It’s Day 5 of the actual trial! Day 9, if you include jury selection.
Best sources of live blogging that I have found.
Mark Sumner at Daily Kos – Live Blogging
Anna Bower at Lawfare – Live Blogging on Twitter (checking for twitter live blogging)
Josh Kovensky at TPM – Live Blogging (no live blogging today)
Judge holds Trump in Contempt, threatens Jail (TPM)
New York Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan threatened to incarcerate Donald Trump on Tuesday if he continues to flout a gag order imposed to block him and others from attacking witnesses in his criminal case.
Merchan said in an order released Tuesday morning that if Trump continued to violate the judge’s orders, he would “impose incarceratory punishment.”
The threat came as Merchan held Trump in contempt of court, fining him $1,000 per statement for nine social media posts that attacked witnesses in the case.
Merchan made a point in the contempt order of leaving open the possibility that he could send Trump to jail for continuing to violate the order. New York state law limits him to fineing Trump $1,000 per violation; Merchan wrote that such a small monetary amount “will not achieve the desired result in those instances where the contemnor can easily afford such a fine.”
He added that while he would prefer to impose a fine “commensurate with the wealth” of the offender, he lacked that power and would “therefore consider whether in some instances, jail may be a necessary punishment.”
Merchan, so far, is only threatening to incarcerate the former and potentially future President. Trump has brazenly flouted the judge’s order over the past several weeks, including in a manner intended to strike directly at the judge. Trump frequently posted about Merchan’s daughter, a fact that Manhattan DA prosecutors drew to Merchan’s attention during a contempt hearing last week.
TRANSCRIPTS OF NY CASES AVAILABLE THE NEXT DAY Link
Emotional support pup and kitty for the occasion.
I’m still interested in the trial, so I’ll put this up again today, but think of it as a general open thread, too.
bbleh
I really don’t know about this one. TIFG does things that are obviously and blatantly intended to strike at the judges overseeing his trials — his repeated attacks on Engoron’s clerk (which he discovered was a bit of a sore spot for Engoron and kept poking at it) and on Merchan’s daughter (pretty obvious there, and note also, both targets were women) — but I can’t figure out how much of it is just uncontrollable ODD-type behavior and how much is calculated, the latter eg to goad the judges into an appealable mistake (hasn’t worked) or to incarcerating him (which he appears to think would boost his political support). I also don’t know whether, to the degree the latter is the case, he’s correct that it would be a NET boost for him: yes it would inflame his base, but they’re committed anyway, and I’m not sure how his being incarcerated would play with the normies and fence-sitters.
Scout211
Some updates from NBC
Baud
I also hold Trump in contempt.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: So say we all.
Gin & Tonic
“Contemnor”? Well, I learned a new word today, I guess.
bbleh
@Baud: and increasingly, alas, many/most of his supporters. sorry folks, but gullibility and ignorance are no longer excuses.
Jackie
Merchan is toying with TIFG, who, IMO, is hoping to be jailed for ignoring his gag order. Of course he can fund raise off of that, while playing the victim. TIFG needs to be careful for what he wishes for.
Scout211
People watching. NBC again:
NotMax
@Baud
Only with a triple layer of nitrile gloves.
//
narya
Question for the lawyers among us: Could Merchan do something like sentence him a day at a time, on a day when the trial isn’t in session? Or overnight? (My understanding is that doing it during the trial would delay it.)
schrodingers_cat
@Baud:
Me too, long before he came down that escalator.
Scout211
@narya: IANAL, but defendants who are remanded show up to court with prison escorts, don’t they?
Bobby Thomson
Summary contempt power is for real.
I’d be OK with him being allowed to suit back up when he goes into court, as long as he doesn’t get to go home and they take his phone. We don’t need him bound, gagged, and chained to a chair like Bobby Seale.
Scout211
We don’t? 😉
Omnes Omnibus
@narya: @Scout211: Scout211 is correct.
Bobby Thomson
@narya: Under the U.S. Constitution, he can sentence him to up to six months on the spot, no jury, no other process.
NotMax
@Bobby Thomson
Still shudder at the court artist’s rendering all these years later.
Barbara
@narya: Many defendants are incarcerated during the course of their trial. They go back to prison at the end of the day but sit at the defendant’s table while the trial proceeds. There is no reason ordering incarceration should delay the trial, although it would no doubt trigger a flurry of motions to appeal the order, but I still don’t see why that would delay the trial itself. The two are not connected.
bbleh
@Omnes Omnibus: you mean about the escort or the gagging and tying? ;)
NotMax
if jury selection is not part of a trial, what is?
Omnes Omnibus
@Bobby Thomson: NY law apparently limits jail to 30 days. Per the order.
sab
@Omnes Omnibus: Two lawyers on the internet overriding an actual judge. I am shocked.
Actially I am, since our jackal legal department has been so restrained.
Geminid
@Scout211: So, Susie Wiles is there. I think this is her first time attending the trial. Maybe it’s moral support, in the looser sense of the word “moral.” Her guy is still scheduled for rallies in Wisconsin and Michigan tomorrow, so Wiles would want to keep him looking forward to them.
Omnes Omnibus
@sab:
Overriding the judge in what way?
Rathskeller
@Scout211: The judge’s earlier statement was simply that he would decide later, then TFG ran outside to complain how unfair it all is, then the RW puke funnel tried to turn this into an issue that people cared about.
eclare
@Jackie:
Was it Engoron who said something like “I think you want me to put you in jail,” and TIFG said yes?
...now I try to be amused
Note to Judge Merchan, from John Rogers: “Nothing changes until rich white men go to jail.”
schrodingers_cat
Chef’s kiss to the sketch artist at the trial. Makes me want to take up oil pastels as a medium.
Barbara
@Bobby Thomson: I am not going to look it up, but there is a maximum period of incarceration (I think it’s 12 months) that can be imposed for a misdemeanor before the crime has to be treated as a felony, and thus triggers certain fundamental rights, such as a right to a trial by jury.
Sentencing a defendant for contempt is not so cut and dried — there are people who have been imprisoned for quite a bit longer than one year for contempt, typically for refusing to disclose where they have hidden their assets or where they moved their child after abduction. This kind of incarceration is considered to be remedial and should not be longer (or shorter) than the situation requires. It’s not without controversy, but in this case, incarcerating Trump for the duration of the trial really shouldn’t be controversial from the perspective of legal process.
ETA: Per the comment of Omnes, of course, state law can be more restrictive than what could be imposed under the U.S. Constitution. The defendant gets the benefit of the least restrictive law that applies under the circumstances. A federal court would not be bound by New York law, however.
NotMax
@Geminid
In Wisconsin: “The cheese is just the right size.”
//
HumboldtBlue
A reminder of what’s in store if the GOP somehow manage to steal the election.
Also:
smith
As I understand it, being found in criminal contempt means he has been found guilty of a felony, so we can rightly call him a felon now.
Also, it means he’s committed a crime while out on bond, so he has violated the conditions of his release in four different cases, and his bond could be revoked in any of them.
different-church-lady
Obvious wins for a change.
Wapiti
@Omnes Omnibus: It would be ironic if Trump missed his kid’s graduation because he was in jail for contempt.
Omnes Omnibus
@smith: No.
eclare
@eclare:
No I think it was Judge Kaplan in the E Jean Carroll trial who said that.
bbleh
@eclare: pretty much that.
@Jackie: I wouldn’t say Merchan is toying with him; I’d say he’s giving him rope and unmistakable fair warning. (And I don’t disagree that were he, say, an otherwise unremarkable young Black man, he’d probably have been treated considerably less gently.)
I’m gonna bet that he backs off the posts now. He’s made his point, disobeyed the teacher a couple times and been called out for it, both to the delight of his little friends, and now he’ll subside. (Unless of course I’m wrong per #1 above, and he really can’t control himself, or he really DOES think incarceration would help him.)
Mr. Bemused Senior
@eclare: it’s hard to keep track.
NotMax
@HumboldtBlue
Trustworthy not a synonym for feckless.
TS
And WaPo is giving trump’s side of the trial in their “live updates”. And in the midst of such updates we get
Trump calls on Biden to address college protests, compares them to Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol
So much for trump being on trial – free campaigning courtesy of the media.
Baud
@TS:
Except during Jan 6, the police were the heroes.
NotMax
@bbleh
I find it extremely interesting he has yet to say boo about financial monitor Barbara Jones.
Baud
@NotMax:
Dems don’t care about him being cowardly. They care about whether they rely on his commitments to them in the event of a deal.
Central Planning
@Omnes Omnibus: Is that 30 days total, or could it be 30 days per violation of the gag order?
eclare
@Mr. Bemused Senior:
I know!
mrmoshpotato
Has the orange shitstain farted himself to sleep yet?
Omnes Omnibus
@Central Planning:
Per violation. Also, if Merchan does put Trump in jail, no one should expect that he go for the maximum immediately.
NotMax
@Omnes Omnibus
No reason I can see he can’t be removed to a holding cell for the duration of each day’s session until such time as compliance is adjudicated..
Mandatory IANAL caveat.
West of the Rockies
@TS:
I am so tired of that newsy phrase “Trump calls on…” “MTG calls on Pelosi to…”
I call on Trump to die.
So what?
I don’t know… it sounds like a meaningful demand with authority, but it’s a fart in a Category 5 hurricane.
Ruckus
@bbleh:
Subside?
SFB?
I’m not all that sure he will. He didn’t run for president for the country, that was 1000% to reenforce his concept of himself that he is a very superior human being to the rest of the humans on the planet. And given his seemingly reached mental limits – reached long ago, this will not change. My opinion – his brain is broken and given his age and his personality, there is not one human on the planet that can fix it. Including him.
Jackie
@eclare:
It was.
eta Or Kagen? 🤷🏼♀️
Baud
Via reddit
Jackie
@Baud: Hey, don’t take away my privileged O neg universal blood-type status!
The Red Cross will stop hounding me!
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: I am sure Dracula approves.
Melancholy Jaques
@Barbara:
Or for refusing to lie about Bill Clinton
bbleh
@Ruckus: personally I’d find that triply satisfying, first for the sheer entertainment value, second for seeing him punished, and third and most importantly because it would indicate that he really DOESN’T have full control over himself, which would bode poorly for both his future at trial and his campaign. But I haven’t seen enough yet.
RaflW
I’d like to see TFG ordered to house arrest in his Manhattan appt on days the trial is off. With absolutely no access to anything but a landline telephone. No smartphone, no tablet, no computer. Strict limits on staff-generated “truthing” (barf).
No trips back to Mar-a-Nogo for egostroking dinners among his maga polloi.
HumboldtBlue
Luther Siler
So what happens when he skips Barron’s graduation to go golfing?
TS
trump trying to keep control of a situation he cannot control
cain
@bbleh: He’s learned his lesson.
prostratedragon
@TS: This is why he feels he can play golf (a real sign of contempt for the public on his part), and not have any field offices. Maybe if we keep shouting about it at least some voters might notice, or it could start to become some kind of meme.
MisterForkbeard
I’m curious what other actions Merchan can take beyond meaningless fines and (effectively) jail.
Can he restrict Trump’s posting? Can he require that Trump show up to the court house 5 hours early and stay an extra few hours afterwards? Can he mandate that every time Trump falls asleep he gets an extra fine?
If he can avoid making Trump look like a martyr but just keep reinforcing that he’s an awful sleazebag who can’t keep his shit together, that both punishes Trump and doesn’t give Trump the martyrdom he deserves. Or he can explicitly say “I’m giving the defendant a huge exception: Any other person who’d acted the way he has would be in jail on a contempt charge. I am explicitly making an exception because the defendant’s past, and because the defendant appears to want to be punished so he can pretend to martyrdom in the media. But he still needs to get in line, and this is how we’re going to do it:”
zhena gogolia
Okay, today my normie friend said, “I just wish he would make up his mind about whether he’s running or not.” I said he’s been running for quite a while. “But he’s in court every day! He’s not campaigning!”
I wish I could take whatever she’s taking.
danielx
@Bobby Thomson:
Actually that image holds great appeal.
Miss Bianca
@MisterForkbeard:
You know, at this point, I’m not worried about Trump’s being “martyred” by being jailed. The fact that none of his allegedly loyal base can be bothered to show up to protest his “unjust” trial makes me wonder how much of an effect it would have.
Except for the relief of the Orange Shitgibbon not being able to squirt out his filth to pollute the public airwaves.
artem1s
@Jackie:
It’s also possible TIFG is trying to force Roberts’ hand on the immunity ruling. As much as we hate that Roberts will probably push the ruling into the next session, the great orange satan hates it even more. If Merchan throws him in jail for contempt, that also provides his lawyers another opportunity to delay this trial and the GA trial based on SCOTUS not ruling on immunity. I’m certain the legal teams for all the trials will be appealing for more delays if Merchan throws him in jail. If POTUS has absolute immunity then how can he be thrown in jail for contempt? Surely NY/GA/DoJ must wait to proceed with this trial and all the other trials until SCOTUS has weighed in on immunity.
Total immunity for all crimes, state and federal, is his only hope now. Don’t assume the evil 6 won’t interfere with state trials if they think they can get away with it.
HumboldtBlue
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: Totebagger?
prostratedragon
An interesting side note from Ryan Goodman about Merchan’s contempt ruling:
Now, this actually seems fair — so did his lawyers request this? If not, why not.
WaterGirl
@artem1s:
I think Omnes said they are required to rule within the session that they heard the case. Which is it?
prostratedragon
@zhena gogolia: Oh, dear😟
Steeplejack
@zhena gogolia:
Your subnormie friend, I think you meant to say.
WaterGirl
@prostratedragon: I believe I read over a week ago that Michael Cohen had announced that he would not be doing his podcast and would refraain from public statements while Trump’s NY trial is going on.
oldgold
As I mentioned the other day, I think there is another option available to the Judge, if Trump continues to violate the Gag Order, besides fining him or placing him in jail.
This third option is to clamp an ankle bracelet on Trump and during the time the Court is not in session confine him to his penthouse apartment in Trump Tower for a week. This would be a fairly significant punishment, avoid the logistical problems of a jail stay and be less prone to render Trump a martyr.
JWR
@TS:
TBH, that was my first thought this morning when they showed “students” breaking the glass to gain entry to one of the buildings. All I could think of was some Repub pol screeching, “see? Just like Jan 6! Eat it, libs!”
prostratedragon
@WaterGirl: He did, but I’m not sure he has been completely silent.
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat: No. Just someone who doesn’t pay much attention to politics. But hates and fears Trump.
Scout211
According to ABC he’s doing a TikTok live stream
zhena gogolia
@JWR: I do wish the “students” would quit helping the Republicans.
Jeffro
but…but…PRESIDENTIAL IMMUNITY!!!1!
lol
If Merchan can wait another week or two and then slap trumpov with that six month free stay, he’d be an American hero on a par with George Washington.
Brachiator
@bbleh:
Trump is not smart enough to be trying to get the judge to make a mistake.
Previously, I believed that Trump was scared of being imprisoned. I still think he may be. But he operates on instinct and low cunning. He would try to capitalize on being put in jail despite his fear of punishment.
Jeffro
@Omnes Omnibus: aww dang it, why’d you have to spoil it for me?
only 30 days? I am sad.
Jeffro
ye gods
talk about the soft bigotry of looooow expectations
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: Ds need to distance themselves from these tankies. They are not as benign as some BJers seem to think.
Ruckus
@bbleh:
But I haven’t seen enough yet.
I have. Actually, I’ve seen – FAR MORE THAN ENOUGH.
He is decompensating. At a not insignificant rate. In my humble opinion he has been in over his head for a long time. His inherited money (said to be around $400 million) got him started long ago, and his gigantic ego took him over the top, way past his limited abilities to actually be human. I used to read about his father and then him in Forbes. It was enlightening, seeing what money can and does do to many people. And how it can blind many people to see the person in front of them. Including the person in the mirror.
MisterForkbeard
@JWR: I saw that news this morning and thought “Well, those kids should be arrested for trespassing and vandalism”. But hadn’t thought that idiots would make the J6 comparison. Should have though, it’s the right kind of obvious disingenuousness that the Right trades in
Brachiator
@Omnes Omnibus:
Thirty days in the hole
That’s what they give you now
Thirty days in the hole
Oh, yeah
Thirty days in the hole
All right, all right
Thirty days in the hole
cain
@Jeffro: Imagine the courts not being able to do anything thanks to the SCOTUS cutting off their own power base.
Let’s ask this if the President has immunity why not the entire executive branch?
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Jeffro:…
As you say, a low bar, but better than nothing.
Ruckus
@zhena gogolia:
I wish I could take whatever she’s taking.
No, you really, really shouldn’t.
UncleEbeneezer
Josh Marshall spitting bars, with the nuance, pragmatism and empathy that has been sadly lacking in discussions about the Gaza protests:
Ruckus
@prostratedragon:
I actually see him often on this internet thing. The last time I saw him (yesterday or the day before) he specifically stated that he could not say a word about any of this. And didn’t. It wasn’t that direct, but close.
Leto
@JWR: @zhena gogolia:
Pro-Israel Agitator Shouts ‘Kill the Jews,’ Gets Everyone Else Arrested
Remember how the same shitheels did this with the BLM protests? Remember how the BLM leaders issued statements condemning anyone smashing/looting buildings, same as a good number of these student leaders have condemned the antisemitic hate speech? Pepperridge Farms remembers.
JWR
@zhena gogolia:
Exactly. And about these “outside agitators” constantly being associated with the protesting students: On last night’s local news, they interviewed a guy saying as much, but when they panned across the Israeli counter-protesters pushing against the students, I saw at least half were middle aged men, grey hair and all. But I’m sure they were just taking time off from their adult extension courses, amirite?
cain
@UncleEbeneezer: I really need to purchase a subscription.
cain
@HumboldtBlue:
Shiiiit.. your job saved by Dems. He’s not gonna last very long – every action will be scrutinized as “is he helping the Dems?” – and MTG is going to be frothing at the mouth and really really start agitating.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
Luckily for us all, contempt is more of a psychic phenomenon.
geg6
@Bobby Thomson:
I dunno, I kinda like the idea.
Miss Bianca
@oldgold:
I’d settle for that.
TBone
For anyone interested, there is a Livestream from the Constitutional Accountability Center today at 1pm
youtube.com/live/qmCI7IwIPVE?feature=shared
Now that the Supreme Court has heard the final oral arguments of this Term, join CAC for our virtual panel to discuss some of the most significant cases and possible decisions yet to come.
CAC President Elizabeth Wydra will deliver opening remarks, followed by a discussion moderated by Slate senior writer Mark Joseph Stern. Our panel of distinguished experts will discuss some of the most significant cases from this Supreme Court Term and look ahead to major rulings and issues on the horizon. From battles over abortion medication and presidential immunity, to big economic justice cases on the Court’s docket, to the use of originalism and textualism, there is much to discuss as the Justices enter this Term’s home stretch.
Featured panelists include Easha Anand, Assistant Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Supreme Court Litigation Clinic at Stanford Law School; Khiara M. Bridges, Professor of Law at UC Berkeley School of Law; Kelsi Brown Corkran, Supreme Court Director at the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy & Protection and Senior Lecturer at Georgetown University Law Center; Deepak Gupta, Founding Principal of Gupta Wessler LLP and Lecturer at Harvard Law School; and CAC’s own Chief Counsel Brianne Gorod.
zhena gogolia
@UncleEbeneezer: Thank you for this. It confirms the sick vibes I’m getting from this organization.
Eolirin
@cain: I can’t see how he won’t last the entire rest of this congress if Dems are willing to back him up. Only a handful of Republicans need to be of the view that another drawn out leadership battle that goes no where for weeks right before an election is a worse look and the votes to keep him in place will be there. Dem support flips the motion to vacate math entirely and secures his position. He only needs to do just enough to maintain that support.
Though there’s a really good chance he’s going to get primaried and will lose his seat in 2026.
geg6
@NotMax:
Well, she does have his balls in a vice. He does have a good sense of self-preservation when it comes to $$.
Hon
@artem1s: If POTUS has absolute immunity then how can he be thrown in jail for contempt?
I may be wrong (there have been so many insane claims that it’s hard to keep track) but as far as I know, not even Trump and his lawyers have tried to argue that ex-Presidents have immunity for things they do after leaving office.
SW
Lock him up. It won’t help him. Anyone who would be sympathetic is already voting for him. It did help Hitler because he wrote a book. Trump doesn’t have the skill or discipline to do that.
JWR
If Trump spends any time in the hoosegow, how much time will they give him to re-do his make-up before going to court? That’s what I wanna know.
Oh, and he’s gotta get that weird ducktail hair style with the swooping flair over the receding hairline and etc.? ~sigh~ Must suck to be him right now. ;)
rikyrah
Mediaite (@Mediaite) posted at 11:10 AM on Tue, Apr 30, 2024:
Conservative Activist Chris Rufo Urges Right to Fuel Pro-Palestine Protests on College Campuses t.co/im6jqIpz5W
(x.com/Mediaite/status/1785340939948425649?s=02)
hueyplong
@SW: Agree. Jail him next time.
As for the “normies,” you kind of have to worry whether people hesitant to lock him up extra short term for obvious violations we can all understand will also be hesitant to lock him up for conviction on a “mere bookkeeping” crime.
It’s like Trump is Reservoir Dogs-ing the legal system, saying, “Hey little doggie, are you gonna bark all day or are you going to bite?”
Bite.
WaterGirl
@Scout211: LOL. Michael Cohen does come off as a little impulsive.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
Bingo. This is the exact right response. For TIFG to push beyond this, and for some here to agree, deplorable.
Jackie
@artem1s: Not true. TIFG would be escorted from jail every morning and brought to court.
See OJ Simpson and the Crumbley’s for examples.
hueyplong
@Hon: “… as far as I know, not even Trump and his lawyers have tried to argue that ex-Presidents have immunity for things they do after leaving office.”
Kind of makes you wonder why the Florida federal case is currently stayed when most of what he’s accused of occurred after he left office.
rikyrah
80%???
Karen Piper (@PiperK) posted at 10:43 PM on Mon, Apr 29, 2024:
80% of the protestors arrested at Arizona State were not students.
(x.com/PiperK/status/1785152920893165938?s=02)
UncleEbeneezer
@Leto: I’ve attended BLM and immigration protests where we were told quite clearly that if we stirred up any shit, chanted or held up signs that bordered on violent language or contained dog-whistles, harassed counter-protestors etc., we would be quickly asked to leave. This is Civil Disobedience/Activism 101 that goes back to the Civil Rights Movement (and surely much earlier). I don’t know why so many Progressive cheerleaders keep insisting that the leaders of these protests (and their supporters) shouldn’t be held to the same standards. I’d have much better feelings towards these protests if I was seeing more evidence of the leaders/orgs actively: 1.) affirming Israel’s right to exist, 2.) condemning anti-Semitism and saying it has no place in their movement and 3.) being honest/critical about Hamas.
lowtechcyclist
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’d be happy to see Merchan put him in a cell overnight for the next violation. I suspect that would get it through to Trump’s lizard brain that shit’s getting real here.
Anoniminous
Spare us the bullshit. Lock the fucker up or STFU
FastEdD
@Brachiator: 30 Days In The Hole-one of my favorite songs. The verses are NSFW.
Newcastle Brown, it can sure smack you down …
it made me like drinking that stuff.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@rikyrah: As near as I can tell from ASU’s website, they’re in final exams this week and done on May 5. Students are busy.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@UncleEbeneezer: I’ll agree that the protestors could use a little guidance in how to deal with agitators. Perhaps if they got a little support and guidance from the universities they were in or more broadly from the culture or the media.
ETA: These aren’t experienced media hands being prepped by staff for regular appearances.
I will say, people are turning condemning Hamas into a punchline. It’s the “I have a black friend” of supporting Palestinian self-determination.
Unless otherwise explicitly stated, everyone condemns Hamas. Okay, folk?
Matt McIrvin
@SW: Please, Trump has “written” plenty of “books”. All you need to to hire a guy to crank one out. These days, you could probably just ask an AI.
zhena gogolia
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: No, not okay. It has to be explicitly stated.
JWR
@Jackie:
Therein lies my concern about the poor perps makeup routine.
And if you think the courtroom artists are having fun with him now, just you wait! ;)
Kay
@UncleEbeneezer:
You can keep criticizing the protestors (really the norm at Balloon Juice, for every protest) but it doesn’t change the facts – 40,000 civilians dead, every university in Gaza leveled, the International Criminal Court looking at charges (which the Biden Administration is blocking) and a growing group even within the Biden Administration for the Biden Administration to do something, anything, to show they are actually opposed to what are war crimes. “Actually opposed” mandates taking some action. It doesn’t mean appearing every two weeks and saying they oppose war crimes.
What could they do? They could start enforcing US law for one thing- the Leahy Laws – or they could stop blocking investigations into war crimes.
They said yesterday that the ICC doesn’t have jurisdiction over Gaza. Yes, they do. Since 2015. You know where the ICC doesn’t have jurisdiction? Ukraine. Neither Ukraine or Russia are signatories – but the US never blocked an indictment against Putin.
If college students didn’t exist all of these things would still be true. The much-maligned college students will be out of school in a month. Then who or what do we offer up as an excuse? Who’s our national fall guy once the 19 year olds are no longer available?
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@zhena gogolia: Because the only reason to support peace and self-determination for Palestinians is as more culturally acceptable way dogwhistle for the destruction of the Jewish people?
The fuck is wrong with you?
Jackie
Democratic member Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar on MTG’s thoughts:
Heh 🤭
cmorenc
@narya: make Trump serve the jail time on weekends, which would not interfere with the trial schedule.
lou
@rikyrah:
Same thing at UT Austin. 60% weren’t students. x.com/lilykepner/status/1785347348031209672
Jackie
@JWR: For those reasons alone, I want TIFG jailed for contempt! Comedy
goldorange!!Kay
@lou:
Which means 40% were. So do you oppose the students protesting war crimes? Or not?
I guess I have to back up- do you think there is a first amendment right for them to protest their government? Or should they all immediately be arrested?
JWR
@UncleEbeneezer:
And the pro-Israeli side was/is blaring out the carefully edited video of the 10/7 Hamas attack, which automatically makes all the pro-Palestinian protesters out to be pro-Hamas. It’s gotten ugly all around.
Kay
I know it’s much more comfortable to act as 30,000 feet critics of the protestors but it’s sure interesting how there is NO discussion of the substantive issues around the US blanket, blank check support for what is going on in Gaza.
This was yesterday, inn case anyone is actually interested:
The Biden Adminstration said yesterday that the ICC doesn’t have jurisidction. That’s not true. Is this okay or are the students the real problem here?
Kay
US blocking even an investigation into war crimes. They better block it. Anyone does a real investigation the US will be complict in the war crimes. But I doubt we’ll get one. No one will be held accountable for any of it, except the 19 year old students who will be suspended and/or expelled for saying it’s happening.
How very brave of all of us older folks. We’ve made them the sacrificial lambs.
Belafon
@Kay: Students have a right to protest, and the non-students do too. But what the students need to figure out how to identify those that are there to protest and there to cause trouble.
stacib
@Kay:The Biden Adminstration said yesterday that the ICC doesn’t have jurisidction. That’s not true. Is this okay or are the students the real problem here?
Does it have to be an either / or considering both sides are carrying some weight here?
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Kay: I thought we noped out of the ICC. With all due respect, less here than is typically due the man, why should the ICC give two shits what Biden thinks?
Geminid
@Jackie: At age 44, Pete Aguilar is the youngest member of the leadership team of Jeffries, Clark and Aguilar. He flipped his inland Southern California seat in 2014. Before that Aguilar was Mayor of Redlands, California so I guess you could call him the other Mayor Pete.
Kay
@Belafon:
Why? What do you care? No one at Balloon Juice is opposing any of it. It shouldn’t bother any of you if they’re discredited.
It’s better politically for Biden if Gaza isn’t mentioned at all, right? They’ll leave school soon for the end of the term and we can just bury Gaza- go back to pretending it isn’t happening. That’s much more comfortable for everyone. It’ll be back in the news soon though – a million people are getting ready to starve.
cmorenc
@oldgold:
But if so restricted, Trump could cry martyr because he is thus being prevented from
playing golfcampaigning on days that week when the court isn’t in session.zhena gogolia
@Kay: Get ready for what’s going to happen in this country (and Ukraine, and Palestine) when Trump wins.
Kay
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
We’re not in and either is Israel. Either are Russia and Ukraine, but for some odd reason we didn’t raise any “jurisdictional” objection then.
They’re too the point they’re gaslighting because this policy is indefensible. No one could defend it. That’s why they’re saying ridiculous things about “jurisdiction”.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@cmorenc: Trump can campaign by Zoom call, perhaps from his basement.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@zhena gogolia: And Trump will count you and obvious racist, Schrodinger’s cat, as among the number to thank.
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: I have also not heard a word on behalf of the hostages or the fact that it is Hamas who has not accepted several ceasefire proposals from the self righteously indignant on this blog.
Kay
@zhena gogolia:
The US is now blocking even investigations into war crimes? You recognize this gets worse every month right? That we trade more and more of our credibility with each of these bad decisions?
I think the students make liberals uncomfortable because liberals know this is a godammned war crime. I mean, at this point everyone in the world does, with the exception of Republicans in the US House.
That’s why we want them to shut up and go away. They will soon – students disperse in the summer. But the war crimes will continue.
JWR
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
The U.S. opted out of the ICC back during Reagan’s war on Nicaragua, allegedly because of some conflict with the Constitution, so yeah, why should they care? The admin can oppose the ICC’s findings all day long, but it doesn’t have any control at all. short of “other” means
ETA, or what Kay said about the Leahy Laws, which are sorely underused, if used at all.
Anoniminous
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
Because the US can impose sanctions on people working for the ICC.
Among other things
Cite: US Sanctions on the International Criminal Court
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@schrodingers_cat: Hey look it’s Dr. Never met a protest I like, constantly rashes white women for behavior she displays to the letter, would be a Republican if not for immigration, herself.
lowtechcyclist
@Belafon:
That’s a pretty significant bar for exercising one’s freedom of speech.
You think the average college student would be able to tell one from the other before they actually caused trouble? I sure wouldn’t have been, and I doubt if I could do so now, with fifty more years of experience under my belt.
Manyakitty
@schrodingers_cat: exactly.
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
If you read anything on the actual conflict instead of focusing on how you hate The Squad and the protesting students you would recognize that every single humanitarian org that is condeming Israel is also condeming Hamas.
The ICC wil issue warrants to both leaders of Israel and Hamas. That’s how it works. Not students “denouncing” this or that which means NOTHING but a real action.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Anoniminous: Goes with the territory of being the biggest player in the block. So we can affect the ICC by external means, fantastic.
This is what happens when a culture de facto requires its leader to be a war criminal.
UncleEbeneezer
@JWR: Yup. Those people suck too.
Harrison Wesley
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: Same stunt as with the Security Council resolution. It was binding, but US refused to admit that.
Baud
I haven’t found an article indicating that the administration said the ICC had jurisdiction to issue the Putin arrest warrant.
cnn.com/2023/03/17/politics/biden-putin-war-crimes-ukraine/index.html
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@schrodingers_cat: Sorry,what I see is someone opining from the most powerful country in the world how people in a stateless nation should negotiate with one of the most powerful nations in its region which just so happens to be on a murdering spree.
Kay
@lowtechcyclist:
This is the new Balloon Juice “condition” on the First Amendment. Protestors must vet each and every person who says they are a protestor. If there’s even one bad protestor they all must be shut down.
They think this issue is bad for Biden (it is) and it makes them uncomfortable so what they really want is it for not to be discussed or mentioned at all.
They’ll probably get their wish! Arresting students is probably pretty effective at blocking all debate on this US policy.
Eolirin
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: When you’ve got people chanting from the river to the sea and some of the organizations running these protests explicitly framing Hamas as revolutionary freedom fighters I don’t think you get to treat everyone condemns Hamas as a baseline assumption here.
zhena gogolia
@Kay: What I wish is that the protestors would think a couple of moves ahead. Trump’s election will ensure the destruction of the Palestinians. And Ukraine. And us. Where is the energy on that issue?
zhena gogolia
I see five-alarm bells screaming for the continued existence of democracy in my own country. I don’t see any energy on college campuses about that, quite the contrary. Trump will mean the end for us, Ukraine, and the Palestinians.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: Protestors are condemning Hamas by putting up posters calling for global intifada?
I don’t hate the Squad or the students, you are mind reading. I find their tactics counterproductive to electing more Democrats. YMMV
You on the other hand are in denial about how your demographic votes in elections reflected by statistical data election after election
The RWNJs don’t claim to represent me or pretend to speak on my behalf. I don’t see them allies. I see them as political opponents to be defeated in elections.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Eolirin: How about I condemn you, instead?
This guilt by association bullshit is right out of the authoritarian playbook. Most of you on this question are, quite literally, no better than Fox News.
Harrison Wesley
@Kay: Students will be out for the summer soon, so publicity will drop off. If IDF can get it cranked up, the whole thing will be over by the end of summer and the American public won’t hear about it again before the election. Problem solved.
The Palestinians? Oh, them. They’ll be exiled or exterminated Sux 2 B U, guys.
Anoniminous
@Kay: Or apply the Kent State solution and shoot the buggers.
Kay
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
Literally DAILY in this country Right wing supporters of Israel are spouting noxious, anti Muslm and anti Arab vitriol yet for some reason no one on Ballon Juice says that discredits support for Israel.
Yet any shitty protestor any where in the country discredits support for Palestinians.
If shitty supporters discredit a cause than that should apply to Israel too. Of course it doesn’t because it’s moronic, but under the Balloon Juice logic it should.
They are using the exact same logic as the people who say every Israeli is responsible for Netanyahu.
JMG
The President of my alma mater, Wesleyan, has sent out a letter, emailed to all alumni as well, that so long as protestors on campus remain chill, the school’s administration will remain chill also. This calm and logical approach is likely to result in the protest quietly ending in due course. There’s some guy on Twitter who is compiling a list of colleges where protests have generated headlines in their local media. So far, he’s got 45 of ’em. There are around 4000 colleges and universities in the US.
Trollhattan
@FastEdD: Very fond of Pie in HS. Live album kills.
youtu.be/sdXjm8pZMws?si=bgrE50Xy0nKtHu4m
Mousebumples
apnews.com/article/marijuana-biden-dea-criminal-justice-pot-f833a8dae6ceb31a8658a5d65832a3b8
Sounds like progress is being made, to reschedule marijuana from I to III. I’m excited about the improved research access – among the other benefits for states that have already legalized use.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@zhena gogolia: I see five-alarm bells screaming for the continued existence of democracy in my own country
You know what? If what the survival of Democracy requires is quiet acceptance of genocide for the sake of image-control, maybe Democracy really isn’t worth saving.
Not saying I believe that, saying your argument forces me to conclude that.
Kay
@Harrison Wesley:
Mike Johnson is a blatant anti Arab, anti Muslim bigot and supporter of Israel. Does that discredit all supporters of Israel? If not, why not? I was just told all supporters of Palestinians are discredited if there is one bad supporter. This must then apply to Israel supporters, right?
Ruckus
@NotMax:
Not even then.
japa21
Before this degenerates too far:
Yes the students and others have a right to protest
No, they do not have the right to destroy property or engage in physical harrassment
The universities have an obligation to make sure that those students who aren’t involved in protesting are able to go to classes, take exams, etc. without obstruction
The universities have an obligation to talk with the protesters to set up ground rules
The legal authorities have an obligation to not interfere with the protests unless something violent or dangerous is happening.
A major point of many of the protests is to demand that universities divest from Israel. Fine to ask for but universities are in their right to refuse.
Being pro-Palestine does not make one pro-Hamas or anti-Israel. There is enough activity of the latter 2 that is can be made to appear that the bulk of the protesters are both pro-Hamas and anti-Israel.
Regarding the Biden administration. They are caught between a rock and a hard place. Anything they do will be met with extreme criticism. I’m just glad I am not in their shoes.
ETA: The degeneration has proceeded apace.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Kay: It’s an extension of the principle that the left is judged by its worst association, however tenuous, regardless of what elected officials do.
This is a smear campaign. Full stop.
ETA: One of the most important things to be looking at in any political judgment, who has power here?
Kay
@japa21:
Okay, but if Republicans in Congress block a Muslim judge out of sheer, blatant religious bigotry and those same Republicans are huge supporters of Israel does every supporter of Israel have to denounce any supporter of Israel who is a bigot? Because they’re going to be doing a lot of apologizing. The US (far) Right wing is very pro Israel.
I mean, I don’t agree that every Israel supporter has to denounce any bigoted Israel supporter but if that’s the rule, we should apply it across the board.
You have to be consistent.
Citizen Alan
@WaterGirl: The theory I’ve heard which sounds plausible is that they will find some bullshit excuse to remand the case for additional factual findings. That will let them punt until after the election.
Baud
@Citizen Alan:
My guess too.
Eolirin
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: I’m Jewish, and I’ve been staunchly pro-Palestinian for decades. I have been condeming Israel’s actions regarding Palestinians since before 10/7.
The current pro-Palestinian protests are absolutely inflitrated, backed, and made more extreme by anti-semites and those looking to eliminate Israel and all Jews. I’m all for good faith actions seeking policy change, even if I think pragmatism is more important than creating situations highly unlikely to lead to the desired outcomes but a ton of this is not that. If we don’t ask these groups that question it is far more difficult to understand which category they fall into and one of those categories is made up of people that want to kill me.
So go fuck yourself.
JWR
@Kay:
Exactly this. If any of those people show up in any country that is a signatory to the ICC, they can, and should be, arrested on the spot. Doesn’t matter what the Biden team says. But the longer they refuse to more fully rein in Israel, the worse it’ll get for the Palestinians, which is horribly bad already.
schrodingers_cat
@japa21: A logical take. Its going to be non-white people who will pay the price for this cosplay of the 60s activism. Tankie Riddhi Patel found this out the hard way and is facing multiple felony charges.
The privileged Ivy League students will take off their keffieyehs and blend into society while the rest of us who don’t have that option will pay the price of guilt by association. If these protests descend into violence, especially if the globalize intifada calls result into casaulties.
I remember the years after 9/11.
Kay
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
Oh, it doesn’t matter. As you say, the students are powerless. The facts on the ground and the US inaction on blatant and repeated war crimes remain the same whether we shut the students up or not. We’ll either investigate the mass graves or we will block an investigation. A sophomore at IU holding a sign matters not a bit to that reality.
They’re a distraction – a scape goat, for a country that is watching this and KNOWS it’s wrong.
japa21
@Kay:
Not sure I understand your point. I am having one of my “dumb” days. But what would be the corollary?
Baud
@Kay:
My opinion means nothing but FWIW, if there a rally and some speaker says something offensive, I’d expect the rally organizers to make a statement about it.
If there’s a rally, and someone elsewhere says the same offensive thing, I would not expect the rally organizers to denounce it.
cain
@UncleEbeneezer:
I think every student protest is being infilterated by people who want to cause trouble.
Here in ‘little beirut’ – every BLM protest turned violent once they moved from one location to another as thugs joined the march and started breaking shit along the ways – the other young people gets pumped up and starts joining in and it turns into a melee.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
Those groups aren’t here. The people who are here are here. If someone here expresses anti-Semitic ideas, please proceed to castigate them. Shit, I’ll help.
The focus on protestors is solely to play into discrediting the movement and too many here are helping.
Get smart. This is one of the oldest and most common plays in the book; targeting feminists, queer folk, race equality activists. They do this every time. Wise up.
ETA: I’ve been pro-truly-equitable solution my entire adult life. I, too, an not new to this debate. Neither are any of these arguments. The forces of war are running the same game, we should not help them.
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
Agian, I know BJ’ers carefully avoid actual Gaza news in favor of a carefully curated “we hate the Left” bubble but your repeated assertion that these are “rich Ivy League” students is incorrect and has been incorrect for weeks.
IU and Ohio State and MSU are not Ivy League schools.
Old School
Eolirin
@Kay: Except they’re not powerless to normalize violence against Jews, which is why people like Rufo are backing them.
The same goes for the hijacking of counter protests normalizing violence against Muslims.
None of it helps.
Jinchi
@Kay:
U.Texas is also a public university that draws widely from the population.
prostratedragon
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: At Columbia they did start to have teach-ins, and also some faculty in yellow vests acting sort of as marshals. I’ve no idea what the content of the teach-ins was beyond talks on the history of the region. It does not appear that there was much talk of tactics, strategy, or practice in effective protest. There is still a group insisting on maximal demands, like immediate divestment from Israel, whatever that means in practice, while doing provocative things like breaking into and barricading Hamilton Hall (‘Tis the season). Some things they might actually be able to get, like greater transparency or a committment to reformulate the endowment’s portfolio policies, but these tactics make it damned hard.
At least across the street, the Barnard students are trying the student referendum route on divestment (link), while 77 percent of all its faculty, following 100 percent of the AAUP chapter, have voted no confidence in the College president for her draconian response to last week’s demonstrations.
Kay
@japa21:
The corrollary would be Right wingers who are supporters of Israel saying everyone who supports Palestinians supports Hamas.
Does every Israel supporter have to denouce that? Do we hold all Israel supporters responsible for what any supporter of Israel says? If not, why not? That’s the rule we made for supporters of Palestiniians.
The fact is we DON’T hold every Israel supporter responsible for what ANY Israel supporter says because that’s stupid and unfair. So either don’t do it to supporters of Palestinians or apply it to both.
schrodingers_cat
And after 9/11 it was Jewish activists who were at the forefront of reminding us not to demonize all Arabs or Muslims. They were at the forefront duing Trump years when he was attacking immigrants. Jewish Americans vote overwhelmingly for Dems. They are an important part of the D coalition and that’s the reason they are being targeted. Held accountable for what Netanyahu’s actions. I have their back FWIW.
There was a leftie commenter here who held me personally responsible for Modi’s actions. Same energy
Jeffro
this is possibly the first “both sides” situation that I’m 110% supportive of
Kay
@Jinchi:
thanks. I forgot about that. I saw Florida put in a rule banning all protests. Blatantly unconstitutional and clearly directed at the CONTENT of the speech. These colleges are going to lose in court. They’re banning speech content with a thin veneer of “time place and manner” which no decent judge is going to fall for. It’s against the law.
Citizen Alan
@Eolirin: I will add to this that these protests are, IMO, also likely infiltrated by groups that don’t give the tiniest shit about either Israel or the Palestinians but who simply want this issue to explode in the media in a way that can be blamed on Biden.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: No not all are wealthy or privileged. You don’t ever completely read my comments, just angrily type how I am wrong. They are the ones who will pay the price. The wealthy and white will skate. The rest will have suspensions and felonies to contend with. They won’t get away with the cosplay/
Riddhi Patel’s NGO immediately fired her. So much for solidarity.
I am for the people of both Israel and Gaza. I am against the demonization of Jewish Americans by the tankie left.
Baud
@Citizen Alan:
The same could be said for the leaders of Israel and Palestine.
Brachiator
@WaterGirl:
RE: As much as we hate that Roberts will probably push the ruling into the next session,
I also would like to know about this.
I hope that Omnes or another lawyer sees this and provides an answer.
I think that it was wrong for the Supreme Court to take up this case at all, but I guess Trump pushed the issue.
Bupalos
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
Democracy isn’t a binary. Nothing there forces you to say “if our democracy is incapable of x, then it’s not worth defending.” It’s always worth defending and building, and indeed that is how we get to a position where the following consideration is no longer true:
The United States does not have the democratic capacity to enter into a renegotiation or major course-change in it’s policy towards its traditional alley and semi-client-state Israel. It is internally torn and hamstrung and incapable of forming and pursuing coherent strategy goals clearly and effectively. Even as this ally goes rogue on us, we’re not in a position to make thoughtful course corrections without taking water into our own boat.
We didn’t have this capacity when Bibi openly tried to harm Democratic presidencies and make common cause with global authoritarian forces, and we certainly don’t have it now. Protest can not change this reality of the point we’ve reached in democratic decline. We no longer have the influence over Israel that is pretended. Starting a divisive process of deciding which levers to pull here, when these levers aren’t meaningfully attached to anything, is not worth the end result.
This is a practical political consideration rather than an expressive moral one.
Baud
@Brachiator:
Not required to but they will.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@prostratedragon: These teach-ins sound like a good start. These kids really do need some guidance on effective activism. Realistically, the school should be providing that regardless of current participation. Should fall under a basic civics requirement.
And thank you for letting me know about an effort happening outside the protests. This petition sounds like a good idea and I hope they find some measure of success.
It’s hard to see what else is going on when the world is trying mightily to focus the world’s contempt on…checks notes … our young students.
Kay
@Jeffro:
Well, you can forget it because the US is working hard to shut down any investigation, which of course also means Hamas won’t be indicted for war crimes either. This is going just fucking great, I must say. No one will be accountable, for anything. Good job, State Department. Excellent work. Murder as many innocent people as you want, call it a “war” and the US will help you dodge prosecution.
Once we get rid of the students -shut them up- then who do we blame for this? Perhaps, I don’t know, people with actual power?
The 19 year olds aren’t fucking responsible for this. The shitty, low quality adults who were and are IN CHARGE fucked this all up before these people were even born.
Citizen Alan
@Brachiator: What I said earlier. SCOTUS has to “rule,” but options for any such ruling include “Remand for additional findings” or “Remand with instructions” after they come up with some bullshit standard of review for the lower courts.
Anoniminous
USC vetoed a Muslim student’s graduation speech for her pro-Palestinian views. Why?
Manyakitty
@schrodingers_cat: ❤️
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
I will very calmly type how you are wrong; virtually always.
Manyakitty
@Citizen Alan: this.
Jinchi
@Eolirin: A simple search on Chris Rufo is enough to show he is not backing the protesters.
He’s backing chaos and encouraging his followers to stoke it. He wants to see violence and he’s encouraging the police to respond with maximum force.
This was him last night:
And this was him this morning
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
I have long thought that it was a problem that some young people confuse ‘safety’ and feeling supported as in, if they don’t feel supported, then the environment isn’t ‘safe’. Right now, they are getting a real time education in how messy life is. The students protesting the Israeli actions in Gaza are right to do so because the Israeli government under Bibi is monstrous. There is an awful lot of denial about this both in Israel and among her supporters. The Jewish students who are fearful of their physical safety are also right. Some of these people do mean them harm and support Hamas, which is also monstrous.
Eolirin
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: You were just saying how these group’s views on Hamas weren’t worth examining at all, despite a number of them showing anti-semetic, Israel should cease to exist, agendas when they’re actually looked at.
That kind of blanket acceptance is a great way for anti Jewish sentiment to flourish and hijack any pro-Palestinian activism, and that’s insanely fucking dangerous if you happen to be Jewish. We’ve seen this fucking play out so many times and it always ends with us being murdered.
At which point you can just shrug, because war crimes were happening and people should be doing something about it, no matter how ineffective, and of course you don’t support the inevitable and predictable consequences of the mainstreaming of fringe rhetoric via legitimate protest movements.
There’s a long history of that too you know, especially as directed against us.
Jeffro
@zhena gogolia: this, and
@zhena gogolia: especially this
While I can’t choose what other people choose to protest or prioritize, it is surprising to me that this is what college students across the country are the most passionate about. (My priorities start, as yours do ZG, with the basic ability to address all the other issues by continuing on as a democracy).
I’m also surprised that they seem to not be aware that…they’re voters? They have elected officials they could be talking to, either locally or back at their hometowns in just a week or two?
Baud
@Jinchi:
Pretty sure it’s not the arrest of violent protesters that’s causing problems.
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
They have a constitutional right to assemble and protest their government. It isn’t conditioned on who claims association with them, any more than a pro Israel protestor would be shut down if an anti Muslim or Anti Arab protestor claimed association.
They’re right to protest their goverment. Hell, even members of their government agree with them. I agree with them. I’m grateful to them for doing it. I think if they hadn’t have done it this wouldn’t be covered by media at all.
schrodingers_cat
@Manyakitty: You are welcome!
prostratedragon
@Citizen Alan: Seems to be a widely-held impression.
Kay
@Anoniminous:
Because they’re riiculous, embarrassing cowards. How much does USC cost students? 60k a year? 70? 80? Christ. I hope the students are not borrowing at 7% to pay the salaries of these morons who are in charge.
Maybe a remedial course in the First Amendment for our million dollar college adminstrators. You can’t arrest people because you don’t like the content of their political speech. They should have learned this in 7th grade.
schrodingers_cat
@Jeffro: Its a miniscule number less that 1% of the entire student body on most campuses. How much of these “spontaneous” student protests can be attributed to a Russian op? I wonder.
Where were these students when Trump was screwing over immigrants in this country on a daily basis with concerted attacks and separating children from their parents from asylum applicants?
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
But that is, emphatically, not what I said. I said that you should be able to criticize Israel without being required to do the same for Hamas in the same breath.
This is all part of you; not people broadly in this case, you personally along with others here; normalizing violence against Palestinians and those that speak on their behalf.
Who is getting murdered in far greater numbers? Who is being arrested for speaking?
Being a group that was previously victimized by genocide does not entitle our to one free genocide against whomever, no questions asked.
And, sorry, the tone and focus you’re taking clearly display any more than lip service for the Palestinian cause.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
Yet, so very deserving of the majority of our time and opprobrium…
Geminid
@Baud: Mahmoud Abbas, the 82 year old leader of the Palestinian Authority,made a good statement this past weekend. He told a gathering in Saudi Arabia that it was important that Israel’s security be guaranteed for a viable Two-State resolution of the conflict. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Jordan and Egypt have agreed on a common strategy for the aftermath of this war that involves a reformed and revitalized P.A. Abbas accepted a new “technocratic” Prime Minister and cabinet last month.
Ed. Abbas’s statement did not break new ground, and tracks the Arab League’s 2002 call for negotiotions and peace with Israel. It was thought significant though, because of where and when he made it.
Ruckus
@Anoniminous:
They almost always give the person the chance to wake the hell up and change. And of course some have shorter fuses than others but still most of them have a reasonable limit to what they will allow and give someone the chance to shut the hell up and not make things far worse. But they all have limits, we all have limits, it’s just that most of us have at least the concept of control and humanity. SFB seems not to have that. This is an egomaniac that got the worst boost possible for one – elected to the highest office in the land, all the while not having a reasonable enough brain to understand that he’s no longer president and how to act NORMAL. Mainly because he’s NOT NORMAL.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Geminid: Glad to see steps being made toward an equitable solution. You mention it as after the war, though, do you see a viable path for the war ending?
Soprano2
@japa21: You know you’re weeks and weeks too late, right? This issue stirs up a lot of heated emotions. I agree that the Biden administration is between a rock and a hard place – trying to get these idiots to negotiate a cease fire, trying to get aid to Gaza, trying to get the whole thing to stop while people are demanding that they do things that they should be doing, but that might possibly make negotiating a cease fire impossible. I think none of us know everything that’s involved in this situation. Then add in that all of us who comment or post on this blog are living in terror at the thought of TFG being elected again, and it’s not surprising that we would be upset by people who seem to want to help him get back in office because they’re upset by this situation. Somehow they think that will make things better, or make Biden “learn his lesson” or something.
Baud
@Geminid:
Too old.
Seriously, Hamas and the Israeli leadership seem to be the bottlenecks. Neither has an incentive not to fight.
Old School
@schrodingers_cat:
In middle school?
Kay
Well, Leahy Laws are now dead letter. Another bullshit “aspirational” US law that no one intends to follow or enforce.
It looks nice in a code book though – we “officially” don’t provide arms to goverments who violate our humanitarian laws. Wink, wink.
Poor old Patrick Leahy. Nice try, buddy.
Eolirin
@Jinchi: I meant to imply that he was also attempting to hijack the movement, and consequently was in favor of it continuing and growing and becoming more violent, not that it was a kind of genuine support.
Which is what a bunch of other anti-semetic groups are doing, for similar and related ends, and what I was talking about up thread.
geg6
@rikyrah:
I can totally believe that. It lines up with what I’m hearing from colleagues at other institutions. Most of these people are not actually students and are there to use the cover as students to either stir up shit (who knows why…can be for many reasons) or to try to get students to join them in starting shit. Every single student I have talked to about this, including those of Middle Eastern or Jewish backgrounds, are against what Israel is doing in Gaza, but it’s simply not top of mind and won’t prevent them from voting blue when November rolls around.
Eolirin
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: You clearly haven’t read anything I’ve said on this topic if you think that. Again kindly go fuck yourself.
Kay
@Old School:
They really were in middle school.
It doesn’t matter. Now they’re responsible for Israel/Palestine and also all anti Semitism. Because they’re surrounded by adults who are abject cowards and horrible role models.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
This is absolutely correct. And I didn’t mean to suggest stopping this was a meaningful test of Democracy.
However, our freedom to discuss it without irreparably damaging the country is.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Eolirin: Says the person whom I excerpted claiming I flat out said the opposite of what I said.
Bad faith interlocutor disregarded.
ETA: I don’t remember what most people say day to day. You have to make a really strong impression for me to intuitively know your history of opinions. So all I have is what I’ve seen on this thread.
But you’ve made your impression now.
geg6
@Kay:
They’re done as of this week, which is finals week for most colleges and universities. The tent city at Pitt folded up and went home last night. Same at CMU. Those never got out of hand because they were actual students, not outside hate groups using the students as cover.
Jeffro
@Kay: I’m pretty sure you are venting in general and not at me, so I’ll just say that I will continue to hope for, speak out for, and work for accountability on both sides.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Kay,
I can’t speak for lou, but I posted because to me, it points out that maybe nefarious entities are at those protests. That their concern isn’t Palestine, but being chaos agents.
Soprano2
What I’m really afraid of is that we’ll have another Kent State. There are red state governors who are salivating at the prospect of that. All they need is an excuse, which some of these people seem to be willing to give them.
Students have the absolute right to free speech and to demonstrate (funny how all the “free speech on college campuses is sancrosect” people are absolutely silent on this situation, or might be actively saying they should be arrested), but they don’t have the right to destroy property and occupy buildings.
Kay
@geg6:
Well, no one shoudl care about them, then. They’re “1%” or “students” (in sarcasm quotes) yet they are the one and only Gaza war issue that is ever discussed on this blog. Why all the vitriol toward them if they don’t matter?
Democrats don’t need them as voters (i’m told). They can be discarded as not useful to our political project.
The problem is…they’re kind of RIGHT. These really are war crimes. The US really is doing nothing to stop them. A decade from now they’re still going to be right.
Anyway
Curious about the demographics of employees fired by Google for protesting about the services/contracts Google has with the IDF
schrodingers_cat
@Old School: I asked for it. Good repartee. I am pretty sure though that the instigators were not in middle school. The ones who always blame the US, but from the left and hate Ds more than they hate Rs.
Soprano2
@Jinchi: I’m sure Chris Rufo is salivating for another Kent State.
geg6
@Kay:
Quit acting as if anyone is criticizing the students. I don’t see many people here criticizing the students. They are criticizing the elements from outside the universities who are causing all the trouble. I work with college students all day, every day. You do not. You have no real idea what is happening and I don’t understand why you are taking such a stand for outside agitators and accusing people here of wanting to arrest students for no reason. If students create unsafe spaces and are destroying things, they should be arrested. But with large majorities of outsiders flooding their campuses, I doubt very much that it’s the students who are causing most of these problems.
Geminid
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: Sure. This war will end like the other ones have, and the sooner the better and with a Security Council resolution ratifying a durable ceasefire agreement.
They might even get to a truce this week. Hamas is under intense pressure to agree to the latest offer. They must be close because Netanyahu’s trying to derail it again.
I think this deal is for a temporary truce, but Qatar’s been active in the process and they’ve said all along they intend to build on a truce to get a permanent ceasefire.
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat:
The person was obviously an idiot.
Have you been posting here or elsewhere about the election in India?
I recently ran across an interview by YouTube political commentator Pyotr Kurxin with a Dr Ankit Shah.
Dr Shah predicted that Modi would transform India into a tech giant larger than China, and that he would strike such a fear into Pakistan that they will quickly give up Kashmir. He also swooned over how much Modi will do to improve the lives of the Indian middle class. He was clearly painting Modi as a populist hero.
raven
This shit reminds me of the endless fucking meetings and arguments when everyone KNEW they were right and had to prove how goddam smart they were and stupid everyone else was. It may be the end of BJ.
Kay
@rikyrah:
Its true of every single protest ever. It is true, right now, of the pro Israel protestors. Some of them are horrible and not students.
If “outside agitators” mean you shut down political speech then you don’t support the First Amendment, because every single protest would have been shut down under this rule.
You really don’t want to do this guilt by association thing. It is the EXACT same logic that leads to blaming US jewish people for Netanyahu. It’s bad logic. It won’t work. It will come RIGHT around and bite you.
JML
That is a good statement. Can the Palestinian Authority regain enough credibility with Palestinians to be a real partner though? Unfortunately, Abbas seems to be mostly irrelevant these days and I don’t know how much weight anything he says has any longer.
And this has been one of the fundamental problems towards establishing a lasting peace in the region: who are the credible partners? there are more factions interested in undermining any kind of settlement or peace than there are leaders with standing and backing to negotiate one. And there’s plenty of blame to go around. The Palestinian Authority has had problems with corruption and ineffectiveness, right-wing lunatic parties in that shitstain Bibi’s coalition undermine peace at every opportunity, especially with functional invasions of the West Bank and running down the PA. Hamas is quite literally a violent terrorist group.
The Arab countries bordering Israel no longer have much interest in wiping it off the face of the earth like they used to, which was always a problem before as well: peace could always be undermined when the guns and aid would flow and sanctuary could be found in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, etc. But those countries are much less interested in backing turmoil and destruction in the region now, generally. They’d prefer stability and trade. Maybe that will matter if Bibi can be sent packing.
geg6
@Kay:
In a moment when the over-used phrase “both sides” is actually relevant, I’m pretty sure there are no innocents other than the old, women and children of Gaza in this conflict. Both fucking sides have committed war crimes and, for real, Hamas started the ball rolling. Why do you excuse them all the time? Don’t get me wrong, I despise both Bibi and his bloodthirsty cronies and Hamas. But you seem to excuse Hamas in all your rants.
Kay
@geg6:
Well, I’ll be honest it does bother me that so many of you work for colleges and universities and seem to resent that these students are even protesting at all. I do wonder a little about that. Concerning.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
Proportionality has entered the chat
History prior to 2023 has entered the chat
ETA: What was this thread about again?
Kay
@geg6:
Please show me where I “excused” Hamas. The ICC will indict Hamas too. The Leahy laws don’tapply to Hamas because the US is not supplying Hamas weapons. That’s why I don’t think the Leahy laws should be applied to Hamas.. Because they dont apply. If we WERE supplying weapons to Hamas I would think US law should be applied there, too.
The sanctions against Israel can be imposed because we supply weapons to Israel. We can’t sanction Hamas with withholding weapons because we don’t give them any.
Brachiator
@Old School:
Good one. And probably very true.
prostratedragon
Homily for the day, or excerpt from a study on consumer dissatisfaction?
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator: Who is Ankit Shah?
I have been busy. I have much to say. I have been taking notes.
Trollhattan
Meanwhile.
Evidently life in Austin and Boise and Ft. Lauderdale isn’t entirely working out for some out-migraters. Also, a smattering of new homes. Whee!
JWR
What I don’t understand is the opposition here to calling for “Global Intifada”. I mean, the Israeli’s may call it anti-Semitic, but there’s really nothing that they can’t or won’t “weaponize” as such.
Here’s the Wikipedia definition of the term:
Doesn’t strike me as anti-Semitic. And here’s Merriam-Webster:
I don’t think these students have shown any indication that they’re armed, so again, it doesn’t strike me as anti-Semitic. Am I missing something, like, am I an anti-Semite? I’ve always tried not to be, but there’s just so much chaff in the air.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
I’d like to amend my earlier analogy.
The insistence on perfunctory condemnation of Hamas is more like responding to BLM with, “what about black on black crime?”
Kay
@geg6:
And this is central point. No one is demanding the US sanction Hamas for a very good reason – the US doesnt support Hamas with weapons. Demanding that people ” doboth sides!” won’t work under US law for the very simple reason that we don’t have any thing to withhold from Hamas- we don tgive them anything.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@schrodingers_cat: Didn’t he run for Senate in MA a couple years back? Lost the R nomination and proceeded as a write-in.
piratedan
I am curious about how the region will look once Netanyahu is no longer in power. This is the biggest stumbling block imho and the one upon which the Biden foreign policy crashes. Without him, aid can be delivered, homes rebuilt. How does he get removed? Bibi is a fascist, but he’s no dummy. he likely understands that once removed, his political ass is grass. Everyone speaks that the US should continue to use the levers that they have over him, I fully believe that they have tried, multiple approaches, but I also believe that just like all politicians, Biden is attempting to know just how much intervention the US public will allow and how far can Biden go with a Congress that is not favorable to him and that any choice, will be gleefully used in bad faith against him.
I understand what is right, I’m sure that Biden does as well, but we’re in a crisis here at home as well, a Constitutional and Political one, is Biden supposed to ignore that as well? Would I like it if Biden said ‘fuck it” and put boots on the ground in Gaza and hell, if we’re going to break the rules, Ukraine as well? How long do we allow the chains of restraint to end there? Hell, we KNOW that the SCOTUS is corrupt and at least 60% of the GOP are the pawns of a international pariah, do we toss the norms to and put those asses in jail?
There are days when I say yes, then I am sitting comfortable behind a keyboard.
There are times when I wonder if someone needs to Seal Team Six Bibi.
Do I wish for a blend of optimism coupled with pragmatism, yes, support Israel, but not with weapons and not with cash that will be turned into weapons. Is the situation worth putting American lives at risk to stop this? If that’s is indeed a line that Bibi would not cross (and I’m not so sure that he wouldn’t), how does Joe get Congress to approve? Does he need their approval? Do something else as well, not just stop the fighting but help to rebuild, repair and even help create a Palestinian State.
I don’t have the answers, people have the right to protest and they do, as usual those protests get used as a vehicle by bad faith actors to set us against each other. None of us here are Hamas supporters, none of us are Netanyahu fans. To me, Bibi is the fulcrum upon which all this turns. How best to remove him seems to be the most relevant question.
Kay
@geg6:
You’re going to continue to run into this practical barrier every time you demand someone “do the same with Hamas”
US laws on aid don’t appy to Hamas because the US doesn’t give them any aid.
I don’t demand the US sanction Hamas for human rights vioaltions because we don’t have anything to sanction them WITH. That’s why the protestors don’t do 50/50 Hamas/Israel. Because the United States supports Israel with weapons. When the US supports Hamas with weapons I’ll demand they be sanctioned by withholding weapons.
Josie
@raven:
You just expressed what I’ve been thinking as I read the comments. I was just unable to come up with a coherent comment. I can only hope that the vitriol i see here is limited to a few commenters and is as unpleasant for everyone else as it is for me.
Kay
@piratedan:
I wish it were true it was just Netanyahu but it’s not. There’s a powerful far Right in Israel – they’ll move right into the void. It’s not just Israel of course. A ton of countries are either threatened with or under the grip of a far Right. America, for example.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
It started as an open thread about Trump on trial, and now it reminds me of all too many screaming matches I hear on the streets of Athens, where everyone’s screaming at each other, past each other, refusing to listen, determined to win the argument at the expense of dealing with whatever the underlying problems are, trying to overpower the other side by sheer volume and ferocity and vitriol, and frankly, my brain quits translating arguments like those, because they become as coherent as an old airliner piston engine at full throttle with a dead spark plug somewhere messing with the works. I can’t see anyone winning this argument other than the Trumpists.
TBone
@rikyrah: I’ve been sitting here quietly, thinking the only winners are Pooty and his chaos agents. Divided we fail.
geg6
@Baud:
This. Emphatically this. No good actors in any of this. I’m disgusted by both sides and hope they blow each other up while leaving the rest of us alone. Fantasy, I know. But when there are no good actors, what do you do?
Raven
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: like I said
Omnes Omnibus
@Josie: it would probably be best if everyone just walked away from this thread.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: That often happens when people are willing to lie and don’t share a common grounding in fact.
schrodingers_cat
@JWR: We are Arab linguists now? BTW what is a benign interpretation of telling Jewish people in the US to go back to Poland?
Raven
@Josie:Well, there’s always soccer.
geg6
@Kay:
Wow, way to completely misread what I said. I’m sticking up for the students. But you be you.
Raven
@Omnes Omnibus: may I run?
TBone
A fellow central Pennsylvanian weighs in
first-draft.com/2024/04/29/keep-bidens-progressive-progress-going/
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@schrodingers_cat: What’s the benign interpretation of telling BLM protestors to quietly accept their treatment at the hands of police? Fuck off, fascist.
schrodingers_cat
@Raven: @Josie: Don’t leave on my account. I am done with this thread. And have some stuff I need to finish.
Omnes Omnibus
@Raven: Highly advisable.
Bostondreams
@Geminid:
The fact that he says Israel has a right to exist challenges some of what some (NOT ALL) of the protesters are saying, so interesting how they might respond.
different-church-lady
Here’s a quick reminder that when it comes to this country’s political response to today’s I/P conflict, everyone is working an angle.
Raven
@schrodingers_cat: nah, you’re
moderate in this one
prostratedragon
Theme from Taxi Driver, Bernard Hermann
different-church-lady
@Omnes Omnibus: What? And lose all my emotional investment?
Bostondreams
@JWR:
Perhaps because it’s often, not always, paired with ‘from the river to the sea’ and proclamations that Israeli Jews need to leave their homeland, though I am guessing here.
Jay
@Geminid:
None of the Israel/Hamas/ Hezbollah “wars” ever ended.
Hamas will not be “destroyed”, instead they will have 40,000 new recruits in short order and easily 100,000 with in a decade.
The PA will not “take over” Government and Services in Gaza, will continue to lose land in the West Bank and the new “technocratic” Government will continue to weaken Palestinian authority.
There will be no Two State solution.
The IDF will continue killing unarmed Palestinians and Arabs with impunity.
There will be no One State solution.
Gaza will remain the world’s largest Open Air Prison Camp.
A million plus Palestinians will continue their 75 years experience as refugees in refugee camps outside of Israel and Palestine.
The bloodshed will simple “ratchet” down from it’s current rate for a few years, and then it will ratchet back up as both the Palestinians and the Israeli’s spend that time to sharpen their grudges and hate.
Kay
@geg6:
Oh, come on geg6. “Outside agitators”? You know the history of that. You know how that’s used.
Show me a US protest that didn’t have outsiders joining. There isn’t one.
I think they should denounce anti semites at the location where they are, but do I hold all of UT responsible for what some people say at IU? No, I do not. Because that high a bar means you’re banning protests.
If we weren’t talking about the protestors we’d be talking about the ICC indictments, so really the protestors are providing a nice distraction for Americans. We should thank them. This way we don’t have to talk about US policy in Gaza.
Josie
@Raven:
Lol. I might wish for football season, but then that would start another fight.
WaterGirl
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: I don’t think there’s anything wrong with zhena, and that sure looks like more of a personal attack than a difference of opinions.
I can’t speak for zhena, but when I read what she wrote, I took it as: In this times, we all need to really clear, because not only are people bad at reading what goes unstated, there are so many bad actors who will take every opportunity to deliberately misread or misinterpret whenever possible. If you don’t state it, they will assign a thought to you.
For me, all of these things are true:
It’s complicated.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Raven: Point. It sometimes takes me quite a while to take what I’m trying to say and hammer a little coherence into it. Screaming matches also do not-wonderful things to my already-fragile sanity. You’re a much better wordsmith than I am today.
different-church-lady
When it comes to these particular campus protests I think there’s enough room for everyone to be wrong.
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat:
Supposedly an expert in geo-politics. The YouTube interview popped up in my feed, maybe because I had been reading stories about the election. I didn’t otherwise know the host or guest.
The interview is about a half hour.
raven
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: I try to keep it brief and not use mark-ups.
Eolirin
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: If you think that’s the opposite of what you said I don’t know that to say.
You may think “You should be able to criticize Israel without being required to do the same for Hamas in the same breath.” is different from “We shouldn’t be examining whether you support Hamas”, and in a more ideal world, where there was no reason to suspect that, in fact, said group does support Hamas, it might be.
I don’t think that’s true of the current college protest movement. I do think it’s true of other actors, and I don’t broadly demand that condemnation from everyone.
In any event it’s at most a difference of emphasis not an actual inversion.
The actual opposite of what you quoted me saying you said would have been “it’s very important to know whether someone supports Hamas”, and you definitely weren’t saying that.
As to what I’m centering; the college protests cannot and will not help Palestinians. They can, and likely will, normalize violence against both Jews and Muslims in the US.
That you’re conflating support for Palestinians and for what’s necessary to improve their conditions, to see an end to the war crimes being committed against them, and an end to the apartheid conditions they’ve been suffering under, with reactions to a domestic protest movement that cannot generate any positive end result to address those issues and only has downside risk for the safety of my community and of the Muslim community as well, is, frankly, offensive.
What’s happening here is dangerous to minority groups living in the US. It’s completely divorced from what’s happening to people in Gaza or Israel. It is 100% being taken advantage of by actors who desire to see harm done to Jews and to Muslims and to further the politicial agenda of fascists. There’s no reason why anyone should be treating them as if they’re the same issue. They’re not. Conflating them like that is not helpful.
Standing in solidarity with or against the college protest movement as it’s currently configured tells you not a god damn thing about a person’s position on Palestinian issues. You need more information to determine that.
I’ve posted a lot on this topic including on why the need to center the suffering of the people living in Gaza over our own is both an existential and moral imperative for Jews.
That isn’t diminished by viewing this protest movement as a potential vector for anti-semetic domestic terrorism to flourish in, or that that’s a dangerous thing, because those things aren’t in conflict.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@WaterGirl: By making it perfunctory, people like zhena are stripping condemnation of Hamas of any true meaning. It’s a blatant way of shifting blame away from people with power and toward people with none.
It’s virtue signalling in its truest and most toxic sense. There is a clear implication, traipses right up to the line of explicitness, that if you support Palestinians, you support the goals of Hamas. It is disgusting. Every bit as deplorable as any other of those behaviors Hillary talked about.
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator: Found his Twitter profile, he is a BJP-RSS fanboy from Modi’s home state.
Belafon
@WaterGirl: And Biden has limited choices on what he can do with aid to Israel when it’s written into the budget.
Gravenstone
You only rag on them every single fucking opportunity you can squeeze a comment into.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
Fuck it, I want to be in prison now.
Jay
@JWR:
To Palestinians and their supporters Intifada refers to the First Intifada.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Intifada
To Israeli’s and their supporters, Intifada always means the Second Intifada,
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Intifada
which saw up until that time, extreme violence and terrorism on all sides.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
Be fair, she shoehorns in opportunities where none would otherwise be perceived.
prostratedragon
The trial is back from lunch. Davidson, former lawyer for both Karen McDougall and Stormy Daniels is still on the stand:
Talk about disarming the opposition!
JWR
@Bostondreams: Thanks for that. And despite people saying that “well, ‘from the river to the sea’ meant something else 50 years ago”, I agree that it’s now widely accepted as anti-Semitic, and is not a statement I can support.
Harrison Wesley
@prostratedragon: I’ve heard of a charm offensive – was this perhaps intended to be offensive charm?
Soprano2
@Josie: Honestly it’s distressing to me to see people who I’ve enjoyed posting with savage each other over this issue when I think they actually agree more than they think they do. We’re all on edge about this because we’re terrified TFG is going to win the election because of it, and we all know that would be much worse for everyone involved than Biden is regardless of how mad the students are at him right now. I read that article about the Muslims in MI who are working against Biden, and they are delusional about TFG – they seem to think he can “stand up to Bibi” or will be better for Palestinians than TFG? Have they paid any attention at all to anything that man has done or said when it comes to Israel and Palestine? I don’t think they have, or they would know better. Either that, or they are so blinded by their rage that they are willing to put someone in the presidency who is demonstrably worse for them and their cause than Biden is.
West of the Rockies
NEW THREAD, PLEASE!
Kay
@Belafon:
Biden really could take surgical, limited action under US law. There are two US laws that apply and we apply them regularly – we applied them in Ukraine. We sanctioned a Ukraine unit for consorting with Nazis. Biden could do that. Seven US Senators have asked him to do it. I believe he HAS to do it or he’s not in compliance with US law. We’re not following our own humanitarian laws now. We’re just sledding down this slippery slope of complcity. It literally gets worse every week.
Anyone can defend the Biden Administration but it isn’t true they can’t do anything. Yes, they can. They are choosing not to.
geg6
@Kay:
I’m not criticizing the students unless they are being violent or destructive. I’m criticizing the assholes who are actually causing the problems on the campuses. When you have 60-80% of the people being arrested who are not students, it’s not the students’ fault. I’m defending them.
japa21
AT LEAST NOBODY HAS COMMENTED IN ALL CAPS YET!
Really, let’s just stop. So many people are talking right over each other and not really paying any attention to what is being said.
Who exactly as said there should be no protests?
Who, other than one early comment, has said that every protester has to condemn Hamas and anything said by other people at other campuses.
Who has said there are no bad actors involved and therefore that means no protest is valid.
And there has been, since 10/7, a lot of discussion here on what is happening in Gaza. I can’t think of single time anybody has suggested that is is okay.
See you all on another thread. I am running with raven.
oldgold
I can’t believe Trump’s attorneys are allowing him to sit when the jury passes by him coming into and out of the courtroom.
Trump’s attorneys stand, but he sits on his fat ass.
Rule #1 in a jury trial: NEVER EVER show disrespect towards the jury.
I am starting to believe Trump may be hoosegow bound.
japa21
@Kay:
I do fully agree with you on this point.
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat:
Thanks for the information. I was struck by his gushing praise of Modi.
But he also seemed to have a view of the aspirations of the Indian people to improve their lives and to be respected by other nations. Modi seems to be feeding into this, or exploiting it, I don’t know.
Also, with respect to an earlier thread, I am wondering about India’s ban of TikTok and restrictions on social media, and how this affects the flow of information about what is happening in India.
sab
@Soprano2: Yes. I pie a lot of people, but on this thread I haven’t seen any pastry.
Josie
@Soprano2: I guess someone creative should come up with an ad targeted at those folks in Michigan that puts together all the things that TFG has said about Palestine vs. Israel. He has not made any secret of his choice between the two.
hueyplong
Gotta say that threads in which multiple commenters seem to think everyone else is acting in bad faith are suboptimal locations for a 300+ post count.
geg6
@Kay:
I couldn’t care less about the Leahy laws. I never even heard of them until the other day, so I’m not sure what you’re on about with this. You, OTOH, have been on here day after day after day screaming about how terrible Israel is, which I don’t disagree with at all. But you never seem to have anything bad to say about what Hamas has done. Just Israel. And you have, of late, been intimating that everyone involved in these protests are innocent students when it is proven most of them are not students and are, in fact, bad actors.
Regardless, I’m out of this conversation. Lots of bad faith arguing and I know how our students are reacting. And it’s not the way you are characterizing it. That’s it for me.
Kay
@japa21:
They have a committee recommendation in hand. Have had it since January. Have done nothing.
Leahy laws work. The humanitarian offenses stop when we enforce. They worked in South and Central America and Egypt and Ukraine and they would work in Israel. But President Biden has to enforce them. And he won’t.
JWR
@Jay:
Finally! Something I can actually understand. Thanks. ;)
schrodingers_cat
A bit of both. BJP-RSS know their marks well and how to play into their insecurities.
Jay
@Kay:
Azov was sanctioned for being accused by ruZZian propaganda for consorting with/being Nazi’s.
They wern’t.
Azov is still sanctioned in every US Aid for Ukraine act despite being one of Ukraine’s most effective Regular Army Brigades.
Still no Nazi’s there.
frog
@Ruckus:
Can the judge order a psych evaluation? That would hurt him more than a fine.
different-church-lady
@japa21:
I’M ON IT!
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@different-church-lady: But do you condemn Hamas?
gvg
@Kay: In Florida, state colleges and Universities have summer school too. Fewer go than fall or spring, but the population is still there. I understand it’s different in each state but do NOT assume there are no “students” in summer.
You are right that it’s better for Biden not to talk about this because it’s complicated which never sounds good in sound bites. If the administration talks about it will be used against him even if he is doing what you want. It will be used against him even if he doesn’t talk about it but I think talking will make it worse for him both winning reelection AND influencing what happens in GAZA.
This problem has not been solved in? 50 years? He can’t solve it, though he might manage to improve it and begin a movement that eventually solves it.
The problems between Israel and the Palestinians and Israel’s internal politics are not identical with the US internal politics.
One BIG problem we have is that any criticism of Israel tends to unleash some anti Jewish bigotry and that is always dangerous. It should be fair and normal to discuss what we think Israel is doing wrong just like we do our own government or France or England. Its not however. When we do the bigots turn up. they discredit valid critiques and those who are making them AND other people defend Israel because they have seen this before and already know how its going to go.
The Gaza outrages are likely to result in attacks on American Jews….I get the impression that hardline Israelis like Bibi think that all Jews should have already moved to Israel, or that they aren’t “real jews”
This is not simple in the real world. Biden is a realist. This is not an issue to make promises on, its an issue you need to spend years of work on.
Geminid
@Bostondreams: I don’t think Abbas’s statement will have much effect on protesters. They’re focused on the current situation, and they talk a lot about the past, but there’s not much attention paid to the way forward.
This is typical of Americans in general though. Most of us don’t pay much attention to problems 5,000 miles away. Even here, much of the debate is about domestic political effects.
And there is a lot of cynicism and outright fatalism about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. People see it as basically insoluble, so why bother trying? The Arab countries do not have that luxury, though, and really want to settle their region’s worst and most persistant problem. They may be the most constructive actors in this whole mess.
They catch flak for this from the more militant. After Iran’s recent big rocket salvo, I saw someone put up a picture of Jordan’s King Abdullah on Twitter. His air force had helped shoot down some of the missiles. The heading asked the question: “How would you describe this man?” People were replying, “Traitor, “Coward, “Zionist” etc. I could not resist commenting, “Based.”
Kay
@Jay:
Ok, sorry but that is why the US did it. Or why we said we did it. My point is no one said “you’re abandoning Ukraine! You love Russia!” when we did it. 99.9% of people weren’t even aware of it and US and Ukraine relations seem fine to me, despite the fact that we sanctioned a unit. We can enforce our laws. That’s permitted. My position is we MUST enforce our laws or we are violating them. I’l listen to a defense of Biden but not one that begins with “he can’t do anything”. That’s not true.
Sister Golden Bear
@Scout211:
I believe they misspelled “golf course.”
prostratedragon
@Harrison Wesley: “Let us say at the outset … “
stacib
@Josie: Raises hand.
catclub
@hueyplong: yeah, I am pretty sure Trump and lawyers HAVE argued what he did with the classified docs was also immunized.
different-church-lady
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: I CONDEMN EVERYBODY! WHY IS THIS SO HARD?!?
different-church-lady
@catclub: At least someone believes in immunization.
Leto
@geg6:
Because one of them is a signatory to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and the other is a terrorist organization. One of them swore to uphold the rule of the law/humanitarian law, and the other is a fucking terrorist organization. How many people have fucking memory holed the past 25 years wrt The War on Terror? And how we handled ourselves with that; Abu Ghraib anyone? There’s a reason why Biden said to Bibi, “Don’t make the same mistake as us; don’t follow us down that path.”
Because I keep posting the link and nobody looks at it, I’ll just post LOAC (Geneva Conventions of 12 Aug 49)
This is the rule of warfare that Israel is supposed to be following. Just as I told my Airmen/peers/leadership why we couldn’t match brutality with brutality, dehumanization with dehumanization, and why torture never fucking works, I’ll continue to scream (into the fucking void) that Israel should follow the law that they’ve signed up to. If they want to pull out of the Conventions, that’s their choice. Until they do, here’s what they’re accountable to. Israel has violated every single one of these. Full stop.
prostratedragon
@oldgold: Stiil? The posts the judge ordered removed have in fact been taken down, at least.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@different-church-lady: I’m sorry, I’ll need more fervor and an explicit mention of Hamas.
Jailer, bring her back to her cell until she is more fervent.
Kay
@gvg:
Oh, I just don’t think you’re looking at the scale of this. 4x the civilians casualties in Ukraine and Gaza oly has 2 million people. President Biden is going to be held responsible for his role in this. He just is. No one is going to look at this in hind sight and say “well, it was very complex and no one else could solve it either…”. They’re going to say 40,000 (or a million) civilians were killed and the US did nothing other than plead for it to stop. The question will be what did he DO, not what did he say.
catclub
@frog:
I suspect only if he and his lawyers make some plea related to his mental condition.
Kay
@Leto:
Thank you. Explained the categorical difference between Israel and Hamas better than I ever did, or could. It matters that they’re different.
different-church-lady
@Leto: Are we sure Bibi’s not a terrorist organization?
catclub
@Kay:
Just like GWBush is held responsible for a million Iraqi civilian deaths?
different-church-lady
OK, so it’s settled: everyone will condemn Hamas once for every ten times they condemn Bibi.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@different-church-lady: I condemn power misapplied wherever I see it.
different-church-lady
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: That sounds pretty exhausting. (No joke.)
JWR
@Kay:
And the fact that Bibi is perfectly willing to tell Biden what he can and cannot do as far as sanctions go is maddening. I don’t know if there’s something else going on here, but it certainly seems that if there’s anything Biden can do, it’s enforcing the damn sanctions against that murder gang of an IDF unit.
Leto
@different-church-lady: I was honestly going to put in a snark, “Because one of them is a signatory, one of them is a terrorist organization; you decide” but thought better of it.
@Kay: Their fight is no different than ours was, but they’ve given in to most of their darker impulses. And it’s part of why the Israeli population is demonstrating. There’s a reason we have rules governing this. It’s the same as OSHA rules: they’ve all been written in blood.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@different-church-lady: You’re right. My doctor wants me to stop even.
Celexa doesn’t cut it for r that kind of depression. I just had a 33 page write-up that taught me phrases like generalized dysphoria and feelings of social adequacy.
Jackie
@Raven: Or baseball😁
My M’s are on 🔥 as of late!
Geminid
@Josie: If Donald Trump had to choose between Israelis and Palestinians, he would obviously choose Donald Trump.
Shalimar
Is it ok to sleep through this thread like Trump sleeps through his future?
Jay
@Kay:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leahy_Law
An issue with the Leahy Law is that it only sanctions “Units”, not an entire Country or their Security Forces.
The US has sanctioned 5 IDF Units,
Another issue, is that term, “impunity”. So if the Country takes steps towards accountability and reform, (even if it’s just smoke and mirrors), the Sanctions come off that Unit.
it’s like International War Crimes trials at the ICC. If the Country investigates, holds a semi real trial, conviction or no conviction, the ICC charges go away.
The last issue, is that the Laws only apply to past actions, offer time and space for the Country to apply accountability and reform, only one IDF unit remains under sanction, and the IDF moved them to the Golan Heights, not Gaza.
unless you are a villified and hated target of the great mass of ruZZian Ukrainian Nazi’s propaganda so deeply embedded in the US.
Kay
@Leto:
I saw that we were going to block the ICC investigation this morning and I just heard a “whooosh!” as we slide down the slippery slope of complicity. Each one of these decisions takes a little further into “completely complicit”. Which Bibi would like, of course. If everyone is guilty then no one is guilty. He knows that. He needs to make a couple big countries complict or he may end up in the dock.
Harrison Wesley
@Shalimar: Not if it includes passing gas.
Trollhattan
@Shalimar:
Yes. I, however, am moving on to Texas, Kansas City, Carolinas, Memphis BBQ. Which is king, and why?
Baud
Since the Leahy Law was brought up, here’s the latest.
Hob
@catclub: Possessing the documents was certainly a thing he did after leaving office, but he’s been arguing that it was legal in the first place – not that it was an illegal thing he’s immune to being prosecuted for. If the point was that no one can charge Trump for anything he does ever, there would be no need for them to do all their bullshit nitpicking about whether the papers are really personal papers or whether he can declassify them with a mere thought.
gvg
@Kay: A few will. Sorry but I think it only might make a difference in the long long term like decades. If the younger generations, several younger generations start to treat Israel as a regular and not special ally and starts now.
Mostly Americans forget. Bush Jr is almost forgotten and he authorized torture. I think he got forgotten because there have been other crisis after. I think we are going to see more distractions to come.
Martin
@Eolirin: This is not correct.
I mean, yes, there are extreme anti-semites infiltrating these movements, and they are at times pushing these toward confrontation. But that’s not the main dynamic. It’s the dynamic that when looking from the outside fits the presented narratives. It misses a LOT of context and overstates a lot of what’s really going on.
To a growing degree these protests aren’t about Israel or Palestine, they are about a whole mess of other things. Students rights to participate in the institution they were told they were a part of and who they pay tuition to. How institutional power is wielded and on whose behalf. Which marginal groups get to possess institutional power and which do not, and why does that mechanism work the way it does. What are the United States real interests in this region. How do you reconcile when foreign policy and national morality contradict each other. And a host of other things. Two examples:
The protests at USC are at best nominally about Palestine. They are primarily a student solidarity movement. There was very little protest energy at USC when they canceled the valedictorian speech, but immediately after that energy increased a lot. That was student solidarity movement that adopted the thing USC appeared to be afraid of. If you previously had no opinion on the conflict and you wanted to show your anger about the administration taking the student’s speaking slot away, you adopted a pro-palestinian presence because that gave you power. And that movement grew steadily as the campus continued to fuck up their response. And I’m sure there were all manner of comparisons drawn between the relationship between the administration and the students here and that between Israel and Gaza. It doesn’t matter how flawed that comparison is, you can see the contours of it. There’s a reason the Irish instinctively back the Palestines here. The details here aren’t that important, what important is the narrative of a bully and a party being bullied.
Take another example – Cal State Humbolt which is a VERY odd place to have a protest. It is a public teaching college in a story mostly about Ivies and flagship public universities. It’s also out in the fucking weeds, so it’s not like there’s some local anarchist movement exploiting it. But the catalyst here happened a few months ago. Humbold has a serious student housing problem. There’s literally no place for students to live, so students have been living in their cars, in the campus parking lots. And a few months ago, the campus kicked the students out. The campus, having failed to balance enrollments to available housing then punish homeless students. Same dynamic of administrative power against vulnerable individuals. Same bully and people being bullied. The protest movement heats up and students who are already fed up, have an easy invitation to join, and if they set up an encampment – they now have a place to sleep on campus. You cannot separate the Humbolt pro-Palestine protests from the student housing situation because they’re basically the same movement.
And as these protests grow they become less about the conflict any more about the power dynamics playing out between students and universities, and the universities’ inability to stand up to political pressure, donors and all that. The university is supposed to be *their* institution to push against all of those things, they’re supposed to be on the inside, not pushed out so that Speaker Johnson can scold them from the steps. When the university invites him in and pushes the students out, they have fundamentally failed their mission, especially when the students have paid millions of dollars in tuition to have the university advocate for their interests.
We do not look back on the Vietnam War movements legacy as having ended the war. Yes, that was the soundtrack the whole thing danced to, but it was also a protest movement against a rigid while patriarchal culture, and their institutions, against the excesses of capitalism at that time, a paternalistic university culture. It was not one thing, it contained multitudes, and when we look back, the end of the Vietnam war was one of the smaller effects of this. Universities changed completely after this, changing their view of their role with students from one where they were to look after and take care of the children of society’s finest, which historically was the job of the university to a more egalitarian view of who would be attending college, treating them as full adults, and so on and so forth. You can see that change in the architecture of the campuses. That moment is when higher education liberalized. You can point directly to the moment when it happened in 1970. Ostensibly, that protest was about the expansion of the campaign in Cambodia. What followed had nothing to do with Cambodia. Not really.
The problem here is that everyone is determined to explain everything they see through a lens someone else holds from a narrative that other people seek to set. Yes, it’s a protest of the conflict, but it’s increasingly that and a whole bunch of other shit that nobody wants to really talk about, that don’t fit the narratives the people above are trying to set or look right through the lens of the people holding them. Some of those things are local in scope – like Humbolts, and some are much broader.
There was an interesting moment at Northeastern over the weekend when protesters and counter protesters faced off. In the middle, someone shouted ‘kill all the Jews’ and the cops rolled in. But there’s cell phone video footage that shows what led up to that – and it was one of the counter-protest organizers that shouted it and the effort they made to get others to do so. That moment is a broad recognition of who has institution power and who does not, and who that power serves and who it does not. In the end it did not matter who shouted it, the pro-Israeli student knew the magic words that would get the police to roll in, and he said the magic words. And the police very dutifully rolled up all of the pro-palestinian protestors because to the cops, the pro-palestinian/muslim students are bigger cultural friction. This is a squaring off between two marginalized groups in the US, but one has slightly more institutional backing and the other is somewhat more marginalized overall. It would not have mattered much what that protester yelled so long as it was a call for violence and the outcome would have been the same – the police would roll on the Muslim/pro-Palestianian group first being the group rubbing against the cultural status-quo the most, and they may or may not roll on the Jewish/pro-Israel group who are rubbing against the cultural status-quo a little bit less. Among other things, they tend to look the part better.
Ultimately the protest is about _that_ power dynamic that everyone understands all too well. That’s what the BLM protests were ultimately about. The women’s march protests as well.
I’ve misjudged the energy among the students. They are more angry about more things than I realized (I’m 3 years retired now) as this should have died down as we approach the end of the academic year. And universities are doing a fantastic job as always of dumping gasoline on it.
Barbara
@Leto: I explained this to a good friend of mine — very gently — that Israel has to decide whether it wants to be a member of the stalwart international community that tries — often imperfectly — to observe the rule of law even in difficult situations. Or whether its soul will always be stuck in the circumstances of its birth.
I realize that there are some things that once experienced cannot be unlived and will change you forever, and many living Jews worldwide have experienced those things either directly or through their not very distant ancestors.
I have long thought that Israel should let Palestine know what the two state solution will be — whatever version was almost accepted when Bill Clinton was president or some other — and just enforce the border for all parties including would be Israeli settlers. It has the weapons, the organization and so on. I actually told this to my friend as well and he told me he thought I was a bit nuts, but most international borders were drawn randomly and without justification, much less approval by the UN.
ETA: The movement of the self-interested Arab countries is probably the main thing that could actually change the dynamic. The knowledge that they hate Iran more than Israel, that there is an advantage to being an integral part of the developed world that supersedes stoking division with Israel or Jews. How easy it would be for Vietnam, for instance, to hate Americans. At some point amnesia is actually preferable to cultural integrity.
Jay
@gvg:
I have not forgiven or forgotten either Bush for their crimes, but then I am old.
Kay
@Martin:
Great comment as usual.
I saw Jerry Seinfeld was crabbing about how people are too woke and all I could think about was how my son and his friends would say “he’s a pedophile!” every time Seinfeld came up because he dated a 17 year when he was 38. It’s just a different world. When he was dating the 17 year it was ok. Now 21 year olds think it’s disgusting. Norms change.
lowtechcyclist
@Jay:
I was unable to find the Definitions section of the law; how flexible or precise is the definition of ‘unit’?
TBone
@Martin: thank you for that perspective.
Kay
@lowtechcyclist:
Just sanctioning units (not entire armies or governments) was deliberate. It’s based on our opposition to collective punishment. We find and sanction the guilty parties, not an entire country – that would punish mostly innocents.
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
Looks to be undefined.
Jay
@Martin:
Thank you, Martin.
This should be a front page post.
Tony Jay
@Kay:
He did?
They’re right. He is.
Jay
@lowtechcyclist:
Page 15/21
state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/PP410_INVEST_v2.1.pdf
Baud
@Jay:
You found the regs. Good man.
Baud
@Tony Jay:
Only for a year.
lowtechcyclist
@Jay:
Thanks!
SiubhanDuinne
@sab:
We must pie different commenters. My place looks like Eeyore moved into the corner patisserie.
Soprano2
@Josie: Maybe they should, but I think their brains are so red with rage that they wouldn’t be able to see it. They want someone to make it stop, and Biden is the president so they think he should make it stop, and because he hasn’t done that they’re against him. When you read the things they are saying about Biden and TFG, you realize this. The mayor of Dearborn is realistic about it; he cited several things TFG did that show he would be worse for them than Biden, so he’s pragmatic about it. I do understand that when people’s brains are red with rage they can’t be pragmatic. I’m terrified they’re going to drag all of us to a TFG presidency, which won’t be good for any of us.
Kay
@Tony Jay:
I was like “what is wrong?!” because they all just started scowling and harumphing when it came up. I had no idea.
I miss them. One time one of them got new pants and they called me over to ask what they were made of – they were all just thrilled with this mystery fabric. I said “corduroy” with a lot of gravitas. This was news to them.
schrodingers_cat
@SiubhanDuinne: Mine does too. BTW how is your coloring coming along?
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@schrodingers_cat: You were my entire pie list, then I got a new phone…
Jeffro
this
also this
lowtechcyclist
@Kay:
My problem with that is that denial of funding isn’t much of a punishment to the units involved. Money is fungible, and the country with the offending units can just move it around to keep the problem units in the field. And even if it doesn’t, the worst that can happen is that that unit gets pulled out of the field. That’s not the sort of ‘punishment’ that one has to worry about inflicting on innocents.
But more important, the sanction should apply at the decision-making level. It’s damn well clear that it took more than five units to kill 30,000 Gaza Palestinians. This slaughter is obviously being condoned by the top levels of the Israeli military and by its civilian government. In the face of that, sanctioning five units means nothing.
Kay
@Soprano2:
I don’t think we know what it’s like to watch this as an Arab American or a Muslim. My country has never attacked my ethnic or religious group. I simply have no experience like theirs.
I think they’re different than the protestors – obviously some overlap. I would be comfortable asking the protestors to back Biden. I think it’s too big an ask for Arab Americans who are outraged. We cannot know what this has been like for them.
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
The Leahy law question the State Department decided was about pre-Gaza war activities.
Kay
@lowtechcyclist:
My standards are low. I just want them to follow US law.
prostratedragon
Court is dismissed until Thursday. Among the texts in evidence is this exchange:
Something about knowing when to take a serious attitude toward what one is doing.
Elizabelle
@SiubhanDuinne:
LOL. I knew you were one of my persons.
Soprano2
@Kay: I guess I’m asking them to be pragmatic, because we all know that TFG would tell Bibi do to whatever he wants to the people in Gaza and with the West Bank too. He’d probably offer to send some of our National Guard to help! I know it’s incredibly difficult for them to be pragmatic, but some of them are because they understand that TFG would be worse for the situation than Biden has been.
Scout211
I haven’t read the whole thread so this may have already been posted, but I’m interjecting some positive news here.
ETA: fixed paragraph order
Kay
@lowtechcyclist:
I know I’m taking a legalistic take and there’s a larger moral and ethical issue. I just don’t know what else to do other than look at US law. It’s all we have.
Elizabelle
@Barbara:
That is a fascinating idea.
Kay
@Soprano2:
I saw one clip of a protest where a woman in her fifties or sixies had a long list of people she knew who are now dead. Killed with US weapons.
I’m not willing to go ask her to be pragmatic. I think she’ll tell me to get fucked, and rightly so.
Barbara
@Kay: I would never address my pleas for people to vote for Biden to one particular group. I HATE the tendency people have to “blame” one group of voters — e.g., the idiotic effort by Andrew Sullivan to blame African Americans for the failure of the California proposition on gay marriage. FFS.
On the other hand, I will say it to anyone who asks: as a member of the disfavored gender whose rights to bodily and integrity are being curtailed in the here and now, that I am putting myself first (along with my daughters and every other female), no matter how much I also sympathize with their pain.
But I do sympathize with them — and they need to reflect for themselves what is in their best interests going forward.
Tony Jay
@Baud:
Aged out of his bracket of choice, did she?
@Kay:
Oh, that is adorable. I agree with the sartorial choice (love a pair of cords, soooo comfortable) but the thought of Generation Unfazable going all “What is this amazing thing?!?” over my style of Grandad Pants just makes my night.
Barbara
@Tony Jay: Huh. I thought he started dating Shoshanna after she started college. But I do remember his usual response to the sense of disgust, that “Shoshanna is a person not an age.”
Yeah, whatever dude. He is not, however, a serial cradle chaser. The woman he married was at least 30.
And lest we forget, few will ever outdo Keith Richards in that department.
JWR
DW News just now says that Bibi has decided to go into Rafah. Says there’s already evacuations going on. I would expect the number of Palestinians killed and wounded to double very soon. Also, screw this IDF spokesman who says in a “pleading” tone that more aid than ever is going into Gaza., so leave us alooone!
lowtechcyclist
@Kay:
I understand that, and I agree that the Leahy law can’t be used more broadly, and I’m not saying it should be used more broadly. I’m saying the law should have been written differently in the first place. There’s nothing that can be done about that in real time, but I think the narrowness of its application is more appropriate for investigation of war crimes with the possibility of trial and imprisonment, than for merely withholding funding. And since we’re not part of the ICC, it’s a total mismatch.
Brachiator
@Geminid:
I was about to write that Americans too often never think about the way forward, but then I remember that US special envoy George Mitchell helped shepherd the Good Friday Agreements, which brought a rough, but currently enduring peace to Northern Ireland.
And obviously this could only happen with people of good will on all sides of the issue being willing to work for peace.
Soprano2
@Kay: Things like that are horrific. I only want her to understand that TFG won’t be better or do anything about that, if anything he’ll make it even worse. Thinking anything else is a fool’s game. What do you think a TFG State Department would do? It’s not a choice between your ideal president and TFG.
Kay
@lowtechcyclist:
My husband is a criminal defense lawyer and former prosecutor and he agrees with you – he thinks it’s unenforceable because of the fungibility issue.
I always look at the opposition though, when I’m judging whether or not something matters. Israel is fighting like hell to stop enforcement of this law. It means something to them. And that’s all you need for a law to act as a deterrent – it means something to the person or people charged.
Like how for years everyone said “unions are dead! They’re toothless!”. Yeah sure. That’s why every billionaire drops 50 million every election to get rid of them :)
Harrison Wesley
@JWR: Reuters says the same – Bibi says IDF will go into Rafah with or without a hostage deal. Either he’s full of shit (always a possibility) or the War Cabinet has agreed on this. Not a good time to be Palestinian.
Baud
@JWR:
AP, about half an hour ago.
Old School
@Barbara:
From Wikipedia:
Bobby Thomson
@Barbara: It’s six months. More than that requires a trial.
Sallycat
@Kay: @The Kropenhagen Interpretation: Guilt by association; do you know what that means. Both of you take a few comments and use them to condemn groups of people, including the Balloon Juice community. Why are you so hostile?
Jay
@lowtechcyclist:
It’s funding, weapons, training, exchanges, exercises, education.
The US carefully tracks it all.
One of the key reasons why Mariupol fell and was destroyed is becuase the Azov Brigade was holding the left flank, and because of the Act and the dominance of ruZZian propaganda in the us, they were barred from any aid and still are, despite being one of the best Ukrainian Army units from 2013 on.
So, when the ruZZian’s attacked, they only had old Soviet gear and war trophies. No Stingers, no Javelins, no APC’s, no NATO training, (other than what they got from books), etc. The US and NATO forces felt free to pick Azov’s brains about ruZZian tactics, but it was a one way street.
After Azovstal, the Azov members who survived and escaped capture, (or were released in prisoner exchanges, unmutilated) reformed as a light infantry unit attached to Ukrainian Special Forces of the SVO.
The rest are have either been executed in ruZZian captivity or are still held in ruZZian torture camps.
Tony Jay
@Barbara:
Oh Goodest of Godlings, what an arse. Then again, you can’t spell Feel Sin without Seinfeld.
And while Keith will always be oh so very Keith, that’s because he’s over 100,000 years old and basically his own species. They’re all ingenues to him.
Plus, Bill Wyman. Bill ‘Perv’ Wyman.
Kay
@Soprano2:
I think Biden can lose Arab Americans in MI or college students in MI. But he can’t lose both. If it were me I would triage and focus on the majority of students who aren’t protesting.
Trollhattan
@JWR: IMO he never undecided. As has been pointed out, maybe by Adam, the IDF had no capacity to continue moving on to there a month or so ago.
Kay
@Baud:
Oh Christ. Now it gets really bad. They’re trapped.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Barbara:
Actually, it was Keith Richards trying to outdo Jerry Lee Lewis.
Harrison Wesley
@Kay: Not our problem. Have a State Dept spokeshuman make some sympathetic mouth noises on teevee, announce creation of a bigly supply dump on..say, Cyprus? Would that be close enough? And then we’re all good. Nobody can say that the Unipolar Power that runs the Rules-Based Order isn’t trying!
Bupalos
@Kay: This is the source of some of the frustration with these protests, and perhaps how some folks are unable to enter into the conversation of basic constitutional rights as well as human rights that you are speaking for here.
The looming background here is global right-wing authoritarianism and it’s presence everywhere. In Israel, in Palestine, in Russia, in Iran, in China, in India, etc etc etc with, as you say, the United States included. In essentially jumping over this context, these student protests in some sense feel like they come from a different era. Not the one in which the United States very recently played a role via right-wing alliance in pushing this very conflict towards the explosion of violence we’ve seen. Trump empowers Bibi, and moves the embassy. Bibi gathers a government and empowers Hamas. Hamas conducts an mind-bending atrocity. Bibi escalates…. And somehow the opponents of right-wing authoritarianism are left holding the bag, in front of a well-meaning movement that is shocked by the violence but seeming to pursue Murc’s-law-justice against… the Biden administration???!
The frustration comes from the way the protests focus so narrowly on issues of justice and humanitarianism that are abstracted from the politics surrounding these events and the political context in the United States. The moral issue at hand is incredibly narrow: these particular people should not be victims of this particular instance of right-wing authoritarian violence. They shouldn’t be, of course. Meanwhile, there is not political activism around Ukraine (in a much clearer moral and strategic case of foreign policy where choices of the administration can be effective) and there here is not political activism around right-wing authoritarianism here at home, where mass student protest and confrontation could make all the difference.
But you are right about the constitutional rights issue. Those shouldn’t be trampled and people should be free to make their voices heard. This is more an explanation of what is so exasperating and why it’s hard to form real solidarity over those issues. This kind of free expression simply isn’t going to help address our crisis, and doesn’t seem to care about our democratic crisis. It feels more likely to deepen it.
Barbara
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Well that’s a low bar if I ever saw one.
Princess
@UncleEbeneezer: This is pretty much where I am.
Bupalos
This is the kind of cynical, depoliticizing, false-morality putinesque bullshit that is going to be empowered in this environment. The right-wing authoritarians can make a great deal of hay from the killing fields they’ve fertilized.
Kay
@Bupalos:
Thanks for the explanation. Understand though, this is their normal. They aren’t responsding to us saying “this is a unique threat!” because they have lived in and among this threat their entire (very short) adult lives.
They don’t know a normal. They don’t know a non authoritarian US Right wing.We’re like “how can you be running your ordinary life! This is an emergency!” They’re looking at you and thinking “was it ever different?” If they’re 20 now they were 11 in 2016.
Kay
@Bupalos:
It isn’t a unique threat to them. It’s The United States. The sum total of their adult existence was conducted in crazytown.
Elizabelle
I really appreciate there are over 400 comments on this thread, and they are way more thoughtful than anything about the idiot defendant in Judge Merchan’s courtroom.
Had not known the US was not a signatory to the ICC.
Woo boy, is that a bit of a rogue’s gallery. Decision taken during the Clinton presidency, that was damn convenient for W-Cheney’s, no?
More of the answer; Clinton did eventually sign. But. W.
2. Is the US a member of the ICC?
sab
@Kay: So true. My oldest granddaughter was a toddler when 9/11 happened. Now she is a college grad.
JWR
@Trollhattan:
Waiting on delivery of the latest 2,000lb bombs?
Elizabelle
@Kay: I know. They were born after 9/11 too.
BUT: I think the generations after WW2 understood the threat of Naziism rather well, and could name the Axis powers.
Kay
@Elizabelle:
I read the WSJ during that period and they basically turned the whole newspaper into an anti ICC propoganda organ. It was disappointing. It was sometimes a great paper.
Kay
@sab:
I feel especially bad for the covid high school kids. They really got screwed. They’ve had an absolutely bizarre coming of age- unlike anything any of us experienced. I think we should be interviewing them for an oral history.
Bupalos
@Kay: I think that is a really excellent point that we’re prone to miss.
It also strikes me that one of the real challenges to the Solidarity movement that brought down Soviet power in Poland was bridging this gap between generations. Getting them to see each other’s causes as the same cause, instead of competing or conflicting causes.
Manyakitty
@schrodingers_cat: that child separation monstrosity sends me right over the edge. I’m twitching with rage from just thinking about it.
strange visitor (from another planet)
@Kay:
first of all, america isn’t bombing anyone.
second, why would you say silly things like, “my country has never attacked my ethnic or religious group.” at this point in our history, america has bombed EVERY ethnic and religious group.
Jay
nitter.poast.org/JayinKyiv/status/1785237704755593627#m
Martin
I think it’s a lot more complicated than that. I’m firmly of the view that the formation of Israel was a move of cowardice on the part of the US and Europe. We recognized that something had to be done to protect the Jewish community but the immediate first act – stamp out anti-semitism and lift Jews (and what the hell, everyone else) to equal legal protection – we decided either was too hard, or that we just kind of liked things the way they were, and so rather than deal with the myriad of problems we were contributing to the state of the Jewish people, we, in Kristi Noem style, chose to throw the dog and goat into the gravel pit, and then toss the shotgun in as well, and turn and walk away. (My apologies for the dehumanizing metaphor, but I think to a large degree it is accurate from the perspective of the people who were making the decisions.) We did not address the underlying problem and to this day we have still not addressed it – other than to make sure the dog and goat stay in the pit, and then toss in more ammunition when it gets low. And that is true in Europe as well.
And so Israel is in this almost impossible situation where in n-1 countries of the world Jews are discriminated against – and in that one, they are surrounded by people who were thrown into the same gravel pit but not given a shotgun, and are understandably pissed off. That’s not a defense for settlements or indiscriminate bombing or withholding aid or any of that, but this is also a country with about the same GDP as the county I live in. They are still in a tenuous spot.
It is easy to say that Israel needs to decide to join the stalwart international community, but at the same time, that community has utterly failed to address the very problem that they so earnestly created Israel to address, and then pretty much just fucking ignored for the next 70 years, because it remains true that ammunition is cheaper than rights and dignity. There is a lot of blood on a lot of hands on this one, and constantly pointing back at Israel and saying ‘hey, do better’ doesn’t really cut it in the grand scheme. Israel is the west’s cop-out, a project to move the simmering cauldron of problems far enough away that we could mostly ignore it, and then get offended every single time we are reminded that it’s still there, still simmering.
(I’ll note, this doesn’t mean that I think Israel shouldn’t have formed, but I think if we addressed the underlying problems, we would have approached the project differently.)
Elizabelle
@Kay: The ICC is such recent history, and have to say, it flew right over my head at the time. Cannot plead having been 20, either.
I am glad to see the students protesting treatment of Palestinians; I just don’t like all the other stuff, and bad actors, getting looped into it.
Kay
@strange visitor (from another planet):
Hey, feel free to go tell Arab Americans how they should feel or what they should do watching this. I said I’m not doing it. I don’t have a clue what that’s like.
I don’t think Biden will either. We’re past that.
Kay
@Elizabelle:
It’ll be over soon. The protests. Not the catastrophe. That’ll get much, much worse.
JML
Their financial reporting used to be consistently good, but their editorial page has been a bastion of right-wing lunacy for decades and it’s more than occasionally influenced their reporting. They’ll publish the fascists, kooks, and lunatics so long as they toe the GOP and supply-side line.
Bupalos
@Jay: Are you the Jay that promulgated this document, as a new development? Can you describe the existing sanction regime that this modifies?
Because you at the least need to clarify what you are claiming here.
Elizabelle
@Kay: I know. It’s horrifying.
schrodingers_cat
@Manyakitty: Heh but they could not blame Bibi and the Zionists for it so our progressive betters stayed mum. I was one of the few commenters who would comment about the daily horrors visited upon immigrants, long term visa holders and asylum seekers during the Trump era.
They flocked to a senator who had one of the most conservative records on immigration as a savior in 2016.
Unless they can grandstand and preen they (purity left) don’t give a fuck as the Palestinians are soon going to find out.
Gaza is this year’s BLM. And the protesters are no longer calling for ceasefire, now that Hamas has rejected many offers. Its a laundry list of ill defined goals.
Brachiator
@JWR:
Don’t know if this thread is still going.
Of course this is not widely accepted as anti-Semitic and should not be accepted as anti-Semitic. Here, this is part of a deliberate campaign to de-legitimize Palestinian claims to any kind of sovereignty. I recall some Republican member of Congress even suggesting that “anti-Zionism” is anti-Semitic, even though some ultra Orthodox Jews are also anti-Zionist.
Also,
“From the river to the sea” is a phrase that the Israeli ruling Likud party used in its 1977 election manifesto. The manifesto stated that “between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty”
This claim, of course, denies any Palestinian rights to live in the West Bank or Gaza independent of Israel.
The position that Palestine should be one country in which Muslims, Jews and Christians live in NOT the same thing as the goal of Hamas that Israel be destroyed and Jewish people be destroyed or eliminated. I don’t understand why some Americans cannot understand the difference.
strange visitor (from another planet)
@Kay: i’m not telling ANYONE what to feel.
it’s a fact. despite what you keep saying, this country, america, is not bombing anyone in the gaza strip.
lowtechcyclist
@Kay:
I have no problem with enforcing the Leahy law to the extent that it means anything. Just that, like your husband, I wouldn’t get my hopes up that it’ll have much of an effect other than pissing Bibi off.
Kay
@strange visitor (from another planet):
They think it’s a distinction without a difference. Another fact is this couldn’t happen without US backing.
Of course I know we fought Japan and Germany and Italy. I just don’t think any of us experienced that. I wouldn’t have told those Americans what to do either, had I been alive.
Jay
@Bupalos:
Not the same Jay,
Effective November 1, 2024, 11 of the largest currently sanctioned Banks that were/are engaged in all aspects of the ruZZian oil and gas industries, (from well heads to “ghost” fleets) will be free from US Treasury sanctions.
Kay
@strange visitor (from another planet):
i read them online (obviously the most vehement and engaged, so not some random representative sample) and they think there is ethnic and religious bias against Arabs and Muslims by the US here. They think Palestinians lives are being devalued, by the United States. The offense comes not because they’re Arabs, but because they are Americans.
Harrison Wesley
@Jay: If the US is going to lift sanctions against an antagonist because of energy price concerns, wouldn’t it make more sense to lift them from Venezuela? As far as I know, Venezuela isn’t invading anybody, even though US is not crazy about the internal politics there.
elliottg
This characterization is somewhat inaccurate. The rule promulgated there is one already in existence and that notice is an extension. Also, the rule protects our allies in certain circumstances.
strange visitor (from another planet)
@Kay: IMO, america doesn’t value lives, it values strategic interests. if it valued lives, we’d be bombing russia out of ukraine.
eta-i think biden is walking a tightrope in both theatres bc the gop WILL impeach him over the slightest misstep.
Kay
@strange visitor (from another planet):
Agree.
I find the Arab American offense – their anguish- particularly compelling because it isn’t really about their countries of origin – it’s not tribalism, which I would be less sympathetic to. They’re offended because they’re Americans. They think their country doesn’t care if people like them live or die. That’s why the hurt is so profound.
Geminid
@Harrison Wesley: The US actually did start to lift sanctions from Venezuela, back in 2022. I think the motivation was to counter the expected shortfall in oil supplies caused by the Russian war on Ukraine. The process with Venezuela seems to have stalled out though.
Jay
@Harrison Wesley:
ruZZian oil and gas industries are the largest exporter under US and Global sanctions. These sanctions run from new wells, equipment, investment, shipping, insurance, etc.
Prices for ruZZian oil and gas are also “benched” at 40% less than the Global market rates for the products, stripping ruZZia of profits.
There is already a large market for certain foreign buyers to use cut out banks, non-US/EU/Alliance currency to buy ruZZian oil and gas, ship it via grey market insured “Ghost fleets” to refineries in China, Venezuela, Nigeria, India, etc, then sell it on the Global markets at Global prices, thus “greywashing” it.
Allowing the sanctioned banks back into the Ruzzian Oil and Gas markets will supercharge the trade, with US dollars and no need for cut out Banks.
Much more impact than de-sanctioning Venezuela.
Melancholy Jaques
@Barbara:
I think you mean Bill Wyman.
Martin
@strange visitor (from another planet): Well, foreign policy doesn’t. It’s purely a function of national power and strategic interests. That is true for every country all the time.
But other aspects of the nation do value lives which are manifest in US Aid and other efforts. The US does walk and chew gum at the same time.
Biden doesn’t worry about impeachment. They’ve already tried and it was an embarrassment to clown shows.
Biden is invested in Israel because Israel is an American project, and America sees its projects through. If your kid commits a crime, you’d think the only options were to disown the kid or accept the implication that you approve of the crime. Parents bail their kid out of jail all the time in the hopes they can them on the right track.
It’s why Obama didn’t cut and run on Iraq despite opposing the war. We had committed to this coalition and he was trying to steer it into as good an outcome as he could. Democrats are always stuck cleaning up after others.
Brachiator
@Barbara:
And when he met Jessica Sklar, she was just returning from a three week honeymoon. Sad for the husband, but sometimes that’s just how things happen.
Bill Wyman? Or even Jerry Lee Lewis.
rikyrah
@Kay:
I know that you will never see this, but this harkens back to the BLM protests where it was proven, time and time again, that the so-called violence of the BLM protests were caused by outsiders, being used to discredit BLM. As part of a group in America that is never given the benefit of the doubt, and is always lumped in with the least of these to discredit the entire group.. I really take those high percentage of protesters not being from the schools seriously. They do not mean those young people or the earnestness of their cause well.
I am not from a group that ever gets the benefit of the doubt. I think it from that lens that I see these protests differently from you.
grubert
@raven: I don’t think it’s the end at all.. been here almost 20 yrs now, mostly lurk these days.. used to get into it hot and heavy under a different,now defunct nom de guire.. remember getting FU a lot from dyspeptic eemom…
I love this blog.
It will survive.
Jay
@rikyrah:
They do not mean those young people or the earnestness of their cause well.
Some do, some don’t. Some are saboteurs.
As Martin pointed out, it’s not all about Gaza.
Bupalos
@Kay: In 1993 at age 38 it was OK to date a highschool kid?
Not how I remember it.
I think a better way to put it is that with connections and privilege and a different media environment and no internet, things could be hushed or buried.