Author: tristero

Barr’s a liar and a rank opportunist. He does not deserve to be quoted as a reliable source about anything. He doesn’t like Trump, now??? Bully for him.

Stop publicizing his book.

The Cuban Missile Crisis is, once again, at the top of many people’s minds as Putin threatens nuclear war.

As it happens, I’ve read extensively about the Missile Crisis. For those who would like to get a sense of what happened — and its relevance to Putin’s mad posturing — here are three books I’ve found essential to understanding the conflict. There are, of course, many others, including books that scholars prefer, but this is a pretty good start for those vaguely familiar with what happened.

Michael Dobbs’s One Minute to Midnight is an hour-by-hour description of the Crisis from the American, Russian, and Cuban sides. It is riveting and terrifying: you can’t help concluding that it wasn’t diplomatic genius that saved us but merely sheer luck.

The Kennedy Tapes was the first widely published transcript of the secretly-taped meetings that Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, McNamara, Lemay, Sorensen, and many others had in order to plan the American strategy for dealing with the Crisis. It is an astonishing read and provides considerable insight into JFK’s leadership — close to exemplary, in my opinion — and the serious limitations of many of the other participants. (JFK, however, has been blamed for blundering into the Crisis, and that, too, is not an unreasonable opinion to hold). Not to be missed is the insane confrontation between the far right General Curtis Lemay and Kennedy; had Lemay’s advice to bomb and invade Cuba been followed, none of us would be here today. (If you’re truly serious about studying the Missile Crisis, this transcript has been superseded by somewhat more accurate (and expensive) ones, There are also detailed analyses which are well worth reading. You can also find the original secret recordings online.)

The Doomsday Machine by Daniel Ellsberg is about the history and planning for nuclear war. It includes a terrifying chapter or two on the Missile Crisis but extends both earlier and later. It is, like other writings by Ellsberg, brilliant, convincing, and terrifying. The assumption that nuclear weapons should not be allowed to fall into the hands of bad or irrational actors is an insane assumption. There is no one, and no country, that can be trusted with nuclear weapons. Banning them entirely might sound like an absurd, unrealistic goal but what is far more absurd and far more unrealistic is to assume that somehow humanity can not ban them and survive.

Just for the record, Bobby Kennedy’s Thirteen Days is deliberately misleading and inaccurate. It will, however, give you an idea of how RFK hoped history would remember the Missile Crisis. The tape transcripts paint a very different picture.

And also, no docudrama (like the movie Thirteen Days) comes close to evoking the terror of the Missile Crisis. To get a sense of how frightening and nuts it was, you’d be better off watching the (barely) fictional Fail-Safe and Dr. Strangelove.

(Incidentally, Fail-Safe the novel was published on October 22, 1962 — smack dab in the middle of the actual Cuban Missile Crisis.)

The parallels between now and 1939 are obvious. But so are the parallels to 2003. The most cynical and flimsiest pretexts for war. Government officials so intimidated that they rubber stamp an utterly unprovoked invasion. Unimaginably swift and horrible violence intended to decapitate the government and replace it with puppets beholden to the invaders. A world united in protest against the invasion — including huge numbers of people in the invading country.

Nearly all of Putin’s strategy is a replay of Bush’s. Very few people have spoken about this eerie parallel publicly. This article makes some interesting points:

Remember that during the Iraq war, Putin’s regime was viscerally opposed to then-US president George W Bush’s “war of choice” against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Bush neither cared nor listened to his Russian counterpart. The drumbeat for war in Washington was far too loud. 

The neoconservative ideologues who had surrounded Bush were convinced that war in Iraq would reassert what they believed was America’s flagging power in the post-Cold War era and restore American credibility in a region of the world where the United States had little credibility remaining. 

Power shift

America was at the apex of its military power in 2002-03. Its leaders and people were galvanized in the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001, to wage war upon any enemy they thought they could take on – and the Bush administration was going to do it regardless of what the international community believed or what international norms existed. That Saddam Hussein acted as a cartoon villain was an added inducement for war.

Russia chafed at the time as its power and influence were nowhere near what they are today. Moscow resisted and balked at the Americans but ultimately could do nothing to stop the invasion of Iraq. 

Twenty years later, however, we are at a different point in time. Today, it is the Americans who are at their breaking point; who’ve been humiliated and dejected by 20 years of failed wars, disastrous leaders, and a volatile economic situation at home. The Russians, while nowhere near as potent today as the Americans were in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, are at their greatest level of power since the end of the Cold War. 

Empowered by extraordinarily high prices of fuel on the global market (Russia is an energy-producing superpower upon which Europe depends for roughly 40% of its energy needs), feeling unstoppable in the face of sclerotic American and ambivalent Europeanopposition, the Putin regime is executing its own rapid invasion of a smaller nation with which it has had a long-standing conflict. 

No amount of caterwauling or virtue-signaling from Western leaders will stop the Russian advance – any more than Russian grandstanding on the eve of the Iraq war could stop Bush’s war of choice. It’s about raw power and will. The Russians have the advantage in these areas today whereas the Americans had the advantages in 2003.

Bloodlust

And like the opening phases of the Iraq war in 2003, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has gone well for Moscow so far. It manipulated the situation flawlessly: probing and provoking its rivals to keep them off balance while playing the various Western leaders off each other repeatedly – all while it massed a force large enough to overcome local opposition but small enough to keep even the most seasoned Western observers uncertain as to Russia’s true intentions…

Vladimir Putin is about to repeat the same mistaken choices that George W Bush made, with similarly terrible results.

Agreed. But let’s make explicit at least one major difference between now and 2003. And also let’s note the depth of Establishment-America’s complicity in Bush/Iraq.

Zelensky (who seems to be both relatively decent and brave) is not, and will never be, comparable to the monstrous Saddam. A monstrous leader is not, however, a viable pretext for invasion. It is insane to imagine Canada or Russia justifying an invasion of the US during Trump with such logic. Similarly, Putin’s pretext for invading Ukraine — and Bush’s for Iraq.

Finally, before we denounce the members of the Russian government for disgraceful cowardice, we shouldn’t forget who voted for the Iraq war. American democracy has been seriously dysfunctional for a very, very long time.

Adding: This post provides, as I see it, some needed context but nothing I’ve written or quoted above in any way justifies the murderous ambitions of Vladimir Putin. The Ukrainian war needs to end immediately, Russia should withdraw and Putin should stand trial for his crimes. As should all leaders who execute invasions of choice.

A good overview from Foreign Affairs of the geopolitical issues at stake in Ukraine. The operating assumption of a lot of American coverage is that Putin has little to gain and will likely fail. This article makes the case that if Putin succeeds, which is quite possible, he stands to gain much, especially in terms of weakening European alliances, both internally and with the US.

But why is Putin invading now? Why not during Trump when he would have risked fewer consequences? My guess is that the world situation posed a much lower threat to Putin’s autocracy than it does now. Most crucially, the US was run by an incompetent president who also was, to say the least, pro-Putin. And Putin had good reason to believe that Trump, no friend to an independent Ukraine, stood a good chance to get re-elected. From Putin’s standpoint, there was no reason to waste resources on an expensive, complex invasion when a US headed by an easily manipulated idiot would eventually let him re-install a puppet.

Therefore, in addition to those advantages that the article details, an invasion benefits Putin because it will surely put enormous pressure on the little that’s left of American democracy and national cohesion. Biden will go into the midterms with (at least) two unequivocal and difficult-to-justify foreign policy disasters — the Afghanistan withdrawal and Ukraine. Yes, Biden’s defenders can argue that both had complex causes and they’re not really Biden’s doing. But I think what the average American sees — even without the ravings of America’s fascist propagandists — are debacles that point to America’s diminishing effectiveness and power. In the case of Ukraine, the debacle may hit home directly, specifically with rising prices and fears of massive war. Biden will be blamed.

Putin is risking a great deal and his people will suffer. But regardless of whether he fully succeeds, the potential consequences here in the US — a United States pushed even further to the brink of internal collapse — are greater than they will be for Russia. Putin knows that and believes it’s worth the risk.

In short, Putin had very few reasons not to threaten Ukraine right now — or to follow through with invasion. Ukraine will experience a terrible human tragedy. And both the US and Europe will be destabilized to Russia’s advantage.

This Times article on Rogan/Spotify is hilarious, infuriating, and most importantly, misses the point. First, the hilarious:

As Mr. Rogan faced growing public criticism, Spotify responded by reaffirming its commitment to free speech, even as dozens of Mr. Rogan’s past episodes have been removed.

Maybe not rising to the level of “gazpacho police” silliness, but it still got me to burst out laughing at breakfast. And let’s remember this sentence the next time a huge corporation beats its mighty chest on behalf of “free speech.”

Of course, if Spotify actually believed in free speech, they wouldn’t be paying Joe Rogan…wait for it, it’s a lot more than you thought:

 …the true value of the deal that was negotiated at the time, which covered three and a half years, was at least $200 million, with the possibility of more, according to two people familiar with the details of the transaction who spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to discuss it.

Granted, what with inflation, $200 million doesn’t go as far as it used to, but still, that’s just plain infuriating.

(And while we’re on the subject of free speech, note that Spotify doesn’t hesitate to suppress the speech of those who want to talk knowledgeably about its business practices, despite the fact that, unlike Rogan’s Covid lies, such speech will physically harm no one.)

And then there’s this, where the reporters, by failing to push back, let Daniel Ek (the head of Spotify) get away with entirely missing the point:

Mr. Ek has made it clear that he is wary of taking on the role of censor. “We’re not in the business of dictating the discourse that these creators want to have on their shows,” he told employees earlier this month in a speech first reported by The Verge, adding that “if we only wanted to make content that we all like and agree with, we will need to eliminate religion, and politics, and comedy, and health, and environment, and education, the list goes on and on and on.”

Okay, step by step:

(1) Joe Rogan can say any stupid thing he wants to. BUT…

(2) Rogan does not have a right to be paid to say stupid things. That is entirely Spotify’s choice.

(3) Since Spotify is paying Rogan (and paying him very well), they are fully responsible when he says something. Especially when Rogan says something stupid and dangerous.

(5) If Spotify wishes to duck responsibility for Rogan saying stupid, dangerous things, they should stop paying him.

Yes, it really is this simple. Sure, there are complex issues of artist payment, monopoly, ethics, and access to mass media in a globalized community swirling about Spotify, but none of those issues is relevant here. Again:

Spotify is paying Rogan. They are responsible for what he says. If they were not paying him, they might — might — be able to argue that they are merely providing him a free speech platform. But they are paying him. And they should be held responsible.

PS There are plenty of alternatives to Spotify for music streaming, like Qobuz. As for podcasts, there are lots of free platforms out there.

Tom Sullivan already posted a link to the great New Yorker interview with Rep. Ocasio-Cortez and added his own excellent observations. Here, I’d like to focus on her effectiveness. Here is Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s second question to Michael Cohen when he testified before Congress.

Rep. Ocasio-Cortez:

To your knowledge, did the president ever provide inflated assets to an insurance company?

Cohen:

Yes.

Her third question:

Who else knows the president did this?

Cohen:

Alan Weisselberg, Ron Lieberman, and Matthew Calamari.

And she went on to ask whether the House Committee should review his financial statements and compare them with his tax returns. Cohen agreed they should. Then she inquired about Cohen’s assertion that Trump had improperly devalued his properties to avoid paying taxes. She went into detail and Cohen confirmed the scam.

Yesterday, Trump’s long time accounting firm cut their ties with the Trump Organization and disavowed ten years of Trump’s financial statements that they prepared. This is a severe blow, on many levels, not only for Trump but for his entire gang.

Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s questioning was certainly not the only impetus for this. Letitia James and her staff deserve significant credit for the immense effort it took to piece this together in a legal fashion (and many others contributed with lower profiles). But with her concise, accessible questions, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez highlighted Trump’s simple, crude grift in a way that made the issues crystal clear to the wide American public.

This is only one of the many substantial ways Rep. Ocasio-Cortez has influenced American politics for the better over the past few years.

I, too, laughed when my Australian friend sent me the Guardian article. But I can think of no better way to illustrate the importance of funding good public schools than Greene’s gaffe. The ignorance and paranoia in Greene’s mistake points also to how important it is to teach multicultural and anti-racist values — and not to back away from doing so when bigots challenge us. If ever there was someone who needed to read Maus when she was 12 — and have a focused discussion about Holocaust history in school, home, and/or church — it was Marjorie Taylor Greene.

At the dawn of the Trump era, Muslims were vilified and banned. Then it was Mexicans, then it was Blacks. Now it’s Jews.

Maus is ranked by many, including me, among the great literary masterpieces of the 20th Century. It won the Pulitzer Prize and is universally loved. Except in Tennessee, which has just started banning it from schools.

And let’s not kid ourselves. The “swear words” and “nude mice” they pretend to object to are the flimsiest of excuses. The real aim is to suppress the teaching of a book that makes the experience of the Holocaust vivid, real, and poignant. Banning Maus is Holocaust denial, plain and simple, a blatant (and tediously obvious) attempt to revise history to ensure that America’s Nazis and White supremacists never feel uncomfortable.

Muslims, Mexicans, Blacks, Jews. It won’t stop there. America’s ugly history of ethnic intolerance has never wanted for people to hate.

I don’t know a better illustration of systemic racism than this:

Prior to a vote to move the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to the Senate floor failed Wednesday, McConnell was asked by a reporter about concerns among voters of color. 

“Well the concern is misplaced, because if you look at the statistics, African American voters are voting in just as high a percentage as Americans,” McConnell responded.

For McConnell, it simply hasn’t registered, at any deep level, that Americans from Africa are, in fact, simply Americans.

(Adding: I’ll leave it to others to point out that it is because Blacks are, indeed voting that McConnell’s White supremacist party is using every single illegal and immoral tactic they can think of to ensure that Black votes don’t count. )

I love you man, but seriously, Greg?

If Republicans succeed in blocking Democratic efforts to protect voting rights this week, as expected, the push to defend democracy will be anything but dead. That’s because another important proposal to prevent a stolen 2024 election is coming together in the Senate.
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This one may — may — prove harder for Republicans to oppose. At least it should prove harder.

No it won’t. Essentially, the proposal Greg’s talking about is to officially reduce Congress’s and the VP’s role in electoral vote counting to a ceremonial role. The pretend purpose is to forestall Trump’s ability to seek any legal recourse to play the games he tried to play in 2020.

But the real purpose of this bill — as Greg acknowledges at the end of the column even if he refuses to fully believe it — is to provide Manchin with an excuse not to vote for a voting rights carve-out for the filibuster — but still vote for something in that general direction. And of course, once that is dead and buried, any fake Republican support for this Lucy’s football of an electoral college reform bill — which is nearly worthless, given the dreadful state of this country’s governance — will magically disappear. And Manchin will likely not vote for Lucy’s football, either.

if you’re an ER doctor and a person complains about their severely sore throat when all you can notice is that their left arm appears to have been recently amputated and is bleeding severely, you treat the wound first.

We have been hemorrhaging democracy for years. We need voting rights protection and Manchin cannot be given an excuse to weasel out of voting for it. We can’t afford to have the imperfect be the enemy of the badly needed.