You might want to read Alan J. Kuperman’s piece at The Hill. Here’s its opening:

I rarely agree with President Trump, but his latest controversial statements about Ukraine are mostly true. They only seem preposterous because western audiences have been fed a steady diet of disinformation about Ukraine for more than a decade. It is time to set the record straight on three key points that illuminate why Ukrainians and former President Joe Biden — not merely Russian President Vladimir Putin — bear significant responsibility for the outbreak and perpetuation of war in Ukraine.

The piece is copiously annotated. The three points are:

1. The violence that provoked Russia’s initial incursion into Ukraine was initiated by ultra-nationalist Ukrainians.
2. President Zelensky violated multiple peace deals with Russia, seeking NATO membership and support instead.
3. President Biden basically gave Zelensky a blank check, “escalating and perpetuating” the fighting.

Dr. Kuperman concludes:

The basic outlines of a deal to end the fighting are obvious even if details remain to be negotiated, as Trump and Putin started doing today in a phone call. Russia will continue to occupy Crimea and other portions of the southeast, while the rest of Ukraine will not join NATO but will get security guarantees from some western countries. The sad thing is that such a plan could have been achieved at least two years ago if only President Biden had made military aid conditional on Zelensky negotiating a ceasefire.

Even more tragic, whatever peace deal emerges after the war will be worse for Ukraine than the Minsk accords that Zelensky foolishly abandoned due to his political ambitions and naïve expectation of bottomless U.S. support.

I presume that Dr. Kuperman’s piece will be dismissed as Russian propaganda. Unfortunately, whatever the truth might be it has become irrelevant. We can choose from Ukrainian propaganda or Russian propaganda.

I’m not particularly interested in watching them dye the Chicago River green. I’ve been down to see the South Side St. Patrick’s Day Parade. It was okay. Public drunkenness isn’t my idea of a good time. Or, at least, it’s more fun to be a participant than a spectator.

Consequently, our St. Patrick’s Day was pretty quiet. Corned beef and cabbage is Irish-American rather than Irish. I made a sauté of Irish bangers, onions, leeks, carrots, potatoes, and cabbage. Sort of a combination of bangers and colcannon. My wife wants to have it again tonight.

Then we watched The Quiet Man on TV. Director John Ford created as close to a love note to Ireland as you can get in that movie. It’s probably John Ford’s most beautiful movie. When you consider how many movies he shot in Monument Valley that’s saying something.

For my money the unsung heroes of the picture are all of the members of the Abbey Theatre (National Theatre of Ireland). That includes Maureen O’Hara, her brother Charles FitzSimons, Barry Fitzgerald and his brother Arthur Shields. They provide most of the humor and local color in the movie.

The editors of the Washington Post call for a lifting of sanctions against Syria:

More than three months since the overthrow of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Damascus, the country remains in a desperate situation. Fourteen years of civil war have shattered the economy. Ninety percent of Syrians live below the poverty line, 1 in 4 are jobless and half of the children are out of school. Seven million people survive in tents and makeshift shelters, and some 16.5 million rely on humanitarian assistance to meet their basic needs. The central bank has too little cash to pay salaries, and the Syrian pound, the national currency, is scarce.

The new government, a rebel coalition led by the Islamist militia group Hay?at Tahrir al-Sham, is struggling to impose security. A recent clash between remnants of the ousted regime’s armed supporters and the government’s security forces left hundreds dead, most of them members of Assad’s Alawite minority based in Syria’s coastal provinces. There were clashes with the minority Druze community outside Damascus. Kidnappings and reprisal killings have surged. And Israel has launched scores of airstrikes and raids targeting weapons depots while building its own military outposts.

Fixing the economic mess, imposing security and preventing the country from splintering along sectarian lines are the daunting challenges facing Syria’s interim president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, formerly known by his nom de guerre, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani. He needs all the help he can get — including from the United States. One thing the Trump administration could do right away is lift the crushing U.S. economic sanctions that hinder Syria’s recovery.

Their argument, essentially, is that unless we lift economic sanctions from the radical Islamic Sunni Arab government Syria will become a failed state.

Syria is already a failed state. The editors opposed the Assad government because Assad was a tyrant. al-Sharaa is a tyrant but, apparently, they support him. Worse than just being a tyrant, he is a radical Islamist Sunni Arab tyrant. Remember the guys who launched the largest terrorist attacks against the United States in our history in 2001? They guys who massacred and enslaved the Yezidis in Iraq?

The multi-ethnic, multi-confessional Syria we have known for the last 80 years is gone, replaced by a government whose soldiers are killing hundreds of Syrians who are Alawites, Druze, or Christians. Any notion that post-Assad Syria will be a liberal democracy is a fantasy. Yes, Syria is desperately poor. It is desperately poor because it is run by tyrants. If we lift sanctions, Syria will continue to be desperately poor but it will make it easier for today’s tyrants to continue their pogroms against Alawites, Christians, and Druze and the tyrants will become rich. Supporting Syria’s latest tyrant is not in the U. S. interest.

I literally have no idea of what the editors of the Washington Post believe in and editorials like this do nothing to clarify their views. Are they nihilists? There are many wiser foreign policy analysts on Substack.

The Trump Administration has begun a more systematic campaign to counter Houthi strikes against commercial and military shipping in the Red Sea. Nancy A. Youssef, Saleh al-Batati, and Benoit Faucon report in the Wall Street Journal:

U.S. military officials described Saturday’s strikes as the beginning of a sustained campaign targeting the rebel group. The USS Harry S. Truman carrier strike group is currently operating in the region and led the U.S. military response, a U.S. defense official said.

The operation included “precision strikes against Iran-backed Houthi targets across Yemen to defend American interests, deter enemies, and restore freedom of navigation,” U.S. Central Command, which is responsible for U.S. military operations in the Middle East, posted on X.

Trump said the strikes were also a message to Iran that it needed to immediately halt support for the group. If Iran threatens the U.S., “America will hold you fully accountable and, we won’t be nice about it!,” he said on his Truth Social platform.

Hours after the U.S. strikes in Yemen, Hossein Salami, the top commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, rejected Trump’s allegations that Iran was backing the Houthis. Iran plays no role in the Houthis’ strategic and operational decisions but Tehran would respond if threatened, Salami was quoted as saying by the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency.

Tehran also publicly denies that it supplies the Houthis with weapons, but United Nations inspectors have regularly traced seized weapons shipments back to Iran.

The Houthis began targeting commercial and military ships transiting the Red Sea and other nearby waters shortly after the Hamas-led assault on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, in what it described as support for the Palestinians. The group suspended those attacks in January, following a cease-fire deal reached by Israel and Hamas.

But in recent weeks, disputes over how to move to the next phase of that cease-fire have threatened to derail an already fragile deal.

Will these strikes be more effective than the Biden Administration’s program of retaliatory strikes against Houthi targets has been? Frankly, I doubt it. I cannot imagine that the area of Yemen in question is a target-rich environment.

The last several years has demonstrated rather conclusively that it’s much harder to maintain sufficient control of an airspace to prevent enemies from striking your commercial or military interests than it used to be. It doesn’t require a national-style air force to conduct such operations. They may be conducted by small groups or even individuals.

As I said at the outset of Houthi harassment of Red Sea shipping two years ago, actually eliminating the possibility of such attacks will require control of the territory from the Red Sea to a 100 km into the interior of the country. That’s 10% of the country or more. I suspect it would require ground operations and such operations have been avoided to date.

There’s a rather remarkable column in the New York Times from Zeynep Tufekci, undoubtedly motivated by the fifth anniversary of COVID-19. Here’s the meat of the piece:

The C.I.A. recently updated its assessment of how the Covid pandemic began, judging a lab leak to be the likely origin, albeit with low confidence. The Department of Energy, which runs sophisticated labs, and the F.B.I. had already come to that conclusion in 2023. But there are certainly more questions for governments and researchers across the world to answer. Why did it take until now for the German public to learn that way back in 2020, their Federal Intelligence Service endorsed a lab leak origin with 80 to 95 percent probability? What else is still being kept from us about the pandemic that half a decade ago changed all of our lives?

I found the use of the passive voice in the title amusing, given the tenor of the column itself: “We Were Badly Misled About the Event That Changed Our Lives”.

And, as Dr. Tufekci makes clear in her column, it was not just a case of knowing little about the virus at the outset but that physicians, scientists, and bureaucrats actively and knowingly lied about the virus and what they knew or did not know.

The German press recently has been full of stories about how the German intelligence service believes with high certainty that the pandemic was the consequence of a “lab leak” from the Wuhan laboratory. My own view, as I have said before, is that is a step too far.

We don’t really know what produced the pandemic—naturally evolving or lab leak—and we are unlikely to know unless the Chinese government miraculously becomes forthcoming about it. The only thing I can imagine that might cause that to happen, as I have said before, would be for our judges and political leaders to allow a civil suit against the Chinese government seeking in the vicinity of $30 trillion in consequential and punitive damages over COVID to proceed.

In the meantime I hope we learn how essential it is for professionals on whom we rely for their expertise be unswervingly honest in their public pronouncements. To be otherwise undermines public trust and, indeed, the very reasons that we rely on them. Furthermore, I hope we have learned that we should not subsidize “gain of function” research outside a place where we can control the safety measures put in place or how the knowledge is used.

Interceptions of eggs smuggled into the United States from Mexico or Canada have increased sharply this year, a response, no doubt, to the high prices. Jeanne Whalen reports at the Wall Street Journal:

The 64 pounds of meth stuffed into the seats and spare tire of a pickup truck caught the attention of border agents in El Paso, Texas, who seized the drugs last month. But it was the trays of eggs that really alarmed them.

As egg prices soar in the U.S., travelers have been stocking up on cheaper supplies in Mexico and, to some degree, Canada. The U.S. Department of Agriculture bans such imports because eggs not inspected through official channels can spread disease.

So-called egg interceptions are up 36% nationwide so far this fiscal year, compared with the previous year, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Along parts of the Texas border, they have risen by 54%, according to CBP’s Laredo field office. In San Diego, they have more than doubled, CBP has reported.

The restrictions on imports of eggs are not due solely to industry lobbying or avian flu. There are risks of salmonella and other diseases as well.

The editors of the Washington Post argue that Arab countries’ counter-proposal for ending the war between Israel and Hamas should be taken seriously and, indeed, should be supported by the U. S. as the only rational solution on the table:

His [ed. President Trump’s] head-scratching proposal put the onus on Arab and Palestinian leaders to come up with an alternative vision for Gaza’s “day after,” and they have done just that. Arab League leaders meeting in Cairo last week endorsed a realistic plan put forward by Egyptian President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi for a multiyear reconstruction of Gaza that would leave Palestinian residents in their homeland and commit the wealthy Arab countries to paying most of the rebuilding costs.

France, Germany, Italy and Britain, as well as China and the 57 Muslim countries represented in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, quickly backed the Arab plan. Predictably, Israel and the Trump administration rejected it. This is a shame, because the Arab plan — though incomplete and vague on key details, including the future role of Hamas’s military wing in Gaza — offers many sensible, workable ideas. It provides a useful starting point for talks on Gaza’s future and a clear road map for reconstruction, and attaches a price tag. It deserves serious consideration in the United States and Israel.

My own view is that I think that forcing people from their homes is unjust whether they are Israelis or Palestinians. But I question whether the Arab proposal is actually rational or a resolution at all. How rational is it for Israel to leave the military wing of an organization dedicated to the murder of its citizens in place?

As I have said any number of times before I do not believe there is a rational, just, and merciful solution to the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians. The best that might be accomplished is an ongoing process of negotiations and that should be our immediate objective.

I think that Ruy Teixeira’s (and economist Thomas Piketty’s) hypothesis about today’s Democratic Party could use a bit of refinement:

The Democrats have become and remain today a “Brahmin Left” party. “Brahmin Left” is a term coined by economist Thomas Piketty and colleagues to characterize Western left parties increasingly bereft of working-class voters and increasingly dominated by highly educated voters and elites, including of course our own Democratic Party. The Brahmin Left character of the party has evolved over many decades but spiked in the 21st century. The chart below illustrates this trend.

How so? Consider the following:

• In 1960 7.7% of Americans had four year college degrees or better; today 37.5% do
• In 1960 2% of Americans had professional degrees; in 2018 3.47% did.
• Once members of the professions, those in finance, and graduates of selective institutions are discounted, the income benefit of a college education disappears
• It used to be the case that there was more than a standard deviation in IQ’s difference in IQ between college grads and non-grads. That is no longer the case.
• Between 1950 and 2010 the number of government employees increased almost four-fold, from 6 million to 22.5 million. After ten years without notable increases the number increased sharply during Joe Biden’s term in office.
• Total employees (including government employees) increased less than four-fold over the same period.
• The majority of union members now work for the government.

And none of that includes government contractors or grant recipients.

When you put all of those factors together I would submit two conjectures:

1. Today’s college graduates are pretty ordinary.
2. A significant proportion of today’s college graduates either will go on to work for government at one level or another or plan to.

or, said another way, people with college educations aren’t brahmins any more by any stretch and it’s completely unsurprising that a large percentage favor expanding government. They’re voting their pocketbooks.

Here’s another discouraging story. What do you think of the proposed ceasefire in the war between Russia and Ukraine? It’s very hard to make an intelligent comment in the absence of details of which I have seen none. That seems to be Russia’s position at present, too.

I’m skeptical that the Russians will accept any ceasefire given the conditions on the ground at present.