Better in their words…

Sunday subscriber bonus: Syria falls without a fight; Trump arm wrestles French president; masked Insurance Assassin remains unidentified; dumb intelligence officials; Senate tackles Big Food; more.

Source: INTENSITY ☙ Sunday, December 8, 2024 ☙ C&C NEWS

WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY

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Proving this indescribable year is not done yet, not by a long shot, yesterday the Wall Street Journal ran a story headlined, “Syria Civil War Live Updates: Assad Flees Syria as Rebels Take Damascus.” The sub-headline added, “President Bashar al-Assad’s destination is unknown.” On the rapidly shifting map, the former country and now failed state appears busier than a football stadium snack bar at halftime:

Just from the legend, the various factions include the Turks, the Israelis, the U.S., the Rebels, Kurds, Syrian loyalists, Russians, Iranians, and ISIS, all pictured above, and all carving off a piece of the dying corpus.

As long as they were throwing a party, why not invite everyone?

Compare Syria’s zippy timeline to the ponderous calendar of Ukraine’s Proxy War. Unlike in Eastern Europe, this only took a single week, start to finish, for irregular, allegedly uncoordinated “jihadi rebels” to seize complete control of a major Middle Eastern country and send the president fleeing for his life. Just goes to show you; you never know.

Last night, in an X post, President Trump first ranted a little about how trivially easy was the rebels’ “literal march through Syria,” and then insisted, in all caps and with exclamation marks, to make sure it was perfectly clear, the United States should stay as far away from the conflict as possible.

Syria is a mess. It has been a mess since at least the U.S. dirty-tricks brigade transformed the country into a geopolitical pencil sharpener. In 2016, pre-Trump, the deep state was enjoying a bloody party in Syria and the LA Times ran its patently absurd Syria story headlined, “In Syria, militias armed by the Pentagon fight those armed by the CIA.” Trump immediately pulled the Syria plug. The very next year in 2017, the BBC reported “Syria war: Trump ‘ends CIA arms programme for rebels’.”

As the CIA withdrew, Russia helped Syrian loyalists to successfully repel the now unfunded jihadi militias. At the time, President Putin promised, “Syria has been preserved as a sovereign state, and if terrorists dare to rise again, we will launch strikes against them the likes of which they haven’t seen before.” He probably wishes he hadn’t said that now.

Since 2017, under the Russian-supported rule of Bashar al’Assad, the benighted country has seen a rare modicum of stability and peace between its Muslim and Christian populations. But with Trump gone, and Biden installed, the neocons could creep back in. In 2021, Foreign Policy ran a story ominously headlined, “The CIA Is Better Than the U.S. Military at Creating Foreign Armies.”

It’s almost a cliché, but of course the CIA’s fabulously expensive, decades-long secret war in Syria was never approved by Congress or even debated on the House floor. Despite multiple changes in government over the years, none of the CIA’s operations there have been declassified. We aren’t allowed to know what our national security interest in Syria is (probably just opposing Russia), or what our tax money has been spent on. It’s another deep-state, black hole money pit, just like Ukraine.

In other words, the Syrian wheel has rotated again, crushing more innocent civilians beneath its bloodstained tracks. The Russian-aligned President is gone, maybe forever. This time, Russia barely tried to help President Assad, for two main reasons. First, as President Trump correctly noted, Russia is distracted with Ukraine. Skilled Russian soldiers, missiles, and fighting gear are needed elsewhere.

Second, the Syrian army did not resist. In town after town, Syrian soldiers dropped their weapons and fled as the rebels raced toward the capital, Damascus. The Russians seemed to figure out that Syria was a sold-out, lost cause. Why fight for Syria if the Syrians won’t even fight for themselves?

We may never find out exactly what happened. In a late development that, if true, will likely fuel years of geopolitical conspiracy theories, while I was writing up this post, the Times of Israel (and others) ran a story headlined, “Syrian sources say Assad may have been killed in plane crash during escape.” But at the time of going to press, Reuters still reported Assad’s whereabouts as “unknown.” Who knows.

I maintain my guess that whatever is happening in Syria is somehow related to the Proxy War. Speaking of which.

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Yesterday, Politico reported a surprising story headlined, “After Trump was late, Zelenskyy-Macron trilateral was all smiles and handshakes.” Politico continued the Trump tardiness theme in its sub-headline: “In Trump’s first trip abroad after the election, he arrived late to meet with Macron and gave the French president a characteristically intense greeting.” An “intense greeting” is one way of putting it. Behold the intensity of a handshake that looked like Trump was trying to loosen a stuck pump handle:

CLIP: Trump greets French President Macron with dominating handshake (0:08).

Maybe Politico wasn’t highlighting Trump’s tardiness as a slam. Maybe the paper was picking up on the combined psychological effects of Trump’s body language —the intense handshake, that occurred without Trump even looking directly at Macron— and Trump’s making the two other presidents, Macron and Zelensky, wait on the U.S. President-Elect’s arrival, a classic diplomatic signal of disrespect and establishment of an hierarchy.

Indeed, the handshake —which looked more like Trump easily winning a bout of arm-wrestling— was so intense President Macron probably needed a chiropracter afterward. Macron released a short video of the two men making quick introductory statements to the press, which ends with President Trump saying, “the world going a little crazy right now, and we’re going to be talking about that.”

Good. They need to talk about that.

Politico’s headlines captured both psychological elements: Trump’s alpha body language and his diplomatic tardiness. Both were muscular signals of strength. So Politico obviously sensed a bigger metaphor: It wasn’t just that Trump has literally arrived in Paris; a new American spirit had landed in Europe.

Superficially, Trump was there to attend the grand re-opening of the Cathedral at Notre Dame, which was severely damaged by fire in 2019 after an arsonist’s attack. Now, just as Trump prepares to take office, the Cathedral —closed and silent during the entirety of Trump’s interregnum— is finally reopening. Is there another metaphor here?

Maybe the most significant part of his visit with President Macron was Trump’s unscheduled meeting with President Zelensky of Ukraine.

They look so happy, don’t they? There is only one reason leaders meet in person like this: they want to say something in person that they can’t or won’t say over an electronic line. Trump was there to tell Zelensky something, and probably something important. I’d love to know what.

The situation is, as they say, fluid. President Trump knows the media is salivating, ready to tear into him with a prepackaged, ‘broken-promises’ narrative for failing to end the war in 24 hours. Meanwhile yesterday, Biden announced another billion dollar aid package for Ukraine. But according to ABC, the aid will be delivered from contracts for future manufacturing and not out of current Pentagon inventory.

Trump will likely be in office when these contracts are ready for delivery, and Trump will control all future aid, so he and Zelensky have a lot to talk about. The men met, reportedly, for just under an hour. What do you think Trump said?

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As if double-dog-daring the Insurance Assassin story to get any more strange, last night ABC ran a widely-covered story headlined, “UnitedHealthcare CEO shooting latest: Suspect’s backpack had Monopoly money.” I know I keep saying it, but you really can’t MTSU.

Yesterday, the NYPD announced finding the shooter’s backpack, or what they think is probably his backpack, discarded in Central Park. Inside were only two things: a Tommy Hilfiger jacket, and some Monopoly money. That’s it. They did not find a Get-Out-Of-Jail free card, fortunately, or any top hat.

They have so much evidence now. ABC said police had: tracked the bus the assassin rode from Atlanta to New York; discovered the hostel he stayed in; traced various taxi trips he took, including his final taxi back to the George Washington Bridge bus terminal; found his water bottle, coffee cup, and burner phone; gathered even more surveillance pictures from various locales; collected receipts from any number of purchases; and even identified the bus the killer boarded to leave New York, which stopped in six cities, all of which presumably have video surveillance just like New York does.

In spite of all that evidence, police have recovered no useable fingerprints and they still don’t know who the guy is. I’m starting to think they never will.

There are two kinds of crime stories these days. The first group is the cases where the media covers the story for a day or two, the law enforcement agencies refuse to talk, citing their “ongoing investigation,” and then poof!, we never hear about it again.

And then there are the cases like this one, where it feels like a daytime crime procedural is playing out in the headlines for day after day after day. Like it’s a media distraction from some other story. If the media were distracting us from another story, what would it be?

Someday, someone will have to explain to me how the FBI located all the people who attended the Capitol protest on January 6th with a tiny fraction of the evidence New York has, but they still don’t have a name for the shooter.

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It’s dejá vue all over again. Yesterday, NBC ran this remarkably tone-deaf headline:

According to NBC, nearly 100 (it didn’t say how nearly) ‘former national security officials’ signed an officious, arrogant joint letter accusing Tulsi Gabbard of spreading Russian disinformation. In their view, spreading Russian disinformation rules Ms. Gabbard right out for any elite government job because it shows Ms. Gabbard is biased — unlike them, who are purely nonpartisan. They want Gabbard’s confirmation hearing to be sealed, made non-public, allegedly so Senators can see some secret classified government files. You know, files like Hillary Clinton’s fake Russian Collusion brief against Trump.

The letter included not a single specific or tangible complaint against Gabbard. It was all just vague hand-waving, at worst suggesting she’s open to working with Russia, which is not a crime since we are not at war with Russia, and is probably a good idea to at least think about, all things considered.

None of the stories reporting the new ‘former intelligence letter’ mentioned the signatories to the now-disgraced ‘51 former intelligence officers’ who signed a letter fasely verifying the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation.

One wishes these shamelessly mendacious ‘former intelligence officers’ would shut up and go away. We don’t care. We think they are a joke, they know we think they are a joke, and they are just sending letters for political props, so some Senator can waive it around in Tulsi’s confirmation hearing like it means something. But it will just give Tulsi an opening to complain about the intelligence agencies.

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Call it the RFK effect. Three days ago, Reuters ran a story headlined, “FDA chief defends work on obesity, food to US Senate as agency awaits fierce critic RFK Jr.” On Thursday, in what may be the most actually important development of the week, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, and Labor held a hearing on regulation of the food and beverage industry. Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders, who led the hearing, grilled the head of the FDA over childhood obesity and hyper-processed food.

CLIP: Senator Sanders presses FDA chief Robert Califf (5:42).

For example, Sanders asked Dr. Califf, “We have a major, major crisis. Lives are being lost. Have you had the courage to take on a powerful food and beverage industry?” Dr. Califf, a cardiologist and skilled political player, is clearly smart. He held his own (it seemed to me) calmly defending his agency and proposing various complexities preventing the FDA from doing its job.

It’s very suggestive timing. Why now? In post-election interviews, Bernie has said that Democrats need to reclaim their classic territories like workers’ rights and health. It looks like he may have started trying to do that this week.

Later on in the hearing, Director Califf —the head of the FDA— called ultra-processed food intentionally addictive, like opioids:

CLIP: FDA Director calls ultra-processed food as addictive as fentanyl (1:57).

Either way, it suggests that Sanders may support Robert Kennedy’s nomination to Secretary of HHS. He’s been guarded and hasn’t committed to either supporting or opposing Kennedy. But the fact he’s not saying is saying something. Courageous covid doctor Marty Makary is slated to replace Dr. Califf, who also headed the agency during the Obama Administration.

Consider this: they argued around the margins of why the FDA hasn’t done more, but nobody at the hearing defended ultra-processed food. Something is happening. It’s another kind of momentum, a momentum toward Making American Healthy Again. Last year it would have been unthinkable we could come so far, so fast. Maybe not as fast as the Syrian rebels raced into control. But still fast. And it’s just getting started.

Have a blessed Sunday! Thank you for your loyal, continuing support. Roll back around tomorrow morning, and we’ll kick the week off together with another terrific C&C roundup. See you then.

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