What You Should Know
07/20/2022
All the epic storms that have been flooding everything here in the Hudson Valley and washing out train tracks has opened up a sinkhole in our backyard that’s now grown to about five feet across and three feet deep, with the water table coming right up to surface. We not in California anymore. People from here say these storms are nothing like they’ve seen in their lifetimes — another sign that we’re living in the end times. I guess I’ll need to get a bigger sump pump.
—Yasha
PS: See previous WYSKs here.
A spooky and oddly familiar Soviet weaponized immigrant story — “When she was 4 years old, she emigrated from Russia with her parents to an illegal Jewish-only settlement in the occupied West Bank. … Her parents had been imprisoned by Soviet authorities after working with pro-Israel activist Anatoly Sharansky.”
Our cluster bombs have a democratic dud rate! — “The alleged use of cluster bombs by Russian troops has been called a war crime by some politicians in the global north. In fact, then-White House press secretary Jen Psaki called Russia’s alleged use of cluster munitions a potential “war crime” in March 2022.”
…grossly cynical to the end. “The Pentagon said the weapons they would send to Ukraine had a failure rate of 2.35 percent or less, far better than the usual rate that is common for cluster weapons. … But the Pentagon’s own statements indicate that the cluster munitions in question contain older grenades known to have a failure rate of 14 percent or more.”
Updated figures: US aid to Ukraine — “I told The Intercept back in September that the structure, content, and overall volume of US aid — particularly in the absence of a coherent strategy — strongly suggests endless war.”
…and while we’re on the issue of Ukraine, I was just reading a historical paper that looks at how Lenin — a man singularly hated by the hyper-nationalist types in power in Ukraine today — was the biggest friend of Ukrainian nationalism and Ukrainian nationhood. He (and Stalin) were outliers among the Bolsheviks. “The leader of the Bolsheviks, Lenin, insisted, against the will of the majority of his party, that Ukrainian national aspirations had to be recognized. This recognition came about in the form of a Soviet Ukrainian republic.” — John-Paul Himka.
I gotta say, I have soft spot for RFK conspiratorial weirdness. What’s funny about him is that he’s convinced of his own Kennedy family gravitas and his anti-establishment political cred and yet uncharismatic and trashy and establishment all the way: biggest friend of Israel, loves the CIA, etc. The vax stuff is the only thing that makes him stand out from the libs. But then the vax stuff is normal in the Hollywood circles he rolls in. DC-by-way-of-Pacific-Palisades.
…and yet when I read this interview conducted by David Remnick of the New Yorker, I was quickly reminded of that Dem establishment types are so unpleasant and unappealing they make RFK sympathetic and serious.
…I wrote about RFK’s gender-affirming self-care on a previous WYSK.
Lotta ways to laugh at the “Israel isn’t a racist state” resolution recently passed by the House…
…I’ll just offer one of the funnier examples from my archives illustrating the total lack of racism in Israel: Fascist Bumfight in Israel — “In one corner, you have racist secular immigrants of the Our Israel type. In the other, you have racist theocratic fundamentalists from the ultra-Orthodox parties. One of them wants to have a Jewish state only for ‘Jews’ based on a mix of secularism and ethnonationlism. The other one also wants to have a Jewish state only for ‘Jews’ but one that’s based on ethnonationalism and an extremist interpretation of biblical law. They might disagree on the finer points of what defines someone as a ‘Jew’ or what laws should underpin Israeli society. But they all agree on the basics: Juden Uber Alles. Apartheid. Death to Arabs. Death to Palestinians.”
Evgenia went to the local theater to watch Past Lives….
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