…where does it end?

The prime minister’s broad statements about what happens after the war, assuming Israel can declare victory, all point to continued occupation of Gaza. Israeli officials have reportedly talked about setting up buffer zones along the border, without offering any details.
[…]
“There will be no Arab troops going to Gaza. None. We are not going to be seen as the enemy.”

Netanyahu has also dismissed US President Joe Biden’s plan to replace Hamas with the Palestinian Authority, led by President Mahmoud Abbas. Netanyahu claims the PA cannot be trusted and supports terrorism, even though it recognises Israel and cooperates with it on security.

…mind you…he’s not exactly unencumbered…but then…who isn’t?

President Biden’s vision of the future is very different to Benjamin Netanyahu’s. Biden continues to give considerable military, diplomatic and emotional support to Israelis. He visited, embraced the families of hostages and has ordered his diplomats at the United Nations Security Council to use the US veto to block ceasefire resolutions. Biden ordered two aircraft carrier strike groups to the region and has sent Israel vast amounts of weaponry.
[…]
The “two state solution” has been the official objective of America and its western allies since the early 1990s. Years of negotiations to make it happen failed. For almost a quarter of a century, since the peace process collapsed, the phrase has been an empty slogan. Biden wants to revive it, arguing correctly that only a political solution will end the conflict.

Biden sent his vice president, Kamala Harris, to Dubai last week to make a speech laying out America’s red lines for Gaza on the day after.

She laid out five principles.

“No forcible displacement, no re-occupation, no siege or blockade, no reduction in territory, and no use of Gaza as a platform for terrorism.”

“We want to see a unified Gaza and West Bank under the Palestinian Authority, and Palestinian voices and aspirations must be at the centre of this work.”

In and out of office, Benjamin Netanyahu has worked consistently hard to thwart Palestinian independence. It is safe to say he is not about to change his mind. If the two-state solution can be revived, it won’t happen while he is prime minister.

…I dunno if the thing about frogs sitting around waiting to be boiled is apocryphal…but the man at the center of prosecuting a conflict that bears all the alarming hallmarks of the sort of thing the existence of the state he represents was itself supposed to underscore the stipulation that we should never see its like again…also bears a startling number of hallmarks of being…criminally guilty…as does the leading candidate for one lane in a two horse race for the title of leader of the free world…&…as crazy as that sounds…they aren’t even close to being the most crazy dangerous bullshit artists in the mix

I went to see Simcha Rotman at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, where he is a prominent MP for the far-right Religious Zionist Party. The government of Benjamin Netanyahu depends on the support of Rotman’s party and other hard-line Jewish nationalists. Their power comes from the dynamism of the movement to settle Jews on the land captured in 1967. From that moment of victory, some Israelis were set on extending the Zionist enterprise into the newly occupied Palestinian territories: the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.

Since 1967 they have been highly successful, despite being forced to leave Gaza when Israel pulled out in 2005. Around 700,000 Israeli Jews now live in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Settler leaders are in the cabinet, and their enterprise is at the centre of Israeli politics.
[…]
Since 7 October, armed settlers in the West Bank, backed by soldiers and police, have prevented Palestinian farmers from harvesting their olives or tending their fields. Settlers have paved illegal roads and sought to entrench themselves even deeper by consolidating outposts that are illegal under Israeli as well as international law. Posters are everywhere demanding the return of Jewish settlers to Gaza.

Settlers have also killed Palestinians and invaded their homes. Men with bulldozers came at night to destroy the tiny village of Khirbet Zanuta, near Hebron. Its population of 200 Palestinians had already left, forced out by armed and aggressive settlers.

International law says an occupying power should not settle its citizens in land it has captured. Israel says the law does not apply.

“Occupation is not the word,” Simcha Rotman told me at the Knesset.

“You cannot occupy your own land. Israel is not an occupier in Israel because that’s the land of Israel.”

For Simcha Rotman and other Jewish nationalists, Gaza is also part of the land of Israel.

…all in all it’s a frightening number of foregone conclusions being staked out hither & yon…& not a lot of purchase for saner alternatives

If there are Palestinian elections after the 7 October war ends, Mustafa Barghouti is likely to run for president. He is the secretary general of the Palestine National Initiative. It wants to be the third force in Palestinian politics, an alternative to the Islamist extremists in Hamas and to Fatah, the faction led by President Mahmoud Abbas, which it regards as corrupt and incompetent. Barghouthi believes resistance to occupation is legitimate and legal, though he wants it to be non-violent.

In his office in Ramallah on the West Bank, Mustafa Barghouthi told me that Israel is using the war to deliver a crushing blow not just to Hamas but to the idea of Palestinian independence and freedom. Like many Palestinians, Barghouthi sees what’s happening as a grim echo of the events of 1948 when Israel won its independence and more than 700,000 Palestinians fled or were forced at gunpoint to leave their homes in what became Israel. Palestinians call it al-Naqba, “the catastrophe” and believe Israel wants it to happen again.

“I am 100% sure that their main goal right from the beginning was the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, complete ethnic cleansing of Gaza, trying to push people to Egypt, a terrible war crime. And if they managed to do so, I think their next goal will be to try to ethnically cleanse the West Bank and force people to join them.”

“If they fail to ethnically cleanse all Gazans, I am sure that Netanyahu’s plan B is to annexe Gaza City and the north of Gaza completely to Israel and claim it as a security area.”

Barghouthi warns that Israel faces dire prospects if its troops stay in Gaza long term.

“Israel did that before and it didn’t work. And there will be resistance to their occupation, which they cannot tolerate. And that’s why Netanyahu’s goal really is to ethnically cleanse people. He wants to have military control of Gaza without people. He knows very well that Gaza with people is something that is unmanageable.”
[…]
This crisis looks as if it will have more chapters. The US veto of the latest ceasefire resolution at the UN Security Council gives Israel more time to wage war. But that extra time is not indefinite, and continued Biden support for Israel carries a political price in America’s coming election year. Influential members of his own Democratic party oppose what he’s doing, and so do younger voters whose support he needs. The Biden Administration is already deeply uncomfortable that Israel is ignoring its repeated requests to protect civilians and respect the laws of war.

Israel-Gaza: The status quo is smashed. The future is messy and dangerous [BBC]

…& that’s from a source that’s had grief over not doing justice to the palestinian side of the thing & soft-peddling the actions of israel in its coverage…which…wow…is beyond complicated…& riven with nuance that gets bleached out every time you further remove a response from the context you can’t wait to take it out of

Civilians make up 61% of Gaza deaths from airstrikes, Israeli study finds [Guardian]

…what…no…that’s not what I meant

Solutions discussed for Gaza’s future range from workarounds to the catastrophic [NBC]

…just…oh…FFS

A lot of Christians wear crosses around their necks. You think when Jesus comes back he ever wants to see another fucking cross?

— Bill Hicks (@Bill_Hicks_RIP) August 16, 2017

…sometimes…it’s…complicated

The American Civil Liberties Union and the National Rifle Association agree about very little. They are often on opposite sides in major cases, and they certainly have starkly different views about gun rights.

But when the Supreme Court agreed to hear the N.R.A.’s free-speech challenge to what it said were a New York official’s efforts to blacklist it, one of its lawyers had a bold idea. Why not ask the A.C.L.U. to represent it before the justices?

“The N.R.A. might be thought of as the 800-pound gorilla on the Second Amendment,” said the lawyer, William A. Brewer III. “Clearly, the A.C.L.U. is the 800-pound gorilla on the First Amendment.”

David Cole, the civil liberties group’s national legal director, said the request in one sense posed a hard question.

“It’s never easy to defend those with whom you disagree,” he said. “But the A.C.L.U. has long stood for the proposition that we may disagree with what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it.”
[…]
He added: “In this hyper-polarized environment, where few are willing to cross the aisle on anything, the fact that the A.C.L.U. is defending the N.R.A. here only underscores the importance of the free speech principle at stake.”

In a statement, the civil liberties group drew a distinction.

“The A.C.L.U. does not support the N.R.A. or its mission,” the statement said. “We signed on as co-counsel because public officials shouldn’t be allowed to abuse the powers of the office to blacklist an organization just because they oppose an organization’s political views.”

…it’s…not to sound trite…but…the principle of the thing…yeah…I know…one man’s old fashioned is another’s obsolete…& one of those goes down a lot smoother than the other

A unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York, ruled against the N.R.A. Judge Denny Chin, writing for the panel, acknowledged that government officials may not “use their regulatory powers to coerce individuals or entities into refraining from protected speech.”

“At the same time, however,” he wrote, “government officials have a right — indeed, a duty — to address issues of public concern.”

Ms. Vullo’s actions were on the right side of the constitutional line, Judge Chin wrote. Key documents, he said, “were written in an evenhanded, nonthreatening tone and employed words intended to persuade rather than intimidate.”

The question of when government advocacy violates the First Amendment is before the justices in another case this term. That one concerns the Biden administration’s efforts to persuade social media companies to delete what the government said is misinformation about topics like the coronavirus pandemic and the 2020 election.
[…]
Mr. Cole, who will argue for the N.R.A. when the case is heard by the justices, probably in March, said it concerned principles that apply to all kinds of groups.

“If Maria Vullo can do this to the N.R.A., then why couldn’t a regulator in Texas do it to an immigrants’ rights group or a regulator in Arkansas do it to Planned Parenthood?” he asked.

He added that federal officials could also abuse their power under the appeals court’s ruling. “Donald Trump has made no bones about his desire to retaliate against his opponents,” Mr. Cole said. “This would be a playbook for him to do exactly that.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/09/us/aclu-nra-scotus-free-speech.html

…I mean…I know it seems like it ought to be simple

…but…even grading on a curve

Nearly 80 percent of all grades given to undergraduates at Yale last academic year were A’s or A minuses, part of a sharp increase that began during the coronavirus pandemic and appears to have stuck, according to a new report.
[…]
“When we act as though virtually everything that gets turned in is some kind of A — where A is supposedly meaning ‘excellent work’ — we are simply being dishonest to our students,” said Shelly Kagan, a Yale philosophy professor known for being a tough grader.

The trend has scrambled the very meaning of grades themselves, he said. Students no longer think B means “good.” An A is the new normal.

Yale’s cluster of A’s and A minuses has been rising for years. In the 2010-11 academic year, 67 percent of all grades were A’s and A minuses, the report found. By 2018-19, 73 percent were in the A range.

That figure spiked during the pandemic. In 2021-22, almost 82 percent of Yale grades were in the A range. Last academic year, that figure was about 79 percent.

The new statistics come from a report by Ray C. Fair, an economics professor at Yale. His work was first reported by The Yale Daily News, the student newspaper, which shared the report with The New York Times. Dr. Fair declined to comment on his findings.

…dr fair? …fer’seriously…the guy researching grade inflation in elite universities is called dr fair & I’m supposed to just swing on past that to some sort of actual point without breaking stride at the sheer gall required of the universe to troll a motherfucker that way & expect to be taken seriously…the way people expect to be when they only ever get top marks…just as a for instance

The sharp post-pandemic spike in grades is not unique to Yale. At Harvard, 79 percent of all grades given to undergraduates in the 2020-21 year were also A’s or A minuses. A decade earlier, that figure was 60 percent. In 2020-21, the average G.P.A. was 3.8, compared to 3.41 in 2002-3.

“Grades are like any currency,” said Stuart Rojstaczer, a retired Duke University professor who tracks grade inflation: They tend to increase over time.
[…]
Private colleges tend to have higher average G.P.A.s than public schools, Dr. Rojstaczer said. In 2013, the average public school G.P.A. was about 3.1, compared to 3.3 to 3.4 at private schools. Yale’s and Harvard’s averages are even higher.

“They are actively championing their students by giving them higher grades than the national average,” he said, of elite schools. “They want their students to have a competitive edge.”

…but you know how it be with inflation…it’s getting harder out there for everyone & your buck doesn’t pack the bang it used to

“Students feel the need to distinguish themselves outside the classroom because they are essentially indistinguishable inside the classroom,” [Amanda Claybaugh, Harvard’s dean of undergraduate education] said, adding, “Extracurriculars, which should be stress relieving, become stress producing.”

…producing…inducing…let’s not quibble over the semantics

Some noted the divide between science and math classes and those in the humanities. Less than 65 percent of grades in economics, mathematics and chemistry, for instance, were A’s or A minuses, compared to more than 80 percent of grades in English, African American studies and the humanities.

“It is a different academic experience,” said Jonah Heiser, 20, a mechanical engineering major, adding, “There’s a common understanding that they’re kind of different scales.”

Others worried about Yale’s grade inflation becoming public knowledge. They feared it could cheapen their degrees — or obscure their hard work to skeptical employers.

Nearly Everyone Gets A’s at Yale. Does That Cheapen the Grade? [NYT]

…after all…this is higher education we’re talking about

If I’d seen only that excerpt from the hearing, which has now led to denunciations of the college leaders by the White House and the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, among many others, I might have felt the same way. All three presidents — Claudine Gay of Harvard, Sally Kornbluth of M.I.T. and Elizabeth Magill of the University of Pennsylvania — acquitted themselves poorly, appearing morally obtuse and coldly legalistic. It was a moment that seemed to confirm many people’s worst fears about academia’s tolerance for hatred of Jew.

…surely there must be room for nuance at that level?

But while it might seem hard to believe that there’s any context that could make the responses of the college presidents OK, watching the whole hearing at least makes them more understandable. In the questioning before the now-infamous exchange, you can see the trap Stefanik laid.

“You understand that the use of the term ‘intifada’ in the context of the Israeli-Arab conflict is indeed a call for violent armed resistance against the state of Israel, including violence against civilians and the genocide of Jews. Are you aware of that?” she asked Gay.

Gay responded that such language was “abhorrent.” Stefanik then badgered her to admit that students chanting about intifada were calling for genocide, and asked angrily whether that was against Harvard’s code of conduct. “Will admissions offers be rescinded or any disciplinary action be taken against students or applicants who say, ‘From the river to the sea’ or ‘intifada,’ advocating for the murder of Jews?” Gay repeated that such “hateful, reckless, offensive speech is personally abhorrent to me,” but said action would be taken only “when speech crosses into conduct.”

So later in the hearing, when Stefanik again started questioning Gay, Kornbluth and Magill about whether it was permissible for students to call for the genocide of the Jews, she was referring, it seemed clear, to common pro-Palestinian rhetoric and trying to get the university presidents to commit to disciplining those who use it. Doing so would be an egregious violation of free speech. After all, even if you’re disgusted by slogans like “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” their meaning is contested in a way that, say, “Gas the Jews” is not. Finding themselves in a no-win situation, the university presidents resorted to bloodless bureaucratic contortions, and walked into a public relations disaster.

…whole hearing? …c’mon…& people call me unrealistic supposing anyone up to & including me has time for the amount of shit I wedge into these doorstop posts…you think the court of public opinion hangs about to give a full hearing time to breathe…when it implies the existence of more where that came from…who’s got time for that noise?

But it seems to me that it is precisely when people are legitimately scared and outraged that we’re most vulnerable to a repressive response leading to harmful unintended consequences. That’s a lesson of Sept. 11 but also of much of the last decade, when the policing of speech in academia escalated in ways that are now coming back to bite the left.

Amid the uproar over the campus antisemitism hearing, many have claimed that if Stefanik had been asking about attacks on any other ethnic group, there would have been no waffling. But Stefanik did ask about another group. Her first question to Gay was, “A Harvard student calling for the mass murder of African Americans is not protected free speech at Harvard, correct?” Gay started to respond, “Our commitment to free speech,” but Stefanik, perhaps realizing she wasn’t going to get the answer she wanted, cut her off and changed tack.

…the way the wind be blowing…I’m all for changing tack…repeatedly if at all possible…any heading that isn’t full steam ahead into the perfect storm would do in a pinch, to be honest…& I’m feeling the pinch if I’m honest

But as the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a libertarian-leaning civil liberties group, said in a statement about the hearings, “Double standards are frustrating, but we should address them by demanding free speech be protected consistently — not by expanding the calls for censorship.” Unfortunately, that is not what’s happening.

“The general point that there’s a hypocrisy around free speech and an imbalance around free speech on college campuses is right,” said Ryan Enos, a Harvard professor of government. But, he said, many of the people pointing this out “are not doing it to stand up for free speech; they’re just doing it because they want to shut down speech they disagree with.”

Enos was a founding member of the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard, formed this year. In October he resigned because, he said, “Some of the leadership led the charge to restrict pro-Palestinian speech on campus.” When it comes to speech about Israel, there is plenty of hypocrisy to go around.

Like me, Enos found the hearings shocking, though not for the reasons many supporters of Israel did. At one point, Virginia Foxx, the North Carolina Republican who is the chairwoman of the committee holding the hearing, asked each of the presidents whether she believed that Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state. Now, I think that calls to dismantle Israel are misguided at best and often despicable, but it was wildly inappropriate for educational leaders to be asked to affirm their Zionism before a government panel. It felt reminiscent of the anti-Communist witch hunts of the House Un-American Activities Committee: “Are you now, or have you ever been, an anti-Zionist?”

“I have a real problem with questions where you think there’s only one right answer,” said Enos. “You’re not asking a true question. You’re asking for some kind of loyalty display. And I think those things are especially dangerous.”

At a Hearing on Israel, University Presidents Walked Into a Trap [NYT]

…something, something…what you pay for?

At a congressional hearing on Tuesday, the leaders of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology gave carefully worded — and seemingly evasive — answers to the question of whether they would discipline students who called for the genocide of Jews. The intense criticism that followed led many to wonder: Who had prepared them for testimony?

It turns out that one of America’s best known white-shoe law firms, WilmerHale, was intricately involved.

Two of the school presidents, Claudine Gay of Harvard and Elizabeth Magill of Penn, prepared separately for the congressional testimony with teams from WilmerHale, according to two people familiar with the situation who asked not to be identified because the preparation process is confidential.

WilmerHale also had a meeting with M.I.T.’s president, Sally Kornbluth, one of the people said.

On Saturday, Ms. Magill resigned as Penn’s president after the fallout from her congressional testimony became overwhelming.

WilmerHale, created by a merger in 2004 between Wilmer Cutler Pickering of Washington and Hale and Dorr of Boston, has offices across the United States, Europe and Asia. It is best known in the legal industry for defending clients facing government investigations and enforcement. Among its best-known clients have been the oil giant BP PLC, which the law firm represented during government investigations after an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and President Richard Nixon, whom it represented in his fight with Congress over the Watergate tapes.

…one person’s holding court…is another’s held in contempt…or something…probably in latin, I shouldn’t wonder

Preparing for congressional testimony involves blending legal caution with political savvy and common sense, legal experts say. Lawyers typically advise those testifying to be mindful of the law but to also consider headlines that could come out of the hearing. That can be a difficult task after hours of pointed questioning.
[…]
Steven Davidoff Solomon, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, said that the college presidents appeared to be “prepared to give answers in the court — and not a public forum.”
[…]
In one of the most charged moments of testimony, Representative Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York, asked the three presidents whether calls for violence against Jews would violate their school’s code of conduct.

Dr. Kornbluth of M.I.T. responded that they might, “if targeted at individuals, not making public statements.” Ms. Magill of Penn said a call for violence against Jews could be considered a violation “if it is directed and severe, pervasive, it is harassment.” When pushed to answer yes or no, she responded, “it is a context-dependent decision.” And Dr. Gay of Harvard responded, “It can be, depending on the context.”

…uh huh…context…I’m…vaguely familiar with the concept

Critics said the answers appeared to be too focused on whether conduct would violate the First Amendment.

“Once they were in that box, I think they stuck with their preparation,” said Edward Rock, a professor of law at New York University. “That’s why they came across so wooden. And then, afterward, they realized it was a terrible answer.”

Dr. Gay of Harvard issued a clarification on Wednesday: “Let me be clear: Calls for violence or genocide against the Jewish community, or any religious or ethnic group, are vile. They have no place at Harvard, and those who threaten our Jewish students will be held to account.”

…fair enough…in context & such…so

Ms. Magill of Penn said in a video, “I was not focused on, but I should have been, the irrefutable fact that a call for genocide of Jewish people is a call for some of the most terrible violence human beings can perpetrate.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/08/business/dealbook/wilmerhale-penn-harvard-mit-antisemitism-hearing.html

…is it just me…or…for a given value of permissible…does it seem like for a thing to be considered universally true…the way…say…”a call for genocide […] is a call for some of the most terrible violence human beings can perpetrate” could be deemed an “irrefutable fact”…it shouldn’t miraculously become acceptable if it’s being perpetrated by a state claiming to represent said jewish people…for all that abe simpson might tell you “it was the style at the time”

In his 2000 book, “The America We Deserve,” Mr. Trump wrote that “pulling back from Europe would save this country millions of dollars annually.” As president, he repeatedly threatened a United States withdrawal from the alliance.

Yet as he runs to regain the White House, Mr. Trump has said precious little about his intentions. His campaign website contains a single cryptic sentence: “We have to finish the process we began under my administration of fundamentally re-evaluating NATO’s purpose and NATO’s mission.” He and his team refuse to elaborate.
[…]
In interviews over the past several months, more than a half-dozen current and former European diplomats — speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from Mr. Trump should he win — said alarm was rising on Embassy Row and among their home governments that Mr. Trump’s return could mean not just the abandonment of Ukraine, but a broader American retreat from the continent and a gutting of the Atlantic alliance.

“There is great fear in Europe that a second Trump presidency would result in an actual pullout of the United States from NATO,” said James G. Stavridis, a retired four-star Navy admiral who was NATO’s supreme allied commander from 2009 to 2013. “That would be an enormous strategic and historic failure on the part of our nation.”

…ok…deep breaths…deep breaths…yes…there are people who don’t understand how to count the costs of the counter-factuals when it comes to backing ukraine’s dog in a bear-fight…seems like you’d have to work at it to be that fucking dumb…but there it is in yays & nays any damned way…but…the equivalent to flipping the nearest thing to a safety catch designed to keep a pin in the grenade that is a straight up global military conflict involving nuclear peers…we gotta explain how that’s a shit idea…fucking seriously?

At this point in the campaign, Mr. Trump is focused on the criminal cases against him and on defeating his Republican primary rivals, and he rarely talks about the alliance, even in private.

As he maintains a broad lead in his campaign to become the Republican nominee, the implications for America’s oldest and most critical military alliance are not clearly advertised plans from Mr. Trump, but a turmoil of widely held suspicions charged with unknowability.

…it’s a goddamn paradox is what it is…a man so profoundly removed from the sort of serious person demanded by circumstance…that it couldn’t be more serious to contend with even as the thing being contended with remains too preposterous to be taken seriously

“Will he throw Zelensky under the bus in the first three months of his term?” Mr. Grand, now at the European Council on Foreign Relations, asked, referring to Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly declared that he would somehow settle the war “in 24 hours.” He has not said how, but he has coupled that claim with suggestions that he could have prevented the war by making a deal in which Ukraine simply ceded to Russia its eastern lands that President Vladimir Putin has illegally seized.

…needless to say…there will be lawyers involved

As a legal matter, whether Mr. Trump could unilaterally withdraw the United States from NATO is likely to be contested.

The Constitution requires Senate consent to ratify a treaty but omits procedures to annul one. This has led to debate about whether presidents can do so on their own or need lawmakers’ authorization. There are only a few court precedents regarding the issue, none definitive.

Decisions to revoke treaties by President Jimmy Carter in 1978 and by President George W. Bush in 2001 led members of Congress to file lawsuits that were rejected by courts, partly on the grounds that the disputes were a “political question” for the elected branches to work out. While the legal precedents are not perfectly clear, both of those presidents effectively won: the treaties are widely understood to be void. Still, any attempt to withdraw from NATO would likely invite a broader challenge.

In reaction to Mr. Trump’s threats, some lawmakers — led by Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, and Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida — put a provision in the annual National Defense Authorization Act, which Congress is likely to vote on this month. It says the president shall not withdraw the United States from NATO without congressional approval. But whether the Constitution permits such a tying of a president’s hands is also contestable.

…but…day to day…you got to worry about exactly which 24hrs these kinds of assholes have in mind…you know…takes one to know one & all that jazz

The uncertainty stemming from Mr. Trump’s maximalist and yet vague rhetoric is bound up in his past displays of consistent skepticism about NATO and of unusual solicitude to Russia.

As a candidate in 2016, Mr. Trump rattled NATO allies by saying that if Russia attacked the Baltic States, he would decide whether to come to their aid only after reviewing whether they had “fulfilled their obligations to us.” He also repeatedly praised Mr. Putin and said he would consider recognizing Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea.

As president in July 2018, Mr. Trump not only nearly withdrew from NATO at an alliance summit but denounced the European Union as a “foe” because of “what they do to us in trade.” He then attended a summit with Mr. Putin, after which he expressed skepticism about the idea that the United States should go to war to defend a tiny NATO ally, Montenegro.

…it’s almost as though…that’s not how the fuck any of that fucking works…when it can be said to work…which is a fucking stretch in the first place half the fucking time in ways the one dipshit almost certainly doesn’t fucking understand but a lot of people in places like moscow & beijing & mumbai &…I dunno…fucking OPEC…or scandinavia…or fucking all over the goddamned joint…bloody well do

With no prior experience in the military or government, Mr. Trump brought a transactional, mercantilist attitude to interactions with allies. He tended to base his views of foreign nations on his personal relationships with their leaders and on trade imbalances.

…fuck this fucking shit

Anti-interventionist foreign policy institutes are more organized and better funded than they were during Mr. Trump’s time in office. Those groups include the Center for Renewing America, a Trump-aligned think tank that published a paper titled “Pivoting the U.S. Away From Europe to a Dormant NATO,” which provides a rationale for minimizing America’s role in NATO.

On Nov. 1, the Heritage Foundation — a traditionally hawkish conservative think tank that has lately refashioned itself in a Trumpist mold, on matters including opposition to aid to Ukraine — hosted a delegation from the European Council on Foreign Relations.
[…]
According to two people who attended, Mr. Anton told the Europeans he could imagine Mr. Trump setting an ultimatum: If NATO members did not sufficiently increase their military spending by a deadline, he would withdraw the United States from the alliance. As the meeting broke up, Eckart von Klaeden, a former German politician who is now a Mercedes-Benz Group executive, implored Mr. Anton to ask Mr. Trump to please talk to America’s European allies as he formulated his foreign policy.

That seems like wishful thinking.

Current and former European diplomats said there was growing concern a second Trump presidency could mean an American retreat from the continent and a gutting of NATO. [NYT]

…well I can see how it’d be hard to tell apart from all the other god-awful shite out there under the same misnomer, I suppose…I’m thinking we oughta be thinking up a better class of wishes before we entirely fail to digest what we’ve asked to bite off…but then I notoriously don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about since none of this shit makes a lick of sense to me

While Gazans Suffer, Hamas Reaps the Benefits [NYT]

How evangelicals learned to put country over God [WaPo]

‘Grifters and sycophants’: the radicals who would fill key posts if Trump is re-elected [Guardian]

Venezuela has laid claim to the oil-rich Essequibo region – which accounts for two-thirds of Guyana – since it gained independence in the 19th century, but Maduro has dramatically raised the stakes in the past week, prompting concerns across the region that the authoritarian leader could be paving the way for a land grab.
[…]
At the center of the dispute is an incendiary vote held in Venezuela on Sunday in which Caracas alleges the public overwhelmingly backed the country’s claims to the 160,000-sq-kilometre swathe of resource-rich rainforest.

Maduro hailed the plebiscite a “total success”, claiming that 95% of Venezuelans supported the plans to annex the region and disregard the international court of justice, which is currently mediating the century-old territorial dispute.

Analysts say voter turnout was likely inflated by the government, but Maduro has used the vote as a springboard to forge ahead with plans to assimilate the region into Venezuela.
[…]
Venezuela has become increasingly vocal about its claim to the territory since billions of barrels worth of oil were discovered in the region in 2015, and there are growing concerns that the bluster could turn into action.

As Venezuela ratchets up tensions, Guyana in turn must respond, prompting concerns that the countries could find themselves in a loop with no way out.
[…]
Guyana was part of the British empire for 200 years until it gained independence in 1966. As the only English-speaking country in South America, the country has closer cultural and political ties with the Caribbean than with the rest of the continent.
[…]
Maduro’s belligerent campaign is widely seen as a way to drum up support and test his capacity to drive turnout before presidential elections in 2024, when he is expected to face a serious challenge by the opposition leader María Corina Machado.

“He could also just use the alleged looming threat from Guyana and the US to say there are no conditions for an election to be held and cancel it entirely,” said Ryan Berg, an analyst and the director of the Americas program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

As Maduro ramps up the rhetoric, Guyana’s diplomats are hurriedly traveling to meet representatives of the Caribbean community (Caricom) as well as going further afield, hoping that they will secure guarantees that their allies will not allow what Guyana’s president called an “outlaw nation” to invade.
[…]
For now, it remain unlikely that Maduro will invade Guyana, said Berg. Launching a conflict would leave Venezuela internationally isolated and risk the US reimposing economic sanctions.

“But the lesson we take away from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is that the rational thing to do is not always what a dictator does,” Berg said. “This could end up in some kind of shooting war or minimal land invasion because we’ve seen how things like this can take on a life of their own.”

US staged flyover of border region Thursday after Maduro held national vote and alleged country’s support for annexation [Guardian]

…what was that shit about context & freedom of speech…because I can’t hear the movie anymore over all the people yelling “fire” in this theater

Human rights activists say that the international community has given up on intervention efforts to stop mass atrocities, leading to fears that such occurrences may become the norm around the world.

The warnings come on the 75th anniversaries this weekend of the Genocide Convention and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, both signed in the aftermath of the Holocaust in the hope that the world would act in concert to prevent a repeat of such mass slaughter.
[…]
The mass killing of civilians in Syria and Ukraine, and the internment of over a million Uyghurs and other Muslims in China, have been followed by war crimes in Ethiopia, and a resumption of ethnic cleansing in Sudan’s Darfur province, 20 years after the start of the genocide there.

The 7 October Hamas killing of 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians, and the consequent Israeli invasion of Gaza, in which women and children have accounted for most of the estimated 16,000 dead, have added to the bloody chaos. The UN high commissioner for human rights, Volker Türk, has warned of “a heightened risk of atrocity crimes”.

“If you look around, you don’t need to be an expert in mass atrocity violence to recognise its prevalence,” said Kate Ferguson, the co-founding director of Protection Approaches, an NGO focused on prevention of and responses to identity-based violence. “We face the likelihood that this violence is going to characterise the next political era. In fact, I wonder if we’re not already in that era.”

In the face of the turmoil, the UN security council has been paralysed by rivalry among the veto-wielding great powers, who themselves have been implicated in the atrocities. Faced with deadlock over the Gaza war, the UN secretary general, António Guterres, invoked a clause in the UN charter that had not been used in decades to force a debate on a humanitarian ceasefire. The US refused to back the resolution on Friday.
[…]
“I think the big difference this time is that, while Darfur attracted enormous attention at the UN and globally in the 2000s, the current war in Sudan is a tragic footnote to more strategically significant wars elsewhere. This sadly follows a pattern we saw in Ethiopia,” said Richard Gowan, the UN director at the International Crisis Group. “The responsibility to protect is at best a fading memory at the UN.”

The ambition to forestall genocide and other crimes against humanity and war crimes has also faded in US foreign policymaking, human rights advocates claim. The high point was the creation in 2012 of the Atrocities Prevention Board, chaired by Samantha Power, a close adviser to Barack Obama and the author of a book on the subject, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, which argued the US had sought to avoid confronting genocide, rather than address it head on.

Under the board, US intelligence agencies and diplomats were tasked with looking for early warning signs that populations were under threat, and an array of tools – military, diplomatic, legal and economic – were designed for early intervention, to deter would-be perpetrators and protect civilians.
[…]
Despite early warnings, activists allege the US had been slow in calling out atrocity crimes in Ethiopia and Sudan, and been paralysed over the Israel-Hamas war. According to sources familiar with the taskforce’s work, it had been blocked from convening to discuss risk factors on the West Bank. From presenting itself as a guardian of human rights, the administration found itself widely accused of complicity in potential Israeli war crimes in Gaza.
[…]
“In the medium and short term, we are failing miserably to use the tools that everybody invested so much blood, sweat and tears to get finalised,” said Nicole Widdersheim, a former senior administration official who served on the Atrocity Prevention Board. “Now there is a whole new ballgame, as everything is affected by the prism of the Gaza crisis.”

“I’m disappointed in this administration’s inability or unwillingness to pursue its own strategy, let alone the laws and tools that are already on the books,” she added.

Stephen Pomper, who succeeded Power as the chair of the board, said that the ambition to stop atrocity crimes had “diminished in terms of its saliency within the administration as a guiding principle”.

But Pomper argued the seeds of the decline were in the original assumptions underlying the policy: that the UN and the international order would continue to function in the same way, the US would remain a unipolar power, “the world would tolerate a certain level of double standards by the US”, and atrocity prevention would not get in the way of conflict resolution.

“I think they’ve all been, to some extent, challenged by reality,” Pomper said.

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2023/dec/08/un-and-us-efforts-to-stop-mass-atrocities-have-waned-activists-warn

…I can empathize…it’s certainly more of a challenge than I feel like facing most days…but…I can’t help feeling that…well…overcoming reality is a dubious goal that sounds like an accident waiting to happen

Failure to agree to phase out fossil fuels at Cop28 ‘will push world into climate breakdown’ [Guardian]

…hey…I ain’t the one rocking the damn boat

We really could triple renewables by 2030, but it won’t be a breeze [Guardian]

…but we’re all of us in the one motherfucker at this point…right?

Opec rails against fossil fuel phase-out at Cop28 in leaked letters [Guardian]

…& for once the rising tide thing is actually fucking true

Cop28 is a farce rigged to fail, but there are other ways we can try to save the planet [Guardian]

…uh huh

Cop28: China ‘would like to see agreement to substitute renewables for fossil fuels’ [Guardian]

…come what may?

Earth on verge of five catastrophic climate tipping points, scientists warn [Guardian]

…or come the day?

On Tuesday, Trump told the Fox News host Sean Hannity: “I love this guy. He says, ‘You’re not going to be a dictator, are you?’ I said, ‘No, no, no, other than day one.

Trump says ‘I’m not a dictator’ but top figures warn of authoritarian takeover [Guardian]

…these are the days…ladies & gentlemen…& the past is prelude

[…you won’t thank me…but if I can find it again I got a helluva tweet to go here]

Tucker Carlson's interview of Alex Jones summed up in 56 seconds: pic.twitter.com/T1Ib7MAgQJ

— Kat Abu (@abughazalehkat) December 9, 2023

…who the fuck knows what the day will bring?

Hey everyone , yesterday just before the top of the hour I was joking around a bit with the team in the gallery.

I was pretending to count down as the director was counting me down from 10-0.. including the fingers to show the number. So from 10 fingers held up to one.

When…

— Maryam Moshiri (@BBCMaryam) December 7, 2023