RandolphCarter posted:

good god

Pistol_Pete posted:

Yeah, Churchill was a real old-fashioned 19th century scientific racist, who believed that:

a) races were totally a thing

b) some races were inherently superior to others

c) that it was the destiny and responsibility of the White race to dominate the world and oversee and supervise the activities of all the lesser races (everyone else).

quote:

One has signed historic climate and infrastructure legislation, steered the economy past a recession and rallied the west against Vladimir Putin. The other spent Monday on trial for fraud ranting and raving against a judge in a puerile display from the witness stand.

And if a presidential election were held today, Joe Biden would lose to Donald Trump by a lot, according to the latest swing state polls.

Maybe it’s the pandemic, or inflation, or tribalism, but it is increasingly hard to deny that something strange and perverse is happening in American politics...

gradenko_2000 posted:

Additional context: Churchill was actually way more racist in the original quotation

www.seattletimes.com posted:

It was exactly a decade ago that Seattle exploded on the political scene for lefty experimentalism.

The outgoing mayor in 2013 had dubbed himself “the most progressive mayor in America.” The incoming mayor one-upped that by saying he would remake Seattle into “the most progressive city in America.”

That was also the year Seattle elected its first socialist — a heady time of concern about inequality, but also touching off a movement politics marked more by protest and purity than coalition-building and compromise.

Voters loved it, for a time, voting ever leftward. Seattle was the first big city to adopt a $15 wage, to try out democracy vouchers, to let gig workers unionize. The city also took on, and ultimately taxed, the big, bad Amazon.

But it’s over. Seattle is the most progressive city no more.

Voters Tuesday were drubbing all that activism in favor of plain ol’ pragmatism. Voters seemed to want less idealism, more in the way of results.

FULL COVERAGE | Key Washington 2023 general election results


Currently the council has four strong progressive voices, and early returns show that three of them were on track to potentially be replaced by more moderate newcomers.

In socialist Kshama Sawant’s district, where she is retiring to go into activism full-time, the more moderate Joy Hollingsworth took a huge lead over the left-leaning Alex Hudson. Just that switch — from Sawant to Hollingsworth, who was endorsed by Mayor Bruce Harrell — marks a big shift in both tone and politics for the entire council.

Likewise, out in West Seattle, outgoing progressive Lisa Herbold is likely to be replaced by Rob Saka, a more centrist attorney. The progressive activist in the race, Maren Costa, trails by nearly 18 points.

All three council incumbents were trailing in Tuesday’s returns. It’s too soon to tell their fates, as later vote counts can sometimes swing by 10 percentage points or more. But it shows the headwinds of historically poor approval ratings.

Most likely to survive is Dan Strauss of Ballard’s District 6. (He is trailing challenger Pete Hanning by only two points.) It’s no coincidence that Strauss undertook a political makeover over the past year, tilting away from his earlier embrace of protest politics such as defund the police.

The results mark a win for business interests, who poured $1.2 million into outside spending into these races. They outspent labor by 6 to 1 — a gap the unions may be ruing.

Along with the 2021 election, in which Harrell defeated a more progressive challenger for mayor and voters improbably tapped a Republican for city attorney, this election marks the end of the decade of experimental progressivism in Seattle. That’s true regardless of whether some of the incumbents eke out wins.

What will it be replaced with?

Well, it’s important to say that in Seattle, when we say someone is “moderate,” it means they’re what we used to call a liberal Democrat. This election is really a shift away from politics by bullhorn.

As Hollingsworth said at a forum I moderated last month: “I’m a Black, queer woman with a cannabis farm. When did that become moderate?”

Her point: Seattle’s just as liberal now as it’s always been. It’s more about a change to a less polarizing political style.

I think the surest sign of what’s coming is what’s going. Check out what happened earlier in the day down at City Hall.

Sawant put forth another activist resolution, to have the Seattle City Council call for a cease-fire in Gaza. None of her eight colleagues seconded her motion though, killing it without a vote. Furious, she berated the council and the Sawant-summoned crowd exploded in shouting. The meeting had to be recessed for 10 minutes.

Performative, divisive, populist to the end. Voters Tuesday were asking for a break from all that.

mawarannahr posted:

Seattle is the most progressive city no more

gradenko_2000 posted:

The Age: ABC journalists criticise broadcaster’s coverage of Gaza invasion

mawarannahr posted:

Seattle is the most progressive city no more

Orange Devil posted:

lol there's no universally recognized definition of apartheid that covers what Israel is doing, for example because Israel doesn't recognize the definition lmao

Some Guy TT posted:

I look at the papers the next day. The newspaper I work for has a tank on the front page: ‘Hundreds die and hostages held as Hamas assault shocks Israel’—victorious terrorists hold a Palestinian flag. The subheading reads ‘Netanyahu declares war as 150 Israelis die. 230 Palestinians killed in air strikes.’

I don’t understand. I know people, Israelis, who were murdered. They did not “die,” as if in some kind of accident. I saw footage of terrorism. It was not an “assault.”

...

I go back the next day. I look at the front page. A photo of Gaza and “violence escalates.” Israelis “dead” but Palestinians “killed.”

quote:

If tens of thousands of Israelis were put at mortal risk when Gaza became a quasi-state after Israel’s withdrawal in 2005, what would it mean to put millions of Israelis at risk along much longer borders if the same process were to be repeated in the West Bank?

quote:

Of all the responses to the October 7 massacre, one of the most contemptible in Britain is that of “Steady on, chaps. Don’t overreact.” This attitude has come from a whole slew of commentators across the British press. My colleague at the Spectator, Matthew Parris, took to the pages of the magazine last week to claim that the aftermath of the biggest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust is the ideal time to “dial down” any anger one feels. Suggesting he feels little, if any, himself.

In The Times, Hugo Rifkind this week expressed concern that reactions to the antisemitism on display at the “pro-Palestine” marches might lead to more antisemitism. Which, like the conclusion Parris comes to, means that when Jews are slaughtered the best thing to do is just sit it out, be quiet, and wait for the next one. Because it wouldn’t do to have too strong a response now, would it?

I’m genuinely baffled that so many people are agonising at a time when the situation before us all — Jews and non-Jews — could hardly be clearer. As I am in Israel at the moment, I witness the situation with even more clarity.

Nothing could surpass the barbarism of what Hamas did that day. I have seen and covered many conflicts in my life, but I have never seen anything quite like this.

As I said after watching at the Israeli embassy the other day the unedited footage of the massacre, this is one occasion when saying that some people are worse than the Nazis is not hyperbole.

Average members of the SS and other killing units of Hitler’s were rarely proud of their average days’ work. Very few felt that shooting Jews in the back of the head all day and kicking their bodies into pits was where their own lives had meant to end up.

Many spent their evenings getting blind drunk to try to forget. Nazi commanders had to worry about staff “morale”. When the war ended, the Nazis tried to pretend that Treblinka and other death camps never existed.

Compare this with the behaviour of Hamas on October 7. As those of us who have viewed the raw footage from the day have seen and heard for ourselves, these terrorists were not just pleased with what they were doing. They were elated. They spent the whole time screaming “Allahu Akbar” with delight. As they decapitated bodies and shot terrified civilians, they were grinning, congratulating each other and seeking acclaim from others.

In one call which the Israelis captured and played, a young Hamas terrorist called back to Gaza to boast to his parents that he, their son, had killed ten Jews “with my own hands”. He was ecstatic with joy. And desperate that his father and then his mother would give him their praise he desired. They did. Their boy had turned out good.

Ordinarily this would be a moment for the civilised world to back Israel and back the destruction of Hamas. Not simply because the civilised world should seek revenge, but because it is clear that the world cannot live with a group whose leadership has boasted that they will carry out October 7 massacres until there are no Jews left. With this there seems absolutely no place for compromise.

And yet in our own country, there have been those who from the beginning have insisted that this very straightforward question is either unutterably complex or a time to show restraint.

While some of us have noted with alarm the chants of “jihad” on our streets, the cries for “intifada” on our trains, and calls for “Muslim armies” to arise in Britain, others have urged that we should calm it down. As though it is the Jews and others who notice these things who are somehow inflaming tensions.

The Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, has come under more criticism for describing the anti-Israel marches as “hate marches” than almost anyone (let alone any opposition politician) has shown against the marches themselves.

As people occupy train stations, attack veterans selling poppies and assault Jews in the streets of our cities, there are those like a senior editor at the Sunday Times, Josh Glancy, who have described the situation in our capital city as “absolutely fine”. It is a “challenging and difficult situation” he acknowledges, but “hyperbole” he insists — lecturing a black online activist — “helps no one.”

Surveying this “calm down, chaps” manner, you wonder what it would take to wake up such people. Perhaps the massacre of every Jew in Israel? But turn this around another way. Can you imagine any other group in the world who would be treated like this? Who, when their families and co-religionists are murdered, are not the subjects of sympathy but are rather themselves then the target of assault and threat? In what other situation do the victims and their coreligionists have to watch their backs while the perpetrators, their friends and supporters march boldly through our own streets, screaming at the police and generally behaving as if they own them?

In the 1930s, a different generation of British Jews had the guts to say to a different generation of antisemites, “they shall not pass”.

Can this generation summon up the same resilience? It has to. For all our sakes.

Douglas Murray is associate editor of the Spectator.

gradenko_2000 posted:

Why must Jews watch their backs as London mobs cheer?

Scrub-Niggurath posted:

truly psycho poo poo jesus christ

Wraith of J.O.I. posted:

NYT disinforming its readers again —— sad!!!

https://twitter.com/kaibosworth/status/1722999280057688375

Wraith of J.O.I. posted:

more great coverage from the new york times

https://twitter.com/DanielDenvir/status/1723723847617163266
https://twitter.com/aaronnarraph/status/1723744811478298716

In Training posted:

did the bourgeois press always spend so much time covering internal campus politics. Who cares about this poo poo, is it just because they have friends and families at ivies and they think the rest of the world cares.

quote:

As an Israeli, Mr. Feiglin can’t pry his mind away from the Oct. 7 attacks. The scale and horror in which Hamas terrorists slaughtered an estimated 1,200 people in Israel, mostly civilians, and some brutally, has led him, by his own admission, to “close off” part of his heart.

He doesn’t like carrying a Glock. But he is allowed to, and so he does. The Israeli Army has been assigned to protect his community. Still, he warily scans the open hills separating his settlement from Arab areas and begins to question many of the fundamental things he once believed in.

“I’m struggling,” he says. “Six weeks ago, I was arguing for peace, I was sending my kids to an Israeli-Palestinian summer camp, I was shopping in the village at Arab stores and embracing the ideology that went with that. And now I’m like: ‘What’s next? Can we really go back to that? Was I, in the past, too naïve?’”

...

A half-hour south of Jerusalem and with 4,300 residents, Tekoa is somewhere in the middle of the settler political spectrum. Known by some as “the hippie settlement” for its sizable contingent of artists and peace activists, it’s also home to right-wing supporters who advocate taking more Palestinian land.

So far there’s been little violence around here, and Mr. Feiglin calls the recent settler attacks in other areas “reprehensible,” “against Jewish values” and “very, very fringe.” Such aggression, he says, clearly contrasts with the modicum of interdependence that Tekoa and neighboring Arab villages had maintained, out of necessity more than anything else.

...

Mr. Feiglin, 39, is a bit of a contradiction. Australian-born, he moved to the West Bank eight years ago. He says he enjoys spending time with ordinary Palestinians and promoting peace and coexistence.

But doesn’t the very existence of his settlement only complicate peace and coexistence?

“It’s a question I’ve asked myself,” he says. “My presence in the settlement won’t change facts on the ground.”

He chose to live in Tekoa, he says, for its sense of community and the intoxicating effects of living on the edge of a spectacular desert. He finds himself thinking about his Palestinian acquaintances like Ismail, a hardware store owner whom he used to see all the time and now hasn’t seen for weeks.

“All these micro-interactions,” he says, his voice trailing off during a conversation in his kitchen. “I don’t know how far this is going to rewind us.”

...

Jeffrey Gettleman is an international correspondent and a winner of the Pulitzer Prize. He is the author of “Love, Africa,” a memoir.

In Training posted:

did the bourgeois press always spend so much time covering internal campus politics.

Best Friends posted:

my entire adult life, half of all opinion column inches have been about how campuses are woke, and effete, but also Stalinist. because the people who write columns never grew up or had a real job, are paid to be outraged at things, and so naturally look to the only place they’ve ever been besides their media job.

In Training posted:

did the bourgeois press always spend so much time covering internal campus politics. Who cares about this poo poo, is it just because they have friends and families at ivies and they think the rest of the world cares.

www.washingtonpost.com posted:

The Jewish historical and religious connection to the land of Israel began with God’s promise to Abraham, and it lives on in the words of our prayer books and the four annual fast days devoted to mourning the events surrounding the destruction of the two Holy Temples thousands of years ago. Even after the region was conquered by various powers and the people scattered to the diaspora, at least a small Jewish community always remained. Despite what some on the far left claim, the innovation of Zionism in the 19th century was not to manufacture a Jewish connection to the land; it was to suggest that return could be accomplished through modern political means rather than waiting for divine intervention.

But the establishment of a state in 1948, by United Nations decree, meant that Israel would be a modern nation-state, subject to the same laws and conventions as others. Disentangling criticism of Israel from anti-Semitism begins with distinguishing Eretz Yisrael (the Land of Israel) from Medinat Yisrael (the State of Israel). We can affirm the Land of Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people while recognizing the State of Israel as a modern nation. The borders of the two are not the same. For example, the city of Hebron is an ancient Jewish city, the burial place, according to tradition, of many of our ancestors, and without a doubt part of Eretz Yisrael. It is not within the internationally recognized borders of Medinat Yisrael but remains under occupation according to international law. Other places, such as Eilat, are undisputedly part of Medinat Yisrael but were not within the ancient borders of Eretz Yisrael. I can pray for the restoration of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem in the messianic era, while opposing any attempts to rebuild it now on top of what is also a Muslim sacred site.

Trump sees all U.S. Jews as Israelis because his Christian Zionist allies do, too

Modern Orthodox rabbinical authorities, including Rabbis Ovadia Yosef, Joseph Soloveitchik and Chaim David HaLevy, understood this distinction when they simultaneously affirmed the sanctity of the whole land of Israel and opened up space for lands captured in war to be returned in exchange for peace and security.

The State of Israel is a country with approximately 8 million citizens, 80 percent of whom are Jewish and 20 percent of whom are Palestinian, that exercises control over some 5 million noncitizen Palestinians living in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. As a member of the United Nations, Israel has a responsibility to uphold international law and to follow conventions that it has signed. And it can be open to even the harshest criticism.

American Jews, most of whom do not hold dual citizenship, by and large have strong connections both to Eretz Yisrael as the Jewish homeland and to Medinat Yisrael as the home of half of the world’s Jewish population and a place that promises shelter to Jews in need of refuge. But this does not mean American Jews are the same as Israelis, nor that we define our Judaism according to Israel’s policies.

In adopting in full the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) guidelines, Trump’s executive order blurs this distinction between American Jews and Israel. Jews are certainly in need of protection, given our history of persecution and recent violent attacks in the United States. But redefining some campus criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism does nothing to protect Jews and only makes Palestinian and Muslim students — another group in need of protection — vulnerable to censure. Even the author of the IHRA guidelines has testified in Congress opposing legislation that would apply these principles to campus.

Most of the examples in the IHRA guidelines are clearly dangerous anti-Semitism. These include denying the Holocaust; “calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a radical ideology or an extremist view of religion”; and “making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations … such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy.”

Two examples, though, have the potential to clamp down on free speech on campus. These are “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” and “applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.”

Jews have a right to self-determination. T’ruah, the organization I lead, represents more than 2,000 rabbis and cantors who work every day for the long-term security of the State of Israel, as well as for the human rights of both Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel and of noncitizen Palestinians living under Israeli control. Palestinians also have a right to self-determination, and I hope this right will be realized through the creation of a Palestinian state side-by-side with Israel. Those who believe that self-determination is a basic human right must apply the same standard to all peoples.

But free speech includes the right to voice opinions that some of us might find hard to hear or with which we vehemently disagree. Despite my personal attachment to the State of Israel, I understand why Palestinians see its establishment not as a major step in the liberation and safety of the Jewish people, but rather as a “nakba” — a catastrophe that resulted in the displacement of more than 700,000 Palestinians. I no more expect Palestinians to be Zionists than I expect Native Americans to celebrate the arrival of the Pilgrims. But no laws force U.S. history professors to refrain from speaking about the bloody origins of our nation. Campuses should be open environments for difficult conversations and protests, sometimes even with harsh language, free from spurious accusations of discrimination.[/b]

The false comfort of Trump's condemnation of anti-Semitism

The warning against applying a double standard to Israel can be used to stifle free speech, too. Even harsh critics are not holding Israel to different standards than other countries, but rather to the same human rights laws and conventions as other U.N. members — most prominently, the articles governing the administration of occupied territories in the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Those who complain of a double standard generally mean that student activism disproportionately focuses on Israel rather than on other countries that also violate international human rights. This is true. It’s also true that when I was in college in the mid-1990s, campus activism disproportionately revolved around the Free Tibet movement. I’m sure China was displeased, but I never heard that we shouldn’t talk about Tibet without also addressing human rights violations in what was then Yugoslavia.

There are many reasons that so much campus activism focuses on Israel and the Palestinian territories: The land is sacred to three major religions; Israel is the top recipient of U.S. foreign aid; a visible U.S.-based lobby and network of organizations promote the policies of the Israeli government; Israel is the only democracy carrying out a military occupation of another people. Palestinians have successfully built a national movement over many decades, and there’s a Palestinian diaspora in the United States. There is also a growing backlash against organizations such as Canary Mission and StandWithUs that monitor and publicly attack students — especially Palestinian and Muslim students — who dare engage in pro-Palestine activism.

Boycotts and divestment don’t constitute a double standard, either, despite what Trump said Wednesday. Neither I nor T’ruah boycotts Israel or supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, both out of ideological disagreements and concerns that the tactic has only backfired. But boycotts are a protected right. When major corporations boycotted North Carolina over its transgender bathroom ban, nobody claimed that one state was being held to a double standard. Nor would we expect legislation to stamp out the global boycott of Myanmar over the Rohingya genocide. Boycotts of Israel target a country whose citizens are not all Jewish, and they don’t constitute boycotts of Jews.

Yes, anti-Semitism is one reason that some activists fixate on Israel. And campus criticism of Israel can cross the line into anti-Semitism — by employing hateful stereotypes, by demanding that Jewish students pass an anti-Zionist litmus test before joining coalitions working on other issues, by harassing Jewish students or blackballing Hillel. Such incidents are best addressed by student leaders, religious chaplains and others who are sensitive to the particular dynamics of the situation. Neither outside organizations litigating the particulars of campus on social media nor broad government directives will protect Jewish students or create open campus environments. And the assumption that anti-Semitism must be at the root of all pro-Palestine activism is simply wrong.

In adopting a definition of anti-Semitism that conflates Jews with the State of Israel, Trump’s executive order does nothing to protect Jews from anti-Semitic attacks by those affiliated with or influenced by hate groups — such as the murders in a kosher grocery store in New Jersey this week or the deadly attacks on synagogues last year. Trump basked in the approval of his supporters on Wednesday. But in reality, his order only threatens freedom of speech while further confusing the distinction between American Jews and the policies of the State of Israel. Instead of issuing bogus executive orders, the Trump administration should unequivocally condemn white nationalism, restore funding for fighting domestic terrorism, and pursue a just foreign policy that would actually protect the long-term security and human rights of both Israelis and Palestinians.

Rabbi Jill Jacobs is the executive director of T'ruah, which mobilizes 2,000 rabbis and their communities to protect human rights in North America, Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.

Real hurthling! posted:

yeah until recently the college panic was how conservative voices were being chased off campus by cancel-happy activist mobs destroying free speech and healthy debate. many such articles in the late 20teens until covid closed campuses

https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/i-want-a-seattle-where-the-bus-my-daughter-rides-is-fentanyl-free/ posted:

Two weeks later, while our high schooler was on the way home on that city bus, I called to tell her I’m five minutes behind. Her voice had a catch in it. I realized she had a situation. I told her to walk to the library and I was calling old neighbors who live near her stop. Turns out, she’d gotten off the bus. The problem was on the bus, the whole ride. I tear down Roxbury Street in my Honda to get to my kid.

She gets in the car and words spill. No seats were available near the front of the bus. She had to wait for an individual shaving his face with an X-ACTO knife to move it out of the aisle so she wouldn’t get poked. A man and a woman got on, talking loudly. They sat next to her. The bus stopped. The driver took a deserved restroom break. An argument started and one member of the couple hit the other. A man cozied up to the one who stayed on the bus after the fight. One of them pulled open a bag full of foil, lighters, little bags — the works — then smoked meth or fentanyl 2 inches from our daughter, who had just left biomed class.

Precambrian Video Games posted:

In Training posted:

did the bourgeois press always spend so much time covering internal campus politics. Who cares about this poo poo, is it just because they have friends and families at ivies and they think the rest of the world cares.

Wraith of J.O.I. posted:

https://twitter.com/TheAtlantic/status/1722251654467346686

quote:

Barron is known for his controversial legal memo justifying the use of lethal drone strikes against U.S. citizens without judicial process.[1]