wsbgnl

on the one hand we should want people to change their mind so we can stop what's happening now. On the other hand there need to be costs for the ghoulish behavior that got us here, as these people absolutely will do this again given half a chance

Secretary Marco Rubio Department of State 2201 C Street NW Washington, DC 20520 Dear Secretary Rubio: The entire Palestinian population of Gaza, over 2 million people, faces imminent starvation and famine as a direct result of Israel’s blockade of the territory, preventing nearly all food and humanitarian aid from entry.1 This follows over 600 days of bombardment, forced displacement, the killing of over 54,000 people, and nearly two decades of siege. As we write this letter, a brave group of international volunteers are standing up for what is right and sailing to deliver lifesaving aid to Palestinians in Gaza. The Madleen, a civilian ship and part of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla crewed by 12 volunteers from seven countries, set sail from Sicily to Gaza on June 1st, carrying desperately needed aid, including medical supplies, baby formula, rice, and flour. It is expected to arrive in Gaza in only a few days; however, the threat of Israeli state violence hangs over its journey. We write to urge you to do everything in your power to ensure the safety of the ship and its unarmed, civilian passengers and the success of their peaceful, humanitarian mission to deliver lifesaving aid. Our concern for their safety stems from the Israeli government’s history of using lethal military force to prevent similar aid ships from arriving in Gaza. In 2010, Israeli commandos conducted a deadly raid on the Mavi Marmara, killing nine activists—including an American —with a tenth later dying from injuries received during the attack.2 Last month, the Freedom Flotilla ship Conscience was attacked in international waters with armed drones, breaching its hull and igniting it in flames.3 Already in the Madleen’s case, an Israeli military spokesperson has already threatened that the “IDF is prepared to operate on all fronts, including in the maritime arena” and will “act accordingly.”4 We must be clear: any attack on the Madleen or its civilian crew is a clear and blatant violation of intern…

Israel to “refrain from any act of hostility” against the Madleen and its passengers.5 This is a serious matter, and we are deeply disturbed by U.S. elected officials making threatening “jokes” about violence against the civilians onboard.6 We call on you to monitor the Madleen’s journey and deter any such hostile actions. Above all else, we urge you to address the issue at the root of this voyage: the brutal Israeli blockade and mass starvation of the Palestinian population of Gaza. We demand an immediate end to the blockade, an immediate resumption of unfettered humanitarian aid entry into Gaza, and an immediate and lasting ceasefire. While the Trump administration and the international community fail to use their immense leverage to end this blockade, the activists on board the Madleen are an example of humanitarianism and solidarity. They deserve safety, as does the besieged population of Gaza.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib leads a new letter to the Trump admin demanding safe passage for the Gaza Freedom Flotilla to deliver aid & food to Gaza.

Signed by Summer Lee, Chuy Garcia, Pramila Jayapal, AOC, Mark Pocan, Greg Casar, Delia Ramirez, Al Green, Ayanna Pressley, and Ilhan Omar.

A YIMBY Theory of Power Pro-housing advocates offer an analysis of class relations that is more sophisticated and has more explanatory power than the one held by many critics of the “abundance agenda.”

One thought I keep coming back to is how much clearer our housing debates could be without the YIMBY/NIMBY terms. “Do you support public housing?” is a much easier debate for me to follow (even with all its intricacies) than “are you a left-YIMBY, center-YIMBY, right-YIMBY or anti-YIMBY?”

Text: The new vice provost, appointed by Columbia, will review curriculum, nontenure faculty hiring and leadership "to ensure the educational offerings are comprehensive and balanced."

We need a name for this person. The vice provost for authoritarian compliance?

This is the equivalent of saying don’t get mad the firefighters aren’t turning on the hoses because the arsonists are the problem.

I follow French politics a lot, as many of you know. Any effort for mass layoffs of public sector employees there would create such huge strikes and marches, the level of disruption and paralysis would be biblical.

American political observers now seem to be realizing something that was true all along: the “institutional” constraints on the executive were a series of doors pretending to be walls. When all else fails, constraint will hinge on social and economic disruption.

How Elon Musk plans to upend NASA The SpaceX CEO wants to overhaul the space agency for his company’s benefit

DOGE is tearing its way through the US government, and NASA will not be spared.

Elon Musk says he wants the agency to focus on Mars, but more than anything he wants to sideline traditional aerospace contractors so SpaceX gets even more money and power over the US space program.

e.g. Many unemployed low wage workers briefly experienced a livable income. Many other workers were promised compensation for working through the pandemic that never came. The US significantly expanded the welfare state and then yanked it away, resulting in spike in poverty, hunger and homelessness.

I mean, did anything else happen in 2020-2021 that might have caused a paradigm shift in how people evaluate their satisfaction with current economic conditions?

It reminds me of moms I interviewed who stopped following the news once they sent their kids back to in-person school after Covid closures. They told me "I'm putting my head in the sand." They didn't want to know what was happening because knowing meant having to do something with that knowledge.

My piece on the squandering of the opportunity to re-set the Democratic Party’s economic policy ideology is out at Boston Review. It’s obvious now that the only chance of defeating Trumpism would have been a full-throated confrontation with plutocracy.
/1

There's another piece here for someone who had more closely followed the Gaza protests—how the combined city/feds/university repression and punishment of those protests, all that police did with most Democrats' blessing last spring and summer, has shaped what protest looks like now in the US.

The #Resistance Lives. It Just Looks Different This Time. Defying mainstream media narratives about the exhausted opposition, protests are picking up in D.C. and across the country, led by protesters who never hung up their placards to begin with.

A quick hit from me after the protests over the last week, despite all the claims that people were too exhausted to protest and were sitting Trump II out. It's true, much of the Trump "resistance" appeared to have gone home when Biden was elected. But plenty of people never left the fight:

I wince at people calling every single thing a distraction. Even if it is a distraction it’s still

1) a thing that is actually happening

2) a thing that is hurting people

3) a thing that also needs to be fought and illuminated

“It’s just a distraction”feels so dismissive.

My phone has been blowing up since yesterday. Workers at the DOL, OSHA, and so many other agencies are scared, disgusted, and absolutely *furious* at the orders they’re being given (in the DOL’s case, by Acting Secretary of Labor Vince Micone) to comply with Elon Musk’s fascist takeover.

“So many of these things are so wildly illegal that I think they’re playing a quantity game and assuming the system can’t react to all this illegality at once,” said David Super, an administrative law professor at Georgetown Law School.

Thanks!

Not sure if they did everything right and got no credit rather than did many things right and benefited from that, and would have benefited more if they had aggressively and publicly countered profiteering and did more to financially assist struggling households.

Thanks!

It would be helpful to present union wages in cumulative terms relative to inflation and nonunion wages, to emphasize the need to catch up as well as get ahead

web.archive.org/web/20230929...

fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1aIQo