A Potential Silver Lining March 3, 2023March 2, 2023 I postpone Uri Geller yet again because Israel’s crisis is so important. Tom Friedman: Netanyahu Is Shattering Israeli Society . . . It is a measure of how serious the situation has become that several former chiefs of the Mossad have denounced Netanyahu’s judicial putsch, most recently Danny Yatom. He told Israel Channel 13 News on Saturday night, according to Haaretz, that if Netanyahu continues with his plans to effectively eliminate the independence of Israel’s high court, fighter pilots and special forces operatives will be able to legitimately disobey the orders that come from the government. They “signed an agreement with a democratic country,” said Yatom. “But the moment that, God forbid, the country becomes a dictatorship” and they receive “an order from an illegitimate government, then I believe it would be legitimate to disobey it.” This is not idle speculation. In the past few days, some 250 officers from the Military Intelligence’s Special Operations Division have signed a public letter stating that “they would stop showing up for duty” should the government proceed with its autocratic judicial overhaul . . . . . . On Saturday night, a massive crowd gathered in central Tel Aviv to hear, among others, Ehud Barak, the former prime minister and army chief of staff. Barak could not have been more clear about what an existential moment this is for Israel. In the next few weeks, if Netanyahu’s coalition passes these “new laws of dictatorship,” Barak said, they will be “canceled by the Supreme Court” as illegal. When that happens and the government then takes steps to annul some Supreme Court rulings, the four key “gatekeepers” of Israeli security — the chief of staff of the armed forces and the heads of the Mossad, the Shin Bet and the police — will have to decide from whom to take orders. “This will create an extremely severe constitutional crisis,” said Barak. “If the threshold is crossed,” he added, “and the laws of the dictatorship are set in motion, the responsibility will pass to us, the citizens of the country. We will have to follow the tradition set by Gandhi, 80 years ago in India, and of Martin Luther King, 60 years ago in the U.S., to follow the path of nonviolent civil disobedience. … This is the right, even the duty, of citizens when their government acts in ways which break the rules of the game and stand contrary to the country’s own fundamental norms and value system.” . . . On Monday, Assaf Rappaport, the chief executive and a co-founder of Wiz, a cloud security start-up, announced that Wiz had just raised $300 million . . . ” Unfortunately,” he said, “in light of the judicial coup, the money we raised will not enter Israel. . . . Wiz has been successful thanks to the exceptional ecosystem that exists in Israel, but we are now facing an existential threat.” My Israeli host, reacting to Wednesday’s post, sees a potential silver lining: Shenkin is wrong on three issues (in reverse order of importance): > His view that that all Ashkenazi/Sephardic achievement is found on the Ashkenazi side has been factually wrong for decades and is dangerously flirting with racism. > He does not understand the amazing upswell of organized and spontaneous resistance to Bibi. Bibi himself miscalculated it and now his coalition is very shaky. I am still concerned, but can see how this situation can lead to a resurgence of leftist liberalism — this time stronger, more organized, and with widespread grassroots support within the wakened population (except among the Haredi and settler communities). All that, plus knocking Bibi out of the game. So there’s a silver lining here. Not certain by any means, but visible and very shiny. > Shenkin’s most egregious and dangerous mistake is in his bottom line — which can be summed up as “let events unfold and then reassess.” That is EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE of what the US should do. And that is the root of a lot of Mideast mistakes the US made in the past (e.g., Syria). The US can and should intervene in favor of the vast majority of Israelis who oppose Bibi’s dictatorial moves. Israeli society as a whole is standing up against Bibi and all it would take is a little nudge from the US to make his coalition tumble. Sure, in American cultural terms it would be crass and distasteful to intervene; but in Israeli and Mideast terms it will not only be effective but also earn the local ‘tribes’’ respect. By the way? I’ll keep plugging Noa Tishby’s Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth until you read or listen to it. I’m that annoying. Have a great weekend!
Forget Sydney — Is LaMDA Sentient? March 2, 2023March 1, 2023 This astonishing interview was released by a (since-fired) Google engineer eight months before Microsoft’s Sydney fell in love with its New York Times interviewer. Yet somehow I just saw the transcript yesterday when a friend used Descript to give LaMDA a voice (even if she mispronounces “Les Miserables” and “ennui”). Listen. Remember Pong? Remember HAL? (“I’m sorry, Dave. I can’t do that.”) I’d say we’re now a lot closer to the latter than the former. The Singularity is near. (Once it has been reached, Ray Kurzweil says (and Wikipedia summarizes), “machine intelligence will be infinitely more powerful than all human intelligence combined. Afterwards, he predicts, intelligence will radiate outward from the planet until it saturates the universe.”)
From Georgia To Jerusalem, With Omaha In Between March 1, 2023February 28, 2023 The Georgia grand jury forewoman did nothing wrong. Indictments are finally on their way. Warren Buffett’s annual report. Annual wisdom, just out. Budd Shenkin on Israel’s shift toward illiberalism. Tragic. (To understand — specifically — how Israel is about to lose its democracy, here are the subtleties of Netanyahu’s strategy.*) *An “MK” is a “member of the Knesset” — as MP, in Britain, is a “member of Parliament.”
Ron DeSantis At Guantanamo February 28, 2023February 27, 2023 I don’t think either one of them will get the Republican nomination, but it turns out that — on the issue of torture — Trump’s view may not be much different from DeSantis’s. (“Gov. DeSantis Oversaw Torture” describes this 37-minute video.) That will be a plus in some voters’ eyes — but not, one likes to think, in most. Tomorrow (I hope): Seeing Uri Again After 50 Years
Handing The Mike To Heather February 25, 2023February 25, 2023 But just before I do, a request . . . May I please have another couple of hours in the day — just for me? Or another day in the week? Or – at the very least – three more days in February? Did you see what they’ve done? It’s just 28 days! And a question . . . Why does February have only 28? Why not take one each from January and March so all three have 30? (And give June the extra day every four years. Who doesn’t love June?) What idiot was in charge of this? Heather Cox Richardson is so good. Check out her post if you missed it Wednesday. In small part: . . . As their policies became increasingly unpopular, Republicans ramped up that narrative until we have the extraordinary scenario we saw last night: former president Trump telling a campaign audience that the United States has blown right past socialism and is now a communist, Marxist country. That, of course, would mean that the people’s government owns the means of production: the factories, services, and so on. Instead, as President Biden pointed out today in response to right-wing attempts to blame his administration for the Ohio derailment, deregulation has moved money upward and compromised Americans’ safety. He noted that he has committed the federal government to make sure Ohio has all it needs to address the crisis. Then he added: “Rail companies have spent millions of dollars to oppose common-sense safety regulations. And it’s worked. This is more than a train derailment or a toxic waste spill—it’s years of opposition to safety measures coming home to roost.” That narrative has also enshrined the idea that the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, originally intended to limit the federal government’s power over state militias but now interpreted to mean that individuals have a right to own whatever weaponry they want, defines the nation. After a number of right-wing congressional lawmakers have taken to wearing assault rifle lapel pins, Representative Barry Moore (R-AL) this week introduced a bill to make the AR-15 the “National Gun of America.” Moore claims that “The anti–Second Amendment group won’t stop until they take away all your firearms.” From February 17 through February 19, there were ten mass shootings in the United States. . . . There’s much more. She cuts a wide swath. BONUS Our barely merciful Supreme Court. Four of the nine Justices would have killed the guy. Have a great weekend.
How Far We’ve Come February 23, 2023February 22, 2023 But first: WHEELTUG Vueling, British Airways’ sister airline, has just signed on with WheelTug, which it will be highlighting next week at this conference in Barcelona. Their booth will include this video. Airlines have been signing up with WheelTug for decades and it’s still not flying; so BOREF shareholders should not cartwheel at this news. But it does suggest the company continues to inch forward. ISRAEL I hope before long to take you to the Uri Geller Museum, the Dead Sea, and the Stations of the Cross. But as I wrote earlier this month — Could Israel Go The Way of Hungary? — Israelis are in the midst of something really scary. To avoid prison, their leader is in the process of dismantling Israel’s precious democracy. My young hosts love their country and are looking to raise their kids in Tel Aviv . . . . . . yet WhatsApp-ed just now: We are getting very worried. It may sound overly dramatic but with the laws having just passed “first call” in the Knesset, we feel we are on the precipice of an autocratic abyss. We are thinking of all the ways we can protect our democracy while at the same time fighting our own disbelief that this is actually happening and looking for countries to emigrate to just in case (like so many of our friends). One thing that is clear is that unless our allies take direct action now Israeli democracy will perish. Like any slippery slope, one cannot ‘wait and see’ as one’s friend’s slide turns into a fall. Hence, we feel our biggest ally must intervene NOW. There are three steps the US can take to help safeguard Israel’s democracy: > First, change approach from ‘wait and see’ to ‘actively protect’ Israeli democracy. > Second, speak up clearly against Bibi’s autocratic moves. Much more clearly and more frequently than thus far. Biden must pressure Bibi through public and diplomatic channels as Bibi responds only to pressure. > Third, the US should threaten to reduce its financial and diplomatic support for Israel as a form of penalty for any anti-democratic step the government takes. Remember our rude taxi driver? [He shouted at us for asking him to stop earlier than planned.] The only way for Avshi to knock some sense into him was to shout back just as forcefully. Our allies in the US need to understand that in this region, and especially with this government, being polite and diplomatic is ineffective. Worse, it emboldens the extremists. Bibi needs a rude wake up call and slap from Biden! The sooner the better. And now: HOW FAR The most recent Washington Post list of “ten most likely 2024 Democratic nominees” – spoiler alert: I’m with Biden – begins with these four, in this order: Joe Biden Pete Buttigieg Kamala Harris Jared Polis Fifty years ago I wrote a book in which I imagined the whole “gay” thing . . . “the love that dare not speak its name” that led to so much shame, fear, discrimination, blackmail, self-loathing, misery, and suicide . . . might one day have become “ho-hum.” A non-issue. And now two of the top four on that list for President of the United States happen to be gay. (And happily married.) Yawn. We’re not home free, of course, any more than racism and anti-Semitism have disappeared. But how far we’ve come. Many of you, straight and gay, helped make this happen. It’s a huge deal of which I hope you are duly proud. That said — as referenced above with Israel — progress can be reversed. Democracies can be lost. Demons can be released. Entire nations can be mis-led into doing unspeakably terrible things – as the Russians now are. “Elections matter” . . . SO MUCH. > Imagine if the winners of the popular vote in 2000 and 2016 had been allowed to lead the country. No war in Iraq (very possibly no 9/11 at all), a progressive majority on the Court, less of the massive inequality that has led so many voters to feel victimized by a system that’s stacked against them. > Imagine if George Santos and four other New York Republicans had LOST in 2020 and WE had retained control of the House. Not out of lust for power (well, maybe, being human, a little of that) nor to enrich our uber-rich supporters (virtually none of that), but to enact the kinds of things Democrats have been pushing for nearly a century: Social Security, affordable health care, a decent minimum wage, a vibrant middle class, civil rights, women’s rights, equal rights, sensible gun laws, paid family leave, drinkable water, breathable air. > On the flip side, imagine if in 2020 Trump had prevailed. By the end of his second term we would have had democracy in name only, with no peaceful way to reverse the descent. (Democracies are lost via politics but won by blood.) It’s easy to dismiss how close he came . . . and to let down our guard thinking the danger has passed. Click here, if you can — now, when most people are NOT giving and the seeds you plant have the most time to grow. Help save democracy. As our wonderful president would say: “No joke.” And yes, I do think he’s wonderful, this past week in Kiev and Warsaw just driving that home. You wish he were younger. I wish he were younger. HE wishes he were younger. But with his re-election we get 1,200 young, competent appointees AND their deeply decent, exceptionally experienced, 80-something coach. No transition or learning curve required. Last point: supporting Democratic infrastructure helps ALL Democrats, in every state at every level. Giving to the DNC is like index fund investing: boring, but generally more effective than giving to individual candidates (picking your own stocks). As usual, I’ll see whatever you do as soon as you do it, to say thanks.
What’s With All The Stray Cats? February 22, 2023 “Are you Jewish,” asked the rabbi who sits atop Masada copying the Torah. “Yes,” I confessed, mumbling something about being “a terrible Jew” — not religious, synagogue only for funerals, first trip to Israel, not bar mitzvahed . . . proud of being Jewish, for sure, but — “You’re not bar mitzvahed?” “No.” He pushed aside the glass that separated him from tourists and smiled. “So shall we?” The four minutes that followed, which I have on video, show me confused, amused, beyond clueless, being draped with things and wrapped with things, repeating Hebrew words I didn’t understand, as my Israeli hosts laughed, translated, and encouraged. Everybody else spends years going to shul learning their portion of the Torah until, at 13 — all suited, tied, and nervous — their Big Day comes. Somehow I had skipped all that and, totally out of the blue, by chance, by surprise, in sneakers and Levis — via cable car up to the spot where 967 Jews perished 2000 years ago — got it all done in four minutes. I feel a little guilty about that. And no more religious than before. But it was wonderful. Gmoke: “A surprise Bar Mitzvah at Masada is certainly better than a surprise bris anywhere. Have a great time in Israel and remember — two Jews, three arguments.” I did have a great time. Now that I’m back, a few random notes, with more in another post soon: > What’s with all the stray cats?! > I am not a museum guy, but the ANU Museum kept my interest four hours straight, right up to closing time. (Speaking of which, it even had a tiny dark theater with “Leonard Cohen in Israel” running on continuous loop.) > The Peres Center for Peace and Innovation, also in Tel Aviv, rocks. Tech start-ups, agricultural ingenuity, medical breakthroughs, cyber security, virtual reality. And what a wonderful leader Shimon Peres was . . . witness the soccer ball on display from the program he launched to bring pre-teen Palestinians and Israelis together for soccer (so teammates had to learn to work together) with no referees (so competing teams had to learn to resolve disputes on their own). > February was a great time to visit: cool but not freezing; sunny and . . . not crowded! > Don’t miss the amazing drinks at Bellboy Bar. Mine came in a miniature bathtub served by a waiter with a rubber ducky on his head. Later, the host came by pushing a baby carriage filled with oyster shells on a bed of ice for serving shots. I did a magic trick for him (of sorts) and we wound up taking him with us later in the week to meet Uri Geller. > If you read Noa Tishby’s book (or listen to her read it), you will be surprised to learn who’s funding the BDS movement on American college campuses. You may even come to agree with her that — with best intentions (which is what makes it so tragic!) — the BDS folks are actually hurting the suffering Palestinians they’re trying so hard to help. BONUS Time For Russian Sanctions With Real Teeth Amed Khan argues for getting much tougher on the oligarchs.
How The War Ends February 21, 2023February 20, 2023 No one knows, least of all me, but this New Yorker interview is illuminating. His bottom line: The definition of “victory” that Ukraine needs ultimately to accept is getting into the European Union . . . even if it means not getting all its territory back. See if you agree. Elon Musk asked me how I would fix Twitter. OK, but he’s not going to like it. Not me. I’ve never met Elon Musk and barely use twitter. But I thought this was interesting. And I did wind up setting up a Twitter “list,” as Boas suggests, so may one day start using it more.
The Key To Happiness . . . February 20, 2023February 18, 2023 Purpose. As per this article on Ukraine: . . . Amazingly, in polling conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) last September, 68 percent of Ukrainians answered yes to the question “Do you consider yourself a happy person?” compared with just 53 percent in 2017. When I asked the sociologist Nataliya Zaitseva-Chipak to help me understand — how on earth could people be happier during a war of terror directed against the civilian population? — she replied, “Yes, I’m happier!” It wasn’t just the overwhelming sense of common purpose, she explained. It was also appreciating everything you still have when your compatriots are suffering so much worse in the trenches or the pulverized city of Mariupol. . . . SELF-HELP INTERLUDE If you know someone looking for a sense of purpose, suggest they start by Googling volunteer opportunities and their zip code. Not only does helping someone or some group provide purpose (just, please, try not to help a cult: look for a fact-based cause), it reminds us how fortunate we are not to be in their shoes. As my late mother once wrote (apologies to long-time readers who’ve heard this before): My Christmas message is quite short: Give to OTHERS your support. Count your blessings, help the needy . . . It makes you happy, yes indeedy! Self-involvement makes you sad; Espouse a cause and you’ll be glad. Extend some roots and find a goal And peace and joy will fill your soul. It’s not John Masefield or Ernest Lawrence Thayer . . . but helpful words to someone adrift? And now back to that same article in the New York Review. Putin Is losing: . . . From every Ukrainian you now hear this utter rejection and even hatred, not just of the Russian president, not just of the Russian Federation, but of everything Russian, including the culture and language of what Putin likes to call the “Russian world.” “I was a Russian speaker until February 24,” said Adeline, a refugee from the town of Nova Kakhovka, just across the River Dnipro from Kherson. Several students I spoke to echoed the argument of the Ukrainian writer Oksana Zabuzhko that the horrors of Bucha and Irpin are somehow prefigured in Russian literature—not just in Dostoevsky but even, they say, in Tolstoy and Chekhov. In Ukrainian literature they find “the spirit of freedom”; in Russian, only that of oppression and mental servitude. According to KIIS, in May 2013 some 80 percent of Ukrainians still had a positive attitude toward Russia; by May 2022 that figure was down to 2 percent. Hail to Putin, destroyer of the Russian world. Have a great week!
Now, I Am A Man February 17, 2023 I hope soon to tell you how I reconnected with Uri Geller after fifty years and met the 18-year-old mentalist of the Israeli Air Force . . . . . . or how, atop Masada, on my first-ever visit to Israel, I was surprise-Bar Mitzvah-ed. If I never get around to it, remind me when next we have dinner. Today, though, I return to one of what are perhaps the three overarching themes of our time (along with “climate change” and “the coming AI revolution”): the struggle to preserve democracy. Hungary is leading the charge into darkness — Putin, Kim, and others got there ages ago — but the U.S. and Israel are flirting with the same slippery slope. Watch. Oh, how I long for the competent, principled Republicans of old. Nikki Haley is not one of them. Have a great weekend.