“While many nations occasionally resort to a ‘state of exception’ to deal with temporary crises, Israel exists in a permanent state of exception. This Israeli exceptionalism is the very essence of the instability that plagues the Middle East. The concept of the state of exception dates back to the Roman justitium, a legal mechanism for suspending law during times of civil unrest. However, the modern understanding was shaped by the German jurist Carl Schmitt, who famously wrote that the ‘sovereign is he who decides on the exception.’ While Schmitt’s own history as a jurist for the Third Reich serves as a chilling reminder of where such theories can lead, his work provides an undeniably accurate anatomy of raw power: it reveals how a ruler who institutes laws also holds the power to dismiss them, under the pretext that no constitution can foresee every possible crisis.” (02/16/26)
“One year after fires tore through the Los Angeles region, devastation remains etched into the landscape, not only in the thousands of empty lots, but also in the near absence of rebuilding. More than 13,000 homes were destroyed across Los Angeles County; 12 months later, just 28 have been rebuilt. What should have been a story of recovery instead reveals deeper institutional failure. Despite political urgency, partial regulatory reforms, and repeated promises of speed, reconstruction has stalled under the weight of a collapsing insurance market, regulatory overreach, labor shortages, and soaring construction costs.” (02/16/26)
“American prisons have never been much for the First Amendment, and now, the Trump administration is exporting prison-style censorship to the general population. In tactics that are easily recognizable to incarcerated people like me, they’re doing it in the name of ‘security.’ This includes claiming antiestablishment ideologies and literature must be punished because they pose nebulous risks to those with government-approved political views. It also includes the logical next step: criminalizing efforts to keep authorities from finding out that one holds those ideologies or reads that literature.” (02/16/26)
“Presidents’ Day is a good day to rank presidents. There’s debate about the top three — my choices are Lincoln, Washington, and FDR — but no suspense about who’s bringing up the rear. Even if he racks up an achievement or two in the next couple of years, we can be confident that Donald Trump will be viewed as the worst president in U.S. history, with Richard Nixon now a distant second. Yes, historians said that in his first term, and more than 70 million Americans ignored his coup attempt and returned him to office. But Trump has no road back now; the country as a whole is finished with him. This period reminds me of 1943, when the Allies knew we would eventually defeat the fascists, but only after a lot more death and destruction.” (02/16/26)
“Thomas Jefferson enshrined our ideals in the Declaration of Independence with words every American recognizes: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’ But he immediately followed that soaring statement with something just as important: ‘That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.’ Ideals alone were never meant to stand. They required durable forms capable of securing and sustaining them. Those forms were later prescribed in the Constitution.” (02/16/26)
“When President Donald Trump convened his so-called Board of Peace in Davos, Switzerland, a key item on the agenda was to endorse his son-in-law Jared Kushner’s extravagant (and, I might add, detached from reality) plan for a ‘New Gaza’. The rendering of Kushner’s scheme shows it to be more of a luxury resort for wealthy tourists than the foundation of a just future for the Palestinian victims of Israel’s genocide. But since the raison d’être of the Board of Peace was supposed to be dealing with the aftermath of Israel’s war on Gaza, the conversation, by necessity, had to address the needs of hundreds of thousands of now-homeless Palestinians. Thus, Kushner presented a proposal for a model Palestinian community (the ‘New Rafah’) he intends to build to house Palestinians in Gaza. The plans for this New Rafah have been circulated since the meeting.” (02/16/26)
“The lesson here isn’t a hard one. It’s not difficult to see the writing on the wall. You can’t out-fash the fascists, so don’t try (and maybe you shouldn’t try since fascism is hostile to all things human and decent; just a thought from a humble blogger). Stop trying to peel away parts of the fascist electorate and instead use your money and power and influence to tell otherwise disengaged people — folks who sit on the sideline, convinced both major U.S. parties are exactly the same — what to think about political issues. Don’t concede far-right framing around immigration and economic matters and everything else that drives voter turnout. Fascists gain power by changing people’s minds — that is how they gain a foothold in multicultural liberal democracies that have largely rejected far-right messaging for decades.” (02/16/26)
“In 2009, President Obama and the EPA decided that the will‑o’-the-wisp of fine-tuning the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere fell under the agency’s purview. They introduced a not-so-thin wedge to pry open a vast new province of regulatory oppression. Obama had sought congressional legislation, but Congress had balked. So he proceeded without any new laws; or rather, as so often happens, told an agency to issue new laws. … Now things may change. Bigly. President Trump has ordered the EPA to un-find its 2009 ‘finding’ that it has blanket authority to regulate human emission of greenhouse gases. The change will be challenged in court. The Trump administration doubtless expects — perhaps even wants — the litigation.” (02/16/26)
Source: CounterPunch
by Kshama Sawant & David Montequin
“A general strike is when workers carry out a work stoppage and shut down the profits across workplaces, sectors, and industries in an entire city, region, or nation. A general strike can be a potent tool in the hands of the working class. By shutting down the business of an entire city, region, or nation, a general strike has the potential power to bring the capitalist machine to its knees. For those same reasons, organizing a general strike and making it successful by winning the strike’s demands is far from straightforward.” (02/16/26)
Source: The American Conservative
by Alan Pell Crawford
“No question, the Post has been a great newspaper, but, like other great newspapers, it has been hemorrhaging money for years, in part because it has been losing subscribers. It’s ironic that a lot of the people now bemoaning decisions made by the Post’s top brass are themselves no longer subscribing. After Bezos decided to pull the editorial board’s endorsement of Kamala Harris (ending a practice of endorsing presidential candidates, which it only began to do about the time [Bpb] Woodward was a Metro desk reporter), 250,000 high-minded subscribers bailed out. They did so no doubt unaware of how their decision might affect the paychecks of reporters about whom they are now expressing such heartfelt concern.” (02/16/26)
