Fresh new hells

by liberal japonicus

The title is a nod to a quote often attributed to Dorothy Parker. I thought it was apropos, and this is your place for those observations. As Ezra Klein observed (via Scott Lemieux at LGM), these are loyalty tests, so absurdity is the point. This Campos post at LGM has pics of the body art of the incoming SecDef and this, from the Daily Show, has him flogging soap.

So a thread to see how low they can go.

Comments

[wj]

So a thread to see how low they can go..

Put another way, how paltry are our imaginations, as we try to predict the next piece of insanity.

[Hartmut]

Well, at least MTG didn't get in. She committed the only unpardonable sin to draw the spotlight from Him to herself too often and too strongly.

[Hartmut]

Well, at least MTG didn't get in. She committed the only unpardonable sin to draw the spotlight from Him to herself too often and too strongly.

[Hartmut]

Sorry for double posting. There was an error message about service unavailable, so I assumed that the post didn't upload.

[Hartmut]

Radical populist proposal for a reform of the US Supreme Court
To be filed under: Why put a limit on absurdity?

The US Supreme Court - henceforth The August Supreme Grand Court of the Disparate States of America - consists of 300 Supreme Justices (SJ) including 30 Supreme Grand Justice Governors (SGJG) and 1 August Chief Supreme Grand Justice. (ACSGJ).
Each state legislature elects one SJ who serves at its discretion and can be recalled and replaced at any time.
Each senator selects his or her own SJ who serves as long as the senator does and cannot be replaced by him or her (buyer beware!) but only by a 2/3rd majority of the 99 other senator selected justices. Senators can be held legally liable for the behaviour of the SJ they select, no immunity applies.
The president appoints 149 SJ who will serve as long as he or she does does and cannot be replaced by him or her (buyer beware!) but only by a 2/3rd majority of the other presidentially appointed justices.
The ACSGJ is elected by the Electoral College, is thus part of the presidential ticket and is subject to he same impeachment rules as the president and vice president.
The SGJG are elected by the whole court for a period of one year or alternatively by lot. Each SGJG presides over a senate of 9 other SJ newly composed for each case.
Court cases are allotted to a senate by lot (3 SJ + 1 SGJG) and selection by the plaintiffs and defendants (3 SJ each).
The Court has to take any case referred to it by a lower court and any case brought by an entity legally imbued with standing.
Cases can be appealed to the August Special Supreme Grand Court senate consisting of the 30 SGJG and the ACSGJ.
SJ have to be citizens at least 25 years of age and at maximum 75 years old.
SJ leaving the court will automatically lose their citizenship and right of residence for life and will be retired to Inaccessible Island ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inaccessible_Island ) to be leased from Britain for that purpose.
In special cases other retirement spots can be designated that fulfill the criteria of remoteness and adverse climate.
Attempts to return to any US state, territory or place of comparable status will be treated as a capital offense.
Violations of the oath of office will be punished by infection with necrotizing fasciitis to be applied to the face with no access to antibiotics before the conditions get life threatening. In milder cases Borreliosis can be used as an alternative. Leprosy only on special appeal.
As an alternative for retirement SJ can chose to be cast in bronze (that is encased in molten bronze) to be displayed at a public place of their choice.

[Ugh]

The Trump administration will be worse than you can imagine even accounting for the fact that it will be worse than you can imagine.

[wj]

Well, Trump managed to simultaneously replace Warren G. Harding as the most corrupt President and replace James Buchanan as the worst President. Exceeding that record seemed a high bar. But he looks well on his way to doing just that.

[wj]

Well, Trump managed to simultaneously replace Warren G. Harding as the most corrupt President and replace James Buchanan as the worst President. Exceeding that record seemed a high bar. But he looks well on his way to doing just that.

[GftNC]

Well, in news appropriate to the times, the Onion has bought Infowars.

[hairshirthedonist]

Dang it, GftNC! I just copied the link to paste here.

https://theonion.com/heres-why-i-decided-to-buy-infowars/?ftag=YHF4eb9d17

Of note is that they did it in concert with Sandy Hook families.

[GftNC]

Great minds, hsh. It's a pleasure to share an impulse with you!

[hairshirthedonist]

Not only great minds, but ours, too. ;^)

Just reading Onion headlines makes me laugh. One under the InfoWars article was titled, "World's First Wooden Satellite Launched Into Space." I didn't even have to read the article and I was laughing.

[Hartmut]

Iirc there has been a real wooden satellite launch recently or is planned shortly. Less hazardous space debris is the main purpose.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

I'm not sure it matters whether the "space debris" is wood or metal, when it hits something at 10km/s.

Wood is better for burning up on atmosphere re-entry, however.

[hairshirthedonist]

“An enormous breakthrough for Amish engineers.”

Josh Kinnard, Corporate Storyteller

[bobbyp]

I take no pleasure in watching the country I love (in my own woke way) plunge, with all due deliberate speed, into the toilet. A lot of people are going to get hurt.

....but pass the popcorn anyway.

[bobbyp]

Biden's smiling handoff of the keys to our government to a fascist loon yesterday was a real insult to Democratic voters.

[Hartmut]

Wood is better for burning up on atmosphere re-entry, however.

I actually meant that. Not that the debris is less hazardous but that there will be less of the hazardous stuff - not just in orbit but also less that manages to get back to ground level in sizes that can do harm.

[Donald]

https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/11/14/israels-crimes-against-humanity-gaza

Human Rights Watch said today that Israel is guilty of crimes against humanity.

Vedant Patel, a Biden State Dept spokesman, said the US does not see it that way.

We will have the new disgusting set of freaks in DC in two months. Don’t lose sight of the current disgusting set of freaks.

I would donate a fair amount of money to any campaign to hold Biden Blinken and various spokespeople accountable for their support for war crimes and constant nonstop lying. It is unforgivable.

Looking forward to four years of similar sociopathic behavior in all areas of government. Yeah, that is sarcasm.

[GftNC]

Biden's smiling handoff of the keys to our government to a fascist loon yesterday was a real insult to Democratic voters.

bobbyp, it was indeed hideous and painful to watch, but what would have been preferable? At least this way he modelled how the president of the defeated party should behave according to the constitution, and those with eyes to see will understand to compare it to Trump in 2020.

[CaseyL]

Giving speculative thought to a post-US world.

Europe is toast without NATO, and NATO is toast without the US. I don't think any of the European nations (including the UK, which might opt to re-join Europe if only for military purposes) can ramp up their military quickly or powerfully enough to fight an expansionist Russia ("Russia" meaning Russia + Iran + North Korea).

I can see China throwing in with Russia's expansionism while it is convenient - that is, until the US and Europe are dismantled - but no further than that.

Australia and New Zealand may form very close relations with China as a buffer to an expansionist Russia... or they may, foolishly, decide to ally with Russia as a bulwark against China. Since both Australia and NZ have gone hard right recently, they'll likely make the foolish choice.

It would be interesting if the traditionally second-tier powers (SE Asia, South America) rose to prominence. I think SE Asia may be a better bet, as they seem to be more dynamic and adaptable.

[nous]

Just applied to renew my passport. Last one expired in 2021 when I had not yet found the cure for hope.

Ah, black humor.

[GftNC]

Apparently a paper is circulating in Kiyiv laying out circumstances in which Ukraine could legitimately develop a "Fat Man" type nuclear bomb, which is apparently well within their power both technologically and materially:

The paper, which is published by the Centre for Army, Conversion and Disarmament Studies, an influential Ukrainian military think tank, has been shared with the country’s deputy defence minister and is to be presented on Wednesday at a conference likely to be attended by Ukraine’s ministers for defence and strategic industries.

It is not endorsed by the Kyiv government but sets out the legal basis under which Ukraine could withdraw from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT), the ratification of which was contingent on security guarantees given by the US, UK and Russia in the 1994 Budapest memorandum. The agreement stated that Ukraine would surrender its nuclear arsenal of 1,734 strategic warheads in exchange for the promise of protection.

“The violation of the memorandum by the nuclear-armed Russian Federation provides formal grounds for withdrawal from the NPT and moral reasons for reconsideration of the non-nuclear choice made in early 1994,” the paper states.

Russian troops are gaining momentum as they advance in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, and Trump has pledged to cut US military aid unless Kyiv submits to peace talks with Putin. Bryan Lanza, a Trump adviser, has already said that Ukraine will have to surrender Crimea. This week Donald Trump Jr taunted Zelensky, posting on X: “You’re 38 days from losing your allowance.”

[My bold purely to express my horror and disgust.]

Ukrainian forces are heavily dependent on US weaponry, and any reduction in the flow of western arms into the country, let alone a complete curtailment, would have catastrophic consequences on the battlefield. That has prompted Ukrainians to look for a way to take matters into their own hands.

“You need to understand we face an existential challenge. If the Russians take Ukraine, millions of Ukrainians will be killed under occupation,” said Valentyn Badrak, director of the centre that produced the paper. “There are millions of us who would rather face death than go to the gulags.” Badrak is from Irpin, where occupying Russians tortured and murdered civilians, and he was hunted by troops with orders to kill him.

Western experts believe it would take Ukraine at least five years to develop a nuclear weapon and a suitable carrier, but Badrak insists Ukraine is less than a year from building its own ballistic missiles. “In six months Ukraine will be able to show that it has a long-range ballistic missile capability: we will have missiles with a range of 1,000km,” Badrak said.

Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a former commanding officer of the UK’s Joint Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Regiment told Times Radio that Ukraine “certainly” had the technical know-how and practical wherewithal to produce a nuclear weapon.

“Trump will take note because the last thing we want is more nuclear proliferation and any sort of nuclear strike in Europe, be it from Ukrainians or the Russians,” he added.

Bretton-Gordon called Zelensky a “master strategist” who was willing to try “absolutely everything

[CaseyL]

GftNC - Wow. I hope Zelenskyy goes for it.

[GftNC]

I don't even know what to hope any more, but I sure as hell understand it from the Ukrainians' point of view. I forgot to say, it was from the Times. This is how it ends:

Sviatoslav Yurash, a serving Ukrainian soldier and MP, told Times Radio: “At the moment it’s quite hard to talk about nuclear weaponry when we have so much other weaponry that we are asking for as far as repelling the Russian constant threats … We need to focus on the means at hand to try and protect as many lives as possible throughout this ordeal.”

Yizhak [the report’s author, Oleksii Yizhak, head of department at Ukraine’s National Institute for Strategic Studies, a government research centre that acts as an advisory body to the presidential office and the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine] and Badrak argue that, should the US abandon Ukraine, Britain could honour its security obligation under the Budapest memorandum by helping Ukraine to develop a nuclear deterrent, given it does not have conventional means to prevent Russia from overrunning Ukraine.

Yizhak believes the threshold for developing a nuclear rearmament programme would be Putin’s troops reaching the city of Pavlohrad, a military-industrial hub about 60 miles from the present front line. Any further, and there would be a risk some of Ukraine’s largest cities, such as Dnipro and Kharkiv, could fall before the weapon was developed.

“I was surprised by the reverence the United States has for Russia’s nuclear threat. It may have cost us the war,” Yizhak said. “They treat nuclear weapons as some kind of God. So perhaps it is also time for us to pray to this God.”

“Ukraine’s foreign ministry said it had no plans to develop nuclear weapons while stressing its commitment to the NPT. “We do not possess, do not develop and do not intend to create nuclear weapons,” Heorhiy Tykhy, a spokesman for the ministry said in a statement.

[bobbyp]

Hi GFTNC ....but what would have been preferable?

Well, if you spend a couple weeks calling your opponent a fascist, I should think giving them a warm welcome kinda' blunts the message. And Trump refused to go through with this same little ceremony when he lost to Biden. Is turnabout not fair play?

Continually pressing Democrats to "be nice" is a mug's game. The GOP is well down a path toward ruthless authoritarianism. Cold indifference is about as polite I can get. Asking for more just gets my hackels up.

Thanks.

[bobbyp]

ach!

another old person brain fart...

[GftNC]

Italiexo!

[wj]

Europe is toast without NATO, and NATO is toast without the US. I don't think any of the European nations (including the UK, which might opt to re-join Europe if only for military purposes) can ramp up their military quickly or powerfully enough to fight an expansionist Russia

NATO seriously weakened without the US? Absolutely. But toast? NO. There's no reason for the Europeans to invent a new structure when there's one already in place.

NATO will struggle, and the European countries** will have to scramble to ramp up their military. But Trump has wanted to withdraw from NATO since his first term, and this time around there will be no adults in the room to stop him. When (not if) he does, that will concentrate some minds which so far have had their heads buried firmly in the sand.

They may not manage in time to save Poland, let alone Ukraine. But Russia doesn't really have the resources to get further than that. North Korea isn't an unlimited source of troops. Iran's appetite for sending their military to help fight Russia's quest for enlargement is doubtful. Sell weapons? Sure. Take casualties? Not so much.

As I say, it will be a struggle for Europe. But their options will be starkly limited.

** Bar Hungary, probably. They can aspire to be Belarus.

[wj]

In a new (so far) low, RFK, Jr. is apparently to head Health and Human Services. The only unknown is which parts will he trash first.

I'd bet on the CDC. If only because that's the one part he has heard of.

EDT: I'm particularly taken by Alexandra Petri's proposed renaming to the Department of Disease Efficiency.

[nous]

RFK miniscule isn't going to last one round.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/07/rfk-jr-wants-to-send-people-on-antidepressants-to-government-wellness-farms/

All those expensive ideas of his are going to smash right against the Hamberdlar's need to mock organic food as a weak, stupid Soyboi conspiracy, and Bobby Brainworm is going to get his ass Tillersoned.

[CaseyL]

wj - For the EU to tool up sufficiently to become a military power again, they may have to abandon most of their social safety network or raise (already-high) taxes by a lot. There's a difference between contributing 2.5% per annum to a military entity that is also subsidized by the US versus doing all the heavy lifting themselves. Not to mention: where are they going to get the serious military hardware - the fighter jets and tanks?

Europeans *may* be more intelligent about these things than USians, simply because so many wars have been fought in their actual backyards, but then again they may not.

(I'm also frankly worried about a US that is not only indifferent to Europe's security, but actually allied with Russia against it.)

nous - My suspicion is that RFK Jr can be worked around, if the next-level-down management of CDC wants to. Treat him like SpaceX treats Musk: carve out a niche wherein he hears what he wants to hear, and keep him away from the actual running of things.

That may be true of the other awful Cabinet picks. It all depends on whether, and how much, the bulk of the bureaucracy is committed to its actual mission v. the 180-degree sabotage Trump's people want to impose. Then again, the people who've made those agencies their career, and who have put in their 20-30 years, are going to be hostile to the idea of doing something that could get them summarily fired.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

Germany has been doing well with producing Leopard tanks, and (I think?) France and Sweden with aircraft.

The EU (except Hungary, aka "neo-Belarus") has been stepping up arms production, but now the incentive just got turned up a LOT. Whether they're going to step up or wimp out remains to be seen.

[Hartmut]

I think at the moment the main problem is ammo. Lots of (older) tanks etc. were already in the depots and had to just get delivered to be slowly replaced at home with newer models. But ammo fabrication is lagging because capacities have to be rebuilt first. The end of the cold war had hit that industry hard, so many plants simply do not exist anymore.
Btw, at the start off WW1 no nation had ammo stored for more than a few weeks at moderate expected expenditure. In theory all states could have fired all their artillery ammo in less than 6 hours. The stalemate at the Western front started with ammo shortage on both sides stymieing offensives for the moment. When the new ammo reached the front everyone had already dug in.

[hairshirthedonist]

So a thread to see how low they can go.

In ElMu's case, perhaps too low for a lot of people.

Twitter Is Getting Absolutely Destroyed as Users Flee to Rivals Run by People Who Haven't Lost Their Minds

Who can blame them?

https://futurism.com/the-byte/twitter-users-flee-rivals

[nous]

I'm over on Bsky now, and the number of authors who are busy not just leaving X, but removing and deleting all their old content, is significant.

It's not just an exodus, it's a repudiation.

Bsky is adding a million users a day at the moment.

[hairshirthedonist]

I was never on twitter even before was X, so my rejection of it was passive. The only thing I can say is that I would very occasionally click on a link to a tweet someone here recommended but stopped doing even that once ElMu took it over.

(I'm never buying a f**king Tesla, either. F**k that comic book villain.)

[GftNC]

Bsky is adding a million users a day at the moment.

I joined months ago, in order to read hilzoy.

(I'm never buying a f**king Tesla, either. F**k that comic book villain.)

Seconded.

[GftNC]

Meanwhile, I can't stop thinking of that Auden poem, The Fall of Rome. His "vast herds of reindeer" refers I'm guessing to the Vandals and Visigoths who will be sacking Rome, but I haven't worked out yet who the modern equivalents are likely to be....

https://poets.org/poem/fall-rome

The piers are pummelled by the waves;
In a lonely field the rain
Lashes an abandoned train;
Outlaws fill the mountain caves.

Fantastic grow the evening gowns;
Agents of the Fisc pursue
Absconding tax-defaulters through
The sewers of provincial towns.

Private rites of magic send
The temple prostitutes to sleep;
All the literati keep
An imaginary friend.

Cerebrotonic Cato may
Extol the Ancient Disciplines,
But the muscle-bound Marines
Mutiny for food and pay.

Caesar's double-bed is warm
As an unimportant clerk
Writes I DO NOT LIKE MY WORK
On a pink official form.

Unendowed with wealth or pity,
Little birds with scarlet legs,
Sitting on their speckled eggs,
Eye each flu-infected city.

Altogether elsewhere, vast
Herds of reindeer move across
Miles and miles of golden moss,
Silently and very fast.

[nous]

22. AUDEN'S THE FALL OF ROME

The last stanza of W. H. Auden's poem "The Fall of Rome,"
reads: Altogether elsewhere, vast Herds of reindeer move across
Miles and miles of golden moss, Silently and very fast.
It has been suggested that the reindeer, which are "altogether elsewhere," suggest a natural order which is indifferent to the problems of and perhaps even superior to a decadent civilization (Main and Seng, editors, Poems, second edition, Belmont, California, 1965, p. 245).

Such a reading, however, does not explain why the reindeer are moving "very fast" and why the whole last stanza produces a sense of imminent doom. My own reading, which Mr . Auden was kind enough to verify while on his recent reading tour, is that the reindeer are in motion because of the shifting migration patterns of the northern peoples which will eventually bring dying Rome into direct confrontation with the Germanic tribes which are destined to provide the coup de grace. Thus, the fast moving herds are not really "altogether elsewhere" at all, but are in fact the first link in a chain of events which will bring Rome (and by extension ourselves) to the inevitable consequences of its own decadence.
-W. P. NICOLET, Southeastern Massachusetts University

The Explicator (1972)

—————-

As for the reindeer analog in our current historical moment, look to the small boats and the migrant trains from Central America. What is climate change but the consequence of our own dedication to a way of life we cannot sustain, which is already moving those with less daylight between them and ruin?

[GftNC]

nous, your own last para on the reindeer analog makes perfect sense to me.

On that Nicolet piece, when he says "the reindeer are in motion because of the shifting migration patterns of the northern peoples", it seems to me that he is implying that the reindeer are reindeer. Whereas to me, (and I'm not sure that Auden's polite acquiescence while on a reading tour is as persuasive as he thinks) it seems very unlikely that Auden would mean anything so pedestrian. Just as "the little birds with scarlet legs" may not in fact be birds, nor "each flu-infected city" an actual city experiencing a flu epidemic. I'd be interested to know if you agree.

[CaseyL]

nous and GftHC -

There was an epidemic in Byzantium (the Eastern Roman Empire) - plague, though, not flu - around 500 CE. "Plague of Justinian " they called it.

The city was devastated and largely abandoned.

Maybe Auden was thinking of that. Though Rome and Byzantium were frequently ravaged, by invaders, disease, and even a major earthquake at one point. If you want to write a poem about no-longer-glorious Roman Empire, there are many "falls of Rome" to pick from!

[nous]

GFtNC - I think that reindeer make for an interesting image. It of course evokes the Sami, and other circumpolar peoples, whose livelihood depend on these herds. That in turn echoes for me the sweep of the likewise nomadic Hun across Northern Europe, and it was the Hun who displaced and unsettled the Gothic tribes.

And the polar regions are northerly enough to feel disconnected from and unseen by much of Europe, thus also evoking the sense of unexpected threat from an otherwise innocuous source, and also the notion of displacement.

And close reading the sound and poetics, there is the rein/rain/reign ambiguity of the homophones, also casting their resonance upon the sense of wave and whelm.

At least that is what I'd say if asked to do some impromptu analysis in a class.

[liberal japonicus]

Auden did have a thing about the North, or perhaps more accurately, the people of the the North. He traveled to Iceland, there are funny anecdotes and his poem Journey to Iceland is here
https://grapevine.is/mag/articles/2015/09/06/the-man-who-didnt-like-hangikjot-w-h-auden-in-iceland/
and the article is even funnier when you know that Auden thought he was of Icelandic descent.

He also did a translation of some of the poetic edda, and his father was amateur Norse scholarship, so he might have thought of reindeer more than one would expect.

[GftNC]

Thank you, nous especially, CaseyL and lj, for indulging my attempts to distract myself with poetry, albeit the subject of the poem is a bit close to home.

Everything you all say is interesting, and I'm glad to have seen it, but I have to say that unlike Nicolet, I incline much more to the interpretation he dismisses of Main and Seng, who see the reindeer as part of " a natural order which is indifferent to the problems of and perhaps even superior to a decadent civilization". It seems to me that they, along with their "miles and miles of golden moss", carry with them an atmosphere of cold and purity, which is directly in contrast to the dissolute and somewhat diseased feel he gives to his Rome.

(lj, this exchange reminds me of what I think was our first interaction with each other: my catching of your reference to Auden's Musee des Beaux Arts! The power of poetry to bring people together.)

[nous]

GftNC - I don't think we have to choose between those two readings. Auden may have been thinking of the chain of events in the north that will bring down Rome as Nicolet asserts, but the imagery of the last stanza is ambiguous and there is an air of ambivalence in the mixture of positive and natural images and the threat of rapid unexpected change coming from without.

To fall back on Chaos Theory for a moment, the last stanza is like a machine that has been set in motion, but there is a central indeterminacy that we cannot predict or control which has yet to be set in place. The inflection point is approaching and the arrow of time is irreversible. What counts for us is how we receive that moment.

And since we have already noted Auden's background with Northern European myth, I think of that difference between the thing that will happen and the individual response to it as the difference between orlog and wyrd. Your fate is fixed, but your choice of how to face that fate is not, and on some level your wyrd contributes to the orlog of what follows. Which is why ragnarök cannot be avoided, but Óðinn and the other Æsir's actions can shape the path for the new world that follows for their offspring in the aftermath of the destruction of the old.

[GftNC]

nous: more and more interesting. Thank you! I think (and not for the first time) what a good teacher you are/must be.

[Donald]

So in the last few days the Biden Administration has done three things on Gaza—

1. They vetoed a resolution in the UN Security Council that called for the immediate release of the hostages and a ceasefire. The vote was 14 to 1. The US is isolated on this. Somehow the rest of the world doesn’t see Biden’s wisdom in supporting genocide. Biden also repeated that our support for Israel is ironclad. Obviously.

2. Sanders led an effort to ban the sale of offensive weapons to Israel. The Biden Administration lobbied against it, along with Schumer and McConnell. There were three votes on three types of weapons,with 17, 18, and 19 votes for the Sanders proposal. The majority of Democrats and all Republicans sided with Biden in wanting to continue to arm Israel.

3. The ICC finally got around to issuing arrest warrants for Biden, Gallant and the Hamas leader who might or might not be alive. The US, of course, is outraged that the ICC got off its leash and acted like the rules apply to people we support.

People need to focus fanatically on issues, not just Gaza of course but all the issues where people’s lives are at stake and make it clear that they don’t give a damn about politicians or parties except as means to an end. We will still end up making lesser evil calculations in the voting booth but politicians should be biting their nails wondering whether we will support them or throw our vote away, because for every person there ought to be a red line where if you support X you don’t get my vote. Lesser evilism can be dishonest because people don’t like to think they are voting for even a lesser evil, but actually someone good. If you think like that you start justifying things that should not and cannot be justified. If you vote lesser evil, don’t pretend that your candidate isn’t supporting things which are evil.

[Donald]

Btw, I did vote for Harris. I hesitated a bit.. There were Palestinians I read wh said that people who vote for Harris were sending a message that their lives didn’t matter and I think that in the event of a Harris victory ( which I wish had happened), that is exactly how the majority of Democratic politicians and many pundits would have seen it.

Trump of course, has picked Huckabee as his ambassador and Huckabee is demented.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

"3. The ICC finally got around to issuing arrest warrants for Biden,"

I thought the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu, not Biden.

But if they DID, they should also do Dubya.

[Donald]

Yeah, I meant Bibi, but that was an interesting subconscious mistake. I do think Biden should be arrested, obviously.

They should arrest Dubya. I am not sure of the legal issues there regarding the invasion of Iraq itself (people on the left commonly say it was illegal, but I don't recall to what extent Bush could claim later UN backing), but the torture policy ought to earn an arrest.

Biden has come out and said it was outrageous for the ICC to put Israel and Hamas in the same category, but one expects him to say this. He seems really passionate about this.

[GftNC]

This is the thread to see how low they can go. So, I give you: Sebastian Gorka for counter-terrorism chief. John Bolton (and we continue to be in a looking-glass world where John Bolton is the one speaking sense):

Bolton came out swinging at Gorka on Friday. The neocon, who served in the Reagan, George W Bush and first Trump administrations, has set out his stall against many of Trump’s picks, including former Democrat and Iraq veteran Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence, and told CNN that he “wouldn’t have him in any US government”.

Earlier this week, Bolton told NewsNation’s The Hill that up until Gorka was nominated by Trump as a deputy assistant to the president and the senior director for counter-terrorism, he would have said that Gabbard’s nomination “was the worst cabinet appointment in recent American history”.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/23/john-bolton-sebastian-gorka-counter-terrorism-chief

I suppose it's like Liz Cheney. In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

[nous]

The 'Stache That Roared is a terrible human being, and it says a lot about the absurdity of our current political moment that the president elect's administrative choices are beneath even The 'Stache's contempt.

[GftNC]

Exactly.

[wj]

I do wonder how much of Bolton's opposition is how terrible the various nominations are. Vs how unhappy Bolton is about being supplanted.

That is, to what extent is what we are seeing the predicted infighting among members, and prospective/would-be members, of the incoming administration. In other circumstances, one would expect this kind of thing to be severely limited, and promptly shut down, by the folks at the top. But when the guy at the top prefers chaos....

[CharlesWT]

Trump strolled into a Star Wars pub to pick members for his crew. Several look good from my point of view, but many look dicey. With Trump, Musk, and RFKj in the mix look out for explosions due to critical ego masses.

[russell]

Sebastian Gorka for counter-terrorism chief

SMFH

We're being trolled by the POTUS-elect.

Re: Bolton - I'd be more interested in his point of view if he wasn't so selective in the timing and targets of his outrage.

[russell]

They should arrest Dubya.

IIRC, there was a Spanish prosecutor who started the process of indicting Bush and some of the other principals of the whole "War On Terror" mess.

Also IIRC, Obama shut it down.

"Look forward, not back" is biting us on the @ss.

[wj]

Quote of the day"
"I've seen smarter cabinets as Ikea."

[liberal japonicus]

Several look good from my point of view...

I hesitate to guess, but curiosity gets the better of me . Tulsi Gabbard? Dr Oz? Huckabee? Stefanik? Which pick do you think was thoughtful and considered?

[CharlesWT]

Doug Burgum as Interior Secretary and Chris Wright as Secretary of Energy look pretty good. Many are pretty bad. A couple, like Lori Chavez-DeRemer as Secretary of Labor, could have been picked by a Democratic president.

[liberal japonicus]

Interesting, those departments will probably be the ones that get cut in order to make the government more "efficient". Interior has the 8th most number of employees at 61.9k, and Energy and Labor have 14.8 and 14.9 respectively. It will be easier for Space Karen and Robin to eliminate departments to manufacture faux efficiency.

[Michael Cain]

IIRC, 95% of Energy's budget is nuclear weapons, other nuclear infrastructure, and the national labs. There's going to be a sizeable "department of nuclear and radioactive stuff", even if it gets rolled into some other cabinet-level agency.

[Tony P.]

I know that personnel=policy, and I suspect CharlesWT agrees. So: on what policy grounds do "Doug Burgum as Interior Secretary and Chris Wright as Secretary of Energy look pretty good" to you, CharlesWT?

--TP

[CharlesWT]

Up until now, I had only seen Burgum and Wright's names in passing and knew little about them. Unlike many of Trump's staff picks, they look like good matches for the departments they would head and be competent.

"President-elect Donald Trump has selected North Dakota Republican Gov. Doug Burgum and Chris Wright, the CEO of Liberty Energy, as his nominees to lead the Department of the Interior and Department of Energy (DOE), respectively. Though other staff picks have been head-scratchers, the selection of Wright and Burgum signals a possible return to energy realism in the federal government."
...
With many of Trump's staff picks being bizarre–or downright terrible—Burgum and Wright are refreshingly competent. Together they have the opportunity to prioritize energy realism, market-led innovation, and deregulation, all of which would be a win for taxpayers, consumers, and the environment.
Trump's Energy Picks Are Refreshingly Competent: If confirmed, Chris Wright and Gov. Doug Burgum will have the opportunity to prioritize innovation and deregulation to the benefit of taxpayers and the environment.

[wj]

Interior has the 8th most number of employees at 61.9k, and Energy and Labor have 14.8 and 14.9 respectively. It will be easier for Space Karen and Robin to eliminate departments to manufacture faux efficiency.

Well, if you're going that route, the Department of Veterans Affairs has 400K employees. Sure, there would be screams of outrage, and not just from liberals, if you abolished that. But does Musk even care?

Actually, I'd bet on the Department of Education to be the first to go. Only 4.4K employees. But it's the one the bigots seem to hate on most.

[Hartmut]

But who will then handle the shoveling of federal tax payer money to religious schools?
Mabye there will be a new Department for Religious Freedom and Excellence for that but it will take valuable time to establish it. The recipients will be unwilling to wait that long.

[russell]

they have the opportunity to prioritize energy realism, market-led innovation, and deregulation, all of which would be a win for taxpayers, consumers, and the environment

I find this astoundingly naive.

"Energy realism" in the current context likely means "drill, baby, drill". Market-led innovation is going to be driven by maximizing shareholder value, because that's how our "market economy" is organized right now. And anybody Trump is likely to nominate is gonna care fuck-all about the environment.

There will undoubtedly be many benefits to taxpayers at the upppermost levels of income and wealth. Everybody else, not so much. Benefits to consumers - what are we talking about here, cheaper gas? - are going to come at the loss of other valuable goods, mostly public goods. And you have to be freaking high if you think a Trump regime is going to do one damned thing for the environment.

Taking his own statements and actions at face value, the Trump administration is most likely going to be about making rich people richer and restoring the dominance of straight white men. Because that is what "make America great" means to him.

[nous]

Climate change is both a vulnerability multiplier and a threat multiplier. The Husk's complete folly on all things environmental is going to spill over into more economic vulnerability and more desperation, and that will just drive him and his bag of hammers to look for more nails to smash.

Education, Interior, and Labor are all departments that reduce domestic vulnerability and threat, and those things are all completely useless in The Husk's worldview. Maybe even worse than useless because they stand in the path of his authoritarian jonez.

Fun times.

[wj]

But who will then handle the shoveling of federal tax payer money to religious schools?

You're making the,mistake of thinking realistically and pragmatically. In maga-world, Trump (or some flunky of his) says "Do it" and it magically happens. Little details about who does it, and did Congress budget and fund it? Totally irrelevant. It's magic, after all.

[GftNC]

As far as I can tell, we don't have a "true" open thread at the moment, so I am putting this here out of interest, to see what ObWi's view of this issue is, if anybody feels like commenting. It's behind a paywall in the Times, so I have cut and pasted.

Bob Geldof on Band Aid at 40: the highs, lows and Ed Sheeran controversy

The singer and activist fights back against criticism of his ‘little song that’s kept millions of people alive’ and reflects on the day he gathered the biggest stars in pop

Jonathan Dean
Saturday November 23 2024, 6.00pm, The Sunday Times

Three weeks ago Bob Geldof was in a Montreal hotel, waiting for his room service. A knock came at the door and in walked a man carrying his breakfast. He seemed nervous, fidgety, telling Geldof that he had been in a camp in Korem, Ethiopia, in the early 1980s and how his older sister, just five at the time, had brought them both there after their parents died. He looked at Geldof and said: “Thank you for my life.”

He told the singer that after aid reached Korem, he had escaped to France, before moving to Canada. Geldof protested — “Stop! You made your life!” — but the man persisted. He took out his wallet and showed Geldof a picture of his wife and six-year-old son. “I said, ‘Great — good-looking kid.’ But he just lunged at me,” Geldof says. “He hugged me and said, ‘Thank you for my son.’”

Band Aid turns 40 tomorrow: November 25, 1984, being the day 37 of the nation’s biggest pop stars gathered in Notting Hill, London, from 11am to 7pm to make Do They Know It’s Christmas? Just one month earlier Geldof had been at home with Paula Yates and their toddler, Fifi, when Michael Buerk’s report from Korem aired on the Six O’Clock News. It showed a nurse, Claire, who had to pick which children would survive and jolted Geldof into penning a song that would make £8 million and instigate the Band Aid Charitable Trust, which he is still very active with today and which has raised more than £140 million.

This week, to mark four decades of the charity, Geldof has marshalled a special edit of the song that blends the 1984 original with its hirsute singers — Tony Hadley, Simon Le Bon, Boy George — with cover versions from 2004 (Robbie Williams, Thom Yorke, Sugababes) and 2014 (Emeli Sandé, Ed Sheeran, Rita Ora). It’s a unique marker of what changes but also stays the same in pop (with Bono a constant). The video, out tomorrow, also mixes three generations, and acts as a reminder of who we have lost — including Yates, Sinéad O’Connor and Liam Payne.

I meet Geldof in his office in west London — he is 73, with his white hair wild and tousled, and shows no sign of retiring. Over two hours he is passionate, still full of the piss and vinegar that made the song happen in the first place. Often he is wistful. “Guileless innocence,” he says, beaming, about the original. “It’s so English, spotty, scruffy.” He recalls introducing pre-fame Bono to mid-Wham! George Michael and a quiet Bono admitting, “I get nervous around pop stars.” About himself, Geldof says: “There’s video of me in my best Eighties rolled-up sleeves — what a c***!”

More often than not, though, Geldof simply gets sad, then angry. Each day he wakes up to a full inbox of messages sent to the trust — “It’s just there, all the f***ing time.” He wells up. “Rage is my animus,” he says, before detailing why he will not let go.

“We were sent in reports from contacts in Sudan about the thuggish warring groups rampaging the country,” he says. “Brutes entered a town three weeks ago, lined up all males over ten and killed them. They took a newborn and killed it; they drowned a toddler. Then the rape began.

“Nine months ago,” he continues, “in northern Ethiopia, a number of schools we built got taken out by either a militia or the Eritrean army. They forced male students to rape female members of their family.” He stops for breath. “Look — I’m painting a reality. So in Sudan yesterday we gave hundreds of thousands of pounds to 8,000 children and the exhausted women who made it across the border into Chad. Would you like to stop that? Or, knowing you can’t, at least make a gesture of disgust [by giving to Band Aid], so somebody can take care of these people?”

Last week Ed Sheeran criticised the new edit, saying Band Aid didn’t ask for permission to re-use his vocals from 2014 and he would have declined if asked. He reposted a statement by the rapper Fuse ODG, who refused to take part in the 2014 version and argues that the song spreads the idea that Africa is a victim of “famine and poverty”, which is “not the truth”.

Geldof’s response? “This little pop song has kept millions of people alive. Why would Band Aid scrap feeding thousands of children dependent on us for a meal?” He reels off all the work the charity does, from education to healthcare. “Why not keep doing that? Because of an abstract wealthy-world argument, regardless of its legitimacy? No abstract theory regardless of how sincerely held should impede or distract from that hideous, concrete real-world reality. There are 600 million hungry people in the world — 300 million are in Africa. We wish it were other but it is not. We can help some of them. That’s what we will continue to do.”

Nothing has really changed for Geldof. In 1984 he and Yates watched Buerk at home. “Which is a measure of where we were as a band,” he says of his group the Boomtown Rats. “No group should be at home at 6pm. But Buerk gave a masterclass. He was spitting with anger, but in a polite, English way. Paula grabbed Fifi and ran upstairs. I sat appalled. If this was happening to my kid, what would me and the missus do? Here were parents holding children in the death throes of starvation, but by chance I was born in Dun Laoghaire — what the f***? You don’t know how lucky you are.”

Which is when he realised he had agency — as a pop star with hits and, due to Yates’s job presenting the music show The Tube, contacts. The next day he and Midge Ure from Ultravox decided to write a song, with Bono’s line, “Well, tonight thank God it’s them instead of you,” a direct response to Buerk’s report.

But the song needed a headline too. Geldof was thinking Give Peace a Chance, The Times They Are A-Changin’ and scribbled “Feed the world” on his notepad. “It has run the gamut of naff to become part of the season’s backing track,” he says. “In Tesco it’s Cliff Richard at the plum pudding, Slade at the bacon and then you reach the turkey …” He beat-boxes out the song’s intro and smiles.

“It’s not a great song,” Ure admits when we speak the next day. “There is no chorus; the structure is bizarre. Had we known it would end up side-by-side with Silent Night and White Christmas we’d have tried to write a better track.”

Ure, though, has little time for other people who pick it apart. For instance, a constant criticism has been that it actually does snow in Africa, but Ure says Geldof’s original lyrics went, “There won’t be snow in Ethiopia this Christmas time” — but that is simply too many syllables.

“And it’s a pop song,” Ure says with a shrug. “We have lines there because they rhyme, not because they make sense. There are many keyboard warriors out there, and in the time it takes them to write a scathing remark some child has died. They talk while we actually do something. All those stars turned up on that Sunday morning with hangovers, but were there for a reason. Although it’s also possible that they were just scared of Bob.”

Bananarama arrived at Sarm Studios in their manager’s two-door Golf. The trio — Keren Woodward, Sara Dallin, Siobhan Fahey — were in their early twenties with two albums under their big Eighties belts. There were only four women on the day — them and Jody Watley from Shalamar — and they had no idea of the magnitude of the project until they spotted Paul Weller and Duran Duran and thought, “Wow, what is this?”

They did not hear the song until they were inside, but their contribution — on the chorus — was not tricky to figure out. “We added a very loud harmony,” Woodward says, “that cut through despite Bono blasting out behind us.”

Dallin looks back at the video and “sees those three little girls singing — we were just embarking on our career”.

“I still really enjoy it when it comes on the radio,” Woodward adds. “And if I’m in the car I’ll absolutely sing along — in all the different voices, obviously.”

In 1984, Spandau Ballet were in their imperial phase — one year after True. They had arrived that morning from Germany. “We got picked up from the airport in this big Daimler,” Gary Kemp says, laughing. “We did think we had got the tone wrong.” Sting turned up on foot holding a copy of The Observer.

Still, this was the first song of its kind. “I don’t remember charity being in my life before then,” Kemp says. “Maybe it was for the middle classes, but that record gave the general public empowerment — it changed society.

“When I look at the old footage, we’re having too much of a good time,” he continues. “Now people are wonderfully earnest and make all the right faces for cameras, but we were just a bunch of Smash Hits front pages. Geldof was the only person in the room with the anger and cojones to really make this happen.”

Did he buy the single afterwards? “Yes, of course!” he says with a laugh. “That was really important.”

“Oh,” says Francis Rossi from Status Quo when I ask the same question. “No — but I should’ve done.” Rossi and his bandmate Rick Parfitt were, by all accounts, the life and soul of Band Aid, clearly happy to be there via means both natural and chemical. “We weren’t the only two,” Rossi insists. “It’s just we had more and were more generous with it.” He means drugs and mentions one person who still owes him for dope, “and everyone did us for coke too. Rick was pissed witless.”

So what are Rossi’s main memories when he watches the video back? “I got caught staring at Jody Watley’s bum,” he says. “And I’m not one of those bum blokes, but it just looked so great in those jeans and the camera’s looking at me so I think, ‘Oh shit.’” Still, I say, it must have been good to be part of the phenomenon? “It always smells a bit to me when we as an industry do charity stuff because it never does the career any harm. ‘Oh, he’s involved with charity — he’s such a good man.’ So was Jimmy f***ing Savile.

“Also, what’s the difference now?” he continues. “There are the same ads on TV telling us to raise money. And all these comedians say that some kid walks six miles every day to water — why don’t they move closer?”

Dare I ask why he and Parfitt went along? “It could have been our manager, or someone said it’d be good to have them because they’re funny like Morecambe and Wise. We were the old people.” Who did they know? “I knew Sting, but he was, like, ‘Steer clear of Quo, they’re not hip.’ Also, Paul Weller — grumpiest shit on the planet, lovely bloke. But he never mentioned that Rick had helped him out with this and that. Liking Status Quo is not one of those things people like to admit to.”

What about Geldof and Ure? “I knew Midge — I used to call him Smudge. I knew Geldof too. He was the ultimate upstart, but I’m not sure he’s actually grown out of that.” But you respected what he was doing? “Absolutely. And I thought the song was OK. The sentiment was there. All credit to the upstart.”

Geldof is realistic about Band Aid in 2024. There are more distractions than there were 40 years ago. The all-encompassing success of Band Aid in 1984 was such that it led to offshoots: Fashion Aid, Theatre Aid, Secretary Aid. “For us to top the charts we sold 620,000 copies,” Geldof says. “Will this new version make anything like that one? No, because there are no f***ing record shops. If we have 620,000 hits on Spotify, what will that make? Literally a quid?”

The way that Geldof sees it, Band Aid in 1984 was a success for many reasons, but mostly because of how Britain was at the time — post-punk, striking, Margaret Thatcher saying, “There’s no such thing as society.” He believes that the people who bought the hit did it as a rebuke. “No such thing as society?” he jeers. “It’s all about greed? Really? No! People were not going to go along with that.

“And now it’s a fractious world — febrile,” he continues. “I’ve never felt it so fragile, and people have lost any ability to control events. From the cost of living to horror in Ukraine. To the horror of Palestine. A million can march, but nobody gives a f***. Or Trump, or the rise in Europe of fascists. What can you do? People are uneasy and uneasiness comes from a loss of control.

“But on this issue you have agency,” he adds sternly — meaning Band Aid. “And I can guarantee your personal action here will result in a kid sleeping warmer, fed that night. This is one issue in which you have power. You get to tilt the world a fraction — and I know: ‘Here is f***ing Geldof banging on.’ But the instrument of this control, as corny as it may sound, is this thing — this OK tune.”

So he keeps trying. He says he needs to speak to the Spotify boss Daniel Ek to ask if Spotify can make a financial exception for the charity. He has not yet been in touch with Keir Starmer, as he was with Tony Blair — “But I could easily.” He says he would meet with Trump about Africa — “But he calls them ‘shithole countries’.” He is also eager to point out that he is compiling a double Boomtown Rats record, going on a pivot about how he only started that band because “this girl wanted to shag me”. Their 50th anniversary is imminent. “And so it doesn’t occupy my day,” he says of Band Aid, laughing — but who really believes him?

[GftNC]

Also, on the subject of seeking to go beyond any fresh hells, this gift article from today's NYT with a possible way forward for the Dems, as well as Labour and other centre-left parties:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/24/opinion/democratic-party-progressives-john-rawls.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ck4.1ORK.2cX8CID2NigY&smid=url-share

I'd never heard of this guy Rawls, but I'm guessing some of you will have.

[russell]

Re: Geldorf and Band Aid -

They talk while we actually do something.

Nuff said.

Also, will now check out the NYT on Rawls. Have heard of him but don't completely understand what he had to say, so will look forward to finding out more.

Thanks GFTNC

[liberal japonicus]

Rawls was often discussed on the intertubes that I hung around on 20 or so years ago. Hilzoy mentioned it several times and this post might have the most content

https://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2009/04/galston-on-rawls-wonkish.html

Ahh, for wonkish posts...

Also, the Grauniad had this a few years ago
https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2020/dec/20/john-rawls-can-liberalisms-great-philosopher-come-to-the-wests-rescue-again

I've read some Rawls, though I'm sure Charles can whip up a chatgpt prompt to explain everything, but what sticks in my mind is the fact that his son, Alec Rawls, emerged after 9-11 with a incurable case of islamophobia, as evidenced by his attempts to stop the memorial to Flight 93,
https://newrepublic.com/article/94170/september-11-the-forgotten-memorial

with his "evidence" assembled in a book entitledCrescent of Betrayal: Dishonoring the Heroes of Flight 93

Some of that 'evidence'

1. THE GIANT CRESCENT. The centerpiece of the original �Crescent of Embrace� design was a giant red Islamic shaped crescent. Every particle of this original crescent design remains completely intact in the so-called redesign, which only added a few irrelevant trees. The giant crescent is still there.

2. IT POINTS TO MECCA. The giant crescent points to Mecca. A crescent that Muslims face into to face Mecca is called a "mihrab," and is the central feature around which every mosque is built. The Flight 93 Memorial is on track to become the world's largest mosque.

3. THE ISLAMIC SUNDIAL. The minaret-like Tower of Voices is a year-round accurate Islamic prayer-time sundial (one of many typical mosque features that are realized in the crescent design, all on the same epic scale as the half mile wide central crescent).

4. THE 44 BLOCKS. There are 44 glass blocks on the flight path, equaling the number of passengers, crew, AND terrorists.

from https://swap.stanford.edu/was/20090819102749/http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/HonorFlight93/">http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/HonorFlight93/">https://swap.stanford.edu/was/20090819102749/http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/HonorFlight93/

Of course, you probably wouldn't be surprised to note that he is also a climate change denier

https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-son-of-a-legendary-moral-philosopher-leaked-the-uns-next-climate-report-in-the-name-of-bad-science/

and at the risk of repeating myself he (I assume) remains a libertarian
https://www.juliansanchez.com/2003/01/16/like-father-like-son-not-quite/

I find it incredibly depressing that the father, by all accounts a decent and thoughtful individual, is so poorly served by the son

[CharlesWT]

..., though I'm sure Charles can whip up a chatgpt prompt to explain everything, ...

"John Rawls and Ayn Rand are two prominent figures in political philosophy, but they represent starkly different ideological frameworks. Rawls’s philosophy is rooted in liberal egalitarianism, while Rand’s philosophy is grounded in individualism and laissez-faire capitalism. Below is a comparison of their ideas on key philosophical issues:"
John Rawls and Ayn Rand Compared.

:)

[GftNC]

Nuff said.

That's my view, russell. But I thought if I were going to hear the contrary argument (e.g. "white saviours" etc) reasonably made, it would be here.

[russell]

if I were going to hear the contrary argument (e.g. "white saviours" etc) reasonably made, it would be here

As a bog-standard cisgender straight white middle class American male, it has long been obvious to me that any virtue I might claim via whatever occasional acts of "doing good" I might do is eclipsed by the absurdly privileged position I occupy in the world.

Geldorf et al saw a need and did something about it. It seems to have been helpful. Lucky them, that they were in a position to do that.

It made some things better for some people, maybe a lot of people.

Without minimizing the complex realities involved in all of it - the deep and intractable unfairness of the world, the brutual damage that we profoundly flawed humans have done, to each other and to the world at large - I'm happy to let that stand, and let the rest be noise.

People needed help. Geldorf et al helped. We should all do as well.

[russell]

I'll follow up on my own comment to share some other stuff that's on my mind right now.

As we approach another Trump regime, I find myself contemplating what I'm going to do about it. And, mostly due to the authoritarian nature and apparent appetite for cruelty of Trump and his ilk, I find myself contemplating what it might cost to do whatever I might do.

We do have institutions meant to curb the most outrageous excesses that a Trump regime might try to implement. But those insitutions have been undermined. The bar for what is considered acceptable behavior in our public life has also been considerably lowered.

So it may be costly, in one way or another, to oppose the incoming regime.

And I'm trying to figure out what may be asked of me - or, what I may ask of myself - and what price I may be willing to pay.

It's a weird time, and I'm afraid it's gonna get weirder. It may not be possible to engage with it all without paying some price.

As the privileged individual that I clearly am, I feel insulated from the worst of it. People are at risk of being deported, having their citizenship revoked, losing basic protections under the law. None of that is likely to happen to me.

Lucky lucky me.

But I have to ask what, if any, of that privileged position I am willing to risk if it comes to that.

Just thinking out loud here, but it's a sobering thought.

[GftNC]

It would be remiss of me not to copy this, from today's Times, putting some of the counter argument I was anticipating.

Whenever the Ethiopian prime minister hears the charity single Do They Know It’s Christmas? an urge overtakes him. He would like to point out that his country was celebrating the birth of Christ centuries before most of the Christian world.

In 1984 a famine in Ethiopia inspired the all-star Band Aid to record the fundraising hit and it has become a Christmas staple. But Abiy Ahmed would prefer that its 40th anniversary was not marked with a re-release and a call for donations.

“It is frustrating to see our nation’s ancient history, culture, diversity and beauty reduced to doom and gloom,” he said, while acknowledging that the Eighties endeavour was “well-meaning at the time” in response to more than a million people starving.

Ethiopia is unrecognisable since Bob Geldof was moved by pictures of what Michael Buerk, the BBC reporter, called a “Biblical” catastrophe to write the song that to date has raised almost £150 million for relief in Ethiopia and elsewhere in Africa.

As well as spawning the ambitious Live Aid, the 1985 concert, Band Aid established fundraising as a global spectacle and gave celebrities a fresh strand to their careers.

In recent years attitudes have hardened towards high profile “do-gooding”. The BBC charity Comic Relief has been battered by criticism for boosting its audience by sending white celebrities to film “poverty porn”.

The lyrics of Do They Know It’s Christmas? have been tweaked several times to try to limit offence. Likening the tragedy in one country with an entire continent of 54 states had been necessary in 1984, Geldof’s co-collaborator Midge Ure said, because “Ethiopia had too many syllables”.

Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia’s prime minister, said: “It is frustrating to see our nation’s ancient history, culture, diversity and beauty reduced to doom and gloom”

The fresh mix, released on Monday, is the fifth attempt to rinse it for a modern ear but silencing the fact-free original has been impossible. The version in which Africans know nothing about Christmas, snow, crops, rain and rivers is a dogged favourite of radio stations.

Images accompanying the new version are unlikely to be of the nameless victims that inspired horror and donations 40 years ago. Still, what Abiy calls the project’s “reductionist and dehumanising narratives” have stuck.

Ed Sheeran said last week that he would prefer it if his vocals recorded for the 2014 revival had been left off the latest remix. To explain himself, the singer shared a post by the rapper Fuse ODG who said the Band Aid lyrics “perpetuate damaging stereotypes that stifle Africa’s economic growth, tourism and investment [and] fuel pity rather than partnership”.

Defending the song’s perpetuity, Geldof, 73, said his “miraculous little record” had brought relief to thousands of hungry children over the years which outweighed “the abstract wealthy-world argument” against it, imagining there to be no critics in the non-wealthy world.

Abiy, at 48 one of Africa’s youngest leaders, said: “I would say that their humanitarian commitment is admirable and to be appreciated but a good cause that has not evolved with the times might end up doing more harm than good.”

Rather than being chained to Band Aid’s brief glimpse of Ethiopia’s ancient history, Abiy said his country would be better off if it was recognised as one of the fastest-growing economies, its ancient sites were on every traveller’s bucket list, and for building the largest hydropower project in Africa.

“The song is not a great soundtrack for the investment we need. Famine does not define who we are as a nation or a continent,” he said. “Even England has experienced a period of famine in its history.”

Abiy, in power since 2018, won the 2019 Nobel peace prize for his efforts in achieving peace with Eritrea. His image since then has been tarnished by a civil war in Tigray during which government troops were accused of human rights violations and choking aid supplies. Funds from the Band Aid Charitable Trust last year helped fund meals for more than 100,000 schoolchildren affected by that war.

It is too late for his intervention in Band Aid 40, but Abiy said he hoped something could be worked out for an inevitable half-century version of Do They Know It’s Christmas? as partners.

Ethiopians won’t be known for being hungry again, he said. The modernisation of the agricultural sector and other measures mean future droughts won’t be so catastrophic.

“Ethiopia has become self-sufficient in wheat production and fully substituted wheat and other cereal imports,” Abiy said, and the country was “determined to pull off one of the most consequential agricultural revolutions the world has witnessed.”

More handouts won’t be welcome. “The long-term solution to the challenges we face cannot emanate from pity,” he said.

The lyrics debunked
Midge Ure, who wrote the Band Aid single with Geldof, insists it is just a “pop song”. Yet it is one that gets quite a lot wrong, from the title onwards…

Do they know it’s Christmas?

Er, yes they do. Ethiopia adopted Christianity in 325AD, making it one of the first places in the world to do so. England was a Pagan country for another two-and-a-half centuries. Christmas is big for Ethiopians, though the focus is religious rather than material. It is not on December 25, as they follow the Julian calendar and celebrate Christmas Day on January 7.

And there won’t be snow in Africa this Christmas time

There is definitely snow in Africa, including often in Ethiopia’s Simien Mountains in winter.

Where nothing ever grows, no rain or river flows

Africa is a continent of farmers who grow a lot, including 70 per cent of the world’s cocoa that goes into making the chocolate munched in other parts of the world. The flowing rivers of Africa include the Nile and the Congo which are respectively the longest and deepest on Earth.

[GftNC]

Sorry! Italiexo!

[nous]

First Geldof; Rawls to follow shortly after.

I think what Geldof and Ure did with their project accomplished a lot of good in an era where music celebrities had a lot of attention and could recruit and mobilize a lot of idealistic young people to look outside of their own little world and try to do some good in places that had a lot less. We could do a lot worse for awakening the political conscience of a generation. A lot of the Amnesty International efforts in pop music in the following decade were built on the back of that first big wave sweeping over MTV. I'm not going to criticize it. In large part, I am a product of it.

I do understand where the critics are coming from in part, but I think that the center of that discussion is in the wrong place. The problem is not with Feed the World, it's with the ways in which that project keeps making its anniversary celebrations without really moving on from that naïveté. It would be great, for example, if some of the artists who were involved in the project's iterations who had made serious bank could facilitate an anniversary celebration that put artists from the Global South in charge and let them take primacy and agency. That can be done without recrimination against the original. That would be genuine progress, and it can be done with grace towards all that have sought to put a shoulder to the wheel.

Yes, we need to move beyond seeing Africa as a failed place with people who are in need of charity from the West. Yes, we need to recognize that the engines of Western prosperity were fueled by the exploitation of the Global South. That can be done without recrimination against the people who, with imperfect understanding and a bit of self-importance, managed to do good. The doing is crucial. The learning how to do better can be done as we keep doing.

I've got a writing about music class coming up in the new year that has current students looking back on the college music of the '80s and '90s to see what that moment was like, and to debate which parts of that moment they may want to take for their own, and which they should move forward from and improve.

I hope that they can learn the sort critical perspective with grace that can lead to solidarity and progress. We shall see. The ball, as always, is in their court.

[russell]

All of Abiy's comments seem more than fair to me, and good on him for presenting a more balanced picture of his country. I'll also say that Africa is a much more complex and various place than the developed world, for lack of a better word, seems to realize.

And hell yes, fair-minded partnership and investment beats pity any day.

All of that, and, it's also good to help hungtu people eat, even if that help is rendered while wearing cultural blinders.

There doesn't always need to be a bad guy.

[russell]

"Hungtu" -> "hungry".

Can't even blame that one on auto-correct. :(

[nous]

On to Rawls...

I have read Rawls, and I find his writing very affirmational. He's very much in the liberal tradition, and if one believes in the basic premises of enlightenment liberalism - that all people deserve to live fair and free lives as equally as can be managed fairly - then the rest of what he says just feels like an expansion of those principles.

But in order for those principles to be put into practice in the actual world, it requires reasonable people. And it requires that those reasonable people be prepared to set aside history and society for a moment and choose to act on a utopian project with faith in the outcome, trusting in the good faith of other peoples.

That's a hard lift in this moment, and it appears to be a losing proposition given the state of politics worldwide. The New Right is constituted on the premise that the liberal project is a failure and needs to be swept aside as so much fairy dust, to be supplanted by the vision of people with superior morals, and the courage to push those morals onto everyone else or force the dissenters out of the way.

The difficulty with Rawls is that I don't see much in the way of practical methods for putting forth a liberal agenda in the face of populist opposition and a well funded and fully developed propaganda movement aimed at burying liberalism under endless waves of grievance and will-to-power.

I'd encourage everyone to read Rawls. He's an inspiring thinker. But I also want you to learn to throw a political punch and get your hands dirty with the idea of practical resistance to the New Right agenda.

Rawls's reasonable person is in short supply at the moment, and those who have the potential to be reasonable are busy fighting for survival.

[nous]

The ChatGPT summary of Rawls, for what it is worth, did a decent job of identifying his main points, but then expanded on many of those points mostly by sampling from the summaries of the work that were written by Rawls' numerous critics on the right. It ends up making Rawls sound more revolutionary than ever he was.

That's what happens when one "reads" without any awareness of contexts and agendas, and with no critical perspective from which to test the various summaries and explanations for accuracy.

[GftNC]

There doesn't always need to be a bad guy.

So very true, and very important.

Rawls's reasonable person is in short supply at the moment, and those who have the potential to be reasonable are busy fighting for survival.

Also very true. Good points on both issues, nous, much appreciated.

[GftNC]

russell, I meant to reply to your 12.54 upthread, but honestly, I did not know what to say. Your self-examination is something that I assume very many of your compatriots are doing, or will be doing soon. And frankly, I can't really see how one can be a good person, and not be thinking along these lines. I only hope that you, and everyone else I care about, stays safe and finds ways to stay true to yourselves, and still do what good you can. Peace be upon you, and upon all your people.