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Monday, September 23, 2024

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.

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.

    • Akela Lacy: Kamala Harris refused to meet with Uncommitted about Gaza -- and Uncommitted refused to endorse her: "The movement counts among its ranks many disillusioned Arab and Muslim voters in the key swing state of Michigan." A pretty clear indication that Harris calculated that an endorsement would expose her to more risk than not. On the other hand, Harris has embraced (and presumably sought) the endorsements of neocon hawks like the Cheneys, so factor that into your risk assessment.

  • [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:

  • Al Jazeera: [09-21] At least 38 killed in Israeli strike on suburb in Lebanon's Beirut.

  • The New Arab: [09-20] Israel strikes south Beirut, Hezbollah figures among dead: what we know so far: "Hezbollah commander Ibrahim Aqil was killed alongside other special forces fighters as they were holding a meeting."

  • Mohammed Mourtaja: [09-20] The Israeli war on Lebanon's hidden goal: Gaza's full erasure: "While the world's attention shifts to Lebanon, Israel may pursue another darker goal -- completing its ethnic cleansing of Gaza." I don't see where this "may" comes from. There's little chance that Israel is going to lose its focus on Palestinians by kicking off a war with Lebanon -- unless they've underestimated the consequences (as happened in 2006). For Israel, Hezbollah is a diversion, one meant to keep the Americans engaged as allies (because, you know, we all fear and hate Iran). Israelis know better than anyone that the easiest way to get away with genocide is to bury it in a bigger war (like, you may recall, Hitler did).

  • Jeet Heer: [09-22] Israel's expanding war against Lebanon: Interview with Trita Parsi "on the dangers of a lame-duck president with spiraling crisis."

• 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:

  • Steven Simon: [09-20] MBS may be more flexible on Israel relations than you think: "It's possible he could back track on condition of Palestinian state for normalization."

Israel vs. world opinion:

• Ramzy Baroud:

  • [09-18] Israel's true objectives in Gaza and why it will fail: "Never in its history of war and military occupation has Israel been so incapable of developing a coherent plan for its future and the future of its victims." But when have they ever had a coherent post-war plan? On various occasions, they've made concessions to American opinion, but they've never been held to anything more than a temporary compromise. And the Biden administration is so confused and spineless they hardly have to go through the motions anymore. But the core problem, which is one that Americans find impossible to relate to, is how Israelis expect to always be at war with people who can never stop wanting to kill them. If your wars are forever, you don't need any sort of postwar vision.

  • [09-18] Abbas 'postponed' democracy -- so, why speaks on behalf of the Palestinian people?.

  • [09-09] Zionism vs. Zionism -- Ben-Gvir and the acceleration of the collapse of Israel.

  • [08-26] Prolonging genocide as a smokescreen: on Israel's other war in the West Bank.

• 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:

  • UN General Assembly demands Israel end 'unlawful presence' in Occupied Palestinian Territory: It passed 124 in favor, 14 against, with 43 abstentions.

  • Vijay Prashad: [09-20] The world says that Israel's unlawful occupation of Palestine must end.

• 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:

    2. Harris courting of the lobby and supporting genocide undermines any remnant of illusion progressives,
    5. 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:

  • California professors fight back against violent repression of Palestine protest.

  • Paging the Hague: Israel's exploding electronics might be war crimes: "Experts on international law pointed to the indiscriminate nature of the blasts in Lebanon and the prohibition on booby traps." I don't think there's any "maybe" about it.

  • Israeli soldiers killed 15 protesters in the same place they shot Aysenur Eygi.

• 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:

• Sasha Abramsky:

  • [09-20] There's no low Trump won't go: "The Republican presidential nominee is peddling lies about Haitian migrants and blaming the Democrats after a thwarted assassination attempt."

  • [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."

• Zack Beauchamp: [09-18] Why Trump's lies about Haitians are different: "Trump says nasty things about immigrants all the time. But these ones have disturbingly specific Nazi parallels."

• Seána Glennon: [09-17] Trump's anti-abortion drive will take lives: lessons from Ireland on why 'reasons-based' access to abortion doesn't work.

• Ed Kilgore: [09-20] Trump uses antisemitism speech to unload on American Jews.

• Ezra Klein: [09-22] The MAGA movement has become a problem for Trump.

• Eric Levitz: [09-18] Trump's healthcare plan exposes the truth about his "populism": Following up on Trump's "concepts of a plan," we find they support "populism of the privileged," using the magic of deregulation to make more affordable for the healthy and more expensive (and prone to fraud) for everyone else. Really just a special case of Trump's concepts about tax policy and business.

• James Risen: It's good Trump won't be sentenced until after the election.

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, . . .

  • Jonathan Chait: [09-19] Mark Robinson and the Republican wackjob problem: "What happens when you stop trying to keep out the kooks."

  • David French: [09-22] MAGA wants transgression, and this is what comes with it: "The lesson is simple: If you want more Mark Robinsons, vote for Donald Trump."

  • Jeet Heer: [09-20] Why a "Black Nazi" fit right in with the modern GOP: "Republicans might disavow Mark Robinson now, but they elevated him knowing his extremism."

  • Eduardo Medina: [09-22] Top aides resign from embattled North Carolina candidate's campaign: "Most of the senior staff members on Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson's campaign for North Carolina governor resigned on Sunday after reports that he had made a series of disturbing online comments."

  • Nicole Narea: [09-20] Will the Mark Robinson revelations tank Republicans in a key battleground state?: "Trump has a problem in North Carolina."

  • Nia Prater/Chas Danner: [09-20] Mark Robinson called Mein Kampf a 'good read' on porn site, too.

• 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.

  • Amy Littlefield: [09-18] An abortion ban killed Amber Thurman -- and likely many more: "Will the law that killed this vibrant young woman, a mother and a medical assistant, be allowed to stand?"

• 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?

  • Shayana Kadidal: [09-18] Torturers for Harris: "Why are the Dick Cheneys of the world endorsing Harris -- and why is she embracing their support."

• 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.

  • John Nichols: [09-20] Kamala Harris is winning the teamsters endorsements that really matter: "The national leadership may have snubbed her -- but Teamsters in the swing states that will decide the election are backing her all the way."

• 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:

  • Dave DeCamp: [09-11] Harris lies in debate with Trump by claiming no US troops are deployed in combat zones.

  • Erin Jones/Brandon Lewis: [09-19] Kamala Harris' claim that there are no active duty US troops in any war zone needs context; and

  • Kim Hjelmgaard/Karina Zalets: [2023-11-29] Maps show US counterterrorism efforts across globe, spanning 78 countries.

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:

• Natasha Lennard: There are so many armed cops on subways that now they're shooting each other.

• Ian Millhiser: [09-18] The Supreme Court is about to decide whether to interfere in the election again: "Republicans want the Court to place the Green Party back on Nevada's ballot after it was removed."

• Elie Mystal: [09-17] How John Roberts went full MAGA: "A revealing article in The New York Times details how the chief justice put his thumb on the scale for Trump to keep him on the ballot and out of jail." The article:

  • Jodi Kantor/Adam Liptak: [09-15] How Roberts shaped Trump's Supreme Court winning streak: "Behind the scenes, the chief justice molded three momentous Jan. 6 and election cases that helped determine the former president's fate."

Climate and environment:

• Li Zhou: [09-18] Why everywhere seems to be flooding right now: "Unique factors have driven torrential rains around the world -- but there's also a likely common thread."

Economists, the economy, and work:

• John Cassidy: [09-18] How inflation fooled almost everybody: "With the Fed poised to cut rates for the first time in years, what have we learned about the economic disruptions of the pandemic era?"

Ukraine and Russia:

• Dave DeCamp: [09-19] EU's Defense Chief says Europe must be ready to fight Russia in 6-8 years.

• Ellen Ioanes: [09-18] Ukraine's dramatic drone strikes on Russia are about making the case for more aid.

Elsewhere in the world and/or/in spite of America's empire:

• Nick Cleveland-Stout: [09-20] Witnesses backed by military, foreign $$ hype war with Iran: "It's a lucrative business if you can get it."

• Nick Turse: The National Guard knows its armories have dangerous lead contamination, putting kids and soldiers at risk.

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).

  • James Miller: [09-19] Karl Marx, weirder than ever: "What good is one of the communist thinker's most important texts to 21st-century readers?"

• 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?)

• Tim Niland: [09-14] Music capsules 9/14.

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]

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