It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Sunday, July 26, 2020
Ted Yoho: Christian group obtains resignation over Ocasio-Cortez attack
Nonpartisan organisation Bread for the World says Yoho agreed to step down following incident with congresswoman
Ted Yoho, right, has been asked to resign from the board of a Christian organisation after being accused of using a sexist insult against Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, left. Photograph: AP
Associated Press
Published onSun 26 Jul 2020 04.32 BST
A nonpartisan Christian organisation that seeks to end hunger says it has asked for and received the resignation of Republican congressman Ted Yoho from its board of directors, following what it called his “verbal attack” on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Democrat congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez had accused Yoho of using a vulgar and sexist insult while upbraiding her during a confrontation last Monday on the steps of the Capitol. Yoho maintained he did not use the words cited, though a reporter who witnessed the incident confirmed the language as she described it.
In a statement on Saturday, Bread for the World said its board met Friday with Yoho and sought his resignation “as an action that reaffirms our commitment to coming alongside women and people of colour, nationally and globally, as they continue to lead us to a more racially inclusive and equitable world”.
On its website, Bread for the World says its “collective Christian voice” lobbies Congress and the administration on ending hunger nationally and worldwide.
“As a bipartisan Christian organization committed to alleviating hunger and poverty through sound public policies, Bread for the World upholds the values of respect, dignity, and compassion that Jesus calls us to when engaging decision makers from across the political spectrum,” the statement said.
“We believe that Rep. Ted Yoho’s recent actions and words as reported in the media are not reflective of the ethical standards expected of members of our Board of Directors.”
A spokesman for Yoho did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
In an extraordinary speech in the House on Thursday, Ocasio-Cortez offered a dramatic account of the incident and broadened her remarks to assail what she called a sexist culture of “accepting violence and violent language against women”. More than a dozen colleagues joined her in casting the incident as all-too-common male behaviour.
Yoho has described the encounter as a brief policy discussion and said that “no one was accosted, bullied, or attacked”. He expressed regret for his “abrupt manner”.
Ocasio-Cortez, 30, is a freshman progressive who has gained praise and criticism for her outspokenness. Yoho, 65, one of the most conservative members of the House, is retiring at the end of his fourth term.
US sheriff Mike Pompeo rode into town last week, telling whoppers as is his wont. The secretary of state – Donald Trump’s top enforcer – accused Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the World Health Organization chief, of cutting a secret pre-pandemic deal with China. Because of this, “you’ve got dead Britons,” he claimed. Pompeo offered no proof. It was an outrageous smear. But Tedros is a wanted man in Washington. He verbally gunned him down.
Pompeo justified January’s real-life assassination of Iran’s Gen Qassem Suleimani by saying he posed an “imminent” threat to US interests.
Declaring the killing unlawful, the UN investigator, Agnès Callamard, ruled this month there was not a shred of evidence to support this. Iran hawk Pompeo had reportedly urged the hit for months. It was he who finally convinced Trump to order the killing.
Pompeo was caught out again last year before Trump’s impeachment. He initially denied detailed knowledge of the phone call in which Trump tried to persuade Ukraine’s president to investigate the son of his White House rival, Joe Biden, saying he had not read the transcript. It later emerged Pompeo had listened in on the call. Democrats accused him of obstructing justice.
Speaking at Texas A&M University last year, Pompeo cheerfully confessed to telling lies when it suited him during a political career that began with election to Congress as a far-right Tea Party member in 2010 and took him to the CIA and state department. “I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. It was like we had entire training courses,” he said, as if reprising Marlon Brando’s role in The Ugly American.
In a week when parliament’s report into Russian interference in British life provoked deep soul-searching, the behaviour of Britain’s best friend bears closer examination, too.
In terms of overt and covert influence-peddling, arm-twisting and behind-the-scenes meddling, the US leaves Russia in the shade. And by hook or by crook, Washington, unlike Moscow, usually gets its way.
The US government shows two faces to the world. One is benign, open, and high-minded. The other is darkly dominated by selfish calculation, ultimately reliant on brute force. Pompeo, Trump’s most influential adviser and possible successor, is the undisguised, snarling face of this latter form of manipulative, intrusive and mendacious American power. He once told Israelis Trump was sent by God to save the Jews from the Persians
In less turbulent, less polarised times, the “special relationship” brought advantages for Britain. In many respects, the opposite is now true. The latest example of US pressure tactics, detrimental to the national interest, was Pompeo’s hysterical appeal last week for a united front of “free nations” to battle China’s “new tyranny”. Manufacturing a cold war with Beijing may suit Trump and the Republicans as they cling to office. It does not suit Britain.
Similarly ill-judged and unwelcome is the Trump administration’s attempt to destroy the International Criminal Court, a part-British creation of which the late Labour foreign secretary, Robin Cook, was rightly proud. Pompeo has imposed sanctions and launched a bogus corruption probe. The ICC’s offence? It dared to investigate alleged US war crimes in Afghanistan.
Pompeo and fellow hawks have done all in their power to prevent Britain and its European allies keeping lines open to Iran after Trump reneged on the 2015 nuclear deal.
None of this double-dealing will surprise those who recall Ronald Reagan’s secret deployment of nuclear-armed cruise missiles in Britain in the 1980s.
Clement Attlee’s government quickly discovered the high cost of American friendship after 1945. The Suez humiliation confirmed it. Today, Britain is still paying for the damaging impact of the US “war on terror” and its Iraq adventurism on national security, human rights and international law.
Pompeo’s evangelical faith and apocalyptic “End Times” views help explain US efforts to thwart another long-held British aim: a two-state solution in Israel-Palestine. The support for Israel of Pompeo and fellow Christian Zionists is unconditional and uncompromising. He once told Israelis Trump was sent by God to save the Jews from the Persians. “I am confident the Lord is at work here.”
A recent Pompeo speech elevating religious and property freedoms over other human rights, such as on abortion, was seen in Washington as a further fleshing out of an ultra-conservative platform in preparation for a 2024 presidential bid. Pompeo is an energetic networker. He has been investigated for using taxpayer-funded state department “Madison dinners” to cultivate wealthy political donors. In London last winter, he attended an “off-the-books” meeting of the Hamilton Society, a private US-UK group of well-connected business leaders.
Days before last week’s UK visit, when he condescendingly praised Boris Johnson for dumping China’s Huawei and again ignored calls for justice for British hit-and-run victim Harry Dunn, Pompeo was in backwoods Iowa, a key state for any future presidency. Lauding what he called his “100% pro-life foreign policy”, he declared: “This administration appreciates and knows that our rights come from God, not government. Can I get an amen to that?”
Some Americans may put their hands together. But ungodly Britons who value hard-won, not divinely conferred, democratic rights should beware. Here was an unscrupulous, ambitious and dangerous man – far smarter than Trump – feeding the prejudices, fears and schisms of an alien, alienated society. With friends like these, who needs Russia?
Trump can't shift public attention from coronavirus to the streets of America Robert Reich
The president shows no leadership on public health but wants to be a strongman on law and order. Voters won’t buy it
Donald Trump gestures to a map while speaking about his administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. Photograph: Drew Angerer/Getty Images Published Sun 26 Jul 2020
The president wants to shift public attention from the virus, which he can’t “dominate”, to the streets of America, which he and his secret police can.
It’s an especially cynical re-election strategy because coronavirus deaths are rising again. More Americans are on track to be hospitalized with the virus than at any other point. Rates of new infections repeatedly shatter single-day records. As a result, the US economy is backsliding.
Trump has never offered a national strategy for testing, contact tracing and isolating those who have the disease. He has provided no standards for reopening the economy, no plan for national purchasing of critical materials, no definitive policy for helping the unemployed, no clear message about what people and businesses should do. He rushed to reopen without adequate safeguards. When it comes to assaulting Americans, Trump has been asserting strong leadership
The hapless White House “coronavirus taskforce” is in perpetual disarray. Trump has downgraded the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). His Department of Labor hasn’t even put out standards for workplace safety.
Trump won’t use the Defense Production Act to secure supplies to perform tests – swabs, chemicals, pipette tips, machines, containers – so public health officials can’t quickly identify and isolate people who are infected and trace their contacts.
It’s been an abominable, chaotic mess – which is why the virus is back.
Yet when it comes to assaulting Americans, Trump has been asserting strong leadership. He’s deploying unidentified federal agents against protesters in Portland, Oregon: attacking them, pulling them into unmarked vans, detaining them without charges.
Trump is also sending troops to Kansas City, Albuquerque and Chicago. He says he’ll send them to New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore and Oakland as well – not incidentally, all cities with Democratic mayors, large black populations and no violent unrest.
Trump can’t find federal personnel to do contact tracing for the coronavirus but has found thousands of agents for his secret police, drawn from the departments of Justice and Homeland Security.
Trump doesn’t want to know about the coronavirus but he’s keeping careful track of the battles in the streets, demanding up-to-the-minute briefings from the front.
Public health authorities don’t have adequate medical equipment to quickly analyze coronavirus tests but Trump’s police have everything they need to injure protesters, including armored vans, teargas, and tactical assault weapons – “the best equipment”, Trump boasted last week.
There is no legal authority for this. The founders denied police power to the national government. The local officials in charge of keeping public order reject Trump’s troops. The mayor of Portland was teargassed this week. The mayor of Kansas City calls them “disgraceful”. Albuquerque’s mayor announced: “There’s no place for Trump’s secret police in our city.” Chicago’s mayor does “not welcome dictatorship”.
The one encouraging note – analogous to Sherlock Holmes’ dog that didn’t bark – is the absence of the US military. Unlike Trump’s lapdog attorney general, William Barr, the generals don’t want any part of it.
The Trump campaign is running fictitious ads portraying cities as overrun by violent leftwing mobs, and Trump’s shameless Fox News lackeys are depicting protesters as “rioters” and the “armed wing of Democratic party”.
At the same time, Trump is trying to suppress the truth about the coronavirus. The White House is instructing hospitals to report cases to the Department of Health and Human Services rather than to the CDC. Trump has muzzled the federal government’s most prominent and trusted virologist, Dr Anthony Fauci, while the White House tries to discredit him. In the upcoming coronavirus relief bill, Trump doesn’t even want to fund more testing and tracing, or the CDC. A lively nursing director, an outspoken phlebotomist: US healthcare workers who died from Covid-19 Read more
After railing against the CDC’s guidelines for reopening schools as “very tough [and] expensive”, Trump this week pressured the CDC to issue more lax guidelines, some of which were written by White House officials instead of CDC experts.
Yet Trump won’t be able to shift public attention from the virus to the streets of America. The violence he’s trying to fuel and exaggerate is far less frightening to average voters than the virus, which is worsening by the day, especially in Texas, Florida, and other states that went for Trump in 2016. His blatant failure to contain it is causing people to die.
The occasion was as unlikely as it was unforgettable: Peter Green playing in Frome, Somerset, 10 years ago, but feels like yesterday. Peter Green, who seemed to play the blues guitar from the far side of some borderline between wherever he was out there, and what passes for reality; Peter Green of Fleetwood Mac when they really were Fleetwood Mac, at the outset. Peter Green who died on Saturday.
Green spoke little that night in May 2010, and sometimes made little sense. It was not his last concert, but not many others followed. At one point, he said something about fish then, prompted by rhythm guitarist Mike Dodd, ventured effortlessly into a sparkling account of John Mayall’s Sitting in the Rain, played with delicate, crystalline sonority. Not long after came Black Magic Woman: electrifying, but more introverted than the Carlos Santana cover we know so well. Green was portly, sitting on a stool, wearing a khaki shirt and headscarf, smiling to himself and his guitar.
He had never fully “recovered” from the existential and later clinical journey – begun in 1969 – from stardom to schizophrenia to whatever this was. But later that evening, when he gave his signature instrumental Albatross, Green’s musicianship had progressed from the technical and emotional cogency of his earlier work to something bordering, frankly, on sublime. As though the agony and ecstasy he had long abandoned formulating into words or conventional communication could be spoken more articulately than ever through music. Green was born Peter Allen Greenbaum, spotted by the playmaker of British blues, John Mayall, for his band, the Bluesbreakers, which Green infused with a resonant power that flourished with Fleetwood Mac. I saw them in spring 1970, at the Roundhouse in London, enthralled not just by Green’s technique, but some inner understanding of what “blue” meant in music, specifically black music, despite the colour of Green’s skin.
He seemed to wrestle with, and gouge, his own compositions, such as the bedazzling demands of Oh Well, with the same intensity as one of his idols, Buddy Guy, as if seeking something within a piece he had yet to fathom. This command of the blues – technical and empathetic – was tried and tested triumphantly when Fleetwood Mac went head-to-head for a double album with Guy, Otis Spann and Willie Dixon in Chicago in 1969.
There was something intangibly but palpably generous about Green, the way he shared sound-space with musicians, played to an audience. In contrast to many of his kind, he seemed to possess an almost mystic modesty. He protested to other members of Fleetwood Mac that the money the band was earning was not really theirs to keep.
Green’s departure from what we call “normal” consciousness was announced by one of the most poignant songs of the age: Man of the World, of 1969: a searing, lonely but lyrical musical-poetic departure, which Green himself then followed in person.
Peter Green in 1996. Photograph: Robert Judges/Rex
Throughout the 1970s, he wandered between diagnoses of schizophrenia, misadventures with drugs – markedly LSD – and what showbusiness calls “obscurity”, even sleeping rough on park benches. A BBC Four film of 2009 afforded glimpses into what happened, but was inconsequential, and its illustrious cast over-edited.
The mystery – and the story – was in the music when Green returned, occasionally during the 1980s, then convincingly, with his Splinter Group during the late 1990s, polished but always spontaneous. The revival was almost therapeutic, thanks largely to guitarist Nigel Watson and former Jeff Beck Group and Black Sabbath drummer Cozy Powell. Green retained his technique, smiled as he played and chatted in between, seemed “himself” again, whatever strange place that was.
During the early 1980s, I went to hear then 70-something Charley Booker – one of the last Mississippi Delta blues greats of his generation still playing – at the Halstead Blues bar on Chicago’s Near North Side. Booker was living in Indiana nearby, and his band was young and white, which raised the question, during the break: can they do it? Can white men play the blues?
“There’s three white kids can play the blues good as any black man,” replied Booker. Which? “Johnny Winter, Stevie Ray Vaughan and, oh, that Englishman of yours, er… now what’s his name…?”
26 JULY 2020 | 9:12 AM THE GUARDIAN NIGERIA Kurfi Instissar
In a bid to keep the environment free from toxins, Kurfi Instissar, an environmental advocate has devised a new form of recycling disposed waste materials. Specifically, plastic bags commonly called nylon bags. These waste materials are recycled and transformed into interlocking tiles, which is equivalent to the conventional tiles used as building materials. Her initiative has proved effective and rewarding to her community and the environment at large. This dynamic development in sustaining our ecosystem has gained recognition in various world media platforms such as the BBC news amongst others.
Instissar speaks to The Guardian Life on the processes, challenges, and impact of recycling waste materials and the human input that can contribute to keeping our ecosystem clean.
What fueled your need to be a part of the recycling business? I was triggered when I saw the amount of plastic pollution the environment was plagued with. Everywhere is littered with Nylon bags. And over the years, research has shown that these plastics are very harmful to our environment and people. Locally and internationally, plastic pollution is listed as one of the enormous problems disturbing communities and the world at large. So this became a major concern of mine. Therefore, in doing my bid to rid the world of pollution, I decided to research ways on how to stop plastic pollution.
Why did you choose to recycle nylons rather than other recyclable materials? I chose to recycle nylons because they are single-use plastics. I needed a recyclable material that would make a huge difference in ridding our environment of plastic pollution. Nylons litter our environment more than any other plastics such as plastic bottles. Plastic bottles are reusable, people use them to create artworks and as containers for liquid soaps, drinks, air fresheners, and many more. Unlike nylons that are found lying around in different places and also being eaten by animals which are very harmful to them and individuals.
Describe the process involved in creating the interlocking tiles? The process involved in creating the interlocking tiles is first, we source for nylons around and sort them out. Afterwards, we melt it with the use of heat and mix it with sand. Then its contents are poured into molds. When it dries, it can be used immediately unlike the other conventional concrete tiles that you have to wait for 28 days before it can be in use.
Are there any hazards involved in processing the tiles? There are hazards involved. Although we are putting in the effort on how it can be reduced. That is why the workers are given glasses, hand gloves, and nose masks during production.
What challenges and criticism do you encounter? Sourcing and sorting out the raw material is one of our biggest challenges. Many people, especially households, are not used to sorting their waste, so getting the material we need can prove difficult. More so, we are currently producing the tiles manually so we face criticism from people due to the flames that are produced during production. People say that ‘the initiative claims to be ridding the environment of pollution but our production causes flames that are hazardous to the environment’. However, we try to make them understand that recycling one ton of waste that emits flames is negligible compared to the destruction the waste would cause if left on the streets. Nevertheless, we are looking at ways to reduce the fire flames during production.
What is the goal of your initiative? Our goal is to rid Abuja and Nigeria of plastic waste and create empowerment for the unemployed youths
Do you plan on embarking on other ecosystems projects? Yes, we plan on embarking on more ecosystem projects. With our plastic recycling, we plan on doing more because there are a variety of things that can be done with plastic waste. We plan on partaking in the planting of trees around the environment, carrying out environmental advocacies, and developing eco-friendly energy cooking technology.
In what ways can we contribute to keeping our ecosystem safe? People need to be conscious of their environment. They need to have knowledge of the factors harmful to the environment and what can be done to improve our environment. Most importantly, it has to be inculcated in the growing youths of today. It could be introduced to schools as part of their curriculum so that children would be taught from their nursery stage how to dispose of waste properly and know about all the essential environmental practices. This need has also led our initiative to introduce sustainable development growth in some schools so it can be part of school clubs which will make children realise that the environment is part of them. This is because whatever harmful deeds we do to the environment comes back to us the people.
To solve the climate crisis, we need an investment revolution We can create the future we need - but we have to make a start now Image: Karsten Würth on Unsplash.com 25 Jul 2020 Nicole Systrom Founder, Sutro Energy Group The World Economic Forum
There are opportunities for patient investors in areas such as energy storage and electrification.
It's time to tap into the power of science and innovation. Here's a guide.
It’s hard to know its ultimate scale or how long it will take, but over the coming months the world will be watching the urgent efforts of scientists to develop a COVID-19 vaccine. At the same time, engineers and academics will develop technologies and models to help businesses and our economy adapt to this extended period of social distancing, Zoom calls and home schooling. And manufacturers will continue to dedicate some of their factories to the mass production of everything from hand sanitizer to ventilators. It’s clear our capacity for innovation is being tested.
It reminds us that as much as we depend on our leaders in moments of crisis and need – and boy, do we ever – we also depend on the tenacity and insights of scientists, the ingenuity and vision of entrepreneurs, and the resourcefulness and boldness of companies to solve big problems. But we also need investors.
I have spent much of my career trying to facilitate innovations that will help us address another existential threat to our society: climate change. Like COVID-19, this is an area where the scale of the problem is so vast and the repercussions so massive – with huge economic and social justice implications – that we need nothing less than a scientific and investment revolution.
Decarbonizing our entire economy by 2050 will require two things:
1. Massive investments and innovation in areas like electrification, affordable long-term energy storage, and regenerative agriculture.
2. Investors patient enough to allow these investments to pay off.
For those willing to wait 10 to 15 years for returns, there is an opportunity to focus long-term on energy storage and the technology we need to remake transportation systems. Electrifying our vehicle fleet is the single biggest opportunity we have to reduce emissions in the transportation sector, but we’ll need a seismic increase in electricity production in order to shift from oil and gas, and provide equitable access to clean transportation options. This increase in demand for clean power can be met by solar and wind, but will also require long-term seasonal energy storage—batteries that can provide energy when renewables don’t provide enough to keep the lights on.
One prominent company working on long-term seasonal energy storage is Form Energy, which is developing a new type of sulphur-based battery. Form, which is based in the Boston area and is backed by Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures, was founded by Mateo Jaramillo, who launched Tesla’s PowerWall business, and MIT professor Yet-Ming Chiang. Another start-up, Quidnet, is pioneering technology that pumps water to store energy at extremely large capacities.
Game-changing innovations aren’t always about new technologies. A generation ago, in the 1990s, New York began to purchase land in the Catskills watershed. The innovative idea was that by acquiring land upstate to restrain development, they could reduce runoff and pollution to provide clean water to New York City. In this case, better short-term forest management saved taxpayers between $8 billion and $10 billion because they didn’t have to build a filtration plant that would cost millions of dollars a year to operate – allowing the state to sequester carbon, offset greenhouse gases and help communities better adapt to the extreme weather patterns and precipitation changes brought about by climate change. New investments in clean energy over the past 14 years have flattened Image: Bloomberg New Energy Finance
At a time when tropical forests are sequestering less carbon dioxide – studies show that by 2035 the Amazon won’t be taking on any new CO2, and that deforestation has been rapidly increasing while the world was distracted by the COVID-19 crisis – investors should be exploring ways to empower local municipalities and indigenous communities to better manage and restore forests, marshland and other natural ecosystems. New financial instruments could provide payoffs in the form of cash raised for local communities, increased biodiversity and climate resiliency.
None of this is to minimize the importance of near-term investments in proven or close-to-proven technologies. Indeed, investing in sustainable infrastructure and all the jobs that will create can be a cornerstone of the world’s economic recovery from the COVID-19 crisis. Everything from building community solar farms to next-generation energy-efficiency retrofits and energy-efficient coatings for windows should be on the table for investors.
So should making electric grids more efficient. While replacing them all will take decades, companies like Siemens and Stem have been developing software that learns from patterns and allows everyone from utility partners to industrial facility managers at universities and corporate campuses across the country to forecast and manage electricity use more efficiently. These, too, are worthy areas of investment.
What's the World Economic Forum doing about the transition to clean energy?
But of all the lessons we’ve learned from COVID-19 as we race toward a solution, perhaps the biggest is that we ignored the warning signals instead of preparing. With the climate, let’s make the most of this opportunity. Let’s start that race now and tap the power that innovation has to accelerate change and unlock new and surprising possibilities. And let’s look to scientists, enabled by savvy investors, to lead the way. Share License and Republishing
As we celebrate the 80th anniversary of the release of “A Wild Hare,” the first animated short starring Bugs Bunny, the question arises: How Jewish was the sassy, anti-authoritarian rabbit?
Bug’s voice, created by the radio personality Mel Blanc (1908–1989) of Russian Jewish origin, was a blend of Brooklyn and Bronx tones. Blanc was such a virtuoso of melting pot sound effects that Milt Josefsberg, a writer on the Jack Benny Program, Blanc’s longtime employer, told his biographer that scripts routinely challenged Blanc to produce seemingly impossible accents. One such was a man on the street identified as an African American gay Jew (using derogatory slang terms of the time). Blanc faithfully reproduced this unlikely blend of tonal characterizations, so Bugs’ Bronx/Brooklyn mix proved no challenge to him.
The typical plot of Bugs Bunny shorts, in which the hare is pursued by an adversary, often the hunter Elmer Fudd, could also be seen as archetypically Jewish. Andrea Most’s “Theatrical Liberalism: Jews and Popular Entertainment in America” declares: “A remarkable amount of American comedy created by Jews features characters who are running for their lives.”
Bugs’ aggressiveness was a matter of concern to Looney Tunes films director Chuck Jones. Worried that violence wreaked upon opponents might repel audiences, Jones insisted that Bugs must first be endangered by antagonists before he reciprocated. Bugs’ catchphrase, “Of course you realize, this means war,” was lifted from Groucho Marx’s 1933 film “Duck Soup.”
Yet even when Bugs imitated Groucho’s stooping posture and waggling eyebrows in “Hair-Raising Hare” (1946) and “Slick Hare,” (1947) the effect was no more overtly Jewish than other visual vocabulary that inspired the filmmakers, such as Clark Gable’s gnawing on carrots in “It Happened One Night” (1934). Director Tex Avery claimed that the expression “What’s up, Doc?” was often heard in the Southwest during his youth.
Likewise, when Bugs reminisces in “A Hare Grows in Manhattan” (1947) and “What’s Up, Doc” (1950), about growing up on New York’s East Side, Irish American family life as described in Betty Smith’s “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” is parodied, not Jewish lore.
Horowitz explains that hares appeared in the painted ceiling of the wooden synagogue of Chodorow, a shtetl in Galicia, Poland, recreated in the Museum of the Diaspora in Tel Aviv, as well as the synagogue of Gwozdziec, a replica of which was installed at the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw.
Boris Khaimovich of the Hebrew University’s Center for Jewish Art has analyzed the meaning of hares in East European Jewish tradition, pointing out that although rabbits and hares are non-kosher, hounds chase hares in early Jewish illuminated manuscripts. One book, the Kennicott Bible created in Spain in 1476, shows hares “punishing or ruling their enemies,” even “storming a fortress occupied by a wolf” in a Bugs-like retort to tyranny.
From the wooden synagogue of Chodorow, Elliott Horowitz traces a line to the artist David Moss born in 1946 in Dayton, Ohio. Illustrator of a much-acclaimed Haggadah Moss included images of Jews as hares endangered by specific historical enemies, which according to Horowitz may reflect early exposure to such Bugs Bunny films. In “Herr meets Hare,” (1945) Bugs faces down Nazi henchman Hermann Goering by dressing as a combination Lady Godiva and Valkyrie, as music from Wagner’s “Tannhäuser” plays on the soundtrack. Later in the same short, Bugs terrifies Adolf Hitler by masquerading as Joseph Stalin.
Given these and other examples, Horowitz asks if Bugs Bunny may be considered Jewish art. Not, he concludes, if we adopt Cecil Roth’s definition of Jewish art as necessarily produced by Jews. Yet if we consider the criterion in Richard Cohen’s “Jewish Icons” that such art must reflect the “Jewish experience,” then we may consider Bugs a proponent of Yiddishkeit.
With adherence, further worries appear for those chary about the gleeful violence meted out by a representative of Judaism. Joseph Epstein noted in “The American Scholar” in Autumn 1984, “A short while ago I saw a Bugs Bunny cartoon, and found my heart going out to Elmer Fudd, that nasty rabbit’s victim.”
Epstein’s empathy was shared by Jack Shaheen, a writer of Lebanese Christian origin with expertise about ethnic stereotypes. Shaheen stated wistfully, “My childhood hero, Bugs Bunny, clobbers nasty Arabs in “1001 Rabbit Tales”(1982). Bugs trounces an ugly genie, a dense sheikh, and the ruler’s spoiled son.”
Bugs is indeed one violent Lepus. His never-say-die assertiveness was displayed in World War II propaganda well beyond “Hare Meets Herr,” with “Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips” (1944) so vehemently anti-Japanese that it has been embargoed from public screenings in recent years.
Bugs was on the battlefield as mascot in U.S. Air Force 380th Bombardment Group planes, and served as squadron logo for Marine Torpedo/Bomber Squadron 242, also gracing the nose of 8th Air Force bombers.
So if Bugs is Jewish, his fighting spirit would be akin to that of Moshe Dayan or Ariel Sharon, perhaps echoed in a plagiarization on “Tomorrow’s Pioneers,” a children’s program broadcast from 2007 to 2009 on Al-Aqsa TV, a Palestinian Hamas-affiliated station. To educate future jihadis and suicide bombers, a Bugs Bunny wannabe named Assoud boasts that he will “get rid of the Jews, Allah willing.”
Comparably unsettling images were evoked in the critic Geoffrey Hartman’s discussion of Art Spiegelman’s “Maus in “The Longest Shadow: In the Aftermath of the Holocaust.” Hartman defines cartoons as transitional objects “helping us toward a difficult truth.” “Maus” reflected Nazi representation of Jews as rodents to “our own uneasy conscience about the ‘lower’ orders of creation” like rabbits who are slaughtered and also promoted “to comic strip immortality.”
Correspondingly, the American Jewish essayist Stephen Miller (b. 1941) in reflections published in “The Sewanee Review” in Spring 2011, relates how in childhood, he saw both God and Bugs Bunny as cruel, but at least Bugs had a sense of humor. More recently, after viewing Bugs cartoons while mulling over violent anti-Semitism, Miller fell asleep and dreamt that the rabbit, chased by Elmer Fudd, emerged into a “crowd of ranting jihadists who are marching with their AK-47s held high and screaming anti-Semitic curses. Bugs is staring at these men and wondering what’s going on. ‘Eh, what’s up, Doc?’ he says to no one in particular.”
Such visions imply that on his 80th birthday, Bugs may be assimilated to Judaism only with caution, since as a triumphantly reactive character, assimilation may bring with it further unsought responses.
Benjamin Ivry is a frequent contributor to the Forward.
Anti-annexation protesters outside the Israeli Consulate in Los Angeles July 19, 2020.
I protested in front of the Israeli consulate in Los Angeles last Sunday. I never thought that I would do that. In doing so I allied myself with the thousands of Israelis who have been rallying in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his annexation plan. Just like them, I support Israel, I am a Zionist– and yet, I believe the annexation plan is so deeply immoral and disturbing that I feel compelled to act.
And I hope that all American Jews will join me.
Growing up in Israel, political arguments swirled around me for as long as I can remember. At the dinner table, at school, in the youth movement. At the heart of all the arguments was the question of the occupation and Israel’s relationship with the Palestinians.
People on the right argued that the Occupied Territories, Judea and Samaria in their terminology, were, in fact, ours all along, a divine, biblical gift. If this argument failed they quickly resorted to more practical considerations, offering a conditional willingness to withdraw if only a “trustworthy Palestinian partner” would one day appear. In the meanwhile, their suggestion was to temporarily hold onto those territories, conveniently ignoring the people that lived there.
Those on the left, like myself, argued that keeping millions of Palestinians under military occupation for decades was immoral. If this argument failed to gain traction, they cautioned that in the long run, the occupation would result in international isolation, economic drain, and, ultimately, cripple Israel’s democracy.
Given my views on the occupation, enlisting in the Israeli army posed a bit of a challenge for me. Ultimately, my belief in Zionism and my motivation to serve my country overcame my doubts. Israel was the haven that embraced my mother and her family after the Holocaust, and it had served as a haven for so many others since.
Now I realize that the key factor that allowed me to serve was the belief that the occupation was temporary. This assumption allowed me to avoid reckoning with the fact that I personally contributed to the oppression of millions of Palestinians.
A lot has changed since. After the army, as an undergraduate, I met and fell in love with a wonderful Jewish American woman who became my wife. We later moved to the United States where we established a family. Living in the United States, surrounded by mostly liberal Jews, sharpened my understanding of the wrongs of the occupation. Things that seemed natural in Israel, like the near-total separation between Jews and Arabs, are deeply unsettling from here.
Yet even after almost two decades here, my heart is still in Israel. I remain a political junkie. Every morning, I still check news from Israel first. But today, much of the old arguments between left and right seem stale. My way, which once seemed like a vibrant alternative, has been so marginalized that people now use the term ‘lefty’ as a curse. It is painful.
Looking back, I see that some of my anti-occupation cautionary predictions were wrong. Despite the deepening of the occupation, Israel has not become a pariah state in the eyes of the international community. The post-Cold War world, it is now clear, cares little about Israel’s actions in the occupied territories. Furthermore, despite deepening inequalities, Israel’s economic growth continues unabated. One can even argue that the occupation, which secured a flow of cheap labor, construction jobs in settlements, and demand for hi-tech security-related technologies has spurred Israel’s economy, even if not everyone shares the bounty.
But the warnings about the corrupting effects of the occupation on Israel’s democracy, unfortunately, proved accurate. In an effort to cement their hold over the government, Netanyahu and his allies presented Palestinian citizens as undifferentiated enemies, effectively rendering their votes illegitimate. Their success was so complete that in recent elections even the centrist parties that have sought to oust Netanyahu embraced the anti-democratic idea that Arab parties are not legitimate partners when it comes to forming a governing coalition. Netanyahu’s intensifying attacks on liberal NGOs and the legal system are designed to further delegitimize anyone who dares to contest the idea that only Jews should partake in the political process.
Even from the United States, I feel the effect of this shift very personally. While my political beliefs have placed me in the opposition for most of my life, only in recent years do I feel unwelcome in my own state. In the past, I used to talk with strangers about politics to get a sense of the street. It used to be enlightening even if sometimes unsettling. I recall a conversation with a taxi driver who related that prior to 1967 it was his father who waited for a day’s job at the junction and now has become the contractor who picks Palestinian day laborers. In recent visits to Israel, when I broach such conversations, the response is often hostile.
The plan to annex large parts of the occupied territories, I fear, will make it even worse. It will turn the occupation, which I long considered a temporary aberration, into the norm which will destroy the possibility that sometime, in the future, a just Israel may reassert itself. The annexation will make it clear that this country, which I love so deeply, is no longer mine. While my own story is unique, I suspect that this is true for all American Jews who care about Israel and about the equality of all people. If the occupation becomes permanent, loving Israel will be impossible.
This is why, on July 19, I went to protest with dozens of other L.A. Jews against the annexation in front of the Israeli consulate in Los Angeles. I believe that protesting against the current Israeli government is the duty of every American Jew who cares about Zionism and about Israel’s future. I hope you will join me in consulates around the country. Our voices must be heard.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Forward.
Trump’s Hint That He May Not Concede Election Would Be a Crisis Like No Other
If Trump loses the electoral college in the fall, which is by no means certain or even likely, he may refuse to concede. Were this to happen, either a military or civilian response or a co-ordinated military and civilian response to remove him from office might be required.
U.S. President Donald Trump is deploying irregularly uniformed armed federal agents in unmarked government vehicles to cities like Portland, Ore.,and Chicago to seize unarmed protesters off the street without legal reason.
Historian Timothy Snyder’s wise warning at the opening of the Trump era was prescient: “When men with guns who have always claimed to be against the system start wearing uniforms and marching with torches and the picture of a leader, the end is nigh. When the pro-leader paramilitary and the official police and military intermingle, the end has come.”
From the riots in Charlottesville, Va., three summers ago to right now, Snyder has described Trump’s America. The authoritarian threshold has now been decisively crossed. Democracy and the rule of law, to the extent they were ever more than noble aspirations, are now receding into the rear-view mirror.
Think that is alarmist? Then why are millions of Americans, and probably billions of people worldwide, dreading a second Trump term?
We can all intuit that the cult of the personality surrounding Trump is powerful and will be difficult to dislodge, whatever the outcome of the election in November.
Suicide cult?
Steven Hassan, a leading U.S. expert on cult formation and mind control, has made the compelling, book-length case that Trump’s base behaves and acts more like a suicide cult than a traditional political partisan group. The recent politicization of masking during the COVID-19 pandemic by Trump supporters suggests that Hasan may be on to something.
With his references to good people on both sides in Charlottesville and his insistence in a recent interview with Chris Wallace of Fox News that whites are the victims of more police violence than Blacks, Trump remains the gaslighter-in-chief.
His abuse of the presidential bully pulpit has unabashedly unleashed the demons of hate and conspiracy into America’s public spaces.
No one should be surprised. This dark vision was presented to the world in all its dystopic horror in Trump’s inaugural address on Jan. 20, 2017.
Civil rights declining in the U.S.
Now, Trumpism has spread globally, including into some the world’s leading democratic states with the most long-standing commitments to the rule of law. It is no coincidence that international human rights watchdog Freedom House described 2017, the year Trump took office, as the 12th consecutive year of decline in global freedom as measured by net declines in political rights and civil liberties in 71 states, with only 35 registering gains.
The pace of decline has continued in subsequent years. The 2020 Human Rights Watch World Report delves into rights violations in the United States in areas that include racial inequality in the criminal justice system, rising poverty and inequality in health-care outcomes.
All of this was documented before COVID-19 and the resurgence of the Black Lives Matters movement following the police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, in Minneapolis in May.
As the U.S. heads into its statutorily scheduled election on “the first Tuesday after Nov. 1” (and in case you are curious, it is almost impossible for Trump to actually cancel the election), the depth of the president’s disdain for democracy and the rule of law is on full display. False claims
In the Wallace interview, Trump — with his habit of proudly revealing his inner authoritarian dialogue — offered a racist and patently false riff on how more whites are killed by police than Blacks, contrary to the evidence.
And after three and a half years in office, Trump still shocks. This time, the moment came when Wallace asked the president whether he would accept defeat in an election. His response: “I will tell you at the time. I’ll keep you in suspense, OK?”
From there, Trump went on to explain how Hillary Clinton never accepted her loss to him in 2016, which is also false.
Wallace, to his credit, was dogged and pushed Trump, asking again. Trump responded, just as he had to a similar question in 2016 from Wallace: “No, I’m not going to just say yes. I’m not going to say no, and I didn’t last time either.”
The difference last time, however, was that Trump was not the White House incumbent. This is why he’s raised serious concerns about overstaying his welcome and difficulties around the peaceful handover of power. Term in office ends on Jan. 20
The 20th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution specifies that a president’s term in office “shall end at noon on the 20th day of January” after an election.
This peaceful transfer of power in accordance with the 20th Amendment has, from 1787 to 2017, permitted the American experiment to continue bound by democratic principles and rule of law.
Granted, it’s not always been easy and there have been blips. In the 1876 election at the end of the Reconstruction era, the outcome between Democrat Samuel J. Tilden and Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was so close that Congress appointed a special Electoral Commission to resolve the matter.
More recently in the Bush vs. Gore case, the U.S. Supreme Court stepped into the breach and tipped the scale for Republican George W. Bush over Democrat Al Gore.
Every historical blip in the peaceful transition of power between presidents in American history has revolved around divergent Electoral College and popular vote counts. Many of the most recent elections have had this type of divergence, including 2016.
In 2000, Gore stepped aside and obeyed the ruling of the Supreme Court despite the misgivings of some of his supporters.
To decisively end the Trump presidency, a large mandate with clear margins in key swing states will be necessary. Of course, if he wins re-election or there is electoral interference again, the next few years could be much worse. In the meantime, buckle up.
Jeffrey B. Meyers is a Lecturer in the Faculty of Law at Thompson Rivers University.
SPOTLIGHT
