Kurdistan (Syria)

Parliament wanted a deal. Will it vote for the one Boris Johnson got them?

benfell

Brexit

Rory Carroll and Lisa O’Carroll, “Rival unionists accuse DUP of catastrophic Brexit miscalculation,” Guardian, October 17, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/oct/17/rival-unionists-accuse-dup-of-catastrophic-brexit-miscalculation

Rowena Mason and Rajeev Syal, “‘It’s painful to choose’: ERG locked in internal talks over Brexit deal,” Guardian, October 18, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/oct/17/its-painful-to-choose-erg-locked-in-internal-talks-over-brexit-deal

Kurdistan

Delil Souleiman, “Deadly Turkish airstrikes shatter deal to pause Syria offensive,” Times of Israel, October 18, 2019, https://www.timesofisrael.com/deadly-turkish-airstrikes-shatter-deal-to-pause-syria-offensive/

Recession

Derek Thompson skillfully distinguishes between the dot-com crash and what is happening with some so-called “tech” companies (like Uber, Lyft, and WeWork) now. But he focuses too much on stock market valuations[1] and not enough on the effects, like mass unemployment such as that which followed the dot-com crash. We still don’t know what’s going to happen to Uber and Lyft employees, let alone the legions of drivers whom the companies refuse to count as employees,[2] when these companies fold.[3]

Derek Thompson, “The Not-Com Bubble Is Popping,” Atlantic, October 18, 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/10/are-we-cusp-next-dot-com-bubble/600232/

  1. [1]Derek Thompson, “The Not-Com Bubble Is Popping,” Atlantic, October 18, 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/10/are-we-cusp-next-dot-com-bubble/600232/↩
  2. [2]Noam Cohen, “How Tech Firms Like Uber Hide Behind the ‘Platform Defense,’” Wired, September 13, 2019, https://www.wired.com/story/how-tech-firms-like-uber-hide-behind-the-platform-defense/; Kate Conger, “Uber Says It Will Not Change Driver Status Under California Gig-Worker Law,” New York Times, September 11, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/11/business/economy/uber-california-bill.html; Shirin Ghaffary, “Uber and Lyft say they don’t plan to reclassify their drivers as employees,” Vox, September 11, 2019, https://www.vox.com/2019/9/11/20861599/ab-5-uber-lyft-drivers-contractors-reclassify-employees; Aaron Gordon, “Uber To California: Make Us,” Jalopnik, September 11, 2019, https://jalopnik.com/uber-and-lyft-drivers-shouldnt-expect-to-be-employees-a-1838048966↩
  3. [3]David Benfell, “Liking Lyft, not liking Uber,” Not Housebroken, August 27, 2019, https://disunitedstates.org/2019/08/27/liking-lyft-not-liking-uber/↩

Another three guns

benfell

Redlining

I found another gun today. Actually three (if you count two small ones in front of the plaque) of them at a Veterans of Foreign Wars Post in Munhall, above Homestead.


That makes ten of these damn sites in or near economically distressed and apparently predominantly Black areas out of twelve.

For some reason, Google’s server is rejecting the photograph I took, so I wasn’t able to add it to the pin. But it’s the most recent photograph in this album.

Brexit

The idea of effectively keeping Northern Ireland in the European Union’s customs zone while leaving the rest of the United Kingdom out makes a lot of sense until one considers that it is effectively “no deal” for England, Scotland, and Wales and would likely have all the expected catastrophic effects.[1] It is also anathema to the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) whom the Tories have partnered with on Brexit and to even form a government in the first place. Indeed, for the DUP, as I understand its thinking, this would be treason.

There has been a lot of reporting suggesting that this is, nonetheless, what Boris Johnson has proposed to the E.U. And this is where I tend to shut up: I’ve learned over the years that I should see what a situation actually is rather than deal with what it might be. So I haven’t been archiving these stories and I haven’t been relaying them here.

But if this is indeed what Johnson has proposed, then he appears unlikely to garner the needed support for it even within his own party.[2]

Toby Helm and Michael Savage, “Support grows for a new Brexit poll amid fears over Johnson’s plan,” Guardian, October 12, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/oct/12/support-grows-for-new-brexit-poll-amid-fears-pm-plan

Kurdistan

Bashar Assad wins.

Karen DeYoung, Dan Lamothe, and Liz Sly, “Trump orders withdrawal of U.S. forces from northern Syria, days after Pentagon downplays possibility,” Washington Post, October 13, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-orders-withdrawal-of-us-forces-from-northern-syria-days-after-pentagon-downplays-possibility/2019/10/13/83087baa-edbb-11e9-b2da-606ba1ef30e3_story.html

Bethan McKernan, “At least 750 Isis affiliates escape Syria camp after Turkish shelling,” Guardian, October 13, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/13/kurds-say-785-isis-affiliates-have-escaped-camp-after-turkish-shelling

  1. [1]David Benfell, “Boris Johnson might think he’s playing poker with the European Union, but he’s actually playing ‘chicken’—with a brick wall,” Not Housebroken, August 2, 2019, https://disunitedstates.org/2019/08/02/boris-johnson-might-think-hes-playing-poker-with-the-european-union-but-hes-actually-playing-chicken-with-a-brick-wall/; Michael Savage and Daniel Boffey, “No-deal Brexit spells calamity for union, warns Gordon Brown,” Guardian, August 10, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/aug/10/gordon-brown-says-no-deal-brexit-would-be-calamity-for-united-kingdom; Tim Wallace, “‘Very real’ recession risk as economy contracts for first time in seven years,” Telegraph, August 9, 2019, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2019/08/09/recession-risk-now-real-economy-contracts-first-time-seven-years/↩
  2. [2]Toby Helm and Michael Savage, “Support grows for a new Brexit poll amid fears over Johnson’s plan,” Guardian, October 12, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/oct/12/support-grows-for-new-brexit-poll-amid-fears-pm-plan↩

Redlining and guns

benfell

Redlining

I have mapped where I have found guns or other weaponry gratuitously displayed here. There are two locations, namely in South Park (the park) and North Oakland (Pittsburgh, near University of Pittsburgh, not far from Carnegie Mellon University), here that are not in or near economically distressed areas that appear to me to have high proportions of Blacks among their populations. The rest all are. Most are on the south or west side of the Monongahela River. Three are on the north or east side of that river. I have not yet found such weaponry on display in other locations, although I believe that more get wheeled out around Memorial Day and the Fourth of July.

There is not, by any means, a one-to-one correspondence between gratuitous displays of weaponry and disadvantaged areas. I see many more, over a wider area, of the latter. But the proportion with which the former, nine out of eleven at this writing, are placed in or near the latter is what raises my suspicion.[1]

These are all locations I have observed while driving for Lyft so a bias exists in that I am more likely to notice these weapons in places I frequent.

The labels are the addresses (from Google Maps) from where I shot the photographs. I transcribed the geographic coordinates from the photographs to map the locations. They thus do not pinpoint the locations of the weapons themselves but rather vantage points (with slight variations if I used more than one) I used in taking the pictures. Clicking on a point will bring up the photograph and and address. The complete photograph album is publicly available and I have preserved the metadata in the photographs.

This is an ongoing project. More points may be added later.

Migration

Priscilla Alvarez, Geneva Sands, and Tami Luhby, “Three federal judges hit Trump on immigration policy changes,” CNN, October 11, 2019, https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/11/politics/green-card-public-charge-rule-blocked/index.html

Kurdistan

When I first heard about U.S. forces coming under so-called “friendly fire” from Turkish forces invading Syria,[2] I remembered the U.S.S. Liberty, a reconnaisance ship that came under attack by Israel. The ship was well-marked and should have been identifiable as a U.S. ship at a considerable distance. Further, the Israelis deployed a form of electronic attack that took out U.S. military communication channels. But, in what’s widely believed to have been a cover-up, the U.S. and Israeli governments have said it was all a mistake and the sailors on the Liberty are under a permanent gag order. An Intercept story on the incident is a classic example of “he said, she said” journalism, and inclines toward the official account,[3] providing yet more evidence in support of J. Herbert Altschull’s thesis.[4]

So guess what happens? Now the soldiers who came under attack—the Turks knew damn well where they were—insist they were intentionally targeted.[5]

The Israelis might have been covering up a slaughter of Egyptian prisoners of war.[6] The Turks may have wider territorial aspirations than they claim.[7] But Donald Trump abandons the Kurds.[8]

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, “U.S. Forces Come Under Turkish Fire As Ankara Presses On In Syria,” Global Security, October 12, 2019, https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/2019/10/mil-191012-rferl01.htm

  1. [1]David Benfell, “The banners and the guns: Flagrant racism in Pittsburgh,” Not Housebroken, October 12, 2019, https://disunitedstates.org/2019/09/20/the-banners-and-the-guns-flagrant-racism-in-pittsburgh/↩
  2. [2]Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, “U.S. Forces Come Under Turkish Fire As Ankara Presses On In Syria,” Global Security, October 12, 2019, https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/2019/10/mil-191012-rferl01.htm↩
  3. [3]Miriam Pensack, “Fifty Years Later, NSA Keeps Details of Israel’s USS Liberty Attack Secret,” Intercept, June 6, 2017, https://theintercept.com/2017/06/06/fifty-years-later-nsa-keeps-details-of-israels-uss-liberty-attack-secret/↩
  4. [4]Herbert Altschull, Agents of Power: The Media and Public Policy, 2nd ed. (White Plains, NY: Longman, 1995)↩
  5. [5]Dan Lamothe, “U.S. forces say Turkey was deliberately ‘bracketing’ American troops with artillery fire in Syria,” Washington Post, October 12, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2019/10/12/us-forces-say-turkey-was-deliberately-bracketing-american-forces-with-artillery-fire-syria/↩
  6. [6]Miriam Pensack, “Fifty Years Later, NSA Keeps Details of Israel’s USS Liberty Attack Secret,” Intercept, June 6, 2017, https://theintercept.com/2017/06/06/fifty-years-later-nsa-keeps-details-of-israels-uss-liberty-attack-secret/↩
  7. [7]Dan Lamothe, “U.S. forces say Turkey was deliberately ‘bracketing’ American troops with artillery fire in Syria,” Washington Post, October 12, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2019/10/12/us-forces-say-turkey-was-deliberately-bracketing-american-forces-with-artillery-fire-syria/↩
  8. [8]Kareem Fahim, Sarah Dadouch, and Asser Khattab, “Turkey launches offensive against U.S.-allied Kurdish forces in northern Syria,” Washington Post, October 9, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/with-turkish-offensive-looming-syrian-kurds-mobilize-civilian-defense/2019/10/09/4efca794-ea02-11e9-a329-7378fbfa1b63_story.html; Bethan McKernan, Julian Borger, and Dan Sabbagh, “Turkish troops advance into Syria as Trump washes his hands of the Kurds,” Guardian, October 9, 2019,
    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/09/turkey-syria-attack-latest-news-kurds-trump; Dion Nissenbaum and Gordon Lubold, “Trump’s Call to Leave Syria Draws Fire From GOP Allies,” Wall Street Journal, https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-begins-pullback-from-northern-syria-clearing-way-for-turkish-offensive-11570439862; Richard Spencer, “Turkey steps up airstrikes on Kurds as 60,000 civilians flee,” Times, October 11, 2019, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/world/turkey-steps-up-bombing-of-kurdish-positions-in-northern-syria-g88fr0x5n; Robin Wright, “Defying the World, Turkey Launches a War Against a U.S. Ally in Syria,” New Yorker, October 9, 2019, https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/defying-the-world-turkey-launches-a-war-against-a-united-states-ally-in-syria; Stephen Zunes, “This Isn’t the First Time the US Has Abandoned the Kurds,” Truthout, October 10, 2019, https://truthout.org/articles/this-isnt-the-first-time-the-us-has-abandoned-the-kurds/↩

Pawns in a Realpolitik game

benfell

Donald Trump

Ann E. Marimow, Spencer S. Hsu, and David A. Fahrenthold, “Appeals court rules against Trump in fight with Congress over president’s accounting firm records,” Washington Post, October 11, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/appeals-court-rules-against-trump-in-fight-with-congress-over-presidents-accounting-firm-records/2019/10/11/42933894-b9ea-11e9-b3b4-2bb69e8c4e39_story.html

Kurdistan

I think Stephen Zunes, among many others, is naïve on nonviolence as a tactic in social movements—its history is much more complex than nonviolence advocates admit[1]—but he’s first rate on what’s going on in the Greater Middle East and North Africa. His article here actually came out yesterday. I couldn’t bear to read it, only in part because I already knew the U.S. had betrayed the Kurds before, and in part because I didn’t realize Zunes had written it. Here he presents the history that can only be regarded as criminal and, indeed, genocidal.[2]

Stephen Zunes, “This Isn’t the First Time the US Has Abandoned the Kurds,” Truthout, October 10, 2019, https://truthout.org/articles/this-isnt-the-first-time-the-us-has-abandoned-the-kurds/

Richard Spencer, “Turkey steps up airstrikes on Kurds as 60,000 civilians flee,” Times, October 11, 2019, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/world/turkey-steps-up-bombing-of-kurdish-positions-in-northern-syria-g88fr0x5n

  1. [1]Steven Best and Anthony J. Nocella, II, eds. Terrorists or Freedom Fighters? Reflections on the Liberation of Animals(New York: Lantern, 2004); Benjamin Ginsberg, “Why Violence Works,” Chronicle of Higher Education, August 12, 2013, http://chronicle.com/article/Why-Violence-Works/140951/; Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Vintage, 1994).↩
  2. [2]Stephen Zunes, “This Isn’t the First Time the US Has Abandoned the Kurds,” Truthout, October 10, 2019, https://truthout.org/articles/this-isnt-the-first-time-the-us-has-abandoned-the-kurds/↩

Oops! Forgot to publish last night.

benfell

Actually, it looks like I did publish last night, but there isn’t that much new anyway. Which on these two topics is kinda pathetic.

Brexit

David Fickling, “Queen Can Call Boris Johnson’s Latest Brexit Bluff,” Washington Post, October 9, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/queen-can-call-boris-johnsons-latest-brexit-bluff/2019/10/09/85158228-ea62-11e9-a329-7378fbfa1b63_story.html

Polly Toynbee, “Johnson’s desperate for a general election, but he faces an unpleasant surprise,” Guardian, October 10, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/10/boris-johnson-election-unpleasant-surprise-opposition

Kurdistan

Bethan McKernan, Julian Borger, and Dan Sabbagh, “Turkish troops advance into Syria as Trump washes his hands of the Kurds,” Guardian, October 9, 2019,
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/09/turkey-syria-attack-latest-news-kurds-trump

Robin Wright, “Defying the World, Turkey Launches a War Against a U.S. Ally in Syria,” New Yorker, October 9, 2019, https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/defying-the-world-turkey-launches-a-war-against-a-united-states-ally-in-syria

Turkey invades Syria

benfell

Housekeeping

When I said yesterday that the mailboxes in my apartment building were falling out of the wall, I wasn’t kidding.IMG_0028
The carrier can’t even lock the boxes closed now.

Kurdistan

Kareem Fahim, Sarah Dadouch, and Asser Khattab, “Turkey launches offensive against U.S.-allied Kurdish forces in northern Syria,” Washington Post, October 9, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/with-turkish-offensive-looming-syrian-kurds-mobilize-civilian-defense/2019/10/09/4efca794-ea02-11e9-a329-7378fbfa1b63_story.html

Pennsylvania

KDKA, “Governor Tom Wolf Wants To Raise Pennsylvania’s Minimum Wage,” October 8, 2019, https://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2019/10/08/tom-wolf-wants-to-raise-the-minimum-wage/

Brexit

Kanishka Singh, “Johnson faces cabinet revolt over no-deal Brexit – media,” Reuters, October 8, 2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-resignation/johnson-faces-cabinet-revolt-over-no-deal-brexit-media-idUSKBN1WO046

No deal

benfell

Housekeeping

Just a hint to a U.S. Postal Service carrier and a United Parcel Service carrier out there: You have real jobs, you should be grateful for those jobs, and you should do those jobs.

I am not amused by your excuses.[1]

For everyone else, there is a new Pittsburgh mailing address that should be used for the foreseeable future unless I tell you otherwise; see my contact information page for details.

Brexit

Danielle Sheridan, Tony Diver, and Amy Jones, “Brexit latest news: Deal ‘essentially impossible’ after call between Boris Johnson and Angela Merkel, Number 10 says,” Telegraph, October 8, 2019, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/10/08/brexit-latest-news-boris-johnson-no-deal-parliament-prorogation/

Misogyny

Antonia Noori Farzan, “A teenager said there was a rapist at her school. She was suspended for bullying,” Washington Post, October 8, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/10/08/maine-teenager-suspended-rape-warning-high-school/

Kurdistan

Dion Nissenbaum and Gordon Lubold, “Trump’s Call to Leave Syria Draws Fire From GOP Allies,” Wall Street Journal, https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-begins-pullback-from-northern-syria-clearing-way-for-turkish-offensive-11570439862

 

  1. [1]David Benfell, “About my job hunt,” Not Housebroken, n.d., https://disunitedstates.org/about-my-job-hunt/↩