FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2023
The facts we ignore during war: If you have the time today, we'll suggest that you give it a try:
Stop a thousand people on the street. Ask them to explain the nature of the so-called "two-state solution."
(By the way, does "the State of Palestine" currently exist? You could even ask them that!)
It's a very familiar phrase, but what does the concept entail? We ask in part because of the way a certain news report begins in today's New York Times.
Principal headline included. Mark Landler's report starts like this:
Palestinian Authority Open to Gaza Role if U.S. Backs 2-State Solution
The Palestinian Authority has told the Biden administration that it is open to a governance role in post-Hamas Gaza if the United States commits to a full-fledged two-state solution to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, according to a top official of its parent, the Palestine Liberation Organization.
The official, Hussein al-Sheikh, the P.L.O.’s secretary general, said he had told Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken last week that the Palestinian Authority sought “a commitment from the U.S. administration, with a comprehensive political decision that would include the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.”
[...]
His message is both a relief and a challenge to the White House, which has been groping for a path out of the worst violence in decades between Israel and Hamas, the extremist group that controls Gaza...
According to Landler's report, the Palestinian Authority might play a role in post-Hamas Gaza if the U.S. commits to a two-state solution.
Check that! According to Landler's formulation, it would have to be a full-fledged two-state solution! You have our permission to interrogate your thousand respondents concerning that new turn of phrase.
How well do we, the people of North America, follow the tragic and deadly events which constitute this long-running human disaster? Perhaps unfairly, consider this:
In this morning's print editions, Vanessa Friedman's report about the Trump family's wardrobes sits on page A1—on the front page—of the New York Times. Landler's report about this possible approach to a post-Hamas Gaza is found on page A6.
We'll have more on Friedman's detailed wardrobe frisking this afternoon. For now, we're asking you about the way we the people follow the basic events involved in such long-running wars.
This takes us back to what Mustafa Barghouti said back on October 11.
As we noted yesterday, Barghouti was interviewed that evening on the PBS NewsHour. Once again, we'll show you a chunk of what he said:
BARGHOUTI (10/11/23): I, as a person, always say that I am against any killing of any civilian, whether Palestinian or Israeli. And we're sorry for all those people who were killed, Palestinians and Israelis.
But, unfortunately, everybody keeps avoiding the root cause of the problem.
[...]
JOHN YANG: You talk about the root cause, and there are—there's a generation of Palestinians who reject your call for nonviolence, who feel that this is how they have to respond. What do you say to them?
BARGHOUTI: I say to them, and I try to prove to them, that nonviolence is a much more effective way of achieving our freedom. That's the best way of doing that.
But one should ask the question, why these young people go in that direction? It's simply because they see no hope.
Eighty percent of young educated people in Gaza are under siege and are unemployed. The poverty is unbelievable.
The GDP per capita in Israel is $56,000 per year, while it is less than $1,000 per year—per capita per year in Gaza. Yet, Gazans are obliged to buy products at Israeli market price. These people don't see a hope, don't see a future.
Was Barghouti excusing the killings and the hostage-takings which had occurred just a few days before? Was he evading the question of who is responsible for the poverty to which he referred?
Following Barack Obama's advice, we'll advise ourselves to briefly sidestep our outrage. For ourselves, as we watched the NewsHour that night, we wondered how accurate Barghouti's highlighted statement was.
Please note! "Per capita GDP" is not the same thing as "per capita income." Also, there are two major ways to measure GDP and per capita GDP—PPP and nominal.
(With statistics, it's rarely comes easy.)
That said, per capita GDP is a basic way to measure the prosperity of a jurisdiction and its people. Could it really be possible that per capita GDP of three such groups actually look something like this?
Alleged per capita GDP, 2022
United States: $75,269
Israel: $57,758
Gaza: "Less than $1,000"
The first two figures are drawn from this source. As it turns out, it's hard to locate figures for the GDP of Gaza.
Over at Axios, Felix Salmon recently scored the data as shown below. Warning! As you can see, he provides no figure for Gaza alone:
Per capita GDP, 2021 / 2022
Israel: $53,000
West Bank and Gaza: $3,500
That second figure plainly exceeds "less than a thousand dollars." But that number is for the West Bank and Gaza combined—and as he continues, Salmon notes that "per-capita income in Gaza is now just half the amount seen in the West Bank."
This suggests that per capita GDP for Gaza alone would have been well less than $3,500 during the period in question. As part of a larger overall view, Salmon offers this:
Palestinian GDP is likely to shrink by 3% in 2023, with per-capita income falling by 5%, per estimates from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.
The big picture: Even before the current conflict, more than half of the people in Gaza lived in poverty, and 60% suffered from food insecurity. The combination of war and recession will only exacerbate Gaza's humanitarian crisis.
Where it stands: Per-capita income in Gaza is now just half the amount seen in the West Bank. As a result, Gaza accounts for less than 18% of Palestinian GDP, down from 34% before a strict blockade was put in place by Israel in 2007, according to the statistical bureau.
How reliable is the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics? We have no idea.
That said, Salmon was willing to go with the claim that, as of the start of this year, "more than half of the people in Gaza lived in poverty, and 60% suffered from food insecurity."
Also, he mentioned some sort of "strict blockade" which has made matters much, much worse. Could all that have something to do with the highlighted part of Barack Obama's recent "disgusting" remarks?
OBAMA: If there’s any chance of us being able to act constructively to do something, it will require an admission of complexity and maintaining what on the surface may seem contradictory ideas:
That what Hamas did was horrific, and there’s no justification for it.
And what is also true is that the occupation, and what’s happening to Palestinians, is unbearable.
And what is also true is that there is a history of the Jewish people that may be dismissed unless your grandparents, or your great-grandparents, or your uncle or your aunt, tell you stories about the madness of antisemitism.
According to Obama, what Hamas did was horrific—one might even say irredeemable. But he also said that we the people need to keep an additional fact in mind:
And what is also true is that the occupation, and what’s happening to Palestinians, is unbearable.
The "occupation" [has been] unbearable? Were GDP figures of the type we've presented part of what the former president had in mind?
For ourselves, we have a dream! We'd like to see a future where Israeli citizens and Palestinian citizens live in peace and prosperity. We want to see Palestinian children and Israeli children born into a world like that—with news of their moral and material success spreading elsewhere in the world.
In search of some such better world, Obama said that we the people need to keep a wide range of basic facts in mind. We can't simply stick to the set of facts which valorizes the population we may tend to identify with or favor, for whatever perfectly understandable reason or set of reasons.
Barghouti's figure may or may not have been perfectly accurate. That said, how often do you see any such matter discussed at all?
Joe Scarborough went off again on this morning's Morning Joe, offering a selective array of facts as he grew red and shouted. That's the way we humans are inclined to behave at times of war, or so the major top experts have all repeatedly said.
Obama said we have to consider a range of relevant facts. In response, a Newsweek editor went on last Sunday's Fox & Friends and said the former president's remarks had been "absolutely disgusting."
Astonishingly, she even seemed to say that he should have a yard sign in his yard—a sign which says, "Kill the Jews." And yes, that's what she said.
By the norms of our own blue tribe, the Fox & Friends guest is "highly educated." She's a Berkeley PhD, with an emphasis on the role played by cannibalism in the early novel in Britain. You can't get much smarter than that!
On that morning, she adopted another identity as her friends on Fox maintained a strategic silence: She became the latest member of the demographic long known as "humans at war."
Her behavior was truly astounding that day. Then too, we have our own Morning Joe program. What should we think about that?
The brutal attack on Israel by Hamas did not happen because of the GDP in Gaza.
ReplyDeleteDoes anyone seriously believe that Palestinians will be fine as long as the Palestinian Authority administers Gaza? That is a return to past conditions that obviously did not produce peace. Israel was invaded previously because Arab Nations (on behlaf of Palestinians) considered this kind of solution unacceptable. Hamas was elected in Gaza in preference to the Palestinian Authority, by the people residing there.
DeleteLandler's quote says that Hamas controls Gaza, yet the Palestinians have been complaining that Israel controls Gaza, when it is convenient for them to say so, because Israel controls who goes in and out. Given that the West Bank still suffers terrorist attacks by Palestinians on Israelis, and vice versa, how does the Palestinian Authority propose to lessen ongoing violence?
Somerby doesn't care enough about the Palestinians to do anything but use this as his current excuse for bashing liberals and journalists who once attended Berkeley (because college is bad). If he did, this wouldn't be the first time, in the history of his blog, that he has mentioned Gaza's troubles.
On December 2, 2015, Somerby said:
"Did Trump actually see such a thing? Fairly early in the discussion, Hewitt seemed to say that he thinks Trump's claim is wrong. "I think, obviously, he is recollecting the West Bank or the Gaza demonstrations," Hewitt said, referring to videotaped celebrations which happened halfway around the world from Jersey City."
He was discussing Trump's lie that he had personaly seen immigrants celebrating the destruction of the twin towers on rooftops and Hugh Hewitt was defending Trump by suggesting he had actually seen footage from Gaza.
Somerby does not give a damn about the GDP in Gaza unless it furthers his own agenda here. And why does Somerby have such an agenda? You tell me. Today he seems to be advancing the Palestinian perspective, but at the expense of Morning Joe and a former Berkeley grad student now a female journalist. Those are his normal targets, after all.
If Somerby cared about the Palestinian people in Gaza, wouldn't he mention what a horrible job Hamas has been doing administering Gaza? It is almost as if increasing the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza would advance their PR goals worldwide and attract more funding to their actual cause -- eradication of Israel. It is almost as if Hamas has expected Palestinians in Gaza to accept that suffering as martyrs to the ultimate goal of wiping out Jews. Babies crying for milk are the price Hamas expects people to pay for the joy of winning sympathy and donations, so that they could buy more weapons and prepare their horrific attack, which has ultimately accomplished nothing but deaths and a return to status quo misery.
Somerby expresses no opinion about Gaza today, except misery is bad and humans (all of us) are barbaric warlike monsters who are causing our country to slide into the sea.
Your criticisms of Somerby are fine, but your claims about Palestinians and Gaza are ahistorical and inaccurate.
DeleteArafat/PLO was elected with a huge majority, having worked on peace deals with Israeli PM Rabin. Rabin was then assassinated by a right wing Jew, and Arafat was assassinated by radioactive polonium, a method favored by Russia.
Following this, the right wing came into power in Israel with Netanyahu, who propped up Qatari backed and right wing Hamas, and started a campaign of instigating the Palestinians. Hamas won a single election, in 2006, with only 44%, and it has even less support today among the Palestinians, half of which are 18 years old and under.
Gaza is not merely blockaded on who, when, and why people can enter and leave, Israel also controls all the infrastructure, the few hours a day Gaza has running water and electricity, food, medicine, etc. It’s an open air prison, with Israel engaging in South African style apartheid.
Hamas’ attack has been universally condemned, but it was in part a self own by right wing Israelis who have propped up and weaponized Hamas, which in reality has little support among Palestinians.
Palestinian citizens in Gaza are innocent, they are mere civilians, not combatants, yet after the Hamas attack killed about 1500 Jews, Israel has responded with indiscriminate bombing that has killed over 10,000 Palestinians, nearly half of whom are children. Since Israel started bombing, a Palestinian child dies about every 10 minutes.
Peace was advancing in the 90s until Israel was taken over by a right wing cohort backed by Israel’s fast growing ultra nationalist and theocratic fanatics.
Israel has always struggled due to being an ethnostate that was divided between peace seeking secularists and blood thirsty ultra orthodox religious right wing fanatics; it’s Jewish people living in constant turmoil, while the majority of Jews live elsewhere, mostly in the US, in relative peace and comfort.
Israel was a mistake from the get go, and a bad one, causing a significant amount of the world’s misery. Jews are not to blame, most of us Jews are secular and support peace. At blame are the right wing religious fanatics, the right wing terrorists like Hamas, and the right wing external interests from other Arab nations, the US - especially Christian fanatics, and Russia.
anon 10:58 - how is TDH's post "bashing liberals." You are the one that is bashing liberals just like everyone on Fox who considers that saying anything sympathetic to the Gazans constitutes antisemitism. Of course, that you are a lunatic should be taken into condieration also.
Delete1:19 accurate, well said
DeleteAC/MA -- wouldn't you call mocking the dissertation of a doctoral candidate studying English literature to be bashing liberals. First, Berkeley is considered a bastion of liberal thought, going back to the 60s and the Free Speech Movement, barefoot radicals supporting the black panthers, etc. Second, education is considered to be a liberal elite affectation. Somerby has written numerous essays with words to that effect.
DeleteIf you are lumping liberals together with progressives, you are trying to portray the left as monolithic when there is considerable diversity of thought on the left. Liberals tend to be closer to centrists and less in favor of economic analyses and more in favor of traditional lefty issues such as civil rights, unions, social justice and social welfare, plus a good measure of environmentalism and concern with climate change. Progressives are more pro-Palestinian, more likely to call Israel a bad guy. I have not used the word antisemitic in any of my recent comments. And no, I am not a lunatic.
@1:19
DeleteIf you are going to call Israel a mistake, you need to explain where the Jews fleeing persecution in Europe were to go follow WWII, when no nation wanted to admit them, including the US. At the time when Jews first started going to the Palestinian Territory administered by Britain, there were not large numbers of Palestinians there, and those that did settle there were immigrants, just as the Jews were. How then can you blame the Jews for conflict that was equally the fault of Palestinians?
Palestinians wish to deny the Jewish roots in the Holy Land and pretend they are European, but 800,000 Jews were expelled from the Arab nations when Israel was established. That is as many Jews as the Palestinians claim were expelled or voluntarily emigrated from Israel (at the start of the 1948 war).
You wish to blame Israel for what Hamas did and for the existence of Hamas. Regardless of Israeli policies, that is unacceptable. Hamas is to blame to its barbaric actions and the people of Palestine are to blame for Hamas. The election of Hamas was a sham, but Israel did not prop up Hamas in order to have it turn around and execute its own people and it is outrageous to claim that. This sort of warped blaming of Israel for everything is an example of the disinformation and propaganda that Palestinian organizations use to gain sympathy. But it makes no sense for a people that can attack and kill people in such a brutal manner to disclaim any responsibility for any other aspect of their lives.
Age has never been less a problem for Joe Biden than it is today.
ReplyDeleteToday we are older than yesterday, and so on.
DeleteSomerby today is complaining that we, the people, don't know enough about the tensions in the Middle East. Perhaps that is because Somerby only told us about Plesner's apology yesterday, not the suffering of Israelis at the hands of Arab attacks? When people like Somerby disappear one side's "suffering" in favor of his preferred message, how can the casual reader get a clear picture of what is happening? And today, Somerby grabs the bit in Barghouti's PBS statement about GDP, as if that explains or settles one single thing in this ongoing conflict. And then he attacks his stalking horse du jour, because she got a PhD from Berekely on an obscure topic, something that has no relevance to Israel or Gaza, English literature.
ReplyDeleteThis is the circus that Somerby makes of a conflict that has been going on since before Israel's existence. Note that Somerby has never mentioned why Jews fled to Israel in the first place -- not one single word about it. Shouldn't that be something that we, the people, know about the Middle East conflict. I'll bet the average citizen doesn't know what the Ottoman Empire was, or who owned it. Hint: It wasn't the British.
"Joe Scarborough went off again on this morning's Morning Joe, offering a selective array of facts as he grew red and shouted. That's the way we humans are inclined to behave at times of war, or so the major top experts have all repeatedly said."
ReplyDeleteIf these major top experts are so major and so top, perhaps Somerby can mentioned just one of them, so that we can figure out what he is talking about when he refers to humans at war? Unfortunately for Somerby, who could use some education on human behavior, those so-called top major experts are as imaginary as Somerby's analysts, who Somerby always treated as children and who never get mentioned at all any more.
This isn't cute or funny, not when Somerby has decided to treat a Fox News guest's "joke" as literal, taking overblown offense at the kind of language that occurs regularly on Fox News. Did Somerby just fall off the turnip truck? Was he born yesterday. And today he pretends that this is how all of us behave when "at war," as if this Middle East crisis has not been going on since before most of us were born.
None of this is Morning Joe's fault, no matter how much Somerby wants to make it so. It isn't the media's fault. It isn't even Biden's fault. I blame Hamas and the Arab Nations who went to war to prevent Israel's existence, and the ongoing antisemitism and persecution of Jews, for religious reasons, since the days of Christ (who may or may not have been a historical figure, but certainly lives in the hearts and minds of rabid Christian Nationalist Republicans like Mike Johnson).
If Somerby thinks we, the people, need to have more facts and understanding of what is going on, Somerby himself needs to stop pretending this is about hapless Berkeley grad journalists on Fox and pay attention to the global politics involved. Serious people do not believe that Palestinians would embrace Israelis, if only their GDP were higher.
ReplyDelete"In response, a Newsweek editor went on last Sunday's Fox & Friends and said the former president's remarks had been "absolutely disgusting.""
What's with this repetitive nonsensical concern of Obama being the real victim of all this?
I've just read that Zionists already dropped tens of thousands of bombs on this small territory with the highest population density in the world. Killing 11,000 people, Aljazeera reports. The massacre is ongoing.
Under these circumstances, how come some scumbag insulting some former US president is what you find most appalling, Bob?
anon 10:46. You misconstrue TDH's point. TDH uses Obama's statement in support of his own position - that we should try to understand the other side's perspective. The "scumbag" attached Obama. TDH is saying that we should understand and sympathize with the Gazans plight, which seems to be in line at least to some extent with your posture. though perhaps you aren't very much sympathetic, with the Israeli side of it. It's not uncommon that there are 2 sides to the story.
DeleteSomerby could be recognizing the asymmetry of those in power (Israel) oppressing those dispossessed of any power (Palestinians).
DeleteAnything is possible.
If so, good on him.
If he is just using this circumstance to push for a both sides false equivalence, the tired zombie nonsense he tends to push daily, then he is an ignorant lost soul.
I don't think I "misconstrued" anything. For the third day he's bringing up this what's-her-name Zionist scumbag insulting an ex-president, like that is the crime of the century. Like I said, consider the context.
DeleteLikely the real context is: hey, let’s ignore the huge electoral win for Dems this week.
Delete(Also let’s ignore that Ukraine has been stomping Russia but needs assistance to avoid a standstill, a possible contributing factor behind the Hamas attack)
Don’t be a sucker.
AC/MA, there are not only two sides to be considered but there is the context in which the conflict is taking place. There is also Somerby's perspective on the two sides, and the context in which Somerby is doing his writing. Somerby doesn't consider context. For example, it is easy to call a Jewish woman on a fake cable news show a scumbag, but perhaps she has relatives in Israel. Might that not influence her intemperate words? Would it change your opinion of what she said to know that her statements were motivated by fear and anger over direct threats to loved ones? It is easy for Obama to be measured when he doesn't know anyone in personal danger in Israel or Gaza.
DeleteStudent A sits in the front row in class.
ReplyDeleteStudent B has spent close to half of his class time on the dunce chair in the back of the room.
Who has learned the most? It won't surprise you that Student A also gets higher test scores and better grades.
Will moving Student B from the dunce chair to the front row cause his grades and scores to improve? Should the teacher be blamed for putting Student B in that chair instead of the front row?
Or is there perhaps more to the story? Should we consider the behavior of Student B that being removed to the dunce chair was punishment to correct? Should we consider that Student B has spent all of his time focused on goals that do not involve learning anything at all? Are there social factors contributing to Student B's behavior (i.e., trouble at home)? Should we believe Student B when he claims that Student A was teasing him and bothering him and that's why he behaved badly? In a classroom he said, she said type of finger-pointing who actually harrassed who -- do we know?
This situation with the Palestinians, Arab nations, major powers engaged in proxy wars (Russia, US), is much more complex than the classroom analogy, but Somerby has reduced this to Fox guests and Morning Joe and two guys representing two perspectives on PBS (though he only really excerpts the Palestinian side and an apology from Israel, skipping the part about Palestinian and Arab nation attacks on Israel's existence). That is not a serious analysis of anything said or done in the past month following the brutal attack by Hamas on Israel. That suggests that Somerby is neither informed nor does he care about what is happening there.
Now he wants to use GDP as a measure of persecution of the people in Gaza, without consideration of anything else going on there. He wants to blame Israel for an embargo in 2007 (because Barghouti does) without considering why Israel might have done that. That is hardly fair, but it does tell us a little about who Somerby will listen to and who he will not in the Middle East he said, he said of finger-pointing and excuse. Simplistic reduction of this crisis to propaganda talking points is unhelpful, but that seems to be all Somerby has to offer. Given that Somerby is a smart man, why is that true? Why do we just get his litany of usual complaints thinly disguised by pro-Palestinian GDP stats? Is this all that Somerby is capable of, or is this all he is willing and able to do within the constraints of his contract with whoever he shills for these days?
There’s a really good tv show on Netflix called Black Dog, about a new teacher navigating the murky waters of teacher/student/admin/parents politics.
DeleteSome of the show deals with promoting top students over the rest, and other issues related to social reproduction.
Thank you for this suggestion.
DeleteThe US is not in charge of the world. We can be as smart as possible and know as much as possible about what is happening in Gaza, but that doesn't give us the ability to change anything.
ReplyDeleteSome people suggest that we stop helping Israel but how would it help anyone but the ruling class in those Arab nations if they were able to win their wars of extermination sooner and wipe out the only democratic nation in the Middle East? But yes, that might have increased the GDP in Gaza, or maybe not, given the poverty in other Arab nations even without embargo. And how would that help the Jews in Israel? Would they be claiming the right to an independent state and fighting a similar war of attrition against their Arab rulers instead?
What magical solution does Somerby imagine would exist if the US people knew more about Gaza? We already fund relief and humanitarian efforts in Gaza, trying to offset the deprivation Hamas inflicted on its own Palestinian people. We are trying to do that now in the midst of war. I myself have contributed, as have the usual relief agencies and NGOs, working under bombardment to save lives and ease suffering. Has Somerby urged support of that effort? Not that I've heard here. It doesn't seem to have occurred to him.
Yes, the US can exert pressure on Israel to lessen its retaliation and allow cease fire breaks to tend to those in need. Biden has been working energetically to achieve what can be done there, and via diplomatic efforts. But it was Trump who enabled Netanyahu, who represents the extreme elements in Israel. Biden is once again cleaning up a mess that Trump left him. I suppose it is the American people's fault that we elected Trump, although Somerby did his part in that direction with his failure to support Hillary and his continual excusing of Trump's wrong choices.
Ultimately we must acknowledge that we have no magic wand to solve a problem that resides with the Palestinian and Israeli people. I blame religion and I really cannot understand the entrenched opposition of the Palestinians and other Arabs and Muslims to Jews and the Israeli state. I do understand the fear among Israelis and the anger that have resulted from a decades-long terrorist campaign against innocent Israeli people. I see no excuse for the methods chosen by Palestinians and Arabs to oppose Israel. Somerby has not acknowledged that and seems inclined to borrow pro-Palestinian talking points while piously intoning against war. I find that unhelpful.
It is somewhat outrageous that Somerby accuses the American people of being ignorant of a situation that most of us have grown up with and followed in news since we were old enough to be aware of the world. It is Somerby who perhaps knows too little and accepts too much of the disinformation being spread by Palestinian organizations and by Russia's disinformation mill.
I find myself wondering when Somerby will notice the other children starving in warn-torn areas of the world, affected by droughts and climate change instead of religious obstinacy and political ambition. Is Africa not part of our world? When will Somerby wonder why so many people migrant from Central America and Latin America to cross the US border? Can he name one leader of a Central American country? And what does he imagine we can do about their problems either?
It was a mistake to erect a Jewish state in a former part of the Ottoman Empire.
ReplyDeleteGiven the troubles in Syria, one could claim the same thing about them. Nearly all of the Arab nations were carved out of the Ottoman Empire.
DeleteAll ethnostates are a mistake.
Delete"In this morning's print editions, Vanessa Friedman's report about the Trump family's wardrobes sits on page A1—on the front page—of the New York Times. Landler's report about this possible approach to a post-Hamas Gaza is found on page A6."
ReplyDeleteSomerby calls this so-called wardrobe frisking (an odd term) frivolous but then promises to waste more of our time complaining because the center of the fashion industry in the US occasionally features a fashion aritcle.
What does Somerby have against Vanessa Friedman anyway? Is Somerby proposing that we do away with any concern over clothing? Shall we all adopt his baggy jeans and t-shirt (men and women both) or is he going to suggest we all go naked? Both options seem a bit impractical. But clothing serves a lot of other purposes besides warmth and skin protection. I once posted a link to a textbook about the social function of clothing/fashion but Somerby clearly didn't read it. That is one of the frustrations of reading a blogger who only expresses himself and never reads what others have to say in response.
It is hard to fathom this response in someone who is today urging Americans to learn more, but only what he approves, apparently. None of that crap on page A1 about what Ivanka wore to court. Does Somerby understand how much is at stake for her? Why wouldn't she want to use all means to influence the judge and the public? I would in her place.
Half of the Palestinian population of Gaza are children. In comparison, a third of the Israeli population are children. That will affect the GDP of both groups because obviously children do not contribute as much as adults in the economy.
ReplyDeleteAmerica: Huge electoral win for Dems this week
ReplyDeleteSomerby: Nothing to see here
What would he say?
Delete@4:55 PM:
DeleteOops!
Note tow fundamentally different attitudes:
ReplyDelete1. Palestinians are poor and Israelis are rich. Therefore Palestinians rank higher than Israelis. Victims rank higher than victimizers.
2. Palestinians have a low GNP; Israel has a high GNP. Israelis ran higher than Palestinians. Productive peope ank higher than unproductive people.
When I was young, the prevailing attitude was to give a higher ranking to the richer, more productive people. Somehow that changed over the years. Today the prevailing attitude is the reverse.
There is a specific term to denote the idea that one people, by virtue of their race or nationality "ranks higher" than another.
DeleteCan't they be super-productive somewhere else? Say, upstate New York? It's probably safer and it's not too hot. And everyone would be happy. Isn't it a win-win?
DeleteAnd if they need virtually free labor from the occupied territories, illegals from Mexico will be happy to provide it. While singing La Cucaracha!
DeleteIsn't it cute how he numbers his dopey misstatements?
DeleteInterestingly, in Sudan there’s been a recent similar attack to that of Hamas on Israel, yet it garners no outcry in the world.
ReplyDeleteIt’s interesting, the hierarchy of human beings; Israelis are very important humans, Sudanese humans - not so much.
Some of us are more aware of events in Sudan than others are. Don't blame all of us for Somerby's ignorance. That is what Somerby is doing today, blaming people for being insufficiently informed by his standards. If Somerby talks about Sudan, he might have to say something about global warming, a topic he has consistently ignored here.
DeleteMost wealth is inherited; people are rich due to privilege and happenstance, people are poor because the rich take surplus value from the working class and horde it instead of distributing it. This goes against human nature and is a primary cause of society’s ills.
ReplyDeleteIn America, the top one percent owns over 32% of wealth, the top ten percent owns 70% of wealth, the 50-90% of people only own about 28% of wealth, the bottom 50% of people only own about 1-2% of wealth.
Studies have found that 1 in 5 top corporate executives are literally psychopaths; a Columbia/Harvard professor, investigating further, wrote a book titled “Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders?”.
Are the literal psychopaths less competent? It seems that they would be less emotional and therefore more competent.
DeleteYes, they are more effective at attaining their self interests, so as they fail upwards, they gain personally but at the expense of everyone else; therefore, they are less competent.
DeleteTrump for example is notorious for generally failing in all his businesses, even going bankrupt numerous times, resorting to laundering money from nefarious entities in Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the like.
Authoritarian rule in corporations is no better than in states; the more democratic an entity is the more it enhances the health and happiness of society.
But isn't it the main concept of capitalism (e.g. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations) that, under sensible laws, attaining one's self interests will benefit the whole society?
DeleteIf you're counting on people's altruism, you may end up disappointed. Severely disappointed. More so than you are now.
I’m not buying that a psychopath is necessarily emotionless. Who says? They may not feel grief or remorse, but they get angry, they enjoy hurting others. Trump is notorious for his temper.
DeleteI wonder how many professors are psychopaths or incompetent.
Delete@3:34 PM
DeleteAre you here to talk about perceived societal ills, or to caress your TDS swellings?
My nym is mh. Yours is apparently “3:59 pm”. Anyway, my main point of discussion was to object to the idea that psychopaths have less emotion than non-psychopaths. 3:19 brought up Trump as an example, and I merely pointed out he has a temper, which is an example that helps make my point. Anything else you’d like to know? Oh, and by the way, the blogger, Bob Somerby, frequently calls Trump a sociopath/psychopath, and I mean frequently. Why not ask him if he suffers from TDS?
DeleteThat’s not the main concept of capitalism nor Adam Smith, who offered more of a descriptive analysis, than a prescriptive. His analysis of efficient markets was combined with a concern about both wealth accumulation/inequality and justice; his work was misappropriated by U of Chicago right wingers who had different goals that had more to do with creating hierarchies.
DeleteCapitalism is a system where a single person or a small group own the means of production, and as such everyone else is forced into merely offering their labor for wages. It is an untenable system that leads to regular cycles of boom and bust, but it is an advancement past feudalism and slavery. (Indeed, Lincoln, after the Civil War, was shifting his concern from chattel slavery to wage slavery.)
Behavioral sciences show that humans tend to be inherently egalitarian. The root cause of impediments to societal progress is not capitalism, which is a symptom or manifestation of other issues, but the circumstances that lead humans away from their natural inclinations to equality into an obsession with hierarchy and dominance.
Of course Bob Somerby is a sufferer; that's not a mystery. And yes, psychopathy is characterized by low emotions and high rationality.
DeleteTrump is neither low emotion nor highly rational. Are you saying he isn’t a psychopath?
DeleteHere:
Delete"The psychopath at the stock exchange
More recently, some researchers, ourselves included, have speculated that people with pronounced psychopathic traits may be found disproportionately in certain professional niches, such as politics, business, law enforcement, firefighting, special operations military services and high-risk sports. Most of those with psychopathic traits probably aren’t classic “psychopaths,” but nonetheless exhibit many features of the condition.
Perhaps their social poise, charisma, audacity, adventurousness and emotional resilience lends them a performance edge over the rest of us when it comes to high-stakes settings. As Canadian psychologist Robert Hare, the world’s premier psychopathy expert, quipped, “If I weren’t studying psychopaths in prison, I’d do it at the stock exchange.” "
Trump feels emotion but his range is limited. His angry temper tantrums are like sociopath emotion. He feels little empahy and has no sense of humor. Watch how little he smiles unless performing.
DeleteDavid, do you have to be a psychopath to be made Speaker of the House when republicans are in the majority, or does it just work out that way because of the odds?
DeleteActuaries are psychopaths. They turn the normal human wish to manage risk into profits for capitalists.
DeleteAdam Smith wrote Wealth of Nations before industrialization. It was based on cottage industries, not factories or later innovations such as assembly lines and job specialization. The dehumanizing nature of work and exploitation of workers grew much worse after he wrote the book that is supposedly the foundation of capitalism. I wonder what he would have thought about modern business and industry.
DeleteAdam Smith is often misrepresented, his describing of the efficiency of markets was not an endorsement of self interest as a driving force for human behavior. Furthermore, self interest is a vague term that could be applied to any circumstance, depending on the context and perspective. Mother Theresa (yes, in real life she was not a good person) could be viewed as fulfilling her self interest because she got emotional satisfaction from helping others. Right wingers love to play with the meaning of words to muddy the waters, which is why it’s important to have simple and clear definitions, particularly concerning subjects in public discourse.
DeleteLeaders are often incompetent because the traits that drive their attainment of higher positions emerge from psychological damage that inhibit their capability to be rational; humans are inherently communal and cooperative.
Our leaders tend to be repulsive, not charming; few people have less charisma than Trump, Musk, Zuckerberg, Gates, Bezos, etc. These type of people create cults of fanboys, not genuine respect or appreciation.
@9:35 PM,
DeleteForget Adam Smith, if you don't like him.
The concept of making use of self-interest for the benefit of the whole society is quite common. Are you rejecting it altogether, or do you only have a problem with its specific implementation in this modern world?
Or, I must ask, are you here to pontificate and virtue-signal? Anonymous virtue-signaling? It would seem odd.
And if you aren't against self-interest being the engine of prosperity, why couldn't psychopaths be useful in this model? Working hard, being crafty and ruthless, creating new, advanced, efficient companies and industries. All for the single purpose of enriching themselves.
Imagine a society where psychopaths can't enrich themselves by operating businesses. What will they do? Something real horrible, most likely, no? Will they all become government officials?
DeleteThe blue tribe stomps the red tribe, invalidating Somerby’s precious but ignorant theories; Somerby hand waves the stomp.
ReplyDeleteOr Ukraine.
DeleteFallujah is an instructive case study, an area where the US was struggling during the ill-fated Iraq war which was started by the Bush admin under false pretenses in the aftermath of the US being attacked by terrorists that were mostly from Saudi Arabia.
ReplyDeleteBush’s disastrous Iraq War was a follow-up to when his dad was President and had also engaged in a war with Iraq. Bush Sr.’s international ambitions were cut short when he (barely) raised taxes, demotivating enough Republican voters to let Clinton slip in.
The US solved the Fallujah issue mainly by spreading millions of dollars in direct payments, about 16 million per month. Direct payments to those in need has been proven time and again to be the most effective way of diminishing poverty and other social issues.
The issue in Fallujah was in part a self own, for example there was the deadly case of Fallujah friendly fire caused by Duncan Hunter, son of congressional Rep Hunter. Duncan’s fatal incompetency was covered up but later exposed.
Duncan Hunter went on himself to became a congressional Rep, and an early Trump loyalist; however, Duncan wound up pleading guilty to corruption - he was misusing campaign funds, both in paying his wife $3k/month as well payments to five other women he was having sex with.
Duncan was pardoned by Trump, but not by his wife, who subsequently divorced him.
The CA district Duncan and his father represented in Congress was a long time red district prior to Duncan’s corruption, but has since turned blue and is now represented by a Dem.
I suspect that the $56,000 per capita GDP given by Somerby is wrong. In comparison, the per capita GDP of Saudi Arabia is $32,586 and the Saudis are described as the largest economy in the Middle East. Egypt's GDP is $3770, Jordan's is $4850 and Syria's is $2806. That makes the $56,000 figure for Israel (which is in the Middle East too) seem ridiculously bloated while the GDP in Gaza is similar to nearby Arab nations. Qatar, UAE top the list with relatively small populations and large gas revenues.
ReplyDeleteSomerby doesn't say that he got around to verifying these numbers but they may be cherry-picked to make Israel look bad, and seem dependent on population size (see my earlier comment about the relative number of children in Israel compared to Gaza).
I agree that the people in Gaza are poorer than Israelis, but I have little faith that these numbers show that they are poorer than Arab neighbors who have not suffered any persecution by Israel.
My figures come from Wikipedia and are for 2023.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Arab_League_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)
You can Google Israel's per capita GDP.
ReplyDelete