#Thomas L. Friedman

[tomorrowusa]

What Putin is doing in Ukraine is not just reckless, not just a war of choice, not just an invasion in a class of its own for overreach, mendacity, immorality and incompetence, all wrapped in a farrago of lies. What he is doing is evil. He has trumped up any number of shifting justifications — one day it was removing a Nazi regime in power in Kyiv, the next it was preventing NATO expansion, the next it was fending off a Western cultural invasion of Russia — for what ultimately was a personal flight of fancy that now requires his superpower army turning to North Korea for help. It’s like the biggest bank in town having to ask the local pawnshop for a loan. So much for Putin’s bare-chested virility.

[ ... ]

Putin lately has stopped even bothering to justify the war — maybe because even he is too embarrassed to utter aloud the nihilism that his actions scream: If I can’t have Ukraine, I’ll make sure Ukrainians can’t have it, either.

[ … ]

This is as obvious a case of right versus wrong, good versus evil, as you find in international relations since World War II.

[ … ]

Ukraine needs to inflict as much damage on Putin’s army as fast as possible. That means we need to massively and rapidly deliver the weaponry Ukraine needs to break Putin’s lines in the country’s southeast. I’m talking the kitchen sink: F-16s; mine-clearing equipment; more Patriot antimissile systems; MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile Systems, which could strike deep behind Russian lines — whatever the Ukrainians can use effectively and fast.

— New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman, just back from a visit to Kyiv. (archived)

If you're in the US, contact your representative in the House and urge him/her to support the proposed $24 billion in aid to Ukraine.

Representatives | house.gov

If you have the misfortune to be represented by a dumb-ass MAGA zombie like Matt Gaetz and they say no, write back and ask: "Why do you hate freedom?"

Wars don't end just because people in third countries get bored with them.

[deadpresidents]

Imagine you woke up after the 2024 U.S. presidential election and found that Donald Trump had been re-elected and chose Rudy Giuliani for attorney general, Michael Flynn for defense secretary, Steve Bannon for commerce secretary, evangelical leader James Dobson for education secretary, Proud Boys former leader Enrique Tarrio for homeland security head and Marjorie Taylor Greene for the White House spokeswoman.

“Impossible,” you would say. Well, think again.

As I’ve noted before, Israeli political trends are often a harbinger of wider trends in Western democracies -- Off Broadway to our Broadway. I hoped that the national unity government that came to power in Israel in June 2021 might also be a harbinger of more bipartisanship here. Alas, that government has now collapsed and is being replaced by the most far-far-right coalition in Israel’s history. Lord save us if this is a harbinger of what’s coming our way.

The coalition that Likud leader Bibi Netanyahu is riding back into power is the Israeli equivalent of the nightmare U.S. cabinet I imagined above. Only it is real -- a rowdy alliance of ultra-Orthodox leaders and ultranationalist politicians, including some outright racist, anti-Arab Jewish extremists once deemed completely outside the norms and boundaries of Israeli politics. As it is virtually impossible for Netanyahu to build a majority coalition without the support of these extremists, some of them are almost certain to be cabinet ministers in the next Israeli government.

-- Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times.

[dk-thrive]

And once we break it, it will be gone — and we may never be able to get it back

But with every passing day, every mass shooting, every racist dog whistle, every defund-the-police initiative, every nation-sundering Supreme Court ruling, every speaker run off a campus, every bogus claim of election fraud, I wonder if he can bring us back together. I wonder if it’s too late. I fear that we’re going to break something very valuable very soon. And once we break it, it will be gone — and we may never be able to get it back...We are staring into that abyss right now.

— Thomas L. Friedman, from “My Lunch with President Biden” (NY Times, May 22, 2022)

[doctorbuzzard]

The Truth Comes Out

“And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” -John 8:32 When Tyranny Becomes Law, Rebellion Becomes Duty How this twisted tale started is difficult to say but most of the events seem to pinpoint to the Covid coming to a head and the patented pieces of the Moderna Vaccine being discovered and independently confirmed. The next day we are engaging the Russian Tanks already…

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

mike luckovich :: [@mluckovichajc]

* * * *

"America last."

February 8, 2024

ROBERT B. HUBBELL

On Wednesday, the dysfunction of congressional Republicans plumbed new depths: Senate Republicans blocked a procedural vote to advance funding for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. Supporting each of those nations is in America’s vital interest. Failing to do so undermines global order and brings America closer to active confrontation with Russia, China, and Iran, at least.

The defeat was expected because Donald Trump wants to continue the crisis at America’s southern border to advance his partisan political interest. But the move also advanced the partisan interests of another politician—Vladimir Putin. Like Trump, Putin is temporizing, biding time in the hope that the clock will run out on Ukraine’s resources to resist Russia’s invasion. In Donald Trump's world, the hierarchy of interests is Trump first, Putin second, and America last.

The notion that Trump has re-ordered the national interests to put America last is not mine. It belongs to Thomas L. Friedman, who wrote an op-ed in the NYTimes, The G.O.P. Bumper Sticker: Trump First. Putin Second. America Third. (Accessible to all.)

Friedman writes,

There are hinges in history, and this [aid bill] is one of them. What Washington does — or does not do — this year to support its allies and secure our border will say so much about our approach to security and stability in this new post-post-Cold War era. Will America carry the red, white and blue flag into the future or just a white flag? Given the pessimistic talk coming out of the Capitol, it is looking more and more like the white flag, autographed by Donald Trump. “Trump First” means that a bill that would strengthen America and its allies must be set aside so that America can continue to boil in polarization [and] Vladimir Putin can triumph in Ukraine . . . .

A meme is developing that asserts that the GOP has surrendered to Trump. While that may be true, the deeper truth is that Trump has delivered the GOP into the hands of Vladimir Putin. The GOP is no longer serving the interests of the Americans who elect Republicans to Congress but instead acts as a skulk of useful idiots who unwittingly advance Putin’s interests.

Just ask Tucker Carlson, the poster boy for MAGA’s Putin Caucus. He traveled to Moscow to interview Putin because Carlson believes that major media outlets have not reported the truth about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Tucker Carlson believes that Putin will “tell the truth” about Russia’s invasion.

Remember that time when Putin assured the world he had no intention of invading Ukraine? See CBS News (2/24/22), Putin attacked Ukraine after insisting for months there was no plan to do so. Shortly after issuing those denials, Putin brutally attacked the civilian populations and infrastructure in Ukraine and kidnapped hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian children. The International Court of Claims has issued an arrest warrant for Putin for the war crime of unlawful transportation of children from Ukraine to Russia.

It is that Vladimir Putin—the fugitive war criminal and inveterate liar--that Tucker Carlson is preparing to lionize in an interview that will be lapped up by useful idiots who skitter at the mere arching of an eyebrow by Trump. As Trump prolongs a crisis at the US border and delays aid to Ukraine, he is serving Vladimir Putin’s interests first. Commentators are right in asserting that a megalomaniac has engineered a hostile takeover of the GOP—but it is not Trump. It is Putin.

How should we react? Should we despair? Should we shrink from another story that seems to turn the world on its head? No. We need only recognize that the rot in the GOP is beyond repair and that electing Joe Biden is a necessary condition to preserving democracy.

There is no gray area in the 2024 election. A vote for Trump is a vote for Putin. A vote for RFK Jr. is a vote for Putin. A vote for No Labels is a vote for Putin. Staying home is a vote for Putin. A vote for Joe Biden is a vote for Democracy. It’s that simple.

Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Jason L. Riley

Published: Oct 6, 2023

Thomas Sowell is best known for his insights on racial controversies, but race isn’t the main topic of most of his books in a career that spans more than six decades. Mr. Sowell, 93, is an economist who earned a doctorate from the University of Chicago, where his professors included Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek and other future Nobel laureates. His specialty is the history of ideas, and his most recent book, “Social Justice Fallacies,” harks back to his writings on social theory and intellectual history, which include “Knowledge and Decisions” (1980), “The Vision of the Anointed” (1996) and “The Quest for Cosmic Justice” (1999).

In his 1987 classic, “A Conflict of Visions,” Mr. Sowell attempted to explain what drives our centuries-old ideological disputes about freedom, justice, equality and power. The contrasting “visions” in the title referred to the implicit assumptions that guide a person’s thinking. On one side you have the “constrained” vision, which sees humanity as hopelessly flawed. This view is encapsulated in Edmund Burke’s declaration that “we cannot change the nature of things and of men—but must act upon them as best we can” and in Immanuel Kant’s assertion that “from the crooked timber of humanity no truly straight thing can ever be made.”

The opposite is the “unconstrained,” or utopian, view of the human condition. It’s the belief that there are no inherent limits to what mankind can accomplish, so trade-offs are unnecessary. World peace is achievable. Social problems such as poverty, crime and racism can be not merely managed but eliminated. Mr. Sowell begins “Social Justice Fallacies” with a quote from Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who expressed the essence of the unconstrained vision when he wrote of “the equality which nature established among men and the inequality which they have instituted among themselves.”

Mr. Sowell has been a fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution since 1980. In a phone interview, he describes the central fallacy of social-justice advocacy as “the assumption that disparities are strange, and that in the normal course of events we would expect people to be pretty much randomly distributed in various occupations, income levels, institutions and so forth.”

He says that’s an assumption based on hope rather than experience or hard evidence. “We can read reams of social justice literature without encountering a single example of proportional representation of different groups in endeavors open to competition—in any country in the world today, or at any time over thousands of years of recorded history,” he writes in the book’s opening chapter on “equal chances fallacies.” He acknowledges that exploitation and discrimination exist and contributed to disparate outcomes. But he notes that “these vices are in fact among many influences that prevent different groups of people—whether classes, races or nations—from having equal, or even comparable, outcomes in economic terms or other terms.”

For Mr. Sowell, the tremendous variety of geographic, cultural and demographic differences among groups makes anything approximating an even distribution of preferences, habits and skills close to impossible. The progressive left holds up as a norm a state the world has never seen, and regards as an anomaly something seen in societies all over the world and down through history. “There’s this sort of mysticism that disparities must show that someone’s done something wrong” to a lagging group, Mr. Sowell says. The social-justice vision “starts off by reducing the search for causation to a search for blame. And for so much of what happens, there is no blame.”

To illustrate the point, the book’s chapter on racial fallacies cites recent census data on poverty. “Statistical differences between races are not automatically due to race—either in the sense of being caused by genetics or being a result of racial discrimination,” Mr. Sowell writes. Liberals argue that higher black poverty rates are mainly a product of slavery, Jim Crow and of lingering “systemic racism.” Yet there are pockets of the U.S. populated almost exclusively by white people who experience no racism and who nevertheless earn significantly less than blacks.

The book cites Clay and Owsley counties in Appalachian Kentucky, places “that are more than 90 percent white, where the median household income is not only less than half the median household income of white Americans in the country as a whole, but also thousands of dollars less than the median household income of black Americans in the country as a whole.”

It’s been true for some time, Mr. Sowell says, that black behavioral patterns play a bigger role in racial disparities than racism does. Black married couples have had poverty rates in the single digits for more than a quarter-century. And black married couples “in which both husband and wife were college-educated earned slightly more than white married couples where both husband and wife were college-educated.” He adds that in a landmark 1899 study of blacks in Philadelphia, the race scholar W.E.B. Du Bois “said that if white people were to lose their prejudices overnight, it would make very little difference to most black people. He said some few would get better positions than they have right now, but for the mass it would be pretty much the same.”

Noting today’s black-white wealth disparities, authors including Ta-Nehisi Coates, Nikole Hannah-Jones and Ibram X. Kendi have advocated reparations in the name of social justice. So have such prominent organizations as the NAACP and Black Lives Matter. Mr. Sowell can’t take their arguments seriously. “The situation of slavery in some ways is much like the situation of conquered people,” he says. “There’s no question whatsoever that conquered people have been treated in a terrible way. Being conquered by the Romans was not a fate you would wish on anyone. But the fact is that the net result has been that those parts of Europe conquered by the Romans have been the most advanced parts of Europe for centuries.

“Similarly, when someone black says . . . ‘I’m worse off because of slavery,’ there’s no way in hell you can say that with a straight face. If you’re going to base reparations on the difference between where blacks today would be if it were not for slavery, then blacks would have to pay reparations to white people.”

Mr. Sowell is no stranger to poverty, prejudice or discrimination. He was born in segregated North Carolina in 1930, orphaned as a toddler and raised in Harlem from age 9. He never finished high school and earned his GED after serving a stint in the Marines during the Korean War. The GI bill enabled him to enroll in college, first at historically black Howard University, before moving on to Harvard, Columbia and finally the University of Chicago.

He says that whether social-justice proponents are pushing for slavery reparations or higher taxes on the rich, their real agenda is the confiscation and redistribution of wealth. Enthralled by what he calls the “chess-pieces fallacy,” progressives treat individuals like inert objects. “I got that from Adam Smith, who had a very low opinion of abstract theorists who feel they can move around people much as one moves around chess pieces,” he says.

“That fallacy takes many forms, and taxation is a classic example.” The fallacy is assuming that “tax hikes and tax revenues automatically move in the same direction, when often they move in the opposite direction.” Liberals say, “ ‘We need more money, so we’ll make the wealthy pay their fair share,’ which is never defined, of course. But the wealthy are not just going to sit there and do nothing.”

A historical example is when “the British decided they would put a new tax on the American colonies. It turns out they not only didn’t get any more revenue, but they lost the tax revenue they had been getting.” In modern times, Mr. Sowell says, studies have shown repeatedly that people and businesses move their money to avoid high tax rates, and that includes migrating from states with higher levies to states with lower levies.

Although the social-justice vision isn’t new, Mr. Sowell observes that these ideas didn’t have much currency before the 20th century, in an era when intellectual elites mostly talked among themselves and reached a far smaller segment of the population. Mass communication changed that by greatly expanding their ability to shape public opinion and, by extension, government decisions: “One example was the period between the two world wars, when intellectuals managed to convince a lot of people that the way to avoid war was to avoid an arms race, and therefore that disarmament was the key to preserving peace.”

The growing influence and arrogance of the social-justice crowd bothers Mr. Sowell, which is one of the reasons he wrote the book. “Someone once said that people on the political left think that they would do what God would do if he were as well-informed as they are,” he says. He’s especially vexed by the quashing of dissent. “The fatal danger of our times today is a growing intolerance and suppression of opinions and evidence that differ from the prevailing ideologies that dominate institutions, ranging from the academic world to the corporate world, the media and government institutions,” he writes. “Many intellectuals with high accomplishments seem to assume that those accomplishments confer validity to their notions about a broad swath of issues ranging far beyond the scope of their accomplishments.”

Mr. Sowell’s own accomplishments cover a broad swath. He’s published more than 40 books, and “Social Justice Fallacies” is his sixth since he turned 80 in 2010. What recommends it is what recommends so many of the others: clear thinking, a straightforward prose style that combines wide learning with common sense, and an uncanny ability to take our preening elites down a notch.

Mr. Riley writes the Journal’s Upward Mobility column and is author of “Maverick: A Biography of Thomas Sowell.”

[ Via: https://archive.md/onp5S ]

[nostalgebraist-autoresponder]

@catgirlanarchist replied to your post “this is the sort of thing that tumblr should be in charge of”

frank i'm sorry but if you become president i will have to overthrow you. (reluctantly and homoerotically, of course)

(Note that I have only read one book on political history so far -- namely, "Democracy for Idiots" by Thomas L. Friedman)

[books-readers-blog]

Books about World discoveries, economics, history, scientific research.

1. "Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Jared Diamond

2 "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari

3. "The Silk Roads: A New History of the World" by Peter Frankopan

4. "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson

5. "The New Silk Roads: The Present and Future of the World" by Peter Frankopan

6. "The History of the World" by J.M. Roberts

7. "The Penguin History of the World" by J.M. Roberts

8. "The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century" by Thomas L. Friedman

9. "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes

10. "The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution' by Francis Fukuyama

11. "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn

12. 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus" by Charles C. Mann

13 A Global History: From Prehistory to the 21st Century by Leften Stavros Stavrianos

14. "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000" by Paul Kennedy

15. "A Concise History of the World" by Merry E Wiesner-Hanks

16. "The Human Web: A Bird's-Eye View of World History" by J.R. McNeill and William H. McNeill

17. The Pursuit of Power: Europe 1815-1914" by Richard J. Evans

18. "The Discoverers" by Daniel J. Boorstin

19. "The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World" by Niall Ferguson

20. "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order" by Samuel P. Huntington

21. "The Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith

22. "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" by Thomas Piketty

23. "The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money" by John Maynard Keynes

24. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster

Capitalism" by Naomi Klein

25. "The End of Alchemy: Money Banking, and the Future of the Global Economy" by Mervyn King

26. The Great Transformation" by Karl Polanyi

27. The Origins of the Modern World: A Global and Environmental Narrative from the Fifteenth to the Twenty-First Century" by Robert B. Marks

28 "Why Nations Fall The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty" by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson

29. "The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant

Technologies" by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee

30. "The Future of Capitalism: Facing the New Anxieties" by Paul Collier

31. "The Rise and Fall of American Growth. The U.S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War by Robert J. Gordon

32. "The Age of Sustainable Development" by Jeffrey Sachs

33. "The Innovators: How a Group of Inventors, Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution" by Walter Isaacson

34. "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" by Thomas S. Kuhn

35. "The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA" by James D. Watson

36. "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins

37. "A Brief History of Time" by Stephen Hawking

38. "The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory" by Brian Greene

39. "The Emperor's New Mind. Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics by Roger Penrose

40. "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000" by Paul Kennedy

41. "The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World" by Niall Ferguson

42. The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined" by Steven Pinker

43. "Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World-and Why Things Are Better Than You Think" by Hans Rosling, Ola Rosling, and Anna Rosling Rönnlund

[jacobsvoice]

The New York Times, Zionism and Israel

(September 13, 2022 / JNS) Nearly a century ago, The New York Times hired Joseph W. Levy, who had spent his boyhood in Jerusalem, as its foreign correspondent in Palestine. Fascinated with archeological discoveries that affirmed the truth of the biblical narrative, Levy admired Zionist land development and the newly founded Hebrew University. He enthusiastically embraced the Zionist narrative of a previously barren land suddenly “flowing with milk and honey.” He admired “the new type of Jew” who was “a member of the chosen people, once again a free citizen in his ancestral homeland.”

The eruption of murderous Arab violence in 1929—when Jews were slaughtered in their ancient capital cities of Hebron and Jerusalem—shocked Levy. Nevertheless, he blamed Zionists for their failure to establish “friendly relationships and cooperation” with local Arabs. His evident anti-Zionist bias would remain the hallmark of Times coverage of Palestine, and eventually, Israel.

Jewish statehood was staunchly opposed by the Times, lest it compromise the loyalty of American Jews to their home country. Publisher Adolph Ochs, a committed Reform Jew, insisted that Judaism was a religion only, not a national identity. His Sulzberger family successors embraced his discomfort with Zionism and the idea, no less reality, of Jewish statehood.

The birth of the modern-day State of Israel has remained problematic for the Times ever since. It became evident once Thomas L. Friedman was appointed Jerusalem bureau chief in 1984. He was an unrelenting critic of Israel for its “occupation” of Jordan’s West Bank—biblical Judea and Samaria. Jewish settlers were repeatedly blamed for obstructing peace with Palestinians, who showed no sign of wanting it.

Returning to Washington in 1988, Friedman’s newly published From Beirut to Jerusalem emphasized Israel’s occupation of “Palestinian” land, leading to its moral decline. He celebrated the emergence of Palestinians as a “people,” absurdly identifying their violent intifada with the American struggle for civil rights and equating Jewish settlers with Palestinian suicide bombers.

Several Jewish Jerusalem bureau chiefs followed in Friedman’s footsteps. Serge Schmemann blamed “the bellicose settlers of Hebron” for the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a resident of a Tel Aviv suburb. After a Likud election victory, Joel Brinkley warned of “a right-wing theocracy.” Steven Erlanger blamed Israeli governments for failing to confront “extreme and ideological” settlers, who he equated with Hamas.

Jodi Rudoren, who grew up in an Orthodox family, focused on Israeli responsibility for Palestinian suffering. Following the murder of three rabbis in a Jerusalem synagogue, she blamed “extremists on both sides.” A Times editorial described it as “a tragedy for all Israelis and Palestinians.”

Times Jewish columnists have been incessantly critical of Israel. Roger Cohen warned that it “cannot remain a Jewish and democratic state” with its “undemocratic system of oppression in territory under its control, … inflicting on disenchanted Palestinians the very exclusion Jews lived” for centuries. Its “corrosive business of occupation” and “messianic religious Greater Israel nationalism” threatened democracy.

No columnist lacerated Israeli settlements more persistently than Anthony Lewis. Identifying himself as a “friend of Israel,” he equated Israeli “occupation” (of its biblical homeland) by “Jewish zealots” with South African apartheid. Settlement, he asserted, “mocks the tradition of Jews as a people of law.”

Echoing Lewis’s absurd analogy Friedman feared that “scary religious nationalist zealots” might lead Israel into the “dark corner” of a “South African future.”

Friedman has remained an unrelenting critic of Israel. He yearns for a “two-state” solution with Palestine occupying biblical Judea and Samaria. Otherwise, Israel will “be stuck with an apartheid-like, democracy-sapping” occupation. He believes that his repetitive castigation of Israel helps it to preserve its moral integrity. In fact, it reinforces his stature as the most unrelenting Times critic since Joseph Levy paved the way nearly a century ago.

How ironic that a newspaper with Jewish publishers for nearly a century that has employed a stream of Jewish reporters, Jerusalem bureau chiefs and columnists should engage in unrelenting criticism of the world’s only Jewish state.

Jerold S. Auerbach is the author of 12 books, including “Print to Fit: The New York Times, Zionism and Israel (1896-2016).”

[arpov-blog-blog]

Progressives have been hammering Biden for his 180 degree turn on working with Saudi Arabian leader MBS. Here is what was in the works just before the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023. Was Hamas, Iran, Russia, and Israeli Zionists complicit in trying to derail this effort by using the attack as a pretext for the war? ...."US President Joe Biden’s administration is homing in on a new doctrine involving an unprecedented push to immediately advance the creation of a demilitarized but viable Palestinian state, The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman reported on Thursday.

The plan, Friedman wrote, “would involve some form of US recognition of a demilitarized Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that would come into being only once Palestinians had developed a set of defined, credible institutions and security capabilities to ensure that this state was viable and that it could never threaten Israel.”

White House officials “have been consulting experts inside and outside the US government about different forms this recognition of Palestinian statehood might take,” revealed Friedman.

US President Joe Biden’s administration is homing in on a new doctrine involving an unprecedented push to immediately advance the creation of a demilitarized but viable Palestinian state, The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman reported on Thursday.

The plan, Friedman wrote, “would involve some form of US recognition of a demilitarized Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that would come into being only once Palestinians had developed a set of defined, credible institutions and security capabilities to ensure that this state was viable and that it could never threaten Israel.”

White House officials “have been consulting experts inside and outside the US government about different forms this recognition of Palestinian statehood might take,” revealed Friedman.

What he termed the new “Biden Doctrine” would include boosting US ties with Saudi Arabia alongside a normalization of ties between Riyadh and Jerusalem, and maintaining a tough military stance against Iran and its proxies.

Before the Hamas assault on October 7, Riyadh was bargaining hard for security guarantees from Washington, as well as assistance with a civilian nuclear program that would have uranium enrichment capacity, as part of a normalization deal.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in January that he was prepared to normalize relations with Israel as part of rebuilding the Gaza Strip after the war, two US officials relayed to The Times of Israel, noting that he indeed is conditioning that deal on Israeli steps toward Palestinian sovereignty.

Hamas’s mass onslaught in Israel is “forcing a fundamental rethinking about the Middle East within the Biden administration,” Friedman wrote.

“If the administration can pull this together — a huge if — a Biden Doctrine could become the biggest strategic realignment in the region since the 1979 Camp David treaty,” he contended.

New York Times columnist, Thomas L. Friedman. (Rebecca Zeffert/Flash90)

[lacopadeeuropa]

misiles portátiles

Ahmed Qureia. Mahmud Abbas. Marwan Barghouthi. Mohammed Dahlan. Rawhi Fattouh. Thomas L. Friedman sentencia que Arafat estaba más obsesionado por la tierra palestina que por la vida palestina. No sé si existe vida sin tierra o tierra sin vida, es casi como intentar averiguar que es lo que existió primero, si el huevo o la gallina, pero ese pueblo sin fronteras más que un gran muro de cemento debe ahora concienciarse en que va a seguir teniendo educadores, políticos como los misiles portátiles que han robado en Irak, que mantienen las premisas de la destrucción -se dice que uno de los supuestos sucesores ya ha quitado de su despacho la foto del rais para colocar la suya propia- ante los ataques incesantes de un Israel hinchado de rabia y dólares. Y continuar abandonado hacia un futuro incierto.

(publicado el 8 de noviembre de 2004)

2 COMENTARIOS

Adrián - 09 de noviembre de 2004 - 02:18

La metamorfosis del texto o del individuo.

luis ricardo - 08 de noviembre de 2004 - 20:16

Creo que Arafat siente el peso de su compromiso. El prometió devolver el lugar digno que perdió Palestina. Lo que parece ingorar es que está completamente fuera de sus manos.

[antonio-velardo]

Antonio Velardo shares: Why Ukraine and Gaza Are Even Bigger Than You Think by Thomas L. Friedman

By Thomas L. Friedman This is no ordinary moment in world affairs. Published: January 25, 2024 at 05:01AM from NYT Opinion https://ift.tt/rkJiIzt via IFTTT

[trendingsphere]

Realism: This theory in international relations emphasizes the importance of power and statesacting in their own self-interest. Realists believe that the international system is anarchic andthat states must prioritize their own security. A book that provides a comprehensive overview ofrealism is “The Tragedy of Great Power Politics” by John J.…

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Tel Aviv :: July 25 :: 2023 :: Eric Alterman

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

Today, Israel’s parliament passed a law that increases the power of the country’s right wing, headed by prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Israel does not have a written constitution, and the prime minister’s ruling coalition is in control of both the executive and the legislative branches of government. The only check on them was the courts, which could overturn extreme laws that did not pass a “reasonableness standard,” which means they were not made according to a basic standard of fair and just policymaking.

The new law aims to take away that judicial power, and it passed by a vote of 64–0 after opponents walked out in protest. Netanyahu’s coalition has indicated it intends to continue to weaken the institutions that can check it. “This is just the beginning,” said National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

For 13 of the last 14 years, Netanyahu, who is under indictment for bribery, fraud, and breach of trust, has been Israel’s prime minister. Israeli democracy has weakened under him, in part because, as Zach Beauchamp of Vox explains, his support for Israeli settlement of the West Bank has fed an aggressive right-wing nationalist movement.

Netanyahu was turned out of the position briefly by a fragile coalition in 2021 but returned to power in December 2022 at the head of a coalition made up of ultranationalist and ultrareligious parties. That coalition commands just 64 out of 120 seats, a bare majority, in the Knesset, Israel’s unicameral legislature, which passes laws and runs the government.

As soon as the coalition formed, it announced its intention of reforming the judiciary to weaken it significantly. It also backed taking over the West Bank and limiting the rights of Palestinians, LGBTQ individuals, and secular Israelis. In early July the government launched a massive attack on the refugee camp in the city of Jenin in the occupied West Bank that killed at least 8 Palestinians and wounded 50 others, saying the camp contained a militant command center.

Secular and center-left Jewish Israelis flooded the streets to protest as soon as the coalition announced its attack on the judiciary, and they have continued to protest for 29 weeks. Last Saturday, military leaders wrote to Netanyahu, blaming him personally for the damage done to the military and to Israel’s national security, and demanding that he stop. “We, veterans of Israel’s wars,… are raising a blaring red stop sign for you and your government.” Thousands of Israeli military reservists warned they would not report for duty if the judicial overhaul plan passed, dramatically weakening the country’s national security.

If the far-right coalition destroys the independence of the judiciary, it will have kneecapped the courts that could convict Netanyahu. It could also rig future elections by, for example, barring Arab parties from participating, thus cementing its hold on power.

The United States was the first nation to recognize Israel 75 years ago and has been a staunch supporter ever since, to the tune of nearly $4 billion a year. But the country’s rightward lurch is testing the strength of that bond.

Netanyahu has politicized the two countries’ bonds, openly siding with Trump and Trump Republicans, who continue to offer him their support. President Joe Biden has staunchly supported Israel for 50 years but recently has warned Netanyahu personally against pushing court reform, and last week he took the extraordinary step of inviting New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman to the Oval Office to make his message clear. Biden told Friedman that Israel’s lawmakers should not make fundamental changes to the country’s government without a popular consensus. The White House called today’s vote “unfortunate.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

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BOOK-ET LIST 2024

With hopes of getting back into reading more regularly, I am challenging myself to read ALL these books in addition to my academic reading this year. Stay tuned for this journey. Might also post short write ups, memes or review them.

The Doll's House (Henrik Ibsen)

The World is Flat (Thomas L. Friedman)

The Picture of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde)

A Tale of Two Cities (Charles Dickens)

The Screenwriter's Problem Solver (Syd Field)

Actor Prepares (Constantin Stanislavski)

Art Direction for Film and Video (Robert L. Olsen)

The Death of a Salesman (Aurthur Miller)

The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)

The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)