Many Israelis are not European-origin white people.

And too much of American discourse about the present horrific phase of the long Israeli/Palestinian war tries to shove the conflict into a framework derived from U.S. racial history, a Black/White binary.

Insisting that this terrible conflict is different than U.S. experience and carries its own complications in no way justifies Israel's current brutal effort to simply eradicate or expel the people of Gaza and the West Bank. Nor does it justify hostage taking and vengeance raids. I'm tempted to say there aren't any good guys, though the work of the Jewish and Palestinian group Standing Together may point to better possibilities.

Standing Together on the Gaza border: marching for LIFE, PEACE, FREEDOM & SAFETY FOR ALL. "We need to end the war. We need to end the occupation. We need to end this cycle of violence and killing. We need a real, just peace that gives everyone a future here - Palestinians and Israelis." via Xitter

But it isn't adequate to think of the hell of the two clashing nations as indigenous dark Palestinians rising up against white Jewish intruders. Both justice and compassion require a more nuanced view.

John Ganz [@lionel_trolling], historian and Xitter pundit extraordinaire, has attempted to recomplicate the agony of Israel/Palestine in simplified form. I've excerpted some of this here, but urge those concerned to Read the Whole Thing.

... as many others have pointed out, the more than half of Israeli Jews—between 50% or 55%—are Mizrahim or Sephardim, rather than Ashkenazim.

... The fact that most of the Israeli population is of non-European descent—including a sizable population of Ethiopian Jews—somewhat complicates the picture given by some Western activists of Israel as a white supremacist settler-colonial state lording it over darker peoples. The Mizrahi population tends to be more religious, more conservative, less educated, less prosperous, and to vote for right-wing parties, like Likud, Shas and the Judeo-Fascist Otzma Yehudit, headed by the national security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, himself of Mizrahi descent. ...

... Mizrahi and other non-European Jews are also more likely to be IDF combat troops involved in the most dangerous and violent missions in the occupied territories and Gaza: They do a lot of the grunt work of repression. ...

 ... “Living in Israel is for us, coming from Arab countries, the continuation of our Jewish identity. Whereas the programme presented by the left is cosmopolitan - in which nationalism is overcome - we, Mizrahi Jews, do not relate at all to this discourse, in which human and civil rights come before our Jewish identity,” as one Likud activist told Middle East Eye.

... To understand why the Mizrahim became so right wing and nationalist, we have to look to the process by which they became integrated into Israeli society and politics. In the wake of the U.N. Partition vote of 1947 and the 1948 Israeli-Arab war, some 900,000 Jews from the Middle East fled their homes. Around two thirds of these would end up in Israel. When they arrived, the Israeli state was dominated by the largely Ashkenazi founding generation, figures you will have heard of like David Ben-Gurion, Chaim Weizmann, and Golda Meir. The Ashkenazi elite had a paternalistic and prejudiced attitude towards their newly arrived cousins, who were often extremely poor and uneducated. ...

... It would be a mistake, however, to put too much weight on the Ashkenazi-Mizrahi distinction as the sole explanatory factor in Israeli politics. The ethnic issue is often a proxy for other things. A recent study shows that as educational attainment rises, voting behavior starts to look the same. Some argue that increasing rate of mixed marriages is reducing the saliency of ethnic politics. Not all class differences map easily onto these ethnic differences: for instance, Iraqi Jews are often part of the elite. One should also not map Mizrahi onto “Settler” or Religious Zionist: Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich is the head of the more Ashkenazi National Religious Party. ...

Click to get a look at Smotrich

Would it matter if we learned a more nuanced view of the agony we watch and seek to impede from here? Perhaps not. But more truth still seems better to me  ...

It's beginning to feel a little 1968ish ...

Republican politicians are licking their chops. They hope beating up on protesting college students will distract their fellow citizens while their leader sits in a dingy New York court room defending a sordid con. Meanwhile the economy chugs along and majorities tell pollsters we're feeling pretty good about our individual lives. Gotta raise the temperature. Beat up on some students ...

Via the Austin American

This dodge has succeeded before. Last time we got Richard Nixon and it took every intact strand in the democratic fabric of the rule of law to evict him. This time they want to ride a stupid, sociopathic, toddler-strong man. 

They want to leverage genuine moral outrage over Gaza for their ugly purposes. Escalating violence on campuses is not the students' fault, even if some are unthinking and overwrought. 

Atlantic editor Adam Server cuts to the essence of the moment:

... As we approach the summer of 2024, the economy is growing, migration to the border has declined at least temporarily owing to what appears to be a new crackdown by Mexican authorities, and in many major cities, crime is returning to historic lows, leaving protests as the most suitable target for demagoguery. The Biden administration’s support for Israel divides Democrats and unites Republicans, so the longer the issue remains salient, the better it is for the GOP.

More broadly, the politics of “American carnage” do not work as well in the absence of carnage. Far-right politics operate best when there is a public perception of disorder and chaos, an atmosphere in which the only solution such politicians ever offer can sound appealing to desperate voters. Social-media bubbles can suffice to maintain this sense of siege among the extremely online, but cultivating this perception among most voters demands constant reinforcement.

This is why the Republican Party is constantly seeking to play up chaos at the border and an epidemic of crime in American cities, no matter what the reality of the situation might actually be. ... any escalation in chaos would redound to their political benefit. They don’t want to solve any problems; they want to make them worse so that the public will warm to “solutions” that will continue to make them worse. They don’t want order, or safety, or peace. What they want is carnage.

They want carnage and they'll make it where it doesn't yet exist. They want to use protesting students in their theater of carnage. And when your cause is just, it's hard not to play.

We entertain visitors

or perhaps they entertain us.

Mature deer seem most likely to come by at dawn.

 

There's something among the sparse grass they find edible.

 

On a rainy afternoon, a younger generation shows up, oblivious to observers inside windows.

This island is home to far too many deer. They serve as a vector for Lyme-infected ticks which are an ever present hazard. A short fall deer hunting season does little to keep the population down.

But for us from the big cities, sharing the land with them has a superficial charm.

Recycling that could become self-sustaining

It's hard to stay enthusiastic about urban recycling when you've seen urban trash haulers just dump your recycling into the same truck with the solid waste.

But industrial recycling may well be an important part of our response to climate change. Instead of proliferating waste, let's hope our eager engineers can figure out how to make money off it.

Such a thing may be underway in north western Nevada, a region fast becoming a tech-industrial hub.  

According to Bloomberg: 

In the scrublands of western Nevada, Tesla co-founder JB Straubel stood on a bluff overlooking several acres of neatly stacked packs of used-up lithium-ion batteries, out of place against the puffs of sagebrush dotting the undulating hills. As if on cue, a giant tumbleweed rolled by. It was the last Friday of March, and Straubel had just struck black gold.

Earlier that day, his battery-recycling company, Redwood Materials, flipped the switch on its first commercial-scale line producing a fine black powder essential to electric vehicle batteries. Known as cathode active material, it’s responsible for a third of the cost of a battery. Redwood plans to manufacture enough of the stuff to build more than 1.3 million EVs a year by 2028, in addition to other battery components that have never been made in the US before.

It’s a turning point for a US battery supply chain that’s currently beholden to China. ... Redwood is attempting to break that stranglehold by creating a domestic loop using recycled critical metals.

... EVs already have a much smaller environmental footprint than internal combustion cars, even in countries that still get most of their electricity from coal. While the toll of mining the raw materials for batteries is considerable, more than 95% of the key minerals can be profitably recycled.

At Redwood, nothing goes to landfill, and no water leaves the facility except the sanitary waste from sinks and toilets. There are no gas lines; everything is electric. It’s also built for scale, allowing the company to quickly break down a truckload of assorted batteries without manual sorting or tedious disassembly.

Recyclers will eventually need to match the pace of car factories. For example, a Tesla factory just 250 miles away in Fremont, California, produced 560,000 EVs last year — more than one every minute. When it’s time for those cars to be recycled, they will generate almost 10 times as much EV battery material as the entire US market processed last year. If recyclers can handle all of that, they would begin to rival traditional mining operations.

“Once we've changed over the entire vehicle fleet to electric, and all those minerals are in consumption, we’ll only have to replace a couple percent each year that’s lost in the process,” said Colin Campbell, Redwood’s chief technology officer and the former head of powertrain engineering at Tesla. “It will become obvious to everyone that it doesn't make sense to dig it out of the ground anymore.”

My emphasis. This Bloomberg article goes on to raise the considerable obstacles that battery entrepreneurs could encounter, including reaching necessary scale to supply the new industry, while China may find it in its interest to undercut the costs of their output.  

But it's happening ... and subsidized by the legislation that the Biden Administration squeezed out of Congress to underwrite sustainability. Weird that a government led by a white haired old guy is so forward looking, but there it is.

By way of Bill McKibben.

Civilized

For anyone who has ever had to worry that some busy body would challenge their gender when entering a pubic bathroom, this notice in a diner is a welcome touch.

Trump and MAGA are weak

Kiev book fair logo

It's a terrible thing when it feels right to be cheering for more guns. But I do cheer today that the American political system -- at long last -- has managed to do the right thing about arming Ukrainians' defense of their vision of a better society and a free country. 

At least less Ukrainians will be dying because we couldn't get our act together. I hope.

A couple of days ago the very measured Heather Cox Richardson summarized Donald Trump's unraveling: 

Americans overwhelmingly support reproductive freedoms, and Republicans are getting hammered over the extreme abortion bans now operative in Republican-dominated states. Now Trump and a number of Republicans have tried to back away from their antiabortion positions, infuriating antiabortion activists. 

It is hard to see how the Republican Party can appeal to both Trump’s base and general voters at the same time.  

That split dramatically weakens Trump politically while he is in an increasingly precarious position personally. He [has gone] on trial on Monday, April 15, for alleged crimes committed as he interfered in the 2016 election. 

At the same time, the $175 million appeals bond he posted to cover the judgment in his business fraud trial has been questioned and must be justified [further]. The court has scheduled a hearing on the bond for April 22. And his performance at rallies and private events has been unstable. 

He seems a shaky reed on which to hang a political party, especially as his MAGA Republicans have proven unable to manage the House of Representatives and are increasingly being called out as Russian puppets for their attacks on Ukraine aid. 

It's up to we the people to finish the job in November.

Trusting the jury

New York Times courtroom reporter Adam Klasfeld observed of the Trump New York City trial he is attending:

I have seen enough jury trials to observe that jurors take their jobs seriously.

This encourages me to bring back something I once wrote about being in a jury pool way back in 1987. When I described the experience in 2005, the context was a lot closer in time; these days I think I need to elaborate just a bit.

Anyone remember who Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North was? He was Ronald Reagan's phony heroic soldier and one of his bagmen in the convoluted episode we call the Iran/Contra Affair whose centerpiece included provision of arms to Nicaraguan right wing insurgents in violation an explicit Congressional ban. Congressional hearings elicited testimony that the US had also been funneling missiles to Iran in exchange for hostages taken in Lebanon by Islamic Jihad, while laundering payments through the Sultan of Brunei. The whole mess was shocking, mostly stupid, and sordid. 

There were televised hearings in which North was the star witness. 

In the midst of these hearings in 1987, I was called for jury duty in Federal Court in San Francisco:

Like most people, I was not happy about this -- I expected tedium and wasted time, as I can't imagine the prosecutor or defense attorney who'd risk putting me on a jury. But I dutifully showed up and sat through an hour or so lecture from a court official on the importance of a good faith, honest and sincere effort to carry out the task we might be given. Then the two hundred or so of us were left in a room furnished like a high school cafeteria (I remember the same orange plastic chairs and tables) to wait to be called into court. There was nothing to do but watch a bank of televisions.

On the tube, a ramrod straight Marine was swearing to "tell the whole truth." It was Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North testifying before the Iran-Contra congressional investigating committee. He was a picture of uprightness, explaining how he'd organized a secret army of "freedom fighters" using every kind of ruse to hide from Congress -- and carried out his Commander in Chief's implied, though never explicit, instructions. After all, laundering money and trading arms for hostages was "defending freedom."

The tangled tale of illegal acts and lies to cover them made me feel ill. But I figured North looked the part of a good guy; his "sincere" pose was probably playing well with most people. And when I got outside the Federal Building and read more about his testimony, it was clear he was going over well.

But for the next 3 days, I had to go back to the jury room, to sit in front of those televised hearings. Gradually, little circles of strangers began to talk with each other. And something amazing was happening -- we were all thinking like jurors, not a TV audience. People began to comment: "he looks good, but I don't trust him"; "does he really think he has a right to break the law?"; "they think they are above the law because they are in the government." In that room, Oliver North was convicted, while in most of the U.S. he successfully played the role of hero.

And then, we, the prospective jurors, were all excused, never finding out what happened to the case we'd been brought in for.

The alchemy of performing the civic duty of being a juror sometimes changes people -- or not. Trump and the MAGAs are trying to tear up our civic fabric; if they are constricted by the rules, they cannot dominate. A jury is being asked if they still care enough for that fabric to defend it in the very presence of the raging sociopath who is trying to eviscerate it. 

I will not be surprised if they are up to the task.

Friday cat blogging

Janeway and Mio are doing a good job overseeing Alln in our absence. Who knows what he'd get into without them to remind him to feed and love them?

Organized fire

The news that Jane McAlevey has entered hospice care hits hard. If you didn't have the chance to meet her, know that Jane was a stalwart of the UC Berkeley Labor Center and hundreds of labor struggles over the last four decades. She communicated how people, collectively, can find their power and fight for themselves.

I've always liked this snap of Jane caught at a board meeting of the Applied Research Center in 2000.

Her organized fire, harnessing anger and pride for people power, has made a difference to so many.

• • •

The news about Jane puts me in mind of this from the wise Kareem Abdul Jabbar:

The past few years has been a relentless stream of days in which someone I care about dies and I grieve the loss. Worse, I’m at an age where I know I will have to face many more of those days. Death. Grieve. Repeat. I am no longer surprised when it happens, the inevitability has numbed me from shock. But not from the sadness. Not from the grief.

At the same time, I realize that each death is like a customer number being called at a bakery—each number brings us closer to our own digits being announced. Then—if you’ve lived your life right—others will grieve for you. Circle of life, blah blah blah.

I’m all for inspirational quotes that embrace the challenges of life with a positive can-do attitude. I do them almost every week. But to ignore the darker aspects of living is to trivialize them and leaves us ill-equipped to deal with them. In a way, the grieving process is a way of honoring your relationships and celebrating a life that is filled with people worth grieving over.

Each day I wake prepared to grieve again. I am not afraid of it anymore. Grief and I are friendly companions skipping stones across the infinite that spreads out before me like a calm lake with grandchildren frolicking on the shore.

It's a time of life. But some people go on too soon.

Good riddance

It's great to learn that the Federal Bureau of Prisons has decided to close the Federal Corrections Institution at Dublin, California. This minimum security women's prison has been a sexual abuse hellhole for a couple of decades. The last few male wardens have ended up charged and convicted for assaulting and raping inmates. 

... “It is a remarkable admission,” said attorney Michael Bien, whose law firm represents inmates in a class-action lawsuit over conditions at the prison. Prison authorities are “saying they can’t operate this prison safely.” He said closure doesn’t address the underlying issue. “How does this solve the problems? The same policy and procedures are in place at other prisons. It is not the building that did anything wrong.” ... “It is an unprecedented move to opt for closure,” said Amaris Montes, director of West Coast litigation and advocacy for Right Behind Bars. “It has been a long time coming for Dublin.”  

... Maria Ledesma, a former inmate released from Dublin after two years in 2022, said she was surprised the closure took so long. “I wish it would have happened sooner,” the 52-year-old Salt Lake City woman said . During her time there, she saw frequent sexual abuse. “Girls were getting raped on the daily there,” she said.

Ledesma recalled walking back from her prison job when she heard some shuffling and spotted two people between the buildings. “There was the warden, zipping up his pants,” she said. “He looked at me, I looked at him, and I knew in that moment I needed to put my head down and keep walking.”

It may or may not be relevant that the current head of the Bureau of Prisons is a woman.

• • •

The article from the LA Times I've quoted here describes the culture of abuse at the Dublin facility as going back to the 1990s. I have reason to believe it is even older.

In 1978-9, I regularly visited a very young Native American woman who was doing a couple of years in there as part of a plea agreement. She claimed she had been waiting in a car while some guys she was with charged into a bank and apparently attempted an armed heist. Hence, there was a federal crime, as bank robbery was then usually prosecuted by the feds. She copped to a guilty plea for a short sentence just to be done with this; somehow the guys got off altogether, but she didn't much understand any of it except that she ended up locked up in a federal prison in another state. I met her through friends who had befriended her in the Seattle King County jail when she was awaiting trial; my friends were in jail for pouring blood on signature petitions for a county anti-gay rights initiative. (Those were the days.)

FCI Dublin was a dreary place. The visiting area was an open space with plastic chairs and tables that looked like a school lunchroom. Each group jostled for its own space amid the hubbub. Many visitors came with children; as I understood it, the younger kids had to be left in a prison day care pen, but older ones did join the visiting. I'm sure that, despite all the searches of inmates and scanning of their visitors, a lot of contraband came in through that room, though I never knew how it worked.

My friend did assure me that some women could get anything they wanted through "relationships" with male guards. She never clarified to me how she fit in the economy of the place and I was too ignorant to know how to ask.

The curiosity of the era was that Patty Heart, the newspaper heiress turned terrorist, was locked up there. She was always in the visiting room with a couple tables of visitors, very much a queen bee for the moment. In February 1979, President Jimmy Carter commuted her bank robbery sentence.

One evening the prison put on a dance to which the inmates were allowed to invite a guest. This was a challenge to me; not only didn't I dance, but I looked like a proper '70s lesbian, a schlub. I took as much care as I could with what I wore, wanting not to embarrass my young friend. I am sure I didn't enhance her status any. 

There was a rumor (later true for awhile) that FCI Dublin was about to be made coed. My friend belonged to a set that hated the idea: they were sure that whatever privileges were available would go to the guys. They were proved right when the experiment happened.

Eventually my friend got out and returned to the Northwest. I lost touch with her. She'd be 65-ish today. I wonder if she has made it alive ...

Whining with a side of extortion

Donald Trump, on trial for one of his many crimes, is sinking in the polls and attempting to imitate the mob bosses he always admired. 

His small donors are not forking over cash at the volume they once did. Maybe they smell a rat? Anyway, he whines for them.

For donors who can give contribute "bigly", the message is extortion. As political scientist Bruce Cain explained to Thomas Edsall: 

... some of the conservative victories in campaign-finance law have had the unintended consequence of strengthening “the power of elected officials to coerce donations out of the donors.”

There has always been, Cain wrote by email, “an element of hostile dependency built into campaign fund-raising. Businesses have always given money to gain access or avoid bad things happening to them if the people in power feel that certain supporters let them down.”

Until recently, Cain argued, the potential for extortion was limited by stricter campaign contribution laws before we loosened the system up post the Citizens United decision. The irony of inviting large donors and businesses to give large or unlimited donations is that the court strengthened the implicit hostile dependency relationship between donors and Trump.

Republican donors sought the elimination of restrictions on donors in the belief that such loosening of the law “would favor them,” Cain wrote. Instead, “the dog has caught the car just as it is backing up on it,” adding: “Trump’s mafia m.o. can be counted on to take this to the extreme.”

While greed and fear are powerful motivations behind the decision to make campaign contributions to a candidate, they are not antithetical. Rather, they reinforce each other, something Trump appears to be acutely aware of.

 Not a pretty picture.

I don't expect our plutocrats to know much history, but if they did, they'd be aware that the experience of men who thought they could buy protection from the autocrats they enabled has not been happy.