Is The Dig the most important podcast on the left? I did *not* bribe The Nation to use this headline but I am grateful to
@daniel_dsj2110
for this thoughtful and lengthy interview. Was a pleasure to be answering questions rather than asking them for once.
Today I spoke with Prime Minister Netanyahu to express my concern for the remaining hostages — and to note that it was Hamas’s refusal to release women civilian hostages that broke down the humanitarian pause.
We will continue to pursue every opportunity to free them.
We’ve witnessed an Orwellian effort to describe peaceful encampments as somehow inherently violent. Now we see actual violence and it’s committed by fascist/Zionist thugs against those same peaceful anti-genocide protesters. Where are the officials condemnations?
Enough people will refuse to vote for Democrats like Fetterman even though that means Republicans will win. This is simply too revolting. No sort of lesser of two evils rationalization will compel people to support Dems like this.
Reporter: Have the protests forced you to reconsider any of the policies with regard to the region?
Biden: No
Apparently Biden is not swayed by the mass killing of children, international law, or an election as a growing number of Americans are appalled by his policies.
Lyft was today valued at $27.3 billion.
That is wealth created by Lyft's nearly 1.5 million drivers, who have not only been robbed of the value they create as workers but even of the basic legal protections that correspond to being identified as an employee.
Expropriate Lyft.
The students (some out of idealism, others out of hateful bigotry) are doing what adolescents and young adults will sometimes do.
These faculty, however, are abdicating multiple responsibilities, as mentors, scholars, and officers of instruction of the university.
It’s a good moment to consider that the left won power in Chile in significant part thanks to a militant mass feminist movement demanding, among other things, abortion rights—a right they are currently enshrining in the proposed new constitution.
These professors’ actions are truly moving. Also: incredible that Columbia sending in the NYPD backfired so spectacularly that they not only ended up shutting down their entire campus but also sparked a nationwide movement…and now NYU is like, we’re doing exact same thing! Lmao
A genre of lib post today that’s like “can you believe INSANE LEFTISTS are siding w a group of ARABS over the US MILITARY and the free movement of GLOBAL COMMERCE?!” as though it self-evidently proves something other than that they’re racist neo-colonial chauvinists ok w genocide
Massive brutal police repression of students. Called in by administrators. With the Biden Administration’s vocal support. All to protect a genocide. During an election year. Morally revolting and politically suicidal.
I have trespassed in peaceful protest.
I have shutdown govt offices in civil disobedience.
I have made the powerful uncomfortable in their routines as I’ve dissented in peaceful but committed disorder.
Those are the American traditions of Thomas Paine, David Thoreau, Rosa Parks
A white Ole Miss frat boy dances like a monkey and makes monkey noises near a Black woman who was protesting for Palestine.
Is this heart warming? (Video:
@StaceyJSpiehler
)
If anti-genocide protesters had orchestrated this sort of brutal assault against Zionist counter-protesters it would be a front page story for weeks. Because it was a Zionist/fascist attack on supporters of Palestinian liberation there’s a mainstream media blackout.
Another video sent to me by friends from Chile. The largest mass movement since the end of dictatorship. Thousands and thousands in the street demanding economic justice.
If you are a journalist and need social movement contacts for interviews in English or Spanish, contact me.
Why would Bernie supporters back a candidate and Dem establishment that’ve vilified median Bernie supporters as cruel internet bullies? I’m not telling anyone who to vote for. I just think it’s remarkable that they expect to have any pull w voters who they’ve insulted for months.
They can slander students, arrest them. It won't stop vast majority of young people from seeing, clear as day, that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza with the enthusiastic support of US ruling class. All this repression does is expose the systemic hypocrisy—connects the dots.
If Democrats are suddenly worried that Biden will lose to Trump—as they should be—the rational thing to do would be to 1) make another, more popular Dem the nominee and 2) move the party away from its pro-genocide position. Blaming the left for saying genocide is bad won’t work.
What's surreal about this all is that Zionist political forces are exercising arbitrary power in increasingly extreme ways over so many facets of American life at the same moment that the public legitimacy of this power is collapsing.
No stronger evidence of antisemitism at Harvard than...many Jews joining pro-Palestine demonstrations? Stay tuned for more in-depth reporting from The New York Times' Ivy League anti-Zionism = antisemitism bureau.
Nothing new to say but it bears repeating: it’s one of American history’s most Orwellian obscenities to see an anti-genocide movement that is in fact one of the most Jewish mass movements in US history slandered as antisemitic by one of the key guys doing the genocide.
If anyone thinks this movement is quitting and falling in line seven weeks before New York even gets to vote they are fucking kidding themselves. The planet is on fire and Joe Biden’s politics are pure arson. No to Biden. Absolutely not.
The constant denial and erasure of so many anti-Zionist Jews helping lead pro-Palestine protests at Columbia and everywhere in the United States is one of the most Orwellian things I’ve witnessed in my life.
In response to “horrific” scenes of antisemitic harassment at and around campus, the Orthodox Rabbi at Columbia/Barnard sent a WhatsApp message to more than 290+ Jewish students this morning recommending that they go home until it’s safe again for them on campus:
I’m not even 40 yet and I’m frequently the by far the oldest person in organizing meetings. We know the boomer story pretty well but what the hell happened to the Gen X left?
Abolishing the Electoral College and directly electing the president would be way more democratic. More importantly, it would end Election Night television as we know it.
No one is forcing Democrats to lose our votes. This is on them. No one is making them support a genocide AND ALSO maniacally mock the majority of their voting base that is calling for a ceasefire. Fetterman is one of the most unhinged, disgusting things I've witnessed in my life.
I don’t think leftists fully appreciate how remarkable it is that so many radical ideas have suddenly become so mainstream in recent years and how unusual that is compared to the entire history of American neoliberal political culture.
This is the largest US anti-imperialist/anti-war movement since the invasion of Iraq. But you wouldn’t know that from reading the NYT or other mainstream press.
There are huge protests everywhere in the US against genocide in Gaza, in solidarity with Palestinians and calling for not only a ceasefire but an end to US support for occupation. Yet, I haven’t seen a single article in a major newspaper about what is becoming a mass movement 1/
I take zero joy in pessimists being right about Warren. I've long believed that best-case short-term the Sanders/socialist left must govern in coalition with the liberal left represented by Warren. The fact that when it came down to it, Warren stood with the establishment, is sad
Liberals have spent twenty years hating Ralph Nader to avoid confronting the fact that Al Gore did nothing when SCOTUS and Bush stole the 2000 election. Democratic complicity in the normalization of the Republican assault on democratic rights has done incalculable harm.
Americans’ steadfast commitment to believing that we are victims when in fact our country is the world’s most powerful aggressor is the product of a distinctly settler colonialist form of political psychosis.
Dear
@nytimes
: I know space for A1 headlines is tight, so it’s curious that you would use the lengthy “Islamic Republic” instead of simply “Pakistan.”
It’s so tragic that Bernie is vaporizing his reputation and legacy among so many young people who were first politicized and radicalized by his presidential campaigns.
I went to Columbia, and was active daily in Jewish life on campus.
This gives me so much joy and pride ❤️🦁
Via
@TheIndypendent
:
"Jewish students celebrate Shabbat in song at the Columbia Gaza Solidarity Encampment."
Owning the libs is fun (and even important!) for leftists. But if you make *hostility to liberalism* rather than *socialism* the foundation of your political ideology, it will lead you to increasingly strange and bad places.
Amazing that Pelosi took a look at the state of the world and decided “there are not enough crises to bring us to the brink of apocalyptic cataclysm yet.”
Fetterman is becoming another Sinema. Do unfortunate fashion choices ultimately drive formerly progressive politicians into becoming the most freakshow versions of "independent maverick" imaginable? We cannot rule this factor out.
Key figures in the Michigan Democratic establishment are uniting to isolate Rashida Tlaib. I cannot emphasize how important it is that we defend Rashida and defeat her enemies.
.
@RashidaTlaib
, I have supported and defended you countless times, even when you have said the indefensible, because I believed you to be a good person whose heart was in the right place.
But this is so hurtful to so many. Please retract this cruel and hateful remark.
We live in a world where one of the most powerful air forces on earth, armed to the teeth by the United States, isn't hiding these atrocities from journalists...it is proudly publishing photos of its flagrant atrocities on its own Twitter feed. This is so fucking dystopian.
Dozens of fighter jets and helicopters attacked a series of terrorist targets of the Hamas terrorist organization throughout the Gaza Strip.
So far, the IAF has dropped about 6,000 bombs against Hamas targets.
Bernie is within striking distance of winning Iowa, New Hampshire, and California. You wouldn’t know this from reading mainstream media, which means that the political establishment and corporate elites won’t realize that Bernie might win until it’s too late. We can do this.
What geniuses advising Elizabeth Warren thought it was a good idea to start 1) pushing the message that she is the only candidate who can bring left and center together while 2) simultaneously entirely burning her relationship with the left? It’s a very weird and bad strategy!
Spoke to a Bernie 2016 supporter who became a hardcore Marianne stan and is now firmly in Buttigieg’s camp. I tried to convince her that Pete had no Marianne energy but to no avail.
No matter what do not black pill yourself.
It’s not supposed to be easy to elect a socialist president of the United States of America.
Five years ago, no one, socialists very much included, would think we had a shot.
And yet here we are, in it. We still have a world to win.
It’s profoundly Orwellian that as the civilian death toll skyrockets north of 10k that Democratic Party elites are conspiring to demonize and isolate Rashida Tlaib—the sole Palestinian-American member of Congress and a leading voice to stop the slaughter they monstrously cheer on
I’m fine w/ Sanders not attacking Warren: he has not attacked Warren. Warren launched a one-sided scorched earth assault. Bernie will move on. But my problem w/ calling for both sides to deescalate is it obscures asymmetry. It’s not “both sides” and most people understand that.
Remember when Poland called Muslim asylum-seekers at its border w Belarus asymmetric weapons of war and refused them entry? I’m glad that Ukrainians are being allowed to flee Russian aggression to safety but we must insist that EVERYONE has a right to free movement and security.
Wow, it’s the New York Times, the newspaper that helped launder the case for the Iraq War, warning that Trump isn’t doing enough war in the Middle East.
We must defend
@IlhanMN
.
If we can't defend Omar, we can't stop imperialism.
If we can't stop imperialism, we can't have social democracy, let alone socialism, at home.
I just donated. Let them know their every attack will be met with our active support
The cynical campaign to stigmatize “from the river to the sea” as some unspeakable kind of hate speech is among the most insidious forms of propaganda; an effort to demonize the very aspiration for the decolonization of the entirety of historic Palestine—the only chance for peace
The fact that Bernie has steadfastly refused to attack Warren says a lot about who Bernie is. Warren’s desperate attacks after falling in the polls reveal things about her that I honestly find deeply upsetting. I anticipate that this will damage her and I wish she hadn’t done it.
Permission to kill 20 civilians for one low-level Hamas commander.
An automated system called “Where’s Daddy” to ensure that targets are bombed while at home with their family.
Truly sicko shit. Murderous. Depraved.
Paid for by the American people.
Right-wing pro-Israel propaganda is bad but far more pernicious are mainstream American media outlets like the NYT that continue to portray an asymmetric slaughter rooted in a settler-colonialist apartheid state as a tragic conflict between two sides.
Very normal to have a massive annual conference in Washington DC where American politicians from both major parties pledge unwavering support to the government of another nation. To suggest otherwise is beyond the pale. Simply outrageous and to be repudiated.
News cycle began with some document from someone in Bernieland with talking points that offer a mild strategic contrast with Warren. It is ending with Warren's camp smearing Sanders as sexist and echoing HRC's charge that he divided the party in '16. This is gross and desperate.
“Antisemitism on campus” as a widespread phenomenon is a *myth* made by Zionists to defame pro-Palestine students as antisemitic—including *many* Jews saying “not in our name.” The defamation’s purpose is to undermine anti-genocide protest & distract from actual genocide in Gaza.
What’s happening right now in the US is profound. It’s not just that young people are turning against Israel, and that they’ll never forget what’s happening in Gaza right now. It’s that the fundamental public legitimacy of Zionism is being challenged in a way it never has before.
I want to thank everyone on Bernie staff. One thing that’s rarely covered in mainstream media is that so many Bernie staff are not conventional guns-for-hire operatives but profoundly committed and ideologically guided movement people. Thank you for fighting to change the world.
The weirdest thing about hype surrounding “self-driving cars” is the premise that driving, as Musk puts it, is “drudgery.” Actually, driving is what’s fun about driving. Traffic is what’s horrible about driving. The solution to that is way more mass transit and many fewer cars.
It’s become beyond clear that we can’t expect even the most modest change at the federal level without a massive, widespread, and disruptive social/political rupture. Something on the scale of what happened in Chile. That doesn’t mean we’ll get it of course but it is what we need
The Dem establishment has no real plan to stop Bernie and can’t unite behind a single candidate to try and stop him because it has no coherent political proposal or vision. They don’t have faith in their own ideas in part because they have no ideas. Neoliberalism is exhausted.
John Kerry — one of Biden's highest-profile endorsers — overheard Sunday on phone at Des Moines hotel explaining what he would have to do to enter the presidential race amid "the possibility of Bernie Sanders taking down the Democratic Party— down whole."
Who does Israel have to kill for US weapons supply to stop? I feel like they could assassinate a member of Congress and get away with it. Absolutely revolting massacres our government is fueling in Gaza. And the insane thing is, American people know it. But Biden won’t say STOP.
I think there’s also a problem where generations “age out” of organizing when they have kids etc bc because we have activist culture instead of left institutions with spaces for people over the lifecycle. We’ll see what happens to millennials!
In victory speech, Petro said that the opposition didn’t have to worry about them eliminating capitalism because Colombia still needs to eliminate feudalism. He also reimagined left-wing Latin American developmentalism and regional integration in ecological/anti-extractive terms.
Bernie is right to say he was wrong to vote "yes" on the Afghanistan invasion. Barbara Lee alone was right. I don't know of any other member of Congress to have acknowledged this basic and important fact.