Israel – The Wrongologist

Memorial Weekend Musings

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise, Paines Creek, Brewster, Cape Cod, MA – May 2024 photo by Bob Amaral Photography

Wrongo and Ms. Right just returned from a whirlwind visit to family in Western MA and from there to family on Cape Cod, MA. We then moved on to the Havanese National Dog Show in North Kingston, RI. Now, we’re happy to be back at the Mansion of Wrong, where most of our flowering plants are in bloom or are budding.

Happy Saturday, and welcome to Memorial Day Weekend, when we remember those in the military who died in service to the country. Before 1971, it was called Decoration Day, which was first observed on May 30, 1868, when flowers were placed on the graves of both Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery. Back then, it was our most solemn holiday.

Memorial Day is Monday, when we mourn the soldiers we knew, and we briefly remember those we never knew personally. By now, the standard American public’s response is, “thank you for your service”. Saying it has become a reflex, like “bless you” when someone sneezes. Our default position is to thank, but not to think. For most of us, America’s foreign wars are a kind of elevator music. Always present, but we barely notice them.

So maybe we watch our town’s parade. There’s likely to be a cookout. It isn’t about love of country. It’s about sad Facebook emojis, Memorial Day mattress sales, and burgers on Monday

Let’s take a moment to think about the wars we are currently waging in Ukraine and Israel. Alex Vershinin, a retired US Army Lt. Col, has an article at RUSI “The Attritional Art of War: Lessons from the Russian War on Ukraine” about the costs of war and how countries fight them in different ways, which can create great difficulty for the combatants: (brackets and emphasis by Wrongo)

“The US (and Israel) are set up to conduct high intensity, airpower heavy conflicts. Russia has long preferred attrition and that is the battle plan adopted by [Hamas]…Attritional wars require simple to operate weaponry since the odds [are] that both sides will have their experienced and well-trained forces badly thinned, forcing them to rely more and more on not-well-trained recent inductees. And of course being able to produce armaments in huge volumes is also important. The Western dismissiveness towards this strategy, seeing it as primitive, is setting it up for a fall.”

Satyajit Das, a former banker takes a similar view: (brackets by Wrongo)

“War requires massive amounts of equipment, munitions and manpower…..Western powers are currently struggling to match Russia and China in producing armaments for its client states [Ukraine and Israel]. The US and its allies have [not prioritized]…heavy manufacturing essential for weaponry in favor of consumer goods and services.”

This is econospeak for saying that the US and Europe are unable to keep the weapons supply chain full for the two wars they currently support. More:

“In contrast, their opponents have prioritized military manufacturing and maintaining inventories for armed conflict. Western industrial ecosystems, frequently now privatized,…lack the necessary capacity and surge capability.

It has always been true that sophisticated weapons systems can be countered by low-cost and low-tech improvisation. We’re seeing this in Ukraine with the use of cheap drones and missiles that can alter the battlefield situation.

That stands in contrast to America’s ‘boys-with-toys’ syndrome that places its faith in expensive high tech weapons, such as the F35 jets that cost around $150 million. Or Patriot Air Defense Systems that cost over $1 billion, with each interceptor missile costing a further $6-10 million. Individual artillery rounds can cost upwards of $3-5,000.

Given the Russian strategy of attrition, degrading Ukraine’s ability to finance its military action is an essential tactic. Russia’s targeting of industrial and agricultural infrastructure combined with the displacement of manpower has reduced Ukrainian output by about 35%. The cost of rebuilding what has been lost in power plants and other infrastructure is thought to be around $500 billion. Soon, Ukraine will need to restructure the country’s $20 billion international debt to avoid default.

Israel’s obliteration of impoverished, aid-reliant Gaza is economically pointless, unless the goal is to drive Gaza residents away. How and when Gaza gets rebuilt is unknown, but certainly it will take decades. OTOH, Israel’s economy has shrunk by as much as 20%. The call-up of reservists for military service and flight of talent out of the country has disrupted its industries. The conflict has cost Israel around $50 billion (10% of GDP) while increasing Israel’s debt. Its credit rating has been downgraded.

Neither of these wars can go on indefinitely. Ukraine and Israel are reliant on their Western backers who will soon be less able to support them financially or in their demand for more weapons. And in both cases the enemy is conducting wars of attrition. Those type of wars last longer and they test both a warring country’s industrial capacity and its borrowing capacity. From Vershinin:

“Unfortunately, many in the West have a very cavalier attitude that future conflicts will be short and decisive. This is not true….Even middling global powers have both the geography and the population and industrial resources needed to conduct…attritional wars.”

If the West is serious about a possible great power conflict, say between the US and China, or between NATO and Russia, the West needs to look critically at its industrial capacity, mobilization doctrines and their ability to conduct a protracted war.

Today, most US war games take place over a single month of conflict. As Afghanistan and Iraq have taught us, that isn’t a likely outcome. The attritional strategy is counterintuitive to most US military officers. Western military thought views being on offense as the means of achieving the decisive strategic goal: forcing the enemy to come to the negotiating table on unfavorable terms.

But they should know better. All of their recent combat experience acquired in overseas operations says when we’re fighting a war of attrition, we lose.

Anyway, it’s Saturday and time for our Saturday Soother. Here is some beautiful (and meditative) music for your Saturday. The Adagio in G Minor is attributed to Tomaso Albinoni, but actually was composed by 20th-century musicologist and Albinoni biographer Remo Giazotto, purportedly based on the discovery of a manuscript fragment by Albinoni. Albinoni died in 1751, and Giazotto obtained a copyright for the Adagio in 1958.

More On The Campus Protests

The Daily Escape:

Japanese Garden, Portland, OR – April 2024 photo via The Oregonian

On Tuesday night, hundreds of NYPD officers entered Columbia University in riot gear, one night after students occupied the University’s Hamilton Hall.

And in a “you can’t make this s__t up” moment, Tuesday was exactly 56 years to the day when police cleared Hamilton Hall of Vietnam War protestors in 1968. The new clear out happened 13 days after students built their encampment and lit the match that started a student movement against the war in Gaza on college campuses nationwide.

The police crackdown at Columbia isn’t an isolated event. There was a round of arrests at City College in Harlem (NY). And police responded to clashes between pro-Palestinian and counter-protesters at UCLA. On Monday, demonstrators at The New School took over Parsons School of Design. Meanwhile, police cleared an encampment at Yale. Nationwide, more than 1,000 students have been taken into police custody since the original encampment began at Columbia on April 18.

From John Dean:

“More than four dozen colleges now have active protests against . . . against what? Signs demand an end to genocide in Gaza, disinvestment from Israel, and an end of US support for Israel. But Jewish students are also being attacked. For some protestors, Palestinians are the people fighting for freedom, and the Jews are the oppressors.”

As the protests continue, the story grows ever more complicated. House Republicans plan a series of hearings into what they are characterizing as antisemitism on college campuses. House Speaker Mike Johnson announced the hearings and also threatened the loss of federal funding:

“Over the last few weeks, we’ve seen absolute lawlessness and chaos on college and university campuses across America. It’s not right, and everybody in this country knows it. If they don’t correct this quickly, you will see Congress respond in time, you’re gonna see funding sources begin to dry up. You’re gonna see every level of accountability that we can muster.”

Columbia’s leadership took the Republicans at their word. They invited the NYPD to campus to remove students from Hamilton Hall with force.

Before the Columbia students occupied Hamilton Hall and got ejected, and before the UCLA demonstrating groups decided to fight each other, these protests seemed familiar in that they were an echo of the Occupy Movement in 2012. Back then, the vast majority of the violence was caused by police, much like it is today, But it isn’t clear that today’s encampments have sufficient size or strength to achieve their goals. They are certainly not of the scale of 2012’s Occupy, let alone the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.

If the past tells us anything, we should be skeptical that these protests will actually lead anywhere. The 1968 Vietnam protests eventually fizzled out, particularly when it became clear that students would be shot and killed by police and the National Guard. Occupy ended with a 17-city crackdown by police that happened just two months after Occupy began. The George Floyd protests fizzled out, but not before significant property damage and police crackdowns.

One thing is very clear: The speed with which campus protestors have embraced Palestine is remarkable. These students have never shown interest in the slaughter of Muslim children in Syria, or women and teenage girls in Iran. To Wrongo’s knowledge, none have protested against genocide in Darfur. Is now what we’re seeing the power of TikTok to feed highly curated information to them?

Some might say that the students are expressing normal human empathy, possibly with a touch of ignorance regarding the history of the Palestinians and the Israelis. And certainly with a definite lack of understanding of the limits of free speech in America. Free speech does not permit extended protests on private property.

The purpose of free speech is the absolute freedom to speak your mind. The First Amendment does not grant the right for a person or group to occupy property that doesn’t belong to them. Freedom of speech does not include resisting arrest. Would any of us say that freedom of speech allows protesters to occupy their home? Free speech doesn’t allow making threats to kill a person or members of a group.

In addition to the desire to draw attention to the Gaza carnage, the campus protests seem to be about the role of the US government and American companies supporting Israel. Doesn’t that make their protests difficult to understand? Israel has been a US ally for more than 70 years. In that time, it hasn’t been able to defend itself without substantial US aid. Most Israeli aircraft bombing Gaza targets today are American-made.

Does our support for Israel make the US complicit in the Israeli military action in Gaza? Of course, but should the US now end that support? If colleges divest from Israel, would that help Palestinians? Hard to say, but it’s unlikely to cause any meaningful change.

Wrongo doesn’t think the students’ problems are with Israel the country or necessarily, with the Israeli people. Most of the heat is reserved for actions by Bibi, his cronies and the IDF. From The Economist:

“Two areas where the IDF has fallen short are its responsibilities as an occupying power and its duty to minimize civilian deaths. Some 1.7m people have been displaced; many lack adequate food, water or medicine.”

More: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“…many armies would find Israel’s rules of engagement disproportionate and hence illegal. The IDF is reported to have set the threshold of civilian deaths in justifying decisions to strike a junior Hamas fighter at 20:1 and a senior leader at 100:1. For Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s dictator, America set a threshold of 30:1.”

The IDF appears to be failing in its goal of destroying Hamas. After six months, Hama’s most senior leaders are still alive, and over 100 hostages remain in captivity. Most important, Israel appears to have no strategy to prevent Hamas from rising from the rubble. Without meeting their goal of destroying Hamas, Israel will remain subject to insurgency.

Israel is paying a high price both economically and diplomatically for its Hamas war. There has been a very real shift in support for Israel’s methods of conducting its war with Hamas. If the student protests were to energize America voters to reject supporting an unending conflict, a significant number of American politicians would eventually follow.

Today, Israel is in a doom loop where the operations designed to reduce the number of terrorists will likely attract recruits to replace them. Without a plan for peace, Israel will end up as an occupier or as in the past, repeatedly striking Gaza to tamp down the insurrectionists.

The story of the 2024 campus protests is still being written. The outcome remains difficult to predict. With the end of the academic year approaching, could the calendar be the deciding factor?

Should Dems Worry About Students Disrupting Their Convention?

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise, Iron Duff, NC – April 2024 photo by Rhiannon Medford. Hard to believe those colors aren’t enhanced.

The clashes between Hamas/Israel war protesters and police on college campuses nationwide is spreading alarm among Senate Democrats. They’re worrying that this type of anger will make the Party’s Chicago-based presidential nominating convention a spectacle that will hurt Biden’s chances of re-election. Does that mean we’re looking at Chicago 1968 version 2.0?

From The Wrongologist:

“In 1968, Tom Hayden helped plan the antiwar protests in Chicago that targeted the Democratic National Convention. Police officers clashed with thousands of demonstrators, injuring hundreds in a televised spectacle that a national commission later called a police riot. Yet, Hayden and others were charged by federal officials with inciting riot and conspiracy.”

Those demonstration led to the Chicago Police riot. We remember it for Mayor Richard Daly saying these immortal words:

“Gentlemen, let’s get this straight. The policeman isn’t there to create disorder, the policeman is there to preserve disorder.”

Those of us who have reached a certain age remember too well what happened in Chicago at the 1968 convention. From The Hill:

“A number of Democratic senators are old enough to remember the violent clashes between police and anti-Vietnam War protesters at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, where the nomination of Vice President Hubert Humphrey as the party’s presidential candidate was marred by images of police tear-gassing protesters and beating them with clubs.”

The Atlantic’s David Frum explains why the disruptions in Chicago in 1968 are unlikely to happen again. His point is that 2024 isn’t 1968. Protesters presuming to replicate 1968 will find the US government is much better prepared, Frum says: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“…responsibility for protecting political conventions has shifted from cities and states to the federal government. This…was formalized in a directive signed by…Clinton in 1998. The order created a category of “National Special Security Events,” for which planning would be led by the Secret Service.

National Security Special Events draw on all the resources of the federal government, including, if need be, those of the Defense Department. In 2016, the federal government spent $50 million on security for each of the two major-party conventions.

Those funds enabled Cleveland, the host of the 2016 Republican convention, to deploy thousands of law-enforcement personnel….Federal funds paid for police to be trained in understanding the difference between lawful and unlawful protest, and to equip them with body cameras to record interactions with the public. The city also used federal funds to buy 300 bicycles to field a force that could move quickly into places where cars might not be able to go, and that could patrol public spaces in a way that was more approachable and friendly.”

This wasn’t an issue in 2020 when the conventions were mostly virtual due to the Covid pandemic.

Right now, the media are making the campus demonstrations seem like a big deal, and they are, in the sense that university campuses are lightly controlled and lightly policed. Frum adds:

“Pro-Palestinian protesters have proved considerably more circumspect when they march in places where laws of public order are upheld.”

The Feds have also gone to school on the Jan. 6 insurrection that has informed their planning. While the subsequent J6 prosecutions make it much less likely that people hoping to disrupt the DNC convention will ever get much beyond being hopeful. It’s important to point out that the scale of today’s protests are nowhere near the same as the Vietnam protests in 1968.

More on the current thinking of students from Simon Rosenberg:

“…there is not broad support for these protests in America or on American college campuses. Most young people are far more concerned with making a living, their health after a pandemic, loss of reproductive freedom and our democracy, climate change, gun safety and a host of other issues.”

Rosenberg includes an interesting chart from the Harvard IOP Youth Poll:

The only issue where inflation did not win its individual match-up was when it was paired with women’s reproductive rights. Women’s reproductive rights was considered the more important issue, 57% to 43%. Israel/Palestine ranked next to last among the 16 issues.

Wrongo has no idea if the campus demonstrations will morph into something huge, or become a nothingburger, but he agrees with this from Caroline Orr Bueno:

“The stories you hear in the media will be the most extreme examples that can be found, and nearly all of them will be fundamentally misrepresented based on the biases of the person telling the story. This will fuel a cycle of escalation that few people on either side want.”

She makes the point that university administrators are not prepared to handle the demonstrations while at the same time, facing donor anger. From the London FT:

“Donors are withdrawing millions of dollars in planned funding to punish US universities for their responses to Hamas’s attack on Israel, in a stand-off over free speech, higher education funding and academic leaders’ public responsibilities.”

The FT also reports that:

“Such actions have highlighted the influence of donors, who last year contributed $60bn to US universities…”

Time to wake up, America! Let’s not get twisted up by the potential for demonstrations in Chicago by students protesting the Hamas/Israel war. How about focusing instead on the antidemocratic extremists who speak at the Republican convention to renominate Trump? We shouldn’t fear this debate. We should welcome it.

To help you wake up on a warm Tuesday, watch and listen to the late Peter Green, former guitarist of Fleetwood Mac, play “Albatross”, originally from FM’s 1969 album “The Pious Bird of Good Omen”. Here Green plays it with the Peter Green Splinter Group in England in 2003:

The late, great BB King said of Peter Green: “He’s the only white guy to ever make me sweat.”

Thoughts On The Student Protests

The Daily Escape:

Orca #T99C Barakat breaching very near shore, Point No Point Beach, WA – April 2024 photo by Hongming Zheng. Yes, the Orca was really that close. The photographer says it was about 10’ from shore.

The US media is giving front-page treatment to the wave of pro-Palestinian protests on university campuses across America. From the NYT:

“University administrators from Texas to California moved to clear protesters and prevent encampments from taking hold on their own campuses as they have at Columbia University, deploying police in tense new confrontations that already have led to dozens of arrests.”

“At the same time, new protests continued erupting in places like Pittsburgh and San Antonio. Students expressed solidarity with their fellow students at Columbia, and with a pro-Palestinian movement that appeared to be galvanized by the pushback on other campuses and the looming end of the academic year.”

Protesters are saying that their demands include divestment by their universities from companies connected to the Israeli military campaign in Gaza, disclosure of those and other investments and a recognition of the continuing right to protest without punishment.

There are many questions raised by these protests. Does protesting by students against what Israel is doing in Gaza equate to antisemitism? Are the protesting students’ free speech rights being violated by the several universities when they are arrested for peaceably protesting?

Wrongo hates writing about Israel and Gaza. It’s very emotional on both sides, maybe more than for any other topic. It’s possible to be accused of being complicit in a genocide and/or accused of being insensitive to the killing of Jews or of being antisemitic.

From Margret Sullivan:

“Can we be clear about a few things? Protesting this slaughter is not expressing antisemitism. It is not engaging in hate speech. It is not endangering Jewish students. It is doing what should be done on a college campus — taking a stand against a perceived wrong, at least provoking discussion and debate.”

Wrongo thinks students have a right to protest. As Robert Reich says:

“The most important thing I teach my students is to seek out people who disagree with them. That’s because the essence of learning is testing one’s ideas, assumptions, and values. And what better place to test ideas, assumptions, and values than at a university?”

Non-violent student activism is a great way to learn and to participate in our democracy. While activism shouldn’t violate school rules, if you are a student and your school makes rules about student protests like: “you can’t protest on this lawn or at this time,” and you break that rule, you should be prepared to get suspended or arrested.

The schools are responsible for not making rules that effectively restrict or end student activism. And students are responsible for following all reasonable rules.

But there’s another big question: Why are the media and politicians treating these protests as very important problems? It’s true that the Israel/Gaza war is very important. It could plausibly lead to a regional war or even to a wider war. But what’s happening on college campuses in the US is relatively minor, particularly if they’re compared to the student protests during the Civil Rights era or during the Vietnam era.

Yet, the Israel/Hamas war and the campus protests about it are receiving nearly the same amount of media coverage. We never see headlines that read “Another Peaceful Day On 99% Of US College Campuses” even though that headline could run on any day of the year. This is the shape of the media today, and it’s difficult to understand why so many reporters and politicians are so deeply concerned with a relatively minor story. More from Robert Reich:

“Education is all about provocation. Without being provoked — stirred, unsettled, goaded — even young minds can remain stuck in old tracks.”

Protests that call for boycott, divestment and sanctions are perfectly rational ways to protest Israel’s war against Hamas. However, getting Columbia (or other universities) to sell an investment in a US defense contractor, or in an Israeli company isn’t going to change anything.

Also, it’s a stretch for protesters to say that any university, its professors or anyone on its faculty are “complicit” in anything Israel decides to do in Gaza. But, non-violent forms of protest offer important objections to policy. And when the university criminalizes or stifles non-violent protests, that often leads to violent protests instead.

In the Columbia University case, its president called in the police (against the vote of the University council) telling the NYPD that the students had been suspended and thus were trespassing. But at that point, the students had not yet actually been suspended, although they WERE arrested. Then Columbia suspended them because they had been arrested:

“The suspension notices that the students received now cite the arrests themselves as part of the cause for suspension. In other words, the logic was circular. They called in the New York Police Department on the premise that the students were trespassing, when they hadn’t yet been suspended…”

Perfectly circular logic. If campus authorities need to act to protect the safety of any of their students, then they should. But when a university is facing pressure from pro-Israel donors and elected officials to shut down the protests, because the powerful find the protesters and their demands offensive, the university goes too far.

If that isn’t bad enough, consider Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR): (emphasis by Wrongo)

“On Monday, the Arkansas senator demanded that President Joe Biden send in the National Guard to clear out the student protests at Columbia University against the Israel-Hamas war, which he described as “the nascent pogroms at Columbia.”

Nascent Pogroms? What is Cotton seeing at Columbia that the rest of us aren’t seeing? Apparently every Republican Senator knows that the military must be called in to end left-wing insurrections, but never for right-wing ones! We should understand that there’s a possibility that any military response might lead to Kent State 2.0.

A final thought. We need to differentiate between protestors who show up and do terrible things and the idea that the current rules of discourse focus mainly on the complainant’s subjective state of mind (“I felt unsafe!”). Without turning this into a rant, once a member of any so-called victim class makes that accusation, the burden of proof falls on the accused to prove they didn’t do something wrong. They have to prove a negative. That’s a game that the accused can rarely win.

That isn’t to say that some students aren’t doing objectively awful things during protests.

The vast majority of student protesters probably are good kids who are horrified by the things they see happening in Gaza. They log onto social media and see heartbreaking videos and feel compelled to do something, even though as individuals they are powerless. That’s a normal human, empathetic reaction to war. War is horrific.

Having that reaction doesn’t automatically make them Jew-hating terrorist-lovers.

What’s past is prologue. Remember how protests morphed into killings at Kent State and elsewhere in 1970? Today’s demonstrators aren’t trying to avoid getting drafted for the Vietnam War; they’re protesting what they see as a genocide in the Middle East.

The Red Sea Is Becoming A Bigger Problem

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise, Camden Outer Harbor, Camden, ME – February 2024 photo by Daniel F. Dishner Photography

A quick update to Wrongo’s column, “The End Of US Naval Superiority?” which concluded by saying:

“We don’t have sufficient deterrence to keep the Red Sea and thereby, the Suez Canal, open. We can’t do enough to the Houthis to make them back down. And we won’t be able to stop them with boots on the ground.”

That’s still true, and the military situation hasn’t gotten any better. Tim Anderson, Director of the Centre for Counter Hegemonic Studies, mused on Xitter that the Houthis might have a path of escalation if the US and UK keep striking at their missile and drone launch capacity by cutting the Red Sea’s internet cables. The Houthis have denied this, but that doesn’t matter. The possibility is now out there.

From The Middle East Eye: (brackets by Wrongo)

“Egypt is a major [undersea cable] chokepoint, handling traffic from Europe to the Middle East, Asia and Africa, and vice versa. The 15 cables that cross Egypt between the Mediterranean and Red seas handle between 17% to 30% of the world population’s internet traffic, or the data of 1.3 billion to 2.3 billion people.”

Does this mean that the Houthis have a path to escalatory dominance? We also learned from CNN that a few days ago, the USS Gravely had to use its Phalanx CIWS (Close-In Weapon System) against a Houthi cruise missile that had gotten to within a mile of the ship. The Phalanx is essentially the ship’s last layer of air defense against incoming attacks. The fact that the Houthis got a missile through the AEGIS system which is the ship’s primary defense against incoming attacks by air, must be really concerning to the Pentagon. Having the possibility of a US Navy ship getting hit by the Houthis would be something that the Chinese, Russian, and Iranian navies would be watching very closely.

The economic situation hasn’t improved either. The WSJ reports that the world’s oceans are seeing an interlocking set of maritime security crises from Europe to East Asia. This raises a troubling question: How difficult will it be to preserve freedom of the seas going forward? Here’s a map showing the way shipping routes have been altered in the last year:

This is exacerbated by the way the US Navy was sidelined during America’s decades of counterterrorism fascination. It makes it difficult to defend not just the shipping lanes but also undersea data cables and gas pipelines that are equally important to global economic output. More from the WSJ:

“Even if those ships can evade Houthi missiles, they can’t hide from insurers. The rate for war insurance through the Red Sea, once a tiny percentage of the total value covered, has ballooned to 1%, a difference that many shippers deem cost-prohibitive.”

The 10,000-mile-long alternative route, circumnavigating Africa, is so fuel-intensive that cargo ships pay steep climate taxes on arrival in Europe and risk scoring failing grades on the International Maritime Organization’s carbon report index.

Adding to shipping costs is the spiking of container rates. Here’s a chart (paywalled) from Statista:

While rates remain lower than they were in 2022, the fact that freight rates have spiked is a sign that the Houthi attacks are getting the desired effect, and that the maritime industry is taking them seriously.

This is an example less of asymmetric warfare than of asymmetric objectives. Briefly, the Houthis have a simple objective – trade disruption – which is straightforward to accomplish with relatively unsophisticated weapons. The West’s objective – freedom of navigation – is much more complex and requires a large, long-term presence with the ability to operate by land, sea and air, without ever having to seize the initiative.

As we’ve said previously, ships handle more than 80% of global goods. We seem unable to stop the Houthis. So it is likely that longer lead times on imported goods are right in front of us, along with more cost in delivering them.

This is another way in which Israel and Netanyahu specifically have dragged the US and the west into an escalating dilemma. There seem to be only two options: We end Israel’s destruction of Gaza as a means to eliminate Hamas, or we escalate in Yemen.

What will Biden and the US military say is our way out of the box we’ve gotten ourselves into?

That’s enough for this weekend. It’s time for our Saturday Soother, where we try to forget about Trump, Nikki Haley and the pile of hot steaming stuff that are the House Republicans. We do that by turning off the news for at least a few minutes. Here at the Mansion of Wrong, we remain undecided about when to take down our Christmas tree. The ornaments are packed away, but Wrongo likes looking at the lights in the evenings. Maybe just before company arrives for Super Bowl weekend.

To help on your way to unplug from the news, start by brewing up a vente cup of Frank Sumatra coffee ($13.95 for 12oz) from Camden, ME’s Coffee on the Porch. It is said to be a fun and lively roast with notes of nutmeg, dark chocolate, and a fruity zing. Who doesn’t like a fruity zing?

Now grab a seat by a window to watch and listen to Ravel’s “Boléro” performed by Prequell live in Paris. The backstory to this performance is that it was part of Paris’ 2017 campaign to host the 2024 Summer Olympics. The city wanted to create a moment combining the city’s history, culture and sporting spirit using the Seine river. One project was this performance of “Boléro” on a 100-meter track floating on the Seine.

It showcases French classical music with a floating orchestra, arranged in a straight line, playing Ravel’s “Boléro”. As you know, Paris was successful in its bid for the 2023 summer games.

Watch and listen to Ravel’s masterful earworm:

Biden’s Dilemma

The Daily Escape:

Highlands, Nantahala National Forest, NC – January 2024 photo by Michele Schwartz

The drone strike on a US base in Jordan killed three American troops and wounded at least 34 more. The base is called Tower 22. The attack has had several effects: First, it makes very real the likelihood of a widening conflict in the Middle East (ME). Second it has caused another partisan fire storm in US politics. Biden vowed to respond to the assault, blaming Iran-backed militias for the first US military casualties in the many similar strikes in the region since the start of the Israel/Hamas war. Here’s a map showing where the attack happened:

Basically, this is a logistics location for US troops in Syria at the US military base at al-Tanf, just 12 miles north of Tower 22. Tanf has been the key support location in the US effort to control ISIS in Syria and to contain Iran’s military build-up in eastern Syria. From AP News:

“Since the war in Gaza began Oct. 7, Iranian-backed militias have struck American military installations in Iraq more than 60 times and in Syria more than 90 times, with a mix of drones, rockets, mortars and ballistic missiles. The attack Sunday was the first targeting American troops in Jordan during the Israel-Hamas war and the first to result in the loss of American lives.”

The timing of this attack could hardly be worse. What began in October as a war between Israel and Hamas has now morphed with involvement by militants from four other Arab states. In addition Iran, Israel and Jordan all bombed Syria this month. Iran also bombed Pakistan, and Pakistan retaliated.

All of this is tit-for-tat in which American airstrikes against militias in Iraq or Syria, alternate with more militia attacks on the US installations. This illustrates the ME mission creep since last October. Whatever the original mission was for US troops in Syria, Jordan, and Iraq is now being sidelined as protection of the troop presence itself becomes the main concern.

All of these tit-for-tats carry an extreme risk of escalation into a larger conflict.

Iran has a network of proxy militias to project power across the ME. It is trying to support them while simultaneously trying to remain outside of the conflict. While Iran has tacitly accepted Israel’s targeting of Hamas, it has been loath to unleash Lebanon’s Hezbollah, fearing that Israel (or the US) will hit back at Iran directly. Iran would like to force Israel into a ceasefire in Gaza and force American troops out of the ME. So far, its proxies have achieved only an increased American presence.

If we assume that the Tower 22 hit was a deliberate hit, (the base has been there for several years), it’s certain that militias in the area knew where to hit it to achieve a maximum result. Expanding from that, the US has about a thousand bases scattered around the world that are used to influence local operations, etc. Up to now, the US has considered them as assets. But if they suddenly become targets, trying to defend them simultaneously will be as difficult as defending ships in the Red Sea: Impossible. On the other hand, they are excellent targets if the US wants to be provoked into attacking Iran.

If such attacks continue, the position of these bases is going to become untenable and will pose a massive political problem for Biden.

Biden has fallen into a trap. And worse, it is Israel that placed Biden in the trap by not even trying to find a way to de-escalate the war with Hamas and bring Israeli hostages home. Biden’s support for Israel and his gentle pressure on Netanyahu to stop killing Gazans hasn’t worked; it also helped Biden fall in the trap. Biden should stop letting Bibi lead him around by the nose.

Biden can retaliate directly inside Iran, which will likely escalate the tit-for-tat attacks. And if taken as far as certain Republican pols want to go, it will endanger the Straits of Hormuz and risk doubling oil prices.

Worse in some ways, direct retaliation inside Iran might lead Russia to announce Iran is under full protection of Russia’s nuclear umbrella. That would make the Russia-China-Iran axis a concrete and formidable enemy. That would be a terrible outcome, even though some American Neo-cons have been making noises about being able to “win” a nuclear war. Here are some Republican chicken hawk suggestions about Iran:

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MI):

“We must respond to these repeated attacks by Iran and its proxies by striking directly against Iranian targets and its leadership. … It is time to act swiftly and decisively for the whole world to see.”

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK):

“The only answer to these attacks must be devastating military retaliation against Iran’s terrorist forces, both in Iran and across the Middle East.”

Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) wrote:

“Joe Biden has emboldened Iran and shown weakness on the global stage. We have to have a stronger Commander-in-Chief.”

Talk is always cheap, and most of this is political theater. Biden could also conduct limited retaliatory missions against the actual militias in Syria who US Intelligence says attacked Tower 22. Whatever he does, Biden will suffer inevitable attacks from Republicans at home. All this with less than eleven months to go before Election Day.

As of now it isn’t clear how Biden intends to respond. In the past, when Trump targeted Quds Force General Qassem Soleimani, and other Iranian interests, the US conducted these actions outside of Iranian territory. Iran’s denial of direct involvement in the attack complicates the situation and makes it less likely that Biden will attack inside of Iran.

Striking militia leaders outside of Iran will cause Republicans to question the effectiveness of Biden’s tactics. The US has employed this type of retaliation in the past, but it hasn’t significantly curbed Iran’s or its proxies’ aggressive actions.

We need to keep perspective on the Tower 22 deaths. Republicans should remember that 48,000 Americans are killed by Americans with American-made guns every year. Of course our three soldiers should be honored, and we should retaliate. But if the loss of American lives is the big deal the Republicans say it is, then their indignation should be directed here at home in addition to in Jordan.

Otherwise, it’s false indignation.

All of us should remember that we have failed in every mission in the ME. We only accomplish growing our list of enemies like the Taliban, Al Qaeda, ISIS, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Iran, Syria and whoever comes next if we stick around.

Welcome To MLK Weekend

The Daily Escape:

Housatonic River, near Appalachian Trail, Bulls Bridge, CT – January 2024 photo by Jane Haslam

We’re into the MLK, Jr. holiday weekend, during which Wrongo, Ms. Right and our extended families and friends are gathering to observe Wrongo’s 80^th birthday which occurred late last year. That means this column will be brief but paradoxically, unfocused.

In addition to MLK’s birthday, is anyone else worried about the expansion of the Israel/Hamas war into the Red Sea? From NBC:

“The United States and Britain launched military strikes against the Houthi rebels in Yemen on Thursday, after weeks of mounting attacks (on commercial shipping) by the Iran-backed militant group in the Red Sea.

The strikes, carried out from land and sea, threatened an expansion of the conflict in the Middle East beyond Israel’s war in Gaza — an escalation the Biden administration and its allies have been working to avoid.”

Nothing about this should be surprising. Houthi leadership have been near-begging for airstrikes against them for the last month, given their continued attacks on international ships attempting to use the Red Sea to transit the Suez Canal.

The reaction so far has been as expected. The Houthis have pledged retribution. Pro-Palestinians claim this is the start of WWIII. Some Republicans in Congress say this strike is not authorized, but Wrongo isn’t sure that was necessary.

Anyone who looks at America’s history with cruise and tomahawk missile attacks knows that they are not particularly effective at taking out land-based military installations. It doesn’t seem particularly likely that these strikes will either prevent or deter attacks on shipping in the Red Sea. But it also doesn’t seem likely to escalate things much beyond where we are right now.

America’s military often says “something must be done, and this is something”, and this seems to be another example. And the alternative of confining ourselves only to defensive responses may not have been any better.

Either way, we seem to be looking at a larger and more long-term military presence in the Red Sea. If the Houthi leadership wants to be part of the Israel/Hamas war, then they’re going to be a part of it. Whether the Houthis benefactor Iran wants them to attack global shipping companies is an unanswered question for now.

Is the Iranian leadership about to start a war? The real question is with whom? Iran has a very highly educated population and a diaspora of people waiting to help push the theocrats out if those theocrats slip up. Iran’s options (in a war) would be the many countries that they share land borders with. Those are Russia, Afghanistan, Iraq (who they fought with for 10 years), Turkmenistan, and Pakistan, (a nuclear power). Also Turkey, (in NATO), Azerbaijan and Armenia.

Among countries they don’t share a land border with, are the Saudis or Israel or US, all of which would likely result in Iran getting at least some of the shit bombed out of them. So a war started by Iran seems unlikely, but “Houthis disrupt global shipping from Yemen” was not on Wrongo’s 2024 bingo card, and it’s still January

Since it’s Saturday, let’s close with a musical statement that echoes MLK’s enduring message. Watch and listen to “Keep Your Eyes On The Prize“, a folk song from the American civil rights movement.

The song was composed as a hymn before World War I, but the lyrics in this version were written by civil rights activist Alice Wine in 1956. It is based on the traditional song, “Gospel Plow”, which is also known as “Hold On”, and “Keep Your Hand On The Plow”.

In this version from 2006, Bruce Springsteen starts on vocals, but when Marc Anthony Thompson (with hat) joins him, it becomes a great soul-stirring anthem. Thus, an instructional guide for all of us:

Sample lyrics:

Paul and Silas bound in jail
Had no money to go their bail
Keep your eyes on the prize
Hold on

Paul and Silas thought they were lost
Dungeon shook and the chains come off
Keep your eyes on the prize
Hold on

Freedom’s name is mighty sweet
And soon we’re gonna meet
Keep your eyes on the prize
Hold on

I got my hand on the gospel plow
Won’t take nothing for my journey now
Keep your eyes on the prize
Hold on

The only chain that a man can stand
Is the chain of hand on hand
Keep your eyes on the prize
Hold on

Wrongo’s Seen Enough

The Daily Escape:

Tini Martini Bar, St. Augustine, FL – December 2023 photo by Rosie Taylor Photography. Wrongo and Ms. Right have had many martinis there in the recent past.

Wrongo has seen enough. The US must change direction in its support for Israel’s war in Gaza. This isn’t an easy decision. Israel has suffered mightily at the hands of Hamas in Gaza and at the hands of Hezbollah in Lebanon with its backer, Iran.

Wrongo has written about the lack of proportionality in Israel’s attacks in Gaza. Now that the war is two+ months old, there can be little doubt that by turning about half of Gaza into a parking lot, Israel’s war is at least as much about uprooting Palestinians as it is about destroying Hamas.

It would be naïve to think that cutting off (or reducing) American funding to Israel would materially improve the chances of Palestinian statehood. And the prospects of that happening have been decreased both by Israel’s disproportionate response to 10/7 and by Netanyahu’s explicit opposition to any form of Palestinian statehood post-hostilities.

Unless the war is ended soon, it will widen beyond Gaza.

It’s already heating up in Lebanon with Hezbollah firing more than 1,000 different types of rockets, missiles, drones, and mortars toward Israel since October 8. Newsweek asked how close Israel was to full-scale war in Lebanon. Israel’s spokesperson said:

“…we could have been at war with Hezbollah…based solely on their actions, their violation of Israeli sovereignty and the casualties that they have caused…”

The tempo of attacks along the boundary between Israel and Lebanon are at levels not seen since the IDF and Hezbollah fought in 2006. Axios reports that Israel told the Biden administration it wants Hezbollah to move six miles back from its border, far enough that they will not be able to fire at Israeli towns along the border. But why would Hezbollah agree?

In Yemen, the Houthi are attacking ships transiting the Red Sea. The US announced a new multinational security initiative aimed at protecting ships in the Red Sea from Houthi attacks. Apparently it’s mostly a PR effort. Politico reported that three additional US destroyers have been moved into the Mediterranean Sea and a Carrier Strike Group vessel has been moved into the Gulf of Aden. Attacks by Houthi militants have prompted Maersk and Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) (both are container shipping companies) to avoid the area.

And inside the Israel/Hamas war in Gaza, CNN reports that an IDF sniper killed a mother and daughter inside the Holy Family Parish in Gaza on Saturday. Seven others were wounded in the attack on the complex, which is housing most of Gaza’s Christian families seeking safety. Pope Francis condemned it.

Also, Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza is no longer functioning and patients including babies have been evacuated, Reuters reported. Last week Israeli forces used a bulldozer to smash through the outside of the hospital.

Israel itself is roiled by the deaths of three Israeli hostages who were mistakenly killed by the IDF in Gaza. Apparently one was carrying a stick with a white cloth says the BBC. This sparked angry protests in Tel Aviv, where thousands of people called for a truce, chanting “Bring them home now“.

Netanyahu refused, saying Israel only had leverage if they continued to fight:

“Military pressure is necessary both for the return of the hostages and for victory. Without military pressure…we have nothing…”

For its part, Hamas said it will not release hostages until the war ends and Israel accepts its conditions for an exchange of 7,000 Palestinian prisoners, which Netanyahu says is a non-starter.

Biden is beginning to get uncomfortable. Recent polling by New York Times/Siena College shows that:

“Voters broadly disapprove of the way President Biden is handling the bloody strife between Israelis and Palestinians….with younger Americans far more critical than older voters of both Israel’s conduct and of the administration’s response to the war in Gaza.”

Here’s a chart from the NYT:

But among young voters, 46% sympathize more with the Palestinians, against 27% who favor Israel. Only 28% of those between the ages of 18 and 29 said Israel was seriously interested in a peaceful solution to the broader conflict, while older voters had far more faith in Israel’s intentions and less in the Palestinians’. Biden sees this and is casting blame on the hardline members of Netanyahu’s war cabinet more than on the prime minister:

“One of the things that Bibi understands, but I’m not sure…[Israel’s Minister of National Security Itamar] Ben-Gvir and his War Cabinet do…they’re starting to lose that support by the indiscriminate bombing that takes place…”

More Immigration Disinformation

The Daily Escape:

Pemaquid Point Lighthouse, ME – December 2023 drone photo by Rick Berk Photography

There are plenty of newsworthy items as we end another week. You can read about them all over the internet. Wrongo wants to highlight just one: The Dow Jones index is up 29% since bottoming on Sept. 30, 2022, climbing to a new all-time high.

This is mostly due to the announcement by the Federal Reserve on Wednesday that in all likelihood, there will be no more increases in interest rates, and that there may be as many as three interest rate reductions in 2024.

Professional investors aren’t following the Dow, but it remains a mental benchmark that many Americans use to gauge the health of the stock market and the economy. So accept good news when it shows up.

Today we return to the topic of illegal immigration. As Wrongo writes this, there is still no deal on immigration, which is thought to be the hold-up on funding for Ukraine and Israel. From Semaphore:

“GOP negotiators said they believed they were making progress in securing a border policy package that’s tilted toward conservative priorities….They also welcomed the…Democratic attacks on the negotiations…..’There are several Democrats that have spoken against it,’ GOP Sen. Thom Tillis, (R-NC) told Semafor. ‘That means we’re hitting the right sort of tone.’”

Wrongo mentioned that it is very difficult to find facts from either side in the immigration debate. One constant refrain from the Right is that terrorists are slipping over the southern border, posing an existential threat to America, and it’s all Biden’s fault. From CBS:

“Republican lawmakers, GOP White House hopefuls and conservative media figures have argued that the Biden administration’s border policies have given terrorists an easier way to enter the US and harm Americans. On Monday…Trump claimed that the “same people” who killed or abducted more than 1,000 civilians in Israel are coming across the southern border separating the US and Mexico…”

And Media Matters added:

“Since the October 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas and the subsequent bombing campaign in Gaza, Fox News has seized on the chaos in the Middle East to revive its relentless fearmongering campaign suggesting that migrants crossing into the US at the southern border are terrorists, this time from the Middle East. Fox’s toxic rhetoric follows “a spike in hate incidents” against Muslims in the US.”

There has been an increase in Border Patrol apprehensions of individuals who are on the US terror watchlist over the past two years. But they represent a tiny fraction of all migrants processed along the southern border. From the NYT: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“From October last year to this September, officials at the southern border arrested 169 people whose names matched those on the watch list, compared with 98 during the previous fiscal year and 15 in 2021, according to government data. But that is a minuscule fraction of the total number of migrants who were apprehended at the border over the past year, more than two million.”

That fraction is less than 0.01% for those of us without calculators. Finding illegals who are on the terror watch list is far more common along the US-Canada border, despite much lower levels of unauthorized migration there. Here’s a US Customs and Border Protection chart:

Customs and Border Protection recorded more than 430 watchlist hits along the northern border in fiscal year 2023, the vast majority of them at official ports of entry.

Still, there are concerns. In its homeland threat assessment for 2024, the intelligence branch of DHS said:

“…record encounters of migrants arriving from a growing number of countries have complicated border and immigration security…”

The assessment also said a recent increase in apprehensions of migrants from the Eastern Hemisphere, while still significantly lower than those from the Western Hemisphere, has “exacerbated border security challenges” because those individuals require more vetting and processing and because it’s more difficult to deport them.

There’s also the question of migrants who aren’t apprehended. The Border Patrol estimates more than 1 million individuals have entered the country surreptitiously over the past two years.

Republicans in Congress now talk about the southern border primarily as a national security issue rather than largely as a collective fear of the “great replacement”. If hundreds of thousands of migrants are evading apprehension, these national security fears have merit. But since terror watch list apprehensions are tiny and a lot higher along our northern border, that border most likely poses an equal threat to national security, if not more, since the security along the northern border is lax. We don’t really have any idea how many evade apprehension by crossing it.

Despite the constant hammering by Fox and the Right, since 1975 no one has been killed or injured in a terrorist attack in the US that involved someone who came across the border illegally. Whenever Congress gets around to dealing with illegal immigration, the solution will require more manpower both for the border patrol and immigration services.

Immigrants will keep on coming. Migration is a part of human nature. Europeans came to North America before America was a country. The peoples of the UK are not the peoples that were there 5,000 years ago. The vast majority of UK citizens have little DNA from the original peoples of those islands. That is also true in the US.

History shows that trying to stop immigration all together is a fool’s errand.

Regardless of how successful we are at controlling immigration, the US demographics of the past 250 years will look VERY different from the US demographics of 100 years from now. That doesn’t mean we should give up on controlling the process as much as possible. Part of that is to increase the costs of crossing the border, which we are doing today with instant expulsion and denial of asylum claims.

And once people are here, we must do all we can to get them integrated into US society.

The Three University Presidents Messed Up. Or Did They?

The Daily Escape:

Wild surf, Shore Acres SP, OR – December 2020 photo by Alan Nyri Photography

Instead of a soothing Saturday, Wrongo has decided to wade into the hot steaming pile that is the controversy over whether the presidents of various prestige universities are sufficiently anti-genocide. What they said at the House hearings has raised a chorus of voices who think that the leadership at Harvard, MIT and UPenn just aren’t anti-genocide enough.

From Bloomberg’s Noah Feldman:

“The lowlight of the House hearings on campus antisemitism…came when Congresswoman Elise Stefanik (R-NY) asked the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania whether it would be bullying and harassment if someone on campus called for a genocide of Jews. The presidents’ answers — that it depended on context — landed about as badly as it could have. Stefanik, a Trumpist Republican election denier, browbeat them and called it “unacceptable.”

Feldman is a law professor at Harvard. He went on to say:

“The core idea of First Amendment freedom is that the expression of ideas should not be punished because doing so would make it harder, not easier, to find the truth. That freedom extends to the most hateful ideas imaginable, including advocacy of racism, antisemitism, and yes, genocide.”

Wrongo isn’t a lawyer and this isn’t a court or a classroom, so what follows is his take on this matter.

Can speech be constrained? In 1969, the Supreme Court protected a Ku Klux Klan member’s speech and created the “imminent danger” test to determine on what grounds speech can be limited, saying in Brandenburg v. Ohio that:

“The constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a state to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force, or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.”

Speech promoting violation of the law may only be restricted when it poses an imminent danger of unlawful action, where the speaker has the intention to incite such action, and there is the likelihood that this will be the consequence of that speech.

In 2017, the Court affirmed this in a unanimous decision on Matal v. Tam. The issue was about government prohibiting the registration of trademarks that are “racially disparaging”. Effectively, the Supreme Court unanimously reaffirmed that there is no “hate speech” exception to the First Amendment. Such speech can be prohibited when the very utterances inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace.

There is plenty of case law on the First Amendment out there to read or about hate speech if you prefer to do your own research. From Wikipedia:

“In the 1980s and 1990s, more than 350…universities adopted “speech codes” regulating discriminatory speech by faculty and students. These codes have not fared well in the courts, where they are frequently overturned as violations of the First Amendment.”

So, while University presidents may sound lawyer-like when asked if “calling for genocide of Jews” should be prohibited, think about the long history of case law that says there are few limits on hate speech that do not result in action intended to produce harm. Also think about the losing streak these universities have been on when they have tried to restrict speech in the past.

As it happens, the three presidents were accurately describing their universities’ rules, which do depend on context. Yascha Mounk in The Atlantic had this to say:

“In a narrow, technical sense, the three presidents were correct to state that their current policies would probably not penalize offensive political speech. In a more substantive sense, universities should defend a very broad definition of academic freedom, one that shields students and faculty members from punishment for expressing a political opinion, no matter how abhorrent.”

Mounk goes on to say that the university presidents were disingenuous when they claimed that their response to anti-Semitism on campus was hamstrung by a commitment to free speech. Recent history at all three institutions shows that their rules about free speech are unevenly applied. So the problem with their answers wasn’t about making a judgement call about calls for genocide.

We’re stepping into muddy waters here. When students say: “From the river to the sea. Palestine will soon be free” they’re using a political slogan that on its face is aspirational. While some may hear that and say it implies genocide of Jews, it should be protected speech. It’s stupid and ignorant, but 100% protected. Widening out our view, blaming all Jews for Netanyahu’s excesses or blaming all Palestinians for the atrocities of Hamas is wrong but it’s still protected speech.

People like Stefanik are too high on their own agenda to appreciate the distinction.

Still, it’s true that many (most? all?) universities have become hypocritical. There are plenty of examples of professors being expelled, or outside speakers being cancelled because the administration doesn’t care for the viewpoints being expressed.

The question of exactly when political/hate speech becomes sufficiently threatening and specific toward a given individual or groups so as to constitute legally (and by extension administratively) a violation of a university’s code of conduct is, not surprisingly, a massive gray area. On Thursday a man saying “Free Palestine” fired shots at a synagogue near Albany NY. Thankfully, nobody was harmed. He wasn’t on campus and he did back his words with a serious threat, so he was arrested.

The university presidents failed to be clear. The US case law and the school’s codes of conduct are sufficiently difficult to adjudicate on a hypothetical basis. These three presidents should learn that first, the US Congress isn’t the academy. Second, they should admit they are fuzzy thinkers about free speech at their institutions. Third, they should develop better codes of conduct.

Let’s give the last word to Feldman:

“Free-speech nuance is something to be proud of, not something to condemn.”

A final thought. Stefanik’s gotcha game with yes/no answers to complex questions shouldn’t be the way the game is played, but for now it is. Many Republicans think that colleges and universities deserve specific blame for the liberal political views of young Americans. It has become an article of faith on the right despite little supporting evidence that colleges are turning young people into liberals. Stefanik is a willing tool of this viewpoint.

On to our Saturday Soother. We’ve had snow overnight for the past two days on the Fields of Wrong. Still, it’s expected to be around 60° on Sunday. Given our uneven weather, the arborist isn’t coming here until the middle of February.

Let’s get comfortable in a big chair near a window. Now, try to let go of the arguments about the “people we hate and I want to talk about them” and empty our minds of complicated ideas, even if they are foundational to our democratic experiment.

Let’s listen to the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields Chamber Ensemble perform Maurice Ravel’s “Introduction and Allegro for harp, flute, clarinet and string quartet”. He composed this work in 1905 and it was first performed in 1907.

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Category: Israel

Memorial Weekend Musings

Should Dems Worry About Students Disrupting Their Convention?

The Red Sea Is Becoming A Bigger Problem

Biden’s Dilemma

Welcome To MLK Weekend

Wrongo’s Seen Enough