Sunday, April 28, 2024
Shorter Me
If you think the pro-Palestine movement has some unsavory elements, wait until you learn something about some of the prominent people in the anti-Palestine movement (joke: everybody knows these famous and powerful people and all the reasons they are bad, they just don't care).
Puppy Killing
The real story with Noem's puppy killing is that she and everyone around her - including everyone involved with the production of the book - thought this was a good anecdote to share.
One bizarre thing which became apparent as the MAGAs took over the conservative movement is that none of these people are capable of even pretending to be nice people. That John Boehner got drunk with journalists and told them great stories doesn't excuse his policies or their coverage of them, but it at least explains how he rose in politics and maintained good coverage. Being a friendly enough shithead can get you a long way!
The MAGAs, however, are all absolutely repellent people who seem to have no understanding that not everybody is like that. I know I shouldn't hand it to him for anything, but the one exception to this is probably Matt Gaetz. No I am not saying he is good, but he is capable of faking being a normal human for 5 seconds.
One bizarre thing which became apparent as the MAGAs took over the conservative movement is that none of these people are capable of even pretending to be nice people. That John Boehner got drunk with journalists and told them great stories doesn't excuse his policies or their coverage of them, but it at least explains how he rose in politics and maintained good coverage. Being a friendly enough shithead can get you a long way!
The MAGAs, however, are all absolutely repellent people who seem to have no understanding that not everybody is like that. I know I shouldn't hand it to him for anything, but the one exception to this is probably Matt Gaetz. No I am not saying he is good, but he is capable of faking being a normal human for 5 seconds.
They hate you, but they all fucking hate each other too, because how could they not?
Are We The Baddies
Anyway, whether or not people in Gaza should be slaughtered in an ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing and collective punishment has little to do with whether or not some campus protesters annoy you, a person 800 miles away from them.
"I think the cause could be just, but the people fighting for it have made me oppose it" is never true, but this is the toddler-level take our big brain pundits give us daily.
Before the Iraq war, there were certainly many more pieces criticizing Iraq war protesters, and the anti-war movement generally, than pieces written voicing their concerns, in our elite newspapers. "The Iraq war would be stopped if only the antiwar movement were different, but sadly they have not convinced me - a person mad at some random signs he saw highlighted on the conservative websites Anti-Idiotarian Rotweiler Dot Com and Confederate Yankee Dot Com" was silly then and its equivalent is silly now.
Back then, "same side as Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, John Bolton, David Frum, and Norman Podhoretz" - public figures with long horrific records - should've been a more important consideration than getting mad about a "no blood for oil" sign, but that's because people like making up excuses rather than acknowledging that they've joined up with the baddies.
Back then, "same side as Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, John Bolton, David Frum, and Norman Podhoretz" - public figures with long horrific records - should've been a more important consideration than getting mad about a "no blood for oil" sign, but that's because people like making up excuses rather than acknowledging that they've joined up with the baddies.
Some real abuser behavior, too. If only you'd behave according to revolving rules, I wouldn't be such a horrible person.
Space
One of my idiosyncratic opinions is that windshield brain and car-centric culture have led to people having absolutely no sense of geographic size and distance. The reliance on GPS for driving directions probably doesn't help.
For example, when people who live in a big city get panicked texts from their relatives every time there's some crime on the news, as if it must happening right there. Or, more relevant to now, when everybody "knew" that in 2020 American cities had been completely taken over by BLM protests when they were maybe happening in a few block range somewhere.
Everyone writing about how a campus protest encampment, which is probably taking up 1/3 of a football field, if that, has COMPLETELY DISRUPTED CAMPUS, is either a fool or a liar. It's one corner of what are mostly very large campuses.
Even urban campus Columbia is quite large. Indiana University is absolutely humongous. Almost every American campus that makes the news is pretty sprawling.
"Fool or liar" is always a tough one, of course, but either disqualifies you from being a pundit worthy of anything but mockery.
For example, when people who live in a big city get panicked texts from their relatives every time there's some crime on the news, as if it must happening right there. Or, more relevant to now, when everybody "knew" that in 2020 American cities had been completely taken over by BLM protests when they were maybe happening in a few block range somewhere.
Everyone writing about how a campus protest encampment, which is probably taking up 1/3 of a football field, if that, has COMPLETELY DISRUPTED CAMPUS, is either a fool or a liar. It's one corner of what are mostly very large campuses.
Even urban campus Columbia is quite large. Indiana University is absolutely humongous. Almost every American campus that makes the news is pretty sprawling.
"Fool or liar" is always a tough one, of course, but either disqualifies you from being a pundit worthy of anything but mockery.
Saturday, April 27, 2024
How Are We Doing
A joint submission from four bureaus - Democracy Human Rights&Labor; Population, Refugees & Migration; Global Criminal Justice & International Organization Affairs – raised "serious concern over non-compliance" w/international humanitarian law in Israel's conduct of the Gaza war.
— Hümeyra Pamuk (@humeyra_pamuk) April 27, 2024
These included repeatedly striking protected sites and civilian infrastructure; "unconscionably high levels of civilian harm to military advantage"; taking little action to investigate violations or to hold to account those responsible for significant civilian harm and "killing…
— Hümeyra Pamuk (@humeyra_pamuk) April 27, 2024
Unlearning
I'm sure my worst takes were when I first started my blog. Not so much the most wrong ones - I'm still capable of being quite wrong - but the most embarrassing ones. Despite having some controversial-for-the-times opinions like "The Iraq war seems like a bad idea," I still felt influenced and constrained by conventional wisdom. I had yet to unlearn a lot of the things one learns while spending years thinking, for example, The Economist magazine has some special insight about the world.
Unlearning is a lot harder than learning. The things we need to unlearn are often things we'd deny believing, but somehow we still do, as they've burrowed into our consciousness like some "fact" we were told when we were 5 and are almost incapable of disbelieving.
Unlearning is a lot harder than learning. The things we need to unlearn are often things we'd deny believing, but somehow we still do, as they've burrowed into our consciousness like some "fact" we were told when we were 5 and are almost incapable of disbelieving.
Friday, April 26, 2024
Speaking of Sanctions
Ah, well, nevertheless.
The Biden administration has determined that three military battalions with the Israel Defense Forces committed "gross human rights violations" against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank but will remain eligible for U.S. military aid regardless because of steps Israel says it's taking to address the problem, ABC News has learned.I see:
Between the lines: Israel expressed grave concern during the talks that a State Department determination that the Netzah Yehuda battalion committed human rights violations in the West Bank that were not dealt with by the IDF would increase the likelihood the International Criminal Court would issue arrest warrants Israeli soldiers and officers, the Israeli official said.Can't be any consequences, or there could be consequences!
Prematurely Shrill
Regularly I see people who, back in the day, were prone to tut-tutting me (or people "like me" - this isn't personal), now being as shrill about the Republicans or a certain media outlet - the one run by several generations of failsons - as I ever was.
I'm not mad. Just observing.
I'm not mad. Just observing.
The University President Group Chat
Don't have enough precise details so I won't share the institutions, but friends have been telling me that their universities have been doing these last minute rule changes without notifications or consultaton, also.
“To invoke a reference to an ad hoc committee that might have existed half a century ago and attempt to use it to justify the on-the-fly creation of a new policy today, is utterly unprincipled,” Sanders said in an email. “If a university lawyer was involved in concocting this rationalization, then no one should trust their integrity or judgment.”
In an email to faculty, Whitten confirmed the university changed the policy Wednesday night after becoming aware of the Thursday protest to “balance free speech and safety in the context of similar protests occurring nationally.” She wrote that the policy was posted online the morning of the protest.
...
According to an emailed statement from IUPD, police detained 33 protesters and took them to the Monroe County Jail. The IDS observed that at least one was an IU faculty member — Germanic Studies professor Benjamin Robinson. At least one student protester — Christopher Handwerger — was arrested for criminal trespass and received a trespass warning from IUPD banning him from IU property for a year. Handwerger told the IDS he is a first-semester senior, meaning he needs this coming fall semester to graduate.
Purity Of Intentions
It is reasonable to ask why the much-touted sanctions, when the war started, don't seem to have hurt Russia much.
It was all very noble at the beginning, but we're talking about real money here, lads.
Maybe I am diagonising the problem incorrectly, but we were promised that all the sanctions would effectively cripple Russia and what happened to that?
The UK has been accused of “helping Russia pay for its war on Ukraine” by continuing to import record amounts of refined oil from countries processing Kremlin fossil fuels.I get that things aren't entirely simple, but there was a great enthusiasm for sanctions at the beginning - everyone was very proud at the sacrifice, even some rich interests were being targeted - and that enthusiasm, along with (presumably) strong enforcement, faded fairly quickly.
Government data analysed by the environmental news site Desmog shows that imports of refined oil from India, China and Turkey amounted to £2.2bn in 2023, the same record value as the previous year, up from £434.2m in 2021.
It was all very noble at the beginning, but we're talking about real money here, lads.
Maybe I am diagonising the problem incorrectly, but we were promised that all the sanctions would effectively cripple Russia and what happened to that?
So It's Bladder Cancer Then
Doesn't sound like Charles is doing well.
Overall, however, the British press have observed what seems like a remarkable silence on the matter of Charles’ health and funeral planning.These "very strict rules and laws" are applied to protect the powerful, and not other times, as anyone who has picked up a British newspaper knows.
This is not, as one journalist told The Daily Beast, just out of respect for or collusion with the palace, but rather due to very strict rules and laws in the U.K. governing medical privacy and the publishing of personal information. “Even if you had it copper-bottomed that he had bladder cancer, you couldn’t run it,” the journalist said.
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