NO ONE HATES JUST MUSLIMS:

That split was at the core of the insecurity occupying American Jewish Republicans: With the rise in the party of an isolationist right, spurred in part by Trump's "America First" rhetoric, how secure is the US-Israel relationship? And how committed to the relationship is the former president?

HOW MUCH TO BUY BACK OUR SOUL?:

Politics is a team sport. But Trump's idea of team is where he is the coach, captain and quarterback while everyone else is a waterboy. And that cannot work in the long term. Trump's egomania has sucked all the oxygen out of the room, leaving no opportunity for other Republicans to build an independent base or identity. When the real estate mogul's hegemony is threatened, he attacks, unwilling to share a photon of the spotlight. His focus is on himself always, not on building a lasting majority. All other Republicans must serve him. 

Even worse, his attitude has filtered through the Republican Party. Witness the fumbling of the House GOP. A narrow majority needs teamwork to operate, and yet Trump acolyte Matt Gaetz, along with a collection of other me-first Trump fans, channeled the Trump Way by torpedoing Kevin McCarthy's Speakership. The fumbling, confused attempts to elect a new Speaker have featured more Trump attitude, with various collections of members sinking candidate after candidate. 

That me-first attitude spreads to messaging and the policy agenda. Particularly in the Republican House Caucus, members are more focused on grandstanding for talk-show appearances and podcasts. A perfect example is James Comer, chair of the Government Oversight Committee. Comer, who has singularly failed in his crusade to impeach Joe Biden and has allowed a plethora of political opportunities to pass by, has been on Fox News or Fox Business 200 times this year. 

Comer has certainly figured out how to self-promote, bluster and pontificate -- too bad he is unwilling to do his actual job. If Comer were serious about building a Republican majority and electing a Republican president, he would be holding hearings on any number of Biden administration policy failures. But that is not Comer's main focus. Like Trump, Comer is all about himself and his own ego. 

In the end, Trump's me-first politics is the real damage inflicted on the GOP.

NO ONE EVER MEANS "NEVER AGAIN":

[I]t is becoming increasingly clear that the war is in pursuit of a second goal: the mass expulsion of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. Israeli politicians and officials from the Israeli defense establishment have called for a second nakba and urged the military to flatten Gaza. Some suggest that Palestinians should flee Gaza through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt and seek refuge in the Sinai Peninsula, including former Brigadier General Amir Avivi and the former Israeli ambassador to the United States Danny Ayalon. 

Avivi and Ayalon insist that evacuating Palestinians out of Gaza is simply a humanitarian measure, protecting civilians while Israel conducts its military operations. But other reports suggest that Palestinians would be permanently resettled outside of Gaza, in an act of ethnic cleansing. On October 17, the Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy--an Israeli think tank founded and led by former defense and security officials--published a paper urging the Israeli government to take advantage of the "unique and rare opportunity to evacuate the whole Gaza Strip," and resettle Palestinians in Cairo with the assistance of the Egyptian government. Separately, a leaked document from the Israeli Intelligence Ministry recommended forcibly resettling 2.2 million Palestinians from Gaza in the Northern Sinai and constructing a buffer zone along the Israeli border to prevent their return.  

The proposals are only the latest in a long history of Israeli plans to depopulate Gaza and resettle Palestinians in the Sinai. After the Six-Day war, the Israeli military launched a deadly campaign against Palestinian resistance movements in Gaza's refugee camps; 16,000 Palestinians whose homes Israel destroyed were transferred to Israeli-occupied al-Arish, while 12,000 relatives of Palestinian fedayeen were moved to new camps in the desert. More recently, before Israel's disengagement from the Gaza Strip in 2005, the head of the Israeli National Security proposed that Egypt accept a large percentage of Gaza's population in exchange for land in Southern Israel, which was rejected by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

THE WORST SORT OF IDENTITY POLITICS:

All nations possess the right to self-determination; the United Nations Charter says so explicitly. That premise is the very basis of the contemporary world order. The Jews, as a nation, have that right, as well - and the modern movement for the realization of that right, the liberation movement of the Jewish people, is known as Zionism. To reject Zionism - that is, to deny the Jewish people, and only the Jewish people, a right afforded to all nations - is to discriminate against Jews.

THE CULTURE WARS ARE A ROUT:

[T]he podcast Taking on the Devil is notable for its heady, intellectual interrogation of The Exorcist's theological implications. The host is horror movie scholar Gina Brandolino, who teaches at the University of Michigan. (Full disclosure, I became friends with Brandolino while on a fellowship there.) Her partner in the podcast is Gabrielle Thomas, an ordained priest and Emory University professor of early Christianity, who has written about representations of the devil. The two debate questions such as how The Exorcist helps us think about evil in the world. [...]

[U]ltimately, Thomas said, The Exorcist is not really concerned with the devil. It's about the people who observe his possession of a 12-year-old girl named Regan who did nothing worse than play with a Ouija board. Which raises the question: why Regan? And that in turn, Thomas notes, raises an even older question: "Why hasn't God stepped in and solved all of this? Which is a question that lots of people are asking all the time."

Why do bad things happen to good people? Thomas says this is not an inquiry for God. This is a question for humans.

"What I loved about The Exorcist is that it gives us a [sense of] how to respond, in the sense of these two priests," she said, referring to the characters Father Karras and Father Merrin, who perform the film's dramatic exorcism. "They're not perfect. They're completely messed up, just as many people on the street would be. But they respond with love," she said. "They're absolutely not the most successful in the way that they approach it ... but they're present in it. So Regan is not alone ultimately."

WE ARE ALL DESIGNIST:

In quantum mechanics, a superposition describes a situation in which two possible realities seem to co-exist, even though they can be distinguished clearly when an appropriate measurement is performed. The analysis of the team's study suggests that superpositions describe different kinds of reality when different measurements are performed. The reality of an object depends on the object's interactions with its surroundings.

"Our results show that the physical reality of an object cannot be separated from the context of all its interactions with the environment, past, present, and future, providing strong evidence against the widespread belief that our world can be reduced to a mere configuration of material building blocks," said Hofmann.

IT'S NOT ETHNIC CLEANSING WHEN WE DO IT:

The document, which is dated October 13, calls for the civilian population to be moved to tent cities in northern Sinai, and eventually the building of permanent cities and the opening of a humanitarian corridor. The plan includes a several-kilometer-wide "sterile" buffer zone inside Egypt, to ensure the population cannot settle on Israel's borders.

THE lEFT IS THE rIGHT:

Since the Eighties, if not earlier, generations have been inducted into a diffuse postmodern ideology commonly denominated "identity politics". The resulting fetishisation of the rights of personhood is often accompanied by confected outrage. It registers an obsession with negligible degrees of marginalisation and tends to abominate just mildly unfavourable attitudes. The assumption is that no one should feel "offended" or "uncomfortable". What was once disliked as an opposing view is now abhorred as a kind of evil. Disadvantage is mostly conceived within the bounds of middle-class privilege. Consequently, the approach tends to verge on narcissism. The main casualty in all this is a sense of proportion and coherent social policy.

YOUR HONOR:

Durham's investigation was a disaster. Once considered a respectable Republican prosecutor, Durham managed to lose the cases he brought to trial and uncovered nothing of substance that would undercut the original narrative that the FBI was right to investigate Trump's 2016 campaign. Moreover, instead of avoiding politics--which is why special counsels get named in the first place--Durham and Attorney General Bill Barr, who appointed him, traveled together and constantly conferred while administration officials and the president cried that any Russia scrutiny was a witch hunt. 

Dannehy resigned in protest but didn't write a tell-all. Only last month, as her nomination to the state supreme court was being considered, did she speak out, in answer to a direct question about her sudden resignation. "I simply couldn't be part of it. So I resigned," she told Connecticut state legislators during her confirmation hearing. "In the spring and summer of 2020, I had growing concerns that this Russia investigation was not being conducted in [an objective and apolitical] way. Attorney General Barr began to speak more publicly and specifically about the ongoing criminal investigation. I thought these public comments violated DOJ guidelines." All true, and an understatement, given the former attorney general's conduct. [...]

Finding nothing prosecutable in the enhanced interrogation program made Durham the Man to See when Barr, who had served in the CIA for four years, was looking for someone outside Washington to investigate the Robert Mueller investigation. This was an opportunity for Dannehy as well as Durham. He had always given Dannehy an open field, even when she prosecuted Republicans. For Dannehy's part, she was happy to stay in the background and give Durham credit for operations she drove across the finish line. It was a perfect working relationship.

But this was the Trump administration, where reputations went to die. Almost as soon as Durham got to Washington in 2019, the bald-and-bearded prosecutor took off for Europe with the boss, Barr, from whom he was supposed to be independent, in search of anyone who could back up Trump's claim that the FBI's investigation was "the crime of the century."

As weeks passed, the two septuagenarian Republicans found no one fitting that description but persisted as if the FBI, of all places, was brimming with Republican-hating rabble-rousers. Dannehy found herself riding shotgun, if not riding in the back seat, in an Edsel. Durham followed Barr protocols, not the department strictures that she'd observed during her Bush inquiry. Contrary to long-established department conventions, first Trump and then Barr, with Durham's acquiescence, began talking up alleged findings. Dannehy asked Durham nicely to ask Barr to stop going on Fox News and hyping their findings. He didn't. In the months before Election Day 2020, Barr even asked Durham to draft an interim report to be released early, which the team began doing without Dannehy's knowledge. This made her furious and would have violated Justice Department guidelines. 

The two old friends argued, but Durham was her boss, Barr was Durham's, and Trump was Barr's. After detailing her concerns and sending a brief farewell message to staff, Dannehy walked out the door. Three more prosecutors followed. She'd been there 11 months. Durham would stay another two and a half years, a belabored investigation that dwarfed the Watergate prosecutor's tenure.

Dannehy completed both her prosecution of Rowland and her investigation of the Bush White House in under two years. In less than three years, Robert Mueller, who ran the inquiry Durham was seeking to discredit, produced seven guilty pleas, two convictions after trial, and several indictments of Russian nationals. Durham's inquisition lasted nearly four years, during which he secured one guilty plea and lost the two cases that went to trial. 

OTHER THAN THAT HOW'S THE ALLIANCE WITH VLAD GOING?:

Hundreds of people stormed into the main airport in Russia's Dagestan region and onto the landing field Sunday, chanting antisemitic slogans and seeking passengers arriving on a flight from Tel Aviv, Israel, Russian news agencies and social media reported.

IT'S EMOTION, NOT THOUGHT:

Sharlet is not the first writer to point out that Trump's followers support incoherent policy initiatives, offer incongruous facts and figures, and believe contradictory ideologies. Inconsistencies like these are legitimate points of criticism of course, but Sharlet cautions that using facts to challenge muddled premises and conclusions is only useful up to a point. You can't argue someone out of something they weren't argued into in the first place. Those trying to understand and explain the appeal of Trumpism, he writes, often miss that its social power flows downward from the exhilaration of spectacle and sensation.

"What I felt most, flowing around me," Sharlet notes after a 2016 Trump rally in Youngstown, Ohio, "was something like happiness. A sense of freedom. Permission." When an elderly man near him snarks about having "dibs" on the first protestor and his wife rolls her eyes and beams ("Oh, Gene!"), Sharlet perceives what's between the lines: "The joy of punching, real or imagined, is the ideal of action, an inner feeling made incarnate." In Sharlet's view, Trump supporters "are not afraid of the full range of human emotion: not just the manufactured hope of a political rally but also the lust, the envy, the anger of our bluntest selves, transformed by a mighty plane and the man inside ... into something greater." 

HAPPY HALLOWEEN:

The plot (minor spoilers ahead), at least on a surface level, follows Badge Dale's James Lasombra, a former detective sleepwalking through his day-to-day after the death of his wife and son in an accident. When the daughter of a family friend seemingly runs away, her mother asks for Lasombra's help in tracking her down. The search takes him to, in no particular order: a cult, a group of kids spooked by an urban legend, a campground, and a mysterious hospital patient. [...]

The film's visual language leaves you queasy, feeling certain that something isn't quite right, even if you can't articulate what it is. You won't realize until a shot has cut that it evoked an image from a few scenes earlier. You'll watch a character pass a framed picture and only realize upon second viewing (you will want, and need, a second viewing) that it depicts the cottage from the film's prologue. Your hair will come to stand on end at the sight of bridges.

Perhaps most notably, Prior plays with the visual signature of the director he shadowed for years as a producer of DVD special features. David Fincher's meticulous tracking of his characters' every motion via camera movement is subverted here -- the camera will linger on an empty space before any character enters it. It will lag in following them out of a room, ruminating in the uncomfortable stillness they leave behind. It all lends to a feeling of cosmic insignificance. Our protagonists aren't the heroes of their journey but rather pawns moving through a space that existed long before them, and will remain long after they leave it.

And then there's the film's signature setpiece, a tour de force of horror filmmaking that takes place toward the end of its second act. The less said about it the better -- again, the film is best seen as blindly as possible -- but Prior's filmmaking prowess is in full flex mode as Lasombra investigates the aforementioned campground. It's the sort of sequence that, a mere year into the 2020s, stakes its claim as the scariest horror moment of the decade.

The film is not without faults, but they're the sort of faults that hardly seem to matter when weighed against everything it does right. The Empty Man feels like something of a miracle. Horror films of this scale, of this budget, of this raw, unbridled ambition, aren't supposed to get made anymore. It is shocking that it was green-lit to begin with and entirely unsurprising, in a sense, that it was shelved by Disney. This movie is borderline unmarketable, an existential cosmic epic that questions every pillar upon which we've built our perceptions of reality. It is made to be discovered, to find its audience slowly over time.

DUDE, YOU NEVER SAY THE QUIET PART OUT LOUD:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday invoked the theory of 'Amalek', a nation in the Hebrew Bible, to justify the killing of Gaza residents in the ongoing Israel-Hamas war that has killed over 1,400 Israelis, and nearly 8,000 people in Gaza. 

"You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. 1 Samuel 15:3 'Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass'," Netanyahu said. 

THE RED AND THE BLACK:

There had been little to separate the teams before Cane was sent off, after a video review, for an upright tackle on Jesse Kriel in the 27th minute. There have been worse tackles, delivered with greater force, but once the phrase "a high degree of danger" is employed there is usually only one outcome. Never before has a player been sent off in a World Cup final, let alone an All Black skipper.

The heart-pounding drama, though, was far from over. Kolisi was shown a yellow card five minutes after half-time for making contact with the head of Ardie Savea, encouraging the 14-man New Zealand to launch a frenetic fightback. The All Blacks had a "try" by the scrum-half Aaron Smith ruled out because of a knock-on by Savea in the buildup but then scored a legal one through Beauden Barrett just before the hour to set up a grandstand finish, with his brother Jordie missing a long-range penalty attempt with seven minutes left. [...]

No team behind at half-time has ever won a men's Rugby World Cup final and, at 12-6 down, the Bok defence was not falling for the All Blacks' deft midfield interplay. Following Kolisi's departure, though, the momentum of the contest shifted yet again and New Zealand, having turned down kickable penalties to go for the corner, deserved their reward when Mark Telea found a little space on the left and his offload was adjudged to have bounced backwards before Beauden Barrett scooped it up to score.

The final quarter was equally breathless, even before Cheslin Kolbe was sent to the sin-bin by the authoritative Wayne Barnes seven minutes from time for a deliberate knock down.

YOU DEFINITELY AREN'T DOING ANYTHING BETTER AT 3PM:

IT'S NOT DISINFORMATION WHEN WE DO IT:

In the two other large wars since Hamas seized control of Gaza from the Palestinian Authority in 2007, however, the overall numbers of the Ministry of Health largely aligned with statistics compiled by the U.N. and Israel. The Palestinian toll for the 50-day war between Israel and Hamas in 2014 was 2,310 people according to the Ministry of Health, 2,251 people according to the U.N. and 2,125 people according to an Israeli government investigation. The main disagreement was about what proportion of the victims at that time were made up of civilians.

Despite Hamas's political control in Gaza, many of the doctors and bureaucrats compiling the statistics are not affiliated with the Islamist movement and the past accuracy of casualty statistics gives credence to current numbers, some officials with the U.N. and with nongovernment organizations operating in Palestinian territories say. 

"We believe that the numbers being reported in Israel and in the occupied Palestinian territories, they may not be perfectly accurate on a minute-to-minute basis but they grossly reflect the level of death and injury on both sides of the conflict," Michael Ryan of the World Health Organization's Health Emergencies Program said at a press conference last week.

Some 1,400 Israelis, most of them civilians, were killed in the Hamas raid on southern Israel on Oct. 7, and more than 220 others were taken to Gaza as hostages, according to the Israeli authorities. Four hostages, all of them women, have since been released. 

The Gaza Ministry of Health numbers don't differentiate between civilians and combatants. But the ministry's current statistics indicate a much higher proportion of women and children among the fatalities of the continuing Israeli bombing campaign than in the 2008-2009 and the 2014 wars.

While adult males accounted for 62% of the deaths in 2014 and 61% in 2008-2009, according to U.N. data, they make up only 34% of fatalities in the current conflict, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.

OPEN THE BORDERS:

There are three points I want to make. First, GDP fell more quickly than the typical policy tightening effect. While the level at this moment is close to its average response, the typical pattern has further steep declines coming. Second, employment has been much stronger than expected, so it would need to weaken a lot to follow the typical relationship. Third, inflation fell much sooner than the historical average. And if past correlations were to hold, most of the reduction in inflation from monetary policy actions to date is still to come, and it would be large.

This traditional approach leaves us with a puzzle. Core inflation began moving down in 2023--not mid-2024. And it did so while the job market was still strong--not after it had already weakened substantially. For the traditionalist, the answer is that it must be noise: Just wait; the real economy will get much worse.

It's possible. But another answer is that something very different is going on: Either nonmonetary shocks are heavily influencing the economy or the nature of the monetary policy environment we are working in today is different. I believe both of these factors are at play. If so, we need to be extra careful about indexing policy to this traditional view of what the incoming data on output and the labor market mean for the inflation outlook.

Sources of inflation

Let's start with the sources of inflation. Recall that inflation began to soar in 2021 even as the unemployment rate exceeded 6 percent and GDP was well below previous estimates of potential output. Such elevated slack should have lowered inflation, not raised it. Also, inflation surged all over the world, including in places with different fiscal responses, also suggesting something else was at work.3

In my view, the most important factors were Covid-related. There were well documented negative supply chain shocks and unusual shifts in the composition of demand. Adding to supply side difficulties, Covid reduced labor supply as labor force participation--especially for women and those nearing retirement--dropped and immigration collapsed. 

IT WOULD BE LIKE ELIMINATING dEMOCRATS TO WIN THE CIVIL WAR:

Under foundational principles of international law and the United Nations Charter, Israel is fully justified in taking necessary steps to exercise its right to self-defense against Hamas. Unlike its opponents, Israel has rightly stated that it is bound to follow international humanitarian law (IHL), or the law of armed conflict. Drawn from sources including the Geneva Conventions, the fundamental principles of IHL--humanity, distinction, proportionality, and military necessity--operate to minimize civilian casualties and needless destruction. Though critical for Israel's ground operation, these principles will prove extraordinarily difficult to realize for two main reasons: Gaza's highly urban environment and Hamas's leveraging of the Palestinian civilian population as human shields.

The principles of distinction, proportionality, and military necessity can be briefly summed up as the obligation to attack combatants, and only combatants, in a way that balances military advantages against collateral consequences, and for purposes essential to legitimate military goals. Gaza's density makes collateral civilian casualties inevitable, even with the use of precision weapons. Israel has ordered Gazans to evacuate, but not everyone will be willing or able to leave their homes, especially as other Arab nations have been unwilling to accept Gazan refugees.

HUMANS ARE THE ONLY SPECIES TINY TRUMP WANTS TO KEEP OUT:

To see exotic animals in Florida, one could visit Disney's Animal Kingdom, Busch Gardens, or Zoo Miami. Or they could just step outside.

The Sunshine State is utterly brimming with nonnative species. More than 500 of them have been reported here, which is more than in any other state, and many of them are considered "invasive," meaning they harm humans or ecosystems. For most of their evolutionary history, these species have never set foot in Florida -- they've never been near a Publix, or Magic Kingdom, for that matter.

In the last few decades, Florida has become an unmanaged zoo, an uncontrolled experiment. And each year, the decision of what to do with it gets harder.

THE RUNNING OF THE BULLS:

Second, and more controversial, is the prison part. Most of us think of a prison as something you can't escape from. So, for example, if the government were to build a chain-link fence around a certain population of people, forbid them from going through it, and enforce that prohibition with the threat of force, the area surrounded by the fence would be a prison for those inside.

There are four sides to Gaza: (1) two sides that border Israel, (2) the side that borders Egypt, and (3) the side that borders the Mediterranean Sea.

The Israeli government prevents people from entering Israel. The Egyptian government prevents people from entering Egypt.

What's left is the Mediterranean. [...]

So my conclusion is that Gaza is, or is close to being, an "open-air prison."

IRONICALLY, THE MORAL CASE WOULD BE STRONGER IF ISRAEL RECOGNIZED THEIR NATION:

One issue of critical importance here is that of proportionality, a concept that is very often misunderstood and misconstrued in a simplistic manner by looking at Israeli casualties and damage to civilian infrastructure, and comparing them to those of the Palestinians.

Under the laws of armed conflict, an attack is considered disproportionate, and therefore illegal, "if the anticipated collateral damage to civilians and civilian objects would be excessive in relation to the military advantage expected from the attack," says Sharvit Baruch, who now works as a researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University.

This means that if an attack would provide the IDF with a significant military advantage, such as taking out a Hamas commander, a key weapons facility, or similar, it could be legal even if it were deemed likely to cause civilian casualties, even heavy ones.

Every individual attack has to be proportionate in this manner in order to be legal.

That said, the circumstances of a given war and the nature of the enemy has a bearing on how the concept of "military advantage" is determined, says Sharvit Baruch.

In the wake of its terror onslaught and the atrocities it committed on October 7, Hamas can justifiably be considered to be more dangerous and ruthless in terms of its paramilitary capabilities and its willingness to harm Israeli civilians and commit war crimes than it was previously thought to be.

In such a light, the military advantage of killing a Hamas operative, destroying a command and control center, or attacking other targets can be given greater weight in the proportionality equation, meaning that the legally tolerable level of harm to civilians is also higher, says Sharvit Baruch.

"In my view, even if many civilians are killed, even in an excessive manner, it is not necessarily illegal, even if it is unfortunate," she said.

Dr. Aurel Sari, an associate professor of Public International Law at the University of Exeter in the UK, points out another crucial point, that proportionality cannot be assessed on the basis of hindsight, but must be assessed on the basis of information that was available to the military commander at the time of the attack and prior to it.

"If it turns out that your information was wrong, that a weapon malfunctioned, or other unforeseen circumstances occurred that led to higher civilian casualties than originally anticipated, that is not a violation of the law," said Sari, who also lectures and consults on international conflict law for NATO and the US and British militaries.

He said that in general terms, "The IDF is a professional force that adheres to the law of armed conflict," and pointed to the quality legal advice it receives through the MAG Corps to help it comply with such laws.

NO ONE MISSES THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:

THE rIGHT EXISTS TO AMUSE NORMALS:

ABC reports that its reporters have found numerous assertions about the 2020 election in Meadows' 2021 book, The Chief's Chief, that "appear to be contradicted by what Meadows allegedly told investigators behind closed doors."

Meadows, in other words, who in meetings with Smith's prosecutors detailed the grift behind Trump's denials that he lost the 2020 election, has been part of the grift himself, profiting off the lies he and Trump told by publishing a book that knowingly repeats some of those lies.

Another thunk: After spending the month of November and part of December in 2020 passing along allegations of fraud in the election Trump lost, "Meadows said that by mid-December, he privately informed Trump that Giuliani hadn't produced any evidence to back up the many allegations he was making, sources said. Then-Attorney General Bill Barr also informed Trump and Meadows in an Oval Office meeting that allegations of election fraud were 'not panning out,' as Barr recounted in testimony to Congress last year."

That little burst of truth telling got Barr fired, but not Mark Meadows, who stuck around for the whole thing, right up until Jan. 6. On that ignominious day, testimony to the January 6 Committee by his assistant, Cassidy Hutchinson, revealed that when White House Counsel Pat Cippolone rushed into Meadows' office and told him, "The rioters have gotten into the Capitol, Mark. We need to go see the President now," Meadows responded calmly, while staring at his phone, "He doesn't want to do anything." Cippollone told Meadows, "Something needs to be done, or somebody is going to die and this is going to be on your effing hands." By that time, Trump had already sent out a tweet essentially telling his followers that Vice President Mike Pence was a coward.

"They're literally calling for the VP to be effing hung," Cipollone told Meadows. "You heard him, Pat," Meadows replied, still staring at his phone. "He thinks Mike deserves it."

ABC News reports that part of what Meadows told prosecutors confirms what others, such as his assistant, Cassidy Hutchinson, have already testified to.

IT WAS FUN WHEN NEVER-TRUMPERS PRETENDED THIS WAS THE WEAK CASE...:

"I was tasked by Mr. Trump to increase the total assets, based upon a number that he arbitrarily elected," Cohen testified, in a steady, calm voice. "And my responsibility, along with Allen Weisselberg, predominantly, was to reverse engineer the various different asset classes, to increase those assets in order to achieve the number that Mr. Trump had tasked us to." At the time Weisselberg was the Trump Organization's CFO. Last year, he pleaded guilty to tax evasion and testified against the Trump Organization in its own tax evasion trail. 

Cohen was much more sure of the cooperation in his testimony. Asked how much he and Weisselberg inflated the value of various properties, Cohen did not hesitate.

Cohen described a process in which he would be called into Trump's office and--after a discussion of what Trump's actual net worth was--Trump would give Cohen and Weisselberg a larger number. Then, Cohen and Weisselberg would retreat to Weisselberg's office and try to figure out how to make Trump look wealthier than he really was. Earlier this month, Weisselberg appeared as a reluctant witness for James, saying he annually took the fraudulent estimates of Trump's wealth to Trump for approval. However, in his testimony he said he didn't recall working with Cohen on the numbers.

When Trump entered court on Tuesday, he seemed tired and somewhat deflated--walking slowly and stiffly, nodding to someone in the front row, but looking vaguely away in the opposite direction whenever he passed by Letitia James' seat. At various points, he whispered animatedly to his lawyers, but his voice was never more than barely audible to the audience. During Cohen's testimony, particularly when he described interactions with Trump personally, Trump would shake his head and whisper more forcefully to his attorneys.

When Cohen began discussing a failed effort by Trump to obtain financing to purchase the Buffalo Bills NFL team, Trump's attorneys objected, saying the purchase never happened and wasn't part of James' fraud complaint. James' attorneys said Cohen's accusation that the Trump Organization had cooked up numbers the NFL might like to see was part of a pattern of behavior. When Engoron sided with James' office, Trump threw his hands up and began tapping his attorney's hand and whispering.

SCHADEN FRAUD:

The sources said Meadows informed Smith's team that he repeatedly told Trump in the weeks after the 2020 presidential election that the allegations of significant voting fraud coming to them were baseless, a striking break from Trump's prolific rhetoric regarding the election.

According to the sources, Meadows also told the federal investigators Trump was being "dishonest" with the public when he first claimed to have won the election only hours after polls closed on Nov. 3, 2020, before final results were in.

THE TIGHTENING NOOSE:

MAGA WITH TWO S'S:

As the Texas Tribune observed at the time, Patrick was parroting the white supremacist "great replacement" conspiracy theory, which claims that liberal elites are bringing nonwhite immigrants into the United States to "replace" the country's white and native-born population, including in voting. This conspiracy theory fueled the 2019 El Paso mass shooting by a white supremacist who targeted Latinos and killed 23 people. That shooter wrote that his attack was due to "the Hispanic invasion of Texas" and denounced Latino political power in the state--in broad strokes, a version of the arguments that Patrick made two years later.

Fast forward to the present. Texas is on the cusp of passing possibly the most extreme anti-immigrant bill in decades. HB4 would create a state crime of improper entry from a foreign country by a noncitizen: essentially a state-law copy of the federal improper-entry criminal prohibition. Further, HB4 would permit law enforcement to "in lieu of arrest, remove a person" from the United States by "transporting the person to a port of entry" and "ordering the person to return to the foreign nation from which the person entered or attempted to enter." The bill provides for no due process before such summary expulsion, and it does not provide any limit based on length of time a person has resided in the United States or proximity to the border. An undocumented individual who crossed the border decades ago, or someone who had just crossed fleeing persecution in Mexico, would be at risk of summary expulsion by a state or local law enforcement officer. Refusal to comply would be a second-degree felony. The bill author admitted under questioning that family separation due to HB4 is possible. HB4 is extreme anti-immigrant state legislation, and an extraordinary state arrogation of the exclusively federal power to regulate entry to and exit from the United States.

Not coincidentally, Texas politics is also experiencing an earthquake from the revelation that white supremacist and neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes met with a major conservative operative for six and a half hours. Fuentes regularly praises Hitler and has expressed despicable views on the Holocaust, among other antisemitic, white supremacist, and misogynistic statements.

MAYBE THE lEFT/rIGHT IS JUST WHINY?:

[W]hile net worth grew 37%, total household debt grew less than 4% from 2019-2022. Sign me up for that every three years, please. [...]

The 2019-2022 increase is off-the-charts good and this was after we already had a strong snapback in 2013-2016 and 2016-2019 from the 2008 financial crisis.

THE BIRTH OF IDENTITARIANISM:

His presence has grown so ubiquitous that commentators are now regularly talking about the "Nietzschean" right and its influence on American politics. It can be juxtaposed against the more religious "post-liberal" right of figures like Patrick Deneen, or the "national conservatism" of Yoram Hazony as the third leg of the new three legged stool of the American right. In theory the overt religiosity and communitarian ethos shared by post-liberalism and national conservatism should inhibit a tight embrace of Nietzschean tropes. In practice things become more complicated.

In an amusing twist, the nominally Christian magazine First Things has published figures who offer discounted Nietzschean bombast like Lom3Z. In his essay, Lom3Z condemns the "Longhouse," which encompasses  "technocratic governance" but also "wokeness"and all that is  "progressive" "liberal" and "secular." This needs to be confronted since it "distrusts overt ambition. It censures the drive to assert oneself on the world, to strike out for conquest and expansion. Male competition and the hierarchies that drive it are unwelcome. Even constructive expressions of these instincts are deemed toxic, patriarchal, or even racist."  This shows the extent to which the Nietzschean right has become a major cultural player. 

The modern Nietzschean right was willed into being by proponents like Richard Spencer and the alt-right, who leaned heavily on the thinking of the "Conservative Revolution" in Weimar Germany. Nietzschean ideas have since gained traction through popularizations like Bronze Age Mindset, which includes truly endless whining about the influence of soft progressive "bugmen" and calls for a new aristocracy of coconut oil glazed musclemen. These ideas have gained considerable traction with young conservative radicals in search of a more muscular rejection of liberal "effeminacy" and its replacement with a butch ethos of unconstrained power. That many of the proponents of these views are terminally online nebbish intellectuals who'd struggle to cosplay as "super-duper" Conan the Barbarians is a major paradox of praxis the Nietzschean right has yet to resolve.  

The American Nietzschean right once more combines Nietzsche with various forms of nationalism and crude racist biologism. This is the temptation generations of interpreters tried to ward off because of its transparent Nazi associations; usually by pointing to Nietzsche's condemnations of anti-Semitism and his cosmopolitan insistence on being a "good European" in Beyond Good and Evil. But the allure of a more populist Nietzsche remains an enduring idol, and its not hard to see why. One of the major tropes of right-wing populism has been the struggle to extend notions of aristocracy and status downwards to build support for hierarchical policies amongst the lower orders who may feel invested in upending them. Not coincidentally Southern antebellum racists were particularly gifted at this, with James DeBow insisting that "the color of the white man is now, in the south, a title of nobility" and observing that poor whites in the North are "at the bottom of the social ladder, whilst [their] brother here has ascended several steps and can look down upon those who are beneath him, at an infinite remove." 

Nietzsche offers an aristocratic grammar and outlook that can be extended to the national level through proclamations that one belongs to a great people who have been humiliated and shamed by decadent and corrupting egalitarian enemies. Once these enemies are overcome by a rarefied elite of super-duper men, this Eminem blonde people can once more fulfill its grand destiny through palingenetic renewal. While technically at cross purposes with Nietzsche's exclusion of all demotic politics, this offers a useful way to drum up popular support for the far right in the same way figures like DeBow hoped to induce poor whites to fight and eventually die for the slave system that ultimately benefited the masters above all else. Bronze Age Pervert even concedes the need for these kinds of Nietzschean compromises with Machiavelli. In Bronze Age Mindset, when he isn't congratulating himself for coming up with coining some neologism as an insult, Pervy the Populist encourages his followers to "make alliance with people who otherwise wouldn't be your friends. I believe that democracy is the final cause of all the political problems I describe here, but in the short run democracy--the will of the people--is on our side because the democracies have been hijacked by a stupid and corrupt elite.

The nations face extinction and an era of permanent civil war because this elite wants to pillage and pillage: and wants to flood them with the shit of the world. This is the immediate threat, and on this you can be allied with people who otherwise may not shoot for the same star you do. If Ann Coulter or Pat Buchanan were in charge, you would get 99% of what you want. Therefore use them as models to solve the problems that face you, and don't scare the peoples with crazy talk if you want to move things politically. Let the normies have their normal lives, and paint our enemies as the crazies...which they are...and as the corrupt vermin they are. If you haven't compromised yourself go into political life maybe, and use Trump as a model for success." [...]

The poison of the doctrine 'equal rights for all'--this has been more thoroughly sowed by Christianity than by anything else, from the most secret recesses of base instincts, Christianity has waged a war to the death against every feeling of reverence and distance between man and man, against, that is, the precondition of every elevation, every increase in culture--it has forged out of the ressentiment of the masses its chief weapon against us.

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ 

Nietzsche is the greatest right wing thinker of all time because he had the audacity to go further and more boldly where other defenders of aristocracy and hierarchy still fear to tread. His originality comes from the sweep and depth of his critique of egalitarian modernity, which inverts the progressive liberal and socialist trajectory to characterize history as a long fall into nihilism. 

BETWEEN THE SEA AND THE JORDAN...:

The agreed international understanding of "genocide," found in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, includes atrocities such as the Nazi death camps and also less overt forces designed to eradicate a particular group. This is the reason British and American officials concluded that CCP actions constitute genocide, including the Trump and Biden administrations and the Uyghur Tribunal, an independent court chaired by British barrister Sir Geoffrey Nice.

The CCP's war against Uyghur women is conducted through family planning policies that emerged from decades-long population control strategies and a techno-authoritarian approach seeking to eradicate the Uyghur population. While Uyghurs were targeted during the Maoist era's Anti-Rightist Campaigns, Great Leap Forward, and Cultural Revolution, the Deng era that followed presented a relatively benign period for Uyghurs--ethnic minorities could reap the economic benefits of "reform and opening" and have more children than ethnic Han families. General Secretary Xi Jinping has revived the Maoist attitude towards the Uyghurs with a targeted vengeance. Under Xi Jinping's direct orders, an estimated 1 million Uyghurs have been detained in at least 380 different internment or "re-education" camps in Xinjiang. In these camps, the Uyghurs not only are subject to constant surveillance and ideological campaigns that aim to erode their identity, but also stringent population control measures directed at women.

In 2014, the CCP declared a "People's War on Terror" against the Uyghurs and shortly thereafter the party began to correlate population growth with "religious extremism." This led to noticeable declines in Uyghur population growth within several Uyghur minority counties in 2015, according to a Jamestown Foundation report by Adrian Zenz.

At the same time that it eased its population control policies for China's Han population, with the latest of policies now allowing these families to have up to three children, the CCP imposed harsher restrictions on Uyghur births. Indeed, leaked documents reveal that Xi Jinping has called for their "root and branch" eradication. Thus, the term "genocide" is applicable because the CCP's "intent to destroy" the Uyghur population clearly satisfies Article II of the Genocide Convention. 

COMETH THE MOMENT, PARTETH THE MAN:

THE KEY TO THESE SCENARIOS...:

 If the military goal is indeed to reoccupy Gaza in order to eradicate Hamas, the next questions, naturally, are: For how long, and to replace Hamas with what? There is much more room for disagreement on these two questions of political strategy than on the military strategy, whose parameters are much narrower since they depend on objective considerations and the nature of the military means at hand. The two opposite poles of the political divergence translate into two scenarios that we might call the Greater Israel scenario and the Oslo scenario.

The Greater Israel scenario is the one that appeals most to Benjamin Netanyahu and his acolytes on Israel's far right. The Likud Party is heir to the Zionist far right, known as Revisionist Zionism, whose armed offshoots perpetrated the Deir Yassin massacre, the most infamous mass murder of Palestinians in 1948, amid what the Arabs call the Nakba (catastrophe). On the 78% of the territory of British Mandate Palestine that Zionist armed forces managed to conquer during the war of that year (the Zionists had been granted 55% by the partition plan approved by a nascent United Nations Organization, then dominated by countries of the Global North), 80% of the Palestinian population were uprooted. They had fled the war, frightened by atrocities such as Deir Yassin, and were never to be allowed to return to their homes and land. And yet the Zionist far right never forgave mainstream Zionism, which was then led by David Ben-Gurion, for having agreed to stop the war before conquering 100% of British Mandate Palestine between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.

During his recent speech at the U.N. General Assembly in New York, only two weeks before Oct. 7, Netanyahu brandished a map of the Middle East showing a Greater Israel that included Gaza and the West Bank. Even more relevant to the new Gaza war is the fact -- hardly mentioned in the global media -- that Netanyahu had resigned from the Israeli cabinet led by Sharon in 2005 in protest against the latter's decision to withdraw from Gaza. (Sharon had succeeded Netanyahu as the head of Likud in 1999, following the latter's electoral defeat to the Labor Party then led by Ehud Barak. Sharon then managed to win the next election, in 2003, and offered the ministry of finance to Netanyahu.)

Much more an army man than a politician, Sharon was attentive to the military's plea for a withdrawal of troops from the unruly Gaza, with a preference for controlling the strip from outside. He saw no prospect for an annexation of Gaza similar to what has been occurring in the West bank since its occupation in 1967. He therefore judged that it would be wiser to let the Palestinian Authority, established by the 1993 Oslo Accords, take care of Gaza, while focusing on the West Bank -- a much more prized and consensual Zionist goal.

Oslo required the withdrawal of Israeli troops only from those West Bank areas densely populated by Palestinians, while allowing Israel to maintain control of most of the territory. To show his contempt for the Palestinian Authority, Sharon opted for a unilateral "disengagement" from Gaza in 2005 -- without preparing it with the Palestinian Authority, that is. 

ONE ECONOMY TO RULE THEM ALL:

[I]f Argentina had never taken multiple zeros off its currency several times since 1916, when the exchange rate was 2 pesos per dollar, today it would take 10,000,000,000,000,000 (ten quadrillion) of those original pesos to buy a dollar!

The spark behind the latest peso plunge is Sunday's presidential election. The front-runner, Javier Milei, promises to ditch the peso and dollarize the economy. Which, in my opinion, is the only sensible thing to do, though it might prove tricky to implement. The Argentine government has been resorting to the printing presses to finance its profligate spending for far too long. People know that every day you hold a 2,000 peso note (the largest note in circulation!) in your pocket you are losing money at the rate of 150-200% per year--i.e., the current rate of inflaton. So the demand for pesos has plunged and the demand for dollars has soared. No wonder Argentines are demanding radical change--this has gone on for far too long.

BROTHERS IN ARMS:

Neither ever, in hundreds of interviews and public appearances, made much attempt to articulate what that moment is like. And perhaps it is by its nature ineffable. How does it feel to win a World Cup? How can anybody possibly explain that? And that, perhaps, is why that image is so powerful, because it encapsulates, even as the seam on Jack's shorts appears on the verge of splitting, the mingled sense of fatigue and accomplishment.

But it is also significant for two other reasons. First because, however frosty their relationship would become, it shows clearly the fraternal love between them. And second because, although neither surely expected it, that was the moment at which the dynamic of their relationship began to change. Bobby had always been the more talented brother, smarter, better-looking, much better at football. He still had two more years of great success to come, but with hindsight that World Cup final was the moment at which Jack caught him up.

Jack was born nearly two and a half years before Bobby. He was, as Cissie put it, "full of devilment". She soon gave up trying to restrain him, simply dressing him in red to make him easier to find after he had inevitably gone missing. He loved the outdoors and soon took to fishing and poaching. When he got a job at the pit, initially sorting coal on the surface, he would arrive early and set snares for rabbits, selling them on the way home.

THE TIGHTENING NOOSE:

[C]hesebro's plea obligates him to turn over documents to the government as well as to testify. We don't know what might be in his emails and text messages or who he might he be able to offer additional evidence against. The possibilities include at least Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Jeffrey Clark, and Jenna Ellis (who, with her publicly expressed grievance over paying her own legal fees, looks like she could be poised for a guilty plea of her own as the case moves forward). They're all candidates for Chesebro to cooperate against. In other words, it's not just about obtaining additional testimony against Trump, it's also about obtaining testimony to encourage defendants who are closer to Trump to plead guilty as well.

Chesebro wrote an entire series of memos in 2020 that acted as road maps for the fake slates of Trump electors in each state. He did that in Georgia, of course, but that wasn't the only state where the Trump campaign ran the fake electors ploy. Chesebro acknowledged in court that he "created and distributed false Electoral College documents" to Trump operatives in Georgia and other states, and that he worked "in coordination with" the Trump campaign (emphasis added). So, it's easy to see how his testimony could help not just Fani Willis, but Jack Smith too. "The defendant provided detailed instructions to co-conspirators in Georgia and other states," a prosecutor told the Judge on Friday when detailing Chesebro's conduct. Chesebro had to acknowledge that the prosecution's statement was correct as part of his colloquy with the Judge. Before accepting a guilty plea, the judge must ensure that a defendant understands what he's pleading guilty to and is doing so voluntarily. That means Chesebro can't walk back the "other states" part of what he knows about.

There's an additional advantage to obtaining guilty pleas from both Powell and Chesebro, and it's more bad news for Trump. There will be no early trial, no opportunity for other defendants to get a preview of Fani Willis' case. Willis is down from 19 defendants to 16 defendants, and she hasn't even struck a jury yet. Her consistent position has been that she wants to try all defendants together--Powell and Chesebro were only going apart from the others because they'd made speedy trial demands. Willis has a strong argument that the remaining defendants should be tried together, and lo and behold, both the Judge and Donald Trump have some empty time on their hands in the next few months before Jack Smith's case against Trump goes to trial in Washington, D.C., in March.

THE BEST THEY'VE GOT:

Arriving in March 2018, the $200,000 check from James Biden and his wife Sara Biden came when Joe Biden was not in or seeking office and was earning significant income from paid speeches and his book. Joe Biden and his wife Jill Biden earned more than $4 million in 2018, according to their tax return.

It is unclear why James Biden sent the money. 

HONORED:

In 1980, White's widow, Susie, called Stuart to let him know she was selling some of Clarence's things. Stuart, a longtime collector of country memorabilia, told her he'd buy anything she was selling.

She led him around her home, showing him a Fender Stratocaster that had belonged to Clarence, a Nudie suit that he'd worn when he was in the Byrds, and various other mementos.

Stuart asked, "Is the Pull-String still here?"

"That's the guitar you really want, isn't it?" Susie said.

Stuart was shocked. "I'd like to just hold it," he said.

The iconic Telecaster was in a case in the attic, missing strings, hadn't been played in years.

Stuart restrung the guitar, spent a few hours playing it, and then Susie walked in and told him she'd sell him Clarence's Pull-String Telecaster along with the other Byrds' memorabilia.

The musician produced his checkbook, laid it on the table, and told her, "Whatever number you put in within reason is fine with me and if it's not within reason, my mom works at a bank -- I'll get a loan."

Susie retrieved a pen and wrote 1,450 dollars.

Stuart shook his head. He said, "Susie, the E-string on this guitar is worth--"

"I know what the guitar is worth," she said.

He pleaded with her to take more money, but she refused.

"I think Clarence would want you to have it," she told him.

"I only met him one time," Stuart reminded her.

"You'll take care of it," she said, "and honor it."

Marty Stuart has kept his word. In 2010, he recorded an instrumental called "Hummingbyrd" on his album Ghost Train with his band the Fabulous Superlatives. The song won a Grammy Award and is a tribute not only to the Byrds, but to Clarence White and the Pull-String Telecaster which Stuart used on the track.

His latest album with the Fabulous Superlatives, the extraordinary Altitude, is shaped as much by White's Telecaster as it has by Stuart's expert songwriting and the band's prodigious talent. 

THE TRUMP BRAND (profanity alert):

The U.S. Capitol Police and the House Sergeant at Arms briefed Omar and other progressive lawmakers critical of Israel -- including the only other Muslim woman in Congress, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., who is Palestinian American -- over potential threats last week, according to a Democratic aide familiar with the meeting.

Voicemails shared with NBC News include profanity-laced death threats calling Omar a "terrorist Muslim." Another claimed a vigilante group spying on the congresswoman and "your children" had obtained "all your addresses and handed them out to rapists."

"I'm from a militant group," the male caller of a third voicemail claimed. "I can't wait 'till our group sees you one day and I can rip your f------ rag off your head... I hope the Israelis kill every f------ one of you."

IT'S ALL IN YOUR HEAD:

New research might complicate our understanding of ketamine as a potential treatment for depression. The study found that people with depression who were either given saline or ketamine before undergoing anesthesia for a surgery experienced a similar improvement in their symptoms afterward.

THE TIGHTENING NOOSE:

The plea deals likely strengthen Fulton County DA Fani Willis' case against Trump and add pressure on more than a dozen other alleged conspirators charged alongside the former president to cut deals of their own.

THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY, BY DEFINITION:

At the end of the day, it is relatively easy for a clever philosopher - or an opportunistic politician - to find a semi-plausible libertarian justification for almost any policy proposal he happens to favor. In Milei's case, he has already given us every indication that he would pursue a libertarian agenda with a decidedly populist bent.

In the US, we got a sneak peak of what libertarian populism might look like in the "paleo-libertarianism" of Murray Rothbard and Lew Rockwell. In the early 1990s, this school lent its support to racist politicians like David Duke, to a nativist (highly restrictive) immigration policy, and to the violent police suppression of criminals and "bums." Such positions have enjoyed a resurgence since Trump's presidency, even coming to dominate the Libertarian Party of the US.

Those who cherish individual liberty therefore should be cautious before throwing their support behind Milei. Yes, he is a libertarian; and yes, libertarians believe in individual liberty. But the real questions are whose liberty, and what specific policies the defense of that liberty entails.

THE ABRAHAM ACCORDS:

Egypt and Qatar have negotiating backchannels with Hamas, Natan Sachs, director of the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, told Vox in an interview.

"There are backchannels; there always were," Sachs said. "The main one is with the Egyptians -- they have open communication with Hamas. They despise Hamas, of course, and they blockade the Gaza Strip, but their intelligence has frequent communication with Hamas." This has allowed them in the past to negotiate ceasefires and exchanges between Israel and Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups, he said.

The primary reason Egypt despises Hamas, as Sachs put it, is because it originated as the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group which Ḥasan al-Bannā, a teacher, devout Muslim, and Egyptian nationalist, started in Egypt in 1928. [...]

And because the Palestinian liberation cause was closely aligned with Arab nationalist and international communist projects during that time, to Israel, "political Islam seemed better than Arab nationalism," Byman said. The Palestinian left was, in the 1970s and '80s in particular, the main opposition to the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority under Yasser Arafat. Those secular, Marxist groups were responsible for several terror operations throughout the Middle East at the height of their power.

"Hamas comes directly out of the Muslim Brotherhood" in Gaza, "not a spinoff or anything like that. It is the Muslim Brotherhood," Byman said.

For nearly 40 years, the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza, which became Hamas, didn't have sufficient power to be a threat to Egypt; they didn't even participate in the First Intifada, or Palestinian uprising, Byman said. But when Hamas gained that power during its takeover of Gaza in 2007, former Egyptian autocrat Hosni Mubarak called the situation a "coup against legitimacy" and supported Israel's blockade against Gaza. Mubarak was deposed during the Arab Spring, and Egyptians elected Mohammed Morsi, who was affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood and hoped to expand relations with Gaza.

Morsi served only a year and four days before he was deposed by Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Egypt's current strongman president. Sisi has heavily suppressed the Muslim Brotherhood and has in the past vilified Hamas and its connection with the Brotherhood.

THE rIGHT'S WAR ON GREEN IS GOING AS WELL AS THE ONE ON OBAMACARE:

The study, based on a data-driven model of technology and economics, finds that solar PV (photovoltaics) is likely to become the dominant power source before 2050 - even without support from more ambitious climate policies.

THE TIGHTENING NOOSE:

"As part of the deal, she will serve six years of probation, will be fined $6,000, and will have to write an apology letter to Georgia and its residents," the Associated Press reports. "She also agreed to testify truthfully against her co-defendants at future trials."

THE CULTURE WARS ARE A ROUT:

The Judeo-Christian relics in the series demonstrate a dramatically dissimilar representation of supernatural power. In Last Crusade - which was a script largely rewritten by an uncredited Sir Tom Stoppard - the characters' will to power is foiled by the nature of the puzzles leading to the Grail. While there's no thematic inevitability to manmade booby traps, they're built in such a way that comprehending them demonstrates knowledge of reality. This is not technical knowledge that might be divorced from the posture of the heart, but rather humble assent. In Hebrew, the word for wisdom means something more like applied knowledge. When Indy stands on the edge of the chasm, hesitant, he has knowledge. When he jumps, he shows wisdom.

And this wisdom Indy has learned because, following the fifth commandment, he has begun to honor his father. Understanding why "only the penitent man shall pass" is the result of years of patient study and faith - more the effort of Henry Jones Sr., than of Indy himself, and (the camerawork implies) communicated between them through an almost supernatural father-son connection. Indy proves himself the sort of person who perceives what manner of cup a humble carpenter would possess, largely because he has reconciled with the father who can teach him that lesson.

Spielberg communicates a deep truth: the unholy cannot safely interact with the holy. Humankind cannot bear very much reality.

Still, what's to prevent an unworthy person from drinking from the Grail, and gaining its powers? There's little sense that the relic itself contains the ability or agency to discern the hearts of men.  It is rather the whole of the mousetrap, the whole of the providential situation, which discerns. And it's finally in the renunciation of the Grail - again, Indy's father's renunciation comes first - that the film finds its moral center. Henry had neglected his son for the search, and in giving up the object of his search, he gains his son. This only works because the Grail as an artifact is inherently humble. As the archdeacon in Charles Williams's Grail novel War in Heaven notes, "In one sense, of course, [the Grail] is unimportant - it is a symbol less near reality now than any chalice of consecrated wine."

The Ark is different. Even though the representation of the Ark in Raiders is highly fanciful, it gets the broad outlines right. In scripture, it was only licit for the Ark to be carried by Levites who were ritually clean, on long poles. One man was struck dead when he reached out to steady the Ark as it trundled along on a wagon. In Raiders, the Ark acts in a vitally different manner than the treasures at the center of the later films. Because it acts.

Every character in Raiders is looking to find the Ark so they can control it or bend it to their will. What they discover is that God will not be used. And they all have to learn this lesson. 

PROSPERITY SUFFICES:

Röpke did not question the good intentions of Cobden and his followers. Nor did he deny that free trade had delivered on its economic promise. The results in terms of increased growth and efficiency were spectacular. While Britain benefited immensely from its embrace of free trade, Röpke also argued that it was "equally true that British free trade was an essential foundation of the world economy such as developed, in all its impressive strength and breadth, and with all its intricate institutions, in the course of the nineteenth century." 

Röpke went on, however, to conclude that that "the underlying social philosophy" associated with the Cobdenite free-trade-leads-to-peace outlook had been exposed by events as insufficiently appreciative of important realities of the human condition. "The dawn of the golden age of peace, and the social philosophy that regarded free trade as the guardian in international concord," Röpke wrote, "seems to us as faded as the paper on which it was printed." Among other things, two world wars in thirty years had illustrated that there are many causes of international conflict that widespread trade had proved unable to neutralize.

For these reasons, Röpke maintained that free traders did not only need to rethink how they made their arguments. They also had to be more modest about what free trade can achieve. Certainly, he stated, "We may still defend as relatively more reasonable than others that the decision as to what individual nations produce or not should be left to free international trade." But the case for free trade, Röpke believed, had to be more aware that nations, national-sovereignty, and the propensity of states to pursue what they regarded as their national interests were facts of life that were not going away anytime soon. Human relations, whether between individuals or countries, were simply more complicated than some nineteenth-century free traders had supposed.

Ropke was in effect making a more "conservative" case for what is typically regarded as a "classical liberal" commitment. The irony is that the outlines of precisely such a case can be found in the writings of important father-figures of the classical liberal tradition.

Cobden was fond of invoking Adam Smith in support of his peace through trade arguments. Many believed that there was clear continuity between the two men's views of nations, trade, the nation, and international affairs. Attention to Smith's writings, however, illustrates the questionable nature of this claim.

In the first place, Smith was skeptical that moral sympathy extended much beyond one's nation. Smith did not argue that our concern for others simply stopped at the border. Smith did, however, believe that our sympathy for others became considerably weaker once it moved beyond national boundaries.

Empathy for humanity as a whole and love of country were not, Smith believed, incompatible. Nonetheless he viewed patriotism as more natural. "The love of our country," Smith stated, "seems not to be derived from the love of mankind. The former sentiment is altogether independent of the latter, and seems sometimes even to dispose us to act inconsistently with it." A person's nation, according to Smith, was more part of his everyday cultural, historical, linguistic, and cultural reality than mankind as a whole. Putting your country's well-being before that of other nations was therefore normal. Smith even regarded fighting and dying for your country as profoundly honorable. The patriot who does so acts, Smith comments, "with the most exact propriety."

IT'S BASICALLY WOODROW WILSON'S FAULT:

In light of the complex and tragic situation unfolding in Gaza and Israel, this episode looks at the past 100 years of the history of the region of Palestine. As well as explanation from Dan, we hear from experts who have been on the podcast before to explain the background to the conflict we're seeing today.

Historian Simon Sebag-Montefiore explores why Jerusalem is so important to both the Israelis and the Palestinians. Yara Hawari, a senior policy analyst for Al-Shabaka, describes the Palestinian perspective of the Mandate of Palestine after the First World War and Benny Morris, a former professor of History at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, provides insight into the Israeli mindset during the first crucial months of the State of Israel established in 1948.

THE TERRORISTS ARE NOT ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE BORDER:

A handful of Republicans this week have not only stood up against the effort to install hard-right Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) as speaker; they've also stood up in a pretty striking way to the pressure tactics and attempted intimidation that came with it.

Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.) offered a full-throated rebuke of these tactics shortly after Jordan failed on the second ballot Wednesday. (Jordan's opposition grew from 20 Republicans to 22 Republicans -- well more than the four GOP defections he can afford.)

Womack cited how his staff had been "cussed out, they've been threatened. It's been non-stop. Most of them are out-of-state calls."

"It's a matter of how you treat people," Womack said, as The Washington Post's Jacqueline Alemany reported. "And frankly, based on what I've been through and what my staff has been through, it's obvious what the strategy is: attack, attack, attack."

Womack added that Jordan's "tactics" had badly backfired.

Another holdout, Rep. Kay Granger (R-Tex.), posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, "Intimidation and threats will not change my position."

A third, Rep. Jen A. Kiggans (R-Va.), echoed that same message on X: "I was a helicopter pilot in the United States Navy ... threats and intimidation tactics will not change my principles and values."

A fourth, Rep. Carlos A. Gimenez (R-Fla.), said he brought this up directly with Jordan. "I told him, 'I don't really take well to threats,'" Gimenez told NBC News.

And a fifth, Rep. John Rutherford (R-Fla.), more explicitly laid the blame at Jordan's feet.

"He's absolutely responsible for it," Rutherford told Alemany. "And look, it doesn't work. ... Nobody likes to have their arm twisted."

ORANGE HAIR AND GREEN EYES:

In his witness statement, Steele suggested Trump's discovery of Steele's friendship with Trump's daughter Ivanka had damaged their father-daughter relationship, "deepened his animus towards me, and [it] is one of the reasons for his vindictive and vexatious conduct towards me and Orbis".

NO ONE FOLLOWS THE SCIENCE:

JUST DON'T SAY WE'RE AT WAR WITH VLAD:

 Ukraine on Tuesday claimed to have carried out one of the most destructive attacks on Russian air assets since the beginning of the war, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy saying the assault used longer-range ballistic missiles donated by the United States.

Zelenskyy's announcement came hours after a U.S. official revealed that the longer-range ballistic missiles sought for months by Kyiv and promised by President Joe Biden had been delivered quietly and are in battlefield use.

Ukraine's Special Operations Forces claimed it destroyed nine Russian helicopters at two airfields in Russia-occupied regions in a nighttime attack on targets in eastern and southern Ukraine.

DISASTER PRONE:

[Current Affairs editor in chief Nathan J. Robinson]

There's an incredible quote you have from an admiral saying, "It will be a catastrophe if we win." That's an interesting thing to say. Why would it be a "catastrophe if we win"?

SLATER 

If "we win," it means that we've just created more resentment and hatred, and it's going to come back against us in the future. I'll read you a few of the quotes. There are a number of high officials who said specifically that we can and should negotiate with Hamas. Now you have this incredible fanaticism, and we'll get to that later on. But earlier, there were Hamas leaders who were in some cases hinting--in some cases more than just hinting--that they recognized that they were not going to be able to defeat Israel, they're not going to be able to achieve their maximum goal, and then they reluctantly but nonetheless came to the conclusion that they needed a settlement. And there were Israeli top security officials--heads of Mossad or Shin Bet--who said, this is almost too good to be true, we must act on this and start negotiations with Hamas.

But the all Israeli prime ministers absolutely ignored and shut down a number of efforts that were being made, including by journalists and others, to start a dialogue between Hamas and Israel. So, even in the case of Hamas, let alone in the largest sense of achieving a two-state solution, you have a phenomenon of top leaders making these kinds of arguments.

ROBINSON 

Your book is, in many ways, the story of a lot of frustrating, tragic missed opportunities. The phrase of "missed opportunities" is kind of infamous in the context of this conflict. Because [Israeli diplomat] Abba Eban said that "[The Arabs] never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity." But in fact, what your book does, in many ways, is highlight opportunities that Israel had if just a few key concessions has been made to the Palestinians, and you enumerate them.

What are the concessions that you think successive Israeli governments refused to make, that if they had been made could have massively increased the chances that there would have been a lasting peace and avoided the current catastrophe?

SLATER 

The main one is withdrawing from all the territory they conquered in 1967 and allowing the Palestinians to exercise sovereignty over that, primarily the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Since the 1967 war, the main problem has been Israeli refusal to withdraw. It withdrew from some of the territories, from Sinai in the context of the peace agreement with Egypt 15 years after the end of the 1967 war, but they refused to withdraw from the West Bank. Gaza is a little more complicated. They had settlements in Gaza, and Ariel Sharon, Israel's leading military hawk, decided when he became prime minister that the cost of hanging on to a few settlements mostly manned by Israeli fanatics was too high. So, they withdrew from Gaza, in the sense of there's no longer any settlements on the ground in Gaza. But they control access to Gaza; they control water, electricity, and the airways. And they've used this control on a number of occasions, not just now, to punish Palestinian acts of terrorism. And of course, what we're going to see now is the most devastating use of Israeli control and power over Gaza. 

REPUBLICAN LIBERTY IN A NUTSHELL:

From a more limited point of view, Ukraine's war is a fight for freedom from Russian domination and the principle of national self-determination; a conflict that will allow Ukrainians to continue their own experiment in democracy and the personal as well as political freedoms that democracy can provide.

Part of that self-determination is the right to choose their own leader, rather than a Russian puppet or even Putin himself, and to choose their leader through democratic elections, not sham elections (which are not elections at all, but a form of political theater).  

Democratic elections themselves rest on two other principles of liberal democracy: political equality - one person, one vote - and popular sovereignty - the idea that the source of political power and legitimacy is not force of arms or conquest, but in the people's decision to grant authority to a person or persons, who use the power of their office on behalf of the people whom they are appointed to serve.

The structure of democracy is rooted in not just political equality but equality under the law: a democratic people is ruled not by an individual, but by laws duly established and enforced not by a monarch, dictator, or president for life, but by an officer of the court: by a person who is herself subject to the law she enforces. 

NO ONE BELIEVES IN ENTROPY:

"Given the ubiquity of evolving systems in the natural world, it seems odd that one or more laws describing their behaviors have not been more quickly forthcoming," the authors write.

The team's own "law of increasing functional information" says evolution in all its forms inevitably leads to more patterning, diversity, and complexity in natural complex systems.

Evolution is certainly not unique to Earth's biosphere; it takes place in other extremely complex systems, such as our Solar System, stars, atoms, and minerals.

"The Universe generates novel combinations of atoms, molecules, cells, etc," says first author of the study, astrobiologist Michael Wong from Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, DC.

"Those combinations that are stable and can go on to engender even more novelty will continue to evolve. This is what makes life the most striking example of evolution, but evolution is everywhere."

DETENTION ITSELF VIOLATES AMERICAN VALUES:

The administration and the American Civil Liberties Union filed a joint plan on Monday to settle a class-action lawsuit over the Trump-era separation practice, under which roughly 4,000 migrant children were forcibly separated from their parents near the U.S.-Mexico border. The settlement, which would last for six years, is expected to be approved by U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw, who outlawed the separations in 2018.

"The separation of families at our southern border was a betrayal of our nation's values," Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta said. "By providing services to these families and implementing policies to prevent future separations, today's agreement addresses the impacts of those separations and helps ensure that nothing like this happens again."

If approved, the 46-page settlement agreement would provide separated families a special process to request U.S. asylum and significantly narrow the reasons for government-sanctioned family separations, preventing officials from using the legal argument the Trump administration cited to justify its separation policy. 

U.S. border officials would no longer be allowed to use parents' illegal entry into the country as a basis to separate them from their children. Separations of migrant families would be limited to rare cases, such as those involving abusive parents or those with serious criminal records.

NO ONE HATES JUST MEXICANS:

Former president Donald Trump, condemned by his Republican rivals and others last week for calling Hezbollah militants "very smart," responded Monday by proposing harsher restrictions on immigration based on ideology, targeting Hamas sympathizers and critics of Israel.

MAKING THEM ATTEND MEETINGS WILL CAUSE THE REVOLT:

Workers around the world are adopting artificial intelligence to streamline tasks ranging from email writing to product development. Now companies have begun using AI to root out another workplace inefficiency: meetings. Across the U.S., some workers are using tools that record, analyze and summarize what has been said, allowing them to skip gatherings entirely and skim the highlights. 

ON A HIDING TO NOTHING:

Erwin Schrödinger, father of the wave-function formulation of quantum mechanics, was greatly vexed by the implications of extending quantum mechanics to macroscopic objects, dreaming up the notorious case of a cat being both dead and alive as a way to voice his discomfort. Hungarian-American physicist Eugene Wigner took things a step further: rather than putting a cat in the box, he imagined an entire laboratory, complete with an experimenter, sufficiently isolated from the environment such as to make a probe of its internal state from the outside impossible.

Together with the experimenter--the eponymous 'friend'--a single quantum system in the state [↑,↓] was present. Now, a tenet of quantum mechanics is that after an experiment has yielded an outcome, that outcome will be observed again upon repeating that experiment. Meaning that performing the ↑↓-measurement on a [↑,↓]-system and obtaining ↑, say, repeating the measurement must again yield the outcome ↑. Therefore, after the measurement, the system can't be in the state [↑,↓] anymore, and must instead be in the state [↑]. This is the origin of the famous 'collapse' of the quantum state upon measurement: somehow, the state must make a transition from [↑,↓] to [↑] (or [↓]) when the ↑↓-measurement is performed.

Wigner now asked himself how quantum mechanics ought to describe the process of measurement itself, i.e. of an experimenter performing an experiment in such a way as to be subject to the usual rules of quantum mechanics (essentially, isolated from the environment sufficiently well to prevent decoherence). This involves modeling the experimenter themself using quantum mechanics. For our purposes, it will be enough to consider an experimenter with two possible states (for each measurement): ["↑"] or ["↓"] for 'having observed ↑' or 'having observed ↓', respectively (and analogously ["←"] and ["→"]).

Paradoxically, it seems that there are two answers: if the observation 'collapses' the state, then after making their measurement, the combined system consisting of the friend and the system they measure should be either described as ["↑"↑] or ["↓"↓], the object-system in a definite state, and the experimenter having definite knowledge of that state. But, modeling both as quantum systems, this is not what happens--rather, as with the dead-and-alive cat, we obtain a combined system in the state ["↑"↑,"↓"↓]--where neither the experimenter nor the object can be assigned any definite state.

Wigner thought this strange enough to postulate an absolute boundary for the quantum description at the experimenter's conscious experience--it is this, he claimed, that causes the collapse (hence, the 'Consciousness Causes Collapse', CCC, interpretation). The quantum buck stops where the experimenter takes conscious account of a measurement result.

A MESS FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA:

The declaration helped Britain's war effort in various ways, boosting support in the United States (which had a significant Jewish population) and providing for British control of Palestine. The Jewish settlers depended on Britain for their survival and, until the Second World War, worked with the British authorities to maintain security in Palestine. Jewish settlement was met with local resistance: in 1920, for instance, rioting broke out as Palestinians opposed British-facilitated Jewish immigration. More violence was to erupt throughout the next two decades.

Jewish-European settlers in this period recorded the mood of colonialism. "We must not forget that we are dealing here with a semi-savage people, which has extremely primitive concepts," one wrote at the time. "And this is his nature: if he senses in you power, he will submit and will hide his hatred for you. And if he senses weakness, he will dominate you." Amid such colonial views, the British veered between support for Jewish settlers and for the Palestinians. Their goals were diverging and becoming seemingly irreconcilable.

As violence erupted between the two communities, Jews and Palestinians divided, and people had to take sides. Early Jewish inhabitants in Palestine, and Mizrahi ('oriental' or 'eastern') Jews who came to Palestine from Arab countries and who spoke Arabic, were now confronted by politically mobilised European Jews arriving to settle the land and build a Jewish state. Many of these long-time Jewish occupants of Palestine and the Middle East cut their ties to their Arab neighbours.

An outbreak of extreme violence in 1929 dashed any faint hopes of Jews and Palestinians combining, and revisionist rightwing Zionist organisations grew. Palestinians and Jews prepared for a full-scale conflict. Militant Muslim preachers such as Shaykh 'Izz al-Din al-Qassam mobilised Palestinians, priming them for jihad. The Jewish population prepared much more thoroughly, building a proto-state alongside nascent political and economic structures, having already established a defence organisation, Haganah.

Jewish families evacuate Jerusalem's Old City in 1936, during the Arab Revolt

Jewish families evacuate Jerusalem's Old City in 1936, during the Arab Revolt - an uprising that followed several years of violence between Palestinians and Jewish settlers (Universal History Archive/Getty Images)

The Jewish community pushed into new land with numerous settlements, and set up a Jewish presence across Palestine. By this point, the Palestinians were in conflict with both the Jews and the British authorities in Palestine, reaching a crescendo in a mass revolt in 1936. The British army crushed the revolt by 1939, but resistance and preparation for further attacks by both communities remained the pattern for the rest of the 1930s and throughout the Second World War.

By the time of the Second World War, the British had shifted their policy from support for Zionism to blocking Jewish immigration to Palestine. They did this, again, to bolster support for their war effort, this time from Arab allies. In the face of Jewish people escaping the unfolding Holocaust in Europe, this caused growing resentment and conflict with Zionists who were trying to save European Jews by helping them get to Palestine.

After the war ended in 1945, the Jewish population of Palestine had become sufficiently powerful and mobilised to fight Britain, and good Jewish preparation won the day. Jewish terror attacks against British targets helped to force Britain to reconsider its geopolitical priorities. In one of the most infamous attacks, in 1946 the wing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem that housed a British headquarters was blown up, killing almost 100 people. In 1947, Britain decided to leave Palestine. Meanwhile, survivors of the Holocaust who emigrated to Palestine further boosted the territory's Jewish population.

In the November of the same year, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution that proposed the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. Under the plan, Jerusalem would be an internationalised city. The suggestion was accepted, albeit reluctantly, by Jewish representatives in the region, because it offered some international acceptance of their aims of establishing a state. Palestinian and Arab groups rejected it, however, arguing that it ignored the rights of most of the population of Palestine to decide their own destiny.

The First Arab-Israeli War of 1948-49 followed on from the violence between Jews and Palestinians as neighbouring Arab states - for their own political motives as well as to help their Palestinian Arab brethren - intervened in the hostilities. In May 1948, as British troops left Palestine, Zionist leader (soon to become the first Israeli prime minister) David Ben-Gurion declared the formation of the state of Israel, at which point Egypt, Iraq, Transjordan, Lebanon and Syria attacked Israel in support of the Palestinians.

TRADITION!:

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Saturday that the U.S. should not accept refugees from Gaza as hundreds of thousands of Palestinians flee from the north to the south, following Israeli government warnings to evacuate before an anticipated ground invasion.

World War II prompted the largest displacement of human beings the world has ever seen--although today's refugee crisis is starting to approach its unprecedented scale. But even with millions of European Jews displaced from their homes, the United States had a poor track record offering asylum. Most notoriously, in June 1939, the German ocean liner St. Louis and its 937 passengers, almost all Jewish, were turned away from the port of Miami, forcing the ship to return to Europe; more than a quarter died in the Holocaust.

Government officials from the State Department to the FBI to President Franklin Roosevelt himself argued that refugees posed a serious threat to national security. 

AESTHETICS IS THE WHOLE SHEBANG:

The problem is that many people's notion of beauty is simply too narrow. Beauty is not charm or allurement or eroticism or a backrub or a bubble bath or frosting on a cake. It is something broader and deeper. There are of course a hundred and one ways one could go about defining something so mysterious and elusive as beauty. I will make an attempt here. Beauty is a signal and symbol of the encompassing order in the universe and nature and the essential goodness, the essentially pleasing character, of reality. This is what we might call transcendent beauty as opposed to surface beauty (which may of course be a small-scale reflection of transcendent beauty). Beauty thus has to do with the truth of things and as such it is essential to human life and flourishing--not a mere adornment, but essential to our inner life. The philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand says in his magisterial Aesthetics that "beauty is a primordial phenomenon of the utmost importance and one of the greatest sources of profound joy." He stresses that beauty is an objective phenomenon, not merely a subjective feeling--not merely "in the eye of the beholder." It is an objective value just as ethical or moral values are.

It's too often implied that beauty is the antithesis of the intellectual, that it is merely sensual--one recalls in this connection the popular antithesis of brains versus beauty. I would insist on the contrary that beauty comes to us with particular content and meaning. It is not a generic mush, but something with determinate qualities which one can name and discuss and engage with on the level of intellect.

ISLAMOPHOBIA INC.:

Reps. Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.) and Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) are set to introduce legislation that would curb the flow of Palestinians looking to resettle in the United States.

WE CAN'T GET RID OF CARS FAST ENOUGH:

On a 17-acre site that once contained a car body shop and some largely derelict buildings, an unusual experiment has emerged that invites Americans to live in a way that is rare outside of fleeting experiences of college, Disneyland or trips to Europe: a walkable, human-scale community devoid of cars.

Culdesac ushered in its first 36 residents earlier this year and will eventually house around 1,000 people when the full 760 units, arranged in two and three-story buildings, are completed by 2025. In an almost startling departure from the US norm, residents are provided no parking for cars and are encouraged to get rid of them. The apartments are also mixed in with amenities, such as a grocery store, restaurant, yoga studio and bicycle shop, that are usually separated from housing by strict city zoning laws.

Neighborhoods of this ilk can be found in cities such as New York City and San Francisco but are often prohibitively expensive due to their allure, as well as stiff opposition to new apartment developments. The $170m Culdesac project shows "we can build walkable neighborhoods successfully in the US in [the] 2020s," according to Ryan Johnson, the 40-year-old who co-founded the company with Jeff Berens, a former McKinsey consultant.

GOALIES ARE WEIRD:

Michael Quinn of University College Dublin and his colleagues therefore hypothesized that goalkeepers would have an enhanced ability to integrate auditory and visual information compared to other players.

To test this, they performed an experiment to measure the so-called "temporal binding window" (the time period in which different sensory inputs are perceived as one event) in 20 professional goalkeepers, 20 outfield soccer players, and 20 age-matched control participants who do not play soccer. This involved showing the participants a series of flashes and beeps presented to them at varying intervals and asking them to report how many flashes they saw. Typically, one flash accompanied by two beeps creates the illusion of perceiving two flashes, as long as the flash and the beeps are presented close enough together (that is, within the temporal binding window).     

In a paper published in the journal Current Biology, Quinn and his colleagues report that this temporal binding window was narrower in the professional goalkeepers than in the outfield players and non-players. In other words, the flash and beeps had to be presented fractions of a second closer to each other in order for the goalkeepers to experience the illusion. They were not easily fooled.

The goalkeepers also exhibited a reduction in the extent to which auditory and visual information interact with each other compared to the other two groups of participants.

Whereas outfield players cover between 10-12 km during a 90-minute soccer match, goalkeepers cover about half that distance. And while outfield players make short sprints roughly every 90 seconds, and typically pass the ball to teammates over distances of up to 50 meters, goalkeepers usually perform just two short sprints, and make up to 14 long kicks into the opponent's half of the playing field per match. 

So although goalkeepers spend most of their match time standing on the goal line, these physically demanding high velocity actions likely contribute significantly to their overall match load, and even may elicit a unique physiological response to the demands placed on them during matchplay. The authors of this latest study suggest that the enhanced multi-sensory integration and reduced interactions between auditory and visual information they observed in goalkeepers likely occurs because of the special demands of the position. 

THE HOMESTEADERS:

...AND GET THE FLU SHOT WITH IT:

IT'S NOT ETHNIC CLEANSING WHEN WE DO IT:

Palestinians scrambled to flee northern Gaza on Saturday after the Israeli military ordered nearly half the population to evacuate south and carried out limited ground forays ahead of an expected land invasion a week after Hamas' wide-ranging attack into Israel.

Israel renewed calls on social media and in leaflets dropped from the air for some 1.1 million residents to move south, while Gaza authorities urged people to stay in their homes. The UN and aid groups have said such a rapid exodus would cause untold human suffering, with hospital patients and others unable to relocate.

Families in cars, trucks and donkey carts packed with possessions crowded a main road heading away from Gaza City as Israeli airstrikes continued to hammer the small, besieged territory . Palestinian witnesses said Israel struck cars rushing south, and authorities said the strikes killed more than 70 people.

ON FRIDAY, Israel ordered the besieged population in the northern half of the Gaza Strip to evacuate to the south, warning that it would soon intensify its attack on the Strip's upper half. The order has left more than a million people, half of whom are children, frantically attempting to flee amid continuing airstrikes, in a walled enclave where no destination is safe. As Palestinian journalist Ruwaida Kamal Amer wrote today from Gaza, "refugees from the north are already arriving in Khan Younis, where the missiles never stop and we're running out of food, water, and power." The UN has warned that the flight of people from the northern part of Gaza to the south will create "devastating humanitarian consequences" and will "transform what is already a tragedy into a calamitous situation." Over the last week, Israel's violence against Gaza has killed more than 1,800 Palestinians, injured thousands, and displaced more than 400,000 within the strip. And yet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised today that what we have seen is "only the beginning."

Israel's campaign to displace Gazans--and potentially expel them altogether into Egypt--is yet another chapter in the Nakba, in which an estimated 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes during the 1948 war that led to the creation of the State of Israel. But the assault on Gaza can also be understood in other terms: as a textbook case of genocide unfolding in front of our eyes.

SUBLIME:

When we say "evolution" we all mean "intelligent design": "The increasingly symbiotic relationship between humans and technology signals a new era in the evolution of life on Earth"
https://t.co/E862Bm0c7W

— brothersjudd (@brothersjudd) October 13, 2023

NOTHING TO OFFER BUT HATE ITSELF:

[A]ustria had two opposing political factions: rabid Austrian Nazis foaming at the mouth in favor of annexation to Nazi Germany, and noble Austrian patriots who found subservience to brutish Nazi Germany abhorrent to their proud sense of refinement. And Catholicism, so the story goes, served as a bulwark of morality against Nazi browbeating.

To be sure, Austrian patriots who opposed Nazism were ardently Catholic. But they were no liberal democrats. Instead, they weaponized Catholicism for authoritarian purposes. The Austrian state before the Anschluss (the Nazi annexation of Austria in 1938) was often referred to as the Ständestaat, or Corporatist State, a reference to the fascist economic policy pioneered in none other than Mussolini's Italy. The guiding political philosophy of this Ständestaat was an Austrian strain of fascism, often known as Austrofascism. This ideology relied on a veritable grab bag of things they detested: from Marxism to socialism to liberalism. Essentially, the Austrofascist "movement" was a negative politics, fixated on tearing others down without really offering its own concrete policies for society.

What they did do was boast. Much like the Nazis, these Austrofascists were German-speaking, antisemitic ethno-nationalists with delusions of imperial grandeur. They proudly and repeatedly bragged of their "German-ness" in natalist terms, all to express a desire for greater German glory. But Austrofascists were also explicitly and violently anti-Nazi, and their disdain for Nazism hinged on their Catholicism.

The Catholic Church in Austria went all in on this authoritarian, fascist endeavor.

In contrast to the likes of U.S. radio stalwart Father Coughlin--who wielded Catholicism to muster sympathy and support for Nazism and American neutrality in World War II--Austrofascists used Catholicism to define themselves in opposition to Nazism. They pathologized Nazism as a vulgar, thuggish outgrowth of north German (i.e., Prussian) militarism and Protestantism, and they saw Nazism as a nearly pagan cult. In Austrofascist calculations, Catholicism made Austrians the "best type" of German and Christian--the most authentic creators, bearers, and defenders of Kultur and Geist. By this logic, their anti-Nazi stance was fulfilling Austria's historical mission to hold the line of "the West" against nondescript hordes from "the East," be they Mongols, Ottomans, Soviets, or, in the 1930s, Prussians in Nazi uniforms. Indeed, some Austrofascists disparaged Prussians as east European Slavs masquerading as Germans.

The Catholic Church in Austria went all in on this authoritarian, fascist endeavor. Such eager collaboration has also earned the Austrofascist regime the label of "clerical fascist" among some historians, a modern ideological spin on older notions of theocracy. Ignaz Seipel, the revered leader of the Christian Social Party that later spearheaded the Ständestaat, was himself a Catholic priest. Political rallies featured massive statues of Jesus on the cross, before which Church leaders said Mass. Such iconography and clerical agency would have been unheard of at Nazi rallies, where sacrality was held by the Führer alone. Austrofascists adored their own Führer, Engelbert Dollfuss, as the Austrian David to the German Goliath. When Nazis assassinated him in a 1934 Putsch-attempt, the country saw an outpouring of memorials that framed him as Austria's messianic leader. [...]

Likewise, we see the Right of today offering us nothing but the braggadocious rhetoric of a negative politics, in which "owning the libs" has become both the means and ends. Indeed, Deneen attacks liberalism again and again as destructive of a healthy civilization and insists that its replacement through "a raw assertion of power" would allow the right kind of society to come into being. This vision is negative in two senses of the word: it mobilizes populism's worst impulses, and it's really just a cathartic tantrum aimed at tearing down the current establishment. All the while, it offers very little of substance that is actually new.

PETARDED:

Smith's demand is important because this defense would trigger two significant consequences -- a waiver of attorney-client privilege and a duty to produce all documents related to the advice. Until now, Trump has been able to have it both ways -- protect testimony and documents from disclosure as privileged, while also claiming that his conduct was lawful because he simply relied on what his lawyers told him.

PALESTINE IS ISRAEL; THEY CAN DO WHATEVER THEY WANT:

NO ONE SAID SELF-DETERMINATION COMES EASY:

In response to these unjust laws and an advancing British Deep State, the colonists' moral principles--their spirit of liberty--motivated them to act in a certain way (i.e., with vigilance, integrity, and courage). Failure to do so meant a concession to tyranny, which could only result in oppression and then enslavement.

American revolutionaries refused to compromise. They had to act because of who and what they were, because of the choices they had already made, because of the values they held, because of the moral law they chose to live by, because of the kind of society they chose to live in, and because George III and the British Parliament threatened to rob them of all that.

The Declaration of Independence represents a precis of the American's moral and political philosophy, but it is also a call to action--the kind of action that leads in the short term to hardship, penury, and possibly even death, but in the long term to the blessings of a free society.

The Declaration also tells us a good deal about the men who signed it and led the Revolution. They declared to the world their right to self-government and they backed it up with their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. They demonstrated to the world that ideas and actions can and must be unified. 

ANGELIC:

10 years after the death of her husband, Dorothy Byrne remains a dedicated philanthropist and leader of the foundation, which was founded in 1999. She makes private donations to the Upper Valley, including the Dartmouth community. Between 2003 and 2017, the foundation donated $72 million to several hundred organizations across the Upper Valley, according to the Valley News. Government professor Russell Muirhead added that the Byrne Foundation partners with civic and volunteer groups, helping them raise money by offering a matching grant. When anyone gets together and does something in the community, the Byrne Foundation is always there ready to help, he said. 

"The Byrne Foundation does not seem to be about claiming credit or bringing attention to itself," Muirhead said. "[Yet] it supports almost every volunteer endeavor, charitable endeavor and public service endeavor that goes on in the Upper Valley."

Organizations supported by the Byrne Foundation include Upper Valley Habitat for Humanity, Vermont Public Radio, Public Health Council of the Upper Valley, the New Hampshire Music Festival and the Red Cross in the northern New England region, according to their websites. Additionally, they support local community organizations such as a nursery school in Hanover, a coworking and a community theater in Bradford, a makerspace and an arts center in Claremont, a food shelf in Springfield and Northern Stage theater in White River Junction, according to the websites of these groups. 

"It is hard to imagine Dartmouth, Hanover [or] Lebanon functioning without Dorothy's generosity," senior lecturer in economics John Welborn said. "Ask anyone who runs any institution of size in the Upper Valley how they survive, and you will hear Dorothy's name."

NATIONALISM IS JUST IDENTITARIANISM FOR THE RIGHT:

 Far from being the spawn of postmodernism, identity politics dates back over a century and half earlier, to the cultural shifts that created the modern world. As the philosopher Charles Taylor has shown in a wide range of books and essays, identity politics is rooted in a fusion of Romanticism's ethic of authenticity and the Enlightenment notion of popular sovereignty. The goal of identity politics is what Taylor famously dubbed "recognition." Although it is not popular to say it, the oldest form of such politics is not based in race, gender, or sexual orientation, but rather in nationalism.

It is a truism that, going back to prehistory, humans form cultural identities. But as Taylor has observed, something importantly novel happens in the 18th and 19th centuries that helps define the modern age. Identity becomes the site of a unique form of ideological rallying.

Whereas premodern people interpreted their identities as grafted onto the cosmos, emerging from a mythic past and secured by spiritual entities, modern people do not. Rather, part of the pathos of modern identity is that even religious people must self-consciously mobilize their identities within secular historical time -- what Taylor famously calls in A Secular Age the "immanent frame." No earthquakes or ghosts or other such signs and wonders will manifest to secure an identity's place in the political order. One must do it oneself.

Modern people, according to Taylor, feel their identities to be fragile. They must either secure recognition or face possible eradication or repression into an ethnic, religious, gender, or other such ghetto. Recognition, according to Taylor, means not merely tolerating but positively affirming a group's value to a community, its right to a certain standing. For this reason, Taylor warns that the modern turn to identity is "felt existentially." The need for "recognition" in the "face of nonrecognition" stimulates an effort to confirm one's place. To survive, modern identities seek protection from the modern administrative state.

THEY'RE ONLY MUSLIMS THOUGH, NOT HUMANS:

On Monday, Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant announced, "I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed." Chillingly, he continued, "We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly." Reports indicate that Israeli Air Force strikes at the Rafah crossing and Israeli government warnings to Egypt not to allow aid in are preventing the delivery of essentials through the only land border not controlled by Israel.

This order commands the starvation of civilians as a method of warfare, which is a violation of international humanitarian law and a war crime (ICC Statute, article 8(2)(b)(xxv)). It may also satisfy the legal threshold for the crime against humanity of inhumane acts (7(1)(K)) and, depending on what happens from here, other crimes against humanity, such as those relating to killing (murder and extermination) (7(1)(a-b)).

NOT THAT THEY'RE ANY EASIER TO DEFINE...:

John Winthrop envisioned a biblical mission for America as a "Shining city upon a hill," a vision that Paul Miller argues tends toward nationalism rather than patriotism. Public domain image uploaded from the Architect of the Capitol.

Paul Miller argues in his recent book, The Religion of American Greatness: What's Wrong with Christian Nationalism, that American conservatives should reject nationalism because it is idolatrous and illiberal, and that we should instead embrace simple patriotism based on devotion to the American creed.  He identifies nationalism as composed of the following beliefs: "(1) Humanity is divisible into mutually distinct and internally coherent cultural units called 'nations.' (2) Each nation deserves its own state. Political and cultural boundaries should, ideally, align perfectly. (3) Governments have rightful jurisdiction over the cultural life of their nations." 

He argues convincingly that any nationalist project of creating neat lines between cultural groups will be extraordinarily difficult because culture constantly bleeds across state boundaries.  If culture is flexible and hard to define (let alone confine), then efforts to keep national boundaries matched perfectly with cultural boundaries will be chaotic and dangerous. 

...AND CHEAPER...:

WE ARE ALL DESIGNIST:

In 2022, Vopson and his colleague Serban Lepadatu, a physicist at the University of Central Lancashire, introduced a proposed new law of physics called the second law of infodynamics. The name plays on the second law of thermodynamics, a major rule in physics that is based on the concept of entropy, which is the measure of the disorder of a system. The second law of thermodynamics establishes that entropy of the universe either remains constant, or increases, but never decreases, over time. Vopson and Lepadatu found, to their surprise, that the second law of infodynamics is the exact opposite: Entropy in information systems either remains constant, or decreases over time.

Now, Vopson has built on this discovery by applying the second law of infodynamics to a wide variety of information systems, including digital information, genetic information, atomic physics, mathematical symmetries, and cosmology. The results "provide scientific evidence that appears to underpin the simulated universe hypothesis," according to a new study by Vopson in the peer-reviewed journal AIP Physics. 

HIS LIPS WERRE MOVING...:

A former Deutsche Bank executive testified this week that the German financial behemoth only agreed to make massive loans to Donald Trump because of Trump's vast personal fortune. The problem? The bank apparently thought, based at least partly on financial statements provided by Trump, that he was far wealthier than he really was.

THE CONSERVATIVES ARE THE PROGRESSIVES:

STRANGE? IT'S COUNTERPRODUCTIVE:

[I] thought it better to talk to a professional to understand how DEI initiatives actually function. Mandice McAllister is the manager of diversity, equity, and inclusion at Warner Norcross & Judd, a corporate law firm headquartered in Grand Rapids, Michigan. We started out with the question one might naturally ask in such a situation: How is DEI defined by its practitioners?

"It's about fairness," says McAllister, who's managed DEI at the firm for the past five years. "It's about making sure people have fair access to opportunities and advancement. We're Americans; we want things to be fair." When asked what DEI practitioners are specifically looking for, she starts by addressing a common misconception about racial diversity in the workplace: "It's not quotas." Her team is looking for overrepresentation in hiring demographics and disparities in pay equity and promotion rates. To McAllister, meritocracy is what she's looking for--but there's a catch. "We love meritocracy; any organization taking this seriously knows that it's not one."

McAllister and her team have encountered their fair share of pushback at the various organizations for which they've carried out DEI training. When asked what some of the most common criticisms are, she gave me her top three: "We're focusing too much on DEI, we're wasting money and time, and it's racially divisive." And yet, McAllister, notes, "They're often just not interested in sitting down and having a conversation" about why they're so resistant.

One of the most controversial aspects of corporate DEI training is mandating it. For her part, McAllister says her thinking has evolved on the issue. "In 2020, I was pro-mandatory DEI. We had a required awareness training that covered sexual harassment, and it felt weird for one to be mandatory and one to not be." Yet, as time went by, she came to believe it was undercutting her goal: "I don't think making it mandatory is effective. When you try to mandate DEI, and we're going to talk about [workplace racial dynamics], it can inflame racial tensions. You don't have to come--you can decide to miss out on the information we present."

TEACH A MAN ABOUT FISH AND YOU TEACH HIM NOTHING:

How much do we remember of what we learn in school or from conversation? Psychologist Adam Mastroianni says: from little to nothing much. What do our brains retain? Mastroianni argues that often it's a mix of emotions, meanings, and values that end up shaping who we are, what Mastroianni calls "vibes." Listen as he and EconTalk's Russ Roberts discuss the role of vibes in knowledge acquisition and the implications for how we teach, learn, and speak to those around us.

ALL COMEDY IS CONSERVATIVE:

The United States has collected specific intelligence that suggests senior Iranian government officials were caught by surprise by Saturday's bloody attack on Israel by Hamas, according to multiple sources familiar with the intelligence.

SOMETHING THERE IS THAT DOESN'T LOVE A WALL:

The breakdown in Israel's physical defenses was its second big failure. Over the years, Israel has invested billions of dollars in barriers--above and below ground--in addition to sophisticated sensors, cameras, radars, and remote-control guns that were supposed to stop anyone from entering Israel through the fence or via cross-border tunnels.

And yet, Hamas proved these defensive measures were not just penetrable, but nothing more than a nuisance. The terrorist organization released videos showing their gunmen breaking through with ease, cutting holes in the barrier so big that pickup trucks could drive right across. 

DITCH THE ABRAHAM ACCORDS...:

It is ironic that a conference on democracy in the Arab world could not be held in the capital of any Arab country, and was instead held in the capital of a politically-unstable Balkan state that itself remains vulnerable to separatist and ethnic intrigues.

According to the Arab Council, its landmark conference "Democratic Transition in the Arab World: Roadmap" was held in the Bosnian city of Sarajevo because they "couldn't locate any Arab capital willing to host a conference on the future of democracy in the region" and were unable to find "a single Arab city where advocates for democracy from various Arab countries and the Arab diaspora could gather without concerns about visas, entry denials or government pressure."

The council chose Sarajevo "because of its significant symbolism as a city that endured war, conflicts and devastation, and transformed into a symbol of recovery, coexistence and cultural and religious diversity." That history, it said, offers "us, as Arab elites living in the midst of conflict, valuable lessons about post-conflict situations, [and] how to establish peace, reconciliation, transitional justice and nation-building."

The conference was essentially built on the premise of the decline of the Arab Spring revolutions that erupted 12 years ago, a process which saw the deterioration and regression of the affected counties - Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and partly Libya - into authoritarianism and dictatorship.

As the efforts to "turn the page on despotism and corruption and establish true democracy, citizenship and good governance remain relatively ineffective in the face of regime violence and coordination between these regimes," as well the continuation of "support of regional and international powers to maintain the status quo and prevent the spread of a new wave of liberation," the conference aimed to bring democratic opposition forces together, "coordinate their efforts, and collaborate to understand these challenges and develop strategies and policies" to counter their relevant regimes.

THE TIGHTENING NOOSE:

While arguing against the motion by Trump's lawyers to delay the May 20 trial, special counsel Jack Smith's lawyers assured they're ready to go and that such a delay isn't necessary, unsurprisingly. But they also said they are ready to prove something significant that, to this point, has remained shrouded and the subject of much speculation: why Trump allegedly took and kept the documents.

"That the classified materials at issue in this case were taken from the White House and retained at Mar-a-Lago is not in dispute," Smith's office said.

It then added that "what is in dispute is how that occurred, why it occurred, what Trump knew, and what Trump intended in retaining them -- all issues that the Government will prove at trial primarily with unclassified evidence."

The government apparently thinks it knows "what Trump intended" with the documents. And it's signaling that it plans to prove that intent.

WHAT PALESTINIANS?:

This murderous and inhumane attack by Hamas arrived just as it seemed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was about to complete his masterpiece: peace with the Arab world while completely ignoring the Palestinians. This attack has reminded Israelis and the world, for better or for worse, that the Palestinians are still here, and that the century-old conflict here involves them, not the Emiratis or the Saudis.

In his speech at the UN General Assembly two weeks ago, Netanyahu presented a map of "The New Middle East," depicting the State of Israel stretching from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea and building a "corridor of peace and prosperity" with its neighbors across the region, including Saudi Arabia. A Palestinian state, or even the collection of shrunken enclaves that the Palestinian Authority ostensibly controls, does not appear on the map.

Since he was first elected prime minister in 1996, Netanyahu has tried to avoid any negotiations with the Palestinian leadership, instead choosing to bypass it and push it aside. Israel does not need peace with the Palestinians to prosper, Netanyahu repeatedly claimed; its military, economic, and political strength is sufficient without it. The fact that during the years of his rule, especially between 2009 and 2019, Israel experienced economic prosperity and its international status improved, was, in his eyes, proof that he is following the right path.

The Abraham Accords signed with Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, and later also Sudan and Morocco, reinforced this belief conclusively. "For the past 25 years, we have been told repeatedly that peace with other Arab countries will only come after we resolve the conflict with the Palestinians," Netanyahu wrote in an article in Haaretz before the last election. "Contrary to the prevailing position," he continued, "I believe that the road to peace does not go through Ramallah, but bypasses it: instead of the Palestinian tail wagging the Arab world, I argued that peace should begin with Arab countries, which would isolate Palestinian obstinacy." A peace agreement with Saudi Arabia was supposed to be the icing on the "peace for peace" cake that Netanyahu has spent years preparing.

NEVER TIE YOURSELF TO A DROWNING MAN:

Since gaining independence after the Soviet collapse, Armenia has mostly depended on Russian support. But largely due to the 20-month-old war in Ukraine, Moscow's priorities have changed. Both Turkey and Azerbaijan became more important for Moscow, and its failure to adequately support Armenia, particularly by deploying its peacekeeping force to dismantle the blockade, sealed last month's outcome.

Unfortunately for Armenia, Azerbaijan also became more important for the West in light of the Ukraine war. This meant that neither Europe nor the United States was willing to take major risks to restrain Baku.

Lastly, international and regional geopolitical rivalries and Armenia's vulnerable geopolitical position contributed to its ultimate defeat. Among these factors were the larger Russia-West rivalry for control of Eurasia and Washington's 30-year-old efforts to contain and isolate Iran by denying Tehran any role in the emerging post-Cold War economic and security structures of the Southern Caucasus, most importantly in the construction of pipelines to transport oil and gas from Azerbaijan, the Caspian Sea, and Central Asia to Western markets.

To accomplish this aim, the U.S. and Europe effectively assigned a leading role to Turkey in the Caucasus and Central Asia both as a model to be emulated by the Central Asian states and as the West's major regional partner. Perhaps, at the time, Armenia should have seen the writing on the wall and aligned itself more closely with the West while seeking some form of accommodation with Turkey. But given Armenians' history with the Ottomans and Turkey, this was not easy to do, and Yerevan chose to align itself more closely to Russia instead.

Armenia did, in fact, retain ties with the West and even joined NATO's Partnership for Peace program. Yet, despite religious and cultural bonds with the West and a politically active Diaspora community, particularly in France and the U.S., Yerevan's closer ties to Moscow resulted in a lingering Western distrust. And, as time went on, the lure of Azerbaijan's energy resources became too strong for the West to resist.

Surrounded by Turkey and Azerbaijan, Armenia saw Iran with which it built a constructive relationship after independence, as a potential counterweight to Azerbaijan. But Iran, fearful of antagonizing its own Azeri population concentrated in the northwestern part of the country and concerned about antagonizing a fellow Muslim and mostly Shi'a country, was limited in its response. At the same time, Moscow worked to enhance Armenia's dependence on Russia, making it more difficult for Yerevan to develop closer economic and energy ties with Tehran. In short, U.S. containment of Iran and Russia's desire to control Armenia deprived Yerevan of alternative sources of support.

The regional involvement of Israel, the Middle East's most important military power and a sworn enemy of the Islamic Republic, has further complicated matters. As a minority state in the Muslim world that was itself born in part as a result of the Nazi genocide against the Jews in Europe, Israel should theoretically have felt a natural affinity for Armenia. But a desire to expand its diplomatic relations with Muslim states (long before the 2020 Abraham Accords), the lure of energy resources and markets, and its hostility toward Iran have pulled Israel ever closer to Azerbaijan.

THERE IS NO FRANCE:

In a succinct one-page communiqué sent to the daily newspapers Corse-Matin, the militant group noted Corsica has "no common destiny with France."

Largely dormant since 2016, the FLNC was roused into action following Corsican nationalist Yvan Colonna's death last year. While in prison, where he was serving a life sentence for the 1998 murder of prefect Claude Érignac, Colonna--who had fast become a symbol of the armed struggle against the French state--died after being attacked by a fellow inmate.

After Colonna's death, riots broke out in Corsica, which is otherwise known as the Île de Beauté ( 'Island of Beauty'). In an effort to bring a halt to the violence, French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin then pledged that Paris would consider granting the island more autonomy.

While Corsican authorities have gradually accrued more powers over the decades, complete autonomy for the wayward island has long been considered taboo in Paris. The French government, not without cause, fears that a Paris that shows itself too mollified might embolden other regions with separatist inclinations, such as the French Basque Country and Brittany.

THE POPULAR GOVERNMENT OF THE NATION:

An ancient trade and sea port, Gaza has long been part of the geographic region known as Palestine. By the early 20th century, it was mainly inhabited by Muslim and Christian Arabs who lived under Ottoman rule. When Britain took control of Palestine following World War I, intellectuals in Gaza joined the emergent Palestinian national movement.

During the 1948 war that established the state of Israel, the Israeli military bombed 29 villages in southern Palestine, leading tens of thousands of villagers to flee to the Gaza Strip, which was under Egyptian control. Most of them and their descendants remain there today.

Following the 1967 Six-Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbors, the Gaza Strip came under Israeli military occupation. The occupation has resulted in "systematic human rights violations," according to rights group Amnesty International, including forcing people off their land, destroying homes and crushing even nonviolent forms of political dissent.

Palestinians staged two major uprisings, in 1987-1991 and in 2000-2005, hoping to end the occupation and establish an independent Palestinian state.

Hamas, a Palestinian Islamist militant group centered in Gaza, was founded in 1988 to fight against the Israeli occupation. Hamas and other militant groups launched repeated attacks on Israeli targets in Gaza, leading to Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005. In 2006, Palestinian legislative elections were held. Hamas beat its secular rival, Fatah, which had been widely accused of corruption. Elections haven't been held in Gaza since 2006, but polling from March 2023 found that 45% of Gazans would back Hamas should there be a vote, ahead of Fatah at 32%.

THE TIGHTENING NOOSE:

WHY MUST THEY RESIST, DANGIT!:

Though we can't be sure why Hamas chose to launch this attack now, we do know that there are a number of background conditions -- including not just the ongoing occupation but also recent surges of conflict in Jerusalem and the West Bank, a far-right Israeli government, and Israeli-Saudi negotiations about normalizing relations -- that made the situation especially combustible.

And this leads to a second, more fundamental point: The conflict is not, as some have suggested, "stable" -- and likely never can be made so.

So long as Israel rules over the Palestinian population, violence will be ongoing and escalation inevitable. The only real way to prevent this kind of thing from happening is for the two sides to come to a mutually agreeable solution that addresses the root causes of violence.

Except today, any solution seems further away than ever. [...]

As combustible as this setup has been, Israeli leadership saw it as essentially the best arrangement available to them. They believed that they could reduce rocket fire to an acceptable level, relying on the Iron Dome missile defense system. Israeli troops and border security measures could prevent major cross-border raids.

Targeted killings and shows of force could deter Hamas itself from escalating too much, as they'd always bear the brunt of the suffering in a true war. These periodic strikes have been euphemistically termed "mowing the grass," a reference to the idea that the terrorist threat couldn't be eliminated but could be reduced to a tolerable level.

Today's events showed that these assumptions were badly mistaken.

Hamas was not deterred from attacking Israel, nor was it stopped by border security. It penetrated Israeli territory through land, sea, and air; once its forces entered, they rampaged through southern Israel. The streets of Sderot, a border town, are currently a war zone. [....]

Palestinian politics is defined, in large part, by how its leadership responds to Israel's continued occupation -- both its physical presence in the West Bank and its economically devastating blockade of the Gaza Strip. Hamas's strategy to outcompete its rivals, including the Fatah faction currently in charge of the West Bank, is to channel Palestinian rage at their suffering: to be the authentic voice of resistance to Israel and the occupation. The angrier Palestinians are at Israel, the greater Hamas's political incentives for violence.

And the past few months have seen plenty of outrages, ones even more significant than events in Jerusalem. Israel's current hard-right government, dominated by factions that oppose a peace agreement with the Palestinians, has been conducting a de facto annexation of the West Bank. It has turned a blind eye to settler violence against West Bank civilians, including a February rampage in the town of Huwara.

HOW DOES THAT HELP FUEL HYSTERIA?:

[T]he effect of theft on retailers' bottom lines is about the same as it has been for years, according to the latest data released Tuesday in the widely used industry survey conducted by the National Retail Federation.

Total retail shrink grew to more than $112 billion in 2022, up from $93.9 billion the year before, according to the newest National Retail Security Survey. The metric, which accounts for various types of inventory loss including theft, damage and vendor error, generally rises as retail sales climb.

While retailers and the NRF are increasingly saying crime is cutting into profits, losses from internal and external theft last year were largely on par with historical trends. They made up 65% of total shrink, the survey found.

External theft, which includes organized retail crime, was again reported as the largest source of shrink last year at 36.15%, but that was slightly below 37% in 2021. Internal theft, or goods stolen by employees, rose slightly to 28.85% from 28.5% in 2021. Process and control failures and errors made up 27.29% of shrink in 2022, up from 25.7% the year prior.

CHOOSING DEATH:

Americans are more likely to die before age 65 than residents of similar nations, despite living in a country that spends substantially more per person on health care than its peers.

Many of those early deaths can be traced to decisions made years ago by local and state lawmakers over whether to implement cigarette taxes, invest in public health or tighten seat-belt regulations, among other policies, an examination by The Washington Post found. States' politics -- and their resulting policies -- are shaving years off American lives.

Ashtabula's problems stand out compared with two nearby counties -- Erie, Pa., and Chautauqua, N.Y. All three communities, which ring picturesque Lake Erie and are a short drive from each other, have struggled economically in recent decades as industrial jobs withered -- conditions that contribute toward rising midlife mortality, research shows. None is a success story when it comes to health. But Ashtabula residents are much more likely to die young, especially from smoking, diabetes-related complications or motor vehicle accidents, than people living in its sister counties in Pennsylvania and New York, states that have adopted more stringent public health measures.

That pattern held true during the coronavirus pandemic, when Ashtabula residents died of covid at far higher rates than people in Chautauqua and Erie.

The differences around Lake Erie reflect a steady national shift in how public health decisions are being made and who's making them.

State lawmakers gained autonomy over how to spend federal safety net dollars following Republican President Ronald Reagan's push to empower the states in the 1980s. Those investments began to diverge sharply along red and blue lines, with conservative lawmakers often balking at public health initiatives they said cost too much or overstepped. Today, people in the South and Midwest, regions largely controlled by Republican state legislators, have increasingly higher chances of dying prematurely compared with those in the more Democratic Northeast and West, according to The Post's analysis of death rates.

The differences in state policies directly correlate to those years lost, said Jennifer Karas Montez, director of the Center for Aging and Policy Studies at Syracuse University and author of several papers that describe the connection between politics and life expectancy.

Ohio sticks out -- for all the wrong reasons. Roughly 1 in 5 Ohioans will die before they turn 65, according to Montez's analysis using the state's 2019 death rates. The state, whose legislature has been increasingly dominated by Republicans, has plummeted nationally when it comes to life expectancy rates, moving from middle of the pack to the bottom fifth of states during the last 50 years, The Post found. Ohioans have a similar life expectancy to residents of Slovakia and Ecuador, relatively poor countries.

HERE'S AN IDEA...:

US Senate Majority Leader, Chuck Schumer, today called on Chinese President, Xi Jinping, to support Israel after the Palestinian resistance's military operation against the occupation state, adding he was "disappointed" that Beijing showed "no sympathy" for the country over the weekend, Reuters reports.

A VACCINE maga WILL REALLY HATE:

Last week, the World Health Organization gave its recommendation to a vaccine formula called R21/Matrix-M, developed by the University of Oxford and the Serum Institute of India, following preprint publication of Phase 3 results that showed 68 to 75 percent efficacy. (The study has not yet been peer-reviewed.) That comes just three months after the rollout of a separate vaccine called RTS,S/AS01, developed by GlaxoSmithKline, which achieved 55 percent efficacy. The WHO approved that formula in October 2021.

The RTS,S vaccine is beginning to be distributed in 12 African nations. After some regulatory steps, the R21 vaccine is expected to debut next year. Together, they could make an extraordinary difference in the survival of children in tropical countries--though experts say it is far too soon to abandon traditional tools, such as bed nets, that have kept malaria imperfectly suppressed until now.

"Up to 620,000 people die of malaria every year. It's a huge economic burden on countries," says Lisa Stockdale, a senior immunologist in the University of Oxford's Jenner Institute and a member of the R21 research team

MUSLIMS ARE SUPPOSED TO LIE BACK AND ENJOY IT!:

[M]uch is new in the past few months. Iran has emerged from diplomatic isolation, forging a key military alliance with Russia from which it's seeking air defenses, restoring diplomatic ties with Saudi Arabia and pushing its allies to fire missiles at Israel. It is also enriching more and more uranium, including a small amount almost to weapons grade -- while denying any plans for making a bomb.

All of these developments, along with a political crisis in Israel triggered by Netanyahu's attempt to overhaul the judiciary, have pushed the government in Jerusalem into a position from which it's issuing daily warnings and letting everyone know that it would not hesitate to act, even alone, if it felt enough of a threat from Iran.

MAGA'S FAVORITE WAR:

"For following the war in real-time, @WarMonitors & @sentdefender are good," Musk posted on the platform formerly called Twitter on Sunday morning to 150 million follower accounts. That post was viewed 11 million times in three hours, drawing thanks from those two accounts, before Musk deleted it.

Both were among the most important early spreaders of a false claim in May that there had been an explosion near the White House. The Dow Jones Industrial Average stock index briefly dropped 85 points before that story was debunked.

Emerson T. Brooking, a researcher at the Atlantic Council Digital Forensics Research Lab, posted that @sentdefender is an "absolutely poisonous account. regularly posting wrong and unverifiable things ... inserting random editorialization and trying to juice its paid subscriber count."

The War Monitor account has argued with others over Israel and religion, posting a year ago that "the overwhelming majority of people in the media and banks are zionists" and telling a correspondent in June to "go worship a jew lil bro."

Information researchers said that the new conflict was an early test of how the revamped X conveys accurate data during a major crisis, and that the immediate impression was poor.

SOVEREIGNTY AT A MINIMUM:

GEORGE W, REPUBLICAN:

In Washington's time, the one great virtue for which he was known both within the borders of the American republic and across the civilized world was his character.  As Commander-In-Chief of the Continental Army, he refused payment and drew no salary.  As the first President of the United States, he asked simply to be called "Mr. President" and would not stand for any other vain affection to be used for the office he held.  And, most importantly, no man in recorded history had ever been vested with the level of authority and power with which Washington had been granted, who hastened to give such power up at the soonest opportunity.

After defeating the British--considered the greatest military force in the world--Washington held the singular approbation of an entire nation.  He had risen to the pinnacle of political and military success, and, along the way, had been granted the full power by Congress to, for all intents and purposes, run the Army, the Navy, and the very Country as Commander-In-Chief.  His mantle was one of absolute power and absolute affection.  Such was Washington's power and authority that most of Europe assumed he would establish a new American monarchy.  King George III himself commented that if Washington truly did resign his place of power, "He will be the greatest man in the world."

George Washington's ultimate declaration and action shocked the world, in some cases perhaps more than the defeat of Britain at the hands of her fledgling colonies.  With the simple words, "I did not defeat King George III to become King George I," George Washington chose to voluntarily relinquish his commission, withdrew from public life, made no demand for political office (indeed, his only demand was to not be given political office), and quietly returned to his dear Martha, his beloved Mount Vernon, and resumed an unassuming and private life in Virginia. 

PROOF OF CONCEPT:

The results of the universal basic income (UBI) experiment were both counterintuitive and totally expected, given the results of previous experiments like it in which recipients ended up with much better access to stable and safer living arrangements and improved mental health. In Denver, many of them started working full-time, pulling themselves out of spiraling debt, getting housed, and bettering their professional opportunities.

"Many participants reported that they have used the money to pay off debt, repair their car, secure housing, and enroll in a course," Mark Donovan, founder and executive director of the Denver Basic Income Project, told Insider, adding that he was "very encouraged" by the results.

"These are all paths that could eventually lead participants out of poverty and allow them to be less dependent on social support programs," he added.

THAT WAS EASY:

Behind that growth, or perhaps within it, is the expansion of what the IEA calls "mass manufactured technologies": solar photovoltaics, electric cars, residential heat pumps and stationary battery storage. These products benefit from "standardization and short lead times," which means they can be produced by the millions or hundreds of millions, and manufacturers can roll out new and improved versions at a rapid clip.

For instance, between 2015 (when the Paris Agreement was signed) and 2022, solar PV added as much capacity as all of Europe's installed power generation, and heat pump sales increased to a level "approximately equivalent to the entire residential heating capacity in Russia."

These milestones are impressive, but even for those steeped in energy data, they are also a bit airless, without reference to something outside energy itself. We know that mass-manufactured clean energy technologies are growing fast - but how does that compare to other sectors and other periods of time?

This year, the IEA provides some useful analogies, setting EV batteries, solar modules and wind turbines against three innovative technologies of the past: US aircraft produced during the Second World War, the Ford Model T from 1910 to 1920 and gas turbine generators from 1970 to 1980.

THE DESERVEDLY HIGH COST OF RACIST PANDERING:

In slavishly supporting Trump and his Maga - Make America Great Again - supporters, they have empowered a political movement that is increasingly testing the limits of the US democratic experiment.

McCarthy's political trajectory tells the sorry tale. After January 6, McCarthy, who, along with his political colleagues, was forced to hide from the marauding insurrectionists, turned against the man responsible for the day's violence. Privately, he told fellow Republicans: "I've had it with this guy". But within weeks, he travelled to the ex-president's palatial digs in South Florida and, on bended knee, pledged loyalty to the GOP's orange god. He tried to block a bipartisan congressional committee to investigate January 6 and allied himself with conspiracy theorists who continued to spread lies about the 2020 election. Earlier this year, he gave in to Republican extremists and announced an impeachment inquiry of Joe Biden, even though there is no evidence that the president has committed any impeachable offences.

McCarthy, like countless Republican supplicants over the past eight years, realised that his political aspirations were directly tied to his willingness to support Trump and the extremist forces within the party that have rallied around him. In a tale as old as time, he made a deal with the devil, only to be burned by the political forces he'd empowered. Trump's hold over the Republican party is so complete that it borders on the pathological. Since March, he has been indicted four times and charged with 91 separate felonies. Yet his poll numbers among Republicans have dramatically improved. He enjoys a more than 45-point lead in the race for the party's presidential nomination.

YOU'VE GOT MAIL:

In a media landscape so polluted by politicians addicted to cheap thrills (Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Orange Monster) and the pundits addicted to them (Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Steve Bannon), the success of Heather Cox Richardson is much more than a blast of fresh air. It's a bona fide miracle.

The Boston College history professor started writing her newsletter, Letters from an American, almost four years ago. Today her daily dose of common sense about the day's news, wrapped in an elegant package of American history, has a remarkable 1.2 million subscribers, making her the most popular writer on Substack. Not since Edward P Morgan captivated the liberal elite with his nightly 15-minute broadcasts in the 1960s has one pundit been so important to so many progressive Americans at once.

In the age of social media, Richardson's success is counterintuitive. When she was profiled by Ben Smith in the New York Times a couple of years ago, Smith confessed he was so addicted to Twitter he rarely found the time to open her "rich summaries" of the news. When he told Bill Moyers, one of Richardson's earliest promoters, the same thing, the great commentator explained: "You live in a world of thunderstorms, and she watches the waves come in."

A PEOPLE WHO THINK THEMSELF A NATION ARE ONE:

Taiwanese public opinion has shifted such that a majority of the population sees themselves as having a Taiwanese identity, rather than Chinese. A majority would also prefer to maintain the political status quo, rather than unifying with China.

Taiwan's democratization, which began in 1987, provides a stark contrast to the authoritarianism and repression in China.

THE CONSERVATISM OF THE REVOLUTION:

For early Americans, theirs was an ornery, moral republicanism. The American Revolution thus centered around a patrimony, the English constitutional tradition, that both belonged to this people and was that to which they belonged. It entailed preexisting, ancient norms to which colonials saw themselves as bound and was an inheritance they would not be denied. The American Constitution that followed thus reclaimed this heritage and, though a document of order and process, was designed to preserve a "peaceful, low-level conflict" for a government of rival interests and a society of plural moral commitments. The real work of this fundamental law was thus to facilitate the exercise of these commitments at lower levels of social life, close to the lives of the citizens.

IT'S IMPOSSIBLE TO OVERSTATE DEFLATIONARY PRESSURES:

Dr. Lloyd Minor, dean of the Stanford University School of Medicine, last year began playing around with AI-powered chatbots, the computer programs that simulate human conversation. 

"When ChatGPT was introduced in November, I just started using it to see what I could learn from it," says Minor, who is also the university's vice president for medical affairs. "And then when Bard came along, I started using Bard. And what I found was incredible."

In moments, the chatbots were able to spit out answers to questions it would have taken Minor hours to research, convincing him that neural networks and generative AI, which can swiftly uncover difficult-to-discern patterns in massive quantities of data, could revolutionize how physicians are trained, how biomedical research is conducted and how healthcare is delivered. 

A PEOPLE WHO THINK THEMSELF A NATION ARE ONE:

Shortly after the Israeli occupation of the Old City of Jerusalem in 1967, Israeli leaders realized that the one issue they should avoid was turning a political conflict into a religious one. In politics, there is room for give-and-take and a pragmatic approach to issues based on the balance of forces, but in a religious war, there is no room for compromise.

A lot of what we are seeing now is the result of the rise of a nationalist religious government that has taken Israel's political secular majority hostage, allowing religious radicals to call the shots and poison the air with words, actions and pogroms. 

Jewish supremacy has not been restricted to demeaning the Muslim population and forcing Jewish religious nationalist views on the Al-Aqsa complex, the third holiest mosque in Islam. This mindset has filtered into a dangerous anti-Christian indoctrination that has manifested in the last year in increasing attacks against priests, nuns, pilgrims and churches.

Add to all that a total lack of effort to find a political solution that might end the decades-long Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands.

The violence erupted suddenly Saturday morning -- but comes after a year of rising tensions between Israel and Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, which has been under a joint Israeli-Egyptian blockade since 2007. This year alone has seen a spate of deadly attacks in Israel and the Palestinian territories, an escalation that followed Netanyahu's move to cobble together the most far-right government in Israeli history.

Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip and carried out Saturday's attacks, said the operation was in response to the blockade, as well as recent Israeli military raids in the West Bank and violence at al-Aqsa Mosque, a disputed religious site in Jerusalem known to Jews as the Temple Mount.

"Enough is enough," the leader of Hamas's military wing, Mohammed Deif, said in a recorded message Saturday, the Associated Press reported. "Today the people are regaining their revolution."

As of Sept. 19, before Saturday's outbreak of violence, 227 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli troops or settlers this year, according to U.N. figures, with most of those deaths -- 189 -- occurring in the West Bank. At least 29 Israelis, mostly in the West Bank, were also killed this year as of the end of August, according to the same U.N. database.

JUST TAX CARBON AND LET MARKETS DO THE REST:

Zero emissions electric vehicle mandates could achieve the scale-up described in the report, as could mixes of other policies like tax incentives, the firm notes.

As other reports have concluded, current U.S. policies would significantly cut emissions through 2030 and by 2050, but they would not be enough to meet the Biden administration's emissions reduction goals.

But combined with current policies, the ICF proposals could cut 40% of emissions by 2030, and get to nearly 90% of emissions cuts by 2050 relative to 2005 levels, the report states.

The 2050 emissions would not quite hit net zero, in part due to hard-to-abate sectors such as steel, cement manufacturing and aviation. Still, they would get the country closer to that all-important target compared to existing policy paths.

WHEN YOU FEAR THE CONSTITUTION:

If the court were to overturn Chevron, it could have several important legal and practical implications. 

For one, it would shrink the power of federal agencies such as the EPA to set rules and enforce environmental protections. And without the shield of Chevron deference, private businesses might have more power to challenge environmental regulations, potentially putting profits ahead of environmental protection.  

Without Chevron, the ability to interpret and enforce laws effectively could also be hindered, potentially leading to uncertainty, inconsistency and circumvention of vital protections. Limiting the discretion afforded to agencies to reasonably interpret laws could effectively transfer that authority to judges.  

Third, the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law argues that Chevron is vital for maintaining the separation of powers between branches of government and empowering agencies to create and enforce regulations that provide clarity and guidance for individuals, organizations and courts in order to uphold civil rights laws passed by Congress.  

HOW'S THAT DIFFERENT? (profanity alert):

ON MONDAY EVENING, Gabrielle Hanson, a pro-MAGA mayoral candidate in Tennessee, walked through the parking lot of Franklin City Hall, on her way to debate her opponent, incumbent Ken Moore, in what was meant to be little more than a typical campaign stop in the small city of Franklin just south of Nashville.

What made this scene so different was the fact that Hanson was flanked by members of the Tennessee Active Club, an openly neo-Nazi hate group. One of the men escorting Hanson into the building was Sean Kauffmann, the reported leader of the group whom the Southern Poverty Law Center says has been part of the white supremacist movement for years, and was photographed giving a Nazi salute at a Black Lives Matter rally.

BECAUSE FREE ISN'T CHEAP ENOUGH:

A new pilot program in Texas will allow residents who own a Tesla Powerwall and solar panels to sell extra energy they have stored to the grid. 

The program intends to create a giant backup battery for the state, which CleanTechnica described as, "what is effectively a giant distributed battery during times of peak use or emergency blackouts."

A similar program already exists in California and helped to keep electricity running during a record-breaking heat wave last summer.

THE RIVER IS OURS:

In the early 1900s, New Hampshire officials sought to tax businesses and property on the western bank of the Connecticut River, which divides the two states. A full-blown border dispute ensued. 

Vermont filed a lawsuit in 1915, claiming the state line ran down the center of the river. New Hampshire claimed its boundary stretched to the top of the river's westerly bank. Ultimately, a special master appointed by the US Supreme Court decided in 1933 that the boundary was the low water mark on the river's western side (i.e., "the line to which the river recedes at its lowest stage, without reference to extreme droughts").

THE rIGHT IS THE lEFT:

Despite Hayek's insistence that he wasn't a conservative, there was a temperamental conservatism to his free market principles. Despite his reputation as a defender of hierarchies, Burke supported markets and free trade and believed in social and economic change, so long as it came slowly through evolved and bottom-up processes, rather than rapidly through top-down imposition. 

Indeed, there is no contradiction between Burke's traditionalism and his support for markets, or between Hayek's libertarianism and his love of accumulated wisdom which evolves over time. Both a commitment to tradition, and a commitment to liberty, spring from a constrained worldview.

Whenever conservatives attempt to do away with commitment to free enterprise, they run into a problem. The left has its economic philosophy. If the right jettisons capitalism, it does not. We can't go back to mercantilism, and mercantilism never really made sense as an economic philosophy anyway--something which has been understood by economists going back to Smith and Ricardo.

Without a competing economic philosophy, right-wingers begin implicitly or explicitly embracing socialism or progressivism, echoing communism or radicalism, or rehashing leftist critiques of the free market, whether or not they understand themselves to be doing so or not. 

And much as some on the right try to explain that you can have a right-wing socialism, you can't. What happens instead is that those who used to call themselves conservatives move gradually further and further to the left until they have jettisoned their conservatism and embraced progressivism. They set out to move socialism to the right, thinking that they could change socialism. Instead, socialism changes them. 

WHERE DO THOSE COMPARISONS COME FROM?????:

During an interview at Mar-a-Lago for National Pulse, Trump made comments about migrants entering the United States that echoed Hitler's Nazi propaganda against immigrants, Jewish people, and interracial families used to affirm his nationalistic, racial purity beliefs:

"Nobody has any idea where these people are coming from, and we know they come from prisons. We know they come from mental institutions and insane asylums. We know they're terrorists. Nobody has ever seen anything like we're witnessing right now. It is a very sad thing for our country. It's poisoning the blood of our country. It's so bad, and people coming in with disease. People are coming in with every possible thing that you could have."

Trump: "Nobody has any idea where these people are coming from... It's poisoning the blood of our country."

"Poisoning the blood of our country" is a phrase you don't hear often from Republicans who have all but officially adopted great replacement rhetoric. Referring to migrants as poisoning the blood of a nation can be found in Hitler's autobiographical manifesto Mein Kampf.

In Chapter 11 titled, "Nations and Race," Hitler wrote the following:

"All great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died out from blood poisoning."

Hitler painted Jews and migrants to Germany as poisons to the Aryan race and the German country. Trump just echoed his words.

WHY iDENTITY IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH CHRISTIANITY AND REPUBLICANISM:

[In her new book "The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves," Alexandra] Hudson's fundamental insight is that the virtues and values associated with a free and prosperous society rest on an irreplaceable foundation of civility, which is the expression and habit of seeing one another as people deserving of respect and made in the image of God. 

A RACE, NOT A RELIGION?:

An Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics survey published in 2021 found that among Israeli Jews over the age of 20, about 45 percent identified as secular or not religious, while 33% said they practiced "traditional" religious worship. Ultra-Orthodox Jews, known as Haredim in Hebrew, made up 10%.

For Naor Narkis and many other secular Israelis, their Jewish identity is cultural -- defined by the Hebrew tongue and historical experience -- rather than governed by traditional religious worship.

rEALISTS LOVE EVIL:

Certainly, no-one committed to democratic politics could support a settlement of that kind. Small-"d" democrats cannot live with Russian, American, or Chinese spheres of influence since these political formations do not allow for democratic decision-making. They are marked, everywhere, by authoritarianism and oppression, and sooner or later, their subjects will rise in rebellion. And the rebels will look for support from democrats around the world. 

INFORMATION WANTS TO BE FREE:

Jubilee ran from 1942 to 1953 and was aimed as a morale-building service for black troops and aired for military personnel. The show was hosted by Bubbles Whitman, yet was never broadcast at home. Jubilee filled an important gap in the musical history of radio, though it was transcribed for distribution to service personnel and was not heard home. Conceived, at least in part, as a morale-building service for for Negro troops overseas, it presented bands and entertainment that had been given short shrift by the networks. The wartime host, Ernie "Bubbles" Whitman, was a jive-talking bundle of energy. Most of the shows were recorded before live audiences in Los Angeles: either at network studios or in the facilities of such syndicators as C.P. MacGregor and Universal Recorders. The series has emerged as an important piece of black heritage: its War Department status ex-empted the performing artists from the union-mandated recording bans of 1942-43 and 1947-48, and many of the discs contain unique performances. Synopsis from oldtimeradiodownloads.com https://www.oldtimeradiodownloads.com/variety/jubilee

This recording is part of the Old Time Radio collection.

GOTTA GIVE NIETZSCHE SOME CREDIT HERE:

Liberal institutions straightway cease from being liberal, the moment they are soundly established: once this is attained no more grievous and more thorough enemies of freedom exist than liberal institutions! One knows, of course, what they bring about: they undermine the Will to Power, they are the levelling of mountain and valley exalted to a morality, they make people small, cowardly and pleasure--loving,--by means of them the gregarious animal invariably triumphs. Liberalism, or, in plain English, the transformation of mankind into cattle... Freedom is the will to be responsible for ourselves. It is to preserve the distance which separates us from other men. To grow more indifferent to hardship, to severity, to privation, and even to life itself. 

Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

IT'S IMPOSSIBLE TO OVERSTATE DEFLATIONARY PRESSURES:

 Our guest today is Brad Plumer, a New York Times climate reporter specializing in policy and technology efforts to cut carbon dioxide emissions. He's also covered international climate talks and the changing energy landscape. [...]

MOSLEY: You write about this transition to clean energy, that it's happening faster than we might think. Can you paint a picture of your findings?

PLUMER: You know, things are moving at such an astonishing pace. So just a few things - renewable electricity, globally, is now expected to overtake coal by 2025 as the world's largest source of electricity. We keep seeing automakers openly talk about expiration dates for the internal combustion engine, talking about how they're going to make more and more miles go electric.

An astonishing stat was this year, about $1.7 trillion worldwide was going to be invested in clean energy technologies - wind, solar power, electric vehicles, nuclear batteries - compared with $1 trillion on fossil fuels. So the amount of money going into it is just staggering. And we keep seeing these records broken. You know, the International Energy Agency, for years, they would put out this forecast of how much wind, how much solar, how many electric vehicles they expect in the coming years. And every year, it would turn out that they just way underestimated the speed of the transition. So it's something that's caught even the experts who study this for a living by surprise.

Allwright says renewed interest in windships started to gain steam in the early 2010s, and today there are about 30 large commercial ships using one of a number of such technologies. Shipping giants Maersk and NYK are already experimenting with such systems. As many as 20 more are expected in the months ahead. So far, they are mostly "testbeds" to see if the concept is commercially viable.

In one recent trial, the 751-foot bulk carrier Pyxis Ocean operated by Cargill was retrofitted with two rigid sails, known as WindWings, inspired by those found on modern America's Cup racers. The vessel, carrying only water ballast, arrived in Paranaguá, Brazil, last month after an approximately 10,000-nautical-mile journey from Singapore.

The articulated fiberglass and metal wings, which stand 123 feet tall, use the force of the wind to create lift and move the ship forward. The wings can be folded on deck in case of unsuitable wind or heavy weather and while in port, where they would interfere with loading and unloading operations.

John Cooper, the CEO of BAR Technologies, which developed the WindWings, says it took considerable engineering and computer modeling to move the concept from high-tech racing boats to a commercial bulk carrier. On the America's Cup boats, "the hydrodynamic resistance is quite low," he says, compared to the "humongous" dynamic drag of a commercial ship.

On its first voyage last month after it was retrofitted, the 5-year-old Pyxis Ocean hit 16.2 knots (18.6 miles per hour) with the WindWings working in tandem with the ship's engine running at minimum power, Cooper says.

Before departing for Brazil, the ship even sailed briefly without the engine. "We pulled the anchor up, we put the wings up, turned them into their flying shape, and we cruised our way off berth," he says. "The crew were dumbfounded."

Variations on the rigid wing concept are being tried elsewhere. One system, first developed in the 1920s, is a bigger departure. "Rotor sails," or large carbon-fiber cylinders, move a ship along using a principle known as the Magnus effect, an aerodynamic force perpendicular to both the direction of the airstream and the axis of the rotor.

"I would say there's a competition right now," says Matthew Collette, a naval architect who teaches ship design at the University of Michigan. The wings on Pyxis Ocean are "more complicated, [but] potentially more efficient. The rotor sails are very simple, a little bit more limited in what you can do with them."

ALL IN YOUR HEAD:

If you've been told your whole life that you have a penicillin allergy, you'd be forgiven for not giving it a second thought. About one in 10 people in the U.S. report having this condition, making it the most common drug allergy in the country--and seemingly ordinary. In reality, 95 percent of those diagnosed with a penicillin allergy aren't actually allergic.

THE DINOSAURS OPPOSING RENEWABLES ARE OBSOLETE AS WELL:

The cost of solar power has dropped by nearly 90 per cent over the last decade, according to new research, taking it towards a key level that will make fossil fuel-generated power no longer economically viable.

Calculations by Berlin-based Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC) found that the plummeting price of electricity produced by solar panels - down 87 per cent since 2013 - means the transition to renewable energy sources is "cheaper than expected".

The falling costs of batteries and other renewable technologies could also help supercharge the trend towards cleaner energy and meeting climate targets.

AESTHETICS IS ALL:

[K]reeft shows how the pursuit of beauty, truth and goodness--which lead to wisdom--enriches our lives. Beauty, he remarks, pulls us beyond ourselves toward truth and goodness: "Beauty is what first impresses us about truth and goodness. It is their child and their ambassador. It is the quality of all objects of love, as Plato taught in The Symposium. And it gives us an ecstasy, a 'standing outside yourself,' a blissful loss of self-consciousness." 

This point ought not slip us by, for it is not merely good, true and beautiful things that we want, but goodness, truth and beauty as they are in themselves. Aristotle observed that "all men by nature desire to know." Not only do we have a natural curiosity to understand--hence the unremitting stream of interrogation from the toddler who asks, "What's that?"--but no finite thing ever satisfies our never ending quest for knowledge. Whether we study bees, financial markets, sales techniques, woodworking or philosophy itself, we find that the complete understanding we yearn for forever eludes our grasp. Moreover, even when we have had our fill of some subject, do we ever say, "I now have all I ever need to know?" On the contrary, when we reach our capacity in one area we find ourselves sailing toward the next shore of knowledge to colonize, ever searching for the complete act of understanding itself. This is no less true for beauty and goodness. Even the most consuming mystical experience pales in comparison to our unrestricted drive for infinite beauty itself. 

ANGLOSPHERIC EPIC:

Parkman was born in 1823 to a family eminent among Boston's Brahmin class. He was marked out early for a respectable career--perhaps as a Unitarian divine, like his father, or else as an attorney. But the muse of history had other plans: young Francis fell under its spell while a sophomore at Harvard, directing his first, precocious efforts toward a study of the French and Indian War. The ambition grew with the execution: "I enlarged the plan," he recounted in a later letter, "to include the whole course of the conflict between France and England; or, in other words, the history of the American forest. . . . my theme fascinated me, and I was haunted with wilderness images day and night."

The result was one of the most remarkable achievements in American letters. France and England in North America, published in six volumes across the span of three decades, astonished readers with its finely wrought prose and unerring command of historical detail. Beginning in the sixteenth century with his protagonists' first abortive efforts at colonization and ending on the Plains of Abraham 250 years later, Parkman's sprawling narrative elevated the contest for the continent to the level of epic.

Though Parkman published several other works, including a memoir of time spent on the Oregon Trail and a history of Pontiac's Rebellion, it is on France and England that his fame chiefly rests. Reviewers were quick to sense the magnitude of the accomplishment. The Atlantic pronounced it "a book for all mankind and for all time," on par with the works of Herodotus and Thucydides; later admirers included Oliver Wendell Holmes, C. Vann Woodward, and Edmund Wilson. And as recently as 1983, when the Library of America brought out its indispensable two-volume edition, the Washington Post declared it "the greatest history ever written by an American. . . . a thousand years from now, if there are still Americans, Parkman will be their Homer."

IT'S IMPOSSIBLE TO OVERSTATE DEFLATIONARY PRESSURES:

Thirteen US states are now implementing underground thermal energy networks to reduce buildings' carbon emissions as part of a nationwide push to adopt cleaner energy sources.

Thermal energy networks use pipe loops that connect multiple buildings and provide heating and cooling through water-source heat pumps. Geothermal heat is commonly used in these networks, but it is also possible to bring in waste heat from other buildings through the sewer system. 

When installed, these networks can provide efficient, fossil fuel-free heating and cooling to commercial and residential buildings. Thanks to legislative backing and widespread support from utility companies and labor unions they're likely to become an increasingly significant part of the future energy mix in the US.  

A RACE, NOT A RELIGION?:

As the legend goes, in the 16th century Prague's Jewish ghetto was under assault. Hoping to protect his people from slaughter, a rabbi conjured a new entity. Using his hands, he slowly shaped the figure of a man from clay. The rabbi then blew into the nostrils of his creation and whispered the name of God into its ear. Thus animated, the intended savior became a monster, embarking on a furious rampage that killed everyone in sight. This creature is known in Jewish folklore as the golem.

 

To borrow this metaphor of unintended dark outcomes, Israel can now be described as under assault from a new golem, created by radical religious and ultranationalist zealots to battle imagined enemies. Having attained unfettered power, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition of four political parties (Likud, the Religious Zionist Alliance, United Torah Judaism and Shas) purports to rescue Israel from globalist elites, mainstream secular Jews and those they regard as "violent Arabs."

The parties seek their country's "salvation" by stripping Israel's judiciary of its power, destroying the checks and balances needed to sustain liberal democracy, and allowing the reimposition of some religious laws, from bans on leavened bread in hospitals during Passover to discrimination against women. They also seem poised to rub out the so-called "Green Line" marking the 1967 boundary between Israel and the West Bank, undertaking a de jure territorial expansion by annexing portions of occupied Palestinian land.

HIS IS A TRAGEDY, NOT A COMEDY:

Don Quixote proves to be a man for whom reading stories of chivalry is insufficient. He wants to experience firsthand the medieval chivalric code, delighting in the fruits of fidelity to its principles. Don Quixote is seeking a true king capable of rewarding his valiant deeds. The rest no longer matters. Unlike Saint Ignatius of Loyola, who renounced worldly honors to become a 'knight' of the Militia Christi, the aged hidalgo commits himself decisively to deeds of arms. These deeds are more real to him than the illusory reality of a declining world. Paradoxically, through our hero, one of the fundamental archetypes of Christianity is revealed to us: chivalry concealed beneath a cloak of humility.

Appearing mad in a world that no longer appreciates nobility, holy knights, like those for whom the great Bernard of Clairvaux wrote in De laude novae militiae, remain ever-present. They will never disappear, supported by the divine glory of the crucified Christ. Tasting the bitterness of an age that extolled Chivalric virtues only when they were confined to the pages of adventure books, Cervantes accurately described the condition of the hidden knight. Practicing Christian virtues, ridiculed precisely for this reason, he becomes a valiant fighter against windmills. Why does this happen? Because, as is evident from the teachings of Saint Paul, there exists an unavoidable conflict between "divine wisdom" and "worldly wisdom." And Don Quixote ardently loves only divine wisdom. Tirelessly pursuing his ideal, he sees ladies, knights, princes, giants, and he sees justice where there are only harlots, greedy innkeepers, thieves, lies, and hypocrisy. A miracle occurs before the astonished eyes of the reader: the "madman" discovers what he is seeking! And this discovery, it turns out, remains perfectly possible anytime, anywhere.

We find ourselves, today, in a situation not dissimilar to that of the early Christians. Practicing virtues and battling unruly passions propel us into an unseen war fought "not against flesh and blood; but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places" (Ephesians 6:12). This struggle takes place in the core of our being. Anticipating this phenomenon of internal chivalry, accompanied by the ridicule that results from habitually practicing its principles, Cervantes deserves credit for having described, in terms understandable to all, the condition of any Christian who opposes the cultural models of a corrupt and corrupting world.

If anyone wishes to conquer the giants of their own vices, they must, like Don Quixote, take up the lance, the shield, draw down the visor, and mount Rocinante. 

HE'S MAGA:

Kennedy's support already comes more from right-leaning Americans than from Democrats, and that would only intensify if he took on the Libertarian label.

Democrats are understandably nervous about their incumbent. And they should be. But Kennedy's candidacy, which was succored by mischief-making MAGA Republicans as a spoiler in the Democratic primaries, seems very much more likely to bite the hands that fed it than to harm Biden in a rematch with Trump.

BUT NOT THE LAST:

A group of officers, enraged at the perceived shameful treatment of the army by Congress, began preparing ways to find redress. Without informing the army's high command, they circulated an unsigned letter urging a meeting at Newburgh in March 1783, ostensibly to discuss a range of possibilities including marching on Congress. George Washington caught wind of the meeting, which he called irregular and disorderly. He ordered the officers to a second meeting, overseen by a high-ranking officer. He also ordered a written report of the meeting, hinting that he himself would not attend.

When the second meeting occurred on March 15, the resentful and fuming officers were stunned when Washington himself appeared and asked to speak. Washington understood the officers' frustrations but rebuked any attempt to coerce the civilian government with military force. Anyone "who wickedly attempts to open the floodgates of civil discord and deluge our rising empire in blood" should, he demanded, be opposed by the army. Coups, Washington made clear, would not only never be instigated by his army, they would also be opposed by the army. The civilian government of the United States must be protected, even when it acted inconsistently or imprudently.

After speaking, Washington took a letter out from a member of Congress of his pocket. He looked at it for a moment and held it uneasily. Slowly, he pulled his reading glasses from the pocket and haltingly put them on. Most of the soldiers had never seen Washington wear them. "Gentlemen," Washington said gently, "you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for I have not only grown gray but almost blind in the service of my country." The sight of a greying and aging Washington--loyal to the government as ever--shamed the conspirators, many of whom began to openly weep. The Newburgh Conspiracy was dead, and so was the first major threat to civilian government in the new republic.

ABOVE AVERAGE IS OVER:

Though robo-ump is sold as a more accurate future through technology, it's also another paradoxically progressive change that sets out to restore the game to the more action-packed glory of yesteryear. The MLB league official says they hope that a shrunken, more consistent zone will decrease strikeouts and walks and will lead to more balls in play. Unfortunately, so far this year, Hawk-Eye's ABS has added many more walks than the number of strikeouts it has removed. Those results are disappointing, the league official tells me, to say the least.

Founded by Paul Hawkins, who has a doctorate in artificial intelligence, in 2001 -- the same year the iPod arrived -- Hawk-Eye was originally conceived as an optical-tracking tool to enhance TV sports coverage. The first broadcast partner used it for cricket. But then, in 2006, Hawk-Eye became an official replay tool used by the tennis judges. Sony bought the company in 2011 for an undisclosed sum. Soon, English Premier League soccer, NASCAR, the Olympics, the Rugby World Cup, and golf's European Tour were using Hawk-Eye in broadcasts and to increase the accuracy of human refs. Hawk-Eye had 12 cameras perched in all 30 MLB stadiums by opening day 2020, marking a watershed for the American market. The NFL began using Hawk-Eye to aid with replays the next year, and the NBA just signed a multiyear deal with Hawk-Eye this March.

Umpires 2

Hawk-Eye's "average error is about 3 millimeters, less than the width of an M&M," says Goltz. That level of accuracy has already leapfrogged humanity's limits. Tyler Le/Insider

As I connect with Justin Goltz, Hawk-Eye North America's commercial director, he can't get his camera working on Zoom. A former college pitcher, Goltz says he's sure he'd be against ABS if he still played, because "the ambiguity of the strike zone probably works more in your favor" as a young pitcher without pinpoint control. "But as someone who now understands the nuances of the business of sports and baseball and the way they're trending with legalized gambling and betting and objectivity playing a big part in making the game as fair and as accurate as possible, I'm a firm believer that it's a step in the right direction," he says. (The MLB league official tells me that legalized gambling has not been a factor in implementing ABS.) 

"The technology is there," Goltz adds, explaining the intricacies of Hawk-Eye's ball-tracking system, which uses high-performance cameras to triangulate an object's trajectory. "Our average error is about 3 millimeters, less than the width of an M&M." That level of accuracy has already leapfrogged humanity's limits. But even Goltz acknowledges there's still the issue of what zone all his company's technology is legislating.

"There are additional layers to the problem that need to be solved," he says. "How do you define the strike zone? Is it on a per-player basis? Is it a standard strike zone? Is it an oval-shaped strike zone? Is it a square-shaped strike zone?" Goltz explains that MLB is taking the lead in answering those subjective questions; Hawk-Eye just delivers the data.

THEY ARE OUR CROSS-ATLANTIC TO BEAR:

The first feature to note of transatlantic relations is that they have always consisted of a love-hate relationship. However the persistence of anti-American sentiment in parts of European society long after the Second World War is alarming for all supporters of a values-based relationship between the United States and Europe. More disturbingly, these continent-wide attitudes can be found across a broad range of the political spectrum, not only at the radical political fringes.

Mistrust and outright repudiation of the American political and socioeconomic systems are often built on an appalling lack of profound knowledge. For generations of Europeans, the United States has always been the projection screen of desires as well as hate, saying more about Europe's own internal tensions than reflecting American reality.

Europe's complicated views of freedom are crucial in explaining this unpleasant truth. Largely forgotten or taken for granted are the contributions of America's thinkers, politicians, and its people in creating, restoring, and maintaining free and open societies in Europe. 

IDEOLOGY IS UGLY:

The attempted suicide of Western classical music has failed. The patient is recovering, no thanks to the efforts of music's Dr. Kevorkian, Arnold Schoenberg, whose cure, the imposition of a totalitarian atonality, was worse than the disease--the supposed exhaustion of the tonal resources of music. Schoenberg's vaunted mission to "emancipate dissonance" by denying that tonality exists in Nature led to the successive losses of tonality, melody, harmony, and rhythm.

Music went out of the realm of Nature and into abstract, ideological systems. Thus we were given a secondhand or ersatz reality in music that operated according to its own self-invented and independent rules divorced from the very nature of sound. Not surprisingly, these systems, including Schoenberg's twelve-tone method of mandatory atonality, broke down. The systematic fragmentation of music was the logical working out of the premise that music is not governed by mathematical relationships and laws that inhere in the structure of a hierarchical and ordered universe but is wholly constructed by man and therefore essentially without limits or definition.

ONLY THE LOGOS:

Apart from the Finnish mythological figures of the Kalevala with whom Sibelius deals in his tone poems, there are no people in his music. This not so much limits Sibelius's music as defines it. Imagine one of the breathtaking nature portraits from the Hudson River Valley School of painting that depicts a stupendous mountain range. It matters very much if there are tiny human figures in the foreground of the painting. Such figures may provide a sense of scale, but an audience inside the painting also changes the relationship of what is depicted to the audience outside. They are distracted from the main event. With Sibelius, there are no people interposing themselves between what he portrays and you, the listener. There is nothing there to distract from the solitary grandeur and mystery of nature. Its impact is direct and overwhelming.

Because he composed such stirring tonal music with nature as its subject, Sibelius has often, and I believe mistakenly, been labeled a Romantic. He is certainly not one in the conventional sense. The late Glenn Gould described Sibelius's music as "passionate but anti-sensuous." Sibelius is uninterested in letting us know how he feels about the mountain. He wants to show the mountain itself. His music is not autobiographical. The sensibility behind, for example, Richard Strauss's Ein Heldenleben (A Hero's Life) is completely foreign to him. So is Mahler's self-indulgence. If anything, Sibelius's music was, in part, a reaction against this kind of late Romanticism. Sibelius's attitude toward nature is worth exploring because it may have something to do with the ups and downs of his reputation.

Sibelius said, "There is music in the whole universe." He believed in the "Music of the Spheres," the classical Greek view that held that the mathematical relationships among the heavenly bodies are the same as those of music. The heavens are literally harmonious. He said, "I believe that there are musical notes and harmonies on all planets." This included planet earth. Sibelius's experience of the world was essentially musical. He was one of those extraordinary individuals gifted with perfect pitch. He not only noted the key and character in which various birds sang, but experienced the most commonplace, everyday sounds in musical terms. Once, when a repairman was hammering away on the veranda, Sibelius observed, "The man is all the time hitting a g that is about a quarter-tone out of tune." Sibelius also experienced colors musically, and often whole visual scenes resolved themselves into musical forms for him. As a young boy, he sat at the piano and tried to play the colors he saw in the parlor carpet. His favorite, a clear green, he said, was "somewhere between d and e flat." When he first heard the sounds of orchestral instruments, they seemed at once familiar to him. Sibelius never wrote in short score. He heard his music orchestrally; each sound came to him instrumentally--as it were, without intermediaries.

Sibelius saw the larger significance of the musical harmony of the world, and it is the key to the meaning and power of his music. One day, Sibelius spoke to his personal secretary Santeri Levas about the astonishing sense of law in the universe, and an almost inconceivable harmony that makes every human effort seem tiny and senseless. This realization did not induce in him a sense of futility, but of humility. "That," Sibelius concluded, "is what I call God."

Though Sibelius was not religious in a conventional sense, he was a deep believer. "The essence of man's being," he said, "is his striving after God." He saw art as hieratic and composition as a vocation. In words that could hardly go more directly to the heart of the matter, he said, "It [composition] is brought to life by means of the Logos, the divine in art. That is the only thing that really has significance."

WASTED:

Usually Monk walked. He ambled across the city on feet as light as a tap-dancer. He weaved his way down block after block, whistling, humming, snapping his fingers. Monk liked to take different routes, but most of them led eventually to the Hudson River, where the large man in the strange hat would lean on the railing and watch the lights of the city dance on the black water.

Wordsworth said that many of his poems collected in the Lyrical Ballads were written to the rhythms of his long walks across the hills of the Lake District.  Thelonious Monk composed some the most revolutionary music of the 20th century out on the streets of Manhattan, rambling down the sidewalks or staring out at the sluggish river. Those fresh new sounds just flowed through his head as he prowled the city: "Criss Cross," "Coming on the Hudson," "Brilliant Corners," "Manhattan Moods."

But on a steamy August night in 1951 Monk missed his evening walk. Instead he was sitting in a car outside his mother's house with his friend Bud Powell. Monk's mother, Miss Barbara, had cancer and he had been staying with her when Powell, the tormented genius, dropped over with a couple of his friends.

Powell was agitated, manic, talking smack. He skittered around the kitchen, bellowing a stream of invective. Monk wanted to calm Powell down. Bud hadn't been the same since that night in Philadelphia when a racist cop split his head open with a truncheon. He was a little off now, a little paranoid, a little skittish. Powell had grown so unpredictable that even his old friend Charlie Parker refused to play with him anymore, telling Miles Davis: "Bud's even crazier than me!"

More and more, Powell needed booze and junk just to steady his hands, to force himself on stage, to dull the painful throb in his head.  Sometimes the sound of Monk's voice could ease him, settle him back into a groove. On this fateful night, Monk suggested they go out in the car to talk so that his mother and young son could sleep.

A few minutes later two New York City cops approached the car, swinging nightsticks. They were from the narcotics squad, out to harass the local junkies. When Powell saw the cops flash their badges, he panicked. He franticly threw a small sleeve of heroin toward the window. He missed. The packet landed at Monk's feet. The cops picked up the envelope, noticed the drug residue and promptly arrested everyone in the car on charges of narcotics possession.

At the station, Monk denied that the heroin was his and said he didn't know who it belonged to. During his interrogation he repeatedly refused to implicate Powell, who had been strapped into a straightjacket and sent to the psych ward at Bellevue. Monk would never snitch out Powell. Seven years older than Powell, Monk had been his mentor, his friend, his nurse. He knew Powell was too frail to handle prison and  later said he wasn't about to "drag him down."

FROM THE PARTICULAR TO THE GENERAL(S):

By the beginning of the 1950s, with the completion of Shiloh, Foote had written four novels and a collection of short stories, all of which did moderately well in sales and reviews. In late 1951 he felt ready to tackle what he planned in his diary to be a tremendous, multigenerational novel about a Delta family (gentiles) to eclipse Faulkner's own sagas. In a letter to Walker Percy on Dec. 31, he crowed, "I'm among the greatest American writers of all time ... and at the age of thirty-five." The next New Year, after 12 months of uninterrupted writer's block, he confided to his diary, "Bad situation--the kind that leads to suicide with some people." His novel--Two Gates to the City--was going nowhere; another marriage had failed; he was broke.

When a publisher, appreciating the historian's art on display in Shiloh, offered Foote a contract for what was supposed to be a short nonfiction overview of the Civil War, he had little choice but to accept, although it soon became not a quick cash-grab but his 3,000-page, two-decades-long masterpiece, the real work of his life.

Faulkner had been in Foote's way; Proust was the light to his path. He had read In Search of Lost Time several times through before beginning the Civil War trilogy, and it was from Proust he learned the abilities essential to such a long, digressive narrative--which turns apparently meandering and spontaneous but moves only with its author's deliberate, far-seeing and much-remembering care--to its long, digressive sentences, and to the art of characterization by which Foote, following Proust, would supply a telling detail at just the right moment to surprisingly revise the reader's understanding. Here he added something new to his acquired mastery in moving among different perspectives, and became, albeit with found rather than invented characters, a master novelist, one who lets personalities shine out in action and be mirrored in the reactions of others. Foote does this even for the smallest characters who appear only briefly to receive a command or charge across a field.

Volume 3 of the trilogy, for example, begins with Grant, haggard, thin, fairly ugly, unphotographed and thus unfamiliar, visually, to the public, upon his arrival in Washington to receive command of the eastern theater:

Late afternoon of a raw, gusty day in early spring--March 8, a Tuesday, 1864--the desk clerk at Willard's Hotel, two blocks down Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House, glanced up to find an officer accompanied by a boy of thirteen facing him across the polished oak of the registration counter and inquiring whether he could get a room ... Discerning so much of this as he considered worth his time, together perhaps with the bystander's added observation that the applicant had 'rather the look of a man who did, or once did, take a little too much to drink, the clerk was no more awed by the stranger's rank than he was attracted by his aspect. This was, after all, the best known hostelry in Washington. There had been by now close to five hundred Union generals, and of these the great majority ... had checked in and out of Willard's ... The desk clerk ... still maintaining the accustomed, condescending air he was about to lose in shock when he read what the weathered applicant had written: 'U.S. Grant & Son--Galena, Illinois'

This extract condenses the opening paragraph, which occupies more than a full page, wherein Grant's taking command, with all its consequences, is introduced first through the snobbery of character so minor as to be otherwise invisible to history. This is Proust at war.