The US claims to be a representative democracy, meaning the people’s elected officials are obligated to consider their constituents’ ideas, interests, concerns, and welfare in making political decisions. However, the reality is that US politicians feel indebted to the megadonors who finance their elections, and as a result, choose to serve not the people who voted them into power, but the financiers who made their election to office a reality. 

Will American Democracy Perish Like Rome’s?

The rich have US politicians on a leash. In 2017, the then president, was accused of meeting with his 2016 campaign megadonor, Sheldon Adelson, for counsel on how to address the mass shooting in , a horrific attack that killed 59 people and injured over 500 at a country music festival. That was two days before Trump finally arrived in Las Vegas to meet with the surviving victims and the families mourning the dead. Trump has denied these allegations, claiming that the timing of his meeting with Adelson was purely coincidental, and had nothing to do with the fact that Adelson had major investments in Las Vegas.

The US electoral system is incredibly , as demonstrated by its of the House Speaker, an event that will go down in history as one of the most notorious examples of the inefficiency of American politics. The country seems to be exclusively  run by two conflicting political parties: the Democrats and the Republicans. Consequently, the nation has become extremely politically polarized, and many Americans experience daily frustration and anger over conflicting political beliefs. 

Economic disparity and discrimination are particularly oppressive to minority groups including Native Americans, blacks, Latinos, and now Muslims. The gap between the rich and the poor is deep and ever-widening. Approximately 32% of all wealth in the US is held by only 1% of the population, an alarmingly disproportionate statistic. Even more concerning is that at the same time, over 11% of Americans live below poverty.

A 2020 article by described the economic disparities in the United States quite accurately, stating that, “Americans may be equal, but some are more equal than others.” Even when the US is in a deep deficit, the government tax policy consistently favors the rich, despite the fact that of Americans believe the nation’s wealthiest should pay more taxes.

The Trump Dynasty is as Dysfunctional as the Windsors

The United States government (USG) is entangled with the , the “” of America. By definition, any  government whose power, either overtly or covertly, is controlled by a small group of wealthy constituents, is called plutocracy. Former US president once alluded to the plutocracy of the US political system, describing it as, “an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery.”

The Incentive for Corruption

Because political candidates in America require to run their campaigns, they become obliged to the rich. Towin a Senate seat, a candidate spends an average of over $10 million. According to , the 2016 presidential candidates, Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump, spent a combined sum of over one billion dollars on their political campaigns.

The wealthy also use their power to manipulate the media, flooding broadcasting platforms with polarizing advertisements and persuading the American public that the only votes that count are votes for either the Democratic or Republican parties. 

This sort of propaganda makes many Americans feel overwhelmed and confused about  which candidate they  should be voting for, and some even choose to abstain from voting at all because they don’t support either candidate. Many Americans are ignorant that the elections are a scheme to make them think about having a voice in the government. However, the choice of who ultimately becomes president, congressman, or other official is usually left to the two political parties at the mercy of the rich. 

Even at the state level, wealthy Americans control political candidates and elected officials by donating to their campaigns. The rich also use their financial power to marginalize certain communities through a process called , in which the boundaries of electoral districts are strategically drawn in a way which favors one political party over the other. . Minorities, the poor, and the least educated are usually the victims of this unethical practice.

Understanding Racial and Partisan Gerrymandering

A Call For Reform

Without ethical standards in place to ensure equal opportunity and constitutional rights for all citizens, democracy can easily become what John Adams called, “the of the majority.” Thomas Jefferson also purportedly claimed that democracy can often resemble mob rule, and this comparison has a ring of truth.

The USG must reform.The country’s current system is riddled with corruption and will not be sustainable long term, as evidenced by the 2021 insurrection at the U.S. capitol building. At the very least, steps must be taken to make sure that campaign funding is democratic and fair first by cutting all  government funding to individual campaigns and political parties, and instead requiring the media to allocate “” at no cost to candidates. Second, the USG must create and enforce regulations to limit campaign funding and prevent “megadonors” from manipulating elections and government policy.

To alleviate the megadonors’ influence, the USG could limit all contributions from all sources equal to what an average-income American is willing to contribute to a candidate. PACs, unions and other associations can multiply that amount by the number of their active members. However, no member can be allowed to double-dip, individual and in group.

Only when the United States takes steps to implement these changes will the nation begin its ascension to true democracy. 
[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The Truth About US Democracy appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The word evening can also be a gerund, a form of a verb that has been turned into a noun. In this case the verb is to even. To make matters more confusing, the word even most often occurs neither as a noun nor a verb, but as an adverb, serving “to add emphasis to show that something is surprising or extreme.” To clarify the differences, here is a perfectly common sentence containing all three examples of even.

“Even by the end of the evening the team had not succeeded in evening the score.”

All language is ambiguous. In the sentence above, there is enough context to clarify how even and evening are being used. Context is the key to reducing the ambiguity of any word, phrase or utterance. But even then (note the adverb here), context can only reduce, not definitively remove ambiguity. Behind every utterance or statement is both a possible failure of accuracy and a shifting relationship of trust between the emitter and the receiver.

The ways of abusing the inherent ambiguity of language are myriad. We are all guilty of it, sometimes consciously and often unconsciously. And though no hard and fast rules exist, one guideline we can suggest is to beware of sentences that contain more than one example of even as an adverb.

I mention this after having read the in the New York Times by US Senator and former presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, who offers an example of excessively “evening” an assertion. The lawmaker and private equity operator wants his readers to believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin is on the verge of using nuclear weapons. After this dreaded event – or perhaps before it – the US will, in his estimation, be justified in engaging in the kind of total war he thinks the US can win against an already weakened Russia. He appears to hope it won’t actually be nuclear but he clearly wants it to be total.

To prove his case concerning Putin’s intentions, Romney offers this sentence, complete with two “evens”: “Even the C.I.A. director, William Burns, has warned of the possibility that Mr. Putin could use a tactical nuclear weapon, even if there is no “practical evidence” right now to suggest it is imminent.”

Romney’s odd use of even

Why did Romney need to begin that sentence with even? He could have simply stated Burns’s warning as a simple fact, though the fact itself had little substance because it evoked “a possibility” rather than a reality. He perhaps senses that no one will trust Romney’s word alone. Burns, as head of the CIA, represents a higher authority. If Burns deems it possible, it must be more than possible, perhaps inevitable.

Now, I could have played the same game as Romney and added a couple of evens to the preceding previous sentence to give it more impact. It would read like this. “He clearly wants his readers to believe that Burns represents an even higher authority than Romney himself and that if Burns deems it possible, it must be more than possible, perhaps even inevitable. If you weren’t persuaded by my original sentence, you will certainly be convinced by that one. With a little effort, anyone could outeven Romney. I submit that we include in future dictionaries this new definition of the verb to even: “to introduce unjustifiably a speculative idea with the adverb even with the intent of making it more credible.” 

This act of excessive evening – by multiplying the number of speculations pushed to an extreme by the use of “even” – happens to be one in a catalog of outstanding rhetorical devices used for the purposes of a certain type of propaganda. In Romney’s assertion, it seeks to convince us that something we know to be annoying or illegitimate isn’t just annoying or illegitimate but should be thought of as evil incarnate. To make his point about the extreme actions we should be preparing to execute, Romney needs to establish as undeniably real his speculative assessment of Putin’s evil intentions. It must stand in the reader’s mind as undeniable truth. 

This strategy becomes clear in the sentence that follows his doubly-evened assertion: “We should imagine the unimaginable, specifically how we would respond militarily and economically to such a seismic shift in the global geopolitical terrain.”

Romney disingenuously calls “unimaginable” exactly what he and many others can and should imagine. Calling it unimaginable is classic hyperbole. If it truly were unimaginable, he wouldn’t have imagined it and certainly wouldn’t suppose that his readers might be willing to take it seriously. But when he insists we “should imagine” – stated as a moral imperative – what he means is that he wants us to accept as probable what is clearly improbable. He wants us to imagine as a fact what he imagines, even if it contradicts our own values and good judgment. In other words, he wants us to accept something that is objectively and morally atrocious. This framing of the issue as a  moral imperative incumbent on all Americans was already present in the title of the article: “We Must Prepare for Putin’s Worst Weapons.”

From speculation to historical truth

Despite his propagandistic intent, Romney does say a number of things that make sense. Here is one revealing example. “By invading Ukraine, Mr. Putin has already proved that he is capable of illogical and self-defeating decisions.” That is a reasonable assessment of the apparent state of play around the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But the truth of the statement is more general than Romney wants to admit. He could have cited any number of examples that prove his point about American leaders as well.  Former President George W Bush did precisely that last week, when he denounced “the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq.”

Bush, of course, corrected himself by immediately blurting out “I mean Ukraine.” But historically, no invasion has been more literally unjustified than Bush’s invasion of Iraq. Bush has never apologized for the crime, not even admitting it was an error. Before the invasion, Putin at least took several hours to explain in considerable historical detail – much of which has been validated by historians and geopolitical analysts from George Kennan to John Mearsheimer and Henry Kissinger – the facts that he felt justified his brutal, clearly illegal and possibly self-subverting act of war.

Romney’s chop logic consists of using the fact that because a particular leader –  Putin, in this case – has demonstrated the capacity to make one self-destructive mistake, we should suppose that he is ready to make a far more extreme mistake. Rhetoricians would cite this as a specific of overgeneralization with a dose of false causality. In this case it asserts that something less extreme makes something more extreme inevitable.

Any honest observer of history should have noticed by now that hardly a politician exists, now or in the past, who was not “capable of illogical and self-defeating decisions.” Putin is no exception, but does that merit not just imagining but expecting the unimaginable: nuclear war? If you believe Putin is Satan incarnate, you have not just imagined the unimaginable, but elevated to the status of a quasi-inevitable truth. 

The Cold War ended, but its mindset endured

For a reason future historians will need to tease out, despite the monumental events that have taken place over the past 30 years that began with the first President George Bush declaring a “new world order,” recent US administrations seem to be locked into a worldview that was dominant in the 1950s and 1960s at the heart of the Cold War. With no literal political iron curtain or physical walls and militarized borders in Europe, the idea that the West itself was divided into two opposing camps should have disappeared from people’s cultural framework. In Europe, it did. But the struggle to adapt one’s ideas to a new reality appeared to be too much of a challenge for American politicians.

Romney offers a perfect example of this when, with this metaphorical logic, he updates the notorious domino theory. For historical realists even at the time, the domino theory was already absurd, but it became a necessary part of American expansionist policy. Here is Romney’s modern version of it : “Failing to continue to support Ukraine would be like paying the cannibal to eat us last. If Mr. Putin, or any other nuclear power, can invade and subjugate with near impunity, then Ukraine would be only the first of such conquests.” Putin is clearly interested in meddling in geopolitical affairs, largely for economic reasons (i.e. trade relationships). He has never shown a developed taste for conquest.

The obsession the US has had since the Second World War with controlling events in the furthest corners of the world on the pretext that without that control the entire world order would collapse like a series of dominos, should have disappeared after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the communist menace. So, many have reasoned, should NATO have disappeared. The domino theory nevertheless made its appearance in a more simplified form during Bush’s Middle East wars with this famous: “We’re fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them here.”

In his new version of the domino theory, Romney appears to sense that thanks to the complication of the current war in Ukraine, Putin’s – i.e. Satan’s –  reach is already diminished, That is why Romney cleverly adds to the list of potential cannibals “any other nuclear power.” He most certainly isn’t thinking of India, Israel, France or the UK. The Middle Kingdom is in his sights. He knows how important it is to keep alive the prospect of US military action against China, the other “evil empire,” at which American nuclear weapons will in the future be aimed.

Romney continues with perhaps the most worrying facet of his strategy. “��ܲ�������’s use of a nuclear weapon would unarguably be a redefining, reorienting geopolitical event. Any nation that chose to retain ties with Russia after such an outrage would itself also become a global pariah. Some or all of its economy would be severed from that of the United States and our allies.” A psychologist might detect that Romney is unconsciously counting on or hoping for Putin’s “illogical decision” of using nuclear weapons simply to provide the means of discrediting every nation in the world that refuses to fall in line with US policy.

Reviving Joe McCarthy’s bag of tricks

Always faithful to Cold War rhetoric, Romney manages in his op-ed to unearth another precious relic of that extraordinary moment in American history known as the McCarthy era. I’m referring to the feverish anti-communist campaign spearheaded in the early 1950s by Senator Joe McCarthy. At a broader political level the staging, production and broadcast of a campaign that was destined to mark US political culture profoundly in the ensuing decades was the handiwork of the two Dulles brothers: John Foster, President Eisenhower’s Secretary of State, and Alan, whom Truman had nominated director of the CIA where he remained until 1961, when he was forced to resign following the Bay of Pigs fiasco.

The political culture known as MCCarthyism was coordinated at another level by J Edgar Hoover, the head and virtual lifetime dictator of the FBI. It occasionally  benefitted from the valuable input of Edward Bernays, the father of Public Relations. This group of  ideological engineers colluded to foster a quasi-murderous zeal, eagerly put on display in the media, designed to brand any non-conventional thinker or economic actor as a traitor. 

The group employed its linguistic creativity to produce insults implying treason such as “egghead,” “pinko” and “commie.” Eggheads were simply useful idiots who spent too much time reflecting on issues. The bald, intellectual Democratic presidential candidate, Adlai Stevenson, apparently provided the model for the egghead moniker. Thinking too much distracts from the essential task of opposing the enemy. Pinkos and commies were the enemy. 

Romney hasn’t forgotten the lessons or even the vocabulary of his youth. Today he boldly forecasts apocalyptic punishment for a heinous category of nations he groups together as “Russia and its fellow travelers.” In the golden age of McCarthyism the zealots applied the label “fellow travelers” to individuals who weren’t quite communists or communist sympathizers, but who failed to conform with the mob mentality they were promoting. Now, seven decades later, Romney innovates by applying it to entire nations. He relishes the idea that once the US has meted out all the appropriate punishments to these refractory rebels, they will suffer “much worse.” He is referring not to random individuals, but to every nation that has resisted aligning with the sweeping sanctions the US has imposed on Russia. Those nations in question today represent approximately two-thirds of humanity.

Drawing on the hallowed Puritan tradition of hellfire preaching from the pulpit, Romney leaves no doubt about where his thought processes are heading as he imagines the weeping and gnashing of teeth these fellow travelers’ will be condemned to experience. “It could,” he tells us, “ultimately be economic Armageddon,” adding this proviso, “but that is far preferable to nuclear Armageddon.” In other words, all these nations have been weighed in the balance and found wanting. They accordingly merit the Armageddon the US intends, with the zeal of an Amazon drone, to deliver to their doorstep. 

Romney is careful to remind his readers that he does have vestiges of humanism that temper his Savanarola style fatalism. Out of humanitarian pity, the suffering inflicted on the untold masses across the globe hopefully may be merely economic instead of nuclear. Count on the Americans to hold back and not pull the trigger, if it is at all possible. Still, at the back of Romney’s mind, it is difficult not to hear an echo of Donald Trump’s notorious question, “if we have nuclear weapons why can’t we use them?”

Before concluding, Romney unearths one more synonym to describe the villains inside or outside Russia whose depravity has prevented them from embracing the forthcoming American Apocalypse. The same people he called fellow travelers he now refers to as “enablers.” They too clearly merit a punishment commensurate with their crime of non-conformity with the geopolitics of the United States. “Mr. Putin and his enablers,” Romney warns, “should have no doubt that our answer to such depravity would be devastating.”

What does Romney mean by “devastating?” Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, Chile, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen and now even Ukraine – that might have been spared war through negotiations – all stand as witnesses to the very real capacity of the United States, through its typically inflexible foreign policy, to wreak devastation on an unrivaled scale. Qualms do not appear in abundance in recent or even ancient US history.

Every politician in the US knows that voters have no means of understanding anything that happens beyond the nation’s borders. Their own problems or simply ambitions are too important to justify the effort required to show an interest in other people’s struggles. If, as is happening today, encouraged by their media to empathize with a specific group of people identified as friendly, white and seemingly appreciative of US ideology, Americans will demonstrate sympathy and offer support, but will remain steadfastly indifferent to and unaware of the deeper causes of the tragic scenes presented for their viewing.

What the American public wants to hear and what their media naturally agrees to serve up to them is the kind of vision Mitt Romney has put forward in his op-ed. Since the beginning of the Cold War, it has consisted of reminding Americans that their accumulated wealth, mobilized by generations of politicians to ensure the capacity for devastation on an unheard of scale, serves as the means not only of ensuring a “world order” consistent with American beliefs, but also as the effective means of holding in check all those who express the slightest doubt about the justice of that order. 

The original Cold War turned around the easily identified contrast between, on one side, a bundle of professed ideals that included doing good while promoting a dominant culture of Judeo-Christian theistic capitalist individualism and, on the other, evil, amoral, atheistic communist collectivism indifferent to the needs of its own citizens. It was from that distinction – theological, economic and cultural, in living color on the American side and in black and white on the Soviet side  – that McCarthyism drew its energy.

The ideological anemia of the New McCarthyism 

Growing up in the 1950s as a Mormon with a father who was once a credible candidate in the Republican presidential bid, Romney unconsciously assimilated all the memes associated with McCarthyism. His discourse today reveals that the McCarthyite spirit is still alive and kicking. The singular problem today is that all the supposedly rational reasons for condemning Russia that existed during his school days have disappeared. 

The folksy democracy of his youth, celebrated in Frank Capra movies, has morphed into  a shameless oligarchy. The wealth of the nation, once made available for ambitious social projects and infrastructure, is now controlled by a smattering of hyper-wealthy individuals focused on expanding and defending their wealth. Like American politicians, they have learned to follow the old cultural models and pay lip service to the official religion when required, perpetuating the image of the US as a good Samaritan Christian nation committed to individual liberties and the general welfare. The fact that Pope Francis is routinely called a socialist or communist – i.e. a fellow traveler – to the extent that he categorically condemns militarism and preaches human solidarity, shows that in the official ideology the faith that separated God-fearing America from atheistic Russia is now focused on the business interests of the nation rather than the teachings of the New Testament.

Today Russia is neither officially atheistic, communist nor collectivist. But it still manages to qualify for the title of embodiment of evil. Thanks to a mysterious cultural reflex, it is still Russia – and therefore the Antichrist – that appears in Americans’ minds as a font from which evil will always exude. And so Romney, the “moderate politician” (meaning blandly representative, conformist and self-satisfied) is free to develop his not very moderate apocalyptic reasoning as if we were back in the 50s and he belonged to the John Birch Society, deemed extremist even by Republicans at the time. Moreover, he expects it to work, and so apparently does The New York Times.

But, in the meantime, various streams of more or less polluted water have passed under the bridge. Times have changed. It isn’t certain that the American people are as interested in nuclear brinkmanship as politicians like Romney and Biden seem to be. Even the American public may lose patience at some point. Biden’s own ratings are one indication. Americans do not trust any of their institutions and, according to recent polls, have already lost in what the media call “the direction of the country.” Some call that not so much the trend of the moment but the arc of history.

Romney’s ultimate solution to the complex problems that face us consists essentially of promising future devastation if our will should not be done. But for a good part of humanity including many Americans, that devastation has already begun and is running its course. The consumer society that has long been the ultimate aim of the American Dream is experiencing some serious problems fulfilling its mission of loyally consuming the widest range of consumables. Romney evokes the very real danger that Putin, if pushed too far, might resort to a nuclear response. He’s right about the risk, which is why responsible members of the governing class should also be inclined to focus on assessing and finding the means to reduce that risk rather than exacerbating the tension and the sense of desperation among the people that simply increases it.

Like many voices in the Western media today, Romney may believe that Putin has become a psychiatric case. Promising devastation is probably not the most appropriate solution a decent psychiatrist would recommend.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Mitt Romney’s Excessive Evening appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Austin’s remarks were problematic on several fronts. For one, they legitimized Russian President Vladimir Putin’s justification of the invasion of Ukraine as a defense against US-led efforts to box Russia in and potentially undermine his regime.

“US policy toward Russia continues to be plagued by lack of rhetorical discipline. First calling for regime change, now the goal of weakening Russia. This only increases Putin’s case for escalating & shifts focus away from Russian actions in Ukraine & toward Russia-US/NATO showdown”, Richard Haas, the president of the New York-based Council of Foreign Relations and a former senior State Department official. Haas was referring to US President Joe Biden’s last month, which he subsequently walked back, that Putin “cannot remain in power.”

US policy toward Russia continues to be plagued by lack of rhetorical discipline. First calling for regime change, now goal of weakening Russia. This only increases Putin’s case for escalating & shifts focus away from Russian actions in Ukraine & toward Russia-US/NATO showdown.

— Richard N. Haass (@RichardHaass)

Leaving aside the fact that Austin’s remark was inopportune, it also suggested a lack of vision of what it will take to ensure that Putin does not repeat his Ukraine operation elsewhere in the former Soviet Union. That is an endeavor that would involve looking beyond Ukraine to foster closer ties with former Soviet republics that do not immediately border Ukraine.

A new strategic focus: Kazakhstan

One place to look is Kazakhstan, a potential future target if Russia still has the wherewithal after what has become a draining slug in Ukraine. Mr. Putin has long set Kazakhstan up as a potential future target. He has repeatedly used language when it comes to Kazakhstan that is similar to his rhetoric on the artificial character of the Ukrainian state.

Referring to his notion of a Russian world whose boundaries are defined by the presence of Russian speakers and adherents to Russian culture rather than its internationally recognised borders, Mr. Putin asserted last December that “Kazakhstan is a country in the full sense of the word.”

Mr. Putin first sent a chill down Kazakh spines eight years ago when a student asked him nine months after the annexation of Crimea whether Kazakhstan, with a 6,800 kilometer-long border with Russia, the world’s second-longest frontier, risked a fate similar to that of Ukraine.

In response, Mr. Putin noted that then-president Nursultan Nazarbayev, Kazakhstan’s Soviet-era Communist party boss, had “performed a unique feat: he has created a state on a territory where there has never been a state. The Kazakhs never had a of their own, and he created it.”

To be sure, Russian troops invited in January by Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev to help put down anti-government protests were quick to from the Central Asian nation once calm had been restored.

Recognizing the opportunity

Mr. Putin’s remarks, coupled with distrust of China fuelled by the of Turkic Muslims, including ethnic Kazakhs, in the north-western province of Xinjiang, and the of ��ܲ�������’s Black Sea Novorossiysk oil terminal, Kazakhstan’s main Caspian oil export route, have created an opportunity for the United States.

Last month, Kazakhstan in a United Nations General Assembly vote that condemned Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. Since then, its sovereign wealth fund announced that it would no longer do business in rubles in with US and European sanctions against Russia. This week, Kazakhstan stopped of ��ܲ�������’s Sputnik V vaccine against Covid-19.

In an apparent effort to stir the pot, Russian media accused Kazakhstan of Russian nationals from expressing support for Mr. Putin’s invasion and firing Kazakhs who supported the Russian president’s actions from their jobs. At the same time, opponents of the war were allowed to stage demonstrations.

“A�� Washington policymakers look for ways to counter Russian influence and complicate Mr. Putin’s life, helping Kazakhstan its dependence on Moscow-controlled pipelines, reform its economy, and coordinate with neighboring Central Asian states to limit the influence of both China and Russia might be a good place to start,” said Wall Street Journal columnist Walter Russell Mead.

Last month, Mr. Tokayev, the Kazakh president, promised sweeping reforms in response to the January protests.

A high-level Kazakh delegation Washington this week to discuss closer cooperation and ways to mitigate the impact on Kazakhstan of potentially crippling sanctions against Russia.

Supporting Kazakhstan would involve a renewed US engagement in Central Asia, a key region that constitutes ��ܲ�������’s as well as China’s backyard. The United States is perceived to have abandoned the region with its withdrawal from Afghanistan last August.

The regional implications

It would also mean enlarging the figurative battlefield to include not only military and financial support for Ukraine and sanctions against Russia but also the strengthening of political and economic ties with former Soviet republics such as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan.

Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are, alongside Kazakhstan, members of the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), which Mr. Putin, referring to Kazakhstan, described as a bulwark that “helps them within the so-called ‘greater Russian world,’ which is part of world civilization.”

The invasion of Ukraine has given Uzbekistan second thoughts. Uzbekistan failed to vote on the UN resolution, but Uzbek officials have since condemned the war and expressed support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity.

As a result, Uzbekistan appears to have reversed its ambition to join the EEU and forge closer ties to the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), the region’s Russian-led military alliance.

“The way Central Asia thinks about Russia has changed. While before, Russia was seen as a source of stability, it now seems that its presence in a very sensitive security dimension has become a weakness for regional stability, sovereignty, and territorial integrity,” said Carnegie Endowment Central Asia scholar Temur Umarov.

“I think that Central Asian governments will seek to the influence of Russia, which will be difficult to do, but they have no choice since it has become an unpredictable power.” Mr. Umarov predicted.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Contesting Russia Requires Renewed US Engagement in Central Asia appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Less officially, President Joe Biden has been emphasizing the emotional side of US motivation when he wants to turn Russia into a “pariah,” while branding its president as a “war criminal” and a “murderer.” Biden’s rhetoric indicates clearly that whatever purely legal and moral point the United States cites to justify its massive financial engagement in the war, its true motivation reflects a vigilante mindset focused on regime change.

A Russian-American Game of Mirrors

READ MORE

The administration denies it has regime change on its mind. But Ferguson cites a senior administration official who privately confided that Biden’s “end game now … is the end of Putin regime.” The historian concludes that rather than seek a negotiated end to the war, the US “intends to keep this war going.”

As usual in foreign policy matters, Ferguson notes a certain convergence of viewpoint from his own government. He quotes an anonymous source affirming that the United Kingdom’s “No. 1 option is for the conflict to be extended and thereby bleed Putin.” A little later in the article, Ferguson qualifies as “archetypal Realpolitik” the American intent “to allow the carnage in Ukraine to continue; to sit back and watch the heroic Ukrainians ‘b������ Russia �����.’�ĝ

Today’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Bleed (a country):

To encourage and prolong an unnecessary and unjustified conflict in the interest of sucking the life out of the political establishment of a declared enemy, a process that usually automatically implies sucking the life out of at least one other country, including eventually one’s own

Contextual Note

Ferguson dares to question the dominant belief in the US that bleeding Russia is a recipe for success. “Prolonging the war runs the risk not just of leaving tens of thousands of Ukrainians dead and millions homeless, but also of handing Putin something that he can plausibly present at home as victory,” he writes.

When the focus is both on bleeding and prolonging the combat, there is a strong likelihood that the bleeding will be shared. If a boxer sees a cut over his opponent’s eye, he may strategically focus all his punches on the opponent’s face hoping for a technical knockout. But, by focusing on the loss of blood, he may drop his guard with the risk of getting knocked out or opening his own bleeding wound.

“I fail to see in current Western strategizing any real recognition of how badly this war could go for Ukraine in the coming weeks,” Ferguson observes. The reason may simply be that the hyperreal moment the Western world is now living through is proving too enjoyable to critique, at least for the media. The more horror stories of assaults on innocent civilians make their way into the headlines, the more the media can play the morally satisfying game of: here’s one more reason to hate Vladimir Putin.

If the White House is focused, as it now appears, not on saving Ukrainian democracy but on bleeding Russia, all the stories of Russian abuse of brave civilians are designed with the purpose of prolonging the war, in the hope that, discredited by Putin’s failure to break Ukraine’s resistance, Russians will revolt and depose the evil dictator. In the meantime, those Ukrainians who manage to survive are being asked to play the supporting role of watching their country reduced to ruins.

Ferguson speculates that US strategists have come to “think of the conflict as a mere sub-plot in Cold War II, a struggle in which China is our real opponent.” That would be an ambitious plan, riddled with complexity. But the Biden administration has demonstrated its incapacity to deal effectively even with straightforward issues, from passing the Build Back Better framework in the US to managing a pandemic.

The Ukraine situation involves geopolitics, the global economy and, even more profoundly, the changing image of US power felt by populations and governments across the globe. At the end of his article, the historian describes this as an example of dangerous overreach, claiming that “the Biden administration is making a colossal mistake in thinking that it can protract the war in Ukraine, bleed Russia dry, topple Putin and signal to China to keep its hands off Taiwan.”

Historical Note

One salient truth about Americans’ perception of the Ukraine War should be evident to everyone. Today’s media thoroughly understands the American public’s insatiable appetite for the right kind of misinformation. Niall Ferguson makes the point that the US government may nevertheless be inept in providing it. The history of misinformation in times of war over the past century should provide some clues.

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In 1935, Major General Smedley Butler wrote a book describing the logic behind his own service on several continents. Its title was “War Is a Racket.” He described the American vision of war as a quest for corporate profit. He tried to warn the nation of the inhumanity of such an approach to the use of military force. He manifestly failed because he was late to the game. Back in 1917, Edward Bernays, the “father of Public Relations,” seduced the American public into believing that the only motive for the nation’s invasions and wars is the spreading of democracy. It was Bernays who provided Woodrow Wilson with the slogan “make the world safe for democracy.”

For the rest of his life, Bernays not only helped private companies boost their brands, he also consulted on foreign policy to justify regime change when it threatened a customer’s racket. In 1953, working for United Fruit, he collaborated with President Dwight Eisenhower’s secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, and his brother, CIA Director Allen Dulles, to overthrow Jacobo Arbenz, the elected president of Guatemala. Arbenz had a plan to redistribute to the country’s impoverished peasants “unused land” monopolized by United Fruit. In a 2007 article for the Financial Times, Peter Chapman that both Dulles brothers were “legal advisers” to United Fruit. Chapman notes that the company was also involved in the 1961 CIA-led Bay of Pigs invasion.

In other words, concerning their impact on the American psyche, Bernays the PR man defeated Butler, celebrated at the time as �������������’s greatest living war hero. His fame was such that a group of powerful fascist-leaning businessmen tried to recruit him to overthrow President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the infamous 1933 “.”

Americans continue to rally around Bernays’ genius for reducing a suspect ideology to a catchy slogan. American interventions abroad are framed as noble efforts to support democracy and promote American business (Butler called them rackets). It’s a population of avid consumers of the media’s plentiful supply of misinformation.

There are nevertheless odd moments when real information breaks through, though it rarely leaves much lasting impact. Last week, the Pentagon leaked news the narrative the State Department, the intelligence community and US media have unanimously adopted and promoted. In the Defense Department’s view, ��ܲ�������’s invasion is not an example of unrestrained sadism toward the Ukrainian people. “A�� destructive as the Ukraine war is,” Newsweek reports, “Russia is causing less damage and killing fewer civilians than it could, U.S. intelligence experts say.”

The US military establishment calls it the “Russian leader’s strategic balancing act,” observing that Russia has acted with restraint. It realistically assesses that, far from seeking to subdue and conquer Ukraine, Putin’s “goal is to take enough territory on the ground to have something to negotiate with, while putting the government of Ukraine in a position where they have to negotiate.”

Ferguson has gleaned his own evidence concerning US and UK strategy that “helps explain, among other things, the lack of any diplomatic effort by the U.S. to secure a cease-fire. It also explains the readiness of President Joe Biden to call Putin a war criminal.” Peace is no objective. Punishment is. This is a case where the Pentagon has received the message of Smedley Butler and dares to contradict an administration guided by the logic of Edward Bernays.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post When Will We Know the Bleeding Truth? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Lopez was sitting with her beau of the time, Ben Affleck, a white Californian built like a light-heavyweight boxer (she may be back with him now). You’ll understand shortly why I’m being specific about their particulars.

You Can Take the Man Out of the Ghetto…

Watching the past weekend’s Oscars , I immediately wondered: What if Chris Rock, an African American comedian, had cracked a gag at the expense of JLo and not Jada Pinkett Smith? After Martin’s joke, Lopez grinned politely, while Affleck, seated next to her, was clearly unimpressed but forced a transparently false smile.

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But what if he had taken offense, like Will Smith, a black actor with a similar build to Affleck, did? If Affleck marched onto the stage and smacked Rock across the face, the situation would have taken on a completely different dynamic. The headlines would have read: White Actor Strikes Diminutive Black Host. Rock is 5 foot 7 inches and, in boxing terms, looks about a featherweight.

The media would have reacted differently, though how differently we’ll never know. One thing is for sure: The episode would have taken on a racial character.

Even as it was, Smith’s assault on Rock is loaded with racial implications, the most obvious one being that he supplied white racists with sustenance. There is an that “You can take the man out of the ghetto but you can’t take the ghetto out of the man.” Racists subscribe to this and often cite the examples of O.J. Simpson and Mike Tyson, both African Americans who became conspicuously successful and had more money than they could count. Both, in their different ways, imploded.

Smith hasn’t committed an offense comparable with rape or any other kind of violent crime. And the LAPD has declared it will not seek prosecution. So, Smith’s contretemps is likely to remain that: an embarrassment rather than a crime.

But let’s face it: Had it occurred in a different context, the likelihood is that the perpetrator of the offense would be arrested and charged. There would be no trouble finding witnesses, either. Smith behaved like a perfect racial stereotype: hot-tempered, bull-headed, thuggish and, most importantly, incapable of controlling his emotions even in an environment where decorum prevailed. Even after Smith returned to his seat, he screamed obscenities at Rock, who lacked the wit to turn the episode into something worthy of laughter. His was an unedifying exhibition of uncontrolled aggression.

Surprisingly, Smith was not ejected and, indeed, later picked up an award for best actor.

Animating Masculinity

But pandering to stock racist types was not Smith’s only offense. His action was borderline misogynistic, perhaps even enhancing the racial stereotype he’d brought to life. Consider if it was a case of Will being taken over by his emotion, seeing the look on his wife’s face, probably under family stress with her condition and snapping. Or a black man animating an anachronistic form of masculinity, historically associated, though not exclusively, with black men. After all, the amusing line was aimed at his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, who has alopecia, a condition that manifests in the partial or complete absence of hair from areas of the body where it normally grows; baldness, in other words.

Couldn’t she have responded to the insult herself? She may have felt a more dignified silence was the best policy. But she might also have answered back with an equally acerbic remark. Or, if she had been moved to act, Pinkett Smith could have administered the slap in the face herself. She’s about the same size as Rock, so it wouldn’t have been the mismatch that actually did take place. Since when do women need their husbands, partners or male friends to take care of their business? Jada looked slightly disgusted by Rock’s remark, but, so far, her views on her husband’s violent behavior aren’t known. Had she objected to it, we would have surely found out by now.

Since #MeToo gained momentum in the aftermath of the Harvey Weinstein case, the flagrant manipulation and abuse of women by men — especially powerful ones — has become visible through the testimonies of countless women. We probably suspected for years that men get away with mistreating women in more ways than one. But #MeToo has effectively put the brake on this egregious historical practice.

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What about men’s abuse of other men? I know readers will think I am stretching this too far, but surely men have the right not to be coerced, harassed or intimidated too. Rock was only doing his job — the tradition at Oscar ceremonies is to “roast,” as Americans call it. That is, to subject guests to good-natured criticism. For many, he may have overstepped the mark by making fun of what is, after all, a medical condition. But the informal rules about what constitutes good or bad taste change year by year. Rock is at least entitled to expect the people he insults will be familiar enough with the custom that they take the ridicule in the spirit he intends.

Victims of Domestic Abuse

The LAPD’s intention not to pursue the case raises a final issue. Should it be necessary for a to press charges when an obvious assault has been committed? Rock is clearly embarrassed by the affair, and his failure to file a complaint presumably reflects his desire to have the incident quickly forgotten. Countless women and men, who have been victims of domestic abuse, do not press charges. But their motivations are usually very, very different. Often, they are pressured by their abuser or threatened with more violence should they pursue charges.

The LAPD’s approach to this seems head-in-the-sand. It will probably have no consequences for Chris Rock and leave no damage, professionally or physically (at least he didn’t seem too badly hurt). But victims of domestic abuse are never so fortunate: their circumstances dictate that they often imperil their own safety by giving evidence. The LAPD’s decision will not inspire them.

*[Ellis Cashmore is the author of “.”]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Market concentration, on the other hand, is a more pernicious issue. More than  the value of US farm production came from farms with at least $1 million in sales in 2015, compared to only 31% in 1991.

The consequences of consolidation become apparent in the sales of various agricultural products. For example, in 2000, the biggest four companies sold 51% of  seeds in the United States. By 2015, their share rose to 76%.

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“The agricultural industry is different than other industries because Capper-Volstead allows them to combine in ways that other individuals would go to jail for,”&�Բ�����;  Allee A. Ramadhan, a former Justice Department antitrust attorney who led an investigation into the dairy industry. The 1922 Capper-Volstead Act was a law originally designed to protect producers by allowing them to secure their interests through cooperatives. Unfortunately, it has resulted in the perfect conditions for heavy consolidation by the largest companies.

Consolidation doesn’t just impact prices, but it also contributes to US agriculture’s declining competitiveness. That is why agriculture was included in President ���DZ�&�Բ�����;��������’s executive  on competition last July, in which he declared that the “American promise of a broad and sustained prosperity depends on an open and competitive economy.”

Fertilizers and Destabilizing Forces

In addition to the structural concerns for US agriculture, there have been further destabilizing since 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Not only did the health crisis remove domestic outlets for agricultural products due to repeated lockdowns, but it also severely disrupted production. This was particularly in terms of available human resources, whether before at the farms or down the processing chain with the temporary closure of many slaughterhouses.

Aside from the impact of COVID-19, extreme weather has pummeled certain states, reduced production and caused billions of dollars in damage. The prices of many inputs are snowballing into other areas. Prices for urea have skyrocketed. DAP, the common phosphate fertilizer, has reached its highest price tag since the 2008 financial crash that led to the food pricing crisis.

“A�� fertilizer prices continue to rise, farmers will either cut application rates, cut fertilizer entirely in hopes for lower future pricing, or cut other farm products to account for the bigger expected spend,”&�Բ�����; Alexis Maxwell, an analyst at Green Markets.

Some farmers are essentially holding out before buying for the next growing season, in the hopes that costs come down. But that is a risky strategy.

Contributing to the destabilizing forces, recent countervailing duties against foreign fertilizer producers selling to the US market have cut supply. Chris Edgington, the president of the National Cotton Growers Association, in late 2021 that the Mosaic Company petitioned for the tariffs and has since seen its share of the phosphate market grow from 74% to 80%, a near-monopoly. “There’s been a dramatic increase of fertilizer costs to the producer and that’s not looking to end,” he added. In general, the price increases for different fertilizers are not yet at the levels seen in 2008, but they could soon be even higher if they keep climbing.

Uncertainty Due to the Ukraine War

The war in Ukraine has added fuel to the fire regarding the uncertainties in the agricultural sector. The conflict has pitted against each other Russia and Ukraine, whose wheat exports for more than 25% of the world’s supply. Now, these exports are at risk, as witnessed by the emerging food crisis in several North African and Middle Eastern countries.

For instance, Tunisia imports half of its wheat from Ukraine to make bread. In the country where the Arab Spring began in December 2010, Tunisians are worried there could be shortages of supplies and a repeat of bread riots like in the 1980s. Alarmingly, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has caused prices to rise to their highest level in 14 years. Yemen, Lebanon and Egypt are also beginning to be stricken by flour shortages.

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The conflict has also led to the introduction of severe against Russia and Belarus, two of the world’s largest producers and exporters of fertilizers of all kinds, along with natural gas, an essential ingredient in ammonia production and a key component of complex fertilizers. Although the United States produces most of its own natural gas, fluctuations in world prices have a significant effect on the fertilizer industry. This only exacerbates the difficulties farmers currently face in obtaining inputs.

Thus, while US farmers could look forward to a windfall of increased demand for their grain in the coming year, in the immediate future, they are simply faced with a further increase in production costs. Due to these added costs of inputs and the supply chain issues, US agriculture — especially the wheat industry — may be lacking the fertilizers needed to maximize yields, resulting in a decline in production and impeding its capability to respond to global demand.

In a way, in the immediate and near future, the nightmare of 2021 is only worsening. For Arkansas farmer , “There’s no guarantee of anything being a sure thing anymore. That’s the scary part.”

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post After a Difficult Year, US Farmers Are Pessimistic appeared first on 51�Թ�.

One good example is an in The American Purpose by the National Endowment for Democracy’s vice-president for studies and analysis, Christopher Walker. In the piece titled, “The Kleptocratic Sources of Russia’s Conduct,” Walker builds his case around the idea that “Vladimir Putin and his gang are fixated on wealth and power.” The author admits being inspired by political analyst Daniel Kimmage, who in 2009 produced what Walker terms a “clear-eyed assessment of Putin’s Russia.” He cites this wisdom he gleaned from Kimmage: “The primary goal of the Russian elite is not to advance an abstract ideal of the national interest or restore some imagined Soviet idyll,” but “to retain its hold on money and power.”

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Kimmage sums up one difficulty Americans have felt when dealing with Putin as an ideological adversary. Whereas the Soviet Union’s embrace of communism made the ideological gap visible even to moronic voters, Putin reigns over a nation that American consultants transformed in the 1990s into a capitalist paradise (i.e., a paradise for owners of capital). To distinguish Putin’s evil capitalism from �������������’s benevolent capitalism, Kimmage called the Russian version a “selectively capitalist kleptocracy.”

Walker notes that “the system of ‘selectively capitalist kleptocracy’ in Russia that Daniel Kimmage described” 13 years ago has now “evolved in ways that are even more threatening to democracy and its institutions.”

Today’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Kleptocracy:

The form of government universally adopted by all powerful nations at the end of the 20^th century.

Contextual Note

An acerbic critic might be excused for not feeling particularly illuminated to learn that Putin and his cronies “are fixated on wealth and power.” Who would expect them to have a different philosophy and mindset than the leaders of every other powerful country in the world? The list includes those that claim to be faultless democracies, committed to implementing the will of the people. The first among them is, of course, the United States, but France, the United Kingdom and others adhere to the same sets of values, even if each of them has worked out more subtle ways of applying them. And, of course, Saudi Arabia stands at the head of everyone’s class as the exemplar of leaderships fixated on wealth and power.

Kimmage’s description of Russia as a “selectively capitalist kleptocracy” may be helpful in ways he may not have intended. ��ܲ�������’s selective capitalist kleptocracy contrasts with �������������’s non-selectively capitalist kleptocracy. The real question turns around what it means to be selective or non-selective. Walker makes no attempt to differentiate the two because he believes the term kleptocracy only applies to Russia. But statistics about wealth inequality reveal that the American capitalist system has become a plutocracy that can make its own claim to being a kleptocracy.

In 1989, the top 10% of income earners in the United States earned 42% of the total , which is already significant. In 2016, they accounted for 50%. “By the start of 2021, the richest 1% of Americans held 32% of the nation’s wealth,” to The New York Times. Between the start of 2020 and July 2021, “the richest 1% gained $10 trillion” in accumulated wealth.

The gap is destined to keep widening. Unlike Putin’s oligarchy, composed of his “selected” friends and other winners of ��ܲ�������’s industrial casino, the 1% in the US have non-selectively emerged to constitute a kleptocratic class that, thanks to a sophisticated system of governance, writes the laws, applies the rules and captures the new wealth that is programmed to gravitate towards them.

Kimmage’s idea of a fixation “with wealth and power” correctly describes the mindset of the members of the American kleptocratic class, whether they are entrepreneurs with names like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates, or politicians like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama who rose from poverty to convert power into riches and earn their place as servants of the kleptocratic class.

Unlike Putin’s mafia-like political culture, the system in the US is subtle and sophisticated. It contains convenient paths to join the kleptocratic class, such as a Harvard or Stanford degree. But mostly it relies on fixation. Within the US kleptocratic class diversity exists. Some may be more focused on power (including cultural power) than wealth. But the fascination with both wealth and power is common to all. The system is built on the symmetrical principle that wealth feeds power and power feeds wealth.

Walker accuses Putin of another grave sin, beyond kleptomania but including it: expansionism. He denounces the “spread of the roots and branches of a transnational kleptocratic system that stretches well beyond the Russian Federation to pose a multidimensional threat to free societies.”

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How could a discerning reader not notice the dramatic irony here? Has Walker forgotten that Putin’s complaint about NATO is that, despite promises made to the contrary, it has spent 30 years aggressively expanding toward ��ܲ�������’s most sensitive borders? Putin may be interested in expansion, but Eastern Europe has become a slow tug-of-war in which NATO, under US impulsion, has been the most active and insistent aggressor.

In short, Walker has produced an essay that correctly identifies very real political evils within the Russian system. But they share the same basic traits as the politico-economic culture of the West under US leadership. In an absolute failure of self-recognition, Walker somehow manages to avoid acknowledging his own culture’s image reflected back to him into the mirror that has become the target of his complaints. That is because, in this article, he has focused on producing just one more example of what has now become the shameless, knee-jerk propaganda that pollutes Western media in this climate of an existential war from which the US has abstained, preferring to let the Ukrainians endure the sacrifice for the sake of American principles.

Historical Note

In the 17^th century, European history began a radical transformation of its political institutions lasting roughly 300 years. After England’s Puritans beheaded their king and declared a short-lived Commonwealth, European intellectuals began toying with an idea that would eventually lead to the triumph of the idea, if not the reality of democracy, a system Winston Churchill generously called “the worst form of government except for all the others.”

For the best part of the 19^th and 20^th centuries, representative democracy became the standard reference for everyone’s idea of what an honest government should be like, while struggling to find its footing with the concurrent rise of industrial capitalism. Capitalism generated huge inequality that seemed at least theoretically anomalous with the idea of democracy.

During the late 20^th century, industrial capitalism that had previously focused on production, productivity and mass distribution, gave way to financial capitalism. This new version of capitalism focused uniquely on wealth and power. In other words, democracies switched their orientation from a belief in their citizens’ anarchic quest for personal prosperity in the name of the “pursuit of happiness” to the elite’s concentrated focus on the acquisition and accumulation of money and clout.

This new social model merged the logic of democratically designed institutions with economic and legal mechanisms that created a sophisticated system at the service of a small number of individuals who understood and controlled the levers of wealth and political power. Their major cultural achievement consisted of giving a sufficiently wide base to this new form of plutocracy that disguised its kleptocratic reality.

For nearly half a century, the Cold War promoted the spectacle of a combat between democratic capitalism and autocratic communism. Both sides seized the opportunity to build military powerhouses that could provide an effective shelter for the kleptocratic class. Once the heresy of communism was banished from Russia, it could morph, under Boris Yeltsin and then Vladimir Putin, into a caricature of the much more subtle kleptocracy encapsulated in Reaganomics.

The Russian and American versions of economic power management shared the same orientations but deployed them in contrasting ways. Kleptocratic rule was at the core of both. Using a musical analogy, the American philharmonic version of kleptocracy was delivered in Carnegie Hall, with a fully orchestrated score. Russia offered an improvisational version delivered by local musicians in an animated tavern. In both cases, as the proverb says, “he who pays the piper calls the tune.”

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post A Russian-American Game of Mirrors appeared first on 51�Թ�.

FADE IN:

EXT. Georgetown Street — Late Afternoon

DYSON: General, if you could spare a minute, I’d like to get your take on how the Ukraine war’s going. Are you satisfied we’re achieving our objectives?

MORAN: You’re a reporter. Read the papers.

DYSON: I write for the papers, so I don’t necessarily trust everything I read. I’d like to get it from the horse’s mouth.

MORAN: Look, you’re asking the wrong stallion. Address your questions to the politicians. The military’s job is to obey orders, not give interviews. Our opinion means nothing.

DYSON: I’ve been talking to the politicians. I know what they’re saying, which is why I’d like to hear your thoughts. I’m interested in the military perspective, the feelings you guys have about your mission.

MORAN: We don’t have feelings. We have orders. Orders lead to actions. Feelings come later.

DYSON: OK, but everyone is acting like we’re engaged in a war. And you know much more about war than any politician.

MORAN: Officially we’re at peace. So I have nothing to say.

DYSON: We’re definitely in a major economic war that sits on top of a local shooting war. That’s a unique situation. The media are whipping the public into a frenzy of war fever. Do you feel you’re being sidelined?

MORAN: Do I feel…? I told you, don’t ask me about my feelings.

DYSON: Well, you and your colleagues must be wondering about what this frenzy means. You can see everybody in the media itching to take on the Russkis. Anyone who thinks a war isn’t necessary can be called a traitor. But at the same time, the official message is that we’re not going to battle.

MORAN: We’re ready for any action that’s required. That’s all. For the moment, it’s the State Department’s war, not ours. Their weapons are sanctions and they have quite an arsenal.

DYSON: So you admit that applying sanctions is the equivalent of war?

MORAN: Sanctions actually kill people more surely and on a more massive scale than any non-nuclear weapons.

DYSON: That’s the point. Critics point out that they target civilians and disrupt the survivors’ lives, people who have nothing to do with politics or combat, whereas war is supposed to be about opposing armies. Are you saying you consider sanctions a legitimate way to conduct war?

MORAN: Well, if you really want my opinion, I’ll tell you. Sanctions make a mockery of the idea of war, which is always has been and should always be considered a noble pursuit. Politicians have no idea what true war is all about. They say they have a strategy, but they have no sense of operational goals.

DYSON: If you admit they have a strategy, how would you assess their tactics?

MORAN: We don’t try. All we can do is hope they come out victorious.

DYSON: Have they given you military people any idea of what victory would look like?

MORAN: From what I can tell, it’s bringing down the evildoer, Vladimir Putin.

DYSON: So, it’s regime change?

MORAN: That’s what it looks like.

DYSON: Blinken absolutely denied that last week on “Face the Nation.” But he does say it’s about provoking the devastation of the Russian economy.

MORAN: Pretty much the same thing.

DYSON: The French minister Bruno Le Maire said something similar, about provoking the total collapse of the Russian economy. It’s beginning to sound like “Carthago delenda est.”

MORAN: Is that French?

DYSON: No, Latin. You know, Cato.

MORAN: Are you telling me the French minister works for the Cato Institute here in DC?

DYSON: No, it’s what Cato the Elder said during one of the Punic wars.

MORAN: It’s disrespectful to call any of our wars puny, even if we have to admit there were a few failures.

DYSON: I’m talking about ancient Roman history. Cato was a Roman politician who preached the destruction of Carthage around 200 BC. He ended all his speeches at the Senate with the catchphrase, “Carthage must be destroyed.” You must have studied the Punic wars? The Romans went ahead and definitively wiped Carthage off the map in 146 BC, killing or enslaving every one of its citizens.

MORAN: Oh, yeah. I remember hearing about that in my history classes at West Point. That was a time when politicians knew how to finish off the quarrels they started.

DYSON: So, is that what we’re talking about now? Destroying Russia?

MORAN: Don’t see how that can work without a nuclear attack. But if they can bring down the regime with sanctions, more power to ‘em. After the habitual “mission accomplished” moment they always love to stage, they’ll probably call us in to clean up the mess. That generally doesn’t go very well, but we’ll make the best of it.

DYSON: As you always do, I guess. Well, thanks for the valuable insight. I’m very grateful.

MORAN: You’re not going to quote me on any of this? You do and I’ll make sure every officer down to the rank of lieutenant knows your name. You’ll never get another story from the Pentagon.

DYSON: Hey, I was only interested in your ideas. And, don’t worry, I won’t take any direct quotes or mention your name. Trust me, I work for The Washington Post.

Disclaimer: This fictional dialogue exists for entertainment purposes only. The ideas expressed in it are totally imaginary. Its eventual inclusion in any Hollywood movie or television script will be subject to negotiating authoring rights with 51�Թ�. That is nevertheless highly unlikely for the simple reason that some of the reflections in the dialogue appear to contradict the widely held beliefs spread in the propaganda that now dominates both the news media and the entertainment industry.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post A Fictional Debate Between a General and a Journalist appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Is Bosnia-Herzegovina Next on ��ܲ�������’s Radar?

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“All experts,” the avowed Erdogan supporter continued, agreed that Washington was escalating the crisis to solidify its dominance in Western Europe. With that, Barlas also echoed the general mood in Turkey. It is fortunate, he said, that ��ܲ�������’s president is much more reasonable and wiser than his American counterpart, Joe Biden.

The Bond Between Erdogan and Putin

This positive image of Putin and Erdogan’s familiarity with the Kremlin leader is no accident. Particularly since the failed coup attempt in Turkey in 2016, Erdogan has, with Putin’s help, been able to position himself independently of — and sometimes even against — the United States and Europe on key foreign policy issues.

In Syria and Azerbaijan, Ankara and Moscow succeeded in marginalizing Western actors. In Libya and the eastern Mediterranean, Turkey acts as a competitor or even adversary to member states of the European Union.

Turkey’s flirtation with Moscow led to concerns that Ankara might turn away from Europe altogether. That contributed to the EU’s kid-glove approach to Turkey in the eastern Mediterranean and Cyprus. It also resulted in Washington’s belated reaction to Turkey’s acquisition of ��ܲ�������’s S-400 missile defense system with sanctions. It is true that Turkey has experience with Putin as a cool strategist and ruthless power politician in conflicts such as the one in Syria. But Erdogan has always seemed to succeed in avoiding escalation.

Despite all of Ankara’s tension with Moscow, Erdogan’s rapprochement with Russia has brought him much closer to his goal of strategic autonomy for his country from the West. Turkey skillfully maneuvered between the fronts of global rivalry and was able to considerably expand its scope and influence in just a few years.

In this seesaw policy, however, Turkey is behaving much more confrontationally toward Western states than toward Russia. For years, the government press has painted a positive picture of Russia and a negative one of the United States and Europe. This is not without effect on Turkish public opinion. Around a month before Russia attacked Ukraine, in a poll carried out by a renowned opinion research institute, a narrow relative majority of 39% of respondents favored foreign policy cooperation with Russia and China instead of Europe and the United States.

In the first days after ��ܲ�������’s invasion, Ankara’s policy followed exactly the aforementioned pattern. Turkey condemned the attack, but it is not participating in sanctions against Russia. In the vote on suspending ��ܲ�������’s representation rights in the Council of Europe, Turkey was the only NATO state to abstain and, as such, is keeping its airspace open to Russian aircraft.

The West is paying particular attention to whether and how Turkey implements the Treaty of Montreux. The 1936 treaty regulates the passage of warships through Turkey’s Dardanelles and Bosporus Straits into the Black Sea. It limits the number, tonnage and duration of stay of ships from non-littoral states in the Black Sea. In the event of war, the convention stipulates that the waterways must be closed to ships of the parties to the conflict, and it entrusts Ankara with the application of the treaty’s regulations

Ankara Swings Around

It took Turkey four days to classify the Russian invasion as “war.” However, Ankara is still reluctant to officially close the waterways — as the treaty stipulates — to ships of parties to the conflict, Russia and Ukraine. Instead, Ankara is “all countries, Black Sea riparian or not,” against sending warships through the straits.

In the literal sense, this step is not directed unilaterally against Moscow, but it also makes it more difficult for NATO ships to sail into the Black Sea. According to the treaty, however, the waterways may only be closed to warships of all countries if Ankara considers itself directly threatened by war. Consciously creating ambiguity, Turkey has triangulated between the West and Russia.

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Almost imperceptibly at first, however, a reversal has now set in. There are four reasons for this. First, the West is showing unity and resolve unseen since the Cold War, and its sanctions are undermining ��ܲ�������’s standing in the world. Second, Putin is losing his charisma as a successful statesman and reliable partner. Third, Ankara realizes that Putin’s vision of a great Russian empire could provoke more wars. Fourth, the ranks of the adversaries are closing and it is becoming more difficult for Turkey to continue its seesaw policy.

Thus, strongly pro-Western tones have emerged from Ankara in recent weeks. Turkey will continue to support Ukraine in consultation with the West, according to the president’s spokesman. Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu now claims to have contradicted ��ܲ�������’s wishes for the passage of warships through the Bosporus “in all friendship.” President Erdogan is also in of admitting Ukraine to the European Union and Kosovo to NATO.

Moreover, Ankara is not contradicting reports by Ukrainian diplomats that Turkey is supplying more armed drones and training pilots to fly drones. On March 2, Turkey joined the vast majority of states in the UN General Assembly’s condemnation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine that Russia to “immediately, completely and unconditionally withdraw all of its military forces.” Two days later, during the extraordinary meeting of NATO’s foreign ministers, Turkey supported the deployment of NATO’s Response Force to NATO countries neighboring Ukraine.

It looks like Putin is not only bringing long-lost unity to the EU, but he is also reminding Turkey of the benefits of its Western ties. Western states should realize that only more unity among themselves and more determination will make Turkey reengage with the West.

*[This was originally published by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), which advises the German government and Bundestag on all questions relating to foreign and security policy.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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For the past month, the most respectable news outlets in the West have channeled their energy into perfecting a novel journalistic phenomenon that goes well beyond traditional propaganda. It has become so concentrated it now deserves an official name. I propose calling it “Obsessive Accusatory Reporting” (OAR). The message of any item in the news meriting the OAR label is to magnify an already present feeling of confirmed hatred in the reader. In principle, it can target nations, peoples, ideas or religions. But it works best when it focuses on a single personality.

Finding a Way to Diss Information

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The current version of OAR began with an idea already built into the cultural woodwork of American media: the perception that Russia — whether in its historical Soviet version or in its modern post-tsarist form — is the natural and eternal enemy of the United States and, by extension, to Western civilization as a whole. Inherited from the Cold War as a set of feelings that Americans find natural, establishment Democrats in the US gave it new impetus thanks to the artificial association they managed to establish with the man they believed could play the role of a true American evildoer: Donald Trump. Now, thanks to a specific event, ��ܲ�������’s invasion of Ukraine, the practice of OAR can focus on a universal target by whom, unlike Trump, no American should be allowed to be seduced. It’s the new Hitler, Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

Anyone who has ever witnessed a rowing event knows that to gain speed and ensure hydrodynamic efficiency, all rowers must have their oars strike the water at the same precise moment and achieve an equivalent depth below the surface of the water as their collective effort pushes the boat and all it contains forward. This repeated, disciplined, rhythmically coordinated energy creates the inertia strokes that produce increased momentum. 

The media’s propaganda campaigns appear to work in much the same way thanks to the equally disciplined and repeated OAR phenomenon. Obsessive repetition, the alignment of an infinite series of examples of despicable behavior and the journalistic talent for turning each example into an emotion-stirring story are the three elements that sum up the art of OAR. The momentum the media has created around hatred for the person of Vladimir Putin has become a spectacle in itself. The danger the media has no time to worry about as its effort continues developing potentially uncontrollable speed is that it may reach the point where it triggers actions leading to a potentially thermonuclear conflagration. Call it the media’s brinkmanship that multiplies the effects of politicians who themselves, persuaded it is now the key to successful electoral marketing, have turned it into an art form. Voters want their leaders to be aggressive decision-makers.

There are undoubtedly plenty of reasons to distrust, despise and morally condemn Vladimir Putin that existed well before he decided to invade Ukraine on February 24. Putin has, as befits a country ruled for a century by autocratic tsars, developed a particularly thuggish form of governing his nation. Russians at least are used to it and fatalistically accept it, with no illusion about its pretention to any form of virtue other than the ability to keep things under control. 

Putin is clearly guilty of every sin — from brutal repression to aggravated narcissism — that accrues to anyone who achieves his level of control that embraces military power, finance and technology. His ability to repress any serious opposition and manipulate electoral processes, his commitment to cronyism and self-enrichment, and his immunity from a basic moral sense concerning the value of human life and the dignity of the average citizen constitute attributes of his office. Unlike some autocratic leaders, he also has a high level of strategic intelligence. 

Westerners have become habituated to leaders who seek to seduce broad segments of the population thanks to slogans rather than the demonstration of their clout or the display of their intelligence, which in fact is never required and, when it exists, may get in the way of their ambition. Western political leaders focus on developing the essential skill of deploying charm to win elections. To Westerners, Putin’s style of governing marked by the arrogance of power is worse than distasteful. It challenges their own belief in the illusion they need to feel of possessing political power in a democracy thanks to their ability to vote at regular intervals. They need to imagine their vote has an impact on policy, an illusion the media encourages them to believe in. All it really does is limit the degree of repression a democratic government may get away with. Putin has no qualms or regrets about manifestly unjust actions carried out against his own people. Western democratic leaders actually worry.

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was unambiguously illegal, morally shocking, paradoxical to the extent that he is attacking the population he claims to wish to protect and downright brutal. It may even be self-defeating, potentially tarnishing his image as a strong leader. It would, however, be premature to draw conclusions on that last point, as many in the Western media have already started doing. But for anyone susceptible to being seduced by today’s OAR culture, the temptation to believe in the inevitable failure of Putin’s enterprise is overwhelming. For the past two weeks, Western media have been joyously proclaiming that Putin’s armed assault is on the verge of defeat. 

Journalism and Democracy

The traditional belief about journalism in a democracy included the idea that the press plays a role closely attuned to the interest and the voice of the people. Ideally, the media exists to provide essential information about the real world and a modicum of independent insight about the topics treated. By showing restraint and focusing on discernible facts, media in a democracy could be trusted to help citizens understand complex events and make informed decisions after drawing their own conclusions about the possible relationship between causes and effects.

That has long been the theory concerning the role of what people still call the fourth estate, a linguistic hand-me-down from 18^th century European history that designates the free press. The fourth estate was deemed to be closest to the third estate (the people, or the commoners) and furthest from the first two estates (the clergy and the nobility). The advent of democracy made the theory of the estates obsolete, to the extent that the clergy lost its status of “estate.” In reality, the totalitarian drift of the 20^th century revealed that the first and second estates merged as democratic governments assumed they could project the moral authority the clergy traditionally exercised.

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The idea of a free and independent press embodied in the fourth estate continued to persist as a necessary but increasingly intangible ideal. Alas, history tells us that whenever an ideal makes contact with reality, it is likely to become distorted. With the rise of democracy in the West in the 19^th century, the press permitted the expression of variable points of view. But over time, no ethical system could prevent those voices from being influenced by political parties, commercial interests, pressure groups and the government itself. The key to honoring the ideal was variety, not just tolerance but also the encouragement of a range of views. Financial concentration eventually limited and finally captured and confined that variety.

The media has been trapped by forces it no longer tries to control or resist. It is virtually impossible even to imagine, let alone create anything resembling the ideal news outlet for which objective presentation of the news would be the inviolable norm. Perhaps the proponents of government by artificial intelligence believe they can one day put that in place by eliminating human agency. They too are victims of an illusion because manipulative human agency can work — and in fact works best — through artificial systems that include and mechanically promote the interests that created them. This is as true of political systems as it is of computer programs. The failure of humanity to even begin addressing the impending catastrophe of global warming can simply be attributed to systemic inertia, not to the idea that no leader is willing to make an appropriate decision.

So long as diversity in the media was still possible, truth for the public at large could emerge not from a spontaneous or enforced consensus, but through the highly interactive process of recognizing and eliminating the distortions of the reality that became visible after comparing the various representations of it. By definition, the truth about human institutions and historical facts is dynamic, organic and interactive. It is not a statement and cannot be contained in statements. It exists as a perception. Perceptions can be shared, compared or contradicted. No single perception sums up the truth.

In the traditional democratic idea of journalism, a good article avoided explicit judgment. In many instances, the standard practice became to avoid even mentioning specific interpretations or judgments. Good reporting limited itself to acknowledging dominant perspectives on a topic without choosing to endorse one or another. In stories about crime, for example, it has become a general rule — before a verdict rendered by a court of justice — to use the epithet “alleged.” This rule holds even when there is no doubt about the existence of the crime and the identity of the author of the crime (though the real reason for this precaution may be the media’s fear of being accused of libel). In contrast, when it comes to political issues, the opposite trend dominates. Journalists or their editors now routinely jump on the occasion to name the culprit and inculcate the belief of guilt in their audience. Knowing their niche audience, it enables them to offer their public what they want to hear or understand.

Russian Agency and the Havana Syndrome

One prominent case in recent years illustrates how easy it is for journalists to play fast and loose concerning real or imaginary political crimes. Over a period of five years dedicated to reporting on the “Havana syndrome,” The New York Times, The Washington Post and other respectable media consistently described reported health incidents as “attacks.” That word alone presumed criminal agency, even though the reality of cause and effect was closer to a “heart attack” or “panic attack” than to an assault.

Articles on the syndrome typically insisted that, even when no evidence could be cited of any human agency, Russia was the prime suspect. Sentences such as this one from The Washington Post were clearly intended to distort the reader’s perception: “Current and former intelligence officials have increasingly pointed a finger at Russia, which has staged multiple brazen attacks on adversaries and diplomats overseas.” It is worth noting that the only act in this sentence that should qualify as news is what the intelligence officials have done: “pointed a finger.” All the rest, the “brazen attacks,” are either imprecisely anecdotal from a random past or simply imaginary.

Five years after initially pointing fingers, those same officials finally admitted officially that there was to point their finger at. When the ultimate negative assessment by the CIA itself of Russian attacks was published in January of this year, did The Post or The Times (or any other media) apologize to their readers for their erroneous reporting over the years? Obviously, not. Perhaps they felt that might oblige them to do the unthinkable: apologize to the Russians.

When there was finally no choice left but to reveal the CIA’s negative assessment, The New York Times tried to save face by insisting that everything it had pinned its hopes on might still have an element of truth in it. “A directed energy weapon,” Julian E. Barnes on January 20, “remains the hypothesis that a number of victims who have studied the incidents believe is most likely.” If that fact is true, a serious reporter would have delved into the interesting question of why the victims continue to believe something that their superiors have determined to be untrue. Does this reveal that CIA operatives and their families have lost their trust in the truthfulness of the agency? The rest of us are left wondering why journalists like Barnes himself think it necessary to print such meaningless observations as significant facts.

Now that the entire thesis of Russian-directed energy attacks has been discredited, a new article delving into the motivation of intelligence officials who made repeated unfounded claims might prove informative. But, miraculously, there are no new articles on the Havana syndrome, except maybe the article you are now reading. But none in The Times or The Post. With hindsight — something the legacy press studiously avoids — the articles of these papers appear to reveal the equivalent of “brazen attacks,” not by Russians but by US intelligence services. They were attacks on the public’s access to the truth. The journalists were simply willing conscious or unconscious accomplices in these brazen attacks. What this entire episode truly reveals is a lesson in how our culture of hyperreality works. It depends entirely on the media.

Finally, a Serious Case of a Brazen Attack: Ukraine

This inevitably brings us back to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This time, Russia is indeed guilty of a brazen attack that isn’t an imaginary hypothesis dreamed up by intelligence operatives. Nevertheless, the media have turned it into something far more brazen by systematically excluding or ignoring other less brazen but equally troubling attacks that have been going on for years. They include a decidedly brazen coup d’état in Ukraine supported, if not engineered, by the United States in 2014.

The carefully managed act of regime change in which the US gratefully accepted the assistance of neo-Nazi extremists to produce the commensurate level of violence used the deposition of one democratically elected leader to enable the comforting fiction that the two Ukrainian presidents elected since those events — Petro Poroshenko and Volodymyr Zelensky — are somehow more legitimate than the president overthrown in the Maidan Revolution. That fiction depends on discarding the fact that Ukraine is not just another “sovereign nation” of Europe, but a historically, culturally and linguistically divided country that also has a conflicting but highly charged symbolic meaning for both Russia, its next-door neighbor, and the United States, a distant hegemon that has used NATO to spread its military dominance across Europe.

Most reasonable and reasoning people admit the principle that complex political entities such as Ukraine require delicate diplomatic treatment. But, as the Bush wars revealed, US foreign policy rarely acknowledges the need for rationality. Even basic diplomacy appears to be inconsistent with the culture of enforced hegemony. At best, it might serve the purpose of catastrophe avoidance. But catastrophes are increasingly welcomed rather than avoided. Instead, we can observe a growing trend of catastrophe provocation that is difficult to explain, since the cost is heavy even for the perpetrators. For the US, it appears to have something to do with the idea that world hegemony is the only possible source of global stability and that catastrophes such as war are somehow good for business (which of course they are, but not for everyone’s or even most people’s business).

In such a geopolitical environment, propaganda becomes a way of life and serves as the core activity in the construction of public culture. Selecting the facts the public will react to in a predictable way according to the interest of those who understand the secrets of geopolitical stability has become the basis of legacy journalism in the US. The ultimately comic example of the Havana syndrome perhaps served as a kind of temporary placeholder in times of relative peace. It upheld the mythological construct of a permanent Cold War, which seems to be essential in the definition of US foreign policy. Now that things have become seriously degraded in a nation that journalists have begun calling the “civilized” part of the world — meaning that it is worth being concerned about, in contrast with the Middle East, Asia and Africa — propaganda has to focus not on pure hallucinatory hyperreality but events that are taking place in the real world.

We are only beginning to see the dominant strategies involved. It is too early to assess them with any historical distance. What we are witnessing is the need to whip up the blind hatred that leads to the OAR phenomenon described earlier. But there is also a more basic approach that applies especially to situations that are historically and culturally complex. It includes the decision to forget to mention or even categorically deny the obvious for as long as possible. When the obvious does become visible, thanks to the indiscipline of some rare investigators interested in the truth, the strategy consists of devising ways of downplaying it and treating it as marginal.

The Neo-Nazi Syndrome

When Putin launched his assault on Ukraine, he defined a mission of denazification of Ukraine. He may have presumed that all Westerners can relate to that theme. Nazis are, after all, the personification of historical evil. So, if we can agree on a common enemy, we should at the very least offer one another friendly support. Putin apparently underestimated the Westerners’ ability to remain ignorant of very real and already documented facts, thanks to the deliberate forgetfulness of their media. Not only did commentators laugh at the notion that a neo-Nazi threat existed in Ukraine, they mocked the idea that it could exist in a nation whose president is Jewish.

Four weeks into the war, The New York Times has published an article acknowledging that the neo-Nazi question is worth mentioning. The bears the title, “Why Vladimir Putin Invokes Nazis to Justify His Invasion of Ukraine.” The title alone is extremely clever. It focuses attention not on the Nazis, who are never seriously identified, but on Vladimir Putin, whom Times readers understand as being evil incarnate. The first sentence reads as pure mockery of phrases Putin has used. “Ukraine’s government,” Anton Troianovski writes, ”is ‘openly neo-Nazi’ and ‘pro-Nazi,’ controlled by ‘little Nazis,’ President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia �������.”

The implication is that if Putin said it, it must be a lie. It is only in the 12^th paragraph of the article that the question of the actual presence and actions of neo-Nazis in Ukraine is even grudgingly entertained. “Like many lies,” the paragraph begins, “Mr. Putin’s claim about a Nazi-controlled Ukraine has a hall-of-mirrors connection to reality.” Ah, Troianovski appears to admit, there is a connection to reality, but of course it is hopelessly distorted, like a fun park’s hall of mirrors.

The following paragraph attempts to convince the reader that the phenomenon is so marginal there is definitely nothing to worry about. “Some fringe nationalist groups, who have no representation in Parliament, use racist rhetoric and symbolism associated with Nazi Germany.” In other words, talk of neo-Nazis is all fiction.

Many paragraphs later, Troianovski reveals the real reason why this article of clarification became necessary for The Times rather than simply neglecting to mention neo-Nazis. It’s the fault of Facebook, which created something of a scandal when it “said it was making an exception to its anti-extremism policies to allow praise for Ukraine’s far-right Azov Battalion military unit, ‘strictly in the context of defending Ukraine, or in their role as part of the Ukraine National Guard.’” The Russians seized on this as proof of complicity between the Ukrainian resistance and the neo-Nazis. To counter dangerous Russian propaganda, The Times is stepping up to clarify the issue, even though it would have preferred not having to mention it.

Unfortunately, the article spends paragraph after paragraph clarifying nothing. It somewhat precipitously ends with a quote about how Jews are now among those fleeing the war. Some of them may never return, implying that Putin’s intent of denazifying Ukraine is in itself a deviously anti-Semitic act. This reversal of perception of blame illustrates one of the key techniques of New York Times-style propaganda. The journalist finds a devious way of turning the supposedly moral motivation of the enemy into its opposite.

Troianovski briefly hints at the uncomfortable paradox that Israel has refused to condemn Russia, a fact that might comfort the idea of Putin’s concern with neo-Nazis. But the journalist leaves that question aside, apparently convinced that the subtlety of that debate unnecessarily complicates his mission as an OAR specialist focused only on highlighting Putin’s evil nature. Surprisingly for those familiar with modern Ukrainian history, Troianovski has the honesty to mention the historical Nazi sympathizer and Ukrainian nationalist, Stepan Bandera, still celebrated by many Ukrainians.

Troianovski even has the merit of providing a link to a fascinatingly instructive 2010 Times article, written at a time when the paper had no particular commitment to churning out propaganda in the interests of celebrating Ukraine’s democratic purity and constitutional integrity. The author of that , Clifford J. Levy, highlights the problem that Viktor Yanukovych was facing as he bravely attempted “to address the ethnic, regional and historical passions that divide the country.” Yanukovych was, of course, the Ukrainian president that Victoria Nuland helped to depose in 2014.

Understanding the Culture of Propaganda by Comparing The Times in 2010 and 2022

All New York Times readers and indeed all American journalists owe it to themselves and the sanity of the world we live in to read Levy’s article from 2010, if only to compare it to the image of Ukraine that American media are putting forward today of a unified people, imbued with liberal European values and united in their hatred of tyranny in all its forms. Levy’s article that applies the now-forgotten practices of straightforward journalism presents facts, cites contrasting points of view — including admirers of Bandera — and takes no sides. In so doing, it gives a clear picture of a terrifyingly complex social and historical situation that Western media have decided to simplify to the extreme in their wish to follow the dictates of US President Joe Biden’s State Department.  

Any objective observer today, however rare their voices are in the media, must , as Barack Obama did in 2016, according to The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, that “Ukraine is a core Russian interest but not an American one.” Obama’s State Department that sent Nuland to Ukraine to manage the Maidan Revolution appeared at the time unaware of what Goldberg called the “Obama Doctrine.” That same objective observer should also be aware of the fact that the Ukraine described by Levy in his 2010 article still exists, despite the State Department’s 2014 coup d’état. There is much more about the history of the last eight years and that, despite the terrifying consequences playing out day after day, US and Western media have now chosen to studiously ignore, if not suppress.

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One salient point that readers of Levy’s article will relate to today, however, is the remark of the director of the Stepan Bandera museum in Lviv: “For Ukrainian nationalists, there is no such word as capitulation.” That is even truer when those same nationalists dispose of a billion dollars worth of American weaponry to keep the war of resistance going as long as possible. The citizenry of Western Ukraine will follow the lead of the nationalists — not all of whom are neo-Nazis — and refuse to capitulate, while suffering what deserves to be called severe if not sadistic cultural, political and military abuse from two enemies fighting a proxy war on their land: Russia and the United States.

But if the continuing destruction of Ukrainian cities and loss of thousands of lives is the price to pay for the pleasure of reading reams of Obsessive Accusatory Reporting, then, as Madeleine Albright might , “the price is worth it.”

​�ċThe views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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It’s Time for #MeToo to Address Structural Racism

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The first official Women’s History Month was inaugurated in 1980 and has been celebrated every year since. There are indeed many milestones and accomplishments to celebrate, including the strides women have made in  and the , the increased  of women in government, and the hard-won legal and social equality. At the same time, white women have leveraged their relative racial privilege to make these gains at the expense of women of color.

Incomplete Picture

While it feels empowering to think of women as a collective group, this category is not a monolith. Failing to consider women and women’s history from an  perspective leaves out the range of experiences and needs of women who do not fit into the white middle-class mold. In short, when the broad range of women’s experiences is not acknowledged, the movement remains incomplete. 

Because historical and contemporary women’s movements have willfully and strategically omitted racial justice, there is a legacy of isolating racism from sexism. This ignores the lived experience of everyone except white women. It has ensured that white women see a competition between issues of racism and sexism, and feel that they lose if the conversation centers around the former. 

The made the deliberate decision to fight for the right of white — not all — women to vote, choosing not to collaborate with black female activists. More recently, the 2017 Women’s March organizers faced criticism for focusing primarily on white women’s issues. 

And in the peak of the #MeToo movement, celebrities like Alyssa Milano, who said that she  to be the vessel for the movement, and Rose McGowan, who  at not being credited with initiating the movement, have by and large been associated with the inception of #MeToo. In reality, , a black female activist and advocate, coined the phrase and spearheaded the movement to raise awareness of sexual violence against working-class women and women of color a whole decade earlier.

As sociologists and white women, we argue that the discomfort regarding engaging with racism in both the society in general as well as in women-centered movements stems from the idea that white people don’t have to talk about race and racism because they aren’t “our issues.” But, because we live in a , everyone has a racial identity.

Another way to think about this is by acknowledging that race is socially constructed, meaning that it carries a social, not biological categorization. However, the fact that it is socially constructed doesn’t mean it isn’t real. In a racist society, race has very real consequences for people.

Real Change

To avoid injury and to build a more equitable and just society, white women must become better at talking about race and racism, and recognize that while we experience sexism, we benefit from racial privilege in society. These benefits range from not having to  when dating to more frequent  in the workplace compared to minority women to extensive when a white woman goes missing, among others. 

Real change will mean giving up some of our comfort and power. Making these changes may not feel nice to us as individuals, but will have life-saving consequences for black people and other people of color. 

Second, we must recognize racism is a  that is embedded into the fabric of American society. Dismantling it will require supporting anti-racist policies and politicians, and advocating for laws such as the , which aims to “improve maternal health, particularly among racial and ethnic minority groups, veterans, and other vulnerable populations. It also addresses maternal health issues related to COVID-19.”&�Բ�����;

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To ensure that political leaders truly represent the American public, everyone must have a seat at the table. While there have been four women on the Supreme Court, this month, we have the opportunity to confirm , who would be the first black woman on the court. 

Finally, we cannot begin to address racism without a shared knowledge of the truth. Ideally, this means casting a wide net and engaging with people from different backgrounds. Black activists and authors can us the social world through their eyes. But even so, we can’t expect anyone to tell us what “good” white people we are. In the words of the late scholar and activist , there is no gold star for “challenging white supremacist, capitalist, and patriarchal values.”&�Բ�����;  

What’s more, since racism is structural, we will all say and do racist things at times. But if we care about making the world a better place, we must listen, learn, apologize and continue to improve. Of course, self-knowledge is not enough. As white women, we must simultaneously work to improve ourselves and engage in the difficult work of dismantling white supremacy. This won’t be easy work, but it’s work that is worth doing. 

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The PCR test is the gold standard for determining if a person has COVID-19. It’s a very good test that gives us the yes-or-no binary information that we value so much for making decisions. Unfortunately, the test is not always readily available and it’s also expensive. And timing is critical. If you take the test too soon after you are infected, the virus may not have yet traveled to your nose where the sample is taken, and thus the result may be a false negative — you have COVID but the test indicates you don’t. Also, it often takes time in a laboratory to process the results — will you isolate or carry on while you’re waiting?

COVID Failure: A Matter of Principle

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Finally, what would prompt you to get a COVID test? Perhaps some event prompts you or requires a test by policy, but otherwise, you might take a test because you feel sick. If so, you already know you may be infectious. In that case, a positive COVID test merely confirms what you already suspect, and you normally get that confirmation a couple of days too late to do any good. Despite our heavy reliance on testing, it’s not as simple or as timely as we would like for deciding when to isolate.

We’ve had another way to separate the healthy from the sick during the COVID-19 pandemic: symptoms. For example, if you have a fever, then you may be infectious. But temperature-based screening has not been very effective at all, and a big reason why is that the US government has historically defined fever as 100.4°F (38°C) or above. If a person’s body temperature is 100.3°F, then according to the government, that person does not have a fever. Does that make sense?

Unfortunately, one of the distinguishing characteristics of COVID is the tendency of many infected people to have mild or even unnoticeable symptoms, including only slightly elevated body temperature, below 100.4°F. So, the government’s definition of “fever,” although simple and binary, has only confused the situation. Some people who were asymptomatic with COVID-19 took their temperature, found it to be below 100.4°F and assumed they did not have a fever. So, they carried on with normal day-to-day activities, often infecting others. Temperature-based screening systems typically use the government’s 100.4°F fever threshold, and, as a result, failed to prevent entry by many infected persons. Relying on the government’s 100.4°F fever definition has contributed to the spread of COVID-19. Where did this government standard come from, how can it be improved, and why has the US resisted change?

Origins of 100.4°F

In 1868, a German physician, psychiatrist and medical professor named Carl Reinhold August Wunderlich published a describing his assessment that normal body temperature is relatively constant, varies from 97.9°F to 99.3°F (36.6°C to 37.4°C), and averages 98.6°F (37°C). He found that patients with a disease often exhibited a symptom of fever that he found to average at or above 100.4°F. He based these findings on 1 million temperature measurements for 25,000 patients.

For the time, this scientific result was quite remarkable, and it changed medicine forever because it gave physicians the newfound ability to objectively assess the presence and severity of many diseases. However, Wunderlich’s patients were mostly German rather than being from different cultures, his thermometer may have been less accurate than those we have today, and people are a little now than they were then.

These are reasons to suspect that Wunderlich’s ideas of normal body temperature and fever are somewhat different today than they were in the mid-1800s. But, to be fair, Wunderlich observed differences in temperature based on many variables when healthy, and he advised that temperature averages have many “shades of gray.” In particular, Wunderlich noted that even smaller rises in temperature are cause for concern, and that there is no definite temperature threshold over which a person transitions from health to sickness. He said that any “elevation of the axillary [under the arm] temperature above 99.5°F (37.5°C) or any depression below 97.2°F (36.5°C) is always very suspicious.” He added: “But even when every precaution has been taken in making the observations, it is impossible to draw a hard and fast line to indicate by temperature the exact limits of health and disease.”

Today, clinical research suggests that Wunderlich’s findings should be , that the normal temperature range by the individual, and that there is no arbitrary fever threshold that works for everyone. Yet, the US government and some medical experts still regard 98.6°F as normal body temperature and 100.4°F or above as a fever. For COVID019, this is simple, easy and, for most people, wrong.

Improving on 100.4°F as a Fever Threshold

If you’re interested in seeing if 100.4°F is an appropriate fever threshold for you, try taking your temperature. Use a normal, digital, under-the-tongue thermometer for at least 60 seconds. Make sure you haven’t consumed anything for 15 minutes — a hot or cold drink or food will change your measurement. Keep your mouth closed during the reading. Assuming you are healthy, if your temperature is below 98.6°F, then it’s a good bet that your fever threshold is under 100.4°F.

If you were to take your temperature every day, preferably in the morning when you first wake, you would see that your normal temperature varies in a range of one degree or so. For example, in the image below is the normal temperature data for a person we’ll call JRDA5.

From this graph, we can see that JRDA5’s normal body temperature varies from 96.6°F to 97.4°F when healthy, and you can expect your own normal temperature to vary also.

In modern medicine, a fever is to be a temperature elevation above a person’s normal range. This definition of fever is more accurate than an arbitrary fever threshold like 100.4°F that is based on population averages and data from 150 years ago. A person’s normal temperature range depends on many such as age, sex, nutrition and level of activity, and so different people will have different fever thresholds.

Almost always, a fever threshold defined as above your normal temperature range is below 100.4°F. Therefore, if we use this new definition, there is significant potential for identifying sick people using temperature-based screening. Relying on 100.4°F is insufficient for identifying mild, pre-symptomatic or asymptomatic cases of COVID-19.

Why the Government Has Resisted Changing the Definition of “Fever”

A pandemic is not the best time for complicated methods. Perhaps the US government chose to stick with 100.4°F for simplicity and consistency. But, in this pandemic, nothing has been simple. We’ve learned to take advantage of vaccines that need boosting, tests that need repeating and symptoms that keep changing. People can figure out their normal temperature range and their own personal fever threshold if that means effective screening. Having a fever or not is still binary, even if we define fever as above your normal range. It’s still pretty simple.

Elevated temperature is not definitive proof you have COVID-19. We all like certainty, and the PCR test will remain the gold standard for COVID. But we don’t need certainty to make a decision to isolate. A fever should prompt isolation, even though it may not be caused by COVID. The next step is to get tested and then wait for the results. We can stop the pandemic if people isolate if they get a fever. Fever is the most timely indicator we may be infectious.

Asymptomatic cases may not exhibit any elevated temperature, so we cannot depend on temperature screening anyway. It’s possible that there are some people infected with COVID-19 who do not have any fever, perhaps because their immune system doesn’t work at all. However, we know that many asymptomatic cases are accompanied by elevated body temperature lower than 100.4°F. We can catch those people using the more correct definition of fever. The perfect should not be the enemy of the good.

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People hate change and the government is no different. It takes a lot to pass federal legislation and to modify federal regulations. But the government’s 100.4°F fever threshold isn’t working. The effort to change will help us control the pandemic.

How Redefining “Fever” Helps

Since the omicron variant of COVID-19 emerged, we’ve seen increased demand for testing, with many people standing in line for hours waiting to get a test. In the United States, the government has been ordering more tests to address the shortages. However, the demand for testing can evidently overrun our testing resources. By using a more accurate definition of “fever,” people will have a better idea of when they need to get tested. Today, about 75% of tests come back negative. We have clinical that fever and other readily available health data can predict test results. By redefining “fever,” we can make testing more efficient.

We can also monitor our health every day, conveniently, in our own homes. We can’t afford to give everyone a daily PCR test, and hardly anyone wants that anyway. In contrast, it’s easy, fast and affordable to take our temperature every day. It’s a smart, safe way to help keep our friends and family safe and do our part to fight the pandemic. A lot of people would self-monitor if they knew it would help.

The coronavirus that causes COVID-19 evidently mutates easily, giving rise to variants, and we don’t expect that to change. It’s possible there are already variants that are not caught by current tests. Redefining “fever” can help identify cases that PCR tests miss. So far, fever is a symptom of all variants. More broadly, fever is a symptom of many other infectious illnesses, such as the flu. Isolating when you have a fever is appropriate for new variants and other viruses to help prevent the spread and keep everyone safer.

It’s high time for the government to redefine “fever” as body temperature above a person’s normal, healthy range. With a more accurate definition, temperature-based screening can be a powerful new tool for fighting the pandemic — and one well-suited to use by anyone, at home and in time to make a difference. Americans want to help fight the pandemic. It’s about time the government helps them do just that.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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India’s abstentions have led to much heartburn in the US and Europe. One high-flying national security lawyer in Washington argued that India was wrong to ignore Russia tearing down  of the Charter of the United Nations. Like many others, he took the view that India has sided with an aggressive autocrat, weakened its democratic credentials and proved to be a potentially unreliable partner of the West. The Economist has India “abstemious to a fault.”

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In particular, serving and retired American and British diplomats have been wringing their hands at India’s reticence to vote against Russia. For many Americans, this is a betrayal of the good faith that the US has reposed in India by giving the country a special nuclear deal in 2008 and  India as a “major defense partner” in 2016. In 2018, the US elevated India to Strategic Trade Authorization tier 1 status, giving India license-free access to a wide range of military and dual-use technologies regulated by the Department of Commerce, a privilege the US accords to very few other countries. On Capitol Hill, India’s abstention is further viewed as an act of bad faith because many members of Congress and senators worked hard to waive  against India. These were triggered by the Countering �������������’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act when India bought Russian S-400 missile systems. 

Many Western business leaders are now wondering if India is a safe place to do business after the latest turn of events. For some in the West, this is yet another example of India slipping inexorably down the slippery slope of authoritarianism under the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Two Unfriendly Nuclear Neighbors

Such fears are overblown. India remains a thriving democracy. Elections just took place in five states after colorful political campaigns. Infrastructure development in India is going on at a record pace and  remains high amidst inflationary pressures. Despite some blunders such as the 2016 demonetization of high-denomination currency notes and the botched 2017 rollout of the goods and services tax, the Modi-led BJP has become more market-friendly.

As per the World Bank’s Doing Business 2020 , India ranked 63 out of the surveyed 190 countries, a marked improvement from the 134 rank in  when Modi came to power. Like the US, India is a fractious and, at times, exasperating democracy, but it is a fast-growing large economy. Even as US manufacturers Chevrolet and Ford exited the Indian market, Korean  and Chinese  have achieved much success.

India is also proving to be a major force for stability in the region. After “�������������’s Afghanistan’s fiasco,” India has been picking up the pieces in an increasingly unstable region. The country is now providing humanitarian assistance to the Afghan people even as the US has abandoned them. Thousands of trucks roll out daily from India to Afghanistan via Pakistan as part of India’s effort to feed millions of starving Afghans. India is delivering 50,000 tons of  to a country led by the Taliban. Earlier, India sent 500,000 coronavirus vaccines as well as 13 tons of essential medicines and winter clothing to Afghanistan. Despite its reservations about the new regime in Kabul that offered refuge to hijackers of an Indian plane in  and sent jihadists to Kashmir, a government as anti-Muslim by The New York Times is behaving magnanimously to help millions of Afghans facing starvation.

Despite its thriving democracy and growing economy, India remains a highly vulnerable nation in an extremely rough neighborhood. To its west lies an increasingly more radical Pakistan that, in the of the late Stephen Philip Cohen, uses “terror as an instrument of state policy in Kashmir.” To its east lies an increasingly aggressive China led by President Xi Jinping assiduously using salami-slicing tactics to claim more Indian territory. In sharp contrast to the US, India has two nuclear-armed neighbors and faces the specter of a two-front war given what Andrew Small has called the China–Pakistan .

National security that occupies much headspace in Washington is a constant headache for New Delhi. Multiple insurgencies, street protests, mass movements, foreign interference and the specter of nuclear war are a daily worry. During the Cold War, Pakistan was an ally of the US and benefited greatly from American funding of the Afghan jihad against the Soviet Union. A 1998  by Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) tells us India was among the top three recipients of Soviet/Russian weapons from 1982 to 1996. 

More recently, India has diversified its arms imports. A 2021 SIPRI fact  makes clear that India is now the biggest importer of French and Israeli arms. From 2011-15 to 2016-20 Russian arms exports to India dropped by 53%, but the country still remained the top importer. In 2016-20, Russia, France and Israel’s share of India’s arms imports comprised 49%, 18% and 13% respectively. A retired assistant chief of the integrated staff estimates that around 70% of India’s military arsenal is of Russian origin.

Given Indian dependence on Russian military hardware, it is only natural that New Delhi cannot afford to annoy Moscow. Critical Russian spares keep the defense forces combat-ready. For high-tech weaponry, which has the added advantage of coming at affordable prices, India relies on Russia. Moscow has also shared software and proprietary interaction elements for weapons delivery systems with New Delhi. Furthermore, Russia allows India to integrate locally-made weapons into its fighter jets or naval vessels unlike the US or even France. 

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From New Delhi’s point of view, the India–Russia military-technical cooperation is even more valuable than Russian military kit. Unlike the West, Russia has been willing to transfer technology, enabling India to indigenize some of its defense production. This began in the 1960s when India moved closer to the Soviet Union even as Pakistan became a full-fledged US ally. Since then, Moscow has shared critical technologies over many decades with New Delhi. India’s supersonic anti-ship missile  that the Philippines recently bought is indigenized Russian technology as is India’s main battle tank.

As a vulnerable nation in a rough neighborhood, India relies on Russia for security. Therefore, New Delhi decided it could not upset Moscow and abstained at all forums.

The China Factor

There is another tiny little matter worrying India. It is certain that Xi is observing and analyzing the Russian invasion of Ukraine. As a revisionist power, China seeks to overturn the postwar order. Beijing has designs on Taiwan and territorial disputes with many of its neighbors. Its most recent armed confrontation occurred with India though. Since that June 2020 clash, Indian and Chinese troops are locked in a stalemate that repeated rounds of  have failed to resolve.

More than anyone else, India fears a Russia–China axis. If Moscow threw in its lot with Beijing, India — deprived of technology and critical spares — might face a military catastrophe. If Russia sided with China in case of a conflict between the two Asian giants, India would face certain defeat.

Recent military cooperation between Russia and China has worried India. A few months ago, a flotilla of 10 Russian and Chinese warships  Japan’s main island of Honshu for the very first time. This joint exercise demonstrated that Russia and China now have a new strategic partnership. Despite their rivalry in Central Asia and potential disputes over a long border, the two could team up like Germany and Austria-Hungary before World War I. Such a scenario would threaten both Asia and Europe but would spell disaster for India. Therefore, New Delhi has been working hard to bolster its ties with Moscow.

In December 2021, Russian President Vladimir Putin flew to India to meet Modi. During Putin’s trip, both countries signed a flurry of arms and trade deals. Apart from declarations about boosting trade and investment as well as purchasing various military equipment, Russia transferred the technology and agreed to manufacture more than 700,000 AK-203 rifles in India’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh where the BJP has just been reelected. In the of a seasoned Indian diplomat Ashok Sajjanhar, Putin’s visit “reinvigorated a time-tested strategic partnership between India and Russia.”

Sajjanhar left unsaid what astute Indian diplomats say in private. India’s close relationship with Russia is insurance against China. New Delhi wants Moscow to act as a moderating influence on Beijing and act as an honest broker between the two Asian giants. India believes that there is no power other than Russia that could act as its bridge to China.

The Weight of History

When Sajjanhar was speaking about a time-tested relationship, he meant decades of close India–Russia ties. During World War II and in the run-up to independence in 1947, the US earned much goodwill because Franklin D. Roosevelt championed the , promising independence to the colonies. However, relationships soured soon after independence because India chose socialism under its first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.

When the US conducted a coup against the democratically elected Iranian government of Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953, India came to view the US as a neocolonial power. It is easy to forget now that Washington backed the interests of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company over those of the government of Iran, triggering trepidation among Indian leaders who remembered clearly that their country was colonized by the British East India Company. The coup gave both capitalism and the US a bad name and pushed New Delhi closer to Moscow.

In the following years, India’s ties with the Soviet Union strengthened. As Pakistan became a firm Cold War ally of the US, India embraced socialism ever more firmly and became a de facto Soviet ally, claims of non-alignment notwithstanding. In 1956, the Soviet tanks crushed the Hungarian Revolution. Nehru censured Moscow in private but refused to condemn Soviet action even as he railed against the Anglo-French intervention in the Suez. As per Swapna Kona Nayudu’s well-researched for the Wilson Center, New Delhi now became “a crucial partner in international politics for Moscow.”

In 1968, the Soviets crushed the Prague Spring, an uprising in then-Czechoslovakia that aimed to reform the communist regime. Nehru’s daughter, Indira Gandhi, was prime minister, and she publicly called for the Soviets to withdraw their troops. In the UN Security Council, though, India abstained in the vote on the Czechoslovakia matter, attracting widespread condemnation from the American press.

Three years later, India went to war with Pakistan to liberate Bangladesh. This did not go down well in the US, despite the fact that the military dictatorship of Pakistan was inflicting murder, torture and  in a genocide of horrific proportions. During the 1971 India–Pakistan War, Richard Nixon called Gandhi a “” and Henry Kissinger termed Indians as “bastards.” Indian diplomats repeatedly point out that Nixon and Kissinger ignored their own diplomats like Archer Blood who valiantly spoke truth to power about Pakistani atrocities, a story superbly by Princeton professor Gary J. Bass in&�Բ�����;“The Blood Telegram.” Instead, they sent vessels from the Seventh Fleet to  on Pakistan’s behalf. It was the Soviets who came to India’s rescue by sending their naval vessels to counter the American ones.

India repaid Moscow’s 1971 favor when Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan. In 1980, India refused to condemn this invasion at the UN. During the decade that followed, the US funded the mujahideen in Afghanistan through Pakistan. Relations between the US and Pakistan became closer than ever at a time when General Zia-ul-Haq  Operation Tupac to “bleed India through a thousand cuts” by championing insurgencies within India. First Punjab and then Kashmir went up in flames. Terrorism became a feature of daily life for India, but the US turned a Nelson’s eye to the phenomenon until the grim attacks of September 11, 2001.

Since those attacks, India and the United States have moved closer together. Thousands of Indian students study in the US every year, American investment has flowed into India and defense cooperation has steadily increased. The US views India as a valuable partner to contain the rise of an aggressive China, and New Delhi cares more about Washington than any other capital on the planet.

Even as US–India ties have deepened, New Delhi has retained close ties with Moscow. Russia continues to build  power plants in energy-hungry India. Plans to import more Russian oil and gas have also been in the works. Because of these ties, India did not condemn Russian action against Crimea in 2014. The left-leaning government in power at that time went on to say that Russia had “” interests in Ukraine.

It is important to note that no opposition party has  the government’s position. Shashi Tharoor, a flamboyant MP of the Indian National Congress party who said that India was on “the wrong side of history,” got rapped on the knuckles by his bosses. The opposition and the government have almost identical views on the matter. Neither supports Russian aggression against Ukraine, but no party wants to criticize an old friend of the nation.

Political Factors, Domestic and International

War in Ukraine is obviously not in India’s interest. India imports energy, and rising oil prices are going to unleash inflation in an economy with high unemployment. This worries both political and business leaders. In its statement at the UN, India called for peace and diplomacy. In official statements, India has also expressed support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. India does not in any way support Russian aggression but cannot criticize Moscow for a host of reasons described above as well as often overlooked political factors.

Indian leaders have also been preoccupied with elections in five critical states. Political analysts consider these elections to be a dress rehearsal for the 2024 national elections. With stakes so high, the ruling BJP was under pressure to bring home thousands of Indian  studying in Ukraine safely. For this, India  on Russia. While some might say this necessitated a Faustian silence, 18,000 Indian lives were at stake.

India also had reservations about Ukraine. Reports of Indian students facing racism in Ukraine have been doing the on social media. These may be info ops by Russians, but they have touched a chord among the masses. Press reports of fleeing Indian students facing racism and segregation at the Ukrainian border have not helped, nor have memories of Ukrainian arms with Pakistan, which have triggered Indian suspicions. Even though India is against the conflict, New Delhi does not want to forsake an old friend and support a potentially hostile power.

India also suspects the motives of the West in taking on Putin. There is a strong feeling across nearly all political parties that the US would not show the same concern for a non-white nation in Asia or Africa. Left-leaning parties point out that the US and the UK based their 2003 invasion of Iraq on a pack of lies. A popular Indian television anchor has railed against the “” of Western media that treats blue-eyed, blonde Ukrainian refugees differently to Syrian or Afghan ones.

There is also another matter driving India’s hesitation to go along completely with the US in targeting Russia. An increasing trust deficit between the Democrats and the BJP is harming US–India relations. For years, The New York Times and The Washington Post have relentlessly criticized the BJP, accusing the party of being authoritarian, if not fascist. Even food aid to the impoverished citizens in Taliban-led Afghanistan did not get any recognition from the papers of record in New York and Washington.

Billionaires like  who support Democrats have been vocal against the BJP and Modi. Their foundations have also funded Indian organizations opposed to the BJP. Americans see this funding as an expression of idealism that seeks to promote civil society and democracy. On the other hand, many Indians  American funding as a sinister ploy to weaken the nationalist BJP and replace them with weak, pliant leaders. Indians are also irked by the fact that Democrats rarely give credit to the BJP for winning elections, the democratic proof of its platform’s popularity.

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Democrats have also been pressuring India to legalize gay marriage, forgetting that the issue is pending before the Indian Supreme Court. Indians point out that it was the British who decreed “unnatural” sexual acts” as not just illegal but also imprisonable during Queen Victoria’s heyday. The BJP has already come out in favor of legalizing  but has no power to intervene in a matter pending before the court. The failure of Democrats to recognize this reeks of a white savior complex that destroys trust between Washington and New Delhi. 

Many BJP leaders are convinced that the Democrats are plotting some sort of a regime change in the 2024 elections. They believe there is an elaborate game plan in place to discredit Modi and the BJP. In this worldview, the Democrat establishment is manipulating discourse and peddling narratives that could lead to some version of the Orange Revolution in India. They are convinced that once Putin goes, Modi might be next. Even though India is opposed to a war that is severely hurting its economy, this fear of Western interference in domestic political matters is one more reason for India to abstain from turning on its old friend Russia.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The US and Ukraine have consistently and emphatically denied any even potentially offensive operations. The debate became complicated last week when at a Senate hearing, US Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland admitted that the laboratories exist and were conducting research that might have dangerous consequences if it fell into Russian hands. She revealed nothing about the nature of the research. Various US officials explained that the research existed but aimed at preventing the use of such weapons rather than their development. That disclaimer may or may not be true.

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At the United Nations meeting, the US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield categorically denied any activity with these words: “I will say this once: ‘Ukraine does not have a biological weapons program.’” As The Guardian, the ambassador then “went on to turn the accusation back on Moscow” when she accused Russia of maintaining a biological weapon program. That may or may not be true. In fact, both accusations have a strong likelihood of being true.

ABC News the issue in these terms: “Russia is doubling down on its false claims that the U.S. and Ukraine are developing chemical or biological weapons for use against invading Russian forces, bringing the accusation to the United Nations Security Council on Friday.”

Today’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

False claims:

Hypotheses that are likely enough to be true but difficult to prove conclusively

Contextual Note

The basic claim made by ABC News is true, at least if we reduce the message to the incontestable fact that the Russians brought the “accusation to the United Nations Security Council on Friday.” What may or may not be true is the reporter’s assertion that these are “false claims.” As noted above, the Russian claims may or may not be true, meaning they may or may not be false.

For news reporting in times of war, propaganda becomes the norm. It trumps any form of serious inquiry, that the legacy media in the US bases its reporting on two complementary suppositions: that everything US authorities tell them is true and that most everything Russians claim is false. Those same reporters who suppose their side is telling the truth and the other side is lying also suppose that their readers share the same suppositions. In times like these, propaganda is the most effective and especially the most marketable form of communication.

The second sentence in the ABC News article adds a new dimension to the assertion. It complains that a “web of disinformation, not only from Russian state media but also Chinese propaganda outlets and even some American voices, have increasingly spread the conspiracy theory this week.” The metaphor of a spider’s web conveniently brings back the sinister logic of the McCarthy era, when certain Americans were accused of being witting or unwitting vectors of communist propaganda. And it inexorably links with the idea of spreading a “conspiracy theory.”

It’s worth stopping for a moment to note that each sentence in the ABC News article is a paragraph. Single-sentence paragraphing is a journalistic technique designed to make reading easier and faster. Subtle writers and thinkers, such as Al Jazeera’s Marwan Bishara, can sometimes employ the to create a percussive effect. But in times of heightened propaganda, the popular media resorts to the practice to short-circuit any temptation on the reader’s part to think, reason, compare ideas or analyze the facts. In journalistic terms, it’s the equivalent of aerial bombing as opposed to house-to-house combat.

The third sentence in the ABC News article delivers a new explosive payload, this time with appropriately added emotion (“heightened concern”) and a horrified hint at sophisticated strategy (“false flag”). It speaks of “heightened concern among U.S. and Ukrainian officials that Russia itself may be planning to deploy chemical or biological weapons against Ukrainian targets or as part of a so-called ‘false flag’ operation.”

In just three sentences, the article has mobilized the standard web of associations journalists use for propaganda masquerading as news. The vocabulary may include any of the following terms: “disinformation,” “fake news,” “false flag,” “conspiracy theory,” “propaganda,” “misinformation,” and, on occasion, the more traditional pair, “deception and lies.”

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The article’s fourth sentence is a quote from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky: “This makes me really worried because we’ve been repeatedly convinced if you want to know Russia‘s plans, look at what Russia accuses others of.” That is a trope the Biden administration has been using throughout this controversy. Zelensky has read the script and the journalist is there to transcribe it.

Historical Note

The still-developing history of COVID-19 that has been with us for nearly two and a half years should have taught us at least two things. Governments have a penchant for presenting a unique version of the truth that insists no other version is possible. They also excel at putting in place a system that suppresses any alternative account, especially if it appears to approach an inconvenient truth. Whether you prefer the wet market or the lab leak theory is still a matter of debate. Both narratives have life in them. In other words, either of them may or may not be true. For a year, thinking so was not permitted.

The second thing we should have learned is that the kind of experimentation done in biological and chemical research labs will always have both a defensive and an offensive potential. From a scientific point of view, claiming that research is strictly limited to defensive applications makes no sense. Even if the instructions given to research teams explicitly focus on prevention, the work can at any moment be harnessed for offensive purposes. Victoria Nuland appeared to be saying just that when she expressed the fear that Russians (the bad guys) might seek to do something the Ukrainians and Americans (the good guys) would never allow themselves to do.

Or would they? That is the point Glenn Greenwald in citing the history of the weaponized anthrax that created a wave of panic in the days and weeks following the 9/11 attacks in 2001. George W. Bush’s White House, followed by the media, clearly promoted the idea that the “evidence” (a note with the message “Allah is Great”) pointed to the Middle East and specifically at Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. Even before 9/11, Bush’s White House had the Pentagon to “accelerate planning for possible military action against Iraq.” In January 2002, the president officially launched the meme of “the axis of evil” that included Iraq, Iran and North Korea.

In retrospect, even though no legacy news media will admit this, the most credible interpretation of the anthrax attacks that killed five Americans was as a failed false flag operation designed to “prove” that Iraq was already using biological weapons. As the White House was preparing for war in Afghanistan, it sought a motive to include Iraq in the operations. The plan failed when it became undeniable that the strain of anthrax had been created in a military lab in the US.

Years later, the FBI “successfully” pinned the crime on a scientist at Fort Detrick called Bruce Ivins, the Lee Harvey Oswald of the anthrax attacks. The FBI was successful not in trying Ivins but in pushing him to commit suicide, meaning there would be no review of the evidence or reflection on the motive for the attacks. This at least is the most likely explanation because it aligns a number of obvious and less obvious facts. Nevertheless, even this narrative accusing the Bush administration of engineering what was essentially a more lethal version of a Watergate-style crime may or may not be true. 

The moral of all these stories is that in times of conflict, everything we hear or read should be reviewed with scrutiny and nothing taken at face value. And just as we have learned to live with unsolved — or rather artificially solved — assassinations of presidents, prominent politicians and civil rights leaders, we have to live with the fact that the authorities, with the complicity of an enterprising media skilled at guiding their audience’s perception, will never allow us to know the truth.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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And yet, three weeks into the war, the no-fly zone proposal just won’t die. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky begs for air support almost daily. In protests and social media posts, millions of ordinary people around the world ask NATO to #closethesky. 

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Here in America, a nationwide poll showed that 74% of Americans  a no-fly zone. And earlier this month, 27 foreign policy experts published an open  requesting a limited no-fly zone over humanitarian corridors. 

If a no-fly zone is so obviously impractical, why are we still talking about it? The answer — which is conspicuously missing from mainstream Western discourse — lays bare the fundamental problem in the US response to the war. 

A False Dichotomy

Politicians and the offer a  simplistic  against protecting Ukraine’s airspace: ��ܲ�������’s nuclear arsenal. Almost every official statement, article and op-ed can be summarized in one sentence: A no-fly zone would start World War III.

But here’s the part no one says out loud: What happens if the West doesn’t institute a no-fly zone? Will such a move keep us safe from nuclear Armageddon? Can the US manage to stay out of this war and out of ��ܲ�������’s crosshairs? 

Vladimir Putin’s rhetoric — and his actions — offer a clear answer. The US can avoid direct confrontation but at a price: handing the Russian leader an absolute, total victory. In Ukraine, of course, but also in Moldova and Georgia and perhaps the Baltics, and who knows where else? And, of course, carte blanche to commit whatever atrocities he’d like worldwide (à la Syria). 

If Putin cannot win, he will lash out against enemies real and imagined. At that point, it won’t matter whether those enemies have instituted a no-fly zone. Putin has already likened sanctions and weapons deliveries to declarations of war on Russia, creating a ready excuse for retaliation. He’s set up a false narrative about Ukraine building a nuclear bomb, building a rationale to use his own nuclear weapons. 

�������������’s Choice 

The real question before the US government isn’t whether to institute a no-fly zone. It’s whether America is ready to help Ukraine win or prefers to stand by and watch the rise of a new Russian empire. 

If not, we must stand up to Putin now. There are multiple viable policy options for doing so. One is  a no-fly zone administered by the United Nations rather than NATO. Another is  Ukraine decommissioned Western fighter jets and several dozen volunteer air force vets who would be granted Ukrainian citizenship. Yet another would be to send only jets — Ukrainian fighter pilots have confirmed that they can, in fact, learn to fly Western jets in just a few days. 

The specific mechanism matters less than the political will — the decision to send Putin a clear message that the US will not let him take Ukraine, backed up by sufficient military support. This option is not risk-free. But it’s impossible for Ukraine to prevail without angering Putin. 

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Is the risk worth it? Ukrainians believe so because they see something most Americans haven’t yet figured out: World War III has already started. Putin’s grand ambitions are reminiscent of a certain German dictator 80 years before him, as is the US strategy of appeasement. In the end, US involvement is inevitable, so why not be strategic and proactive rather than reacting years later when the human and economic costs of Putin’s empire-building are too high to be ignored? 

Of course, the US government may disagree with this perspective and opt for appeasement 2.0. Maybe this time around, the unstable dictator will be more reasonable?

If this is the case, and the US government is not ready to stand up to Putin, it’s essential to make it clear that Zelensky is on his own. If we cannot make a commitment to let Ukrainians win, we should let them lose. Ukraine’s government deserves an honest understanding of what it can and can’t expect from the US so it can make decisions accordingly.  

The Worst of Both Worlds

So far, American politicians have spurned both of these options. Instead, they’re pursuing an immoral, dangerous fantasy, waiting for someone to stop Putin without America getting its hands dirty. To this end, they offer half-measures that drag out the conflict and cost thousands of lives. They wear blue and yellow, they send aid and enact sanctions, but they consciously steer clear of any support that could lead to a Ukrainian victory. 

This brings us back to the absurd situation we started with: ongoing calls for an impossible no-fly zone, which we can now see are absolutely logical. Let’s review.

America: Ukraine, we support you in your brave fight for freedom!

Ukrainians and their friends abroad: Great! So, the one thing we need is support with our airspace.

America: No can do. But believe us — we’re on your side here and we’re ready to help! 

Ukrainians: Thank you. We’re dying here and we can’t win without air support. 

America: Once again, no. But we stand with you.

This hypocrisy goes well beyond the debate over the no-fly zone. For instance, on March 6, Secretary Blinken gave the green light for Poland to donate its fighter jets to Ukraine. When Poland agreed to cede the jets to the US for immediate transfer to the Ukrainian army, American officials  in a truly impressive display of doublespeak. 

Ukraine cannot win this war without the US taking tangible steps to protect Ukrainian airspace. Pretending otherwise and willfully extending the bloodshed with partial measures is the worst possible option for the United States. 

The US government doesn’t owe Ukraine support. But it does owe Ukraine an immediate end to the falsehoods and the empty words — a bullshit ceasefire, if you will. An admission that, no matter how many civilian deaths, no matter what kind of banned weapons Russia uses or how many war crimes it commits, no matter if Russia drops a nuclear bomb on Kyiv, the US will not step in. 

Until then, Russia pushes new boundaries every day with impunity, Ukraine holds out hope for help that will never come and Joe Biden wavers while children die. 

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post American Hypocrisy and Half-Measures Damn Ukraine and Help Russia appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Nuland has loyally served every administration, Democrat and Republican, since Bill Clinton, with a single exception. Donald Trump most likely refused to exploit her acquired competence on the grounds that she had been tainted by working for Barack Obama’s State Department under Hillary Clinton and John Kerry. Or perhaps Trump felt she had become too embedded in the culture of the deep state he claimed to abhor.

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Nuland’s closest direct collaboration with a luminary of American politics occurred between 2003 and 2005 when she held the position of principal deputy foreign policy advisor to Vice-President Dick Cheney. That enabled her to hone her skills as an aggressive agent of US power while playing an influential role in promoting the Iraq War. After that stint, she became George W. Bush’s ambassador to NATO. In January 2021, President-elect Joe Biden named her under secretary of state for political affairs, the fourth-ranking position in the State Department.

According to Foreign Policy, who Bill Clinton’s Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, Nuland “has a high degree of self confidence and an absolute dedication to working for the administration she is working for, whatever administration that is.” In other words, she is a reliable tool of anyone’s policy decisions, however generous, cynical or perverse they may be. That is what she proved when sent to Kyiv in February 2014 to pilot the operations around the peaceful protests that were then taking place that the State Department judged could then, with the appropriate level of management, be turned into a revolution.

The hacked recording of a phone call between the US ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, and Nuland sealed the otherwise discreet diplomat’s place in history. In the recording, Nuland’s voice can be heard giving Pyatt about who the United States had selected to be Ukraine’s new prime minister. Countering Pyatt’s suggestion of the popular former boxer, Vitali Klitschko, Nuland selected Arseniy Yatsenyuk. After the pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych fled the country and Yatsenyuk struggled to lead a new government, an anti-Russian billionaire, Petro Poroshenko, won the presidency in September 2014. He immediately appealed to the Obama administration for military to counter Russia, but President Obama kept him at bay, that “Ukraine is a core interest for Moscow, in a way that it is not for the United States.”

In other words, not only did the CIA work to overthrow the elected president, Yanukovych, but Nuland managed to manipulate Ukrainian politics from within and thus contribute to what was to evolve into a notoriously corrupt regime under Poroshenko. At the same time, her commander-in-chief, Barack Obama, chose to limit the US involvement in Ukraine by defining a prudent arm’s length relationship with the fiasco that was unfolding, even after Russia seized Crimea from the Ukrainians.

Back in the News in 2022

The events around the 2014 Maidan revolution provided the only occasion for the general public to become aware of Nuland’s name until last week when she appeared before the Senate where Florida Senator Marco Rubio questioned her about the current situation in Ukraine. That should have been routine, but Rubio felt it was important to use Nuland’s testimony to refute accusations by Russia and China that the US was funding the development of chemical weapons in laboratories in Ukraine. 

Nuland could have simply denied that any such laboratories existed and Rubio would have been satisfied. Instead, she uncomfortably explained not only that “biological research facilities” exist, but that the State Department is worried the Russians might effectively gain control of the labs, creating the risk of “research materials … falling into the hands of the Russian forces.” Some attentive observers deduced that the worry Nuland expressed concerned the possible revelation of illicit research funded and encouraged by the United States.

The scandal that exploded after this exchange provoked two reactions. The first was a firm and over-the-top denial by the Biden administration. It was accompanied by a defensive counter-accusation claiming somewhat absurdly that the Russians were only making the accusation to cover up their own intention to use chemical weapons against Ukraine. The second more serious reaction was Rubio’s attempt to the ambiguity of Nuland’s revelation by interrogating Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines and CIA Director William Burns.

Rubio counted on Haines not to make the same mistake as Nuland. Clearly, he expected her to give just enough perspective to dismiss any suspicions that the US may be involved in illegal military research. Claiming that “the best way to combat disinformation is transparency,” to make sure Haines would understand the type of response he hoped to hear to dispel the negative effect of Nuland’s testimony, Rubio spent three full paragraphs framing his question and insisting “it’s really important … to understand what exactly is in these labs.” Haines offered this astonishing response: “I think medical facilities — that I’ve been in as a child, done research in high school and college — all have equipment or pathogens or other things that you have to have restrictions around because you want to make sure that they’re being treated and handled appropriately. And I think that’s the kind of thing that Victoria Nuland was describing and thinking about in the context of that.”

Haines tells Rubio not what she knows but what she “thinks,” a verb she uses three times in two sentences. What she describes is nothing more than a subjective memory from her personal past and a vague generalization about medical security. It contains zero information of any kind. The next part of her answer, concerning nuclear power plants, is not only irrelevant but also a vague generalization about the possibility of “damage … or theft.” Her answer clarifies nothing. But Rubio is satisfied and concludes with three words: “All right, thanks.”&�Բ�����; 

In his subsequent questioning of CIA Director Burns, Rubio takes four paragraphs to frame his question, again intended to clarify Nuland’s testimony. In the last two paragraphs, however, he veers away from the question of Nuland’s revelation and instead asks Burns about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s strategy concerning negotiations. Burns jumps on the opportunity to avoid answering the initial question about the Ukrainian biolabs. From Rubio’s point of view, the case is closed.

Growing Curiosity Outside the Circles of Power

Whereas most news outlets were happy to repeat the Biden administration’s adamant denials that any kind of biochemical research was taking place in Ukraine, various commentators, including, picked up the issue and raised further questions. Greenwald took the time to remind his public of the troubling precedent of the anthrax attacks following 9/11 in 2001. Only months after killing five people did Americans learn that the anthrax originated in the Fort Detrick military lab in Maryland and not in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. (I have written elsewhere on 51�Թ� about my own interrogations and investigation of that affair.)

Nuland’s testimony was seriously embarrassing. Rubio’s follow-up failed to put the scandal to bed. It was time for the White House to go into full denial mode. Predictably, presidential Press Secretary Jan Psaki stepped up with the intent to kill all debate by peremptorily: “This is preposterous. It’s the kind of disinformation operation we’ve seen repeatedly from the Russians over the years in Ukraine and in other countries, which have been debunked, and an example of the types of false pretexts we have been warning the Russians would invent.”

We may be justified in asking whether, in times of armed conflict, anything is more preposterous — and indeed more dangerous — than seeking to kill debate on a serious topic that might permit a better understanding of the context of the war. The refusal of debate would be especially preposterous concerning a war in which one’s own nation is theoretically not involved. (In reality, the Ukraine War is a showdown between the United States and Russia.) But now that fighting on the ground is real, preposterous discourse of any kind from either side becomes dangerous as the perspective of using weapons of mass destruction, either chemical or nuclear, has clearly become part of the equation. Since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, the prospect of nuclear war has never been so evident.

In this case, unfounded speculation about evil intentions cannot be considered an appropriate response. After all, the Russian expressed at the United Nations that the Ukrainian “regime is urgently concealing traces of a military biological program that Kiev implemented with support of the US Department of Defense” was at least partially confirmed by Nuland in her response to Rubio. It was met at the UN by a simple denial: “Ukraine does not have a biological weapons program. There are no Ukrainian biological weapons laboratories supported by the United States — not near ��ܲ�������’s border or anywhere.”

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The Russian accusation, citing purported facts, should require at least a consideration of those facts rather than a blanket denial or a counter-accusation. Nuland never walked back her statement. Haines mentioned only what she “thinks” and Burns was spared even answering the question.

Psaki is nevertheless right to bring to the public’s attention the criterion of preposterousness. That is something worth focusing on in times of massive propaganda. Reading the news in all the legitimate press today, it should be clear that, as always, preposterousness becomes the dominant feature of public discourse in times of conflict. Psaki’s tweets themselves are wonderful examples of preposterous blathering.

A Game for Spectators in Times of War

It may be time to propose an instructive game for anyone interested in paring down the level of preposterousness in public discourse and even news reporting. Anyone can play the game, but it requires forgetting about the beliefs and reflexes our various authorities expect us to acquire.

The game simply consists of ranking, on a scale of one to 10 in terms of the degree of apparent preposterousness, any official statement or authoritative-sounding opinion made about the conflict, whether pronounced by political authorities or the news media. In other words, it requires accepting as a default position that every simple assertion one sees or hears is as likely as not to be preposterous. 

The first criterion is to weigh the amount of emotional force in the assertion in relation to informational content. If emotion is clearly present and dominant, three or more points should be added to the potential preposterousness score.

The inclusion of some authentic context, real information, can, on the other hand, make the proposition potentially less preposterous, bringing the score proportionately back down. The score can be improved by the inclusion of serious context, including facts drawn from historical background, reducing the level of preposterousness. On the other hand, citing purported trends from the past, what are presented as reflexive patterns of behavior or supposed “playbooks” will add points, pushing the preposterousness level further upward. A simple denial or the categorizing an opposing comment as “disinformation” will add two or more points to the preposterousness.

An important consideration is the identity of the source of the statement. If the author of the proposition is clearly associated with one or the other of the two opposing sides, five points will be added to the level of perceived preposterousness. Those points can only be reduced by the citation of facts. Neutral sources, unaffiliated with one side or the other, receive no preposterousness points but they may still say preposterous things. 

This neutral or non-neutral identity of the source can become complicated by other considerations, some of which may themselves prove preposterous. For example, anyone aware of the track record on controversial events of Glenn Greenwald, cited above, knows that he has no loyalty to either Vladimir Putin or Joe Biden. That fact can be easily proved. But because he is American and criticizes American leaders and pundits who demonize Russia, some preposterously believe he is favorable to Putin. This phenomenon of seeing nuance as opposition is a direct consequence of a longstanding trend in US culture that consists of believing that those who are not for us (i.e., those who do not automatically endorse all our actions) are against us.

Another important rule of the game is that an identical counter-accusation, of the kind Psaki has made, should automatically add six points to the preposterousness index. In some cases, the counter-accusation may be true, so it cannot be assumed to be totally preposterous. If that can be established, some of the points can be canceled. The reason for adding so many points for an identical counter-accusation is simple. It is almost always an attempt not to clarify but to avoid addressing the evidence that exists. It goes beyond simple denial, which is worth only two or three points at best. A truthful counter-accusation should be accompanied by some form of concrete evidence other than vaguely reputational. If not, the six points should stand.

Another rule is that citing sources for whom the suspicion of preposterously lying has become part of a standard mindset merits two supplementary points of preposterousness. This is a standard trick of lawyers in criminal cases who conduct research to impugn a witness who may have lied on another occasion. They want the jury to believe that lying on one occasion means lying on all occasions. Case dismissed.

Two other significant factors of preposterousness that often go together are, first, the attempt to account for the psychology of the adversary by reducing to a particular (and generally ignoble) cause, and, secondly, predicting bad behavior to come. This last is often a clever gamble to the extent that the predictor may have some ability to provoke the predicted bad behavior. Depending on the odds, such predictions are worth two to four points. 

Finally, repetition of stereotypes — often cited accusations or memes built up by past propaganda to provoke a predictable reflex in the public — may be worth from three to five points, depending on the status of the stereotype in the ambient culture.

Those are the basic rules. Now, let’s look at a practical example to see how the game can be played. Jan Psaki provided another that can serve that purpose: “Now that Russia has made these false claims, and China has seemingly endorsed this propaganda, we should all be on the lookout for Russia to possibly use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine, or to create a false flag operation using them. It’s a clear pattern.”

Psaki has accomplished a lot in this tweet to achieve a high score in preposterousness. “False claims” and “propaganda” are gratuitous assertions that need to be supported by evidence, which she has no intention of providing. This indicates the presence of a strong emotion of indignation. Citing China is an example of discrediting anything a witness has to say as being unreliable. The suggestion of being “on the lookout” appeals to the reflex of fear. The “false flag” accusation repeats a meme that has occurred so often in recent weeks that it deserves being compared to the boy crying wolf.

And finally, Psaki uses the idea of a “pattern,” with the intention of making the public believe there is no reason to explore the facts, since the discourse is a simple repetition of predictable behavior. 

Psaki has a reputation for making preposterous statements sound reasonable, unlike, for example, Donald Trump’s former spokesperson, Kelly-Anne Conway, who excelled in sounding preposterous. In all fairness to Psaki, the state of war she is commenting on admits of so much ambiguity and uncertainty, even concerning basic facts, that the preposterousness level of her tweet should not be considered to have attained the maximum of 10;  seven or eight may be a more fitting appraisal.

Other Applications of the Game

Those interested in this game might try applying it to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s latest stab at being preposterous on the same issue in this from Sky News. In videos like this, body language and speech cadences can add a significant element to the score, two factors that became evident to observers in the Nuland hearing. 

Of course, the same game can be played with ��ܲ�������’s or any other country’s official discourse. War is not only an assault on people, infrastructure and property. It is always an assault on dialogue, curiosity and truth itself. Commenting on the “1984” communication atmosphere that we are now subjected to, Matt Taibbi that a “healthy person should be able to be horrified by what’s happening in Russia and also see a warning about the degradation that ensues from using “pre-emptive” force, or from trying to control discontent by erasing expressions of it.” Preposterous statements are just one way of disqualifying and erasing discontent. They may also seek to stir up the kinds of emotions that could trigger a nuclear war.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Try This Game to Evaluate Levels of Disinformation in Times of War appeared first on 51�Թ�.

We invite readers to join us by submitting their suggestions of words and expressions that deserve exploring, with or without original commentary. To submit a citation from the news and/or provide your own short commentary, send us an email.

March 10: True Toll

In this month of March, the world is understandably somewhat reluctant to commemorate the second anniversary of the moment when the nations of the world unanimously declared COVID-19 a pandemic and began their largely concerted actions of lockdown. The story that unfolded afterward included a variety of traumatic episodes, including speculation about a diversity of possible preventive and curative treatments, sporadic outbreaks of revolt against enforced public policies and a scientifically successful campaign to produce effective vaccines. Despite their promise, the effectiveness of those vaccines nevertheless proved to be far from absolute.

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A group of over 100 public health, medical and epidemiology experts, after assessing the global results, has chosen this second anniversary to react and call into question the decisions taken by governments presumably capable of doing more. From the very early days, the scientific experts knew that, given the capacity of the coronavirus to mutate over time, any complication or holdup related to manufacturing and global distribution could undermine the entire logic of vaccines. They should have known that the biggest complication would come from a political and economic system that works according to principles that make it impervious to understanding the logic of a virus.

On March 9, the group of experts addressed a letter to the Biden administration to express their frustration with a situation that has evolved very slowly and largely inadequately outside the wealthy nations. This is not the first time concerned experts have urged “the administration to share Covid-19 vaccine technology and increase manufacturing around the world,” Politico . For the past two years, they have regularly been rebuffed, as governments preferred to pat themselves on the back for the short-term efforts they were making to protect their own populations, while creating the conditions that would allow the virus to mutate and gain strength elsewhere before returning to provoke new research and the promise of further commercial exploitation with boosters and new treatments.

Principles vs. Ideals

The experts should have realized by now that there is a principle at work that overrides every other scientific or medical consideration. It was established early on by the coterie established around Bill Gates, big pharma executives and other important influencers sharing their industrial mindset. It can all be traced back to the wisdom of Milton Friedman, who loved to repeat the slogan, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” The principle is self-explanatory: In a competitive world, the idea of sharing simply cannot compete with the idea of competing. If you can’t afford lunch, you’ll just have to go without eating. That works when the only outcome is seeing people starve. It doesn’t work when the effects of their starvation are somehow transmitted back to those who have a permanent place at the banquet.

US culture has cultivated the idea that life itself is a competitive race for advantage and the promotion of self-interest stands as the highest of virtues. Health like wealth must play by the rules of the competitive game. That same culture insists heavily on a form of discipline based on the idea of respecting “principles,” which it sometimes perversely confounds with “laws of nature.” The divinely ordained requirement to solve all problems through competition is a prominent one, but not the only one. 

The problem with such principles that are taken to be universal laws is that once you believe it is a law, you no longer need to reflect on its appropriateness or assess its very real effects. We are witnessing an example of it today in the Ukraine conflict. The United States has invoked the defense of the sacred principle of “sovereignty,” reformulated as the right of a nation to determine its own foreign policy, including the choice to join a distant empire. That may be a principle, but is it a law? Insisting on it instead of reflecting and debating the question has provoked a disastrous and increasingly out of control war that, like the COVID-19 pandemic, has already had severe unintended knock-on effects, wreaking havoc on the global economy as well as destruction in Ukraine itself. 

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Every culture must realize that its own principles may not be universally applicable, that they may not be perceived by others to have the status of laws. Any attempt to apply them as universal truths may cause immense human suffering. And that reveals the very dimension of the problem the health experts are pointing to. A potentially criminal complacency exists when the suffering caused by the inflexible application of the principle is directed toward others, at the same time when the purveyors of the principle are taking measures to protect their society and their environment. The principle of Ukraine’s sovereignty is already damaging not just Ukraine itself and now Russia, thanks to the application of the principle, but also Europe, the Middle East and Africa, which will be cut off from vital supplies of energy, food and fertilizer.

For the past two years, the concerted defense of the ideal of competition by the pharmaceutical companies in their supposed combat to defeat COVID-19 has clearly aggravated the effects of a pandemic that might have been contained if the idea of sharing had been elevated to the status of principle. But sharing doesn’t deserve to be regarded as a principle. For Americans, it is based on soft ideas like empathy and compassion rather than hard reasoning about what might be financially profitable.

Reflecting on two years of struggle, the group of experts noted “that the development of U.S. vaccines was largely successful, bringing protection to the public in record time,” Politico reports. That’s the good news. And now for the bad news: “But getting shots in arms in low- and middle-income countries has been a ‘failure.’”

Out for the Count

No precise statistics can account for the difference between the damage actually done by COVID-19 and what might have happened had governments effectively managed the global response in the earlier phases of the pandemic. “The true toll of this failure will never be known,” the experts explain, “but at this point almost surely includes tens of millions of avoidable cases and hundreds of thousands of deaths from Covid.”

The “true toll” they cite reminds us of John Donne’s on the bells rung for the dying in a time of plague. The poet and dean of St Paul’s affirmed that “any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” Might we hope that 400 years after Donne wrote these words, pharmaceutical companies and politicians could, for once, take them to heart?

But there is yet another much more concrete  meaning of “toll,” as in “toll road.” It is the price humanity is expected to pay, in dollars and cents, to the pharmaceutical companies that have so diligently used their patents to protect their exclusive rights to exploit and enrich themselves thanks to the global potential for suffering of others.

The final and fundamentally political irony of this sad tale relates to the fact that to do what the experts insist needs doing requires “more funding from Congress.” At a time when prominent members of Congress have become obsessed by the threat of inflation, while at the same time unabashedly inflating military budgets and responding urgently to the “sacred” needs of NATO in times of peril, the likelihood that Congress might suddenly address a global problem it has avoided addressing for two years seems remote.

One of the experts, Gavin Yamey, suggests that COVID-19 “could follow the path of diseases like HIV or tuberculosis: become well controlled in wealthier countries but continue to wreak havoc in poorer nations.” Geopolitics in this increasingly inegalitarian world appears to be following a trend of domestic demographics in the US, marked by the separating of society itself into two groups: the denizens of gated communities and the rabble, everyone else out there.

Why Monitoring Language Is Important

Language allows people to express thoughts, theories, ideas, experiences and opinions. But even while doing so, it also serves to obscure what is essential for understanding the complex nature of reality. When people use language to hide essential meaning, it is not only because they cynically seek to prevaricate or spread misinformation. It is because they strive to tell the part or the angle of the story that correlates with their needs and interests.

In the age of social media, many of our institutions and pundits proclaim their intent to root out “misinformation.” But often, in so doing, they are literally seeking to miss information.

Is there a solution? It will never be perfect, but critical thinking begins by being attentive to two things: the full context of any issue we are trying to understand and the operation of language itself. In our schools, we are taught to read and write, but, unless we bring rhetoric back into the standard curriculum, we are never taught how the power of language to both convey and distort the truth functions. There is a largely unconscious but observable historical reason for that negligence. Teaching establishments and cultural authorities fear the power of linguistic critique may be used against their authority.

Remember, 51�Թ�’s Language and the News seeks to sensitize our readers to the importance of digging deeper when assimilating the wisdom of our authorities, pundits and the media that transmit their knowledge and wisdom.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post COVID Failure: A Matter of Principle appeared first on 51�Թ�.

We invite readers to join us by submitting their suggestions of words and expressions that deserve exploring, with or without original commentary. To submit a citation from the news and/or provide your own short commentary, send us an email.

March 10: Sacred Obligation

Sometimes official language and even reporting in the media hides more of the truth than it reveals. This is especially true in times of armed conflict. To highlight the gap between the official narrative and other possible interpretations of events, we have crafted an imaginary scene between two entirely fictional characters. 

One of the characters is obviously familiar with a by US President Joe Biden made in 2021: “NATO is Article Five, and you take it as a sacred obligation.”&�Բ�����;

FADE IN:

INT/EXT. Washington Bar — NIGHT

Two men standing at a bar. One is the journalist, Lee Matthews. The other is the State Department spokesman, Ed Costa.

LEE MATTHEWS: Thank you for agreeing to a private conversation outside of any official context.

ED COSTA: Yeah, it’ll do both of us good to have a frank conversation, for once. You know, it’s all about respecting the truth, not always an easy thing to do in our jobs. But just to be clear, none of this is on the record.

LEE MATTHEWS: Trust me. I’m just trying to get a handle on a rather complex situation. After all, I can’t always be sure that what you say officially is always the unvarnished truth.

ED COSTA: Well, we told you Putin would invade Ukraine and even announced the approximate date. We may have been off by a week or so, but it happened exactly as we predicted. This isn’t another case of Saddam’s WMD.

LEE MATTHEWS: I grant you that. And I admit it sounded incredible when you guys started insisting that you knew for sure the Russians would invade. Some of us thought it was just Putin bluffing.

ED COSTA: Come on, you didn’t trust us. Now you know we would never lie to you. And, hey, you have to hand it to our intelligence services. Now that I think of it, you owe me and the intelligence community an apology for doubting our word.

LEE MATTHEWS: Actually, if you remember correctly, what I openly doubted was when you said there would be a false flag operation to justify the invasion. That never happened.

ED COSTA: Well, it could have happened, but the result is the same. We got the invasion right.

LEE MATTHEWS: But you promised us a false flag. Instead of that, we watched Putin sitting in front of a TV camera and rattling off a litany of historical reasons explaining why he felt compelled to mount an operation of denazification.

ED COSTA: Well, all that history was fake news, wasn’t it? Fake news, false flag, what’s the difference?

LEE MATTHEWS: Well, some of the history he cited made sense, at least to the Russian people, and nobody in DC wants to acknowledge it. We in the media couldn’t follow all the details, but shouldn’t you guys have been aware of both the reasoning and the motivation it represented?

ED COSTA: We were aware. As you saw, we predicted the invasion.

LEE MATTHEWS: Actually, you guys told us that by predicting the invasion and announcing it publicly beforehand, that would prevent Putin from invading. So, you were wrong about that.

ED COSTA: Who can predict what Putin would do?

LEE MATTHEWS: I thought that’s part of the intelligence community’s job, anticipating the enemy’s reaction.

ED COSTA: Well, yeah, we thought that might happen.

LEE MATTHEWS: Given the catastrophe that is now taking place for the Ukrainian people, whose suffering is likely to continue and most likely get worse, don’t you think that strategy of trying to prevent an invasion and failing to do so was a costly mistake?

ED COSTA: It will be costly for the Russians, thanks to the measures we’re taking in the form of sanctions.

LEE MATTHEWS: But it has been very costly for the Ukrainians, on whose behalf you guys are doing all this. And it is beginning to have tragic consequences everywhere, even in the US and obviously in Europe, which is to say, the populations covered by NATO. Couldn’t you have prevented the war by taking seriously Putin’s complaints about NATO and working something out? I mean, like anything? War is a pretty serious business.

ED COSTA: NATO is sacred, as is Ukraine’s sovereignty. So, there’s some suffering. There’s a principle to defend. And how can you negotiate with a madman?

LEE MATTHEWS: If I take you literally when you say NATO is sacred, this sounds like a holy war. A lot of American experts, from the late George Kennan to John Mearsheimer today — guys you’ve read and studied — they took Putin’s reasoning about national security seriously. And they certainly didn’t view NATO as sacred.

ED COSTA: Sorry, when I said NATO was sacred, I meant it is necessary because, thanks to it, things have been pretty peaceful in Europe until Putin made his move. All its members are happy with NATO. So, we see no reason why that happiness shouldn’t be shared. Spread it as far as possible. And, as you know, Ukraine asked to share that happiness.

LEE MATTHEWS: Well, didn’t Bush push that idea before anyone in Ukraine thought of it? In any case, isn’t the whole NATO question the factor that provoked the invasion and started a war that NATO seems helpless to address?

ED COSTA: As all your colleagues in the media have been repeating — and I’ll ask you to do the same — this is an unprovoked war. Repeat after me. This is an unprovoked war.

LEE MATTHEWS: Are you saying the Russians are wrong to see the expansion of NATO and the US supplying weapons to nations that border Russia as a provocation?

ED COSTA: Of course, they’re wrong. How could a country that once allowed itself to be dominated by communists be right? NATO exists only for peace. That’s what aircraft, tanks, missiles and nuclear bombs are all about. They’re so frightening, no one would ever dare use them. Everybody knows that. What we’ve been expanding is peace, not war.

LEE MATTHEWS: Are you saying that the war currently raging in Ukraine should be seen as an example of peace?

ED COSTA: Hey, the US isn’t at war with Russia. NATO isn’t at war with Russia. We’re just helping things along, to protect the innocent. When this blows over and Russia sees how we have been able to cripple their economy, we will all be at peace again.

LEE MATTHEWS: Why then is Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy begging the US to join the war?

ED COSTA: You know these Slavic politicians. (LAUGHS) It’s probably a cultural thing. They get overexcited about nothing and hallucinate that we’re up to some devious games. They begin to imagine that we aren’t there for one simple reason: to ensure their safety and future prosperity. That’s the permanent mission of NATO and, of course, the eternal mission of our exceptional nation, the United States.

LEE MATTHEWS: So, tell me, what is the exact date the intelligence community has predicted for Biden’s victory speech on a Black Sea aircraft carrier in full military garb?

ED COSTA: Hey, we can’t predict everything.

LEE MATTHEWS: I’ll say. And I expect there are a few Ukrainians who now agree. 

DISCLAIMER: This dialogue is entirely fictional. Despite some superficial similarity, the names Ed Costa and Lee Matthews are not meant to refer to real people such as Ned Price and Matt Lee.

Why Monitoring Language Is Important

Language allows people to express thoughts, theories, ideas, experiences and opinions. But even while doing so, it also serves to obscure what is essential for understanding the complex nature of reality. When people use language to hide essential meaning, it is not only because they cynically seek to prevaricate or spread misinformation. It is because they strive to tell the part or the angle of the story that correlates with their needs and interests.

In the age of social media, many of our institutions and pundits proclaim their intent to root out “misinformation.” But often, in so doing, they are literally seeking to miss information.

Is there a solution? It will never be perfect, but critical thinking begins by being attentive to two things: the full context of any issue we are trying to understand and the operation of language itself. In our schools, we are taught to read and write, but, unless we bring rhetoric back into the standard curriculum, we are never taught how the power of language to both convey and distort the truth functions. There is a largely unconscious but observable historical reason for that negligence. Teaching establishments and cultural authorities fear the power of linguistic critique may be used against their authority.

Remember, 51�Թ�’s Language and the News seeks to sensitize our readers to the importance of digging deeper when assimilating the wisdom of our authorities, pundits and the media that transmit their knowledge and wisdom.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post A Fictional Debate Between a Biden Administration Spokesman and a Journalist appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The Contradictory Musings of Biden’s Speculator of State

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The Forbes article, an excerpt from Bourla’s book, “Moonshot,” ends with a moving story about how Pfizer boldly resisted the pressure of the evil Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, who had no qualms about depriving the rest of the world — even civilized countries such as Canada and Japan — of access to the COVID-19 vaccine to serve the US in their stead.

“He insisted,” the good doctor explains, “that the U.S. should take its additional 100 doses before we sent doses to anyone else from our Kalamazoo plant. He reminded me that he represented the government, and they could ‘take measures’ to enforce their will.”

Today’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Take measures:

Go well beyond any measured response in an act of intimidation

Contextual Note

Bourla begins his narrative at the beginning, before the development of the vaccine, by asserting his company’s virtuous intentions and ethical credentials that would later be challenged by bureaucrats and venal politicians. “Vaccine equity was one of our principles from the start,” he writes. “Vaccine diplomacy, the idea of using vaccines as a bargaining chip, was not and never has been.”

Some readers may note that vaccine equity was only “one” of the principles. There were, of course, other more dominant ones, such as maximizing profit. But Bourla never mentions these other principles, instead offering a step-by-step narrative meant to make the reader believe that his focus was on minimizing profit. That, after all, is what a world afflicted by a raging and deadly pandemic might expect. A closer examination of the process Bourla describes as well as the very real statistics about vaccine distribution reveals that, on the contrary, Pfizer would never even consider minimizing profits. It simply is not in their DNA.

Bourla proudly describes the phases of his virtuous thinking. The CEO even self-celebrates his out-of-the-ordinary sense of marketing, serving to burnish the image not only of his company but of the entire pharmaceutical industry. “We had a chance,” he boasts, “to gain back our industry’s reputation, which had been under fire for the last two decades. In the U.S., pharmaceuticals ranked near the bottom of all sectors, right next to the government, in terms of reputation.”

Thanks to his capacity to tone down his company’s instinctive corporate greed, Bourla now feels he has silenced his firm’s if not the entire industry’s critics when he makes this claim, “No one could say that we were using the pandemic as an opportunity to set prices at unusually high levels.” Some might, nevertheless, make the justifiable claim that what they did was set the prices at “usually” high levels. A close look at Bourla’s description of how the pricing decisions were made makes it clear that Pfizer never veered from seeking “high levels,” whether usual or unusual, during a pandemic that required as speedy and universal a response as possible.

Thanks to a subtle fudge on vocabulary, Bourla turns Pfizer’s vice into a virtue. He writes that when considering the calculation of the price Pfizer might charge per dose, he rejected the standard approach that was based on a savant calculation of the costs to patients theoretically saved by the drug. He explains the “different approach” he recommended. “I told the team to bring me the current cost of other cutting-edge vaccines like for measles, shingles, pneumonia, etc.” But it was the price and not the cost he was comparing. When his team reported prices of “between $150 and $200 per dose,” he agreed “to match the low end of the existing vaccine prices.”

If Pfizer was reasoning, as most industries do, in terms of cost and not price, he would be calculating all the costs related to producing the doses required by the marketplace — in this case billions — and would have worked out the price on the basis of fixed costs, production and marketing costs plus margin. That would be the reasonable thing to do in the case of a pandemic, where his business can be compared to a public service and for which there is both a captive marketplace (all of humanity shares the need) and in which sales are based entirely on advanced purchase orders. That theoretically reduces marketing costs to zero.

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But Bourla wrote the book to paint Pfizer as a public benefactor and himself as a modern Gaius Maecenas, the patron saint of patrons. Once his narrative establishes his commitment to the cause of human health and the renunciation of greed, he goes into detail about his encounter with Kushner. After wrangling with the bureaucrats at Operation Warp Speed created to meet the needs of the population during a pandemic, Bourla recounts the moment “when President Trump’s son-in-law and advisor, Jared Kushner, called me to resolve the issue.” That is when Kushner, like any good mafia boss, evokes his intent to “take measures,” a threat the brave Bourla resists in the name of the health of humanity and personal honor.

That leads to the heartwarming, honor-saving denouement, the happy ending that Bourla calls a miracle. “Thankfully, our manufacturing team continued to work miracles, and I received an improved manufacturing schedule that would allow us to provide the additional doses to the U.S. from April to July without cutting the supply to the other countries.”

Historical Note

Investopedia up the reasoning of pharmaceuticals when pricing their drugs: “Ultimately, the main objective of pharmaceutical companies when pricing drugs is to generate the most revenue.” In the history of Western pharmacy, that has not always been the case. Until the creation of the pharmaceutical industrial sector in the late 19^th century, apothecaries, chemists and druggists worked in their communities to earn a living and like most artisans calculated their costs and their capacity for profit.

The Industrial Revolution changed all that, permitting large-scale investment in research and development that would have been impossible in an earlier age. But it also introduced the profit motive as the main driver of industrial strategy. What that meant is what we can see today. Pharmaceutical companies have become, as Albert Bourla himself notes, “ranked near the bottom of all sectors.” They exist for one reason: to make and accumulate profit. Industrial strategies often seek to prolong or extend a need for drugs rather than facilitate cures. Advising a company, Goldman Sachs famously asked, “Is curing patients a sustainable business model?” The implied answer was “no.” The greatest fear of the commercial health industry is of a cure that “exhaust[s] the available pool of treatable patients.”

In any case, COVID-19 has served Pfizer handsomely and is continuing to do so. In late 2021, the Peoples Vaccine Alliance “that the companies behind two of the most successful COVID-19 vaccines —Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna— are making combined profits of $65,000 every minute.” Furthermore, they “have sold the majority of doses to rich countries, leaving low-income countries out in the cold. Pfizer and BioNTech have delivered less than one percent of their total vaccine supplies to low-income countries.”

At the beginning of the COVID-19 “project,” Bourla boasts, “I had made clear that return on investment should not be of any consideration” while patting himself on the back for focusing on the needs of the world. “In my mind, fairness had to come first.” With the results now in, he got his massive return on investment, while the world got two years and counting of a prolonged pandemic that will continue making a profit for Pfizer. At least he had the satisfaction of putting the ignoble Jared Kushner in his place.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Pfizer’s Noble Struggle Against the Diabolical Jared Kushner appeared first on 51�Թ�.

We invite readers to join us by submitting their suggestions of words and expressions that deserve exploring, with or without original commentary. To submit a citation from the news and/or provide your own short commentary, send us an email.

March 8: Says

The logic of capitalism has always given an advantage to anyone capable of constructing a monopoly. Monopolies oppress potential rivals, hold consumers hostage, distort the very principle of democracy and stifle innovation. That’s why governments in past times occasionally tried to rein them in. That was before the current era, a unique moment in history when the biggest monopolies learned the secret of becoming too powerful for any government to derail.

Is Europe’s Newfound Unity a Liberal Illusion?

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But there is at least one domain where the principle of democracy still reigns: propaganda. When it comes to distorting the news or simply inventing something that sounds like news, nobody has a monopoly. For the past six years or so, complaints about fake news have been rife. They come from all sides. And all those complaints are justified. Misrepresenting the truth has become a universal art form, thanks in part to advances in technology, but also to some great modern traditions such as public relations and the science of advertising.

On every controversial issue or every instance of a political or cultural conflict — from the Ukraine War to the censorship of podcasts — the interested parties will mobilize every piece of evidence (real or imagined) and every creative idea they have in their heads to produce something they want others to think of as “the truth.” It needs neither facts nor disciplined reasoning. It just has to stir emotion and sound somewhat credible. One of the standard techniques can be seen in the kind of reporting that uses an isolated anecdote to create the belief in a much more general threat.

To take one prominent case, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s official pretext for invading Ukraine was “denazification.” His implicit claim was that because there are neo-Nazi militias in Ukraine (which is true) and because over the past eight years some of them have stepped up to commit criminal acts in the name of Ukrainian nationalism, the current Ukrainian government can be held responsible for covering for Nazis. The corollary is that Russia has a legitimate mission to cleanse the neighboring country of them.

In his defense, Putin may have been influenced by a precedent that he feels justifies his arrogance. After the 9/11 attacks, the US government mobilized the resources of NATO to overthrow the Afghan government, which the Bush administration accused of “harboring” al-Qaeda militants. The world applauded at the time, but as time wore on and the great mission was never accomplished, that same world ended up seeing the invasion and occupation as an act of prolonged military folly. The whole episode nevertheless lasted for nearly 20 years.

The Designated Role of the Media: Reinforce Official Propaganda

Anyone trying to understand what is happening today in Ukraine just by consulting the media and the press will quickly discover a plethora of moving anecdotes but little substance. We are living through an intensive moment of massive propaganda. It has even produced a new journalistic genre: the article, interview or multimedia document revealing for the first time to the world what the evil mind responsible for the Ukrainian tragedy is really thinking. There are dozens of such articles every day.

As we reported last week, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, �������������’s chief official propagandist, provided an unintentionally comic model that journalists could imitate. In an interview about the Russian invasion in which Blinken started by explaining the precise process of Putin’s thinking, he later answered another question defensively, objecting: “I can’t begin to get into his head.”

Business Insider offers a typical example of an article that presents no facts or insights other than what one person “says” another person is thinking. This isn’t even hearsay, which is a form of news. It’s “listensay,” gleaned by a reporter for a specific purpose. The title of the reads: “Former NATO commander says Putin has his ‘gun sights’ on more nations apart from Ukraine.” The author, Matthew Loh, has the honesty to reveal that James Stavridis, the expert he quotes, is “a retired four-star US Navy admiral and current executive at the Carlyle Group.” This contrasts with MSNBC, which provided the quote that Loh based his article upon in a televised interview with Stavridis. The cable network introduced Stavridis as the former NATO commander but studiously neglected to mention his role at the Carlyle Group.

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Upon hearing an expert like Stavridis describe Putin’s most secretive thoughts, a discerning listener may begin wondering how he managed to “get into [Putin’s] head.” Does NATO possess telepathic technology? In reality, neither MSNBC nor Loh is curious about what the former admiral knows, whether through experience or telepathy. They only want the public to know what Stavridis “�������.”

A truly attentive reader of Loh’s article might prefer to reflect on the question of what a former NATO commander might be tempted to say about actions undertaken in the name of resisting and rejecting NATO. After a bit of research that the Carlyle Group is “the leading private equity investor in the aerospace and defense industries,” that same reader may begin to sense that what Stavridis “says” may be influenced by who he is and how he earns a living. 

At one point in the MSNBC interview, Stavridis could barely contain his pleasure with the current situation when he asserted: “Vladimir Putin may be the best thing that ever happened to the NATO alliance.” This at least has the merit of revealing the true reasoning behind the Biden administration’s stonewalling on the question of excluding Ukraine from NATO. Everyone knew that for the Russians, the very idea of Ukraine’s membership in NATO crossed a red line. The intelligence services should have known that it could even push Putin to act according to the promises he has been making for at least the past 15 years. 

Serious analysts like John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt understood that long ago. This is where it would be useful to get into the head of US President Joe Biden and his administration and the policymakers at NATO. Could it then be that the NATO alliance, led by the United States, was less concerned with the security of Ukraine and the Ukrainian people than it was actively seeking to provoke Putin’s reaction as a pretext for expanding and reinforcing NATO? That certainly appears consistent with Stavridis’ logic. They could do so in the hope that ��ܲ�������’s display of aggression would prove to the “free world” that NATO was more necessary than ever. 

NATO not only defines the ability of the US to be militarily present in other parts of the world, but it also gives structure to the military-industrial complex in the US, the source of profit the Carlyle Group depends on. The military-industrial complex sells its sophisticated weapons to its allies in Europe and elsewhere, making them vassals twice over, by binding them into an alliance if not allegiance with US foreign policy and making them loyal customers for American military technology.

The propaganda blitz now underway is clearly exceptional, possibly because there have never been so many people the media can solicit to step and “say” what Putin “thinks.” This provides endless matter for lazy journalists who understand their job at the service of the military-industrial complex in times of (other people’s) wars is to take sides in the name of Western solidarity and in the interest of their own future employment.

Is Propaganda Immoral or Just Amoral?

The propaganda machine now unleashed on the world seeks to create an illusion of universal agreement about what, in reality, no one can be sure of. As always throughout human history, its aim is to prevent critical thinking, which means it is also an obstacle to problem-solving. That is why Stavridis can be so pleased with Putin’s aggression. Because it is a literally undefendable act, all right-thinking people will condemn it on purely legal grounds. But Stavridis and the entire propaganda machine take Putin’s sins as proof of NATO’s virtue. And the Carlyle Group executive believes that for that very reason, other nations have no choice but to align and support the extension of NATO.

Could this be a Pyrrhic victory for the propagandists? While it has worked at least superficially in the West and is being trumpeted by the media, the successful moral intimidation of other governments by a nation and a bloc not known for the impeccable morality of its foreign policy decisions and military actions in the past may be limited to the West.

The best illustration of this is Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan’s to an initiative by the heads of 22 Western diplomatic missions who sent him a letter literally instructing him as an ally of the US to support a resolution of the UN General Assembly condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Citing the letter, Khan commented: “What do you think of us? Are we your slaves…that whatever you say, we will do?”

Putin is undoubtedly a consummate knave and as narcissistic as they come. But, like Khan, he has every reason to fear as well as critique the inexorable imperial reach of the US-NATO military-industrial complex. Whatever selfish considerations motivate him, Putin is aware of his unique power to challenge an entity perceived even by its allies (at least ever since Charles de Gaulle) as having the personality of a slave-master or at the very least a feudal baron. Though none would dare to go public, the allies themselves are beginning to worry and have begun seeking in the shadows to change the system that defines their own abject dependence. But it’s far too early to talk about it. For the moment, they are willing to repeat what their master says.

The problem that lies ahead goes beyond any solution propaganda can imagine. Even if some or most Western governments slavishly follow the reasoning that NATO is their only hope of defense against the Russian ogre, people in Europe are now chattering amongst themselves about how the very logic of NATO has produced a situation in which Ukraine and its people are being condemned to atrocious suffering by the intransigence of both sides. NATO itself stands as the “casus belli.” And what reason does it invoke to justify its stance? An artificial idea of “sovereignty.”

Most ordinary citizens can already see that NATO’s insistence on expansion has been and continues to be unduly aggressive. At the same time, the notion of US leadership in Europe and the rest of the world is no longer what it once was. NATO’s inflexibility is beginning to appear as a threat to everyone’s security for two reasons: It has exposed a nation it claims to protect to suffering and as Pakistan, a US ally, observes, it seeks to treat all others as vassal states.

This reality is becoming increasingly visible, no matter how much we listen to people cited in the media who think they can say what Vladimir Putin is thinking.

Why Monitoring Language Is Important

Language allows people to express thoughts, theories, ideas, experiences and opinions. But even while doing so, it also serves to obscure what is essential for understanding the complex nature of reality. When people use language to hide essential meaning, it is not only because they cynically seek to prevaricate or spread misinformation. It is because they strive to tell the part or the angle of the story that correlates with their needs and interests.

In the age of social media, many of our institutions and pundits proclaim their intent to root out “misinformation.” But often, in so doing, they are literally seeking to miss information.

Is there a solution? It will never be perfect, but critical thinking begins by being attentive to two things: the full context of any issue we are trying to understand and the operation of language itself. In our schools, we are taught to read and write, but, unless we bring rhetoric back into the standard curriculum, we are never taught how the power of language to both convey and distort the truth functions. There is a largely unconscious but observable historical reason for that negligence. Teaching establishments and cultural authorities fear the power of linguistic critique may be used against their authority.

Remember, 51�Թ�’s Language and the News seeks to sensitize our readers to the importance of digging deeper when assimilating the wisdom of our authorities, pundits and the media that transmit their knowledge and wisdom.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The Art of Saying What Other People Think appeared first on 51�Թ�.

We invite readers to join us by submitting their suggestions of words and expressions that deserve exploring, with or without original commentary. To submit a citation from the news and/or provide your own short commentary, send us an email.

March 7: Unity

Like many voices in the West, The Economist appears delighted by one of the effects of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The title of a current article contains the self-congratulatory : “Russian aggression is prompting rare unity and severe reprisals.” The New York Times made the same point with its own more melodramatic . “In a few frantic days,” a trio of Times reporters wrote, “the West threw out the standard playbook that it had used for decades and instead marshaled a stunning show of unity against ��ܲ�������’s brutal aggression in the heart of Europe.”&�Բ�����;

Unity is stunning, and The Economist’s “severe reprisals” are the icing on the cake that demonstrate the West’s vaunted ability, according to The Times, to respond “on a global scale and with dizzying speed.” So why is beleaguered Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy now  about not getting the support he expected?

Emmanuel Macron’s Chance to Appear Transformative

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The suffering of the Ukrainian people and their president’s complaints apparently haven’t dampened the West’s penchant for self-congratulation. Carl Bildt, the former Swedish prime minister, writing for The Washington Post, goes further in summing up US : “It’s too early to think in these terms, but a NATO that perhaps also has Sweden and Finland as members should be ready to invite both Ukraine and Russia to join.”&�Բ�����;

It’s the dream of every politician inside the Beltway and nearly everyone in Arlington and Langley: the evocation of a new Europe enthusiastically and harmoniously united under the US military leadership. Bildt nevertheless concludes on a note of appropriate humility and even a dose of realism: “But before we get there, much will happen, little of which we can foresee today.”

Harvard University also  the phenomenon, which it describes as “a much-needed wake-up call for Europe.” In the interest of offering some much-needed perspective, Harvard mobilized two serious thinkers for a panel discussion. The noted theorist and professor of international affairs, Stephen Walt, argued that “the war in Ukraine has in some respects dispelled a whole series of liberal illusions that misled many people during the post-Cold War period.”

This remark is particularly apt at a time when the entire US establishment, led by a Democratic administration that has been obsessed by the Russian threat since losing the 2016 election to Donald Trump, is currently using the power of the media to recreate a dangerously bellicose Cold War atmosphere.

Walt’s analysis dares to call into question the major assumptions inculcated by US media in its presentation of the stakes of the current crisis. He unveils some of the “liberal illusions” that other less charitable analysts might more appropriately call a case of systemic, voluntary blindness. Among the illusions he cites “the idea that a major war could never happen again in Europe, and that the spread of economic interdependence and the expansion of NATO would mean that ‘eventually all of Europe would be a vast zone of peace.’”

These were essentially acts of faith shared by every administration and promoted by the massive security state and military-industrial for the last 30 years. They stemmed from the neoliberal conviction that a stable American economy required a system based on subsidizing an industrial core focused on military technology that was also indirectly coupled with the consumer market. The military side, through the global presence of US armed forces, guaranteed unencumbered access to the resources required to produce the technology. The military also served as the initial outlet for the technology’s use.

This rational system supposedly respectful of free markets that was launched in the aftermath of World War II rapidly turned into a “liberal” version of a new version of state socialism with global reach. It imperceptibly acquired the attributes needed to build a modern hypertechnologized hegemon. 

Alas, its very scope and several of the mistakes it produced along the way made the formerly invisible model of state socialism visible to critics. It became increasingly clear that the institutions of a democratic nation had become dominated by a financial and political elite. They even had a name, “the 1%.” They banded together to fuel, manage and monitor the system they had put in place. Politics was redesigned to meet their needs rather than those of the people.

Liberal Orthodoxy at the Service of State Socialism

The world has seen three contrasting models of state socialism in the past century, as well as a fourth and highly aggressive one — fascism. That one was thankfully eliminated at the end of the Second World War, discredited for providing a model that was too in your face. Fascism’s focus on military technology and the media’s role in disseminating nationalistic propaganda nevertheless provided models that influenced the other versions of state socialism. The three other more solidly built models are those of the Soviet Union, the US and China.

The Soviet model ultimately failed because it was frozen into an ideology crafted in the 19^th century that took no account of an evolving world. The American model gradually took form, initially as a reaction to the particularly aggressive version of laissez-faire capitalism that emerged in the late 19^th century. Its taming began in the 20^th century with the anti-trust movement. 

Eschewing any form of collectivist ideology, the US model subtly and nearly invisibly imposed its collectivist nature through its understanding of the power of media and the birth of the “science” of public relations,  in the early decades of the 20^thcentury by Ivy Lee and Edward Bernays. These consultants worked in the darker shadows of the corridors of political and economic power. Unlike Marx and Lenin, they were cleverly prevented by their handlers from being seen on center stage as they honed the powerful ideology that undergirded the new American version of state socialism. They and their ideology remained too invisible to criticize.

The new ideology nevertheless didn’t go unnoticed. Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky engaged a valiant effort to articulate criticism of it in their book “Manufacturing Consent.” And they did so with great precision. But their thesis focusing on the oppressive power of the media at the service of a corporate and governmental oligarchy became known only to a marginal segment of the population. 

The new ideology nevertheless didn’t go unnoticed. Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky engaged a valiant effort to articulate criticism of it in their book “Manufacturing Consent.” And they did so with great precision. But their thesis focusing on the oppressive power of the media at the service of a corporate and governmental oligarchy became known only to a marginal segment of the population. The media it criticized predictably ignored it, ensuring the invisibility of the true structure of a system of state socialism. 

In traditional centralized power systems — and this is true in many nations even today — the lack of cultural influence of their media forces them to resort to direct censorship. In an evolved system in which the media has attained a superficial image of autonomy, government censorship serves no purpose because it can count on the media to self-censor. Indeed, any attempt to censor calls attention to what the government prefers people simply to ignore.

China has turned out to be a special case. With the Communist Party running the government, it is archetypically a socialist state. But it has learned some of the lessons provided by the US example, including the admiration of personal wealth stemming from the traditional Chinese celebration of prosperity.

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Because many Westerners have traditionally labeled Chinese culture “inscrutable,” American establishment strategists, attracted by the dynamics of the Chinese economy but repelled by its political culture, appear to be floundering about in their quest to categorize the evil they desperately want to see as the essence of a perceived powerful rival. It was easy for Americans to dismiss the Soviet Union as a relic of a 19^th-century worldview. In contrast, China’s state socialism is oriented toward the future, notably with its emphasis on technology and proactive concern with infrastructure. 

Moreover, in too many ways, China’s state socialism resembles the US version, which means criticizing China might invite self-criticism. Worse, instead of placing all its faith in the ruling class as the US does with its trickle-down economics, China factors into many of its policies the needs of the entire population. That, as Edward Bernays might remark, gives it a certain PR advantage.  

At the Harvard event, the Atlantic Council’s Benjamin Haddad represented a point of view more consistent with the optics of the US security state. But, in contrast with The Post’s editorialist, he noted that “something much deeper is happening in Europe that will have really long-term consequences.” He has dared to express the heterodox view that, instead of perceiving an increased need for NATO, Europe may now be calling into question its traditional acceptance of US leadership.

As such debates continue in the US, the Ukrainian people and President Zelenskyy appear to be losing patience with NATO and the US, who have expressed their undying love for the country while refusing to save it from a situation they created. They may be well placed to appreciate Stephen Walt’s observation that “powerful countries often do pretty horrible things when they feel, rightly or wrongly, that their security is being endangered.” The US and NATO are more worried about their own security than Ukraine’s. On that, they are in total agreement with Vladimir Putin.

Why Monitoring Language Is Important

Language allows people to express thoughts, theories, ideas, experiences and opinions. But even while doing so, it also serves to obscure what is essential for understanding the complex nature of reality. When people use language to hide essential meaning, it is not only because they cynically seek to prevaricate or spread misinformation. It is because they strive to tell the part or the angle of the story that correlates with their needs and interests.

In the age of social media, many of our institutions and pundits proclaim their intent to root out “misinformation.” But often, in so doing, they are literally seeking to miss information.

Is there a solution? It will never be perfect, but critical thinking begins by being attentive to two things: the full context of any issue we are trying to understand and the operation of language itself. In our schools, we are taught to read and write, but, unless we bring rhetoric back into the standard curriculum, we are never taught how the power of language to both convey and distort the truth functions. There is a largely unconscious but observable historical reason for that negligence. Teaching establishments and cultural authorities fear the power of linguistic critique may be used against their authority.

Remember, 51�Թ�’s Language and the News seeks to sensitize our readers to the importance of digging deeper when assimilating the wisdom of our authorities, pundits and the media that transmit their knowledge and wisdom.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Is Europe’s Newfound Unity a Liberal Illusion? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

We invite readers to join us by submitting their suggestions of words and expressions that deserve exploring, with or without original commentary. To submit a citation from the news and/or provide your own short commentary, send us an email.

March 3: “Every Inch”

At his State of the Union on Tuesday, US President Joe Biden repeated a mantra he has been using for at least the past two weeks. “A�� I have made crystal clear,” he intoned in his address to Congress, “the United States and our Allies will defend every inch of territory of NATO countries with the full force of our collective power.”

Biden was in effect quoting himself, or repeating crowd-pleasing sentences and phrases, as he often does. Political marketing has become a science in which the rules of brand recognition defined by the wizards of Madison Avenue dominate. It is a convenient substitute for other more traditional political practices, such as critical thinking, responding creatively to an evolving situation, reacting and adapting to the shifting parameters of a dynamic context. The basic rule of branding consists of repeating the same message in exactly the same formulation over and over again to create familiarity and brand recognition.

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On February 22, in practically identical terms, Biden had already proclaimed the same : “that the United States, together with our Allies, will defend every inch of NATO territory and abide by the commitments we made to NATO.”&�Բ�����; Two days later, on February 24, he : “A�� I made crystal clear, the United States will defend every inch of NATO territory with the full force of American power.”

Some may find this tirelessly repeated commitment, surprising not for its vehemence but for its banality. One member of Ukraine’s parliament, Oleksandra Ustinova, on The Today Show, expressed her “total disappointment” in Biden’s speech because she was expecting military engagement rather than vehement rhetoric. 

The sad fact of the matter — for Ukraine but also the rest of the world, including Russia — is that Biden’s promise to defend every inch of NATO territory is fundamentally meaningless in the context of ��ܲ�������’s war on Ukraine. Not because Biden’s commitment to NATO isn’t real — it definitely is genuine — but because it simply repeats the conditions delineated in the articles of NATO.

The message it sends to Europe is that if your country does not accept to be a vassal state of the US through membership in NATO, we will not only create the conditions that will expose you to war, but will leave you to suffer the consequences. Had the US not insisted on promoting Ukrainian membership in NATO — something France and Germany had rejected more than a decade ago — Russia would have had no reason and certainly no excuse for invading Ukraine. By insisting and refusing even to discuss the question of Ukraine’s candidacy for NATO, the inevitable occurred, as Mikhail Gorbachev, John Mearsheimer and other realists predicted.

Biden’s promise is also slightly odd in its logic because it sends a message to the Russians that they had better do everything they can to crush Ukraine now, in order to prevent Ukraine from ever becoming a territory full of square inches that one day will be occupied and defended by “the full force of American power” to say nothing of the “collective power” of 30 countries — some of whom are endowed with nuclear arsenals — that Biden evoked in his State of the Union address.

As the rhetorical effect of the commitment to defend every inch, Biden undoubtedly sought to create the fragile illusion that Ukraine is already spiritually part of NATO and that the bold sanctions he is capable of mobilizing to punish Russia will be adequate to spare Ukraine the worst. But illusions create confusion. In this case, it has created that particular form of confusion we call war. And it has fallen on the largely defenseless population of an entire nation.

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Politicians, just like advertising wizards, choose repetition to instill a fixed idea in people’s minds without necessarily reflecting on the unintended consequences of that idea, which they generally write off as collateral damage. The marketers focus on what really matters: product awareness and brand recognition. In the world of commerce, it makes some sense because no one is obliged to keep buying the product. 

One of the predictable effects of the confusion created by Biden’s rhetoric has already been revealed in the growing call for actual military engagement, not only by the Ukrainians themselves but also by Americans. Some members of Congress and even a seasoned journalist, Richard Engel, have suggested that the US institute a no-fly zone. The White House has rejected that idea precisely because it would be an act of war, with potential nuclear consequences.

Another dimension of the president’s pet phrase appeared when, at a press conference last week, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg twice repeated Biden’s exact . He began with this promise: “We will do what it takes to protect and defend every Ally. And every inch of NATO �ٱ�������ٴǰ���.” Later in the Q&A with the press, he spoke of the “reason why we so clearly send the message that we are there to protect all Allies and every inch of NATO �ٱ�������ٴǰ���.”

Americans will not be surprised by Stoltenberg’s repetition of Biden’s slogan, but Europeans should be. The US is the only nation, along with Liberia and Myanmar, that has not committed to the metric system, not just for science and industry, but as the nation’s cultural norm, making it the basis for informal talk in everyday life about weights and measures. Even the UK made the metric system official in the 1990s, where it is now taught in schools. Europeans think and talk according to the metric system. Americans think and talk — appropriately enough — according to the imperial system.  

Stoltenberg is Norwegian. The population of 29 of NATO’s 30 members uses the metric system in their daily activities. So, what does it tell us when instead of saying every square centimeter, the European head of NATO says “every inch”? The answer should be obvious to Europeans. Stoltenberg is the lead actor in a play written and directed by the United States. NATO is not the collegial entity that some cite, with the intent of proving its legitimacy. It is an instrument of US power and culture. And that happens to be a militaristic and hegemonic culture, in direct contrast with most European nations following World War II.

One of the longer-term consequences of the current crisis is something no one seems willing to talk about at this moment as everyone is concerned with expressing their solidarity with the Ukrainian people. Numerous commentators have interpreted ��ܲ�������’s aggression as a signal that the West is for once becoming united and will be stronger than ever when the fighting dies down and Russia is humbled. 

The question no one wants to assess realistically is precisely the evolving image of NATO, particularly for Europeans. The idea that the Russian assault will strengthen Europe’s commitment to NATO to avoid future crises is naive at best and the product of the kind of illusion Biden has created with his rhetoric. What is happening today is frightening, and to the extent that the problem itself turns around the existence of NATO, without compromising their empathy for Ukrainians, Europeans have already begun reflecting on the danger NATO represents for their political and economic future.

Europeans have plenty to think about. Depending on how the war itself plays out, two things seem likely in the near future. The first is that, thanks to the unpopularity of Biden at home, it seems inevitable that the Republican Party will control Congress in 2023 and that a Republican will likely defeat the Democrats in the presidential election of 2024. This appears even more likely were either President Biden or Vice-President Kamala Harris to be the party’s standard bearer. The Republican Party is still dominated by Donald Trump, a fact that clearly unsettles most politicians and political thinkers in Europe. The marketers of both parties, over at least the past eight years, have failed to defend their once prestigious brand. 

Depending on Europe’s capacity to act independently after decades of accepting to remain in the shadow of the US, welcomed as their protector in the aftermath of World War II, it is highly likely that a movement will emerge to create a European and possibly Eurasian security framework that could replace or, at the very least, marginalize NATO. And even after the fiasco of the Ukraine War (Vladimir Putin’s folly), that new framework might even include Russia. 

Why Monitoring Language Is Important

Language allows people to express thoughts, theories, ideas, experiences and opinions. But even while doing so, it also serves to obscure what is essential for understanding the complex nature of reality. When people use language to hide essential meaning, it is not only because they cynically seek to prevaricate or spread misinformation. It is because they strive to tell the part or the angle of the story that correlates with their needs and interests.

In the age of social media, many of our institutions and pundits proclaim their intent to root out “misinformation.” But often, in so doing, they are literally seeking to miss information.

Is there a solution? It will never be perfect, but critical thinking begins by being attentive to two things: the full context of any issue we are trying to understand and the operation of language itself. In our schools, we are taught to read and write, but, unless we bring rhetoric back into the standard curriculum, we are never taught how the power of language to both convey and distort the truth functions. There is a largely unconscious but observable historical reason for that negligence. Teaching establishments and cultural authorities fear the power of linguistic critique may be used against their authority.

Remember, 51�Թ�’s Language and the News seeks to sensitize our readers to the importance of digging deeper when assimilating the wisdom of our authorities, pundits and the media that transmit their knowledge and wisdom.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post How Coherent Is NATO Today and in the Future? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

But there is a more insidious reality at work beneath the surface of this classic morality play, and that is the role of the United States and NATO in setting the stage for this crisis.

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US President Joe Biden has called the Russian invasion “,” but that is far from the truth. In the four days leading up to the invasion on February 24, ceasefire monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) a dangerous increase in ceasefire violations in the east of Ukraine. Most were inside the de facto borders of the Donetsk (DPR) and Luhansk (LPR) regions of Donbas in eastern Ukraine, consistent with incoming shell-fire by Ukrainian government forces. With nearly OSCE ceasefire monitors on the ground, it is not credible that these were all “false flag” incidents staged by separatist forces, as American and British officials claimed.

Whether the shell-fire was just another escalation in the long-running civil war in eastern Ukraine or the opening salvos of a new government offensive, it was certainly a provocation. But the Russian invasion has far exceeded any proportionate action to defend the DPR and LPR from those attacks, making it disproportionate and illegal. 

The New Cold War

In the larger context, though, Ukraine has become an unwitting victim and proxy in the resurgent Cold War against Russia and China, in which the United States has surrounded both countries with military forces and offensive weapons, withdrawn from a whole series of arms control treaties, and refused to negotiate resolutions to rational security concerns raised by Russia.

In December 2021, after a summit between Biden and his counterpart in Moscow, Vladimir Putin, Russia submitted a draft for a new mutual security treaty between Russia and NATO, with nine articles to be negotiated. They represented a reasonable basis for a serious exchange. The most pertinent to the crisis was simply to agree that NATO would not accept Ukraine as a new member, which is not on the table in the foreseeable future in any case. But the Biden administration brushed off ��ܲ�������’s entire proposal as a nonstarter, not even a basis for negotiations.

So, why was negotiating a mutual security treaty so unacceptable that Biden was ready to risk thousands of Ukrainian lives — although not a single American life — rather than attempt to find common ground? What does that say about the relative value that Biden and his colleagues place on American vs. Ukrainian lives? And what is this strange position that the United States occupies in today’s world that permits a US president to risk so many Ukrainian lives without asking Americans to share their pain and sacrifice? 

The breakdown in US relations with Russia and the failure of Biden’s inflexible brinkmanship precipitated this war, and yet his policy externalizes all the pain and suffering so that Americans can, as another president once said, “go about their business” and keep shopping. �������������’s European allies, who must now house hundreds of thousands of refugees and face spiraling energy prices, should be wary of falling in line behind this kind of “leadership” before they, too, end up on the front line.

NATO

At the end of the Cold War, the Warsaw Pact, NATO’s Eastern European counterpart, was dissolved. NATO should have been too since it had achieved the purpose it was built to serve. Instead, NATO has lived on as a dangerous, out-of-control military alliance dedicated mainly to expanding its sphere of operations and justifying its own existence. It has expanded from 16 countries in 1991 to a total of 30 countries today, incorporating most of Eastern Europe, at the same time as it has committed aggression, bombings of civilians and other war crimes. 

In 1999, NATO launched an illegal war to militarily carve out an independent Kosovo from the remnants of Yugoslavia. NATO airstrikes during the Kosovo War killed hundreds of civilians, and its leading ally in the war, Kosovan President Hashim Thaci, is now on trial at The Hague charged with committing appalling war under the cover of NATO bombing, including murder, torture and enforced disappearances. 

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Far from the North Atlantic, NATO joined the United States in its 20-year war in Afghanistan and then attacked and destroyed Libya in 2011, leaving behind a failed , a continuing refugee crisis and violence and chaos across the region.

In 1991, as part of a Soviet agreement to accept the reunification of East and West Germany, Western leaders assured their Soviet counterparts that they would not expand NATO any closer to Russia than the border of a united Germany. At the time, US Secretary of State James Baker promised that NATO would not advance “one inch” beyond the German border. The West’s broken promises are spelled out for all to see in 30 declassified published on the National Security Archive website.

The INF Treaty

After expanding across Eastern Europe and waging wars in Afghanistan and Libya, NATO has predictably come full circle to once again view Russia as its principal enemy. US nuclear weapons are now based in five NATO countries in Europe: Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Turkey, while France and the United Kingdom already have their own nuclear arsenals. US “missile defense” systems, which could be converted to fire offensive nuclear missiles, are based in Poland and Romania, including at a in Poland only 100 miles from the Russian border. 

Another Russian in its December proposal was for the US to join a moratorium on intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) in Europe. In 2019, both the United States and Russia withdrew from a 1987 treaty, under which both sides agreed not to deploy short- or intermediate-range nuclear missiles. Donald Trump, the US president at the time, pulled out of the INF treaty on the advice of his national security adviser, John Bolton.

None of this can justify Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, but the world should take Russia seriously when it says that its conditions for ending the war and returning to diplomacy are Ukrainian neutrality and disarmament. While no country can be expected to completely disarm in today’s armed-to-the-teeth world, neutrality could be a serious long-term option for Ukraine. 

Neutrality

There are many successful precedents, like Switzerland, Austria, Ireland, Finland and Costa Rica. Or take the case of Vietnam. It has a common border and serious maritime disputes with China, but Vietnam has resisted US efforts to embroil it in its Cold War with Beijing. Vietnam remains committed to its long-standing “” policy: no military alliances, no affiliation with one country against another, no foreign military bases and no threats or uses of force. 

The world must do whatever it takes to obtain a ceasefire in Ukraine and make it stick. Maybe UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres or a special representative could act as a mediator, possibly with a peacekeeping role for the United Nations. This will not be easy. One of the still unlearned lessons of other conflicts is that it is easier to prevent war through serious diplomacy and a genuine commitment to peace than to end war once it has started.

If or when there is a ceasefire, all parties must be prepared to start afresh to negotiate lasting diplomatic solutions that will allow all the people of Ukraine, Russia, the United States and other NATO members to live in peace. Security is not a zero-sum game, and no country or group of countries can achieve lasting security by undermining the security of others. 

The United States and Russia must also finally assume the responsibility that comes with stockpiling over 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons and agree on a plan to start dismantling them, in compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the new UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

Lastly, as Americans condemn ��ܲ�������’s aggression, it would be the epitome of hypocrisy to forget or ignore the many recent wars in which the United States and its allies have been the aggressors: in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, , Somalia, Palestine, Pakistan, Libya, Syria and Yemen. 

We sincerely hope that Russia will end its illegal, brutal invasion of Ukraine long before it commits a fraction of the massive killing and destruction that the United States has committed in its own illegal wars.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The US Leaves Ukraine to Fight New Cold War With Russia appeared first on 51�Թ�.

In an article published on the day of ��ܲ�������’s invasion of Ukraine, CBS News up journalist Norah O’Donnell’s conversation with the top foreign policy official in the US in these words: “Secretary of State Antony Blinken said it is obvious Russian President Vladimir Putin has goals beyond Ukraine and may have other countries in his sights.”

Today’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Obvious:

Possibly true, maybe even unlikely, but what the speaker hopes people will believe is true

Contextual note

With everyone in government and the media speculating about — rather than thinking through — the real reasons behind the Russian assault on Ukraine, CBS News, like most of US legacy media, wants its readers to focus on the most extreme hypothesis. That is the gift any war offers to the media: the possibility of not just imagining but supposing the worst.

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It works because the idea that Vladimir Putin has designs that go beyond Ukraine is certainly credible. But it has no basis in fact. In wartime, the media, even more than politicians, will always do their damnedest to damn beyond redemption the party designated as the enemy. One crime is never enough. The public must be encouraged to believe that other, more serious crimes are in the offing. That will incite the audience to return for more.

The article is about Antony Blinken’s understanding of the conflict, but he never used the word “obvious.” Instead, he speculated out loud about what an evil dictator might be thinking. “He’s made clear,” Blinken asserted without citing evidence, “that he’d like to reconstitute the Soviet empire.” He then shifts to a less extreme interpretation. “Short of that,” Blinken continues, “he’d like to reassert a sphere of influence around neighboring countries that were once part of the Soviet bloc.” And he ends with what is a perfectly reasonable assumption: “And short of that, he’d like to make sure that all of these countries are somehow neutral.”&�Բ�����;     

Blinken’s contention that Putin’s “made clear” his intention to restore the Soviet empire undoubtedly prompted CBS’ choice of the word “obvious,” which is a bold exaggeration. But Blinken is exaggerating when he claims it’s “clear.” Something is clear if it is visible, with no obstacle that prevents us from seeing it. In this case, clarity would exist if Putin had ever expressed that intention. But that has never happened. So, what Blinken claims to be clear is mere suspicion.

Blinken cleverly evokes “the Soviet empire” that he is convinced Putin wants to restore. The Soviet Union was a communist dictatorship, the ideological enemy of the United States. But Putin is an oligarchic capitalist who inherited a Russia whose economy was transformed by American consultants after the fall of the Soviet Union. Blinken knows that Americans are horrified by any association with communism and quasi-religiously “believe in” capitalism, even oligarchic capitalism, since the US has produced its own version of that. Blinken’s statement can therefore be read as clever State Department propaganda. He designed it to evoke emotions that are inappropriate to the actual context.

Things become linguistically more interesting when Blinken goes on to offer a softer reading of Putin’s intention, introduced by “short of that.” He descends the ladder of horror by moving from “empire” to “sphere of influence.” It is far less fear-inspiring, but he continues to evoke the communist threat by alluding to “countries that were once part of the Soviet bloc.”&�Բ�����;

The next step down the ladder, again introduced by “short of that,” reads like a puzzling anti-climax. “And short of that,” Blinken says, “he’d like to make sure that all of these countries are somehow neutral.” Is he suggesting that the neutrality of surrounding nations is the equivalent of reconstituting the Soviet Union? If they are truly neutral, like Switzerland or Finland, they belong to no bloc. Blinken apparently wants the undiscerning listener to assume that being neutral is just a lighter, perhaps less constraining version of being part of a new Soviet empire.

This kind of speculation based on mental reflexes acquired during the Cold War may seem odd for another reason. Blinken was speaking at the very moment when actual hostilities were breaking out. In the previous weeks, discussions between the two sides had taken place, which meant they could continue. Things changed, of course, at the beginning of last week when Putin , “I deem it necessary to make a decision that should have been made a long time ago — to immediately recognize the independence and sovereignty of the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Luhansk People’s Republic.”

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That statement on February 21 should have created a new sense of urgency in Washington to prevent the worst from happening by precipitating new negotiations. The opposite happened. ��ܲ�������’s overtures calling for a summit were refused and Blinken’s planned meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was canceled.

The West and indeed the world were legitimately shocked by Putin’s move. It violated a basic principle of international law and contradicted the terms of the Minsk agreement that looked forward to defining the future autonomy of Donetsk and Luhansk. On that score, Putin was not wrong when he noted that the definition and application of that autonomy should have taken place much earlier, indeed, “a long time ago.”

What Blinken described corresponds to an imaginary negotiation with Putin, who may have adopted a strategy of beginning with an extreme position by demanding a return to a post-Yalta order in Eastern Europe. Negotiators typically exaggerate at the beginning, proposing what they never expect to achieve, to arrive at something that will be deemed acceptable. It’s called giving ground. Blinken’s first “short of that” anticipates what Putin might do once the extreme position is rejected. His second “short of that” tells us what Blinken imagines Putin’s next concession might be. That takes him to the neutrality hypothesis, which in fact, as everyone knows, was Putin’s red line. 

If Blinken can imagine that kind of negotiating process, why didn’t he choose to engage in it? The answer lies in his implicit assessment of the idea of neutrality. Neutrality is not an option. It confirms what many suspect: the US adheres to a confrontational model of international relations. It is the George W. Bush doctrine: if you are not with us, you are against us. That applies even to neutral countries.

The CBS article contains some other interesting curiosities. After explaining exactly what Putin is secretly thinking, at one point, Blinken objects: “I can’t begin to get into his head.” When queried about what the intelligence community has provided to Blinken to justify what he says he thinks is in Putin’s head, he replies, “You don’t need intelligence to tell you that that’s exactly what President Putin wants.” Blinken wants us to believe that he understands everything but knows nothing.

Historical Note

Could it be that in this age of social media, where everyone lives comfortably in their silo, we have heard the death knell of even the idea of negotiation, a practice that has been respected in international relations throughout human history? Or is it an effect of historically informed cynicism due to the fact that, in many cases, negotiations have failed to prevent the unthinkable? Everyone remembers Neville Chamberlain’s negotiation with Adolf Hitler in 1938 that seemed to succeed until it became clear that it had failed.

Or is it just a US phenomenon? Emmanuel Macron of France and Olaf Scholz of Germany made last-minute attempts to negotiate with Vladimir Putin, but they lacked the authority of the US. 

In recent decades, US culture appears to have created a kind of reflex that consists of refusing to enter into dialogue whenever one has the feeling that the other party doesn’t share the same ideas or opinions. This aversion to sitting down and sorting out major problems may be an indirect consequence of the wokeness wars, which inevitably lead to the conclusion that the other side will always be unenlightened and incorrigible. Discussion serves no purpose, especially since those committed to a fixed position live in fear of hearing something that might modulate their enthusiasm.

Today’s confrontational culture in the US reveals that Americans are now more interested in making a display of their moral indignation at people who look, think or act differently than they are in trying to understand, let alone iron out their differences. In the past, John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev solved major problems through dialogue. Ronald Reagan and Leonid Brezhnev talked , as did Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. And then there was the extraordinary case of Richard Nixon and Mao Zedong.

We are now in the age of . Even our political leaders have identified with that culture.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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For months, I’ve been reading about the growing Trumpist-Republican movement to ban whatever books its members consider politically unpalatable, lest the lives of �������������’s children be sullied by, say, a novel of Toni Morrison’s like&�Բ�����;“”&�Բ�����;or Margaret Atwood’s&�Բ�����;“”&�Բ�����;or a history book like&�Բ�����;“”&�Բ�����;It’s an urge that just rubs me the wrong way.

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After all, as a boy growing up in New York City in the 1950s, when children’s post-school lives were much less organized than they are today, I would often wander into the local branch of the public library, hoping the librarian would allow me into the adult section. There — having little idea what I was doing — I would pull interesting-looking grown-up books off the shelves and head for home.

Years later, exchanging childhood memories with a friend and publishing colleague, Sara Bershtel, I discovered that, on arriving in this country, she, too, had found a sympathetic librarian and headed for those adult shelves. At perhaps 12 or 13, just about the age of those Tennessee school kids, we had both — miracle of miracles! — not faintly knowing what we were doing, pulled Annmarie Selinko’s  novel “Désirée”&�Բ�����;off the shelves. It was about Napoleon Bonaparte and his youthful fiancé and we each remember being riveted by it. Maybe my own fascination with history, and hers with French literature, began there. Neither of us, I suspect, were harmed by reading the sort of racy bestseller that Republicans would today undoubtedly loathe.

A Tennessee School

Oh, and if you’ll excuse a little stream of consciousness here, my friend Sara was born in a German displaced-persons camp to Jewish parents who had, miraculously enough, survived the Nazi death camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald, which brings me back to the jumping-off spot for this piece.

Unless you’ve been in Ukraine these last weeks, it’s something you undoubtedly already know about, given the attention it’s received in the United States: that, by a 10-0 vote, a school board in McMinn, Tennessee,  from its eighth-grade classroom curriculum Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel&�Բ�����;“,” about his parents’ Holocaust years in Auschwitz and beyond (and his own experience growing up with them afterward). When I first heard about that act, I felt, however briefly and indirectly, pulled off the shelves myself and banned. And , — yes, I want to make sure that this piece gets banned as well — I felt proud of it!

Just to back up for a moment: that Tennessee school board banned Spiegelman’s book on the grounds, at least nominally, that it contained naked cartoon  — Jewish victims in a concentration camp and Spiegelman’s mother, who committed suicide, in a bathtub — and profanity as well (like that word “damn”). In a world where, given a chance, so many of us would head for the modern equivalent of those adult library shelves — these days, of course, any kid with an iPhone or a computer can get a dose of almost any strange thing on this planet — that school board might as well have been a marketing firm working for&�Բ�����;“Maus.” After all, more than three decades after it first hit the bestseller lists, their action sent it soaring to number  at Amazon, while donated  began to pour into rural Tennessee.

As former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich recently pointed , if you truly want a teenager to read any book with gusto, the first thing you need to do is, of course, ban it. So, I suppose that, in its own upside-down way, the McMinn board did our world a strange kind of favor. In the long run, however, the growing rage for banning books from schools and  (or even, in the case of the  books, burning them, ) doesn’t offer a particularly hopeful vision of where this country’s headed right now.

“What’s So Funny?”

Still, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, I’m only going on like this because that incident in Tennessee and the media response to it brought back an ancient moment in my own life. So, think of the rest of this piece as a personal footnote to the McMinn story and to the growing wave of book bans in courses and school libraries across too much of the US.

And that’s not even to mention the plethora of&�Բ�����;“gag order”  passed by or still being considered in Republican-dominated state legislatures to prevent the teaching of certain subjects. It’s further evidence, if you need it, of an urge to wipe from consciousness so much that they find uncomfortable in our national past. It’s also undoubtedly part of a larger urge to take over �������������’s public-school system, or even  it, much as Donald Trump and crew would like to all-too-autocratically take over this country and transform it into an unrecognizable polity, a subject has covered for years.

However, my moment in the sun began at a time when The Donald was about to open the first of his Atlantic City casinos that would eventually turn him into a notorious . And it took place inside the world of publishing, which then seemed all too ready to essentially ban&�Բ�����;“Maus”&�Բ�����;from this planet. Back in the early 1980s, putting out a Holocaust “comic book” — though the term “graphic novel”&�Բ�����;, just about no one in publishing knew it — in which Jews were cartoon mice and the Nazis cats, seemed like a suicidal act for a book publisher.

And in that context, here’s my personal story about the cartoon mice that might never have made it to McMinn County, Tennessee. In the 1980s, I was an editor at Pantheon Books, a publishing house run by Andre Schiffrin who, in a fashion hardly commonplace then or later, gave his editors a chance to sign up books that might seem too unfashionable or politically dangerous.

One day, our wonderful art director, Louise Fili, came to my office. (She worked on another floor of the Random House building in New York City, the larger publishing house of which we were then a part.) In her hands, she had an oversized magazine called RAW that I had never seen before, put out by a friend of hers named Art Spiegelman. It was filled with experimental cartoon art. And in the seams of new issues, he had been stapling tiny chapters of a memoir he was beginning to create about the experiences of his father and mother in the Holocaust. Jews from Poland, they had ended up in Auschwitz and managed, unlike so many millions of Jews murdered in such death camps, to survive the experience. Louise also had with her a proposal from Spiegelman for what would become his bestselling graphic novel, “Maus.”

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I still remember her telling me that it had already been rejected by every publisher imaginable. In those days, that was, I suspect, something like a selling point for me. Anyway, I took the couple of teeny chapters and the proposal home — and all these years later, I still recall the moment when I decided I had to put Spiegelman’s book out, no matter what. I remember it because I thought of myself as a rather rational editor and the feeling that I simply had to do “Maus” was one of the two least rational decisions I ever made in publishing (the other  to do Chalmers Johnson’s book&�Բ�����;“Blowback,” also a future bestseller).

At that moment, I doubt I had ever read what came to be known as a graphic novel, but there was something in my background that, I suspect, left me particularly open to it. My mother, , had been a theatrical and later political caricaturist for New York’s leading newspapers and magazines (and, in the 1950s, The New Yorker as well). She was, in fact, known as “New York’s girl caricaturist” in the gossip columns of her time, since she was the only one in an otherwise largely male world of cartoonists.

Because she lived in that world, after a fashion I did, too. I can, for instance, remember , the creator of the now largely forgotten cartoon&�Բ�����;“Dondi,” sitting by my bedside when I was perhaps seven or eight drawing his character for me on sheets of tracing paper before I went to sleep. (Somewhere in the top of my closet, I suspect I still have those sketches of his.) So I think I was, in some unexpected way, the perfect editor for Spiegelman’s proposal. I was also a Jew and, though my grandfather had come to America in the 1890s from Lemberg (now Ukraine’s Lviv) and later brought significant parts of his family here, I remember my grandmother telling me of family members who had been swallowed up by the Holocaust.

Anyway, here’s the moment I still recall. I was lying down reading what Louise had given me when my wife, Nancy, walked past me. At that moment, I burst out laughing. “What’s so funny?” she asked. Her question took me completely aback. I paused for a genuinely painful moment and then said, haltingly and in an only faintly coherent fashion, something like: “Uh… it’s a proposed comic book about a guy whose parents lived through Auschwitz and later, in his adolescence, his mother committed suicide…”

I felt abashed and yet I had been laughing and that stopped me dead in my tracks. At that very moment, I realized, however irrationally, that whatever this strange, engrossing, disturbing comic book about a world from hell turned out to be, I just had to do it. From that moment on, whether it ever sold a copy or not wasn’t even an issue for me.

A Holocaust Comic Book?

And then, you might say, the problems began. I went to Andre, told him about the project and he reacted expectably. Who in the world, he wondered, would buy a Holocaust comic book? I certainly didn’t know, nor did I even care then. In some gut way, I simply knew that a world without this book would be a lesser place. It was that simple.

Thank heavens, as a boss, Andre deeply believed in his editors, just as we editors believed in each other. He also hated to say “no.” So, instead, a kind of siege ensued while the proposed book passed from hand to hand and others looked and reacted, but I remained determined and knew that, in the end, if I was that way, he would let me do it, as indeed he did.

I was considered something of a fierce editor in those days, and yet I doubt I touched a word of Spiegelman’s manuscript. What it is today, it is thanks purely to him, not me. I took him out to lunch to tell him about our publication decision and prepare the way for our future collaboration. While there, I assured him that I knew nothing about producing such a book — he, for instance, wanted the kind of flaps that were found on French but not American paperbacks — and would simply do what he wanted. The one thing I wanted him to know, though, was that he shouldn’t get his hopes up. Given the subject matter, it was unlikely to sell many copies. (A ? It never crossed my mind.)

Fortunately, as far as I could tell, he all too sagely paid no attention whatsoever to me on the subject. And as it happened, some months later (as best I remember), The New York Times Book Review devoted a full page to him and, in part, to the future&�Բ�����;“Maus.” It was like a miracle. We were stunned and, from that moment on, knew that we had something big on our hands.

And in that fashion, in another century, you could say that I unbanned&�Բ�����;“Maus,” preparing the way for McMinn County to ban it in our own Trumpist moment. I couldn’t be prouder today to have had a hand in producing the book that caricaturist David Levine would all too aptly compare to the work of Franz Kafka.

In its continuing eventful existence, as a unique record of the truly terrible things we humans are capable of doing to one another, it is indeed a masterpiece. It raises issues that all of us, parents and children, should have to grapple with on our endangered , a place where we have so much work ahead of us if, in some terrible fashion, we don’t want to ban ourselves.

*[This article was originally published by .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post My Life With Maus appeared first on 51�Թ�.

We invite readers to join us by submitting their suggestions of words and expressions that deserve exploring, with or without original commentary. To submit a citation from the news and/or provide your own short commentary, send us an email.

March 1: Knowledge

In a 2015 article for The Atlantic, Eric Liu attempts to answer the intriguing that appears in the title of the piece: “What Every American Should Know.” The question itself is troubling, if only because the United States is a nation that struggles with the very idea of knowledge. Partly because the First Amendment has elevated the right to freedom of expression to the status of a moral ideal, it has never managed to put knowledge at a level permitting it to compete with belief. 

Sanctions as �������������’s Universal Response to Evil (and Anything Else)

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In US culture, people are defined professionally by what they know and socially or existentially by what they believe. The frontier between knowledge and belief has always been porous. Whenever there’s a doubt, the advantage goes to belief, if only because everyone has a right to their beliefs. This is not just about religious belief, but any kind of belief, especially political and social beliefs that take the form of shared ideas such as American exceptionalism, trickle-down economics or racial behavioral traits (stereotypes).

The culture wars — that have now evolved into the wokeness wars — are contests between people who have acquired just enough “knowledge” (reinforced opinion) to establish what for them has become an unshakable belief. Once the belief is in place, dialogue becomes impossible. If you believe, for example, that wealth is the natural reward for hard work, you also tend to believe that people who aren’t wealthy haven’t worked hard enough. Just as logically, those who are wealthy automatically deserve our respect for their commitment to working hard (even if it is to defend their inherited wealth). If you believe that marriage as a cultural concept is simply a contract between any two beings that want to share their intimacy, you dismiss any argument that appeals to traditions related to the role of families in social construction.

The very idea that there is something that can seriously be called “what everyone should know” is itself a belief. The fragility of its premise resides in the assumed meaning of the last three words in the phrase. Who is “everyone”? Invoking the entire population implies a quest for conformity, if not uniformity. Some might see that as an example of authoritarian thinking. “Should” contains a moral concept, even though linguistically “should” is an ambiguous word that can, in its soft connotation, indicate an act or a state that is desirable for the good of the person. In that sense, it designates a friendly recommendation. But it can also convey the idea of a requirement and implicitly points to a moral failing, its authoritarian sense. It thus becomes the pretext for other people — society itself or its institutions — to enforce it. In extreme cases, which are not so rare, it becomes the foundation of every form of propaganda. It says: This is what we want you to think you know.

Then there is the most problematic term in the phrase: “know.” What is knowledge? In the age of fake news, when everyone, including lawmakers, believes they have a mission to condemn and punish disinformation, the temptation exists to reduce the idea of knowledge to its lowest common denominator: the citing of verifiable facts. But the value of knowledge — whether it is scientific, historical or experiential — never resides in the facts that compose knowledge, but rather in the potential of an individual’s or a group’s state of knowing that produces understanding. Human understanding is constructed like a neural network. It emerges — and is constantly transformed — not through the accumulation of facts, but through the complex linking and association of the diverse elements of understanding that enter into interaction. Understanding is an organic process that includes (and then combines, often in unpredictable ways) facts, perceptions, memory and another element of social experience that is even more difficult to situate: values.

Liu borrowed the idea of “what everyone should know” from a book that was first published in 1987: “Cultural Literacy” by E.D. Hirsch Jr., a professor of English. The book became a bestseller and provoked some serious controversy, not about knowledge, but — predictably enough — about belief or political opinion. Hirsch’s argument turned around the question of “why nations need a common cultural vocabulary and why public schools should teach it.” The book stirred the emotions of cultural thinkers and educators, not because they objected to the idea that a common cultural vocabulary would be desirable, but because Hirsch and two of his colleagues took upon themselves the task of establishing a list of “about 5,000 names, phrases, dates, and concepts that ‘every American needs to know.’”

In the article, Liu critiques the book and then proposes a crowd-sourcing campaign to establish a new list of the thousands of things Americans need to know, presumably to allow a much-divided nation to feel whole again. He formulates the challenge in these terms: “What ten things do you feel are both required knowledge and illuminating gateways to those unenlightened about American life?” He hopes hundreds or thousands of his readers, in their diversity (as readers of The Atlantic?) will respond by submitting their list of words. (When it comes to beliefs, it is important to point out that Americans have a strong belief in lists.) If readers respond, Liu will be in a position to reframe the 5,000 or more “things” (facts? ideas? memes? names? references?) Americans need to know.

Here are the 10 items Liu himself proposes: whiteness, the Federalist Papers, the almighty dollar, organized labor, reconstruction, nativism, the American dream, the Reagan revolution, DARPA, and a sucker born every minute.

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This may remind some people of Jorge Luis Borges’ list of of animals purportedly derived from a Chinese source, the Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge. If readers do respond to Liu’s invitation, it could turn out to be an interesting and revealing cultural and sociological experiment. It will tell us something about the nature of US culture, but much more about the psychology of readers of The Atlantic. It might even turn out to be a valuable resource for innovative teachers who could use the random list not as something to be studied and learned, but as the basis of an exercise in creative thinking. (That, in any case, is what I would recommend.) What it definitely will not be is a list of things everyone should know.

Why Monitoring Language Is Important

Language allows people to express thoughts, theories, ideas, experiences and opinions. But even while doing so, it also serves to obscure what is essential for understanding the complex nature of reality. When people use language to hide essential meaning, it is not only because they cynically seek to prevaricate or spread misinformation. It is because they strive to tell the part or the angle of the story that correlates with their needs and interests.

In the age of social media, many of our institutions and pundits proclaim their intent to root out “misinformation.” But often, in so doing, they are literally seeking to miss information.

Is there a solution? It will never be perfect, but critical thinking begins by being attentive to two things: the full context of any issue we are trying to understand and the operation of language itself. In our schools, we are taught to read and write, but, unless we bring rhetoric back into the standard curriculum, we are never taught how the power of language to both convey and distort the truth functions. There is a largely unconscious but observable historical reason for that negligence. Teaching establishments and cultural authorities fear the power of linguistic critique may be used against their authority.

Remember, 51�Թ�’s Language and the News seeks to sensitize our readers to the importance of digging deeper when assimilating the wisdom of our authorities, pundits and the media that transmit their knowledge and wisdom.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The Troubling Question of What Americans Think They Need to Know appeared first on 51�Թ�.

We invite readers to join us by submitting their suggestions of words and expressions that deserve exploring, with or without original commentary. To submit a citation from the news and/or provide your own short commentary, send us an email.

February 25: Appetite

Is it justified to think that nations have personalities, along with tastes, fears and desires? People do. But can we assume there is an equivalence between the demonstrable inclinations of a national government and the needs, ambitions and predilections of the people in a democracy? It appears ever more obvious that the political class — increasingly perceived as an isolated elite in modern societies — is less representative of and responsive to the people who elect its leaders and officials than to the economic and cultural elite those politicians tend to associate and identify with.

Beware of Dying Empires, an African Warns

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In a Los Angeles Times article on the Kremlin’s view of international sanctions, David Pierson and Sam Dean seek to how the West has been elaborating an effective strategy designed to counter ��ܲ�������’s militarily assault on Ukraine. “With no appetite for military confrontation,” they write, “the U.S. and its allies are relying on sweeping economic sanctions to persuade Russian President Vladimir Putin to pull out of Ukraine.”

Most people would find this sentence a reasonable description of the American reaction to events in Eastern Europe. The comforting message is that the West has no interest in war. The damage and suffering caused by this war can be blamed on one government and indeed one man, Vladimir Putin. 

But does it make any sense to talk of an “appetite” when speaking of the foreign policy of a nation? If the metaphor of a nation’s appetite has any factual foundation in the realm of foreign policy, the history of the United States over at least the past three-quarters of a century reveals an aptitude of American leaders for war in all its forms, which may or may not reflect an appetite or even a craving of its leaders.

Recent decades have revealed a proclivity of the American political class to toggle between physical warfare itself — which traditionally pitted trained and equipped armies against each other — and economic warfare directed against entire civilian populations. The latter has recently been deemed by political leaders to be more humane, even though it spreads suffering wider and disproportionately affects uncounted masses of people not remotely involved in wartime aggression or any of the practices cited to justify going to war.

In 1996, when Madeleine Albright, the US ambassador to the UN at the time, was asked about the death of 500,000 Iraqi children due to US sanctions, she said “the price is worth it.” This reflects the kind of political calculus that counts half a million lives not as a tragedy, but as a “price,” something to be evaluated in purely monetary terms. In moral terms, Albright was counting on a form of specious reasoning that says if we haven’t directly sought to kill those children, we bear no responsibility. Their sacrifice is thus of no concern.

A similar form of reasoning led to the policy privileged at least since Barack Obama’s presidency of seeing drone warfare as humane because it is “clean,” to the extent that it precludes any risk to the “good guys” (ourselves) doing the killing. If only bad people are being killed, war appears to be humane and possibly as fun as playing a video game.

So now The Los Angeles Times wants us to accept the idea that American leaders have “no appetite for military confrontation” in the current Ukraine drama. Apart from the irrelevance of the question of appetite, that idea is contestable for another reason. In this case, it isn’t a question of desire, aptitude, proclivity or even ingrained habit. The unwillingness to mount a military operation is due to the simple fact that the United States has no legal justification for engaging in physical war with Russia, which has not threatened US security or the security of any NATO nation. 

Invoking the idea of appetite is disingenuous. Had Ukraine achieved its goal of joining NATO, no one doubts that there would have been plenty of appetite, even a devouring hunger, at least on the part of the military-industrial complex in the US, who are nevertheless actively supplying weapons. Any war is good for business, even a war the US is not allowed to engage in directly. This one, which holds the promise of reinforcing NATO thanks to the magnified fear of Russia, already makes good economic sense for the defense industry at home. That stimulates a lot of appetites. And for the past five years, mainstream Democrats have plenty to munch on after doing everything in their power to enforce the belief that Vladimir Putin is Satan incarnate.

The complementary question The Times authors raise of “relying on sweeping economic sanctions” to wage war is more ambiguous. Sanctions can be, and in this case are very likely to be, a two-edged sword, even if it’s the only sword left in the armory due to the rules surrounding NATO defense. Disturbing the flow of global commerce entails a raft of unintended and often unanalyzed consequences for all parties concerned. 

What is clear, however, is that US administrations have in recent decades developed not so much an appetite as a craving for applying sanctions in every direction whenever anything displeases them in the behavior of any country in the world. Sanctions have become the essential pheromone of the world’s unique hegemon, intent on leaving its odor in every nook, cranny, crevice or just bare wall of the global economy.

Why Monitoring Language Is Important

Language allows people to express thoughts, theories, ideas, experiences and opinions. But even while doing so, it also serves to obscure what is essential for understanding the complex nature of reality. When people use language to hide essential meaning, it is not only because they cynically seek to prevaricate or spread misinformation. It is because they strive to tell the part or the angle of the story that correlates with their needs and interests.

Make Sense of the World

Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

I agree to receive emails and other content from 51�Թ�. I understand that I may repeal my consent at any time. You can review our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for further information .

In the age of social media, many of our institutions and pundits proclaim their intent to root out “misinformation.” But often, in so doing, they are literally seeking to miss information.

Is there a solution? It will never be perfect, but critical thinking begins by being attentive to two things: the full context of any issue we are trying to understand and the operation of language itself. In our schools, we are taught to read and write, but, unless we bring rhetoric back into the standard curriculum, we are never taught how the power of language to both convey and distort the truth functions. There is a largely unconscious but observable historical reason for that negligence. Teaching establishments and cultural authorities fear the power of linguistic critique may be used against their authority.

Remember, 51�Թ�’s Language and the News seeks to sensitize our readers to the importance of digging deeper when assimilating the wisdom of our authorities, pundits and the media that transmit their knowledge and wisdom.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Sanctions as �������������’s Universal Response to Evil (and Anything Else) appeared first on 51�Թ�.

An OSINT agency would create a uniform system to procure, develop, build and operate the systems utilized to exploit, analyze and disseminate intelligence. This solution would give OSINT the credence it deserves and create an effective method of acquiring and procuring equipment while improving the quality and quantity of OSINT products.

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OSINT uses open-source tools to collect information from publicly available sources and analyze it for decision-making. The sources it uses to create intelligence products range from academia to traditional  such as television and radio, social media and even . As a result, OSINT provides actionable intelligence and includes support and . Despite the presence of OSINT in the US security apparatus for the last 80 years, it is currently the only intelligence discipline that does not have a .

No Standard

There is no singular standard or platform for OSINT to be processed and no standard acquisition or purchasing process for OSINT equipment. This  is especially troubling, as the technological edge in the United States shifted from defense and security structures during the Cold War to the academic and business sectors today. Moreover, as new technical fields such as Big Data, artificial intelligence, robot process automation and blockchain technologies, among others, become utilized by the intelligence community, it makes sense that one agency is responsible for their acquisition and procurement.

The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) can serve as an example of what a new OSINT agency can accomplish. According to its , “The NRO is the U.S. Government agency in charge of designing, building, launching, and maintaining America’s intelligence satellites.” Created in 1961, the NRO developed US reconnaissance satellite programs but was never in charge of exploiting the images it produced. 

Instead, the NRO handles the maintenance and steering of the satellites so that they can meet all of the collection requests given to the NRO by other intelligence agencies. Since the NRO is the only agency handling  (GEOINT) collection, it can insist on high standards for every satellite’s design and procurement.

OSINT’s current challenges mirror those faced by GEOINT from the 1960s. Today, there is too much open source information to  much like there was too much satellite imagery to be processed effectively after the creation of the NRO. Decades later, the Journal of Defense Resources , “At this point, the challenges posed by OSINT consisted in the ability to convert into actionable intelligence the large volumes of data, which in most cases were unorganized, came from multiple sources, were available in different forms and collected through several categories of channels and to subsequently convert them into validated intelligence.” 

To resolve the gap, the Committee on Imagery Requirements and Exploitation () was created as a central point to manage “imagery collection, analysis, exploitation, production, and dissemination.” An independent OSINT agency could effectively collect, analyze, exploit, produce and disseminate open source information to the various intelligence agencies in a similar manner.

Technological Shifts

Technological shifts are another area in which OSINT today mirrors GEOINT from decades ago. Satellite technology  throughout the 1960s and 1970s, reflecting the rapid pace at which OSINT sources are changing due to the  of the internet and social media. By creating the NRO, the US government set the  of the satellite equipment it was procuring. 

A  by the Center for Strategic & International Studies states that “the U.S. I.C. cannot compete in the global intelligence arena and fulfill its vital missions without a reinvention of how it procures, adopts, and assimilates emerging technologies and delivers them to mission users — at speed and at scale.” The NRO’s model would be a perfect role for an OSINT agency to take the lead on procuring all OSINT technology rather than relying on different agencies.

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Using the NRO as a model for an OSINT agency will help the intelligence community in several ways. First, it will not take away from any agency’s existing mission set. That will avoid any large-scale reshuffling of the intelligence structure as a whole and prevent any mission overlap between existing agencies and the new one. 

Second, it will stop the stove-piping of OSINT within the intelligence community and permit a greater flow of finished intelligence products to senior officials and political leaders. Finally, an OSINT agency will guide and direct new research for other intelligence offices with similar missions. That office will allow the intelligence community to access the latest technological breakthroughs and decrease the costs of procuring and maintaining equipment.

With more people gaining access to the internet, smartphones and social media every day, open source intelligence will only become more relevant to shaping the future of the intelligence community. By creating a dedicated OSINT agency, the US intelligence community can maintain a strategic advantage over both adversarial state and non-state actors.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post It’s Time to Give OSINT Its Own Agency appeared first on 51�Թ�.

We invite readers to join us by submitting their suggestions of words and expressions that deserve exploring, with or without original commentary. To submit a citation from the news and/or provide your own short commentary, send us an email.

February 25: Dead Empires

Perhaps the most lucid on the Ukraine crisis came from the Kenyan ambassador to the United Nations, Martin Kimani. Addressing the UN Security Council earlier this week, Kenya joined the chorus of nations categorically condemning ��ܲ�������’s violation of Ukraine’s territorial integrity as a prelude to a military assault. But unlike other nations, which have been framing their judgment only in terms of international law, Kimani proposed a measured reflection drawing on a much wider historical perspective than that of disputed territories in Eastern Europe. The experience of African nation-states, “birthed” as he reminds us in the past century, helps to clarify the crisis in Eastern Europe as just one more symptom of a pathology spawned by the Western colonial tradition.

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The New York Times didn’t bother to mention Kimani’s speech. After all, who cares about Kenya or the historical insight of Africans? The Washington Post offered two minutes of excerpted from the ambassador’s six-minute speech. It was accompanied by a single sentence of commentary that gives no hint of the substance of his remarks: “Kenyan Ambassador to the U.N. Martin Kimani evoked Kenyan‘s colonial history while rebuking Russia’s move into eastern Ukraine at the U.N. Security Council on Feb. 21.”

Carlos Mureithi at Quartz Africa penned a fuller that doesn’t quite get Kimani’s real point. He begins by describing the speech as “a scathing condemnation of the Russia–Ukraine crisis, comparing it to colonialism in Africa.” But it was much more than that.

Kimani invited the Security Council to consider how the nation-states we have today were crafted by European colonial masters focused on perpetuating their own interests and indifferent to the needs and even identities of the peoples who lived in those lands and who woke up one morning to find themselves contained within newly drawn national borders. Kimani makes the surprising case for respecting those borders. However arbitrary in their design, they may serve to reign in the ethnic rivalries and tribal tendencies that exist in all regions of the globe, inevitably spawning local conflicts. But even while arguing in favor of the integrity of modern nation-states, he showed little respect for those who drew the borders and even less for the self-interested logic that guided them.

“We must complete our recovery from the embers of dead empires,” Kimani urges, “in a way that does not plunge us back into new forms of domination and oppression.” The populations on the receiving end of colonial logic know that even dead empires, chopped down to size, can be sources of contamination. They have left a lot of dead wood on the path of their colonial conquests. Not only does dead wood tend to rot, but, if the vestiges of the past are not cleared away, those who must continue to tread on the path frequently risk tripping over it.

Kimani evokes the specter of “nations that looked ever backward into history with a dangerous nostalgia.” He sees a bright side in the fact that an incoherently drawn map may have helped Africa avoid the worst effects of nostalgia. The real paradox, however, is that his description of dead empires applies to the two still breathing opponents who are facing off in the current struggle: Russia and the United States.

In an article on the Russia–Ukraine crisis published on 51�Թ� in December, Atul Singh and Glenn Carle highlighted Vladimir Putin’s obsession with a form of nostalgic traditionalism. They described it as “a reaction to and rejection of the cosmopolitan, international, modernizing forces of Western liberalism and capitalism.” Though Putin’s wealth is as legendary as it is secret and the Russian president appears to be as greedy as a Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk, he seems possessed by a pathological nostalgia for the enforced order of the Soviet Union and perhaps even for the Tsarist Russia the Bolsheviks overturned a century ago. At the same time, Donald Trump’s campaign to “Make America Great Again” reveals a similar pathology affecting the population of the US. It’s equally a part of President Joe Biden’s political culture. The “back” that appears in Biden’s slogan “America is back” and even in “Build Back Better” confirms that orientation.

In declining empires, the mindset of a former conqueror remains present even when conquest is no longer possible. Kimani alludes to this when he affirms that Kenya “strongly condemn[s] the trend in the last decades of powerful states, including members of this Security Council, breaching international law with little regard.” He accuses those states of betraying the ideals of the United Nations. “Multilateralism lies on its deathbed tonight,” Kimani intones. “It has been assaulted today as it has been by other powerful states in the recent past.” In other words, Putin is not an isolated case.

Kimani politely names no names. But the message is clear: There is blame to go all around and it is endemic. That is perhaps the saddest aspect of the current crisis. Sad because in wartime situations, the participating actors will always claim to act virtuously and build their propaganda around the idea of pursuing a noble cause. Putin has provocatively — and almost comically — dared to call his military operations a campaign of “demilitarization,” which most people would agree to be a virtuous act. We have already seen Biden the various severe measures intended to cripple ��ܲ�������’s economy “totally defensive.”

Empires assumed to be dead are often still able to breathe and, even with reduced liberty of movement, follow their worst habitual instincts. The two empires that squared off against each other during the Cold War to different degrees are shadows of what they once were. But their embers are still capable of producing a lot of destructive heat.

Why Monitoring Language Is Important

Language allows people to express thoughts, theories, ideas, experiences and opinions. But even while doing so, it also serves to obscure what is essential for understanding the complex nature of reality. When people use language to hide essential meaning, it is not only because they cynically seek to prevaricate or spread misinformation. It is because they strive to tell the part or the angle of the story that correlates with their needs and interests.

In the age of social media, many of our institutions and pundits proclaim their intent to root out “misinformation.” But often, in so doing, they are literally seeking to miss information.

Is there a solution? It will never be perfect, but critical thinking begins by being attentive to two things: the full context of any issue we are trying to understand and the operation of language itself. In our schools, we are taught to read and write, but, unless we bring rhetoric back into the standard curriculum, we are never taught how the power of language to both convey and distort the truth functions. There is a largely unconscious but observable historical reason for that negligence. Teaching establishments and cultural authorities fear the power of linguistic critique may be used against their authority.

Remember, 51�Թ�’s Language and the News seeks to sensitize our readers to the importance of digging deeper when assimilating the wisdom of our authorities, pundits and the media that transmit their knowledge and wisdom.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Beware of Dying Empires, an African Warns appeared first on 51�Թ�.

We invite readers to join us by submitting their suggestions of words and expressions that deserve exploring, with or without original commentary. To submit a citation from the news and/or provide your own short commentary, send us an email.

February 24: Unmistakable

Our regular examination of language in the news cycle has been bringing us back to the major international story thus far of 2022. The Russia–Ukraine crisis keeps generating examples of the deliberately twisted and sometimes directly inverted semantics, a trend that will probably continue and perhaps become amplified in the coming weeks and months.

As a general rule, when politicians claim to be “clear,” the observer can be certain that what they are clear about is at best half the story. Clarity imperceptibly fades into obscurity. It gets worse when the speaker claims that the message is “unmistakable.” Quoted by the New York Times, US President Joe Biden offered a wonderful example of such while explaining the measures he is taking to counter ��ܲ�������’s incursion into Ukraine.

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“Let me be clear: These are totally defensive moves on our part,” Biden proclaimed. “We have no intention of fighting Russia. We want to send an unmistakable message, though, that the United States, together with our allies, will defend every inch of NATO territory and abide by the commitments we made to NATO.”

This is the standard mantra in Washington. Economic sanctions are always intended to punish civilian populations in the hope that they will revolt against their government. They should never be thought of as aggressive or offensive, not even partially. Perish the thought. Biden makes that “clear” when he claims they are “totally” defensive, like a soldier in the field raising a shield before his face to deflect an enemy’s arrow. 

As for the “unmistakable message,” it may simply mean that the White House has made so many mistaken guesses in recent weeks about the date of a Russian invasion, it is now necessary to inform people that the latest message, for a change, is not just one more in an endless series of mistakes.

Biden also called Vladimir Putin’s move “the beginning of a Russian invasion of Ukraine.” For the moment, it is an aggressive incursion into contested Ukrainian territory, but it isn’t an invasion. It can only be deemed the beginning of an invasion if there actually is an invasion that follows from it. There is no question that President Putin’s initiative violates international law, but that alone doesn’t make it a military invasion.

Biden should know something about what invasions look like. He was, after all, the key Democrat, as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to champion US President George W. Bush’s tragically planned and utterly unjustified of Iraq in 2003, a well-documented episode Biden persistently denied during his election campaign.

Putin’s move may be a prelude to an invasion, but preludes only become real when the event they are preparing becomes real. The real reason Biden calls it “the beginning of an invasion” is to save face in an attempt to maintain a modicum of credibility regarding his administration’s warnings in recent weeks. He may well be hoping it turns into a Russian invasion just to prove his repeated predictions were somewhat correct.

Then there’s Biden’s promise to defend “every inch of NATO �ٱ�������ٴǰ���.” Everyone knows Ukraine is not NATO territory. So why offer such a justification? Perhaps Biden’s reason for saying this on record is that, when Republicans and the more bellicose Democrats begin castigating him for failing to support Ukraine militarily, he will be able to use Ukraine’s non-NATO status to defend his policy. At the same time, he is getting the best of both worlds. He may thus safely stand back and watch a bloody proxy war proceed, much as Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Biden have done for the past seven years with Yemen.

Finally, Biden made the important decision to call off the proposed summit meeting with Putin. At the same time, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken a planned meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov that should have taken place on February 24. “Now that we see the invasion is beginning,” Blinken explained, “and Russia has made clear its wholesale rejection of diplomacy, it does not make sense to go forward with that meeting at this time.” 

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That statement on Blinken’s part is literally a “wholesale rejection.” He even used the expression “pretense of diplomacy,” disparaging the very idea of trying to solve the problem rather than let it get worse. Lavrov had made no attempt to scotch the meeting. In its coverage, Reuters added that “Blinken said he was still committed to diplomacy.” Except, apparently, when he’s committed to preventing it from happening. In former times, diplomacy consisted of getting a conversation going whenever a serious problem arose. It certainly did not consist of explaining why there was no need for a dialogue.

In the light of this new style of diplomacy, historians may now find it an interesting counterfactual exercise to wonder what might have happened during the Cuban missile crisis had either John F. Kennedy or Nikita Khrushchev objected that diplomacy was a waste of time. 

Why Monitoring Language Is Important

Language allows people to express thoughts, theories, ideas, experiences and opinions. But even while doing so, it also serves to obscure what is essential for understanding the complex nature of reality. When people use language to hide essential meaning, it is not only because they cynically seek to prevaricate or spread misinformation. It is because they strive to tell the part or the angle of the story that correlates with their needs and interests.

In the age of social media, many of our institutions and pundits proclaim their intent to root out “misinformation.” But often, in so doing, they are literally seeking to miss information.

Is there a solution? It will never be perfect, but critical thinking begins by being attentive to two things: the full context of any issue we are trying to understand and the operation of language itself. In our schools, we are taught to read and write, but, unless we bring rhetoric back into the standard curriculum, we are never taught how the power of language to both convey and distort the truth functions. There is a largely unconscious but observable historical reason for that negligence. Teaching establishments and cultural authorities fear the power of linguistic critique may be used against their authority.

Remember, 51�Թ�’s Language and the News seeks to sensitize our readers to the importance of digging deeper when assimilating the wisdom of our authorities, pundits and the media that transmit their knowledge and wisdom.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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In a new for Foreign Affairs bearing the title, “Enemies of My Enemy: How Fear of China Is Forging a New World Order,” Beckley makes the case that having and sharing an easily identified enemy is the key to effective world government. The Cold War taught him that “the liberal order” has nothing to do with good intentions and being a force for good. Instead, it thrives on a strong dose of irrational fear that can be spread among friends.

Ukraine’s Tug of War and the Implications for Europe (Language and the News)

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As the Republican presidential candidate in 2000, George W. Bush produced these immortal : “When I was coming up, it was a dangerous world, and you knew exactly who they were. It was us vs. them, and it was clear who them was. Today, we are not so sure who the they are, but we know they’re there.” Probably unwittingly, Beckley echoes Bush’s wisdom. “Today, the liberal order is fraying for many reasons,” Beckley writes, “but the underlying cause is that the threat it was originally designed to defeat—Soviet communism—disappeared three decades ago.”&�Բ�����; Unlike the clueless Bush, Beckley now knows who the “they” is. It’s China.

History has moved on. China can now replace the Soviet Union as the star performer. Bush proposed Islamist terrorism as his coveted “them,” but that ultimately failed. The terrorists are still lurking in numerous shadows, but when President Biden withdrew the last American troops from Afghanistan in August 2021, he definitively delegitimized it as a threat worthy of spawning a new Cold War. And now, even while Russia is being touted as the best supporting actor, the stage is finally clear to push China into the limelight.

Today’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Shared enemy:

A powerful nation whose negative image can be modeled by another powerful nation in such a way that its name alone inspires fear, to the point that it may be generously offered to governments of weaker nations on the pretext of forming a profitable alliance

Contextual Note

For Beckley, US hegemony needs China’s help. Now that the Middle Kingdom has now achieved the status of a high-profile enemy to be generously shared with obedient allies, the liberal order may thrive again, as it did during the Cold War. For Beckley, it is China, not Donald Trump, that will “make America great again.”

Some may find Beckley’s historical logic slightly skewed. He explains that the modern liberal order was “designed to defeat … Soviet communism.” If it was “designed,” what does he have to say about the designer? Who indeed could that have been, and what were their real motives? Could it have been the Dulles brothers, whose combined clout in the Dwight Eisenhower years allowed them to dictate US foreign policy? More alarmingly, Beckley seems to be suggesting that without a pretext for paranoia, the liberal order would not or could not exist.  

Beckley is probably right but for reasons he might not appreciate. The idea of needing an identifiable enemy stands as a purely negative justification of the liberal order. But Beckley has already dismissed the idea that it is all about bettering the world. He seems to underestimate the need ordinary Americans have to think of their country as a shining city on a hill, endowed with the most powerful military in the history of the world whose mission is not to maraud, destroy, displace populations and kill, but to intervene as a “force for good.”

It’s not as if social harmony was the norm in the United States. The one thing that prevents the country from descending into a chaos of consumer individualism, or from becoming a nation populated by angry Hobbesian egos intolerant of the behavior of other egos, is the ideology that Beckley denigrates but which politicians continue to celebrate: the “enlightened call to make the world a better place.” Americans would fall into a state of despair if they no longer believed that their exceptional and indispensable nation exists as an ideal for humanity.

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But recent events have begun to shake their faith in what now appears to be a manifestly not very egalitarian democracy. Increasingly oligarchic, if not plutocratic, American society remains “liberal” (i.e., free) for those who control the growing mountains of cash that visibly circulate among the elite but rarely trickle down to meet any real human needs.

As the defender of an idealized liberal order, Beckley is right to assume that, with so many factors undermining the American consensus, the cultivation of a shared enemy may be the necessary key to maintaining that order. Fear has always had the unique virtue of diverting attention from serious and worsening problems. Between income inequality, climate change and an enduring pandemic punctuated by contestable government mandates, people’s attention definitely needs to be diverted.

Historical Note

Michael Beckley is certainly very knowledgeable about China. He admires Chinese civilization and many of its accomplishments. He also believes a war between the United States and China is far from inevitable. Moreover, he is a realist. He admits that, as many people across the globe affirm, the US represents the biggest threat to world peace. At the same time, he “that the United States has the most potential to be the biggest contributor to peace.” He lucidly notes that “when the United States puts its weight behind something the world gets remade, for better or for worse.” But, having said this, he eludes the implicit moral question. If both the better and worse are possible, the rest of the world should be the ones to decide every time its reality is “remade” whether that remaking was for the better or the worse.

As Pew show, most people outside the US appear to believe that American initiatives across the globe over at least the past half-century have been predominantly for the worse. Beckley himself cites Iraq and Vietnam as egregious examples. But, ever the optimist, he sees in what he calls the ability of the “system of US alliances” to create “zones of peace” the proof that the worse isn’t as bad as some might think.

Beckley recognizes that alliances are not created out of generosity and goodwill alone. In his influential book, “Super-Imperialism,” the economist Michael Hudson describes the workings of what is known as the “Washington Consensus,” a system of economic and military control that, in the decades after World War II, managed, somewhat perversely, to miraculously transfer the immense burden of its own debt, generated by its military adventurism, to the rest of the world. The “Treasury-bill Standard,” an innovation President Richard Nixon called into being to replace the gold standard in 1971, played a major role. With the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, Hudson notes that “foreign governments were obliged to invest their surplus dollars in U.S. Treasury securities.” It was part of a complex financial, diplomatic and military system that forced US allies to finance American debt.

Beckley’s  “zones of peace” are zones of dependence. Every country that participated in the system found itself forced to hold US Treasury bonds, including China. They thus had an interest in maintaining the stability of a system that dictated the flow of money across the globe. To a large extent, that is still the case. It explains why attempts to dethrone the dollar are systemically countered, sometimes violently through military action (as in Libya, to scotch Muammar Gaddafi’s for a pan-African currency).

None of that worries the eternal optimist Beckley, clearly a disciple of Voltaire’s Pangloss. He believes that — even while admitting the US has “wrecked the world in various ways” — its “potential” for peace trumps the reality of persistent war and that its “capability to make the world much more peaceful and prosperous” absolves it from the wreckage it has already produced. 

From a cultural point of view, Beckley is right. Americans always believe that what is “potential” trumps what is real and that “capability” effaces past examples of incapable behavior. That describes a central feature of American hyperreality.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post An Expert Explains Why We Need a New Cold War With China appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Why Now?

The raid comes after IS conducted an attack on al-Sinaa prison in the northeastern city of Hasakah in January in an attempt to break free its fighters. In the assault, several Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighters were . According to SDF officials, IS was  for six months. Nevertheless, the US-backed SDF recaptured the prison about a week later. 

Lieutenant Colonel Rick Francona suspects that the attack on the prison “was the catalyst that led to the decision to act on what was obviously already known location intelligence on … al-Qurayshi.” Francona, who served as the US military attaché in Syria from 1992 to 1995, notes that “Over the past few months, there has been an increase in ISIS activity — more widespread and bolder in nature. This also comes at a time when Iranian-backed militias have also stepped up attacks on US forces in Syria and Iraq.”

Both Qurayshi and his predecessor, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, were eliminated in Idlib province, in areas under the control of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). Previously, HTS was known as Jabhat al-Nusra, affiliated with al-Qaeda and initially  with IS. In 2013, however, it  from IS and has been with the group since 2014. In 2016, it also  relations with al-Qaeda and  itself as Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (JFS). The following year, JFS assumed its current iteration as it  with other groups. 

During much of the past decade, Idlib served as a  for extremists. In 2017, then-US envoy to the coalition fighting the Islamic State, Brett McGurk,  that “Idlib Province is the largest Al Qaeda safe haven since 9/11.” Following Baghdadi’s elimination in 2019, former US President Donald Trump suggested Baghdadi was in Idlib as part of a plan to rebuild IS. Indeed, it was  to see Qurayshi hiding in Idlib as well. 

According to David Lesch, professor of Middle East History at Trinity University in Texas and author of “Syria: A Modern History,” “it seems strange that al-Baghdadi and al-Qurayshi were killed in [a] province largely controlled by its rival HTS and overseen by Turkey, but on the other hand it is the only area not under the control of the Syrian government and its allies or the US-supported SDF, all of whom are opposed to ISIS.”

“Idlib is now home to thousands of IDPs, therefore it was easier for the two to blend in, live secretively, and not be identified as outsiders since most everyone in certain areas of the province are outsiders,” Lesch explains. “Yet they were still found because despite all this they lived in an area still teaming with enemies who were obviously directly or indirectly assets to US intelligence.”

The recent US operation in Idlib, which was  planned over several months, has been the largest of its kind in the country since the 2019 raid that eliminated Baghdadi. Although Qurayshi was  than Baghdadi, the fact that he was targeted in the US raid confirms his .

It is worth noting that Qurayshi was named as the leader of IS in 2019, following the death of Baghdadi. While IS called on all Muslims to pledge allegiance to Qurayshi as the new “caliph,” it did not provide much information about his . The use of the name “Qurayshi” seemed to be an attempt to  to the Prophet Muhammad. This is a tactic that was  vis-à-vis Baghdadi with the aim of  his leadership role. Qurayshi’s real name is Amir Muhammad Said Abdal-Rahman al-Mawla but he is also known as Hajji Abdullah and Abdullah Qaradash.  

As the US continues to create an impression that it is minimizing its presence in the region, especially following its withdrawal from Afghanistan last year, the raid seems to have been used to demonstrate  to reassure Washington’s partners. It also  as a needed win for Biden at a time when the Ukraine crisis remains unsolved. 

However, while Qurayshi’s elimination is a positive development, it may simply be a “,” as Sean Carberry suggests in The Hill. While the operation against Qurayshi may create internal chaos within IS, ultimately, the terror group is likely to name a new leader and move on, which is what took place following Baghdadi’s assassination. Although IS was militarily defeated, the group has not been eliminated and remains a threat. In fact, there have been increased indications, such as the attack on al-Sinaa prison, suggesting that the group is in a state of resurgence. The militants might also seek to use the recent US raid to encourage revenge attacks. 

US Policy in Syria

The Biden administration’s policy vis-à-vis Syria seems to indicate that the official approach will be “,” as Abdulrahman al-Masri and Reem Salahi suggest. It should not be surprising to learn that Syria does not constitute a top diplomatic priority for President Biden. Yet while the US does not want to remain engaged in endless regional wars, it seems to  that a political settlement in war-torn Syria would only empower President Bashar al-Assad, whom Washington would never back. 

Moreover, the US and the Kurds are partners, and Washington would not want to portray an image that it has abandoned those who have shouldered the fight against the Islamic State. This was the overall perception when Trump announced the withdrawal of US forces from Syria in 2019, and Biden seems keen to remedy that controversial decision. 

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It is worth noting that during President Barack Obama’s tenure, Vice President Biden was one of the  when it came to what the US could achieve in Syria. Nevertheless, it  be taken as a given that as president, Biden may be in favor of removing all US forces from the country. For instance, he criticized Trump’s decision to withdraw forces from Syria,  it granted IS “a new lease on life.” In the same year, Biden also  he supports keeping some forces in eastern Syria for the foreseeable future. 

Middle East expert and former US State Department analyst, Gregory Aftandilian doesn’t see the US leaving Syria anytime soon. Aftandilian, who is also a non-resident fellow at Arab Center Washington DC, thinks “It is doubtful [Biden] will do more than the anti-ISIS campaign and humanitarian aid. In light of the attempted prison break in northeastern Syria he may put pressure on some countries to take back ISIS ��������DzԱ����.”

For the US to play a role in stabilizing Syria, there needs to be a clear strategy. Unfortunately, at the moment, that strategy is largely . While the elimination of Qurayshi is a positive step, much more work needs to be done to stabilize the country.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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A 2021 poll from the  found that 95% of Americans believed that the spread of misinformation was concerning, with over 70% blaming, among others, social media companies. Though Americans overwhelmingly agree that misinformation must be addressed, why is there little public consensus on the appropriate solution? 

Social Media and the Cold War Around Free Speech

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To address this, we ran a national web survey with 1,050 respondents via Qualtrics, using gender, age and regional quota sampling. Our research suggests several challenges to combating misinformation. 

First, there are often misconceptions about what social media companies can do. As private entities, they have the legal right to  on their platform, whereas the First Amendment applies only to government restriction of speech. When asked to evaluate the statement “social media companies have a right to remove posts on their platform,” a clear majority of 58.7% agreed. Yet a partisan divide emerges, where 74.3% of Democrats agreed with the statement compared to only 43.5% of Republicans.  

Ignorance of the scope of the First Amendment may partially explain these findings, as well as respondents believing that, even if companies have the legal right, they should not engage in removal. Yet a history of tech companies initially couching policies as consistent with free speech principles only to later backtrack adds to the confusion. For example, Twitter once &�Բ�����;“a devotion to a fundamental free speech standard”&�Բ�����;of content neutrality, but by 2017 had shifted to a policy where not only posts could be removed but even accounts without . 

Second, while most acknowledge that social media companies should do something, there is little agreement on what that something should be. Overall, 70% of respondents, including a majority of both Democrats (84%) and Republicans (57.6%), agreed with the statement that “social media companies should take steps to restrict false information online, even if it limits freedom of information.”

We then asked respondents if they would support five different means to combat misinformation. Here, none of the five proposed means mentioned in the survey found majority support, with the most popular option — providing factual information directly under posts labeled as misinformation — supported only by 46.6% of respondents. This was also the only option that a majority of Democrats supported (56.4%).

Moreover, over a fifth of respondents (20.6%) did not support any of the options. Even focusing just on respondents that stated that social media companies should take steps failed to find broad support for most options. 

So what might increase public buy-in to these efforts? Transparent policies are necessary so that responses do not appear ad hoc or inconsistent. While many users may not pay attention to terms of services, consistent policies may serve to counter perceptions that efforts selectively enforce or only target certain ideological viewpoints.

Recent research finds that while almost half of Americans have seen posts labeled as potentially being misinformation on social media, they are wary of  because they are unsure how information is identified as inaccurate. Greater explanation of the fact-checking process, including using multiple third-party services, may also help address this concern.

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Social media companies, rather than relying solely on moderating content, may also wish to include subtle efforts that encourage users to evaluate posting behavior. Twitter and Facebook have already nodded in this direction with prompts to suggest users should  articles before sharing them. 

Various crowdsourcing efforts may also serve to signal the accuracy of posts or the frequency with which they are being fact-checked. These efforts attempt to address the underlying hesitancy to combat misinformation while providing an alternative to content moderation that users may not see as transparent. While Americans overwhelmingly agree that misinformation is a problem, designing an effective solution requires a multi-faceted approach. 

*[Funding for this survey was provided by the Institute for Humane Studies.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Canada’s Anti-Mask Movement Demands Liberty

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Indeed, as the Canadian truck protests spread across the globe, the PPC is of particular relevance given that Bernier has been quick to visit the protesters and become a vocal defender of their actions, calling upon Canadians to defend their . Nevertheless, the PPC is also of interest for another reason, namely its detrimental impact in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections upon Canada’s more moderate/center-right Conservative Party. 

Consequently, two questions stand out from the growing significance of the PPC that have implications for fringe parties in general. First, could these parties ever evolve into mainstream political parties? Second, could they, as the Canada Guide ,&�Բ�����;“‘spoil’ races in very close elections by pulling votes away from other mainstream parties”?

Context: Fringe Parties in Canada

Although there are currently five “major” political parties represented in the current Canadian House of Commons — the Liberal Party, the Conservative Party, the Bloc Québécois, the New Democratic Party and the Green Party of Canada — at the time of the 2021 election there were some 17 eligible federal political parties . These 17 are often referred to as “fringe” parties because they have not secured electoral success, their party membership is small, they often only promote a single issue, and their supporters tend to be few and far between. 

They can also be widely divergent. Some, such as the , are of a leftist political persuasion and have been in existence for a century. Others, such as the , have only been in existence for a short while and are of an extreme-right predisposition.

Nevertheless, labels such as “fringe” are open to debate. Indeed, the Green Party, for example, is theoretically the nation’s fifth major party. Yet at its height, it has only ever secured three seats in the Canadian Parliament in 2019 with 6.5% of the popular . Its parliamentary representation dropped to two seats in the 2021 election, with 2.3% of the national vote. In this context, it is that there is “no universally accepted definition of what constitutes a ‘fringe party.’”&�Բ�����; 

In Canadian politics, it seems that success at the ballot box appears to be the nebulous cut-off point for differentiating between fringe and mainstream parties. The example of the Green Party is again illustrative of this, as it went from being a fringe party to being a major one. Yet the 2.3% that the Greens received in 2021 was less than the nearly 5% the PPC won that same year. The fact that a so-called major party received a smaller share of the vote than an ostensible fringe party testifies to the problematic nature of the term “fringe.” Furthermore, it implies that the PPC could morph into a mainstream political force. 

Radical Impact

However, it is the second question relating to pulling votes from mainstream parties that presents the crux of this cautionary tale. Following the creation of the Reform Party of Canada in 1987, some had that it had split the anti-Liberal vote on the moderate conservative right. The same outcome is true in Britain, where there “a widespread willingness among current Conservative Party members in Britain to countenance voting for the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP).”

In order to evaluate the importance of the PPC to the Canadian landscape, it is vital to look at the party’s electoral impact. In the 2019 federal election, the PPC achieved a mere 1.6% of the popular vote. However, analysis by CBC news  that “even with its dismal level of support — the PPC cost the Conservatives seven seats in the House of Commons by splitting the vote.”

Moreover, irrespective of the PPC’s election results, it is impressive that, in just over a year,  “managed to create a new federal political party, found candidates to run in all of Canada’s 338 federal electoral districts and participated in all the televised pre-election leaders’ debates.” If Bernier achieved all of this within 12 months, what can he achieve within 12 years? 

Although the PPC failed to win any seats in the 2021 federal election, the party’s share of the popular vote increased from 1.6% to 4.94%. The detrimental electoral significance of the PPC was recognized by the Conservative leader Erin O’Toole in the run-up to the . Direct personal communication with a source within the PPC further underlined the threat that the party’s “presence on the ballot may have cost the Conservatives about 21 ridings in this year’s election.”&�Բ�����;

Given the failure of O’Toole to win in 2021, an additional significant outcome of the emergence of the PPC is that the Conservative Party could face pressure to move further to the right in order to win a greater share of the popular vote. Indeed, O’Toole’s leadership position immediately came under threat by  elements within his own party on the grounds that he was too moderate. By February 2022, he was from the party’s leadership.

Although the PPC remains a so-called fringe party, this is not to deny its impact. It was responsible for sometimes splitting the center-right vote and contributing to the Liberal Party’s success, as well as now possibly helping to force the Conservative Party into a more radically right-wing . Indeed, some contenders for O’Toole’s now-vacant seat as party leader have also started to speak out in support of the . However, it is also worth noting that the PPC’s electoral impact might not necessarily be the beginning of a new trend. 

The COVID-19 pandemic presented Bernier with the opportunity to appeal to an outlier proportion of the population which, without the PPC, might not have had a sympathetic ear in Parliament — anti-vaxxers and anyone vehemently opposed to health measures instituted to contain the pandemic. Although the majority of Canada’s population champion vaccines, mask-wearing and similar public health measures, the fact that the PPC was the only political party opposed to vaccine passports allowed it to generate additional support from this cohort that for 8%-10% of the population. 

This support is further demonstrated by the fact that the PPC did best in those provinces with the lowest vaccination rates, namely Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. The PPC’s anti-lockdown rhetoric and strong stance against Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s vaccine mandates were, therefore, partly responsible for its rise in the polls, as suggested by some academic experts who that “Historically, populism … tends to appear in times of crises.” 

Ideological Impacts

The PPC has not only had a tangible impact on Canadian politics, but also an ideological one. Canada has traditionally been as “immune to the outbreak of right-wing populism observed in other established western democracies.” That is, until now, as Republican figures such as Ted Cruz and Donald Trump praise the actions of the Ottawa protesters and denounce Trudeau as a&�Բ�����;“.”&�Բ�����;

Bernier’s campaign manifestos of 2019 and 2021 also look similar to populist and nationalist counterparts elsewhere, namely UKIP and the under Donald Trump in the US. The , for instance, states its opposition to climate change policies (“Withdraw from the Paris Accord and abandon unrealistic greenhouse gas emission reduction targets”); commitment to end to Canada’s participation in global institutions (“Withdraw from all UN commitments”); and xenophobic resentment in its anti-immigration plans (“Substantially lower the total number of immigrants and refugees Canada accept every year”).

A noteworthy addition to the PPC’s 2021 manifesto that also has echoes of other nationalist/populist party positions is its consideration of race. In the lead-up to the 2021 federal election, the mainstream parties focused on the economic and political rights of indigenous peoples following the uncovering of unmarked graves of hundreds of indigenous children on the properties of former residential schools. The PPC, by contrast, went in the opposite direction and instead looked to repeal the Multiculturalism Act of 1988, which aims to not only preserve but enhance multiculturalism in Canada.

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This, in addition to the PPC’s call to reduce the number of immigrants, contradicts a widely-held that “nativism has become impossible, even unthinkable, for a competitive political party in Canada today.” It is for this that “Bernier’s embrace of radical right-wing populism has heightened concerns about the importation of Trumpism and other far right ideologies into mainstream Canadian politics.”

The emergence of the PPC has pointed a light at a potentially darker underbelly within Canadian politics, one that may demonstrate violent sentiments. The of gravel at Trudeau during the 2021 election campaign by the former PPC president of the London Riding Association is a case in point. 

The potential political impact of the PPC is undeniable. At a theoretical level, it points to a need to consider the importance of fringe parties in discussions of Canadian politics in general. The PPC also stands as a bellwether, representing a potential future trend. Furthermore, the party is significant as it has had a detrimental impact on the electoral success of the Conservative Party and possibly its future direction of travel.

Most concerning, however, is its ideological impact. As David Moscrop in Global News, “The People’s Party of Canada has become a rallying point for extremists who existed before it did, but who now have an organisational anchor and home.”&�Բ�����;

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Further, after decades of pushing some stylized version of democracy on the rest of the world, often at the point of a gun or spurred on by lucrative defense contracts and arms sales, it has finally occurred to some in America that we are far short of a common understanding of the fundamental elements of democratic governance. Often, those on whom we loudly thrust the largesse of democracy are little more than ruling oligarchs in a rigged system. If that sounds familiar, it should.

Is the Decline of Democracy Inevitable?

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Democracy is generally defined as “government by the people, especially rule of the majority.” In fuller terms, it has been defined as “a government in which the supreme power is in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections.”

Finding an institutional fit for this definition of democracy is at best elusive. Unfortunately, almost all of the loose talk of a precious “democracy” in peril is utterly devoid of context and content.

Democracy in America

In the United States, rule of the majority is a delusional joke starkly playing itself out in the procedural charade that is the Senate. The entire Republican Party is committed to drive free elections and truly representational government even further into the fictional realm that it has historically occupied. Meanwhile, the has legalized and special interest influence peddling that openly overwhelms and corrupts any pretense at truly representational government and makes a mockery of the legislative process.

Even today, as America engages in a frenzied response to Russian provocation on the Ukrainian border, we loudly and uncritically assert that there is an actual Ukrainian “democracy” that must be defended. This is only �������������’s latest chapter in the arrogant advocacy for “democracy” around the world at the point of a gun. What remains uncritically defined at home is doomed to failure when uncritically asserted to justify intervention, arms sales and hostile action elsewhere.

On American soil, democracy has an equally abused cousin in public discourse: “freedom.” It is hard to overestimate the impact of whatever “freedom” means individually and collectively on the perception of “democracy.” One need look no further than the role that perceptions of “freedom” play in the carnage resulting from gun violence in a country in which foundational rule of law should result in a constructive institutional response to that carnage. Or, reflect for a moment on all of the Christian prayers floating about in the public forum in a country whose institutions are supposedly committed to “freedom” of religion that should include “freedom” from religion.

The national response to gun violence is a wonderful gateway issue to examine the health of �������������’s “democratic” institutions. What happens when your idea of your “freedom” steps all over my idea of my “freedom”? Imagine an America in which everybody agreed that gun carnage was an unacceptable intrusion on a collective freedom. Imagine an America in which that precious handgun gave way to that precious life. Imagine an America in which its “democratic” institutions responded to the 84% of American voters who universal gun purchase background checks by actually enacting legislation to meet that overwhelming majority goal.

It has been noted above that “democracy” at the point of a gun takes the shine off of the pristine concept. Democratic institutions that cannot respond to majority sentiment with something more than the universal thoughts and prayers that litter our public discourse in response to gun carnage are not, in fact, democratic institutions. Believing otherwise is yet another round of self-delusion on �������������’s magical mystery tour. In America, Americans die. Elsewhere, the devastation is no less traumatic for those caught in the grip of �������������’s addiction to violence without meaningful consent of the governed.

Money and Politics

Yet another confounding feature of �������������’s “democracy” is the incredible amounts of cash needed to even begin to compete for political office. So, on a stage already tilted by voter suppression measures, fundraising becomes the essential component of gaining political power for both the anxious candidate and those seeking to peddle their own influence.

In today’s politically and socially divided America, creating political theater is the surest way to attract the cash needed for electoral success. Think about that for a moment. Since the press and social media networks cannot seem to get enough of the lying, cheating, stealing and fraud at the heart of one outrageous public claim after another, infamy can be turned into instant cash. Tell the public that school libraries are awash in critical race theory, send out a message telling the faithful that you are their champion in the fight for the souls of their children and, most importantly, to be their champion you will need their financial support. The money rolls in and the beat goes on.

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This is not how any constitutional democracy was designed to work. Democratic institutions cannot survive in a sea of public ignorance and indifference. Truly democratic institutions cannot be bought and sold like a used car. So, come one, come all, this US senator is for sale. Listen to his chatter, believe his message, fill his coffers and watch him perform. Get 41 of these elected clunkers in the 100-member Senate at the same time, and gun control is an illusion, environmental protection is eroded and social justice is denied. All filibustered to legislative death by an institutional minority.

It is the hypocrisy of it all that should be apparent to anyone actually paying attention. So, the next time that you see the stars and stripes flying or hear the glorious strains of “God Bless America,” stop for just a moment and think about the meaning of democracy, how precious it could be and how utterly absent it is from �������������’s shores. The nation is not now, nor has it ever been, a democracy. And loudly declaring it as such should ring hollow every time, because the evidence overwhelmingly suggests otherwise.

Then, stop for just another moment and think about how truly democratic institutions might be able to provide the essential platform for shaping a more perfect union. The success of the struggle to make that happen should be the most significant measure of a great nation.

*[This article was co-published on the author’s , Hard Left Turn.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Things have radically changed since the turn of the century. It may be related to a growing sentiment of fatalism that defines our Zeitgeist. Outside of the billionaire class, people feel powerless, a feeling that is already wreaking havoc in the world of politics. After banks that were “too big to fail,” we have inherited problems that appear too big to solve. Climate change and COVID-19 have contributed powerfully to the trend, but a series of chaotic elections in several of our most stable democracies, accompanied by newer wars or prospects of war called upon to replace the old ones all serve to comfort the trend.

Language and the News

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In the United States, this feeling of helplessness has had the unfortunate effect of turning people’s attention away from the issues and the facts that matter to focus on the language individuals use to describe them. Words that inspire aggressive emotional reactions now dominate the news cycle, eclipsing the people, events and ideas that should be at the core of the news cycle.

One reason we have launched 51�Թ�’s new feature, Language and the News, and are continuing with a weekly dictionary of what was formerly The Daily Devil’s Dictionary is that, increasingly, the meaning of the words people use has been obscured and replaced by the emotions different groups of combative people attach to words.

What explains this drift into a state of permanent combat over words? Addressing the issues — any issues — apparently demands too much effort, too much wrestling with nuance and perspective. It is much easier to reduce complex political and moral problems to a single word and load that word with an emotional charge that disperses even the possibility of nuance. This was already the case when political correctness emerged decades ago. But the binary logic that underlies such oppositional thinking has now taken root in the culture and goes well beyond the simple identification of words to use or not use in polite society.

The Problem of Celebrities Who Say Things Out Loud

Last week, US podcast host Joe Rogan and actress Whoopi Goldberg submitted to concerted public ostracism (now graced with the trendy word “canceled”) over the words and thoughts they happened to express in contexts that used to be perceived as informal, exploratory conversations. Neither was attempting to make a formal pronouncement about the state of the world. They were guilty of thinking out loud, sharing thoughts that emerged spontaneously.

It wasn’t James Joyce (who was at one time canceled by the courts), but it was still a stream of consciousness. Human beings have been interacting in that way ever since the dawn of language, at least 50,000 years. The exchange of random and sometimes focused thoughts about the world has been an essential part of building and regulating every human institution we know, from family life to nation-states.

During these centuries of exchanges, many of the thoughts uttered were poorly or only partially reasoned. Dialogue with others helped them to evolve and become the constructs of culture. Some were mistaken and bad. Others permitted moments of self-enlightenment. Only popes have ever had the privilege of making ex cathedra pronouncement deemed infallible, at least to the faithful. The rest of us have the messy obligation of debating among ourselves what we want to understand as the truth.

Dialogue never establishes the truth. It permits us to approach it. That doesn’t preclude the fact that multiple groups have acquired the habit of thinking themselves endowed with papal certainty allowing them to close the debate before it even begins. Everyone has noticed the severe loss of trust in the institutions once counted upon to guide the mass of humanity: governments, churches and the media.

That general loss of trust means that many groups with like-minded tastes, interests or factors of identity have been tempted to impose on the rest of society the levels of certainty they feel they have attained. Paradoxically, internationally established churches, once dominant across vast swaths of the globe, have come to adopt an attitude of humble dialogue just as governments, the media and various interest groups have become ensconced in promulgating the certainty of their truth while displaying an intolerance of dialogue.

Dialogue permits us to refine our perceptions, insights and intuitions and put them into some kind of perspective. That perspective is always likely to shift as new insights (good) and social pressures (not always so good) emerge. The sane attitude consists of accepting that no linguistically formulated belief — even the idea that the sun rises in the east — should be deemed to be a statement of absolute truth. (After all, despite everyone’s daily experience, the sun doesn’t rise — the Earth turns.) Perspective implies that, however stable any of our ideas may appear to us at a particular time, we can never be absolutely sure they are right and even less sure that the words we have chosen to frame such truths sum up their meaning.

Truth and the US State Department

A quick glance at the media over the past week demonstrates the complexity of the problem. Theoretically, a democratic society will always encourage dialogue, since voting itself, though highly imperfect, is presented as a means for the people to express their intentions concerning real world issues. In a democracy, a plurality of perspectives is not only desirable, but inevitable and should be viewed as an asset. But those who are convinced of their truth and have the power to impose their truth see it as a liability.

On February 3, State Department spokesman Ned Price spent nearly four minutes trying to affirm, in response to a journalist’s persistent objections, that his announced warning about a Russian false flag operation wasn’t, as the journalist suspected, itself a false flag. The journalist, Matt Lee of the Associated Press, asked for the slightest of the substance of the operation before accepting to report that there actually was something to report on. What he got were words.

Price, a former CIA officer, believed that the term was self-explanatory. He clearly expected members of the press to be grateful for receiving “information that is present in the US government.” Price sees Lee’s doubt as a case of a reporter seeking “solace in information that the Russians are putting out.” In other words, either a traitor or a useful idiot. Maggie Haberman of The New York Times reacted by, “ This is really something as an answer. Questioning the US government does not = supporting what Russia is saying.”

Haberman is right, though she might want to instruct some of her fellow journalists at The Times, who have acquired the habit of unquestioningly echoing anything the State Department, the Defense Department or the intelligence community shares with them. Especially when for more than five years, The Times’ specialized in promoting alarmism about ��ܲ�������’s agency in the “Havana syndrome” saga. Because the CIA suspected, all the cases were the result of “hostile acts.” Acts, by the way, for which the only physically identified perpetrator was a species of Cuban crickets.

The back and forth concerning ��ܲ�������’s false flag operation, like the Havana syndrome itself, illustrates a deeper trend that has seriously eroded the quality of basic communication in the United States. It takes the form of an increasingly binary, even Manichean type of reasoning. For Price, it’s the certainty of the existence of evil acts by Russians before needing any proof and even before those acts take place. But it also appears in the war of obstinate aggression waged by those who seek to silence anyone who suggests that the government’s vaccine mandates and other COVID-19 restrictions may not be justified.

This binary syndrome now permeates all levels of US culture, and not only the political sphere. The constraining force of the law is one thing, which people can accept. The refusal of dialogue is literally anti-human, especially in a democracy. But it also takes the form of moral rage when someone expresses an idea calling into question some aspect of authority or, worse, pronounces a word whose sound alone provokes a violent reaction. There is a residual vigilante culture that still infects US individualism. The willingness, or rather the need people feel, to apply summary justice helps to explain the horrendous homicide rate in the United States. Vigilantism has gradually contaminated the world of politics, entertainment and even education, where parents and school boards go to battle over words and ideas.

George W. Bush’s contribution

US culture has always privileged binary oppositions and shied away from nuance because nuance is seen as an obstacle to efficiency in a world where “time is money.” But a major shift began to take place at the outset of the 21^st century that seriously amplified the phenomenon. The 1990s were a decade in which Americans believed their liberal values had triumphed globally following the collapse of the Soviet Union. For many people, it turned out to be boring. The spice of having an enemy was missing.

In 2001, the Manichean thinking that dominated the Cold War period was thus programmed for a remake. Although the American people tend to prefer both comfort and variety (at least tolerance of variety in their lifestyles), politicians find it useful to identify with an abstract mission consisting of defending the incontestable good against the threat posed by inveterate evil. The updated Cold War was by George W. Bush in September 2001 when the US president famously proclaimed, “Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make: either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”

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The cultural attitude underlying this statement is now applied to multiple contexts, not just military ones. I like to call it the standard American binary exclusionist worldview. It starts from the conviction that one belongs to a camp and that camp represents either what is right or a group that has been unjustly wronged. Other camps may exist. Some may even be well-intentioned. But they are all guilty of entertaining false beliefs, like Price’s characterization of journalists who he imagines promote Russian talking points. That has long been standard fare in politics, but the same pattern applies in conflicts concerning what are called “culture issues,” from abortion to gender issues, religion or teaching critical race theory.

In the political realm, the exclusionist worldview describes the dark side of what many people like to celebrate as “American exceptionalism,” the famous “shining city on a hill.” The idea it promotes supposes that others — those who don’t agree, accept and obey the stated rules and principles — are allied with evil, either because they haven’t yet understood the force of truth, justice and democracy and the American way, or because they have committed to undermining it. That is why Bush claimed they had “a decision to make.” Ned Price seems to be saying something similar to Matt Lee.

A General Cultural Phenomenon

But the exclusionist mentality is not just political. It now plays out in less straightforward ways across the entire culture. Nuance is suspected of being a form of either cowardice or hypocrisy. Whatever the question, debate will be cut short by one side or the other because they have taken the position that, if you are not for what I say, you are against it. This is dangerous, especially in a democracy. It implies an assumption of moral authority that is increasingly perceived by others to be unfounded, whether it is expressed by government officials or random interest groups.

The example of Price’s false flag and Lee’s request for substance — at least something to debate — reveals how risky the exclusionist mentality can be. Anyone familiar with the way intelligence has worked over the past century knows that false flags are a very real item in any intelligence network’s toolbox. The CIA’s Operation Northwoods spelled out clearly what the agency intended to carry out. “We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba,” a Pentagon official , adding that “casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation.”

There is strong evidence that the 2001 anthrax attacks in the US, designed to incriminate Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and justify a war in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, was an attempted false flag operation that failed miserably when it was quickly discovered that the strain of anthrax could only have been produced in America. Lacking this proof, which also would have had the merit of linking Hussein to the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration had to struggle for another 18 months to build (i.e., fabricate) the evidence of Iraq’s (non-existent) weapons of mass destruction.

This enabled the operation “shock and awe” that brought down Hussein’s regime in 2003. It took the FBI nearly seven years to complete the coverup of the anthrax attacks designed to be attributed to Iraq. They did so by pushing the scientist Bruce Ivins to commit suicide and bury any evidence that may have elucidated a false flag operation that, by the way, killed five Americans.

But false flags have become a kind of sick joke. In a 2018 on false flags, Vox invokes the conventional take that false flag reports tend to be the elements of the tawdry conspiracy theories that have made it possible for people like Alex Jones to earn a living.  “So ‘false flag’ attacks have happened,” Vox admits, “but not often. In the world of conspiracy theorists, though, ‘false flags’ are seemingly everywhere.” If this is true, Lee would have been on the right track if he were to suspect the intelligence community and the State Department of fabricating a conspiracy theory.

Although democracy is theoretically open to a diversity of competing viewpoints, the trend in the political realm has always pointed toward a binary contrast rather than the development of multiple perspectives. The founding fathers of the republic against parties, which they called factions. But it didn’t take long to realize that the growing cultural diversity of the young nation, already divided into states that were theoretically autonomous, risked creating a hopelessly fragmented political system. The nation needed to construct some standard ideological poles to attract and crystallize the population’s political energies. In the course of the 19^th century, a two-party system emerged, following the pattern of the Whigs and Tories in England, something the founders initially hoped to avoid.

It took some time for the two political parties to settle into a stable binary system with the labels: Democrat and Republican. Their names reflected the two pillars of the nation’s founding ideology. Everyone accepted the idea that the United States was a democratic republic, if only because it wasn’t a monarchy. It was democratic because people could vote on who would represent them.

It took nearly 200 years to realize that because the two fundamental ideas that constituted an ideology had become monopolized by two parties, there was no room for a third, fourth or fifth party to challenge them. The two parties owned the playing field. At some point in the late 20^th century, the parties became competitors only in name. They morphed into an ideological duopoly that had little to do with the idea of being either a democracy or a republic. As James Carville insisted in his advice to candidate Bill Clinton in the 1992 presidential campaign, “It’s the economy, stupid.” He was right. As it had evolved, the political system represented the economy and no longer the people.

Nevertheless, the culture created by a two-century-long rivalry contributed mightily to the triumph of the binary exclusionist worldview. In the 20^th century, the standard distinction between Democrats and Republicans turned around the belief that the former believed in an active, interventionist government stimulating collective behavior on behalf of the people, and the latter in a minimalist barebones government committed to reinforcing private enterprise and protecting individualism.

Where, as a duopoly, the two parties ended up agreeing is that interventionism was good when directed elsewhere, in the form of a military presence across the globe intended to demonstrate aggressive potential. Not because either party believed in the domination of foreign lands, but because they realized that the defense industry was the one thing that Republicans could accept as a legitimate highly constraining collective, national enterprise and that the Democrats, following Carville’s dictum, realized underpinned a thriving economy in which ordinary people could find employment.

The Crimes of Joe Rogan and Whoopi Goldberg

Politics, therefore, set in place a more general phenomenon: the binary exclusionist worldview that would soon spread to the rest of the culture. Exclusionism is a common way of thinking about what people consider to be issues that matter. It has fueled the deep animosity between opposing sides around the so-called cultural issues that, in reality, have nothing to do with culture but increasingly dominate the news cycle.

Until the launch of the culture wars around issues such as abortion, gay marriage, identity and gender, many Americans had felt comfortable as members of two distinct camps. As Democrats and Republicans, they functioned like two rival teams in sport. Presidential elections were always Super Bowls of a sort at which the people would come for the spectacle. The purpose of the politicians that composed the parties was not to govern, but to win elections. But, for most of the 20^th century, the acrimony they felt and generated focused on issues of public policy, which once implemented the people would accept, albeit grudgingly if the other party was victorious. After the storm, the calm. In contrast, cultural issues generate bitterness, resentment and ultimately enmity. After the storm, the tempest.

The force of the raging cultural winds became apparent last week in two entirely different celebrity incidents, concerning Joe Rogan and Whoopi Goldberg. Both were treated to the new style of excommunication that the various churches of correct thinking and exclusionary practices now mete out on a regular basis. In an oddly symmetrical twist, the incriminating words were what is now referred to as “the N-word” spoken by a white person and the word “race” spoken by a black person. Later in the week, a debate arose about yet another word with racial implications — apartheid — when Amnesty International formally the state of Israel of practicing it against Palestinians.

The N-word has become the locus classicus of isolating an item of language that — while muddled historically and linguistically — is so definitively framed that, even while trying to come to grips with it informally as an admittedly strange and fascinating phenomenon in US culture, any white person who utters the reprehensible term will be considered as having delivered a direct insult to a real person or an entire population. Years , Joe Rogan made a very real mistake that he now publicly regrets. While examining the intricate rules surrounding the word and its interdiction, he allowed himself the freedom to actually pronounce the word.

In his apology, Rogan claimed that he hasn’t said the word in years, which in itself is an interesting historical point. He recognizes that the social space for even talking about the word has become exaggeratedly restricted. Branding Rogan as a racist just on that basis may represent a legitimate suspicion about the man’s character, worth examining, but it is simply an erroneous procedure. Using random examples from nearly 10 years ago may raise some questions about the man’s culture, but it makes no valid case for proving Rogan is or even was at the time a racist.

The Whoopi Goldberg case is less straightforward because it wasn’t about a word but an idea. She the Holocaust “was not about race.” Proposing the hypothesis that Nazi persecution of Jews may be a case of something other than simple racism is the kind of thought any legitimate historian might entertain and seek to examine. It raises some serious questions not only about what motivated the Nazis, but about what our civilization means by the words “race” and “racism.” There is considerable ambiguity to deal with in such a discussion, but any statement seeking to clarify the nature of what is recognized as evil behavior should be seen as potentially constructive.

Once some kind of perspective can be established about the terms and formulations that legitimately apply to the historical case, it could be possible to conclude, as many think, that either Goldberg’s particular formulation is legitimate, inaccurate or inappropriate. Clearly, Goldberg’s critics found her formulation inappropriate, but, objectively speaking, they were in no position to prove it inaccurate without engaging in the meaning of “race.”

The problem is complex because history is complex, both the history of the time and the historical moment today. One of the factors of complexity appeared in another controversy created by Amnesty International’s publication of a study that accuses Israel of being an apartheid state, which considered in international law is to be a crime against humanity.

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Interestingly, The Times of Israel gives a fair and very complete to Amnesty International’s spokespersons, whereas American media largely ignored the report. When they did cover it, US media focused on the dismissive Israeli reaction. PBS News Hour quoted Ned Price, who in another with Matt Lee stated that the department rejects “the view that Israel‘s actions constitute apartheid.”

Once again, the debate is over a word, the difference in this case being that the word is specifically defined in international law. The debate predictably sparked, among some commentators, another word, whose definition has often been stretched in extreme directions in the interest of provoking strong emotions: anti-Semitism. Goldberg’s incriminating sentence itself was branded by some as anti-Semitism.

At the end of the day, the words used in any language can be understood in a variety of ways. Within a culture that has adopted the worldview of binary exclusionism, the recourse to constructive dialogue is rapidly disappearing. Instead, we are all saddled with the task of trying to memorize the lists of words one can and cannot say and the ideas it will be dangerous to express.

What this means is that addressing and solving real problems is likely to become more and more difficult. It also means that the media will become increasingly less trustworthy than it already is today. For one person, a “false flag” corresponds to a fact, and for another, it can only be the component of a conspiracy theory. The N-word is a sound white people must never utter, even if reading Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn aloud. And the word “race” — a concept that has no biological reality — now may apply to any group of people who have been oppressed by another group and who choose to be thought of as a race.

The topics these words refer to are all serious. For differing reasons, they are all uncomfortable to talk about. But so are issues spawned by the COVID-19 pandemic, related to health and prevention, especially when death and oppressive administrative constraints happen to be involved. The real problem is that as soon as the dialogue begins to stumble over a specific word or ill-defined concept or the feeling of injustice, reasoning is no longer possible. Obedient acceptance of what becomes imposed itself as the “norm” is the only possible survival strategy, especially for anyone visible to the public. But that kind of obedience may not be the best way to practice democracy.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Language Paranoia and the Binary Exclusion Syndrome appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Since a US judge has now agreed to bring Virginia Giuffre’s civil lawsuit to trial, it means that for the first time, a prince of England, a member of the royal family, will be officially put on the hot seat in an American courtroom. The rebelling colonists couldn’t get King George III to answer for his crimes, but they now appear to have a son of Elizabeth II in their grasp.

Boris Johnson’s Convenient Bravado

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For weeks, the media have been running updates specifically on speculation about the legal strategy Andrew’s attorneys are likely to adopt. Though for the moment it remains mere speculation, it does have the power for attentive observers to provoke a few comic effects. The latest has the lawyers seeking to turn the tables on Giuffre by accusing her of sex trafficking. They aren’t claiming Andrew is innocent, but they want her to appear guilty. Business Insider considers that ploy “risky” because the tactic consists of getting a witness — another of Epstein’s victims — to make that claim about Giuffre. It risks backfiring because the witness could actually contradict Andrew’s adamant claim that he never had sex with Giuffre.

Actually, the legal team appears already to have prepared a strategy for that eventuality. On January 26, NPR that Andrew’s lawyers addressed a message to the court saying, “that if any sexual activity did occur between the prince and Virginia Giuffre, it was consensual.” This may sound odd because the accused’s lawyers should know if he did or didn’t, but the law is never about knowledge, only the impression a good attorney can make on a judge or a jury.

NPR continues its description of the lawyers’ position: “The court filing made clear that Andrew wasn’t admitting sexual contact with Giuffre. But it said if the case wasn’t dismissed, the defense wants a trial in which it would argue that her abuse claims ‘are barred by the doctrine of consent.’”

Today’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Consent:

Agreement on something perceived as illicit between two or more people, including, in some extreme cases, a member of the British royal family and a 17-year-old American girl turned into a sex slave by the royal’s best American friend

Contextual Note

Since lawyers live in a world of hypotheticals, evoking the idea that “if” a judge and jury were to decide sexual contact between the two was real, it should enable the legal team to make a claim they expect the court to understand as: She was asking for it. In civil cases, all lawyers know that attack is the best defense.

Thus, Andrew’s legal team is now being paid, not to prove the prince’s innocence, but to establish the guilt of the victim. They are seeking to create the impression that the Virginia Roberts of two decades ago was already a wolf in sheep’s clothing when she consented to consorting with a prince. And, of course, continues to be one as she seeks to profit from the civil trial today.

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Most commentators doubt that Andrew has a case. This has permitted the media to revel in the humiliation of a man who has always been perceived as and deserving of no one’s attention apart from being the queen’s “favourite son.” That is why this has been nothing but bad news for Buckingham Palace. 

And it looks to get worse. So stay tuned.

Historical Note

Legal tell us that what the prince’s lawyers refer to as the “doctrine of consent” is officially described as the “doctrine of informed consent.” More pertinently, the consent referred to focuses entirely on cases in the realm of medical treatment. It is all about a patient’s agreement to a medical procedure that may be risky. It defines the physician’s duty to inform the patient of all the risks associated with a recommended procedure. If consent is obtained, the physician will be clear of responsibility should any of the risks be realized.

It may seem odd that Prince Andrew’s lawyers are appealing to a doctrine established specifically for medical practice. But while many will not think of lawyers themselves as appealing, whenever they lose a case, you can be sure that they will be appealing it. But that isn’t the only kind of appealing they do. When preparing a case, they will appeal to any random principle or odd fact that appears to serve their purpose. This should surprise no one because, just like politicians who focus on winning elections rather than governing, lawyers focus on winning cases for their clients rather than on justice.

The sad truth, however, for those who believe that justice is a fine thing to have as a feature of an advanced civilization is that the lawyers are not only right to follow that logic; the best of their lot are also very skillful in making it work. Which is why what we call the justice system will always be more “just” for those who can afford to pay for the most skillful lawyers.

The final irony of this story lies in the fact that, in their diligence, the lawyers have borrowed the idea behind the doctrine of consent, not from the world of sexual predation, but from the realm of therapy and medical practice. They need to be careful at this point. Even Andrew and his lawyers should know that if you insert a space in the word “therapist,” it points to the image Prince Andrew has in some people’s minds: “the rapist.” The mountains of testimony from Jeffrey Epstein’s countless victims reveal that, though they were undoubtedly consenting in some sense to the masterful manipulation of the deceased billionaire and friend to the famous and wealthy (as well as possibly a spy), all of them have been to some degree traumatized for life by the experience.

As Bill Gates when questioned about the problem of his own (he claims ill-informed) consent to whatever he was up to with Epstein, for him there could be no serious regrets. The problem no longer exists because, well, “he’s dead” (referring to his pal, Jeffrey). Prince Andrew is still alive, though this whole business has deprived him of all his royal privileges, making him something of a dead branch on the royal family tree. Virginia Giuffre is also still alive, though undoubtedly disturbed by her experience as a tool in the hands of Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and Prince Andrew.

So, unless a nuclear war intervenes in the coming weeks between the US and Russia making everything else redundant (including the collapse of Meta’s stock), the interesting news will turn around the legal fate in the US of two prominent Brits. The first is a socialite (and possibly also a spy) as well as a high-profile heiress, Ghislaine Maxwell. She is expected to have a retrial sometime in the future. The second is none other than the queen’s favorite son.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Of course, there’s the possibility of a major war breaking out between Russia and Ukraine. But would Russian President Vladimir Putin really take such an enormous risk? Moreover, periodic conflicts in that part of the world — in Ukraine since 2014, in Georgia in 2008, in Transnistria between 1990 and 1992 — have not escalated into Europe-wide wars. Even the horrific bloodletting of Yugoslavia in the 1990s was largely contained within the borders of that benighted former country, and many of the Yugoslav successor states have joined both the European Union and NATO.

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So, you might argue, the European security order is in fine shape, and it’s only Putin who’s the problem. The United States and Europe will show their resolve in the face of the Russian troops that have massed at the border with Ukraine, Putin will accept some face-saving diplomatic compromise and the status quo will be restored.

Even if that were to happen and war is averted this time, Europe is still in a fundamental state of insecurity. The Ukraine conflict is a symptom of this much deeper problem.

The current European security order is an overlay of three different institutional arrangements. NATO is the surprisingly healthy dinosaur of the Cold War era with 30 members, a  of $3 billion and collective military spending of over a trillion dollars.

Russia has pulled together a post-Cold War military alliance of former Soviet states, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), that is anemic by comparison with a membership that includes only Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Instead of expanding, the CSTO is shrinking, having lost Azerbaijan, Georgia and Uzbekistan over the course of its existence.

And then there’s the Helsinki framework that holds East and West together in the tenuous OSCE. Neither Russia nor its military alliance was able to prevent the march of NATO eastward to include former Soviet republics. Neither NATO nor the OSCE was able to stop Russia from seizing Crimea, supporting a separatist movement in eastern Ukraine or orchestrating “frozen conflicts” in Georgia and Moldova.

Presently, there are no arms control negotiations between East and West. China became Russia’s leading trade partner about a ago, and the United States and European countries have only fallen further  since. Human rights and civil liberties are under threat in both the former Soviet Union and parts of the European Union.

So, now do you understand what I mean by the breakdown of the European security order? The Cold War is back, and it threatens once again to go hot, if not tomorrow then perhaps sometime soon.

So, yes, Ukrainian sovereignty must be defended in the face of potential Russian aggression. But the problem is much bigger. If we don’t address this bigger problem, then we’ll never really safeguard Ukraine, deal with Russia’s underlying concerns of encirclement or tackle the worrying militarization of Europe. What we need is Helsinki 2.0.

The Origins of Helsinki 1.0

In the summer of 1985, I was in Helsinki after a stint in Moscow studying Russian. I was walking down one of the streets in the Finnish capital when I came across a number of protesters holding signs.

“Betrayal!” said one of them. “Appeasement!” said another. Other signs depicted a Russian bear pressing its claws into the then-Baltic republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

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I’d happened on this band of mostly elderly protesters outside a building where dignitaries from around the world had gathered to celebrate the 10^th anniversary of the Helsinki Accords. At the time, I had only a vague understanding of the agreement, knowing only that it was a foundational text for East-West détente, an attempt to bridge the Iron Curtain.

As I found out that day, not everyone was enthusiastic about the Helsinki Accords. The pact, signed in 1975 by the United States, Canada, the Soviet Union and all European countries except Albania, finally confirmed the post-war borders of Europe and the Soviet Union, which meant acknowledging that the Baltic states were not independent but instead under the Kremlin’s control. To legitimize its control over the Baltics in particular, a concession it had been trying to win for years, the Soviet Union was even willing to enter into an agreement mandating that it “respect human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief, for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion.”

At the time, many human rights advocates were skeptical that the Soviet Union or its Eastern European satellites would do anything of the sort. After 1975, “Helsinki” groups popped up throughout the region — the Moscow Helsinki Group, Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia — and promptly discovered that the Communist governments had no intention of honoring their Helsinki commitments, at least as they pertained to human rights.

Most analysts back then saw the recognition of borders as cold realpolitik and the human rights language as impossibly idealistic. History has proved otherwise. The borders of the Soviet Union had an expiration date of 15 years. And, ultimately, it would be human rights — rather than war or economic sanctions — that spelled the end of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. Change came in the late 1980s from ordinary people who exercised the freedom of thought enshrined in the Helsinki Accords to protest in the streets of Vilnius, Warsaw, Prague and Tirana. The decisions made in 1975 ensured that the transitions of 1989-91 would be largely peaceful.

After the end of the Cold War, the Helsinki Accords became institutionalized in the OSCE, and briefly, that promised to be the future of European security. After all, the collapse of the Soviet Union meant that NATO no longer had a reason for existence.

But institutions do not die easily. NATO devised new missions for itself, becoming involved in out-of-area operations in the Middle East, intervening in the Yugoslav wars and beginning in 1999 expanding eastward. The first Eastern European countries to join were the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, which technically brought the alliance to Russia’s very doorstep (since Poland borders the Russian territory of Kaliningrad). NATO expansion was precisely the wrong answer to the question of European security — my first contribution to Foreign Policy in Focus back in 1996 was a critique of — but logic took a backseat to appetite.

The OSCE, meanwhile, labored in the shadows. With its emphasis on non-military conflict resolution, it was ideally suited to the necessities of post-Cold War Europe. But it was an unwieldy organization, and the United States preferred the hegemonic power it wielded through NATO.

This brings us to the current impasse. The OSCE has been at the forefront of negotiating an end to the war in eastern Ukraine and maintains a special monitoring mission to assess the  there. But NATO is mobilizing for war with Russia over Ukraine, while Moscow and Washington remain as far apart today as they were during the Cold War.

The Helsinki Accords were the way to bridge the unbridgeable in 1975. What would Helsinki 2.0 look like today?

Toward Helsinki 2.0

The Helsinki Accords were built around a difficult compromise involving a trade-off on borders and human rights. A new Helsinki agreement needs a similar compromise. That compromise must be around the most important existential security threat facing Europe and indeed the world: climate change.

As I argue in a new  in Newsweek, “In exchange for the West acknowledging Russian security concerns around its borders, Moscow could agree to engage with its OSCE partners on a new program to reduce carbon emissions and transition from fossil fuels. Helsinki 2.0 must be about cooperation, not just managing disagreements.”

The Russian position on climate change is “evolving,” as politicians like to say. After years of ignoring the climate crisis — or simply seeing it as a good opportunity to access resources in the melting Arctic — the Putin administration change its  last year, pledging to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.

There’s obviously room for improvement in Russia’s climate policy — as there is in the United States and Europe. But that’s where Helsinki 2.0 can make a major contribution. The members of a newly energized OSCE can engage in technical cooperation on decarbonization, monitor country commitments to cut emissions, and apply new and stringent targets on a sector that has largely gotten a pass: the military. It can even push for the most effective decarbonization strategy around: demilitarization.

What does Russia get out of the bargain? A version of what it got in 1975: reassurances around borders.

Right now, everyone is focused on the question of NATO expansion as either an unnecessary irritant or a necessary provocation in American-Russian relations. That puts too much emphasis on NATO’s importance. In the long term, it’s necessary to reduce the centrality of NATO in European security calculations and to do so without bulking up all the militaries of European states and the EU. By all means, NATO should be going slow on admitting new members. More important, however, are negotiations as part of Helsinki 2.0 that reduce military exercises on both sides of Russia’s border, address both nuclear and conventional buildups, and accelerate efforts to resolve the “frozen conflicts” in Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova. Neither NATO nor the CSTO is suited to these tasks.

As in 1975, not everyone will be satisfied with Helsinki 2.0. But that’s what makes a good agreement: a balanced mix of mutual satisfaction and dissatisfaction. More importantly, like its predecessor, Helsinki 2.0 offers civil society an opportunity to engage — through human rights groups, arms control advocates, and scientific and educational organizations. This might be the hardest pill for the Kremlin to swallow, given its hostile  toward civil society. But the prospect of securing its borders and marginalizing NATO might prove simply too irresistible for Vladimir Putin.

The current European security order is broken. It can be fixed by war. Or it can be fixed by a new institutional commitment by all sides to negotiations within an updated framework. That’s the stark choice when the status quo cannot hold.

*[This article was originally published by .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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There is a multitude of factors that contributed to the increase in alcohol consumption during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, anxiety and depression rose dramatically among the general population, and alcohol consumption often increases for those who use it as a way to cope. “Stress and boredom likely were main drivers for a substantial increase in alcohol intake,” explains Dr. Jagpreet Chhatwal, associate director of the Massachusetts General Hospital’s Institute for Technology Assessment and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School.

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Measures that were designed to help businesses stay afloat during the pandemic may have also affected drinking habits. According to Chhatwal, “cocktails-to-go laws that allowed customers to pick up mixed cocktails at local bars and direct-to-consumer laws that allowed liquor stores to deliver alcohol directly to homes” point to a potential link between access and consumption. 

Regardless of the reason, these numbers are going to translate to significant morbidity and mortality rates for Americans in the future. According to new a by researchers at Harvard’s Massachusetts General Hospital published in Hepatology, due to the pandemic uptick in alcohol use, there will be close to 20,000 cases of liver failure, 1,000 cases of liver cancer and 8,000 deaths over the next two decades. 

Addressing this pressing issue will be complicated in a country that has long glamorized the use of alcohol among its population. From Super Bowl advertisements to film and music references, alcohol has long been associated with celebration, letting loose and having a good time. Consuming alcohol, even excessively, is normalized to the point that it is integrated into daily life on a regular basis: after-work happy hours, relaxing at home, birthdays, weddings, sporting events, etc. Alcohol has become so fused into the fabric of American society that in 2019, the industry was already over $250 billion.

Putting a positive spin on alcohol is dangerous because it creates the mirage that there are no negative consequences on a person’s physical or mental health, which is both untrue and potentially harmful. “Not everyone is aware of the safe drinking limits or realizes when to stop,” says Chhatwal. Excessive drinking can cause a myriad of health problems including high blood pressure, heart attacks, stroke, increase the risk for cancer, liver and GI problems, a weakened immune system, depression and anxiety as well as socialization issues and job loss.

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In a country where more than 14 million American adults 18 years and older had a , according to statistics from National Institute for Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, the challenge will be raising awareness, confronting a booming business model and reevaluating new laws that made alcohol more accessible during the pandemic.

In Chhatwal’s opinion, “One of the foremost steps is to create awareness about the risk of an increase in alcohol consumption, especially high-risk drinking among women and minority populations who are more vulnerable.” He also stressed the importance of enlisting primary care providers to do more extensive screening for alcohol consumption patterns. There is also an obligation to take a hard look at new laws: “We need to evaluate the effect of cocktail-to-go and direct-to-consumer laws — if such laws contribute to increased drinking then there is a need to make policy-level changes.”

*[The Wider Lens provides commentary on trending stories in the world of health, covering a wide variety of topics in medicine and health care.]

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February 22: Practice

For the past month or so, the Biden administration has been demonstrating a unique innovation in diplomacy. It consists of explaining not its own intentions — which might be interesting for the media and the world to understand — but the will of the party it has decided to brand not as a rival or even an adversary, but as the archenemy embodied in the person of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

No one doubts that ��ܲ�������’s deployment of troops on the Ukrainian border that began at the end of 2021 was a powerful and unusual provocation. We now know that it was a prelude to Putin’s decree on February 21 recognizing the separatist regions of eastern Ukraine as independent. On the basis of that decree, Russian troops are now entering those regions, not as an invading force, but under the pretext of assisting those areas in the exercise of their autonomy.

Ideally, at any point following the initial buildup of Russian troops along the border, if Washington’s intention truly was to avoid war, the appropriate response would have been to engage in a serious and discreet diplomatic dialogue. Far less ideally, working the media in a way that exacerbates tensions and could produce the perception of a bungled or inappropriate response could only exacerbate the risk of war. For the past few months, brinkmanship has become the rule on both sides. The Biden administration’s choice of predicting an invasion went beyond mere brinkmanship and at times resembled the theater of the absurd.

Serious diplomacy should take place as quietly as possible between governments that understand the stakes. This is especially true when there is a sense of standing on the brink. The Biden administration chose instead to use the popular media to stir up a belief that conflict is inevitable. The intention behind that tactic can be interpreted in three ways.

The first could be that its experts believe the opposing forces are not on the brink, that it’s a tempest in a teapot. If that is true, we should find it reassuring. The second is that Washington doesn’t really care because Ukraine is so far away. Some would call that the Tucker Carlson thesis, which may be true even if the US does insist on engaging. The third is that because President Joe Biden has promised not to send US troops, he counts on the perception that only Russia could be blamed for the killing and destruction to follow. In this scenario, the aim would be to draw Russia into Ukraine and let the fireworks play out.

Pundits in US media have been endlessly speculating about what the evil genius Putin’s ultimate intentions are. He has now begun his gambit, but how he intends to develop the game remains a mystery. A new round of speculation can begin. It might be useful now for the pundits to begin making the same effort to guess the intentions of the White House by considering the three hypotheses stated above or a possible fourth or fifth one. 

Careful and discreet diplomacy rather than largely unbelievable declarations directed toward the media about an imminent invasion would have been the logical and even traditional approach to avoiding what is now almost certain to become, at the very least, a form of civil war within Ukraine. Despite Washington’s claim, the crisis has never been about a simple question of national sovereignty. It has unfolded within a historical context whose complexity seasoned non-political experts on Russia and diplomacy — such as John Mearsheimer and the recently departed Stephen Cohen — had little trouble understanding. It is unthinkable that the advisers in the Biden administration might remain ignorant of the insight those and other analysts have provided. Consequently, the tactic the White House has employed — that consisted of predicting not just what Russia will do but when it will do it, and getting it repeatedly wrong — can only be seen as the opposite of serious diplomacy.

The best indication that things are truly out of kilter appears when someone as ideologically inflexible and bellicose as John Bolton plays the role of a realist. According to The Hill, the former national security adviser to Donald Trump worries about the of the current administration because he thinks it “is so consumed by the reaction to its catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan, that it’s overhyping the imminence of the potential attack.” When you talk for weeks on end of an imminent attack, the message it sends is that you are aching for an imminent attack. 

It is hardly surprising that the Russians were not pleased by the Biden administration’s tactic, traditionally used by end-of-the-world cultists who keep predicting and then having to re-predict the apocalypse. Perhaps it was just a psychological game invented by the Biden administration as nothing more than a ploy to throw Putin off balance. The Russians ended up complaining not about the substance of the predictions, but about the very real risk such an alarmist campaign may provoke among the Ukrainian population. “So all this has – may have – detrimental consequences,” commented Dmitry Peskov, quoted by Reuters. “The daily exercise of announcing a date for Russia to invade Ukraine is a very bad practice.”

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Peskov is right to call what the White House sees as a powerful tactic an “exercise” and a “practice.” For weeks on end, everyone in the State Department and the security apparatus has been focused on exercising and practicing, rather than addressing real issues or preparing for a tense future. As Peskov warns, such a practice will inevitably ratchet up tension on the ground, a tension over which the leaders themselves on both sides are likely to have no control. 

Washington’s practice has already unnerved the Ukrainians themselves, the very people Biden claims to support. That includes Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who has repeatedly asked the Biden administration to tone down the rhetoric. With so much heat generated, at any point, a minor spark could set off a blaze. Putin’s decree is not quite the spark, but by encouraging the pro-Russian population of Ukraine to believe in its independence, the conditions for producing that spark have been immensely magnified.

NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly interviewed the US-educated Russian journalist Vladimir Pozner, who “that this whole drumming up of the possibility or the reality of Russia attacking Ukraine is something that the West is interested in and that Russia doesn’t want because Russia can win nothing by invading Ukraine.” Kelly has a hard time believing that. She also fails to react when Pozner correctly observes that “most people are … victimized by their media.” It is common knowledge that Americans are put off by their omnipresent media, but they are still victimized by it, especially when it uncritically plays the government’s game to create expectations of the worse rather than hope for the better.

In the same interview, Pozner cites the precedent of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, drawing a parallel between President John F. Kennedy, who focused on discreet negotiations with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. He successfully avoided war by making a concession that was kept from the media concerning US missiles in Turkey. Kelly, who is certainly too young to remember, mistakenly objects that “that did not bring these countries to the brink of war.” Pozner corrects her, affirming that it “did bring the countries to the brink of war.” It required enormous skill and tact on Kennedy’s part to prevent the military’s insistence on an invasion of Cuba that could easily have escalated into nuclear war.

Kelly’s response to Pozner’s clarification is revealing: “To the brink of war but not to war.” Apparently, she fails to understand the distinction between the brink and what’s beyond the brink. Many people are now wondering whether the current team in the White House understands that distinction. The sanctions the US has promised and will certainly deliver are likely to have little effect if the aim is to prevent a civil war — that has already been smoldering for eight years — and ensure Ukraine’s territorial integrity. The situation was already complex and has now become more complex. 

Washington still has the possibility of pushing diplomacy forward, though the latest events have weakened its position. The real question that needs to be asked is this: Does anyone inside the Beltway know how to conduct true crisis diplomacy. The theatrical performance that consists of standing on the stage like a failed magician trying to identify the card a member of the audience has drawn from the deck and constantly being foiled would seem to indicate that the art of US crisis diplomacy died with Kennedy on November 22, 1963. That may be the result of Biden’s State Department practicing and exercising too hard instead of assessing the stakes, thinking and discreetly preparing the move that could possibly avoid checkmate.

February 21: In Some Senses

In an with the BBC, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson demonstrated his talent for diverting attention from his own precarious situation that includes a growing lack of legitimacy even within his own party. He undoubtedly remembers how another Tory prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, reversed her waning approval numbers by going to war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands in 1982.

The BBC sums up the prime minister’s message: “Russia plans biggest war in Europe since 1945.” In other words, Johnson wants the world (and voters in the United Kingdom) to understand his firm intention of stepping up as a national hero ready to wreak havoc on the enemy by promising to bring in even more far-reaching sanctions “against Russia than have been suggested before,” the BBC reports.

Johnson may have some difficulty convincing people as he attempts to step into the role of the valorous knight in shining armor prepared for the most challenging battle of his career. The observant will perceive someone more like the squire who tends to US President Joe Biden’s needs. Johnson has no hope of emulating Thatcher’s performance as the resolute and ultimately victorious wartime leader.

On the other hand, Johnson’s role of raising the alarm demands little effort. And delivering on his promises will entail no painful sacrifice as they only consist of playing the now traditional US game of imposing sanctions that will prevent Russian firms from “trading in pounds and dollars.” This phrase creating a false equivalence between the once mighty pound and the almighty dollar may impress a few people who cling to the image of a past empire, but it sounds hollow in today’s world.

The prime minister’s precise words merit a brief effort at close reading. “The plan that we’re seeing,” he insists, “is something that could be the biggest war in Europe since 1945.” At the most obvious level, this is simple alarmism. It evokes the most costly war in European history and, more implicitly, the specter of Adolf Hitler (played on the world state today by Vladimir Putin).

Johnson’s&�Բ�����;“plan that we’re seeing” evokes a great British tradition in entertainment from to and . The dread of a diabolical plan — or the pride in a great strategic plan — has long been a standard melodramatic trope. But that too is risky, as in the British tradition those plans are almost always comically mocked.

Johnson claims that “we” are “seeing” the plan. Since by “we” he means the nation as a whole, this apparently refers to the media, including the BBC, that are only too happy to broadcast the news about the supposed plan. The fact that the plan is still only supposed is borne out by Johnson’s use of the now classically evocative but utterly uncertain “could,” followed by the superlative of “the biggest war.” The qualifying condition of “since” allows him to compare it with World War II, clearly the biggest of all time. It is clearly time to think about things more alarming than Friday night cocktail parties at 10 Downing Street.

“All the signs are that the plan has already in some senses begun,” Johnson continues, making sure the public understands that it’s all about a devious “plan.” He claims that the plan, whose details nobody knows, has begun, which is nonsense since plans do not begin or end, especially ones we know nothing about. What he means is that the execution of the supposed plan has begun, though it is impossible to say how. For the moment, and possibly for a long time to come, the only thing being executed on either side is a campaign to create fear and suspicion. And that plan has clearly begun in the West, led by the US and followed by Johnson.

Johnson’s cluelessness, which he has tried to masquerade as strategic insight, becomes evident in his dodge when he uses the phrase, “in some senses.” It’s an expression as vague as the all-inclusive “could.” Though the evidence is invisible, the prime minister, whose own senses may be slightly out of whack, wants everyone to believe that they are “seeing” something real and active, not something that simply “could” happen. Because we can see it despite its being invisible requires bold action on the part of bold leaders, such as himself.

That is why only some of Johnson’s senses (but not actual seeing, hearing, touching, tasting or smelling) have perceived what he wants us to believe is an already “begun” invasion of Ukraine. In such a case, who wouldn’t be ready to have confidence in Boris Johnson’s sixth sense?

February 18: Defensive Alliance

Political will is a real thing. It defines geopolitics and international relations. Recognizing it is always useful, but in a civilized world (or a world that likes to think of itself as civilized), pure political will inevitably rubs against the duty political leaders feel they have to appeal to a rules-based order to justify their actions.

Everyone who manipulates power knows the value of invoking rules to legitimate any purely willful action. If there’s any contradiction between the act and the rule, you simply aim to impose the fait accompli. As the events since World War II have demonstrated, even in a respectfully observed rules-based order, the rules more often than not bow submissively to the force of political will. Political savvy consists of understanding when and how to bend the rules, if not simply to ignore them.

“Russia says it may be ‘forced’ to respond militarily if the US won’t agree to its unacceptable security demands on Ukraine” is the title of an article in Business Insider describing the at the Ukrainian border between the US and Russia. “The US and NATO,” John Haltiwanger writes, “have firmly rejected Russia’s demand that Ukraine be forever banned from the alliance, stating that countries should be free to choose their own allies and defensive partnerships.”

This accurately described difference of interpretation has produced a curious and dangerous misunderstanding about respecting and applying rules. If it turns into a direct contest of wills, it could lead to a new world war. ��ܲ�������’s idea of banning the further expansion of NATO isn’t just a willful attempt to expand its own influence. It is based on what any relationship-based culture considers sacrosanct: respecting one’s word and fulfilling one’s promises. Several US presidents, beginning with George H.W. Bush, promised not to expand NATO eastward after the fall of the Soviet Union. Their governments failed to take that promise literally.

The US invokes a different, more abstract rule. This is logical since the US culture eschews even the idea of relationships. Like marriage, they are too unstable. Instead, Americans place all of their faith in formal written laws or contracts. Every self-assertive American knows that promises are the stuff of sales pitches. They have no meaning. The only thing that counts is the text that finally appears in the contract.

But US insistence builds on yet another rules-based principle: that sovereignty means the freedom to sign any contract one wishes to, regardless of the immediate or long-term consequences. For the US State Department, as Haltiwanger writes, the basic iron-clad rule is that “countries should be free to choose their own allies and defensive partnerships.” That means that, as a matter of principle, neither the US itself nor NATO’s executives can contractually oblige Ukraine to accept being eternally excluded from NATO. US jurists cannot even imagine how such a thing can be done. It contradicts the very idea of law.

The geopolitical problem, however, is fundamentally linguistic and cultural rather than legal. Even the legally established idea of the right to select one’s “defensive partnerships” is ambiguous. Every realist knows that, when push (military buildup) comes to shove (acts of war), “defensive” means “potentially offensive.” They also know that in the hands of a powerful political entity such as the United States, defense routinely and pretty much exclusively manifests itself as offense, as happened when, to defend the American homeland, the US (dragging NATO along with it) spent decades attacking multiple nations on the other side of the world. All of those nations happen to be closer to Russia than to the US.

In other words, for three decades, Russia has been seeking to negotiate a relationship rather than a formal political solution. Paradoxically, that relationship, if anything, has a precedent in the Monroe Doctrine, which at the time no European nation had the means of countering, not only because of the geographical distance and the limited means of communication in the early 19^th century, but because of Europe’s disarray following the Napoleonic wars.

The sad fact is that US culture has no time for relationships. Every question must be settled by a point of law or the signature of a contract. And quite literally, neither the US — which clearly controls NATO and uses it for its own purposes — nor NATO itself has the authority to change its own rules that allow it to weigh the merits of any nation’s candidacy to become a member. That is a rule it would be impossible to change since a just law admits no exceptions.

In other words, the key to understanding the current crisis may be less political and military than cultural and to some extent linguistic. Rudyard Kipling may have been right after all: “East is east and West is west, and never the twain shall meet.” Relationship and law are culturally incompatible. Russian culture, like all Asian cultures, is relationship-based rather than rules-based. The US is prohibitively laws-based, and not even rules-based, because the idea behind rules is that their interpretation and application can be negotiated and adapted whereas laws must be obeyed or canceled from the books.

That is bad enough already. But there is a further complication. European culture, from north to south and east to west, is a mix of relationship-based and rules-based cultures. Although it is literally impossible to guess what might come of the current showdown between Russia and the United States, it is easier to forecast that things are likely to get much more complicated for Europe itself in the next decade, and that the fiction of solidarity within NATO, on which the US now insists, will not survive. That alone, as a consequence of the current crisis, could represent a major geopolitical earthquake that would be further complicated by the possible return of Donald Trump to the White House in 2024.

February 17: Needless

US President Joe Biden really seems to need a war. But not a war that will actually be waged with guns, bombs and explosions — just a war that plays out in people’s heads. He may remember George W. Bush’s popular when he called himself a “war president.” Or perhaps Biden is thinking of how media pundits expressed their excited praise of the suddenly “presidential” Donald Trump the day he launched missiles on Syria. To be thought of as a leader in the United States, the president must find a way of promoting the idea of American force. If Biden can’t really afford to wage war, he must show the public he is always ready to appeal to the specter of war in the name of American ideals.

Biden, of course, made headlines last year when he ended a war believed to be as interminable as it was futile. Unfortunately, his handling of it, which was bound to be messy, branded him in American eyes as both weak and confused. It produced a PR disaster that has seriously compromised the prospects of Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections. In such circumstances, talk of war will always emerge as an attractive theme for the clever political strategists in the White House. Biden desperately needs to plant the idea of a war in the American public’s mind, even if he is convinced allowing war to happen is senseless.

The president needs a fantasized war for yet another reason, as all presidents do. The core business of the United States depends on the specter of war. The defense industry consumes more resources than any other industry, puts a hell of a lot of people on the government payroll and guarantees employment in most of the major industries. It also develops, with taxpayer money, the technology that future generations of billionaires — the people who finance political campaigns — will exploit essentially to feed their greed and their desire to participate in power. Even more importantly, the job of the entire military-industrial complex across the globe consists of protecting the supply chains and access to raw materials for all of �������������’s global businesses. The US always needs war. A fragile US president even more.

That is one explanation of the otherwise incomprehensible showdown taking place at the limits of Eastern Europe, nearly halfway across the globe from Kansas. The United States is facing off with Russia, a nation concerned about its relationship with its neighbors that says it does not intend to go to war or to invade Ukraine, itself a country that is uncomfortable with the prospect of war evoked by the US war machine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who otherwise accepts to be a vassal of NATO and in fact is given no choice, has expressed — both seriously and sarcastically — his personal disapproval of the kind of aggressive talk about war the Biden administration is now relying on to bolster its image.

So, we have reached a point of pure absurdity. Biden needs a climate of war, but not an actual war on the other side of the world. If it were to happen, he might be right about the dire consequences for Russia, but for the US and Biden, in particular, the effect would be worse. Apart from the short-term electoral advantage politicians seek, the experience of the past two decades should have taught them that wars easily get out of hand and produce a long and messy series of unintended consequences.

Biden has worked out a strategy for deflecting any blame if war does occur, but not many people outside of the US are ready to swallow it. The president claims the entire onus will fall on Russia. It’s useless to imagine, he tells us, that either Biden himself or the United States could be blamed. “If Russia attacks Ukraine, it would be a war of choice, a war without cause or reason.” Speaking of ��ܲ�������’s “accountability” (yes, he uses that utterly inappropriate word), The Guardian reports that he such a “war would bloody the country’s reputation in the history books. The world, he said, would ‘not forget that Russia chose needless death and destruction.’”

Biden is right when he reminds us that the death and destruction of war is “needless,” though he might have mentioned the exception in cases where the leader of a powerful nation needs the war to bolster his electoral prospects. He makes it clear that he would never sanction a war that produces needless death and destruction. As chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, he championed the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, but at the time, he clearly thought the death and destruction it was about to spawn was needful rather than needless.

If a war does break out on the Russian-Ukrainian border, Biden has made it clear that it will be the result of ��ܲ�������’s choice. It will have nothing to do with Washington’s adamant insistence that Ukraine become a member in NATO. That would be nothing more than an insignificant convenience for a free nation. It has nothing to do with the idea of pushing the zone of authorized US military intervention right up to the Russian border.

Biden fully understands the core issue. The US is committed to peace in the world. Russia must be persuaded not to choose war. Vladimir Putin should abandon his evil ways and seek to emulate the US, a nation that never chooses war. The fact that, over the past two centuries, it has set the world record on the number of wars it has conducted causing “needless death and destruction” in practically every corner of the world should not distract us from the realization that, as Biden himself repeatedly , the US must lead “by the power of example rather than the example of our power.”

February 16: Sarcastic

Jonathan Guyer at Vox has become justifiably fed up with the US State Department’s predictions of a date for evil genius Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine that some feel could trigger the launch of World War III. In an with the title, “Enough With the Ukraine War Predictions,” Guyer reveals a probable truth the rest of the overly solemn media has sought to avoid: that the origin of the decidedly hyperreal citing of today’s date, February 16, as the launch of ��ܲ�������’s “imminent” invasion of Ukraine was a joke by the comedian-president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky.

Before going into the background of a series of dire predictions proffered by the Biden administration, the Vox article summarizes the situation that reached its surreal culmination this week. “Monday afternoon,” Guyer writes, “American news outlets startled markets when they reported that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video, ‘We are told that February 16 will be the day of the attack.’”

The problem for the US government and, to a large extent, the media is that Zelensky may have been sarcastic when he cited the specific date. For weeks, the Biden administration has been using language that sounds more like promising than predicting a Russian invasion of Ukraine. By the end of last week, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan announced that the invasion “may well happen soon,” indicating that that meant before the Olympic Games end on Sunday.

“Any day now,” Sullivan Fox News on February 13, “Russia could take military action against Ukraine or it could be a couple of weeks from now, or Russia could choose to take the diplomatic path instead.” He even called that absurdly imprecise time frame “the window.” The three examples of “could” in his prediction showed that, in fact, the US is clueless about a situation it can neither understand nor control. That is what impelled Zelensky to crack a joke at the expense of an administration that has no qualms about creating confusion and exaggerated anguish in the very country it has taken upon itself to defend against President Putin’s evil empire.

What Guyer describes is precisely the transformation of hyperreality — the controlled fabrication of a worldview designed to replace reality in the average person’s mind — into a complicated work of art worthy of the surrealists. Media coverage of this entire episode of history has come to resemble a Dali painting or the theater of the absurd. 

The language solemnly intoned by the State Department appears as something akin to Andre Breton’s automatic writing. After promising a Russian invasion as some sort of divinely ordained fatality that is certain to take “before the Olympic Games end,” with evidence of at least a partial pullback by the Russians, US President Joe Biden now says it merely “remains distinctly possible.” Citing the Russians’ “threatening position,” and invoking a time for evacuation “before it’s too late to leave safely,” Biden seems possessed by the fear that people may stop feeling sufficiently afraid. “Misinformation abounds,” Guyer notes, “and information is being used to tell stories that may not hold up.”

When this episode winds down — whether that is “any day now” or years into the future — it will generate some interesting insights about geopolitics and history to draw from it. For the moment, it’s a strange political pantomime presented on the stage by poor players improvising a script full of sound and fury but, as yet, signifying nothing.

February 15: Self-Supervised Algorithm

Back in January, only weeks before the spectacular decline of its stock price, at a time when the prospect of its future conquest of the soon-to-be-born metaverse was still in the air following the renaming of Facebook as Meta, Newsweek the bold new vision of the platform’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg. The Menlo Park firm’s suitably autocratic and reliably narcissistic CEO “hailed the development of Meta’s data2vec, a new artificial intelligence algorithm that is capable of learning about several different types of information without supervision.”

To make sure the public understood the significance of the breakthrough Meta has prepared for humanity, Newsweek cites a blogpost in which “Meta developers described data2vec as ‘the first high-performance self-supervised algorithm that works for multiple modalities.’” That’s an impressive string of adjectives: high-performance, self-supervised and multiple. Utopia is indubitably nigh.

In making such statements, Zuckerberg and his acolytes appeared unaware of the growing anxiety some people have concerning the “types of information” about them that his company is not only collecting, but of course exploiting for profit. If artificial intelligence (AI) is the agent executing the task rather than the brave souls trapped in human bodies that populate Meta’s Menlo Park offices, will the public be reassured?

Though most neurologists, psychologists and philosophers are likely to disagree, Zuckerberg holds to the unscientific belief that his AI is capable of thinking “the way we do.” What could that mean? Is Zuckerberg referring to the way he and his loyal team think? Or does he imagine he understands the way real people think? 

The case could be made — and most anthropologists and psychiatrists would probably make it — that Zuckerberg lives in a world where thinking doesn’t quite mean the same thing it does for most of us. Yes, the instinct and the thought patterns that focus on optimizing one’s interest are things all humans and indeed all animals share. But when ordinary people think, promoting self-interest may not be the permanent obsession and unique motivation that regulates their actions and language. It’s true that our civilization wants us to believe that because there’s no such thing as a free lunch, we spend our lives calculating the price of the one we will have to pay for. But real people live their lives according to different, non-ideological principles. They simply do not conform to that model of homo economicus the ideological economists and politicians have foisted upon us.

In an attempt to prove that he too can be connected with the real world, “Zuckerberg predicted that the development could eventually be used to more effectively help people perform common tasks like cooking.” Will his AI know when to dip its finger in the broth to make sure it’s right for Aunt Leonine? Will AI’s self-learning capacity teach it how to duplicate the succulence of the madeleines that revived the associations and sensual memories of Marcel Proust’s childhood? No, it will help Meta’s customers to enjoy their experience of an essentially visual metaverse from which fragrance and taste are absent and in which sounds are never random but programmed. But man, what a trip for the eyes! You won’t want to miss it.

That conviction that the metaverse will connect with our lives gives us the first clue as to the radical difference between Zuckerberg’s and the rest of humanity’s thinking. For Zuckerberg, it’s simple. Put on a show, a feast for the eyes, and people will pay. First, the other billionaires (not Zuckerberg himself) and the venture capitalists who fund the creation of the tools. Then the public whom you can count on to always buy into novelty. Zuckerberg’s famed “business genius” is precisely that. He thinks exclusively about what people will buy, not like the rest of us, who think about what we need to get by. There can be no doubt that his AI will be programmed to think the way he thinks, not the way the rest of us think.

True to his shtick that began nearly two decades ago when he decided that all he was ever trying to do was “connect people,” Zuckerberg shows no hesitation in making an entirely erroneous claim about human perception, understanding, knowledge and insight.&�Բ�����;“People experience the world,” he , “through a combination of sight, sound and words, and systems like this could one day understand the world the way we do.”

No, Mark, people experience the world through the complex combination of sensations that come together to form our state of self-perception. When the promoters of AI talk about duplicating human intelligence and predict “the singularity” — the moment when AI surpasses human intelligence — the one basic physiological and psychological concept they carefully avoid thinking about is a phenomenon well known to science: proprioception. The medical designates the sense of where our body is in space. It includes the notion of kinaesthesia, the combined effect of all our sensory input that tells us not only where we are in the world but, on another psychological plane, who we are in the world. It is the true root of everything we perceive and know.

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To control the public that already funnels revenue to Meta, Zuckerberg wants the billions of customers already subscribed to platforms to believe that to achieve pseudo-social fulfillment, all they need is “a combination of sight, sound and words, and systems” the wizard of Menlo Park promises to deliver to our individual brains.

Even if Meta’s share price is taking a hit today, there is little doubt that Mark Zuckerberg and others like him will continue to push the idea that we are all destined to live at least part-time in their metaverse. They will do it not because it is good, not because people want it and not because people need help “performing common tasks.” The masters of the metaverse will do it because they know they can make money by doing it.

And there’s no doubt that they will make money. What they won’t do, however, is capture humanity’s mind, which is what they and all the commercial interests that are aligning with the opportunity of a metaverse hope will happen. One day they may have the humility to realize that proprioception is a more powerful force than any of their self-supervised algorithms. For the moment they prefer to pretend it doesn’t exist. When that day comes, unless we are all held prisoner in the future metaverse, humanity may once again feel free to return to its traditional business of trying to live reasonably harmoniously among other fully sentient beings.

February 14: Ubiquitous

Dictionary.com provides definitions of the words in the English language. It also keeps track of the people look up and save. The website has just announced the winners for 2021. A quick glance at the list leaves us wondering why people think those particular words might help them talk about the world they are living in today.

Nine of the top 10 words were: pernicious, desolate, ephemeral, egregious, ostentatious, capricious, conspicuous, benevolent and ambiguous. At the top of the list was: ubiquitous.

If the selection can be seen as a barometer of today’s culture, it is worth noting that only one word has a strong positive connotation: “benevolent.” It’s reassuring to see that people want to keep thinking of benevolence. But it may simply indicate that it has become so rare in our dog-eat-dog hyper-competitive world that people need a dictionary to remind them what it means.

Four of the words are anything but reassuring: “desolate,” “egregious,” “ostentatious” and “capricious.” The first two are seriously negative, evoking destruction and something that is extremely reprehensible, while the other two belong to the category of behavioral failings.

The remaining words that appear more neutral are “ephemeral,” “conspicuous” and “ambiguous.” But even these words tell us something about the Zeitgeist. In an increasingly polarized society, like that of the United States, where people camp on their positions while refusing to consider even the slightest nuance of critique, could it be that they have begun wondering about the very real ambiguity that is always at the core of social life and political reality, especially in a pluralistic society? 

Democracy was not meant to be about which group should dominate another or all others, but how some consensus may be found. That means tolerating ambiguity. The fact that many people have to look the word up in a dictionary reveals how much they may have lost touch with the idea. The trend from the past in US culture has been to see ambiguity as something that impedes progress toward a goal rather than as the clue to understanding complexity. Can the fact that people now want to explore the meaning of the word mean that they are beginning to recognize the value of ambiguity and the appreciation of nuance that provides the key to understanding ambiguity?

Ephemeral evokes a similar reflection. In the consumer society, nothing is meant to last and everything to be exploited in the short term. The ephemeral has become the normal, to the point that people no longer need the word because there is little to contrast with it. Whether it is in business (quarterly results) or social life (fulfilling desires), value is typically measured only in the short term.

Then there is “conspicuous,” a fairly rare adjective that nevertheless entered the general conversation at the dawn of the 20^th century when the sociologist and economist Thorstein Veblen, in his book, “Theory of the Leisure Class,” launched the concept of “conspicuous consumption.” It is the notion that drove the growth of the consumer society in the 20^th century, defining the modern economy. Veblen described behavior that, in his day, was limited to a small leisured class. During that century, everyone in the US strove to be a conspicuous consumer, dedicated to purchasing their leisure. It is a concept Madison Avenue and companies like Apple became experts at fostering.

The winner, however, was “ubiquitous,” a concept that becomes quite literally inescapable in our connected world thanks to a new generation of speculators, investors and techies who are now seeking to invite us to live our lives, not in this boring real world, with all its annoying physical and material constraints, but in the spotless metaverse they are creating for us. It is filled with imaginary products they expect us to consume and represents the final stage in the triumph of hyperreality. Their commercial interests and the ability these companies have to dictate our tastes endow provide them with a literally ubiquitous character; ensuring that their reality will replace our own.

It is important to bear in mind that the list contains not the words people most often looked up, but the ones they chose to save. That presumably means that people who saved these words felt a need to use them in their conversation or writing. It is worth noticing that every one of them is an adjective. That alone tells us that people are struggling to find ways of describing the reality or hyperreality — or the mix of the two — they are currently living in. Things (nouns) don’t matter so much anymore. Neither do verbs (actions), when in the metaverse even can fly without restriction and human avatars have unlimited powers. None of the parts of speech of our traditional language matters quite as much as the qualities we attribute to things and the adjectives — dominantly negative — required to designate those qualities. Evidence, perhaps, of our civilization’s troubled mind.

February 11: Not Flaky

When politicians and political parties find themselves in difficulty, a condition shared currently by US President Joe Biden and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, their language begins to be encumbered by negative formulations whose tortured logic sounds as if it is describing something seriously concerning, but when analyzed ends up saying nothing at all.

Johnson is under a concerted attack especially within his own party for a of sins that former Conservative Prime Minister John Major has taken the trouble to list in great detail. The Ukraine crisis has provided Johnson with the opportunity to deviate attention from his failings by responding to something he wants the public to believe is so important they need to rely on his leadership.

Following Biden’s game plan that consists of proclaiming an imminent invasion of Ukraine by the evil empire of Vladimir Putin, Johnson offered a brilliant of nothing thanks to his ability to twist a series of negative ideas into a solid knot. “I don’t think,” he said, “a decision has yet been taken but that doesn’t mean that it is impossible that something absolutely disastrous could happen very soon indeed.”

Between not thinking and not meaning, he has managed to say that what he is saying contains no substance. Major himself might agree with the beginning of Johnson’s statement when he says, “I don’t think.” No thinking politician in Major’s view would make all the mistakes Johnson has made. But the key phrase in the prime minister’s pronouncement is “that doesn’t mean that it is impossible,” a stale circumlocution for saying that way he envisions is unlikely but requires insisting that it is real. “Absolutely disastrous” could of course describe any of the documented actions from Johnson’s past, which is why he wants the public to focus on a not impossible absolute disaster in the future.

Johnson was seconded by his defense secretary, Ben Wallace, who explained: “What this is really about is saying to President Putin [that] NATO is not flaky. NATO will stand by its members, big or small.”

Business Insider notes the obvious, that “Ukraine is not a NATO member” before relating Wallace’s justification when he “said an invasion of the country would affect its NATO neighbours including Poland by prompting a refugee crisis.” Following this reason, in our globalized economy anything anywhere will affect NATO countries, so why even bother to explain whatever aggressive action NATO undertakes anywhere in the world. But Wallace’s most interesting negative formulation was that “NATO is not flaky.” It is typically one of those denials politicians utter when they know everyone understands that what they are denying is fundamentally true. In any case, this may be the first time or at least rare times anyone has used the epithet flaky with NATO.

February 10: Dovetail

The respected journalist Anderson Cooper at CNN is carrying on what has become a great media tradition of accusing of treason anyone who questions official US foreign policy under President Joe Biden and fails in their civic duty to frame Russia as the evil empire that meddled fatally in the 2016 election and is now seeking to reconstitute the Soviet empire. These accusers have found various ways of designating heretical Americans as useful idiots rather than conscious tools of the Kremlin.

But the implication of their remarks is clear: They are seeking to incite the public to question the patriotism of anyone with a voice in the politics or the media, from the left or the right, who dares to suggest a nuanced reading of the dilemma at the Russian border. The most prominent targets have been easy ones on the right like Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson, but also more complex ones on the left, such as Glenn Greenwald and Tulsi Gabbard.

Following the State Department’s lead, the media invented a convenient to dismiss anything that seems to correlate with the interests of Russia as an act of disinformation straight out of the “Russian playbook.” Last week, Cooper accused Fox News host Tucker Carlson of pleading in favor of Russia when he claims that the US has no reason to engage militarily over Ukraine. The CNN journalist offers a subtle stylistic : “It is striking how neatly Kremlin propaganda seems to dovetail with Carlson’s talking points.”

Democratic strategist Alexandra Chalupa was more and aggressive when she tweeted: “Tucker Carlson needs to be prosecuted as an unregistered agent of the Russian Federation and treason under Article 3, Sec. 3, Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution for aiding an enemy in hybrid warfare against the United States.” Business Insider followed a similar line of thinking when it offered this : “Tucker Carlson told The New York Times he’s not a Russian agent amid controversy over his pro-Kremlin stance.”

Unlike Chalupa or Business Insider, Cooper discreetly avoids implying Carlson may be guilty of treason. His much gentler use of the metaphor “dovetail,” borrowed from carpentry, is doubly intriguing. The dove is a symbol of peace. Carlson argues in favor of peace and decries the folly of war. He makes it clear that his position concerns the interests of Americans and implies no alignment with ��ܲ�������’s policies or ambitions. He simply claims that there is no historical or political justification for preparing for war with Russia over Ukraine because it entails no threat to US security.

If we really want to find a metaphor to describe what is going on here, it could be this: CNN’s suspicion of anything short of blindly obedient, aggressive militarism could be said to “hawktail” with the propaganda of the military-industrial complex.

Whether it’s State Department spokesman Ned Price implying that AP reporter Matt Lee was looking to “find solace in information that the Russians are putting out” or Cooper pointing out that Carlson says things that dovetail with Russian talking points, the government and the media appear to have devised a concerted campaign to discredit any voice that counsels prudence or even prefers peace over military intervention and eventually war.

Carlson is of course an easy target. His platform is Fox News, and on domestic issues, he is known to voice outrageously xenophobic and even potentially racist opinions. But, if they had the courage, there are other more serious targets they could have taken on: respected and historically important diplomatic thinkers such as the late George Kennan and the political scientist, John Mearsheimer. These two men are known for producing fundamental ideas about diplomacy, while avoiding the realm of everyday politics that the media prefers to cover.

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Kennan is credited with defining the “Truman doctrine” based on the idea of communist containment. It set the diplomatic tone at the start of the original Cold War. But Kennan, unlike the Washington establishment, remained a realist, eschewing the Cold War hysteria that began to define an epoch in which Senator Joe McCarthy’s anti-Soviet paranoia could emerge and in which the Dulles brothers — John Foster, the secretary of state under the Eisenhower administration, and Allen, the Harry Truman-appointed director of the CIA — became the duo who had a free hand in defining and executing US foreign policy.

Kennan never lost his sense of perspective. He deplored the policy of the Soviets but saw a mirror image of it in US policy. “But what about my own government,” he wrote in his, “and its state of blind militaristic hysteria? It has not only convinced itself of the reality of its own bad dreams, but it has succeeded in half-convincing most of our allies, and that to such an extent that anyone who challenges that view of the world appears to them as dangerously subversive.” The “dovetailing” rhetoric of Tucker Carlson is mild in comparison to Kennan’s acerbic but realistic critique.

Several years ago, assessing the complex situation in Ukraine, Mearsheimer — in 2015 — analyzed the of ��ܲ�������’s security with regard to NATO. Like Ian McCredie in these columns, he made the case that Russian President Vladimir Putin is devious and unscrupulous, but it cannot be doubted that he is a clever operator. Most of what he says dovetails with the strategic concerns for ��ܲ�������’s security that has led Putin to his current aggressive posturing at the Ukrainian border.

Kennon died in 2004 but his analysis, which was true in 1950 (the year he left the State Department) and again at the time of his death, has remained as pertinent as ever. Mearsheimer is very much alive, but the media would never even think of inviting him onto their programs to explain the “realistic” view of geopolitical issues. They prefer hiring former intelligence directors like James Clapper and John Brennan, who can be counted on to hawktail with their former agencies. Mearsheimer can be relegated to the category of an irrelevant, eccentric academic. Because he is a respected thinker, like Noam Chomsky, he can simply be ignored rather than accused of treasonous thoughts.

February 9: Binary Exclusion

​�ċThanks to Ned Price, Joe Rogan and Whoopi Goldberg, the curious relationship between language and culture in the US has exploded into the headlines.

“False flag,” “the N-word,” “race” and “apartheid” reveal an emotional and coercive power that goes far beyond their literal meaning.

More to come (read here).

February 8: Not Completely Wrong

French President Emmanuel Macron may be seeking the spotlight in his initiatives regarding the Ukrainian border crisis, but it isn’t only to bolster his fragile lead in the polls ahead of April’s first round of the presidential election, as he hopes to earn a second term. That is undoubtedly a strong motivating factor, but Macron’s attempt to single-handedly solve the world’s biggest diplomatic crisis, one deemed to bring humanity to the brink of nuclear war, is perfectly consistent with his historic commitment to redefining Europe’s security order that has for three-quarters of a century been defined by NATO and largely controlled by the US.

Nobody knows exactly what Macron has in mind or even what is possible in a situation where both Russia and the United States have declared incompatible red lines. Apart from the difficulty he will have getting the rest of Europe on board with anything initiated unilaterally by France, his margin of maneuver is so limited that any prospect of success seems unlikely. After talking with Vladimir Putin, unless Macron manages to persuade US President Biden that giving ground in the name of resolving a crisis with Russia — as John F. Kennedy did in secret to defuse the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 when he agreed to remove American missiles from Turkey — there is little hope for a negotiated solution to a standoff that cannot reasonably be prolonged indefinitely.

So, what is Macron trying to accomplish? The New York Times the head of the Paris Peace Forum, Justin Vaisse, who believes it may just be a question of how the complaints about Putin’s posturing are framed. Promising to “take a step toward Putin,” Vaisse recommends that the West “recognize he is not completely wrong,”

Does that mean accepting that President Putin is partially right? Is it even possible to identify what part or percentage of Putin’s putative wrongness may be right? The Times opines that “Macron wants to explore whether American offers last month could be complemented by further confidence-building measures that permit a way out of the crisis.” Can anyone hope to build confidence with someone they qualify as being “not completely wrong?”

Jeremy Shapiro, a former State Department official, had a more realistic suggestion that consists of going beyond the existing the arms control offers by the US and combining them “with some sort of consultative mechanism for changes in NATO status, or some sort of moratorium on NATO expansion, or some creative interpretation of the Minsk agreement that gives a Donbas constituent assembly veto powers over what the government will do.”

Any of those solutions would constitute an acknowledgment that Putin was basically right in his analysis, rather than being “not completely wrong.” The only reason any of those outcomes remains unlikely to be adopted or even put forward is similar to the principal motivating reason for Macron seeking the spotlight. Any of Shapiro’s solutions would appear to show Biden backing down to Putin. Democratic presidents — especially when the election prospects for their party are on a depressingly downward incline, as they are today for Democrats — must never back down. Kennedy did back down, but he did so in secret. That will likely be impossible for Biden. Could the US president be hoping that Macron will get the job done for him, sparing Biden the suspicion that he caved to Putin?

In a made to France’s Le Journal de Dimanche, Macron appeared to deviate rather significantly from Biden’s position when he affirmed that ��ܲ�������’s “geopolitical objective … today is clearly not Ukraine, but to clarify the rules of cohabitation with NATO and the European Union.” This appears to contradict the State Department’s insistence for weeks that an invasion of Ukraine was imminent, with Putin’s implicit goal of taking over at least part of the nation. State Department spokesman Ned Price has insisted that intelligence has determined how the invasion will play out, starting with a false flag for which he refuses to provide any evidence. There is clearly a difference in the intelligence assessments of France and the United States. Would it be wrong to think that, despite the NATO alliance, each nation simply fabricates its own brand of propaganda? Public messaging on international issues always tends to target voters at home. They hold the key to any incumbent’s hope of maintaining power. And most observers would agree that is not completely wrong to insist power is still the only real priority of politicians, however statesmanlike they may seek to appear.

February 7: Noble Act

In a world that accepts money as the indicator not just of worth, but of worthiness and the accumulation of wealth as a measure of all value, including moral value, Melinda French (formerly Mrs. Bill Gates) stands out as one of the rare multi-billionaires willing to admit publicly what the male members of her elite class, seconded by the media, consistently deny. “It’s important to acknowledge,” Fortune French as saying, “that giving away money your family will never need is not an especially noble act.”

She adds a particularly cutting observation, that “philanthropy is most effective when it prioritizes flexibility over ideology.” Could this be an implicit critique of her ex-husband, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, whose actions as a philanthropist have consistently reflected a deep sense of greed, a strong touch of narcissism and an all too obvious ideological commitment to privileging corporate profit over the human needs philanthropy is believed to address?

Melinda French represents a small, select club composed of the divorcees of overweening hyper-wealthy men who see themselves as masters of the universe. Two years before the Gates couple’s divorce, MacKenzie Scott, formerly Mrs. Jeff Bezos, had already set the tone for sincere rather than cynically calculated, self-interested philanthropy. Without trying to show up Scott, French takes the rhetoric a step further in the analysis of the reigning masculine style of philanthropy, designed fundamentally to serve the philanthropist’s ego and broaden his power over society and its institutions. 

In an article on last December, Scott expressed a similar idea concerning the role of ideology, explaining that “the gifts will do more good if others are free from my ideas about what they should do.” In other words, it isn’t only the self-interested ideas of men that must be avoided, but the women’s own as well. Though it cuts across the grain of today’s competitive, self-aggrandizing culture, in these women’s minds, humility trumps hubris. Especially when you say you are doing things to help other people.

According to Vanity Fair’s Bess Levin, MacKenzie Scott’s discreet generosity has led her, with zero fanfare, to “at least $8.6 billion to worthy causes” since her divorce in 2019. Levin points to “the uncomfortable fact that, by comparison and as a proportion of his wealth, Jeff Bezos is kind of a cheapskate!” Bezos may wish to send rockets to another world, but he himself already lives in another world. Between space travel and building a superyacht too big to leave the port of Rotterdam without having to dismantle a historic , Bezos, like Gates, believes that monopolies, not spontaneous generosity, will save the world. Like Gates when weighing in on vaccines, Bezos claims that “for-profit models improve the world more than philanthropy models.”

This contrast between the men and their ex-wives may point to a possible solution. Society (rather than government) should find a way to oblige any family that holds more than $1 billion in assets to put every dollar above the first billion in the stewardship of the lady of the house. This would not only mean that philanthropy could live up to its promise of helping humanity, but it would also relieve men of the fastidious task of feeling the need to parade in public as benefactors of humanity.

With rare exceptions, super-wealthy men seem stricken by a pathology that induces them to believe they have been chosen by the almighty (whose name is now Mammon) to guide the benighted masses toward fulfilling their personal vision of a better world. Society would be wise to let the men of this world — whether they are called Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk or even the less narcissistic Warren Buffet — build their wealth to the symbolic level of $1 billion and not a penny more. Anything in excess of this amount should then be removed from their hands and entrusted to the women who will use it to meet humanity’s needs. For the men themselves, this will have the salutary effect of preventing the fantasy of power bred by excessive wealth from rotting their brains, as it apparently never fails to do.

February 4: Level of Consciousness

In an article on Ondalinda, a winter festival in the tropics designed for a class of people that could be called the “superwoke international elite,” Sheila Yasmin Marikar, writing for, quotes Filippo Brignone, a member of the Italian family that founded a festival for the wealthy that takes place every year on the Pacific coast of Mexico: “At one time, my father didn’t want any Americans. You want people who have a certain level of consciousness.”

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“It’s rich people with an intellectual level,” Brignone says. “Artists, successful businessmen—you know, opinion leaders.” That is, the custodians of hyperreality.

Marikar quotes philanthropist Gillian Wynn: “It’s not an unsavory thing like Las Vegas. There’s a wholesome component. Everything is tasteful.” For example, “a polo field illuminated by ten thousand candles and towering neon mushroom puppets with red-rimmed eyes. L.E.D. lassos swirled.”

For these people having consciousness therefore appears to mean: wealthy, self-indulgent and narcissistic but weaned of the vulgar, plebeian tastes. Donald Trump would not qualify.

February 3: Anti-Western Tropes

Anton Troianovski at The New York Times — perhaps following the lead of our dear friends, Atul Singh and Glenn Carle — believes that the showdown at the Ukrainian border can be explained by President Vladimir Putin’s ideology that sees “Russia as a bulwark of ‘traditional values.’”

Singh and Carle identified Vladislav Surkov as the actor who, honoring the Tsarist tradition, stepped up to the role of Putin’s Rasputin and shaped Russian politi

The simple truth is that projecting a misleading understanding of national history is the duty of the government of every nation-state, especially ones that achieve the status of hegemon. In the US, a Democratic president such as Joe Biden has less need to make the effort. He counts on Republicans fulfilling that role. The Democrats seem quite happy to have delegated to their rivals that ungrateful task. Republican senators such as Tom Cotton not only militate to the taste for slavery of the republic’s founders, Cotton’s fellow Republicans have traditionally dominated the publication of US history books to make sure that the undiminished glory and unanimously proclaimed “exceptionalism” of the nation is the only message taught in schools and, implicitly, transmitted by the media.

In 2010, during Barack Obama’s presidency, The New York Times that the Texas Board of Education “approved a social studies curriculum that will put a conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks, stressing the superiority of American capitalism, questioning the Founding Fathers’ commitment to a purely secular government and presenting Republican political philosophies in a more positive light.”

Democrats may occasionally carp in the background at Republicans’ super-patriotism, but they have never even acknowledged, let alone championed, the one historian who dared to state a case closer to their party’s supposed commitment to people rather than power: Howard Zinn. Zinn’s flair for and delight at exposing the American conquerors’ crimes was uncompromising, to the point that even today it can embarrass the unimpeachably leftist Matt Taibbi. But the facts he reported were real and had for generations been locked out of the curriculum. Just like the old Cold War, but this time with a reversal of roles, the new one features a nation that is guided by traditional values (Dwight Eisenhower’s “under God”) against a nation that disdains them (Soviet atheists). For Putin’s Russians, the US undermines marriage and everything else that binds a traditional culture together. For the US, Russia refuses to join the enlightened, inclusive modern world. For both, the president of the adversary is being called, through their media, a modern version of Adolf Hitler.

February 2: Choreography

Commenting on the situation at the Russia-Ukraine border that is much too complex for any commentator to fully understand, Yahoo the artistic opinion of Retired Army General Martin Dempsey, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “The choreography of our actions matter, because you want to enable and empower diplomacy, while at the same time not being seen as indecisive,” he said. “And I think we have the choreography and sequence of moves about right.”

As Dempsey describes it, the dance sequence managed by US President Joe Biden may not be that similar to the art of Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, but it may prove reasonably effective in the short term. The diplomacy is directed at the Europeans, who can be cajoled into a formal alliance, rather than Russia. The image of decisiveness is held firmly by the White House. But for the medium term and an even longer term, the prospects are more ambiguous. Some of the dancers are showing signs of looking into the future for a new dance master.

Even today, contradictions abound. An unnamed expert described as “a retired four-star general with long experience in NATO” expressed an opinion at odds with the discourse coming from the Biden administration. “At the end of the day,” he explained, “I don’t think [Putin] plans to invade Ukraine so much as force it back into Moscow’s sphere of influence.”

If the wisest sages in the US military, as well as the Ukrainians themselves, believe that Russia will not invade, why does the White House keep insisting the invasion is imminent? On the geopolitical front, it doesn’t even make for good diplomacy. It has already diminished the trust the Ukrainians themselves have in their American protectors.

Most likely, Biden is calculating the posture required to look tough, the “true grit” Americans expect from their president. If, as most anticipate, Russia does not invade, as both the Ukrainians and the military’s top brass contend, Biden can then say it was because he stood up to Vladimir Putin and flexed Uncle Sam’s powerful muscles. It’s what the in the US call looking “presidential,” something even Donald Trump managed to do when he bombed Syria. 

February 1: Multiple Audiences

CNN that Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is feeling some discomfort in the face of US President Joe Biden’s eagerness to create panic around the idea of a Russian threat. Zelensky himself describes ��ܲ�������’s actions as “dangerous but ambiguous.”

“Earlier in the day, another source from the US side said there is a recognition in the White House that Zelensky has ‘multiple audiences’ and is trying to balance them. ‘On the one hand, he wants assistance, but he has to assure his people he has the situation under control. That’s a tricky balance.’”

Though the source cited only two of the audiences, there are certainly a few others that were not mentioned. It could be said that nearly every relatively powerless country has at least two audiences: its people and whatever hegemonic power has decided to support it. The United States is by far the most prolific hegemonic “audience” of countries across the globe, though some fear China may surreptitiously catch up. The idea of being an audience, of course, implies an attitude of listening attentively, usually through the hegemon’s diplomats but just as significantly, through its spies.

We invite readers to join us by submitting their suggestions of words and expressions that deserve exploring, with or without original commentary. To submit a citation from the news and/or provide your own short commentary, send us an email.

Why Monitoring Language Is Important

Language allows people to express thoughts, theories, ideas, experiences and opinions. But even while doing so, it also serves to obscure what is essential for understanding the complex nature of reality. When people use language to hide essential meaning, it is not only because they cynically seek to prevaricate or spread misinformation. It is because they strive to tell the part or the angle of the story that correlates with their needs and interests.

In the age of social media, many of our institutions and pundits proclaim their intent to root out “misinformation.” But often, in so doing, they are literally seeking to miss information.

Is there a solution? It will never be perfect, but critical thinking begins by being attentive to two things: the full context of any issue we are trying to understand and the operation of language itself. In our schools, we are taught to read and write, but, unless we bring rhetoric back into the standard curriculum, we are never taught how the power of language to both convey and distort the truth functions. There is a largely unconscious but observable historical reason for that negligence. Teaching establishments and cultural authorities fear the power of linguistic critique may be used against their authority.

Remember, 51�Թ�’s Language and the News seeks to sensitize our readers to the importance of digging deeper when assimilating the wisdom of our authorities, pundits and the media that transmit their knowledge and wisdom.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The second was the legitimization of voyeurism. What was at one time regarded as an unwholesome and indecent fascination with other people’s affairs is now considered conventional. In fact, the more transgressive outlook is to be nonchalant.

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The new Disney+ mini series “” dramatizes an infamous leaked sex tape ���Ա��DZ������Բ��� and her then-husband, Tommy Lee, who still plays drums for the band Mötley Crüe. Anderson was starring in Baywatch, a TV series that ran from 1989 until 2001. The show was about a team of lifeguards on a Los Angeles beach and became a showcase for Anderson, who featured in the series from 1992 to 1997 before moving into film.

Anderson married Lee in March 1995. It seemed a marriage made in heaven. Well, in Cancún, Mexico, to be exact. The newlyweds were sensibly undressed in beachwear, Lee’s splendidly inked torso in full view of the media. By the end of the year, Anderson announced she was pregnant. But heaven had an unwanted visitor.

Private Lives Made Public

There were rumors about a videotape of Anderson and Lee in sexual congress. That such a thing existed surprised no one. The couple seemed blissfully loved-up. But what surprised many was that people were discussing it as if it were a public event. It later became known that the videotape had been stolen from the couple’s California home while they were honeymooning and that the thief, a dissatisfied contractor who had done some work at their house, was seeking to release the tape in an instance of what we’d now call revenge porn.

This was the mid-1990s, remember. Today, he would have immediately uploaded the recording and gotten millions of views within minutes.

Anderson and Lee were, it seems, genuinely upset by the prospect of having their private lives turned inside out. Neither had anything to gain. Lee’s band had six successful albums, and Anderson was borderline iconic, her signature red swimsuit emblematic of the time. Had the tape gained a wider audience, NBC, the TV network, would probably have dropped her from the show amid protest from their advertisers and several indignant church organizations.

For comparison, in predigital 1988, Rob Lowe’s career temporarily cratered after the media got hold of a recording of the actor in a threesome with a woman who was later revealed to be 16 and another woman in her 20s. After a 10-year absence, Lowe made a Lazarus-like recovery when he got a part in “The West Wing,” a show that restored him. Of course, Lowe was a man.

Lowe’s recovery is one way of imagining how Anderson’s career might have gone had the tape been quickly and widely distributed. Another way is to remember Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” of 2004. She had several contracts canceled after a tumult of complaints about her appearance in the halftime Super Bowl show in which she exposed her breast. Her partner in the stunt was Justin Timberlake, whose career suffered no comparably ill effects.

Also in 2004, a similar sex tape featuring Paris Hilton and her partner Rick Salomon had the opposite effect. It propelled Hilton to global notoriety and consequent stardom. Hilton was a woman, but, unlike Anderson or Jackson, she did not have a successful career in show business. Salomon was relatively unknown and, perhaps paradoxically, later married — and I am not making this up — Anderson (though only for a year).

A sex tape also functioned as a career propellant for Hilton’s one-time friend, Kim Kardashian. Again, unlike Anderson, but a lot like Hilton, Kardashian had no known acting or singing talents and belonged to what was then the emerging class of celebrities who were well-known for being followed avariciously by the media. Kardashian existed as an internet life force and a presence in a reality TV series. Halfway through the first decade of the century, this was sufficient to guarantee her a spot high on the A-list.

There were several differences between Anderson’s experience and those of Hilton and Kardashian. For a start, audiences already knew Anderson and realized she needed a sex tape circulating about as much as a funeral wreath. Hilton and Kardashian, on the other hand, were best known as socialites, people who dress well, inhabit fashionable environments and are fond of premieres. All three women acted as if they were affronted, outraged and embarrassed by the leaks, but only one of them sounded credible.

Has Porn Lost Its Appeal?

There was another big difference. When Anderson’s tape appeared, the internet was still in its infancy and without YouTube, which launched in 2005, there was no obvious conduit for publishing. Consent and exploitation may sound old-fashioned today, but, in the 1990s, they were still relevant. Even by the early 21st century, the lack of online regulation had not been realized as the major problem it later became.

Kardashian herself stress-tested the internet’s limits in 2016 when she posted , her modesty protected only by censor bars. In the same year, launched an online platform specializing in what was then seen as risqué material. Its majority owner Leo Radvinsky’s background was in porn. It’s now one of the fastest-growing , according to Ofcom, second only to Pornhub for streaming this type of erotica.

Tumblr appeared to buck the trend when it banned adult content in late 2018. Its traffic dropped and it was sold a year later for a modest $3 million, having been at $1.1 billion in 2013.

What about us? Did we change too? Our capacity to respond, appreciate or be repelled by aesthetic influences is not fixed. Perhaps we were more likely to be offended or shocked when the Anderson tape became available, less so by the later exposures and hardly at all by OnlyFans’ output. Porn has largely lost some of its power to thrill or disgust. Our sensitivity to images of others having sex couldn’t have remained unchanged with so much of it readily available online, could it?

There hasn’t really been anything shocking since the original Kardashian transmission. Can you imagine if anyone tried it today? Audiences would hardly be able to contain their indifference. With the possible exception of Britain’s seemingly indestructible, multi-purpose , surely no one would attempt it, for fear of being ridiculed.

Our fascination with what other people do in their not-yet-made-public moments is what drove reality TV to its preeminent position as the century’s most popular genre, and I think its form, style and subject matter justify calling it a genre. Maybe this prurient streak has always been in us, though I’m inclined to believe the captivation was animated and encouraged by TV’s ingenuity; by coaxing drama from documentary, TV cameras made privacy entertaining. Every one of us became eavesdroppers without any of the guilt typically associated with being a peeping tom. Maybe that’s why watching sex tapes, or their digital equivalents, isn’t so exciting anymore. Those pangs of conscience were probably part of the frisson.

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Like anything else that’s banned, the prohibition is part of porn’s appeal. The instant you make it legit, you reduce its attraction. While #MeToo and other movements that fight the objectification and degradation of women would find this irony hard to accept, there is logic in rinsing off porn’s dirt and making it a bit more respectable — and a bit less stimulating.

Anderson, now 54, would probably not accept any responsibility for the growth or sanitization of porn and almost certainly not want her legendary tape viewed again after nearly three decades. And if it were, it would register only historical interest rather than titillation. But in the 1990s, Anderson was riding the zeitgeist, however unwittingly and, perhaps, with help from her private misfortune, changing its direction.

*[Ellis Cashmore’s “” will be published by Bloomsbury in May.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Will the Pandemic Revitalize Ideas of the Global Common Good?

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In the same period, Great Britain moved to the right under Prime Minister Boris Johnson while autocratic regimes in Poland, Hungary, Turkey, the Philippines and Brazil tightened their grip on governance structures.

What does the future hold for liberal democracies around the world in the next decade? Are current trends an aberration, or is Marc Plattner prophetic in in “Democracy in Decline?” that authoritarianism seems to have the “wind at its back even if it has not yet spread to many more countries”?

Inevitable Decline Scenario

Current trends produce compelling evidence that seems to suggest that the decline of democracies is an inevitability. In the United States, daily columns appear pronouncing that democracy is in peril and under siege, and asking whether another civil war is possible. The January 6 assault on the Capitol continues to be a flashpoint in what was already a very volatile political environment. Voting restrictions targeted at likely Democratic voters have been instituted in many pro-Republican states. Given the prominence of America as a symbol of liberal democracy, countries around the world are now thinking the unthinkable about the future of democratic governance.

Last year’s Freedom House , “Freedom in the World for 2021,” carries the subheading “Democracy under Siege.” It suggests that the aggregate decline in freedom has exceeded gains for the past 15 years. While much of the deterioration in 2020 was associated with regimes in Africa and the Middle East, European nations — Poland, Hungary and Turkey — recorded reductions in freedom. Moreover, the United States has seen a 10-year decline in freedom equivalent to that experienced in 25 other nations.

Meanwhile, as the left-wing populist party headed by Nicolas Maduro has captured the headlines because of his dismantling of democratic institutions in Venezuela, right-wing populist movements are increasing across Latin America — Brazil, Bolivia and Peru are examples. More recently, following Jair Bolsonaro’s playbook in Brazil, the leader of the right-wing populist Christian Social Front in Chile, José Antonio Kast, forced a run-off in a recent election after voicing a desire to return to the autocratic regime of Augusto Pinochet.  

Kast eventually lost in a landslide, which bodes well for the stability of democracy in Chile for the near future, but still raises the disconcerting issue of the popularity of authoritarianism among a sizeable minority of Chile’s polity. 

Predisposition to Authoritarianism

All of these recent events would seem to posit an argument that many citizens are susceptible to an authoritarian appeal. However, forecasting trends from recent events is always hazardous. Yet there is a more ominous source for predicting inevitability than the recent accounts and actions of political leaders and pundits. The writings of a number of social psychologists, historians and political scientists are extremely relevant to the question at hand.

Karen Skinner argues in her book “The Authoritarian Dynamic” that autocratic tendencies are baked into the psychic of citizens of liberal democracies. Fear of change and diversity is easily transformed into a call by a politician for a return to the status quo of the past, like “Make American Great Again.” Long before the ascent of Trump, Skinner estimated that as many as one-third of the population in liberal democracies have a predisposition to authoritarianism.

Given that democracies encourage diversity, alternative interpretations of history and open dialogue on difficult issues, these strengths may exceed people’s capacity to tolerate difficult issues. A growing lack of tolerance toward immigrants, people of color or bureaucrats provides a platform for opportunistic leaders to activate that “authoritarian ���Բ�������.”

Roger Griffin a similar argument when he attributes modernity as a force for fascism. With the unfolding of modernity, populist interpretations of an idealized national past arise in response to the anxiety that citizens feel about a future where the only certainty is that it will be different than the past. Leaders with autocratic ambitions use “restorative nostalgia” — Svetlana Boym’s concept in her book “The Future of Nostalgia” to describe a hereafter that replicates the past — to rally citizens to a populist political movement, a revolt against democratic institutions and their advocates,&�Բ�����;“the bureaucratic elites.”

The arguments offered by Skinner, Griffin and others provide an important understanding of how the internal vulnerabilities of liberal democracies can nurture their own demise. However, despite the presence of an authoritarian dynamic within liberal democracies, a political leadership factor is part of the calculus for predicting the future of democracies. The past decade has witnessed the emergence of Plutarchian leaders who have learned to navigate the pathway that enables populist sentiments to be integrated with autocratic predispositions.

While their hold on the masses is important, what is required to secure power is their ability to bewitch a small key group of capable and principled people in leadership roles and convince them to submit to the autocratic impulses of a prophetic leader as a means of achieving limited policy goals.  

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A cadre of — those who have no autocratic predisposition but are willing to align with anti-democratic politics as a means of achieving specific policy goals or to ensure their own power base in the governance structure — is required. The important and notorious role that Franz von Papen had in enabling the rise of fascism in Germany in the 1930s must not be duplicated if democracy is to be resilient in countries experiencing populist movements. The dangerous combination of a charismatic populist leader and a sizable component of politicians willing to compromise their political ideals for transitory political goals would make the downward spiral of democracy inevitable.

Yet in the United States, a contingent of politicians did defy the urges of the Trump administration to decertify the election results and preserve democratic rule. In Chile, citizens and political leaders rejected the call to return to the autocratic governance model of Pinochet’s dictatorship. In Europe, despite the political uncertainties created by the pandemic, right-wing populist movements have not established themselves as viable alternatives to current regimes. 

Democracy will be resilient and survive the current wave of right-wing authoritarianism if leaders and institutions demonstrate their ability to solve critical social and economic problems, reverse the erosion of trust between themselves and the public, and put the safeguarding of democracy at the forefront of their political agenda.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Is the Decline of Democracy Inevitable? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Fact-checking Is Not Enough. Sense-checking Is Equally Important.

One of the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic has been to highlight the awkward gap between what our institutions and media express in official language and people’s sense of reality. From our school days behind a desk to sitting down in front of the evening news after a hard day’s work, we have been conditioned to trust a class of people we call professionals who know things we don’t know. These professionals feed us not just what they present as facts, but also the message and especially the meaning that results from interpreting those facts. Once their job is done, the media in particular count on us to share the information we have received with family, friends, coworkers and acquaintances we happen to converse with. And all of us most of the time obey. That is what keeps our private conversations going.

In recent times, certain anomalies and blatant contradictions in the news cycles have upset this pattern of behavior that formerly structured civilized life. We have experienced a series of major crises that end up dominating the news cycle, including financial meltdowns, climate change, pandemics, to say nothing of the damage resulting from mass surveillance and meaningless wars. The not always convincing reporting on these events has seriously disrupted the ability of information professionals in both the media and education to maintain the stable cultural order that once seemed so sure to so many people.

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This has led to a well-documented serious of confidence in the authority of democratic governments and their institutions on a global scale. Yahoo Finance recently cited Edelman’s Trust Barometer for 2022 that describes a global trend. “Among the key findings of the report was the overall lower trust in world leaders and institutions around the world, with 67% of respondents saying they worry that journalists and reporters were ‘purposely trying to mislead people by saying things they know are false or gross exaggerations.’ The figures were 66% and 63% for government and business leaders, respectively.”&�Բ�����;

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With few exceptions, the populations of nations across the globe have deemed the performance of their government leaders seeking to manage the now two-year-old pandemic unsatisfactory, if not worse. A much longer trend reveals that in the media has never been more shaky. Many governments and media pundits have attempted to blame social media for this visible decline in trust. But that seems like a ruse or at best a distraction, encouraged by the very authorities in whom the public has been losing trust. Though the owners and promoters of social media platforms, motivated by profit, narcissism and especially rapidly expanding power, are by no means to be trusted, most ordinary people understand that social media itself is little more than an extended space of personal conversation. For that reason, some in the political world see it as a threat to the established order.

Commercial media and political authorities have increasingly touted the idea that fact-checking will solve the problem of restoring trust in information providers. But that is naive. We have already seen that making decisions about what is true and false is a perilous undertaking, not only because the boundaries between the two is often fuzzy, but also because powerful interests will inevitably step in to impose their preferred distinctions. 

Things become even more complex when we realize that truth is not simply a set of verifiable facts, but an understanding that can be built up of the complex relationships and patterns those facts combine to create. We try to make sense of the world, but the act of making sense should require its own quality control. Expecting those who “manage” the information to provide that control is as dangerous as it is naive.

Is There an Answer? Can Sense-checking Exist?

51�Թ�’s “Language and the News” launched at the beginning of this year will focus on the curious ways in which public personalities — those who have knowledge to impart — literally play with the range of meaning language permits. On the face of it, playing sounds entertaining. And indeed, the purveyors of news understand that. It is why so many people now count on the news for entertainment. It is also why so much of the news is indistinguishable from entertainment. It is a game, but it’s a game in which there are clearly winners and losers. One of those losers is not so much the facts themselves, which do of course get distorted, but our perception and understanding of the reality we live in.

Only by looking at the variety of resonances produced by language does the true complexity of reality come into view. But something else, slightly more sinister also comes into view. It is the relentless effort engaged by those who are empowered to use language for our information and entertainment to reduce complexity to a simple idea that serves some practical or ideological end that they are attached to. Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky once described the processes in detail in their book, “Manufacturing Consent.”

At the end of the month of January 2022, 51�Թ� launches its feature, “Language and the News.” It includes a “Weekly Devil’s Dictionary” but will also be composed of short vignettes that pick up salient examples from the current news cycle to highlight how they produce or obscure meaning. In the coming weeks, we will open the channel of communication for our readers to provide their own sense-checking. Think of it as a communication game. But it is the kind of game in which there should be no losers, since — at least theoretically — everyone in a democratic society profits from clarity. 

Here are the first two examples to inaugurate the new feature.

Example 1: Mitch McConnell’s America

Newsweek Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell’s objections to the voting rights bill the Democrats proposed. With impeccable self-revelatory logic, he derided the need for reform or the fact that the current system in many places was built to reduce access to the polls for black Americans. “Well, the concern is misplaced,” he said. “Because if you look at the statistics, African American voters are voting in just as high a percentage as Americans.”

Sigmund Freud maintained that verbal slips reveal deeper levels of psychical truth. What would he say about this? 

Coming from the senator from Kentucky, one of the Confederate states during the Civil War, he would see a true continuity with the spirit and culture of the Old South. It is likely that at the nation’s founding, blacks who were in their vast majority slaves were not considered Americans. Even though each slave counted, for the needs of representation, as three-fifths of a “real” American, they could not vote. They were property. McConnell may feel that because the black community consistently votes at more than 90% for Democrats, they are the property of Democrats rather than “Americans.”

Example 2: Joe Biden’s Extended Property

In his extended press conference last week, US President Joe Biden offered his interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine.&�Բ�����;“We used to talk about, when I was a kid in college, about “�������������’s backyard,” the president reminded the press. “It’s not �������������’s backyard. Everything south of the Mexican border is �������������’s front yard.”

Everyone in the United States knows that your front yard is not only identified as your property, but more significantly it represents the image of yourself you wish to convey to the outside world. The traditional reference to a backyard contained the idea that it was a stretch of land that was far less significant, required less upkeep, if any at all, and could even merge with the countryside. Calling Latin America �������������’s backyard was disrespectful but suggested the possibility of benign negligence.

Biden most certainly believed his metaphor would convey a notion of respect and even solidarity with the people who inhabit the land in front of his house. But that is the crux of the problem. People who live in your front yard are squatters, not neighbors. The very idea that there may be people in a space the owner controls and designs to convey the family’s image is shocking. At least it should appear shocking to anyone who lives anywhere between El Paso and Tierra del Fuego.

To avoid misunderstanding, though with no real intention to correct the terrifying image he created, Biden added: “And we’re equal people. We don’t dictate what happens in any other part of that — of this continent or the South American continent. We have to work very hard on it.”

And so, between Mitch McConnell and Joe Biden, we learned that blacks are not quite the same thing as Americans and that Latinos and Latinas are at best thought of as tolerated squatters. The land of the free continues, at least unconsciously, to make distinctions between those who are authentically free and those who may, according to their ethnic or cultural identity, simply aspire to be free. 

The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The Pentagon’s Latest Glorious Failure

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Since the question of whether he will invade has been put aside, the pundits are asking themselves a different question. It concerns President Putin’s motives. Does Putin feel he needs to overthrow the Ukrainian government and reestablish a friendly regime that will serve as a buffer state between Russia and Europe? Or will he simply be content with controlling the Russian-speaking eastern parts of Ukraine, effectively destabilizing the current regime and thus preventing the possibility of the nation’s integration into NATO?

Given the apparently Beltway mantra that an invasion is imminent and that the West insists on Ukraine’s right to do what it wants, including joining NATO, it was therefore surprising to read in The New York Times this week that people in the White House — in this case, people who usually are removed from communication with the media — may have made a different assessment. In an whose title “War May Loom, but Are There Offramps?” is an acknowledgment of the level of uncertainty that surrounds the current geopolitical standoff, David E. Sanger reveals that “even President Biden’s top aides say they have no idea if a diplomatic solution, rather than the conquest of Ukraine, is what Mr. Putin has in mind.”

Like most Russians, and unlike most Americans, Putin knows something about how the game of chess is played. Geopolitics for Russians has always been a game of chess. Curiously, Western commentators instead seem to believe that the game logic Putin respects is similar to that of American football or basketball. They talk about ��ܲ�������’s “playbook.” These are sports where you assign roles, plan actions and then try to execute. However complex the configurations may come, plays in a playbook follow a logic of going from step one to step two. Chess requires a different form and level of thinking.

It is reasonable to suppose that the Russian-American AP reporter Vladimir Isachenkov has a good understanding of Russian politics and Russian culture. Here is how he describes the: “Amid fears of an imminent attack on Ukraine, Russia has further upped the ante by announcing more military drills in the region.

Today’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Up the ante:

A metaphor from poker that when used correctly means to increase the initial stakes of a game, the amount that must be advanced by each player to enter the game. It is often used incorrectly as an equivalent of another poker term: call the bluff.  

Contextual Note

Isachenkov predictably foresees the invasion authorities in the West almost seem to desire, and not only in Washington. This week, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson Putin’s “plan for a lightning war.” Translated into German, that means Blitzkrieg, a term Johnson preferred to avoid using, though the innuendo was clear. The point of the entire effort to predict a Russian invasion is to instill the idea that Vladimir Putin is Adolf Hitler.

Russians, however, are not known for practicing Blitzkrieg. Chess players prefer to construct their game patiently through a series of maneuvers that look at a long-term evolution. They challenge their opponent’s understanding of an evolving situation and are extremely sensitive to the layout on the chessboard, with the intent of making a checkmate inevitable. Americans, in particular, tend to go for strikes and are always hoping for a lucky strike.

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Perhaps because Isachenkov believes Americans may not understand such strategies, instead of looking to the subtlety of chess for his gaming metaphor or even to Putin’s documented experience of judo, he draws his literary inspiration from another quintessential American game, poker. He tells us Russia has “upped the ante.” In so doing, he misinterprets not only the meaning of Putin’s moves but even the practice of poker itself. Isachenkov appears to interpret “up the ante” as meaning “increase the pressure” or “raise the temperature.” He didn’t realize that poker offers a better metaphor for Putin’s actions: calling Biden’s bluff.

No respectable Western commentator would frame the situation in those terms. It would mean acknowledging that the US resorts to the ignoble art of bluffing. Bluffing implies hypocrisy. The US has only one goal: to make the world more equitable and to help democracy prevail. Secretary of State Antony Blinken the mission in these terms: “It’s about the sovereignty and self-determination of Ukraine and all states,” before adding that “at its core, it’s about ��ܲ�������’s rejection of a post-Cold War Europe that is whole, free, and at peace.” And, just to make things clear: “It’s about whether Ukraine has a right to be a democracy.”

Isachenkov points out that Russia “has refused to rule out the possibility of military deployments to the Caribbean, and President Vladimir Putin has reached out to leaders opposed to the West.” He calls this “military muscle-flexing” but perhaps fails to see this for the theater it is meant to be, coming from the president of a nation that gave us Pushkin, Gogol, Chekhov and Gorki. Evoking the Caribbean is Putin’s way of alluding to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. It may especially be meant to call Americans’ attention to the idea that powerful nations do not look kindly to discovering an adverse military nuclear presence at its borders. If John F. Kennedy could force Nikita Khrushchev to back down 60 years ago, Putin should be allowed to do the same to Biden today.

Historical Note

If Vladimir Putin is calling Joe Biden’s bluff, what is the nature of that bluff? In the simplest terms, Biden’s bluff is the latest version of what President George H.W. Bush, after the demise of the Soviet Union, proudly called the “new world order.” After defeating Donald Trump, Biden announced to his allies in Europe that “America is back,” which was his way of saying “my version of America is great again,” the version that uses its military reach to protect its business interests across the globe.

In a New York Times dated January 24, national security expert, Fiona Hill, who served under presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump, claims that Putin’s aim is not just to annex all or part of Ukraine. He isn’t looking at taking a pawn or even a bishop. He has the whole chessboard in view. Hill is undoubtedly correct about Putin’s real purpose, that he “wants to evict the United States from Europe.”

“Right now,” Hill writes, “all signs indicate that Mr. Putin will lock the United States into an endless tactical game, take more chunks out of Ukraine and exploit all the frictions and fractures in NATO and the European Union.” In other words, the current posture of the United States is offering Putin a winning hand (poker) or setting itself up for a checkmate.

Former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, who knows something about the stakes associated with warfare, makes a point concerning the nature of the risk for the US: “It is another thing altogether to speak only of the pain sanctions would cause Russia, with little thought, if any, to the real consequences that will be paid on the home front.” If events get out of control, as is likely if there is no diplomatic solution, the effects on the West’s economy will be far more dramatic than any damage that can be inflicted on Russia through sanctions. 

The US has refused to listen to the arguments not just of Putin, but also of foreign policy wonks such as John Mearsheimer. They believe that even the daydream of linking Ukraine with NATO crosses the reddest of lines, not just for Putin but for Russia itself. Failing to take that into account while insisting that it’s all a question of respecting an independent nation’s right to join a hostile military alliance represents a position that makes war inevitable.

In a 2021 Geopolitical Monitor with the title “Do We Live in Mearsheimer’s World?” Mahammad Mammadov cited “Mearsheimerian realism,” which he claims “sees Ukraine’s future as a stable and prosperous state in its being a ‘neutral buffer’ between multiple power poles, akin to Austria’s position during the Cold War. Accordingly, Russia is still a declining power with a one-dimensional economy and need not be contained.”

That seems like a solution most people in the West could live with… apart from the military-industrial complex, of course. And Democratic presidents seeking to prove they are not weaklings before this year’s midterm elections.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Coming to Terms With the Game Being Played on the Russia-Ukraine Border appeared first on 51�Թ�.

There are two solutions: attract more immigrants and institutionalize flexible work arrangements, especially for older Americans who aren’t ready or able to leave their jobs.

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Unfortunately, politicians and employers have shown reluctance to embrace these common-sense solutions. Despite promises to make sweeping to US immigration policy, President Joe Biden has been unwilling or unable to roll back most of the extreme policies of the Trump administration. To be fair, in the cases where Biden and his team have to make some changes, they have been by Republican-appointed judges to reimpose these policies, as in the case of the “” policy.  

In the workplace, some employers have refused to institute flexible work policies, leading to employee on calls to return to the office. Additionally, last summer, in 26 — all but Louisiana led by — ended extra unemployment benefits from the American Rescue Plan two to three months earlier than federally required, with some explicitly stating that the unemployed are “lazy” and wanting to collect government benefits. Governor Mike Parson of Missouri in May 2021 that continuing these unemployment programs “only worsens the workforce issues we’re currently facing. It’s time that we end these programs that have incentivized people to stay out of the workforce.” 

However, with the US averaging around confirmed cases of COVID-19 each day over the last week, the pandemic is far from over. American families are at their breaking point. Rather than relying on outdated racist and classist ideas about immigration and government support for families, politicians and employers wanting to stimulate the economy should focus on creative solutions to what is clearly an unprecedented crisis.  ]

Immigrant Workers

One solution is to build on the existing labor force by welcoming more immigrant workers and providing better benefits for their labor. While immigrants continue to be employed at a than those who are US-born, they make up just over one-sixth of the total US labor force. Immigrants have been on the of the COVID-19 pandemic working as essential workers at all levels. But at the same time, many immigrants, particularly Asian, faced increased during the early days of the pandemic. 

Politicians and the American public alike often invoke the idea that we are a “.” While some might argue that we never have , immigrants are an important part of American society and deserve better opportunities and benefits available to them.

Many immigrants in the US are not eligible for benefits, which makes them more vulnerable. The Migration Policy Institute estimates that at least 6 million work in industries hardest hit during the pandemic. Additionally, immigrant families have a of being food insecure. Thus, while immigrants take care of us, we do not return the favor.  

Flexible Working

The early retirements of older workers are more likely tied to concerns about health and safety around COVID-19 and an increasing desire for remote , yet many are not prepared financially for retirement. It would not be surprising if many returned to the workforce, at least part-time, at some point in the coming years. 

Industries, corporations, foundations and employers would be wise to recruit retirees, even for part-time positions. The older population has a wealth of experience, knowledge and the aptitude to mentor younger workers and immigrants. For example, in one of retired surgeons, more than half of participants were interested in serving as mentors to new surgeons and most were willing to do so even without compensation. Similarly, for , mentoring is a valuable experience for both retirees and new teachers.  

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To be sure, attracting immigrant workers by offering competitive salaries and benefits, and meeting workers’ need for flexible work arrangements might require employers to temporarily cut back on profits. However, making these investments in workers would show that employers are forward-thinking and respect their contributions.

With US population growth, employers will have a smaller pool of potential employees and will therefore need to offer better working conditions to attract workers. Additionally, 2021 saw American workers striking and unionizing with rates not seen in , with attributing this, in part, to pandemic working conditions. In short, employers can create better working conditions by choice or by force.

Politicians could ease the burden on companies by incentivizing flexible working policies and making it easier for Americans to combine work and family. But — even better — they could ease the burden on workers by providing direct support through paid leave, housing support, universal health care and other programs that would allow for a better quality of life for Americans. These supports would also make part-time work a more realistic option and empower families to make their own decisions about how best to combine work and family at any age.  

Reimagine Society

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed us as individuals and as a society. We cannot simply “get back to normal” despite calls from and to do so. After all, the US alone will likely reach 1 million COVID-19 deaths in the months to come. 

If politicians and employers want to stay operational, we must take this chance to reimagine our society. This means putting people over profits and creating workplaces that are responsive to the needs of people and their whole selves. 

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Facebook Rebrands Itself After a Fictional Dystopia

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Regrettably, people’s opinions on the metaverse currently depend on whether they view owning and operating a “digital self” through the lens of dystopia (“The Matrix”) or harmless fun (“Fortnite”). It is additionally unfortunate that an innovative space as dynamic and potentially revolutionary as the metaverse has become, in the public’s imagination, the intellectual property of one company.

But the fact that future users so readily associate the metaverse with Facebook is a temporary result of and a wave of , and will be replaced by firsthand experiences gained through our exposure to the metaverse itself, and not a single firm’s vision for it.

Meta Power

So, what does this all mean? How will the metaverse shape the way we do , the way we live our lives, the way we ourselves? Who owns the metaverse? Why do we need it? Who will be in charge?

Taking a lead from this stellar , if we simply replace the word “metaverse” with the word “internet” wherever we see it, all of a sudden, its application and significance become easier to grasp. It also becomes clear that Facebook’s rebranding as Meta is not as much a reference to the creation of the metaverse but more in line with the company’s desire to become this new territory’s most enthusiastic homesteaders. Facebook is not so much creating the metaverse as it is hoping — like every other firm and government should hope — that it won’t be left behind in this new world.

As far as the metaverse’s impact, its political implications might end up being its least transformative. In the United States, for instance, the digitization of political campaigning has carved a meandering path to the present that is too simplistically summed up thus: Howard Dean so that Barack Obama could so that Donald Trump could so that Joe Biden could drop us all off at .

Where this train goes next, both in the United States and globally, will be a function of individual candidates’ goals, and the all-seeing eye of algorithm-driven voter outreach. But the bottom line is that there will be campaign advertisements in the metaverse because, well, there are campaign advertisements everywhere, all the time.

More interesting to consider is how leaders will engage the metaverse once in power. Encouragingly, from the governmental side, capabilities and opportunities abound to redefine the manner in which citizens reach their representatives and participate in their own governance. Early public sector adopters of metaversal development have but scratched the surface of these possibilities.

For starters, the tiny island nation of Barbados has staked out the first . This openness to embracing technology and a renewed focus on citizen interaction evidenced in this move are laudable and demonstrate the metaverse’s democratic value as a means for increased transparency in government and truly borderless global engagement. Though novel, Barbados’ digital embassy is no gimmick. You can be sure that additional diplomatic missions will soon follow suit in establishing their presence in the metaverse and will perhaps wish they had thought to do so earlier.

Another happy marriage of innovation and democracy is underway in South Korea. Its capital city has taken the mission of digitizing democracy a step further by setting the ambitious goal of creating a by 2023 for the express purpose of transforming its citizenry’s access to municipal government. Things like virtual public hearings, a virtually accessible mayor’s office, virtual tourism, virtual conventions, markets and events will all be on the table as one of the world’s most economically and culturally rich metropolises opens its digital doors to all who wish to step inside.

Digital Twinning

Any time technology is employed in the service of empowering people and holding governments more accountable, such advancements should be celebrated. The metaverse can and must become a vehicle for freedom. It need not provide a tired, easy analog to Don DeLillo’s ominous underworld.

But then there’s . While some of its cities and state-run firms are making plans to embrace what functionality is afforded via metaversal innovation, there can be no question that the government in Beijing will have a tremendous say in what development, access and behavior is and isn’t permitted in any Chinese iterations of the metaverse. It is hard to imagine, for instance, certain , products or symbols making their way past the same level of censorship beneath which China already blankets its corner of cyberspace.

Yet China’s most intriguing metaverse-related trend involves the in digital property ownership occurring while its real-world real estate market continues to . Such a considerable of resources away from physical assets into digital ones mirrors the increasing popularity of as a safe haven from the risk of inflation. Call it a technological inevitability or a societal symptom of COVID-fueled pessimism, but the digital world now appears (to some) to present fewer risks and more forward-looking stability than the physical.   

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China may be an extreme example, but the need to balance transparency, openness and prosperity with safety and control will exist for all governments in the metaverse just as it does in non-virtual reality. Real-world governmental issues will not find easy answers in the metaverse, but they might find useful twins. And as is the case in the industry, the of democracy will give its willing practitioners the chance to experiment, to struggle, to build and rebuild, and to fail fast and often enough to eventually get some things right.

Championing commendable applications of this new technology in government and business will position the metaverse as a useful thing within the real world, something that enriches real lives, that serves real people — not the other way around.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Welcome to the Metaverse: The Peril and Potential of Governance appeared first on 51�Թ�.

In the world of Silicon Valley, an entrepreneur whose first startup fails gets up, dusts off and returns to the race. The venture capitalists will often look at a second effort after the first one fails as proof of courage and resilience. Three- or four-time losers, however, will usually get the message that it may not be worth trying again. In the meantime, the venture capitalist will have removed them from their files.

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Some privileged people and institutions exist who appear to be spared the indignity of having to retreat after a pattern of failure. The Afghanistan Papers revealed how the repeated of US military leaders over decades not only did not require them to return to their studies, but duly rewarded them for their service.

Then there is the US Department of Defense itself. In November 2021, Reuters offered startling headline: “U.S. Pentagon fails fourth audit but sees steady progress.” Since 1990, Congress has obliged all government institutions to conduct a thorough audit. The Pentagon got a late start but they are already at their fourth audit. And they have consistently failed. But like a backward pupil in an elementary school class, the authorities note that despite consistent failure, they should be encouraged for making progress. Will they prove to be better at failing the next time?

The Reuters article reveals the source of the government’s hope. It isn’t about performance. Like everything else in our society of spectacle, it’s all about favorability ratings. Our civilization has elevated the notion of ratings to the ultimate measure of virtue. Mike McCord, the Pentagon’s CFO, explains why, despite the failure, there is no need to worry. “The department continues to make steady progress toward achieving a favorable audit opinion.”

Our Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Audit opinion:

The rigorous standard by which the most sacred part of the US government, the only one that has achieved the status of an object of worship, will be judged by

Contextual Note

Opinion is famously fickle, never more so than in the hyperreal world of politics. Like the wind, it can change direction at a moment’s notice. Political professionals have become adept at forcing it to change. That is what political marketers are paid to do. And they measure their success by shifts in the largely unstable numbers that appear in the ratings. Everything becomes focused on the numbers produced by surveys of opinion.

Concerning the Pentagon’s audit, McCord did mention some impressive numbers that went beyond registering opinion alone. The results of the failed audit revealed “more than $3.2 trillion in assets and $3 trillion in liabilities.” Learning that the Pentagon’s balance sheet is $200 billion in the black can only be encouraging. Any entrepreneur knows what that means. In case of forced liquidation, there would be a valuable stockpile of usable weapons to be sold to the highest bidder and still money left over to pay off all the debts. Or, more likely, the whole operation could be profitably sold to a competitor, say, Canada, Mexico, France or Israel at an even higher valuation. China would be excluded from consideration because of the feat, perhaps at the UN, that such a merger would produce a global monopoly.

Reuters reassures us that optimism is in the air: “As the audits mature and testing expands, Department of Defense leaders expect findings to increase in number and complexity.” They underline the encouraging thought that “successive sweeps could expose more profound problems.” Even the idea of exposing “more profound problems” is promising. It means we may one day understand what’s behind the discovery that the DoD — to a previous audit — left $21 trillion of expenditure unaccounted for over the past two decades.

The commentator Jonathan Cohn an obvious fact that should resonate with the public in light of recent haggling in Congress over President Joe Biden’s agenda. “None of the ‘centrist’ Democrats or Republicans who complained about the cost of the Build Back Better Act,” Cohn notes, “have said a peep about the ever-growing Pentagon budget — and the fact that it is somehow still growing even despite the Afghanistan pullout. It has grown about 25% in size over the past five years, even though the Pentagon just failed its fourth audit last month.”

In his book, “War is a Racket,”, the most decorated senior military officer of his time, Smedley Butler, the underlying logic that still holds true nearly a century later. “The normal profits of a business concern in the United States,” Butler wrote, “are six, eight, ten, and sometimes twelve percent. But war-time profits — ah! that is another matter — twenty, sixty, one hundred, three hundred, and even eighteen hundred per cent — the sky is the limit. All that traffic will bear. Uncle Sam has the money. Let’s get it.”

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A lot of corporations — with names like, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Halliburton and Northrup — have managed to “get it.” Those corporations are very careful with their own audits because they know that failing an audit, even once, let alone four times, would cancel their ability to keep milking the Pentagon’s cash cow. Luckily, the Pentagon doesn’t have to worry about losing its relationship with those corporations simply on the grounds that it failed yet another audit.

Historical Note

Ratings, and more particularly favorability ratings, are numbers with no stable meaning. Instead of reflecting reality, they merely register the state of shifting opinions about reality. And yet, ratings have become a dominant force in 21^st-century US culture. This is perhaps the most significant sign of a fatal decline of democracy itself.

The idea of democracy first launched in Athens nearly three millennia ago aimed at spreading the responsibility for government among the population at large. Inspired by the Athenian example, the founders of the United States and drafters of the US Constitution realized that what worked reasonably well for the governance of a city-state could not be directly applied to a nation composed of 13 disparate British colonies. Drawing on England’s parliamentary tradition, the founders substituted representative democracy for Athenian direct democracy.

Instead of sharing the responsibility of governance with the general population, the new republic offered the people a simple tool: the vote. It was accompanied by the idea that any (male) citizen could seek to stand for election. The founders hadn’t fully appreciated the fact that this might lead to the constitution of a separate ruling class, an elite group of people who could compete amongst themselves to use the tools of governance to their partisan ends.

Nor did they anticipate the consequences of industrialization of the Western world that was about to unfold over the next two centuries. It would not only consolidate the notion of political organization focused on partisan ends, it would ultimately spawn the “science” of electoral marketing. With the birth of technology-based mass media in the 20^th century, that science would focus exclusively on opinion, branding and ratings, leaving governance as an afterthought.

By the 21^st century, politics became totally dominated by the race for popularity and the cultivation of strategies to that end. The emergence of television in the second half of the 20^th century, coupled with the presence of telephones in every home, sealed the deal. The science of polling was born. Once that occurred, everything in public life became subject to ratings. In the world of politics, the needs of “we the people” were fatally subordinated to a focus on the shifting and increasingly manipulable opinions of those same people. The science of electoral marketing definitively replaced the idea of public service and the quality of governance as the dominant force in political culture.

The only trace of uncertainty left is the famous “margin of error” attributed to polls, usually estimated at around 3%. In contrast, the Pentagon’s margin of error is measured in multiple trillions of dollars.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Weekly Devil’s Dictionary on 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The Pentagon’s Latest Glorious Failure appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The reason for this curious phenomenon, similar to what occurred for the movie “Bonnie and Clyde” 55 years ago, lies in the fact that, while capturing the mood of an epoch focused on the very real possibility of the collapse of civilization, as a work of art, the movie is visibly flawed in a number of ways that no professional critic could ignore. Given McKay’s track record and the star power he brought together in the case, the critics felt that the film failed to live up to its advertised promise. 

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When the viewership statistics began appearing, the disconnect between critical assessment and the public’s appreciation became flagrant. “Don’t Look Up” the record for Netflix viewership for a new release. The gap in judgment between the critics and the public itself became a topic for discussion in the media. 

Some may see this as a demonstration of the inexorable loss of prestige of movie reviewers in the era of social media. Once respected pillars of popular journalism, most consumers now see cinema critics as irrelevant. This has something to do with the ambiguity of cinema itself. Traditionally consumed in a dark movie theater as a collective experience amid a responsive audience, most people now watch their movies at home on television. The distinction between movies and TV has become increasingly blurred. 

Getting Talked About

No one doubts that audiences were drawn to the film principally through the appeal of the star-studded cast featuring, among others, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, Ariana Grande and Cate Blanchett. But there may be another cultural factor that complements the roster of stars: the power of the traditional and non-traditional news media. That includes the uncountable bevy of pundits on social media. Commentary on the news has become another form of entertainment, thanks in part to its much lower production costs than Hollywood movies. 

Once the critics had done their job, most outlets in the US treated the film’s release and reception as a news story in and of itself. The media began talking about the movie, no longer in terms of its artistic success or failure, but as a kind of psy-op designed to sensitize the public to the urgency of combating climate change. Anyone with access to Netflix felt obliged to watch it. 

By becoming not only a much-viewed work of entertainment but more significantly an object of endless discussion in the media, the movie achieved the director’s real goal: getting talked about. The attention the media is still giving “Don’t Look Up,” weeks after its Netflix release, reveals more about the state of US culture than it does about the movie itself. It highlights the paradox, specifically targeted in the movie’s satire, of the public’s addiction to the media’s blather and its growing distrust of all institutions, including the very media to which the public is addicted.

Were the Critics Right?

In the case of “Bonnie and Clyde,” released in 1967, Newsweek’s Joe Morgenstern “initially panned [the movie], only to come back and proclaim it (wisely) a great movie,” to David Ansen (a later Newsweek critic and a friend of mine). Morgenstern penned a second review celebrating Penn’s accomplishment. I’m not sure I agree with David about it being a great movie, but “Bonnie and Clyde” became such a popular success that Morgenstern had to sit down and rethink the cultural conditions that made it, if not a great movie, then at least a movie for its time. And what a time it was! 1967 is remembered as the year of the “summer of love,” a propitious moment for any cultural artifact that could be perceived as being “for its time.” More significantly, “Bonnie and Clyde” became a trend-setter for the next generation of filmmakers.

Can we compare our era with the ebullition of the sixties? Can “Don’t Look Up” pretend to be the “Bonnie and Clyde” of the 21^st century? Because of COVID-19 and Donald Trump, 2020 and 2021 may be remembered by future generations as two years as significant as 1967, 1968 (assassinations of MLK and RFK, “mai 68”) or 1969 (Woodstock). Then again, future generations may simply remember these two years as a period of gradual but certain decline marked by a debilitating indifference to the impending crisis that “Don’t Look Up” wants us to respond to.

McKay intended “Don’t Look Up” to be a satire. The mood of the movie is clearly satirical, but some critics noticed that the plot and characterization easily broke the mood, slipping dangerously at times into parody. True satire treats a serious subject seriously before introducing the elements of ironic perspective that subtly or unsubtly undermine the characters’ pretention of seriousness. For a director, this means controlling both the timing and the gap between the sober and the comic.

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Hollywood satire, which always employs humor, has traditionally fallen into two broad categories: dramatic and comic. The Marx Brothers were specialized in comic satire. It achieved its effects through immediate exaggeration of recognizable social behaviors, almost always including the relationship between a woman from the American upper class (Margaret Dumont), an upstart male gold digger (Groucho) and a penniless southern European immigrant trying to make it in WASP (White Anglo Saxon Protestant) America (Chico). 

In this Marxian (rather than Marxist) world, the three brothers in real life represented three different types of cultural marginality. Chico’s character comprised both Italians and Jews; the mute Harpo represented an extreme form of marginality, combining the handicapped and the poet (and natural musician). He even had his place in the poor black community (Harpo’s “” in “A Day at the Races”). All three of the Marx Brothers embodied, in contrasting ways, characters bent on destabilizing a self-satisfied majority that could neither understand them nor integrate them into their putative order. The very existence of the three non-conformists challenged the legitimacy of the institutions they interacted with. 

Comic vs. Dramatic Satire 

The Marx Brothers may have produced raucous comedy intended to provoke non-stop laughter, but their humor was built on a foundation of social satire. Audiences didn’t necessarily think about it in that way. They didn’t exit the movie theater reflecting deeply on the presumption, injustice and cluelessness of the ruling class. But the worlds and situations the Marx Brothers interacted with skewered a range of institutional targets: political and military (“Duck Soup”), academic (“Horsefeathers”), the arts (“A Night at the Opera”) or even medical (“A Day at the Races”). In so doing, they subtly altered the audience’s perception of the class system in the US and some of its most prestigious institutions. All of these movies appeared during the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Like Jonathan Swift in “Gulliver’s Travels,” the Marx Brothers created parallel worlds, clearly differentiated from our own, in which recognizable social and transactional behavior became exaggerated to the point of producing immediate comic effects that highlighted the illogic and even injustice of the real world. Like the Marx Brothers, Charlie Chaplin, W.C. Fields and Laurel and Hardy produced variants on the same principle of comic satire. Each created and gave life to distinctive marginal personalities, at odds with respectable society and usually defeated by it. 

Dramatic satire has in common with comic satire the aim of making its points by producing laughter. But it follows a radically different set of rules. Instead of throwing absurdity straight in the face of the audience by staging wildly exaggerated behavior designed to challenge and upset the veneer of seriousness attributed to what is presented as “normal society,” dramatic satire first takes the time to create the audience’s belief in a realistic situation that will later be challenged by an unexpected event or external force. It turns around an anomaly that erupts to provoke reactions from a range of characters unprepared for the surprise. 

In other words, dramatic satire gives deadpan seriousness a head start. It is the gap between the nature of the anomalous event and the quality of the characters’ reaction that produces what comes across not as the pretext for a joke, but as unintentional humor. In the history of cinema, the most perfect example of dramatic satire — and the most appropriate to compare with “Don’t Look Up” — is Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 film, “Dr. Strangelove” or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb,” the archetypal doomsday satire. McKay was acutely aware of that when he made “Don’t Look Up.”&�Բ�����;

Kubrick’s drama literally turns around the plot device of a Soviet “doomsday machine” that, if triggered, will destroy human life on the surface of the earth. The plot begins in total seriousness, like any dramatic movie. The key to its brilliance as satire is the gradual pace at which the exaggerated behavior of some of the characters unfolds. Playing their designated roles to the hilt, the politicians and generals become overtly comic when they go one step (and sometimes two or three) beyond what is reasonable. 

There are several points in the first third of the movie where it becomes apparent to the viewer that they are watching a comedy. But this happens gradually and only through significant, but credible details in the dialogue, such as Brigadier General Ripper’s obsession with “purity of essence.” As the plot develops, at key moments, the comedy can erupt at the highest level of absurdity, as when President Muffley : “Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here, this is the war room.” Such absurdly comic moments emerge logically, without ever undermining the fundamentally dramatic plot structure as it builds toward a final crescendo that will be followed by an instantaneous release.

Adam McKay’s Compromise

McKay’s script attempts to respect the same principle of dramatic satire as “Dr. Strangelove.” The initial scenes reveal the introverted scientist (DiCaprio) and his research student (Lawrence) making the disquieting discovery of a comet certain to strike the earth within half a year. The impending catastrophe is fully confirmed before the audience can get a reasonable feeling for the characters. That is the movie’s first glaring flaw. The apparent tension seems unjustified. The audience doesn’t yet care enough about the characters to start seriously worrying about whether they or the earth they (and we) stand on will survive the comet’s assault. 

A quick transition leads us to the corridors of the White House in Washington, DC. We spend some time with the troubled scientists who are kept waiting before meeting President Orlean (Meryl Streep). She turns out to be a clever composite of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. There’s even a gratuitous hint of a link to Barack Obama, the secret smoker.

The characters in “Dr. Strangelove” are each given the time to appear as reasonable, conscientious, professionally competent human beings. Their irrationality and moral failure only appear as they attempt to deal with the impending threat. In contrast, “Don’t Look Up’s” president and colleagues are simply the embodiments of the algorithm that now dominates US politics, aimed at winning elections. This is where the mood of the movie moves from satire to parody.

We then move to New York where a serious news bureau modeled after The New York Times and a daytime TV interview show demonstrate the same algorithmic principle predicated this time essentially on optimizing ratings. At this point, the spectacle of increasingly trivial behavior by all the establishment parties definitively takes over.

What follows is a dynamically edited series of acts and scenes that riff on the gap between the serious intentions of the scientists and the endless venality and psychological triviality of politicians, entertainers and techno-capitalists. The specific critique of institutions and the media is usually on target. But it too often appears to be an exercise of making fun of what is visible every day in our media simply by duplicating its most consistent behaviors.

The Difficulty of Satirizing Hyperreality

In other words, McKay’s parody suffers from the already hyperreal nature of what it seeks to critique. The culture it puts on display, already accessible in today’s media, is too recognizable and predictable, in a certain sense, too true to (hyperreal) life. It may be a thankless task to try for comic effect by further exaggerating anything in the real world that is already so exaggerated in its triviality and cynical efficiency that on its own it tends to be laughable. McKay ends up faithfully reproducing a world that, through its media, endlessly parodies itself.

That may be what made the critics feel uncomfortable. The actors do their best to parody what it already a parody. The movie rarely achieves the sense of queasy discomfort satire normally seeks to inspire. “Dr. Strangelove” does so by slowly building that discomfort to a fever pitch. Kubrick shows his characters thinking, strategizing, trying to adapt to an unusual situation. McKay’s characters too often appear to be reading from a script. We never get the impression that they are grappling with anything. Instead, they are playing out their algorithmically determined roles.

Perhaps the real lesson, worth being talked about, from “Don’t Look Up” is that in a world so dominated by the hyperreality projected not just by our media but also by our politicians, technology gurus and even academics, true satire is no longer possible. When the media reaches the level of superficiality and sheer venality that it has achieved today, as revealed in every scene of “Don’t Look Up,” the link to reality in today’s culture is too tenuous for effective political satire to be produced.

Hollywood Satire and Contemporary History

Over the past century, Hollywood has produced many successful and indeed unforgettable satires. They fall into a variety of styles and with a wide range of comic techniques. “Duck Soup” (Marx Brothers), “Blazing Saddles” (Mel Brooks), “M*A*S*H”(Robert Altman), “Mulholland Drive” (David Lynch) and many others stand as great Hollywood satires that achieved their effect by creating largely unbelievable frameworks that become believable by virtue of the director’s control of exaggeration, coupled with the capacity to build a coherent intricacy of contrasts and conflicts in the plotting.

“Don’t Look Up” never quite makes up its mind about whether it wishes to embrace “Dr. Strangelove’s” focused drama or the liberated wackiness of Mel Brooks. That may be why the critics found it to be an unsatisfying hybrid. In its defense, however, we should recognize — and future generations should note — that it does stand as an effective parody of the most predictable behavior of public figures incapable of responding to an existential crisis because they have been programmed according to a different set of algorithmic rules. For that reason, the film should be considered a resounding success. It has raised in the public forum the most troubling question concerning the climate crisis: that even our awareness of it cannot serve to find a solution. The system we are trying to save is built to resist anyone’s saving it.

For all its cinematic quality, brilliant humor and critical success, “Dr. Strangelove” had no immediate impact on the arms race. Still, it is worth noting that when Ronald Reagan was elected president, sixteen years after the movie’s release, as he was making the rounds of the federal government’s , upon visiting the Pentagon he “asked the chief of staff to show him the war room of Dr. Strangelove.” The Hollywood actor, who had spent plenty of time in his earlier career in sound studios, believed Kubrick’s set was real. 

Reagan’s public anti-communist philosophy was not radically different from Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper’s as detailed in “Dr. Strangelove.” The man who, before his election, “had argued that the United States was falling behind the Soviets in the nuclear competition” personally initiated the negotiations that led to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (), “the first treaty that required U.S. and Soviet/Russian reductions of strategic nuclear weapons.” Could it have been Reagan’s memory of the lessons of “Dr. Strangelove” that ultimately guided him towards that decision?

A Tale of Two Cold Wars

The original Cold War nuclear arms race Kubrick denounced in his movie is still going on to this day. Perhaps more than ever it can be triggered in a heartbeat. In contrast, climate change promises a slow agony, whose groans may already be discernible. �������������’s current president, Joe Biden, says he wants to rein it in but seems incapable of exercising any real leadership to achieve that goal. 

At the time Kubrick was shooting “Dr. Strangelove,” John F. Kennedy was still president. In his first year of office, JFK called for the of nuclear weapons “before they abolish us.” In the summer of 1963, he initiated the first nuclear test ban . Four months later, he was successfully “abolished” himself in the streets of Dallas.

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It appears clear now that, willingly or unwillingly, President Biden will accomplish little to limit the effects of climate change. Seeking to raise the stakes of the US rivalry with China and increasing the pressure on Russia over Ukraine in a spirit that sometimes resembles a new cold war, he has also made it abundantly clear that he has no intention of banishing nuclear weapons. In the first week of 2022, the White House affirmed the that “nuclear weapons—for as long as they continue to exist—should serve defensive purposes, deter aggression, and prevent war.”

The first cold war ended in 1991 with the fall of the Soviet Union. The lesson of “Dr. Strangelove” no longer lives in any president’s memory. But can we suppose or perhaps even hope that a future president who happened to watch “Don’t Look Up” at the end of 2021 will, like Reagan, remember its message and dare, even decades later, to take some kind of serious action to address it? That seems unlikely. As President Orlean pointed out, unless the end of the world is scheduled to take place before the next presidential or midterm election, there are more important things to attend to.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The Real Message of Adam McKay’s “Don’t Look Up” appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Besides the Eiffel Tower and foie gras, France is known for having produced an intellectual class that, over the centuries, from Diderot’s ���Գ�����DZ�é�徱�� to Derrida’s critical theory, has successfully exported its products to the rest of the world.

France’s intellectual history demonstrates that alongside traditional social classes, a nation may cultivate something called the intellectual class, a loose network of people who collectively produce ideas about society that are no longer restricted to the traditional categories of philosophy, science and literature. Prominent intellectuals merge all three in their quest to interpret the complexity of the world and human history.

Justice in the US Is an Art Form

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French intellectuals are perceived as floating freely in the media landscape. American intellectuals, in contrast, tend to be tethered to universities or think tanks. They publish and sometimes appear in the media, but with a serious disadvantage, having to compete in shaping public discourse with far more influential media personalities such as Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson or even Tucker Carlson.

A stale historical cliché compares Europe with ancient Greece and the US with the Roman Empire. Rome and the US both produced a vibrant and distinct popular culture, with a taste for gaudy spectacle and superficial entertainment. But in Roman times, plebeian culture co-existed with a patrician culture cultivated by Rome’s ruling class. Modern democracy roundly rejects the very idea of a ruling class. Commercialism has turned out to be the great equalizer. Everyone in America is expected to share the same culture of movies, TV and popular music. The same applies to popular ideas, whether political, scientific or economic.

Amy Wax is a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania who is not shy about expressing her ideas, notably her updated version of class differences. She is convinced that what she calls “bourgeois culture” replaced Rome’s patrician culture in the US but is in danger of extinction. Wax believes everyone in the US, including recent immigrants, should share that culture. Anyone who resists should be excluded. She also thinks that race and ethnicity are reliable indicators of the capacity of immigrants to conform.

As a young woman, Wax paced the halls and absorbed the wisdom spouted in lectures at Yale, Oxford, Harvard and Columbia University. Along the way, she amassed the kind of elite educational experience that identifies her as a distinguished exemplar of the modern intellectual class. With such impeccable credentials, it is fair to assume that she is not only well-informed but has learned the fine art of responsible thinking, a quality the media attributes to such luminaries.

So could it have come about that such a distinguished thinker and ranking member of the intellectual class should now be accused of sharing the kind of white supremacist attitude Hillary Clinton (Wellesley, Yale) famously attributed to the “basket of deplorables”? The intellectual class in the US uniformly and loudly rejects all forms of racism. If Wax expresses ideas that echo racist theses, it would indicate that she is betraying her own intellectual class. Appropriately, her university acknowledged her betrayal when it her “xenophobic and white supremacist” discourse.

In a podcast in late December, Wax went beyond her previously expressed that the US would “be better off with more whites and fewer nonwhites.” On that earlier occasion, she specifically targeted blacks, whom she categorizes as intellectually inferior. This time, she , whose reputation for academic excellence and scientific achievement most people admire. She justified her attack in these terms: “A�� long as most Asians support Democrats and help to advance their positions, I think the United States is better off with fewer Asians and less Asian immigration.”

When the host of the podcast, Professor Glenn Loury, questioned her logic, she evoked “the danger of the dominance of an Asian elite in this country” who may “change the culture.” Wax’s fear of domination by a foreign race and her defense of white civilization could hardly convince Loury, who is black. Loury countered that the Asians Wax wants to exclude are “creating value” and “enlivening the society.”

“How do we lose from that?” he asks. In response, Wax offered her own rhetorical question: “Does the spirit of liberty beat in their breast?”

This week’s Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Spirit of liberty:

�������������’s supreme civic virtue that consists of pursuing self-interested goals and conducting aggressive assaults against whatever one finds annoying

Contextual Note

Wax offered her own definition of the spirit of liberty, which she identified as the virtue associated with “people who are mistrustful of centralized concentrations of authority who have a kind of ‘don’t tread on me’ attitude, who are focused … on our freedoms, on our liberties, on sort of small- scale personal responsibility who are non-conformist in good ways.”

Apart from the fact that Wax is attributing a cultural attitude to “A��ians” (more than half of humanity), her idea of liberty reflects feelings associated with aggressive, nationalistic historical memes (for example, “don’t tread on me”) rather than the kind of political concept we might expect from a serious intellectual. In his 1859 essay “On Liberty,” John Stuart Mill defined it as the “protection against the tyranny of political rulers,” analyzing it in terms of the individual’s relationship with authority, not as a “spirit” or attitude. But Mill was English and, unlike Americans, the English are disinclined to celebrate attitude.

Wax, who is Jewish, paradoxically complained that Jews “have a lot to answer for … numerically through their predominance.” She derides their “susceptibility to the idealistic, pie-in-the-sky socialist ideas.” When Loury accuses her of appealing to a stereotype, she objects that there’s nothing wrong with stereotyping when it is used correctly.” Just as Wax approves of non-conformity “in good ways” she condones “correct” stereotyping. She believes herself to be the arbiter of what’s good and correct.

Historical Note

Wax shares with Fox News host Tucker Carlson a sense of legitimate domination of what she calls “the tradition of the legacy population,” identified as the traditional white Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) majority. Wax aligns with cultural nationalists like Samuel Huntington, whose book “Who Are We: America’s Great Debate?” — following his famous “The Clash of Civilizations: And the Remaking of the World Order” — preached for the reaffirmation of the political and moral values transmitted by the WASP founders of American culture 400 years ago.

The Weatherhead Center for International Affairs of Harvard University up the components of the Puritans’ culture: “the English language, Protestant values, individualism, religious commitment, and respect for law.” The culture’s admirers routinely forget that their respect for law might mean disrespecting the law of the indigenous populations of the land they chose to occupy. Enforcing that respect sometimes translated as genocidal campaigns conducted in the name of that law. It also embraced slavery based on racial criteria.

Wax’s up-to-date WASP culture, which she prefers to call “bourgeois culture,” no longer requires genocide or slavery to prevail. Her defense of a largely imaginary legacy culture has nevertheless led her to embrace a racist view of humanity. While decrying the multicultural “wokism” that she believes now dominates academic culture, she appears to believe 19^th-century France rather than the Yankee Revolution sets the standard to live up to.

Wax is right to lament the very real breakdown in �������������’s intellectual culture. The trendy woke moralizing so prevalent in American academia deserves the criticism she levels at it. Both her attitude and that of woke scholars derive from the same puritanical tradition that insists on imposing its understanding of morality on everyone else.

Wax’s choice of “bourgeois culture” as the desirable alternative to wokism seems curious. Bourgeois culture is identified with the mores of a dominating urban upper-middle class that emerged in 19^th century France that projected the image of a vulgar version of the aristocracy. It produced a culture specific to France, very different from the democratic culture of the United States at the time.

This highlights another difference. Whereas the French intellectual class, even when indulging in its traditional disputes, tends to agree on the meaning of the terms it fabricates, American intellectuals routinely bandy about terms they never seek to define or understand and use them to punish their enemies. That is what Wax has done with bourgeois culture and, in so doing, she has declared multiple races and ethnicities her enemies. 

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary. After four years of daily appearances, 51�Թ�’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary moves to a weekly format.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Amy Wax and the Breakdown of �������������’s Intellectual Culture appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The Financial Sector Needs to Address Whistleblower Retaliation

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How sustainable this period of prosperity will prove, however, is another question. Indeed, while the four major auditors — Deloitte, KPMG, PwC and Ernst & Young — are registering their strongest collective financial performance since the  20 years ago, the industry has yet to undergo the systemic overhaul necessary to ward off another Enron-scale incident. As high-profile scandals and legal battles have multiplied, it’s ever clearer that the UK must implement more robust and meaningful regulation of the auditing industry.

Still Mired in Scandals 

As recently , the auditing giants have all posted their strongest financial results since the 2002 Enron scandal led to the collapse of one-time competitor Arthur Andersen, shrinking the Big Five to today’s Big Four. Indeed, the auditing industry has been a standout performer amidst the pandemic, steadily outpacing the broader economy with the Big Four’s advisory arms reaping a particular windfall as businesses seek expertise on how to recover from the pandemic and protect themselves from future economic downturns.

The wave of mergers and acquisitions deals and increased spending on services such as environmental social and governance (ESG) consulting have given an impressive bump to auditors’ bottom lines. The Big Four a total of $167.3 billion in revenue this financial year, up 7% on 2019-20. Of the four,  experienced the greatest increase, with its global revenue jumping 10% to reach $32.1 billion. , meanwhile, reported a 7.3% rise in overall turnover, including 19.6% growth in its strategy consulting arm.  rose 5.5% to $50.2 billion, while  increased sales by 2% to the overall revenue of $45 billion, with its advisory sector growing by 3.1%.

Unfortunately, this impressive financial performance hasn’t been matched by a corresponding uptick in standards. While auditors have tried to deflect blame — the UK boss of PwC recently  that criticism of the audit industry from politicians and regulators is damaging the sector’s reputation — there’s little doubt that the industry continues to be embroiled in scandals, with all four firms associated with high-profile cases.

In one of the latest instances, KPMG is being for $600 million over its allegedly sloppy auditing of collapsed private equity firm Abraaj. In its heyday, the Dubai-based fund managed some $14 billion in assets, with Abraaj founder  selling himself as an ESG trailblazer to the global political and financial elite. Abraaj turned out to be a massive , and the firm  amid allegations of mass fraud and misuse of funds. 

KPMG played a particular role in the debacle, with the firm’s Lower Gulf affiliate  of failing to identify the irregularities at Abraaj and not maintaining sufficient independence from the troubled fund. In particular, red flags were raised by executives bouncing between posts at Abraaj and KPMG, as well as the fact that KPMG also audited companies in which Abraaj invested.

KPMG is also facing other investigations, including  from UK financial regulators over apparently providing misleading information and failing to spot discrepancies in its auditing of collapsed construction firm Carillion. Meanwhile, EY  of “actively concealing” a six-year fraud from investors during its auditing of Gulf-based NMC Health, which comes as the auditor deals with high-profile auditing failures with  and .

Deloitte was a record £15 million ($20.3 million) in 2020 for failing to “act with integrity and objectivity” in its audit of software firm Autonomy. PwC, meanwhile, has faced fines and lawsuits for audits of firms including  and racing car dealer , and its Frankfurt offices were recently  over a suspected tax evasion scheme.

In total, the Big Four have been  £42 million in the UK in the past three years for flawed audits — a startling sum that underscores the need to more effectively regulate the sector.

Regulation Needed

The trouble is that, two decades on from Enron, regulation hasn’t been beefed up sufficiently to curb abuses in the auditing sector. An independent review found that the current UK regulator, the Financial Reporting Council (FRC), is “rather ramshackle” and should be urgently  with a strengthened body with more accountability to Parliament. 

Plans for such a replacement have yet to materialize concretely, and the government’s appetite for audit reform is worryingly meager. Recent  that ministers are planning to water down suggested reforms — including replacing planned legislation to make company directors more accountable over financial reporting with a weaker, more narrowly applicable UK corporate code — are alarming given the deeply rooted problems in the auditing sector.

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Indeed, it is long past time to carry out a thorough overhaul of financial services regulation in the UK and install robust corporate governance to prevent another crisis on par with Enron. As American investigative journalist David Hilzenrath has , there are critical lessons to be learned from Enron, such as the imperative to end the multiple conflicts of interest that exist within the auditing sector, including close relationships and even “revolving doors” that develop between companies, auditors and regulators.

These can be tackled with measures such as ensuring that auditors are independently assigned rather than company-appointed, frequently rotating auditors, and instituting a politically accountable regulator with the power to implement penalties at an earlier stage before the damage has been done.

The UK government should heed the warnings that countless scandals have provided and implement suggested regulatory changes before it’s too late. There’s little point in championing the successes of the professional services sector if this is just paving the way for a headline-grabbing crisis that brings it all crashing down.  

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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