Friday, December 29, 2023

Friday cat blogging

Family portrait -- two lively beasts in mid-tussle. Mio is big, but Janeway gets in her licks (literally), grabbing his head between her front paws and twisting. They are, I think, happier for having each other to chase around and then, when done, ostentatiously ignore. 

Thursday, December 28, 2023

The two wars we're not even noticing

Nobody, resting safe and sound in their own warm bed, can hardly be expected to attend to, and to weep over, and to try to comprehend all the distant wars on the planet. This is a season of far too many brutal conflicts and too much brutal displacement of peoples.

I write about Israel/Palestine and about Ukraine's war of independence. But, in this time of year change, I can at least mention two other places where even more people are being driven from their homes by war.

Sudan: According to the United Nations, fighting between rival militarys have caused massive numbers of Sudanese to flee. As of December 21, 

The war between the head of the army, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane, and his second, General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo, boss of the much-feared FSR, extended last week to the state of al-Jazeera in the centre-east of the country, hitherto spared, approaching the town of Wad Madani which served as a humanitarian hub and refuge for previous displaced people.

According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), up to 300,000 people fled Wad Madani as the fighting approached. “These new movements bring the displaced population to 7.1 million,” including 1.5 million who have taken refuge in neighbouring countries, said Stéphane Dujarric, spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General.

That's as many refugees as the entire Jewish population of the state of Israel.

Myanmar: since 2021, a military government which seized power from elected leaders has waged war on the country's ethnic minorities -- and those minorities have fought back. Adam Tooze writes about how neighboring China is deeply involved with all parties in that seesaw war. The U.N. estimates that 1.25 million people have taken refuge in neighboring countries and 2.6 million more people are considered stateless within the country.

Tuesday, December 26, 2023

Seasonal pleasures

Having spent the height of autumn in New England, it seems improbable to highlight the astonishing color changes in a few California trees observed in the last week. But they are all around.

I've long joked, since becoming a California immigrant over 50 years ago, that instead of turning colors, the trees around here just get tired and finally drop their leaves.

 
But that dismissive attitude is unfair to trees doing their deciduous thing.
 
Pretty magnificent, actually.
Naturally we Californians can't resist adding our own embellishments.

Monday, December 25, 2023

Christmas in Ukraine

 
At the moment caught here, Russian missiles are not incoming. But they might be at any time; the war against the empire grinds on.
 
Myroslava Tanska-Vikulova writes from Ukraine:  
Strange as it may sound, the aroma of gluhwein [Ukrainian mulled wine] on Independence Square or hot tea that warms Ukrainian defenders at the front – these are our simple pleasures, the ones that help us understand what we’re living for.

In recent years, every Ukrainian has become dependent on one another. The front cannot exist without the rear, but without the front Ukraine’s distinct culture and society would be eliminated.

Since the invasion began, the holidays have taken on a whole new meaning for us. Now it's not just about drinking champagne while the bells ring, or opening presents.

For Ukrainians, Christmas and New Year is a time to thank every defender, a time to remember that it is only because of them that we sleep under warm blankets, to pay tribute to those who have died and those who are still in captivity, to think about those who are currently under occupation and cannot feel free on their native Ukrainian land.
St. Nick via Razom, people-to-people aid to Ukraine
• • •
The Ukraine war puts me in mind of another anti-colonial war, an analogy that I see raised very seldom in this country, yet which seems highly apt to me: the United States War of colonial Independence, 1775-1783.

A rag-tag band of colonials with sophisticated political ideas and mixed motives decided they were ready to throw off a constraining imperial power. The old power despised them as rude farmers and shop keepers. It took their revolt lightly, expecting a quick suppression. Ingenuity and determination among the colonials kept them in the fight and stretched the old empire's military resources. Other world empires propped up the revolt in order to weaken their competitor. There was nothing easy about the U.S. independence struggle, but the insurgent colonists prevailed and the rest is history.

When I think of Ukraine this year, I think of General Washington crossing the Delaware River on Christmas night in 1776 leading his ill-trained, under-equipped Continental Army to challenge the era's most imposing military. 
Few observers would have expected that these improbable amateur troops could endure and win, but they did. Ukraine surviving Russian invasion makes no sense. But Ukraine still lives and carries hope of something better for its people and for all of Europe. I am grateful for the example, however tenuous and imperfect.

Sunday, December 24, 2023

Christmas eve: wishes from Tel Aviv

Dana Mills is chronicling what it means to an Israeli peace activist to live in the aftermath of the 10/7 attacks and the daily presence of no good news of so many hostages and Israel's Gaza war of vengeance. As it happens, she's what Erudite Partner calls "a hemi-semite," the offspring  of a Christian parent who identifies with the tribe of her Jewish parent and claims no religion for herself. (E.P. is a hemi-Semite too.) So Mills knows from Christmas having spent a lot of time around Christians.

She contemplates a very painful Christmas in the accursed "Holy Land". The small tribe of resident Palestinian Christians have called off what is usually their high season at the Biblical sites of the Incarnation.

... This year, I've heard from different Palestinian Christian friends that their communities are treating Christmas differently. The grief for the death toll in Gaza is tremendous, and the feeling of heaviness is everywhere in Palestinian communities. I told someone I know, a practicing Christian, and he said "I can understand why you wouldn't feel like celebrating Christmas". I don't think this captures the extent of the decision to not mark Christmas here, and the reason for that.

... The Christian Palestinian community is smaller than the Muslim one, yet the connection between this land to the sites to which Christians all around the world pray and long has sustained. Flying to Tel Aviv around this time always brought pilgrims and priests of various kinds on my flights (I recall one flight in which around 50 nuns were sitting on the plane and I felt like an extra in The Sound of Music). I always knew that for various people my homeland was "the Holy Land". I used to sign "regards from the not- very- holy-land" when visiting home.

... Yet, the decision to not have grand and open celebrations for Christmas here is a big one. It's not a matter of "not feeling like it". It's protesting on a symbolic plain that constitutes the ontological place in which the narrative of Christmas took place. It's removing the ground, quite literally, from the story of Christmas.

Living abroad added to my complexity of my feelings towards Christmas. I was shocked and appalled by the commercial nature of Christmas; most people around me mainly saw it as a time for shopping and a break from work. Very few people took interest in the holiday's meaning and symbols, and even the music and other cultural artifice around it.
So I'm both sad and also not surprised that the little town of Bethlehem is not on many peoples' minds this year, as they rush for Christmas shopping and overjoy in putting their autoreply on email. And so, even this act of protest, which is really what the Palestinian community has by way of power internationally, is perceived as "not feeling like celebration"; a personal, individualistic act rather than collective dissent. ...

... I wrote yesterday about realizing that I need to engage with social media in order to understand this war, how to campaign against it and how to engage with those who disagree with me around it. I've found recently that the people who upset me the most on social media are those who write hollow statements on everything I post, such as "praying for peace" or some such. Many of whom are also practicing Christians. The reality here is so horrendous that I find it offensive to see people cling on to slogans and words that bring them comfort while looking away from the world in all its gore. Of course, peace is what I-- many people around me--- strive towards, but in order to get even close to that, so much healing, restorative justice, and just a deep space of grief have to be held.

... Don't talk to me about peace on earth before you're willing to look at the pain and grief we're living through here, in your Holy Land. If I can force myself to look at Gaza instagrammers photos of ash clad children running to look for their families, so should a Christian who wants to see peace in any possible way come to this earth.

And so, I felt heavy hearing of the decision not to have big public events for Christmas yet understood it and felt the need to be in solidarity with it, from my bad-atheist-Jewess- half- Christian point of view.

This is a sad Christmas, whether you are interested in what had happened in the "Holy Land" million years ago, or not; take a stern look at what is happening here now, around the corner from the little town of Bethlehem.

My Christmas wish is for a ceasefire to finally be installed and last, for Israel to tend to its injured, dead and grieving, and focus on life not revenge; and Palestinian communities to receive solidarity not only as victims of atrocities but as a people who deserve -- like all of us -- the right to self-determination and cultural and political sovereignty.

My Christmas wish is for us to make the small, important step towards a just peace-- recognizing and acknowledging power disparities as well as the pain held by all communities on this land.

My Christmas wish is that we are able to look at the worlds inhabited around us, and that the world outside of these borders between the river and the sea looks at us and understands we are real people who wish to live, not die, and need solidarity in order to cease this senseless violence.
BETHLEHEM, OCCUPIED WEST BANK - DECEMBER 14, 2023: In Bethlehem, the Lutheran Church decided that its Christmas nativity scene this year would be different by placing the symbolic Baby Jesus in a manger of rubble and destruction to reflect the reality of Palestinian children living and being born today ... Thursday, Dec. 14, 2023. The pastor of the church is a Palestinian Christian theologian.

More from Dana Mills can be found at this link.

Saturday, December 23, 2023

An unwelcome blast from the past

The headline reads: U.S.-Brokered Talks Seek to Ease Tensions on Israel-Lebanon Border. I have no idea whether this is a meaningful development or not. I tend to doubt that the U.S. is a useful interlocutor in talks which, of necessity, must involve dealing with Hezbollah, the Lebanese force which we have designated a "terrorist organization" and a hostile Iranian proxy. Many, but not all, Lebanese think differently, recognizing Hezbollah as one legitimate force among many in a divided country. I claim no expertise.

The immediate focus of the discussions has been to prevent cross-border skirmishes between Israel and Hezbollah — fueled by Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza — from escalating into an all-out conflict, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive deliberations.

... In addition to its efforts to contain the immediate risk of escalation, the Biden administration has been discussing with the parties the parameters of a longer-term agreement to increase stability along the border so that tens of thousands of displaced civilians in northern Israel and southern Lebanon feel safe enough to return to their homes after the war in Gaza ends.

... According to participants in the talks, Israeli officials have sent mixed messages about the distance Hezbollah fighters would have to move north of the border to allow Israeli civilians to return to their communities in northern Israel. One Israeli proposal called for Hezbollah forces to move at least five kilometers, or about three miles, north of the Israeli-Lebanese border — to reduce the chances that the group could follow Hamas’s example and send large numbers of fighters into Israel to kill and kidnap Israeli civilians. Another called for them to move eight kilometers.

The discussion -- the sort of matter about which I tend to believe nothing until something concrete occurs -- reminds me that I had the privilege of being driven through that border area in an ostensibly peaceful interlude in 2006. Such beauty, so much history.

 
The remains of a Crusader castle, Beaufort Chateau, sat on a ridge.
 
Yes, that is the Hezbollah flag flying proudly.
 
On the Lebanese side of the ridge, the village of Arnoun.
 
To the south, an Israeli settlement.

I have no idea how much of what is pictured is still there. Less than a month after I took these pictures, the 2006 Israel/Hezbollah War washed over this border area. Israel also bombed civilian infrastructure throughout Lebanon. Hezbollah survived, was able to use Iranian contributions to rebuild southern towns, and matured into a party within the Lebanese government, though remaining a non-state military force apart from the Lebanese Armed Forces.

Hezbollah and Israel have continued to lob missiles at each other sporadically ever since.

Let us hope Israel's Gaza retaliation for 10/7 doesn't not spread to Lebanon.

Friday, December 22, 2023

Friday cat blogging

We are observed. The job of the cats is to supervise the humans.

Janeway is intent on the action. Is E.P. doing it right?

Meanwhile, Mio takes a more cautious approach to watching me assemble blog posts.

That intent stare can be unnerving.

Thursday, December 21, 2023

Israel makes an unsustainable malignant Sparta

Israel's war on the people of Gaza will wind down or at least change form some time soon. Unfortunately, this will come about NOT because of international repulsion. Rather, despite U.S. support, the current level of Israeli military mobilization will become economically unsustainable.

National security establishment journalist David Ignatius let the cat out of the bag in an aside:

Israel’s leaders know they need to transition to a new stage in the conflict, not least to allow reservists to leave the front lines and return to their jobs.
This offhand remark alludes to what is less talked about: the Israel Defense Forces, despite being a conscript force requiring "all" men and women to serve, in fact treats lots of people living in Israel as exempt. The 21 percent who are "Arab" Israelis don't do military service. Nor do most ultra-Orthodox (Haredim).
Since Israel’s establishment in 1948, young Haredim have been exempt from the mandatory military service required of their non-Haredi counterparts. The exemption is deeply resented by many non-Haredi Israelis. Most must serve at least 32 months, while almost all young ultra-Orthodox men shun service. Haredi rabbis insist that fervent prayer for Israel’s security is just as important as military service.
Although the high court struck down the exemption in 2017 and ordered the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, to create a new, more equitable military draft, the Knesset has never complied with the court’s order.
The consequence of these exemptions is that IDF military personnel come from among the most economically active, modern sectors of Israel's fully up-to-date economy. In ordinary times, Israel thrives because these citizen soldiers are working. Keeping 300,000 reservists mobilized in a country of 7 million eligible citizens (perhaps two thirds of appropriate age) creates a terrible drain on prosperity, as well as on civilian life.

AP photo - In this December 23, 2010 photo, dozens of African migrants cross into southern Israel through the border with Egypt. Not these days ...

The war against Hamas has highlighted another area of fragility in the Israeli economy. The not-so-modern agricultural sector is dependent on contract farm laborers imported from impoverished countries.

Many Thai workers were among the victims of Hamas's 10/7 raid on southern Israel. Twenty-three were among the hostages released in the prisoner swap.

After the Oct. 7 attack, around 9,000 Thai workers — most of them from the area by Gaza — had evacuated the country, sending Israeli agriculture into its own state of emergency.
Voice of America reports how Israel is finding replacements these days.
Several hundred of young Malawi men have left for Israel to work on farms left deserted by an exodus sparked by the Gaza war, the labor ministry said ... Malawi's Secretary for Labor Wezi Kayira said Israel was one of several countries targeted by a government labour export program aimed at finding jobs for youth and generating desperately needed foreign exchange.

Even in a war zone, people need to eat and to work.

Wednesday, December 20, 2023

Undernews breaks through

This is just delicious. The right wing media sphere has got itself in a panty-soiling tizzy over a dance performance of the Nutcracker in the White House about which Jill Biden tweeted. You can watch the performance at that link.

Apparently none of the right wing media opinion makers ever saw a production of Hoffman's 1816 fable, such a corny staple of Christmas delight.

Ron DeSantis thinks he's onto something according to a fund appeal using a picture of the production:

Jill and Joe Biden are taking your tax dollars and throwing them at radical activist groups to parade through the halls that leaders like Ronald Reagan used to march through. There is truly no clearer picture of our country's decline than the dereliction of duty by our President. ...

Such confidence that his supporters must be narrow minded morons. Now we know Ron is one ... but all of them? 

Catherine Rampell [gift article-enjoy] has the story:

Hide your children, hide your wives. A radical force is sweeping the nation, threatening to destroy everything that God-fearing Americans hold dear.

That threat, according to Fox News? Tap-dancing, one of the most quintessentially American art forms there is.

Last week, first lady Jill Biden shared a festive holiday video of tap troupe Dorrance Dance performing their swingin’ spin on “The Nutcracker,” set to a jazz arrangement by Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn. ...

More seriously, David Frum [gift article] has described how MAGA acolytes become confirmed in believing so much nonsense in the concept he calls "undernews". 

During the Obama presidency, more extreme conservative media trafficked in rumors that Obama was secretly gay and having an affair with a male aide, or else that Michelle Obama was secretly transgender. This rubbish was too lurid, offensive, and stupid ever to be repeated on Fox News itself. But Fox hosts regularly made jokes and references that only made sense to viewers who had absorbed the undernews from other sources.

Undernews made itself felt during the first Trump impeachment too. The official defense of Trump, the one articulated by more high-toned hosts, was that the extortion of Ukraine did not rise to the level of impeachment. After all, Ukraine got its weapons in the end: no harm, no foul. In the undernews, however, this defense was backed by an elaborate fantasy that Trump had been right to act as he did.

In this fantasy, Ukraine became the center of a global criminal enterprise masterminded by the Biden family. Trump, the myth went, had heroically acted to reveal the plot—only to be thwarted by the Deep State’s machinations in Washington and Kyiv. Believers in the undernews reimagined Ukraine as a pro-Biden mafia state that had cruelly victimized Trump. They burned to inflict payback on Ukraine for the indignity of Trump’s first impeachment.

This delusory narrative was seldom articulated in venues where nonbelievers might hear it. But the delusion shaped the opinion of believers—and the behavior of those who sought votes from those believers: congressional Republicans. ...

That's the point. We don't hear it, but millions of our sibling citizens marinate in this stuff -- and end up scared of a tap dance performance.

Tuesday, December 19, 2023

Got a cold?

Does it seem as if every second person you know has flu, or cold, or perhaps COVID? That's because they do.

Click to enlarge

At least that's true in the more southerly parts of the country. 

I am glad to have received all my recommended shots -- most of us have not, so it's virus time.

Monday, December 18, 2023

Seasonal blahs

The Erudite Partner created a very carefully organized project for a rainy day. I don't understand it, but then I don't have to.

'Tis the season for indulging the instinct to hunker down and wait resignedly for light and warmth to return ... . This year, I'm not enjoying the dark when I get out of bed to feed cats. I look forward to the solstice. Soon the days will get longer. ...

Guess I'll go turn on some football ...

Sunday, December 17, 2023

In search of a critical eye, intellectual vigor, and humility ...

While watching college football yesterday, I heard that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar had been hospitalized following a fall in which he broke a hip. Let's hope the 76 year old basketball great has good doctors and manages a speedy recovery.

I'd been planning to post one of Abdul-Jabbar's homilies soon enough. Why not do it today? 

"A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life." -- Muhammad Ali, The Greatest

Sometimes when I look back on some of the ideas I had when I was twenty, and how arrogantly certain I was of being right, I wish I could hop in a time machine, go back to UCLA, and kick my smug, twenty-year-old ass. But most of the time, I just smile when I think back because I know that being wrong is part of the process of getting it right.

I wasn’t wrong about everything. The Vietnam War was bad. As the Pentagon Papers proved, President Lyndon Johnson lied to the American public as well as to Congress about what was really going on there. I wasn’t wrong about the treatment of Blacks in America and the need for equal treatment and opportunities.

The real issue isn’t which specific ideologies, philosophies, or politics have changed, but whether one’s ability to recognize their own weaknesses in forming opinions and stubbornness in keeping them, despite evidence to the contrary, has grown. With age can come a belief that you are suddenly imbued with supernatural wisdom. For some, that’s just an illusion that allows them to not challenge their opinions—and to rebuff others’ disagreements. There’s a difference between being resolved and being stubborn. ...

As an aside, here’s something you should learn as you grow older: Stop using “man” when referring to humankind (as ... Ali’s quote ... [does]). That’s not being woke, it’s being accurate. Using man is disrespectful and insisting to use it regardless proves you haven’t learned anything in the past 30 years.

Just to piggyback off Ali’s quote, anyone who thinks the same at 70 as they did at 50 hasn’t been paying attention. This is not about changing political sides or taste in music or playing pickleball instead of tennis. It’s being aware that the world is in a constant state of flux. Greek philosopher Heraclitus made this point best: “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.” (There’s that “man” again.)

Nothing remains the same and so we must approach each new idea or opinion with the same critical eye, intellectual vigor, and humility as we did in our youth. We must be willing to be wrong, yet also willing to be proven wrong. The rocky treacherous path to being right is the one thing that doesn’t change. The willingness to walk that path is what gives our beliefs value.
It isn't easy to avoid becoming stuck. Engagement with the world's joys and pains helps, if we can endure them. Perhaps a wisdom in aging is to discern just how much immersion in the flow of life we can bear and yet hold a steady course despite changes and chances.

Erudite Partner is an ethicist; from her I've learned that what makes for an ethical life is usually a product of what habits we form and encourage in ourselves. Courage always buttresses all other desirable habits which shape our changes.

Let's wish Kareem all good courage in his physical challenges.

Kareem in hospital

Saturday, December 16, 2023

College football bowl season begins

Here we go again ... once again I'm giving myself a break from the horrors of the world watching a surfeit of obscure end-of-season contests. Yes, the whole thing is full of hypocrisy about education and character-building while young men break their bodies to raise the profile of some institution. At least the money in the game is a little more transparent in this time of the overthrow of the conferences and of the corrupt NCAA. 

Sure, there are some engaging, well-played games. Florida A&M defeating Howard was gripping. And there were the marching bands ...

But it is the matches between what I think of as E. Armpit again W. Hangnail that often produce the more entertaining struggles. Whoever heard of some of these colleges? Players and spectators often care about something more than individual stats. And very few are playing solely to try to catch the eye of professional scouts.

Of course, watching live means seeing a deluge of ads. This Amazon offering so far wins the prize for the season. Having seen it at least 20 times, I still smile.

 
May we all be open to so much joy.

Friday, December 15, 2023

Two wars: where we can, the people want their say

Last night we joined a well-organized crew of Google workers and friends from Jewish Voice for Peace and the Arab Resource & Organizing Center in downtown San Francisco protesting the tech giant's work with the Israeli military. Google's Nimbus Project enables collection and analysis of sophisticated data intelligence and is reported to have been used for targeting in Israel's Gaza bombing campaign. (Hard to know how much targeting is going on when whole neighborhoods are leveled ...)

Protester Rami Abelkarim said Thursday evening that Google is well known as a search engine but “nobody thinks of Google as a war profiteer.”

• • •

On arriving home, I read independent reporter Tim Mak's account of a little demonstration in embattled Kyiv where Russian rocket attacks break up the nights.

Despite these obvious barriers to organization, demonstrators gathered in front of Kyiv city hall this morning to demand changes in the local government. If there’s a feeling that captures freedom, this is it: the energy of a demonstrating crowd protesting for a just future.

“As a civil society, we need to remind our authorities to serve our interests instead of their own,” said Volodymyr, whose father has been serving in the Ukrainian Army since the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014.

As stinging rain poured down, Kyiv residents shouted slogans: “More weapons, faster victory!” “Money for the armed forces!” Inside the building, the local government deliberated the annual budget.

... “All young democracies have to fight for themselves,” said Marianna, a political asylum seeker from Belarus, supporting Belarusian volunteer fighters in Ukraine. “I'm here because I don't want Ukraine to turn into what my home country is like now.”

Following the results of the session, Kyiv city mayor Vitalii Klychko announced the allocation of around $16 million for the Armed Forces on his official social media pages.

The demonstrators continue to protest despite this news: they were there, they said, to demand more.

• • •
In this less-than-happy holiday season, I remain grateful for the human spirit that demands peace, justice, and freedom, however little it feels we can achieve.

Friday cat blogging

Imagine my surprise when, one quiet evening, they both deposited themselves on my lap at once. Eighteen pound Mio and eight pound Janeway thought they'd found the perfect venue to practice a little intimacy ... They aren't shy.

She's sure he needs a bath. He returns to the compliment ... It feels a little awkward to me, but I'm not a cat.

Thursday, December 14, 2023

Voting is about survival

Charles Blow, columnist and son of the Black South, is out with an appeal for frustrated, angry citizens to get serious. 

There are still too many citizens who think of a vote, particularly for president, as something to throw to a person they like rather than being cast for the candidate and party more likely to advance the policies they need.
And there are too many who think that a vote should be withheld from a more preferable candidate as punishment for not delivering every single thing on their wish lists — that choosing not to vote at all is a sensible act of political protest rather than a relinquishing of control to others. Abstinence doesn’t empower; it neuters.
If you want a democracy to thrive, the idea that voting is a choice is itself an illusion. Voting is about survival, and survival isn’t a choice. It’s an imperative. It’s an instinct.
It’s a tool one uses for self-advancement and self-preservation. It’s an instrument you use to decrease chances of harm and increase chances of betterment. It is naïve to use it solely to cosign an individual’s character; not to say that character doesn’t count — it does — but rather that its primacy is a fallacy.
Voting isn’t just an expression of your worldview but also a manifestation of your insistence on safety and security.

I'm afraid that 2024 is going to be another long slog during which we will have to make this point over and over. Posting Blow here to get a jump on the project.

Wednesday, December 13, 2023

On antisemitic Zionism

John Ganz, scholar of populisms and other social diseases, deconstructs this unholy convergence. 

... Israel may seem to stir up antisemitism through its aggression and bellicosity. But in some cases it actually neutralizes antisemitism: It puts the Jews in an acceptable context.

Many on the Christian Right don’t particularly care for the Jews, but in so far as Israel is part of their idea of a divine plan, they have a conditional acceptance of the Jews. They “like” Jews because Jews = Israel. This doesn’t always have a religious underpinning, or rather, something else often lurks beneath the religious veil.

Many on the far right may not like Jews in so far as they are liberals, “rootless cosmopolitans,” and so forth, but love Zionism. They say, in effect, “Heck, I may I don’t like Jews, but I love all these soldiers, tanks, bombs, checkpoints, and settlements.” In so far as Jews act as intrepid settlers on the far edge of “Western civilization,” and are appropriately aggressive and brutal with the lesser races, they can even celebrate the Jews. They don’t tolerate a certain degree of settler-colonialism because its being done by Jews who deserve their own homeland after so many years of persecution and ultimately genocide, as liberal Zionists do, but they tolerate Jews only in so far as they are settler-colonists.

They might not state it openly, but the “apartheid” stuff is not so much a pejorative label in their minds as a positive condition for their support. For such people, Zionism “naturalizes” the Jews, it literally and metaphorically gives them a place: rather than being a disturbing alien entity in the midst of a larger society, it makes them a people or even a race like any other. It also transforms Jews, to use a term from apartheid South Africa, into “honorary whites”—even if Israel has a majority Sephardic and Mizrahi population now.

Apartheid South Africa, founded on the basis of a deeply antisemitic ideology, came to cooperate with Israel not just out of realism and mutual self-interest, but because Zionism made Jews recognizable to them: these Jews they could deal with. Just look at how the apartheid government understood Israel: "Israel and South Africa have one thing above all else in common: they are both situated in a predominantly hostile world inhabited by dark peoples."

Zionism also lets antisemites imagine a world without Jews: “Well, they can eventually just go to Israel, I suppose.” Their “Jewish problem,” as it were, is thereby solved.

... Just as some will only extend solidarity to Jews in so far as they are vocally anti-Zionist, there are also those who will only extend solidarity to the Jews in so far as they are Zionists. These are both forms of antisemitism: they treat Jews as not really be full members of the societies they belong to, but as props in their own ideological or racial struggles.

Just say no to making anyone political props!

Tuesday, December 12, 2023

Kareem calls bullshit

The media are reporting this morning that Harvard University's board is refusing to be stampeded into firing their recently installed Black president. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar knows racism when he sees it. Here's his opinion of the hue and cry to throw out a Black woman.

Pershing Square CEO Bill Ackman is good at making money. I’m good at making baskets.
Neither one of us is qualified to select the president of Harvard University. Sure, Ackman has a BA and MBA from Harvard, but just because I attended UCLA doesn’t mean I have special insights into the requirements for being president.

Here’s what I do know: Accusing Harvard’s first Black president of being hired only because she was Black is a pretty racist statement. Being Black might have been a consideration in her being hired, but that in no way diminishes her other qualifications.

For example, let’s say I ran a hospital in which all the doctors were White and I needed to hire another doctor. I looked at three candidates, two White and one Black. All are equally qualified. I might then take into consideration that many of our patients are non-White and might feel more comfortable with a Black physician (several studies back this up). Did I hire him because he was Black? Yup, but only because he also met all other qualifications, and having a Black doctor would make us a better hospital.

The enrolled undergraduate and graduate student population of Harvard University is 34% White with the 66% majority of students non-White. [Yes, that surprised me too, so I looked it up. Seems true if you include foreign students as non-White.] Yet, Harvard has never had a Black president before. Coincidence?

So, what’s Ackman’s beef? Well, he heard from someone else that the search committee wanted to hire someone to change the White Wall of presidents. First, he’s formed his opinion based on gossip. Second, even if that was their choice, he’s offered no evidence that she wasn’t as qualified as any other candidate.

Ackman’s real problem with her is that he didn’t like the answers she (and two other university presidents) gave at a congressional hearing when questioned by Rep. Elise Stefanik, whose interrogation technique was akin to asking, “Are you still beating your wife? Yes or no.” I’ll get into the specifics of that story at a later time, but for right now, the question Ackman raised was about Dr. Gay being hired in the first place. He demeaned her with the usual racist rant that she was hired because she was Black. Based on his inability to use logic, perhaps he should return his Harvard diplomas.

This tempest in a teapot isn't really about Israel/Palestine/free speech/antagonistic and overzealous students. It's about what a president of a super-elite institution ought to look like. I assume Dr. Gay has been getting this crap all her life, as has Kareem.

Monday, December 11, 2023

Some critical thinking all around, please

Kevin Drum did the work to create this visual summary of common Republican beliefs based on wide ranging poll questions by the firm YouGov.

Click to enlarge
There's a lot of scary stuff in there. He comments:

My point is ... that, thanks to Fox News and Donald Trump and the rest of the conservative ecosphere, this is what Republicans think of the world. 

They believe Christians are widely discriminated against. They believe Biden stole the election. They believe COVID came from a Chinese lab. They believe we're in a recession. Virtually all them believe the country is "out of control."

If you believed this stuff, you'd act like a Republican too. We are all far more susceptible to what the media tells us than we like to think. The problem with Republicans is just that their media is so much worse than ours.

Yes, I think that's fair. We have a right to expect that which labels itself "news" -- and even responsible politicians -- to operate in a world of verifiable fact. 

But also, above and beyond all our different information sources, people in this country live in different worlds. And all of us need to cultivate the habit of subjecting our own worlds to critical examination.

Saturday, December 09, 2023

Kyiv Christmas tree shines light in darkness in wartime

Last Wednesday, December 6 -- St. Nicolas Day -- the embattled capital of Ukraine lit its civic Christmas tree. Nothing is entirely easy in that embattled country.

"We must follow the rules. At any moment an air alert can sound, and this means everyone must be in a shelter where it is safe." -- Mayor Vitali Klitschko

I was intrigued by the date. Until very recently, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) followed the Julian calendar, as do most Orthodox Christian churches. Those churches' Christmas will fall on January 7 on the Gregorian calendar which most of the world lives by. Launched in early modern Europe, use of the Gregorian dating system has gradually spread across the globe. 

The shift to the new dating system has not been without controversy in the OCU.

... the faithful in Ukraine use[d] the Julian calendar. The question of whether this was desirable arose after the Russians invaded Ukraine through a full-scale invasion. “Today, the Julian calendar is perceived as related to the culture of the Russian Church”, the Church stated, according to the Orthodox Times.

The Church made the decision to switch to a new calendar at the bishops’ council. Only one bishop out of 53 voted against the transition, and one more abstained....

The road to the calendar change was not a formality... It was a move discussed for decades, but people within the Church were afraid that the reform would not be accepted by the faithful. 

“Facebook activists will not go to churches”, the head of the newly created Church, Metropolitan Epiphany, said in 2019. The Church viewed the wish for a calendar transition as supported only by people who did not visit the Church. Therefore, the transition seemed a fantasy. 

... However, after the full-scale [Russian] invasion, the issue gained political weight, and most Ukrainians expressed their support for a calendar change.

It's hard to think of a change more wrenching than changing the dating of major religious holidays to which we are accustomed. 

The Russia/Ukraine war is not some exotic, if awful, border skirmish. It is about, and further encourages, deep changes in how people choose to live, of which the calendar change is just one manifestation.

Ukraine aims to control its own destiny as a part of a western-facing Europe.

Friday, December 08, 2023

Friday cat blogging

 
The fur critters have welcomed us home after weeks away.

 
Mio's stare reminds us he's more important than any football game. 
 
For Janeway, football season just implies a reliable warm lap.

Thursday, December 07, 2023

A "beautiful and terrible" story

Noah Smith captures gracefully how industrialization is spreading around the globe. His economic techno-optimism can feel cloying -- but he's onto something here.

In my last post, I predicted how manufacturing would spread to India and other developing countries in South and Southeast Asia. Basically, India will start out doing low-value assembly work using imported tools and components, and then gradually work its way up the value chain. Right now, in terms of its position in the supply chain, India is about where China was in the early 2000s.

Viola Zhou and Nilesh Christopher have a wonderful article about what Indian industrialization looks like on the ground. They traveled to a Foxconn factory in southern India, where Apple has shifted some iPhone production in order to diversify out of China. They found that many of the engineers that have been brought over to train and supervise the Indian factory workers are themselves Chinese. Much of their reporting focuses on the interaction and culture clash between the factory’s Chinese and Indian workers.

The story that emerges is a very familiar one. The Chinese supervisors think the Indian workers are slow, lazy and undisciplined — just as the British once thought of German and Japanese workers, when those countries were first industrializing. Industriousness is learned; it proceeds from industrialization. The people who first come to work in the labor-intensive factories are mostly women, looking for independence and an escape from rural life (and probably advantaged by having small fingers). The Indian factory girls are recognizably similar to their Chinese predecessors, or their British forebears centuries ago.

The Mill Girls of Lowell, Mass. via the National Park Service
This is the universal tale of industrialization, and it’s a beautiful and terrible one at the same time. It’s a story of ruthless labor exploitation, urban ennui, and harsh working conditions. But it’s also the story of workers escaping what Marx called “the idiocy of rural life”, finding their own way in the world, making money and winning their independence. And it’s the story of a country that is primed to become much richer in the near future. 

We know how this story typically ends, too. Indian factories will become more automated; salaries will rise and assembly line jobs will become fewer and more technical. Indians will move into higher-paying service jobs with better conditions. Indian companies will move up the value chain, learning how to make tools and components, eventually creating their own brands and competing with China and the rest of the industrialized world. And then Indian engineers will be off to the next poor country — Bangladesh? Ethiopia? Nigeria? — to start the whole process over again.

So far, across the globe, most humans have welcomed abundance and forgotten the miseries along the way. That seems to be who we are.

Wednesday, December 06, 2023

Electric vehicle anecdata

 
They are coming; one of these days, sooner than we perhaps imagine, we'll mostly all be driving electric-powered cars. And a predictable climate will be the more sustainable for the change, we hope.
 
We're not there yet in this household and won't be for awhile; the beater "Wowser" -- the lime green 2011 Ford hybrid -- is still too good a vehicle to move on. But the next car will almost certainly be electric.

I've found it interesting to quiz folks about the EV transition:

A relative who made a career of selling high end used cars is a doubter. He's not seeing it. But he's also open, if automakers can build what he considers good cars.
 
Another friend who lives in northern rural New England says the EV transition is clearly coming. All the towns have charging stations. So do many houses. She's convinced, though not yet able to become an EV owner herself.

Around San Francisco, we're in Tesla-land. It seems as if every third car is one. And the driverless vehicles striving to take over the cab and Uber business are also EVs. California aims to cut off sales of new gas cars in 2035. 

Meanwhile the business press is dubious, but don't want to miss something. A sample:
Automakers are tapping the brakes on their ambitious electric vehicle (EV) targets, trying to make sense of consumer appetites amid rising interest rates, stubbornly high prices and anxiety about where to recharge. ...

... Despite the doom and gloom, EV sales are growing faster than any other segment in the U.S. — and are on track to surpass 1 million annually for the first time this year.

Not a model of definitive journalism, but that's where we are.

Where are you in this chart?

Discourses of climate delay
Except perhaps for a few beloved environmentalist fanatics, we're all there somewhere. Click to enlarge and contemplate.

For myself, I've leaned of late toward technological optimism, balanced with a smidgen of doomism. 

But as in so many arenas, we have no choice but trudge on, in hope. That's what humans do.

Chart by way of Carbon Brief and Adam Tooze.

Monday, December 04, 2023

Just say no to all erasures

Palestinian-American writer, poet, and clinical psychologist Hala Alyan, who specializes in trauma, addiction, and cross-cultural behavior, asks “Why Must Palestinians Audition for Your Empathy?”

Have you ever felt like you had to audition for empathy? Like you had to prove that you or your community deserve compassion? 

In the last few weeks, I’ve watched Palestinians from all walks of life try to prove they deserve humanity. I’ve watched them beg for fair news coverage, get interrupted or silenced on air. I’ve watched them create infographics, summarize history, organize teach-ins to try to earn solidarity for thousands and thousands of dead, innocent civilians... 

... I don’t hesitate for a second to condemn the killing of any innocent life, any civilian. 

This, of course, includes Jewish life. This, of course, includes October 7. It includes every day before that, it includes every day since. Condemning innocent killings is the easiest ask in the world. 

And that’s exactly why I say: condemn brutal acts, condemn murder, condemn oppression, condemn violence, condemn war crimes, condemn human rights violations, and notice if it feels harder to condemn these things when they happen to certain people, certain lives, certain communities....

Any queer, any LGBTQ+ individual over the age of 45, should recognize Aylan's question. Queers auditioned for empathy from our fellow citizens for many years, particularly during the early years of the AIDS epidemic. The now-lionized President Reagan refused for many years to admit and respond to a plague killing masses of gay men. 

When the HIV/AIDS epidemic began in the 1980s, the Reagan administration's first reaction was chilling: It appeared to treat the epidemic as a joke.

It required years of aggressive activism to extort money and compassion from our straight, right-wing, Republican fellow citizens. 

No wonder many gay people feel instinctive empathy with Palestinians oppressed and murdered by Israel. This empathy persists despite the inconvenient fact that much (most?) of the organized force of Palestinian liberation is no friend to our being. Erasure is not good for living humans.

Sunday, December 03, 2023

Women wage peace

Sharon Brous serves as the senior rabbi of a Jewish congregation in Los Angeles. It's her job to make spiritual meaning by way of her tradition of the horrors of Hamas's assault on Israelis on 10/7 and Israel's subsequent revenge upon the Palestinians of Gaza. 

I hesitated to post this until I had read further confirmation that her opening contention that Israeli male military authorities ignored warnings because they came from women is reported fact. This has been broadly confirmed.

Making reliable sense of horrors is beyond any of us, of course. And too much of what passes for explication is simply heated nonsense; we're human. But Rabbi Brous seems to me to offer insight and so I'll publish this here, though it is longer than most videos I post. (If the YouTube tries to give you a preliminary advertisement, just push on through. The video is worth the trouble.)

11/25/23 - Women Wage Peace
"... On both sides of the border, many of those in power subscribe to that messianic fever dream that I spoke about on Yom Kippur in which women must be fully subjugated to men into traditional gender roles that ignore, sideline, or marginalize our voices and ultimately aspire to eliminate women from public life altogether. ... I learn from [the biblical story of] Rachel that this might be the greatest spiritual need -- to be seen and to be heard ... and it is no mistake that the person crying out to be heard and seen here is a woman living in a man's world. ...that was thousands of years ago, how painful that the same instincts and inclinations plague out society today ... Women just lead the movement for peace... women are essentially a missing cohort in the political arena ... I will continue to wish and to fight to ensure that we who so desperately want the world to see and hear  us, open our ears and eyes and hearts to the Palestinian women who are suffering so terribly today.  ... Women lead the reckoning, the repair, and reconstruction of our broken hearts and of our world."
Do take the time to watch and feel.

Saturday, December 02, 2023

An extended autumn on Martha's Vineyard trails

For a Californian, the dramatic color changes of a New England fall forest seem magical.

 
Some hardwoods turn color later than others.
 
Different hues dominate in sequence.
 
While the sun shines, the contrasts are vibrant.
 
Of course, the sun does not always break through cloud cover.

But when the sun does break through, the effect is magnificent.

 
The wild turkeys have no idea that once upon a time they were dinner fodder. Today they swarm over bushes, road sides, and often motor ways as well, oblivious to any peril from humans or cars.

Home again, I will miss these trails until next visit.

Friday, December 01, 2023

Friday cat blogging

Here dozes Delphine last week in Massachusetts, right next to the pillow E.P.'s stepsister stitched to memorialize Morty of blessed memory.

We're home in San Francisco, Janeway and Mio greeted us with appropriate licks during a quiet night, though the miracle of flying thousands of miles and 3 time zones in 6 hours takes its toll. Later ...