Music Week

Expanded blog post, December archive (final).

Tweet: Music Week: 57 albums, 10 A-list

Music: Current count 41531 [41474] rated (+57), 21 [21] unrated (+0).

This usually comes out on Monday, but since I wanted to end the month and year properly, it's backdated to Sunday, December 31. Actually, most weeks end the night before I post, this six-day week is pretty close to being a seven-day one. The rated count reflects that. I've been burning through EOY lists at a fast clip. Indeed, all December has been a speed blur, averaging more than 50 records per week for five straight weeks.

To help move this post up a day, I also posted Speaking of Which a day early. I threatened to add some late finds in an update today, and indeed have added a few (marked with a red right-border). Still, it's been impossible to write about recent news at much length. On the other hand, virtually everything I wrote about Israel and Gaza since Oct. 7 is still worth a read and thought.

The 18th Annual Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll will be published in ArtsFuse later this week. I expect to send them two short essays tomorrow, one written by Davis, presenting the results. We also have this year's In Memoriam list more or less ready to go. It's sort of traditional, really going back to Robert Christgau's annual Pazz & Jop essays, to try to come up with a detailed analysis that lends an air of coherency and completeness to the year as summed up in a poll. But this has been a very frustrating, and a very puzzling, year, so it's been hard to reach clear, firm conclusions. Maybe a few weeks (or months) down the line, I'll gain enough perspective to venture more than wild guesses.

But at least the website will make all of the totals available, and all of the 159 individual ballots that were submitted and compiled into the poll. One thing I do hope to do in the coming week is to add more explanation and more ways of viewing the data. I'll write more about that in coming days on the website, and in next week's Music Week, and possibly elsewhere. One more thing I hope is that many of the people who contributed to the poll will take a little extra time and spread the word around, and generate some buzz and discussion. Same for the people who so far are merely innocent bystanders, but who appreciate that the poll continues to exist and thrive.

My lists are continually updated. I won't bother linking to them here (ok, here's an index), but they continue to grow the more I learn, and are invaluable tools in that learning.

I haven't done all of my usual bookkeeping, but have at least set up the framework so that the next record I play goes into the January 2024 file.

New records reviewed this week:

• Lina Allemano: Canons (2022 [2023], Lumo): [bc]: B+(*)
• Lina Allemano/Uwe Oberg/Matthias Bauer/Rudi Fischerlehner: SOG (2022 [2023], Creative Sources): [bc]: B+(***)
• Ray Anderson: Marching On (2022, Double Moon): [sp]: B+(**)
• Ray Anderson & Bobby Previte: Double Trouble (2023, Double Moon): [sp]: B+(***)
• Jim Campilongo/Steve Cardenas: New Year (2023, Sunnyside): [sp]: B
• Laura Cantrell: Just Like a Rose: The Anniversary Sessions (2023, Propeller Sound): [sp]: A-
• Ken Carson: A Great Chaos (2023, Opium/Interscope): [sp]: B+(**)
• Cash Box Kings: Oscar's Motel (2023, Alligator): [sp]: B+(**)
• Crosslegged: Another Blue (2023, self-released): [sp]: B+(*)
• Alabaster DePlume: Come With Fierce Grace (2023, International Anthem): [sp]: B+(**)
• DJ Maphorisa/Tman Xpress: Chukela (2023, New Money Gang): [sp]: B+(***)
• David Dove/Joe McPhee: Where's the Wine? (2023, C.I.A.): [bc]: B+(***)
• Silke Eberhard/Céline Voccia: Wild Knots (2021 [2023], Relative Pitch): [sp]: B+(**)
• The End: Why Do You Mourn (2021-22 [2023], Trost): [bc]: B+(**)
• Gunna: A Gift & a Curse (2023, YSL/300 Entertainment): [sp]: B+(***)
• Kevin Hays/Ben Street/Billy Hart: Bridges (2023, Smoke Sessions): [sp]: B+(**)
• Headie One x K-Trap: Strength to Strength (2023, self-released): [sp]: B+(**)
• Eric Hofbauer/The Five Agents: Waking Up! (2023, Creative Nation Music): [sp]: B+(***)
• Jasper Høiby's 3 Elements: Earthness (2023, Edition): [sp]: B+(***)
• Hotline TNT: Cartwheel (2023, Third Man): [sp]: B+(*)
• Mick Jenkins: The Patience (2023, BMG): [sp]: B+(**)
• Arthur Kell Speculation Quartet: Live at Lunàtico (2022 [2023], Origin): [sp]: B+(***)
• Karina Kozhevnikova & Krugly Band: Polyphonic Circle (2022 [2023], Leo): [bc]: B+(**)
• Alexey Kruglov: Synchronization of Time (2022, Leo): [bc]: B
• Lambrini Girls: You're Welcome (2023, Big Scary Monsters, EP): [sp]: B+(***)
• Janel Leppin: The Brink (2023, Shiny Boy Press): [sp]: B+(*)
• Joe Locke: Makram (2021-22 [2023], Circle 9): [sp]: B+(*)
• Lage Lund: Most Peculiar (2022 [2023], Criss Cross): [sp]: B+(**)
• Maps: Counter Melodies (2023, Mute): [sp]: B+(*)
• MC Yallah: Yallah Beibe (2023, Hakuna Kulala): [sp]: A-
• Lubomyr Melnyk: The Sacred Thousand (2022 [2023], Jeriska): [sp]: B+(***)
• Roscoe Mitchell Orchestra and Space Trio: At the Fault Zone Festival (2022 [2023], Wide Hive): [sp]: C+
• Paul Mottram: Seven Ages of Man (2023, Ubuntu Music): [sp]: A-
• Tisziji Muñoz: Burning Down Hades (2023, Ra Kalam): [sp]: B+(***)
• Marius Neset: Geyser: Live at Royal Albert Hall - BBC Proms (2022 [2023], ACT Music): [sp]: A-
• Sam Newsome/Dave Liebman: Soprano-Logues (2021 [2023], Some New Music): [sp]: B+(*)
• Sam Newsome & Jean-Michel Pilc: Cosmic Unconsciousness Unplugged (2022 [2023], Some New Music): [sp]: B+(**)
• Pangaea: Changing Channels (2023, Hessle Audio): [sp]: B+(***)
• Pizza Hotline: Level Select (2022 [2023], We Release Whatever the Fuck We Want): [sp]: A-
• Polobi & the Gwo Ka Masters: Abri Cyclonique (2023, Real World): [sp]: B+(**)
• Amy Ray: If It All Goes South (2022, Daemon): [sp]: B+(**)
• André Roligheten: Marbles (2022 [2023], Odin): [sp]: A-
• Kurt Rosenwinkel: Undercover: Live at the Village Vanguard (2023, Heartcore): [sp]: B+(**)
• Scree: Jasmine on a Night in July (2023, Ruination): [sp]: B
• Titanic: Vidrio (2023, Unheard of Hope): [sp]: B+(**)
• Lucinda Williams: Stories From a Rock N Roll Heart (2023, Highway 20): [yt]: A-
• WILSN: Those Days Are Over (2023, Ivy League): [sp]: B+(***)
• Libby York: Dreamland (2021 [2023], OA2): [sp]: B+(**)

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

• Albert Ayler Trio: 1964 Prophecy Revisited (1964 [2023], Ezz-Thetics): [bc]: B+(**)
• Albert Ayler: Summertime to Spiritual Unity Revisited (1964 [2023], Ezz-Thetics): [bc]: A-
• Albert Ayler: Quartets 1964: Spirits to Ghosts Revisited (1964 [2023], Ezz-Thetics): [bc]: B+(***)
• Albert Ayler: 1965: Spirits Rejoice & Bells Revisited (1965 [2023], Ezz-Thetics): [bc]: B+(***)
• Albert Ayler Quintet: Lost Performances 1966 Revisited (1966 [2023], Ezz-Thetics): A-
• Albert Ayler: More Lost Performances Revisited (1962-67 [2023], Ezz-Thetics): [bc]: A-
• Miles Davis: Turnaround: Rare Miles From the Complete On the Corner Sessions (1972-73 [2023], Columbia/Legacy): [sp]: B+(***)
• Phineas Newborn Jr.: A World of Piano! (1961 [2023], Craft): [sp]: B+(***)
• Stanley Turrentine: Mr. Natural (1964 [2023], Blue Note Tone Poet): [sp]: B+(**)

Old music:

• André Roligheten: Homegrown (2016 [2017], Clean Feed): [sp]: B+(***)

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

None.

Speaking of Which

Blog link.

Several things have nudged me toward shifting my usual posting schedule this week. The first is that I usually do Music Week on Monday, but I also like to finish the last Music Week of the calendar year on the 31st, which this year is Sunday. Delaying last Monday's post seemed like too much, but moving this week's up one day makes enough sense. But then, I normally do Speaking of Which on Sunday. I could post both on the same day, but I like separate days, which suggests moving this one up a day, too. Besides, my big job this weekend is to get the Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll ready to go up next week, so it would be nice to get this out of the way.

Besides, not much happens on holiday weekends, although there seems to be no letting up in the unfolding genocide in Gaza. At least Congress and the Supreme Court are safely home with their families (or sugar daddies). Meanwhile, the usual media sources are chock full of lookbacks at 2023, projections for 2024, and occasional (but rare) cross-checking. I can't ever recall feeling less enthusiasm for such fare. Very few made my first pass here.

Of course, if I notice anything that should be added to this week's list, I can always add it later, flagged with the bit of red right border. [PS: Some were added when I posted Music Week, and some more on Jan. 1 -- mostly ones I had open but hadn't gotten to in the rush to post. Also some more on Jan. 4, although the articles themselves are still in bounds.]

Paywalls are the bane of my existence, but this one strikes me as especially pernicious: all of a sudden, I can't read a single article on AlterNet without paying them money? I rarely cite them, unless I'm looking to reinforce a political point I've already made. Paywalls make sense for media that caters to specialized business interests, but are suicidal as political outreach.

Top story threads:

Israel: The genocide, and there's really no other word for it, continues, with the Biden administration, to its eternal shame, deeply complicit.

• Mondoweiss:

  • [12-25] Day 80: Israel kills at least 100 Palestinians in Christmas Eve attacks.

  • [12-26] Day 81: WHO says Gaza's health system is being 'decimated' by Israeli bombardment.

  • [12-27] Day 82: Israel accused of harvesting organs from dead Gazans.

  • [12-28] Day 83: Israel attacks 10 Palestinian cities in largest West Bank invasion since October 7.

  • [12-29] Day 84: Gaza at 'catastrophic threshold' of famine, West Bank marks 'deadliest year on record' for Palestinian children.

  • [12-30] Day 85: South Africa files case against Israel at the ICJ for genocide.

  • [12-31] Day 86: Israel falls in 'serious strartegic trap' in Gaza as Netanyahu vows to fight 'for months'.

• Randa Abdel-Fattah: [12-27] On Zionist feelings.

• Fatima AbdulKarim: [12-28] Palestinian Christians in Gaza fear being 'swept under the rubble or into the desert'.

• Kyle Anzalone:

  • [12-28] Israel requesting Apache attack helicopters from US. "More," as they've been using them all along.

  • [12-29] Over 1,000 children in Gaza have had one or both legs amputated since Oct 7.

• Ramzy Baroud: [12-29] 'We will come to you in a roaring flood': The Untold story of the October 7 attacks.

• Daniel Beaumont: [12-29] Dead end: Israel gets lost in Gaza.

• Emanuel Fabirn: [12-31] IDF expects fighting to go on all year, is adjusting battle methods for sustained war. Does slowing genocide down a bit make it any less so?

• William Booth/Itay Stern: [12-31] How the costs of Israel's war on Hamas in Gaza are mounting.

• Noam Gidron: [12-29] Israel's horrible year started long before October 7.

• Adam Goodman/Ronen Bergman/Mark Mazzetti/Natan Odenheimer/Alexander Cardia/Ainara Tiefenthäler/Sheera Frenkel: [12-30] Where was the Israeli military? On October 7.

• Isabella Hammad/Sahar Huneidi: [12-21] The uses and abuses of language in Israel's war on Palestinians.

• Rohini Hensman: [12-30] South Africa is right to invoke the genocide convention against Israel's war on Gaza.

• Hebh Jamal: [12-27] Pro-Palestinian speech is now effectively banned in German universities.

• Gideon Levy: [12-28] There's no way to 'explain' the degree of death and destruction in Gaza.

• Joseph Massad: [12-26] Israel's mass murder of Palestinians in Gaza began seven decades ago: "a long and brutal history that goes back to 1951."

• MEE: [12-31] Netanyahu says Israel must control Egypt-Gaza border zone. In this, he is exactly wrong: Israel can exercise no control over any Gaza border except its own. The border is just one of many ways in which Israel's psychology of power has turned toxic. The only way Israel can save itself is by making a clean break with Gaza. Israeli abuse of border control has done much to create this crisis: also see [11/27] Who controls the Egypt-Gaza Rafah crossing?

• Emile Nakhleh: [12-18] Where did Hamas come from and what does it want?

• Mitchell Plitnick: [12-28] Israel announces its Gaza endgame: Ethnic cleansing as 'humanitarianism'.

• Mouin Rabbani: [12-28] The long history of Zionist proposals to ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip.

• Hafiz Rashid: [12-28] Benjamin Netanyahu is the war criminal of the year: "Experts aren't mincing words about the Israeli leader's brutal and disproportionate response to the October 7 Hamas attacks."

• David Rothkopf: [12-31] Are there no red lines to U.S. support for Israel? "October 7 was a heinous crime. But how many Gazans must die, how many Israeli ministers must promote ethnic cleansing, how many failures must Netanyahu deny -- for the U.S. to reconsider its immoral, unconditional support for the depraved war being waged by Israel's government?" The rest is beyond the paywall, but Rothkopf previously wrote: [12-21] Biden administration's relationship with Netanyahu government has turned toxic.

• Sara Roy: [12-19] The long war on Gaza: "Over fifty-six years, Israel has transformed Gaza from a functional economy to a dysfunctional one, from a productive society to an impoverished one."

• Michael Schwalbe: [12-29] The moral injuries of witnessing genocide.

• Richard Silverstein:

  • [12-27] The Gaza crucifixion.

  • [12-29] Gaza and the threat of regional war.

• Noga Tarnopolsky: [12-28] What Israel lost before October 7: "The worst year in the country's history began with Netanyahu's return to power."

• Simon Tisdall: [12-29] Amid fears of escalation in the Israel-Gaza conflict, consider this: war without end suits Netanyahu.

• Philip Weiss: [12-26] The Jewish establishment's blindness to Palestinian slaughter also hurts U.S. Jews.

• Afnan Abu Yahia/Lila Hassan: [12-29] The impossibility of reporting the story of Gaza.

• Alya Zoabi: [12-26] Attacks on Palestinian lawyers emphasize Israel's authoritarian nature.

Israel and America: And Iran, which Israel doesn't care that much about, but finds useful to goad America into reckless conflict.

• James Bamford: [12-22] Who is funding Canary Mission? Inside the doxxing operation targeting anti-Zionist students and professors.

• John Hudson/Mikhail Klimentov: [12-30] U.S. approves $147.5 million sale of artillery ammunition and gear to Israel.

• James North: [12-30] Israel is provoking the U.S. in to a conflict with Iran -- but the media ignores the danger.

• Trita Parsi: [12-26] Did Israel kill Iranian commander to provoke a wider war? "Assassination of Razi Mousavi preceded US airstrikes in Iraq early Tuesday."

• Bernie Steinberg: [12-27] For the safety of Jews and Palestinians, stop weaponizing antisemitism.

• Paul Woodward: [12-31] Biden continues supporting Israel's 'Genghis Khan model of warfare'. Based on an AP article: The Biden administration once again bypasses Congerss on an emergency weapons sale to Israel.

Trump, and other Republicans: With Maine joining Colorado in banning Trump from Republican primary ballots -- see Maine declares Trump ineligible under disqualification clause -- that story is going to take a while to play out, though I haven't seen anyone yet who thinks the Supreme Court will let the bans stand. The lawyers will deal with that in due course. Meanwhile:

• Jack Healy/Anna Betts/Mike Baker/Jill Cowan: [12-30] Would keeping Trump off the ballot hurt or help democracy?

• Stephen Prager: [12-28] The courts can't save us from Trump: "It's the latest example of Democrats being politically clueless."

• Steve M: [12-30] Maybe we should have tried ballot removal three years ago: Second thoughts after his earlier [12-27] How we'll get a second Trump term: by trying to pursue justice.

Other stories on Trump and/or other Republicans:

• Ed Kilgore: [12-30] The real reason MAGA-World is trying to rehabilitate Nixon.

• Josh Kovensky: [12-26] Dictator on day one: The executive orders that Trump would issue from the start: "Ending birthright citizenship and politicizing the civil service rank high among Trump's planned first acts in office."

• Amanda Marcotte: [12-29] GOP's biggest losers of 2023: George "it's a witch hunt" Santos. Actually, for a nobody two years ago, he seems to have done pretty well for himself -- even though he only came in fourth in this series, behind Kevin McCarthy, Moms for Liberty, and Lauren Boebert. PS: Last in this five-part series [12-30]: Donald "smells like a butt" Trump and his fellow insurrectionists.

• Heather Digby Parton: [12-29] Nikki Haley deserves no grace for Civil War gaffe. Refers to her hesitancy to identify slavery as the "cause" of the Civil War. Her actual answer was far worse:

  I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was gonna run. The freedoms and what people could and couldn't do. . . . Government doesn't need to tell you how to live your life. They don't need to tell you what you can and can't do. They don't need to be a part of your life. They need to make sure that you have freedom. We need to have capitalism, we need to have economic freedom, we need to make sure that we do all things so that individuals have the liberties, so that they can have freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to do or be anything they want to be without government getting in the way.

  Clearly, no Republican actually believes this crap, because they're always trying to use government to force people to "behave themselves" (i.e., to conform to their political dictates). Freedom, for them, is reserved for the capitalists Haley says we "need." Most of us recognize slavery as the total abnegation of freedom, but Haley identifies with capitalists completely, understanding that their freedom is paid for by exploiting others. Perhaps "slavery" is too abstract to be the one-word cause of the Civil War. A more precise answer is "slaveholders." They are the ones who seceded to protect their "peculiar institution" with laws and arms they safely controlled. And when they lost, the first thing Americans did was to abolish slavery. After all, if freedom can't be enjoyed by everyone, it's really just a euphemism for tyranny. But, they stopped short of abolishing other forms of capitalism, allowing tyranny to return, dressed up as "freedom" for the rich.

  Also on the Haley "gaffe":

  • Chris Lehman: [12-29] Nikki Haley needs a history lesson.

  • Steve M: [12-29] Haley's real problem isn't giving the wrong answer.

  • Timothy Noah: Nikki Haley somehow made her Civil War gaffe even worse.

  • Tori Otten: Nikki Haley ends her week of saying stupid things with a gift to Trump.

  I should also note that when I first saw the top headline here, I blanked out "Civil" and just registered "war gaffe." Haley's been making them all along. Kinsley's famous definition is: "a gaffe is when a politician tells the truth -- some obvious truth he isn't supposed to say." Of course, it needn't be true. It's just something that the politician thinks but should know better than say in public. Haley's worst gaffe in recent weeks was when she urged Israel to "finish it" in Gaza.

• Maeve Reston/Hannah Knowles/Meryl Kornfield: [12-30] Led by Trump, GOP candidates take polarizing stances on race and history: It's not like Haley is the only one saying stupid things. It's more like a contest, a race to the bottom, which is ground Trump has clearly staked out.

• Peter M Shane: [12-26] Trump's laughable claim of immunity.

• Reis Thebault: [12-31] DeSantis, Haley pledge to pardon Trump if convicted: Angling for leadership of the pro-crime party. Aside for all you pundits arguing that Christie should drop out so the "anti-Trump" GOP can unite behind Haley, please start eating your hats now.

• Li Zhou: [12-27] House Republicans' humiliating year, explained.

Climate and environment:

• Chico Harlan: [12-31] The climate future arrived in 2023. It left scars across the planet. This, of course, is the biggest story of 2023.

• Umair Irfan: [12-27] How 7 scientists feel after the hottest year on record.

Ukraine War:

• Connor Echols: [12-29] Diplomacy Watch: Ukraine peace talks could be on the horizon.

• Constant Méheut/Ivan Nechepurenko: [12-30] Ukrainian missile attack on a Russian city kills at least 20, officials say.

• Missy Ryan: [11-27] With funds running out, U.S. sends more weapons to Ukraine.

• Anton Troianovski/Yuliya Parshina-Kottas/Oleg Matsnev/Alina Lobzina/Valerie Hopkins/Aaron Krolik: [12-29] How the Russian government silences wartime dissent.

Other stories:

Ben Armbruster: [12-29] Mainstream media wasn't good for US foreign policy in 2023: "Major themes this year focused on feeding the Ukraine war, hyping the China threat, and avoiding context in Israel-Palestine." Some more general pieces relating to America's incoherent inability to understand the world needs and how to interact with others:

• Daniel Larison: [12-26] Biden's 2023 foreign policy was a bust: "Between Ukraine, Gaza, and the loss of US global authority, he won't be able to boast much ahead of the election."

• Blaise Malley: [12-27] Congress and the 4 faces of China baiting bills in 2023.

• John Mueller: [12-30] Remember when Japan was going to take over the world? Not 1941, when they tried, but the 1980s, when the Japanese economy was booming (and soon to go bust), when we were deluged with books like The Coming War With Japan. These days China is being touted as the same sort of threat.

Dean Baker:

• [12-22] This economy has landed, we are at the Fed's target.

• [12-24] The problem for musicians and writers is the internet, not monopolistic corporations.

• [12-29] Government-granted patent monopolies are not the free market.

Dan Diamond: [12-28] America has a life expectancy crisis. But it's not a political priority.

Connor Echols: [12-29] The 7 best foreign policy books of 2023: Worth listing:

• Henry Farrell/Abraham Newman: Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy
• Steven Simon: Grand Delusion: The Rise and Fall of American Ambition in the Middle East
• Keyu Jin: The New China Playbook: Beyond Socialism and Capitalism
• Paul Kennedy: Victory at Sea: Naval Power and the Transformation of the Global Order in World War II
• Nathan Thrall: A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy
• Thomas Graham: Getting Russia Right
• Paul R. Pillar: Beyond the Water's Edge: How Partisanship Corrupts U.S. Foreign Policy

Greg Grandin: [12-27] Arno Mayer has died. He leaves us an unorthodox Marxism. I noted his death last week, complained about the lack of obituaries much less of appreciation, but predicted they would come. This is a very useful review of one great historian by another.

Eric Levitz: [12-29] Are America's cities overpoliced? Podcast debate between Alex Vitale (author of the 2017 book The End of Policing, cited by many who argue to "defund the police," and Adaner Usmani, a Harvard sociology professor who "argues that America is suffering from a crisis of mass incarceration but not one of overpolicing." Levitz's concept is to set up debates on issues that divide folks on the left, but I suspect that there's pretty common agreement here on the core fact, which is that a lot of police work is being done very badly (see St Clair, below, for hundreds of examples).

Raina Lipsitz: [10-13] Why haven't the protest movements of our times succeeded? Review of Vincent Bevins' book: If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution.

Eric Lipton: [12-30] New spin on a revolving door: Pentagon officials turned venture capitalists: "Retired officers and departing defense officials are flocking to investment firms that are pushing the government to provide more money to defense-technology startups."

Andrew Prokop: [12-26] The weird, true story of the most successful third-party presidential candidate in the past century: "Why did Ross Perot do so well in 1992? And could something like that happen again in 2024?"

Nathan J Robinson:

• [12-20] The journalist who most understands George Santos explains how he made it to Congress: Interview with Mark Chiusano, who has a book, The Fabulist: The Lying, Hustling, Grifting, Stealing, and Very American Legend of George Santos.

• [12-27] Why do we have any poverty when it's such a solvable problem? Interview with Matthew Desmond, author of Poverty, by America.

• [09-28] The history of Arab-Jews can change our understanding of the world: Interview with Avi Shlaim, one of the major "revisionist" historians to emerge in Israel in the 1990s (e.g., The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World), most recently author of Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew.

Areeba Shah: [12-30] The worst right-wing influencers of 2023: Pictured and profiled: Nick Fuentes, Alex Jones, Andrew Tate.

Jeffrey St Clair: [12-29] From taser face to the goon squad: The year in police crime. A staple of his most-weekly "Roaming Charges" reports, still the sheer length of this post is striking.

Daily Log

I write this Facebook comment:

I recall a DownBeat Blindfold Test with Matt Wilson, who went to remarkable lengths to understand and appreciate literally everything he was presented with. My first thought was that he'd make a really useless critic. My second what that his skill and selfless dedication probably serves him well as a session drummer. But as a critic, and that is both identity and mindset, I've found that most people have good reasons for liking what they like, and that it helps me to approach their views with cautious respect, but that doesn't (and shouldn't) diminish my own considered views.

This was in response to Matt Merewitz's:

I am really trying to embrace all of the music that people who don't know anything about music are saying is the greatest music because I desperately want to understand what they are relating to. Is that lame?

Daily Log

Village Voice Pazz & Jop Rip-Off Poll: ballot, I guess:

1. Olivia Rodrigo: Guts (Geffen) 16
2. Rodrigo Amado/The Bridge: Beyond the Margins (Trost) 14
3. Buck 65: Punk Rock B-Boy (self-released) 12
4. Irreversible Entanglements: Protect Your Light (Impulse!) 10
5. Steve Lehman/Orchestre National de Jazz: Ex Machina (Pi) 10
6. James Brandon Lewis Red Lily Quintet: For Mahalia, With Love (Tao Forms) 8
7. Billy Woods & Kenny Segal: Maps (Backwoodz Studioz) 8
8. The Rempis Percussion Quartet: Harvesters (Aerophonic, 2CD) 8
9. George Coleman: Live at Smalls Jazz Club (Cellar) 7
10. Aluna: Mycelium (Mad Decent) 7

Link is here.

Economist TV list:

• Barry
• The Bear
• Beef
• Colin from Accounts
• The Crown
• Dead Ringers
• The Diplomat
• Fargo
• The Gold
• The Good Mothers
• Happy Valley
• The Last of Us
• Poker Face
• Succession

Clifford Ocheltree commented, endorsinng The Gold and The Last of Us, and adding Paalal Lok ("best thing I've watched all year").

I posted this day-after comment on Facebook (response to comment mentioning Grace Potter, Nicki Minaj, and Baby Queen):

Mostly very quick impressions these days, but I rarely see much movement on second plays. Only Minaj got (or should I say took?) more. Man on Man got a second play, and stayed close (same for Malcolm Holcombe; Priya Ragu's second play slipped a bit). Michel Pastre didn't get a second play, but perhaps should have (should appeal to Scott Hamilton fans, of which I am one; but it broke a streak of five straight ** albums, and I was eager to move on). Baby Queen and AlunaGeorge had previous A- albums, so shouldn't have been surprises, but I had forgotten about them (same for Third Mind). I admire those of you who stick with records and write up well-considered opinions. I fear my own "reviews" these days are little more than diary notes.

Music Week

Expanded blog post, December archive (in progress).

Tweet: Music Week: 52 albums, 10 A-list

Music: Current count 41474 [41422] rated (+52), 21 [21] unrated (+0).

The final number of voters in the 18th Annual Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll is 159. It took quite a bit of last-minute hustling to reverse what initially looked like a small decline and turn it into a record turnout. Next thing I have to do is to write an essay to introduce that data, and try to make some sense out of it. As usual, I keep stewing on it, leaving me little option but to panic tonight or (more likely, and more panicky) tomorrow. I do have last year's essay, which looks like it might be reusable as a template.

I also have last year's other piece, with tables of past winners and a memoir/history of the Poll. We also usually do an In Memoriam, which I've barely started, but Andrey Henkin's Jazz Passings website already has much more than I need.

I need to get all the writing done by the end of the week, plus clean up some details on the Poll website, so ArtsFuse can publish the results the following week (January 1-5). Results and ballots won't be available there until ArtsFuse is set to go, but the rest of the material is available for anyone who wants to take a peek. I'd appreciate the extra eyes, especially if you catch mistakes or have suggestions to make things clearer or more useful.

I started collecting a few notes on EOY lists, before realizing that I don't have time for such indulgences right now. (Maybe after the 1st?) But here's what I had:

Tim Niland, who (sad to say) shut down his long-running "Music & More" blog mid-last year, posted this 2023 Music Rewind list on Facebook, soon to disappear forever. [PS: more permanent link.]

Some more EOY lists you won't find in AOTY's 2023 Music Year End Lists (which is the main, but not the only, source for my aggregate):

• Humanizing the Vacuum [Alfred Soto]
• Chris Monsen's Listening Booth
• RIOTRIOT [Dan Weiss] 40-1: Also 82-41.
• So It Goes [Stephen Thomas Erlewine]

For my lists, I'll just refer you to the index. I'm continuing to update them as I find and hear more. This week's haul is, for once, mostly non-jazz. But I started off the week by exploring Joe Bebco's jazz ballot. Bebco is editor of The Syncopated Times, which is about the only outlet covering trad and swing jazz these days (or "real jazz," as I like to call it). Two of his records hit my A-list, and many more came close.

Despite everything, I managed to scratch out another abbreviated Speaking of Which yesterday. It left me in a very bad mood, especially as I ponder the relationship between the year in jazz and the year in everything else. There is much to be said for listening -- to jazz, of course, or to pretty much any kind of music, which continues to evolve in humane ways that enhance thought, reflection, and/or body movement. One might also note that even if the business seems increasingly perilous, that isn't stopping people from making music and enjoying it.

I'm not sure how I'm going to handle this, but I while I usually end months on the last Monday, I like to extend the last week of December to the end of the month, so the year ends per the calendar. In this case, that means next Sunday (Dec. 31). I didn't want to hold this post back until then, so I'll probably just declare next week over a day early. At any rate, this week isn't end-of-month.

New records reviewed this week:

• A.S.O.: A.S.O. (2023, Low Lying): [sp]: A-
• Actress: LXXXVIII (2023, Ninja Tune): [sp]: B+(**)
• Aluna: Mycelium (2023, Mad Decent): [sp]: A-
• Avelino: God Save the Streets (2023, More Music/OddChild Music): [sp]: B+(**)
• Baby Queen: Quarter Life Crisis (2023, Polydor): [sp]: A-
• David Bandrowski & the Rhumba Defense: French Onion Superman (2021 [2022], self-released): [sp]: B+(**)
• McKendrick Bearden: Bright as the Mines Out (2023, self-released): [sp]: B+(*)
• Benny Benack III: Third Time's the Charm (2023, La Reserve/Bandstand Presents): [sp]: B+(**)
• Cigar Box Serenaders: Spasm (2022 [2023], self-released): [sp]: B+(**)
• Jessi Colter: Edge of Forever (2023, Appalachia): [sp]: B+(**)
• Dan Ex Machina: Ex's Sexts (2023, self-released): [sp]: A-
• Mick Flannery: Goodtime Charlie (2023, Oh Boy): [sp]: B
• Frog & Henry: Italy & England: 2020-2022 (2020-22 [2022], self-released): [bc]: B+(**)
• The Garden of Joy: Bouncin' Around (2022 [2023], self-released): [sp]: B+(**)
• Hannah Gill: Everybody Loves a Lover (2023, Turtle Bay): [sp]: B+(***)
• Charlie Halloran and the Tropicales: Shake the Rum (2022, self-released): [bc]: B+(***)
• Charlie & the Tropicales: Presents for Everyone! (2023, self-released): [bc]: B+(**)
• Jaimee Harris: Boomerang Town (2023, Thirty Tigers): [sp]: B+(**)
• Big Chief Donald Harrison Jr.: Congo Square Suite (2023, Truth Revolution): [sp]: B
• Malcolm Holcombe: Bits & Pieces (2023, Singular): [sp]: B+(***)
• Ice Spice: Like . . ? [Deluxe] (2023, 10K Projects/Capitol, EP): [sp]: A-
• Wata Igarashi: Agartha (2023, Kompakt): [sp]: B+(**)
• King Krule: Space Heavy (2023, XL/Matador): [sp]: B+(*)
• MJ Lenderman and the Wind: Live and Loose! (2023, Anti-): [sp]: B+(**)
• Man on Man: Provincetown (2023, Polyvinyl): [sp]: B+(***)
• Rainy Miller/Space Afrika: A Grisaille Wedding (2023, Fixed Abode): [sp]: B
• Nicki Minaj: Pink Friday 2 (2023, Young Money/Republic): [sp]: A-
• The New Wonders: The New Wonders (2023, Turtle Bay): [bc]: B+(**)
• NewJeans: Get Up (2023, ADOR, EP): [sp]: B+(**)
• Michel Pastre/Louis Mazetier/Guillaume Nouaux: Fine Ideas (2023, Camille Productions): [bc]: B+(***)
• Peacherine Ragtime Society Orchestra: Take Me to the Ragtime Dance (2023, Rivermont): [sp]: B
• Maisie Peters: The Good Witch (2023, Gingerbread Man): [sp]: B+(**)
• Grace Potter: Mother Road (2023, Fantasy): [sp]: A-
• Priya Ragu: Santhosam (2023, Warner): [sp]: B+(**)
• Regal86: La Onda: Groove In-Groove Out (2023, self-released): [sp]: B+(***)
• Logan Richardson: Holy Water (2023, Wax Industry): [sp]: B
• Molly Ryan: Sweepin\' the Blues Away (2022, Turtle Bay): [sp]: B+(***)
• Smoking Time Jazz Club: Six Blues, Five Joys & a Stomp (2023, self-released): [sp]: A-
• Soggy Po Boys: It's Good to Laugh Again (2022, self-released): [sp]: B+(***)
• The Streets: The Darker the Shadow the Brighter the Light (2023, 679/Warner Music UK): [sp]: B+(**)
• The Third Mind: The Third Mind/2 (2023, Yep Roc): [sp]: B+(***)
• Leon Thomas III: Electric Dusk (2023, Ezmny/Motown): [sp]: B+(***)/li>
• Dlala Thukzin: Permanent Music 3 (2023, Dlala): [sp]: B+(***)
• David Toop & Lawrence English: The Shell That Speaks the Sea (2023, Room40): [sp]: B
• Tuba Skinny: Hot Town (2023, self-released): [bc]: B+(***)
• Marta Warelis: A Piece of Earth (2021 [2022], Relative Pitch): [sp]: B+(**)
• Westside Gunn: And Then You Pray for Me (2023, Griselda/Empire): [sp]: B+(**)

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

• Baikida E.J. Carroll: Orange Fish Tears (1974 [2023], Souffle Continu): [bc]: B+(***)
• Dick Hyman: One Step to Chicago: The Legacy of Frank Teschemacher and the Austin High Gang (1992 [2022], Rivermont): [sp]: A-

Old music:

• Molly Ryan: Let's Fly Away (2014 [2015], Loup-Garous Productions): [sp]: B+(**)
• Molly Ryan: Swing for Your Supper! (2013, Loup-Garous Productions): [sp]: B+(**)
• Dlala Thukzin: Permanent Music (2020, Dlala): [sp]: A-
• Dlala Thukzin: Permanent Music 2 (2021, Dlala): [sp]: B+(***)

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• None.

Speaking of Which

Blog link.

In a recent trawl through my Facebook feed, I came across a meme quoting Benjamin Franklin: "Life's biggest tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late." First thing I was reminded of was that documentary film about the five former Shin Bet chiefs, all of whom had, in their retirement, come to see their tenures as failures, as each had preserved and deepened conflict with Palestinians, instead of working to ameliorate injustice and secure a durable peace. But each in turn, in youthful vigor, had climbed the ranks of the security services by proving to be more aggressive than their predecessors.

The annals of Israeli history are filled with ambitious young men grabbing everything they could, only to turn into old men with regrets. Even Ariel Sharon ended his days with the admission that it's not good for Jews to rule over other people. Old David Ben-Gurion warned against launching the 1967 war, on grounds that have long seemed prescient -- not that he wasn't delighted with the way the war turned out.

My second thought is that this offers a prism for viewing Joe Biden. I quote Jeffrey St Clair below, placing Biden in the line of New Democrats from Clinton to Obama (and back again), which is certainly true of Biden when he was younger, but I can't dismiss the possibility that he's become wiser as he's aged. (Of course, he still has a long ways to go on foreign policy, which is the realm of American politics most completely wrapped up in myth and nonsense.) But also, he reminds us that a big problem with getting old is that you lose the ability to act on whatever wisdom you manage to garner. All the while, his declining polls remind us that the foolish young look for leaders with vigor, which Trump, despite his years and obvious incompetence, manages to fake with brash, reckless promises.

Again this week (no doubt next week as well), I'm mostly working on the Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll, so have to limit my time here. I made a quick round of the usual sources, noted things that looked interesting, and mostly left it at that.

Top story threads:

Israel: Latest from New York Times, which can certainly be counted on to echo whatever Israeli leaders want it to say, is: Israel says it is intensifying its campaign against Hamas. That translates as "more genocide."

• Mondoweiss:

  • [12-18] Day 73: Reports surface of Palestinian deaths inside Israeli detention camps.

  • [12-19] Day 74: Hamas tells Israel it 'arrived too late' to tunnel; forces arrest doctors at Al-Awdeh Hospital.

  • [12-20] Day 75:Security council postpones ceasefire vote as Hamas leader arrives in Cairo for talks.

  • [12-21] Day 76: Extrajudicial killings of men in front of their families in Gaza

  • [12-22] Day 77: Palestinians in Gaza face famine, as political prisoner count in West Bank soars.

  • [12-23] Day 78: UNSC resolution criticized as 'meaningless,' hundreds of thousands evacuate central Gaza.

  • [12-24] Day 79: Bethlehem cancels Christmas celebrations as Israel continues to bomb Gaza.

• Yuval Abraham: 'The hostages weren't out top priority': How Israel's bombing frenzy endangered captives in Gaza.

• Amena Al-Ashkar: [12-21] Hamas official calls for Palestinian elections, national unity in the 'day after' the war. Look, if Israel had followed my advice six weeks ago, this wouldn't be happening. They say they wanted to destroy Hamas, but they missed their opportunity. That, simply, stupidly, is because they can only think of destroying something with bombs. Hamas committed suicide on Oct. 7. Had Israel limited its tantrum to a week or two, then washed their hands of the mess and turned the rubble Gaza over to the UN, the Palestinians would have disposed of Hamas themselves. Instead, after two months of spirited resistance, they're back in front of microphones, as the self-proclaimed leaders of Palestine, ready to wheel and deal.

• Doaa Alremeili: [12-22] The situation in Gaza is getting worse, Mohammad.

• Phyllis Bennis: [12-22] Why we need a ceasefire now.

• Alexander B Downes: [12-21] The cruelty and futility of Israel's starvation blockade on Gaza.

• Julia Frankel: [12-22] Israel's military campaign in Gaza seen as among the most destructive in recent history. Related here is:

• Evan Hill/Imogen Piper/Meg Kelly/Jarrett Ley: [12-23] Israel has waged one of this century's most destructive wars in Gaza: "The damage in Gaza has outpaced other recent conflicts, evidence shows. Israel has dropped some of the largest bombs commonly used today near hospitals."

• David Ignatius: [12-16] In the West Bank, I saw how peace will require confrontation with Israel.

• Ken Klippenstein/Daniel Boguslaw: Israeli military censor bans reporting on these 8 subjects.

• Yoav Litvin: [12-22] The anatomy of Zionist genocide.

• Ibtisam Mahdi: Gaza's health crisis 'catastrophic,' say Palestinian experts.

• Branko Marcetic:

  • [12-19] Israel's assault on Gaza is unlike any war in recent memory.

  • [12-20] In Gaza, the next generation of radicalization begins: "Leadership in Tel Aviv claims that taking out Hamas will end its security problems. The evidence suggests the opposite."

• Andrew O'Hehir: [12-24] Israel's "heavy cost" in Gaza: 15 soldiers killed this weekend: Don't laugh. Using the Gilad Shalit exchange rate, that's equal to 15,404 Palestinian lives -- probably more than Israel killed during the period, but it's hard to tell for sure. But not enough to give Netanyahu second thoughts about the wisdom of his course.

• Mitchell Plitnick: [12-21] Biden administration's flawed response to Yemen attacks increases possibility of regional war.

• Alex Shams: How Jesus's hometown is coping with war at Christmas.

• Richard Silverstein:

  • [12-20] GOP House candidate is Israeli citizen, IDF veteran: Mazi Melesa Pilip, nominated to run for George Santos's vacant seat.

  • [12-23] Biden's Band-Aid solution for Gaza.

• Mark Lewis Taylor: [12-22] Israel and genocide: Not only in Gaza. Consider Guatemala, 1987, with its own Israel connection. Article cites Jeff Halper's 2015 book, War Against the People: Israel, the Palestinians and Global Pacification.

• Philip Weiss:

  • [12-17] Weekly Briefing: 'Well, you dropped the atom bomb,' Netanyahu tells Biden. Among other things, this cites (rather critically) Ezra Klein interviews Nimrod Novik.

  • [12-24] Weekly Briefing: Seeking hope in the darkest days.

US, Israel, and a decaying empire:

• Adam Johnson: [12-18] Bernie Sanders's incoherent pernicious Gaza cease-fire position, explained.

• Joshua Keating: [12-21] How a Yemeni rebel group is creating chaos in the global economy: "The Houthi attacks in the Red Sea, explained."

• Branko Marcetic: [12-23] Joe Biden has the political space to push for a cease-fire in Gaza. He just doesn't want to.

• Nicole Narea: [12-22] The US may be flouting its own laws by sending unrestricted aid to Israel.

• Jon Schwarz: Samantha Power calls on Samantha Power to resign over Gaza.

• Stephen Semler: [12-18] Pols loaded with industry cash vote up military budget.

Zionism, Antisemitism, and Palestinian rights:

• Fabiola Cineas: [12-21] How Republicans are weaponizing antisemitism to take down DEI.

• Rashid Khalidi: [12-23] Open letter to the Columbia administration.

• Eric Levitz: [12-23] Masha Gessen on Israel, Gaza, and the Holocaust analogies: An interview.

• Yonat Shimron: [12-21] Shaul Magid on reviving Jewish exile as a counterweight to Zionism: "In a new book, the Dartmouth scholar argues exile can be seen as an equally positive and constructive Jewish identity." Interview. His book is: The Necessity of Exile: Essays From a Distance.

Trump, and other Republicans:

• Aaron Blake: [12-18] 3 in 10 Trump voters want a president willing to break 'rules and laws': "While 65 percent of Trump backers said a president should always follow the rules and the law, 30 percent said breaking rules and laws could be justified. The split among Biden voters was 83-15 against breaking rules and laws." The phrasing is broad enough one could read more or less into it. A lot of this depends on what law we're talking about, and who is violating it for what reason. Civil rights campaigners broke plenty of laws, and many of us applauded them. Same for whistleblowers exposing state secrets. No doubt a large chunk of Biden's 15% includes people who recognize that there are times when laws are meant to curtail freedom and defend injustice. A good chunk of Trump's 30% might agree with that statement, but with other standards of freedom and justice. What's more troublesome, but only partially revealed in the headline, is how Republicans are well on their way to becoming a cult of criminality. This is most obvious in Republican support for tax evasion and other business crimes -- everything from financial scams to pollution dumping to bribery and fraud -- but most specifically Trump himself.

• Jonathan Chait: [12-22] Asking Trump 'will you be a dictator?' is not a real question: "Hugh Hewitt tries, fails to Hannitize Trump's authoritarian problem."

• Matt Ford:

  • Criminal defendant of the year: Donald Trump.

  • Texas's middle finger to the federal government -- and the constitution.

• Mike Godwin: [12-20] Yes, it's okay to compare Trump to Hitler. Don't let me stop you. The author of Godwin's Law admits it's more of a "rule of thumb," especially when it's not pure hyperbole, and there are specific points to be made.

• Margaret Hartmann: [12-22] So what is Rudy Giuliani up to these days? This piece has been updated many times of late, most recently with his bankruptcy filing.

• Ed Kilgore: [12-19] Trump is benefiting from his incoherent Israel-Hamas war stance

• Marianne Levine/Isaac Arnsdorf: [12-23] Trump says he would indemnify police. Experts say that's already reality in most departments.

• Tori Otten: Dumbest Senator of the year: Tommy Tuberville.

• Matt Stieb: [12-22] The sex scandal that could take down Moms for Liberty. On the other hand: Jennifer C Berkshire/Jack Schneider: [12-15] Moms for Liberty isn't going anywhere.

• Tatyana Tandanpolie: [12-22] "I'm not a student of Hitler": Trump insists Nazi leader "didn't way it the way I said it". This reminds me of an old LBJ story. He starts a rumor that his opponent is a "pig fucker." An aide asks him if it's true? LBJ explains: I don't care. I just want to see him stand up there and deny it. Still, Trump's "it's a very different kind of a statement" may well be better than even LBJ hoped for.

• Michael Tomasky: Kevin McCarthy was the most incompetent House Speaker of all time.

The Colorado Supreme Court ruling: They held that Trump's name should be taken off the Republican primary ballot in Colorado, due to the 14th Amendment's prohibition against insurrectionist (i.e., secessionists) holding office. I've ridiculed that argument ever since it was first raised.

• Erwin Chemerinsky: [12-20] Colorado's ruling against Trump raises questions only the Supreme Court can answer.

• Eric Levitz: [12-21] The legal merits of the Colorado Supreme Court decision don't matter.

• Ian Millhiser: [12-20] Everything you need to know about the court order removing Trump for the ballot.

• Andrew Prokop: [12-19] The fraught debate over whether the 14th Amendment disqualifies Trump, explained.

Biden and/or the Democrats:

• Rachel M Cohen: [12-17] A historian's advice to the Democrats trying to build stuff: "What supply-side liberals can learn from the past." Interview with Brent Cebul, author of Illusions of Progress: Business, Poverty, and Liberalism in the American Century.

• Matthew Duss: [12-14] Ukraine and Israel and the two Joe Bidens. "In Ukraine, Biden has spent two years articulating a stirring argument for a rules-based order. In Israel, he set about burning that argument to the ground. Is a morally consistent foreign policy possible?" Well, is a politically consistent one possible? It's hard to keep one's goals straight when in each arena they are set by competing interest groups, each with its own agenda.

• Chris Lehmann: [12-19] Biden's best chance for 2024 is to take aim at corporate America.

• Eric Levitz: [12-20] Why Biden's poll numbers will get better (And why they won't). Quoting sub-heads: On the up side: 1) Voters will likely warm to the economy in 2024; 2) Conventionally Democratic voters -- who pay little attention to politics -- are depressing Biden's numbers; 3) Democrats have been doing well in recent elections; 4) Some Trump supporters say they would switch to Biden if the Republican is convicted in one of his many trials. On the down side: 1) The economy has been improving for months, yet Biden's numbers haven't; 2) Biden isn't getting any younger; 3) Third-party candidates threaten Biden more than Trump; 4) Early polls may be more predictive in a rematch; 5) The off-year election results are perfectly consistent with a Biden loss; 6) There's reason to suspect that polls overestimate how many votes Trump would lose from being convicted.

• Holly Otterbein: [12-20] 'Medicare for All' bill becomes part of Dean Phillips' presidential pitch.

Legal matters and other crimes:

• Jodi Kantor/Adam Liptak: [12-15] Behind the scenes at the dismantling of Roe v. Wade.

• Ian Millhiser: [12-22] In a big victory for Trump, the Supreme Court tells Jack Smith to go away.

• Abbie VanSickle/Steve Eder: [12-24] Clarence Thomas's clerks: An 'extended family' with reach and power.

Economic matters:

• Christian Paz: [12-16] Black and Latino Americans haven't experienced the same economy as everyone else.

Ukraine War:

• Blaise Malley: [12-22] Diplomacy Watch: Zelensky says discussion of negotiations 'not relevant'.

• Anatol Lieven/Alex Little: [12-21] Ukraine should take a page out of Finland's fight with Stalin: "Helsinki had to sacrifice territory for autonomy, but its pride and prosperity soared."

Around the world:

• Ellen Ioanes: [12-17] Argentina's new president, Javier Milei, explained.

Other stories:

Bob Hennelly: [12-19] New York City is crumbling -- but officials don't "have enough oomph" to build it back up: "The least any city can do is make sure its buildings remain standing."

Hannah Natanson: [12-23] Half of challenged books return to shools. LGBTQ books are banned most.

• Reshma Kirpalani/Hannah Natanson: [12-21] The lives upended by Florida's school book wars.

Will Oremus: [12-23] Elon Musk promised an anti-'woke' chatbot. Grok is not going as planned.

Jonathan Shorman/Katie Bernard/Amy Renee Leiker/Katie Moore: [12-19] Across Kansas, police conduct illegal search and seizures 'all the time,' upending lives.

Jeffrey St Clair: [12-22] Roaming Charges: The sickness of symbolic things: Title from Fannie Lou Hamer: "I am sick of symbolic things. We are fighting for our lives." Pull quote:

Bill Clinton, Al Gore, HRC, Barack Obama & Biden all share the same New Democrat philosophy: hawkish on defense, pro-business & banks, punitive criminal justice policies and a desire to roll back Great Society social programs. Clinton and Obama had the rhetorical skills to sell symbolism to the base, to make people see what isn't there. The others don't and they paid the political price.

Rolling back "Great Society social programs" was less a desire than a chit they were happy to sacrifice to achieve their business goals. Biden seems less interested on that score, but that may just be because the Democratic base is getting more agitated, demanding not just defense but expansion of the safety net.

Jessi Jezewska Stevens: The relentless growth of degrowth economics.

Zephyr Teachout: [12-11] The big unfriendly tech giants: "We must ensure that corporations aren't able to pick and choose winners and losers in journnalism."

Siva Vaidhyanathan: [12-11] Elon Musk's real threat to democracy isn't what you think: "How the attention-starved CEO took over our communications infrastructure."

Selected obituaries:

• [12-22] Antonio Negri, 90, philosopher who wrote a surprise best seller, dies: The book was Empire, co-written with Michael Hardt, "offering what many found a compelling interpretation of globalization after the Cold War."

• [12-21] Robert M. Solow, groundbreaking economist and Nobelist, dies at 99: "His elegant work established that the main determinant of economic growth was technology, not growing capital and labor."

• [12-19] J.G.A. Pocock, historian who argued for historical context, dies at 99. I took a course from Pocock at Washington University. I had earlier read, and much admired, his work, so I had high expectations, but I was still amazed at his ability to stand in front of his desk and reel off hour-long lectures that read like carefully edited book passages. It gave him the appearance of being the most brilliant person I ever met, and nothing in the content suggested otherwise. (Unlike, say, William H. Gass, another brilliant lecturer I encountered there.)

• [12-19] Mars Williams, 68, saxophonist who straddled new wave and jazz, dies.

• [12-10] Shlomo Avineri, Israeli scholar skeptical about peace, dies at 90: A prominent "public intellectual," wrote books on Hegel, Marx, and The Making of Modern Zionism (1981, rev. 2017), worked in Israel's foreign ministry under Rabin.

• [12-07] Benjamin Zephaniah, poet of social justice issues, dies at 65.

I was surprised not to find an obituary for Arno J. Mayer, who died on Dec. 18 at 97. He was one of the very greatest historians of the last century, even since his landmark books Political Origins of the New Diplomacy, 1917-1918 (1959), and Politics and Diplomacy of Peacemaking: Containment and Counterrevolution at Versailles, 1918-1919 (1967). I especially recommend three later works: The Persistence of the Old Regime: Europe to the Great War (1981), Why Did the Heavens Not Darken? The "Final Solution" in History (1988), and Plowshares Into Swords: From Zionism to Israel (2008). He was the first I'm aware of to emphasize the continuity of the World Wars, referring to 1914-45 as "the 30-Years War of the 20th Century." Another item I recommend is Studs Terkel's interview with him in "The Good War". He was born in Luxembourg in 1926, his family reaching the US in 1941, and soon joined the US Army, where while still in his teens was assigned to babysit "high ranking German prisoners of war" (e.g., rocket scientists; Mayer was one of the Ritchie boys, as was Guy Stern, who also died last week). I expect we'll have more to link to next week. Meanwhile:

• Enzo Traverso: [12-19] Arno J Mayer's 20th century.

• Counterpunch: Articles by Arno J Mayer. E.g., Israel: The wages of hubris and violence. This was written in 2009, and posted in 2015, but remains insightful:

  Since Israel's foundation, the failure to pursue Arab-Jewish understanding and cooperation has been Zionism's "great sin of omission" (Judah Magnes). At every major turn since 1947-48 Israel has had the upper hand in the conflict with the Palestinians, its ascendancy at once military, diplomatic, and economic. This prepotency became especially pronounced after the Six Day War of 1967. Consider the annexations and settlements; occupation and martial law; settler pogroms and expropriations; border crossings and checkpoints; walls and segregated roads. No less mortifying for the Palestinians has been the disproportionately large number of civilians killed and injured, and the roughly 10,000 languishing in Israeli prisons.

  Despite the recent ingloriousness of Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, Israel's ruling and governing class continues to stand imperious. . . . Israelis must ask themselves whether there is a point beyond which the Zionist quest becomes self-defeatingly perilous, corrupting, and degrading.

Music Week

Expanded blog post, December archive (in progress).

Tweet: Music Week: 52 albums, 5 A-list

Music: Current count 41422 [41370] rated (+52), 21 [17] unrated (+4).

I've been almost totally swamped in trying to compile the 18th Annual Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll. Deadline for ballots was Friday, December 15. I'll admit I was pretty bummed when I went to bed with only 145 ballots counted: down 6 from 2023, down 11 from 2022, so my two years in the helm were beginning to look like a death spiral.

What made this worse is that for the first time ever, I started thinking about how to expand the poll a month before the I needed to send ballots out. I had a list of contacts from a prominent PR guy. I collected the names from the DownBeat Critics Poll. Then I started searching for jazz publications and blogs, and found many more -- some pretty far-flung. I accosted contacts for leads and contact info. I had contacted over 200 possible voters in 2022, and figured 250 this year wouldn't be too much of a stretch.

Then I stumbled. I barely got my initial invite mailing out in mid-November. And while I dashed off a few letters after that, all the way to deadline day, I never came close to my goal. In the end, I only got 25-30 new invites sent out, of which only half sent in ballots (as opposed to 75% from 2022's invite list). But that only came close to making up for the attrition, less than half of which I have any insight into (illness/death, job/career shifts, a lot of "no fucking time," a couple of snits).

One possibly big problem is that it's impossible to verify that an email address works, or rather that it's impossible to distinguish a non-working email address from one that's simply being ignored, or simply being too vigilantly monitored by spam assassin robots. In a few cases, I tried to track down alternative contact routes (I've even tried Facebook messaging). Another source of attrition was the demise of JazzTimes. We've long had 10-12 of their writers voting, and a third or more dropped out this year.

Along the way, my distaste for Substack has grown by leaps and bounds: I don't see any way to contact their users, even in the few cases where I currently subscribe. Ted Gioia is only the most prominent of several searches that dead-ended there. (He claims 84,000 followers there, a really extraordinary number. His top-100 list, which I've tracked for years in my EOY aggregates, is buried behind the wall there.) While a precious few are cashing in big time, and many more figure they have nothing to lose -- indeed, I can think of a few writers, like Christian Iszchak and Brad Luen, who have really blossomed with the platform -- the obvious result is atomization, breaking culture into tiny, isolated droplets. (Of course, this line got the engineer in me to thinking up different ways to structure it, to build collectives instead of tearing them apart, but the lure of money is hard to work around, perhaps even more so when there isn't any.)

Still, I'm feeling better about the Poll today than I was back on Friday. I've extended the deadline, at least for a select few, to Tuesday night (or -- what difference does a few hours make? -- to Wednesday morning). Current ballot count is 154, so there's still a slight chance we'll hit the all-time record. More importantly, some of the late ballots have been real doozies. Just to mention one, Joe Bebco (editor of New Orleans roots rag, The Syncopated Times), managed the rare feat of voting for 16 albums no one else has voted for -- good chance I'll review most of them next week. The album list is up to 743 at the moment, and that's +32 from last year's record number.

I figure I'll start writing my essay on Wednesday. As with last year's essay, I figure I'll start with some data crunching, then try to pick out what's most interesting in the various tables. Whether this will include a capsule summary of the top-ten and the minor list winners may depend on whether Francis Davis beats me to the punch. (He's suggested he might write such a piece, or maybe not, but if he does so, he's promised to do it early. Previous essays were structured that way, followed by his own list. In the past, I've usually been content to link to my list -- up to 75 jazz A/A- this week; the Max Koch album took over the Debut slot in my ballot.)

Almost everything new this week, especially up top, comes from the jazz ballots. My non-jazz list continues to flounder (51 A/A- records, way down from last year). One problem is that I've had virtually no time to work on the EOY aggregate, which is stuck at 94 lists. I need to find time to update the Christgau database with his latest Consumer Guide (my previous grades: Buck 65: A-/A; CMAT: ***; Feelies: **; Megan Moroney: ***; Azuka Moweta: ***; Piconema: A-; Homeboy Sandman: **; not graded yet: Barbie, Dolly Parton, Tele Novela). Then it'll be easier to factor his grades into the Aggregate.

I did manage to squeeze out a relatively cryptic Speaking of Which yesterday. I noticed a couple more things today that I should have noted, so I added them to the file, with some extra mark up (red border-right) to flag the changes. I may make a regular habit of this.

New records reviewed this week:

• Ambrose Akinmusire: Owl Song (2023, Nonesuch): [sp]: B+(*)
• Lina Allemano Four: Pipe Dream (2021 [2023], Lumo): [bc]: B+(***)
• Biig Piig: Bubblegum (2023, RCA, EP): [sp]: B+(*)
• Vilhelm Bromander: In This Forever Unfolding Moment (2021 [2023], Thanatos): [sp]: A-
• Filipe Catto: Belezas Sao Coisis Acesas Por Dentro (2023, Joia Moderna): [sp]: B+(*)
• Ed Cherry: Are We There Yet? (2022 [2023], Cellar): [sp]: B+(**)
• Avishai Cohen & Abraham Rodriguez Jr.: Iroko (2023, Naïve/Believe): [sp]: B+(*)
• Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band: Dancing on the Edge (2023, Sophomore Lounge: [sp]: B+(**)
• Marike van Dijk Nonet: Stranded (2022 [2023], Brooklyn Jazz Underground/ZenneZ): [sp]: B+(**)
• Mike Dillon & Punkadelick: Inflorescence (2023, Royal Potato Family): [sp]: B+(*)
• The Go! Team: Get Up Sequences Part Two (2023, Memphis Industries): [sp]: B+(***)
• Laura Groves: Radio Red (2023, Bella Union): [sp]: B+(*)
• Mats Gustafsson & Ensemble E: EE Opus One (2022 [2023], Trost): [r]: B
• Mats Gustafsson: Hidros 9: Mirrors (2022 [2023], Trost): [sp]: B+(*)
• Ron Horton: A Prayer for Andrew (2023, Newvelle): [sp]: A-
• The Human Hearts: Viable (2023, Open Boat): [bc]: B+(**)
• Terry Klein: Leave the Light On (2023, self-released): [sp]: B+(***)
• Max Koch: Ten Bulls (2021 [2023], Jazzwerkstatt): [sp]: A-
• Koma Saxo: Post Koma (2021 [2023], We Jazz): [sp]: B+(*)
• Marthe Lea Band: Herlighetens Vei (2023, Motvind): [sp]: A-
• Helge Lien Trio/Tore Brunborg: Funeral Dance (2022 [2023], Ozella Music): [sp]: B+(***)
• Antti Lötjönen Quintet East: Circus/Citadel (2023, We Jazz): [sp]: B+(***)
• Tkay Maidza: Sweet Justice (2023, 4AD): [sp]: B+(**)
• Robin McKelle: Impressions of Ella (2023, Doxie): [sp]: B+(***)
• Joe McPhee/Mette Rasmussen/Dennis Tyfus: Oblique Strategies (2018 [2023], Black Truffle): [bc]: B
• Joe McPhee & John Edwards: Tell Me How Long Has Trane Been Gone (For James Baldwin and John Coltrane) (2019 [2022], Klanggalerie): [sp]: B+(**)
• Palle Mikkelborg/Jakob Bro/Marilyn Mazur: Strands: Live at the Danish Radio Concert Hall (2023, ECM): [sp]: B+(*)
• Nils Petter Molvaer/Norwegian Radio Orchestra: Certainty of Tides (2023, Modern): [sp]: B+(***)
• Roy Nathanson: 82 Days (2023, Enja/Yellowbird): [sp]: B+(***)
• Nation of Language: Strange Disciple (2023, PIAS): [sp]: B+(*)
• Augusto Pirodda Septet: The Monkey and the Monk (2021 [2022], El Negocito): [sp]: B+(**)
• Anthony Pirog: The Nepenthe Series Vol. 1 (2023, Otherly Love): [sp]: B+(*)
• Adam Rudolph/Tyshawn Sorey: Archaisms 1 (2023, Defkaz): [sp]: B+(***)
• Thollem/Terry Riley/Nels Cline: The Light Is Real (2021-22 [2023], Other Minds): [bc]: B+(*)
• Micah Thomas: Reveal (2022 [2023], Artwork): [sp]: B+(**)
• U SCO: Catchin' Heat (2019 [2023], New Atlantis): [sp]: B+(**)
• Brad Walker + Extended: Side by Side (2021 [2023], self-released): [sp]: B+(***)
• Web Web x Mar Herre: Web Max II (2023, Compost): [sp]: B+(*)
• Hailey Whitters: I'm in Love (2023, Big Loud/Pigasus, EP): [sp]: B+(**)
• Mareike Wiening: Reveal (2023, Greenleaf Music): [sp]: B+(***)
• Jack Wright: What Is What (2023, Relative Pitch): [sp]: B+(**)
• Neil Young: Before and After (2023, Reprise): [r]: B+(**)
• John Zorn: Parrhesiastes (2023, Tzadik): [sp]: B+(**)

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

• Hasaan Ibn Ali: Reaching for the Stars: Trios/Duos/Solos (1962-65 [2023], Omnivore): [sp]: B+(**)
• As-Shams Archive Vol. 1: South African Jazz, Funk & Soul 1975-1982 (1975-82 [2023], As-Shams Music): [sp]: B+(**)
• Derek Bailey & Paul Motian: Duo in Concert (1990-91 [2023], Frozen Reeds): [bc]: B+(**)
• Steve Davis: Meets Hank Jones, Vol. 1 (2008 [2023], Smoke Sessions): [sp]: B+(**)
• Bill Evans: Tales: Live in Copenhagen (1964) (1964 [2023], Elemental Music): [sp]: B+(**)
• Joy: Joy (1976 [2023], Cadillac): B+(*)
• Roland Kirk: Live at Ronnie Scott's 1963 (1963 [2022], Gearbox): [sp]: A-
• Malombo Jazz Makers: Malompo Jazz (1966 [2023], Strut): [sp]: B+(*)
• Malombo Jazz Makers: Malombo Jazz Makers Volume 2 (1967 [2023], Strut): [sp]: B+(*)
• Amina Claudine Myers: Song for Mother E (1979 [2023], Leo): [sp]: B+(***)

Old music:

• John Zorn: Nove Cantici Per Francesco D'Assisi (2019, Tzadik): [r]: B+(*)

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Steven Kamperman: Maison Moderne (Trytone) [09-29]
• Lothar Ohlmeier/Tobias Klein: Left Side Right (Trytone) [02-16]
• Reggie Quinerly: The Thousandth Scholar (Redefinition) [01-19]
• Jim Snidero: For All We Know (Savant) [02-16]

Speaking of Which

Blog link.

I'm extremely preoccupied with other work, so don't expect anything more than the occasional for-future-reference link here. Of course, if I did have time, I could write much about these pieces (but, especially re Gaze, refer to recent weeks. Meanwhile, look for links to Sarah Jones below.

PS: I've added a couple more links and/or comments since this was originally published Sunday afternoon. They are marked with a red right-border, like this one:

Top story threads:

Israel:

• Mondoweiss:

  • [12-11] Day 66: Israel attacks ambulances, medics in Gaza; people across the world join strike for Palestine.

  • [12-12] Day 67: Israeli forces storm Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia.

  • [12-13] Day 68: Israel announces death of 10 soldiers, UN says Israel destroyed nearly quarter of Gaza's buildings.

  • [12-14] Day 69: Reports of Israeli soldier shooting women and children execution style in Gaza.

  • [12-15] Day 70: A deteriorating public health crisis in Gaza, raids across the occupied West Bank.

  • [12-16] Day 71: Al Jazeera journalist killed in Gaza, protests in Tel Aviv after Israel kills own hostages.

  • [12-17] Day 72: Israeli forces kill Palestinians in church, UNRWA warns of mass flight to Egypt.

• Yuval Abraham: [12-17] 'The hostages weren't our top priority': How Israel's bombing frenzy endangered captives in Gaza. I suspect most Israeli authorities would prefer all the hostages dead, as that would shift them from being an inhibition against genocide into a martyred cause for.

• Jehad Abusalim: [12-15] Refaat Alareer was a brilliant poet and intellectual -- he was also my teacher: And he's dead now -- one of the few casualties of Israel's genocide with a name others can relate to.

• Miriam Berger/Hajar Harb: [12-17] Gaza, smashed by Israeli strikes, sees new threat: Disease.

• Ranjani Chakraborty: [12-13] Why Israel has so many Palestinian prisoners: "Inside Israel's dual criminal justice system."

• Jonathan Cook:

  • [12-05] How Israel uses AI genocide programme to obliterate Gaza.

  • [12-15] Why is the media ignoring evidence of Israel's own actions on 7 October? They "fail to report on growing evidence that Israel killed its own citizens."

• Tareq S Hajjaj: [12-15] The cost of freedom: "Many in Gaza are faced with difficult choices that aren't choices at all."

• Jeff Halper: [12-15] Why Biden's 'day after' means two-state apartheid.

• Chris Hedges: [12-17] The death of Israel: "Settler colonial states have a terminal shelf life. Israel is no exception."

• David C Hendrickson: [12-13] Hawks pushing for more fronts in Israeli military operations: "Supporting Netanyahu may mean accommodating actions against Hezbollah, Iran, West Bank, and more."

• Gideon Levy: [12-13] Israel's first unanimous war: "We've never before had a war like this, a war of complete consensus, a war of total silence, a war of blind support; a war without objection, without protest, without refusal to serve, without opposition, neither in the beginning or in the middle. . . . The brainwashing by the media is at fire-hose intensity, spraying forth from the TV news studios day and night, and even those in whom doubt may be starting to stir do not dare to raise them publicly. . . . As far as Israelis are concerned, it's possible to keep this war going forever, to kill all the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip and destroy it entirely for good."

• Eyal Lurie-Pardes: [12-12] Why Israel's top court is greenlighting a civil rights crackdown.

• Adam Miyashiro: [12-14] How racist discourse fuels Israel's settler colonial genocide.

• Mouin Rabbani: [12-15] Quick thoughts; Ongoing post on the war on Gaza: Ongoing commentary, latest update December 16.

• Nathan J Robinson: [12-13] There is no good reason to oppose a ceasefire in Gaza: "The rest of the world sees what the United States still does not: Israel's actions in Gaza can only succeed in producing an endless cycle of violence and suffering."

• Mina Sadi: [12-15] Israel's attack on the Freedom Theatre in Jenin camp is part of a cultural genocide.

• Jeremy Scahill: [12-11] This is not a war against Hamas: "The notion that the war would end if Hamas was overthrown or surrenders is as ahistorical as it is false."

• Richard Silverstein:

  • [12-13] IDF death toll mounts as 10 senior officers, soldiers killed in Gaza ambush.

  • [12-17] IDF disasters leave 10 dead in ambush, 3 hostages killed.

• Nadia Taha: [12-12] It's time for Gaza's journalists to be treated like the heroes they are.

• Jeff Wright: [12-14] The hope of ending 'Israel's fever dream': An interview with Craig Mokhiber: Former Director of the Ne York Office of the UN's High Commissioner of Human Rights after he stepped down in protest over the UN's failure to prevent a 'textbook case of genocide' in Gaza."

• Zi Zhou: [12-14] The growing global support for a Gaza ceasefire, explained: "Why the US and Israel are becoming 'increasingly isolated.'" Uh, because they're excusing, defending, and committing genocide?

Also note that the New York Times has run a collection of articles under the title What is the path to peace in Gaza? The dumbest is "Let NATO nations send troops," by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, although not by a huge margin over Bernard Avishai and Ezzedine Fishere's "The answer lies with Biden." The closest to my thinking is Jerome M Segal's "Grant Gaza statehood." He's much more tentative than my proposals (from recent weeks, shouldn't be hard to look them up), as he misses one key component: that Israel should have absolutely no say in or direction over the territory of Gaza and its people. Israel has proven, beyond any doubt, its incompetence as well as its inhumanity as what used to be called a "mandate" power. The other key point of my plan is that it separates Gaza off from Israel's more general, deeper, and intractable problem with the Palestinians still under its power. While a more general solution is still desirable, the case for separating Gaza off has become extraordinarily more urgent, not just for the people suffering there but also for those who realize the grave peril Israel and the United States are causing to their reputation and standing in the world.

US, Israel, and a decaying empire:

• Christine Ahn: [12-15] More sanctions and military pressure won't improve North Korean human rights.

• Andrew J Bacevich: [12-15] Israel is not America's responsibility.

• Daniel Brumberg: [12-16] Are Israel and the United States on a collision course? "For Washington, Netanyahu's singular and relentless focus on military tactics represents a strategic nightmare."

• Eli Clifton: [12-15] US lawmaker: Backing Israel is the 'path of least resistance'.

• Ryan Grim: [12-14] State Department stuns Congress, saying Biden is not even reviewing Trump's terror designation of Cuba.

• Robert E Hunter: [12-11] Biden needs to stop coddling Bibi: "The US must press for a ceasefire and then get serious about resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

• Daniel Larison: [12-12] Keep US troops out of post-war Gaza: Incredibly, someone actually proposed such a thing. Anyone with the slightest recollection of the US "peacekeeping" force in Lebanon will instantly recoil from the thought. Robert Fisk's Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon (1990) should be mandatory reading. Even without the overhead of serving as Israeli proxies, the US military has a terrible track record as "peacekeepers."

• Jon Schwarz: [12-12] How Biden's state department conceals its "human rights black hole" in the Middle East.

• Sarang Shidore/Dan M Ford: [12-15] Mapping it: striking US isolation in UN vote.

• Robert Wright: [12-15] Biden's Israel impotence: "The frequency and directness with which Israeli officials convey to the world that they don't care about Biden's opinion is getting embarrassing."

Zionism, Antisemitism, and Palestinian rights:

• Michael Arria: [12-12] The Shift: Misleading U.S. headlines on Palestine activism.

• Zack Beauchamp: [12-12] The return of liberal Zionism?: "For many Jews, the October 7 attacks discredited both the Zionist right and the anti-Zionist left -- paving the way for the resurrection of a seemingly dead political tradition."

• Peter Beinart: [12-11] Harvard is ignoring its own antisemitism experts: "The university's new advisory group on antisemitism elevates political concerns over academic integrity."

• Tim Dickinson: [12-16] Turning Point USA's AmericaFest is infested with antisemitism.

• Emma Green: [12-15] How a student group is politicizing a generation on Palestine: "Activists with Students for Justice in Palestine have mobilized major campus demonstrations in support of Gaza -- and provided an intellectual framework for protesters watching what's happening in the Middle East."

• Donald Johnson: [12-10] Anti-Palestinian racism is inherent in Zionism and you're not allowed to talk about it.

• Sarah Jones: [12-12] Don't lose sight of Gaza.

• Eric Levitz: [12-11] How bad is antisemitism in America, really? If you more or less align liberal and/or left, and are still seriously concerned about the rise of antisemitism, this is for you, and provides a fair and judicious appraisal of the situation.

• Nicole Narea: [12-15] What elite universities -- and their critics -- get wrong about campus antisemitism.

• Katha Pollitt: [12-15] Why have feminists been so slow to condemn the Hamas rapes? Maybe because the charges are wrapped up in a propaganda campaign meant to promote genocide? One fallback position seems to be that "of course, Hamas committed rapes -- all armies rape." But wouldn't that also apply to the army that's 10 times as large, with 100 times the budget for death-dealing arms? It's been some times since anyone proclaimed the IDF as "the most moral army in the world" -- I can't recall hearing that since Sharon became Prime Minister. (You should have seen his face when Bush called him "a man of peace.")

• Ishmael Reed: [12-15] To shame Dr. Gay, the media had to shield Representative Stefanik.

• Jen Wieczner: [12-12] How Bill Ackman's campaign to oust Harvard's president failed.

Trump, and other Republicans:

• Eric Adelson/Patricia Mazzei: [12-17] Florida Republicans strip powers of embattled party chairman: Christian Ziegler, "who faces a criminal investigation and has resisted calls to resign."

• Isaac Arnsdorf: [12-16] Trump quotes Putin condemning American democracy, praises autocrat Orban.

• John Cassidy: [12-12] What Trump's civil trial tells us about his upcoming criminal cases.

• David Gilbert: [12-14] Moms for Liberty is tearing itself apart: "One of the Republican Parlty's most successful grassroots organizations is being torn apart by scandal, including accusations of sexual assault."

• Maggie Haberman/Shane Goldmacher/Nicholas Nehamas/Jonathan Swan: [12-16] Jeff Roe, top strategist for star-crossed DeSantis Super PAC, resigns.

• Margaret Hartmann: [12-13] Trump spent legal defense fund money at Mar-a-Lago.

• Kelly McClure: [12-16] Trump recirculates Hitler rhetoric at campaign event in New Hampshire.

• Ally Mutnick/Burgess Everett: [12-17] Senate GOP enters critical stretch for fending off bad candidates.

• Adam Rawnsley/Asawin Suebaeng: [12-14] 'Dictator' Trump plans to deploy massive number of troops on U.S. soil.

• Luke Savage: [12-14] Nikki Haley is an anti-worker fanatic, not a "moderate".

• Ian Ward: [12-15] The crazy conservative scheme to make Trump look normal: Rehabilitate Nixon.

• Li Zhou: [12-13] Why Republicans are pursuing an unfounded impeachment inquiry into Biden.

Biden and/or the Democrats:

• Kevin Breuninger: [12-15] 'Good one, Donald': Biden flaunts stock market record highs, mocks Trump for predicting 'collapse'.

• David Marchese: [12-15] Rep. Ro Khanna has a reminder for Democrats: Americans love money.

• Nicole Narea: [12-09] Can Democrats overcome their deep divisions over Gaza? "The party is fractured over President Joe Biden's unequivocal support for Israel as it continues its military campaign in Gaza ahead of 2024."

• Andrew Prokop:

  • [12-13] Republicans' thin corruption case against Joe Biden, explained.

  • [12-14] Why Biden may give in to Republican demands on immigration: "It's partly about Ukraine aid. But the politics of immigration have also changed for Democrats."

• Michael Tomasky: This impeachment will do more to reelect Biden than anything Biden could do himself.

• Li Zhou: [12-13] Why Republicans are pursuing an unfounded impeachment inquiry into Biden.

Legal matters and other crimes: Also see the Sarah Jones article in the main section, which relates to the Kate Cox abortion case but goes much deeper. I've moved other pieces on Cox down there.

• Justin Elliott/Joshua Kaplan/Alex Mierjeski/Brett Murphy: [12-16] A "delicate matter": Clarence Thomas' private complaints about money sparked fears he would resign.

• Matt Ford: America's most corrupt mayors have a friend in the Supreme Court.

• Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling:

  • How a Supreme Court leak helped conservative justices unite to overturn Roe.

  • Broke Giuliani must pay up $148 million for defaming Georgia election workers. Also:

    • Charles Bethea: [12-15] Watching Rudy Giuliani self-destruct at a defamation trial in Washington.

    • Andrew Rice: [12-13] Rudy Giuliani can't resist digging himself a hole at his defamation trial. Also: [12-15] The women Rudy Giuliani tried to destroy, and [12-15] Why Rudy Giuliani lost so big.

• Ian Millhiser:

  • [12-11] l The Supreme Court hands down a small but unexpected victory for LGBTQ people.

  • [12-13] The Supreme Court will hear its biggest abortion case since it overruled Roe v. Wade: "The justices will decide whether to ban mifepristone, a drug used in half of US abortions."

  • [12-14] The Supreme Court case that could shut down Trump's election theft trial, explained: "Trump claims that when the president tries to steal an election, it's not illegal."

Climate, environment, and COP28: Isn't the latter supposed to do something about the former?

• Umair Irfan:

  • [12-11] Pledges to slash methane pollution at COP28 are leaving out one big thing: "Cows."

  • [12-11] The severe El Niño in South America is a preview of a climate-changed world: "Dengue, drought, and floods are hammering Peru and Bolivia this year."

• Benji Jones: [12-14] Welcome to the extinction capital of the world: "Our planet faces a mass extinction. I visited ground zero." Hawaii.

• Elizabeth Kolbert: [12-13] What did COP28 really accomplish?

• Eric Levitz: [12-14] The new global climate deal is mostly hot air.

• Kate Morgan: [11-11] How to detox coal country.

• Paige Vega: [12-13] Don't be satisfied with a pledge to end fossil fuels.

• Aarhus University: [12-14] People, not the climate, found to have caused the decline of the giant mammals.

Economic matters:

• John Cassidy: [12-15] The Federal Reserve is trying to catch up with falling inflation.

• Emily Stewart: [12-13] Starbucks has lost $11 billion market value, and not because of boycotts: "Starbucks's messy December, explained."

Ukraine War:

• Joshua Keating: [12-16] What happens in Ukraine if US aid disappears?

• Anatol Lieven: [12-13] Biden says Ukraine has already won. He's right.

• Charles P Pierce: [12-13] Republicans in Congress stiffed Ukraine, but gave Zelensky some unsolicited advice: How's this for snark? "Their stance on military aid made Neville Chamberlain look like Charlemagne." Related here:

  • EJ Dionne Jr: [12-17] Ukraine shouldn't have to pay the price of the GOP's wedge politics: I fear that Democrats are making a grave error treating growing Republican opposition to funding endless war in Ukraine to "wedge politics." They're setting themselves up as the War Party, while more and more Americans are growing weary of war abroad. And who are they to Ukrainians would be "paying the price" by not extending a war that is already costing them dearly?

• Paul Sonne/Rebecca R Ruiz: [12-17] How Putin turned a Western boycott into a bonanza.

Other stories:

David Atkins: [12-13] Conservatives have lost the culture war: Which is why it works for them: it gives them an endless source of complaints, a fount of anger to ride to power on, with nothing they can actually do.

Kyle Chayka: [12-07] The terrible twenties? The assholocene? What to call our chaotic era.

Elise Craig: [12-10] Resilience is invaluable in tough times. Here's how to build it.

Tom Engelhardt: [12-13] Keeping TomDispatch alive: In deeply troubled times: Bills itself as "A regular antidote to the mainstream media." For 23 years, one of the world's most important sources of critical thought and fine writing on the world's really big issues. Only thing I can think of to make it better would be if they took an interest in publishing little old me.

Trip Gabriel: [12-16] Paul Chevigny, early voice on police brutality, dies at 88: "An eminent civil rights lawyer, he was one of the nation's foremost experts on abusive policing. He also successfully challenged New York's Cabaret Law." I remember his book, Police Power: Police Abuses in New York City (published in 1969).

Masha Gessen: [12-09] In the shadow of the Holocaust: I cited this article last week. It has since become news controversy in its own right.

• Calder McHugh: {12-16] Masha Gessen kicks the hornet's nest on Israel and the Holocaust: Interview.

Jeet Heer: [12-15] The 2 Murrays and the age of pretend anarchy: "The strange global influence of anarcho-capitalism." Bookchin and Rothbard: I've noted the name they share before, as I've been fascinated with both.

Jordan Heller: [12-14] An oral history of the George W Bush shoe throwing, 15 years later.

Sarah Jones: [12-14] The anti-abortion movement is anti-human: Read this one:

Abortion opponents try to hide their authoritarian tendencies. In victory, though, their motives are clear, and so is the movement's true character. Forced birth is not an accidental outcome of the end of Roe v. Wade, but rather the primary goal -- no matter the consequences. A woman's needs become secondary to fetal requirements. The viability of a fetus does not seem to matter, nor does the woman's health. Just ask Kate Cox. . . .

These women have revealed a crucial truth: Abortion bans weren't written for human beings. As written, they strip women of their humanity and reimagine them as vessels. A vessel is not a person. A vessel has no rights. A vessel is only useful as long as it is functional. When it is no longer fit for purpose, it is cast aside; there are plenty more where it came from.

Also on abortion and the Cox case:

• Greer Donley: [12-17] What happened to Kate Cox is tragic, and completely expected.

• Maureen Dowd: [12-16] Supreme contempt for women.

• Ian Millhiser: [12-12] The sinister court decision denying Kate Cox an abortion, explained: "The court's opinion reads like something out of Franz Kafka, or maybe something out of Jim Crow."

• Alexandra Petri: [12-15] GOP baffled that 'We don't care if you die' is not a winning slogan. Which, in turn, links to:

  • Madison Fernandez: [12-15] Republicans struggle as they keep getting forced to talk about abortion.

• Li Zhou: [12-12] One Texas case shows why women can't rely on legal exceptions to abortion bans: The Kate Cox case.

Inkoo Kang: [12-10] The best TV shows of 2023: Having almost totally lost my appetite for movies, and having given up reading fiction decades ago (never any time), streaming TV series has become my only respite from the long work day. Still, I've only seen four of these: Reservation Dogs; Somebody Somewhere; Barry; and Succession (of course). More TV links:

• Inkoo Kang: [11-21] Why can't we quit The Morning Show?

• Inkoo Kang: [12-14] The Crown ends with a whimper. "Without a living protagonist fit to carry it, The Crown is increasingly populated by ghosts."

• Matthew Gilbert: [12-01] The 10 best TV shows of 2023: Boston Globe piece, so no way I can read the details, but add Bear and Poker Face to the list we've watched, and Fargo from the HMs (which we're in the middle of, same for Slow Horses, and Shetland -- which has taken a very Fargo-ish turn this year). Year End Lists have more lists I should check out, like this one from Playlist, where numbers 20-16 are Full Circle, Slow Horses, Shrinking (which I didn't like, but there's something to it), Justified: City Primeval, and Fargo.

• Vikram Murthi: [11-21] How Reservation Dogs changed the TV landscape.

Josh Katz/Aatish Bhatia: [12-17] Seven things we learned analyzing 515 million Wordles.

Joshua Keating: [12-13] Why we still underestimate what groups like Hamas are capable of: "Two decades after 9/11l, extremist groups continue to pull off surprise attacks. Why?" Article quotes Erik Dahl: "We have too much information and not enough understanding of what's going on in the world."

Matt McManus: [12-12] It's time to break up with our exploitative political and economic system: Review of Malaika Jabali's book, It's Not You, It's Capitalism: Why It's Time to Break Up and How to Move On.

Charles P Pierce: [12-14] Andre Braugher was one of the greatest actors of his generation.

David Remnick: [12-10] Are we sleepwalking into dictatorship? Liz Cheney has a book to sell you.

Norman Solomon:

• [12-14] Unilateral sanity could save the world: What Daniel Ellsberg understood, especially in his 2017 book: The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planer.

• [12-15] Noam Chomsky at 95: Still speaking hard truths, still ignored by mainstream media.

Jeffrey St Clair/Alexander Cockburn: [12-15] The sinister career of Ariel Sharon: From Sabra and Shatila to Gaza: Old piece from 2001, when Sharon had just become Prime Minister, so this misses his most politically toxic years, as he systematically demolished the Oslo Accords and the Palestinian Authority. Baruch Kimmerling wrote a good book about Sharon's rule, for which he coined the term Politicide. That's still a pretty accurate term for Israel's plan, although it never fully masked a hope for genocide. Despite the title, the piece does go back before 1982, mentioning the 1951 massacre at Qibya that did so much to establish Sharon's reputation as a war criminal.

Rick Sterling: [12-15] From Dallas to Gaza: How JFK's assassination was good for Zionist Israel.

George Varga: [12-13] Lester Bangs at 75: Legacy of 'America's greatest rock critic' endures 4 decades after his death.

Joan Walsh: [12-14] I finally left Xitter because of Alex Jones. Lots of complicated reasoning can go into deciding whether or not to engage in a social media platform, but the marginal difference of Alex Jones being on or off it is infinitesimally small. Of course, the point could simply be that Jones and Musk are each so bad they deserve each other, but if that were the point, why does Walsh make it about herself?

Daily Log

Deadline has come for voting in the 18th Annual Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll. I started working on this a bit earlier than usual this year, with the explicit goal of growing the electorate from the 150 or so we've plateaued at in recent years: we hit 141 in 2012 (up from 122 in 2011), and since then: 137, 140, 147, 139, 137, 140, 140, 149, 156, 151. I sent out a little over 200 invites to get those 151, so I figured if I could find another 40-60 people to invite, we ought to be able to get the vote total up to 180, maybe even 200.

Despite the early start, I didn't come close to meeting those goals, and by deadline day I was worrying whether I'd match last year's 151, let alone 2022's record 156. While it's still possible that another ballot (or two or three) may surface, I ended Dec. 15 with 145, and collected three more the morning after, so 148.

Let's try to take stock of the changes:

New voters this time: Katchie Cartwright, Esteban Arizpe Castañeda, Jeff Cebulski, John Corbett, David Cristol, Chuck Eddy, Stephen Graham, Ludovico Granvassu, Jason Gross, James Koblin, Lance Liddle, Brad Luen, Fotis Nikolakopoulos, Kazue Yokoi.

People who were invited, indicated they would vote, but didn't send in ballots in time. I've sent reminders to them: Joe Bebco, Jordannah Elizabeth, Willard Jenkins, Bill Meyer (probably no), Ken Micallef, J.T. Ramsay, George Varga; Glenn Kenny.

Prospective voters who were contacted but declined: S. Victor Aaron, Steve Elman, Allen Lowe, Rick Lopez, Michael Steinman.

Prospective voters who were contacted (with formal invites) but who never replied: Matty Bannond, Robert Barahona, Antonio Branco, Aldo Del Noce, Hannah Edgar, John Eyles, Stef Gijssels, Ian Mann, Marcelo Morales, Keith Prosk, Steve Provizer, J.T. Ramsay, Martin Schray, Fabricio Vieira.

Others who were sent less formal queries asking if they'd be interested, but who never replied: Bruce Lee Galanter, Gary Giddins, Harmony Holiday, Mike Jurkovic, Chris May, Asia Pieczykolan. Seems like there were more but I must not have noted them at the time.

Previous voters who were invited but declined: Michael J. Agovino, Clifford Allen, Mirian Arbalejo, Duck Baker, Bob Blumenthal, Kevin Coultas, Steve Greenlee, David Hajdu (auto), Eugene Holley, Aidan Levy, Howard Mandel (late?), Matt Marshall (?), Allen Morrison (?), John Pietaro, Mac Randall, Bill Shoemaker, Jackson Sinnenberg, Kevin Whitehead (?). Post-deadline: T.R. Johnson.

Previous (mostly recent) voters who were contacted but never replied: Karl Ackermann, Andy Beta(s), Cisco Bradley, Marcela Breton, Richard Brody, Greg Bryant, Robert Bush, Aaron Cohen, Morgan Enos, Sascha Feinstein, Ted Gioia(s)-, Mike Greenblatt, Kira Grunenberg, Evan Haga, Robert Ham, Ed Hazell, Alex Henderson, David Brent Johnson, Matthew Kassel, Brian Kiwanuka, John Litweiler, Martin Longley, Kevin Lynch, Dan McClenaghan, Lee Mergner, Tom Moon, Brian Morton*, John Murph, Russ Musto, Sean J. O'Connell, Simon Rentner, Ronald Schepper, Michael Shanley, Jon Solomon, Alan Young.

Old, long-inactive voters. I tried contacting a few (no response except as noted): Bridget A. Arnwine, David Fricke, Lyn Horton (declined), Marc Myers, Doug Ramsey, Gio Russonello.

For most I lacked email addresses: A.D. Amorosi, Glenn Astarita, Bradley Bambarger, Angelika Beener, Nick Bewsey, Paul Blair, Michael Bourne, Nate Cavalieri, Alan Chase, Fred Cisterna, Sharonne Cohen, Owen Cordle, Donald Elfman, Brad Farberman, Sean Fitzell, Colin Fleming, David Franklin, Sasha Frere-Jones, Will Friedwald, Laurel Gross, Jason Gubbels, Don Heckman, Will Hermes, Patrick Jarenwattananon, Larry Kart, Mark Keresman, Joe Lang, John McDonough, Ted Panken, Thierry Pérémarti, Bob Porter, Craig Premo, Tom Reney, Joel Roberts, Chris Robinson, Alex W. Rodriguez, Michael Rosenstein, Karl Stark, Thomas Staudter, Chip Stern, Zan Stewart, Jeff Stockton, Perry Tannenbaum, Greg Thomas, Anastasia ?Tsiouclas, Mark F. Turner, Jon Wertheim, Jim Wilke, Carlo Wolff.

After all the above is said and done, I've also sent invites to: Mark Lomanno.

Music Week

Expanded blog post, December archive (in progress).

Tweet: Music Week: 49 albums, 5 A-list

Music: Current count 41370 [41321] rated (+49), 17 [6] unrated (+11).

Let's see how quickly I can knock this out.

Speaking of which yesterday. Abbreviated intro and pretty much the same old news, but still came to 5184 words (114 links).

Lots of records below, but fewer A-list than in the last couple weeks, so diminishing returns? Two came from jazz poll ballots, and two from Chuck Eddy's latest PJPR post.

Deadline for the Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll is coming up fast: Friday, December 15. I have 77 ballots counted. Hopefully we'll add at least that many more. It will be dispiriting (and a personal embarrassment) if we don't. Right now New Releases is a very tight two-album race. Total number of albums with votes is over 500.

EOY Aggregate has grown slowly as I fall ever farther behind. Last I checked it was a dead heat between Boygenius and Olivia Rodrigo, with Caroline Polachek close in third.

I'm updating my other lists as I go along, but have nothing much to report there.

I filed the following as my Jazz ballot:

New Releases:

1. Rodrigo Amado/The Bridge: Beyond the Margins (Trost)
2. Irreversible Entanglements: Protect Your Light (Impulse!)
3. Steve Lehman/Orchestre National de Jazz: Ex Machina (Pi)
4. James Brandon Lewis Red Lily Quintet: For Mahalia, With Love (Tao Forms)
5. The Rempis Percussion Quartet: Harvesters (Aerophonic)
6. George Coleman: Live at Smalls Jazz Club (Cellar)
7. Art Ensemble of Chicago: The Sixth Decade From Paris to Paris: Live at Sons D'Hiver (RogueArt)
8. Jason Kao Hwang Critical Response: Book of Stories (True Sound)
9. Emmet Cohen: Master Legacy Series Volume 5: Featuring Houston Person (Bandstand Presents)
10. Farida Amadou/Jonas Cambien/Dave Rempis: On the Blink (Aerophonic)

Rara Avis (Reissues/Historical):

1. Roy Hargrove: The Love Suite: In Mahogany (1993, Blue Engine)
2. Steve Swell's Fire Into Music: For Jemeel: Fire From the Road (2003-04, RogueArt)
3. François Carrier Ensemble: Openness (2006, Fundacja Sluchaj)

Vocal:

1. Lisa Marie Simmons/Marco Cremaschini: NoteSpeak 12 (Ropeadope)

Debut:

1. Dave Bayles Trio: Live at the Uptowner (Calligram)

Latin:

1. Aruán Ortiz: Pastor's Paradox (Clean Feed)

I should probably just give up on trying to vote in the three specialist categories, as I have little sense of them anymore. Good chance my vote is the only one for each of the three (although Ortiz does have votes for Serranias, which seems to be regarded as more authentic or paradigmatic (or whatever the word is).

New records reviewed this week:

• Bar Italia: The Twits (2023, Matador): [sp]: B+(***)
• John Blum/David Murray/Chad Taylor: The Recursive Tree (2022 [2023], Relative Pitch): [sp]: A-
• ML Buch: Suntub (2023, 15 Love): [sp]: B+(*)
• Dave Burrell: Harlem Rhapsody (2023, Parco Della Musica): [sp]: B+(***)
• Adriana Calcanhotto: Errante (2023, Modern/BMG): [sp]: B+(**)
• Call Super: Eulo Cramps (2023, Can You Feel the Sun): [sp]: V+(**)
• Chory Thicket [Christy Doran/Ronan Guilfoyle/Gerry Hemingway]: A Breath of Time (2023, Auricle): [bc]: B+(**)
• Chouk Bwa & the Ängstromers: Somanti (2023, Bongo Joe): [sp]: B+(**)
• Creation Rebel: Hostile Environment (2023, On-U Sound): [sp]: A-
• Harold Danko: Trillium (2023, SteepleChase): [sp]: B+(**)
• DJ +1: Aromáticas (2023, También): [sp]: B+(*)
• Nick Dunston: Skultura (2022 [2023], Fun in the Church): [sp]: B
• Hilario Duran and His Latin Jazz Big Band: Cry Me a River (2023, Alma): [sp]: B+(**)
• Ekiti Sound: Drum Money (2023, Crammed Discs): [sp]: B+(*)
• The Feelies: Some Kinda Love: Performing the Music of the Velvet Underground (2018 [2023], Bar/None): [sp]: B+(**)
• Alan Ferber Nonet: Up High, Down Low (2022 [2023], Sunnyside): [sp]: B+(**)
• Funkwrench Blues: Soundtrack for a Film Without Pictures (2023, Need to Know): [sp]: B+(*)
• Muriel Grossmann: Devotion (2023, Third Man, 2CD): [sp]: B+(***)
• Miho Hazama's M_unit: Beyond Orbits (2023, Edition): [sp]: A-
• Lisa Hilton: Coincidental Moment (2023, Ruby Slippers): [sp]: B+(**)
• Mary Lattimore: Goodbye, Hotel Arkada (2023, Ghostly International): [sp]: B+(*)
• Ingrid Laubrock: Monochromes (2022 [2023], Intakt): [dl]: B+(*)
• Lenhart Tapes: Dens (2023, Glitterbeat): [sp]: B+(***)
• Gregory Lewis: Organ Monk Going Home (2022 [2023], Sunnyside): [sp]: B+(*)
• Mat Maneri Quartet: Ash (2021 [2023], Sunnyside): [sp]: B+(***
• Lesley Mok: The Living Collection (2021 [2023], American Dreams): [sp]: B+(***)
• Mozart Estate: Pop-Up! Ker-Ching! and the Possibilities of Modern Shopping (2023, West Midlands/Cherry Red): [sp]: B+(*)
• Nihiloxica: Source of Denial (2023, Crammed Discs): [sp]: A-
• Maciej Obara Quartet: Frozen Silence (2022 [2023], ECM): [sp]: B+(***)
• Endea Owens and the Cookout: Feel Good Music (2023, BassBae Music): [sp]: B+(**)
• Jeb Patton: Preludes (2021 [2023], Cellar Music): [sp]: B+(**)
• Eddie Prevost/NO Moore/James O'Sullivan/Ross Lambert: Chord (2022 [2023], Shrike): [bc]: B+(*)
• Amy Rigby: Cut & Run (2022, Southern Domestic): [bc]: B+(**)
• Amy Rigby: Cut Two (2023, Southern Domestic): [bc]: B+(**)
• Say She She: Silver (2023, Colemine): [sp]: B+(***)
• Slowdive: Everything Is Alive (2023, Dead Oceans): [sp]: B+(**)
• Simon Spillett Big Band: Dear Tubby H (2023, Mister PC): [sp]: B+(***)
• Elias Stemeseder/Christian Lillinger: Umbra (2022 [2023], Intakt): [dl]: B+(***)
• Sultan Stevenson: Faithful One (2022 [2023], Whirlwind): [sp]: B+(**)
• Loren Stillman: Time and Again (2022 [2023], Sunnyside): [sp]: B+(***)
• Two Shell: Lil Spirits (2023, Mainframe Audio, EP): [sp]: A-
• Martina Verhoeven Quintet: Driven: Live at Roadburn 2022 (2022, Klanggalerie): [sp]: B+(***)
• Colin Webster Large Ensemble: First Meeting (2022 [2023], Raw Tonk): [bc]: B+(***)
• Wilco: Cousin (2023, dBpm): [sp]: B+(*)

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

• John Butcher & Gerry Hemingway: Roulette - New York City (2005) (2005 [2023], Auricle): [bc]: B+(**)
• Clairvoyance Is the Dance (2023, Huveshta Rituals): [sp]: B+(*)
• Luis Russell: At the Swing Cats Ball: Newly Discovered Recordings From the Closet: Volume 1 1938-1940 (1938-40 [2023], Dot Time): [sp]: B+(*)
• Bernie Worrell/Cindy Blackman Santana/John King: Spherical (1994 [2023], Infrequent Seams): [sp]: B+(**)

Old music:

• Lenart Tapes: Duets (2021, Novo Doba): [sp]: B+(**)

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Alia Trio: Shaped by Sea Waves (Edgetone) [07-07]
• Frank Carlberg Large Ensemble: Elegy for Thelonious (Sunnyside) [03-08]
• The Rob Dixon/Steve Allee Quintet: Standards Deluxe (self-released) [02-01]
• Anne Foucher & Jean-Marc Foussat: Chair Ça (Fou) []
• Jean-Marc Foussat/Daunik Lazro: Trente-Cinq Minutes & Vingt-Trois Secondes (Fou) []
• Amanda Gardier: Auteur: Music Inspired by the Films of Wes Anderson (self-released) [01-26]
• Riley Mulherkar: Riley (Westerlies) [02-16]
• Noertker's Moxie: In Flitters: 49 Bits From B*ck*tt (Edgetone) [11-07]
• Bill Scorzari: Through These Waves (self-released '16)
• Bill Scorzari: Now I'm Free (self-released '19)
• Bill Scorzari: The Crosswinds of Kansas (self-released '22)/li>
• Rob Sussman: Top Secret Lab (Sus4music) [12-12]

Speaking of Which

Blog link.

Woke up yesterday thinking of an introduction I might write in lieu of gathering links, a task I really don't have time for this week. But I gathered a few links instead. So I'm barely going to hint at an introduction here. Some of that is time, but there's also an element of "fuck it!" too. As Molly Ivins was known to say, "lie down with dogs, get up with fleas!" The government of Israel is committing genocide in Gaza (and slower but no less surely in the occupied West Bank and annexed east Jerusalem), and the government in Washington is fully committed to helping and defending them (despite the occasional "tsk, tsk" -- surely I don't need to quote Moshe Dayan again on what Israelis think of American "opinions"?). Meanwhile, Washington is funding a hopeless war in Ukraine just to marginalize and alienate Russia, and, well, too many other things to list here.

And no matter how careful we are at distinguishing between the specific groups of people responsible for all this, we are all going to feel the effects of a generalized backlash, because, well, that's just how people operate. They may not be exacting at ferreting out root causes, but they understand when they've been wronged, and they can find the general direction those wrongs are coming from. And, really, the political leaders in Jerusalem and in Washington have no answer, since they're more guilty of such gross generalizations than anyone.

Anyhow, basta per ora! I have some real work to get to. And then, latkes and chopped liver on rye rolls for a midweek Hannukah dinner.

Top story threads:

Israel:

• Tony Karon/Daniel Levy: [12-08] Israel is losing this war: "Despite the violence it has unleashed on Palestinians, Israel is failing to achieve its political goals." I listed this piece first, because everyone pretty much understands the enormous human costs of the "Israel-Hamas War" -- the dividing point isn't on the facts, but whether one cares. What's harder to grasp is the possible political goals of the war: why Israel's leaders insisted on waging it, why in this particular way, what they think they might achieve, and why they think it's worth the effort. That's the subject here, and something to think about. And it really hits Israel's leaders where it hurts: complain about their racism, their arrogance, their contempt, their savagery, and they'll just puff out their chests; but call them losers, and their minds explode. Once again, refer back to Richard Ben Cramer's 2004 book, How Israel Lost.

• Mondoweiss: Philip Weiss's website continues to do heroic work:

  • [12-04] Day 59: Palestinian civilians have nowhere to run as Israel expands ground operations south.

  • [12-05] Day 60: Israel surrounds Kamal Adwan hospital, 'shooting anything that moves'. Subheds include: "Israel plans to flood Hamas tunnels with seawater"; "WHO: Israeli forces notified us to empty medical warehouses in 24 hours."

  • [12-06] Day 61: US believes Israel's Gaza invasion could last until the end of January.

  • [12-07] Day 62: UN Chief invokes Article 99, warning Israel's war on Gaza threatens 'international peace and security'.

  • [12-08] Day 63: Israeli army rounds up, strips and blindfolds civilian men in Gaza, takes them to unknown location.

  • [12-09] Day 64: U.S., alone against the world, vetoes Security Council resolution on Gaza ceasefire.

  • [12-10] Day 65: U.S. rushes arms to Israel as Palestinians announce over 250,000 homes destroyed in Gaza.

• Maha Abdallah/Aseil Abu-Baker/Lina Ali/Marya Farah: [12-10] Are human rights really universal? Palestine and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 75 years later.

• B'tselem: [12-07] Humanitarian catastrophe as policy.

• Allia Bukhari: [12-09] Germany's Muslims fear rise in Islamophobia amidst war in Gaza: We've already seen this in several examples of shootings in America. Israel's propaganda war aims not just at tarring anyone who criticizes Israel as anti-semitic, but at dehumanizing Palestinians, making it easier to accept their deaths and destruction, and encouraging others to join in the killing. Germany is perhaps more susceptible to this propaganda war than most other nations (as is the US and UK).

• Zah Cheney-Rice: [12-05] Norman Finkelstein's long crusade: "A cantankerous Israel critic takes a rare turn in the limelight." I've been citing Finkelstein's Gaza: An Inquest Into Its Martyrdom (2018, so you might be thinking he'd seen nothing yet, but he saw plenty) since this war began, but I read his two seminal books -- Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict (1995) and The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering (2000) -- while the second intifada was still going on, and Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History (2005) shortly after, and they are masterful dissections of the stories Israelis tell themselves and others, a hard-nosed chronicle of national mythmaking. I haven't followed his later book closely, because he was effective enough at teaching how to see through the hasbara, further instruction seemed unnecessary (e.g., his critiques of books by Dennis Ross, Richard Goldstone, and Ari Shavit, or his I Accuse! Herewith a Proof Beyond Reasonable Doubt that ICC Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda Whitewashed Israel; also two previous books on Gaza, the first titled This Time We Went Too Far).

• Marin Cogan: [12-06] The Israel-Hamas war is tearing American cultural institutions apart.

• Alexis Grenell: [12-08] No, the Israel/Palestine conflict is not "simple". The complaints are just window-dressing. The core of this piece is simple enough: it is a brief for the annihilation of Hamas, mostly because they've said some bad things, and done some desperate things. For the magazine's left-leaning readers, this is all wrapped up in concern for the innocents Hamas has taken advantage of and used as an excuse for their evil deeds, but the word for that isn't "complexity": it's obfuscation. But you don't want to know anyway.

• Yoav Haifawi: [12-09] 'Democratic margins' get even thinner in '48 Palestine: "The war on Gaza has provided an opportunity for the police, under ultra-right minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, to launch an all-out repression campaign against the Arab population, and any opposition to the slaughter of Palestinians." Title is rather oblique. It refers to the so-called "Arab Citizens of Israel" -- Palestinians who stayed put during the Nakba, and were subsequently granted citizenship in 1950, in a law that stripped Palestinian refugees of their property and any right to return (a right the UN always supported). Their "citizenship" was never equal, either de jure or de facto, but has increasingly come under attack, especially under the current government.

• Benjamin Hart: [12-07] Why Israel won't forgive Benjamin Netanyahu: Interview with Anshel Pfeffer, a Haaretz reporter and author of Bibi: The Turbulent Life and Times of Benjamin Netanyahu.

• Imad Abu Hawash: [12-08] 'It would've been better if they shot us': Palestinians recount prison abuse: "Newly released inmates detail cases of humiliation, torture, rape threats, and a prison beaten to death by Israeli forces in the weeks since October 7."

• Adam Johnson: [12-07] The "Hunt for Hamas" narrative is obscuring Israel's real plans for Gaza.

• Eric Levitz: [12-04] The price of Hamas's destruction is too high.

• Gideon Levy: [12-07] Israel is fostering the next generation of hatred against itself.

• Mark Mazzetti/Ronen Bergman: [12-10] 'Buying quiet': Inside the Israeli plan that propped up Hamas.

• Jay Michaelson: [12-06] Elise Stefanik's calculated demagoguery on antisemitism and free speech: Background for this week's SNL opener -- probably the best they could do, since they're not really up to dealing with genocide and Washington's complicity. Another take:

  • Michelle Goldberg: [12-07] At a hearing on Israel, university presidents walked into a trap. By the way, Stefanik's premise about "intifada" being intrinsically violent is historically wrong (not that you can expect university presidents to know better). Goldberg also wrote: [12-04] The backlash to anti-Israel protests threatens free speech.

  • David French: [12-10] What the university presidents got right and wrong about antisemitic speech.

• Tom Mutch: [12-02] Top Israeli official reveals catastrophic plan for rest of Gaza.

• Nicole Narea: [12-08] Israel's wartime assault on the free press: Subheds: "Israel's history of killing journalists"; "Israel is limiting press access to Gaza, where it was already difficult to be a journalist"; "Journalists covering the conflict are being harassed, arrested, and censored in Israel and the West Bank."

• Jonathan Ofir: [12-08] I used to think the term 'Judeo-Nazis' was excessive. I don't any longer.

• Kareena Pannu: [12-08] Despite lack of evidence, allegations of Hamas 'mass rape' are fueling Israeli genocide in Gaza.

• Claire Parker/Jon Gerberg/Judith Sudilovsky/John Hudson: [12-08] Israel wants civilians to arm up. Gun permit applications are soaring.

• Paul R Pillar: [12-08] Evidence of ethnic cleansing growing in West Bank and Gaza.

• Harriet Sherwood/Patrick Wintout: [02-08] UN says Gaza near 'full-blown collapse' as US vetoes ceasefire call: Thirteen countries voted in favor. The UK abstained.

• Richard Silverstein:

  • [12-05] US and Israel jointly conspired to ethnically cleanse Gaza.

  • [12-08] Israeli Security Cabinet orders execution of Palestinian poet, because of a joke.

• Adam Taylor: [12-06] Unexploded bombs, many U.S.-made, could make parts of Gaza uninhabitable.

• Philip Weiss: [12-03] Weekly Briefing: Half of Americans under 35 see Hamas attack as 'justified by Palestinian grievances'. Well, it's not like we didn't train youngsters to see "extremism in the defense of liberty as no vice." (For you youngsters out there, that is a Barry Goldwater quote. Later Republicans may be more explicit about their weapons of choice.) On the other hand, old lefties (like myself), brought up on the successes of Gandhi and MLK tend to view violence as never justified, either on moral or political grounds -- forgetting that both got murdered for their troubles.

• Li Zhou: [12-06] The "apocalyptic" humanitarian situation in Gaza, captured by one quote. Isreal has repeatedly ordered Gazans to go to "safe zones," but, as a Unicef spokesperson points out: "There are no safe zones in Gaza. These are tiny patches of barren land. They have no water, no facilities, no shelter from the cold, no sanitation."

• Mitchell Plitnick: [12-06] Two dangerous bills in Congerss take aim at Palestinian solidarity. The House passed a "bill equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism and effectively laying the groundwork for other laws to be crafted that could classify pro-Palestine protests and demonstrations as crimes." A second bill would "establish the Commission to Study Acts of Antisemitism in the United States," which given "the whereas clauses (100% about October 7 & its aftermath)" is designed to "target criticism of Israel & Zionism." Also on Congress in a time of lobby-induced hysteria:

  • Michael Arria: [12-07] The Shift: Congress embraces McCarthyism.

  • Ben Burgis: [12-08] Congress is absolutely wrong to equate anti-Zionism with antisemitism.

  • Connors Echols: [12-07] Dems call for more oversight of US weapons in Gaza. As it's beginning to dawn on a few (but still not many) that possibly full endorsement of genocide may not be the best look for America.

  • Chris Lehman: [12-05] The House of Representatives rules that anti-Zionism is antisemitism.

  • Jonathan Weisman: [12-10] A fraught question for the moment: Is anti-Zionism always antisemitic? This is historically ignorant. Before 1948, Zionism was an internal debate among Jews, where many Jews (both religious and on the left) opposed. After 1948, many diaspora Jews identified with and took a measure of pride in Israel, without feeling any need or desire to immigrate, and Israel took advantage of those feelings to equate Jewish and Israeli identity, and later used that identity -- most effectively among Western liberals -- to deflect criticism for its illiberal policies. In recent years, the word "Zionist" has fallen out of use among its adherents -- after the Russian immigration of the 1980-90s all of the diaspora Jews who wanted to resettle in Israel had done so, and the brief post-Zionist vogue among Israeli liberals petered out -- but the word has been revived by people in the west (mostly leftist, many Jewish) who wanted to distinguish between right-wing Israelis and the broader Jewish population. In other words, the current definition of "anti-Zionist" is someone who is not antisemitic, and insists on being clear on that point. So "always" is beyond ridiculous here.

    A better question would be: is Zionism ever not antisemitic? I can think of exceptions (Ahad Ha'am, Martin Buber) that tried to cast Zionism as a positive cultural movement, as opposed to the political drive for Jewish supremacy, but that's a side issue. One may question whether "Zionism" is the best term to use today for what is essentially Israel's nationalism cult, but one thing its use has done is lead to a reexamination of the political and cultural history of the Zionist movement, which turns out to be deeply imbued with racism, imperialism, and the reactionary manias of its time, such that today's policies seem to inexorably flow from past principles.

  • Edward Wong: [12-09] State Department bypasses Congress to approve Israel's order for tank ammuinition.

  • Dave Zirin: [12-05] How Zionism feeds antisemitism: This doesn't go much deeper than HR 894, because Zionism has from its very inception depended on a two-faced game of antisemitism: to the antisemites, it offered a way to get rid of the Jews ("give us a homeland of our own"), and to the Jews it offered a haven from antisemites -- on many occasions, they even stirred the antisemites up (or sometimes just false-flagged anti-Jewish terror) to usher Jews along to Israel.

Related tweets (h/t to Means testing is divisive, wasteful and punitive for many of these):

• Ryan Grim [refers to image on right]:
  Perfect distillation here: it might seem obvious but actually it's complicated and unclear

• Joshua Leifer:
  Two months into the war, Israel still has no plan--not now, now for the day afterward. Listening to interviews with former security officials, it's clear the strategy is one of gruesome improvisation: inflict maximum carnage, see what happens next. 1/

  It's the old Israel mindset--it'll work out--but with an unimaginable human toll. From their perspective, any number of scenarios might still occur: Humanitarian catastrophe and refugee crisis that spills into Egypt; loss of Hamas legitimacy that precipitates surrender 2/

  But that means it is unlikely Israeli defense officials will set a clearer goal other than the expressive "take down Hamas." 3/

  The untold civilian casualties, the horrific images of detainees stripped naked--these are intentional decisions by IDF, operating under the logic that through enough force and suffering and dehumanizing, Hamas will give up. 4/

  In some interviews, officials boast about this operational "flexibility," unlike the US operational culture where everything gets a PowerPoint 5/

• Doo B. Doo:
  Evidence on the ground indicate policies of extermination & forcible transfer. By making Gaza uninhabitable and imposing siege, Israel creates a "fact on the ground" that will put maximum pressure on int'l community to accommodate transfer. There is no shelter for Gazans.

• Yousef Munayyer [responding to Tony Blinken tweet celebrating "75 years of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights"]:
  If I had to sit down and try to formulate a strategy for spreading anti-Americanism around the globe, I don't think I could come up with something more effective than what the Biden administration has been doing for the last two months.

• Jeff Melnick:
  Probably unnecessary reminder: every college administrator issuing a statement that centers concerns around antisemitism on their campus is actively working to call your attention away from the genocide happening right in front of our eyes.
  Don't believe the hype--it's a sequel.

• Nathan J Robinson:
  Israel is operating on a quite simple theory. Make Gaza entirely unlivable, and then the choice facing the international community will be to either let Gazans all die or agree to "resettle" them elsewhere. This is said openly among Israeli officials ("second Nakba").

• Tony Karon:
  Israeli apartheid is rooted in the nationalist ideology of Zionism. Most of the world is appalled by Zionist violence vs Palestinians. To brand anti-Zionism anti-Semitism literally promotes anti-Semitism, because it holds Jews collectively responsible for Israel's outrages

• Jeff Melnick:
  If you want to understand the cooked-up "campus antisemitism" crisis, it's really simple: the Zionist project simply cannot exist without regular infusions of "antisemitism"--real or imagined. It is literally the lifeblood of this political, cultural, and military formation.

There's also this video of an Israeli soldier happily vandalizing a gift shop "after destroying the area and killing or expelling residents."

Trump, and other Republicans:

• Michelle Cottle: [12-07] Was it worth it, Kevin McCarthy? A requiem for the "young guns," who rose to power as fanatics, only to pass away for not being fanatic enough.

• Stephen F Eiseman: [12-08] Vermin: The more they try to explain what he meant when he said "vermin," the more fascist he/they sound.

• David French: [12-07] Why fundamentalists love Trump: Draws on Tim Alberta's book, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism.

• Sarah Jones: [12-07] Nikki Haley's gender trap.

• Robert Kagan: [12-07] The Trump dictatorship: how to stop it. I noted (somewhat derisively) Kagan's warning last week -- A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending. -- so figured I should mention the sequel. You can do the scoffing this time: "The first step is to consolidate all the anti-Trump forces in the Republican Party behind a single candidate, right now." His candidate is Nikki Haley, "not because she's pro-Ukraine," but because, well, she's the most dependable warmonger in the crowd. Related:

  • Ruth Marcus: [12-07] How an Ohio senator's stunt proves the Trump dictatorship theory, follows Kagan's lead.

  • Greg Sargent [12-05] Enough with all the fatalism about a Trump dictatorship.

  • Peter Baker: [12-10] Talk of a Trump dictatorship charges the American political debate. "Former President Donald J. Trump and his allies are not doing much to reassure those worried about his autocratic instincts. If anything, they seem to be leaning into the predictions."

• Jonathan Martin: [12-08] Where are all the anti-Trump Republicans? Cue Louis Jordan.

• Kelly McClure: [12-09] Texas Supreme Court steps in the way of woman's fight for an emergency abortion.

• Tom Nichols: A military loyal to Trump: Something he dearly craves, and rather expects given his fascist fetish for force and military regalia, but unlikely to happen, and not just because Democrats have been so generous in their promotion of the military and its graft.

• Heather Digby Parton:

  • [12-06] Billionaires bet big on Nikki Haley: The stunning motive behind her sudden surge in wealthy donors.

  • [12-08] Donald Trump's dream team looks like an American nightmare.

• Paul Pringle/Adam Elmahrek: [12-07] Kevin McCarthy uses PAC to lavish cash on high-end resorts, private jets and fine dining.

• Adam Rawnsley/Asawin Suebsaeng: [12-08] Inside Trump's plot to corrupt the 2024 election with 'garbage' data.

• Alex Skopic: [12-07] The lessons of Vivek: "Some tips on how to bullshit your way through life from upstart, attention-hungry, deeply annoying presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy."

• Kirk Swearingen: [12-10] "Trump derangement syndrome" is real -- but it's not what they say it is: "In an epic case of projection, followers of an infamous deranged criminal accuse their foes of a mental disorder."

• Tatyana Tandanpolie: [12-07] Experts horrified by report revealing Trump's rumored "cabinet of losers": I wouldn't put any stock in this parlor game. Cabinets are never settled pre-election, but rather are the result of painful negotiations between an incoming president's top staff and the real, quasi-permanent powers in Washington (political powers and factotums, big donors, lobbies, and entrenched bureaucrats). In 2016, Trump left that tedium to Mike Pence and Reince Priebus, who saddled him with a posse distinguished only by their greed, graft, and general contempt for serving the public. However, since that early disaster, Trump's been keeping a list of who's been naughty or nice to him, and he can hardly wait to sit in judgment over them. Nor is that information closely held, as it's hard to suck up to Trump without being publicly exposed. Hence, these lists have less to do with predicting the future than with warning us about the threat Trump presents.

• Andrew Prokop: [12-06] 3 winners and 1 loser from the fourth Republican presidential debate: "Winner: The Haley-Christie alliance"; "Winner: Far-right conspiracy theorists" (pic: Ramaswamy); Loser: "Small-government conservatism" (pic: DeSantis); "Winner: Donald Trump."

  • Ed Kilgore: [12-08] GOP debaters barely even tried to take down Trump. On the day of the first debate, Trump's polling average was 55.2%. With the fourth debate, it's at 61.3%. The notion that these jerks are only campaigning for second place has only grown. Only Christie dares attack Trump, and is too marginal to gain anything from it, so no one else sees an opening.

  • Kelly McClure: [12-10] Trump calls DeSantis a "bobble head" and Christie a "sick puppy" in debate critique. Ok, that's better than "Meatball Ron." As for Christie, he should wear it as a compliment.

  • Kelley Beaucar Vlahos: [12-07] GOP Debate: Ukraine inching toward the memory hole: "Zelensky should be very worried at this point."

Biden and/or the Democrats:

• Jonathan Allen/Peter Nicholas/Megan Lebowitz: [12-10] She's with him: Hillary Clinton steps out as a key player in Biden's re-election effort. Note pic: foreground face blurred out to focus on her. Maybe not her fault, but she has that effect. Note that she also made an appearance in Hugh Hewitt: [12-05] In praise of Hillary Clinton's defense of Israel.

• David Dayen: [12-08] On drug prices, Biden opts for talk over action.

• Eric Levitz: [12-08] No, Democrats are not driving America's culture wars.

• Andrew Prokop: [12-08] Hunter Biden's new indictment, explained.

• Myah Ward: [12-02] Swing-state Muslim leaders launch campaign to 'abandon' Biden in 2024.

Legal matters and other crimes:

• Ian Millhiser:

  • [12-03] Billionaires had a surprisingly bad day in the Supreme Court today: "Even this very conservative Court appears reluctant to blow up the federal government's power to tax rich people."

  • [12-04] Two new Supreme Court cases ask if there is a right to medically necessary abortion.

Climate and environment:

• Nathan J Robinson: [12-08] A climate scientist on why the global climate summit is a disaster and a "sick joke": Interview with Peter Kalmus.

• Li Zhou: [12-04] An oil executive is leading the UN climate summit. It's going as well as you'd expect.

Economic matters:

• Kevin T Dugan: [12-04] Wall Street has decided it's time to get greedy again: Actually, they never decided not, but are hoping you're not paying attention this time.

• Paul Krugman: [12-07] The progressive case for Bidenomics: "Don't let the perfect get in the way of the coulda been worse." Basically the same line he used to convince me that Obamacare was the best we could do under the circumstances. Maybe this will be the Democratic Party's 2024 slogan: "Aim for imperfect, but settle for 'coulda been worse.'"

Ukraine War:

• Blaise Malley: [12-08] Diplomacy Watch: New Ukraine aid not likely this year: "Biden tried his hardest to make it a matter of war or peace this week."

• Benjamin Hart: [12-04] Why Russia could win the Ukraine War next November: Interview with war guru John Nagl. Next November is, of course, when Americans could decide to throw in the towel and return Donald Trump to office, screwing Ukraine. He admits that even if Ukrainians "are killing ten Russians for every one they lose," it's not decisive, or "even particularly important." But he continues to look on the bright side: "at some point, Putin is in fact going to die." After all, he's only ten years younger than Biden.

• Fred Kaplan: [12-08] Republicans are on the verge of delivering Putin a big Christmas gift.

• Fredrick Kunkle/Serhii Korolchuk: [12-08] Ukraine cracks down on draft-dodging as it struggles to find troops. I thought that one of the lessons of Vietnam was that you can't fight a modern war with slave labor (uh, drafted troops). Ukrainians fought brilliantly for the first six months of this war: they were highly motivated to defend their people, were relatively unencumbered by problems of logistics and advanced weaponry, and faced an invading army mostly composed of poorly motivated draftees. They even posted some gains in late 2022, but nothing but death and drudgery since then.

• Anatol Lieven: [11-29] Biden's role in Ukraine peace is clear now: "It's not enough for Washington to urge talks from behind the scenes, while insisting in public that only Kyiv can negotiate."

• Branko Marcetic: [12-04] Did the West deliberately prolong the Ukraine war?: "Mounting evidence proves that we cannot believe anything our officials say about the futility of negotiations."

• Washington Post: [12-04] Miscalculations, divisions marked offensive planning by U.S., Ukraine. Looking at the map here, I find myself thinking that ending the war there wouldn't be such a bad idea. They're still using the June 7 frontline because so little has changed since then -- latest I heard was that the much touted Ukrainian counteroffensive has netted minus-four square miles of territory, at which rate the reconquista will take . . . well, much longer than Ukraine, even if American support doesn't fade away, can afford. Most of the territory was ethnically Russian before 2014, and it's more so now. The rest of Ukraine would be free to join Europe, and start to rebuild, with virtually no sympathy for Russia. And Putin would still have to negotiate with the US and Europe over sanctions, so there would be plenty of leverage left.

Around the world (and America's crumbling empire):

• Connor Echols: [11-20] Why is Latin America so pro-Palestine?

• Julia Gledhill: [12-04] Pentagon can't account for 63% of nearly $4 trillion in assets: "DOD regularly buys parts and equipment it doesn't need because it can't keep track of the parts and equipment it already owns."

• Daniel Larison: [12-05] When 'internationalism' became a dirty word: "Neocons and liberal interventionists have perverted the term to mean primacy and global power projection of the worst kind."

• Stavroula Pabst: [12-05] Do venture capitalists want forever war? "These shrewd billionaire investors are jumpstarting today's rising stars in defense. In a risky business, peace is against their bottom line."

• Nick Turse: [11-29] The US knows the War on Terror is a big fat failure in Africa: "Far from reducing violence, a militarized approach has led to a 75,000% uptick in terrorist attacks."

Other stories:

David Barnett: [12-10] Groundbreaking graphic novel on Gaza rushed back into print 20 years on: Joe Sacco's Palestine. You might also be interested in Harvey Pekar's Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me (2012).

Rhoda Feng: [12-08] The work of black life: A conversation with Christina Sharpe: Author of the recent book, Ordinary Notes.

David Friedlander: [12-08] Why does no one trust No Labels? "The group says it doesn't want to elect Trump. The problem is everything else it says."

Masha Gessen: [12-09] In the shadow of the Holocaust.

Melvin Goodman: [12-07] The Washington Post gratuitously and wronglyh trashes Jimmy Carter: In favor of Henry Kissinger? There are lots of things I didn't like about Carter's foreign policy, but they were mostly Cold War stances extending from Nixon-Kissinger to Reagan. It is interesting that while Reagan slammed Carter for "giving away" the Panama Canal, he never made the slightest effort to reverse Carter's treaty (nor did Bush, when he actually invaded Panama for other reasons). One thing not mentioned here is how Carter backed Israel down from intervening in Lebanon in 1978. Four years later, Reagan turned Israel loose, starting a war that lasted 18 years (plus later flare-ups), which did more than anything pre-9/11 to turn Arabs against the US.

David C Hendrickson: [12-05] The morality of ending war short of 'total victory': "'Just and Unjust Wars' author Michael Walzer seems to believe there is a humane way to destroy Hamas in Gaza. That's not true." This may be meant to be part of the Israel/Palestine debate, but I thought we should give it a wide berth. Walzer is a philosopher who seeks the high ground on morality but more often than not winds up deeply complicit in mass murder. This is hard to read and parse because at this point I really don't care what Walzer thinks any more. What might help would be to realize, as many Israelis do, that Hamas is inextricable from the Palestinian people; that as long as Israel treats Palestinians as they do, some will be driven to fight back, and they will ally in groups like Hamas. As long as key Americans buy the notion that evil Hamas can be surgically excised from ordinary Palestinians, they compliantly support Israel's indiscriminate campaign, and as such as complicit in Israel's genocide. Which is exactly what so many Israelis wanted all along.

Nathan J Robinson: [11-26] The rise and fall of crypto lunacy: Interview with Zeke Faux, author of Number Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall.

Michael Slager: [12-07] The trouble with evil.

Paul Starr: [12-08] The life-and-death cost of conservative power: "New research shows widening gaps between red and blue states in life expectancy." The chart specifically contrasts Connecticut and Oklahoma.

Jeffrey St Clair: [12-08] Roaming Charges: Leave it to the men in charge.

Peter Taylor: [11-20] Brazil's Tropicália movement was the soundtrack to resistance to the military. I'll just note that my one big disappointment with Mark Kurlansky's 1968: The Year That Rocked the World was the absence of a chapter on Brazil. This is why.

Daily Log

Time to settle on my ballot for the Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll.

New Releases:

1. Rodrigo Amado/The Bridge: Beyond the Margins (Trost)
2. Irreversible Entanglements: Protect Your Light (Impulse!)
3. Steve Lehman/Orchestre National de Jazz: Ex Machina (Pi)
4. James Brandon Lewis Red Lily Quintet: For Mahalia, With Love (Tao Forms)
5. The Rempis Percussion Quartet: Harvesters (Aerophonic)
6. George Coleman: Live at Smalls Jazz Club (Cellar)
7. Art Ensemble of Chicago: The Sixth Decade From Paris to Paris: Live at Sons D'Hiver (RogueArt)
8. Jason Kao Hwang Critical Response: Book of Stories (True Sound)
9. Emmet Cohen: Master Legacy Series Volume 5: Featuring Houston Person (Bandstand Presents)
10. Farida Amadou/Jonas Cambien/Dave Rempis: On the Blink (Aerophonic)

Rara Avis (Reissues/Historical):

1. Roy Hargrove: The Love Suite: In Mahogany (1993, Blue Engine)
2. Steve Swell's Fire Into Music: For Jemeel: Fire From the Road (2003-04, RogueArt)
3. François Carrier Ensemble: Openness (2006, Fundacja Sluchaj)

Vocal:

1. Lisa Marie Simmons/Marco Cremaschini: NoteSpeak 12 (Ropeadope)

Debut:

1. Dave Bayles Trio: Live at the Uptowner (Calligram)

Latin:

1. Aruán Ortiz: Pastor's Paradox (Clean Feed)

Finally looked at Spotify's "unwrapped" presentation. Overall stats are probably indicative of something: 13,190 songs; 69,325 minutes (565 on April 4); 2,941 artists. Probably got my money's worth.

More dubious is: listened to 6 genres (only 6?), the top three stacked up as: rap, jazz saxophone, alternative hip-hop. Surely at that level of granularity, the actual number must be 30+ (maybe much plus). This suggests they threw out everything under a cutoff (say, 1%).

Less useful is the ranking of my top artists: Barb Jungr, John Zorn, Billy Woods, Corook, Margaret Glaspy. The first two can be traced back to "dives," where I checked out ten or so albums in fairly quick succession. That included most of Jungr, but barely scratched the recent Zorns. The others are no more than 3 titles, with some replays because I had trouble sorting them. Top songs were by Glaspy and Noname (same explanation). To call these "favorites" shows zero understanding of my methodology.

They did note that "you like to play albums all the way through, from opening track to the final note." We have a word for that: "work."

I summed this up in a Facebook comment:

I took a look at my Spotify "unwrapped" for 2023. Stats seem reasonable: 13,190 songs, 69,325 minutes (565 on April 4), 2,941 artists. 6 genres seems low given the granularity (top 3: rap, jazz saxophone, alternative hip-hop). "Favorites" are useless: two songs each by Margaret Glaspy and Noname (I doubt I played any of them more than 5 times, and only that because I was struggling with the albums). Favorite artists? Barb Jungr, John Zorn, Billy Woods, Corook, Glaspy. The first two were moderately deep dives. The others were problem cases that required 3-5 plays, on records I have yet to return to. They also noted: "Your concentration is absolute, friend. You like to play albums all the way through." I wouldn't rate my concentration at more than 3%, and I'd take the fact of letting albums play out as evidence of that. No doubt there are algorithms at play here, but dwim is still a long ways off. (In case you don't recognize the term, "dwim" is an old hacker joke from the 1980s, from "do what I mean" -- as opposed to the bad code I actually wrote -- although it also worked as a telos for primitive artificial intelligence efforts.)

Monday, December 04, 2023

Music Week

Expanded blog post, December archive (in progress).

Tweet: Music Week: 59 albums, 9 A-list

Music: Current count 41321 [41262] rated (+59), 6 [2] unrated (+4).

Running late, so let's make this quick.

Massive Speaking of Which yesterday (7422 words, 173 links), mostly on the genocide Israel is committing, and not just in Gaza, but the death of Henry Kissinger occasioned many glances back into the many atrocities he helped along.

There is also a Q&A related to Hamas, to which I've added a postscript, where everyone doubles down. There's a music review question there, too.

The Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll is coming along nicely, with 48 ballots submitted and counted so far. Deadline is December 15, so a bit less than two weeks away. I meant to send out a reminder to the voters today, but got distracted by other work. Maybe tonight, for sure by tomorrow.

One piece of work is that I wrote up a script to list out the albums that have received votes so far. As the guy counting the ballots, I've been in the enviable position of seeing all this prospecting work, so I thought I should share it. Albums are sorted alphabetically by artist, so you can't tell standings from the lists, but you are certain to discover things you weren't aware of. (At least, I certainly have. All four of this week's A-list jazz albums were unknown to me before the Poll started -- although two of them were recent promos sent to me, that haven't yet received any votes. Two non-jazz albums first came to my attention on Phil Overeem's latest list, which I still have a lot of catching up on.)

I did create my EOY aggregate list file(s), to which I've added 35 lists so far. I usually wind up with more than 300 lists (last year 565), but there is no guarantee I'm going to go that crazy this year.

My own EOY lists for Jazz and Non-Jazz continue to grow (currently 69 and 47 new A/A- albums, respectively). I meant to firm up my Jazz ballot for today's post, but didn't make it on time. Still, the top dozen-plus have been pretty stable recently, with additions landing well down.

I'm probably missing some stuff, especially on indexing. I know I meant to do more maintenance work on the Poll website, yet I've done very little.

Almost done with Viet Tranh Nguyen's Nothing Ever Dies, and I'm getting tired of it. I've long understood how memories of war are orchestrated to promote more wars, not least because I grew up with a counterexample: my father had no fond memories of his "service" in WWII, and while he had no quarrel with the mission, he was quite certain that his role in it was utterly superfluous (unlike the years before and after when he helped build the B-29s, B-47s, and B-52). Next up is the final chapter on "forgetting," which is long overdue.

Not sure what's next to read, but I'm checking Norman Finkelstein's Gaza for reference. I've read a vast amount of material on every aspect of the conflict, so lots of things are instantly clear to me that seem to hopelessly befuddle others. One thing I will say is that the recent books I've read on 1848 impressed on me that we're not very far removed from an age where revolutionary change was only possible through violence -- in large part because it was always resisted with violence. The latter is often still the case today, which is a big problem for the world.

New records reviewed this week:

• Aesop Rock: Integrated Tech Solutions (2023, Rhymesayers Entertainment): [sp]: B+(**)
• André 3000: New Blue Sun (2023, Epic): [sp]: B
• Artchipel Orchestra With Jonathan Coe: Suspended Moment: The Music of Jonathan Coe (2021 [2023], British Progressive Jazz): [bc]: B+(**)
• Assiko Golden Band de Grand Yoff: Magg Tekki (2023, Mississippi): [sp]: B+(*)
• Richard Baratta: Off the Charts (2023, Savant): [sp]: B+(**)
• Michael Bates: Metamorphoses: Variations on Lutoslawski (2022 [2023], Anaklasis): [sp]: B+(**)
• Antonio Borghini: Banquet of Consequences (2023, We Insist!): [r]: B+(***)
• Bounaly: Dimanche à Bamako (2023, Sahel Sounds): [sp]: A-
• Danny Brown: Quaranta (2023, Warp): [sp]: A-
• VV Brown: Am I British Yet? (2023, YOY): [sp]: B+(***)
• Buck 65/Doseone/Jel: North American Adonis (2023, Handsmade): [sp]: B+(***)
• Butcher Brown: Solar Music (2023, Concord Jazz): [sp]: B
• Chicago Edge Ensemble: The Individualists (2023, Lizard Breath): [bc]: B+(**)
• Michael Dease: Swing Low (2023, Posi-Tone): [sp]: B+(**)
• Hannah Diamond: Perfect Picture (2023, PC Music): [sp]: B+(*)
• Aaron Diehl & the Knights: Zodiac Suite (2023, Mack Avenue): [sp]: B-
• Marcelo Dos Reis & Luís Vicente: (Un)prepared Pieces for Guitar and Trumpet (2022 [2023], Cipsela): [cd]: A-
• Marcelo Dos Reis: Flora (2023, JACC): [cd]: B+(***)
• Shuteen Erdenebaatar Quartet: Rising Sun (2021 [2023], Motéma Music): [sp]: B+(***)
• My World (2023, Arbors): [sp]: B+(**)
• Don Fiorino/Andy Haas: Accidentals (2023, Resonant Music): [cd]: A-
• Five-Way Split: All the Way (2023, Ubuntu Music): [sp]: B+(*)
• Michael Formanek Elusion Quartet: As Things Do (2022 [2023], Intakt): [dl]: B+(***)
• Sullivan Fortner: Solo Game (2023, Artwork): [sp]: B+(*)
• Ghost Train Orchestra and Kronos Quartet: Songs and Symphoniques: The Music of Moondog (2023, Cantaloupe): [sp]: A-
• Hamell on Trial: Bring the Kids (2023, Saustex): [sp]: B+(**)
• Lafayette Harris Jr.: Swingin' Up in Harlem (2023, Savant): [sp]: B+(*)
• Benjamin Herman: Nostalgia Blitz (2023, Dox): [sp]: A-
• Nitai Hershkovits: Call on the Old Wise (2022 [2023], ECM): [sp]: B+(*)
• Anthony Hervey: Words From My Horn (2023, Outside In Music): [sp]: B+(**)
• Jungle: Volcano (2023, Caiola/AWAL): [sp]: B+(*)
• Sean Mason: The Southern Suite (2023, Blue Engine): [sp]: B+(*)
• MIKE: Burning Desire (2023, 10K): [sp]: B+(*)
• Lisa O'Neill: All of This Is Chance (2023, Rough Trade): [sp]: B+(**)
• OMD [Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark]: Bauhaus Staircase (2023, 100%): [sp]: B+(**)
• Ryoko Ono/Satoko Fujii: Hakuro (2023, self-released): [bc]: B+(***)
• PinkPantheress: Heaven Knows (2023, Warner UK): [sp]: B+(***)
• Tineke Postma: Aria (2022 [2023], Edition): [sp]: B+(**)
• Mette Rasmussen/Paul Flaherty/Zach Rowden/Chris Corsano: Crying in Space (2019 [2023], Relative Pitch): [sp]: B+(***)
• Ernesto Rodrigues/Dirk Serries/Joao Madeira/Jose Oliveira: Dripping (2023, Creative Sources): [bc]: B+(*)
• Aksel Røed's Other Aspects: Do You Dream in Colours? (2023, Is It Jazz?): [bc]: B+(**)
• Alex Sipiagin: Mel's Vision (2022 [2023], Criss Cross): [sp]: B+(**)
• Guido Spannocchi: Live at Porgy & Bess Vienna (2022 [2023], Audioguido): [sp]: B+(***)
• Haralabos [Harry] Stafylakis: Calibrating Friction (2023, New Amsterdam): [sp]: B+(*)
• Chris Stapleton: Higher (2023, Mercury Nashville): [sp]: B+(*)
• Earl Sweatshirt & the Alchemist: Voir Dire (2023, ALC/Tan Cressida): [sp]: B+(*)
• Isaiah J. Thompson: The Power of the Spirit (2023, Blue Engine): [sp]: B+(***)
• Tyvek: Overground (2023, Ginkgo): [sp]: A-
• VHS Head: Phocus (2023, Skam): [sp]: B+(*)
• J.D. Walter: The Last Muse (2023, Arkadia): [sp]: B-
• Jeppe Zeeberg: Occasionally, Good Things Do Happen (2023, self-released): [sp]: B-

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

• Geri Allen/Kurt Rosenwinkel: A Lovesome Thing (2012 [2023], Motéma Music): [sp]: B+(**)
• Axolotl: Abrasive (1981 [2023], Souffle Continu: [bc]: B+(*)
• Graham Collier Music: Smoke-Blackened Walls & Curlews (1970 [2023], British Progressive Jazz): [bc]: B+(*)
• Don Ellis: How Time Passes (1960 [2023], Candid): [sp]: B+(**)
• Jean-Marc Foussat: Abattage (1973-81, Fou): [cd]: B+(***)
• Ibrahim Hesnawi: The Father of Libyan Reggae ([2023], Habibi Funk): [sp]: B+(*)
• Wynton Marsalis: Plays Louis Armstrong's Hot Fives and Hot Sevens (2006 [2023], Blue Engine) **
• Mike Osborne: Starting Fires: Live at the 100 Club 1970 (1970 [2023], British Progressive Jazz): [bc]: B+(***)
• Pet Shop Boys: Smash: The Singles 1985-2020 (1985-2020 [2023], Parlophone, 3CD): [r]: A-
• Todd Snider: Crank It, We're Doomed (2007 [2023], Aimless): [sp]: A-

Old music:

• Don Fiorino/Andy Haas: American Nocturne (2018, Resonant Music): [bc]: B+(***)

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Marcelo Dos Reis: Flora (JACC) [09-01]
• Marcelo Dos Reis & Luís Vicente: (Un)prepared Pieces for Guitar and Trumpet (Cispela) [10-01]
• Don Fiorino/Andy Haas: Accidentals (self-released)
• Jean-Marc Foussat: Abattage (1973-81, Fou)
• Satoko Fujii Tokyo Trio: Jet Black (Libra) [01-24]
• Adam Schroeder/Mark Masters: CT! Adam Schroeder & Mark Masters Celebrate Clark Terry (Capri) [01-19]
• Josh Sinton: Couloir & Book of Practitioners Vol. 2 (Form Is Possibility, 2CD) [01-12]

Speaking of Which

Blog link.

I spent some time today crafting a Q&A on "two fundamental flaws in your thinking" about Hamas, Palestine, and Israel. It draws on my comment to the De Luca/Cavazuti piece on Hamas, below. There is, of course, zero chance that Biden's going to tell Netanyahu: hey, maybe Hamas has a point after all, so let's talk about it a bit, before we get too carried away with this war thing.

Like I said, zero chance. Which leads me to ask an even deeper question: what's the use of having all this wealth and power if it just locks you into doing senseless things that are stupid and cruel? I can see where Hamas might use their power to do something so self-destructive, because they don't have enough power to get noticed otherwise. But Israel and the United States have so much wealth and power, they could actually put it to some good, and people would love it. Instead, they just blow things up and kill and starve people. And maybe they wonder a bit why so many people despise them, but not so much really, because no one else has the power (or the death wish) to stop them.

Top story threads:

Israel: The "pause" for exchanging prisoners (aka hostages) ended on Friday, with Israel immediately resuming its bombardment of Gaza. The number of Palestinians confirmed killed and the number of displaced passed the total levels of the 1948-50 war (aka Nakba) -- although the displaced are still locked in besieged Gaza, instead of scattered in the exile Israel is working so hard to promote. The euphemism "ethnic cleansing" has become a common term for the forced expulsion of people from their homes (in Gaza, many of which were already refugee encampments, set up as temporary during the 1948-50 war). But the more formal legal term is "genocide," which is still the most accurate description of the war Israel is waging, and of the professed intentions behind this war. The whole world should find this alarming, especially those in the democracies that have long given Israel their support, even in its project to turn a haven for oppressed Jews into a fortress of ethnic supremacy.

• Mondoweiss:

  • [11-27] Day 52: Palestinians in Gaza brace for resumption of Israeli attacks as truce reaches final day.

  • [11-28] Day 53: Hostage exchange continues, Israel, Hamas agree to extend truce.

  • [11-29] Day 54: Two children killed by Israeli forces in Jenin amid discussions of truce extension.

  • [11-30] Day 55: Palestinians in Gaza are once again counting down the hours until the bombing restarts.

  • [12-01] Day 56: Truce ends, Israel kills over 100 in Gaza.

  • [12-02] Day 57: 'Not an inch' of Gaza is spared by Israeli strikes after truce ends.

  • [12-03] Day 58: Israel kills 700 in Gaza over 24 hours as Palestinians get forced further south toward Egypt.

• Yuval Abraham: [11-30] 'A mass assassination factory': Inside Israel's calculated bombing of Gaza: "Permissive airstrikes on non-military targets and the use of an artificial intelligence system have enabled the Israeli army to carry out its deadliest war on Gaza."

• Aja Arnold: [12-01] The case against the Merrimack Three is an attack on the Palestine movement as a whole: "Three activists are facing possible decades in prison for taking non-violent direct action against an Israeli military company."

• Avishay Artsy:

  • [12-01] How Israel fractured the left and united the right. Transcript of a podcast interview with Washington reporter David Weigel, which means it's about Washington politics, not the real left. Democrats aren't fractured so much as stunned: torn between the blind love and loyalty they swore to AIPAC and the horrifying reality on their screens and in their feeds, something they simply lack the tools to process.

  • [12-03] Israeli settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, briefly explained.

• Jaclynn Ashly: [11-28] The grim reality of Israel's corpse politics: "Israel is the only country in the world that has a policy of confiscating and withholding human remains, which is a violation of international humanitarian and human rights law."

• James Bamford: [11-17] Israel's war on American student activists: "For years the Israel on Campus Coalition -- a little known organization with links to Israeli intelligence -- has used student informants to spy on pro-Palestinian campus groups."

• Ross Barken: [11-30] The pro-Palestinian left is booming: Not a term I'm happy with. Pro-Palestinian can mean several different things, and not all (or even most) of them align with the left. You can be on the left and not give a toss about any nationalist movement. On the other hand, some people on the left do identify as pro-Palestinian, primarily because they believe in solidarity with the oppressed, and hardly anyone is more oppressed than Palestinians these days. But no one on the left wants to pick sides in a war. We want peace, and with peace, equality and freedom. Describing that as pro-Palestinian, or even as anti-Israeli, really misses the point.

  Barkan continues his effort to muddy the waters with this: "The left is split over what it wants to see in the region: One or two states." That's a false dichotomy, imposed by powers with ulterior motives. What we on the left want is equal rights for all people in whatever nations exist. As for how this relates for forming viable electoral coalitions in America, it probably doesn't. Here, too, the left faces the problem of achieving more equitable rights.

• Daniel Brumberg: [11-30] How Hamas has made life harder for Iran and its allies: "The October 7 assault has shaken the assumptions of every player in the Middle East, including Tehran."

• Jessica Buxbaum: [11-30] 'Erase Gaza': How genocidal rhetoric became normalised in Israel.

• Samantha Chery: [12-02] Julianna Margulies apologizes for saying Black, LGBTQ people hate Jews: That's nice, and no doubt sincere, but it does rather prove the point, which is that when atrocities occur, not everyone has the presence of mind, let alone the tact, to say precisely and clearly the right things first. Actually, that's quite rare, which is why one should be generous enough not to try to hang people for their rash, out-of-context quotes. There is another example in this piece, a quote from Susan Sarandon that is bad on several counts, for which she, too, has sincerely apologized. I could point out a few differences, like that consequences (at least in America) seem to be more more severe for insensitivity and disrespect to Jews than to Palestinians, and that many of the people (not just Jews, and not only Jews) who are so quick to remind us of the evil of antisemitism have shown similar concern for Palestinians, despite (how shall we put this?) ample evidence on numerous occasions in the 75 years since the Nakba.

• Thalif Deen: [11-27] How the US made Israel's military what it is today: "Washington has provided over $130 billion in unrestricted aid and weapons to Tel Aviv, more than any other country, ever."

• Dan De Luca/Lisa Cavazuti: [10-25] Gaza is plagued by poverty, but Hamas has no shortage of cash. Where does it come from? "Hamas has an investment portfolio of real estate and other assets worth $500 million, say experts, and an annual military budget of as much as $350 million." I found this piece when I was looking for some backup reference for a reader's assertion that "at its core Hamas is essentially a criminal enterprise which made nearly a billion in the last few years. Pornography, drugs and human trafficking." (Also: "Hamas merely acts as a beard for Iran.") This piece provides some support for those assertions, but even here the headline gets trimmed down pretty fast: "Estimates for its annual military budget range from $100 million to $350 million, according to Israeli and Palestinian sources." (Article says $100 million, of which $40 million "goes to terror group's tunnel digging work." The "Palestinian sources do not include Hamas.)

  We're supposed to react to such numbers by thinking they're huge (and wasteful, and a shade demonic), but are they really? Israel's military budget is more than $23 billion (and they're spending at a much higher rate right now -- the $14 billion Biden requested gives you an idea how much), so even by these lavish estimates, Hamas is spending at most 1% as much as Israel, probably less than 0.5%. Moreover, while labor costs may be cheap in Gaza, the cost of goods must be very dear, as they have to be purchased illicitly, then smuggled into Gaza.

  As for all that cash, the article points out that Qatar is a major source, but all Qatari cash passes through Israel, with its safeguards against redirection to Hamas. The US and others have been sanctioning Hamas for years. While that never seems to work 100%, it does strain credibility to think that Hamas leaders are sitting on huge cash reserves in foreign resorts. And if they were living so high on the hog, why did they blow it all up by launching that Oct. 7 revolt?

• Connor Echols: [11-30] The myth of the 'surgical' war: Interview with Sam Moyn "about what international law really means."

• Rabea Eghbariah: [11-21] The Harvard Law Review refused to run this piece about genocide in Gaza.

• Thomas L Friedman: [12-01] I'm not going to try to argue the points, but this is basically similar to the Gaza separation proposal I've been pushing since the war started (and, effectively, for many years prior). Not exactly the same: it's meaner-spirited, and more petulant (renewing the post-Munich assassination teams). But he's got a good lede, quoting Confucius: "'Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves' -- one for your enemy and one for yourself." Israel has no solution for Gaza, nor even any help. Just ever-renewing problems, not least for itself.

• Melvin Goodman: [12-01] Mainstream media largely ignore Israel's duplicity and deceit: Examples go all the way back to 1948.

• Bassam Haddad/Sinan Antoon: [11-28] This open license must be revoked: The "license" refers to the charge of "antisemitism against any and all critics of Israel." Who granted it, and how it can be "revoked" aren't clear. But its use to defend Israel is at best confusing. (So, the people against genocide are the antisemites? And the people who support Israel's militarized apartheid state aren't antisemites? Even the ones who sound so much like antisemites of yore?) And in the long run, it's likely to backfire, either by making antisemitism seem like not such a bad thing, or turning it into a badge of honor.

• Tareq S Hajjaj: [11-30] 'They shot her son in her arms and forced her to throw his body': testimonies from the death march on Salah al-Din Street.

• Imad Abu Hawash: [11-22] 'If you don't leave, we'll kill you': Hundreds flee Israeli settler violence in Hebron area.

• Noah Hurowitz: [11-27] Not in Their Name: "Jewish Voice for Peace doesn't just oppose the war; it challenges the link between Jewish identity and support for Israel."

• Ellen Ioanes: [12-02] Israel moves into southern Gaza after a week-long truce -- and its goals are murkier than ever.

• Hebh Jamal: [11-30] How Israel's war is deliberately making Gaza uninhabitable.

• Nadim Khoury: [11-30] Israel-Palestine war: Why the West can't conceive of a Palestinian right to security.

• Menachem Klein: [11-28] Israeli arrogance thwarted a Palestinian political path. October 7 revealed the cost: Explains a 2021 Fatah-Hamas agreement, which "offered a different political horizon," but was quashed by Israel and the US, refusing to allow Palestinians to elect new leaders to represent them in talks with Israel.

• Ken Klippenstein: Joe Biden moves to lift nearly every restriction on Israel's access to U.S. weapons stockpile.

• Dan Lamothe/Alex Horton: [11-27] Thousands leave behind American lives to join Israel's war in Gaza.

• Zach Levitt/Amy Schoenfeld Walker: [12-02] What the scale of displacement in Gaza looks like.

• Eric Levitz: [11-28] In Bibi's Israel, Musk's brand of antisemitism is kosher. This article touches on a number of important points -- more than I feel up to unpacking at the moment: the decline and resurfacing (largely after Trump encouraged the crypto-nazis to pop up) of antisemitism in America; the historic pact of convenience between antisemites and Zionists, who before Israel were opposed by left and orthodox Jews, and ignored by the masses who preferred emigration to America; the hardening of Israel as a racist colonial project, with alliances to right-wing political movements around the world; the propaganda war that seeks to discredit opposition to Israel's apartheid and emergent genocide by branding critics as antisemitic. But for now, here's a paragraph to mull over:

  There is no inherent conflict between the interests of Jews in Israel and those who live everywhere else. Yet there is an inescapable contradiction between the values of Israel's far-right government and those that best serve the Jewish diaspora. As minority populations, diasporic Jewish communities have an interest in pluralism, egalitarianism, and inviolable human-rights protections. By contrast, as the vanguard of a Jewish supremacist project that aims to either ethnically cleanse Palestinians in the occupied territories or subject them to unending apartheid, the current Israeli government is hostile to all of those values. Therefore, its search for allies abroad inevitably leads it into the arms of parties and political figures who are bad for the (diaspora) Jews.

• Gideon Levy:

  • [11-12] Children are children, whether in Israel or Gaza. They never deserve to die: "In the fascist reality now sweeping Israel, even such a statement is considered treasonous and an expression of Israel hatred."

  • [11-29] "There is nothing cheaper than Palestinians' lives in Israel".

• Charisma Madarang: [11-30] Israel knew Hamas' attack plan a year before Oct. 7: Report. Draws on Ronen Bergman/Adam Goldman: [11-30] Israel knew Hamas's attack plan more than a year ago: "Israeli officials dismissed it as aspirational and ignored specific warnings."

• Joseph Massad: [11-30] Why Israeli claims have no credibility outside of the West.

• Nicole Narea: [11-22] The many, many times Israelis and Palestinians tried to make peace -- and failed. Useful checklist, but the reason all these "tries" fell through is almost always Israel refused or reneged. For another piece on the same subject, see Jon Schwarz: [11-28] All the times Israel has rejected peace with Palestinians.

• Jonathan Ofir: [12-01] Israel's Gaza onslaught is the next stage of the Dahiya Doctrine: "The Dahiya Doctrine was coined by current Minister Gadi Eisenkot when he was Chief of Northern Command in 2008. The military doctrine, named after the Dahiya quarter of Beirut that Israel targeted and leveled during the 2006 war, outlines 'what will happen' to any enemy that dares attack Israel." In other words, it calls for massive collective punishment of any neighborhood where anyone defies Israel.

• Yumna Patel: [11-30] Israel has a long history of taking Palestinian children captive.

• Mitchell Plitnick: [12-02] Biden works to create plausible deniability as he backs Israel's assault on Gaza. With their leaked notes advising caution and prudence, it's almost as if they're seeding their defense brief for eventual trial in The Hague.

• Maria Rashed: [11-29] UK protests expose wide gulf between gov't and public on Palestine.

• Dan Sabbagh: [12-01] Israel's military strategy threatens to make a desperate situation utterly dire.

• Jeremy Scahill: Israel's insidious narrative about Palestinian prisoners.

• Areeba Shah: [11-24] "Powerful influence of wealthy lobbyists": Right-wing group pressures lawmakers on pro-Israel bills: "ALEC, the group behind a wave of bills to crack down on Israel boycotts, urges states to unconditionally back war."

• Richard Silverstein:

  • [11-30] Language, social media, and the Gaza information war: "Mainstream media no longer dominate battle for hearts and minds in Gaza war."

  • [11-30] IDF efforts to eliminate Hamas have failed: Much ado about body counts.

  • [12-01] Israeli claims of Hamas sexual assaults lay its credulity on the line. I usually find Silverstein to be pretty credible in his detailed pieces about how Israel operates, but will note here that Eric Levitz is now saying "there is no excuse for denial now," citing this article. While I'm sure any rapes were horrific, as indeed was the mere appearance of armed Palestinian intruders in any Israeli home, this strikes me as a small matter in the broad scheme of things. It is, however, the sort of detail that propagandists love to pounce on.

    [PS: In a later tweet, Levitz backs down a bit, admitting the article he cites is a bit fishy. In the meantime, I was reading the part in Viet Tanh Nguyen's Nothing Ever Dies where he talks about the inevitability of rape in war, in much the same terms Levitz uses. As a general rule, sure, but do the rapes really start on the first day of a war (which for Hamas was the only day out of their cage, where they had potential victims, at a time when their position was so precarious that most were bound to die)? My impression is that war rapes mostly happen after the war has ground down, in secure but still alien territory, with the complicity of your fellow troops.]

    [PPS: Mondoweiss also has a piece debunking the rape reports.]

  • [12-01] Netanyahu plan to "thin out" Gaza population to "bare minimum": "Israel claims it is not ethnic cleansing, but a humanitarian gesture."

  • [12-03] As Israel plans Gaza ethnic cleansing, US says no.

  • [12-03] Israeli MKs, messianic evangelicals lobby Congress for ethnic cleansing.

• Margaret Sullivan: [11-28] The Israel-Hamas war is deadly for journalists. Lives are being lost, and truth: "At least 53 journalists have been killed since 7 October, the deadliest figure in the 30 years of keeping these dire statistics."

• Philip Weiss: [11-29] Biden became 'Genocide Joe' thanks to the Israel lobby.

• Sammy Westfall/Helier Cheung: [11-30] Here are the hostages released by Hamas and those remaining in Gaza.

• Jason Willick: [12-01] What Chuck Schumer gets wrong about antisemitism on the left: This piece has been bugging me, and it's probably not worth the trouble trying to figure out why. Obvious first point is that anyone who talks about antisemitism in the left doesn't know the most basic definitions. If you're on the left, you believe that all people deserve the same rights and respect, and there's no reconciling that belief with discrimination on race, ethnic group, religion, creed, sex, or any other arbitrary division. But also, and this is the part that right can't wrap their minds around, you also don't believe that people who have been oppressed should have the right to oppress others.

  Schumer and Willick are slightly at odds here, but Willick is reluctant to attack such a reliable mouthpiece for Israeli interests. His own views are more clear from his recent columns:

  • Biden's efforts to constrain Israel could backfire [10-26]
  • We can't ignore the truth that Hamas uses human shields [11-14]
  • Benjamin Netanyahu, moderate [11-22]
  • Identity politics is a game Jews can't win [10-17]

  The latter is most relevant here, as it confuses the left with the Democratic Party, echoing a common (mostly from centrist elites) complaint about intersectional coalition building. Also note a better critique of Schumer's speech:

  • Dave Zirin: [11-29] Chuck Schumer is antisemitism's great enabler. In his speech, Schumer refers to Zirin's previous article: [11-15] The March for Israel was a hate rally: "What kind of gathering against antisemitism invites antisemites?"

Trump, and other Republicans:

• Zack Beauchamp: [11-29] Nikki Haley's "rise" and the Republican flight from reality: The Koch political arm, Americans for Prosperity Action, endorsed Haley. Given the current polls, Beauchamp thinks this utter folly. But there is still a non-trivial chance that Trump's candidacy could simply implode, leading to a desperate search for any kind of replacement. The current Republican field screams "none of the above" -- the obvious contenders from 2016 chose to sit this one out, leaving it to a few perishables and extreme longshots. But of the field, Haley is the one who's managed to get serious press support, and without compromising her stake on evil. So I'm not sure this is such a bad bet (except for America, of course). Speaking of Haley, here's some of the latest:

  • Jonathan Chait: [12-02] Nikki Haley's rocket ride to second place.

  • Paul Krugman: [11-27] Nikki Haley is coming for your retirement.

  • Harold Meyerson: [11-30] Nikki wins the Wall Street primary: "Unlike Trump, Haley's not crazy, merely far (far!) right." After recounting Haley's anti-union militancy, Meyerson notes: "South Carolina is one of the six states that has never enacted a minimum-wage law, and boasts the lowest rate of unionization (1.7 percent) of any state, in keeping with its history as the staunchest defender of slavery in antebellum America."

  • Catherine Rampell: [12-01] Supposed 'moderates' like Nikki Haley would blow up the government, too. As Steve M. explains, "This is why the Koch network endorsed Haley."

• Kyle Cheney/Josh Gerstein: [12-01] Trump may be sued over Jan. 6 incitement claims, appeals court panel rules.

• Chauncey DeVega: [12-01] The violence is Trump's goal: "It is both the means as well as the goal of Trump's fascist political project."

• Hailey Fuchs/Heidi Przybyla: [11-28] Leonard Leo firm received $21M from Leo-linked group.

• Margaret Hartmann:

  • [11-28] Melania Trump adds awkward touch to Rosalyn Carter funeral. What's awkward is the whole "presidential wives club" concept. And while it's easy to separate Melania as the odd duck out, isn't there a deeper divide between Democrats and Republicans: the Democratic wives feel more like partners (Clinton more in the spotlight, Carter less, but every bit as solid), whereas the Republicans have more constrained, specialist roles -- a feminist critic could have a field day deconstructing all that.

  • [11-30] Gag order can't derail Trump's tirade about judge's wife.

• Robert Kagan: [11-30] A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending. Long, serious piece, but yes, that Robert Kagan, so just noted in passing, without the scrutiny to root out its rotten core. Seriously, warmongers like Kagan make Trump look not so bad (but then he hires ones like McMaster, Pompeo, and Bolton, and screws up even worse).

• Ed Kilgore:

  • [11-28] Iowa kingmaker Vander Plaats thinks state will 'rise up' against Trump: Having picked Republican caucus winners in 2008, 2012, and 2016, he's coming out for DeSantis now.

  • [12-02] Trump plans to make civil service a MAGA spoils system.

• Paul Krugman: [11-30] Donald Trump still wants to kill Obamacare. Why? Probably just because people still call it Obamacare. He could just pass the same law again, maybe with a couple extra loopholes for graft, and call it Trumpcare, and he'd be peachy keen. (That's basically what happened when NAFTA became USMCA.) Also:

  • Catherine Rampell: [11-28] Efforts to kill Obamacare made it popular. Trump says he'll try again.

• Heather Digby Parton: [12-01] Newsom humiliates DeSantis on Fox News. Also:

  • Lloyd Green: [12-01] His debate with Gavin Newsom showed Ron DeSantis will never be president.

  • Ellie Qujinlan Houghtaling: All the things that went wrong for Ron DeSantis in his latest debate failure.

• Amanda Marcotte: [11-30] Students for Trump founder said guns made "women equal" -- before allegedly pistol-whipping a woman: "Ryan Fournier repeatedly said MAGA are women's true protectors -- he's under arrest for hitting his girlfriend."

• Donald P Moynihan: [11-27] Trump has a master plan for destroying the 'deep state': I.e., the "administrative state," the professional civil servants, who work to serve the public, according to the laws they are sworn to uphold, regardless of the political interests of the president.

• Timothy Noah: The GOP showed again how anti-worker it really is.

• Christian Paz: [12-01] Can the party of Trump really become a multiracial coalition? Patrick Ruffini is pushing that line, especially in his book, Party of the People: Inside the Multiracial Populist Coalition Remaking the GOP.

• Beth Reinhard/Manuel Roig-Franzia/Clara Ence Morse: [12-02] Trump pardoned them. Now they're helping him return to power.

Biden and/or the Democrats:

• Ryan Cosrtello: [12-01] House Dems sabotage Biden's Iran diplomacy: Israel über alles!

• Andrew Prokop: [11-27] Is Biden doomed in 2024? 3 theories about the president's bad polls. None very good, but they cover the range, and reveal the limits, of conventional wisdom.

Legal matters and other crimes:

• Gabrielle Gurley: [11-30] Abortion confusion in Texas: "State courts must now decide how to handle life-threatening pregnancy issues that state attorneys, lawmakers, and medical officials refuse to clear up."

• Ian Millhiser:

  • [11-28] Elon Musk's attempt to silence his critics will be heard by one of America's worst judges.

  • [11-28] The new Trump judge revolt against the Voting Rights Act, explained.

  • [11-29] The Supreme Court seeks a middle path between following the law and blowing up the government: SEC v. Jarkesy.

• Cristian Farias: [12-02] The Supreme Court Sandra Day O'Connor left behind is dead, too: "Her successors abandoned the principles of pragmatism and compromise she represented." She just died, at 93. Just think: if she hadn't resigned, we wouldn't have gotten Samuel Alito, and Biden would be able to appoint her successor. But she was a Republican partisan, a Reagan appointee, who proved her bona fides in throwing the 2000 election to GW Bush. Our friend Liz Fink was always a shrewd judge of Supreme Court justices -- she was the first I knew who suggested that David Souter might not turn out to be so bad -- had this take on O'Connor: that while she would allow states to hassle women seeking abortions, she would never rule against that right of well-to-do white women, like herself. She never did, but she did pave the way for her Party to take away your rights.

• Stephen I Vladeck: [11-28] The Fifth Circuit is making the Supreme Court look reasonable.

Climate and environment:

• COP 28 Climate Summit: Updates on the global warming talks.

  More on COP 28:

  • Elizabeth Kolbert: [11-25] The road to Dubai: "The latest round of international climate negotiations is being held in a petrostate. What could go wrong?"

  • Anatol Lieven: [12-01] COP28: Will there be an honest stocktaking on climate?

  • George Monbiot: [11-29] Here's a question Cop28 won't address: why are billionaires blocking action to save the planet?

• Kevin Crowe/Brady Dennis: [11-30] Extreme weather helped fuel surge in malaria cases last year.

• Scott Dance: [11-30] This year will be Earth's hottest in human history, report confirms.

• William B Davis/Judson Jones: [12-02] 2023 hurricane season ends, marked by storms that 'really rapidly intensified'. Somehow, the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean got spared (aside from Idalia), despite record warm temperatures, with a lot of storms turning north far out in the Atlantic. But also there were a lot of storms in the eastern Pacific -- and, though not detailed there, in the western Pacific, and for that matter in the Indian Ocean.

• Oliver Milman: [11-27] US oil and gass production set to break record in 2023 despite UN climate goals: 12.9m barrels of crude oil. That's more than double since 2009, when Obama became president, after 8 years of declining production and soaring prices under GW Bush.

Economic matters:

• Eric Levitz: [11-30] You don't want 2020 prices back: Why deflation is usually not a good thing, with one counterexample to make a point.

• Emily Stewart: [11-28] Why Diet Coke got so expensive: "The economy, explained by Diet Coke, kind of."

Ukraine War:

• Connor Echols: [12-01] Diplomacy Watch: New revelations shed light on early talks.

• Jen Kirby: [11-30] There are now more land mines in Ukraine than almost anywhere else on the planet: "Ukraine is staring down a massive humanitarian challenge -- now and into the future."

Around the world:

• Aparna Gopalan: [11-28] Israel's brutality is stoking the imagination of India's far right: "As the genocide in Gaza continues, India's Prime Minister Narenda Modi is taking notes." The mutual affinity of the world's foremost racist/ethnocrats is striking: "In the past four decades, Hindu nationalism has become the dominant political ideology in India, and the country's support for Zionism has risen in tandem."

• Jeet Heer: [12-01] If Narenda Modi is running a global death squad, he'll be protected by the Kissinger doctrine: "Trying to murder American citizens on American soil is no big deal -- so long as the foreign policy elite likes you."

• Phillips Payson O'Brien: [12-02] The U.S. keeps thinking it's a greater power than it is.

• Hans Steketee: [12-01] The sensible Dutch take a sharp turn to the right: "Far-right anti-immigrant campaigner Geert Wilders emerged as the leader of the largest party in the new parliament."

Henry Kissinger: He died, a nice round 100 years old, elites sucking up to him to the very end. Which raises the question: who is the new worst person in the world? (Here's a reddit thread, which still needs some work -- although I'd keep Murdoch and Netanyahu for the short list, maybe Putin too. More fun is who Kissinger succeeded? If not his partner-in-crime, Nixon, I'd nominate Winston Churchill, who exceeded Kissinger not only in the amount of damage he caused, but also in the amount of praise -- if not necessarily money -- he collected along the way. One difference was that people kept forgetting Churchill's disasters, allowing him more chances, whereas Kissinger's crimes were studiously documented (as will be evident below), even though people in power never seemed to care.

• Dylan Matthews: [11-30] What Henry Kissinger wrought. The bullet points (subheds):

  • Henry Kissinger supported Pakistan's genocide in Bangladesh
  • Henry Kissinger supported Indonesia's bloody invasion of East Timor
  • Henry Kissinger backed brutal bombing raids in Cambodia
  • Henry Kissinger sabotaged peace talks with Vietnam
  • Henry Kissinger supported military coups against democratic leaders in Chile and Argentina
  • Henry Kissinger's good deed: opening China

• Spencer Ackerman: [11-29] Henry Kissinger, war criminal beloved by America's ruling class, finally dies.

• John Bartlett/Uki Goñi/Julian Borger: [11-30] Latin America remembers Kissinger's 'profound moral wretchedness'.

• Daniel Boguslaw: [11-30] Members of Israel's ruling Likud Party once planned to assassinate Henry Kissinger: This was in 1977, "according to a news report from the time." One should recall that in 1948 Lehi, led by future Likud Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, assassinated UN mediator Count Folke Bernadotte.

• Greg Grandin:

  • [11-29] Henry Kissinger: To die at the right time.

  • [11-29] A people's obituary of Henry Kissinger: "For decades, Kissinger kept the great wheel of American militarism spinning ever forward."

  Grandin previously (2015) wrote: Kissinger's Shadow: The Long Reach of America's Most Controversial Statesman. He also wrote the introduction to a Jacobin book expected to ship later this month: The Good Die Young: The Verdict on Henry Kissinger.

• Jonathan Guyer: [12-01] The 4 final acts of Henry Kissinger: "Accountability never came, only more birthday cake." Many good lines here, like: "He said a lot of words and told anecdotes that in the moment riveted the room, but there was no great substance about how to solve perennial problems that would explode again in less than 48 hours."

• Brian Karem: [12-01] My conversations with Henry Kissinger, a man I abhorred.

• David Klion: Henry Kissinger only cared about one thing: "All of the death and misery he left in his wake was a mere by-product of his single-minded pursuit of elite power."

• Charisma Madarang: [11-30] Media, conservatives team up to lionize war criminal Henry Kissinger.

• Joseph Massad: [11-30] The murderous legacy of Henry Kissinger.

• Tom McKenna: [11-30] Scathing obituaries of Henry Kissinger don't mince words about his bloody legacy.

• Ben Rhodes: [11-30] Henry Kissinger, the hypocrite.

• Jon Schwarz: On top of everything else, Henry Kissinger prevented peace in the Middle East.

• Choire Sicha: [11-29] Henry Kissinger, the devil at the dinner party: "His long final act -- after Harvard and D.C. and Cambodia -- was spent at New York's more rarefied tables."

• Norman Solomon: [11-30] Henry Kissinger was the definition of elite impunity.

• Tatyana Tandanpolie: [11-30] "Murderous scumbag": Anthony Bourdain's brutal takedown of "war criminal" Henry Kissinger goes viral.

• Nick Turse: [12-01] Ask brutalized Cambodians what they think of Kissinger.

• Travis Waldron/George Zornick: [11-29] Henry Kissinger, America's most notorious war criminal, dies at 100: "The titan of American foreign policy was complicit in millions of deaths -- and never showed remorse for his decisions."

• Politico Magazine: [11-30] 'My mother told me not to speak ill of the dead': Political experts on Henry Kissinger's legacy. They consulted ten "experts," and took the title from Rosa Brooks, who added, "which pretty much precludes me from saying anything at all about Henry Kissinger." Even the ones who try to say something nice have trouble conveying the notion.

• Responsible Statecraft: [12-01] Symposium: Peace or destruction -- what was Kissinger's impact?: "Wide range of experts and commentators weigh in on the conflicted legacy of an American statesman." George Beebe is one of the few to applaud Kissinger, in terms that Tom Blanton immediately punctures in the next entry:

  The declassified legacy of Henry Kissinger undermines the triumphant narrative he labored so hard to build, even for his successes. The opening to China, for example, turns out to be Mao's idea with Nixon's receptiveness, initially dissed by Kissinger. His shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East did reduce violence but it took Anwar Sadat and then Jimmy Carter to make the peace that Kissinger failed to accomplish. The 1973 Vietnam settlement was actually available in 1969, but Kissinger mistakenly believed he could do better by going through Moscow or Beijing. Meanwhile, Kissinger's callousness about the human cost runs through all the documents.

Other stories:

Tim Alberta: [12-01] The bogus historians who teach evangelicals they live in a theocracy: "A new book on the Christian right reveals how a series of unscrupulous leaders turned politics in to a powerful and lucrative gospel." That would be Alberta's own book: The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism.

Jeremy Barr: [11-30] MSNBC draws backlash for canceling Mehdi Hasan show. Also:

• John Nichols: [12-01] American discourse needs more Mehdi Hasan, not less.

Ryan Cooper:

• [11-30] The Cybertruck is the dumbest thing I've ever seen: "Elon Musk enters his Caligula era."

• [11-21] Tesla faces off against Nordic labor solidarity.

Chas Danner/Nia Prater: [12-01] George Santos has been expelled from Congress: Live updates. The House vote was 311-114: Democrats voted 206-2 (2 present) to expel; Republicans 112-105 to not expel. The measure required a two-thirds supermajority (282 votes). Five Republicans (including Kevin McCarthy) and three Democrats (including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) did not vote.

• Li Zhou: [12-01] George Santos's messy expulsion vote, briefly explained.

• Michelle Goldberg: [12-01] Farewell to George Santos, the perfect MAGA Republican.

• Lydia O'Connor: [12-01] 'George Santos is an ass': House colleagues share their true feelings after his ouster.

• Adam Serwer: [12-01] Expelling George Santos was a mistake.

• Matt Stieb/Margaret Hartmann: [12-01] Here's every single lie told by George Santos: This article has been kicking around ever since shortly after the 2022 election, with many updates. I've never bothered reporting it, but now seems like the time.

• Kara Voght/Ben Terris/Jesús Rodriguez: [12-01] The last days of George Santos, U.S. Congressman "Scenes from the final act of a Washington farce."

Silvia Foster-Frau/N Kirkpatrick/Arelia R Hernández: [11-16] Terror on Repeat: "A rare look at the devastation caused by AR-15 shootings."

Penelope Green: [11-30] Larry Fink, whose photographs were 'political, not polemical,' dies at 82. I noted Larry's death last week, and complained that the New York Times didn't have an obituary up. (When his sister, Elizabeth Fink, died a few years back, her obituary appeared, at least briefly, above that of Yogi Berra.) Here it is, complete with a nice selection of his photographs ("the chilly anomie of Manhattan's haute monde, the strangeness of Hollywood royalty and the lively warmth of rural America").

Jeet Heer: [11-26] Garry Wills and the real Kennedy curse: Unfortunately, this is a 1:43:30 podcast with no transcript, so I can't imagine myself slogging through it, but I want to at least note that my interest was piqued by "our shared love for Garry Wills's The Kennedy Imprisonment, a revelatory book about not just the Kennedy family but also the nature of 'great man politics.'" I've read a number of Wills's books, starting (long ago) with Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man, which at the time I saw as a brilliant dissection.

Anita Jain: [12-01] How Franklin Roosevelt tamed Wall Street: Review of Diana B Henriques: Taming the Street: The Old Guard, the New Deal, and FDR's Fight to Regulate American Capitalism. Over the course of American history, there have been few cases where presidential leadership actually meant something, but the most brilliant of all was Roosevelt's handling of the banking panic in the first weeks of his administration. He ordered a "banking holiday" to stop the withdrawals, and addressed the nation via radio, where he explained in authoritative detail how banking worked, why it was vulnerable to panics, and how they can be avoided with a little patience. When he reopened the banks, the panic had subsided, but he still moved quickly to pass a new law to make sure such panics wouldn't happen again (as they had regularly throughout American history). This law was the Carter-Glass Act, which worked brilliantly -- especially federal deposit insurance -- for 65 years, until Citibank got the Republican Congress and Clinton to repeal it, a mere ten years before the biggest banking crisis since 1933. This was the cornerstone of Roosevelt's famous "100 days," which remains the "gold standard" for what Democratic government can do with a large majority in Congress and business back on their heels. (And yes, one of the most important things they did was get rid of the gold standard, which had become a dead weight on the world economy.)

A good book to read on this is Adam Cohen: Nothing to Fear: FDR's Inner Circle and the Hundred Days That Created Modern America. As someone who was born in 1950, I grew up with little sense of what Roosevelt accomplished, even though it was all around me. Democrats were way too modest. This contrasts starkly with the Republicans' systematic efforts to memorialize Lincoln and Reagan.

Sarah Jones: [11-29] The infidel turned Christian: "When Ayaan Hirsi Ali renounced Islam for atheism, her conversion made her a global star." Now, she's reinventing herself.

Ezra Klein: [12-03] The books that explain where we are in 2023. A noble undertaking, but a hard one for anyone to read enough to undertake. None here that I've read, but half or so I've reported on. Still, isn't it a bit strange that when he looks for a book on Israel, all he comes up with is Ari Shavit's 10-year-old My Promised Land? I did read a substantial extract from that book, where he describes in considerable detail the 1948 expulsion of Palestinians from Lydda and Ramle -- we'd call that "ethnic cleansing" these days -- and rationalizes it as essential to the founding and glory of his beloved Israel.

I could complain that much more has been written on Israel/Palestine since then, but the book I still most recommend came out in 2004: Richard Ben Cramer's How Israel Lost: The Four Questions. The most enduring of those questions is why Israel keeps pushing the parameters of a peace settlement beyond what Palestinians are willing to accept. But he also has some insights as to why Palestinian leaders have proven so inept at negotiating with Israel.

More book lists/reviews:

• The New Yorker: [11-29] The best books of 2023.

Keren Landman: [11-29] US life expectancy no longer catastrophic, now merely bad.

Clay Risen: [11-30] Pablo Guzmán, Puerto Rican activist turned TV newsman, dies at 73: A name I recognize from back in the 1970s, involved with a group called the Young Lords.

Nathan J Robinson: [11-28] Why you should primarily focus on your own country's crimes: "Why don't U.S. activists focus on the crimes of the Chinese government? Because we're responsible for what is done in our name, and what we can most affect." Well, also because echoing a moral critique by Americans in power is taken to ratify and promote hostile foreign policies that often only make the problems worse, and in any case are beyond what the US should be doing abroad. And also because, regardless of how pure your intentions are, you're not likely to be heard beyond the din of American saber-rattling. As for other countries that are allied with America (like Israel and Saudi Arabia), you have no business interfering with them, but you can certainly question why the US helps them oppress their own people.

Aja Romano: [11-17] The Crown increasingly becomes a fantastical apologetic for the royal family.

Jeffrey St Clair: [12-01] Roaming Charges: The Dr. Caligari of American Empire: Title refers to Kissinger, the opening subject here, with much more to follow.

Washington Monthly: [11-28] Remembering Charlie Peters: A useful compendium of articles and other tributes occasioned by the death of Washington Monthly's founder and long-time editor. I cited James Fallows: Why Charlile Peters matters last week. No need to list them all here, since that's what this article is for, but let me point out:

• Robert Kuttner: [11-27] Charlie Peters and the odyssey of neoliberalism.

Clinton Williamson: [11-23] You have "the right to be lazy": "Paul Lafargue's anti-work manifesto is newly relevant in a time when the very idea of labor is changing." Lafargue (1842-1911) published his book in 1883.

Scattered tweets:

Ryan Grim:

The irony of conflating anti-zionism with antisemitism is that in the beginning, zionism's most essential backers, the British government, supported zionism because they were actively antisemitic and wanted to make sure Jewish refugees from Russian pogroms didn't come to Britain

Richard Yeselson:

Eye for an eye is now twenty eyes for one eye. And ever trending up. Gotta stop. Hamas' taking of the first eye was horrific. How much more horror will Israel and the US now inflict in response? Gaza is being vaporized. For what?

Nov 2023