James Carroll has been a Shorenstein Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and has a multitude of other appointments, has written numerous fiction and non-fiction books as well as countless essays in major magazines and newspapers in the United States and overseas. At TomDispatch, he writes—Doomsday Redux The Most Dangerous Weapon Ever Rolls Off the Nuclear Assembly Line:
Last month, the National Nuclear Security Administration (formerly the Atomic Energy Commission) announced that the first of a new generation of strategic nuclear weapons had rolled off the assembly line at its Pantex nuclear weapons plant in the panhandle of Texas. That warhead, the W76-2, is designed to be fitted to a submarine-launched Trident missile, a weapon with a range of more than 7,500 miles. By September, an undisclosed number of warheads will be delivered to the Navy for deployment.
What makes this particular nuke new is the fact that it carries a far smaller destructive payload than the thermonuclear monsters the Trident has been hosting for decades -- not the equivalent of about 100 kilotons of TNT as previously, but of five kilotons. According to Stephen Young of the Union of Concerned Scientists, the W76-2 will yield “only” about one-third of the devastating power of the weapon that the Enola Gay, an American B-29 bomber, dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. Yet that very shrinkage of the power to devastate is precisely what makes this nuclear weapon potentially the most dangerous ever manufactured. Fulfilling the Trump administration’s quest for nuclear-war-fighting “flexibility,” it isn’t designed as a deterrent against another country launching its nukes; it’s designed to be used. This is the weapon that could make the previously “unthinkable” thinkable. [...]
Unlike tactical weapons, intercontinental strategic nukes were designed to directly target the far-off homeland of an enemy. Until now, their extreme destructive power (so many times greater than that inflicted on Hiroshima) made it impossible to imagine genuine scenarios for their use that would be practically, not to mention morally, acceptable. It was exactly to remove that practical inhibition -- the moral one seemed not to count -- that the Trump administration recently began the process of withdrawing from the Cold War-era Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, while rolling a new “limited” weapon off the assembly line and so altering the Trident system. With these acts, there can be little question that humanity is entering a perilous second nuclear age.
Alexandra Petri at The Washington Post writes—Profile of Holden Caulfield, an American boy:
We are doing these profiles now, I guess!
Holden Caulfield is a high school senior from New York. Like all boys his age, he thinks a lot about what he wants to do with his life. He wants to just stand in the rye at the edge of a cliff and catch children before they fall off. That’s all he would really like to do. But life is never that simple.
Holden Caulfield is 16 and happy not to be a phony. To be a phony would be the worst thing in the world, likely. It would just kill him. He’d have to pretend to give a crap about the opera and crummy things like that, which he doesn’t ever want to do. He might not be a phony, but everyone around him is. [...]
E.J. Dionne Jr. at The Washington Post writes—Trump’s fixation on a wall looks juvenile. Democrats should learn from his mistakes:
...the GOP, including Trump, is already signaling that its main goal is to pick up on the most adventurous proposals from Democratic legislators — and any reckless or offensive statements from individual Democrats — to pretend that Republicans are, against the evidence of the past two years, a mainstream bunch.
Dealing with this issue is much trickier. For the long run, it’s useful for progressive Democrats to push the boundaries of the policy debate. But they should leave the incendiary tweets to Trump, keep the focus on his extremism and legislate in areas where their party is united — political reform, voting rights, repairs to the health-care system, protections for the “dreamers” and infrastructure.
Successful parties manage to do more than one thing at the same time. To keep the initiative, the Democrats need to show that they can master this essential political art.
Simon Tisdall at The Guardian writes—Trump’s Iran summit shows just how far he is from the rest of the West. Britain, France and Germany clearly don’t like his tub-thumping – but that may not be enough to stop him:
Does Mike Pompeo realise what a foolish figure he cuts as he shambles around Europe, spouting risible tosh about Donald Trump’s commitment to a “new liberal order” and America as “force for good” in the Middle East? It seems he does not. Pompeo is a former soldier, Tea Party Republican, hawkish CIA chief and enthusiastic torture advocate who complained in 2013 that Guantanamo Bay inmates on hunger strike had “put on weight”. Self-awareness is not really his thing.
Whatever else he is, Pompeo is plainly no diplomat. Yet thanks to Trump, his job since April last year is US secretary of state, arguably the world’s most influential diplomatic post. It’s a role previously held by such towering figures as James Monroe, John Foster Dulles and George Shultz. By comparison, Pompeo is a political pufferfish floundering out of his depth. His latest self-inflicted embarrassment is Wednesday’s conference in Warsaw, envisaged (by him) as an international rally to put pressure on Iran.
In the week Iran noisily celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Islamic revolution and its leaders dared the US to do its worst, Pompeo mounted a demonstration of his own. His cunning wheeze was to bring together the pliant nations of Europe and the Arab world in an American-led show of unity that would convince the terrified mullahs to forsake their “malign” activities. What this inept bumbling has achieved instead is to startlingly expose the deep and widening divisions between the US and its principal European allies.
Katherine Goldstein writes—American moms: let's stop feeling guilty and start getting mad. Even Planned Parenthood is mistreating its mothers in a country where they face discrimination and farcical expectations:
In December, I read a news article that had me cursing at the computer with rage. It was a New York Times investigation detailing allegations ofpoor treatment of mothers by Planned Parenthood, including not offering maternity leave, mistreating pregnant workers and discriminating against moms in hiring and promotion. So why did this get me so much more worked up than average? After all, we live in a general cascade of bad news, with no shortage of things to be outraged about. The story made me particularly angry because, in addition to being a mother myself, for the last two years I’ve been researching and reporting on working mothers. And the more I learn about motherhood in America, the angrier I get. Many thoughtful articles and interesting books are exploring new levels of anger in the public sphere – and there’s been a lot of attention on exploring our current renaissance of women’s rage. While mothers today are rightfully involved in all sorts political organizing and public protests, I think we should also make space to be truly pissed about what it’s actually like to be mother in 2019.
Let’s start at the beginning. When a woman learns she’s pregnant, she immediately becomes vulnerable to the “epidemic” of pregnancy discrimination; it appears no industry is immune. Mothers are more likely to die in childbirth in America than in most industrialized countries, and that rate is climbing. Even more disturbingly, black mothers are nearly 3.5 times more likely to die than white mothers. As hospitals try to address this, some of them appear more interested in blaming mothers for their own deaths than proactively changing outcomes. Since we live in the only industrialized country that doesn’t mandate paid family leave, nearly 25% of mothers go back to work within two weeks of giving birth. To give you a sense of where human mothers fall on the legal protection hierarchy, it’s illegal to separate a dog from her newborn pups before eight weeks in several states.
Emily Atkin at The New Republic writes—If Not the Green New Deal, Then What? Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's proposal has countless critics. Two of them share their good-faith alternatives for reversing climate change:
As momentum for the Green New Deal grows, so do its detractors. The ambitious plan to fight climate change introduced by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey last week has been called everything from “brainless” to “delusional” by conservatives. President Donald Trump said it sounded like “a high school term paper that got a low mark.” Some Democrats have criticized the Green New Deal, too, saying that its goal of net zero carbon emissions by 2030 is unachievable. Others believe the plan doesn’t go far enough.
What, then, do these critics propose instead? What should America do to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and slow catastrophic global warming?
Most Republicans don’t have an answer to that question because they deny that anything needs to be done at all. But as New Yorker staff writer Osita Nwanevu noted on Twitter, those who accept the dire reality of climate change aren’t helping by offering empty critiques. [...]
The Green New Deal is based on the idea that the only way to solve a problem as enormous as climate change is to change the way society works: to reform American capitalism itself. That’s why, in addition to transitioning the country to 100 percent renewable energy and installing a high-speed rail system to reduce our reliance on cars, Ocasio-Cortez and Markey’s resolution calls for universal health care, a federal job guarantee program, and affordable housing for all. It also says the public should have “an appropriate ownership stake” in the achievements of the Green New Deal.
Farhad Manjoo at The New York Times writes—Pretend It’s Aliens. A neat mental trick to understand the climate battle ahead:
What so riled me up was not just the projected devastation but also the obvious incapacity of our political system to even begin to comprehend the suffering to come, let alone mitigate it. It struck me that what we need to fight climate change is not just some new political plan but a whole new politics — the sort of thorough reimagining of stakes that humanity has only previously achieved during times of total war.
But climate change is not war. There is no enemy, other than ourselves. And we are very bad, as individuals or collectively, at fighting ourselves over anything.
This thought chilled me.
Then, one late night after taking a dose of a kind of sleep medicine that is now widely available in California, I had an epiphany:
Pretend it’s aliens.
And just for fun, let’s check out what the latest trope from one of the right-wing acolytes of the No Can Do squad has to say about the Green New Deal. Henry Olsen at The Washington Post writes—The Green New Deal is a declaration of an unwinnable ‘World War G’:
War is clearly the GND’s background metaphor. The resolution introduced last week states that combating climate change requires “a new national, social, industrial and economic mobilization on a scale not seen since World War II.” It goes on to state that achieving Green New Deal goals “should be accomplished through a 10-year national mobilization,” which the document helpfully calls “the Green New Deal mobilization.” The 11-page proposal invokes that phrase five more times in case you didn’t get the message up front.
There will be no exemptions from the GND’s draft. Since the goal is to reduce global “greenhouse gas emissions from human sources” by “40 to 60 percent from 2010 levels by 2030,” pretty much everyone and everything will need to be mobilized in the “Federal Government-led” effort. The list of what would need to be regulated or taxed is limitless, essentially impacting anyone who drives a vehicle, heats their home or eats food.
The very nature of the goal makes this war more endless than our intervention in Afghanistan. Human life has emitted greenhouse gases since the first homo sapiens discovered fire. Regulating these emissions so that the global temperature will never rise above a certain level cannot end at a certain date. This is not a war where we beat the enemy and then bring the troops home — it is a constant, never-ending struggle against humanity’s basic impulse to raise itself from poverty.
That struggle makes the war unwinnable.
Obviously in Olsen’s view, Green New Dealers hate poor people.
David Dayen at The American Prospect writes—California’s Bullet Train Goes Off the Rails. Governor Gavin Newsom decides to slow down what could have been one of the country’s most transformative transportation infrastructure projects.
Aweek after the introduction of the Green New Deal resolution, designed to build an inclusive economy while fighting the climate crisis, the textbook version of such a project has been essentially cancelled. In California, Governor Gavin Newsom used his State of the State Address to declare that there’s “no path” currently for a high-speed rail network connecting all of the state’s population centers.
Instead of abandoning the project, Newsom has committed to completing the segment connecting Bakersfield, Fresno, and Merced, three cities with a population of around one million in a state pushing 40 million. No line would be preferable to running this line, which would create the false impression that high-speed rail cannot work in America.
California’s bullet train tragedy is a cautionary tale on numerous levels. It’s about whether big infrastructure projects can flourish in the U.S.; whether a determined opposition can put big ideas out of reach; and whether the Green New Deal in theory can ever match the cold reality of constructing a green economy. Policymakers need to learn from this, and fast, because we need high-speed rail in America. [...]
Nora Barrows-Friedman writes—Who Will Stand Up for Ilhan Omar?
Ilhan Omar was right to call out the massive influence of Israel lobby groups, which do not hide their close working relationships to U.S. lawmakers. Yet, she was immediately denounced, criticized and smeared as an anti-Semite, and not just by the usual coterie of right-wing, Israel-aligned politicians who already despise her anti-war positions and her bold support of the Palestinian cause. She was blasted by self-identified liberals as well—including Chelsea Clinton, the offspring of famous politicians who have been loyal supporters of AIPAC and Israel’s genocidal policies for decades.
The avalanche of condemnation peaked on Monday with chastising statements by top Democratic leaders Rep. Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (N.Y.), both staunch advocates of Israel’s policies. As the criticisms reached crescendo on Tuesday, President Donald Trump called for Omar to resign.
Republicans and Democrats alike are happy to throw Omar—a Black, Muslim refugee woman who has garnered significant popularity for her unapologetic progressive politics—under the bus.
However, by slamming the freshman representative, Pelosi, Schumer and the entire Democratic party revealed precisely what Omar pointed out: AIPAC, like other enormous lobby groups, wields its power by pushing politicians to protect their interests and silencing those who refuse to cower.
Ady Barkan at The Nation writes—What Ilhan Omar Said About AIPAC Was Right:
Over the weekend, Republican House minority leader Kevin McCarthy said he would seek to formally sanction the first two Muslim congresswomen, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, because their criticism of Israel’s occupation of Palestine was even more reprehensible than Congressman Steve King’s defense of white supremacy. What motivated McCarthy’s false accusations of anti-Semitism? On Twitter, Omar suggested, “It’s all about the Benjamins baby,” quoting Puff Daddy’s ’90s paean to cash money. Omar subsequently specified that she was talking about spending from the likes of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, better known as AIPAC, the powerful pro-Israel lobbying organization.
By Monday morning, AIPAC had mobilized its allies to condemn Omar’s comment for playing into centuries-old anti-Semitic tropes that wealthy Jews control the world. Even the Democratic leadership put out a statement condemning her. All because she dared to point out that the emperor has no clothes.
Talia Lavin at The Nation writes—The Maddening, Baffling, Exhausting Endurance of Anti-Semitism:
The flap over Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s dashed-off-seeming tweets about a pro-Israel lobbying group has stretched on for days, each of which has lasted a century. Thus far Republicans have chided Democrats for allowing a supposed anti-Semite in their midst. Democrats have capitulated somewhat, as is their wont. Leftist Jews have chided centrist and right-wing Jews, who chided them right back. Just about everyone has weighed in, from Chelsea Clinton to the president, who appeared unwanted but inevitably, like piss in city snow.
And in the Twitter mire and growing pile of think pieces, in the swirling intersection of prejudices of this particular mini-scandal, clarity on what anti-Semitism is exactly and how to prevent it—becomes less and less clear with every word.
The primary feeling I have when anti-Semitism comes up in the news is exhaustion. It’s almost preemptive; at the first mention of the word by a single pundit, all the strength leaves my bones. I want to drape myself on a divan and read the tender Jewish fiction of Joseph Roth for the next 20 years. Time and again, I’ve watched disputes over anti-Semitism whirl up and come to nothing, leaving only acrimony in their wake. The prospect of engaging with these discussions winds up being little more than daunting.
This is not to downplay the importance of anti-Semitism. As a world-historical phenomenon, it’s remarkably durable. As a political tool, it retains the weight of a lead bludgeon. The way it’s surged back into prominence in recent years is impressive, and unavoidable if you’re a Jew online. The notion of eradicating it, like eradicating any hatred, is impossible to conceive. And it has recently led to a massacre in a synagogue, so the stakes are high and the wound freshly scabbed.
Ed Kilgore at New York magazine writes—Political Cult Leader Lyndon LaRouche Dies at 96:
Originally in an effort to help Ronald Reagan by dividing his opposition, the LaRouche movement began depicting itself as a Democratic Party faction in 1980. LaRouche himself would run for president seven times as a pseudo-Democrat, despite promoting an ever-more-right-wing agenda. All over the country, journalists and voters alike were puzzled by LaRouche candidates in Democratic primaries who came across as calm, articulate, and completely out of their minds as they promoted some of their idol’s favorite delusions, most notably the idea that Queen Elizabeth II was in charge of a global drug cartel.
The high point of this perpetual campaign of deception by LaRouchies posing as Democrats was in 1986, when, in a low-turnout primary in Illinois, LaRouche candidates won the Democratic nominations for lieutenant governor and secretary of state. They basically wrecked what had been a promising year for Illinois Democrats, who had to create a separate ticket to avoid pulling these unwelcome parasites into office.
Eventually LaRouche was undone by his sloppy finances and deceptive practices, and served five years in federal prison on fraud and tax charges. But he made a comeback before eventually eating his own movement in the early years of the 21st century by trying to recruit a new cadre of young people via an attack on the very baby boomers who had followed him for so long. A suicide by the man who had long run LaRouche’s publishing armhad a powerful effect on the group’s membership and finances, though subventions from his devotees always kept LaRouche flush personally.
Kia Gregory at The New Republic writes—Killing Us Softly: How Videos of Police Brutality Traumatize African Americans and Undermine the Search for Justice:
With the ubiquity of smartphones and dash and body cameras, there is ample footage to expose police violence and grab the nation’s attention. In a virtually unlimited digital space, the images spread fast and far. Footage has refuted police accounts, revealed crucial facts withheld from families of victims, and sparked campaigns for justice and reform. “The racial justice movement against state violence would not have accelerated at the quick pace that it did without these videos,” said Khalil Gibran Muhammad, a professor of history, race, and public policy at Harvard Kennedy School.
Yet because the images of police violence are so pervasive, they inflict a unique harm on viewers, particularly African Americans, who see themselves and those they love in these fatal encounters. This recognition becomes a form of violence in and of itself—and even more so when justice is denied.
For [Victor] Dempsey and scores of viewers who watched the surveillance video, the shooting death of [his brother, Delrawn] Small was a clear-cut crime. When the shooting was first reported in the media, Isaacs and the New York City police department said that Small had exited his car and repeatedly punched Isaacs in his face through Isaacs’s car window. Isaacs said he feared for his life, a justification that has been routinely deployed by police officers when they use deadly force on African Americans. But the video, Dempsey said, “is like truth serum.”
Four days after the shooting, the footage was leaked, disputing the police account. The family thought the video would be enough to prove that Isaacs had used excessive force. “That was our hope,” Dempsey said. “That was our redemption. That was our justice.” So when the murder trial inside Brooklyn Supreme Court ended with a not-guilty verdict in the fall of 2017, “it was literally like losing him twice,” Dempsey told me. “It was like he got killed in front of us again.”
“So these videos don’t mean anything,” he added. “So now, what the hell matters?”