What Happened Today: March 3, 2023
Parliament's big, bad message leak; 'We just want different things' U.S.-Russia edition; Conservative girls are happier than Liberal boys; Sugarcubes reviews The Banshees of Inisherin
The Big Story
Digging into a trove of 100,000 WhatsApp messages that former British health secretary Matt Hancock handed over to British journalist Isabel Oakeshott, The Telegraph’s new series, “The Lockdown Files,” offers a rare and at times unflattering glimpse into the decision-making process that took place at the highest levels of British government during COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns. Initially given the messages by Hancock after he hired her to help him write a book about the crisis, Oakeshott said she felt obliged to withdraw from the book project and make the messages public. Some revealed Hancock’s indifference both to the impact of lockdowns on the airline industry (“of course v hard for them as they’re going bust”) and to mandatory quarantine for citizens returning to the United Kingdom (“149 chose to enter the country and are now in Quarantine Hotels due to their own free will!”) and referred to leaning on the police to enforce lockdowns as “the plod got their marching orders.”
“Anyone who thinks I did this for money must be utterly insane,” Oakeshott has said in the wake of critics accusing her of taking a big payout to reveal the trove of messages. “This is about the millions of people—every one of us in this country—that were adversely affected by the catastrophic decisions to lock down repeatedly, often on the flimsiest of evidence, for political reasons.”
While Hancock’s messages may appear callous, other supposedly shocking revelations about Hancock’s patchwork testing campaign for seniors going from hospitals to senior-care facilities was not the result of indifference to the advice of scientists but rather to a lack of testing equipment. More significantly, the reporting thus far suggests then British prime minister, Boris Johnson, was taking cues on the lockdown duration from one of his media advisers, Lee Cain. When Johnson considered easing lockdowns in Spring 2020, Cain told him he was “too far ahead of public opinion.” Hancock also criticized the then chancellor and now prime minister, Rishi Sunak, for his Eat Out to Help Out attempt to save the restaurant industry, calling it “Eat out to help the virus get about.”
Read More: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/lockdown-files/
In The Back Pages: A Devastating Moment of Clarity in Ukraine
The Rest
→ At the G20 summit on Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov met for the first time since the start of hostilities in Ukraine last year. At a press conference following the meeting, Blinken told reporters he’d said to Lavrov it was time to end the war in Ukraine and release American prisoner Paul Whelan and asked Russia to rejoin the nuclear disarmament START treaty that President Putin abandoned last week. Blinken added that even at the height of the Cold War, the two countries were able to find common ground on arms treaties, and that should hold true today. Lavrov, for his part, said the Western nations turned the G20 summit into a “farce.” At his meeting with Blinken, Lavrov recalled having said that “if the West doesn’t want talks to take place but wishes for Ukraine to defeat Russia on the battlefield—because both views have been expressed—then perhaps there is nothing to talk about with the West.”
→ As interest rates rise worldwide in an attempt to combat runaway inflation, the big-ticket defaults are piling up, including a $562 million bond held by Blackstone that had been pegged to Finnish office real estate. After defaulting on the loan, Blackstone says it is still confident in its overall portfolio of European real estate properties, but the default, and Blackstone’s halt of all withdrawals from another $71 billion real estate fund, has property speculators sweating.
→ Speaking of bubbles popping, the rapidly proliferating “vertical farming” start-up sector has contracted into a shriveled cabbage. The indoor industry, which uses a lot of automation and LED lights to grow vegetables, has received about $2 billion from venture capitalists, but founders of these companies have struggled to achieve profitability amid mounting electricity costs, start-up expenses, and overspending on staffing (a common start-up mistake.) The benefits of indoor, automated farming aren’t nothing: no pesticides, much less water needed, the protection against disease, and less travel time from farm to table. But so far, they simply aren’t cost competitive.
Read More: https://www.fastcompany.com/90824702/vertical-farming-failing-profitable-appharvest-aerofarms-bowery
→ Vanguard CEO Tim Buckley—leader of one of the top two investment firms on earth, number one depending on how you count—announced in December that Vanguard would be leaving the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative. Now, in an interview with the Financial Times, he explains the move: “Our research indicates that ESG investing does not have any advantage over broad-based investing.” The trend of investing in companies that are environmentally conscious, with an eye toward zero-carbon emissions by 2050, simply doesn’t seem like a sound fiduciary move to Buckley. Part of the reason for that is Buckley’s, and Vanguard’s, tradition of favoring index funds over actively managed funds, with fewer than 1 in 7 portfolio managers outperforming the market in any five-year span.“It would be hubris to presume that we know the right strategy for the thousands of companies that Vanguard invests with,” said Buckley.
→ The Delaware Supreme Court has decided to change aspects of the Delaware Bar Exam in order to increase the state’s number of non-white lawyers and judges, a move some see as patronizing if not borderline racist. In 2021, Delaware Chief Justice Collins J. Seitz Jr. created the Delaware Bench and Bar Diversity Project, whose recommendations led to the changes, which include lowering the number of correct answers on the 200-question test to 143 from 145; cutting the number of essays required from eight to four and the number of areas of law eligible for essay prompts from 14 to 10; reducing the clerkship requirement length; and decreasing the number of mandatory legal proceedings a prospective barrister needs to attend from 25 to 18. Speaking for Seitz, court spokesperson Sean O’Sullivan said that the changes were a “lowering of the standards but a modernization of the process to better reflect how other states handle admission to the bar” and that they would help Delaware continue to attract top talent.
→ California’s wild winter weather has now closed down Yosemite National Park, as the wondrous home of Half Dome just counted 15 feet of snow. The storms, which have been ongoing all winter, have cost the state upwards of $30 billion in damages and killed at least 18 people. Though the storms have brought much-needed moisture to the drought-ridden state, Jeanine Jones, the interstate resources manager at the California Department of Water Resources, told KTLA that it still isn’t enough to replenish groundwater depletions that weigh heavily on rural areas in particular. But the mountains’ snowpack, which provides much of the state’s water, is at 181% of its normal levels.
→ Quote of the Day:
In reality, of course, Jews included not only saints and savants, but also criminals, hustlers, and the marginal, unmoored luftmenschen (in Yiddish a person who seems to “float on air”). In the early 20th century, Jewish gangs flourished in cities such as London, where ‘the Kosher nostra’ competed with other ethnic gangs for control of downscale areas like the East End.
Tablet contributor Joel Kotkin has a new piece out on UnHerd about the darker side of Jewish exceptionalism. In it, he outlines the history of Jewish thuggery and how it has transformed into a far-less ethnically associated, more merely self-indulgent bourgeois kind of crime.
Read More: https://unherd.com/2023/02/the-fall-of-the-jewish-gangster/
→ Friday news wires reported the Hungarian government of Viktor Orban will become the first European Union nation to move its embassy to Jerusalem, in April. “Senior Foreign Ministry sources” communicated to The Times of Israel that the move is being made in part so Orban can help out his pal Netanyahu in a time of great criticism over Netanyahu’s proposed judicial reforms. Upon Bibi’s re-election, Orban tweeted a photo of himself with the prime minister’s autobiography, writing, “What a great victory for Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel! Hard times require strong leaders. Welcome back!”
→ Several journalists across the political spectrum have published pieces in recent weeks grappling with the phenomenon of teenage depression, especially in teenage girls. President of the right-leaning Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology, Richard Hanania, conducted a literature review on the correlation between social media use and mental health issues among teens and concluded that “the rise of social media has had disastrous effects on the mental health of young people.” Matthew Yglesias adds a 2021 study that shows teenagers’ depression is correlated to their political affiliation. Least depressed are conservative boys, then conservative girls, liberal boys, and finally liberal girls. Yglesias challenges what he calls the liberal adult tendency to “valorize depressive affect.” The New York Times’ Michelle Goldberg agrees the phenomenon is likely due to social media, but frames it as a corporatist barrage on our youth rather than merely a side effect of using the platforms.
The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)
Written and Directed by Martin McDonagh
If hell is other people, it’s surely the people of Inisherin, the small, Irish island that’s the setting of Martin McDonagh’s latest film. Colm Doherty (Brendan Gleeson), a vainglorious composer; Pádraic Suilleabhain (Colin Farrell), a kind but boring herdsman; and Siobhan, his bookish sister, along with a smattering of townsfolk, wander day after day among the stone-studded hills, shuffling from home to pub to post office to pub again, making small orbits of the island and of each other.
The claustrophobic quotidian is ruptured when Colm, who spends his time sitting by the beach and writing jigs and ballads on his fiddle, decides that, in the interest of his art and his yearning to create something great, he won’t talk with Pádraic, his old pub partner anymore—and that he’ll cut off a finger every time Pádraic even tries. “He’s dull,” Colm explains to Siobhan when she asks about this decision, speaking the words with the anguish only induced by the truly boring, which rises, in this film, to the level of an existential problem. “But you live on an island off the coast of Ireland,” Siobhan responds. “What the hell are you hopin’ for, like?” Sure, the tedium of the herdsman’s conversation is considerable (Colm complains that Pádraic spent two full hours talking about what he found in his donkey’s droppings), and such talk could, day after day, become unbearable. But Colm’s insistence that Pádraic never speak to him again is, as Pádraic puts it, “not nice,” and an island where people are not nice to one another is a hell of a different kind.
TODAY IN TABLET:
Biden Sets Israel on Fire by Lee Smith
U.S. support for demonstrations in Tel Aviv isn’t about the future of Israel’s judiciary. It’s about handcuffing Israel while Iran gets the bomb.
Religious Liberty Behind Bars by Maggie Phillips
Two court cases involving Rastafarian inmates attract the attention of legal advocates of other faiths
SCROLL TIP LINE: Have a lead on a story or something going on in your workplace, school, congregation, or social scene that you want to tell us about? Send your tips, comments, questions, and suggestions to scroll@tabletmag.com.
A Devastating Moment of Clarity in Ukraine
Sanctions have failed to break Putin, and the West is running out of missiles and bullets
By Jeremy Stern
Watching Volodymyr Zelensky fight back tears as he addressed his soldiers in Kyiv’s St. Sophia Square last Friday, it was hard not to think of two of the past year’s most common refrains. The first is that, in his determination to eliminate Ukraine as a national concept, Vladimir Putin has done more than any man in history to consolidate Ukrainian national sentiment. The second is that, in his attempt to prove the decadence of the West, Putin has breathed more life into the Western alliance than it’s had since the end of the Cold War.
It’s true that the West, with the support of official, public, and elite opinion, has formed a united front to uphold the principles of territorial integrity and national sovereignty in Europe. We have done this while making great economic sacrifices of our own, and walking the tightrope of avoiding direct confrontation with Russia even as we help Ukraine build the most formidable land army in Europe. The average voter in America or Europe can therefore be forgiven if he believes that the war has steeled rather than strained the idea of the West, the same way it has fortified rather than broken the idea of a free and independent Ukraine.
But this truism, which is repeated as much in the United States as in Europe, is at least somewhat illusory. In reality, the war has revealed that the West’s position is more contingent and isolated than we’d thought, while the prospects for Ukrainian freedom may rest on a set of promises and expectations that the West is not prepared to fulfill.
Few things capture the brittleness of the Western alliance like the otherwise discrete issue of tanks. For months, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was seen as the sole obstacle to providing Ukraine with two battalions of German-made Leopard 2 battle tanks, which are maintained in arsenals all over Europe. Scholz claimed he simply sought guarantees that a tank package for Ukraine would be seen as a Western rather than a German initiative; his critics, including the author, suspected he was really just seeking to forestall a Ukrainian victory in order to protect German relations with Russia. Scholz finally caved at the end of January under pressure from NATO allies and his coalition partners in the German government, and after obtaining a commitment from the Biden administration to send its own M1 Abrams tanks.
Only a few weeks later, however, the tank coalition started to come apart. Portugal announced it would send three tanks, Spain six, and Norway eight. But the Netherlands, having pledged 18 tanks, suddenly revised its offer to zero. Ditto Denmark, which will now offer none of its 44 Leopard 2s to Ukraine. Greece, which has more of the tanks than any country but Germany, has also declined to participate. Sweden signaled that it wouldn’t provide any battle tanks to Ukraine until after it becomes a member of NATO, a process that could outlast the war. Finland will supply three Leopard mine-clearing vehicles, but no battle tanks. The effort to put together two small battalions—just 62 Leopard 2 tanks out of a European inventory of 2,000—nearly collapsed, leaving Germany (and Poland) holding the bag.
Some of the damage has since been reversed—Sweden has offered “up to 10” tanks, Spain may add four more later this year, and the Dutch and Danish will now furnish 40-year-old Leopard 1s by year’s end—but only after furious activity from Berlin, which increased its own commitment to complete a battalion of advanced model Leopard 2s. The tank coalition now appears every bit a “German” endeavor—precisely the situation Scholz had said he needed to avoid.
The political consequences of the battle tank fiasco should not be dismissed. A large percentage of German voters already oppose arms deliveries to Ukraine on principle; now, German media and public opinion leaders will find it hard to complain about Scholz’s gut policy of hesitance and reluctance, which Western and Northern Europe have revealed to be justified. The tank episode will likewise weaken the position of Germans in favor of further military aid like fighter jets and long-range missiles—which means those requests may have to find their way through Western, Northern, and Southern Europe without the decisive backing of Berlin. Scholz’s more hawkish coalition partners in the Green and Free Democratic Parties have taken a hit, and forces opposed to NATO and to higher defense spending have been strengthened. America and Europe remain more united in Ukraine than they ever were over Serbia or Iraq, but there are reasons to worry about the future and value of Western solidarity.
The political crosswinds now buffeting German supporters of Ukraine suggest that the burden of arms provisions in 2023 and beyond will likely fall even more heavily on the United States, whose contributions to Ukraine’s war effort already dwarf those of the other top 30 donor countries combined: Between Jan. 24, 2022. and Jan. 22, 2023, the United States committed $47 billion in military aid to Ukraine, compared with $5.8 billion from Britain, $2.6 billion from Poland, $2.5 billion from Germany, and a derisory $700 million from France. (When accounting for all bilateral commitments as a percentage of GDP, including the costs of settling refugees, Poland, the Baltics, and the Czech Republic have contributed the most.)
The physical limitations to this trend continuing much further are stark: As a recent Bloomberg essay by Niall Ferguson and a New Yorker interviewwith historian Stephen Kotkin vividly brought home, Ukraine is using up far more ammunition, artillery, rockets, and missiles everyday than the U.S. defense industrial base is capable of replenishing—to say nothing of reserving stocks for possible conflicts in the Taiwan Strait or the Middle East. The Pentagon has ordered a review of U.S. arms stockpiles, and further budget allocations to ramp up production are likely. But it’s not clear the United States can simply spend its way out of the consequences of a 20-year industrial offshoring frenzy in a time frame relevant to the military needs of Ukraine.
Perhaps even more severe than the physical limits are the political ones. For now, talk of waning GOP support for Ukraine is mostly overblown—a recent House resolution calling for the end of military and financial aid to Ukraine won the support of just 5% of the GOP caucus. But the stage is clearly set for a fight. As the Fed tightens policy to lower inflation, a real or perceived U.S. recession may not be far away, even as Ukraine—which is already battling 30% inflation, currency debasement of some 70%, and burning through its foreign exchange reserves—becomes more desperate for a financial life vest.
According to recent polls, between March 2022 and January 2023, the percentage of Republican voters who favor military aid to Ukraine fell from 80% to below 50%. Regardless of the ironclad support of Republican congressional leadership and doomed GOP presidential contenders like Nikki Haley, Mike Pence, and Mike Pompeo, every additional dollar of U.S. aid to Ukraine plays into the hands of Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis—both of whom are likely to argue, with an entirely predictable measure of success, that fiscal support which might have gone to poor and working-class American families is going instead to Eastern Europe.
No matter that U.S. military expenditures in Ukraine as a percentage of GDP have been only one-third of what we spent on an average year in Iraq, and one-thirteenth of annual spending in Vietnam. Neither Joe Biden nor any other Democrat wants to enter 2024 against DeSantis or Trump as the candidate of indefinite fiscal support to Ukraine—especially as hopes recede that there will ever be an end to this war that looks and tastes like real victory.
So much for guns and politics. But what about the unprecedented Western sanctions regime? Our economic strategy for a year now has been to accelerate an end to the war by denying Russia the means to continue funding it, or by fueling enough domestic turmoil in Russia that Vladimir Putin feels compelled to negotiate a settlement. Hasn’t it worked, at least in part?
Read the rest, here.