Israelis or Jews?

As more details about the attack of Israeli soccer fans in Amsterdam are released, the murkier the dominant narrative of "antisemitism" becomes. As I read it, beligerant Israeli soccer hooligans came to town to cause trouble; shouting "death to Arabs" (which is technically anti-semitic). Being assholes, they hassled cab drivers and waved flags until other fans had had enough and began to beat them down. Of course the media and certain politicians went full ADL, claiming the idiots were targeted because they were Jews. But all we know, and all the those doing the beating knew, is that they were Israeli and proud Zionists. They could have been Christians. Or athiests. Or Hindu, for all anybody knew. Those doing the beating didn't ask for identification to make sure it was only Jews they were chasing. But just as they did with the campus protests over the genocide in Gaza, the media immediately latched on to "anti-semitism" as the cause of violence. I don't know what it is about soccer culture that attracts violent, xenophobic morons, but this is hardly the first such episode. What I do know is that if you are an Israeli or a Jew or anybody who supports that genocide, you should expect some harsh reaction. Because you deserve it. And if you shout your hate from the rooftops...yeah. "In real subsumption, territorial empires gave way to empires based on control of market access, reshaping labour processes and supply-chains on a more consistently capitalist basis and incorporating workforces into financial and consumer systems to an unprecedented degree." Richard Seymour

Bomb Bomb Iran

Some may remember John Mc Cain's little ditty. With Rubio, Stefanik and Huckabee running the Middle East desk, he may, posthumously get his (death) wish. It appears Biden/ Harris were punished for accomplishing the barest minimum ie infrastructure, climate. It turns out the less competent the government is, the more it is rewarded. Getting nothing done is the whole point. Petty squables, government shutdowns, endless ethics hearings: there's your "wrecking ball". Wrecking ball to the fantasy of a "two state solution". Wrecking ball to the fantasy of "international law". Wrecking ball to the fantasy of "green capitalism". Yes it's terrible and there will be untold death and misery and suffering but these are your choices: terrible or horrible. But hey, at least it's not Somalia! Some on the far left are defending the rubes who voted for the real estate/tech-billionaire government, saying their protest votes expressed legitimate dissatisfaction. Whatever. Their revolution will not be televised. The fun and games will only last so long. David Brooks sees the education divide - highschool vs college - as the best explanation, but neither team, nor most NYTimes pundits, understand the current conjuncture. Symptoms are not the disease. Some of the biggest suckers are the "Muslims For Trump" who thought he would help their cause. Right. Then ask your waiter at Applebees what he thinks of Project 2025. Then ask him what big event is happening in Azerbaijan this week. Then ask him to find Azerbaijan on a map. Craig Singleton, a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies", believes if Trump can "stay disciplined, he just might be crazy enough to confront China — and win." And if unicorns can fly, we can ride them to the moon! You can't spit without hitting a psychotic moron today. This freak served for decades in the defense establishment. The Kubuki continues unabated.

Better Late Than Never?

Not really. The dominant post-election narrative promulgated by both U.S. "political" parties and the vast commentariat is that the Dems lost the socio-economic group known as "the working class" to the Repubs. A group, by the way, that never got much airplay prior to this bizarre election. Now it's all you hear! We abandoned the Working Class! Win back the Working Class! For the last several decades we heard a lot about the "middle-class". Until a few weeks ago, this was who all the "politicians" were supposedly fighting for. The class everyone wanted to see prosper. This class is different from workers even though they work. They are simply better educated and make more dough and are willing to help the environment as long as there is no cost to them personally. According to sociologists and people who study these things. The problem, unfortunately, is that the working class is so thoroughly atomized and individuated, they have no class consciousness nor sense of class belonging. They are alienated consumers and totaly transactional in their "politics". Sadly, appeals to solidarity or economic justice or even "democracy" fall flat. Like everyone, they simply want treats. Promise them treats, even fossil-fueled treats, especially fossil-fueled treats and you get their vote. A chicken in every pot works but a guaranteed family vacation to Disneyworld will make you Emperor For Life. Try asking them if they identify as workers and see the funny look you get. The reason I put "politics" in scare quotes is because in a liberal capitalist "democracy" ( more scare quotes), the sphere of The Political is so truncated, so denuded, as to debase the true meaning of the term. It is used (constantly, repeatedly) to make people believe they are self-governed. A lovely thought, right? "Of the People, by the People, for the People!" Legislation and policy! As Master of your own destiny you get to choose between a Party who offers you a trip to Disneyworld or one who offers sex-reassignment surgery and cities without cops. No brainer! Of course all of this post-election analysis assumes you would really want to win control over this free-falling shit show. That takes a certain breed of sociopath or deluded moron. As the COP resumes in Azerbaijan you won't hear two words about climate change in all the Post-Election Analysis. Because it was never an issue during the election. We heard a lot about the wars, a lot about inflation, a lot about immigration. So the workers voted for Hope and Change! Why wouldn't they. Cheap fossil-fueled treats for all! Deal with the floods and fires as they come. That's what insurance is for , right? What this all boils down to is a huge pile of what Mark Fisher called ideological rubble. Mixed with a large dose of repressed and subsumed psych-social trauma. We know it's a facade but act AS IF it's real. Thrown in a cynical fuck-the-future attitude and some Christian millenialism and hang on to your hats, we're in for a wild ride.

Face to Face

Richard King, author of Here Be Monsters, has a new piece in the magazine Arena titled Standing Ground in a Turning World. He argues that "identity politics" has been detrimental to Left organizing because it lacks a sympathetic understanding of how people's lives have been turned upside down by the pace of techno-scientific change. He recommends tolerance for small c conservatism and the traditional values that help anchor people people tossed about by modernity. He sees signs of this "moral maturity" in the pro-Palestinian demonstrations which have avoided the purity tests seen in other recent protest movements. I've tried to make this case for some time, insisting that technology tends to run out ahead of culture's ability to absorb and assimilate it resulting in the kind of incoherent "politics" we are seeing globally. This incoherence shows up on the Left in the form of pronoun policing and snow-flake hysteria over cultural appropriation. On the Right it manifests as looney conspiracy theories and "passionate intensity" ranging from populism to fascism. The question for me is how you find the sweet spot between a provincialism that can be reactionary, racist, xenophobic etc and a cosmopolitanism that is alienating. You want to tolerate religious belief but also challenge chauvinistic sex-gender prejudice. We can appreciate "face to face" interactions but still value the internet. It is the question of how much time these adjustments take. Capitalism moves at the speed of light and "all that is solid melts into air", regardless of the cultural dislocation Freemantle Shipping News

Economists

This quote from the director of Trump's National Economic Council says it all: "There is no faster way to deliver benefits across the board than lower energy prices. The forced scarcity of the Green New Deal, one of the great policy blunders in modern history, should be replaced with an “all of the above” approach to domestic energy supply. The benefits will be felt at the pump, in heating bills, at the grocery checkout and in every small business." Despite decades of international climate conferences and hundreds of scientific reports, mainstream economists still dismiss externalities and consider impacts to the ecosystem totally irrelevant. In this case he is 100% correct about short-term "benefits" while ignoring the inevitable catastrophe. Like most Americans, this particular economist is willing to write off future generations to preserve political power and the treats that go along with it. Despite all the warnings. For capitalists, any limit to growth is considered "forced scarcity" and must be overcome. Even if it is physics. But of course physics cannot be overcome. This is why physics is ignored, dismissed, pretended away or disavowed. For capitalist economists, there can be no relinquishment or even reduction, it is all grow, grow, grow. More, more, more. "All of the above". Keep the train speeding toward the cliff, keep the people lobotomized with consumer "benefits", keep your party in power. What can possibly go wrong?

Influencers

The Saudi minister lays it out : “But now we see that the U.S. has no power or influence over Israel — to a humiliating degree,” he added, “and that the Israelis have no intention to create a Palestinian state.” It is true that the US political "leadership" is reluctant to cut off arms shipments to Israel but the US Jewish lobby has plenty of influence and they are using it to support the genocide. The US electorate is clueless, having been brainwashed for the last eighty years, and will accept any criticism of Israel as "antisemitic". The Saudis are now insisting a "two-state solution" be part of any normalization deal but we'll see how deep that committment runs. It is "humiliating" that a rogue politician like Netanyahu rubs it in Biden's face, we expect Israeli leaders to pretend deference as they pursue their goal of an apartheid ethno-state. But like Trump, Netanyahu has decided to forgo these pieties. Neither are inhibited by established norms, which explains their popularity. Apparently, Trump's crude, "hypermasculine" act has a great deal of influence over young men. According to the NY Times: "Compared with when Mr. Trump ran in 2020, young male voters are now less likely to support government-backed climate change solutions (down 15 points, according to our poll)" At the same time they feel hopeless about the future, they also don't want any threats to their American Dream. If you can't get laid, the least you can do is drag the ecosystem down with you. It would be just if these morons were the only ones to face the consequences of their obliviousness. But that's not how ecosystems work.

What's Roiling Democrats

I listened to a podcast by three left-of-center NY Times columnists where they discussed the issues "roiling" the Democratic party's coalition. They went over foreign policy and economics and domestic issues like immigration and crypto and all kinds of topics. But they never once mentioned climate change. Not even the environment. This tells us something about how effective the "climate movement" has been. It's never a polling question, it has no "constituency", it is not, despite all the alarming reports, an "issue" with voters. It will take catastrophe to change anything here in the U.S. That might not be so far down the road. “Florida-focused property insurers, they are really at the highest level of danger,” Mr. Manyem said. Those companies, he said, are likely to have the hardest time getting new reinsurance policies, too." An opinion piece titled "America is Walking into an Economic Storm" never mentions climate change. All about the aging population and AI and bah blah. It is written by an econ-science MIT prof who won this years Nobel Prize. For him, climate change doesn't exist as a threat. Without having watched it, I guarantee the FOX news interview of Harris had no mention. Disavowal: I know it is true but I act as if I don't. Trumpism cannot be blamed for this obliviousness, though it helps legitimize it. Most people understand at some level that there will be a cost to decarbonization and they don't want to pay it. So much easier to kick the can down the road so you can keep buying treats for yourself. It's the economy stupid.