plinky

linky to tweet

hope they do work out a deal tho

linky to paywalled archive

Interesting interview about history of palestine

linky

linky to bsky

President Joe Biden told Democratic governors during a meeting at the White House on Wednesday that part of his plan going forward is to stop scheduling events after 8 p.m. so that he can get more sleep, according to three sources briefed on his comments.

not beating sleepy joe allegations tbh

some choice paragraphs:

He [marx] understood very well that wage-earning children represent a burden to families when business cycle downturns put them out of work; it is less certain that he could envision a proletarian family whose decisions about household size would be made according to “the constraints of income, prices, taste and time,” such that children could be considered “consumer durables” or “household produced goods.”34 Above all, he did not imagine the role the modern welfare state would play in mediating social reproduction, or that retired workers would be left to fend for themselves, rather than being cared for by their own children and extended family.

Control over family size and the choice to reproduce must also, it warrants underlining, include the choice to have children as well. If in Nigeria and sub-Saharan Africa the particular ways in which households reproduce themselves do not allow women simply to choose smaller families, access to education and birth control notwithstanding, in the industrialized nations real wage compression and the high cost of raising children mean small families are not simply chosen, nor are they testimony to the unequivocal success women have had in gaining control over their bodies and their laboring capacities. We can be certain, however, that in the coming decades the purported “existential” threat posed by the prospect of demographic collapse will mean women and “feminism” will be singled out as scapegoats.

...

When “family-friendly” pronatalist policies—longer parental leave, child tax credits, subsidized child care, etc.—are deemed to have failed, a more punitive (i.e. American) approach might be adopted, in which women are denied access to abortion, and perhaps contraception altogether.36 A generalized and perhaps novel form of misogyny will likely be the result, with childless women shunned and shamed, not just by their communities, but directly by the state; under such conditions, violence against women, deemed narcissistic and against life, would be normalized.

....

But much of the demand for labor in the more developed countries is for in-person services, which cannot be relocated to Lagos or Accra.

I quite liked this piece little bit scarce on graphs, but seems grounded in reality

author's tweet

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A report filed last month by Barofsky disclosed an investigation into UAW President Shawn Fain for alleged retaliation, Secretary-Treasurer Margaret Mock for claims she misused her treasury powers, and an unnamed regional director for potential embezzlement. In response to delays in obtaining documents related to these allegations from the union, Barofsky accused it of "obstructing and interfering" and said that "if left unaddressed," it would be "an apparent violation" of the union's consent decree with the U.S. Justice Department following a years-long corruption scandal.

according to an email sent on Feb. 19 to Barofsky by Benjamin Dictor, a attorney working with the union — Barofsky called Fain for a conversation “strictly on a personal level” in which he shared "concerns about the union’s position on the crisis in Gaza." The Algemeiner — a global news outlet that covers the Middle East, Israel and matters of Jewish interest around the world — in October named Barofsky to its list of the top 100 people positively influencing Jewish life for an investigation into historical Nazi ties.

"Your call to President Fain on an issue so blatantly outside of the Monitor’s jurisdiction was inappropriate as your Office holds disproportionate power over the UAW," Dictor wrote, "and even a 'strictly personal' sharing of opinion implicitly implicates such power dynamic."

Later on Feb. 15, an email signed by Barofsky was sent by a legal assistant to the IEB. It included a letter sent to the monitor's hotline by the Anti-Defamation League, an organization involved in combatting antisemitism that expressed concerns over a statement passed by Local 7902's joint council in support of a ceasefire. The ADL letter said the statement lacked context, that it accused Israel of apartheid and ethnic cleansing, and that misinformation contributes to antisemitism.

The land seizure, which was approved late last month but only publicized on Wednesday, comes after the seizure of 8 square kilometers (roughly 3 square miles) of land in the West Bank in March and 2.6 square kilometers (1 square mile) in February.

Smotrich was granted expanded powers over Israel’s administration of the occupied territory under Netanyahu’s governing coalition. Smotrich laid out his plans for the West Bank at a conference for his ultranationalist Religious Zionism Party last month, a recording of which was obtained by Peace Now. He said he intended to appropriate up to 15 square kilometers (nearly 6 square miles) of land in the West Bank this year.

“We came to settle the land, to build it, and to prevent its division and the establishment of a Palestinian state, God forbid,” he said during the conference. He vowed to “change the map dramatically” by claiming more West Bank land than ever before as state land.

fucking settlers

ap tone is curiously extremely "neutral" here

Hamas cited the expansion of West Bank settlements as one of its justifications for the Oct. 7 attack into southern Israel, in which Palestinian militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took around 250 hostage. Israel has launched a massive offensive in response that has killed over 37,900 Palestinians, according to local health officials, who do not say how many were fighters.