What kind of people can even think such a thing?

Headline on an editorial opinion piece — this has the full weight of the newspaper behind it! — in the Miami Herald:

Israel must put down Hamas

The full headline is “Israel must put down Hamas – rebuild relations.” Well, sure. After you slaughter all the chickens with bird flu, you try to “rebuild relations” with the uninfected chooks.

 

(artdesigner.lv)

Update: Aug 18, 2014. I guess the Miami Herald reads this blog and noticed how atrocious that sounds. Now the only thing that comes up is an editorial from July 26th with the same meaning but more marketable words: Israel’s Challenge. The Orlando Sentinel still has a copy up. And I’ve taken a screen shot this time in case it disappears again. The point, I would like to tell these editors, is not to delete the article. It is to delete the mindset.

Update: Feb. 6, 2015. Second link also disappeared. All righty, then, here are the screenshots: Read more »

First (well, first for me) there was Victoria Nuland pushing for some guy to run Ukraine and “Fuck Europe” for not being decisively behind the same strategy. Up to that point, I didn’t even know the US was pushing an agenda in Ukraine, which is bloody stupid since the US is always pushing an agenda. Everywhere.

Then once separatists start breaking away, there’s the US again apparently doing its damndest to stir the pot. Crimea? All Russia’s fault.

I’m sure Putin is as far from innocent of pretty much anything as it is possible to be, but so are a lot of other world “leaders.” That doesn’t explain why the US is so loudly playing it up in this case and not otherwise.

Eastern Ukraine separatists? Also all Russia’s fault. And the US has satellite evidence! Except nobody can see it.

They keep screaming for more sanctions against Russia because Putin doesn’t curb his dogs. (I wonder how that makes the separatists feel? I get the distinct impression some of them think they’re rather important. Not a smart move if you really did want to manipulate some of these guys.)

The horrible shooting of the Malaysian jet? They started saying that was all Putin’s fault almost before the pieces hit the ground. Again, there are presumably satellite pictures, but nobody can see them. The obvious guess is that some trigger-happy loon thought he was shooting down an enemy transport and then found out he wasn’t. It seems to have even less actual thought behind it than the US shooting of the Iranian passenger jet or the Soviet shooting of the Korean one. But it’s all Putin’s fault and requires massive sanctions now now now.

The latest thing I see is something about Russia breaking the 1987 nuclear weapons treaty. Omigod. Bad. Bad Putin! You will be punished. The only thing they haven’t said yet is “Ve haff vays!” (in a bad-guy-German-World-War-II voice of course).

So what in hell is Obama playing at? I’m assuming he doesn’t really want to start a World War With Nukes. Right? Right? Is this all to make the Europeans get over being spied on? And to keep them running to the US Big Brother instead of the Russian Big Brother? Is it to gin up some popular war feeling in the US in time for the elections? (Honestly, I wouldn’t put it past them.) Is it all of the above? Together with several other things I can’t even imagine?

What a world.

He’s making the news because he’s a gazillionaire and he thinks people shouldn’t work so much.

All right. I mean, really now, isn’t it obvious? If we spread time and money around a bit we could all be working less and enjoying it more.

I made that point years ago. But, not being a gazillionaire, I’m one of those people who’s actually done overlong work weeks, so what do I know?

The only thing he does wrong is not take it far enough.

He’s talking about a three-day work week of 11-hour days. (Financial Times but with stupid login restrictions. The gist also here.) So it’s not really a big change from the civilized world with its current 35-hour week. And there’s research (I’ll come back with the link as soon as I dig it up) that people’s productivity slopes off toward the end of even an 8-hour day. It’s d.u.m.b to use people as placeholders to fill up traditional and counterproductive time.

What we need is 24-hour work weeks. Yes, twenty four hours. It seems like a huge departure, but once upon a time a work week was on the order of 70 hours. Halving that to 35 to 40 has helped, not hurt, economies.

The same would happen with 24-hour weeks. If people were paid real living wages for those hours, it would mean significantly more even distribution of wealth. As I think we’ve all figured out by now, that would be a good thing. Rich people would be making twenty or forty times as much as ordinary people. Not hundreds or even thousands of times more. Economies have plenty of resources to provide for (normally) rich people and lots of ordinary people able to live on their 24 hours per week of work. Really. Read that first link up there. I go through the numbers.

And it would solve other problems, too. With 24-hour weeks, there’d be many ways to slice up shifts. Work could be four hours a day for six days, or eight for three, and so on. Within a day, shifts could start every four, six, eight, or, hell, even twelve hours if that works in some cases. The flexibility would be good for everyone: students, people with errands to run, creatives, you name it. Employers could, by law, accommodate caregivers with different shifts. Child care or elder care could become much simpler to arrange.

Honestly. It’s time. The wealth produced by our technologically advanced economies is festering because it’s all piled up in a tiny space and doesn’t get air.

A wage you can live on for a week you can live in.

Real wealth

I’m just like everyone else. I don’t understand what’s going on in Gaza. So when the BBC ran an article titled “Gaza-Israel conflict: What can Israel and Hamas gain?,” I read it.

It makes the point that Hamas has been much weakened by political changes around them. Iran used to contribute enough to run the government of Gaza, but (Sunni) Hamas supported Sunni rebels in Syria so (Shia) Iran stopped that funding.

Then while the Muslim Brotherhood ran Egypt, there was a good bit of trade going on and hence revenue for Hamas from taxes. But the current Egyptian government considers Hamas too close to terrorists and that source of funds has also dried up.

I’d heard about the new understanding between the West Bank Fatah group and Hamas, but I didn’t realize Hamas had no choice. They’re down to their last bean and fighting in the last ditch.

Meanwhile, Israel was just doing its usual “carefully calibrated” air raids.

[T]raining grounds and launching sites in Gaza were attacked. The target list was enough to persuade the Israeli public that Hamas was being punished for the rocket fire but not enough to push the militant group to step up its attacks.

There were even hints that a truce might be possible….

According to the report, the impression I get is that the escalation just happened.

The article says maybe Hamas was hoping that the sight of suffering civilians would increase funding and international sympathy for them.

The Israelis? They’re trying to get rid of rockets, apparently. This will be very difficult. They’re small, distributed, some are even home made.

I’m a bit boggled. So that’s why we see pictures of whole blocks blowing up in Gaza? There must have been a pipe full of gunpowder and nails in there somewhere.

A Palestinian reacts in front of a fire which police said was caused by an Israeli tank shelling in an industrial area in the east of Gaza City July 12, 2014. REUTERS.

(Ashraf Amrah, Reuters)

Nowhere in this narrative of monsters willing to sacrifice their neighbors and persecuted people trying to defend themselves does the article make the obvious point.

Hamas is weakened. Israel swoops in to try to finish them off.

Sure, that may not be the explanation for the current carnage. But it’s certainly one explanation.

How could a news organization of the BBC’s caliber not even mention it?

When I wrote a piece years ago called “Are women human?” that title was supposed to be funny. Or at least tongue-in-cheek.

I didn’t think the answer was “no.”

But it’s official. Corporations are human. Now even with religious beliefs! Woohoo!

And women? They’re just non-artificial ambulatory uterine incubators. What’s the point of rights for a mass of blood vessels that’s a waste of space unless it’s feeding babies?

Actually, strike that “ambulatory.” Incubators are easier to use when they’re not wandering around loose. That’ll be the next decision by the Five Guys:

 

Modified from Wikimedia

It’ll be entirely consistent when they come to it. They’ve never cared that some rights are essential for the others to have any meaning at all. That’s because they’ve never cared about rights, except the kind might makes. Controlling your own body is up there at Right Number One. No other right means anything if other people can do whatever they want to you. The Five Guys just knocked the whole structure down.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, dissenting. “The court, I fear, has ventured into a minefield.”