Every dictator who ever seized power justified his coup as an official act for the good of the state. Between November 2020 and January 2021, Donald Trump attempted a coup d'etat. Fortunately, power is harder to seize in the United States than in other countries. Fortunately too the outcome of the 2020 election was too clear to be subverted. Fortunately also ...

They'd each deny it, but this is psychologically indistinguishable from this

The defendant's presence at his criminal trial is not an inconvenience or imposition, as Trump's partisans complain. The defendant's presence is a *right,* guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment. 1/x The right to be present at one's trial is precious. But it is not absolute. The Supreme Court has ruled that presence at a trial can be forfeited by persistently bad behavior. 2/x

The US did not sell weapons to Israel until the mid-1960s.
1/xciaotest.cc.columbia.edu/olj/meria/meri… The US did not provide military aid to Israel until the mid-1970s. 2/xjewishvirtuallibrary.org/history-and-ov…

No big deal, just the second-largest newspaper in French Canada caricaturing Jews as vampires. lapresse.ca/actualites/car… The Jew as vampire is one of the deepest myths of western culture. The 1922 film Nosferatu that inspired the La Presse cartoon also inspired Nazi cartoonists of the Third Reich anumuseum.org.il/blog/myth-vamp…

Why was the Alger Hiss case such a big deal? The secrets Hiss betrayed to the Soviets were not so important. (He gave them, eg, blueprints for a new design for a Navy lifeboat.) It was Hiss's career trajectory that alarmed: the potential for a Soviet asset as secretary of state. The Hiss case convulsed the country. But we've now had eight years of people with deep connections to the ex-KGB dictator in Moscow arriving at the very highest levels of US politics, media, and government - and that's become business as usual.

News reports don't get more disturbing than this, from @propublica about the president of Mexico. propublica.org/article/mexico…
The @propublica story deals with Lopez Obrador's first run for president, in 2006. Lopez Obrador lost, a result he never accepted and tried to overturn. When he ran again in 2018, Lopez Obrador promised "hugs, not bullets" for the cartels.

"Israel has only existed since 1948."

Which is true, if by "existed" you mean "has been continuously sovereign under its present government."

It's also true that as a country founded in 1948, Israel is older than 134 of the 193 member nations of the United Nations. The weird fact of the modern world is how *new* most countries are, even seemingly ancient ones. EG Egypt re-emerged as an independent sovereignty only in 1922 after half a millennium under Ottoman then British overlordship.

Meet Sir Mark Sykes, a baronet, wealthy landowner, and a faithful servant of the British Crown and Empire as both soldier and diplomat. In his short life - he died a month before his 40th birthday - Sir Mark Sykes saw action in the Boer War, was elected to Parliament, traveled in the Near East. At the outbreak of the First World War, Sykes was assigned to the intelligence unit that studied the Ottoman Empire.

Some thoughts on the future of Gaza after the end of major combat operations, whenever that may be. A thread ... 1. Hamas's October war will leave behind great destruction in Gaza - and (if imaginable) even more intense bitterness than ever before between Palestinians and Israelis.

ISIS recreated slavery within the territory it held. Captive girls, women, and boys were bought and sold by ISIS fighters. iir.cz/institutionali…
The opportunity to take and exploit enslaved women, girls, and boys became an important part of ISIS recruitment message. theguardian.com/world/2017/oct…

In "The Decline of the English Murder," Orwell observed that certain crime stories actually bolster faith in the social order: stories about crimes that are not system-threatening, that are detected and justly punished. George Santos was such a story. orwell.ru/library/articl… I think the above explanation is why the Santos story has amused so many people so much: no challenge to the Constitution, no threat to democracy, just a shameless lawyer and crook ultimately brought low by his own comically outrageous excesses.

How many stories have you read about ultra-left Democrats rejecting Biden's backing of Israel?

How few have you read about the overwhelming support for Biden's policy by a great majority of Americans? (thread) Major new poll dropped yesterday from @YouGov
It found that Americans sympathize with Israel over the Palestinians by a margin of 37-15. Another 27% sympathize equally with both sides. today.yougov.com/politics/artic…

Twice in the past hundred years, a nervous incumbent president switched his vice president to win the coming election. Two stories of what happened next ... In 1976, President Gerald Ford faced a mutiny from the Republican right. To appease them, Ford switched his vice presidential nominee. When Ford ascended to the presidency after Nixon's resignation, Ford had selected former New York State Governor Nelson Rockefeller as his VP.

Hamas claims that 8,000 people have been killed in Gaza. True? Who knows. True or not, it folds Hamas fighters into the total to inflate perceptions of civilian casualties.

But that's not the worst. (Thread) Western media then amplify Hamas's casualty number by repeating a falsely parallel claim that Ukraine has suffered only 8,000 civilian casualties - to defame Israel by denying Ukraine's losses. A TV interviewer posed that false parallel to me just yesterday. 2/x

A few weeks ago, I was invited onto Turkish state television to discuss the idea of reparations to former British colonies. I declined, but said that if I did join, I'd want to discuss what modern Turkey owed Greece, Bulgaria, Iraq, and Egypt for 500 years of Ottoman imperialism The big problem with so-called anticolonialism is that it obliterates most of the history of the human race. The only experiences of domination it cares about are those that originated in a single one of the continents settled by human beings.

Ancient antagonists can reconcile. British prime minister Tony Blair and Irish Taoiseach Bernie Ahern signing the Good Friday accords in 1998. French president Mitterand and (West) German chancellor Kohl jointly commemorating the Battle of Verdun

The Romans told a legend about a an acclaimed prophetess. She compiled all her predictions into 10 books and offered them to the Senate for sale at an enormous price.
The Senate refused.
So she burned half the books - and offered the surviving 5 at the same price. ... Which the Senate refused again. Long story short:

The Senate eventually purchased a few charred pages for the price for which they could have bought all 10 volumes if they had said "Yes" the first time.

This is basically the story of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict isn't it?

In the aftermath of the most horrific mass murder and mass rape of Jews since the Nazi Holocaust, many are volunteering to provide "context" for antisemitic atrocity. (Thread) We all seek insight. But be on guard: there is "context" that adds understanding and "context" that subtracts. There is "context" that explains and "context" that excuses. There is a "context" powered by expertise and "context" that functions as propaganda for terrorism.

War is politics by other means, as the saying goes, so some political thoughts here. But to summarize (thread):

thehub.ca/2023-10-08/ham… Coalition management will be indispensable - not only the coalition with western powers but the tacit coalition with Egypt and the Gulf states.

As all the world now knows, the Canadian Parliament was misled by the Speaker of the House into rising to applaud an SS man during Vladimir Zelensky's visit to Ottawa. I spoke about that debacle in the below conversation with @TheHubCanada (Thread) ?shows.acast.com/61d335631b91cf… Since the debacle, the Justin Trudeau government and its allies have fiercely argued that the debacle was entirely the Speaker's fault. Trudeau was a helpless by-stander to the Speaker's invitation. ?shows.acast.com/61d335631b91cf…