toastykitten

I realize that there is very little actual good news these days, but here are some things that make me not hate everything a little less. 

• Boston Consulting Group CEO apologizes to employees because their own employees gave them shit about partnering with Israel to run food/aid distribution instead of the normal process of distributing aid via UNRWA or the UN - BCG leadership came under fire from staff who said: "Collaborating with a state actor in the midst of a military campaign that has killed tens of thousands of civilians, under the guise of humanitarian aid, is morally indefensible" 
• People keep asking the only Muslim candidate (Mira Nair's son) for mayor of NYC if he supports Israel's right to exist, and he keeps saying he believes in its right to exist as a state with equal rights and this is making everyone crazy. 
• I got mixed up - I didn't realize there were more people out there trying to break the siege - this one is made of Middle Easterners, and I hope they stay alive. You can track the one Greta Thunberg is on here. 
• Anti-ICE protests unfolding in LA. Chickenshit stuff here. 
• I hate him for other things, but Newsom threatening to withhold CA's tax money since Trump wants to defund CA? Good. 
• Congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh advocating for healthcare for everyone. And refusing to call Musk into the Democratic Party. Unlike Ro Khanna. 
• Sen Chris Van Hollen continuing to advocate for Kilmar Abrego Garcia, after it's being confirmed that he's being brought back to the US to get criminally indicted. 
• I don't care about this other than it being funny but Trump selling his Tesla. And also Trump threatening to look into the government contracts. Yeah, Biden should have done it. 

 Seems like a culmination of all of Bong Joon Hos obsessions getting all smushed together in a sci-fi comedy of sorts. Mark Ruffalos performance was very unnerving and really put me off him for the movie so I think that was successful? Anyway the movie is very messy and ambitious and could have cut out about twenty min. Or since it’s based on a book could have been a TV show like The Expanse. Which I have been meaning to read/watch.

FYI apparently HR 867 has been pulled from the schedule, after vocal opposition from Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie, both Republicans. I am so repulsed that this obviously unconstitutional bill had to be objected to vocally by Republicans on free speech grounds for it to be taken seriously, and so annoyed that Democrats can't even just take the easy layup of saying Americans should be able to boycott whoever the fuck they want.

Anyway, here are some documentaries on Israel and Palestine that are freely available - I have not watched them all yet, as honestly, I have to really pace myself because of the content.

Israelism - this is presented by Al-Jazeera, follows Simone Zimmerman, who goes on to found IfNotNow, and Eitan's journey of self-awareness of basically the cult they've grown up in, and how they come to change their views.



This Settlers is not the most recent one that was released and is currently getting publicity - this is the first one, first released in 2021.



Palestine 1920: The Other Side of the Palestinian Story - Al-Jazeera has several documentaries on the history of Palestine through the Palestinian lens, and I think they are pretty educational.



Al-Nakba: The Palestinian Catastrophe is a 4 part series on the history of the Palestinian exodus that led to the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948 and the establishment of the Palestinian state.

The House vote is happening on Monday.

This Act would essentially make it a crime to voluntarily boycott Israel or settlements. Here's the summary - and here's the actual text itself:

This bill expands an existing anti-boycott law to include certain boycotts imposed by international governmental organizations (IGOs).

Current law prohibits various actions by U.S. persons (individuals or entities) in relation to boycotts imposed by foreign governments on a country which is friendly to the United States and that is not itself the object of a U.S. boycott. This bill applies those prohibitions to similar boycotts imposed by IGOs.

Prohibited actions include (1) refusing to do business with companies organized under the laws of the boycotted country, if the refusal is pursuant to an agreement with or request from the country or IGO imposing the boycott; (2) refusing to employ any U.S. person on the basis of race, religion, sex, or national origin; and (3) furnishing information about whether someone is associated with charitable or fraternal organizations that support the boycotted country.

The bill also requires the President to annually submit to Congress and make available to the public a report describing these boycotts and listing the foreign countries and international organizations involved in fostering or imposing them.

• Tesla sales plunged 13%
• Elon Musk mocked for trying to spin the Wisconsin election results.
• Tesla Takedown protests continue
• Foot traffic at Target is down for the eighth consecutive week while foot traffic at Costco is rising. 
• The House of Rep cancelled votes for the week after 9 Republicans joined all Democrats in opposing a procedural rule that would have killed a bipartisan effort to allow proxy voting for new parents.

Other good things:

• Kat Abughazaleh running for office in Illinois on a platform of "What if we didn't suck?"
• Adam Schiff places hold on Trump loyalist's nomination for top federal prosecutor in DC - they should be placing holds on everyone IMO

• Here's video of Mahmoud Khalil being arrested by plainclothes immigration authorities who don't identify themselves, and don't show a warrant.
• BTW, a pro-Israel group (Betar) says it has a "deportation list" and sent "thousands of names" to Trump officials.
• Letter to Columbia University from Trump admin demanding - a mask ban, putting the Middle East, South Asian, and African Studies department under academic receivership for five years, suspend/expend students for Hamilton Hall protest, etc.
• Columbia expels Student Workers of Columbia-United Auto Workers President, union says - The University expelled Grant Miner, president of the Student Workers of Columbia-United Auto Workers, UAW announced in a Thursday news release. Miner is a Ph.D. student in the department of English and comparative literature. “Columbia fired our union president the day before we start bargaining—less than a week after allowing ICE to abduct our coworker,” SWC-UAW wrote in a Thursday post on X.
• The University Judicial Board issued expulsions, temporary degree revocations, and multi-year suspensions for students involved in the April 2024 occupation of Hamilton Hall on Thursday, according to a Thursday email from University Life.
• Mahmoud Khalil finally got to speak with his attorney.
• Another protester got arrested by ICE, and another "self-deported".

There are lots of fundraisers floating out there for Khalil, most of them unverified, but I checked his main one and it's pretty solid. If you feel like donating to anything, please try donating directly to people in Gaza via Chuffed - Israel has blocked any food or aid from going in for almost two weeks now, and they've destroyed their water source. People are straight up starving and dying. The Sameer Project has specific things you can donate to and you can direct dollars via Venmo or PayPal. GoFundMe has been really inconsistent and they've been cancelling people's campaigns even when they've proved themselves.

• Powerful speeches from trans Reps in Zooey Zephyr and SJ Howell delivered on Montana House floor flips dozens of Republican votes and kill 2 anti-trans bills. 
• Dr Michelle Monje was awarded the Brain Prize. Dr. Monje's lab is one of the places that the Neev Kolte & Brave Ronil Foundation supported with their donations. Her research into DIPG and treatment has led to the complete recovery of one patient in clinical trials, giving hope to children diagnosed with DIPG, and also possibly leading to treatments for other cancers.
• Michael Sheen writes off over $1m of debt for 900 people using his own money.
• A new study from Stanford Med taps AI to find a naturally occurring molecule that works similarly to Ozempic, without the side effects.
• A small biotech lab in China made a new lung cancer drug that's twice as effective as the current biggest cancer drug on the market.

There are multiple boycotts going on right now:

• BDS - this is a multi-decade movement aimed at disrupting businesses that support Israeli apartheid. There is a recent debate about whether No Other Land, the Oscar-winning Palestinian/Israeli documentary about apartheid in the West Bank, should be on the boycott list or not, due to its perceived "normalization" of Zionism. (Side note: almost impossible to find a non-Israeli source about the boycott via search or the actual BDS statement without a lot of digging, really annoying. So much for impartiality.) I follow a lot of the BDS stuff, so I agree with them on a lot of things, but I disagree on this one. If you read the critique of the BDS statement, you'll see there's a class component to it as well as the different circumstances between Palestinians who live in the West Bank and are suffering under Israeli occupation and Palestinians in diaspora who are a bit more removed from the day-to-day violence. 
• We're going to see No Other Land today. I do not see a point in boycotting any Palestinian work as most of it is already so marginalized. It is an incredible achievement for this work to break through the censorship in Hollywood, and the thing is, we are starting to have Palestinian/Arab/Muslim art and work that does stand on its own and unapologetic about their politics and point of view. See Mo, Ramy, etc. Perfect Victims and the Politics of Appeal by Mohammad El-Kurd, which is a searing critique of Western treatment of Palestinians is a NYT bestseller. (Have this one, haven't read it yet.) It also goes to show that there is no such thing as a Palestinian monolith, as the existence of multiple political parties show. The one thing they all agree on is Palestinian self-determination and rights. How we get there is going to be a process.
• PEN America Boycott still stands.
• TeslaTakedown's been pretty effective, I think.
• The one day Feb 28 boycott seems to have had some noticeable effect. There is now a Target Fast in effect for Lent, led by black faith leaders. (Gonna be honest, this one's going to be difficult for me. I love Target.)
• I think of the boycotts as a marathon, not a race. You know, like how Rome wasn't built in a day. I'm not going to boycott Google (impossible for me to) but other people can have at it. It took us a while, but we no longer buy soda at all, and we stopped going to fast food restaurants for the most part, and also chain restaurants. It turns out...we prefer local, independent restaurants anyway. I've dropped a bunch of my Amazon subscribe & saves and downloaded my Kindle ebooks. The Kindle has not really worked out for me...I keep forgetting it exists and it turns out I really like reading on paper.

Just wanted to note that BeHealthy has a pretty big clearance section going on right now, and I just ordered 100 kids masks for the cost of shipping. Unfortunately, shipping is $25. But still a pretty good deal. There's another deal you can get that includes free shipping.

AMA has a podcast on general updates - last episode was on 2/10, covered cattle bird flu news, and flu tests.

Bay Area is overrun with flu this season, so get your flu shots. Get all the shots you are eligible for.

For CA, CDPH appears to still be tracking respiratory viruses.

The thing about having followed the news over the past year and a half on Gaza has left me sufficiently skeptical of most things I’ve read in legacy media, including the big ones like New York Times or even NPR. Like, are they accurate on day-to-day stuff in the US? Sometimes? Anything that has to do with cops? Absolutely not. If it’s something to do with basic non-political stuff, maybe. This leaves me sometimes with having to dig through multiple social media sites, multiple news sites, multiple analysts, to actually arrive at the truth. Which, no one really has time for that. I only do it because the actual truth matters to me. 

Case in point: the contention of whether the budget for LAFD was cut by $17 million. This has played out over the past few days with even Chris Hayes weighing in on BlueSky, and then deleting the post because he got confused. 

1.  He cited the Politico article claiming that Democratic mayor Karen Bass was taking heat from “far left activists online” and asserted that they were flat out wrong, without actually linking to the budgets. 
2. Over the next day or two, the “far left activists online” pushed back, as did the LAFD fire chief going on TV and various news shows saying that the overall budget cuts did hamper the emergency response.
3. Also not mentioned in the news story is right-wing assholes citing DEI for somehow the huge fires not getting put out and blaming the fire chief because she’s gay and somehow that means she’s incompetent. 
4. The LAFD chief got called into a closed door meeting with the mayor, leading to rumors spurred by the Daily Mail that she’d been fired or forced to resign. The mayor has denied this.
5. Yesterday, the LA city controller Kenneth Mejia laid out everything on social media - 61 civilian positions were eliminated as a result of the new budget, raises were allocated after the budget, but haven’t been transferred yet, because they’re being held for the liability and litigation payouts for LAPD. 

Like, do I have the capacity to analyze whether Mejia is accurate on what he claims? No, I do not. I have to trust that he’s telling the truth because of his prior record, and that the charts and budgets he’s showing are accurate. I liked his campaign and if I lived in LA still I would have voted for him. But you know who’s supposed to actually make a judgment and tell me if things like that are true? The so-called “mainstream media”. 

I have been watching and rewatching the Thunderbolts trailer and special look over and over again - it just looks like so much fun:




also i binged my way through this rapper reacting to Hamilton cold (he didn't know Burr shot him!) and it is delightful: