War & Society
- “Get away from the window! Curiosity is death!” The sketch shows a terror- or awe-stricken family looking out, many mouths wide open. Instead of gawking, the poster commands readers, “Stand individually behind pillars!”
- “Never remain standing on an exposed road!” “Always seek cover!”
- “Don’t stand behind the door!” This is followed by more advice about strong pillars or load-bearing sections of the wall.
- “Panic is worse than an air raid!” Pictured are people hurrying down the stairs, one person holding a candle, another an oil lamp. Underfoot is a small child who has fallen down, and ahead of these residents is an old man with a cane, about to be trampled. Instead of panicking, the readers are told, “Don’t worry about an attack at night!” Pictured is a man under a duvet sleeping soundly.
- “Never stand in the middle of the room!” The picture below this final warning shows a domestic space in which a man in bare feet and a nightshirt has behaved correctly: He is standing in a corner, an empty bed nearby, but the middle of his floor has disappeared.
Russia has been testing drones and training their pilots with attacks on Ukrainian civilians in Beryslav (Kherson Oblast). Good investigative reporting by DW Documentary. https://youtu.be/kuTo94TnMPo
With its massive air attack today, Russia offers still more convincing arguments for lifting restrictions on Ukraine’s use of Western-provided missiles. It’s high time we attended to Russia’s actions instead of its bluster.
Interesting DW documentary about Palestinian refugees from Gaza fortunate enough to gain entry to Egypt: “Fleeing war in Gaza - for a new life in Egypt?"
Recommended Insights into the Kursk Incursion
Michael Bohnert, an engineer at Rand Corporation, shares some useful insights about electronic warfare in the August 16, 2024 episode of the podcast Ukraine the Latest. He discusses this topic in connection with Ukraine’s Kursk incursion and describes the difficult choices that Russia’s political and military leadership face in the coming months from the standpoint of electronic warfare.
Also, Anders Puck Nielsen, a military analyst in Denmark, released a helpful 15-minute video on YouTube today about where he thinks Russia’s leadership is in responding to Ukraine’s incursion. Acknowledging complexity, he nonetheless keeps his viewers' eyes on two fundamental issues for Russia, namely, space and manpower, and he underlines the critical domestic political entanglements that the manpower question has.
Both of these contributions offer useful perspectives on Ukraine’s shakeup of a common impression that the conflict was supposedly frozen. Of course, there are many more aspects of this story, but I highlight these contributions because I haven’t seen them in other news stories so far.
Map of the incursion in early August, uploaded to Wikimedia Commons on August 8, 2024 by Ecrusized in varying sizes and languages. License: CC0 (no rights reserved).
The Centre for Eastern Studies (OSW) in Warsaw has put out two interesting reports on YouTube that analyze Russia’s initially incoherent propaganda response to Ukraine’s Kursk incursion and how this propaganda interacts with ordinary Russians' reactions.
Negotiating One's Own Murder (Satire)
Here is some satire from Ukraine on a certain 🍊 candidate’s nonsense: “Shot of Peace” (cartoon in Ukrainian with English subtitles by Фріоніс), https://youtu.be/… #СлаваУкраїні #НахуйПутіна #НахуйТрампа
There are two documentary films streaming on Paramount+ right now that I find inspiring and motivating: “Superpower” (2023), directed by Sean Penn and Aaron Kaufman; and “Kiss the Future” (2024), directed by Nenad Cicin-Sain. The first centers on Ukraine and Volodymyr Zelinsky in Russia’s current war against Ukraine, and the second goes back to the Siege of Sarajevo (1992–96).
A theme common to each film is ordinary citizens standing up to genocidal aggressors. There is also the relationship between popular culture and politics in war, including the role of international celebrity. In the first movie, an entertainer-turned-president must lead a country in war, supported by a self-mobilizing citizenry. Moreover, one of the directors is himself an entertainer. In the second movie, inhabitants of a city under constant fire find a way to get by and even thrive with punk rock and dance. They are later joined on TV and then in person by the band U2.
Good on Ukraine for using a little leverage against the Putin lackey Viktor Orban. It was high time. Details of the spat are in this short Politico piece: “EU ‘ready’ to negotiate as Hungary-Ukraine oil row boils over”.
The Kremlin switches messages at will to its advantage, climbing inside everything: European right-wing nationalists are seduced with an anti-EU message; the Far Left is co-opted with tales of fighting US hegemony; US religious conservatives are convinced by the Kremlin’s fight against homosexuality. And the result is an array of voices, working away at global audiences from different angles, producing a cumulative echo chamber of Kremlin support, all broadcast on RT.
Peter Pomerantsev, Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia (New York: PublicAffairs, 2014), act 3, last section.
Delirious Television Propaganda
“Forms of Delirium” is the third act of Peter Pomerantsev, Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia (New York: PublicAffairs, 2014). Now deep in the section titled “A Brief History of Sects in Post-Soviet Russia,” it dawns on me that this material provides useful context for the bizarre, messianic, wartime rhetoric I’ve heard come out of Russian propagandist Vladimir Solovyov’s mouth in the television clips that Julia Davis translates for English-speaking audiences.
This is not to say that Solovyov necessarily believes all the poison he spews. The first act of the same book, “Reality Show Russia,” provides plenty of background on that subject, even if it is based on prewar Russia. Still, the combination of mysticism, religion, ethnic Russian nationalism, and ostensibly anti-imperialist imperialism dripping from parts of the final act of this excellent book offers at least some reason for not dismissing a talking head like Solovyov out of hand. He may use the privilege of the fool to say extreme things, but he knows his words are landing.
Russian Hybrid Warfare
“How disinformation from a Russian AI spam farm ended up on top of Google search results” by David Gilbert, Wired.com, via ArsTechnica, July 10, 2024.
In the space of 24 hours, a piece of Russian disinformation about Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky’s wife buying a Bugatti car with American aid money traveled at warp speed across the internet. Though it originated from an unknown French website, it quickly became a trending topic on X and the top result on Google. . . .
According to the Frankfurter Rundschau today, Russian food producers are adding banned “meat glue” (transglutaminase) to products to increase their volume in the face of the inflation that Putin’s illegal war is bringing them. HT @[email protected]
“We believe Russia is a great empire that other powers want to tear away parts from. We need to restore our power, occupy our lost lands, grab Crimea from the Ukrainians,” the football supporters say, then in the same breath: “We want a Russia for Russians, all these darkies from the Caucasus and Central Asia need to go home.”
This has always been the paradox of the new Russian nationalism: on the one hand wanting to conquer all regions around, on the other wanting an ethnically pure great power. And all that comes out of this confusion is an ever-growing anger.
Peter Pomerantsev, Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia (New York: PublicAffairs, 2014), act 3, section: “The Call of the Void”.
Reading about Israel's Inequitable Application of Military Conscription
In Thursday’s Hareetz, Ofer Aderet offers some useful background on the exemption of yeshiva students from military service. In 1948, there were only some 400 yeshiva students. Preserving their schools seemed a priority in the wake of the destruction of so much Jewish learning. The exemption was supposed to be temporary, but it still exists. Nowadays, there are more than 60,000 yeshiva students, and the religious and cultural situation of 1948 improved decades ago. Given Israel’s current security situation, there is enormous societal pressure to make the burden of mandatory military service equitable. The current government, which includes ultra-Orthodox Jews, has avoided doing so, but the High Court of Justice ruled it has to. John Strawson talks about what this means for Netanyahu in a question-and-answer piece in The Conversation. This second piece assumes less background knowledge on the part of the reader, while also going a bit deeper into the current political context.
Links to developments closer to home: Conscription, what Americans call “the draft,” is a powerful tool for war, but it requires a broad political consensus about the justness of the war and a sense that conscription’s implementation is fair. The U.S. Army and its political masters learned this lesson the hard way during the Vietnam War, after which the country moved to a volunteer force. By contrast, the Federal Republic of Germany held onto conscription until 2011 because its political leadership valued the link between military service and citizenship, a liberal tradition with roots in nineteenth-century political, military, and constitutional developments. Conscription is still in the country’s Basic Law, but the number of people being called up made conscription inequitable and therefore untenable, at least during a time when a major war in Europe no longer seemed likely.
World War I Poster: How to Act during an Air Raid
Air raids were a new danger in the Great War, and people within range of enemy aircraft needed to know what to do. The main caption of this related instructional poster reads, “How should I behave during an air raid?” Five captioned cartoons in the top row show what not to do. Below each of these is the recommended life-saving response.
The apparent repetition and contradiction in this anonymously produced poster suggest that the poster was less a product of foresight and more an ad hoc response to recent events or rumors.
Source: “Wie verhalte ich mich bei Fliegergefahr?,” poster from the Kriegsbilder exhibit of the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek, https://ausstellungen.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de/kriegsbilder/items/show/28. Physical object: Hessisches Landesarchiv. License: CC BY 4.0 Attribution.
😠 Shameless: “Israel blames U.N. for Gaza aid crisis amid fresh reports of starvation” (Washington Post) archive.ph/qSSPf
Death, destruction, refugeehood, humanitarian crises – those are the things we’re used to accepting as part of the reality of war… But in Gaza I also saw the death of the human soul. The Gazans are zombies. Death of souls on that scale, psychological wreckage at that level, I’ve never seen anywhere. At a certain point, I went through Rafah, and the streets were filled with refugee tents, and people, and booths, and there were hardly any vehicles, because there’s no fuel, so transportation is via carts and donkeys, and people move between them slowly. It took us two hours to cover a distance that normally would take 10 minutes. And all this time I looked at the faces of the people who were passing by us and I was shocked because they just looked dead.
Arwa Damon, quoted in “As a CNN War Reporter, Arwa Damon Thought She Had Seen Everything. Then She Went to Gaza” by Shany Littman, Haaretz, June 21, 2024.
Images of Returned POWs
I just saw images in The Telegraph of emaciated Ukrainian POWs recently traded back from Russia. These stark images were taken after the men had regained some 10 kilograms of their lost weight. If you look closely, you’ll actually see life in the photographed eyes. How did the same eyes and severely weakened bodies look before the exchange?
Starved and no contact with the International Red Cross—I’m trying to grasp what this intentionally extreme mistreatment means. After all, the Ukrainians are holding Russians. As far as I know, food as such is not in short supply in Russia. Was this the result of extreme mistreatment in one location? Or was it more widespread, systematic? Was it about torture with specific mission-related objectives? Was it zeal, resentment, sadism, corruption, indifference? Will this have any impact on Russian POWs in Ukraine? Or will Ukraine’s leadership continue striving to keep the higher ground?
Reading about Netanyahu's Clusterfuck of a War
"Amid the Fighting in Gaza, the Bitter War Between Netanyahu and Israel's Generals Is Intensifying" by Anshel Pfeffer, Haaretz, June 17, 2024.
"Netanyahu and the IDF Top Brass Fight Over Gaza Cease-fire While Spiraling Towards Total War With Hezbollah" by Amos Harel, Haaretz, June 16, 2024.
Anshel Pfeffer’s analysis draws on the time-tested framework of civil-military relations. First and foremost, there is the conflict between the prime minister and his generals. Netanyahu is right to insist on the primacy of civilian political control of the army, but he has apparently never learned the value of taking counsel from his generals. Worse, he is resorting to using a stab-in-the-back conspiracy theory about the generals. People familiar with fascist takeovers will get very uncomfortable with this rhetoric.
Besides the conflict between the civilian and military leadership, there is the army itself, the IDF, whose ranks include conscripts and men and women called back because of their obligations in the reserves. There might be people who escape military service in Israel, but its army is more closely linked to civilian society than any in countries that use all-volunteer professional militaries. That places limits on how irresponsibly it can be used.
Reading about Evidence of Russia Using Starvation as a Weapon in its War on Ukraine
"New Report: 'Deliberate Pattern' of Starvation Tactics against Ukrainian Civilians by Russian Forces in Siege of Mariupol City" by Global Rights Compliance, June 13, 2024. (Summary in Ukrainian followed by English)
Full report in English (PDF) — "The Hope Left Us": Russia’s Siege, Starvation, and Capture of Mariupol City
Full report in Ukrainian (PDF) — "Надія залишила нас": Облога, моріння голодом і захоплення Маріуполя Росією
I still need to process this report, but its outline already lines up with the reporting presented in the prize-winning Frontline/AP documentary, “20 Days in Mariupol” (available in full on the Internet Archive). Its chapters include:
Waging War with Factories
Production. B-17F heavy bomber. Working on the roof of a B-17F (Flying Fortress) bomber swung over on its side in the Boeing plant at Seattle. A turret will be mounted over the large circular opening. The Flying Fortress, a four-engine heavy bomber capable of flying at high altitudes, has performed with great credit in the South Pacific, over Germany and elsewhere.
– Andreas Feininger, December 1942, United States, Office of War Information, Library of Congress
The library has a large collection of photos showing the manufacture of B-17 bombers under the subject heading United States–Washington–King County–Seattle.