#(something which was in-line with American and International policy)

[charlesoberonn]

It's called Accusation in a Mirror and it's very intentional as part of their propaganda, going back to Joseph Goebbels:

"Accuse the other of which you're guilty."

You can see a clear example of it in the Republicans' attempt to smear Biden for the kind of nepotism and corruption that Trump did openly during his presidency.

[centrally-unplanned]

I know, I am really on a "mocking Tyler Cowen" kick, I will move on from this soon. I just think the ways he is failing these days is very symptomatic of the zeitgeist faux-intellectualism and the ways thinkers are struggling to slot into an openly anti-intellectual movement.

He starts with "USAID is probably good", but in a very compliment-sandwich way. You taught me what a Straussian read is my dear Cowen, so when your "it is good" section is two lines of link dumps, and the rest of the piece is criticism, I am getting the message. So let us set that part aside and dig into those criticisms:

To be clear, I consider this kind of thing to be scandalous.  And I strongly suspect that some of the other outrage anecdotes are true, though they are hard to confirm, or not

The link is to the think tank The Urban Institute putting out a donation call because 1/3rd of its budget is from the Federal government. Which is scandalous...because...uh, why? It is the Urban Institute. They analyze government policy for hire. Their biggest customer is the government. What the fuck? Their latest research - just chosen randomly, top of the list - is an impact evaluation of a program to help at-risk youths graduate high school. Is that bad now?? Does Tyler Cowen no longer think impact evaluations of policy are good??

Imagine describing consulting firms this way: "Oil Well Advisors has hit significant headwinds now that Exxon Mobile is suspending all outside contractors", is that a scandal? Or just absolutely normal behavior for industries with large institutional clients? What is the alternative here? Does he want - in a post subtly praising the Trump Admin - the government to in-house all impact evaluations? I don't disagree that they should do more but, uh, read the room buddy?

I know I am harping on this point but I really wanna emphasize how much of a bad writing call this is - taking an actually insane position (orgs specializing in government contracts shouldn't exist lmao) and because it is so indefensible you instead just handwave it as obvious so the audience maybe doesn't notice. Very cringe.

Okay, moving on:

It does seem Nina Jankowicz and her work received funding, and that I find hard to justify.  It seems to be evidence for something broken in the process. 

The money went to her work with the Center for Information Resilience, which does investigative reporting on war crimes like in the Ukraine War. Maybe her project sucked, I don't even know, but come on. This is incredibly normal behavior for USAID.

 Or how about funds to the BBC?

You mean the BBC Media Action charity, which trains journalists and helps build out mobile & communication networks in developing countries? Should the US build 100% of its own orgs and never fund effective, international partners from US allies? Is that a coherent foreign policy goal I can just wave my hands about and never explain because it is so obvious?

He then goes into the "reforming USAID" angle:

The Samo piece is excellent.  For one thing he notes: “The agency primarily uses a funding model which pays by hours worked, thus incentivizing long-duration projects.”  And the very smart Samantha Power, appointed by Biden to run AID, “…is in favor of disrupting the contractor ecosystem.”  Samo also discusses all the restrictions that require American contractors to be involved. Here is a study on how to reform AID, I have not yet read it.

Which is totally fine, I agree if I ran USAID I could totally like boost efficiency by 50%. I bet a lot of spending is inefficient. But why are you pretending that the current admin is, in any way, aiming for technocratic reform?

Why bother bringing this thread up? That isn't what they are doing! It isn't relevant.

I love this classic trick:

According to the very smart, non-lunatic Charlie Robertson: "My data suggests US AID flows in 2024 were equivalent to: 93% of Somalia’s government revenues, 61% in Sudan, just over 50% in South Sudan and Yemen" While I do not take cutting off those flows lightly, that seems unsustainable and also wrong to me as a matter of USG policy.  Those do not seem like viable enterprises to me.

You can think whatever you want is wrong, your call. But unsustainable? All of USAID is half a percent of the federal government. Payments to Somalia are a rounding error. This is the definition of sustainable! You could run this forever and never even notice.

But okay, maybe you mean like it is creating a culture of dependency or somesuch, not the same thing but I will humor you. Let's look at the latest USAID impact assessment of their work in Somalia:

Oh whoops, looks like our ability to even evaluate programs has been stripped away by the current admin's mass purging of databases like impact assessment reports! Fortunately I have the Wayback Machine, so I can get around this:

"Culture of dependency" this money went to food and clean water for starving people. You can say whatever you want about priorities and all that shit. That it is "unsustainable". But if someone doesn't do this then some of these people die. I notice "let them die" does not appear in your bloodless discussion of "aid dependency". Maybe we should cut aid because they will be forced to get their state together and be better off in the long run. I understand that logic, I really do, you can make that case.

But fucking say it. Say "let them die" to my face. Man the fuck up.

Alright, last one since this is going on too long:

There are various reports of AID spending billions to help overthrow Assad. I cannot easily assess this matter, either whether the outcomes was good or whether AID mattered, but perhaps (assuming it was effective) such actions should be taken by a different agency or institution?

I love this one because it is a peak "attack of opportunity" moment. At the beginning of this very post he says this:

Here is a Samo analysis...The Samo piece is excellent. 

The linked piece, by the Samo Burja, is this:

The piece, to clarify, explains that USAID is not an aid agency, but fundamentally an extension of US foreign policy and conducts itself to achieve foreign policy goals. That this is its explicit, stated purpose. And Tyler Cowen says it is a great piece.

And then proceeds to say that pursuing those goals in Syria should maybe be at a different agency because that isn't "aid".

Bro you don't give a rat's ass about that! You just wanted to score points, you don't care about this at all. It was just on the list, you didn't even think about it, you just said something that sounded plausible. It is pathetic, you don't have to comment on every headline if you don't have a hot take. Just post a meme instead like a normal person.

But he does have to comment, because this post exists to ingratiate himself to the vibe shift. It as transparent as it is embarrassing - it is so limp-wristed, saying things like "the 'Elonsphere' on Twitter is very much exaggerating the horror anecdotes" when their most viral claims are just naked fabrications. Come on, man. You used to be better than this.

[ceekbee]

There are moments in history where you can feel the tectonic plates of power shifting under your feet, the precise seconds when empires declare themselves rotten and ready to collapse. February 28, 2025, was one of those moments—a grotesque display of unchecked narcissism, geopolitical idiocy, and the full-throttle transformation of American foreign policy into a goddamn mafia shakedown.

Donald Trump, the world’s loudest and dumbest charlatan, decided to hold a public execution of Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, not with bullets, but with bullying. This was not diplomacy. This was not strategy. This was the kind of goonish humiliation typically reserved for reality television, except now the stakes were measured in millions of lives and the looming specter of World War III.

“YOU’RE GAMBLING WITH WORLD WAR III”

Trump—flanked by his yes-man JD Vance and an eerily silent Marco Rubio—welcomed Zelenskyy to the Oval Office only to berate, belittle, and ultimately dismiss him like a waiter who forgot to refill his Diet Coke. The Ukrainian president had made the grave mistake of advocating for his people, for his country, for his soldiers dying daily on the front lines against Russian invaders. But in Trump’s world, there is no room for dignity or resistance—only total submission to the Don.

"You’re gambling with World War III," Trump barked at Zelenskyy, acting like a discount Tony Soprano shaking down a local shopkeeper. "You either make a deal, or we are out." The message was crystal clear: Surrender to Putin, or America lets you rot.

When Zelenskyy pushed back—trying to explain, like a rational human being, that diplomacy requires more than rolling over and exposing your belly to a psychotic autocrat like Vladimir Putin—Vance chimed in, whining that it was "disrespectful" to discuss such things in front of the American media. Disrespectful! As if the real problem here was the optics, not the grotesque moral betrayal unfolding in real time.

TRUMP’S FIXATION WITH GRATITUDE: A MOB BOSS DEMANDING TRIBUTE

"Have you ever said thank you once?" Vance sneered at Zelenskyy, echoing his master’s worldview that all human interactions are transactional. "You have to be thankful," Trump added, "you don’t have the cards. You’re buried there."

This is what American diplomacy has become: an extortion racket.

Forget alliances, forget history, forget standing up to despots—Trump views everything through the lens of a cheap con artist running a rigged casino. Ukraine, in his mind, is a desperate gambler, and Trump is the pit boss deciding whether to extend another round of credit.

If Zelenskyy had gotten on his knees and kissed Trump’s golden slippers, maybe he’d have left with something. But instead, he left with nothing, because he had the audacity to act like the elected leader of a sovereign nation, rather than a groveling servant.

THE CANCELED PRESS CONFERENCE: WHEN THE HUMILIATION IS TOO MUCH TO SPIN

After the carnage, Trump did what he always does: He took to Truth Social to declare victory.

"I have determined that President Zelenskyy is not ready for Peace," he wrote, as if the real issue is Ukraine’s unwillingness to surrender, rather than Russia’s ongoing campaign of war crimes and territorial theft.

The joint press conference was canceled—which in diplomatic terms is the equivalent of overturning the table and storming out of the restaurant. Zelenskyy was seen leaving the White House, no deal signed, no support secured. Just the bitter taste of betrayal in his mouth.

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian ambassador literally facepalmed in the middle of the meeting. She couldn’t even hide her disgust. This was the international equivalent of watching your boss drunkenly scream at a client in a meeting while you rub your temples and quietly plan your resignation.

TRUMP’S ‘PEACE’ PLAN IS A SURRENDER PLAN

This is all part of a deliberate pivot in American foreign policy. Trump has always sided with Russia, whether it’s calling Putin "a very smart guy," ignoring his war crimes, or pretending Ukraine started the war. Now, his administration is pushing a so-called "peace plan" that amounts to a glorified land grab for Moscow.

The Wall Street Journal has already reported that Trump’s advisers are split on how exactly to force Ukraine to submit. Some want a "frozen conflict"—which translates to "Russia keeps what it stole"—while others are pushing for a formal deal that outright cedes Ukrainian land and resources to Putin. Either way, the outcome is the same: Ukraine loses, Russia wins, and Trump gets to preen about his ‘deal-making.’

THE DEATH OF AMERICA’S WORD

The entire world saw this Oval Office debacle. If you’re an ally of the United States, you just learned a very clear lesson: You cannot trust America under Donald Trump. Your security, your sovereignty, and your survival are all secondary to whether Trump personally feels flattered. If you are not groveling at his feet, you’re expendable.

Meanwhile, Putin is watching. And he’s grinning. Because now he knows that Trump will do his dirty work for him.

Zelenskyy was just the first ally to be fed to the wolves. He won’t be the last.

Welcome to America, 2025. This is what losing looks like.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Jay Kuo at The Big Picture:

When I write about the latest horrific policy or action by the Trump administration, often a reader will comment, “The cruelty is the point.” We all sense, and in many ways accept, this as true. How could we not, given everything we have seen and experienced for years under Trump? But there has always been something unsatisfactory and circular about this assessment. It asserts that Trump and his lackeys are cruel just to be cruel, presumably because that is their nature and they enjoy it. That feels correct, but also incomplete. Cruelty serves a number of other purposes beyond the sadism of those who inflict it. We’ve witnessed this wherever atrocities occur anywhere in the world. Soldiers not only kill enemy soldiers but systematically rape, torture, and execute innocent civilians. Vulnerable minorities, whether Jews in Nazi Germany or LGBTQs in Uganda, become targets for cruelty not only because they are easy targets and people are awful, but because the state has an agenda and the cruelty is a twisted part of it. The United States is not somehow immune to this and never has been. Throughout our history, our government, acting through our military and our courts, has repeatedly inflicted intentional cruelty upon whole populations within our borders. This has led to the worst chapters of our nation’s story: Indigenous genocide, centuries of Black slavery, and the Japanese American internment. Today, cruelty has once again become a feature of U.S. policy, particularly as practiced against migrants to our country. Given where our policies have led in the past, it is not enough to shake our collective heads and conclude that such cruelty is the point, that they are cruel just to be cruel. We need to look behind that cruelty and ask the harder question: But what’s the goal?

Creating an enemy

Scholars of fascism will tell you that the first pillar of fascism is to create domestic enemies. As the Public Leadership Institute writes,

[Fascism creates a myth of victimhood, that the majority population is in a humiliating decline from a past greatness because of singled-out minority populations. It’s an us-against-them crisis, the myth goes. The targeted racial, ethnic, religious or gender minorities, and the “liberals” who support them, are thus framed as not just opponents but enemies, demonized so the majority can feel justified in hating and repressing them. In fact, “Make America Great Again” is the quintessential fascist slogan. It’s a myth that celebrates the good ole days of white supremacy.]

This is precisely why Trump has targeted migrants and falsely labeled them all as criminals and undesirables who are “poisoning the blood of our country”—a line favored by Adolf Hitler. Migrant communities are relatively small in size here. They are politically powerless in the face of concerted attacks. It is therefore the responsibility of those with greater social and political power to step up in their defense. That’s why the first response of a democracy to any attack upon its most vulnerable members must be to recognize and call it out as fascist. Trump isn’t trying to make our communities safer from migrant crime, which is not a widespread thing. He is trying to divide us, to make us fear and despise other human beings who live in our communities, and to gain power from that division and fear.

Brandishing the power of the fascist state

The White House first announced that it was rendering members of “Venezuelan gang members” to a prison in El Salvador under the pretense that we were under “invasion” and Trump was justified in invoking the Alien Enemies Act. When the migrant flights began, the government of El Salvador released a deeply disturbing video depicting the operation in action. The sheer number of armed guards and police and military vehicles, complete with an ominous Hollywood movie-style soundtrack, sent the message: We are the government, and we have the power to do whatever we want, to whomever we want. There’s a reason that Trump wants to spend tens of millions on an unprecedented military parade, which happens to coincide with his birthday. It’s a show of force and lethal power, meant to stir awe and admiration among his followers while intimidating his enemies. [...]

Sowing doubt and creating mass fear

Recently, the White House announced it was ending Temporary Protective Status (TPS) for hundreds of thousands of refugees from war-torn, dangerous, and stricken parts of the world, from Haiti to Afghanistan. With respect to the latter, he even turned our nation’s back upon the very people who collaborated with the U.S. during the long war we started there. These refugees now face persecution and even death should they be returned to the Taliban-controlled country. Despite its welcome stance on the fundamental right of due process, the Supreme Court has proven no bar to the mass deportation of millions of migrants previously under protected status here. Just yesterday, apparently agreeing that immigration decisions including TPS lie within the ambit of the executive branch’s authority, the justices permitted the Department of Homeland Security under Secretary Kristi Noem to end TPS for 300,000 Venezuelan migrants. This termination is now happening long before their statuses were set to expire. This means that all of these people, who arrived here legally after accepting an offer to come here from the Biden administration, are now subject to deportation. The lesson to the world is that the offer and promises of a prior U.S. president mean nothing to the new one. The message is both deeply unjust and utterly lacking in humanity: You may have come here legally, but we will find a way to send you back anyway. As a result of this ruling and Noem’s draconian order, the lives of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans, along with millions of their families and friends, have suddenly been upended. Many justifiably fear what will happen to them next. Will they be seized off the street or out of their cars? Will they be held indefinitely in decrepit and dangerous ICE detention facilities? Will they be sent back to their native country or instead to a third country, perhaps even to prison there? The U.S. has already demonstrated that its en masse mistreatment of migrants is intentional and without remorse or recourse. There are now well-documented horror stories of scores of men who are wholly innocent of any criminal activity being sent to El Salvador’s CECOT prison.

[...]

Making cruelty the new normal

There is a fourth, and perhaps most disturbing, reason for the administration’s cruelty: conditioning the U.S. populace to it. For those of us who remain horrified by its actions, the White House is hoping we ultimately treat it like we now do mass shootings. That is to say, the administration hopes it becomes so commonplace that we hear about it, shake our heads in resigned hopelessness, and begin to accept it as inevitable. For the cult followers of Trump, there is a still more dangerous goal. He wants them to absorb and appreciate the cruelty and make it part of their political identity. When flights bearing migrants to El Salvador began, the White House put out a video depicting the preparation and use of chains and shackles upon migrants being rendered or deported. Along with the video, it used the acronym ASMR, which stands for “Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response.” [...]

Pushing the boundaries

Earlier in this piece, I noted that the creation of “domestic enemies” such as migrants permits the government to target not just the migrants themselves but the liberals and activists who support them as “enemies of the state.” The White House is now attempting to sow doubt and fear among its political opponents by using the power of the state to intimidate them and even lock them up, too. Specifically, the administration has now begun to target members of other branches of government. These include Judge Hannah Dugan in Wisconsin, who was recently indicted on two federal counts of “obstructing proceedings” and “concealing a person from arrest” as ICE agents sought to detain a migrant attending a criminal proceeding in her courtroom. Federal authorities have also targeted Rep. LaMonica McIver of New Jersey, who as of today stands charged by the Justice Department for “assault” at an ICE facility near Newark as she sought to carry out her statutorily protected right to inspect a migrant detention facility in her state. This is a deliberate test, not just of the administration's own willingness to cross traditional boundaries and infringe upon the judicial and legislative prerogatives and immunities of the other governmental branches, but of the public’s willingness to tolerate it.

The Tyrant 47 Regime’s policies on immigration are about cruelty.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Elizabeth Weiss

Published; Jan 17, 2025

Biological anthropology and archaeology are facing a censorship crisis. Censorship can be defined simply as the suppression of speech, public communication, or information, often because it is deemed harmful or offensive. It can be enforced by government agencies or private institutions. Even self-censorship is increasingly prevalent, such as when an author decides not to publish something due to fear of backlash from their colleagues, or the belief that their findings may cause harm.

In these fields, censorship is primarily driven by professional associations like the American Anthropological Association (AAA) and the California Society for Archaeology, academic journals (often produced by these associations) such as Bioarchaeology International, universities, and museums, including the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. The focus of this censorship largely involves the suppression of images—including X-rays and CT-scans—of human remains and funerary objects, which are artifacts found in graves.

Biological anthropologists, such as bioarchaeologists (who study human remains from the archaeological record), have historically used photos and X-rays of skeletal remains and mummies to explore disease patterns of past peoples, teach new methods of age estimation and sex identification, and attract new students to the field of biological anthropology. Archaeologists use photos of artifacts to facilitate comparisons with other artifacts, aid in reconstructing past cultures, and explore topics like the peopling of the Americas, prehistoric trade patterns, and the emergence of new technologies. These are just a few of the many ways images have been used in the field.

Yet, in recent years, the use of photos of human remains and artifacts has faced increasing censorship. For example, the guidelines of the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) and its journals state: “Out of respect for diverse cultural traditions, photographs of full or explicit human remains are not accepted for publication in any SAA journal.”

Additionally, they add that “line drawings or other renderings of human remains may be an acceptable substitute for photographs.” In other words, they also may not be acceptable! So, the photo on the left would definitely not be accepted in SAA journals, and the image on the right may or may not be accepted.

In conference bookrooms, books featuring covers with photos or realistic images of bones are now being rejected for display. Ironically, just ten years ago, my cover photo from Paleopathology in Perspective: Bone Health and Disease through Time was so popular that someone stole the poster from the SAA conference bookroom. Just three years later, however, the SAA wouldn’t allow my publisher to buy advertising space using the cover of my book Reading the Bones: Activity, Biology, and Culture. Now, even realistic images of human remains are shunned! Somehow, I doubt my latest book, On the Warpath: My Battles with Indians, Pretendians, and Woke Warriors, will make it into any anthropology or archaeology conference bookrooms either!

Southeastern Archaeology, the journal of the Southeastern Archaeological Conference, has implemented a policy that it “will no longer publish photographs of funerary objects/belongings.” This is an expansion of their previous policy against publishing photographs of human remains. They now add that “in lieu of photographs, authors may choose to include line drawings or other representations of funerary objects/belongings.” This decision was initially made without member input, leading go backlash against the decision. However, after a discussion and a vote, the censorship was upheld. Majority rule is no way to run a scientific organization—which should be done on adherence to the principles and methodologies of science!

Not to be outdone by the southeastern archaeologists, the Society for California Archaeology (SCA) declared that “NO depictions of the remains of any specific person, regardless of ancestry, are to be included in any presentations, including photographs, drawings, X-rays, 3-D models, etc.” So, forget displaying any historic figures such as the mummy of Lenin, the death mask of Ishi, or the skeletal remains of Joseph Merrick (also known as the Elephant Man, who taught many people that physical deformity does not equate to a lack of intelligence). This restriction even extends to individuals like Jeremy Bentham, a professor from London College, who explicitly requested his preserved body be displayed, illustrating the breadth of these new policies. All of these and many others are now strictly off limits!

While banning photos, the SCA does permit the use of “[d]iagrams of generic skeletons, bones, teeth, or other body tissues.” Additionally, at their conferences, “[a] caution symbol will be placed next to all presentations discussing human remains in the program and on signage outside the door of the session so that those who wish to avoid this subject matter can easily do so.” Is education truly about avoiding uncomfortable information and materials?

The AAA’s Commission on the Ethical Treatment of Human Remains has ruled that images and digital materials must be treated as parts of bodies—and, thus, not published in any public spaces, including on social media. They state:

The use of images and any other digital materials (e.g. maps or GIS) derived from human tissues or Ancestral remains should be considered as part of the respectful treatment of those whose actual remains are used. This treatment acknowledges that their use should be restricted to defined (and consented) purposes, and that such use should remain confined to a protected, nonpublic space (and should never be displayed on social media or other non-password protected internet sites, including educational sites, and museums).

In other words, even maps constructed with DNA information are now subject to restriction!

They also plan to require members to take an “ethics pledge” to join or renew their membership. This is to ensure that no one goes rogue and shows a human bone in a place where someone might actually see it.

Journals that once served as valuable resources for understanding bone pathology (or disease) are now discarding the most important tool of all—images. Bioarchaeology International now demands “explicit recent permission” from descendants for the use of photos or images of human remains, even if the image were taken before these requirements and had been previously published (often on multiple occasions). These are referred to as “legacy images.” The journal further states that “if no permissions are forthcoming, the manuscripts are not considered for review.” Bioarchaeology International is not alone in censoring the use of legacy images; nearly all peer-reviewed anthropology and archaeology journals now enforce a similar policy.

One exception is the American Association of Biological Anthropology, which publishes the prestigious American Journal of Biological Anthropology. This organization specifies that the requirement to obtain permission for images and data of human remains applies only to new data; “legacy data is not included.” One wonders how long these comparatively ‘courageous’ holdouts will last before caving in. Currently, they have a committee developing a policy on human remains.

The International Journal of Paleopathology specializes in case studies of rare pathologies, where photos are essential to conveying information. The editorial board acknowledges the usefulness of photos, but they also state that:

While careful description of pathological lesions is essential to research in paleopathology, authors are encouraged to consider whether photographs of human remains are critical to the presentation of the research. If not essential, out of respect for descendent communities, they should be replaced with drawings or included as supplementary material. Authors may wish to consult the editor regarding these issues.

Can a line drawing really do justice to the complex and intricate changes that occur on skeletons due to diseases like osteomyelitis (bone infections), osteoarthritis, cribra orbitalia (a sign of anemia), or the various forms of dental disease seen sometimes in a single individual?

Beyond this censorship, institutions are also toeing the ideological line to exclude images of human remains. In September 2023, Penn Museum decided that its inventory would not include such images. And, the renowned Mütter Museum of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, which aims to educate the public about anatomical medicine and health, has removed all images of human remains from its online database. This includes the image of Carol Orzel, who had specifically wished that her body be displayed to educate others about fibrodysplasia ossificans progressive, the painful, debilitating, and fatal bone and cartilage disease she suffered from.

The Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History issues a warning to anyone who might find human remains: “Never take photos of human remains in our region; that is culturally inappropriate here.” But Santa Barbara is a region that encompasses many cultures, including some Central Mexican communities who do not view photographing human remains as inappropriate, as they celebrate their ancestral past by displaying the dead. For example, Lisa Holtzover and Juan R. Argueta note in their 2017 article that in the central Mexican town of Xaltocan, indigenous residents support archaeological research and the exhibition of ancient human remains. Yet, North American academics often criticize their cultural preferences, even while they claim to be decolonizing the field. In their blind adherence to wokeism, academics’ patronizing “we know best” approach towards indigenous peoples who deviate from their narrative exemplifies a white savior complex. Ironically, those who claim to oppose racism in their quest for wokeism are themselves perpetuating it. What next? Should we give Egyptian mummies a Christian burial in the name of decolonization?

Universities, especially in California, have also imposed complete moratoria on the use of human remains images. For example, on August 30, 2023, California State University Bakersfield’s president issued a moratorium that stated:

[T]he university is placing a moratorium on the research, teaching, display, imaging, and circulation of human remains and cultural items (including archival material, notes, movies, and data) that are potentially subject to NAGPRA and CalNAGPRA.

Similarly, on March 26, 2024, the president of California Polytechnic Pomona issued a memorandum stating:

Cal Poly Pomona will consult with Tribes prior to access, use, distribution or display of potentially sensitive or proprietary information. This includes but is not limited to images, renderings, and reproductions of ancestral remains and cultural items that are or have been in a university’s collection.

The universities are dressing up their actions as compliance with national and state reburial laws, yet these laws do not yet ban the use of images. And, from the look of anthropologists’ self-censoriousness and the acts of university presidents, new laws are likely not even necessary to restrict scientific research and educational efforts.

But this isn’t just a US problem. For instance, Uppsala University in Sweden advises that “photographs of human remains from indigenous ethnic groups are not normally to be published.” Similarly, the National Museum of Scotland has put out a statement that “All images of human remains except those that are wrapped have been removed from our online collections database.” At the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, this policy resulted in the absurd covering up of a mummy that was wrapped because of the photo behind the mummy contained images of skulls from a forensic collection.

One may wonder what has led to such vast censorship. Progressive anthropologists have decided that images—and, in some cases, data—from human remains and funerary objects cause harm to indigenous peoples. They adopt the narrative from indigenous activists that these images are dangerous, rather than explaining the importance of research and dispelling the notion that societal ills like alcoholism, missing women and children, and poverty stem from evil spirits roaming the earth and wreaking havoc on their lives.

For instance, in a 2020 book chapter on digitizing anthropological collections, Laure Spake and colleagues, citing the Smithsonian’s collaboration with the Tlingit, stated, “the disturbance of Ancestors and their belongings can result in physical danger for the living.” Ironically, the authors used this argument to advocate for 3D scanning and creating replicas to allow for the rapid reburial of human remains as quickly as possible—a viewpoint that is now considered outdated!

At a Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act meeting on January 5, 2023, there was a discussion on the deletion of digital data. Even non-fungible tokens (NFTs) were discussed, although those discussing them didn’t even know what they were. During the meeting, Hawaiian Native activists argued that it’s possible to “entice the spirit of someone to inhabit” photos, digital data, and replicas, which they assert can be harmful. Consequently, the tribe opposes making scans and casts.

Larry Zimmerman and Margaret Conkey, in their 2024 article for the SAA Record, argue that control over photos and data should belong to Indigenous communities because it is “respectful” to believe their feelings of harm. In their words, “when someone tells you that what you are saying or doing hurts them and you truly respect them, you will make every effort you can to eliminate or at least to understand the cause of the hurt.”

Furthermore, in the 2024 AAA Ethical Commission on Human Remains, Sabrina Agarwal and her colleagues repeatedly imply that harm will come to descendent communities from research. The term “harm” actually was mentioned 44 times, including in the statement:

As an ethical approach to ethical solutions, the Commission chose to meet with representatives of those most affected by anthropological work with ancestral remains to learn their assessments of how they might be harmed or protected from harm when research and education is considered.

In a 2020 article in Sapiens, Chip Colwell wrote that “photographs of human are problematic because of specific cultural beliefs.” He elaborates that the Navajo, for instance, believe encountering spirits of the dead can sicken those who see them. He helpfully then adds that photos are more harmful than line drawings, 3D scans, or casts.

Also in 2020, Deborah Thomas, then the editor-in-chief of American Anthropologist, selected a photo of Margaret Mead with skulls for an issue featuring a special section on the anthropology of global white supremacy, complete with a republished conversation between Mead and James Baldwin. The image sparked a social media uproar and was said to be violent, racist, and harmful to indigenous and black communities. Thomas, agreeing that the image produced trauma, changed the cover and issued a groveling apology, which included the statement that “We know the role that anthropology has played in the erasure of Indigenous peoples in the Americas through its salvage/savage ethnography project and its continued use of human remains for ‘research’ purposes.”

Unfortunately, by leaving anthropology and archaeology devoid of images of human remains and funerary objects, we will learn less about the past. Legacy data will not be allowed for comparative research, and our next generation of forensic anthropologists will be poorly trained. More troubling is that non-scientists who attribute normal human variation to supernatural or alien influences will continue to captivate young minds with sensational images, drawing them towards pseudoscience instead of a genuine scientific understanding of the world.

Moreover, we should not expect censorship in anthropology and archaeology will be limited to new publications featuring human remains. I have no doubt that woke academics and publishers will start to remove previously-published materials. For example, the University of Florida Press deleted the images from my blog post, “Human Variation: More Than Skin Deep!”—which was intended to promote my book Reading the Bones—two years after its initial publication on their blog.

What is the solution for anthropologists? Woke anthropologists suggest a different mindset is needed. Zimmerman and Conkey argue that archaeologists will be required to abandon “cherished ideas like academic freedom” and “relinquishing complete control, ownership, or even stewardship of excavated materials” to continue working in the field. Additionally, the AAA Commission on the Ethical Treatment of Human Remains would also like to curtail our desire for academic freedom. They write, in a scolding tone, that “Academic freedom is not synonymous with ‘unrestricted access.’ Scholars, educators and museum curators must be responsible to descendants’ concerns for the dignified treatment of their dead.”

Once academic freedom is relinquished and the data—images and all—are in the hands of activist descendant communities, don’t expect new scientific discoveries. Instead, expect woke fairy tales arising out of victim narratives.

Censorship (and self-censorship) of images should not be seen as an isolated issue. It’s symptomatic of a wider pathology afflicting the field. Anthropology is dying. But when it’s finally dead, don’t expect to see a picture of the body!

--

About the Author

Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at San Jose State University and National Association of Scholars Board Member. Author of On the Warpath: My Battles with Indians, Pretendians, and Woke Warriors.

==

This is unabashed corruption.

Any organization or institution which implements policies like this must be stripped of all government (i.e. taxpayer) funding. You don't get to implement ideological dogma when the taxpayer is paying for it.

[mariacallous]

Wading through the latest dreck from the 2024 campaign, it seems that a racist congressman from Louisiana has demanded that the mythic dog-and-cat-eating, “vudu”-practicing Haitian immigrants of Springfield, Ohio, slurred by Donald Trump on the national debate stage earlier this month, “better get their mind right and their ass out of our country before January 20th.” Or else. Under pressure from colleagues in the House on Wednesday, the congressman, Clay Higgins, deleted the social-media post. Then hours later he told CNN that he stood by it anyway: “It’s all true. . . . It’s not a big deal to me. It’s like something stuck to the bottom of my boot. Just scrape it off.” Asked about the controversy, House Speaker Mike Johnson called Higgins “a dear friend of mine” and a “very principled man.” As for the tweet, Johnson, an ostentatiously devout Christian, replied, “We move forward. We believe in redemption around here.”

Outrage is an impossible emotion to sustain in this age of manufactured political outrage. I know it; Higgins and Johnson surely know it, too. Indeed, they are counting on it. Who, after all, will remember this particular bit of hate speech next week, when there will undoubtedly be so many newer, fresher outrages to be upset about? But still. Maybe pause a minute on this one. While Democrats agonize over the proper levels of policy detail required to prove Kamala Harris’s suitability for the Presidency, Trump and his acolytes have gone deep into the racist recesses of the American psyche to run a campaign meant to stir the passionate hatreds and deepest insecurities of their followers.

J. D. Vance recently made the mistake of publicly admitting the artifice inherent in all this. In an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash, the Republican Vice-Presidential candidate was asked about the alleged Haitian pet consumption and why he and the former President kept bringing up a story that had no basis in fact. “The American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes,” he said. “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.” When Bash expressed shock at his admission, Vance backpedalled, but barely, claiming that he had, in fact, heard “firsthand accounts” from his constituents, causing him to spread the rumor, never mind that they were swiftly debunked. “But,” he concluded, “yes, we created the actual focus that allowed the American media to talk about this story and the suffering caused by Kamala Harris’s policies.”

Days of coverage ensued about what he did or did not admit in the interview, lost in which was the important point that this was not a “gotcha” story about a single errant statement from Vance but a core belief that has underpinned the MAGA approach to politics since Trump’s demagogic début, nine years ago. The jokes about Trump’s “they’re eating the dogs” debate line might have missed the point, which is that when the laughter fades, the slurs remain. This is how propaganda works. Ask Congressman Higgins.

I was reminded of this when I received a call from Fiona Hill, the top National Security Council aide on Russia for much of Trump’s Presidency. Hill told me that she was stunned by how similar Vance’s defiant embrace of the radicalizing power of stories, whether true or not, was to the views advanced by Vladimir Putin’s chief international propagandist, the Russia state-television personality Margarita Simonyan: So what, in effect, if we make stuff up? “I was just really struck: RT and VT—Vance-Trump—are the same,” she said. “It’s the same weaponization of migration and disinformation.”

The episode recalled for Hill an incident early in Trump’s Presidency, in November of 2017, when Trump tweeted out several inflammatory videos from a British far-right group purporting to show attacks carried out by Muslim immigrants. British officials contacted Hill, urging her to get the White House to have Trump pull down his tweets and disavow them. But, she said, when she brought the concerns to the White House press staff, which was then run by the current governor of Arkansas, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, she was rebuffed. Hill was told that Trump was simply using the videos to further his domestic political agenda. When Sanders was then asked about the tweets by reporters, her response was an uncanny preview of Vance’s recent remarks: “Whether it’s a real video,” she said, “the threat is real.”

Vance’s justification for the Springfield slur—that he was really making a point about “Kamala Harris’s policies”—is a reminder of another one of the big lies powering this election: the charade that Trump is actually an ideological MAGA warrior engaging in legitimate and substantive policy dispute, and that that policy agenda is what makes him appealing to his otherwise unrepresented followers. This canard has been one of the most persistent fallacies we’ve heard from Republicans about Trump, a category error that fundamentally misses what kind of politician he really is.

I was reminded of this often overlooked point while moderating a book launch for “The Origins of Elected Strongmen: How Personalist Parties Destroy Democracy from Within,” an important new academic work by Andrea Kendall-Taylor, a former national-intelligence official covering Russia and Eurasia, and two academic colleagues, Erica Frantz and Joseph Wright. Their study places Trump in the international category to which he properly belongs—that of an aspiring autocrat who has taken over the Republican Party and turned it into a “personalist” vehicle for himself, the type of party that, in the authors’ words, exists “primarily to promote and further the leader’s personal political career rather than advance policy.” This is now a global phenomenon, the authors found—from Brazil under Bolsonaro and Turkey under Erdoğan to less cited cases in El Salvador, Georgia, Poland, Senegal, and Tunisia. Putin’s Russia, regrettably, is the modern archetype, a template going back more than two decades that the others have followed.

Where does all this leave the non-MAGA Republican? We actually know the answer to this one: they are hunkered down, still largely planning to vote the party line, averting their eyes, ignoring the slurs, and pretending that Trump and his campaign are something other than what they are. Nikki Haley offered a pretty clear version of the contortions required by the hard-core Republican partisan who both hates Trump and is voting for him anyway, because, well, the policy. During the début of Haley’s new Sirius XM radio show, on Wednesday, she struggled to explain why she was now publicly endorsing a man that she called “toxic” and “totally unhinged” just a few months ago. She said that she had not forgotten his campaign’s personal attacks on her—including, apparently, putting a bird cage outside of her hotel room to emphasize his insult of her as a “bird brain”—but that she was willing to overlook the insults now, because “politics is not for thin-skinned people” and she needed to think of “the good of our country.” She then listed the economy, the border, national security, and “freedom” as reasons why she would make such a sacrifice. Uh-huh.

To the extent that Trump is promoting policy in 2024 at all, his proposals largely revolve around a single theme: he will wave his magic wand and make problems go away. At the G.O.P. Convention in Milwaukee, he promised, “Under my plan, incomes will skyrocket, inflation will vanish completely, jobs will come roaring back, and the middle class will prosper like never, ever before.” In his rallies, he pledges to end the war in Ukraine “in twenty-four hours.” The Republicans’ all-caps political platform, which was approved at the Convention in Milwaukee after being personally dictated, in part, by Trump, contains planks such as vows to “STOP THE MIGRANT CRIME EPIDEMIC” and “MAKE OUR COLLEGE CAMPUSES SAFE AND PATRIOTIC AGAIN.”

Earlier this week in Georgia, Trump appeared at a campaign rally that was billed as a policy rollout for his plans to inaugurate “a new age of American industrialism.” In between extolling his proposed tariffs as a brilliant scheme to “take other countries’ jobs,” Trump, the policy maven, questioned Harris’s intelligence and patriotism, attacked electric cars (except those manufactured by his supporter Elon Musk), and said immigrants were “coming from all over the world” to ruin the country. Trump’s signature moment in this rally, as in other recent speeches, was when he recounted his takeaway from the two assassination attempts against him: “People say: It was God, and God came down and He saved you because He wants you to bring America back.” Still think this is about policy? Kamala Harris might need an eighty-two-page economic plan printed out on glossy paper, but not Trump. His was sent from Heaven above to rescue us. 

[schraubd]

Nothing Else Like It

In one sense, what we're going through in America is highly reminiscent of other countries which have recently gone through authoritarian regresses. Hungary, India, Israel, the Philippines, and Brazil, to name a few, all have seen liberal democratic institutions decay in the face of far-right populist demagogues. I've found this weirdly comforting -- not because what's happened in those countries hasn't been awful, but because somehow knowing this sort of thing doesn't stand outside history is reassuring. It's not the end of time, it is a thing happening in time. Yet even this reassurance is, I fear, somewhat misleading. Because while it may be true that Hungary, India, Israel, etc. have gone through this before; and even true that (some of) these countries have or will come out the other side, what we have not ever seen is a global hegemon going through this sort of regression. Without understating the havoc that a recklessly authoritarian India or Israel can wreak on a local or even regional scale, they're unlikely to take down the entire international order with them. An out-of-control America could tank the global economy, could cause anarchic chaos to break out all over the planet, could set off a literal World War III. There's literally been nothing like it. And domestically, with the possible exception of the Redemption-era South, we haven't in American history seen as rapid an authoritarian rollback of democratic equality and rule of law as what the Trump administration has inaugurated in its first week(!) in office. Every aspect of our constitutional order feels like it under attack, all at once, and nobody really knows how to respond. This uncertainty, unfortunately, is sometimes paired with a strangely confident certainty that purports to know exactly how to respond -- which is to say, "something not what we're doing now." At one level, I understand where this frustration is coming from -- "what we're doing now" can't be the right response, because it's not stopping things that need to be stopped. At another level, it really does elide the brute reality that nobody knows exactly what the most effective response is to Trump's blitzkrieg fascism. For example, I saw a report that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) was taking the stance that Democrats should ignore Trump's "flood the zone" tactics and focus, laser-like, on the economic damage he was wreaking. I also saw many panning this tactic as leaving many critical issues unaddressed while missing opportunities to make hay out of massively unpopular oversteps that weren't clearly economic. I certainly see the weight of this critique, but I also understand the other side -- that trying to cover everything will inevitably result in an unfocused, chaotic response that lacks a clear narrative and just reinforces a "Dems in disarray" sensibility. How do I resolve that tension? I'm not sure -- and to be blunt, I think most people are unsure too. My best proposal is this: the important thing is to keep fighting. The where or when or how is far less important than that it happens at all. This means I do agree wholeheartedly with the stance that Democrats' job is to be the opposition party and not give any free inches to Republican policies. But beyond that, I'm not sure the best use of our energy is engaging in internal sniping regarding who is prioritizing what messaging or narrative point best. Is that a possible line to hold? I don't know. Is it even the best line to hold? I don't know! We're in new territory here. There's been nothing else like it. via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/QpsJeGa

[encounterthepast]

From: Fear and Loathing: Closer to the Edge

https://www.facebook.com/share/15p91Ds86p/

There are moments in history where you can feel the tectonic plates of power shifting under your feet, the precise seconds when empires declare themselves rotten and ready to collapse. February 28, 2025, was one of those moments—a grotesque display of unchecked narcissism, geopolitical idiocy, and the full-throttle transformation of American foreign policy into a goddamn mafia shakedown.

Donald Trump, the world’s loudest and dumbest charlatan, decided to hold a public execution of Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, not with bullets, but with bullying. This was not diplomacy. This was not strategy. This was the kind of goonish humiliation typically reserved for reality television, except now the stakes were measured in millions of lives and the looming specter of World War III.

“YOU’RE GAMBLING WITH WORLD WAR III”

Trump—flanked by his yes-man JD Vance and an eerily silent Marco Rubio—welcomed Zelenskyy to the Oval Office only to berate, belittle, and ultimately dismiss him like a waiter who forgot to refill his Diet Coke. The Ukrainian president had made the grave mistake of advocating for his people, for his country, for his soldiers dying daily on the front lines against Russian invaders. But in Trump’s world, there is no room for dignity or resistance—only total submission to the Don.

"You’re gambling with World War III," Trump barked at Zelenskyy, acting like a discount Tony Soprano shaking down a local shopkeeper. "You either make a deal, or we are out." The message was crystal clear: Surrender to Putin, or America lets you rot.

When Zelenskyy pushed back—trying to explain, like a rational human being, that diplomacy requires more than rolling over and exposing your belly to a psychotic autocrat like Vladimir Putin—Vance chimed in, whining that it was "disrespectful" to discuss such things in front of the American media. Disrespectful! As if the real problem here was the optics, not the grotesque moral betrayal unfolding in real time.

TRUMP’S FIXATION WITH GRATITUDE: A MOB BOSS DEMANDING TRIBUTE

"Have you ever said thank you once?" Vance sneered at Zelenskyy, echoing his master’s worldview that all human interactions are transactional. "You have to be thankful," Trump added, "you don’t have the cards. You’re buried there."

This is what American diplomacy has become: an extortion racket.

Forget alliances, forget history, forget standing up to despots—Trump views everything through the lens of a cheap con artist running a rigged casino. Ukraine, in his mind, is a desperate gambler, and Trump is the pit boss deciding whether to extend another round of credit.

If Zelenskyy had gotten on his knees and kissed Trump’s golden slippers, maybe he’d have left with something. But instead, he left with nothing, because he had the audacity to act like the elected leader of a sovereign nation, rather than a groveling servant.

THE CANCELED PRESS CONFERENCE: WHEN THE HUMILIATION IS TOO MUCH TO SPIN

After the carnage, Trump did what he always does: He took to Truth Social to declare victory.

"I have determined that President Zelenskyy is not ready for Peace," he wrote, as if the real issue is Ukraine’s unwillingness to surrender, rather than Russia’s ongoing campaign of war crimes and territorial theft

The joint press conference was canceled—which in diplomatic terms is the equivalent of overturning the table and storming out of the restaurant. Zelenskyy was seen leaving the White House, no deal signed, no support secured. Just the bitter taste of betrayal in his mouth.

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian ambassador literally facepalmed in the middle of the meeting. She couldn’t even hide her disgust. This was the international equivalent of watching your boss drunkenly scream at a client in a meeting while you rub your temples and quietly plan your resignation.

TRUMP’S ‘PEACE’ PLAN IS A SURRENDER PLAN

This is all part of a deliberate pivot in American foreign policy. Trump has always sided with Russia, whether it’s calling Putin "a very smart guy," ignoring his war crimes, or pretending Ukraine started the war. Now, his administration is pushing a so-called "peace plan" that amounts to a glorified land grab for Moscow.

The Wall Street Journal has already reported that Trump’s advisers are split on how exactly to force Ukraine to submit. Some want a "frozen conflict"—which translates to "Russia keeps what it stole"—while others are pushing for a formal deal that outright cedes Ukrainian land and resources to Putin. Either way, the outcome is the same: Ukraine loses, Russia wins, and Trump gets to preen about his ‘deal-making.’

THE DEATH OF AMERICA’S WORD

Meanwhile, Putin is watching. And he’s grinning. Because now he knows that Trump will do his dirty work for him.

The entire world saw this Oval Office debacle. If you’re an ally of the United States, you just learned a very clear lesson: You cannot trust America under Donald Trump. Your security, your sovereignty, and your survival are all secondary to whether Trump personally feels flattered. If you are not groveling at his feet, you’re expendable

Zelenskyy was just the first ally to be fed to the wolves. He won’t be the last.

Welcome to America, 2025. This is what losing looks like.

[warsofasoiaf]

re: China/Taiwan

All of the examples of Chinese action you mentioned from the last 12 years were, as you pointed out with Joint Sword, in response to something from Taiwan or America (and I’ll own that I should have made Taiwanese agency here clearer - you’re correct that it isn’t solely America leading). Regardless of rhetoric from China it seems like the pace of change isn’t being set by China.

ADIZ incursions are nearly impossible to avoid given the overlapping areas - the Taiwanese ADIZ extends over the mainland, and Taiwan somewhat arbitrarily counts activities in the southwest zone outside or what most people would consider Taiwan as median line crossings. The pace has escalated over the last few years but as you pointed out it follows American and Taiwanese action like Pelosi’s visit.

With natalism, I’m again not clear what ‘investigation’ or ‘survey’ you’re referring to (and those terms aren’t interchangeable). There was a recent policy announced to lower the cost of raising children, but there’s also been a lot more work over the last two years to, for example, introduce vouchers for consumer goods upgrades/trade-ins. I’m not sure why you’re evaluating natalism as a top priority for the Chinese government when the Chinese government’s rhetoric and actual policy work seems to downplay it and treat it as an extension of cost of living challenges?

I’m not sure what other foreign policy has to do with anything - water rights negotiations, internal policing in Hong Kong, and the yes aggressive actions in relations to maritime border disputes in the SCS are very different from the sui generis relationship with Taiwan. That would be like saying we should treat America’s relation with Cuba as grounds for assessing Trump’s policy on Canada after his recent 51st state joke, which we hopefully agree would be deeply misguided.

I never said anti corruption was Xi’s primary focus, I said it was his top priority which legislatively it is. He’s promoted the previous head of party discipline, reiterated anti corruption rhetoric far more often than anything to do with Taiwan, and strengthened internal monitoring. He may well be doing it to strengthen his position, I won’t argue otherwise, but it’s definitely a much higher priority than anything Taiwan related.

You’re conflating cross strait relations with reunification rhetoric. Yes there have been swings in the relationship especially in 1996, but Beijing’s position has been consistent. Reunification is inevitable, peaceful reunification is preferred, force remains on the table. Xi hasn’t changed any of that. What has changed is that since the sunflower movement pro-mainland factions in Taiwan have been weakened and the hard greens have been emboldened, and more importantly Trump moved the Overton window to back Taiwan and challenge China more aggressively. In that framework China is the reactive party and unlikely to initiate an invasion in the near future - there’s nothing to suggest Taiwan has moved up the priority lists only that action/reaction framework is more active

Alright, wow, there's a lot to unpack there.

The idea that "pro-mainland factions have been weakened," as if by outside action, doesn't pass merit. Taiwan's democratic push came with a push against reunification because, having experienced decades of the Chiang dictatorship that repressed Taiwanese culture and having achieved a representative democracy, they were not eager to place themselves back under the boots of another dictator who would stamp out the island's heritage. This is a failure of China - they have made reunification unappealing. I'd argue that reunification rhetoric has changed from the Chinese side because it represents a much more drastic shift in the lives of the Taiwanese compared to decades prior. Moreover, I'd argue that Beijing has changed their position - they demanded that Tsai Ing-wen recognize the PRC's interpretation of the 1992 Consensus as opposed to the deliberate ambiguity of previous eras.

The idea that China has been a reactive player is again, completely wrong. Military drills are not cheap, and are not used as mere signaling devices. The first circumnavigation with fighter aircraft came after a statement saying "Our pledges have not changed and our goodwill has not changed." Somehow, though, that's aggression.

The Taiwanese rejection of the "one country, two systems" model is completely China's fault - they had espoused one country, two systems for Hong Kong only to completely brutalize the city. Much as we saw in Ukraine - the failure of the Budapest Memorandum to deter Russian violation of the Ukrainian border in the seizure of Crimea meant that Ukraine sought NATO membership as a deterrent. Taiwanese rejection of the one country, two systems model is because Beijing deliberately violated it.

Natalism, the about-to-go-into-effect pension reform, the relaxing of the previous one-child policy to a two and later three-child policy suggests that the demographic issues are actually of concern to Chinese lawmakers.

You've failed to make your point on the ADIZ. I was using the USAF figures and again, as I've noted, the ADIZ violations have continued for years after the Pelosi visit. This suggests to me that the idea that they were due to Pelosi is false - she's long left the island and the ADIZ violations continue at a high pace. It's used as a continual excuse, thus it holds no meaning. Sorry, but you have failed to create a logical argument for that to be the case as opposed to what it is, a deliberate attempt to intimidate Taiwan into pro-mainland policies as opposed to a reaction.

Your use of the reducto ad absurdum straw man fallacy has been noted and cheerfully ignored. Pattern shifts are a real thing in geopolitics. I'd recommend against using logical fallacies to prove your point - they're quite ineffective.

Characterizing China's foreign policy actions as "water rights negotiations, internal policing in Hong Kong, and the yes aggressive actions in relations to maritime border disputes in the SCS" is not only dishonest, it's outright disgusting and laughably debunkable. The SCS is not a maritime dispute - it's an illegal claim contrary to all international law (UNCLOS), laws which China had signed. The Mekong River issue is not a water rights negotiation, it was an attempt to create an artificial drought downstream and force concessions on independent countries and prevent them from conducting their own independent foreign policy, again in contravention to international institutions already addressing the issue - the Mekong River Commission. Hong Kong was not an internal policing matter, it was a violent crackdown characterized by arbitrary arrests, police brutality, and confessions extracted via torture. To frame them as such is to minimize very real violations of international law and human rights.

I get it, you're trying to push PRC talking points. I'd suggest pushing them elsewhere.

-SLAL

[dailyanarchistposts]

On the Experience of Moral Confusion

debt: noun 1 a sum of money owed. 2 the state of owing money. 3 a feeling of gratitude for a favour or service. —Oxford English Dictionary

If you owe the bank a hundred thousand dollars, the bank owns you. If you owe the bank a hundred million dollars, you own the bank. —American Proverb

Two years ago, by a series of strange coincidences, I found myself attending a garden party at Westminster Abbey. I was a bit uncomfortable. It’s not that other guests weren’t pleasant and amicable, and Father Graeme, who had organized the party, was nothing if not a gracious and charming host. But I felt more than a little out of place. At one point, Father Graeme intervened, saying that there was someone by a nearby fountain whom I would certainly want to meet. She turned out to be a trim, well-appointed young woman who, he explained, was an attorney—“but more of the activist kind. She works for a foundation that provides legal support for anti-poverty groups in London. You’ll probably have a lot to talk about.”

We chatted. She told me about her job. I told her I had been involved for many years with the global justice movement—“anti-globalization movement,” as it was usually called in the media. She was curious: she’d of course read a lot about Seattle, Genoa, the tear gas and street battles, but … well, had we really accomplished anything by all of that?

“Actually,” I said, “I think it’s kind of amazing how much we did manage to accomplish in those first couple of years.”

“For example?”

“Well, for example, we managed to almost completely destroy the IMF.”

As it happened, she didn’t actually know what the IMF was, so I offered that the International Monetary Fund basically acted as the world’s debt enforcers—“You might say, the high-finance equivalent of the guys who come to break your legs.” I launched into historical background, explaining how, during the ’70s oil crisis, OPEC countries ended up pouring so much of their newfound riches into Western banks that the banks couldn’t figure out where to invest the money; how Citibank and Chase therefore began sending agents around the world trying to convince Third World dictators and politicians to take out loans (at the time, this was called “go-go banking”); how they started out at extremely low rates of interest that almost immediately skyrocketed to 20 percent or so due to tight U.S. money policies in the early ‘80s; how, during the ’80s and ’90s, this led to the Third World debt crisis; how the IMF then stepped in to insist that, in order to obtain refinancing, poor countries would be obliged to abandon price supports on basic foodstuffs, or even policies of keeping strategic food reserves, and abandon free health care and free education; how all of this had led to the collapse of all the most basic supports for some of the poorest and most vulnerable people on earth. I spoke of poverty, of the looting of public resources, the collapse of societies, endemic violence, malnutrition, hopelessness, and broken lives.

“But what was your position?” the lawyer asked.

“About the IMF? We wanted to abolish it.”

“No, I mean, about the Third World debt.”

“Oh, we wanted to abolish that too. The immediate demand was to stop the IMF from imposing structural adjustment policies, which were doing all the direct damage, but we managed to accomplish that surprisingly quickly. The more long-term aim was debt amnesty. Something along the lines of the biblical Jubilee. As far as we were concerned,” I told her, “thirty years of money flowing from the poorest countries to the richest was quite enough.”

“But,” she objected, as if this were self-evident, “they’d borrowed the money! Surely one has to pay one’s debts.”

It was at this point that I realized this was going to be a very different sort of conversation than I had originally anticipated.

Where to start? I could have begun by explaining how these loans had originally been taken out by unelected dictators who placed most of it directly in their Swiss bank accounts, and ask her to contemplate the justice of insisting that the lenders be repaid, not by the dictator, or even by his cronies, but by literally taking food from the mouths of hungry children. Or to think about how many of these poor countries had actually already paid back what they’d borrowed three or four times now, but that through the miracle of compound interest, it still hadn’t made a significant dent in the principal. I could also observe that there was a difference between refinancing loans, and demanding that in order to obtain refinancing, countries have to follow some orthodox free-market economic policy designed in Washington or Zurich that their citizens had never agreed to and never would, and that it was a bit dishonest to insist that countries adopt democratic constitutions and then also insist that, whoever gets elected, they have no control over their country’s policies anyway. Or that the economic policies imposed by the IMF didn’t even work. But there was a more basic problem: the very assumption that debts have to be repaid.

Actually, the remarkable thing about the statement “one has to pay one’s debts” is that even according to standard economic theory, it isn’t true. A lender is supposed to accept a certain degree of risk. If all loans, no matter how idiotic, were still retrievable—if there were no bankruptcy laws, for instance—the results would be disastrous. What reason would lenders have not to make a stupid loan?

“Well, I know that sounds like common sense,” I said, “but the funny thing is, economically, that’s not how loans are actually supposed to work. Financial institutions are supposed to be ways of directing resources toward profitable investments. If a bank were guaranteed to get its money back, plus interest, no matter what it did, the whole system wouldn’t work. Say I were to walk into the nearest branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland and say ‘You know, I just got a really great tip on the horses. Think you could lend me a couple million quid?’ Obviously they’d just laugh at me. But that’s just because they know if my horse didn’t come in, there’d be no way for them to get the money back. But, imagine there was some law that said they were guaranteed to get their money back no matter what happens, even if that meant, I don’t know, selling my daughter into slavery or harvesting my organs or something. Well, in that case, why not? Why bother waiting for someone to walk in who has a viable plan to set up a laundromat or some such? Basically, that’s the situation the IMF created on a global level—which is how you could have all those banks willing to fork over billions of dollars to a bunch of obvious crooks in the first place.”

I didn’t get quite that far, because at about that point a drunken financier appeared, having noticed that we were talking about money, and began telling funny stories about moral hazard—which somehow, before too long, had morphed into a long and not particularly engrossing account of one of his sexual conquests. I drifted off.

Still, for several days afterward, that phrase kept resonating in my head.

“Surely one has to pay one’s debts.”

The reason it’s so powerful is that it’s not actually an economic statement: it’s a moral statement. After all, isn’t paying one’s debts what morality is supposed to be all about? Giving people what is due them. Accepting one’s responsibilities. Fulfilling one’s obligations to others, just as one would expect them to fulfill their obligations to you. What could be a more obvious example of shirking one’s responsibilities than reneging on a promise, or refusing to pay a debt?

It was that very apparent self-evidence, I realized, that made the statement so insidious. This was the kind of line that could make terrible things appear utterly bland and unremarkable. This may sound strong, but it’s hard not to feel strongly about such matters once you’ve witnessed the effects. I had. For almost two years, I had lived in the highlands of Madagascar. Shortly before I arrived, there had been an outbreak of malaria. It was a particularly virulent outbreak because malaria had been wiped out in highland Madagascar many years before, so that, after a couple of generations, most people had lost their immunity. The problem was, it took money to maintain the mosquito eradication program, since there had to be periodic tests to make sure mosquitoes weren’t starting to breed again and spraying campaigns if it was discovered that they were. Not a lot of money. But owing to IMF-imposed austerity programs, the government had to cut the monitoring program. Ten thousand people died. I met young mothers grieving for lost children. One might think it would be hard to make a case that the loss of ten thousand human lives is really justified in order to ensure that Citibank wouldn’t have to cut its losses on one irresponsible loan that wasn’t particularly important to its balance sheet anyway. But here was a perfectly decent woman—one who worked for a charitable organization, no less—who took it as self-evident that it was. After all, they owed the money, and surely one has to pay one’s debts.

For the next few weeks, that phrase kept coming back at me. Why debt? What makes the concept so strangely powerful? Consumer debt is the lifeblood of our economy. All modern nation-states are built on deficit spending. Debt has come to be the central issue of international politics. But nobody seems to know exactly what it is, or how to think about it.

The very fact that we don’t know what debt is, the very flexibility of the concept, is the basis of its power. If history shows anything, it is that there’s no better way to justify relations founded on violence, to make such relations seem moral, than by reframing them in the language of debt—above all, because it immediately makes it seem that it’s the victim who’s doing something wrong. Mafiosi understand this. So do the commanders of conquering armies. For thousands of years, violent men have been able to tell their victims that those victims owe them something. If nothing else, they “owe them their lives” (a telling phrase) because they haven’t been killed.

Nowadays, for example, military aggression is defined as a crime against humanity, and international courts, when they are brought to bear, usually demand that aggressors pay compensation. Germany had to pay massive reparations after World War I, and Iraq is still paying Kuwait for Saddam Hussein’s invasion in 1990. Yet the Third World debt, the debt of countries like Madagascar, Bolivia, and the Philippines, seems to work precisely the other way around. Third World debtor nations are almost exclusively countries that have at one time been attacked and conquered by European countries—often, the very countries to whom they now owe money. In 1895, for example, France invaded Madagascar, disbanded the government of then–Queen Ranavalona III, and declared the country a French colony. One of the first things General Gallieni did after “pacification,” as they liked to call it then, was to impose heavy taxes on the Malagasy population, in part so they could reimburse the costs of having been invaded, but also, since French colonies were supposed to be fiscally self-supporting, to defray the costs of building the railroads, highways, bridges, plantations, and so forth that the French regime wished to build. Malagasy taxpayers were never asked whether they wanted these railroads, highways, bridges, and plantations, or allowed much input into where and how they were built.[1] To the contrary: over the next half century, the French army and police slaughtered quite a number of Malagasy who objected too strongly to the arrangement (upwards of half a million, by some reports, during one revolt in 1947). It’s not as if Madagascar has ever done any comparable damage to France. Despite this, from the beginning, the Malagasy people were told they owed France money, and to this day, the Malagasy people are still held to owe France money, and the rest of the world accepts the justice of this arrangement. When the “international community” does perceive a moral issue, it’s usually when they feel the Malagasy government is being slow to pay their debts.

But debt is not just victor’s justice; it can also be a way of punishing winners who weren’t supposed to win. The most spectacular example of this is the history of the Republic of Haiti—the first poor country to be placed in permanent debt peonage. Haiti was a nation founded by former plantation slaves who had the temerity not only to rise up in rebellion, amidst grand declarations of universal rights and freedoms, but to defeat Napoleon’s armies sent to return them to bondage. France immediately insisted that the new republic owed it 150 million francs in damages for the expropriated plantations, as well as the expenses of outfitting the failed military expeditions, and all other nations, including the United States, agreed to impose an embargo on the country until it was paid. The sum was intentionally impossible (equivalent to about 18 billion dollars), and the resultant embargo ensured that the name “Haiti” has been a synonym for debt, poverty, and human misery ever since.[2]

Sometimes, though, debt seems to mean the very opposite. Starting in the 1980s, the United States, which insisted on strict terms for the repayment of Third World debt, itself accrued debts that easily dwarfed those of the entire Third World combined—mainly fueled by military spending. The U.S. foreign debt, though, takes the form of treasury bonds held by institutional investors in countries (Germany, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, the Gulf States) that are in most cases, effectively, U.S. military protectorates, most covered in U.S. bases full of arms and equipment paid for with that very deficit spending. This has changed a little now that China has gotten in on the game (China is a special case, for reasons that will be explained later), but not very much—even China finds that the fact it holds so many U.S. treasury bonds makes it to some degree beholden to U.S. interests, rather than the other way around.

So what is the status of all this money continually being funneled into the U.S. treasury? Are these loans? Or is it tribute? In the past, military powers that maintained hundreds of military bases outside their own home territory were ordinarily referred to as “empires,” and empires regularly demanded tribute from subject peoples. The U.S. government, of course, insists that it is not an empire—but one could easily make a case that the only reason it insists on treating these payments as “loans” and not as “tribute” is precisely to deny the reality of what’s going on.

Now, it’s true that, throughout history, certain sorts of debt, and certain sorts of debtor, have always been treated differently than others. In the 1720s, one of the things that most scandalized the British public when conditions at debtors’ prisons were exposed in the popular press was the fact that these prisons were regularly divided into two sections. Aristocratic inmates, who often thought of a brief stay in Fleet or Marshalsea as something of a fashion statement, were wined and dined by liveried servants and allowed to receive regular visits from prostitutes. On the “common side,” impoverished debtors were shackled together in tiny cells, “covered with filth and vermin,” as one report put it, “and suffered to die, without pity, of hunger and jail fever.”[3]

In a way you can see current world economic arrangements as a much larger version of the same thing: the U.S. in this case being the Cadillac debtor, Madagascar the pauper starving in the next cell—while the Cadillac debtors’ servants lecture him on how his problems are due to his own irresponsibility.

And there’s something more fundamental going on here, a philosophical question, even, that we might do well to contemplate. What is the difference between a gangster pulling out a gun and demanding you give him a thousand dollars of “protection money,” and that same gangster pulling out a gun and demanding you provide him with a thousand-dollar “loan”? In most ways, obviously, nothing. But in certain ways there is a difference. As in the case of the U.S. debt to Korea or Japan, were the balance of power at any point to shift, were America to lose its military supremacy, were the gangster to lose his henchmen, that “loan” might start being treated very differently. It might become a genuine liability. But the crucial element would still seem to be the gun.

There’s an old vaudeville gag that makes the same point even more elegantly—here, as improved on by Steve Wright:

I was walking down the street with a friend the other day and a guy with a gun jumps out of an alley and says “stick ’em up.”

As I pull out my wallet, I figure, “shouldn’t be a total loss.” So I pull out some money, turn to my friend and say, “Hey, Fred, here’s that fifty bucks I owe you.”

The robber was so offended he took out a thousand dollars of his own money, forced Fred to lend it to me at gunpoint, and then took it back again.

In the final analysis, the man with the gun doesn’t have to do anything he doesn’t want to do. But in order to be able to run even a regime based on violence effectively, one needs to establish some kind of set of rules. The rules can be completely arbitrary. In a way it doesn’t even matter what they are. Or, at least, it doesn’t matter at first. The problem is, the moment one starts framing things in terms of debt, people will inevitably start asking who really owes what to whom.

Arguments about debt have been going on for at least five thousand years. For most of human history—at least, the history of states and empires—most human beings have been told that they are debtors.[4] Historians, and particularly historians of ideas, have been oddly reluctant to consider the human consequences; especially since this situation—more than any other—has caused continual outrage and resentment. Tell people they are inferior, they are unlikely to be pleased, but this surprisingly rarely leads to armed revolt. Tell people that they are potential equals who have failed, and that therefore, even what they do have they do not deserve, that it isn’t rightly theirs, and you are much more likely to inspire rage. Certainly this is what history would seem to teach us. For thousands of years, the struggle between rich and poor has largely taken the form of conflicts between creditors and debtors—of arguments about the rights and wrongs of interest payments, debt peonage, amnesty, repossession, restitution, the sequestering of sheep, the seizing of vineyards, and the selling of debtors’ children into slavery. By the same token, for the last five thousand years, with remarkable regularity, popular insurrections have begun the same way: with the ritual destruction of the debt records—tablets, papyri, ledgers, whatever form they might have taken in any particular time and place. (After that, rebels usually go after the records of landholding and tax assessments.) As the great classicist Moses Finley often liked to say, in the ancient world, all revolutionary movements had a single program: “Cancel the debts and redistribute the land.”[5]

Our tendency to overlook this is all the more peculiar when you consider how much of our contemporary moral and religious language originally emerged directly from these very conflicts. Terms like “reckoning” or “redemption” are only the most obvious, since they’re taken directly from the language of ancient finance. In a larger sense, the same can be said of “guilt,” “freedom,” “forgiveness,” and even “sin.” Arguments about who really owes what to whom have played a central role in shaping our basic vocabulary of right and wrong.

The fact that so much of this language did take shape in arguments about debt has left the concept strangely incoherent. After all, to argue with the king, one has to use the king’s language, whether or not the initial premises make sense.

If one looks at the history of debt, then, what one discovers first of all is profound moral confusion. Its most obvious manifestation is that most everywhere, one finds that the majority of human beings hold simultaneously that (1) paying back money one has borrowed is a simple matter of morality, and (2) anyone in the habit of lending money is evil.

It’s true that opinions on this latter point do shift back and forth. One extreme possibility might be the situation the French anthropologist Jean-Claude Galey encountered in a region of the eastern Himalayas, where as recently as the 1970s, the low-ranking castes—they were referred to as “the vanquished ones,” since they were thought to be descended from a population once conquered by the current landlord caste, many centuries before—lived in a situation of permanent debt dependency. Landless and penniless, they were obliged to solicit loans from the landlords simply to find a way to eat—not for the money, since the sums were paltry, but because poor debtors were expected to pay back the interest in the form of work, which meant they were at least provided with food and shelter while they cleaned out their creditors’ outhouses and reroofed their sheds. For the “vanquished”—as for most people in the world, actually—the most significant life expenses were weddings and funerals. These required a good deal of money, which always had to be borrowed. In such cases it was common practice, Galey explains, for high-caste moneylenders to demand one of the borrower’s daughters as security. Often, when a poor man had to borrow money for his daughter’s marriage, the security would be the bride herself. She would be expected to report to the lender’s household after her wedding night, spend a few months there as his concubine, and then, once he grew bored, be sent off to some nearby timber camp, where she would have to spend the next year or two as a prostitute working off her father’s debt. Once it was paid off, she’d return to her husband and begin her married life.[6]

This seems shocking, outrageous even, but Galey does not report any widespread feeling of injustice. Everyone seemed to feel that this was just the way things worked. Neither was there much concern voiced among the local Brahmins, who were the ultimate arbiters in matters of morality—though this is hardly surprising, since the most prominent moneylenders were often Brahmins themselves.

Even here, of course, it’s hard to know what people were saying behind closed doors. If a group of Maoist rebels were to suddenly seize control of the area (some do operate in this part of rural India) and round up the local usurers for trial, we might hear all sorts of views expressed.

Still, what Galey describes represents, as I say, one extreme of possibility: one in which the usurers themselves are the ultimate moral authorities. Compare this with, say, medieval France, where the moral status of moneylenders was seriously in question. The Catholic Church had always forbidden the practice of lending money at interest, but the rules often fell into desuetude, causing the Church hierarchy to authorize preaching campaigns, sending mendicant friars to travel from town to town warning usurers that unless they repented and made full restitution of all interest extracted from their victims, they would surely go to Hell.

These sermons, many of which have survived, are full of horror stories of God’s judgment on unrepentant lenders: stories of rich men struck down by madness or terrible diseases, haunted by deathbed nightmares of the snakes or demons who would soon rend or eat their flesh. In the twelfth century, when such campaigns reached their heights, more direct sanctions began to be employed. The papacy issued instructions to local parishes that all known usurers were to be excommunicated; they were not to be allowed to receive the sacraments, and under no conditions could their bodies be buried on hallowed ground. One French cardinal, Jacques de Vitry, writing around 1210, recorded the story of a particularly influential moneylender whose friends tried to pressure their parish priest to overlook the rules and allow him to be buried in the local churchyard:

Since the dead usurer’s friends were very insistent, the priest yielded to their pressure and said, “Let us put his body on a donkey and see God’s will, and what He will do with the body. Wherever the donkey takes it, be it a church, a cemetery, or elsewhere, there will I bury it.” The body was placed upon the donkey which without deviating either to right or left, took it straight out of town to the place where thieves are hanged from the gibbet, and with a hearty buck, sent the cadaver flying into the dung beneath the gallows.[7]

Looking over world literature, it is almost impossible to find a single sympathetic representation of a moneylender—or anyway, a professional moneylender, which means by definition one who charges interest. I’m not sure there is another profession (executioners?) with such a consistently bad image. It’s especially remarkable when one considers that unlike executioners, usurers often rank among the richest and most powerful people in their communities. Yet the very name, “usurer,” evokes images of loan sharks, blood money, pounds of flesh, the selling of souls, and behind them all, the Devil, often represented as himself a kind of usurer, an evil accountant with his books and ledgers, or alternately, as the figure looming just behind the usurer, biding his time until he can repossess the soul of a villain who, by his very occupation, has clearly made a compact with Hell.

Historically, there have been only two effective ways for a lender to try to wriggle out of the opprobrium: either shunt off responsibility onto some third party, or insist that the borrower is even worse. In medieval Europe, for instance, lords often took the first approach, employing Jews as surrogates. Many would even speak of “our” Jews—that is, Jews under their personal protection—though in practice this usually meant that they would first deny Jews in their territories any means of making a living except by usury (guaranteeing that they would be widely detested), then periodically turn on them, claiming they were detestable creatures, and take the money for themselves. The second approach is of course more common. But it usually leads to the conclusion that both parties to a loan are equally guilty; the whole affair is a shabby business; and most likely, both are damned.

Other religious traditions have different perspectives. In medieval Hindu law codes, not only were interest-bearing loans permissible (the main stipulation was that interest should never exceed principal), but it was often emphasized that a debtor who did not pay would be reborn as a slave in the household of his creditor—or in later codes, reborn as his horse or ox. The same tolerant attitude toward lenders, and warnings of karmic revenge against borrowers, reappear in many strands of Buddhism. Even so, the moment that usurers were thought to go too far, exactly the same sort of stories as found in Europe would start appearing. A Medieval Japanese author recounts one—he insists it’s a true story—about the terrifying fate of Hiromushime, the wife of a wealthy district governor around 776 ad. An exceptionally greedy woman,

she would add water to the rice wine she sold and make a huge profit on such diluted saké. On the day she loaned something to someone she would use a small measuring cup, but on the day of collection she used a large one. When lending rice her scale registered small portions, but when she received payment it was in large amounts. The interest that she forcibly collected was tremendous—often as much as ten or even one hundred times the amount of the original loan. She was rigid about collecting debts, showing no mercy whatsoever. Because of this, many people were thrown into a state of anxiety; they abandoned their households to get away from her and took to wandering in other provinces.[8]

After she died, for seven days, monks prayed over her sealed coffin. On the seventh, her body mysteriously sprang to life:

Those who came to look at her encountered an indescribable stench. From the waist up she had already become an ox with four-inch horns protruding from her forehead. Her two hands had become the hooves of an ox, her nails were now cracked so that they resembled an ox hoof’s instep. From the waist down, however, her body was that of a human. She disliked rice and preferred to eat grass. Her manner of eating was rumination. Naked, she would lie in her own excrement.[9]

Gawkers descended. Guilty and ashamed, the family made desperate attempts to buy forgiveness, canceling all debts owed to them by anybody, donating much of their wealth to religious establishments. Finally, mercifully, the monster died.

The author, himself a monk, felt that the story represented a clear case of premature reincarnation—the woman was being punished by the law of karma for her violations of “what is both reasonable and right.” His problem was that Buddhist scriptures, insofar as they explicitly weighed in on the matter, didn’t provide a precedent. Normally, it was debtors who were supposed to be reborn as oxen, not creditors. As a result, when it came time to explain the moral of the story, his exposition grew decidedly confusing:

It is as one sutra says: “When we do not repay the things that we have borrowed, our payment becomes that of being reborn as a horse or ox.” “The debtor is like a slave, the creditor is like a master.” Or again: “a debtor is a pheasant and his creditor a hawk.” If you are in a situation of having granted a loan, do not put unreasonable pressure on your debtor for repayment. If you do, you will be reborn as a horse or an ox and be put to work for him who was in debt to you, and then you will repay many times over.[10]

So which will it be? They can’t both end up as animals in each other’s barns.

All the great religious traditions seem to bang up against this quandary in one form or another. On the one hand, insofar as all human relations involve debt, they are all morally compromised. Both parties are probably already guilty of something just by entering into the relationship; at the very least they run a significant danger of becoming guilty if repayment is delayed. On the other hand, when we say someone acts like they “don’t owe anything to anybody,” we’re hardly describing the person as a paragon of virtue. In the secular world, morality consists largely of fulfilling our obligations to others, and we have a stubborn tendency to imagine those obligations as debts. Monks, perhaps, can avoid the dilemma by detaching themselves from the secular world entirely, but the rest of us appear condemned to live in a universe that doesn’t make a lot of sense.

The story of Hiromushime is a perfect illustration of the impulse to throw the accusation back at the accuser—just as in the story about the dead usurer and the donkey, the emphasis on excrement, animals, and humiliation is clearly meant as poetic justice, the creditor forced to experience the same feelings of disgrace and degradation that debtors are always made to feel. It’s all a more vivid, more visceral way of asking that same question: “Who really owes what to whom?”

It’s also a perfect illustration of how the moment one asks the question “Who really owes what to whom?,” one has begun to adopt the creditor’s language. Just as if we don’t pay our debts, “our payment becomes that of being reborn as a horse or an ox”; so if you are an unreasonable creditor, you too will “repay.” Even karmic justice can thus be reduced to the language of a business deal.

Here we come to the central question of this book: What, precisely, does it mean to say that our sense of morality and justice is reduced to the language of a business deal? What does it mean when we reduce moral obligations to debts? What changes when the one turns into the other? And how do we speak about them when our language has been so shaped by the market? On one level the difference between an obligation and a debt is simple and obvious. A debt is the obligation to pay a certain sum of money. As a result, a debt, unlike any other form of obligation, can be precisely quantified. This allows debts to become simple, cold, and impersonal—which, in turn, allows them to be transferable. If one owes a favor, or one’s life, to another human being—it is owed to that person specifically. But if one owes forty thousand dollars at 12-percent interest, it doesn’t really matter who the creditor is; neither does either of the two parties have to think much about what the other party needs, wants, is capable of doing—as they certainly would if what was owed was a favor, or respect, or gratitude. One does not need to calculate the human effects; one need only calculate principal, balances, penalties, and rates of interest. If you end up having to abandon your home and wander in other provinces, if your daughter ends up in a mining camp working as a prostitute, well, that’s unfortunate, but incidental to the creditor. Money is money, and a deal’s a deal.

From this perspective, the crucial factor, and a topic that will be explored at length in these pages, is money’s capacity to turn morality into a matter of impersonal arithmetic—and by doing so, to justify things that would otherwise seem outrageous or obscene. The factor of violence, which I have been emphasizing up until now, may appear secondary. The difference between a “debt” and a mere moral obligation is not the presence or absence of men with weapons who can enforce that obligation by seizing the debtor’s possessions or threatening to break his legs. It is simply that a creditor has the means to specify, numerically, exactly how much the debtor owes.

However, when one looks a little closer, one discovers that these two elements—the violence and the quantification—are intimately linked. In fact it’s almost impossible to find one without the other. French usurers had powerful friends and enforcers, capable of bullying even Church authorities. How else would they have collected debts that were technically illegal? Hiromushime was utterly uncompromising with her debtors—“showing no mercy whatsoever”—but then, her husband was the governor. She didn’t have to show mercy. Those of us who do not have armed men behind us cannot afford to be so exacting.

The way violence, or the threat of violence, turns human relations into mathematics will crop up again and again over the course of this book. It is the ultimate source of the moral confusion that seems to float around everything surrounding the topic of debt. The resulting dilemmas appear to be as old as civilization itself. We can observe the process in the very earliest records from ancient Mesopotamia; it finds its first philosophical expression in the Vedas, reappears in endless forms throughout recorded history, and still lies underneath the essential fabric of our institutions today—state and market, our most basic conceptions of the nature of freedom, morality, sociality—all of which have been shaped by a history of war, conquest, and slavery in ways we’re no longer capable of even perceiving because we can no longer imagine things any other way.

There are obvious reasons why this is a particularly important moment to reexamine the history of debt. September 2008 saw the beginning of a financial crisis that almost brought the entire world economy screeching to a halt. In many ways the world economy did: ships stopped moving across the oceans, and thousands were placed in dry dock. Building cranes were dismantled, as no more buildings were being put up. Banks largely ceased making loans. In the wake of this, there was not only public rage and bewilderment, but the beginning of an actual public conversation about the nature of debt, of money, of the financial institutions that have come to hold the fate of nations in their grip.

But that was just a moment. The conversation never ended up taking place.

The reason that people were ready for such a conversation was that the story everyone had been told for the last decade or so had just been revealed to be a colossal lie. There’s really no nicer way to say it. For years, everyone had been hearing of a whole host of new, ultra-sophisticated financial innovations: credit and commodity derivatives, collateralized mortgage obligation derivatives, hybrid securities, debt swaps, and so on. These new derivative markets were so incredibly sophisticated, that—according to one persistent story—a prominent investment house had to employ astrophysicists to run trading programs so complex that even the financiers couldn’t begin to understand them. The message was transparent: leave these things to the professionals. You couldn’t possibly get your minds around this. Even if you don’t like financial capitalists very much (and few seemed inclined to argue that there was much to like about them), they were nothing if not capable, in fact so preternaturally capable, that democratic oversight of financial markets was simply inconceivable. (Even a lot of academics fell for it. I well remember going to conferences in 2006 and 2007 where trendy social theorists presented papers arguing that these new forms of securitization, linked to new information technologies, heralded a looming transformation in the very nature of time, possibility—reality itself. I remember thinking: “Suckers!” And so they were.)

Then, when the rubble had stopped bouncing, it turned out that many if not most of them had been nothing more than very elaborate scams. They consisted of operations like selling poor families mortgages crafted in such a way as to make eventual default inevitable; taking bets on how long it would take the holders to default; packaging mortgage and bet together and selling them to institutional investors (representing, perhaps, the mortgage-holders’ retirement accounts) claiming that it would make money no matter what happened, and allow said investors to pass such packages around as if they were money; turning over responsibility for paying off the bet to a giant insurance conglomerate that, were it to sink beneath the weight of its resultant debt (which certainly would happen), would then have to be bailed out by taxpayers (as such conglomerates were indeed bailed out).[11] In other words, it looks very much like an unusually elaborate version of what banks were doing when they lent money to dictators in Bolivia and Gabon in the late ’70s: make utterly irresponsible loans with the full knowledge that, once it became known they had done so, politicians and bureaucrats would scramble to ensure that they’d still be reimbursed anyway, no matter how many human lives had to be devastated and destroyed in order to do it.

The difference, though, was that this time, the bankers were doing it on an inconceivable scale: the total amount of debt they had run up was larger than the combined Gross Domestic Products of every country in the world—and it threw the world into a tailspin and almost destroyed the system itself.

Armies and police geared up to combat the expected riots and unrest, but none materialized. But neither have any significant changes in how the system is run. At the time, everyone assumed that, with the very defining institutions of capitalism (Lehman Brothers, Citibank, General Motors) crumbling, and all claims to superior wisdom revealed to be false, we would at least restart a broader conversation about the nature of debt and credit institutions. And not just a conversation.

It seemed that most Americans were open to radical solutions. Surveys showed that an overwhelming majority of Americans felt that the banks should not be rescued, whatever the economic consequences, but that ordinary citizens stuck with bad mortgages should be bailed out. In the United States this is quite extraordinary. Since colonial days, Americans have been the population least sympathetic to debtors. In a way this is odd, since America was settled largely by absconding debtors, but it’s a country where the idea that morality is a matter of paying one’s debts runs deeper than almost any other. In colonial days, an insolvent debtor’s ear was often nailed to a post. The United States was one of the last countries in the world to adopt a law of bankruptcy: despite the fact that in 1787, the Constitution specifically charged the new government with creating one, all attempts were rejected on “moral grounds” until 1898.[12] The change was epochal. For this very reason, perhaps, those in charge of moderating debate in the media and legislatures decided that this was not the time. The United States government effectively put a three-trillion-dollar Band-Aid over the problem and changed nothing. The bankers were rescued; small-scale debtors—with a paltry few exceptions—were not.[13] To the contrary, in the middle of the greatest economic recession since the ’30s, we are already beginning to see a backlash against them—driven by financial corporations who have now turned to the same government that bailed them out to apply the full force of the law against ordinary citizens in financial trouble. “It’s not a crime to owe money,” reports the Minneapolis-St. Paul StarTribune, “But people are routinely being thrown in jail for failing to pay debts.” In Minnesota, “the use of arrest warrants against debtors has jumped 60 percent over the past four years, with 845 cases in 2009 … In Illinois and southwest Indiana, some judges jail debtors for missing court-ordered debt payments. In extreme cases, people stay in jail until they raise a minimum payment. In January \[2010\], a judge sentenced a Kenney, Ill., man ‘to indefinite incarceration’ until he came up with $300 toward a lumber yard debt.”[14]

In other words, we are moving toward a restoration of something much like debtors’ prisons. Meanwhile, the conversation stopped dead, popular rage against bailouts sputtered into incoherence, and we seem to be tumbling inexorably toward the next great financial catastrophe—the only real question being just how long it will take.

We have reached the point at which the IMF itself, now trying to reposition itself as the conscience of global capitalism, has begun to issue warnings that if we continue on the present course, no bailout is likely to be forthcoming the next time. The public simply will not stand for it, and as a result, everything really will come apart. “IMF Warns Second Bailout Would ‘Threaten Democracy’ ” reads one recent headline.[15] (Of course by “democracy” they mean “capitalism.”) Surely it means something that even those who feel they are responsible for keeping the current global economic system running, who just a few years ago acted as if they could simply assume the current system would be around forever, are now seeing apocalypse everywhere.

In this case, the IMF has a point. We have every reason to believe that we do indeed stand on the brink of epochal changes.

Admittedly, the usual impulse is to imagine everything around us as absolutely new. Nowhere is this so true as with money. How many times have we been told that the advent of virtual money, the dematerialization of cash into plastic and dollars into blips of electronic information, has brought us to an unprecedented new financial world? The assumption that we were in such uncharted territory, of course, was one of the things that made it so easy for the likes of Goldman Sachs and AIG to convince people that no one could possibly understand their dazzling new financial instruments. The moment one casts matters on a broad historical scale, though, the first thing one learns is that there’s nothing new about virtual money. Actually, this was the original form of money. Credit system, tabs, even expense accounts, all existed long before cash. These things are as old as civilization itself. True, we also find that history tends to move back and forth between periods dominated by bullion—where it’s assumed that gold and silver are money—and periods where money is assumed to be an abstraction, a virtual unit of account. But historically, credit money comes first, and what we are witnessing today is a return of assumptions that would have been considered obvious common sense in, say, the Middle Ages—or even ancient Mesopotamia.

But history does provide fascinating hints of what we might expect. For instance: in the past, ages of virtual credit money almost invariably involve the creation of institutions designed to prevent everything going haywire—to stop the lenders from teaming up with bureaucrats and politicians to squeeze everybody dry, as they seem to be doing now. They are accompanied by the creation of institutions designed to protect debtors. The new age of credit money we are in seems to have started precisely backwards. It began with the creation of global institutions like the IMF designed to protect not debtors, but creditors. At the same time, on the kind of historical scale we’re talking about here, a decade or two is nothing. We have very little idea what to expect.

This book is a history of debt, then, but it also uses that history as a way to ask fundamental questions about what human beings and human society are or could be like—what we actually do owe each other, what it even means to ask that question. As a result, the book begins by attempting to puncture a series of myths—not only the Myth of Barter, which is taken up in the first chapter, but also rival myths about primordial debts to the gods, or to the state—that in one way or another form the basis of our common-sense assumptions about the nature of economy and society. In that common-sense view, the State and the Market tower above all else as diametrically opposed principles. Historical reality reveals, however, that they were born together and have always been intertwined. The one thing that all these misconceptions have in common, we will find, is that they tend to reduce all human relations to exchange, as if our ties to society, even to the cosmos itself, can be imagined in the same terms as a business deal. This leads to another question: If not exchange, then what? In chapter five, I will begin to answer the question by drawing on the fruits of anthropology to describe a view of the moral basis of economic life; then return to the question of the origins of money to demonstrate how the very principle of exchange emerged largely as an effect of violence—that the real origins of money are to be found in crime and recompense, war and slavery, honor, debt, and redemption. That, in turn, opens the way to starting, with chapter eight, an actual history of the last five thousand years of debt and credit, with its great alternations between ages of virtual and physical money. Many of the discoveries here are profoundly unexpected: from the origins of modern conceptions of rights and freedoms in ancient slave law, to the origins of investment capital in medieval Chinese Buddhism, to the fact that many of Adam Smith’s most famous arguments appear to have been cribbed from the works of free-market theorists from medieval Persia (a story which, incidentally, has interesting implications for understanding the current appeal of political Islam). All of this sets the stage for a fresh approach to the last five hundred years, dominated by capitalist empires, and allows us to at least begin asking what might really be at stake in the present day.

For a very long time, the intellectual consensus has been that we can no longer ask Great Questions. Increasingly, it’s looking like we have no other choice.

[theculturedmarxist]

thoughts on the democrat party

Personally I think the Dems are doing "their best" with Biden. From what I can see the shape that American society has taken due to corporate monopolization has influenced the party in such a way that it has divested itself from the necessary talent to either govern or develop a new intellectual framework to deal with emerging circumstances. Biden is the best they've got because party power has been monopolized by all the geriatric party bosses, who have spent decades weeding out any potential party rivals and self selecting for mediocrity and the kind of intellectual narrowness necessary to carry the nebulous Dem party line.

The Dems have been outfoxed at every turn in spite of their comparative popularity to the Reps because as awful as it is, the Reps at least have a vision of the future and how to get their, which the Dems absolutely lack, and you can't beat something with nothing. So the Dems default to the "norms" set by the Republicans whenever the Ds manage to get power, which only serves the Republican agenda as eventually they'll just get in power again and pick up where they left off.

Biden is actually the best they can do, because they have no one of any vision to energize the base, and even if they did they don't have the clout to either direct the party or attract investment from donors. The fact that an octogenarian with dementia is at the head of the party and nothing can be done about it points to how serious the problems in the party have become.

>At what point do the Dems just collapse from the institutional rot you're describing?

I'm not sure, really. I haven't really thought about it.

I suppose we might be seeing the first indications of such a collapse now. I think the marks of a healthy institution are for it to a) be able to identify, incorporate, and cultivate new talent, b) to have an internal well of theoretical and practical knowledge to draw from, and c) to utilize the previous two in novel ways in order to work towards some kind of future ideal and/or to deal with novel circumstances, both benign and malignant.

It's much more complicated than just Trump as a person, but him and the circumstances surrounding him are a novel, malignant circumstance as far as the Democratic Party is concerned, and one that it had failed to deal with after 8 years of wrangling with it. Bernie Sanders is another facet of this malignant novelty, and the party's manner of dealing with him is ironically why they're incapable of dealing with Trump. As far as the party runners are concerned, Sanders and other members of the 'progressives" in the party are a tumor to be combated. Even their mild reforms run counter to party orthodoxy and are not to be tolerated, and anywhere they might seriously challenge that orthodoxy, like we saw when they prevailed in Nevada, they have to be crushed. They're allowed to showboat and make their little tirades, but when it comes to any sort of actual challenge to party policy there are various means of chastening them, like we saw recently with AIPAC crushing the "squad" and making AOC cry.

So this rigidity has made adaptation and innovation basically impossible. There's just the status quo, and if you want to get anywhere in the party you have to serve that status quo with a practically religious devotion. The party is now overflowing with empty suits like Kamala and Buttigieg, the sort of mediocrities that have no real values, no real intellect, and whose only talent is being able to say with some level of conviction whatever currently serves the party's interests. Unfortunately for them, the party's interests are diametrically opposed to the general population's interests, so while they might be able to get up in front of a tv and deliver a speech someone wrote for them which will make PMC types on twitter and the MSNBC hosts they follow swoon, there's nothing there to attract average people and convince them to vote for them. They've heard it all before and because there's very little material difference to them in being fucked by a Republican or Democrat president, they don't really care.

So the crisis now is that they have nothing to beat Trump with, and no way to fix this situation. Even if they had the talent to fall back on, Biden himself represents a significant amount of clout within the party itself, and the party's convention rules mean that all the delegates they gave him are his to do with as he pleases, and for whatever reason refuses to give them up, probably because he's a) a bastard and b) his progressing dementia is bringing out all his worst qualities, and making the magnanimous play for the benefit of others is not something that Biden would ever, ever do.

Right now we're witnessing all the powers and interests behind the party trying to come to grips with these circumstances. The young, attractive party members that would be worth funding like AOC are unacceptable because the donors won't accept their politics, so giving them actual power within and over the party is out of the question. The old party hacks like Clinton or Pelosi wouldn't accept this either because it would threaten their own power and security. Anyone that would be acceptable to the party bosses lacks the ability to attract enough sections of the party donors and voters to be viable. They lack the charisma to appeal to the people, and Obama's ability to line them up behind themselves with "it's me or the pitchforks" type of rhetoric.

However this election shakes out, it won't change the fact that the Democratic party is in the grip of a small number of extremely powerful party bosses that can't be dislodged for various reasons, and that as long as they're alive they're going to do whatever it takes to maintain their positions. As long as they do, no one of any real talent is going to make it anywhere in the party, and as long as that's true it's only going to continue to stagnate. And even if Obama, Pelosi, Biden, Clinton, and the rest of the bosses died tomorrow, that still wouldn't bring much effect because the ideology of the bourgeoisie behind the party is rigidly devoted to the status quo out of political and economic necessity. With all that said, their party remains viable only as long as the status quo remains viable, and that is quickly becoming not the case. They've been able to indulge in this stagnancy only because they've been able to minimize or externalize all the worst effects of it, but between climate change, the ascendancy of BRICS, the war in Ukraine they're losing, the war in Palestine they're losing, the cold war over Taiwan they're losing, the ongoing COVID pandemic, the incipient Avian Flu pandemic, and many, many other very severe problems developing in and around the country, that indulgence becomes increasingly untenable.

So to sum up, we might be witnessing the early stages of an ongoing and possibly irreversible collapse at this very moment.

[readingsquotes]

Authorities in and outside government said the acquiescence to Israel as it prosecuted a brutal war will likely be regarded as one the most consequential foreign policy decisions of the Biden presidency. They say it undermines America’s ability to influence events in the Middle East while “destroying the entire edifice of international law that was put into place after WWII,” as Omer Bartov, a renowned Israeli-American scholar of genocide, put it. Jeffrey Feltman, the former assistant secretary of the State Department’s Middle East bureau, told me he fears much of the Muslim world now sees the U.S. as “ineffective at best or complicit at worst in the large-scale civilian destruction and death.”

...

Time and again, Israel crossed the Biden administration’s red lines without changing course in a meaningful way, according to interviews with government officials and outside experts. Each time, the U.S. yielded and continued to send Israel’s military deadly weapons of war, approving more than $17.9 billion in military assistance since late 2023, by some estimates. The State Department recently told Congress about another $8 billion proposed deal to sell Israel munitions and artillery shells.

“It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the red lines have all just been a smokescreen,” said Stephen Walt, a professor of international affairs at Harvard Kennedy School and a preeminent authority on U.S. policy in the region. “The Biden administration decided to be all in and merely pretended that it was trying to do something about it.”

...

Throughout the contentious year inside the State Department, senior leaders repeatedly disregarded their own experts. They cracked down on leaks by threatening criminal investigations and classifying material that was critical of Israel. Some of the agency’s top Middle East diplomats complained in private that they were sidelined by Biden’s National Security Council. The council also distributed a list of banned phrases, including any version of “State of Palestine” that didn’t have the word “future” first. Two human rights officials said they were prevented from pursuing evidence of abuses in Gaza and the West Bank.

...

The repercussions for the United States and the region will play out for years. Protests have erupted outside the American embassies in Muslim-majority countries like Indonesia, the world’s third-largest democracy, while polls show Arab Americans grew increasingly hostile to their own government stateside. Russia, before its black eye in Syria, and China have both sought to capitalize by entering business and defense deals with Arab nations. By the summer, State Department analysts in the Middle East sent cables to Washington expressing concerns that the IDF’s conduct would only inflame tensions in the West Bank and galvanize young Palestinians to take up arms against Israel. Intelligence officials warn that terrorist groups are recruiting on the anti-American sentiment throughout the region, which they say is at its highest levels in years.

...

“This is the human rights atrocity of our time,” one senior diplomat told me. “I work for the department that’s responsible for this policy. I signed up for this. … I don’t deserve sympathy for it.”

... For decades, the U.S. has repeatedly looked the other way when Israel is accused of human rights abuses.

[juliens-bakery]

hi sorry this is so long ! this question may seem out of the blue, apologies, but why are so many boygenius fans on here, like, shameless liberals who won't tolerate any criticism of Biden? to be clear I'm not talking about your blog, I scanned it and it was so refreshing to see someone actually critical of the Dems and their instrumental role in the genocide. like, I see popular blogs in the fandom making aggressive posts that are basically “you HAVE to vote blue” and *yet, crucially*, they haven't reblogged anything actually critical of Biden? it seems the only time they talk about politics is to proselytise about how you HAVE to vote blue despite the *genocide*, and nothing negative about the actual policies, just scolding anyone to the left of them and saying hey biden's actually not that bad domestically !

i'm a POC boygenius fan from the global south and it's just something I've been observing keenly knowing that the external policies of that country will always hang over my head like a looming threat, whether blue or red is in power internally. and when young voters in that country do, for once, take cognizance of the devastation enacted on *our* countries by their govs, these liberals crawl out of the woodwork to scold them, then go back to posting about the latest julien-lucy sighting or whatever. it's surreal to see.

again, sorry for the unprompted rant, it's just been eating at me for so long and this blog just seems like one in the fandom that I can still trust. I just needed to get this off my chest. i fell in love with bg in 2020 I'll go back to streaming them now <3.

hi! thank you for this ask, it's been very thought-provoking for me, and i really do appreciate the trust. and no worries about the length, i'm about to one-up this shit.

it is a little hard for me to answer this question fairly. for one, the boygenius-sphere has changed a LOT since i started here (7 years! it's a long time!), and so a lot of my mutuals that i've had since are no longer here (shoutout @remembermydog though, we still here <3) and a bunch of new people have come through. so i'm really not as plugged in with the broader fandom space as i used to be, and i don't really follow a ton of new blogs these days, so i can't really say that i've seen everything that you've seen for myself.

that being said, even if i've had less ability to share your experiences, i do think what you're saying has a lot of truth to it. the obvious thought is that boygenius fans are disproportionately white, which naturally lends itself to that sort of optimism about the extant systems of power. fundamentally, i think, it is very difficult for a white person in that country to reconcile themselves with the idea that the extant systems of power were always bad to begin with and have never been fit for purpose, b/c they've always worked well enough for them. like, there's no innate moral value with being white or not, but it's not the most surprising correlation either. (and yes, i'm aware that boygenius fans are also disproportionately queer women, which counterbalances that optimism to a very real degree).

the frustrating thing is that there are so many people who refuse to even entertain the idea that some people have a moral line over which they will not cross. and i do think that there can be a moral obligation to do an unpleasant distasteful or "bad" thing in order to achieve better ends. but there's always balance between the depth of the wrong and the value of the ends. and everyone has to decide for themselves where that balance lies for them. if i was american, i don't think i would vote this year, for a bunch of reasons. i don't think i would begrudge anyone voting for biden, especially if they thought that trump would send even more bombs (although frankly i have no fucking idea what trump would do). i've voted for trudeau in years when i really didn't want to because of the voting patterns of my particular district. i am about to be an extension of the canadian legal system, which has inflicted incredible amounts of harm to indigenous people and many others.

voting for biden and not voting for biden are both moral compromises. the only question is: how much blood are you willing to get on your hands as you fight for a better world? everyone's line is different (and not everyone's line is acceptable). i think i'd be more comfortable with not voting, because i think joe biden is among the very guiltiest people for this genocide. so maybe i don't want to support and reinforce that guy! and fundamentally, a party that wins elections has much less incentive to change. and the thoughtless and condescending dismissal of these ideas that really infuriates me. so i am really sorry that your experiences of this space have been tainted in this way. there are lots of good and thoughtful people, and these years have been the most fulfilling period of my internet life. but it's a space full of people on the internet just like any other, and so i don't really think it's uniquely bad, but neither is it uniquely good. i've made a nice little space for myself, and i really hope you can find that too <3.

thanks for the ask. there were a lot of things i needed to get off my chest.

[man-and-atom]

As much as we hear about the “anti-nuclear Left”, we have long cherished suspicions that there is nothing particularly “Leftist” about antinuclearism. Indeed, it seems generally opposed to the top-level goals espoused by the international labour movement, of less work and more of the good things of life for everyone.

This one-sided focus on the costs of action without considering the costs of inaction runs throughout Ramana’s book. His priority is proving why nuclear is no solution, not in proposing what could be a solution. He emphasizes the cost of doing something but totally neglects the cost of not doing it.

In that vein, it is good to see a dismantling of anti-nuclear positions from a publication which sees itself as a voice for the radical Left. The writer is not as strong as one might wish on certain factual points — most notably, fast-neutron reactors are so far from being a novel approach to atomic power, that the first power-generating reactor was of this type — but is very well-equipped to show just how bad is the fit between the anti-nuclear cause and the ideology some of its most vocal proponents attach themselves to, as well as how incoherent their positions really are.

Rutgers anthropology professor David McDermott Hughes concedes that if we give up both fossil fuels and nuclear power (and presumably large-scale hydro, too), it will indeed be difficult if not impossible to maintain a reliable grid. However, Hughes argues that this isn’t a problem — it’s a solution. He suggest that society needs to simply stop expecting constant electricity. Rather, Zimbabwe and Puerto Rico, home to regular interruptions to the power supply, provide models of “just and feasible ways of living amid intermittency.”

Professor Hughes’ ideas of social justice are… well, something else, to put it politely.

If we want to speed up decarbonization while delivering a prosperous, high-energy, egalitarian reindustrialization that will heal the economic wound that has driven the rise of global Trumpism, the Left must abandon outdated, evidence-free 1970s antinuclear ideology, neo-Malthusian degrowth rhetoric, and other eco-austerity politics. It is an insult to the millions of Americans who are living paycheck to paycheck to be told by middle-class intellectuals that they consume too much. Instead, climate activists need to align with the industrial trade unions on the front lines of the clean energy transition, which strongly support nuclear energy and industrial policy for the high-quality, unionizable jobs they provide. Antinuclear politics, along with its technophobia, and antipathy toward industry, has been a colossal mistake. We need to rediscover the Left’s commitment to defending industrial modernity against counter-Enlightenment nostalgia and promising a far superior industrial modernity than capitalism could ever deliver.

Now the question : will this message be heard?

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Chris McGreal at The Guardian:

Jimmy Carter’s terminal illness reignited a bitter dispute over accusations the former president was antisemitic after he wrote a bestselling book likening the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories to South African apartheid. Prominent American supporters of Israel lined up to denounce Carter and the book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, when it was published in 2006. Abe Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League, called the former president a “bigot”. Deborah Lipstadt, who is now the Biden administration’s special envoy against antisemitism, accused him of having a “Jewish problem”. Alan Dershowitz, the US constitutional lawyer and ardent advocate for Israel, said Carter set out to offend Israelis and Jews. “Jimmy Carter’s sensitivities seem to have a gaping hole when it comes to Jews. There is a term for that,” he wrote.

Others did not beat around the bush and called Carter an antisemite. Pro-Israel pressure groups placed ads in the New York Times accusing Carter of facilitating those who “pursue Israel’s annihilation” and claiming he was “blinded by an anti-Israel animus”. But nearly two decades later, the book looks prescient given that leading Israeli politicians and major human rights organisations now accuse Israel of imposing a form of apartheid on the Palestinians in breach of international laws. News that Carter had entered hospice care at the beginning of the year prompted calls for critics to apologise for the abuse, drawing an admission from at least one critic. Among those outraged by Carter’s book in 2006 were members of the former president’s own foundation, which has built an international reputation for its work on human rights and to alleviate suffering. Steve Berman led a mass resignation from the Carter Center’s board of councillors at the time. Earlier this year, Berman revealed that he later wrote to Carter to apologise and to say that the former president had been right. “I had started to view Israel’s occupation of the Palestinians as something that started in 1967 as an accident but was now becoming an enterprise with colonial intentions,” Berman said in his letter to Carter. Shortly before Carter’s death, Peter Beinart, described as “the most influential liberal Zionist of his generation”, said the time had come for the former president’s critics to apologise for the “shameful way that the book was received by many significant people”.

When the late Jimmy Carter released his Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid book in 2006, the book’s release drew a lot of controversy because it called out Israel’s occupation of Palestine and compared their situation to South Africa’s highly controversial and racist Apartheid policies aimed at non-Afrikaner South Africans, especially the Blacks.

Turns out that Carter was well ahead of his time in calling out Israel Apartheid before it became a mainstream issue in some parts of the left in the US.

[mariacallous]

The fundamental problem for American presidents who have attempted to work with Benjamin Netanyahu is that Benjamin Netanyahu does not care what American presidents think. An exceptional English orator who was raised in Philadelphia, Netanyahu believes that he can outmaneuver and outlast American politicians on their own turf. “I know America,” he said in a private 2001 conversation that later leaked. “America is something that can easily be moved.” This attitude constituted a sharp break; in the past, even hard-line politicians like the maverick general turned premier Ariel Sharon responded to pressure from American presidents.

But during Bill Clinton’s presidency and again during Barack Obama’s, Netanyahu changed the equation. He repeatedly blew off American entreaties on issues including the peace process and Iran, and turned his willingness to stand up to U.S. presidents into an electoral selling point with his base. Faced with this unprecedented recalcitrance, different Democratic administrations tried different tactics for wrangling Bibi. Some attempted to compel his compliance with hard public pressure, only to have Netanyahu wait out a U.S.-imposed settlement freeze, then agitate against the Iran nuclear deal in Congress and the American media. Others attempted to settle disputes privately with Netanyahu, on the assumption that the Israeli leader would respond better if not openly antagonized.

None of this worked and none of it arrested Netanyahu’s drift further to the right. As both vice president and chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Joe Biden had a front-row seat to these failures. So did his close-knit foreign-policy team, including longtime staffers such as Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan. Recognizing the errors of the past, they have charted a different course aimed at outmaneuvering Netanyahu, seeking to succeed where their predecessors did not. This approach predates the current Gaza conflict, but has reached full expression in the past months. It explains why Biden has full-throatedly supported Israel against Hamas while simultaneously assailing the country’s hard-right governing coalition. And it offers a glimpse at the administration’s intended endgame for the war—and for Netanyahu himself.

In 2015, I visited another country with an ascendant right-wing populist leader: Hungary. Today, the country is essentially aligned with Russia against America and its allies. At the time, its prime minister, Viktor Orbán, was escalating his rhetoric against the European Union and the West. As part of the trip, my group met with officials at the American embassy, who explained their impossible predicament: Whenever Western countries would publicly pressure Orbán on his policies, he would refashion that pressure into electoral support, leaving his critics with no good options. Stay silent and he would win; speak up and he would also win.

Right-wing populists such as Orbán and Netanyahu thrive on posturing against outside antagonists, using external criticism to bolster their bona fides as strongmen who can stand up to the international community. This insight has shaped Biden’s approach to Netanyahu—not by preventing the president from publicly fighting with the prime minister, but by influencing which fights he picks. Simply put, Biden has opted to challenge Netanyahu on issues that splinter his support rather than consolidate it. In practice, this means strategically targeting policies where Netanyahu is on the wrong side of Israeli public opinion and forcing him to choose between his hard-right partners and the rest of the country.

Netanyahu’s disastrous attempt to overhaul the Israeli judiciary offers a case in point. The proposed legislation was drafted by right-wing hard-liners with no opposition input and would have subordinated Israel’s courts to its parliament. The attempted power grab provoked the largest sustained protest movement in Israeli history. Polls repeatedly showed that most Israelis opposed the overhaul and wanted lawmakers to come up with new compromise reforms conceived by consensus. And so that’s precisely what the Biden administration began calling for.

“Hopefully, the prime minister will act in a way that he is going to try to work out some genuine compromise,” Biden told reporters in March. “But that remains to be seen.” In July, he repeated the same point to Netanyahu, then reiterated it to the press: “The focus should be on pulling people together and finding consensus.” As the State Department emphasized at the time, “We believe that fundamental changes should be pursued with the broadest possible base of support.” By placing himself firmly on the side of the Israeli majority, Biden was able to prevent Netanyahu from turning his criticism into an electoral asset. After all, it’s hard to paint someone as anti-Israel, as Netanyahu once did with Obama, when they are expressing the opinion of most Israelis.

Biden understands that Netanyahu’s position is a precarious one. His governing coalition received just 48.4 percent of the vote, and took power only because of a quirk of the Israeli electoral system. The coalition relies on an alliance of unpopular far-right parties to stay afloat, whom Netanyahu must appease to remain in office. Biden has exploited this weakness and repeatedly poked at it. Rather than directly confronting Netanyahu, he has called out his extremist partners and in this way heightened the contradictions within Netanyahu’s coalition, undermining its stability and gradually eroding its support in the polls.

In July, Biden told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria that Netanyahu’s government has “the most extremist members of cabinets that I’ve seen” in Israel, noting that “I go all the way back to Golda Meir.” This past week, at a campaign event hosted by a former chair of AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobbying group, Biden went even further, singling out a far-right minister by name. “This is the most conservative government in Israel’s history,” the president said. Itamar “Ben-Gvir and company and the new folks, they don’t want anything remotely approaching a two-state solution.” This was Biden’s approach in action: criticizing Israel during wartime in front of a pro-Israel crowd, and doing so in a way that nonetheless denied Netanyahu any opening. As long as it’s Biden versus Ben-Gvir, rather than Biden versus Bibi, the president holds the upper hand.

Biden has brought the same strategy to bear on the issue of settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, which has accelerated under the cover of Israel’s campaign in Gaza. Netanyahu’s coalition is unable to clamp down on these extremists and their terrorism because it is beholden to these extremists. But most Israelis have no desire to mortgage the security of Israel and its indispensable relationship to the United States in favor of some far-flung hilltop settlers in West Bank regions that few Israelis could locate on a map.

Knowing this, Biden has begun unrolling a series of unilateral measures intended to raise the price of settler violence and pit Netanyahu and his allies against the Israeli public. Earlier this month, the administration announced visa bans on those implicated in settler violence, spurring similar actions by the EU, Britain, and France. “We have underscored to the Israeli government the need to do more to hold accountable extremist settlers who have committed violent attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank,” Blinken said. “As President Biden has repeatedly said, those attacks are unacceptable.” This past week, the U.S. froze the sale of more than 20,000 M16 rifles to Israel over concerns that they might find their way into the hands of violent settlers.

Hamas’s October 7 slaughter has put Biden’s approach to the ultimate test. Like most Israelis, he wants to see Hamas vanquished. And like most Israelis, he does not trust Netanyahu and his far-right allies to do it. This has left the president with few appealing options. Publicly denying Israel support during what it sees as an existential war wouldn’t just go against Biden’s personal values. It would collapse all the credibility he has accrued with the Israeli public through his careful diplomacy during his presidency. And it would give Netanyahu the American antagonist he desperately craves, providing the floundering premier with a lifeline he would use to reunite the right behind him.

To avoid this outcome, Biden has backed Israel’s military campaign, but worked nonstop to shape its contours and limit its fallout on civilians and the rest of the region, tapping into the reservoir of goodwill he has built with the Israeli public. The president has also upped the pressure on Netanyahu by assailing his coalition partners and explicitly calling for a new, more moderate Israeli government. U.S. officials have leaked that they think Netanyahu will not last, and Biden has told the Israeli leader to think about what lessons he’d impart to his successor.

In other words, Biden has once again placed himself on the side of the Israeli majority, in order to undermine Netanyahu and shape the political future of the entire country. It’s one of the biggest bets of his presidency, and when the guns finally fall silent, it could determine the fate of the broader Middle East.