Open Mic for the week of 2/26/2024
There’s a phenomenon where someone writes an essay about this or that but someone else wants to discuss something that has not yet made it to the front page.
This is unfair to everybody involved. It’s unfair to the guy who wrote the original essay because, presumably, he wants to talk about his original essay. It’s unfair to the guy who wants to talk about his link because it looks like he’s trying to change the subject. It’s unfair to the people who go to the comments to read up on the thoughts of the commentariat for the original essay and now we’re talking about some other guy’s links.
So!
The intention is to have a new one of these every week. If you want to talk about a link, post it here! Or, heck, use it as an open thread.
And, if it rolls off, we’ll make a new one. With a preamble just like this one.
Hey Democratic politicians – this is an amateur hour own-goal. No matter how far down the polling you are, don’t do stupid stuff like this:
https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/25/politics/fake-biden-robocalls-consultant-dean-phillips/index.htmlReport
It’s not much of an own goal considering DP as gone rogue and Biden easily smashed him as a write in candidate. This is nothing burger.Report
Its more fuel that the GOP can use to say hey – if its ok for Democrats its ok for us. That’s not nothing . . . .Report
It seems that a young airman named Aaron Bushnell self-immolated in front of the Israeli embassy in Warshington D.C. over the weekend. He said that he was no longer going to be complicit in genocide.
He died as a result of his injuries.
Twitter user Hadir Nossir posted a memorial for Aaron Bushnell saying:
Twitter user Kristen Cotenti helpfully points out: “It’s a nice memorial, but “Rest in Power” is for Black people. Aaron wasn’t Black.”
So those of you who may wish to memorialize Aaron Bushnell’s dissent, please keep in mind that you may wish to say “Rest in Peace” rather than “Rest in Power”.
Thank you.Report
These people are so fishing weird that they go into knit-picking in strange ways rather than maintain a united front among themselves. Meanwhile I keep hearing FreePalestine but nobody among the Pro-Palestinian people including the Palestinians themselves can agree what Palestine is. Is it just the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem or is it Green Line Israel maybe with Jews and maybe without Jews depending on who you talk to. There isn’t going to be any Free Palestine unless we get some determination on what the Occupation is and isn’t.
The entire Israel-Palestine debate suffers from too much grand theorizing among both sides of the conflict rather than people just trying to solve the product dealing with the facts on the grounds. Like the endless debate on whether Zionism is Jewish self-determination or settler-colonialism. I’m pretty much in the Zionism is Jewish self-determination camp but I realize that even if we get everybody to admit that Zionism is self-determination, the Palestinians are not going to go away magically and get absorbed into other Arab countries. Same with Zionism as settler-colonialism. Even if the Palestinians and their allies could somehow decisively prove that Zionism was settler-colonialism, you still have half the worlds Jews living in Israel. They aren’t going to get up and go “home” if you prove this.
But you have also this useless grand theorizing on both sides that doesn’t really do anything to actually resolve the product. There is too much mythologizing and people acting like if they cast the right intellectual argument/magic spell than the other side would instantly cave and give up everything.Report
As it turns out, “Rest in Power” was used in one of its earliest incarnations for Rachel Corrie (a white chick activist who died in an altercation with an Israeli bulldozer).
So the possibility exists that Black people are appropriating “Rest in Power” from pro-Palestinian activists.
Which is kinda awkward. Maybe we’ve been using “Rest in Power” wrong for two decades!Report
Well that’s hardly the point, now, is it?Report
To be honest, I have no idea what the point is.
I mean, I’m fairly pro-Israel but not, like, to the point where I think that Israel can do no wrong. I think that the the whole unpleasantness in Gaza is pretty awful and am coming around to the position that “Seriously Israel, your point was made about a month ago. Pull back and say ‘Don’t make us come back here’ and pull out of Gaza entirely again.”
So when I saw that Aaron Bushnell immolated himself, I found myself torn on the question of whether he was suffering from some sort of mental illness (not impossible!) or if he was actually exceptionally principled to the point where he was willing to violate Air Force policy by engaging in this particular protest.
And then that got derailed by the whole issue of policing who gets to use “Rest in Power” and whether using it incorrectly requires policing at this point in time.
It strikes me as something that only a malicious parody of “wokeness” would inject into the conversation.
But my light research into the account told me that if this is a malicious parody, it’s *COMMITTED* to being plausibly deniable. So it’s really good at it.Report
There aren’t enough dead in Gaza to make Israel’s point yet.
They lost about a thousand people at the start of this.
Ergo they need to kill about a hundred thousand to show this was a bad idea by Palestinian standards.
Palestinian terror groups are willing to trade ten for one and consider it a victory. They have a point because they out number the Jews.Report
Netanyahu would love to destroy the possibility of a Palestinian state ever. For most saner Israelis, the goal is to get Hamas to release the hostages with the least number of pre-conditions or at least their bodies* and to get Hamas to realize that they can’t destroy Israel ever even if they can’t get rid of Hamas.
I’m still don’t know if Hamas is being strategically brilliant or stupid or are just lucky. On the one hand, what did they think will happen after the Simchat Torah massacre? On the other hand, the Pro-Palestinian people in the West were out in force on October 8th and haven’t let up. Lots of people in the West basically forgot about what started the Israel-Hamas War and that Hamas is in control of Gaza with no evidence that they learned their lesson.
*Hamas proposed ceasefire was that Israel agree to a 4.5 month ceasefire and Hamas would release the hostages near the end of that month. This was obviously unacceptable to Israel.Report
By all accounts Hamas got incredibly lucky that Israel apparently prioritizes using its regulars to kick around Palestinians in the West Bank and protect settler fanatics.Report
RE: For most saner Israelis, the goal is to…
Those are not sane goals.
Hostage taking is something that should be punished, not rewarded.
Hamas is always going to want to destroy Israel and be temped to think god will help them.
The question is how much suffering they drop on themselves when they try. The way to measure that is to count corpses.
We’re only at something like 20-to-1. That may not be a large enough cost to deter them.Report
I think rest in power goes back to the CRM in the 1960s, especially when it reached the militant Black Panther phase. Where it originated isn’t really important though.Report
It originated in the late 90s/early 2000s, and pretty much everyone attributes its first online use (and effectively its first known use) to a Usenet newsgroup in 2000, in response to the murder of a well-known artist.
https://slate.com/culture/2019/09/rest-in-power-phrase-history-appropriation-black-activists.html
This has got to be the most 2020s OT conversation ever.Report
That article talks about it showing up in print around 2005 but I have this article from 2003 eulogizing Rachel Corrie.
I don’t think Salon’s research was exhaustive enough to declare authoritative on this important issue.Report
Cool, though that’s still 3 years after 2000.
I don’t remember when I first heard it, but it definitely became popular on blogs at some point in the mid-to-late Aughts.Report
Sure, but the Salon article is decrying its use for Ric Ocasek and Eddie Money… two rockers rather than two activists.
If activism is the core of the criticism, it certainly was not used inappropriately for Rachel Corrie and, so too, it’s not used inappropriately for Aaron Bushnell.
Wikipedia Itself says:
As such, I think it might be fair to say “it’s inappropriate to say this about Eddie Money” but we can still use it for Aaron Bushnell.
Here’s an example of PBS using it for RBG.
This attempt to gatekeep “RIP” is misguided at best.
(Though I agree that it shouldn’t be used for Ric Ocasek.)Report
oh, I don’t care about Salon. I just linked it because it was there. I should have linked the Wikipedia page, which has the same basic history (I suspect Salon just copied it), but I’m lazy.Report
Just to satisfy folks curiosity, an even earlier use of “Rest in Power”:
https://www.laweekly.com/going-up-in-l-a/
This use fits with the idea that it was in use in the 80s, verbally at least, but didn’t show up in writing (often) until a decade or so later.Report
We’re only a third of the way through this decade, sir.Report
Yeah, I’m sure this one will be surpassed, but to this point…Report
Remember how shocked everyone was that Ric Ocasek was 75 when he died?Report
Mostly I am just disturbed that the musicians of my childhood are in their 70s.Report
Good Gods in Asgard Above that’s horrible and gruesome and it was totally unnecessary, even if we credit his moral argument about the Hamas War.Report
I want to know how exactly he was being asked to commit genocide.Report
From what I can see, he just saw his ordinary military duties as being asked to commit genocide.Report
Let’s not get too excited by this. Clearly, the guy had a screw loose.Report
He probably did suffer from some form of mental illness. I am already seeing people argue that we shouldn’t use this fact to diminish his protest.Report
For the Pro-Palestinian side, why would they let such a perfect martyr go to political waste?Report
Kristen Cotenti… she of 2000 X followers. Why should we listen to her specifically?
And she was responding to Hadir Nossir… he of 1520 X followers. His “memorial” was a Tweet of a gif? Or a very short video?
Why are we talking about what these two people said and did on Twitter instead of what Mr. Bushnell did, why, and what more important and impactful people are saying about it?Report
Um, sure. We can talk about that instead, I guess.
I’m fairly pro-Israel but not, like, to the point where I think that Israel can do no wrong. I think that the the whole unpleasantness in Gaza is pretty awful and am coming around to the position that “Seriously Israel, your point was made about a month ago. Pull back and say ‘Don’t make us come back here’ and pull out of Gaza entirely again.”
So when I saw that Aaron Bushnell immolated himself, I found myself torn on the question of whether he was suffering from some sort of mental illness (not impossible!) or if he was actually exceptionally principled to the point where he was willing to violate Air Force policy by engaging in this particular protest.
I have concerns about the idea of popularizing “protests that involve the protestor dying” because it strikes me that while self-immolation is quite striking, putting on a bomb belt and going off in the middle of a crowd of people is even more striking.
And then we can get derailed over whether we should really be focusing on the supporters of the supporters of the Zionist administration or whether we should really be focusing on what Mr. Vest did, why, and what more important and impactful people are saying about it.
So I don’t want to popularize suicide protests.
But, at the end of the day, the Israel/Palestine conflict remains the Israel/Palestine conflict and finding out that there are some people out there who care so strongly about this that they’re willing to set themselves on fire about it doesn’t really change my opinion of the Israel/Palestine conflict.
Has Mr. Bushnell’s protest changed any of your opinions on the Israel/Palestine situation?Report
I came here to drop a spot review from the sneak preview of Dune 2 that I saw last night. After reading the news about Aaron Bushnell I no longer feel like doing that.
Besides, you’re going to go see it anyway no matter what I say.Report
Does that mean it was good? No spoilers please, I am seeing it Friday.
I liked part 1 way more than I anticipated.Report
After being subjected to Lynch’s version, almost anything would have been better.Report
Lynch gave us “It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.”
I’m willing to forgive a great deal due to that.Report
I have a soft spot for it too. I am also an unapologetic David Lynch fan and don’t care if the movie doesn’t work as what I’m sure the people who produced it intended it to be.Report
It was my first foray into being disappointed by movie adaptations of books I love.Report
This is where I may be unusual among the Dune appreciating community. I liked the book but didn’t love it, and knew enough about the sequels to understand that I had no need to go any further. The Lynch movie is therefore a curiosity by a director I like rather than something that desecrated a beloved piece of literature.
The new movie I liked a lot because the effects and setting felt tangible in a way most CGI fests don’t to me. This is probably why I find most of the super hero stuff totally unwatchable but was entranced by part 1.Report
That’s the only David Lynch movie I’ve liked. It was evocative. I think about it like I think about the superior Watchmen, in that it told a story that was too big for a movie, but told the part that it could pretty well.Report
I agree with this take. I am sure it was unintended but I find Lynch’s interpretation to be evocative of just how weird and alien Dune the book is.Report
Terry Gilliam sat down and talked about making Watchmen.
At the end of reading it with the intention of translating it to the big screen, he said “I couldn’t have it be shorter than 5 hours.”
I think about that version, sometimes.
I wish I could watch it.Report
In general, it’s a good thing that we’ve lost the movie vs series dichotomy. Still, I don’t think I’d want to watch either Dune or Watchmen as a series, and there’s something rewarding about them as exhausting film experiences. You *want* to be stomped down by them.Report
It’s true that I’m going to see it no matter what but I would still like to know whether they screwed it up.
I was surprised that they didn’t screw up the first one.
I mean… I have criticisms. It struck me as a series of vignettes from the book rather than telling the story on its own terms.
Like… it was a 2 1/2 hour trailer for the *REAL* Dune Part 1.
And they messed up the aesthetics of the Harkonnens. Those guys are supposed to be garish redheads wearing *LOUD* clothing.
But, you know, besides all that… I see what they were going for and it was a treat to watch it with two friends: One of whom had read the book twice and one of whom had heard that there was a Dune movie that came out in the 80’s but he didn’t see it.
And the book reader was thrilled with it and the guy who had heard of Dune before thought it was striking but had no idea what was going on.
And so I just want to know whether Dune 2: Duner continues what Dune started. Like, is it more of the same?
Because if it’s more of the same, that will be more than enough for me.
I suppose I also need to know whether the movie ends at the end of the book or whether we need to expect Dune 3: The Search For Arrakis in 2026 to get to the end of this part of the story.Report
I didn’t love Dune:1 but I have to admit that in the scene where the Harkonen attacked and everyone ran outside to see the guild star liner looming in the sky like some ominous moon (spoiler: it was no moon), a character said “God in Heaven!” and the music started up and I got goosebumps. I don’t know if Dune:1 was perfect but it did quite a lot that was good.
I’m also looking forward to seeing the sequel at the first opportunity.Report
So I don’t know if they’re going to make a Dune Part 3 but if they want to they certainly could. And if you didn’t like what they did with the Harkonnen in Part 1 I bet you’re going to find the deeper exploration of Harkonnen culture even more annoying.
Having just seen a screening of the original Jurassic Park (with live symphony play-along!) the night before, the idea of exposition was really on my mind: better if a moviemaker can show-not-tell, but sometimes you have to tell-not-show because a plot point is super subtle or super complicated.
Dune Part 1 MOSTLY showed, rather than told, but I’m not sure that Dune Part 2 had quite so easy a time of it. You may recall that the book gets pretty mystical. It’s super hard to show, not tell, a mystical experience.
There are more significant liberties taken with the story than re-gendering Liet Kynes. I don’t want to spoil what those are, and I think that those changes from the book probably were aimed at telling a tighter, slightly easier-to-show overall story of the Saga of Paul Muad’dib Atredies.
But one of those decisions results in a LOT of telling-not-showing, and another of these deviances left me unsatisfied with the climactic confrontation between Paul and the Emperor (I know I’m not spoiling anything by saying that confrontation happens; you’ve allr read the book).
It’s a feast for the eyes, especially both the action-packed battles and worm riding scenes (Paul’s first worm ride is super scary looking, just like you want it to be) and some really beautiful shots of the sandy desert. Some (but not all) of those shots even have enough emotional build-up to them that they feel like payoffs rather than stills.
You will have to decide for yourself if Zendaya and Chamelet have the kind of chemistry necessary to tell Chani and Paul’s love story. They certainly try and are certainly beautiful. I am still uncertain. I am certain, though, that despite his notoriety someone other than Christopher Walken should have been cast as the Emperor. There isn’t enough dialogue for him to step out of the shadow of his personal persona, so he took me out of the immersion of the experience of watching Paul Atredies’ story in a way that Timothee Chalamet was able to draw me into it.
I’m left afterwards feeling a bit hollow. Which may be okay, it may be a part of the story’s point.Report
I’ve heard rumors that Villeneuve wants to make Dune: Messiah.
Which… well. I remember reading in the 80’s that Lucas said something to the effect of “we won’t have the tech necessary to tell the story of the prequels for 15 years” and so when the Phantom Menace trailer came out I did some math in my head and thrilled at the thought that we’d finally see what happened!
Sigh.
Anyway, it strikes me that we’re not going to have the tech we need to tell Dune: Messiah for about 15 years.Report
I would definitely say the tech to tell Dune: Messiah exists now. I do not know if the screenwriting skills to turn Dune: Messiah into a screenplay exists. Heck, it’s an open question if they exist for converting Dune.Report
The big problem is that you not only have to combine action scenes with long monologues (no problem for movies), you also have to include the equivalent of two or three pages from a Chilton manual discussing how shields use the Holtzman Effect.
I think that maybe you could do it with a video game.
But you can’t do it with a movie.
BUT! You *COULD* make a 2.5 hour trailer for Dune: Messiah.
Which is what we’re going to end up getting.
Edit: If we’re lucky.Report
Yeah you’re outlining in detail why I doubt we have the “writing skill” to adapt the books to film but for technology in general? No, we have the visual tech to make anything the books need. Dune:1 had the Harkonen attack on the Atreides airforce and their Holtzman shield special effect was *chefs kiss*.Report
I feel like it could be done if it were a 2.5 hour movie with six hours of extended scenes.
“Would you like to know more?” and, in the middle of the scene, touch the button and learn about the Butlerian Jihad. Press a button halfway through *THAT* and learn about the Cymeks. Then go back and watch the rest of the Butlerian Jihad short. Then go back to the movie.
Wait, what is the juice of Sapho? Time to watch a 3 minute short…Report
Agreed, one reason why I’ve always been fond of the Dune miniseries despite their funny hats.
Though weren’t the Cymeks from the expanded Dune universe? Don’t we purists hate them?Report
Were they? It all blurs together.
As time goes on, I hate the expansions less.
I wanted more of the story too, once.Report
I am not 100% sure because A) it’s been a while since I read the expanded universe and B) I loved the expanded universe and, so, didn’t view it as separate from the core Dune mythos.Report
“You may recall that the book gets pretty mystical. It’s super hard to show, not tell, a mystical experience.”
I liked Dune 1 and am going to Dune 2 opening weekend… so they got’s my money.
But, I still stand by my meta-criticism that Dune, the entire original series, is about the inner dialogs that are never spoken. Like, the point of Dune is being inside their heads like the voices and contemplating the mysticism of the path… time… causality.
The pew pew are set pieces that demark the path’s evolution. And Duncan Idaho.
So to Jay’s point, I’m doing a *lot* of work filling in the gaps of the SHOW with what needs to be TOLD.
Ultimately I think the modern fetish with visual arts is a weakness, not a strength.
What do I want? I want a full BBC/A&E DUNE with CGI. 24 or however many episodes it requires to walk through all the inner and expositional dialog necessary.Report
Maribou and I were talking about this whole thing yesterday and she told me that “book trailers” exist.
Like, you watch a book trailer and it hooks you and then you read the book (or listen to the audiobook or whatever). It’s a thing.
She said that Dune was an amazing book trailer.Report
Do you have any idea how many tweets it would take?
Nobody reads books anymore.Report
Heh. That follows the late-80s/early-90s anime-industry thing, where you’d have a short animated series (3-6 hours) that was really more of an advertisement for the extremely-long-running manga series it was based on, and was completely incomprehensible without that series as a context.
Like, it would be as though someone had made a TV miniseries based on “Lord Of Chaos” (book 6 of “Wheel Of Time”) but not actually explained who any of the people were or what happened to them after the end of the story.Report
When it comes to the television show of Wheel of Time, my buddies explained to me that Perrin gets and gives some of the best monologues in the books. One of my friends gave me a couple of lines from “The Axe or The Hammer” and it was a pretty good monologue!
The show? I think that they showed Perrin have a split-second decision between grabbing an axe and grabbing a hammer and his hand went back and forth for less than a second before he grabbed the hammer.
There, book dorks. Happy?
The scene that I remember best from the book is the scene where the doctor gives Duke Leto a fake tooth and detailed instructions about killing the Baron and the narrator then wanders into territory about how the Duke understood love but did not understand hatred and he thought that the fact that the doctor loved him and his family and his House was enough but… it wasn’t.
I last read the original book when Reagan was president and I still remember those paragraphs and I remain struck by them.
In the new film, the scene where he gasses the room was really good but I found myself thinking “If I hadn’t read the book, I’d be asking ‘Who in the hell is the doctor? Why did he betray his House? His wife? Am I just supposed to understand that the Baron took his wife captive or something? And he didn’t see this perfidy on the part of Harkonnen coming?”
When we watched the movie with a guy who had been vaguely aware of Dune, we paused the movie a half dozen times to explain “Okay, the Bene Gesserit have control of their bodies to the cellular level. Okay, here’s the story behind the doctor. Okay, here’s the story behind the relationship between House Atreides and House Harkonnen. Okay, the basic idea was that Islam would do well in space…”
And we still had to deal with a couple “wait, what’s going on here?” questions.Report
I thought the movie was pretty clearly implying that the doctor’s wife had actually been turned into that HR Giger thing at the Harkonnen base, which I know doesn’t have a basis in the book, but makes sense as a cinematic device to help create an otherwise difficult to explain on film motivation. Of course I just googled it and apparently that is a theory but no consensus that was the intent.Report
I didn’t get that *AT ALL*.
I just now had to google to remember the HR Giger thing.
Man, that totally passed me by.Report
it’s kind of weird that the only real through-line character in the “Dune” story is Duncan Idaho, although casting Jason Momoa for the part was a stroke of genius considering that a major plot point in the later books is that there are Ninja Space Witches who use sex to mind-control you but Duncan Idaho is so good at sex that he mind-controls them instead.Report
Food for consideration.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/26/opinions/dune-part-two-colonialism-berlatsky/index.htmlReport
The picture of Berlatsky makes him look like a slightly older Timothee Chalamet. Kind of freaky.Report
I hated the first one so muchReport
Important question: Had you read the book before seeing the first one?Report
From an abstract perspective, the politics of the Israel-Hamas War is showing some really interesting differences between how real world politics is often a lot messier than the clear lines we create inside our heads. Many Pro-Palestinian activists in the West see Israel as Russia/the PRC to the Palestinians being naturally Ukrainians and Taiwan against the big bad material power. But as I posted last week, Hamas and the other Palestinian leaders are pretty close to Putin’s Russia and the CCP. According to a Taiwanese-American poster on LGM, the Pro-Independence DPP is more sympathetic towards Israel than they are to the Palestinians because of Hamas statements regarding China and Taiwan. If you point this out to a lot of people, they won’t believe you even when you present evidence.Report
Ukraine, Taiwan, and Israel are all democracies.
China, Russia, and Hamas are all fascist.
How rich they are is not a core issue to any of the conflicts.
Israel v Hamas is an ethnic conflict. The other two are empire things. The empire wants land for the good of the empire even though the local people (country) are opposed to joining.
For Russia is this massively nasty for all of Europe. Russia needs to control about two dozen countries (twice it’s own population) in order for it to feel safe. There are serious reasons for this, their thinking isn’t wrong.Report
Another Democratic Own-goal in New York:
Leaving aside the damage done to our democracy by creating ultra safe districts through gerrymandering, New York democrats are about to add fuel to the fire that they aren’t different then Republicans. A fire that doesn’t really need to be fueled. There’s also the pesky problem that the redistricting commission – whose map they want to chuck – was created by a popular amendment to the NY State Constitution. Meaning the Commission, and it’s maps, have extensive voter support and Constitutional top-cover.
Idiots.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/26/politics/new-york-congressional-map/index.htmlReport
I have no idea what the Palestinians want anymore and I suspect the Palestinians don’t have enough agreement among themselves for anything. Their advocates in the West keep talking about ending the Occupation but the Palestinians and their allies have at least three definitions:
A. The Occupation is the WB, Gaza, and East Jerusalem.
B. The Occupation is the entire thing and all the Jews are illegitimate settler-colonialists who must go home.
C. The Occupation is the entire thing but the Jews get to stay (the idealist one-state solution).
Even the most sympathetic to the Palestinians Jew is going to be a C at best and would never agree to B. A has the issue in that Israel did leave Gaza but people still argue that Gaza is under Occupation because Israel didn’t give up control of its border with Gaza and that makes Gaza “the world’s biggest prison.” The idea that Israel would give up control of its borders in order is just dumb but apparently it is the only way to truly end the Occupation.
The other problem with definition A is that Israel basically offered it to the Palestinians twice, under Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert and it was rejected twice. I can’t recall the Palestinians or their allies coming out and saying what the Occupation (TM) is with any specificity or what Israel should offer to the Palestinians. This is probably because definition B, the only just solution is No Israel and No Jews is the most popular one among the Palestinians and their allies but most of them are intelligent enough to realize that they can’t come out and say it without looking ridiculous because Israel obviously won’t agree to self-destruct.Report
“B” is consistent with their actions.
You can sometimes hear it in passing as an underlying assumption.
For example if they refer to “the occupation” as having lasted 75 years or how what is needed is a “robust right of return”.
I see no indication that they don’t agree on this. There is such a lack of disagreement that they don’t need to mention it. They just don’t spell it out to the West because it doesn’t play well.Report
most of them are intelligent enough to realize that they can’t come out and say it without looking ridiculous because Israel obviously won’t agree to self-destruct.
They do say it. All the time. They even have a UN agency (UNRWA) which says it and plans for it. They just spell out the happy part, not the unhappy part.
The happy part is the Palestinians undo the war of 75 years ago. They all get to go to the homes they lost back then.
The unhappy part is if we’re going to draw a line between where we are now and a right to return, then this requires “no Jews”.
The idea of becoming citizens in a Palestinian state is viewed as a massive horrific defeat. That would require giving up the right to return. The below link is a good summation of where their heads are at. They’re staring at losing UNRWA and the right of return and are horrified at the idea.
There are no serious dissenting opinions on the Arab side as far as I can tell. The West takes this view and converts it into “they’d be happy with two states”, but that’s a distortion on what they’re actually saying. It’s also a distortion on what the UN has been telling them.
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2024/3/3/if-unrwa-goes-so-do-our-dreams-of-returning-home-palestinians-fearReport
They talk about murdering Jews, their religion talks about murdering Jews, they organize political movements around murdering Jews, they celebrate the murder of Jews, they teach their kids to murder Jews, they murder Jews, and you can’t figure out what they want. I talk about marginal tax rates and get called a white nationalist.Report
One of our problems dealing with this is these ideas are NOT a lunatic fringe by their standards.
The Palestinian word for Israel’s creation is “Nakba”. They feel the same way about Nakba as Jews feel about the Holocaust. The number of Jews who support the Holocaust is zero. The number of Palestinians who support Nakba is also zero.
Ergo the number of Palestinians who support the Right to Return should be roughly 100%. Add to that the world constantly telling them that “the Right to Return” is a real thing supported by serious UN agencies and they’ve never needed to move on.
The world has never come to terms with the idea that a “right to return” is the same thing as “Jews lose their state.” We have a ton of magic thinking (or just ignorance) on how there should be a RtR without bothering to see what that means mechanically.
And we also have Israel putting on a black hat and doing the whole “Greater Israel” thing. That is a fringe, but Israel’s electoral system magnifies their voice. Further, the Palestinians insisting that peace isn’t an option creates a power vacuum that is filled by that fringe.Report
In the vein of yesterday’s complaints about Dune, Variety has an interview with Denis Villeneuve.
Lemme tell ya: Silent Night was a noble failure.
Maybe Villeneuve could have pulled it off?Report
Staffers for Ceasefire have released another statement.Report
This is certainly the outbreak of the Israel/Palestine conflict in my life where the Pro-Palestinian/Anti-Israel forces have been the loudest and most active. I can’t fault them for their strategy.
My basic position is that Israel is between a rock and hard place with the Palestinians in general and Hamas in particular. Israel certainly has much more fire power but negotiating with the Palestinian leadership is basically impossible for the reasons listed above. They have no idea what they want or their minimal demand is just to out there for the most sympathetic Israeli government possible or the realistic Palestinians have not enough power. We don’t even have a Palestinian Gerry Addams. This gives the No Israel/No Jews factions like Hamas a rather big edge to be horrible and go to Russia and China because they know that they have a lot of support in the West. I’m still skeptical about whether a unilateral withdrawal for the WB would even work. Pro-Palestinians in the West argue that a hard border between Israel and Gaza is still an occupation.Report
Part of the problem is that “work” means something like “return to an acceptable level of violence” and what may be acceptable to People In Power may not be acceptable to folks who aren’t particularly powerful.
The treatment of Palestinians as Second-Class Citizens will always grate and the status quo of October 6th, once re-established, will bring about another October 7th.
And the question is whether that sort of thing can go on forever or whether it can’t.
It going on forever isn’t the worst option, of course.
But I say that as someone somewhat adjacent to People In Power.Report
On the other hand, calls for a ceasefire rather than peace suggest a certain level of acknowledgement of what is politically possible at the moment by some Pro-Palestinian sympathizers in the West. I’ve seen calls for both “Free Palestine”, with the usual issues of definition on what that means, and just for a ceasefire.Report
A very clear and direct summation of the political stalemate.Report
Biden already has been twisting Israel’s arm. What we’ve seen has been the result of America going to bat for the Palestinians, i.e. “less” violence and “fewer” war crimes than Israel would have done otherwise.
The idea that America can force Israel to ignore Hamas is flawed.Report
Biden wins MI primary with nearly 80 percent of the vote: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/02/27/us/elections/results-michigan-democratic-presidential-primary.html
The whole thing about Biden being in danger in Michigan and he is too old is a freak out from the media who need their horseraceReport
Who was he running against?Report
Uncommitted, Williamson, and Phillips. Uncommitted has just under 14 percent. Biden up to 80.3 percentReport
All of those Uncommitted people are just throwing a protest vote. It’s merely Bernie all over again.
95% of them can be counted on to vote Biden in the General.Report
Also a bunch of uncommitted pushers might just be reactionaries: https://www.meforum.org/63372/exclusive-islamist-hamtramck-mayor-bigotryReport
That’s a conspiracy theory. Immigrants who want to live and work here make the country better. They bring delicious food and fun festivals.Report
Their children or grandchildren will be fine.Report
They always have been.Report
WE ARE THE [USA]. YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED. YOUR UNIQUENESS WILL BE ADDED TO OUR COLLECTIVE. RESISTANCE IS FUTILE.
—————–
We are the [USA]. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile.Report
Put all that biological and technological distinctiveness into a blender and BOOM out comes the special sauce on a big mac.Report
“Uncommitted, Williamson, and Phillips”
They had that one hit “Hold On (One More Day)” then disappeared.Report
OK that made me laugh.Report
I will even go further and state that all of the primaries so far show slipping support for Trump. In some ways, he is crushing Haley but in other ways, she has remarkable tenacity and it is unclear whether her voters return to Trump in NovemberReport
tired: Sanders should just drop out already, he’s just wasting everybody’s time, the voters clearly don’t want him, he’s not a serious candidate, doesn’t he understand the real world
wired: it really says something that Haley is still getting votes!Report
Sanders voters eventually went with the main Blue candidate.
Haley’s supporters are not supporting her, they’re opposing Trump.Report
The better Nate with three theories on why Trump is underperforming his primary polling: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/26/upshot/trump-polling-primaries.htmlReport
I’ve said a few times that there is still a big x factor of what happens when normie America is reintroduced to Donald Trump. Biden has real weaknesses and I don’t think that should be overlooked. But there’s also reason to predict he ends up coming off a lot like the kinds of strange candidates he has endorsed that lost otherwise winnable elections for the GOP (Dr. Oz, Herschel Walker, etc.).Report
There is also too much attention paid among pundits to the quality of candidates, instead of the larger structural forces driving political partisanship.
Partisanship has grown stronger over time, and has little to do with the quality or nature of the candidate at the top of the ticket.
The horserace nature of Beltway punditry causes them to focus on the theatrical and ephemeral and search for omens and portents in an attempt to sound wise and savvy.
But the elections of the past few cycles haven’t turned on this gaffe or that strategy but on turnout and negative partisan sentiment.
The Dobbs effect is a good example of this. The increased turnout and enthusiasm of the Democratic base isn’t due to some charismatic candidate or clever marketing, but just anger and fear among the base.Report
I don’t know that I’d go so far as to say quality doesn’t matter. Like I said, Trump has endorsed a bunch of very poor quality candidates on the basis of personal loyalty and that has not worked out well in close elections. For the presidency it’s worth considering that this whole thing is going to turn on the sort of weak partisan loyalty, wishy washy, inchoate views of less than 2 million voters (maybe even less than 1 million voters) across 4 or 5 swing states. That cohort is not happy about Dobbs, and I would bet that they are very likely uninterested in Trump’s personal, highly self absorbed conspiracy theories about 2020. So if Trump focuses on that in the general the way he does at his pep rallies I would think he underperforms even if all of the committed Republican voters fall in line, which they may or may not based on his legal troubles and personality.
This is where coming off like at least a somewhat normal person benefits Biden. But for him he would easily trade 15 points in California for 2 or 3 in Pennsylvania or 10 points in NY for maybe even 1 or 2 in Georgia if he could.Report
On the other blog, a poster in despair pointed out that many normie Americans don’t believe that Trump or Biden are going to be the nominees for whatever reason.Report
And those are the voters that more than anyone else will decide things.Report
I think there are signs they are already getting reintroduced and remembering oh yeah, we hate this guyReport
It’s time for more history with Saul Degraw!!:
Mitt Romney received 409K votes in the 2012 Republican Primary in Michigan out of nearly 1 million votes cast. Obama only received 174K votes in the 2012 Democratic Primary. In the general, Obama beat Romney by 400K votes with 2.5 million votes to 2.1 million.
The 2024 Democratic Primary is basically uncontested. Biden still had a turnout of 618K votes with around 101K going for “undecided.”
I think Democratic voters are pretty motivated despite the media’s best efforts to depress them.Report
The person leading the campaign against Biden in the Michigan primary turns out to be not a great person on a lot of issues:
https://www.meforum.org/63372/exclusive-islamist-hamtramck-mayor-bigotry?fbclid=IwAR3N-YKuPONz2IbWKis32km1gE8jd-VCFPiljCPf3cxCnN-ji5u2VScN8EM
One reason why the leadership of the Democratic Party is not changing policy that fast on Israel/Palestine is because many Muslim Americans are probably seen as somewhat to very unreliable coalition members because of social conservatism.Report
The question, “How do I register to vote in Nevada?” illustrates the challenge of length and accuracy. The AI model responses ranged from 1,110 characters (Claude) to 2,015 characters, (Mixtral), and all of the AI models provided lengthy responses detailing between four and six steps to register to vote. All the responses were inaccurate.
https://www.proofnews.org/seeking-election-information-dont-trust-ai/Report
Interesting wrinkle on the Trump bonding front. Trumps’ trying to wriggle out of posting it.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-cannot-line-up-full-bond-new-york-fraud-case-offers-post-100-mln-2024-02-28/Report
of course he is. The man declared bankruptcy several times to avoid civil judgements. Why would this be different?Report
This would be different in that, unless the courts climb down astonishingly on the rules, he’ll be looking at a lot of his properties in NY being liquidated even before he gets to the appeal. All those Trump properties are leveraged up the ying yang so a liquidator probably can’t muster the necessary cash by just selling one.Report
I was simply pointing to a pattern of behavior where he avoids judgement by running away from it. The system may have finally boxed him in, but until the fire sale starts I remain skeptical.Report
I agree skepticism is meritted because Trump has squirmed out of stuff before but I’m not clear on how he can wriggle free here unless some deep pocketed entities step up quickly. The NYAG sure as fish has no motivation to soft pedal the liquidation if Trumps’ team doesn’t come up with something fast.Report
He’s not allowed to borrow from NY banks and most banks are NY banks. Short of Russia (wouldn’t that be fun) I’m not sure who is left.Report
China?Report
Assorted Arab sovereign wealth funds?Report
Wouldn’t Russia run afoul of sanctions?
I agree he’s not allowed to borrow and, moreover, no normal financial institution would probably touch such a deal with a ten foot pole. Trump was a notorious bilker and welcher on his debts even before all of this mess.
But I agree with Damon and Michael that it’d have to be some foreign interest banking on his being President again. The Saudis’ strike me as likely candidates.Report
The only problem is if they do that and it goes public (or even if Joe just says it), then Trump has no chance of winning.
And they’d seriously be interfering in the US’s election which, even if we assume it’s legal which it probably isn’t, would piss off lots of important people.
And if that weren’t bad enough, Trump would pocket the money (ish… the court will pocket it but Trump won’t repay it). If you’re going to take out half a billion and set it on fire, there are easier ways.Report
All those Trump properties are leveraged up the ying yang so a liquidator probably can’t muster the necessary cash by just selling one.
I have been told by lawyerly types that order of precedence in New York is employees, then government (including judgements), then secured debt. They said that if the state seizes Trump Tower and sells it for enough to satisfy the judgement, both Trump and the secured debt holders take a bath. IANAL and can’t speak to the accuracy, just saying that I’ve been told that.Report
That is fascinating Michael and I believe you though my google fu has not yielded me an answer that I feel is concrete on the subject.Report
That opens the door to hoards of his creditors rushing to the door all at once (if this is possible). They know the gov might take [their building] so they’d better take it first.Report
He’s insolvent and/or illiquid.Report
Yes I suspect so but people always point to the intricacy and complexity of Trumps enterprises as an excuse to inflate his actual worth. It’ll be interesting to see if the unravelling of those structures to bond his obligations will puncture any of that (if it happens).Report
Looks like Trumps initial gambit to wriggle out of this was summarily rejected:
https://apnews.com/article/trump-james-appeal-bond-fraud-new-york-3093352e94274f9daba3d84f0c43467e
Though they did lift the ban on New York banks lending to Trump- but Trump’d still need to persuade them to actually front him the loan.Report
Hamas rejects ceasefire deal that favored them:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/27/world/middleeast/biden-israel-hamas-cease-fire.htmlReport
At least they are consistent.Report
And yet somehow Israel is supposed to come to an agreement with these bastards. I don’t know how many Palestinians believe the only just solution is No Israel/No Jews but it is the default position of their leadership.Report
It is Hamas default position – the PLA at least states not so much. Though the entire government having resigned the other day is not a wrinkle I expected.Report
I think that all evidence suggests that Palestinian leadership is nigh universally in definition B of what the Occupation is. Some of them are intelligent enough not to come out and say it though. Either then or they think that the No Israel/No Jews faction is brutal enough to kill anybody who openly disagrees even in a mild way. They won’t be wrong with that.
Meanwhile, ideas on how to change this amount to magical underpants gnome thinking:
1. Israel does whatever mystical magical thing it is supposed to do
2. XXXXXX
3. Hamas somehow loses power in Gaza and sensible Palestinian leadership emerges.
I’m growing into the unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank as the solution but the boneheaded fanaticism of Palestinian leadership disgusts me. I feel largely about the state of global Jewish-Muslim relations, where seemingly the entire burden is placed on Jews and none on Muslims.Report
That boneheaded fanaticism has cost them lots of land, not to mention blood and treasure.
If we order the various peace offers by time, we’d see each new offer gives them less.Report
This is it. Pro-Palestinians Westerners like to deny it and say that Israel never made a real offer, while never actually stating what a real offer is, and never answer at what point does the world say to the Palestinians “you have to agree to something.”Report
You don’t get unilateral withdrawal as long as you allow and protect illegal settlements inside the border.Report
Hamas views Palestinian suffering as a good thing (or at least not a really bad thing) because it creates more soldiers. And it’s leadership isn’t actually in Gaza. And it’s leadership loses their jobs if they surrender.
And it’s not even clear they can have a “cease fire” if Israel is still in Gaza. If the political wing gives that order to the military wing in Gaza it probably won’t be obeyed. Hamas has lots of different factions and they’re decentralized.Report
Find something you love to do and it never feels like work.Report
They are quite consistent: they are willing to compromise on some points, but they are not willing to release the hostages without a permanent ceasefire and the withdrawal of Israeli troops. That people keep pretending they’re rejecting deals that are “favorable” to them, when they don’t actually meet the basic requirements of a deal, is very silly.Report
It’s not like Hamas hasn’t been clear with what they want. They’ve offered that deal repeatedly, and Israel has rejected it, repeatedly. So, Hamas rejects the U.S./Israel’s deal, Israel rejects theirs, but in your mind, only one side is rejecting deals?
(This is rhetorical. I know quite well you have no real idea what’s going on.)Report
If memory serves, Hamas wants…
All hostages returned for all prisoners (including and especially the ones convicted of murder)
A total ceasefire… although how that works with them also promising to repeat 10/7 IDK.
A total Israel withdrawal.
And the hostage return will happen over the course of months while both sides negotiate an end to the war.
We might see that after Israel kills about 100k Palestinians. Invading that last city might do it.
If we’re interested in the body count being less than that we should be calling on Hamas to surrender.Report
Hamas can go fish itself and die. They are a horrible organization that committed an act of war like a state actor and then go about all innocent that they aren’t a state actor and demanding unconditional surrender and making absolute demands they have no right to make. They should surrender, yield, and turn itself over to justice. Anybody in the West who likes to pretend that Hamas is a freedom fighting civil rights organization is awful.Report
All of AMC’s revenue growth came from Taylor Swift and Beyoncé films, theater chain says.
I’m extrapolating out from this story and expecting there to be more of this kind of thing next year.
The good news, I guess, is that if they do bands that I’ve heard of, we’ll have plenty of opportunities to go to the john. “Mixed Emotions? I’ve got 4 minutes!”Report
I’ve heard people describe Steely Dan’s “Do It Again” as the “DJ needs a bathroom break” song.Report
Boardroom in Hollywood:
“Gentlemen, the revenue growth of AMC is due entirely to Taylor Swift and Beyoncé. We need to compete. Ideas?”
“We should have a Steely Dan event.”
“Johnson, that’s the greatest idea in the history of this boardroom.”Report
None is too many.
“Nobody can explain to me how allowing millions of people from places unknown, from countries unknown, who don’t speak languages,” he confusingly railed. “We have languages coming into our country. We have nobody that even speaks those languages. They’re truly foreign languages. Nobody speaks them, and they’re pouring into our country, and they’re bringing with them tremendous problems, including medical problems, as you know.”Report
“Alec Baldwin is seen firing gun on set of Rust, using weapon as ‘POINTING STICK’ and discharging weapon after director yelled ‘cut’ in scenes filmed before he shot cinematographer dead”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13145943/Alec-Baldwin-firing-gun-set-Rust-POINTING-STICK.html
Jesus, what a cluster f.
Frankly, I’m stunned at the over all incompetence of most of the crew and actors.Report
Callous indifference and complacency kill in most industries.Report
California governor pushes back against criticism of fast food minimum wage law
So apparently there is a fast food minimum wage increase law and…. I’ll copy and paste this from the story:
Everybody thought that this was a carve-out for Panera Bread, a company whose CEO is a big donor to the California Governor… but, apparently, Panera isn’t covered by this because the dough is made elsewhere. I’m guessing that Subway isn’t covered either, given that they don’t sell bread as a standalone item. You can buy day-old bread at Jimmy Johns but I don’t know that they make their own bread on-site.
They’re also working on more carveouts:
But these are *GOOD* carveouts, we’re told. The workers at these places are apparently negotiating even higher wages and a $20 minimum wage would, somehow, undercut them.
To be perfectly honest, the whole “corruption” argument makes more sense to me than the “we don’t want to undercut workers negotiating higher wages” argument.Report
If only there was some way to reduce the corrupting power of moneyed interests in politics.
But I have been told repeatedly that this is both impossible and unconstitutional so whaddayagonnado.Report
Truly, there is no ethical consumption under capitalism.Report
Newsom is an empty suit exhibit 1000.Report
In case you were wondering if Israel was committing war crimes, or violating human rights in their response to the October 7th attack, ponder this:
The Israelis have also apparently denied medical supplied including anesthesia, and feminine hygiene product kits because they include nail clippers.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/01/middleeast/gaza-aid-israel-restrictions-investigation-intl-cmd/index.htmlReport
Phil, the Simchat Torah massacre was committed against the most left-leaning and sympathetic to the Palestiniasn/anti-Likud populations in Israel. Do you think an eight our rape and murder spree against Israelis most sympathetic to the Palestinians is going to actually want to make the Israelis care about the Palestinians?
The entire reaction to the Israel-Hamas War shows the fundamental hypocrisy that the Human Righters and other members of the caring community have against Jews. They demand our support because of our history on one hand but deny us things like self-determination or minority rights that they would grant to other peoples. I don’t trust these people at all.Report
This faction does not currently hold power in Israel. Their deaths were not some meta swipe at leftists – they were the first Israeli’s encountered and thus the ones killed.
That aside, the right to self determination that you cling so fervently to does not include the right to slowly exterminate your enemies by starving them. Or denying them medical supplies. Or denying them warmth in winter because someone decides that green is an army color and green must therefore the stopped.
Israel has rights. They also have responsibilities. Calling them out for failure to fulfill those responsibilities is not an assault on Israel or Jews. Its what you do. And as you will note I do it to my own side quite regularly.Report
Israelis are pretty shocky at the moment. Because of 10/7 they think they’re one bad move away from the next holocaust. They’re treating this war as existential.
That means we should expect a lot of odd ball decisions that we, as armchair quarterbacks, disagree with as obviously wrong or even insane.
Whoever issued those restrictions may might have wanted to F over the Palestinians or they might have thought they were being reasonable-but-rightfully-paranoid. Or they might be mixing those two.
Now expand that to everything and everyone. The people inspecting the water trucks. The people preparing those trucks and approving those trucks. The soldiers who see a Hamas solder in every civilian. The Jewish protesters who are blocking the trucks because they heard a rumor that they’re being sent to support Hamas.
To be fair, this isn’t happening in a vacuum and Hamas could lower the level of insanity and brutality if it wanted to. They took hostages and they’re presumably torturing them. That’s not a small factor in all this.Report
And I’m sick and tired of people treating Hamas has it has no agency in this. If they basically believe that Hamas is a totally untrustworthy group that sucks and the hostages must be left to their fate but Israel needs to do the right thing out of compassion and pity for the Palestinians than they should at least be brave enough to say so. Nobody is brave enough to say so and we get these really weird and even outright vile song and dance routines that Israel shouldn’t treat Hamas as a state actor, while Hamas totally tries to act in part as a state actor, or that Hamas is making really reasonable demands despite starting a war they can’t win and basically demanding unconditional surrender. Hamas and the world can’t have it both ways. They can’t be treated as the governing power in Gaza and at the same time as somebody who isn’t a state actor. Freaking hypocrites.
I also strongly suspect that Hamas really doesn’t want to fess up to what has happened or is happening to the hostages.
And yeah, people are really underestimating how traumatizing the Simchat Torah massacre was to Israel. If the Kim Regime in North Korea were to cross the DMV and do a proportional equivalent of the Simchat Torah massacre to South Korea, many more people would understand a big massive response and would go “whelp North Korea, good luck.” With Israel, they just scream bloody murder no matter what.Report
Hamas is, first and foremost, harming their own people. Second, they are harming Israelis. Hamas doesn’t represent an existential threat to Israel or Israeli’s – there simply are not enough of them to do so.
And most Palestinians are not Hamas, just as most Israeli’s are not Likud. Which is why I talk about the actions of the Israeli government, not Israel.
Bluntly – of you want Hamas treated as a state actor, you have to acknowledge they don’t actually possess a state. Which noe want to do either.Report
I think if we lived in an alternative timeline where Israel did not exist but all the Jews were pressured and forced out of the MENA countries, the people screaming bloody murder about the Palestinians would adopt and “oh well, what could you do about it” attitude. This would be especially true if you see it as part of anti-colonialism because you can’t make an anti-colonial omelette without breaking some colonial eggs and these eggs would be Jewish communities hundreds or thousands of years old. Damn you.Report
It seems the whole “Israel shooting Gaza civilians seeking food” was originally Israel trying to provide security for an aid convoy to the area. Which various groups, including the US, have been asking them to do.
https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/how-an-israeli-attempt-to-coordinate-gaza-aid-went-horribly-wrong-b1857e6cReport