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Sunday, March 31, 2024
Speaking of Which
Blog link.
Monday, March 25, 2024
Music Week
Expanded blog post,
March archive
(in progress).
Tweet: Music Week: 32 albums, 8 A-list
Music: Current count 42039 [42007] rated (+32), 31 [28] unrated (+3).
Speaking of Which ran over again. I posted what I had late
Sunday night (227 links, 9825 words; the former possibly a record,
the latter well above usual but less than 10883 for the week of
March
3. (Updated tally: 259 links, 11559 words, so may very well
be the biggest one ever.)
I got this started early Monday afternoon, but probably won't
post until late, not so much because I expect this to take much
as because I'd rather spend the time cleaning up Speaking of Which.
I'm under no delusions that what I say here will make any difference
to the world, but times like these need witnesses. And that is the
one thing I can still offer.
Not a lot of albums this week -- played a lot of old stuff again --
but I'm fairly pleased with the finds this week, including some jazz
artists not previously on my radar (Espen Berg, Roby Glod, Nicole
McCabe) and a couple old-timers who returned to form with their best
releases in years (Kahil El'Zabar, Charles Lloyd). I'll also note
that results flipped expectations for two much-hyped reissues (Joe
Henderson, Alice Coltrane).
Very little non-jazz this week, especially if you count Queen
Esther as jazz (which you should for her better releases below,
but not for the still-recommended Gild the Black Lily).
Tierra Whack came from Robert Christgau's latest
Consumer
Guide. I should replay the records he liked better than I did --
Yard Act, Les Amazones d'Afrique, the Guy Davis I
reviewed shortly after
it came out in 2021. Most other records I have similar grades for
(the three I mentioned I'm just one or two notches down on), leaving
unheard the Queen compilation and a Thomas Anderson album that isn't
streamable yet. By the way, Christgau skipped over Anderson's recent
odds & sods set, The Debris Field (Lo-Fi Flotsam and Ragged
Recriminations, 2000-2021), which I gave an A- to in my
review.
Unpacking below does not include Monday's haul, which looks to be
substantial. Most promising among the new releases is Dave Douglas
with James Brandon Lewis, but note also a new album with Kevin Sun
as Mute. Plus a lot of vault discoveries: Chet Baker/Jack Sheldon,
Yusef Lateef, Sun Ra, Art Tatum, Mal Waldron/Steve Lacy, in addition
to the Sonny Rollins already uwrapped.
New records reviewed this week:
- Espen Berg: Water Fabric (2023, Odin): [sp]: A-
- Espen Berg: The Hamar Concert (2022 [2023], NXN): [sp]: B+(**)
- Kahil El'Zabar's Ethnic Heritage Ensemble: Open Me, a Higher Consciousness of Sound and Spirit (2023 [2024], Spiritmuse): [sp]: A-
- Romy Glod/Christian Ramond/Klaus Kugel: No ToXiC (2022 [2024], Nemu): [cd]: A-
- Julian Lage: Speak to Me (2024, Blue Note): [sp]: B+(*)
- Remy Le Boeuf's Assembly of Shadows: Heartland Radio (2023 [2024], SoundSpore): [cd]: B
- David Leon: Bird's Eye (2022 [2024], Pyroclastic): [cd]: B+(**)
- Charles Lloyd: The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow (2024, Blue Note): [sp]: A-
- Nicole McCabe: Live at Jamboree (2023 [2024], Fresh Sound): [sp]: B+(***)
- Moor Mother: The Great Bailout (2024, Anti-): [sp]: B+(*)
- Willie Morris: Conversation Starter (2022 [2023], Posi-Tone): [sp]: B+(**)
- Willie Morris: Attentive Listening (2023 [2024], Posi-Tone): [sp]: B+(*)
- Kjetil Mulelid: Agoja (2022 [2024], Odin): [sp]: B+(**)
- Queen Esther: Things Are Looking Up (2024, EL): [cd]: A- [04-09]
- Queen Esther: Rona (2023, EL): [sp]: B+(*)
- Ron Rieder: Latin Jazz Sessions (2023 [2024], self-released): [cd]: B+(***)
- Viktoria Tolstoy: Stealing Moments (2023 [2024], ACT): [sp]: B+(*)
- A Tonic for the Troops: Realm of Opportunities (2022 [2023], Odin): [sp]: B+(**)
- Tierra Whack: World Wide Whack (2024, Interscope): [sp]: A-
Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:
- Alice Coltrane: The Carnegie Hall Concert (1971 [2024], Impulse!): [sp]: A-
- Joe Henderson: Power to the People (1969 [2024], Craft): [sp]: B+(***)
Old music:
- Espen Berg Trio: Bølge (2017 [2018], Odin): [sp]: B+(***)
- Espen Berg Trio: Fjære (2021 [2022], Odin): [sp]: B+(**)
- The Herb Geller Quartet: I'll Be Back (1996 [1998], Hep): [r]: B+(**)
- The Herb Geller Quartet: You're Looking at Me (1997 [1998], Fresh Sound): [r]: B+(***)
- Herb Geller and Brian Kellock: Hollywood Portraits (1999 [2000], Hep): [r]: B+(***)
- Herb Geller With Don Friedman: At the Movies (2007, Hep): [r]: B+(**)
- Nicole McCabe: Introducing Nicole McCabe (2020, Minaret): [sp]: A-
- Nicole McCabe: Landscapes (2022, Fresh Sound New Talent): [sp]: B+(***)
- Queen Esther: Talkin' Fishbowl Blues (2004, EL): [sp]: B+(**)
- Queen Esther: What Is Love? (2010, EL): [sp]: B+(***)
- Queen Esther: The Other Side (2014, EL): [sp]: B+(**)
Limited Sampling: Records I played parts of, but not enough
to grade: -- means no interest, - not bad but not a prospect,
+ some chance, ++ likely prospect.
Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
- Owen Broder: Hodges: Front and Center, Vol. Two (Outside In Music) [04-12]
- Benji Kaplan: Untold Stories (self-released) [05-01]
- João Madeira/Margarida Mestre: Voz Debaixo (4DaRecord) [02-17]
- Ivo Perelman Quartet: Water Music (RogueArt) * [04-00]
- PNY Quintet: Over the Wall (RogueArt) * [03-00)
- Ernesto Rodrigues/Bruno Parinha/João Madeira: Into the Wood (Creative Sources) [01-09]
- Sonny Rollins: Freedom Weaver: The 1959 European Tour Recordings (Resonance, 3CD) [04-20]
- Dave Schumacher & Cubeye: Smoke in the Sky (Cellar) [04-19]
Sunday, March 24, 2024
Speaking of Which
Blog link.
I was struck by
this meme: "If Israelis stop fighting there will be peace. If
Palestinians stop fighting there will be no more Palestinians."
The first line is certainly true. This latest war has been so
devastating that it's hard to imagine any fight left -- at least
of the sort that would strike out at Israelis beyond their wall.
The other obvious point is that there's no risk in trying. If
Hamas does attack again, Israel can always strike back, and that
reaction will be better understood than the systematic, genocidal
war Israel is waging.
The second is less obvious, depending on what you mean by
"stop fighting." Hamas has never had the capability of fighting
Israel like Israel fights Gaza. Hamas has no air force, no navy,
no submarines, no tanks, no heavy artillery, no anti-aircraft or
anti-missile defenses, no drones. Their rockets are small and
unguided, and have never produced more than accidental damage.
Aside from the Oct. 7 jailbreak, the only way an Israeli gets
hurt is by entering Gaza, and even then the ratio of Palestinian-to-Israeli
casualties is 50-to-1 or more. That's not much of a fight.
However, the second line could be rewritten in terms that both
sides will agree with, if not agree on: "Palestinians will [only]
stop fighting when there are no more Palestinians." An army may
sensibly surrender to a more imposing power, but this will only
happen if one has hope of surviving and eventually recovering
from surrender. Germany and Japan surrendered to the US to end
WWII, but only because they believed that they would be given
a chance to return to running their own lives. (See John Dower's
Embracing Defeat for more on how Japan dealt with this.
Japan is a better example than Germany, because its government
was still intact when it surrendered, whereas Germany's was in
tatters after Hitler's suicide.) A number of American Indian
tribes surrendered with similar hopes, even though the US had
given them little reason for such hope.
But Israel's current demands for ceasefire terms, following
the genocidal threats of Israel's leaders, and the genocidal
methodology they've practiced in this war, offer little or no
hope to any Palestinian that surrender is anything but suicide.
Israelis demand absolute servility, but know that they'll never
get everyone to submit, that there will always be resistance of
some sort, and as such their security will always be at risk. This
presents them with an existential dilemma, to which there are only
three solutions: equal rights, separation, or annihilation.
They have long refused to consider equal rights. (Lots of
reasons we needn't consider here, like racism and demography.)
They've considered separation, at least within certain bounds,
but it's naturally a formula for war, so they've insisted on
being the dominant power, both by building up a huge military
advantage and by preventing Palestinians from ever developing
their own popular leadership. But the solution they've always
craved was annihilation. The problem there has been finding a
time when they could get away with it. Oct. 7 was the excuse
they were waiting for, dramatic enough that few of their allies
grasped immediately how they had goaded Hamas into action.
Even so, Israel has always had a numbers problem. America
was able to reduce its native population to levels where they
became politically and economically irrelevant, after which
annihilation no longer mattered, and some reconciliation was
possible. But for Israel, there were always too many Palestinians,
too close by, too economically developed and culturally sophisticated.
For just
these reasons, colonizers eventually gave up on Algeria and South
Africa, but only after extraordinary brutality. Israel is the last
to believe they're strong enough to beat down any and all resistance.
And that's really because they have few if any scruples against
killing every last Palestinian.
And don't for a moment think that Palestinians don't understand
this. They've lived through it for decades, and while often beaten
down, often severely, they've survived to resist again. They'll
survive this, too, and will continue to resist, as peacefully as
Israel will allow, or as violently as they can muster.
Looking further down my twitter feed:
From
Rami Jarrah: Picture of an adult Palestinian male seated on
a couch, surrounded 14 children (a couple into their teens). Text:
"Nobody in this photo is alive. Israel's right to self defence."
From
Kayla Bennett: Chart image. Text: "One of the most horrifying
graphics ever." I looked for an article including the chart, and
came up with:
From
Ryan Heuser: A link to the website for
The New York War Crimes,
reporting on propaganda published by The New York Times
(motto: "All the Consent That's Fit to Manufacture"). I haven't
figured out yet where the illustrations come from.
From
Yousef Munayer retweeted Heuser, adding: "A new poll found that
even though some 30,000 more Palestinians have been killed than
Israelis since October, half of Americans didn't know which side
has lost more lives. This has a lot to do with it."
From
Etan Nechin retweeted Chris Olley: "[Pennsylvania]'s
richest person Jeff Yass is buying Truth Social for $3 Billion so
Trump can pay off his $450 Million judgment in return for Trump
doing a 180 on his Tiktok and China stance to preserve Yass's $30
Billion-with-a-B stake in Tiktok. We call this oligarchy' when it's
elsewhere." Nechin adds: "Notably, Jeff Yass was the main financier
of Kohelet Forum, the shadowy organization behind Israel's attempted
judicial coup that was championed by the settler far right. These
oligarchs care little for democracy, only market interests." The
Wikipedia page for Yass is
here, which
documents all this and more.
From
Daniel Denvir: "Truth Social has roughly twice the monthly app
users as my niche left-wing intellectual podcast has monthly downloads.
The Dig's own healthy but rather modest financial situation suggests
to me that this company is not worth nearly $6 billion."
From
Paul Krugman: "So, did the ACA bend the cost curve? Call it
coincidence, but excess cost growth -- health spending growing
faster than GDP -- basically ended when it passed." See chart:
I'm reminded that Switzerland long had the world's second most
expensive health care system, with costs increasing in tandem with
US costs, until they adopted a universal non-profit insurance scheme.
While this was still much more expensive than systems in UK, Germany,
and France, it halted the increase, while US costs continue to rise.
ACA hasn't worked as well as Switzerland's system -- by design, it isn't
universal, and still allows (and sometimes encourages) profit-seeking --
but it was a step in the right direction.
Initial count: 227 links, 9,825 words.
Not really finished when posted late Sunday night, so some Monday
updates have been added. While sections are marked (like this),
minor edits (like the last paragraph above) are not. (Seems like
there should be a finer-grained way to do this, but I haven't
figured one out yet.
Updated count [03-25]: 259 links, 11,559 words.
Several breaking stories on Monday [03-25] are not reported or
reacted to below, but should be significant next week: Here's the
"heads up":
Luisa Loveluck/Karen DeYoung/Missy Ryan/Michael Birnbaum:
[03-25]
Netanyahu cancels delegation after US does not block UN cease-fire
call: The US, for the first time
since Israel attacked Gaza after the Oct. 7 attacks, abstained from
and didn't veto a cease-fire resolution, allowing it to pass 14-0.
This is the first concrete step that the Biden administration is
developing a conscience over Israel's genocide. A stronger signal
would have been to vote for the resolution. Stronger still would
be to withhold aid (especially munitions) until the cease-fire has
been implemented (at which point Israel won't need the arms). So
Biden still has a long ways to go, but at least he has found a new
direction. Next step will be to show Netanyahu that his tantrum is
for naught, and that his conceit that he actually runs Washington --
which, by the way, is a big part of his political capital in Israel --
is no longer true.
PS: Yousef Munayyer tweeted after this: "The US abstention at
the UNSC today as well as Netanyahu's reaction to it should be
seen as each leader's attempt to manage domestic audiences. What
matters is Biden signed off on $4billion more in weapons for
Israel to further the genocide. Keep your eye on the ball."
Mark Berman/Jonathan O'Connell/Shayna Jacobs: [03-25]
Trump wins partial stay of fraud judgment, allowed to post $175
million: This postpones foreclosure on Trump properties, for
ten days at least (the time allowed to post the bond).
Shayna Jacobs/Devlin Barrett: [03-25]
NY judge sets firm April 15 trial date in Trump's historic hush
money case.
Top story threads:
Israel:
Mondoweiss:
[03-18]
Day 164: Israeli army storms al-Shifa again, aid reaches Jabalia for
first time in months: "Over a million people in Gaza face 'imminent'
famine as UNRWA aid trucks arrive in northern Gaza for the first time
in months. Meanwhile, the Israeli army's Chief of Staff says 'a long
way to go' until Israel's military objectives are achieved."
[03-19]
Day 165: Israeli attacks escalate on Rafah, al-Shifa Hospital invasion
enters second day: "After a night of heavy bombardment the PA warns
Israel's Rafah offensive has begun. Meanwhile, the invasion of al-Shifa
hospital continues; all communication with medical staff trapped inside
the hospital has been silent since Monday evening."
[03-20]
Day 166: Israel kills Gaza officials handling food delivery to the
north; Canada votes to halt arms sales to Israel: "Hamas slams
Israel for 'spreading chaos' after an Israeli airstrike killed two
local police officers in charge of securing and delivering food to
north Gaza. In the West Bank, Israeli forces and settlers kill two
Palestinians."
[03-21]
Day 167: Israel has killed over 100 aid workers in Gaza in the last
week: "Israel has killed over 100 aid workers in Gaza over the
past week as its military siege of al-Shifa Hospital continues.
Meanwhile, the Netanyahu government continues planning for an
invasion of Rafah."
[03-22]
Day 168: US advances UN Security Counsil ceasefire resolution as
al-Shifa Hospital siege enters fifth day: "The siege of al-Shifa
Hospital enters its fifth day as the Israeli army threatens to blow
up the hospital, while the U.S.'s proposed UNSC resolution uses
nebulous language that does not call for an "immediate" ceasefire.
[03-23]
Day 169: Israel kills 7 aid-seekers in northern Gaza, 4 children in
Rafah as siege of al-Shifa Hospital enters sixth day: "Israel
continued its airstrikes on Rafah, killing four children, while in
northern Gaza Israel turned back food aid for the second time in a
week and killed at least 7 Palestinian aid-seekers near the Kuwaiti
roundabout."
[03-24]
Day 170: Israel assaults al-Shifa, Nasser, and al-Amal hospitals
in one day: "Israeli forces ordered Palestinians inside al-Amal
Hospital in Khan Younis to leave 'naked,' while survivors of the
al-Shifa Hospital raid witnessed numerous atrocities committed by
the Israeli army. In Jerusalem, Israeli settlers stormed al-Aqsa."
Sabreen Akhter: [03-21]
When children are present in a genocide.
Faress Arafat: [03-23]
Gaza's children are enduring overwhelming trauma: "A Palestinian
nurse from the al-Shifa Hospital recalls his experience tending to
the children wounded and killed in the war."
Mohamad Bazzi: [03-21]
The Gaza famine is human-made. And the US is complicit in this
catastrophe.
Cate Brown: [03-22]
Israel announces largest West Bank land seizure since 1993 during
Blinken visit.
Eliza Griswold: [03-21]
The children who lost limbs in Gaza: "More than a thousand children
who were injured in the war are now amputees. What do their futures
hold?"
Isaac Chotiner: [03-21]
The brutal conditions facing Palestinian prisoners: "Since the
attacks of October 7th, Israel has held thousands of people from
Gaza and the West Bank in detention camps and prisons." Interview
with Tal Steiner, whose Public Committee Against Torture in Israel
tries to monitor such things.
Stephanie Guilloud: [03-20]
There is nothing we can do about Israel other than everything:
"The war on Gaza is being used to advance fascism and white supremacy
in the U.S. It is also opening people's eyes to global systems that
require genocide to continue. To stand with Palestine is to transform
those systems and build a different world."
Middle East Monitor: [03-13]
Satellite images show 35% of Gaza's buildings destroyed.
Mondoweiss: [03-18]
The real reason Israel stormed al-Shifa Hospital yet again: "Israel's
latest attack on al-Shifa Hospital and the successful delivery of food
aid to northern Gaza are connected. Here's how."
Yumna Patel: [03-22]
Israel's plans to replace its Palestinian labor force could spell
disaster for the Palestinian economy.
Meron Rapoport: [03-20]
The Israeli public is dispirited. So why is the right euphoric?
Jeremy Scahill:
"Man-made hell on Earth": A Canadian doctor on his medical mission
to Gaza: "Palestinian doctors 'are working on a daily basis on
the most horrific, explosive trauma that you've ever seen. They're
doing sometimes 14, 15 amputations, mostly on children, per day,
and they've been doing it for six months now."
Amna Shabana: [03-20]
'All of them are gone except me': "My friend Reem Hamadaqa barely
survived an attack on her home in Khan Younis that killed her parents
and most of her family. What do you tell a friend who has lost nearly
everything?"
Richard Silverstein: [03-23]
Amalek directive approves murders of Hamas leaders' families:
"Israel targeting Hamas leadership for elimination along with all
family members." The "Amalek directive" refers back to an earlier
[2023-10-25] post:
Israeli security cabinet orders murders of senior Hamas leaders and
families: "Ministers tasked IDF and Shin Bet with mass assassinations,
invoking a Biblical verse commanding extermination of Amalek."
Maureen Tkacik: [03-20]
What really happened on October 7? "And why, wonders a new Al
Jazeera documentary, did the media go to such lengths to concoct
gruesome X-rated versions of an attack that was harrowing enough
to begin with?" Pull quote: "Hamas had some rockets, but did it
really have the weaponry capable of mounting this level of
destruction? Western journalists have reported that Hamas was
fully responsible." Who did? Well:
By November, the IDF conceded that it had, actually, deployed
Apache helicopters and tanks to the Nova music festival that "may"
have killed "some" of the Nova festival concertgoers, in accordance
with something called the Hannibal Directive, a doctrine named for
a Carthaginian general who poisoned himself rather than be questioned
by his Roman captors, whereby the Israeli army is ordered to fire
upon its own troops to prevent the enemy from taking those troops
hostage. Around noon on October 7, according to Israeli newspapers
cited in the documentary, the IDF may have invoked a version of the
Hannibal directive, expanded to include Israeli civilians, and in
accordance began blindly opening fire with rockets and helicopter
gunships on any person or vehicle seen moving across the border
with Gaza. In particular, the documentary visits Kibbutz Be'eri,
which looks a bit like present-day Gaza in parts, with a munitions
expert who demonstrates strong evidence that some of the houses had
been hit with IDF tank fire. It was Israeli troops, not Hamas
"murderers," according to one resident, who killed 12 longtime
residents there.
Also on the Al Jazeera documentary:
Alex de Waal: [03-21]
We are about to witness in Gaza the most intense famine since the second
world war: "Even when the numbers of people needlessly dying dwindle,
the scars of famine will endure."
Vivian Yee/Iyad Abuheweila/Abu Bakr Bashir/Ameera Harouda: [03-23]
Gaza's shadow death toll: Bodies buried beneath the rubble.
Israel vs. world opinion:
Michael Arria:
Ramzy Baroud: [03-22]
Cognitive dissonance: Perplexed US foreign policy is prolonging Gaza
genocide: "Perplexed" works on two levels here: they can't figure
out how to do things, because they're stuck in a lot of dysfunctional
ideas (like deterrence, sanctions, their great "indispensable nation"
conceit); but they also can't figure out what they want to do, partly
because Israel doesn't allow them any sensible options.
Daniel Boguslaw:
Biden decries civilian deaths in Gaza as Pentagon fails with its own
safeguards.
Peter Beinart: [03-22]
The great rupture in American Jewish life.
Jonathan Chait: [03-21]
Schumer is a better friend to Israel than Netanyahu's allies:
"Israelis have a right to know the dangers of Netanyahu's
one-statism."
Stan and Priti Gulati Cox: [03-19]
Blocking the aid trucks, letting the tanks roll.
Thomas L Friedman: [03-19]
What Schumer and Biden got right about Netanyahu: Like them,
Friedman's been so securely on the party bus for so long that he
feels entitled to weigh on on Israeli politics, if only to pretend
that something can be redeemed out of their descent into genocide.
Mostly, that means another attempt to rescue the "two-state" mirage.
As I've noted elsewhere, "two-state" is a card that Israel shows on
occasion when it seems convenient, but always withdraws, because
they're unwilling to allow anything like an independent state of
Palestinians. Or maybe they've just found it unnecessary, as long
as no one seriously twists their arms -- Americans have nominally
supported "two-state" since 1967, but never required more than a
bit of lip-service. They have at various points suggested they'd
agree to "two-state": they supported the 1937 and 1947 partition
plans, they agreed to UN resolutions in 1967 and 1973 which they
never followed up on, they agreed with Egypt in 1979 to "autonomy"
(a vague term with no timetable), they agreed to Oslo (with various
delays for "confidence building" that never happened, at least to
their satisfaction); all the while building more settlements
designed to establish "facts on the ground" making it impossible
to return land to any Palestinian state.
Friedman's six points here just show how maleable his mind is
to Israeli thinking. For instance, "Hamas's attack was designed to
halt Israel from becoming more embedded than ever in the Arab world
thanks to the Abraham Accords and the budding normalization process
with Saudi Arabia." So, the real reason a thousand Hamas fighters
undertook a suicide mission was to spoil Jared Kushner's kickback
scam? Gaza had been blockaded and was being choked to near-death,
especially since 2005, but Israelis can only imagine their own
existence at stake.
Mention "one-state," with its obvious implication of everyone
under that state enjoying equal rights, and Israelis will reject
the very idea as a "non-starter" -- as an idea they're unwilling
to even entertain, even though every real democracy takes pains
to protect minority individual rights from majoritarian abuse.
Liz Goodwin/Abigail Hauslohner/Yasmeen
Abutaleb/Leigh Ann Caldwell: [03-20]
Republicans hug Netanyahu tighter as Democratic tensions with Israel
war strategy boil: "The Israeli PM criticized Schumer's comments
calling for a new election as 'outrageous' in GOP-only meeting." The
meeting itself says volumes about those present: how arrogant and
careless Netanyahu is about entering into American party politics,
and how arrogant and careless Republicans are in usurping Biden's
foreign policy prerogatives. But my first reaction was simply,
"birds of a feather flock together" -- be they fascists, or merely
criminal-minded.
Michael Hirsh: [03-22]
From 'I love you' to 'asshole': How Joe gave up on Bibi.
Elie Quinlan Houghtaling:
In harrowing speech, AOC warns the US is aiding "genocide" in Gaza.
Gabriela Kaplan: [03-24]
'Not in my name': How a new generation is divesting from Israeli
apartheid.
Fred Kaplan: [03-18]
What Trump really means when he says he would end the war in Gaza
"quickly". Why write the article when you know the answer is
"nothing"? Trump spent his first term in thrall to his advisers
and donors/investors, and got nothing to show for it (aside from
his son-in-law pocketing $2B for his Abraham Accords scam). Ok,
one stroke of genius was scheduling the Afghanistan withdrawal to
occur on Biden's watch, as that was the exact point his approval
rates sunk under 50%. But that suggests Trump was smart enough
to lose 2020 on purpose, so Biden would get blamed for all of
the messes Trump left -- Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Gaza are the
loudest ones to date, but many more are still simmering -- so he
could rise again and claim a second term on his own far more
extremist terms. The main foreign policy change to expect from
Trump 2.0 is that he will provide a much more credible test of
Nixon's "madman theory."
Tariq Kenney-Shawa: [03-22]
Don't be fooled by Antony Blinken's crocodile tears: "The
secretary of state is very good at projecting empathy about the
horror in Gaza. But his actions speak much louder than his words."
Amed Khan:
Organizing aid to Gaza led me to a harsh truth: Biden is on board
for ethnic cleansing: "I helped with airlifts in Afghanistan,
aid to the Ukrainian front, and building roads in Rwanda. None of
it prepared me for the challenges of Gaza.
David Klion:
Hit dogs holler: What the backlash against Jonathan Glazer says
about Israel's defenders.
Mary Lawlor: [03-21]
There is no moral argument that justifies the sale of weapons to
Israel: "Israel has shown it will use these arms indiscriminately
against Palestinians."
Branko Marcetic: [03-23]
Israel's meddling in US politics is aggressive and unceasing.
Joseph Massad: [03-20]
In the West, Israel never reinitiates violence, it only 'retaliates':
Or so says Western media, especially the New York Times.
Jeff Melnick: [02-27]
A 'Black-Jewish alliance' in the US? Israel-Gaza war shows it's more
myth than special relationship.
James North: [03-23]
Mainstream media finally reports on Gaza famine but won't admit
Israel is deliberately responsible.
Trita Parsi: [03-22]
Why US ceasefire proposal failed at UNSC: "Russia and China
vetoed language which did represent a shift for Biden -- but the
devil is in the details."
Mitchell Plitnick: [03-23]
Chuck Schumer's speech widens rifts over Israel in Congress:
"Democrats are fracturing over support for Israel, because their
constituents don't support it. The long-term result might be the
end of the bipartisan consensus on Israel."
Ted Rall: [03-20]
Israel: Hermit kingdom: "Why is Israel rapidly sliding into
pariah status now?"
Michael Sappir:
The spiraling absurdity of Germany's pro-Israel fanaticism.
Karim Sariahmed: [03-19]
Doctors justify genocide in a prestigious journal: "The Journal
of the American Medical Association published four letters rife with
racist anti-Palestinian tropes. The prestigious platform created the
appearance of intellectualism and expertise, but it's all just racism
with a ribbon on it."
Norman Solomon: [03-24]
How Israel hides its atrocities in Gaza: "Apologists for Israel's
mass murder in Gaza fall back on 'antisemitism' claims."
Prem Thakker:
US doubles down on defunding UNRWA -- despite flimsy allegations.
Philip Weiss: [03-24]
Weekly Briefing: Zionism will never be viewed the same after the
Gaza genocide: "Jeffrey Goldberg used to brag of his Israeli
military service but this week was forced to withdraw from a
speaking event after students asked how a former IDF prison guard
could speak on democracy. Zionism has lost its hallowed perch in
U.S. society."
America's increasingly desperate and pathetic empire:
Sam Biddle:
Tech official pushing TikTok ban could reap windfall from US-China
cold war.
Connor Echols: [03-21]
'Not defendable': Top enlisted brass blast conditions for soldiers:
"The 'quality of life' for military and their families has become a
persistent problem, and its feeding into the recruitment crisis."
Jonathan Freedland: [03-22]
In defying Joe Biden, Benjamin Netanyahu is exposing the limits of US
power.
Daniel Larison: [03-22]
Hawks pushing for 'axis of evil' reunion tour: "Lumping US
adversaries into a single-headed monster is a paranoid delusion
used as to fuel militarism."
Alfred McCoy: [03-12]
The American Empire in (ultimate? crisis: "The decline and fall
of it all?" Sections, predictably, include: "Creeping disaster in
Ukraine"; "Crisis in Gaza"; and "Trouble in the Taiwan Straits."
Andrew O'Hehir: [03-04]
America in 2024: Blind, blundering Colossus on a downward slide:
"If the Biden-Trump rerun wasn't embarrassing enough, US support for
Israel has alienated the entire world."
Ishaan Tharoor: Washington Post's "Worldview" columnist.
These pieces could be scattered about, but fit together:
[03-19]
Israel's war on Hamas brings famine to Gaza: "What makes this
calamity all the more stunning is that it's entirely the product
of human decisions." Catherine Russell says, "we haven't seen that
rate of death among children in almost any other conflict in the
world." He also notes that "Israeli officials, chiefly Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, appear unmoved by the state of
affairs." Like it's exactly what they wanted.
[03-20]
How the war in Ukraine has split the Czechs and Slovaks.
[03-22]
Mexico rejects Texas's 'draconian' migrant law.
[03-25]
The US and Israel have a 'major credibility problem': Let's
quote some of this, about US Assistant Secretary of State Bill
Russo:
According to NPR, Russo said in his March 13 call that Israel --
and the United States, as Israel's security guarantor and close ally --
face a "major credibility problem" because of the war, the astonishing
Palestinian death toll (now more than 32,000 people),
the man-made famine gripping ravaged areas of the Gaza Strip,
and growing global frustration with Israel's insistence on prolonging
the war to fully eradicate militant group Hamas.
"The Israelis seemed oblivious to the fact that they are facing
major, possibly generational damage to their reputation not just in
the region but elsewhere in the world,"
the memo saida. "We are concerned that the Israelis are missing
the forest for the trees and are making a major strategic error in
writing off their reputation damage."
Alex Thurston: [03-21]
Why the Nigerien junta wants to kick US troops out: "While
Washington's policy has been rudderless since last year's coup,
an American exit might not be a bad thing." Also:
Election notes: After Super Tuesday, this is
turning into a category with not much happening, or at least not much
people are bothering to write against. March 19 saw presidential
primaries in Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Kansas, and Ohio. Biden's
been winning the Democratic side by a bit over 80%, which isn't
great for an incumbent, but also isn't disastrous. Trump wins as
easily, but rarely hits 80% -- also not great considering no one
is actively running against him. (In Arizona, the figures were
89.3% Biden, 78.8% Trump; in Florida, 81.2% Trump; in Illinois,
91.5% Biden, 80.6% Trump; in Kansas 83.8% Biden, 75.5% Trump;
in Ohio, 87.1% Biden, 79.2% Trump; in Louisiana, 86.1% Biden,
89.8% Trump. Missouri had a caucus, where Trump got 100% of 924
votes.
Paul Krugman: [03-21]
What's the matter with Ohio?
Nia Prater: [03-22]
The Republican Party is too embarrassing for George Santos:
So he's going to run as an independent in Nick LaLota's (R-NY)
House district. Most people run as independents because they
think they are, but the big advantage for Santos is that he can
keep his campaign finance scam going all the way to November,
instead of getting wiped out in the primary. So pretty much the
same reason Bob Menendez is running as an independent to keep
his Senate seat in New Jersey.
Trump, and other Republicans: Salon picks up some substantial
pieces, but they also do a lot of stuff that basically amounts to Trump
trolling. I usually skip past them, but this week they especially spoke
to me, so quite a few got crammed in here this week. I can also give
you some author indexes, in case you want to dig deeper (just scanning
the titles is often a hoot):
This week's links on all things Republican (the Trumpier the
better, but the real evil lies in the billionaire-funded think tanks):
Avram Anderson/Shealeigh Voitl: [03-22]
Heritage Foundation's blueprint for regression: "Project 2025
targets vulnerable communities, politicizes independent institutions,
and quashes dissent."
Gregg Barak: [03-23]
It's time to ignore Trump's trials: Criminal accountability is now
a distraction: "Please wake up sleeping America." It's a rather
messy argument, but until judgment came, the civil trials seemed
like a circus sideshow, but now he's scrambling for money. Barak
himself has a book coming out soon, which news will quickly render
obsolete:
Indicting the 45th President: Boss Trump, the GOP, and What We Can
Do About the Threat to American Democracy.
Jonathan Chait: [03-23]
The paramilitary candidate: "Trump has made justice for
insurrectionists the center of his campaign."
Jeremy Childs: [03-24]
Eric Trump says lenders he hit for half-billion dollars in father's
bond scramble 'were laughing'.
Nick Corasaniti/Maya King/Alexandra Berzon: [03-18]
The GOP flamethrower with a right-wing vision for North Carolina:
"Mark Robinson, the Republican nominee for governor, has a long
history of inflammatory statements. He has also called for weaving
conservative religious beliefs into the fabric of government."
Oliver Darcy: [03-22]
NBC hires former RNC chair Ronna McDaniel, who has demonized the
press and refused to acknowledge Biden was fairly elected. As
Norman Ornstein
tweeted: "At $300,000. Far more than experts, and honest analysts.
What an utter disgrace." Not the only blowback:
Igor Derysh:
Chauncey DeVega:
Kevin T Dugan: [03-21]
How screwed is Trump? "Unless he can find a way out of paying
Tish James, he will go bust on Monday."
Abdallah Fayyad: [03-19]
Trump is suddenly in need of a lot of cash. That's everyone's
problem. Why on earth is that? The US judicial system isn't
famed for treating convicts with the sort of kid gloves Trump
feels he's entitled to. Is this supposed to be some variation
on the joke: "if you owe thousands, that's your problem; if you
owe millions, that's the bank's problem"? Whatever happened to
"if you can't do the time, don't do the crime"? I might grant
that the system, in general, is biased against defendants, and
tends toward overly harsh judgments. But why should Trump, a
guy who seems incapable of remorse, and who has never shown any
sympathy for anyone else, be the exception? If anything, he's
a flagrant example of what the justice system is designed to
protect us against.
Henry A Giroux: [03-17]
Brecht's warning about the serpent's egg: Everyday Fascism:
"In a world shaped increasingly by emerging authoritarianism, it
has become increasingly difficult to remember what a purposeful
and substantive democracy looks like."
Rae Hodge: [01-29]
The Trump White House was hopped up on Air Force "go pills" because
of course it was.
Elie Honig: [03-22]
What are the odds Trump goes on trial before the election?
Brian Karem: [03-21]
We have met the enemy and he is us: "Trump is just a symptom. The
absurdity is everywhere." Links to:
Ed Kilgore:
Clare Malone: [03-25]
The face of Donald Trump's deceptively savvy media strategy:
"The former President and his spokesman, Steven Cheung, like to hurl
insults at their political rivals, but behind the scenes the campaign
has maintained a cozy relationship with much of the mainstream press."
Evidently, he's the one responsible for lines like "[DeSantis] shuffled
his feet and gingerly walked across the debate set like a 10 year old
girl who had just raided her mom's closet and discovered heels for the
first time" and "it's clear to see that Haley's campaign is just one
giant grift to either build her name ID for life after politics or to
audition for a cable news contributor contract."
Amanda Marcotte:
Lisa Mascaro/Mary Clare Jalonick/Jill Colvin:
[03-19]
Trump is making the Jan. 6 attack a cornerstone of his bid for the
White House.
David Masciotra: [03-16]
Ignorance and democracy: Capitalism's long war against higher education:
"My alma mater, and dozens of other colleges, are ditching the liberal
arts. That's a good way to kill off democracy." Sounds like a pretty
broad indictment, but first two words in article are "Donald Trump,"
and a pull quote cites advanced degree holders Ron DeSantis and Ted
Cruz. When I see names of some Harvard grads -- KS Attorney General
Kris Kobach is one, and as far as I can tell he's never written a law
that's been upheld as constitutional -- I'm reminded of the Randy
Newman lyric: "Good old boys from LSU, went in dumb, came out dumb
too."
This led me to a couple older articles:
Andrea Mazzarino: [03-21]
A dictatorship on day one? If America were a Trumpian autocracy.
Kelly McClure: [03-22]
Trump refers to AG Letitia James as having an "ugly mouth" and "low IQ"
in Truth Social rant.
Harold Meyerson: [03-21]
Republicans say it aloud: They want to raise the retirement age:
"The vast majority of House GOPniks tell Americans that if they want
Social Security, they need top work longer."
- Stephanie Mencimer: [03-25]
From laddie mag model to RNC co-chair: Lara Trump, nepo-spouse.
Dean Obeidallah: [03-22]
"He'll never leave": Why Trump's dynasty, built on corruption and violence, won't end with him: Interview with Ruth Ben-Ghiat, author of
Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present.
Heather Digby Parton:
Christian Paz: [03-21]
3 theories for why Donald Trump's popularity is rising: None are
very convincing:
- Trump is benefiting from economic nostalgia
- Trump is recovering from a remarkably low moment
- Trump is benefiting from a quieter campaign, muted coverage, and
a tuned-out public
You might as well say it's because many people are forgetful,
gullible, ill-tempered and flat-out stupid, because that's what
Trump's campaign -- which, by the way, has not been very quiet
or muted, no matter how many have tried to tune it out -- caters
to. I think this also reflects two problems that Biden has: he
represents the status quo, which in the end will probably save
him, but for now it's mostly marked by increasing inequality and
precarity, even through relatively decent economic stats; also,
Biden's still in the phase where he's mostly campaigning for the
donors -- and he's raising more money, even before you deduct the
fines and legal costs Trump is racking up. That focus will shift
with the DNC in August, when they start spending their war chest
on actually wooing voters they've thus far taken for granted.
Sam Russek:
The mattress tycoon funding the far right in Texas: Jim McIngvale.
Greg Sargent:
Trump's latest rage-rant reveals a major political weakness.
- Deirdre Shesgreen: [03-18]
'Gross misjudgment': Experts say Trump's decision to disband pandemic
team hindered coronavirus response.
Matt Stieb:
Kirk Swearingen: [03-24]
Who brought the crime, the drugs and the rape? It was him: "Trump's
infamous 2015 speech claimed immigrants were 'bringing crime' and were
'rapists.' Talk about projection."
Prem Thakker:
House Republicans want to ban universal free school lunches.
Lucian K Truscott IV: [03-19]
Trump blows the MAGA whistle -- and his signal is heard loud and
clear.
Andra Watkins:
[03-19]
Decoding Project 2025's Christian nationalist language:
"Evangelicalese allows Trump's MAGA supporters to hide their extreme
positions in plain sight." Note: She also has a Substack called
How Project 2025 Will Ruin YOUR Life. Previously wrote:
[03-01]
Project 2025 is more than a playbook for Trumpism, it's the Christian
Nationalist manifesto: "The right intends to force every American
to live their definition of a good life through government edict."
Li Zhou: [03-20]
How the threat of a government shutdown became normalized.
Biden and/or the Democrats:
Perry Bacon Jr: [03-19]
Voters of color are shifting right. Are Democrats doomed?
Hannah Story Brown: [03-25]
Tim Ryan's natural gas advocacy makes a mockery of public service:
Ex-Representative (D-OH), ran for Senate and lost, now "leveraging his
prior career for a group backed by fossil fuel and petrochemical players."
Why do you suppose he couldn't convince voters he'd serve them better
than a Republican?
Gail C Christopher: [03-22]
Stop ageism: A call for action: "It's one of the last socially
acceptable forms of prejudice, and it needs to come to an end in
society and this presidential campaign." Really, you think this is
going to work? Or even help? Believe me, I know it happens, often
in cases where it is inappropriate, but unlike many prejudices,
there is also something substantive at root here, and finding the
right combination of respect and care and understanding in each
distinct case is going to take some work, and not just a bumper
sticker slogan.
Ryan Cooper: [03-11]
Democrats need a party publication: "The New York Times is
not going to get Biden's campaign message before voters." Pull
quote: "There is a giant right-wing propaganda apparatus blasting
Republican messaging into tens of millions of homes every day,
which Democrats do not have." Also: "You could do quite a lot of
journalism for a tiny, tiny fraction of what the Democrats are
going to spend on the 2024 campaign." I figured the line about
the New York Times was some kind of joke, but here's the unfunny
part:
A recent speech from New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger makes
clear that he -- perhaps unsurprisingly for a scion of multigenerational
inherited wealth -- is proud of his paper's ludicrously anti-Biden slant
and virulent transphobia, and will keep doing it. If it's up to him,
this campaign will center around Biden's age, while Trump's numerous
extreme scandals and outright criminality -- as well as his own advanced
age and dissolving brain -- will be carefully downplayed. If I were Biden
and the Democrats, who implicitly elevate the Times as their counterpoint
to Fox, I'd be looking to change that, and quick.
James Downie: [03-23]
House Republicans just gave Biden the biggest possible gift: "When
it comes to Social Security and Medicare, Republicans just can't help
themselves." I could have filed this under Republicans, but didn't
want this piece to get lost among this week's Trump scuzziness. Trump
is a problem, but he's merely cosmetic compared to the deep Republican
mindset, which remains set on destroying the institutions that at least
minimally protect us from the most predatory practices of capitalism,
supposedly in favor of an entrepreneurial utopia. I was pointed to
this piece by an Astra Taylor tweet (link just vanished), possibly
because the piece itself cites her The Age of Insecurity.
Robert Kuttner:
[03-18]
Man of steel: "President Biden's blockage of the proposed purchase
of US Steel by Japan's Nippon Steel is unprecedented and magnificently
pro-union."
[03-22]
The promise of Biden's second term: "And the exemplary effects of
his green jobs creation programs in his first term."
Legal matters and other crimes:
Climate and environment:
Stephen Lezak: [03-22]
Scientists just gave humanity an overdue reality check. The world
will be better for it. This follows on [03-20]
Geologists make it official: we're not in an 'anthropocene' epoch.
For geologists, it's a fairly technical question, and given the ways
geologists think about time, I'm not surprised that they don't see
need for another division. The Holocene only starts with the retreat
of the Wisconsin Ice Age -- the fifth major glacial advance of the
Pleistocene, itself an arguably premature designation. (The factors
that drove ice ages during the period have are presumably still in
place -- certainly the continents haven't moved much, nor has the
earth orbit changed, or solar output -- but the atmosphere has been
altered enough to make renascent glaciation very unlikely.) Humans
started leaving their mark on the Earth's surface as the
Holocene
started some 11,700 years ago, so the whole epoch could have been
named the Anthropocene. Perhaps that seemed presumptuous when first
named, and maybe even now, but using 1952 as an convenient dividing
line is simply arbitrary.
Delaney Nolan:
The EPA is backing down from environmental justice cases nationwide.
Cassady Rosenblum: [03-23]
Blocking Burning Man and vandalizing Van Gogh: Climate activists are
done playing nice: This is indicative of what happens with those
in power deny, dissemble, and ultimately fail at problems that have
become overwhelmingly obvious. Those in power should see protests --
orderly of course, but also disruptive and destructive -- as symptoms
of underlying issues that require their attention.
But most often,
they think they can get away with suppressing protests, which by
aggravating the protesters while ignoring the problems only makes
future protests more desperate, and dangerous. As noted here,
"something desperate and defiant is stirring in the climate
movement." Signs of escalating tactics are as easily measured
as the increasing ppm of greenhouse gases. The tipping points
of catastrophic inflections are harder to guess, but their odds
are approaching inevitable, as we have observed stressed humans
do many times before, in many comparable situations.
David Wallace-Wells: [03-20]
When we see the climate more clearly, what will we do? There
is not a satellite designed to locate methane leeks.
Business/economic matters:
Ukraine War:
Blaise Malley: [03-22]
Diplomacy Watch: Middle powers offer unique 'congrats' to Putin:
"Leaders in Turkey, India, use post-election phone calls to offer
support in future negotiations."
New York Times: [03-23]
Death toll rises to 133 in Moscow concert hall attack: US
sources were quick to blame this on ISIS, and to deny Ukrainian
involvement (although Zelensky couldn't resist a "told you so").
PS:
Simon Jenkins: [03-22]
Putin is a dictator and a tyrant, but other forces also sustain him --
and the west needs to understand them: "Kneejerk criticism of
regimes in Russia, China or India may make us feel better, but there's
no evidence it is making the world a safer place."
Joshua Keating: [03-22]
Why the Pentagon wants to build thousands of easily replaceable,
AI-enabled drones: "Ukraine's drone innovations have changed
how the US is planning for a war with China."
Jack Hunter: [03-20]
Lindsey Graham wants to force more Ukrainian men into the draft:
"The war-hawking senator said 'we need more people in the line.' But
'we' doesn't mean 'he.'"
Pjotr Sauer: [03-22]
Over 1m Ukrainians without power after major Russian assault on
energy system: "Kyiv says the country's largest dam and hydroelectric
plant were hit as Moscow unleashed 88 missiles and 63 drones." For more,
see their
Ukraine war briefing, which also reminds us of the peril facing
the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant."
Ted Snider: [03-20]
How many Westerners are fighting in Ukraine? "There may be more
foreign boots on the ground -- troops and mercenaries -- than you
think."
Simon Tisdall: [03-16]
How will the Ukraine war end? Only when Vladimir Putin is toppled.
This extremely stupid piece was written while Russia's election was
happening, which we now know gave Putin six more years with 87% of the
vote. He raises the usual alarms about "white flags" and "capitulation,"
castigates Putin as a "messianic mass murderer," and conjures up a new
domino theory, assuming that any sign of weakness would only encourage
Russia to attack and swallow more territories. Still, there's little
reason to believe that Putin could do those things if he wanted to,
which is far from certain. The war is stalemated, but neither side can
afford to give up, nor is likely to (and clearly, Russia is no more
likely to than the US, where Putin's patsy is leading in the polls --
but still 10 months away from becoming president). And despite all
his bluster, even Tisdall admits that a "middle way" -- basically a
Korea-type ceasefire where "near-term priorities need to shift from
attempting to liberate more territory to defending and repairing
the more than 80% of the country still under [Ukraine's] control."
I'd submit that an even better deal would be possible -- maybe not
on territory, but you'd get more security by allowing economic ties
to return to normalcy. One should recall that the parts of Ukraine
that Russia was able to seize, especially in 2014 but also extras
in 2022, were mostly ethnic Russian, and acted as a pro-Russian
bloc inside Ukraine. Giving them up makes the rest of Ukraine more
pro-western, which is what the US/EU wanted in the first place. I'd
call that a win -- and one which Putin wouldn't have to think of as
a loss.
Robert Wright: [03-22]
Special cold war freak-out issue: "China and Russia and Cuba --
oh my!" First section is on TikTok, if you're interested, but I want
to point you to the second, on how the Wall Street Journal (Yaroslav
Trofimov) tries to twist around things that Putin says to suggest
negotiating with him is impossible. Further down there's a section on
the "Havana Syndrome" freak out, plus his concerns over AI -- which
is more the subject of his [03-15]
Meta's dangerously carefree AI chief. I'm rather skeptical of his
alarm over Open Source in AI -- my position has always been that the
real threat is the business model, and Open Source usually tempers
that sort of problem (but doesn't preclude it, as Google has amply
demonstrated). I'm an admirer but unpaid subscriber, so I haven't
listened to his podcasts, but
What does Putin want? could be helpful, especially to the
aforementioned WSJ reporter.
Around the world:
Connor Echols: [03-20]
US 'prepared to deploy troops to Haiti if necessary. If Biden
goes along with this, I dare say it would be political suicide. For
Trump, as for most US presidents going back to Thomas Jefferson,
Haiti is the quintessential "shithole country." Right-thinking
Americans would bristle at the idea of doing anything to help
there. Realistic Americans would realize that the US military is
not capable of helping, and that its entrance would make matters
worse. The left should be pushing back against Biden's warmaking
on all fronts. And nobody wants another costly quagmire.
Sam Knight: [03-25]
What have fourteen years of Conservative rule done to Britain?
"Living standards have fallen. The country is exhausted by constant
drama. But the UK can't move on from the Tories without facing up
tot he damage that has occurred."
Robert Kuttner: [03-13]
WTO, RIP: "The annual World Trade Organization meeting came
to an ignominious end last week with no 'progress' on major issues.
That is a form of progress."
Emily Tamkin:
Slovakia's presidential election is a warning to America:
"What to see what the United States would look like under a reelected
Trump?"
Other stories:
Laura Bult: [03-21]
Why it's so hard for Americans to retire: "There's a reason so
many of us don't have enough retirement savings." Video piece, but
links to Teresa Ghilarducci's book,
Work, Retire, Repeat: The Uncertainty of Retirement in the New Economy.
Probably good, but Astra Taylor covers the key point in her
The Age of Insecurity: Coming Together as Things Fall Apart.
Stephanie Burt:
Lucy Sante and the solitude and solidarity of transitioning:
"In her new memoir, I Heard Her Call My Name, Sante dissects
her past in order to understand her future."
David Dayen: [01-29]
America is not a democracy. Long piece from the print magazine.
Seems like I should have noticed it before. Too much to get into
just now.
Sarah Jones:
The exvangelicals searching for political change. Self-evident
neologism is from the book reviewed herein, The Exvangelicals:
Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church, by
Sarah McCammon. Related here:
Carlene Bauer: [03-12]
She trusted God and science. They both failed her. Review of
Devout: A Memoir of Doubt, by Anna Gazmarian, "an author
who grew up in the evangelical church recounts her struggle to
find spiritual and psychological well-being after a mental health
challenge."
Rich Juzwiak: [03-12]
A biography of a feminist porn pioneer bares all: "In Candida
Royalle and the Sexual Revolution, the historian Jane Kamensky
presents a raw personal -- and cultural -- history." Another review:
Keren Landman: [03-20]
Abortion influences everything: "By inhibiting drug development,
economic growth, and military recruitment, as well as driving doctors
away from the places they're needed most, bans almost certainly harm
you -- yes, you."
Katie Moore: [03-17]
When Kansas police kill people, the public often can't see bodycam
footage. Here's why.
Marcus J Moore: [03-21]
The visions of Alice Coltrane: "In the years after her husband
John's death, the harpist discovered a sound all her own, a jazz
rooted in acts of spirit and will." I'll say something about this
in Music Week. Meanwhile:
Rick Perlstein: [03-20]
'Stay strapped or get clapped': "How the media misses the story
of companies seeking profit by keeping traumatized veterans armed
and enraged."
Andrew Prokop: [03-21]
The political battle over Laken Riley's murder, explained:
Riley was a 22-year-old student in Georgia who was murdered,
allegedly by an "illegal immigrant," an event seized upon by
right-wing agitators, like the guy who tweeted: "If only people
went to the streets to demand change in the name of Laken Riley,
like they did for George Floyd." Article provides more details.
While the murders as isolated events were equivalent, the policy
considerations are very different, starting with responsibility
for enabling the killers, and regarding the more general context.
One not even mentioned here is the effect of the sanctions and
isolation policy toward Venezuela -- mostly but not exclusively
Trump's work -- and how that has driven many, including Riley's
alleged killer, to migrate to the US. Prokop: "But reality is
also more complicated than Trump's promises that he'll fix
everything by getting tougher once he's president."
Brian Resnick: [03-22]
The total solar eclipse is returning to the United States --
better than before: "This will be the last total solar eclipse
over the contiguous United States for 21 years." I find myself
with zero interest in looking up, much less traveling to do so,
but family and friends in Arkansas are lobbying for visitors,
and I know some people who are going. April 8 is the date.
Dylan Scott: [03-22]
Kate Middleton's cancer diagnosis is part of a frightening global
trend: "More and more young people are getting cancer." I have
zero interest in her, or in any of "those ridiculous people" (John
Oliver's apt turn of phrase), and so I've ignored dozens of pieces
on them recently, but there's something more going on here. Every
category of cancer they used is more common among ages 14-49 than
it was in 1990. My wife swears it's environmental, and while I can
think of statistical variations, I'm inclined to agree.
Jeffrey St Clair: [03-22]
Roaming Charges: L'état sans merci. "Willie Pye is dead and
Georgia is back in the execution business." This introduces a
long section on what passes for justice in America. Much more,
of course. For more on Pye, see:
Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins: [03-20]
The problematic past, present, and future of inequality studies:
Interview with Branko Milanovic, whose lates book is Visions of
Inequality: From the French Revolution to the End of the Cold War.
Dodai Stewart: [03-16]
You're not being gaslit, says a new book. (Or are you?) Review
of Kate Abramson: On Gaslighting. Demands precision of a
phenomenon that is deliberately imprecise ("all kinds of interactions --
lying, guilt-tripping, manipulation"; "a multi-dimensional horror
show"). Cites Harry G Frankfurt's On Bullshit (2005) as a
"spiritual forebear."
Astra Taylor/Leah Hunt-Hendrix: [03-21]
The one idea that could save American democracy: Tied to the
authors' new book,
Solidarity: The Past, Present, and Future of a World-Changing
Idea. Also:
By the way, I just found a link to audio for
Astra Taylor: [2023-11-17]
The Age of Insecurity: 2023 CBC Massey Lectures, with five
hour-long lectures corresponding to the book I just read, and
recommend as highly as possible -- I'd go so far as to say that
she's the smartest person writing on the left these days. I was
pointed to the lectures by a daanis
tweet: "I finally listened to
@astradisastra
Massey Lectures on my way to Boston, just mainlined them one
after another straight into my brain, and added her language
about precarity and insecurity into my own remarks about
surviving together by becoming kin."
Maureen Tkacik: [03-11]
'Return what you stole and be a man with dignity': "Doctors
didn't think it was possible to loathe the world's biggest health
care profiter any more. Then came the hack that set half their
bookkeeping systems on fire." About the ransomware outage at
Change Healthcare, which is owned by UnitedHealth ("the nation's
fifth-largest company").
Bryan Walsh: [03-22]
Baseball superstar Shohei Ohtani has been caught up in a gambling
controversy. He won't be the last. One of the biggest changes in
my lifetime has been the changed attitude toward gambling, which
in my mother's day was a degenerative sin indulged by lowlifes,
much to the profit of mobsters. Today the mobsters have turned
into Republican billionaires -- hard to say whether that's a step
up or down ethically -- and their rackets have moved out into the
open. For a long time, the shame of the Black Sox kept the lid on
sports gambling, but that's been totally blown open in the recent
years. I hate it, which doesn't mean I want to try to ban it, but
those involved are no better than criminals, and should be reminded
of it as often as possible.
Thursday, March 21, 2024
Daily Log
Gretchen Eick has signed off on my revised "Reading Obits" piece,
for inclusion in a second edition of
The Death Project: An Anthology for These Times (Blue Cedar
Press,
original edition, edited by Eick and Cora Poage, published 2020).
Eick and Michael Poage (Cora's father) are close personal friends,
as well as owners of Blue Cedar Press, and my wife does significant
unpaid editing work for them, so my inclusion is arguably just a
favor. It certainly doesn't mark much of a breakthrough in me being
anything but self-published, but I chose to spin it a bit in a
series of
tweets:
Felt like noting that I have an essay selected for a 2nd ed of "The
Death Project." I've self-published millions of words, but that anyone
else shows an interest - in this case a 2011 blog on "Reading Obits" -
so this is some kind of personal milestone. More later.
"The Death Project" was published in 2020 when, well, you remember
(don't you?). A collection of essays, fiction, and poetry, which has a
rep as the worst seller ever at Blue Cedar Press. Link to original
edition (w/o my essay):
link.
Blue Cedar Press is run by friends - it's been a long time since
I've pitched pieces to strangers, and I can't recall any approaching
me - so perhaps they're just humoring me. But they've published
excellent work over the years, especially this novel:
link
The original 2012 "Reading Obits," is still in the notebook (link
follows). It's on how hard it is to keep track of people you've known,
who were important to you, as they pass, and how unmoored one feels
not knowing. I had to revise, as people keep dying:
link.
Submitted "voluntary recall of certain models of Cosori air fryers."
Tuesday, March 19, 2024
Music Week
Expanded blog post,
March archive
(in progress).
Tweet: Music Week: 33 albums, 8 A-list
Music: Current count 42007 [41974] rated (+33), 28 [27] unrated (+1).
Just a day late, although it feels like longer, and feels like it
should have been longer still. I did manage to wrap up a small essay
that's been hanging over my head for weeks -- or at least I'm hoping,
as a final sign off would be nice. This pushed
Speaking of Which back a day, which I didn't mind.
While I've
occasionally threatened to kill it, the process of scanning my news
sources, plucking out what strikes me as important and/or interesting,
and occasionally commenting -- sometimes taking off on a tangent of
personal/philosophical interest, sometimes just to heckle -- has been
giving me a strange sense of comfort in what are clearly discomforting
times.
Besides, this week the writing project I most seriously considered
killing was Music Week. As to why, you're free to dig into the notebook,
but what you'll find there is rather sketchily one-sided, with very
little of what I really think, let alone why. Nor is there more than
a hint of how much pain and anger I've felt this week. In my experience,
such emotions do no good, although for better or worse -- sure, mostly
the latter -- they are a big part of who I am, and how I came to be
this way.
You also can simply ignore most of that paragraph, and just accept
what I have to say in this one. Music Week changed this week, and may
be changed for good, although I rather doubt it. Midweek I stopped
reviewing new music, so everything in this week's "New records"
section was done by Wednesday last. I don't plan on resuming any
time soon, although that's no guarantee I won't have a few next
week, and the odds of at least some appearing increase over time.
In particular, it's inevitable that at some point I'll return to
my promo queue, and when I do play something, I'll probably write
it up in my logs, because, well, that's what I do.
Indeed, I started on that this week. After several days of playing
my kind of comfort food, I decided I wanted to hear some Art Pepper.
But instead of pulling out an old favorite -- of which there are dozens,
including any random disc in The Complete Galaxy Recordings --
I remembered a 7-CD box that came out last year, that I thought I could
stream. I put it off, mostly due to the length, but I figured I had
time now, and was looking to fill it up. Unfortunately, while the title
is listed (The Complete Maiden Voyage Recordings, what's actually
available is a 4-CD release from 2017, which I couldn't find a label
for. But I did find an Unreleased Art volume I hadn't heard,
and that got me looking around. And as I did play them, I wound up
doing what I always do.
I trust there are no surprises in the "Old music" section this week.
Four A/A- records are ones I previously had graded that high in other
forms. Getz's Nobody Else but Me is an old standby from one of
the primo shelves, and I was surprised I only had it listed at B+, so
an upgrade was clearly in order. The Jaki Byard is a bootleg that Allen
Lowe raved about. I found it when I was trying to clear up some tabs,
and decided I might as well play it, and write it up.
I moved from Getz
to Geller by proximity. He's long fascinated me, so seemed worth the
dive. Playing him now as I write, so next Music Week will at least
have him. His late period seems to produce consistently fine but less
than spectacular records.
Indexing
February still delayed,
as is damn near everything else in my life.
By the way, Kansas's first presidential primary in ages was today.
We braved a line of absolutely no one to vote for Marianne Williamson
in the Democratic primary. I gave up my Independent status in 2008 to
caucus for Obama (against Clinton), and again in 2016 for Sanders
(again, against Clinton), both of whom won big in Kansas. Williamson
didn't win:
current returns (91.9% in) give her 3.4% to Biden's 83.9%,
with 10.2% "none of the names shown." Still, anyone who wants to
create a Department of Peace gets my vote over Biden's war machine.
Trump is leading Haley 75.3% to 16.1%, with 5.2% for "none of
the names shown." Trump had lost the
2016 caucus to Cruz.
PS: Oops! Was thinking about this most of the week,
then slipped my mind when I initially posted. Meant to mention
that the rated count ticked over another thousand mark this week,
now over 42,000.
New records reviewed this week:
- Lynne Arriale Trio: Being Human (2023 [2024], Challenge): [cd]: B+(**)
- Blue Moods: Swing & Soul (2023 [2024], Posi-Tone): [sp]: B+(***)
- Gerald Cannon: Live at Dizzy's Club: The Music of Elvin & McCoy (2023 [2024], Woodneck): [sp]: B+(***)
- The Chick Corea Elektric Band: The Future Is Now (2016-18 [2023], Candid, 2CD): [sp]: B+(*)
- Patrick Cornelius: Book of Secrets (2022 [2023], Posi-Tone): [sp]: B+(**)
- Stephan Crump: Slow Water (2023 [2024], Papillon Sounds): [cd]: B+(***) [05-03]
- Art Hirahara: Echo Canyon (2023, Posi-Tone): [sp]: B+(**)
- Mannequin Pussy: I Got Heaven (2024, Epitaph): [sp]: B+(**)
- Pissed Jeans: Half Divorced (2024, Sub Pop): [sp]: B+(*)
- Diego Rivera: With Just a Word (2022 [2024], Posi-Tone): [sp]: B+(***)
- Jeremy Rose & the Earshift Orchestra: Discordia (2023 [2024], Earshift Music): [cd]: B+(***)
- Bill Ryder-Jones: Iechyd Da (2024, Domino): [sp]: A-
- Nadine Shah: Filthy Underneath (2024, EMI North): [sp]: B+(*)
- Sheer Mag: Playing Favorites (2024, Third Man): [sp]: B+(**)
- Rafael Toral: Spectral Evolution (2024, Moikai): [sp]: B+(*)
- Hein Westergaard/Katt Hernandez/Raymond Strid: The Knapsack, the Hat, and the Horn (2022 [2024], Gotta Let It Out): [cd]: B+(**)
Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:
None
Old music:
- Jaki Byard: Live in Chicago 1992 (1992, Jazz³+): [yt]: B+(**)
- Herb Geller: European Rebirth: 1962 Paris Sessions (1962 [2022], Fresh Sound): [sp]: B+(***)
- Herb Geller: Plays the Al Cohn Songbook (1994 [1996], Hep): [r]: B+(**)
- Herb Geller: To Benny & Johnny, With Love From Herb Geller (2001 [2002], Hep): [r]: B+(**)
- Herb Geller: Plays the Arthur Schwartz Songbook (2005, Hep): [r]: B+(**)
- Stan Getz/Charlie Byrd: Jazz Samba (1962, Verve): [sp]: A-
- Stan Getz With Al Haig: Prezervation (1948-51 [1967], Prestige): [sp]: B+(**)
- Art Pepper & Warne Marsh: Unreleased Art: Volume 9: At Donte's, April 26, 1974 (1974 [2016], Widow's Taste, 3CD): [r]: B+(***)
- Art Pepper: Surf Ride (1952-53 [1957], Savoy): [sp]: A-
- Art Pepper Quintet: Live at Donte's 1968 (1968 [2004], Fresh Sound, 2CD): [r]: B+(***)
- Art Pepper/Warne Marsh: Art Pepper With Warne Marsh (1956 [1986], Contemporary/OJC): [r]: A-
- Art Pepper: No Limit (1977 [1978], Contemporary): [sp]: A-
- Art Pepper: Saturday Night at the Village Vanguard (1977 [1992], Contemporary/OJC): [r]: A-
- Art Pepper: More for Les: At the Village Vanguard, Volume Four (1977 [1992[, Contemporary/OJC): [sp]: A
- Sonny Redd/Art Pepper: Two Altos (1952-57 [1992], Savoy): [sp]: B+(*)
- Sonny Red: Out of the Blue (1959-60 [1996], Blue Note): [sp]: B+(***)
Limited Sampling: Records I played parts of, but not enough
to grade: -- means no interest, - not bad but not a prospect,
+ some chance, ++ likely prospect.
- Stephan Crump/Steve Lehman: Kaleidoscope and Collage (2011, Intakt): [sp]: -
Grade (or other) changes:
- Stan Getz: Nobody Else but Me (1964 [1994], Verve): [cd]: [was: B+]: A-
Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
- Martin Budde: Back Burner (Origin) [03-22]
- Four + Six: Four + Six (Jazz Hang) [03-29]
- Romy Glod/Christian Ramond/Klaus Kugel: No Toxic (Nemu) [01-02]
- Johnny Griffin: Live at Ronnie Scott's (1964, Gearbox)
- Jazz Ensemble of Memphis: Playing in the Yard (Memphis International) [04-05]
- Last Day Quintet: Falling to Earth (Origin) [03-22]
Monday, March 18, 2024
Speaking of Which
Blog link.
Saturday, March 16, 2024
Daily Log
I started to write a thing on two-state vs. one-state confusion
in Israel/Palestine, then decided to pull it. Here's a salvaged
fragment:
Not least because it extracts "two-staters" from the conflict
and responsibility for its recent escalation. We need to consider
a few definitions to clear up this muddle:
- The fundamental political division is between left and right.
The right promotes inequality and defends hierarchy, using all forms
of persuasion including religion and violent force to secure and
maintain its preferred order. The left believes that all people
should be treated equally. If given no better alternative, the left
may attempt revolution, but prefers democratic processes, because
in the end, most people will agree to equality, while hardly anyone
will submit to tyranny.
Wednesday, March 13, 2024
Daily Log
On Monday, I posted a review:
Laura Jane Grace: Hole in My Head (2024, Polyvinyl):
Originally Thomas Gabel, singer-guitarist leader in punk group Against
Me!, third solo album, a short one (11 songs, 25:28). Still sounds
male, so you can just bracket the trans angle. Songs open up a bit
towards folk, partly to expound on politics, e.g.: "out in the country
is where fascists roam."
B+(***) [sp]
Melody Esme, a former rock critic (under a different name) I respected
enough to accept a Facebook friend request, commented:
I didn't get around to replying, but then Joey Daniewicz
posted a screen grab of the review with this:
yo Tom Hull you cannot, cannot, cannot, absolutely cannot write about
trans people this way
Esme chimed in again:
If I saw this review with no name attached, I'd assume a TERF wrote it
Even more upsetting considering LJG has been vocal about how much she
wishes that name could be scrubbed from the Internet
Daniewicz added:
Per Melody's research, this isn't a one off. Tom Hull seems to have
a compulsive name to deadname the trans subjects of his reviews.
Iris Demento, commented:
Sincerely doubt Tom meant harm but I agree. I profiled a trans artist
in 2016 and didn't understand the negative gravity of deadnaming and I
regret asking the subject for it as part of journalistic background,
which I bet is where this impulse is coming from. Please rewrite this
one without the "trans angle," deadnaming, or "sounds male." It's
Laura's best in about a decade and she deserves the respect and
professionalism.
I had been stewing on this since the original comment, and finally
wrote this:
But I absolutely can, and did -- using the "archaic" meaning of those
words, the one I first encountered in learning English, and not the
one Joey seems to mean -- "write about trans people this way." And, as
you may surmise and/or guess, so I have in the past, and there's
little reason to doubt I will again in the future. Last time, as best
I recall, I got roasted for not mentioning that an artist is trans, so
with some people on this subject at least there may be no way out. I
often do start reviews off with the actual name behind an alias: I
find that a short list of background facts helps get me started, and
mapping a real name to an alias helps (I think) connect me to that
person, although it may well disclose attributes like sex or ethnicity
that aren't necessarily relevant or important). "Deadnaming" is new
vocabulary for me, although I can intuit its meaning, see its
relevance, and still conclude it's not my problem. "TERF" I had to
look up, and see no use for. Like "transphobic," it is a hateful term
that is almost always be applied to castigate other people (unlike
"racist" and "antisemite," which were originally coined by people to
describe themselves). And note that I'm not saying that "*phobic" has
no political value. It both suffices to label all-too-common attitudes
and it turns the tables by pointing out that much hatred is used to
mask fear. But when you apply to term to me, I have to ask "what's my
fear?" -- and I can't find it. What I find instead is an effort at
bullying, at coercing (even if just by guilt-tripping) me into using
your wording and framing. And since I can't possibly mold myself into
your mental framework, that's tantamount to telling me to just stop
writing. I must say, it's tempting. On the other hand, I remember a
day long ago when my boss told me I had a "bad attitude." I doubt she
had any idea how bad that attitude would get once I embraced it. By
the way, do some research of your own, on what "bracket" means. Start
with Husserl. Before your time, most likely, but not before mine.
Some of us earned the right to be archaic.
"TERF" stands for Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist. There is a long
discussion of the term on
Wikipedia,
which of course links to
Transphobia.
Note: The following postscript was written on 2024-03-16, but
obviously belongs here.
I read several more comments the next day, then stopped for several
days. When I returned to collect the more thoughtful ones here, I found
the thread had 43 comments, which is probably more than my last ten
Music Week notices had elicited. In chronological order (skipping a
few with no interest). First, directly under my comment:
Joey Daniewicz: I didn't apply any of these terms to
you. You've earned way less than you think, and this stands to be an
area of deep personal embarrassment for your work.
Iris Demento: Tom if you admit that you're not familiar
with the term "deadnaming" before today, please listen: doing it would
not fly with any editor in 2024 whose publication isn't a Republican
nest. Doing it in any workplace in 2024 would get you written up and
sent to HR if not cause for termination. The level of disrespect and
bigotry (and pain it causes) to knowingly call a trans person by their
deadname at this time is considered to be on the level of calling
someone a racial or homophobic slur. If those are things you also
would not do (or defend by saying you've "earned the right to be
archaic") you should not do this either. This is completely at odds
with virtually all other evidence of your values that I have
seen.
Heather Batson: I think the shocking thing here is there
have been some big shifts in how we discuss trans topics and how a
transition related name change is now treated as a special case. For
most trans artists in 2024, a name change is not a simple artistic
alias, though! It certainly makes sense to anchor her in her role with
Against Me, but when a trans person changes her name in all areas of
life, as Grace did, their birth name should not be thought of as their
'real name' but a wrong name forced on them for years. It is
understood now that in this situation the 'real name' is the chosen
legal name. This can be confusing when it comes to artists who may
have a stage name separate from a legal name, but in the case of
Grace, it is pretty easy to find that she is pained by her deadname
and that Laura Jane Grace is clearly her real name. 'Sounds male' was
like a gut punch level of rude. Like Iris, I am sure this is not
intended to offend, so please know we are engaging because we care. I
certainly don't want you to stop writing or feel you need my mindset
on trans issues but I do want you to know that there is an updated
style guide for best practices. I'm pushing 50 myself so I'm no
youngster and I have to constantly relearn how to discuss certain
things--but that is just part of how rapid culture shifts go!
- Melody Esme: I don't care if you're personally transphobic
or not. I think your review is deeply transphobic, and that your
doubling down and disregarding terms relating to my community's shared
experiences shows a lack of care in how you write about certain
subjects of your reviews. Why bother reviewing Laura Jane Grace, or
Backxwash, or Ezra Furman, or Laura Les, or SOPHIE, or any of the
other trans artists who've put their souls into their art if you don't
care to understand the fundamentals of what they're singing about? Who
does it help to bring up an old name somebody purposefully shed
because it causes them pain? "Laura Jane Grace" isn't a fucking non de
plume, it's her name, and she's made it clear that the repeated
printing of her old name hurts her. Your SOPHIE review deadnamed her
and I don't even know how you did that, since her deadname has hardly
even been reported -- I didn't even know it was publicly known until I
read that review, to be honest. You don't include Kim Petras' deadname
in your blurbs on her work, I'm guessing because it's hard to find,
and the reviews don't suffer from that missing context at all. Your
phobia is in your reluctance to change in a way that doesn't affect
you at all but would make people in a marginalized community feel more
comfortable and understood. In recent years, Christgau has made
strides in improving the ways he writes about transgender artists --
even switching off on all of Ezra's (at the time) pronouns in his
review of Twelve Nudes, which I thought was really cute. Rather than
quitting writing, you could follow in his example and just stop
writing about this one group of people in a way we unanimously find
insulting and bigoted. Also, please never, ever, ever say that a trans
woman sounds male. It kinda sucks a lot.
- Eric Johnson: I'm sure you have earned the right to be
archaic, but that's not really the issue.
Archaic or modern, I'm sure you don't want to be hateful or
hurtful. That's really the issue. Folks here are giving you credit for
your good intentions and asking you to get your public words in line
with those intentions. Please listen to them.
Eric Johnson: Tom Hull I hope it doesn't seem like I'm
piling on. Again, this is on the Spirit of hoping you can understand
why this is such a concern.
I completely get being defensive here. But imagine going through a
tremendous amount of physical, psychological, and medical work in
order to make the way people see you on the outside match up with the
way you have _known_ you are on the inside for a long time. Imagine
doing that in a country where a major political party has turned you
into a public target.
Then imagine that someone who is ostensibly evaluating your music
(or the music of another trans person) virtually ignores the musical
content and spends pretty much the entire review claiming that all the
work you put in making your inner and outer selves match was a
charade, and claiming that "the trans angle" could be "bracketed"
while really making the entire review about that angle.
That's got to be a significantly worse feeling than the feeling we
get when we get called out on account of our choices in words. So
please don't let feeling sorry for yourself about this overcome the
kind of empathy that makes you a good writer.
Laura Jane Grace is not an alias, full stop. That's her
name. That's who she is.
For the record, I'm nearly 59. I know what it's like to feel like
there's no right way to say something. But please listen to people who
are trying to help you here.
Other comments (with threads):
Mark Kemp: Ugh! The weird thing is how much space the writer
devotes, at this point, to LJG's transition (and, of course, the
bizarre language he uses to talk about it), and how little he spends
on characterizing the actual music. Reading this, I have no idea what
the album sounds like.
Boris Palameta: Don't want to pile on here, I respect
Tom a lot as a writer. And professional standards are important -
though ever-shifting, as several have pointed out. And rightly so, as
we listen and learn more about lived experience. As an old guy who's
only recently begun to manage openly non-binary and trans staff, when
they tell me what's important and what hurts, I believe them.
Alfred Soto: Tom, let me be as polite as possible. You
seem more peeved that ugly-sounding neologisms are allowed to persist
rather than trying to understand how/why they work. To respond like
you did without referring to the people to whom those neologisms apply
strikes me as a fundamental misunderstanding of how writing works, as
if you thought a euphonic sentence couldn't possibly be
amoral.
Phil Overeem: As a fellow older cis gender straight male
with Kansas roots and pressurized conservative Christian post-birth
incubating (I'm not sure we share that last part, Tom, but probably we
do), I'd like to chime in. I was ignorant for a long time about trans
people while fighting my way out of other modes of thinking until I
moved to Columbia, Missouri, to teach. I have taught several trans
kids, two in particular who hadn't begun transitioning when I first
met / taught them and one of whom was the child of two good friends
and fellow teachers. Watching those students struggle with family,
friends, random hostile fellow humans, and institutions as they went
through the process (including surgery) and found their true selves
and as much happiness as anyone can expect in this world taught me
extremely well. I have been fortunate to be able know them for that
expanse of their lives. I'm still struggling to "see" my current trans
students and a fellow worker with ease and habitual respect (I still
screw up pronouns on occasion when my visual sense blinds what I
know), but I'm getting there, and making sure I include material in
class that speaks to them helps everyone--including me, because one of
the best ways to really learn something is to teach it, especially
over and over. Again, I'm not where I need to be, but I'm close, and
it is essential I get there.
I know you are a copious reader, and I've always been of the mind
that, when all else fails, READ. I am including the covers of four
very disparate books that have really opened my eyes and heart: a
memoir (Lucy Sante's, which I just finished and am still processing),
a YA novel--I try to read one every year--about an intersex kid, a
NYC-set group of dazzling but often heart-rending stories about trans
life by a trans Chilean author, and Torrey Peters' very complex (for a
cis mind), funny, and torturous DETRANSITION, BABY.
One reason I was so fully behind Anohni's album last year was how
it dovetailed with the impact of my experiences with students and
those books. It's really good aesthetically, but its power as a
statement about how it must feel to be trans and try to live in this
country (and world) made it impossible for me NOT to understand that
feeling and feel it empathetically as much as that's possible for
someone like me.
Tom, we also both live in states where our legislators and many of
our fellow residents are a straight-up danger to the lives of trans
people, so I think that further obligates us to be as supportive as we
possibly can as we keep trying to understand more fully.
Phil Overeem: Maybe I'm way off base with this reply and
it's about linguistics more than anything. If so, I'm not sure it
still wouldn't be helpful, but I'm just trying to help.
Tim Niland: I agree, when I moved to blue state New
Jersey from the highly Republican/Catholic Upstate NY area where I
grew up in 2001 I had no idea. Working in a public library for fifteen
years was a big eye-opener for me, learning and becoming much more
empathetic toward LGBTQI+ issues. It's a process, we all learn and
grow, I don't think Tom meant ill will.
Phil Overeem: Tim, I cannot imagine he would be
deliberately hurtful.
Alfred Soto: Phil, using the language of DeSantis to
adduce his toughness sure doesn't help. [TH: what the fuck is he
talking about here?]
Phil Overeem: I don't get why he used it. It doesn't
sound like him. [TH: does Overeem know?]
Phil Overeem: Heather, thank you. I "read around" and in
this case it's been really important. Have you read any of
those?
Heather Batson: Phil Overeem during the pandemic I was
in a book group with - a few gender variant and trans pals, and with
them, I read detransition Baby and LOVED it. one of those friend told
me too much about None of the Above so then I didn't read it
😂, and I recently heard a long interview with Lucy Sante that
I really enjoyed so I'm on a waiting list for the ebook from the
library but did not read yet!
Scott Coleman: Although the review makes me
uncomfortable, so does reposting it here. A comment could have been
sent to Tom on his site to discuss the issue. That may have been more
effective in prompting a consideration of the very real issue and
would likely have been perceived as less confrontational.
Joey Daniewicz: My impression had been that Tom had
ignored engagement on the issue previously. Thanks for your
comment
Kenneth Coleman: But we do this kind of thing all the
time with Christgau reviews. While I think it's wrong to repost
private conversations, this was a public review for all the world to
see. And since Hull runs the Christgau site and does reviews in the
same format, many of us view his site as something of a more
jazz-friendly extension of the Consumer Guide. I suppose there's a
difference in that Hull actually posts here on occasion. But if
Christgau (or Greil Marcus) participated here, I would assume we could
still use this space to point out problematic aspects of their
reviews.
I probably wouldn't have framed or worded my critique like Joey
Daniewicz did, but I definitely support the crux of it--and his right
to use this space this way. It's also evident here that more
constructive attempts with collegial, good faith suggestions also hit
a brick wall.
Greg Morton: I would just like to remind everyone that
someday you'll be older too, and new conventions will happen faster
than you can keep up with.
Alfred Soto: I don't even know the posters who _liked_
Hull's post.
I was tempted to respond to Soto's last post: "I didn't notice
any who did." Some were less hostile, but everyone who commented
except me seemed to agree with the charges.
Another comment that occurred to me is: "Thank you for your
comments. I will take them under advisement." I do, and I will,
but at this late date, it seemed unwise to prime this particular
pump.
But my gut feeling right now is pure trauma. It's exactly the
same feeling I had after two gunmen broke into our house, hogtied
me in the basement, ransacked the place, stealing everything they
took a fancy in, then kidnapped my wife. (After several hours,
she was abandoned in our car they stole, and contacted the police,
who ultimately rescued me.) Well, it probably won't last that
long (unless I keep writing this entry). Probably more like the
time Dana Daum screamed at me for disobeying a software design
order I found completely unreasonable. (It was, by the way, a
grudge he never showed any sign of giving up.)
So this hurts. But most immediately, this makes me very angry.
And that's something I'm not used to, and not at all comfortable
with. That brings up the obvious question, which is whether I
should retreat from my anger -- an easy way to do that would be
to follow through on my threat to stop writing reviews, which
is what I've mostly (but not yet publically) done this week,
or channel that anger into more pointed writing. I'm reminded
here that China Miéville, in his book on The Communist
Manifesto, sees anger as valuable (maybe even essential)
to political writing.
One thing I can say is that I won't be going on an anti-trans
rant, nor am I likely to try to raise my unhappiness into a defense
of free speech against the vigilantes of political correctness and
cancel culture. (Does the DeSantis thing mean they think I'm calling
them woke?)
One thing I will grant is that some of the points above deserve
future consideration. But even having considered them, I still like
my review. Aside from pissing off more people off than expected, it
says what I wanted to say, precisely and economically. I'm loathe
to follow Trump and claim it's a "perfect review" -- it certainly
isn't (for one thing, the transition from "folk" to politics ought
to be more secure, and I haven't figured out how the politics
relates to the "trans angle" I perhaps too cavalierly brushed
aside -- but for my everyday purposes it sufficed. In particular,
I don't buy that "sounds male" is an insult, and it definitely
isn't inaccurate.
True that I didn't really need to mention trans at all, and
that may be the best way forward, but it seems like everywhere
I look it's made up to be such a big deal. And it's hard to say
it isn't without mentioning what it is.
Some of this will come out in next Monday's Music Week. How
much, we'll see. I'm sorely tempted to quash it, but having written
reviews before this blew up, I should probably go ahead and post
what I have.
Super late here and now, but at least I won't have to start Sunday
with this as something to do. "Reading Obits" edit done, should be
good to go after a quick re-read. "Speaking of Which" crunch time.
It won't be super-big, but I have a good start on it already.
Updates, compiling on March 22. Not sure I need any more of this,
but it does keep coming.
Rex Harris: I'm just coming to this thread myself. Aside
from Tom's semi-hissy fit of a defense (and I can put that
aside. Being called out for supporting bigotry, one may not feel, can
be a hard slap. Takes a bit for the sting to wear off, and allow for
an honest self- assessment), this thread, and its well thought out
replies, has made me feel a bit better about the condition of my
fellow humans. Heather Batson, Iris Demento, and friendly Phil Overeem
gave me especially nice reading. By the way, I'm in no way suggesting
I'm not a fuck-up in my language or comprehension toward others (hard
to see outside myself), but I try. Thanks all.
Brian O'Neill: This reminds me of my grandmother on my
dad's side. She was born in 1900 in upstate New York. She never even
saw a black person until my grandfather - who contacted her after
buying a pair of pants she put her name in when she made them (a story
in and of itself!) - courted and married her and whisked her away to
Queens, NY in the 1920s.
I loved grandma and she was a sweet lady, but she was also a
racist. Not the burning-crosses-on-yards type. She just was very
suspicious of black people - even my best friend Cliff, even the
paramedics who came to help her ("they might come back to steal
something," she told me while the man was right there; he just gave me
a look that said he's heard this before and he gets it).
[More "stream of consciousness" here, then:]
Maybe it would take a real humiliation for Tom to reconsider, but I
don't think so. If he viewed this thread as a "pile on," I cannot
imagine how he would handle being truly and rudely embarrassed.
All I do know is that grandma was my grandmother whether I liked or
approved of her or not. Tom's just some guy who writes about music and
in recent years I have a lot of experience cutting out acquaintances
online and even friends in real life out of my life because I didn't
approve of their views or how they expressed them.
I used to love Ted Nugent. Now? Fuck Ted Nugent.
I'm sure I read Tom before. Now? Fuck Tom.
Liam Harper: I'm late to all of this, but I'd like to
add a few points. (Without sharing personal details, this is a
discussion that concerns me.)
I admire Tom's writing, but ofc the LJG review and subsequent
comment here were very bad. Personally I'm most concerned about the
"TERF is hateful" comment as it resembles the "TERF is a slur" talking
point advanced by various transphobes. Also, it's not good practice to
post comments from a private group on a public site without getting
permission first.
I think that ultimately the role of allies in these conversations
should be to persuade and inform, not to find catharsis for one's
feelings of outrage. I worry that public callouts can backfire and
cause people to retreat from discussion, or else double down. So I
prefer to err on the side of civility out of pragmatism: public
transphobia is worse than it has ever been and the community needs all
the support it can get. I've seen that some people have reached out to
Tom via private messages, which I think is the best approach going
forward.
All that being said, I thought most of the commentary here was v
nuanced and thoughtful. I really liked Heather and Phil Overeem's
posts in particular.
It's also worth keeping in mind is how generally awful the current
media environment is with regard to trans commentary. Republicans
aside, most of the landscape is dominated by transphobes
self-promoting through the "I'm not allowed to say this" angle and
uninformed/disingenuous attempts to "objectively" understand the
"debate". I think that the effect has been to successfully shift the
focus of public discourse onto bad-faith discussions about bathrooms,
sports, and detransitioners. Imo the most pressing issues are
actually: prison justice, violence against trans POC and sex workers,
workplace harassment & employment discrimination, teenage
homelessness, and interactions with the police. (That being said,
allowing access to children / teenagers to access puberty blockers and
hormones is v important.)
I'm going to take the chance to recommend a few more trans writers
and media creators who deserve people's attention:
- Mia Mulder (good video unpacking the hormones and sports issue)
- Kai Cheng Thom
- Kama la Mackeral
- Contrapoints (controversial figure who has drawn justified anger
from queer leftists on a few occasions, but her videos are highly
researched and well-argued . . . her video "Pronouns" is a good debunking
of some common arguments from right-wingers)
- Julia Serano
Joey Daniewicz: So I don't know if we've all read this
yet: [url for this entry, quoting from above]
Key passage: "One thing I will grant is that some of the points
above deserve future consideration. But even having considered them, I
still like my review. Aside from pissing off more people off than
expected, it says what I wanted to say, precisely and
economically. I'm loathe to follow Trump and claim it's a "perfect
review" -- it certainly isn't (for one thing, the transition from
"folk" to politics ought to be more secure, and I haven't figured out
how the politics relates to the "trans angle" I perhaps too cavalierly
brushed aside -- but for my everyday purposes it sufficed. In
particular, I don't buy that "sounds male" is an insult, and it
definitely isn't inaccurate."
Tom Hull, this is pretty disappointing. It's obviously a bit weird
that you've used your blog to name all of us, but whatever, maybe some
folks care about that more than I do. But some folks did a pretty good
job explaining what was wrong with your review, but I'll confess I
mostly did not put in that work.
So I'm going to just go over again why two parts of your review are
unacceptable, not just by woke mob standards but by professional
standards. Alfred mentioned that you'd be blacklisted from submission
by basically any site if you submitted these in a review of this
album, and I have to agree! This isn't us being finnicky, this is a
very severe issue, and I would very much like to see you understand
and remedy it. It appears that you do not.
"Originally Thomas Gabel"
This might be confusing, because you are technically correct!
However, this information is both completely irrelevant and unhelpful
(mentioning that she's part of Against Me! is more than enough for
anyone confused about the new name that she adopted over a decade ago
now), but also painful. Let me be clear: including Laura's former name
is something that a right wing reviewer would do with malice and
disrespect towards her trans identity. Laura is not a stage name. It
is her name. It's true that you are not exactly saying otherwise, but
you are using a name that she has said she'd like to be scrubbed from
memory. You can greatly improve your writing about trans artists
simply by not bringing these former names (deadnames, as we call them)
up at all.
"Still sounds male"
I get that you don't think this is an insult. Again, maybe I
wouldn't technically call it an insult. But it's also, again, the sort
of thing you'd say if you were trying /very hard/ to insult Laura and
make her feel bad about her voice and her music. Trans women would
really love to be seen as women, and saying you don't is entirely
cruel. It doesn't sound like you meant any harm by this or by
anything, but you do need to consider both how they appear and how
they would be taken.
Just from those two bits, I have to imagine that if Laura ever came
by your review, it would make her feel very, very bad, and not for any
valid reasons, such as you not liking her music. The above moments are
firmly within your control and frankly do not contribute any positive
qualities to your review.
I also understand that people are often stuck in their ways and
haven't quite understood equality issues the way that's natural to us
who have gone to college in the last twenty years. That's true, but it
also shows that you aren't doing the work necessary of a music
writer. Bringing up that artists are trans is fine and often essential
to a review, but you should be trying to put in the work to see how
people have come to approach those topics. Again, no respectable music
publication, absolutely none, would allow a review that states a trans
artist's "former" name or that states an artist's voice sounds like
their "former" gender. These aren't cutting edge developments, either,
this has been figured out for the better part of a decade.
I'm sorry you felt attacked, Tom. I could have done a better job
initiating this, and feel partially responsible for your extremely
defensive responses. But I do hope we can bring one of our most
esteemed writers in line on this issue. I do promise that I brought
this up not in the hopes of "canceling" you, but in the hopes we could
figure this out. I probably didn't put in the effort necessary for
such a thing, so hopefully this does something more.
Phil Overeem: Joey, you have done your level best,
patiently, clearly, thoroughly and encouragingly, to open the
clouds. I hope it helps. I don't know how else or how much better it
could be said.
Mark Kemp: [Joey Daniewicz] This is all very nice, and
you're right: He's a smart music writer and a perceptive critic. But
the fact that he can't appreciate criticism himself, offer thanks to
you all for the very clear guidance you've given, and own up to the
gaffe(s) tells me he may not be the quick learner that he (and others)
think he is. Alfred said it best: a simple "thank you" -- and, I'd add,
a sincere apology -- would have gone a long way. Who knows? Maybe
that's yet come.
Alfred Soto: So I guess this is all cool and no big deal
and we can keep interacting with him, eh?
Alfred Soto: If anyone commented on this thread, you
have no business liking his posts unless you think he's earned the
forgiveness.
Eric Marcus: TH's review and his defense of it were both
awful. But shaming people for liking his posts, rallying people to
shun him, and telling people under what conditions they can forgive
him, is lame.
Eric Johnson: The review itself, the single defensive
double-down response, and then a week's worth of ignoring a bunch of
us crediting him with good intentions but asking him to reconsider
those harmful words is not something I can forget.
Alfred Soto: Eric, please! If he'd written that thing
about gays and Blacks you think the response would be the
same?
Eric Marcus: I think it's easy to overestimate how much
independence each of us has from the patterns of thinking we grew up
with. Yes, he should know better. He should have learned at least from
the incredibly thoughtful and often generous comments of the people
here. I don't know TH at all, but I have no doubt that the past week
of shaming has been brutal for him. Yes, trans people (including one
of my wonderful kids) have it much worse than an internet
drubbing. But if I ever found myself on the wrong end of one, my
reaction would probably be to curl up into a ball and not get out of
bed for a month. And yes he doubled-down instead. But I am in no way
ready to write him off as a person.
Eric Johnson: I'm puzzled by this response. I'm agreeing
with you here, regarding the likes on Tom's newest post, and also
saying personally that I couldn't simply go on interacting with Tom
as if this was nothing.
Btw, just saw the notebook entry on his site, which makes all of
this worse. I'm fucking done with this dude.
Eric Marcus: I didn't mean to say that everyone must
carry on as before. I meant just that I am uncomfortable with Afred's
exhortation to shun. And I totally get your reaction, even if I'm
inclined towards a more hopeful one. Steve put it best below.
Phil Overeem: Alfred, I'm guilty of this, and I did sit
and think about it considerably. Also, I did read his intro to his
reviews, which was not encouraging. I'd really like to know his
thoughts, but I'd been meaning to tell him about the Geller
recommendation of two columns ago and decided for better or worse to
do so. I understand your position, which now makes me regret clicking
a "like," but I would be dishonest unclicking it, right?
Steve Alter: I don't think Tom is ignoring the issue, as
his Notebook entry makes clear; he's very much grappling with it,
though how he's doing so may not be satisfactory to folks. I've been
on the perimeter of conversations on addressing gender expansiveness
and related issues (and have really enjoyed many of the thoughtful
responses from you all here) and honestly have had to control my
desire to verbally punch some people in the face because even though I
am an old straight white guy, I have some deep personal experiences
with trans friends and families. But, outside of some folks who are
truly hateful transphobics (and guess what, they're often racist,
too!) I've come to feel that a lot of people need to be on a learning
journey here (and sometimes it's suprising who does) and I try to show
some grace to folks and support them on that path. I can't blame Tom
for disappearing from this conversation and don't think that should be
interpreted has him hiding from the issue and burying his head in the
sand. I hope he gets on that learning journey and evolves his
understanding in ways that benefit him, his readers and the
communities he's a part of. There have been points at which I have
completely disengaged from people whose thinking was stuck in
cul-de-sacs, but I try to start by hoping for change and
evolution. Understand everyone's MMV.
Alfred Soto: Steve, I understand your point. One isn't
born to wisdom, and the pile-on can make us more obstinate -- it's
happened to me! But EW is not a mean place, nor does it
discourage. Several posters less patient than yours truly have
attested to his good faith. I've enjoyed reading him. He needn't
address every one of points -- and why would he? who has the time --
but a simple "Thanks, all, I'm taking this in," etc. would've been a
palliative.
Eric Johnson: Yeah, I just don't see much "learning
journey" in that notebook. Just more doubling down on how awful it is
to be criticized on the internet. Meanwhile, in my non-internet life,
I'm seeing people deal with actual hurt caused by the kind of shit
he's shoveling, and I'm seeing those people do so with far more
bravery and kindness and far less self-pity. I'm deeply, deeply
unimpressed.
Steve Alter: Brian O'Neill, people hear and process
things differently, hence my clarifier on that remark. We're mostly
all narcissists, too, and it's not terribly surprising that when
someone crushes you on something you don't fully comprehend, your
response is going to initially be about you, and be pretty
defensive. The fact that he exposed the conversation and is clearly
upset by it is a start, even if the focus is still on himself. If it
doesn't move beyond that, it'd be a damn shame (especially for someone
so deeply immersed in politics and social issues) but I'm hoping he
finishes somewhere different in the not too distant future.
Phil Overeem: Steve, my hopes align with yours. In that
intro, I found myself wondering what his specific anger was. I
suppose, too, that his posting today (I was wondering if he would
withdraw) surprised me (arrogance? guts? carrying on until he's had
more time do get things straight), and it got me to thinking of
Mencken: I'll take from him what I need and leave the rest, since he's
providing information. I appreciated the Geller recommendation
(spot-on, as it turns out), wanted to thank him for that (I perhaps
too automatically click "like"), and move on. There are more than a
few live people (unlike Mencken) in my life who have views I abhor
(such as being certain I am going to hell for not accepting Jesus--and
very likely being trans-haters) whom I appreciate (they take very good
care of my mom and look after her, have been her joy for 40 years, and
live in her town, whereas I'm 3.5 hours away). What am I supposed to
do? (I say that calmly.)
Steve Alter: [Brian O'Neill], yeah, maybe "engaging"
would have been a better word (though probably no more satisfying to
you). I've seen folks in similar situations just ignore anything ever
happened, and not respond at all. At least a defensive and
ill-informed response is an opportunity for education and
change. Can't say that will happen, but it's rolling around in his
brain and hopefully leads up rather than down.
Steve Alter: [Eric Johnson], I totally get it, but
change is not binary. I don't know Tom well enough to know how his
brain works, why he may think the way he did here, and why he
responded the way he did (which I indeed found deeply offensive). But
I do know I've not always behaved well when confronted with things
that I wasn't ready to admit to, or own, particularly things that
required me to get out of myself and step into someone else's shoes. I
don't mean to sound Pollyanna-ish about it. Tom may change, he may
not, he many feign change on the surface but not really mean it,
etc. But I understand it being super raw for him right, and getting
into a defensive posture, and I'm at least OK giving him a little
breathing room to see if some self-discovery and adaptation
happens. If not, he'll end up ignored like many other folks I've
admired and dropped along the way because I wasn't OK with their
behavior or values.
Eric Johnson: [Steve Alter] I hear you, and that's all
good. But for me, I'm done. A bunch of people put a lot of energy into
assuring him that we knew his heart was good, while also trying to
explain why that prose didn't look like it reflected that good
heart. For our trouble we got called cancelers and bullies. Fuck
that. I don't have time to be part of another crusty old writer's
effort to fix his damn heart.
Steve Alter: [Eric Johnson], totally respect everyone's
choices here - and appreciate that we can have the conversation
here.
Kevin Bozelka: [Alfred Soto] you have a like policy that
I'm very much opposed to. But that's democracy. I chose my response
carefully in accordance with my policy on using Facebook reactions. It
was not meant to convey that he's earned my forgiveness but rather
something closer, though not identical, with what Steve Alter has
written so eloquently above.
I wasn't keeping score at first, but it appears that I'm banned and
shunned for life by: Alfred Soto, Eric Johnson, Brian O'Neill.
This diverges somewhat from Joey Daniewicz and Melody Esme, who I
trust will continue to read, if only to look for more opportunities
to push their agenda. Also from Iris Demento and Phil Overeem, who
see me more as someone in need of, and possibly still receptive to,
help. (I should follow up with them offline, as I have corresponded
with them on other topics before, and I think I know them well enough
to be able to continue to help one another.)
Not much more to say on this, as only Harper seems to have added
anything new. I'm especially disappointed with Soto here. Sure, we've
had disagreements before (like on Franco), but he's a good critic,
and one I follow regularly.
Some more comments appeared under my Music Week
post, so I might as well include them as well:
Eric Johnson: So, no further engagement with us on
reconsidering your approach to reviewing the album by Laura Jane
Grace, Tom? Steve Alter: [Eric Johnson], read
his Notebook entry on the site.
Eric Johnson: [Steve Alter] Read it, and I'm pretty much
done.
I know a couple of trans kids through my kid. One of those kids is
the only reason she ever made it to school at all last year while
negotiating a maze of grief and medical issues.
Politicians from one of the two major political parties in the
country are using state and institutional powers to make these kids'
lives living hells. Kids are literally dying because of the rhetoric
that these monsters traffic in. Meanwhile, Tom is tossing around
references to "cancel culture" and "free speech" and moaning about how
traumatic it is to be criticized by one's peers. Cry me a fucking
river.
Criticism isn't an attack on free speech. It's pretty ironic that a
working critic needs to be told this.
Tom Hull I was pretty sure previously that you were a kind person
who hadn't considered how this rhetoric affects real people. What I'm
seeing instead here is a preposterous combination of self-importance
and self pity. It's pretty clear that you don't really have any
empathy for the people you write about. Whatever comments you've
transcribed onto your notebook, you clearly still have your head too
far up your own ass to understand what anyone is saying. So, fuck
you
To be clear, I'm not trying to "cancel" you. I'm not trying to
interfere with how you write. I'm just telling you that you're acting
like a piece of shit.
Tom Hull: [Eric Johnson] I added a note to the previous
Music Week noting the objections and also that I stand by the
review. I see no point in further engaging on this issue in this or
any other semi-public forum, which probably includes my scarcely
noticed Q&A. Private media, as Iris Demento constructively offered, is
another option, guaranteed a hearing if not necessarily a response. Of
course, you can continue to harangue me on your own forum, including
here. Curiously when I first read your question, I started to answer a
different one, which I had more on my mind. That's an easy trap to
fall into, especially when one is angry.
[Note: In chronological order, this was a response to Johnson's
initial question, not his subsequent tirade. The question I was
originally entertaining was why was I still posting to the EW
group, despite at least the intimation I might not.]
Joey Daniewicz: Really sad stuff, Tom. Don't think
you're worth reading without confronting what went wrong here. Hearing
all that and still coming down with, "I like my review, deadnaming
isn't my problem" just shows that you don't really take any of what
was said very seriously.
Iris Demento: Tom - extending an invite to chat
privately if you'd like, as I'm in the unique position of
understanding the experience of semipublic online humiliation
firsthand and the trauma response. I think you have my email but feel
free to message if you need it.
All I'll say here is I don't think anyone wants you to stop writing
or reviewing albums, they just urge you to steer clear of verbiage
that will no longer fly in regards to one of the most oppressed groups
of people today, who are still struggling extremely hard to be
understood and have their human rights recognized.
Phil Overeem: Very open-hearted of you. I definitely
support that strategy and hope he takes you up on it!
Iris Demento: [Phil] regardless of the
validity/necessity of this discussion taking place in a public forum I
virtually never think personal reflection is best served with an
audience
Michael Imes: Same, I don't get the public
peacocking. It's obvious to a long time reader of this group and Tom's
that better ground will be gained from all parties with real dialog
not FB posting. Some great points have been made all around butto
prove it's more than a performative gesture to a symnpathetic group
then a real ole fashioned phone call or discussion should take
place.
Joey Daniewicz: Reposting from the other thread:
[already have this, above]
Iris Demento: Just to add an anecdote that supports
this: in 2015 I wrote the SPIN review of Sophie's Product and gave it
a 9 out of 10, one of our highest scores of that year (i pazzed it at
2010s). It got a 6 from pitchfork and a negative review from Sasha
geffen of all people (for consequence) and a lot of people who loved
the singles felt like the compilation didn't add enough new to
them. Despite it being overwhelmingly the most positive review I'm
pretty sure that record received (I think xgau was actually responding
to me in his A- by saying it "wasn't the future of pop" which I'm
pretty sure I said it was), my review/score - tantamount to a full A -
wasn't really used in future sophie press kits or emails at
all. Sophie wasn't out as trans yet, but I had dug up her then-"real"
name-now deadname and used it in the opening bars of the review. (In
2020 I worked with spin again briefly and had the deadname removed.) I
can't prove that's why her team didn't wear it as a badge of honor but
I'd be really shocked if it didn't have something to do with
it.
Dalton Mobley: For what it's worth, I would personally
keep "bracket the trans angle" on that list--I agree with Tom that
many people who might object to it aren't familiar with its
origins/use in phenomenology, but that is probably a very good reason
-not- to use it in this context--because to most people it just sounds
like the review is saying the trans angle is irrelevant, bordering on
a nuisance.
It's also probably true that this is the kind of subject matter
that the capsule review can be ill-suited to handling--it's very easy
to come off as dismissive in 53 words, when you might just be trying
for concision and accuracy as you see it.
Again, nothing much to add at this point. I suppose I could note
that I've received several private emails offering support -- not
for being transphobic, as none of the correspondents and few if any
people who actually know me think I am, but I get the sense that
they think I'm not alone in getting slammed in this way. No need
to include them here. The point here isn't to relitigate, but just
to document what transpired, in case I ever wish to revisit it.
Monday, March 11, 2024
Music Week
Expanded blog post,
March archive
(in progress).
Tweet: Music Week: 36 albums, 6 A-list
Music: Current count 41974 [41938] rated (+36), 27 [21] unrated (+6).
Another substantial
Speaking
of Which yesterday, plus some late additions today, bringing it
up to 206 links, 9408 words. Otherwise, I have nothing much to show
for the week, and I'm feeling as drained and hapless as I can recall,
perhaps ever. Lots of tasks and projects piling up, unattended. At
least I feel fairly well informed, and like I'm making sense when I
drop into whatever topics come my way. Reflexes, and a substantial
backlog of references I can still call up.
Meanwhile, I listened to the following bunch of records. I spent
a lot more time with the R&B comp, eventually replaying all of
it, which was enough for the promotion. Good tip from the redoubtable
Clifford Ocheltree, so thanks again. The Hawkwind album tip came
from a follower who goes by
Cloudland Blue Quartet, who featured
it in a
#13at13 list.
I didn't spend enough time on it -- certainly nothing like I would
have had I encountered it at 13 (or 21, which I was when it came out;
I certainly didn't have 13 albums at that age, and none to brag about).
It seems like I must have heard more from them at the time than I have
in the database, but not enough to really register (except as noted).
Three relatively mainstream jazz albums in the A-list this week.
I feel a bit bad about not finding less obvious choices, but sometimes
it breaks that way. The Potter album isn't actually in the 36 count,
but I moved it in to wrap it up here. None scored high enough to be
strong top-ten candidates at EOY (11, 13, 14 at the moment, or 6, 8,
9 among jazz), but they are likely to finish high in EOY polls.
Hurray for the Riff Raff is another pick with pretty broad support
(86 on 21 reviews at
AOTY; making it the year's highest-ranked album so far with that
many reviews). It's taken over the number 2
slot in my
2024 list.
As for Old Music, the Gebru album I most recommend is still
Éthiopiques 21: Ethiopia Song (1963-70 [2006], Buda Musique),
attributed more precisely to Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, but any of the
recent Emahoy/Mississippi compilations could do the trick. For solo
piano, I usually prefer something upbeat (Earl Hines), fanciful
(Art Tatum), and/or abrasive (Cecil Taylor), but all rules seem
to have exceptions, and this is definitely one.
PS: [03-19] I have it on good authority that
my Laura Jane Grace review, below, is "archaically transphobic." I
understand their arguments, and will consider them in the future.
But I will let this review stand. I've spent considerable time
considering how I might respond, but after one rash attempt, I
doubt that further discussion will do anyone any good.
New records reviewed this week:
- Albare: Beyond Belief (2023 [2024], AM): [cd]: B+(*)
- Bob Anderson: Live! (2023 [2024], Jazz Hang): [cd]: B+(*) [03-29]
- Jonas Cambien: Jonas Cambien's Maca Conu (2023 [2024], Clean Feed): [sp]: B+(***)
- Ian Carey & Wood Metal Plastic: Strange Arts (2019 [2024], Slow & Steady): [cd]: B+(**) [03-22]
- Giuseppe Doronzo/Andy Moor/Frank Rosaly: Futuro Ancestrale (2022 [2024], Clean Feed): [sp]: B+(**)
- Fire!: Testament (2022 [2024], Rune Grammofon): [sp]: B+(***)
- Glitter Wizard: Kiss the Boot (2023, Kitten Robot, EP): [sp]: B
- Laura Jane Grace: Hole in My Head (2024, Polyvinyl): [sp]: B+(***)
- Dave Harrington/Max Jaffe/Patrick Shiroishi: Speak, Moment (2021 [2024], AKP): [sp]: B+(**)
- Keyon Harrold: Foreverland (2023 [2024], Concord): [sp]: B+(**)
- Brittany Howard: What Now (2024, Island): [sp]: B+(**)
- Hurray for the Riff Raff: The Past Is Still Alive (2024, Nonesuch): [sp]: A-
- Idles: Tangk (2024, Partisan): [sp]: B+(**)
- Vijay Iyer: Compassion (2022 [2024], ECM): [sp]: B+(***)
- The Last Dinner Party: Prelude to Ecstasy (2024, Island): [sp]: B+(*)
- Little Simz: Drop 7 (2024, Forever Living Originals, EP): [sp]: B+(**)
- Mike McGinnis + 9: Outing: Road Trip II (2023 [2024], Sunnyside): [sp]: B+(**)
- Emile Parisien/Roberto Negro: Les Métanuits (2023, ACT): [sp]: B+(**)
- Emile Parisien Quartet: Let Them Cook (2024, ACT): [sp]: B+(***)
- Chris Potter/Brad Mehldau/John Patitucci/Brian Blade: Eagle's Point (2023 [2024], Edition): [sp]: A-
- Joel Ross: Nublues (2023 [2024], Blue Note): [sp]: A-
- Scheen Jazzorkester & Cortex: Frameworks: Music by Thomas Johansson (2022 [2024], Clean Feed): [sp]: B+(***)
- Patrick Shiroishi: I Was Too Young to Hear Silence (2020 [2023], American Dreams): [sp]: B+(***)
- The Smile: Wall of Eyes (2024, XL): [sp]: B
- Vera Sola: Peacemarker (2024, Spectraphonic/City Slang): [sp]: B+(**)
- John Surman: Words Unspoken (2022 [2024], ECM): [sp]: A-
- Michael Thomas: The Illusion of Choice (2023 [2024], Criss Cross): [sp]: B+(***)
- Akiko Tsugura: Beyond Nostalgia (2023 [2024], SteepleChase): [sp]: B+(**)
- The Umbrellas: Fairweather Friend (2024, Tough Love): [sp]: B+(*)
- Yard Act: Where's My Utopia? (2024, Island): [sp]: B+(**)
Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:
- Emahoy Tsegue Maryam Guebru: Souvenirs (1977-85 [2024], Mississippi): [sp]: B+(***)
Old music:
- Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru: Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru (1963-70 [2016], Mississippi): [sp]: A-
- Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru: Jerusalem (1972-2012 [2023], Mississippi): [sp]: B+(***)
- Gigi W Material: Mesgana Ethiopia (2010, M.O.D. Technologies): [sp]: B+(**)
- Hawkwind: Doremi Fasol Latido (1972, United Artists): [sp]: B+(***)
Grade (or other) changes:
- The R&B No. 1s of the '50s (1950-59 [2013], Acrobat, 6CD): [cd]: [was: A-] A
Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
- Neal Alger: Old Souls (Calligram) [03-01]
- Sam Anning: Earthen (Earshift Music) [04-05]
- Alex Beltran: Rift (Calligram) [03-01]
- Julieta Eugenio: Stay (self-released) [03-29]
- Julien Knowles: As Many, as One (Biophilia) [04-26]
- Travis Reuter: Quintet Music (self-released) [04-19]
- Claudio Scolari Project: Intermission (Principal) [03-25]
- Dan Weiss: Even Odds (Cygnus) [03-29]
- Hein Westergaard/Katt Hernandez/Raymond Strid: The Knapsack, the Hat, and the Horn (Gotta Let It Out) [02-25]
Sunday, March 10, 2024
Speaking of Which
Blog link.
Once again, started early in the week, spent most of my time here,
didn't get to everything I usually cover. Late Sunday night, figured
I should go ahead and kick this out. Monday updates possible.
Indeed, I wasted most of Monday adding things, some of which,
contrary to my usual update discipline, only appeared on Monday.
The most interesting I'll go ahead and mention here:
Alexander Ward/Jonathan Lemire: [03-11]
If Israel invades Rafah, Biden will consider conditioning military
aid to Israel. There are several articles below suggesting that
the Biden administration is starting to show some discomfort with
its Israeli masters. I've generally made light of such signals, as
they've never threatened consequences or even been unambiguously
uttered in public. I've seen several more suggesting that the long
promised invasion of Rafah -- the last corner of Gaza where some
two million people have been driven into -- could cross some kind
of "red line."
I am willing to believe that "Genocide Joe" is a
bit unfair: that while he's not willing to stand up to Netanyahu,
he's not really comfortable with the unbounded slaughter and mass
destruction Israel is inflicting. I characterize his pier project
below as "passive-aggressive." I think he's somehow trying (but
way too subtly) to make Israel's leaders realize that their dream
of killing and/or expelling everyone from Gaza isn't going to be
allowed, so at some point they're going to have to relent, and
come up with some way of living with the survivors.
I don't recall where, but I think I've seen some constructive
reaction from Biden to the "uncommitted" campaign that took 13%
of Michigan and 18% of Minnesota votes. So it's possible that the
message is getting through even if the raw numbers are still far
short of overwhelming. The Israel Lobby has so warped political
space in Washington that few politicians can as much as imagine
how out of touch and tone-deaf they've become on this issue.
Still, Biden has a lot of fence-mending to do.
I'll try not to add more, but next week will surely come around,
bringing more with it.
Initial count: 181 links, 7,582 words.
Updated count [03-11]: 207 links, 9,444 words.
Top story threads:
Not sure where to put this, so how about here?
Jacob Bogage: [03-08]
Government shutdown averted as Senate passes $459 billion funding
bill: In other words, Republicans once again waited until the
last possible moment, then decided not to pull the trigger in their
Russian roulette game over the budget. It seems be an unwritten
rule that in electing Mike Johnson as Speaker, the extreme-right
gets support for everything except shutting down the government.
Israel:
Mondoweiss:
[03-04]
Day 150: Israel is 'engineering famine' in Gaza. "Amnesty
International says Israel is 'engineering famine' in Gaza. Organization
head Agnes Callamard adds, 'all states that cut UNRWA funding, sold
weapons and supported Israel bear responsibility too.'"
[03-05]
Day 151: Israel 'campaigns' to end UNRWA in Gaza Strip: "UNRWA's
chief says dismantling the agency is 'short-sighted' and will 'sow
the seeds of hatred, resentment, and future conflict.' Israeli forces
fire at Palestinians seeking aid and food in Gaza City and detain
others in southern Gaza."
[03-06]
Day 152: Prospect of breakthrough in ceasefire talks remains thin:
"Canada will resume funding to UNRWA and pay a pledge of $25m due in
April. In Gaza, another Palestinian child dies of thirst and hunger
in the north, bringing the number of children to die from malnutrition
to 18."
[03-07]
Day 153: Over 2 dozen Palestinian captives have 'died' in Israeli
detention camps: "At least 20 Palestinians have died as a result
of malnutrition and dehydration in Gaza, health officials say.
Meanwhile, new reports from Israeli media say 27 Palestinian
captives who were being held in Israeli 'makeshift cages' have
died."
[03-08]
Day 154: Biden's maritime aid corridor to Gaza slammed as
'unrealistic': "Human rights experts say the Biden administration's
proposed maritime corridor is a much less effective solution to
addressing the dire needs of Gaza's besieged and starving population
than a ceasefire and pressuring Israel to open land crossings."
[03-09]
Day 155: Deadly aid drop and obstacles to a maritime corridor expose
farcical humanitarian response to Gaza famine: "At least eighteen
children have died in Gaza from malnutrition, while deaths by starvation
have risen to 23. Meanwhile, the Pentagon announced that Biden's proposed
floating pier would take two months and 1000 US troops to build.
[03-10]
Day 156: Israel deploys 15,000 troops in West Bank as Ramadan starts:
"Ceasefire talks falter as Izz El-Din Al-Qassam Brigades spokesperson
says Israel is using 'deception and evasion.' Israel deploys thousands
of troops in the West Bank and Jerusalem ahead of plans to restrict
access to Al-Aqsa Mosque during Ramadan."
Shane Bauer: [02-26]
The Israeli settlers attacking their Palestinian neighbors: "With
the world's focus on Gaza, settlers have used wartime chaos as cover
for violence and dispossession."
Giorgio Cafiero: [03-05]
Why Egypt can't and won't open the floodgates from Gaza.
Emma Farge: [03-07]
Israel destroying Gaza's food system in 'starvation' tactic.
Noa Galili: [03-10]
Strangled by Israel for decades, Gaza's future must begin with free
movement.
Imad Abu Hawash:
A new surge of settler outposts is terrorizing Palestinians off
their land.
Ibrahim Husseini: [03-08]
Palestinians expect Israeli crackdown on worship at al-Aqsa during
Ramadan.
Ellen Ioanes: [03-07]
What the UN report on October 7 sexual violence does -- and doesn't --
say.
Eyal Lurie-Pardes:
Journalism out, hasbara in: How Israeli news joined the Gaza war
effort.
Khalid Mohammed:
Desperate to escape Gaza carnage, Palestinians are forced to pay
exorbitant fees to enter Egypt.
Aseel Mousa: [03-08]
As Ramadan approaches, Rafah braces for an Israeli ground invasion.
Jonathan Ofir: [03-06]
'We are the masters of the house': Israeli channels air snuff videos
featuring systematic torture of Palestinians.
Yumna Patel: [03-05]
Palestinian PM's resignation nothing more than 'cosmetic shake up,'
analysts say.
Reuters: [03-09]
Israeli settlements expand by record amount, UN rights chief
says.
Jeffrey St Clair: [03-02]
Gaza Diary: Burning all illusions.
- Times of Israel: [03-08]
Five Palestinians killed in Gaza after aid airdrop malfunctions.
Nick Turse:
Who could have predicted the US war in Somalia would fail? The
Pentagon.
Israel vs. world opinion: Note that Biden's relief scheme
for Gaza, announced in his State of the Union address, has been moved
into its own sandbox, farther down, next to other Biden/SOTU pieces.
Kyle Anzalone: [03-07]
South Africa urges ICJ for emergency order as famine looms over
Gaza.
James Bamford: [03-06]
Time is running out to stop the carnage in Gaza: "Given the toll
from bombing and starvation, Gaza will soon become the world's largest
unmarked grave." Actually, time ran out sometime in the first week
after Oct. 7, when most Americans -- even many on the left who had
become critical of Israeli apartheid -- were too busy competing in
their denunciations of Hamas to notice how the Netanyahu government
was clearly intent to commit genocide. At this point, the carnage
is undeniable -- perhaps the only question is when the majority of
the killing will shift (or has shifted) from arms to environmental
factors (including starvation), because the latter are relatively
hard to count (or are even more likely to be undercounted). Of
course, stopping the killing is urgent, no matter how many days
we fail.
Greer Fay Cashman: [03-07]
President Herzog faces calls for arrest on upcoming Netherlands
visit.
Jonathan Cook: [03-07]
How the 'fight against antisemitism' became a shield for Israel's
genocide.
Richard Falk: [02-25]
In Gaza, the west is enabling the most transparent genocide in human
history.
Noah Feldman: [03-05]
How Oct. 7 is forcing Jews to reckon with Israel. Excerpt from
his new book, To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and
the Jewish People.
Daniel Finn: [03-07]
Slaughter in Gaza has discredited Britain's political class.
Fred Kaplan: [03-06]
Four things that will have to happen for the Israel-Hamas war to
end: I have a lot of respect for Kaplan as an analyst of such
matters, but the minimal solution he's created is impossible. His
four things?
- The Hamas leadership has to surrender or go into exile. ("Qatar
will have to crack down on Hamas, or perhaps provide its military
leaders refuge in exchange for their departure from Gaza.")
- "Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and other Sunni powers in the region will
have to help rebuild Gaza and foster new, more moderate political
leaders."
- "Israel will at least have to say that it favors the
creation of a Palestinian state and to take at least a small
movement in that direction." Why anyone should believe Israel
in this isn't explained.
- "The United States will have to serve as some sort of guarantor
to all of this -- and not only for Israel."
In other words, every nation in the region has to bend to Israel's
stubborn insistence that they have to maintain control over every
inch of Gaza, even though they've made it clear they'd prefer for
everyone living there to depart or die. In any such scenario, it is
inevitable that resistance will resurface to again threaten Israel's
security, no matter how many layers of proxies are inserted, and no
matter how systematically Israel culls its "militants." Short of a
major sea change in Israeli opinion -- which is a prospect impossible
to take seriously, at least in the short term -- there is only one
real solution possible, which is for Israel to disown Gaza. Israel
can continue to maintain its borders, its Iron Walls and Iron Domes,
and can threaten massive retaliation if anyone on the Gaza side of
the border attacks them. (This can even include nuclear, if that's
the kind of people they are.) But Israel no longer gets any say in
how the people of Gaza live. From that point, Israel is out of the
picture, and Gaza has no reason to risk self-destruction by making
symbolic gestures.
That still leaves Gaza with a big problem -- just not an Israel
problem. That is because Israel has rendered Gaza uninhabitable, at
least for the two million people still stuck there. Those people
need massive aid, and even so many of them probably need to move
elsewhere, at least temporarily. Without Israel to fight, Hamas
instantly becomes useless. They will release their hostages, and
disband. Some may go into exile. The rest may join in rebuilding,
ultimately organized under a local democracy, which would have no
desire let alone capability to threaten Israel. This is actually
very simple, as long as outside powers don't try to corrupt the
process by recruiting local cronies (a big problem in the region,
with the US, its Sunni allies, Iran, its Shiite friends, Turkey,
and possibly others serial offenders).
Sure, this would leave Israel with a residual Palestinian problem
elsewhere: both with its second- and lesser-class citizens and wards,
and with its still numerous external refugees. But that problem has
not yet turned genocidal (although it's getting close, and is clearly
possible as long as Smotrich and Ben-Gvir are part of Israel's ruling
coalition). But there is time to work on that, especially once Israel
is freed from the burden and horror of genocide in Gaza. There are
lots of ideas that could work as solutions, but they all ultimately
to accepting that everyone, regardless of where they live, should
enjoy equal rights and opportunities. That will be a tough pill for
many Israelis to swallow, but is the only one that will ultimately
free them from the internecine struggle Israelis and Palestinians
have been stuck with for most of a century. There's scant evidence
that most Israelis want that kind of security, so people elsewhere
will need to continue with BDS-like strategies of persuasion. But
failure to make progress will just expose Israelis to revolts like
they experienced on Oct. 7, and Palestinians to the immiseration
and gloom they've suffered so often over many decades decades.
Colbert I King: [03-08]
The United States cannot afford to be complicit in Gaza's tragedy:
True or not, isn't it a bit late to think of this?
Nicholas Kristof: [03-19]
'People are hoping that Israel nukes us so we get rid of this pain':
Texts with a Gazan acquaintance named Esa Alshannat, not Hamas, but
after Israeli soldiers left an area, found "dead, rotten and half eaten
by wild dogs." Kristof explains: "Roughly 1 percent of Gaza's people
today are Hamas fighters. To understand what the other 99 percent are
enduring, as the United States supplies weapons for this war and vetoes
cease-fire resolutions at the United Nations, think of Alshannat and
multiply him by two million."
Debbie Nathan:
Vivian Nereim: [03-10]
As Israel's ties to Arab countries fray, a stained lifeline remains:
The United Arab Emirates is still on speaking terms with Israel,
but doesn't have much to show for their solicitude.
Ilan Pappé: [02-01]
It is dark before the dawn, but Israeli settler colonialism is at
an end.
Mitchell Plitnick: [03-07]
Replacing Netanyahu with Gantz won't fix the problem.
Rebecca Lee Sanchez: [03-06]
Gaza's miracle of the manna: Aid and the American God complex.
Philip Weiss:
[03-07]
Zionism and Jewish identity: "American Zionists are not deluded
about Zionism. They know exactly what Israel is, and they are actively
supporting blatant supremacy, racism, and apartheid. But that is
changing, because Zionism is finally being challenged in the
left/liberal press."
[03-10]
Weekly Briefing: Israeli genocide is 'embarrassing' Biden, at
last.
Brett Wilkins: [03-06]
AIPAC's dark money arm unleashes $100 million: "Amid the
Netanyahu government's assault on Gaza and intensifying repression
in the West Bank, AIPAC is showing zero tolerance for even the
mildest criticism of Israel during the 2024 US elections."
America's increasingly desperate and pathetic empire:
I started this section to separate out stories on how the US was
expanding its operations in the Middle East, ostensibly to deter
regional adversaries from attacking Israel while Israel was busy
with its genocide in Gaza. At the time, it seemed like Israel was
actively trying to promote a broader war, partly to provide a
distraction from its own focus (much as WWII served to shield
the Holocaust), and partly to give the Americans something else
to focus on. Israel tried selling this as a
"seven-front
war" -- a line that Thomas Friedman
readily swallowed, quickly recovering from his initial shock at
Israel's overreaction in Gaza -- but with neither Iran nor the US
relishing what Israel imagined to be the main event, thus far only
the Houthis in Yemen took the bait (where US/UK reprisals aren't
much of a change from what the Saudis had been doing, with US help,
for years). So this section has gradually been taken over by more
general articles on America's imperial posture (with carve outs
for the still-raging wars in Israel/Gaza and Ukraine/Russia.
Ramzy Baroud:
[03-04]
To defend Israel's actions, the US is destroying the int'l legal
system it once constructed: I'm not sure that the US ever supported
any sort of international justice system. The post-WWII trials in Japan
and Germany were rigged to impose "victor's justice." The UN started
as a victors' club, with Germany and Japan excluded, and the Security
Council was designed so small states couldn't gang up on the powers.
And when Soviet vetoes precluded using the UN as a cold war tool, the
US invented various "coalitions of the willing" to rubber-stamp policy.
The US never recognized independent initiatives like the ICJ, although
the US supports using the ICJ where it's convenient, like against Russia
in Ukraine. The only "rules-based order" the US supports is its own,
and even there its blind support for Israel arbitrary and capricious --
subject to no rules at all, only the whims of Netanyahu.
[03-08]
On solidarity and Kushner's shame: How Gaza defeated US strategem,
again.
Mac William Bishop: [02-23]
American idiots kill the American century: "After decades of
foreign-policy bungling and strategic defeats, the US has never
seemed weaker -- and dictators around the world know it."
Christopher Caldwell: [03-09]
This prophetic academic now foresees the West's defeat: On
French historian/political essayist Emmanuel Todd, who claims to
have been the first to predict the demise of the Soviet Union (see
his The Final Fall: An Essay on the Decomposition of the Soviet
Sphere, from 1976), has a new book called La Défaite de
l'Occident.
Caldwell, who has a book called The Age of Entitlement,
seems to be an unconventional conservative, so even when he has
seeming insights it's hard to trust them. Even harder to get a
read on Todd. (The NYTimes' insistence on "Mr." at every turn has
never been more annoying.) But their skepticism of Biden et al.
on Ukraine/Russia is certainly warranted. By the way, here are
some old Caldwell pieces:
Brian Concannon: [03-08]
US should let Haiti reclaim its democracy.
Gregory Elich: [03-08]
How Madeleine Albright got the war the US wanted: NATO goes on
the warpath, initially in Yugoslavia, then . . . "the opportunity
to expand Western domination over other nations."
Tom Engelhardt: [03-05]
A big-time war on terror: Living on the wrong world: "A
planetary cease fire is desperately needed."
Connor Freeman: [03-07]
Biden's unpopular wars reap mass death and nuclear brinkmanship.
Marc Martorell Junyent: [03-07]
Tempest in a teapot: British illusions and American hegemony from
Iraq to Yemen. Review of Tom Stevenson's book,
Someone
Else's Empire: British Illusions and American Hegemony.
Joshua Keating: [03-09]
The Houthis have the world's attention -- and they won't give it up:
"What do Yemen's suddenly world-famous rebels really want, and what will
make them stop?" One lesson here is that deterrence only works if it
threatens a radical break from the status quo. The Saudis, with American
support, have been bombing the Houthis for more than a decade now,
causing great hardship for the Yemeni people, but hardly moving the
needle on Houthi political power. So how much worse would it get if
they picked a fight with Israel's proxy navy? Moreover, by standing
up to Israel and its unwitting allies, they gain street cred and a
claim to the moral high ground. For similar reasons, sanctions are
more likely to threaten nations that aren't used to them. Once you're
under sanctions, which with the US tends to be a life sentence, what
difference does a few more make? It's too late for mere threats to
change the behavior of Yemen, Iran, North Korea, and/or Russia --
though maybe not to affect powers whose misbehaviors have thus far
escaped American sanctions, like Israel and Saudi Arabia. But for
the rest, to effect change, you need to do something positive, to
give them some motivation and opportunity to change. In many cases,
that shouldn't even be hard. Just try to do the right thing. Respect
the independence of others. Look for mutual benefits, like in trade.
Help them help their own people. And stop defending genocide.
Nan Levinson: [03-07]
The enticements of war (and peace).
Blaise Malley: [03-06]
Opportunity calls as Cold War warriors exit the stage: "Will
Mitch McConnell's replacement represent the old or new guard in
his party's foreign policy?"
Paul R Pillar: [03-06]
Why Netanyahu is laughing all the way to the bank: "David Petraeus
said recently that US leverage on Israel to do the right thing in Gaza
is 'overestimated' -- that's just not true."
Robert Wright: [03-08]
The real problem with the Trump-Biden choice: This piece is
far-reaching enough I could have slotted it anywhere, but it has
the most bearing here: the problem is how much Trump and Biden
have in common, especially where it comes to foreign affairs:
"America First" may seem like a different approach from Biden's,
but the latter is just a slightly more generous and less intemperate
variation, as both start from the assumption that America is and must
be the leader, and everyone else needs to follow in line. Trump thinks
he can demand the other pay tribute; Biden possibly knows better,
but his pursuit of arms deals makes me wonder. Wright cites a piece
by Adam Tooze I can't afford or find, quoting it only up to the
all-important "but" after which the Trump-Biden gap narrows. While
I'm sure Tooze has interesting things to say, Wright's efforts to
steer foreign policy thinking away from the zero-sum confrontations
of the Metternich-to-Kissinger era are the points to consider.
Fareed Zakaria: [03-08]
Amid the horror in Gaza, it's easy to miss that the Middle East has
changed.
Election notes: Sixteen states and territories voted for
president on Super Tuesday, mostly confirming what we already knew.
Biden won everywhere (except American Samoa), even over "uncommitted"
(which mostly got a push from those most seriously upset over his
support for Israeli genocide). Trump won everywhere -- except in
Vermont, narrowly to Nikki Haley, who nonetheless shuttered her
campaign (but hasn't yet endorsed Trump). Dean Phillips dropped out
of the Democratic race after getting 8% in his home state of Minnesota
and 9% in Oklahoma. He endorsed Biden. I'm not very happy with any of
the news summaries I've seen, but here are a few to skim through:
538;
AP;
Ballotpedia;
CBS News;
CNBC;
CNN;
Guardian;
NBC News;
New York Times;
Politico;
USA Today;
Washington Post.
One quote I noticed (from CNN) was from a "reluctant Democrat" in
Arizona: "It's hard to vote for someone with multiple felony charges;
and it's also very hard to vote for someone that is pro-genocide."
Michael C Bender: [03-06]
How Trump's crushing primary triumph masked quiet weaknesses:
"Even though he easily defeated Nikki Haley, the primary results
suggested that he still has long-term problems with suburban voters,
moderates, and independents."
Aaron Blake: [03-08]
The Texas GOP purge and other below-the-radar Super Tuesday
nuggets.
Nate Cohn: [03-07]
Where Nikki Haley won and what it means: Inside the Beltway (61%),
Home base and Mountain West cities (57%), Vermont (56%), University
towns (56%), Resort towns (55%): In other words, the sorts of places
that would automatically disqualify one as a Real Republican.
Antonia Hitchens: [03-06]
Watching Super Tuesday returns at Mar-a-Lago.
Ro Khanna: [03-07]
The message from Michigan couldn't be more clear: Actually,
these figures (see Nichols below) are hardly enough for a bump in
the road to Biden's reelection -- unlike, say, Eugene McCarthy's
New Hampshire showing in 1968, where Lyndon Johnson got the message
clearly enough to give up his campaign. What they do show is that
the near-unanimity of Democratic politicians in support of Israel
is not shared by the rank and file.
Adam Nagourney/Shane Goldmacher: [03-09]
The Biden-Trump rerun: A nation craving change gets more of the same:
I bypassed this first time around, but maybe we should offer some kind
of reward for the week's most inane opinion piece. Wasn't Nagourney a
finalist in one of those hack journalists playoffs? (If memory serves --
why the hell can't I just google this? -- he finished runner-up to
Karen Tumulty.)
John Nichols: [03-05]
Gaza is on the ballot all over America: "Inspired by Michigan's
unexpectedly high 'uncommitted' vote, activists across the country
are now mounting campaigns to send Biden a pro-cease-fire message."
Uncommitted slate votes thus far (from NYTimes link, above):
Minnesota: 18.9%;
Michigan: 13.2%;
North Carolina: 12.7%;
Massachusetts: 9.4%;
Colorado: 8.1%;
Tennessee: 7.9%;
Alabama: 6.0%;
Iowa: 3.9%.
Alexander Sammon:
[03-09]
Katie Porter said her Senate primary was "rigged." Let's discuss!
"Her complaint was kind of MAGA-coded. But it wasn't entirely wrong."
Adam Schiff had a huge fundraising advantage over Porter, as Porter
did over the worthier still Barbara Lee. This is one of the few pieces
I've found that looks into where that money came from (AIPAC chipped
in $5 million; a crypto-backed PAC doubled that), and how it was used,
explained in more depth in the following:
[03-05]
Democrats have turned to odd, cynical tactics to beat one another in
California's Senate race. Schiff wound up spending a lot of money
not trying to win Democrats over from Porter and Lee -- something that
might require explaining why he supported the Iraq War (which itself
partly explains why he got all that AIPAC money) -- but instead spent
millions raising Republican Steve Garvey's profile. In the end, Schiff
was so successful he lost first place to Garvey (on one but not both
of the contests: one to finish Feinstein's term, one for the six year
term that follows), but at least he got past Porter and Lee, turning
the open primary into a traditional R-D contest (almost certainly D
in California).
Michael Scherer: [03-08]
Inside No Labels decision to plow ahead with choosing presidential
candidates: "The group announced on a call with supporters
Friday plans to announce a selection process for their third-party
presidential ticket on March 14 with a nomination by April."
More No Labels:
Li Zhou: [03-06]
Jason Palmer, the guy who beat Biden in American Samoa, briefly
explained.
Trump, and other Republicans:
David Atkins: [03-06]
The incompetent malfeasance of today's Republican party: "They're
mendacious buffoons, but their lack of political acumen makes them no
less dangerous than if they knew how to shoot straight." Laugh as you
may, but in much of the country, they're still kicking your ass.
Zack Beauchamp: [03-06]
The Republican primary was a joke. It tells us something deadly
serious. "Trump's inevitable romp to victory revealed how strong
his hold on the GOP is -- and how dangerous he remains to democracy."
Ryan Bort: [03-08]
Republicans tap election denier, Trump's daughter-in-law to run
RNC: "The MAGA takeover of the Republican National Committee
is complete, and the group appears poised to subsidize Trump's
legal fights." Michael Whatley and Lara Trump.
Zak Cheney-Rice: [03-09]
The normalization of Trump's alleged crimes: "His legal strategy
is both buying him time and erasing the accusations against him."
Juan Cole: [03-06]
Trump, Like Biden, supports Israeli Campaign against Gaza: "You've got
to finish the Problem": Odd turn of phrase, isn't it? (I usually
try to standardize case in headlines, but this one was so peculiar, I
left it alone.) Most people try to solve problems, but "finish" could
have two meanings, one suggesting that it isn't problem enough yet,
so needs to be made more complete; the other interpretation, which is
more like Trump, is that "Problem" means Palestinians, and "finish"
means annihilation (or more vividly, if you know the original German,
Vernichtung). I don't quite buy the argument that "Trump's position
on Gaza is not any different from that of Joe Biden." Biden may feel
powerless to object to Israel, but he's not unaware of the human cost.
Trump simply doesn't care. As long as the checks don't bounce, he's
good to go. More on Trump's Gaza "problem":
Dan Diamond/Alex Horton: [03-07]
Navy demoted Ronny Jackson after probe into White House behavior:
"Trump's former physician and GOP ally is now a retired captain, not
an admiral."
Jesse Drucker: [03-09]
How Trump's Justice Dept. derailed an investigation of a major
company: "The industrial giant Caterpillar hired William Barr
and other lawyers to defuse a federal criminal investigation of
alleged tax dodges."
Michael Gold: [03-10]
Trump vilifies migrants and mocks Biden's stutter in Georgia
speech.
Jessica M Goldstein:
The right-wing war on abortion has nothing to do with babies:
"Coverage of the recent controversy over IVF has made a perilous
omission: This is a battle over body autonomy." Related:
Alex Isenstadt: [03-11]
Ralph Reed's army plans $62 million spending spree backing Trump:
"Faith & amp; Freedom plans to spend big registering and turning out
evangelicals and handing out 30 million pieces of literature at
churches."
Josh Kovensky: [03-09]
Inside a secret society of prominent right-wing Christian men prepping
for a 'national divorce'.
Paul Krugman:
Eric Levitz:
[03-05]
Republicans' voter suppression obsession may end up helping . . .
Democrats? "The GOP convinced itself it could only win with a
smaller, whiter electorate. The polls show that's just not true."
[03-06]
Republicans just passed up the chance to win a historic landslide:
"If Republicans ever figure out how to nominate a normal human, Democrats
could be in trouble." You might think that, but Romney and McCain, who
were about as close as Republicans get to normal these days, lost to
Obama, and Bush didn't fare much better, leaving office with the lowest
approval rating at least since Nixon. Republican policies are moving
disasters, many so obviously defective even they don't dare campaign
on them. The only option, other than betraying their base(s), is to
deflect and dissemble, which they do mostly by generating rage. Even
that doesn't always work, but Trump was credibly crazy in 2016, and
pulled off a miracle, and when he did, he raised the stakes about
what winning meant. As long as he has a chance of winning -- and he
does have enough polls to keep that fantasy going -- he's the horse
the base wants to bet on, because he's the only one promising to
fulfill their fantasies. Until he loses as bad as Landon in 1936,
or at least Mondale in 1984, Republicans have little reason to
recalculate.
Daniel Lippman: [03-09]
Kellyanne Conway advocating for TikTok on Capitol Hill:
Trump failed to "drain the swamp," but his aides are learning to
earn there.
Alexandra Marquez: [03-10]
Lindsey Graham: Biden has 'screwed the world up every way you can':
I can't help but wonder how many people actually fall for this sort
of vague but indiscriminate line, which has become default for most
Republicans. Graham spouts more on foreign policy, where it's most
clear that he wants to "screw the world up" in ways even Biden hasn't
tried.
Stephanie Mencimer: [03-08]
Lara Trump is all about meritocracy: "That's why she got the
top job at the RNC."
Mary Jo Murphy: [03-07]
This book about Trump voters goes for the jugular: Another
review of Tom Schaller/Paul Waldman:
White
Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy. And another:
Nicole Narea: [03-06]
Mark Robinson, the North Carolina GOP nominee for governor, is off the
rails even by MAGA standards: "North Carolina has seen a politician
like Robinson before: Jesse Helms." More:
Anna North: [03-04]
Fetal personhood laws, explained: "The anti-abortion legal theory
that could jeopardize IVF around the country."
Charles P Pierce: Many recent
short posts, not all of which apply to this slot, but the first
couple do, and easier to keep them together, with more respect for
their author:
Greg Sargent:
Trump's angry rant about Biden's speech showcases MAGA's ugliest
scam.
Charles Sykes: [03-05]
Donald Trump, the luckiest politician who ever lived.
Ishaan Tharoor: [03-08]
Trump, Orban and the GOP's deep obsession with foreign demagogues:
This column includes an interview with Jacob Heilbrunn, author of
America Last:
The Right's Century-Long Romance with Foreign Dictators.
The century is just enough time to go back to Mussolini, lionized
as the guy who got the trains to run on time.
Liz Theoharis: [03-10]
The great unwinding: "The failing battle for health and healthcare
in these all too disunited states." Republicans are responsible for
this, and need to own it: "Since March 2023, 16 million Americans have
lost healthcare coverage, including four million children, as states
redefine eligibility for Medicaid for the first time in three years."
This is one of many areas where Democrats were able to expand the
safety net to ameliorate the horrors of the Covid-19 pandemic, but
as Republicans recovered from the panic, they've killed off these
much needed expansions as soon as possible.
Peter Wehner: [03-10]
If there's one thing Trump is right about, it's Republicans:
They'll follow him anywhere:
Mr. Trump is a human blowtorch, prepared to burn down democracy. So
is his party. When there's no bottom, there's no bottom.
The next 34 weeks are among the more consequential in the life of
this nation. Mr. Trump was a clear danger in 2016; he's much more of
a danger now. The former president is more vengeful, more bitter and
more unstable than he was, which is saying something. There would be
fewer guardrails and more true believers in a second Trump term. He's
already shown he'll overturn an election, support a violent insurrection
and even allow his vice president to be hanged. There's nothing he won't
do. It's up to the rest of us to keep him from doing it.
Biden's band-aid folly: Unveiled in Biden's State of the
Union address, q.v., but for this week, let's give it its own section:
Alex Horton: [03-08]
How the US military will use a floating pier to deliver Gaza aid:
"Construction will take up to two months and require 1,000 US troops
who will remain off shore, officials say. Once complete, it will
enable delivery of 2 million meals daily."
Jonathan Cook: [03-10]
Biden's pier-for-Gaza is hollow gesture.
Kareem Fahim/Hazem Balousha: [03-08]
Biden plan to build Gaza port, deliver aid by sea draws skepticism,
ridicule. Sounds like they had a contest to come up with the most
expensive, least efficient method possible to trickle life-sustaining
aid into Gaza, without in any way inhibiting Israel's systematic
slaughter.
Miriam Berger/Sufian Taha/Heidi Levine/Loveday Morris: [03-05]
The improbable US plan for a revitalized Palestinian security force:
Because the US did such a great job of training the Afghan security
force?
Noga Tarnopolsky: [03-09]
The Biden plan to ditch Netanyahu: "The 'come to Jesus moment' is
already here, according to Israeli and US sources." I don't give this
report much credit, but it stands to reason that eventually Biden will
tire of Netanyahu jerking him around just so he can further embarrass
both countries with what is both in intent and effect genocide. I do
see ways in which Biden's initial subservience is evolving into some
kind of passive-aggressive resistance. Rather than denounce Israel
for making reasonable aid possible, Biden has challenged Israel to
spell out what they would allow, and agreed even as these schemes are
patently ridiculous. It's only a matter of time until Israel starts
attacking American aid providers. For another piece:
Zack Beauchamp: [03-08]
Are Biden and the Democrats finally turning on Israel? "Biden's
new plan to build a pier on the Gaza coast seems to say yes. The
continued military aid to Israel says otherwise."
Biden's State of the Union speech: A section for everything
else related, including official and unofficial Republican responses:
Biden and/or the Democrats:
Perry Bacon Jr: [03-07]
Biden is failing at the most important task of his presidency.
Bacon's definition: "Biden has failed at the most important task
for a Democratic president in the 2020s: eliminating or at least
drastically reducing the chances of Trump or someone who shares
his radical beliefs being his successor." That may have been the
job, but it's really hard to see how he could have done it. When
I saw the headline, I filled in my own answer, which is that Biden
simply isn't a very good communicator. But Obama was, technically
at least, pretty much all you could hope for in a communicator,
and who listened to him? Bill Clinton was also pretty good. But
both were hobbled by a hostile media that relentlessly amplified
Republican countermessaging, and by the muddle created by their
own willingness to conform to conservative framing of issues --
is it any wonder that they were more successful at persuading
donors than voters? Franklin Roosevelt was the great communicator
among all presidents, but we no longer live in a world where
nominally Republican farmers (like, say, my grandfather) would
tune in to listen to him explain how banking worked, and believe
a word he said.
Jonathan Chait: [03-05]
Good riddance, Kyrsten Sinema, plutocratic shill: "She killed her
career by blocking bipartisan ideas that threatened the rich." The
Democrat-turned-independent from Arizona finally decided not to run
for a second term. Presumably she'll reap her rewards as a lobbyist,
not that she's likely to have much influence over anyone. More:
Timothy Noah:
The stealth budget cuts imperiling the Biden antitrust agenda.
Evan Osnos: [03-04]
Joe Biden's last campaign: A long New Yorker profile on
Biden, by just about the only writer who managed to get a biography
of Biden together before the 2020 election (and just barely).
Andrew Prokop: [03-08]
The media's coverage of Biden's age needs a rethink: "There's
been too much focus on trivialities."
John E Schwarz: [03-01]
Democratic presidents have better economic performances than Republican
ones: This has been true for so long you'd think everyone would be
acknowledging it.
Astra Taylor/Eleni Schirmer: [03-05]
The Biden administration has a chance to deliver student debt relief.
It must act.
Benjamin Wallace-Wells: [03-06]
Can Joe Biden fight from behind in a rematch against Donald Trump?
Legal matters and other crimes:
Elie Honig: [03-08]
Biden's looming nightmare pardons: Ever since this "former
federal and state prosecutor" started writing for Intelligencer,
his pieces have sounded like stealth briefs from the Trump legal
team, even if not things they would actually want to own. This
one at least assumes things not yet in evidence: that Trump is
actually tried and convicted and sentenced to jail time -- the
power may be to pardon, but all he's asking for is commutation
of prison time, not full pardons. As that's increasingly unlikely
before November, the assumption may also be that Biden wins then,
so has some breathing room before having to consider the issue,
which would leave plenty of time for this discussion, unlike now.
Josh Kovensky: [03-05]
Feds slap 12 new counts on Bob 'Gold Bars' Menendez: Senator
(D-NJ).
Ian Millhiser: [03-10]
Do Americans still have a right to privacy? "With courts coming
for abortion and IVF, it's hard not to wonder what the Supreme Court
will go after next."
Climate, environment, and energy:
Ukraine War:
Blaise Malley: [03-08]
Diplomacy Watch: Chinese diplomat shuttling to Russia, and Ukraine.
Turkey is also making efforts to mediate the conflict.
Francesca Ebel/Robyn Dixon: [02-29]
Putin threatens nuclear response to NATO troops if they go to
Ukraine.
Francesca Ebel/Serhiy Morgunov: [03-08]
Russia's opposition and Ukraine find it impossible to unite against
Putin.
Mark Episkopos: [03-08]
What will more aid to Ukraine accomplish? "There are limits to
what Kyiv can do, even with an indefinite flow of Western assistance."
Valerie Hopkins: [03-01]
Thousands turn out for Navalny's funeral in Moscow.
Daniel Larison: [03-05]
Victoria Nuland never shook the mantle of ideological meddler:
"Blurting out F-ck the EU' typified her blunt, interventionist style
throughout three presidential administrations."
Emily Rauhala: [03-07]
Sweden finally joins NATO in expansion spurred by Putin's Ukraine
war.
Lauren Wolfe: [01-16]
Putin's history lessons: Review of Yaroslav Trofimov:
Our
Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine's War of
Independence, which is somewhat tangential to the subhed
argument that Putin's rhetoric about the unity of Russia and Ukraine
has laid "the rhetorical groundwork for a forever war."
Amanda Yen: [03-11]
Hungary's Viktor Orban: Trump 'won't give a penny' to Ukraine if
elected. One of the stranger recent political dynamics is that
as Trump digs in more as the anti-war (and especially, anti-world-war)
candidate, Democrats are trying to rally support for Ukraine as
necessary to spite Trump here in America. Why they think that's
a winning strategy is beyond me. They could argue that unified
support for Ukraine would help them negotiate a better deal to
end the war, but first they need to be open to negotiating, which
so far doesn't seem to be the case. America has a bad history of
never negotiating reasonable exits from conflicts. Rather, in
Vietnam and Afghanistan, they negotiated deals where they just
slipped away, leaving their supposed allies to collapse, or in
Korea, where they signed a ceasefire but refused to call it an
end to the war. A reasonable deal with Russia is possible, and
it could lead to further reasonable deals in the future, in the
long run ending a conflict that the US has done as much or more
to fuel as Putin has. Trump may pull out, but he won't negotiate
a real deal, because he doesn't know how, and he doesn't care.
But even the bad deals I've mentioned were better for Americans
than the hopeless, pointless wars they escaped from. So even if
that's all Trump is promising, many people will see it as better
than Biden and the Democrats pouring endless resources into a
stalemate.
Around the world:
Other stories:
Michelle Alexander: [03-08]
Only revolutionary love can save us now: "Martin Luther King Jr's
1967 speech condemning the Vietnam War offers a powerful moral compass
as we face the challenges of our time."
Indivar Dutta-Gupta/Korian Warren: [03-04]
The war on poverty wasn't enough: "While Lyndon B Johnson's
effort made some lasting impacts, the United States still has some
of the highest rates of nonelderly poverty among wealthy nations."
As the article notes, Johnson's programs brought big improvements,
but the Vietnam War hurt him politically, and his successors lost
interest: e.g., Nixon's appointment of Donald Rumsfeld to run the
Office of Economic Opportunity. And while Republicans deserve much
of the blame, Democrats like Daniel Moynahan and Bill Clinton were
often as bad, sometimes worse.
Henry Farrell: [02-27]
Dr. Pangloss's Panopticon: A very thoughtful critique of Noah Smith's
"quite
negative review of a recent book by Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson,
Power and Progress: Our 1000-Year Struggle Over Technology &
Prosperity. There are complex issues at dispute here, many
much more interesting than those that dominate this (and all recent)
posts. Dr. Pangloss (from Voltaire) stands in for techno-optimism:
the idea that unfettered innovation, accelerated as it is through
modern venture capitalism, promises to deliver ever-improving worlds.
Panopticon (from Jeremy Bentham) is an early form of mass surveillance,
a capability that technology has done much to develop recently, with
AI promising a breakthrough to the bottleneck problem (the time and
people you need to surveil other people).
Luke Goldstein: [02-23]
Crunch time for government spying: "Congress has a few weeks left
until a key spying provision sunsets. Both reformers and intelligence
hawks are plotting their strategies."
Oshan Jarow: [03-08]
The world's mental health is in rough shape -- and not getting any
better: "Guess where the US ranks?"
Sarah Kaplan: [03-06]
Are we living in an 'Age of Humans'? Geologists say no.
A recent proposal for delineating a stratigraphic boundary for
the Anthropocene, based on "a plume of radioactive plutonium
that circled around the world" in 1952, was proposed recently
and, at least for now, voted down. More:
Alvaro Lopez: [03-08]
The making of Frantz Fanon: Review of Adam Shatz's new book,
The
Rebel's Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon.
Also:
Rick Perlstein: [03-06]
The spectacle of policing: "'Swatting' innocent people is the latest
incarnation of the decades-long gestation of an infrastructure of
fear."
Dave Phillipps: [03-06]
Profound damage found in Maine gunman's brain, possibly from blasts:
"A laboratory found a pattern of cell damage that has been seen in
veterans exposed to weapons blasts, and said it probably played a
role in symptoms the gunman displayed before the shooting." Robert
Card was a grenade instructor in the Army Reserve for eight years.
He went on to shoot and kill 18 people and himself. Something not
yet factored into the "Costs of War" accounting. Another report:
Jeffrey St Clair: [03-08]
Roaming Charges: Too obvious to be real.
I ran across a link to this David Brooks [02-08]:
Trump came for their party but took over their souls. A normal
person would have little trouble writing a column under that headline.
Even Brooks hits some obvious points, like: "Democracy is for
suckers"; "Entertainment over governance"; and "Lying
is normal." But the one that really upsets Brooks is: "America
would be better off in a post-American world." The other maxim
that Brooks castigates Trump for is "Foreigners don't matter."
This leads to his rant against "isolationism," which inevitably
devolves into invoking the spectre of Neville Chamberlain.
Brooks celebrates the triumph of Eisenhower over Taft in 1952,
when "the GOP became an internationalist party and largely remained
that way for six decades" -- glorious years that spread capitalist
exploitation to the far corners of the globe, transforming colonies
into cronies ruled by debt penury, policed by "forever wars" and,
wherever the occasion arose, ruthless counterrevolutions and civil
wars.
Meanwhile, instead of enjoying the wealth this foreign policy
generated, America's middle class -- the solid burghers and union
workers who, as Harry Truman put it, "voted Democratic to live like
Republicans" -- got ground down into their own penury. The Cold
War was always as much about fighting democracy at home as it was
about denying socialism abroad, much as the "war on terror" was
mostly just an authoritarian tantrum directed against anyone who
failed to submit to America's globe-spanning military colossus.
Sure, it is an irony that blows Brooks' mind that it now seems
to be the Republicans -- the party that most celebrates rapacious
capitalism, is most devoutly committed to authoritarian rule, and
whose people are most callously indifferent to the cries of those
harmed by their greed -- should be the first give up on the game.
Of course, they weren't. The left, or "premature antifascists"
(as the OSS referred to us in the 1940s, before "communists and
fellow travelers" proved to be a more effective slur), knew this
all along, but that insight came from caring about what happens
to others, and solidarity in what we sensed was a common struggle.
It took Republicans much
longer to realize that globalized capitalism, under the aegis of
American military power, not only didn't work for them personally,
but that it directly led to jobs moving overseas, and all kinds
of foreigners flooding America. And since Republicans had put
so much propaganda effort into stoking racism and reaction, not
least by blaming Democrats (with their "open borders" and focus
on wars as "humanitarian") for loving foreigners more than their
own people.
I was pointed to Brooks' piece by a pair of
tweets: Simon Schama linked, adding: "Heartfelt obituary by
David Brooks for the expiring of last vestiges of the Republican
Party. No longer has supporters but 'an audience.' Lying normalised.
Total abandonment of internationalism." To which, Sam Hasselby added:
People have really memory-holed the whole Iraq catastrophe which
is in fact what normalized a new scale of lying and impunity in
American politics. It was also a lie which cost $7 trillion dollars,
killed one million innocent Iraqis, and displaced 37 million people.
Yet Iraq War boosters like Brooks still have major mainstream
media gigs, while Adam Schiff trounced Barbara Lee (the only member
of Congress to vote against the whole War on Terror) in a Democratic
primary, and Joe Biden became president -- finally giving up the
20-year disaster in Afghanistan, only to wholeheartedly embrace
new, but already even more disastrous, wars in Ukraine and Gaza.
Saturday, March 09, 2024
Daily Log
Cloudland Blue Quartet published a "#13at13" list: "Here are 13 of
the 16 LPS I owned at the age of 13. No wonder I am warped . . ." As
best I can make out:
- The Animals: The Most of the Animals
- The Who: A Quick One
- Various Artists: Fill Your Head With Rock
- Various Composers: The World of Your Hundred Best Things
- Alice Cooper: Love It to Death
- The Rolling Stones: Gimme Shelter (Live)
- Black Widow: Black Widow III
- Hawkwind: Doremi Fasol Latido
- Mott the Hoople: All the Young Dudes
- T Rex: Ride a White Swan
- Uriah Heep: Demons and Wizards
- Uriah Heep: Magician's Birthday
- Alice Cooper: Billion Dollar Babies
Wednesday, March 06, 2024
Daily Log
I got this message via Facebook from Ken Brown:
Tom - since you know by far the most about the Brown family, I have a
question: someone once told me that the Brown boys went to school
until they were old enough to pick cotton, and they then picked cotton
until they were old enough to run away from home. So, my dad maybe
only went to the 5th or 6th grade? What do you know? I do have some
letters that my dad wrote to my mom - and you can barely read the
handwriting.
Tuesday, March 05, 2024
Music Week
Expanded blog post,
March archive
(in progress).
Tweet: Music Week: 38 albums, 5 A-list
Music: Current count 41938 [41900] rated (+38), 21 [22] unrated (-1).
I'm having a rough time getting anything done, which is my best
explanation for wasting most of last week on a still-unfinished
Speaking of Which -- posted well after midnight last, with
a few further adds flagged today. The most important add is the
link to Pankaj Mishra's
The Shoah after Gaza (also on
YouTube).
I've neglected pretty much everything and everyone else. My
apologies to anyone expecting a response from me. As I must have
noted already, I gave myself a month to write a quick, very rough
draft of my long gestating political book, with the promise that
if I couldn't pull it off, I'd shelve the idea once and for all,
and spend my waning days reading fiction -- forty years later,
I still have a bookmark 300 pages into Gravity's Rainbow,
and enough recollection I'm not sure I'll have to retrace --
while slipping in the occasional old movie and dawdling with
jigsaw puzzles (ok, I'm already doing the latter). I certainly
wouldn't have to plow through any nonfiction that might be
construed as research -- e.g., a couple items currently on
the proverbial night stand: Franklin Foer's book on Biden, or
Judis/Teixeira on the missing Democrats.
That month was supposed to be January, but the Jazz Critics
Poll and EOY lists lapped over without me starting, so I decided
I'd give it February. I still have no more than a fragment of a
letter stashed away in a
notebook entry, so
the obvious thing to do at this point is admit failure, and be
done with it. Aside from easing my mind -- the last six months
have been unbearably gloomy for my politics, my prognostications
turning markedly dystopian -- ditching politics might be good
news for those of you more interested in my writing on music.
Two small projects that I've also neglected are: a thorough
review of the
Francis Davis Jazz
Critics Poll website, which is missing some unknown quantity
of historical material (hopefully Davis has it stashed away),
and needs some modernization; I'm also behind on maintenance,
not to mention the long-promised redesign, of the
Robert Christgau
website. It would also make sense to reorganize my own data
along those same lines, as even now it's virtually impossible
for even me to look up what I've written about any musician.
I also have neglected house projects: the most pressing of
which is the imminent collapse of a chunk of ceiling in my wife's
study room. I used to be pretty competent at carpentry and home
improvement tasks. About all I can claim to have managed in the
last month has been replacement of two light bulbs, which took
me weeks (in my defense, both involved ladders and unconventional
sockets).
Nothing special to say about this week's music. A copy of the
year 2023 list has been
frozen, but I am
still adding occasional records to my
tracking file,
jazz and
non-jazz EOY lists, and
EOY aggregate, but mostly
just my own belatedly graded items. But I'm not very focused on what
I'm listening to, and often get stuck wondering what to play next.
I can't say I've reached the point of not caring, but I'm getting
there.
My most played record of the last couple weeks is The
R&B No. 1s of the '50s, especially the final disc, which
has left me with Lloyd Price's "I'm Gonna Get Married" as the
ultimate earworm. I should probably bump the whole set up to full
A. I played the last three discs while cooking on Saturday, and
I'm satisfied with them. Then I started Sunday and Monday with
disc 6. As this post lapsed into Tuesday, I was tempted again,
but had unfinished Vijay Iyer queued up.
Found this in a Facebook comment: "I'm not sure keeping up with
Tom Hull is possible. The very thought makes my synapses cry out,
'no mas, no mas.'" But from my view, they really just keep coming
poco a poco. During the long delay from listing out this file to
posting it -- mostly spent on the Speaking of Which intro -- I only
managed to collect four more reviews for next week: two marginally
A- jazz albums (Joel Ross, John Surman), and two more marginally
below A- (Vijay Iyer, Emile Parisien).
New records reviewed this week:
- Black Art Jazz Collective: Truth to Power (2024, HighNote): [sp]: B
- The Choir Invisible [Charlotte Greve/Vinnie Sperazza/Chris Tordini]: Town of Two Faces (2022 [2024], Intakt): [sp]: B+(***)
- Djeli Moussa Condé: Africa Mama (2023, Accords Croises): [sp]: B+(***)
- Gui Duvignau/Jacob Sacks/Nathan Ellman-Bell: Live in Red Hook (2022 [2024], Sunnyside): [sp]: B+(**)
- Alon Farber Hagiga With Dave Douglas: The Magician: Live in Jerusalem (2023 [2024], Origin): [cd]: B+(***)
- R.A.P. Ferreira & Fumitake Tamura: The First Fist to Make Contact When We Dap (2024, Ruby Yacht): [sp]: B+(***)
- David Friesen: This Light Has No Darkness (2023 [2024], Origin): [cd]: B
- The Fully Celebrated Orchestra: Sob Story (2023 [2024], Relative Pitch): [sp]: B+(**)
- Vanisha Gould and Chris McCarthy: Life's a Gig (2022 [2024], Fresh Sound New Talent): [sp]: B+(**)
- Heems & Lapgan: Lafandar (2024, Veena Sounds): [sp]: A
- Katy Kirby: Blue Raspberry (2024, Anti-): [sp]: B+(**)
- Lapgan: History (2023, Veena Sounds): [sp]: B+(*)
- Lapgan: Duniya Kya Hai (2021, Veena Sounds): [sp]: B+(**)
- Lapgan: Badmaash (2019, self-released): [sp]: B+(**)
- Les Amazones d'Afrique: Musow Danse (2024, Real World): [sp]: B+(***)
- James Brandon Lewis Quartet: Transfiguration (2022 [2024], Intakt): [sp]: A-
- Cecilia Lopez & Ingrid Laubrock: Maromas (2022 [2023], Relative Pitch): [sp]: B+(**)
- Corb Lund: El Viejo (2024, New West): [sp]: B+(***)
- Brady Lux: Ain't Gone So Far (2024, 6483357 DK): [sp]: B+(***)
- Mali Obomsawin/Magdalena Abrego: Greatest Hits (2024, Out Of Your Head): [bc]: B+(**)
- QOW Trio: The Hold Up (2024, Ubuntu Music): [sp]: A-
- Zach Rich: Solidarity (2021 [2024], OA2): [cd]: B+(*)
- Dex Romweber: Good Thing Goin' (2023, Propeller Sound): [sp]: B+(*)
- Ignaz Schick/Oliver Steidle: Ilog3 (2021 [2023], Zarek): [bc]:" B+(***)
- Fie Schouten/Vincent Courtois/Guus Janssen: Vostok: Remote Islands (2023, Relative Pitch): [sp]: B+(**)
- Håkon Skogstad: 8 Concepts of Tango (2023 [2024], Øra Fonogram): B+(*) [03-15]
- Simon Spiess Quiet Tree: Euphorbia (2022 [2024], Intakt): [sp]: B+(**)
- Sleater-Kinney: Little Rope (2024, Loma Vista): [sp]: B
- Albert Vila Trio: Reality Is Nuance (2022 [2023], Fresh Sound New Talent): [sp]: B+(**)
Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:
- Roberto Magris: Love Is Passing Thru: Solo/Duo/Trio/Quartet (2004 [2024], JMood): [cd]: A-
- Jack Wood: The Gal That Got Away: The Best of Jack Wood, Featuring Guest Niehaud Fitzgibbon ([2024], Jazz Hang): [cd] [03-29]
Old music:
- Gigi: Gigi (2001, Palm Pictures): [sp]: B+(***)
- Gigi: Illuminated Audio (2003, Palm Pictures): [sp]: B+(*)
- Gigi: Gold & Wax (2006, Palm Pictures): [sp]: A-
- Barney McAll: Precious Energy (2022, Extra Celestial Arts): [sp]: B
- Pajama Party: Up All Night (1989, Atlantic): [sp]: B+(**)
- QOW Trio: QOW Trio (2020, Ubuntu Music): [sp]: B+(***)
- Stacey Q: Greatest Hits (1982-95 [1995], Thump): [sp]: B+(***)
- SSQ: Playback (1983, Enigma): [sp]: B+(**)
- SSQ: Jet Town Je T'Aime (2020, Synthicide): [sp]: B+(*)
Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
- Guillermo Gregorio: Two Trios (ESP-Disk) [2023-12-01]
- Mercer Hassy Orchestra: Duke's Place (Mercer Hassy) [04-15)
- Ellie Lee: Escape (self-released) [05-24]
- Matthew Shipp Trio: New Concepts in Piano Trio Jazz (ESP-Disk) [04-05]
- Ronny Smith: Struttin' (Pacific Coast Jazz) [04-19]
Sunday, March 03, 2024
Speaking of Which
Blog link.
I started this early, on Wednesday, maybe even Tuesday, as I
couldn't bring myself to work on anything else. There's a rhythm
here: I have twenty-some tabs open to my usual sources, and just
cycle through them, picking out stories, noting them, sometimes
adding a comment, some potentially long. By Friday night, I had
so much, I thought of posting early: leaving the date set for
Sunday, when I could do a bit of update.
I didn't get the early post done. Sunday, my wife invited some
friends over to watch a movie. I volunteered to make dinner, and
that (plus the movie) killed the rest of the day. Nothing fancy:
I keep all the fixings for pad thai on hand, so I can knock off
a pretty decent one-dish meal in little more than an hour. And I
had been thinking about making hot and sour soup since noticing
a long-neglected package of dried lily buds, so I made that too.
First actual cooking I had done in at least a month, so that felt
nice and productive.
This, of course, feels totally scattered. I'm unsure of the
groupings, and it's hard for me to keep track of the redundancies
and contradictions. And once again, I didn't manage to finish my
rounds. Perhaps I'll add a bit more after initially posting it
late Sunday night. But at the moment, I'm exhausted.
My wife mentioned an article to me that I should
have tracked down earlier, but can only mention here: Pankaj Mishra:
[03-07]
The Shoah after Gaza. Mishra grew up in a "family of upper-caste
Hindu nationalists in India," deeply sympathetic to Israel, so his
piece offers a slightly distant parallel to what many of us who
started sympathetic only to become dismayed and ultimately appalled
by what Israel has turned into. Beyond that, the piece is valuable
as a history of how the Nazi Judeocide -- to borrow Arno Mayer's
more plainly factual term in lieu of Holocaust or Shoah -- has been
forged into a cudgel for beating down anyone who so much as questions
let alone challenges the supremacy of Israeli power.
There is also a
YouTube video of Mishra's piece.
On Facebook, I ran across this quote attributed to Carolina
Landsmann in Haaretz:
We (Israelis) continue to approach the world from the position of
victim, ignoring the 30,000 dead in Gaza, including 12,000 children,
assuming that the world is still captive to its historic guilt toward
Israel without understanding that this is over. The era of the
Holocaust has ended. The Palestinians are now the wretched of the
earth.
It's impossible to go back to the pre-Oct 7 world. To the blame
economy between the Jews and the world, which gave the former moral
immunity. Enough; it's over. Every era draws to a close. The time has
come to grow up.
There was a time, and not that long ago, when I still thought
that the experience of victimhood would still temper the exercise
of Israeli power: sure, Israel was systematically oppressive, and
Israeli society was riddled with the ethnocentrism we Americans
understand as racism, but surely they still had enough of a grip
on their humanity to stop short of genocide. That's all changed
now, and it's coming as quite a shock -- no doubt to many Israelis
as they look at their neighbors, but even more so to Americans
(not just Jews but also many liberals who have long counted on
Jews as allies).
It's hard to know what to do these days, beyond the call for
an immediate and unconditional ceasefire, and the constant need
to remind anyone who's still echoing the Israeli hasbara that
it's genocide, and by not opposing it, they're complicit. It may
be unfair to go so far as to make placards about "Genocide Joe" --
he's just in thrall, having fully adapted to the peculiar gravity
of the Israel lobby when he arrived in Washington fifty years ago --
as there is still a difference (maybe not practical, but certainly
in spirit) between him and the people in Israel (and some Republicans
in Congress) who really are committed to genocide. But in times like
this, nice sentiments don't count for much.
Another important piece I noticed but skipped over on Sunday:
Aaron Gell: [03-03]
Has Zionism lost the argument? "American Jews' long-standing
consensus about Israel has fractured. There may be no going back."
There is a lot to unpack here. It's worth your time to read the
interview with Ruth Wisse, with her absolutist defense of Israel,
then the digression where the author considers the charge that Jews
who doubt Israel are becoming non-Jews, ending in a reference to
the Mishnah, specifically "by far the hardest to answer: If I
am only for myself, who am I? Many Zionists long justified
their project as providing a haven from anti-semitism, but their
exclusive focus on their own issues, turning into indifference
or worse towards everyone else, has finally turned Israel into
the world's leading generator of anti-semitism.
Wisse insists that "the creation of the state changes the entire
picture, because now to be anti-Zionist is a genocidal concept. If
you're an anti-Zionist, you're against the existence of Israel . . .
the realized homeland of nine million people." But later on, Gell
notes: "I've spoken to dozens of anti-Zionists over the past few
months, and not a single one thought Israel should cease to exist."
They have various ideas of how this could be done, in part because
they've seen it work here:
American Jews are justifiably proud to live in a successful multiethnic
democracy, imperfect though it is. As citizens of a nation in which Jews
are a distinct minority, we owe our well-being, our prosperity, and, yes,
perhaps our existence to the tolerance, openness, and egalitarianism
of our system of government and our neighbors. No wonder we shudder at
Israel's chauvinism, its exclusionary nationalism, its oppression. It's
all too obvious how we'd fare if the United States followed Israel's
lead in reserving power for an ethnic or religious majority. Seen in
this light, what's surprising isn't that some American Jews are
anti-Zionists; it's that many more aren't.
I've been reading Shlomo Avineri's 1981 book (paperback updated
with a new preface and epilogue 2017), The Making of Modern
Zionism: The Intellectual Origins of the Jewish State, which
offers a highly sympathetic survey of most of the reasons people
have come up with to justify and promote Zionism. I'm still in
the last profile chapter, on David Ben Gurion, before the initial
epilogue, "Zionism as a Permanent Revolution." Immediately previous
were chapters on Jabotinsky (who built a cult of power based on
fascist models and used it to flip the script on race, promoting
Jews as the superior one) and Rabbi Kook (who reformulated Zionism
as God's will).
Ben Gurion's major contribution was the doctrine of "Hebrew
labor," where Jews would fill all economic niches in the economy,
leaving native Palestinians excluded and powerless. This was a
significant change from the usual practice of settler colonialism,
which everywhere else depended on impoverished locals for labor.
Ben Gurion's union bound Jews into a coherent, self-contained,
mutual help society, including its own militia, well before it
was possible to call itself a state. But in doing so, he excluded
the Palestinians, and plotted their expulsion -- his endorsement
of the 1937 Peel Commission plan, his campaign for the UN partition
plan, and finally his "War of Independence," remembered by
Palestinians as the Nakba.
Ben Gurion was an enormously talented political figure, and his
establishment of Israel through the 1950 armistices, the citizenship
act, and the law of return, was a remarkable achievement against
very stiff odds. He might have gotten away with it, but he couldn't
leave well enough alone. He always wanted more, and he cultivated
that trait in his followers. And while he feared the 1967 war, his
followers launched it anyway, and in the end -- even as his fears
had proven well founded -- he delighted in it. Like Mao, he so loved
his revolution he kept revitalizing it, oblivious to the tragedy it
caused. I expect the book, with its "permanent revolution" epilogues,
will end on that note.
There is a lot of wishful thinking in the early parts of Avineri's
book -- most obviously, Herzl's fairy-tale liberalism, but also the
socialism of Syrkin and Borochov, which could have been developed
further in later years, but it's appropriate to end as it does, with
the real Israeli state. Great as he was, Ben Gurion made mistakes,
and in the end the most fateful was allowing Jabotinsky and Kook,
or more precisely their followers, into the inner sanctumm, from
which they eventually prevailed in shaping Israel into the genocidal
juggernaut it has become. The path from Jabotinsky to Netanyahu is
remarkably short, passing straight through the former's secretary,
the same as the latter's father. The other intermediaries were Ben
Gurion's rivals of 1948, Begin and Shamir, who became favored tools
in driving the Palestinians into exile, and future prime ministers.
Less obvious was Ben Gurion's decision to invite the Kookists
into government, but what politician doesn't want to be reassured
that God is on his side? Rabbi Kook was succeeded by his son, Zvi
Yehuda Kook, whose Gush Emunim (Bloc of the Faithful) was the
driving force behind the West Bank settlements, leading directly to
Smotrich and Ben Gvir. The first casualty in Ben Gurion's schemes
was the socialism that unified the Yishuv in the first place. That
was what gave Israel its foundational sense of justice, a reputation
that is now nothing but ruins.
Initial count: 174 links, 8,842 words.
Updated count [03-05]: 193 links, 10,883 words.
Top story threads:
Israel:
Mondoweiss:
[02-26]
Day 143: Gaza famine is 'man-made,' says UNRWA Chief: "UNRWA says
that the famine in northern Gaza can be avoided if more food convoys
are allowed in, but Israel continues to hold up over 2000 aid trucks.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu reaffirms plans to invade Rafah, where 1.5
million Gazans have sought shelter."
[02-27]
Day 144: Israel and Hamas contradict Biden claim that Gaza ceasefire
is close: "A proposed ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas is
reported to include a temporary 40-day truce, the release of 40 Israeli
captives in return for 400 Palestinian prisoners, and the entry of
humanitarian aid and mobile shelters into Gaza."
[02-28]
Day 145: Hamas warns Israel and US of 'political machinations' amid
ceasefire talks: "UN humanitarian officials say that thousands of
Palestinians in Gaza are 'just a step away from famine' by May. Russia
calls on UNSC members to refrain from endorsing Washington's resolution
on Gaza, denouncing it as 'a license to kill' for Israel."
[02-29]
Day 146: Israeli forces massacre civilians waiting for humanitarian
aid: "Israeli tanks and warplanes reportedly targeted civilians
waiting for aid, killing at least 77 and wounding hundreds. Meanwhile,
international aid groups say airdrops of aid are so "negligible" that
they "perpetuate the overall blockade strategy."
[03-01]
Day 147: No ceasefire in sight despite international condemnation
of Israel's 'flour massacre': "US blocks a UN Security Council
resolution condemning Israel for its massacre against Palestinians
attempting to receive humanitarian aid in Gaza, saying that the
incident "still needs to be investigated."
[03-02]
Day 148: UN reports at least 14 cases of Israel firing on Palestinians
waiting for aid in Gaza: "UN calls for an investigation following
Thursday's "flour massacre" where Israel killed at least 115 Palestinians
waiting for aid and injured more than 760. The need for aid is becoming
even more dire as starvation worsens in northern Gaza."
[03-03]
Day 149: Palestinian children die of malnutrition as Israel blocks
aid into Gaza: "US airdrops of food and aid in Gaza have been
described as "performative BS" that "fools no one." Meanwhile, Hamas's
delegation has arrived in Cairo for ceasefire talks as Ramadan is due
to start next Sunday."
James Bamford: [02-26]
Israel's far right finally gets the war it has always wanted:
"Billed as a response to the October 7 Hamas attack, the conflict in
Gaza has increasingly become a war to eliminate all Palestinians --
a longtime goal of Israel's homegrown fascists."
Mariam Barghouti: [02-27]
In Jenin, brazen Israeli raids fuel fiercer Palestinian resistance:
"Incessant Israeli incursions into Jenin refugee camp since October
7 have killed nearly 100 Palestinians, including many civilians. But
as repression surges, the children of the Second Intifada are taking
up arms." Which is, of course, a self-perpetuating process, where
Palestinians are torn between the urgent need to defend themselves
and their inability to muster the arms to do so. So the main effect
is, as Israeli leaders seem to wish, to intensify the Israeli drive
to genocide.
Nina Berman: [02-29]
Violating intimacies: "Israeli soldiers have photographed themselves
posing with the lingerie of Palestinian women they have displaced or
killed in Gaza. They join a long line of conquest images, from Abu
Ghraib images to the spectacles of Jim Crow-era lynchings." But we've
been seeing pictures like this, or more commonly just gratuitous
vandalism, for decades now -- from what used to be advertised as
"the most moral army in the world."
Sarah Dadouch: [02-29]
As besieged Gaza grows desperate, donors drop aid from the sky.
Elias Feroz: [02-26]
Thirty years after Baruch Goldstein's massacre, his followers are now
carrying out a genocide: "His legacy of bloodshed continues in
Gaza and the West Bank as his followers are now in power."
Shatha Hanaysha: [02-28]
Israeli forces kill 3 Palestinians, including Tubas Brigade leader in
northern West Bank.
Ellen Ioanes:
Gideon Levy: [03-03]
Gaza's night of death and hunger.
Niha Masih/Annabelle Timsit: [03-03]
US plans more airdrops into Gaza amid hope for Ramadan cease-fire:
This has got to be the least cost-effective means of delivering aid
humanly possible. That the US cannot trust Israel to safely deliver
aid via trucks speaks volumes about how little faith America has in
its so-called closest ally.
Chris Floyd tweeted (?): "OK, why don't you
set up a depot on the beach, supply it via the US Navy, and deliver
the aid throughout Gaza with military trucks under escort? That
would be pulling out all the stops. Otherwise, you're just putting
on a PR show with pitiful dribs and drabs." I don't take this as a
serious proposal. It's more of a thought experiment. If the US did
this, would Israel be deterred from attacking relief distribution?
And, to defend its deterrent threat, would US troops be allowed to
return Israeli fire?
The same question applies to airdrops, which thus far Israel has
not attempted to shoot down. But the airdrops are so inefficient
they'll do little to blunt Israel's starvation weapon. Ships and
trucks could make a real as well as a symbolic difference. Still,
if Biden had the guts to send the Navy in, why wouldn't he do the
right thing and start by insisting on an Israeli ceasefire? The
only way relief is going to work is if it won't be attacked by
Israel. Until the bombing stops, nothing good, or even decent,
can happen.
Mahmoud Mushtaha: [02-29]
These words are penned in hunger from northern Gaza. I have little
energy to go on: "From the daily indignity of searching for food
to the extreme dangers of doing journalistic work, life in this dark
corner of the earth has become impossible."
Marcy Newman: [03-02]
How Israeli universities are an arm of settler colonialism:
Review of Maya Wind: Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli
Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom.
Dean Obeidallah: [02-27]
"Nothing has compared to what we're seeing": Hala Gorani on the toll of
covering Gaza war: Interview with the NBC News journalist and author
of But You Don't Look Arab: And Other Tales of Unbelonging.
Yumna Patel: [02-27]
New reports confirm months of Israeli torture, abuse, and sexual violence
against Palestinian prisoners.
Jeremy Scahill/Ryan Grim/Daniel Boguslaw: [02-28]
"Between the hammer and the anvil": "The story behind the New
York Times October 7 exposé." This was the story by Anat Schwartz
that charged Hamas fighters with rape during their short-lived
jailbreak. This article was a big deal in the first week of the
war, when writers who meant well were so quick to condemn Hamas
when they should have been more alert to Israel's initial moves
toward genocide. (In particular, I remember a piece by Eric Levitz
finding the charges credible because "soldiers of all armies rape" --
an insight he didn't follow up on when Israel started sending their
soldiers into Gaza.) For another piece on this:
Ishaan Tharoor: [03-01]
Gaza's spiraling, unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe.
Philip Weiss:
Oren Ziv:
[02-26]
'People say I'm naive, antisemitic, a traitor': Israeli teen jailed
for draft refusal: "Conscientious objector Sofia Orr explains why
she never wavered in her decision despite the crackdown in Israel
against opponents of the war."
[03-01]
Israeli settlers cross into Gaza, build 'symbolic' outpost: "Dozens
of settlers and right-wing activists stormed Erez Crossing, building
two wooden structures while soldiers and police stood aside." This is
a very disturbing development, but follows Israel's now common police
practice of permitting and even encouraging encroachments and mob
violence against Palestinians. Still, one would expect that in a war
zone, the IDF would insist on imposing discipline on its own troops.
In 1948, Ben Gurion deemed this so important that he ordered the IDF
to turn on the previously independent right-wing EZL/LEHI militias,
forcing them to submit to state control. Netanyahu, on the other
hand, seems to see right-wing mobs as helping drive his relentless
drive to extremism, which is clearly the point here.
By the way:
Killing of aid seekers part of a 'decades-long pattern' of Israeli
violence: Per Human Rights Watch.
Israel vs. world (including American) opinion: This week we
lead off with a singular act of self-sacrifice, by an American, an
active duty serviceman, Aaron Bushnell, in front of the Israeli embassy
in Washington. I feel like I should add an opinion, but I don't really
have one. My inclination is to view him as just another casualty of
the more general madness, so not a hero or martyr or even a fool,
but I'm also not so callous as to look the other way -- especially
when so many people do have things to say.
Other stories:
Spencer Ackerman: [03-28]
The anti-Palestinian origins of the War on Terror: Interview
with Darryl Li, who wrote the report
Anti-Palestinian at the core: The origins and growing dangers of
US anti-terrorism law.
Ammiel Alcalay: [02-28]
War on Gaza: How the US is buying time for Israel's genocide:
"As the US ambassador to the UN recently made clear in a rare moment
of honesty, Washington is fully committed to facilitating Israel's
destruction of the Palestinians."
Kyle Anzalone: [03-01]
US vetoes UN resolution condemning Israel for flour massacre.
Muhannad Ayyash: [02-26]
Boycotting Israel could stop the genocide: At this point, this
is probably just wishful thinking: "the world must ensure Tel Aviv's
legal, economic and political isolation." The nice thing about BDS
was that it provided a forum for grass-roots organizing against the
apartheid regime in Israel: something that individuals could start
and grow, and eventually recruit more powerful organizations, while
ultimately appealing to the better consciences within Israel itself.
That it worked with South Africa was encouraging.
But it was always
going to be a much more difficult reach in Israel -- I could insert
a half-dozen reasons here -- and it never came close to gathering
the collective moral, let alone financial, force it had with South
Africa. Now, about all you can say for it is that it allowed people
of good will to express their disapproval without promoting even
more violence. I would even agree that it's still worth doing --
Israel deserves to be shamed and shunned for what it's doing, now
more than ever. And, as we witness what Israel is doing, many more
people, indeed whole nations, may join us.
But will boycotting stop
the genocide now? Maybe if the US and NATO banded together and put
some serious teeth in their threats, some Israelis might reconsider.
But sanctions usually just push countries deeper into corners, from
which they're more likely to strike back than to fold. I'm not about
to blame BDS for Israel's rampant right-wing -- their racism dates
back further than any outsider noticed -- but they would claim their
ascent as the way of fighting back against foreign moralizers. Even
if we could count on eventually forcing some kind of reconciliation,
the people in power in Israel right now are more likely to double
down on genocide. It's not like anyone in the Nazi hierarchy saw the
writing on the wall after Stalingrad and decided they should call
the Judeocide off, lest they eventually put on trial. They simply
sped up the extermination, figuring it would be their enduring
contribution to Aryan civilization.
Jo-Ann Mort: [02-28]
BDS is counter-productive. We need to crack down on Israeli settlements
instead: "A future peace depends on drawing a line between Israel
proper and the illegal settlements in Palestinian territory." This
article is so silly I only linked to it after the Ayyash piece above.
It does provide some explanation why BDS failed, but it doesn't come
close to offering an alternative. Israel has been continuously blurring
and outright erasing the Green Line ever since 1967. (It started with
he demolition of the neighborhood next to the Al-Aqsa Mosque's western
wall, just days after the 7-day war ended.) There is no way to force
Israel to do much of anything, but few things are harder to imagine
them acceding to is a return to what from 1950-67 were often decried
as "Auschwitz borders."
Phyllis Bennis:
Amena ElAshkar: [02-28]
Gaza ceasefire: Talk of an imminent deal is psychological warfare.
I haven't bothered linking to numerous articles about an imminent
ceasefire deal because, quite frankly, possible deals have never been
more than temporarily expedient propaganda, mostly meant to humor the
hostage relatives and the Americans. If Israel wanted peace, they could
ceasefire unilaterally, and having satisfied themselves that they had
inflicted sufficient damage to restore their Iron Wall deterrence,
leave the rubble to others to deal with. The hostages would cease to
be a bargaining chip, except inasmuch as not freeing them would keep
much needed international aid away. So why is Netanyahu negotiating
with Hamas? Mostly to squirrel the deal, while he continues implementing
his plan to totally depopulate/destroy Gaza.
Paul Elle: [02-26]
The Vatican and the war in Gaza: "A rhetorical dispute the Church
and the Israeli government shows the limits -- and the possibilities --
of the Pope's role in times of conflict." On the other hand, if you
look at the Pope's recent comments on "gender theory," you'll realize
that he has very little to offer humanity, and that a Church that
follows him could be very ominous. (For example, see [03-02]
Pope says gender theory is 'ugly ideology' that threatens humanity.)
Sometimes I'm tempted to take heart in that the Catholic Church is one
of the few extant organizations to predate, and therefore remain somewhat
free of, capitalism. But in it the spirit of Inquisition runs even
deeper.
Madeline Hall: [02-28]
Israeli genocide is a bad investment: For one thing, Norway has
divested its holdings of Israeli bonds.
James North:
Peter Oborne: [02-27]
These ruthless, bigoted Tories would have Enoch Powell smiling from
his grave: "The recent spate of vile anti-Muslim rhetoric from the
Tories shows they have decided that stoking hatred against minorities
is their only way to avoid electoral annihilation." Also in UK:
Charles P Pierce: [02-29]
The US has enabled Netanyahu long enough: "Two democracies,
hijacked for alibis."
Vijay Prashad: [02-14]
There is no place for the Palestinians of Gaza to go.
Barnett R Rubin: [03-02]
Redemption through genocide: "The ICJ ruled that Israel's Gaza
campaign poses a plausible and urgent threat of genocide. Future
historians of Jewish messianism may recount how in 2024 "redemption
through sin" became "redemption through genocide," with unconditional
US support."
Sarang Shidore/Dan M Ford: [02-29]
At the Hague, US more isolated than ever on Israel-Palestine.
Adam Taylor: [02-29]
Democrats grew more divided on Israeli-Palestinian conflict, poll
shows. Interesting that the Democratic split has always favored
"take neither side," from a peak of 82% down to 74% before Gaza blew
up -- the 12% drop since looks to be evenly split. Republicans, on
the other hand, never had any sympathy for Palestinians, and became
more pro-Israeli since (56% would "take Israel's side," vs. 19% for
Democrats).
Philip Weiss: [02-28]
PBS and NPR leave out key facts in their Israel stories: "Pundits
and reporters in the mainstream media have a double standard when it
comes to Israel and all but lie about apartheid, Jewish nationalism,
and the role of the Israel lobby."
America's empire of bases and proxy conflicts, increasingly
stressed by Israel's multifront war games:
Juan Cole: [03-03]
How Washington's anti-Iranian campaign failed, big time.
Dave DeCamp: [02-29]
US officials expect Israel to launch ground invasion of Lebanon:
"Administration officials tell CNN they expect a ground incursion
in late spring or early summer." The logic here is pretty ridiculous,
and if it's believed in Washington, you have to wonder about them,
too. Israel had a lot of fun bombing Lebanon in 2006, but their
ground incursion was a pure disaster. There's no possible upside
to trying it again. The argument that Netanyahu will, for political
expediency, enlarge the war in order to keep it going "after Gaza,"
overlooks their obvious desire to "finish the job" by doing the
same to Palestinian enclaves in the West Bank.
Sasha Filippova/Kristina Fried/Brian Concannon: [03-01]
From coup to chaos: 20 years after the US ousted Haiti's
president.
Jim Lobe: [03-01]
Neocon Iraq war architects want a redo in Gaza: "Post-conflict
plan would put Western mercenaries and Israel military into the
mix, with handpicked countries in charge of a governing 'Trust.'"
Pic is of Elliott Abrams, who was the one in charge of US Israel
policy under Bush, and who pushed Sharon's unilateral withdrawal
of settlements from Gaza, so that Gaza could be blockaded and
bombed more effectively. That directly led to Hamas seizing power
in Gaza, so one could argue that Abrams already had his "redo in
Gaza."
The Michigan primaries: Of minor interest to both party
frontrunners, so let's get them out of the way first. Trump won
the Republican primary with 68.1% of the votes, vs. 26.6% for
Nikki Haley, splitting the delegates 12-4 (39 more delegates will
be decided later). Biden won the Democratic primary with 81.1% of
the vote, vs. 13.2% for an uncommitted slate, which was promoted
by Arab-Americans and others as a protest vote against Biden's
support for Israel's genocide in Gaza. Marianne Williamson got 3%,
and Dean Phillips 2.7%. Everyone's trying to spin the results as
much as possible, but I doubt they mean much.
Next up is "Super Tuesday," so here's a bit of preview:
Trump, and other Republicans:
David Brooks: [02-29]
The GOP returns to its bad old self: He means the "America First"
party of the 1930s: nativist, isolationist, recoiling in dread of the
New Deal, and willing to suffer repeated defeats rather than offer
anything constructive. He contrasts that to the bullish, globalist
part of Eisenhower and Reagan (and the Bushes?), which Trump has
totally eclipsed, and is likely to remain in place even when Trump
is gone.
Russ Choma: [03-03]
A large percentage of Republican primary voters can't stomach
Trump. Nowhere near large enough to prevent him from running
away with the nomination, but the question is whether they are
numerous (and resolute) enough to sink him against Biden. "The
AP report did find, however, that just because those voters said
they didn't want to vote for Trump -- ever -- it didn't mean they
were Biden voters." Haley is not a tenable candidate because she
can't even crack a 50% approval rate within the Party.
Rachel M Cohen: [03-03]
The anti-abortion playbook for restricting birth control:
"Contraception, like IVF, poses problems for those claiming personhood
begins at conception." Filed under Republicans, because they own the
anti-abortion movement now, and are stuck with it.
Ryan Cooper: [02-29]
Mitch McConnell, Senate arsonist.
Thomas B Edsall: [[01-17]
The deification of Donald Trump poses some interesting questions:
First exhibit is a video titled "God Made Trump."
Susan B Glasser: [02-22]
The crazy collapse of the House GOP's impeachment case against Biden:
"'A Big Russian Intelligence Op' flops on Capitol Hill."
Karen Greenberg: [02-29]
Trump's justice: "Justice delayed is democracy denied." Four
sections on Trump, followed by one on Guantánamo.
Margaret Hartmann:
[02-29]
Old-man Trump yells at Biden over Melania Late Night joke.
[03-01]
Trump complains migrants use languages 'nobody speaks'.
[03-01]
Trump's most unhinged plans for his second term: Updated, a
neverending project. To recap: Give the president unchecked power
over federal agencies; Restore the president's authority to bypass
Congress; Appoint a special prosecutor to 'go after' Biden; Use
the Justice Department to get revenge on all of his enemies;
Expand presidential immunity; Purge the civil service; Install
thousands of loyalists throughout the federal government; Fill
his cabinet with people like Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon;
Round up, detain, and deport millions of undocumented immigrants;
Deploy US troops for 'war' on the southern border; End birthright
citizenship; Construct 'freedom cities'; Put flying cars in
Americans' driveways.
Alexander Hinton: [02-26]
I went to CPAC as an anthropologist to understand MAGA -- what I saw
was "shocking".
Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling:
Sarah Jones: [02-29]
Republicans can't be trusted to protect IVF.
Pema Levy: [03-01]
How Todd Akin's "legitimate rape" debacle previewed the abortion agenda
of today's GOP.
Chris Lewis: [02-29]
Ken Cuccinelli and the persuasive, pervasive politics of cruelty.
Jason Linkins:
A year of Republicans lying about abortion.
Sarah Longwell:
What 17 of Trump's 'best people' said about him: Quotes from his
cabinet members and other high officials in his administration.
Carlos Lozada: [02-29]
What I learned when I read 887 pages of plans for Trump's second
term. Lozada was last seen bragging about "reading books so you
don't have to," and he proves that in spades here. No doubt his
outline only scratches the surface, still I'm left wondering less
what they want to do than what kind of damaged psychology drives
one to imagine wanting to do such things.
Michael Podhorzer: [02-20]
It was never a civil war: "The threat posed by Trump and the MAGA
movement, like the Confederate States, is not 'conservative' or even
'extremist' but criminally anti-democratic."
Tom Schaller/Paul Waldman: [02-28]
How to end Republican exploitation of rural America: "The authors of
the upcoming book White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy
explain how rural voters can build a national political movement and
improve their local economies." Inadvertent humor here when the authors
explain that rural voters don't need to switch to Democrats so much as
they should find "better Republicans." By the way, this also just
appeared:
Paul Krugman: [02-26]
The mystery of white rural rage: Reviews the same book. I think a
big part of the problem is that Democrats simply don't try to organize
in impoverished rural areas, partly because they don't expect to win
in the short term, and largely because they'd rather put their efforts
toward upscale suburban districts. One reason is that readily organized
constituencies like unions are scarce in rural America. But well before
they consider organizing voters, they search for donors, and that's
where the suburbs seem like much riper targets. A good example of this
was in 2017, when Trump appointments opened up House districts in Kansas
and Georgia. Democrats puts tons of money into the latter (where they
lost), and virtually nothing into Kansas (where they also lost, but with
a terrific candidate managing to carry Wichita, but losing bad in the
adjacent rural areas). On some level, most Democrats actually understand
that they have much to offer impoverished rural areas, but they do so as
outsiders, more focused on their donors and their issues, and unwilling
to put the work in to building a representative local party.
- Nathan J Robinson: [03-04]
Are rural white people the problem?: Another review of the
Schaller-Waldman book.
Tatyana Tandanpolie: [02-28]
New book details how "incensed" Trump and Melania clashed in the
White House.
Katrina vanden Heuvel: [02-27]
If Trump wins, he'll be a vessel for the most regressive figures in US
politics.
Andra Watkins: [03-01]
Project 2025 is more than a playbook for Trumpism, it's the Christian
Nationalist manifesto: "The right intends to force every American
to live their definition of a good life through government edict."
Li Zhou: [02-29]
Trump's immigration policies are his old ones -- but worse: Some
section heads: Mass deportations; Raids; Detention camps; Suspending
refugee resettlement; Ending Temporary Protected Status programs;
Making seeking asylum harder; Ending DACA; Reviving family separation
hasn't been ruled out; Attacks on birthright citizenship.
Mitch McConnell, 82, announced he will step down as Republican
Leader in the Senate in November. This led to some, uh, appreciation?
Ryan Cooper: [02-29]
Mitch McConnell, Senate arsonist.
Jack Hunter: [02-29]
Sorry AP: Mitch McConnell is no Ronald Reagan: "The paper
deploys the usual neoconservative trope that their foreign policies
are the same. They are not." Still, I hate it when critics think
they're being so clever in claiming that old Republicans were so
sensible compared to the new ones. Reagan's "willingness to talk
to America's enemies" didn't extend much beyond Russia, and that
only after the door had been opened by Gorbachev. He left nothing
but disasters all over Latin America and the Middle East through
Iran and Afghanistan.
Ed Kilgore: [02-29]
Mitch McConnell's power trip finally comes to an end.
Ian Millhiser: [02-29]
How Mitch McConnell broke Congress.
John Nichols: [02-29]
Good riddance to Mitch McConnell, an enemy of democracy: Sorry to
have to break this to you, but he isn't going anywhere. He'll serve
out the rest of his six-year term. He's not giving up his leadership
post out of a sudden attack of conscience. He's doing it so some other
Republican can take over, and possibly do even worse things than he
would have done. By holding out until November, he's giving Trump the
prerogative of hand-picking his successor -- assuming Trump wins, of
course.
David A Graham:
Mitch McConnell surrenders to Trump: That's more like it, but at
least he's given himself some time. If Trump wins in November, there'll
be no fighting him. And if Trump loses, why should he want to be the
one stuck cleaning up the mess?
Andrew Prokop: [02-28]
How Mitch McConnell lost by winning.
Jane Mayer: [2020-04-12]
How Mitch McConnell became Trump's enabler-in-chief: Sometimes
an old piece is the best reminder. Had McConnell a bit more foresight
and backbone, he could have swung enough Republican votes to convict
Trump over Jan. 6, and followed that with a resolution declaring
Trump ineligible to run again, according to the 14th Amendment --
such a resolution was discussed at the time, and would undoubtedly
be upheld. Sure, it would have been unpopular among Republicans at
the time, but popular will has almost never entered into McConnell's
political calculus.
Biden and/or the Democrats:
Zack Beauchamp: [02-27]
Biden has been bad for Palestinians. Trump would be worse.
"On Israel, the two are not the same." Probably true, but this really
isn't much comfort. Biden is effectively an Israeli puppet, with no
independent will, or even willingness to caution Netanyahu in public,
and as such has had no effect on moderating Israel's vendetta -- and
may reasonably be charged with not just supporting but accelerating
it. For instance, Biden did not have to send aircraft carriers into
the region, threatening Iran and provoking Yemen and Lebanon. Nor did
he have to accelerate arms deliveries when a ceasefire was obviously
called for. As for Trump, sure, he doesn't even know the meaning of
"caution." He is largely responsible for Netanyahu believing that he
can get away with anything.
Dave DeCamp: [03-03]
Poll: Majority of Democrats want a presidential candidate who opposes
military aid to Israel: With Marianne Williamson unsuspending
her campaign, there actually is one, but will anyone find out?
Isaac Chotiner: [02-28]
Does the Biden administration want a long-lasting ceasefire in Gaza?
Interview with John Kirby, Biden's National Security Council spokesman,
explaining that Biden only wants whatever Netanyahu tells him to want.
It's like a form of hypnosis, where Hamas is the shiny object that so
captures America's gaze that it will support Israel doing anything to
it wants as long as it's saying it's meant to eliminate Hamas. Sure,
Biden understands that Palestinians are suffering, and he implores
Netanyahu to make them suffer less, but he can't question his orders.
The key to this is that he buys the line that Hamas is a cancer that
can be excised from the Palestinian body politic, allowing Israel to
regain its security. I hesitate to call that the Israeli line: sure,
they developed it with their targeted assassinations (they go back
at least as far as Abu Jihad in 1988), but Israelis never claimed
one strike would suffice -- they tended to use metaphors like "mowing
the grass"). It was only the Americans, with their romantic conceits
about their own goodness and the innate innocence of ignorant savages,
that turned this systematic slaughter into magical thinking. Israelis
don't think like that. They understand that Hamas (or some other form
of militant backlash) is the inevitable result of their harsh occupation.
And, their consciences hardened by constant struggle (including their
carefully cultivated memory of the Holocaust), they're willing to live
with that brutality.
If they can't distinguish Hamas from the mass of
people they've emerged from, they see no reason to discipline their
killing. They figure if they destroy enough, the problem will subside.
Even if it inevitably erupts again, that's later, and they'll remain
eternally vigilant. There are no solutions, because they don't want
to accept the only possible one, which is peaceful coexistence. But
silly Americans, they need to be told stories, and it's amazing what
they'll swallow.
Mitchell Plitnick: [03-01]
Biden memos show Palestine advocacy is working: "Two recent
presidential orders show the Biden administration is feeling the
heat from months of protests against his support for Israel's
genocide in Gaza."
Alexander Ward: [03-01]
'We look 100 percent weak': US airdrops in Gaza expose limit to Biden's
Israel policy.
Fareed Zakaria: [03-01]
Biden needs to tell Israel some difficult truths. Only he can do it.
Erica L Green: [03-03]
Kamala Harris calls for an 'immediate cease-fire' in Gaza:
Promising title, but fine print reveals it's only the "six-week
cease-fire proposal currently on the table," and that she's
calling on Hamas, not Israel, the ones who are actually doing
all of the firing, and who have already broken off talks on
that particular proposal. A cease fire, especially where the
war is so one-sided, doesn't need to be negotiated: just do it
(perhaps daring the other side to violate it, but the longer
it lasts, the better). Sure, prisoner exchanges have to be
negotiated, but not cease-fire, which is just common sense.
Frank Bruni: [03-03]
How Democrats can win anywhere and everywhere.
Michelle Goldberg: [03-01]
The Democrat showing Biden how it's done: Gretchen Whitmer,
governor of Michigan. This follows on recent columns by Goldberg:
Ezra Klein: [02-16]
Democrats have a better option than Biden: Starts by heaping
considerable praise on Biden and his accomplishments of the last
three-plus years, then lowers the boom and insists that he should
step aside, not so much because one reasonably doubts that he can
do the job for more years, but that he's no longer competent as a
candidate. (Never mind that Trump is far from competent, in any
sense of the term. He's a Republican, and one of our many double
standards, we don't expect competency from Republicans, or for
that matter caring, or even much coherence.) He goes into how
conventions work, and offers a bunch of plausible candidates.
It's a long and thorough piece, and makes the case as credibly
as I've seen (albeit much less critically of Biden than I might
do myself).
Klein's columns are styled as "The Ezra Klein Show," which are
usually just interviews, but this one is monologue, with multiple
references to other conversations. He's had a few other interviews
recently with political operatives, a couple adding to his insight
into Democratic prospects, plus a couple more I'll include here.
(Also see the pieces I listed under Ukraine.)
Paul Musgrave: [03-03]
An inside look at how Biden's team rebuilt foreign policy after
Trump: Review of Alexander Ward: The Internationalists: The
Fight to Restore American Foreign Policy After Trump.
Bill Scher: [02-29]
"Nightmare in America": How Biden's ad team should attack Trump:
"In 1984, Ronald Reagan's reelection campaign ran a series of ads
that evoked how different life felt in America compared to under
his opponent's administration four years prior. Today, Joe Biden
should do the same." Sure, there's something to be said here, if
you can figure out how to say it. But Trump's going to be pushing
the opposite spin, in many cases on the same set of facts, all the
while pointing out the extraordinary efforts his/your enemies took
to hobnob his administration and persecute him since he was pushed
out of office. He's just as likely to embrace the Left's notion of
him as their worst nightmare. Note that page includes a link to a
2020 article, which also cites Reagan: Nancy LeTourneau:
Are you better off than you were four years ago?
John E Schwarz: [03-01]
Democratic presidents have better economic performances than Republican
ones.
Legal matters and other crimes:
Climate and environment:
Ukraine War:
Connor Echols: [03-01]
Diplomacy Watch: Russia could be invited to Ukraine-led peace talks.
I don't really buy that "Ukraine's shift is a sign of just how dire
the situation is becoming for its armed forces," but I do believe
that Russia can more/less hold its position indefinitely, that it can
continue to exact high (and eventually crippling) costs from Ukraine
indefinitely, and that it can survive the sanctions regime (which the
US is unlikely to loosen even in an armistice. All of this suggests
to me that Zelensky needs to approach some realistic terms for ending
the war, then sell them as hard to his "allies" as to Putin, and to
the rest of the world.
Anatol Lieven/George Beebe: [02-28]
Europeans' last ditch clutch at Ukrainian victory: "France's
Macron raised the idea of Western troops entering the fray, others
want to send longer range missiles."
Olena Melnyhk/Sera Koulabdara: [02-29]
Ukraine's vaunted 'bread basket' soil is now toxic: "Two years
of war has left roughly one-third of its territory polluted, with
dire potential consequences for the world's food supply."
Will Porter: [02-28]
Russia claims first Abrams tank kill in Ukraine.
Ted Snider: [03-01]
How the West provoked an unprovoked war in Ukraine. The ironies
in the title at least merit quotes around "unprovoked." The important
part of the story is the relatively underreported period from March,
2021 when Biden added $125 million of "defensive lethal weapons" on
top of $150 million previously allocated under Trump, up to the eve
of the March 2022 invasion, when "Putin called Ukraine 'a knife to
the throat of Russia' and worried that 'Ukraine will serve as an
advanced bridgehead' for a pre-emptive US strike against Russia."
It is unlikely the US would ever launch such a strike, but Ukraine
had by then given up on the Minsk accords and was preparing to take
back Donbas. Had they succeeded, Crimea would be next, and that
(plus excessive confidence in his own military) was enough for
Putin to launch his own pre-emptive attack.
Marcus Stanley: [02-28]
Biden officials want Russian frozen assets to fund Ukraine war:
"Not only will this prolong the conflict, but rock confidence in the
Western-led world economic system."
Ishaan Tharoor: [02-28]
Foreign troops in Ukraine? They're already there.
Ezra Klein:
[2022-03-01]
Can the West stop Russia by strangling its economy? Transcript
of an interview with Adam Tooze, doesn't really answer the title
question but does provide a pretty deep survey of Russia's economy
at the start of Putin's invasion of Ukraine. One minor note: I think
Tooze said "Kremlinologists" where you read "the criminologists of
the modern day have five, six, seven, eight different groups now
that they see operating around Putin."
PS: Unrelated to Russia, but for another Klein interview with Tooze,
see: [2022-10-07]
How the Fed is "shaking the entire system".
Around the world:
Other stories:
Lori Aratani: [03-01]
Boeing in talks to reacquire key 737 Max supplier Spirit AeroSystems:
Boeing spun the company off in 2005, including the Wichita factory my
father and brother worked at for decades.
Marina Bolotnikova/Kenny Torrella: [02-26]
9 charts that show US factory farming is even bigger than you
realize: "Factory farms are now so big that we need a new
word for them."
Related here:
Rosa Brooks: [02-20]
One hundred years of dictatorship worship: A review of a new book
by Jacob Heilbrunn: America Last: The Right's Century-Long Romance
With Foreign Dictators [note: cover has it "America First" in
large white type, then overprints "Last" in blockier red].
Daniel Denvir: [02-28]
The libertarians who dream of a world without democracy: Interview
with Quinn Slobodian, who wrote the 2018 book Globalists: The End
of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism, and most recently,
Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World
Without Democracy.
Adam Gopnik: [02-19]
Did the year 2020 change us forever? "The COVID-19 pandemic
affected us in millions of ways. But it evades the meanings we
want it to bear." A review, which I haven't finished (and may
never) of the emerging, evolving literature on 2020.
Sean Illing: [03-03]
Are we in the middle of an extinction panic? "How doomsday
proclamations about AI echo existential anxieties of the past."
Interview with Tyler Austin Harper, who wrote about this in the
New York Times:
The 100-year extinction panic is back, right on schedule.
I could write a lot more on this, especially if I referred back
to the extinction controversies paleontologists have been debating
all along, but suffice it to say:
- Short of the Sun exploding, there is zero chance of humans
going extinct in the foreseeable future. People are too numerous,
widespread, and flexible for anything to get all of us. (Side
note: the effective altruist focus on preventing extinction
events is misguided.)
- Human population is, however, precariously balanced on a mix
of technological, economic, political, and cultural factors which
are increasingly fragile, and as such subject to sabotage and other
disruptions (not least because they are often poorly understood).
Any major breakdown could be catastrophic on a level that affects
millions (though probably not billions) of people.
- Catastrophes produce psychological shocks that can compound
the damage. By far the greatest risk here is war, not just for its
immediate destruction but because it makes recovery more difficult.
- People are not very good at evaluating these risks, erring often
both in exaggeration and denial.
The Times piece led to some others of interest here:
Chris Lehman: [03-01]
Border hysteria is a bipartisan delusion: "Yesterday, both President
Biden and Donald Trump visited Texas to promise harsher immigration
policies."
Andrea Mazzarino: [02-27]
War's cost is unfathomable. I mentioned this in an update
last week, but it's worth mentioning again. She starts by
referring to "The October 7th America has forgotten," which was
2001, when the US first bombed Afghanistan, following the Al-Qaeda
attacks of that September 11. In 2010, Mazzarino founded the
Cost of War Project, which, as economists are wont to do,
started adding up whatever they could of the quantifiable costs
of America's Global War on Terror and its spawn. Still, their
figures (at least
$8 trillion and counting, and with debt compounding) miss
much of the real human (and environmental) costs, especially
those that are primarily psychic.
For instance, would we have the gun problem that we have had
we not been continuously at war for over two decades? Would our
politics have turned so desperately war-like? Certainly, there
would have been much less pressure to immigrate, given that war
is the leading producer of refugees. Without constant jostling
for military leverage, might we not have made more progress in
dealing with problems like climate change? The list only grows
from there.
One constant theme of every
Speaking of Which is the need to put aside the pursuit of
power over and against others and find mutual grounds that will
allow us to work together cooperatively to deal with pressing
problems. There are lots of reasons why this is true, starting
with the basic fact that we could not exist in such numbers if
not for a level of technology that is complex beyond most of
our understandings and fragile, especially vulnerable to the
people who feel most unjustly treated. Our very lives depend
on experts who can be trusted, and their ability to work free
of sabotage. You can derive all the politics you need from
this insight.
Michelle Orange: [03-01]
How the Village Voice met its moment: A review of Tricia Romano's
The Freaks Came Out to Write, a new "oral history" (i.e.,
history presented in interview quotes). I rushed out and bought a
copy, and should probably write my own review, even if only because
she left me out. More:
Rick Perlstein: [02-28]
Kissinger revisited: "The former secretary of state is responsible
for virtually every American geopolitical disaster of the past
half-century."
Deanne Stillman: [02-21]
Mothers, sons, and guns: Author wrote a book about Lee Harvey Oswald
and his mother, recounted here, in light of high school shooter Ethan
Crumbley and his mother, Jennifer Crumbley, who was convicted for her
role leading up to the shootings.
David Zipper: [03-01]
Driving at ridiculous speeds should be physically impossible:
As someone who grew up with a great love of auto racing, I'd argue
that driving at ridiculous speeds has always been physically
impossible, even as limits have expanded with better technology.
Of course, "ridiculous" can mean many different things, but I'd
say that's a reason not to try to legislate it. I've long thought
that the 55 mph speed limit was the biggest political blunder the
Democrats made, at least in my lifetime. (Aside from Vietnam.)
Not only did it impose on personal freedom -- in a way that, say,
European levels of gasoline taxes wouldn't have done -- but it
induced some kind of brain rot in American auto engineering, from
which Detroit may never have recovered. (I can't really say. After
several bad experiences, I stopped buying their wares.)
Ironically, this political push for mandating "speed limiters"
(even more euphemistically, "Intelligent Speed Assistance") on new
cars is coming from tech businesses, who see surveillance of driving
as a growth area for revenue. This fits in with much broader plans
to increase surveillance -- mostly government, but it doesn't end
there -- over every aspect of our lives. Supposedly, this will save
lives, although the relationship between speeding and auto carnage
has never been straightforward, and much more plausible arguments
(e.g., on guns) go nowhere. My great fear here is that Democrats
will rally to this as a public health and safety measure, inviting
a backlash we can ill afford (as with the 55 mph speed limit, which
helped elect Reagan).
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