Kamala picks radical VP partner

Click above for the video 

I haven’t yet seen what CNN, MSNBC and the rest are saying about Kamal Harris’ VP pick, Tim Walz , as it’s only just happened, but you know it’s going to be wildly supportive. Just as Kamala herself went from being a dodgy untalented Veep to the Second Coming of Barack Obama, so Tim Walz will be lauded for his progressive views.

So that’s a given. For a conservative view, one that won’t be seen in MSM, there’s Shapiro above. I know many can’t stand Shapiro if only for his voice. And I find him hard to take quite often.  I don’t agree with a lot of his rather right wing views. Bit I do respect his smarts and we know that the GOP does take note of his views. Given that his Daily Wire company is the largest conservative news and content company in America.  

Short Ben: Tim Walz is a radical pick. Partly chosen because he’s not a Jew, as was the expected pick, Josh Shapiro (no relation to Ben). This choice gives the GOP a new attack vector. 

Many moderate Democrats, the likes of talk show host Bill Maher say they haven’t left the Democratic Party but that the Democratic Party left them. 

Whatever side you’re on during this fascinating election, it’s worth a bit of both-sidesing, in the sense of getting both sides to a candidate, views from the MSM, inevitably Left, and from the Right of the pod-sphere. 

A view from a an independent. One of the commenters there: “Team Harris is now Team Hamas”. 

And Megyn Kelly here.

ADDED: In the video at top there’s a clip of Josh Shapiro talking of the 2-State Solution. Hoping for “two states living side by side in peace, respecting each other’s rights, worshipping whoever they wished”. Right. And that was the hope for the whole well-meaning world. Until we realised: (1) Palestinians rejected every single proposal for a 2-state solution since even before 1948 and up to 2022. And (2) the Palestinians never even wanted a 2-state solution. They’ve said so repeatedly, though we’ve only recently come to believe them. Consider this: there has never been a proposed map of what the 2-states might look like. Only proposals from the Israeli side. 

Genocide, ethnic cleansing and apartheid in the Middle East

Click above for the video

Summary: In all the lands of the Middle East, genocide has gone on against the Christians, the Zoroastrians, the Buddhists, the Yazidis, and -- let’s not forget -- the Jews. And of this nothing is said.  The one country that is accused of genocide is the one country that neither preaches nor practices genocide. What a cruel irony. Is there a worse irony? A worse hypocrisy? A worse warping of history?

My X feed is full of anti-Israel, anti-semitic rants about how Israel is committing genoncide. It’s a majority. That’s being on the side of Hamas. It’s not “caring for the little children”. For where was the care for the little children of Israel. It’s being anti-Israel and using a word that makes them the worst of the worst: “genocide”. But it’s not. 

Rereading the “Communist Manifesto” | it’s “hate speech”!

Heh. 

I’ll be jotting down some thoughts after listening to a podcast interviewing a new book on the Communist Manifesto (CM), “A Spectre, Haunting Europe: on the Communist Manifesto”, by China Miéville. 

I say “re-read” as I’d had to study it, the CM, seriously, in 1976, at the Peking Language Institute, with the double horror of studying it in Chinese.

Meantime, the above meme is place-marker-cum-troll. Kind of spot on, isn’t it, though? One of the best learning in life is “there’s no such thing as a free lunch” (Milton Friedman).

LATER: My process leading me back to a re-reading of the Communist Manifesto: 

Yesterday’s screenshot of looking up “Twitter” on NYT site ⇨ To Chris Hayes article  ⇨ Chris Hayes podcast with China Miéville ⇨ New book on the CM, called “Spectre, Haunting”, which is the first line in the Introduction to the CM ⇨ And so back to the CM....

The CM is a shocking read even today. One could make the case that it’s “hate speech”. Hatred towards groups of people (the bourgeoisie and capitalists) and calling for their elimination (“genocide”?). 

One sometime hears an apologia for Communism (aka socialism) along the lines of “the original idea is great; just that it’s not been implemented well”. I’m not so sure the original idea was all that great, tbf. Read it. Read the CM. To me it’s pretty grim, and I’m sure it seemed pretty grim to many even when it was published in 1848. But even if one grants that it was a grand idea then, in 1848, (which, to repeat, I don’t), even if you grant that the idea was a wonderful, utopian one, we’ve had nearly two hundred years of trying it out in practice since then. And not a single country out of the dozens that have tried, not a single one has succeeded.[*] They have all fallen into dictatorship and despair. That’s on record, so why on earth do we still have people the likes of Chris Hayes (senior at MSNBC) and China Miéville (award winning author) still admiring the Manifesto with so much admire? Why? I don’t get it. 

[*] China has been successful in recent decades to the exact extent that it has given up on the principles of the CM. When I arrived in 1976, they were following the CM. They were dirt poor. They gave them up when I was there. The economy boomed. QED. 

Snippets below. They are cherry-picked, of course. But everything in life cherry-picked. Including this sentence, cherry-picked from my mind. In any case, they are representative and the full text is right there for the reading (only 12,000 words). Here are my snippets:

In this sense the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.

China treatment of Uygurs: It’s bad, but is it “genocide”?

Mike Pompeo, 24 hours before leaving office, says China is committing “ongoing” genocide against Uygurs in Xinjiang. Is it, though?

“Genocide”:

The United Nations Genocide Convention, which was established in 1948, defines genocide as "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such" including the killing of its members, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately imposing living conditions that seek to "bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part", preventing births, or forcibly transferring children out of the group to another group. Victims have to be deliberately, not randomly, targeted because of their real or perceived membership of one of the four groups outlined in the above definition. [Link]

One thing to say is this: I don’t know what’s going on in Xinjiang. And neither does the writer at the Guardian, or the New York Times, or the BBC. None of us knows what’s going on. The boy people who do are those living there, those that have escaped from there and Chinese (ie Han) officials in charge of the province. The rest of us are onlookers and have to muster the best we can in limited info. 

On that, on the sat-photos, on the testimony of refugees, it seems pretty certain that there’s severe repression going on in Xinjiang. That native Uygurs, especially the majority Muslims, are being targeted for systemic repression. A “justification” is because the Han Chinese want to squash terrorism. There’s the East Turkmenistan Liberation Front, claiming Xinjiang. It’s not a fantasy and it’s genuinely dangerous. China is not the only nation to use some pretty severe methods to subdue Islamic terrorism. 

But still. Is it “genocide”? The “-cide” bit of “genocide” is critical here. It means “killing of”. As in “homicide”, “suicide”, “regicide” and “fratricide”. In all cases it means the killing of. Not the mistreatment of or the repression of. The killing of.

Two things against that: One, the UN Genocide Convention definition is rather more broad than simply “killing” of a whole people. So, China sterilising Uighur women would come under it. Though again, China did this widely during the One Child Policy era, against their own people, the Han, and no-one considered that genocide (indeed, ironically, there were exceptions to the One Child Policy for ethnic minorities, including Uygurs, who were able to have as many children as they wished).

Two: the word itself — “genocide” — is weaponised, just as is “racism”. It’s a very effective spear. Mist look show many people are now talking about it, vs saying that there’s “repression” or Labour camps in Xinjiang.  That one word has power in itself. Of course it’s a power that may wane with overuse, just as that’s happened with “racism”.

End of the day, I’d much rather we were careful and accurate in our use of words as powerful and emotional as “genocide”. What’s going in in Xinjiang seems pretty bad. I’m just not convinced it’s “genocide”. One could even argue -- not without some basis --that what’s going on is a forceful form of the Reform of Islam. China makes the Uygurs shave their beards, eat pork and drink alcohol. Yikes! “What have the Chinese ever done for us!”. 

ADDED: the very fact that Beijing won’t allow investigations into Xinjiang says a lot. 

Also: I’ve been posting against the treatment of Uygurs for a couple of years: click the Uygur Label to see.  So it’s not like I’m an apologist for Beijing. Not on this issue, anyway…