(1) CURATOR TAKES SIDES, GETS CANCELLED. An Afrofuturism-themed exhibit “chapter” is the casualty when “German Museum Shutters Curator’s Contribution Over Pro-Palestine Instagram Activity, Igniting Censorship Outcry” reports ArtNews.
… On Monday, writer, professor, and curator Anaïs Duplan, who goes by the pronouns he/they, posted screenshots on Instagram of an email sent to them from Museum Folkwang director Peter Gorschlüter informing them that the institution had decided to “suspend” their “collaboration.”
The email reads: “We noticed that you shared and commented on a number of posts on your Instagram channel in the light of the current situation in Israel and Gaza. From our perspective some of these posts are unacceptable. These posts do not acknowledge the terroristic attack of [Hamas] and consider the Israeli military occupation in Gaza a genocide.”
Gorschlüter continued that Duplan’s engagement put the museum “in a situation that the museum might be considered to support antisemitic tendencies and voices that question the very right of existence of the state Israel.”
The show, titled “We is Future” and slated to open on November 24, invited artists and curators to propose “historic and current” ideas “for alternative forms of living together” in relation to various social catastrophes: climate change, the housing crisis, late-stage capitalism, among others. The “chapters” of the show listed on its webpage include architectural projects from Bruno Taut and Wenzel Hablik, eco-conscious drawings and paintings by Elisàr von Kupffer, and contemporary works by Eglė Budvytytė, Emma Talbot, and Timur Si-Qin.
Duplan’s chapter was centered on the intersectional potential of Afrofuturism and was set to feature, among others, Brooklyn-based artist Fields Harrington, whose multidisciplinary practice examines the inextricability of race from our social fabric. The description of Duplan’s chapter has since been deleted from the webpage…
…The [Museum Folkwang’s] statement continued: “This decision was made neither for artistic-curatorial reasons nor because of the exhibition’s theme, but solely because the curator personally takes sides with the BDS campaign, which questions Israel’s right to exist. The Museum Folkwang views the developments in Israel and Gaza and the suffering of the civilian population on both sides with great concern. The City of Essen and the Museum Folkwang stand for peace and dialogue between cultures.”…
.. Amid an outpouring of support from professional peers, Duplan wrote in an Instagram post Monday that their priorities were “to ensure that any artists in the future—especially BIPOC artists—who are considering working with [the museum] have full transparency regarding their politics, not just in relation to the war on Palestine, but also their very fraught labor practices.”
Duplan added in a separate post Tuesday: “It should go without saying that Afrofuturism and liberation struggles around the world go hand in hand, as do Afrofuturism and antisemitism, Afrofuturism and islamophobia, and Afrofuturism and all other struggles for collective wellbeing.”…
(2) KEEP THE LIGHTS ON AT THE DARK. Last month Sean Wallace told Facebook readers that “for The Dark the loss of Amazon Newsstand effectively resulted in ten thousand dollars of revenue going poof, for the entire year.” Yesterday he wrote about the budget he’s working with to keep the publication afloat. After you’ve read the screencap, here is the subscription page for The Dark Magazine.
(3) HAS YOUR TROPE LOST ITS FLAVOR ON THE BEDPOST OVERNIGHT? Four-time Stoker Award winner Tim Waggoner has written a fascinating discussion about “61 Horror Clichés and How to Make Them Fresh Again” at Writing in the Dark.
…I can choose one element of horror writing that I think will have the most immediate impact on your fiction to talk about – and that’s avoiding and reworking clichés.
A genre has a collective group of character types (both protagonist and antagonist), setting types, story types, etc. These elements are called tropes, and they’re the shared tools genre writers use in their work. In Horror, an abandoned graveyard is a setting trope. A curious, naïve, and ultimately doomed scholar is a character trope. You get the idea. Tropes are effective when they’re first created/used in a story, but the 3000th time? Not so much. (This is one of the reasons readers can get sick of a genre. When they first start reading in it, all the tropes are new to them, and thus interesting and exciting. But after they read a number of books in the genre, they start to realize that the same old tropes are used all the time, and they get bored.) There’s a word for an overused trope that has lost its power and impact.
Cliché.
This is the reason that old pros like me advise new writers to read widely in their chosen genre and seek out the best, most original work via reviews and word of mouth. (This is one of the most useful functions social media serves – it makes you aware of some really cool shit to check out.)…
Here are two of his many ideas.
…Once you’ve identified overused tropes, you can avoid including them in your work. Better yet, you can transform them into something new and powerful. Allow me to elucidate.
Choose a New Signifier
One of the most common tropes in horror is darkness/shadows as a signifier of evil or a threat. It makes sense, since not being able to use one of our strongest senses puts us at a huge disadvantage in a dangerous situation. But darkness has been used so often in horror that it doesn’t have much power anymore. Maybe you could choose a different sense to indicate evil in your story. How about cicada song? Or a slight stickiness on surfaces in a place tainted by evil? (A stickiness that gets worse the closer you get to the source of the evil.) Corvids are used as harbingers or servants of evil in horror. What if you used hummingbirds instead?
Reverse a Trope
Haunted houses are often portrayed as old and abandoned. Let’s reverse this trope. Older houses are safe from hauntings/demonic infestations because they gain psychic shielding from the long-term presence of living beings inside them. So only new structures are susceptible to hauntings/demonic infestations. In Frankenstein, a living being is fashioned from parts of the dead. Reverse this: an immortal being who can instantly heal any injury seeks death by trying to find a way to permanently disassemble their body….
(4) HELP DECIDE THE DIAGRAM PRIZE. The shortlist for the Bookseller Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year 2023 is now open for a public vote on The Bookseller website here. The closes December 1, with the winner revealed on the 8th. Here is this year’s Diagram Prize shortlist:
The 12 Days of Christmas: The Outlaw Carol that Wouldn’t Die by Harry Rand (McFarland & Co)
The author of Rumpelstiltskin’s Secret: What Women Didn’t Tell the Grimms looks at how a raucous drinking song became a festive favourite.
Backvalley Ferrets: A Rewilding of the Colorado Plateau by Lawrence Lenhart (University of Georgia Press)
The “beguiling weasel” at the centre of this book is “more than a charismatic minifauna; it is the covert ambassador of a critical ecosystem,” says the author.
Danger Sound Klaxon! The Horn That Changed History by Matthew F Jordan (University of Virginia Press)
Charts the device’s lifespan from “metallic shriek that first shocked pedestrians” to its use in the trenches in the First World War.
Dry Humping: A Guide to Dating, Relating, and Hooking Up Without the Booze by Tawny Lara (Quirk Books)
The only non-academic contender is a “judgement-free” handbook from a podcaster and self-described “sober sexpert”.
I Fart in your General Direction: Flatulence in Popular Culture by Don H Corrigan (McFarland & Co)
“Covers every aspect of abdominal gas” in movies, music and TV, combined with “philosophical positions on colonic expression”.
The Queerness of Water: Troubled Ecologies in the Eighteenth Century by Jeremy Chow (University of Virginia Press)
An interdisciplinary look at classic canonical works and how “sea, rivers, pools, streams and glaciers all participate in a violent decolonialism”.
(5) HWA-THEMED GAME IS ON THE WAY. An officially-licensed party game called “Sudden Acts of Horror” – coming in 2024 – aims to celebrate the Horror Writers Association, the oldest and most respected professional nonprofit organization in the horror genre. The game asks teams of players to act out made-up horror novel titles to score the highest points and ultimately win a mini–Bram Stoker Award® for their efforts.
“Sudden Acts of Horror” is scheduled for release in the second quarter of 2024 and will be available for purchase at www.stopthekiller.com.
(6) SAVE THE COYOTE. This ain’t over ’til Porky Pig sings… “’Coyote vs. Acme’: Congressman Calls for Federal Probe on Warner Bros Discovery” — Deadline has the story.
…“The @WBD tactic of scrapping fully made films for tax breaks is predatory and anti-competitive,” wrote Castro, who has protested WBD before on antitrust issues.
“As the Justice Department and @FTC revise their antitrust guidelines they should review this conduct,” he continued.
“As someone remarked, it’s like burning down a building for the insurance money,” he added.
…. Several sources have told us that in a cost-cutting, debt-laden environment as Warner Bros Discovery that it’s not CEO David Zaslav to blame here for the axing of the film. Warner Bros. Motion Picture bosses Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy and new animation head Bill Damaschke are the ones who made the decision, this despite the fact that it’s not a production chief’s bandwidth to worry about tax writedowns on a movie. That’s for accounting and finance to sweat over.
The new WBD administration doesn’t want the problem of the previous admin’s greenlights and at $70M, that’s a cost too high for a movie to simply skip theatrical and head to streaming service Max.
While it’s not in production bosses’ nature to worry about tax writeoffs, they realize that there’s a lot of stress over at WBD to win in the wake of having the highest-grossing movie in the studio’s history and YTD with Barbie at $1.4 billion worldwide. A severe financial savings mentality exudes at Warners, and if a film looks too risky to spend marketing on, execs there don’t want to stick their necks out and have a lackluster result and be blamed for a greenlight that wasn’t there….
(7) STARSHIP LAUNCH APPROVED. [Item by Bill.] The FAA and the Fish and Wildlife Service have completed their reviews of SpaceX’s launch plans, issued their final reports, and given approval for the next launch of Starship. The FAA has issued a NOTAM (Notice to Airmen) closing airspace around Boca Chica for Friday November 17. SpaceX appears to be planning for a Friday launch. Gizmodo has further coverage: “SpaceX Granted FAA Permission for Second Starship Test Flight”.
…The FAA’s entire report can be seen here, but in summary, the water deluge system was deemed to be no more threatening to the environment than a summer rain storm:
“…an average summertime thunderstorm at Boca Chica would deposit more water over the landscape than any single or all combined activations of the deluge system. Since the amount of water that is anticipated to reach the mud flats from a maximum operation of the deluge system is expected to be less than an average summer rainfall event, this amount of water would be unlikely to alter water quality.”
With the launch license secured, SpaceX is ready to go. The second launch of Starship is scheduled for Friday, November 17 at 8:00 a.m. ET, with the launch window ending two hours later. Two FAA space TFRs (temporary flight restrictions) are in effect for Brownsville, Texas, one for Friday and a second TFR going into effect at 8:00 a.m. ET on November 18 and ending one hour later….
(8) ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDALS SHORTLIST. The American Library Association has unveiled the 2024 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction shortlist. None of the items are genre works. The winners will be announced on January 20.
Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction 2024 Shortlist
- “The Berry Pickers,” by Amanda Peters. Catapult. In 1962, an Indigenous Mi’kmaq family is in Maine to pick summer blueberries when their youngest child, four-year-old Ruthie, disappears. Her six-year-old brother, Joe, saw her last. Told in alternating, first-person chapters from Joe and a narrator called Norma, this braided novel fascinates. While little is easy for Peters’ characters, in the end, for all of them, there is hope.
- “Denison Avenue,” by Christina Wong and Daniel Innes. ECW Press.
In a mixed-media narrative saturated with a sense of poignancy and grief, Wong Cho Sum navigates the sudden death of her husband by a hit-and-run driver. As an “invisible” elderly observer, she compares the old Chinatown she remembers with this new, slowly gentrifying one. Innes’ detailed and beautiful hand-drawn illustrations are eye-catching complements to Wong’s writing. - “Let Us Descend,” by Jesmyn Ward. Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Sold away from her mother, teenage Annis, daughter of a Black mother and the white man who enslaved them, must endure a grueling march to the slave markets of New Orleans with only her wits and her mother’s ivory awl to help her survive. Ward’s vivid imagery and emotionally resonant prose convey the horrors of chattel slavery in stark, unforgettable detail.
Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction 2024 Shortlist
- “The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration,” by Jake Bittle. Simon & Schuster.
This multifaceted examination considers numerous communities that have been wiped out by changing weather patterns and foretells a future filled with additional displacements. Environmental journalist Bittle uses a combination of science reporting and individuals’ stories to explain the fates of towns deemed uninhabitable and ends with a plea for comprehensive environmental policy change and urgent action. - “The Talk,” by Darrin Bell. Henry Holt and Company.
In 2019, Bell became the first Black editorial cartoonist to win a Pulitzer Prize. In this brilliant graphic memoir, Bell’s growth from a trusting child afraid of dogs to an esteemed, nationally syndicated cartoonist is a marvel to witness through his spectacular panels and pages. A must-read manifesto against racist brutality. - “We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America,” by Roxanna Asgarian. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Investigative reporter Asgarian’s years of work getting to know the birth families of six children killed by their adoptive parents in 2018 uncovered a devastating web of intergenerational poverty, violence, and wrenching separations. She exposes the tragedy of what happened and the ongoing, insupportable failings of the foster system.
Carnegie Medal winners will each receive $5,000.
(9) MORE FOR MOUNT TBR. TIME Magazine’s list of “The 100 Must-Read Books of 2023” includes several works of genre interest that I recognize, and doubtless others I didn’t which you can name in the comments:
- The Future by Naomi Alderman
- Lone Women by Victor LaValle
- Victory City by Salman Rushdie
- Yellowface by R.F. Kuang
(10) MORE ON MICHAEL BISHOP. The family’s Michael Bishop Obituary has been published. It includes details on Bishop’s life and writing career, and funeral plans.
(11) MEMORY LANE.
1950 — [Written by Cat Eldridge.]
We mentioned Mack Reynolds’ The Case of the Little Green Men in a Scroll recently and there it was noted that it was set at a Con, and that’s all it’ll say about it as there might be someone here who hasn’t read it yet. Now I will ask the question, well two questions actually. Was it the first genre novel set at a Con? And what’s your favorite Con set novel? Or more.
So now let’s talk about The Case of the Little Green Men. It was the first novel by him, published seventy-three years ago by the Phoenix Press who ISFDB lists only one other work being published, Will Garth’s Dr. Cyclops. The cover illustration is by Carl W. Bertsch.
Is the novel fun? Oh yes. Is it really a mystery? Well, that depends on how much you want to stretch your idea of what a mystery is. And I’m surprised it hasn’t been nominated for a Retro Hugo. Really surprised.
To my utter surprise, the publication notes for The Case of the Little Green Men at ISFDB, says it was out of print for sixty-one years until Prologue Books did a new edition. It is available from usual suspects on, and no I’m not pulling your tentacles, Richard A. Lupoff’s Surinam Turtle Press. The website for that is here.
And now for our shortest Beginning ever…
The detective isn’t tough and he isn’t even smart and he doesn’t prove the case against the killer. And boy doesn’t get girl, either. Otherwise, this story is just about like a good many others you’ve read. At least it starts the same way.…
We can’t help it if it dissolves into men from Mars, people who believe in spaceships and flying saucers, murders without motive, and heat rays fired by little green men (or were they?).
(12) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
- Born November 15, 1877 — William Hope Hodgson. By far, his best-known character is Thomas Carnacki, featured in several of his most famous stories and at least partly based upon Algernon Blackwood’s occult detective John Silence. (Simon R. Green will make use of him in his Ghost Finders series.) Two of his later novels, The House on the Borderlandand The Night Land would be lavishly praised by H.P. Lovecraft. It is said that his horror writing influenced many later writers such as China Miéville, Tim Lebbon and Greg Bear but I cannot find a definitive source for that claim. (Died 1918.)
- Born November 15, 1933 — Theodore Roszak. Winner of the Otherwise Award for The Memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein and the rather excellent Flicker which is well worth reading. Flicker and The Devil and Daniel Silverman is available at the usual suspects, and his only other available fiction is his Japanese folktales. Odd. (Died 2011.)
- Born November 15, 1941 — Daniel Pinkwater, 82. His absolutely best work must be without doubt Lizard Music, an sf novel in which a young boy begins seeing musical lizards all around. Lizards opposing an alien invasion. Oh so perfect a novel.
- Born November 15, 1942 — Ruth Berman, 81. She’s a writer of mostly speculative poetry. In 2003, she won the Rhysling Award for Best Short Poem for “Potherb Gardening”, and in 2016 for “Time Travel Vocabulary Problems”. She was the winner of the 2006 Dwarf Stars Award for her poem “Knowledge Of”. She’s also written the fantasy novel, Bradamant’s quest. In 1973, she was a finalist for the first Astounding Award for Best New Writer. She brings out the Dunkiton Press genre zine annually — over 30 issues and still going strong. She was nominated for Best Fan Writer Hugo at Baycon (1968).
- Born November 15, 1955 — N Lee Wood 68. She was once married to Norman Spinrad. The Mahdi written in 1996 is an interesting take on the situation in the Middle East with AIs thrown into the mix. I’m more fond of her Inspector Keen Dunliffe series of detective novels which are definitely not genre. There’s at least twenty-three to date, and they’ve been adapted for television under the series title of DCI Banks. It’s a most excellent series.
- Born November 15, 1982 — Jessica McHugh, 41. Very prolific horror writer who’s also a playwright. IDFDB says she has written eight genre novels and some forty pieces of shorty fiction to date, the latter gathered in three collections. She won an Imadjinn Award for The Train Derails in Boston novel given by the Con of the same name held in Kentucky every year. Her poetry which apparently is on the dark side of things, of which she’s even written more than she has short fiction, has earned two Stoker nominations.
(13) COMICS SECTION.
- Lio’s local library has some strange books. Of course it does.
(14) GONZO AND GAIMAN TOMORROW. Nick Gonzo says, “If you are in Leeds on Thursday and are looking for something cool to do, I am hosting a workshop with Leeds Library about the history of Scifi and Zines. This is obviously a career high point as I’m sharing an event programme with Neil Gaiman.” Program description and ticket information is in the screencaps below.
(15) LIBRARIANS LAUNCH GAME AWARD. The Games & Gaming Round Table (GameRT) of the American Library Association is seeking nominations for the new Platinum Play Awards as part of its celebration of International Gaming Month. The new award will recognize the best games for use in library collections and library programming. “GameRT seeks nominations of amazing games for its new Platinum Play Awards list!”
Through this award, GameRT will highlight and honor the best games for library collections and programming. The Platinum Play Awards — affectionately called The Platys after the platypus mascot on the new award seal — are planned as an annual award and will recognize up to twenty games each year. GameRT will collect nominations from library workers and patrons each year. Once all nominations are in, GameRT members will be able to vote for their top picks, and games that receive at least two votes will move on to the final assessment round, where they will be evaluated by GameRT’s Platinum Play Award Committee. The final award list will be announced each year, starting with a special Platinum Play Classics Hall of Fame in January 2024 that will celebrate classic games like Chess and Go.
In an effort to help libraries find newer games, only games published between two and ten years prior to the awarding year are eligible. Games will be evaluated based on their ability to provide an enjoyable gaming experience in one hour of play. Eligibility for the award is open for games designed for any age range and any number of players. Games that require a system for play will be considered based on the number of platforms available that libraries can access.
…Nominations for the 2024 Awards — for games published between published between 2013 and 2021 — are open now and can be submitted online until March 31, 2024. Library staff, teachers, and gamers of all types should submit their favorite games using the online nomination form. Game publishers and creators that seek to have their games considered should email GameRT Staff Liaison Tina Coleman at [email protected].
(16) DON’T TOUCH THAT DIAL. The LA Times learns why “Composer John Williams can’t let Indy go to someone else”.
What does an old adventurer have to offer a modern world that seems to have moved on?
That’s the existential question posed to Indiana Jones, the beloved archaeologist immortalized by Harrison Ford across four decades, in “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.” Indy is creaky, retiring and alone when the fifth and latest chapter opens in 1969 — a man out of time.
It was also a question for John Williams, the venerable composer who gave Indy his infectious march beginning with “Raiders of the Lost Ark” in 1981. Williams was no less than Indy’s galloping tempo and his comic, whip-cracking action, his romantic stirrings and his heroic quest for every previous search for some ancient relic.
Now in his 10th decade, Williams had nothing left to prove and no obligation to score a new “Indiana Jones” film. For the first time, his forever-collaborator Steven Spielberg wasn’t even directing. So why get back in the saddle?
“Very frankly,” Williams says, “I thought to myself: Well, I really don’t want somebody else to do that. It was like when I was doing ‘Star Wars,’ you know. I thought: If I can possibly do it, I should try to do it.”
In other words: Just like Harrison Ford, no one else should wear that hat….
(17) THIS PLANET BITES. Camestros Felapton watched “Scavengers Reign (HBO)” and wrote a review that will make you nervous whenever you hear easy-listening music from now on.
…You could probably make a nice edit of the more relaxed landscape scenes that would be quite relaxing. Indeed, musically from the soft opening titles to much of the incidental music the tone is one that emphasizes the sense of wonder in this alien world.
This sense of wonder is coupled with terror though. The beauty of the world comes with plenty of creatures eager to eviscerate the humans (if they are lucky) or infest them (if they are more unlucky) or turn them into monstrous puppets (if they are even more unlucky). Spores, tentacles, stingers, strangling vines and psychic powers are all out to consume the hapless survivors….
(18) ANOTHER BIZARRE PRODUCT. Archie McPhee has done it again with “Bigfoot Basecamp”.
Some say Bigfoot is an interdimensional traveler who disappears when he wants to, but maybe there are no good pictures of Bigfoot because he’s so tiny. The Bigfoot Basecamp has all the things you need to create the scene of a surprised camper trying to snap a picture as Bigfoot approaches. You can take the itty bitty soft vinyl figures, between 1/2″ and 1-3/8″ tall, out of the box and play with them or leave them inside as a desktop display. Comes with eight pieces, everything you need from trees to Bigfoot to a campfire! Figures may come loose during transit but snap easily back into place.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Steven French, Hampus Eckerman, Nickpheas, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]
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Travel nightmares ongoing- wish luck and chocolate to me
12) Greg Bear’s City at the End of Time has at least one callback to Hogdson’s The Night Land, as I recall.
6) “As someone remarked, it’s like burning down a building for the insurance money,” he added.
Exactly what I was thinking.
I hear that there have been several screenings of “Coyote” to industry insiders as the movie is being shopped and they have been packed, and people who have attended stated that there was lots of laughter and applause–and lots of interest from potential buyers.
I think part of all this is that with the merger into Warner Brothers/Discovery that new executives were put in place who did not greenlight these movies in production so if they release the movie and it is a success, then the credit doesn’t go to them, but to the previous regiem so the axe the current crop of movies and then greenlight new movies. And a merger gives them an incentive to shelve them indefinitly due to Tax Write Offs that come with a merger.
1) Some background to this: For starters, Germany is very sensitive towards anti-semitism for obvious reasons. The fact that soem Pro-Palestinian protests (though by no means all) have escalated into chanting of anti-semitic slogans and even violence doesn’t help either. Neither did the arseholes partying on Sonnenallee in Berlin on the morning following the Hamas attacks on Israel.
What is more, last year the famous documenta modern art exhibition, which takes place every four years, was overshadowed by an anti-semitism scandal, when one of the artworks displayed was clearly anti-semitic. The artwork was eventually removed, but the scandal didn’t die down and even an archive of political pamphlets from the Middle East got under fire for anti-semitic content (it’s an archive of political pamphlets from the Middle East. Of course, some of them are going to be anti-semitic). The documenta scandal wasn’t just about the anti-semitism, there were many underlying issues. For large parts of the German art world were displeased that the 2022 edition of the documenta displayed a lot of works by non-western artists. Plus, a lot of people don’t like the current German secretary of culture Claudia Roth (who is one of the few people in the current cabinet who are actually competent and probably the only one from the Green party who’s actually competent) and called for her to resign over the documenta with which she had nothing to do, because Claudia Roth is not responsible for selecting documenta curators and artworks.
Anyway, the modern art world is still shaken from the big documenta anti-semitism scandal, which had a follow-up, when a member of the committee selecting the curator for the next documenta in 2026 turned out to be a BDS supporter. And now a guest curator at the Museum Folkwang, which is one of Germany’s most important museums for 19th and 20th century art, also turns out to be a BDS supporter who posted problematic stuff on Instagram. So he was removed as well, because the last thing the Museum Folkwang wants is a repeat of last year’s documenta scandal, which stretched out for weeks and months, well after the problematic work of art was removed.
There was also some criticism of removing the guest curator, since there is nothing problematic in the exhibition itself.
6) Seems to me a congressman would be in a position to lead a re-evaluation of the tax laws that make this sort of behavior viable, and not just sit & complain that somebody else should do something.
Jon Ault: I don’t really think it’s a problem with the law. The timing of the deduction of production costs is governed by the corporation’s method of accounting. If they determine a produced movie will never be used — and actually stick with that — they have abandoned the asset and can take their deduction.
On the other hand, if they proceed to market the movie, there are a lot more costs that will be racked up doing that. Part of what’s involved here is a combination of the tax benefit of an immediate deduction and probably the avoidance of more loss from unrecovered marketing expenses.
Of course, a decision like this probably involves other factors that aren’t financial, like whether new executives want to ride with decisions made by the people they replaced, and that sort of thing.
Exhaustion reigns, so, clickity .
PS Thanks for the Title Credit
(1) Thank you for the explanation, Cora.
(2) This is scary. 😐
(12a) I discovered William Hope Hodgson without realizing it — because I read an adaptation of “The Voice in the Night” in a Gold Key Mystery Comics Digest.
(12b) I discovered Daniel Pinkwater a little later — because my college town had an inviting library with a lovely children’s book section (and a memorable children’s book librarian).
Note: I hope this works. I’m posting on Microsoft Edge because Firefox has decided it won’t let me access File 770. 🙁
@Anne Marble: have you tried
reversing the polarityturning it off and on againclearing your browser cookies? In Firefox, bring up Settings, then click on “Privacy & Security”. Scroll down to “Cookies and Site Data”, click the button labeled “Manage Data”, then search for file770.Or just nuke them all from orbit, but that might break other things.
Anne Marble: I wonder if Firefox is friends with Jetpack and took offense at how I talk about it?
@ Jim Janney
That worked! I tried clearing cookies and what-not earlier. But I guess Firefox didn’t believe I really wanted to. (It’s making me sign into everything again, but it apparently kept the massive cache anyway.)
@ Mike Glyer
Jetpack is always to blame. I expect to be finding villains named Jetpack in SF novels for the next few years.
I hate brute force fixes that completely bypass any analysis, but they have this annoying habit of often working.
@Joe H.: City is very much a Night Land homage – and Bear’s story “The Way of All Ghosts” is straight up fanfic.
Thanks for the Time list; it reminded me of a book about Shakespeare (the Great White Bard) that I want to read.
I don’t have a Mount TBR so much as 4-5 foothills of TBR.
Do you expect me to scroll?
No, Mr Jetpack, I expect you to crash!
(6) Rep. Castro can’t see any difference between not releasing a movie and burning a building. That’s enough to qualify him as an idiot.
Joaquin Castro is actually one of the best people that we’ve managed to elect to Congress from Texas, despite our criminal gerrymandering. I wish we had more like him.
6) I get the frustration with this tactic. I share it.
At the same time, writing down the costs does not somehow make the movie into a net zero-dollar project. It reduces the amount of income that is subject to corporate income taxes. It isn’t even close to burning down a building for the insurance money. The insurance pays more.
The tactic doesn’t make sense. Writing down a completed $70m movie still results in a net loss of roughly $55m. They could take a streaming deal and only lose $40m in the short term. The upside risk is that people like it enough that they can license it out to other streaming services over the next decade or so and cut the loss to nearly nothing. Or…gasp…make a profit!
9) I’ve seen none of these books this year. I’ve read a couple of 2023 books that should be considered for recognition and have high hopes for a couple more that dropped late in the year.
@Anne Marble
I had similar issues with Chrome a few weeks back. It worked itself out. I tried turning off my various adblockers with no obvious benefit. I also did a purge of cookies, etc.
I think it was a WordPress problem as I’ve been encountering a new interface since things have returned to normal.
Regards,
Dann
I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts, and beer. – Abraham Lincoln
Some additions to Corah’s statement:
1) Germany has a racist tradition of hatred towards arabs. As such, they aren’t seen as fully human or deserving of human rights. When Israel is breaking international law with war crimes such as apartheid, collective punishment, genocide,ä and ethnic cleansing, this has been with the full support of the German establishment.
2) This view of Palestinians as not truly human has made the racist German government to condemn Palestinian calls for freedom as “antisemitic”. As an example, the call of liberty and equal rights in the slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is now illegal.
3) The German hate towards a peaceful resistance towards Israeli oppression also forbids German state entities to cooperate with those pro-palestinians who wants to protest illegal occupation by boycotting Israeli goods. In this way, we should see Germany in the same way as those who supported apartheid South Africa and the Jim Crow laws.
@Hampus: If Germans went around saying, “From the Vistula to the Rhine, Germany will be free,” I don’t think Poles would see that as a call for liberty and equal rights.
@Gary McGath
The use of simile and other forms of figurative language is generally seen as a sign of literacy.
@ Hampus Eckerman
Israel has a right to exist. They are not occupiers. Given the history of repeated, frequent pogroms against Jews, it is sadly necessary for Israel to exist.
Israel is a fully democratic, pluralistic nation.
Hamas is a terrorist organization imposing authoritarian rule.
The only way for Palestinians to be free is if from the river to the sea, Palestine is free…from Hamas and other terrorist organizations.
Witnessing the last few weeks of excusing the actual attempt at genocide has been sickening.
And this is the short version.
Dann
@Hampus “Germany has a racist tradition of hatred towards arabs.”
Germany — you mean the country that accepted 800,000 Syrian refugees in the 2015 crisis? How very racist of them.
“war crimes such as . . . genocide” — how is this playing out? Israel has Palestinians in the Knesset. It has nearly 2 million Palestinian/Arab citizens (there were only about a million or so in the borders in 1948). Hardly signs of a genocidal state.
“the call of liberty and equal rights in the slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free””
The slogan isn’t a call for liberty and rights, it is a call for the death of every Jew between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
@Hampus
We have a lot of people of Arab descent living in Germany. Mostly Lebanese and Syrian people, but also Iraqis and yes, Palestinians. There’s more than a million people of Arab descent living in Germany altogether. Most of them seem to be happy here.
And yes, there are people who don’t like Middle Easterners or Muslims in general. And in fact, the far right AfD, which contains actual Neonazis, has suddenly decided to style themselves as warriors against Anti-Semitism, because they hate Muslims more than they hate Jews.
But I frankly, I find it insulting to call our entire country and our government (which is terrible, but for those reasons) racist, because we do no tolerate Anti-Semitic rallyes in our streets. And note that while many Pro-Palestinian protests were banned (and banning a protest isn’t easy), several were not and were able to peacefully make their point. A news site even posted a list of what is and is not allowed at such protests. For example, Palestinian flags are okay, Hamas symbols and certain slogans are not. And yes, “From the river to the sea” is one of them, because it is Anti-Semitic, since it denies Israel’s right to exist.
As for BDS, they’re not violent, but some of them (not all) are Anti-Semitic. They’re also disruptive jerks, much like the Last Generation people. Who are still legal in Germany BTW.
I probably shouldn’t have commented and I’m not even sure why this news item about the guest curator at Museum Folkwang was linked here at all, since it isn’t remotely SFF related. Not sure if firing the curator was justified or not, but I’m leaning towards justified. But I felt it was important to share the context about the documenta scandal (which IMO was overblown, they should just have removed the artwork or someone in charge should have caught the issue before it became one) and how it made the German art scene extra careful.
But if I’m going to be insulted here for not wanting Anti-Semitic slogans and rallys in our streets, fine, I’m gone.
Also, we don’t want the Israel-Hamas war spilling over into our streets. In Berlin, some apartment houses where Jewish people live have already been tagged with Star of David graffiti and that’s shit I never ever want to see in this country again. Never mind that Jewish Germans are no more automatically responsible for what Israel is doing than Germans of Arab descent are automatically responsible for what Hamas is doing.
(7) Here is the launch license.
@Cora Buhlert–I would be sad and angry if we lost you here, due to someone who thinks Germany should allow antisemitic, pro-Hamas rallies that advocate violence either explicitly, or with eliminationist slogans like “from the river to the sea.”
Peaceful rallies are one thing, and “from the river to the sea” and Hamas symbols are something else again.
I want to start by agreeing with a point that Cora Buhlert makes in her response, despite the fact that I’m going to disagree with many of her other points. She argues that racist harassment of Jewish citizens is despicable and it is similarly despicable to collectively assign blame for the policies of Israel. I’ll go farther and simply call this behavior antisemitism. It must be condemned and the movement for Palestinian rights frequently does so, although I would frankly like to see more activity calling out some of the recent opportunism on the part of bigots.
At the same time, its important to recognize that the slogan, ‘From the River to the Sea’ is a far more complex one that is acknowledged in this conversation, and points to the fact that discrimination is not simply an issue in the Bantustan like conditions of the occupied territories, but the forms of discrimination that occur for Arab citizens of Israel. You can find some discussion on that issue here. It’s an acknowledgement that the dispossession isn’t limited portions of the territory, but covers all the territory. It is not a call of elimination in the way that it is commonly used in the United States. Rashida Tlaib’s comment captures this fairly eloquently, ” From the river to the sea is an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction, or hate. My work and advocacy is always centered in justice and dignity for all people no matter faith or ethnicity.” It’s fairly easy to find articles that discuss the complexities of the use of the phrase.
I’m less directly aware of the situation of Germany, but this report suggests that the repression is more substantial than what Cora Buhlert is discussing. It can be found here. In addition, the issues of racism that Hampus discuss are real and substantial. Here is a relatively recent AP article on that topic. (I also want to note that these are not exceptional issues. We see similar issues in the United States.)
Finally, the term ‘Israel’s right to exist’ is repeatedly invoked, but its not clear what is often meant by that slogan. At one level, if this simply means that the primarily Jewish citizens of Israel should not experience the kinds of ethnic cleansing that were the preconditions of the creation of Israel and that those individuals should have meaningful rights and have the ability to have a meaningful say in the governance process than that is certainly true. Those individuals have lived in the area for generations and their forcible removal would be a profound crime and a tragedy. At the same time, if this means that the individuals who aren’t Jewish are somehow limited in their participation or that their population must be limited for Israel to continue then there are some problems.
As previously noted, there are significant limitations to both the democratic practices of Israel and substantial limitations to its pluralism. To address those, Israel as a state must operate in a substantially different way, a point that would equally apply to a two or one state solution. In either case, Edward Said’s vision of a land for two peoples must be put in place. At this point, the exclusion of either is a massive injustice.
I never agree with Dann, but evidently WB is so bad lately that we 100% agree on that issue, as do all right-thinking people. I still haz a sad over Batgirl.
Andrew (not Werdna)
Dark chocolate, milk chocolate, caramel and chocolate, mixing devil’s food and chocolate brownie mixes (with powdered sugar on top of a snowflake stencil) for LOTS of brownies, chocolate covered, chocolate filled Sees Chocolates, classic Toll House Cookies, all reminds me when I was a little kid, and used to mix Ovaltine with Nestles Quick and put just enough water on it to make a syrup. (and no, I’m NOT diabetic now!)
Here’s to chocolate!
Thank you. In spite of flat tires and flight delays, I’m home.
SpaceX is delaying the launch of Starship by one day.
https://www.space.com/spacex-starship-second-test-flight-launch-delay
@Robert Wood — Your statements re: “River to the sea” would be more convincing if one ever saw the slogan unaccompanied by antisemitism, usually virulent, and often in support of the eradication of Israel. Despite the comments of Rashida Tlaib (who is an example of the antisemitism of which I speak), the slogan is a dog whistle for “wipe them out.”
Lurkertype says I never agree with Dann, but evidently WB is so bad lately that we 100% agree on that issue, as do all right-thinking people. I still haz a sad over Batgirl.
I wouldn’t make the assumption that the Batgirl film will never see the light of day. All it will take is a future regime there changing its mind and one of the streamers paying for it. The film still exists after all.
bill, Unsurprising, I think that is a substantial misrepresentation of Tlaib’s position and the position of most groups demanding a ceasefire and the end of the occupation, although I understand that a number of speakers associated with a Marxist Leninist group said some fairly deplorable things at a New York demonstration just after November 7th. I could immediately point to the defense of the slogan by progressive Jewish groups such as Jewish Voices for Peace, who made the following statement to a Democratic politician over Twitter. “The full phrase is “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free.” If you believe that freedom for Palestinians means eradicating Jews, it says more about you than anyone else. Stop trying to tell Palestinians what they mean when they call for freedom.” I might make the same suggestion when you falsely impugn the reputation of Rashida Tlaib. I have also seen the substantial participation of younger Jewish activists involved in Palestinian liberation work. They are frequently the ones organizing these events and are the ones getting arrested.
“demanding a ceasefire” — are you aware that there was a ceasefire in place on Oct. 7? Why should Israel give Gaza another one when Gaza won’t observe them? There’s a very simple solution to the violence — release the hostages, renounce Hamas.
“the end of the occupation” — Israel stopped occupying Gaza in 2005. If Gaza would just stop trying to kill its neighbors, there would be no Israeli soldiers there.
“Jewish Voice for Peace” — that’s the organization that hosted Rasmea Odeh, who was convicted of bombing a Jerusalem supermarket; and that honors Leila Khaled, an airline hijacker. Interesting way to advocate for peace . . .
“The full phrase is “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free.” ” I’m aware, as that is what I referred to upthread in response to Hampus. But the slogan, by calling all of the area between the Jordan and the Mediterranean “Palestine” and erasing Israel, is itself antisemitic by its own words.
“you falsely impugn the reputation of Rashida Tlaib.” All I said about Tlaib is that she is antisemitic, and there’s nothing false about that.
Dann665:
Israel exists. Palestine does not and it also has the right to exist. That is the reason for the conflict: Israel’s illegal occupation and apartheid system. An apartheid state can never be called democratic and a state with an enshrined law saying all land is exclusively for Jews can never be said to be pluralistic.
The only way for Palestine to be free is to get rid of Hamas and to get rid of the settlers and the occupation army.
Bill:
Genocide is a crime of intent, not of scale. As such, the Serbian massacre of Srebrenica is seen as a crime of genocide even though far fewer were murdered than Israel has murdered in Gaza and even though the ones murdered by Israel has a much higher part of children, women and elderly.
Your lies about the slogan of Palestinian liberation only shows your genocidal hatred towards Palestinians.
Apart from that, no, Israel did not end the occupation in 2005. It implementer an illegal blockade towards Gaza and is therefore still seen as the occupying power of Gaza by UN, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty and the Red Cross.
Cora Buhler
When the German government constantly spouts hate and racism towards Palestinians, outlaws peaceful resistance towards occupation in the form of boycott and gives full support to a genocide, they absolutely should be called racist. Again, it is brutally racist to deny Palestinians the right of freedom from the westbank (the river) to the sea (Gaza). To deny the use of that slogan is to support apartheid and occupation.
@Hampus
I do not agree with Israeli politics, but let’s not forget that Hamas started the current round of hostilities by attacking, kidnapping and murdering more than a thousand people. I don’t agree with bombing civilians in Gaza either, but let’s not forget who started this round.
Also, sprouting Anti-Semitic bullshit on an SFF site is a choice.
Cora Buhlert:
No. Lets not forget that Israel started the last round of hostilities. In the last election, Netanyahu chose to incorporate Kahanist parties into his government. People with terrorist background who openly celebrated Baruch Goldstein’s slaughter of praying muslims.
The finance minister Bezalel Smotrich chose to appear with a map saying even the state of Jordan should become part of Israel. Itamar Ben-Gvir from the neo-nazi party “Jewish Power” became Minister of National Security with full power over the Westbank. He immediately encouraged settlers into pogroms as the one in the village of Huwara. He defended the extremist tradition of spitting at Christians and started riots when forcing his way into the Al Aqsa Mosque. Settler attacks multiplied as did the Israeli government increased plans for new settlements and enlargement of old.
This is what started the current round of hostilities.
I haven’t seen anyone spouting antisemitism here, but several people defending hatred towards Palestinians and denying the voicing of calls for freedom from occupation and apartheid.
Hampus: I am still not over the anger, didn’t respond yesterday because of that.
You are at the moment spreading theorist propaganda (Hamas is a theorist organisation)
I also would understand the slogan you and Robert Wood are defending as a slogan for Genocide.
I would also call you an uneducated Antisemite, who is spreading alternative facts.
I will not defend Netanjahu, because even the people in Israel aren’t defending him.
Your defense of a teorist attack that is propably similar to 9/11 for the Americans as already part of the conflict is somethink I will hope that you will be ashamed if you ever get out of your hate.
Fact is that this wasn’t the first act of war that Hamas did penetrate. There were stones beeing trown from the Al Aqsa Mosque (which is very worth visiting btw) on Jews praying at the Wailing Wall.
There was no peace Hamas was at times firering 1.000 rockets at Israel (30% going down in Gaza).
There is the problem, how does a society react, if they are attacked all the time, from neighbours who don’t want peace.
A private plea not for this discusion but for others that are more discusion here and on other sites, if you can don’t interact with me, if you don’t feal you have, too.
@Lurkertype
So you have moved from “I never agree with Dann” to “I rarely agree with Dann”. I’ll take that as a marginal step forward for the human condition and look forward to our next moment of agreement.
Alternatively, this probably happens far more frequently than you imagine as I read your responses and agree with you from time to time.
VBR,
Dann
‘There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running around with lit matches.’ Ray Bradbury
@Hampus — you use the term “genocide” both in reference to Israel and myself, and you call it a crime. Let’s look at the definition of “genocide” in the context of international law and war crimes.
As you say, genocide is a crime of intent.
Israel does not have the intent to destroy Palestinians as a group, and nor do I.
Israel has taken many steps, often to its own detriment, to avoid killing Palestinians. They are not waging a genocidal war.
On the other hand, Hamas (and other major Palestinian organizations) openly advocate for the destruction of Israel and the death of Jews. They teach this to children in their schools. Genocide is going only one way in this conflict.
Re: the slogan. I, in my youth, used the Confederate flag as a symbol of Dixie and Southern culture. I learned that black people see it as racist and white supremacist, and that’s enough for me. I no longer use it. Likewise, Israelis see the slogan as a call for their elimination, and reasonably so, since it doesn’t even allow for the existence of Israel, and since people who kill Israelis routinely use it. You may say that it doesn’t mean “wipe out the Jews”, but in doing so you are standing with modern-day Nazis.
StefanB:
You can be angry at me for seeing Palestinians as humans if you want. Calling it “propaganda” that I don’t believe that calls for a “Free Ireland” or a “Free Palestine” is the same as calls for the genocide of all Protestants or Jews.
I have not with one word defended Hamas, because I believe they are a terrorist organization that shouldn’t be defended. And yet you make up disgusting shit about me, because I don’t think it’s right to turn 1.5 million people into refugees while in one month murdering more than eight time as many children as Russia hss killed in Ukraine in 20 months. Because I don’t think Israeli terrorists, now part of the government, is something we should be quiet about and whose violence isn’t worth of noting.
No, this wasn’t the first act of violence from Hamas. But then it wasn’t the first act of violence of Israel, it’s army or its illegal settlers either. And this round of violence started with an escalating Israeli violence on the Westbank. Then Hamas escalated from that and then Israel onto unprecedented levels, setting a world record of killed UN personnel and children in the shortest time.
Bill:
Israelis do not see the slogan as antisemitic. They use it themselves, as an example in the 1977 charter of Likud. Your parable is also turned on its head. Supporters of Israel getting angry at a slogan about Palestinian freedom is more akin to white people getting angry at the phrase “Black Lives Matter”, as if it was a call to express that white lives don’t.
You gave the list about what defines a genocide and here is what the Genocide Watch said about it.
https://www.genocidewatch.com/single-post/genocide-emergency-alert-israel-and-gaza
Here’s what Jewish Current says:
https://jewishcurrents.org/a-textbook-case-of-genocide
The public statement of 800 scholars:
https://twailr.com/public-statement-scholars-warn-of-potential-genocide-in-gaza/
What the UN says:
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/11/gaza-running-out-time-un-experts-warn-demanding-ceasefire-prevent-genocide
And here is Netanyahu making a biblical call for the slaughter of all Palestinians, men, women and children.
https://m.timesofindia.com/world/middle-east/netanyahu-cites-amalek-theory-to-justify-gaza-killings/articleshow/104802548.cms
@Hampus: The West Bank isn’t a river, and Gaza isn’t a sea. The people who came up with the slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” and most of their supporters, are talking about Palestine existing from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea and including the land which makes up Israel proper.
(I say “most” of their supporters because I suspect that in the U.S., some of their supporters don’t know which river and which sea are being referred to.)
If Palestine were to be the country that ran “from the river to the sea,” that would leave no place for Israel to be. The kindest plausible interpretation of Palestine being “from the river to the sea” is that the Jews of Israel should live under the rule of the Palestinians or leave if they don’t like it.
Note that I’m not saying that Israel ought to govern the entire land from the river to the sea. I am saying that Israel ought to govern some of that land rather than having all of it be Palestine.
Joshua K:
Gaza lies by the Mediterranean Sea, Westbank by Jordan River. I.e both parts of Palestine lies between the river and the sea. Then it is also a catch all phrase for both the one-state solution or the two-state solution with equal rights for Palestinians inside Israel (i.e no more land or villages exclusive for Jewish use), both which are de facto impossible today as US and the western world in practice supports the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. To call for a two state solution is not antisemitic. Neither is the call for a one state solution more antisemitic than it was anti-boer to call for an end to apartheid with the end of the Bantustanis South Africa had created nor it is anti-anglo to call for a united Ireland.
I honestly do not care if the solution will be two states (impossible without dismantling of the settlements) or one state (impossible because Israel is created as a colonial ethnostate). But calls for either solution aren’t antisemitic.
Hampus: If all you would be doing in your comments was to defend the lives of Palestines as important and stating that they were human, this whole discusion wouldn’t have happen or wouldn’t be as hostile.
I also hope for the lives of the people in Gaza and I see the situation as damm hard. I also said that I have no problem with attacks on Netanjahu.
I stand by my statment that you have started this tread by lying about my homecountry(concratulation I thaught that this wouldn’t bother me one bit) and are having an extreme Pro-Palestine, anti-Israel PoV. I will not take back that you are spouting antisemitism here and that your viewpoint is influenced by Propaganda from Hamas.
I also still state that you gloss over about the terorist attack as an ongoing act in a war, because it doesn’t fit your narative and I haven’t made up disgusting shit about you, you are fully responsible alone for that negative impresion.
StefanB:
Yes, this is true. I have a very negative view about the apartheid state of Israel and its occupation, just as I have a negative view of the brutal Russian state and its occupation and I had a negative view of the South African apartheid state. I also have a negative view towards terrorist organizations such as Azov, Hamas, IRA and Jewish Power. And I do not agree with Nelson Mandela’s justifications of terrorism as a solution when nothing else can end the oppression of ones people.
I also have a pro-Ukrainian view in that I think Russia should end its occupation and Ukraine be able to reclaim their land. I’m for the unification of Ireland even if people tell me it makes me anti-anglo. I’m also pro-palestinian in that I think Palestinian have the right to their own land and that Israel should follow international law and let food, water, fuel and medicine into Gaza, end its illegal blockade, dismantle the settlements and end the laws that allow the creation of neighbourhoods only Jews are allowed to live in. I also think both Hamas and Israel should release all hostages and stop attacking and murdering civilians. Preferably all leadership of both Hamas and Israel from the last 30 years should be sent to the International Court of Justice.
Not sure why that is strange. It is called supporting international law.
People don’t choose where they’re born, what color they are, what religion their parents are born in, what their anatomy is like (damaged, malformed, or missing) or how their brains are wired. It makes no sense to target any person based on their physical traits.
War creates casualties. It’s usually territorial, political, or ideological. In the case of Israel and Gaza/Syria/Iran/etc its all of the above.
Any time there is war there is incalculable damage to people, infrastructure, society, faith, and progress. None of it is worth the cost in lives or the truth.
Ages ago, Israelites were kicked out of their homeland. They came back after World War II and kicked out the residents (both Arab and Christian) and created the state of Israel, offering either pennies on the dollar for their land or nothing and they’d take it. There have been wars ever since.
Ukraine used to be part of the USSR. It isn’t now, but Russia is trying to resurrect it by invading, killing, destroying, and kidnapping children to be indoctrinated into the Russian ideology. They still need funding and our government obstructionists are preventing it. Here is the official Ukrainian Donation Site: https://war.ukraine.ua/donate/
(there are many Russian generated fraudulent ones, beware of all the rest!)
In the US, the extreme right wing is trying to take over the US. See story, links, and commentary from many sources, as well as the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2024” manifesto at:
https://www.axios.com/2023/11/13/trump-loyalists-2024-presidential-election
There are innumerable other, legitimate news sites that corroborate this.
This old gem says it best: “War is Not Healthy for Children and Other Living Things” (origin described below)
http://www.thepeacecompany.com/store/prod_cards_warnothealthy.php
@Hampus
“Israelis do not see the slogan as antisemitic. They use it themselves, ”
The slogan, as you originally quoted it and I have engaged it since, is “From the River to the Sea Palestine will be Free”. I regret saying one time just “River to the Sea” as shorthand, but what I’m criticizing is the use of the full saying, as you used it yesterday. Israelis do not use the full saying. The full saying is antisemitic in that it refers to the lands of Israel as Palestine. The full saying is widely seen as calling for the eradication of Israel, and that you would argue otherwise is bizarre.
I will concede that much of what you say about the slogan would be true if the slogan were “From the River to the Sea, Palestinians will be Free” — but it doesn’t, and the difference is important.
Genocide: What is going on in Gaza is horrific, but it is not genocidal. Israel has no intent to eliminate Palestinians as a group, and their actions to the contrary (acceptance of Palestinians as citizens in Israel, warnings in advance of air strikes, encouragement of evacuation before attacking legitimate Hamas targets) are clear evidence to the contrary. Biased NGOs, academics, and opinion journals calling it genocide, and Israeli extremists advocating genocide, do not make it so.
“US and the western world in practice supports the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.” Bullshit. The US and the Western World have provided billions in aid to the Palestinians, and have argued for years for the Israeli tolerance of a Palestinian state. Despite these billions, Gaza still depends on Israel for potable water. If they would use the aid as it is intended, instead of pissing it away on weapons to kill their neighbors and graft for their “leadership”, the Middle East would be a much nicer place.
Bill:
That just isn’t true. The Likud charter says:
While the Palestinian use of the phrase is only a call for freedom, only racists with a deep hatred against Palestinians say otherwise, the Israeli use is a call for full annexation of the Westbank and for the Palestinians to accept living within an apartheid state or be driven of the land.
As we all know, it is Israel that has eradicated all possibility for a Palestinian state, not the opposite. And it is Israel that is now performing a genocide and an ethnic cleansing in Gaza as per the definition you referred to and according to the expert who wrote the definition.
Even since Golda Meir, Israel has used its genocidal call “There is no Palestinian people” and have worked to eliminate all existence of a Palestinian identity. Genocide.
That you are attacking UN and the expert who wrote the definition of Genocide you yourself used doesn’t surprise me.