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Another week, another Tucker interview, another transcription of a juicy part by yours truly. I promise, this is unusual, I haven't listened to two in a row, at all, ever.
This week is Jeffrey Sachs. The part below is just after 1:44.
That was the first mention of Israel, that I could recall, but the whole conversation is about Ukraine, Russia, Putin, and NATO. It's not exactly new to me, but it's refreshing to hear someone so clearly say that this is a war of choice, and the choice is being made by the USA, and their puppet states involved in NATO.
And that was all before any discussion of COVID. tl;dl, it's obviously from a lab, we (USA) pretty clearly funded it, and Fauci has been running the germ warfare branch of the DoD for decades. Which lab, and how is unknown, but, in his own words:
Great interview, and I'm glad that Tucker has twitter dot com to host his stuff, rather than be consigned to the fringes of the internet.
I just don’t see either war actually stopping just because we said so. Most especially with Israel. Israel is much more likely to ramp up attacks on Palestinians if a state is announced because they understand that this is their last chance to do something about the issue before the rest of the world decides whether or not to defend Palestine. They know a state means weapons pointing at them and they won’t have it. TBH if think the bombings if Rafa are about European states recognizing Palestine as a show of resolve— if Palestine is recognized then we have to neutralize it.
I think you're not completely wrong, but "statehood" is a whole gamut that manifests in a variety of ways in different circumstances. To some, I'm sure statehood means internationally-defined borders, but this isn't universally given: to use that standard, neither Taiwan nor South Korea have statehood. Others might suggest it means the right to raise its own military to defend those borders, but there are plenty of non-militarized small states (how many legions does Monaco wield?). Or the right to engage in international trade, but there are plenty of sanctions and de-facto blockades across the world, and no shortage of fortified walls and fences. Or some degree of popular sovereignty, but there is no global shortage of despots.
To me, at least, the notion of statehood also comes with responsibility both to one's people and in the scope of international relations. It means preserving a monopoly on the use of force -- if unsanctioned militias in Texas started shelling Ciudad Juárez, we'd expect the US government to respond with force, not shrug and tell Mexico to deal with it. It means providing for one's people -- international aid is acceptable in the short term, but is expected to be a stepping stone to economic independence, not an inter-generational affair. It means not invading one's neighbors (with some caveats for "just war"), and following the laws of war when violence is truly necessary.
It seems that, to a large extent separably, Gaza (and to a slightly lesser degree, the West Bank) have de facto statehood: there are borders. There is some degree of law enforcement. To be clear, that statehood is often failed statehood: there doesn't seem to be a monopoly on violence, especially across its borders. And to a large extent, it seems to me that the broader international community, largely in the name of "aid" props up this failed state and makes things palatable enough for its residents to maintain the status quo. It seems to me (perhaps as I've gotten older) that indefinite carrots often just enable bad behavior, and that long-term gain may require some amount of shorter-term pain: high unemployment (I've generally seen numbers close to 50% pre-war) seems like a fertile breeding ground for fanaticism in ways that might be less appealing when there's a sense that there really is something to lose -- and my observation there isn't unique to Palestine, either.
Now, I'm hardly in a place to dictate Israel's foreign policy, but I think it would at least be interesting to consider a unilateral recognition of a state of Palestine as an open-ended starting point for peace negotiations. Sure, it gives something to Palestinians (most directly, it would probably require defined borders in the West Bank), but it also gives them a platform to expect things in return: they could feasibly dictate that such a state would be non-militarized in exchange for security guarantees, demand that firing weapons across its borders be treated as a criminal action (extradition?), and provide a roadmap to gradually removing blockades in exchange for extended periods of peace. I'm not sure that would actually improve the situation given the religious fanaticism at play, but it seems like it would provide something to point to as a reasonable defined goal to point to, although I'd expect at least some criticism along the lines of "Bantustan."
Gaza and West Bank to my mind are not states in any greater sense than native reservations in the USA are. And for me the three things I think would work definitively to define a state are things like a security force of some sort for defense purposes (which Israel will never allow) a border that it controls, and it’s own diplomatic and trade policies. By my estimate it has none of this and is thus really a Palestinian reservation with no more nationhood than the Lakota reservations that are making a big show of banning Noem from their lands. If it came down to it, a few Lakota police could not hope to actually keep her from entering, walking around anywhere she pleases and piss on the chief’s house.
Native Americans are American citizens who can live anywhere in the US and vote in federal elections. There are no more boomers and sooners that are taking over their lands. I'd say their current status is better than that of Palestinians.
Imagine that the US started giving more local authority to reservations and then the reservations started bombing the US. What do you think would be the reaction by the US?
We all know what the US reaction was: ethnic cleansing, genocide and finally, when the threat has been permanently pacified, land acknowledgment statements.
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They were shunted onto largely shitty land and democracy is irrelevant since at 2% of the population they don’t have any real power. Palestinians were able to travel freely into Israel until they started killing large number of civilians in terror attacks.
Indians can, and routinely do, engage with the broader U.S. economy. They’re certainly poorer than average, but I’m not sure they’re poorer than typical deep-rural whites. There are Indians living in New York, LA, DC, working with no special permit.
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