Good morning. It is September 3rd. It is a bright, cool morning in New York City on the Monday-est Tuesday of the year, And this is your indignity morning podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. 

On the front of this morning's New York Times, the lead story “Netanyahu vows to keep control of a Gaza border. Truce hopes seem dim.” Biden says Israeli leader isn't doing enough to reach a deal. “Brushing aside pleas from allies,” the Times writes, “and the demands of Israeli protesters for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza in exchange for the release of hostages, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Monday vowed to maintain Israeli control along the border between Egypt and Gaza, a contentious plan that appeared to dim, if not dash, prospects for a truce.” Ostensibly, or at least formally, Netanyahu is claiming that Israel's security needs require it to control the border between Gaza and Egypt. Substantively and obviously, the actual strategic consideration is that demanding control of the border on the far side of Gaza guarantees that a peace deal won't get done, advancing Netanyahu's only actual goal, which is to keep butchering Palestinians indefinitely so that the war never ends, he never leaves office, and he never has to go to prison, for either his extensive pre-war corruption or for his past 11 months of war crimes. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis were out in the streets yesterday in response to last week's killing of six more hostages. As one more piece of evidence that Netanyahu never cared about the lives of the people killed and abducted in the October 7th attacks on his behalf, he professes to have no choice but to carry out mass murder in Gaza. With apologies to the Times, Netanyahu's latest demand can't really be said to have dimmed the prospects for a truce, because so far the unflinching goal of the Netanyahu administration has been to make sure that there are no prospects for a truce. Just an endless cycle of empty negotiations. All the bombs keep dropping. 

Next to that on page one is a story about what the Times describes as Hamas's handbook for underground combat, which instructed Hamas forces, the Times writes, “how to navigate in darkness, move stealthily beneath Gaza, and fire automatic weapons in confined spaces for maximum lethality. Battlefield commanders were even instructed to time, down to the second, how long it took their fighters to move among various points underground.” Right, that all seems like exactly what you would do if you were setting up a system of tunnel -based warfare. Looking behind the whole account is the grim realization that the tunnel system is essentially a MacGuffin, “just as Israel underestimated the tunnels,” the Times writes after the jump, “Hamas prepared for subterranean battles that have not materialized. Israel was reluctant, especially early in the war, to send troops underground where they might face combat. Hamas has primarily ambushed soldiers near tunnel entrances while avoiding direct confrontations.” This means the tunnels are less a theater for fighting a war than they are a system for redirecting the war away from fighting forces taking on fighting forces, and into the total obliteration of civilian life above ground. 

Below the jump at the bottom of page 89, there's a look at Elon Musk's travails in Brazil as he tests what happens when a centibillionaire decides that he simply won't comply with the requirements of a sovereign government. Musk's service, known as Twitter, is blocked in the country and as Musk refuses to pay fines for his social platforms behavior, the Brazilian courts have frozen the assets of his satellite service system, Starlink. “Mr. Musk,” the Times writes, “flew to Brazil in 2022 to announce Starlink's arrival there alongside the country's conservative then president, Jair Bolsonaro. Mr. Musk said Starlink would provide internet connections to 19 ,000 rural schools in Brazil. Mr. Bolsonaro gave Mr. Musk a medal and called him a true legend of freedom.” The Times continues. “Brazilian officials have since said that they have no record of Starlink providing internet to the schools.” Can it be that Elon Musk said he was going to do something and then didn't do it? Unimaginable. 

Elsewhere inside the international section on page A6, Sunday's victories in German state elections by Alternative for Deutschland, the Nazi-est electorally viable political party in Germany, only rate an explainer's story, under the headline, “Effect of German Far -rights Wins May Be Slim.” Among the interstitial explainer headings in the story, “a viable mainstream opposition still exists.” So, you know, there's nothing to worry about. Or hardly anything to worry about. Or not much to worry about. Just a few neo-Nazis winning a few elections in a few parts of Germany. When has that ever really been a problem? 

That is the news. Thank you for listening. The Indignity Morning podcast is edited by Joe MacLeod. Theme song composed and performed by Max Scocca-Ho. And it depends, as always, on the support of our paid listening subscribers. If you are a listening subscriber but not a paid one, now is a great time to click the button and send us a little money. 

Apologies for the helicopter noise in this one, don’t I know what they were up to, but they seem to have moved a little bit off. And if all goes well, we will talk again tomorrow.