Yesterday, I had a rather crowded late morning/early afternoon. The radio opera was Vivaldi’s “Bajazet” which I had never heard of, let alone heard, before. However, atthe same time, Theater od War was mounting a Zoom production of Aeschylus’s play “The Suppliant” (an unusual word in English these days – but think “The Refugees”), as a vehicle to jump start a discussion on Ukraine, and with an all-Ukrainian chorus (including a very remarkable 12-year-old girl.) My final decision was to watch the play (and subsequent discussion) but with the opera softly in the background. So I’m not able to share much about the opera. In the end I made the right choice, I think. There was a note that the session was being recoorded – it is not yet posted at their site, but if and when it is I’ll share the link. Also included were three professional actors whose names you migh recognize – David Strathairn (Danaus), Oscar Isaac (Pelasgus), and Willem DaFoe (Aegyptus.)The play dates to the mid-fifth century BCE (450 BCE plus or minus 10) but so much has not changed. One line: “Those who speak in foreign tongues are never fully welcome.) As are all of their productions, it was very moving. On top of all that, I received cinfirmation to visit Virgil today – so I’ll be around even less than usual. But I’ll be in as much as I can.
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I didn’t know who Mola was either. He appears to have been Franco’s Jeff Clark (or Roy Cohn) but he died in an air crash in 1937 and his name disappeared.
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CNN Politics – Why Republicans want to redefine one word in the Constitution
Quote – The Constitution refers specifically to the “legislature” in each state determining the time and manner of federal elections. Backers of the “Independent State Legislature Claim” argue that since the Constitution doesn’t name other parts of state government — including courts — they should have no power to check the legislature on the subject of federal elections. Even if a state’s constitution or laws give power to courts or a governor, the theory argues legislatures should be able to ignore them. Clck through for full analysis. The case in question is Moore v. Harper. I don’t want to forget that myself, nor do I want any of us to forget it. After it’s decided, we’ll know whether it’s OK to forget it … or whether we eill never forget it, whether we want to or not.
Mother Jones – Don’t Fall into the Collusion Trap on Trump and January 6
Quote – This question is an important one, but it is also a trap. Trump and his comrades have been rather deft at developing a tactic to protect him from charges of profound wrongdoing: They raise the bar. If Trump is caught holding a match outside a burning house, Trump and his defenders will say, “Do you have proof he doused the interior with gasoline? That’s fake news. A hoax.” Click through for full explanation. Neither the Committee nor prosecutors are IMO likely to fall into this trap, but since public opinion can help or hurt a case, it still matters.
Glenn Kirschner – Even Mick Mulvaney concludes Trump incited an armed riot. So why has there been no accountability?
Meidas Touch – Texas Paul REACTS to OAN Anchor’s TOTAL MELTDOWN over Pride Flag
The Lincoln Project – Now We Know the Truth
Twitter – Saw this on DU and had to share. Hanky Alert.
This little Ukrainian was wounded during today’s shelling of Mykolayiv. While she is being helped, she is singing the anthem of Ukraine
📹by NikNews media outlet https://t.co/FkGn9inU5Upic.twitter.com/7zoBnEd7uT
Yesterday was fairly routine. I did watch the second hour of the hearings – and I have to say I was glad they adjourned – I don’t know how much more I could have withstood. I watched here, so I got no commentary. After looking around afterwards, I started looking for any other sources, especially those which might continue to be available in case anyone else missed anything. The first one I found was PBS (I have set this to start just as the hearing does, so it may be a little choppy.) Meidas Touch also made it avaiabe trough The Tony Michaels podcast. It was still going when I found it, so I didn’t try to look for a starting time. Those commenting there are likely, some of them, to be familiar (Texas Paul is one, but others have also been seen in the Video Thread here.) I did look for MSNBC, but didn’t have a lot of time to look, and only found a clip on it.
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Crooks & Liars – Here’s What A Real Expert Has To Say About Active Shooters
Quote – This event isn’t a real team building exercise, however, but a powerful new PSA put out by March For Our Lives, the gun control group that formed in the wake of 2018’s Parkland school shooting. The PSA, titled “Generation Lockdown,” seeks to build support for the passage of a bill in the US Senate that would expand background checks for guns. Click through for video and article. I put this here rather than in the Video Thread because the article, I believe, adds content. Someone at DU commented that if this doesn’t break your heart, you probably don’t have one. – let that be a hanky alert.
The Daily Beast – Putin’s Favorite Copycat Gears Up in Panicked Wartime Frenzy
Quote – In the past few days Lukashenko and his advisers have made a flurry of announcements about plans to bolster the Belarusian military. First, they announced Belarus was creating a people’s militia to give a boost to the country’s armed forces. Then they announced both a new military unit on the country’s southern border with Ukraine and new military mobilizations exercises. Click through for details. Frankly, this scares me. Belarus isn’t very big – but then, neither is a straw.
The New Yorker (Daily Shouts) – Racism Outshines Platinum Jubilee
Quote – On Friday, at a service of thanksgiving for Her Majesty at St. Paul’s Cathedral, Racism, attending with its partner, Colonialism, turned things up a notch in haute couture by the House of Anxiety, a dazzling coat composed of thousands of individual boos directed toward Meghan and Harry as they entered the church. When asked about the custom creation, House of Anxiety responded, “White supremacy demands hating the other, and hating the other is the moment.” Click through for article. “Daily Shouts” is a humor column which often comes very close to realiy because its readers are expected to be alert to satire. But frankly, I think this one is TOO close (Harry and Meghan did not, at least I don’t think so, leave early because of any disrespect to Elizabeth, but because two neo Nazis told Harry to his face that Archie was “an abomination” who ought to be “put down.”)
Yesterday, for reasons I won’t go into, I was late for my visit with Virgil. That is more annoying at this faco;ity than at prior facilities I’ve visited, because of the shuttle bus system. I ca arrive at the facility any time, but I can only get on the bus when it is scheduled. o I was late, arriving at the visiting room about 12:30, and he was also late, having gone to lunch. So the visit was shorter than usual, but still a good one. I’m just as tired as if I had been thre all day – maybe more so – so I’ll probably rest today as much as I can.
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The New Torker (Andy) – Biden and Zelensky Reach Agreement to Send Americans’ Four Hundred Million Guns to Ukraine
Quote – In a move that could tip the scales in the war against Russia, U.S. President Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky have reached an agreement to ship Americans’ four hundred million firearms to Ukraine. “The Second Amendment calls for a well-regulated militia necessary to secure a free state,” Biden said. “I can’t think of a better description of what’s going on in Ukraine right now.” Click through for full humor. This is Andy’s best idea since sending Abbott to Russia to take down Russia’s power grid. In fact, it may be even better!
Republicans somehow missed this:
After Trump Republicans ran up the biggest deficits and debts ever over his four years, last month saw the biggest budget SURPLUS in US history. The biggest budget surplus ever🧐 https://t.co/FcbFZ2BdKH
Click through if you like – I’d say the tweet stands alone (Also, all tweets I have quoted today are linked to Twitter, both at my source, and here. Click on the blue bird.)
Yesterday, Colorado Public Radio News published thefirst photo of the first bud (at leasst in eighty years) on the Camp Amache rose. It is pink. I cropped the photo so it would fit here. I was deeply touched. I’m looking forward to seeing it after it opens.
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CPR News – Why two CPR News journalists are in Europe with Colorado’s National Guard
Quote – Colorado’s Army and Air National Guard units are just some of the 1,200 Guard members from six states — Maryland, which has a state partnership with Estonia, Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania and West Virginia — taking part in this exercise. In total, more than 3,400 U.S. military and 5,100 allied service members are spending this month participating in Defender and various other exercises, with names like Swift Response, Iron Wolf, Flaming Thunder and Summer Shield, across Eastern Europe…. Now, the U.S. military will be the first to tell you that Defender is unrelated to what’s happening in Ukraine (and the former Foreign Service officer in me would agree with that). American troops rotate, train and exercise regularly across the region as part of the nation’s relationship with Europe…. Yet, this annual exercise has taken on added significance — to reporters like me, and readers like you, and possibly the people of Estonia too — because of what’s happening in Ukraine. Click through for story. It’s a good day to be a Coloradan Despite Lauren Boebert (and Doug Lamborn), we have reasons to take pride in our state. (And it has some gorgeous phptps pf Tallinn.)
The Conversation – He’s Australia’s 31st prime minister. So who is Anthony Albanese?
Quote – To continue the slow burn theme, if Albanese is to be believed, his ambition for leadership formed late. Those who reach leadership positions are typically consumed with an aspiration for the top job from early in their parliamentary careers — if not before. They are fuelled by a sense of their own prime-ministerial destiny. Albanese is different. On his telling, it was only in 2013, on the defeat of Rudd’s second government, that he first entertained thoughts of becoming leader. Until then he had contented himself with the role of “counsellor and kingmaker”. CLick through for background. I won’t promise that this will be my last article on the Australian election – I hadn’t planned having another one, but I think this has merit. I am convinced that the so-called “fire in the belly” which so many pundits say leaders need is actually a bad thing if one wants the best possible leadership.
NM Political Report – In light of drought, NM congresswomen introduce bills focused on water and science
Quote – “We know that our farmers and our communities are struggling to meet their water needs,” U.S. Rep. Melanie Stansbury, a Democrat representing the state’s 1st Congressional District, said during a press conference on Thursday. “And the pieces of legislation that we introduced this week will be game changers to help address those needs, put resources into the hands of our communities, and to address the long term water security of our communities.” Click through for details of the proposals. Of course we all knew that getting the right women into the right offices would be beneficial to everyone.
Glenn Kirschner – Bill Barr to testify to J6 committee about Trump’s crimes. Will he be a credible witness?
Meidas Touch – Texas Paul REACTS to George W. Bush Megaviral Iraq Gaffe
The Damage Report – Leaked Memo Warns Of SURGE In Right-Wing Violence Following SCOTUS Decision
Twitter – Ana Kasparian (I was going to look for this this week, but fortunately tripped over it at DU. Everyone posting about it is right. This is transformative.
Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”
It’s all very well to discuss how to deal with a tyrant or an autocrat when you actually have one – whether in your own country, or from the outside looking in at another country. But, you know, things change. It seems pretty clear that Texas, for instance, is a virtual autocracy right now. But it hasn’t always been so. Ann Richards was governor once – up until 1996. Between then and 2015, something happened. But what exactly? During those years, one assumes Texas was sliding into autocracy. How exactly?
NATO was formed to be an alliance of western democracies. Turkey is a member. Turkey is being described as “sliding into autocracy.” How far down that slippery slope is it really? Is it far enough to be expelled from NATO? Is there even any provision for a country to be expelled from NATO if it ceases to be a democracy? At one point does a nation cease to be a democracy?
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Why Turkey isn’t on board with Finland, Sweden joining NATO – and why that matters
After decades of neutrality, the two Nordic states that have to date remained out of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization have reacted to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by declaring an intention to join the American-led alliance. But there is a major obstacle in their way: Turkey.
Erdogan is alone among NATO leaders in publicly stating that he is against the two countries’ joining the alliance.
Harboring terrorists or grudges?
The Turkish president’s opposition is based on his view that Finland and Sweden support “terrorists.” What Erdogan means is that both countries have given protection and residence to members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK – the major armed group mounting resistance to Turkey’s harsh treatment of its millions of Kurdish citizens. The plight of the country’s Kurds, part of a large but stateless ethnic group in the region, has long been a bone of contention between Turkey and parts of the international community.
Despite the PKK’s being listed by the U.S.and EU as a terrorist group, Finland and Sweden have been reluctant to extradite members of the group to Turkey over human rights concerns. Erdogan has responded by calling Sweden a “hatchery” for terrorism and claiming neither country has “a clear, open attitude” toward terrorist organizations, adding: “How can we trust them?”
Erdoğan’s ire with Finland and Sweden has also been exacerbated by the country hosting followers of Turkish scholar and cleric Fethullah Gulen. These followers are part of an educational and political movement with which Erdogan had been allied, but with which he broke as it grew more powerful. The Turkish president accuses the Gulenists of staging a failed coup against his government in 2016.
Foreign policy is almost always intimately tied to domestic concerns. In the case of Turkey’s government, a major fear is the threat to its grip on power posed by the Kurds – and international pressure over Turkey’s record of repressing the group.
Finland and Sweden are neutral countries not beholden to the strategic compromises that the United States and NATO are forced to make to hold the alliance together. Both countries have to date been free to take a moral position on Turkey’s position on Kurdish rights and have officially protested the repressions of dissidents, academics, journalists and minority groups.
Meanwhile, NATO countries have equivocated before their fellow member, agreeing to label the PKK a terrorist organization.
So where does this all leave Finland and Sweden’s application for NATO membership?
As such, Turkey can effectively veto the entry of Finland and Sweden.
The standoff highlights an underlying problem the alliance is facing. NATO is supposed to be an alliance of democratic countries. Yet several of its members – notably Turkey and Hungary – have moved steadily away from liberal democracy toward ethnonational populist authoritarianism.
Finland and Sweden, on the other hand, fulfill the parameters of NATO membership more clearly than several of the alliance’s current members. As the United States proclaims that the war in Ukraine is a struggle between democracy and autocracy, Turkey’s opposition to the Nordics who have protested its drift to illiberalism are testing the unity and the ideological coherence of NATO.
