President Biden spoke eloquently in Normandy, remarks by President Biden on the 80th Anniversary of D-Day, Normandy, France, honoring those who fought to free the world of the scourge of Nazism.
However, I believe he should have added four (4) observations.
The dragon flies, breathes fire, wipes out towns. It is a symbol of awesome power and unbridled greed. Yet, in the traditional American and English stories the dragon is defeated; outwitted by little hobbits, killed by dour warriors and noble knights. In the brutal dystopian world of “Game of Thrones“ and “House of Dragon,” its prequel (neither of which I have seen), dragons are tamed by humans more cruel and more ruthless who wield magic. But above all else, aside from the large monitor lizard that is the Komodo Dragon, the dragon illustrated above is legend, myth, and fantasy; it is not real.
Continue readingPutin says Russia’s “Special Military Operation” in Ukraine is going according to plan …
Looking objectively, Russia has failed to achieve Putin’s “strategic” goals.
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The French navy has intercepted a Russian cargo ship in the English Channel that was bound for Saint Petersburg, the BBChas reported.
French officials said the ship was intercepted according to new European Union sanctions imposed on Russian entities and individuals after Vladimir Putin launched an invasion of Ukraine.
An official told the BBC: “A 127 meters long Russia cargo ship called the ‘Baltic Leader’ transporting cars has been intercepted overnight by the French Navy in the Channel and escorted to the Port of Boulogne-Sur-Mer in Northern France.
You can’t get Russian Vodka in Ontario, Alberta, Manitoba, and British Columbia, Canada (CTV News). Putin won’t notice.
Russians are protesting the invasion of Ukraine, across Russia, by the thousands (NY Times). Putin won’t care. There may be too many to put in jail – and anyway, they already are inside the gulag, they are already in jail, a jail called the Russian Federation.
However,
Continue readingPutin appears to be recreating the Russian Empire – with himself, of course, as Tzar. While calling himself “President” not “Tzar,” he has succeeded within Russia and he has extended his dominion to Belarus and eastern Ukraine.
The rest of Ukraine is obviously next. And then? The Baltics? Poland? Czechia & Slovakia?
I have friends who remember the Soviet invasions of Hungary in 1956 (click here) and of Czechoslovakia in 1968 (here).
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Iranian Pres. Achmadinejad at Natanz.
Focusing on “Operation Olympic Games,” the US efforts behind the Flame and Stuxnet cyber attacks, Mischa Glenny, in “A Weapon We Can’t Control,” an op-ed in the NY Times, 6/24/12, says the U.S. has “fired the starting gun in a new arms race … cyberweaponry.” However, Mr. Glenny ignores efforts by hackers in China and from the former Soviet Union.
CVAX ... When you care enough to steal the very best
Mark Landler and Edward Wong, covering Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping’s trip to the US, in the New York Times, Feb 14, With Edge, U.S. Greets China’s Heir Apparent, wrote,
“On the list of American concerns, Mr. Biden said, were China’s artificially depressed currency and conditions imposed by the Chinese that require foreign companies to turn over technology in return for doing business in China. He raised the issue of jailed Chinese dissidents and … Syria”
In Inflaming Trademark Dispute, Second City in China Halts Sales of the iPad, published in the NY Times, Feb. 14, 2012, Michael Wines wrote:
“The authorities in a second Chinese city have begun seizing iPads from local retailers in an escalating trademark dispute between Apple and Proview Technology. … The seizures follow a ruling in December in which a court in Shenzhen dismissed Apple’s contention that it owned the iPad name in China. … Proview has also made a filing with the General Administration of Customs in China putting Apple on notice that the company could seek to block the export of iPads, should Proview’s ownership claims be upheld. … the seizures and the filing are warnings by Proview of the havoc it could wreak unless Apple agrees to pay a large fee to settle the trademark fight. … Paradoxically, China’s intellectual property laws are so sweeping that they allow the government to ban the worldwide sale of any made-in-China product that is found to violate a Chinese patent, trademark or other protection.”
Remember back during the cold war, when Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev said “Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you.” ( various quotes by Kruschev).
And later when the American computer company DEC, in response to reverse engineering of VAX computers by Soviet computer scientists inscribed, in Russian,“CVAX, … When you care enough to steal the very best” on the CVAX microprocessors. (Links: TRAILING EDGE.com, CNET, FSU.edu.)
Suppose Khrushchev had called John Kennedy, on the occasion of John Glenn’s orbit in the Friendship 7, February 20, 1962, here, or Leonid Brezhnev had called Richard Nixon, after Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins returned from the moon in Apollo 11, July 24, 1969, Apollo 11, or Mikhail Gorbachev had answered Ronald Reagan’s call to “tear down this wall,” and said
“Mister President, I have business proposition for you: Let us to build your consumer goods. We have factories with skilled laborers. Our workers are like children, so eager to please. (Ok, they are children.) We can more or less match your quality control. We can deliver on time. And we do this for pennies on the dollar – pennie!
“All we ask is you give us designs for the products, and computer software source code for computers and telecommunications de-wices we assemble. It will be great Soviet / American partnership.”
Presidents Kennedy, Nixon, and Reagan would have said
“Give you our designs? Our software? That’s our intellectual property? Are you nuts? That would be crazy!”
Premiers Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and Gorbachev might have answered,
“But our labor costs are much lower than yours. We have workers in factories, happy workers in the ‘Worker’s Paradise.’ Why. workers in our factories in Siberia work 7 days a week. And for little more than food and water. Go on strike? Never! (If they did we would shoot them.) You won’t have to pay them union scale or retirement benefits.”
Presidents Kennedy, Nixon, and Reagan would still have said
“Give you our designs? Our software? Our intellectual property? So you can use children and slave labor to build our consumer goods? That would destroy our middle class. That would be nuts.”
And they would have been right.
So how exactly are the Chinese communists different from the Soviet communists?
We wouldn’t outsource to the Soviet Union. Why are we outsourcing to China?
Michael Schwirtz reported in the The New York Times of 13 October, the death of Vyacheslav K. Ivankov.
Vyacheslav K. Ivankov, a Russian crime boss who survived tangles with the K.G.B., the F.B.I. and other violent criminals in a bloody career that spanned decades, was laid to rest at a Moscow cemetery. Hundreds attended the funeral.
Mr. Ivankov died on Friday in a Moscow hospital from complications stemming from a gunshot wound he received apparently in an assassination attempt in July. He was 69. His death has set off fears of a mob war in Moscow like those that bloodied the streets of major Russian cities in the 1990s.
Photo by Andrei Stenin/Reuters. The coffin of Vyacheslav K. Ivankov carried at Vagankovskoe Cemetery in Moscow.
In Russian Mafia in America: Immigration, Culture, and Crime
, James O. Finckenauer and Elin J. Waring hypothesized that “Yaponchick,” while a serious criminal, was not the leader of a large, sophisticated criminal organization – but rather portrayed as such by United States government officials and the press. (Previous citation to Google Books; excerpt published on PBS/FrontLine website linked here).
Finckenauer and Waring aren’t likely to have been in a position to have known that Ivankov would be extradited to Russia for murder and then been acquitted; one’s general impression of the Russian judicial system is that acquittals don’t generally happen when the government wants a conviction.
If Ivankov was sufficiently well-connected that the Russian government was willing to risk losing face being seen conspiring a weak case in order to extradite and then release him, it seems fair to infer that he was, in fact, fairly high up in Russian criminal-political circles.
If you’re not already persuaded that the current state of affairs in Russia should be a cause of great concern, Mark Kleiman makes the point quite concisely in this post.
I’ve been reading Kleiman’s work since dinosaurs roamed the Grand Concourse, carrying betting slips for wise-guys. When getting a copy of one of his article or books meant long waits via interlibrary loan, and many quarters spent printing microfilm reprints. He was one of the first people to look at drug policy in a methodical way. These days he posts at The Reality-Based Community
– and lots of other stuff.
While I was law school, and a bit after, I did some work as a ghostwriter and book editor. I was approached by aides to someone that I’ll refer to here as One of Many Current Candidates. OMCC wanted me to ghost-write a book persuading America that (illegal) drugs were evil, as great a threat as threats could be, and that only someone with the particular skills, experience, and temperament of OMCC could save America from the dreadful prospect of the universal availability of drugs, mandatory
drug use (an idea which, sadly, has not gotten the consideration it’s due), the whole country taken over by Colombian drug cartels.
I talked myself out of that job – and, in fact, I talked OMCC out of being one of many politicians who’ve written drug-war memoirs. One of the arguments I used was that to make the case he wanted to make, one would first have to take account of – and rebut – the work of a number of serious scholars who’d already addressed the issue – and who hadn’t necessarily come to the “no penalty too harsh, no intrusion sufficiently invasive” position this politician had come to. I’m sure I mentioned Kleiman, and Norman Zinberg, of Harvard Medical School. Their work was part of my introduction to drug policy, before I was involved in enforcing it, or criticizing it, or writing about it.
So I talked myself out of a well-paid gig; the politician – now a candidate for the presidence – never did have that book written.
I don’t know if Kleiman is the coiner of the phrase “Reality-Based Community.” I’ve been reading his stuff on the Internet since I found out that I could do it without using the microfilm machines or filling out an interlibrary loan slip and waiting two months. His current blog includes his contributions and those of a handful of other people – mostly scholars – who aren’t familiar to me. But The Reality-Based Community blog is worth checking out; its current skewerings of the Administration’s prevarications and obfuscations regarding the “overblown personnel matter” (the firing of eight United States Attorneys) are precise, and to the point. Each new statement from the Administration is like the Coyote’s new order to the Acme Company; Kleiman’s posts are like the Acme merchandise, unwrapped and in action. See, Coyote v. Acme, U.S.D.C., S.W.D., Arizona (No. B191294) (1990).