Weekend Reading
Long reads for a late Autumn Weekend
“I GREW UP during the civil war in Lebanon. With my parents and brothers, I endured the Israeli siege of Beirut in 1982 and recall what we thought was the unsurpassable violence of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006. But nothing I or anyone I know have seen bears even a passing resemblance to what we are helplessly watching unfold in Gaza today. Since October 7, the Israelis bombing the Gaza Strip have killed more than 11,000 people, including almost 5,000 children. The true, horrific scale of these numbers—of the calamity being methodically inflicted on an entire population as the world watches on—becomes even clearer when considered in relative terms. In three weeks, Israel has killed more civilians than the Russians have killed in almost two years of total war in Ukraine, a country with twenty times Gaza’s population and a land mass over a thousand times its size.” (Saree Makdisi/NPlusOne)
“The media business has seen numerous firings, resignations, and hastily implemented new policies on employees making political statements. These include the firing of Mike Eisen, the editor-in-chief of the biomedical-science journal eLife, after he retweeted a satirical article from the Onion; the firing of David Velasco, the editor-in-chief of Artforum, after he signed and published a letter that expressed solidarity with the cause of Palestinian liberation and called for an immediate ceasefire; and the resignation of the Times staff writer Jazmine Hughes after she signed, in violation of a newsroom policy, a different Palestine solidarity statement, which several New Yorker writers also signed. (The board of eLife said in a statement that it had had broader concerns about Eisen’s social-media use, among other things.) Hearst Magazines also made a truly draconian move to crack down on any political speech expressed by its employees on social media, including “liking” other people’s posts. Within the news media, these types of censures are seen, by the people and institutions who perform them, as a necessary bit of housekeeping—a way of projecting a type of objectivity. (Some of this is understandable: large newsrooms with reporters spread across the globe have legitimate concerns about how political statements from their employees might cause difficulties for their colleagues.) But the disciplinary actions are best understood as acts of desperation from institutions that have lost much of their power to shape public opinion. Strong media organizations confident in the righteousness of their mission do not need to offer up their employees as sacrifices to an angry mob.” (Jay Caspian Kang/TNY)
“A period of disagreements between the United States and China culminates in a spike of tensions over Taiwan, followed by a meeting between the two top leaders that resets the trilateral relationship. Chinese President Xi Jinping’s meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden in San Francisco on Wednesday carried a strong whiff of déjà vu. The Taiwan crisis of 1995-1996 was wrapped up with Chinese President Jiang Zemin’s visit to the United States in late 1997. But while the third Taiwan Strait crisis ushered in a long period of détente and prosperity, the legacy of the ongoing fourth crisis could be a reduction in Taiwan’s room to maneuver. The fourth crisis kicked off in August 2022 with a visit to Taipei made by then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, which was followed by China’s largest-ever military exercises in the ocean around Taiwan. By exposing the hollowness of Taiwan’s traditional defense strategy, it set off a period of reckoning on the island. For decades, Taipei invested in air and naval power, so that it could fend off a Chinese invasion force for long enough for the U.S. military to ride to the rescue. But in the latest crisis, China demonstrated that it could potentially negate that strategy—forcing Taiwan to seek new means of defense or else find itself at the mercy of U.S. relations with China.” (Lucy Hornby/FP)
“That will definitely be the case unless there is serious punishment at the polls. One of the problems is the Republicans who are driving the extremism tend to be from districts they have completely locked down. Many of them, of course, are wildly gerrymandered. Jim Jordan’s being one example, and Marjorie Taylor Greene’s being another. The only real exception to that is Lauren Boebert. Whatever moderates existed are long gone. The ones who you would call more pragmatic tend to be the ones who are from the shakier districts. That’s been a problem for a while, but it’s growing worse and worse. But the other caveat here is Mike Johnson might blow up in their faces.” (Public Notice)
“Mavin Global, the Nigerian music label behind one of the biggest worldwide hit songs of the last two years, has held talks with strategic and financial partners in recent weeks which have valued the company as high as $150 million, according to a person with knowledge of the discussions. It confirmed an earlier report by Billboard. The label, founded by veteran Nigerian hitmaker/producer Don Jazzy in 2012, launched the career of Afrobeats star Rema, whose song ‘Calm Down’ has been streamed over 10 billion times on various platforms, including a remix with U.S. star Selena Gomez. Other Mavin artists include Ayra Starr who has had hundreds of millions of streams and is among the Grammy nominees for Best African Music Performance. The new category, introduced this year, is another sign of the worldwide popularity and influence of music from the continent. The potential strategic partners have included the world’s biggest music company Universal Music Group and HYBE, the Korean entertainment group behind K-Pop act BTS. There has been a wide range of valuations for the Lagos-based label as potential partners try to gauge whether Afrobeats is a passing pop trend or set to diversify into other African subgenres.” (Yinka Adegoke/semafor)
“This past weekend saw the publication of a disturbing report from Axios, following a phone call between Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and his Israeli counterpart. According to unnamed sources, the outlet reports, there are growing fears within the Biden administration that the Israeli government wants to provoke Hezbollah into starting a wider regional war that would envelop Lebanon and other nearby countries, as well as the United States. It’s a powerful reminder that the Biden administration’s current policy of unconditional support for the Israeli government’s war on Gaza carries with it no upsides and only downsides in regards to U.S. interests. Avoiding another Middle Eastern war is a core priority for President Joe Biden, who both campaigned on ending ‘forever wars,’ and has expressed concern about the U.S. capacity for a future military confrontation with China. In fact, according to Axios, Austin’s weekend phone call was precisely to register his concern over the Israeli attacks in Lebanon and ‘the need to contain the conflict to Gaza and avoid regional escalation.’ U.S.officials have been reportedly trying to prevent this outcome from the start of the conflict.” (Branko Marcetic/Responsible Statecraft)
“— Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-WV) decision not to run for reelection next year pushes our rating for the West Virginia Senate race from Leans Republican to Safe Republican.
— Next door, Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D, VA-7) is forgoing reelection in her Biden +7 seat to focus on a 2025 gubernatorial run. Her district now becomes a better Republican target, although we think Democrats are small favorites to hold it, at least for now.
— A flurry of other retirements across the board haven’t pushed us to reconsider other ratings, though some primaries may be consequential.” (J Miles Coleman/Center for Politics)
“In the aftermath of the atrocities committed by Hamas on Oct. 7, thought leaders and policymakers around the world have been exposed to the horrors that occurred that day, thanks to a film made by the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit which documented the terrorist group’s brutality. While the film has allegedly already been leaked online, there remains a discussion surrounding whether it should be made available to the public. Releasing the film may very well help Israel win the information war. At the same time, it’s incumbent upon Israel to ask itself: What would be the hidden costs associated with that victory? Indeed, there are mental health considerations that must be taken into account.Members of the Knesset who watched the film were given anti-anxiety medication prior to viewing it and, despite this, still emerged from the screening shaken and disturbed by what they saw. This is a testament to two facts: First, the gravity of what people witness when viewing this film and, second, the potentially traumatic impact of the content. Should this film be released to the general Israeli public, nobody will be handing out anti-anxiety medication to help viewers cope with the trauma.” (Aliya Herman/TimesofIsrael)
“The decline of local newspapers accelerated so rapidly in 2023 that analysts now believe the U.S. will have lost one-third of the newspapers it had as of 2005 by the end of next year — rather than in 2025, as originally predicted. Why it matters: Most communities that lose a local newspaper in America usually do not get a replacement, even online. By the numbers: There are roughly 6,000 newspapers left in America, down from 8,891 in 2005, according to a new report from Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications.
‘We're almost at a one-third loss now and we'll certainly hit that pace next year,’ said the report's co-authors — Penelope Muse Abernathy, a visiting professor at Medill, and Sarah Stonbely, director of Medill's State of Local News Project.
Of the papers that still survive, a majority (4,790) publish weekly, not daily.
What's happening: Over the past two years, newspapers continued to vanish at an average rate of more than two per week, leaving 204 U.S. counties, or 6.4%, without any local news outlet.” (Sara Fischer/Axios)
“Ongoing excavations in Turkey – in the ruins of the ancient capital of the Hittite empire – are yielding remarkable evidence that the imperial civil service included entire departments fully or partly dedicated to researching the religions of subject peoples. The evidence suggests that, back in the second millennium BC, Hittite leaders told their civil servants to record subject peoples’ religious liturgies and other traditions by writing them down in their respective local languages (but in Hittite script) – so that those traditions could be preserved and incorporated into the empire’s highly inclusive multicultural religious system. So far, modern experts on ancient languages have discovered that Hittite civil servants preserved and recorded religious documents from at least five subject ethnic groups … The discovery suggests that even the most obscure languages in the empire were being recorded, studied and preserved in written form. That in turn raises the possibility that other small previously unknown Middle Eastern languages will be discovered, recorded on Hittite imperial clay tablets, in the particular series of ancient scriptoria that the archaeologists are currently excavating at Bogazkoy. The empire’s civil service scribes wrote all their manuscripts in a Hittite version of a pre-existing Mesopotamian-originating script (the oldest writing system in the world) called cuneiform, consisting of wedge-shaped lines arranged in groups representing syllables. The area of the Middle East which is now Turkey was, in ancient times, particularly rich in languages.” (David Keys/The Independent)
“Why did the Jewish Federations of North America and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, organizers of Tuesday’s massive ‘March for Israel’ rally on the National Mall in Washington, DC, an event whose official logo highlighted three causes—Israel, freedom for the hostages held by Hamas, and fighting antisemitism—invite Pastor John Hagee, an evangelical Christian who has made many antisemitic statements, to address the crowd? The answer is plain: the American Jewish establishment uses the antisemitism charge in a highly selective way. If you are ‘pro-Israel,’ which means in favor of giving the Israeli government whatever it wants, then you get a pass. (Hagee runs Christians United for Israel, America’s largest Zionist organization by sheer membership size.) And if you are critical of Israel, you may well be ‘antisemitic.’ So much for actually protecting Jews from antisemites.” (The Connector/Micah L. Sifry)
“Turkey’s parliament has postponed a vote on ratifying Sweden’s accession to Nato, in a fresh snag to the Nordic country’s hopes of joining the western military alliance. The parliament’s foreign affairs committee on Thursday debated Stockholm’s bid but held off from voting pending further review. The committee must give its approval before the parliament as a whole can vote on it. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, whose coalition controls parliament, vowed in July at a Nato summit to approve Sweden’s accession, but the process has been beset by delays. Allowing the Scandinavian country to join is a crucial priority in many western capitals nearly two years after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The Turkish president has repeatedly insisted that Stockholm must do more to fight terrorism and Islamophobia before clinching Ankara’s support. Erdoğan has focused particularly on the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK), a Kurdish militant group that has fought a decades-long insurgency in Turkey, members of which Ankara claims had been allowed to operate freely in Sweden. Stockholm passed a new anti-terrorism law this year in an attempt to meet Turkish demands, and in July a Swedish court sentenced a Turkish man to jail for funding the PKK. A Swedish man was also convicted last month on hate speech charges for setting a copy of the Koran on fire.” (Adam Samson/FT)
“The story—a strong indicator that a person or entity in Russia was using an American lobbyist to influence an election in Albania—generated front-page headlines in Albania. The possibility of secret Russian intervention made sense. Basha’s party opposed the government led by Prime Minister Edi Rama, who had been steering Albania into the European Union and warning of the rise of Russian influence in the Balkans. Moscow certainly had an interest in Basha ousting Rama. The DPA denounced the article and Mother Jones, claiming the piece was part of a conspiracy involving billionaire philanthropist George Soros. Eventually, Albanian prosecutors charged Basha with money laundering and falsifying documents in connection with the matter. That prosecution was later suspended. The controversy oddly came up in the case of Charles McGonigal, the former head of the FBI counterintelligence division in New York who pleaded guilty in September to crimes that included accepting a $225,000 loan from a Rama ally and then ordering up an FBI investigation of US lobbying efforts conducted on behalf of Basha.Last year, a State Department report offered a strong suggestion that the Biniatta Trade payment to Muzin was part of an international clandestine Russian influence operation. In a summary of a US intelligence review, the department said that the Kremlin since 2014 had slipped at least $300 million to political parties and politicians outside Russia ‘to shape foreign political environments in Moscow’s favor.’” (Dan Friedman and David Corn/Mother Jones)
“Four years after his stroke, Bei Dao’s Chinese language abilities had improved dramatically, and a new medical assessment showed a recovery of over 80 percent. He continued his painting practice, though, and started to write poetry again. In 2018, a year before he turned seventy, Bei Dao had his first-ever painting exhibition at the Galerie Paris Horizon, located just north of the Centre Pompidou. In the essay he wrote for the exhibition, he contrasts the oil-based pointillism of an artist like Seurat with the watery ink dots of the East, where the tones and textures of the so-called five shades of ink in traditional Chinese painting must be naturally integrated with the brush and the rice paper to form a single whole. And as the water evaporates, the ink colors change, creating unexpected effects. He has experimented with using the cold colors of Japanese green ink alongside the warm colors of brown ink, while using sumi ink to deepen the tones and textures through a rhythmic layering. Around the time he began his new painting practice, he made a pilgrimage from Hong Kong to many cities across the mainland to learn about traditional Chinese medicine. He has received treatment from eight different traditional Chinese medical doctors who are well trained in the dialectical principles of yin and yang and the five elements as originally presented in the Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canon, which was compiled over two thousand years ago.” (Jeffrey Yang/The Paris Review)
This is great Ron, thanks. So much here. The Hittite story is incredible, and Saree Makdisi.