A while back, I offered $1000 in a match 1 for 1 to the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee or DLCC. With Marc Susselman leading the way, and David Palmeter putting his $1000 next to mine to make it a 2 for 1 match, we managed to raise $3000 for the campaign. The time has come to try it again.
I will match each donation to the DLCC 1 for 1 up to a limit of $1000. This time around, let us hear from those of you who did not donate the first time. If 40 of you will give $25 each I will match all of that with my $1000.
We can talk about the deeper meaning of it all later. Now is the time to do our little bit. Let us do it!
I'm in for $500.00. I'm in a good mood - I just defeated a Canadian chess player ranked 200 points higher then me. He resigned after 10 moves! Plus, El Duce, and his Russian counterpart, are on the ropes.
ReplyDeletePost-script:
ReplyDeleteI know, my remark was sexist - I should have stated s/he resigned in 10 moves, since I have no idea of my chess opponent's gender.
Okay, I have completed the donation, with a $10.00 tip.
I made a small donation last time, but this time I'm not in for anything. I'm making very few discretionary expenditures right now, though I did recently buy a hardcover book that was on deep sale at Princeton Univ. Press.
ReplyDeleteFor you cat lovers out there, Netflix has a new documentary titled "In The Mind Of A Cat," based on resent cat research.
ReplyDeleteSplendid, Marc. I have matched it already. We are halfway there. Now let us hear from some of you who did not give last time. Thank you again Marc
ReplyDeleteI don't have a Netflix subscription. For me that falls into the category of discretionary expenditure, albeit subjectively defined. (Plus I'm not a big cat fan.) I've now watched almost all of the Burns documentary on the U.S. and the Holocaust, btw. Some of what was covered I was already familiar with, but some, esp details on U.S. govt policy, differences betw State Dept and Treasury Dept e.g., I was not. I still have roughly the last hour of the last episode to watch (on WETA website).
ReplyDeleteLFC,
ReplyDeleteUh oh, you are in hot water now. Admitting that you are not a cat lover on this blog is inadvisable.
I watched all three segments of the Burns’ documentary. Although I was also already familiar with much of what was reported based on my reading and seeing still photographs of the concentration camps, I had not seen the live videos of the atrocities which were committed by Nazi soldiers and members of the Einsatzgruppen in Russia and Lithuania. They were very difficult to watch – that human beings could shoot other human beings, stripped naked and exposed to the elements, then dump them into mass graves, is stupefying and sickening. Yet, reports coming from Ukraine indicate that Russian soldiers have been repeating such atrocities. At the end of the documentary, Eleanor Roosevelt was quoted as stating that the civilized world can never again stand by while there is knowledge of such atrocities taking place. Fortunately, the Ukrainian military is fighting back vigorously and effectively – but if they were not, would we have an obligation to intercede, even though Ukraine is not a member of NATO, and live up to Eleanor Roosevelt’s exhortation?
Not much, but I donated $10. Thanks for what you do, Prof.
ReplyDeleteHere's the link to donate; it's quite easy - https://dlcc.org
P.S. The Netflix documentary was really cute.
*SPOILER*: One of the cat scientist people was moved to tears when describing how meaningful cats are to her/humankind. :)
Marc,
ReplyDeleteI started to write a comment in reply and then lost it. I don't have time to rewrite it now. Will come back later today.
The very short version is that, as I see it, the main lesson conveyed by the documentary has to do with U.S. immigration and refugee policy. Your hypothetical question doesn't really capture that lesson, in my view. Since you watched all 6+ hours of the documentary and I've watched almost all of it, I guess this just shows that two people can watch the same film and derive different "lessons" from it.
LFC,
ReplyDeleteThere are many different lessons that the documentary teaches, depending on what context we are addressing. The documentary has different lessons for different contexts. The immigration lesson, i.e., the turning away of the St. Louis carrying Jewish refugees, applies to the context of adapting the U.S. immigration policy to provide a safe haven for those seeking to escape oppression by immigrating to another country, e.g., Venezuelans and Guatemalans seeking refuge from the conditions in their home countries. This lesson is not applicable to the context of how to react to those who are not escaping from aggression, but who are caught in its throes, as are the Ukrainians in the Eastern Ukraine, who are being massacred by the Russians, which raises the debate discussed in the documentary whether to bomb the railroad lines leading to Auschwitz. I thought the pros and cons of that issue, which were debated in Washington during WWII, were very informative.
Putin is not Hitler and while he is committing war crimes and other brutal human rights abuses in Ukraine, unlike Hitler he is not committing genocide.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure I'll be called a "Putin apologist" and/or a "tankie" and we've been through his before, but lots of sane people such as Chilean CNN analyst Raul Sohr and Chomsky believe that if the U.S. had been willing to sit down and negotiate with Putin instead of arming Ukraine and using it as a proxy to weaken Putin in this new semi-cold war, some kind of peaceful deal could have been reached. No deal could have been reached with Hitler by the way.
Given the circumstances, I know I have to repeat the affirmation that I condemn Putin's invasion of the Ukraine and I do, but the comparisons with Hitler just serve to rev up the war fever, which the Democrats, to which you are all donating money (better than Trump to be sure), are feeding along with their pals in the Pentagon, CIA and arms industry.
If I had a credit card in dollars (my debit card is in Chilean pesos), I'd probably donate money too, but that one has to opt between Trump and the mainstream Democrats is depressing.
Marc,
ReplyDeleteI will have a couple of thoughts in response to your comment later, when I have more time and computer is on.
To SW:
ReplyDeleteYou say: "... if the U.S. had been willing to sit down and negotiate with Putin instead of arming Ukraine and using it as a proxy to weaken Putin in this new semi-cold war, some kind of peaceful deal could have been reached."
The question is: What would the U.S. have negotiated with Putin about?
Exclusion of Ukraine from the EU? from Nato?
But Ukraine is a sovereign nation... There is every evidence that it wanted to do what it pleased in the region, especially with respect to liberalization and closer ties to the West, not what Russia wanted it to do. Would you have advocated that the U.S. put pressure on Ukraine to bend to Russian demands?
And what if Russia had demanded Donbas and the other Eastern provinces? Would you have had the U.S. pressure Ukraine to give in? ---Crimea all over again?
To be sure (I guess), Putin in not Hitler--- but he would have been just as eager for the West to have taken the route of appeasement.
I think that you grossly exaggerate the likelihood that anything but the West's capitulation to outrageous demands would have dissuaded Putin from invading Ukraine.
Ukraine at this point depends wholly on the U.S. I genuinely doubt that Zelensky makes any decisions without consulting the U.S. advisors, whom, I'm sure, surround him. My guess would be that given the possibility that Putin or even Ukrainian Nazis would try to assassinae him, Zelensky has U.S. bodyguards to protect him and his family. Without U.S. arms Zelensky would not last 24 hours.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Michael. We are on our way.
ReplyDelete"To be sure (I guess), Putin in (sic) not Hitler"
ReplyDeleteAn astonishing comment.
It was a typo... "in "instead of "is"...
ReplyDeleteWhat's astonishing?.... The "I guess" part?
Well.... I'm not so sure that Putin is not as bad as Hitler.
Are you?
I donated $25. Thanks for matching challenge, Professor.
ReplyDeleteI was talking about appeasement, not genocide.
ReplyDeleteTalking about the nature of science? Well, I might emphasize particularly the existence of doubt and uncertainty. Wait, we're talking about the deeper meaning of it all.. LATER? Later!
ReplyDeleteIn for a $100. Also folks might want to check out the DSCC and individual senate races (it seems the North Carolina senate race is competitive. I see that the Greens and Jill Stein are doing their best to elect the Trumpy Republican).
ReplyDelete"Without U.S. arms Zelensky would not last 24 hours."
s.w., interesting (and hopefully not an intended) elision. Zelensky is a stand up dude but hardly irreplaceable and I don't see any cult of personality stuff. Without US (and NATO assistance - Poland and the UK as well as other NATO members have helped quite a bit) arms Ukraine would be in a bad way but they stopped the initial phase of the invasion mostly on their own. It's written that "without strategy the people falls, but with many counselors there is victory." Besides arms, Ukraine would be foolish to blow off US/NATO intelligence and advice but I don't see any puppetry going on. Top down doesn't work anyway (see Russia's SOP).
Zelensky in a recent visit to Kharkiv.
https://english.aawsat.com/sites/default/files/styles/article_img_top/public/2022/05/29/_russia_ukraine_war_49272-b7bb8-1653834639.jpg?itok=3EonWnKF
Compare and contrast:
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/58F8/production/_123467722_tabletop.jpg.webp
Don't know Sohr but Chomsky is a stuck record and can't get past (by his own admission) global warming and nuclear war. The problem is that in the instant case Putin sees global warming as good for Russia and without nukes Russia is, at best, a second rate power. I would like to see what evidence they have that Putin would abide by any agreement that left Ukraine as more then a Russian colony.
Hitler merely demonstrated how not to do genocide. The PRC and Russia took note. Using Hitler as a marker misses the point.
Thank you David and aaall. We are cooking! We are almost 2/3 of the way there.
ReplyDeleteZelensky is perfect for the role. He's Jewish, so no one in their right mind can suspect him of being a Nazi, good-looking, a first-rate actor, charismatic. Central casting couldn't have picked someone more calculated to win the sympathies of U.S. and European liberals and progressives over to the cause of U.S. geopolitical ambitions in Eastern Europe.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, I like Zelensky myself. I wish him well and I can't imagine a nice guy in a worse spot.
aaall said...
ReplyDelete'without nukes Russia is, at best, a second rate power'
Of course, military and other aid from NATO nations and others continue to pour into Ukraine, and I dunno, maybe we say that observers are increasingly concerned that the Kremlin may escalate the war. I speculate about Biden that he’s decided how he’d respond to various levels of nuclear escalation. Or at least, it seems that he's deliberately vague in public.
But I think the thread is supposed to be about the left outdoing the right at raising and spending millions from undisclosed donors. No? You prefer losing?
This is a response to Marc's comment @3:41 p.m.
ReplyDeleteAs a general point, I agree with "different lessons for different contexts," but I'm not sure one of the lessons is "intervene militarily whenever atrocities are occurring," though it might be. I think scale and other factors are relevant. There was no effective intervention in Rwanda, to take one example, and there should have been, given the scale of what was happening. That's not to say smaller abuses and atrocities, in terms of numbers, don't matter; it's a hard question.
On immigration, it was of course not just turning away the St. Louis, but all the obstacles, intricate visa requirements, geographical limits, etc. that the State Dept and the statutory framework put in the way, including the rule that immigrants could not be a "public charge." One official in the State Dept in particular, Breckinridge Long, comes in for much of the blame, though the Sec of State, Cordell Hull, also comes in for justified criticism.
As one of the historians interviewed in the film pointed out, most of the Holocaust's victims were killed in a 20-month period, and during that period the places where the killing was mostly taking place (Poland and parts of the then-USSR, e.g. Ukraine, Belarus, etc.) were out of reach of American or British airstrikes (and Stalin, preoccupied with fighting the German invasion, was of course not going to do anything for humanitarian reasons even if the Soviet air force had the capability and the needed intelligence information). In short, bombing the rail lines to Auschwitz, the main extermination camp still running at that point (Sobibor, Belzec, and Treblinka having been, after killing some 1.3 or 1.4 million people between them (if I recall the number correctly), closed and razed), only became possible in the war's last phases. So most of the Holocaust's victims, including the huge number who died by mass shootings -- i.e., not in the camps -- could not have been saved by military action because it was not possible. That's why the issue of who could get out of the affected parts of continental Europe, and when, before the door was finally shut by the Nazis completely, was so important. That said, and despite the very grim subject, I look forward to watching the documentary's last hour, in which the question of bombing the rail lines to Auschwitz is, I gather, discussed.
P.s. The figure I gave above for the total killed at Sobibor, Belzec, and Treblinka is too low. According to Richard J. Evans, "modern estimates" put that number "at around 1,700,000." (The Third Reich at War, p. 294)
ReplyDeleteDoesn’t matter if you were talking about appeasement instead - the same point applies, as the analogy with Hitler is both preposterous and obscene.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous,
ReplyDeleteNeither I, nor LFC, nor David Zimmerman, were comparing Putin to Hitler. Neither I, nor they, care whether Putin can be accurately compared to Hitler, to Stalin, to Genghis Khan, or to Attila the Hun. What is undeniable is the video footage of the bombed-out apartment buildings which Putin’s military has caused; the video of mass graves containing the slaughtered bodies of Ukrainian civilians; the video of thousands upon thousands of Ukrainians fleeing the Russian aggression. In this sense, the death and destruction which Putin’s military forces have inflicted, and are inflicting, on the population of a sovereign nation is equivalent to the death and destruction which Hitler’s military forces inflicted on the millions of people living in Poland, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Greece and Russia. Whether or not this makes Putin the reincarnation of Hitler, Stalin, Genghis Khan or Attila the Hun is irrelevant.
On a separate note, watching CBS News this morning, I saw this moving tribute to a great teacher, and then found that it is available on youtube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bH179wiFBSk
P.S.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Prof. Wolff, from a former snarky, somewhat anarcistic, studnet.
Who can't spell "student."
ReplyDeleteOr "anarchistic."
ReplyDeleteYou can find very similar footage from many other wars, eg Saudi Arabia’s very recent aggression against Yemen, but in the very case the comparison to Hitler, be this in terms of appeasement or else, is beside the point.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous,
ReplyDeleteAre you acting as Putin’s advocate, and making the following argument on his behalf: Putin, “To the United States, NATO and the EU, you are aware, are you not, that Saudi Arabia is committing atrocities in Yemen as bad as those you claim I am committing in Ukraine, but I don’t see you sanctioning Saudi Arabia with the same economic sanctions and providing military hardware to the Yemeni rebels as you are doing to Russia. Therefore, until you do so, I have the right continue bombing civilian sites, and continue to deny that is what my military forces are doing, and continue to slaughter civilians and dump their bodies into mass graves. Your failure to sanction Saudi Arabia the way you are sanctioning Russia vindicates my right to continue my military de-Nazification program, come what may.”
Professor Wolff,
ReplyDeleteAlthough it was prior to this Match request, I did donate, on 9/11, $100 to the DLCC, and you are welcome to consider it a pre-Match contribution.