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Monday, September 30, 2024
Music Week
Expanded blog post,
September archive
(in progress).
Tweet: Music Week: 12 albums, 5 A-list
Music: Current count 43007 [42995] rated (+12), 42 [26] unrated (+16).
New records reviewed this week:
- Manu Chao: Viva Tu (2024, Because Music): [sp]: A-
- Colin James: Chasing the Sun (2024, Stony Plain): [sp]: B
- Lizz Wright: Shadow (2024, Blues & Greens): [sp]: B+(*)
Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:
Old music:
- Sunny Ade & His Green Spot Band: The Master Guitarist Vol. 1 (1970 [1983], African Songs): [sp]: A-
- King Sunny Ade and His African Beats: The Message (1981, Sunny Alade): [yt]: A-
- King Sunny Ade and His African Beats: Check 'E' (1981, Sunny Alade): [sp]: B+(***)
- King Sunny Ade & His African Beats: Juju Music of the 80's (1981, Sunny Alade): [sp]: B+(***)
- King Sunny Adé & His African Beats: Ajoo (1983, Sunny Alade): [yt]: A-
- King Sunny Ade & His African Beats: Bobby (1983, Sunny Alade): [sp]: B+(***)
- King Sunny Ade: E Dide/Get Up (1992 [1995], Mesa): [sp]: B+(***)
- Batsumi: Batsumi (1974 [2011], Matsuli Music): [sp]: B+(*)
- Colonel Jubilation B. Johnston and His Mystic Knights Band and Street Singers: Moldy Goldies: Colonel Jubilation B. Johnston and His Mystic Knights Band and Street Singers Attack the Hits (1966, Columbia): [sp]: A-
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]
- Ben Waltzer: The Point (Calligram) [10-04]
Speaking of Which
Blog link.
Friday, September 27, 2024
Daily Log
I thought of Raymond Williams:
Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (1976; revised 2014),
and had the thought of jotting down the word list, but then it occurred
to me that I could look it up (it's in the Amazon preview) whenever I
need. I've added some relevant links to Speaking of Which.
One interesting link I stumbled on is:
-
WorldCat, which when searching for Keywords offers "79
editions in 1,961 libraries," sorted by proximity to "your current
location," so effectively it's offering a list of nearby libraries.
Tuesday, September 24, 2024
Music Week
Expanded blog post,
September archive
(in progress).
Tweet: Music Week: 19 albums, 3 A-list
Music: Current count 42995 [42976] rated (+19), 26 [23] unrated (+3).
New records reviewed this week:
- Benjamin Boone: Confluence: The Ireland Sessions (2023 [2024], Origin): [cd]: B+(***)
- Michael Dease: Found in Space: The Music of Gregg Hill (2022 [2024], Origin): [cd]: B+(***)
- Delia Fischer: Beyond Bossa (2024, Origin): [cd]: B+(***)
- Heems: Veena (2024, Veena Sounds): [sp]: B+(***)
- Jason Kao Hwang: Soliloquies: Unaccompanied Pizzicato Violin Improvisations (2024, True Sound): [cd]: A-
- Miranda Lambert: Postcards From Texas (2024, Republic Nashville): [sp]: A-
- Matt Panayides Trio: With Eyes Closed (2023 [2024], Pacific Coast Jazz): [cd]: B+(**)
- Anne Sajdera: It's Here (2024, Bijuri): [cd]: B+(*)
- Jason Stein: Anchors (2022 [2024], Tao Forms): [sp]: B+(***)
- Nilüfer Yanya: My Method Actor (2024, Ninja Tune): [sp]: B_+(***)
Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:
Old music:
- Charles Bell and the Contemporary Jazz Quartet: Another Dimension (1963, Atlantic): [sp]: B+(***)
- Ahmad Jamal: Poinciana (1958 [1963], Argo): [r]: B+(**)
- The Ahmad Jamal Trio: The Awakening (1970, Impulse!): [r]: B+(**)
- Ahmad Jamal: Live in Paris 1992 (1992 [1993], Birdology): [sp]: B+(*)
- Ahmad Jamal: I Remember Duke, H oagy & Strayhorn (1994 [1995], Telarc): [r]: B+(*)
- Ahmad Jamal: The Essence, Part 1 (1994-95 [1995], Birdology): [sp]: A-
- Ahmad Jamal: Big Byrd: The Essence, Part 2 (1994-95 [1996], Birdology): [sp]: B+(***)
- Ahmad Jamal: Nature: The Essence, Part 3 (1997 [1998], Birdology): [sp]: B+(**)
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]
- Nacka Forum: Peaceful Piano (Moserobie) [10-18]
- Dann Zinn: Two Roads (Ridgeway) [10-04]
Monday, September 23, 2024
Speaking of Which
Blog link.
File opened: 2024-09-17 2:05 PM.
File opened: 2024-09-17 2:05 PM. Wrapping it up, rather arbitrarily,
on Monday afternoon. I feared I would have little time to work on my
weekly posts this week (and next, and the week after, when we expect
visitors), so I limited my hopes to picking up a few links for future
reference, collected in my spare time. This has grown larger than I
expected, especially as I opened up and wrote several lengthy comments.
Such informal writing comes easy, and feels substantive, where my more
ambitious concepts so often flounder. So I count this as therapeutic,
regardless of whether it's of value to anyone else.
My one ambitious concept this week was to write up an outline of
an introduction, which would provide some kind of "executive summary"
of current events. As events change little from week to week -- for
some time now I've been starting each week with a skeletal template,
which I refine and reuse -- it occurred to me that I could come up
with a boilerplate introduction, which I could then copy and edit
from week to week, but would cover the main points I keep returning
to in scattered comments.
I came up with that idea back on Thursday, but here it is Monday
and I still haven't started on it. So maybe next week? I'll start
with a blanket endorsement of Harris and all Democrats, not because
I especially like them but because they're the only practical defense
against Republicans, who are set on a program to do you great harm,
and in some cases get you killed. Then we'll talk about inequality
and war, which top my list of the world's problems -- not that we
can ignore the latter, but fixing them is really hard without ending
war and reducing inequality. And when it comes to war and inequality,
no example is more horrific than Israel, which as you'll read below,
took a sudden, bizarre turn for the worse last week. Back in October,
I explained my plan for ending the Gaza war. My thinking has evolved
a bit since then, and it would be good to update it and keep it
current.
I woke up early (way too early for me) Tuesday morning, and found
this in my mailbox from Mazin Qumsiyeh (I've replaced URLs with
linked article titles):
A regional war has just been officially declared and will likely
soon become a global war. This accelerated with Netanyahu's refusal
to do a prisoner swap and ceasefire deal for Gaza for 11 months
(even against the wishes of his military commanders) with no prospect
of that changing which meant continuation of the genocide and
conflict with Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq (yes supportive resistance
forces to Israeli imperial hegemony). The Israeli regime escalated
with a series of terrorist attacks on Lebanon including rigging
pagers and walkie-talkies to explode killing and injuring scores
of civilians. Then attacked Beirut apoartment buildings, then in
the past 24 hours attacked homes throughout Lebanon killing 500
Lebanese civilians (most women and children like in Gaza)
Israel escalates its military attacks in Lebanon, targeting
residential areas and civilians with intense raids.
And yes the resistance from Lebanon and Gaza continues to target
Israeli military forces. And attacks on the West Bank continue so
that they can depopulate us
Inside the brutal siege of Jenin.
An Interfaith Dispatch From the West Bank: Rabbis for Ceasefire
and Hindus for Human Rights make a peace pilgrimage (mentions us):
An interfaith dispatch from the West Bank.
The prospect and the solution? See this just published very
short article of mine in Z Magazine
A path forward or listen to this interview 5 Sept Heroes and
Patriots
Mazin Qumsiyeh and Abba Solomon, heroes and patriots or this
talk 22 Sept UU Brevard, Flordia
9 22 24 Decolonization of people and nature in Palestine and
globally, with Prof Mazin Qumsiyeh.
Question: How many more thousands of children have to be massacred
(so far 20,000) before the world governments act?
Reminder: THIS DID NOT START 7 OCTOBER 2023 . . IT STARTED IN 1948
AND EARLIER WITH ETHNIC CLEANSING AND COLONIZATION.
See
Frequently asked questions, answers, and documentation on Gaza.
Top story threads:
Israel:
Mondoweiss:
[09-16]
Day 345: Israel threatens Lebanon again: "Israeli settler
violence continues to terrorize Palestinians in the Jordan Valley
as the U.S. envoy arrives in the region to deescalate tensions
along Lebanon's southern border."
[10-19]
Day 349: Nasrallah says 'we wish' Israel invades Lebanon: "Following
the Lebanon pager explosion attacks, Nasrallah said an Israeli invasion
would be a 'historic opportunity' to target Israeli forces. Earlier in
the week, Israel razed an entire residential block in central Gaza,
killing at least 40 people."
[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."
Juan Cole: [09-17]
25% of 95K injuries inflicted in Gaza are "life-changing;" require
medical care that Israelis destroyed.
Georgia Gee: [09-16]
Pick peppers, patrol for Palestinians: the 'new guardians' of Israeli
agriculture: "With major government funding, Hashomer Hachadash
sends volunteers to cement Jewish control of open farmland -- on both
sides of the Green Line."
Tareq S Hajjaj: [09-18]
Israel bombed a residential block in Gaza. Then drones shot at
anyone trying to rescue the survivors: "On September 17, the
Israeli army bombed a block near the al-Bureij refugee camp,
completely destroying seven homes and trapping dozens under the
rubble. When rescuers arrived at the scene to help, Israeli drones
started firing at them as well."
H Patricia Hynes: [09-19]
Water, war and women in Gaza:
Prior to the current war, Gaza had 150 small-scale desalination
plants to produce potable water. By mid-October 2023, Israeli
missile attacks destroyed the drinking water desalination plants;
and its almost total blockade cut off fuel to run the other water
treatment plants, as well as metal parts to repair them. Gaza's
drinking water production capacity dropped to just
5 percent of typical levels.
With no power to run Gaza's five wastewater treatment plants,
sewage has flowed freely through the streets, causing a record
increase in cases of diarrheal illnesses. By December 2023, cases
of diarrhea among children under 5 in Gaza jumped 2000%, because
of which children under five are over
20 times more likely to die than from Israeli military violence.
Ibrahim Mohammad: [09-18]
The Gazan infants who never saw their first birthday: "For
thousands of Palestinian parents, the joy of giving birth rapidly
turned to grief when their newborn babies were killed by Israel's
bombardment."
Craig Mokhiber: [09-21]
Every accusation a confession: Israel and the double lie of 'human
shields': "Multiple human rights reports show that Palestinian
armed groups do not use human shields, but Israel does."
Arie Perliger: [09-19]
How the Israeli settlers movement shaped modern Israel:
The increase in settler violence against Palestinians in the West
Bank over the past year has been unprecedented. Since Hamas' Oct. 7,
2023, attack and the start of the war, there have been more than
1,000 attacks, according to
a new report from the International Crisis Group.
The spike, which has
raised international alarm, is often blamed on the permissive
policies of Israel's right-wing government, led by Benjamin Netanyahu.
According to a
U.N. investigation, nearly half of all settler attacks documented
in October 2023 were conducted in collaboration with, or in the
presence of, Israeli military forces.
Tala Ramadan: [09-11]
Gaza faces a massive reconstruction challenge. Here are key facts
and figures: "Billions of dollars will be needed to rebuild
Gaza when the war between Israel and the Palestinian militant
group Hamas ends, according to assessments from the United Nations.
Here is a breakdown of the destruction in Gaza."
Meron Rapoport: [09-17]
A plan to liquidate northern Gaza is gaining steam: "As Israeli
ministers, generals, and academics bay for a decisive new phase in
the war, this is what Operation Starvation and Extermination would
look like."
America's Israel (and Israel's America):
Michael Arria:
[09-19]
Jill Stein leads Kamala Harris among Muslim voters in swing states
as Palestine supporters weigh choices amid Gaza genocide: "A
recent poll shows Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein
beating Kamala Harris among Muslim voters in multiple swing states
as pro-Palestinian voters weigh the upcoming U.S. presidential race."
I'm skeptical of any such polling, and not just because third-party
support tends to evaporate in the closing days of the season. The
article doesn't go into much detail about either the poll details
or the question of how many voters are we really talking about here.
CAIR estimates that there are over 2.5 million Muslim voters in
the US (75% born in the US, 20-25% African-American), so about 1.5%
of all registered voters. Contrary to the headline, the
CAIR poll shows Harris slightly ahead of Stein, 29.4%% to 29.1%,
trailed by Trump (11.2%), Cornel West (4.2%), and Chase Oliver (the
Libertarian, 0.8%), with 16.5% undecided and 8.8% not voting.
[09-19]
The Shift: Uncommitted Movement says it won't back Harris in election.
If you read the fine print, you'll see that while they refuse to endorse
Harris, they "oppose" Trump, and are "not recommending a third-party
vote in the Presidential election, especially as third party votes in
key states could help inadvertently deliver a Trump presidency given
our country's broken electoral college system." They don't talk about
not voting, but if you're leaning that way, please read the parts
about Trump again.
[09-17]
The Shift: Nearly 60% of Israelis say they'd vote for Trump:
"Former President and GOP nominee Donald Trump remains a popular
figure in Israel. A recent poll found that 58% of Israelis would
vote for Trump, while just 25% would vote for Harris."
This week Trump will give two speeches to pro-Israel audiences.
First, he'll speak to a group of Jewish supporters in DC about
countering antisemitism.
Jewish Insider's Matt Kassel reports that Orthodox
businessman Yehuda Kaploun and his business partner Ed Russo
will host the event.
A source told Kassel that the event will allow Trump to speak
with Jewish leaders "about his plans to combat the wave of antisemitism
and antisemitic behavior and enforce the laws for religious liberty
to all."
Miriam Adelson is expected to attend. The GOP megadonor is
reportedly set to spend more than $100 million to elect Trump
in November.
In DC Trump will also address the Israeli American Council's
(IAC) national convention. The IAC is led by lan Carr, who served
as the envoy to combat antisemitism under Trump. Its largest donor
is Adelson.
I understand why people are disturbed the level of reflexive
support for Israel that Harris has consistently shown, and how
tempting it is to punish her at the ballot box, but the candidate
who is most under Israel's thumb is clearly Trump. Harris at least
has the presence of mind and decency to decry and bemoan the war,
and offer that it must stop. Trump's allegiance is not just for
sale here. It's done been sold.
Juan Cole: [09-17]
A centrist Muslim alliance against an extremist Israel?
Edo Konrad: [09-20]
What Israelis don't want to hear about Iran and Hezbollah:
"For years, Israeli expert Ori Goldberg has tried to challenge
commonly-held assumptions about the Islamic Republic and its
allies. Will anyone listen?"
Daniel Larison: [09-19]
A rare foreign policy win is there for the taking: "Iran's new
reformist president wants to negotiate with the West; we should
take him up on his request."
Jim Lobe: [09-18]
42 years ago today: the Sabra & Shatila massacre.
Nicole Narea: [09-18]
What we know about the pager and walkie-talkie explosions in Lebanon
and Syria: Unfortunately, Vox doesn't seem to know very much about
this wave of exploding tech devices -- hundreds of pagers on Tuesday,
followed by thousands of walkie-talkies on Wednesday, each packed with
remotely-detonated explosives, and allegedly distributed by Hezbollah
in Lebanon and Syria -- and more importantly, isn't able or willing to
set the context and draw meaningful conclusions. Their subhed: "It's a
dangerous escalation in the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel as
the war in Gaza rages on."
The first thing that needs to be noted is that the "conflict" is
extremely asymmetrical. The background is that Israel invaded Lebanon
in 1982, intervening in a civil war to bolster a Phalangist (fascist)
party thought to be favorable to Israel, which backed out of Beirut
but continued to occupy southern Lebanon, up to its withdrawal in
2000 (except for a small sliver of territory[*], which remains as
a sore point, which seems to be the point). Hezbollah developed as
the most effective resistance organization to Israeli occupation.
Once Israel withdrew (except for that sliver, see what I mean?),
Hezbollah's mission was complete, but since Israel never signed
any peace treaty with Lebanon, they continued to organize as a
deterrent against another Israeli attack (as happened in 2006).
Since then, except for that sliver, the only times Hezbollah
has fired (mostly missiles) at Israel has been in response to
Israel's periodic attacks on Lebanon. I'm convinced that Israel
does this simply to provoke responses that they can spin into
their cover story on Iran: Americans still bear a grudge against
Iran over 1979, a feud they've relentlessly stoked since the
1990s, as it gives Israel a threat which is beyond its means,
thus binding an American alliance that provides cover for their
real agenda, which is to erase the Palestinian presence in all
of Israel.
The US could end this farce immediately by making a separate
peace with Iran (and for good measure, with its alleged proxies
in Syria, Lebanon, Yemen). Obama took one step in that direction
with the JCPOA "nuclear deal," which was the only realistic
solution to "the Iranian nuclear threat" -- which Israelis had
played up since the early 1990s[**]. But Netanyahu denounced the
deal, and used the full power of the Israel lobby to undermine it,
leading to Trump's withdrawal, and Biden's failure to reinstate.
Had Israel been serious about the "nuclear threat," they would
have celebrated JCPOA. Had the US understood Israel's objectives,
they would have extended their "deal" with Iran to resolve other
disputes and normalize relations.
I had several other points in mind when I started writing this,
but they're more obvious from the reporting, which I'll continue
to collect below. Chief among them is that this is a patently
Israeli operation, combining as it does a fascination with high
tech and completely oblivious disregard for its impact on others,
or even for the damage it will do to the future reputation of
all Israelis. This is indiscriminate terrorism, on a huge scale.
Exactly who in Israel is immediately responsible for this isn't
yet clear, but whoever it is should be held responsible, first
and foremost by the Israeli people, but until that happens, it
is not unreasonable to sanction the state. Any nation, like the
US, which claims to be opposed to terrorism would be remiss in
not doing so.
The most similar event I can recall was the
Chicago Tylenol murders of 1982, which was probably the work
of a single rogue individual (although it was followed by several
copycat crimes, and was never definitively solved). The maker of
Tylenol (Johnson & Johnson) took extraordinary measures to
restore consumer trust (see
How the Tylenol murders of 1982 changed the way we consume
medication). While similar in terms of sowing mistrust, this
case is orders of magnitude larger, and is likely to prove much
more difficult for Israel to manage. No one ever thought for a
moment that Johnson & Johnson wanted to poison customers,
but Netanyahu's hands are not just tainted but dripping blood.
Even if he is not personally responsible for this, the war and
genocide are clearly his work, in conception and commission,
and in his consistent refusal to end or even limit it. Moreover,
there is no reason to trust Israel to investigate itself -- as
it has claimed many times in the past to do, covering up and/or
excusing many serious crimes along the way.
[*] This sliver is called Shebaa Farms. When Israel withdrew from
Lebanon, they continued to occupy this bit of land, arguing that it
was originally part of the Syrian Heights, which Israel has occupied
since 1967 (and later annexed, contrary to international law; it is
now better known as Golan Heights). See
Why is there a disputed border between Lebanon and Israel?.
[**] What changed for Israel in 1990 was that after Saddam Hussein
was defeated in Kuwait and bottled up and disarmed, they needed a new
"existential threat" to replace Iraq and maintain American support.
While the Ayatollahs weren't as chummy with Israel as the Shah had
been, they maintained cordial relations all through the 1980s -- by
far the most anti-American period of Iran's revolution. Israel helped
arm Iran as a counterweight to Iraq's ambitions (including their role
in Reagan's Iran-Contra scandal, which gave them insight into America's
schizoid reaction to overthrowing the CIA-installed Shah). Trita Parsi
explains all of this in Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings
of Israel, Iran, and the United States (2007).
CNN [Tara John, et al.]: [09-18]
How did pagers explode in Lebanon and why was Hezbollah using them?
Here's what we know.
CNN [Charbel Mallo, et al.]: [09-18]
Israel behind deadly pager explosions that targeted Hezbollah and
injured thousands in Lebanon.
Caitlin Johnstone: [09-17]
Turning people into involuntary suicide bombers to fight terrorism.
Daniel Larison: [09-18]
Israel terrorizes Lebanon: "This was a reckless attack that makes
a major war between Israel and Hezbollah much more likely."
Nikita Mazurov:
A brief history of booby-trapping electronics to blow up.
Jonathan Ofir: [09-18]
Israel's attack on Lebanon using exploding electronics is part of a
long history and strategy of targeting civilians: "Israel's
latest attack on Lebanon represents an expansion of its Dahiya
doctrine which intentionally targets civilians to send a political
message."
Paul R Pillar: [09-20]
Wider war closer after Israel's attack on Lebanon.
Mitchell Plitnick: [09-18] I scraped this off Facebook.
A friend asked me how I come to say that Israel targeted civilians
with their attack on pagers purchased by Hezbollah.
Here is my response:
So let's start with this: being a Hezbollah "operative" does not
make one a legitimate target nor does it mean you're not a civilian.
Hezbollah operatives include clerks, messengers, secretaries, even
medical workers. Bear in mind, Hezbollah is part of the Lebanese
government. Its activities cover a lot more than military actions.
Therefore, targeting Lebanese people for their connection to Hezbollah
is no different from targeting the janitor in the IDF's Tel Aviv
headquarters. It's targeting civilians.
Second, I am told by people I know and have seen it confirmed by
at least two Lebanese journalists that many recipients of these pagers
are not military. Israel certainly knows that.
Third, Israel detonated these pagers en masse. They certainly knew
they were sure to be in populated areas, with women and children nearby,
but they certainly did NOT know who actually had each pager. That's not
collateral damage. That's intentionally targeting civilians.
Any ambiguity in any of this is negated by the fact that this is a
blatant violation of international law, specifically the
Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons which explicitly bars
booby-trapping ordinary items. Israel is a High Contracting Party to
Article II, where this prohibition is seen:
4. "Booby-trap" means any device or material which
is designed, constructed or adapted to kill or injure, and which
functions unexpectedly when a person disturbs or approaches an
apparently harmless object or performs an apparently safe act.
3. It is prohibited in all circumstances to use any mine,
booby-trap or other device which is designed or of a nature to
cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering.
4. Weapons to which this Article applies shall strictly comply
with the standards and limitations specified in the Technical Annex
with respect to each particular category.
5. It is prohibited to use mines, booby-traps or other devices
which employ a mechanism or device specifically designed to detonate
the munition by the presence of commonly available mine detectors as
a result of their magnetic or other non-contact influence during
normal use in detection operations.
I'm very comfortable calling this the deliberate targeting of
civilians.
Steven Simon: [09-18]
Exploding pagers in Lebanon: taste of what's yet to come?
Israel followed up the pager/walkie-talkie attacks with another
round of bombing Lebanon, going all the way to Beirut. Some articles
on this:
Annelle Sheline: [09-18]
MBS: no Saudi-Israel normalization until Palestinians get a
state: "The Kingdom's crown prince throws cold water on Biden's
'grand bargain,' days after Oman does the same." However:
Israel vs. world opinion:
Ramzy Baroud:
Medea Benjamin/Nicholas JS Davies: [09-17]
Can the world save Palestine from US-Israeli genocide? Refers
to a UN General Assembly resolution, which passed on 9/18:
Jonathan Cook: [09-20]
Jewish Chronicle scandal: why was there no uproar over past pro-Israel
disinformation? "Despite a deeply problematic track record, the
paper's fake news is making waves only now, after it printed claims
based on forged Hamas documents."
Georgia Gee:
These human rights defenders were hacked by Pegasus. Now they want
police to charge the spyware maker. "So far, no one has been
able to hold the notorious Israeli spyware firm accountable for
complicity in human rights abuses."
David Hearst: [09-11]
How Israel's genocide in Gaza is creating enemies on all sides:
"Netanyahu's refusal to end the war on Gaza and settlers' terrorism
in the West Bank have sowed the seeds of hatred across the region."
Ziyad Motala: [09-12]
The US must allow the World Court to adjudicate on Israel's
genocide: "Israeli diplomats have reportedly been instructed to
push Washington to scupper South Africa's case before the International
Court of Justice."
Mazin Qumsiyeh: Links from his latest newsletters,
one new, most old, but his writings rarely lose their relevance,
as new events more often than not just confirm his insights.
[01-01]
2024: Year-end report, personal achievements (research papers,
etc.), plans for the coming year.
[2023-12-29]
Hope for 2024.
[2023-11-12]
Are we being duped to focus only on Gaza suffering? This is an
even bigger question today, as coverage of Gaza has settled into a
mind-numbing tedium while Israelis have escalated attacks on the
West Bank, and working hard to provoke a war with Hezbollah which
will only further cloud their operations against Palestinians. The
first two paragraphs here (my bold) are so accurate one has to
wonder about all the pundits back then who were (and in many cases
still are) clueless.
Israel's genocide of Gaza is intentional, planned and ongoing with
no sign of slowing down. The contrary, with no water, food and
medicine it is accelerating. Israel leaders boast openly that they
do not care about what the UN, ICC, or ICJ say. Israeli fascist
leaders say they do not care what statements are issued by governments.
Nor do they care if public pressure causes some western leaders to
moderate their "language" stating there is a "humanitarian catastrophe"
unfolding in Gaza (without naming the perpetrator and continuing to
support physically the genocide). Israel actually can use the
humanitarian catastrophe (as if it is an act of God not their agency)
as bargaining chips. The focus on "ceasefire negotiations" is actually
a very clever strategy to continue the genocidal occupation and for
impunity from facing tribunals for war crimes and crimes against
humanity.
Israeli leaders are crystal clear about their crimes and they get
their way by genocide and total state terrorism against populations.
If you have any doubt, listen to them (see below). They even say
openly that if Hizbollah continues its resistance in South Lebanon,
then all of Lebanon will pay a devastating price and Beirut will be
like Gaza (i.e. totally devastated). Israeli military spokesmen
gave the same threats to cities in the West Bank like Jenin and
Tulkarem and even Ramallah. These are not idle threats. Many were
complicit with Israeli apartheid regime by suppressing the truth
and giving weapons to commit genocide. According to Israeli leaders
global public opinion and "diplomatic" pressure will not end its
carnage done to promote colonialism and greed. Many human rights
advocates are at a loss as to how to end the carnage. While people
focus on the carnage, few address its underlying cause. It is like
focusing on suffering in concentration camps without identifying
the source of that suffering (or even worse blaming the victims).
Next line is a bit inflammatory ("Extreme nationalism leads to
genocide: Nazis and Zionists"), but the error there is assuming
causality from consequences. Extreme nationalism may be a necessary
precondition, but something more is also required: the hubris of
unchecked, unaccountable power. Plenty of kneejerk nationalists
all around the world, but in Israel they've achieved a sense of
invincibility unmatched since Hitler's Germany. That one exemplar
claims to be for Jews and the other against just how unimportant
the category is.
[2023-07-14]
Lebanon & Palestine: A trip report.
[2023-07-03]
Hope: present and future: Starts with an Israeli atrocity which,
needless to say, predates the Oct. 7 Hamas revolt, and the even
greater Israeli atrocities since then.
[2023-06-29]
Changing ourselves: "As a zoologist and geneticist I am always
puzzled about human (optimistically named Homo sapiens) behavior."
[09-22]
End of empire? His grasp of US politics is less assured here.
While his critique of Trump is sound enough, his points against
the Democrats are harsh where I would be more generous. To pick
out two of five:
- Harris courting of the lobby and supporting genocide
undermines any remnant of illusion progressives,
- the Democrat party is corrupt and worked hand in
glove with republicans against allowing other parties.
The American political system is such that it is impossible for
anyone to win without picking up a whiff of corruption. While some
Democrats play that game as adeptly as Republicans, and when they
can, shower their donors with favors as readily, most also see and
feel some obligation to serve their constituents, or more generally
"all the people." One thing nearly all Democrats have in common is
their loathing for Trump and his shock troops, and this is almost
always due to how repulsive they find the effect of his programs
on ordinary people. The Israel lobby has done a masterful job of
disappearing Palestinian humanity, but most Democrats can still
see through that veil -- and, unlike most Republicans, once they
see they will care and act. It's not unreasonable to hope that
eventually their leaders, including Harris, will follow their
rank and file [there's a good Gandhi quote I could look up and
insert here]. This may seem like faint hope, but Qumsiyah has
written eloquently about his hopes. I'm not going to deny that
Harris, following Biden, has been complicit in and supportive
of genocide and other hideous crimes against human rights, but
I still believe that their support is squishy and conflicted,
far from the hardened determination of Smotrich, Ben-Gvir, and
now Netanyahu, who would rather join Hitler in the bunker than
give up their life's work.
Dave Reed: [09-15]
Weekly Briefing: Zionism is now a dirty word.
Mona Shtaya: [09-16]
Israel is joining the first global AI convention, here's why that's
dangerous: "Over the last year Israel has weaponized AI in its
genocide in Gaza, deploying AI-driven surveillance and automated
targeting systems which has killed tens of thousands. Israel's
participation in the first global AI treaty raises serious
questions."
Jonah Valdez:
Kelley Beaucar Vlahos: [09-17]
South Africa minister: countries have to 'boycott' Israel's war:
"In a Washington appearance Tuesday, Ronald Lamola recalled how the
world community ended apartheid in 1990."
Election notes:
Jonathan Chait: -[09-21]
The case for 2024 indecision is feeble: "Trump-wary conservatives
have run out of rational reasons to be undecided." His examples of
still-vacillating conservatives include
Ross Douthat and
Bret Stephens.
Andrew Prokop: [09-17]
What happened to Nate Silver: I'm not sure he was ever all that
"beloved by progressives." In his 538 days, his focus was on getting
it right, which meant anticipating contests Republicans would win,
and calling them emphatically enough to claim the win. He started
out as a useful corrective to a lot of polling bullshit, but after
he blew the 2016 election, he overcompensated and turned into just
another annoying pundit.
Trump:
Vance, and other Republicans:
Jonathan Chait: [09-18]
How JD Vance became Trump's pet liar.
Zak Cheney-Rice: [09-20]
Mark Robinson has been hiding in plain sight. He's the current
Lieutenant Governor of North Carolina, and the Republican candidate
for Governor this year. He's, well, . . .
Jeet Heer: [09-16]
JD Vance can't even bullshit properly: "Donald Trump is a world-class
BS artist. His running mate is just a twitchy liar."
Sarah Jones: [09-19]
When abortion bans kill.
Chris Lehmann: [09-04]
The never-ending grift of DC influence peddling: "Right-wing
fraudsters Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman got caught lying about their
lobbying firm, but K Street has long been a breeding ground for
bottom-feeding grifters." This is a truly bipartisan problem, and
some Democrats pursue grift as avidly as many Republicans -- Bob
Menendez and Krysten Sinema leap to mind -- but Republicans have
raised it to a cultural ideal. Links here to a couple of old "more
on grifter politics" articles (and underscore the Republican link):
Mike Konczal: [2017-11-02]
Trump is creating a grifter economy: "The White House economic
plans help the scheming and powerful swindle ordinary Americans."
Elie Mystal: [2022-09-16]
Trump's "big lie" was also a big grift: "The January 6 committee's
revelations that the Trump campaign raised money for a bogus 'Official
Election Defense Fund' point to criminal fraud."
Harris:
Aida Chavez: [09-14]
Do Kamala Harris's neocon supporters just hate Trump, or is there
something more to her appeal?
Chas Danner: [09-21]
Harris agrees to another debate against Trump on October 23.
Harris
accepted an invitation from CNN. Trump previously rejected
any further debate, saying "I am not inclined to do it because
I won by a lot."
Doug Henwood: [09-16]
Kamala's capitalist class: "Both parties have little trouble
attracting support from the superrich. But a closer look reveals
fissures within the ruling class."
Ellen Ioanes: [09-19]
The real impact of the Teamsters' non-endorsement. I'm not
reading any credible answers here.
Rebecca Picciotto: [09-21]
Harris raised 4 times more than Trump in donations for final election
sprint: Harris raised $189 million in August, compared to $44
million for Trump. Harris ended the month with $404 million in cash
on hand, "dwarfing Trump's $295 million war chest." Converting that
advantage in money into votes isn't straightforward, but Democrats
have a lot to work with here. The article doesn't break this down,
but I figure the fundraising advantage must come from two sources:
from the usual rich donors, who in substantial numbers are sick and
disgusted with Trump, and want to see him gone; and from small donors,
whose enthusiasm is unprecedented. People who put their money on the
line will also press their friends and acquaintances into voting,
and that's likely to determine how the election breaks. And while
most of the money will be spent on advertising, one thing I've
been noticing is how much more "ground game" focus there is among
Democrats this year -- living in Kansas, the norm is zero, so what
I'm seeing is not just unprecedented, but orders of magnitude.
And the good news in bad polls is that no one's counting chickens
before they're hatched. The race is on.
Sara Swann: [09-11]
Why Harris' debate remarks about US military in combat zones is
misleading: I noted her comment in passing, and linked to an
article on it (Joshua Keating:
Biden and Harris say America's no longer at war. Is that true?),
but didn't attempt to discern whether there was any technical
plausibility behind the gross misrepresentation. This popped up
again when Heather Cox Richardson tweeted:
Harris is shifting the
Afghanistan question to point out that the US has no troops in
combat zones in the world right now.
To which Greg Grandin replied:
Because it is as much a lie as Haitians eating cats.
So I did a bit of digging here. This turns on the term "combat
zone," which has some effect on soldiers' pay and benefits, but
not everyone's clear on this. PolitiFact says the assertion is
"mostly false." Here are a couple more references:
Walz, Biden, and other Democrats:
Rick Perlstein: [08-26]
Say it to my face: "How Democrats learned to tell the plain
truth and like it." Perlstein's columns have been terrific ever
since he started writing for American Prospect, but somehow I
missed this one, which came out of the DNC without being explicit
about it (well, until the end). He gives examples from Clinton,
Gore, Kerry ("the worst of them all"), and Obama. I don't think
Harris is totally past running from her own shadow, but she's
much better at at defending what's right, and attacking what's
wrong.
Supreme Court, legal matters, and other crimes:
Climate and environment:
Economists, the economy, and work:
Ukraine and Russia:
Elsewhere in the world and/or/in spite of America's empire:
Other stories:
Ryan Cooper: [08-05]
The case for pragmatic socialism: "The times are right for a
socialist agenda that America can accept. We even have examples of
it in practice." I held this piece back for later perusal, but I
rather doubt I'm ever going to finish reading it, much less argue
with it. In my philosophy days, I was fairly simpatico both with
Marxism and with Pragmatism, and never saw much of a problem there.
(I certainly knew a lot more of Marxism, but I read a fair amount
of Charles Peirce, and also of Kant and various neo-Kantians like
Robert Paul Wolff -- although I gather he spent more time critiquing
pragmatists than swimming with them.) At least the focus on praxis
was shared, along with the suspicion of metaphysics. The thing is,
I have very little interest in salvaging "socialism" as a slogan,
even though I admire both the theory and the legacy, and I'm willing
to do my bit in defense of both. I just think that at this point a
fresh start might work better. There's something pragmatist in that,
isn't there?
Jeffrey St Clair: [09-20]
Roaming Charges: Cat scratch political fever: Starts with
"Miss Sassy started the biggest political fire since Mrs. O'Leary's
cow kicked over a lamp and burned down Chicago." So, with Trump
and Vance. Then includes a picture captioned "When sleazy immigrants
[Don Jr. and Eric Trump] sneak into your country and kill your cats."
Obituaries
Books
Wendy Brown: [09-09]
The enduring influence of Marx's masterpiece: "No book has done
more than Capital to explain the way the world works." Essay
"adapted from the foreword to the first English translation of
Capital: Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1 in 50 years."
Somehow, I don't recall this "famous turn of phrase" that Brown cites:
"Capital is dead labor that acts like a vampire: It comes to life when
it drinks more living labor, and the more living labor it drinks, the
more it comes to life." Brown continues:
Capital's requirements of increased labor exploitation over time --
exploiting more workers and exploiting them more intensively -- and
in space -- ever expanding markets for its commodities -- constitute
the life and death drives of capitalism, drives that are as insatiable
as they are unsustainable. They reduce the masses to impoverishment,
concentrate wealth among the few, and pile up crises that spell the
system's eventual collapse, overthrow, or, as we have later learned,
reinventions through the social state, the debt state, neoliberalism,
financialization, and the asset-enhancing and de-risking state. Since
growth is essential for what Marx called the "realization of surplus-value"
or profit, capitalist development becomes an almighty shredder of all
life forms and practices, including its own recent ones. From small
shops, family farms, and cities to gigantic industries, rain forests,
and even states, everything capital makes or needs it will eventually
also destroy. In Marx's summary, "Capitalist production thus advances . . .
only by damaging the very founts of all wealth: the earth and the
worker."
I'm reminded here of how easy it is to explain all of the world's
ills with one word: "capitalism." That's the lesson drawn by every
person who ever fell under Marx's spell, but reading this now I'm
most struck by the insatiability of the process, which dialectically
impels us to limit and regulate growth. Even now, when we've seen
much of the harm capitalism can do, and as we've clearly benefited
from many efforts to limit its rapacity, that's still a tough sell
to many otherwise well-meaning people (e.g., "progressives," who
still hope to grow our way out of all earthly hardships).
Adam Gopnik: [2012-02-27]
The big reveal: Old article, popped up in a link list, piqued
my curiosity for reasons I may (or may not) get around to explaining.
Basically, a review of
Elaine Pagels: Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in
the Book of Revelation, first imagining the text as a
blockbuster movie:
The Bible, as every Sunday-school student learns, has a Hollywood
ending. Not a happy ending, certainly, but one where all the dramatic
plot points left open earlier, to the whispered uncertainty of the
audience ("I don't get it -- when did he say he was coming back?"),
are resolved in a rush, and a final, climactic confrontation between
the stern-lipped action hero and the really bad guys takes place.
That ending -- the Book of Revelation -- has every element that
Michael Bay could want: dragons, seven-headed sea beasts, double-horned
land beasts, huge C.G.I.-style battles involving hundreds of thousands
of angels and demons, and even, in Jezebel the temptress, a part for
Megan Fox. ("And I gave her space to repent of her fornication; and'
she repented not.")
I have this mental image of a certain type of 19th century Midwest
farmer-intellectual who thinks that all of the world's knowledge --
past, present, and future -- is locked in the pages of the Bible,
waiting to be explored and conquered by obsessive scholars like
themselves. I even have a specific name in mind: Abraham Lincoln
Hull, my great-grandfather, born on an arid west Kansas homestead
in 1870, shortly after his father (plain Abraham Hull) moved out
from Pennsylvania, after the Civil War. He was a sheep rancher,
but I've heard him described as "the laziest human being ever." I
suspect he was just lost in his thoughts, which fed into sideline
jobs of teaching and preaching. I never knew him, but I did know,
until I approached 15 and he died at 70, thereby confirming his
own biblically-derived prophecy. He also farmed, taught school,
dressed up for church, and pondered Revelations. One of the few
times when he asked me a question was when he was trying to figure
out whether the founding of Israel was proof that the second coming
was imminent. I lacked the presence of mind to figure out whether
he was a premillennial or postmillennial dispensationalist, but I
was struck by the crackpot nature of the question, and I've recalled
the moment every time I've seen or heard of Christian Zionists wax
on the subject -- going back at least as far as David Lloyd George
in approving the Balfour Declaration.
As it turned out, my father had his own very different take on
Revelation, but I never made the slightest effort to understand
his, just noting that it was opposed to my grandfather's, and
suspecting that, as with most of his theories of everything, it
erred on the side of the whimsical. Eventually, I realized that
I too was fated to have a theory of Revelation, even without
having read more than the occasional isolated verse (which is
the only way I ever approached the Bible -- the idea that one
could just read it as literature, like The Gilgamesh or
Moby Dick, only occurred to me when I saw it listed in
the Great Books curriculum). My theory is that the book was
tacked onto the end of the Bible as a reveal, one of those joke
endings that exposes everything that had come before it as an
elaborate hoax. That suggests more intention than I can imagine
early Christian clerics as being capable of. Still, some of the
most dedicated scholars have easily wandered into reductio
ad absurdum, especially when the subject is religion.
While my "theory" was never more than a joke, it was pretty
clearly derived from insights I gleaned while reading a book
about Judaism:
Douglas Rushkoff: Nothing Sacred: The Truth About Judaism.
Rushkoff's thesis is that the internal logic of Judaism functions
as an aid in helping you get through and past and over religion.
The book isn't fresh enough in my mind to do justice to here (not
that I have the time, anyway), but I will note that I had spent a
lot of time on the history and evolution of puritanism, and found
a similar dynamic at play there (e.g., the unitarians are direct
descendants yet perhaps the most secular and tolerant sect in all
of Christendom; but far more significant is the liberation puritan
theology allowed to turn into "the protestant ethic and the spirit
of capitalism").
Ed Park:
Nuance and nuisance: on the Village Voice: Review of
Tricia Romano's oral history, The Freaks Came Out to Write: The
Definitive History of the Village Voice, the Radical Paper That
Changed American Culture.
Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins/Kate Yoon: [09-12]
The age of public austerity and private luxury: "A conversation
with Melinda Cooper about the recent history of neoliberalism and
her new book
Counterrevolution: Extravagance and Austerity in Public Finance.
Cooper opens with:
My overarching argument is continuous with the one I developed in
Family Values [2017, subtitle: Between Neoliberalism and
the New Social Conservatism]. I question the idea that the neoliberal
counterrevolution of the early 1980s was a backlash against Keynesianism
as such. Instead, I see it as a backlash against the leftist social
movements of the late 1960s and '70s, which were already engaged in a
kind of immanent critique of actually existing Keynesianism. . . .
My basic argument is that neoliberals of different stripes managed
to create a regime of extreme public spending austerity for those
primarily dependent on wage income, while at the same time ushering
in a regime of radical spending and monetary extravagance for financial
asset owners. We tend to see only the austerity side of the equation --
hence the illusion that this is all about the retreat of the state.
But it's hard to explain the extreme wealth concentration that has
occurred in recent decades if we don't also understand the multiple
ways in which financial wealth is actively subsidized by the state.
There's quite a bit here on how capital gains taxation (or lack
thereof) subsidizes asset inflation -- my term, not a very popular
one as it suggests assets aren't really worth as much as they seem,
and also that inflation, like money, is "good for the rich but bad
for the poor" (as Lewis Lapham liked to put it). Also more details
on how the "Virginia school neoliberals" (like James Buchanan)
"dovetailed" with the "supply siders" - despite different concepts,
both sought to make the rich richer, at the expense of everyone
else. Then back to politics:
Having said this, I don't think economic liberalism as such ever
works alone; it always works in alliance with some species of
conservatism. This may be the communitarian/neoliberal alliance
of a Third Way Democrat like Bill Clinton, or the neoconservative
neoliberalism of George W. Bush.
In today's Republican Party, we have something that looks like
a neoliberal/paleoconservative alliance, and this brings complexities
of its own. Paleoconservatism has clear connections to the white
supremacist and theocratic far right; as a movement, it defines
itself in opposition to neoconservatism, which it sees as too
secular, too liberal, too internationalist, and too Jewish.
However, the kinds of economic alliances made by paleoconservatives
have been quite diverse. [Mentions Koch-favorite Murray Rothbard,
drawing on Ludwig von Mises; "Ayn Rand devotee" Alan Greenspan;
Pat Buchanan.] . . .
I would say the contemporary Republican Party draws on all of
these influences, Trump more haphazardly than others. In his first
election campaign, Trump seemed to embody the kind of paleoconservative
national protectionist policies espoused by Pat Buchanan or Steve
Bannon -- and certainly on the issue of trade with China, he followed
through on this.
JD Vance sounds like he espouses an anti-neoliberal national
protectionist position too, but then again he is one of several
Republican right operators who are funded by the ultra-libertarian
Peter Thiel. What unites these people is their affiliation to
far-right paleoconservatism and their immersion in the world of
private investment. This underwrites a deeply patrimonial,
autarchic, and atavistic outlook that is sometimes dressed up
in the garb of a more progressive anti-corporate agenda.
Music (and other arts?)
Chatter
Means testing is divisive, wasteful and punitive: [09-19]
Israel has shown itself as a metastasizing threat to the whole
world. Are you going to be comfortable getting on a plane with
people carrying Israeli-made products?
Jeff Sharlet: [09-23]
49% of the class of '23 at Dartmouth, where I [t]each, went into
finance or consulting. Even were [I] the most ardent capitalist --
I am really not that -- this would be a crushing statistic. So
much energy, education, & intellect hoovered up by one sector.
[I might have added: which produces nothing of value, being mostly
parasitic, and often just predatory.]
Tony Karon: [09-24]
Israel -- a Jewish supremacist state created by violently displacing
the indigenous Palestinian majority -- was built on racist contempt
for Arab life, limb and property. It is maintained today by the same
people -- for Israel and its US backers, Arab lives don't matter.
[image of headline: Israeli air strikes kill 492 people in
Lebanon]
Local tags (these can be linked to directly):
music.
Original count: 135 links, 8611 words (11055 total).
Current count: 144 links, 9060 words (11622 total).
Sunday, September 22, 2024
Daily Log
I see that I originally slated Speaking of Which to post on Monday,
instead of the customary Sunday. As it's Sunday, I might as well stick
to that plan, even though I don't recall making it. I promised that
this weekend's posts will be abbreviated, and so they will be. But at
the moment, I have 119 links, 7047 words. As for Music Week, that will
also be delayed a day. At present, I have 17 new rated, -2 unrated
(but with a four packages to open and list).
Work upstairs is coming along, but I took time out to cook Saturday,
a dinner for Mike and Gretchen. It was another inventory reduction deal,
and this time occasioned zero new shopping (although I had a couple
fresh vegetables on hand, that needed use for something). I came up
with a mix of Greek/Italian/Spanish dishes, plus an old family cake:
Baked shrimp with feta: I started with 2 lbs. freezer-burnt jumbo
shrimp; sauce took 1 onion, 1 bunch scallions, garlic, parsley, a big
can of crushed tomatoes, wine, oregano; I cooked that down, spooned it
into a baking dish with the shrimp, sprinkled feta on top, and baked
12 minutes at 500F.
Penne puttanesca: I had half a bag of dried penne, so boiled it;
made sauce from olive oil, garlic, anchovies, kalamata olives, capers,
some Aleppo pepper (hot, but not very), a can of tomato sauce; I cooked
that down, dumped the hot pasta into the pan, and served it with extra
parmesan.
Pisto manchego: I chopped an onion, a red bell pepper, a zucchini,
and some garlic, and sauteed it in olive oil, adding capers and parsley.
I found it a bit dull, so added 1 tsp sugar and 4 tbs red wine vinegar,
for a caponate effect, which was perfect.
Green beans and artichoke hearts in lemon-caper sauce: I had
frozen bags of the vegetables, so cooked them separately; I started
out thinking two separate sauces, with lemon-caper for the artichokes,
then decided to combine them. I zested a lemon, added half a preserved
lemon peel, and juiced the lemon, into butter with capers, then folded
the vegetables in. I also chopped up half a package of prosciutto
(since I usually use some kind of pork with green beans).
Chocolate cake with maple-black walnut frosting: I did the
"all-in-the-pan" recipe, but experimented by adding 1 tbs espresso
powder to the water; cake came out a bit on the dry side, and not
noticeably tastier, so I'd say the experiment failed. I used some
leftover cream cheese in place of butter for the icing, and topped
with black walnuts, and served with vanilla ice cream.
No picture of the dinner plate. Maybe when I heat up leftovers?
We still have a lot of stuff in the freezer (especially seafood,
but also a duck, liver, sweetbreads, and ground venison and boar).
Some frozen veggies, but probably not much. Lot of stuff in the
pantry I haven't been using either, especially noodles and pulses.
Tuesday, September 17, 2024
Music Week
Expanded blog post,
September archive
(in progress).
Tweet: Music Week: 37 albums, 8 A-list
Music: Current count 42976 [42939] rated (+37), 23 [38] unrated (-5).
New records reviewed this week:
- Gino Amato: Latin Crsossroads (2024, Ovation): [cd]: B+(*)
- Laurie Anderson: Amelia (2024, Nonesuch): [sp]: A-
- Eric Bibb: Live at the Scala Theatre Stockholm (2024, Repute): [sp]: B+(**)
- Peter Case: Doctor Moan (2023, Sunset Blvd.): [sp]: B
- Dawn Clement/Steve Kovalcheck/Jon Hamar: Dawn Clement/Steve Kovalcheck/Jon Hamar Trio (2021 [2024], self-released): [cd]: B+(*)
- Coco & Clair Clair: Girl (2024, Nice Girl World, EP): [sp]: A-
- Buck Curran: One Evening and Other Folks Songs (2021-22 [2024], Obsolete/ESP-Disk): [cd]: B+(*)
- Zaccai Curtis: Cubop Lives! (2024, Truth Revolution Recording Collective): [sp]: B+(**)
- The Vinny Golia Quintet 2024: Almasty (2024, Nine Winds): [bc]: B+(**)
- Hot Club of San Francisco: Original Gadjo (2024, Hot Club): [cd]: B+(**)
- Ill Considered: Infrared (2024, New Soil): [sp]: B+(**)
- Ive: Ive Switch (2024, Starship Entertainment, EP): [sp]: A-
- Julie: My Anti-Aircraft Friend (2024, Atlantic): [sp]: B+(*)
- MJ Lenderman: Manning Fireworks (2024, Anti-): [sp]: B+(***)
- LL Cool J: The FORCE (2024, Def Jam): [sp]: A-
- Delfeayo Marsalis Uptown Jazz Orchestra: Crescent City Jewels (2023-24 [2024], Troubadour Jass): [cd]: A-
- Chad McCullough: In These Hills, Beyond (2023 [2024], Calligram): [cd]: B+(***)
- Kate Nash: 9 Sad Symphonies (2024, Kill Rock Stars): [sp]: A
- Amy Rigby: Hang in There With Me (2024, Tapete): [sp]: A-
- Jeff Rupert: It Gets Better (2021 [2024], Rupe Media): [cd]: B+(***)
- Otis Sandsjö: Y-Otis Tre (2021-23 [2024], We Jazz): [sp]: B
- Claudio Scolari Project: Intermission (2023 [2024], Principal): [cd]: B+(***)
- Kenny Wayne Shepherd Band: Dirt on My Diamonds: Volume 1 (2023, Provogue): [sp]: B
- Nala Sinephro: Endlessness (2024, Warp): [sp]: B+(***)
- Chris Smither: All About the Bones (2024, Signature Sounds): [sp]: A-
- Superposition: II (2024, We Jazz): [sp]: B+(**)
- Verraco: Breathe . . . Godspeed (2024, Timedance, EP): [sp]: B+(***)
- Morgan Wade: Obsessed (2024, Ladylike/RCA Nashville): [sp]: A-
- Gillian Welch/David Rawlings: Woodland (2024, Acony): [sp]: B+(***)
Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:
- Alan Tomlinson Trio: Loft 1993 (1993 [2024], Scatter Archive): [bc]: B+(**)
- Unholy Modal Rounders: Unholier Than Thou 7/7/77 (1977 [2024], Don Giovanni, 2CD): [sp]: A
Old music:
Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
- Benjamin Boone: Confluence: The Ireland Sessions (Origin) [09-20]
- Delia Fischer: Beyond Bossa (Origin) [09-20]
- Rich Halley 4: Dusk and Dawn (Pine Eagle) [10-25]
Monday, September 16, 2024
Speaking of Which
Blog link.
File opened 2024-09-11 01:27 PM. Didn't make the Sunday deadline,
so posting is delayed until Monday.
Opened this file on September 11, 1:27 PM, with the big debate
looming that evening. As I'm writing this Sunday evening, that
start seems like ages ago. Little chance I'll make my rounds
before nodding off tonight. I could see posting or of not, where
the main reason for posting is to move earlier into doing endlessly
delayed non-blog work.
Indeed, late Sunday night I decided to pack it in without posting.
I don't expect I'll need to add much on Monday. And in general,
I won't be circling back to publications I checked on Sunday, or
reporting news that only broke on Monday.
Finally posted this late Monday night. I ran into a lot of pieces
on Monday that added a lot of extra writing, in many cases including
regrets that I didn't have time to write even more. Even with the
extra day, I didn't make all the usual rounds. I also found myself
needing to search for further articles on specific topics, which
may wind up being a better way to go about doing this. I also hit
a bunch of paywalls. That's a horrible way to run a democracy, but
that's a rant for another day.
For what it's worth, this week, on initial post, has the most
words (15635) and the third most links (288, behind
317 and
290) of
any week since I embedded the counting software.
I was struck by the following passage from Annie Proulx's
Fen, Bog & Swamp: A Short History of Peatland Destruction
and Its Role in the Climate Crisis, where talking about
the bogs in Germany she brings up some old Roman history. The
significance here is about how arrogant empires seed their own
destruction (p. 120):
Rome's first emperor, Caesar Augustus, was seventy-two years old and
near the end of his rule when the legions suffered their catastrophic
defeat on the edge of the Great Bog. Germania's population was rural,
made up of farmer-warriors and their families living in small
settlements at the time of the battle. There were no real towns, and
private ownership of land had been unknown among the eastern
barbarians fifty years earlier when Caesar conquered Gaul. In general,
where colonial- and imperial-minded aggressors make their moves into
new territories and encounter indigenous people, often very numerous
and "complex, multi-lingual, culturally diverse," as the two groups
gradually mix and confront each other, tribal identities begin to take
shape and individual "tribal leaders" are named. For the aggressor,
this bundling is the opening process of controlling the indigenous
people who, up to that time, may not have seen themselves as
distinct tribes. Suddenly, they are corralled by identity to a
specific area.
The Roman system of conquest was to grant conquered people Roman
citizenship and involve them in Roman customs and culture. What Rome
got from its aggressive takeovers encircling the Mediterranean Sea
was an increase of manpower to serve in the army, slaves and money
from taxation of its new colonies.
The Roman legions were augmented by auxiliaries of men from
conquered lands. Yet many of the vanquished hated the Romans, their
martial ways, their enslavements, their self-proclaimed superiority,
their heavy taxes and their strutting presence as overseers and
governors in seized territories. At the same time the conquered
population wanted to be joined to the powerful, to visit glittering
Rome whence all roads led.
The next couple pages go into specifics about the battle, where
over 13,000 Roman troops were slaughtered at a loss of 500 Germans.
I had long been under the impression that the Roman Empire expanded
steadily up to its maximum under Hadrian (117-138 CE;
Wikipedia has maps from 117 and 125), but I've since learned
that history is messier. I first heard about the German bog debacle
after the Bush invasion of Iraq, when I
noted:
Of course, this will take a while to play out, but the logic of
self-destruction is clear. A while back Martin van Creveld compared
the Bush invasion of Iraq to the disastrous Roman invasion of Germany
in 9 BCE when Augustus marched his legions into a swamp, losing them
all.
By the time I wrote that, I had already
noted a comparable Roman military disaster, when in 53 BCE
Crassus led "across the Euphrates" into Iraq, where the desert
proved as debilitating as the German bog -- although in both cases
the real culprit was the Roman ego. Back then I was thinking more
about the hubris of the invaders, but one could just well focus on
the inevitability and resilience of resistance.
A short while later, I read this, from
Timothy Egan, Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life
and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis (2011, pp. 16-17):
What Curtis knew of Indians was informed, in large part, by depictions
of dead natives he had seen in a book as a child. More than a thousand
Eastern Sioux had been rounded up following an 1862 raid on settlers
in Minnesota. The carnage was widespread in villages and farms in the
southwest part of the state; by one estimate, eight hundred whites
were killed in what became known as the Sioux Uprising. The Sioux had
been roused to violence by repeated violations of their treaty, and by
the mendacity of corrupt government agents who refused to make the
required payments from the pact. In defeat, after the uprising, the
Indians were sentenced to death. At the same time, many in Congress
demanded that all Indians be wiped from the map, echoing the view of
their constituents after the Sioux had caused so many casualties.
President Lincoln commuted the sentences of most of the insurgents.
But the death penalty remained for more than three dozen of them. On
December 16, 1862, they were all hanged, the largest mass execution
in American history. Curtis had studied an engraving of the lifeless
Sioux in Mankato, Minnesota. Necks snapped, faces cold -- it haunted
him. "All through life I have carried a vivid picture of that great
scaffold with thirty-nine Indians hanging at the end of a rope," he
wrote.
Top story threads:
Israel:
America's Israel (and Israel's America):
Ruwaida Kamal Amer/Mahmoud Mushtaha: [09-12]
'People torn to pieces' in Israeli airstrike on Gaza displacement
camp: "Israeli bombs set tents ablaze and left deep craters in
the earth as the army attacked Al-Mawasi, a designated 'safe zone,'
for the fifth time."
Michael Arria:
James Bamford: [09-13]
Israel's crackdown on the West Bank has already killed an American
citizen: Aysenur Ezgi.
Rachel Chason/Jennifer Hassan/Alon Rom/Niha Masih/Kareen
Fahim: [09-15]
Houthis fire missile from Yemen into central Israel, warn of more
strikes: "Israeli forces said the missile Sunday did not cause
any direct injuries, but Netanyahu threatens, 'we exact a heavy
price for any attempt to harm us.'"
Ellen Ioanes: [09-11]
How Israel keeps evading responsibility for killing Americans.
Fred Kaplan: [09-11]
The key reason why we're not close to a cease-fire: That's an
easy one -- "Netanyahu refuses" -- but one should note that Biden
doesn't dare make his refusal the least bit awkward, even though
that simply reinforces the ideas that he is helpless as a leader
and/or he actually endorses as well as facilitates genocide.
Previous American presidents have generally been able to prevail
on Israeli leaders to make some gestures toward accommodating
American needs, even if they really didn't want to (withdrawing
from Sinai in 1957) and/or doublecrossed the Americans later
(basically, every time since). Also, what the hell is this?
Both sides' positions are reasonable, given their interests. Hamas
fears that without a permanent cease-fire and total withdrawal,
Israel will inflict utter devastation on all of its positions (and
suspected positions) after the last hostage is released. And Israel
fears that Hamas will attempt another Oct. 7 if the group isn't
first destroyed as a political and military power.
I mean, the Hamas position sounds reasonable, because that's
exactly what Israel is doing, and without a permanent ceasefire
has vowed to continue doing until the last Hamas fighter is dead,
even if they have to kill every other Palestinian to get to him.
But Israel has no grounds for any such "reasonable fear." Another
"Oct. 7," if indeed any such thing is possible, will only happen
if Israel recreates the same (or worse) conditions. There are
many ways to prevent further eruptions from Hamas. Killing every
Palestinian is the worst possible option.
Joshua Keating: [09-13]
Can the world stop a massive oil spill in the middle of a war
zone? "If the race to stop a spill in the Red Sea fails,
it would be one of the worst in history."
Branko Marcetic: [09-13]
The US government is a partner to Israel killing US citizens.
Mitchell Plitnick: [09-12]
Israel's lie about a US activist's murder has exposed the
Biden-Harris double standard on Palestine: "Israel's lie
over the murder of U.S. activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi has been
exposed, and in the process, so has Joe Biden and Kamala Harris's
double standard on the worth of Palestinian lives."
Josephine Riesman/SI Rosenbaum: [09-10]
Kamala is sending a subtle message on Israel. Is anyone listening?
What she said in the debate was almost literally what she said in
her DNC acceptance speech. "Subtle" is one word for it, if you assume
that she's being completely honest, and has every intention of filling
out every little detail. Or, less generously, you could say she's being
cynical and deceptive. As I pointed out a while back, her "subtle"
message would be more effective if she reversed the order of terms,
and first bemoaned the massive destruction and loss of life before
touting her deep commitment to a secure Israel. At this point, when
most people hear "Israel's right to defend itself" they automatically
translate it to a license to commit mass murder, because that is
exactly what Israel has done every time they've uttered those magic
words.
The authors make their case at great length. I'm not completely
dismissive, but I'm far from convinced. I do have some feeling for
the pressure she is under, and of the stakes should she fail. I'm
personally willing to let this play out through November, after
which she will either have much more leverage, or will be totally
irrelevant. Partly for that reason, I've moved this discussion
away from the sections on Debate and Harris. But another part of
that reason is that I feel her critics for failing to come out
more clearly in favor of ceasefire and conflict resolution have
every cause to speak their piece. And even to vote against her
if they feel the need, although I think that would be a mistake,
especially as an attempt to move your fellow Americans to be
more critical and independent of Israel.
Here's part of the piece:
If you're trying to determine Harris' position on Israel from the
mainstream news media coverage of it, you're likely confused.
Headlines point in all directions, from
"Harris'
Support for Israel 'Ironclad' After Attack on Golan Heights" to
"Harris
Team 'Expressed Openness to a New Direction' on Israel Policy."
One article
claims there are "Democrats Working Inside the Party to Persuade
Kamala Harris to Stop Weapons for Israel," while another
dishes: "Harris Steps Out on Israel." But many explainers wind up
throwing their hands in the air, like the Forward
did: "Kamala Harris Wants to Support Israel, and Palestinians.
It Will Be Even Harder Than It Seems." Indeed.
But taken together, Harris' statements and movements around Israeli
policy -- throughout her career but especially in recent months, after
the candidacy was bestowed on her -- do add up to something.
Ali Rizk: [09-12]
Is Gaza war feeding ISIS resurgence in Middle East? "As
resources are drawn to Israel-Lebanon region, US troops are
fighting the terror group more than ever."
Norman Solomon: [09-11]
Undebatable: what Harris and Trump could not say about Israel and
Gaza: Starts with "Kamala Harris won the debate. People being
bombed in Gaza did not." Ends with: "Silence is a blanket that
smothers genuine democratic discourse and the outcries of moral
voices. Making those voices inaudible is a key goal for the
functioning of the warfare state."
Jeffrey St Clair: [09-13]
Murder in Beita: the IDF's killing of Aysenur Eygi.
Jonah Valdez:
Most Americans want to stop arming Israel. Politicians don't
care.
Israel vs. world opinion:
Gideon Lewis-Kraus: [09-08]
The angst and sorrow of Jewish Currents: "A little magazine
wants to criticize Israel while holding on to Jewishness."
Ben Lorber: [09-05]
The right is increasingly exploiting the horror of genocide:
"Right-wing operatives are channeling the genocide in Gaza into
mainstream antisemitism." A report from the fifth annual National
Conservatism (NatCon) conference ("the cutting edge of the Trumpian
Right"). I'm not making a lot of sense out of this. Traditional
right-wing antisemites, including some NatCon grandees, have more
often been staunch supporters of Israel: Zionism both flatters
their prejudices and offers them hope for their own societies
becoming Judenrein. However, we're not dealing with especially
clear-headed thinkers here, so it shouldn't be much of a surprise
when they start confusing their complaints. Anyone who sees the
atrocities Israel is committing and conflates them with all Jews
(or even all Israeli Jews) is a fool -- and note that the most
flagrant offenders here are the propagandists who try to equate
any criticism of Israel with antisemitism. It's inevitable that
people who don't know any better will take this hint and run
with it, which seems to be Lorber's subject here.
I hadn't run across Lorber before, but he has a book (co-written
by Shane Burley),
Safety through Solidarity: A Radical Guide to Fighting
Antisemitism, and some older articles:
Craig Mokhiber: [09-10]
No, Israel does not have a right to defend itself in Gaza. But
the Palestinians do. "Basic morality and simple logic dictate
that the right of self-defense belongs to the Palestinian people,
not to their oppressor. And international law agrees." True that
international law does recognize some right to self-defense, but
it is not a moral principle, and I am suspicious of whatever logic
you might think supports it. Although law often reinforces what we
take to be moral, it has to deal not just with what people should
do, but with real people in complex situations who do things that
do not always conform with morality. One thing that people often
do, whether by nature or culture, regardless of law, is attempt to
defend themselves. Self-defense is used to describe a wide range
of acts, from shielding your face from blows to throwing punches
of your own. Modern weapons magnify and accelerate both threats
and damage. Some are so powerful that they can harm bystanders,
who never were threats, so never needed to be defended against.
What law has to do is to decide whether self-defense
is understandable and/or excusable, or should be condemned and
possibly punished. To say self-defense is a right is to assert
that acts which otherwise would be considered criminal should
be not just tolerated but taken as exemplary, as precedents to
encourage others to even greater violence.
But in this specific case, to the extent that one allows such
a right, why shouldn't Palestinians enjoy it same as Israelis?
If you only allow Israel a right to self-defense, and allow it
so broadly, you're really just saying that you think Palestinians
are sub-human, that they don't count or matter, and might as well
be slaughtered indiscriminately. As the last year has proven,
that's no hypothetical. That's what Israel is doing, and anyone
who thinks they have a "right" to do so is simply aiding and
abetting genocide.
James Ray: [09-13]
Electoral politics are not the way forward for the Palestine
movement: "The question of how Palestine activists should
engage in electoral politics has split the movement, but the
2024 election season should clarify why they are not an effective
strategy for building power." I'll endorse the title, but the
article itself leans way to heavy on "the Palestine movement,"
which I have some sympathy for but little faith or interest in.
Electoral politics are set for the year, with nothing but the
voting left to do. While there are important issues and major
differences in candidates yet to be decided, lots of issues
aren't on the ballot, including America's support for Israel's
genocide against Palestinians -- which is how I prefer framing
the issue, as it seems much broader (of interest to many more
people) and deeper (of greater importance) than the question
of where and when one can fly Palestinian flags.
The movement, of course, can and must continue, using any
tactics that seem likely to move public and/or elite opinion --
anything that would put pressure on those in power to act to
halt these atrocities and start the long process of healing.
I can argue that those of you who are intensely concerned with
this issue should spend your vote on Harris and the rest of
the Democrats -- it's not much, but it's yours, and if you
don't vote, even out of righteous spite, you're wasting your
right to participate in even our bare minimum of democracy.
Also, by spoiling your vote, you're not just being negligent
but showing contempt for people who need your help on issues
that really matter to them -- the same people you need most
urgently for your issue.
I could also argue that Harris is more cognizant of and
amenable to further pressure on this issue. I'm not going to
plead this case here: it's just a feeling, not supported by
clear statements on her part, or by a track record which shows
any great will on her part to withstand the enormous pressures
the entire political systems puts on politicians like her to
pledge allegiance to Israel. My own inclination is to not just
vote for her but to give her a free pass through November, as
I don't see any constructive value in further embarrassing her
on this issue (or in encouraging her to embarrass herself by
reiterating her blanket support for Israel). But I'm not saying
that anyone active on this issue should stop talking about it,
and I'm not going to be holding any grudges against others who
can't help but include her among the many American political
figures who are complicit in this genocide. For pretty much
the same reason, I may think that people who self-identify as
"pro-Palestinian" have a dubious grasp of political tactics, I
bear them no ill-feeling, because they at least are committed
to opposing Israel's hideous and shameful reign of terror.
Until the atrocities are stopped, whatever thoughts they may
have about Palestinian statehood are mere curiosities.
By the way, don't give Trump the same free pass until the
election. Feel free to point out how his presidency contributed
to the conditions that elected Israel's ultra-right government,
that cornered and prodded Hamas into their desperate Oct. 7
revolt, and that revealed so many Republicans as genocide's
biggest cheerleaders. This is not just a matter of setting the
historical record straight, but it directly counters the ridiculous
notion that Trump is some kind of antiwar candidate.
Ben Reiff: [09-11]
Why did a British Jewish newspaper publish fake Israeli intelligence?
"Israel's army suspects fabrications published in the Jewish Chronicle
were part of a pro-Bibi influence campaign, while the article's author
is not as he claims."
Stephen Semler: [09-12]
Is Israel intentionally attacking aid workers? "We've compiled
14 incidents where humanitarians were attacked despite giving the
IDF their coordinates and being clearly identified as civilians."
The Harris-Trump debate:
Vox [Andrew Prokop/Nicole Narea/Christian Paz]: [09-10]
3 winners and 2 losers from the Harris-Trump debate: The winners
were: Kamala Harris, ABC News's debate moderators (David Muri and
Linsey Davis), and Swifties for Kamala; the losers: Donald Trump,
and Immigration. Once again, the Vox writer were out in force:
Ellen Ioanes: [09-10]
Kamala Harris's and Donald Trump's wildly different tax plans,
explained.
Joshua Keating: [09-11]
Biden and Harris say America's no longer at war. Is that true?
"Harris says US troops aren't fighting in any 'war zones.' What
about Iraq, Syria, and the Red Sea?" Within the context of the
debate, Harris had a point, which was useful in countering Trump's
lie:
Beyond the legal hair-splitting, Harris made the comment in the
context of a defense of the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan,
and it is true that under Biden, the US military posture overseas
has significantly shrunk from what it was under the Bush, Obama,
and Trump administrations.
(Trump has falsely claimed in the past that his presidency was
the first in 72 years that "didn't have any wars," despite the fact
that he oversaw four years of combat in Afghanistan as well as major
military escalations in Iraq, Syria, and Somalia. At least 65 US
troops died in hostile action under Trump's presidency.)
That number under Trump was significantly less than under Obama,
which in turn was less than under Bush. A comparable Biden number
is probably less than Trump's, but not much less.
Eric Levitz: [09-11]
Donald Trump lost the debate because he's too online: "The GOP
nominee spoke to swing voters as though they were his Truth Social
followers." Also note the section head: "For swing voters, many of
Trump's ravings sounded like a summary of the sixth season of a
show they'd never watched."
Intelligencer:
Emma Brockes: [09-11]
Harris clearly beat Trump -- not that you'd know it from the
right-wing media. Shame on them. "From the likes of Fox News
has come a masterclass in post-debate pretzel logic. Surely the
excuses must run out soon."
Frank Bruni: [09-12]
Kamala Harris is serious. Donald Trump is not.
Margaret Carlson: [09-11]
Harris shows how to dismantle a would-be dictator: "Humor,
ridicule, gut punches, and that look of puzzlement and contempt
were just some of the tools the vice president used to take down
Trump."
Nandika Chatterjee: [09-12]
Fox News host triggers Donald Trump by saying "he decisively lost"
the debate with Kamala Harris: "Fox Business anchor Neil Cavuto
said the debate wasn't close."
John Ganz: [09-11]
Cats and dogs: "I can't believe I watched the whole thing!"
Trump still has considerable powers of self-expression, which are
often underrated by liberals, but they should not be overrated
either. He has a very limited vocabulary and it constrains the
extent to which he can articulate responses on any issue. So, he
falls back into hyperbole -- everything is the worst, the best,
the greatest. This can be effective, but often last night it
sounded repetitive and, yes, kind of dull. If the American simply
people tire of his antics, it will really be over for him. Harris's
message of "let's turn the page" is a good one because it presents
Trump as tiresome as much as fearsome.
Richard A Friedman: [09-12]
Trump's repetitive speech is a bad sign: "If the debate was a
cognitive test, the former president failed."
Susan B Glasser: [09-11]
Donald Trump had a really, really bad debate.
Shane Goldmacher/Katie Rogers: [09-11]
Harris dominates as Trump gets defensive: 6 takeaways from the
debate: "Layout out bait that Donald Trump eagerly snatched,
the vice president owned much of the night, keeping him on the
back foot and avoiding sustained attention on her own
vulnerabilities." As
Rick Perlstein tweeted: "In a strictly intellectual sense, I'm
very excited to see how the New York Times solves the linguistic
puzzle of making that sound like a tie. It will require a Fermat's
Last Theorum-level of ingenuity." Perlstein later linked to a NYT
app article headline ("Fierce Exchanges Over Country's Future
Dominate Debate") that satisfied his expectations, but when I
searched for that headline, I found this article instead. Perhaps
sensing that such precise (albeit vague) balance wouldn't stand
up to scrutiny, they conceded the debate to Harris, while playing
up whatever they could for Trump. The six takeaways:
- Harris set traps. Trump leaped into them.
- Trump played defense on his record.
- Harris seized the advantage on abortion.
- Trump didn't hide his disdain of Harris.
- Harris missed some opportunities.
- Trump missed Biden.
Nardos Haile: [09-10]
"I went to the Wharton School of Finance": Harris getting Trump
flustered makes for great TV.
Thom Hartmann: [09-13]
Inside Trump's 'peace candidate' debate scam. This is an important
subject -- one I wish he did a better job of handling. Trump should
have zero credibility as a "peace candidate," well below Biden/Harris,
even though they've set the bar pretty low. They at least have a
modicum of empathy for the costs of war. As such, they can see some
reason to stay clear of war, or to clean up the wars they've been
given (e.g., Afghanistan). What Hartmann is pretty good at is pointing
out "our media failures":
Thus, Trump and the entire GOP are now furiously trying to rewrite
their party's history of using unnecessary wars to get re-elected.
And, according to opinion polls, it's working because America's
corporate media pretty much refuses to point out Republican perfidy
in any regard.
Consider these indictments of our media failures. Polls show:
- 52% trust Trump more compared to 37% for Harris on inflation
(even though America has the lowest inflation rate in the developed
world because of Biden's policies)
- 51% trust Trump vs. 43% for Harris on handling the economy (even
though Biden's economy beats Trump's by every metric, even pre-Covid)
- 54% trust Trump more on border security compared to 36% for Harris
(even though border crossings are at historically low levels now,
lower than any time during Trump's non-Covid presidency)
- 53% trust Trump vs. 40% for Harris on immigration (even though
Trump wants to build concentration camps, go door-to-door arresting
Hispanics, and again tear children from their mother's arms)
- 51% trust Trump vs. 41% for Harris to stand up to China, even
though Trump got millions in bribes from them for his daughter
- And on crime and public safety, 48% trust Trump versus 42% for
Harris, even though crime levels today are lower than any time during
Trump's presidency
None of these numbers would be where they are if our news
organizations had accurately reported the facts.
Jeet Heer: [09-11]
With her rope-a-dope strategy, Kamala Harris baited Trump into
scaring swing voters: "Last night's debate will help give
Democrats an edge. But strengthening the base remains crucial."
Fred Kaplan: [09-11]
Harris exposed how easy Trump is to manipulate. Dictators have known
this for a long time. Easy to manipulate, for sure, but when it
comes to manipulation, you need proximity, which only his staff really
has, and they've generally been able to cancel out any idea foreign
dictators may have planted. While Trump threatens to break the mold
on US foreign policy, in his first term, he was hamstrung by orthodox
blob operatives, leaving him with nothing but a few ridiculous photo
ops. A second term could be better or worse, but given how consistent
(and wrong-headed) US foreign policy has been across both partisan
administrations, he'll probably just make the same mistakes over and
over again. It's not like he actually knows any better.
Ezra Klein: [09-11]
Harris had a theory of Trump, and it was right: "The vice president
successfully baited Trump's angry, conspiratorial, free-associating
side. But what wasn't said was just as telling."
Robert Kuttner: [09-11]
Notes for next time: "Kamala Harris did well in the debate but
missed some opportunities to remind voters of Trump's sheer
craziness."
Dahlia Lithwick:
Amanda Marcotte: [09-11]
"The same old, tired playbook": Harris baits an aging Trump into
being his grumpiest, weirdest self: "Even with the muted
microphones, there is no 'sane-washing' Trump during the debate."
There's also an interview of Marcotte by
Alex Henderson.
Melanie McFarland: [09-11]
"She whupped him": Kamala Harris won the debate by turning a potential
disaster into a laugh-in.
Mary McNamara: [09-12]
How Kamala Harris de-normalized Trump is less than 2 hours.
Harold Meyerson: [09-11]
Normal meets weird: "And normal wins by a knockout in Tuesday's
Harris-Trump debate."
John Nichols: [09-11]
Kamala Harris won the debate about the future of American democracy:
"Harris exposed Donald Trump as a clear and present danger, framing a
stark choice and inviting voters to 'turn the page.'"
Andrew O'Hehir: [09-12]
Trump's self-destruction was epic -- but this is America, so it might
not be enough.
Molly Olmstead:
Bernie Sanders: [09-12]
Kamala Harris was great in the debate. Will that be enough to win?
Bill Scher: [09-11]
Kamala Harris is good at this: "The vice president laid out her
plans for the future while Donald Trump was caught in a tangle of
grievances about the past."
Adam Serwer: [09-14]
The real 'DEI' candidates: Kamala Harris's evisceration of Donald
Trump at the debate revealed who in this race is actually unqualified
for power."
Rebecca Solnit: [09-11]
Kamala Harris, unlike Donald Trump, was well prepared for this debate --
and won: "Harris spoke in lucid paragraphs, but Trump spouted
lurid, loopy stuff."
Margaret Sullivan: [09-11]
ABC's debate moderators did what some said was impossible: factcheck
Trump.
Charles Sykes: [09-11]
Trump blames everybody but himself: Talk about infinitely
recyclable headlines! "He can't face the truth about his performance
at the debate."
Robert Tait: [09-11]
Republicans dismayed by Trump's 'bad' and 'unprepared' debate
performance: "GOP lawmakers and analysts virtually unanimous
that Trump was second best to Harris in first presidential
debate."
William Vaillancourt: [09-12]
Longtime GOP pollster Frank Luntz says Trump's campaign is over
after bad debate.
John Zogby: [09-14]
The polling is in and Harris won the debate. But Democrats shouldn't
get cocky.
Steve M: [09-11]
How the right-wing mediasphere -- and Trump's fragile ego -- set him
up for failure last night. This elaborates on a theme that I've
been noticing for years, which is that Trump is merely a receptacle
for right-wing propaganda. Right-wingers have cynically formulated
their propaganda to trigger incoherent emotions in their listeners --
a technique often dubbed "dog-whistling." To carry the analogy a bit
farther, Trump isn't a whistler; Trump's just one of the dogs. What
makes him the MAGA leader is his money, his ego, his ability to
capture the media's attention. But as a thinker, as a speaker, as
an organizer, he's strictly derivative, a second-rate hack picking
up and repeating whatever he's been told. M explains:
Trump has always been cultural conservative -- a racist, a fan
of "law and order," an admirer of strongmen and authoritarians --
but years of binge-watching Fox News have made his opinions and
prejudices worse. Now he has a set of opinions -- on renewable
energy vs. fossil fuels, on immigration, and so on -- that are
made up of talking points from the right-wing informationsphere.
When he says that windmill noise causes cancer, he's repeating
an idea spread by pseudo-scientists funded by the fossil fuel
industry.
But that's how his mind works -- his ego is so fragile that he can't
bear to be wrong, so he clings desperately to any assertion that
reinforces his notion that he's right. Windmills kill birds! Solar
energy is useless when it's cloudy! Of course, the right-wing
infosphere is a machine designed to reassure all of its consumers
that their prejudices and resentments are right. . . .
But in recent years, as Fox News has begun losing its primacy
on the right while the Internet has increasingly been the main
source for what rank-and-file right-wingers believe, fringe ideas
have become more mainstream: Barack Obama birtherism, the allegedly
stolen election in 2020, QAnon's notion of a vast elitist pedophile
ring that somehow excludes all Republicans.
And now we have the cats.
When even J.D. Vance was spreading scurrilous stories about
Haitian immigrants eating cats in Springfield, Ohio, I was surprised --
not because right-wingers are spreading hateful and dangerous blood
libels about immigrants (that happens all the time), but because
Republicans weren't confining the spread of this preposterous and
easily disproved story to the fringier parts of their infosphere.
They were going mainstream with this.
But of course they were. In 2024, it's hard to restrict a story
like this to the fringe. Naturally, Elon Musk promoted it, as did
many online influencers and Trumpist members of Congress.
Trump hates immigrants, so of course he seized on this story
and talked about in the debate. Trump's confirmation bias is tied
to his delicate ego, which always needs to say, See? I was right.
A few years ago, he might not have even noticed this story. But
the tiers in the right-wing mediasphere have collapsed, so the
confirming messages Trump is exposed to are stupider. And he
believes them. . . .
Trump simply can't take in information that challenges his
beliefs. His ego can't handle it. The right-wing infosphere
flatters Trump the way dictators flatter Trump: by telling him
what he wants to hear. That's the person Kamala Harris showed
us last night, and that's why we can't allow him to win the
presidency again.
Taylor Swift endorses Harris:
I wouldn't be surprised to find that her lawyers drafted the
statement (released on Instagram) weeks ago, but its timing
does two useful things: it shows due diligence, as she waited
for a moment when it would appear she considered both options
fair and square, and it provided a singuarly conspicuous
verdict on the debate, thereby underscoring its importance.
Constance Grady: [09-11]
Will Taylor Swift's Kamala Harris endorsement actually matter?
Margaret Hartmann:
Amanda Marcotte: [09-12]
Taylor Swift's "childless cat lady" endorsement of Kamala Harris
exposes what MAGA men fear most.
Alex Galbraith: [09-15]
"I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT": Trump goes on Truth Social tirade against
Harris supporters: "In a series of Sunday morning posts to
Truth Social, Donald Trump rallied [sic] against Kamala Harris'
rich supporters." Apologies for the Latin, but I think whoever
titled this meant "railed." Trump's identity as a billionaire
is so narcissistic that he takes any billionaire who doesn't
bow to his class leadership an act of treason. This sense of
entitlement is most common among those who inherited fortunes
(like Trump, and certain Kochs and Mellons come quick to mind),
as opposed to billionaires who can remember or imagine what
life is like for the non-rich.
Donald Trump told his supporters how he really feels about Kamala
Harris' most-famous booster in a Sunday morning flurry of angry
posts to his Truth Social platform.
"I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT," the former president wrote, as one part
of a tirade against rich supporters of Harris' candidacy.
"All rich, job creating people, that support Comrade Kamala
Harris, you are STUPID," he wrote. "She is seeking an UNREALIZED
TAX ON CAPITAL GAINS. If this tax actually gets enacted, it
guarantees that we will have a 1929 style Depression. Perhaps
even the thought of it would lead to calamity - But at least
appraisers and accountants would do well!"
Trump also said: "She's a very liberal person. She seems to
always endorse a Democrat. And she'll probably pay a price for
it in the marketplace."
Griffin Eckstein: [09-12]
Trump campaign sells Taylor Swift-themed shirts after he denounced
her Harris support.
Trump:
Sasha Abramsky: [09-13]
Trump is as gullible as he is a threat to democracy: "A decade
into his political career, Donald J Trump is entirely at the mercy
of his own BS."
David Atkins: [09-12]
Trump doesn't understand tariffs, but he knows enough to be menacing.
Trump's fascination with tariffs seems to be based on the notion
that he can impose them arbitrarily and with impunity, so they
function as a massive ego stroke. On the other hand, his opponents
are nearly as simple-minded and dogmatic as he is. As I've said
before, tariffs only make sense as part of a strategy to build up
domestic industries (i.e., if you are doing economic planning,
which is something most American politicians have long denounced).
It now occurs to me that there may be better ways to do that than
tariffs.
Facts cannot penetrate Trump's narrow, incurious, egotistical
worldview. He believes that as the leader of the world's dominant
economy, he can bully the rest of the world into submission. And
like Hoover -- not coincidentally, the only other president to
preside over a net loss of jobs in the United States -- he will
make an easily avoidable mistake that costs everyone.
Peter Baker: [09-09]
As debate looms, Trump is now the one facing questions about age
and capacity.
Charles R Davis: [09-08]
Trump, lying about migrants and crime, says mass deportations "will
be a bloody story": "he claimed he would use police and soldiers
to deport at least 12 million undocumented people."
John Cassidy: [09-09]
Donald Trump's new "voodoo economics": "The former president's
tax plan would cost the government trillions of dollars. Tariffs
and Elon Musk will pay for everything, he says."
Chauncey DeVega: [09-12]
The problem with pinning Donald Trump down: Americans' attention
spans are too short: "The American people are not well. Sick
societies produce sick leaders." Time to "elect a new people"?
Wouldn't it be much simpler to just slam Trump with the truth
day and night until everyone sees him as an embarrassment?
Kevin T Dugan: [09-11]
Trump's bad debate cost him nearly $500 million. The metric here
is the value of Trump's Truth Social stock.
Eugene R Fidell/Dennis Aftergut: [09-13]
Trump's plan to undermine foreign policy: The authors argue
that Trump promised to violate the Logan Act, a law which "makes
it a felony for private citizens, including presidents-elect, to
interfere in foreign policy." I doubt that anyone, least of all
Trump himself, is going to take his statements that literally,
but the sloppy thinking is typical. The innuendo, that he's just
a Putin stooge, is more barbed, but its plausibility is also
based on his sloppy thinking.
Adam Freelander: [09-09]
Exactly how Trump could ban abortion: "Whether the US bans it
everywhere could be up to the next president."
David A Graham:
Elie Honig: [09-13]
Jack Smith's reckless gamble: "The special counsel seems ready
to bet the entire January 6 case against Trump on an improbable
outcome."
David R Lurie: [08-19]
Trump's carny act isn't working anymore: "His Folgers Coffee
Conference showed a candidate in decline." Compares his Aug. 15
"press conference," with tables of grocery items, props for his
wild claims about inflation, with a similar branding event from
his 2016 campaign, describing the latter:
It was all pretty darn weird; but the press lapped it up and, for
the remainder of the campaign, gave Trump all the airtime and
attention he wanted for similar performances.
The Trump Steaks Conference was to become the template for
Trump's political strategy during the ensuing decade, a mélange
of elaborate (and often patently false) self-promotion blended
with equally false and correspondingly vicious attacks on whoever
happens to be Trump's opponent du jour.
Jason Stanley: [09-13]
Donald Trump is openly running on a Great Replacement Theory
campaign. If you're not familiar with
GRT (especially as used by the
American right), here's an
index of articles.
Margaret Sullivan: [09-07]
The power of a single word about media malfeasance: "It's
'sanewashing' -- and it's what journalists keep doing for Trump."
She credits various pieces by
Parker Molloy,
Michael Tomasky,
Aaron Rupar, and
Greg Sargent, quotes some, quotes a definition, and notes:
Here, as an example, is a Politico news alert that summarizes a
recent Trump speech: "Trump laid out a sweeping vision of lower
taxes, higher tariffs and light-touch regulation in a speech to top
Wall Streets execs today." As writer Thor Benson
quipped on Twitter: "I hope the press is this nice to me if
I ever do a speech where no one can tell if I just had a stroke
or not."
Trump has become more incoherent as he has aged, but you wouldn't
know it from most of the press coverage, which treats his utterances
as essentially logical policy statements -- a "sweeping vision,"
even.
After the intense media focus on Joe Biden's age and mental acuity,
you would think Trump's apparent decline would be a preoccupation. He
is 78, after all, and often incoherent. But with rare exceptions, that
hasn't happened. . . .
But why does the media sanewash Trump? It's all a part of the
false-equivalence
I've been writing about here in which candidates are equalized
as an ongoing gesture of performative fairness.
And it's also, I believe, because of the restrained language of
traditional objective journalism. That's often a good thing; it's
part of being careful and cautious. But when it fails to present a
truthful picture, that practice distorts reality.
I was pointed here by a Paul Krugman reference. I figured it
was worth noting separately, and for good measure, I searched for
"sanewashing Trump" and found it's suddenly been adopted widely
of late. Links follow -- I skipped "Trump has not been 'sane-washed',"
because it's at Atlantic, and I didn't want to blow one of my few
"free article" credits on something as transparently worthless.
(Parker Molloy critiques the Paul Farhi piece below, so you can
find the link there.)
But let me make a couple preliminary points. The term has never
been used pre-Trump, because no previous candidate has ever given
us such copious evidence of dubious sanity. It's not that we've
never seen neuroses or delusions before, but they've never seemed
so disconnected from reality. Trump has three personal problems
that are relevant here, and while none of these are unprecedented,
his combination is pretty extreme. (1) He lies a lot, and not just
about things we're used to other politicians lying about. (2) He
has very little grasp of policy ideas, but even his conventional
policy ideas -- the ones common to most Republicans, most of which
he thoughtlessly picked up from Fox News -- are ill-considered and
unworkable, so detached from reality even before he embroiders and
imbues them with his personal twists. (3) He is old and mentally
clumsy, as well as extremely vain and conceited, states that we
perhaps too readily associate with dementia.
While "sane-washing" is new and especially Trump-specific --
unless the term ever appeared in the Republican campaign to
impugn "Biden's dementia" -- the media angle is much older, this
a mere inflection on the more common term "white-washing," which
occurs when reporters suppress, sanitize, and/or rationalize
their reporting. This has been going on for ages, but few if
any candidates have benefited more from an indulgent press than
Trump, not least because few candidates have ever needed so much
indulgence. Worse still, the process has been self-normalizing,
so rather than gently nudging Trump back into normal discourse
(as white-washed Trump), he figures he can push his boundaries
even further, confident the media will excuse further excesses
(or that he can denounce them as 'fake news").
Jon Allsop: [09-09]
Is the press 'sanewashing' Trump?
Tom Boggioni: [09-14]
Mary Trump bashes media outlets for 'sane-washing' Donald's
'delusional' rants.
David Corn: [09-10]
The "sane-washing" of Donald Trump.
Carl Gibson: [09-13]
Why the media's 'sanewashing' of Trump is uniquely dangerous.
Drew Goins: [09-13]
How Fox News sane-washes Trump.
Josephine Harvey: [09-10]
Lawrence O'Donnell spots New York Times 'confession' to 'sane-washing'
Trump.
Bruce Maples: [09-10]
If Donald Trump were your dad, you'd take away his car keys:
"And the mainstream media is making the situation worse."
Parker Molloy:
Heather Digby Parton: [09-06]
Donald Trump's incoheence makes the media's double standard hard
to hide: "Donald Trump has the whole press corps acting as his
ghostwriter, sanitizing his babble for the public."
Zachary Pleat: [09-12]
Conservative economic commentators have been "sanewashing" Trump's
incoherent tariff proposals.
Stephen Robinson: [09-10]
Sanewashing and the damage done: "The press is helping Trump hide
in plain sight." This is a pretty good piece, but inadvertently points
out a major problem with reporting on Trump:
A common defense of the media's Trump coverage is that it's almost
impossible to detail every awful thing he says and does. But there's
a consistent narrative through line with Trump: He's a criminal who'd
use the power of the presidency to seek revenge on his enemies. That's
not complicated, and his every action supports this thesis. The
mainstream media simply chooses to ignore the obvious.
But in reducing everything to a single defamatory statement, you
lose the truth that it's really not that simple. Just calling him
a criminal doesn't tell you much (and not just because the standard
for him isn't "innocent until proven guilty" but "innocent until
even his hand-picked Supreme Court can't take it any more"). And
while, sure, he'd like "to use the power of the presidency
to seek revenge on his enemies," the problem here is not what he
would actually do but his attitude, that he's the sort of person
who'd relish doing things like that. He's simply so far outside
our normal perception frameworks that hardly anyone can talk about
him precisely and accurately. We're always self-correcting, simply
because we're incapable of processing that he's really as hideous
as he quite obviously is. Journalists are the worst here, because
their job is to report credible stories, and every day they have
to sift through all of his bullshit and try to make him credible.
Blame them if you must, but it's a fucking hopeless job.
Kathy Sheridan: [09-11]
US media must stop 'sanewashing' Trump's deranged speeches:
"Ignorant madness of presidential candidate's gibberish is being
played down as news outlets make him sound sane and rational."
Rebecca Solnit: [09-12]
'Sanewashing' Trump's gibberish: Solnit interviewed by Alan
Rusbridger & Lionel Barber.
David Swanson: [09-08]
The making (and sanewashing) of Donald Trump.
Kelley Beaucar Vlahos: [09-09]
Rustbelt poll: Majority say Trump more likely to avoid war:
"Survey finds strong support for Gaza ceasefire; most believe
today's foreign policy doesn't put America first." The poll was
designed and run by Cato Institute.
Elizabeth Warren: [09-14]
What Donald Trump isn't telling us: Starts off with Trump's
"concepts of a plan" for replacing Obamacare:
Plans translate values into action. They test the quality of the
ideas and the seriousness of the people advancing them. Plans reveal
for whom candidates will fight and how effective they are likely to
be. And in a presidential race, if either party's nominee is asked
about his or her plans for something as fundamental as health care,
voters should get a straight answer.
The problem is not that Mr. Trump can't think up a way to put his
values into action. The problem is that when he and other Republican
leaders produce plans with actual details, they horrify the American
people.
Mr. Trump's health care values have been on full display for years.
In 2017, Republicans controlled Congress, and their first major
legislative undertaking was a bill to repeal the Affordable Care
Act. Every time they drafted something, independent experts would
point out that their plan would toss tens of millions of people off
their health insurance, jack up premium costs and slash benefits for
those with ongoing health problems. . . .
But at the debate, Mr. Trump displayed a new strategy. He seems
to realize that his health-care plans are deeply unpopular, so he
simply doesn't talk about them. Thus, after nine years of railing
against the A.C.A. and trying mightily to repeal it, he has moved
to "concepts of a plan," without a single detail that anyone can
pin him down on.
The new strategy might have worked -- except Mr. Trump's right-wing
buddies have already laid out the plans. No need for concepts. Project
2025 has 920 pages translating Republican values into detailed action
plans, including on health care: Repeal the A.C.A. Cut Medicare benefits.
End $35 insulin. Stop Medicare drug price negotiations. Cut health-care
access for poor families. Restrict contraceptive care. Jeopardize access
to I.V.F. Ban medication abortion.
As Project 2025's favorability plummets, Mr. Trump is once again
scrambling. "I have nothing to do with Project 2025," he claimed at
the debate. "I'm not going to read it." But it was written by many
members of Mr. Trump's former administration and over 250 of the
policies in the plan match his past or current policy proposals.
Agence France-Presse: [09-14]
Laura Loomer, far-right flame thrower who has Trump's ear.
Meet Laura Loomer, the latest fringe figure to set up in the
presidential candidate's inner circle, and who has managed to
shock even Trump's most extreme allies as he seeks to reclaim
the White House.
Loomer, a 31-year-old social media influencer and provocateur,
has managed to squeeze into Trump's entourage as he is struggling
to win over the independents and moderates needed to prevail in
November's election against Kamala Harris, a race that is coming
down to the wire. . . .
Asked Friday about her incendiary posts and conspiracy theories,
Trump -- a voracious consumer of social media who has previously
amplified Loomer's posts on his own account -- shrugged them off,
telling reporters in California: "I don't know that much about it."
Trump declined to criticize Loomer, instead hailing her as a
"free spirit" supporter with "strong opinions."
More on Loomer:
Madeline Halpert/Laurence Peter: [09-15]
Trump rushed to safety and suspect held after man spotted with
rifle: Evidently someone was seen with a gun on a golf course
where Trump was playing. Secret Service shot at a man, who dropped
the gun and fled, and was later apprehended. Many articles call
this "a shooting" and/or "an assassination attempt," which is
something to look into, but not established fact. Presumably
we'll know more soon, but I don't recall ever learning much
about the previous "assassination attempt." While it would be
bizarre to fake events like this -- the previous one seemed to
spike his polls -- it's hard to rule anything out with Trump,
or to assume that normal rules apply. It's also hard to care,
possibly because he seems so keen on assassinating other folks
that you can't discount the karma, and possibly because when I
think of similar cases the one I always land on first is
George Lincoln Rockwell.
Vance, and other Republicans:
Vance's psyop about immigrants eating
pets:: Vance
had been pushing a story about Haitian immigrants in Springfield,
Ohio abducting and eating dogs and cats. Trump made a big deal
out of this during the debate, so it's already been mentioned
above, but this is a place to file additional stories as they
pop up:
Zack Beauchamp: [09-12]
How the GOP became the party of racist memes against Haitian
immigrants: "Back in 2016, the alt-right tried to normalize
joyful bigotry. It worked."
Aaron Blake: [09-16]
The staggering reach of Trump's misinformation -- not just on
Haitian migrants: "A new poll shows lots of Trump backers say
they believe his pet-eating claim about Haitians, as well as plenty
of other claims."
Philip Bump: [09-16]
JD Vance explains the political utility of anti-immigrant hostility:
"The Ohio senator's effort Sunday to defend his virulent, racist
rhetoric about immigrants eating pets was remarkably dishonest."
Nandika Chatterjee: [09-13]
Schools evacuated in Springfield, Ohio, following Trump-Vance lies
about immigrants eating pets.
Chas Danner: [09-15]
How Vance and Trump's lies about Springfield, Ohio continue to
unravel.
Alex Galbraith:
Edward Helmore: [09-14]
More bomb threats hit Springfield, Ohio after Trump elevates false
claims about Haitians.
Eric Levitz: [09-13]
Thw twisted political logic behind Trump's attacks on Haitian
immigrant: "Republicans know exactly what they're doing."
Getting the media to focus on any given issue or storyline over
others is not easy. Yet precisely because Vance's attack on Haitian
immigrants in Springfield is so incendiary, it has generated great
quantities of media coverage.
What's more, because Trump and Vance's behavior is so repugnant
to liberal values, it has provoked Democratic politicians and
commentators into advertising their sympathy for immigrants and
concern for their welfare.
The calculation here is that it could nudge a swing voter
rightward, even if they find Vance's conduct off-putting. That
voter can disapprove of Vance's cat memes and still glean from
the conversation around them that Republicans are the party that's
harsher on immigration.
The Republican ticket, if this reading is correct, is betting
that voters are looking for someone who can get an ugly job done.
The health of our republic, and the safety of its most vulnerable
residents, depends on this being a mistake.
Amanda Marcotte: [09-13]
Cat ladies and dog-eating: MAGA can't quit the weird talk about
pets: "MAGA's animal obsession is getting deranged."
Stephen Starr: [09-14]
Haitian immigrants helped revive a struggling Ohio town. Then neo-Nazis
turned up: "Springfield's immigrant community was targeted by
far-right extremists months before Trump shared racist rumors."
Joan Walsh: [09-13]
Trump and Vance won't be happy until Springfield Haitians die:
No, they won't be that easily satisfied.
Li Zhou: [09-15]
America's long history of anti-Haitian racism, explained.
Freddy Brewster: [09-13]
JD Vance is trying to push Citizens United further:
"JD Vance and other Republicans are spearheading a lawsuit that
aims to get the Supreme Court to move beyond its Citizens United
decision and tear up some of the last remaining rules designed to
limit the influence of money in politics."
Karen Dolan: [09-13]
Project 2025 is a blue print for the end of the American dream.
Bullet points:
- Millions of Americans will lose health care.
- Children will be sicker, poorer, and hungrier.
- Public schools will suffer.
- Millions of families will be criminalized.
- Food, water, and air will be poisoned.
- Only the wealthy win.
That only scratch the surface, and I'm not even sure the "wealthy"
come out much ahead, as the world they think they run increasingly
turns against them. Even in terms of cash accounting, lower taxes
hardly compensate for converting public goods to more exclusive and
expensive private goods erodes much of your imagined gains. The
super-rich may escape the trap longer, but they'll still be stuck
looking over their shoulders.
Jeet Heer: [09-16]
JD Vance can't even bullshit properly: "Donald Trump is a world-class
BS artist. His running mate is just a twitchy liar."
Chris Lehmann: [09-16]
How the liberal media gave us JD Vance: "The months-long romance
between Vance and an easily duped press in 2016 led directly to his
sordid political rise."
Nicholas Liu: [09-12]
Republican megadonor Leonard Leo tells allies it's time to "weaponize
our conservative vision": Leo "wants less conversation and more
action to seize the 'choke points of power.'" You know, like he did
with the Supreme Court.
Mike Lofgren: [09-07]
The far right actually hates America: its dark ideology has foreign
roots. Drops various names, starting with Joseph de Maistre.
There is a pitch here "to support Mike Lofgren's historical
commentary," so I brought up his
index. Some interesting articles there, including:
Ian Millhiser:
[09-11]
Republicans' racist, cat-eating conspiracy theory, briefly explained:
After Trump adopted this theme in the debate, I could have filed it
up there, but it evidently started elsewhere -- the first meme here
was posted by Ted Cruz, and the second by "House Judiciary GOP," so
let's credit the whole Party. Trump's contribution is his usual one:
he just sucks up all the malevolence in the Party, and oozes it out
in concentrated form.
Rick Perlstein: [09-11]
The zeal of the convert: "Matthew Sheffield, a former rising star
in the conservative movement, turned away from what he finally realized
was an extremist, anti-truth agenda."
Tatyana Tandanpolie: [09-15]
"What homegrown fascism looks like": The insidious nature of GOP's
not-quite-dog-whistle politics: "Experts link the right's
'DEI hire' attacks to a dark history of racist political violence."
Sarah Zhang:
'That's something that you wont' recover from as a doctor': "In
Idaho and other states, draconian laws are forcing physicians to
ignore their training and put patients' lives at risk."
Harris:
Jedediah Britton-Purdy: [09-12]
Harris can win on the economy, but she needs a stronger message.
Dean Baker
reacted to this piece -- "the gist of the piece is that
most people are hurting now, but Harris can turn things around by
adopting a more populist agenda" -- adding that "it would be great
to see Harris push a more populist agenda," but mostly attributing
the problem to misinformation ("the media have lied to the public"),
but also by asserting that "most people are not hurting how, or at
least not more than they did in the past." One problem is that the
whole system is rigged to maintain a level of economic pain, so
most people feel precarious even when conditions are within normal
bounds. Also not clear to me what Britton-Purdy's "clear economic
program" actually is. Certainly there are lots of opportunities,
but making them clear and tangible to voters is much easier said
than done.
Marin Cogan: [09-11]
Wait, Kamala Harris owns a gun?
Jill Filipovic:
The big thing Kamala Harris is doing differently than Hillary
Clinton: "The Democratic Party is finally figuring out how to
right-size its focus on identity politics."
Jacob S Hacker: [08-14]
Kamala Harris had a great health care idea in 2019. She should
embrace it.
Heather Digby Parton: [09-13]
Kamala Harris' big tent strategy -- and its success -- has thrown
Trump for a loop. I personally find the Cheney endorsements
damning, but when she mentioned them, I thought she got the "even"
inflection just right. I suppose what that shows is that she's the
politician, and I'm not. I'm skeptical of how many disaffected
Republicans she can win over, but as long as she can pick up some
without turning on (or off) her natural base, that not only helps
her chances of winning, it opens up the possibility of winning
big -- and that would be a good thing, even if it muddies the
message a bit.
I could go farther here and argue that for most Republicans,
a big Harris win, even one that gave her a comfortable margin in
Congress, would be a blessing. Trump and his movement are a dead
end, desperately clinging to demographics that are slipping away,
that can only be shored up by disabling democracy, while their
policy prejudices only make problems worse, and their reflexive
resort to force behind propaganda only makes their victims and
opponents more desperate.
In the 1970s, Republicans argued -- wrongly, I think, but not
without reason -- that America has swung too far to the left, so
they set about "rebalancing" government. Since then, they never
let up, pushing inequality to levels that never existed before:
the "gilded age" of the 1880s and the "roaring '20s" were past
peaks, both ending in massive depressions, which were corrected
with shifts back to the left -- never far, as the rich fared
handsomely in the Progressive and New Deal/Great Society eras.
Pace the Trump paranoia, they have little to fear from Harris
and the Democrats -- even from the farthest left reaches of the
party, whose actual programs proposed are modestly reformist,
and easily compromised by lobbying.
Capitalism doesn't help anyone develop a sense of enough, but
common sense does, and Republicans need some of that. Especially,
they need a break from the Trumpists, who are paranoid and delusional,
prepared to burn it all down for the sake of idiot theories, just
to exercise their malice against much of the world. It's good to
respect the new Republicans who, like recovering alcoholics, are
willing to break. The the Cheneys still have a lot of recovering
to go.
Charles P Pierce: [09-16]
Kamala Harris understands that an overly serious campaign is a
losing campaign: "Our history is not all crises weathered
and problems solved. It is also brass bands, and torchlight
parades, and barrels of hard cider at rural polling stations."
Point noted, but then: "Sorry. This article is for subscribers
only."
Zephyr Teachout: [09-09]
Stop calling Kamala Harris' anti-price gouging proposal price
controls: "Her plan to control inflation is not some leftist
plot. It's rooted in mainstream American legal tradition -- and
sorely needed."
Rebecca Traister: [09-09]
The people for Kamala Harris: "How a women-led movement,born
in the devastation of 2016, put Democrats on the brink of making
history." Magazine cover story article, takes the time needed to
sketch out the big picture. This article was paired with:
Olivia Nuzzi: [09-09]
The afterlife of Donald Trump: "At home at Mar-a-Lago, the
presidential hopeful contemplates miracles, his campaign, and
his formidable new opponent." Note, however, that the magazine
cover used a different, more intriguing title: "Peering into
Donald Trump's ear, and soul." (Actually, the Traister article
also has a different cover title: "The joyous plot to elect
Kamala Harris.")
The Cheney endorsements
Walz, Biden, and other Democrats:
Election notes:
Supreme Court, legal matters, and other crimes:
Climate and environment:
Economists, the economy, and work:
Dean Baker:
Jenny Brown: [09-14]
Boeing machinists are on strike.
Paul Krugman: Several weeks of columns to catch up
with, mostly on Trump, but let's start with inflation, and work
forward:
Kelsey Piper: [09-12]
Shrinking the economy won't save the planet: "561 research papers
in, the case for degrowth is still weak." The author wrote a previous
piece arguing against the idea of "degrowth" as a panacea for dealing
with world environmental problems (especially climate change) --
[2021-08-03]
Can we save the planet by shrinking the economy? -- where the
author turned "degrowth" into a strawman, arguing that it is not
necessary (is the only way to solve the problem) or sufficient (is
able to solve the problem on its own), and with that throws the
whole cluster of ideas out. But at least that piece took the ideas
seriously. All this piece does is say we've looked at a bunch of
research papers purportedly about "degrowth" and found them wanting
(e.g., "paper after paper with meaninglessly tiny sample sizes,"
"studies are opinions rather than analysis," "studied offer ad hoc
and subjective policy advice").
Ukraine and Russia:
Elsewhere in the world and/or/in spite of America's empire:
Zack Beauchamp: [09-13]
It happened there: how democracy died in Hungary: "A new kind
of authoritarianism is taking root in Europe -- and there are
warning signs for America." In case you didn't quite grasp Trump's
reference to Viktor Orban in the debate, here's a refresher.
Marcus Stanley: [09-11]
House passes $1.6 billion to deliver anti-China propaganda overseas:
"Somehow it's a crime when Russia does it to us, but good 'information
ops' when we want to discredit Beijing's Belt & Road initiatives
worldwide."
Ishaan Tharoor:
Nick Turse:
Parker Yesko: [09-10]
The war crimes that the military buried: "The largest known
database of possible American war crimes committed in Iraq and
Afghanistan shows that the military-justice system rarely
punishes perpetrators."
Other stories:
Yet another 9/11 anniversary:
WD Ehrhart: [09-13]
Why I don't watch political speeches: A position I sympathize
with, although I've never been tempted to throw things at the TV,
other than the occasional snide comment. So I'd have to explain my
aversion differently.
Nathan J Robinson/Current Affairs:
[09-13]
The worst magazine in America: The Atlantic poses as a magazine
of ideas, but its writers get away with terrible arguments. Its
ascendance is a sign of the dire state of American intellectual
life." Long article, seems like he spends a lot of time on effort
on such obvious atrocities as Robert D Kaplan's "In Defense of
Henry Kissinger." More interesting is Simon Sebag Montefiore's
"The Decolonization Narrative Is Dangerous and False," which is
about how we shouldn't describe Israel as a "settler colony"
because the settlement took place over several generations, the
"settlers" are no different from immigrants elsewhere, but their
designation as "settler-colonists" marks them as "ripe for murder
and mutilation." Robinson spends a lot of time on this piece, but
that last bit is too insane for him to bother with further. What
he does instead is spend considerable time discrediting the sort
of mythmaking Montefiore's "caricature" attempts. Whole books
have been written to that effect. Robinson makes good points
here, but misses most of the angles I would have focused on --
like why does the "settler-colonial" analysis help or hinder you
from understanding the history? and what's with this "murder and
mutilation"? -- as well as the deeper question of why Atlantic's
editors like to publish overblown articles by ill-tempered
nincompoops?
One reason could be that some articles, even if you know they're
not just wrong but horribly so, should be published somewhere, if
only for smarter people to knock them down. I don't know from
Montefiore, but I can imagine someone deciding they want a piece
on Kissinger, and wondering if Kaplan might have an interesting
take. (I've read a lot of Kaplan, and while he's often wrong --
any time he opens a paragraph with "that got me thinking," you
know some really insane shit is coming around the bend -- I've
learned a lot along the way. Same for George Packer, source of
another Robinson case study.) You're never going to convince me
that Atlantic editorial choices are above political prejudices,
or even that they are seriously dedicated to providing some sort
of open forum, but you need more than just a few examples. You
could really use some statistical analysis. But I suppose you
could point out examples that are both countersensical and have
no "prestige" reason to be published, like the
sanewashing article I mentioned
above. Robinson does get into this a bit later on, but mostly
as asides to a big bang of extra example outrages.
I sometimes wonder whether I should break down and subscribe
to Atlantic. I frequently see links to articles that look like
they may be interesting (some by writers I respect, like Adam
Serwer and David Graham), and some that just look like arguments
I want to knock down, but in the end, I'm just too cheap (and/or
committed to free speech), so I almost never click on them. (My
wife does pay for digital subscriptions, so sometimes I'm able
to piggyback on her accounts, but she really loathes much of
what appears in Atlantic, so it's not on her list.) Still, I
regularly look at their
table of contents to get the lay of the land. From Monday's
list, here are some articles I might have considered (a few
more I slipped into relevant slots above, especially on Trump
and the debate):
[09-13]
How the soul of New York City is vanishing: Interview with
Jeremiah Moss "on what neoliberalism has done to the culture and
soul of New York City."
[09-13]
What doesn't get said: "Commentary around the first Harris-Trump
debate focused on Harris's impressive performance. But both candidates
accepted dangerous right-wing premises on climate, immigration,
economics, and foreign policy." Well, as the joke goes: two campers
are surprised by a bear in the woods. One says, "you can't outrun
that bear." The other says, "I don't have to; I just have to outrun
you." I hate Chait's concept of
"the
assignment" , but I accept that Harris has one, which is
make sure she beats Trump in November, preferably by a lot. To do
that, she needs to run fast and not trip and fall. (Trump tripping
and falling would help, but isn't something you can count on.) I
see three risks for her: one is that the war situation gets worse,
with Biden and her getting by a public that isn't very sharp on
such issues; the second is that she loses support from the money
people, most likely by appearing too far to the left; the third
is that in steering away from the left, she loses the enthusiasm
she needs to get out the popular vote. She's done a pretty solid
job of avoiding two and three so far, while Trump and Vance are
proving to be even worse than expected, so I'm not inclined to
nitpick. War I'm more worried about, but at this point turning
on Israel may be the more dangerous option: I was thinking about
what Netanyahu's
latest threats against Yemen might mean, and wound up wondering
what would stop him from exacting his "heavy price" with "a mushroom
cloud." How would Biden and Harris react to that kind of "October
surprise"? (Trump would probably cheer, and seize it as a wedge
issue, which would only encourage Netanyahu.)
Still, I don't have any beef with Robinson writing articles like
this. He, and his readers, quite properly focus on issues. No need
for them to stop during what Matt Taibbi used to call "the stupid
season." That will pass, while the issues keep coming back, at least
until someone finally takes them seriously.
[09-11]
You've got to read books: "Not everyone has the available time
or energy to do deep reading. But if you're going to make confident
public pronouncements on matters that require a lot of research,
books will help you avoid dangerous foolishness." Needless to say,
I endorse this view. Following something
Billmon did on
his blog (defunct since 2006), I've kept a "current reading" roll and
list going for 20+ years now,
so I can check how much (and how little) I've read, and just what --
at least in book form. Curiously, I haven't read any of the four books
Robinson cites on the 2000 Camp David negotiations, although I've
read 3-6 (or maybe 12, depends on how you slice them) other books
that cover the same ground -- we're in general agreement on the
facts, but I wouldn't go around citing Quandt's "it's really
complicated" explanation.
This is a big subject, one that I can imagine writing quite a
lot about. It's true that bad books can be worse than no books at
all. (Robinson mentions Robert Fisk's Pity the Nation on
Lebanon, which is monumental, but I've actually run into people
who got everything they know about Lebanon from Thomas Friedman,
and they're painful to deal with.) It's also true that one can
learn to read bad books and get value out of them (like the
aforementioned Robert D Kaplan library). But even journalists
doing "first draft" history often get much better by the time
their work comes out in book form (cf. practically everyone who
started embedded and wound up with a book on Iraq -- hell, even
George Packer got better with a bit of perspective; I wouldn't
be surprised if Thomas Ricks' Fiasco had Gung Ho!
as its working title).
[09-05]
How to approach the crisis of mass incarceration: "Mass
incarceration is extremely harmful to prisoners and society.
But what do we do about it? The editors of
Dismantling Mass Incarceration discuss." Interview with
Premal Dharia, James Forman Jr., and Maria Hawilo.
Obituaries
Books
Zack Beauchamp: [09-11]
How a 2006 book by a Harvard professor explains the Trumpist right's
gender politics: "Harvey Mansfield's book on 'manliness' prefigured
JD Vance's musings about 'childless cat ladies' by nearly two
decades."
Daniel Immerwahr: [09-09]
What if Ronald Reagan's presidency never really ended? "Anti-Trump
Republicans revere Ronald Reagan as Trump's opposite -- yet in critical
ways Reagan may have been his forerunner." A long review of Max Boot's
"definitive" 880 page biography,
Reagan: His Life and Legend.
Recent events have forced Boot to ask if Reagan was part of the
rot that has eaten away at Republicanism. Boot now sees him as
complicit in the "hard-right turn" the Party took after Dwight D.
Eisenhower which "helped set the G.O.P. -- and the country -- on
the path" to Trump.
And yet Boot sees a redeeming quality as well: Reagan could
relax his ideology. He was an anti-tax crusader who oversaw large
tax hikes, an opponent of the Equal Rights Amendment who appointed
the first female Supreme Court Justice, and a diehard anti-Communist
who made peace with Moscow. "I've always felt the nine most terrifying
words in the English language are: I'm from the government, and I'm
here to help," Reagan famously quipped. But he delivered that line
while announcing "record amounts" of federal aid. He viewed the world
in black-and-white, yet he governed in gray.
I rather doubt that Reagan wanted to "govern in gray." That
was a concession to the Democrats who controlled Congress, to
the still-existing liberal Republicans, to the liberal courts,
and to the popularity of New Deal and Great Society programs.
Reagan was realistic about what he could accomplish, but he
did move the needle on all fronts. How anyone could see his
program, or his personal charisma, as heroic escapes me.
Here's another review:
Michael Ledger-Lomas:
All roads lead to ruin: "Sunil Amrith's The Burning Earth
takes us on a gloomy and bleak tour of how, in the name of progress,
Western empires made a mess of everything."
Rohan Silva: [2022-09-19]
Fen, Bog & Swamp by Annie Proulx review -- where have all out
wetlands gone? I just read this book, and quoted a bit of it
in the introduction, which is why I found this review. While there
is much of interest in the book, it's connection to climate change
never gets developed, beyond the occasional occasional notes that
peatlands sequester a lot of carbon, so their loss has increased
atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Annie Levin: [09-16]
Why you should host a hootenanny: "Outside of a church or karaoke
room, singing is mostly left to the professionals. But anyone can --
and should -- partake in the joys of collective singing." I can
imagine, but I gave up singing in public in 5th grade, when Lannie
Goldston insisted that I lip-synch, and kicked me in the shins
every time I slipped up and uttered a sound.
Chatter
It took me the better part of two days to finally insert all of
the entries in my April 25, 2024
Book Roundup into my
Book Notes file, which
at this point is probably too long to be a useful web page
(6944 paragraphs, 369868 words), but which I need to figure
out whether I've mentioned a book before. I couldn't really
start on a new post until that bit of housekeeping got done.
One thing I noticed there was this blurb on a 2017 book
(presumably written then) that seems completely relevant to
this week's news:
Nathan Thrall: The Only Language They Understand: Forcing
Compromise in Israel and Palestine (2017, Metropolitan Books):
Hard to think about the conflict without considering how to end it,
especially if you're an American, since we've long assumed that our
mission on Earth is to oversee some sort of agreement. Thrall has
been following the conflict closely for some time now, and writes
up what he's figured out: that the only way it ends is if some
greater power wills it. The title has a certain irony in that the
Israelis, following the British before them, have often said that
violence is the only language the Palestinians understand. But as
students of the conflict should know by now, the only times Israel
has compromised or backed down have been when they been confronted
with substantial force: as when Eisenhower prodded them to leave
Sinai in 1956, when Carter brokered their 1979 peace with Egypt,
when Rabin ended the Intifada by recognizing the PLO, or when Barak
withdrew Israeli forces from Lebanon in 2000. Since then no progress
towards resolution has been made because no one with the power to
influence Israel has had the will to do so -- although Israel's
frantic reactions against BDS campaigns shows their fear of such
pressure. On the other hand, one should note that force itself
has its limits: Palestinians have compromised on many things,
but some Israeli demands -- ones that violate norms for equal
human rights -- are always bound to generate resistance. What
makes the conflict so intractable now is that Israel has so
much relative power that they're making impossible demands. So
while Thrall would like to be even-handed and apply external
force to both sides, it's Israel that needs to move its stance
to something mutually tolerable. The other big questions are
who would or could apply this force, and why. Up to 2000, the
US occasionally acted, realizing that its regional and world
interests transcended its affection for Israel, but those days
have passed, replaced by token, toothless gestures, if any at
all. It's hard to see that changing -- not just because Israel
has so much practice manipulating US politics but because
America has largely adopted Israeli norms of inequality and
faith in brute power.
Curiously, I noted but wrote nothing about Thrall's later
book:
Nathan Thrall: A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy
of a Jerusalem Tragedy (2023, Metropolitan Books).
Local tags (these can be linked to directly):
music.
Original count: 290 links, 15664 words (20559 total).
Current count: 290 links, 15873 words (2077t total).
Wednesday, September 11, 2024
Daily Log
Opened
Speaking of Which draft file (1:27 PM), nominally scheduled
for Sunday, September 15. I had the foresight of editing the
template file a bit. Played CDs from John Lee Hooker and Hank
Williams boxes to kick the day off.
Referring back to the
August 30 to do list,
which I've meant to resume but haven't managed to do any more
work on. Needless to say, nearly all of the tasks remain. Still,
having knocked out Speaking of Which (9/9) and Music Week (9/10),
I woke up thinking of project things I could do to make life a
bit more manageable in these parts.
Tuesday, September 10, 2024
Music Week
Expanded blog post,
September archive
(in progress).
Tweet: Music Week: 34 albums, 7 A-list
Music: Current count 42939 [42905] rated (+34), 28 [30] unrated (-2).
New records reviewed this week:
- Dave Alvin & Jimmie Dale Gilmore: TexiCali (2024, Yep Roc): [sp]: A-
- Bacchae: Next Time (2024, Get Better): [sp]: B+(***)
- Rahsaan Barber & Everyday Magic: Six Words (2022 [2024], Jazz Music City): [cd]: B+(**)
- Andrew Barker/William Parker/Jon Irabagon: Bakunawa (2022 [2024], Out of Your Head): [sp]: B+(***)
- Beabadoobee: This Is How Tomorrow Moves (2024, Dirty Hit): [sp]: A-
- Geoff Bradfield: Colossal Abundance (2023 [2024], Calligram): [cd]: B+(***)
- Patricia Brennan Septet: Breaking Stretch (2023 [2024], Pyroclastic): [cd]: A-
- The Chisel: What a Fucking Nightmare (2024, Pure Noise): [sp]: B+(*)
- Clairo: Charm (2024, Clairo): [sp]: B+(***)
- Greg Copeland: Empire State (2024, Franklin & Highland, EP): [cd]: B+(**)
- Elbow: Audio Vertigo (2024, Polydor): [sp]: B
- Fontaines D.C.: Romance (2024, XL): [sp]: B+(**)
- Future Islands: People Who Aren't There Anymore (2024, 4AD): [sp]: B+(*)
- Dylan Hicks & Small Screens: Modern Flora (2023 [2024], Soft Launch): [cd]: A-
- Illuminati Hotties: Power (2024, Hopeless): [sp]: B+(**)
- Jon Irabagon: I Don't Hear Nothin' but the Blues: Volume 3 Part 2: Exuberant Scars (2024, Irabbagast): [bc]: B+(**)
- Jon Irabagon Trio + One: Dinner & Dancing (2023 [2024], Irabbagast): [bc]: B+(***)
- Tom Johnson Jazz Orchestra: Time Takes Odd Turns (2023 [2024], self-released): [sp]: B
- Allen Lowe & the Constant Sorrow Orchestra: Louis Armstrong's America Volume 1 (2023-24 [2024], ESP-Disk, 2CD): [cd]: A-
- Allen Lowe & the Constant Sorrow Orchestra: Louis Armstrong's America Volume 2 (2023-24 [2024], ESP-Disk, 2CD): [cd]: A
- Shelby Lynne: Consequences of the Crown (2024, Monument): [sp]: B
- Rose Mallett: Dreams Realized (2024, Carrie-On Productions): [cd]: B+(***)
- Brian Marsella/Jon Irabagon: Blue Hour (2019-22 [2024], Irabbagast): [bc]: B+(*)
- Claire Rousay: Sentiment (2024, Thrill Jockey): [sp]: B+(*)
- Bria Skonberg: What It Means (2023 [2024], Cellar Live): [sp]: B+(**)
- This Is Lorelei: Box for Buddy, Box for Star (2022 [2024], Double Double Whammy): [sp]: B+(**)
Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:
- Raymond Burke: The Southland Recordings 1958-1960 (1958-60 [2024], Jazzland): [sp]: B+(*)
- Gastr Del Sol: We Have Dozens of Titles (1993-98 [2024], Drag City, 2CD): [sp]: B+(**)
- Wayne Shorter: Celebration, Volume 1 (2014 [2024], Blue Note): [sp]: A-
Old music:
- Charles Bevel: Meet "Mississippi Charles" Bevel (1973, A&M): [yt]: B+(**)
- Bun B: Trill O.G. (2010, Rap-A-Lot): [sp]: B+(**)
- Raymond Burke: Raymond Burke 1937-1949 (1937-49 [2014], American Music): [sp]: B+(**)
- Lil' Kim: The Naked Truth (2005, Atlantic): [sp]: B
- Nas: Stillmatic (2001, Columbia): [sp]: B+(***)
- Scarface: The Fix (2002, Def Jam South): [sp]: B+(**)
Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
- Gino Amato: Latin Crsossroads (Ovation) [09-01]
- Dawn Clement/Steve Kovalcheck/Jon Hamar: Dawn Clement/Steve Kovalcheck/Jon Hamar Trio (self-released) [09-06]
- Rebecca Kilgore: A Little Taste: A Tribute to Dave Frishberg (Cherry Pie Music) [10-28]
- Delfeayo Marsalis Uptown Jazz Orchestra: Crescent City Jewels (Troubadour Jass) [08-30]
- Eric Person: Rhythm Edge (Distinction) [10-01]
- Claudio Scolari Project: Opera 8 (Principal) [04-05]
Monday, September 09, 2024
Speaking of Which
Blog link.
Opened file 2024-09-03 01:16AM.
I opened this file early enough (2024-09-03 01:16AM), but did
little on it, and spent much of Wednesday/Thursday working up a
fairly large dinner menu. So I didn't really get into this
until Saturday, and then got waylaid on the long
Plitnick comment (conceived in lieu of
an introduction). I still hoped to wrap this up Sunday evening,
but after a TV break was too exhausted to continue. Then Monday
morning (for me, anyway) I quickly found myself writing more long
comments (look for the star bullets below). Still hoping to post
Monday evening, but once again time is running out.
After several weeks dominated by campaign news, this week
Israel/Gaza came roaring back with a vengeance -- which reflects
poorly on Biden/Harris, not that they are alone in that regard.
Tuesday's Trump-Harris debate will probably be a big deal next
week, although I'm skeptical that anything good will come out
of it. I just got an unsolicited text from "Harris":
Tomorrow night may be my first debate with Donald Trump, but I
am no stranger to taking on perpetrators of all kinds: predators
who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters
who broke the rules for their own gain.
Believe me when I say I know Trump's type. And on tomorrow's
debate stage, I will do my best to put my record against his.
Then she asks for money.
Approaching 10PM, I'm giving up for the day, and calling this a
week. I've just spent the last several hours on even more Israel
comments. My guess is that there's a decent essay buried herein,
awaiting an editor I don't have to dig up the bits, restructure
them a bit, and demand some finishing touches. Having barely touched
on the election stories, I'm just now seeing lots of disturbing
stories I have no energy for right now. (Last add was Kuttner's
story on Harris' "capitulation," after which I saw a similar story
in New Republic, and I have little doubt there are more. And now
I'm seeing new Intelligencer pieces I suddenly find I can't read
by Jonathan Chait:
Kamala Harris should cut Joe Biden loose -- hasn't he been
reading about those "capitulations to capital"? -- and Ed Kilgore:
Believe it or not, many voters think Trump is a moderate, let
alone Margaret Hartmann:
Melania slams effort to 'silence' Trump on social-media site he
owns.)
Top story threads:
Israel:
Mondoweiss:
Isaam Ahmed: [08-29]
Under cover of Gaza war, Israel is seizing Palestinian land in the
West Bank: "The Gaza war is serving as a cover for Israel to
accelerate expansionist policies in the West Bank, with the ultimate
aim of annexing the territory."
Anadolu Agency:
[09-06]
'Game of demographics': How Israel aims to wipe out Palestinians
from Occupied East Jerusalem.
[08-22]
Is the US a suitable actor for a mediation role in Gaza?
I think at this point, we can all agree that the US cannot act
as an impartial arbiter in the dispute. That ship sailed long
ago, assuming it ever floated in the first place. But mediation
is a slightly different art: for that, you need to be able to
find a solution acceptable to both sides, and you need to be
willing and able to apply leverage to both sides to close the
deal. This conflict should be slightly simpler than most, as
Israel has all of the power, so mediation only has to work to
rein in one side. That makes America the only possible mediator
for the conflict, because only America has any serious leverage
to bring Israel to a deal -- partly because American support
has been so essential to Israel for so long. (Proviso here is
that while Palestinians
have no power to set terms, they can reject and resist imposed
terms they find demeaning and debilitating. Similarly, Israel
can also reject terms, regardless of the mediator's leverage.)
You can go through Israel's history and see various examples
of American mediation working (e.g., Sadat-Begin in 1979, the
recent Abraham Accords, as far as they got) and not working
(Barak-Assad and Barak-Arafat in 2000). The latter failed because
Barak's demands, due to internal political pressure, became
unreasonable, and/or Clinton didn't have the willpower to put
sufficient pressure on Barak. The situation is even worse with
Biden, because he seems to have no independent willpower over
anything having to do with Israel: he can't even imagine any
alternative solutions, nor dare he challenge Israel's leaders.
On the other hand, can you even conceive of any other mediator?
You may recall the Quartet, but that was never more than a US
front -- and given how subservient the US has become, Israelis
were free to treat them as a mirage.
So we're stuck: Israel has no need to change course unless
the US challenges it with an acceptable alternative, which the
US won't dare do as long as it is under Israel's thumb. With
nothing to stop them, or even to induce second thoughts --
Israel is not quite the monolithic autocracy it has presented
since last October -- Israel's genocide will continue, until
its logical conclusion (which could take years or decades, to
the whole world's detriment). All anyone else can do is to look
for weak links that could be moved with the limited pressure we
can muster. That's already happened enough to make the powers
involved here nervous, and the movement to end this war and the
injustices that caused and sustain it will only grow. But make
no mistake: this only ends when Israel is willing to change,
and that means America must also be willing to change.
Mariam Barghouti: [09-04]
Inside the brutal siege of Jenin: "The Israeli army is destroying
civilian infrastructure, blocking medical access, and conducting
mass arrests in the largest West Bank operation in years."
Ramzy Baroud: [09-05]
War on children -- Gaza kids are unvaccinated, hungry and orphaned.
Zack Beauchamp: [09-04]
The real reason Netanyahu won't end the Gaza war: "The Israeli
public has turned against Netanyahu's war, but they can't stop it."
I'm not sure how true this is. Israelis have run hot-and-cold on
Netanyahu all year, but the only practical dissent on the war has
come from the hostage families, who would make some concessions to
release the hostages, whereas Netanyahu and his allies would be
happier if the hostages would die already (see
Hannibal Directive). But the war, fought so brutally that many
outsiders have called it genocide, seems to have few dissenters
within Israel (at least among the Israelis that count). Netanyahu
still has a fairly slim coalition majority (64 of 120), so it
wouldn't take many defections to bring it down. If Likud really
was the "center-right" party as claimed, it shouldn't be hard to
fracture, but it appears that they're not merely loyal to Netanyahu,
and that Netanyahu is not merely maneuvering to keep out of jail,
but that the policies Smotrich and Ben-Gvir have been demanding
are things they've long wanted to do.
The answer is brute power politics. The 2022 election gave right-wing
parties a clear majority in the Knesset (Israel's parliament), allowing
Netanyahu to build the most far-right government in Israeli history.
Though this coalition has since become extremely unpopular, there's
no way for voters to kick it out on their own.
The government could only collapse if it faces defections from
inside the governing coalition. But at present, the greatest threat
to Netanyahu's coalition comes from his extreme right flank, which
wants him to continue the war at all costs. And for that reason, he
seems intent on doing so. . . .
"For [the government to fall], Israeli political leaders would
need common sense, political courage, and a moral backbone. Too
clearly, the overwhelming majority have none,"
Dahlia Scheindlin, a leading Israel pollster, writes in the
Haaretz newspaper.
Jessica Buxbaum:
Abdallah Fayyad: [09-04]
How a disease the world (mostly) vanquished reared its head in Gaza:
"Israel's attacks on Gaza created conditions for polio to spread. Now,
a vaccination campaign is racing against time."
Tareq S Hajjaj: [09-07]
'The world has gotten used to our blood': Israeli massacres in
Gaza continue: "Despite the shift in the media's attention to
regional developments and the Israeli invasion of the northern West
Bank, the massacres in Gaza continue in silence. In the first three
days of September, Israel committed nine massacres in the strip."
Shatha Hanaysha: [09-06]
'Days filled with terror': Palestinians in Jenin recount harrowing
10-day Israeli army invasion: "Israeli occupation forces withdrew
from the occupied West Bank city of Jenin, including the Jenin refugee
camp, early on Friday."
Gideon Levy:
[08-29]
Israel holds a ceremony for a war that hasn't ended -- instead of
ending it. Looks like Israel's "never forget" industry is back,
working harder than ever:
Why is it even important to hold a ceremony on October 7? Is there
anyone who doesn't remember? And has anyone learned any lessons from
it? . . .
Since October 7, Israel has been wallowing nonstop in October 7.
There has yet to be a news program that doesn't wallow again in that
day -- the longest day in Israel's history, the day that still hasn't
ended.
Yet this, too, is meant to repress, deny and escape what really
matters. We'll wallow in the past, and then we won't have to think
about how to extricate ourselves from it. We'll play the victim to
the hilt, and then we won't have to deal with the victims of our
own horrific crimes.
October 7 doesn't need a ceremony. It's still alive and well,
dead and held hostage. It's present all the time.
[09-05]
When six Israelis are mourned more than 40,000 Palestinians:
The "six" were hostages recently found dead by Israel. The
"40,000" is the minimal number of Palestinians in Gaza killed
by Israeli military operations since October 7, 2023.
While the world is shocked by the fate of Gaza, it has never paid
similar respect to the Palestinian victims. The president of the
United States does not call the relatives of fallen Palestinians,
not even if they, like the Goldberg-Polins, had American citizenship.
The United States has never called for the release of thousands of
Palestinian abductees that Israel has detained without trial. A
young Israeli woman who was killed at the Nova festival arouses
more sympathy and compassion in the world than a female teenage
refugee from Jabalya. The Israeli is more similar to "the world."
Everything has already been said about the overlooking and
concealment of Palestinian suffering in the Israeli public
conversation, and not enough has yet been said. The Palestinian
killed in Gaza who had a face, a name and a life story and whose
killing shocked Israel has not yet been born.
Yoav Litvin:
Harold Meyerson: [09-03]
Only Israelis can end their war on Gaza: "But even the massive
demonstrations weren't enough to get Bibi to shut down the war to
which his own job security is linked."
Abdaljawad Omar: [09-04]
Testing the boundaries for ethnic cleansing in the West Bank:
"The current operation in the West Bank is meant to test the
boundaries of what Israel will be allowed to get away with. It
is setting the stage for the forced ethnic cleansing of the
Palestinian people." The author is basically right, but I have
a couple nits to pick. There are no boundaries, in large part
because there is no one monitoring what they are or are not
"allowed to do." If their actions seem measured, it's because
they have their own reasons for measuring them. They aren't
seriously worried about the Americans turning on them, but
they respect the threat enough to take some care in managing
the issues. It seems to me that their game in the West Bank
is to provoke an armed uprising, similar to Gaza, which they
can then respond to with a major escalation of violence (as
they did in Gaza). The the West Bank is a trickier proposition,
so they're exercising a bit more care, but they've been pretty
relentless about tightening down their control to maximize
pressure.
Paul R Pillar: [09-04]
Why Isreal is attacking the West Bank: "Another chapter in
the long, tragic story of Tel Aviv's leaders choosing to live
forever by the sword."
Meron Rapoport: [09-04]
To sacrifice or free the hostages? Israeli protesters have chosen
a side: "Fearing for the remaining captives, the mass rallies
that erupted across Israel were essentially demanding an end to
the war -- and Netanyahu knows it." There is an element of hopeful
thinking here, as the author admits: "To be clear, such a statement
was not uttered from the stage nor was it seen on many placards,
save for among the small pockets of left-wing protesters that
formed
the anti-occupation bloc."
Adnan Abdul Razzaq: [09-05]
Israel's growing emigration rate has serious consequences:
The number of migrants to Israel fell by more than half between
7 October and 29 November last year, according to statistics
provided by the Israeli Immigration Authority. The Times of
Israel reported that half-a-million people have left the
occupation state and not returned, which confirms the erosion
of trust and the decline of the population which frightens the
regime in Tel Aviv. Prophecies about the "curse of the eighth
decade" loom ever more menacingly over the apartheid state of Israel.
Nathalie Rozanes: [09-05]
The Gaza war is an environmental catastrophe: "Toxic waste,
water-borne diseases, vast carbon emissions: Dr. Mariam Abd El Hay
describes the myriad harms of Israel's assault to the region's
ecosystems." I'd say all wars are environmental disasters, and have
been so for quite some while now, but this one is exceptionally
egregious, both in the extent of devastation and for its clearly
deliberate intent, where rendering the environment uninhabitable
is a critical strategy for genocide.
In recent months, the phrase
ecocide has been widely used to describe the
environmental impact of the Israel-Hamas war (as Wikipedia
put it). "Ecocide" is not a new coinage: the Wikipedia article
cites several examples, starting with the US use of chemical
defoliants in Vietnam, but doesn't mention similar antecedents
like the fire-bombing of urban area in WWII, atomic bombs in
Japan (although Chernobyl gets a mention), or the bombing of
dams in North Korea, as well as older strategies aimed at mass
starvation (another Israeli strategy).
I've probably cited some of these already, but a quick search
for "Gaza ecocide" produces a long list of articles, including:
The Century Foundation: [2023-12-19]
War has poisoned Gaza's land and water. Peace will require
environmental justice.
Rabia Ali: [03-19]
Poisonous effects of Israeli 'ecocide' will plague Gaza for years.
Kaamil Ahmed/Damien Gaylle/Aseel Mousa: [03-29]
'Ecocide in Gaza': does scale of environmental destruction amount
to a war crime? "Satellite analysis revealed . . . shows farms
devastated and nearlyl half of the territory's trees razed. Alongside
mounting air and water pollution, experts says Israel's onslaught on
Gaza's ecosystems has made the area unlivable."
Forensic Architecture:
Jake Johnson: [03-29]
Ecocide a 'critical dimension of Israel's genocidal campaign' in
Gaza: "Analysis by a research group found that roughly 40% of
Gaza land that was previously used for food production has been
destroyed by Israeli forces."
Saeed Bagheri: [04-03]
The silent victim of Israel's war on Gaza. This follows up
on the Forensic Architecture report.
Philippe Pernot: [05-09]
Ecocide in Gaza: the environmental impact of Israel's war.
Raphael Tsavkko Garcia: [06-05]
Don't ignore Israel's 'ecocide': "Just as we cannot turn away
from the human rights crisis unfolding in Gaza, we must not overlook
the intrinsic connection between environmental degradation and
justice."
Helga Merkelbach: [06-20]
Forgotten victims of the Gaza war: environment and climate.
Justin Salhani: [07-03]
Genocide, urbicide, domicide -- how to talk about Israel's war on
Gaza: Additional terms covered here: politicide, ecocide,
educide and scholasticide, culturcide. Such is the focus on
killing every aspect of humanity that disposing of the bodies
is almost a side-effect, although it's also a means to those
very ends.
Lula Fox: [07-07]
Israeli ecocide in Gaza pollutes Palestinian futures.
Palestinian Environmental NGOs Network:
Ecocide at its cruelest, among other relevant pages.
Ethan Brown: [03-20]
The "ecocide" smear targerts Israel: "Wartime environmental
damage is devastating, but creating a poorly defined crime just
to stick the overworked ICC on Israel is simply one-sided
propaganda." I only included this in case you want to stick your
head back in the [now toxic] sand. Curiously enough, he doesn't
deny what Israel is doing, but has lots of quibbles about law,
including that Israel didn't sign it in the first place. By the
way, the author "is the creator and host of The Sweaty Penguin,
an award-winning comedy climate program."
Khalil Abu Yahia/Natasha Westheimer/Mor Gilboa:
[2022-01-13]
Gazas race against climate breakdown: "Amid a deepening
climate crisis, Palestinians in Gaza are fighting to salvage
their land and livelihoods. But repeated bombardments and an
unrelenting blockade are devastating efforts to build climate
resilience." Another report from a few years back
Devi Sridhar: [09-05]
Scientists are closing in on the true, horrifying scale of death
and disease in Gaza.
America's Israel (and Israel's America):
Branko Marcetic: [09-04]
Netanyahu is blocking a hostage deal. You know that. You've
known that all along. Netanyahu has always welcomed the opportunity
of war. I still clearly remember him on TV on Sept. 11, 2001, grin
on face, inviting the US to join Israel in the "war on terror." He
said something to the effect of "now you know what it feels like."
Mitchell Plitnick: [09-06]
The genocide in Gaza is as American as it is Israeli. The US won't
stop it. "The desire for a ceasefire in the United States,
certainly among Democrat voters, is clear. Yet, as the slaughter
in Gaza enters its twelfth month, why does the US continue to
act the way it does?" I woke up this morning thinking I should
write an introduction on just this subject, so this article
gives me a chance to dodge the introduction -- which I really
don't have time for -- and just hang a couple comments here.
I think we need to sort this out several ways, which give us
slightly different answers.
Has Israel embarked on a deliberate program of genocide?
Short answer is "yes." Most Israelis will quibble over the term,
and there are various nuances and idiosyncrasies to their approach,
but they don't qualify the point. I could write much more on how
this resembles and/or differs from other genocides over history,
but the key points are: they know what they want to do, they are
working deliberately to realize their intentions, and they have
no effective internal constraints against continuing.
Do the Israeli people (by which one means the Jewish ones
with full citizenship, which is a privileged subset of the total)
support this program of genocide? Short answer is "pretty much so."
Very few Israelis object to the dehumanization of Palestinians,
which underlies the indiscriminate brutality Israelis practice
on them. Israeli culture is designed to inculcate the fear and
alienation that makes this dehumanization possible.
Do Americans understand and support Israel's genocide?
Some pretty clearly do: e.g., anyone (like Lindsey Graham and
Tom Cotton) who've uttered the words "finish it!" Especially
prominent among these people are neoconservatives who envy and
admire Israel's habit of using force to impose its will on its
supposed enemies. Such people are still very prominent in US
security circles in both political parties. But they are a small
(but exceptionally influential) faction. A somewhat larger faction,
including many otherwise liberal Democrats, is simply loyal to
Israel, and they are mostly in denial about the genocide. (Their
share is especially large among the politician class, as their
world has long been shaped by donors and lobbyists.) Support for
Israel has long been tied to cultural prejudices -- including
America's experience as a settler colony, its racist divisions,
religious focus, and fondness for world wars -- maintained with
extraordinary propaganda. Nonetheless, it is likely that most
Americans who are aware of what Israel is doing to Palestinians
are deeply unsettled and want to see the war and genocide stop.
The Biden administration reflects all of these American
views (but especially the blind loyalty expected of politicians
on the take), but rather than trying to reconcile contradictions,
they have kept doing what they've long been doing -- supplying
Israel with large quantities of money and arms, while providing
Israel with diplomatic cover -- only touched with schizophrenia.
(I can think of dozens of examples, but let's start with the
air drops of relief supplies.) I think you have to ask five
questions about Biden's handling of this affair:
Did Biden conspire with, or intend for, Israel to commit
genocide? I think (but don't know) the answer here is "no." But
this does show considerable naďveté and/or carelessness on Biden's
part, as the conditions for Israel escalating its long-established
program of collective punishment into the range of genocide have
been brewing for more than a decade, and the provocation of the
Oct. 7 attack was exactly the sort of event that could trigger
such an escalation. That Biden's first response was to offer
Israel full-throated, open-ended support was seen by Netanyahu
as an open invitation.
Did American support materially contribute to Israel's
ability to commit genocide? The answer there is "yes," which
is to say that the US was materially complicit in the genocide.
The obvious follow up here is: did Biden attempt to withdraw or
limit American support to end this complicity? The answer there
is "not really." Similar questions can be asked about political,
financial, and/or moral support, to which the answers are the
same.
Is Israel able and willing to carry out its genocide without
American (and allied) support? I think the answer here is "maybe,
but not nearly as effectively, or for such a sustained period."
The main material supply was ammunition. Perhaps more important
is money. Israel has maintained a very high mobilization for an
exceptionally long time, while Israel's economy has lagged, so
American money has helped pick up the slack. While Israel could
self-fund their war, the cost-benefit analysis -- which is to
say the viability of the Netanyahu coalition -- would be much
harder to justify without the incoming cash.
Is there some reason beyond loyalty for the US to support
Israel's program of genocide? Given America's efforts at global
hegemony, it is easy to imagine that there must be some sort of
master plan, but beyond promoting arms sales, global finance, and
the oil industry, there is very little coherence in US foreign
policy, and much arbitrary prejudice -- which Israel has been
very effective at playing for its own peculiar interests. So I
would answers this "no," and add that Biden is hurting the real
interests[*] of the American people in aligning with Israel.
[*] By which I mean peace, cooperation, and development of
equitable and mutually advantageous relationships, but those
"interests" have no effective lobby in Washington (unlike the
arms and oil industries, and Israel).
If Biden finally decides to dissuade Netanyahu from his present
course, could he? The answer here is "probably," but it wouldn't
be easy. First problem would be gathering enough political support
in the US to keep the idea from being strangled in the crib. The
Israel lobby is very focused on preventing any politician from
even considering any shift away from complete support for anything
Israel's leaders desire, and they have a lot of influence both in
the media and behind closed doors.
Then you have to calculate
enough pressure to move Netanyahu, who has more experience in
manipulating American politicians than anyone else alive, and
therefore more arrogance at resisting them. I have some ideas
about how to do this, but it's a tricky business, especially
when you start out on your knees, with no sense of decency or
morals.
Finally, you need to anticipate which compromises will
ultimately prove to be acceptable, achievable, and viable. This,
too, is hard, not least because the people who you need to get
to accept the compromises -- which is to say, the ones with
enough power to ignore you (by which I mean Israel) -- want
something else instead (or just to play the game forever), and
are unwilling to see the benefit of settling for something less
injurious to the other party than they think deserved. Relative
power warps the field of options so severely that truly just
solutions may be impossible, so the best you can do is choose
among disappointments, trying to pick ones that will lessen
problems, rather than exacerbate them.
Both Israel and the US should consider the reputational
damage their complicity in genocide will cause them. It's not
just that other people are tempted to sanction and shun them,
but it calls into question their motives and behavior everywhere.
Also related here:
Meron Rapoport: [09-02]
'This is also America's war': Why the US isn't stopping Israel's
Gaza onslaught: "Israelis and Palestinians are making a terrible
mistake by looking exclusively to Washington to solve their problems,
says former negotiator Daniel Levy." When asked about Harris's DNC
speech, Levy says:
I think she achieved what she wanted: that both of those kinds of
reporting could come out, and that both AIPAC and J Street could
endorse it. But if we shift attention to the Palestinian rights
movement or the Uncommitted Movement, there is nothing there for
them. The way the DNC treated the issue tells you everything you
need to know about the ways things aren't changing -- for instance,
[the fact there was] no Palestinian speaker or perspective on the
stage.
Harris can talk about bad things that have happened to Palestinians,
but from her words you wouldn't know who caused it -- a natural
disaster? An earthquake? When Hamas does something bad, they are
named and shamed; but when bad things happen to Palestinians, there
is never any acknowledgement that they are caused by Israel.
The nuances and differences between Biden and Harris do exist,
and they matter, but we always have to go deeper. The expectation
is totally misplaced that the United States will solve this.
Mohamad Bazzi: [09-06]
Kamala Harris should do what Joe Biden won't: commit to actually
reining in Israel: But she won't, and I'm not sure she should --
what she should say is that the slaughter and destruction has to
end, that it's really unacceptable for any country to treat any
people like that under any circumstances, and amends need to be
made to make sure nothing like that ever happens again. And it's
ok here to use the passive voice, which she has a lot of practice
at when describing things that Israel and/or the US have done to
get to this point. What we need to know now is that she takes
this seriously, and will work on it when and as she's able, but
I expect that her work will almost all be done in the shadows.
It is important that Israel be seen as calling their own shots.
And it is important that the US not be seen that way -- we really
need to break out of the really bad habit of thinking we can go
out and tell other countries what to do and how to behave.
I got some flak last week over something I wrote about how
the Biden couldn't force Israel to end the genocide even if he
wanted to. My wife was arguing that Biden does have the power,
at least to force a ceasefire, given the enormous amount of aid
the US provides Israel. I allowed that might work, but hasn't
been tested (and won't) because Biden lacks the understanding
and willpower to apply such leverage. My wife added that he lacks
the morals, which is true, but I've grown weary of moralizing
over foreign policy. But my point wasn't that such pressure
couldn't work. It was that it's not guaranteed to work, because
Netanyahu could hold firm, accepting the loss of support, and
doubling down. We know from bitter experience that even maximal
sanctions can be resisted (e.g., North Korea), and Israel has
both the wherewithal and the psychology to do just that.
Or so we should assume, and respect. As far as I'm concerned,
the only escalation possible, direct war, is an option off the
table. On the other hand, we don't know that Israel would take such
extreme measures in resisting sanctions. They are, for the most
part, rational people, who can be expected to carefully weigh
their options, balancing costs against benefits, not least those
of their own political careers. A big part of Netanyahu's political
capital is the perception that he can wrap the Americans around his
little finger, which could make him vulnerable to pushback -- sure,
not from a pushover like Biden (or Trump), but perhaps from someone
with a clear idea what they want. (Whether Harris is such a person
remains to be seen. Obama never quite got ahead of Netanyahu.)
Ishaan Tharoor: [09-04]
Netanyahu still wants more war: "The Israeli leader's critics
argue he would rather prolong the war to assuage his far-right allies
(and keep hold of power) than clinch a deal that stops hostilities
and frees the remaining hostages." His critics are right, of course,
but his friends would probably tell you the same thing. Where one
might quibble is in his motivation: his odds of staying in power
don't change much one way or the other, but what he mostly wants
to do is to see how much war he can get away with -- before Biden
gets disgusted and pulls the plug, before his coalition cracks up
and forces a new election. Worst case scenario, he goes back to the
people, campaigning on his defiance of the lily-livered turncoats
who tried to derail his path to absolute victory.
Jonah Valdez: [09-06]
Israel just killed another American in the West Bank. Will the
US ever respond? "Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, a human rights activist,
was protesting an illegal West Bank settlement when she was
reportedly shot in the head by Israeli soldiers."
Israel vs. world opinion:
Michael Arria: [09-08]
Former Jewish Voice for Peace leaders reflect on the lessons of
anti-Zionist organizing: "Mondoweiss speaks with Rebecca
Vilkomerson, co-author [with Alissa Wise] of the book
Solidarity Is the Political Version of Love: Lessons from Jewish
Anti-Zionist Organizing,
about the evolution of Jewish Voice for Peace and the state of
anti-Zionist organizing." I think JVP has done truly heroic work
not just since last October but for at least 20 years prior. We
attended their confab in 2003, which for me at least was very
informative and ingratiating. After that, we bought a series of
video tape lectures they had produced, and presented them with
discussions to the Wichita Peace group. My own study largely
grew out of that experience. The interview here notes that JVP
didn't officially support BDS until 2015, but I recall it being
a hot topic with considerable interest back in 2003. I dare say
that had the BDS movement been more successful, the atrocities
on (and after) October 7 would never have happened.
I'm tempted to quote the entire section on "decoupling Zionism
from Judaism," but just go read it.
Allan C Brownfeld: [07-23]
Palestinians: the final victims of the Holocaust. Old history,
worth knowing and reflecting upon, although it's actually rather
light on the ways Palestinians have reflected and recapitulated
the legacy of the Nazi Judeocide, which at this point might be
useful not just for pluralizing the Holocaust but for finding a
way to break the cycle of genocide. Maybe "never again" isn't
the answer, especially while "again" is actually happening?
Nuvpreet Kalra: [09-04]
Israel's allies are using anti-terror laws to lock up anti-genocide
activists.
Suhail Kewan:
What options has the Israeli occupation left for the Palestinians?
That's a very good question, one we should have been asking at every
step along the way.
What has happened in the Gaza Strip could easily happen in the West
Bank, in terms of the destruction of its refugee camps and cities,
collective punishments and huge numbers of Palestinians killed and
wounded. All the signs are that the occupation state is ready and
willing to do this. It will, to a large extent, be up to the
Palestinians to decide if and how to challenge this.
What is happening in the West Bank at the moment is that Israel
is forcing people to defend themselves and is leaving them with only
two options: complete and unconditional surrender to the extremist
settlers; or defending themselves and their property. Both options
are very costly, and the occupation state has not left a middle option.
I'd argue that neither of those qualify as options, understood as
realistic free choices. Fighting back might, if one had a reasonable
chance of success. Surrender might, if one could expect mercy. Israel,
however, does have options, and the one they've chosen is to deny
Palestinians any choice at all.
The New Arab:
James North:
Orly Noy: [09-02]
Hersh is gone, sacrificed on the alter of Israel's 'total victory':
"The parents of hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin pleaded for their son's
release. But Netanyahu chose to cling to power and spill rivers of
blood in Gaza instead."
Norman Solomon: [09-06]
Knowledge is power. Gaza war supporters don't want students to have
both.
David Spero: [09-05]
Contrived charges of antisemitism are the new 'red scare':
"How an evidence-free smear is being used to suppress those fighting
for justice in Palestine."
Tom Suarez: [09-08]
Palestine defines us: "Palestine is the perfect illustration of
the West's staggering hypocrisy. The Gaza genocide defines us because
it is us."
Jonah Valdez:
Columbia welcomes students back to campus with arrests: "Two
students, including one activist with Columbia University Apartheid
Divest, were arrested in front of campus."
Election notes:
Trump:
Zack Beauchamp: [09-04]
Trump's biggest fans aren't who you think: "A new book shows
how people are getting the right's class appeal all wrong." The
book is
Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right,
by Arlie Russell Hochschild (whose 2016 book,
Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American
Right, got a lot of attention after Trump's win as "a
guide and balm for a country struggling to understand the election
of Donald Trump" -- the other book from back then that was often
cited alongside it was JD Vance's
much
discredited
Hillbilly Elegy). As revelations go, this -- that Trump does
best among "the elite of the left-behind" -- doesn't strike me as a
very big one. The more common term for many in that demographic is
"asshole," and sure, Trump's their guy. (To be clear, supporting
Trump doesn't make you an asshole, but being an asshole makes you
much more likely to rally for Trump.)
Sidney Blumenthal: [09-04]
Donald Trump is deeply threatened by Kamala Harris -- and desperately
flailing.
Kevin T Dugan:
Trump bombs his big speech debuting Elon Musk's commission.
Tom Engelhardt: [09-03]
Trumptopia and beyond: "Is reality the biggest fiction of all
today?"
Margaret Hartmann:
The highs and lows from Trump's lazy new coffee table book:
"From the glaring errors to the debunked gossip about Castro and
Trudeau, Save America is a dizzying semi-literary adventure."
Sarah Jones:
Jerelle Kraus: [09-06]
Two and a half hours alone with Nixon, the anti-Trump.
Nia Prater:
Trump won't be sentenced before election day: "Juan Merchan, the
presiding judge, ruled that Trump's sentencing hearing will be moved
to November 26, weeks after the general election."
Robert Wright: [09-26]
Is Trump a peacenik? No, but if you're worried that Biden
(now Harris) is a bit too fond of war, he says a vote for him
will save you from WWIII. And given that American politicians
of both parties have long and ignominious histories of lying
about wanting peace while blundering into war, and given how
little reliable information there is about either, there may
be enough gullible but concerned people to tilt the election.
Wright reviews some of the contradictions here, and there are
much more that could be considered.
I've been worried about just this prospect all along, and
I remain worried. I don't have time to explain all the nuances,
but very briefly, Biden has done a very bad job of managing US
foreign affairs, failing to make any progress dealing with a
number of very manageable hostilities (North Korea, Venezuela,
Iran, many others) while letting two crises (Ukraine, Gaza)
drag into prolonged wars that he seemingly has no interest in
ever resolving (at least he doesn't seem to be putting in any
effort). The only good thing you can say about his handling of
Afghanistan is that he dodged the worst possible option, which
was to stick around and keep losing. And while he's made money
for the arms and oil industries, both have made the world a
much more dangerous place. And then there's China -- do we
really need to go there?
One might reasonably think that anyone could have done a
better job than Biden has done, but we actually know one person
who had every same opportunity, and made them all worse: Donald
Trump, the president before Biden. Is there any reason to think
that Trump might do better with a second chance? The plus side
is that he may be more wary this time of relying on the "deep
state" advisers who steered him so badly. (Biden, too, was
plagued by their advice, but he seemed to be more in tune with
it -- the only changes Biden made in US foreign policy were to
reverse Trump's occasional unorthodox lapses, especially what he
viewed as softness on Russia.)
On the other hand, Trump brings
a unique set of disturbing personal characteristics to the job:
he cares more about perception than reality; he wants to be seen
as very tough, but he's really just a whiney bitch; he's majorly
ignorant, and incoherent on top of that; he's impetuous (but he
can usually be talked down, because he rarely has any reasons
for what he wants to do); he's vain and narcissistic; he has
no empathy with people he meets, so has no idea how to relate
with them (e.g., to negotiate any kind of agreement); he has
no sympathy for other people, so he has no cares for anything
wrong that could happen; he has a weird fascination with using
nuclear weapons, so that's one of the things he often has to
be talked down from; I know I already said that he's ignorant
and implied that he's clueless, but he's also pretty stupid
about how most things in the modern world actually work. He
does, however, have a keen interest in graft, and a passing
admiration for other right-wing demagogues, if only because
he admires their art and sees them as his peers. About the
only thing I can see as a positive is that he doesn't seem
to feel any personal need for war to prove his masculinity --
for that he's satisfied abusing women.
Steve M: [09-08]
In addition to "sanewashing," can we talk about "reality-washing"?
Various bits quoting Donald Trump, summed up in the end:
I still say Trump isn't crazy or suffering significant dementia. He's
just beginning to realize that he can tell any lie, no matter how
divorced from reality it is, and no one will say that his lies are
categorically different from ordinary political lies. To the media,
there's no difference between Trump saying schools are forcibly
performing gender reassignment surgery on children and Tim Walz
saying that he and his wife conceived their children using in vitro
fertilization when they really used intra-uterine insemination.
A lie is a lie! Nothing to see here, folks!
Maybe the press has a sense of futility about fact-checking Trump --
it's never stopped him from insisting that the 2020 election was rigged,
so why bother? And fact checking clearly can't kill other Republican
Big Lies -- that Democrats support abortion after birth, or that entire
cities were burned to the ground during the George Floyd protests in
2020. (Many Republicans other than Trump tell these lies and get away
with them.)
If we continue to let Trump lie this brazenly without making the
sheer magnitude of the lies a story, we run the risk that he'll become
president and indict enemies or call out troops on disfavored groups
based entirely on fictional scenarios. Once that happens, the press
might finally tell us that he's the worst-ever purveyor of Big Lies,
but it could be too late by then.
Also see his earlier post, on a point I also recall making:
Vance, And other Republicans:
Harris:
Jack Hunter: [08-26]
Harris' aversion to talks with dictators is more Bush than Obama:
"Negotiating with adversaries is not 'cozying up to tyrants' as she
suggested in her DNC speech."
Joshua Keating: [09-06]
The guessing game over Kamala Harris's foreign policy:
"Nobody knows."
Robert Kuttner: [09-09]
Kamala's capital capitulation: "The money is not that huge, but
the optics are terrible."
Eric Levitz: [09-05]
Harris is swimming in cash -- but Democrats may still have a fundraising
problem: "Democratic donors are underinvesting in state legislative
races, where money goes a lot further." This has been a persistent
problem, especially when Clinton and Obama used the Democratic Party
as a personal piggy bank, while letting Democratic majorities in
Congress go under. This happens because Democratic donors have very
different priorities than Democratic voters, and may even prefer to
sandbag policies that Democratic majorities would pass if they had
the numbers. Republicans, on the other hand, work much harder to get
their candidates elected down ballot, because they need to pass laws
to implement their regressive agenda.
Nicole Narea/Sean Collins: [09-06]
Will Harris's massive fundraising spree actually help her?
The chart here shows that both candidates combined raised almost
twice as much money in 2020 as in 2016 ($1774M vs. $896M). As
Jeffrey St Clair pointed out (article below), 2020 was the first
year in many when the winner got more votes than the number of
eligible voters who didn't vote, so one correlation seems to be
that more money means more voter participation (although the
returns there are pretty slim). Chart also shows that Trump more
than doubled his fundraising in 2020 over 2016. I was thinking
that shows the value of incumbency, but Obama's raised almost
exactly the same in 2012 and 2008.
Adam Wren/Megan Messerly: [09-09]
Why the 'one-two punch' of Liz and Dick Cheney backing Harris
matters: Evidently they have their own PACs, so they can
back up their votes with some money. Whether they have any
credibility with anyone who wasn't already a "never Trumper"
isn't very likely. Dick Cheney ended his VP term with the lowest
approval numbers ever (9% is the number I remember). Liz Cheney
has some fawning admirers among the DC press core (including
Joan Walsh?). But it's quite possible that the net change will
be negative. By far the biggest liability Biden (and now Harris)
had was their involvement in senseless foreign wars -- which they
seem completely powerless to do anything to stop -- and here they're
picking up endorsements from bona fide super-hawks. That's a very
bad look.
Walz, Biden, and other Democrats:
Perry Bacon Jr.: [09-03]
What a conference for the left just revealed about November:
"The war in Gaza and the threat of another Trump presidency pulled
democratic socialists in opposite directions at a post-convention
meeting in Chicago." Look, life can be frustrating on the left.
You've managed to figure out some basic truths about how the
world works, and how for most people it could work better, but
one major group of people keep telling you that your proposals,
which you see as just plain common sense, are impossible dreams,
that instead you have to not just limit yourself to corporate
compromises but smile when you vote for the Democrats who broker
those deals (or just let them wither and die) -- and be assured
that if you don't vote for them, if you even criticize them at
inopportune times, they will blame all their failures on you.
Then there's that other major group of people who simply hate
you for even suggesting that any conscious change is possible
let alone desirable, even though those people have consistently
pursued their own self-interests in ways that have drastically
altered the world, with hardly any regard for the vast harm
they have caused all around the world.
These major groups dominate the political parties that limit
our choices in what passes for democracy in America: the Democrats,
who are leery and dismissive of the left, and the Republicans,
whose fear and loathing is so unbounded we often recognize them
as Fascists. (Fascism is sometimes dignified as an ideology, but
for leftists, the telltale sign is sensing that someone wants to
kill you.) November matters because that's the next big election,
a rare opportunity for most people (even leftists) to vote for
one of the two major parties' vetted candidates. Most of us feel
the need to participate, on principle for democracy, but also
because we usually have a pretty good idea which candidate is the
worst -- it may be hard to vote for some ideal, but we shouldn't
squander the opportunity to vote down someone truly malignant.
But that's just one moment: too glaring to ignore, not least
because so many people invest so much hope in its outcome. I can
identify with one leftist quote here: "Presidential elections, the
Democrats specifically, have a way of sucking all life out of any
movement." In November, winners will celebrate, losers complain,
but leftists (and lobbyists) can only go back to work.
Supreme Court, legal matters, and other crimes:
Climate and environment:
Economists and the economy:
Ukraine and Russia:
Ben Armbruster: [09-06]
Diplomacy Watch: Are Moscow and Kiyv on collision course to
talk? "Both sides now appear to be signaling that the war
cannot be won outright."
Michael Corbin: [09-06]
Turkey's BRICS gambit is just what Russia ordered: "Joining
the geopolitical block would allow Ankara access to non-EU/Western
institutions, which makes Moscow happy."
John Feffer:
[09-04]
Why Ukraine invaded Russia: "How many more mistakes will Putin
make before Russians give up on him?"
[08-14]
When do autocrats give up? "Protestors pushed out the leader
of Bangladesh. They have yet to succeed in Venezuela. Why the
difference?" No real answers here, but there is the contrast,
and one could easily extend this essay with the Putin case.
Anatol Lieven: [09-05]
When will the war in Ukraine end? "One month later, Kyiv's
invasion of Russia hasn't moved the needle, while Moscow has made
gains on other fronts."
Ray McGovern: [09-04]
Conditioning Americans for war with Russia: "With new US action
today against Moscow, Russiagate remains like a vampire, with no
one able to drive a wooden stake into its heart and keep it there."
This was in response to:
Ian Proud: [09-04]
Will Kursk be a sideshow that turns into tragedy for Ukraine?
"The Russians are hardening their positions while Ukraine may not
have a lot of maneuvering room left."
Aja Romano: [09-05]
The right-wing podcasters turned Russian propaganda dupes, explained:
"The DOJ says Tim Pool, Dave Rubin, Benny Johnson and others were
unwitting Russian stooges." This is already being dubbed "Russiagate
II: Kamala's Revenge" by right-wingers like
Ben Shapiro
The World and/or America's empire:
Other stories:
Marty A Bullis: [08-12]
MAGA to MAGNA: "True greatness -- magnanimity -- is rooted in
giving our selves away, not attempting to make ourselves great
again." Philosophy professor, launched this newsletter a month
ago, evidently he's a friend of
a friend, deep enough I decided not to bury it in the "laugh
and cry" section under
Donald Trump's name. I'm afraid I lost
my interest in all things great long ago, so it's hard for me to
take "make America great" as anything other than sardonic conceit.
For starters, it always conjured up the Bill Moyers story of how
he suggested calling Lyndon Johnson's social programs "the good
society," but Johnson insisted on "great." A big chunk of the
problem is that very little of what people claim as great is
really much good. And Hillary Clinton's counterpoint, that
"America has always been great," was really unhelpful (but,
I supose, revelatory). What kind of person even aspires to
greatness? Especially after models like these.
Bullis does us a service in describing how the phrase works,
and in breaking it down to five "core values" (which I might
add are not tautological, but are empirically derived from
observation of the people we've come to shorthand as "MAGA"):
"Make America Great Again" (MAGA) is the central value-phrase Trump
uses to activate our instinct for greatness. MAGA stimulates a
simultaneous sense of loss for, and desire to work and fight to
regain some part of our past -- whether real or imagined. The
phrase is generic in a way that it can be all things to all people.
Who hasn't experienced loss? And who would not want to get something
valuable back? Trump for his part had the brilliant (and self-serving)
idea to trademark and market this motivational phrase, and then turn
it into a repetitive rallying cry to channel our fears and hopes for
his benefit.
I will be highlighting five core MAGA values that play on these
fears and hopes, bringing harm in their path. The list is not meant
to be exhaustive of the values driving negative actions in the
MAGA-sphere, and I am not the first to discuss them. My goal is,
however, to show how these values can be redirected in ways that
will allow us to be authentically great. The five MAGA values are:
1) insular self-interest; 2) cultural homogenizing;
3) social wall building; 4) patriotic ranting; and
5) self-serving aggression. Like Trump, these values are
attractive to many people.
His emphasis. He then spoils the mood with his next sentence:
"But I will argue that there are better and truly authentic
value-paths to greatness." He really needs a better destination,
and not just because "greatness" has been spoiled. (I don't
have a counterproposal, but the first word that popped into
mind was "satori.) Looks like he at least has his path plotted
out, with a first section here and the promise of more to come:
- Unselfing America: Embracing service rather than self-interest
- Unhomogenizing America: Embracing diversity as our identity
- Unwalling America: Embracing our immigrant status rather than isolation
- Unranting America: Embracing gracious discourse rather than hateful speech
- Unaggressing America: Embracing nonviolence rather than picking a fight
- Stepping out in authentic greatness
Mostly good themes, so good luck with that. Maybe something good
can come out of "greatness" after all. But don't get me started on
"authenticity," a concept I like even less than "greatness."
Ted Chiang: [08-31]
Why A.I. isn't going to make art: "To create a novel or a painting,
an artist makes choices that are fundamentally alien to artificial
intelligence." I was directed to this piece by a
tweet, which quoted this nugget:
The task that generative A.I. has been most successful at is lowering
our expectations, both of the things we read and of ourselves when we
write anything for others to read. It is a fundamentally dehumanizing
technology because it treats us as less than what we are: creators
and apprehenders of meaning. It reduces the amount of intention in
the world.
Gabor Maté: [09-06]
We each have a Nazi in us. We need to understand the psychological
roots of authoritarianism: I don't have any specific insight
into this question, other than my experience that every argument
ever made constructed along these lines has been complete and utter
horseshit -- the most obvious examples being blatantly racist, or
closely analogous.
Neuroimaging studies have shown that the amygdala, the tiny
almond-shaped brain structure that mediates fear, is larger in
people with more rightwing views. It is more active in those
favoring strong protective authority and harboring a suspicion
of outsiders and of people who are different.
I have a pretty low opinion of right-wingers, but I'm pretty
sure the only ones "born that way" are explicable in terms of
class acculturation, and even if tightly held are not locked
in.
Caitlin PenzeyMoog: [09-04]
Organize your kitchen like a chef, not an influencer. Well,
this is the sort of soft "lifetyle" feature I often bother to
read, and I kept the link for future reference (partly because
I didn't know what a "cambro" was, although I have some cheaper
alternatives). I have the largest refrigerator I could find,
and I keep it jammed, for better or worse, so managing it (as
opposed to presenting it as a gallery) is something often on
my mind.
Jeffrey St Clair: [09-06]
Roaming Charges: Ain't that America, something to see, baby?
Starts off with the latest school shooting, then gives you some
Xmas cards from our "family values" Republicans. After that, the
usual smorgasbord.
Jason Stanley: [09-05]
Why fascists hate universities: "Authoritarians and would-be
authoritarians are only too aware that universities are primary
sites of critique and dissent." Mostly on Bangladesh and India,
but of more general interest. Stanley has a recent book:
Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the
Future, following up on his previous books:
How Propaganda Works (2015), and
How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them (2018).
Barry Yourgrau: [09-03]
Lessons of a Weimar anti-fascist in Palestine: "After my father
fled Nazi Germany in 1933, he witnessed a toxic new nationalism
rising among Jews in Palestine -- and was silenced for trying to
warn of its dangers."
Obituaries
Books
Riotriot: [09-02]
The 50 best rock bands right now (#50-26); and [09-03]
The 50 best rock bands right now (#25-1). This is a genre I've
gradually lost interest in, at least since the early 1990s, when I
found Nirvana and Sleater-Kinney so underwhelming. But, as I still
check out most such well-regarded bands, I've turned this into a
personal
checklist. From these 50 bands, I've identified 27 A- and 3
full A albums (although only 6 since 2020, 11 since 2015).
Chatter
Zachary D Carter: [09-06] [Responding to Leah Greenberg, writing
on Vance: I can't get over how disrespectful this is. It's the answer
of someone who has never seriously considered any aspect of how care
policy works, because he believes -- but knows better than to say out
loud -- that women should be home taking care of the kids.]
When you did get past the gender hang-ups there's nothing here
except warmed over occupational licensing reform stuff from the 60s
and 70s. These guys say they want to represent working families but
they have no interest in how working families live.
To the extent there is a policy argument here, Vance is saying
we should lower daycare costs by paying lowering pay for childcare.
If your solution to an economic problem is "lower wages," you aren't
interested in supporting working families.
Stephen Walt: [09-05]
By now it is clear that there is nothing #Netanyahu could do or
say that would lead @SecBlinken to withhold U.S. support. A more
ineffectual approach to diplomacy is hard to imagine, and the
failure to achieve any positive results is entirely predictable.
[Comments follow:]
Blairja: [09-05]
The entire Biden Administration simply does not know how to negotiate.
The entirety of US current foreign policy is purely the result of this
basic inability to negotiate. No negotiations = endless support for war.
The ONLY way conflicts ever end is with negotiation.
Jean-Noël: [09-05]
It is clear that the Biden administration and Blinken in particular
are completely under the thumb of Netanyahu. They all follow Biden's
example of unconditional support, whatever humiliation Netanyahu
inflicts to them over and over again. We are the laughing stock of
the world.
[Given the company they're joining, it's a bit surprising that
anyone bothers to offer intelligent commentary. I've understood
all along that the longer this war continues, the more people who
are appalled by it may turn to antisemitic tropes. Most of the
people I read are careful not to fall into that trap, but there's
quite a bit of it in the commentary here -- most personal about
Blinken (e.g., "Blinken is effectual, he's just not playing for
our team"), although there was also a "Jews run America." Still,
by far the most offensive comment was "Hamas supporter," followed
by a cartoon showing Netanyahu and someone labeled Hamas holding
a child wrapped in a suicide vest and a paper that reads "Demands:
Death to all Jews," with Blinken in the middle saying, "Could you
at least meet him half way?"]
Local tags (these can be linked to directly):
Plitnick ("the genocide in Gaza is as
American as it is Israeli"),
Trump,
music.
Initial count: 154 links, 10515 words (13320 total)
Current count: 166 links, 11076 words (14052 total)
Wednesday, September 04, 2024
Daily Log
Feeling sorry for myself, I posted this on Facebook:
Just unwrapped my first promo albums for release on my birthday, which
got me to thinking about what to cook this year: an annual tradition
which started c. 1995 in Boston, with a 20+ dishes study in Chinese,
especially for Liz & Nina. As best I recall, I did Indian the next
year, and again in 1998 in NJ (25+ dishes, easily the largest and
possibly the best attended dinner of the series). Since moving to
Wichita in 1999, I think I've only skipped two years (once at my
brother's, where I did a beer can chicken, and once with Jerry for a
Brookville Hotel field trip. I've done a couple domestic menus -- one
with the "soul food" cookbooks, the other was just a hamburger cookout
(well, six variants, three kinds of homemade buns, plus a nice array
of sides). But most started as explorations into some national
cuisine, of which there have been more than a dozen, from Mexico and
Brazil to Thailand and Korea, but most centered around the
Mediterranean. Last year was Spanish (probably not for the first
time). I have no idea what to do this year, but after a year of being
bummed out over my writing failures and housework disasters, I really
could use a project with a reasonable chance of success. Plus, I've
really done damn little cooking this year, so I figure I need this. So
I'm looking here for inspiration and challenge. Any good ideas?
(Picture below was labelled "birthday desserts 2021," which given the
pecan pies -- one with chocolate, the other with bourbon -- was
probably the "soul food" dinner; the coconut cake, on the other hand,
has made multiple appearances, as has the flourless chocolate cake.)
I did some grocery shopping today, and will cook dinner tomorrow
for Janice, Tim (+1), Ran, and Laura. Trying to do one of my "inventory
reduction" menus, using up surplus from the freezer and pantry. Turns
out I still have leftovers from last year's birthday dinner shopping,
so that suggests a Spanish theme. Also, lots of opportunities in
tapas-land for small dishes that can be prepped a day ahead, so I
figure that's what I'm going to do starting tonight, and to hell
with everything else. Speaking of Which is open and about 500 words,
but I have little enthusiasm for working on it. Music Week is +15
now, and again, who cares?
I'll fill in the Spanish menu for tomorrow as I develop it.
The only thing planned to start is dessert (strawberry shortcake).
I also have some calf liver I really want to do, and something
with shrimp. Plus I've decided to use up some leftover wine for
sangria. Shopping today was limited to strawberries, cream, and
some fresh veggies that may prove useful: yellow onion, red onion,
red bell pepper, zucchini, carrots, garlic, ginger, tomatoes,
russet potatoes, dill, oranges, mini-cucumbers.
After dinner, I added this comment:
Last couple dinners I cooked have been "inventory clearance specials,"
where I try to use up old stuff, mostly from the freezer. I did
jambalaya-and-adjacent things a month or so ago, including a chocolate
pecan pie like the one pictured. Seeing as I still have surplus
shopping from last year's Spanish birthday dinner, I thought paella
plus tapas might work, so I fixed that today. Fuller report to follow,
but two notes for now: hip problem flared up severely yesterday, so
this whole project was pretty painful; with no coherent plan, a menu
formed opportunistically as I saw things I wanted to get rid of, and a
lot of missteps and substitutes, literally everything (12 dishes) came
out as good or better than expected.
Menu:
- Oven-roasted potatoes
- Paella, with chorizo, shrimp, green beans, and peas
- Calf liver in almond sauce
- Shrimp in "spicy" tomato sauce
- Lamb meatballs in brandy sauce
- Pisto manchego (zucchini/onion/tomato)
- Shiitake mushrooms with garlic sauce (plus some sausage)
- Pickled cucumbers
- White bean salad
- Tuna, egg and tomato salad
- Strawberry shortcake with whipped cream
- Sangria
New shopping for this meal (also onions, garlic, and some small
tomatoes, used in multiple dishes):
- Russet potatoes (3)
- Zucchini, red bell pepper
- Mini-cucumbers
- Strawberries, heavy cream
- Seltzer, peaches, pineapple, orange
Inventory used up in this meal (skipping staples, like olive oil,
tomatoes, eggs, rice, stock, flour, sugar, and spices):
- Chorizo, salsichon, shrimp, green beans (frozen), peas (frozen)
- Calf liver
- Shrimp
- Ground lamb
- Shiitake mushrooms (frozen)
- Canned white beans
- Canned tuna
- Three bottles of leftover wine (pink moscato, white
moscato, something red -- I cook with it but don't drink it, so we
have a BYO policy, and get stuck with whatever gets left; frozen
berries)
Tuesday, September 03, 2024
Daily Log
I started compiling a
checklist, based
on Dan Weiss's "Best 50 Rock Bands Right Now." Of bands 26-50, I
haven't heard anything from 7, and have only heard A/A-records
from 5 (7 albums total).
Another possible checklist: Questlove presents "only sixteen
albums have been awarded the [Source five-mic] rating since the
magazine started publishing in 1988" [my grades in brackets]:
- A Tribe Called Quest, People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm (1990) [A-]
- Eric B. and Rakim, Let the Rhythm Hit 'Em (1990) [B+(***)]
- Boogie Down Productions, Edutainment (1990) [B+]
- Ice Cube, AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted (1990) [B+(**)]
- Brand Nubian, One for All (1990) [A-]
- De La Soul, De La Soul Is Dead (1991) [C+]
- A Tribe Called Quest, The Low End Theory (1991) [A-]
- Nas, Illmatic (1994) [A-]
- The Notorious B.I.G., Life After Death (1997) [B+]
- Outkast, Aquemini (1998) [A-]
- Jay-Z, The Blueprint (2001) [B+]
- Nas, Stillmatic (2001) [B+(***)]
- Scarface, The Fix (2002) [B+(**)]
- Lil' Kim, The Naked Truth (2005) [B]
- Bun B, Trill OG (2010) [B+(**)]
- Kanye West, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010) [A]
So, only 4 unheard, all in a row (2001-10). Questlove says "for me,
the De La Soul and Tribe records, definitely."
Monday, September 02, 2024
Music Week
Expanded blog post,
September archive
(in progress).
Tweet: Music Week: 36 albums, 7 A-list
Music: Current count 42905 [42869] rated (+36), 30 [34] unrated (-4).
Yesterday's
Speaking
of Which slacked off a bit, only citing 141 links, less than
half of the
previous week's 290 (although the word count only dropped
by 28%, as I got off on more tangents; also last week included
an extra day plus extra adds, whereas this one appeared on
schedule, and I haven't tallied up what little I've added
since).
Music Week is also coming in a day short. Rating count got a
boost as my dive into Houston Person's old records carried over
from
last week, and led me to a new one. Also the A-list bounced
back after only one
record each in three of the last four weeks (but 7 for the week of
August 20.
Three of those came from promos I had been sitting on until their
late August release dates. (An extra day would have added Patricia
Brennan's Breaking Stretch, but that's banked for next week.)
I'm still updating the
2024 Jazz list,
which has already reached a ridiculous A-list length (70+3 new
music, 16+1 old music). I haven't sorted out the Non-Jazz yet,
but at this point it's unlikely that I have half as many albums
in any subdivision. Four pop records I tried I played multiple
times before leaving them in the B+ ranks: Sabrina Carpenter,
Lainey Wilson, Buoys, Magdalena Bay. The latter's Mercurial
World was one of my favorite records of 2021, but only hints
at that level toward the end. Same fate seems likely for
Beebadoobee's This Is How Tomorrow Moves next week,
but there's a lot to like there.
I started to write up a "to do" list in my Aug. 30 notebook
entry, and hope to get back to it soon. I did cross a couple
items off today already: I updated and did the indexing for
August Streamnotes.
I was surprised to find I have more patience for that kind of
work early in the day.
Joan Didion's Where I was From is the first (of three)
books I picked up in the brick-and-mortar bookstore last week.
I've never read her fiction, but have read two books of political
reporting: Political Fictions (2002), and Fixed Ideas:
America Since 9.11 (2003), by which time she was a recovering
Republican. Less of a memoir than I expected, but interesting as
history, even as drawn from novels. I have more typical political
books "on the nightstand" (Zack Beauchamp, Danielle Allen, Henry
Farrell/Abraham Newman), but figured I could use a break.
New records reviewed this week:
- The Buoys: Lustre (2024, Sony): [sp]: B+(***)
- Bex Burch: There Is Only Love and Fear (2023, International Anthem): [sp]: A-
- Gunhild Carling: Jazz Is My Lifestyle! (2024, Jazz Art): [cd]: B+(***)
- Sabrina Carpenter: Short n' Sweet (2024, Island): [sp]: B+(***)
- Bill Charlap Trio: And Then Again (2024, Blue Note): [sp]: B+(***)
- Doechii: Alligator Bites Never Heal (2024, Top Dawg/Capitol): [sp]: B+(**)
- Girl in Red: I'm Doing It Again Baby! (2024, Columbia): [sp]: B+(**)
- The Haas Company [Featuring Frank Gambale]: Vol. 2: Celestial Latitude (2024, Psychiatric): [cd]: B+(**)
- Javon Jackson/Nikki Giovanni: Javon & Nikki Go to the Movies (2024, Solid Jackson/Palmetto): [cd]: A-
- Magdalena Bay: Imaginal Disk (2024, Mom + Pop): [sp]: B+(**)
- Mavi: Shadowbox (2024, Mavi 4 Mayor Music): [sp]: B+(**)
- Nicole Mitchell and Ballaké Sissoko: Bamako Chicago Sound System (2017 [2024], FPE): [sp]: A-
- Houston Person/Peter Beets: Live in Holland: Houston Person Meets Peter Beets Trio (2024, Maxanter): [sp]: A-
- Catherine Russell/Sean Mason: My Ideal (2023 [2024], Dot Time): [cd]: A-
- Taliba Safiya: Black Magic (2024, self-released, EP): [sp]: B+(*)
- Sault: Acts of Faith (2024, Forever Living Originals): [yt]: B+(*)
- Philip Weberndoerfer: Tides (2023 [2024], Shifting Paradigm): [cd]: B+(**)
- Lainey Wilson: Whirlwind (2024, BBR): [sp]: B+(***)
- Miguel Zenón: Golden City (2023 [2024], Miel Music): [cd]: A-
Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:
None.
Old music:
- Ashtyn Barbaree: Ashtyn Barbaree Debut EP (2018, self-released, EP): [bc]: B+(*)
- Ashtyn Barbaree: Better Luck Next Time (2022, self-released): [bc]: B+(*)
- Houston Person: Broken Windows, Empty Hallways (1972 [2004], Prestige): [sp]: B+(***)
- Houston Person: A Little Houston on the Side (1977-94 [1999], 32 Jazz): [sp]: B+(**)
- Houston Person: My Romance (1998, HighNote): [sp]: B+(**)
- Houston Person: Soft Lights (1999, HighNote): [sp]: B+(**)
- Houston Person: Blue Velvet (2001, HighNote): [sp]: B+(***)
- Houston Person With Ron Carter: Dialogues (2000 [2002], HighNote): [sp]: B+(**)
- Houston Person: Sentimental Journey (2002, HighNote): [sp]: B+(***)
- Houston Person: Social Call (2003, HighNote): [sp]: A-
- Houston Person: The Melody Lingers On (2014, HighNote): [sp]: B+(***)
- Houston Person: Something Personal (2015, HighNote): [sp]: B+(**)
- Houston Person: Rain or Shine (2017, HighNote): [sp]: B+(***)
Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
- Ashtyn Barbaree: Sent Through the Ceiling (Artists 3 60) [10-25]
- Anne Sajdera: It's Here (Bijuri) [09-20]
Sunday, September 01, 2024
Speaking of Which
Blog link.
I opened this file about noon, Wednesday, August 28. First thing
I did was to revise the template. Most obvious thing was to move the
VP candidates (plus Biden) into the "and other D/R" sections. Also
some minor rephrasing. The three Israel sections overlap some, but
reflect different focuses: the first focuses on what Israel does
directly, but also includes items on Israel's domestic politics;
the second focuses on Israel's relationship to the US, and what
American political elites think and do about Israel; the third
focuses on the part of Israel's propaganda war directed at others,
and their responses to the atrocities (the word "genocide" comes
up here). Further subdivisions are possible, as is overlap, and
sometimes I just try to keep articles by single authors together.
I tend to put pieces on Israel's provocations with Lebanon, Iran,
and their so-called proxies into the second section, as my view
is that Israel's cultivation of regional enemies is mostly geared
toward keeping the Americans looking at Iran and away from Gaza
and the West Bank.
Ukraine and Russia still seems to need their own section, but
the broader context is the notion of America as imperial hegemon,
even if in fact it's defined more as an arms market where loyal
customers are counted as allies, and anyone who goes DIY and/or
shops on the black market is regarded as an enemy. For now, I'm
putting pieces on the arms cartel in the World section, along
with whatever scraps of world news that don't slot directly under
Israel or Ukraine/Russia. In theory, I should be covering news
that has nothing to do with America's imperial ego, but few such
stories reach my attention. So, for now this remains a grab bag.
Three topical sections -- law, climate/environment, economy --
cover most of what crops up domestically (sometimes overflowing).
"Other stories" is a catch all, from which I've broken out certain
recurrent themes, which may on occasion be empty.
Sunday, early afternoon, eager to get to a delayed breakfast.
With 82 links, 7415 words, this is way less than
last week's 290 link, 15528 word monstrosity. And already
I'm dead tired, disgusted, and just want to get it over with,
so today's plan is to just go through the motions, and fuck it.
In essence, I feel like I already know everything I need to
know, at least about the 2024 elections, where we will try to
fend off the grave peril of wrong-headed Republicans with the
vague hopes of naďve and uncertain Democrats. At this point,
further research and reporting is only likely to show that
the Republicans are even worse than imagined, and also that
the Democrats aren't quite as good as we hoped. Even that
can be readily intuited from what we already know -- not to
totally dismiss the "devil in the details," which I'm pretty
sure will be quite appalling.
At this point, I'd much rather return to the woefully incomplete
"to do" list I started in my August 30 notebook entry. At least
there are some tasks on that list that I can reasonably expect
to accomplish -- some within days, more in months, some that will
(like so much else) inevitably slip through the cracks. Today's
little bit of self-realization is that I'm basically an engineer:
I deal with things by making plans to change them by practical
measures in desirable directions.
Finally posted this after midnight. Link count way down this week,
but word count not so much. Uncertain at this point how much (little)
I managed to cover, but enough for now. Anything extra added on Monday
will be flagged.
Monday evening: did add a few bits here and there, but nothing
major.
Top story threads:
Israel:
Mondoweiss:
Hanna Alshaikh: [08-30]
Demystifying how the Hamas leadership works: "Media sources
have misunderstood how the leadership of Hamas operates, drawing
simplistic binaries between the 'moderate' Ismail Haniyeh and the
'extremist' Yahya Sinwar. In reality, Hamas decision-making is
far more institutionalized."
Julian Borger/Sufian Taha: [08-31]
'There was no mercy, even on children': trauma in the West Bank
after Israeli raids: "Israel accused of using a 10-year-old
girl as a human shield as it carried out its devastating attack
on the occupied Palestinian territory."
Juan Cole: [08-31]
Israeli PM Netanyahu says recovering hostages not a priority, occupies
Philadelphi Corridor instead.
Dave DeCamp: [08-28]
Israeli forces launch major assault on the West Bank, killing at
least 10 Palestinians: "Israel's foreign minister said the
territory should be dealt with the same as Gaza and called for
the evacuation of Palestinians."
Georgia Gee: [08-30]
What is Hashomer Yosh, the latest settler group his with US sanctions?
"The government-backed organization, which brings volunteers to Israeli
farming outposts, is a major driver of violent land theft in the West
Bank."
Tareq S Hajjaj: [08-28]
'We won't leave our people': the medical workers refusing to
evacuate central Gaza's last functioning hospital: "Medical
staff at al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital are refusing to abandon their
patients after an Israeli evacuation order. 'If we leave our
positions, we will fail ourselves and our society,' a doctor at
the hospital told Mondoweiss."
Ellen Ioanes: [08-30]
Israel has launched a major operation in the West Bank. Here's what
to know. The main thing to know, which never quite gets stated
clearly here, is that this is all Israel's doing, with most of the
violence initiated by settler-vigilantes, knowing that the IDF will
back them up and amplify their violence.
Since the October 7 Hamas raid on Israel, at least 660 Palestinians
and 15 Israelis have been killed in the West Bank, according to the
United Nations. It's a smaller number than the more than 40,000
Palestinians killed in Gaza over the past 10 months, but it is
still a reminder of how intense ongoing violence in the West Bank is.
You hear much about "Israel's right to self-defense," but nobody
talks about Palestinians having such a right, nor does Israel agree
that they have any rights at all. Nonetheless:
Gaza, Jerusalem, and the West Bank are recognized as occupied
territory under international law, and therefore Israel is obligated
to protect the people living there. Israel denies that it is
occupying Palestinian lands, but just last month, the International
Court of Justice ruled that Israel is occupying Palestinian lands
and should end that occupation immediately.
Israel's recent escalations in the West Bank, including aircraft
bombing refugee camps, suggests their intent to extend genocide to
the West Bank (as some Israelis, not quoted here, have urged).
Lubna Masarwa: [08-30]
West Bank attacks: To western leaders, there are no red lines for
Israel's slaughter: "Emboldened by the US and other western
powers, Israel feels it can get away with unleashing hell on all
Palestinians."
Dana Mills: [08-30]
'Israelis are frustrated, but do they want to stop the war? Not
exactly': "Rallying around the flag, low trust in government,
rebounding support for Netanyahu: Dahlia Scheindlin unpacks Israel's
peculiar public opinion trends." Interview with the author of a
2023 book,
The Crooked Timber of Democracy in Israel: Promise Unfulfilled.
Also on her book:
Qassam Muaddi: [08-30]
The new status quo after Israel's assault on the northern West
Bank: "Israel's old policy of containing armed resistance
in the West Bank is over. Palestinians are now wondering whether
the war on Gaza has expanded to the West Bank."
Adam Rasgon/Gabby Sobelman/Vivek Shankar/Thomas Fuller: [09-01]
Discovery of 6 dead hostages in Gaza spurs protest and division in
Israel: "The Israeli military said Sunday that Hamas had killed
the hostages before they were discovered by Israeli troops on
Saturday."
Bel Trew:
Stripped and held at gunpoint, the Gaza schoolboys 'forced to be
Israel's human shields': "Palestinians as young as 12 describe
how they were forced to inspect houses and roads to look for tunnels
and militants, sometimes dressed in military fatigues, in a practice
an Israeli NGO warns is 'broadly used' and 'systemic'.
Vivian Yee/Bilal Shbair: [08-22]
The war in Gaza is making thousands of orphans: "Extended
families, hospital staff and volunteers are stepping in to care
for Gaza's many newly orphaned children, some of whom are injured,
traumatized and haunted by memories of their parents." A point so
obvious few bother to make it -- especially the ones who work so
hard to deny that Palestinians are human.
Oren Ziv: [08-29]
'If you try to defend yourself, you're dead': a West Bank village's
night of terror: "Palestinians in Wadi Rahal were left to pick
up the pieces after settler-soldiers from a nearby outpost stormed
the village and killed one resident."
Mairav Zonszein: [08-13]
Israeli society is in a deepening state of contradiction:
"Israelis blame Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for dragging
them into endless war -- and are at a loss for how to carve a
way out." I'd have to quote the entire article to give you a
sense of how hopelessly circular the thinking of most Israelis
is on their war, their political system, and their cloistered
society. There are lots of people who hate Netanyahu for one
thing or another, but few if any who are willing to rethink
Israel's founding paradigm of Iron Wall security. They've
never gotten to the point of thinking about what comes next,
and have no idea how to proceed (although an expanded war
against Hezbollah seems to be popular). If only Israel had
a friend who could guide them to something more viable.
America's Israel (and Israel's America):
Michael Arria: [08-29]
'I think we've reached a tipping point': James Zogby on Uncommitted
and the DNC: "James Zogby speaks to Mondoweiss about the DNC's
snub of the Uncommitted movement, and what it will take for Washington
to shift on Palestine."
Michael Crowley/Eric Schmitt/Edward Wong: [08-29]
Inside the frantic US efforts to contain a Mideast disaster:
"A bigger disaster may have been avoided, even as the region
continues to teeter on the brink of wider war."
Daniel DeCamp: [08-28]
Biden was told Gaza pier would undermine efforts to get Israel to
allow more aid into Gaza. Source here is:
Joe Gill: [08-23]
Kamala Harris's speech killed any hope she would end the Gaza
genocide. Only if you hoped that she would use the bully
pulpit provided by her nomination to publicly oppose what Israel
is doing. Regardless of her feelings, I don't see any political
advantage in her breaking with Biden and/or Israel, while to do
so could invite peril. She is, after all, running a popular
front campaign against Donald Trump, who is clearly an even
worse option if you style yourself as "pro-Palestinian," so
her present course doesn't hurt her much there. On the other
hand, she needs to hold onto "pro-Israel" donors, many with
long ties to the Democratic Party but so singly focused on
Israel that they could well defect to Trump.
There is still some reason to hope that when she is free to
make policy, and freed of the obligation to follow Biden, that
she will do a better job of restraining Netanyahu than Biden
has done. There is some evidence to support this hope -- she
has been more disciplined than Biden in calling for ceasefire,
and she has been more credible in recognizing the harm done to
Palestinians -- as well as the reasoning revealed in the logic
of her campaign. What's much harder to gauge is how much she
could (and should) influence Israel policy as vice-president.
I could only speculate on that, and I don't want to, other than
to point out that only Israel (which right now, and for the
foreseeable future, means Netanyahu) can stop the genocide, and
really needs to change much more.
Even as president, the only
thing Harris could do would be to tip Netanyahu's cost-benefit
analysis toward less egregious policies (which could still be
pretty awful). Even if Harris were tempted to burn all of her
good will with Israel and institute maximum-level sanctions,
Israelis are at least as likely to respond by hunkering down
like North Korea as by reforming like South Africa -- and with
their arsenal and in confirmation of their paranoia, they could
turn more militant than North Korea.
I just got a refresher course on Bush's Iraq war propaganda
from reading Lapham's Age of Folly, and could easily
imagine recycling it to gin up a regime change operation in
Israel, but nobody's going to do it: the architects of that
folly were then-and-now staunch fans of Israel, while those
who thought better (or who painfully learned their lesson)
are likely to point out that a "splendid little war" against
Israel can go wrong in many more ways than the Iraq one did --
for one thing, Israel actually has WMD; also, while that line
about "Saddam gassing his own people" hit its target, hardly
anyone thinks to think of Palestinians as Israel's "own
people" -- the dehumanization is far too complete for that.
Also on Harris and Israel (allowing me to compartmentalize
and exclude these articles from her section):
While I was writing the [PS] on
Risen, I sketched out some "unsolicited
advice" I would give the Harris campaign, if I could possibly see
any way to get the message through. (Down there, I talk a bit about
why I've never been able to do anything like that, then went off on
another tangent where I could have just offered a parade of failing
examples.) Anyhow, makes more sense to move that comment up here
(although by the time I post this it will probably be redundant to
other comments in this section.
Anyhow, my advice to the Harris campaign is this:
When asked about Gaza, don't start with your
rote mantra about "Israel's right to defend itself." Anyone who cares
has already heard that a million times already and will instantly
turn you off and never credit another word you way. What you have
to start with is acknowledgement of the immense suffering the war
has caused, to both sides if you really must (and you don't really
have to get into numbers here), and insist that the war has to stop,
as soon as possible. You can mention the hostages at this point, if
you really must, but understand that the hostages were taken to
negotiate a ceasefire, not for prisoner swaps. End the war, and
the hostages (what few are left; like Trump, Netanyahu only admires
those who didn't allow themselves to be captured) will be freed
(while there will still be thousands of Palestinians in Israel's
concentration camps; even if they have to replenish them, they're
a renewable resource). And then, after stressing the importance
of peace, and human rights, and dignity and security for all (sure,
both-sides this, but make sure you don't slight the Palestinians),
then segue to how you're working around the clock with Israel to
make peace happen, on terms, of course, that fully take into account
Israel's security and well-being (including, if you really must, its
much-abused "right to self-defense").
I'm not even asking her to say anything different from what she's
already saying. Just put it in a different order, so it gets heard
not just by pro-Israel donors but by genuinely concerned Americans
(the donors are smart enough to wait to the end for their reassurance;
they've been speaking in code for aeons now). Also, Harris has a bit
of unique value-added here. I think most people realize that Israel
is completely in charge of their war: they started it (long before
Oct. 7, which was merely a hiccup they decided to magnify), and they
alone can end it, which they will only when they decide they've had
enough, that it serves no further purpose.
For nearly everyone else,
all you can do is speak up, bear witness, demonstrate, maybe vote
(but almost never directly), all of which is ultimately directed at
making Israeli leaders think better, whether through conscience or
through self-interested cost-benefit analysis (which is what BDS
aims at). We've spent a lot of energy trying to get Biden, Harris,
other prominent Democrats to do what we've been doing, which is to
speak out, but they are actually very different from us: they don't
have to speak out, because they're close enough to speak to, if not
the right people, at least to people closer to the right people,
to make their appeals personal.
Unfortunately, the few people in
that position are severely compromised, but their loyalty should
earned them the right to a hearing. And in some cases, they have
some power to tip that cost-benefit analysis. Harris is already
in that general orbit, which is part of the reason why she has to
be discreet in public, in order to operate in private. We should
respect that, but she should also give us some sign that we can
trust her discretion. Reframing her answer does that, or at least
helps. And electing her president will increase her leverage --
assuming she wants to use it.
I think she can and will, but when she does, she will be subtle
and disciplined about it. Netanyahu is a bully, someone who has
taken great delight in humiliating American presidents (going back
to his Wye River sleight-of-hand with Clinton, and his pre-emptive
attack on Gaza between Obama's election and inauguration, but he
found Trump such an easy mark that when Biden came along he found
he could finally get away with being sadistic), but I'd venture
a guess that she has some experience in handling his type. Still,
there is no way she can simply dictate terms. The best she can
do is to look for tolerable compromises, which she's more likely
to find and sell by being sympathetic to Israel than by becoming
a clear-headed critic of Zionist settler-colonialism.
That won't necessarily, or even likely, lead to good solutions,
but damn near anything would be better than blank-check support
for genocide -- which is where we're at, and where we're stuck,
until someone in a position to do something thinks better of it.
(I've spent 20+ years racking my brain for solutions that would
help a bit while still being acceptable to the racist-paranoid
mindset of contemporary Zionism. My "pro-Palestinian" friends
hate this line of thought, but I see no other as possible, at
least within any reasonable time frame.)
Unfortunately, I fear that no one in such a position -- and we
can comfortably include Kamala Harris in that sharply circumscribed
circle -- is able to think better of it. They wouldn't be allowed
the chance if they could. So we have every reason to be profoundly
pessimistic about Israel, about America's relationship with Israel,
and about the possibility that Harris might finally change course.
Still, I give her slightly better odds than Trump, and with no other
alternatives this cycle, I'm inclined to cut her considerable slack.
But we can't stop talking about the problem, and we do need to
remain aware that she is still very much a part of it.
Daniel Levy: [08-27]
The US diplomatic strategy on Israel and Gaza is not working:
Well, it never has worked. It took Ben Gurion almost six months to
realize Eisenhower was serious about Israel leaving Sinai in 1956,
and that was pretty much the last time any American insisted on a
point. Maybe Carter's opposition to Israel's first Lebanon war --
which Reagan allowed the rerun in 1982, much to everyone's eventual
embarrassment. And sure, there was some mutual make-believe, like
Israel accepting the UN "land for peace" resolutions, or the nods
to a "two-state solution." But from Clinton on, no one took the
charades seriously. Netanyahu not only stopped playing, he took
advantage of American timidity to make himself look like he's the
strong one. Meanwhile, the Americans look like weak fools with no
principles or even interests, while being complicit in war crimes
and crimes against human rights.
Branko Marcetic: [08-29]
Biden may be the president who kills the two-state solution:
"Israel is only doing this because it has learned that there is
nothing it can ever do that would make Biden cut off the weapons
and military support it needs to carry on its spree of violence."
Taha Ozhan: [08-27]
Israel is rudderless, and Washington is going down with the ship.
Jeremy Scahill:
[09-01]
How the US enabled Netanyahu to sabotage a Gaza ceasefire.
[08-30]
Israel's violent invasion of West Bank parallels the early stages
of war on Gaza: UN rapporteur on Palestine. One thing to note
here (and I have no idea how credible this reporting is) is:
On Thursday, Abdel Hakim Hanini, a senior Hamas official, suggested
that the group was preparing to engage in suicide bombings inside
Israel, a tactic that became common during the Second Intifada,
which spanned 2000-2005, but had ended almost entirely after 2006
when Hamas and other groups announced an end to the practice.
"The resistance in the West Bank has begun changing its tactics
and returning to martyrdom operations to strike at the occupation
within the occupied interior," Hamas said in a statement outlining
Hanini's announcement. "The resistance's change in tactics is a
result of the settlers and the occupation government crossing red
lines in their crimes against the Palestinian people." Hanini also
called on the security forces of the Palestinian Authority to
participate in a popular uprising against Israeli occupation
forces and settlers.
This is exactly what Netanyahu's right-wing allies have been
hoping (or should I say agitating?) for: a panic and pretense to
extend Israeli military operations and significantly increase
their destructive force. One might as well call this genocide --
Israel is less concerned with counting scalps than with reducing
the infrastructure that makes life viable, so that ultimately
whatever Palestinians are still alive will realize that their
only hope is to emigrate, emptying the land for more settlers.
It would be a sad mistake for any Palestinians to invite such a
savage response, but it would also be a sign of hopelessness --
a desperate resolve, once cornered, to make their menacers pay
as dear a price as possible. And make no mistake, while there is
no doubt that Palestinians would suffer far worse, a surge of
Palestinian violence would take a toll that ordinary Israelis
aren't used to. During the second intifada, Israeli casualties
rose to such an extent that Israel's kill ratio sunk to around
4-to-1, as opposed to typical ratios between 10-to-1 and 100-to-1.
(For comparison, the kill ratio since and including Oct. 7 is at
least 30-to-1, and probably double that, yet Israel's leaders
are showing no signs that their blood lust is abating.)
Donald Shaw/David Moore: [08-27]
AIPAC officially surpasses $100 million in spending on 2024
elections.
Yoana Tchoukleva: [08-31]
An arms embargo on Israel is not a radical idea -- it's the law:
"Halting military aid to Israel is the bare minimum the U.S. can do
to stop the Gaza genocide. An arms embargo is not only supported by
80% of Democratic Party voters, it is demanded by international and
U.S. law."
Israel vs. world opinion:
Election notes:
Trump:
Alex Abad-Santos: [08-29]
Your guide to the Brittany Mahomes-Donald Trump drama, such as it
is: "Why everyone suddenly cares about Brittany Mahomes'
politics." Everyone?
Margaret Hartmann:
Sarah Jones:
[08-30]
Misogyny is about power: A pretty generic title, but filed here
because the first line is:
"Donald
Trump's supporters in search of apparel have no shortage of
options." The generalization is also true, and one can go even
wider and explore the intoxication of power and how seeking to
solve problems through its application is not just bad philosophy
but should more properly be regarded as a form of mental illness.
But back to Trump:
By attacking Harris's gender, Trump demonstrates his own masculinity
and makes himself seem more and more like the strongman that he --
and his followers -- believes the U.S. needs. Trump was the vehicle
for a vengeance fantasy in 2016, and that remains true in 2024. To
followers, his pursuit of raw power is a means to bully liberals
and the left into submission. . . . The sexual remarks that Trump
reposted this month are a way for him and his followers to put the
vice-president back in her place.
As I've observed on many occasions, the essence of conservatism
is the belief that each person has a proper place, and a passion
to use force to keep people there.
[08-28]
The 'pro-life' policies hurting women: These specific examples
mostly come from Arkansas, but they are part of a much wider trend.
Filed here to keep the author's articles together, but also because
Trump is the single person most responsible for allowing things
like this to happen. Remember that in November. And don't believe
anything he says to the contrary . . . or to be safe, anything he
says at all.
Ed Kilgore:
Casey Michel: [09-01]
Trump is making new, sketchy foreign business deals: "From
Saudi Arabia to Serbia, despots are cozying up, likely in preparation
for a second term." Every one of these deals is an advertisement
for ending Trump's political career. If I was a TV exec, I'd hire
Michael Moore to turn this story into a documentary. At this point
it would be a rush job to beat the election, which would make it
a public service as well as useful history. He could always redo
it as a film later, especially with a happy ending: Trump loses,
the business deals crash, he finally goes to jail. And if worse
comes to worse, he could continue it as a series, because crooks
like Trump don't just stop of their own accord. They have to be
busted.
Ben Lefebvre: [08-30]
'Political poison': How Trump's tariffs could raise gasoline
prices.
Chris Lehmann: [08-28]
The Trump campaign is now running on pure contempt: "Both Trump
and JD Vance are incapable of hiding their lack of basic humanity."
Shawn McCreesh: [09-01]
Meandering? Off-script? Trump insists his 'weave' is oratorical
genius. "Former President Donald J Trump's speeches often wander
from topic to topic. He insists there is an art to stitching them
all together."
Nicole Narea: [08-23]
Does RFK Jr. dropping out of the presidential race help Trump?
"The weirdest 2024 candidate endorsed Trump."
Nia Prater:
[08-27]
RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard are joining the Trump transition team:
I noted this story last week, dismissing it with "sounds like something,
but probably isn't." Here I should note that while it probably isn't,
it could actually be something. Kennedy and Gabbard have a lot of traits
that discredit them as presidential candidates, but the one thing they
do have is pretty consistent antiwar track records, which they are not
just committed to, but are eager to use against Biden and Harris, who
are not exactly invulnerable to such charges. Moreover, they can say
that they left the Democratic Party because they opposed how hawkish
the Party had become -- so hawkish that even Trump would be a safer
and more sensible foreign policy option. It remains to be seen how
credible they'll be, because, well, on most other issues they're nuts,
but on this one, they could be more credible than Trump himself to
people with real concerns. I've said all along that if Biden doesn't
get his wars under control, he will lose in November. The switch to
Harris gives Democrats a partial reprieve, but the one thing she is
most seriously vulnerable on is the suspicion that Democrats are
going to continue saddling us with senseless and hopeless foreign
wars. Kennedy and Gabbard could be effective at driving that point
home -- sure, not to rank-and-file Democrats, who are generally
much more dovish than their leaders, and who are even more wary of
Republicans on that count, but to the "undecideds," who know little,
even of what little they know.
[08-29]
What does Jack Smith's new indictment against Trump mean?
[08-30]
Trump throws another Hail Mary on the hush-money case.
Andrew Prokop: [08-30]
The Trump Arlington National Cemetery controversy, explained:
"Shoving, insults, politicizing soldiers' gravesites." For more on
this:
Nikki McCann Ramirez:
James Risen:
Why the media won't report the truth about Trump: "The political
press has doubled down on horse-race coverage of the election,
overlooking the threat Trump poses to democracy." The mainstream
press does a half-assed job of covering nearly everything and
everyone, but they seem to be exceptionally inept when it comes
to Donald Trump. I have a few theories about why, and I'd love
to see an article that explored them, but this piece, with its
historical review of election books from 1960 on, never gets to
the point. One clue to the problem appears in the title: the
idea that there is such a thing as "truth about Trump." Sure,
it's a natural idea for the star writer for a publiciation that
prides itself on muckracking. But is there any such thing?
Sure, Trump has a history, so journalists can write about
what he's said and done in the past, and how rarely one has
anything to do with the other. Still, few journalists are up
to the task of sorting fact from fraud from utter bullshit,
which seems to exist in such profusion for no better reason
than to camouflage underlying meaning -- if, indeed, there
is any, for like Churchill's "armada of lies" you only have
his word that there is some "precious truth" somewhere. The
only sensible way to report on what Trump says would be to
put the quotes into a table, each one followed by a note
explaining the fallacy. (Feel free to apply the technique
to other politicians.) The revelation about Trump is that
there is nothing else leftover. Journalists stuck with
following him around can file each day's article under the
same headline: "Trump lies again." Or, if they want to mix
it up a bit, "Trump is a pompous asshole (again)."
Having disposed of the horse's orifices, journalists might
consider doing some actual reporting. The first thing they
need to work on is making the campaign more transparent: Who
are the operatives? How does their polling direct messaging?
What psychology does the messaging attempt to manipulate?
Where is the money coming from? And what do donors expect for
their money? Who's thinking about staffing? What are all those
eager staff-in-waiting plotting to do? Again, it's fair to ask
these same questions of Democrats, but you really need to start
with Trump, because with him the real interests are buried so
extra deep.
One mistake many people make is to assume that presidents
and administrations go hand-in-hand. While the president has
to sign off on who does what, and can oversee an administration
through cabinet meetings, directives, and the occasional staff
shake up, harmony requires a degree of focus that Trump simply
is incapable of. If Trump wins, he will quickly sign off on
whatever slate of generic Republican functionaries and donors
he's presented with, and they will go off and try to do whatever
they've long wanted to do.[*] Sure, they may be a bit Trumpier this
time than they were in 2016, but that's just fashion sense. All
Republicans, including Trump, have been marching to the same
ideological drumbeat for decades (as popularized by Fox News,
and articulated by their "think tanks," in forms like "Project
2025").
Trump is the Republicans' leader not because he leads (except
in the fashion sense) but because he's the perfect diversion: he
keeps the media focused on side-issues and trivia, all the while
cultivating an air of deniability, as in how can you possibly
believe he believes in anything? Given how many of his fans
seem to be in on the joke, it's really quite amazing that so
few journalists can figure it out. (Of course, they wouldn't
last long if they did, nor would anyone who did and still had
an ounce of self-respect stick around, so you might say that
natural selection favors gullible journalists on the Trump
beat.)
The main reason for wanting Trump to lose is to avoid having
to survive four more years of Republican administration, but
Trump as president presents its own discomforts, chiefly in the
form of embarrassment. As president, most of what he would do
may be harmless -- he'll watch a lot of TV, tweet, golf, pose
for pictures, talk nonsensically, waddle absent-mindedly, hold
campaign rallies even after being term-limited, make occasional
"perfect phone calls," and run his family grafts (or, like the
government, allow them to be run in his name). Any president
can stupefy, but no one else has ever come close to his level.
If this were a purely aesthetic matter, I might not mind seeing
the exalted office of the presidency reduced to buffoonery. But
the office has too much power to entrust anyone like him, let
alone to someone whose worst instincts are reinforced by the
malevolence of his party.
[*] Journalists would be well advised to dig up John Nichols'
2017 quickie, Horsemen of the Trumpocalypse: A Field Guide to
the Most Dangerous People in America. The book on Trump's
initial cabinet picks was soon obsoleted as several subjects
self-destructed almost instantly, but it's a useful empirical
account of on how Trump picks "the best people" and why.
[PS]: After writing the above, I got a spam pitch for
donations from The Intercept, which I might as well quote at
length:
When Donald Trump announced his third campaign for the White House,
leading voices in the journalism industry vowed that the press
couldn't fail in its coverage of Trump again.
This time, the media would aggressively investigate Trump while
focusing coverage on the threat that he poses to democracy, we were
told. The stakes for the nation in the election, not just the odds
of who was likely to win the campaign, would be put front and center.
But with 66 days until the election, it's clear that the major
national news media hasn't changed a bit.
Horse-race coverage is back in full force, with breathless reports
on every trivial social media spat or tick in poll numbers running on
an endless loop 24/7 -- while the threat Trump poses to democracy is
now relegated to an afterthought.
The Intercept rejects this failed approach to political journalism.
Every day, we're reporting on what the candidates really stand for,
how their policies will impact your life, and how billionaire campaign
donors stand to benefit.
Risen's article, which I had just found so wanting, was obviously
their best idea on how to do this, so I thought, maybe, write them
a letter? I did, following my quote with a few more thoughts:
I realize that this, like most things, is easier to complain about
than to fix. The subject is vast and deep, and perversely rooted
in the minds of people who don't read and are immune to analysis.
I could imagine this taking a whole book just to explain: perhaps
a sequel to Manufacturing Consent as something like
Manufacturing Faux Divisions in the Theater of the Absurd.
Paradoxically, if one reported as I suggest on both Harris and
Trump, it would probably be devastating for her while merely annoying
to him, for much the same reason as focusing on corruption killed
Hillary Clinton while letting Trump off the hook -- that we hold her
to higher standards, because she presents as worthy of them, whereas
he's just Trump.
By the way, my theory there was that voters saw both candidates
as really horrible choices, but also saw an opportunity to get rid
of one of them, and seized on that opportunity to vote Hillary off
the island. To some extent, that worked against Trump in 2020, but
he had other things buoying him up, and he refused to take the hint.
If I was a campaign strategist, I'd try to figure out how to raise
consciousness of this election as the voters' opportunity to finally
rid us of his oppressive presence.
I doubt anything will come of this, because it never does. I've
written a dozen or so unsolicited advice letters over the years, and
never gotten any meaningful response. (Two letters I wrote early on
did elicit responses that changed my life, but they were more in the
form of dismissive harrangues: Eugene Genovese convinced me to give
some serious study to Marxism, and Robert Christgau invited me to
write for the Village Voice. Come to think of it, aggressive letters
may work better for me. I once wrote a letter to Steve Ballmer, that
got me a job interview at Microsoft in 1984. They ran me through an
assembly-line gauntlet of middle managers from Xerox PARC who couldn't
square the timid, uncredentialed programmer they saw with the prick
who had written the letter, so they passed. Had they taken a chance,
it would have changed my life, and possibly theirs. I quite possibly
would have developed into a millionaire tech entrepreneur, instead
of becoming a free software diehard who hates every fiber of their
being.)
Sorry for that diversion, but that was something I've long wanted
to get off my chest. What I meant to write next was that I woke up
this morning trying to figure out how to pass some unsolicited advice
to the Harris campaign:
Matthew Stevenson: [08-30]
Trump IPOs his presidency:
Why does anyone think Donald Trump is actually running for president?
Granted, he's the Republican nominee and is on the ballot in all fifty
states, but the only election day that interests Trump is the one
around September 20. On that day (or perhaps a few days later) the
lockout period on his Trump Media shares (for which he paid nothing)
expires and he will be free to dump his gifted 57.6% stake (114,750,000
shares) on scheming billionaires (for example, the Saudis, Vladimir
Putin, a Mexican drug cartel, etc.) who might have an interest in the
first $2.4 billion IPO (initial public offering) of a prospective
American presidency.
Trump isn't so much a candidate these days as a walking
conflict-of-interest whose bumper stickers might well read:
"Trump-Vance 2024: On Sale September 20."
Vance, and other Republicans:
Zack Beauchamp: [08-27]
An inside look at how the far right is mainstreaming itself:
"A radical troll got unmasked -- and then spilled the beans."
On Jonathan Keeperman.
Michael C Bender: [08-31]
JD Vance's combative style confounds Democrats but pleases Trump:
"Over dozens of events and more than 70 interviews, Mr. Vance's
performances as Donald Trump's attack dog have endeared him to
his boss, even if America is broadly less enthusiastic." I
noticed this because the headline elicited considerable ridicule
on X. In particular,
Andrew:
We weren't confounded @nytimes. We're disgusted. We're mortified
for our country that this weird misogynistic sociopath abomination
could be a heartbeat away from the Presidency. And that you keep
writing headlines line this while our democracy burns to the ground.
Some more comments:
- JFC another misleading headline from the rag @nytimes. At this
point, MSM are committing election interference with their overt
biased reporting. What happened to journalistic integrity. We are
NOT confounded, not in the least.
- JD Vance's Combative style? The man is a twerp. Nobody thinks
he's even the least bit impressive. He is -10 unfavorable and
Trump is crapping his diaper over it.
- Every single Democrat I know is delighted that Vance is on
the ticket. He's one of the least effective politicians in recent
memory.
Of course, the comment roll degenerates quickly once the
right-wing bots get into action: "That's a lot of propaganda
but you are the Communist Party. I never voted Republican but
I'm not voting for the candidate of no choice backed by the
war party." If this "I never voted Republican" line seems to
come gratuitously out of the blue, Steve M wrote an
eye-opening post on this phenomenon: [09-02]
A charitable explanation for the latest New York Times
reporting failure (a different one, but quel coďncidence),
following up on [09-01]
A failed attempt at humanizing Trump? It worked on your paper's
reporter.
One helpful commenter did point us to this:
Ben Smith: [05-05]
Joe Kahn: 'The newsroom is not a safe space': An interview
with the New York Times Executive Editor, who says:
It's our job to cover the full range of issues that people have.
At the moment, democracy is one of them. But it's not the top one --
immigration happens to be the top [of polls], and the economy and
inflation is the second. Should we stop covering those things
because they're favorable to Trump and minimize them?
The problem isn't that they're reporting on issues "favorable
to Trump," but that they're accepting that slant as fact instead
of exposing it as nonsense. They do that because they so readily
accept Republican framings at face value, when most of them are
not just partisan distortions but bald-faced lies. Of course,
it's not just Republicans they favor. They'll carry water for
any well-heeled lobby (Israel is a perennial favorite). Kahn
goes on to brag that the Times offers "a much more favorable
view of Biden's conduct over foreign policy at a difficult
time than the polling shows the general public believes."
Again, he's consciously catering to powerful interests, while
slighting honest reporting that the public sorely needs.
Kevin T Dugan: [08-29]
The right-wing crusade against DEI isn't actually working.
Gary Fineout/Kimberly Leonard: [08-30]
Ron DeSantis is struggling to maintain power in Florida following
presidential campaign flop.
Margaret Hartmann: [08-28]
JD Vance blames staff for disastrous doughnut-shop visit:
Last week,
J.D. Vance took a break from saying weird things about
childless people to visit a doughnut shop in Valdosta, Georgia.
Presumably, the Trump campaign wanted to show off how well the VP
nominee connects with regular people. Instead, it got a viral video
that has been
compared unfavorably to an
infamously cringeworthy episode of The Office.
This story also provides context for a
New Yorker cartoon.
David Sirota: [08-29]
Project 2025 started a half-century ago. A Trump win could solidify
it forever. Minor point, but both sides are tempted to indulge
in arguments of this form: that this election is some kind of tipping
point wherre the wrong way will lead to permanent, irreversible
horrors. While I can't categorically say that's impossible, it
seems pretty unlikely. The biggest problem with Project 2025 is
that it's mostly unworkable. Indeed, most conservative policies
are bound to fail: some are just designed that way (presumably to
make government look bad, or at least hapless), some attempt to do
impossible things, and many create feedback loops (or blowback)
that erode them from within. The last three Republican presidencies
have ended with remarkably low approval ratings, and their rate
of collapse has been accelerating (Reagan-Bush lasted 12 years,
Bush-Cheney 8, Trump 4; by contast, Democratic presidencies have
tended to end with a feeling of satisfaction, like a feeling that
we've recovered enough we can afford to go out and do something
stupid again).
Of course, there is a difference between right and left here.
Democrats' fear that incremental changes, while not so troubling
to start with, could eventually turn catastrophic, as in the
Republican packing of the Supreme Court. In another major example,
it took 30+ years for the repeal of Taft-Hartley to be turned into
a serious union-busting tool -- which radically undermined the
Democratic Party's political base, leading politicians like Bill
Clinton to turn for corporate support, and further alienate the
party base. Project 2025 would like to do lots of things like
that, but the one thing that looms largest there is the attack
on the civil service system.
On the other hand, right-wing paranoia is often just that.
For example, Stephen Miller has a pinned
tweet warning:
If Democrats win they will:
Eliminate the filibuster
Pack SCOTUS
Make DC a state
Import a new electorate with full voting rights
Declare dissent "hate speech," punishable with jail time
Enforce a vast censorship & surveillance regime
Make their power over you PERMANENT.
The first three sound like pretty reasonable ideas, as they would
expand democracy (well, restore is more like it, as they'd reverse
currently undemocratic practices). The last four are not on any
Democratic agenda, even as "blue sky" wish list items. (Ok, the
one about "hate speech" is being done to criminalize dissent over
Israel, but that's being driven by AIPAC, and mostly behind closed
doors.) On the other hand, those four points do smell a lot like
things Republicans would be keen on doing (they'd be deporting
and stripping rights, but that's effectively the same).
I had to go back and qualify my paranoia comment, because some
of their fears are that Democratic programs might not just work
but become so popular that they can't be repealed or rolled back:
there are several big examples, like Social Security and Medicare,
as well as numerous smaller ones.
Ramon Antonio Vargas: [08-31]
Ex-beauty contestant condemns JD Vance for use of embarrassing
video: "Viral video of Caitlin Upton from 2007, which led to
her considering suicide, used by Vance to mock Kamala Harris."
Ryan Grim: [08-31]
Project 2025 roots date back half a century: Interview with
David Sirota on "how a memo from 1971 laid the groundwork for
enshrining corporate corruption in American politics." I'll spare
you the suspense and note that the "memo" was the famous Lewis
Powell letter, which pretty much everyone who's tracked the history
of right-wing think tanks, direct mail, and lobbying operations at
least references and often starts with. Still fits the definition
of "smoking gun." Interview also goes into Sirota's longer-term
project, a series of podcasts called
Master Plan: Legalizing Corruption.
Harris:
The CNN interview:
Perry Bacon Jr.:
Eric Levitz: [08-30]
Kamala Harris's big housing plan has a big problem: "Affordable
housing comes at a cost." I wouldn't be surprised to find one can
poke holes in Harris's plan (which I haven't studied any further),
but most of these points strike me as wrong-headed. I rented up to
1985, and have owned a series of houses since then. Still, I can't
say much about them as investments -- my record has been pretty
mixed. But what I can say is that owning made a big difference to
me psychologically, because I really hated the power that landlords
held over me as a tenant. On the other hand, owning gives me the
freedom to build, to tailor, to make my home work for me. Levitz
seems to be arguing that renting is more cost-effective, and in
some ways it may be. And I'm sure there are other arguments at
play here (e.g., renters are more mobile, which makes labor
markets more efficient). But there's more to it.
PS: Levitz tried to sum up his article in a pair of
tweets:
Harris wants housing to be more affordable -- and a good
vehicle for building wealth. Yet the cheaper housing becomes,
the worse it will perform as an investment.
A frustratingly large number of people are reading this
tweet and concluding, "He must be arguing that we should keep
housing unaffordable to prop up home values; I should express
outrage about that imaginary claim, instead of reading the piece"
(which argues the exact opposite)
On the merits, there is little question that liberals should
prioritize making housing cheaper. There is nothing progressive
about putting property owners' return-on-investment above less
privileged Americans' access to shelter. Further, promoting
homeownership as a wealth building strategy also fails many
homeowners. Concentrating one's savings in a single asset is
a perilous investment strategy, especially for America's least
privileged groups.
This dual nature is so locked into our thinking about housing
it's hard to see anyone debunking it, least of all a politician.
Still, why not start by treating this as two separate problems,
which have been confounded in the interests of a special interest
group (the real estate industry, which seeks to drive up prices,
and finds it useful to disguise inflation as appreciation).
I can think of a dozen programs that would help in one way or
another, but they hinge on breaking the conceptual hold of this
dual nature -- one so strong that even Levitz can't see his way
out of. Of course, one could simply cut the Gordian knot and
blame it all on capitalism, and you can certainly make that
case, but that's too easy an answer, and too simple a solution.
John McWhorter: [08-29]
'Joy' is a euphemism for a word no one wants to say out loud:
I clicked on the title for the most basic of reasons, which is to
find out who is saying such a thing, and why? (Third edit, as my
first was filled with expletives.) This isn't the first time I've
done that and found this bloke dangling from the hook. His mission
in life is to help conservative white folk feel better about their
racism -- a task he has expanded beyond his columns to include
books like Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black
America. And there he's said the "word no one wants to say,"
but evidently it's ok for him to say (guess why?). He starts by
asking us to compare Harris joy with a list of white alternatives
he finds no joy in (from Gretchen Whitmer to Beto O'Rourke, how
hard do you think he looked? did he even have any idea what to
look for? or does he just assume the euphemism is commutative?).
I mean, this is a guy who thought Woke Racism was clever,
so does he really know what joy means? And why can't he imagine
that joy is just a personality attribute that any individual can
exhibiti and/or find? Why does everything have to trace back to
race? Oh yeah, that's his business model.
Christian Paz: [08-28]
How is Kamala Harris getting away with this? "The nominee is
pivoting hard to the right on immigration, so why do progressives
say they can live with it?" My answer is something along the lines
of "a candidate's gotta do what she's gotta do." I'm in no position
to second-guess, much less micromanage, her campaign. I wouldn't be
allowed to anyway, and the noise I might create is just spurious.
Sure, when she says or does something I really object to, I'll
speak up (cf. the sections this and every week on Israel), but
I don't see any point in getting hysterical about it. Candidates
says lots of things during campaigns that never turn real.
Besides, I really don't care about immigration per sé. It's
not a left-right issue (unlike equality, freedom, justice, and
peace). I have a problem with mistreating immigrants (which is
something Republican do and want to do much more of). I have a
problem with forcing people to emigrate (which is mostly done
by war, by repression, by economic hardship, and increasingly
by climate, which are all issues Republicans are on the wrong
side of). I think that people should have a "right to exile,"
because everyone should have a right to live in a country that
is safe and supportive -- as some countries demonstrably are
not -- but that doesn't mean that other countries have an
obligation to accept just anyone (I'm trusting that somewhere
someone will be agreeable, without coercion). But I accept that
there borders between countries, and that governments ("of, by
and for the people" that live therein) should regulate them,
subject to some fairly universal standards of decent conduct.
I doubt that it's possible (never mind desirable) to make those
borders totally impermeable, but I do believe that it's better
to manage affairs legally than it is to drive them underground.
(That the US has millions of "illegal immigrants" suggests that
they didn't do a very good job of managing things legally.)
I personally don't fear immigrants, and I don't have a lot of
patience or understanding for people who do (who for the most
part strike me as ignorant clods; although most that I know
would make exceptions for the immigrants they actually know --
it's only the hypothetical others that provoke their kneejerk
reactions). But I do fear the political issue, which dovetails
so neatly with much more delirious and dangerous right-wing
demagoguery, so I don't mind artful efforts to defuse the issue.
I can't really tell whether Harris' pivot qualifies, not least
because I'm not the audience she's pitching. I do know that it
is very difficult to pass any new law on immigration, so her
proposals are going to be kicked around many blocks before
anything becomes real. As with everything else she proposes,
we'll take it seriously when the time comes. Until then, the
only thing that really matters is that she beats Trump.
Since we're on immigration, here are some more pieces:
Walz, Biden, and other Democrats:
Daniel Han: [08-30]
From 'a nobody' to the Senate: George Helmy is ready to replace Bob
Menendez.
Umair Irfan: [08-26]
Why Democrats aren't talking much about one of their biggest
issues: "Climate change was a huge issue for Democrats in the
the 2020 election. Voters care less now."
Mitchell Plitnick: [08-31]
Why Democrats refused to allow a Palestinian speaker at the DNC:
"The Democrats did not allow a Palestinian speaker at the DNC
because they did not want to encourage any possible sympathy for
the Palestinian people who are facing a genocide fully supported
by the Biden-Harris administration." Sympathy would have been
cheap, hardly a step above "thoughts and prayers." And while
Israel has worked tirelessly at dehumanizing Palestinians, few
Democrats actually buy their arguments. They mostly ignore them,
because if they didn't, they'd have to confront the savage facts
of Israel's caste system, which is at odds with their cherished
"only democracy in the Middle East." I think the decision was
the logical result of three precepts: They see the DNC, as both
parties have for at least 30 years now, as an infomercial, and
want to squeeze every last drop of value out of it, so they add
speakers who enhance their brand, and reject any who might hurt
them. (The rejection of the Teamsters leader, simply for having
spoken at the RNC, was arguably worse than not slotting a token
Palestinian.) They believed that even admitting concern, much
less culpability, for anything bad on their watch would hurt
them, and Gaza was a major sore point -- and frankly one that
many of them could (and should) feel embarrassed over. And as
the party of the left (if only because Republicans left them
with no other choice), they were terrified of losing critical
donors -- wealthy pro-Israel donors are most likely to break to
Trump, whereas there was little risk in losing the anti-genocide
masses to Trump. Also a fourth one: this year at least, the
defense of democracy doesn't seem to allow much room for the
practice of democracy, so the notion that everyone in the party
should get a say just got squashed (without much complaint from
the rank and file).
Lavanya Ramanathan/Christian Paz: [09-01]
Democrats' vibes are excellent. Can they turn that into votes?
Bernie Sanders: [08-29]
The 'far-left agenda' is exactly what most Americans want.
Supreme Court, legal matters, and other crimes:
Climate and environment:
Economists and the economy:
Ukraine and Russia:
Kelley Beaucar Vlahos: [08-30]
Diplomacy Watch: F-16 crashes, Zelensky says they need more:
"Russia digging in, officials say no interest now in talking even
as Kyiv seems keen."
Jack Detsch/Amy Mackinnon: [08-21]
Biden's Ukraine strategy is missing in action: "Lawmakers are
frustrated at the lack of a coherent plan as Biden prepares to
leave office." A plan suggests some expected series of steps,
but US policy seems to be a fixed attitude, held fast in the
belief that the longer they than can stretch the war out, the
more they'll degrade Putin and Russia, but they don't see any
risks in doing so, or potential benefits to reconciliation.
That strikes me as naive and short-sighted, but it does help
the US arms cartel, and props up oil and gas prices to the
extent that they can reduce Russia's market share.
Mark Episkopos: [08-27]
Ukraine & the West are crossing red lines. Why isn't Russia
reacting? "Putin's aces -- non-Western countries unaligned
with the US -- are also preventing him from upping the ante."
Luke Harding: [09-01]
Ukrainian drone attacks hit power stations and refineries in
Russia: "Russia plays down overnight strikes as its forces
make incremental gains in Donbas and launch missiles at Kharkiv."
Ellen Ioanes: [08-26]
Zelenskyy's new plan to end the war, explained: "The plan is short
on detail but aims to push Russia to negotiate." Nothing here suggests
that he understands how negotiating works.
Joshua Keating: [08-28]
Did Ukraine just call Putin's nuclear bluff? "By invading Russia,
Ukraine was also sending a message to America." Some questions --
like: "are Russia's threats still working?"; "are there any more
'red lines'?"; "does Putin have a breaking point?" -- should make
one doubt the questioners more than their objects. If Putin can
resist going berserk when one of his "red lines" is crossed, that
should suggest he's someone one can reason with, while raising
doubts about the "ally" who's brazenly attempting to provoke a
wider and deadlier war.
Anatol Lieven: [08-27]
How the Russian establishment really sees the war ending:
"An inside look at what Russia expects -- and doesn't -- in a
cease-fire with Ukraine."
Dylan Motin: [08-27]
Why Macron went full hawk on Ukraine and then backed down: "The
French president wants to go his own way, but as usual there are
limits to what he can do."
Stephen M Walt:
The murky meaning of Ukraine's Kursk offensive: "A short-term
success doesn't necessarily have any long-term effects."
The World and/or America's empire:
Other stories:
Henry Farrell: I had these tabs saved off last week,
but didn't find them in time.
[08-12]
Seeing like a Matt: "The intellectual blind spots of
anti-anti-neoliberalism." Matt is Yglesias, who has a series of
articles defending neoliberalism against its enemies, cited
here: [07-11]
What was neoliberalism?; and [07-23]
Neoliberalism and its enemies.
[08-21]
Illiberalism is not the cure for neoliberalism: "Democrats
should be reading Danielle Allen, not Deneen." In addition to the
Yglesias pieces, this cites James Pogue: [08-19]
The Senator warning Democrats of a crisis unfolding beneath their
noses, where the Senator is Chris Murphy [D-CT], which in turn
refers back to Chris Murphy: [2022-10-25]
The wreckage of neoliberalism, as well as where Patrick J Deneen
enters the picture -- his books are Why Liberalism Failed
(2018) and Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future (2023).
I don't have a good picture of what neoliberalism is: in economics
it seems to be an attempt to dress up laissez-faire as something new
(and therefore not yet discredited); in politics it wears two dresses,
as sleight-of-hand magic for liberals and as unfettered plundering
for conservatives; and in foreign policy (or "geopolitics"), it seems
to be the good cop teamed with the neoconservative bad cop; and on
the left/liberal side it is something self-evident to favor or oppose
(the right/conservative side doesn't much care for the term, so the
few people, like Yglesias, who advocate neoliberalism wind up trying
to defend something significantly different from what most leftists
attack as neoliberalism, a distinction blurred by how readily they
lapse into cartoonish anti-leftism).
Much of the piece is about Danielle Allen's book,
Justice by Means of Democracy, which turns on points I don't
quite grasp the subtlety of -- partly, no doubt, because I've never
made much sense of Rawls, but also because I don't believe conservatives
when they claim to discern some true "public interest" they've spend
much of their lives destroying. On the other hand, I am inclined to
lean into the notion that more democracy is the answer, especially
if it results in better justice. I'm intrigued enough to order a
copy. I also looked up the following:
Anna North: [08-29]
Kids today: your guide to the confusing, exciting, and utterly new
world of Gen Alpha.
Igor Shoikhedbrod: [08-31]
Why socialists shouldn't reject liberalism: An interview with
Matt McManus, the author of the forthcoming book
The Political Theory of Liberal Socialism.
Jeffrey St Clair: [08-30]
Roaming Charges: Genocide with a smile. Starts with Harris, but
ranges widely, including:
- "In CNN interview, Vice President Harris says she will appoint
Republican to her cabinet": First I heard of this sounded less like
a commitment than another cock-eyed suggestion by Bill Scher
(Kamala
Harris should pledge to appoint a Republican to her cabinet,
followed by
Which Republicans might serve in a Harris cabinet), but I figured
that was just Scher being Scher. I think committing to a type is dumb,
as well as self-crippling. (Remember how Clinton wanted a woman as
Attorney General, then wound up with Janet Reno as his 3rd pick?)
On the other hand, looks like there will be plenty of Republican
applicants even without a commitment: see Alex Gangitano:
More than 200 Bush, McCain, Romney aides endorse Harris.
- Notes that among states ranked by life expectancy, Biden won all
of the top 10, but Trump won 9 of the bottom 10.
- "Democracy in the post-Citizens United era: A mere 50 'mega-donors'
have pumped more than $1.5 billion into the election, so far."
- "On Tuesday, southern Iran recorded a heat index of 82.2°C and a
dew point of 36.1°C, provisionally the highest ever globally."
- I'll register a strong dissent on St Clair's dis of Philip
Larkin's jazz writing. I don't know much about Larkin's poetry
(or whatever), but Larkin's All What Jazz: A Record Diary,
1961-1971 is a personal favorite.
Obituaries
Books
Music (and other arts?)
Chatter
Dean Baker: [09-01] [responding to josh ryan-collins:
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. Pretending the govt budget is like a households', as in
this economically illiterate video, reinforces the idea that it
can't.]
I would argue that it's even more important for a progressive
government to explain to people that the government structures
the market to determine winners and losers, with things like
patent/copyright monopolies, rules of corporate governance,
and trade deals.
[Seems to me these points aren't exclusive, or even alternatives.]
Local tags (these can be linked to directly):
music.
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Current count: 146 links, 12150 words (14996 total)
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