Also on today’s menu:
Burned Out By Burning Man?
Wisconsin Rules That Trump Can Appear On Ballot
Israel’s ground offensive has spread into Palestinian refugee camps in central Gaza, killing dozens of people in Bureij, Nuseirat, and Maghazi camps in recent days, while continuing the fighting in the southern city of Khan Younis.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has described the offensive as “beyond a war of annihilation”. More than 21,100 — mostly children and women — have been killed in 11 weeks of fighting, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. Local officials and witnesses said dozens of civilians were killed overnight. Israeli warplanes targeted the homes of the Nasser and Hazouqi families in Nuseirat, killing a number of people and wounding dozens more, according to the official Wafa news agency.
Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, with Israel Defense Forces (IDF), told reporters on December 26 that IDF forces had “expanded the combat to the area known as the Central Camps”. The IDF has ordered residents in more than a dozen central areas between the Gaza-Israel perimeter and the coast to leave, including Bureij and Nuseirat camps. According to the UN, the affected areas were home to nearly 90,000 people before the war and include six shelters where about 61,000 displaced people, mostly from the north, are staying.
IDF Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi, said that fighting with Hamas is taking place in “a complex area,” so it would “continue for many more months. … There are no magic solutions or shortcuts in the fundamental dismantling of a terrorist organization, except persistent and determined fighting, and we are very, very determined.”
Discussion: Knowing that Hamas has created tunnels throughout Gaza in which to hide weapons and personnel, Helevi’s assertion that it is a “complex area” is hardly an overstatement, but neither is Abbas’ description of the offensive as as being “beyond a war of annihilation”. The United States has supported the offensive against Hamas, but has urged Israel to “transition from high-intensity operations to lower-intensity and more surgical operations”. Gemma Connell of the United Nations’ humanitarian agency Ochahas has described what is happening as “absolute carnage” and “[E]ven when people are told to evacuate, the places that they are fleeing to are not safe.”
Burned Out By Burning Man?
San Francisco’s Baker Beach was the original location, starting in 1986, for the burning of an anonymous effigy referred to as the Man, but the event moved to northern Nevada’s desert wilderness in 1992 where the Burning Man festival established a national (international?) reputation for artistic expression, avant-garde theatrics, acts of kindness, experiments with hallucinogens, and nudity. By 1995, the festival attracted 4,000 participants, but by 2010, there were more than 50,000, many of them wealthy and living in luxury motor homes rather than makeshift shelters.
“Exponential growth led to increasing questions about whether organizers had veered too far from the core principles of radical inclusion, expression, participation, and the pledge to ‘leave no trace’,” the Associated Press reports. Many veteran participants believe the festival is losing touch with Burning Man’s roots as a “repudiation of order and authority.”
Organizers are considering minor changes for the future after this year’s event left behind mounds of garbage, abandoned vehicles, and overflowing portable toilets — contrary to the leave-no-trace code of ethics.
Discussion: Like most utopian visions, the practice of idealistic endeavors tends to morph into something quite different from the original intentions. There is a desire to hold onto what is there, but eventually it will take a new initiative to rekindle (so to speak) the desire for something different and inspiring.
Wisconsin Rules That Trump Can Appear On Ballot
After the Michigan Court of Claims ruled that state law does not allow election officials to deny the eligibility of presidential primary candidates to appear on the ballot, the Michigan Supreme Court also rejected the attempt to remove former president Donald Trump from the state’s 2024 ballot based on the US Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment ban on allowing insurrectionists to subsequently serve as president.
Michigan Court of Claims Judge James Redford said questions about whether Trump’s role in the January 6, 2021, insurrection prevents him from returning to the White House should be addressed by elected representatives in Congress rather than by the judicial branch.
The Colorado Supreme Court, however, ruled that Trump cannot appear on that state’s primary ballot because of his role in the January 6 Capitol riot. Trump is appealing that decision to the US Supreme Court.
Discussion: Some people question whether the Fourteenth Amendment, crafted to prevent Civil War rebels from serving as president, applies to today’s presidency. To me, there is no question that it does apply, and that Trump cannot legally serve. However, there are legitimate questions as to whether someone not yet found legally guilty of insurrection can be prevented from serving. Even if Trump cannot serve, it is reasonable to argue that his name still can appear on the ballot. The problem with that is, if elected, it would be difficult to deny his assuming office. (I can’t resist mentioning comedian Pat Paulsen’s presidential bid, in which he said, “I will not run if nominated, and if I’m elected, I will not serve.” In the 1996 New Hampshire primary, Paulsen received 921 votes to finish second to Bill Clinton.)
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