"If there are two foreign policy agendas that tie US politics together, it is the mantra 'for Israel, against China'." @adamtooze https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-365-defend-columbia-but
// on the cosmopolitan research university—particularly Tooze's Columbia—as ground zero for unwinding retrofutures.
ht @ChrisMayLA6
if a US visa or green card is a “privilege” whose revocation constitutes foreign-policy discretion rather than punishment and so is not subject to protection on first-amendment grounds, couldn’t an identical case be made with respect to passports for US citizens?
@lienrag I guess I consider all of their deaths tragedies. Maybe it’s a distinction without a difference, one way or another people participating in war risk getting killed, whether you consider that a tragedy or an openly accepted hazard. (Of course how voluntary participation is can vary a lot.) I’d like to think if force capability were more balanced, mutual deterrence might yield peace. But then groups like the Houthis initiate military action despite relative weakness.
@lienrag War is bad. But it is also not one-sided. I’m not inclined to give the current US administration, which I consider lawless and fascist, much benefit of the doubt. I think it likely this leadership are reckless with civilian life to the point of war crime. But these melees are in response to hostilities from the Houthis that have also resulted in deadly consequences. 1/
@lienrag You may condemn that too, or you may consider it a justified response to Israel’s actions in Gaza. But these aren’t killings coming from one side out of nowhere. Whichever of the many linked parties you consider more or less culpable, they are all — the US, Houthis, Israelis, Hamas, etc — prosecuting murderous military actions. /fin
@lienrag I don’t revel in the deaths of Russian soldiers either, though of course it’s legitimate for the Ukrainians to kill them. It would have been legitimate for the Houthis to kill these servicemembers too—this is war—but I am very glad that did not happen, despite the severe intelligence breach. War is tragedy upon tragedy upon tragedy. Mass death may eventually help exhaust support for war, but that doesn’t make it virtuous or desirable. There are better ways to peace.
[new draft post] Delivering rough consensus https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2025/03/26/delivering-rough-consensus/index.html
@lienrag Orders to bomb targets carefully selected for military importance are not *prima facie* a war crime such that a servicemember could or should refuse such orders. Questions of proportionality might lead to accusations *ex post* of war crime, that risks or harms to civilians were beyond proportionate to legitimate military objectives, but that is beyond the duty or capacity of servicemembers to judge in real time. They had no basis to refuse these orders.
@lienrag ( as more information comes out, the case that military planners were not in fact adhering to obligations to protect civilian life and proportionality grows stronger. after the fact, we may well conclude there were war crimes. but again, that's not something servicemembers executing these orders could have judged and refused. https://bsky.app/profile/eliothiggins.bsky.social/post/3llcabku2xk25 )
@Eh__tweet i’m not interested in a pissing match. but i think the blizzard of bad things is preventing people from staying aware and focused on just how consequential and terrible some of these things have been. these are lives, not news cycles.
@lienrag the servicemembers acting as ordered, on a mission that is not a war crime, are not the people responsible. their deaths are not to be sought or excused. in consequential terms, had incompetence led to their deaths, the probability of an escalation for all involved, leading to more civilian and noncivilian catastrophe, would be very high. it may already be high, but severe escalation (eg restarting full civil war) may also yet be avoided.
kakistocracy is downstream from plutocracy because under plutocracy those who survive in positions of authority become restricted to those who’ve proven susceptible to extortion and gratuity.
@efraim @serge @carolannie I don’t know any solution that seems plausible in the immediate term, but I agree entirely that intifada rhetoric is… unhelpful, and that whatever works to engender peaceful coexistence is what matters, much more than all the isms.
@efraim @serge @carolannie Critical of Zionism often means critical of the existence of Israel as a specifically Jewish state, which is distinct from critical of Israel existing at all. You might think it historically undesirable or genocidally impractical, but most Westerners who describe themselves as anti-Zionist claim to want a state neutral among the religions and ethnicities of residents, who would all become citizens. 1/
@efraim @serge @carolannie One can be critical of this Israeli government and still be a Zionist in the sense of favoring Israel as an explicit Jewish homeland. One can be critical of Israel in a way that attributes its putative misbehavior to its construction as a Jewish state, and therefore be anti-Zionist, but still want a peaceful state for its inhabitants to exist on the territory. /fin
@serge @carolannie As you have pointed out, the relationship between Judaism and Zionism is complex within the Jewish community. Like it or not, given the both the American state and the Israeli state act with power and violence in the world, people in the world will make judgments about those actions and will have to reconcile those judgments with their own understandings of Judaism and human beings they interact with who are Jewish. 1/
@serge @carolannie Many people of good will, precisely because it is important to them that they not be racists, but who nevertheless condemn the actions of the Israeli state, adopt a frame in which there’s a sharp distinction between Judaism and Zionism. Some Jews do the same, while some see the connection between Judaism and Israel as pragmatically or theologically essential. 2/
@serge @carolannie From your perspective, Jewish anti-Zionism means “Jews…support[ing] the murder of other Jews”. There are lots of Jews who don’t see it that way, rightly or wrongly. It is not racist of those Jews, or of non-Jews, to disagree with you about what Zionism or anti-Zionism mean (though outcomes might ultimately prove some views right or wrong). 3/
@serge @carolannie Regardless, a lot of people, rightly or wrongly (I think rightly), condemn the choices the Israeli state is currently making. It’s a good impulse, not a bad impulse, for those people to put daylight between those choices and Jews and Judaism generally. 4/
@serge @carolannie It might be best if people were better at making a distinction between what the Israeli state is currently doing and Zionism as a project, which once and might in future refer to a Jewish state whose government has a very different character than Israel’s current government. 5/
@serge @carolannie But I guess I’d say that’s a very fine parsing to expect of people. People, Jewish and non-, do have a right, even obligation, to form views about this Israeli government and this American government. If it’s hard to critique Israel’s behavior without risk of seeming antisemitic, it’s harder still to do so without seeming anti-Zionist, even if in theory there’s a space for that. /fin
@serge @carolannie I agree, the issue is the deportation based on speech, even if the speech is reprehensible.
I suspect we all agree on that. But that principle is being violated, by the US govt, based on a particular set of claims abt what constitutes antisemitism, whether antisemitism might by association with terrorism constitute something beyond mere speech + so be actionable. These are now questions of general public concern in the US.
@serge I’m glad to forgive you for being on edge. We all are these days I think, and “here” is rarely where we are at our best.
Israel and its relationship to questions of antisemitism are not Jews’ alone to adjudicate when the United States is using a particular view of those things to justify unprecedented actions against e.g. green card holders. @carolannie has every right, and perhaps even an obligation, to form her own view.
I’m a Jew, I don’t think @carolannie has said or done anything remotely racist or wrong, and I think @serge is being a real dick.
@lienrag It would have been, yes.
if you want a fair hearing on human rights, i guess you're better off suing in El Salvador. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/venezuela-hires-lawyers-detainees-el-salvador-rcna197955
The war-plans thing is bad, but I think it's far less of a scandal than lawlessly decimating USAID, CFPB, NSF/NIH, etc.
It would have been a terrible tragedy if US servicemembers had been harmed due to their leaders' miserable opsec. But what those mfs have done to USAID alone will kill many more.
@GreenSkyOverMe there were more than two candidates on people’s ballots.
Donald Trump won more votes than any other candidate. But the other candidates together won more than 50% of the vote.
a majority of voters voted for someone other than Donald Trump.
@GreenSkyOverMe (Suppose there are three candidates. Candidate A receives 40% of the vote, Candidate B receives 35% of the vote, Candidate C receives 25%. No candidate has achieved a majority, but Candidate A is said to have achieved a plurality, the largest nonmajority block.)
