The dystopia at the front door

PALESTINE

Unless you’ve been to Palestine and seen firsthand what Palestinians are forced to endure by the Israeli military apparatus occupying an ever greater proportion of their land, it’s hard to understand the extraordinary oppression, humiliation and harassment occurring daily. Here’s a view from on the ground by an Australian human rights observer (my own account is here).

From Gaza, the story of Hamza’s death. What Labor’s shift on Palestine means. How extremism and Israel’s relentless settlement-building destroyed any chance of a “two-state solution”. And a “one-state solution” is the equivalent of apartheid, as former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak argues.

THE DYSTOPIA AT THE FRONT DOOR

Like a lame version of Minority Report, US police are now predictively policing black Americans for violent crimes — leading, inevitably, to violent crimes against black Americans. A new book explores the rise of mass shootings as an American phenomenon. The routine nature of mass shootings in the US. Artificial intelligence can now write its own disinformation without human help (why anyone thought writing an algorithm for that was a good idea is beyond me).

FOREIGN AFFAIRS

Just because the EU parliament voted the deal down doesn’t mean China accepts that its investment deal with the EU is dead (well why would they, given they don’t believe in nonsense like parliaments). China’s campaign of forced reproductive control in Xinjiang (seriously, why the hell are we contemplating sending anyone to the genocide Olympics next year?). Elsewhere, China also has a huge infrastructure debt problem. Europe should resist the example of the US and Australia and send diplomats to the Indo-Pacific, not people in uniform.

INDUSTRY POLICY

Unhappy with the Suez Canal, Japanese shippers are looking for other ways to ship to European markets. The collapse of Kashmir’s legendary carpet industry. Scott Morrison and Angus Taylor might be desperate to support fossil fuels but Australians are embracing rooftop solar at record levels, and European companies are abandoning natural gas at a rate of knots.

UNLIMITED FISCAL OPPORTUNITY

It’s been enjoyable to watch in recent days the rest of the media catch up with Side View’s long-running interest in UFOs. In case readers have ever wondered quite why Unexplained Aerial Phenomena (UAP’s the new, more legit acronym, like how sci-fi fans liked to refer to “speculative fiction”) is of such interest to a publication ostensibly interested in public affairs, here’s why.

That UFOs might, by some quirk of the laws of physics, be piloted by little green women from Proxima Centauri/Uranus/the fifth dimension is possibly the least interesting aspect of them (my view — they’re glitches in the simulation within which we reside, but that’s another story). But UFOs are endlessly fascinating for what humans project onto them, how they have morphed over the decades to reflect societal fears (the Cold War and communism, higher sources of non-capitalist wisdom, bodily and sexual violation) and the remarkable array of conspiracy theories they generate.

There is in fact a straight connection between the stories of alien abduction of the 1980s and ’90s (complete with anal probes) and cattle mutilations, and the profound hostility to the US government exhibited by large swathes of the population, based on the conviction it is engaged in some kind of conspiracy against citizens — often with straight tropes from right-wing mythmaking like world governments thrown in.

It’s also now clear that UFOs represent a magnificent new opportunity — especially in the conspiracy-genic state of US politics — for the channelling of more funds to defence contractors to “investigate” the phenomena and develop new technology. The New Republic explains.

MISCELLANEOUS

The cover-up continues in a decades-old British murder linked to systematic policy and media corruption (no prizes for guessing the media company concerned). Ex-Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger deplores wokeness (apparently it all went wrong after he stopped editing the official journal of record of political correctness…).

And finally, no, Americans are not returning their pandemic pets in large numbers. Because — why would you?