The X-files

by liberal japonicus

Thought I'd crack open a thread on X (i.e. ex-Twitter). This is an old article about what the X might have meant. The hole article is a fun look at what X could mean, but a pull graf

X can symbolize divinity and harmony as a symmetrical letter, but references to death, toxicity and the concept of error (cast yourselves back to your schooldays) are never far. With this in mind, Twitter’s new logo feels oddly perfect when taking into account X as the visual representation of two paths crossing. A pair of souls meet and, having failed to establish respectful dialogue or settle on a middle-ground, continue on their original momentum and go their own separate ways. A failed connection, representing a defeat of dialogue in a splintered digital world that was intended to unite in connection, but only succeeded in fostering division.

A pretty apt encapsulation of the Twitter platform, all things considered.

What has me post about this is the Guardian note

Another line of reasoning is that Musk wants to kill Twitter because his investment was in user accounts rather than a social network. There’s a mysterious method to his madness and he wants to destroy the current business model so he can transform it into something a lot more profitable.

Lou Paskalis, former head of global media at Bank of America, seems to be one of the proponents of this theory. “[Musk] is smart, he knows it’s illegal – although usually hard to prove – to intentionally devalue an asset to manipulate creditors, and he knows how to make money so I have to believe he sees an entirely new revenue model that the rest of us don’t yet recognize,” Paskalis told Business Insider. In other words, everything that looks like self-sabotage to the common man is actually a genius business decision.

It’s possible that there is some substance to these theories. But it’s also possible that the simplest answer is the correct one: Musk is a narcissist who has let his enormous ego get in the way of making sensible business decisions. He’s realized that he can’t actually make X profitable so he’s letting it all burn to the ground while casting himself as some sort of free speech martyr.

Again, I don’t know exactly what’s going on in Musk’s brain (I’m not sure he does either) but I do know this: theories that Musk is playing some sort of four-dimensional chess with his bizarre decisions and unprofessional outbursts demonstrate that an awful lot of people find it hard to believe that a rich white guy might not be as smart as he thinks.

I'd put my money on the latter.

I've never been a big Twitter user. Balloon Juice moves to fast for me to keep up, so Twitter is like that Star Trek episode where the aliens are all sped up. And that's just in English. I made an attempt to follow it in Japanese, but it was like drinking from a firehose. Anyway, a thread about Musk's Bonfire of the Vanities or anything else you want to talk about.

Comments

[Snarki, child of Loki]

"O" has more symmetry than "X".

I completely agree about the pace of commenting various places. Too slow or too fast, and you don't get much opportunity for conversation. ObWi is a Goldilocks blog, in that respect.

Also having a website that is not burdened with bunches of java/popup/tracker/BS. Seems to have gotten progressively worse and worse, so that it takes *forever* for some sites to load, and just when you try to click a link, the link shifts out from under your mouse because of some damn fancy crap moves stuff around.

Now pardon me while I shout at some clouds about HTML 0.9.

[Donald]

Twitter is useful for situations like Gaza— you find links to articles and some people can type out really long and useful threads. I have used it off and on for years. I mostly ignore it for weeks or months— right now I use it a lot.

Thousgh the long threads would be better as articles on a blog, or as links to an article,

I am not sure what would replace Twitter for situations like Gaza. Maybe there is an equivalent I don’t know about.

[JanieM]

I am not sure what would replace Twitter for situations like Gaza. Maybe there is an equivalent I don’t know about.

Not if you believe the folks at BJ, who mull over that question on a regular basis.

I've cut way, way back on the time I spend at BJ, but I still at least skim the front page posts, and read a lot of them, and I sometimes skim comment threads, mostly scanning for commenters I like. But the comment threads are too often taken over by people sniping at each other over what I see as trivialities, and then they're a total waste of time.

Back to the point: they quite often mention the topic of whether there's an equivalent to Twitter (yet?). Quite a few people there are participating in several platforms, and the consensus seems to be no, there isn't, and maybe there never will be. They debate the various possibilities (Mastodon, Bluesky, I forget what else) -- but none of the newer platforms seem to be able to do what Twitter did as a global gathering place.

I've never had a Twitter account, but I've seen a lot of Twitter, mostly via Anne Laurie's posts at BJ (and manually following a few other people, like Connie Shultz), and the thing I personally will miss most about it is the quick and quirky humor.

[JanieM]

ObWi is a Goldilocks blog, in that respect.

Interesting that you should mention that...I've been thinking about a post that would (will?) touch at least briefly on ObWi in that regard, both then and now.

[wj]

I have to believe he sees an entirely new revenue model that the rest of us don’t yet recognize,

Sometimes, however, something is incomprehensible simply because it has no connection to reality. I'm betting that (assuming Musk even has a plan he thinks is clever) it simply won't work.

[Girl from the North Country]

As I have said before, I also think it is possible that Musk is going slightly mad. He gets, I believe, very little sleep, obviously has a narcissistic messiah complex (he will be the one to save humanity by taking it to the stars), and is isolated by, as well as the latter, a) huge wealth and b) one gathers huge IQ. Truly, what with populist strongmen gaining ground around the world, and the possible resurgence of Trump, life feels more and more as if we are living in someone's dystopian novel about the future.

[ral]

I viewed the CNBC clip of Musk dropping the F-bomb. To me he doesn't look at all well.

[Donald]

I just found a new Twitter person to follow on Gaza— Dimi Reider. He did a couple of really good threads.

One problem with Twitter now is that I think you need an account to read very much of it, or that was my experience a few months ago when I was logged off.. It didn’t used to be like that. You could read without being a member. You just couldn’t post, but you could read everything. I even got myself blocked by Rod Dreher under my old account ( he richly deserved my sarcasm) but could still read him if I logged off and was morbidly curious. I didn’t use the old account for so long I forgot both my name and password and couldn’t find either. Got a new one because they stopped letting you read freely.

I don’t know if that openness hurt them as a business or not.

But there really does need to be something like Twitter, especially the older version. I realize it is also a great way to spread lies and BS ( I refuse to use that idiotic term disinformation). But I think the price is worth it if there is genuine free speech and an ability to quickly spread first hand information during a war. The MSM can’t publish as much.

Though even I will admit the ability to create fake videos of virtually anything is or soon will be a huge problem. There will need to be experts to tell us ( if this is possible) which videos are likely real.

[JanieM]

Donald -- I've had the same experience with Twitter. Before Musk bought it, if I followed a link or poked around I could see not only a post, but the responses to it, in reverse chronological order. Now, if I click on something in (usually) one of Anne Laurie's BJ posts, I get taken to Twitter and can usually see the tweet, but never the responses.

[Michael Cain]

I have to believe he sees an entirely new revenue model that the rest of us don’t yet recognize...

I used to think everything he did was about a colony on Mars (or a lunar colony when it turned out Mars was too difficult). Big batteries for various purposes. A rocket that can deliver a 100-ton payload. A boring machine that can be stripped down to go in two such loads, then run off the batteries and drill tunnels for living space. Internet in the sky so the colony is never out of touch with Earth (or other colonies). A compute cloud and information to run over that internet.

With X, I no longer think that. At some point the company misses a payment and the lenders take it into bankruptcy court. I assume the assets don't match the size of the debts, so they won't force Chapter 7. I always suspect a privatization effort has hidden financial terms, so we'll find out then what they are this time.

[CaseyL]

I valued, and miss, Twitter's utility as an information source for breaking news - but even then, even before Musk, disinformation got out first, fastest, and most broadly.

On the whole, thinking of the world before Twitter, not only do I not see much value or utility in the app anymore, I'm not at all sure it was a net good even before Musk.

People were able to organize before there was Twitter, and fundraise, and get the word out about events and causes.

Frankly, I have come around to thinking the online world was a mistake. We're consumers of content, living life at a remove. It is silo-ing, and alienating, and short circuits our ability to think long and deeply.

[Donald]

On things like I-P, the internet made an enormous difference, I think. I remember getting into an argument with friends right after 9/11 about US foreign policy and everything I said sounded like insanity to them and while there was some sort of primitive internet then— Usenet and some other things I can’t recall,, I didn’t know how to send them links or do anything like that. Nowadays you can send links to human rights groups or reputable sources. It wasn’t like I carried around my small library of books on various human rights issues or my collection of Amnesty International and HRW reports.

And it is much easier to push back against newspapers. They had complete control over who could publish a letter to the editor decades ago. Nowadays they usually have comment sections and ( mostly) allow pushback and are acutely aware that people are looking at ther stores and able to talk to each other about bias on the internet.

So on foreign policy stories where most Americans are not directly involved the internet makes it much easier to challenge false mainstream narratives. Of course it also allows people to challenge true mainstream narrratives.

[Donald]

This link, for instance ( which I put up earlier) refutes the standard line that Israel tries to avoid civilian casualties and they all result from Hamas using human shields.

https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-calculated-bombing-gaza/

Before the internet, you might possibly find a magazine like 972 in a very good university library, maybe. It might as well not have existed. But everyone who is following the issue closely will have seen that article linked over and over again on Twitter.

[wj]

This link, for instance ( which I put up earlier) refutes the standard line that Israel tries to avoid civilian casualties and they all result from Hamas using human shields.

I must live in some kind of information bubble (:-). Because, while I'm aware that the Israeli government puts that spin out, I haven't seen much (a tiny bit, but not much) of it elsewhere. Certainly not enough to call it a "standard line."

I confess that, a few decades ago, it might have been another story. But this Israeli government? Ha!

[Girl from the North Country]

Because, while I'm aware that the Israeli government puts that spin out, I haven't seen much (a tiny bit, but not much) of it elsewhere.

It is a standard line. The Israeli spokesmen interviewed each night on C4 News repeat it.

I confess that, a few decades ago, it might have been another story. But this Israeli government? Ha

A few decades ago, it might have been true, at least some of the time. But with this Israeli government it is just that: a line for propaganda purposes.

[bobbyp]

What does Musk hope to accomplish by crashing twitter into dust? Damnned if I know. Here's one take:

https://slate.com/technology/2023/11/elon-musk-advertisers-curse-out-dealbook-antisemitism.html

It might have some merit.

[GftNC]

I thought there was a lot to this, on Friday:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/01/war-hamas-israel-tragic-choice?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

[Donald]

The "they try to avoid civilian casualties" is the line that was put out by John Kirby (the Biden spokesperson) early on and now that they are criticizing what was done in Northern Gaza, they told the Israelis not to do that in Southern Gaza. And they claim that the Israelis are trying, though so far it looks pretty much like they are doing the same things.

Anyway, that belongs more in the open thread. The relevant point here is that there is all sorts of useful info and links (and people reporting from within Gaza to the extent they can) that you can find on Twitter, and the Internet has made alternative non-mainstream views much much easier to access. That, of course, can be good or bad, depending on the issue and whether the mainstream is right--also, there are always going to be multiple alternative views, some worth hearing and some pure garbage. Though even the pure garbage ones are worth knowing about, in the sense that you can see what these people are like online, at a safe distance, so to speak.

[JanieM]

Frankly, I have come around to thinking the online world was a mistake. We're consumers of content, living life at a remove. It is silo-ing, and alienating, and short circuits our ability to think long and deeply.

I partly agree with this but am less pessimistic, I guess. Cell phones would have to be included on the list of things that are allowing people to live life at a remove -- 20 years ago, well before people started doing all their internet things on the phone, I said that "people are never where they are anymore" -- people sitting at a restaurant table, for example, all lost in their phones. Why did they bother to go out together?

I think we were plenty silo-ed pre-internet, it just showed in different ways, and a lot of it could be, and was, better hidden. On the other hand, the internet has allowed us to make connections and -- for me at least -- hear opinions and learn things that I would never have run across otherwise. I treasure some of the connections I've made, and still nurture, online. In that respect it has been a boon to housebound people for building community.

The thing I don't think there's any good solution for is "free speech," and the sifting of good information from bad. Who decides? ...

I imagine services coming into being that will sift and evaluate (Snopes on steroids) -- people could subscribe to the one(s) they trust. But I don't really believe it's a function that's humanly (even collectively) possible to keep up with.

(First real storm of the season...one day too late, I'm going off to get my snow tires put on the car.)

[JanieM]

Frankly, I have come around to thinking the online world was a mistake.

Also, this made me smile a bit. We are awash in such "mistakes," inventions that can't be unraveled or made to disappear after the fact -- the internal combustion engine? weaponry? (the printing press? the wheel?). All of them are a mixed blessing. (Except maybe the wheel?)

I think they are faits accomplis, so the contuing challenge is how best to manage them. (And/or how best to manage human nature in relation to them.)

[wj]

...people sitting at a restaurant table, for example, all lost in their phones. Why did they bother to go out together?

Just an off-the-wall guess. But perhaps so both could be on their phones, rather than one losing valuable on-line time while fixing dinner.

I suppose that assumes couples living together rather than just dating. But still....

[Michael Cain]

Re bobbyp's link... It's hard to remember to think about "The worst that can happen is I have a $20B (or whatever his actual share is) capital loss that I can use when I decide to sell part of SpaceX so I don't have to pay taxes on that gain..."

[CaseyL]

JanieM - I've gotten to know and befriend quite a few people that if the online world didn't exist, I would never have even met. You're one of them, in fact. But, for all that, I'm still not sure online life as it is, is a net gain/net good. Maybe if we'd stopped with blogs...

Michael - It would be genuinely hilarious if the reason Musk wrecked Twitter was so he could have a big tax write-off.

[CaseyL]

"...stopped with blogs," is more ambiguous than I meant it to be. I don't mean, if we'd stopped blogging. I mean, if we had just kept blogging and groupnetting, and not gone on to instant online global chat.

[novakant]

Frankly, I have come around to thinking the online world was a mistake.

Lol, back in the pre-internet days only assorted weirdos, bored pensioners and anoraks would write the occasional letter to the editor - now everyone is doing it on a daily basis. What could possibly go wrong...

[Michael Cain]

Frankly, I have come around to thinking the online world was a mistake.

The internet has been an enormous step forward for the academic and pseudo-academic communities. The mistake was we let the "civilians" in.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

"The Year that September Never Ended"

[nous]

We need an alternate 2004 timeline in which Facebook flops and academics, rather than treating digital engagement as a distraction, go full on Bitch PhD/Hilzoy/SEK and launch a golden era of intellectual outreach.

Bonus points if we can push that back to 2000 and get a redo of Bush v Gore as a lagniappe.

[ral]

Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake coming down from the trees in the first place, and some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no-one should ever have left the oceans.

[I'm surprised I'm the first to post this.]

[CharlesWT]

How to get ratioed on X/Twitter.

[wonkie]

I enjoyed twitter back in the day. I followed lots of writers, artists, poets, historians, scientists, all kinds of people. I got into substantive conversations with people I never would have met any other way. But I quit a long time ago, shortly after Musk started running the site down.

[wonkie]

"The "they try to avoid civilian casualties" is the line that was put out by John Kirby (the Biden spokesperson) early on and now that they are criticizing what was done in Northern Gaza, they told the Israelis not to do that in Southern Gaza. And they claim that the Israelis are trying, though so far it looks pretty much like they are doing the same things."

I think the goal is to kill as many civilians as possible with "plausible" deniability and make Gaza uninhabitable so that those who manage to survive have to leave.

[Michael Cain]

I think the goal is to kill as many civilians as possible with "plausible" deniability and make Gaza uninhabitable so that those who manage to survive have to leave.

Yes, if there are no Palestinians in Gaza then Israel doesn't have a Gaza problem. The big question is where they might go. Recent population of the Gaza Strip is about 2.4 million people. Egypt doesn't accept refugees from Gaza because they don't want Hamas operating from/in Egypt. Jordan doesn't seem inclined to take very many of them these days.

[CharlesWT]

The leaders of the surrounding countries won't say it out loud but they're likely hoping Israel completely radicates Hamas.

[Hartmut]

Jordan already took far more in the past than the poor country could reasonably shoulder, too many to fully integrate. The latter is a significant source of the problems to-day. Egypt could not shoulder a million extra citizens or more even without the political problems. The Gulf states want only de facto slave workers, and their attempts to become buddies with Israel (unpopular with their population) is also a strong disincentive to letting Palestinians in. Syria, Lebanon and Iran are completely out of the question. [sarcasm] Yemen maybe? [/sarcasm].
If the Isrealis would simply kill them all, at least some Arab state leaderships would be happy: a) no burden- and troublesome people to worry about*
b) very useful as martyrs should the wind turn**.

*cue Stalin quote
**dead people don't complain about the abuse of their fate

[Donald]

The leaders of the surrounding countries are monarchies and dictatorships. What they want is not what their people want. Not that their people are perfect members of Amnesty International either--they have their biases obviously. But they are going to be sympathetic to the Gazans and if their lovely rulers side openly with Israel against Hamas, they are likely to have some riots or worse on their hands. So no, they won't say what they think out loud.

What is always amusing in a dark depressing sort of way is listening to some Saudi official talk about human rights. Just a couple months ago the big dream of Biden, Bibi, and Thomas Friedman was an open peace treaty and maybe anti-Iranian alliance between Israel and the Saudis--disrupting that was almost certainly one of the motives for the Oct 7 massacre.

[Donald]

Back to the uses of Twitter--one thing it is very good on is seeing the real time efforts of various people to spread BS in wartime. I don't think the MSM does this--that is, report on the various lies and spin by the various sides in detail. For example, on the initial hospital bombing, I think all three sides were lying. As it happens I decided that it was a Palestinian rocket that misfired, not on the basis of the claims of the US and Israel, but because the Hamas lie seemed the most damning. They claimed they couldn't find any fragments. So that suggested they didn't want to find them.

The Israelis claimed they had tapes of Hamas guys admitting over the airwaves that it was one of theirs, and on Twitter Arab speakers ridiculed this, saying that the voices had the wrong accents. Israel also put out a fake video of a nurse at the Al Shifa (I am horrible at spelling) hospital claiming that Hamas was in the basement, and again the Arab speakers ridiculed the accent and people at the hospital claimed they didn't know who this was. The tweet was taken down. There were other episodes like this. (The US claim to analyze the video evidence was disputed by the NYT expert--the NYT didn't take a position on who hit the hospital, but merely disputed the US evidence.)

I decided after numerous flipflops that it was the Palestinians because Hamas's lie didn't make sense unless they just wanted to conceal physical evidence that would show it was not Israel. I considered the other lies to be attempts by Israel and maybe the US to frame a guilty man. It doesn't change my overall view of the conflict--a war between two sets of war criminals. But it is fascinating to watch the propaganda claims fly back and forth. There have been several other examples I could talk about. Previously I would just read about this in books or articles. It would help greatly if I had a thorough knowledge of written and spoken Arabic,and the accents but I have none at all, so I am taking the word of all those (Western and Arab) who say they do.

[Hartmut]

And Bibi knows exactly what buddies he is acquiring there. He also has a hearty relationship with Orban and the Polish (hopefully soon past) RW government who both use antisemitism as a regular tool. As long as it is authoritarian, illiberal and corrupt, he's happy to do business with it.

[wj]

As long as it is authoritarian, illiberal and corrupt, he's happy to do business with it.

I'd say that's like Trump. Except that Trump wouldn't hesitate to ignore the "illiberal" requirement (assuming a regime which met the other two criteria was available). Actually, I think for him it would be "or" rather than "and".

[Girl from the North Country]

I think the goal is to kill as many civilians as possible with "plausible" deniability

If I believed this, I would be prepared to call it a genocide. As I said before, I wouldn't dream of speculating about the secret wish of Bibi's heart, but I don't believe that this is the goal of the vast majority of the IDF or the Israeli public.

[JanieM]

anything else you want to talk about

In case we were about to run out of depressing topics, here's a post from Betty Cracker at BJ about Uvalde. And here's a long comment from a BJ commenter I respect a lot.

Supposedly one "good guy with a gun" should be able to save children/people from this kind of bloodbath, but for some weird reason, hundreds of law enforcement officers showed up and did shit that day.

[nous]

Whatever the hardliners aspirations might be, the whole Iraq debacle and its aftermath should have taught them that there is no such thing as eradicating Hamas any more than we were able to eradicate Daesh. All the hardliners will do is force Hamas to evolve into an even more disperse entity that increases the shock value of their attacks to make up for the attacks' reductions in scale.

As far as language to describe what is happening goes, I'll say once again that what this looks like to me, more than anything else, is an old fashioned bloodfeud. (Though given the asymmetries here, it has some features of an outlaw saga as well.) If I am right in this reading of the situation, then there will be no legal solution available until we burn through the ones actually driving these extrajudicial tactics. And I don't like our odds for that.

[wj]

Well, it would be genocide -- exactly within the definition.

I would agree that the vast majority of Israelis (and of the IDF) are not of that view. And I doubt that Bibi cares one way or the other. Unfortunately, he is dependent, in order to stay in power (and out of jail, he hopes), on the far right -- who do want to kill off as many Palestinians (in the West Bank as well as Gaza) as possible. And, frankly, aren't particularly concerned about plausible deniability either.

[CharlesWT]

There's a Doonesbury cartoon from a decade or so ago that I can't find. The war correspondent is interviewing a West Bank settler. She tells him something like "We didn't come all the way from Cincinnati to be Arabs."

[CharlesWT]

A tweet thread on the casualty figures coming out of Gaza.

🧵Critical Thread. Close review of Gaza casualty figures reported by UN OCHA based on daily Hamas “Ministry of Health” numbers proves they are FALSIFIED. Women & children are grossly inflated. This is easily proven but media ignores. See detailed expose below: 1/

— Aizenberg (@Aizenberg55) December 4, 2023

[Donald]

That's a predictably silly thread, CharlesWT. You know what it is going to be like based on the attacks at the top of the person's account on those noted anti-Israel groups Amnesty International and HRW.

The civilian death toll in the 2014 was 1400 or so. This war is on a vastly larger scale, so the civilian death toll is also going to be vastly larger. I doubt that the Health ministry actually compiles the death toll accurately on a day to day basis--they accumulate data and report it and it might go up dramatically on a given day depending on what they manage to find out. Lately, with most hospitals out of commission, it's likely to be an even bigger undercount than before. So I for one don't trust the Gaza figures--I don't think they could possibly be keeping an accurate count and the true figure is likely to be considerably higher.

As for Hamas dead, I suspect that Hamas might not let them report their numbers even under the heading of "male dead".

But if we want kooky stuff, I can supply some of that from the other side, if people are interested. I doubt they are, but yes, there is some kooky denialism on the pro-Palestinian side too. The most extreme is that virtually all the civilian dead on Oct 7 were caused by friendly fire. (Some were caused that way, as reported in the Israeli press, but you would expect that in the confusion. Going from that to making it sound like all or most of it was is where it gets kooky.)

[Donald]

Number of buildings damaged or destroyed in the 2014 war was about 10,000

https://unitar.org/about/news-stories/news/impact-2014-conflict-gaza-strip-unosat-satellite-derived-geospatial-analysis#:~:text=Overall%20Damage%20Analysis&text=It%20should%20also%20be%20noted,kilometers%20from%20the%20Armistice%20Line.

[Donald]

Hard to make a 1 to 1 comparison with 2014, but this piece says over 40,000 housing units destroyed and over 200,000 buildings damaged in the 2023 conflict so far.

https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2023/middleeast/map-humanitarian-aid-water-power-hospitals-gaza-strip-dg/

[wonkie]

"If I believed this, I would be prepared to call it a genocide. As I said before, I wouldn't dream of speculating about the secret wish of Bibi's heart, but I don't believe that this is the goal of the vast majority of the IDF or the Israeli public."

I don't think that genocide is the goal of everyone in Israel. I don't know what percentage of the population supports the apartheid and ethnic cleansing that preceded the terrorist attack and I don't know what percentage supports the mass murder going on now. I assume that it is not everyone, perhaps not even a majority.

13 thousand dead. If that's not deliberate, then what is it? Incompetence? Acceptable collateral damage (acceptable to who?) Unfortunate accidents? Defense isn't an excuse. Remember: Netanyahu supported Hamas and his government was informed about the attack well ahead of time and could have stopped it.

The Israeli army is literally chasing civilians up and down inside the small area where they are imprisoned. Of course they are running up the score.

[Hartmut]

I'd be interested in the opinion here on the controversy about representative Jayapal's interview on CNN concerning rape in the context of the Gaza situation.
The impression I got is that the interviewer tried to get her to justify the death toll in Gaza because of the sexual atrocities committed by Hamas on their female victims and she simply refused (while leaving no doubt that she condemns what Hamas has done). And this conjured up a shitstorm in other media (in particular MSNBC) accusing her of whataboutism and even victim blaming (and commenters of course called her a Hamas apologist etc.*).
But that is just my perspective. I am neither Jewish nor Palestinian nor female nor am I otherwise directly involved.
Are you of the opinion that she was the weasel there, could have expressed herself better, should be outright condemned since what she said was beyond the pale or is the victim of a hit job and the criticism is primarily hypocritical virtue signaling.

*which of course triggered counter comments of the "Zionist controlled media" kind. You know the routine in comment threads on youtube and elsewhere as well as I do.

[Donald]

I saw the interview. Jayapal condemned Hamas incouding the rapes and said one war crime doesn’t justify another. Bash accused her of distraction and then said Israeli soldiers don’t commit mass rapes. Probably true. Actually recently released Palestinian prisoners say they were threatened with rape but don’t say they were. . The boys were beaten.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67581915

So the only person engaged in comparison and denial in that interview was Dana Bash.

[Donald]

CNN summary of the Jayapal interview and followup

https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/05/politics/pramila-jayapal-statement/index.html

[Girl from the North Country]

I didn't see it, but if it went down as Donald suggests, and I believe him, then I have no argument with Jayapal.

wonkie, I know from previous comments that you have no problem with generalising the worst motives about people whose policies you hate (in past cases that was Republicans), so this,

I don't know what percentage supports the mass murder going on now. I assume that it is not everyone, perhaps not even a majority.

even the appalling last phrase, does not entirely surprise me. But I have some weeks ago corrected myself when I called it indiscriminate mass murder, and changed it to indiscriminate mass killing of civilians, for the obvious reason that murder is the intention to kill the victim. I absolutely do not believe that the civilian deaths are intentional, so in your formulation I suppose they would, understandably in the context of other conflicts worldwide, count to most Israeli public opinion as collateral damage. The degree of acceptability is moot, and no doubt differs from group to group.

It is not acceptable to me, however, and I am somewhat in touch with the opinion of various different groups in Israel to whom it is very clearly not "the intention to kill as many Palestinians as possible", plausible deniability or no. Ironically, the only person I have heard express that wish is a non Jewish American rightwing Republican, but even so I don't ascribe the wish to other American Republicans.

[wj]

I absolutely do not believe that the civilian deaths are intentional

There is definitely a segment of the Israeli population which would cheerfully countenance mass murder of Palestinians. If some of them were in the IDF, they might well have done so. This will be one of the times that the rest of Israel can be thankful that those folks have mostly managed to get themselves exempted from the draft. (Otherwise, they are resented for taking all the benefits of the country, while refusing to bear any of the burden.)

[Donald]

I don’t think they are literally trying to kill as many as possible, but I don’t think Assad was trying that in Syria. Pol Pot and Hitler and the Hutus in Rwanda had that kind of ambition.

I think they are deliberately killing civilians, and deliberately making much of Gaza uninhabitable and given the chance, they would expel most Gazans out of Gaza.

Both sides ( Hamas and the Israeli government) are imo unequivocally evil. Not Hitler level, but Assad level. Neither side can be trusted.

[Donald]

I want a ceasefire, but agree that it is impossible to imagine a long term solution with the Hamas leaders that planned Oct 7. They pretended to be pragmatists for years, and this planning has been going on for I don't know how long, but fairly long. Makes it impossible to trust them.

And the Israeli right is pretty much all about the one state solution, though not democratic, and would gladly drive out all the Palestinians if they can. And from the 972 article I've linked, some of the bombing , the "power targets" are aimed at civilians in order to shock them and put pressure on Hamas. But one doesn't need the article. Just the sheer level of destruction shows that.

And there is endless anecdotal evidence about murderous intent, but I have to go.

[Girl from the North Country]

As so often, I agree with Donald, in particular most of @09.45. Should also have said, regarding collateral damage, I imagine there is more tolerance for it under circumstances when your people have been raped, tortured, murdered or abducted. There shouldn't be, but there is. And I believe (although I haven't seen) that Hamas have said they intend to do it again and again. Which is one of the reasons that I think Israel is doing, in many ways, exactly what Hamas wanted them to do.

[Pro Bono]

(I posted a comment earlier about the Jayapal interview which hasn't appeared.)

I think the interview was fair. There are several minutes about Jayapal's views on Gaza, then at 6:45 the interviewer asks her a question about Hamas sexual violence, asking why it hasn't been condemned by progressives. Jayapal disagrees with the premise, and says she condemns it absolutely, but...and pivots back to Israel's wrongful actions.

That "but" was poor. If you're condemning something absolutely, there's no need for a "but".

[JanieM]

Pro Bono: there's no earlier comment in either Spam or "Unpublished." Dunno what happened.....

[hairshirthedonist]

I don't even bother discussing I-P with anyone. I find it frustratingly stupid that so many people can't seem to accept that you can be utterly opposed to Hamas while also respecting the human rights of Palestinians or that you can support Israel's right to defend itself while being opposed to it committing war crimes while doing so. Too much dumb black-and-white, good-versus-evil oversimplification, often not even in good faith. Yet another political football.

I can at least read the comments here without pulling out what little hair I have left. It's a sanctuary of sanity. I don't comment much only because I don't have anything to add beyond what others have already written.

[Donald]

"That "but" was poor. If you're condemning something absolutely, there's no need for a "but"."

In the US government, specifically Congress, given that we are supplying the bombs that are killing thousands of children and it is a small minority that opposes this, there is a reason for inserting a statement that both sides are committing war crimes.

Hamas is guilty of crimes against humanity. Full stop. So is Israel. Full stop. One doesn't justify the other. Jayapal was trying to make that point.

This was a typical political interview on American TV, so nothing is stated clearly and everything is frustrating and vague and about appearances, so it becomes a political scandal. But nobody in Congress says we should be arming Hamas or supporting Hamas and if there is anyone in Congress who denies Hamas atrocities I am not aware of it. Most of them deny Israel is doing anything wrong.

On "my side", there are idiots who either defend Hamas or make antisemitic statements in protests or do other things that are moronic or worse, but for once I am glad that my side doesn't have the kinds of freaking nutcases in power that are so common on the other side. Usually I prefer balance, but not here. Fine with me if all the actual apologists for war crimes who are in Congress are on the other side.

[wonkie]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/israel-touts-civilian-warning-system-but-for-gazans-nowhere-is-safe/ar-AA1l5j3D?ocid=msedgntp&pc=DCTS&cvid=d0db52c09c5e42e4996bcf2c88e8b4cd&ei=15

[Girl from the North Country]

I find it frustratingly stupid that so many people can't seem to accept that you can be utterly opposed to Hamas while also respecting the human rights of Palestinians or that you can support Israel's right to defend itself while being opposed to it committing war crimes while doing so.

And this is just one of the reasons, hsh, why you belong in this "sanctuary of sanity".

[nous]

I think it is important to remember that Bash intentionally put that question to Jayapal in a way that was intended to erode Democratic support no matter what answer was given.

Add a "but..." gets reframed as a pivot to shifting Israel in order to erode as many Jewish votes as possible for the Democrats.

Not adding a "but..." will leave Palestinian-Americans feeling left unseen and exposed, which would be useful for eroding as many Palestinian-Amreican votes as possible for the Democrats.

Same goes for the congressional hearing about rising anti-semitism on college campuses. Yes, jewish students are feeling vulnerable and exposed because of widespread disapproval of the IDF operations in Gaza. Understandably so. I can't think of many Muslim students who are feeling empowered or valued on their campuses in this moment, either.

There are options besides polarization or empty both-siderism, but they require a media that is not working to propagandize and polarize, rather than waving the bloody shirt.

[Cheez Whiz]

if you're condemning absolutely, there's no need for a "but". As the philosopher Paul Reubens put it, "everybody's got a big but".

a typical political interview. I'm a bit surprised by the total lack of reference to the concepts of diplomacy and foreign relations. It's deliberately vague and about appearances. People appalled by Israel throwing Gaza in a woodchipper seem the think the US can force Israel to stop, but refuses out of cowardice or complicity. Thing is, they can't force Israel to stop, and the US and Israel know it. The US demands, Israel ignores, and the US has that much less leverage to get another cease fire or whatever agreed to, and the slaughter continues. Netanyahu's government has put all their chips on riding a wave of anger and blood to keep their government together and Bibi out of jail. Losing some bombs and ammo isn't going to change that.

[wonkie]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/israel-s-2-000-pound-spice-bombs-are-highly-accurate-but-could-be-overkill-in-gaza/ar-AA1l70Cp?ocid=msedgntp&pc=DCTS&cvid=195e5b77bae64ccda749017cdf0bebc5&ei=18

https://www.businessinsider.com/israel-using-big-bombs-weighing-1-000-to-2-000-pounds-gaza-report-2023-11

[wj]

Netanyahu's government has put all their chips on riding a wave of anger and blood to keep their government together and Bibi out of jail. Losing some bombs and ammo isn't going to change that.

Losing some bombs and ammo will not, in itself, have an impact. But for the US to announce that it was cutting off military aid? The psychological impact in Israel would, I think, be substantial.

What the impact would be on US politics is a different matter. So not likely to happen any time soon.

[Tony P.]

Donald: "That "but" was poor. If you're condemning something absolutely, there's no need for a "but"."

Politicians would do well to say "and" in place of "but", sometimes.

Like hairshirt, I feel like others have already said everything I can think of to say, on most topics.

--TP

[Donald]

Anonymous Israeli officials think the death toll in Gaza is about 15,000, with about 2/3 being civilians and that the Hamas figures are roughly accurate.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/idf-officials-15000-likely-killed-in-gaza-since-start-of-war-5000-of-them-are-hamas/#:~:text=Reports%20citing%20anonymous%20Israeli%20officials,been%20killed%20than%20Hamas%20operatives.

[Hartmut]

Well, it looks like no one is getting any money right now since the GOP is more interested in televised temper tantrums. Of course they lie about Biden ignoring the Southern border (there are large concessions in the bill already).
I assume that some of them are happy that they can block Ukraine aid (90% of which is spent on US weaponry btw) with a new excuse that does not point to their affinity to Ras Putin*.

*OK a tired cliche pun**. And the historical Grigorij Jefimovich was an actual pacifist and that was an important factor for his murderers and the time they struck.
**and Ras as a title is not Russian but semitic.

[Donald]

Oh, btw, I don’t mean to bow to the authority of Israeli estimates, but one does see people on Twitter like Charles’s cite still arguing that the number of civilian deaths is greatly exaggerated. It’s a bit harder to do when a mainstream Israeli paper reports that anonymous Israeli officials think the numbers are roughly accurate.

[Hartmut]

But, but but liberal Jews are the worst antisemites that one can find anywhere. And Jewish mainstream media is the leader of the mob. Actual Nazis (in particular when properly religious) are far more amenable as far as Israel is concerned. At least that is what I hear on a daily basis from conservatives and Israeli officials.

[Girl from the North Country]

But, but but liberal Jews are the worst antisemites that one can find anywhere.

It hasn't happened for years, possibly because of the company I mostly choose to keep, but the accusation of being "a self-hating Jew" anytime I criticised Israel was a regular feature of my life when my parents' friends were still alive (I was infuriated, but kept reminding myself that they had lived through the Holocaust). Now, as far as I can tell, it is mainly used on the US right.

[Pro Bono]

Jayapal had the first six minutes of the interview to say what she wanted about Gaza. It was only after that that she was invited to condemn rape. I don't agree that there was any sort of trap involved.

[wonkie]

It isn't a matter of trapping. It's the obnoxious assumption that someone who recognizes the historic and current crimes against the Palestinians is somehow obligated to speak up (over and over and over ) against Hamas, while equivalent treatment isn't given to Congresspeople who defend Israel For example: "Are you outraged by people being incarcerated indefinitely without charges? Are you outraged by the abuse of incarcerated children? Are you outraged about the illegal settlements? Why haven't you spoken up about the north part of Gaza being bombed so heavily that it is no longer inhabitable? Why haven't you spoken up with enough outrage over the clearly bigoted statements made by Zionist leaders?" Etc.

Until I see reporters badgering Congresspeople with questions like that, I see the question directed at Jayapal as...based on a false assumption.

[nous]

Yes to wonkie's 1:14. And even if I were to agree that Jayapal's response could have been managed a bit better, I don't see how her response as it stands makes the situation in Israel and Gaza any better or worse. The metacommentary about her response is itself a deflection and a distraction. We talk about it because we don't feel like we have any agency over the ongoing atrocities being perpetrated by the dehumanizers.

I just found this article explaining Mbembe's concept of "necropolitics" and was struck by how thoroughly the concept elucidates the situation in the Palestinian Territories:

Necropolitics entails the “subjugation of life to the power of death”. In “our contemporary world” — following Mbembe — various types of “weapons are deployed in the interest of maximum destruction of persons and the creation of death-worlds, new and unique forms of social existence in which vast populations are subjugated to conditions of life conferring upon them the status of living-dead”.

Gaza very much seems like the sort of death-world that Mbembe discusses, and Hamas' strategy very much lives within the logic of these death-worlds and the ecology of the global media landscape. The true weapon wielded by the terrorist is always the media. The people they harm and kill are like shrapnel that they use the media to spray into the rest of the populace.

Martyrs only ever exist within the logic of a death-world, real or imagined.

[JanieM]

@nous: not a historian, so this is just half-assed. But I'm not sure "our contemporary world" is much different from the rest of human history in this respect. The main difference seems to me to be that "terrorists" (e.g. Putin) now have a global media instead of word of mouth at their disposal. And maybe that in this era there have actually been large populations of ordinary people who have been able to live for short (in the context of human history) periods in conditions of life that made it seem like they were NOT in danger of becoming the living dead.

(Thinking of the building of the Mongol Empire, or the Hundred Years War, but I'm sure the examples are endless. In face, see here.)

[hairshirthedonist]

In face, see here.

That's a link-following rabbit hole for me. I wish I could take it all in "Matrix"-style. Plug a gizmo into the back of my head and download it. That or kung fu? Tough choice.

[JanieM]

Even the typo? ;-)

(She faceplants.) (And wishes her copy editor hadn't absconded.)

[Donald]

There are such things as actual Hamas apologists. I read them sometimes. They use a lot of euphemisms and don't state plainly what they defend. They defend Hamas as a "resistance" group and call Oct 7 a military action or similar type language. The atrocities are not openly named.

Jayapal is not an Hamas apologist. She isn't a supporter of terrorism or kidnapping grandmothers or young children or a defender of rape. At worst she committed a gaffe and made her position clear the next day, though it was clear in the interview.

Not on the other hand the President continues to supply Israel with 2000 lb bombs and while they say they pressure Israel to take more care regarding civilians, Israel keeps bombing. And Republicans are outright Israeli apologists. DC is clogged with apologists for Israel's actions in both parties. I can't think of a single US politician who is a Hamas apologist. I am glad of that. I wish there were no Israel apologists, just people who have a clear-eyed view of atrocities no matter who commits them. People could debate what our stance should be in an imperfect world (with our own actions part of the problem), but we are nowhere near basic honesty, let alone serious discussion of policy options.

HRW just put out a report saying that Israel deliberately targeted journalists in Lebanon back in October. (Not exactly a surprise.) And Israel is currently arresting Palestinian men and boys at random in northern Gaza to see if any are Hamas. Twitter account link if you can read it.

https://twitter.com/OmarBaddar/status/1732842215414669543

[CharlesWT]

The conflicts listed on the "List of Conflicts by Duration" Wikipedia page can be grouped into several categories based on their nature and context. While the specific categories may not be explicitly mentioned on the page, we can identify common classifications for these conflicts. Here are some categories in which the conflicts can be grouped:

1. Wars: This category includes conflicts between nations or states involving organized armed forces. Examples include World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Gulf War.

2. Rebellions and Revolutions: This category comprises conflicts where a group or population rises against an established power or government. Examples include the American Revolution, the French Revolution, and the Russian Revolution.

3. Civil Wars: This category encompasses conflicts within a single country or region, typically involving factions or groups vying for control. Examples include the American Civil War, the Spanish Civil War, and the Syrian Civil War.

4. Colonial Conflicts: This category includes conflicts that arose during colonialism, involving European powers and indigenous populations. Examples include the Algerian War of Independence, the Indian Rebellion of 1857, and the Boxer Rebellion.

5. Independence Movements: This category includes conflicts where regions or territories sought independence from ruling powers. Examples include the Indian Independence Movement, the Irish War of Independence, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

6. Border Disputes and Territorial Conflicts: This category includes conflicts arising from disputes over boundaries or territorial claims between nations. Examples include the Arab-Israeli conflicts, the India-Pakistan conflicts, and the Falklands War.

7. Insurgencies and Guerrilla Warfare: This category includes conflicts characterized by irregular warfare tactics, typically waged by non-state actors against established powers. Examples include the Vietnam War, the Afghan War, and the Colombian conflict.

8. Ethnic and Religious Conflicts: This category includes conflicts driven by ethnic or religious tensions, often resulting in violence and displacement. Examples include the Rwandan Genocide, the Yugoslav Wars, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

These categories provide a general framework for grouping the conflicts on the page. However, it's worth noting that some conflicts may overlap or fall into multiple categories, and the classification of conflicts can sometimes be subjective depending on different perspectives and interpretations.

—Ask AI Chat

My single largest carbon footprint may be the queries I make to LLMs.

[Girl from the North Country]

I wish there were... just people who have a clear-eyed view of atrocities no matter who commits them.

Amen.

[Pro Bono]

...I don't see how her response as it stands makes the situation in Israel and Gaza any better or worse. The metacommentary about her response is itself a deflection and a distraction. We talk about it because we don't feel like we have any agency over the ongoing atrocities being perpetrated by the dehumanizers.

Yes. I just want politicians I agree with to make a good job of presenting their case.

[nous]

@JanieM - Mbembe is working under Foucault's premise that the modern state exerts a different sort of bureaucratic control over the lives of its subjects than did previous forms of governance. His turning point for this lies in the Napoleonic reforms, and takes the Treaty of Westphalia as another of those big inflection points, before which the nation state did not exist as the de facto political paradigm for international recognition.

There may be some arguments for earlier versions of this in the Chinese bureaucratic state (I'm guessing...haven't looked), but those would have been outside of Foucault's research scope. He was mostly concerned with French history and the French colonial regime.

Which is to say that much of history is a fraught hellscape for people, but the apparatus of a death-world as Mbembe conceived of it requires both a post-Westphalian political order and a global media ecology that moves at the speed of a telegraph rather than a slow boat.

Teasing out the shape of this formulation would take some dedicated reading - at least until someone at Teen Vogue takes it upon themself to write an op ed explainer.

[JanieM]

@nous -- the Teen Vogue comment made me laugh out loud.

Foucault is beyond the level of intellectual challenge that I'm up for trying to meet these days (no "intellectual heft," I've been told ;-) ) -- but it sounds like Mbembe is saying that we (humans as a whole) are facing a new kind of fraught hellscape to replace the old kind(s). I can't argue with the idea, if this is part of it, that "we" can face it and deal with it more effectively the better we understand it. So thanks for the reference -- and the interim explainer while we wait for Teen Vogue.

[Girl from the North Country]

Teen Vogue v Ask A1 Chat? Hard to choose...

I couldn't help thinking about the sometime academic contempt (or at least condescension) towards "civilians" as I watched the ghastly Stefanik perform for the cameras in her interrogation of the university heads about the manufactured "genocide of the jews" controversy. The Penn person, in particular, had a most off-putting smirk on her face during her answers, and yet I still took no pleasure in seeing her forced apology today. You would not think that people like that would be so absolutely stumped by having to a) make the point that calls for intifada do not, in general, equal calls for genocide of the jews, b) that bullying and harassment usually have to have a specific object, or victim, and that therefore c) an offense of hate speech would be more useful under those hypothetical circumstances. Although they would (and should) have had to deal with the issue of how their answers, even if about a hypothetical situation, made sense in the era of "microaggession tracking tools". Talk about scoring an own-goal when in the front line of the culture wars.

[JanieM]

Teen Vogue v Ask A1 Chat? Hard to choose...

It shouldn't be. From Wikipedia:

n December 2016, the magazine published an opinion article by Lauren Duca, the magazine's weekend editor, entitled "Donald Trump Is Gaslighting America."[37] Within weeks, the essay had been viewed 1.2 million times, and on NPR's All Things Considered, David Folkenflik described the essay as signaling a shift in the magazine's emphasis toward more political and social engagement.[38] According to The New York Times, many media observers were "surprised to see a magazine for teenagers making such a strong political statement,"[39] although Folkenflik acknowledged he drew criticism for expressing this surprise and at Slate, Mark Joseph Stern argued the essay was consistent with the magazine's record, since the appointment of Welteroth and Picardi, as a "teen glossy with seriously good political coverage and legal analysis, an outlet for teenagers who—shockingly!—are able to think about fashion and current events simultaneously."[40] At The Atlantic, Sophie Gilbert similarly noted, "The pivot in editorial strategy has drawn praise on social media, with some writers commenting that Teen Vogue is doing a better job of covering important stories in 2016 than legacy news publications."[41]

[JanieM]

From a commenter at Crooked Timber in response to a post that was part of a series on Silicon Valley. I bookmarked the comment because it was the most concise explainer I've run across about how AI works, in relation to how overhyped and misunderstood it is in the current phase of its existence:

But what happens if the AI bubble bursts? If people finally realize that, under the hood, LLMs only process undefined tokens and can’t do any of the things we normally consider to be basic to “reasoning”. If people finally realize that “neural nets” aren’t anything like neurons, that the processing they do is fundamentally and radically different from how humans and other mammals do things, and that the computational properties of the things are really hairy and ugly (they can’t tell us why/how they decided something, and when we finally figure out what they did, it’s often so stupid we didn’t think of it). (At the back of my mind here is the very first rule of statisices: “Correllation is not causation” (just because things match up in the data doesn’t mean there’s something actually going on). But the whole neural net game is predicated on finding subtle correlations that mere humans have missed, even though there’s probably nothing causal actually there.)

Neural nets don’t do causal models, they do correlation extraction. Similarly, LLMs don’t do logical reasoning, they do statistical template instantiation.

[Girl from the North Country]

And, as for Virginia Foxx asking each of them whether they believed that Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state, words fail. What is this, McCarthyism?

[Girl from the North Country]

Ah yes, I remember the articles about that Teen Vogue piece. It just goes to show, one shouldn't assume - although I have no idea if that was a one-off, I haven't heard anything about it since.

[nous]

I just read the Teen Vogue explainer for "necropolitics" today. I haven't gone looking to see if they have any for Foucault.

Academics should be doing more of this sort of thing.

[hairshirthedonist]

I have a vague recollection of reading a number of good articles in (non-teen) Vogue when my wife subscribed a decade or so ago. I’m pretty sure she pointed them out to me, otherwise I would never have thought to read anything from Vogue - at first, anyway.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

"I haven't gone looking to see if they have any [explainer] for Foucault."

The only explainer anyone needs for Foucault is that he thought the world revolved around him.

[nous]

The only explainer anyone needs for Foucault is that he thought the world revolved around him.

Nice one. Well done.

The other Foucault.

[Donald]

Never understood the first Foucalt’s pendulum except at the poles. I can take a vector component of an angular velocity as good as the next person, but it still doesn’t make intuitive sense to me.

The other guy I know about because his attitude towards morality shocked Chomsky. Also something about panopticons. I have just outlined all I know about, um, whatever branch of continental philosophy he is part of. Deconstructionism?

[Donald]

Just checked out from the local library the online Very Short Intro to Continental Philosophy and will soon become the world’s leading expert on it, at least in an apartment whose inhabitants are me, my wife and 2 cats.

I like that Very Short intro series.

[ral]

You will never exceed the expertise of the cats.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

"I can take a vector component of an angular velocity as good as the next person, but it still doesn’t make intuitive sense to me."

There's your problem. No vector components needed.

Just think of the *plane* of the pendulum staying fixed as the Earth rotates under it.

There's probably a metaphor for (the more recent) Foucault's philosophy here, but the blog is too small to contain it.

[Girl from the North Country]

There's probably a metaphor for (the more recent) Foucault's philosophy here, but the blog is too small to contain it.

LOL

[Donald]

“ Just think of the *plane* of the pendulum staying fixed as the Earth rotates under it.”

I will give that a shot, but it is probably at the limit of my ability to visualize things in 3d, so I probable need a sheet of paper and a sphere to play with.

Ral— I am counting on our cats having little interest in Continental philosophy. Same for my wife, probably. Unless Kierkegaard ( sp?) is an influence.