The Very Discriminate Assault on WCK Humanitarian Workers

 

I am outraged and heartbroken by the deaths of seven humanitarian workers from World Central Kitchen, including one American, in Gaza yesterday.

Incidents like yesterday’s simply should not happen.

Here is my full statement. pic.twitter.com/Nl2jq8wqTt

— President Biden (@POTUS) April 3, 2024

With respect to my president, whom I continue to support, I lack faith in the ability of the IDF to investigate what they did wrong here and be honest about it, because they keep saying they are NOT indiscriminately bombing or attacking journalists or aid workers or children, and since the results are that aid workers and journalists and children keep being assaulted, I am going to have to take them at their word:

It isn't indiscriminate. If these are the results they are getting, and they insist they are targeting precisely, I must assume these are the results they want. 

I'm not an infant--I get that even innocents die in wartimes all the time. Privations are a part of the deal. But famines can be planned, and the deliberate starvation of Gazans over the decisions of their terrorist government is a bridge way too far. 

Hamas does not give a shit. Hamas rejects ceasefires. Hamas won't give up the hostages. They continue to fire missiles. I am not immune to the call for Israel to self-defense. I am long past immune, however, to the idea that the IDF is being disciplined in the process of this conflict or that they are taking necessary steps to minimize non-combatant casualties. I have begun to see the civilian population of Gaza as a kind of hostage as well. They seem to have decided on behalf of these innocent civilians to go ahead and let Israel to their worst, because when it comes to Palestinian liberty, well okay, they will also take death. For them. Those guys who aren't in the tunnels and end up paying for the privilege of eating intercepted aid to terrorist mafiosi. 

Senator Ossoff Threads a Fine Needle

 

Sen. Ossoff addresses the U.S. Senate on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza: pic.twitter.com/fzApPP7xwV

— Ossoff's Office (@SenOssoff) November 17, 2023

What the Senator from Georgia has done here is so important--given both sides their due, but to advocate for those who are most grieviously injured and imperiled in the current situation, to plead for the humanity of those who are oppressed but suffering the wrath intended for the oppressor. He is a young man speaking a lot of wisdom. We could do with more like him in the Senate.

Genocide as Peer Pressure.

 

Parents are stunned by a school board candidate’s comments in an Indiana town:

“All Nazis weren't 'bad' as you specify. They did horrible things … Who is to say if we were both there in the same place and time, that we wouldn't have done the same thing” https://t.co/AzrR4qIUOl

— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) October 20, 2022

Loads of people over the years have asked themselves what they would be doing if they were living in Nazi Germany and how they would resist and not go along with genocide or maybe think about how they would sabotage the movement, but Dr. Matt Keefer has a different take: wouldn't you just do a little genocide, because everyone else was into it?  It's not like it makes you a bad person if basically everyone else was into it. 

Sure. Myself, I get that peer pressure makes people smoke, do crack, sleep with everyone they know and vote third party, but I tell you what, I draw the line at genocide. 

A lot of conservatives these days seem genocide-curious. At Meghan McCain's husband's little website, somebody definitely seems into it:

On the transgender question, conservatives will have to repudiate utterly the cowardly position of people like David French, in whose malformed worldview Drag Queen Story Hour at a taxpayer-funded library is a “blessing of liberty.” Conservatives need to get comfortable saying in reply to people like French that Drag Queen Story Hour should be outlawed; that parents who take their kids to drag shows should be arrested and charged with child abuse; that doctors who perform so-called “gender-affirming” interventions should be thrown in prison and have their medical licenses revoked; and that teachers who expose their students to sexually explicit material should not just be fired but be criminally prosecuted.

If all that sounds radical, fine. It need not, at this late hour, dissuade conservatives in the least. Radicalism is precisely the approach needed now because the necessary task is nothing less than radical and revolutionary.

What the writer is implying, is that public LGBT identity needs to be erased, and straight allies need to be punished for their support of gay and trans culture. Why? Because the writer is discomfited that these people exist. He is irked. His feelings are deranged. He is a melting snowflake in a warming world. 

But I genuinely do not doubt that his fears of a gay-friendly planet are dangerous--and echoed in the culture. Take Matt Walsh. He too, wants to see people punished for supporting queer culture. He wants people who support queer culture to be treated as child abusers, when the system he wants to impose on queer youth is child abuse, and well-documented as such. So do the jumped-up neo-Nazis who turn up in LGBT -friendly spaces at the exhortation of Libs of TikTok.  

Many Ukraine/Russia Commenters are Confused

 

After Russia has tried to bomb the hell out of maternity hospitals and schools and places clearly marked for being where children were sheltering in place, and after kidnapping tens of thousands of people, and trying to punish the Ukrainian out of the kidnapped children to make them Russian, after all these understood tactics of genocide? No, I don't think any of these things are appropriate, and "Fuck off" is the only answer. Ukraine doesn't have to negotiate shit, because they got invaded by Putin on bullshit made-up terms that even he lets on were always fake: he wants territory, the territory formerly held whenever but certainly not considered Russian territory this minute.

Putin's history is wrong, and the support of it by his apologists are wrong. When Russia was supposed to have a neat little 72 hours war or so, maybe there was reason to think Ukraine needed to negotiate. 

It's been longer and costlier than Russia anticipated, and for people who bothered to listen to what Putin has actually been saying about his hopes for westward expansion, support for Ukraine has only become more necessary as support for the borders of sovereign states who already have self-determined. If Ukraine falls, who is next?

It has become apparent that Ukraine needs to win, and I don't even know where these "negotiate people", these "sue for peace" people are even coming from.  Russia, in their fake annexation and mass mobilizations are committing themselves to a path from which there isn't an off-ramp. This isn't fixed at any negotiation table. It stops when Russia pulls back a helplessly bleeding stump and realizes shit isn't ever going to get better for them. 

The annexation votes were bullshit, and never should have been staged, so how the hell should they be re-done? When those loyal to Ukraine have been relocated as refugees for their safety? How do you manage anything approaching serious and fair? How do you re-introduce the original citizen pool safely?  You don't.  The idea of the vote itself is an affront. A lie. An imposition. 

As a humanitarian issue, of course people should have the right to water. but that is a human rights issue that the instigator of the aggression--Russia--should consider their responsibility and should be rightfully sanctioned for what they fail to achieve regarding human rights--

But that's a fucking laugh, isn't it? These Russians are rapists and torturers. They don't care about their own people. They've been thieving from Ukraine for their own material benefit. No one at the top of the Russia food chain thinks they will ever see repercussions for what they've done, even if it should wind them up in the Orange Hotel. 

And don't get me started on how Ukraine is supposed to stay neutral after all of this. Would I if this was what was done to my country? Would you? 

The apt sobriquet stays the same: if Russia stops fighting the war ends, if Ukraine stops fighting, Ukraine ends. 

There isn't any room for negotiation here. and for US quislings who want to relent on Ukraine aid, I am telling you: Putin isn't your potential benefactor so much as you are his potential bitch. If you think the US way of life is superior, you don't fucking cater or crater to his influence, because he is planning to expand it and already has made inroads to do that.  If you want America First, you don't place Russia anywhere on your priorities. We are not buddies with Putin. He isn't even a necessary evil.  He's the kind of evil we can do without. 

People missing this understanding have slipped a cog in their cogitations. 

The Exception that Proves the Rule, or Something

 

So, I think the takeaway from the 49-51 vote that failed to codify Roe has to be taken with a grain of salt--did you expect something else? It's a failure, but in the classic silver-linings sense, it's just demonstrative of one way to not succeed. What we have is only one out of 50 Democratic senators voting against your right to bodily autonomy, and every single one of the Republicans voting against it.

Manchin is an exception. The rule is: absolutely don't rely on a situation when only Joe Manchin doing the right thing stands between you and success. The only answer I get solving for that is--more not-Manchin Democrats in office. 

This also means: don't vote for a Republican unless you actually want a country where one's body is policed (Fugitive Uterus Act, anyone?) for unsanctioned reproductive activity (or inactivity, as the case may be). If people will just take very seriously the implications of this vote, it signals something bad for the GOP--a chalk outline, perhaps. 

Highly Visible and Easily Defined

 

Take a look at this SOB, won't you?

Rep. Good: Thank you Person Speaker. I say Person Speaker because I’m not a biologist… pic.twitter.com/0sWkfpBgTQ

— Acyn (@Acyn) March 31, 2022

This is following on the peculiar trolling of the Ketanji Brown Jackson judicial hearing, in which she was asked to define what a woman is by the notable public intellectual (sinkhole) Marsha Blackburn. Rep. Good is being exceptionally foolish--if he understands very well what a woman is, he doesn't need to be a biologist to say so--isn't that supposed to be his point? And in any event, Speaker Pelosi has always gone by she/her pronouns. All he ever needed to do to be sure was ask. 

 Now, I offer an answer to the question of "What is a woman?" that you can all use if you like, free of charge: A woman is the term commonly understood to mean an adult female human, although the definitions of "female" may be disputed in terms of genetics, anatomy, socialization, politics or law. But under the Constitution in the US, all human beings are entitled to the protection of the law, without respect to gender. And I hope that helps. 

The L Should Stand for Learning

 

The Biden Administration is trying to do a thing that needed to be done some time ago, and it won't be without blood. The US is extricating itself from a war that began with no good definition, that moved from invasion to occupation and nation-building with no sense of what the exit needed to be, and no great sense of the local lay of the land, having made brutal mistakes largely of neglect and failure to understand that only so much can ever be done; to just take the "L" on whatever great plan existed and realize we could not backstop the Afghan government forever. 

We had 20 years. In that time, there were some human rights gains, but the problems that needed rooting out to our satisfaction were cultural and endemic. We were managing a crisis that wasn't ours--we didn't create Afghanistan. We waded in to do something about Al-Qaeda, and then...stayed. imagining we'd fix whatever was broken to pay these people back for the invasion. The US military hasn't any spiritual or crisis counseling options for what is going on. 

Mourning lost opportunities makes sense if opportunities existed, but I think we were sold on something that we created for ourselves--the idea that our ways and ideals were naturally exportable, and that our military was a great way to export them. But what the Taliban represent is something unique to the area and we gave them credibility by making them the face of anti-US imperialism. We helped to make them a stable and lasting presence and to treat with them like a stable opposition. And as President Biden just reminded us, The Former Guy even meant to negotiate with the Taliban at Camp David before the idea was scrapped. 

That he claims he would do things differently than Biden is doing now is inconsequential--Trump simply isn't president and pretending you would do something better and actually doing the thing better are quite different, and Trump has really only ever shown himself better at the former. For that matter, I don't know what pundits in media think should be happening now--were we to stay forever? Make Afghanistan a colony or a territory? Always and inadequately stand in the breach between the health of this country and other people who didn't give a shit, fought like motherfuckers, and incidentally, lived there? 

If Afghanistan cannot do it, with the support given for so long, themselves, this should tell us the value of that support. If what we could have passed on was fighting for the rights of women and children, if we could have passed on democracy, if we could have injected western values...

You can say we failed Afghanistan, but I say we're also failing here--we have our anti-democratic, theocratic, anti-woman, anti-LGBT, racist thugs here. The lesson is once you have a Taliban, it is maybe too late to stop a Taliban without extraordinary violence, which we did not do there and wouldn't have done because of what that would have made us. 

Afghanistan sees to Afghanistan. We see to ourselves. I don't like the outcomes. But if it can be a lesson, it isn't a failure. And all the "What if" in the world won't change it. I don't think were were really helping, maybe just putting on a bandage. But we never could have made Afghanistan different. We might have just made it more the same, adding to the eras of occupation, war, and opportunism. We can only learn not to do this again.

Whistling Dixie Past the GOP's Graveyard

 

Looking at the above picture where a handful of very white dudes watch another white dude sign Georgia's new voter suppression law into effect, I sit and wonder: did they realize you can dam a river and still not stop a flood? That bottlenecking a force can sometimes give it terrific direction? Did they sign a new lease on life for a party that just lost two US Senate seats in the state in an election we've been assured had no widespread fraud--or did they sign a death warrant for the national party?

I'm not going to go into the optics of signing this bill under a landscape painting of tree-lined Brickhouse Road which once was the site of an infamous plantation, but for a moment consider the image of Rep. Park Cannon, led away and jailed for knocking on the door where this act was taking place. 

She, an elected representative of the people of her district of that state, was just trying to see the business that was happening in her state. She was arrested for the "good trouble" she took--which even wouldn't be so troublesome if those men in that picture above didn't know full well and good the disapprobation they deserved from history for what they had just done. They were doing something wrong there, and blamed people who had the eyes to see it. 

They aren't making a mistake--as I've noted before on this blog, what is happening in Georgia and elsewhere is very deliberate. We aren't born yesterday, but even if we were, we could do math and recognize that Georgia has a problem with voter equity, and decided to double-down on an inequitable system. To do what? To maintain the status quo where the GOP is in power. (Attention to Tom Cotton, et als, this is actually the textbook example of some critically race-based shit happening. So, FYI--you are a bunny with a pancake on your head. People in power passing laws to stay in power--whether for race-based reasons or not, is like the law of inertia, as in, totally observable and endlessly reproduced.) But that is to say, they aren't making a mistake as to their immediate goals--trying to limit the votes of people they deem unlikely to vote for them.

They are making a mistake as to what the spirit of democracy and the rights of the citizens of their state entails. They are boldly making the statement of the autocrat: if the people don't support me, I'll just find a better people. The other guys--they can be unpeopled--in practice if not in fact. What is said of books might apply: where they burn voter registrations, they could....

But we all have eyes to see, ears to hear, or minds to understand. So we know, for example, that Mitch McConnell is dead wrong when he says there is nothing racial about the history of the filibuster. We need to end the filibuster for this, maybe not the last leg, but a big leg of our journey towards achieving a more perfect nation, with freedom and justice for all.  We need to undo it to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, because Shelby vs. Holder was flat out wrong. It is true that the US South isn't uniquely racist--if you mean that Wisconsin and Pennsylvania Republicans wouldn't do exactly what Georgia is doing right now. The point isn't geographical: it's that as a creedal nation, we hold one person, one vote to be important, without regard to circumstance except age and citizenship. 

This image above, shows that these men with their voter suppression bill might have known they were being iconic. But they are not in control of what this icon means. I say it means they are afraid that people will understand what they do and hope so desperately no one is looking they would even arrest their colleagues. I say that because that is what happened. They arrested their Black, female colleague because she was looking. But we all can see. We see you. We see you, Georgia. 

Better than what they did is possible and will be done because the people united will not be defeated. And people who incur hours long lines and deny food and water are showing their inhumanity and contempt of human rights. And that can't help but be seen for what it is. You reap what you have sown and people will show up to assist. 

 

Matt Schlapp Misses the Point

I'm screen-capping the Twitter post for this one on the off-chance that Schlapp will understand where he went wrong here, but the picture of his post above reads: "Statues of Jesus are next. It won't end. Pray for the USA." This is apparently in response to the recent protests having resulted in the toppling and removal of statues honoring Confederate figures, slaveowners, and other figures that honor persons or events representing racism and colonialism.  It's three short sentences, but it packs in a lot of how conservatives can get the thrust of what's happening quite wrong.

The roots of abolition, both of slavery and of the injustice system, are long, and intricately tied with religion, with people who passionately believed that "whatever you did not do for the least of these, you did not do for me." I don't know if Schlapp's education somehow missed that the Great Awakening in the US encouraged abolitionism, and that evangelicals, Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Catholics and Quakers were moved to speak against slavery, just as many of their descendants today speak out about social justice.  After all:

a man who preached about loving one's neighbor as oneself, was apprehended for his activism, scourged, and then hung from a wooden beam by the state authorities, is not the image of the transgressor. Jesus of Nazareth was railroaded. Jesus of Nazareth was abused by Rome's cops. Jesus died because Pilate washed his hands of the whole thing when, maybe, he could have stood up to a multitude wanting to do evil. 

But the point is, the mob Schlapp is concerned about isn't the "godless (probably Commies)" he seems to think they are. Sure, there's a weird current of thought amongst the far right, your Birchers and them, that the civil rights movement is dictated from the Kremlin and that Black people don't have the agency to be quite deservedly pissed at the treatment they have experienced. The civil rights movement of the 20th century was anything but godless. But the idea that there's a slippery slope from "Fuck General Lee" to "Fuck Jesus Christ and the ass and her foal he rode in on" is without any reason. For what it's worth, if you think an actual feeling human being needs, for example, to be paid by Soros or whoever, to be stricken with horror at the idea of a human being, lying on the ground and without defense, with the very breath he needs to live denied him by a knee--a knee! of a person wearing the uniform of a civil servant for nine damn minutes, then fuck you and your civilly anesthetized ass. 

But for another thing, if I had it in my heart to pray, and held the philosopher from Galilee in my mind, I'd pray we answer the fucking question: are all men and women created equal here, or what? Wasn't that what our US of A Founding Fathers were trying to say, even if they weren't about to really put their slave-holding money where their mouths were when they wrote the Declaration of Independence?  Do we value the life of a Breonna Taylor, of George Floyd, of Tamir Rice, of Walter Scott, of Sean Bell, of Sandra Bland, of Tony McDade, of Ahmaud Arbery, and so on, more than we do the fictions that let us keep thinking this country was built with clean hands?  And doesn't letting it go on leave us all in the position of Pilate--washing our hands of what we could have done, but had not the will to do? 

I'm not a Christian, but if Schlapp believes that statues of Jesus would topple, who does he think that image is for? Because I know very well who the statues of Confederate generals are for, and I don't care if they fall one little bit. 

Jesus should be safe in this movement. Schlapp's preconceptions are not. And is that not a reason to pray and tremble? (Nah, I think he'll stick with his mouthful of pitch that defiles. He is accustomed to the taste.)

Was Man Made for The Economy or....?

There is an argument that with respects to coronavirus and its effects on the market, cooler heads should prevail and we should jump-start the corporations that are about to start bleeding capital along with their putative stock value by bailing them out, and well, maybe smaller businesses should get cheap loans or whatever, and a little bit of a payroll tax cut and a wad of cash on the nightstand should be just fine for the working folks. 

Those people should be pilloried. At best. The reason everything is falling apart isn't because the businesses are fucked. It's because the people are. We're fucked. We're mortal. We've built a widely interconnected just in time financial universe, and time is out of joint. We can't travel or function as we once did, and the economy is a lagging indicator of what is happening to us. To people. 

Extreme measures to flatten the virus “curve” is sensible-for a time-to stretch out the strain on health infrastructure. But crushing the economy, jobs and morale is also a health issue-and beyond. Within a very few weeks let those with a lower risk to the disease return to work.

— Lloyd Blankfein (@lloydblankfein) March 23, 2020

I am considered an "essential employee" because of my government work, and my husband and brother are both in food retail. We haven't stopped working. We've worked more. But this thing about assuming that some people, the workers lower on the chain, the presumably younger ones considered at "a lower risk" should be exposed (and therefore be at a risk of exposing others, like our parents) is a tip--we're invaluable and expendable at once. We are revenue-producers and without value in ourselves. We serve the economy, and not the other way about. And our pneumatic lungs juice the wheels of commerce!

Let's consider the possibility that maybe the stock market and the health of capital shouldn't be a stand-in for the health of humanity. Maybe the important thing is that people can eat. Stay in their homes. Have access to health care. Have basic security. And that mere suffering mortals aren't born into this world to make rich people richer. What if the maxim that "Man was not made for the Law, but the Law for Man" carried over to the economy? What if no one gave a good honest fuck if the stock price of every major industry fell through the floor and then another floor and then another, but we just focused on whether human beings could afford to live?

I don't know how long the virus is going to affect everything, I only know that the length is up to us, and if we want any kind of society, we need to take a long view. We need to protect one another. That is what society means. We take a hit for one another if we need to. If my husband cuts your meat, if my brother stocks your shelves, if my sister-in-law nurses your sick, if my brother-in-law keeps your machines running, you stop seeing our service as a right the economy deserves, but the lifeblood of the economy itself. We are it. The food service worker, the farmer, the bus drivers and train operators, the people out here, right now. The EMT and cops and firefighters and the other frontline folk the rich want to starve money from (because taxes pay salaries for some folks, don't you know). The health care workers whose hospitals might be starved for money, but who are keeping humans alive, or devoutly trying to. You tend to the people first. You backstop the people doing the work. Then maybe, we can worry about the "poor" money.

But people who don't understand that the only value money has is it's fungibility for real work and real goods, and is not valuable in itself? These people! How do they price/value themselves?

I don't know. But the idea that the stock market is more of a metric for our overall health than the evidence that a virus is killing folks is absurd and insane.

Speaking of McCarthyism

Just to follow on from the preceding post, where I noted that Sen. McConnell is a bit off with respects to what McCarthyism is, I regret to inform that Sen. Ted Cruz probably knows exactly what it is, because he's basically practicing it with his proposition that Antifa be treated as a domestic terrorist organization. And for what it's worth, President Trump also seems to be onboard with the notion (even if people who understand these things somewhat better than Trump find it ridiculous at best, chilling at worst). 

Demonization of anti-fascists (remember, folks, the "fa" in Antifa stands for "fascism" and fascism is bad!) is happening at a very awkward time--it has been reported that white supremacist violence is on the rise, but Antifa, as a response to white supremacy, which takes several forms including nonviolent action, is the movement being singled out. What grips me about this is that there are numerous loose groups that protest fascism and racism (not a single, centralized organization) but there is a good probability that language that simply calls this activity "left wing activists" or "affiliated with Antifa" will be used to target any "fellow traveler". (One might recall that HUAC looked into civil rights groups, but kept their paws off the Klan.)

I don't like the implications of it--and with McConnell crying about McCarthyism, I guess I'm just saying it seems to me to be a case of one side accusing the other of the very thing they'd like to do.  And I guess I could just be misreading red meat for a red scare. Except there's also this denunciation of socialism proposed by Sen. Steve Daines.  For some reason, he associates socialism with lack of freedom as opposed to being an alternative to unregulated free market capitalism, but again, this is a denunciation specifically of "the left". 

A Terrible Lack of Trust

JUST IN: Mattis ignored orders from Trump, White House on North Korea, Iran: report https://t.co/bPah2j4ocH pic.twitter.com/kK2gBcuVka

— The Hill (@thehill) April 29, 2019

One is reminded of Trump's very recent claim that "nobody disobeys my orders" when it has become clear that several people have ignored his instructions, and also have, in fact felt really relieved and like we all dodged a bullet because they did decide to ignore the crazy old man who watches too much Fox News. General Mattis apparently felt the impulse to try to inhibit Trump's "talking out loud" fumbling regarding foreign policy because he distrusted Trump's ability to assess the information he was given and thought he might be swayed by whoever the last person he talked to was.

Here's what bothers me about this--a Commander in Chief and top executive should actually be able to give directions that can be obeyed because they are clear and make sense, are timely and neither violate the letter of the law nor "burn" personnel by hanging them out to dry because their chain of command refuses to take responsibility. Trump doesn't seem to take in daily briefings to the extent that people who know him feel comfortable with his assessment of what is going on. He also has to be trusted as a person who appreciated historical alliances and recognizes the value of previous negotiations without trying to tear everything up and start from scratch--he has shown he can not be trusted in this way, because tearing everything up is exactly his plan. Also he lacks good planning about how to achieve deals, but that's another thing.

One recent episode to look at is the recent information that North Korea requested $2 million for the hospital bills of Otto Warmbier.

Trump administration agreed to pay $2 million ransom to North Korea for release of Otto Warmbier, but did not actually pay, says Bolton. @Kate_OKeeffe https://t.co/o7EKcufYUh

— Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) April 29, 2019

An agreement was signed to pay this, and we received the all but deceased body of a once-vibrant young man. And the best that Trump officials can do now about what this implies is to blithely admit that there was no intention to pay, because Trump stiffs people all the time.

Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?

The circumstantial evidence, thus far, regarding the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi is fairly damning--he went into the Saudi Arabian consulate building in Istanbul on October 2, and he did not come back out. The Turkish police allege they have audio proof of what happened to him. He was there as a Saudi Arabian national ex-pat on personal business, he wasn't doing anything but getting some paperwork related to his divorce so he could remarry, which is one of the important functions of such offices--to serve their nationals. 

They appear to have, once again, circumstantially, served Khashoggi differently. There might be reason to believe he at one time was an agent on behalf of the royal family, and after the shakeup, became an independent voice regarding KSA politics. It looks like he entered this building and did not come out again because the Saudi government could not at once provide security video proof to that effect. There's a whole lot of backstory regarding the Arab Spring and the legitimacy of the Muslim Brotherhood as a political effort and not a terror thing, but I don't even have the stones to try and parse ME politics at the mo. Anyhow, there is a possibility that Mohammad bin Salman, Crown Prince and First Deputy Prime Minister and smirking millennial proof that extremism can rebrand in the social media age for some values of people staying asleep, ordered a soft hit, got fancy, botched it, and is currently fuxxoring up the fallout with the current US regime too compromised to help but engage in a cover-up.

See, the US/KSA relationship goes back a while, and was really tight during the last Republican Administration. Trump seems to have been really happy to reestablish US/KSA ties and also appears to have multiple financial reasons to. Even if he lied and pointedly said he had no financial attachments whilst defending KSA.  He dispatched Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to thank the Saudi Royal family for existing and to create the above picture: Is this Columbo begging the pardon of the most likely culprit in the course of the US' version of the investigation?  Or is this a well-compensated diplomat kissing the behind of his boss's patron, faking like everything is mad cool, when everything is mad short of cool? For a version of reality where it is very probable that digital confirmation exists that a journalist was either injected with something or otherwise subdued shortly upon entrance into the building, and then was sectioned like an orange, the optics created by this above picture is...not great. 

Unless some assurance really existed that KSA had no hand in whatever happened to Khashoggi, this picture should not exist, And for various reasons, this assurance should already have been made public. But it has not been, and Mike Pompeo has made this disgraceful and public journey to do no verifiably useful thing whatsoever, except pose with the likely director of the hit on a guy who could not have, all things considered, been so threatening to the order of the KSA government to merit his believed dismembering. 

If worse comes to worse, as seems likely, this picture should be Trump's foreign policy swan song, and proof he's got no business playing on this particular grass. But social media and stupid fuckery and the universe that seems constructed to announce "Nothing matters" will possibly create a narrative where either the KSA lied for great internal security reasons, where the Trump Administration fronted believing them for great diplomatic reasons, and we should all just accept the results because we've nothing else to go on, or both. 

This would be an entirely different, and dangerous, game, from what has been played before. But my gut feeling is, this started from Trump foreign policy incompetence. They overly-identified with KSA, and the KSA got stupid with unstructured possibilities.

The US has been derided by some libs as having played "world cop" for too long. The Trump era is defined by lacking such a definition for the US.  But who else, I ask you, is gonna? And if the US abdicates, should they so obviously pose with suspects? For his part, Trump lets us continue believing the worst. 

Donald Trump Can Shut Up About Sports Forever

I am not a sports fan, really. I'm not athletic myself, for one thing and I don't really have the capacity to invest myself in watching organized sporting contests for a whole season. It is just entertainment that I don't quite understand, in some ways, although I appreciate that people have trained and pushed their bodies, through muscle memory and a long understanding of various plays, to excel in well-regulated physical contests of skill. I get it, but I don't. I also don't watch billiards or chess tourneys. I follow politics. It's like, the one game of homo ludens I actually grok.

This is why the intersection of sports and politics matters to me. We have witnessed sports history as  being about multi-talented people, and heroic symbols of the excellence of diversity.  We see sports records at times in light of many "firsts". And we can also view sports as a platform for role models who display acts of conscience.  

President Trump in his long and rambling speech in Huntsville, Alabama, had something to say about athlete protesters (but I am sure he probably had Colin Kaepernick in mind): 

Kaepernick opted out of his contract with the 49ers during the offseason. He has not been signed by a new team since then. Several players have continued to protest during the anthem this season.

"The only thing you could do better," Trump said, "is if you see it, even if it's just one player, leave the stadium. I guarantee things will stop. Things will stop. Just pick up and leave. Pick up and leave. Not the same game anymore, anyway."

Leave the stadium? Does this jackass know what people pay for these seats? What a dumbass. Pay for a ticket, then fail to watch the game, and the NFL still gets the same revenue. This guy has a problem with understanding that the NFL needs to confront the brain damage issue, but sounds like he has a bad case of CTE, himself. And what would people be walking out for--a failure to appreciate people taking advantage of the platform their skills have given them to try to start a conversation--

About whether black lives matter. Whether black people can drive cars, walk streets, carry things that might look vaguely gun-like, in public where cops can see, without getting shot dead. They aren't protesting every damn thing about America. They are protesting people getting killed for their skin. And I acknowledge and see their point, and don't get how this is offensive to anyone. People should not be killed for no good reason by duly constituted authority. Blackness shouldn't ever be a death sentence in a world where we live by a presumption of innocence for suspected persons.

Donald Trump disparages the speech of some people, to stoke the biases of biased people. He is just a divider, and an overt and grotesque one at that. I stand with and if necessary, take a knee alongside someone like Kaepernick, who has given back and done the work of supporting his community, not just agitating about it.

I get what Trump was stooping to in Alabama.  And I guess he got his applause. But I think less of him. Because he makes it so clear how little he values human and civil rights.

Scenes from a Presidential Trip Abroad

Of all the things I was prepared to grimace about regarding President Trump's foreign travels, the idea of him giving a speech vaguely described as being "about Islam" in Saudi Arabia struck me as being obviously the most fraught with peril. The Muslim ban thing--not likely to be the greatest advance word-of-mouth recommendation regarding his opinions on things Islamic, you know? But the speech wasn't really terrible--given where many are setting the bar for such things on Trump's behalf, anyway. I'm not of the Muslim faith, so the eye-rolling parts might not stand out so much to me--I think that hitting on Iran's support of terror might be a little bit slanted to his SA audience (they just re-elected a moderate and ahem! SA also has their history with terror--and current events!)

But the part about "not lecturing" to the Islamic world also comes at the risk of admitting to the US turning its back to human rights issues in the Muslim world. I don't see that as a useful step for the US to be making, and it erodes the idea we've long-projected of American exceptionalism. The US has had its failings, but I don't think that means uselessness in the attempt to face what is, alongside of terrorism, a form of evil. It is this concern that casts a pall over the arms deal that has been signed--how are these weapons being used, and isn't Trump's Administration not, in signing this deal, also signing off on how they will be used?

I don't know what to make of the $100 million donation being made to Ivanka Trump's nascent women's empowerment fund that will be set up through World Bank and should not be, as I understand it, managed by Ms. Trump herself. (I basically think there's lots of room for crony capitalism in Trump's orbit.) Whether this is exactly like Trump's campaign criticisms regarding the Clinton Foundation strikes me as almost in the vicinity of the question of whether President Trump appeared to be curtseying like a lady--really? This is where we go? (Yeah--of course it is!)

But I have to give extra points to whoever set up the "hands on the glowing globe" photo, which is almost like movie shorthand for "we're just joining forces for world domination like villains do!" Of course, it's not a Giant Globe.  (We've seen how these can go wrong.) But it glows!

Don't Sit Under the Organ Tree..

This is simply amazing--we can grow human organ tissues just like we...do gardening. It's a little harder than that, but still--growing heart tissue seems outstanding and so futuristic. I'm wondering where we go from here--and imagine greenhouses of possible human transplants. It's a very promising field.  I hope we have the sense to fund this type of research in an age where the USG might be more science averse.

A Survivor and Witness has Passed: Elie Wiesel

The passing of Elie Wiesel is terribly sad, because he bore witness to an enormity which, in my own lifetime, will have no one left with the immediate knowledge. When anyone with such a personal tale dies, it's like a museum of remembrance is ransacked. Elie Wiesel passed through Auschwitz, Buna, and Buchenwald. He passed this life having given witness to the worst of humanity, and yet, he understood that there was teaching in having survived and in making the choice to stand against horror. There was a gift in knowing that one had to choose. There was a substance in siding with life, and there was a meaning in hope. "Action is the only remedy to indifference".

I take this greatly to heart. If indifference is the opposite of love, how do people who are indifferent to politics love? If action is the opposite of indifference--isn't it demanded of us to act against evil? When we view evil are we to stay silent and hope for the best?

Never. The lesson of Elie Wiesel's life is that there is meaning in speaking out about your truth and your oppression. He did this. The enormity of the Holocaust happened because people forgot how other people were human.  It is a sin to forget this important thing.

Here's our secular prayer: We won't forget. We will never forget.  The lives of those who experienced inequality and dehumanization at its worst, call us to grace them with a world of better understanding.

So Much Iran News!

Between snarking on public figures and dishing out environmental news, I try (key word: "try") to keep on top of foreign affairs. This week was trying. I was already a bit behind on blogging about the SOTU, so I also missed blogging about the capture, and release, of 10 US sailors who were in Iranian waters.

It's not that I didn't care, mind you--it just that when I heard of it, it was already determined that they were going to be released. I might be conflicted by how it was handled on Iran's part, but I'm wholly unsympathetic to people who want to play the "optics" game about how what the Iranian footage of the sailors looked like. Yes, Iran has to make it look a certain way for their folks at home. Yes, it looks shitty to us. It's almost like there are two very different points of view at work! But did I second-guess whether they were really releasing them--no. Timing.

It is coincidental that Iran has also released four Americans ahead of confirmation by the IAEA that Iran has complied with their end of the nuclear agreement. But it should also be recognized as being due to very hard work by the US State Department occurring alongside the work on the nuclear deal. I'm also (no surprise if you're following this blog) not really sympathetic to criticisms of either deal. The seven Iranians we're releasing aren't "most wanted criminals"--they violated sanctions on trade (and the US apparently feels so-so on that score depending upon who one is). The $150 billion that Iran is supposedly "getting" is the unfreezing of their own assets as a part of sanction relief. And we can always add sanctions as Iranian misbehavior dictates without necessarily scuttling any part of the deal.

All in all, it seems like pretty positive news to me.

Free Speech Update: Saudi Arabia Detains Samar Badawi

Samar Badawi*, the sister of Raif Badawi and wife of jailed human rights attorney Waleed Abulkhair, as well as a human rights activist in her own right has been arrested, although the reason why as yet is not clear. It's not clear if she's being charged with anything, or just being questioned (or harassed).

It looks like another case of Saudi Arabia's ham-handed approach to freedom of speech (they really can't hide how much they are against it). The recent execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a Shia cleric critical of the royal family, along with 46 others, displays the degree to which the regime doesn't seem to distinguish the difference between terrorism and contrary opinions--and if they anticipated that this would have a dampening effect on criticism of the House of Saud, they were quite wrong. (Unless they really wanted to antagonize Shias living in Saudi Arabia as well as Iran--Middle Eastern politics gets awfully deep for me. In which case--they got their outrage.)

I've been saying this sort of thing strikes me as a symptom of deeper problems that Saudi Arabia has. Samar Badawi and her family should not have to pay with their safety, health and lives for SA's own insecurities.

(*As a feminist, I didn't want to have to introduce Badawi primarily in relation to her male relatives, but as her brother's flogging and imprisonment are more recent, I have to assume my readers are more familiar with him. The above picture is Samar Badawi receiving a Woman of Courage Award from Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton.)

UPDATE: She was released, but the possibility of charges remains.

Discrimination Hits my Hometown

Monday morning, apparently, some jerk in a red pick-up truck bowled a pig's head onto the steps of the Al-Aqsa Academy mosque in my very own hometown. It's pretty clearly symbolic--pork is not halal but haram. So this act was using a little bit of knowledge about Islamic tradition to try to defile a mosque. It was pretty disgusting, but it is only mildly intimidating--still, I think this is a bad sign regarding what utter irresponsible bullshit is going around in the presidential race.

Mayor Nutter, who is about as mild-mannered and cool a cat as you can find, referred to Donald Trump just recently as an asshole. He isn't wrong--in fact I admire his restraint in not referring to him with Charles Pierce's winning sobriquet of "ambulatory pilonidal cyst". (I think one of them kept Rush Limbaugh out of 'Nam. Thus, good for exactly nothing, ever.) My man for the PA Senate race, John Fetterman, called Trump a jagoff. Yup. This, too, sounds about right.

See, leadership is a funny old thing. You can lead bigoted asshats to support your mouthy hide by yapping it up, but at the end of the day, you are responsible for the permission slips you went and wrote to all the delinquent-ass SOB's who took the perfectly generic insinuations you made and then decided to hit up actual people and threaten them, personally. And if you do not understand or accept that responsibility--you are not any kind of real leader, because in the real world, words mean things and policies have consequences.