Monday, September 30, 2024

Speaking of Which

As expected, I've had very little time to work on this all week. The idea of starting each week's post with an evolving executive summary will have to wait until next week, at the earliest.

Trying to wrap this up Monday afternoon, but I soon have to take a break to buy some lumber and tools, and I should spend most of the day working on the upstairs room (having wasted my weekend on what should have been a simple wiring job, and, well, much of the bulk below. I probably won't post this until late, so I'll likely find more, but in lieu of trying to summarize my main points, let me just emphasize two:

  1. I've tried very hard for very long to be as understanding as possible to Israelis, even though I never embraced the nationalist movement that founded and led the "Jewish State" (never mind the crypto-religious settler cult that currently holds sway over it). Nor have I been reluctant to criticize when I've sensed similar (correlative?) movements among Palestinians, even when I saw in them reflections of the dominant Israeli trends. I believe that people of all sides deserve human rights, and I'm sympathetic to those who are denied them, regardless of whose fault that might be (even when the fault is one's own). However, at this point Israel alone -- by which I mean the current governing coalition and all those who support them (not all Israelis, but most; not most Americans, but some) -- bear exclusive responsibility for all pain and suffering in the region, even their own. One thing that follows from this is that every violence from any side is properly viewed as a consequence of Netanyahu's incitement and perpetuation of this genocidal war. Just for the record, I don't approve of Hamas or Hezbollah violence any more than I approve of Israeli violence, but I understand that when Israel acts as it has been doing, human nature will respond in kind. Israel alone has the power to end this conflict. That they refuse to pay even the minimal rights of according Palestinians a right to live in peace and dignity puts this all on them.

  2. I have very little new to say about the US elections. Trump, Vance, and virtually every other Republican have proven to be even more boorish and benighted than previously imagined. Honest and decent American voters have to stop them, which means electing Democrats, regardless of their flaws. I will continue to note some of these flaws, but none of them can possibly alter the prime directive, which is to stop the Republicans. To that end, I will continue to note pieces that expose their failures and that heap derision on them, but I don't see that doing so here makes much difference. I, and probably you, know enough already. Aside from voting, which is the least one can and should do, I wouldn't mind tuning out until November, when we can wake up and assess the damages.

I could write much more about each of these two points, but not now.

Top story threads:

Israel: Israel dramatically expanded its genocidal war into Lebanon this week, which warrants yet another section, below

  • Mondoweiss:

    • [09-23] Day 353: Israel launches bombing campaign on Lebanon as Hezbollah retaliates: "Israel's intensifying bombardment of Lebanon has killed at least 274 people so far, while Hezbollah retaliates with rockets across Israel. The Israeli army also raided and forcibly shut down the Ramallah office of Al Jazeera."

    • [09-26] Israel's Genocide Day 356: Netanyahu denies accepting US-French ceasefire proposal with Lebanon: "As Israel expands bombing in Lebanon, Hezbollah rockets have reached reached Akka, Haifa, Tiberias, and the lower Galilee. Meanwhile, in Gaza, Israel returned a truckload of decomposing bodies without identification that it had abducted from Gaza." First thing to note here is that they've changed the headline here: all previous entry titles started with 'Operation al-Aqsa Flood' (their quotes) before "Day." I've always dropped that part, as I found it both unnecessary and unhelpful: "Operation al-Aqsa Flood" lasted at most four days; everything since then, as well as most of those first four days, has been Israel's doing -- and I wasn't about to impose Israel's own declaration ("Operation Swords of Iron," which in itself says much about Israeli mentality). I'm not going to repeat the new title either (beyond this one instance), but I do consider it truthful, and have since about one week into the operation, by which time it was clear what Netanyahu had in mind (look back for quotes about Amalek; e.g.: Noah Lanard: [2023-11-03] The dangerous history behind Netanyahu's Amalek rhetoric: "His recent biblical reference has long been used by the Israeli far right to justify killing Palestinians").

    • [09-30] Day 360: Israel tells US Lebanon invasion 'imminent' as Hezbollah says it is 'ready to engage' Israeli forces: "Hezbollah's Deputy Secretary General said Hezbollah's military capacities remain intact, while Israel has reportedly informed the U.S. that an Israeli ground invasion of southern Lebanon is 'imminent.'"

  • Ahmed Abu Abdu: [09-25] Waste is piling up in Gaza. The public health implications are disastrous. "I am in charge of waste management in Gaza City. The Israeli occupation has launched a war on our sanitation facilities and waste management systems, creating an environmental and health crisis that will take years to recover from."

  • B'Tselem: The pogroms are working - the transfer is already happening: This is mostly a report on events in the West Bank prior to the Oct. 7 Gaza revolt, after which settler violence in the West Bank -- "in the past two yeras, at least six West Bank communities have been displaced" -- only increased.

    For decades, Israel has employed a slew of measures designed to make life in dozens of Palestinian communities throughout the West Bank miserable. This is part of an attempt to force residents of these communities to uproot themselves, seemingly of their own accord. Once that is achieved, the state can realize its goal of taking over the land. To advance this objective, Israel forbids members of these communities from building homes, agricultural structures or public buildings. It does not allow them to connect to the water and power grids or build roads, and when they do, as they have no other choice, Israel threatens demolition, often delivering on these threats.

    Settler violence is another tool Israel employs to further torment Palestinians living in these communities. Such attacks have grown significantly worse under the current government, turning life in some places into an unending nightmare and denying residents any possibility of living with even minimal dignity. The violence has robbed Palestinian residents of their ability to continue earning a living. It has terrorized them to the point of fearing for their lives and made them internalize the understanding that there is no one to protect them.

    This reality has left these communities with no other choice, and several of them have uprooted themselves, leaving hearth and home for safer places. Dozens of communities scattered throughout the West Bank live in similar conditions. If Israel continues this policy, their residents may also be displaced, freeing Israel to achieve its goal and take over their land.

  • Tareq S Hajjaj: [09-26] In Gaza, all eyes are on Lebanon: "People in Gaza hoped that an expansion of the Lebanese front would ease pressure on Gaza. Instead, Israel has escalated its massacres while global attention is elsewhere. They still hope the resistance in Lebanon will make Israel pay."

  • Vera Sajrawi: [09-25] In Israel's prisons, skin diseases are a method of punishment: "Prison authorities are allowing scabies to spread by restricting Palestinian inmates' water supply and depriving them of clean clothes and medical care."

  • Erika Solomon/Lauren Leatherby/Aric Toler: [09-25] Israeli bulldozers flatten mile after mile in the West Bank: "Videos from Tulkarm and Jenin show bulldozers destroying infrastructure and businesses, as well as soldiers impeding local emergency responders."

  • Oren Ziv: [09-23] Settlers attacked Bana's village. Then a soldier shot her through her window: "After Israeli settlers assaulted Palestinians with rocks and Molotov cocktails, soldiers raided Qaryut and killed a 13-year-old as she stood in her bedroom."

Israel targets Lebanon: Following last week's stochastic terrorist exercise -- detonating thousands of booby-trapped pages and walkie-talkies -- Israel escalated its bombing of Lebanon, Israel targeting and killed senior Hezbollah leadership, including long-time leader Hasan Nasrallah. In many quarters, this will be touted as a huge success for Netanyahu in his campaign to exterminate all of Israel's enemies, but right now the longer-term consequences of fallout and blowback are incalculable and probably even unimaginable. We should be clear that Hezbollah did not provoke these attacks, even in response to Israel's genocide in Gaza.

(In 2006, Hezbollah, which had been formed in opposition to Israel's 1982-2000 occupation of southern Lebanon, did act against Israel, as a diversion after Israel launched its first punitive siege of Gaza. Israel shifted attention to Lebanon, and conducted a horrific bombing campaign, as well as an unsuccessful ground incursion.)

Rather, Israel has repeatedly provoked Hezbollah -- which has tried to deter further attacks by demonstrating their ability to fire rockets deep into Israel, a strategy I regard as foolish ("deterrence" only deters people who weren't going to attack you in the first place; it works for Israel against its hapless neighbors, but when others try it, it just provokes greater arrogance and aggression by Israel). As I've stressed all along, Israel's expansion of the war into Lebanon serves two purposes: to provide "fog of war" cover for continuing the genocide in Gaza, and expanding it into the West Bank; and to lock reflexive US support in place, which is tied to the supposedly greater regional threat of Iran. The US could short-circuit this war by denouncing Israel's aggression, by demanding an immediate cease-fire, and by negotiating a separate peace and normalization with Iran (which Iran has long signalled a desire for). Instead, the Biden administration continues to let Netanyahu pull its strings.

Note that I haven't tried to subdivide these links, but events unfolded quickly, so dates may be significant.

  • Al Jazeera: [09-28] Israel kills Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in air strike on Beirut: "Hezbollah confirms Nasrallah's death as Israel says it hit the group's leaders at their headquarters in south Beirut."

  • Seraj Assi: [09-24] Israel is extending its genocidal war to Lebanon.

  • Elia Ayoub: [09-23] With page blasts and airstrikes, Israel unleashes its terror on Lebanon: "Israeli leaders have threatened to replicate the 'Gaza model' in south Lebanon. But Hezbollah may prove to be an even more challenging foe than Hamas."

  • Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor: Israel escalates its military attacks in Lebanon, targeting residential areas and civilians with intense raids.

  • Khader Jabbar/Abualjawad Omar: [09-27] From Gaza to Beirut: Abdaljawad Omar on the ripple effects of Israel's attack on Lebanon: Interview, from [09-25]. Omar has written several articles for Mondoweiss that I've been highly critical of. On the other hand, I see little to quibble with here:

    I may be exaggerating at some level, but those are the contours of how Israel viewed October 7. Not because it was really an existential risk. We already saw that in only two or four days, Israel was able to regain the Gaza envelope and the settlements surrounding Gaza. But on the level of the psyche, that's how it felt for most Israelis. So they want to regain the initiative. They saw October 7 as an opportunity to exact a price from everybody in the region who supports resistance. They want to destroy societies that are challenging them, whether in Gaza, Lebanon, or other places.

    The real desire is for an ultimate form of victory, this kind of awe-inspiring victory that will give them an answer to their existential questions.

    I think that on some level, the Israelis won the war, they won the victory. They want to create these awe-inspiring moments, like we saw with the pager and walkie-talkie attacks, which they have severely missed in contrast to how they were caught with their pants down on October 7.

    October 7 was a moment that not only stuck in the Israeli psyche, but the Palestinian psyche as well. Israel's genocide in Gaza inspired shock and horror, but didn't inspire a lot of awe. It didn't give Israelis the taste of power that Israeli identity was built on. But with Hezbollah, we've seen this awe factor come back, like the penetration of the communication devices and blowing them all up at once. This includes some of the operations that Israel has conducted in Gaza, like the extraction of some Israeli prisoners held by the Palestinian resistance.

    That's on a level of, if you want, psychological and aesthetic analysis. But on a political level, Israel finds this as an opportunity. It's already way deep into a war for 11 months, a war that is costing it a lot economically, socially, politically, and diplomatically. It sees that only more war will bring about better results in those domains.

    It will be able to establish what it calls deterrence. It will be able to put a line in the sand and say, if you ever challenge us again, this is what will happen to you. It will burn into the consciousness of the people of the region that Israel shouldn't be played with. All of these motivations coexist all at once in Israel's conduct -- and of course, for the settlers specifically.

    The only ones who have a real solution for this whole Palestinian question, instead of managing the conflict or shrinking the conflict or destroying the possibilities for two states or one state, are the settlers who say that we should change the paradigm with the Palestinians. They say, we should destroy Palestinian existence in the land of Palestine.

    So for the settlers, the "ultimate victory" is to get rid of as many Palestinians as possible from the river to the sea, including Palestinian citizens of Israel, and establish the kind of pure religious Jewish state that they have always dreamed of. For them, war is desirable. It maintains the possibility for ethnic cleansing, it maintains the possibility for genocide. It means it still keeps the possibility of total victory open. Of course, even in their wildest dreams, even if they clear out all of the Palestinians from Palestine, I think the Palestinian question will not go away.

    I don't have time to ruminate on this right now, but there is a lot to unpack here.

  • Ken Klippenstein: [09-23] Beep, beep! "Israel's pager caper is a Wile E. Coyote vs. Road Runner exercise in futility."

    This is the less cinematic but no less depressing reality of the pager attack: it is just another version of the latest weapon in the never changing battlefield, one typified by these kinds of tit-for-tat attacks that never bring about a decisive ending or a new beginning.

    Before long, other countries and terrorist groups will buy or develop their own Acme Exploding Pagers, as Panetta hinted. The media's uncritically declaring Israel's latest caper a success creates an incentive for countries to do just that. Absent an honest assessment, hands will again be wrung, chins scratched, ominous warnings issued, and beep, beep! -- perpetual war will zip right on by.

    And of course when Hezbollah or some other group attacks our devices, the national security state will happily label it terrorism.

  • Edo Konrad: [09-20] What Israelis don't want to hear about Iran and Hezbollah: "For years, Israeli expert Ori Goldberg has tried to challenge commonly-held assumptions about the Islamic Republic and its allies. Will anyone listen?"

  • Andrew Mitrovica: [09-28] The peace appeals of Israel's Western enablers are a cynical charade: "For the West, Lebanese lives are as disposable as Palestinian lives. Its calls for a ceasefire are no more than a sham."

  • Qassam Muaddi:

  • Nicole Narea: [09-28] Hezbollah's role in the Israel-Hamas war, explained.

  • Liz Sly: [09-29] Nasrallah's assassination shreds illusion of Hezbollah's military might. What military might? In 2006, Hezbollah was effective at repelling an Israeli ground incursion, which wasn't all that serious in the first place. But Hezbollah has no air force, no effective anti-aircraft defense, no tanks, few if any drones, a few small missiles that while more sophisticated than anything Hamas had in Gaza have never been able to inflict any serious damage. Sure, they talk a foolish game of deterrence, but no one in Israel takes their threat seriously.

  • Mohamad Hasan Sweidan: [09-20] No one is safe: the global threat of Israel's weaponized pagers.

America's Israel (and Israel's America):

  • Michael Arria:

    • [09-24] The Shift: Biden team admits they won't get ceasefire done. Cites the Sanger and Ward pieces below.

      • David E Sanger: [09-23] Biden works against the clock as violence escalates in the Middle East: "President Biden is beginning to acknowledge that he is simply running out of time to help forge a cease-fire and hostage deal with Hamas, his aides say. And the risk of a wider war has never looked greater." It's hard to make things happen when you don't have the will to exercise your power. Still, it's pretty pathetic to think that a sitting US president needs more than four months to demand something as simple and straightforward as a cease-fire. (The hostage exchange is an unnecessary complication.) While I'm sure there are limits to presidential power, the problem here appears to be that Biden and his administration don't have the faintest understanding of what needs to be done. Nor do they seem to care.

      • Alexander Ward: [09-19] US officials concede Gaza cease-fire out of reach for Biden: "Biden administration is still pushing talks, but a breakthrough appears unlikely.

      • Arria also quotes Alon Pinkas in Haaretz:

      [Netanyahu] has a vested interest in prolonging the war for his political survival and in making it an election issue that could potentially harm Vice President Kamala Harris. It seems that the US finally and very belatedly realized it last week, which is why, however unfortunate, there is little the US will do until the election, unless it's forced to act in the case of a major escalation.

    • [09-26] The Shift: Tlaib target of (yet another) smear campaign: "Rep. Rashida Tlaib is being targeted by yet another smear campaign, after she criticized Michigan's AG for pursuing charges against Palestine protesters."

    • [09-27] Netanyahu defends Gaza and Lebanon attacks in UN speech: "Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the United Nations on Friday, vowing to continue waging war on Gaza and Lebanon. Israeli media reports the Israeli Prime Minister ordered massive strikes on Beirut just before giving the speech."

  • Sam Bull: [09-23] US sending more troops to the Middle East: "Now close to 50,000 American service members in the region as the threat of a wider war looms."

  • Tara Copp: [09-23] US sends more troops to Middle East as violence rises between Israel and Hezbollah: I've been saying all along that Israel's attacks on Lebanon (aka Hezbollah) are designed to trap the US into a role of shielding Israel from Iran. The thinking is that if the US and Iran go to war, the US will become more dependent on Israel, and more indulgent in their main focus, which is making Gaza and the West Bank uninhabitable for Palestinians. US troop movement prove that the strategy is working, even though it's pretty obviously cynical and deranged.

  • Dave DeCamp: [09-26] US gives Israel $8.7 billion in military aid for operations in Gaza and Lebanon.

  • Fawaz A Gerges: [09-30] The rising risk of a new forever war: Title from jump page: "The United States has not been a true friend of Israel." This is the relevant paragraph:

    Nevertheless, it is the only way forward. Israel's hubris in its attacks on Lebanon has been enabled by America's "ironclad" military support and diplomatic cover for its ally. In this regard, the United States has not been a true friend to Israel. Israel will not know lasting peace until it recognizes that its long-term security depends on reconciliation with the millions of Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Its leaders must find a political compromise that will finally allow Israel to be fully integrated into the region. Top-down normalization with Arab autocrats is not enough.

  • Jamal Kanj: [09-27] Israel's war on Lebanon and Netanyahu's October Surprise to pick the next US president.

  • Yousef Munayyer: [09-25] How Anthony Blinken said no to saving countless lives in Gaza: "The secretary of state overruled his own experts, allowing bombs to continue to flow to Israel. How many more people would be alive today if he hadn't?"

  • Brett Murphy: [09-24] Israel deliberately blocked humanitarian aid to Gaza, two government bodies concluded. Anthony Blinken rejected them.

  • Ishaan Tharoor:

    • [09-20] A broader Israel-Lebanon war now seems inevitable: "This week's pager explosions in Lebanon represent a tactical victory for Israel. They also appear to lock the region into an escalatory spiral." I thought that tactics were meant to facilitate strategy, but it's hard to discern either in such massive, indiscriminate mayhem. Unless the strategy is to convince the world that Israelis are insane as well as evil, in which case, sure, they're making their point.

    • [09-23] World leaders gather at a UN desperate to save itself: "Ongoing crises in Sudan, Gaza and Ukraine have underscores the inefficacy of the world's foremost decision-making body. Great power competition may be to blame." You think? The UN has no power to enforce judgments, so the only way it can function is as a forum for negotiation, and that only works if all parties are amenable. There is nothing the UN can do about a nation like Israel that is flagrantly in contempt of international law. In many ways, the US is even more of a rogue force on the international scene. America's disregard for other nations has pushed other countries into defensive stances, further disabling the UN. Now it's just a big gripe session, as the speeches by Netanyahu and Biden made abundantly clear.

    • [09-24] Biden walks off the UN stage, leaving behind a world in 'purgatory': "In his last speech from the dais of the UN General Assembly, Biden highlighted his efforts to resolve the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. Others remain skeptical."

    • [09-27] At the UN, overwhelming anger at Israel: "At the United Nations, world leaders cast Israel's heavy-handed campaigns in Gaza and the inability of the UN system to rein it as a danger to the institution itself."

  • Robert Wright: [09-27] Biden and Blinken, Israel's lawyers.

Israel vs. world opinion:

Election notes:

Trump:

Vance, and other Republicans:

Harris:

  • James Carden: [09-25] When odious foreign policy elites rally around Harris: "We should take seriously those responsible for some of the bloodiest, stupidest national security decisions in recent memory." Cheneys, of course, and a few more mentioned, as well as reference to this:

  • Adam Jentleson: [09-28] Kamala Harris said she owns a gun for a very strategic reason: "She has been doing an effective job of vice signaling from the left." First I've heard of "vice signaling," and this definition doesn't help: "Vice signaling means courting healthy controversy with the enforcers of orthodoxy -- the members of interest groups who on many critical issues have let themselves off the hook for accurately representing the views and interests of those they claim to speak for." I have run across "virtue signaling" before, which is a term used to deride views from the left as mere ploys to make one seem more virtuous -- an implicit put-down of anyone who doesn't agree. "Vice signaling" has the same intent, but opposes virtue by embracing its opposite vice. Why these terms should exclusively be directed against the left is counterintuitive -- throughout history, "enforcers of orthodoxy" have nearly always come from the right, where "holier than thou" is a common attitude, and snobbery not just accepted but cultivated.

    The actual examples given, like embracing fracking and threatening to shoot a home invader, may help Harris break away from cartoon left caricatures, and that cognitive dissonance may help her get a fresh hearing. That may be part of her craft as a politician -- as a non- or even anti-politician, I'm in no position to tell her how to do her job. Nor do I particularly care about these specific cases. But I am irritated when leftists who've merely thought problems through enough to arrive at sound answers are dismissed as "enforcers of orthodoxy."

  • Padma Lakshmi: [09-21] As a cook, here's what I see in Kamala Harris. There's a lot in this piece I can relate to, put my own spin on, and imagine her spin as not being all that different.

    Talking about food is a way to relate to more Americans, even those uninterested in her politics. We've all been eating since we were babies, and we're experts on our own tastes. Talking about food paves the way to harder conversations. Food removes barriers and unites us.

    Ms. Harris evinces clear delight in cooking and in talking about almost any type of food -- a passion that is core to who she is, like basketball for Barack Obama or golf for Donald Trump.

    She is omnivorous and a versatile cook.

    That Obama and Trump would go for sports is in itself telling (as is that Trump went for the solo sport, vs. a team sport for Obama, one that requires awareness of other people and the ability to make changes on the fly). I've only watched one of the videos (so far, making dosa masala with Mindy Kaling, which was chatty with less technique than I would have preferred -- I understand the decision to use the premix batter, after at least one stab at making it from scratch).

  • John Nichols: [09-20] Kamala Harris is winning the Teamsters endorsements that really matter: "The national leadership may have snubbed her -- but Teamsters in the swing states that will decide the election are backing her all the way." They all matter. Not clear whether the non-endorsement was reaction to the DNC snub, which I never quite understood. Still, the choice for labor is so overwhelming this time the national leadership appears pretty out of touch.

Walz, Biden, and other Democrats:

  • Ethan Eblaghie: [09-26] The Uncommitted Movement failed because it refused to punish Democrats: "The Uncommitted movement failed to move the Biden-Harris administration policy on Gaza because unaccountable movement leaders were unwilling to punish Democrats for supporting genocide." They failed, if that's the word you want to use, because they didn't get the votes. I doubt this was due to lack of sympathy for their issue: most rank-and-file Democrats (as opposed to party politicians, who of necessity are preoccupied with fundraising) support a cease-fire, and many are willing to back that up with limits on military aid[*]; but they also see party unity as essential to defeating Trump and the Republicans, and they see that as more critical/urgent than mobilizing public opinion against genocide. I can see both sides of this, but at this point the ticket and the contest are set, so all you can do is to pick one. While I have little positive to say about Harris on Israel, it's completely clear to me that Trump would be even worse, and I can't think of any respect in which he would be preferable to Harris. As for punishing the Democrats -- even with third-party and not-voting options -- don't be surprised if they never forgive you. So ask yourself, do you really want to burn the bridge to the people you're most likely to appeal to?

    [*] Michael Arria, in a piece cited above, has some polling:

    Recent polls show vast support for an arms embargo on Israel among Democratic voters.

    A March 2024 Center for Economic and Policy Research survey found that 52% of Americans wanted the U.S. to stop weapons shipments. That included 62% of Democratic voters.

    A June survey then from CBS News/YouGov found that more than 60% of voters should not send weapons or supplies to Israel. Almost 80% of Democrats said the the U.S. shouldn't send weapons.

  • Ken Klippenstein: [09-25] Biden's ode to perpetual war: "In final UN speech, President ignores a world on fire.

Supreme Court, legal matters, and other crimes:

Climate and environment:

Economists, the economy, and work:

Ukraine and Russia:

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

Other stories:

Obituaries:

  • Benny Golson:

    • Richard Williams: [09-25] Benny Golson obituary: "Tenor saxophonist whose compositions were valued for their harmonic challenge and melodic grace."

  • Fredric Jameson: A critic and philosopher, I remember him fondly from my early Marxist period, which certainly meant his books Marxism and Form: Twentieth Century Dialectical Theories of Literature (1971), and possibly The Prison-House of Language: A Critical Account of Structuralism and Russian Formalism (1972), but I haven't followed him since. Turns out he's written much more than I was aware of, especially many titles published by Verso Books.

    • Terry Eagleton: Fredric Jameson, 1934-2024: "reflects here on Jameson's humility, generosity, and unrivalled erudition."

    • Owen Hatherley: [09-28] Fredric Jameson's capitalist horror show: "We still live in the postmodern landscape defined by the Marxist thinker, who died this month."

      Jameson's work was both utopian and depressive, expansive in the field of its analysis and trained almost entirely on culture rather than politics. And he was rare among Marxist intellectuals in the neoliberal era to have managed to speak firmly to the present day. That is why his work affected so many. An entire strand of mainstream political thought is unimaginable without the influence of Jameson's fusion of hard cultural criticism, immense knowledge, refusal of low/high cultural boundaries, and his endlessly ruminative, open-minded dialectical curiosity, put in the service of a refusal ever to forgive or downplay the horrors that capitalism has inflicted upon the world. Jameson's Marxism was particularly tailored for our fallen era, a low ebb of class struggle, an apparent triumph of a new and ever more ruthless capitalism: "late", as he optimistically put it, borrowing a phrase from the Belgian Trotskyist Ernest Mandel.

      Also:

      "The dialectic," wrote Jameson, "is not moral." In the sprawling Valences of the Dialectic (2009), Jameson proposed "a new institutional candidate for the function of Utopian allegory, and that is the phenomenon called Wal-Mart". While conceding that the actually existing Wal-Mart was "dystopian in the extreme", Jameson was fascinated by its unsentimental destruction of small businesses, its monopolistic mockery of the concept of a "free market", and its immense, largely automated and computerised network of distribution of cheap, abundant goods. Perhaps it was a step too far to extrapolate from this -- as did Leigh Phillips and Michael Rozworski in their 2019 The People's Republic of Wal-Mart -- and portray the megacorp as a prefiguring of communist distribution networks. But what Jameson was up to, following Gramsci's and Lenin's fascination with Fordism and Taylorism, was an attempt to uncover what the new horrors of capitalism made possible. In the case of Wal-Mart, he argued, the answer was: a computerised planned economy. Jameson was a strict, 20th-century Marxist in remaining a firmly modernist thinker, refusing to find any solace in imagined communal or pre-capitalist pasts. But his unsentimental modernism did not preclude an outrage at the ravages inflicted by colonialism and imperialism in the name of "progress", an often overlooked thread in his work.

      [PS: From this, my first and evidently only free article, I clicked on Richard Seymour: [07-22] The rise of disaster nationalism: "The modern far-right is not a return to fascism, but a new and original threat." I could see this as a reasonable argument, as evidence of the "thought-provoking journalism" the publication touts, but I was stopped cold at the paywall ("as little as $12.00 a month").

    • Clay Risen: [09-23] Fredric Jameson, critic who linked literature to capitalism, dies at 90: "Among the world's leading academic critics, he brought his analytical rigor to topics as diverse as German opera and sci-fi movies."

    • AO Scott: [09-23] For Fredric Jameson, Marxist criticism was a labor of love: "The literary critic, who died on Sunday at age 90, believed that reading was the path to revolution."

    • Robert T Tally Jr.: [09-27] The Fredric Jameson I knew.

    • Kate Wagner: [09-26] The gifts of Fredric Jameson (1934-2024): "The intellectual titan bestowed on us so many things, chief among them a reminder to Always Be Historicizing."

    • Verso Books: [09-23] Jameson at 90: A Verso Blog series: "Our series honoring Fredric Jameson's oeuvre in celebration of his 90th birthday."

  • Kris Kristofferson:

  • Maggie Smith:

  • Also note:

Books

  • Patrick Iber: [09-24] Eric Hobsbawm's lament for the twentieth century: "Where some celebrated the triumph of liberal capitalism in the 1990s, Hobsbawn saw a failed dream." Re-reviewing the British historian's 1994 book, The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914-1991, which I started at the time, and have long meant to return to -- although after re-reading the first of what turned into his tetraology, The Age of Revolution (1789-1948), I found myself wanting to work through the intermediate volumes -- The Age of Capital (1848-1875) and The Age of Empire (1875-1914) first. Iber teases us with his conclusion:

    But if a classic is a work that remains worth reading both for what it is and for what it tells us about the time it was created, Hobsbawm's text deserves that status. It rewards the reader not because a historian would write the same book today but precisely because they would not.

    Hobsbawm's previous books are dazzling for the breadth of his knowledge, and his skill at weaving so many seemingly disparate strands into a sensible whole. This one, however, is coterminous with his life (into his 70s; his dates were 1917-2012), which gives him the advantages (and limits) of having experienced as well as researched the history, and having had a personal stake in how it unfolded.

  • Sandip Munshi: [09-25] Irfan Habib is one of the great Marxist historians.

  • Ryu Spaeth: [09-23] The return of Ta-Nehisi Coates: "A decade after The Case for Reparations, he is ready to take on Israel, Palestine, and the American media." Coates has a new book, The Message, coming out Oct. 1. I expect we'll be hearing much more about this in coming weeks. To underscore the esteem with which Coates is held, this pointed to a 2015 article:

    Here's are several fairly long quotes from Spaeth's article:

    In Coates's eyes, the ghost of Jim Crow is everywhere in the territories. In the soldiers who "stand there and steal our time, the sun glinting off their shades like Georgia sheriffs." In the water sequestered for Israeli use -- evidence that the state had "advanced beyond the Jim Crow South and segregated not just the pools and fountains but the water itself." In monuments on sites of displacement and informal shrines to mass murder, such as the tomb of Baruch Goldstein, who gunned down 29 Muslims in a mosque in 1994, which recall "monuments to the enslavers" in South Carolina. And in the baleful glare of the omnipresent authority. "The point is to make Palestinians feel the hand of occupation constantly," he writes. And later: "The message was: 'You'd really be better off somewhere else.'" . . .

    His affinity for conquered peoples very much extends to the Jews, and he begins the book's essay on Palestine at Yad Vashem, Israel's memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. "In a place like this," he writes, "your mind expands as the dark end of your imagination blooms, and you wonder if human depravity has any bottom at all, and if it does not, what hope is there for any of us?" But what Coates is concerned with foremost is what happened when Jewish people went from being the conquered to the conquerors, when "the Jewish people had taken its place among The Strong," and he believes Yad Vashem itself has been used as a tool for justifying the occupation. "We have a hard time wrapping our heads around people who are obvious historical victims being part and parcel of another crime," he told me. In the book, he writes of the pain he observed in two of his Israeli companions: "They were raised under the story that the Jewish people were the ultimate victims of history. But they had been confronted with an incredible truth -- that there was no ultimate victim, that victims and victimizers were ever flowing." . . .

    The book is strongest when its aperture is narrow. There is no mention of the fact that Israel is bombarded by terrorist groups set on the state's annihilation. There is no discussion of the intifadas and the failed negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian leaders going back decades. There is even no mention of Gaza because Coates was unable to visit the region after the October 7 attack and he did not want to report on a place he hadn't seen for himself. ("People were like, 'Gaza is so much worse,'" he told me. "'So much worse.'") What there is, instead, is a picture of the intolerable cruelty and utter desperation that could lead to an October 7.

    "If this was the 1830s and I was enslaved and Nat Turner's rebellion had happened," Coates told me that day in Gramercy, "I would've been one of those people that would've been like, 'I'm not cool with this.' But Nat Turner happens in a context. So the other part of me is like, What would I do if I had grown up in Gaza, under the blockade and in an open-air prison, and I had a little sister who had leukemia and needed treatment but couldn't get it because my dad or my mom couldn't get the right pass out? You know what I mean? What would I do if my brother had been shot for getting too close to the barrier? What would I do if my uncle had been shot because he's a fisherman and he went too far out? And if that wall went down and I came through that wall, who would I be? Can I say I'd be the person that says, 'Hey, guys, hold up. We shouldn't be doing this'? Would that have been me?"

    • Ta-Nehisi Coates: [08-21] A Palestinian American's place under the Democrats' big tent?: "Though the Uncommitted movement is lobbying to get a Palestinian American on the main stage, the Harris campaign has not yet approved one. Will there be a change before Thursday -- and does the Democratic Party want that?" In the end, the DNC didn't allow a Palestinian speaker, calling into question their "big tent" commitment, and exposing how invisible and unfelt Palestinians have become even among people who profess to believe in democracy, equal rights, human rights, peace and social justice.

Chatter

  • Zack Beauchamp: [09-24] The Israel-Palestine conflict is in fact complicated and difficult to resolve fairly.

    Invariably, posts like these attract the absolute stupidest people who prove why it needs saying in the first place.

    PS: I replied: Reminds me of a joke: how many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb? One, but the light bulb really has to want to change. Palestinians have tried everything; nothing worked, so it looks difficult. But Israel has offered nothing. If they did, it would be easy.

    Many comments, preëmptively dismissed by Beauchamp, make similar points, some harshly, others more diplomatically. One took the opposite tack, blaming it all on Palestinian rejection of Israel's good intentions -- basically a variation on the argument that when one is being raped, one should relax and enjoy it. The key thing is that Israelis have always viewed the situation as a contest of will and power, where both sides seek to dominate the other, which is never acceptable to the other. When dominance proves impossible, the sane alternative is to find some sort of accommodation, which allows both sides most of the freedoms they desire. That hasn't happened with Israel, because they've always felt they were if not quite on the verge of winning, at least in such a dominant position they could continue the conflict indefinitely. Given that presumption, everything else is rationalization.

    One comment cites Ta-Nehisi Coates:

    For Coates, the parallels with the Jim Crow South were obvious and immediate: Here, he writes, was a "world where separate and unequal was alive and well, where rule by the ballot for some and the bullet for others was policy." And this world was made possible by his own country: "The pushing of Palestinians out of their homes had the specific imprimatur of the United States of America. Which means it had my imprimatur."

    That it was complicated, he now understood, was "horseshit." "Complicated" was how people had described slavery and then segregation. "It's complicated," he said, "when you want to take something from somebody."

  • Zachary D Carter: [09-25] Biden's Middle East policy straightforwardly violates domestic and international law.

    In just about every other respect Biden's foreign policy operation has been admirable, but the damage he has done to international conceptions of the U.S. with his Middle East program is on par with George W. Bush.

    PS: I replied: Funny, I can't think of any aspect of Biden foreign policy as admirable, even in intent, much less in effect. Same hubris, hollow principles, huge discounts for shameless favorites (arms, oil, $$). Even climate is seen as just rents. Israel is the worst, but the whole is rotten.]

I saw this in a Facebook image, and felt like jotting it down (at some point I should find the source):

Banksy on Advertising

People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, ttakle a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you're not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.

You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.

Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no chance whether you see it or not is yours. It's yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.

You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don't owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don't . . .

Quite some time ago, I started writing a series of little notes on terms of interest -- an idea, perhaps inspired by Raymond Williams' book Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, that I've kept on a cool back burner ever since. One of the first entries was on advertising, and as I recall -- I have no idea where this writing exists, if indeed it does -- it started with: "Advertising is not free speech. It is very expensive . . ." Williams would usually start with the history of the word, including etymology, then expand on its current usage. I was more focused on the latter, especially how words combine complex and often nuanced meanings, and how I've come to think through those words. Advertising for me is not just a subject I have a lot of personal experience in -- both as consumer or object and on the concept and production side -- but is a prism which reveals much about our ethics and politics. In particular, it testifies to our willingness to deceive and to manipulate one another, and our tolerance at seeing that done, both to others and to oneself.

In looking this up, I found a few more useful links on Raymond Williams (1981-88) and Keywords:

Local tags (these can be linked to directly): music.

Original count: 171 links, 10266 words (13367 total)

Current count: 171 links, 10271 words (13374 total)

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