Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 308
September 7, 2017
Tig Notaro on showing Mississippi’s ugly side in season 2: “It felt especially timely”
When Tig Notaro’s “One Mississippi” debuted in 2016, critics and audiences praised it for its wry, nimble exploration of family, relationships and grief. Its first season largely took inspiration from the veteran comic’s own famous annus horribilis.
But now, as its second season debuts on Amazon Prime after a politically divisive summer, the show’s Southern identity is taking own a deeper dimension. An upcoming episode, for example, explores the real life controversy over “Great Americans Day,” Biloxi’s Confederacy-nodding alternative to Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
Notaro spoke to Salon recently about her series and its depiction of the Magnolia State, its history and its present.
Here are some highlights from our conversation. Watch the full interview above for more on “One Mississippi.”
On writing while history is happening:
It felt timely when we were writing and when we were in production and filming.
I think what I’d like people to know is that yes, that is a terrible part of the South, but it’s also a terrible part of so many other states in the country. People like to think, “Oh my gosh, the South.” [There’s] this idea that it’s just this area where that’s the only thing going on with people’s mindset.
On how current events have shaped the show’s new season:
What I wanted to do with “One Mississippi” [during] the first season is show the beauty of the town and the state and the people. I also felt it would be irresponsible in the second season to not show that there is another side of Mississippi and of people. It felt especially timely to do so.
The tough lessons of “Wolf Warrior II”: The Trump effect on China’s box office
Donald Trump; Wolf Warriors II (Credit: AP/Alex Brandon/Deng Feng International Media)
For all the handwringing over the lousy summer box office, there’s been one huge success. Here’s a hint: a super hero travels to a foreign land, gets involved in a foreign war, and triumphs. Here’s another hint: WW.
No, not “Wonder Woman,” although that movie grossed $406 million domestically and $806 million worldwide. I’m talking directed by and starring Wu Jing as ex-special ops soldier Leng Feng, who fights western mercenaries to save locals and Chinese nationals in a fictional African country. It was released on July 27. It’s been shattering box office records in China ever since.
I know: We’ve been hearing the phrase “shattering box office records in China” for years now, but with reason: It keeps happening. Just 10 years ago, the biggest hit of the year in China was the first “Transformers” flick, which grossed $37.2 million. Compare that with China’s recent top grossers: In 2013 “Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons” took home $196,740,000. The next year “Transformers: Age of Extinction” made $320million. “Furious 7″ earned $390,910,000; and in 2015 “The Mermaid” scooped up $526,848,189.
Now “Wolf Warrior II” has shattered that record again, grossing $810 million (and counting) in China alone. Only one movie has ever grossed more in a single market: “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” which earned $936 million in the U.S. in 2015. “Wolf” has done so well domestically that it’s become the first non-Hollywood movie to enter the top 100 films in terms of worldwide gross. It’s 63rd with a bullet. It just passed “Wonder Woman.”Numbers via Box Office Mojo
Lone Wolf
The movie’s vibe is distinctly 1980s-era Sylvester Stallone. Leng Feng is a muscled, ex-military superpatriot who kicks ass abroad the way Rambo did, and drapes himself in the flag the way Rocky did in “Rocky IV.” If you think of those Stallone movies as an assertion of American manhood against Soviet political oppression, the Wu Jing movies are like an assertion of Chinese manhood against American cultural oppression. Despite the movies’ ostensible villains (an Asian drug lord in “Wolf Warrior” and an African rebel leader in “II”), Leng Feng’s real battles are with western mercenaries who belittle the Chinese. “You’re nothing but a bunch of boy scouts,” sneers Tomcat (Brit martial artist Scott Adkins) in “Wolf Warrior.” “People like you will always be beaten by people like me,” sneers Big Daddy (American martial artist Frank Grillo) in “II.”
Here, the West fights for money, not country, and flees when civil war breaks out. “From the dock,” Leng Feng tells a feisty Chinese-American doctor (Hong Kong actress Celina Jade), “I saw a Stars and Stripes flag among the countless masts heading into the distance.” Indignant, she calls up the U.S. consulate . . . and gets a recording: “We are closed.” But while others are fleeing, China steams into port. It is policeman of the world now.
And it’s recognized and respected as such. At the end, our bruised and bloodied rag-tag group of Chinese nationals and African locals are driving to safety when they are blocked by a firefight in a small town. Do they search for a way around? No. Leng Feng simply puts the Chinese flag on his arm — he literally wears the flag on his sleeve — and as they drive it unfurls behind him majestically. “Hold your fire!” the African soldiers shout. “It’s the Chinese!”
So yes, comparisons with Stallone and “Rambo” are in order, but it’s worth pointing out the differences at the box office. The most popular Rambo movie, “First Blood — Part II,” was certainly a hit, and, with “Rocky IV,” a Reagan-era cultural touchstone, but it didn’t exactly break all-time domestic box office records. It wasn’t even the highest-grossing film of 1985 (That distinction belongs to “Back to the Future,” which grossed $210 million against Rambo’s $150). More, the four Rambo pictures, for all of their rah-rah patriotism, actually did better abroad than in the states: $443.8 million vs. $294.1 million. That’s not the case with “Wolf II.” Its $810 million domestically dwarfs the $5 mil it earned internationally. The movie about Chinese power abroad, ironically, is only powerful at home.
But why is it so powerful at home? And why now? That’s the question everyone seems to be asking.
Is it the “rising tide of Chinese nationalism” as so many western commentators are saying? Maybe. Except the just-as-superpatriotic “Wolf Warrior” came out two years ago and grossed only $81 million. More, where was that rising nationalism last year when the No. 1 box-office hit was an environmentally conscious romantic comedy about a mermaid? What’s changed since 2016 that would make China flock in such huge numbers toward a superpatriot?
Well, the U.S. president changed.
Wolf blitz
Before I address all that, a few caveats. I get the difference between the box-office circumstances of the two “Wolf Warrior” movies. The first opened in 2015 in late March — not a great time for moviegoing — and was swamped a week later by “Furious 7.” The second not only opened in the more lucrative summer months but during a state-sanctioned blackout period of foreign releases — a protectionist policy designed to encourage attendance at Chinese-produced films. As a result, the only Hollywood competition “II” had when it premiered was the fourth weekend of “Despicable Me 3;” then nothing for a month.
Let me also acknowledge that “Wolf Warrior II” has great production values, huge explosions, a charismatic lead, and a kick-ass opening number in which, in a single shot, we see Leng Feng dive off a freighter being hijacked by Somali pirates, upend a hijacker inflatable, fight them underwater, then pull himself into one of the inflatables, pick up a rifle, and take out the lead hijacker with a crack shot from a hundred yards away. Cue credits.
I’m also well aware of the danger of assuming everything has to do with, you know, us.
That said, it’s fascinating to see exactly when “Wolf Warrior II” took off at the box office in unprecedented ways. Here’s how Scott Mendelson at Forbes describes it:
“Wolf Warrior II” opened . . . with a huge, but not necessarily record-setting $136m. That’s fine and dandy, even with the mere 15% drop from Saturday to Sunday and a 2.9x weekend multiplier. But then the picture earned $41.5 million on Monday, $42 million on Tuesday, $41.4m on Wednesday and $31.6m on Thursday, giving it a week-long $307.3 million running total and a Monday-Thursday total ($156 million) larger than the film’s opening weekend. And it made another $161 million in its second weekend, a jump of nearly 12% from its debut.
After Thursday, Friday and Saturday, in other words, “Wolf Warrior II” suddenly kicked into a gear never seen in movie history. Was this just word-of-mouth for a quality product? Or did something happen during that first weekend that might’ve nudged the film into stratospheric territory?
And here’s where we get to Donald Trump.
Trump has never exactly been a friend to China. In 2012, he tweeted that the concept of global warming was “created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive,” and during the 2016 campaign he repeatedly blamed China for “taking our jobs.” In one of his first acts as president-elect, he took a phone call from the president of Taiwan — a slap in the face to the mainland — and as president he’s continued to rail against the U.S. trade deficit with China, saying in May, “We can’t continue to allow China to rape our country.”
Then there’s how he’s harangued China over North Korea. And on July 28, during the opening weekend of “Wolf Warrior II,” the president of the United States made these belittling comments on Twitter to the world’s most populous nation:
I am very disappointed in China. Our foolish past leaders have allowed them to make hundreds of billions of dollars a year in trade, yet…
…they do NOTHING for us with North Korea, just talk. We will no longer allow this to continue. China could easily solve this problem!
Both tweets went out Saturday afternoon, which is Sunday morning in China. A day later, Xinhua, China’s state-run news agency, offered a public rebuke of the president. It suggested he stop “venting” on Twitter, and that the U.S. “must not continue spurning responsibility [for North Korea], and even less should it stab China in the back.”
Again, it was exactly at this moment that box office for “Wolf Warrior II” went ballistic.
There’s no way of knowing if Trump’s comments had an effect on the huge financial success of “Wolf Warrior II.” But if you’re a Chinese moviegoer, in this atmosphere, which movie would you rather see? A romantic fantasy about the goddess of the heavenly realms? The third, overdone “founding of China” movie? Or the one where the Chinese superpatriot kicks the ass of the pompous, belittling American?
If true, the irony is overwhelming. The bluster of the self-proclaimed “businessman president” would have helped reveal the power of the Chinese marketplace and its protectionist policies at the very time Hollywood studios are trying to negotiate a better deal with China. Not exactly Make America Great Again.
Wife of Trump Organization ethics lawyer busted in backseat of car with jailhouse inmate
(Credit: AP/Evan Vucci)
The wife of an ethics attorney for President Donald Trump’s business organization was arrested on Tuesday after allegedly engaging in “suspicious” activity with an inmate trustee in the backseat of a car outside of a jail, according to the Fauquier Times.
Teresa Jo Burchfield, 53, is the wife of Bobby Burchfield who “was appointed as an independent ethics advisor to the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust in January,” the Virginia-based newspaper reported this week. Burchfield has served as a Republican attorney for years and also “served as counsel to President George W. Bush in the 2000 Florida recount.”
His wife was arrested on Tuesday “in a parking lot adjacent to the Fauquier County Adult Detention Center,” after law enforcement officials allegedly found her in the backseat of a car with an inmate trustee, the Times reported. A criminal complaint filed in Fauquier County General District Court alleged that the two were having sex.
“The defendant was caught in the backseat of her vehicle with an inmate…,” Dept. J. B. Thorpe wrote in Burchfield’s criminal complaint, according to the newspaper. “When the inmate exited the vehicle, he handed me a bag of brown pills (capsules), that he claims to be workout pills.” Other items were found on the inmate included cigarettes, clothes, vitamin supplements as well as “unauthorized articles alleged to have been obtained from the female,” the Times reported.
The 23-year-old inmate was of “trustee” a status at the time, which means that they were jailed on “minimal charges” as well as “authorized to perform work inside and outside of the detention center and sheriff’s office facilities,” the statement said. The inmate also said that the two have been meeting for roughly a month.
Burchfield, an “independent research consultant” in the Washington D.C. area, according to her Linkedin profile, was released on $5,000 bail after being charged with “willfully delivering unauthorized articles to a confined prisoner, a class 1 misdemeanor.”
“Yo, I’m not going to die young”: A chef’s journey from diabetes diagnosis to community health
Struggling with the task of maintaining a nutritious diet, especially when finding the time to properly plan a healthy eating schedule, can feel almost impossible. And what are we supposed to eat when we do find the time? Markets are exploding with GMO foods, unpronounceable chemicals and in some cases even tainted vegetables, so I’m often left scratching my head as I wander the aisles of the grocery store. But all hope isn’t lost. I recently sat down with Chad Cherry, a chef and the founder of Refresh Live, to talk about solutions.
Refresh Live is an organization focused on developing community education and empowerment programs to combat food disparity, address food deserts, and bring a farm-to-table and organic lifestyle to income-challenged areas.
“I start in the culinary community when I became a Type 2 diabetic [at] 26, so I was pretty young, and I always say I took an unscheduled vacation,” said Cherry. “I didn’t get to pack no bags; I spent a month in the hospital, and when I came out, I was like, what do I do now?”
Cherry said his doctors told him “everything I couldn’t eat,” but didn’t really offer him a blueprint for how to live after his diagnosis, so he had to learn.
“I was like, yo, I’m not going to die young, I’m not going to have any of the side effects of diabetes,” he said. “So I started cooking myself.”
Cherry figured out how to save himself, and then started Refresh Live so that he could do the same for others. Watch our full conversation to learn more about clean eating and how we all can be healthy.
Trump’s war on Dreamers and other immigrants is a frontal attack on everyone’s economic safety net
Supporters of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Credit: Jeff Malet Photography)
Donald Trump reportedly will announce on Tuesday that he will end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), the legal protection accorded to 800,000 young people, known as “Dreamers,” who have lived in the United States since they were children. Dreamers are contributing members of society who grew up here but happened to be born in another country to mothers who moved here without the proper papers.
So much for not being punished for the sins of our parents. And for not being arbitrary and capricious in our public policy. Two siblings, a year apart in age, could face very different circumstances simply because the younger one was born inside the United States and the older one outside. One would be, thanks to our Constitution, an American citizen, with all the rights and privileges citizenship grants. The other could be a demonized “other,” subject to the whims of Trump.
The United States is the home of both siblings, just as much as it is for everyone else who grew up here. President Obama appropriately coaxed Dreamers out of the shadows on the promise that their government wouldn’t come along and exile them from their homes. They trusted their government. By doing so, not only are the Dreamers now in jeopardy, but so are other members of their families.
Trump’s action is part of his larger war on immigrants. He recently suggested changing the immigration laws so that the number of people immigrating to the United States would be cut in half. He has defamed immigrants by asserting that they are criminals – even though immigrants have lower crime rates than native-born Americans. He has unleashed the power of the federal government to hunt down and deport people on the flimsiest of excuses, often separating mothers from children in the process.
His attitude toward immigrants is ignorant, stupid, and immoral. Trump is showing himself to be cruel and callous. His cavalier announcement that he would wait until after the holiday weekend to announce what he plans for the Dreamers and their families perfectly exemplifies his cruel and callous indifference to causing fear and worry.
But his policies are more than cruel and callous. They are destructive of our country in general and of our Social Security system, in particular.
Lin-Manuel Miranda, the brilliant composer, lyricist, and performer, explained it in a succinct and catchy fashion, in a line from his hit musical “Hamilton”: “Immigrants, we get the job done!” Immigrants, in general, and the Dreamers, specifically, are members of the armed forces, firefighters, doctors, nurses, teachers, and other contributing members of our society.
Take, for example, Tomas Pendola, a high school chemistry teacher who came to this country at age 10. Now aged 25, he is one of about 20,000 Dreamers teaching in our schools. If they are deported, hundreds of thousands of our nation’s children will lose their teachers.
Trump’s decision to end DACA puts our communities at risk. It also damages our economy. Trump’s action will cost the economy hundreds of billions of dollars in lost GDP. It will also hit Social Security’s financing, making it harder to expand, and not cut, our earned benefits.
Immigration is a net plus for Social Security’s financing. Because immigrants are generally younger, they contribute currently and do not draw benefits until far into the future. Ironically, undocumented workers contribute even more. They are prohibited from receiving Social Security, even when they can prove that they have contributed and so earned those benefits, just like the rest of us. The Social Security Administration has estimated that undocumented workers pay billions of dollars to Social Security each year, but earn no benefits as a result of those contributions.
If Trump has his way and cuts immigration in half, Social Security will lose $2.4 trillion over the next 75 years. In contrast, if immigration were doubled, Social Security would gain around $5 trillion over the next 75 years. The increased revenue that would flow to Social Security as the result of increased immigration would be about two and half times the cost of switching to the more accurate Consumer Price Index for the Elderly, so that benefits don’t erode. That projected increased revenue is about seventeen times the cost of restoring benefits to students between the ages of 18 and 22, whose working parents have died or become disabled. It is more than four times the cost of recognizing the invaluable role of family caregivers by providing Social Security wage credits to stay-at-home parents and other family caregivers. Indeed, it is substantially more than the cost of giving all current and future beneficiaries a five percent increase starting today!
The right policy, reflecting both the values and the self-interest of the country, is to expand immigration while bringing undocumented immigrants out from the shadows. But Trump is pursuing just the opposite. And the reason is not hard to see.
In order to keep all of us from uniting against him and his billionaire cronies, who refuse to pay their fair share towards the common good, he seeks to get us to fight with one another. In magic, it is called misdirection: Don’t look at all the upward redistribution of wealth; focus, instead, on our different heritages, religions, beliefs, and other qualities that set us apart from one another. President Franklin Roosevelt understood this tactic well. In a speech defending Social Security, he eloquently reminded us, “It is an old strategy of tyrants to delude their victims into fighting their battles for them.”
Let us not let ourselves be so deluded. Let’s join together to fight against Trump’s divisive tactics and policies. Let’s join together and fight for policies that unite us, including the expansion of Social Security. A good place to start paying for that expansion is by increasing immigration and inviting Dreamers and others living in the shadows to come into the sunshine and join our great nation that reminds us, every time we look at our money, that out of many, we are one.
September 6, 2017
2,000 striking auto mechanics say their whole industry needs realignment
(AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar) (Credit: AP)
The cost of car repairs might make your heart sink, but Chicago-area mechanics say they don’t get a fair deal from dealerships, either. On August 1, the nearly 2,000 members of Auto Mechanics Union Local 701 voted overwhelmingly to strike after rejecting a contract at the end of July. If the strike doesn’t produce the contract the union wants, many young mechanics could be facing tough decisions about their future.
Rafael Rosas, 23, has been working at the Nissan dealership in Evanston, Ill, for three years. He was promoted from lube-technician to apprentice last year and now makes a little under $20 an hour. Before he can become a journeyman, or full-fledged mechanic, his employer must agree to promote him—a process that can take up to 8 years. Rosas says he can’t wait that long; if the union fails at the negotiation table, he’s going to leave the industry for plumbing or another more lucrative trade in order to keep up with rent, bills and student loan payments.
“I wanted to become a mechanic, and we’ll see if everything works out,” says Rosas. “If not, I’m gonna have to change careers.”
Better wages and faster promotion for apprentices are among the strikers’ top demands. Aspiring auto
mechanics might spend two or three years as a lube-technician before even being offered an apprenticeship, says Elion Seitllari, an Automotive Instructor at Truman College in Chicago. Those positions generally pay under $20 an hour, and aspiring mechanics may also spend thousands of dollars to buy their own tools, which is effectively a requirement in the industry.
The union wants to cut to five years the time that employers can keep apprentices before promoting them. As the strike entered its fourth week, the union sent a new contract proposal Tuesday evening to the New Car Dealers Committee, which is representing 140 or so local dealerships in the negotiations. Both sides are expected to return to the negotiation table in the coming days. The union voted to reject a proposed contract earlier in the month, saying it met very few of their demands.
“It’s not even about what’s right at this point,” says Christian Walker, head technician at Northside Toyota in Chicago. “Seems like a battle of ego: ‘How dare us peasants challenge you.’”
Local 701 is the largest mechanics union in the country. It’s part of the International Association of Machinists (IAM) and Aerospace Workers, which originally formed in 1888 and began organizing auto mechanics in the 1920s.
On Wednesday, IAM International President Bob Martinez visited strikers outside the Cadillac of Naperville in Chicago’s western suburbs. According to a report by CBS Chicago, the suburban dealership recently instructed striking technicians to remove their toolboxes from the premises and threatened to hire replacements.
“We’re sick and tired of their bullshit and we deserve what we’re owed,” Martinez told a crowd of about 50, who had assembled next to an iconic inflatable rat balloon used by unions to shame unfair employers. Martinez told In These Times that said the mechanics’ strike highlights the importance of solidarity, saying that it would “benefit both union and non-union workers” by improving conditions industry-wide. About 45 percent of Chicago auto mechanics are unionized, according to IAM.
Nationally, the industry is facing an auto mechanic shortage. One estimate predicts there will be more than 25,000 unfilled positions in the next five years, according the New York Times. Experts worry there aren’t even enough training facilities to meet the demand in time. Cars are more sophisticated than ever, meaning mechanics need training in traditional auto repairs, as well as computer and electrical repair. Vocational work isn’t popular to begin with, and working as a plumber or electrician is often more profitable than trying to break into automotive service.
Local 701 believes their recommended changes will entice new talent. But Dave Radelet, lead negotiator for the NCDC, insists that the union’s demands aren’t feasible. He acknowledges that a typical dealership charges customers $100 or more for an hour of service, while union technicians usually make around $30 an hour. But the difference goes toward expenses and employee benefits, he says. As for the young workers stuck waiting for a promotion, Radelet said they should leave for another dealership and negotiate a higher job title with better pay.
Another key demand from the union is a 40-hour a week guarantee for journeymen, up from the 34 their
contract currently ensures. The NCDC reports that 70 percent of technicians book 40 hours or more through working additional repair jobs, but the union feels this arrangement leaves workers vulnerable to slow weeks where there isn’t enough work coming in. Additionally, low repair times for warranty fixes can lead to unpaid work: per industry standards for new-car dealerships, mechanics are only paid for the time manufacturers state a given job should take, and both the union and NCDC agree these times have dropped in recent years. If a mechanic needs four hours to finish a job that’s listed to only take two, they are only paid for half that work time (Radelet says this is a “very rare situation,” but several mechanics told In These Times that jobs often take longer than the listed repair time).
Marc Osberg, a mechanic at the Evanston Nissan shop, says that his annual pay has fallen from $80,000 in 2007 to less than $60,000 today, thanks to a drop in his paid hours. He filed for bankruptcy earlier this year, after his wife’s illness and eventual death pushed him into debt.
“It’s almost like losing a part-time job the way we’ve been getting paid,” he says.
There’s no word yet on exactly when both sides will return to the negotiating table or have a new contract to vote on. But this strike, says Christian Walker, shows exactly what happens when you don’t have enough mechanics in the shop.
“The guys who are treated the worst and ignored the most overnight shut down 140 multi-million-dollar businesses,” he says. “You can take anyone else from this equation and this will still operate. You take us out? Done.”
How to watch YouTube with your kids
(Credit: AP/Richard Vogel)
For some kids, it’s not enough to watch YouTube videos. Some kids want to make them, too. And a growing number of under-20 YouTubers are doing just that — and earning good money. Whether they play “Minecraft,” review toys, make music videos, or just rant, they’re attracting other kids in droves. (Check out “A Parent’s Ultimate Guide to YouTube” for tips on managing your kid’s YouTube time.) With millions of viewers, young vloggers are regularly among YouTube’s top 50 most-subscribed-to and most viewed, becoming nearly as influential and vital to kids as TV.
Like all things on YouTube, kid vloggers come in all varieties. Some, such as tween gamer LTCorbis, are completely independent, self-funded, and self-motivated. And not necessarily age-appropriate. Some, such as the 7-year-old star of Ryan’s Toys Review, are directed by their parents. Some are part of larger content-creation groups, such as the Fine Brothers Entertainment channels Kids React and Teens React. Most YouTube kids also are multi-platform, cultivating audiences on Instagram, Musical.ly, Snapchat, and Twitter and even writing books.
It’s natural for kids to be attracted to watching other kids. But be aware that many YouTube videos — even ones hosted by kids — may contain mature content. And while plenty of kid YouTubers are safe bets, there are some pros and cons about the entire enterprise.
On the Plus Side:
Videos tend to be relatively brief, bite-sized chunks of news and entertainment (ideal for kid attention spans and schedules).
The hosts are interested in the same subjects your kids are, and they look and talk like them — which gives your kids a sense of connection.
When kids choose their own entertainment, they often don’t spend time on stuff they don’t like. They tune into specific vloggers who deliver incredibly relevant information that’s tailor-made to their interests.
The fact that these kids are earning thousands (and even millions!) can make vlogging look like an attractive undertaking to fans (i.e., your kids). It also can be a creative and educational hobby, but there are some risks. If your kid wants to try it, get tips on doing it safely.
On the Down Side:
Language and content can be an issue, especially with gamers and any tween and teen vloggers.
Your kid will be seeing a lot of advertising. Ads are how YouTube and its users make money, and the ads are not all age-appropriate.
Many YouTubers, especially toy reviewers, get stuff for free in exchange for coverage on their channels. They may or may not disclose that fact. But your kids may not understand that sometimes what they’re watching is essentially advertising.
According to YouTube’s terms of service, users must be at least 13 to run a channel. The fact that there are so many kid bloggers makes it seem like younger kids are permitted. Kid bloggers usually state that their parents actually own the channel, but this fact could be lost on your kids.
Here are some of the most highly subscribed kids on YouTube. Check our guidance on which ages they’re best suited for:
Ryan’s Toy Reviews
Evan Tube HD
Kid President
Kids React and Teens React
EthanGamer
Jacob Sartorius
Mark Thomas
Brooklyn and Bailey
Matty B Raps
Awesomeness TV
LtCorbis
Bretman Rock
Jay Versace
Ryan’s Toys Review
This 7-year-old has been creating toy-demonstration videos (with the help of his mom, who directs and works the camera) since age 4. Now, with more than 6 million subscribers, the videos of Ryan playing with cars, trucks, superheroes, surprise eggs, and Play-Doh are some of the most viewed on the entire internet.
Quick take: Ryan’s Toys Review features tons of products, including expensive ones like kiddie cars. The family donates a lot of the toys to charity, but the “reviews” give the companies lots of publicity.
Best for: Preschoolers and little kids
He started with a stop-motion “Angry Birds” video at age 8. Now, 12-year-old Evan’s videos, featuring unboxing, toy reviews, and food challenges, have billions of views, millions of subscribers, and spin-off channels featuring his sister and family — oh, yeah, and millions of dollars in yearly revenue.
Quick take: Evan’s videos are filmed by his father, and they are all family-friendly and fun — if product-heavy.
Best for: Little kids and tweens
Teen actor Robby Novak portrays the character Kid President on the thought-provoking channel Soul Pancake. Kid President poses innocent but profound questions such as, “What makes an awesome leader?” He has done TED talks and has been invited to the White House.
Quick take: Through his many “pep talk” vlogs and musings, Kid President gets kids to think deeply about civic engagement.
Best for: Big kids and tweens
Produced by the internet content-creation team Fine Brothers Entertainment, these series feature kids and teens viewing and commenting on viral videos. Through their reactions and impressions, the audience gets a glimpse into how young folks perceive the world and the people in it. Many of the kids and teens of React (including singer and actress Lia Marie Johnson, now on AwesomenessTV) also have their own channels and cultivate audiences independently of the series.
Quick take: You have to know a little about viral videos and internet trends to really “get” these shows. Kids (and parents) can learn how to view media more critically by watching other kids express their ideas.
Best for: Big kids, tweens, teens
While mostly known as a gamer (“Roblox,” “Minecraft,” and “Pokémon”), this British tween has branched out into unboxing videos, candy reviews, and toy reviews.
Quick take: If you’d like to find a mild-mannered gamer for your kid, Ethan is your boy.
Best for: Tweens
A singer-songwriter at the tender age of 14, Sartorius also reaches millions of fans on Musical.ly, Twitter, and Spotify. His single “Last Text” amassed over 4 million views, and he has designs on becoming as famous as another singer-songwriter kid who got his start on YouTube (Justin Bieber).
Quick take: A talented, likable entertainer whose music, while not groundbreaking, is easy on the ears.
Best for: Tweens
This teen entertainer has mastered the art of cross-platform self-promotion. In addition to his YouTube channel, he has a social media presence under the name Duhitzmark on Twitter, Instagram, and Musical.ly. Kids — mostly girls — like him for his heartthrob looks, sexy moves, and original videos.
Quick take: Adults may not necessarily understand the appeal, but kids go crazy for his stuff, including sexy, grinding dance moves and explicit music.
Best for: Tweens
Seventeen-year-old identical twins Brooklyn and Bailey got their start on their mom’s beauty vlog, Cute Girls’ Hairstyles. They now upload slickly produced videos on a range of subjects from dating to fashion to DIY.
Quick take: There’s nothing not to like about these charming blue-eyed beauties — unless, maybe, they’re too perfect?
Best for: Tweens and teens
This 14-year-old singer-songwriter uploads songs, music videos, skits, and other material to the delight of his 2 million-plus fans. He launched a cross-country tour based on his YouTube success.
Quick take: Matty B often features his friends (many of whom are girls) on his vlogs, which offer a glimpse into his seemingly charmed teenage life.
Best for: Tweens and teens
AwesomenessTV is a youth-oriented entertainment brand, sort of like MTV but web-based (although it had a show on Nickelodeon for a while, too). It features teens and 20-somethings who vlog, sing, and perform on the channel’s original scripted series such as “Chat.Like.Love” and “Foursome.”
Quick take: While stars’ individual vlogs are mostly mild, the scripted series can be edgy.
Best for: Teens
LtCorbis is actually a middle schooler named Sophia. She vlogs, tweets, and shows up on gaming sites such as Steam and forums such as Reddit. Some of her videos contain racial and ethnic slurs, and many contain expletives. Still, her rants draws fans who are enthralled by observations.
Quick take: Her videos may have some value for gamers, but overall she seems embittered beyond her years.
Best for: Teens
With his jet-black hair, clear blue eyes, and steady stream of hilarious commentary on life, Hawaiian teen Bretman Rock has makeup tips that seem almost beside the point. He shares beauty techniques — and lots more — on his boundary-pushing channel.
Quick take: For a guy who specializes in makeovers, he’s endearingly down-to-earth.
Best for: Teens
This teen got his start doing short, funny skits on the now-defunct video-sharing site Vine. On his madcap YouTube channel, he will do anything for a laugh, such as giving ridiculous advice, wearing wigs, fake crying, and even pranking his viewers.
Quick take: Though he’s super silly, he’s one of the most adept video editors on YouTube, and he conveys lots of humor through interesting splicing techniques.
Best for: Teens
Climate anxiety doesn’t have to ruin your life. Here’s how to manage it
FILE - In this Dec. 19, 2016, file photo, Chinese women wearing masks to protect themselves from air pollution walk through Ritan Park shrouded by dense smog in Beijing. China's government said on Wednesday, March 29, 2017, it will stick to its promises to curb carbon emissions after President Donald Trump eased U.S. rules on fossil fuel use that were meant to control global warming. A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said Beijing is committed to the Paris climate agreement. (AP Photo/Andy Wong, File) (Credit: AP)
A reader recently wrote me to say she has given up. She is done.
Our reader is a relentless recycler — beyond that, a recycling evangelist. She removes her coworkers’ recyclables from the trash, an action that has earned her a reputation as the office’s “passive-aggressive bitch.” She’s infuriated by grocery stores’ cavalier attitude toward reusing plastic bags. And she is struggling, she writes, to keep from plunging into a pit of deep despair.
People usually fall into one of two camps upon hearing such a story. You cheer her on for fighting the good fight, or you dismiss her as a humorless try-hard who won’t stop telling you how to live your life. Either way, her conflict is a familiar one: She’s endeavoring to do what she can to forestall seemingly inevitable disaster, all the while seeing no progress.
Climate change is an existential threat. If CO2 levels hit a certain concentration and temperatures increase by a particular number of degrees, the human race is certainly doomed. This summer, in particular, has seen a nonstop slew of ever-worse disasters that permanently changed lives and formerly familiar landscapes: from Hurricane Harvey to western wildfires that fill the sky with ash.
It’s also a unique threat, because you know what you should do to foil it: Don’t drive, don’t fly, don’t eat meat, don’t buy lots of things, don’t vote for (most) Republicans. But in practice, it’s hard to do many of those things. At best, they are mildly inconvenient; at worst, they obstruct your daily life and long-term goals.
And climate change — while slow-moving — has already begun to alter the places in which we live in ways that cannot be reversed. That, to the average person, is a viscerally depressing sentiment.
So I’ll give you a moment. But only one!
The sad truth is, you can’t control the actions of your peers, coworkers, and fellow citizens, so you need to figure out how to keep yourself from losing all hope. So I did what so many Americans have reluctantly dragged themselves to do, and talked to a therapist. (A few of them, actually.) Here’s what I gleaned: Confront the end of your own life, and then figure out one thing you can do to channel your anxiety effectively.
The anxious brain is a bit of a hellhole, so let me attempt to describe it for the blessedly unfamiliar. There’s some nebulous peril looming — you don’t know what it is, but you know you’re supposed to be doing things to avert it, and you’re not doing any of them. So you sit and you fret. And the weight of your inaction gets heavier and heavier.
Anxiety seems like a very popular thing to have right now. Many of us feel out of control, and we like to yell about it on the internet, as Julie Beck recently pointed out in The Atlantic: “I am scared! I don’t know what’s going to happen! I can’t sleep!” (The yelling, as Beck noted, does nothing to assuage your anxiety — but does a good job of spreading it to your audience.)
A portion of environmental psychologist Renee Lertzman’s work is devoted to what she calls “environmental melancholia,” our unconscious sadness over ecological loss and degradation. And in the great American WASP tradition, we have no earthly idea how to talk about those feelings. So we don’t!
Lertzman starts with the premise that a single person can’t stop an environmental crisis. One person can only do so much, and many people are doing too much to drown out any individual action. That imbalance, Lertzman says, can lead to a kind of depression — a “resignation of place,” she calls it. Sufferers might try to avoid those feelings by focusing obsessively on a behavior that they believe can be effective.
Thus, the environmentally woke can fall victim to recycling fanaticism, vegan evangelism, bicycle zealotry. The urge to convert others to the cause grows: If everyone knew the human-race-eliminating consequences of climate change, why wouldn’t they take the actions to prevent them? Soon, you’re bullying the not-yet-converted: “You must do this too, you see — because if you don’t, we’ll all die.”
That’s the worst possible approach, Lertzman says, if you want to have an impact.
“Our inability to manage feeling out of control often leads to very unproductive communication and behaviors, which center around: ‘How do I get you to care about what I care about?’ ‘How do I get you to change?’” she explains. “And that simply brings up people’s resistance and ambivalence.”
No one likes being told what to do. They also don’t typically enjoy pondering their demise. But resistance to confronting climate change is essentially choosing not to think about your own death.
That is the guiding philosophy of Michael Apathy, a psychotherapist in New Zealand who treats environmental anxiety. In some of his younger patients, he says, he’s seeing “a real terror and despair that the picture of our individual and collective future is just so, so dark.”
But feeling terror and despair isn’t the same as truly coming to grips with the fatal implications of climate change. They’re the product of futility brought about by anxiety — the running-in-circles sensation of not being able to do enough to save the world.
“The impulse to do something proactive is very, very healthy, in my mind,” says Apathy, contrary to his surname. “But when that becomes over-relied on as a substitute for facing the fear and deep rage and loss periodically, we get uncreative and disillusioned and backed up against a wall.”
So maybe our initial reader — the so-called “passive-aggressive bitch” — has been vigilante-ing the neighborhood’s recycling bins as a way to avoid reckoning with her own mortality. I mean, who among us?
Margaret Klein Salamon, a psychologist and founder of the Climate Mobilization initiative, is fond of quoting (well, paraphrasing) famed conservationist Aldo Leopold: “Being ecologically conscious is like living in a world of wounds.”
“The truth is: This is really fucking terrible,” says Klein Salamon, who believes that we are about three seconds shy of running out of time to deal with the climate crisis. “And I prefer to live in that.”
Klein Salamon’s organization is pushing for a World War II-era mobilization to drastically reduce emissions. It’s not what she envisioned her life’s calling to be. She’d hoped to be a psychologist, to write, to have a family — her own version of the American dream.
“I was in my Ph.D. program when I realized this whole ‘have a private practice and write books’ thing isn’t going to feel very good on a collapsing planet,” Salamon says.
So she changed course. And while the cause is grandiose, Climate Mobilization’s means to its desired end aren’t particularly Herculean. They are, in sum: “Organize your community and get involved in politics.” Still, with so many people seemingly unwilling to take on even that responsibility, I wondered how Salamon kept from buckling under such a weight.
“I have a lot of doubt about whether this is going to work,” she fires back. “But the thing is, I don’t have any doubt about what I should do. It doesn’t really matter whether there’s a 50- percent or 10- percent or 1- percent chance that it’s going to work. What matters is doing everything you can to enhance that likelihood.”
One of Klein Salamon’s subtler points is that there are a million ways to attack a problem as big as climate change. A single one of them can’t fix the problem, of course, but each chips a piece off the carbon burden. It’s up to you to figure out which one can be your strongest little pickaxe, and how to wield it to have the most impact. (The strongest pickaxe, we can infer from Renee Lertzman’s recommendations, is perhaps not yelling at people about recycling — but rather, finding other, less howl-y ways to get them interested in climate issues.)
Courtney Mattison, for example, creates insanely beautiful sculptures of corals. The idea is that the uninitiated observer might see, say, a ceramic recreation of a brain coral and think: “What a good thing that is — I don’t want it to die!” That’s how she’s chosen to take on climate change.
She was driven to her current vocation after falling in love with coral reefs and then immediately realizing that they were dying — like A Walk to Remember, but replace a cancer-stricken Mandy Moore with zooxanthellae. When it comes to saving ecosystems, she explains, you can’t tell people what to do. Instead, try enticing them.
Consider the difficulty of Mattison’s work for a moment. She spends months building delicate replicas of beloved creatures that are on their aquatic deathbeds, thanks to the actions of billions of blissfully unaware humans.
“I do privately vent and complain and tear my hair out,” Mattison says when I ask how she keeps pushing forward. “But then I get it together and think about what will be productive in terms of inspiring change.”
Mattison has taken on a tall challenge. It is hard to try to coax humans into assessing their impact on non-human creatures. Most of us have never even seen a coral (myself included). But it is somehow even more frustrating, in practice, to watch humans fail to care about the fate of their own future generations.
Roberto Nutlouis has been a community organizer with the Black Mesa Water Coalition for 16 years. That means — among many other characteristics — he tries to build tribal support and enthusiasm for climate mitigation and adaptation projects in the Navajo nation of northwest Arizona. And he frequently has to negotiate between opposing interests within the community.
For example, there’s a lot of debate over the coal, oil, and gas infrastructure on reservations. Older officials in the community rely on the revenue that it can bring to a relatively impoverished community, while Nutlouis and his younger cohort insist that fossil-fuel development will keep the tribe from living sustainably. Both groups want the same outcome — the survival and success of the Navajo nation — but see wildly different ways of achieving it.
How do you keep from being driven to despair when the ones you are disagreeing with are the ones you’re trying, specifically, to protect? How do you deal with resistance to a threat that, to you, is urgent?
His answer surprised me, honestly: He’s patient. The projects he’s developing — a food-sovereignty initiative, a land-grant system — will be entrusted to younger members of the tribe, those who understand climate change and are passionate about fighting it.
“I’ve accepted the fact that some of these ideas may not come into fruition in my lifetime,” he says. “But we’ve got to plant these seeds, and some of them will sprout. They need to be watered and nourished.
“That’s my hope in my work.”
All of this is to say, dear reader, when you feel anxious and out of control in the face of a changing planet, choose the thing that you can do best and most effectively, and then don’t let others ruin your faith in it. I chose my thing — climate journalism. It is frequently horrible — thanks to the subject matter — and I feel anxious and powerless and sad regularly.
But when one piece of writing turns out even approximately as well as I wanted it to, it feels like I have taken one small but sure-footed step toward saving humanity. And that makes the next, inevitably faltering ones easier.
You feel what you feel, you do what you can, and you try not to carry the weight of every errant carbon molecule on your shoulders. Everyone else is carrying that weight, too, whether they’ve dealt with it or not — and most are just as lost as you are. You help them figure out their thing that they can do, rather than tell them what they should be doing. You try to be patient.
And doing all of these things, is what will keep you from giving up hope.
How Muslim Americans are fighting Islamophobia and securing their civil rights
Protesters chant slogans against President Donald Trump's executive order on immigration Thursday, Jan. 26, 2017, in downtown Miami. The protesters manifested their opposition to Trump's executive order restricting immigration from some Middle Eastern and African countries. (AP Photo/Alan Diaz) (Credit: AP Photo/Alan Diaz)
The past year has been a difficult one for American Muslims.
According to a July 2017 Pew survey, 48 percent of Muslims report experiencing at least one incident of discrimination in the past 12 months. The Council on American-Islamic Relations and other Muslim advocacy organizations found these trends were particularly intense during the 2016 campaigns and the early months of the Trump presidency.
And while the survey shows that Americans report warmer feelings toward Muslims today than they did in 2014, Muslims continue to be the most negatively rated religious group — followed closely by atheists. In fact, about half of Americans (49 percent) believe that at least “some” Muslim Americans are anti-American.
As a scholar of religion and politics, I’ve studied how U.S. Muslim advocacy organizations have advanced their community’s integration in America. Their work reminds us that minorities in the U.S. are still struggling for civil rights.
Islamophobia in politics
Spikes in anti-Muslim sentiments and hate crimes appear to correlate with elections cycles. This is not a coincidence. In recent years, politicians have increasingly relied on anti-Muslim rhetoric to mobilize voters. What was once considered unacceptable discourse by members of both parties has gradually been normalized, particularly among Republican candidates.
During the 2016 presidential primaries, for example, Sen. Ted Cruz called for law enforcement to “patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods.” Ben Carson claimed that Islam was incompatible with the Constitution. And former Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal warned that some immigrants were trying to “change our fundamental culture and values and set up their own.”
Then, candidate Donald Trump called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” Many critics consider that statement the basis for his January 27 executive order banning immigration from seven Muslim majority countries.
Muslim Americans are responding through organizations that represent their interests, and are increasingly visible, engaged and assertive. At the grassroots level, their presence is seen through the work of activists like Linda Sarsour, a co-sponsor of the 2017 Women’s March. At the policy level, Muslim advocacy organizations such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations also work to advance the community’s legislative agenda.
Advocating for Muslim Americans
There are an estimated 3.35 million Muslims in the U.S. A majority of them, 58 percent, are first-generation Americans who arrived in the U.S. after the passage of the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965. As these immigrants began to settle in the U.S., they established institutions. In fact, most Muslim advocacy groups were founded in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but gained prominence in the post-9/11 era.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Muslim Public Affairs Council and the more recently established U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations are among the largest at the national level.
By working on behalf of one of the most stigmatized religious minority groups, Muslim advocacy organizations aspire to uphold the most cherished of American ideals and values: liberty, equality and the inalienable rights of all citizens. They aim to make U.S. Muslims agents of their own narratives, fostering their civic engagement and strengthening the social fabric of our nation.
Muslim American advocacy today
For years, these organizations have encouraged and registered Muslim citizens to vote. More recently, they’ve begun encouraging them to run for office. These efforts are significant because many Muslims are not registered to vote, and only 44 percent of those who are voted during the 2016 elections.
Muslim advocacy organizations are also actively bringing their community’s concerns to the attention of elected officials. Some of their most recent lobbying efforts include calling on the House and Senate to support two bills. The No Religious Registry Act of 2017 (H.R. 489) would protect the constitutional rights of American Muslims. And Senate Bill 248 would block Trump’s travel ban on seven Muslim majority countries.
They’ve also lobbied for the protection of immigrant communities and the cessation of religious and racial profiling. In particular, they have focused on building support for the BRIDGE Act, which would protect young undocumented immigrants from deportation, and the End Racial and Religious Profiling Act of 2017 (S.411), which would protect all Americans from discriminatory profiling by law enforcement.
U.S. Muslims face serious challenges, but they are also increasingly motivated to confront them. Their efforts show how minority groups in America work to secure their collective interests and continue the process of building an inclusive democracy.
Emily Cury, Research Fellow in International Affairs and Middle East Studies, Northeastern University
Israel is playing charades in its population battle with Palestine
FILE -- In this Sunday, Dec. 25, 2016 file photo, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem. On Wednesday, Jan. 5, 2017, Netanyahu called for a pardon for a soldier convicted of manslaughter in the shooting death of a badly wounded Palestinian assailant. With his comment, the prime minister has plunged into a raging political debate that has divided the country and put himself at odds with the military. Sgt. Elor Azaria was convicted on Wednesday of manslaughter in the fatal shooting of a Palestinian who lay on the ground incapacitated from shots sustained after he stabbed and wounded a soldier in the volatile West Bank city of Hebron. (Dan Balilty/Pool photo via AP, File) (Credit: Dan Balilty/Pool photo via AP, File)
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered a crushing rebuke to the hopes of perennial optimists roused by the visit to the Middle East last week of Donald Trump’s adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner. At an event on Monday in the West Bank celebrating the half-centenary of Israeli occupation, Netanyahu effectively admitted that U.S. efforts to revive the peace process would prove another charade.
There would be no dismantling of the settlements or eviction of their 600,000 inhabitants — the minimum requirement for a barely feasible Palestinian state. “We are here to stay forever,” Netanyahu reassured his settler audience. “We will deepen our roots, build, strengthen and settle.”
So where is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict heading if the two-state solution is dead? The answer: back to its origins. That will entail another desperate numbers battle against the Palestinians, with Israel preparing to create new categories of “Jews” so they can be recruited to the fray.
Demography was always at the heart of Israeli policy. During the 1948 war that founded a Jewish state on the ruins of the Palestinian homeland, 750,000 Palestinians were expelled in a campaign that today would be termed ethnic cleansing. By the end, a large native Palestinian majority had been reduced to less than a fifth of the new state’s population. David Ben Gurion, the country’s founding father, was unperturbed. He expected to swamp this rump group with Jews from Europe and the Arab world.
But the project foundered on two miscalculations.
First, Ben Gurion had not factored in the Palestinian minority’s far higher birth rate. Despite waves of Jewish immigrants, Palestinians have held fast, at 20 per cent of Israel’s citizenry. Israel has fought a rearguard battle against them ever since. Studies suggest that the only Israeli affirmative action programme for Palestinian citizens is in family planning.
Israeli demographic scheming was on show again last week. An investigation by the Haaretz newspaper found that in recent years, Israel has stripped of citizenship potentially thousands of Bedouin, the country’s fastest-growing population. Israel claims bureaucratic “errors” were made in registering their parents or grandparents after the state’s founding.
Meanwhile, another Rubicon was crossed this month when an Israeli court approved revoking the citizenship of a Palestinian convicted of a lethal attack on soldiers. Human rights groups fear that, by rendering him stateless, the Israeli right has established a precedent for conditioning citizenship on “loyalty.”
Justice minister Ayelet Shaked underlined that very point this week when she warned the country’s judges that they must prioritise demography and the state’s Jewishness over human rights.
The second miscalculation arrived in 1967. In seizing the last fragments of historic Palestine but failing to expel most of the inhabitants, Israel made itself responsible for many hundreds of thousands of additional Palestinians, including refugees from the earlier war.
The “demographic demon,” as it is often called in Israel, was held at bay only by bogus claims for many decades that the occupation would soon end. In 2005, Israel bought a little more breathing space by “disengaging” from the tiny Gaza enclave and its 1.5 million inhabitants.
Now, in killing hopes of Palestinian statehood, Netanyahu has made public his intention to realise the one settler-state solution. Naftali Bennett, Netanyahu’s chief rival in the government, is itching to ignore international sentiment and begin annexing large parts of the West Bank.
There is a problem, however. At least half the population in Netanyahu’s Greater Israel are Palestinian. And with current birth rates, Jews will soon be an indisputable minority ruling over a Palestinian majority.
That is the context for understanding the report of a government panel, leaked last weekend, that proposes a revolutionary reimagining of who counts as a Jew and therefore qualifies to live in Israel (and the occupied territories).
Israel’s 1950 Law of Return already casts the net wide, revising the traditional rabbinical injunction that a Jew must be born to a Jewish mother. Instead, the law entitles anyone with one Jewish grandparent to instant citizenship. That worked fine as long as Jews were fleeing persecution or economic distress. But since the arrival of 1 million immigrants following the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the pool of new Jews has dried up.
The United States, even in the Trump era, has proved the bigger magnet. The Jerusalem Post newspaper reported last month that up to one million Israelis may be living there. Worse for Netanyahu, it seems that at least some are included in Israeli figures to bolster its demographic claims against the Palestinians.
Recent trends show that the exodus of Israelis to the US is twice as large as the arrival of American Jews to Israel. With 150 Israeli startups reported in Silicon Valley alone, that tendency is not about to end.
With a pressing shortage of Jews to defeat the Palestinians demographically, the Netanyahu government is considering a desperate solution. The leaked report suggests opening the doors to a new category of “Jewish” non-Jews. According to Haaretz, potentially millions of people worldwide could qualify. The new status would apply to “crypto-Jews,” whose ancestors converted from Judaism; “emerging Jewish” communities that have adopted Jewish practices; and those claiming to be descended from Jewish “lost tribes.”
Though they will initially be offered only extended stays in Israel, the implication is that this will serve as a prelude to widening their entitlement to eventually include citizenship. The advantage for Israel is that most of these “Jewish” non-Jews currently live in remote, poor or war-torn parts of the world, and stand to gain from a new life in Israel or the occupied territories.
That is the great appeal to the die-hard one-staters like Netanyahu and Bennett. They need willing footsoldiers in the battle to steal Palestinian land, trampling on internationally recognised borders and hopes of peace-making.
Will they get away with it? They may think so, especially at a time when the U.S. administration claims it would show “bias” to commit itself to advancing a two-state solution. Trump has said the parties should work out their own solution. Netanyahu soon may have the arithmetic to do so.
A version of this article first appeared in the National, Abu Dhabi.
