Monday, October 14, 2024

Speaking of Which

File opened 2024-10-08 11:43 AM.

I had the thought of writing up a "top ten reasons for voting for Kamala Harris and the Democrats this year," but haven't gotten much further than considering the possibility of adding a second list of "top five reasons why voting for Kamala Harris and the Democrats won't be enough." The former is obviously dominated by how bad the Republican offerings are, although you still have to establish that at least in some significant respects, Democrats are preferable. If you can't show that, you can't reject the "third party" option. The second list might even help there, in that most of my reservations are about programs that don't go far enough. The exceptions there are Israel/Palestine and Russia/Ukraine, where Harris doesn't go anywhere at all.

So while I have zero doubt that I will vote for Harris/Walz, and most likely for every other Democrat who bothers to run here in Kansas, I've spent most of my time here dealing with the pressing issues of war, which the election will have little obvious impact on. The best hope I can offer is a mere hunch that Harris has locked herself into a Netanyahu dittohead position out of the calculated fear that any sign of wavering might precipitate a sudden pro-Israel shift toward Trump, and scuttle her campaign, but that once she wins, she'll have more room to maneuver behind the scenes, and ease back toward the more viable ground of decency. In any case, decency isn't even an incidental prospect with Trump.

Monday night, I ended this arbitrarily, with little sense of how much more I didn't get to.

The following is a bit from Gideon Levy's The Killing of Gaza: Reports on a Catastrophe (pp. 9-11):

Israel's media have acted this way for years. They conceal the occupation and whitewash its crimes. No one orders them to do this; it is done willingly, out of the understanding that this is what their consumers want to hear. For the commercial media, that is the top and foremost consideration. In this way Israel's media have become the most important agent for dehumanization of the Palestinians, without the need for censorship or a government directing it to do so. The media take on this role in the knowledge that this is what their customers want and expect of it. They don't want to know anything about what their state and army are carrying out, because the best way to be at peace with the reality of occupation, apartheid and war is with denial, suppression and dehumanization.

There is no more effective and tried means to keep alive an occupation so brutal and cruel as dehumanization via the media. Colonialist powers have always known this. Without the systematic concealment, over dozens of years, and the dehumanization, it may well be that public opinion would have reflected greater opposition to the situation among Israelis. But, if you don't say anything, don't show anything, don't know anything and have no desire to know anything, either, if the Palestinians are not truly human -- not like us, the Israelis -- then the crime being committed against them goes down easier, can be tolerated.

The October 7 war brought all of this to new heights. Israel's media showed almost nothing of what was happening in Gaza, and Israelis saw only their own suffering, over and over, as if it was the only suffering taking place. When Gazans counted 25,000 fatalities in less than four months, most of them innocent noncombatants, in Israel there was no shock. In fact, shock was not permitted, because it was seen as a type of disloyalty. While in Gaza 10,000 children were killed, Israelis continued to occupy themselves exclusively with their captives and their own dead. Israelis told themselves that all Gazans were Hamas, children included, even the infants, and that after October 7, everyone was getting just what they deserved, and there was no need to report on it. Israelis sank into their own disaster, just theirs.

The absence of reporting on what was happening in Gaza constituted the Israeli media's first sin. The second was only slightly less egregious: the tendency to bring only one voice into the TV studios and the pages of the printed press. This was a voice that supported, justified and refused to question the war. Any identification with the suffering in Gaza, or worse, any call to end the war because of its accumulating crimes, was not viewed as legitimate in the press, and certainly not by public opinion. This passed quietly, even calmly, in Israel.

In Israel, people were fine with not having to see Gaza. The Jewish left only declined in size, great numbers of people said they had the scales removed from their eyes -- that is, October 7 led to their awakening from the illusion, the lies, the preconceptions they had previously held. It was sufficient for a single cruel attack for many on the left to have their entire value system overturned. A single cruel attack was sufficient to unite Israelis around a desire for revenge and a hatred not only of those who had carried out that attack, but of everyone around them. No one considered what might be taking place in the hearts and minds of the millions of Palestinians who have been living with the occupation's horrors for all these dozens of years.

What kind of hatred must exist there, if here in Israel such hatred and mistrust could sprout up after a single attack, horrific as it may have been. This "waking up" among the left has to raise serious questions about its seriousness and resilience. This wasn't the first time that the left crumbled in the face of the first challenge it encountered.

I've long been struck by the fickleness of the "peace camp" in Israel: in particular, by how quickly people who should know better rally behind Israeli arms at the slightest provocation. Amos Oz and David Grossman are notorious repeat-offenders here, but the effect is so common that it can only be explained by some kind of mass psychology so deep-seated that it can be triggered any time some faction sees an opportunity for war.

Top story threads:

Israel's year of infamy:

  • Mondoweiss: A website founded by Philip Weiss which has moved beyond its origins as a vehicle for progressive Jews to express their misgivings about Israel by providing an outlet for a wide range of Palestinian voices, this has long been my first stop for news about Israel/Palestine, and has been extraordinarily invaluable over the past year. Here's their: Palestinians reflect: One year of genocide:

    • Michael Arria: [10-10] A year of genocide, a year of protest: "Despite the horror we are watching unfold in Palestine, the movement challenging Israel has seen unprecedented growth and accomplishments in the past year." A reminder that every action produces a reaction -- perhaps not "opposite and equal," but things have a way of settling out over time.

    • Noura Erakat: [10-08] Five things we've learned since October 7. From an August 30 speech as part of a panel titled "All Eyes on Palestine."

      1. It has exposed the enduring colonial nature of international law
      2. This is a U.S. genocide of Palestinians
      3. Universities are an extension of the state's coercive apparatus
      4. Zionism has no moral legs to stand on
      5. Racism and power -- the invisibility and power of Palestinians

    • Tareq S Hajjaj: [10-07] After October 7, my home became a bag I carry with me: "I have lived through my own Nakba and understand why thousands of Palestinians fled their homes in 1948. I made the most difficult decision of my life and left Gaza, not knowing that what I carried might be all I will ever possess of my homeland."

    • Reem A Hamadaqa: [10-07] My martyrs live on: "Out from under the rubble, I see my martyrs waving for me. They all stand again. They smile. They live. They go back home."

    • Maen Hammad: [10-09] Photo essay: An autobiography of uprising: "Documenting one year of revolt from the occupied West Bank to the East Coast."

    • Hebh Jamal: [10-10] The Gaza I knew is gone with our martyrs: "We do not fight for Palestine for our family. I am no longer clinging to the hope of reunification and survival. We fight for Palestine because the liberation of its people means the liberation of us all."

    • Ghada Karmi: [10-08] The true lesson of October 7 is that Israel cannot be reformed: "The year since October 7 has shown us that Israel can neither be accommodated nor reformed. It must be dismantled, and Zionism must be brought to an end. Only this will finally alleviate the Palestinians' terrible ordeal over the past 76 years." This is an argument that I instinctively dislike and recoil from, but I do take the point that it is incumbent on Israelis to show that they are open to reform, the first step to which would be the recognition that they have done wrong, and the resolve to stop doing so, and to start making amends. Whether they can salvage some sense of Zionist legacy is an open question. The strands of thought and culture that drove Israel to genocide are woven deep in their history, and won't be easy to dispose of, but I wouldn't exclude all hope that Israel might recover.

    • Rawan Masri: [10-11] October 7 created a new world, but there is so much left to be done: "We live in an entirely new world than a year ago. The ugly, racist, violent logic dominating our lives has been irrevocably exposed. Will we allow that logic to prevail?"

    • Qassam Muaddi: [10-09] After a year of extermination, Palestine is still alive: "Palestinians have endured 76 years of the Nakba and now the 2024 genocide. Despite Israel and the West's desire to erase our existence, we continue to declare, 'We won't leave.'"

    • Salman Abu Sitta: [10-07] From ethnic cleansing to genocide: "I am a survivor of the 1948 Nakba who lived to witness the 2024 genocide. I may not live to see justice be made, but I am certain our long struggle will be rewarded. Our grandchildren will live at home once again."

  • Ruwaida Kamal Amer: [10-05] After a year of terror in Gaza, our souls feel suspended in time: "I've cheated death, mourned friends, and lost my livelihood. Just when I was on the cusp of leaving this torment, Israel shut our last crossing to the world."

  • Alice Austin: [10-07] A year after the Nova massacre, survivors are still paralyzed with grief: "The Nova festival was the site of October 7's largest massacre. Now, survivors and the families of those murdered are suing the state for negligence." One section head here is in quotes: "It's impossible to heal, because it's never-ending." But the massacre itself ended almost as quickly as it started. What has never ended has been the political use and psychological abuse of that massacre as a pretext for genocide. End that, and everyone can start healing.

  • Ramzy Baroud: [10-11] A year of genocide. "No one had expected that one year would be enough to recenter the Palestinian cause as the world's most pressing issue, and that millions of people across the globe, would, once again, rally for Palestinian freedom." In some limited sense that may be true, but I don't see how it works out. Not for lack of trying, but those "millions of people" haven't been very effective, nor is their fortune likely to change.

  • Joel Beinin: [10-07] Yahrzeit for October 7: Long note on Facebook, including:

    Since October 7, organizations of the American Jewish establishment, like the Jewish Federations and the Anti-Defamation League, have weaponized our grief, decontextualized it, promoted falsehoods about what happened that day, and deployed Israeli propaganda talking points to justify a genocidal onslaught against the Gaza Strip. Within days of October 7, Israeli political and military leaders publicly declared their intention to exact vengeance by destroying Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip. Leading with a campaign of mass bombing in densely populated areas that could only result in massive civilian deaths, they have done so. Israel's conduct of the war does not conform to any reasonable definition of self-defense.

    The second half of the piece is devoted to relatively old history, especially an event in 1971, which leads into the final paragraph:

    The January 2, 1971 attack on the Aroyo family and Israel's brutal response to it prefigure, albeit on a much smaller scale, the events of October 7, 2023 and their aftermath. Shlomo Gazit was correct. Israeli security cannot be achieved by committing war crimes and ethnic cleansing. Palestinian liberation cannot be achieved by murdering civilians.

  • Helen Benedict: [10-03] Ending the cycle of revenge: "Bereaved Israelis and Palestinians use their grief to advocate for reconciliation and peace together."

  • Robert Grenier: [10-05] How Israel's brutal war strategy has remade the Middle East: "Israel set out to reestablish military superiority. It succeeded -- at catastrophic human cost." Article misses the obvious question, which is why "military superiority" matters to anyone other than the military budget makers, as well as why the Hamas attack on October 7 made them think they had something to prove. As for "remaking the Middle East," it really looks much like it did just over a year ago, except for the humanitarian crisis which Israel itself is solely responsible for. (Sure, blame America for aiding, but had Israel not wanted to launch its multi-front war, Americans would have bowed and scraped just the same.)

  • Anis Shivani: [10-11] Israel won: I considered pairing this piece with Baroud (above) as a sobering counterpoint, but it has its own problems. While Palestinians have lost much, it's hard to say what (if anything) Israel has won. Also, he seems to be stuck on the notion that the US is the architect of Israel's foreign policy, whereas the opposite seems much closer to the truth.

  • Nick Turse: [10-07] Israel's year of killing, maiming, starving, and terrorizing the people of Gaza: "Taking stock of the human toll of one year of destruction in the densely packed Gaza Strip." Lots of statistics follow, ending with:

    Last year, images and video of the survivor of the October 7, 2023, strike in Abasan Al-Kabira, 11-year-old Tala Abu Daqqa, circulated online. In a short video, the young girl -- her face peppered with tiny cuts -- appears glassy-eyed, broken, shattered. That day, the first of the war, she became one of the now 2.1 million Palestinians in Gaza who have witnessed or directly experienced conflict trauma and one of the 1 million children in need of mental health and psychosocial support. Since the attack, at least 138,000 fellow Gazans have been killed or wounded.

    Numbers can't tell the full story of the suffering of children and adults living under a year of Israeli bombardment. No matter how accurate, figures can't capture the scope of their sorrow or the depth of their distress. An estimate of how many million tons of rubble Israeli attacks have produced can offer a sense of the scale of destruction, but not the impact of each strike on the lives of those who survived, and the effect on the future of Gaza given how many didn't.

    Numbers are wholly insufficient to explain Tala Abu Daqqa's anguish. Statistics can't tell us much about how living through such a catastrophe affects an 11-year-old child. Heartache defies calculation. Psychological distress can't be reduced to the score on a trauma questionnaire. There is no meaningful way to quantify her loss except, perhaps, by offering up two basic, final numbers that will stay with her forever: two parents and three sisters killed.

Israel:

  • Mondoweiss:

  • Jonathan Adler: Israel's paradoxical crusade against UNRWA: "Israeli officials are relying on UNRWA to prevent a polio epidemic -- while the Knesset advances laws to expel the agency." Paradox?

  • Dave DeCamp: [10-13] Israeli government done with ceasefire talks, seeks annexation of Gaza.

    Israeli defense officials told Haaretz on Sunday that the Israeli government is not seeking to revive ceasefire talks with Hamas and is now pushing for the gradual annexation of large portions of the Gaza Strip. . . .

    The Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth has reported that Israeli forces in Jabalia are carrying out a "scaled-down" version of the "general's plan," an outline for the complete ethnic cleansing of northern Gaza and the killing of any Palestinians who choose to stay, whether by military action or starvation. The UN's World Food Program said Saturday that no food aid has entered northern Gaza since October 1. . . .

    If Israel is successful in cleansing northern Gaza of its Palestinian population, it would pave the way for the establishment of Jewish-only settlements in the area, an idea openly supported by many Israeli ministers and Knesset members. The general's plan calls for the tactics to be used in other parts of the Strip once the north is cleansed.

  • Tareq S Hajjaj: [10-09] Inside Israel's ongoing invasion of Jabalia in northern Gaza: "Israel laid siege to Jabalia in northern Gaza on the anniversary of October 7. Residents tell Mondoweiss that the Israeli army is forcibly conscripting civilians as human shields and shooting residents who attempt to evacuate."

  • Mohammed R Mhawish: [10-09] I'm still reporting on Gaza. But the blood on our streets is no closer to drying: "Palestinian journalists write for a future that doesn't involve counting the dead -- for the bombs to stop, the tanks to roll back, and the drones to disappear."

  • Ibrahim Mohammad/Mahmoud Mushtaha: [10-10] 'Dead bodies everywhere' in Jabalia camp as Israel besieges northern Gaza: "Gazans in the north are trapped in their homes as Israel launches a new military operation, threatening and shooting at fleeing residents."

  • Qassam Muaddi: [10-08] 'I can't feel anything anymore': women in a West Bank refugee camp reflect on a year of Israeli military raids on their homes: "After a year of near-constant Israeli military raids on their homes and private spaces, women are some of the most affected among the Palestinian residents of Nur Shams refugee camp in Tulkarem."

  • Suzi Weissman: [10-07] Israeli politics is even more right-wing since October 7: Interview with Yoav Peled.

  • Mairav Zonszein: [10-07] On Israeli apathy. I resisted the word "apathy" here. It's a commonplace that many (most?) Israelis have lost the ability to recognize Palestinians as human beings -- a loss of empathy that makes them indifferent to horrendous violence. But it's easier to understand that as hatred than as apathy. And no doubt much Israeli propaganda is devoted to stoking hate, but that goes hand-in-hand with efforts to desensitize Israelis to the effects of violence directed at others, and ultimately to keep Israelis from realizing that their own violence is doing to themselves.

    The lawlessness and state violence directed at Palestinians for so long have started to seep into Jewish Israeli society. Mr. Netanyahu's refusal to assume responsibility for the security failures of Oct. 7, his grip on power despite corruption trials, his emboldening of some of the most radical and messianic elements in Israel are a testament to that. The nearly carte blanche support Israel has received from the Biden administration throughout much of this war has further empowered the most hard-line elements of the nation's politics. And yet many Israelis are still not making the connection between their inability to get the government to prioritize Israeli life and how expendable that government treats Palestinian life.

    Without this realization, it is hard to see how Israelis can pave a different path forward that does not rely on the same dehumanization and lawlessness. This, for me, has made what is already a dire, desperate reality seemingly irredeemable. For Israelis to start carving a way out of this mess, they will have to feel outraged not only by what is being done to them, but also what is being done to others in their name, and demand that it stop. Without that, I'm not sure that I, like other Israelis with the privilege to consider it, see a future here.

    Any state that allows such abuse will ultimately turn its anger and callousness on its own people.

Lebanon:

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

  • Michael Arria:

  • Sunjeev Bery: [10-10] US foreign policy has created a genocidal Israel: "Without massive, unconditional US military subsidies, Israel would have had to practice diplomacy with their neighbors years ago." One could just as easily argue that Israel has steered the US toward increasing embrace, if not (yet) of full-blown genocide, then at least to the leading policies of "extraordinary rendition," "black sites," and "targeted assassination," as Israel became first the model, then the laboratory for the "war on terror" -- really just a cult that believes that sheer force can overcome all obstacles. Or one can argue that genocide is encoded in the DNA of our shared settler-colonial origins, a latent tendency which flowers whenever and wherever conditions allow.

    There can be no doubt that the American "blank check" has contributed significantly to those conditions. And on the surface, it would seem that the rare occasions when American presidents attempted to restrain Israel were successful: in 1956, Eisenhower forced Israel to retreat from Egypt; in 1967 and 1973 the US and Russia brokered UN ceasefire resolutions; in 1978, Carter halted Israel's intervention in Lebanon, and in 1979 Carter brokered a peace agreement with Egypt; in 1990-91, Bush restrained Israel from retaliating against Iraq, and pressed for peace talks, which ultimately led to Israelis replacing the recalcitrant Shamir with Rabin, leading to the ill-fated Oslo Accords. But in fact, every apparent accommodation Israeli leaders made to US pressure was systematically subverted, with most of the offenses repeated as soon as allowed: the war against Egypt that Eisenhower ended was relaunched with Johnson; the invasion of Lebanon that Carter held back returned with Reagan; the sham "peace process" under Clinton was demolished -- well, actually repackaged in caricature -- with GW Bush. But under Trump and Biden, American subservience -- which is part pure corruption, but also imbued in war-on-terror culture -- has become so complete that Netanyahu no longer bothers to pretend.

    Actually, Israel's die was set in two previous events where a realistically alternative path was possible and rejected -- in both cases, by David Ben-Gurion. The first was in 1936, when British authorities realized what a mess of their mandate in Palestine, and proposed, through the Peel Commission, to solve their problem with a program of partition and mandatory transfer: divide the land into two pieces, and force all the Jews to one side, and all the Arabs to the other. The division, of course, was unfair, not just in the ratio of people to land but especially in that nearly all of people forcibly uprooted and "transferred" would be Arabs. But Ben-Gurion, whose power base at the time was the Hebrew-only union Histadrut, saw in the proposal the prospect of an ethnically pure Jewish state, which could with independence and time build up a military that could seize any additional lands they thought they needed.

    The British proposal was not only rejected by the Palestinians, but precipitated a revolt which took the British (and the Israeli militias they encouraged) three years to suppress, and then only when the British to the main Palestinian demand, which was to severely limit Jewish immigration. But Ben-Gurion kept the drive for partition alive, eventually persuading the UN to approve it in diluted form -- the "transfer" was sotto voce, but when the British withdrew in 1948, Israel's militias merged into the IDF, significantly expanded beyond the resolution's borders, and drove more than 700,000 Palestinians from their homes into exile. The resulting Israel wasn't as large or as pure as Ben-Gurion had hoped, but it soon became as powerful, as became clear in its wars against Egypt in 1956 and 1967 (and its defense in 1973).

    One can argue that Ben-Gurion did what needed to be done in order to found and secure Israel. But once Israel was free and secure, it had options, one of which was to treat its new minority fairly, earn its respect and loyalty, and disarm its neighbors by normalizing relations. Ben-Gurion didn't do that, but he did give way to his lieutenant, Moshe Sharrett, who was much more inclined to moderation. Ben-Gurion's second fateful decision was to return to politics, deposing Sharrett, and returning Israel to the path of militarism, ethnocracy and empire building. This led straight to the 1956 war, and its 1967 reprisal. Ben-Gurion had retired again before the latter, but he had left successors who would carry on his maximalist objectives (notably, Moshe Dayan, Golda Meir, Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin, and Ariel Sharon; meanwhile, he had rehabilitated his old enemies from the Jabotinsky wing, from Menachem Begin to Benjamin Netanyahu, and integrated into the political system the followers of the ultra-orthodox and ultra-nationalist Kook rabbis -- pretty much the entire spectrum of current Israeli politics).

    I like to think of Ben-Gurion's return to power as similar to Mao's Cultural Revolution: the last desperate attempt of an aging revolutionary to recreate his glory days rather than simply resting on his laurels. It is interesting that Ben-Gurion advised against the 1967 war, arguing that Palestinians wouldn't flee from Israel's advancing armies like they did in 1948, so any land gained would reduce the Jewish demographic majority he had fought for, and be burdened with a heavy-handed occupation. But once the war ended so decisively, he was delighted, and his followers were confident they could handle the occupation -- the bigger threat was that Egypt and Syria would fight to get their land back, as they did in 1973.

    While Ben-Gurion has had extraordinary influence on Israel's entire history, he has at least in one respect been eclipsed of late: he always understood that occupation was a burden, one that can and should be lightened by some manner of decency, and he also understood that Israel needs friends and alliances in the world, which again demands that Israel show some decency and respect. Shlomo Avineri ends his The Making of Modern Zionism with chapters on Ben-Gurion, Jabotinsky, and Kook. Ben-Gurion at least understood the rudiments of social solidarity, and saw practical value in it, even if his socialism was radically circumscribed by his nationalism. Most Israelis today no longer feel the need: like Jabotinsky, they believe that power conquers all, and that the powerful should be accountable to none; while some, like Kook, see their power as divinely ordained, as is their mission to redeem greater Eretz Yisrael, and purge it of its intruders. To them, America is just a tool they can use for their own ends. Indeed, it's hard to explain why Biden and his predecessors have indulged Israel so readily. Which, I suppose, is why Bery's thesis, that American power has always been rotten, cannot be easily dismissed. His conclusion is not wrong, except inasmuch as he implies conscious intent:

    The simple reality is that U.S. foreign policy remains just as bloody and horrific as it has always been. In earlier decades, "acceptable" losses included the 1 to 2 million civilians killed in Vietnam, another million dead in Indonesia, the carnage of U.S.-backed dictators across Latin America, and the hundreds of thousands killed during the U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Today's U.S. military and diplomatic interventions in the Middle East are no different.

    To end Israel's horrific actions in the Middle East, we must change the politics of America itself. This is no easy task, given the robust power and influence of pro-Israel -- and pro-war -- networks, donors, and lobbying groups inside the U.S. But it is the task at hand, and it should be the focus of every person of conscience, both within and outside the borders of the United States. As has been true in other regions of the world, U.S. foreign policy is the fundamental obstacle to justice, democracy, and peace in the Middle East.

    Page also included a link to a year-old article which adds background depth here:

  • Max Boot: [10-10] There is no purely military solution to Israel's security woes: And this from a guy who sees "military solutions" like a hammer sees nails.

  • Yaniv Cogan: [10-06] Blinken approved policy to bomb aid trucks, Israeli cabinet members suggest.

  • Daniel L Davis: [09-16] Israel's conduct in the war will consume us all: "Netanyahu used a sledgehammer when a scalpel was the right tool -- now everyone is paying the price."

  • Liza Featherstone: [10-06] The chicken hawks want war with Iran.

  • Jeet Heer: [10-11] The high cost of Biden's policy of unconditional support for Israel: "Beyond hobbling Kamala Harris's campaign, Biden is leaving behind a disaster that will last decades."

  • Khader Jabbar: [10-06] Israel and Iran: Unpacking Western media bias with Assal Rad: "Assal Rad joins The Mondoweiss Podcast to discuss media coverage of recent events in Palestine and Lebanon and the persistent pro-Israel bias in Western media."

  • Jake Johnson: [10-13] Alarm as Pentagon confirms deployment of US troops to Israel: "Netanyahu is as close as he has ever been to his ultimate wish: making the US fight Iran on Israel's behalf." The deployment is pretty limited -- "an advanced antimissile system and around 100 US troops" -- but it encourages Israel to provoke further armed responses from Iran, while making American troops handy targets for all sorts of terrorist mischief. Washington, conditioned to see Iran as a potential aggressor, probably sees this as purely defensive, urgent given Iran's threats (and occasional but mostly symbolic practice) of retaliation, and practical in that trained troops can get the system operative much faster than just handing the weapons over to Israel. Netanyahu, on the other hand, will see this as confirmation that the Americans are on the hook for war with Iran. They also understand that if/when Iran wants to hit back in ways that actually hurt, the US has many easier targets to hit than the patch of Israel this weapon system is meant to protect.

  • Imran Khalid: [10-09] Israel is the greatest threat to US strategy in the Middle East: "Netanyahu's push for a military victory beyond Gaza threatens to drag Washington into a broader regional war, challenging America's long-term interests in the region."

  • Rashid Khalidi:

    • [10-13] Israel is acting with full US approval: An interview with the noted historian, author of many books, including Brokers of Deceit: How the US Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East (2013). I still find it a bit hard to buy into his main point:

      The first thing we have to do is to disabuse ourselves of the notion that the United States has any reservations about what Israel is doing. Israel is doing what it is doing in careful and close coordination with Washington, and with its full approval. The United States does not just arm and diplomatically protect what Israel does; it shares Israel's goals and approves of Israel's methods.

      The tut-tutting, the pooh-poohing, and the crocodile tears about humanitarian issues and civilian casualties are pure hypocrisy. The United States has signed on to Israel's approach to Lebanon -- it wants Israel to destroy Hezbollah and Hamas. It does not have any reservations about the basic approach of Israel, which is to attack the civilian population in order to force change in Lebanon and obviously in Gaza. . . .

      The United States helps Israel in targeting Hezbollah and Hamas leaders -- that is a fact. Anybody who ignores that and pretends that there's any daylight between what Israel does and what the United States wants it to do is lying to themselves or is lying to us.

      I don't have any evidence to contradict this, but this doesn't fit the model I have of American interests and motivations. The most likely part of this story is the low-level sharing of signals intelligence and targeting information, because that doesn't have to go through diplomatic levels where questions might be asked about what it's being used for. That sort of thing is pre-approved, not because Israel is doing America's dirty work but because US officials have, as a matter of political convenience, given up any pretense of independent thought where Israel is concerned.

    • [05-07] Violent settler colonialism caused this war: Earlier interview, happened to find it in an open tab.

  • Maureen Clare Murphy: [10-05] US admits it doesn't want diplomatic solution.

  • Paul R Pillar: [10-07] Biden is letting Israel trap the US into war with Iran: "One year after Hamas' Oct 7 attacks, regional conflict is raging with no end in sight."

  • Ben Samuels: [10-02] In US election, Israel might be the ultimate October surprise: "For the first time, there's a real chance that Israel may help sway the race. Election Day is 34 days away. Undoubtedly, many more surprises are in store, and none of them are likely to be pleasant."

  • Dahlia Scheindlin: [10-01] Hamas and Hezbollah trapped Israel on October 7. Now Israel is trapping Iran and America: "Tehran and Washington are facing tremendous dilemmas, trapped between two highly fraught options. Their choices will determine the fate of the Middle East for both the short term and for years to come." But the only real choice here is Israel's, as they can keep doing this until they get their desired result, which is America and Iran at war.

  • Ishaan Tharoor: [10-09] How Netanyhahu shattered Biden's Middle East hopes: "The Israeli prime minister tested and bested President Joe Biden's diplomatic strategy around the growing conflict in the Middle East." The logical fallacy here is in thinking that Biden ever had his own plans for anything involving Israel.

  • Nick Turse:

  • Jonah Valdez: One year of empty rhetoric from the White House on Israel's wars.

  • Sharon Zhang:

Israel vs. world opinion:

  • Kyle Anzalone: [10-13] Israel to seize UN agency's headquarters for new settlement housing: That would be the UNRWA offices in East Jerusalem.

  • Marjorie Cohn: [10-08] As Israel extends its genocide into the West Bank, it targets and kills children.

  • Julia Conley: [10-11] Hiroshima survivor and nuke abolitionist wins Nobel Peace Price, spotlights Gaza: "Toshiyuki Mimaki said he thought 'the people working so hard in Gaza' would be honored, referring to UNRWA aid workers."

  • Jim Fitzgerald: [10-14] Israel against itself and Israel against all.

    There is a good bit of evidence that suggests Israel is unraveling from within. It now appears that Zionism, like communism, is a self-defeating project. In June of this year, renown Jewish historian, Ilan Pappé, suggested [link follows] that the collapse of Zionism may be imminent. According to Pappé, "We are witnessing a historical process -- or, more accurately, the beginnings of one -- that is likely to culminate in the downfall of Zionism."

    In a manner eerily reminiscent of ancient Israel, modern Israel is quickly dividing into two separate states: the State of Israel and the State of Judea. The former identifies as a secular liberal democracy while the latter consists of far right religious zealots who want to establish a theocracy, and believe that God has promised them all the land between the Nile and the Euphrates.

    Israeli finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich is a leading figure of this latter group. In a new documentary produced by Arte, Smotrich claimed that "the future of Jerusalem is to expand to Damascus."

    Not surprisingly, Smotrich's vision for the State of Judea includes annexing territories presently belonging to Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. The members of this group, including, Itamar Ben-Gvir, Minister of National Security, believe that the events which transpired on October 7 provide the perfect pretext for them to realize their vision of Greater Israel.

    It should be noted here that Smotrich's party only holds seven seats (out of 120) in the Knesset, although they seem able to use their limited leverage to dominate the coalition government agenda.

  • Adam Johnson/Othman Ali: [10-14] A study reveals CNN and MSNBC's glaring Gaza double standard: "Palestinians received far less sympathetic and humanizing coverage than either Israelis or Ukrainians, a Nation analysis has found." Nice to have the charts and all the rigor, but the conclusion has been obvious for many years. It's been engineered by "hasbara" architects, and reinforced by the whispers of money in editors' ears.

  • David Klion: [10-08] The failure of liberal Zionism: "Israel has behaved exactly as its harshest critics predicted."

    By scapegoating Netanyahu, who has dominated the Israeli political system for most of the past fifteen years, liberal Zionists have been able to preserve in their imaginations the idealized Israel many of them fell in love with decades ago -- the Israel that was founded by secular socialists from Eastern Europe and that branded itself as a paragon of enlightened governance, even as it engaged from the beginning in colonization, land theft, murder, and expulsion on a scale that Netanyahu's coalition can only envy. By denying the essential nature of the Zionist project and its incompatibility with progressive values, liberal Zionists have also been in denial at every stage about the war to which they have pledged at least conditional support. They have insisted that the situation is "complicated," which is the framing Ta-Nehisi Coates absorbed during his tenure at the predominantly liberal Zionist Atlantic, and which he denounced as "horseshit" following a trip to the occupied West Bank in the summer of 2023. "It's complicated," Coates told New York magazine last month, deriding that common talking point, "when you want to take something from somebody."

    A year after October 7, no one seriously believes there will be peace between Israel and the Palestinians in our lifetime. The bombed and starved children of Gaza will never forget what they've been subjected to, nor the world's general indifference; while it's not on the same scale, their counterparts in Israel will never forget the national trauma of the attacks. The "two-state solution" that liberal Zionists have verbally supported for years as the only possible just outcome is an obvious fantasy. Other, far more disturbing outcomes seem likelier; at present, it is hard to see what consequences Israel will face from continuing to kill and displace Palestinians on all fronts while seizing and occupying more and more of their land. If there is one lesson to be taken from the past dismal year, it's this: the liberal Zionist interpretation of the conflict has no predictive value, no analytical weight, and no moral rigor. It is a failed dream of the previous century, and it is unlikely to survive this one.

  • Gideon Levy: [10-10] Israel has lost its humanity as it celebrates its power to kill: "A hundred innocents, a thousand, even ten thousand dead Palestinian children - none of this changes the new Israeli mindset."

    The loss of humanity in public discourse is a contagious and sometimes fatal disease. Recovery is very difficult. Israel has lost all interest in what it is doing to the Palestinian people, arguing that they "deserve it" - everyone, including women, children, the elderly, the sick, the hungry and the dead.

    The Israeli media, which has been more disgraceful over the past year than ever before, voluntarily carries the flag of incitement, inflaming passions and the loss of humanity, just to gratify its consumers.

    The domestic media has shown Israelis almost nothing of the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, while whitewashing manifestations of hatred, racism, ultra-nationalism, and sometimes barbarism, directed at the enclave and its population.

  • Owen Jones: [10-03] What atrocity would Israel have to commit for our leaders to break their silence?

  • Jake Romm: [09-24] There's another way to hold Netanyahu accountable for the Gaza genocide: "A case for prosecuting the Israeli prime minister for the crime of persecution." Good case, but in what court?

  • Said Zeedani: [10-08] Gaza's governance must remain in Palestinian hands: "Amid plans for external interventions, it is vital to build a consensus around an interim body to manage Gaza's urgent needs and pave the way for unity." I have no idea who's saying what about "external interventions," but nothing serious can happen until Israel implements a ceasefire (with or without any Hamas consent -- even if the hostages are not repatriated immediately, they will be much safer with a ceasefire), agrees to withdraw its forces, and renounces any claim to the land of Gaza and/or its people. If we've learned anything from the last year, it's that Israel is not fit to occupy land without citizens. That shouldn't be a hard sell to Israel, as they have no settlers in Gaza to contest claims, and they've more than made their point about what they will do to people who attack them.

    Once Israel is out of the picture, other people can get involved, immediately to rescue the people -- for the most part de-housed, with many diseased and/or starving -- and eventually to repair and rebuild. Gazans have great needs and no resources or leverage, so reconstruction will depend on the generosity of donors -- which may quite reasonably come with strings attached (especially to respect Israel's security, to avoid future repeats of its brutality). The one point which must be respected is that in due course Gaza must be self-governing, its sovereignty vested in the people who live there and are free to choose their own leaders. Any "interim authority" must lead without prejudice to such a democracy. Among other things, this means that it should not ensconce previous political parties (like Fatah or Hamas), nor should it exclude former members. Gaza should rebuild on a clean slate.

  • B'Tselem: The pogroms are working - the transfer is already happening: I've cited this report before, but it popped up again in Mazin Qumsiyeh's newsletter, and is worth repeating, as it helps put the post-Oct. 7 genocide into its much deeper historical context, as a continuation of a process which Israelis were diligently working on before they could accelerate it under the "fog of war." (You may recall that the Nazi extermination program only began after they invaded Russia, although the Nazis were rabidly antisemitic from the start, and committed many heinous crimes against Jews well before they crossed the line we now know as genocide.)

    This is mostly a report on events in the West Bank prior to the Oct. 7 Gaza revolt, after which settler violence in the West Bank -- "in the past two yeras, at least six West Bank communities have been displaced" -- only increased.

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

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

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

Election notes:

  • Gail Collins/Bret Stephens: [10-07] How could the election be this close? Good question, to which the article only offers the oblique of answer of demonstrating how clueless two New York Times opinion columnists can be. Stephens, at least, wears his ignorance on his sleeve, going out of his way to quote arbitrary Blacks and Hispanics who think Harris is "too liberal," "overall untrustworthy," and "unsure how prepared she is to be president." (And see those traits as worrisome compared to Trump?) Stephens also wants Harris to "name some widely respected policy heavyweights as members of her brain trust -- people like Robert Rubin and David Petraeus. And announce that Liz Cheney will be her secretary of state." Collins keeps her cluelessness hidden better. She has a reputation for humor, but here it's mostly just egging Stephens on to say stupid things.

    PS: Speaking of stupid Stephens things, this piece came to my attention:

    • Bret Stephens: [10-01] We absolutely need to escalate in Iran. It's quite possible that this was the inspiration for the "preemptive strike on Iran now?" question that opened the VP debate. The editorial came to my attention via:

    • Kathleen Wallace: [10-11] We absolutely do not need to escalate anything New York Times.

      Despite what those afflicted with sociopathy at the top want us to believe, we are hardwired to help each other. We've heard how the military has to work so hard to train killers, to erase that hesitation to kill, and how so many shots taken in war are purposely missed ones. When we see such wanton glee at killing we can bet that an immeasurable number of hours have been spent in the indoctrination of hatred, to erase the inclination for community and mutual aid. . . .

      But we all know how kids often turn out after living in violent and hate-filled homes and that's basically what all of us have been toiling under our whole lives. We all know we've been propagandized, it's a constant task that we need to be aware of this fact and we need to recognize things like "passive voice" so popular in newspapers like the New York Times. All these people dying, not being killed! Children being called adult terms to take away our natural gut reaction to their deaths . . . I think many have been able to break out of the arrogant decrees that are brought down by religious institutions but still are enamored with the liberal intelligentsia media. If they say it, it must be true and there is no slant to the way it's delivered. Well, it will take some time and critical thinking for those "esteemed" edifices to be brought down. But for now, New York Times, you can go fuck yourself and your call to war, there's real work to be done and we don't have time for your shit.

      Author's ellipses in last paragraph (originally six dots, no idea why). I considered dropping the second half of that paragraph, but decided the author deserved to make the point, even if crudely.

  • Stanley B Greenberg: [10-09] Trump is laser-focused on the final duel. Harris is not. "That will put Trump and Vance in the White House." One problem with reporting based on polls is that polls most often ask stupid questions of people who are far short of well-informed, so they can chastise politicians for failing to cater to their nonsensical results.

  • Chris Lehman: [09-25] In 2024, the pundits are wronger than ever: "Most of the predictions, advice, and scolding emanating from the glow of TV news this year have proved flat-out wrong. Democrats should stop listening once and for all." Well, yes and no. It helps to start from the assumption that you're being lied to and being given faulty and often disingenuous advice, then try to work out what you can learn from that. On the other hand, there actually is a lot of pretty good, solid reporting and analysis available, if only you can figure out which is which.

  • Rick Perlstein:

    • [09-25] The polling imperilment: "Presidential polls are no more reliable than they were a century ago. So why do they consume our political lives?" Catching up with other Perlstein columns:

    • [10-02] Who are the 'undecided'? "It may not be about issues, but whether voters surrender to Trump's invitation to return to the womb." Here he draws on an article Chris Hayes wrote on undecided voters in 2004, and which hardly anyone seems to have understood or rediscovered in the last two decades of intense 24/7 political "coverage": basically, undecided voters are unable to think about political issues in terms of political choices. That's my simplification. Here's Perlstein quoting Hayes:

      Chris noted that while there were a few people he talked to like that, "such cases were exceedingly rare. More often than not, when I asked undecided voters what issues they would pay attention to as they made up their minds I was met with a blank stare, as if I'd just asked them to name their favorite prime number . . . the very concept of the 'issue' seemed to be almost completely alien to most of the undecided voters I spoke to." . . .

      Hayes: "I tried other ways of asking the same question: 'Anything of particular concern to you? Are you anxious or worried about anything? Are you excited about what's been happening in the country in the last four years?'"

      But those questions harvested "bewilderment" too. "As far as I could tell, the problem wasn't the word 'issue' . . . The undecideds I spoke to didn't seem to have any intuitive grasp of what kinds of grievances qualify as political grievances."

      That's the part that stuck with me word for word, almost two decades on. Some mentioned they were vexed by rising health care costs. "When I would tell them that Kerry had a plan to lower health-care premiums, they would respond in disbelief . . . as if you were telling them that Kerry was promising to extend summer into December."

      Of course, you don't have to be "undecided" to have no clue as to the policy domain that politics determines. Many uninformed or less than competently comprehending voters pick their allegiances on other seemingly arbitrary and often nonsensical grounds. These factors are rooted in psychology, and are expertly exploited, mostly by Republican operatives, perhaps realizing that their actual policy preferences have little rational appeal. Perlstein, after noting Trump's promise to be "your protector," reflects back on fascism:

      Millions of pages have been filled by scholars explaining the psychological appeal of fascism, most converging on the blunt fact that it offers the fantasy of reversion to an infantile state, where nothing can come and harm you, because you will be protected by an all-powerful figure who will always put you first, always put you first. It is simply indisputable that this promise can seduce and transform even intelligent, apparently mature, kind-hearted people formerly committed to liberal politics. I've written before in this column about the extraordinary film The Brainwashing of My Dad, in which director Jen Senko describes the transformation of her Kennedy-liberal dad under the influence of right-wing talk radio and Fox News -- and also how, after she explained the premise of her film for a Kickstarter campaign, scores of people came out of the woodwork to share similar stories about their own family members.

      I've learned a lot about the psychological dynamics at work from the X feed of a psychologist named Julie Hotard, who drills down on the techniques Fox uses to trigger infantilization in viewers. The people at Fox who devise these scripts, one imagines, are pretty sophisticated people. Trump's gift is to be able to grunt out the same stuff just from his gut. Trump's appeals have become noticeably more infantile in precisely this way. When he addresses women voters, for instance: "I am your protector. I want to be your protector . . . You will no longer be abandoned, lonely, or scared. You will no longer be in danger . . ."

      Or when he grunts the other side of the infantilizing promise: that he will be your vengeance. His promise to destroy anything placing you in danger. Like when he recently pledged to respond to "one really violent day" by meeting criminals with "one rough hour -- and I mean real rough. The word will get out and it will end immediately."

      Or when he posted the Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel ("O Prince of the heavenly hosts, by the power of God, cast into hell Satan, and all the evil spirits, who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls") illustrated by a 17th-century painting of said saint curb-stomping a defeated devil, about to run a sword through his head.

      Even on the liberal-left, many interpret the way Trump seems even more to be going off the rails these last weeks as a self-defeating lack of control, or as a symptom of cognitive impairment. They almost seem to celebrate it. The New Republic's email newsletter, which I cannot stand, is full of such therapeutic clickbaity headlines canvassing the same examples I talk about here: "Trump Proposes Stunningly Stupid Idea for Public Safety"; "Ex-Aide Says Trump's 'Creepy' Message to Women Shows He's Out of Touch"; "Trump Appears to Have Lost a Total Grasp on Things."

      I certainly don't disagree that Trump is becoming more cognitively impaired and out of touch with reality. But might not these impairments render him a better fascist seducer, as his invitations to infantile regression become ever more primal, ever more basic, ever more pure?

    • [10-09] Our cults, ourselves: "Is the best way to understand the MAGA movement to binge-watch docuseries about charismatic leaders sending their acolytes to ruin? Tune in and find out."

    • [09-18] Everything you wanted to know about World War III but were afraid to ask: "For generations, we thought fear of nuclear holocaust would prevent world war. Is that faith obsolete?"

    • [02-14] A cultural artifact that meets the moment: "Stephen King's Under the Dome nails how Trumpism functions at the most elemental of levels." This is the piece Perlstein cited in the "undecided" piece above, but worth breaking out here. I remember watching, and enjoying, the miniseries (2013-15), but had forgotten whatever political import it might have held, but I welcome the refresher course. The section on The Brainwashing of My Dad is kind of a coda. I should look into it further, although I can already think of several examples from my own family. (I had a pair of cousins, who shared the same cultural legacy -- small towns, church, hunting -- and could be socioeconomic twins, but one got her news from the BBC, the other from Fox.) This essay also refers to a "Part 1":

    • [01-31] A hole in the culture: "Why is there so little art depicting the moment we're in?" Starts with a letter, which includes this:

      My husband and I are old and sitting right slap dab in the middle of red Arkansas with MAGA friends and family all around. They try to pull us into their discussions but we change the subject. I stopped going to church because the churches no longer teach Christ's message, but Trump's message.

  • Harris endorsements:

Trump:

  • Peter Baker/Dylan Freedman: [10-06] Trump's speeches, increasingly angry and rambling, reignite the question of age: "With the passage of time, the 78-year-old former president's speeches have grown darker, harsher, longer, angrier, less focused, more profane and increasingly fixated on the past, according to a review of his public appearances over the years." This elicited letters: [10-09] In Trump's speeches, signs of cognitive impairment.

  • Zach Beauchamp: [10-09] What Trump really means when he says immigrants have "bad genes": "The ominous implication of an outburst that ties two strains of right-wing thought together."

  • Jonathan Chait: [10-10] Trump delivers historically illiterate lecture on tariffs: "Everything he says about this is wrong."

  • Margaret Hartmann: [10-10] Highs and lows from Melania Trump's baffling book. Bullet points:

    High: It's an actual memoir, not a picture book.
    Low: It reads like a generic college-application essay.

    High: The book is quite short.
    Low: There's too much filler.

    High: Melania shares some political views.
    Low: Her political takes make no sense.

    High: The insults are subtle and classy.
    Low: Some insults may be too subtle.

    High: The book is beautiful.
    Low: It won't stay beautiful for long.

    High: The book is endorsed by Donald J. Trump.
    Low: Donald J. Trump probably didn't read it.

  • Richard Lardner/Dake Kang: [10-09] It turns out Trump's 'God Bless the USA' Bibles were made in China: This week's least surprising headline.

  • Robert Lipsyte: [10-06] Growing old in the age (and that's the appropriate word!) of Trump:

    After Joe Biden was shuffled off stage on trumped-up charges of senility, I started thinking seriously about the weaponization of old age in our world. Who gets credit for old age and who gets the boot?

    At 86, I share that affliction, pervasive among the richest, healthiest, and/or luckiest of us, who manage to hang around the longest. Donald Trump is, of course, in this same group, although much of America seems to be in selective denial about his diminishing capabilities. He was crushed recently in The Great Debate yet is generally given something of a mulligan for hubris, craziness, and unwillingness to prepare. But face it, unlike Joe B, he was simply too old to cut the mustard.

    It's time to get real about old age as a condition that, yes, desperately needs and deserves better resources and reverence, but also careful monitoring and culling. Such thinking is not a bias crime. It's not even an alert for ancient drivers on the roads. It's an alarm for tolerating dangerous old politicians who spread lies and send youngsters to war, while we continue to willfully waste the useful experience and energy of all ages.

    He also mentions Rupert Murdoch (93) and Warren Buffett (94):

    Those old boys are anything but role models for me and my friends. After all, they've been practicing all their lives how to be rich old pigs, their philanthropy mirroring their interests, not the needs of the rest of us. In my pay grade, we're expected to concentrate on tips from AARP newsletters on how to avoid telephone scams and falls, the bane of the geezer class. And that's important, but it's also a way of keeping us anxious and impotent.

    But he does mention some other ancients, like Casey Stengel and Jules Feiffer, who he finds more inspiration in. And the Gray Panthers, founded by Maggie Kuhn -- a personal blast from the past, as I knew of them through Sylvia Fink Kleinman (who excused her own fine tastes, explaining "nothing's too good for the working class").

  • Nicholas Liu:

  • New York Times: [09-26] The dangers of Donald Trump, from those who know him: A big chart of sound bites from "administration insiders, the Trumps & Trump Inc., Republican politicians, conservative leaders, world leaders" -- including some who remain as steadfast supporters, like Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz. Oddly enough, the wittiest is Kim Jong-un's "a frightened dog barks louder."

  • Pamela Paul: [10-03] Donald Trump, you lucky dog.

    There are lists of Donald Trump's lies and lists of his alleged crimes. But the catalog of all the good things that have happened to the former president is equally unnerving. Every dog has its day, but Trump -- no fan of dogs, BTW -- has had far more good luck than the average mutt.

    Of course, the man was born lucky -- into a life of wealth and privilege and with looks that some women apparently find attractive. Like many indulged heirs, he quickly dispensed with those gifts, wasting away his fortune like a 20th-century tristate re-creation of "A Rake's Progress." It could have easily curdled into squalor from there.

    But one fateful day, along came "The Apprentice," visiting the sulky developer in his moldering office. As my colleagues Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig document in their new book, aptly titled Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father's Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success, it was this improbable TV show that offered Trump a golden ticket out of bankruptcy and irrelevance, transforming him into a successful billionaire by pretending he actually was one.

    Also:

    Eight years ago Trump, who has been convicted of 34 felony charges in Manhattan and has been indicted in three other cases, told a rally full of acolytes, "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters." It is fortunate for him, then, that he was able to appoint three justices to the Supreme Court who created the possibility for him to be granted immunity in the three remaining cases against him.

    It's impossible to attribute all of this to strategy or intelligence or even mere cunning. In the same way the mask-averse Trump contracted what we now know was a serious case of Covid, at age 74 and seriously overweight, miraculously bounced back with the benefit of cutting-edge treatment that did not include injecting disinfectant, these things happened independent of Trump's own actions and inclinations.

    Now here we are, with Trump crediting the outcome of two failed assassination attempts to divine intervention.

  • James Risen: [10-03] The reason Netanyahu and Putin both want a Trump victory: "so they can prolong and intensify their brutal wars." Actually, there's not much stopping them now, and any policy shift under Harris is purely speculative -- it's sure not something she's campaigning on. I don't doubt that Trump is preferred by both -- as a fellow right-winger, Trump is unbothered by human rights abuses, and he's notoriously open to bribery and flattery. Also, both have history of poking their noses into American domestic politics, although in that Putin is a piker compared to Netanyahu.

  • Tony Schwartz: [10-11] I was Trump's ghostwriter. A new biopic gets the most important thing right. The movie is The Apprentice, directed by Ali Abbasi and written by Gabriel Sherman, based on "Trump's career as a real estate businessman in New York in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as his relationship with lawyer Roy Cohn." (Sebastian Stan plays Trump, Jeremy Strong plays Cohn, and Martin Donovan plays Fred Trump Sr.)

    Watching The Apprentice crystallized two big lessons that I learned from Mr. Trump 30 years ago and that I've seen play out in his life ever since with more and more extreme consequences. The first lesson is that a lack of conscience can be a huge advantage when it comes to accruing power, attention and wealth in a society where most other human beings abide by a social contract. The second lesson is that nothing we get for ourselves from the outside world can ever adequately substitute for what we're missing on the inside.

    Also on The Apprentice:

  • Tatyana Tandanpolie: [10-08] Analysis shows Trump tax plan "taking money" from bottom 95% and "giving it" to richest 5%: "This is an enormously redistributive tax plan from low- and middle-income families to the wealthiest Americans."

  • Joan Walsh: [09-24] Trump is spiraling, and getting creepier, about women voters.

  • Lawrence Ware: [10-11] Republicans are not evil . . . well, not all of them: When I saw this, my first thought was that it might take off from a New York Times opinion piece I had noticed but didn't mention at the time. Author is based in Oklahoma, so no suprise that he regularly encounters Republican voters who seem decent enough even when they are wrong. As a writer, I am often tempted to use "evil," as few words make a point so succinctly. But almost always, the real target is some act or belief, not the person implicated in the moment. Aiming at the person loses that distinction, and makes it that much harder to ever recover.

    • Nicholas Kristof: [08-31] Here's why we shouldn't demean Trump voters. It's not just that some Trump voters have decent (even if misguided) motivations, and that grouping them all together is a logical fallacy, but that the habit and practice is bad for you too -- it makes you more like the person you are demeaning. That said, in this particular case, "misguided" is a really huge understatement.

    • Brad Warthen: [10-11] Kristof is right: don't demean Trump voters.

  • Li Zhou: [10-08] Donald Trump's many, many lies about Hurricane Helene, debunked: "Rampant disinformation is getting in the way of disaster response."

Vance, and other Republicans:

Harris:

  • Jonathan Chait:

    • [10-08] The race is close because Harris is running a brilliant campaign: "Stop complaining; the centrism is working." Or so says Chait, who only views every disappointed/disaffected leftist as a strategic gain, even though he can't begin to count the votes. No doubt that if Harris does manage to "pull a Hillary" and lose the election, Chait will be the first to blame it on the left.

    • [10-10] The election choice is divided government or unrestrained Trumpism: "Harris won't be able to implement her plans. Trump will." As a devout centrist, Chait may regard divided government as the best of all worlds, with each party making sure the other doesn't accomplish anything, or rock any boats. Indeed, no Democratic president has had a Democratic Congress for a full terms since Carter, and even the initial two-year stretches Clinton, Obama, and Biden inherited were hobbled by lobbyists and the filibuster.

  • David Dayen: [10-09] Harris in-home care plan recognizes information gap on seniors: "Trump has been blanketing Pennsylvania with dubious claims that Harris would cut Social Security and Medicare."

  • Susan Faludi: [10-06] Kamala Harris is turning a Trump tactic on its head.

  • Ed Kilgore: [10-09] Can Nikki Haley voters win it for Kamala Harris? I can believe that most of the people who voted for Harris in Republican primaries this year won't vote for Trump. But calling them "Nikki Haley voters" seems gratuitous, especially given that Haley is on board for Trump, so isn't one of them.

  • Branko Marcetic: [10-12] Is Kamala 2024 Clinton 2016?: "Republican endorsements, running to the right on foreign policy, an unambitious agenda of incremental change less important than how bad the other guy is. Where have we seen this before?"

  • Andrew Prokop: The rise -- and fall? -- of the New Progressive Economics: "Progressives conquered economic policy under Biden. Would they lose it under Harris?" How should I know? And not just because the article is a "member exclusive" I can't even get a glimpse of. (I did feel kind of bad about never giving what used to be my favorite news site any money, but less and less so every time I hit a paywall, especially on an article that is obvious bullshit.) In the first place, the premise that "NPE conquered Biden" is somewhere between greatly exaggerated and plain false. Biden moved somewhat out of the Obama-Clinton neocon rut because both the economics and the politics failed. Unlike Republicans, Democrats are expected to address and at least ameliorate real problems, and the old neoliberalism just wasn't working. Some new stuff got tried, and mostly worked. Other ideas got stymied, for which there was lots of obvious blame, as well as Biden's own lukewarm interest. But where is the evidence that Harris is going to abandon policies and proposals that are popular with Democrats just to help the rich get richer? The only thing I'm aware of is that she's had to cozy up to a lot of rich donors to raise her billion dollar campaign war chest, and they're going to want something in return. But by then, she'll be president, and in a better position to call her own shots.

  • Bill Scher: [10-10] No "deplorables," "you ain't black," "cling to guns": Harris's gaffe-free campaign: I suppose that's good news, but Scher is the most unflappable of Democratic Party apologists, so one doubts his ability to detect gaffes, let alone strategic missteps. The one I'm most worried about is her continuing political calculation to amp up vitriol against Russia and Iran. My guess is that as president she will pivot to a more moderate stance, because I don't see her as a neocon ideologue, but I do see her as politically cunning, so her stance tells me that she thinks it's the smart play viz. voters and the media. That's pretty depressing.

  • Matthew Stevenson: [10-11] Why Harris and Walz lose.

Walz, Biden, and other Democrats:

  • Robert Kuttner: [10-04] Biden's amazing win settling the dock strike: "The terms are a total victory for dockworkers and for smooth supply chain operation, as the White House faced down exorbitant shipper profits. What would Trump have done?"

  • Paul Starr: [09-20] What should Democrats say to young men? "Young men appear to be drifting right. Ignoring them means trouble." As an asymptomatic observer, I have trouble caring about this -- much like the "stolen pride" in the Arlie Russell Hochschild book (below): been there, got over that. Still, I do, as a matter of principle, believe that every voter counts, and that all pain (even the phantom variety) merits some kind of treatment. Cites:

  • Astra Taylor: [09] Divided and conquered: "In search of a democratic majority." "You've reached your free article limit," so sayonara. "The essay was partially adapted with permission from Solidarity: The Past, Present, and Future of a World Changing Idea, which I did buy a copy of, so I can probably reference it when I want a critique of Kevin Phillips (The Emerging Republican Majority, which is often counted as prescient, even if only with regret) and/or Ruy Teixeira/John Judis (The Emerging Democratic Majority, which isn't, so they recently rewrote it as Where Have All the Democrats Gone?), not that I couldn't write those myself.

Supreme Court, legal matters, and other crimes:

  • David Dayen: [09-30] How Congress gets its groove back: "The Supreme Court's recent rulings will change how Congress writes laws. It may even force the legislative branch to take a hard look at its own dysfunctions." This is about the Court's recent dismantling of what's called the "Chevron defense," which while possibly disastrous for the normal functioning of the federal government, can (at least in theory) be rectified by Congress writing and passing more precise laws that leave less discretionary power in the hands of an increasingly politicized executive. But for that to happen, you first need a Congress that is willing and able to do the necessary work to deal with real problems. That obviously involves getting rid of a lot of Republicans, and tools like the filibuster, but it also suggests the need for much better Democrats. Otherwise, problems just multiply, while the courts further hamstring any efforts at remedy by executive order.

  • Sarah Jones: [10-10] The misogyny plot: A new report on the Kavanaugh hearings reveals a deeper conspiracy."

  • Ian Millhiser:

    • [10-05] We should call the Republican justices "Republicans" and not "conservatives": "Supreme Court journalist should tell the truth about what's going on at the Court." While I agree that "the arguments against treating the justices as partisan actors are unpersuasive," I worry that reducing them to partisan hacks will set expectations both for and against, reinforcing their stereotypical behavior. It is still the case that on occasion Republican justices can rule against their party's most craven arguments -- indeed, the legitimacy of the Court depends on at least some air of independence. Same for Democratic justices (which as far as I've noticed happens more often).

    • [10-08] Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett seem unsure whether to save a man's life: "It's unclear how the Supreme Court will resolve an unusually messy death penalty."

  • Stephen S Trott: [10-07] Why the Supreme Court's immunity ruling is untenable in a democracy.

Climate and environment:

Business, labor, and economists:

Ukraine and Russia: No "Diplomacy Watch" this week?

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

Other stories:

  • Matt Breunig/Zephyr Teachout: [09-27] Should the government break up big corporations or buy them? "Matt Bruenig writes that governments should nationalize more companies while Zephyr Teachout argues that freedom requires decentralized power." Ça dépend. Each case should be evaluated on its own merits. One could write a book on this.

  • Stephen F Eisenman: [10-11] What does fascism look like? A brief introduction: Most of this piece focuses on Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, with an eye toward architecture and aesthetics, but that leads to a section "what does fascism look like today?" that opens with a photo of the Pentagon. Conclusion:

    Huey Long, governor of Louisiana from 1928-32, himself often called a fascist, said: "American Fascism would never emerge as Fascist, but as a 100 percent American movement; it would not duplicate the German method of coming to power but would only have to get the right President and Cabinet." Fascism, as I said at the beginning of this brief survey, is easy to see in retrospect, but not in prospect. However, when it appears right in front of you, identification becomes simple -- signs and symbols appear everywhere. As we approach the U.S. election, we can clearly witness one political party's tight embrace of fascism -- but seeing it doesn't mean we can easily stop it.

    Those of us on the left, especially with any real sense of history, are quick to brand certain right-wingers as fascists -- the dividing line is where disagreement turns to hatred and a desire to kill us. To us, at least, it's not just a derisive label, but a full paradigm, which informs not just by analogy but by internal logic. However, the label "fascist" doesn't appear to have much utility in communicating with people who are not on our specific bandwidth. One thing I will point out is that throughout history, fascists have not only done bad things, they have repeatedly failed, often bringing to ruin the nations and folk they claim to love. By the way, Eisenman has a forthcoming book, The Young Person's Illustrated Guide to American Fascism, with illustrations by Sue Coe.

Obituaries

Books

Music (and other arts?)

Chatter

  • Lara Friedman: [09-28] Observations on the current the moment - a thread.

    Israel used 10/7 to manufacture US consent/collaboration to undo what Bibi & his Greater Israel/neocon fellow travelers (incl in US) have long viewed as historic errors forced on Israel by weak leaders & intl appeasers of terror.

    These are: Gaza disengagement (viewed as capitulation to Hamas), the Oslo Agreement (viewed as capitulation to the PLO), and withdrawal from southern Lebanon (viewed as capitulation to Hezbollah).

    Along the way the Biden Admin & Congress acquiesced to new Israeli-authored rules of war that, among other things, define every human being as a legitimate military target - a terrorist, a terrorist supporter or sympathizer, or a "human shield" -

    - & allowing the annihilation of huge numbers of civilians & destruction of entire cities; allowing entire populations to be displaced, terrorized, starved, & deprived of medical care; & normalizing killing of journalists, medical workers, & UN staff - all with impunity.

    The costs of these new rules of war will be paid with the blood of civilians worldwide for generations to come, and the US responsibility for enabling, defending, & normalizing these new rules - and their horrific, dehumanizing consequences will not be forgotten.

    In the countdown to the US November elections, continued Israeli impunity means that Netanyahu and his government have every incentive to continue to pursue their revanchist and genocidal goals in Gaza, the West Ban, and Lebanon.

    Absent some new US & intl seriousness to impose concrete consequences that change Israeli calculations, the only real question now is whether Bibi & friends will seize this moment to pursue the other long-held dream of neocons in both Israel and the US: regime change in Iran.

    If they do so - and following a year of genocide-with-impunity capped by Nasrallah's assassination, the likelihood is today higher than ever before - the decision will be in large part based on the certainty that the Biden Admin, more than any Admin before it, will back them.

    This backing - which they have every reason to assume is assured - includes money, military aid, & even US military action. & it is assumed, regardless of whether the Biden Admin wants such a war & regardless of Israel's tactics/the scope of the destruction and casualties.

    Likewise, such a decision will reflect an equal certainty that the Harris & Trump campaigns not only will support Israel in waging war on Iran, but will actively compete over who, as president, will stand more firmly with Israel in its push to remake the entire region.

    And to be clear: Bibi & friends have - in actions & words - been telling the world since 10/7 their intent. Anyone surprised things have reached this point was either not paying attention, was in denial, or was happily playing along.

    For anyone who thinks my analysis re "next up, Iran" is wrong, see: [followed by tweet from Jared Kushner, then video of Netanyahu]

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

Current count: 214 links, 15280 words (19367 total)

Ask a question, or send a comment.