Photo: Harrowgate Valley Gardens by Cliff Ounsley
Harold Meyerson at The American Prospect, "New Israeli Law: Hangings for Palestinians, but No Noose for Jews: Today on TAP: A Palestinian murder of a Jew is a capital offense; it's not for a Jewish murder of a Palestinian. Let's give credit where credit is due. Anyone who argues that Zionism is racism owes a profound debt to the Israeli right, which works furiously to provide such critics with a constant stream of talking points. The most recent and glaring piece of evidence came yesterday, when the Knesset's far-right majority approved a new law that makes Palestinians convicted of killing Israeli Jews subject to execution, while exempting Israeli Jews convicted of killing Palestinians from the hangman's noose. (That's not a figure of speech; the law specifies hanging as the means of execution.)"
Feminist writer Kylie Cheung explores the strange case of "centrists" suddenly rising up against our greatest enemy, a left-wing podcaster who most people have never heard of, in "The liberal Zionists equating support for Palestine with rape apologia: Dana Bash claimed 'Hasan Piker is excusing sexual violence' because he rightly questioned Zionist propaganda. This line of attack is all that supporters of Israel's genocide have left. Last week, I wrote about the lunacy of centrist Democrats' meltdown over Hasan Piker, igniting a coordinated smear campaign to frame him as not just anti-Semitic but 'anti-women.' At first I wasn't sure what to make of the nebulous 'anti-women' accusation, but I've since learned it's not just the 'anti-Semitism' smear—the 'anti-women' claim also relates to Piker's criticisms of Israel. At issue are his correct statements that 'if' Palestinian fighters perpetrated acts of sexual violence on October 7, this wouldn't justify genocide and collective punishment against the population of Gaza"
Good video interview by Current Affairs editor Nathan Robinson of Citations Needed's Adam Johnson on how "Liberal Media Helped Destroy Gaza," about his new book, How to Sell a Genocide: The Media's Complicity in the Destruction of Gaza — well worth a listen if you have an hour to spare, especially if you've heard the propaganda about how mean the media is to Israel.
"FBI Disrupts Plot to Assassinate Head of Pro-Palestinian Rights Group in New York: 'This disturbing case underscores the growing climate of harassment, threats, and violence directed at those speaking out on Palestinian human rights and other social justice issues.' Nerdeen Kiswani, the co-founder of the Palestinian rights group Within Our Lifetime, emphasized on Friday that public threats and violent rhetoric from a sitting Republican congressman and a Zionist organization had preceded the news that there was an active plot to assassinate her. [...] On Friday, Kiswani noted that the pro-Israel group Betar and US Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.), who has long been known for making openly Islamophobic statements, including against Muslim members of Congress, 'encouraged violence against' the organizer and her family."
Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns, and Money, "Before the flood: Ketanji Brown Jackson is continuing the trend of unusual truth-telling in public appearances [...] There is a dark side to this, needless to say. Just as it's almost certainly not a coincidence that Breyer announced his resignation in the immediate aftermath of Alito circulating the draft (internally, that is, before he circulated it externally) announcing the death of Roe v. Wade, this almost certainly portends that every fantasy that John Roberts has had for decades about the total destruction of the Voting Rights Act is about to be fulfilled [...] It's going to get worse before it gets even worse than that."
"House and Senate Republicans Reach Deal to End Homeland Security Shutdown [...] House and Senate Republicans agreed on Wednesday to advance a bipartisan plan to fund the Homeland Security Department, which has been closed for more than six weeks. Under the plan, which the House rejected last week, a regular spending bill would fund the bulk of the department and Republicans would seek to fund President Trump's immigration crackdown through a separate process aimed at skirting a Democratic filibuster. The plan does not include any of the restrictions on immigration enforcement that Democrats have sought after federal officers killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis earlier this year." This is the same deal Republicans rejected numerous times, but the Senate finally passed it and somehow the House passed it although Johnson tried to keep it stalled. It still doesn't force ICE to take off the masks, but at least it doesn't fund them.
Radley Balko, "You can't hide your lying ICE [...] For me, it became clear that we were in a uniquely dangerous era after the shooting of Marimar Martinez and the killing of Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez in Chicago. I'm pretty jaded about these things, but I was jarred at how the administration openly gloated and shamelessly lied about the use of lethal force by DHS against people who posed no threat. It only got worse after the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. The lies the administration told after those killings aren't the lies you tell to cover something up. They're the lies you tell when you want to project to the country that you can get away with anything. The lies themselves are their own display of authoritarianism. The government is telling us, 'You know we're lying. We know that you know we're lying. And there isn't a goddamn thing you can do about it.'"
"How Congress Rigs The Budget — Then Blames The Rules: Behind every budget fight is a system designed to block real trade-offs and protect the status quo. ne of my favorite podcasts is 99% Invisible, whose premise is that so much of our existence is shaped not by the attention-grabbing spectacles in our foregrounds, but by the infrastructures and superstructures we barely notice in the background. In national politics, federal spending bills exemplify this dynamic, as I learned while working on the House Appropriations Committee. How those bills are structured is rarely ever discussed or interrogated — yet, as we're seeing right now, those decisions are deeply ideological and determinative of policy outcomes."
"If Dems Retake Congress, Platner Says 'Compelling Case' Exists for Impeaching 'At Least Two' Supreme Court Justices: [...] US Senate hopeful Graham Platner wants Democrats to 'deal with' the Supreme Court if they retake power in November and launch oversight and possible impeachments to remove justices from office." I assume he means Thomas and Alito, although Roberts has been taking favors from Singer, too, and Kavanaugh has that credit card bill that someone paid off. Platner also called for expanding the court.
RIP: "Dave Mason, co-founder of Traffic who had a star-studded solo career, dies aged 79: British singer and guitarist wrote and performed Traffic classics including "Feelin' Alright?" before platinum-selling solo albums and work with Jimi Hendrix, Fleetwood Mac and more." Still one of my favorite tracks.
Matthew McManus in Liberal Currents, "The Right Wants You Stupid: The opening of Russell Kirk's classic book The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot begins, as much of right-wing thought does, with grievance. Kirk had a serious axe to grind against J. S. Mill, the patron saint of progressive liberalism. Kirk resented Mill's biting charge that, by and large, 'most stupid people are conservative' and that this was 'so obviously and universally admitted a principle' that he thought hardly anyone would or could deny it. Kirk, a thoughtful man very capable of effectively apologizing for some frequently bad ideas, wanted to reject the charge."
Kylie Cheung at Abortion, Every Day, "How Celebrity Smear Campaigns Are Inspiring Attacks on Birth Control: Throughout March, I was hit over the head with social media posts attacking Chappell Roan, an LGBTQ popstar who's often labeled as 'difficult' or 'aggressive.' It's transparently misogynistic: young women are always 'difficult' when they set boundaries or ask for respect, while male artists face none of the same backlash—even after committing abuse. Predictably enough, a BuzzFeed report showed that many of the users behind sexist content about Chappell were bots or social media accounts quite literally created to drive the online smear campaign. Don't get me wrong—social media is a sexist cesspool. But these public orgies of misogyny aimed at celebrity women are rarely as organic or innocuous as they seem. And as a fairly online woman in her twenties, I was the algorithm's perfect target. The pink pill pipeline, through which young women are exposed to anti-feminist ideologies disguised as 'lifestyle' content, isn't always limited to 'tradwife' TikToks. Increasingly, this pipeline revolves around pop culture and celebrity news. Most young women and girls likely don't even realize that news about their favorite artist or moviestar might just be a Trojan Horse for ultra-conservative horseshit."
"Mass Protest: Where Are the Kids? The latest No Kings marches attracted a record eight million people. Most of them were of an advanced age that suggested they personally remembered the 1960s. [...] One of my students at Brandeis, very much a progressive, told me that 'No Kings doesn't have a clear political message,' and displays 'the weakness of the Democratic Party in effectively opposing Trump.' In other words, the students whom you'd most expect to be marching find No Kings to be ineffective."
"What to do if Amazon killed your Kindle: As Rob pointed out last week, Amazon is killing support for a number of its older e-readers. In the near future, owners of first- and second-generation Kindles and the Kindle DX won't be able to use their e-readers to borrow reading material or download newly purchased books from the Amazon Kindle Store. If you own one of these devices, it might feel like you're being screwed: the damn things were working fine last week; there's no reason why they shouldn't be able to keep on keeping on. Bummer. But what you actually have here is an outstanding opportunity. With Bezos' Bozos turning their backs on your long-serving hardware, you'll be freed from the shackles of their stewardship."
Wikipedia has a game you can play: Catfishing.
The Beatles, "Help!" (movie soundtrack intro version).