Where We Are This Week 07/14/2023
NATO, cluster bombs, UPS, and kiddy pools.
I got water in my ear yesterday.
This is what I do. I roll my left ankle and get water in my ear. But let me tell you, I would roll my ankle a thousand times before I, electively, put water in my ear. Okay, not a thousand, but you get my point.
My sister and I, through a suboptimal audio gene pool, have perforated ear drums. Semi-regularly, my mom would have to take us to the doctor where she would explain the problems we were having and awkwardly attest that neither she nor my father was responsible for punctured eardrums.
So, I’ve done it all my life - I’ll get water in my ear, it stays there longer because of the perpetual holes in my eardrum, and I wallow about for the next few days with reduced hearing and the equivalent of an extremely stopped-nose for an ear. It’s not the worst thing in the world, but it’s uncomfortable and infuriating when it happens.
I’d love to tell you it happened while I was learning to surf or cliff-diving. I’d settle for lying and telling you that it happened while I was swimming. But alas, I’m afraid, that’s not the case.
One of the best things about having a child, I think, is your reduced inhibition. No longer are you concerned with the anxieties and self-conscious worries of pre-parenthood, but instead, are solely concerned with the entertainment of the small human that sits before you. You’ll go to great lengths to extract a laugh, a smile, or a toothy grin from your progeny. No amount of humiliation is enough to thwart your ambition. If not, you’re doing it wrong.
So, how did it happen? I was thrashing about in a kiddy pool.
What’s worse is that I’m pretty certain my wife warned me against doing that either moments before I did, or during the several preceding days. So, it’s not that I’ve been sitting around with a muffled left ear for the last 48 hours that makes me so disappointed, it’s how unbelievably avoidable and benign the circumstances were that led to my discomfort.
So, in summation, don’t be me. Don’t make the same mistakes of your past when the literal voice of reason is advising otherwise. Do make your daughter laugh, though. It’s worth it.
What Can Brown Do For You?
Come August 1st, the United States might witness the costliest labor strike in its history.
United Parcel Service workers have authorized its union by a 97% affirmative vote to initiate a strike at the beginning of next month if demands have not been met by then. The decision has been looming over the heads of UPS and its workers since last year, and the company only narrowly avoided a nationwide walkout scheduled for this month when they agreed to purchase vehicles with air conditioning for the drivers.
It only took a few cases of heat stroke, one death, and loss of profits for that conclusion to come to fruition.
Now, both sides, UPS and their workers represented by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters were optimistic that a new, five-year labor agreement would be reached until UPS representatives abruptly walked away from proceedings this month.
In recent years, and especially during the pandemic, the corporation headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia has seen record, record profits ( $11.3 billion in 2022 ) with workers seeing no increase in pay or benefits during that same period of time. Most of the union demands appear to be reasonable enough - end the two-tier pay system established by UPS in 2013 where ‘legacy’ and ‘new’ employees were separated by potential income, increase the availability of full-time jobs, and provide better stability and pay for part-time positions as they currently make up well over half its workforce.
If UPS employees were to strike in August, it would be the largest single-employer strike in US history and its results would reverberate through the American economy and beyond.
As positive sentiment for labor unions has only increased in recent years in sharp contrast to the decline in union membership, a massive strike visible to the public eye may be the reminder the American people need. What better to highlight the strength and power of the people than 350,000 blue-collar workers standing together in solidarity?
As Americans, we ought to be collectively bargaining with our government. We certainly have the numbers to do so, but currently, lack the imagination and the will. A strike of this proportion could do wonders to reignite the minds of the proletariat and show us all what’s possible when we stand together.
If the strike does, in fact, take effect, there’s one additional permutation to look out for. Recently, in an 8-1 bipartisan decision, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a corporation’s right to sue labor unions for damages caused by labor strikes. One does not need to stretch their imaginations too far to see how loss in costs could be construed as ‘damages’.
All UPS will need to do is find a state sympathetic to its complaints, for example, Tennessee, and a case might be wrought against the striking workforce. But only time will tell on that front.
For now, onwards and upwards, my friends. Next, Amazon!
Ukraine x NATO
Ukraine isn’t a NATO country. That is, not yet anyway.
The leaders of the 31 member countries met this week at a NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania. Among the things that were discussed over the last few days were the possible admittance of Ukraine to the group and the confirmation of Sweden and Finland.
Finland’s entry into NATO has really picked up steam in the last year or so - it seemed as if the Western contingency of NATO had set their sights on an alternative country bordering Russia when the route to welcoming Ukraine to the group proved to be fraught with difficulty.
Sweden’s induction into the Treaty Organization was initially rebuffed by President Erdogan of Turkey - and rightfully, so, I might add. Not because Erdogan has any sort of moral standing among Europe’s elite but because it’s reasonable for any country to act in its own interest - a tactic that in the unipolar West is practically unheard of and is irrationally linked to only those nations of the nationalist far-right.
Admission to NATO has to be unanimously approved by all member-states in order to take effect. This is because, in part, admitting a new country to the ‘peacekeeping’ organization is quite costly as full member status grants a nation the full, uncompromising protection of the entire alliance. So, while Erdogan was correct to obstruct Sweden’s induction, it’s frustrating to see America and its closest allies appease a de facto dictator in order to annex a Scandinavian country with the GDP of Washington, USA to - what, spite Russia?
Nevertheless, Finland’s admission was finalized to NATO during the conference, and a sudden breakthrough occurred regarding Sweden’s potential membership as Turkey relented and voted to welcome it into the fold.
It’s unclear what the entirety of the concessions was that Erdogan managed to extract from its NATO allies in order to procure his consent, but, on an unrelated note, America will likely be sending several shiny, new F-16s to Istanbul in the very near future. You get an F-16! And you get an F-16!
Oprah may have helped elect Barack Obama, but it’s Joe Biden who has elevated her ethos all the way to the Oval Office.
Despite US lawmakers like Lindsey Graham and his EU counterparts calling for an immediate annexation of Ukraine to NATO, Zelenskyy may have to wait a little longer. During the summit, NATO issued a communiqué outlining its reservations about Ukraine’s readiness for full membership status but recommitted itself to supporting the embattled nation, and promised to welcome it with open arms after a few conditions have been met.
A couple of the conditions for the Ukrainian/NATO collaboration we’ve all been clamoring for were that the nation continues to develop its democratic governance and further its Euro-Atlantic integration. The message plainly states that “Ukraine’s future is in NATO.”
Zelenskyy, understandably, wasn’t thrilled with the delay of his membership card - he can’t wait to buy in bulk at that new NATO superstore - but no fear, in lieu of that, a special commission was created called the NATO Ukraine Council that will allow the war-torn nation to communicate and strategize alongside all member countries of NATO.
If the summer release of Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer does anything, maybe it will remind our leaders of the existential threat represented by nuclear weapons of which they appear to be rather cavalier. Bring back above-ground tests!
Cluster Bombs
In keeping with this tone, alongside several NATO countries’ new commitment to provide long-range missiles to Ukraine, the United States will now be providing cluster bombs.
What is a cluster bomb, you ask? A cluster bomb is a type of munition that is used to blanket large areas with explosives. One large bomb is deployed, but before impact it opens, releasing thousands of smaller submunitions, or bomblets ( how cute ) onto the target area.
As if its wide indiscriminate dispensation over a given territory wasn’t lamentable enough, the bomblets have a fairly high dud rate effectively creating mine-fields of lodged submunitions waiting to explode on any unfortunate passerby in the decades to come. Cluster munitions have been used in Laos, Vietnam, Iraq, and Yemen and have led to the deaths of innocent children and unsuspecting adults years after they were deployed in combat.
As such, in 2008, there was a convention regarding this particular type of weaponry where 123 different countries agreed to a moratorium regarding their use and have - so far - been resolute in their condemnation. Notably - not that it would really matter - neither America, China, nor Russia signed on to the prohibition.
But just because the United States didn’t officially sign the agreement doesn’t mean we don’t acknowledge the dangers of this type of weaponry. Last year, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki - I really do miss her - was asked what the US response would be to Russia’s use of cluster munitions.
“We have seen the reports,” Psaki said. “If that were true, it would potentially be a war crime.”
But it couldn’t be a war crime if they were supplied by the United States and used by our allies, could it? Russia’s cluster bombs might kill civilians for years to come but ours come with rainbows and reparations - and will kill civilians for years to come.
Additionally, in a rather stunning admission, President Biden said it was a “difficult decision” to provide Ukraine with the explosives but - hear him out - that Ukraine - and the US! - are running out of ammunition in their fight against Russia.
“This is a war relating to munitions. And they’re running out of that ammunition, and we’re low on it,” Biden said in an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria. “And so, what I finally did, I took the recommendation of the Defense Department to – not permanently – but to allow for this transition period while we get more 155 weapons, these shells, for the Ukrainians.”
So, what, we’ll just turn over to the Ukrainians whatever we have rolling around in the bottom of the barrel? I understand the burden of arming Ukraine has disproportionately fallen on the shoulders of Uncle Sam - it’s our war, too, after all - but what happens when they eventually run out of these munitions?
What happens when we no longer have any of our much safer, much nicer cluster bombs to provide? How long until we break international conventions on some other type of weaponry because we’re low on everything else and they ‘need them?’
Years from now, when Europeans and Americans have lost their passion for this theater of war and Ukraine has outworn its usefulness to Western interests, Ukrainian and Russian children will be playing in former battlefields, just one moment of innocent curiosity away from a mortal explosion dealt to them by the hands of a long-gone American bureaucrat.
And you, or I, won’t hear about them. How do I know? Because it’s happening now.
To a better next week.
Cheers,
~FDA