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Saturday, December 31, 2022Music WeekExpanded blog post, December archive (done). Tweet: Music Week: 55 albums, 6 A-list, Music: Current count 39330 [39275] rated (+55), 39 [36] unrated (+0: 11 new, 28 old). I've been known to extend the last Music Week of December to the end of the month, because the transition from year to year is such a natural breaking point, and I don't want to cheat 2022. Still, lots of things contributed to this delay, including an illness that didn't lay me up so much as it sapped my will to do anything, and a still persistent problem with internet connection that has made it hard to stream and to research. The main casualty in this has been the Jazz Critics Poll, which should have been published last week, but is now delayed . . . hopefully no later than next week. I still have much to write for it, so I won't dawdle further here. Note that other website updates are minimal: I haven't done anything to wrap up the monthly Streamnotes; I'm a couple entries behind in the Recent Reading; and who knows what else I've left broken. One thing I can leave you with is a PJRP ballot, which I basically scraped from my 2022 list without further thought:
More details in the EOY lists for Jazz (73 A-list) and Non-Jazz (80 A-list). My tracking file shows 1524 records rated this year (out of 4619 listed). You might also find the EOY Aggregate interesting. New records reviewed this week:
Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:
Old music:
Grade (or other) changes:
Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
Friday, December 30, 2022Daily LogJotted this down for Village Voice Pazz & Jop Rip-Off Poll: 1. The Regrettes: Further Joy (Warner) 16 2. Tyshawn Sorey Trio + 1: The Off-Off Broadway Guide to Synergism (Pi) 15 3. Gonora Sounds: Hard Times Never Kill (The Vital Record) 14 4. Big Thief: Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You (4AD) 10 5. Dave Rempis/Avreeayl Ra Duo: Bennu (Aerophonic) 10 6. Omri Ziegele Where's Africa: That Hat (Intakt) 8 7. Charlotte Adigery & Bolis Pupul: Topical Dancer (Beewee/Because Music) 7 8. Saba: Few Good Things (Saba Pivot) 7 9. Bob Vylan: Bob Vylan Presents the Price of Life (Ghost Theatre) 7 10. Nilufer Yanya: Painless (ATO) 6 Tuesday, December 27, 2022Speaking of WhichLong time, many delays, most significant of which was coming down with Covid a week ago. It followed a couple days of socializing, something I'm clearly ill-practiced at. The wife of a cousin died the previous week. I missed the funeral, but went out to the farm to see some of the family, who had all been at the funeral. Then, next day, I fixed our usual latke holiday dinner, for a rather tightly packed crowd of nine. Two days later I tested positive. I've had all three booster shots, and got a 5-day run of paxlovid. As illnesses go, I've suffered worse, but in this politically charged time, this one feels both sad and infuriating. And there have been many compounding hardships, from record cold that broke an appliance to a dog sadly on her last legs. Plus fear of infecting my wife, which so far hasn't happened, and as such remains a constant struggle. Still, the main side-effect has been a huge sense of disinterest in everything I've been doing, or wanting to do. The most immediate victim is the Francis Davis Jazz Poll, which won't come out on time, because I haven't gotten it together. My usual Music Week post is also delayed, perhaps indefinitely. (Certainly no guarantee it will appear tomorrow.) For some reason, this post framework has been easier to get back into than anything involving music. It started just jotting down links, and most of the ones I grabbed early are still pretty bare (and I'm unlikely to return to them). But over several days, a few comments started to form. Still, I figure this is still mostly an exercise to file away bookmarks, in case I ever feel like revisiting the history. Beware that Covid-19 cases have been rising steadily since new cases dropped under 37,000 on Oct. 30, to 70,425 (+90%) on Dec. 22 (numbers around Christmas bounce due to reporting fluctuations). Ben Armbruster: [12-16] Diplomacy Watch: Is the Overton window of the Ukraine war's end game shifting? Also: Connor Echols: [12-23] Diplomacy Watch: Sketching the uncomfortable path to peace. Both titles sound more optimistic than there seems to be evidence for.
Dean Baker: [12-16] We Don't Need Government-Granted Patent Monopolies to Finance Drug Development: Quite frankly, they do much more harm than good. Doug Bandow: [12-21] Ending the Syrian war, getting US troops out, and lifting sanctions: "The status quo is doing more harm than good. Let's admit failure before more people are hurt and put in harm's way." I would have been quite happy had Assad been driven into exile, or even strung up, but that didn't happen, despite the efforts of at least a dozen other countries to intervene. Realism suggests the need to reach some sort of deal where the US offers to normalize relations (including removing troops and ending sanctions), provide humanitarian aid, and use its influence to dissuade its "allies" from attacking and/or trying to subvert the Assad regime (Turkey being the most immediate threat, but Israel regularly bombs Syria), in exchange for agreement not to punish dissidents and to allow political prisoners to go into exile. Note, however, that the US has never negotiated such a deal, as it always seemed politically expedient to perpetuate "cold war" hostilities, and in the end the US never cared that much about the people it supposedly entered the conflict to help -- most were left to their own devices, then begrundingly allowed to immigrate if they made it that far. Dave Barry: [12-25] Dave Barry's 2022 Year in Review: Getting old here, and there. Old enough I can remember a time when he was genuinely funny. Probably because less seemed to be at stake then. Matthew Cooper: [12-22] Charlie Peters, Washington Monthly Founder and Mentor to Leading Journalists, Turns 96: Peter founded Washington Monthly in 1969. I started subscribing shortly after that. For a while, I suppose I could have followed two different political paths: one into reform-minded Democratic Party politics, which was influenced significantly by reading the policy-wonky articles in Washington Monthly, and the other into more radical left movements. Peters was a guru of the former path, but I probably stopped reading him before the McGovern loss crushed my faith in elections. But while the new left offered a convincing critique of liberal capitalism, I never found a practical politics there. I stopped subscribing to Washington Monthly after a few years, so I didn't notice when Peters was one of the first to expound a new notion of neoliberalism. I've never been clear how much his adoption of the term has in common with the "New Democrats" who made neoliberalism a dirty word. The last thing I read by him was a lament on how his native West Virginia abandoned the Democratic fold. Shirin Ghaffary: [12-16] Elon Musk's Twitter journalist purge has begun.
Melvin Goodman: [12-23] How the New York Times Mythologizes US-Israeli Relations. Something they're not alone in, but have been at the forefront of, at least since . . . well, the earliest examples in this article are from the 1950s. Margaret Hartmann: [12-16] 7 Great Things About Trump's Incredibly Dumb NFT Announcement: You know the bar's low when the article starts with: "NFTs are the least harmful thing Trump could have announced." Other Trump trivia pieces (see Prokop below for the Jan. 6 criminal referrals, and Narea for his taxes):
Ben Jacobs: [12-23] Did George Santos lie about everything? And how incompetent was the media in failing to figure him out before the election? Same for whoever was supposed to do "oppo research" for the Democrats. Too little, too late, but the New York Times has more: [12-23] George Santos's Early Life: Odd Jobs, Bad Debts and Lawsuits. On the other hand, while journalists aren't much good at discovering, they are pretty adept at piling on: Joe Perticone: [12-23] George Santos's Problems Are Just Getting Started. Ed Kilgore: [12-14] Democrats Came Shockingly Close to Keeping the House: Going into the election, my working assumption was that Democrats would win the popular vote for the House, but could lose control due mostly to gerrymanders. But it appears now that Republicans actually won the popular vote (50.6% to 47.8%, a margin of 2.8%) while winning the House by somewhat less (222-213, a margin of 2.0%). I don't know what this means, but one effect of gerrymandering is to suppress turnout by making elections less competitive ("safe" seats were often won by 70% or more), but also slanting competitive seats toward Republicans may have boosted R turnout more than D. Siobhan McDonough: [12-22] Why are American lives getting shorter? "US life expectancy got worse during Covid-19, and then kept getting worse." Ian Millhiser:
Brian Murphy: [11-09] Ernie Lazar, who quietly amassed huge FBI archive, dies at 77: Late tip here from Rick Perlstein, a beneficiary of his research. Nicole Narea: [12-21] Trump's tax returns are about to become public. What happens now? New Republic: The Scoundrels, Ghouls, and Crooks of 2022. Timothy Noah:
Andrew Prokop: [12-19] The January 6 committee's case against Trump.
Dylan Scott: [12-15] Ron DeSantis's vaccine "investigation" is all about beating Trump. Dan Secatore: [12-19] What I Learned Curating Presidential Theater for Obama: "A former Obama advance man on how the hollow pageantry of political stagecraft legitimizes bad policy and distracts us from more substantive political discussions." Stephen M Walt: [12-13] The United States Couldn't Stop Being Stop Being Stupid if It Wanted To. The "realist" blames liberals, for thinking that the rights and liberties we expect at home should be available to everyone else, but what kind of liberalism is one that extends its values at gun point? Granted, Americans like to talk about liberal values when they go to war, but that's only because it sounds better than admitting to crass imperialist aims. Brett Wilkins: [12-20] UN Experts Decry Record Year of Israeli Violence in Occupied West Bank: "Israel's deplorable record in the occupied West Bank will likely deteriorate further in 2023." Also, a golden oldie: Rick Perlstein: [2021-10-26] A Short History of Conservative Trolling. Friday, December 23, 2022Daily LogPhil Overeem posted his top-ten list to PJRP, with Rosalia: Motomami at his top pick. I commented:
Facebook objected:
Continuing, they try to explain:
I chose "Disagree with decision." This led to:
Monday, December 19, 2022Daily LogI'm trying to recollect specs on my two work computers, from various sources (none definitive). The "north desk" machine:
The "south desk" machine, built in 2019 ($1136 for the computer itself, screen was about $329):
Wednesday, December 14, 2022Music WeekExpanded blog post, December archive (in progress). Tweet: Music Week: 72 albums, 9 A-list, Music: Current count 39275 [39203] rated (+72), 36 [32] unrated (+4: 8 new, 28 old). The rated count, and the reviews below, cover 9-10 days, which partly explains the big numbers. But even at the normal 7-day mark I was close to 50, a total that pops up mostly when I go off into deep dives of mostly-familiar old music (often with short run times), like my recent specials on Jerry Lee Lewis (58) and Loretta Lynn (63). This week was nowhere near that easy, but I was locked into a zone counting jazz critics' ballots, and they were generating long lists of things to check out. The official deadline was end-of-business Monday, but on Tuesday I compiled a list of invited critics who hadn't voted and sent off last-ditch reminders. That produced another half-dozen ballots, bringing the total to 150. That leaves me four short of last year. I'm a bit disappointed, but it's still a respectable turnout, enough to maintain our boast of having the broadest, most comprehensive poll anywhere. I still have a ton of work to do, starting with adding notes to explain various artifacts of the poll. The biggest problem this year was how many voters wanted to combine votes for two albums in one line, especially where labels released two albums by one artist at the same time: Mary Halvorson, Amaryllis and Belladonna (May 13, on Nonesuch; complicating this, they were released as separate albums on CD and digital, but were packaged together on vinyl); and Ahmad Jamal, Emerald City Nights: Live at the Penthouse 1963-1964 and 1965-1966 (Dec. 2, on Jazz Detective/Elemental). This week's haul means that I've currently heard and rated 843 jazz albums this year (out of 1443 in my tracking file, a file which now includes 185 albums that got votes in the Jazz Critics Poll that I haven't yet heard, even as I'm shouldering the day-to-day work. Needless to say, work on my Non-Jazz EOY and my EOY aggregate files has largely stalled (although not before Beyoncé took a commanding lead in the latter). To answer a question I just got, the poll will again be published by Arts Fuse, some time between Christmas and New Years, and will be known as the 17th Annual Francis Davis Jazz Poll, in honor of its founder and guiding spirit, who I'm pleased to say is still keeping a keen eye on things. I did manage to kick out a belated Speaking of Which on Tuesday. Buried therein is the germ of an idea on how to solve a large share of America's political problems. I didn't get around to writing about the plan to shift the Democratic presidential primaries away from Iowa and New Hampshire and focus on South Carolina, but I recall floating an idea quite a while back to restructure primaries: run them in five Super Tuesday rounds, starting with the 10 smallest states (plus D.C.), then the next 10, etc. The bottom 10 states have too many Dakotas, but are still pretty diverse. You could even do more than 10 for the first round, so you can pick up traditional early states like Iowa, South Carolina, and Nevada. A couple new ideas could help here: the Democratic Party could run the primaries privately, mostly using mail votes (based on state registration records), so you wouldn't have to get a lot of state laws passed; the Party would be responsible for providing a neutral forum for debates, pamphlets, and get-out-the-vote efforts, in effect centralizing a lot of the fundraising tasks, and making campaigning much less prohibitively expensive; eligibility would be limited from round to round based on results. .New records reviewed this week:
Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:
Old music: None. Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
Tuesday, December 13, 2022Speaking of WhichI opened this during a brief lull on Friday, adding a bit here and there, but by Sunday evening I was so swamped with my collation of the 17th Annual Francis Davis Jazz Poll that it became clear that I wouldn't be able to find time to post until after Monday's deadline.l That's pushed it back two days, and will push Music Week back another, to Wednesday (at the earliest). In making a final round, I haven't limited myself to Sunday's articles, but I am trying to keep it light and manageable. Zack Beauchamp: [12-09] The bizarre far-right coup attempt in Germany, explained by an expert: Interview with Peter Neumann. Also:
Melissa del Bosque: [12-11] Arizona governor builds border wall of shipping crates in final days of office. Jessica Corbett: [12-10] Kari Lake files suit to reverse her loss in race for Arizona governor: I've occasionally wondered who is the Trumpiest governor in America -- Ron DeSantis is certainly the most prominent, although Kristi Noem pops into mind -- but to be truly Trumpy, you have to lose an election and refuse to let it go. Lake is the only one other than Trump with the ego to do that, although one suspects that even she is only following the Leader. Tim Craig: [12-10] As bitcoin plummets, Miami vows to hold onto its crypto dreams: Paul Krugman linked to this and tweeted: "Republicans have long insisted that governments shouldn't try to pick winners. So I guess they've decided to pick losers instead." He continued: "Crypto has always been a combination of technobabble and libertarian derp. But the sheer scope of the scam continues to amaze. The fact that there's still an FTX arena is the cherry on top." Connor Echols: [12-09] Diplomacy Watch: NATO infighting continues as Putin signals long war: "Western policy on Ukraine is hitting a snag as Turkey and Hungary flex their new-found geopolitical muscles." Little here beyond the hostage swap of Brittney Griner for Viktor Bout. More on Ukraine:
Rhoda Feng: [12-07] The Gamification of Everything Is No Fun: Review of Adrian Hon: You've Been Played: How Corporations, Governments, and Schools Use Games to Control Us. William Hartung: [12-09] New spending bill squanders billions on dysfunctional weapons programs: "The increase alone [$80 billion] from last year is more than what some of the world's biggest countries spend on their own defense budgets." This year's bill allocates $858 billion. More on this:
Shirin Ghaffary: [12-09] What the Twitter files don't tell us: "The documents are ammo for conservatives, even if they lack crucial context." Elon Musk selected Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss to orchestrate these leaks, figuring they'd give them the political spin he wanted. Also on this:
Margaret Hartmann: [12-08] Donald Trump Cost Lara Trump Her Fox News Gig: "Nepotism giveth, and nepotism taketh away." Eric Herschtal: [12-08] How the Right Turned "Freedom" Into a Dog Whistle: "A new book traces the long history of cloakroom racism in the language of resistance to an overbearing federal government." Review of Jefferson Cowie: Freedom's Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power. Ellen Ioanes: [12-10] Iran's months-long protest movement, explained. Also:
Ed Kilgore: [12-13] Is DeSantis More Electable Than Trump?: This is not a question Democrats should fret over. Better or worse? Perhaps, but best to prepare against the union of their two sets of views, which is often worse than any divergences you might be able to discover. (And note that Trump's deviances from Republican orthodoxy are like subatomic particles: tiny, unstable, and very short-lived.) No real need to go down this rabbit hole, but:
Keren Landman: [12-06] The US has never recorded this many positive flu tests in one week: "And health care systems are getting crushed . . . again." Rebecca Leber: [12-10] The weird Republican turn against corporate social responsibility: "Companies say they want to acknowledge environmental impacts. Republicans are mad about that." It used to be easy to think that Republicans are simply shills for big business, and that they'll reflexively support anything that adds to corporate bottom lines. The reality is more complex and more nuanced than that -- much more than I can unpack here, but whatever the political and ideological underpinning may be, for all practical purposes it just seems like Republicans really want a world that is even more dystopian than the one they've already created. Eric Levitz: [12-08] Climate Hawks Should Have Given Joe Manchin His Pipeline: Because Manchin's "permitting reform" bill would have made it easier not just to build his pet pipeline but to install more wind power and transmission lines, which are currently bogged down in the permit process. Neal Meyer/Simon Grassmann: [12-12] The Case for Proportional Representation. This is a "response" to another piece, by Benjamin Studebaker: [06-16] Proportional Representation Is a Terrible Idea That the Left Should Not Embrace. From a practical standpoint, I'm not sure exactly that they are proposing (or opposing), but I had a related idea a couple weeks back, and this gives me a chance to jot it down. My idea wasn't to divide the number of representatives up proportionately, but to keep districts (including states) and award weighted votes to the top two (or possibly more than two, subject to some minimum threshold) representatives. With a two-party system, each district would have two representatives: one Republican, one Democrat, with their voting weight set by the election split (rounded up for the winner, down for second place). The Senate could also be organized this way, with or without factoring the state population in. (Obviously, factoring it in would eliminate one big problem with the Senate.) I'm not sure what you'd do about executives (other than reduce their power). Think about it: this would solve a lot of problems, starting with gerrymandering; it would give more people a stake in representative government (living in Kansas, I can testify that at present "my" representatives are totally fucking useless); it would also reduce the incentive people have to invest in campaigns, given that most districts can only be swayed by a few percentage points. What this has to do with "left" political strategy is beyond me, but a more functional democracy seems likely to be a good thing. Ian Millhiser:
Françoise Mouly: [12-02] Remembering the artist Aline Kominsky-Crumb, a trailblazing funny woman: Dead, at age 74. Nathan J Robinson: [12-12] Why We Need Book Reviews: "Books are where the knowledge is. A flourishing democracy depends on a culture that care about and talks about books." Amen to that. Given that my own reading capacity is so starkly limited, I find that it also helps to have a map to books I (mostly) haven't read. Paul Rosenberg: [12-10] How the New York Times helped Republicans win the House: "The Gray Lady told America that rising crime and worsening inflation were driven by Democrats. None of it was true." Among other things, quotes Dean Baker: "In short, the media decided that we had a terrible economy, and they were not going to let the data get in the way." Storer H Rowley: [12-05] Biden Faces Netanyahu and Israel's Most Right-Wing Government. One imagines that Democrats including Biden should take offense at the rampant racism and the callous contempt for human rights and peace, but they've tolerated (and for all practical purposes endorsed) such behavior in increasing amounts for decades. It's hard to see why that changes now, although we are seeing more articles like Uriel Abulof: [11-25] "Have I Just Met the Jewish Hitler?" Barbara Slavin: [12-10] When will the US learn that sanctions don't solve its problems? "Harsh economic penalties rarely, if ever, work to change a targeted regime's behavior; so why do we still use them?" Could have filed this under Ukraine, but it's a much more general problem. In Russia's case, sanctions -- even if ineffective -- may be justifiable as a way to do something in response to invasion short of escalating the war. One might also imagine scenarios where the threat of sanctions might work to deter undesired behavior, but that's only likely to work if you're threatening to take away something a country depends on: South Africa is the poster case, and Israel might work the same way (at least that's the hope of the BDS movement). And relieving sanctions can be useful as a diplomatic bargaining chip, but only if you're willing to bargain and withdraw the sanctions: Iran and North Korea should be success examples here, but aren't, because ultimately preferred to nurse their grudges over allowing other nations any degree of normal freedom. Jeffrey St Clair: [12-09] Roaming Charges: The Mask of Order. Emily Stewart: [12-13] FTX's implosion and SBF's arrest, explained. This has become much bigger news than I care to go into. One wonders, for instance, if the decision to prosecute Brinkman-Fried isn't an attempt to whitewash the rest of the crypto racket, much like Bernie Madoff became the fall guy for a much larger and deeper financial scandal. But, what the hell:
Li Zhou: [12-06] Raphael Warnock is officially Democrats' 51st senator. Here's why that matters. On the other hand, days later the other shoe dropped: Christian Paz: [12-09] How Kyrsten Sinema's decision to leave the Democratic Party will change the Senate. She's registering as an Independent, and says she won't caucus with the Republicans, so that probably means that for organizational purposes Democrats will retain a 51-49 advantage, but now dependent on three independents (also Angus King and Bernie Sanders). More on these stories:
Monday, December 05, 2022Music WeekExpanded blog post, December archive (in progress). Tweet: Music Week: 44 albums, 10 A-list, Music: Current count 39203 [39159] rated (+44), 32 [33] unrated (-1: 4 new, 28 old). I sent a deadline reminder to Jazz Critics Poll invitees on Friday, and get a deluge of ballots back, bringing the total to 55. Took a long time to get them all counted, so yesterday's Speaking of Which was exceptionally short, mostly limited to links I might want to look back at later. Actual deadline is still a week away: December 12. We got 156 ballots last year, and I sent out more than 200 invites this year, so I expect a lot more work coming in. With all this, I had little time to review my own prospective ballot. However, I might as well practice what I preach and settle on a ballot now (with extra mentions for context:
Aside from Historical, this mostly corresponds to my highly volatile Best Jazz of 2022 list. My Historical votes have varied from the list for several years now, mostly because I value archival albums over reissues (especially the often-excellent Ezz-Thetics series), and because I value physical CDs over downloads and streaming. That worked against Cecil Taylor, and in favor of Sam Rivers (although I could just as well have picked Dave Brubeck, so there may be some mystery factor at work there). The Vocal category may also call for some explanation. The Hemingway album has vocals throughout, but isn't jazz in any broadly conventional sense -- you just hear little bits that suggest a jazz sensibility, which is to be expected from one of the great jazz drummers of the last 40 years. Camae Ayewa unconventional in other ways: a poet who first turned to rap then to jazz, her record is more explicitly jazz, but her vocals aren't. I found myself wanting to file several records last year on both lists, as I did Hemingway and Moor Mother this year. On the other hand, if you want a real, classic jazz singer, try Sheila Jordan. This week's haul is, once again, almost all jazz. A few weeks ago, when I first assembled the EOY Jazz and Non-Jazz files, I was surprised to find, for the first time since I've been splitting them, many more A-listed Non-Jazz albums. The gap has now closed to 68 to 75, and will probably close further next week. My secret tool is getting to see the Jazz Critics Poll ballots first. One thing that's slowed me in the counting is that I've been assembling a list of everything voted for that I haven't heard yet, which is currently 130 albums out of 443. That number has been increasing much faster than I can whittle it down. Most years we get votes for about 600 albums. There seems to be even less consensus than usual this year, so the final number may well exceed expectations.Meanwhile, other projects -- like the EOY Aggregate -- are languishing. I doubt that will change until the end of the year. If you're sitting on a Jazz Critics Poll invite, please fill it out and send it in. If you're not, but think you should be and want to fill one out, holler at me. I'm running out of time and energy to vet new voters, but we do have another week left. New records reviewed this week:
Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:
Old music:
Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
Sunday, December 04, 2022Speaking of WhichThis week's column will be the schematic one I thought I was going to write last week. How do I know? Well, I didn't open this file until 6:00 PM, and I still have other work to get done by bedtime. Dean Baker: Evidently Baker has been banned from Twitter (see: Left-Wing Twitter Accounts Criticizing Elon Musk Are Being Suspended for "Platform Manipulation and Spam", yet Elon Brings One of America's Most Prominent Nazis Back to Twitter, as Hate Speech's Rise on Twitter Is Unprecedented).
Charles Bethea: [12-04] Will Republicans who have soured on Trump turn out for Herschel Walker? I don't think we're talking about a very big group here, but if you're a Republican and Walker is the only candidate on the ballot, would you bother to vote? Especially when a victory means Walker will be in the public eye, as a "leading light" of the GOP, for six more years? Christopher Byrd: [12-04] Cory Doctorow wants you to know what computers can and can't do: "A conversation about the 'mediocre monopolists' of Big Tech, the weirdness of crypto, and the real lessons of science fiction." Patrick Cockburn: [12-05] The Cruel, Dishonest and Shameful Story of Britain's Last Colony May Be Coming to an End: The Chagos Archipelago, in the Indian Ocean. Connor Echols: [12-02] Diplomacy Watch: Divisions flare in the West as winter looms: "As energy prices rise and temperatures drop, European publics are feeling squeezed by the Ukraine's war's secondary effects." More on Ukraine:
Omar Guerrero: [11-28] Why the Right Can't Boogaloo. Margaret Hartmann: [10-30] Trump Was Tricked Into Dining With Too Many Antisemites: The story of his life, in a nutshell. A downside of wearing his prejudices and ignorance on his sleeves is that he's amazingly easy to con into saying and/or doing something disgusting. You'd think that with his money and exposure, he'd take some precautions, but the only people willing to work for him are ones as debased as he is -- and even then they're often playing a long game to find the most propitious moment to sell him out (e.g., Omorosa, Michael Cohen, Stormy Daniels). More on Trump and/or antisemitism:
Ellen Ioanes: [12-04] What Congress can do with Trump's tax returns. Paul Elliott Johnson: How the Right Developed Its Victim Complex: "Once a party that touted rugged individualism, today's Republicans have an ever-expanding list of grievances and complaints about perceived wrongs." John Limbert: [12-01] Iran's clerics have declared war on their own people: "A tight, privileged fraternity of religious leaders has monopolized power in Tehran since 1979. It's now backed itself into a corner." More on Iran:
Ian Millhiser:
Lily Sánchez: [11-23] On Slowing Down to Cook. Jeffrey St Clair: [12-02] Roaming Charges: Railroaded, Again: He's very unhappy, but not surprised, about Biden and the Democrats ending the railroad strike. Michael D Swaine: [11-28] Here's how the US shouldn't respond to China protests: "Washington has a habit of getting involved in ways that make things worse for demonstrators on the ground." More on China:
The story above that needs the most unpacking is the way US media has lined up behind the idea that China's anti-Covid strategy was a disaster, even though America's schizophrenic response to the pandemic resulted both in a per capita death rate 600 times as high, while China's economy has continued to grow faster than America's. One might argue many sides of this issue, but those facts do not prove that China has less regard for the health and welfare of its people than we do -- if anything, quite the opposite. Yet the implication seems to be politicians who actively sabotaged pandemic response were somehow being heroic. For a prime example, see Charles P Pierce: [11-30] The Ghoulish Hubris of Letting People Die and Calling That Bravery.
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