The pond woke with a sense of Friday dread, and decided it needed to open with a distraction, a little light relief..
The pond doesn't get out enough, but amid the splendid sight of Uncle Elon driving X into the ground, it's important not to forget other bizarre events, as reported by John Carreyrou in the NY Times a few days ago, under the header The Strange $55 Million Saga of a Netflix Series You'll Never See, with the lede After suitors flocked to a sci-fi project by Carl Rinsch, director of a single movie, the winner handed over money and control. They’re still fighting. (paywall)
The pond won't do spoilers, it's a long read, but here's a teaser trailer.
The project with Mr. Rinsch has turned into a costly fiasco, a microcosm of the era of profligate spending that Hollywood studios now are scrambling to end. Netflix burned more than $55 million on Mr. Rinsch’s show and gave him near-total budgetary and creative latitude but never received a single finished episode.
Soon after he signed the contract, Mr. Rinsch’s behavior grew erratic, according to members of the show’s cast and crew, texts and emails reviewed by The New York Times, and court filings in a divorce case brought by his wife. He claimed to have discovered Covid-19’s secret transmission mechanism and to be able to predict lightning strikes. He gambled a large chunk of the money from Netflix on the stock market and cryptocurrencies. He spent millions of dollars on a fleet of Rolls-Royces, furniture and designer clothing.
Mr. Rinsch and Netflix are now locked in a confidential arbitration proceeding initiated by Mr. Rinsch, who claims the company breached their contract and owes him at least $14 million in damages. Netflix has denied owing Mr. Rinsch anything and has called his demands a shakedown.
Soon after he signed the contract, Mr. Rinsch’s behavior grew erratic, according to members of the show’s cast and crew, texts and emails reviewed by The New York Times, and court filings in a divorce case brought by his wife. He claimed to have discovered Covid-19’s secret transmission mechanism and to be able to predict lightning strikes. He gambled a large chunk of the money from Netflix on the stock market and cryptocurrencies. He spent millions of dollars on a fleet of Rolls-Royces, furniture and designer clothing.
Mr. Rinsch and Netflix are now locked in a confidential arbitration proceeding initiated by Mr. Rinsch, who claims the company breached their contract and owes him at least $14 million in damages. Netflix has denied owing Mr. Rinsch anything and has called his demands a shakedown.
A little later ...
...In São Paulo, the local film industry union dispatched a representative to the set after receiving a complaint that Mr. Rinsch was “mistreating the team” with “shouts,” “cursing” and “excessive irritation,” according to a letter the union sent Netflix’s local production partner. Netflix was informed of the issue and addressed it with Mr. Rinsch, a person familiar with the matter said.
In Budapest, Mr. Rinsch went days without sleep and accused his wife of plotting to have him assassinated, two people who witnessed the outburst said.
Ms. Rosés later said in a court filing in her divorce case that Mr. Rinsch’s behavior had started to change even before the overseas shoots. On several occasions, he had thrown things at her and twice punched holes in a wall.
Mr. Rinsch has said he was diagnosed with autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and took medications for both. Ms. Rosés and some crew members worried about his use of Vyvanse, an amphetamine that is commonly prescribed to treat A.D.H.D. When overused, the drug can have serious side effects, including mania, delirium and even psychosis, according to psychiatrists.
In Budapest, Mr. Rinsch went days without sleep and accused his wife of plotting to have him assassinated, two people who witnessed the outburst said.
Ms. Rosés later said in a court filing in her divorce case that Mr. Rinsch’s behavior had started to change even before the overseas shoots. On several occasions, he had thrown things at her and twice punched holes in a wall.
Mr. Rinsch has said he was diagnosed with autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and took medications for both. Ms. Rosés and some crew members worried about his use of Vyvanse, an amphetamine that is commonly prescribed to treat A.D.H.D. When overused, the drug can have serious side effects, including mania, delirium and even psychosis, according to psychiatrists.
A little later ...
...Mr. Rinsch transferred $10.5 million of the $11 million to his personal brokerage account at Charles Schwab and, using options, placed risky bets on the stock market, according to copies of his bank and brokerage statements included in the divorce case. One of his wagers was that shares of the biotech firm Gilead Sciences, which had announced that it was testing an antiviral drug on Covid patients, would soar. Another was that the S&P 500 index, which had already declined more than 30 percent, would fall further. Mr. Rinsch lost $5.9 million in a matter of weeks.
In the following months, he behaved more erratically. Like many people, he was deeply affected by the pandemic, and he espoused strange theories about the coronavirus, according to text messages and emails reviewed by The Times. When Ms. Rosés went to check on him in June 2020, he took her to a scenic lookout in the Hollywood hills and pointed at planes overhead. They were “organic, intelligent forces” that “came to say hi,” he told her, according to Ms. Rosés’s filing in the divorce case. He also sent her texts claiming that he could predict lightning strikes and volcanic eruptions...
In the following months, he behaved more erratically. Like many people, he was deeply affected by the pandemic, and he espoused strange theories about the coronavirus, according to text messages and emails reviewed by The Times. When Ms. Rosés went to check on him in June 2020, he took her to a scenic lookout in the Hollywood hills and pointed at planes overhead. They were “organic, intelligent forces” that “came to say hi,” he told her, according to Ms. Rosés’s filing in the divorce case. He also sent her texts claiming that he could predict lightning strikes and volcanic eruptions...
And so on ...
Through bitter personal experience, the pond knows that the film and television industry is a den of madness ... you only have to watch the documentary about the making of Apocalypse Now to get a rich dose.
It's probably wrong to dwell on the misfortune attending the making of the film and the unfortunates involved, though the pond is cheerful enough about Netflix stepping into that cow pat ...
What the story does remind the pond of is the form of incipient insanity the pond feels creeping over it each time it takes a dive into the pages of the lizard Oz ...the horror, the horror, if you will ...
Dammit, the pond was looking forward to the SMR in the back yard and now the pond will have to re-tender? And instead of 2027 to get it working, maybe 2035?
Back for a final gobbet of the lizard Oz editorialist ...
Stop it, that's more than enough. What's happening below the fold?
As feared the pond regulars were busy working for Benji's government, so the pond turned to Ted for a little comedy. Would tiresome, tedious Ted ever mention the Liberal government wot set Snowy in motion, or Malware, who spruiked it?
It put a spring in the pond's step, the pond was now in energiser bunny mode and raced through Ted's tedious last gobbet ...
All to avoid renewables and best of all, no mention of Malware's vision ...much blather about the results of the vision, but the man himself and his dreaming had been disappeared, had vanished, from the story ...
And so to a novel strategy to deal with the pond's Friday regulars ...
With this the latest news in WaPo from the collective punishment and ethnic cleansing and purging and displacement mob ...
The Israel Defense Forces are preparing to deploy crowd dispersal measures if Palestinians who had fled from northern Gaza to southern Gaza attempt to return to the north during the pause in fighting, Israel’s Army Radio reported.
Israel urged people in the northern Gaza Strip to evacuate to the south, where it said they would be safer, but the IDF has since struck parts of the south.
At previous large gatherings near Gaza’s border with Israel, the IDF said it has issued verbal warnings “using megaphones and sound projection systems,” but that as those were “generally ineffective,” it has employed “non-lethal means, primarily the use of tear gas … to avoid higher risk situations which necessitate other uses of force.”
Israel urged people in the northern Gaza Strip to evacuate to the south, where it said they would be safer, but the IDF has since struck parts of the south.
At previous large gatherings near Gaza’s border with Israel, the IDF said it has issued verbal warnings “using megaphones and sound projection systems,” but that as those were “generally ineffective,” it has employed “non-lethal means, primarily the use of tear gas … to avoid higher risk situations which necessitate other uses of force.”
... the pond decided it couldn't cope with a typical presentation of our Henry and cackling Claire...
Instead the pond would strip them of the status granted by the gobbet methodology... call it a form of collective punishment if you will. As a bonus, this would make it easy for anyone to copy and paste a comment if they could raise the energy.
First it was necessary to get out of the way the huge snaps used to elevate the hole in the bucket man's piece ...
... and then defanged and downgraded, the pond could begin UN’s charge of ‘genocide’ robs term of all meaning...
There will, it goes without saying, be no mention of collective punishment, ethnic cleansing, the killing fields of the West Bank, and so on ...
Late last week, just days before the official reopening of Melbourne’s Holocaust Museum, a group of UN Human Rights rapporteurs accused Israel of genocide.
Even when set against the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the rapporteurs’ statement, which steers well clear of declaring Hamas’s goals and conduct genocidal, is laughable. In effect, as William Schabas notes in his authoritative treatise on Genocide in International Law (2000), making out a charge of genocide “requires the prosecution to establish the highest level of specific intent”.
But it is obvious Israel’s “specific intent” is not to exterminate the inhabitants of Gaza – had that been its goal, it could have achieved it with devastating speed by aerial bombardment, without endangering thousands of Israeli servicemen and women.
And the fact the claim is manifestly inconsistent with Israel’s unceasing efforts to warn civilians of impending military action, and encourage them to move to safety, only further undermines its credibility.
Even when set against the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the rapporteurs’ statement, which steers well clear of declaring Hamas’s goals and conduct genocidal, is laughable. In effect, as William Schabas notes in his authoritative treatise on Genocide in International Law (2000), making out a charge of genocide “requires the prosecution to establish the highest level of specific intent”.
But it is obvious Israel’s “specific intent” is not to exterminate the inhabitants of Gaza – had that been its goal, it could have achieved it with devastating speed by aerial bombardment, without endangering thousands of Israeli servicemen and women.
And the fact the claim is manifestly inconsistent with Israel’s unceasing efforts to warn civilians of impending military action, and encourage them to move to safety, only further undermines its credibility.
Indeed, indeed, we've seen the current "unceasing efforts" noted in WaPo, but the pond must let the portentous, pompous pedant, in the pocket of far right Benji's thugs, go on ...
But the accusation’s absurdity is less surprising when it is considered in the context of the Genocide Convention’s troubled history. As Anton Weiss-Wendt shows in his two-volume study of the Convention’s early years, the USSR was intimately involved in its drafting, with Stalin (an undoubted expert on genocides) personally marking up the successive versions that led to the final document, which was approved by the UN General Assembly on December 9, 1948.
The result was a legal instrument the American Bar Association called full of “vague formulations that could be used against the United States”, but which plainly “lacked the teeth” to prevent the genocides carried out by authoritarian regimes.
Opened for signing as the Cold War turned especially threatening, North Korea’s invasion of South Korea on June 25, 1950 provided the Soviet Union with the first opportunity to test the new Convention’s propaganda value.
Almost immediately, China and the USSR charged that the US, instead of simply ensuring South Korea’s self-defence, was perpetrating a genocide that “overshadowed even the Nazi atrocities” by dropping bombs “stuffed with insects infected with communicable diseases” on North Korean schools, hospitals and refugee camps.
Those contentions were entirely concocted, as historians Kathryn Weathersby and Milton Leitenberg have shown. Far from suffering genocidal attacks, the North Korean regime, acting on Chinese and Soviet advice, had injected prisoners with cholera bacteria and then provided tissue samples from their corpses to supposedly reputable human rights investigators.
But despite their complete falsity, the claims were a propaganda triumph, fuelling massive anti-American protests worldwide. That success, which confirmed the shock value of accusations of genocide, cemented a pattern that was to be repeated time and again.
Central to that pattern was the use of prominent dupes. Behind his back, the Soviets ridiculed Bertrand Russell, who had distinguished himself in the run-up to World War II by suggesting that in the event of a German invasion, Nazi troops should be welcomed in Britain as “tourists”, since the manifold charms of the British way of life would take “the starch out of them”. But Russell and a bevy of illustrious lawyers, whose intelligence was surpassed only by their stupidity, unfailingly lent an aura of authority to even the most far-fetched allegations.
As that process played itself out, the claim that a “genocide” was under way, in any one of its “ecological”, “cultural”, “racial” or just plain “ethnic” varieties, was applied by a bewildering range of UN bodies and experts to over 80 countries, accounting for four-fifths of the world’s population.
No country, however, was targeted more relentlessly than Israel. Yet again, the Soviet Union under Stalin took the lead, first accusing Israel of perpetrating a genocide “no different from the Nazis” in 1950, just as the Arab League was threatening to renew its war of extermination against the Jewish state.
After that, the clamour never subsided: from 1948 to 1988, fully one-fifth of the articles in Pravda mentioning genocide involved accusations hurled at Israel.
Indeed, the last comprehensive Soviet study of genocide, published during the Gorbachev era, downplayed the USSR’s own crimes while accusing Israel of cold-bloodedly murdering Palestinian children by distributing bombs disguised as toys. And even those contentions, presented without a skerrick of evidence, paled compared to the claims of the Arab states and their fellow-travellers – claims in which the assimilation of Zionism to Nazism, and of Israeli leaders to Hitler, was always uppermost.
The aim of this propaganda blitz was clear: if Israel was itself perpetrating a genocide comparable to the Nazis’, it could hardly derive any moral legitimacy from the Holocaust. Rather, as an abomination, it deserved, like the Hitler regime, to be wiped out, justifying its enemies’ genocidal plans.
But the ultimate result of the strategy the Soviets pioneered, with its endless proliferation of genocide claims, was to rid the notion of its substance.
Winston Churchill, when he reported in 1941 on the atrocities the Nazis were committing in the western borderlands of the USSR, had called them “a crime without a name”. Now, the term, coined in response to his speech, remained, but it was a name without a crime. As Weiss-Wendt put it, “genocide” had become “a hollowed-out vessel that could be filled with any meaning” – once everything is genocide, nothing is.
The effect, highlighted by last week’s UN statement, is not only to distort public understanding of the contexts to which the term is recklessly applied; it is, even worse, to occlude the distinctiveness of radical evil.
The result was a legal instrument the American Bar Association called full of “vague formulations that could be used against the United States”, but which plainly “lacked the teeth” to prevent the genocides carried out by authoritarian regimes.
Opened for signing as the Cold War turned especially threatening, North Korea’s invasion of South Korea on June 25, 1950 provided the Soviet Union with the first opportunity to test the new Convention’s propaganda value.
Almost immediately, China and the USSR charged that the US, instead of simply ensuring South Korea’s self-defence, was perpetrating a genocide that “overshadowed even the Nazi atrocities” by dropping bombs “stuffed with insects infected with communicable diseases” on North Korean schools, hospitals and refugee camps.
Those contentions were entirely concocted, as historians Kathryn Weathersby and Milton Leitenberg have shown. Far from suffering genocidal attacks, the North Korean regime, acting on Chinese and Soviet advice, had injected prisoners with cholera bacteria and then provided tissue samples from their corpses to supposedly reputable human rights investigators.
But despite their complete falsity, the claims were a propaganda triumph, fuelling massive anti-American protests worldwide. That success, which confirmed the shock value of accusations of genocide, cemented a pattern that was to be repeated time and again.
Central to that pattern was the use of prominent dupes. Behind his back, the Soviets ridiculed Bertrand Russell, who had distinguished himself in the run-up to World War II by suggesting that in the event of a German invasion, Nazi troops should be welcomed in Britain as “tourists”, since the manifold charms of the British way of life would take “the starch out of them”. But Russell and a bevy of illustrious lawyers, whose intelligence was surpassed only by their stupidity, unfailingly lent an aura of authority to even the most far-fetched allegations.
As that process played itself out, the claim that a “genocide” was under way, in any one of its “ecological”, “cultural”, “racial” or just plain “ethnic” varieties, was applied by a bewildering range of UN bodies and experts to over 80 countries, accounting for four-fifths of the world’s population.
No country, however, was targeted more relentlessly than Israel. Yet again, the Soviet Union under Stalin took the lead, first accusing Israel of perpetrating a genocide “no different from the Nazis” in 1950, just as the Arab League was threatening to renew its war of extermination against the Jewish state.
After that, the clamour never subsided: from 1948 to 1988, fully one-fifth of the articles in Pravda mentioning genocide involved accusations hurled at Israel.
Indeed, the last comprehensive Soviet study of genocide, published during the Gorbachev era, downplayed the USSR’s own crimes while accusing Israel of cold-bloodedly murdering Palestinian children by distributing bombs disguised as toys. And even those contentions, presented without a skerrick of evidence, paled compared to the claims of the Arab states and their fellow-travellers – claims in which the assimilation of Zionism to Nazism, and of Israeli leaders to Hitler, was always uppermost.
The aim of this propaganda blitz was clear: if Israel was itself perpetrating a genocide comparable to the Nazis’, it could hardly derive any moral legitimacy from the Holocaust. Rather, as an abomination, it deserved, like the Hitler regime, to be wiped out, justifying its enemies’ genocidal plans.
But the ultimate result of the strategy the Soviets pioneered, with its endless proliferation of genocide claims, was to rid the notion of its substance.
Winston Churchill, when he reported in 1941 on the atrocities the Nazis were committing in the western borderlands of the USSR, had called them “a crime without a name”. Now, the term, coined in response to his speech, remained, but it was a name without a crime. As Weiss-Wendt put it, “genocide” had become “a hollowed-out vessel that could be filled with any meaning” – once everything is genocide, nothing is.
The effect, highlighted by last week’s UN statement, is not only to distort public understanding of the contexts to which the term is recklessly applied; it is, even worse, to occlude the distinctiveness of radical evil.
Yes, when it comes to radical evil, it can only go one way ... when you're intent on doing propaganda for a far right government ...
Meanwhile ... in another paper ...
The Israeli government’s mass evacuation order from northern Gaza is an ostensibly humanitarian act done in an utterly inhumane way. The order requires 1.1 million people to flee their homes in northern Gaza in advance of an imminent Israeli ground invasion – the next step in the Israeli response to the horrendous Hamas massacre and abduction of Israeli civilians on 7 October. Warring parties, if possible, are supposed to give “effective advance warning of attacks”. Yet the Israeli order will compound the suffering of the Palestinian civilians of Gaza. It may also begin an illegal process of ethnic cleansing.
The threat in northern Gaza is plenty real as Israeli bombers pulverize neighborhoods in attacks that appear designed less to pinpoint Hamas fighters than to collectively punish the civilian population of Gaza – the same population that has endured years of Hamas’s military dictatorship and had no say in Hamas’s decision to slaughter Israeli civilians. Yet evacuation has its risks, too. At least 70 people were reportedly killed while traveling along the prescribed road south.
And flee to what? Southern Gaza, already impoverished, is in no position to care for an influx of people that could effectively double its overcrowded population in a matter of days. Water is in especially short supply, because the Israeli government has cut off water to the territory (some may have resumed) and stopped the fuel needed to operate its three desalination plants. Food is not being let in. Electricity has been shut off.
And ...
...To see why the Israeli government might welcome a new round of ethnic cleansing requires understanding its policies of demographic engineering. Beyond wanting as a top priority to minimize the number of Palestinians (or “Arab Israelis”) within the 1967 borders of Israel – currently about 21% of the population – the government maintained a hierarchy among parts of occupied Palestinian territory depending on the degree of annexation and control that it sought. The next priority was to steer Palestinians away from East Jerusalem, which Israel already purports to have annexed, then from Area C of the West Bank, which contains all the Israeli settlements and many officials would like to annex. Then came Areas A and B of the West Bank, which enjoy limited Palestinian rule but are largely controlled by the Israeli government.
Last was always Gaza. The Israeli government has long controlled its borders – hence, the ongoing occupation – but had no interest in incorporating its territory so it could tolerate its population. But as Israel’s West Bank settlement expansion renders the prospect of a viable contiguous Palestinian state increasingly remote, there is growing recognition that the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River has become a “one-state reality”. And as pressure mounts to replace the apartheid in the occupied territory with a regime of equal rights, the Palestinian population of Gaza has grown in importance. With the proportion of Jews and Palestinians roughly equal across Israel and Palestine, the far-right extremists in Benjamin Netanyahu’s government might welcome a chance to shift a million or more Palestinians off the demographic balance sheet of that effective single state.
Gideon Sa’ar, the Israeli minister, said in an interview on Saturday with Israel’s Channel 12 News that Gaza “must be smaller at the end of the war ... Whoever starts a war against Israel must lose territory.” Yoav Gallant, defense minister, said: “Gaza won’t return to what it was before. We will eliminate everything.” They seem to be suggesting mass expulsion from at least a portion of the territory. But that collective punishment – that war crime – is a wholly inappropriate response to Hamas’s atrocities. It will be aggravated if it becomes force deportation to Egypt – the same crime that the International Criminal Court is already investigating Myanmar military officers for having committed by forcibly driving Rohingya to Bangladesh in 2017.
And that's the only reason that the pond allowed the hole in the bucket man a chance to play the Nazi/Holocaust card, so that an alternative reality might be referenced ...
We cannot, nowadays, even come close to fathoming what was experienced by those the Holocaust sought to destroy. The all-consuming fear the prisoners in the camps had to swallow in order to continue to live; the constant prospect that one might at any moment be beaten, hanged, or shot; the aching hunger without any prospect of respite; the deliberate, calculated reduction of human beings to walking, crawling skeletons, suspended in the no-man’s land between life and death; and then death itself, industrialised, everywhere present, stripped of all dignity, shorn of all meaning.
Genuinely comprehending those experiences is impossible. And as they recede into the past, they risk becoming ever more abstract, ever more removed from our mental map. That is why institutions such as Melbourne’s Holocaust Museum, which allow us to stare genocide in the face, are of such importance. But it is also why the UN statement is so utterly pernicious.
By blurring the distinction between the radical evil that was shockingly on display on October 7 and the response to it, the statement legitimates an entirely false moral equivalence behind which that evil can shelter, strengthen and strike. There neither is, nor could there possibly be, any surer way of guaranteeing yet more genocides. And, in the Islamists’ tender hands, they will be the real thing.
As for Benji's tender hands?
Any two state solution long gone, Jordan and Egypt determined to keep Palestinians locked in their gulags, and the Jewish state determined to collectively punish and just to make the collective punishment clear ...
Gaza “must be smaller at the end of the war,” Israeli Minister Gideon Sa’ar said in an interview Saturday, according to Ha’aretz.
“We must make the end of our campaign clear to everyone around us,” he told Israeli Channel 12 News. “Whoever starts a war against Israel must lose territory.”
Just to make the collective punishment even clearer ...
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant says he has ordered a “complete siege” of the Gaza Strip, as Israel fights the Hamas terror group.
“I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed,” Gallant says following an assessment at the IDF Southern Command in Beersheba.
“We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly,” he adds.
“I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed,” Gallant says following an assessment at the IDF Southern Command in Beersheba.
“We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly,” he adds.
Time for a cartoon break ...
And now to a serve of cackling Claire, also stripped of gobbet status ...Mid-East war drives global schism on the left
The Israel-Hamas conflict is opening up schisms among left-wing coalitions around the globe.
In Washington DC, near the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters, escalating tensions led to violent clashes that injured six police officers, resulting in evacuation of the area.
In Britain, hundreds of protesters marched through Labour leader Keir Starmer’s constituency after he refused to vote for a “ceasefire”. And in Sydney on Tuesday night, 23 people were arrested after holding an illegal demonstration against an Israeli container ship at Port Botany.
Responding to the Port Botany protest on Tuesday night, NSW Labor Premier Chris Minns made the commonsense observation: “We cannot have a situation where our ports are blocked for commerce because one group or another has a political disagreement with another country.”
Federal Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil likewise did not hold back when she described the protest as “anti-Semitic” and “utterly despicable”.
It is both reasonable and commendable that Minns and O’Neil expressed these views. The Australian Labor Party, a party of government at state and federal levels, cannot afford to partake in the performative activism of the Greens and the hard left, even if it might appeal to some of its constituents. More broadly, however, the notion that protests in Australia could in any way influence the conflict in Gaza is highly unrealistic, if not downright insane.
Israel is a democracy, which means its government answers to the Israeli people. And the Israeli citizenry demand Hamas be destroyed in response to the massacre of October 7. Protests around the world will not change that. On the contrary, global pro-Palestinian protests and rising anti-Semitism are only reinforcing the Israeli public’s demand for their government’s protection.
But apart from failing to understand the political realities of the war, the hard left’s concept of political action does not seem to go much further beyond dress-ups. Safe inside liberal democratic nations, with their Pride weeks and music festivals, Westerners can wear rainbow keffiyehs while calling for the destruction of the only democracy in the Middle East – knowing full well they will never have to live under the yoke of theocratic fascists such as Hamas.
This isn’t a new phenomenon, of course. Paul Berman, in his book, Power and the Idealists, notes that the 1968 generation of New Left activists were mainly driven by a mix of nostalgia and fear stemming from their childhood experiences during World War II.
Many of them lived with the fear that the Nazis had not been completely vanquished, and would one day return. Imagining themselves as following in the footsteps of the heroic French Resistance, New Left radicals grasped at any insurgent cause they could find. This led them to absurd and dangerous places, such as the jungles of Latin America and eastern Cambodia alongside Che Guevara and the Khmer Rouge. It also led some of them to hijack planes alongside Palestinian terrorists.
These radicals yearned for a revolutionary purpose, and they did almost anything to find it.
A classic example of the misguided radical was Wilfred Bose, a German leftist who participated in the 1976 Entebbe hijacking with the Popular Front for Palestinian Liberation. Upon helping his comrades hijack Air France Flight 139, he was told by the PFLP to separate Jews and Israelis from the other passengers, who were then set free.
Bose was apparently taken aback by the command. He had become a left-wing radical because he wanted to fight Nazis. Yet here he was kidnapping Jews.
In Washington DC, near the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters, escalating tensions led to violent clashes that injured six police officers, resulting in evacuation of the area.
In Britain, hundreds of protesters marched through Labour leader Keir Starmer’s constituency after he refused to vote for a “ceasefire”. And in Sydney on Tuesday night, 23 people were arrested after holding an illegal demonstration against an Israeli container ship at Port Botany.
Responding to the Port Botany protest on Tuesday night, NSW Labor Premier Chris Minns made the commonsense observation: “We cannot have a situation where our ports are blocked for commerce because one group or another has a political disagreement with another country.”
Federal Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil likewise did not hold back when she described the protest as “anti-Semitic” and “utterly despicable”.
It is both reasonable and commendable that Minns and O’Neil expressed these views. The Australian Labor Party, a party of government at state and federal levels, cannot afford to partake in the performative activism of the Greens and the hard left, even if it might appeal to some of its constituents. More broadly, however, the notion that protests in Australia could in any way influence the conflict in Gaza is highly unrealistic, if not downright insane.
Israel is a democracy, which means its government answers to the Israeli people. And the Israeli citizenry demand Hamas be destroyed in response to the massacre of October 7. Protests around the world will not change that. On the contrary, global pro-Palestinian protests and rising anti-Semitism are only reinforcing the Israeli public’s demand for their government’s protection.
But apart from failing to understand the political realities of the war, the hard left’s concept of political action does not seem to go much further beyond dress-ups. Safe inside liberal democratic nations, with their Pride weeks and music festivals, Westerners can wear rainbow keffiyehs while calling for the destruction of the only democracy in the Middle East – knowing full well they will never have to live under the yoke of theocratic fascists such as Hamas.
This isn’t a new phenomenon, of course. Paul Berman, in his book, Power and the Idealists, notes that the 1968 generation of New Left activists were mainly driven by a mix of nostalgia and fear stemming from their childhood experiences during World War II.
Many of them lived with the fear that the Nazis had not been completely vanquished, and would one day return. Imagining themselves as following in the footsteps of the heroic French Resistance, New Left radicals grasped at any insurgent cause they could find. This led them to absurd and dangerous places, such as the jungles of Latin America and eastern Cambodia alongside Che Guevara and the Khmer Rouge. It also led some of them to hijack planes alongside Palestinian terrorists.
These radicals yearned for a revolutionary purpose, and they did almost anything to find it.
A classic example of the misguided radical was Wilfred Bose, a German leftist who participated in the 1976 Entebbe hijacking with the Popular Front for Palestinian Liberation. Upon helping his comrades hijack Air France Flight 139, he was told by the PFLP to separate Jews and Israelis from the other passengers, who were then set free.
Bose was apparently taken aback by the command. He had become a left-wing radical because he wanted to fight Nazis. Yet here he was kidnapping Jews.
The pond hasn't intruded thus far, but to be sure, the chance to note a feeble billy goat butt, dressed up as a "to be sure" was irresistible ...
To be sure, defending the human rights of Palestinians or calling for peace are without a doubt noble causes. But real peace rallies would call for the return of Israeli hostages at the same time as calling for a ceasefire. Real peace rallies would carry Israeli and Palestinian flags, side by side. And real peace rallies would call on Hamas to surrender and evacuate from civilian areas.
None of this happens at our “ceasefire” rallies, of course, because they are not about peace at all. They demand “peace” from one side only.
It is perhaps for this reason, most Australians are averse to them. A study by Resolve Research shows a significant disparity in Australian public opinion: only 14 per cent support ceasefire protests, while nearly 70 per cent prefer Australia to remain uninvolved in the Israel-Gaza conflict.The Resolve study reflects the reality that many on the centre left still believe in universal values. Abhorring racism in all its forms, including anti-Semitism, they believe in the “fair go” that does not discriminate by skin colour, religion or nationality.
Unfortunately for the centre left, however, the hard left disagrees. According to hard-left moral logic, ships should be protested because of the nationality of their origin (Israeli), businesses should be boycotted because of their owners’ religion (Judaism).
Centre-left politicians such as Minns and O’Neil, who stand firm against the extreme views on their left, deserve recognition, even when we might disagree with them on other matters.
History shows anti-Semitism tends to rise in societies where moderate forces lose control and demagogues from either side exploit divisions to seize power.
In Australia, we must counter the divisive tactics of the hard left by raising our voices for universal values. We must raise them as loud as we can.
Claire Lehmann is founding editor of online magazine Quillette.
The desire to dress up objections to the current situation of Palestinian people as being "hard left" is profoundly offensive ...
The murmuring has grown a little louder than that ...
Members of the European Parliament have described Israel’s actions in Gaza as a “violation of international law,” “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing.”
During a session held at the European Parliament’s General Assembly yesterday, parliamentarians accused the European Union of applying double standards by remaining silent on Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip.
The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, stated that while Israel has the right to defend itself, the EU is also concerned about the impact on civilians in Gaza and the West Bank.
French MEP Manon Aubry stressed the need for a long-lasting ceasefire in Gaza, adding that a pause is not enough.
Irish MEP Grace O’Sullivan called on EU leaders to stop trading with Israel and demand a permanent ceasefire.
O’Sullivan also urged the EU to show courage and recognise the state of Palestine.
The state of Palestine?
It hasn't been a goer for decades, and Palestinians will remain stateless, and an easy target for thugs who dismiss them as animals ...best shipped elsewhere ...
Israel’s intelligence ministry has proposed a “worldwide refugee resettlement scheme” as a “solution” to what the occupation state refers to as its “Gaza problem.” Israeli official, Gila Gamliel, proposed the controversial plan in an article published yesterday in the Jerusalem Post.
Gamliel rejected bringing the Palestinian Authority back to rule Gaza. She said that it has failed before and would fail again. Instead, Gamliel shockingly proposed what appears to be a programme for ethnic cleansing disguised as humanitarianism.
An Israeli victory would be an “opportunity”, explained Gamliel, revealing that her office “has been working diligently on how to proceed the day after Hamas has been defeated and annihilated.”
A Hamas defeat would not solve the problem as far as Israel is concerned, Gamliel argued. “We will still have around two million people in Gaza, many of whom voted for Hamas and celebrated the massacre of innocent men, women, and children,” Gamliel said. “Gaza is a breeding ground for extremism.”
Gamliel ignored the fact that half of Gaza’s 2.2 million are children and would not have been born or eligible to vote during the last election held in 2006. Nevertheless, Israeli officials have deployed this line of argument to justify their indiscriminate killing. Of the 15,271 Palestinians killed by the Israeli military, 6,403 are children.
The proposal by the international community, including the US, to bring the PA back to Gaza is an “obvious structural flaw,” said Gamliel. She went on to claim that the “PA does not have a markedly different ideology from Hamas.”
After dismissing the return of the PA, Gamliel proposed her thinly veiled plan for ethnic cleansing under the guise of a voluntary humanitarian relocation scheme. Gamliel disingenuously calls on nations supporting Palestinians to help resettle refugees.
“Some world leaders are already discussing a worldwide refugee resettlement scheme and saying they would welcome Gazans to their countries,” Gamliel claimed. “This could be supported by many nations around the world, especially those that claim to be friends of the Palestinians. This is an opportunity for those who say they support the Palestinian people to show these are not just empty words.”
The Israeli official callously suggests redirecting reconstruction funds away from Gaza towards resettlement costs, so Gazans can be transferred abroad. This completely ignores Israel’s central role in creating the humanitarian disaster through its crippling almost two-decade-long siege and blockade of the enclave.
“Instead of funnelling money to rebuild Gaza or to the failed UNRWA, the international community can assist in the costs of resettlement, helping the people of Gaza build new lives in their new host countries,” said Gamliel, referring to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees.
You won't have read any of that in the lizard Oz, but if you care to read the original post in the Jerusalem Post, it's real enough ...
...As we consider our options for the day after, the international community appears to be pushing to bring the Palestinian Authority back to rule Gaza. This has obvious structural flaws, as it was tried in 2005 after the disaster of the Disengagement when all 8,600 Jewish residents were forcibly evicted from the Gaza Strip. It took only two years for Hamas to seize power, largely by throwing PA leaders off high roofs.
Furthermore, as we are witnessing at this very moment, the PA does not have a markedly different ideology from Hamas. Recently, for example, the PA Ministry of Religious Affairs distributed instructions to preachers in mosques throughout Judea and Samaria to deliver a teaching about the requirement to kill Jews and the wider goal to exterminate all Jews.
So, this option – bringing the PA back to rule Gaza – has failed in the past and will fail again. It is an option that is seen as illegitimate by the Israeli public and one that would put us back to square one within a short amount of time.
Another option is to promote the voluntary resettlement of Palestinians in Gaza, for humanitarian reasons, outside of the Strip.
It is important that those who seek a life elsewhere be provided with that opportunity. Some world leaders are already discussing a worldwide refugee resettlement scheme and saying they would welcome Gazans to their countries. This could be supported by many nations around the world, especially those that claim to be friends of the Palestinians.
This is an opportunity for those who say they support the Palestinian people to show these are not just empty words.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the global UN body that deals with refugees, is mandated by its Statute and the UN General Assembly Resolutions to undertake resettlement as one of its three durable solutions. Unfortunately, however, for the last 75 years, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), a refugee body that privileges Palestinians over every other refugee population, has done zero to help the Palestinian people, even though it has an annual budget of well over $1 billion.
Instead of funneling money to rebuild Gaza or to the failed UNRWA, the international community can assist in the costs of resettlement, helping the people of Gaza build new lives in their new host countries.
Gaza has long been thought of as a problem without an answer. We have tried many different solutions – Disengagement, enrichment, conflict management, and building high walls in the hope of keeping the monsters of Hamas out of Israel.
These have all failed.
We must try something new, and we call on the international community to help make it a reality.
It could be a win-win solution: a win for those civilians of Gaza who seek a better life and a win for Israel after this devastating tragedy.
Israeli communities in the Gaza border area and the South could then return to their homes and communities and live in safety and security. They should not have to continue living with the constant threat of rocket attacks and murderous infiltrations.
This solution, which I proposed already during the early days of the way, is far from perfect. It has its drawbacks and obstacles, but it is our job to look at all options and decide which is better.
I am gratified to hear that Members of Knesset from across the political spectrum, including both the coalition and opposition, have joined my Ministry’s initiative and declared their support for it. I am certain that many others will follow suit.
As the saying goes, perfect is the enemy of the good. This is by no means a perfect plan, but it is a good one. It is feasible, and it brings security, prosperity, and – hopefully – peace for all.
The dream is alive. Israel without any difficult, pesky, uppity Palestinians, sent into permanent exile ... and if resistant to the idea, send in settlers to finish the dirty business.
And meanwhile, our Henry and cackling Claire blather on, without any sign of care or compassion for the human animals caught up in it all ...
What a relief it is then to turn to domestic matters for a closing couple of cartoons, with both the cartoonists having the same idea ...
Err Mr Ed, it's Turkiye not Turkey. And if SMR ever gets up and going and isn't prohibitively expensive, then may be the time to investigate it seriously.
ReplyDeleteThings look to be very expensive in going for renewables now, because we were too stupid to pick up on it back when we'd have had a bit more time to make the conversion and now we have to do it all in a hurry.
When it comes to spelling you don’t want to take your lead from those damned foreigners, do you GB - what would they know? Or perhaps the News Corp style guide simply hasn’t been updated for a few years as yet another cost-cutting exercise.
DeleteWell they used to have subeds once upon a time, Anony, who knew such things (mostly) and corrected the ignoramuses on the payroll. But not now - way too expensive. And I notice that the Aussie Graudian is just as bad these days.
DeletePeter Leahy: "In 2000, nobody anticipated the ADF would spend two decades fighting land wars." And not using even one single tank in any of them.
ReplyDeleteTed Woodley: "So why are taxpayers forking out over $1.5bn for a power station that can only run on gas for 10 hours, can never run on hydrogen, will be emitting greenhouse gases potentially after 2050, will be outcompeted by batteries, and; will never pay for itself."
ReplyDeleteGotta admit that, for a guest reptile, they all sound like very sensible questions. But then Ted does seem to have had some real experience in that sort of thing.
The Australian’s editorial is suggesting Australia should follow the UK’s lead? Not the UK of the disastrous Brexit and whose current chancellor was described by John Crace like this: “The chancellor who knows next to nothing about macroeconomics.” and “The entrepreneur who knows how to create a small business. Start with a big one.”
ReplyDeleteAs for suggesting, we should follow Biden, the Courier-Mail had a headline “ ‘Everybody knows’ President Biden is not ‘up to the job’.”
Looks like the UK and the USA have already been nuked, so I doubt we should follow suit.
Given that the closest thing the current UK government has to an actual policy is to demonise refugees, I’d say that they’ve been following Australia’s lead, rather than the other way round.
DeleteAnyway GB, doncha know that Brexit has been a raging success? Just ask the local reptiles and their UK cousins.
Umm, well as The Real GB, I'd have to say that Brexit has been a great success: it has lifted the UK (excluding Scotland) to the very top of the Exemplary Colonialist Stupidly table - way ahead of even Trump's USA.
DeleteMaybe this is a variant of the Thucydides Trap: the waning power goes into an inevitable state of continuing idiocy, like the UK is now. And in many cases adopts the final stupidity: a losing war.
A little observation from today's John Crace about right wing, and especially far right wing, politicians: "All that matters is that they are in power and that they can retain it for as long as possible." And that is indeed what we are seeing: in our case, the way that Dutton is playing a strung out kind of 'Gish Gallop' by continually throwing up 'talking points' and then just quickly moving on to the next one.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/nov/23/jeremy-hunt-the-crap-magician-cant-escape-his-own-autumn-statement-illusion