Archive for October, 2024

U.S. politics, fascism and the age of Trump

October 30, 2024

American politics since 2015 or so has revolved around the cult of the personality of a single individual: Donald Trump.

Establishment Democrats and Republicans depict Trump as an existential threat to democracy, who must be stropped at all costs, including abrogating fundamental constitutional and democratic rights.  Nothing else matters as much.

There is a hard core of Trump supporters who regard him as a savior. No Democrat since Barack Obama has inspired this kind of loyalty. There is an outer layer of Trump supporters who are aware of his flaws, but regard him as a lesser evil than the status quo.

Many of my personal friends and Internet acquaintances regard Trump as morally and politically the equivalent of Hitler.  While I do not regard Trump as a man of peace or a champion of civil liberties, I recall we all lived through one whole Trump administration before and lived to tell the tale.

The Hitler-Trump talk generally includes the phrase, “This man must not be allowed to take power.”  Not, “this man must not win the Nov. 5 election,” but take power.  If you could travel back in time and assassinate Hitler before he was sworn in as Chancellor in 1933, wouldn’t you do it?

Many people in authority predict riots and disorder on election day.  It is easy to see how this could be used by a lame-duck Democratic administration to invoke of the Insurrection Act and declare a state of emergency.  Or maybe Trump could be convicted and sentenced to prison on one of the charges pending against him before he is inaugerated.

“Lambert Strether” of Naked Capitalism has written a good post on a possible scenario of how this could happen.  The America This Week podcast by Matt Taibbi and Walter Kern regularly considers this possibility. 

I myself do not predict this will happen.  I have no idea what will happen. I do say I am uneasy about what may happen between election day and inauguration day.

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Posted in Politics | 16 Comments »

Make the case for Biden, Harris or Trump

October 30, 2024

This is an open thread.  I want comments that list positive traits or accomplishments of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris or Donald Trump or the Biden-Harris or Trump administrations.

My purpose is to test my theory that American voters’ motives for supporting either of the candidates in the 2024 presidential election is hate or fear of the other candidate.

On this particular post, I want only positive comments, preferably based on fact rather than adjectives.  Comparisons are ok, provided one side of the comparison is positive, but I don’t want lesser-evil arguments. Positive comments about small-party candidates are ok. 

Purely negative comments or parts of comments are subject to deletion.

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Posted in Politics, Public Policy | 8 Comments »

The outlook for Israel is not good

October 27, 2024

What Has Israel Achieved in the Past Year? by Arch Bungle for Moon of Alabama.

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Posted in International, War and Peace | 1 Comment »

Genocide Watch: Links 10/25/2024

October 25, 2024

The friend who sent me this video told me that the two little girls must be Christians, because they do not wear Muslim headdresses. An estimated 1 percent of the Palestinian Arab population are Christians.

What Doctors and Nurses in Gaza Saw from the New York Times.

“Our Job  Is to Flatten Gaza.  No one will stop us”: Inside one Israeli battalion’s year-long mission of destruction by Yunis Tarawi and Sami Vanderlip for Drop Site.

Video of Sexual Abuse at Israeli Sde Prison Is Latest Evidence Sde Teiman Is Torture Site by Jonah Valdez for The Intercept.

UN Probe Finds ‘Appalling Acts’ of Torture Against Palestinians Detained by Israel by Edward Carver for Common Dreams.

UN Expert Says Impunity for Israel Must End as ‘Genocidal Violence’ Spreads to the West Bank by Jake Johnson for Common Dreams.

Why I am not voting for Kamala Harris: My red line is genocide and no ‘good vibes’ campaigning will change it by Maura Finkelstein for Al Jazeera.  Of course Donald Trump, based on his record and statements, is as much and possibly more of an enabler of genocide than Harris or President Biden.

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Posted in Abuse of Power, Foreign Affairs, Human Rights | 3 Comments »

Why I cast a blank ballot for President

October 23, 2024

I sent in a mail-in ballot last Saturday.  I cast a blank ballot. 

I was unwilling to vote for Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.  They were the only candidates on the ballot, so I had no choice.

Whichever one is elected, we Americans will have four more years of war, four more years of declining living standards and four more years of attacks on basic civil liberties, just as we’ve had for the past eight years and more. 

We will have a continuation of support for Israel’s genocidal attacks on Palestine and Gaza with money, arms and personnel.  I feel sick and ashamed just thinking about it.  We will very likely continue to gamble with the possibility of nuclear war.

We will almost certainly lack meaningful preparation to deal with threats such as climate-related weather catastrophes, pandemic disease, shortages due to trade wars and exhaustion of natural resources.

I would have voted for Jill Stein of the Green Party, not only because she is a peace candidate, but because, unlike Trump and Harris, she gives interviews in which she shows mastery of the issues while maintaining her composure and dignity.

But New York state has changed its requirements for small parties to get on the ballot, and the Greens, like the Libertarians, didn’t make the cut this year.

Neither party represents me.  Neither respects the democratic process.

Roughly speaking, Democrats try to win by trying to kick their opponents off the ballot and deny them access to social media, and Republicans try to win by kicking voters off the registration rolls.

Why should I waste my vote on either of them?

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Why these rural Democrats went for Trump

October 23, 2024

Voters in rural Elliott County, Kentucky, voted for Democrats for President, from 1872 through 2012.  In 2016 NS 2020, they gave a big majority to Trump, and probably will do the same this year.  Yet in 2019 and 2023, they voted for liberal Democrat Andy Beshear for governor.

Why?  Journalists John Russell and Nehemiah Stark went there to find out.  Their conclusion is that the change is because the Democratic Party has changed from being the party of unions and wage-earners to the party of free trade and big business.

Can it change back?  Can the Republican Party become the working class party?  I doubt it.  What do you think?

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Posted in Politics | 10 Comments »

Perfectly timed photos

October 19, 2024

Time for something a little lighter.

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Posted in Photography, The Lighter Side, The Passing Scene | 2 Comments »

Who started the war in Lebanon?

October 16, 2024

 

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Posted in War and Peace | Leave a Comment »

Should the USA police the world? No

October 12, 2024

Last Wednesday Matt Taibbi and investigative reporter Lee Fang took the negative position in a debate with Jamie Kirchik of the Atlantic Council and Bret Stephens of the New York Times on the question, “Should the United States still police the world?”

Taibbi, like many writers, is better with the written word than the spoken word.  He posted his afterthoughts  yesterday. They were eloquent and true, and well worth reading in full.  Here are some key paragraphs.

Before World War II the British mocked us as a bumbling giant too timid to become a global power. A Foreign Office memo said, “They have enormous power, but it’s the power of the reservoir behind the dam.”

Now we throw our weight around all the time, and somehow, there isn’t much left behind the dam.

That’s not a material or financial assessment. Our biggest losses since 1945 have been in the realm of things Caesar measured when considering the worthiness of adversaries: valor, dignity, judiciousness.

With our awesome military and resources we should never lose a war, but we’ve suffered numerous humiliations at the hands of more furious and determined adversaries in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, to say nothing of disasters like our Libyan engagement.

The common theme has been politicians betraying soldiers by saddling them with unjust or unclear missions, against people fighting on their own land for their lives and families.

These losses haven’t dented our military power, but they have drained any claims to honor, things unfortunately not detectable to those reading line items in Washington. [snip]

Invading a country whose people have done nothing to us isn’t something you can shrug off as a “blunder.” The shame sticks, it arouses enmity, and (in a way I don’t think hawks even try to understand) advertises superficiality of thought, which is a kind of weakness. A trigger-happy nation is a dumb nation, and dumbness doesn’t scare anyone.

We’ve been dumb a lot. We backed massacres of (conservatively) 500,000 by the Indonesian Army under Suharto in the mid-1960s, were complicit in deaths of nearly 2,000,000 civilians lost in Indochinese wars (including a generation of horrific birth defects caused by Agent Orange), 160,000 killed in Guatemalan massacres, 200,000 civilians killed in Iraq, 50,000 more in Afghanistan, tens of thousands more in Chile after the 1973 coup, the El Mozote massacre in El Salvador in 1981, and so on.  [snip]

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Posted in Foreign Affairs, War and Peace | 2 Comments »

How to live at the end of the world

October 11, 2024

DOOMER: How to Live at the End of the World by Jessica Wildfire (2024)

Jessica Wildfire writes an excellent blog called Sentinel Intelligence (formerly OK Doomer), which is about existential threats to society and how to survive them, both on an individual and societal level.

It provides good information, mainly but not exclusively about covid and climate change.  It includes a valuable online library of links to scientific articles, mainly but not exclusively about covid.

But Doomer is not about these topics.  It is about the reasons why people almost always ignore warnings of disaster, not matter how well-founded, and why those who gave warning are almost never acknowledged, even when their warnings prove correct.

A certain percentage of the population who possess what she calls “sentinel intelligence,” which is the ability to perceive when something is wrong and to act on it.  But a much higher percentage of the population is mentally hard-wired to associate bad things with people who warn about the bad things, and not with those who gave false reassuring statements.

The Cassandras who warned of the folly of invading Iraq, of the need to keep the New Orleans levees in repair prior to Hurricane Katrina or the danger of wild financial speculation prior to the 2008 financial crash – none of them got any credit for having been proved right.  Instead we are told “nobody could have foreseen … …”

The great example she gives is hostility to people who wear masks for protection against covid.  Covering one’s nose and mouth is simple common sense if you want to protect yourself against an incurable, highly infectious, incapacitating virus that is occasionally fatal, which is what covid is.  Wearing a mask harms no-one and may make others safer.

People also may wear masks because they are allergic to pollen in the air, or because they have jobs where they are exposed to particulate matter, or for other reasons. 

Yet mask wearers are stigmatized and even outlawed in some jurisdictions, including Nassau County on Long Island.  Here’s a letter to the editor of a local paper there.

Of course the supposed danger of masked criminals is just an excuse.  The basic reason for this hostility is that maskers remind the public that covid is still a threat and that little is being done about it. 

Another problem is the kind of learned helplessness that seems to pervade US American society nowadays.  Wildfire gave as an example a woman who was in the Twin Towers on Sept. 11, 2001, when the airplanes hit.

The force of the explosion knocked her out of her chair, but the woman said afterwards that her first reaction was disbelief and the hope someone would tell her she was imagining things

She was immobilized until she heard someone say, “Get out!”  If not for that, she probably would have died.  Even then, she took a few minutes to gather up her stuff before she fled.

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Posted in Books, Climate Change, Coming Bad Years, Global Warming, Medicine and Health, Philosophy, Practical Advice, Psychology | 6 Comments »

Did God give Lebanon to Abraham?

October 8, 2024

A writer for the Jerusalem Post said God’s promise to Abraham included not only what I think of as the Holy Land (the former British Palestine Mandate), but also Lebanon and other adjoining lands.

The article, by one Mark Fish, has been taken down, but it is not the only JP article expressing that view at a time when Israel is  invading Lebanon.  Here is the meat of the article.

In the last generation, the term “Greater Israel” has come to the forefront. It is sometimes used in political or religious discussions about the ideal or future borders of Israel, often in the context of messianic or Zionist aspirations. Some interpret it as a call for the re-establishment of Israel’s biblical borders. However, the concept varies in meaning, ranging from symbolic or spiritual interpretations to literal geographical claims.
 
This term refers to the concept of the biblical boundaries of the Land of Israel as promised to the Jewish people in various parts of the Torah. It is often associated with the land described in the Covenant with Avraham (Brit Bein HaBetarim), which stretches from the “River of Egypt” (interpreted by some as the Nile or a smaller river in Sinai) to the Perat River. This expansive region includes parts of modern-day Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq.
 
When Hashem [God] promised Avraham Avinu the Land of Israel at the Brit Bein HaBetarim, the pasuk says (בראשית טז): “On that day, Hashem made a covenant with Avram, saying: To your descendants, I have given this land—from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates.”
 
At the blessing at the end of Parshat Ekev, Hashem tells us that we are granted every land we will conquer within the borders mentioned. In the north, the Torah states: “Every place where the sole of your foot will tread shall be yours—from the wilderness and the Lebanon, from the river—the Euphrates River—until the western sea shall be your boundary.” This promise from the Creator clearly places the land of Lebanon within the Promised Land of Israel, or what some refer to as “the Complete Land of Israel,” or “The greater Israel.”
 
This claim goes well beyond the territory actually occupied by the nations of Israel or Judah in Biblical times.
 
Mark Fish does not necessarily speak for the government of Israel.  He most certainly does not speak for all Jewish people nor for all citizens of Israel.  But the fact that such sentiments can be published in a leading newspaper indicates that such sentiments are acceptable.

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Posted in Religion, War and Peace | 5 Comments »

The fake populism of JD Vance

October 7, 2024

JD Vance is much less of a populist than I have given him credit for and more of a blood-and-soil nationalist.  This post is to set the record straight.

I first heard of Vance because of his book, Hillbilly Elegy.  He tells how he raised himself from a culture of poverty to the culture of the middle class, and then to the elite.  His moral is that character and self-discipline are more important than external circumstances.

Born in 1984, he grew up in Middletown, Ohio, in a family whose forebears came from eastern Kentucky and were products of the Appalachian culture, which is based on extreme individualism and assertiveness.

The community had fallen on hard times because of the decline of Armco Steel, its major employer.  Many people there had given up on life  Vance’s mother was addicted to drugs.  He said living with her and the succession of men in her life was an experience of never-ending emotional violence.

He was basically raised by his maternal grandmother, a profane and belligerent woman who nevertheless was a strict and loving surrogate parent who taught him responsibility.  Later he lived for a time with his birth father, a member of a Pentecostal church, and learned what it was like to be part of a supportive religious community.

The major transformative influence in his life was his four-year service in the Marine Corps, where he learned discipline and self-discipline.  He then earned a degree from Ohio State University and enrolled in Yale Law School.

So far, so meritorious.

But the next stage in his rise was not based on character and achievement.  It was based on acquiring traits that would make him acceptable to members of the American elite.

He was mentored in elite behavior by his law school professor, Amy Chua, author of The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, and his future wife, Usha Chilukuri, an upper-class California girl who was the daughter of immigrants from India.

After graduating from Yale, Vance practiced law for a couple of years and then joined Mithril Capital,  a venture capital firm headed by Peter Thiel, in San Francisco, in 2016 and 2017.

Thiel is an interesting character. He is the son of German immigrants who brought him to the U.S. at the age of one.  He is a billionaire through having been a co-founder of PayPal and an early investor in Facebook and other highly successful businesses.  He is gay.  He backed Donald Trump for the Republican nomination in 2016 and has supported him rhetorically and financially ever since.

Vance reportedly spend much of his time with Mithril working on Hillbilly Elegy.  In it, he accused Trump of offering fake solutions to American workers’ problems.  He compared faith in Trump to opioid addiction.  But he soon changed his mind.

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China’s industrial supremacy: a reminder

October 3, 2024

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Background facts on Ukraine

October 1, 2024

As the two major candidates for the U.S. vice presidency prepare to debate Tuesday night in Manhattan, veteran U.S. intelligence officials have some firm advice for them on Ukraine.

MEMORANDUM TO: The Candidates for U.S. Vice President

FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

SUBJECT: Clarity on Ukraine

At Tuesday’s debate, we strongly suggest you avoid repeating familiar “facts” that do not bear close scrutiny. Chief among these is the claim that Russia’s decision to send troops into Ukraine was “unprovoked.”  A companion is the claim that Russia will not stop in Ukraine and that Poland will be “next”.

A constructive debate needs to be informed by accurate facts; we offer some below:

Unprovoked

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg inadvertently gave the game away on Ukraine during a speech at the European Parliament on Oct. 7, 2023, with these words:

“He [Putin] wanted us never to enlarge NATO…We rejected that…So he went to war to prevent more NATO.”

Reaching farther back, we remind you that on Feb. 1, 2008 Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told then-U.S. Ambassador William Burns in no uncertain terms that Russia would be provoked if NATO invited Ukraine to become a member.

Burns titled the embassy cable #08MOSCOW265, sent immediately to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice:

“NYET MEANS NYET: RUSSIA’S NATO ENLARGEMENT RED LINES.”

Nevertheless, Bush and Cheney scorned that warning and just two months later successfully pressed other NATO leaders to agree, in the NATO Summit Declaration of April 3, 2008, that Ukraine “will become a member of NATO.”

You will probably recall that earlier still, on Feb. 9, 1990, Secretary of State James Baker successfully persuaded Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to accept reunification of Germany in return for an undertaking by the U.S. not to expand NATO “one inch eastward.”

Since then NATO has more than doubled in size, with all new members east of what had been East Germany.

Coup d’ Etat, Kyiv, Feb. 2014

The coup in Kiev, appropriately known as the “most blatant coup in history” – drove out duly elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and turned the issue of Ukraine joining NATO into a very live issue. The coup government, which was given official U.S. recognition in record time, immediately called for NATO membership

Crimea was the first big fly in the ointment. By an accident of history Crimea, traditionally part of Russia, had been ceded to Ukraine by Soviet fiat (ukaz) in 1954. It hardly mattered then because Ukraine was a constituent Republic of the USSR.

After the USSR fell apart in 1991, and after the 2014 coup leaders declared NATO membership as a main goal, it mattered greatly.

Crimea’s strategic significance to Russia cannot be understated. Suffice it to point out here that Russia’s only ice-free naval base is in Crimea. That’s why a quick plebiscite was held; the vote was overwhelming in favor of annexation by Russia; and that was speedily accomplished.

This too was branded “unprovoked” by the likes of Sen. John McCain. The Establishment media were obfuscating this issue to such an extent that one of us was provoked into sending a letter to the editor of The Washington Post, published on July 1, 2015:

“Sen. John McCain was wrong to write that Russian President Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea without provocation. What about the coup in Kiev on Feb. 22, 2014, that replaced President Viktor Yanukovych with pro-Western leaders favoring membership in NATO? Was that not provocation enough?

This glaring omission is common in the Post.

The March 10 World Digest item ‘Putin had early plan to annex Crimea’ described a “secret meeting” Mr. Putin held on Feb. 23, 2014, during which ‘Russia decided it would take the Crimean Peninsula.’ No mention was made of the coup the previous day. …”

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Posted in Foreign Affairs, War and Peace | 7 Comments »