To enter a secret session of Germany’s Parliament, lawmakers must lock their phones and leave them outside. Inside, they are not even allowed to take notes. Yet to many politicians, these precautions against espionage now feel like something of a farce.
Because seated alongside them in those classified meetings are members of the Alternative for Germany, the far-right party known by its German abbreviation, AfD.
In the past few months alone, a leading AfD politician wasaccusedof taking money from pro-Kremlin strategists. One of the party’s parliamentary aides wasexposedas having links to a Russian intelligence operative. And some of its state lawmakers flew to Moscow toobserveRussia’s stage-managed elections.
“To know with certainty that sitting there, while these sensitive issues are discussed, are lawmakers with proven connections to Moscow — it doesn’t just make me uncomfortable. It worries me,” said Erhard Grundl, a Green party member of the Parliament’s foreign affairs committee.
In this war, Israel has no statesmen and no diplomatic thinking. At the beginning of the war, Israel’s cabinet decided to ignore “the day after” in Gaza because merely having a discussion of the “political goal” of the operation would undermine the stability of the governing coalition. The cabinet’s members are hemmed in by their own political considerations, and they are taking the country down a dangerous road.
Today Israel is sinking in quicksand in Gaza. The disaster on February 29, in which more than 100 Palestinian civilians were killed and hundreds more injured as they surrounded trucks of humanitarian aid guarded by soldiers in the Israeli Defense Forces, together with the killing of the seven World Central Kitchen workers and the lack of declared political objectives, have almost totally erased the legitimacy of a war that most of the world considered unavoidable when Israel was attacked in October. If Israel does not now announce attainable political goals and activate a diplomatic channel to achieve them, the war will march the country to the precipice.
Israel today is at a strategic point in its war in Gaza, and there is every indication that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is going to choose the wrong path — and take the Biden administration along for a very dangerous and troubling ride. It is so dangerous and troubling that Israel’s best option, when all is said and done, might be to leave a rump Hamas leadership in power in Gaza. Yes, you read that right.
To understand why, let’s look back a bit. I argued in October that Israel was making aterrible mistakeby rushing headlong into invading Gaza, the way America did in Afghanistan after 9/11. I thought Israel should have focused first on getting back its hostages, delegitimizing Hamas for its murderous and rapacious Oct. 7 rampage, and going after Hamas’s leadership in a targeted way — more Munich, less Dresden. That is, a military response akin to how Israel tracked down the killers of its athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, and not how the U.S. turned Dresden into a pile of rubble in World War II.
But I understood that many Israelis felt they had a moral and strategic right and necessity to go into Gaza and remove Hamas “once and for all.” In which case, I argued, Israel would need three things — time, legitimacy, and military and other resources from the U.S. The reason: The ambitious goal of wiping out Hamas could not be completed quickly (if at all); the military operation would end up killing innocent civilians, given how Hamas had tunneled under them; and it would leave a security and government vacuum in Gaza that would have to be filled by the non-Hamas Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, which would have to be upgraded and transformed to take on that task.
In short, Israel would need to fight this war with the least collateral damage for Palestinian civilians and accompany it with a political horizon for a new relationship between Israelis and Palestinians, built around two nation-states for two indigenous peoples. Doing so would give Israel a chance to say to the world that this was not a war of vengeance or occupation, but a war to eliminate the Palestinian entity that was out to destroy any two-state solution — Hamas — and create the political space for a deal with the Palestinian Authority, which is still committed to a two-state deal. That approach would have won the support, funding and, I think, even peacekeeping troops of moderate Arab states like the U.A.E.
Unfortunately, Netanyahu and his military did not pursue that course. They opted for the worst strategic combination: Militarily they opted for the Dresden approach, which, though it may have ended up killing some 13,000 Hamas fighters, also killed thousands of Palestinian civilians, leaving hundreds of thousands of others injured, displaced or homeless — and delegitimizing, for many around the world, what Israel thought was a just war.
And diplomatically, instead of accompanying this war strategy with an initiative that would buy Israel at least some time, legitimacy and resources to dismantle Hamas, Netanyahu refused to offer any political horizon or exit strategy and expressly ruled out any collaboration with the Palestinian Authority under orders from the Jewish supremacists in his governing coalition.
That is an utterly insane strategy.
It has locked Israel into a politically unwinnable war, and it has ended up isolating America, imperiling our regional and global interests, compromising Israel’s support in the U.S. and fracturing the base of President Biden’s Democratic Party.
And the timing is truly awful. The Biden foreign policy team, led by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, have just finished working out the draft of a new strategic deal with Saudi Arabia — including a civil nuclear program, advanced arms and much deeper security ties. The deal, a senior Biden administration official told me, could be wrapped up in a matter of weeks — but for one element. It hinges on Saudi Arabia normalizing relations with Israel in return for Israel ending the war in Gaza, getting out of the Strip and agreeing to a defined “pathway” for a two-state outcome — with clear metrics in terms of what both Israel and the Palestinian Authority would have to do and in what time frames.
The Russian Defense Ministry has reported that there are more people trying to join the military after the terrorist attack. Russia has repeatedly tried to claim that Ukraine was behind the attack.
Kiev has developed the ability to attack deep within the Russian territory. (Note: Slava Ukraini).
The bridge between Russian and Crimea will be destroyed before mid-year.
There are some big developments within NATO.
NATO could send weapons and ammunition to Ukraine. There is a trust fund scheme. That would require NATO members to commit more money. This is intended to “Trump-proof” aid to Ukraine. (Note: This is shameful. I cannot see how anybody would ever trust the US again. I am ashamed.)
“American support is not guaranteed.” (Note: Pathetic)
This would mean that NATO would take over managing this funding which was previously managed by the US. (Note: Again, pathetic, shameful.)
There are still fears about “escalation.” (Note: Again, pathetic.) NATO will have to take the role of coordinating the supply of lethal aid. Zelensky will be advised to accept this agreement even though it does not guarantee Ukrainian membership of NATO (Note: Again, just pathetic.)
But Stoltenberg (Secretary General of NATO) has just said within the past hour that Ukraine membership in NATO is not a matter of if, but of when. (Note: Great.)
A sign of “waning trustworthiness” of the US. (Note: Pathetic. I am ashamed.)
Article: Institute for the Study of War. “Denying Russia’s only strategy for Success.” Russia cannot defeat Ukraine or the West if it mobilizes for defeat. The important strategy is not military, it is the strategy to convince us to see the world from Russia’s perspective.
We cannot participate in a Kremlin-generated “alternative reality.”
This alternative reality is that Russia is going to win and it is necessary for the West to stay on the sidelines.
This specter of “escalation” is difficult to supersede.
In Europe, members of the EU has been paid by Moscow. Russia had approached members of the European Parliament and asked them to accept money.
Zelensky is saying that unless the stalled US aid package is approved, they will have to retreat.
Well, I’m 73 now, and especially since I’m retired, I cannot stop watching the network, or cable news. I wrote a book about media coverage of the invasion of Panama and the twists and turns of political coverage fascinate me even though I know it is not as important as it once was in shaping opinion.
This mea culpa is to ward off what I expect to be a deluge of criticism for even watching something as ridiculous as “Morning Joe” in the first place not to mention spending time writing about it. But…
This morning, I saw Joe Scarborough once again, virtually stop a cable news program because one of the regulars, Jonathan Lemire, (who does Way Too Early) was a second late getting from the set of WTE over to the Morning Joe set. That was rude enough to provoke comment,, but I have seen Scarborough do this to Lemire before.
A few months ago, Scarborough actually walked off the set and reentered, shaking hands with all the guests to make the point that he, too, could saunter onto the set late (lLemire did not “saunter.”). This display, designed to embarrass Lemire and imply that his late arrival had been selfish and self-indulgent (two things Joe Scarborough is notorious for being). This display went on for roughly 10 minutes as Scarborough ambled around the Morning Joe set and even over to another set while advancing arguments for making the other set a sports set. It was mean and it was unnecessary. It reminded me of high school bullies, who ruthlessly ridicule other, always less powerful, boys. These guys always punch down.
Joe Scarborough is just a grown up, more egoistical, and much more powerful version of the high school A-team bully. And, MSNBC has now given him free run of FOUR HOURS of time to fully display in all its glory, his misogyny, his obsession with his brief time in Congress, and his gleeful long discussions of sports. By the way, he thinks that talking over the dreadful Mika while she is trying to do the news, to converse with Willie Geist about sports is outrageously funny. The more disconcerted the dreadful Mika beomes, the funnier he thinks his behavior is. And, Willie Geist (like all hangers on) of course, plays along. Geist, as every other guest on the show, knows that you play along or you get summarily ousted (Refer to Harold Ford, Jr., who has to his shame, descended to Fox. Does this sound like a grown man to you?
As a side note: The only person on cable television worse than Joe Scarborough is the dreadful Mika Brezenski. I can never get over the fact that she has made a fortune hawking a “Know your Worth” self help, or self glorification package for women. This is the woman who had a secret, adulterous affair now turned marriage with her boss which assured her a life-time job on Morning Joe. That’s sure knowing your worth. This is not to mention having participated with Scarborough in a slavering display of support of Trump for the entire first year of his campaign. Unlike almost every other guest, they allowed Trump to call in his rants every morning during that year. Then, there was the famous dreadful Mika off-mike incident beseeching Trump for permission to ask him a hard question.
But, back to bully-boy Scarborough. The first time I saw him ridicule Lemire was before Joe took him on the show to provide daily sadistic pleasure. Lemire was reporting from home and when he was on, there would be framed paper silhouettes on the wall behind him. They looked like silhouettes of two children. Scarborough ridiculed the silhouettes relentlessly until Lemire finally took them off the wall. “What kind of old lady pussy are you?” was the general tenor of the ridicule. Again, It was mean and it was unnecessary.
But, if you credit Keith Olbermann, who has a segment on his podcast I am unreasonably jealous of, called “Things I Promised Never to Talk About” Joe Scarborough is a viper and much more powerful at MSNBC than any of us sitting at home realize.
While I am at this vicious little exercise, I will unnecessarily add my theories about this marriage made in hell. I am guessing that, for Scarborough, this relationship was a temporary convenience. What man doesn’t have an affair with any colleague or subordinate he spends a lot of time at work with? (This was one of the reasons why I could not get hot and bothered about Fani Willis. I am, as I said 73, and I can’t even remember how many of my male colleagues or professors were sleeping with secretaries, colleagues, students the janitor, basically anybody they could get their hands on. But, let a woman do it? In the case of Fani Willis, a single woman sleeps with a single man? You would think the world’s coming to an end. I can’t remember how many people, oh wait, my God I can remember: JOE SCARBOROUGH WHINGED ON AND ON ONE MORNING ABOUT FANI WILLIS’ “POOR JUDGEMENT.”)
This is the Joe Scarborough whose intern died in such strange circumstances people were publicly accusing him of murder years later. This is the Joe Scarborough who supported Donald Trump until Donald Trump 1) did not make him chief of staff and 2) outed his adulterous affair with the dreadful Mika when it was a secret from her children. This is the Joe Scarborough who had the affair and then wound up having to marry someone for whom he has little respect and is obviously now stuck with for both professional and personal reasons. This is the Joe Scarborough who is on MSNBC lecturing Fani Willis about bad judgement?
I know I should get back to something more intellectually challenging and interesting and significant. My cats?
Oh, yes. There’s Israel, now blowing up a car full is aid workers and bombing the Iranian embassy in Syria? Thousands of protesters out on the street in the middle of a war, demanding that Netanyahu stand down. Then, there’s the fact that Netanyahu’s wife is setting up taxpayer funded hair salon visits because she is bothered by protesters. (This is the woman who once said, we don’t care if you don’t reelect Bibi, we’ll just leave the country.)
O.K. this is descending again.
But, even all that is easier to deal with than the reprehensible betrayal of Ukraine. The Republicans have blood on their hands over funding to Ukraine and the Democrats are hopeless because they have allowed it to happen.
I always wondered what it must have been like for people in the 1930s, gathered together in front of their radios at night, listening to the news from Europe, scouring the newspapers for any tidbit about the creeping fascism talking over democratic countries. What it must have been like to gather together to experience the ominous gathering storm building. Now, I know.
I just don’t have the comfort of gathering together with other people I love. I’m stuck with Joe and the dreadful Mika.
Law, Power, and Justice 