No way to run a planet

 COP28 is holding one of its periodic confabs where important people by the thousands gather (this time in Dubai) to talk and talk and talk about climate change and then get back on their private jets and go home.  This time the president is Sultan Al Jaber, CEO of Adnoc, the Emirates state oil company.  Yesterday he warned that phasing out fossil fuels is a no-go "unless you want to take the world back into caves."  Today he reversed himself:  "the phase-out of fossil fuel is inevitable."  So caves it is, I guess.  There seems to be no real reason for these shindigs apart from reminding the world that we still have sultans and kings in the twenty-first century.

And dictators.  Liz Cheney is so worried about the possibility of another Trump presidency and the inevitable collapse of even our limited democracy that she is "weighing whether to mount her own third-party candidacy" for president.  She seems intelligent enough to understand that a vote for anyone but Joe Biden is a vote for Trump.  Also, with West, Kennedy, Williamson and Stein already running, she would be a seventh-party candidate.  If Cheney really wants to help she should get her father to take Trump hunting.

Even before MSNBC silenced Mehdi Hasan, supporters of Palestinians struggled to get their message heard, so it's hard to fault them for disrupting every public gathering including the funeral of Rosalynn Carter.  It takes discipline to maintain the line between compassion for the suffering people of Gaza and antisemitism.  Blurring that line helps no one.  The White House and Governor Josh Shapiro were right to condemn a demonstration outside a Philadelphia falafel shop owned by an Israeli-American, although they did not employ the phrase "fucking stupid."  So I will.  What the hell, people, the man is selling food that folks eat all over the Middle East and North Africa.  He is not committing "genocide" unless you're chickpea-intolerant.  It's enraging that Wadea Al-Fayoume, who was six, was murdered for being Palestinian; and that Hisham Awartani, who is twenty, was shot and paralyzed for being Palestinian.  Both crimes were committed by Americans who may or may not be Jewish.  

It doesn't matter.  At times like this Americans lose their grip on reason and reality.  In 2001 Sikhs, Arabs, anyone with a beard was fair game.  In 1917 German merchants had their shop windows smashed and a lot of Schmidts and Schneiders became Smiths and Snyders.  The concentration camps for West Coast Japanese are still a stain on our history.  Last year the Russian invasion of Ukraine made otherwise normal people boycott New York's Russian Tea Room, whose owners are actually Ukrainian.  What do we think we're doing when we stop thinking?  Who do you think you're helping?

Bernie Sanders doesn't know it but he's my adopted Jewish Zeyde.  (All right, we're only a few years apart but I grew up not knowing my grandfathers.)  He's cantankerous and stubborn and funny and he doesn't give a damn what anybody thinks besides the voters in Vermont, so he can speak his mind about the Israel-Gaza war and you can go to hell and grow there like an onion.  He opposes another $10.1 billion in "unconditional" aid to Israel because "what the Netanyahu government is doing is immoral."  (He supports "Iron Dome" and other defensive measures.)  Now call him antisemitic if you dare.

Israel famously requires military service of men and women alike.  So what role did sexism play in the intelligence failures leading up to October 7?  Members of the Border Defense Corps told Haaretz they were ignored when they warned where and how and practically when the Hamas attacks would occur because all of them are women and girls.  Even worse, they were left unprotected:  "The IDF left us like sitting ducks...the female surveillance soldiers were abandoned by the army and simply slaughtered without having any chance to defend themselves."  The first condition of further US aid must be the end of Netanyahu's premiership. 

"Be it further resolved that the Republican Party of Texas have no association whatsoever with any individual or organization that is known to espouse anti-Semitism, pro-Nazi sympathies, or Holocaust denial."  That fiery language was removed before said party's executive committee voted down the resolution 32-29.  At least it was close.  Given the timing it looks like they set out to derail any expression of support for Palestinians, then realized it would alienate Nick Fuentes and his rich friend Jonathan Strickland.  Among others.  Life is so complicated.

Porn-again Speaker Johnson is having the faces of the January 6 insurrectionists blurred from video to prevent "retaliation" by the Justice Department -- or, to use the legal term, prosecution.  Can we impeach him for obstruction of justice now?

Remember how Hitler had to take over the Sudetenland to prevent the oppression of ethnic Germans?  Vladimir Putin remembers.  Hitler's successor as capo di tutti fascisti is threatening Latvia with "appropriate response" if they don't stop being mean to the Russian-speaking minority.  All right, how may thought Poland would be next after Ukraine?  Who had Moldova?

It looks like hundreds of military promotions will finally be permitted by Putin's man in Alabama.  Tuberville finally noticed that his tactics are not changing DoD rules about abortion.  A protester set fire to themself outside the Israeli consulate in Atlanta yesterday -- try that, Tommy.

The Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act requires hospitals which accept Medicare funds to perform abortions in cases of medical emergency.  Naturally, it's being challenged in court.  What part of "medically necessary" will the Alito Court slide past on a skateboard of law from seventeenth century England?

Nine people who displayed a banner reading "Globalise the Intifada" were arrested in London.  We have a First Amendment, they have a Public Order Act.

Finally, the UK will see its first Jewish holiday panto, "Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Pig."  Music, laughs and a pantomime Dame, of course, but they're meshuggah if they don't include Jon Lovitz as Hanukkah Harry.