Yet another open thread

by liberal japonicus

Harris is sitting down for an interview with MSNBC (preview here) which seems like as good a reason as any for an open thread. I'm still waiting for Harris to go on Hot Wings though...

Comments

[Hartmut]

It gets difficult to believe in coincidences.
Has the RNG been replaced by the RNC or did the NRA load the dice?

* An ill-equipped judge gets another huge case: “The federal judge who presided over — and threw out — the criminal classified documents case the Justice Department brought against Donald Trump is now set to oversee the case into the latest apparent assassination attempt against the former president. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon — a Trump appointee — was randomly assigned the attempted assassination case Tuesday.”

[wj]

I'm betting that this defendant gets a lot less deference.

Because she's learned her lesson? Right?
Right? Believe that and I've got a primo bridge that's on sale cheap.

[liberal japonicus]

Open thread grist
via Paul Campos at LGM
This Rick Perlstein piece getting into the history of polling is worth a read
https://prospect.org/politics/2024-09-25-polling-imperilment/

If only for the link to this two part takedown of Nate Silver.
https://www.ettingermentum.news/p/the-art-of-losing-a-fivethirtyeight
https://www.ettingermentum.news/p/the-art-of-losing-a-fivethirtyeight-627

[novakant]

What on earth is going on? It seems the US has lost all its diplomatic influence - but will reliable deliver weapons nonetheless.

White House insists Lebanon truce was ‘coordinated’ with Israel, despite later being rejected by Jerusalem

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/white-house-insists-lebanon-truce-was-coordinated-with-israel-despite-later-being-rejected-by-jerusalem/

Seriously, what's the endgame here? This could get much worse than it already is - very quickly.

[novakant]

This sounds plausible:

Diplomatic Sources: Netanyahu Backtracked on Agreements With U.S. Regarding Hezbollah Truce Due to Political Pressure

According to sources, Netanyahu expressed his approval of the U.S.-French truce proposal but changed course after facing criticism from factions within his government. 'The Americans faced something similar during negotiations over the hostage deal in Gaza,' a Western diplomat told Haaretz

So Ben Gvir and Smotrich run the show.

[novakant]

link:

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-09-26/ty-article/.premium/sources-netanyahu-reneged-on-hezbollah-truce-promises-with-u-s-due-to-political-backlash/00000192-2f23-dc91-a1df-bfab00de0000

[wj]

So Ben Gvir and Smotrich run the show.

Run the show? Or just have a veto over certain kinds of sanity? Not a difference here. But could in cases where they want Bibi to take some kind of action.

[nous]

Jolly...so now there is one of those electronic marquee trucks on campus that has made billboards for the various people arrested at the encampment featuring their pictures, and labeling them as the leading antisemites on campus. The people in the truck are parking it and interviewing students.

It's telling that this behavior gets condemnation from the campus administration, but gets dismissed as a "disturbing feature of modern political discourse," while the encampments got shut down by force with muscle from dozens of regional law enforcement agencies.

I never feared that anyone involved in the encampments was going to provoke sympathy violence against anyone in the campus community. I very much fear that the same can not be said for the groups behind this latest bit of intimidation theater.

I think the right would be happy to turn college campuses into literal battlegrounds for the culture war.

[novakant]

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2024/09/israel-gaza-war-biden-netanyahu-peace-negotiations/679581/

This article suggests that Netanyahu is actually pretty powerless against the far right in his coalition, even if he wanted to oppose them, which is not a given. And let's not forget that this is nothing new. From the very beginning of his career, he has been cooperating with the far right:

https://www.timesofisrael.com/labor-chief-michaeli-rabin-was-assassinated-with-netanyahus-cooperation/

[Donald]

“ seems the US has lost all its diplomatic influence - but will reliable deliver weapons nonetheless.”

Biden has made it very clear that he will support Israel no matter what. His alleged desires, boilerplate expressions of compassion, and red lines have meant nothing and so Bibi only has to worry about his own domestic politics. From what I have read, attacking Hezbollah is popular in Israel and so far they seem to be a paper tiger. I have always read otherwise, but at the moment they are not striking back very hard and if that pager attack weakened them that doesn’t speak well for their competence either. It is possible they are deliberately exhibiting restraint in an attempt at avoiding all out war, but if so I don’t think it will work out well. Bibi only cares about force and so there is no reason why he can’t keep bombing as much as he wants and presumably Biden will keep supplying the bombs. Invading might be harder. Hezbollah is supposed to be very tough. But one could start to wonder if that was exaggerated. We might find out soon.

I half suspect Biden is fine with all of this so long as the US isn’t dragged in. The civilian deaths are a bit of a PR problem.

Needless, to say, I have nothing but contempt for Biden, but if he cares about the death toll it is low on his priority list and so far they deal with it by emoting ( not very convincingly) and saying that Israel needs to do better. We also get carefully leaked stories about him being upset with Bibi. It’s like an old West Wing episode, except Bartlett would never let Bibi get away with this nonsense for more than one episode.

[CharlesWT]

It is possible they are deliberately exhibiting restraint in an attempt at avoiding all out war, but if so I don’t think it will work out well.

Supposedly, Hezbollah has precision missiles they haven't used yet. Over the past year, they've given the impression that they were poking Israel to the limit of not provoking a strong reaction. Likely both sides don't want an all-out war. A pundit claimed that an all-out war would set Israel back 50 years and Lebanon back to the Middle Ages.

Several cargo planes of US troops and equipment are headed to/have landed in Israel.

[CharlesWT]

For the moment the US troops are holding up in Cyprus.

[wj]

Needless, to say, I have nothing but contempt for Biden

Donald, that's kind of like saying one gets wet in a rain storm. As far as I have ever been able to tell, you have nothing but contempt for any and every US president in my lifetime, for at least 99.9% (maybe more) of the US government, and for well over half of the entire US population.

Not saying that you are wrong about the flaws in various parts of our foreign policy. I have disagreements with various parts as well. Just that, again so far as I can tell, the idea that we ever do anything right is simply not part of your world view.

Your arguments might be more persuasive if you mentioned something we did right, if only in passing and for comparison. Like "The US did this good/right thing in case X. Why isn't it doing the same here?" But I suppose if, for you, there is no "case X" that's not an option.

[wj]

Supposedly, Hezbollah has precision missiles they haven't used yet.

From what I've read, they have tens of thousands of missles. At that point, precision isn't really critical.

Israel, if they take the genocidal approach they are using in Gaza, can probably reduce the area of southern Lebanon that Hesbollah controls to rubble. But Israel would be pretty thoroughly trashed in return. Israel could probably recover faster, but that's definitely a comparative not to be confused with fast.

[Donald]

Wj—

I don’t feel inclined to jump through your hoops. It isn’t up to me to persuade you that Biden’s Middle East policy has been catastrophically bad. It seems self evident to many. It has to do with all the rubble and corpses created by US- supplied weapons. And the nonstop lying by the Administration. People look at this and think it is somehow not right. And predictably Bibi just keeps doing what he wants.

The rest of your mind reading is inaccurate. I think Biden has a good record on domestic issues. I don’t know what to do about a great many issues. Lots of issues people discuss here and elsewhere where I agree with others but have nothing to say that seems worth saying.
I wish him well in stopping the slaughter in Sudan, though maybe they need to talk to the UAE.

But US officials and much of our foreign policy community seems to lack any sense that they might sometimes be deeply morally wrong. We were on the right side in WW2 and ever since then every dictator we don’t like is Hitler about to invade Czechoslovakia. They are wrong and sometimes maybe it is the US that needs to be stopped. Not violently, but by our own citizens telling our leaders they are complicit in war crimes.

I don’t think the voting booth is where it needs to happen. It should be in court.

[CharlesWT]

If Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, they're not very good at it or they're slow-walking it. Why put troops on the ground and get a hundred or so killed when they could just carpet-bomb the place? Pausing operations to bring in and distribute polio vaccines. Are they trying to hide genocide in plain sight?

Someone must win decisively or the conflict will continue for decades. But a regime change in Iran could take the air out of it.

[CharlesWT]

Receding the sanctions against Iran freed up money for Iran's proxies in Gaza, Lebanon, and elsewhere.

[wj]

Donald, I don't think you need to persuade me particularly.

But presumably (me mind reading again) you would like to persuade somebody. (Unless you are just venting, of course. Which is fine. We all need to do so occasionally.) If so, rants with no alternate path forward beyond "Don't do X!" aren't generally effective, at least in my experience.

If you wanted to take the Trump approach, and just walk away and let them slaughter each other (I'm clear you don't) that would be one thing. But if not, perhaps an occasional picture of how we get to Peace in Our Time would be enlightening. In the case of Israel, Hamas, and Hezbollah I'm not seeing one. But then, I'm not an expert.

Arguing for criminal sanctions is fine, but it still requires some persuasion. Not just to get charges brought, but to convince a jury to convict. It may seem like an ironclad, open and shut, case to you. But you might consider that you need to persuade your fellow citizens; the same folks who keep electing the people you want tried and convicted.

[wj]

Are they trying to hide genocide in plain sight?

I suspect they are doing exactly that. The religious fanatics in coalition with Bibi want genocide, both in Gaza and the West Bank. But they are aware that saying so would get a huge negative reaction in Israel. Not to mention pretty much forcing the US to cut all support. So they slow walk it, occasionally make gestures to confuse the issue, and calmly ignore insignificant details like casualties as an acceptable cost of getting what they want.

[nous]

According to the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide:

Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

Just so we can be talking about this in conventional terms under UN law.

https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/Genocide%20Convention-FactSheet-ENG.pdf

And to Donald's points, the US is supposed to have obligations under our role as signatories to the Convention:

• Obligation not to commit genocide (Article I as interpreted by the ICJ);
• Obligation to prevent genocide (Article I) which, according to the ICJ, has an extraterritorial scope;
• Obligation to punish genocide (Article I);
• Obligation to enact the necessary legislation to give effect to the provisions of the Convention (Article V);
• Obligation to ensure that effective penalties are provided for persons found guilty of criminal conduct according to the Convention (Article V);
• Obligation to try persons charged with genocide in a competent tribunal of the State in the territory of which the act was committed, or by an international penal tribunal with accepted jurisdiction (Article VI);
• Obligation to grant extradition when genocide charges are involved, in accordance with laws and treaties in force (Article VII), particularly related to protection granted by international human rights law prohibiting refoulment where there is a real risk of flagrant human rights violations in the receiving State.

...though the US has never really been much for holding itself to these obligations when we or one of our domestically significant allies is flirtatiously nibbling the ear of genocide.

Badly executed or not. Slow or not. Doesn't matter where treaty obligations are concerned.

[Donald]

Wj— One can’t rely too much on polls but I have seen polls ( or reports of polls) that say the majority of Americans favor an arms embargo on Israel. Often such things depend on the exact wording of the question. But I think it is accurate to say that a great many Americans are apppalled by what Israel is doing. Enough reporting of the consequences of our policies can be persuasive. I doubt most Americans ever heard anything about Yemen and that is probably more typical.

I don’t think democracy in the US works when it comes to foreign policy. That is, most people are not informed about the worst things we do and the politicians and officials and frankly much of the press keep it that way. Gaza is the exception. And when people do find out and oppose what we are doing, it doesn’t influence the policy. There are too many issues at stake at the ballot box and so voting is an ineffective way to influence our government on things like Gaza. If enough people do protest votes, Trump wins.

And politicians know this. And the foreign policy community doesn’t want to be pestered by the hoi polloi. They want to run the world. I think for many there are crude financial incentives— I mean, hardly any Westerner would like the Saudi government if they weren’t rich. Others are true believers in our nobility. But none of them want antiwar protestors to have any power and unless American troops are dying, they generally don’t. Except possibly thiis time but unfortunately if they change the course of the election we just get someone worse in every respect.

Voting is a useless exercise on this issue unless enough people decide that they want to have nominees who are not like Biden.

I don’t think anyone knows what Harris will do if she wins.

As for Israel, the U.S. has to make plain that they have passed our red lines and won’t be getting any more offensive weapons. They can also start paying out of their own pocket for whatever components of Iron Dome they need from us. Israel has no incentive to hold back if we support them without conditions.

Hezbollah has been restrained up until now. I am not sure what theur capabilities are after recent events. But theur demand has always been for a ceasefire in Gaza. The US and Israel don’t want the issues coupled. The US would prefer a world where only the US and its pals can act without restraint.

Hamas is probably deeply unpopular with the majority of Gazans for starting a war knowing full well how brutal the Israelis are. Sinwar ( who might be dead, last I read) has been open about this. I think there should be a ceasefire. I think the Hamas leadership, whoever is left, will find that they are not seen as heroes by the people who had to suffer from their decisions. ( By the way, I am not using the human shield argument. You can’t fight in Gaza without fighting in urban areas unless you want to stand out in the open to be bombed. )

[Donald]

So I think both Hamas and Hezbollah would welcome a ceasefire. Virtually all Gazans would. Friedman is probably right about one thing— Hamas will then have some explaining to do.

Israel needs to be treated like apartheid South Africa. I don’t think they are capable of reform without outside pressure. And they have been treated as this wonderful democracy for so long, with the US leaping to their defense, I am not sure that pressure will work either. But no, I am no expert myself. My impression is that people who can see both sides ( appalled by both Hamas and their own country’s behavior) are a smalll minority. Quite a few don’t like Bibi, but that is because Bibi is Trump without the charm.

[Donald]

And if Israel refuses to reform, we start distancing ourselves. We can have relations with plenty of countries without praising their lousy human rights record.

But I think there is too much emotional attachment for a divorce, so we should pressure for reform and stop being their enablers.

[GftNC]

I'm pretty much with Donald on all of that. While knowing that there is (or was in the fairly recent past) a sizeable part of the Israeli population who would not have agreed with any of this kind of "warfare", or the settlements, or many of the terrible things done under Bibi. I don't know now. Sigh.

On nous's genocide stuff (which I guess was mostly in response to Charles), since I was originally one of the most vocal commenters opposing the term in this context, I think Israeli actions now (and for some time past) easily meet the UN definition. I actually believe the UN definition is somewhat too broad for the crime of genocide (I think it should entail intent to extirpate a "race" in as much of its entirety as possible, but since there is no easily available definition of race that is too difficult to apply), but it is the one we have now, so that's that. Even if I could have my fantasy definition of genocide, I would still consider what Israel has done/is doing in Gaza a heinous war crime and appalling crime against humanity.

[wj]

Donald, I think we are in agreement in much of this.

• favor an arms embargo on Israel -- check.
• I don’t think democracy in the US works when it comes to foreign policy. Yes and no. Yes in the sense that there are a limited number of single issue voters on any particular bit of foreign policy. Nowhere near enough to impact election results.

  But no in the sense that voters have no influence on those policies. Who does have influence are members of Congress. In my observation, most members pay attention to what they hear from their constituents. Yes, there are some ideologues. And yes, members usually have some strong opinions of their own. But even those in safe seats (my Congressman being one) will push on something when they hear from enough of their constituents about it. ("Enough" being vastly short of enough that they would tip an election. A hundred or two would do it.) But polls alone, even back in the day when their results were meaningful, won't.

• The US would prefer a world where only the US and its pals can act without restraint. Sure. But then, that is true of absolutely every country. The only difference is that the US is in a position closer to that than most.
• As for Israel, the U.S. has to make plain that they have passed our red lines and won’t be getting any more offensive weapons. Check. I don't think this will have any effect at all on Netanyahu; he has too much personal stake in keeping the war going. Nor on his coalition. It would have an effect when next Israel has an election. But that isn't happening any time soon. Still worth doing. Just not short term effective.
• I think there should be a ceasefire. ... I think both Hamas and Hezbollah would welcome a ceasefire. Totally agree that there should be a ceasefire. And that Hezbollah would welcome one. About Hamas, I am less sure. At the moment, I think Israel's actions are recruiting new members for Hamas faster than they are killing current ones. And Hamas shows no signs that they care about the people of Gaza except in the very abstract.

All of the things we should do, and all of the things we think should happen, are, I think, a short term bandaid. I'm not sure there is a long term solution, at least one which has any chance of being implemented in any of our lifetimes. Even a ceasefire is unlikely to more that a pause to rearm.

[wj]

I see I got too wound up in this to tie it back to my original point. Which is that, to get even that tiny "flood" of letters to Congressmen which could have an impact on policy, you have to persuade people. And rants tend to have the opposite effect. Saying "There is a problem here. We jnow from experience elsewhere [i.e. not just from theory] that these steps will help.** We should do them." is far more likely to have an impact.

** Something like your passing reference to South Africa.

[GftNC]

I half suspect Biden is fine with all of this so long as the US isn’t dragged in. The civilian deaths are a bit of a PR problem.

Needless, to say, I have nothing but contempt for Biden

This is where I part ways with Donald, not that it makes any difference to my opinion about what is actually happening. I don't think Biden is fine with it, but that he can compartmentalise (as leaders probably have to do), is an old guy and has a kneejerk sympathy with Israel as a project, because of the 20th century history of antisemitism.

I've said before, and still think, that the SA apartheid comparison is a pretty good one.

[GftNC]

Oh no - RIP Maggie Smith. One of the greats.

[Hartmut]

Pausing operations to bring in and distribute polio vaccines.

Highly infectious diseases are a threat to Israel too, so this is just self-defense with good PR attached.

[Hartmut]

Oh no - RIP Maggie Smith. One of the greats.

There goes my hope that one day she would play Granny Weatherwax in a Pratchett adaptation.

[russell]

But a regime change in Iran could take the air out of it.

Of course! So easy!

[GftNC]

Hartmut, despite Israel's abominable acceptance of children as collateral damage in its Gaza campaign, I think that cynical remark displays uncharacteristic and unnecessary casual demonisation. Other people's MMV.

[Hartmut]

I believe that, if it had been something less notorious than polio (or measles), help would have taken much longer. And polio is a special case. It was marked for extinction a few years ago but rivalry between religious fundamentalists of several religions killed the effort on the home stretch* - a few month before the WHO intended to declare the decades long struggle successfully over. And now the whole fight has to begin anew. The radicals in the Israeli government probably do not care about Palestinian children at all but they have good reason to fear that not acting quickly risked a spread to Israel itself. And who could blame them for trying to also use that as a PR opportunity? It's stonecold realism and I do not imply ulterior motives there. They did not introduce the infection.
In Iraq a rare form of hepatitis began to spread after the US invasion and occupation because the public health system had broken down. The US did not introduce it but efforts to fight it iirc only really started when the Pentagon saw a risk of it spreading to US troops. So, I see both cases as a typical "I would not care but now it affects me too, so I have to." Human nature, unfortunately. For that matter, HIV/AIDS started as a mere 'gay plague' and was ignored by most governments until 'normal' people got it too. Or look at Ebola. As long as it stayed in Africa, the world (apart from some novelists and disaster movie makers) mostly ignored it. A handful of cases in Europe and America caused a panic and frantic governmnent efforts to fight it.

*Both Islamic and Christian fundamentalists in Africa and iirc both Hindu and Islamic ones on the Indian subcontinent spread the lie that the other side was running a chemical sterilization campaign disguised as vaccination. Before that deliberately spread rumor got stamped out, the beleaguered virus successfully broke out of the few remaining pockets and spread again to several neighbouring states.

[GftNC]

I am aware, thank you, of the history of polio's near eradication and the various forces which stopped it.

To me, it is not just polio's notoriety, it is the fact that it disproportionately affects children (under the age of five I believe), and leads, if they survive, to effects like lifelong paralysis. If you think it would have left Israel (including most particularly its public opinion) unmoved if there was no risk of it spreading to them, what other acts are you prepared to assume they would have been happy to commit? Is their appalling behaviour in their prosecution of the war in Gaza license to believe there is absolutely no atrocity they would not commit? Good to know.

Far be it from me to defend their behaviour in Gaza, and before, but it seems to me that this is the slippery slope to real and extremely worrying demonisation, and not just of "radicals in the Israeli government".

[Hartmut]

I would not call it an 'atrocity committed'. They did not introduce it and they did not actively try to block help. Both would be atrocities and to accuse them of either would indeed be demonisation.
I still think a less notorious illness would have resulted in far slower countermeasures. It would have created far less worldwide publicity and thus less pressure.
And, cynical me again, does it really matter HOW people die in war as collateral damage? Isn't it hypocritical to say 'blowing to pieces, starving, dying of exposure are just unavoidable side effects of war but death through a particular disease that is not even a bioweapon is beyond the pale'?
There were official statements that it was illogical to allow food in since Gaza is essentially siege warfare and feeding the enemy defied the very purpose of that. That would be an actually atrocious act - actively starving a civilian population in order to force the (not even affected) enemy leadership into submission.
Simply not caring about how exactly the collateral damage occurs is imo secondary.
What is not called for is attributing any major merit to the act of making an exception in this particular case. Defenders of Israel constantly praise the government for allowing any food in as a proof that the IDF is the most moral and humanitarian military in history. That is absurd. But how is this different from letting vaccines in? Except of course that we are used to mostly ignore starvation (of people of all ages) that constantly occurs in many places of the world but somehow we get emotional when it's mainly children dying of some disease that at least the older ones among us still remember as being something once close and personal.
As a German political satirist once put it, he was waiting for a newscaster to finally come up with 'many lost their lives - fortunately only men' [in reaction to the phrase very commonly used, if emphasis on the tragic nature of an event is intended: 'many lost their lives - among them women and children'].

Sorry for ranting.

[wj]

It would be interesting to know if Israel's religious fundamentalists are as anti-vaxx (for themselves**) as religious fundamentalists here. If so, the prospect of a disease spreading to them personally could have made a difference.

** As far as I have seen, anti-vaxxers can be pretty relaxed about those they dislike getting vaccinated.

[nous]

I hear tell, wj, that Google is willing to be your friend.

[GftNC]

Pausing operations to bring in and distribute polio vaccines.

This was the phrase to which you brought your cynical motivation. Not pausing operations to bring in and distribute polio vaccines would have been to commit an atrocity, of which mainly children would have been the victims. I certainly do not deny (which should be obvious by now) that the Israelis have committed atrocities in Gaza, but if you think they would have hindered delivery of polio vaccines to children, and that it would not have caused widespread condemnation amongst their own public, you are demonising the Israeli population as well as their leadership. (Parenthetically, in word as in deed, I don't understand what you mean by a "notorious disease".)

Contrary to what you say, I believe they did in the first days hinder delivery of food and water, and this was clearly a war crime. They have certainly committed war crimes, and as I have said, also crimes against humanity. But attributing allowing the passage and administration of polio vaccines to the Gazan children purely to self-interested motives seems to me to cross the line into true demonisation.

[CharlesWT]

If anyone is starving in Gaza, it's Hamas' fault. In some communications between Hamas members, there were complaints about not having enough storage space for the foreign aid they had intercepted. They steal the aid and sell it to the people who should have gotten it.

[GftNC]

Sorry for ranting

And sorry for going at you, too. But it's bad enough what they're doing, without attributing worse!

[Pro Bono]

Both Islamic and Christian fundamentalists in Africa and iirc both Hindu and Islamic ones on the Indian subcontinent spread the lie...

The last three countries with wild polio were Nigeria, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. In all three cases, Islamic lies against vaccination were a major factor.

We don't need to "both sides" this. Islam, in this respect, has been evil.

[CharlesWT]

Some years ago the CIA was accused of embedding operatives in NGOs distributing and administering vaccines in Pakistan. Not a good way to engender trust.

[Donald]

The two US agencies with expertise in this area disagree with you Charles.

https://www.propublica.org/article/gaza-palestine-israel-blocked-humanitarian-aid-blinken

A lot of people ( including me) think Blinken should be prosecuted for lying to Congress, though no doubt many in Congress wanted to be lied to on this subject.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

pathogens (viruses, bacteria, protozoa, etc) are the enemies of all humankind, and always have been.

Setting aside our intra-species squabbles to deal with the threat is just good sense. We can't 'negotiate' with them: they are trying to eat us.

[Donald]

Wj— I haven’t ranted in letters to politicians. Currently most of what I do is participate with some ( mostly older) peace activists in a local ( extremely peaceful) protest. I am not sure what we accomplish. We get some friendly honks from passing cars. One local guy with relatives in Israel has behaved badly, ripping signs out of people’s hands and hoping that every Gazan dies. But I wonder if protests do anything. They probably do something in the sense of showing some people care.

I am not sure what it would take to get politicians to change ther attitudes. I agree with Gftnc that Biden is reacting out of kneejerk sympathy because of 20th century antisemitism, and this is true of many others, but that attitude slides into a dismissal of the Palestinian case. People need to stop doing that.

I think the Biden attitude has been cynical, They openly opposed a ceasefire until it began to look like a threat to his campaign. I am pretty sure that with Biden and Blinken the Palestinian civilian death toll is a PR problem for US foreign policy and for his campaign initially and now the Harris campaign. If Harris wins, which I hope she does, it will have the unfortunate side effect of making them think this was a vindication of sorts.

As for long term solutions to the problem, I have difficulty seeing any. I would be fine with one state or two, if anyone asked me, but I can’t see either happening. And Gaza is a hellscape.

[russell]

perhaps relevant

h/t Adam Silverman at BJ

Haven't read the whole thing, I make no claim about the goodness of the reporting or analysis. It's just information, eat the meat and spit out the bones.

There are two communities who do not trust each other, each with legitimate historical grievances, trying to live in the same place. Every time they get within sight of a possible solution, somebody fucks it up.

There is so much blame to go around it's hard to know where to start.

[wj]

There are two communities who do not trust each other, each with legitimate historical grievances, trying to live in the same place. Every time they get within sight of a possible solution, somebody fucks it up.

The communities could probably muddle thru. But both of them have their small cadre of radicals and fanatics, who will only accept the eradication of the other community. They are the ones who repeatedly fuck things up.

Fantasy solution: build a huge stadium. Put the fanatics on the field, armed only with very dull knives. Last man breathing (not last man standing) is the winner. Everyone promises to acknowledge that he was right all along. And then deports him to some tiny isolated island on the edge of the Antarctic Ocean.

The proceeds from the event to be used to rebuild the area.

[Hartmut]

"notorious disease" as in
1) well-known (everyone has at least heard of it, although many may have never seen a victim personally)
2) feared (the very idea of it causes horror).

I get the impression that polio these days has a much greater fear factor attached to it than measles, although the latter in absolute numbers is the bigger killer. Cf. that anti-vaxxers' * first target after Covid was mandatory vaccination against measles for schoolkids. Anti-vaxxers (here in Germany too) even claim that kids should get the measles and as early as possible because - as they (falsely) claim - the disease is harmless and builds up the immune system, so keeping it from kids would actually be bad. I think in case of polio the fear has a reasonable correlation to the threat while for other diseases perception and actual threat can widely diverge in both directions.

I think the other big (traditional) three 'notorious' ones are the plague, leprosy and tuberculosis (cholera following at a significant distance). And I see a general misperception to their actual threat there too. The plague is easily treatable these days, leprosy can be controlled (treatment takes long time) but tuberculosis is a prime candidate for complete resistance to antibiotics. But the latter is not taken seriously anymore by most while the former instill fear even with isolated cases that reach the West (cf. the attempts of the GOP to tie leprosy to illegal immigration).

*I at first typed ant-vaxxers. How does one apply the needle to these armored critters? ;-)

[nous]

My anti-vaxx family members absolutely believe that the measles vaccine was not the reason why measles stopped being a public health concern. They'd like to make that claim about polio as well, except that they have a close family friend who contracted polio as a child, so they tread lightly around the edges of that particular disease.

None of it has a single iota of scientific legitimacy. It's all just conspiracy theory thinking bumping up against local community necessities.

[Donald]

I think the problem is deeper than some small number of fanatics in each community. It may start out with fanatics, almost by definition, but then the fanaticism takes root. And people embrace myths where their side is the morally perfect victim or at worst make make a few mistakes but the other side is pure evil. It is safe to say those attitudes almost completely dominate on both sides. But one side has most of the power.

And it is an attitude that dominates American political culture when it comes to foreign policy. I know a few of you think I am unhinged or extreme in my attitude towards Biden and most US politicians, but they really do see themselves, not as victims, but as the Good Guys by definition. They are the leaders of the free world against tyranny and oppression and terrorism and yet here they are, supplying weapons they know beyond any doubt will be dropped on civilians. I think ther reaction when the ICC prosecutor requested indictments of both Israeli and Hamas leaders was in some sense sincere. They really think it is absurd that Western leaders, in this case people they arm, could be guilty of war crimes like some nasty terrorist.

This is fanaticism and it isn’t okay just because one finds this is a universal attitude amongst powerful people. That is exactly the point. Our powerful people are fanatics. They can do terrible things and feel they are the good guys.

I used to say that Assad in Syria was reacting exactly as Israel would in a similar situation. The Syrian government wasn’t just facing pro democracy demonstrators. It started that way, but the armed rebels were Islamists. Hezbollah and Hamas were on opposite sides. The armed opposition, not just ISIS ( which constituted a third side) were fanatics even if romanticized by the West. Imagine a situation where the West armed Hamas.

And Assad and his Russian allies reacted with torture, massacres and carpet bombing. And Assad had popular support from ethnic communities who see more afraid of a rebel victory than of Assad. It should sound familiar. I didn’t expect my analogy— I made this exact one repeatedly to friends of mine repeatedly — would come so literally true.

Assad lived in Britain. I don’t think he is that much different from the Western figures who denounced him.

We ought to do better than this. We shouldn’t accept that our politicians are above the laws that are used to prosecute terrorists or dictators, as though by definition our side can’t do terrible things. And even aside from international law, Blinken lied to Congress and Biden is only pretending to abide by the Leahy Law.

Google the Dahiya doctrine sometime. All of Israel’s actions are in accord with it. It is no dfferent from how Russia behaved in Syria and literally no one has bombed civilian areas as intensely as Israel in the past 20 years.

[Donald]

From Rashida Tlaib’s Twitter account—

Our residents keep booking those "available flights," and they are canceled repeatedly, and guess what? The cost of airfare for the one available commercial flight is $8,000. When I told the
@StateDept
about the cost barrier, their reply is "we will provide them with a loan."

————————-

People are pointing out that the US provided charter flights to get US citizens out of Israel last October if they chose to leave, but the danger was from Hamas invaders or rockets. In this case it is only from US supplied bombs in air raids that destroy entire city blocks, so we will give you a loan.

[Donald]

The part below the horizontal dashed line was me, not Tlaib.

[GftNC]

I know a few of you think I am unhinged or extreme in my attitude towards Biden and most US politicians,

Definitely not unhinged. Maybe extreme, in that your expectations of how politicians and leaders should behave seem unknown in leaders anywhere in the world. But on the side of the angels, for sure.

they really do see themselves, not as victims, but as the Good Guys by definition. They are the leaders of the free world against tyranny and oppression and terrorism and yet here they are, supplying weapons they know beyond any doubt will be dropped on civilians

This is all absolutely true. But, like your "lesser evil" thinking on the election, I guess a lot of people here (certainly me) think they are, if not the Good Guys, a lesser evil than all the others. Certainly in domestic policies, which I know you acknowledge about Biden. And not him alone: I can't think of a single leader of the "democratic West" who enriches himself corruptly and obscenely at the expense of his people - with the possible exception of Trump. And where foreign policy is concerned, I do think that the intricate web of alliances, and possible repercussions of their rupture with consequent opening up of pathways for tyrants to walk through, entail such complex calculations that what seems the obviously right thing to do looks different when leaders are fully informed. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong. But it is like the old trolleycar thought experiment, maybe you have to be prepared to kill x number of people (or have them die by your actions) in order to avoid the killing of 100 x.

[Donald]

“ do think that the intricate web of alliances, and possible repercussions of their rupture with consequent opening up of pathways for tyrants to walk through, entail such complex calculations that what seems the obviously right thing to do looks different when leaders are fully informed. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong. But it is like the old trolleycar thought experiment, maybe you have to be prepared to kill x number of people (or have them die by your actions) in order to avoid the killing of 100 x.”

Totally disagree. The burden of proof is on the person supplying the bombs or dropping the bombs to justify what they are doing and only in the most extreme circumstances could that be done. Every leader says they are doing the right thing. They will always say there are “ complex calculations”.

We have laws on the conduct of war. Israel is flagrantly violating them. We have laws about supplying weapons to countries that violate the laws of war. Biden is violating them. We have laws about lying to Congress about these circumstances. Blinken violated them.

We don’t have the rule of law in this country. We have powerful people who squash human beings like bugs and expect to be praised for their empathy and decency. Biden had the extraordinary gall to say last July that nobody had done more for Palestinians than he had. Given what Gaza looks like, what sort of grotesque gibbering fool say something like that? Trump would. Biden did.

So no, I don’t think Biden is some genius playing 11 d chess. I think he is an idiot. There was an article in politico last fall that said he was patting himself on the back for his wisdom in embracing Bibi and also thinking that his careful management of the Gaza crisis would make him look good in the campaign.

Calling him an idiot is charitable. But again, it isn’t just about him. It is about people with power who think themselves to be decent by definition, giving themselves permission to inflict massive suffering on innocents. They should show their sincerity by willingly going to jail for the crimes they commit in the name of avoiding bigger disasters.

The philosopher who invented the trolley car example should have been strapped to a track by himself, with 100 other people strapped to the alternative track, and then made the decisions to have himself run over. Always put yourself or someone you care about in the position of the innocent person being killed if one wishes to make that argument. Or imagine yourself facing the family of the victim, alone and unarmed, explaining why you did it.

Let Biden go to Gaza and brag about all he has done for them and why the others had to die.

Anyway, the world sees what Western morality is in practice. It is the morality of any terrorist group.

[Donald]

Here is the official Harris statement about the killing of Nasrallah. Biden’s statement is almost the same but a bit longer—

————-

Hassan Nasrallah was a terrorist with American blood on his hands. Across decades, his leadership of Hezbollah destabilized the Middle East and led to the killing of countless innocent people in Lebanon, Israel, Syria, and around the world. Today, Hezbollah’s victims have a measure of justice.

I have an unwavering commitment to the security of Israel. I will always support Israel’s right to defend itself against Iran and Iran-backed terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis.

President Biden and I do not want to see conflict in the Middle East escalate into a broader regional war. We have been working on a diplomatic solution along the Israel-Lebanon border so that people can safely return home on both sides of that border. Diplomacy remains the best path forward to protect civilians and achieve lasting stability in the region.

——-

Not one word about the people in the destroyed buildings who died. This is an endorsement of the air strike. A measure of justice. One country has the right to defend itself. Palestinians and others might get some kind of happy ending, those that survive, when the godlike rulers of the United States and Israel generously decide to grant them this using a process called “ diplomacy” that involves a lot of talking while we kill lots and lots of children. And bombs. Lots of bombs for justice dispensing. Eventually we will stop and then maybe we can talk some more.

And I am not crying for Nasrallah. I just don’t think he was any worse than Western officials.

[wj]

the world sees what Western morality is in practice. It is the morality of any terrorist group.

Just as a thought experiment, which governments (and their behavior) would not fit that of a terrorist group? Preferable limited to those with the capacity to behave badly. But don't feel like that's a hard and fast requirement,

[Donald]

Any government which doesn’t support terrorism or war crimes would fit the bill. I don’t have a list. So is the argument that we can supply bombs to destroy Gaza because that’s what powerful people do? Okay, but I would be fine if we just stopped using moralistic language to justify our foreign policy decisions. Stop the gibbering about terrorism and one country’s right to defend itself. Or use the language, but be honest. Or, just as many or most countries used to practice slavery and then people said “ we should stop doing this”, we should stop assuming we have the right to support war criminals. Wouldn’t that be a nice change of pace, , to be what we claim to be.

Real life trolley problem— these are common in war. My favorite would, be the Battle off Samar, where due to Admiral Halsey’s blunder a Japanese fleet of battleships, cruisers, and destroyers came upon a small American fleet of destroyers, destroyer escorts and escort carriers. No carrier of any sort is ever supposed to be in gun range of an enemy fleet and escort carriers are slow, so this was a freaking disaster. The American admiral on the scene, I think, ordered the destroyers and destroyer escorts to attack the Japanese fleet, which was basically condemning many or most of them to death to give the bulk of the men a chance to escape. It worked. But of course that is war and people on occasion, preferably very rare occasions or something has gone wrong, know they are going to be called upon to do something heroic and possibly suicidal.

I have always wondered why that hasn’t been made into a Hollywood movie because it seems like something a scriptwriter made up but it actually happened. My guess is that you need Navy cooperation and maybe they wouldn’t want Halsey looking bad. He was a great admiral early in the war but made a few mistakes later. Or maybe nobody has thought of imaking a movie out of it, which is strange.

Not really the same as saying “Well, I gotta keep giving Bibi bombs to kill civilians because even though I claim I don’t want him doing this, he won’t stop so I will give him more bombs and leak stories about how upset I am.”

[GftNC]

We have laws on the conduct of war. Israel is flagrantly violating them. We have laws about supplying weapons to countries that violate the laws of war. Biden is violating them. We have laws about lying to Congress about these circumstances. Blinken violated them.

No argument there, Donald. I don't think you're interested in praise, but moral clarity such as yours is necessary. It's just hard to see how action based on it would play out in the real world, that's all. And maybe that's because nobody (as far as I know) has ever demonstrated it. Maybe Jimmy Carter in certain ways. And unfortunately, that turned out to be electorally unsuccessful. And as I have always said: you have to be in power to actually do anything, and particularly anything good.

[GftNC]

And of course I know you know this, Donald, but the whole point of the trolleycar question is that there are only 2 choices, and neither allows for your suggested one of personal sacrifice/heroism. So you're right, real life war examples (and possibly some others) can entail personal heroism, but in the trolleycar problem that route is not available. The fact that it is hypothetical does not make it useless to contemplate.

Always put yourself or someone you care about in the position of the innocent person being killed if one wishes to make that argument.

The moral person should certainly think about it, but how does that help? You are still in the position of having to save x lives, rather than 100 x. It is just one more example of that most hated conundrum: the greater evil or the lesser evil.

[nous]

I don't think that Biden, or Harris, or any person who is put into that position to make these sorts of strategic decisions, will ever take the sort of moral stance that activists are asking for. I don't think that they can. It's not about brilliance and 11-dimensional chess or anything like that. I simply don't think that any current Western leader has the leverage to shift Israel's policy in the short term. I'm down for all of the steps we have discussed here WRT Israel, but even if those steps were to be taken right now, Bibi could still push forward with his attacks. In all likelihood that is what Bibi would do, even ramping up his efforts to assert Israel's independence, and to pile pressure on the current administration while we are close to a pivotal electoral moment.

Bibi ain't gonna blink before November. He's going to push this as hard and as far as he dares while Biden and Harris try to keep the situation in the region (and their own position at home) steady enough to not tip a bunch of disaffected voters towards Trump.

It's not that they are playing a genius game of chess. They don't ever get to actually play a full game of chess. No world leader does. They inherit a board position that is the result of a bunch of conflicting strategies at use by the people who came before them, and they have to try to improve our board position for however many turns they get agency over.

And with Biden especially, I think he's playing a conservative and defensive game because he's afraid the whole board is going to be overturned if he's not careful. And now he's also trying hard not to shift anything too radically before he has to hand it off to Harris, because he doesn't want to saddle her with a bigger mess than what we already have.

I spend a lot of time thinking about the plight of people caught in terrible conditions with terrible choices to be made. I think it is morally important to try to get my students to think about these situations, too, because empathy and cooperation are the only path through the situation we have built for ourselves. In the long run, our decisions have to align - on balance - with those two principles.

I don't think, however, that empathy and cooperation are always the best tactical decision. What happens when we are not yet in a position to win, but we are definitely, catastrophically, in a position to lose if we try to act morally in that moment?

This is the reason why I am a teacher, and not a politician. I don't want to be in a position where I cannot choose to act in accordance with what I belive to be morally correct. But I recognize that the world often is arrayed in ways that run counter to moral justice, and that sometimes we have to hold our moral cards longer than we wish in order to have a chance to make a positive difference. The people who make those choices cannot think the way that I do and still do what is required to stretch the runway of possibility a bit longer so that we can give hope a chance to land.

[GftNC]

I completely agree with nous. And I should have made clear, that in no way do I think Biden, or indeed anybody else, is playing genius 11 dimensional chess:

They don't ever get to actually play a full game of chess. No world leader does. They inherit a board position that is the result of a bunch of conflicting strategies at use by the people who came before them, and they have to try to improve our board position for however many turns they get agency over.

Exactly right.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

nous said it a lot better than I was going to, in a comment that I deleted before posting.

Which was basically a question: how many innocents dying is an "acceptable price" to reduce the probability of Trump winning from 50% to 5%?

Which is a lot more quantitative than these choices ever are, in reality. But that's the kind of calculation that we're talking about.

[Donald]

This is driving me absolutely nuts, so I will say this and do the laundry.

Biden put himself into this position. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/biden-obama-divide-closely-support-israel-rcna127107

I didn’t look it up, but he has poured massive amounts of munitions into Israel since Oct 7. Israeli generals have said our aid is crucial.

If he genuinely put any priority on Israel’s carpet bombing tactics, he would have cut off the spigot. He has had 11 months and all he did was cut off one shipment of 2000 lb bombs. He just put through another 8.7 billion dollars of aid. Yeah, at this point Bibi has him over a barrel, given that November is coming up. Biden put himself there.

Also, if it weren’t for the domestic political risk, I don’t think Biden actually disagrees much with Bibi. If Bibi destroys Hamas and gratify weakens Hezbollah and Iran stays contained, I think he sees that as a win and the civilian casualties are a PR problem to be finessed. It is embarrassing that Israel no longer pretends to care about a two state solution, but that too is a PR problem so long as there is no effective military force threatening Israel.

You guys keep talking about Biden like he is balancing tough choices, building up some sort of picture of a President doing his best and while it would make a good West Wing episode, the evidence is that the Administration is not in reality upset with much of anything Bibi has done except on PR grounds. He is acting concerned for votes. Initially he thought he would be perceived as some wise foreign policy leader, sort of like Bush after 9/11, the calm resolute guy coming to the aid of our ally. His initial reaction to reports of civilian deaths in large numbers was to sneer that he didn’t believe numbers coming from Gaza and Kirby dutifully echoed his boss. That didn’t go over well, so he changed. It took him months and the campaign season for him to switch from openly opposing a ceasefire to “ working tirelessly” for a ceasefire, which meant for months pretending that Israel was on board and Hamas was not, before Bibi just made that impossible since he has his own base to play to.

This isn’t some moral issue that has Biden worried. He doesn’t care how many civilians die— he supplies the weapons that kill them. He cares only that the bad PR might lose votes in crucial states, so he has to fake it. So if you say he is walking a tightrope, yes, but only a domestic political one.

Do you really think a guy who says “ Nobody has done more for the Palestinians than me” actually feels empathy for them? To me it shows a level of deranged narcissism and ego and sheer blindness that would be worthy of Trump. I mean, even someone faking compassion should have thought to himself “ Can I really say that given what Gaza looks like now, given that people in Michigan have lost up to 100 members of their extended family?” You can’t say anything that could explain that statement as showing empathy. It is the exact opposite of empathy.

Biden has no incentive to be a decent human being on this issue because there is insufficient political pressure for him to be one. And there won’t be sufficient pressure if people make excuses for political leaders. There are very few Presidents who deserve empathy, who probably really do agonize over their choices. Mr. “ Nobody has done more for Palestinians” is not one of them.

Gftnc— Point to the 100 times as many potential victims that justify murdering over ten thousand children. Biden had to support Bibi as he committed mass murder or something bad will happen. The burden of proof is on the war criminal to do that and yes, if people make such decisions they had damn well better feel the moral weight and be very very clear who the other 100 x people are.

I hate that stupid thought experiment for the same reason I hate the ticking time bomb one. It is artificially contrived BS meant to justify something obscene with n imaginary clear cut alternative that is worse.

[nous]

And then there is the questions of which side gets to suffer how much. Those are harder to balance because often the side that has already done most of the suffering gets their suffering prolonged because their suffering is of less tactical and political importance than lesser suffering somewhere else.

I'm sure we all have examples close to hand in our thoughts.

The eye of justice is bound to get blackened in such a world. And yet, we have to find reasons to keep demanding, and expanding, justice, and learn to work despite the pain of moral injury.

[nous]

Donald - when Biden said that "Nobody has done more for Palestinians:"

-do you think that he is speaking candidly, for himself, advocating for his own actions, or that he is speaking strategically, with particular audiences and contexts in play?

-what audience(s) do you think he is speaking to in that moment, and for what purpose(s)?

My own best guess (based on a few years experience doing crisis communications work for corporations) is that the actual Palestinians who are upset with him are outside of the top three priority audiences that he is trying to navigate through when he makes a statement like this. Again, compartmentalization.

[GftNC]

Nothing justifies killing ten thousand children. But, just as one hypothetical possibility (the first that springs to my mind):

Biden refuses to arm the Israelis, Trump boasts about how no-one has done more for Israel than he has, and wins the election. It is far from impossible that 100,000 children or a million, in the US or elsewhere in the world (Ukraine? Poland if Putin marches in? the possibilities are legion), die as a result of a second Trump presidency. Half a million Americans died of Covid during his administration, for example, while he said it would disappear "like a miracle".

That is only one of a myriad hypothetical possibilities. I am not defending Biden, and certainly not the Israelis. But your counsel of moral certainty cannot survive the real world, where all these choices are between innumerable greater and lesser evils.

And, for clarity, I am not suggesting that Biden cannot and should not be seriously criticised. It is just that the tone of some of the criticism ignores the fact that he could possibly be acting this way for less narcissistic and callous motives than you ascribe to him.

[liberal japonicus]

We've just gotten a new Prime Minister here in Japan, and despite it being a crowded field, it was a remarkably low-key contest, as compared with the US and UK. I think one reason is that Japan/Japanese automatically compensate for what nous talks about just above, about audiences and messages. Speaking from a 'western' perspective (which is really a US/UK one), there is a notion of a unitary person and if there are contradictions between statements, there is a lie to be uncovered. In Japan, there is an notion that a person has multiple identities and how they express themselves to one group will be different to how they express themselves to another. Sometimes when this happens (and this happens on the personal level as well as the political level), I have to grit my teeth, because it is often used as a way to avoid conflict but to avoid facing up to challenges and maintaining the status quo, (possibly why Japan has been ruled by a single political party for almost the entire postwar period) but I do see the utility.

The current (imo faux) kerfluffle that is riling up the British press is Keir Starmer accepting various gifts or donations from Labour supporters. Some of it is tone deaf (like glasses and clothes) but to me, the same press would do a deep dive as to why a politician doesn't dress snappily enough. I'd be interested in GftNC's take on it, here's a Guardian article

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/sep/18/keir-starmer-100000-in-tickets-and-gifts-more-than-any-other-recent-party-leader

[GftNC]

lj, it's late here, and I'm now on my phone, so will give you more dtail tomorrow. But briefly, I think accepting the gifts showed bad judgement, but was not against the rules, and pales in significance compared to eg the Tories' corruption in awarding billions of pounds of contracts for (often faulty) equipment to VIP pals during the pandemic. There's a concerted attack against Labour going on, which considering they've been in power for less than two months and inherited a shambles is really out of order. More tomorrow....

[novakant]

I'm not sure how useful it is trying to evaluate a president's morality and psychology of individual presidents - chances are that simply by virtue of their position none of them will come across as very good human beings.

I would even go further and say that as president you need to have a capability to compartmentalize that would be judged as psychopathic in regular citizens.

What I find more worrying is how the shared moral standards in international relations, the post WW2 consensus and adherence to international law, have been contiunously slipping since the Bush 2 presidency. Now we are basically left with "might makes right" thinking, since most of those purporting to uphold international law have discredited themselves thoroughly.

And judging by what you can grasp from social media, the general public seems to have no idea that international law is supposed to apply to all actors. Most people seem to think simply in terms of in- and out-groups, whereby the latter have no rights whatsoever.

[novakant]

Sorry, the first sentence should read:

I'm not sure how useful it is to try to evaluate the morality and psychology of individual presidents.

[liberal japonicus]

Most people seem to think simply in terms of in- and out-groups, whereby the latter have no rights whatsoever.

It's interesting, for the past 30 years, living in Japan where high barriers for immigrants and a culture that enshrines in-group, I've had to gingerly argue with people about why this is backward and it doesn't ultimately serve the country. Yet now, it seems that the rest of the world is moving to Japan's default position. It's disheartening and painful to watch, especially when one assumed (like I did) that Japan should be catching up with the rest of te world rather than foreshadowing it.

[Priest]

A portion of the movie "In Harm's Way" (1965) includes a highly fictionalized version of the action at Samar, so it hasn't been ignored by Hollywood.

[CharlesWT]

"There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen." —Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

[wj]

for the past 30 years, living in Japan where high barriers for immigrants and a culture that enshrines in-group, I've had to gingerly argue with people about why this is backward and it doesn't ultimately serve the country.

Is there any sign that the Japanese are beginning to figure out that their national demographics are going to require them to accept immigrants if the nation is to survive? Or are the cultural barriers still too high to allow reality to intrude on that subject?

P.S. I note that China has a similar problem. Not yet as advanced, but very real. So far, the government seems to be focused on trying to persuade women to just have more children. But built in cultural misogyny makes persuasion quite difficult.

In both cases, the xenophobia in Europe, let alone the US, seems incredibly mild.

[CharlesWT]

So far, the government seems to be focused on trying to persuade women to just have more children.

Which could lead to being forced to have children. They had forced abortions in the past. Why not forced pregnancies in the future?

[GftNC]

lj, on reflection, I don't have much more to add. Except to say that the campaign against Starmer has several different threads (e.g. against his chief of staff), and looks as if it is coming from the left, and possibly some infighting within his own staff. I only hope that they manage to pull something off soon to stop the rot - it's very frustrating since I do believe that their approach will eventually undo a lot of the Tory damage, particularly if they succeed in getting a second term (this campaign has seriously damaged their always slightly unstable popularity). As I repeat ad nauseam, you have to be in power to get anything done.

[GftNC]

Oh no! Kris Kristofferson - one of my greatest crushes of all time. And a terrific song writer. RIP

[liberal japonicus]

Is there any sign that the Japanese are beginning to figure out that their national demographics are going to require them to accept immigrants if the nation is to survive? Or are the cultural barriers still too high to allow reality to intrude on that subject?

I would say that there isn't, but I don't know. People make the case and there are a lot more foreigners around. If I were doing south asian languages like Tamil and Sinhala, I would have more than enough informants, cause there are so many getting employed at convenience stores. The weak yen has opened the floodgates for tourists and there is some pushback. But the management of all this seems to work a lot better than what I'm seeing in the West, where any kind of opening allows demagogues to take off.

I'm just posting something about that, I'd welcome discussion there (or here, I'm easy going)

[Donald]

“ that he could possibly be acting this way for less narcissistic and callous motives than you ascribe to him.”

The evidence is that he is in fact morally blind.. I again can point to his statements, most recently the one in July. Sure, we could fantasize about some other person genuinely torn up because he had to side with Israel— one could imagine a conventional world war where once again we fight alongside sone horrific allies but that is not the case here.

Biden adopted Trump’s dream of trying to build an alliance between Israel, the Saudis and other Arab monarchies against Iran and its alies and that, along with domestic politics, is what motivates him. The civilian deaths are barely even a secondary consideration and if they could be kept on the far back pages of the newspaper and mentioned about as often as Yemen, with virtually no protests that anyone ever heard of, he wouldn’t have to pretend to care. That is the common situation.

As for moral certainty, it is the people who supply bombs to people who drop them on apartment buildings who are showing extraordinary arrogance, yet somehow we are supposed to lean over backwards and imagine that there has to be a good reason for it. The reason is simply that US officials think they have the unquestionable right to do things that they call war crimes when Russia does them.

I watch some of the press conferences where reporters ask about the latest atrocity and the spokespeople simply say the same things each time, which I could quote from memory. Basically, they will ask the Israelis for more information, urge them to do a thorough investigation, blah,blah blah. They know in a week there will be something new and they won’t be asked again about atrocity X and if they are they just say they have nothing new to add. It’s farcical. You can’t possibly watch these things and think any of it means anything. Bibi knows it.

But novakant is right in that the problem is much deeper. We have a political culture where supporting mass murder is normal. We can’t talk about international law because we have no more use for it than the dictators we criticize. Biden said America is back and talks about democracies vs authoritarians but it is delusional.

Nous— he was talking to a reporter from a Black cultural magazine I hadn’t heard of, based in Michigan. I don’t think there was an audience physically present but would have to check. I think he was speaking to people in general. He gets contentious when criticized— weeks before the disastrous debate the WH had some TikTokkers come in order to reach the youth vote and. one asked him ( in a civil tone but it was implicitly critical) and initially he responded in a professional way, and then after speaking to someone else briefly, came back and lost his temper, threatening to toss the guy’s phone as far as he could, bragging that he had a good arm. It was like the golf handicap moment in the Trump debate. Apart from my moral contempt for him, I think he is losing it and people were kidding themselves about that.

But the deeper problem is with our foreign policy establishment, which simply doesn’t think international law applies to the West and cannot imagine a world where a western leader could be put on trial by the ICC. Sinwar, sure, if he is still alive, or Putin if he could be arrested without nuclear war, but Bibi? Let alone our people?

Back when the US debated whether we should join the ICC, Republicans opposed it because they didn’t want our official subjected to its authority. Democrats said there was no danger — we had a functioning court system which meant the ICC would have no reason to step in. Which was ludicrous, but they were only thinking of low ranking soldiers. A Presidential war criminal is unthinkable.

[liberal japonicus]

Thanks GftNC, for the comment. I got that it was from the media, but didn't get that it was coming from the left, though I see that a Labour MP has resigned (though Politico says she was a 'top' Labour MP?)
https://www.politico.eu/article/rosie-duffield-labour-mp-resign-decry-greed-power-gifts-scandal-waheed-alli-keir-starmer-party/

[Donald]

Actually the most recent statement was the official reaction to Nasrallah’s assassination. Absolutely nothing was said about the method. You can watch it online. The explosions are immense. Several apartment buildings are destroyed. Biden and Harris basically applaud Nasrallah’s death as a terrorist leader and say nothing about the civilians. In a way it is refreshing. This is who we are. This is what we support. These are the rules of war as we choose to interpret them.

Perhaps we owe Putin an apology.

[novakant]

I had never heard of her before lj and I follow UK politics quite closely. Apparently she has been in a longstanding conflict with the party about trans issues .

Starmer's acceptance of gifts doesn't look good though. For me it's less the money than the thought that he can't or doesn't want to afford his own clothes and glasses

[Donald]

Long piece about Hezbollah from a critic. It is nuanced, a word I sometimes see in the NYT deployed against protestors, but only as a rhetorical weapon and not something they do themselves.

https://www.hauntologies.net/p/hezbollah-10-things-you-need-to-know

[Donald]

I don’t know if the consensus is as strong as this ex diplomat says, but I have read claims that many people inside the State Dep and elsewhere strongly disagree with Biden and Blinken. Biden sees himself as a foreign policy guru, basically believing his own press.

From Twitter—

stunned (but not surprised) by how the US maintains this huge well-resourced foreign policy establishment and then just doesn't listen to it. the consensus blob position is to withhold arms shipments to force a ceasefire. full stop. only the white house disagrees at this point.
11:27 AM · Sep 30, 2024
·

A-100 gecs
@PinstripeBungle
·
5h
these are not crypto-leftists or antizionists by ANY means this is just the logical move at this point if your job is to preserve stated US policy goals (two state solution regional stability blah blah) and the degree of rupture between the institutions and leadership is huge

A-100 gecs
@PinstripeBungle
·
5h
the generation before me talked and felt this way about the Iraq war but at least then there was a substantial institutional faction within State/CIA/DoD who were pilled on the neocon vision. that isn't there now. it's just Biden and Blinken with crusty boomer pro-Israel feelings

A-100 gecs
@PinstripeBungle
·
5h
the only rough analogy I can think of for this sort of institutional decay is "I spent all my money on this huge military I cannot mobilize because I'm scared they'll overthrow me" it's like I funded thirty years of MENA experts and they're all telling me I'm a dumbass oh no

[Donald]

Different Twitter account — Akbar Shahid Ahmed, the diplomatic reporter for HuffPost—

Asked a well-placed US official about the Biden administration's framing of the imminent Israeli ground operation in Lebanon as "limited."

Response: "It will be big. Everyone who says it’s going to be 'limited' is a white man who thinks a million dead brown people is 'limited.'"
Quote

Michael Young
@BeirutCalling
·
2h
Recall that Israel’s incursion in 1982 was also billed as a limited incursion. But as Sharon understood, there will always be someone shooting at you from the next hill, so self-defense mandates taking that hill…until they reached Beirut.

[Donald]

I should have just linked to the article.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/lebanon-invasion-israel-biden_n_66fae3cee4b029b6b7a6f0dc

Hopefully the article is wring.

[wj]

it's just Biden and Blinken with crusty boomer pro-Israel feelings.

Giving some reason to hope that Harris, as a non-Boomer, will take a different path.

[Pro Bono]

Harris was born in 1964. Doesn't that make her a boomer?

[CharlesWT]

Yes, the last year.

[hairshirthedonist]

Generations are very well defined and sharply delineated.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

"Generations are very well defined and sharply delineated."

Does that mean that it's time for the traditional "when did the 21st Century start?" argument? Or is it being saved for Festivus?

[Donald]

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/09/30/us-israel-military-hezbollah-00181797

The Biden Administration supported a ceasefire and attacking Hezbollah because of their quantum superposition approach to foreign policy. Decoherence appears to be mucking this up.

[Donald]

Article from last December about Biden’s long history of defending Israel— it reached embarrassing levels.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/12/how-joe-biden-became-americas-top-israel-hawk/

[GftNC]

Thanks GftNC, for the comment. I got that it was from the media, but didn't get that it was coming from the left, though I see that a Labour MP has resigned (though Politico says she was a 'top' Labour MP?)

Sorry lj, I've been dipping in and out for a few days, so missed this. Rosie Duffield was treated very badly by the party for her gender critical views, before public opinion started to turn with various new developments, and Labour had to row back a bit for (mainly?) electoral reasons. So although her resignation letter was damaging, in context it was not seen as much of a left/right thing, despite the examples she gives of what she sees as unacceptable current Labour policy (with which policies lefties certainly do vociferously disagree). But her citing of the "sleaze factor" rings very hollow when you compare Labour with the alternative, and everybody knows it!

No, my reason for saying that much of the machination against Starmer comes from the left of the party has come purely from personal conversations with (albeit unusually knowledgeable and involved) friends. My two leftiest (incidentally two of my absolutely closest) friends, one of whom is or certainly was an out and out Corbynite, and still sympathetic to that wing, say that most of it is coming from the left.

Of course the Tories are enjoying it, but standing back a bit because a cursory examination shows how truly corrupt they were in office. And again in fairness, I have to also add that a certain amount of the leaking etc seems to be coming from inside number 10, and stems from people who object to Sue Gray's way of dealing with things, and from members of Starmer's team who conflict over which of either a) electoral popularity both short-term or medium-term, or b) long-term likelihood of success in delivering real change and improvement of public services is most important. Obviously, in order to succeed in b) you need a second term, so a) must be taken into account, but at the moment the holders of these two views do not seem to be able to deal well together.

Let's hope the two camps can come together, because the welfare of the country depends upon it. And let's hope that the people who say this (particularly the so-called "sleaze" story) is minor in the long run, and will soon blow over, are right.

[Donald]

A letter to Biden and Harris from 99 American doctors and nurses and other health care workers who have been in Gaza

http://www.gazahealthcareletters.org/usa-letter-oct-2-2024

One excerpt—

“ Children are universally considered innocents in armed conflict. However, every single signatory to this letter saw children in Gaza who suffered violence that must have been deliberately directed at them. Specifically, every one of us who worked in an emergency, intensive care, or surgical setting treated pre-teen children who were shot in the head or chest on a regular or even a daily basis.”

Another —

“ Virtually every child under the age of five whom we encountered, both inside and outside of the hospital, had both a cough and watery diarrhea.”

[Donald]

Another article about bad faith in the Biden Administration and its decisions to keep arming Israel.

https://www.propublica.org/article/israel-gaza-america-biden-administration-weapons-bombs-state-department

[GftNC]

An interesting article about the changing demographic in Israel, and a potential brain drain:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/06/as-war-and-religion-rages-israels-secular-elite-contemplate-a-silent-departure

[wj]

It was one thing when the ultraorthodox were a tiny minority that the country could afford to indulge. It's a very different matter when they are driving government policy across the board. While still refusing to pull their weight in supporting the nation.

So, not surprising that those with the skills to prosper elsewhere are departing. And it's the kind of phenomena which tends to cascade.

[nous]

Shades of the Iranian Revolution, but without a Shah to depose and the secular Israelis are quiet quitting?

One more theocratic state in potentio?

It seems to me, though, that there are many more religiously inclined people that are committed to pluralism, and thus to liberalism, than there are fundamentalist types - in Europe and North America at least, clearly the Middle East and India are a problem. makes me wonder where the pluralists end up settling and making a stand against the theocracies and illiberal states?

[wj]

At a guess, those pluralists who can will head for places which aren't headed towards becoming theocracies. Which will be a boon to their destinations. And an added problem for the theocracies they leave behind.

The question is, of course, where will the non-theocracies be? And how many immigrants can they absorb? At a guess, Australia, Argentina, Canada, and (one hopes) the US.

China (if you count them a non-theocracy, despite the official status of Xi Jin-Ping Thought) might be a possibility, except for the level of xenophobia. Their demographics could drive them towards change. But not, I suspect, fast enough to be significant.