies can take years before it
is felt. The repeal of Taft-Hartley in 1947 took decades before it
started to do serious damage to unions and workers (although it had
the immediate impact of ending a campaign to unionize in the South,
which would have been a big advance for civil rights). Deregulation
of savings & loans in the 1980s and larger banks in the 1990s
took most of a decade before triggering recessions. Much of what
Trump did during his term didn't blow up until after the 2020
election, including his killing of the Iran nuclear deal, his
agreement to give Afghanistan to the Taliban, and his Supreme
Court's overturn of Roe v. Wade.
Harris's ability to deliver on campaign promises will, as Biden's
has, depend much on the balance of power in Congress, but at least
Democrats have a track record of trying to pass laws to help most
Americans, and not just those favored by Republicans with their tax
and benefit cuts. Harris will be further hampered by the Republican
packing of the courts, but that's one reason why it matters not just
that Democrats win elections, but win big.
On the other hand, if Trump were more dedicated
in pursuit of the policy positions he espouses, or if he's just given
more power by a Republican Congress, he could (and probably would)
do much more harm in a second term, way beyond the still not fully
accounted for harm of his first. For starters, he has a much more
developed idea of what he wants to do -- not because he understands
policy any better, but because he has more specific goals in areas
that especially interest him -- and will hire more loyal operatives,
eager to carry out his wishes. This will be easier, because he's
already bent the party to his will, especially promoting its most
crazed cadres, while he himself has become further radicalized.
Moreover, he now has a long list of enemies to punish, while his
minions will be free to pursue their own grafts and obsessions.
We've already seen how he's turned the presidency into a cult of
personality. Give him more power -- not just in Congress but the
Supreme Court is ready to enshrine the "unitary executive theory" --
and he will only grow more monstrous.
Donald Trump is a shit stain on the face of America.
They say that wealth is power, and that power corrupts, absolute
power absolutely. America emerged from WWII with half of the world's
wealth, with troops spread to Europe and East Asia, and corporations
everywhere. America has been "breaking bad" ever since, starting in
the 1940s rigging elections in Italy, fighting communists in Greece
and Korea, overthrowing democratic governments in Guatemala and Iran,
replacing them with corporate-friendly autocrats. Still, even Reagan
expected good guys in white hats to win out, so he pretended to be
one, while the Bushes hid their conservatism behind fake compassion.
Trump is the first US president to give up all pretense. His fans
may mistake his contempt for candor, but the result is a much more
brutal world. He demands tribute from allies, lest they fall into
the ranks of enemies, who are expected to cower when faced with
overwhelming American might, and face escalating threats when they
refuse to fall in line. His is a recipe for neverending war, as
we've already seen with Russia and Iran, with Korea and China
waiting for the next break.
Nor are we only talking about foreign policy. The conservative
solution to domestic matters is also to rely on force, starting
with mass incarceration, eroding/stripping rights, smashing unions,
purging the civil service, quelling demonstrations, stifling free
speech, book bans, censoring the press, turning education into
indoctrination, rigging elections, even going so far as to incite
mobs and promise them immunity. While these impulses have long
been endemic to Republicans, Trump is unique in he wants you to
see and smell the feces, and that seems to be the basis for his
popularity among his hardcore constituency. This, with its embrace
of sheer power and rampant criminality, is what's so reminiscent
of the fascist movements of the 1930s.
Still, as bad as Trump is personally, the real
danger is that his election will bring a tidal wave of Republicans
into power all throughout the federal and local governments they
have pledged to debilitate and reduce, as Grover Norquist put it,
"to the size where I can drown it in the bathtub." (The less often
discussed ancillary idea is to hack off functions done by government
and give them away to the private sector. This almost never works.
When attempted, it almost always makes the functions more expensive
and/or less useful.) This is just one of
many deranged and dysfunctional ideas prevalent in the Republican
Party. Like most of their ideas, it's appealing as rhetoric, but
unworkable in practice. Republicans have repeatedly tried to reduce
government spending by cutting taxes on their donor class, but have
found little to actually cut -- even when they had the power to
write budgets -- so all they've produced is greater deficits, and
an inflated oligarchy.
They've had more luck at poisoning benefits, trying to make
government appear to be worthless. The idea is to convince voters
that voting is hopeless, because government will only take from
them, and never give back. The idea that the purpose of government
is to "provide for the general welfare" (that's in the Preamble to
the US Constitution) is inimical to them. The idea of "government
of, by, and for the people" (that's in Lincoln's Gettysburg Address)
is alien to those who hate most American people. Republicans created
a death spiral of democracy, which they hope will leave them in
permanent power, not to serve the public, but to prevent people
from using government for their own improvement.
Trump has added his own authoritarian quirks to the Republican
agenda, but the big risk to democracy has always come from money,
which Republicans have made sure selects candidates and drives
elections. Trump is less a cause of oligarchy than evidence of
how far it has progressed.
Two important concepts in economics are externality
(public costs that are not factored into product costs, such as
pollution) and opportunity costs (other things that we could spend
money on if we weren't preoccupied with given expenses). Republicans,
driven exclusively by their desire to help the rich get richer in the
here and now, and blind to the future, have no interest in these
concepts. Democrats are subject to the same donor pressures, but at
least recognize that such side effects are real and important. This
is because they try to recognize and balance everyone's welfare, and
not just that of their donors and voters.
Climate change is a good example of both: it is largely caused by
the waste products of fossil fuels, and can only be remedied by major
investment sooner rather than later. But people only see what gasoline
costs when they fill up, while the climate change they're contributing
to only manifests later, and mostly to other people. This gives them
little reason to spend now to avert future costs, so they don't.
Even as climate change has become a very tangible problem, Trump and
the Republicans have wrapped themselves ever deeper into a cocoon of
denial and ignorance, which ensures that as long as they're in power
we will never invest what we need to in sustainable infrastructure.
While a second Trump term could do a lot of immediate damage, its
long-term cost will largely be opportunity costs, as we belatedly
realize we didn't invest what we should have when it would have been
more effective.
It's impossible to overstate how completely Donald
Trump has taken over and perverted our culture, what philosophers
call our noosphere -- the mental universe, our ability to reason.
This may seem paradoxical given that few people on Earth are as
disengaged from and contemptuous of reason as Donald Trump, but
that may well be the source of his power. He has effectively given
his followers permission to disengage from other people, to eschew
reason and argument and indulge their own prejudices and fantasies,
because that's what he does, and he's so fabulously successful.
Moreover, it has the added benefit of driving crazy all those who
still worry about real problems (both their own and those of other
people), which they expect to deal with through science and reason.
(Such people often project their own mania back onto the Trumpers,
and reckon them to be saddled with problems, when they actually
seem to be quite blissfully serene in their obliviousness and/or
ignorance.)
Political scientists have a concept known as the Overton window,
which describes "the range of policies politically acceptable to
the mainstream population at a given time." Ideas outside the window
are dismissed as radical or even unthinkable, making it very hard to
get any sort of coverage, as the media limits itself to more widely
acceptable ideas. Events may push some ideas into the mainstream,
while discarding others. For instance, there was a time when eugenics
was all the rage, but no more. Climate change has become increasingly
mainstream, although there are still political interests out to kill
any such discussion. A big part of politics is fighting over what we
can and cannot talk about. What Trump has done has been to expand
the Overton window to the far right, legitimizing clusters of issues
that were previously regarded as baseless (like QAnon, antivax claims,
election denial). Perhaps the most disturbing of all has been Trump's
own criminal enterprises. These subjects, which at best distract from
real problems and often create more, would only grow under a second
Trump term.
I have no doubt that the bad policies advanced by Trump will blow
up and wind up discredited, but at a great waste of effort to stop
them, and a huge opportunity cost as we ignore constructive ideas
from the left. Even where Harris does not have good programs, which
certainly includes her continued fealty to Bush-Obama-Trump-Biden
(and Cheney?) foreign policy, her election would provide a much
healthier window for debate than what we'd be stuck with under
Trump.
It's time to turn the page on Trump and the era of
Fox Republicanism. Cloture on Trump is easy to imagine, as he's way
past his prime, increasingly doddering at 78, unlikely to ever run
again. Vote him out, and that's one problem America will never have
to deal with again. Not only would it give us a chance to heal, to
move on, to deal with our self-protracted problems, but it could be
the kindest result for Trump and even for his Party. Trump could cut
his plea deals and escape most of the legal jeopardy he's landed in.
The Party could finally recalculate, trying to find a way to compete
in the real world instead of trying to scam the rhetorical madness
that Fox created to profit from fear and rage. Moreover, by cutting
their losses, they'd escape much of the blame for the disasters their
preferred policies would inevitably lead to. Progress is inexorable,
so those who would resist it only have two choices: bend or break.
The Republicans' forty-year (1980-2020) era has done much damage to
the social and economic fabric of the nation. Some things have broken,
and many more are creaking. We might survive four more years of Trump,
but time is running out. And when things do break under Trump, beware
that no one will be more ill-prepared and incompetent at dealing with
them.
On the other hand, Harris, like most Democrats (even the nominally
left-wing of the party), doesn't represent visionary change, but she
is perceptive, analytical, and pragmatic, which suggests that she will
adapt to changing circumstances, and endeavor to make the best out of
them. She will be sorely tested by the influence of wealthy lobbyists,
by the superficial and sensationalist press, by the still powerful
remains of Republican power -- which while incapable of governing
competently let alone responsibly, is still a formidable machine for
amplifying grievances -- and by new challenges we haven't even been
able to think of yet (so mired are we in the ruins of bad Republican
politics, from Nixon and Reagan through the Bushes to their ultimate
self-parody in Trump, tempered ever so slightly by interim Democrats
who never got beyond patchwork repairs).
Of course, one can think of many more reasons, especially if you
tried to work from policies outward. I may do a separate document
where I read through Trump's "Agenda 47" and comment line-by-line.
Presumably there's a comparable Harris document somewhere, which
could also be scrutinized. From them, I might be able to come up
with a scorecard, but there's no chance of a different result. As
it is, I've concentrated less on issues and more on personalities
and political dynamics: Trump is at best muddled on issues, but
his shortcomings as noted are extremely clear.
Harris, as I noted, is harder to read, especially because for
tactical campaign purposes she has adopted a set of views that aim
to win over not just undecided/centrist voters but any Republicans
that Trump hasn't totally stripped of their decency yet. She's had
some success at that, although it remains to be seen how many actual
votes follow her celebrity endorsements. At this point, I don't see
any point in second-guessing her campaign strategy. Presumably she
has researched the electorate and knows much better than I do just
how to pitch them. If she loses, we'll have a field day dissecting
her mistakes -- which, for all the reasons mentioned above and many
more, may be the only fun we can have in the next four years.
But for now, let's assume she wins, and she runs her administration
along lines it is reasonable to expect. In that case, the left will
still have work to do and things to protest. So here are my:
Top 5 Reasons Electing Harris Won't Solve Our Problems
I ran across this synopsis recently: "There are converging
political, economic, and ecological crises, and yet our politics
is dominated by either business as usual or nostalgia for a
mythical past." Harris represents the party of "business as
usual," where "change" is acknowledged as inevitable, but is
guarded so as not to upset the status quo -- which may include
reforms to make it more tolerable, as not doing so would risk
more disruptive change.
While it didn't occur to me in listing the "top ten reasons"
above, one more strong reason is that Trump's "nostalgia for a
mythical past" -- the once-great America he aims to restore and
protect -- is not just incoherent but impossible, so much so that
his efforts to force the world back into his ideal alignment are
more likely to break it than to fix anything. Reducing America
to his chosen few would breed chaos and resentment, and collapse
the economy, destroying the wealth he meant to protect. Moreover,
his instinct to use force would only compound the damage.
It is ironic that while most of us on the left have grown wary
of revolution, many on the right, perhaps due to their embrace of
violence, have been seduced by the notion that might makes right.
If conservatism means wishing to keep things as they are, it is
the Democrats who are the true conservatives, while Republicans
have turned into flaming radicals, with Trump emerging as their
leader given his flamboyance and utter disregard for conventional
political thinking. As with the fascist movements of the 1930s,
many people are enthralled by this radicalism. Why such movements
have always failed, sometimes spectacularly, has yet to sink in --
although the connection does at long last seem to be entering the
mainstream media.
Democrats are still uncomfortable being the party of the status
quo. Many are nostalgic for the days when Republicans filled that
role, providing foils against which they could propose their modest
reforms -- which they've long needed to attract struggling voters.
The problem that Harris faces in 2024 is that the Trumpian romance
of reactionary revolution has become so attractive -- the backdrop
is the unprecedented extension of inequality over the last fifty
years, which has left most people feeling left behind -- and so
terrifying that she's fallen into the trap of defending the status
quo, making her seem insensitive to the real problems that we look
to candidates to help solve. Trump at least has answers to all the
problems -- wrong ones, but many people don't understand the details,
they're just attraction to his show of conviction, while they note
that Harris seems wary of pushing even the weak reforms popular in
her party.
She's banking on the status quo to save America from Trump and
the Republicans. If she wins her bet, she will win the election.
But then she'll have to face the more difficult task of governing,
where her limits could be her undoing. These five questions loom
large on the post-election agenda:
Perhaps most immediately, US foreign policy needs
a total rethink. US foreign policy took a radical turn shortly after
WWII, renouncing the "isolationist" past and assuming a militarily
as well as an economically interventionist stance. This was partly
a matter of filling the vacuum left by the war's global destruction,
and partly ambition. Beyond the battlefields, Europe's colonial
empires had become untenable, opening the door for businesses as
the hidden powers behind local rulers. As the alternatives were
communist-leaning national liberation movement, this soon turned
into the Cold War -- which was great news for the arms industry,
which along with oil and finance became a pillar of American
foreign policy. When the cold war receded, neocons came up with
more rationales for more conflicts, to keep their graft going.
Efforts at building international institutions (like the UN)
increasingly gave way to unilateral dictates: America First,
before Trump, who basically thinks of foreign policy as some
kind of protection racket, latched onto the term. There hadn't
been significant partisan differences in foreign policy since
the advent of the Cold War: all the Democrats who followed
Republican hawks (Reagan, the Bushes, even Trump in his own
peculiar way) did was to normalize their aggressiveness. Thus
Biden reaffirmed his support for Ukraine and Israel, as well as
his opposition to Russia, China, and the usual suspects in the
Middle East, which has (so far) blown up into two catastrophic
wars, while at the same time the US has made sure that world
organizations (like the UN) are powerless to intervene.
Harris seems to be fully on board with this: not only does
she support the current wars, she has gone out of her way to
ostracize so-called autocrats -- not the ones counted as allies
because they buy American arms but the others, the ones who make
their own (or buy from each other). This conventional thinking,
based on the notion that force projection (and sanctions) can
and will dictate terms for resolving conflicts, has a very poor
track record: it polarizes and militarizes conflicts, stokes
resentments, stimulates asymmetric responses (like terrorism),
while driving its targets into each others' clutches. Meanwhile,
the reputation the US once had for fairness is in tatters.
A new foreign policy needs first of all to prioritize peace,
cooperation, and equitable economic development. It should also,
where possible, favor social justice (albeit not through force,
which is more likely to make matters worse).
Restricting immigration is the one issue where
neo-fascist politicians seem to be gaining significant popular
support, in Europe as well as the US. Harris has chosen to lean
into the issue rather than oppose the Republicans, as had Biden
and Obama before her, not that any of their harsh enforcement
efforts have gotten any cooperation or compromise from Republicans,
who would rather milk this as a grievance issue than treat it as
a practical issue. Part of the problem here is that while many
voters will support Republicans just to vent rage, other voters
expect results from Democrats, and no matter what results they
hoped for, few are satisfied. The issue is complex and messy,
and Congress is unable or unwilling to pass any legislation to
help clear the mess. Which makes this an issue that will haunt
Harris indefinitely, no matter what she tries to do.
Personally, this is an issue I care little about either way.
What concerns me more is that the system be seen as fair and
just, that it is neither exploitative of immigrants nor that
it hurts the domestic labor market. I could see arguments for
limiting or for expanding immigration numbers. I do think that
the current backlog of non-documented immigrants needs to be
cleared up, which could involve clearing the path toward
naturalization and/or paying them to leave, but it needs to be
done in an orderly and humane manner, with clear rules and due
process. I've generally opposed "guest worker" programs (like
the one Bush tried to push through), but could see issuing green
cards as a stopgap measure. Harris will find it difficult to
navigate through this maze, but what would help is having some
clear principles about how citizenship should work -- as opposed
to just responding to Republican demagoguery.
I should also note that the biggest determinant of immigration
is foreign policy. Most people emigrate because they are dislodged
by war or ecological and/or economic distress, and those are things
that American foreign policy as presently practiced exacerbates.
Policies that resolve (or better still, prevent) conflicts, that
limit climate change, and/or that extend economic opportunities
would significantly reduce the pressures driving emigration.
Democrats under Biden made the first serious
legislative effort at addressing climate change ever, but the
structure of American politics makes it much easier to promote
the development of new technologies and products than it is to
do things like changing habits of fossil fuel use. Democrats
are so wedded to the idea of economic growth as the panacea
for all problems that they can't conceive of better lives lived
differently. How one can ever get to zero emissions isn't on
any agenda. Meanwhile, Republicans keep digging themselves ever
deeper into their tunnel of ignorance, so they have nothing to
offer but obstruction.
While prevention seems to be too much to ask of any Democratic
politician, they do still have a big advantage on disaster care.
Reagan's joke -- "The nine most terrifying words in the English
language are 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help'" --
is easily disproven every hurricane season, yet remains as sacred
dogma. Given that climate change has already happened, and is
playing out in cycles of increasingly uninsurable "natural"
disasters, it becomes imperative to elect a government that
cares about such problems, and regards it as its duty to help
people out. Harris will be tested on this, repeatedly.
Meanwhile, if you want to try out nine really terrifying
words, try these: "I'm a Republican, and Donald Trump is my
President."
There is one political issue that close to 90%
of all Americans could agree on, but it has no leadership and
little support in either major party, and that is the thoroughly
corrupt influence of money on politics. The situation has always
been bad, but got much worse in 2010 when the Supreme Court ruled
in favor of unlimited corporate spending in Citizens United v. FEC.
Obama spoke out against the ruling, but did nothing to overturn it.
Rather, he easily outraised his opponents in 2008 and 2012, winning
twice. Biden and Harris have also raised much more money than Trump,
so while Republicans are the most steadfast supporters of campaign
graft, top Democrats also benefit from the system -- especially
against their real competition, which is other Democrats, who
might be tempted to campaign on issues that appeal to voters, as
opposed to having to spend all their time catering to the whims
of rich donors. The 2024 presidential election is by far the most
ridiculously expensive in history, which also makes it the most
tainted by special interests and their peculiar obsessions (like
Israel, which has kept both candidates from expressing any concern
about ongoing genocide). Breaking this mold is a golden opportunity
for some aspiring politician. Harris can't do it while she's still
campaigning, but it's not only wasteful, it diminishes trust in
everyone involved, and as such discredits the whole system.
The worst offenders, of course, are the billionaires,
many of whom -- starting with Elon Musk, the kind of immigrant that
even Trump can love -- has been especially conspicuous this year.
They are the beneficiaries of a wide range of laws and breaks that
allow a tiny number of individuals to accumulate obscene amounts
of wealth. And they use that wealth to steer government away from
any notion of public interest, to do their own bidding, and to
indulge their own fantasies. This extraordinary inequality -- far
beyond the historic highs of the Gilded Age and the Roaring '20s
(both, you may recall, ill-fated bubbles) -- is the single biggest
problem facing the world today. It may seem hypothetical, but it
lies beneath so many other problems, starting with the dysfunction
of government and politics, which is largely influenced by the
distortions of wealth. It extends worldwide, with inequality of
nations mirroring the inequality of individuals.
The problem with inequality isn't that some people have a bit
more than others. It's that such wide variations corrupt and
pervert justice. It's often hard to say just what justice is,
but it's much easier to identify injustice when you see it. In
highly stratified societies, such as ours, you see injustice
everywhere. It eats at our ability to trust institutions and
people. It diminishes our expectation of fair treatment and
opportunity. It raises questions about cooperation and even
generosity. It makes us paranoid. And once lost, trust and
security is all that much harder to restore.
There is no simple answer here. It needs to be dealt with
piecemeal, one step at a time, each and every day. It helps
to reduce gross inequality (which can be done by taxation).
It helps to reduce sources of inequality (which can be done
by regulation of business, by limiting rents, by promoting
countervailing powers, like unions). It also helps to reduce
the impact of inequality (which can be done by raising basic
support levels, by removing prices from services, by ending
means testing, by providing universal insurance, and when no
better solution is possible, by rationing). I don't expect
any politician, especially one who has proven successful in
the current system of extraordinary inequality, to go far
along these lines, but most people are at least aware of the
problem, and many proposals for small improvements are in
common discourse. Even if Harris doesn't rise to the occasion,
we should work to make sure her successors do.
While I think that Harris comes up short on all five of these
really important points, they in no way argue for Donald Trump,
even as a "lesser evil." He personifies modern inequality, Back
in 2016, he tried arguing that his wealth would allow him to run
a truly independent campaign, but that was just another lie. No
one in recent memory has been more obvious about selling favors
for financing. He is a climate change denier, and has shown
nothing but contempt for the victims of natural disasters. His
signature issue is his hatred of immigrants (excepting, presumably,
two wives and his sugar daddy, Elon Musk), where he puts even more
emphasis on performative cruelty than on effectiveness.
His take on foreign policy is slightly more . . . well, "nuanced"
isn't exactly right, more like "befuddled." It's hard to make a
credible case that he's anti-war when he puts such emphasis on what
a tough guy he is, on how no opponent would dare challenge him.
He has shown remarkably poor judgment in defense staffing, which
is only likely to get worse now that two of his former generals
have called him a fascist. He has no dealmaking skills, nor would
he hire someone who could negotiate (any such person would be
dismissed as a wuss). His "America First" schemes are designed
to strain alliances, and are more likely to break than not. He
delayed his deal to get out of Afghanistan so Biden would get
the blame. His handling of Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Iran-Saudi
Arabia directly contributed to the outbreak of war and genocide.
As I said, foreign policy needs a complete rethink. He's already
failed on several counts, starting with the need to think.
Published another abbreviated
Speaking of Which yesterday. Came to 212 links, 12063 words,
but I added some more stuff this morning, and may add even more
before this is posted. My computer time (listening and writing)
was limited last week, mostly by a home repair project that drags
on and on, with little hope of winding up soon. Well, maybe a
little hope: the collapsed ceiling is repaired, old wallpaper
removed, walls patched up, the bedroom walls primed, half of the
closet paneling put up, and we just got back from buying finish
paint. If I can muster the time, the paint and paneling should
be doable in 2-3 days, but I haven't been able to get many good
working shifts in, and I've repeatedly been snagged by Murphy's
law.
Plus, I have another project this week, which is being pushed
ahead by a deadline, plus the thought that it might be a lot more
fun to do. That's my annual birthday dinner, scheduled for Friday,
with at present nothing more than a concept: my first ever stab
at making Burmese cuisine. I've often picked out exotic locales
for past birthday dinners, and in my peak years managed to make
twenty-some dishes.
But I've never picked one I had so little experience with and
knew so little about. My experience is one take-out meal in New
York at least 12 years ago. The reason I can date it is because
I bought a Burmese cookbook shortly after, but it didn't have the
dish that most delighted me from the restaurant, and nothing else
really caught my eye, so I've never cooked anything from it. The
concept came from seeing that cookbook on the shelf, and thinking
maybe I should finally do something with it.
I may have made a dish or two from broader area cookbooks --
Charmaine Solomon's The Complete Asian Cookbook introduced me
to all hot spots from India through Indonesia and China to Japan --
and I've gone deep on Indian (although not necessarily Bengali),
Thai, and Chinese, which border old Burma (now Myanmar), so I expect
to be working within those parameters. But as of Tuesday afternoon,
I still don't have a menu, much less any shopping or prep done. My
only move so far has been to buy a second Burmese cookbook, plus
one that's more generically southeast Asian. (I haven't generally
been listing cookbooks in my "recent reading" roll, but added my
old Burma: Rivers of Flavor last week, so I figured I might
as well spotlight the new books as well.) Generic southeast
Asian may well be what I wind up with -- especially given that the
local grocers are mostly Vietnamese, plus a couple Indian.
I'm torn between working on the room and on the menu next, but
either option seems more enticing that diddling further on this
post. Should be enough here for any decent week.
New records reviewed this week:
Nick Adema: Urban Chaos (2023 [2024], ZenneZ):
Trombonist from Canada, based in Amsterdam, has a previous 2022
album as Adema Manouikas Octet but effectively his debut, mostly
a quartet with piano/electric bass/drums, but includes a patch
of string quartet, some guest guitar and horns, most prominently
Noah Preminger (tenor sax) on 7 (of 12) tracks, and one vocal --
a surplus of ideas, held together with some fine trombone.
B+(***) [cd]
JD Allen: The Dark, the Light, the Grey and the Colorful
(2024, Savant): Tenor saxophonist, many impressive albums since 1998,
mostly trios with bass (here Gregg August and/or Ian Kenselaar) and
drums (Nic Cacioppo). Seems rather restrained.
B+(**) [sp]
Andy Baker: From Here, From There (2018 [2024],
Calligram): Trombonist, originally from London but based in Chicago,
has side credits going back to National Youth Jazz Orchestra in
1996 but this seems to be his first album as leader. With Russ
Johnson (trumpet), Clark Sommers (bass), and Dana Hall (drums).
B+(**) [cd]
Basic: This Is Basic (2024, No Quarter): Trio
of Chris Forsyth (guitar), Nick Millevoi (baritone guitar &
drum machine), and Mikel Patrick Avery (percussion &
electronics). Forsyth has albums going back to 1998, seems to
be more rooted in rock than in jazz (where I have a previous
album filed), cites Manzanera, Fripp, and Frith in his notes,
as well as Robert Quine, who's 1984 duo album with Fred Maher
is taken as the name of this group. No vocals, all jagged
rhythms too insistent to decay into drone.
B+(***) [sp]
Big Freedia With the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra: Live
at the Orpheum Theater (2023 [2024], Queen Diva): New Orleans
rapper Freddie Ross Jr., influenced by drag queens, released a single
in 1999 and a mixtape in 2003, counts two studio albums, gets full
orchestra backing for this live party.
B+(***) [sp]
Anne Burnell & Mark Burnell: This Could Be the Start of
Something Big (2024, Spectrum Music): Both sing, Mark plays
piano, some originals mixed in with the standards, backed by bass
and drums, plus sax (Pat Mallinger) on six tracks, guitar (Fareed
Haque) on five (four others).
B [cd]
Chris Corsano/Joe Baiza/Mike Watt: Corsano Baiza Watt Trio
(2023 [2024], Yucca Alta): Drums, guitar, bass, only the group name
on the cover. Discogs credits the drummer with 81 albums since 2002,
mostly shared headlines, plus at least as many side-credits (going
back to 1996). The others came out of rock groups: Baiza from Saccharine
Trust, Watt (much more famously) from Minutemen.
B+(*) [bc]
Doug Ferony With His Swingin Big Band: Alright Okay You
Win (2024, Ferony Enterprizes Music): Singer, handful of
albums going back to 1994, leads a big band (as advertised) through
fourteen standards, all done better in the past, most by Frank
Sinatra.
B [cd]
Ingebrigt Håker Flaten/(Exit) Knarr: Breezy (2024,
Sonic Transmissions): Norwegian bassist, very active since 1994 --
Discogs credits him on 260 albums, second album with this group,
which includes trumpet, two saxophonists, piano, and drums, with
spots of guitar or synth.
B+(**) [sp]
Floating Points: Cascade (2024, Ninja Tune):
British electronica producer Sam Shepherd, fifth album since
2015, threw everyone a curve last time when he mixed in Pharoah
Sanders and the London Symphony Orchestra. I'd say this is a
return to form, but it's much better than that: a relentless
stream of dance beats that keeps you moving through thick and
thin.
A- [sp]
Darius Jones: Legend of e'Boi (The Hypervigilant Eye)
(2024, AUM Fidelity): Alto saxophonist, burst onto the scene with
a 2009 album called Man'ish Boy (A Raw & Beautiful Thing),
to which this is at least nominally a "Chapter VII" (of a planned
nine). This is a trio, with Chris Lightcap (bass) and Gerald Cleaver
(drums), bristling with energy, but paced with well-measured spots
of reflective calm.
A- [cd]
Doug MacDonald and the Coachella Valley Trio: Live at the
Rancho Mirage Library (2024, DMAC Music): Jazz guitarist,
many albums, finds a nice groove in a set backed by bass and drums,
with special guest Big Black on djembe.
B+(**) [cd]
Mark Masters Ensemble: Sui Generis (2023 [2024],
Capri): Big band arranger, has a regular stream of albums since
1984, dubs this "a jazz concerto for chamber orchestra," featuring
trumpet player Tim Hagans.
B+(**) [cd]
Gurf Morlix: In Love at Zero Degrees (2024,
Rootball): Alt-country singer-songwriter, originally from Buffalo,
moved to Texas in 1975, best known for his associations with Blaze
Foley and Lucinda Williams, and maybe as a producer, but has a
steady series of own albums since 2000. This one is toned down,
but steady and solid.
B+(**) [sp]
Eric Person: Rhythm Edge (2024, Distinction):
Saxophonist (soprano, alto, tenor, flute), ten or so albums
since 1993, notable side credits with Ronald Shannon Jackson,
Chico Hamilton and Dave Holland, and a fling with World Saxophone
Quartet. He's joined here by Ingrid Jensen (trumpet), Robin Eubanks
(trombone), and a fusion-oriented rhythm section that includes
organ, piano/keyboards, guitar, bass, and drums, and offers no
edge that I can discern, although when uncluttered he remains
a very respectable saxophonist.
B [cd]
Jason Robinson: Ancestral Numbers II (2023 [2024],
Playscape): Might as well recycle my review of the previous album,
released back in May: Saxophonist (tenor/soprano here, also alto
flute), albums since 1998, composed everything here, thinking about
his ancestors. Quintet with Michael Dessen (trombone), Joshua White
(piano), Drew Gress (bass), and Ches Smith (drums). Interesting
throughout, and this time connected even quicker.
A- [cd]
Snotty Nose Rez Kids: Red Future (2024, Savage Mob):
First Nations rappers from Canada, sixth album since 2017.
B+(***) [sp]
Moses Sumney: Sophcore (2024, Tuntum, EP): Born in
California, "grew up on a goat farm in Accra [Ghana]," moved to Los
Angeles after high school, has two albums, several EPs -- this one
six songs, 20:37.
B+(*) [sp]
Ohad Talmor/Chris Tordini/Eric McPherson: Back to the Land
(2023 [2024], Intakt, 2CD): French tenor saxophonist, mostly associated
with Lee Konitz, also plays bass clarinet and some electronics here,
second credit tier line plays bass and drums, but there are seven more
names in smaller print, most pretty notable ones at that, and then at
the bottom of the cover you see "Ornette Coleman" -- the new pieces
are mostly variations on old Coleman pieces, with some mention of
Dewey Redman.
B+(***) [sp]
Fred Thomas: Window in the Rhythm (2024, Polyvinyl):
Indie rock singer-songwriter from Michigan, started in 1994 math
rock band Chore, then joined His Name Is Alive, before his solo
debut in 2002, with a dozen more up to this one. Sometimes hits
an interesting vibe, but I can't quite peg it, or maybe just can't
be bothered.
B+(*) [sp]
Tropical Fuck Storm: Tropical Fuck Storm's Inflatable
Graveyard (2024, Three Lobed): Australian art-punk band,
formed by two members of the Drones (Gareth Liddiard and Fiona
Kitschin), two others, with three studio albums since 2018, back
here with a live double. Seems a bit much.
B+(*) [sp]
Jack Wood & Nichaud Fitzgibbon: Movie Magic: Great Songs
From the Movies (2024, Jazz Hang): Wood was billed as "a
classic crooner," based in southern California, released a "best of"
(with no recording dates) early in the year which proved surprisingly
engaging, and featured the Australian Fitzgibbon as a guest. She's
definitely his better half, which helps on this collection of classic
movie schmaltz, backed tastefully by a long list of musician credits,
from a half-dozen studios, also undated.
B+(**) [cd]
Jamie xx: In Waves (2024, Young): British electropop
producer James Smith, name from his group (The xx) with Oliver Sim
and Romy Madley (three albums 2009-17), second solo album after a
2015 side-project. Dance beats illuminate the world.
A- [sp]
Dann Zinn: Two Roads (2024, Ridgeway): Tenor
saxophonist, based in Bay Area, sixth album, postbop quintet with
Rachel Z (piano), Jeff Denson (bass), Omar Hakim (drums), and
Brian Rice (percussion).
B+(**) [cd]
Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:
William Basinski: September 23rd (1982 [2024],
Temporary Residence): Classically-trained electronic composer,
many albums since 2001 but reaches back into his early archives
for this 40:11 ambient-meets-drone piece.
B+(*) [bc]
Old music:
Adema Manoukas Octet: New Roots (2021 [2022],
self-released): Canadian group, met at University of Toronto,
led by composer/arrangers Nick Adema (trombone) and Alex
Manoukas (baritone sax), with trumpet, two more saxophones,
and unidentified rhythm.
B+(***) [bc]
Sister Rosetta Tharpe: The Swinging Gospel Queen 1939-1947
(1937-47 [1998], Blues Collection): Gospel singer (1915-73), at
least due to her subject matter, but she strums a mean guitar,
and with half the voice and no backup singers she could pass for
a folksinger, and a rocking one at that. I was surprised to find
no graded albums in my database (despite seven albums, including
a 4-CD Properbox, on the "shopping" list) -- "Up Above My Head I
Hear Music in the Air" is one of my most persistent earworms --
so when I noticed a new Acrobat collection (The Singles
Collection As & Bs 1939-1950), I was first tempted to buy
it, then considered the Christgau-recommended The Absolutely
Essential 3CD Collection, but came to my senses and checked
out what I could stream. This one may be out of print, but comes
from their generally reliable "Historic Recordings" series, with
twenty songs, including my earworm and many more contenders (like
"Everybody's Gonna Have a Wonderful Time Up Here"). Also named on
the cover: Lucky Millinder, Sammy Price, Marie Knight.
A- [sp]
Sister Rosetta Tharpe: Live in 1960 (1960 [1991],
ORG Music): A solo set, so just her voice and guitar with the voice
worked extra hard, a dozen songs, mostly standards but not necessarily
hers ("Precious Lord," "Down by the Riverside," "Peace in the Valley").
B+(**) [sp]
Sister Rosetta Tharpe: Sister on Tour (1961, Verve):
Another live set, from New York, with a hard-swinging band, identified
only as "arranged and conducted by Teacho Wiltshire."
B+(***) [sp]
Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
The Attic & Eve Risser: La Grande Crue (NoBusiness) [10-04]
Arthur Blythe Quartet: Live From Studio Rivbea: July 6, 1976 (NoBusiness) [10-04]
Bill Evans: In Norway: The Kongsberg Concert (1970, Elemental Music, 2CD) [11-29]
Joe Fonda Quartet: Eyes on the Horizon (Long Song) [11-15]
Joel Futterman: Innervoice (NoBusiness) [10-04]
Andrew Hill: A Beautiful Day Revisited (2002, Palmetto, 2CD) [11-01]
B.B. King: In France: Live at the 1977 Nancy Jazz Pulsations Festival (Deep Digs/Elemental Music) [11-29]
Michael McNeill: Barcode Poetry (Infrasonic Press) [10-01]
William Parker/Hugo Costa/Philipp Emsting: Pulsar (NoBusiness) [10-04]
Emily Remler: Cookin' at the Queens (1984-88, Resonance, 2CD) [11-29]
Sara Serpa: Encounters & Collisions (Biophilia) [11-15]
Spinifex: Undrilling the Hole (TryTone) [11-22]
Sun Ra: Lights on a Satellite: Live at the Left Bank (1978, Resonance, 2CD) [11-29]
Late Monday night, I'm posting this, without any real sense of
where I'm at, how much I've looked at, and how much more I should
have considered. I have no introduction, and at this point can't
even be troubled to think up excuses. (Perhaps I'll write something
about that in tomorrow's Music Week -- assuming there is one: my
problem there isn't lack of records but no time, given other demands
and priorities.) One thing I am confident of is that there is a lot
of material below. Maybe I'll add more on Tuesday, but don't count
on it.
Got up Tuesday morning and before I could eat breakfast, let
alone open next week's file, I added several entries below, including
a Zachary Carter piece I had open in a tab but didn't get back to in
time.
Top story threads:
Israel's year of infamy: Given the hasty
nature of last week's
Speaking of Which, it was inevitable that I'd need another
week (or more) for one-year anniversary pieces.
Spencer Ackerman: [10-03]
The year after October 7th was shaped by the 23 years after September
11th: "9/11 gave Israel and the US a template to follow -- one
that turned grief into rage into dehumanization into mass death.
What have we learned from the so-called 'war on terror'?" That it
feels better to make the same mistakes over and over again rather
than learn from them? Worth noting that the US response to 9/11
was modeled on Israel's by-then-long war against the Palestinians
(recently escalated in the Sharon's counter-intifada, effectively
a reconquista against Palestinian Authority, which saved Hamas
for future destruction).
Haidar Eid: 10-13]
A vision for freedom is more important than ever: "We must focus
on the present as conditions in Gaza worsen daily, but a clear strategy
and political vision are crucial to inspire people around the world
as to what is possible."
A retaliatory military operation that many wizened pundits predicted
would last no more than a month or so has now thundered on in
ever-escalating episodes of violence and mass destruction for a year
with no sign of relenting. What began as a war of vengeance has become
a war of annihilation, not just of Hamas, but of Palestinian life and
culture in Gaza and beyond.
While few took them seriously at the time, Israeli leaders spelled
out in explicit terms the savage goals of their war and the
unrestrained means they were going to use to prosecute it. This was
going to be a campaign of collective punishment where every
conceivable target -- school, hospital, mosque -- would be fair game.
Here was Israel unbound. The old rules of war and international law
were not only going to be ignored; they would be ridiculed and mocked
by the Israeli leadership, which, in the days after the October 7
attacks, announced their intention to immiserate, starve, and displace
more than 2 million Palestinians and kill anyone who stood in their
way -- man, woman or child.
For the last 17 years, the people of Gaza have been living a
marginal existence, laboring under the cruel constrictions of a
crushing Israeli embargo, where the daily allotments of food allowed
into the Strip were measured out down to the calorie. Now, the
blockade was about to become total. On October 9, Israeli Defense
Minister Yoav Gallant warned: "I have ordered a complete siege on the
Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, food, or fuel; everything is
closed." He wasn't kidding.
This goes on for 14 more paragraphs, all deserving your attention,
before he descends into his usual plethora of bullet points -- dozens
of them, his attention never straying to the more pedestrian atrocities
he often (and compared to most others exceptionally) reports on. He
ends with this:
The war of revenge has become a war of dispossession, conquest and
annexation, where war crime feeds on war crime. Not even the lives
of the Israeli hostages will stand in the way; they will become
Israeli martyrs in the cause of cleansing Gaza of Palestinians. . . .
It's equally apparent that nothing Israel does, including killing
American grandmothers, college students, and aid workers, will trigger
the US government, whether it's under the control of Biden, Harris, or
Trump, to intervene to stop them or even pull the plug on the arms
shipments that make this genocidal war possible.
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor: [04-24]
200 days of military attacks on Gaza: "A horrific death toll amid
intl. failure to stop Israel's genocide of Palestinians."
Oren Yiftachel: [10-15]
Is this Israel's first apartheid war? "Far from lacking a political
strategy, Israel is fighting to reinforce the supremacist project it
has built for decades between the river and the sea." The author thinks
so, while acknowledging the long history of war that preceded this
year's war:
While its eight previous wars attempted to create new geographical
and political orders or were limited to specific regions, the current
one seeks to reinforce the supremacist political project Israel has
built throughout the entire land, and which the October 7 assault
fundamentally challenged. Accordingly, there is also a steadfast
refusal to explore any path to reconciliation or even a ceasefire
with the Palestinians.
Israel's supremacist order, which was once termed "creeping" and
more recently "deepening apartheid," has long historical roots. It
has been concealed in recent decades by the so-called
peace process, promises of a
"temporary
occupation," and claims that Israel has "no partner" to negotiate
with. But the reality of the
apartheid project has become increasingly conspicuous in recent
years, especially under Netanyahu's leadership.
Today, Israel makes no effort to hide its supremacist aims. The
Jewish Nation-State Law of 2018 declared that "the right to
exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is
unique to the Jewish people," and that "the state views the
development of Jewish settlement as a national value." Taking
this a step further, the current Israeli government's manifesto
(known as its
"guiding
principles") proudly stated in 2022 that "the Jewish people
have an exclusive and inalienable right to all areas of the Land
of Israel" -- which, in the Hebrew lexicon, includes Gaza and the
West Bank -- and promises to "promote and develop settlement in
all parts of the Land of Israel."
My reservation here is that the "apartheid program" goes way
back, at least to 1948 when Israelis declared independence and
set up a separate judicial system for Palestinians in areas they
controlled, retaining it even after Palestinians became nominal
citizens of Israel. In effect, Israeli apartheid goes back to
the "Hebrew labor" concept adopted by Ben-Gurion's Histadrut
in the 1930s. (By the way, South Africa's
Apartheid laws were only formalized in 1950, although, as
with Israel, the roots of racist discrimination ran much deeper.
The ideas behind South Africa's legal thinking drew heavily on
America's Jim Crow laws, which were also notable sources for
Nazi Germany's race laws.) So what's new since October 7 isn't
apartheid, but the nature of the war, which has crossed over the
line from harsh enforcement to genocide: the purpose of which is
not just to punish Hamas for the insolence of rebellion, but to
purge Israel of all Palestinians:
Under the fog of this onslaught on Gaza, the colonial takeover of
the West Bank
has also accelerated over the past year. Israel has introduced
new measures of administrative annexation;
settler violence has further intensified with the backing of the
army;
dozens of new outposts have been established, contributing to the
expulsion of Palestinian communities; Palestinian cities have been
subjected to suffocating economic closures; and the Israeli army's violent
repression of armed resistance has reached levels not seen since the
Second Intifada -- especially in the refugee camps of Jenin, Nablus, and
Tulkarem. The previously tenuous distinction between Areas A, B, and C
has been completely erased: the Israeli army operates freely throughout
the entire territory.
At the same time, Israel has deepened the oppression of Palestinians
inside the Green Line and their status as
second-class citizens. It has intensified its severe restrictions
on their political activity through
increased surveillance,
arrests,
dismissals,
suspensions, and
harassment. Arab leaders are labeled "terror supporters," and the
authorities are carrying out an unprecedented wave of house demolitions --
especially in the Negev/Naqab, where the number of demolitions in 2023
(which
reached a record of 3,283) was higher than the number for Jews
across the entire state. At the same time, the police
all but gave up on tackling the serious problem of organized
crime in Arab communities. Hence, we can see a common strategy
across all the territories Israel controls to repress Palestinians
and cement Jewish supremacy.
Near the end of the article, the author points to
A Land for All: Two States One Homeland as an alternative,
and cites various pieces on
confederation. I'm not wild about these approaches, but
I'd welcome any changes that would reduce the drive of people
on both sides to kill one another.
[10-14]
Day 374: Israeli airstrike on Gaza hospital burns patients alive<:
"Israel bombed displacement shelters across Gaza and aid distribution
points in Jabalia, while Hezbollah intensified its fire on Haifa and
Tel Aviv amid Israel's continued bombardment of southern Lebanese
towns."
[10-21]
Day 381: Israel pummels northern Gaza amid intensifying extermination
campaign: "Israel's conditions for a ceasefire with Lebanon
include allowing the Israeli army to continue operating in Lebanese
territory. Meanwhile, Israel steps up its extermination campaign in
northern Gaza, targeting its last remaining hospitals."
David Dayen: [10-17]
In Israel, the war is also the goal: "Yahya Sinwar's death is
unlikely to change the situation in Gaza." This has long been
evident, but it's nice to see new people noticing:
That Netanyahu's personal and political goals vastly outweigh whatever
could resemble military goals in this war in Gaza by now has become a
cliché. Netanyahu wants to stay out of prison, and ending the war is
likely to place him there. So new missions and operations and objectives
sprout up for no reason.
Suddenly Bibi's party has mused about re-settling northern Gaza for
the first time in nearly 20 years, while transparently using
a policy of mass starvation as a way to implement it. . . .
The war has long passed any moment where Israel has any interest
in declaring victory, in the fight against terror or in the fight
for the security of its people. Even bringing up the fact of continued
Israeli hostages inside Gaza seems irrelevant at this point. The war
is actually the goal itself, a continuation of punishment to fulfill
the needs of the prime minister and his far-right political aims. The
annals of blowback indicate pretty clearly that incessant bombing of
hospitals and refugee camps will create many Yahya Sinwars, more than
who can be killed. That is not something that particularly burdens the
Israeli government. Another pretext would serve their continuing
interests.
Griffin Eckstein: [10-17]
Harris sees "opportunity to end" to Israel-Gaza war in Hamas leader
Sinwar's killing: Nice spin, especially after
Biden's me-too statement, but naive and/or disingenuous. Surely
she knows that the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan didn't end with
regime change or the later deaths of Saddam Hussein, Mullah Omar,
or Osama Bin Laden. Sure, those deaths seemed like good ideas at
the time, but by the time they happened many more people had been
killed, and more people rose from nowhere to fight back, and then
they too had to be killed, because once you -- by which I mean the
kind of people who lead countries and start wars -- start killing,
there's always more to do. Still, Harris deserves a nod for even
imagining that some other path is possible. Whether she deserves
it depends on whether she can follow through and act upon her
insight. Unfortunately, to do so would mean she has to develop
enough backbone to defy and put pressure on Netanyahu, which thus
far she hasn't risked.
Abdaljawad Omar: [10-21]
It was only their machines: on Yahya Sinwar's last stand:
"Yahya Sinwar's last stand laid bare Israel's weakness, exposing the
truth about its post-heroic army that only survives from a distance
and remains shielded by armor, unwilling to face its enemies head-on."
Steven Simon: [10-17]
The demise of Yahya Sinwar and his 'big project': "The Hamas
leader overestimated Israel's fractures and underestimated Netanyahu's
willingness to destroy Gaza." I'm not convinced that either of these
assertions are true. I tend to see his "big project" as an act of
desperation, aimed to expose Israel's brutality, as well as imposing
some measure of cost for an oppression that had become routinized
and uninteresting for most people not directly affected. It seems
highly unlikely that he underestimated Netanyahu's monstrosity,
although he might not unreasonably have expected that others, like
the US, would have sought to moderate Israel's response. But even
as events unfolded, Israel has done an immense amount of damage to
its international reputation, as has America. While it's fair to
say that Sinwar made a bad bet for the Palestinian people, the
final costs to Israel are still accumulating, and will continue
to do so as long as Netanyahu keeps killing.
Edo Konrad: [10-16]
The 'pact of silence' between Israelis and their media: "Israel's
long-subservient media has spent the past year imbuing the public
with a sense of righteousness over the Gaza war. Reversing this
indoctrination, says media observer Oren Persico, could take
decades." I've long been critical of US mainstream media sources
for their uncritical echoing of Israeli hasbara, but Israel --
where major media, 20-30 years ago, seemed to be far more open to
critically discussing the occupation than American outlets were --
has become far more cloistered. Consider this:
What Israeli journalists do not understand is that when the government
passes its
"Al Jazeera Law," it is ultimately about something much larger
than merely targeting the channel. The current law is about banning
news outlets that "endanger national security," but they also want
to give the Israeli communications minister the right to prevent any
foreign news network from operating in Israel that could "harm the
national morale." What the Israeli public doesn't understand is that
next in line is BBC Arabic, Sky News Arabic, and CNN. After that,
they're going to come for Haaretz, Channel 12, and Channel 13.
We are heading toward an autocratic, Orbán-esque regime and
everything that comes with that -- in the courts, in academia, and
in the media. Of course it is possible. It sounded unrealistic 10
years ago, then it sounded more realistic five years ago when
Netanyahu's media-related legal scandals blew up. Then it became
even more reasonable with the judicial overhaul, and even more so
today. We're not there yet, but we are certainly on the way.
[10-21]
Israel commits largest massacre yet in northern Gaza: "The siege
of north Gaza and Jabalia refugee camp enters its third week as Israel
has cut off aid to some 200,000 people. On Saturday, Israeli forces
bombed Beit Lahia, killing at least 80 Palestinians, in one of the
largest massacres in months."
Lebanon:
Dave DeCamp: [10-20]
Israel starts bombing banks in Lebanon: "The Israeli military is
targeting branches of al-Quard al-Hassan, which Israel accuses of
financing Hezbollah."
Adam Shatz: [10-11]
After Nasrallah. Long piece, lot of background on Nasrallah and
Hizbullah.
It's hard to see what strategy, if any, lies behind Israel's reckless
escalation of its war. But the line between tactics and strategy may
not mean much in the case of Israel, a state that has been at war
since its creation. The identity of the enemy changes -- the Arab
armies, Nasser, the PLO, Iraq, Iran, Hizbullah, Hamas -- but the war
never ends. Israel's leaders claim this war is existential, a matter
of Jewish survival, and there is a grain of truth in this claim,
because the state is incapable of imagining Israeli Jewish existence
except on the basis of domination over another people. Escalation,
therefore, may be precisely what Israel seeks, or is prepared to
risk, since it views war as its duty and destiny. Randolph Bourne
once said that 'war is the health of the state,' and Netanyahu and
Gallant would certainly agree.
[10-21]
Leaked documents show Israel's alleged plans for Iran attack:
"On October 18, two U.S. intelligence documents on a potential Israeli
attack on Iran were leaked, one describing shifting missile deployments,
and the other detailing possible Israeli rehearsals for a strike on
Iran."
Matt Duss: [10-17]
Yahya Sinwar's death can end this war: But it won't, because only
Netanyahu can end the war, and he doesn't want to, because there are
still Palestinians to dispossess and dispose of, and because Biden
isn't going to make it hard on him to continue. But sure, if one did
want to end the war, checking Sinwar off your "to do" list offers a
nice opportunity. On the other hand, negotiating a ceasefire with a
credible leader like Sinwar would have been even better. This piece
was cited by::
Mitchell Plitnick: [10-18]
No, the US is not 'putting pressure' in Israel to end its war:
"A letter from the Biden administration to Israel this week
threatening to possibly withhold weapons raised hopes among some,
but the delivery of a missile defense system and deployment of U.S.
soldiers sent the real message."
Sarah Leah Whitson: [09-27]
Shared zones of interest: "Harris and Trump's foreign-policy
aims in the Middle East proceed from the same incentive structures
and presuppositions about US supremacy." This is an important point,
which could be developed further.
There are two principal reasons for this. First, Harris and Trump's
worldviews are grounded in an article of faith that has undergirded
America's post-World War II foreign policy: maintaining U.S. hegemony
and supremacy. There is full agreement, as Kamala Harris recently
declared at the Democratic convention and reiterated in her debate
with former President Trump, that the U.S. must have the "most lethal"
military in the world, and that we must maintain our military bases
and personnel globally. While Trump may have a more openly mercenary
approach, demanding that the beneficiaries of U.S. protection in Europe
and Asia pay more for it, he is a unilateralist, not an isolationist.
At bottom, neither candidate is revisiting the presuppositions of U.S.
primacy.
Second, both Harris and Trump are subject to the overwhelming
incentive structure that rewards administrations for spending more
on the military and selling more weapons abroad than any other country
in the world. The sell-side defense industry has fully infiltrated the
U.S. government, with campaign donations and a revolving escalator to
keep Republicans and Democrats fully committed to promoting their
interests. The buy-side foreign regimes have gotten in on the pay-to-play,
ensuring handsome rewards to U.S. officials who ensure weapons sales
continue. And all sides play the reverse leverage card: If the U.S.
doesn't sell weapons, China and Russia (or even the U.K. and France)
will. There is no countervailing economic pressure, and little political
pressure, to force either Harris or Trump to consider the domestic and
global harms of this spending and selling.
In the Middle East, the incentive structure is at its most powerful,
combining the influence of the defense industry and the seemingly
bottomless disposable wealth of the Gulf States. And there are two
additional factors -- the unparalleled influence and control of the
pro-Israel lobby, which rewards government officials who comply with
its demands and eliminates those who don't; and Arab control over the
oil and gas spigots that determines the prices Americans pay for fuel.
As a result, continued flows of money, weapons, and petroleum will
ensue, regardless of who wins in November.
Whitson is executive director of Democracy for the Arab World
Now, after previously directing Human Rights Watch's Middle East
and North African Division from 2004 to 2020. Here are some older
articles:
Israel vs. world opinion: Although my
title is more generic, the keyword in my source file is "genocide,"
because that's what this is about, no matter how you try to style
or deny it.
Gabriel Debenedetti: Has a series of articles called
"The Inside Game":
[10-14]
David Plouffe on Harris vs. Trump: 'Too close for comfort':
"The veteran strategist on the state of play for his boss, Kamala
Harris, and what he thinks of the 'bed-wetters.'" He doesn't seem
to have much to say about anything, which may be what passes as
tradecraft in his world of high-stakes political consulting. It
does seem like an incredible amount of money is being spent on a
very thin slice of the electorate -- Plouffe is pretty explicit
on how he's only concerned with the narrow battleground states.
[09-15]
The WhatsApp Campaign: "Kamala Harris's team is looking for
hard-to-find voters just about everywhere, including one platform
favored by Latinos."
[10-02]
How Tim Walz saved himself: "At first, he looked overmatched by
JD Vance. Then came abortion, health care, and, above all, January 6."
John Morling: [10-21]
It is not too late for the Uncommitted Movement to hold Democrats
accountable for genocide: "The Uncommitted Movement voluntarily
gave up its leverage but it is not too late to hold Kamala Harris
accountable for supporting the Israeli genocide in Gaza." Yes, it
is too late. The presidential election is about many things, but
one thing it is not about is Israeli genocide. To insist that it
is overlooks both that Trump has if anything been more supportive
of genocide, and that while he was president, he did things that
directly connect to the Oct. 7 Hamas revolt, and to Netanyahu's
sense that he could use that revolt as a pretext for genocide.[*]
On the other hand, punishing Harris suggest that none of the real
differences between her and Trump matter to you. Most Democrats
will not only disagree, they will blame you for any losses.
[*] Trump moved the US embassy to Jerusalem, abandoning a major
tenet of international law. Trump ended the Iran nuclear deal. And
Trump's invention of the Abraham Accords was widely considered as
a major factor in Hamas's desperate attack.
Andrew Prokop: [10-21]
The big election shift that explains the 2024 election: "Progressives
felt they were gaining. Now they're on the defensive." A new installment
in a
Vox series the point of which seems to be to tell leftists to go
fuck themselves. As with the Levitz piece (also
hereabouts), this article is half false
and half bullshit. The false part starts with the "gaining" -- the
success of the Sanders campaigns had less to do with ideological
gains (although he made some, and continues to do so) than with his
presentation of a non-corrupt alternative to a very corrupt system),
and the adoption of some progressive thinking by Biden had more to
do with the proven failures of much neoliberal thinking under Obama
and Clinton -- and continues with the "defensive": Sanders' decision
not to challenge Biden and (later) Harris was largely a concession
to age, as well as a gesture of party unity against Trump and the
increasingly deranged Republicans, but also a sense that Harris
would be at least as willing to work toward progressive ends as
Biden had been. That Harris, having secured the nomination with no
real opposition from progressives or any other faction or interest
group, should deliberately tack toward political orthodoxy may be
disappointing to a few of us -- and in the especially urgent matters,
like Israel's wars and genocide, we still feel the need to speak
out[*] -- but the "assignment" (to use Chait's wretched phrase) is
to win the election, and that involves reaching and convincing a
majority of voters, way more than just self-conscious progressives,
in an environment and culture that are severely warped by moneyed
interests and mass media doublespeak. I'm inclined to trust that
what she's saying is based on sound research and shrewd analysis
with that one goal in mind. She's the politician, and I'm just a
critic. If she loses, I'll take what little joy I can in dissecting
her many failings, but if she wins, I can only be thankful for her
political skills, at least for a few days, until her statements
move from vote-grubbing to policy-making, in which case we critics
will have a lot of expertise to offer.
As for the left, I'm more bullish than ever. Capitalism creates
a lot of benefits, but it is also a prodigious generator of crises
and chronic maladies, and it fuels political ideologies that seek
to concentrate power but only compound and exacerbate them. Anyone
who wants to understand and solve (or at least ameliorate) thsee
systemic problems needs to look to the left, because that's where
the answers are. Granted, the left's first-generation solutions --
proletarian revolution and communism -- were a bit extreme, but over
many years, we've refined them into more modest reforms, which can
preserve capitalism's advances while making them safer, sustainable,
and ultimately much more satisfying. Post-Obama Democrats haven't
moved left but at least have opened up to the possibility that the
left has realistic proposals, and have adopted some after realizing
that politics isn't just about winning elections, it's also about
delivering tangible benefits to your voters. (Obama and Clinton no
doubt delivered tangible benefits to their donors, but neglect of
their base is a big part of the reason Trump was able to con his
way into his disastrous 2016 win.)
No problems are going to be solved on November 5. What will be
decided is who (which team) gets stuck with the problems we already
have. Republicans will not only not solve any of those problems,
they -- both judging from their track record and from their fantasy
documents like
Project 2025 (or Trump's somewhat more sanitized
Agenda47 -- they will make them much worse for most people,
and will try to lock down control so they can retain power even as
popular opinion turns against them. Democrats will be hard-pressed
to solve them too, especially if they revert to the failed neoliberal
ideologies of the Clinton-Obama years. But when decent folk do look
for meaningful change, the left will be there, with understanding
and care and clear thinking and practical proposals. Left isn't an
ideology. It's simply a direction, as we move away from hierarchy
and oppression toward liberation and equality. It only goes away
when we get there.
[*] It's not like Communists did themselves any favors when in 1939,
when after Stalin negotiated his "pact" with Hitler, they stuck to the
party line and dropped their guard against Nazi Germany. Ben-Gurion
did much better with his 1939 slogan: "We shall fight in the war
against Hitler as if there were no White Paper, but we shall fight
the White Paper as if there were no war." He ultimately succeeded
on both counts.
David Weigel: [10-15]
No matter who wins, the US is moving to the right: Prokop
cites this piece, which argues that the rightward shift of 1980-2005
had been countered by a leftward drift from 2005-20, but since 2000
the tide has shifted back to the right. His evidence is superficial,
mostly polling on language that correlates weakly with left/right.
Biden may have talked more left in 2020 because he literally stole
the nomination from Sanders, and desperately needed to shore up
left support (which he managed to do). Harris got the nomination
handed to her on a platter, with virtually no dissent from the
left, so she's been free to wheel and deal on the right, for
whatever short-term margin it might bring. But nobody on either
side thinks she's more conservative or orthodox than Biden. That's
why Republicans are in such a panic, so unmoored from reality.
Stephen Rohde: [10-07]
Why the Uncommitted and Undecided should vote for Kamala Harris:
"In sharp contrast to the lawless dictatorship Trump promises in his
second term, I urge Undecided voters to examine how Harris would
preserve democracy and continue to strengthen the United States."
He also explains that "since Uncommitted voters care about the
humanity and self-determination of the Palestinian people, Harris
is their best choice."
[10-16]
Critiquing Trump's economics -- from the right: "What one of the
right's greatest thinkers would make of Trumponomics." On Friedrich
Hayek, who saw himself as a classical liberal, and who saw everyone
else even slightly to his left as marching on "the road to serfdom."
But nothing here convinces me he would have a problem with Trump --
he was, like most of his cohort, a big Pinochet fan -- let alone that
his opinion (having been wrong on nearly everything else) should matter
to me.
Philip Bump: [10-18]
Trump's age finally catches up with him: "The man who would (once
again) be the oldest president in history has reportedly scaled back
his campaign due to fatigue. So who would run his White House?"
Zachary D Carter: [10-16]
The original angry populist: "Tom Watson was a heroic scion of the
Boston Tea Party -- and the fevered progenitor of Donald Trump's violent
fantasies." Link title was: "They say there's never been a man like
Donald Trump in American politics. But there was -- and we should
learn from him." If you're familiar with Watson, who started out as a
Populist firebrand and wound up as a racist demagogue, it's probably
thanks to C Vann Woodward, if not his 1938 biography,
Tom Watson: Agrarian Rebel, then (as in my case) his 1955 book,
The Strange Career of Jim Crow. But this, of course, is mostly
about Trump.
Something important happened at the end of Trump's presidency and the
beginning of Joe Biden's. Nobody wants to talk about it -- not even
conservatives bring up masks and school closures anymore, and much of
the discourse surrounding inflation studiously avoids reference to the
massive economic disruption of COVID-19. But one of the most important
cultural artifacts of the period is the sudden spread of vaccine
skepticism to the cultural mainstream. The anti-vaxxer delusion that
vaccines cause autism has lingered at the fringes of the autism
community in no small part because it provides narrative meaning to a
difficult and random experience. There is tremendous joy in the life
of a special needs parent, but there is also a great deal of fear and
pain. Fear, because you do not know how the world will respond to your
child, and pain, because you must watch your child struggle for no
fault of their own. For many, it is more comforting to believe that
their child's hardships are not a random act of fate but a product of
deliberate malfeasance. The idea that bad things happen for bad
reasons is more palatable than the belief that they happen for no
reason at all.
It is not only anti-vaxxers who seek such comfort. Americans on
both the left and the right avert their eyes from the story of Tom
Watson not only because the story is ugly and violent but because we
insist on being able to control our own destiny. From Huck Finn to
Indiana Jones, American mythology tends to write its heroes as
variations on the story of David and Goliath -- tales of underdogs who
secure unlikely triumphs against an overbearing order. Even when that
order is part of America itself, individual heroism soothes the
audience with the promise that the world's wrongs can be righted with
enough derring-do. Horatio Alger's novels of children born into
poverty could be read as an indictment of the Gilded Age social order,
but the romance of these stories always lies in a boy taking fate by
the horns. Watson disturbs us not only because he turns to evil but
because an extraordinary leader's earnest, Herculean attempt to right
the world's wrongs comes up short. To win, he assents to the dominion
of dark forces beyond his control.
Chas Danner: [10-15]
Trump turned his town hall into a dance party after fans got sick.
This was much ridiculed by late night comics, so I've seen much of
Trump and Kristi Noem on stage, but very little of the crowd, which
is usually the definition of a "dance party." How did the crowd react
after his bumbling responses to five setup questions? It's hard to
imagine them thrilling to multiple versions of "Ava Maria," but it's
also hard to imagine them showing up for the information. I wonder
if Trump rallies aren't like "be-ins" in the 1960s, where crowds
assemble to associate with similar people and complain about the
others. Trump defines who shows up, but after that, does it really
matter what he says or does? This was a test case, but if you start
thinking everything Trump does or says is stupid, your confirmation
bias kicked in instantly, without raising the obvious next question,
why do crowds flock to such inanity? Or are they as stupid as Trump?
[10-18]
"Thirst for the spectacle of Trump's cruelty": Exploring MAGA's
unbreakable bond. Some time ago, I noted that there are two
basic types of Christians in America: those whose understanding
of their religion is to love their neighbors and seek to help them,
and those who hate their neighbors, and see religion as a way to
punish them for eternity -- it's no wonder that the latter group
have come to define Christian Republicans.
DaVega includes a long quote from Peter McLaren, then adds:
McLaren notes "Trump is speaking to an audience that since 2016
has come to share Trump's worldview, his political intuition, his
apprehension of the world, what the Germans call Weltanschauung
and has created a visceral, almost savage bond with the aspiring
dictator."
As the next step in Trump's dictator and authoritarian-fascist
plans, he is now embracing scientific racism and eugenics by telling
his followers that nonwhite migrants, refugees and "illegal aliens"
have bad genes, i.e. "a murder gene." Last Monday, Trump told
right-wing radio host Hugh Hewitt that, "You know now, a murderer --
I believe this -- it's in their genes. And we got a lot of bad genes
in our country right now." Take Trump's obsessions with good genes
and bad genes and couple them with his remarks about "purifying the
blood" of the nation by removing the human poison and other human
vermin. Historically, both in American society and other parts of
the world, people with the "bad genes" that Trump is so obsessed
with have been removed from normal society through imprisonment and
other means. Such targeted populations have also been subjected to
eliminationist violence and forced sterilization.
Sometimes I wonder if Trump's team doesn't just plant this obvious
Nazi shit to provoke recognition and reaction. They know that it
just sails past their own people, while it turns their opponents
into whiny hysterics droning on about stuff no one else understands.
Dan Froomkin: [10-20]
If Trump wins, blame the New York Times: "America's paper of
record refuses to sound the alarm about the threat Trump poses to
democracy." Sure, the Times endorsed Harris -- see [09-30]
The only patriotic choice for president -- but in such jingoistic
terms you have to wonder. Their opinion columnists are, as always,
artfully divided, but in day-to-day reporting, they do seem awfully
dedicated to keeping the race competitive (presumably the ticket to
selling more papers) and keeping their options open (as is so often
the way of such self-conscious, power-sucking elites). I've never
understood how many people actually take "the paper of record" all
that seriously. At least I've never been one.
Though braggadocio is a familiar Trump quality, much like his reluctance
to stick to his prepared remarks, he is arguably getting weirder -- and
more disturbing -- over time. Trump's speeches are so outlandish, so
false, that they often pass without much comment, as the New York
Times
reported earlier this month in a story about his age. Yet a change
is noticeable. "He rambles, he repeats himself, he roams from thought
to thought -- some of them hard to understand, some of them unfinished,
some of them factually fantastical," the Times noted, adding
that his speeches have become much longer on average, and contain
more negative words and examples of profanity than they previously
did.
Hassan Ali Kanu: [10-16]
Conservatives use Trump assassination to target women in anti-diversity
war: "It's a move to enshrine values into law, but it's not beyond
the realm of possibility." What? "The claim is one of reverse discrimination:
that the historically and presently male-dominated Secret Service
discriminates against men." Say whaaat?
[10-18]
Campaign official admits Trump "refusing interviews because he's
'exhausted'": "Trump has cancelled at least 11 campaign events
since August even as he accuses Kamala Harris of dodging media."
On the other hand, as best I recall, Trump surged in the polls in
2016 after his staff took away his Twitter handle, reducing
his exposure. So it's not clear to me that Trump gains much (other
than merch sales) from his appearances. Still, "exhausted" may not
be the message they want to convey.
Carlos Lozada: [10-13]
When Trump rants, this is what I hear: The author came to the
US when he was three, so technically he's an immigrant, a person
Trump makes rather gross generalizations about.
[10-11]
Donald Trump's campaign stops give away the game: "California and
New York are not battleground states so why is the campaign spending
time there in the final weeks?" I don't see an answer here, but I also
don't like the idea that one should only campaign in "battleground"
states. (Not that I mind that both sides take Kansas for granted: this
has been a remarkably quiet election here in Wichita, with only two
political signs out as I walk the dog around the block -- both, fwiw,
Harris/Walz.)
Chas Danner: [10-17]
Who won Kamala Harris's Fox News interview with Bret Baier?
What does "winning" even mean here? The more salient question is
who survived with their reputation intact? This is really just a
catalog of reactions, the final of which was "both sides got what
they wanted." Which is to say, if you missed it, you didn't miss
much.
David Dayen/Luke Goldstein:
Google's guardians donate to the Harris campaign: "Multiple
Harris donors at an upcoming fundraiser are representing Google
in its case against the Justice Department over monopolizing
digital advertising." I have to ask, is digital advertising
something we even want to exist? Competition makes most goods
more plentiful, more innovative, and more affordable, but if
the "good" in question is essentially bad, maybe that shouldn't
be the goal. I'm not saying we should protect Google's monopoly.
A better solution would be to deflate its profitability. For
instance, and this is just off the top of my head, you could
levy a substantial tax on digital advertising, collect most of
it from Google, and then redistribute much of the income to
support websites that won't have to depend on advertising.
Elie Honig: [11-18]
Kamala Harris has finally embraced being a cop: "The label hurt
her in 2019. Today she wears it like a badge." Reminds me a bit of
when Kerry embraced being a Vietnam War soldier. He didn't get very
far with that.
Robert Kuttner: [10-09]
Notes for Harris: "It's good that Kamala Harris is doing more
one-on-one interviews, because she's getting a lot better at it.
Still, she occasionally misses an opportunity." E.g., "Harris could
point out that the administration has made a difference by challenging
collusion and price-gouging, in everything from prescription drugs
to food wholesalers."
Matthew Stevenson: [10-18]
Harris: Speed dating Howard Stern: I was surprised last week
to find the "shock jock and satellite-radio wit" endorsing Harris
last week, probably because I have zero interest or curiosity in
him, and may know even less.
Walz, Biden, and other Democrats:
Avishay Artsy/Sean Rameswaram: [10-21]
Why Wisconsin Democrats are campaigning in places where they can't
win: "To win statewide, the party wants to "lose by less" in
rural areas." That's good advice everywhere. Especially as Democrats
actually have a better proposition for rural voters than Republicans
have.
Ed Kilgore: [10-19]
Four good reasons Democrats are terrified about the 2024 election:
I wasn't sure where to fire this, but the reasons turn out to mostly
reside in Democrats' heads. Nothing here suggests that Democrats are
more likely to lose. It's just that if they lose, the consequences
will be far worse than whatever setbacks Republicans might suffer in
another Trump loss:
Democrats remember 2016 and 2020
Democrats fear Trump 2.0 more than Republicans fear Harris
Only one party is threatening to challenge the election results
If Harris wins, she'll oversee a divided government; if Trump
wins, he'll have a shot at total power
Eric Levitz: [10-17]
The Democrats' pro-union strategy has been a bust: "Despite
Joe Biden's historically pro-union policies, the Democrats' share
of the union vote is falling." First question is: is this true?
(Actually, either "this": the falling vote share, or the "pro-union"
policies.) Second question is would be anti-union (like Republicans)
win or lose votes? Most of the people who are locked into Republican
positions (e.g., guns, abortion) are so distrustful of Democrats no
amount of pandering can move them, but giving up positions that are
popular among Democrats can lose face and faith, and that can hurt
you more than you can possibly gain, even if there is no meaningful
alternative. Third point is who cares? If standing up for unions is
the right thing to do, why equivocate with polling? We live in a
country where the rich have exorbitant power, where unions are one
of the few possible countervailing options. Extreme inequality is
corroding everything, from democracy to the fabric of everyday life.
More/stronger unions won't fix that, but they'll help, and that's
good in itself, as well as something that resonates with other
promising strategies. Fourth, if you're just polling union members,
you're missing out on workers who would like to join a union if
only they could. Are your "pro-union" policies losing them? Or
are they offering hope, and a practical path to a better life?
On some level, Democrats and Republicans are fated to be polarized
opposites, each defined by the other and stuck in its identity. A
couple more pieces on labor and politics this year:
Sharon Block/Benjamin Sachs: [10-16]
The truth about the parties and labor: "You need only look at
the state level to understand who supports workers and who doesn't."
Steven Greenhouse: [10-15]
Sean O'Brien's tantrum against the Democrats: "He appears to be
hoping for a Trump victory, which would be a disaster for the
Teamsters, but just maybe good for him."
Erik Loomis: [09-26]
Preserving public lands: "Deb Haaland has been a remarkable
secretary of the interior. But the future is about funding in
Congress."
Hassan Ali Kanu: [10-15]
America's judicial divisions: "Every major policy issue is now
also a courtroom battle, decided in increasingly partisan settings.
And there's no end in sight." This is a good overview of an effect
Millhiser has been writing about case-by-case for years: right-wing
plaintiffs and Red State attorneys general shopping for favorable
judges willing to impose horrific rulings on the rest of the nation.
Kacsmaryk's mifepristone ruling is just one glaring case example.
Ian Millhiser:
[10-16]
The nightmare facing Democrats, even if Harris wins: "If Harris wins,
the Republican Party will almost certainly be able to veto anything she
does, thanks to our broken Constitution." She'll also have to contend
with thousands of lobbyists, including many with hooks deep into her
own party -- and given her billion dollar campaign warchest, most likely
into her as well -- as the Constitution isn't the only thing broken in
American politics.
Alex Abad-Santos: [10-11]
For some evacuation defiers, Hurricane Milton is a social media
goldmine: "They didn't listen to Hurricane Milton evacuation
orders. Then they posted through it." This reminds me of the hype
that "shock and awe" would win the war against Iraq, because all
it would take is one awesome demonstration of force to get Iraqis
to drop their arms and surrender. Problem was: the people who were
truly shocked were dead, and the rest survived not just the bombs
but the hype, making them think they were invincible.
Robert Kuttner: [10-15]
How hurricanes are a profit center for insurers: "To compensate
for exaggerated expectations of claims, they jack up rates and hollow
our coverage, giving themselves more profit than before." As long
as the market will bear it, and up to the point when they really do
go bankrupt. This is, of course, the kind of profiteering business
schools teach their students to be shameless about.
Business, labor, and Economists:
Dean Baker: Quite a bit to catch up with here, as
he always has good points to make. In trying to figure out how
far I needed to go back, I ran across this tweet I had noted:
"Part of the job of a progressive government is to shift the
public narrative towards the idea that the state can improve
people's lives." I'll add that the point here is not to convince
you that government is good or benign, but that it belongs to
you and everyone else, and can be used to serve your interests,
as far as they align with most other people (or, as the US
Constitution put it, to "promote the general welfare, and secure
the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity"). While
progressives initially do this by advancing reasoned argument,
they also need to put it into practice whenever possible, and
actually do things to "promote the general welfare and secure
the blessings of liberty." You hear much about "democracy" these
days, but knows this: democracy makes good government possible,
but only works if/when people realize they have the power to
direct it. Also, make sure to check out Baker's free book,
Rigged.
The New York Times picks an atypical worker to tell a story
about a divided economy.
It's hard for recent college grads to find jobs even when
their unemployment rate is near a twenty-year low.
The two-full time job measure of economic hardship
The retirement crisis
The collapsing saving rate
Young people will never be able to afford a home
He adds:
Those are my six favorites, but I could come up with endless more
pieces, like the CNN story on the family that drank massive amounts
of milk who suffered horribly when milk prices rose, or the New York
Times piece on a guy who used an incredible amount of gas and was
being bankrupted by the record gas prices following the economy's
reopening.
There are also the stories that the media chose to ignore, like
the record pace of new business starts, the people getting big pay
increases in low-paying jobs, the record level of job satisfaction,
the enormous savings in commuting costs and travel time for the
additional 19 million people working from home (almost one eight
of the workforce).
The media decided that they wanted to tell a bad economy story,
and they were not going to let reality get in the way.
[09-26]
The economy after the GDP revisions: "Basically, they tell us
a story of an economy that has performed substantially better since
the pandemic than we had previously believed."
The highlights are:
An economy that grew substantially more rapidly than previously
believed and far faster than other wealthy countries
Substantially more rapid productivity growth, suggesting more
rapid gains in wages and living standards and a smaller burden of
the national debt;
Higher income growth than previously reported, with both more
wages and more profits;
A higher saving rate, meaning that the stories about people
having to spend down their savings were nonsense.
There were also a couple of not-so-good items:
A higher profit share that is still near a post-pandemic peak;
A lower implicit corporate tax rate, although still well above
the 2019 level.
[10-05]
Automation is called "productivity growth". As he points out,
productivity growth was long regarded as a universal good thing,
until the 1980s, when businesses found they could keep all of the
profits, instead of sharing with workers.
Anyhow, this is a big topic (see Rigged, it's free), but the
idea that productivity growth would ever be the enemy is a bizarre
one. Automation and other technologies with labor displacing potential
are hardly new and there is zero reason for workers as a group to fear
them, even though they may put specific jobs at risk.
The key issue is to structure the market to ensure that the benefits
are broadly shared. We never have to worry about running out of jobs.
We can always have people work shorter hours or just have the government
send out checks to increase demand. It is unfortunate that many have
sought to cultivate this phony fear.
I will say that by any historical standard the labor market is doing
pretty damn good. It could be better, but a low unemployment rate and
rapidly rising real wages is a better story than any incumbent
administration could tell since -- 2000, oh well.
I would put more stress here on "it could be better" than on the
seemingly self-satisfied "pretty damn good." I'd also stress the
options: that Republicans and business lobbyists have obstructed
reforms that would help more (and in some cases virtually all) people,
and that the key to better results is electing more Democrats -- who
may still be too generous to the rich, but at least consider everyone
else.
[10-14]
CNN tells Harris not to talk about the economy. CNN is not
the only "neutral news outlet" to have persistently trashed the
economic success of the Biden-Harris administration, but they
have been particularly egregious. It's almost as if they have
their own agenda.
The goal for Democrats in pushing their many economic successes
(rapid job creation, extraordinarily low unemployment, real wage
growth, especially at the lower end of the wage distribution, a
record boom in factory construction) is to convince a small
percentage of the electorate that this is a record to build on.
By contrast, Donald Trump seems to push out a new whacked out
proposal every day, with the only constants being a massive tax
on imports and deporting a large portion of the workforce in
agriculture and construction.
Given the track record of the Biden-Harris administration
compared with the craziness being pushed by Donald Trump, it is
understandable that backers of Donald Trump would not want Harris
to talk about the economy. But why would a neutral news outlet
hold that view?
Sarah Jones: [Fall 2024]
In the shadow of King Coal: "While the coal industry is in terminal
decline, it still shapes the culture of central Appalachia."
Robert Kuttner: [10-18]
Redeeming the Nobel in economics: "This year's prize went to three
institutionalist critics of neoliberalism. The award is overdue."
Daren Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James A Robinson. The latter two
were co-authors with Acemoglu of books like Why Nations Fail: The
Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty (2012), and Power and
Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity
(2023). Johnson was also co-author, with James Kwak, of one of the
first notable books to come out of the 2008 financial meltdown: 13
Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown
(2010).
Van Jackson: I just ran across him today, but he has
several books I should have noticed by now, and a Substack newsletter
that I'll cite below. He describes himself as "a one-time 'defense
intellectual' and a longtime creature of the national security state,"
but also "on the left," albeit only in a "vague cosmopolitanism and
an antiwar sensibility, yet reflexively in support of the going
concerns of the Democratic Partly, including (paradoxically) military
primacy."
Whizy Kim: [10-16]
Is every car dealer trying to rip me off? "Why buying a car is
the worst kind of shopping." Cited here because after 18 years I'm
in the market for a new car, and because I've been for 2-3 years
without ever managing to put the time and effort into it. I've only
bought one used and four new cars in my life, and the new car I
spent the least time shopping for was by far the worst -- the
others were pretty good deals on pretty good cars. But I've seen
a lot of crap like this, and it pays to beware.
Fred Kaplan: [10-15]
Bob Woodward's latest book tells the story of America's declining
leverage in the world. Link title was "Bob Woodward's new book
is about Biden, but the most urgent takeaways are about Trump."
This is just more proof of the truly ridiculous extent to which
Trump has dominated our minds since 2015. Nearly four years out
of office, it still feels like he's the incumbent, to no small
extent because most of our regrets and great fears of the moment
are directly traceable back to him, but because of his amazing
(and I'll use the word "ridiculous" again here) domination of
the noosphere (apologies for using a word almost everyone will
have to look up, so I can at least save you that trouble: per
Merriam-Webster: "the sphere of human consciousness and mental
activity especially in regard to its influence on the biosphere
and in relation to evolution"). In short, he's in our heads, as
intractable as an earworm, and several orders of magnitude more
disturbing. I've been struggling with trying to narrow down "the
top ten reasons for voting for Harris against Trump," but number
one has to be: MAKE IT STOP!
Returning to the book, Kaplan writes a bit about Biden:
Woodward's style of storytelling is more episodic than structural.
Chapters tend to run for just a few pages. His mantra tends to be
"And then . . . and then . . . and then . . . " as opposed to "And
so . . . and so . . . and so . . ." Still, the stories here hang
together, more than they usually do, because of their underlying
thread -- as the title suggests, the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, and
how Biden and his team dealt with them.
For the most part, Woodward is impressed, concluding that they
engaged in "genuine good faith efforts" to "wield the levers of
executive power responsibly and in the national interest," adding,
"I believe President Biden and this team will be largely studied in
history as an example of steady and purposeful leadership."
Needless to say at this point, I disagree with nearly everything
that Biden has done in the foreign policy arena, but Woodward's
wording here -- "good faith efforts," "steady and purposeful
leadership" -- betrays the subtext, where the baseline for praise
is "at least he's not Trump." So I can get the point, without
having to agree with the particulars. Kaplan continues:
This is an uncharacteristically bold assertion for any author, much
less Woodward, who, throughout his 50-year career, has been the less
judgmental half of the Woodward and Bernstein team that broke the
Watergate scandal and brought down Richard Nixon. In a
Playboy interview back in 1989, he admitted that analysis wasn't
his strong point; it still isn't. But heading into his ninth decade,
with nearly two dozen books under his belt, it seems he feels entitled --
properly so -- to render some verdicts from journalism's high bench.
He dangled his new assertiveness in 2020, on the eve of that year's
election, when he wrote, as the last line in Rage, "Donald Trump is the
wrong man for the job." The next year, after Trump's defeat, he ended
Peril by musing, "What is your country? What has it become under
Trump?"
And even in War, where Trump plays a cameo role as he mulls
making another run for the White House, Woodward declares, just before
touting Biden's legacy, "Donald Trump is not only the wrong man for the
presidency, he is unfit to lead the country."
Meme quote from Michelle Wolf: "You know in High School if you
didn't believe in Science or History, it was just called failing."
I got this from a Facebook
thread, with several interesting comments, including this one from
Clifford Ocheltree:
I shall only point to an earlier remark, the failure of our educational
system to teach critical thinking. To be skeptical in the absence of
that learned skill is pure ignorance. I would add that perception plays
a critical role in how an uneducated populace becomes 'skeptical,'
'credulous' and 'easily duped.' We are, we have become, the product of
a failed educational system. One in which the vast majority of the
population cannot read directions on a bottle of aspirin or name the
three branches of the Federal Government. These failures allow both
parties to play fast and loose with history and science knowing full
well the audience isn't likely to 'get it.'
Ocheltree also addressed history: "History is the interpretation
of fact by 'experts' who bring their own bias." Someone else picked
this up, noting "I can't help laugh at the notion of your feigning
disdain for history" then asking "why do you lap up so many history
books?" Ocheltree replied:
Fact and history are not the same thing. Most 'experts' (historians)
have a bias and view 'facts' through that lens. Nearly 50 years ago
I read an excellent book by Frances Fitzgerald, "America Revised:
History Schoolbooks in the Twentieth Century" (1979). A discussion
and analysis of how history teaching and texts had changed over the
years. At times the result of new information coming to light and
at others the outgrowth of changing social standards or political
leanings. Some 20 years ago I discovered some 'facts' while researching.
Trial testimony with supporting documentation (original records) in
a Virginia court house basement. At a conference I had some time to
speak with the author of the leading text(s) being used on the topic
by any number of colleges. I shared my findings, privately, as they
disproved a good chunk of his work. His response in short? Nobody
will give a shit that I was wrong, my text is the accepted standard
and will always be paramount because it makes my point.
I would add, history and record reviews are much the same. The
author collects 'facts,' the critic listens. Each applies his/her
own bias. The idea that anyone would accept an authors' work(s) as
'unbiased' strikes me as a failure of our education system. Steven
Pinker's recent work has focused on the utter lack of training
students in the basics of critical thinking. I 'lap up' history
books with a jaundiced eye. I love the topic but learned many
years ago, just because a book has been issued isn't 'proof' that
it is accurate.
Hardin Smith, who started this thread, added:
Who said fact and history are the same thing? I sure didn't. But
that doesn't mean it's not worth studying and it doesn't mean that
it doesn't behoove people to have a working knowledge of it. And
certainly you'd agree that there are certain things that we can
all agree on, or at least on the general outlines. Here's a question:
if so much of what you read is biased, whose work are you using to
make that judgment? Is there a higher unbiased source you go to?
And, are there certain historical events that we can all agree to?
The Holocaust, the Moon Landing, Trump's loss in '20? Or is everything
in your world subjective opinion? Also, history is not like record
reviews, sorry. Record reviews are totally based on opinion, but
though there may be bias, history at least concerns itself with
actual facts. It's a subjective interpretation of actual facts.
There's never completely removing bias in anything produced by
humans, but I'd submit to you that some are more biased than others.
Some are relatively free of bias. None of it means that history
isn't worth knowing.
It's tempting to go all philosophical here, and argue that it's
all biased, all subjective, at best assertions that are subject to
independent verification -- same for record reviews, although the
odds of being rejected by other subjectives there are much elevated
compared to science, which has a longer history of refinement and
consensus building (not that similar processes don't apply to record
reviewing). Still, not much disagreement here. Smith seems to find
it important to maintain a conceptual division between opinion and
fact, between subjective and objective, which I find untenable and
not even necessary (although it's easy to fall into when arguing
with idiots -- which is why Wolf's joke is so cutting).
This leads us back to the importance of critical thinking,
which is ultimately a process of understanding one's own biases --
starting, of course, with exposing the biases of others. (Much
like crazy people developed psychoanalysis to understand, and
ultimately to master, their own neuroses.)
Ali Abunimah: [10-21]
In April, under pressure from "Israel," @amazon banned the sale of
The Thorn and the Carnation, the novel by Palestinian resistance
leader Yahya Sinwar.
You can still buy copies of Hitler's Mein Kampf from Amazon,
in multiple languages.
Company departed, and left me feeling exhausted. I've been making
very slow progress on the upstairs bedroom/closet project, but have
very little to show for it, other than a gargantuan mess. I have a
lot of sanding to do -- hopefully tomorrow will be good enough,
after which I move on to primer and (still undecided) paint. The
paneling for the closet is cut, and so far seems to fit. After an
initial misstep -- one of way too many to count -- I think I bought
the right glue today, and also some screws (which are more likely
to work than the prescribed process of nailing around the edges).
I can imagine someone who knows what they're doing wrapping this
up in two days (plus breaks to let paint dry), but it's probably
going to take me another week. And the soreness just adds to the
frustration.
Somehow, in my spare time I knocked out a rather substantial
Speaking of Which yesterday. I added a couple small bits
today, as I don't have a file open for next week, and without
searching found a few items worth noting (e.g., an obituary
for rapper Ka, whose recent records are noted below, and a
record review by Allen Lowe).
More records this week than last. Probably more next week than
this, although it's hard to imagine ever getting back to normal.
New records reviewed this week:
Jessica Ackerley: All of the Colours Are Singing
(2022 [2024], AKP): Canadian guitarist, based in New York, has
several previous albums since 2019, this one backed with bass
and drums, plus viola/violin (Concetta Abatte) on four (of seven)
tracks).
B+(*) [sp]
Adekunle Gold: Tequila Ever After (2023, Def Jam):
Nigerian Afrobeats singer-songwriter, Adekunle Kosoko, went through
a Silver phase before he turned Gold. Has an interesting beat I
can't quite match up elsewhere.
B+(**) [sp]
Bad Moves: Wearing Out the Refrain (2024, Don Giovanni):
DC-based power pop quartet, third album after a 2016 EP, doesn't seem
like much as first, but grows on you, especially with earworms like
"I can't get the part where you fucked up out of my head."
B+(***) [sp]
John Chin/Jeong Lim Yang/Jon Gruk Kim: Journey of Han
(2024, Jinsy Music): Piano/bass/drums trio, some electric keyboards,
six originals by Chin, one each by the others, plus a few standards.
B+(*) [cd]
Guy Davis: The Legend of Sugarbelly (2024, M.C.):
Blues singer-songwriter, son of actors Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis,
first album 1978, has been remarkably consistent since his third
album in 1993.
B+(***) [sp]
The Kris Davis Trio: Run the Gauntlet (2024,
Pyroclastic): Pianist, from Canada, a major figure since 2004,
with Robert Hurst (bass) and Johnathan Blake (drums). This is
very good, rewards patient listening, but never quite grabs me.
B+(***) [cd]
Wendy Eisenberg: Viewfinder (2022-23 [2024],
American Dreams): Jazz guitarist, more than a dozen albums since
2017, singer-songwriter here, the songs focusing on seeing,
occasioned by eye surgery. But the shift to instrumentals,
chopped and skewed, gets more interesting.
B+(**) [sp]
Frode Gjerstad Trio: Unknown Purposes (2023 [2024],
Circulasione Totale): Norwegian saxophonist, started in Detail in
the early 1980s, many albums since 1996, Discogs lists 22 just for
his Trio, here with Jon Rune Strøm (bass) and Paal Nilssen-Love
(drums).
B+(***) [bc]
Frode Gjerstad/Margaux Oswald/Ivar Myrset Asheim: Another
Step (2024, Circulasione Totale): Relatively short live set
(2 pieces, 30:41), the leader on alto sax and clarinet, backed with
piano and drums.
B+(*) [bc]
Joel and the Neverending Sextet: Marbled (2023
[2024], Motvind): Norwegian cellist Joel Ring, second group album,
with Karl Hjalmar Nyberg on tenor sax/clarinet, backed with piano,
tuba, bass, and two drummers.
B+(***) [sp]
Ka: The Thief Next to Jesus (2024, Iron Works):
Rapper Kaseem Ryan, just got news of his death at 52 and recalled
that he had a recent album that I had trouble finding.
B+(**) [sp]
Omer Leshem: Play Space (2024, Ubuntu Music):
Tenor saxophonist, from Israel, based in New York, third album
since 2017, Bandcamp shows two releases (2008, 2016) from what
seems to be a different Omer Leshem (plays guitar, in Israel),
Discogs is no help here (one co-credit with Naama Gheber for an
arrangement that could go either way). Original pieces, backed
with guitar, piano, bass, and drums, nicely done postbop.
B+(**) [cd]
Terence McManus: Music for Chamber Trio (2024,
Rowhouse Music): Guitarist, albums start around 2010 with several
duos, including ones with Ellery Eskelin (tenor sax) and Gerry
Hemingway (drums), who return to fill out this trio. "Chamber"
seems to mean soft and slow, which over 71 minutes can add up
to plodding, but it's always nice to hear Eskelin.
B+(***) [cd]
Kate Pierson: Radios & Rainbows (2024, Lazy
Meadow Music): B-52s singer-songwriter from 1976 on, released a
solo album in 2015, and now this second one. The herky-jerk one
seems to have been Fred Schneider, but occasionally you get a
whiff of that here. Notable lyric: "If you give your heart to
science, I will give you mine."
B+(**) [sp]
Dafnis Prieto Sí o Sï Quartet: 3 Sides of the Coin
(2024, Dafnison Music): Cuban drummer, moved to New York in 1999,
debut album in 2004 was widely acclaimed, won a MacArthur in 2011,
never any doubt about his chops but I've been slow to warm to his
records, at least until this utter delight, with Ricky Rodriguez
on electric bass, and star turns by Martin Bejerano on piano and
Peter Apfelbaum on soprano sax, tenor sax, and flute.
A- [cd]
Dave Rempis/Jason Adasiewicz/Joshua Abrams/Tyler Damon:
Propulsion (2023 [2024], Aerophonic): Saxophonist
(alto, tenor, baritone) from Chicago, first appeared replacing
Mars Williams in Vandermark 5 and immediately established
himself as one of the world's greats. He's been releasing 3-5
new albums per year, some a bit rough for my taste, but most
are so brilliant even that can be an advantage. Not much to
differentiate his many releases, but key value added here
comes from the vibraphonist.
A- [cd]
Dred Scott/Moses Patrou/Tom Beckham/Matt Pavolka: Cali
Mambo (2023 [2024], Ropeadope): Piano, vibes, bass,
percussion. One original, the rest standards, with "Manteca"
especially fine as a closer.
B+(**) [cd]
M Slago/Homeboy Sandman: And We Are Here (2024,
Fly 7 Music): Hip-hop producer Chris Jones, originally from
Nashville but based in Dallas, has a previous (2021) solo album,
Sandman is presumably the rapper ("feat." on all tracks, but
joined on a couple, one with Aesop Rock).
B+(***) [sp]
Walter Smith III: Three of Us Are From Houston and Reuben
Is Not (2024, Blue Note): Tenor saxophonist, from Houston,
debut 2006 -- with bassist Reuben Rogers, who returns here (he's
from the Virgin Islands), along with two other Houston natives who
have made names for themselves: Jason Moran (piano) and Eric Harland
(drums). Exemplary postbop, nicely balanced, ever-shifting, sketchy
but pointed.
A- [sp]
Sulida: Utos (2023 [2024], Clean Feed): Norwegian
trio of Marthe Lea (tenor sax/flute), Jon Rune Strøm (bass), and
Dag Erik Knedal Andersen (drums), first group album (but all three
have albums under their own names), all songs joint credits. Very
solid effort.
B+(***) [sp]
Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:
Kampire Presents: A Dancefloor in Ndola ([2024],
Strut): "Up-and-coming" DJ Kampire spins fourteen East African
grooves, some dating back to the 1970s, others "present day,"
details hard to come by, although influences include Congo and
Zambia -- home to Ndola, where the Kenya-born DJ grew up before
landing in Uganda, where his parents started.
A- [sp]
Miami Sound: Rare Funk & Soul From Miami, Florida
1967-1974 (1967-74 [2023], Soul Jazz): Pretty rare, with
George and Gwen McRae the most recognizable names, but funk, for
sure. [Rhapsody version is truncated from 17 to 9 tracks.]
B+(**) [r]
Miami Sound: More Funk and Soul From Miami, Florida
1967-1974 (1967-75 [2024], Soul Jazz): More adds up
to 20 songs, a few more artists I'm familiar with (Betty
Wright, Latimore).
B+(**) [r]
Old music:
Ka: Languish Arts (2022, Iron Works): One of a
pair of short albums released same day, at least digitally (vinyl
and CD came out in 2023). Ten songs, 28:23.
B+(**) [sp]
Ka: Woeful Studied (2022, Iron Works): Same day
release, ten more songs (26:27), not sure this is any better but
his calm narration over modest squiggles of sound may be growing
on me.
B+(***) [sp]
Don Walser: Rolling Stone From Texas (1994, Watermelon):
Country/western swing singer-songwriter (1934-2006), best known for
his yodeling, started a group called the Panhandle Playboys in 1950,
later led the Texas Plainsmen, but spent most of his adult years as
a mechanic and auditor in the National Guard, before "retiring" in
1994 and recording this career-defining album. Wikipedia notes that
"his extraordinary vocal abilities earned him the nickname 'the
Pavarotti of the Plains," which definitely overlooks Roy Orbison --
a comparison that occurred to me as soon as the opening sea of yodel
parted, although it took a couple of covers -- "Shotgun Boogie" and
"That's Why I'm Walking" -- to clarify into something uniquely his
own. Per John Morthland: "perhaps the last of God's great pure
country singers."
A- [sp]
Don Walser: Texas Top Hand (1996, Watermelon):
Second album, opens with a yodel on the title song, drifts
through various covers from "Tumbling Tumbleweeds" to "Weary
Blues From Waiting" to "Divorce Me C.O.D." to "Danny Boy."
B+(**) [sp]
Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
Caleb Wheeler Curtis: The True Story of Bears and the Invention of the Battery (Imani, 2CD) [11-01]
Andy Haas: For the Time, Being (Resonant Music) []
Shawneci Icecold/Vernon Reid/Matthew Garrison & Grant Calvin Weston: Future Prime (Underground45) [09-01]
Laird Jackson: Life (self-released) []
Pony Boy All-Star Big Band: This Is Now: Live at Boxley's (Pony Boy) [08-09]
I had the thought of writing up a "top ten reasons for voting for
Kamala Harris and the Democrats this year," but haven't gotten much
further than considering the possibility of adding a second list of
"top five reasons why voting for Kamala Harris and the Democrats
won't be enough." The former is obviously dominated by how bad the
Republican offerings are, although you still have to establish that
at least in some significant respects, Democrats are preferable. If
you can't show that, you can't reject the "third party" option. The
second list might even help there, in that most of my reservations
are about programs that don't go far enough. The exceptions there
are Israel/Palestine and Russia/Ukraine, where Harris doesn't go
anywhere at all.
So while I have zero doubt that I will vote for Harris/Walz, and
most likely for every other Democrat who bothers to run here in Kansas,
I've spent most of my time here dealing with the pressing issues of
war, which the election will have little obvious impact on. The best
hope I can offer is a mere hunch that Harris has locked herself into
a Netanyahu dittohead position out of the calculated fear that any
sign of wavering might precipitate a sudden pro-Israel shift toward
Trump, and scuttle her campaign, but that once she wins, she'll have
more room to maneuver behind the scenes, and ease back toward the
more viable ground of decency. In any case, decency isn't even an
incidental prospect with Trump.
Monday night, I ended this arbitrarily, with little sense of how
much more I didn't get to.
Israel's media have acted this way for years. They conceal the
occupation and whitewash its crimes. No one orders them to do this; it
is done willingly, out of the understanding that this is what their
consumers want to hear. For the commercial media, that is the top and
foremost consideration. In this way Israel's media have become the
most important agent for dehumanization of the Palestinians, without
the need for censorship or a government directing it to do so. The
media take on this role in the knowledge that this is what their
customers want and expect of it. They don't want to know anything
about what their state and army are carrying out, because the best way
to be at peace with the reality of occupation, apartheid and war is
with denial, suppression and dehumanization.
There is no more effective and tried means to keep alive an
occupation so brutal and cruel as dehumanization via the
media. Colonialist powers have always known this. Without the
systematic concealment, over dozens of years, and the dehumanization,
it may well be that public opinion would have reflected greater
opposition to the situation among Israelis. But, if you don't say
anything, don't show anything, don't know anything and have no desire
to know anything, either, if the Palestinians are not truly human --
not like us, the Israelis -- then the crime being committed against
them goes down easier, can be tolerated.
The October 7 war brought all of this to new heights. Israel's media
showed almost nothing of what was happening in Gaza, and Israelis saw
only their own suffering, over and over, as if it was the only
suffering taking place. When Gazans counted 25,000 fatalities in less
than four months, most of them innocent noncombatants, in Israel there
was no shock. In fact, shock was not permitted, because it was seen as
a type of disloyalty. While in Gaza 10,000 children were killed,
Israelis continued to occupy themselves exclusively with their
captives and their own dead. Israelis told themselves that all Gazans
were Hamas, children included, even the infants, and that after
October 7, everyone was getting just what they deserved, and there was
no need to report on it. Israelis sank into their own disaster, just
theirs.
The absence of reporting on what was happening in Gaza constituted
the Israeli media's first sin. The second was only slightly less
egregious: the tendency to bring only one voice into the TV studios
and the pages of the printed press. This was a voice that supported,
justified and refused to question the war. Any identification with the
suffering in Gaza, or worse, any call to end the war because of its
accumulating crimes, was not viewed as legitimate in the press, and
certainly not by public opinion. This passed quietly, even calmly, in
Israel.
In Israel, people were fine with not having to see Gaza. The Jewish
left only declined in size, great numbers of people said they had the
scales removed from their eyes -- that is, October 7 led to their
awakening from the illusion, the lies, the preconceptions they had
previously held. It was sufficient for a single cruel attack for many
on the left to have their entire value system overturned. A single
cruel attack was sufficient to unite Israelis around a desire for
revenge and a hatred not only of those who had carried out that
attack, but of everyone around them. No one considered what might be
taking place in the hearts and minds of the millions of Palestinians
who have been living with the occupation's horrors for all these
dozens of years.
What kind of hatred must exist there, if here in Israel such hatred
and mistrust could sprout up after a single attack, horrific as it may
have been. This "waking up" among the left has to raise serious
questions about its seriousness and resilience. This wasn't the first
time that the left crumbled in the face of the first challenge it
encountered.
I've long been struck by the fickleness of the "peace camp" in
Israel: in particular, by how quickly people who should know better
rally behind Israeli arms at the slightest provocation. Amos Oz
and David Grossman are notorious repeat-offenders here, but the
effect is so common that it can only be explained by some kind of
mass psychology so deep-seated that it can be triggered any time
some faction sees an opportunity for war.
Top story threads:
Israel's year of infamy:
Mondoweiss: A
website founded by Philip Weiss which has moved beyond its origins
as a vehicle for progressive Jews to express their misgivings about
Israel by providing an outlet for a wide range of Palestinian voices,
this has long been my first stop for news about Israel/Palestine, and
has been extraordinarily invaluable over the past year. Here's their:
Palestinians reflect: One year of genocide:
Michael Arria: [10-10]
A year of genocide, a year of protest: "Despite the horror we
are watching unfold in Palestine, the movement challenging Israel
has seen unprecedented growth and accomplishments in the past
year." A reminder that every action produces a reaction -- perhaps
not "opposite and equal," but things have a way of settling out
over time.
It has exposed the enduring colonial nature of international law
This is a U.S. genocide of Palestinians
Universities are an extension of the state's coercive apparatus
Zionism has no moral legs to stand on
Racism and power -- the invisibility and power of Palestinians
Tareq S Hajjaj: [10-07]
After October 7, my home became a bag I carry with me: "I have
lived through my own Nakba and understand why thousands of Palestinians
fled their homes in 1948. I made the most difficult decision of my life
and left Gaza, not knowing that what I carried might be all I will ever
possess of my homeland."
Reem A Hamadaqa: [10-07]
My martyrs live on: "Out from under the rubble, I see my martyrs
waving for me. They all stand again. They smile. They live. They go
back home."
Hebh Jamal: [10-10]
The Gaza I knew is gone with our martyrs: "We do not fight for
Palestine for our family. I am no longer clinging to the hope of
reunification and survival. We fight for Palestine because the
liberation of its people means the liberation of us all."
Ghada Karmi: [10-08]
The true lesson of October 7 is that Israel cannot be reformed:
"The year since October 7 has shown us that Israel can neither
be accommodated nor reformed. It must be dismantled, and Zionism
must be brought to an end. Only this will finally alleviate the
Palestinians' terrible ordeal over the past 76 years." This is
an argument that I instinctively dislike and recoil from, but I
do take the point that it is incumbent on Israelis to show that
they are open to reform, the first step to which would be the
recognition that they have done wrong, and the resolve to stop
doing so, and to start making amends. Whether they can salvage
some sense of Zionist legacy is an open question. The strands of
thought and culture that drove Israel to genocide are woven deep
in their history, and won't be easy to dispose of, but I wouldn't
exclude all hope that Israel might recover.
Qassam Muaddi: [10-09]
After a year of extermination, Palestine is still alive:
"Palestinians have endured 76 years of the Nakba and now the 2024
genocide. Despite Israel and the West's desire to erase our existence,
we continue to declare, 'We won't leave.'"
Salman Abu Sitta: [10-07]
From ethnic cleansing to genocide: "I am a survivor of the 1948
Nakba who lived to witness the 2024 genocide. I may not live to see
justice be made, but I am certain our long struggle will be rewarded.
Our grandchildren will live at home once again."
Alice Austin: [10-07]
A year after the Nova massacre, survivors are still paralyzed with
grief: "The Nova festival was the site of October 7's largest
massacre. Now, survivors and the families of those murdered are
suing the state for negligence." One section head here is in quotes:
"It's impossible to heal, because it's never-ending." But the
massacre itself ended almost as quickly as it started. What has
never ended has been the political use and psychological abuse
of that massacre as a pretext for genocide. End that, and everyone
can start healing.
Ramzy Baroud: [10-11]
A year of genocide. "No one had expected that one year would be
enough to recenter the Palestinian cause as the world's most pressing
issue, and that millions of people across the globe, would, once
again, rally for Palestinian freedom." In some limited sense that
may be true, but I don't see how it works out. Not for lack of
trying, but those "millions of people" haven't been very effective,
nor is their fortune likely to change.
Since October 7, organizations of the American Jewish establishment,
like the Jewish Federations and the Anti-Defamation League, have
weaponized our grief, decontextualized it, promoted falsehoods about
what happened that day, and deployed Israeli propaganda talking
points to justify a genocidal onslaught against the Gaza Strip.
Within days of October 7, Israeli political and military leaders
publicly declared their intention to exact vengeance by destroying
Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip. Leading with a campaign of
mass bombing in densely populated areas that could only result in
massive civilian deaths, they have done so. Israel's conduct of the
war does not conform to any reasonable definition of self-defense.
The second half of the piece is devoted to relatively old history,
especially an event in 1971, which leads into the final paragraph:
The January 2, 1971 attack on the Aroyo family and Israel's brutal
response to it prefigure, albeit on a much smaller scale, the events
of October 7, 2023 and their aftermath. Shlomo Gazit was correct.
Israeli security cannot be achieved by committing war crimes and
ethnic cleansing. Palestinian liberation cannot be achieved by
murdering civilians.
Helen Benedict: [10-03]
Ending the cycle of revenge: "Bereaved Israelis and Palestinians
use their grief to advocate for reconciliation and peace together."
Robert Grenier: [10-05]
How Israel's brutal war strategy has remade the Middle East:
"Israel set out to reestablish military superiority. It succeeded --
at catastrophic human cost." Article misses the obvious question,
which is why "military superiority" matters to anyone other than
the military budget makers, as well as why the Hamas attack on
October 7 made them think they had something to prove. As for
"remaking the Middle East," it really looks much like it did just
over a year ago, except for the humanitarian crisis which Israel
itself is solely responsible for. (Sure, blame America for aiding,
but had Israel not wanted to launch its multi-front war, Americans
would have bowed and scraped just the same.)
Anis Shivani: [10-11]
Israel won: I considered pairing this piece with Baroud (above)
as a sobering counterpoint, but it has its own problems. While
Palestinians have lost much, it's hard to say what (if anything)
Israel has won. Also, he seems to be stuck on the notion that
the US is the architect of Israel's foreign policy, whereas the
opposite seems much closer to the truth.
Last year,
images and
video of the survivor of the October 7, 2023, strike in Abasan
Al-Kabira, 11-year-old Tala Abu Daqqa, circulated online. In a short
video, the young girl -- her face peppered with tiny cuts -- appears
glassy-eyed, broken, shattered. That day, the first of the war, she
became one of the now 2.1 million Palestinians in Gaza who have
witnessed or directly experienced conflict trauma and one of the
1 million children in need of mental health and psychosocial support.
Since the attack, at least 138,000 fellow Gazans have been killed or
wounded.
Numbers can't tell the full story of the suffering of children
and adults living under a year of Israeli bombardment. No matter
how accurate, figures can't capture the scope of their sorrow or
the depth of their distress. An estimate of how many million tons
of rubble Israeli attacks have produced can offer a sense of the
scale of destruction, but not the impact of each strike on the
lives of those who survived, and the effect on the future of Gaza
given how many didn't.
Numbers are wholly insufficient to explain Tala Abu Daqqa's
anguish. Statistics can't tell us much about how living through
such a catastrophe affects an 11-year-old child. Heartache defies
calculation. Psychological distress can't be reduced to the score
on a trauma questionnaire. There is no meaningful way to quantify
her loss except, perhaps, by offering up two basic, final numbers
that will stay with her forever: two parents and three sisters
killed.
Israel:
Mondoweiss:
[10-07]
Day 367: Israel orders new evacuations in Gaza, expands bombing in
Lebanon: "The Israeli ground invasion of southern Lebanon
continues to face stiff resistance along the border one week on,
while the Israeli army has renewed its assault on northern Gaza,
laying siege to Jabalia refugee camp for the sixth time since
October 7."
Jonathan Adler:
Israel's paradoxical crusade against UNRWA: "Israeli officials
are relying on UNRWA to prevent a polio epidemic -- while the
Knesset advances laws to expel the agency." Paradox?
Israeli defense officials
told Haaretz on Sunday that the Israeli government is not
seeking to revive ceasefire talks with Hamas and is now pushing for
the gradual annexation of large portions of the Gaza Strip. . . .
The Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth has
reported that Israeli forces in Jabalia are carrying out a
"scaled-down" version of the "general's plan," an outline for the
complete ethnic cleansing of northern Gaza and the killing of any
Palestinians who choose to stay, whether by military action or
starvation. The UN's World Food Program said Saturday that no
food aid has entered northern Gaza since October 1. . . .
If Israel is successful in cleansing northern Gaza of its Palestinian
population, it would pave the way for the establishment of Jewish-only
settlements in the area, an idea openly supported by many Israeli
ministers and Knesset members. The general's plan calls for the
tactics to be used in other parts of the Strip once the north is
cleansed.
Tareq S Hajjaj: [10-09]
Inside Israel's ongoing invasion of Jabalia in northern Gaza:
"Israel laid siege to Jabalia in northern Gaza on the anniversary
of October 7. Residents tell Mondoweiss that the Israeli army is
forcibly conscripting civilians as human shields and shooting
residents who attempt to evacuate."
Mairav Zonszein: [10-07]
On Israeli apathy. I resisted the word "apathy" here. It's a
commonplace that many (most?) Israelis have lost the ability to
recognize Palestinians as human beings -- a loss of empathy that
makes them indifferent to horrendous violence. But it's easier to
understand that as hatred than as apathy. And no doubt much Israeli
propaganda is devoted to stoking hate, but that goes hand-in-hand
with efforts to desensitize Israelis to the effects of violence
directed at others, and ultimately to keep Israelis from realizing
that their own violence is doing to themselves.
The lawlessness and state violence directed at Palestinians for so
long have started to seep into Jewish Israeli society. Mr. Netanyahu's
refusal to assume responsibility for the security failures of Oct. 7,
his grip on power despite corruption trials, his emboldening of some
of the most radical and messianic elements in Israel are a testament
to that. The nearly carte blanche support Israel has received from
the Biden administration throughout much of this war has further
empowered the most hard-line elements of the nation's politics. And
yet many Israelis are still not making the connection between their
inability to get the government to prioritize Israeli life and how
expendable that government treats Palestinian life.
Without this realization, it is hard to see how Israelis can pave
a different path forward that does not rely on the same dehumanization
and lawlessness. This, for me, has made what is already a dire,
desperate reality seemingly irredeemable. For Israelis to start
carving a way out of this mess, they will have to feel outraged
not only by what is being done to them, but also what is being done
to others in their name, and demand that it stop. Without that, I'm
not sure that I, like other Israelis with the privilege to consider
it, see a future here.
Any state that allows such abuse will ultimately turn its anger
and callousness on its own people.
Lebanon:
Elia Ayoub: [10-04]
Killing Hezbollah leaders failed 30 years ago. It won't work now:
"Instead of debilitating Hezbollah, Israel's assassination of Hassan
Nasrallah may prove to be a major PR boost for the embattled
organization." Useful mostly for background, especially Israel's
1992 assassination of Hezbollah co-founder Abbas al-Musawi, which
only intensified the struggle against Israel's occupation of south
Lebanon, as new leaders like Nasrallah took over.
[10-09]
Israel invaded Lebanon because the United States let it: "The
leveling of Lebanese border towns is the continuation of Israel's
Gaza policy: total destruction and ill-defined objectives." I also
found an earlier article I had meant to mention:
Sunjeev Bery: [10-10]
US foreign policy has created a genocidal Israel: "Without
massive, unconditional US military subsidies, Israel would have
had to practice diplomacy with their neighbors years ago." One
could just as easily argue that Israel has steered the US toward
increasing embrace, if not (yet) of full-blown genocide, then at
least to the leading policies of "extraordinary rendition," "black
sites," and "targeted assassination," as Israel became first the
model, then the laboratory for the "war on terror" -- really just
a cult that believes that sheer force can overcome all obstacles.
Or one can argue that genocide is encoded in the DNA of our shared
settler-colonial origins, a latent tendency which flowers whenever
and wherever conditions allow.
There can be no doubt that the American "blank check" has
contributed significantly to those conditions. And on the surface,
it would seem that the rare occasions when American presidents
attempted to restrain Israel were successful: in 1956, Eisenhower
forced Israel to retreat from Egypt; in 1967 and 1973 the US and
Russia brokered UN ceasefire resolutions; in 1978, Carter halted
Israel's intervention in Lebanon, and in 1979 Carter brokered a
peace agreement with Egypt; in 1990-91, Bush restrained Israel
from retaliating against Iraq, and pressed for peace talks, which
ultimately led to Israelis replacing the recalcitrant Shamir with
Rabin, leading to the ill-fated Oslo Accords. But in fact, every
apparent accommodation Israeli leaders made to US pressure was
systematically subverted, with most of the offenses repeated as
soon as allowed: the war against Egypt that Eisenhower ended was
relaunched with Johnson; the invasion of Lebanon that Carter held
back returned with Reagan; the sham "peace process" under Clinton
was demolished -- well, actually repackaged in caricature -- with
GW Bush. But under Trump and Biden, American subservience -- which
is part pure corruption, but also imbued in war-on-terror culture --
has become so complete that Netanyahu no longer bothers to pretend.
Actually, Israel's die was set in two previous events where a
realistically alternative path was possible and rejected -- in both
cases, by David Ben-Gurion. The first was in 1936, when British
authorities realized what a mess of their mandate in Palestine,
and proposed, through the Peel Commission, to solve their problem
with a program of partition and mandatory transfer: divide the
land into two pieces, and force all the Jews to one side, and all
the Arabs to the other. The division, of course, was unfair, not
just in the ratio of people to land but especially in that nearly
all of people forcibly uprooted and "transferred" would be Arabs.
But Ben-Gurion, whose power base at the time was the Hebrew-only
union Histadrut, saw in the proposal the prospect of an ethnically
pure Jewish state, which could with independence and time build up
a military that could seize any additional lands they thought they
needed.
The British proposal was not only rejected by the Palestinians,
but precipitated a revolt which took the British (and the Israeli
militias they encouraged) three years to suppress, and then only
when the British to the main Palestinian demand, which was to
severely limit Jewish immigration. But Ben-Gurion kept the drive
for partition alive, eventually persuading the UN to approve it
in diluted form -- the "transfer" was sotto voce, but when the
British withdrew in 1948, Israel's militias merged into the IDF,
significantly expanded beyond the resolution's borders, and drove
more than 700,000 Palestinians from their homes into exile. The
resulting Israel wasn't as large or as pure as Ben-Gurion had
hoped, but it soon became as powerful, as became clear in its
wars against Egypt in 1956 and 1967 (and its defense in 1973).
One can argue that Ben-Gurion did what needed to be done in
order to found and secure Israel. But once Israel was free and
secure, it had options, one of which was to treat its new minority
fairly, earn its respect and loyalty, and disarm its neighbors by
normalizing relations. Ben-Gurion didn't do that, but he did give
way to his lieutenant, Moshe Sharrett, who was much more inclined
to moderation. Ben-Gurion's second fateful decision was to return
to politics, deposing Sharrett, and returning Israel to the path
of militarism, ethnocracy and empire building. This led straight
to the 1956 war, and its 1967 reprisal. Ben-Gurion had retired
again before the latter, but he had left successors who would
carry on his maximalist objectives (notably, Moshe Dayan, Golda
Meir, Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin, and Ariel Sharon; meanwhile,
he had rehabilitated his old enemies from the Jabotinsky wing,
from Menachem Begin to Benjamin Netanyahu, and integrated into
the political system the followers of the ultra-orthodox and
ultra-nationalist Kook rabbis -- pretty much the entire spectrum
of current Israeli politics).
I like to think of Ben-Gurion's return to power as similar to
Mao's Cultural Revolution: the last desperate attempt of an aging
revolutionary to recreate his glory days rather than simply resting
on his laurels. It is interesting that Ben-Gurion advised against
the 1967 war, arguing that Palestinians wouldn't flee from Israel's
advancing armies like they did in 1948, so any land gained would
reduce the Jewish demographic majority he had fought for, and be
burdened with a heavy-handed occupation. But once the war ended so
decisively, he was delighted, and his followers were confident they
could handle the occupation -- the bigger threat was that Egypt and
Syria would fight to get their land back, as they did in 1973.
While Ben-Gurion has had extraordinary influence on Israel's
entire history, he has at least in one respect been eclipsed of
late: he always understood that occupation was a burden, one that
can and should be lightened by some manner of decency, and he also
understood that Israel needs friends and alliances in the world,
which again demands that Israel show some decency and respect.
Shlomo Avineri ends his The Making of Modern Zionism with
chapters on Ben-Gurion, Jabotinsky, and Kook. Ben-Gurion at least
understood the rudiments of social solidarity, and saw practical
value in it, even if his socialism was radically circumscribed by
his nationalism. Most Israelis today no longer feel the need:
like Jabotinsky, they believe that power conquers all, and that
the powerful should be accountable to none; while some, like
Kook, see their power as divinely ordained, as is their mission
to redeem greater Eretz Yisrael, and purge it of its intruders.
To them, America is just a tool they can use for their own ends.
Indeed, it's hard to explain why Biden and his predecessors have
indulged Israel so readily. Which, I suppose, is why Bery's
thesis, that American power has always been rotten, cannot be
easily dismissed. His conclusion is not wrong, except inasmuch
as he implies conscious intent:
The simple reality is that U.S. foreign policy remains just as
bloody and horrific as it has always been. In earlier decades,
"acceptable" losses included the 1 to 2 million civilians killed
in Vietnam, another million dead in Indonesia, the carnage of
U.S.-backed dictators across Latin America, and the hundreds of
thousands killed during the U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Today's U.S. military and diplomatic interventions in the Middle
East are no different.
To end Israel's horrific actions in the Middle East, we must
change the politics of America itself. This is no easy task, given
the robust power and influence of pro-Israel -- and pro-war --
networks, donors, and lobbying groups inside the U.S. But it is
the task at hand, and it should be the focus of every person of
conscience, both within and outside the borders of the United
States. As has been true in other regions of the world, U.S.
foreign policy is the fundamental obstacle to justice, democracy,
and peace in the Middle East.
Page also included a link to a year-old article which adds
background depth here:
Khader Jabbar: [10-06]
Israel and Iran: Unpacking Western media bias with Assal Rad:
"Assal Rad joins The Mondoweiss Podcast to discuss media coverage
of recent events in Palestine and Lebanon and the persistent
pro-Israel bias in Western media."
Jake Johnson: [10-13]
Alarm as Pentagon confirms deployment of US troops to Israel:
"Netanyahu is as close as he has ever been to his ultimate wish:
making the US fight Iran on Israel's behalf." The deployment is
pretty limited -- "an advanced antimissile system and around 100
US troops" -- but it encourages Israel to provoke further armed
responses from Iran, while making American troops handy targets
for all sorts of terrorist mischief. Washington, conditioned to
see Iran as a potential aggressor, probably sees this as purely
defensive, urgent given Iran's threats (and occasional but mostly
symbolic practice) of retaliation, and practical in that trained
troops can get the system operative much faster than just handing
the weapons over to Israel. Netanyahu, on the other hand, will see
this as confirmation that the Americans are on the hook for war
with Iran. They also understand that if/when Iran wants to hit
back in ways that actually hurt, the US has many easier targets
to hit than the patch of Israel this weapon system is meant to
protect.
The first thing we have to do is to disabuse ourselves of the notion
that the United States has any reservations about what Israel is doing.
Israel is doing what it is doing in careful and close coordination with
Washington, and with its full approval. The United States does not just
arm and diplomatically protect what Israel does; it shares Israel's
goals and approves of Israel's methods.
The tut-tutting, the pooh-poohing, and the crocodile tears about
humanitarian issues and civilian casualties are pure hypocrisy. The
United States has signed on to Israel's approach to Lebanon -- it
wants Israel to destroy Hezbollah and Hamas. It does not have any
reservations about the basic approach of Israel, which is to attack
the civilian population in order to force change in Lebanon and
obviously in Gaza. . . .
The United States helps Israel in targeting Hezbollah and Hamas
leaders -- that is a fact. Anybody who ignores that and pretends
that there's any daylight between what Israel does and what the
United States wants it to do is lying to themselves or is lying to us.
I don't have any evidence to contradict this, but this doesn't
fit the model I have of American interests and motivations. The
most likely part of this story is the low-level sharing of signals
intelligence and targeting information, because that doesn't have
to go through diplomatic levels where questions might be asked
about what it's being used for. That sort of thing is pre-approved,
not because Israel is doing America's dirty work but because US
officials have, as a matter of political convenience, given up
any pretense of independent thought where Israel is concerned.
Ben Samuels: [10-02]
In US election, Israel might be the ultimate October surprise:
"For the first time, there's a real chance that Israel may help sway
the race. Election Day is 34 days away. Undoubtedly, many more surprises
are in store, and none of them are likely to be pleasant."
Dahlia Scheindlin: [10-01]
Hamas and Hezbollah trapped Israel on October 7. Now Israel is trapping
Iran and America: "Tehran and Washington are facing tremendous
dilemmas, trapped between two highly fraught options. Their choices
will determine the fate of the Middle East for both the short term
and for years to come." But the only real choice here is Israel's,
as they can keep doing this until they get their desired result,
which is America and Iran at war.
Ishaan Tharoor: [10-09]
How Netanyhahu shattered Biden's Middle East hopes: "The Israeli
prime minister tested and bested President Joe Biden's diplomatic
strategy around the growing conflict in the Middle East." The logical
fallacy here is in thinking that Biden ever had his own plans for
anything involving Israel.
"Reading the health experts, I am starting to think with horror that
if it's not stopped, Israel's assault could end up exterminating almost
the entire population in Gaza over the next couple of years," Francesca
Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur for Palestine,
wrote on Friday on social media.
Albanese cited
a recent report from University of Edinburgh global public health
chair Devi Sridhar finding that the true death toll from Israel's
genocide could be estimated at 335,500 as of September.
Sridhar based this rough calculation
off of an estimate by public health researchers published in
The Lancet in July regarding typical indirect death counts
from previous conflicts, citing research hailed as the gold standard
in the field. At that time, the researchers estimated that the true
death toll could be roughly 186,000, stemming from direct killings
like bombings as well as Israel's destruction of the health, food
and sanitation systems in Gaza.
The death toll, then, could be between 15 and 20 percent of the
population by the end of this year, Albanese said, in just over a
year of Israel's genocide. And, as Sridhar writes in her Guardian
report, the calculation that she borrows from The Lancet
editorial is highly conservative -- meaning the death toll could be
even higher than her 335,500 estimate.
There is a good bit of evidence that suggests Israel is unraveling
from within. It now appears that Zionism, like communism, is a
self-defeating project. In June of this year, renown Jewish historian,
Ilan Pappé, suggested [link follows] that the collapse of Zionism
may be imminent. According to Pappé, "We are witnessing a historical
process -- or, more accurately, the beginnings of one -- that is
likely to culminate in the downfall of Zionism."
In a manner eerily reminiscent of ancient Israel, modern Israel is
quickly dividing into two separate states: the State of Israel and the
State of Judea. The former identifies as a secular liberal democracy
while the latter consists of far right religious zealots who want to
establish a theocracy, and believe that God has promised them all the
land between the Nile and the Euphrates.
Israeli finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich is a leading figure of
this latter group. In a new documentary produced by Arte, Smotrich
claimed that "the future of Jerusalem is to expand to Damascus."
Not surprisingly, Smotrich's vision for the State of Judea includes
annexing territories presently belonging to Egypt, Jordan, Syria,
Lebanon, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. The members of this group, including,
Itamar Ben-Gvir, Minister of National Security, believe that the events
which transpired on October 7 provide the perfect pretext for them to
realize their vision of Greater Israel.
It should be noted here that Smotrich's party only holds seven seats
(out of 120) in the Knesset, although they seem able to use their
limited leverage to dominate the coalition government agenda.
Adam Johnson/Othman Ali: [10-14]
A study reveals CNN and MSNBC's glaring Gaza double standard:
"Palestinians received far less sympathetic and humanizing coverage
than either Israelis or Ukrainians, a Nation analysis has
found." Nice to have the charts and all the rigor, but the
conclusion has been obvious for many years. It's been engineered
by "hasbara" architects, and reinforced by the whispers of money
in editors' ears.
By scapegoating Netanyahu, who has dominated the Israeli political
system for most of the past fifteen years, liberal Zionists have
been able to preserve in their imaginations the idealized Israel
many of them fell in love with decades ago -- the Israel that was
founded by secular socialists from Eastern Europe and that branded
itself as a paragon of enlightened governance, even as it engaged
from the beginning in colonization, land theft, murder, and expulsion
on a scale that Netanyahu's coalition can only envy. By denying the
essential nature of the Zionist project and its incompatibility with
progressive values, liberal Zionists have also been in denial at
every stage about the war to which they have pledged at least
conditional support. They have insisted that the situation is
"complicated," which is the framing Ta-Nehisi Coates absorbed
during his tenure at the predominantly liberal Zionist Atlantic,
and which he denounced as "horseshit" following a trip to the occupied
West Bank in the summer of 2023. "It's complicated," Coates
toldNew York magazine last month, deriding that common
talking point, "when you want to take something from somebody."
A year after October 7, no one seriously believes there will be
peace between Israel and the Palestinians in our lifetime. The bombed
and starved children of Gaza will never forget what they've been
subjected to, nor the world's general indifference; while it's not
on the same scale, their counterparts in Israel will never forget
the national trauma of the attacks. The "two-state solution" that
liberal Zionists have verbally supported for years as the only
possible just outcome is an obvious fantasy. Other, far more
disturbing outcomes seem likelier; at present, it is hard to see
what consequences Israel will face from continuing to kill and
displace Palestinians on all fronts while seizing and occupying
more and more of their land. If there is one lesson to be taken
from the past dismal year, it's this: the liberal Zionist
interpretation of the conflict has no predictive value, no analytical
weight, and no moral rigor. It is a failed dream of the previous
century, and it is unlikely to survive this one.
The loss of humanity in public discourse is a contagious and sometimes
fatal disease. Recovery is very difficult. Israel has lost all interest
in what it is doing to the Palestinian people, arguing that they "deserve
it" - everyone, including women, children, the elderly, the sick, the
hungry and the dead.
The Israeli media, which has been more disgraceful over the past
year than ever before, voluntarily carries the flag of incitement,
inflaming passions and the loss of humanity, just to gratify its
consumers.
The domestic media has shown Israelis almost nothing of the
suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, while whitewashing manifestations
of hatred, racism, ultra-nationalism, and sometimes barbarism,
directed at the enclave and its population.
Said Zeedani: [10-08]
Gaza's governance must remain in Palestinian hands: "Amid plans
for external interventions, it is vital to build a consensus around
an interim body to manage Gaza's urgent needs and pave the way for
unity." I have no idea who's saying what about "external interventions,"
but nothing serious can happen until Israel implements a ceasefire
(with or without any Hamas consent -- even if the hostages are not
repatriated immediately, they will be much safer with a ceasefire),
agrees to withdraw its forces, and renounces any claim to the land
of Gaza and/or its people. If we've learned anything from the last
year, it's that Israel is not fit to occupy land without citizens.
That shouldn't be a hard sell to Israel, as they have no settlers
in Gaza to contest claims, and they've more than made their point
about what they will do to people who attack them.
Once Israel is out of the picture, other people can get involved,
immediately to rescue the people -- for the most part de-housed,
with many diseased and/or starving -- and eventually to repair and
rebuild. Gazans have great needs and no resources or leverage, so
reconstruction will depend on the generosity of donors -- which may
quite reasonably come with strings attached (especially to respect
Israel's security, to avoid future repeats of its brutality). The
one point which must be respected is that in due course Gaza must be
self-governing, its sovereignty vested in the people who live there
and are free to choose their own leaders. Any "interim authority"
must lead without prejudice to such a democracy. Among other things,
this means that it should not ensconce previous political parties
(like Fatah or Hamas), nor should it exclude former members. Gaza
should rebuild on a clean slate.
B'Tselem:
The pogroms are working - the transfer is already happening:
I've cited this report
before, but it popped up again in Mazin Qumsiyeh's newsletter,
and is worth repeating, as it helps put the post-Oct. 7 genocide
into its much deeper historical context, as a continuation of a
process which Israelis were diligently working on before they could
accelerate it under the "fog of war." (You may recall that the Nazi
extermination program only began after they invaded Russia, although
the Nazis were rabidly antisemitic from the start, and committed
many heinous crimes against Jews well before they crossed the line
we now know as genocide.)
This is mostly a report on events in the West Bank prior to the
Oct. 7 Gaza revolt, after which settler violence in the West Bank --
"in the past two yeras, at least six West Bank communities have
been displaced" -- only increased.
For decades, Israel has employed a slew of measures designed to
make life in dozens of Palestinian communities throughout the West
Bank miserable. This is part of an attempt to force residents of
these communities to uproot themselves, seemingly of their own
accord. Once that is achieved, the state can realize its goal of
taking over the land. To advance this objective, Israel forbids
members of these communities from building homes, agricultural
structures or public buildings. It does not allow them to connect
to the water and power grids or build roads, and when they do, as
they have no other choice, Israel threatens demolition, often
delivering on these threats.
Settler violence is another tool Israel employs to further
torment Palestinians living in these communities. Such attacks
have grown significantly worse under the current government,
turning life in some places into an unending nightmare and
denying residents any possibility of living with even minimal
dignity. The violence has robbed Palestinian residents of their
ability to continue earning a living. It has terrorized them to
the point of fearing for their lives and made them internalize
the understanding that there is no one to protect them.
This reality has left these communities with no other choice,
and several of them have uprooted themselves, leaving hearth and
home for safer places. Dozens of communities scattered throughout
the West Bank live in similar conditions. If Israel continues this
policy, their residents may also be displaced, freeing Israel to
achieve its goal and take over their land.
Election notes:
Gail Collins/Bret Stephens: [10-07]
How could the election be this close? Good question, to which the
article only offers the oblique of answer of demonstrating how clueless
two New York Times opinion columnists can be. Stephens, at least, wears
his ignorance on his sleeve, going out of his way to quote arbitrary
Blacks and Hispanics who think Harris is "too liberal," "overall
untrustworthy," and "unsure how prepared she is to be president."
(And see those traits as worrisome compared to Trump?) Stephens also
wants Harris to "name some widely respected policy heavyweights as
members of her brain trust -- people like Robert Rubin and David
Petraeus. And announce that Liz Cheney will be her secretary of
state." Collins keeps her cluelessness hidden better. She has a
reputation for humor, but here it's mostly just egging Stephens on
to say stupid things.
PS: Speaking of stupid Stephens things, this piece came to my
attention:
Despite what those afflicted with sociopathy at the top want us to
believe, we are hardwired to help each other. We've heard how the
military has to work so hard to train killers, to erase that
hesitation to kill, and how so many shots taken in war are purposely
missed ones. When we see such wanton glee at killing we can bet that
an immeasurable number of hours have been spent in the indoctrination
of hatred, to erase the inclination for community and mutual aid. . . .
But we all know how kids often turn out after living in violent
and hate-filled homes and that's basically what all of us have been
toiling under our whole lives. We all know we've been propagandized,
it's a constant task that we need to be aware of this fact and we
need to recognize things like "passive voice" so popular in newspapers
like the New York Times. All these people dying, not being killed!
Children being called adult terms to take away our natural gut reaction
to their deaths . . . I think many have been able to break out of the
arrogant decrees that are brought down by religious institutions but
still are enamored with the liberal intelligentsia media. If they say
it, it must be true and there is no slant to the way it's delivered.
Well, it will take some time and critical thinking for those "esteemed"
edifices to be brought down. But for now, New York Times, you can go
fuck yourself and your call to war, there's real work to be done and
we don't have time for your shit.
Author's ellipses in last paragraph (originally six dots, no
idea why). I considered dropping the second half of that paragraph,
but decided the author deserved to make the point, even if crudely.
Stanley B Greenberg: [10-09]
Trump is laser-focused on the final duel. Harris is not. "That
will put Trump and Vance in the White House." One problem with reporting
based on polls is that polls most often ask stupid questions of people
who are far short of well-informed, so they can chastise politicians
for failing to cater to their nonsensical results.
Chris Lehman: [09-25]
In 2024, the pundits are wronger than ever: "Most of the predictions,
advice, and scolding emanating from the glow of TV news this year have
proved flat-out wrong. Democrats should stop listening once and for
all." Well, yes and no. It helps to start from the assumption that
you're being lied to and being given faulty and often disingenuous
advice, then try to work out what you can learn from that. On the
other hand, there actually is a lot of pretty good, solid reporting
and analysis available, if only you can figure out which is which.
Rick Perlstein:
[09-25]
The polling imperilment: "Presidential polls are no more reliable
than they were a century ago. So why do they consume our political
lives?" Catching up with other Perlstein columns:
[10-02]
Who are the 'undecided'? "It may not be about issues, but whether
voters surrender to Trump's invitation to return to the womb." Here
he draws on an article Chris Hayes wrote on undecided voters in 2004,
and which hardly anyone seems to have understood or rediscovered in
the last two decades of intense 24/7 political "coverage": basically,
undecided voters are unable to think about political issues in terms
of political choices. That's my simplification. Here's Perlstein
quoting Hayes:
Chris noted that while there were a few people he talked to like that,
"such cases were exceedingly rare. More often than not, when I asked
undecided voters what issues they would pay attention to as they made
up their minds I was met with a blank stare, as if I'd just asked them
to name their favorite prime number . . . the very concept of the
'issue' seemed to be almost completely alien to most of the undecided
voters I spoke to." . . .
Hayes: "I tried other ways of asking the same question: 'Anything
of particular concern to you? Are you anxious or worried about anything?
Are you excited about what's been happening in the country in the last
four years?'"
But those questions harvested "bewilderment" too. "As far as I could
tell, the problem wasn't the word 'issue' . . . The undecideds I spoke
to didn't seem to have any intuitive grasp of what kinds of grievances
qualify as political grievances."
That's the part that stuck with me word for word, almost two decades
on. Some mentioned they were vexed by rising health care costs. "When
I would tell them that Kerry had a plan to lower health-care premiums,
they would respond in disbelief . . . as if you were telling them that
Kerry was promising to extend summer into December."
Of course, you don't have to be "undecided" to have no clue as to
the policy domain that politics determines. Many uninformed or less
than competently comprehending voters pick their allegiances on other
seemingly arbitrary and often nonsensical grounds. These factors are
rooted in psychology, and are expertly exploited, mostly by Republican
operatives, perhaps realizing that their actual policy preferences
have little rational appeal. Perlstein, after noting Trump's promise
to be "your protector," reflects back on fascism:
Millions of pages have been filled by scholars explaining the
psychological appeal of fascism, most converging on the blunt fact
that it offers the fantasy of reversion to an infantile state, where
nothing can come and harm you, because you will be protected by an
all-powerful figure who will always put you first, always put you
first. It is simply indisputable that this promise can seduce and
transform even intelligent, apparently mature, kind-hearted people
formerly committed to liberal politics. I've
written before in this column about the extraordinary film
The Brainwashing of My Dad, in which director Jen Senko
describes the transformation of her Kennedy-liberal dad under the
influence of right-wing talk radio and Fox News -- and also how,
after she explained the premise of her film for a Kickstarter
campaign, scores of people came out of the woodwork to share
similar stories about their own family members.
I've learned a lot about the psychological dynamics at work from
the
X feed of a psychologist named
Julie Hotard, who drills down on the techniques Fox uses to trigger
infantilization in viewers. The people at Fox who devise these
scripts, one imagines, are pretty sophisticated people. Trump's
gift is to be able to grunt out the same stuff just from his gut.
Trump's appeals have become noticeably more infantile in precisely
this way. When he
addresses women voters, for instance: "I am your protector.
I want to be your protector . . . You will no longer be abandoned,
lonely, or scared. You will no longer be in danger . . ."
Or when he grunts the other side of the infantilizing
promise: that he will be your vengeance. His promise to destroy
anything placing you in danger. Like when he recently pledged to
respond to "one really violent day" by meeting criminals with "one
rough hour -- and I mean real rough. The word will get out and it
will end immediately."
Or when he
posted the Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel ("O Prince of the
heavenly hosts, by the power of God, cast into hell Satan, and all the
evil spirits, who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls")
illustrated by a 17th-century painting of said saint curb-stomping a
defeated devil, about to run a sword through his head.
Even on the liberal-left, many interpret the way Trump seems
even more to be going off the rails these last weeks as a
self-defeating lack of control, or as a symptom of cognitive
impairment. They almost seem to celebrate it. The New Republic's
email newsletter, which I cannot stand, is full of such therapeutic
clickbaity headlines canvassing the same examples I talk about here:
"Trump Proposes Stunningly Stupid Idea for Public Safety"; "Ex-Aide
Says Trump's 'Creepy' Message to Women Shows He's Out of Touch";
"Trump Appears to Have Lost a Total Grasp on Things."
I certainly don't disagree that Trump is becoming more cognitively
impaired and out of touch with reality. But might not these impairments
render him a better fascist seducer, as his invitations to infantile
regression become ever more primal, ever more basic, ever more pure?
[10-09]
Our cults, ourselves: "Is the best way to understand the MAGA movement
to binge-watch docuseries about charismatic leaders sending their acolytes
to ruin? Tune in and find out."
[02-14]
A cultural artifact that meets the moment: "Stephen King's Under
the Dome nails how Trumpism functions at the most elemental of
levels." This is the piece Perlstein cited in the "undecided" piece
above, but worth breaking out here. I remember watching, and enjoying,
the
miniseries (2013-15), but had forgotten whatever political import
it might have held, but I welcome the refresher course. The section on
The Brainwashing of My Dad is kind of a coda. I should look
into it further, although I can already think of several examples
from my own family. (I had a pair of cousins, who shared the same
cultural legacy -- small towns, church, hunting -- and could be
socioeconomic twins, but one got her news from the BBC, the other
from Fox.) This essay also refers to a "Part 1":
[01-31]
A hole in the culture: "Why is there so little art depicting
the moment we're in?" Starts with a letter, which includes this:
My husband and I are old and sitting right slap dab in the middle
of red Arkansas with MAGA friends and family all around. They try to
pull us into their discussions but we change the subject. I stopped
going to church because the churches no longer teach Christ's
message, but Trump's message.
The Nation: [09-23]
The Nation endorses Kamala Harris: "In her own right, and
because we oppose Donald Trump's reactionary agenda." I imagine
Joan Walsh is responsible for the first clause, although in the
fine print, they admit "on foreign policy, however, the positive
case is harder to make" -- in what Billmon liked to call a
"Hirohito moment" (which I recalled as severe understatement,
expressed as innocuously as possible; his
definition: "a political statement so painfully cautious and/or
ridiculously understated that it's hard not to laugh at it").
After Joe Biden was shuffled off stage on trumped-up charges of
senility, I started thinking seriously about the weaponization of
old age in our world. Who gets credit for old age and who gets the
boot?
At 86, I share that affliction, pervasive among the richest,
healthiest, and/or luckiest of us, who manage to hang around the
longest. Donald Trump is, of course, in this same group, although
much of America seems to be in selective denial about his diminishing
capabilities. He was crushed recently in The Great Debate yet is
generally given something of a mulligan for hubris, craziness, and
unwillingness to prepare. But face it, unlike Joe B, he was simply
too old to cut the mustard.
It's time to get real about old age as a condition that, yes,
desperately needs and deserves better resources and reverence, but
also careful monitoring and culling. Such thinking is not a bias
crime. It's not even an alert for ancient drivers on the roads. It's
an alarm for tolerating dangerous old politicians who spread lies
and send youngsters to war, while we continue to willfully waste
the useful experience and energy of all ages.
He also mentions Rupert Murdoch (93) and Warren Buffett (94):
Those old boys are anything but role models for me and my friends.
After all, they've been practicing all their lives how to be rich
old pigs, their philanthropy mirroring their interests, not the
needs of the rest of us. In my pay grade, we're expected to
concentrate on tips from AARP newsletters on how to avoid telephone
scams and falls, the bane of the geezer class. And that's important,
but it's also a way of keeping us anxious and impotent.
But he does mention some other ancients, like Casey Stengel and
Jules Feiffer, who he finds more inspiration in. And the
Gray Panthers, founded by Maggie Kuhn -- a personal blast from
the past, as I knew of them through
Sylvia Fink Kleinman (who excused her own fine tastes, explaining
"nothing's too good for the working class").
New York Times: [09-26]
The dangers of Donald Trump, from those who know him: A big chart
of sound bites from "administration insiders, the Trumps & Trump
Inc., Republican politicians, conservative leaders, world leaders" --
including some who remain as steadfast supporters, like Lindsey Graham
and Ted Cruz. Oddly enough, the wittiest is Kim Jong-un's "a frightened
dog barks louder."
There are lists of Donald Trump's lies and lists of his alleged
crimes. But the catalog of all the good things that have happened
to the former president is equally unnerving. Every dog has its
day, but Trump -- no fan of dogs, BTW -- has had far more good
luck than the average mutt.
Of course, the man was born lucky -- into a life of wealth and
privilege and with looks that some women apparently find attractive.
Like many indulged heirs, he quickly dispensed with those gifts,
wasting away his fortune like a 20th-century tristate re-creation
of "A Rake's Progress." It could have easily curdled into squalor
from there.
But one fateful day, along came "The Apprentice," visiting the
sulky developer in his moldering office. As my colleagues Russ
Buettner and Susanne Craig document in their new book, aptly titled
Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father's Fortune and
Created the Illusion of Success, it was this improbable TV
show that offered Trump a golden ticket out of bankruptcy and
irrelevance, transforming him into a successful billionaire by
pretending he actually was one.
Also:
Eight years ago Trump, who has been convicted of 34 felony charges
in Manhattan and has been indicted in three other cases, told a rally
full of acolytes, "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and
shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters." It is fortunate for
him, then, that he was able to appoint three justices to the Supreme
Court who created the possibility for him to be granted immunity in
the three remaining cases against him.
It's impossible to attribute all of this to strategy or intelligence
or even mere cunning. In the same way the mask-averse Trump contracted
what we now know was a serious case of Covid, at age 74 and seriously
overweight, miraculously bounced back with the benefit of cutting-edge
treatment that did not include injecting disinfectant, these things
happened independent of Trump's own actions and inclinations.
Now here we are, with Trump crediting the outcome of two failed
assassination attempts to divine intervention.
James Risen: [10-03]
The reason Netanyahu and Putin both want a Trump victory: "so
they can prolong and intensify their brutal wars." Actually, there's
not much stopping them now, and any policy shift under Harris is
purely speculative -- it's sure not something she's campaigning
on. I don't doubt that Trump is preferred by both -- as a fellow
right-winger, Trump is unbothered by human rights abuses, and
he's notoriously open to bribery and flattery. Also, both have
history of poking their noses into American domestic politics,
although in that Putin is a piker compared to Netanyahu.
Tony Schwartz: [10-11]
I was Trump's ghostwriter. A new biopic gets the most important thing
right. The movie is
The Apprentice, directed by Ali Abbasi and written by Gabriel
Sherman, based on "Trump's career as a real estate businessman in New
York in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as his relationship with lawyer
Roy Cohn." (Sebastian Stan plays Trump, Jeremy Strong plays Cohn, and
Martin Donovan plays Fred Trump Sr.)
Watching The Apprentice crystallized two big lessons that I
learned from Mr. Trump 30 years ago and that I've seen play out in
his life ever since with more and more extreme consequences. The
first lesson is that a lack of conscience can be a huge advantage
when it comes to accruing power, attention and wealth in a society
where most other human beings abide by a social contract. The second
lesson is that nothing we get for ourselves from the outside world
can ever adequately substitute for what we're missing on the inside.
Lawrence Ware: [10-11]
Republicans are not evil . . . well, not all of them: When I
saw this, my first thought was that it might take off from a New
York Times opinion piece I had noticed but didn't mention at the
time. Author is based in Oklahoma, so no suprise that he regularly
encounters Republican voters who seem decent enough even when they
are wrong. As a writer, I am often tempted to use "evil," as few
words make a point so succinctly. But almost always, the real
target is some act or belief, not the person implicated in the
moment. Aiming at the person loses that distinction, and makes
it that much harder to ever recover.
Nicholas Kristof: [08-31]
Here's why we shouldn't demean Trump voters. It's not just
that some Trump voters have decent (even if misguided) motivations,
and that grouping them all together is a logical fallacy, but that
the habit and practice is bad for you too -- it makes you more like
the person you are demeaning. That said, in this particular case,
"misguided" is a really huge understatement.
Branden Adams: [10-13]
Jim Justice tied West Virginia coal to global financial capital:
"While running his coal company Bluestone, Governor Jim Justice
ushered the mines of West Virginia deep into the grasp of global
financial capital -- at the expense of West Virginians. Why should
Swiss bankers get paid before West Virginia teachers?"
Gaby Del Valle: [09-25]
How immigration became a lightning rod in American politics:
"Anti-immigrant think tanks and advocacy groups operated on the
margins until Trump became president. Now they have molded not
only the GOP but also Democrats in their image."
[10-08]
The race is close because Harris is running a brilliant campaign:
"Stop complaining; the centrism is working." Or so says Chait, who
only views every disappointed/disaffected leftist as a strategic
gain, even though he can't begin to count the votes. No doubt that
if Harris does manage to "pull a Hillary" and lose the election,
Chait will be the first to blame it on the left.
[10-10]
The election choice is divided government or unrestrained Trumpism:
"Harris won't be able to implement her plans. Trump will." As a devout
centrist, Chait may regard divided government as the best of all worlds,
with each party making sure the other doesn't accomplish anything, or
rock any boats. Indeed, no Democratic president has had a Democratic
Congress for a full terms since Carter, and even the initial two-year
stretches Clinton, Obama, and Biden inherited were hobbled by lobbyists
and the filibuster.
Ed Kilgore: [10-09]
Can Nikki Haley voters win it for Kamala Harris? I can believe
that most of the people who voted for Harris in Republican primaries
this year won't vote for Trump. But calling them "Nikki Haley voters"
seems gratuitous, especially given that Haley is on board for Trump,
so isn't one of them.
Branko Marcetic: [10-12]
Is Kamala 2024 Clinton 2016?: "Republican endorsements, running
to the right on foreign policy, an unambitious agenda of incremental
change less important than how bad the other guy is. Where have we
seen this before?"
Andrew Prokop:
The rise -- and fall? -- of the New Progressive Economics:
"Progressives conquered economic policy under Biden. Would they lose
it under Harris?" How should I know? And not just because the article
is a "member exclusive" I can't even get a glimpse of. (I did feel
kind of bad about never giving what used to be my favorite news site
any money, but less and less so every time I hit a paywall, especially
on an article that is obvious bullshit.) In the first place, the premise
that "NPE conquered Biden" is somewhere between greatly exaggerated and
plain false. Biden moved somewhat out of the Obama-Clinton neocon rut
because both the economics and the politics failed. Unlike Republicans,
Democrats are expected to address and at least ameliorate real problems,
and the old neoliberalism just wasn't working. Some new stuff got tried,
and mostly worked. Other ideas got stymied, for which there was lots
of obvious blame, as well as Biden's own lukewarm interest. But where
is the evidence that Harris is going to abandon policies and proposals
that are popular with Democrats just to help the rich get richer? The
only thing I'm aware of is that she's had to cozy up to a lot of rich
donors to raise her billion dollar campaign war chest, and they're
going to want something in return. But by then, she'll be president,
and in a better position to call her own shots.
Bill Scher: [10-10]
No "deplorables," "you ain't black," "cling to guns": Harris's
gaffe-free campaign: I suppose that's good news, but Scher is
the most unflappable of Democratic Party apologists, so one doubts
his ability to detect gaffes, let alone strategic missteps. The one
I'm most worried about is her continuing political calculation to
amp up vitriol against Russia and Iran. My guess is that as president
she will pivot to a more moderate stance, because I don't see her as
a neocon ideologue, but I do see her as politically cunning, so her
stance tells me that she thinks it's the smart play viz. voters and
the media. That's pretty depressing.
Robert Kuttner: [10-04]
Biden's amazing win settling the dock strike: "The terms are a
total victory for dockworkers and for smooth supply chain operation,
as the White House faced down exorbitant shipper profits. What would
Trump have done?"
Paul Starr: [09-20]
What should Democrats say to young men? "Young men appear to be
drifting right. Ignoring them means trouble." As an asymptomatic
observer, I have trouble caring about this -- much like the "stolen
pride" in the Arlie Russell Hochschild book (below): been there, got
over that. Still, I do, as a matter of principle, believe that every
voter counts, and that all pain (even the phantom variety) merits
some kind of treatment. Cites:
Astra Taylor: [09]
Divided and conquered: "In search of a democratic majority."
"You've reached your free article limit," so sayonara. "The essay
was partially adapted with permission from Solidarity: The Past,
Present, and Future of a World Changing Idea, which I did buy
a copy of, so I can probably reference it when I want a critique
of Kevin Phillips (The Emerging Republican Majority, which
is often counted as prescient, even if only with regret) and/or Ruy
Teixeira/John Judis (The Emerging Democratic Majority, which
isn't, so they recently rewrote it as Where Have All the Democrats
Gone?), not that I couldn't write those myself.
Supreme Court, legal matters, and other crimes:
David Dayen: [09-30]
How Congress gets its groove back: "The Supreme Court's recent
rulings will change how Congress writes laws. It may even force the
legislative branch to take a hard look at its own dysfunctions."
This is about the Court's recent dismantling of what's called the
"Chevron defense," which while possibly disastrous for the normal
functioning of the federal government, can (at least in theory) be
rectified by Congress writing and passing more precise laws that
leave less discretionary power in the hands of an increasingly
politicized executive. But for that to happen, you first need a
Congress that is willing and able to do the necessary work to
deal with real problems. That obviously involves getting rid of
a lot of Republicans, and tools like the filibuster, but it also
suggests the need for much better Democrats. Otherwise, problems
just multiply, while the courts further hamstring any efforts at
remedy by executive order.
Sarah Jones: [10-10]
The misogyny plot: A new report on the Kavanaugh hearings reveals
a deeper conspiracy."
Ian Millhiser:
[10-05]
We should call the Republican justices "Republicans" and not
"conservatives": "Supreme Court journalist should tell the
truth about what's going on at the Court." While I agree that
"the arguments against treating the justices as partisan actors
are unpersuasive," I worry that reducing them to partisan hacks
will set expectations both for and against, reinforcing their
stereotypical behavior. It is still the case that on occasion
Republican justices can rule against their party's most craven
arguments -- indeed, the legitimacy of the Court depends on at
least some air of independence. Same for Democratic justices
(which as far as I've noticed happens more often).
Intelligencer: [10-10]
Florida assessing damage from Hurricane Milton: Live updates,
at least through 10-10. My impression is that it was not as bad
as predicted: it was down to category 3 when it made landfall,
which was significantly south of the feared direct Tampa Bay hit,
and it moved across Florida and out into the Atlantic rather
quickly. Still a lot of rain and wind in a fairly narrow band,
and a lot of local damage.
Dan Stillman: [10-04]
Helene has become one of the deadliest hurricanes of the modern era:
"the deadliest hurricane to make landfall on the US mainland since
Katrina" (1392 deaths in 2005; many more since 1954 are listed, as
is Maria's 2975 deaths in 2017, but evidently Puerto Rico doesn't
count).
[10-09]
Just how doomed is home insurance? "Hurricanes like Milton and
Helene are making it harder than ever to insure your home." Aside
from the big storms, he spends a lot of time on other factors that
are driving insurance into an unaffordable spiral. Then he asks
the big question: "is the future insurable?" He throws cold water
on the idea of government reinsurance ("would only entrench the
current flaws of the insurance market," which sounds to me like
a call for better design than a blanket rejection).
Maureen Tkacik/Luke Goldstein: [10-02]
A toxic explosion in private equity payouts: "Private equity
barons just pocketed as much as $850 million from the company
behind this week's massive chemical blast in Georgia."
Ukraine and Russia: No "Diplomacy Watch"
this week?
Ted Snider: [10-08]
How Blinken turned the diplomatic corps into a wing of the
military: "In 2021 the administration said it would pursue
'relentless diplomacy.' They call it something else today in
Ukraine." Starts with a Henry Kissinger saying (not a direct
quote) that is even dumber than I'd expect ("little can be won
at the negotiating table that isn't earned on the battlefield")
before he quotes Blinken saying the same thing ("all that we can
to strengthen Ukraine's position on the battlefield so it has
the strongest possible position at the negotiating table").
Also cites a paywalled FT article claiming "it is the diplomats
who have pushed for escalation, and the Pentagon and intelligence
community who have argued for caution."
Elsewhere in the world and/or/in spite of America's empire:
Matt Breunig/Zephyr Teachout: [09-27]
Should the government break up big corporations or buy them?
"Matt Bruenig writes that governments should nationalize more
companies while Zephyr Teachout argues that freedom requires
decentralized power." Ça dépend. Each case should be
evaluated on its own merits. One could write a book on this.
Stephen F Eisenman: [10-11]
What does fascism look like? A brief introduction: Most of this
piece focuses on Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, with an eye toward
architecture and aesthetics, but that leads to a section "what does
fascism look like today?" that opens with a photo of the Pentagon.
Conclusion:
Huey Long, governor of Louisiana from 1928-32, himself often called
a fascist, said: "American Fascism would never emerge as Fascist,
but as a 100 percent American movement; it would not duplicate the
German method of coming to power but would only have to get the right
President and Cabinet." Fascism, as I said at the beginning of this
brief survey, is easy to see in retrospect, but not in prospect.
However, when it appears right in front of you, identification becomes
simple -- signs and symbols appear everywhere. As we approach the U.S.
election, we can clearly witness one political party's tight embrace
of fascism -- but seeing it doesn't mean we can easily stop it.
Those of us on the left, especially with any real sense of history,
are quick to brand certain right-wingers as fascists -- the dividing
line is where disagreement turns to hatred and a desire to kill us.
To us, at least, it's not just a derisive label, but a full paradigm,
which informs not just by analogy but by internal logic. However, the
label "fascist" doesn't appear to have much utility in communicating
with people who are not on our specific bandwidth. One thing I will
point out is that throughout history, fascists have not only done
bad things, they have repeatedly failed, often bringing to ruin the
nations and folk they claim to love. By the way, Eisenman has a
forthcoming book,
The Young Person's Illustrated Guide to American Fascism,
with illustrations by Sue Coe.
Obituaries
Donald L Bartlett
Glenn Rifkin: [10-09]
Donald L Bartlett, 88 dies: prizewinning reporter bared corruption:
"Over four decades, he and his colleague James B Steele gained renown
for resourceful, often explosive investigative journalism at The
Philadelphia Inquirer. I've read several of their books.
Robert Coover:
John Williams: [10-06]
Robert Coover, inventive novelist in iconoclastic era, dies at 92:
"Once called 'probably the funniest and most malicious' of the
postmodernists, his books reflected a career-long interest in
reimagining folk stories, fairy tales and political myths."
Branko Marcetic: [10-09]
Ta-Nehisi Coates is bucking the media's Palestine consensus:
"The problem with Ta-Nehisi Coates's recent grilling on Palestine
by CBS News's Tony Dokoupil isn't that it was rude. It's that
Dokoupil's questioning betrays a fundamental lack of concern for
Palestinians' basic humanity, shared across mainstream media."
Allen Lowe: [10-11]
The new Archeophone King Oliver: Just a Facebook note, but longer
and much deeper than most reviews. Remind me that I got some press
(but no CD) from Archeophone -- first I've heard from them in many
years.
Lara Friedman: [09-28]
Observations on the current the moment - a thread.
Israel used 10/7 to manufacture US consent/collaboration to undo
what Bibi & his Greater Israel/neocon fellow travelers (incl in
US) have long viewed as historic errors forced on Israel by weak
leaders & intl appeasers of terror.
These are: Gaza disengagement (viewed as capitulation to Hamas),
the Oslo Agreement (viewed as capitulation to the PLO), and withdrawal
from southern Lebanon (viewed as capitulation to Hezbollah).
Along the way the Biden Admin & Congress acquiesced to new
Israeli-authored rules of war that, among other things, define every
human being as a legitimate military target - a terrorist, a terrorist
supporter or sympathizer, or a "human shield" -
- & allowing the annihilation of huge numbers of civilians &
destruction of entire cities; allowing entire populations to be displaced,
terrorized, starved, & deprived of medical care; & normalizing
killing of journalists, medical workers, & UN staff - all
with impunity.
The costs of these new rules of war will be paid with the blood of
civilians worldwide for generations to come, and the US responsibility
for enabling, defending, & normalizing these new rules - and their
horrific, dehumanizing consequences will not be forgotten.
In the countdown to the US November elections, continued Israeli
impunity means that Netanyahu and his government have every incentive
to continue to pursue their revanchist and genocidal goals in Gaza,
the West Ban, and Lebanon.
Absent some new US & intl seriousness to impose concrete
consequences that change Israeli calculations, the only real question
now is whether Bibi & friends will seize this moment to pursue the
other long-held dream of neocons in both Israel and the US: regime
change in Iran.
If they do so - and following a year of genocide-with-impunity
capped by Nasrallah's assassination, the likelihood is today higher
than ever before - the decision will be in large part based on the
certainty that the Biden Admin, more than any Admin before it, will
back them.
This backing - which they have every reason to assume is assured -
includes money, military aid, & even US military action. & it is
assumed, regardless of whether the Biden Admin wants such a war &
regardless of Israel's tactics/the scope of the destruction and
casualties.
Likewise, such a decision will reflect an equal certainty that the
Harris & Trump campaigns not only will support Israel in waging
war on Iran, but will actively compete over who, as president, will
stand more firmly with Israel in its push to remake the entire
region.
And to be clear: Bibi & friends have - in actions & words -
been telling the world since 10/7 their intent. Anyone surprised
things have reached this point was either not paying attention, was in
denial, or was happily playing along.
For anyone who thinks my analysis re "next up, Iran" is wrong, see:
[followed by tweet from Jared Kushner, then video of Netanyahu]
Local tags (these can be linked to directly):
music.
Current count:
214 links, 15280 words (19367 total)
As I explained in my "PS"
last week, I didn't expect to blog much this week. I did catch
a break yesterday, and posted a fairly respectable
Speaking of Which (131 links, 7251 words), but that was the
first day I managed to listen to much new music, which is why
this Music Week has anything at all, but as you can see, not
much -- nothing A-listed, some solid high B+ (which next week
will include Terrence McManus: Music for Chamber Trio),
as I've been working through my rather stuffed promo queue in
release date order.
I left Speaking of Which so abruptly when I posted last night
that it would have been easy to add more stuff today. But I
decided the more sensible approach is to open a new
draft file right away, and start putting anything new and
notable there. I have a trick devised to suppress display of
unfinished draft posts, but for now I'll let this one go up
in normal blog order, its incomplete nature implicit in its date
(October 14) and the "(draft)" in the title. I usually only
update the website when I have new posts, but if I do, you
can observe whatever progress I've made.
Next week should be a bit better, for blogging that is, but
there are still lots of distractions, and a lot of other work
to do. The project of sorting out 75 years of accumulated life
from my childhood home isn't really finished, but we made a lot
of progress, and can take a break before going back to it. I
have several boxes of stuff here, and will probably pick up some
more later in the week. I did manage to find one day to rustle up
some dinner before my brother and his wife headed back to
Washington. My niece is still here for a couple more days.
My upstairs bedroom/closet project has languished, but I need
to return to it, making it top priority after I post this. (But
then I blew all afternoon, so I may get nothing done on it today.
I did go buy a tool belt -- something I've never felt the need
for before, but I need to be able to stand on a stool in a very
confined space with at least five tools handy, including power
drill and screwdriver.) Still mostly doing wall repair at this
point, with painting after that. At least we got the paneling
cut, which among other things means I don't have to get the walls
very good. Once I finally get going, I figure I have about three
days of work to go, plus whatever it takes to move back into the
room. So I should wrap that up within the week, but it will take
a lot of time away from here.
Seems like I've been plagued with a lot of minor tech problems
lately: nothing insurmountable, but every little thing chews up
a lot more time than seems right, and adds to my sense of ever
increasing decrepitude.
New records reviewed this week:
El Khat: Mute (2024, Glitterbeat): "Home-made
junkyard band" from Tel Aviv, a quartet led by multi-instrumentalist
Eyal El Wahab, whose roots are in Yemen. Third album. Arab groove
with extra angst.
B+(*) [sp]
Forq: Big Party (2024, GroundUP): Jazz fusion group,
led by Henry Hey (keyboards), one 1999 album and several since 2014,
a fairly long list of players here. Seems to have some intersection
with Snarky Puppy.
B+(*) [cd]
Satoko Fujii Quartet: Dog Days of Summer (2024,
Libra): Japanese pianist, has run many groups for many albums since
the mid-1990s, bills this particular one as her "jazz-rock fusion
quartet," a revival "after an 18-year pause" -- Bacchus was
recorded in 2006 and released in 2007, also with Hayakawa Takeharu
(bass), Tatsuya Yoshida (drums), and Natsuki Tamura (trumpet),
after four previous 2001-05 albums -- I've heard three, liked
Zephyros (2003) a lot, but I didn't care for Bacchus
at all.
b>B+(***) [cd]
Alden Hellmuth: Good Intentions (2023 [2024], Fresh
Sound New Talent): Alto saxophonist, based in New York, first album,
shifty postbop quintet plus guest trumpet/keyboards on several tracks.
B+(***) [cd]
Keefe Jackson/Raoul van der Weide/Frank Rosaly: Live at
de Tanker (2022 [2024], Kettle Hole): Tenor saxophone/bass
clarinet player, from Chicago, live set in Amsterdam with a local
bassist and another Chicagoan on drums.
B+(***) [cd]
Simon Moullier: Elements of Light (2023-24 [2024],
Candid): Vibraphonist, several albums since 2020, this mostly
quartet with piano-bass-drums, plus a guest spot each for Gerald
Clayton (piano) and Marquis Hill (trumpet).
B+(*) [cd]
Patrick Shiroishi: Glass House (2023-24 [2024],
Otherly Love): Alto saxophonist, from Los Angeles, prolific since
2014, no musician credits given here although there is a lot of
piano/synths in the mix.
B+(*) [sp]
Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:
Raphael Roginski: Plays John Coltrane and Langston Hughes
(2024, Unsound): Polish guitarist, albums since 2008, this reissue
first appeared in 2015. eight Coltrane tunes plus two originals,
solo guitar, adding voice (Natalia Przybysz) on two pieces built
around Hughes texts. Reissue adds four bonus tracks on a second
CD.
B+(**) [sp]
Old music:
None
Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
Terry Gibbs Dream Band: Vol. 7: The Lost Tapes, 1959 (1959 [2024], Whaling City Sound) [10-11]
Jason Keiser: Kind of Kenny (OA2) [10-25]
Kevin Sun: Quartets (Endectomorph Music, 2CD) [10-18]
Western Jazz Collective: The Music of Andrew Rathbun (Origin) [10-25]
Andy Wheelock/Whee 3 Trio: In the Wheelhouse (OA2) [10-25]
Draft file opened 2024-10-02 12:17 PM. I expected to have very
little time to work on this, and that's proved accurate. Now trying
to wrap this up Monday afternoon, while I have a bit of a breather.
But I already got distracted, and spent the last hour posting a
dinner plate to
Facebook, and writing further notes in the notebook. Nero wasn't
the only one ever to fiddle while their country burns.
Wound up after 2AM, arbitrarily deciding I've done enough. Maybe
I'll add more while working on Music Week, but I should get back to
working on house. Good news, though, is that working on blog is less
painful than the house work has been.
When I got up this morning, I started reading the third chapter in
Ned Blackhawk's The Rediscovery of America, it occurred to me
that the following bit, while written about Champlain in the early
1600s, is most relevant today (pp. 81-82):
While violence was an essential institution of colonialism, it was
never enough to achieve permanent goals of empire. As political
theorists have long maintained, violence fails to create stability. It
destroys relationships -- between individuals, communities, and
nations -- and does so unpredictably. Once it is initiated, none can
predict its ultimate course. While threats upon a population do over
time result in compliance, more enduring stability requires shared
understandings of power and of the legitimate use of violence. . . .
Nor could violence ever be completely monopolized. As in New Spain,
Native peoples across North America quickly adopted the advantages
that Europeans brought. Raiders took weapons as spoils of war and
plundered Indians who were allied with Europeans or had traded with
them. They stole their metals, cloths and, if possible,
guns. Increasingly, they took captives to trade in colonial slave
markets.
Apologists and propagandists for Israel really hate it when you
describe Israel as a settler-colonial movement/nation. They resent
the implicit moral derision -- every such society has been founded
on racist violence, which we increasingly view as unjust -- but
they also must suspect that it implies eventual failure: the cases
where settler-colonialism was most successful are far in the past
(especially in America, where the Indian wars ended by 1890, and
full citizenship was accorded to Indians in 1924). But perhaps most
troubling of all is the recognition that many others have started
down this same road, and found that only a few approaches can work
(or at least have worked), and only in limited circumstances.
Top story threads:
Israel: One year ago today, some Palestinians
from Hamas and Islamic Jihad -- street gangs left free to operate in
Gaza because Israel and the US refused to allow any form of political
freedom and democratic self-governance in a narrow strip of desert with
more than 2 million people, isolated from all norms of human discourse --
staged a jail break, breaching Israel's walls, and, as brutalized
prisoners tend to do, celebrating their temporary freedom with a
heinous crime spree.[*]
Most of the people in Gaza were refugees from
Israel's "war of independence," known to Palestinians as "Nakba"
for the mass expulsions of Palestinians. From 1948-67, Egypt had
occupied Gaza. In 1967, Israel attacked Egypt, and occupied Gaza,
placing it under military rule. The situation there became even
more desperate after 2006, when Israel dismantled its settlements
in the territory, locked down the borders, left local control to
Hamas, and begun a series of increasingly devastating punitive
sieges they rationalized as "mowing the grass."
As the situation in Gaza grew more desperate, Israeli politics
drifted ever more intensely to the right, to the point where some
parties advanced genocidal responses to the Gaza revolt, while
even large segments of the nominal opposition concurred. Meanwhile,
especially under Trump, the US has become a mere rubber stamp for
whatever Israel wants. And what "Israel wants" is not just to
extirpate Hamas and punish Gaza but to take out their fury on
Palestinians in the West Bank, to complete the annexation of
Palestinian land, and to export war all the way to Iran.
[*] Per Wikipedia, the
2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel lasted two days (October 7-8),
during which 1180 Israelis (379 security forces, 797 civilians)
were killed, and 251 Israelis were taken captive, while Israeli
forces killed 1609 "militants" and captured 200 more. At the end
of those two days, Israel had secured its border with Gaza, and
had gone on the offense against the people and infrastructure of
Gaza. Israel's subsequent slaughter and destruction has been so
indiscriminate, and so systematically destructive of resources
necessary for sustaining life, that it is fairly characterized
as genocide -- a judgment that is consistent with the clearly
stated intentions of many Israeli political leaders. Moreover,
the genocide in Gaza, has provided cover allowing Israelis --
including vigilante settler-mobs protected by IDF forces -- to
attack Palestinians in the West Bank, and Israeli aggression has
now has spilled over into Lebanon.
[10-07]
Day 367: Israel orders new evacuations in Gaza, expands bombing in
Lebanon: "The Israeli ground invasion of southern Lebanon
continues to face stiff resistance along the border one week on,
while the Israeli army has renewed its assault on northern Gaza,
laying siege to Jabalia refugee camp for the sixth time since
October 7."
The ongoing violence has created a cycle of anxiety and trauma in
the besieged Strip, leaving young people particularly devastated.
Tlaleng Mofokeng, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health,
spoke to Anadolu about the mental health crisis in Gaza.
The amount of anxiety and the exposure to trauma, as well as the
level of anticipation of violence, is very abnormal
Mofokeng said, emphasizing the persistent threat of violence
as a major contributor to the psychological distress.
She highlighted that 50 per cent of Gazans were already suffering
from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) before the relentless
violence they experienced since 7 October, 2023. "We have to talk
about it as a deliberate infliction of mental trauma," she added.
The psychological impacts, manifesting as anxiety, nightmares,
depression and memory loss, are compounded by the absence of
adequate mental health resources.
Yet, some scars remain invisible, Mofokeng pointed out, as many
suffer in silence, with distress escalating into PTSD, eventually
leading to complex mental health issues. These only intensify for
children who have lost their entire family. She further noted that
the lack of proper mourning and dignified funerals is "very
detrimental," robbing families and communities of the chance to
heal and opening wounds that may take a lifetime to mend.
The absence of healthcare and therapy has exacerbated the
situation. "The situation is much worse," she stressed.
Tareq S Hajjaj: [10-07]
After October 7, my home became a bag I carry with me: "I have
lived through my own Nakba and understand why thousands of Palestinians
fled their homes in 1948. I made the most difficult decision of my
life and left Gaza, not knowing that what I carried might be all I
will ever possess of my homeland."
[10-07]
Israel's year of war on the West Bank: "While Israel has been
carrying out a genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, its
military and settlers have been waging another campaign of ethnic
cleansing in the West Bank, moving ever closer towards Israel's
goals of annexation." This is an often neglected but increasingly
important part of the story. This makes it clear that the root
problem is not Hamas or Palestinian "national ambitions" but the
fundamental, all-pervasive injustice of the apartheid regime. I
was hoping in early days that the powers could separate Gaza and
the West Bank, deal with the former by cutting it loose, and save
the more entangled West Bank occupation to later, at which point
cooler heads might prevail. But hotter heads made sure peace was
never given a chance, because they saw the cover of war as useful
for promoting their real goals.
Abdaljawad Omar: [10-03]
Israel's forever war and what comes next: "In Gaza and Lebanon,
Israel is projecting its force while burrowing itself deeper into a
quagmire. While it may achieve brief operational successes, it fails
to extinguish the spirit of the resistance or coerce it into
submission."
America's Israel (and Israel's America):
Spencer Ackerman: [10-03]
The year after October 7th was shaped by the 23 years after
September 11th (director's cut): "9/11 gave Israel and the US
a template to follow -- one that turned grief into rage into
dehumanization into mass death. What have we learned from the
War on Terror?" Unfortunately, "this post is for paying subscribers
only," so I don't know how he relates the US reaction to 9/11 to
the previous year's demolition of the Oslo Accords and the breakout
of the Shaul Moffaz Intifada (more commonly called "Al-Aqsa," but
Moffaz was the instigator).
[10-03]
The Shift: US preemptively backs Israel after Iran attack:
"Joe Biden said he opposes Netanyahu hitting Iran's nuclear sites,
but why should anyone trust him? The administration backed Israel's
invasion of Lebanon while he was publicly calling for a ceasefire.
Will we see a similar contradiction on Iran?"
Matthew Duss: [10-07]
Joe Biden chose this catastrophic path every step of the way:
"What's happening in the Middle East was enabled by a president with
ideological priors, aides who failed to push back, and a cheerleading
media establishment."
There's a 23-year-old quote from Benjamin Netanyahu
in The New York Times that I've been thinking a lot about
lately. Reached on the evening of September 11, 2001, the then-former
prime minister was asked what the terrorist attacks that brought down
the Twin Towers and killed almost 3,000 people meant for relations
between the United States and Israel. "It's very good," he said. Then
he quickly edited himself: "Well, not very good, but it will generate
immediate sympathy."
He may have been rude and insensitive, but he was also being
uncharacteristically honest. Like any demagogue, Netanyahu knew
instinctively that enormous pain could be easily transformed into
permission.
In addition to providing Israel's then-Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon a freer hand in crushing the second intifada, Netanyahu
also saw America's trauma as an opportunity to achieve a wider
set of regional security goals. As Congress was considering the
Iraq invasion, he came to the United States to lend his support.
"If you take out Saddam, Saddam's regime, I guarantee you that
it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region," he
assured a congressional committee in September 2002.
James Robins: [10-07]
Israel is trapped by its own war machine: link title, actual,
with sub: "The missed moral lesson of October 7: Hamas's attack
should have triggered not military retaliation but the immediate
resumption of negotiations for a just peace." Of course, it didn't,
because Israel has never considered justice a consideration in its
very rare and never serious efforts at negotiation -- they look
for leverage, and play for time. But I do recall making the same
point on 9/11: I thought it should be viewed as a wake-up call,
as a time when the first thing you ask yourself, have I failed?
Netanyahu (and Bush) couldn't ask that question, much less answer
it. But if you just give it a few minutes of thought, you'll
realize that every war is consequential to a series of mistakes.
The least you can do is to learn from such mistakes, but the
people who yearn to fight wars never take the effort to learn.
Yousef Munayyer: [10-07]
A year that has brought us to the breaking point: "Alongside
the mass graves and beneath the tons of rubble, there may lie
another victim: the very possibility of a jointly imagined
coexistence."
Trita Parsi: [10-01]
Iran bombs Israel, but buck stops with Biden: "If Israel's response
sucks us into war, it will be on the administration's hands. Here's
why." People really need to get a better idea of motivations, costs,
and imagined rewards.
Biden's strategy has been to put enormous effort into deterring Iran
and its partners from retaliating against Israel, while doing virtually
nothing to discourage Israel from escalating in the first place. This
lopsided approach has in fact been a recipe for escalation, repeatedly
proving to Netanyahu that Washington has no intention of bringing
pressure to bear on Israel, no matter its actions.
The situation is actually worse than this, because Israel sees
nothing but positives from provoking a war that pits Iran and the
US. For starters, it keeps the US preoccupied with external threats
when the real enemy of peace is Israel itself. And if Americans get
hurt in the fracas, Netanyahu understands that will only make the
Americans more determined to fight Iran, just as he knows that his
periodic attacks on Iran and its friends only make them more determined
to strike back, even if just ineffectively, at Israel.
Mitchell Plitnick: [10-05]
The United States and Israel set out to remake the Middle East,
again: "The mood in Washington today is similar to 2003 when the
neocons of the Bush administration sought to remake the Middle East.
This time, a joint vision shared by Israel and the Biden administration
seeks to remake the region in the West's vision."
The images coming out of Lebanon and Gaza are horrifying. As I write
this, well over a million Lebanese civilians are displaced as the
Israeli military carries out punishing bombing raids across nearly
the entire country, and over 2,000 have been killed. We've watched
them drop so-called "bunker buster" bombs on residential blocks in
Lebanon's capital, Beirut, in an attempt to kill the leadership of
Hezbollah, never mind the civilians who may be in the way. Like in
Gaza, Israel is targeting hospitals and schools, border crossings,
and infrastructure. That the international community is allowing
this to go on is nothing short of a calamity.
Responsible Statecraft: [10-03]
Symposium: Will US-Israel relations survive the last year? "We
asked if the post-Oct. 7 war has permanently altered Washington's
80-year commitment to the Jewish state." Collects statements from:
Geoff Aronson, Andrew Bacevich, Daniel Bessner, Dan DePetris, Robert
Hunter, Shireen Hunter, Daniel Levy, Rajan Menon, Paul Pillar, Annelle
Sheline, Steve Simon, Barbara Slavin, Hadar Suskind, Stephen Walt,
Sarah Leah Whitson, James Zogby. While several are critics, it is
pretty obvious that the "special relationship" has held fast, with
the Biden administration providing unstinting support despite
reservations that they are unable or unwilling to act on, with most
of Congress even more emphatically in thrall.
Jonathan Guyer: [10-04]
The price of power: "America's chief humanitarian official rose
to fame by speaking out against atrocities. Now she's trapped by
one." Welcome to hell, Samantha Power.
Jeffrey D Sachs: [09-30]
Israel's ideology of genocide must be confronted and stopped:
"Israel's violent extremists now in control of its government
believe that Israel has a Biblical license, indeed a religious
mandate, to destroy the Palestinian people."
VP Debate
Zack Beauchamp: [10-01]
The only moment from the VP debate that mattered: "Vance's
'damning non-answer' on the 2020 election exposed the true stakes
for democracy in 2024." I'm a bit chagrined that the one Vance lie
that Walz chose to push back hard on was the "fate of democracy."
It's not that I don't appreciate the threat, but to understand it,
you need some context. To borrow Grover Norquist's metaphor, the
program of the right since the 1970s -- cite Potter Stewart if you
like -- has been to shrink democracy "down to the size where we
can drown it in the bathtub." We've barely noticed the shrinkage,
but only started to panic now that we can identify Trump as the
one threatening to finish the job. So right, it matters, a lot
even, but it's a bit like waiting until a hurricane or flood or
fire to discover that something is screwy with the climate --
another comparable oops!
Gabriel Debenedetti: [10-02]
How Tim Walz saved himself: "At first, he looked overmatched by
JD Vance. Then came abortion, health care, and above all, January 6.
In a Times/Siena College poll last month, 55 percent of respondents
said Trump was respected by foreign leaders while 47 percent said
that of Harris.
The ad claims Harris is not tough enough to deal with China,
Russia, Iran or Hamas. It features actors playing Vladimir Putin,
Hamas fighters and a tea-sipping ayatollah watching videos of the
candidate who wants to be the first woman president. It ends with
four clips of Kamala dancing -- a lot better than Trump does --
and a clip of Trump walking on a tarmac with a military officer
and a Secret Service agent. The tag line is: "America doesn't need
another TikTok performer. We need the strength that will protect
us."
Even though Trump lives in a miasma of self-pity and his businesses
often ended up in bankruptcy, somehow his fans mistake his swagger and
sneers for machismo. What a joke. Trump is the one who caves, a foreign
policy weakling and stooge of Putin. . . .
In a Trumpworld that thrives on mendacity, demonizing and dividing,
sympathy is weakness.
Debate watchers said, 48% to 35%, that Walz is more in touch than Vance
with the needs and problems of people like them, and by a similar margin,
48% to 39%, that Walz, rather than Vance, more closely shares their
vision for America.
M Gessen: [10-03]
The real loser of the VP debate: "It's our politics." And: "In
this audio essay, Gessen argues that when we put Trump and his acolytes
on the same platform as regular politicians and treat them equally,
'that normalization degrades our political life and degrades our
understanding of politics.'"
Andrew Prokop/Dylan Scott/Abdullah Fayyad/Christian Paz: [10-02]
3 winners and 2 losers from the Walz-Vance debate:
W: JD Vance's code switching abilities;
L: The narrative that Tim Walz is a media phenomenon;
W: Obamacare;
L: The moderators;
W: A surprising amount of decency. The bottom line is that Vance lied
outrageously (but smoothly) in his attempt to make Trump out as a
reasoned, skillful public servant, while Walz somewhat awkwardly
dialed his own criticism back. From point two:
It was not exactly a masterful showing, though. Walz seemed uncomfortable
in the format compared to the smooth-talking Vance, he didn't really seem
to have one overarching message that he kept returning to, and he often
missed opportunities to call out Vance's lies and misrepresentations.
On the moderators:
From the start, Norah O'Donnell and Margaret Brennan, the CBS news
moderators, made it clear they did not think it was their job to
keep the candidates grounded in reality. . . . The questions
themselves were either not probing enough or poorly framed.
Jeffrey St Clair: [10-04]
Notes from a phony campaign: the great un-debate: "This week's
vice-presidential debate, one of the most tedious and dull in US
history, was praised by the punditocracy for its civility. Is civility
in politics what we need when the current government is arming a
genocide and the rival campaign wants to arrest 15 million people
and deport them?" Also: "Why did Walz try to humanize a jerk who
claims Haitians are BBQing pets?"
Kelley Beaucar Vlahos: [10-01]
VP debate: preemptive strike on Iran now? "This was the only
foreign question of the night, which made it easier for everyone,
apparently." The question was horrible, even to suggest such a
thing. The obvious answer was: no, never, wars should be ended,
not started when there is any chance of avoiding one. The answers --
unlike John McCain's "bomb bomb bomb Iran" refrain -- at least were
evasive, but in failing to address the question, allowed it to hang
in the air, as if the idea is something a sane person might consider.
It wasn't, and should have been flagged as such.
Election notes:
Ed Kilgore: [10-07]
Harris and Trump are deploying party defectors very differently:
They may be calculating differently, but the dominant issue is the
same. Trump is using Gabbard and Kennedy as testimony that he's the
lesser world war threat, without him having to soften his tough guy
image. Harris, on the other hand, is attracting some Republicans
with extreme neocon credentials, like the Cheneys -- not primarily
to show that she's the hawk in the contest, but their support does
reassure the neocons that she's likely to stick with the conventional
wisdom on foreign policy (which is decidedly neocon, despite their
disastrous track record).
Kevin T Dugan: [10-04]
Trump Media has major new problems: "A whistleblower alleges that
CEO Devin Nunes is running the struggling Donald Trump-owned company
into the ground."
[10-05]
Vance says Trump shooting inevitable: "Speaking in the town where
Trump was nearly assassinated, Vance laid blame for the shooting on
Democrats."
David Daley: [10-04]
Two men have re-engineered the US electoral system in favor of
Republicans: "If the right strews constitutional chaos over
the certification of this presidential election, two people will
have cleared the path." Leonard Leo (who packed the Supreme Court)
and Chris Jankowski (who refined the art of gerrymandering).
I don't mean to pick on Margaret Sullivan. I think the fact that even
she can't find the words to explain what's so horrifying about this
suggests that maybe there aren't any words -- or to be more precise,
maybe there aren't words that can convey what's so horrifying about
this to people who've watched Trump for the past nine years and still
aren't horrified.
Calling a political opponent "mentally impaired" and "mentally
disabled" ought to be a very bad look for any candidate, and it should
be self-evidently bad for reasons Joe Scarborough noted this morning:
"If [Harris] were so quote stupid, if she were so quote mentally
impaired, if she were quote so mentally disabled, why did she destroy
him in a debate for 90 minutes, humiliate him, and beat him so badly
that he refuses to even debate her on Fox News?"
"That's question number one," he continued. "And if she's had this
mental condition from birth, then why did he give her thousands of
dollars in 2014 for her political campaign when she was running for
the United States Senate?"
But it's unsuitable language for any candidate to use -- except it
isn't anymore, because talk radio and Fox News coarsened the political
culture, in lockstep with Republican politicians from Newt Gingrich on,
and now there's a large percentage of the voting population for whom
there's nothing a Republican can say that will lead to a
withdrawal of support, except perhaps a kind word about a Democrat. . . .
Trump can't be discredited any more than he already has been. Our
only recourse is a large turnout by people who are neither impressed
by his rhetoric nor numbed by it.
If you're Vance, the only reason you agree to take Trump on as a client
is the hope that he will pay your seven-figure fees before you, yourself,
end up in jail.
Alas, as the history of broken dreams isn't one of the subjects
taught at Yale Law School, Vance seems to be missing the point that
most of his predecessors -- Michael Cohen, Sidney Powell, Kenneth
Cheseboro, Jenna Ellis, Rudy Giuliana, John Eastman, Jeffrey Clark,
and Alina Habba (to list only a few Trump attorneys who are drifting
up the river) -- never got paid and will probably end up in jail long
before Trump himself is fitted with an oversized orange necktie.
Nicholas Wu/Madison Fernandez: [10-04]
House Democrats' new bogeyman: Project 2025: "The party is making
a concerted effort to go on the attack using the controversial set of
conservative policy proposals." It's about time. Similar plots have
been circulating for decades, but this year's edition exposes the
threats exceptionally tangible form. Moreover, it's never been easier
to imagine Republican apparatchiki blindly following whatever master
plan they're given. Project 2025 makes clear and comprehensible how
pervasive rotten ideas are throughout the Republican Party.
Jonathan Chait: [10-03]
Kamala Harris is right to get endorsements from bad Republicans:
Like Dick Cheney and Alberto Gonzales. Of course, Chait loves this
because it gives him another excuse to take digs at Sanders and AOC,
who also, like Chait, support Harris. Different people have different
reasons for who they vote for, and these particulars aren't totally
deluded in thinking a public announcement might help, and probably
won't hurt. What bothers me is the suggestion that they see Harris
as more in tune with their neocon warmongering legacy, and that
their endorsements can be taken as evidence that Harris is more
war-prone than Trump.
Michael Kruse: [10-04]
The woman who made Kamala Harris -- and modern America: "Shyamala
Gopalan's immigrant story explains the roots of a multiethnic society
that has defined the country in the 21st century -- and also become a
political flashpoint."
Elie Honig: [10-03]
Jack Smith's October Surprise: That's the title on the index
page. The title on the page itself is "Jack Smith's October cheap
shot." Honig's complaining that Smith's "proactive filing" was too
long, disclosing many more details of his case than was necessary,
and that filing it ahead of the election was "prejudicial." Honig
goes to great lengths here to parade his disapproval. In charging
Smith with playing politics to get at Trump, he never considers
the possibility that politics is what has kept this case from
going to trial, and that the only way to break that logjam might
be to do what Smith has done, and remind the public what evidence
says, and why it is all the more relevant before the election.
The way the court system is rigged, it's unlikely that Trump will
ever "face justice," at least on federal charges, but the people
deserve to know what he did, before they risk giving him the
chance to do it again.
Li Zhou: [09-26]
The Eric Adams indictment, explained: "Fancy plane tickets, donations,
and political favors: what to know about the charges." I hadn't noted
the New York City mayor, which seems like the sort of run-of-the-mill
corruption that occasionally traps unwary Democrats, yet Republicans --
despite being ideologically committed to furthering corruption -- are
rarely held accountable for. That plus it's a local issue, but in a
locale that generates a lot of political media, so we're getting
a cluster of stories.
Jeffery C Mays/Stefanos Chen: [10-05]
Big business saw an ally in Eric Adams, and overlooked his issues:
"New York's business community threw its support behind Adams, and
continued backing him even as his legal problems began to threaten
the governance of the city."
Intelligencer Staff: [10-07]
Hurricane Milton intensifies to category 5, Florida prepares: live
updates. The storm formed in a hot spot in the Gulf of Mexico,
heading northeast. Projection is that it will hit Tampa, with 175
mph winds and a 15-foot storm surge, on Wednesday, cross Florida,
and continue heading east into the Atlantic. More Milton:
Li Zhou: [10-03]
Get used to more absurdly hot Octobers: "This year's unrelenting
heat, explained." Last few days here in Wichita have been in the
mid-90s, which is what I expect for first two weeks of September,
but hard to remember anything this hot this late in the year.
Dylan Scott: [10-02]
Why is US health care like this? "America unintentionally built
a health care system that is hard to fix." Short article, but covers
the basics. It's not a system. It wasn't designed. It was created
as opportunities to profit were relentlessly exploited, resulting
in various gaps and inequities, which have been partly compensated
for with a patchwork of fixes designed mostly to preserve previous
profit centers. And each of those profit centers has its own lobby,
which is to say clout within the American political "system."
Mark Mazzetti/Adam Entous: [10-05]
Behind Trump's views on Ukraine: Putin's gambit and a political
grudge: "The roots of Donald Trump's animus toward Ukraine --
an issue with profound consequences should he be elected again --
can be found in a yearlong series of events spanning 2016 and
2017."
Constant Méheut: [10-05]
Ukraine's Donbas strategy: Retreat slowly and maximize Russia's
losses: "The idea is to use rope-a-dope tactics, letting Russian
forces pound away until they have exhausted themselves. It's far
from clear if the Ukrainian strategy will succeed." Maybe that's
because "rope-a-dope" is a strategy that favors the one with the
greater reserves of strength, which isn't Ukraine.
Elsewhere in the world and/or/in spite of America's empire:
Richard Slotkin: [10-05]
To understand Trump vs. Harris, you must know these American myths:
The author has mapped out the entire history of American mythmaking
in his book
A Great Disorder: National Myth and the Struggle for America,
so applying his methodology to one more election is pretty easy.
I've read his book, and previously cited various reviews. I've
long placed great importance on the notion of myth -- paradigmatic
stories that are widely believed, transcending fact and fiction --
so I'm very used to this form of critique. Still, there is a risk
that his categories have become too pat, and forcing new facts to
fit them tends to lose your grip on anything new. For instance, it's
easy enough to see Trump playing off the "lost cause playbook," but
those of us who grew up in what was still the Jim Crow era should
be struck by how much weirder it seems this time around. On the
other hand, when Democrats (like Obama/Clinton) embrace "American
exceptionalism," they look naive and foolish, and easily loose
track of the reforms they understand we need.
Jennifer Szalai: [09-29]
Ta-Nehisi Coates returns to the political fray, calling out
injustice:
"The
Message marks his re-entry as a public intellectual determined
to wield his moral authority, especially regarding Israel and the
occupied territories." More on the book below, but first a good
introduction is a bit of
CBS Mornings interview with Coates. A quick sampling of reviews.
(I have a copy of the book, but haven't cracked it open yet.)
Jay Caspian Kang: [10-04]
Why Ta-Nehisi Coates writes: "In The Message, Coates urges
young writers to aspire to 'nothing less than doing their part to
save the world,' but his latest work reveals the limits of his own
advice."
Peter Beinart: [10-01]
this first question: would you support a preemptive strike on Iran
rather than how would you stop this regional war pretty much encapsulates
what is wrong with US media coverage of this conflict
Local tags (these can be linked to directly):
music.
Original count: 131 links, 7251 words (9735) total).
Too many distractions this past week to spend any serious time
listening to new music. I wouldn't be surprised if I come up with
even less next week, although things should settle down shortly
thereafter.
Again I took an extra day for
Speaking
of Which, mostly because that's how I set the file up. I expected
it to be similarly abbreviated, but I wound up with 171 links, 10275
words -- nowhere near record length, but pretty substantial, with
lots of interesting stuff.
Then I rushed this out on the same day, to keep it within September.
I may update this (and/or Speaking of Which) on Tuesday, but really
need to be working on something else.
PS [10-01]: I rushed this post out late last night, to
squeeze it into September, which mostly mattered because I didn't
want to take the extra time to dig out this week's paltry offering
and replant it in the now extant but empty
October Streamnotes
file. In the clear light of morning -- something I prefer to sleep
through, but once again failed today -- I can add a few more words.
It takes me a while to get going these days, so this is prime time
for collecting my thoughts.
When I do get moving, my main task today will be to work on the
small (12x12) second bedroom upstairs, and its adjacent L-shaped
closet. The house was built in 1920, which means the walls and
ceilings were plaster on lathe. When we bought the house, in 1999,
the room had ugly wallpaper and the ceiling was painted with a
glittery popcorn finish. The closet was also wallpapered, with a
pattern simulating wood. We hated all those things, but lived with
them. I built a bookcase that covered the entire west wall, except
for the closet door. I built another bookcase I situated on the
east wall, just north of the big window. The other side of the
window had a standalone bookcase, as did the north wall next to
the east corner. The rest of the north wall, underneath its own
big window, was occupied by a futon, usable as a spare bed, on a
crude platform I had built. Laura's desk was up against the south
wall.
A few years after we arrived, I noticed a crack in the ceiling,
near the southwest corner, extending from the entry door out about
three feet. I watched that crack grow over twenty-some years. A few
months ago, some of the plaster had detached and lowered an inch or
two, making its collapse inevitable. I started thinking about ways
to push it back up and/or patch it over, but did nothing before it
did collapse. I started looking for help to repair it, and finally
found some.
Finding more cracks in the same ceiling, we decided to recover
the whole ceiling with a new layer of 3/8-inch plaster board. We --
meaning our money and their labor, but I wasn't exctly a passive
bystander -- did that last week. To prep, we had to move everything
out of the room. For good measure, I also had them steam off the
wallpaper, so I could paint the walls, and I cleared out the closet.
Some years ago, I figured the walls weren't worth the trouble of
repairing, so could be covered up with paneling. I bought several
sheets, stored in the garage wood pile for an opportune time, such
as now.
Riverside Handyman did the ceiling, including a quick paint, and
took down the room wallpaper. I used his steamer to work on the
closet, where the walls proved to be as bad as anticipated. That
leaves me with the task of finishing the painting, fixing up the
closet, and moving everything back so we can reduce the upstairs
clutter to normal levels. Big push today (and probably tomorrow,
and possibly longer) will be to sand and prep the bedroom walls,
caulk the window frames, and mask them off for painting. But also
I need to finish prepping the walls and ceiling in the closet --
the latter has a big hole, which used to provide attic access, to
fill in and level. The walls mostly need a rough mud job, filling
in cracks, corners, and some large missing chunks, but it won't
need much sanding, as it will all be covered with paneling.
Aside from impatience, I have another deadline, which is that
my brother, his wife, and their daughter are coming for a visit,
arriving late Wednesday. They won't be needing the bedroom, and
chances are I can put them to work on various projects -- not just
this one, as I have more lined up -- but one point of the trip is
a separate project, which is to finally sort through the stuffed
attic of our ancestral family home on South Main Street.
My parents bought that small house in 1950, a few months before
I was born, and lived their until they died, in a three-month span
of 2000. They both grew up on farms -- my mother in the Arkansas
Ozarks, my father in the Kansas Dust Bowl -- and through the Great
Depression, moving to Wichita in the 1940s for war work. They were
resourceful and self-sufficient, which among much more meant that
they kept a lot of stuff. My father's "super-power" was his knack
for packing things to maximize use of space -- I'm pretty good at
that myself, but not nearly as good as he was at remembering what
he had and where it was.
After they died, we cleared out some obvious stuff, but left
most of it for my brother, who moved into the house, and added
his own stash. When his work took him to Washington, my sister --
who had inherited the deed -- moved in with her grown son (and
her own stash), who still lives there, after she died in 2018.
While the attic has been plundered several times over the years --
that "wall of books" in the bedroom I'm working on mostly date
from my purchases from before I left home in 1972 (or 1975) --
one harbors the suspicion that there are still precious memories
(probably just junk to others, as antique treasures aren't very
likely) buried in deep nooks and crannies.
So the plan is to gather some younger folk willing and able
to do the spelunking to drag everything out, so we can sort it
all out into the obvious categories (trash, recycle, desired by
one of us, or deferred/repacked). They're figuring two days,
which strikes me as optimistic, but not inconceivable. I think
part of the operation should be to catalog everything (except
the rankest trash) into a spreadsheet for future reference --
especially everything that gets deferred. I could use some sort
of database of my own stuff, especially as I feel increasing
need to unburden.
I'm not sure of the schedule for all of this. My niece is just
budgeting enough time for the housecleaning, but my brother may
be able to stay a bit longer. However long that is, I will mostly
be occupied with them, while letting my usual grind slide. Plenty
to do later, as we wrap up the year with another Francis Davis
Jazz Critics Poll. Obvious point from below is that the unheard
demo queue has grown considerably. And that doesn't count the
download offers waiting in a mail directory, if indeed I ever
get to them. (I did download the new Thumbscrew, but most just
get shunted aside.)
This week's King Sunny Adé albums were a side-effect of Brad
Luen's
Ten favorite African albums of 1974. I didn't manage to get to
the Adé albums on his list, because I started looking for gaps in my
own list,
especially as the 1974 albums Luen cites are late entries in
multi-volume series.
Breaking news today:
Iran launches about 180 ballistic missiles at Israel. Scroll
down and the previous headline reads: "Israel's recent airstrikes
destroyed half of Hezbollah's arsenal, U.S. and Israeli officials
say." As I've noted, Hezbollah's arsenal was always intended not
to attack Israel but to deter Israeli attack. Obviously, it was
never sufficient to do so, and even less so as Israel is amassing
tanks on the Lebanon border. I've never bought the argument -- so
often and readily repeated by American media -- that Hezbollah is
some kind of Iranian proxy, its strings pulled from Tehran, or that
Hezbollah has any aggressive intent against Israel beyond what it
sees as self-defense, or that Iran has any designs against Israel
beyond the self-defense of its co-religionists in the region. But
Israel's latest attacks on Lebanon are, as was undoubtedly their
intent, forcing Iran to fight back.
I am saddened by this, and do not approve, but it's time to
reiterate a point that I just made just
yesterday:
One thing that follows from this is that every violence from any
side is properly viewed as a consequence of Netanyahu's incitement
and perpetuation of this genocidal war.
I didn't write this up yesterday, but I did entertain the idea
of offering an extreme example: suppose Hezbollah has a nuclear
bomb, and could deliver it deep inside Israel, and explode it,
killing a hundred thousand or more Israelis (including quite a
few Palestinians), would that still be Netanyahu's fault. Yes,
it would. (It would also lead to a "why didn't you tell us?"
scene, like in Dr. Strangelove. And while it was a pretty
safe bet that Hezbollah had no nuclear capability, perhaps Israel
should have a think before "counterattacking" Iran in the same
way it went after Lebanon.)
One way you know that this is all Netanyahu's fault is because
he is the single person who could, even if just acting on a whim,
put an end to the entire war. He has that power. He should be held
responsible for it.
New records reviewed this week:
Manu Chao: Viva Tu (2024, Because Music):
French-born Spanish singer-songwriter, sings in both, English,
and several other languages; started group Mano Negra (1984-95),
six solo albums 1998-2008 (a couple personal favorites there),
returns after a 16 year break (although he's released several
singles). First couple songs had me wondering, before he found
his old groove, and delighted to the end.
A- [sp]
Colin James: Chasing the Sun (2024, Stony Plain):
Canadian blues-rocker, eponymous debut 1988, early albums had a
retro-swing aspect -- especially those with his Little Big Band.
B [sp]
Lizz Wright: Shadow (2024, Blues & Greens):
Jazz singer, from Atlanta, started in a gospel group, eighth
album since 2003. Impressive voice, but limited appeal.
B+(*) [sp]
Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:
None.
Old music:
Sunny Ade & His Green Spot Band: The Master
Guitarist Vol. 1 (1970 [1983], African Songs): Nigerian
singer-guitarist, has produced many albums from 1967 on, came
to world attention in 1982 when Mango released his Juju
Music, some of his earlier work later issued by Shanchie
(The Best of the Classic Years and Gems From the
Classic Years (1967-1974). I still recommend those (the
former I have at A+, as does Christgau), but streaming offers
other spots for toe-dipping, like this 6-or-10-song, 34:16
former LP (first "side" has five song titles mixed into one
track). Date info is spotty. I'm not sure I'll be able to make
fine distinctions among many similar albums, but this one is
superb.
A- [sp]
King Sunny Ade and His African Beats: The Message
(1981, Sunny Alade): Robert Christgau, in his dive into Adé's early
Nigerian albums (such as he could find), singled this one out as
the pick of the litter (while alluding to another one with orange
cover -- later identified as Eje Nlogba. Hard for me to be
sure, but this is certainly a contender.
A- [yt]
King Sunny Ade and His African Beats: Check 'E'
(1981, Sunny Alade): Another nice Nigerian album, feels a bit
slighter.
B+(***) [sp]
King Suny Ade & His African Beats: Juju Music of the
80's (1981, Sunny Alade): More seductive grooves.
B+(***) [sp]
King Suny Adé & His African Beats: Ajoo (1983,
Sunny Alade): Cover just shows the man with electric guitar, which
may be the focus, but the beats are complex, the groove sinuous,
and the vocals neatly woven in, whatever they mean. Not sure I've
heard it all -- first side for sure, and at least half of the
second, but I'm satisfied. [Reissued in US by Makossa.]
A- [yt]
King Sunny Ade & His African Beats: Bobby
(1983, Sunny Alade): With Juju Music released internationally
on Island, he continued releasing albums in Nigeria, with this one
of several (five?) before his second Island-released album, 1984's
Synchro System. This one is relatively subdued, although
seductively so.
B+(***) [sp]
King Sunny Ade: E Dide/Get Up (1992 [1995], Mesa):
Island dropped him after Aura (1984), as best I recall due
to the expense of touring with his big band. He kept up recording,
with this one of the few albums to get much notice outside Africa.
B+(***) [sp]
Batsumi: Batsumi (1974 [2011], Matsuli Music):
South African jazz-fusion group founded in Soweto, South Africa
in 1972. Some typical township jive riffs, attractive as ever,
with other things, including vocals, that don't have quite the
same appeal.
B+(*) [sp]
Moldy Goldies: Colonel Jubilation B. Johnston and His
Mystic Knights Band and Street Singers Attack the Hits
(1966, Columbia): One-shot album by Bob Johnston (1932-2015),
started c. 1956 as a songwriter (as were his grandmother and
mother), recorded a couple rockabilly singles, but made his mark
as a producer, scoring a hit for Timi Yuro in 1962, working for
Kapp and Dot, and moving on to Columbia in 1965, which assigned
him to produce Bob Dylan (through New Morning), Simon &
Garfunkel, Johnny Cash, Marty Robbins, Flatt & Scruggs, Burl
Ives, and Leonard Cohen, before going independent c. 1970 ("most
successfully with Lindisfarne on Fog on the Tyne" -- so not
so famous, but probably beat his Columbia salary). This, as I said,
was a one-shot project, artist name folded into the subtitle (and
compressed above), the credited musicians aliased (although most
appear to have been obscure studio musicians). The eleven songs
were all big hits from the previous year, things I still remember
well from AM radio at the time, although if you're even a few years
younger you may have missed more than a few. They were "goldies"
by RIAA calculation, rendered instantly moldy by mock-skiffle
arrangements and brass band, but 58 years later they've aged into
postmodern classics. Compares well to Peter Stampfel's 20th
Century in 100 Songs, except focused on a year that really
holds up to the treatment. Of course, some people won't get the
joke (although probably fewer now than then). Nadir is "Secret
Agent Man" followed by "(You're My) Soul and Inspiration." If
you're down with them, you'll love the rest.
A- [sp]
Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
Nick Adema: Urban Chaos (ZenneZ) [10-04]
Jason Anick/Jason Yeager: Sanctuary (Sunnyside) [10-11]
Andy Baker: From Here, From There (Calligram) [10-04]
T.K. Blue: Planet Bluu (Jaja) [10-25]
John Chin/Jeong Lim Yang/Jon Gruk Kim: Journey of Han (Jinsy Music) [09-27]
Forq: Big Party (GroundUP) [09-13]
Satoko Fujii Quartet: Dog Days of Summer (Libra) [09-13]
Keefe Jackson/Raoul van der Weide/Frank Rosaly: Live at de Tanker (Kettle Hole) [08-04]
Darius Jones: Legend of e'Boi (The Hypervigilant Eye) [10-04]
Brian Lynch: 7X7BY7 (Holistic MusicWorks) [10-25]
Mark Masters Ensemble: Sui Generis (Capri) [10-04]
Mavis Pan: Rising (self-released) [10-04]
Jason Robinson: Ancestral Numbers II (Playscape) [10-08]
Brandon Seabrook: Object of Unknown Function (Pyroclastic) [10-18]
Tyshawn Sorey Trio: The Suspectible Now (Pi) [10-11]
As expected, I've had very little time to work on this all week.
The idea of starting each week's post with an evolving executive
summary will have to wait until next week, at the earliest.
Trying to wrap this up Monday afternoon, but I soon have to take
a break to buy some lumber and tools, and I should spend most of
the day working on the upstairs room (having wasted my weekend on
what should have been a simple wiring job, and, well, much of the
bulk below. I probably won't post this until late, so I'll likely
find more, but in lieu of trying to summarize my main points, let
me just emphasize two:
I've tried very hard for very long to be as understanding as
possible to Israelis, even though I never embraced the nationalist
movement that founded and led the "Jewish State" (never mind the
crypto-religious settler cult that currently holds sway over it).
Nor have I been reluctant to criticize when I've sensed similar
(correlative?) movements among Palestinians, even when I saw in
them reflections of the dominant Israeli trends. I believe that
people of all sides deserve human rights, and I'm sympathetic to
those who are denied them, regardless of whose fault that might
be (even when the fault is one's own). However, at this point
Israel alone -- by which I mean the current governing coalition
and all those who support them (not all Israelis, but most; not
most Americans, but some) -- bear exclusive responsibility for
all pain and suffering in the region, even their own. One thing
that follows from this is that every violence from any side is
properly viewed as a consequence of Netanyahu's incitement and
perpetuation of this genocidal war. Just for the record, I don't
approve of Hamas or Hezbollah violence any more than I approve
of Israeli violence, but I understand that when Israel acts as
it has been doing, human nature will respond in kind. Israel
alone has the power to end this conflict. That they refuse to
pay even the minimal rights of according Palestinians a right
to live in peace and dignity puts this all on them.
I have very little new to say about the US elections.
Trump, Vance, and virtually every other Republican have proven
to be even more boorish and benighted than previously imagined.
Honest and decent American voters have to stop them, which means
electing Democrats, regardless of their flaws. I will continue
to note some of these flaws, but none of them can possibly alter
the prime directive, which is to stop the Republicans. To that
end, I will continue to note pieces that expose their failures
and that heap derision on them, but I don't see that doing so
here makes much difference. I, and probably you, know enough
already. Aside from voting, which is the least one can and
should do, I wouldn't mind tuning out until November, when we
can wake up and assess the damages.
I could write much more about each of these two points, but
not now.
Top story threads:
Israel: Israel dramatically expanded its
genocidal war into Lebanon this week, which warrants yet another
section, below
Mondoweiss:
[09-23]
Day 353: Israel launches bombing campaign on Lebanon as Hezbollah
retaliates: "Israel's intensifying bombardment of Lebanon has
killed at least 274 people so far, while Hezbollah retaliates with
rockets across Israel. The Israeli army also raided and forcibly
shut down the Ramallah office of Al Jazeera."
[09-26]
Israel's Genocide Day 356: Netanyahu denies accepting US-French
ceasefire proposal with Lebanon: "As Israel expands bombing
in Lebanon, Hezbollah rockets have reached reached Akka, Haifa,
Tiberias, and the lower Galilee. Meanwhile, in Gaza, Israel
returned a truckload of decomposing bodies without identification
that it had abducted from Gaza." First thing to note here is that
they've changed the headline here: all previous entry titles
started with 'Operation al-Aqsa Flood' (their quotes)
before "Day." I've always dropped that part, as I found it both
unnecessary and unhelpful: "Operation al-Aqsa Flood" lasted at
most four days; everything since then, as well as most of those
first four days, has been Israel's doing -- and I wasn't about
to impose Israel's own declaration ("Operation Swords of Iron,"
which in itself says much about Israeli mentality). I'm not going
to repeat the new title either (beyond this one instance), but
I do consider it truthful, and have since about one week into
the operation, by which time it was clear what Netanyahu had in
mind (look back for quotes about Amalek; e.g.: Noah Lanard:
[2023-11-03]
The dangerous history behind Netanyahu's Amalek rhetoric: "His
recent biblical reference has long been used by the Israeli far right
to justify killing Palestinians").
Ahmed Abu Abdu: [09-25]
Waste is piling up in Gaza. The public health implications are
disastrous. "I am in charge of waste management in Gaza City.
The Israeli occupation has launched a war on our sanitation
facilities and waste management systems, creating an environmental
and health crisis that will take years to recover from."
B'Tselem:
The pogroms are working - the transfer is already happening:
This is mostly a report on events in the West Bank prior to the
Oct. 7 Gaza revolt, after which settler violence in the West Bank --
"in the past two yeras, at least six West Bank communities have
been displaced" -- only increased.
For decades, Israel has employed a slew of measures designed to
make life in dozens of Palestinian communities throughout the West
Bank miserable. This is part of an attempt to force residents of
these communities to uproot themselves, seemingly of their own
accord. Once that is achieved, the state can realize its goal of
taking over the land. To advance this objective, Israel forbids
members of these communities from building homes, agricultural
structures or public buildings. It does not allow them to connect
to the water and power grids or build roads, and when they do, as
they have no other choice, Israel threatens demolition, often
delivering on these threats.
Settler violence is another tool Israel employs to further
torment Palestinians living in these communities. Such attacks
have grown significantly worse under the current government,
turning life in some places into an unending nightmare and
denying residents any possibility of living with even minimal
dignity. The violence has robbed Palestinian residents of their
ability to continue earning a living. It has terrorized them to
the point of fearing for their lives and made them internalize
the understanding that there is no one to protect them.
This reality has left these communities with no other choice,
and several of them have uprooted themselves, leaving hearth and
home for safer places. Dozens of communities scattered throughout
the West Bank live in similar conditions. If Israel continues this
policy, their residents may also be displaced, freeing Israel to
achieve its goal and take over their land.
Tareq S Hajjaj: [09-26]
In Gaza, all eyes are on Lebanon: "People in Gaza hoped that
an expansion of the Lebanese front would ease pressure on Gaza.
Instead, Israel has escalated its massacres while global attention
is elsewhere. They still hope the resistance in Lebanon will make
Israel pay."
Erika Solomon/Lauren Leatherby/Aric Toler: [09-25]
Israeli bulldozers flatten mile after mile in the West Bank:
"Videos from Tulkarm and Jenin show bulldozers destroying
infrastructure and businesses, as well as soldiers impeding
local emergency responders."
Israel targets Lebanon:
Following last
week's stochastic terrorist exercise -- detonating thousands of
booby-trapped pages and walkie-talkies -- Israel escalated its
bombing of Lebanon, Israel targeting and killed senior Hezbollah
leadership, including long-time leader Hasan Nasrallah. In many
quarters, this will be touted as a huge success for Netanyahu in
his campaign to exterminate all of Israel's enemies, but right
now the longer-term consequences of fallout and blowback are
incalculable and probably even unimaginable. We should be clear
that Hezbollah did not provoke these attacks, even in response
to Israel's genocide in Gaza.
(In 2006, Hezbollah, which had
been formed in opposition to Israel's 1982-2000 occupation of
southern Lebanon, did act against Israel, as a diversion after
Israel launched its first punitive siege of Gaza. Israel shifted
attention to Lebanon, and conducted a horrific bombing campaign,
as well as an unsuccessful ground incursion.)
Rather, Israel has
repeatedly provoked Hezbollah -- which has tried to deter further
attacks by demonstrating their ability to fire rockets deep into
Israel, a strategy I regard as foolish ("deterrence" only deters
people who weren't going to attack you in the first place; it
works for Israel against its hapless neighbors, but when others
try it, it just provokes greater arrogance and aggression by
Israel). As I've stressed all along, Israel's expansion of the
war into Lebanon serves two purposes: to provide "fog of war"
cover for continuing the genocide in Gaza, and expanding it into
the West Bank; and to lock reflexive US support in place, which
is tied to the supposedly greater regional threat of Iran. The US
could short-circuit this war by denouncing Israel's aggression, by
demanding an immediate cease-fire, and by negotiating a separate
peace and normalization with Iran (which Iran has long signalled
a desire for). Instead, the Biden administration continues to let
Netanyahu pull its strings.
Note that I haven't tried to subdivide these links, but events
unfolded quickly, so dates may be significant.
I may be exaggerating at some level, but those are the contours
of how Israel viewed October 7. Not because it was really an
existential risk. We already saw that in only two or four days,
Israel was able to regain the Gaza envelope and the settlements
surrounding Gaza. But on the level of the psyche, that's how it
felt for most Israelis. So they want to regain the initiative.
They saw October 7 as an opportunity to exact a price from
everybody in the region who supports resistance. They want to
destroy societies that are challenging them, whether in Gaza,
Lebanon, or other places.
The real desire is for an ultimate form of victory, this kind
of awe-inspiring victory that will give them an answer to their
existential questions.
I think that on some level, the Israelis won the war, they won
the victory. They want to create these awe-inspiring moments, like
we saw with the pager and walkie-talkie attacks, which they have
severely missed in contrast to how they were caught with their
pants down on October 7.
October 7 was a moment that not only stuck in the Israeli psyche,
but the Palestinian psyche as well. Israel's genocide in Gaza inspired
shock and horror, but didn't inspire a lot of awe. It didn't give
Israelis the taste of power that Israeli identity was built on. But
with Hezbollah, we've seen this awe factor come back, like the
penetration of the communication devices and blowing them all up at
once. This includes some of the operations that Israel has conducted
in Gaza, like the extraction of some Israeli prisoners held by the
Palestinian resistance.
That's on a level of, if you want, psychological and aesthetic
analysis. But on a political level, Israel finds this as an opportunity.
It's already way deep into a war for 11 months, a war that is costing it
a lot economically, socially, politically, and diplomatically. It sees
that only more war will bring about better results in those domains.
It will be able to establish what it calls deterrence. It will be
able to put a line in the sand and say, if you ever challenge us again,
this is what will happen to you. It will burn into the consciousness of
the people of the region that Israel shouldn't be played with. All of
these motivations coexist all at once in Israel's conduct -- and of
course, for the settlers specifically.
The only ones who have a real solution for this whole Palestinian
question, instead of managing the conflict or shrinking the conflict
or destroying the possibilities for two states or one state, are
the settlers who say that we should change the paradigm with the
Palestinians. They say, we should destroy Palestinian existence in
the land of Palestine.
So for the settlers, the "ultimate victory" is to get rid of as
many Palestinians as possible from the river to the sea, including
Palestinian citizens of Israel, and establish the kind of pure
religious Jewish state that they have always dreamed of. For them,
war is desirable. It maintains the possibility for ethnic cleansing,
it maintains the possibility for genocide. It means it still keeps
the possibility of total victory open. Of course, even in their
wildest dreams, even if they clear out all of the Palestinians
from Palestine, I think the Palestinian question will not go away.
I don't have time to ruminate on this right now, but there is
a lot to unpack here.
Ken Klippenstein: [09-23]
Beep, beep! "Israel's pager caper is a Wile E. Coyote vs. Road
Runner exercise in futility."
This is the less cinematic but no less depressing reality of the
pager attack: it is just another version of the latest weapon in
the never changing battlefield, one typified by these kinds of
tit-for-tat attacks that never bring about a decisive ending or
a new beginning.
Before long, other countries and terrorist groups will buy or
develop their own Acme Exploding Pagers, as Panetta hinted. The
media's uncritically declaring Israel's latest caper a success
creates an incentive for countries to do just that. Absent an
honest assessment, hands will again be wrung, chins scratched,
ominous warnings issued, and beep, beep! -- perpetual war will
zip right on by.
And of course when Hezbollah or some other group attacks our
devices, the national security state will happily label it terrorism.
[09-28]
Hezbollah confirms the death of Hasan Nasrallah in Israeli
carpet-bombing: "Considered an icon of resistance against Israel
and one of the most influential political figures in the Arab world,
Hasan Nasrallah was killed by a massive Israeli airstrike that
leveled an entire residential block in Beirut's Dahiya district."
Liz Sly: [09-29]
Nasrallah's assassination shreds illusion of Hezbollah's military
might. What military might? In 2006, Hezbollah was effective at
repelling an Israeli ground incursion, which wasn't all that serious
in the first place. But Hezbollah has no air force, no effective
anti-aircraft defense, no tanks, few if any drones, a few small
missiles that while more sophisticated than anything Hamas had in
Gaza have never been able to inflict any serious damage. Sure, they
talk a foolish game of deterrence, but no one in Israel takes their
threat seriously.
David E Sanger: [09-23]
Biden works against the clock as violence escalates in the Middle
East: "President Biden is beginning to acknowledge that he is
simply running out of time to help forge a cease-fire and hostage
deal with Hamas, his aides say. And the risk of a wider war has
never looked greater." It's hard to make things happen when you
don't have the will to exercise your power. Still, it's pretty
pathetic to think that a sitting US president needs more than four
months to demand something as simple and straightforward as a
cease-fire. (The hostage exchange is an unnecessary complication.)
While I'm sure there are limits to presidential power, the problem
here appears to be that Biden and his administration don't have
the faintest understanding of what needs to be done. Nor do they
seem to care.
[Netanyahu] has a vested interest in prolonging the war for his
political survival and in making it an election issue that could
potentially harm Vice President Kamala Harris. It seems that the
US finally and very belatedly realized it last week, which is why,
however unfortunate, there is little the US will do until the
election, unless it's forced to act in the case of a major escalation.
[09-27]
Netanyahu defends Gaza and Lebanon attacks in UN speech:
"Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the United Nations on Friday, vowing
to continue waging war on Gaza and Lebanon. Israeli media reports
the Israeli Prime Minister ordered massive strikes on Beirut just
before giving the speech."
Tara Copp: [09-23]
US sends more troops to Middle East as violence rises between Israel
and Hezbollah: I've been saying all along that Israel's attacks
on Lebanon (aka Hezbollah) are designed to trap the US into a role
of shielding Israel from Iran. The thinking is that if the US and
Iran go to war, the US will become more dependent on Israel, and
more indulgent in their main focus, which is making Gaza and the
West Bank uninhabitable for Palestinians. US troop movement prove
that the strategy is working, even though it's pretty obviously
cynical and deranged.
Fawaz A Gerges: [09-30]
The rising risk of a new forever war: Title from jump page: "The
United States has not been a true friend of Israel." This is the
relevant paragraph:
Nevertheless, it is the only way forward. Israel's hubris in its
attacks on Lebanon has been enabled by America's "ironclad" military
support and diplomatic cover for its ally. In this regard, the United
States has not been a true friend to Israel. Israel will not know
lasting peace until it recognizes that its long-term security depends
on reconciliation with the millions of Palestinians in Gaza, the West
Bank and East Jerusalem. Its leaders must find a political compromise
that will finally allow Israel to be fully integrated into the region.
Top-down normalization with Arab autocrats is not enough.
[09-20]
A broader Israel-Lebanon war now seems inevitable: "This week's
pager explosions in Lebanon represent a tactical victory for Israel.
They also appear to lock the region into an escalatory spiral." I
thought that tactics were meant to facilitate strategy, but it's
hard to discern either in such massive, indiscriminate mayhem.
Unless the strategy is to convince the world that Israelis are
insane as well as evil, in which case, sure, they're making their
point.
[09-23]
World leaders gather at a UN desperate to save itself: "Ongoing
crises in Sudan, Gaza and Ukraine have underscores the inefficacy
of the world's foremost decision-making body. Great power competition
may be to blame." You think? The UN has no power to enforce judgments,
so the only way it can function is as a forum for negotiation, and
that only works if all parties are amenable. There is nothing the UN
can do about a nation like Israel that is flagrantly in contempt of
international law. In many ways, the US is even more of a rogue force
on the international scene. America's disregard for other nations has
pushed other countries into defensive stances, further disabling the
UN. Now it's just a big gripe session, as the speeches by Netanyahu
and Biden made abundantly clear.
[09-27]
At the UN, overwhelming anger at Israel: "At the United Nations,
world leaders cast Israel's heavy-handed campaigns in Gaza and the
inability of the UN system to rein it as a danger to the institution
itself."
Kyle Anzalone: [09-27]
Israel is fighting a war on seven fronts: "The Israeli leader
called the UN General Assembly a 'swamp of antisemitic bile'.
The UN published a
statement summary of Netanyahu's speech. Two fairly obvious
points here: (1) most leaders would seek to divide and diminish
their enemies, but Netanyahu conflates and aggrandizes them, to
make them look more ominous to Israel's patrons in America, to
keep them in line; (2) relentlessly conflating any criticism of
Israel's apartheid and genocide with anti-semitism is a sure-fire
way to promote generic Judeophobia.
Craig Mokhiber: [09-28]
How Israel attempts to justify indiscriminate attacks on civilians
(and why it's failing): "Israel's mass terror attack in Lebanon that
led to the death and maiming of hundreds of civilians also served as
a playbook for how Israel seeks to justify its war crimes. But as
the attack's aftermath showed, these tricks are beginning to fail."
This is a big and important subject, including "collateral damage
defense," "magic-word defense," all sorts of canards, many of which
inadvertently expose underlying prejudices.
But calling someone a "terrorist" or saying that they are affiliated
with a group that you dislike or consider to be terrorist, is not a
legal argument. At the very heart of international humanitarian law
is the distinction between combatants and non-combatants.
Superimposing another label on top of a civilian population that
you do not like does not make them legitimate targets.
Indeed, even attempting to re-label combatants in this way does
not relieve Israel of its obligations under international humanitarian
and human rights law. Unlawful weapons and tactics remain unlawful,
regardless of the labels the attackers apply to their targets.
James North: [09-25]
CNN's dishonest duo, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, strike again:
"The latest dishonesty from CNN's Biased Duo, Jake Tapper and Dana
Bash, about Rashida Tlaib prompted an intense critical reaction.
The solution? CNN should ban them from reporting on Palestine."
[09-27]
Biden would rather defend Israeli impunity than stop a regional
war: "As Israel intensified its deadly attacks on Lebanon, the
US moved more troops to the Middle East. The move shows Joe Biden's
priority is not to avoid escalation but to ensure that Israel has
full impunity."
Derek Seidman: [09-29]
Using research to uncover campus complicity in genocide: "Across
the US, students organizing against Israel's assault on Gaza have made
essential use of power research, uncovering financial ties between the
Pentagon and campus labs and mapping out connections between university
trustees and the war machine."
Saad Shahriar: [09-28]
The German Left's complicity in the Palestinian genocide:
"While the German left passionately supports many international
causes but remains conspicuously silent on the ongoing genocide
of Palestinians, conveniently overlooking its own complicity in
Germany's military-industrial ties to Israel."
Kate Wagner: [07-09]
The awful plan to turn Gaza into the next Dubai: "The Netanyahu
administration seems to have learned from neighboring petrostates
that spectacle can distract from ethnic cleansing." I missed this
when it came out -- not long, just a few months ago -- but it's all
smoke and mirrors, so hardly matters. Reminds me, though, that it
wasn't all that long ago with Hamas (although I'm hard pressed to
find a suitable link).
On Truth Social, Donald Trump recently posted a special message to
American women. "WOMEN WILL BE HAPPY, HEALTHY, CONFIDENT AND FREE!"
he announced. "YOU WILL NO LONGER BE THINKING ABOUT ABORTION, BECAUSE
IT IS NOW WHERE IT ALWAYS HAD TO BE, WITH THE STATES." The first
sentence sounds like an Always commercial; the second is a bit more
pernicious. It is difficult to be "happy, healthy, confident and
free" as women
die from abortion bans in states such as Georgia. Nevertheless,
Trump is fond of his new pitch. At a
campaign event in Pennsylvania on Monday, he called himself a
"protector" of women, adding that ladies will no longer be "abandoned,
lonely, or scared." How wonderful. . . .
The rhetoric is characteristically authoritarian in the sense
that Trump admires strongmen and wishes to become one. He will thus
deliver further subjugation, not liberation. Not even his female
supporters will be safe from the anti-feminist backlash heralded
by his party. If it's dangerous to be pregnant in America, then
it's dangerous for anyone who can conceive; a doctor won't check
a patient's political views when he refuses to perform a D&C
under the threat of prosecution. That is the world that Trump's
supporters have signed up for; it is a world that social
conservatives have labored to create. . . .
We can review the facts, and
polling suggests that most of us are inclined to reject Trump
as our improbable protector. Trump is not capable of protecting
anyone, let alone women, from himself or from anyone else. He is
the wolf in the pasture, the threat in the dark. We can run, or
we can fight.
Not that long ago, endorsements like these would have been rebuffed]
by Democrats as valentines from warmongers.
I can't recall any such time, certainly not since Clinton picked
Gore as his VP in 1992 because both were Gulf War hawks, then Gore
picked the even more hawkish Lieberman as his VP in 2000. Obama kept
much of Bush's war cabinet on board after 2008, especially Gates, who
he later replaced with another Republican before finding an even worse
Democrat in Ash Carter. Hillary Clinton didn't shy away from Kagan
endorsements -- see Ben Norton: [2016-06-10]
Another neocon endorses Clinton, calling her "2016's real conservative"
and "the candidate of the status quo". Before Nixon and Reagan,
the party with the reputation for fighting wars was the Democrats
(Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman, Johnson).
Brett Wilkins: [09-25]
Trump condemned for 'genocidal' threat to destroy Iran: "Trump's
threat to blow Iran's largest cities and the country itself 'to
smithereens' is an outrageous threat that should be widely condemned,"
said the National Iranian American Council."
Chas Danner: [09-23]
Mark Robinson's campaign is imploding: Republican lieutenant
governor, campaigning for governor, and much in the news of late.
Also:
Political advocacy and charitable groups controlled by Leo now have
far more assets than the combined total cash on hand of the Republican
and Democratic National, Congressional and Senatorial committees:
$440.9 million.
Leo is a 58-year-old graduate of Cornell Law School, a Catholic
with ties to Opus Dei -- the most conservative "personal prelature"
in the church hierarchy -- chief strategist of the Federalist Society
for more than a quarter century and a crucial force behind the
confirmations of John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett
Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. He has emerged over the past five
years as the dominant fund-raiser on the right.
As Leo has risen to this pinnacle of influence, he has become
rich, profiting from the organizations he has created and from the
consulting fees paid by the conservative advocacy and lobbying
groups he funds.
James Carden: [09-25]
When odious foreign policy elites rally around Harris: "We
should take seriously those responsible for some of the bloodiest,
stupidest national security decisions in recent memory." Cheneys,
of course, and a few more mentioned, as well as reference to this:
Adam Jentleson: [09-28]
Kamala Harris said she owns a gun for a very strategic reason:
"She has been doing an effective job of vice signaling from the
left." First I've heard of "vice signaling," and this definition
doesn't help: "Vice signaling means courting healthy controversy
with the enforcers of orthodoxy -- the members of interest groups
who on many critical issues have let themselves off the hook for
accurately representing the views and interests of those they claim
to speak for." I have run across "virtue signaling" before, which
is a term used to deride views from the left as mere ploys to make
one seem more virtuous -- an implicit put-down of anyone who doesn't
agree. "Vice signaling" has the same intent, but opposes virtue by
embracing its opposite vice. Why these terms should exclusively be
directed against the left is counterintuitive -- throughout history,
"enforcers of orthodoxy" have nearly always come from the right,
where "holier than thou" is a common attitude, and snobbery not
just accepted but cultivated.
The actual examples given, like embracing fracking and threatening
to shoot a home invader, may help Harris break away from cartoon left
caricatures, and that cognitive dissonance may help her get a fresh
hearing. That may be part of her craft as a politician -- as a non-
or even anti-politician, I'm in no position to tell her how to do her
job. Nor do I particularly care about these specific cases. But I am
irritated when leftists who've merely thought problems through enough
to arrive at sound answers are dismissed as "enforcers of orthodoxy."
Padma Lakshmi: [09-21]
As a cook, here's what I see in Kamala Harris. There's a lot in
this piece I can relate to, put my own spin on, and imagine her spin
as not being all that different.
Talking about food is a way to relate to more Americans, even those
uninterested in her politics. We've all been eating since we were
babies, and we're experts on our own tastes. Talking about food paves
the way to harder conversations. Food removes barriers and unites us.
Ms. Harris evinces clear delight in cooking and in talking about
almost any type of food -- a passion that is core to who she is, like
basketball for Barack Obama or golf for Donald Trump.
She is omnivorous and a versatile cook.
That Obama and Trump would go for sports is in itself telling
(as is that Trump went for the solo sport, vs. a team sport for
Obama, one that requires awareness of other people and the ability
to make changes on the fly). I've only watched one of the videos
(so far, making dosa masala with Mindy Kaling, which was chatty
with less technique than I would have preferred -- I understand
the decision to use the premix batter, after at least one stab
at making it from scratch).
John Nichols: [09-20]
Kamala Harris is winning the Teamsters endorsements that really
matter: "The national leadership may have snubbed her -- but
Teamsters in the swing states that will decide the election are
backing her all the way." They all matter. Not clear whether the
non-endorsement was reaction to the DNC snub, which I never quite
understood. Still, the choice for labor is so overwhelming this
time the national leadership appears pretty out of touch.
Walz, Biden, and other Democrats:
Ethan Eblaghie: [09-26]
The Uncommitted Movement failed because it refused to punish
Democrats: "The Uncommitted movement failed to move the
Biden-Harris administration policy on Gaza because unaccountable
movement leaders were unwilling to punish Democrats for supporting
genocide." They failed, if that's the word you want to use, because
they didn't get the votes. I doubt this was due to lack of sympathy
for their issue: most rank-and-file Democrats (as opposed to party
politicians, who of necessity are preoccupied with fundraising)
support a cease-fire, and many are willing to back that up with
limits on military aid[*]; but they also see party unity as essential
to defeating Trump and the Republicans, and they see that as more
critical/urgent than mobilizing public opinion against genocide.
I can see both sides of this, but at this point the ticket and the
contest are set, so all you can do is to pick one. While I have
little positive to say about Harris on Israel, it's completely
clear to me that Trump would be even worse, and I can't think of
any respect in which he would be preferable to Harris. As for
punishing the Democrats -- even with third-party and not-voting
options -- don't be surprised if they never forgive you. So ask
yourself, do you really want to burn the bridge to the people
you're most likely to appeal to?
[*] Michael Arria, in a piece cited
above, has some polling:
Recent polls show vast support for an arms embargo on Israel among
Democratic voters.
A March 2024 Center for Economic and Policy Research
survey found that 52% of Americans wanted the U.S. to stop
weapons shipments. That included 62% of Democratic voters.
A June
survey then from CBS News/YouGov found that more than 60% of
voters should not send weapons or supplies to Israel. Almost 80%
of Democrats said the the U.S. shouldn't send weapons.
Jeffrey St Clair: [09-27]
The judicial murder of Marcellus Williams: "The State of Missouri
executed Marcellus 'Khalifah' Williams on Tuesday night despite knowing
he was
most likely innocent of the crime he was condemned for." Also:
"The State of Missouri plans to execute another innocent man,
Robert Roberson, on October 17."
Nia Prater: [09-30]
Videos show Helene's catastrophic toll in Southeast: "Multiple
states are contending with widespread damage and significant loss
of life following the landfall of Hurricane Helene, a Category 4
storm."
Sam Bull: [09-24]
Poll: Americans want Ukraine talks, conditions on aid to Israel:
"Yet they are split along party lines on a host of issues ahead of
the elections." Still, the numbers are very scattered, and it's
especially hard to credit the party trust figures.
Elsewhere in the world and/or/in spite of America's empire:
Other stories:
Obituaries:
Benny Golson:
Richard Williams: [09-25]
Benny Golson obituary: "Tenor saxophonist whose compositions
were valued for their harmonic challenge and melodic grace."
Fredric Jameson: A critic and philosopher,
I remember him fondly from my early Marxist period, which certainly
meant his books Marxism and Form: Twentieth Century Dialectical
Theories of Literature (1971), and possibly The Prison-House
of Language: A Critical Account of Structuralism and Russian Formalism
(1972), but I haven't followed him since. Turns out he's written much
more than I was aware of, especially many titles published by
Verso Books.
Terry Eagleton:
Fredric Jameson, 1934-2024: "reflects here on Jameson's humility,
generosity, and unrivalled erudition."
Jameson's work was both utopian and depressive, expansive in the
field of its analysis and trained almost entirely on culture rather
than politics. And he was rare among Marxist intellectuals in the
neoliberal era to have managed to speak firmly to the present day.
That is why his work affected so many. An entire strand of mainstream
political thought is unimaginable without the influence of Jameson's
fusion of hard cultural criticism, immense knowledge, refusal of
low/high cultural boundaries, and his endlessly ruminative, open-minded
dialectical curiosity, put in the service of a refusal ever to forgive
or downplay the horrors that capitalism has inflicted upon the world.
Jameson's Marxism was particularly tailored for our fallen era, a low
ebb of class struggle, an apparent triumph of a new and ever more
ruthless capitalism: "late", as he optimistically put it, borrowing
a phrase from the Belgian Trotskyist Ernest Mandel.
Also:
"The dialectic," wrote Jameson, "is not moral." In the sprawling
Valences of the Dialectic (2009), Jameson proposed "a new
institutional candidate for the function of Utopian allegory, and
that is the phenomenon called Wal-Mart". While conceding that the
actually existing Wal-Mart was "dystopian in the extreme", Jameson
was fascinated by its unsentimental destruction of small businesses,
its monopolistic mockery of the concept of a "free market", and its
immense, largely automated and computerised network of distribution
of cheap, abundant goods. Perhaps it was a step too far to extrapolate
from this -- as did Leigh Phillips and Michael Rozworski in their
2019 The People's Republic of Wal-Mart -- and portray the
megacorp as a prefiguring of communist distribution networks. But
what Jameson was up to, following Gramsci's and Lenin's fascination
with Fordism and Taylorism, was an attempt to uncover what the new
horrors of capitalism made possible. In the case of Wal-Mart, he
argued, the answer was: a computerised planned economy. Jameson was
a strict, 20th-century Marxist in remaining a firmly modernist thinker,
refusing to find any solace in imagined communal or pre-capitalist
pasts. But his unsentimental modernism did not preclude an outrage
at the ravages inflicted by colonialism and imperialism in the name
of "progress", an often overlooked thread in his work.
[PS: From this, my first and evidently only free article, I clicked
on Richard Seymour: [07-22]
The rise of disaster nationalism: "The modern far-right is not
a return to fascism, but a new and original threat." I could see
this as a reasonable argument, as evidence of the "thought-provoking
journalism" the publication touts, but I was stopped cold at the
paywall ("as little as $12.00 a month").
Kate Wagner: [09-26]
The gifts of Fredric Jameson (1934-2024): "The intellectual titan
bestowed on us so many things, chief among them a reminder to Always
Be Historicizing."
Verso Books: [09-23]
Jameson at 90: A Verso Blog series: "Our series honoring Fredric
Jameson's oeuvre in celebration of his 90th birthday."
Patrick Iber: [09-24]
Eric Hobsbawm's lament for the twentieth century: "Where some
celebrated the triumph of liberal capitalism in the 1990s, Hobsbawn
saw a failed dream." Re-reviewing the British historian's 1994 book,
The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914-1991,
which I started at the time, and have long meant to return to --
although after re-reading the first of what turned into his
tetraology, The Age of Revolution (1789-1948), I found
myself wanting to work through the intermediate volumes --
The Age of Capital (1848-1875) and The Age of Empire
(1875-1914) first. Iber teases us with his conclusion:
But if a classic is a work that remains worth reading both for
what it is and for what it tells us about the time it was created,
Hobsbawm's text deserves that status. It rewards the reader not
because a historian would write the same book today but precisely
because they would not.
Hobsbawm's previous books are dazzling for the breadth of his
knowledge, and his skill at weaving so many seemingly disparate
strands into a sensible whole. This one, however, is coterminous
with his life (into his 70s; his dates were 1917-2012), which
gives him the advantages (and limits) of having experienced as
well as researched the history, and having had a personal stake
in how it unfolded.
Ryu Spaeth: [09-23]
The return of Ta-Nehisi Coates: "A decade after The Case for
Reparations, he is ready to take on Israel, Palestine, and the
American media." Coates has a new book,
The Message, coming out Oct. 1. I expect we'll be hearing
much more about this in coming weeks. To underscore the esteem
with which Coates is held, this pointed to a 2015 article:
Here's are several fairly long quotes from Spaeth's article:
In Coates's eyes, the ghost of Jim Crow is everywhere in the
territories. In the soldiers who "stand there and steal our time,
the sun glinting off their shades like Georgia sheriffs." In the
water sequestered for Israeli use -- evidence that the state had
"advanced beyond the Jim Crow South and segregated not just the
pools and fountains but the water itself." In monuments on sites
of displacement and informal shrines to mass murder, such as the
tomb of Baruch Goldstein, who gunned down 29 Muslims in a mosque
in 1994, which recall "monuments to the enslavers" in South Carolina.
And in the baleful glare of the omnipresent authority. "The point
is to make Palestinians feel the hand of occupation constantly," he
writes. And later: "The message was: 'You'd really be better off
somewhere else.'" . . .
His affinity for conquered peoples very much extends to the Jews,
and he begins the book's essay on Palestine at Yad Vashem, Israel's
memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. "In a place like this," he
writes, "your mind expands as the dark end of your imagination blooms,
and you wonder if human depravity has any bottom at all, and if it
does not, what hope is there for any of us?" But what Coates is
concerned with foremost is what happened when Jewish people went
from being the conquered to the conquerors, when "the Jewish people
had taken its place among The Strong," and he believes Yad Vashem
itself has been used as a tool for justifying the occupation. "We
have a hard time wrapping our heads around people who are obvious
historical victims being part and parcel of another crime," he told
me. In the book, he writes of the pain he observed in two of his
Israeli companions: "They were raised under the story that the
Jewish people were the ultimate victims of history. But they had
been confronted with an incredible truth -- that there was no
ultimate victim, that victims and victimizers were ever
flowing." . . .
The book is strongest when its aperture is narrow. There is no
mention of the fact that Israel is bombarded by terrorist groups set
on the state's annihilation. There is no discussion of the intifadas
and the failed negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian leaders
going back decades. There is even no mention of Gaza because Coates
was unable to visit the region after the October 7 attack and he did
not want to report on a place he hadn't seen for himself. ("People
were like, 'Gaza is so much worse,'" he told me. "'So much worse.'")
What there is, instead, is a picture of the intolerable cruelty and
utter desperation that could lead to an October 7.
"If this was the 1830s and I was enslaved and Nat Turner's rebellion
had happened," Coates told me that day in Gramercy, "I would've been
one of those people that would've been like, 'I'm not cool with this.'
But Nat Turner happens in a context. So the other part of me is like,
What would I do if I had grown up in Gaza, under the blockade and in
an open-air prison, and I had a little sister who had leukemia and
needed treatment but couldn't get it because my dad or my mom couldn't
get the right pass out? You know what I mean? What would I do if my
brother had been shot for getting too close to the barrier? What would
I do if my uncle had been shot because he's a fisherman and he went
too far out? And if that wall went down and I came through that wall,
who would I be? Can I say I'd be the person that says, 'Hey, guys,
hold up. We shouldn't be doing this'? Would that have been me?"
Ta-Nehisi Coates: [08-21]
A Palestinian American's place under the Democrats' big tent?:
"Though the Uncommitted movement is lobbying to get a Palestinian
American on the main stage, the Harris campaign has not yet approved
one. Will there be a change before Thursday -- and does the Democratic
Party want that?" In the end, the DNC didn't allow a Palestinian
speaker, calling into question their "big tent" commitment, and
exposing how invisible and unfelt Palestinians have become even
among people who profess to believe in democracy, equal rights,
human rights, peace and social justice.
Zack Beauchamp: [09-24]
The Israel-Palestine conflict is in fact complicated and difficult to
resolve fairly.
Invariably, posts like these attract the absolute stupidest people
who prove why it needs saying in the first place.
PS: I replied: Reminds me of a joke: how many psychiatrists does
it take to change a light bulb? One, but the light bulb really has
to want to change. Palestinians have tried everything; nothing worked,
so it looks difficult. But Israel has offered nothing. If they did,
it would be easy.
Many comments, preëmptively dismissed by Beauchamp, make similar
points, some harshly, others more diplomatically. One took the
opposite tack, blaming it all on Palestinian rejection of Israel's
good intentions -- basically a variation on the argument that when
one is being raped, one should relax and enjoy it. The key thing
is that Israelis have always viewed the situation as a contest of
will and power, where both sides seek to dominate the other, which
is never acceptable to the other. When dominance proves impossible,
the sane alternative is to find some sort of accommodation, which
allows both sides most of the freedoms they desire. That hasn't
happened with Israel, because they've always felt they were if
not quite on the verge of winning, at least in such a dominant
position they could continue the conflict indefinitely. Given
that presumption, everything else is rationalization.
One comment cites Ta-Nehisi Coates:
For Coates, the parallels with the Jim Crow South were obvious and
immediate: Here, he writes, was a "world where separate and unequal
was alive and well, where rule by the ballot for some and the bullet
for others was policy." And this world was made possible by his own
country: "The pushing of Palestinians out of their homes had the
specific imprimatur of the United States of America. Which means
it had my imprimatur."
That it was complicated, he now understood, was "horseshit."
"Complicated" was how people had described slavery and then segregation.
"It's complicated," he said, "when you want to take something from
somebody."
Zachary D Carter: [09-25]
Biden's Middle East policy straightforwardly violates domestic and
international law.
In just about every other respect Biden's foreign policy operation
has been admirable, but the damage he has done to international
conceptions of the U.S. with his Middle East program is on par
with George W. Bush.
PS: I replied: Funny, I can't think of any aspect of Biden
foreign policy as admirable, even in intent, much less in effect.
Same hubris, hollow principles, huge discounts for shameless
favorites (arms, oil, $$). Even climate is seen as just rents.
Israel is the worst, but the whole is rotten.]
I saw this in a Facebook image, and felt like jotting it down
(at some point I should find the source):
Banksy on Advertising
People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your
life, ttakle a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you
from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant
comments from buses that imply you're not sexy enough and that all the
fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend
feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated
technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They
are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.
You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual
property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they
like wherever they like with total impunity.
Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no chance
whether you see it or not is yours. It's yours to take, re-arrange and
re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is
like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.
You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially
don't owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the
world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your
permission, don't . . .
Quite some time ago, I started writing a series of little notes
on terms of interest -- an idea, perhaps inspired by Raymond Williams'
book
Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, that I've
kept on a cool back burner ever since. One of the first entries
was on advertising, and as I recall -- I have no idea where this
writing exists, if indeed it does -- it started with: "Advertising
is not free speech. It is very expensive . . ." Williams would
usually start with the history of the word, including etymology,
then expand on its current usage. I was more focused on the latter,
especially how words combine complex and often nuanced meanings,
and how I've come to think through those words. Advertising for
me is not just a subject I have a lot of personal experience in --
both as consumer or object and on the concept and production side --
but is a prism which reveals much about our ethics and politics.
In particular, it testifies to our willingness to deceive and to
manipulate one another, and our tolerance at seeing that done,
both to others and to oneself.
In looking this up, I found a few more useful links on
Raymond Williams (1981-88) and Keywords:
The Raymond Williams Society:
Contemporary Keywords. "Every year our journal Key Words
includes a new "keyword," usually linked to the general 'theme' of
the issue, in the tradition of Williams's historical analysis."
These were written by Tony Crowley: class, commitment, crisis,
post-truth, privilege, scouse, the Raymond Williams Society also
publishes a
journal and a
blog.
After an abbreviated
Speaking
of Which yesterday, this is an even shorter Music Week. For most
of last week, I've been prepping the house for arrival of a contractor,
to fix the collapsed ceiling in a small upstairs bedroom. Main thing
there was moving 25 years of accumulated living out to somewhere else.
Some things got thrown away, but most -- including three bookcases of
books -- just had to find temporary storage elsewhere. Contractor
arrived today, and should have another couple days of work, after
which I intend to refinish (mostly paint) everything, including a
closet that long been the most wretched corner of a 100-year-old
house.
So I haven't had much time to listen to music, or to write.
Expect no more (and probably less) for next week, and probably
the week after -- hopefully the bedroom will be done by then,
but I expect project repercussions to spread far and wide. I'm
looking forward to these weeks, figuring they'll produce more
tangible accomplishments than I've felt from writing all year.
Indeed, I'm rushing this out now, so I can go back to my closet
and get a couple more hours of work in. Downside is that it can
be physically wearing.
One minor accomplishment last week was when I fixed one of my
"inventory reduction" dinners on
Saturday: I turned shrimp and vegetables from the freezer,
the end of a bag of dried pasta, and some aging items in the
refrigerator into a small dinner of: shrimp with feta cheese,
penne puttanesca, pisto manchego, and a lemon-caper sauce with
green beans, artichoke hearts, and prosciutto; followed by a
chocolate cake with black walnut frosting (one of my mother's
standards).
I have nothing much to say about this week's music, other than
that the Ahmad Jamal records were suggested by a
question. I thought "why bother?"
at first, then "why not?"
New records reviewed this week:
Benjamin Boone: Confluence: The Ireland Sessions
(2023 [2024], Origin): Alto saxophonist, has some good records,
especially the pair backing poet Philip Levine. Trio with bass
and drums plus scattered guests, including singer JoYne on three
songs. They're nice enough, but the saxophone is better.
B+(***) [cd]
Michael Dease: Found in Space: The Music of Gregg Hill
(2022 [2024], Origin): Trombonist, also baritone sax, has more
than one album per year since 2010. Hill is a Michigan-based
composer with no records of his own, but several of his students
have released tributes to him recently, and this is Dease's
second. Large group, eleven pieces, and probably the best yet.
B+(***) [cd]
Delia Fischer: Beyond Bossa (2024, Origin):
Brazilian singer-songwriter, plays piano/keyboards, recorded two
albums 1988-90 as part of Duo Fênix, solo albums after that. As
the title implies, the atmosphere here is familiarly Brazilian,
but there is much more going on, including interaction of many
dramatic voices, which suggest opera (or at least concept album).
Not something I feel up to figuring out, but seems exceptional.
B+(***) [cd]
Heems: Veena (2024, Veena Sounds): New York
rapper Himanshu Suri, formerly of Das Racist, named his album
(like his label) after his mother. His earlier 2024 album,
Lafandar, tops my non-jazz list. This one is iffier,
and not just because they redo the old phone message thing.
B+(***) [sp]
Jason Kao Hwang: Soliloquies: Unaccompanied Pizzicato
Violin Improvisations (2024, True Sound): Exactly what
the title promises, which sets an upper bound on how enjoyable
this can be, but he comes remarkably close to hitting the mark.
Hwang became our greatest living jazz violinist when Billy Bang
passed, and is a safe bet to maintain that claim until he, too,
is gone.
A- [cd]
Miranda Lambert: Postcards From Texas (2024, Republic
Nashville): Country singer-songwriter, debut 2005, probably the most
consistent one since, even if you count her Pistol Annies side project.
Another batch of good songs.
A- [sp]
Matt Panayides Trio: With Eyes Closed (2023
[2024], Pacific Coast Jazz): Guitarist, based in New York,
fourth album since 2010, a trio with Dave LaSpina (bass) and
Anthony Pinciotti (drums).
B+(**) [cd]
Anne Sajdera: It's Here (2024, Bijuri): Pianist,
some solo (two tracks), some trio (two more), some with various
horns (four).
B+(*) [cd]
Jason Stein: Anchors (2022 [2024], Tao Forms):
Bass clarinet player, based in Chicago, leads a trio with Joshua
Abrams (bass) and Gerald Cleaver (drums). Billed as his "most
personal album to date," impressive when he hits his stride, but
seems to back off a bit much.
B+(***) [cd]
Nilüfer Yanya: My Method Actor (2024, Ninja Tune):
British pop singer-songwriter, father is Turkish, third album.
Didn't grab me right away, like the first two, but snuck up.
B+(***) [sp]
Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:
None.
Old music:
Charles Bell and the Contemporary Jazz Quartet: Another
Dimension (1963, Atlantic): Pianist (1933-2012), only
released two albums, one called The Charles Bell Contemporary
Jazz Quartet in 1961, this this one a couple years later.
Four originals, covers of "Django," "Oleo," and "My Favorite
Things," with guitar (Bill Smith), bass (Ron Carter), and drums
(Allen Blairman).
B+(***) [sp]
Ahmad Jamal: Poinciana (1958 [1963], Argo):
Early compilation LP, took the title song from Live at the
Pershing, then tacked on seven songs from his September
sets at the Spotlite (released in 1959 as Portfolio of
Ahmad Jamal; Ahmad's Blues also comes from the
Spotlite stand, but only two songs there are dupes from
here). So this seems like a sampler for more definitive
editions.
B+(**) [r]
The Ahmad Jamal Trio: The Awakening (1970, Impulse!):
With Jamil Nasser (bass) and Frank Grant (drums).
B+(**) [r]
Ahmad Jamal: Live in Paris 1992 (1992 [1993],
Birdology): French label, founded 1992 and ran up to 2005,
associated with Disques Dreyfus. Mostly trio with James Cammack
(bass guitar) and David Bowler (drums), with alternates on one
track.
B+(*) [sp]
Ahmad Jamal: I Remember Duke, Hoagy & Strayhorn
(1994 [1995], Telarc): Covers as noted, plus a couple originals
along those lines. With Ephriam Wolfolk (bass) and Arti Dixson
(drums), but they don't add much.
B+(*) [sp]
Ahmad Jamal: The Essence, Part 1 (1994-95 [1995],
Birdology): The first of three volumes the label collected, this
from live sets in Paris -- six quartet tracks with piano, bass
(James Cammack), drums (Idris Muhammad), and percussion (Manolo
Badrena), plus two tracks from New York with a different bassist
(Jamil Nasser) and George Coleman (tenor sax). I wish we had more
of the latter -- his bits are really terrific -- but without him
I'm still reminded of how bright Jamal's piano is.
A- [sp]
Ahmad Jamal: Big Byrd: The Essence, Part 2 (1994-95
[1996], Birdology): More quartet tracks from the same dates in
Paris and New York, with guests Joe Kennedy Jr. (violin) on one
track, Donald Byrd (trumpet) on the other (the 15:13 title track).
B+(***) [sp]
Ahmad Jamal: Nature: The Essence, Part 3 (1997
[1998], Birdology): A later studio session from Paris, with the
same quartet -- James Cammack (bass), Idris Muhammad (drums),
Manolo Badrena (percussion) -- joined by Othello Molineaux on
steel drum. Stanley Turrentine (tenor sax) drops in for one
track, and is terrific.
B+(**) [sp]
Unpacking: Found in the mail last week (incomplete):
Michael Dease: Found in Space: The Music of Gregg Hill (Origin) [09-20]
Doug Ferony: Alright Okay You Win (Ferony Enterprizes Music) [10-01]
Alden Hellmuth: Good Intentions (Fresh Sound New Talent) [09-08]
Randy Ingram: Aries Dance (Sounderscore) [10-18]
Ryan Keberle & Catharsis: Music Is Connection (Alternate Side) [10-18]
Peter Lenz: Breathe: Music for Large Ensembles (GambsART) [11-08]
Hayoung Lyou: The Myth of Katabasis (Endectomorph Music) [11-15]
Yuka Mito: How Deep Is the Ocean (Nana Notes) [10-11]
Simon Moullier: Elements of Light (Candid) [09-20]
