Close Readings: Kerry nominalizes a war crime

By Dan Brooks in Close Reading 1 Comment
"Last person to die for a mistake" -era John Kerry, when words meant something

“Last person to die for a mistake” -era John Kerry, when words meant something

Secretary of State John Kerry argued Sunday that Russia was heavily involved in the downing of a Malaysia Airlines 777 over eastern Ukraine, and he did it in the most tepid way imaginable. Before we go any further, let’s take a moment to consider what an insanely awful thing happened Thursday. Someone used a military anti-aircraft missile to shoot down a commercial airliner carrying almost 300 people, either accidentally or because they could. Probably, it was the second one. Regardless of how you feel about the conflict in Ukraine, it has enabled at least one crew of surface-to-air missile operators to kill 300 civilians for sport. According to the US State Department, that’s Russia’s fault. And Secretary Kerry is here to tell the world, in roughly the same tone as stereo instructions.

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Friday links! Trust not the internet edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 0 Comment
A fox and a magpie make out on the medieval internet.

A fox and a magpie make out on the medieval internet.

There must have been some point when the internet was a reliable source. The first time someone was lied to over the internet—probably in 1979, when Al Gore had to enter each new email address manually—it was like getting lied to in a letter. Then there was a long time when finding a lie on the internet was approximately as scandalous as finding a lie in the newspaper. Your aunt still lives in this time. The rest of us now encounter falsehood on the internet as a feature of the medium. Today is Friday, and nothing you read on this screen is necessarily true. Won’t you make the classic blunder with me?

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Friday links! Are you kidding? edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 2 Comments
From The Nietzsche Family Circus, which randomly pairs Nietzsche quotes with panels from the comic

From The Nietzsche Family Circus, which randomly pairs Nietzsche quotes with panels from the comic

Now that we’ve all been hoaxed a few times by ZANU-PF’s Twitter and lymphomatic Hawaiian girlfriends and whatnot, it’s easy to read any report with a baseline skepticism in mind. Is this, strictly speaking, real? is a perilous question to ask of the news, particularly since the news is often about events, and events are what we use to determine the quality of the real. To ask whether every new event is real is to fix our standard of reality in the past. Still, certain things that happen seem like they did not really happen. Today is Friday, and the march of wonderment continues apace. Won’t you fall into lockstep with me?

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Kyl plans to torpedo arms treaty

By Dan Brooks in Politics versus Government 2 Comments

Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl, rehearsing here for his "Mr. Kyl" puppet show

In a surprise move that angered the White House and delighted nuclear weapons fans, Senate Minority Whip Jon “The License Plate” Kyl has announced that he will block a vote on the New Start treaty during the lame duck session of Congress. The treaty would have capped US and Russian nuclear arsenals and restored inspections to both countries, which lapsed last year for the first time since the Cold War. It was also widely regarded as an important step in improving relations with Russia, which country happens to hold a lot of influence over A) transport routes to Afghanistan and B) the ongoing effort to keep Iran* from developing nuclear weapons. Those sound like two compelling American interests, right there, but Kyl is concerned that the whole thing might be a little rushed. After months of negotiations, he announced that he would block cloture, “given the combination of other work Congress must do and the complex and unresolved issues related to Start and modernization.”

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