U.S. Air Force Member Sets Self on Fire Outside Israel’s Embassy in D.C. to Protest War in Gaza Time. Aaron Bushnell:
“I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I’m about to engage in an extreme act of protest,” the airman repeated, in footage reviewed by TIME, as he walked toward the driveway of the Israeli embassy. “But compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it’s not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.”
Oddly, all of the early coverage suppresses the detail:
Why did he do it?
Four major news outlets have almost the exact same headline for the self-immolation of 25-year old Aaron Bushnell. Not one of them mentions the words “Gaza” or “genocide,” the reason for Aaron’s protest, or the word “Palestine,” his last words spoken. pic.twitter.com/MdRCFsptzD
— Assal Rad (@AssalRad) February 26, 2024
We’ll see how the official reaction goes:
Prediction—a reporter to Karine Jean-Pierre tmrw: A serviceman set himself on fire to avoid, in his words, being complicit in “genocide.” Will the president call his family & if so, what’ll he say?
KJP: The president will tell them that…Israel has a right to defend itself. pic.twitter.com/vMQgeAuzJw
— 🍉 Steven W. Thrasher, PhD, CPT (@thrasherxy) February 25, 2024
Bushnell recorded his self-immolation on Twitch (since deleted). Here’s the YouTube (until it gets taken down):
Here is a transcript from @taliaotg, who broke the story. Key detail:
MORE INFO: The person who self-immolated apparently emailed reporters this morning stating “Today, I am planning to engage in an extreme act of protest against the genocide of the Palestinian people,” and stated that it would be live-streamed on Twitch.
— Talia Jane ❤️🔥 (@taliaotg) February 25, 2024
One wonders who the reporters who got the email were….
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Houthis demand entry of relief into Gaza in exchange for salvaging sunken British ship Anadolu Agency
Israel to intensify strikes on Hezbollah even if there is cease-fire in Gaza: Gallant Anadolu Agency
$14b US aid package for Israel crafted with eye to ‘multi-front war,’ not just Gaza Times of Israel
* * *
How Israel’s war went wrong Vox
How One Error May Haunt Biden’s Foreign Policy Legacy David Rothkopf, Alon Pinkas, The New Republic. “You can’t fine-tune a massive error into being a success.” In the vulgate, “you can’t buff a turd.” Pinkas is the former consul general of Israel in New York; Rothkopf is a Blob pseudopodium.
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Settlers Attack Israeli Soldiers Helping Palestinian Shepherds Look for Stolen Goats Haaretz
Police beatings of pro-Palestinian schoolchildren spark outrage in Italy The New Arab
New Not-So-Cold War
Avdeevka Denouement: Russian Momentum Turning Point Simplicius the Thinker(s)
Talking with Lt. Col. Danny Davis about Where The Ukrainian War Is Headed (video) John Mearsheimer, John’s Substack
Two Years After Russia Invaded Ukraine: Q&A with RAND Experts RAND
Ukraine can win war if it has enough assets – Advisor to US President Ukrainska Pravda
* * *
Ukraine vows more self-reliance as war enters third year Politico. Oh.
New Footage Shows Ukraine’s U.S.-Supplied Abrams Tanks in First Combat: Images Fuel Speculation of Battlefield Loss Military Watch
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The Spy War: How the C.I.A. Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin Adam Entous and Michael Schwirtz, NYT. What an odd headline. I would have thought nation-states “fight” other nation-states, not individuals. Anyhow, it all started after the Maidan coup we sponsored in 2014. And John Brennan. I can’t even. One nugget: “The details of this intelligence partnership, many of which are being disclosed by The New York Times for the first time, have been a closely guarded secret for a decade.” The Times as spook asset is nothing new, but why now? Another: “The Ukrainians gave the new [CIA] station chief an affectionate nickname: Santa Claus.” I’ll bet. I sure hope none of those “backpacks full of [Russian] documents” were Russian chickenfeed (especially the “election meddling” stuff, of which Brennan was apparently enamored). Anyhow, much detail here for readers to pick over. Enjoy!
Senate Aide Investigated Over Unofficial Actions in Ukraine NYT. Last line: “‘You never go into wartime Ukraine with an empty suitcase,’ he said.” Oh.
The Ukraine War Runs on Prevarication The American Conservative
The crisis of Soviet Ukraine: The Maidan Revolution didn’t free my people Unherd. Interesting.
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Zelenskiy says 31,000 soldiers killed, giving figure for first time Guardian. That’s not very many. So I guess they don’t need that conscription law, then?
Ukraine’s counter-offensive plan was in the Kremlin before it even started – Zelenskyy Ukrainska Pravda. And no wonder. It was the the most widely telegraphed counterpunch in the history of the world.
A Tale Of Two Wars Madras Courier. I’m all for diplomacy, but there are some prerequisites for making it work, none of which were fulfilled in Ukraine or Israel.
South of the Border
Thousands of Brazilians rally in support of Bolsonaro amid coup probe Al Jazeera
The Caribbean
Jovenel Moïse’s widow is accused of being party to his murder The Economist
U.S. looks to galvanize support for Kenya-led armed mission to Haiti among G20 ministers Miami Herald
Why are you spending so much time on a dead white guy? Peste. Paul Farmer.
2024
US millennial women are now more likely to die in their late 20s and early 30s than any generation since the World War II era: report Business Insider
The Bezzle
Why Are There Suddenly So Many Car Washes? Bloomberg. A private equity infestation.
Digital Watch
Google explains Gemini’s ‘embarrassing’ AI pictures of diverse Nazis The Verge. Like this:
Very 1619 Project. Commentary: “I’m done with @Google” Mario Juric. A long Tweet. Key paragraph:
I’ve been reading Google’s Gemini damage control posts. I think they’re simply not telling the truth. For one, their text-only product has the same (if not worse) issues. And second, if you know a bit about how these models are built, you know you don’t get these “incorrect” answers through one-off innocent mistakes. Gemini’s outputs reflect the many, many, FTE-years of labeling efforts, training, fine-tuning, prompt design, QA/verification — all iteratively guided by the team who built it. You can also be certain that before releasing it, many people have tried the product internally, that many demos were given to senior PMs and VPs, that they all thought it was fine, and that they all ultimately signed off on the release. With that prior, the balance of probabilities is strongly against the outputs being an innocent bug — as @googlepubpolicy is now trying to spin it: Gemini is a product that functions exactly as designed, and an accurate reflection of the values people who built it.
Those values appear to include a desire to reshape the world in a specific way that is so strong that it allowed the people involved to rationalize to themselves that it’s not just acceptable but desirable to train their AI to prioritize ideology ahead of giving user the facts.
Microsoft trying to stop Copilot generating fake Putin comments on Navalny’s death The Register
Travel
Stunning choreography:
Cruise ships leaving port Miami on a regular Sunday.pic.twitter.com/GNt5E7G6d0
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) February 24, 2024
Norwegian cruise quarantined due to stomach illness cases on board USA Today. “Stomach illness” “suspected to be cholera.”
* * *
Sky High Sabotage: Major Airlines Are Using TSA To Secretly Shut Down A Competitor View from the Wing
Boeing
Ryanair demands compensation from Boeing for aircraft delivery delays FT
Supply Chain
Asia’s love for non-OPEC+ crudes set to deepen as output expands Hellenic Shipping News
Groves of Academe
Koch Injected Nearly $500 Million into Hundreds of Colleges and Universities Between 2018 and 2022 Exposed by CMD. Biggest winner: George Mason.
Healthcare
Best health care system in the world!
Let this sink in—if the former U.S. Surgeon General @JeromeAdamsMD can’t afford a hospital visit, after knowing full well about doctors and insurance, and having a “premier” health insurance plan—what hope is there for the rest of us? #Medicareforall #healthcareforall now! https://t.co/QBvqk0tff4
— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) February 25, 2024
A loophole got him a free New York hotel stay for five years. Then he claimed to own the building AP
Class Warfare
It’s Not Just Wages. Retailers Are Mistreating Workers in a More Insidious Way. NYT
A New Force Set Loose New York Review of Books. Pre-1789 France.
The Origins of Enduring Economic Inequality (forthcoming) (PDF) Journal of Economic Literature. From the Abstract:
We survey archaeological evidence suggesting that among hunter-gatherers and farmers in Neolithic western Eurasia (11,700 to 5,300 years ago) elevated levels of wealth inequality occurred but were ephemeral and rare compared to the substantial enduring inequalities of the past five millennia. In response, we seek to understand not the de novo “creation of inequality” but instead the processes by which substantial wealth differences could persist over long periods and why this occurred only at the end of the Neolithic, at least four millennia after the agricultural revolution. Archaeological and anthropological evidence suggests that a culture of aggressive egalitarianism may have thwarted the emergence of enduring wealth inequality until the Late Neolithic when new farming technologies raised the value of material wealth relative to labor and a concentration of elite power in early proto-states (and eventually the exploitation of enslaved labor) provided the political and economic conditions for heightened wealth inequalities to endure.
Constitutional Clash: Labor, Capital, and Democracy (PDF) Northwestern University Law Review. From the Abstract:
In the last few years, workers have engaged in organizing and strike activity at levels not seen in decades… Viewed collectively, these efforts—”labor’s” efforts for short—seek not only to redefine the contours of labor law. They also present an incipient challenge to our constitutional order. If realized, labor’s vision would extend democratic values, including freedom of speech and association, into the putatively private domain of the workplace. It would also support the Constitution’s promise of free labor… this Article shows that contemporary fights about labor are also inherently fights about constitutional law
“[T]he Constitution’s promise of free labor.” Oh?
Death of the Innovator? New Left Review
Leap year saved our societies from chaos—for now, at least National Geographic
Deep Time Diligence (interview) Tyson Yunkaporta, Emergence Magazine
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/02/links-2-24-2024.html“>here
