“We can thus see Xi Jinping as both a heir to Lenin’s New Economic Policy and in much more contemporary terms as a populist response to the excesses of the new rich.” #BrankoMilanovic https://branko2f7.substack.com/p/state-capitalism-one-hundred-years

the tagline for the program offering free peep shows to snitches, “if you say something, see something!”

@nuala happy birthday! 🎉🎊🎁

“I suppose that it is kind of you to celebrate our martyrdom.”

i'm pretty sure full KYC-ed legal names have been pilfered from bittrex, which are used to generate scam e-mails with a bit of verisimilitude.

if you click the link, a site comes up which will smoothly connect to a crypto wallet and ask it to sign a message presented only as a bunch of hex. i, um, chose not to.

not many crypto enthusiasts on my mastodon timeline, but if you ever had a bittrex account, be careful out there. https://www.reddit.com/r/Bittrex/comments/17qaf36/is_this_email_a_scam_picture_below/

[new draft post] The bad war, like all the wars https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2023/11/07/the-bad-war-like-all-the-wars/index.html

ornamental soap is an attractive nuisance.

it makes more sense once you realize “moms for liberty” is kind of the opposite of “liberty for moms”.

@mybarkingdogs there might be some radicalisms with which i have some sympathy. but on Israel/Palestine, each radicalism I think is rancid.

i agree, we need the dull, practical work of arranging coexistence, letting passions cool, and detoxifying the discourse from the dreams of eliminationists masquerading as idealists on either side.

This Israel-sympathetic reading of the Israel/Palestine conflict (that writes Palestinians as victims of larger forces than themselves that are decidedly not Israel) is worth a careful read.

by #ShanyMor https://mosaicmagazine.com/essay/israel-zionism/2023/11/ecstasy-and-amnesia-in-the-gaza-strip/

@Alon @BenRossTransit @phillmv @stevenbodzin earlier in the conflict, when the US first hindered fighter jet deliveries, escalation risks were clearly top-of-mind. it’s the awful stability of the conflict that has made escalation seem like a non- or merely pretextual concern now.

@Alon @BenRossTransit @phillmv @stevenbodzin maybe so. i guess i’d give a bit more benefit of the doubt that (at least US) blob caution had something to do with fears about uncontrolled escalation (which i very much felt and shared). but here we are.

@Alon @BenRossTransit @phillmv @stevenbodzin there’s a lot going on in the world. better an armed ukraine than a defeated one. but ukraine like gaza is a place where the urgent task is to find some alternative means of competing or adjudicating a situation that seems now to be destructively entrenched. we need to create alternatives that are neither capitulation nor continued destruction.

@BenRossTransit @Alon @phillmv @stevenbodzin yes. Israel should be Westphalian with respect to its neighbors, but a form of constructive meddling consistent with Westphalianism is simply the power of example, and Israel under Netanyahu has been deeply deficient in that regard.

@Alon @phillmv @BenRossTransit @stevenbodzin Pakistan is one case, and I agree its position and relationship viz China and India render it largely insensitive to what goes on in Israel/Palestine. But there is a continuity of history and sentiment across muslims in MENA west of Persia that it is unwise simply to write off, even if its current, brittle governing structures can be coopted.

@Alon @phillmv @BenRossTransit @stevenbodzin there are publics whose perceptions and understandings of the world are likely to condition what sorts of political arrangements are durable, or at least functional if they endure, and which are not. pursuing strategic interests by treating the world as a chessboard of status quo states is inadequate.

@Alon @phillmv @BenRossTransit @stevenbodzin the west has a strong interest in not simply ceding the entire muslim world to increasingly adversarial strategic competitors.

@Alon @phillmv @BenRossTransit @stevenbodzin yes. all of which is terrible, because the west has an incredibly urgent strategic interest in emphasizing common interests and possibilities rather than conflict with the third world right now. besides all humanitarian and israel/palestine specific considerations, however fair or unfair, ethical or not, those larger strategic concerns need to be given some weight. a great deal in my view.

@Alon @phillmv @BenRossTransit @stevenbodzin No argument. The conversation around “genocide” is mostly terrible and dumb. Like so much of the mythologized aftermath of WWII, it has become a battleground for rhetorical mischief rather than a foundation for ethical action. Perceptions of Israel’s militarism may well be disproportionate. That’s cultivated by a variety of parties (not just BLM), with advantages and disadvantages for Israel.

@Alon @phillmv @BenRossTransit @stevenbodzin it is very true that there are inconsistent standards in how, from whom, upon whom the “global community” perceives scale of casualty and atrocity. i’m not sure where you go with that, though. differential enforcement is an injustice in itself, but it doesn’t absolve any party of the underlying acts.