This week’s interview with Refaat Alareer, Yumna Patel, and Muhammad Shehada:

After Hamas’s attack in Israel on Saturday, the Israeli massacres of Palestinians in Gaza have skyrocketed. This genocidal ethnic cleansing has scarcely been reported by mainstream media at any time in its 50 year history, let alone at a time when western media and politicians openly support a religious war against Palestine. So we’re giving a platform to three Palestinian voices to share their story.

We speak with Refaat Alareer, a Palestinian academic currently sheltering 15 children in his Gaza apartment, Yumna Patel, the Palestine news director for Mondoweiss, and Muhammad Shehada, a Palestinian writer from Gaza.

Their stories of bombings, murder, cruelty, and lies from the Israeli government and malicious rumors from US media and politicians are difficult to hear, but so important when they’re being silenced everywhere else.

“The American public and the general public around the world is being sold a genocide,” they tell us. “We are being convinced through the rhetoric of Israeli politicians, the US president, and US state department spokespeople that Palestinians, specifically Gazans, are not human. They are trying to wipe Gaza off the map.”

And while the deaths of Israelis must be covered and mourned, the West’s hypocrisy and double standard on the value of life is clear.

“I have never seen the amount of profiles and interviews with the families of victims than I’ve seen of mainstream media interviewing these Israeli families. I have never seen this level of attention paid to one singular Palestinian.”

Israeli children matter. Why don’t Palestinian children matter? “No attention is being paid to the killing of 270 children just in the span of three or four days.”

Refaat, Yumna, and Muhammad share their frustration and disgust with “the fact that our government and the President of the United States is repeating dehumanizing genocidal language, repeating these unsubstantiated claims.”

And sadly, we may not be able to hear their voices for long. Refaat, calling from Gaza with the sounds of bombs exploding in the background during the interview, warns that resources are running low. “But in a couple of days, maximum a week or two, if things don’t change, we’re looking at a total blackout, no coverage, no media, no internet. Not that Israel cares, and mainstream media is complicit.”

Hear them speak, and share the interview to spread their message. At a dangerous time, we thank you for continuing to support Useful Idiots and our guests.

Plus, catch this week’s Thursday Throwdown: US politicians call for religious war against Palestine

And join the Absurd Arena live discussion board with Katie and Wilson every Tuesday at 12pm est in the Substack app.

Enlarge / San Francisco City view through the haze of smoke as seen from Treasure Island on September 20, 2023. (credit: Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

When wildfire smoke turns the air brown and hazy, you might think about heading indoors with the windows closed, running an air purifier or even wearing a mask. These are all good strategies to reduce exposure to the particles in wildfire smoke, but smoky air is also filled with potentially harmful gases. Those gases can get into buildings and remain in the walls and floors for weeks.

Getting rid of these gases isn’t as simple as turning on an air purifier or opening a window on a clear day.

In a new study published in the journal Science Advances, colleagues and I tracked the life of these gases in a home exposed to wildfire smoke. We also found that the best way to get rid of the risk is among the simplest: start cleaning.

Read 24 remaining paragraphs | Comments

The world has been struggling to find a good historical parallel for the vicious and horrific surprise attack Hamas launched against Israel on October 7.

It is often said that 10/7 is the new 9/11. But 10/7 was more like a prison riot.

For nearly two decades, the Gaza Strip has been bottled up and almost completely blocked off. It has been widely compared to an open-air prison. Israel and the United States have tried to seal Gaza, isolating its nearly 2 million residents on a tiny, impoverished strip of land. Washington and Tel Aviv thought that would let them keep Hamas at arm’s length.

Instead, it just turned Gaza into an overcrowded penal colony where the most radicalized and violent gang leaders eventually gained control. Mass murder and hostage taking have been the result.

Sealing off Gaza didn’t solve anything. Instead, its problems festered until they finally exploded last weekend.

In the days since the carnage erupted, the American media has offered precious little context to the violence. But it really isn’t that difficult to look back over U.S., Israeli, and Palestinian policies and politics of the last 20 years and understand how we got here. Like so much else that has gone wrong in the Middle East in the 21st century, the George W. Bush administration deserves plenty of the blame for what’s happening now in Israel and Gaza.

In the years immediately after the disastrous 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, Bush doubled down on his enterprise in the Middle East by proclaiming that he wanted to spread democracy throughout the region. So he pushed for elections in Gaza without thinking things through, just as he had in Iraq. Hamas gained power in Gaza after the 2006 elections there, leaving Palestinian territory badly divided between Gaza and the West Bank, where Fatah, a bitter enemy of Hamas, remained in charge.

By then, Israeli politics were increasingly dominated by right-wing leaders. After the second Intifada began in 2000, the Israeli left had largely collapsed, and most Israelis had dropped their support for the “two-state” solution, under which Israel would agree to the creation of an independent Palestinian state.

Instead, Israel bricked itself up. It built walls and expanded Jewish settlements in the West Bank while blockading Gaza.

The Bush administration, eager to please pro-Israel, right-wing Christian evangelicals and simultaneously win American Jewish voters over to the Republican Party, did little to stop Israel from raising its drawbridges. Foreign assistance to Gaza dried up while the U.S. imposed sanctions on the Palestinian Authority because of Hamas’s rise to power. The Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip became an international pariah.

When Barack Obama became president, he initially sought to revive Israeli–Palestinian peace talks, but little came of his efforts before he too abandoned them.

As president, Donald Trump ignored the Palestinians while engineering the so-called Abraham Accords, in which the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco agreed to recognize Israel. President Joe Biden has sought to expand the accords to include Saudi Arabia. But the agreements are hollow; they have won little popular support in the Arab world, largely because they do not address the status of the Palestinians.

In other words: For two decades, a succession of American presidents has largely ignored the Palestinians and, in effect, gone along with Israeli efforts to abandon the idea of a Palestinian state.

One reason the United States has been so unwilling to challenge Israel’s lurch to the right has been the simultaneous rise of right-wing Christian evangelicals in U.S. politics. Evangelicals have become so powerful within the Republican Party that they have changed the domestic American political calculus about Israel.

George W. Bush’s father, President George Herbert Walker Bush, was willing to push Israel and criticize its policies, so much so that when George W. Bush first ran for president, Israeli leaders feared that he would be just as tough on Israel as his father had been.

But that didn’t prove true, and one reason was that Christian evangelicals had become a more important part of the Republican Party by the time he came into office. Evangelicals believe the Bible compels them to support Israel; they believe that the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 was the fulfillment of the biblically foretold “regathering” of the Jews. They also believe that the Bible says that the Jews will continue to rule Israel until the return of Jesus, so Israel must continue to exist until the “Rapture,” which will occur after the second coming of Christ.   

Evangelicals vigorously debate the many side-plots of this “end times” theology, which have the potential to lead them down weird geopolitical rabbit holes. And in the long run, their theology isn’t good for the Jews; in the Rapture, Christians will ascend to heaven while everyone else, including the Jews, will be destroyed.

But the Rapture is still a long way off. For now, the upshot is that Christian evangelicals are unquestioning supporters of Israel — and that means the Republican Party is too. Trump’s controversial decision to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem in 2018 enthralled evangelicals. His administration prominently featured Robert Jeffress, a leading evangelical minister, and John Hagee, a televangelist and founder of Christians United for Israel, at the embassy’s opening.  

(Oddly, that support for the state of Israel has coincided with an explosion of antisemitism on the American right.)

Christian evangelicals’ strong pro-Israel stance has led Republicans to make a play for the votes of American Jews — unnerving Democrats, who worry that Jews will leave their longtime political home in the Democratic Party. As a result, Democrats, just like Republicans, have been unwilling to challenge Israel’s right-wing governments or its refusal to revive serious negotiations about a Palestinian state. The few progressive voices in the Democratic Party who criticize Israel are usually shouted down by both Republicans and by the mainstream of their own party. There are no powerful voices in the United States warning of another bloody Middle Eastern quagmire.

Instead, in the coming weeks, Israel will be operating with something close to an American blank check.

The post Not Israel’s 9/11, but a Prison Riot appeared first on The Intercept.

Podfather Bryan Quinby returns to the show for some spoofs and goofs. We catch up with various radio personalities and explore some D.C. gossip, then Bryan takes us on a tour of some of his favorite types of guy he’s encountered so far while making his new show GUYS.

Find Guys wherever you get podcasts and get all of Bryan’s premium content including Guys+ here: https://www.patreon.com/MurderXBryan

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Sometimes I want to work with all the talks associated with an email in my inbox. For example, maybe a speaker said that the draft schedules are fine, and I want to make a note of that in the conference Org file.

First we start with a function that gets the e-mail addresses for a talk. Some speakers have different e-mail addresses for public contact or private contact, and some e-mail us from other addresses.

(defun emacsconf-mail-get-all-email-addresses (talk)
  "Return all the possible e-mail addresses for TALK."
  (split-string
   (downcase
    (string-join
     (seq-uniq
      (seq-keep
       (lambda (field) (plist-get talk field))
       '(:email :public-email :email-alias)))
     ","))
   " *, *"))

Then we can use that to find the talks for a given e-mail address.

(defun emacsconf-mail-talks (email)
  "Return a list of talks matching EMAIL."
  (setq email (downcase (mail-strip-quoted-names email)))
  (seq-filter
   (lambda (o) (member email (emacsconf-mail-get-all-email-addresses o)))
   (emacsconf-get-talk-info)))

We can loop over that to add a note for the e-mail.

(defun emacsconf-mail-add-to-logbook (email note)
  "Add to logbook for all matching talks from this speaker."
  (interactive
   (let* ((email (mail-strip-quoted-names
                  (plist-get (plist-get (notmuch-show-get-message-properties) :headers)
                             :From)))
          (talks (emacsconf-mail-talks email)))
     (list
      email
      (read-string (format "Note for %s: "
                           (mapconcat (lambda (o) (plist-get o :slug))
                                      talks", "))))))
  (save-window-excursion
    (mapc
     (lambda (talk)
       (emacsconf-add-to-talk-logbook talk note))
     (emacsconf-mail-talks email))))

The actual addition of notes is handled by these functions.

(defun emacsconf-add-to-logbook (note)
  "Add NOTE as a logbook entry for the current subtree."
  (move-marker org-log-note-return-to (point))
  (move-marker org-log-note-marker (point))
  (with-temp-buffer
    (insert note)
    (let ((org-log-note-purpose 'note))
      (org-store-log-note))))

Then we have a function that looks for the heading for a note and then adds a logbook entry to it.

(defun emacsconf-add-to-talk-logbook (talk note)
  "Add NOTE as a logbook entry for TALK."
  (interactive (list (emacsconf-complete-talk) (read-string "Note: ")))
  (save-excursion
    (emacsconf-with-talk-heading talk
      (emacsconf-add-to-logbook note))))

All together, that makes it easy to use Emacs as a very simple contact relationship management system where I can take notes based on the e-mails that come in.

Figure 1: Logging notes from e-mail

These functions are in emacsconf-mail.el.

Naming conventions make it easier for other people to find things. Just like with file prefixes, I like to use a standard naming pattern for our BigBlueButton web conference rooms. For EmacsConf 2022, we used ec22-day-am-gen Speaker name (slugs). For EmacsConf 2023, I want to set up the BigBlueButton rooms before the schedule settles down, so I won't encode the time or track information into it. Instead, I'll use Speaker name (slugs) - emacsconf2023.

BigBlueButton does have an API for managing rooms, but that requires a shared secret that I don't know yet. I figured I'd just automate it through my browser. Over the last year, I've started using Spookfox to control the Firefox web browser from Emacs. It's been pretty handy for scrolling webpages up and down, so I wondered if I could replace my old xdotool-based automation. Here's what I came up with for this year.

First, I need a function that creates the BBB room for a group of talks and updates the Org entry with the URL. Adding a slight delay makes it a bit more reliable.

(defun emacsconf-spookfox-create-bbb (group)
  "Create a BBB room for this group of talks.
GROUP is (email . (talk talk talk)).
Needs a Spookfox connection."
  (let* ((bbb-name
          (format "%s (%s) - %s%s"
                  (mapconcat (lambda (o) (plist-get o :slug)) (cdr group) ", ")
                  (plist-get (cadr group) :speakers)
                  emacsconf-id
                  emacsconf-year))
         path
         (retrieve-command
          (format
           "window.location.origin + [...document.querySelectorAll('h4.room-name-text')].find((o) => o.textContent.trim() == '%s').closest('tr').querySelector('.delete-room').getAttribute('data-path')"
           bbb-name))
         (create-command (format "document.querySelector('#create-room-block').click();
document.querySelector('#create-room-name').value = \"%s\";
document.querySelector('#room_mute_on_join').click();
document.querySelector('.create-room-button').click();"
                                 bbb-name)))
    (setq path (spookfox-js-injection-eval-in-active-tab retrieve-command t))
    (unless path
      (dolist (cmd (split-string create-command ";"))
        (spookfox-js-injection-eval-in-active-tab cmd t)
        (sleep-for 2))
      (sleep-for 2)
      (setq path (spookfox-js-injection-eval-in-active-tab retrieve-command t)))
    (when path
      (dolist (talk (cdr group))
        (save-window-excursion
          (emacsconf-with-talk-heading talk
            (org-entry-put (point) "ROOM" path))))
      (cons bbb-name path))))

Then I need to iterate over the list of talks that have live Q&A sessions but don't have BBB rooms assigned yet so that I can create them.

(defun emacsconf-spookfox-create-bbb-for-live-talks ()
  "Create BBB rooms for talks that don't have them yet."
  (let* ((talks (seq-filter
                 (lambda (o)
                   (and (string-match "live" (or (plist-get o :q-and-a) ""))
                        (not (string= (plist-get o :status) "CANCELLED"))
                        (not (plist-get o :bbb-room))))
                 (emacsconf-publish-prepare-for-display (emacsconf-get-talk-info))))
         (groups (and talks (emacsconf-mail-groups talks))))
    (dolist (group groups)
      (emacsconf-spookfox-create-bbb group))))

The result: a whole bunch of rooms ready for people to check in.

Figure 1: BigBlueButton rooms

Using Spookfox to communicate with Firefox from Emacs Lisp made it easy to get data in and out of my browser. Handy!

This code is in emacsconf-spookfox.el.

Lucy Porter, Tom Ballard, Anushka Asthana, and Mark Steel joined Andy Zaltzman to quiz the week's news.

In this episode Andy and the panel search for the world's most obvious spy, the world's most awkward train ride, and the UK's worst road.

Written by Andy Zaltzman

With additional material by Cody Dahler Mike Shephard and Christina Riggs

Producer: Sam Holmes Executive Producer: James Robinson Production Co-ordinator: Katie Baum Sound Editor: Marc Willcox

A BBC Studios Production

Subscribe to Bad Faith on Patreon to instantly unlock our full premium episode library: http://patreon.com/badfaithpodcast

Brie catches up with Friday left-chair from Rising Jessica Burbank about all the news relevant to the left, from RFK Jr’s third party announcement, the dethroning of he speaker, Diane Finestein’s anti-labor replacement, and Bernie’s support for Ukraine funding. Lots has happened since we recorded this on Monday so let’s shoot for a short call in to catch up on Nina Turner’s announcement and the FTV redux!

Subscribe to Bad Faith on YouTube for video of this episode. Find Bad Faith on Twitter (@badfaithpod) and Instagram (@badfaithpod).

Produced by Armand Aviram.

Theme by Nick Thorburn (@nickfromislands).

A couple of months ago, I wrote about Charles Choi’s post on Emacs defaults. Choi had a list of defaults with which he disagreed. I agreed with him on some of list and disagreed on other parts. It was, though, an interesting post and I even learned something. Now Sandra Snan over at Idiomdrottning has her own list.

Mostly, it’s hard to argue with her about the list or her suggested replacements. The only exception is one that I doubt any Emacs user would agree with: Ctrl+h, she says, should be a backspace instead of an entry to the Help system. Yes, her rationale makes sense. It is, after all, the ASCII character for backspace but No True Scotsman Emacser is going to agree with her on this one.

The rest of her list makes sense to me. She considers:

• Placing of backup and autosave files in the current directory.
• Copying a backup file rather than moving it.
• Spaces ending a sentence.
• Indentation using TABs and spaces.
• Requiring a final newline in a file.
• frame-inhibit-implied-resize.
• Showing trailing whitespace.
• Killing the whole line.

As I said, most of these seem non-controversial to me except spaces ending a sentence. The proper number of spaces after a period ending a sentence is a battle that rages within and without the Emacs community. Irreal has plowed that ground many times so I won’t belabor it here.

Take a look at Snan’s list and see what you think. Perhaps you’ll decide to change some of the defaults on your own system. Regardless, Emacs, as always, lets you have it your way.

Journalist Mohammad Alsaafin returns to the show to cover the unprecedented new developments in the Israel-Gaza conflict.

The piece from Séamus Malekafzali mentioned in the episode: https://www.seamus-malekafzali.com/p/a-siege-broken

The playlist of AJ+ videos on Palestine Mohammad recommends at the end of the episode: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZd3QRtSy5LNqTTQagN3IgbqVPtEIQOp1

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It's everyone's favourite topic, Slovakian politics. Content Warning: Magyarphobia I guess.

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Minimizing your carbon footprint traditionally involves paying attention to the things you buy, how you commute, and conserving energy at home. A new study published in PLOS Climate shows that mindful consumption is only part of the equation: How much money you make, along with how you make it, matters too. Researchers found that the highest-earning 10% of U.S. households are responsible for around 40% of U.S. carbon emissions. And a large proportion of those emissions are associated with investment income. The findings could inform policy decisions aiming to create more equitable carbon tax systems.

Household Carbon Footprints

Carbon footprints are generally calculated from a consumption standpoint—how individual consumers’ personal choices directly translate to carbon emissions.

“I think there are some limits to that,” said lead author Jared Starr, a sustainability scientist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “It assumes that people have an endless amount of choices and knowledge and agency to purchase less carbon-intensive items, and that’s not always the case.” There are many reasons, he said, why people cannot change their commute, buy local products, or install energy-saving appliances.

Instead of focusing on consumption, which can be influenced by a person’s time, money, and location, Starr and his colleagues looked at how making money produces carbon emissions. The researchers calculated the emissions created by earning wages, as well as income made from investments (rent, dividends, interest, and capital gains) and retirement accounts (Social Security or individual retirement accounts).

Using Eora MRIO—a global supply chain database that captures both supplier- and producer-sourced carbon emissions—the group calculated how much each industry category contributed to overall carbon emissions.

Starr explained that, using these data, the researchers figured out how many tons of emissions are needed to produce 1 dollar of income from a specific industry. They then linked this back to household-level U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics/Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey data (between 1990 and 2019), which show how many dollars of income a person earned from a given industry. Details on investment incomes within a household were collected from the Congressional Budget Office, which breaks down household incomes across different income groups by type (such as wages, investments, and government entitlements such as unemployment or disability payments).

To determine the carbon emissions from investment income, the researchers assumed that households had a diversified investment portfolio that tracked a stock market index, not one that is actively managed, and that the greenhouse gas emissions from these investments were weighted by each industry’s contribution. To account for variability, the team allowed the carbon intensity of a household’s investments to vary by 25% above and below the mean, Starr explained.

In 2019, the highest-earning 10% of American households were associated with about 40% of total U.S. emissions. Among the top 1%, investments made up 28%–43% of earnings, researchers found, whereas the poorest households were more wage-based and might not have any investment income.

The team found that lower-income groups tended to be employed in sectors associated with fewer greenhouse gases—think retail, teaching, and service industries. Higher-income workers tended to work in sectors associated with higher carbon emissions: financial services companies that underwrite fossil fuel projects and high-end real estate companies, for example. Higher-wage earners have more money left over for investing, too: Passive income from the top 1% of earners is associated with more emissions than their wages. And in our fossil fuel–based economy, Starr pointed out, much of a company’s shareholder value comes with creating emissions.

The emissions inequality between the highest- and lowest-income earners is profound. “Half of the American population—65 million households—are only responsible for about 14% of the emissions [from income],” Starr said. “I think just that scale of disparity is quite striking.”

Removing the consumption aspect of carbon footprints is a new way of looking at the source of household emissions. “They were able to provide evidence to something that I think we all would anticipate but hasn’t really been shown,” said Regan Patterson, an environmental engineer at the University of California, Los Angeles who was not involved with the study. Their findings were consistent with other studies on greenhouse gas emissions by wealthy households, she added.

Starr noted that the poorest Americans produce less than 2 tons of income-based carbon dioxide (CO₂) per year, compared with the top 0.1% of households, which emit 2,670 tons of CO₂. Put another way, it takes only about 15 days for a top-earning household to surpass a lifetime of emissions for a lower-earning household.

Rethinking Carbon Taxes

This new look at income-based emissions can foster conversations about carbon taxation policy and reducing industry greenhouse gas emissions, Patterson said.

Currently, carbon taxes are placed on consumer goods, not on passive income from investments. Because low-income earners spend all their income on goods and services, they end up carrying an outsized load of carbon emission mitigation. This is doubly the case if you consider that only 40% of a top earner’s income has any sort of consumer-focused carbon tax applied to it, Starr said, compared with 100% of a low-income earner’s income.

Instead, implementing a carbon tax on investment income could be a way to help level the burden of mitigation. “I think if we put a carbon tax on shareholders that reflected the carbon intensity of the company, it would incentivize shareholders to move money out of highly taxed companies out of their own self-interest,” Starr said. The approach may incentivize corporations to “decarbonize their own operations in order to attract investment.”

—Sarah Derouin (@Sarah_Derouin), Science Writer

Citation: Derouin, S. (2023), How you make money matters when it comes to carbon emissions, Eos, 104, https://doi.org/10.1029/2023EO230381. Published on 10 October 2023.

Text © 2023. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

On the night of September 11, 2001, I sat on the stoop of my apartment building in Greenwich Village and drank some abominable wine coolers with my neighbors. I’d bought them from a nearby store that had already started wild profiteering and was charging three times the normal price. We were two miles north of the site of the World Trade Center; the neighborhood smelled of acrid smoke, which turned out to be preferable to the stench of burnt, rotting bodies that would develop later that week.

Now, according to a plethora of voices, with the vicious recent attacks by Hamas, Israel has experienced its own 9/11. “This is our 9/11,” says the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations. “This is our 9/11,” says the Israeli military’s spokesperson. “This is the equivalent for Israel of probably what happened in the United States in September 11th,” says Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. “Israeli Faces Its 9/11,” says the Wall Street Journal op-ed page. If you’d like to see 37,000 more examples, have at it.

The point of all these comparisons is obvious. Former Rep. Joe Walsh expressed it here:

In other words, Israel, like the U.S., had been innocently walking through the world when SUDDENLY, OUT OF NOWHERE, it was inexplicably attacked by inhuman barbarians. Therefore Israel, like the U.S. was, is entitled to do anything whatsoever in response. A recent estimate found that the U.S. war on terror has directly and indirectly caused over 4.5 million deaths.

I don’t agree with Walsh’s conclusion. But certainly everyone here is starting from the correct premise — that this is Israel’s 9/11 — even if they don’t understand why.

First of all, something like Hamas’s attack on Israel, as with something like 9/11, was going to happen eventually. Israel and the U.S. constantly deal out ultraviolence on a smaller scale (Israel) and a huge scale (the U.S.). Anyone in either country who believed this would never come home was living in a vain fantasy.

Likewise, the establishments of both Israel and the U.S. were well aware of this: that their policies would inevitably lead to the deaths of their own citizens. Richard Shultz, a longtime national security state intellectual, wrote in 2004 that “a very senior [Special Operations Forces] officer who had served on the Joint Staff in the 1990s told me that more than once he heard terrorist strikes characterized as ‘a small price to pay for being a superpower.’” Eran Etzion, onetime member of Israel’s national security council, just explained that from the government’s perspective, “the relatively small price that Israel paid every so often” for its policy toward Gaza was the deaths of dozens of Israelis.

What stunned both the U.S. and Israel was that anyone managed to briefly deal out damage on a scale they’re used to delivering. Israel killed over 10,000 Palestinians from 2000 through last month. God only knows how many hundreds of thousands the U.S. killed in the Middle East in the lead-up to 9/11.

Then, as now, anyone pointing out these obvious facts was smeared as “supporting” or “justifying” the vicious blowback. It’s frustrating and suggests that it’s impossible for human beings to be rational about this subject. If you tell someone that pouring gas on a pile of shredded newspaper and then throwing a match on it will probably make the newspaper catch on fire, you are not “supporting fire” or “justifying fire.” On the contrary, you’re trying to reduce the amount of fire in the world by describing reality.

Another similarity is that both Israel and the U.S. generated their own enemies. The U.S. famously nurtured fundamentalist Islamic opposition to the Soviet Union in Afghanistan during the 1980s. Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser, said in a 1998 interview that this had been “an excellent idea” and he had no regrets about these “stirred-up Muslims.” Israel did essentially the same thing in miniature in the occupied territories, encouraging the growth of Hamas to damage the secular Fatah. “Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation,” according to one of the Israelis who worked on this clever project.

As with 9/11, the attacks on Israel could only have succeeded on the scale they did because of the monstrous incompetence of the relevant leaders. “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.,” the CIA told George W. Bush in August 2001. Bush ignored this. Dick Cheney actually pushed back at the intelligence world’s many warnings because he believed Al Qaeda was merely feinting and trying to get the U.S. to expend resources preventing something that would never happen. Likewise, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was apparently warned by Egypt that something bad was coming but ignored it. We’ll inevitably learn shocking details soon about Netanyahu’s general indifference to what was on the horizon.

This is all of a piece with the irrelevance of citizens’ lives to leaders like Netanyahu and Bush. They gnash their teeth and rend their garments about how enraged they are by attacks by foreigners, yet in their hearts they don’t care about us at all. Immediately after 9/11, the Bush administration falsely told New Yorkers that the city air was perfectly safe to breathe.

Finally, the revenge that Israel will now exact will be hideous, as was that taken by the U.S. There is nothing on earth like the fury of the powerful when they believe they have been defied by their inferiors.

This is something my neighbors and I agreed on as we drank those awful wine coolers on 9/11. We were frightened deep in our guts by what had happened that morning. For anyone who wasn’t in New York then, let me tell you — Al Qaeda truly put the terror back in terrorism. But what we were most scared of was what our own government was about to do next. Ever since that moment, my dream has been that someday the regular people of the world — all of us, on every “side” — will form an alliance against our grotesque leaders.

The post Yes, This Is Israel’s 9/11 appeared first on The Intercept.

Kath’s back as we continue reviewing the outpouring of affection for Matt and catching up on last week’s news, specifically Commander Biden’s ongoing one-dog war against White House secret service. Then, we look at Kevin McCarthy’s ouster as Speaker of the House, and discuss just how far one fellow Patreon creator will go for content.

Prod. note: I’m just as upset as you are that the public eps are now odd numbers and subscriber eps are now evens. If anyone has any ideas to rectify this without skipping more episodes, I’m all ears.

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Julia Evans had a great talk called Making Hard Things Easy. One of the takeaways for me was that I should be using tools for parts of a system I find hard to remember. In particular, when writing bash scripts I should be using shellcheck.

It turns out Emacs 29 has support for shellcheck, and older versions of Emacs can use the flymake-shellcheck page.

To set it up in Emacs 29:

(use-package flymake
  :bind (("H-e" . flymake-show-project-diagnostics)))

(use-package sh-script
  :hook (sh-mode . flymake-mode))

I use consult for navigating my errors, and I want to make errors more noticable in the mode line, so my flymake configuration is:

(use-package flymake
  :bind (("H-e" . my/consult-flymake-project))
  :preface
  (defun my/consult-flymake-project ()
    (interactive)
    (consult-flymake t))
  :custom
  (flymake-suppress-zero-counters t)
  :config
  (defface my/flymake-modeline-error-echo
    '((t :inherit 'flymake-error-echo :background "red"))
    "Mode line flymake errors")
  (put 'flymake-error 'mode-line-face 'my/flymake-modeline-error-echo)
  (defface my/flymake-modeline-warning-echo
    '((t :inherit 'flymake-warning-echo :background "orange"))
    "Mode line flymake warnings")
  (put 'flymake-warning 'mode-line-face 'my/flymake-modeline-warning-echo))

It's too early to know what other tweaks I might want, but so far it's alerted me to several errors in my shell scripts.

Update: [2023-10-07] Comments on HN pointed to bash-language-server which works with emacs lsp or eglot.

Bloomberg (8/3/23)

Since the 19th century, the epithet “sick man of Europe” has been used to describe European nations undergoing economic hardship or social restlessness—first the Ottoman Empire in the 1860s, then Russia in 1917, France in the 1950s, Britain in the 1960s, Italy in the 1970s and Germany in the late 1990s/early 2000s.

Corporate media outlets have recently been applying the phrase to Germany again in response to the Central European nation’s negative GDP growth. “Is Germany the Sick Man of Europe?” a Bloomberg video (8/3/23) asked. A CNN article (8/24/23) explained “Why Some Are Calling Germany ‘the Sick Man of Europe’ Once Again.” CNBC (9/4/23) reported, “Germany Is the ‘Sick Man of Europe’—and It’s Causing a Shift to the Right, Top Economist Says.”

But their reporting has consistently ignored what is likely a primary source of Germany’s economic illness: the sabotage on the Nord Stream pipelines that carried natural gas from Russia to Europe.

Blowing up the economy

CNBC (9/4/23)

There is substantial evidence that the “sick” German economy has been significantly impacted by the loss of the pipelines, and it can be verified that the dearth of inexpensive Russian gas is a major contributor to Germany’s succumbing to a recession. Natural gas accounts for around a quarter of Germany’s overall energy mix. In 2021, the year before fighting over Ukraine’s secessionist Donbas region deepened, Germany imported 142 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas, with 52% of it originating from Russia. In the three years leading up to the current conflict, Germany’s natural gas consumption averaged 89 bcm. (Germany was able to reexport much of its imports, reaping the economic benefits from selling the surplus gas to neighboring countries.)

Nord Stream 1 alone was vastly larger than any other Russian gas pipeline to Germany, annually delivering up to 59 bcm. Germany’s Federal Office for Economic Affairs and Export Control does not identify the infrastructural origin of imported gas, so the public remains unaware of the exact volume of gas imports coming from Nord Stream. But Germany lost, at least for the foreseeable future, as much as a staggering 66% of its gas consumption, and 42% of its supply.

“The German economy is the European Union’s greatest economic casualty of the war in Ukraine,” economist Jeffrey Sachs told FAIR:

The destruction of Nord Stream, the loss of trade with Russia and the boomerang effect of US/EU sanctions will weigh very heavily on the German economy, and hence on the EU-wide economy, for years to come.

Scrambling to find replacements for Russian gas, Germany has turned to liquified natural gas (LNG) from the United States—and it may even turn to Russia LNG, too. The European Union and the United Kingdom saw their imports of US LNG increase more than threefold in the first four months of 2022 from the previous year. At the same time, Europe is now importing greater quantities of LNG from Russia than ever before. According to a report in Spiegel (9/12/23), “There are many indications that this fuel will ultimately also be burned in Germany.”

Methane, a potent greenhouse gas, is the largest component of natural gas; an estimated 56,000–155,000 metric tons were released into the atmosphere by the Nord Stream sabotage. If the destruction of the pipeline expedites the transition to green energy, its long-term net impact may be positive. However, there are short-term repercussions.

Russian pipeline gas is more cost-effective than LNG, and using the the latter as an energy source is more harmful to the environment: It requires energy-intensive, low-temperature storage, fuel for transatlantic shipping (in the case of LNG from the US), liquefaction and regasification, and often the construction of LNG terminals (as seen in Germany).

The $19 billion elephant

FAIR.org (10/7/22)

In September 2022, three of the four strands that make up the $19 billion Nord Stream 1 and Nord 2 pipelines were ruptured by underwater explosions. Russia held a 51% stake in the pipelines, with remaining ownership distributed among four Western European nations. Financing for the project came from a Russian energy firm and Western European companies. The pipelines made landfall in Germany, the nation that depended on them the most.

Nord Stream 1 began delivering gas in 2011. Nord Stream 2 never entered service, as its certification was suspended by Germany in February 2022 following Russia’s formal recognition of two breakaway regions in Ukraine. In August 2022, Russia halted gas flows through Nord Stream 1, citing maintenance work. After the sabotage, in October 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin offered to supply gas via the one remaining line of Nord Stream 2 that had not been damaged in the attack; his offer was rebuffed.

Corporate media’s knee-jerk reaction was to blame Russia for what stands as one of the most significant acts of industrial sabotage in history (FAIR.org, 3/3/23, 10/7/22). Yet with emerging evidence suggesting a Western nation—either the US, Ukraine or possibly a combination of the two—as the likely perpetrator, self-appointed media doctors who have dubbed Germany the “sick man of Europe” are declining to associate German economic woes with the $19 billion elephant in the room.

Misdiagnosing the patient

NPR (9/27/22)

Hundreds of corporate media articles have recently focused on Germany, and many of them have characterized the country as the “sick man of Europe.” There is consensus in the reporting that skyrocketing energy costs, particularly the surging price of natural gas, are the primary drivers of inflation, recession and the plummeting industrial output of Europe’s largest economy. But omission of a key source, if not the main source, of the illness appears to be a significant oversight by the corporate press, akin to medical malpractice.

The case of Spiegel is a serious one, especially given the outlet’s recent history of breaking consequential stories about the Nord Stream sabotage. The attack is absent from a 7,000-word article—“Why Germany’s Economy Is Flailing—and What Could Help” (9/7/23)—bylined by no fewer than 11 reporters. The following week, the outlet continued to feign ignorance, posing the question “How Can That Be?” (9/12/23) in reference to Europe’s growing imports of Russian LNG.

NPR has covered the Nord Stream sabotage as well. However, an NPR article (9/27/22) on Germany’s energy crisis immediately following the attack excluded its impact. Published on the very day following the sabotage, NPR’s piece about Germany’s return to coal as a fuel amid the urgency to find alternatives to Russian gas notably neglected to mention the unprecedented attack on both the environment and industry.

“Nord Stream” and “sabotage” are missing words from these Spiegel and NPR reports, as well as from hundreds of articles assessing Germany’s energy crunch (e.g., PBS, 7/19/23). Here the omission is the bombshell news. The unreported constitutes the core of the story, serving as the viral headline that remains unwritten.

What connects the Spiegel pieces and much of NPR’s reporting is a suppression of the specifics of the breaking news. Euphemisms are employed to avoid providing an accurate diagnosis. In the case of Spiegel, the Nord Stream pipelines are rechristened “the Baltic Sea pipelines” and the deliberate act of sabotage is called “failed Russian pipeline gas.” For its part, NPR (12/26/22) found it suitable to bowdlerize the bombed pipelines as “now-defunct.”

Prescription: less rights for workers

CNN (8/24/23)

Having sidelined the sabotage as a major cause of Germany’s economic troubles, many in the corporate press went on to recommend dubious remedies. Take CNN (8/24/23):

One problem—the cost of natural gas—has been particularly acute for its [Germany’s] energy-guzzling manufacturers. European gas prices soared to all-time highs last summer. Although they have fallen steeply in recent months, they are ticking up again as the possibility of strike action at liquefied natural gas (LNG) plants in Australia has raised fears of a global supply crunch.

The “possibility” of a labor strike is scapegoated for the high “cost of natural gas.” The subtext is that workers’ rights, already dangerously widespread and infecting the economy, must be curtailed.

CNN appears to be constraining the wider facts. The outlet defines recession “as two consecutive quarters of declining output.” The data confirming Germany’s fall into recession are based on its GDP performance in the first quarter of 2023. Output, in other words, contracted over the first three months of the year, following a contraction of 0.4% in the fourth quarter of 2022. Both time periods precede the pathogens of organized labor allegedly “ticking up” gas prices and Germany’s recent designation as the “sick man of Europe” (New Statesman, 6/7/23).

This is not the first time FAIR (e.g., 8/10/23, 6/1/23, 9/1/97) has documented the corporate press scapegoating workers’ rights for economic conditions.

Slashing corporate taxes rates are also among the medications recommended in various articles about the “sick man of Europe.” The expertise of the chief economist at Commerzbank was sought by a number of media organizations (e.g., Financial Times, 8/20/23; Deutsche Welle, 8/1/23; Yahoo! Finance 5/25/23). The expert told CNBC (8/24/23) that

Germany needs lower corporate taxes, less red tape, faster approval procedures, more investment in roads, bridges and digital infrastructure, competitive electricity prices and better schools.

Some of those prescribed economic and structural restoratives may very well improve the patient’s economic health. But the articles touting corporate tax cuts as a cure overlook a critical fact: Corporate tax rates in Germany averaged 38.5% from 2001 to 2007, and have hovered at approximately 30% since 2008. How, despite these rates, the German economy managed to become, after 2008, a “powerhouse” and “economic superstar” doesn’t seem a question worth considering.

Too much social spending?

Politico (7/13/23)

Politico (7/13/23), too, seems to have recommended treatment unrelated to the disease:

A big flash point will be social welfare. Germany operates one of the most generous welfare states, with social spending accounting for 27% of the economy last year (compared with 23% in the US). With Berlin under pressure to spend vastly more on defense, the belt-tightening—and the public backlash—has already begun.

A lot to unpack there. Large military contractors, such as Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, provide Politico with advertising revenue. Axel Springer, the multibillion-dollar German media company that owns Politico, has a documented history of hostility toward social democracy.

Like the CNBC article, the 3,400-word Politico piece does not contain even one sentence informing readers that “social spending” by the German government has seen a minuscule increase—from 25.5% to 26.7%—over the last quarter-century. Nor are readers told that although social spending in countries such as France and Austria accounts for around 30% of GDP, their economies are being given much cleaner bills of health than Germany’s.

US no model patient

Economist (8/17/23)

The implication is that health would be regained if sickly Germany adopted an economic model more closely resembling that of the United States. But Germany’s economy minister seems to disagree that the German welfare state is a weakness that makes the economy sick.

“At the same time, the German economy retains a host of strengths,” Robert Habeck wrote in the Economist (9/14/23) in response to its August 17 cover story, “Is Germany Once Again the Sick Man of Europe?” “Our social-market economy maintains its traditions of employer-union co-operation and a powerful welfare state,” Habeck declared.

Is Habeck wrong to reject the US model as a cure for the “sick man of Europe”? Nein.

Following the pandemic, life expectancy in many other high-income countries rebounded. But life expectancy in the US, already lower than in peer nations, declined. The US spends more on the military than the next 10 countries combined, including China, Russia, India and Saudi Arabia. “Among industrial nations, the United States is by far the most top-heavy, with much greater shares of national wealth and income going to the richest 1% than any other country,” according to Inequality.org.

Perhaps most damning of all for the US, a country that prides itself on the “American Dream,” is its failure to even crack the top 25 on the list of nations with the highest socioeconomic mobility. Germany is ranked 11th, well ahead of the US.

But the health of the two countries may be more intertwined than initial diagnoses suggest. According to an MSNBC op-ed (7/13/23), “The US also has a lower inflation rate than any other G7 member—it’s not like Biden’s policies are driving up inflation in Germany.” But if the United States, either directly or through proxies, blew up the Nord Stream pipelines, it would bear a significant responsibility for the deteriorating condition of the “sick man of Europe”—and it’s going to need a really good medical malpractice defense lawyer, despite what establishment media have told readers.

The post Media’s ‘Sick Man of Europe’ Diagnosis for Germany Needs a Second Opinion appeared first on FAIR.

Democracy Now! 2023-10-05 Thursday

• Headlines for October 05, 2023
• "A Day in the Life of Abed Salama": How the Death of Abed's 5-Year-Old Son Sheds Light on Life Under Israeli Apartheid

Download this show

Will & Hesse bring you Horrotober Ghoulvie Screamset, a selection of Horror film bangers for this October. We start with two all-time classics of the genre: George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead (1968) and Tobe Hooper’s “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” (1974). Both films redefined the genre into heightened levels of gruesome nihilism, creating vivid reflections of charnel-house America while serving up ghouls galore for your puerile titillation. 

As always, the first episode of this miniseries is free for all to listen, all subsequent episodes will be for subscribers only at: www.patreon.com/chapotraphouse

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On this week’s episode of Lever Time, David Sirota is joined by Brendan James and Noah Kulwin, producers and hosts of the wildly popular historical narrative podcast Blowback. Their new season covers the history of foreign intervention in Afghanistan and both the intentional and unintentional blowback from those efforts. 

“Blowback” refers to an old CIA term meaning, “the unforeseen and unwanted effects, or repercussions to one’s actions.” In Blowback, Brendan and Noah report on the history of America’s foreign policy and interventions — including its efforts related to the various wars in Iraq, the Cuban Revolution, and the Korean War. 

David speaks with Brendan and Noah about their new season, which goes into painstaking detail about Afghanistan, a country that has arguably suffered more modern foreign interventions than any other place on Earth. They cover Soviet interventions in the country in the 1970s and ’80s, the U.S.-backed rise of the Mujahideen, the September 11 World Trade Center attacks, and the subsequent U.S. invasion and war, which lasted over two decades. 

A transcript of this episode is available here.

Links:

• Blowback

BONUS: On this past Monday's bonus episode of Lever Time Premium, exclusively for The Lever’s supporting subscribers, we shared our interview with attorney Jeffrey Simon, who is part of the legal team suing 17 fossil fuel companies for their contribution to a 2021 heatwave that killed 69 people in Oregon’s Multnomah County. 

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Ryan and Emily discuss the aftermath of McCarthy's ouster as Speaker with his confirmation of not seeking to run again, Sean Hannity claims Trump is weighing a run for speaker, the largest strike in American history launching this week, Hunter Biden pleads not guilty in gun case, SCOTUS hears case that could decide the fate of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, iPhone security protections threatened by dark money backed groups, NC Republicans push for ability to destroy public records, McConnell outmaneuvered on Ukraine, and Nina Turner joins the show to discuss her new union supporting organization.

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We are back. What a week to take a break, huh? We catch up on Nazi officers in Canadian parliament, Sen. Bob “Goldbar” Menendez, Sen. Dianne “RIP” Feinstein, an assortment of madcap Trump statements, China repossesses its Pandas, and more. 

Thank you for bearing with us through all of this. Programming should continue as usual now. Movie Mindset Halloween Edition starts this Wednesday 10/4/23, and we have some more surprise treats coming to the Patreon when that’s wrapped up in November.

If you’d like to join Will & Hesse this October 30th for screenings of The Fog and Halloween III at the Roxy Cinema in NYC, ticket links here:

The Fog: https://www.roxycinemanewyork.com/screenings/the-fog/

Halloween III: https://www.roxycinemanewyork.com/screenings/halloween-iii-season-of-the-witch/

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