#brinksmanship

[mikeo56]

Nuclear war is a topic few care to think about. We sometimes call it unthinkable. But we need to think carefully, and to talk—particularly with high-ranking foreign officials whose motives we may have reason to distrust, just as they distrust ours—about how we can collectively avoid launching a weapon that would end our civilization.

Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen’s timely new book, Nuclear War: A Scenario, is a lightning-fast read intended to put the nuclear threat squarely back on everyone’s radar. Her narrative thread, as the title suggests, is a fact-based (though thankfully fictional) scenario that shows how a nuclear launch can escalate into World War III at dizzying speed.

[qqueenofhades]

Two genuine questions: was it REALLY necessary to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and were those two cities European ones (read: full of white people) do you think we still would've made the decision to bomb them?

People have been arguing from the moment it happened whether it was necessary, justifiable, or in any way required, when the war was almost over and Japan was going to lose anyway. My personal view is that it is and remains a completely indefensible action, especially since a) Hiroshima and Nagasaki were relatively unimportant civilian cities with only some military infrastructure, b) Japan was already under heavy conventional bombing that had devastated the mainland, and c) there was no way, ever, that the west was going to drop a nuclear bomb on mainland Europe. So yes, Japan's geographical distance and non-whiteness played pivotal roles in this, especially after American propaganda stereotyped Japanese people as wild yellow savages and, let us not forget, put Japanese-American citizens in concentration camps for the duration of the war. You can read the Wikipedia page about the post-1945 debate here.

[maridiayachtclub]

i just ran the most dogshit session of pathfinder ever and need the reassurance provided by the comforting embrace of uhhhhhh (performs incredibly detailed mental calculations to determine optimum levels of bisexuality, horniness, and balance between exotic and mainstream appeal) an androgynous 40 year old minotaur with a well-paying blue collar job

[cleo-fox]

Technically, you don’t need to be in Congress to be the Speaker of the House, so if they can’t agree on someone in 72 hours, I think they should let me try it as a treat.

[recursive360]

ICBM

ICBM, in full Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, Land-based, nuclear-armed ballistic missile with a range of more than 3,500 miles (5,600 km). Only the United States, Russia, and China field land-based missiles of this range. The first ICBMs were deployed by the Soviet Union in 1958; the United States followed the next year and China some 20 years later. The principal U.S. ICBM is the silo-launched Minuteman missile. Submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) with ranges comparable to ICBMs include the Trident missile, deployed by the United States and Britain, and several systems deployed by Russia, China, and France.

Source: https://www.britannica.com/technology/ICBM

Revelations 8:10–11

[yuri-alexseygaybitch]

I know it's all reactionary empire politics "scratch a liberal a fascist bleeds" and all of that but it's so mind-meltingly insane to keep seeing liberal/"leftist" intelligentsia and media ghouls increasingly frame not just anti-imperialism but anti-aggressive militarization, anti-Cold War posturing, and anti-nuclear brinksmanship as being "right-wing"/"authoritarian"/"tankie" ideas. Like straight up saying shit like "acshully sweaty the real anti-imperialism is having nukes in Guam so we can fight the Chinese." We live in insane and dangerous times.

[artbyblastweave]

In order for me to take your assessment of the politics of The Dark Knight Returns seriously, your assessment needs to take into account both the right-wing powertrip fantasy of infinite no-holds-barred violence against street gangs and petty criminals and the fact that Bruce ends the book in a state of guerilla warfare against a third-term Reagan administration whose cold war brinksmanship and imperialism has recently incited a potentially famine-inducing nuclear exchange

[mutfruit-salad]

i find the way fans are already shipping cooper with lucy over her black love interest very telling of the clueless white supremacy and media illiteracy in the fandom. coop and lucy are obviously being setup as a father-daughter duo who need to learn caution/kindness from each other to survive, but these weirdos can’t have their white-man fave without a self-insert stand-in for 1 season. and the way people are glorifying cooper’s character is a load of bs - a morally greg white guy who realises he endorsed and was sympathetic to a massive war crime/political injustice… so he goes on to indiscriminately kill/hurt more people who have no idea of, nor say in the bigger picture that he was complicit in… is sooo boring and nothing new. also, giving him a biracial daughter as an accessory to show he’s Not Racist isn’t something we’ve seen half of a million fuckin times before 🤪 the way the show back-tracked on fallout’s message of blind american nationalism and militarism being a problem to It’s All Capitalism’s Fault, seemingly in reaction to the US currently endorsing and aiding in foreign war crimes, and past ones becoming common-knowledge, is horseshit on a platter.

I find the complete lack of a character for his daughter really horrifying- how she only exists to die dramatically for the sake of his sadness. It's odd because his wife is a well-established important character, yet their daughter is not allowed to be a person.

Fallout, in general, has had a habit of completely ignoring racism- presenting the prewar world as some fully integrated post racism utopia. Which is weird when the games regularly display overt anti Chinese (and broader anti Asian) sentiments in prewar logs and ads. This is a problem both the classic games AND the bethesda games have- racism has always been a touchy subject to the devs of the series and it seems like every game they've been content to ignore it, occasionally invoking it for horror or stumbling headlong into depicting it without realizing.

The way Ghoulgins regrets his past and just takes it out on everyone around him is absurd and plays into a lot of very hostile ideas the character peddles.

People shipping Ghoulgins with Lucy is baffling to me also considering he spends the entire series physically abusing her. People just don't want to acknowledge Max's existence, I have noticed. I know her and Ghoulgins get closer by the end, but it's after he's done just unspeakably cruel things to her- and you're right that it is absolutely framed as a father/daughter relationship.

I would also like to point out that the series has always criticized capitalism as well- but would generally frame it as sort of tangled up in American imperial ambition- with one feeding into the other. They were two halves of the same coin.

Vault Tec's entire existence in the classic games was selling smoke- profiting off of the extreme tension and stress of US military buildup- a process which would always inevitably end in disaster: either with Vault Tec going under or brinksmanship coming to its inevitable end.

Vault Tec (and the entire idea of luxury bunkers as a whole) WAS a critique of capitalism, and how it goes hand-in-hand with the American military industrial complex. It was selling the fear of annihilation to the populace. They didn't need to be some secretive controlling force to achieve any of this.

Making Vault Tec the sole antagonist, and the driving force of the apocalypse, is both deeply conspiratorial AND undermines the Cold War roots the series has always had- replacing the fear of American military buildup with a sort of hateful simplicity.

[flyingpurplepeopleprogrammer]

Look, I'm probably a bad person for enjoying this but every now and again a particular kind of vaguely bratty, eager subbyject will ask me to explain an aspect of their behaviour or their kink with an "I just don't know why I do that!"

So I'll look. And I'll tell them that - well, really, I wouldn't know the inside of their head and it's probably better to talk about things than to play guessing games do they really want to solicit my opinion and it's always that little bit if brinksmanship like it's a challenge to see if I've actually been listening to them during our talks.

And then I'll tell them what I see and they'll just break.

Like full on "I - uhhh - I need a moment" stunned silence interspersed with occasional strings of profanity and "Really?!"

See, I probably shouldn't enjoy that. But it's awfully fun.

[livelovecaliforniadreams]

So I've talked about this, I think at live shows. I don't know if I've ever talked about it on the podcast, but, you know, Ben's humor is so based on audio and like, and quality of words and the sounds and and sound effects and like, sort of how people say things. And, and he would get locked into in jokes. He would always have in jokes with literally every single person, every crew member, every cast. He would have one word that he would say that the way he said it would make you lose it. And it was always just one of the funniest things. And Ben and I, over the years, built up a pantheon of these references and repertoire. Oh my God. And this was one of the most legendary. So, and now I see why it's so great, because this what we real, so what he's doing here, and he doesn't actually do it, but what he had been doing all week, he barely does it. But what he had been doing all week was he, Ben used to take the tonal interpretation of lines in movies that we knew and insert the reading into a different line that we actually had to say on the script. So let me explain what I mean. So in the movie, Teen Wolf we talk, and the reason we were doing Teen Wolf was because Jerry. So we had been obviously talking Teen Wolf nonstop. And so there's a character in Teen Wolf is a coach, or the, the drama teacher. And the drama teacher has this amazing line where Michael J. Fox walks on. He's refusing to be the werewolf near the end of the movie when he is decided to embrace his humanity. And the, the, the, the drama teacher is gonna kick him outta the show. And he goes, how do I put this? No, no, no wolf. No wolf. No wolf, no part. And we always just thought it was so brilliant because the guy, he swallows it. And the way he sort of like, you know, 'cause the way it's written is like no wolf, no part kid. And he decides to like, make it this like very, and Ben and I would quote it and thought it was hysterical. So then Ben started saying, whatever this line is, I, God, I should have written it down. -Rider

In this recurring dream. What happens next? Shawn recalls, I'm left alone with this beautiful sorority girl who just got dumped, who just got dumped by her boyfriend. She's not too fond of men at the moment. So she wreaks havoc on me emotionally and physically. -Danielle

And then what does Ben's, what does Cory say then? -Rider

Cory, tell Shawn there's something that's not quite meshing with. -Danielle

That's, it was mesh. It was mesh. Mesh. Mesh. So he all week long would say, Shawn, Shawn, there's something that's not quite um mesh. Meshing. Meshing. And he would, so he inserted and it was something he would do at run throughs. He would do it in front. And nobody knew what he was doing. But he's signaling to me. Except for me. So I would be losing. So you can see in anticipation of this moment coming, and I'm sitting here basically daring him. You're not gonna do it while the cameras are rolling. I know. He already had, which is why I was already losing it. 'cause this is probably take two. So yes, this is the brinksmanship of me and Ben trying to make each other laugh. And they left it, they left. 'Cause there probably wasn't a take where we are not losing it. So yes, this is Ben Savage doing his Teen Wolf tone line insertion on our dialogue to just mesh. make each other laugh. And they left it, they left. 'cause there probably wasn't a take where we are not losing it. So yes, this is Ben Savage doing his teen wolf tone line insertion on our diet dialogue to just mesh. Mesh. Meh. Oh, there's so many instances of this throughout our history. But this was like the, I mean, yeah, I'll never forget it. And when I saw me start to laugh, that's all I remembered about this episode. That's all I remembered. Man, that makes me miss it so much. -Rider 

[wumblr]

we have 10 years before the nuclear arsenal is refreshed. i know this is a topic no one else will touch, and i am struggling to communicate just how many sudden changes have occurred in uranium mining, production, processing, and refinement this year, or this week.

a floodgate has been opened, pouring billions in funding towards producing the new sentinel ICBM warheads. i have been trying to warn you about this since ground was broken on northrop headquarters for the missile launch system, back when the bomb-in-development was called the GBSD.

the time to prevent this was yesterday, and nobody listened to me. every day that passes creates a new barrier to prevention of brinksmanship. every additional day you waste makes the solution more difficult.

[gorillaxyz]

if i have to write abt macarthur i will kms

[ladyaislinn]

Oct 24, 2024

>> video

Rufus Sewell talks ‘The Diplomat’ Season 2, playing villains

Actor Rufus Sewell visits TODAY to discuss Season 2 of “The Diplomat,” premiering on Netflix on Oct. 31. He also shares his experience playing villains and offers insights into starting filming for the third season of “The Diplomat.”

Rufus Sewell learned the ending of Season 2 of "The Diplomat" before nearly anyone else.

“I thought the ending of Season 1 was a big shock. I really wasn’t expecting that,” he tells TODAY.com. “The ending of this season, no one could anticipate.”

He and co-star Keri Russell, who play a married pair of ambassadors forever entangled in their own games of brinksmanship, were the only members of the cast to get the final scripts ahead of time. Other cast members' finale scripts had redacted portions until the final read-through.

"It was on the day of the read-through people were getting to that page. You could see, as they turned that page, reactions popping like a line of explosions across the read-through tables. And people going, 'No!' It was a very good, exciting kind of clue as to what the public reaction will be like," he says.

While Season 2 of "The Diplomat" premiered Oct. 31, Sewell says he's "stuck" in Season 3, which is currently filming.

"It's dangerous," he says. "There are things that I cannot say that are old news for us that nobody knows yet."

He admits he "kind of likes" the feeling of having secrets. "Luckily, I'm so forgetful I can't remember most," he quips.

In that respect, he says he's much different from his character on "The Diplomat." Hal Wyler is the husband of the U.S. ambassador to the U.K., Kate Wyler (Keri Russell), and also an ambassador himself. He is a freewheeling rogue-meets-foreign policy genius.

"You need killers on the side of good. He is one of those people," Sewell says. "He says, 'OK, this needs to happen. I've got to go in here. I've got to do something drastic.' Unfortunately, the consequences of that are unforeseeable."

What happens at the end of Season 2 of "The Diplomat" — and what does his character have to do with it? Read below to find out.

What happens at the end of ‘The Diplomat’ Season 2?

The final moments of "The Diplomat" Season 2 end with a shocking reveal: The president of the United States has died — seemingly of shock brought on following a phone call with Hal.

Over the course of the season, the Wylers unravel the conspiracy of who was behind the British warship attack in Season 1.

Turns out Grace Penn (Allison Janney), the vice president of the U.S., orchestrated it with the help of U.K. Prime Minister Nicol Trowbridge’s former adviser Margaret “Meg” Roylin (Celia Imrie).

Grace hired a mercenary to attack a British ship in an effort to give the United Kingdom something to unite over. She did this so that Scotland wouldn't vote yes for independence and the U.S. could keep control of a military base in Scotland. Nobody was supposed to get hurt, but there was a malfunction they couldn't have predicted, which led to people being where the missile hit, Trowbridge explained.

Kate and Hal go back and forth about what to do with the information. They settle on telling Miguel Ganon (Miguel Sandoval), the U.S. Secretary of State. But then, in classic Hal fashion, Hal goes rogue and calls the president instead.

The show skips over the phone call between Hal and the president and instead skips ahead to what he says on the phone to Kate.

Keep in mind that, at this moment, Kate has just gotten out of a tense conversation of her own with the VP, during which she confirmed she was coming for her job. (...)

What does Hal say on the phone to the president?

Sewell says more of the exact conversation will be revealed next season.

"I have to explain to people what happened. Why were you talking to him? What were you talking about? There's not much I can say, you know," he says.

Sewell understands Hal's decision to go rogue and call the president instead of the secretary of state; it was his original plan.

"The only way he could fully control the outcome was to tell the president directly. Going through anyone else, they could use it to their advantage and use gamesmanship against them," he says.

His intentions were in the right place, Sewell says — this was meant to be another Hal Wyler special.

"The fact is, what he's famous for and infamous is pulling off feats that no one else would have the bravery or the intellect to be able to work out," he says.

Hal, he says, is always aware of the risks, and moved forward anyway.

"Sometimes there are casualties. What we're doing is for the world and will benefit an enormous amount of people. But sometimes, if things go wrong, there can be bad results. This is one of those things. He was right to do it, right? Who was to have known that this might have happened?"

[loving-n0t-heyting]

A bunch of my mutuals evidently find it infuriating when activists appear ready and willing to tank electoral political coalitions (in particular around the presidency) on the basis of demands way way to the left of the overton window. I think i am usually midway between them and the activists being maligned, i have definitely been the one to advocate the reasonableness of eg vote boycotts under some circumstances. And if i lived in a country with actual parliamentary elections i would be even more congenial to this sort of political brinksmanship

Otoh when these same activists exhibit the same willingness to tank the labour movt over similarly politically infeasible demands i do start to go berserk

[seat-safety-switch]

War is bad. It imperils the existence of the human race, and throws away our most patriotic youth on the idiocy of political brinksmanship. To make things even worse, the salvage is mostly burned-out trucks and tanks, and none of those vehicles have parts that swap easily into my fleet of half-decrepit 1970s domestic automobiles.

There is so, so much salvage. Why? Think about it: if you’re Bob Warhaver, then you don’t want your war to get all fucked up because you ran out of tires for your trucks and one guy keeps getting flat tires. So you buy way more tires than you think you’re going to need. When the war is over, you don’t want to be paying expensive storage locker fees to store those tires: especially not at the U-Haul depot that keeps their lights on all the time, even with LEDs that shit has got to add up.

So there is a huge industry in getting those leftover tires from the place where the war was, and bringing them home to where the war currently is not. If you know where to look, you can buy all manner of taxpayer-funded excess, all for pennies on the dollar. Again, though, it doesn’t fit my car. Or does it?

Here’s another thing they sell: welders. It turns out that when you blow a hole in the side of a tank when a bunch of nineteen-year-olds hopped up on combat amphetamines try to drive through a former elementary school, you might want to patch that hole up. So they also have lots of surplus welders heading home for the holidays, and they go cheap. Unfortunately, it’s just the machines, and not the people who do the welding – the auction sites have a strict “no slavery” policy – but it’s hard to get the job done without a welder (the person) and impossible to get it done without a welder (the machine.)

All this is to say that while I don’t think a Volare with Unimog portal axles underneath it is particularly legal, they can’t exactly get mad at me. I’m really helping out Big Government, supporting the war effort, in the most patriotic way I can think of: spending a bunch of money and then not being able to break 25km/h on the highway.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Tim Campbell

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

February 29, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

MAR 1, 2024

Today’s story is that in the negotiations to fund the government and pass the national supplemental security bill, MAGA Republicans appear to be losing ground. Biden appears to be trying to weaken them further by making it clear it is Republicans, not Democrats, who are preventing new, strict border security legislation.

The first of two continuing resolutions to fund the government for fiscal year 2024 will expire tomorrow. Fiscal year 2024 began on October 1, 2023, and Congress agreed to a topline budget, but it has been unable to fund the necessary appropriations because MAGA Republicans have insisted on having their extreme demands met in those measures. In this struggle, former president Trump has urged his loyalists not to give way, telling them in September 2023: “UNLESS YOU GET EVERYTHING, SHUT IT DOWN!” 

But a poll from last September showed that 75% of Americans oppose using brinksmanship over a government shutdown to bargain for partisan gain. 

After kicking the can down the road by passing three previous continuing resolutions, House Republicans a week ago expected a shutdown. But today they backed off. The House passed a short-term continuing resolution that pushes back the dates on which the two continuing resolutions expire, from March 1 and March 8 to March 8 and March 22. The vote was 320 to 99 in the House, with 113 Republicans joining 207 Democrats to pass the measure. Ninety-seven Republicans opposed the bill, as did two Democrats who were protesting the lack of aid to Ukraine. 

Tonight, the Senate approved the continuing resolution by a vote of 77 to 13. President Joe Biden is expected to sign it tomorrow. “What we have done today has overcome the opposition of the MAGA hard right and gives us a formula for completing the appropriations process in a way that does not shut the government down and capitulate to extremists,” Senate majority leader Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) said.

Trump opposes helping Ukraine in its fight to resist Russia’s invasion, and under his orders, MAGA Republicans have also stalled the national security supplemental bill, which contains Ukrainian aid, as well as aid to Israel, the Indo-Pacific, and humanitarian aid to Gaza. The measure passed the Senate on February 13 by a strong bipartisan vote of 70 to 29, and is expected to pass the House if Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) takes it up, but so far, he has refused.

Today, Representative Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) told reporters that “several” House Republicans are willing to sign a discharge petition to force Speaker Johnson to bring a national security supplemental measure to the floor for a vote. A simple majority can force a vote on a bill through a discharge petition, but such a measure is rare because it undermines the House speaker. With Johnson refusing to take up the Senate measure, Fitzpatrick and his colleague Representative Jared Golden (D-ME) have prepared their own pared-down aid measure. Fitzpatrick told CNN’s Jake Tapper Tuesday that “[w]e are trying to add an additional pressure point on something that has to happen.” 

Speakers from the parliaments of 23 nations wrote to Johnson yesterday and urged him to take up the Senate measure, saying that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has “challenged the entire democratic world, jeopardizing the security in the whole European and Euro-Atlantic area,” and that “the world is rapidly moving towards the destruction of the sustainable world order.”  

On Tuesday, Johnson met with President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Senate majority leader Schumer, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), and House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) to discuss the importance of funding the government and passing the national security supplemental bill. There, he was the odd man out as the other five pressed upon him how crucial funding for Ukraine is for U.S. national security.

Yesterday, Johnson told Fox News Channel personality Sean Hannity that the leaders told him he was “on an island by myself, and it was me versus everyone else in the room.” He went on: “What the liberal media doesn’t understand, Sean, is that if you’re here in Washington and you’re described as a leader that’s on an island by themselves, it probably means you’re standing with the American people.” 

But an AP-NORC poll released today shows that it is not Johnson but the others at that meeting who are standing with the American people: 74% of Americans, including 62% of Republicans, support U.S. aid to Ukraine’s military. 

The struggle between Biden and Trump for control over U.S. politics played out starkly today as both were in Texas to talk about immigration. Both say the influx of migrants at the southern border of the United States needs to be better managed. But Trump blames Biden for what he compares to a war in which an “invasion” of criminal “fighting-age men” are pouring over the border. (NBC News noted that “there is no evidence of a migrant-driven crime wave in the United States” and that, in fact, their review of crime data ”shows overall crime levels dropping in those cities that have received the most migrants.”)

Trump promises he would solve immigration issues instantly with executive orders, although his orders during his term faced legal challenges.  

In contrast to Trump’s promise to dictate a solution, Biden emphasized that the government should work for the people. In Texas, he noted that the federal government has rushed emergency personnel and funds to the state to combat the deadly wildfires there that have burned more than a million acres, and he urged Congress to pass a law to address border issues, as he has asked it to since he took office. 

Such a measure is popular, and earlier this month, Trump undermined a bill that was tilted so far to the right that it drew the support of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Wall Street Journal editorial board, and the U.S. Border Patrol union. Senators from both parties had spent four months hammering the bill out at the insistence of House Republicans, who then killed it when Trump, apparently hoping to keep the issue open for his campaign, told them to. 

Today, Biden urged Congress to pass the $20.2 billion bipartisan border bill that would, he said, give border patrol officers the resources they need: 1,500 more border agents, 100 cutting-edge machines to detect and stop illegal fentanyl, 100 additional immigration judges to deal with the backlog of cases, 4,300 more asylum officers, more immigrant visas, and emergency authority for the president to shut the border when it becomes overwhelmed. 

Biden spoke directly to Trump: “Instead of playing politics with the issue, instead of telling members of Congress to block this legislation, join me, or I'll join you, in telling the Congress to pass this bipartisan border security bill. We can do it together…. Instead of playing politics with the issue, why don't we just get together and get it done. Let’s remember who the heck we work for. We work for the American people, not the Democratic Party or the Republican Party. We work for the American people.”

Trump may not share that perspective. Last night, Maggie Haberman and Andrew Higgins of the New York Times reported that Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, who has undermined democracy in Hungary, will visit Trump at Mar-a-Lago next week as Trump scrambles to find the more than half a billion dollars he needs to pay the fines and penalties courts have ordered. “We cannot interfere in other countries’ elections,” Orbán said last week, “but we would very much like to see President Donald Trump return to the White House.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON