;)
April 6, 2022
Late Morning Update:
The New York Times' live updates of developments Wednesday in Russia's war on Ukraine are here: "A day after President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine demanded a tougher global response to mounting evidence of atrocities by Russian forces, European Union and NATO leaders were meeting on Wednesday to consider additional sanctions against Moscow and military assistance to Ukraine. E.U. leaders were weighing a ban on buying Russian coal and a ban on Russian vessels in European ports, and deliberations were extended by a day to Thursday." ~~~
~~~ The Washington Post's updates for Wednesday are here: "The Biden administration is escalating efforts to punish Russia amid global alarm over civilian deaths, imposing new sanctions that will include two of the country's largest banks as well as ... Vladimir Putin's adult children, said White House National Economic Council Director Brian Deese. The announcement comes as NATO foreign ministers are gathering in Brussels beginning Wednesday for discussions that include how to continue support for Ukraine, and to end fighting."
The Three Fs. Erin Doherty of Axios: "Democratic National Committee chair Jaime Harrison on Wednesday slammed the Republican Party, saying "it is a party built on fraud, fear and fascism" in an interview on MSNBC's Morning Joe. MB: I don't think Harrison likes Sen. Tom Cotton (Rrrr-Ark.) that much, either; Harrison described Cotton as a "little maggot-infested man."
This is a pretty helpful video; Chris Hayes explains the GQP. Thanks to RAS for the link. Related stories linked below: ~~~
Travis Gettys of the Raw Story: "A longtime aide and spokesperson for Steve Bannon was interviewed by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection this week. Alexandra Preate, who has been described as Bannon's 'consigliere' and reportedly worked with Donald Trump's White House staff on communications, was photographed at the 'Stop the Steal' rally that preceded the attack on the U.S. Capitol, and two sources confirmed that she met with congressional investigators, reported Rolling Stone." The Rolling Stone story is firewalled.
Matt Egan of CNN: "The Federal Reserve's fight against inflation will spark a recession in the United States that begins late next year, Deutsche Bank warned on Tuesday. The recession call -- the first from a major bank -- reflects growing concern that the Fed will hit the brakes on the economy so hard that it will inadvertently end the recovery that began just two years ago."
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David Smith & Jon Henley of the Guardian: "Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has given the UN security council a harrowing account of atrocities in his country and demanded that Russian leaders be 'brought to justice for war crimes'. A day after Joe Biden called for Putin to be held to account, Zelenskiy said there should be an international tribunal similar to the Nuremberg trials of Nazis after the second world war. There has been global revulsion at apparently deliberate civilian killings by Russian troops in Ukraine. Zelenskiy visited the town of Bucha on Monday after officials said the bodies of 410 civilians had been recovered from Kyiv-area towns after Russian troops withdrew. 'There is not a single crime that they would not commit there,' Zelenskiy said via video link and an interpreter. 'The Russians searched for and purposely killed anyone who served our country. They shot and killed women outside their houses. They killed entire families -- adults and children -- and they tried to burn the bodies.': (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~
~~~ Karen DeYoung & John Hudson of the Washington Post: "Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of war crimes Tuesday in a remote appearance before the U.N. Security Council that included gruesome video of dead bodies, challenging diplomats to take bold action or risk exposing the world body as a hollow institution."
Malachy Browne & Dmitriy Khavin of the New York Times: "New video has emerged that adds to mounting evidence of atrocities carried out while Russia's military occupied the suburban town of Bucha, northwest of Kyiv. The video shows a cyclist moving along a street in Bucha, dismounting and walking a bicycle around the corner onto a street occupied by Russian soldiers. As soon as the cyclist rounds the turn, a Russian armored vehicle fires several high-caliber rounds along the thoroughfare. A second armored vehicle fires two rounds in the direction of the cyclist. A plume of dust and smoke rises from the scene. The video is aerial footage recorded by Ukraine's military in late February, when Russian forces still held the town. It has been independently verified by The New York Times. Weeks later, after Russia withdrew from Bucha, a body in civilian clothes was filmed beside a bicycle in this precise location in a second video verified by The Times."
Oh, TuKKKer! Max Boot of the Washington Post: "Only someone born yesterday would be remotely surprised by the atrocities revealed in Bucha, Ukraine. Russian dictator Vladimir Putin has been committing war crimes since the day he took office. That makes it all the more sinister and enraging that he retains an influential rooting section of right-wing voters in the United States. The Pew Research Center finds that the number of Republicans expressing confidence in the Russian tyrant has, mercifully, declined from 37 percent in 2006 to just 7 percent today. But some of the loudest and most influential voices in the MAGA movement still refuse to support Ukraine or stop pushing Russian propaganda.... The worst offenders are also the most influential: ... Donald Trump and Fox 'News' host Tucker Carlson. Hey, Tucker, are you still rooting for Russia over Ukraine -- as you said you were in 2019?" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
The House Putin Caucus. Peter Weber of the Week: "The House on Thursday evening passed a nonbinding resolution reaffirming its 'unequivocal support for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as an alliance founded on democratic principles,' and calling on President Biden 'to use the voice and vote of the United States to establish a Center for Democratic Resilience within NATO headquarters,' to underscore the alliance's 'support for shared democratic values and committed to enhancing NATO's capacity to strengthen democratic institutions within NATO member, partner, and aspirant countries.' The resolution passed 362 to 63, with all 63 no votes coming from Republicans...." ~~~
~~~ William Saletan of the Bulwark: "After years of defending a pro-Putin American president and dismissing Russia's interference in American elections, Republicans have returned to their old shtick: accusing Democrats of being soft on Russia. Their hypocrisy is galling, but the bigger problem is that their depiction of the two parties is backward. In polls, Republicans are more dovish on Russia ... than Democrats are. And in Congress, the purveyors of isolationism, appeasement, and Russian propaganda are on the right, not the left.... [Twenty-one House Republicans have] swallowed a cocktail of isolationism, defeatism, partisan paranoia, and Russian disinformation. Here are the main pillars of their reasoning[.]"
Katie Rogers of the New York Times: "Former President Barack Obama returned to the White House on Tuesday, the first visit he had made since departing in January 2017, to celebrate a new policy that expands coverage under the Affordable Care Act, his signature domestic policy achievement.... The visit gave Mr. Obama and [President] Biden a moment or two to engage in the sort of light ribbing that appeared downright quaint by current Washington standards.... 'I intended to get health care passed even if it cost me re-election, which, for a while, looked like it might,' Mr. Obama said.... On Tuesday, the Biden White House announced a new policy that will fill one of the major remaining holes in coverage under the health law. The change, proposed as a new regulation, would allow the relatives of people with health coverage through their employer to qualify for financial assistance if they buy insurance on the Obamacare marketplaces."
Alex Gangitano & Hanna Trudo of the Hill: "The Biden administration is expected to announce another extension to the student loan pause this week, multiple sources told The Hill. The announcement could come as soon as Wednesday and would extend the moratorium on federal student loan payments and interest accrual past the current May 1 expiration date. "
DOJ Gets Around to Broadening Its Investigation of Insurrection. Alan Feuer, et al., of the New York Times: "According to a subpoena issued by the grand jury, [Justice Department] prosecutors are asking for records about people who organized or spoke at several pro-Trump rallies after the election. They presumably include two events in Washington in November and December 2020 that preceded the gathering on the Ellipse near the White House on Jan. 6, 2021, where ... Donald J. Trump told the crowd to descend on the Capitol. The subpoena is also seeking records about anyone who provided security at those events and about those who were deemed to be 'V.I.P. attendees.' Moreover, it requests information about any members of the executive and legislative branches who may have taken part in planning or executing the rallies, or tried to 'obstruct, influence, impede or delay' the certification of the presidential election."
Ivanka Speaks!. Luke Broadwater of the New York Times: "Ivanka Trump..., Donald J. Trump's eldest daughter, who served as one of his senior advisers, testified for about eight hours on Tuesday before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, according to people familiar with the matter. It was not immediately clear how revelatory her testimony was for the committee, but those familiar with the interview said Ms. Trump did not seek to invoke any privilege -- such as executive privilege or the Fifth Amendment, as other witnesses have done -- and broadly, if not garrulously, answered the panel's questions.... Ms. Trump and [her husband Jared] Kushner are among the highest-ranking Trump White House officials to testify before the committee. The interviews have been closed to the public as the panel conducts its work in secret." This is an update of a story linked yesterday afternoon.
Katelyn Polantz & Paul LeBlanc of CNN: "The House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol has obtained a cache of emails that right-wing lawyer John Eastman had sought to keep secret. The 101 emails -- exchanged between January 4 and January 7, 2021 -- were released to the committee after Judge David Carter ruled that Eastman had not made a sufficient claim to attorney-client privilege. One email, a draft memo for Rudy Giuliani, was obtained by the committee because the judge decided it was potentially being used to plan a crime. The memo recommended that then-Vice President Mike Pence reject some states' electors during the January 6 congressional meeting." The content of this story also is covered in Luke Broadwater's report on Ivanka Trump's testimony, linked above.
Josh Gerstein & Kyle Cheney of Politico: "A Virginia state court has disbarred Jonathon Moseley, an attorney who has represented a slew of high-profile Jan. 6 defendants, including a member of the Oath Keepers charged with seditious conspiracy, as well as several targets of the House select committee investigating the attack on the Capitol.... Moseley's troubles with the Virginia State Bar could imperil his ability to continue as an attorney for ... an array of other Jan. 6 litigation.... Moseley spent several years as a manager at the U.S. Department of Education, beginning in the Reagan Administration, and later worked for the conservative legal organization Judicial Watch, his website said." The Virginia Bar Association's Website listed violations against numerous professional rules. Moseley will appeal the decision.
Marie: Looks as if the Comte de Mar-a-Lardo sorta kinda accidentally admitted he lost the 2020 election: ~~~
~~~ Martin Pengelly of the Guardian: In that same Zoom interview with the historians -- story linked below -- "Describing his attempts to make South Korea pay more for US military assistance, Trump said Moon Jae-in, the South Korean president, was among the 'happiest' world leaders after the 2020 US election put Joe Biden in the White House. 'By not winning the election,' Trump said, 'he was the happiest man -- I would say, in order, China was -- no, Iran was the happiest. [Moon] was going to pay $5bn, $5bn a year. But when I didn't win the election, he had to be the happiest -- I would rate, probably, South Korea third- or fourth-happiest.' Trump also said 'the election was rigged and lost'." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
New Hampshire Congressional Race. Sam Levine of the Guardian & Agencies: "A former Trump administration official now running for Congress in New Hampshire voted twice during the 2016 primary election season, possibly violating federal voting law and leaving him at odds with the Republican party's intense focus on 'election integrity'. Matt Mowers, a leading Republican primary candidate hoping to unseat the Democratic representative Chris Pappas, cast an absentee ballot in New Hampshire's 2016 presidential primary, voting records show. At the time, Mowers served as the director of former New Jersey governor Chris Christie's presidential campaign.... Four months later, after Christie's campaign fizzled, Mowers cast another ballot in New Jersey's Republican presidential primary, using his parents' address to re-register in his home state.... Mowers ... was a senior adviser in Donald Trump's administration and later held a state department post...." MB: Senior advisor? What was his advice? "Vote early and often"?
The GQP. Donald Moynihan in a Washington Post Outlook opinion piece: "Republican senators questioning Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson at her Supreme Court nomination hearing didn't explicitly mention QAnon or its putative oracle, Q.... They didn't have to.... All Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) had to do to set the stage for the hearing was allege in tweets beforehand that Jackson's record on sex offender policies 'endangers our children.' Never mind that Hawley's attacks have been fact-checked and found wanting or that they were never raised in previous nomination hearings, for Jackson or for Trump judicial nominees with similar records.... The goal was to portray Jackson, and by extension Democrats, as players in the QAnon narrative that public institutions are overrun with child predators.... A spokeswoman for [Florida] Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) [was using Q language, too, when he] reframed [the 'Don't Say Gay' law] as an 'Anti-Grooming' bill. If you oppose the bill, 'you are probably a groomer,' she said.... No target is too big. 'Disney Goes Groomer' is the headline on a new article by Rod Dreher in the American Conservative." ~~~
~~~ Philip Bump of the Washington Post: "Upon learning that three moderate Republican senators -- Sens. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Susan Collins (Maine) and Mitt Romney (Utah) -- would support the Supreme Court nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) offered the most derogatory, simplistic disparagement she could muster. 'Murkowski, Collins, and Romney are pro-pedophile,' Greene wrote on Twitter. 'They just voted for #KBJ.'... To the second point, the Senate has not yet taken the vote to formally consent to Jackson's nomination. Nor is a vote in support of Jackson 'pro-pedophile' in any rational sense.... Before being elected to Congress, [Greene] was active in promoting the extremist QAnon ideology, a centerpiece of which is based on false claims that there's a cabal of powerful people who are engaged in abusing children.... Donald Trump Jr. claim[ed] the Jackson hearings show that Democrats are 'really doing their best to secure the pedophile vote for future elections.'... Fox News is now talking about pedophiles and child porn more than it is about socialists...." And Federalist loon Mollie Hemingway implied Mitt Romney might be into pedophilia because he voted against Jackson's confirmation as an appeals court judge and"[t]he only new info since he voted against her a few months ago was increased awareness of her 'soft-on-pedos' approach."
Welcome Back, Liars. Kate Conger, et al., of the New York Times: "On Tuesday, Twitter announced that [the world's richest man, Elon] Musk, 50, would be appointed to its 11-person board in a term that expires in 2024. That followed the revelation on Monday that Mr. Musk had accumulated a 9.2 percent stake in Twitter, making him its biggest shareholder. Mr. Musk has agreed not to own more than 14.9 percent of Twitter's stock or take over the company, which is based in San Francisco, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.... The addition of one of Twitter's most powerful users to its board has implications for a social network where world leaders, lawmakers, celebrities and more than 217 million users conduct their daily public discourse. Unlike some other Twitter board members, Mr. Musk did not sign an agreement that forbade him from influencing the company's policies. That could allow him to work with Mr. Agrawal on a futuristic vision for 'decentralized' social networking.... The plan jibes with Mr. Musk's, [Twitter co-founder Jack] Dorsey's and [Twitter CEO Parag] Agrawal's beliefs in unfettered free speech."
Eeeew, Ctd. Matthew Chapman of the Raw Story: "On Tuesday, The Daily Beast reported new details about Lauren Handy, the anti-abortion activist who was found with five fetuses in her home after authorities arrested her for obstructing patients for accessing a clinic in Washington, D.C.... Her group alleges that there were 110 more fetuses that they took from the facility -- and gave burial rites. They also allege that their actions aren't really theft. 'At a crowded Tuesday press conference, activists -- including Randall Terry, founder of the extremist anti-abortion group Operation Rescue -- said they wished to set the record straight about the fetuses that made national headlines last week,' reported Pilar Melendez. '"During the five days they were under my stewardship, the 115 victims of abortion violence were given funeral mass for upbaptized children and 110 ... were given a proper burial in a private cemetery," said Handy....' The five fetuses found in Handy's home, the group claims, were not buried because they supposedly had wounds that indicated a violent crime and they wanted to deliver them to the district medical examiner. The Daily Beast story, which is here, is firewalled.
Jessica Contrera of the Washington Post: Vaughn Smith, a carpet cleaner in the D.C. area, speaks eight languages fluently and can carry on conversations in another 37.
The Pandemic, Ctd.
Republicans Hold Hostage Covid Bill. Emily Cochrane of the New York Times: "An election-year dispute over immigration policy emerged on Tuesday as the latest obstacle to quick approval of a $10 billion coronavirus response bill, as Senate Republicans refused to advance the measure without a vote to keep in place pandemic-era border restrictions that President Biden has moved to lift. While lawmakers in both parties have said they support the money for vaccines, testing and therapeutics, Republicans blocked action on it on Tuesday, insisting that the chamber first vote to maintain the immigration policy, known as Title 42, which has restricted immigration at U.S. land borders since the beginning of the pandemic."
Beyond the Beltway
Michigan Congressional Race. Paul Kane of the Washington Post: Rep. Fred Upton, one of ten Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump last year, is retiring from Congress following a Michigan redistricting decision that would have pitted him against another Republican congressman.
Missouri Senate Race. Blake Hounshell & Leah Askarinam of the New York Times: "Lurid allegations of blackmail, sexual misconduct and child abuse would doom most politicians. Not Eric Greitens. Or at least not yet. Until recently, the former Missouri governor was the undisputed leader of the state's Senate race, despite facing years of scandals. Republicans have urged him to drop out amid fears that his possible victory in the Aug. 2 primary could hand a seat in the chamber to Democrats -- or at least force the G.O.P. to stomach an unpalatable candidate in a state that should be undisputed Republican turf. Pressure has grown on Greitens in recent weeks over allegations made in court filings by his ex-wife, Sheena Chestnut Greitens. In a statement to a Missouri judge first published on Tuesday, she said he had become 'unhinged' and 'threatening.'"
New York. Ed Shanahan & Jesse McKinley of the New York Times: "A New York State judge whose home was searched by law enforcement authorities last month against the backdrop of the federal prosecution of one of his former clients killed himself on Tuesday, one of his lawyers said. The judge, John L. Michalski, an acting justice of the State Supreme Court, was found dead at his home in Amherst, N.Y., a Buffalo suburb, shortly before noon, said the lawyer, Terrence Connors.... He had not been charged with any crime, but he had drawn the authorities' attention because of his ties to Peter Gerace Jr., the owner of a strip club in Cheektowaga, another Buffalo suburb."
Oklahoma. Michael Levenson of the New York Times: "Lawmakers in Oklahoma on Tuesday approved a near-total ban on abortion, making it the latest Republican-led state to forge ahead with stringent abortion legislation as the Supreme Court weighs a case that could overturn Roe v. Wade later this year. The measure, Senate Bill 612, would make performing an abortion 'except to save the life of a pregnant woman in a medical emergency' a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a fine of $100,000." MB: Those who voted for this law are twisted. Overt expressions of hatred for women & efforts to punish our sexuality are stunning. One need not be "pro-abortion" (I'm not) to see this.
News Lede
New York Times: "Bobby Rydell, a Philadelphia-born singer who became a teenage idol in the late 1950s and, with his pleasant voice, stage presence and nice-guy demeanor, maintained a loyal following on tours even after both he and his original fans were well past retirement age, died on Tuesday in Abington, Pa. He was 79."
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Reader Comments (8)
In yesterday's thread, a commenter asked,
"Marie: I haven't seen any commentary from you regarding this point of view:
"https://consortiumnews.com/2022/04/04/questions-abound-about-bucha-massacre/
"https://consortiumnews.com/2022/04/05/patrick-lawrence-the-us-bubble-of-pretend/
"Curious what you and/or your readers think."
Ken Winkes & Akhilleus both provided good answers in yesterday's thread, and those answers are well-worth reading . I'll add mine:
The left-right political spectrum is usually seen as a straight line, from far-left nutso to left to "moderate" to right to far-right wackadoodle. A better model, IMO, is to bend that straight line into a circle so nutso & wackadoodle meet. Thus you find opinionators like Glenn Greenwald & Taibbi the Younger, who have turned their far-left into far-right frames of mind. The same is true for the opinions the writers of the linked articles express: that the West's "mainstream media" have twisted themselves into a situation where "It is morn-to-night propaganda, disinformation and lies of omission — most of it fashioned by the Nazi-infested Zelensky regime in Kiev and repeated uncritically as fact." Where "evidence mounts that these incidents were staged as propaganda to frame the Russians and draw NATO forces directly into the war." And where "an impartial investigation [of the massacre at Bucha] is warranted" because currently all we are getting is a "dangerous ... rush to judgment."
While I would agree that an impartial investigation will be necessary and entirely in order to convict Russians, and Putin specifically, of war crimes, the evidence so far presented seems overwhelming, and Russian's claims otherwise amount to piling the atrocity of absurd denials upon the atrocity itself. I suppose there is a one-percent (or less) chance that some people of Bucha came out of their basements to massacre some of their neighbors at a convenient moment, but such a scenario defies logic and the evidence. Is every Ukrainian soldier a model of moral rectitude & adherent to the Geneva Accords? Of course not. There already has been a least one credible report of Ukrainian soldiers killing unarmed Russian soldiers whom the Ukrainians had captured. That the "Zelensky regime" is "Nazi-infested" seems ludicrous. Zelensky, in his first days in office, stood up to the authoritarian Donald Trump as best he could, and now he and his country are standing up to the authoritarian Putin as best they can. If they are "Nazis," they have done a marvelous job of hiding it.
Patrick Lawrence, in particular, has lost it. He has gone over to the dark side. His POV is not to be credited by serious readers. It's an affront to the victims, to logic, to common sense and to commonly-accepted moral standards.
Chris Hayes explains the GQP.
All the comments answering the questions of a commenter yesterday were on the same page especially Marie's (see above) who answered in depth.
There is a new book out by Samuel Moyn: "Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War." He starts out by citing what took place after 9/11 and quotes an exchange Bob Woodward had with Dick Cheney –– asked him how long the war might last. "It may never end, at least not in our lifetime" was his reply.
Moyn's central insight, according to Jackson Lears who wrote a review, is that the quest for humane war, whether by the deployment of smarter weapons or making new rules, has obscured the more basic task of of opposing war itself. He also stresses that "wars make a lot of people very rich"–-a wave here to that same Dick whose daughter is now digging in a different hole–––Lear says that Moyn only mentions this once in passing but its importance should not be overlooked. He reminds us that when the cold war ended in 1991, an army of lobbyists remained in Washington to "urge the continuation of enormous defense budgets. Even Eisenhower warned us of the manipulations of the "Military Complex"and I remember thinking, wow, he be dissing his own homies. But back to Moyn who talks about the postwar (WW11) Peacemakers who had to create the means for identifying and punishing. This was the background of the Nuremberg trials: "They put perpetrators on trial for starting an aggressive war, not for committing war crimes. War was the crime."
So here we are involved in another brutal war and we are trying like hell to help but not in a way that would start another world war and because we do not trust Putin's possible finger on the big bomb. The problem of war crimes looms large and its implementation shaky.
And as a concerned U.S. citizen I watch in horror at what is happening in Ukraine and even though I know the problems of proving war crimes, it seems to me they are screaming loudly right there on all the streets and bombed out buildings whose signs of "CHILDREN" were ignored.
And someone said yesterday on T.V. that this war might go on for years or as Cheney once said---"it might never end.'
And my D.C. friend just sent me this:
From Peter, Paul, and Mary version of Pete Seeger’s Wasn’t That A Time:
The wars are long, the peace is frail, the madmen come again.
There is no freedom in a land where fear and hate prevail.
Isn't this a time, isn't this a time?
A time to try the soul of men,
Isn't this a terrible time?
Last year, as the Trump virus raged on, I sat down to read “War and Peace”. I had read an abbreviated version in high school (only 700 pages) and wanted to get the Full Tolstoy. I picked one translation. Didn’t like it. So I tried another, the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation. Better.
Recently I came across a very early essay by a guy I’ve been reading for years, Walter Benjamin, an essay on the art of the translator. And by way of testing some of Walt’s ideas, I decided to go back to the translation of W&P I had first set aside (for somewhat snobbish reasons, I’m forced to admit). And now here I am again in 1812 with Napoleon running amok and Russians of all social strata trying to cope with the ravages of war. A freaking mad house.
And this brings me to the original reason for this comment. So, Russian sanctions, at least as far as I’ve been reading, are creating some difficulties for Putin and his oligarch pals. Great. May their collective undies do the Laocoön twist (complete with the snakes). But this sanction business has gotten a tad out of hand.
So the Met bounced their superstar soprano, Anna Netrebko, for her (initial) refusal to whack her buddy Putin for his despotic murder of the neighbors. Okay, fine. This happens. back in the 40s, soprano Kirsten Flagstad came under fire for suspected family connections to the Nazis. Plus, her specialty was Wagner. (A giveaway?)
But now orchestras around the country, and in Europe, are canceling performances of Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky and other Russians. C’mon. Stravinsky left Mother Russia as a young guy and never returned. He died an old man in New York City decades later. Tchaikovsky would never have been a Putin supporter. The guy was gay, fer crissakes.
Netflix has put the kibosh on a new film adaptation of “Anna Karenina”. Seriously? How does the story of Anna and Vronsky give aid and comfort to Putin?
Nixing everything Russian is a little nuts. Tolstoy grew up in tsarist Russia. He was no totalitarian. They booted him from the Russian Orthodox Church. And, getting back to W&P, the whole point of the book is what a complete disaster war is for everyone. Chapter after chapter, page after page, he hands us hundreds of examples of war’s futility, toxicity, of the hubris, ignorance, and abysmal human abominations brought in its wake. Reading the stories out of Ukraine, it feels like sections of Tolstoy come to life.
So why cancel him?
It gets crazier. I read somewhere that Russia has been kicked out of the International Cat Lovers something or other. Geez.
This is right up there with that Freedom Fries bullshit.
And certainly, economic sanctions hurt the little people first, and perhaps hardest. But they also have affected the lives of Tsar Putin’s greedy prick pals.
So whack those bastards, but leave Tolstoy alone. And those cat people too.
PD,
About 20 years ago, historian Phillip Bobbitt published a book examining the affect of war on statehood, and vice versa. “The Shield of Achilles” is still well worth reading if for no other reason than the historical contexts he provides.
One if his theses involves linking together historical events that are nearly always taken as individual and largely separate. He suggests that we look at the 20th C conflicts starting in 1914, with WWI, as the Long War, which he very convincingly connects as the Great War, WWII, the Spanish Civil War, Korea, Vietnam, and the Cold War. To this grouping we can now add the Iraq wars, Afghanistan, and the various Russian incursions that make this a hundred years of war with short intervals in between for Eisenhower’s military industrial complex to come up with newer and more efficient (and more expensive) ways of killing more and more people.
Eisenhower knew whereof he spoke. His time as commander of allied forces in the ETO gave him a unique insight into the role (and requirements) of the military contractor class. War is big business.
So Dickless Cheney might be right after all. All war, all the time.
AK: If I remember correctly Gary Wills wrote about "The Shield of Achilles" years ago and reading his piece made me think of wars differently and at the time I was involved in reading about the British Empire and its vast overtake of peoples and their homelands. And I so appreciated your long comments before this one about "War and Peace" and how we go overboard with sanctioning anything Russian which is so ridiculous–––even the cats get bad press!!
Sorry, effect…not affect. War Fucks up everything, even vocabulary.