The Cosmopolicast

Sorry folks, it’s Monday. We have to think about this again.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claireberlinski.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claireberlinski.substack.com/subscribe

We decided that every Friday, we’re going to talk about things that don’t involve any of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse. From now on, we’re dedicating Fridays to the cosmopolitan part of the globalist. We’ll talk about great cities, great books, the world’s best gardens, Roman history, our favorite languages, travel by train, cooking, the best music by which to drive through the American southwest in a convertible, writing and literature, the world’s best restaurants, the world’s best recipes, navigating Paris by scent, the best martial art, how to train a puppy, how to hitch a ride on a cargo ship, how to renovate a Louis XV commode, circuses we’ve loved, circuses we’ve run away to join—or anything, really, but war, famine, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and death.

Museums we mention:

* Pergamonmuseum

* The British Museum

* The Museum of Innocence

* The Louvre

* The Orangerie

* The Picasso Museum

* The Rodin Museum

* The Uffizi

* National Museum of Denmark

* Imperial War Museum

* Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights

* Musée de l’Armée d’Invalides

The Scutum from Dura-Europos:

A Vilnius descent, by John

There’s something deeply unsettling about standing in a Soviet prison cell, even when it is part of a museum. The air feels dank. The walls are thick, the windows frosted out, and the heavy door can swing closed with surprising ease. There’s an unavoidable sense that with one shove, you could be disappeared, trapped, invisible to the world outside. Instinctively, you do not feel comfortable lingering too long inside. 

I was in the basement level of Vilnius’ Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights—known as the “KGB Museum” to the tourist tours. It’s housed in the building that played host successively to the Gestapo and then the organs of Soviet security who despite ever-changing names (NKVD, MGB, KGB) never altered their purpose or cruelty. Operational as a prison until the dissolution of the USSR, the newly independent Lithuania preserved it as a museum. …

Orhan Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence, by Claire

… The novel is one of his great accomplishments, and the idea of representing the story in two forms is ingenious. Of course, the idea can only work if one writes a novel about a museum. The novel is about more than this, though: It is about love, and it is about Istanbul, and it is about the power of artifacts to evoke nostalgia. It is a long—perhaps excessively long—account of Kemal, an idle Istanbul playboy, and his florid obsession with Füsun, a lower-class shop girl 12 years his junior. Unable to possess her beyond the initial heady days of their affair, he spends years contriving simply to be in her presence, whereupon he pilfers and collects artifacts connected with her. He consoles himself by touching the things she has touched, ultimately transforming Füsun into a fully developed museum of objects consecrated to his obsession with her.

… To enter the museum itself is to feel that past evoked, and it is to feel the book—and indeed an entire era and culture—evoked. It is a bit like reading the script for a play and then seeing its performance. The museum is as carefully crafted as the book, presenting in meticulous display cases and boxes the items used and collected and discussed by the novel’s characters, and managing somehow to make them compelling rather than disgusting—not an easy trick when one of the exhibits comprises 4,213 cigarette butts, each supposedly smoked by Füsun. It is the minute attention to detail that spares this display from grotesquerie—the butts have been pinned to the wall like a lepidopterist's prized treasures; there is something fascinating about the author’s handwritten notes, beneath each butt, and the lipstick stains—each the same shade—or the lack of lipstick, and the way some cigarettes are half-smoked, others stubbed to the core in a suggestion of rage.

The love and memory on display here are not merely that of Kemal for the vanished Füsun, but Pamuk’s for the vanished Istanbul of his youth, the “irreplaceable mementos of a lost world whose every detail figured in the meaning of the whole.” Istanbullus of a certain age roamed the museum with expressions of tender recognition—“Oh yes, we remember that”—the brand names, the film stars, the high-society gossip columns, the photographs of women from newspapers of the epoch with black bands branded across their eyes. (Such was the fate of women who had sex before marriage.)

On Paris Syndrome

Paris syndrome (French: Syndrome de Paris) is a transient psychological disorder encountered by some people visiting or vacationing in Paris and more generally France and Spain. It is similar in nature to Jerusalem syndrome and Stendhal syndrome.

Japanese visitors are observed to be especially susceptible. It was first noted in Nervure, the French journal of psychiatry in 2004. From the estimated six million yearly visitors, the number of reported cases is significant: according to an administrator at the Japanese embassy in France, around twenty Japanese tourists a year are affected by the syndrome. The susceptilibity of Japanese people may be linked to the popularity of Paris in Japanese culture, notably the idealized image of Paris prevalent in Japanese advertising, which does not correspond to reality.

Paris Syndrome is characterized by a number of psychiatric symptoms such as acute delusional states, hallucinations, feelings of persecution (perceptions of being a victim of prejudice, aggression, or hostility from others), derealization, depersonalization, anxiety, and also psychosomatic manifestations such as dizziness, tachycardia, sweating, etc. …

Professor Hiroaki Ota, a Japanese psychiatrist working in France, is credited as the first person to diagnose the disease in 1986. However, later work by Youcef Mahmoudia, physician with the hospital Hôtel-Dieu de Paris, indicates that Paris Syndrome is “a manifestation of psychopathology related to the voyage, rather than a syndrome of the traveller.” He theorized that the excitement resulting from visiting Paris causes the heart to accelerate, causing giddiness and shortness of breath, which results in hallucinations in the manner similar to the Stendhal syndrome described by Italian psychologist Graziella Magherini in her book La sindrome di Stendhal.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claireberlinski.substack.com/subscribe

We decided that every Friday, we’re going to talk about things that don’t involve any of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse. From now on, we’re dedicating Fridays to the cosmopolitan part of the globalist. We’ll talk about great cities, great books, the world’s best gardens, Roman history, our favorite languages, travel by train, cooking, the best music by which to drive through the American southwest in a convertible, writing and literature, the world’s best restaurants, the world’s best recipes, navigating Paris by scent, the best martial art, how to train a puppy, how to hitch a ride on a cargo ship, how to renovate a Louis XV commode, circuses we’ve loved, circuses we’ve run away to join—or anything, really, but war, famine, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and death.

Museums we mention:

* Pergamonmuseum

* The British Museum

* The Museum of Innocence

* The Louvre

* The Orangerie

* The Picasso Museum

* The Rodin Museum

* The Uffizi

* National Museum of Denmark

* Imperial War Museum

* Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights

* Musée de l’Armée d’Invalides

The Scutum from Dura-Europos:

A Vilnius descent, by John

There’s something deeply unsettling about standing in a Soviet prison cell, even when it is part of a museum. The air feels dank. The walls are thick, the windows frosted out, and the heavy door can swing closed with surprising ease. There’s an unavoidable sense that with one shove, you could be disappeared, trapped, invisible to the world outside. Instinctively, you do not feel comfortable lingering too long inside. 

I was in the basement level of Vilnius’ Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights—known as the “KGB Museum” to the tourist tours. It’s housed in the building that played host successively to the Gestapo and then the organs of Soviet security who despite ever-changing names (NKVD, MGB, KGB) never altered their purpose or cruelty. Operational as a prison until the dissolution of the USSR, the newly independent Lithuania preserved it as a museum. …

Orhan Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence, by Claire

… The novel is one of his great accomplishments, and the idea of representing the story in two forms is ingenious. Of course, the idea can only work if one writes a novel about a museum. The novel is about more than this, though: It is about love, and it is about Istanbul, and it is about the power of artifacts to evoke nostalgia. It is a long—perhaps excessively long—account of Kemal, an idle Istanbul playboy, and his florid obsession with Füsun, a lower-class shop girl 12 years his junior. Unable to possess her beyond the initial heady days of their affair, he spends years contriving simply to be in her presence, whereupon he pilfers and collects artifacts connected with her. He consoles himself by touching the things she has touched, ultimately transforming Füsun into a fully developed museum of objects consecrated to his obsession with her.

… To enter the museum itself is to feel that past evoked, and it is to feel the book—and indeed an entire era and culture—evoked. It is a bit like reading the script for a play and then seeing its performance. The museum is as carefully crafted as the book, presenting in meticulous display cases and boxes the items used and collected and discussed by the novel’s characters, and managing somehow to make them compelling rather than disgusting—not an easy trick when one of the exhibits comprises 4,213 cigarette butts, each supposedly smoked by Füsun. It is the minute attention to detail that spares this display from grotesquerie—the butts have been pinned to the wall like a lepidopterist's prized treasures; there is something fascinating about the author’s handwritten notes, beneath each butt, and the lipstick stains—each the same shade—or the lack of lipstick, and the way some cigarettes are half-smoked, others stubbed to the core in a suggestion of rage.

The love and memory on display here are not merely that of Kemal for the vanished Füsun, but Pamuk’s for the vanished Istanbul of his youth, the “irreplaceable mementos of a lost world whose every detail figured in the meaning of the whole.” Istanbullus of a certain age roamed the museum with expressions of tender recognition—“Oh yes, we remember that”—the brand names, the film stars, the high-society gossip columns, the photographs of women from newspapers of the epoch with black bands branded across their eyes. (Such was the fate of women who had sex before marriage.)

On Paris Syndrome

Paris syndrome (French: Syndrome de Paris) is a transient psychological disorder encountered by some people visiting or vacationing in Paris and more generally France and Spain. It is similar in nature to Jerusalem syndrome and Stendhal syndrome.

Japanese visitors are observed to be especially susceptible. It was first noted in Nervure, the French journal of psychiatry in 2004. From the estimated six million yearly visitors, the number of reported cases is significant: according to an administrator at the Japanese embassy in France, around twenty Japanese tourists a year are affected by the syndrome. The susceptilibity of Japanese people may be linked to the popularity of Paris in Japanese culture, notably the idealized image of Paris prevalent in Japanese advertising, which does not correspond to reality.

Paris Syndrome is characterized by a number of psychiatric symptoms such as acute delusional states, hallucinations, feelings of persecution (perceptions of being a victim of prejudice, aggression, or hostility from others), derealization, depersonalization, anxiety, and also psychosomatic manifestations such as dizziness, tachycardia, sweating, etc. …

Professor Hiroaki Ota, a Japanese psychiatrist working in France, is credited as the first person to diagnose the disease in 1986. However, later work by Youcef Mahmoudia, physician with the hospital Hôtel-Dieu de Paris, indicates that Paris Syndrome is “a manifestation of psychopathology related to the voyage, rather than a syndrome of the traveller.” He theorized that the excitement resulting from visiting Paris causes the heart to accelerate, causing giddiness and shortness of breath, which results in hallucinations in the manner similar to the Stendhal syndrome described by Italian psychologist Graziella Magherini in her book La sindrome di Stendhal.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claireberlinski.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claireberlinski.substack.com/subscribe

Show notes

Background: Why I don’t trust news organs I usually find reliable to report the news from Israel and Gaza accurately:

*

What COGAT says:

The image above came from a video; here’s the full footage:

COGAT didn’t provide a translation, and I don’t speak Arabic. So I put the video through an AI program for translation and subtitles, which resulted in gibberish:

My best guess, from the context, is that they’re saying something like this:

First Man: We’re now living from day to day, and our daily sustenance depends on aid. Capone will give you a box. What do you do, under duress, about the things you’re deprived of? The things you see with your own eyes are impossible to buy. For example—you have a kilo of sugar for 80 shekels.

Second Man: These prices ruin people’s homes. People don’t have the money to buy it or do anything else. You can buy one or two. In Ramadan. How are we supposed to live? We won’t be able to live. I mean, in this time, there is no work or anything. We’ve been displaced from Gaza to here. We’re sent one place, then another. Fascists, I mean, the Jews, beatings and beatings on our heads, and there is nothing to eat or drink.

Third Man: A coconut for 15 shekels, a cabbage for 20, and I sell tomatoes for six shekels or five shekels, I brought peppers, but I can’t sell them, because no one is working. No one has a job. Not even one. Is there a job anywhere? Where can I get it? Where does the money come from? Where do we get it from? Where do we get it from? God, it is what it is.

I could be wildly wrong, but I think it’s something like that. (Perhaps one of our Arabic-speaking readers could help?)

The video certainly suggests that Gazans are enduring poverty and want. They’re saying, if I’ve correctly understood, that life in Gaza has been gravely disrupted, their circumstances are parlous, they’re miserable, and they bitterly resent it. But this isn’t a scene of starvation, which is, obviously, COGAT’s point. I don’t know how much disparity there is from one part of Gaza to another, but I don’t see famine in this video.

On the same day, the Washington Post published an article titled, “How Israel’s restrictions on aid put Gaza on the brink of famine.”

On Saturday, the United States airdropped 38,000 meals into Gaza—a territory controlled not by a hostile foreign power but by one of its closest allies.

The remarkable scene of American aid bundles floating down to starving Palestinians was the starkest illustration yet of the rift that has grown between the Biden administration and the Israeli government over the Gaza war. For months, Israel has resisted pressure from Washington to allow more humanitarian aid into the enclave, even as it relies on US bombs and diplomatic support to carry out its punishing military campaign there.

Several paragraphs down, it says,

Israel says it is not limiting the delivery of aid to Gaza, and it has blamed the United Nations for failing to distribute it to those in need—or worse, diverting aid to Hamas.

So who’s telling the truth? Is Israel limiting aid or not? This shouldn’t be hard to answer. The Post could send a journalist to Israel to stand in front of one of the crossings that Israel says is open and see if any trucks go through it. Why aren’t they doing that?

On March 9, The New York Times put the image below on its front page. In the online version, the headline reads: “The 10-year-old boy who has become the face of starvation in Gaza.” The sub-heading says, “The harrowing image of a skeletal Yazan Kafarneh circulated widely on social media and has served as a graphic warning about the enclave’s dire food situation.”

It’s a shocking image. The article begins:

It is all too easy to trace the skull beneath the Gazan boy’s face, the pallid skin stretching tight over every curve of bone and sagging with every hollow. His chin juts with a disturbing sharpness. His flesh has shrunk and shriveled, life reduced to little more than a thin mask over an imminent death.

In one of a series of news photographs of the boy, Yazan Kafarneh, taken with his family’s permission as he struggled for his life, his long-lashed eyes stare out, unfocused. In that widely shared picture online, his right hand, bandaged over an intravenous line, contracts in on itself at an awkward angle …

Then they arrive at a detail that might easily be overlooked:

… a visible marker of his cerebral palsy.

Cerebral palsy is a dreadful disease. The majority of children with severe cerebral palsy do not reach adulthood. The malady is often characterized by difficulty eating and swallowing. This causes malnutrition, which has a major impact on life expectancy. Other symptoms include accelerated musculoskeletal aging, accompanied by severe muscle atrophy:

The clinical observation of muscle wasting has prompted a comparison with sarcopenia in older adults, and the term accelerated musculoskeletal ageing is often used to describe the hallmark phenotype of CP through the lifespan.

Obviously, it’s fully possible—likely, even—that this child’s death was hastened by malnutrition, lack of medical care, and the terrible stress of fleeing from bombardment. But is this truly “the face of starvation in Gaza”—that is, a typical, representative face in Gaza, a face that gives readers an accurate sense of life in the Gaza Strip right now? Or is this the face of late stage, severe cerebral palsy?

Is this face a warning about Gaza’s “dire food situation?” Or is it a warning that The New York Times will violate the dignity of a dying child just so it can tell you—yet again—that there are no depths to which Israelis won’t sink? “Look what the Jews did! They starved him to death!”

The article continues:

Five months into Israel’s campaign against Hamas and its siege of Gaza, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are close to starvation, United Nations officials say. Almost no aid has reached northern Gaza for weeks, after major UN agencies mostly suspended their operations, citing mass looting of their cargoes by desperate Gazans, Israeli restrictions on convoys and the poor condition of roads damaged during the war.

Again, I’m stumped. They suspended their operations to feed people who are “close to starvation” because the roads are damaged?

Israel categorically denies that it’s restricting aid convoys. COGAT points out that private sector aid trucks aren’t finding the bad roads an insuperable barrier:

Either COGAT or the UN—as I say in the podcast—is lying. Neither the Times nor the Post seems to think that getting to the bottom of this question matters; they’re content with intimating, repeatedly, that Gazans are starving because Israelis are deliberately starving them.

Here’s the interview with the interesting Kurdish-Swedish journalist I mentioned:

And here’s Israel’s ambassador to the UK. (I take John’s point that this isn’t diplomatic, but man—I get where she’s coming from.)

Update: I have to say I’ve searched in vain for a clip that shows Tzipi Hotovely saying something with which I truly disagree. I have seen terrible Israeli diplomats in action (I could tell you stories—oy), but she seems fine to me. And her critics seem insane. (Anyone who gets Owen Jones as lathered up as she does can’t be all bad.)

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claireberlinski.substack.com/subscribe

Show notes

Background: Why I don’t trust news organs I usually find reliable to report the news from Israel and Gaza accurately:

*

What COGAT says:

The image above came from a video; here’s the full footage:

COGAT didn’t provide a translation, and I don’t speak Arabic. So I put the video through an AI program for translation and subtitles, which resulted in gibberish:

My best guess, from the context, is that they’re saying something like this:

First Man: We’re now living from day to day, and our daily sustenance depends on aid. Capone will give you a box. What do you do, under duress, about the things you’re deprived of? The things you see with your own eyes are impossible to buy. For example—you have a kilo of sugar for 80 shekels.

Second Man: These prices ruin people’s homes. People don’t have the money to buy it or do anything else. You can buy one or two. In Ramadan. How are we supposed to live? We won’t be able to live. I mean, in this time, there is no work or anything. We’ve been displaced from Gaza to here. We’re sent one place, then another. Fascists, I mean, the Jews, beatings and beatings on our heads, and there is nothing to eat or drink.

Third Man: A coconut for 15 shekels, a cabbage for 20, and I sell tomatoes for six shekels or five shekels, I brought peppers, but I can’t sell them, because no one is working. No one has a job. Not even one. Is there a job anywhere? Where can I get it? Where does the money come from? Where do we get it from? Where do we get it from? God, it is what it is.

I could be wildly wrong, but I think it’s something like that. (Perhaps one of our Arabic-speaking readers could help?)

The video certainly suggests that Gazans are enduring poverty and want. They’re saying, if I’ve correctly understood, that life in Gaza has been gravely disrupted, their circumstances are parlous, they’re miserable, and they bitterly resent it. But this isn’t a scene of starvation, which is, obviously, COGAT’s point. I don’t know how much disparity there is from one part of Gaza to another, but I don’t see famine in this video.

On the same day, the Washington Post published an article titled, “How Israel’s restrictions on aid put Gaza on the brink of famine.”

On Saturday, the United States airdropped 38,000 meals into Gaza—a territory controlled not by a hostile foreign power but by one of its closest allies.

The remarkable scene of American aid bundles floating down to starving Palestinians was the starkest illustration yet of the rift that has grown between the Biden administration and the Israeli government over the Gaza war. For months, Israel has resisted pressure from Washington to allow more humanitarian aid into the enclave, even as it relies on US bombs and diplomatic support to carry out its punishing military campaign there.

Several paragraphs down, it says,

Israel says it is not limiting the delivery of aid to Gaza, and it has blamed the United Nations for failing to distribute it to those in need—or worse, diverting aid to Hamas.

So who’s telling the truth? Is Israel limiting aid or not? This shouldn’t be hard to answer. The Post could send a journalist to Israel to stand in front of one of the crossings that Israel says is open and see if any trucks go through it. Why aren’t they doing that?

On March 9, The New York Times put the image below on its front page. In the online version, the headline reads: “The 10-year-old boy who has become the face of starvation in Gaza.” The sub-heading says, “The harrowing image of a skeletal Yazan Kafarneh circulated widely on social media and has served as a graphic warning about the enclave’s dire food situation.”

It’s a shocking image. The article begins:

It is all too easy to trace the skull beneath the Gazan boy’s face, the pallid skin stretching tight over every curve of bone and sagging with every hollow. His chin juts with a disturbing sharpness. His flesh has shrunk and shriveled, life reduced to little more than a thin mask over an imminent death.

In one of a series of news photographs of the boy, Yazan Kafarneh, taken with his family’s permission as he struggled for his life, his long-lashed eyes stare out, unfocused. In that widely shared picture online, his right hand, bandaged over an intravenous line, contracts in on itself at an awkward angle …

Then they arrive at a detail that might easily be overlooked:

… a visible marker of his cerebral palsy.

Cerebral palsy is a dreadful disease. The majority of children with severe cerebral palsy do not reach adulthood. The malady is often characterized by difficulty eating and swallowing. This causes malnutrition, which has a major impact on life expectancy. Other symptoms include accelerated musculoskeletal aging, accompanied by severe muscle atrophy:

The clinical observation of muscle wasting has prompted a comparison with sarcopenia in older adults, and the term accelerated musculoskeletal ageing is often used to describe the hallmark phenotype of CP through the lifespan.

Obviously, it’s fully possible—likely, even—that this child’s death was hastened by malnutrition, lack of medical care, and the terrible stress of fleeing from bombardment. But is this truly “the face of starvation in Gaza”—that is, a typical, representative face in Gaza, a face that gives readers an accurate sense of life in the Gaza Strip right now? Or is this the face of late stage, severe cerebral palsy?

Is this face a warning about Gaza’s “dire food situation?” Or is it a warning that The New York Times will violate the dignity of a dying child just so it can tell you—yet again—that there are no depths to which Israelis won’t sink? “Look what the Jews did! They starved him to death!”

The article continues:

Five months into Israel’s campaign against Hamas and its siege of Gaza, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are close to starvation, United Nations officials say. Almost no aid has reached northern Gaza for weeks, after major UN agencies mostly suspended their operations, citing mass looting of their cargoes by desperate Gazans, Israeli restrictions on convoys and the poor condition of roads damaged during the war.

Again, I’m stumped. They suspended their operations to feed people who are “close to starvation” because the roads are damaged?

Israel categorically denies that it’s restricting aid convoys. COGAT points out that private sector aid trucks aren’t finding the bad roads an insuperable barrier:

Either COGAT or the UN—as I say in the podcast—is lying. Neither the Times nor the Post seems to think that getting to the bottom of this question matters; they’re content with intimating, repeatedly, that Gazans are starving because Israelis are deliberately starving them.

Here’s the interview with the interesting Kurdish-Swedish journalist I mentioned:

And here’s Israel’s ambassador to the UK. (I take John’s point that this isn’t diplomatic, but man—I get where she’s coming from.)

Update: I have to say I’ve searched in vain for a clip that shows Tzipi Hotovely saying something with which I truly disagree. I have seen terrible Israeli diplomats in action (I could tell you stories—oy), but she seems fine to me. And her critics seem insane. (Anyone who gets Owen Jones as lathered up as she does can’t be all bad.)

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claireberlinski.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claireberlinski.substack.com/subscribe

Okay, so we changed the name. The new name was Thomas Gregg’s suggestion, and we love it.

I can’t tell whether I forgot to speak slowly, or if I made a mistake in the editing that sped up the recording. I don’t know what I could have done, if so. It’s not bad—but I’m not speaking slowly. I’ll work at that more.

Trump is “unhinged” but we love him, say Kremlin mouthpieces, by Julia Davis

Peace talks “just because” Ukraine is running out of ammunition are “ridiculous,” says Putin

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claireberlinski.substack.com/subscribe

Okay, so we changed the name. The new name was Thomas Gregg’s suggestion, and we love it.

I can’t tell whether I forgot to speak slowly, or if I made a mistake in the editing that sped up the recording. I don’t know what I could have done, if so. It’s not bad—but I’m not speaking slowly. I’ll work at that more.

Trump is “unhinged” but we love him, say Kremlin mouthpieces, by Julia Davis

Peace talks “just because” Ukraine is running out of ammunition are “ridiculous,” says Putin

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claireberlinski.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claireberlinski.substack.com/subscribe

Here it is: The long-awaited report.

This annual report of worldwide threats to the national security of the United States responds to Section 617 of the FY21 Intelligence Authorization Act (Pub. L. No. 116-260). This report reflects the collective insights of the Intelligence Community (IC), which is committed every day to providing the nuanced, independent, and unvarnished intelligence that policymakers, warfighters, and domestic law enforcement personnel need to protect American lives and America’s interests anywhere in the world.

This assessment focuses on the most direct, serious threats to the United States primarily during the next year. The order of the topics presented in this assessment does not necessarily indicate their relative importance or the magnitude of the threats in the view of the IC. All require a robust intelligence response, including those where a near-term focus may help head off greater threats in the future.

Midway through, I misspeak and refer to “Leningrad” when I mean to say, “St. Petersburg.” Old habits die hard. Dates me a bit. At least I didn’t call it “Petrograd,” right?

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claireberlinski.substack.com/subscribe

Here it is: The long-awaited report.

This annual report of worldwide threats to the national security of the United States responds to Section 617 of the FY21 Intelligence Authorization Act (Pub. L. No. 116-260). This report reflects the collective insights of the Intelligence Community (IC), which is committed every day to providing the nuanced, independent, and unvarnished intelligence that policymakers, warfighters, and domestic law enforcement personnel need to protect American lives and America’s interests anywhere in the world.

This assessment focuses on the most direct, serious threats to the United States primarily during the next year. The order of the topics presented in this assessment does not necessarily indicate their relative importance or the magnitude of the threats in the view of the IC. All require a robust intelligence response, including those where a near-term focus may help head off greater threats in the future.

Midway through, I misspeak and refer to “Leningrad” when I mean to say, “St. Petersburg.” Old habits die hard. Dates me a bit. At least I didn’t call it “Petrograd,” right?

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claireberlinski.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claireberlinski.substack.com/subscribe

Show notes:

* India joins the elite list of nations with test of Agni-V MIRV tech

* Mission Divyastra: What Agni-5 missile with MIRV tech can do

* Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyaan: self-reliant India

* Why “poverty first, moon next” is an absurd argument

* IAEA: Iran is “not entirely transparent” on its atomic program

* West concerned over Iranian nuclear bomb in IAEA meeting

* Too close for comfort: Cases of near-nuclear use and options for policy

* Twenty mishaps that might have started accidental nuclear war

* Causes of false missile alerts: the sun, the moon and a 46-cent chip

* Black carbon lofts wildfire smoke high into the stratosphere to form a persistent plume

* What wildfire smoke tells us about nuclear winter

* Could nuclear weapons testing resume as global tensions rise?

* Several countries could be planning nuclear tests, India and Pakistan may follow suit

* Where are they? Why I hope the search for extraterrestrial life finds nothing

Here are some of the articles CG has published over the years treating the (very real, and growing) risk of nuclear war. Many of you have read them already, but if you’re new to CG, be sure to have a look.

I’m writing a bit more, separately, about the latest news about Iran’s nuclear program. Stay tuned. Meanwhile, read that. ⬆️ It’s news you can use.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claireberlinski.substack.com/subscribe