Meanwhile on the International front....

Couldn't get to work because of all the college protests against Russia invading Ukraine, killing civilians, raping women, kidnapping children...oh wait

 

While I do believe the cause is just - I'm pro-peace wherever - but imagine if this much energy was expended to combat higher tuition.

 

Went to Yale-Columbia softball and was kind of nice in two hours of chanting from college kids to not hear anything about a global intifada.

 

I think that first quote has something of a point. Setting aside the historical context, they are a group that remains something of a punching bag, whether it's a light ethnic joke or straight-up Nazis marching the streets of Skokie under protection.

In my attempts to untie these knots in my head, I've realized there are several examples of what you might describe as "state vigilantism," like the US in Afghanistan, and probably a few others that escape me. I don't think anyone seriously thinks what Israel has done is unprovoked, but as I've said before I don't think being the victim of a terrorist attack gives you carte blanche to do what you please.

Some time ago I followed a Russian hockey writer on Twitter who appears to blame Ovechkin and his people by way of the Capitals for running him out of the business. His stridentness is exhausting but back in the day I found some of his viewpoints on late-stage Soviet Russia (a topic that I am fascinated by) interesting. I'm not suggesting his viewpoint is credible but I find it curious that he seems to simultaneously hold the position that Ovechkin and any Russian hockey player who doesn't defy Putin should be ejected on moral grounds from the NHL because of Ukraine but that Jews, by virtue of their status as a historically oppressed class, have the right to defend themselves by any means necessary in Gaza.

That said, Israel is an explicitly Jewish state and the IDF the military arm of that explicitly Jewish state, and whose personnel are overwhelmingly Jewish. I recognize that not all Jews support Israel's political actions, but there is probably no ethnic group on the planet that is intellectually harder to separate from its representatives than that.

As far as "oppressors and oppressed," I think my bar for what constitutes oppression is higher than some (probably because I'm a straight white male), but I definitely think what Israel has done to its neighbors in the last 25 or so years in the name of its own security certainly qualifies.

Thank God it wasn't high school. Lord knows they probably would have figured out a way to rhyme "from the river to the sea" to "strike three" by now.

 

Good piece.

 

gift link

Opinion | The Student-Led Protests Aren’t Perfect. That Doesn’t Mean They’re Not Right.

 

Decent piece, kind of misleading headline. The piece is evenhanded in its criticism, and some of the things protesters say is disgusting.

Standing next to him was another officer, a Black woman. Another protester seemingly shouted her way: “Your ancestors are ashamed of you. Your ancestors were murdered by colonizers, and you are here standing with the colonizers.”

 

I think you're right. Check out these couple of interesting/appalling reads/listens.

There's this from the New York Post, which I don't often look at or take things from. Lately, however, I've had a sense that what this article/video addresses is how it is:

MSN

and this contention that much of the problems are practically performative in nature. It's all really challenging, and, frankly, disturbing stuff that only likely to stir the pot, and more trouble, in and for this country:

MSN

 

Free Link:

https://wapo.st/3WgJAqH

More than 50 tenured journalism professors from top universities have signed a letter calling on the New York Times to address questions about a major investigative report that described a “pattern of gender-based violence” in the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel.

The letter follows months of criticism and concerns raised by outside critics as well as some Times staffers about the credibility of its sourcing and the editorial process for the story.

The letter, signed by professors at colleges including New York University, University of Pennsylvania, Emory and the University of Texas, asks the Times to “immediately commission a group of journalism experts to conduct a thorough and full independent review of the reporting, editing and publishing processes for this story and release a report of the findings.”

 

That's how it was when I graduated from UVA, and the rain was so bad that I marched down the Lawn, then turned right around and walked back to my apartment with my sad, misshapen mortarboard hanging off my head.