
Not LA, but Gaza a few hours after the ceasefire agreement was announced. (Screengrab from a video posted to X).
“The war will end. The leaders will shake hands. The old woman will keep waiting for her martyred son. That girl will wait for her beloved husband. And those children will wait for their heroic father. I don’t know who sold our homeland. But I saw who paid the price.”
– Mahmoud Darwish
A ceasefire deal seems to have been reached in Gaza. Great. But recall that Israel has breached the Lebanon truce nearly 500 times in the two months since it was signed…and any retaliation or defensive measures taken by Palestinians will be considered a violation, which is how Israel justified ending the first ceasefire/hostage release deal back in late November 2023.
This ceasefire deal could have been reached any time since May and likely anytime since December of 2023, as Qatar’s Prime Minister, Sheikh Mohammed, acidly noted: “13 months of a waste, of negotiating details that [have] no meaning and aren’t worth any single life that we lost in Gaza, or any single life of those hostages.” It wasn’t because neither Netanyahu nor Biden wanted an agreement; even after the leadership of Hamas and Hezbollah had been eliminated, the mass killing and destruction went on.
According to many reports, Wednesday was one of the bloodiest days in Gaza in months, with Israeli airstrikes on Palestinian tent camps, homes, apartments, and journalists. At least 80 Palestinians were killed and nearly 200 injured. How many more Palestinians will Israel kill in the next four days before the ceasefire takes effect (if it does)?
Who will be the last Palestinian child killed by an Israeli-launched US-made bomb in Gaza in the days and hours before the ceasefire commences? (During WW I, the US and UK forces launched a senseless massive artillery barrage on German positions after they’d laid down their arms in the minutes leading up to the 11 a.m. start of the Armistice. At least 2,738 men were killed on the final morning of the war.) Why?

Let’s just reflect for a moment on how many Palestinians, overwhelmingly civilians, have been killed in the last 15.5 months…
Direct Casualties from Israeli Airstrikes, drones, quadcopters, artillery shelling & gunfire…
Gaza Ministry of Health Estimate: 46,500 + 11,000 missing in the rubble
New Lancet study: 75,000+
Estimated deaths from starvation: 63,000+
Estimated deaths from all causes related to the war (including untreated diseases, suicides, freezing to death): 183,000 – 300,000+
How many students were beaten, arrested, jailed, kicked out of school, and banned from campus for demanding a ceasefire that Trump, Biden, and Netanyahu have now blessed? And how many lecturers, teachers, and professors lost their jobs or were denied tenure for defending their students?
Could there be a more humiliating end to the Biden presidency than Trump taking credit for forcing Israel to agree to a peace deal Biden claims to have proposed nine months ago but was too impotent to secure?
According to reporting by Haaretz, the deal will unfold in three phases starting on Sunday. The first phase will feature a ceasefire, a swap of hostages and prisoners, and an increase in the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza. The release of 33 hostages held in Gaza, beginning with the Americans and including women, children, the sick, and men over the age of 55, will be gradual over the course of 42 days. The IDF will permit the displaced Gazan population to move from the southern part of the Strip to the north during the first phase of the cease-fire. After two weeks, negotiations will begin on the implementation of the second phase, which will include the release of 65 more Israeli hostages. As the deal progresses, the IDF will withdraw to a buffer zone inside the Gaza Strip, settling between the Gaza Strip’s population and the Israeli border settlements.
The roadblocks to a ceasefire in Gaza have always been erected by the Netanyahu government. I imagine this will come as breaking news to readers of the NYT but not to Israelis, who’ve seen their leaders openly brag about it for months.
But the Ben-Gvir/Smotrich crazies weren’t the only ones scuttling previous ceasefire deals. Haaretz has documented Netanyahu himself undermining at least eight prior efforts to craft at least a pause in the slaughter…

Which is precisely what he seems to be doing now…
On Thursday, with the rightwing of his coalition in revolt, Netanyahu said Hamas backtracked on agreements on terms of a proposed cease-fire and hostage release deal. He threatened that his cabinet would not approve it until the matter was resolved. He also emphasized in a statement that Israel was not withdrawing from the Philadelphi Corridor in southern Gaza and would not agree to end the war unless Hamas submitted to all of Israel’s demands (i.e., total surrender of weapons and power in Gaza). Neither of these demands are featured in the Doha agreement.
“Contrary to misleading reports, Israel is not withdrawing from the Philadelphi Corridor,” Netanyahu said on Thursday. “Israel will remain in Phase A of the corridor for the entire 42-day period. The scope of forces will remain at its current size but will be deployed differently–encompassing outposts, patrols, observations, and control along the entire corridor.
“During Phase A, starting on the 16th day, negotiations will begin to end the war. If Hamas does not agree to Israel’s demands for ending the war (achieving the war’s objectives), Israel will remain in the Philadelphi Corridor on the 42nd day and, consequently, beyond the 50th day.
“In practical terms, Israel will remain in the Philadelphi Corridor until further notice.”
The far-right Religious Zionism party said it would only stay in Netanyahu’s government if the prime minister promised to resume fighting in Gaza after the completion of the first stage of the hostage and cease-fire deal with Hamas.
The Trump and Netanyahu camps keep referring to the “ceasefire” as a “hostage deal,” which is an indication that the “ceasefire” is actually a pause–perhaps lasting only long enough to secure the release of the American hostages with Trump hailed as their liberator and, possibly, eventual avenger. I hope I’m wrong. History, though, is on my side. Israel pulled similar bomb-and-switch ceasefire tricks in 2009 and 2014, prolonging its assaults long after deals had been reached.
I’m a natural-born cynic, of course, but I can’t help but think that this ceasefire, this lull in the killing, is meant to erase, if not the memory of, at least the responsibility for, the killing that has come before. As Baudrillard wrote: “Forgetting extermination is part of extermination.”
+++
+ One of the post-ceasefire announcement dead is Raafat Salha, director of the Independent Commission for Human Rights in northern Gaza, who was killed by an Israeli airstrike on his house along with all the members of his family, including his wife and two kids.

+ Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General:
The news that a ceasefire deal has been reached will bring some glimmer of relief to Palestinian victims of Israel’s genocide. But it is bitterly overdue.
For Palestinians, who have endured more than 15 months of devastating and relentless bombardment, have been displaced from their homes repeatedly, and are struggling to survive in makeshift tents without food, water and basic supplies, the nightmare will not be over even if the bombs cease.
For Palestinians who have lost countless loved ones, in many cases, had their entire families wiped out or seen their homes reduced to rubble, an end to the fighting does not begin to repair their shattered lives or heal their trauma.
The release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian detainees will bring relief to families in Israel and across the Occupied Palestinian Territory but likewise will not erase the ordeals they have suffered in captivity.
There is no time to waste. Israel’s continuous and deliberate denial and obstruction of humanitarian aid to Gaza has left civilians facing unprecedented levels of hunger and children have starved to death. The international community, which has thus far shamefully failed to persuade Israel to comply with its legal obligations, must ensure Israel immediately allows lifesaving supplies to urgently reach all parts of the occupied Gaza Strip to ensure the survival of the Palestinian population. This includes guaranteeing the entry of vital medical supplies to treat the wounded and sick and facilitating urgent repairs to medical facilities and other vital infrastructure. Unless Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza is promptly lifted, this suffering will only continue. They must also urgently grant access to independent human rights monitors into Gaza to uncover evidence and reveal the extent of violations.
For Palestinians who have lost so much, there is little to celebrate when there is no guarantee that they will get justice and reparation for the horrifying crimes they have suffered.
Unless the root causes of this conflict are addressed, Palestinians and Israelis cannot even begin to hope for a brighter future built on rights, equality and justice. Israel must dismantle the brutal system of apartheid it imposes to dominate and oppress Palestinians and end its unlawful occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territory once and for all. Third states have a crucial role to play to bring an end to Israel’s impunity and restore some faith in the rule of law.
+ Craig Mokhiber, former UN human rights lawyer:
The diplomats are again talking about “the day after.” And, yes, a cessation of armed attacks on the people of Gaza & an exchange of prisoners is to be welcomed. But the struggle continues. A return to the cruel status quo before October 2023 is not the day after, it’s the day before. The genocide & siege must end, its perpetrators & collaborators must be held to account, Gaza rebuilt, the apartheid regime in Israel dismantled, the occupation ended, the entire land decolonized, society de-zionized, Palestinians freed across the land & those in the diaspora allowed to come home, and a new dispensation must be established based on full & equal human rights for all Christians, Muslims, and Jews. That is the struggle. That is the only “day after.”
+ Who will tell, Little Marco? Rubio, at his confirmation hearing, the same day the Trump-brokered truce was agreed to: “How can any nation-state on the planet coexist side by side with a group of savages like Hamas.”
+ In an exit interview with Reuters, Biden’s ambassador to Israel, Jack Lew, disclosed some uncomfortable but undeniable truths about the Administration’s total complicity with Israel during its genocidal assault on Gaza…
The questions about targeting are real. There are many questions about many incidents, as there are after every war. There’s been a process internally of looking into things that might have gone wrong in different places that haven’t been resolved. When the secretary says there are still questions to be answered, there are still questions to be answered. In the IDF, there are still questions to be answered. But fundamentally, nothing that we ever said was, just ‘stop the war.’
You never heard criticism from the United States for Israel carrying out strikes for almost a year in southern Lebanon, attacking Hezbollah and diminishing Hezbollah.
You have not heard a word of criticism from the White House, the State Department, the Defense Department, from the United States, of the operation in Rafah. It’s a mistake when people say, as they sometimes do, “You told us not to, and we did.”
We never had an arms embargo. Not in May. Not since. Never. We did have a public disagreement about 2,000-pound bombs. Why did that get blown into Israel’s closest ally, which has been supporting it every day since October 7, with extraordinary flows of material and support? Why characterize it as an embargo? It wasn’t.
+ Whether this proves to be a lasting ceasefire or not, it’s now obvious that Biden, Harris and AOC’s claims of “working tirelessly” to achieve one were absolute bunk. Biden could have ended the war with a phone call at any time but didn’t. (Apparently, Trump could’ve as well.)
+ Many voters saw through the smokescreen and Harris paid the ultimate price at the polls.

+ Anthony Blinken has secured his place in the Guinness Book of World Records for amassing the largest carbon footprint in the cause of promoting a genocide…

+ After asking Blinken why he wasn’t “in the Hague,” our friend Sam Husseini, a credentialed reporter for State Department briefings, was violently hauled out of the Secretary of State’s final press briefing…

+ Sam told us his questions for Blinken included the following…
* Was the point of the May 31 announcement to block the implementation of the May 24 ICJ order?
* Why do you refuse to recognize the Geneva Conventions as applying to Gaza?
* Everyone from Amnesty International to the ICC accuses Israel of extermination and genocide. Why are you not in the Hague?
* Why was your stepfather Pisar connected to both Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein?
* [Press secretary Matthew] Miller here pretends not to know about the Hannibal directive – do you know about the Hannibal directive?
* Why do you not even acknowledge Israel’s nuclear weapons?
+ BBC Verify has documented nearly 100 Israeli airstrikes on “humanitarian zones” where displaced Palestinians in Gaza were told to set up camp. Remember, these “humanitarian zones” were set up by Israel, not the UN, and they’ve been attacking them since they were established, never more fiercely than this month (22 already) when a ceasefire seems possible, if not likely.
+ 60 Minutes has held on to video evidence of US bomb fragments at civilian massacre sites in Gaza, where most of the victims were children, for more than eight months but waited until the last week of the Biden administration to run it…” Former U.S. diplomat Hala Rharrit said she documented images coming out of Gaza for the State Department – “fragments of U.S. bombs next to massacres of mostly children.” This isn’t “breaking news” but a broken news system.
+ My last Gaza Diary (Dead Consciences) was a blast at the Western media’s absolute indifference to the systematic slaughter of Palestinian journalists. And still, the killing continues, unlamented by the press. The latest journalist assassinated by Israel: Ahlam Al Nafed, one of the last few remaining journalists who was documenting the genocide in northern Gaza. Will we hear a word of protest or outrage from her colleagues in the Western media? Not if the lethal silence over the deaths of more than 200 other Palestinian journalists is any indication.
+ Giorgia Meloni’s neo-fascist Italian government announced this week it would ignore the international statute signed in its own capital city and not enforce ICC’s arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant…

+ Former Sanders foreign policy advisor, Matt Duss: “In 2021, I never imagined I would write this, but by the end of his presidency, Biden will have done more damage to the ‘rules–based order’ than Trump did.”
+ I‘d argue that Biden‘s most important (though unintentional) contribution to US political history was to reveal that there never was a “rules–based order.”
+++

Drone image of Pacific Palisades.
Number of destroyed or severely damaged buildings in LA (so far): 20,000
Population of LA County: 10 millionNumber of destroyed or severely damaged buildings in Gaza (so far): 80,000
Population of Gaza: 2.1 million
+ In only five days, the Pacific Palisades fire destroyed more structures (> 12,500) than any fire in California history, except the Camp Fire of 2018, which burned for 18 days.
+ In the 1980s, the US experienced around three weather-related disasters that caused more than $1 billion in damages. Now, the average is around 18 a year. (NOAA)
+ More than 1000 incarcerated people are out fighting LA’s fires, but their families aren’t allowed to contact them to see if they’re safe.
+ Jason Oppenheim, owner of the celebrity real estate firm featured on Selling Sunset, told the BBC that his clients are being price gouged in post-fire LA. One landlord was asking $13,000/month, but when his client went to rent the home, the landlord demanded $23,000. Welcome to the club…Meanwhile, California State Attorney General Rob Bonta said that his office has received numerous reports of hotels and rental properties in southern California increasing their prices by more than 10%, which violates the state’s anti-price gouging law. According to the LA Times, the asking price for single-family homes in the Los Angeles area are being listed for nearly 20% higher since the wildfires started.
+ Florida’s state residual insurance plan is on the hook for $525 billion in losses, twice the amount in 2022, while California’s state insurer faces $290 billion in liabilities, a sixfold increase from 2018. Thirty-six states now have residual insurance plans, but 21 of the states don’t explain how they will pay when the liabilities overwhelm their assets.
+ A report by researchers at the University of Colorado and the University of Wisconsin-Madison estimates that three-fourths of homeowners may not have enough insurance to fully cover losses after a disaster.
+ Shed a few tears for the investment bankers of So Cal, one of whom shelled out $27 million to buy a now incinerated mansion on ‘Billionaire’s Beach.’ He told Fortune that he only expects $3 million from insurance. He’ll probably write the loss off on his taxes for the next decade, assuming he’s paying any.
+ From the Luigi Was Right News Wire: According to a ratings agency report obtained by the LA Times, three of California’s largest home insurance companies declined nearly half of their claims in 2023, well above the national average.
+ During the first week of NYC’s “congestion pricing,” traffic on the city’s most clogged streets dropped by 7.5% and morning commutes were faster at all of the major crossings into Manhattan.
+ The New York Post reported on Wednesday that Los Angeles landlords have increased rents by as much as 124% after the wildfires.
+ Here’s a spreadsheet tracking rental price-gouging by landlords in LA County…
+ Potential insurance exposure to the Los Angeles fires is $458 billion. The state’s FAIR insurance program only has $700 million cash on hand to pay claims.
+ From Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism: “Out of approximately 700 homes destroyed in the 2020 Santa Cruz Mountains Lightning Complex Fire, only 95 have been rebuilt and occupied 4 years later, with only 158 more in construction. Nearly two-thirds are not being rebuilt.”
+ The top five least affordable metro areas in the US are all in California. According to Redfin, someone living in LA Country who makes the median income in 2024 would need to spend 77.6% of their earnings on monthly housing costs if they bought a median-priced home. How long can this go on?
+ Octavia Butler wrote about a climate-change-ignited wildfire in her path-breaking novel, the Parable of the Sower. The cemetery in the historic black community in Altadena where Butler is buried was burned in the LA fires.
+ Adam Nagourney writing in the NYT: “Staging the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles–for all its promise to bring LA international attention–was always going to be hard. But the fires are what one city leader called the “nightmare scenario” for a beleaguered city.” Few cities have ever needed “international attention” less than LA. LA needs affordable housing, public transport, a buffering of the urban-wildland interface and a de-militarized police force…Let Bismark, North Dakota, have the Olympics and see how they like it.
+ Don’t worry, LA: Sly, Jon and Mel are on the case.

+ Then again, maybe you should worry. Roving anti-semite Mel Gibson to Laura Ingraham speculating on the possibility that the LA fires were part of a plot to move people from single-family homes into high-density housing: “I can make all kinds of horrible theories up in my head…But, it just seemed a little convenient that there was no water and that the wind conditions were right and that there were people ready and willing and able to start fires. Are they commissioned to do so? They seem pretty well equipped to be just acting on their own basis.” Gibson’s version of Marge’s Jewish Space Lasers?

+ Too bad David Lynch isn’t around to make the film.
+ A new paper by Zeke Hausfather published in Dialogues on Climate Change exploring climate outcomes under current policies finds that the planet is likely headed toward 2.7C warming by 2100 (with uncertainties ranging from 1.9C to 3.7C), which, if it pans out, is a little better than the 4C warming many of us feared.
+ More than 11 million Californians now live in high-risk wildfire zones, including large areas of Los Angeles County, San Diego, and the wine country of Napa and Sonoma.
+ $2,000: cost per hour of private firefighting teams employed by wealthy homeowners in southern California.
+ If you’re looking for a book to help explain the political ecology behind the LA fires and other climate-driven cataclysms, try this one by a couple of writers you might be familiar with: The Big Heat: Earth on the Brink…
+ Sean Duffy, Trump’s nominee to run the Department of Transportation, says EVs should pay a road usage fee.
+ As he prepared to go out the door, Biden took time this week to sign an Executive Order cutting regulations for “energy sources” (nuclear, among them) for AI data centers, which are expected to consume around 12% of U.S. electricity by 2028.
+ From an FT story on the coming collapse of the Atlantic Circulation Current: “Data uncertainty is substantial. But uncertainty is not our friend. Uncertainty could mean the tipping point is passed early.”
+ According to an alert sent out “to hunters” this week by the NJ Department of Fish and Wildlife, avian influenza is the likely cause of the recent spate of bird deaths in the state, including at least seven snow geese, two Canada geese, and two hawks.
+++
+ Zuckerberg, who is hosting a Trump inauguration gala this weekend with Miriam Adelson, seems intent on returning Facebook to its “Hot-or-Not” origins…

+ Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan, who briefly considered running for president as a Democrat, has fallen into line, saying this week that tariffs, if properly used, can help resolve issues such as unfair competition and national security.
+ Speaking of tariffs, Canada has compiled an initial list of $105 billion of US-manufactured items it would target with tariffs if Trump follows through on his threat to levy tariffs against Canadian goods.
+ As Trump prepares to take office, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aide, Nikolay Patrushev, said in an interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda this week that Ukraine could “cease to exist” as a country in 2025.
+ According to the FT, “A 20-year US study found that 70 percent of wealthy families lost their wealth by the second generation, and 90 percent by the third.”
+ A Bankrate survey finds that 35% of American workers feel significantly behind in their retirement savings.
+ Electric vehicles are expected to outsell cars with internal combustion engines in China for the first time in 2025. According to the Financial Times, the shift occurred 10 years earlier than expected.
+ Corporate bankruptcies in the US have risen to the highest level since the aftermath of the global financial crisis.
+ According to the New York Times, Patrick Soon-Shiong, owner of the Los Angeles Times, killed an opinion column that was critical of Trump’s recent Cabinet picks, telling the paper’s editorial board that it could only publish the piece if it also ran an editorial with an opposing view.
+ Headline in São Paulo paper last weekend highlighting the record increase in homeless families in the US: “The USA now has 135% more homeless people than Brazil.” (h/t Vincent Bevins)
+ Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reports that the US has “more fancy apartments than it can fill.” The national vacancy rate for multifamily apartments hit 8% in the last quarter of 2024, while luxury (4-5 star) units had an 11.4% vacancy rate, twice that of what the Journal considers “affordable units.” Some cities, like Austin, have “fancy apartment” vacancy rates as high as 15%. (Austin has a homeless population of 6,650.)
+ The vaccination rates of kindergarteners in the US for polio, measles and whooping cough have declined since the COVID pandemic.
+ According to the Congressional Budget Office, deaths will surpass births in the US by 2033. The FT reported this week that declining birth rates used to result from couples having fewer children; now, the alleged baby deficit is attributed to there being fewer couples.
+ An investigation by Mother Jones describes how the Waterkeepers Alliance, an RFK Jr.-led nonprofit, funneled $67 million to a small environmental group he and hedge-fund billionaire Louis Bacon helped establish in the Bahamas. This prompted the resignation of a WKA board member, who said, “Where did that money go? The whole thing stunk. It was obvious they were hiding something. They have never provided good answers.”
+ Trump’s Treasury Secretary nominee, Scott Bessent (net worth: >$521 million), testified that he opposes raising the federal minimum wage.
Bernie Sanders: “You don’t think we should change the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour?”
Bessent: “No, sir.”
+ Maybe Trump should have spent another hour or two working as a fry cook at McDonalds…
+ I eagerly await the David Frum column explaining why “child soldiers” is not a pejorative…

+ Pete Hegseth says under his watch, the Pentagon will restore the names of Confederate generals on US military bases. While they’re at it, the Pentagon should also name some bases after Death Squad leaders who were US-trained and armed, like Rios Montt, and they should certainly re-name a big one for Ariel Sharon…
+ Letters and notes from fallen North Korean troops sent to fight for Russia reveal them leaving instructions to die by suicide rather than face capture and that some were executed by their comrades when injured.
+ As a parting shot on January 11, 2021, the outgoing Trump administration designated, with only the most vaporous evidence to support it, Cuba a “state sponsor of terrorism.” The incoming Biden administration allowed this absurd sanction to further squeeze Cuba for four years until finally removing it during the old Cold Warrior’s last week in office. Then, before even the Trump transition team could erupt in performative fury, Biden’s much-belated move was trashed by members of his own party, led, not surprisingly, by the Florida Democratic Party…

+ So, you ask, why do we need a Democratic Party? For hilarious episodes of political comedy like this: Chuck Schumer told Biden in a phone call this week to hold off banning TikTok because “the ban would damage his legacy if it occurred on his watch.” I probably don’t need to remind you (though someone should remind Chuck) that the Senator from Citibank voted for the ban in the Senate.
+ A note on Jimmy Carter, who pledged during his 1976 campaign to make human rights the centerpiece of his foreign policy but continued to fund and train the El Salvadoran military, even though many of its members moonlighted in the death squads that were terrorizing the country. This is from Jonathan Blitzer’s excellent book on the origins of the immigration “crisis” Everyone Who is Gone is Here:
Billions of dollars of US aid were at stake, and regardless of Carter’s avowals, entrenched geopolitics prevailed. Cold War orthodoxies were sacrosanct. In July 1979, leftwing Sandinistas in Nicaragua overthrew the dictatorship of Anastasio Samosa, a US ally. Officials in the upper echelons of the State Department, the CIA, and the Defense Department wondered whether El Salvador might fall next. The view in Washington was that the military needed American support for the center to hold for El Salvador. Salvador soldiers, meanwhile, came up with a new name for an old torture technique: the victim was tied up by his hands and feet while his interrogators applied intense pressure to the man’s testicles with a wire. They called it “the Carter.”
+++
The Onion, my paper of record, can’t keep up with this shit…

+ They should christen the USS Shrub with a shoe-toss instead of champagne…
+ AI is now running on Ketamine: According to Fortune, Elon Musk says AI has already absorbed all human-produced data needed to train itself and now relies on hallucination-prone synthetic data: “The cumulative sum of human knowledge has been exhausted in AI training. That happened basically last year.”
+ BBC interviewer: “Is it ok for kids to use ChatGPT to do their homework?”
+ UK Science Secretary Peter Kyle: “With supervision, then yes. We need to make sure kids are learning how to use this technology.”
+ It would be even better if Keir Starmer allowed ChatGPT to answer for him during Question Time sessions in Parliament.
+ Bloomberg expects global banks to cut as many as 200,000 jobs in the next three to five years, replacing human jobs with artificial intelligence programs. The AI programs may be on ketamine, but the bankers they’re prepping themselves to replace are snorting Adderall…
+ Musk, Zuckerberg and Bezos will attend the Trump inauguration and sit together on the platform with Cabinet picks and elected officials. At least Klaatu and Gort will know where to find our real leaders…Klaatu barada nikto!
+ Perhaps Biden could leave Major behind at the White House for one last nip at the robust posterior of Trump’s Rasputin…

+ Barbara Tuchman: “Theology being the work of males, original sin was traced to the female.”
+ The UK has minted an Orwell coin commemorating the 75th anniversary of the writer’s death. “But it was alright, everything was alright, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.” And he had the coin of the realm to prove it.

+ Speaking of Orwell, North Dakota Sen. Kevin Cramer used his question time to express his disappointment that Pete Hegseth had to face questioning before leading the Pentagon. He told the confessed two-time adulterer, “I want to say thank you for your strong, unapologetic proclamation of faith in Jesus Christ.”
+ Hemingway’s wife Mary on why she didn’t tell him how awful she (and nearly everyone else at the time) thought Across the River and Into the Trees was: “I kept my mouth shut. Nobody had appointed me my husband’s editor.” (I liked the novel better than For Whom the Bell Tolls. There’s a recent film of the book with Liev Schreiber in the doomed Hemingway hero role.)
+ “Anti-scale fencing” is the free jazz of crowd control…

+ The great David Lynch, who died of emphysema on Thursday, started smoking when he was 8 years old. He knew it would kill him, but he just couldn’t quit. That fact gives even deeper resonance to the unforgettable Episode 8 of Twin Peaks: The Return, perhaps the most chilling and profound hour in the history of television.
+ Film critic David Ehrlich: “David Lynch gave us the language we needed to better articulate the indescribable strangeness of our shared reality. ‘Lynchian’ is so overused because it’s a viscerally understandable word without any known synonyms. I can’t imagine a more beautiful artistic legacy than that.”
+ Lynch wasn’t a surrealist about the things that mattered…

+ “A curiously arresting mumbling,” New York Times music critic Robert Shelton’s description of Dylan’s voice in his first review of the singer in performance at a July 1961 folk concert at the Riverside Church.
You know, capitalism is above the law
I say, “It don’t count ‘less it sells” When it costs too much to build it at home You just build it cheaper someplace else
Sound Grammar
What I’m listening to this week…
How Did This Happen and What Does It Mean
Joan Armatrading
(BGM/Universal)
Cookin’ at the Queens: Live in Vegas, 1984 and 1988
Emily Remler
(Resonance)
A Year With Club 8
Club 8
(Darla)
Booked Up
What I’m reading this week…
The Destruction of Palestine is the Destruction of the Earth
Andres Malm
(Verso)
Policing White Supremacy: The Enemy Within
Mike German and Beth Zasloff
(New Press)
The Power of the Badge: Sheriffs and Inequality in the United States
Emily M. Farris and Mirya R. Holman
(Chicago)
Our Good Fortune
“Imagine the amazing good fortune of the generation that gets to see the end of the world. This is as marvelous as being there in the beginning. How could one not wish for that with all one’s heart? How could one not lend one’s feeble resources to bringing it about?”
– Jean Baudrillard, Fragments