White House Defends Hunter Biden's Art Selling Scheme (VIDEO)

Pfft.

Right. Hunter Biden is the next Claude Monet or Pierre-Auguste Renoir --- you gotta be kidding me!

I'm mean the crackhead's work is going on the market for as high as $500,000 for a piece. That's outrageous!

At the New York Times, "White House Sets Ethics Plan for Sales of Hunter Biden’s Art":

WASHINGTON — The White House has helped develop a system for Hunter Biden to sell pieces of his art without him, or anyone in the administration, knowing who bought them, the latest effort to respond to criticism over how President Biden’s son makes his money.

Under the arrangement, a New York City art dealer would sell the paintings, which the dealer has said he is pricing at between $75,000 and $500,000, while keeping secret all information about the sales, according to a person familiar with the plan.

The gallerist, Georges Bergès, has agreed to not share any information about the buyers or prices of Hunter Biden’s work with anyone. Mr. Bergès has also agreed to reject any offer that appears suspicious, such as one well beyond the asking price, the person familiar with the matter said.

Hunter Biden has been under scrutiny for years over business dealings around the world that often intersected with his father’s official duties. His work in Ukraine in particular became a political flash point, helping to lead indirectly to the first impeachment proceedings against President Donald J. Trump, and his business dealings in China became a campaign issue last year.

Hunter Biden is also under investigation by the U.S. attorney’s office in Delaware over his taxes. He has said he is confident he will be cleared of any wrongdoing.

He has taken up painting in recent years, and his efforts to sell his works created a new ethics challenge for the White House, which came under pressure to ensure that buyers would not purchase them in an effort to curry favor with or gain access to the administration.

While some government ethics watchdogs defended the right of the president’s adult son to pursue a career, others raised concerns that the new arrangement lacked sufficient safeguards to prevent improper influence over the administration from potential purchasers.

Virginia Canter, the chief ethics council at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a government watchdog, questioned what would stop purchasers of the artwork from subsequently making public they had bought a painting by Hunter Biden. “I think it’s creative,” Ms. Canter said. “I guess they want to manage the conflict but the problem will be enforcement. Unless you have the purchaser sign nondisclosure agreements, this information would come out.”

The administration should also specifically prohibit officers of foreign governments from purchasing the pieces of art, she said. The Treasury Department warned last year that the anonymity of high-value art transactions could make the market attractive to those engaging in illegal financial activities or people subject to U.S. sanctions.

Andrew Bates, a spokesman for the White House, said the arrangement, which was previously reported by The Washington Post, would ensure ethical dealings.

“The president has established the highest ethical standards of any administration in American history, and his family’s commitment to rigorous processes like this is a prime example,” Mr. Bates said in a statement...

 

Richard Evan, The Third Reich in Power

At Amazon, Richard Evan, The Third Reich in Power.

Tucker Slams Extreme Leftists on Mandatory Indoctrination in Our Schools (VIDEO)

A great, great opening segment.

Watch:

Biden Defends Afghanistan Withdrawal (VIDEO)

Should be an easy case, but at the video the president is stumbling and bumbling.

At NYT, "In Forceful Defense of Afghan Withdrawal, Biden Says U.S. Achieved Its Objectives":

WASHINGTON — President Biden vigorously defended his decision to end America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan on Thursday, asserting that the United States can no longer afford the human cost or strategic distraction of a conflict that he said had strayed far from its initial mission.

Speaking after the withdrawal of nearly all U.S. combat forces and as the Taliban surge across the country, Mr. Biden, often in blunt and defensive tones, spoke directly to critics of his order to bring an end to American participation in a conflict born from the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. He said the United States would formally end its military mission at the end of August.

“Let me ask those who want us to stay: How many more?” Mr. Biden said in remarks in the East Room of the White House. “How many thousands more American daughters and sons are you willing to risk? And how long would you have them stay?”

Mr. Biden said he was not declaring “mission accomplished,” but he made clear that the future of the country — including the fate of the current government and concerns about the rights of women and girls — was no longer in the hands of the American military.

Responding to questions from reporters about his decision to bring the war to a close, Mr. Biden grew testy as he rejected the likelihood that Americans would have to flee from Kabul as they did from Saigon in 1975. He insisted that the United States had done more than enough to empower the Afghan police and military to secure the future of their people.

But he conceded that their success would depend on whether they had the political will and the military might.

Pressed on whether the broader objectives of the two-decade effort had failed, Mr. Biden said, “The mission hasn’t failed — yet.”

The president also insisted that the United States had not abandoned the thousands of Afghans who served as translators or provided other assistance to the American military. Responding to critics who argue his administration is not moving quickly enough to protect them, Mr. Biden said evacuations were underway and promised those Afghans that there was “a home for you in the United States, if you so choose. We will stand with you, just as you stood with us.”

John F. Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman, said the military was looking at relocating Afghan interpreters and their families to U.S. territories, American military installations outside the United States, and in other countries outside of Afghanistan.

The war began two decades ago, the president argued, not to rebuild a distant nation but to prevent terror attacks like the one on Sept. 11, 2001, and to bring Osama bin Laden to justice. In essence, Mr. Biden said the longest war in United States history should have ended a decade ago, when Bin Laden was killed.

“We did not go to Afghanistan to nation-build,” he said. “And it’s the right and the responsibility of Afghan people alone to decide their future and how they want to run their country.”

Mr. Biden delivered his remarks even as the democratic government in Kabul teeters under a Taliban siege that has displaced tens of thousands of Afghan civilians and allowed the insurgent group to capture much of the country.

More at that top link.

 

Richard Evans, The Third Reich in Power, 1933-1939

Currently reading. 

Boy is this one fat tome, lol. 

And a review, at the New York Times:

In "The Third Reich in Power, 1933-1939," the British historian Richard J. Evans picks up where he left off in "The Coming of the Third Reich," the first installment of a three-volume history that is shaping up to be a masterpiece. Fluidly narrated, tightly organized and comprehensive, "The Third Reich in Power" explains, in thematic chapters, how Hitler, after gaining control of the German government in 1933, immediately set about transforming the national economy, purging enemies, reversing the humiliating terms of the Versailles peace treaty and imposing a nationalist-racist ideology on a less than receptive population.

That's a tall order, and Evans, as he carefully constructs a portrait of life in Germany under the Nazis, makes it clear that the Nazi program, in virtually every arena, met with only spotty success. He challenges the notion that Germany was, by tradition and history, uniquely susceptible to Hitler's message and totalitarian rule. Under the kaiser, he argues, Germany was in many respects a modern state, with universal manhood suffrage, a flourishing Social Democratic Party and a dynamic economy. The Nazis, in 1933, ruled a nation in which the Communists and Social Democrats had received nearly a third of the vote in recent elections.

All the more impressive, then, that the Nazi Party, in a few short years, transformed Germany into a police state and dragged it into a European war that most Germans feared and assumed would end badly. It was able to do this, moreover, at a fraction of the cost, in human lives, incurred in Soviet Russia.

The Nazis benefited greatly from the inability of the Communists and Social Democrats to cooperate, and from the virtual carte blanche handed to them by the people, traumatized by the social disorder and economic dislocations of the Weimar period. Always, no matter what the excesses of the regime, the non-Nazi alternatives seemed worse. An overwhelming majority of Germans thrilled to the promise of a resurgent economy and a rearmed Germany that could command international respect.

The Nazis were at their most efficient in establishing a climate of fear and convincing average Germans that even chance criticisms would be picked up by the Gestapo's all-hearing ear. There was no such thing as a harmless joke. Schoolteachers, before grading essays, made sure to look over the main Nazi newspaper, fearful lest they criticize material that had been plagiarized from its articles.

Evans notes that the Gestapo, contrary to legend, was not made up of fanatical Nazis. Most of its members were career policemen who had joined the force during the Weimar period or even earlier. Of the 20,000 Gestapo officers serving in 1939, only about 3,000 belonged to the SS.

The Nazis tried to transform every aspect of German life, from music to sports to garden design. Brownshirts confronted women on the street wearing too much makeup - the new German woman was expected to rely on exercise to create a natural glow - and sometimes snatched cigarettes from their painted lips.

Evans manages to weave a wealth of statistical information into a smooth narrative enlivened by eyewitness commentary from diaries, Gestapo reports and observations by Social Democratic opponents of the regime reporting to their colleagues abroad. This method works particularly well in his chapters on Nazi persecution of the Jews, which vividly convey the slow smothering of Jewish life, punctuated by episodes of fantastic violence, and the inexplicable double-think of ordinary Germans who stood by silently. Evans, here and throughout, maintains a dispassionate tone. He lets the facts, and the voices of the times, speak for him.

In the countryside, where tradition ran deep, local loyalties often trumped Nazi policy. In the Hessian village of Körle, storm troopers tried to seize bicycles from a club with ties to the Communist Party, but the local innkeeper, a longtime Nazi, said that the club owed him money and that the bicycles therefore belonged to him. He stored the bicycles in his loft and returned them to their owners after the war. The Nazi machine, as Evans describes it, moved forward with a good deal of creaking and squeaking. The economy was no exception. On many fronts, the Nazis managed nothing more than to bring the economy back to the status quo that existed before the Depression.

Most Germans did not realize the dirty little secret to the German economic recovery, which, by the late 1930s, had reached its natural limits. The only way forward, in 1939, was war and foreign conquest...

Still more.

 

San Diego Sees Surge in Road Rage Incidents (VIDEO)

It's the COV-Rage surge, apparently.

At ABC 10 News San Diego:

Cameras in the Classroom

Tucker Carlson from tonight's show:

Shop Amazon for Survival!

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BONUS: Norman Ohler, Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich.

The Spike in Homocides

Following up, "

Los Angles Endures Spike in Homocides."

It's Dana Loesch, at Fox News":

Richard Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich

 At Amazon, Richard Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich.

'Summer Breeze'

This song just popped into my mind yesterday, for some reason. (*Shrugs.*)

Here's Seals and Crofts, "Summer Breeze":

Thursday Cartoon

Via Theo Spark.

The Full Story on How Rachel Nichols' Comments, Which She Thought Were in Private, Became Public

Following-up, "Rachel Nichols Will Not Work as Sideline Reporter for NBA Finals After Allegedly 'Racist' Comments."

A good read, at CNBC, "LeBron James PR advisor Mendelsohn said, ‘I’m exhausted. Between Me Too and Black Lives Matter,’ report shows."

Read the whole thing at the link.

Los Angles Endures Spike in Homocides

Murders are up since last year.

At LAT, "Los Angles Endures Spike in Homocides":

A bloody Fourth of July weekend that left a dozen people dead across Los Angeles accelerated an already troubling increase in homicides and shootings in 2021, with some of the city’s poorest communities suffering the heaviest toll.

Homicides are up 25% so far this year across Los Angeles, although the brunt of the increase has been felt in South Los Angeles, where killings have jumped 50% over the same time last year.

Shootings citywide, meanwhile, have spiked by half this year. Police and community activists are bracing for tough months ahead as the summer traditionally brings with it a rise in bloodshed.

Like with the COVID-19 pandemic, the rise in violence has not been spread evenly in Los Angeles. Watts, Westmont, downtown Los Angeles, Westlake and other largely poor neighborhoods have endured much of the upheaval, though there have been some exceptions. The Los Angeles Police Department’s Wilshire division had recorded no homicides this time last year. It now has at least 10.

“Black and Latino communities are suffering,” said Najee Ali, a community activist.

The worrisome trend is playing out in cities other than Los Angeles. After experiencing decades of historic declines in homicides, many big cities nationwide saw that crucial bellwether sharply reverse course in 2020 and have been helpless to stop the surge in killings in 2021. Last weekend, at least 189 people were killed in violent incidents across the U.S., according to gun violence archives that gather data from police and media reports.

Los Angeles police officials say guns are fueling the rise here.

The percentage of homicides that involved a firearm has climbed from 66% in 2019, to 70% last year and currently is running at about 75%, said Los Angeles Police Capt. Paul Vernon, who is soon to retire from his job tracking crime trends as head of the LAPD’s CompStat program.

“There are too many guns in too many hands,” said Capt. Stacy Spell, the department’s main spokesman who once oversaw its South Bureau Homicide Division.

Officers are finding guns at significantly higher rates as well. As of last month, the department had seized 661 ghost guns — unregistered weapons that cannot be traced to an owner — compared to 813 in all of 2020. “At that rate, we could collect 1,500 ghost guns in a year,” Spell said.

Spell echoed recent comments by LAPD Chief Michel Moore, who has argued the increased violence is inextricably linked to the pandemic. The lockdown restrictions imposed to slow the spread of the virus, Spell said, further eroded already fraying social safety nets and devastated families’ finances. Gang intervention workers, for example, were unable to break cycles of retaliation by visiting shooting victims or calming mourning family members in hospital emergency rooms.

A man was fatally shot and a woman was wounded in a car-to-car shooting that occurred as their vehicle was being followed through a Venice neighborhood, police said. The incident began about 2:30 a.m. near the intersection of Brooks and 6th avenues. CALIFORNIA

While gangs have undoubtedly played a role in the killings, police point as well to what they say is a newfound willingness to settle disputes with a gun that goes beyond any gang affiliation.

Police say it’s impossible to know where the numbers are going. If the current pace of killings continues, L.A. would end the year with about 433 homicides — a sharp increase over the 254 killings recorded in 2019. Vernon cautioned, however, that 2020 — with 349 killings — was a very unusual year for homicides with a small increase in killings in the first half of the year, followed by a dramatic rise in the second. The volatility makes it difficult to project what might happen in the remaining months of 2021, he said.

And while the ongoing rise is troubling, Spell noted the current numbers still pale in comparison to the early 1990s, when more than 1,000 killings in a year were common.

Police also took some solace and hope in the fact that the spike in homicides has not been matched by a rise in other types of crime. Overall, violent crime is down slightly from 2020 and property crime is up only by a small amount. Violent crime arrests are down by nearly 10% compared to 2019 levels for the same period, while homicide arrests are up for that time by 60%.

So far in 2021 the LAPD’s Southeast Division, which includes Watts, has seen the city’s largest increase in homicides —24 — compared with 10 during the same period last year.

Violence over the last week cut short lives across the city.

Afghanistan's Most Successful Flee Before Taliban Takeover

Well, this year the U.S. would've marked its 20th anniversary in Afghanistan, minus the troop withdrawal.

Of course, we can't stay there forever, but's not just a Taliban "advance" that has Afghani's fleeing. It's that in all likelihood the Taliban will topple the government in Kabul and take over the country. 

This is interesting. At WSJ, "A Generation of Afghan Professionals Flees Ahead of Taliban Advance":

KABUL—Afghanistan’s professional class of men and women, part of a generation that came of age under the shield of the U.S. military, are weighing the danger of rapidly advancing Taliban forces. Many are packing their bags.

Hasiba Ebrahimi is already gone. The 24-year-old actress, who embodied modern Afghanistan’s optimistic youth, was raised, like many Afghans, as a refugee in Pakistan and then in Iran. She returned to Kabul in 2014 and has since become a star in the country’s new film industry.

In a video released in November, Ms. Ebrahimi urged young Afghan women not to lose hope: “Everything is hard, but nothing is impossible.” She traveled to Australia soon after—for what she thought would be a short reunion with her New Zealand-based sister. She is still there.

“My mom is telling me, ‘I am begging you, I love you so much, but I can’t let you come back, I can’t let you put yourself in danger,’ ” Ms. Ebrahimi said from Sydney. “We have all had hope. We were thinking that we would do something out of that country, working harder and harder each day. It’s really sad to think that you don’t have any future in your own country.”

Long before President Biden announced the U.S. withdrawal in April, hundreds of thousands of Afghans had fled to Europe, Australia and the U.S. Now, many of the well-educated people who prospered in the new Afghanistan and hadn’t dreamed of leaving have also concluded that staying put is no longer an option.

Even though the U.S. has said for years it would withdraw its troops, Mr. Biden’s announcement caught many Afghans by surprise. So did the meltdown of Afghanistan’s U.S.-equipped and trained security forces. Afghan soldiers surrendered en masse in recent weeks, handing over their weapons and Humvees to the Taliban, who have conquered about a third of the country’s districts since April and now surround several major cities.

A recent U.S. intelligence assessment concluded that Kabul could fall to the Taliban as soon as six months after the U.S. military pullout is completed this summer.

Hamid Haidari was seven years old when he woke to see Taliban fighters fan into his western Kabul neighborhood in September 1996. The Afghan capital had fallen overnight, and militants soon were banging on doors and pulling men aside for execution. Mr. Haidari now heads the news operation for 1TV, a booming television network, one of the many new fields that have flourished in Afghanistan over the past two decades. With only a few hundred American troops remaining in the country, mostly to protect the U.S. Embassy, Mr. Haidari said he hears the same questions from his staff: What shall we do if we wake up to see the Taliban occupy Kabul again? Shall we leave? If so, where and how

Mr. Haidari went to India in January after warnings of an assassination attempt by insurgents. He returned three months later and intends to stay in Kabul for as long as he can.

Since meeting with Taliban representatives in Doha, Qatar—part of the stalled Afghan peace process—Mr. Haidari has concluded that a freewheeling TV network wouldn’t survive under the Islamist movement’s rule. The network has already pulled several journalists from Taliban-besieged cities to Kabul.

“No one knows what will happen,” Mr. Haidari said. “It’s Afghanistan. In the future, there will be bloodshed, there will be killings and maybe civil war. But if there won’t be any free media, if we shut down, no one will know what kinds of crimes will be happening in Afghanistan.”

The TV company’s owner, Fahim Hashimy, said he was looking at contingency plans, moving parts of the network to Turkey or Uzbekistan. “I am joking to my people, we need to turn into a portable TV channel, a movable TV channel, a mobile TV channel so we can keep moving around the world and keep broadcasting,” he said.

More affluent Afghans are paying thousands of dollars on the black market for visitor visas to Turkey, India, the United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan—the few destinations that remain relatively accessible.

“Even the friends who want to stay here are taking their families out because, when the war comes, children and women cannot fight and will be vulnerable,” said Omar Sadr, a political scientist at the American University of Afghanistan. His backup plan is moving to India, where he was educated...

Shop Amazon

Thanks for your support!

Here: New deals. Every day. Shop our Deal of the Day, Lightning Deals and more daily deals and limited-time sales.

More, American Furniture Classics 840 4 Gun Wall Rack, Medium Brown.

Here, Fixed Blade Knife with Wood Handle for Hunting and Fishing - Good for Camping and Travels - Dependable Knife for Survival.

And, Cold Steel Bushman Series Fixed Blade Survival Knife with Hollow Handle, Fire Starter and Sheath - Great as a Camping Knife and Throwing Knife.

Plus, Jinager Survival Gear Kits Outdoor Survival Gear Tool for Trip,with Fire Starter, Whistle, Wood Cutter, Tactical Pen for Camping, Hiking, Climbing for Wilderness/Trip/Cars/Hiking/Camping.

BONUS: Norman Ohler, Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich.

Beautiful Women

See Drunken Stepfather, "KATE HUDSON THONG OF THE DAY." 

And, at Celeb Jihad, "ARIEL WINTER FLAUNTS." 

ASU pic.twitter.com/gNPS7ng1i0

— Old Row Rad Chicks (@OldRowRadChicks) July 1, 2021

Prestige Boston Art Museums Will Not Return Objets d'Art Once-Owned by German Collector Curt Glaser

These Nazi art cases are always fascinating to me. 

The Nazis took control of Glaser's collection after persecuting the man for his Jewish faith. The dude must have emigrated to the U.S., as according to Wikipedia he died in 1943, at Lake Placid, New York. 

More than a dozen institutions and collectors have concluded that Curt Glaser sold his art collection in 1933 as a result of Nazi persecution. But the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston have rejected his heirs’ claims.

More than a dozen institutions and collectors have concluded that Curt Glaser sold his art collection in 1933 as a result of Nazi persecution. But the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston have rejected his heirs’ claims. https://t.co/lzC5gQT4TN

— The New York Times (@nytimes) July 6, 2021

July 6, 2021

The Nazi authorities removed Curt Glaser from his post as director of the Berlin State Art Library in April 1933 because he was Jewish. He was also evicted from his home and, the following month, sold most of his art collection at two auctions.

Since 2007, 13 private collectors or institutions — including the Dutch Restitutions Committee, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation in Berlin, the Museum Ludwig in Cologne and the city of Basel — have concluded that Glaser sold his collection in May 1933 as a result of Nazi persecution, and agreed to either return or pay some compensation to his heirs for art he sold that wound up in their collections.

But the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston have repeatedly rejected the heirs’ claims for paintings that were sold at the same auctions. They argue there is not enough evidence that Glaser sold under duress.

The disparity in the decisions highlights how, 76 years after World War II ended, the criteria for determining whether a work of art that changed hands during the Nazi persecution of Jews should be returned still remains a matter of debate. Both the Met and the Museum of Fine Arts have a record of recognizing claims on art sold under duress. The Met has settled eight claims for art looted by the Nazis or sold under duress since 1998, when the United States endorsed the international Washington Principles, which called for “just and fair” solutions in handling claims for looted art. In 2009, the Terezin Declaration, also approved by the United States, specified that this requirement also applied to sales under duress. The Museum of Fine Arts has previously settled heirs’ claims for 13 objects sold under duress.

But in the cases of two works sold at a May 9, 1933 auction — Abraham Bloemaert’s 1596 painting “Moses Striking the Rock,” which is owned by the Met, and Joachim Anthoniesz Wtewael’s “Actaeon Watching Diana and Her Nymphs Bathing” from 1612, which is owned by the Museum of Fine Arts — the museums have taken a position at odds with other institutions who held Glaser works from that sale.

Rachel Nichols Will Not Work as Sideline Reporter for NBA Finals After Allegedly 'Racist' Comments

At NYT, "Rachel Nichols Out for N.B.A. Finals Coverage on ABC":

Comments made by Nichols that were caught on tape caused tremendous upheaval within ESPN over the past year. Nichols, who is white, suggested that a Black colleague, Maria Taylor, had been selected for a marquee job because of her race.

When a sideline reporter first appeared on ABC’s broadcast of the N.B.A. finals on Tuesday night, it was not Rachel Nichols, an abrupt change announced by ESPN earlier in the day. It was an attempt to stanch a yearlong scandal that has spilled into public view about the company’s handling of conflicts centered around race.

The decision to have Malika Andrews be the sideline reporter instead was made after The New York Times reported that Nichols, who is white, made disparaging comments about a Black colleague, Maria Taylor, last year. Among other things, Nichols said that Taylor was picked to host N.B.A. finals coverage last season because ESPN was “feeling pressure” about diversity.

Nichols’s comments came during a private phone conversation while she was quarantined in a Florida hotel last July before the N.B.A. resumed its season, which had been paused because of the coronavirus pandemic. She was seeking career guidance from Adam Mendelsohn, the adviser and political strategist who works closely with the Los Angeles Lakers superstar LeBron James. The phone call was accidentally captured on camera and uploaded to a server at the company’s headquarters in Bristol, Conn., then quickly spread widely among ESPN employees.

“I wish Maria Taylor all the success in the world — she covers football, she covers basketball,” Nichols told Mendelsohn during the call. “If you need to give her more things to do because you are feeling pressure about your crappy longtime record on diversity — which, by the way, I know personally from the female side of it — like, go for it. Just find it somewhere else. You are not going to find it from me or taking my thing away.”

There have been wide-ranging discussions about the comments inside and outside of ESPN over the last two days, with former employees and even N.B.A. players weighing in. The Memphis Grizzlies point guard Ja Morant tweeted in support of Taylor, while some high-profile former ESPN employees — including Dan Le Batard and Jemele Hill — discussed the matter on Le Batard’s show Tuesday morning.

In a sign of the sprawling complexity of the scandal, commentators weighed in on numerous topics, including ESPN’s discipline and management as well as the friendship and professional relationship between Nichols and Mendelsohn. Some focused on the privacy issues at play with the recorded phone call. Others, in a discussion about white privilege and career advancement, raised that Nichols is related by marriage to the famed broadcast journalist Diane Sawyer and the Academy Award-winning director Mike Nichols.

Adam Silver, the commissioner of the N.B.A., addressed the situation at length during a news conference before tip-off of Game 1 between the Phoenix Suns and the Milwaukee Bucks.

“It’s disheartening,” Silver said. He said that both Nichols and Taylor are “terrific” at their jobs, and that it was “unfortunate that two women in the industry are pitted against each other.” He said he would have thought that through difficult conversations “ESPN would have found a way to be able to work through it. Obviously not.”

The Return of Great-Power Subversion

It's Jill Kastner and William C. Wohlforth, at Foreign Affairs, "A Measure Short of War: The Return of Great-Power Subversion":

In the run-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, a foreign power managed to exert what seemed like unprecedented influence over the sacred rites of American democracy. On social media, a legion of paid Russian trolls sowed discord, spreading pernicious falsehoods about the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, and seeking to boost turnout for the Republican candidate, Donald Trump. Powerful Russians close to the Kremlin sought out contact with Trump and his courtiers, dangling the promise of damaging information about Clinton. State-sponsored hackers stole and leaked her campaign aides’ private emails. They went on to target election systems in all 50 states and even managed to infiltrate voter databases.

The meddling set alarm bells ringing. “We have been attacked; we are at war,” the actor Morgan Freeman solemnly announced in a video in 2017 released by a group calling itself the Committee to Investigate Russia, which was backed by old U.S. intelligence hands such as James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, and Michael Morell, the former acting director of the CIA. A New York Times headline announced that “Russian cyberpower” had “invaded” the United States. Foreign policy experts predicted a coming wave of digital subversion, led by authoritarian states targeting their democratic rivals. “This digital ecosystem creates opportunities for manipulation that have exceeded the ability of democratic nations to respond, and sometimes even to grasp the extent of the challenge,” Alina Polyakova of the Brookings Institution testified before a congressional committee in 2019. “All democracies are current or potential future targets.”

U.S. policymakers scrambled to react. In its final months, the Obama administration expelled 35 Russian diplomats, seized Russian diplomatic property, and pledged that the United States would retaliate at a time and place of its choosing. In 2018, Congress created an entirely new agency—the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, a division of the Department of Homeland Security—to prevent similar intrusions in the future.

The 2016 election may have been a rude wake-up call, but no one should have been surprised. Russia’s operation was just the latest instance of a pattern that stretches back in history as far as the eye can see. Subversion—domestic interference to undermine or manipulate a rival—has always been a part of great-power politics. What stands out as an anomaly is the brief period of extraordinary U.S. dominance, beginning after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when the United States appeared immune to malicious meddling by peer competitors, in large part because there weren’t any. Now, that dominance is beginning to wane. Great-power competition has returned—and with it, so has great-power subversion...

Keep reading.