it used to be “apres moi, le deluge”, but now every political actor makes its case as “sans moi, le deluge.” our politics has given up on hope for the efficiency of blackmail.
“‘You know what was good about the Second World War?’ Nayyem asked wistfully. ‘It ended!’” #MashaGessen https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/02/05/ukraines-democracy-in-darkness
@Akshay @40Years Yes, the conflict always was going to require a political settlement, but UNRWA was designed to maintain pressure + create demographic realities in order to sustain and enhance “facts on the ground” that might shape a potential settlement that could only be resisted at increasingly brutal cost. Most wars that displace populations do resolve, with political settlements that are easier to reach, when in the usual case, most of the displaced do not return. 2/
@Akshay @40Years There are bitter ironies in all this. In recent decades, Israel adopted the same “facts on the ground” approach to the conflict that Arab states pioneered in shaping UNRWA. And the governments of several states that did shape UNRWA, now threatened by Iran, now wish their predecessors had not locked in “facts on the ground” that would make alliance with Israel very difficult. 3/
@Akshay @40Years But the basic brutal fact is that wars displace people, and usually permanent settlements involve many of the displaced finding new lives elsewhere. It is ethnic cleansing, but that is a fact that attends most wars. To prevent ethnic cleansing, you have to build a peaceful coexistence. 4/
@Akshay @40Years But UNRWA's role in the Israel/Palestine conflict over decades has been absolutely catastrophic. It was designed, in contradistinction to UNHCR and most other refugee-concerned organizations to freeze and escalate the conflict over time rather than to let it, however justly or unjustly, resolve and fade. It has done so. It and those who (decades ago!) framed it bear no small share of responsibility for what is happening now. 2/
@Akshay @40Years Questions of how connected UNRWA employees or facilities are to particular acts of resistance or terrorism are I think secondary. Structurally, UNRWA to function in the role it has taken on necessarily works under terms set by the de facto governing authority, and given its role in education, that also is problematic. UNRWA was designed to be a party to the conflict, not something apart from it. There are bloody hands to go 'round, but the letters "UN" cannot absolve UNRWA. /fin
@candidexmedia FWIW, I've posted a (too long, too intimidating) tutorial on setting up and customizing feedletter.
It really needs to be packaged, installation more automated. But at least its current state is now decently documented, I hope.
https://tech.interfluidity.com/2024/01/29/feedletter-tutorial/index.html
"No democracy perfectly distills the will of the people. But America is uniquely terrible at achieving democratic outcomes." @ddayen https://prospect.org/politics/2024-01-29-america-is-not-democracy/
Text: Exactly what part of democracy are we trying to save? Is it our democratic legislature, gerrymandered and malapportioned beyond recognition, with supermajority thresholds that deny rule even by that corrupted majority? Is it our democratic presidency, which Trump legally took over after losing the popular vote in 2016, and George W. Bush in the same fashion 16 years earlier? Is it our democratic judiciary, morphed into a super-legislature and habitually twisting the Constitution to advantage those with power, money, and influence? Are we worried about a democracy that can be so easily purchased, where corporate lobbyists either win whatever they want on Capitol Hill, or win by regulatory change or international trade treaty whatever they don’t? Has this government, where the most important modification of our democracy’s original sin, the second-class citizenship of Black people, is now being steadily reversed by state legislatures and the courts, earned our support? Is there despair over losing something that has produced unequal opportunity, unequal justice, and the conversion of economic power into political power? Where can we find this democracy we need to fight to preserve?
[interfluidity-main-mastonotify] New Post: Cold December, by Steve Randy Waldman https://www.interfluidity.com/v2/9926.html
[New Post] Cold December https://www.interfluidity.com/v2/9926.html
@phillmv Right! But then the politics gets really hard. "Everybody gets the same cheque" is a political Schelling point (in English, a natural focus for coordination). It's not perfect, but if the imperfections aren't too massive, people can mostly agree it meets a basic notion of "fair", and it seems "natural" rather than manipulatively contrived. As soon as we start trying to distinguish traditional indigenous communities from cheap-mcmansion-seeking exurbanites, though, that's gone.
[tech-mastonotify] New Post: Feedletter tutorial, by Steve Randy Waldman https://tech.interfluidity.com/2024/01/29/feedletter-tutorial/index.html
@phillmv that's the political-economic point! to flip the political incentives.
for the median household a carbon-tax-and-dividend should not be a burden but a source of net income, creating a constituency that seeks to maintain it and even to increase the rate.
(there is and will always be an influential counter constituency, the high-carbon-consumption wealthy, of course, and businesses that pay the tax but receive no rebate.)
@phillmv (the most compelling pushback comes from people who are not wealthy, but whose lifestyles are structurally more dependent on carbon use than others. the rural non-rich have to drive a lot, since they may live far from towns. one perspective is to say this is the carbon tax doing its work, that people should move to where they can live with a lower footprint until there are few enough ruralites they earn enough to overcome the tax.)
@phillmv (but an alternative perspective takes existing communities as having a moral right to survive, despite their high per-capita environmental weight. this is certainly the perspective of people living in those communities! if we want to accommodate that perspective, the policy becomes harder to design, because anything other than flat, per-person or tax-unit distribution invites all kinds of gaming.)
@phillmv one tremendous victory for the right-wing has been persuading governing elites that any effective marketing of government action amounts to propaganda no good liberal should support or assist.
@phillmv I don't know how it's arranged in Canada, but a carbon tax if fully and equally refunded should be a source of net income for most people! average carbon consumption is much, much higher than median.
TIL much of Canada has implemented something like carbon-tax-and-dividend! But apparently the dividend part has not been very clear, undermining much of the point of the plan. https://ici.radio-canada.ca/rci/en/news/2041709/millions-of-canadians-get-their-carbon-tax-rebates-today-so-why-do-many-not-believe-it
i’m not “getting old” i’m a gerontonaut.
"UNRWA is paid to support people in refugee camps as refugees, and the UNHCR is paid to get people out of refugee status and to become normal citizens. This, along with its focus on only one group of displaced people does not produce best outcomes for the people that they ostensibly support." @40Years https://40yrs.blogspot.com/2024/01/unrwa-is-problematic.html
is the ad industry going to morph into selling manipulations of AI weights that make your thing more likely to come up in response to related prompts?
will AI come to stand for “Artificial Influencer”?
Not the greatest vocabulary lesson for the kids.
An image of a tornado, captioned “Can you survive hurricane?”
Image of a “Ride the Hurricane” booth from a distance, for context.
Sometimes I think the main role of tech figures who now weigh in loudly and proudly on public policy (Musk, Sacks, etc etc) is to make traditional policy elites — as compromised and deeply flawed as they are — look sane and competent by comparison.
someday we will all wake up and realize that nowhere actually exists except Canada.