#the vast majority of Americans are against it's policies. and that includes the vast majority of republicans!

[heritageposts]

Harris has been a staunch supporter of Israel for years. In 2017 she addressed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) annual conference and reminded attendees that the first resolution she co-sponsored as a senator was aimed at combating “anti-Israel bias” at the United Nations. “Let me be clear about what I believe. I stand with Israel because of our shared values, which are so fundamental to the founding of both our nations,” she told the crowd. In 2018 she gave an off-the-record speech to the organization, but eventually released her comments. In that speech she claimed that she raised money for the Jewish National Fund as a Girl Scout. “Having grown up in the Bay area, I fondly remember those Jewish National Fund boxes that we would use to collect donations to plant trees for Israel,” she told the audience. “Years later, when I visited Israel for the first time, I saw the fruits of that effort and the Israeli ingenuity that has truly made a desert bloom.”

For those unfamiliar with the Jewish National Fund (JNF), they're a Zionist organization that has been instrumental in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

See Stop the JNF for more information on their history, the way they operate, and their decades-long campaign of greenwashing (i.e. destroying native plants, crops, and agriculture under the banner of 'making the desert bloom').

Continuing, the Mondoweiss article goes:

“The vast majority of people understand the importance of the State of Israel,” she added later. “Both in terms of its history and its present in terms of being a source of inspiration on so many issues, which I hope we will talk about, and also what it means in terms of the values of the United States and those values that are shared values with Israel, and the importance of fighting to make sure that we protect and respect a friend, one of the best friends we could possibly have.” While running for President in 2019, Harris was praised by the lobbying group Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI) for running to the right of Obama on the Iran deal. On the campaign trail Harris told Kat Wellman, a voter affiliated with DMFI, that she would reenter the agreement but “strengthen it” by “extending the sunset provisions, including ballistic missile testing, and also increasing oversight.” “I was very impressed with her. I thought she gave an excellent speech, she gave a very detailed, responsive answer to my question,” Wellman told a local paper after the exchange. “I’m pro-Israel, so I was I was very concerned and all about making sure we limit nuclear missiles in any country that could possibly destroy us all. I thought her answer was very good.” Harris has condemned the BDS movement and claimed that is “based on the mistaken assumption that Israel is solely to blame for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” However, she voted against an anti-BDS bill in 2019 citing First Amendment concerns.

For the full article, which includes Kamala's response to Israel post Al-Aqsa Flood, see Mondoweiss (July 22, 2024)

[reasonsforhope]

"Legislative momentum against PFAS has surged this year, as at least 11 states enacted laws to restrict the use of “forever chemicals” in everyday consumer products or professional firefighting foam.

The legislation includes bans on PFAS in apparel, cleaning products, cookware, and cosmetic and menstrual products. Meanwhile, lawmakers in some states also passed measures that require industries to pay for testing or cleanup; order companies to disclose the use of PFAS in their products; and mandate or encourage the development of PFAS alternatives, according to Safer States, an alliance of environmental health groups focused on toxic chemicals.

In total this year, at least 16 states adopted 22 PFAS-related measures, according to the group. Since 2007, 30 states have approved 155 PFAS policies, the vast majority of them in the past five years.

The thousands of chemicals categorized as perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, do not naturally break down and are found in the blood of 97% of Americans. Some PFAS compounds can harm the immune system, increase cancer risks and decrease fertility...

Earlier this year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released new standards limiting PFAS in drinking water. Water systems have five years to comply with the rules. Even before the EPA action, 11 states had set their own limits on PFAS in drinking water, starting with New Jersey in 2018.

Water utilities and chemical manufacturers are challenging the new EPA standards. But states also are heading to the courthouse: So far, 30 states have sued PFAS manufacturers or key users for contaminating water supplies and other natural resources, according to Safer States...

Sarah Doll, national director of Safer States, said one reason states have been so successful in enacting PFAS limits is that more companies are willing to stop using the chemicals.

“When California restricted PFAS in textiles, all of a sudden you saw companies like REI saying, ‘We can, we’re going to do that. We’re going to move to alternatives,’” Doll said.

In Vermont, state lawmakers in April unanimously approved a measure banning the manufacture and sale of PFAS in cosmetics, menstrual products, incontinence products, artificial turf, textiles and cookware.

“The same as everyone else, like Democrats, we want to make sure that we remove PFAS and get it out of products as soon as we can,” said Vermont Republican state Rep. Michael Marcotte, who said his district includes cosmetics manufacturer Rozelle Cosmetics, in Westfield.

Democratic state Sen. Virginia Lyons, the chief sponsor of the Vermont bill, said it is particularly important to get PFAS out of products that are essential to consumers.

“There are some consumer products where you can say, ‘I don��t need to buy that, because I don’t want PFAS,’” Lyons said. “But it’s really tough to say that [about] a menstrual product.”

California’s latest PFAS measure, which Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed last month, specifically bans the use of PFAS in menstrual products. Democratic Assemblymember Diane Papan, the author of the bill, said it was particularly strong because it covers both intentional and unintentional uses of PFAS, so “manufacturers will have to really be careful about what comes in their supply chain.”

While more states enact laws focused on specific products, Maine is preparing to implement the world’s first PFAS ban covering all consumer goods. The Maine law, which is scheduled to take effect in 2030, will include exceptions for “essential” products for which PFAS-free alternatives do not exist. Washington state has also taken a sweeping approach by giving regulators strict timelines to ban PFAS in many product categories.

[mariacallous]

When Trump announces an aggressive policy, he attaches to it a grotesque justification. The nonsensical fiction is supposed remain in our minds, as a button to be pushed, so that we accept violence. We will have trouble questioning lies later if we accept them when offered, because that would challenge our own sense of ourselves as not being idiots.

This is the magic of the big lie, as Hitler explained in Mein Kampf. Tell a lie so big, advised Hitler, that people will not believe that you would deceive them on such a scale. His biggest lie was that of an international Jewish conspiracy: something that could always be blamed, something that would always relieve you of responsibility. In 1939, he and his propagandists piled up the fictions about Poland. They pretended that Poland did not really exist as a state, but also that Poland was the aggressor and had started the war.

Big lies today? That Canada attacked the United States first by sending masses of fentanyl across the border. And also that Canada also does not really exist.

To be sure, fentanyl is a serious and deadly problem. It is in the third wave of America’s opioid crisis, after OxyContin and heroin. It kills people, including young people, in alarming numbers.

For a quarter century, the opioid crisis has been an essential element of the American experience. In certain parts of the country, including some I know well, one cannot carelessly bring up the subject of opioids with strangers, because of the likelihood of a recent family death.

Opioids, including fentanyl, are a preeminently American problem. We have the highest rate of opioid deaths in the world. We Americans are not only the consumers of fentanyl; we are also the the vast majority of the smugglers. Our “health care” system is in the middle of it the consuming and the smuggling. The opioid crisis began because of a moneymaking scheme by an American company, Purdue Pharma. Our commercial health care guides people towards opioids, but lacks long-term care and attention needed to prevent addiction. The addiction wave that began with Purdue’s OxyContin and continued with heroin has now reached fentanyl.

The demand for fentanyl is American, including inside the Trump White House itself. The people who live at the epicenters of the addiction crisis tend to vote Republican; without them, Trump would never have become president in the first place. Trump and Vance are attuned to the opioid issue, in the sense that they see the suffering as a political resource, as a wellspring of misery that can be directed against an enemy of choice.

Vance’s message? We must understand our own addictions as an attack from outside. It is important to understand the psychology of this. An addict will tend to blame others rather than himself. In our domestic politics, we have elevated this irresponsibility to a national verity: someone besides Americans must be to blame for America’s additions. This has now become our foreign policy. We are blaming someone else for our problems, and flailing for ever more nonsensical stories: like that Canada is to blame.

In his book, Vance tells of us his mother, a nurse, who used to be an alcoholic and was addicted to pharmaceuticals. He has chosen to make her central to his political messaging. Vance has misled the public about the essentials of his mother’s problem, blaming other countries — ‘'poison coming across our border” — for her travails. His mother’s problems had nothing to do with drugs coming from other countries.

Unlike other politicians, including some Republicans, Vance has not become an advocate of drug prevention or addiction recovery. He has instead become a champion of lying and blaming others — behaviors that he himself associates with addiction.

In his book, he instructs us that we all need to take personal responsibility and not expect the government to help us. We need to reject the “cultural movement” that urges us to blame others for our own failings. As vice-president, however, he leads that “cultural movement.” He blames other countries for what we do, and then joins in as we direct our government’s power against them.

As the extreme case of addiction reminds us, lies work because they shift responsibility. For Vance to blame other countries for his mother’s problems is a lie without foundation but with psychological appeal. For Americans to blame other countries generally for fentanyl is also an attractive displacement of responsibility.

To be sure, other countries are involved. China manufactures the basics. Two drug cartels in Mexico play a huge rule. The drug is indeed smuggled in large quantities (though usually by Americans and almost entirely for Americans) from Mexico to the United States. Although it is unreasonable to create a false distinction between guilty Mexicans and innocent Americans, it is very important to stop the supply — as the Biden administration was already doing, with some success.

The Trump administration claims that Canada deserves tariffs because of fentanyl smuggling. Vance claims that Canada is “taking advantage” of him personally by allowing drugs to cross the border. This quite extraordinary capacity for personal grievance introduces a dangerous political fantasy.

Blaming Canada is bad faith. When Trump groups Canada and Mexico together and claims that fentanyl is “pouring in” through both countries he is not telling the truth. The amount of fentanyl that passes from Canada to the United States is about 0.2% of the total -- not two percent, zero point two percent. The total amount smuggled in fiscal year 2024 would fit in one suitcase. Canada was not even mentioned in the official 2024 National Drug Threat Assesment of the Drug Enforcement Administration. As the Canadians are often too polite to point out, the real problem at the border is the illegal smuggling of American guns into Canada.

Canada has been a reliable friend and ally to the United States. Casting Canada as the villain in an American story is weird. Portraying Canada as America’s fentanyl enemy is a conspiracy theory, with no basis in empirical reality, but with firm traction in the need to blame someone else for what we ourselves have done. It is fiction on a very grand scale, on that requires an entire alternative reality to be constructed around it. Once we accept that “Canadian fentanyl” is a conspiracy theory, then America’s trade war with Canada takes on a very different resonance.

Trump and his cabinet are training the press to associate the one thing with the other: that the tariffs have to do with the fentanyl. But this is bunk. The idea that Canada sends us fentanyl and that we respond with tariffs involves such a dripping overflow of mendacity that it demands that we seek elsewhere for the truth, and urgently.

It is much more plausible to think, as former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said, that tariffs are a step in a policy designed to soften up Canada for annexation. This follows from what Trump himself has said, on a number of occasions in public, and also to Trudeau in private. Trump himself is ever more persistent and direct in his claim that Canada should become the fifty-first state. Once we see that the tariffs have nothing to do with fentanyl, we can ask: why, then, all the rhetoric?

The tariff policy and the fentanyl fantasy both come from another place: the desire to annex Canada.

The fentanyl propaganda is most likely designed to prepare Americans to see Canada as an enemy. The only way for the United States to achieve such a territorial aggrandizement would be threats intending to make Canadians surrender, or an actual invasion of Canada. In such a pursuit, associating Canada with our addiction crisis is useful propaganda.

Why not blame the Canadians for what we do to ourselves? And then punish them for it? And when they do not solve an essentially American problem, as of course they cannot, then let Canadians be targeted for further lies and hatred.

The “Blame Canada” song from South Park was always a satire of America, but at least a comforting one, as it showed American self-awareness. Its last two lines: “We must blame them and cause a fuss/Before somebody thinks of blaming us!” This is now happening, as reality, and it has to be faced.

Squarely faced. Democrats in the United States sometimes take comfort from the notion that a United States with Canada added would be more likely to elect Democratic than Republican presidents. This is daft.

We should not imagine a hypothetical America that somehow just peacefully involves Canadians in our elections. We have to consider the process by which the subjugation of Canada would take place. In a world where the United States uses violence or the threat of violence to annex Canada, the colonized Canadians are not going to have the right the vote. Their country would be treated as a hostile military zone, to be exploited for its resources. And in a world of imperialism within North America, Americans too will see their rights dismissed. When an empire arises, a republic falls.

And, by the way: it is not at all clear that the United States would win such a war. Americans tend to blot out our disastrous history of invading Canada. And again, it is important not to confuse politeness with weakness. I once visited a Canadian resort town where everything aboveground was perky commerce and skiing fun. And then underground was a place where you went to throw axes. Next to me was a dad with two girls, maybe twelve and eight, who were hitting the bull’s eye. (This was an all-ages axe-throwing facility.) The axe quivering in the wood is a suggestive reality.

War with Canada is what Trump seems to have in mind. Fentanyl is not the only the big lie. That Canada does not really exist is the other. The way that this fiction is formulated is strangely Putinist. Trump's rhetoric about Canada uncannily echoes that of Russian propagandists towards Ukraine. The claim that the country is not real; that its people really want to join us; that the border is an artificial line; that history must lead to annexation... This is all familiar from Putin, as is Trump’s curious ambiguity about a neighbor: they are our brothers, they are also our enemies; they are doing terrible things to us, they also don’t really exist.

The imperialist rhetoric has to be seen for what it is, which is preparation not just for trade war but for war itself. And, it goes without saying, a disastrous one, in every sense, for everyone. (Except Putin and Xi, perhaps: the American-Canadian conflict is one way that Trump is handing them the world on a platter.)

Just because someone treats you politely and speaks your language does not mean that they want to be invaded by you. This was an underlying Russian mistake about Ukrainians. Ukrainian public culture, before the Russian invasion, was bilingual and polite. In general people simply adjusted to whichever language was most comfortable for the other person. Visiting Russians therefore had the experience of Ukrainians speaking their language, and then could arrogantly assume that this was because Ukrainians were in fact Russians and wanted to be part of Russia. I fear that Americans, or at least some Americans in the White House, are making a similar mistake.

Canada also has a polite public culture, less bilingual in practice than Ukraine’s, but unlike Ukraine’s with an official second language. Canadians, whether their first language is French or English, will naturally speak English with monolingual Americans. This is simple courtesy, but it leads Americans away from considering Canada’s differences, one of which is that the official language of its largest province is French and that the entire country has two official languages. Canadian elected officials use both, at least at the beginning of their speeches. They have to debate each other in both. The Canadian foreign minister is from Quebec. When she is talking circles around us, we don’t necessarily pause to consider that she is doing so in her second language.

Canadians tend to be (or tended to be) patient with us. Canadians know Americans well, and tend (or have tended) to see us as our best selves. All of this is to their credit; none of this means that they want to become the fifty-first state (a phrase so dumb it hurts my fingertips to type it). Canada is a very interesting and a very different country, with a very different history. Canadians have quite different institutions, and live quite different (and longer) lives. Canadians have a profound sense of who they are; anyone who suggests the contrary simply has not taken the time to come to the country or to listen with any attention.

The notion that Canada is not real is an example of the complaisant lies that imperialists tell themselves before beginning doomed wars of aggression. The specific association of Canada with fentanyl is a big lie that allows Americans to shift responsibility away to a chosen enemy and enter a world of geopolitical fantasy. Anyone who plays with the idea that Canada is not a real place or repeats the fentanyl slander is warmongering and preparing the way for North American catastrophe.

Big lies are powerful; but they are also vulnerable, at least before war begins. Wars begin with words, and we have to take words seriously, at the time when they matter most, which is now. When we see the truth of where this is all meant to go, we can prevent it: by calling out the big liars and telling the small truths.

[centrally-unplanned]

A few eye-opening results from a recent CBS/YouGov poll show this: some 70 percent of Americans think Trump is keeping his campaign trail promises, and nearly half of Americans think he’s doing even more than they expected he would in the early days of his presidency. Among that subset of respondents, the vast majority like the fact that he’s exceeding their expectations. Looking specifically at the issues, Trump gets positive marks for his attention to immigration and the southern border and for cutting government spending and foreign aid budgets. Another poll, from Marquette University, shows something similar for two other areas: Trump’s executive orders and stance on transgender people, and his plan to expand oil and gas production in the US. Both enjoy double-digit levels of support.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

To be more specific on one of my recurring themes, voters just do not care about "checks and balances" or "rule of law" or anything like that. They do care somewhat! Many voters ofc care a lot. But on net, relative to other issues, they don't care enough. The will vote it away for issues they care more about.

I have begun calling it "the grand delusion" that they ever really did care. It will change back and forth in this or that era, but overall these systems are maintained by elite norms, not mass norms, and there is no out for that. But I have discussed that to death before.

The other side of the coin of this article is that this stuff is just very normal for a lot of people, but they don't take to the weird stuff:

Yet there are a handful of other eccentric and wacky Trump positions and priorities that don’t seem to enjoy the same level of approval — including one signature Trump position that carries pretty negative associations. It runs a bit counter to one of the theories for Trump’s success on the campaign trail: that his weirdness, his bluster, and his comedic celebrity were part of why voters liked him. That same Marquette poll that finds Trump’s immigration, transgender, and energy policies to be popular also finds some of Trump’s more random policy positions to be viewed quite negatively. “Taking back” the Panama Canal and pardoning January 6 rioters are both opposed by 65 percent of Americans, while renaming the Gulf of Mexico is opposed by a little more than 70 percent of Americans. “Trump’s more traditional executive orders are very positively received, as expected for a president in his honeymoon phase,” the election analyst Lakshya Jain, from Split-Ticket.org, said in a post reflecting on these dynamics. “One of the biggest strikes against ‘people love Trump’s weirdness’ is that renaming the Gulf of Mexico, taking back the Panama Canal, and pardoning J6 rioters all are incredibly unpopular actions, while GOP-orthodox policies on gender, immigration, and drilling are net positive.”

Which I do take for cautious evidence for the "normalism" understanding of politics - most voters don't see things like dismantling USAID and such as a big deal, that is normal because checks and balances aren't important to them, but they don't value all this weird New Right stuff. Which imo is pretty bad because most of this stuff is probably just blustering bullshit while dismantling USAID is actually awful; but such is the world.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

CNN:

In early February, John Schwarz, a self-described “mindfulness and meditation facilitator,” proposed a 24-hour nationwide “economic blackout” of major chains on the last day of the month. Schwarz urged people to forgo spending at Amazon, Walmart, and all other major retailers and fast-food companies for a day. He called on them to spend money only at small businesses and on essential needs. “The system has been designed to exploit us,” said Schwarz, who goes by “TheOneCalledJai” on social media, in a video to his roughly 250,000 followers on Instagram and TikTok. “On February 28, we are going to remind them who really holds the power. For one day, we turn it off.”

Schwarz, 57, has no background in social or political organizing. Until early this year, he almost exclusively posted videos of himself offering inspirational messages and motivational tips sitting in his home, backyard and shopping mall parking lots. He had low expectations for his boycott message gaining traction. “I thought maybe a handful of my followers would do it,” he told CNN in a phone interview this week. Instead, Schwarz’s call rapidly spread online. His video has been shared more than 700,000 times on Instagram and viewed 8.5 million times. Celebrities such as Stephen King, Bette Midler and Mark Ruffalo have encouraged people to participate. Reporters wrote and aired TV pieces about the boycott, propelling it further. The “economic blackout” effort is relatively uncoordinated and nebulous. Experts on consumer boycotts and corporate strategy are dubious that it will make a dent in the bottom lines of the massive companies it targets, let alone the vast US economy. Effective boycotts are typically well organized, make clear and specific demands and are focused on one company or issue. But this boycott has gained strength online because it has captured visceral public anger with the American economy, corporations and politics. “There’s the sense that a lot of people want to do something. Doing something in the American context has often meant using pocketbook politics,” said Lawrence Glickman, a historian at Cornell University and author of “Buying Power: A History of Consumer Activism in America.” “This a way of engaging in a form of collective action outside of the electoral arena that makes people feel some connection and sense of potential power.”

People online say they want to join the boycott for many different reasons. Some are commenting about high prices and the cost of living. Others are angry about the power of large corporations and billionaires such as Elon Musk. Some are pushing back against the Trump administration’s efforts to gut federal programs and fears about an autocracy in America. Yet others want to boycott companies rolling back their diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies. Schwarz scrambled as a result of the response to create a group. He called it The People’s Union and describes it on its new website (that is frequently down) as a “movement created by the people, for the people to “(take) action against corporate control, political corruption, and the economic system.” He has raised around $70,000 in donations on a GoFundMe page that solicits funds for social campaigns, legal advocacy and other efforts. He has also called for more targeted boycotts in the coming weeks against specific companies, including Amazon and Walmart. (Walmart declined to comment to CNN. Amazon did not respond to comment.) Although the response online appears to be strongest from the political left, Schwarz has no ideology that could be considered consistently progressive or conservative, at least along the traditional US political spectrum. He does not belong to either political party, but he supports Bernie Sanders. In recent posts, has advocated for the end of federal income tax, term limits in Congress, universal health care and price caps.

John Schwarz proposed a 24-hour nationwide “economic blackout” of major chains on the last day of the month of February, and he initially thought it would get minimal traction. Alas, it has spread to a mass of people, especially those fed up with businesses rolling over for the anti-American autocrat occupying 1600 by ending DEIA programs, the Trump/Musk co-Presidency’s attacks on federal workers, and frustrations about the high cost of living.

[misfitwashere]

TIMOTHY SNYDER

MAR 16

When Trump announces an aggressive policy, he attaches to it a grotesque justification. The nonsensical fiction is supposed remain in our minds, as a button to be pushed, so that we accept violence. We will have trouble questioning lies later if we accept them when offered, because that would challenge our own sense of ourselves as not being idiots. 

This is the magic of the big lie, as Hitler explained in Mein Kampf.  Tell a lie so big, advised Hitler, that people will not believe that you would deceive them on such a scale. His biggest lie was that of an international Jewish conspiracy: something that could always be blamed, something that would always relieve you of responsibility. In 1939, he and his propagandists piled up the fictions about Poland. They pretended that Poland did not really exist as a state, but also that Poland was the aggressor and had started the war. 

Big lies today? That Canada attacked the United States first by sending masses of fentanyl across the border. And also that Canada also does not really exist.

To be sure, fentanyl is a serious and deadly problem. It is in the third wave of America’s opioid crisis, after OxyContin and heroin. It kills people, including young people, in alarming numbers. 

For a quarter century, the opioid crisis has been an essential element of the American experience. In certain parts of the country, including some I know well, one cannot carelessly bring up the subject of opioids with strangers, because of the likelihood of a recent family death. 

Opioids, including fentanyl, are a preeminently American problem. We have the highest rate of opioid deaths in the world.  We Americans are not only the consumers of fentanyl; we are also the the vast majority of the smugglers. Our “health care” system is in the middle of it the consuming and the smuggling. The opioid crisis began because of a moneymaking scheme by an American company, Purdue Pharma. Our commercial health care guides people towards opioids, but lacks long-term care and attention needed to prevent addiction. The addiction wave that began with Purdue’s OxyContin and continued with heroin has now reached fentanyl. 

The demand for fentanyl is American, including inside the Trump White House itself. The people who live at the epicenters of the addiction crisis tend to vote Republican; without them, Trump would never have become president in the first place. Trump and Vance are attuned to the opioid issue, in the sense that they see the suffering as a political resource, as a wellspring of misery that can be directed against an enemy of choice. 

Vance’s message? We must understand our own addictions as an attack from outside. It is important to understand the psychology of this. An addict will tend to blame others rather than himself. In our domestic politics, we have elevated this irresponsibility to a national verity: someone besides Americans must be to blame for America’s additions. This has now become our foreign policy. We are blaming someone else for our problems, and flailing for ever more nonsensical stories: like that Canada is to blame. 

In his book, Vance tells of us his mother, a nurse, who used to be an alcoholic and was addicted to pharmaceuticals. He has chosen to make her central to his political messaging. Vance has misled the public about the essentials of his mother’s problem, blaming other countries — ‘'poison coming across our border” — for her travails. His mother’s problems had nothing to do with drugs coming from other countries. 

Unlike other politicians, including some Republicans, Vance has not becomean advocate of drug prevention or addiction recovery. He has instead become a champion of lying and blaming others — behaviors that he himself associates with addiction. 

In his book, he instructs us that we all need to take personal responsibility and not expect the government to help us. We need to reject the “cultural movement” that urges us to blame others for our own failings. As vice-president, however, he leads that “cultural movement.” He blames other countries for what we do, and then joins in as we direct our government’s power against them.

As the extreme case of addiction reminds us, lies work because they shift responsibility. For Vance to blame other countries for his mother’s problems is a lie without foundation but with psychological appeal. For Americans to blame other countries generally for fentanyl is also an attractive displacement of responsibility. 

To be sure, other countries are involved. China manufactures the basics. Two drug cartels in Mexico play a huge rule. The drug is indeed smuggled in large quantities (though usually by Americans and almost entirely for Americans) from Mexico to the United States. Although it is unreasonable to create a false distinction between guilty Mexicans and innocent Americans, it is very important to stop the supply — as the Biden administration was already doing, with some success. 

The Trump administration claims that Canada deserves tariffs because of fentanyl smuggling. Vance claims that Canada is “taking advantage” of him personally by allowing drugs to cross the border. This quite extraordinary capacity for personal grievance introduces a dangerous political fantasy. 

Blaming Canada is bad faith. When Trump groups Canada and Mexico together and claims that fentanyl is “pouring in” through both countries he is not telling the truth. The amount of fentanyl that passes from Canada to the United States is about 0.2% of the total -- not two percent, zero point two percent. The total amount smuggled in fiscal year 2024 would fit in one suitcase. Canada was not even mentioned in the official 2024 National Drug Threat Assesment of the Drug Enforcement Administration. As the Canadians are often too polite to point out, the real problem at the border is the illegal smuggling of American guns into Canada.

Canada has been a reliable friend and ally to the United States. Casting Canada as the villain in an American story is weird. Portraying Canada as America’s fentanyl enemy is a conspiracy theory, with no basis in empirical reality, but with firm traction in the need to blame someone else for what we ourselves have done. It is fiction on a very grand scale, on that requires an entire alternative reality to be constructed around it. Once we accept that “Canadian fentanyl” is a conspiracy theory, then America’s trade war with Canada takes on a very different resonance. 

Trump and his cabinet are training the press to associate the one thing with the other: that the tariffs have to do with the fentanyl. But this is bunk. The idea that Canada sends us fentanyl and that we respond with tariffs involves such a dripping overflow of mendacity that it demands that we seek elsewhere for the truth, and urgently. 

It is much more plausible to think, as former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said, that tariffs are a step in a policy designed to soften up Canada for annexation. This follows from what Trump himself has said, on a number of occasions in public, and also to Trudeau in private. Trump himself is ever more persistent and direct in his claim that Canada should become the fifty-first state. Once we see that the tariffs have nothing to do with fentanyl, we can ask: why, then, all the rhetoric?

The tariff policy and the fentanyl fantasy both come from another place: the desire to annex Canada.

The fentanyl propaganda is most likely designed to prepare Americans to see Canada as an enemy. The only way for the United States to achieve such a territorial aggrandizement would be threats intending to make Canadians surrender, or an actual invasion of Canada. In such a pursuit, associating Canada with our addiction crisis is useful propaganda. 

Why not blame the Canadians for what we do to ourselves? And then punish them for it? And when they do not solve an essentially American problem, as of course they cannot, then let Canadians be targeted for further lies and hatred. 

The “Blame Canada” song from South Park was always a satire of America, but at least a comforting one, as it showed American self-awareness. Its last two lines: “We must blame them and cause a fuss/Before somebody thinks of blaming us!” This is now happening, as reality, and it has to be faced.

Squarely faced. Democrats in the United States sometimes take comfort from the notion that a United States with Canada added would be more likely to elect Democratic than Republican presidents. This is daft. 

We should not imagine a hypothetical America that somehow just peacefully involves Canadians in our elections. We have to consider the process by which the subjugation of Canada would take place. In a world where the United States uses violence or the threat of violence to annex Canada, the colonized Canadians are not going to have the right the vote. Their country would be treated as a hostile military zone, to be exploited for its resources. And in a world of imperialism within North America, Americans too will see their rights dismissed. When an empire arises, a republic falls. 

And, by the way: it is not at all clear that the United States would win such a war. Americans tend to blot out our disastrous history of invading Canada. And again, it is important not to confuse politeness with weakness. I once visited a Canadian resort town where everything aboveground was perky commerce and skiing fun. And then underground was a place where you went to throw axes. Next to me was a dad with two girls, maybe twelve and eight, who were hitting the bull’s eye. (This was an all-ages axe-throwing facility.) The axe quivering in the wood is a suggestive reality.

War with Canada is what Trump seems to have in mind. Fentanyl is not the only the big lie. That Canada does not really exist is the other. The way that this fiction is formulated is strangely Putinist. Trump's rhetoric about Canada uncannily  echoes that of Russian propagandists towards Ukraine. The claim that the country is not real; that its people really want to join us; that the border is an artificial line; that history must lead to annexation... This is all familiar from Putin, as is Trump’s curious ambiguity about a neighbor: they are our brothers, they are also our enemies; they are doing terrible things to us, they also don’t really exist. 

The imperialist rhetoric has to be seen for what it is, which is preparation not just for trade war but for war itself. And, it goes without saying, a disastrous one, in every sense, for everyone. (Except Putin and Xi, perhaps: the American-Canadian conflict is one way that Trump is handing them the world on a platter.)

Just because someone treats you politely and speaks your language does not mean that they want to be invaded by you. This was an underlying Russian mistake about Ukrainians. Ukrainian public culture, before the Russian invasion, was bilingual and polite. In general people simply adjusted to whichever language was most comfortable for the other person. Visiting Russians therefore had the experience of Ukrainians speaking their language, and then could arrogantly assume that this was because Ukrainians were in fact Russians and wanted to be part of Russia. I fear that Americans, or at least some Americans in the White House, are making a similar mistake.

Canada also has a polite public culture, less bilingual in practice than Ukraine’s, but unlike Ukraine’s with an official second language. Canadians, whether their first language is French or English, will naturally speak English with monolingual Americans. This is simple courtesy, but it leads Americans away from considering Canada’s differences, one of which is that the official language of its largest province is French and that the entire country has two official languages. Canadian elected officials use both, at least at the beginning of their speeches. They have to debate each other in both. The Canadian foreign minister is from Quebec. When she is talking circles around us, we don’t necessarily pause to consider that she is doing so in her second language. 

Canadians tend to be (or tended to be) patient with us. Canadians know Americans well, and tend (or have tended) to see us as our best selves. All of this is to their credit; none of this means that they want to become the fifty-first state (a phrase so dumb it hurts my fingertips to type it). Canada is a very interesting and a very different country, with a very different history. Canadians have quite different institutions, and live quite different (and longer) lives. Canadians have a profound sense of who they are; anyone who suggests the contrary simply has not taken the time to come to the country or to listen with any attention.

The notion that Canada is not real is an example of the complaisant lies that imperialists tell themselves before beginning doomed wars of aggression. The specific association of Canada with fentanyl is a big lie that allows Americans to shift responsibility away to a chosen enemy and enter a world of geopolitical fantasy. Anyone who plays with the idea that Canada is not a real place or repeats the fentanyl slander is warmongering and preparing the way for North American catastrophe. 

Big lies are powerful; but they are also vulnerable, at least before war begins. Wars begin with words, and we have to take words seriously, at the time when they matter most, which is now. When we see the truth of where this is all meant to go, we can prevent it: by calling out the big liars and telling the small truths.

[eretzyisrael]

by Charles Jacobs and Uzay Bulut

Tragically, the American administration—and nearly all the cultural institutions in the West –– are silent about these horrors while it could act powerfully on behalf of the women captives. According to Coptic Solidarity:

“The U.S. Embassy in Cairo and the State Department should be raising these cases of abductees, urging the immediate return of abducted Coptic women, that the perpetrators are brought to justice … ”

“These cases should be included in the annual Trafficking in Persons Report (TIP), published by the State Department. The U.S. and other governments should raise this issue during Egypt’s Universal Periodic Review as well to apply pressure on the Egyptian government to stop ignoring crimes against the indigenous Coptic women of Egypt.”

The problem is that America and its human-rights groups are generally silent when it comes to the treatment of non-Muslims in Muslim-majority countries. This is so even when the minorities are the very people—blacks, women, religious minorities and LGBT+—that we go to great lengths to protect in our own society. And it remains U.S. policy even in cases that would normally tug at the heart.

In Egypt, for example, minority Coptic Christians have for centuries experienced severe persecution. Their historic churches are often degraded or destroyed. Permission to build new churches is obstructed. Many Copts have been killed for faith-related reasons or arrested on “blasphemy” charges. Egyptians are forbidden to change their religious faith from Islam to Christianity. The current constitution of Egypt specifies Islam as the state religion and the principles of Sharia as the main source of legislation. Yet nowhere in American educational institutions will students learn of such matters, and they remain invisible in American foreign policy and are of little interest to our human-rights behemoths: Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch.

Yet they are the sort of underdogs that Americans typically warm to: Copts are the indigenous people of Egypt. According to the Coptic Solidarity,

“Copts are Egypt’s ethno-religious population that identifies as the descendants of ancient Egyptians, demonstrated by their DNA, their undeniable link to the land of Egypt, unique language, calendar and traditions that root back to the ancient Egyptian civilization. There’s been a historical continuity of discrimination against Copts since the first Arab invasion of Egypt in 693 C.E. and how their situation has evolved until current times.”

Islamic conquests of vast areas of the Middle East and Africa, and Islam’s treatment of those conquered are mostly unknown to Americans because they are forbidden topics to American educators and government spokesmen. Yet the basic historical facts about these conquered peoples have shaped the modern world. Egypt was once a Christian country with a sizable Jewish community. It was part of the Roman and Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empires from 30 C.E. to 642 BCE.

[notwiselybuttoowell]

President Joe Biden is expected to permanently ban future offshore oil and gas development in parts of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans in a way that could be especially difficult for the incoming Trump administration to undo.

Biden’s planned executive order will invoke the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, a law that gives presidents broad authority to withdraw federal waters from future oil and gas leasing and development, according to an administration source familiar with the plans.

The law does not give presidents explicit authority to revoke the action and place federal waters back into development, meaning President-elect Donald Trump would have to get Congress to change it before he could reverse Biden’s move.

As Biden’s presidency draws to a close, environmental and climate groups have advocated for him to withdraw areas off the Eastern Gulf of Mexico, as well as other parts of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans – giving the areas permanent protections from future drilling. The move would guard against future oil spills and adding more planet-warming pollution from fossil fuels to the atmosphere.

“We hope it will be part of a very vast area,” Oceana campaign director Joseph Gordon told CNN, adding Biden’s actions “would extend and make permanent those protections.”

Despite a friendly posture towards the oil and gas industry, Trump also moved to ban offshore drilling while president. After proposing a major expansion in offshore drilling early in his first term, Trump in 2020 extended a ban on future oil drilling in the Eastern Gulf and expanded it to include the Atlantic coasts of three states: Florida, Georgia and South Carolina.

“Every president this century has recognized that some areas of the ocean are just too risky or too sensitive to drill,” Earthjustice vice president of litigation for lands, wildlife and oceans Drew Caputo said in a statement.

The White House declined to comment. Biden’s move was first reported by Bloomberg.

Energy analysts told CNN the move won’t make much of a difference in US oil production, which has set new records under Biden.

It’s “not particularly consequential for US exploration and production going forward,” said Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis at the Oil Price Information Service. Kloza noted there’s plenty of existing offshore rigs pumping oil in the Gulf of Mexico and added that offshore projects typically take 6-8 years to come online.

“I don’t see it as having any real impact on US supply, exports, imports,” Kloza said.

Still, the American Petroleum Institute blasted Biden’s decision, calling it a “misguided approach.”

“We look forward to working with the incoming administration to bring the benefits offshore oil and natural gas production provides to the United States through jobs, investment and domestic energy security,” API senior vice president of policy, economics and regulatory affairs Dustin Meyer said in a statement.

In a separate coming announcement, the Biden administration is also expected to declare two new national monuments in California in the coming week, a source familiar with the planning told CNN.

Biden will establish the Chuckwalla National Monument in Southern California near Joshua Tree National Park and the Sáttítla National Monument in Northern California, the source said. Native tribes have been actively pushing the administration to protect the land from energy development.

This ban has now gone ahead

[vomitdodger]

Why is Juneteenth celebrated as the “end of slavery”? Of all the dates to choose, why Juneteenth? Consider the following dates and choices:

Emancipation proclamation:

End of Civil War dates, and the much debated “it was about slavery”:

13th amendment dates:

That’s a lot of dates to choose from. Again…why Juneteenth?

Note that June 19, 1865 falls basically right in the middle of all the above significant dates. So why Juneteenth?

You know why. Same as always. Complete pandering. The worst of which is of course BLM:

Odd that BLM didn’t mention the people who actually did the fighting. People of ALL colors but let’s be honest…the vast VAST majority of the lives lost in the civil war were white.

Washington DC has a proclamation day. Why didn’t it become a national/federal holiday:

The answer as already stated is complete racial pandering. Who made it official? Of course it was Joe “you ain’t black” Bribing Biden in 2021 as a way to wrestle even more political racial control in the wake of the BLM riots:

Do you really think Joe Bribing Biden who has lied about civil rights matches and openly used the dreaded N word throughout his career actually cares about Juneteenth or blacks…or even America? A sampling of his openly racist remarks:

And don’t forget Bribing Biden openly and with great glee eulogized the death of KKK Senator Byrd.

I’m not necessarily against a date in which we collectively celebrate the end of slavery in the US…Chinese, Irish Blacks etc., a day in which we celebrate overcoming the dark nature of humanity. A dark nature that is not unique to America…or whites…or Americans or Europeans, etc.

We as a country, despite all our imperfections, have done more, and faster, than any other country to end slavery.

The problem is such a day would be corrupted by the Marxists into “minimizing the black experience” and resultant BLM outrage. Examples of historical inaccuracies not talked about in all that:

And in the setting of todays open borders…and all the evil repercussions and domino effects of the Joe Bribing Biden policies that intentional adversely affect all Americans including blacks of course, human trafficking, a form of modern day slavery, is at an all time high in the US. Odd the guy who signed off on the Juneteenth Holiday is responsible for such modern day slavery.

Great article:

[posttexasstressdisorder]

The arc of justice finally bends against Big Oil

Sabrina Haake

April 14, 2024 6:15AM ET

An oil refinery blow off stack is seen, Sept. 16, 2008, in Texas City, Texas. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

This article was paid for by Raw Story subscribers. Not a subscriber? Try us and go ad-free for $1. Prefer to give a one-time tip? Click here.

In an historic ruling that could change the trajectory of a rapidly heating planet, a court of law with binding jurisdiction over most of Europe has ruled that governments can be held liable for inadequate responses to climate change.

The European Court of Human Rights determined that rising temperatures in Switzerland caused direct and tangible health consequences among Swiss citizens, and that governments failing to take adequate steps to mitigate and reduce greenhouse gas emissions could owe damages to people hurt by their inaction.

So what, in practical terms, does this mean for a planet that is literally burning in an increasing number of locations?

Europe could take climate cases in a new direction

The ECHR ruling is unprecedented in several respects, beginning with its reliance on principles of human rights.

The Court ruled that governments failing to do enough to address climate change were violating the European Convention on Human Rights, which holds as its first tenet that, “Everyone’s right to life shall be protected by law.” By failing to meet its own climate goals, the court held, the Swiss government impaired citizens’ fundamental rights to life.

The plaintiffs themselves were also unique. In climate cases pending around the world, including in the United States, the vast majority of plaintiffs are young people worried about how they will survive on a sweltering planet with rapidly disappearing habitats and resources.

ALSO READ: 15 worthless things Trump will give you for your money

The ECHR case, in contrast, was brought by elderly plaintiffs, most of whom were women in their 70s who proved that their age and gender make them particularly vulnerable to health risks linked to climate change. Heatwaves, in particular, can be deadly for the elderly as excessive heat triggers a strained cardiovascular response. Cognizant of their own time limitations, these women sued to benefit the next generation. One plaintiff told the BBC, “We know statistically that in 10 years we will be gone. So whatever we do now, we are not doing for ourselves, but for the sake of our children and our children's children.”

Because there is no avenue for appeal, the ECHR ruling will directly influence energy policy throughout the industrialized economies of Europe. Although it falls to Switzerland to comply with the ruling, its precedent is legally binding on all 46 member states, including Germany, the U.K., France and Italy — all fuel-burning heavy hitters.

Climate challenges in the U.S.

The European Court ruled that Switzerland’s efforts to reduce carbon emissions had been “woefully inadequate.” Although the ruling isn’t binding on U.S. courts, the domestic fossil fuel industry will be directly affected by it, since the U.S. has recently become the biggest supplier of crude oil to the European Union.

ALSO READ: Revealed: What government officials privately shared about Trump not disclosing finances

Climate litigants in the U.S. follow a different strategy. State and local governments are now suing fossil fuel companies and the American Petroleum Institute for damages caused by climate change — astronomical damages that inevitably fall to states, cities and towns that can’t afford to pay for them.

These climate cases name private fossil fuel companies as defendants, seeking to hold responsible various for-profit companies, including BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil and Shell, for increasing carbon dioxide and methane emissions caused by their products.

Big Oil’s campaign of deception

Legal claims and allegations pending in the U.S. focus largely on Big Oil’s deceptive practices. Like the tobacco disinformation cases from the 1990s, these cases allege fraud, nuisance, conspiracy and negligence arising from the industry’s long-standing public disinformation campaigns.

Congress has conducted numerous investigations into Big Oil’s pattern of deception. Despite conclusive evidence that oil executives have long known the causal connection between fossil fuels and climate change, industry executives have consistently lied about it to protect their profits.

Nearly 10 years ago, Democratic members of Congress addressed a report by the Union of Concerned Scientists concluding that “there was a coordinated campaign of deception” on climate science by ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, BP, Shell, Peabody Energy and other members of the fossil fuel industry.

Tanker drivers working for Shell in Grangemouth, Scotland. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

Big Oil’s targeted acts of deception over a decades-long campaign included “forged letters to Congress,” secret funding of allegedly independent but industry-controlled scientists, creating “fake grassroots organizations” to influence policy, and multiple, ongoing, and in-depth “efforts to deliberately manufacture uncertainty about climate science.”

Evidence of the industry’s deceptive practices could be pivotal in cases brought by state and local governments paying a staggering tab for intensifying storms, flooding, crop-destroying droughts, extreme heat events and, for states and towns on major bodies of water, coastal erosion.

In the meantime, the fossil fuel industry continues to profit outrageously from extracting, distributing and marketing dangerous products known to increase Earth’s already feverish temperature: March was the 10th month in a row to set a new monthly global heat record, both on land and in the oceans, as global reliance on coal — the dirtiest fossil fuel of all — continues to climb.

Landmark climate cases in Montana, Hawaii

The ECHR decision was the first to rule that governments are obligated under human rights laws to address climate change, but it won’t be the last. Cases pending in Montana and Hawaii also allege damages from unmet climate obligations by their respective state governments.

Last August, 16 young plaintiffs scored an unprecedented victory in Montana. They argued that the state violated a state constitutional provision that guarantees Montana citizens a healthy environment, and Judge Kathy Seeley agreed. She ruled that permitting coal, oil and gas production worsened the climate crisis, in violation of the “healthy environment” guarantees found in the Montana constitution.

In result, state regulators issuing permits for fossil fuel developments must now consider the effects of greenhouse gas emissions as part of their overall analysis of whether to grant or deny the permit. After the state appealed the maverick ruling, Montana’s Supreme Court, in a 5-2 decision, denied the governor’s request to block the ruling pending appeal.

In Hawaii, another pending climate case involves 14 youths. Plaintiffs in Hawaii allege that the state’s transportation department, by funding highway projects that increase fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, violated a constitutional duty to protect the environment.

A protestor holds a 'Polluters Pay Up' sign outside the Phillips 66 Los Angeles Refinery Wilmington Plant on Nov. 28, 2022, in Wilmington, Calif. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

After the state challenged plaintiffs’ standing, claiming they could not show particularized harm because climate damages are already “baked in,” the judge ruled that climate damages to plaintiffs “are not hypothetical,” and allowed the case to proceed.

When the state asked Hawaii’s legislators for more than $2 million to hire outside counsel to fight the case, one state legislator told Hawaii Public Radio that instead of “spending the millions of dollars we’re spending on some hotshot law firm,” Hawaii should apply that money toward emissions reductions instead.

The case was scheduled for trial this summer, but in February, the fossil fuel defendants petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court, claiming that federal law precludes damages claims against them.

Take heart, then take action

Climate activists should be uplifted and encouraged by the ECHR decision, particularly as its effects begin to ripple through the fossil fuel industry, industrialized economies and reluctant courts.

It won’t change the prognosis or the immediate future — today’s youth throughout the world will still live through the worst effects of climate destruction, even though they had nothing to do with the policies that caused it.

It’s the same lament heard from emerging economies in Asia and Africa. Struggling countries and coastal populations who had nothing to do with industrialization over the past 150 years are now paying the steepest price through their own rapidly disappearing habitats.

Thousands of school students join protesters in a Climate strike rally on September 20, 2019, in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Mark Evans/Getty Images)

But one major, outcome-determinative difference between these two rightfully aggrieved populations remains: the right to vote.

As enraging as it is for young Americans to hear oil-financed politicians deny climate change (“Drill baby, drill!”), we could fund the transition to clean energy — including an upgraded, nationwide grid of sufficient capacity — if every young adult simply voted.

Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25 year litigator specializing in 1st and 14th Amendment defense. Follow her on Substack.

[tapiancailini]

Robert Reich on recent plane crash tragedy

Friends,

Trump blamed last night’s tragic crash on former Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama for seeking to include Blacks and Latinos in the federal workforce.

“They actually came out with a directive — ‘too white’,” Trump charged today in remarks about last night’s air crash that killed 67 people. But “we want the people that are competent.”

Asked why he believed DEI (policies promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion) had anything to do with the crash, Trump said: “Because I have common sense. OK. And, unfortunately, a lot of people don’t.”

Trump’s new secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, was on hand to add his own bigoted view. “The era of DEI is gone at the Defense Department,” he said, “and we need the best and brightest — whether it’s in our air traffic control or whether it’s in our generals or whether it’s throughout government.”

Not to be outdone in the bigot department, Vice President JD Vance piped up: “When you don’t have the best standards in who you’re hiring, it means on the one hand you’re not getting the best people in government. But on the other hand, it puts stress on the people who are already there.”

What is America to make of this? That the underlying cause of last night’s tragedy was that not enough white people were in charge? That “competent” people — the “best and the brightest” — “the best people” — are not Black or Latino?

Is it now open season on such racist bullshit?

No. We will not allow neo-fascists to scapegoat people of color.

We know what they’re doing, and why.

They want to divide us. They want white people to blame Black and Latino people for every tragedy, every problem, every harm. And they want Black and Latino people to react not only with hurt but with justifiable anger.

It’s part of Trump’s strategy of divide and conquer: Get us so riled up against one another that we don’t look upward and see where all the wealth and power have gone.

I don’t know the cause of last night’s tragedy, but I do know that the air-traffic control system has been hampered for years by inadequate funding, like so much else the public depends on.

I also know that a big reason for inadequate funding is that the average working family can’t afford to pay more in taxes because their pay has been stagnant for 40 years, while the wealthy — who have a record percentage of the nation’s total wealth — have lobbied for and gotten huge tax cuts (the latest being from Trump himself in his first term of office).

I’m not blaming the rich. I’m blaming a system that continues to underfund what the vast majority of Americans need.

Speaking of the rich, Elon Musk — the richest person on the planet — forced Michael Whitaker to step down as administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration immediately after Trump’s inauguration. That was because the FAA fined SpaceX for failing to get approval for launch changes. Whitaker’s absence left a power vacuum at the agency. Just sayin’.

Again, I don’t know what caused last night’s crash. But shame on Trump and Vance and Hegseth for blaming it on people of color.

What are your thoughts?

[mariacallous]

A number of major centrist and liberal American Jewish groups say they oppose the reestablishment of Israeli settlements in Gaza.

The statements by some of the largest Jewish organizations in the country, made in response to press inquiries, come as Israel has reportedly cleared out portions of northern Gaza, and as far-right Israeli government ministers have called for resettling the Palestinian enclave. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir have also repeatedly called for Israel to encourage Palestinians to leave Gaza, drawing condemnation from the Biden administration.

For several American Jewish groups — including some that have vocally defended Israel’s prosecution of its war in Gaza against Hamas — the idea of Israeli settlements in Gaza is a non-starter. Groups opposed to the idea include the Jewish Federations of North America, the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League. Also opposed are bodies representing the Reform and Conservative movements, which together can claim to represent the majority of American Jews. 

“The land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, indigenous to both Jews and Arabs, cannot be the exclusive domain of one people, but must be shared,” Jason Isaacson, AJC’s chief policy and political affairs officer, said. “Like the vast majority of Israelis, AJC believes that the reestablishment of Israeli settlements in Gaza, or a program of displacing Palestinians from Gaza or the West Bank, would be contrary to Israel’s interests.” 

Israel evacuated its Gaza settlements in 2005, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly ruled out the idea of reestablishing them after the war. But while most Israelis oppose the idea, more than a third — including 42% of Israeli Jews — support it, according to a recent poll by the Israel Democracy Institute. That includes nearly 60% of Israeli Jewish right-wingers, the current government’s voter base. 

“Ideas like settlement in Gaza are welcome, we need to remember that in the end that’s the biggest punishment for what they did to us on Oct. 7,” Ben-Gvir said in an interview on Israeli radio this month, referencing the Hamas attack that launched the war. 

He said he discusses encouraging Palestinian emigration from Gaza frequently in government meetings, and said, “I’m starting to see a certain openness to the topic” on Netanyahu’s part. “I hope the prime minister will understand in the end that this is the way,” he added.

Those sentiments have faced criticism in Israel, including from former officials who were once partners with Netanyahu and have since broken with him. 

Moshe Ya’alon, a former Israeli military chief who served as Netanyahu’s defense minister a decade ago, said recently, “The road they’re taking us down is one of occupation, annexation, ethnic cleansing. Look at the north of the strip — transfer, call it what you want, in order to establish Jewish settlement there. That’s the idea.”

Carole Nuriel, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Israel office, condemned proposals to permanently displace Palestinians in Gaza and reestablish Jewish settlements there. 

“We are deeply troubled by statements from Israeli government ministers and activists advocating for the emigration or ‘population thinning’ of Palestinians in Gaza,” Nuriel said in a statement. “These views reflect an inhumane approach, tarnish Israel’s reputation, and are fundamentally immoral.” 

Discussion of the issue recently attracted attention at a Jewish Federations of North America conference, where a senior executive joked in a closed-door meeting about owning property in Gaza, drawing blowback from a number of attendees. 

In response to an inquiry, a spokesperson for JFNA said the group’s position on Gaza resettlement “has not changed,” pointing to the group’s own policy page, which supports a two-state solution “where Israel lives in peace with a demilitarized Palestinian state” — an outcome that would preclude Israeli occupation and settlement of Gaza. 

Support for a two-state solution is widespread, though not universal, among centrist U.S. Jewish groups, though condemnations of Israeli West Bank settlement from their desks are rarer. Polls show that most Israelis oppose the establishment of a Palestinian state, as does the Israeli government. 

In its statement on Gaza settlement, however, the Union for Reform Judaism noted that it opposes West Bank settlement expansion as well. 

“Just as we have been steadfast in our opposition to continued settlement expansion, we are adamantly opposed to the horrendous and dangerous plan by right-wing members of the current Israeli government to resettle Gaza,” said Rabbi Rick Jacobs, URJ’s president. He added that settlement of Gaza would make Israel “less secure” by diverting its military, and would also displace Palestinians. 

The Rabbinical Assembly, which represents clergy from the Conservative movement, also said it “opposes any plan for Jewish settlement in Gaza,” which CEO Rabbi Jacob Blumenthal said “would be a significant step backward” for other stated goals in the region, including the release of hostages still being held by Hamas, as well as any eventual Palestinian state.

AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby, did not directly address settlement in Gaza in response to an inquiry about it. 

“Our focus remains on ensuring that America continues to stand with Israel as it fights a just war against aggression from Iran and the regime’s terrorist proxies on Israel’s borders and across the Middle East,” the group’s spokesman Marshall Wittmann told JTA in a statement.

By contrast, the liberal Israel lobby J Street said it was vocally opposed to any Gaza resettlement project, and voiced concern about Israel “being dragged into the abyss by extremists.”

Gaza resettlement, said J Street Vice President Adina Vogel-Ayalon, would “not only cross a red line for the majority of American Jews and for J Street, but for most Israelis and many former military and political leaders. This should be a red line for any pro-Israel group representing American Jews.”

Representatives for the Orthodox Union and the Rabbinical Council of America, major American Orthodox groups, did not respond to a request for comment. Neither did William Daroff, CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, an umbrella group that supports Israel and whose members span political ideologies.

Some American Jews, though, support resettling Gaza, including Morton Klein, the head of the Zionist Organization of America, which has long supported Israeli settlements. 

“We truly support Jews who want to return to their homes in Gaza or live in Gaza. If 2 million Arabs can live in Israel, why can’t Jews live in Gaza?” Klein said. “And the Israeli government should help facilitate that.”

The statements came as some of the same groups opposed to resettling Gaza harshly criticized a new report from the human rights NGO Amnesty International this week that accuses Israel of genocide. The report also calls on the international community to “oppose any attempts by Israel to establish a permanent military presence in Gaza, alter its borders and demographic make-up or shrink its territory,” among a litany of charges against Israel.

Israel has rejected the genocide accusation, saying that it takes extensive measures to limit harm to civilians, an argument the AJC and other supporters echoed. 

“Israel’s many actions in Gaza that are clearly intended to allow it to fight Hamas while limiting incidental harm to civilians should make it clear to all that its forces act with no such intent,” the group said.

[dragoneyes618]

When asymmetrical warfare is discussed, the focus is usually what happens on the battlefield. So, for instance, when the Viet Cong snuck out of the jungle to attack Americans or when Hamas terrorists leave their tunnels to shoot at Israeli troops or hide their weapons while they pretend to be innocent civilians, the battlefield is the subject of unequal or asymmetric warfare. But I want to discuss some other aspects of the asymmetries – the inequalities – in the current Gaza/Hamas war against Israel. These asymmetries are essential parts of the situation and culture of each combatant and so they appear off the battlefield rather than on it.

First, there is a striking asymmetry in numbers of people aligned with each side. There are only approximately seventeen million Jews in the world today and only one Jewish majority country. There are about six-and-a-half to seven million Jews in the U.S., about seven to seven-and-a-half million in Israel, and the rest are scattered around the world, with the largest concentrations of Jews being in France, the English-speaking countries, and then in smaller pockets throughout the world, including Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, and elsewhere. There are, however, approximately four hundred million Arabs in the world and approximately two billion (with a B) Muslims in the world, and fifty-two Muslim majority countries.

Those numbers matter not only regarding the ability of Israel to raise the money and troops to fight in its defense, but also because Israel’s enemies do not ever have to work hard to obtain a majority in the United Nations and to vote along religious-ethnic lines. Add to the Muslim countries in the United Nations the Russian and Chinese allies and puppets like Tajikistan and Khazakstan, and the “post-colonial” sewers that fester under ideologies of hatred of Western civilization, hatred of democracy, and hatred of Israel’s ally, the U.S. – countries like Myanmar, South Africa, Nicaragua, Malawi, and Chad. When Israel-haters and Jew-haters say that the whole world hates Israel, they are partly correct because most of the world lives under nasty regimes that have no freedom of speech, no freedom of religion, no free press, and no fair and free elections. The pressure of that asymmetry of numbers is always upon us.

Besides the asymmetry between Israel and much of the rest of the world because Israel is a liberal democracy, with its many freedoms, the contrast becomes even more stark with Gaza/Hamas. Even while at war, Israeli politicians are squabbling and posturing, Israeli newspapers are attacking the government’s policies and conduct of the war, reporters are exposing flaws in governmental operations, and people are “leaking” news to reporters so that there is a vast array of negative information, as well as positive information, about the Israeli leadership even during the war. In Israel even now there are public demonstrations against certain government policies. Contrast that with Gaza/Hamas which is a theocratic dictatorship run by an armed group that took power in 2006 and has never held another election. Because it is a dictatorship, there is no opposition party to challenge Hamas or to point to its flaws. Because Gaza/Hamas is a dictatorship, there are no newspapers whose editorial stance is to challenge the government’s policies or to advocate that the government take better care of its citizens. Because it is a dictatorship, there are no public discussions of policy, no demonstrations, no public admissions that mistakes have been made, no acknowledgement that the Gaza/Hamas government has ever done anything wrong.

Hamas does not have to respond or explain why they use the population of Gaza as they do because no one questions Hamas. When Israel makes a mistake or does something untoward, it is on the front page of every newspaper in the world. When Hamas shoots its own civilians, rapes, tortures, or murders a hostage in a tunnel, or steals money or other international aid intended for the population, it is a secret. While all of Israel’s imperfections are exposed, very few of Hamas’ are.

There is also an asymmetry in the conception of time that the combatants have. Because Israel is a democracy, its leaders have to respond to the public and respond to them at relatively frequent intervals. Politicians in democratic countries are usually focused on the next election in a year, or two or three. That conception of time as being related to the next election tends to make for short-range planning and pleasing the electorate now. That may be as much a problem for Israel’s most important ally, the United States, as it is for Israel. In a theocratic dictatorship with no elections, such as Hamas and such as Hamas’ major ally, Iran, which bars most opposition candidates from running for office, satisfying voters is simply not an issue. Hamas and Iran plan for the long term, free from any concern about what the citizens want.

Israel largely has to finance its own wars, although it does receive significant aid from the United States. That financing largely comes from internal taxation and some import duties. Israelis pay income taxes and a high “value-added tax” (VAT) to defend our country and provide necessary services such as schools and medical care. That is significantly different than Hamas/Gaza, which finances its war with money from Iran, Qatar, UNRWA, Syria, and Russia. Iran’s interest, like Hamas’, is in destroying Israel and killing all the Jews. Qatar largely shares that interest. Russia wants to embarrass the United States and have more influence in the Arab world. UNRWA, besides giving fake “refugee” status to third- and fourth-generation descendants of Arabs who left Israel in 1948, 1967, and at other times, teaches hatred of Jews and of Israel in its schools, gives “day jobs” to Hamas operatives and their family members so that Hamas does not have to pay their operatives a living wage, and provides schools and clinics which also sometimes double as Hamas weapons storage facilities, command centers, barracks, and entrances to the Hamas tunnels. By providing these schools and clinics, UNRWA relieves Hamas of what would ordinarily be the governmental responsibility of building and operating schools and clinics for Gazans. The “international community” thereby frees Hamas from having to pay for ordinary government services and allows Hamas to spend more on making war on Israel.

Last, and perhaps most important of all the asymmetries between the combatants, is their ideologies. Israel wants to live in peace and security inside her current borders. If Israel had that result, it would be the end of the almost constant warfare that Israel has suffered these last seventy-six years. Hamas, Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, Houthis, and other governments and quasi-governments want to kill all the Jews in the Middle East or, at least, expel all the Jews from the Middle East. They are not interested in peace. They will, at times, consider a truce or a ceasefire for strategic reasons, but not real, lasting peace. Different authorities in the field give different reasons for Arab and Muslim hatred of Jews and the little Jewish state (which Arabs and others try to disguise as “anti-Zionism”). One authority argues that because of their different value system, most Arabs do not believe in living together with other groups in peace and harmony but rather they believe that a group must either dominate or be dominated, oppress or be oppressed. They believe that Israel has dominated and oppressed but that they can right that wrong.

Another authority has contended that in Muslim doctrine, land has a character and that once it is conquered by Muslims, as Israel was in the seventh century, it always retains the character of Muslim land. Other thinkers in the field urge the simple religious explanation for the Arab hatred of Jews and unwillingness to live in peace with us: that Muslims believe that they have received the final word and prophecy as revealed by Mohammed and that we Jews have come to Israel, humiliated them in war, built a nation far more prosperous than any of theirs (at least until the extraction of large amounts of oil in some Arab countries), and have openly and explicitly rejected their prophet and their god. The one thing that is clear is that it is not about “Palestine,” a little corner of the world smaller than many American counties.

Despite those asymmetries between the combatants, there is one more that matters – an asymmetry that weighs very heavily in Israel’s favor. In all the polls and surveys of “happiness” by country, Israel consistently ranks as having a very happy population, much more so than any Arab or Muslim country. It is surely not because of material prosperity that Israelis feel this way. Most Israelis care about the land, about each other, about the fate of the Jewish people, and about Jewish tradition. I suspect that even many secular Israelis, deep in the recesses of their thoughts, no matter their outward protestations, believe that a benevolent G-d watches over the world and over us. What else could explain the happiness of a people constantly under threat, woefully outgunned and outnumbered in a hostile world?

So we will go on as well as we can. We have always faced asymmetries like these throughout our history. We have always been a comparatively small people, a people who had to make our way in a hostile world, a people who had to struggle to survive. We have gotten through these crises before, even if it has been painful to do so. We will get through this one also. Am Yisrael Chai.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Rachel Bitecofer at The Cycle:

So many political science terms, so little time. As I meet with more and more people from the upper tiers of Democratic Party politics it is becoming clear to me that there are key findings from peer-reviewed political science research that simply never trickled down to the general public. Long time subscribers to this distinguished ‘Stack should know two of those political science concepts well by now: 1. the strength of party identification on public opinion and vote choice for the vast majority of the electorate and 2. the stunningly low levels of civic knowledge of American voters. Today, I want to talk about a third concept known as the Overton window. What is the Overton Window? Put simply, the Overton Window refers to what is considered acceptable in a political culture. For example, once upon a time it was considered unacceptable to plot a coup and call a mob to attack the Capitol to hold onto power after losing reelection. In fact, prior to Trump’s 2016 run, something as insignificant as having a campaign trail Baby Mama was seen as disqualifying for the presidency. The first time Elon Musk tweeted about the Overton Window it became clear to me that smart people had made this a core objective of his purchase of Twitter. Could the world’s richest man using the world’s largest megaphone redefine what is acceptable in American politics? Early in his reign as the arbiter of truthiness, Elon was focused on moving the Overton Window on transgenderism. When he purchase Twitter in 2022, just two weeks before the 2022 midterms, one of the first changes to the platform Elon ordered were to remove protections against misgendering people. He was also interested in normalizing the discourse of the alt-Right, bringing previously fringe shit like the Great Replacement Theory into the mainstream of Republican politics.

Again, Great Replacement Theory is the argument that Latinos and other non-White immigrants are migrating to America in order to take control of the country away from White people. Through algorithm manipulations and the unmatched power of an Elon RT, over the course of the last 3 years I’ve watched as rhetoric once confined to neo-Nazi meetings became popular policy appeals on the Right. And Elon saw the true power of his new platform. Since then, Elon has used his megaphone to push the Overton Window open on a host of things including getting Republican voters to accept things like DOGE, pushing Republicans to abandon Ukraine, and most recently, to get Republican voters to accept destroying our checks and balances system by discrediting the courts.

Rachel Bitecofer wrote on Substack about far-right co-”President” Elon Musk’s widening of the Overton Window to make far-right subject matter mainstream.

[misfitwashere]

ROBERT REICH

JAN 30

Friends,

Trump blamed last night’s tragic crash on former Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama seeking to include Blacks and Latinos in the federal workforce. 

“They actually came out with a directive — ‘too white’,” Trump charged today in remarks about last night’s air crash that killed 67 people. But “we want the people that are competent.”

Asked why he believed DEI (policies promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion) had anything to do with the crash, Trump said: “Because I have common sense. OK. And, unfortunately, a lot of people don’t.”

Trump’s new Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, was on hand to add his own bigoted view. “The era of DEI is gone at the Defense Department,” he said, “and we need the best and brightest — whether it’s in our air traffic control or whether it’s in our generals or whether it’s throughout government.” 

Not to be outdone in the bigot department, Vice President JD Vance piped up: “When you don't have the best standards in who you're hiring, it means on the one hand you're not getting the best people in government. But on the other hand, it puts stress on the people who are already there.”

What is America to make of this? That the underlying cause of last night’s tragedy was that not enough white people were in charge? That “competent” people — the “best and the brightest” — “the best people” — are not Black or Latino? 

Is it now open season on such racist bullshit? 

No. We will not allow neo-fascists to scapegoat people of color. 

We know what they’re doing, and why.

They want to divide us. They want white people to blame Black and Latino people for every tragedy, every problem, every harm. And they want Black and Latino people to react not only with hurt but with justifiable anger.

It’s part of Trump strategy of divide and conquer: Get us so riled up against one another that we don’t look upward and see where all the wealth and power have gone. 

I don’t know the cause of last night’s tragedy but I do know that the air-traffic control system has been hampered for years by inadequate funding, like so much else the public depends on. 

I also know that a big reason for inadequate funding is that the average working family can’t afford to pay more in taxes because their pay has been stagnant for forty years, while the wealthy — who have a record percentage of the nation’s total wealth — have lobbied for and got huge tax cuts (the latest being from Trump himself in his first term of office). 

I’m not blaming the rich. I’m blaming a system that continues to underfund what the vast majority of Americans need. 

Again, I don’t know what caused last night’s crash. But shame on Trump and Vance and Hegseth for blaming it on people of color.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Horsey

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

June 7, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

JUN 08, 2024

Two big stories today that together reveal a broader landscape.

The first is that the Bureau of Labor Statistics today released another blockbuster jobs report. The country added 272,000 jobs in May, far higher than the 180,000 jobs economists predicted. A widespread range of sectors added new jobs, including health care, government, leisure and hospitality, and professional, scientific, and technical services. Wages are also up. Over the past year, average hourly earnings have grown 4.1%, higher than the rate of inflation, which was 3.4% over the same period. 

The unemployment rate ticked up from 3.9% to 4%. This is not a significant change, but it does break the 27-month streak of unemployment below that number. 

The second big story is that Justice Clarence Thomas amended a financial filing from 2019, acknowledging that he should have reported two free vacations he accepted from Texas billionaire Harlan Crow. While in the past he said he did not need to disclose such gifts, in today’s filing he claimed he had “inadvertently omitted” the trips on earlier reports. ProPublica broke the story of these and other gifts from Crow, including several more trips than Thomas has so far acknowledged. 

Fix The Court, a nonprofit advocacy group that seeks to reform the federal courts, estimates that Thomas has accepted more than $4 million in gifts over the last 20 years. As economic analyst Steven Rattner pointed out, that’s 5.6 times more than the other 16 justices on the court in those years combined.

These two news items illustrate a larger story about the United States in this moment. 

The Biden administration has quite deliberately overturned the supply-side economics that came into ascendancy in 1981 when President Ronald Reagan took office and that remained dominant until 2021, when Biden entered the White House. Adherents of that ideology rejected the idea that the government should invest in the “demand side” of the economy—workers and other ordinary Americans—to develop the economy, as it had done since 1933. 

Instead, they maintained that the best way to nurture the economy was to support the “supply side”: those at the top. Cutting business regulations and slashing taxes would create prosperity, they said, by concentrating wealth in the hands of individuals who would invest in the economy more efficiently than they could if the government interfered in their choices. That smart investment would dramatically expand the economy, supporters argued, and everyone would do better. 

But supply-side economics never produced the results its supporters promised. What it did do was move money out of the hands of ordinary Americans into the hands of the very wealthy. Economists estimate that between 1981 and 2021, more than $50 trillion dollars moved from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%.

In order to keep that system in place, Republicans worked to make it extraordinarily difficult for Congress to pass laws making the government do anything, even when the vast majority of Americans wanted it to. With the rise of Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to the position of Senate majority leader in 2007, they weaponized the filibuster so any measure that went against their policies would need 60 votes in order to get through the Senate, and in 2010 they worked to take over state legislatures so that they could gerrymander state congressional districts so severely that Republicans would hold far more seats than they had earned from voters. 

With Congress increasingly neutered, the power to make law shifted to the courts, which Republicans since the Reagan administration had been packing with appointees who adhered to their small-government principles. 

Clarence Thomas was a key vote on the Supreme Court. But as ProPublica reported in December 2023, Thomas complained in 2000 to a Republican member of Congress about the low salaries of Supreme Court justices (equivalent to about $300,000 today) and suggested he might resign. The congressman and his friends were desperate to keep Thomas, with his staunchly Republican vote, on the court. In the years after 2000, friends and acquaintances provided Thomas with a steady stream of gifts that supplemented his income, and he stayed in his seat.

But what amounts to bribes has compromised the court. After the news broke that Thomas has now disclosed some of the trips Crow gave him, conservative lawyer George Conway wrote: “It’s long past time for there to be a comprehensive criminal investigation, and congressional investigation, of Justice Thomas and his finances and his taxes. What he has taken, and what he has failed to disclose, is beyond belief, and has been so for quite some time.” A bit less formally, over a chart of the monetary value of the gifts Thomas has accepted, Conway added: “I mean. This. Is. Just. Nuts.”

As the Republican system comes under increasing scrutiny, Biden’s renewal of traditional economic policies is showing those policies to be more successful than the Republicans’ system ever was. If Americans turn against the Republican formula of slashing taxes and deregulating business, those at the top of the economy stand to lose both wealth and control of the nation’s economic system. 

Trump has promised more tax cuts and deregulation if he is reelected, although the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office recently projected that his plan to extend the 2017 tax cuts that are set to expire in 2025 will add more than $3 trillion to the deficit over the next decade. In April, at a meeting with 20 oil executives, Trump promised to cut regulations on the fossil fuel industry in exchange for $1 billion in donations, assuring them that the tax breaks he would give them once he was in office would pay for the donation many times over (indeed, an analysis quoted in The Guardian showed his proposed tax cuts would save them $110 billion). On May 23, he joined fossil fuel executives for a fundraiser in Houston.

In the same weeks, Biden’s policies have emphasized using the government to help ordinary people rather than to move wealth upward. 

On May 31 the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced that it will make its experimental free electronic filing system permanent. It asked all 50 states and the District of Columbia to sign on to the program and to help taxpayers use it. The program’s pilot this year was wildly successful, with more than 140,000 people filing that way. Private tax preparers, whose industry makes billions of dollars a year, oppose the new system. 

The Inflation Reduction Act provided funding for this program and for beefing up the ability of the IRS to audit the wealthiest taxpayers. As Fatima Hussein wrote for the Associated Press, Republicans cut $1.4 billion from these funds last summer and will shift an additional $20 billion from the IRS to other programs over the next two years. 

Today the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued five new reports showing that thanks in part to the administration's outreach efforts about the Affordable Care Act, the rate of Black Americans without health insurance dropped from 20.9% in 2010 to 10.8% in 2022. The same rate among Latinos dropped from 32.7% to 18%. For Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders, the rate of uninsured dropped from 16.6% to 6.2%. And for American Indians and Alaska Natives, the rate dropped from 32.4% to 19.9%. More than 45 million people in total are enrolled in coverage under the Affordable Care Act.

President Biden noted the strength of today’s jobs report in a statement, adding: “I will keep fighting to lower costs for families like the ones I grew up with in Scranton.” Republicans “have a different vision,” he said, “one that puts billionaires and special interests first.” He promised: “I will never stop fighting for Scranton—not Park Avenue.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON