DL Open Thread Monday, Dec. 11, 2023
Cynics might consider a UN climate conference a study in hypocrisy – thousands of people burned fossil fuel flying to a desolate stretch of sand atop a petroleum patch so they can emit a lot of hot air pretending to do something about global warming. Oil-rich nations, though, see it as an existential threat. Reuters got hold of a letter from OPEC Secretary General Haitham Al Ghais urging countries to reject any deal targeting fossil fuels, such as the one calling for their “eventual” phase-out. Russia and Saudi Arabia are particularly against it, so I’m guessing their languages lack a term for “It’s just talk.”
Talk can be dangerous, though. Truthfully answering a question about campus censorship has cost the University of Pennsylvania president her job. As the Palestinians in Gaza have learned, the beatings of the people who criticize Israel will continue until their morale improves.
Cowardly blowhard Donald Trump rage-tweeted that he won’t testify again in his fraud trial. Media treated this as important news because to them it is – without Trump, they’re nothing.
If you wonder how and why the GOP turned to Donald Trump, well, just look at the roster of incompetent boobs looking to replace him. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the lamest scary monster the political media could produce, is so desperate for voters, any voters, that his equally noxious wife went on Fox News and told out-of-staters to take part in their caucuses. This isn’t a good look for a guy who made up his own Election Security Police Force to stop Black people from voting.
People who watch Fox News probably think the country is in the grips of a shoplifting epidemic, and all it took was a little prompting. OK, a lot of prompting:
After looking through a video database of Fox programming over the last five years, Media Matters found a very small number of retail theft mentions between 2019 and 2020 — just 35. Since 2021, however, there has been a huge spike — at least 1,575 mentions of retail theft. The coverage was particularly widespread in the fourth quarter of 2021, the group noted.
I’m saving the “Well, duh” stories for the bottom of the stack. For example, it’s unsurprising that abortion clinics in states that haven’t banned them have seen a record surge in out-of-state patients.
Less obvious, perhaps, is the fact that a good deal of the “inflation” in the U.S. should actually go by the less-flattering term “price gouging.” A new report shows that a good bit of the rise in prices – not all of it, but a good bit – consisted of companies raising prices well above the rise in costs. I guess the report authors are too genteel to call it what it is.
The floor’s yours.
Yep, the anti-Woke mob found (un-)witting allies with pro-Israel zealots and D officeholders, and are working their mischief on higher-ed institutions.
Why only destroy public education when you can do the same to colleges and universities?
A stupid populace is a complicit populace.
Hey, I’ve learned my lesson. I rudely suggested indiscriminately killing defenseless Palestinians is bad. Imagine my surprise to find out that what I really said was that I am in favor of indiscriminately killing defenseless Israelis.
I remain an old “Peacenik” and always remember Ben Franklin’s “there was never a good War, or a bad Peace.”, especially in Israel. As for the military slaughter of civilians, aided by advance weapons courtesy of well… us, it remains slaughter none the less.
After the October 7 attack, Israel did not begin its major ground invasion of Gaza until Octoper 27. “World opinion” thus had 20 days to offer alternative solutions for returning the hostages and removing Hamas. Crickets from the UN, from world leaders, and – especially – from US critics of Israel.
Israel was left once again to be responsible for its own security against the petrodollar-funded jihadist clients on its borders. Once the ground invasion began, the critics predictably found their voices and started in with the slogans and buzzwords.
You say that as if “offering alternative solutions” matters more than what Netanyahu wants to do.
You can support Israel while admitting that its response, particularly the callousness towards innocents, is at this point costing it support around the world. Well, you apparently can’t, but one can.
He’s a genocide apologist
Noun, verb, slogan, buzzword. LOL!
Try going off script and write something that reflects original thinking.
you first … also, see below. You’re grasping and flailing to support genocide. Very strange
If you do settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing there is no way to “remove” the resistance. You can either dissolve the violent apartheid state (like South Africa) or complete the genocide (like in America).
Pretending this crisis started two months is the big tell. Gives away the game.
Also, as a point of clarity, Gaza isn’t on Israel’s border, like another separate nation. It’s a refugee camp (or was) that was under full military siege. It was an Israeli prison, not an autonomous country.
Everybody lives on land that used to belong to someone else.
Great argument! So you’re a genocide apologist. Thanks for confirming this.
Does this excuse the violent apartheid too?
EB – Puck is right. As you see it, that would make the entire history of mankind genocidal. Do you really think so many people have been wiped from the face of the earth? Actual genocide exists, but you throw the word around carelessly.
What would be your realistic alternative to how history might have developed? That everybody would just stay put forever? That no people would ever feel the need to expand? That people would never look out for their own interests?
I think you’re hopelessly naive about the nature of man. But, yes, we should try to do the the best we can within human limitations and the intractable nature of reality.
The Anglo-Saxons took over the land of the Britons. The French took over the land of the Anglo-Saxons. Won’t anybody think of the Britons and the Anglo-Saxons?
I just read this again for fun. It’s one of the most absurd things I’ve ever seen written down.
Very glib and very cool. Hopelessly naive about the nature of man lol We gotta kill all the other people. It’s the nature of man! No one is making the decisions. It’s happening naturally!
No, I don’t think it makes all of human history everywhere genocidal. It’s a genocide by the international legal definition. So, there’s that. I thought liberals supported international law and “norms.”
And yeah I think we probably shouldn’t do them anymore. But if you think it’s ok because they’ve happened before, well, that’s a strange argument. But that’s very clearly making an argument to do genocide. You just think it should be allowed for whatever reason. I don’t.
It’s f**cking presumptuous to tell Jews what genocide is. In your spare time do you lecture blacks about racism?
The belief that Jews are somehow uniquely qualified to talk about genocide is a ridiculous proposition, springing from the notion that Jews are the only victims of genocide in the world.
It’s only our ignorance of world affairs that makes it seem so. The Holocaust took place mostly in western Europe, which is where we’re from, so we all know about it. But ask Armenians, or the Tutsi in Rwanda. Are they not qualified to speak about it either?
There are more people dead in the latest civil war in Sudan, where Arabs are killing Africans in activity that’s just as genocidal as in Gaza –and yet Puck maintains that nobody can tell a Jew anything about genocide.
Puck, you have an amazing ability to see every issue through nobody’s eyes but your own.
As a Jew, I know what genocide is. The Jewish State is committing genocide against the Palestinian people.
One would have thought that Israel would be especially sensitive to committing this type of mass killing.
One would be wrong.
Genocide is different. Not all horrific wars are genocide. Nobody accused the western allies of genocide when they bombed German cities flat, although the civilians were just as dead.
You should argue with international law then. Genocide is defined and Israel is doing it right now. I’m sorry this makes you mad.
Also, many, many Jews understand this clearly and El Som is one.
“Genocide is defined and Israel is doing it right now. ”
Your assertion does not make it so. Especially not from your safe armchair far from the threat.
Not mine. International law. You should yell at international law.
Are you not also in a safe armchair?
“International law” has no enforcement arm.
If international law had any meaning, we would have flooded Gaza with peacekeeping forces to prevent further violence. We haven’t and won’t.
EB – I’m not making an argument to “do genocide”(!). I’m saying we should try to understand human nature and make the best we can of it.
I have a pretty clear understanding of the situation, yeah. Thanks for your help. I can put a reading list together if you need it.
Yeah, we’re all impressed with your mighty morality.
I agree with you, but not with your obnoxious-ass performance art.
what’s obnoxious about it?
If you have to ask you’ll never understand.
Is it the “reading list” bit? All I know is reading the scholarship on this was a huge help to me.
No, it’s the moral high horse. You have determined your opinion, and you apparently won’t let it go until everyone shares it.