Your Government Is Murdering People Again
A News Link Round-Up
Here is the latest weekly round-up of links, with a collection of interesting articles on: the ongoing war over the Strait of Hormuz, the tragedy of Lindsey Graham, the Graham Platner debacle, more ICE killings of random Hispanic men, the Trump swamp, the non-revival of manufacturing, some interesting perspectives on declining fertility, and Zelensky continuing to turn the tide against Russia.
A reminder about this News Link Round-Up format: The main headlines are there to provide context and perhaps a little commentary, the headlines with the links are the original headlines from the articles, and the quotations beneath are extracts from the articles.
It’s a Good Thing We Stopped All Those “Forever Wars”
Strait of Hormuz Ship Traffic Falls to Lowest Point in a Month After Strikes
Just 14 ships passed through the waterway on Sunday in both directions, the fewest in a month, according to figures from Kpler, a maritime data firm.
Mr. Trump said in a social media post on Monday that he would reinstate the U.S. Navy’s blockade of Iranian ports, which would prevent “Iran’s ships or customers from entering or leaving” the strait.
He added that the United States would provide security for other ships in the waterway but would charge a fee at the “rate of 20% on all cargo shipped” for “any and all costs necessary.”
Before the start of the war in late February, an average of more than 130 vessels transited the strait daily. In mid-June, when the United States and Iran signed a preliminary agreement to reopen the strait, traffic spiked. In the sevendays starting June 20, nearly 400 ships moved through the strait, the most in a one-week period since the war began.
But hopes for a recovery in shipping quickly faded.
Requiem for a Lightweight
Lindsey Knew Better. He Chose Worse.
Let there be no confusion about what Lindsey Graham was. There was no complexity to the man, nor much in the way to plumb and analyze about his journey to the bottom of the Trump sewer.
Lindsey Graham lived his life as a pilot fish, a parasitic sucker fish hovering about larger predators. He was a sidekick and the hollowest of hollow men. Here is what I once shared with Rolling Stone:
People try to analyze Lindsey through the prism of the manifest inconsistencies that exist between things that he used to believe and what he’s doing now. The way to understand him is to look at what’s consistent. And essentially what he is in American politics is what, in the aquatic world, would be a pilot fish: a smaller fish that hovers about a larger predator, like a shark, living off of its detritus. That’s Lindsey. And when he swam around the McCain shark, broadly viewed as a virtuous and good shark, Lindsey took on the patina of virtue. But wherever the apex shark is, you find the Lindsey fish hovering about, and Trump’s the newest shark in the sea. Lindsey has a real draw to power—but he’s found it unattainable on his own merits.
Lindsey Graham’s Choices (from Garry Kasparov)
Lindsey Graham knew right from wrong. He just chose not to act on that knowledge….
[S]ome Republicans agreed with Trump’s sentiments. They simply couldn’t stomach Trump’s style. Their objections were cosmetic.
Graham was different. He was once a moderate with bipartisan instincts on issues like immigration and money in politics, and a man with strong convictions about democracy and world affairs. He had real, substantive differences with Trump. That makes his descent all the more galling.
If American support for Kyiv and other frontline allies was Graham’s animating principle, then he did tremendous damage to his own cause, leading isolationist, pro-Russian forces to the apex of their influence in Washington.
