Partha Chakraborty- Hamas terrorist attacks on October 7 left 1400 murdered and 240 taken hostage in the deadliest single day for Jews worldwide since the Holocaust; it also spawned an avalanche of emotions in college campuses in the US. A section of the student body appears to not grasp the extent of the calamity, especially […]
In the wake of Oct 7 Hamas terrorist attack, US intelligentsia careened into a cacophony of victim-blaming. Subliminal antisemitism played a large part; some of the vituperative and insidious behavior was cocooned in a high-minded “resistance” to something called “settler-colonialism.” Since I was schooled in things other than grievance studies, and now make a living via real work and risk-taking, I had to look it up.
Partha Chakraborty writes: This morning, out of whimsy, I searched “distance between Tel Aviv and Gaza City.” Bing replied “49.3 miles * Light Traffic * 1 hr 7 min” [at 10:35 AM PT Oct 22, 2023]. At a balmy 79 degrees, this should be very pleasant, I could keep my top down and music up. Thankfully, Google Map did better, saying, “Sorry, we could not calculate driving directions.” If I went by the Art Museum of Tel Aviv, I would have seen the center of the plaza outside the museum featuring a symbolic installation — a long table covered with white cloth with 203 empty chairs and place-settings for guests that failed to turn up for Shabbat.
Partha Chakraborty writes: Vivek Ramaswamy sounds like a Messiah on the throes, even carrying his “Ten Commandments” anywhere he goes. It is easy to close the eyes and imagine him trekking down the dusty alleyways spewing venom on the tribes of today — he commits to eliminating three quarters of the Federal administrative apparatus. It is easy to imagine him standing on horseback seeking compadres for an expedition against the heretics — he commits to sending the US military across the Southern border.
Partha Chakraborty writes: The Fitch ratings? We did see this coming, I will argue. In these pages we lampooned supply chain debacles that started inflationary pressures, railed against rising deficit and government profligacy predicting they could force a fall from grace for the US dollar, advocated in favor of using debt-ceiling drama as a lever to bring wayward spending down; last week we discussed how the high-minded — and well intentioned — efforts at crafting a US “industrial policy” might not mean that much. Every single driver Fitch mentioned was flagged as a concern, if not a three-alarm-bell issue.
