Left Jabs

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Goliaths, Davids, and the Rules of War

He thought it would be over in three days. Swoop in, decapitate the government, install a new one, piece of cake. Instead it’s turned into an extended exercise in barbarity, targeting civilian populations, destroying infrastructure, and ruining multiple economies, with no apparent strategy or purpose beyond stroking a sociopath’s ego. Are we talking about Trump or Putin here? Iran or Ukraine? Hard to tell from just that paragraph. The similarities are as striking as the differences, the big difference being that Iran is just getting started, while Ukraine is a more mature catastrophe, four years in the making. Another difference is that Ukraine’s impact on the world economy after four years will prove to be a mere fraction of Iran’s after a few months. But Ukraine has been the harbinger of a new kind of war, which is now ready for prime time. Asymmetric war. Goliath-versus-David war. Total offense versus shrewd defense. Fertile ground for atrocities and war ...

The Rule of Law Strikes Back

It’s hard to say what constitutes an emergency these days. We can look in any direction and see one coming. We constantly blink in disbelief that one deranged individual seems bent on bringing down the whole planet, for no discernible reason other than it looks like fun. Yes, for a certain kind of sociopath, blowing shit up does look like fun. The same sort of fun a delinquent middle schooler might have setting off illegal cherry bombs in the boys’ room. Same mentality, a billion times more dangerous. There’s a race against time going on. For reasons that have the whole world baffled, the only chance of stopping this monster is waiting for the midterms and hoping for the best. That’s, um, eight months away. As infuriating as that is to us, imagine what it’s like for people in other countries, none of whom have any control over the cataclysmic disruptions, born of sheer whimsy, that now threaten their lives. Living inside the economic blast radius of this ...

Rewriting History has a Long and Ugly History

I n 1937, Nikolai Yezhov was the second most powerful man in the Soviet Union. He was head of Stalin’s secret police, the dreaded NKVD, which was rebranded years later as the KGB. Most important, he was, at least for the moment, in Stalin’s good graces, a precarious place to be. As he well knew. Yezhov was everything Stephen Miller wants to be. He was the guy responsible for carrying out what became known as the Great Terror. His job was the systematic and ruthless elimination, often through summary execution, of anyone Stalin suspected might be an “enemy of the people.” This was a lengthy list, numbering in the many thousands, and from all reports Yezhov made a substantial dent in it. That year, there was an official photo taken of Stalin, Yezhov, and two others walking along a canal in Moscow. (One of the others was Vyacheslav Molotov, whose notorious cocktails had not yet been introduced). A mere three years later, Yezhov was out of the ...

Iran Plays Rope-a-Dope, and Guess Who’s the Dope

I n 1974, Muhammed Ali and George Foreman went to Africa to fight for the heavyweight championship of the boxing world. Billed as the “Rumble in the Jungle,” this was widely regarded as a mismatch — Ali was past his prime, while Foreman, the current champ, was seen as a violent force of nature. Ali won, through sheer brilliance. He spent most of the fight with his back against the ropes, arms in front of his face, calmly deflecting anything Foreman threw at his arms or body. Foreman, known for putting away opponents with one punch, spent most of the fight having his blows harmlessly absorbed by Ali’s arms. When Ali was able, when he saw an opening, he “stung like a bee,” taking Foreman by surprise with quick shots to the face. But rather than “float like a butterfly” — his trademark dance-like style — Ali decided instead to stand still, conserve energy, take the abuse, and hit back when he could. Foreman was not ready for this. This was surely...

Is Anyone Surprised There’s No Plan for Iran?

It’s a given that Trump has no idea what he’s doing. But that hasn’t stopped him from launching a devastating attack on Iran which, looking back, was always going to happen. Not that there’s a rational reason for war with Iran, or for burning through a billion dollars a day, or for tanking the global economy, or for putting literally billions of lives at risk. He’s Trump, he doesn’t need a reason. But as much as Trump lies, when it comes to the big things — mass deportation, Venezuela, election denial — he generally means what he says, insane as that might be. Are you listening Cuba? Do you think he’s forgotten you Greenland? So when he started signalling that Iran was next on his bucket list, I suppose this day was always going to come. We knew there would be no real plan or objective, just the sick whims of a senile sociopath, drunk on power. Of course, Republicans have fallen all over themselves trying to stay ahead of the narrative du jo...

Farmers are Being Seriously Messed With

L et me say, right up front, that my knowledge of agriculture is minimal. Food grows in supermarkets. But I have done some homework to back up a suspicion of mine, which is that in terms of existential peril wrought by the Trump regime, there is no single group — with the glaring exception of our immigrant population — being bludgeoned as cruelly as the nation's farmers. Yes, there is deep irony in knowing that farmers voted overwhelmingly for Trump, many of them three times. Yes, it’s another FAFO moment — one of many coming fast and furious now. The problem is that we’re talking about our food supply here. We need those farmers — dumbshit Trump voters or not — to keep growing stuff for us to eat too much of. So it is of some concern to all of us that farm bankruptcies are up 36% since Trump took office. Underlying that figure is the grim fact that the market prices of virtually every major crop grown in this country are lower than the costs required to gr...