It’s kinda hard to see size-wise, but that little dragonfly mid-frame on the left marks the first time in my photographic life that I’ve made a non-blurred image of one. Yet another reason for an extended return to Japan.
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Elsewhere In Disasters
We’ve had quite enough of He Who Shall Not Be Criticized, I think, although there is this one funny thing where Ross Douthat’s praise for Augusto Pinochet’s post-coup reign of terror in Chile has resurfaced for like the fifth time. Douthat has said he was nought but a callow provocateur at the time—he was a Harvard student—and surely he’s right that dismissing Pinochet’s program of killings and disappearances and torture as a small price to pay for ridding the country of democratically-elected president Salvador Allende is in fact provocative.
I’m not linking to it but Douthat’s most recent New York Times effort is sort of a “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” thing, with some thoughts that could charitably be described as disorganized about how leftists, which in the Douthat vocabulary includes everybody to the left of, say, JD Vance, can let go their worries and find happiness in a country which is definitely not going full-bore fascist. Leftists, which in the Douthat vocabulary includes everybody to the left of, say, Stephen Miller, are shown to be chronic hysterics.
So there’s a genocide in Gaza, one of several the US has materially supported over the decades and centuries, the latter if you count the ones we perpetrated ourselves in the 19th and 20th centuries.
The Associated Press has done some polling on the Gaza affair during the period since the Israeli invasion, and most recently finds that roughly half of mah fella Americans think Israel has “gone too far” in dispossessing, slaughtering and starving Palestinians. That’s up from 40% the month after the invasion, the latter figure one which seems startlingly high to me given the near-universal support the invasion was getting from the press and Congress and university administrations at the time. Good for us. I had no idea.
A 10% increase in the number of us who oppose what a flood of academics and other experts outside the UN have named a genocide in recent months seems chintzy, though, and AP says additionally that the percentage in support of negotiating a ceasefire has actually declined during the past three months. And I suspect that one reason Democrats are more willing now than a year ago to say something is amiss is that the Biden administration is no longer out there insisting that it’s not.
The movement in public opinion is not stopping universities and of course the regime from persecuting pro-Palestinian/anti-genocide actvists, as demonstrated by the deportation order from a reactionary immigration judge—in Louisiana, a favorite venue for disposing of troublesome residents—against pro-Palestine activist Mahmoud Khalil. Khalil now faces removal to Syria or Algeria, neither of which are in great shape in terms of human rights and both of which, he says, put him within reach of retaliation from Israel for his activism.
Khalil is appealing the order, but as with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran man the regime illegally deported to be incarcerated in El Salvador’s criminally abusive CECOT prison, the regime will continue to pursue him.
I wish to return to the subject of the regime’s Christian nationalist/state religion project, which I mentioned a few days ago in connection with the state department’s early success in meeting the goals of the regime’s “Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias” in government agencies.
State department chief Marco Polio, the pestilential former senator who is also and not irrelevantly our current national security adviser and among those greenlighting the extrajudicial killings of Venezuelans on the high seas, was effusive in his praise for his department’s effort to root out heretical programs, regulations and personnel. His is, though, not the only agency which has brought distinction upon its leaders for smiting the unholy, as set out in the task force’s initial report.
In the 120 days since the issuance of Executive Order 14,202, the Task Force has been stood up and launched, the majority of member agencies have initiated a thorough review of antiChristian policies, practices, and conduct, and agencies have already begun to take action to remedy past wrongs. Though these investigations remain in their early stages, the evidence uncovered is unmistakable: during the Biden Administration, people of faith, particularly Christians, were repeatedly subjected to anti-religious bias at the hands of their own government.
Attorney General Bondi and the Task Force are resolved to end that pattern once and for all. Over the next twenty months, the Task Force will pursue its mandate with vigor, conducting robust investigations, enforcing the rule of law, and ensuring that the Trump Administration’s commitment to equal treatment of all faiths is fully realized.
This work is not merely corrective. It is foundational. By eradicating anti-Christian bias in the federal government, the Task Force is reaffirming a principle older than the Republic itself, that freedom of religion is not granted by government but guaranteed against it. America must remain One Nation Under God if she is to remain Indivisible, With Liberty and Justice for All. The Task Force will never permit the federal government to be used as a weapon against faith.
I also have to reiterate that while the executive order establishing the task force received considerable mainstream attention, this intial report on its activities received none, which is to say that the regime is doing important work to establish a state religion without much scrutiny. I blame the Epstein affair.
More stupid press tricks
Long-time national security correspondent David Sanger at The New York Times wrote an entire story about Trump’s lethally belligerent new approach to both foreign and domestic policy with once mentioning that many of his actions and prospective actions are illegal under internal law or unconstitutional, saying only in passing that some guy on Twitter called blowing up a boatload of Venezuelans a war crime and that JD Vance poo-poo’d the notion, and that “the administration does not devote much energy to providing the legal basis for its actions.”
Instead, Sanger focused on how the regime’s approach differs from Trump’s first term, when he felt unfairly constrained by people who grew up and worked in settings where the Constitution and international law was at least notionally binding.
It is too early to know whether the politics will be any different (from that governing extrajudicial killings) when it comes to sending National Guard troops, and perhaps regular military forces, into more American cities. Again, the administration does not devote much energy to providing the legal basis for its actions; Mr. Trump talks only about results, and has issued a blitz of numbers — some accurate, some misleading — about the drop in crime in Washington.
…
The mystery now is whether Mr. Trump will take the next step — using the investigatory powers of the Justice Department, the F.B.I. and other agencies — to implicate nongovernmental organizations and political groups for supporting those he calls “leftist radicals,” and leverage the findings to designate some of them as domestic terrorists.Mr. Trump said on Monday that he would consider just that for “antifa,” a term that began as a shortening for “antifascists” but that has evolved to describe the politics of the far left, often beyond the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. But it is more an amalgam than a movement, so decentralized that it is unclear how the government would figure out its membership.
Mystery no more: that story was published yesterday, and a few hours later Trump declared on his social media site that antifa is a terrorist organization and that he has directed the regime’s internal security apparatus to investigate it. As for figuring out its membership—you’re a member if they say you’re a member, and the fact that no legal basis exists for declaring any domestic organization a terrorist group, even one that unlike antifa actually is an organization, will be no barrier.
The Laws of Faux Objectivity do not preclude saying things like “blowing up boats carrying people you may suspect of transporting drugs is categorically illegal under international law.” It’s valuable context. So fucking say it. Strike a few of the sentences detailing cabinet-level anal tonguing if word count is an issue. Geez.
A personal thing
I had two doctors in two days offer to write me an oxy prescription for some persistent pain. I am pleased that they’re taking pain management seriously, and one day I may take them up on it but meanwhile I remember how much I liked that stuff when the guy who took my thyroid out prescribed it post-surgery. I mean, I really liked it beyond its effectiveness as a pain killer, and I completely understand why people wind up addicted to it, and the risk looks weightier than the reward at this point. Plus it’s hard to do stuff when you’re fucked up on it. Plus my pain isn’t as bad as what I know other people were suffering when they got the stuff. I don’t think the offer would have been made if I didn’t have cancer.
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Music
Young Fathers, Heavy Heavy, “I Saw”
Amyl and The Sniffers, Amyl and The Sniffers, “Some Mutts (Can’t Be Muzzled)”
Big Special, POSTINDUSTRIAL HOMETOWN BLUES, “Black Dog/White Horse”
Black Midi, Hellfire, “Sugar/Tzu”
That’s all I got. Be well; take care.
When my wife had knee replacements, she had the same experience with oxy you did and the same reflexion on its addictive power.