A discussion of NATO and Putin and how we got here on Fresh Air yesterday:

My guest, Mary Elise Sarotte, is the author of a book about the history of NATO in the years just before and after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It’s called “Not One Inch,” and it helps explain how NATO, Ukraine and Russia got to where they are today. It’s based in part on papers she got declassified after fighting for years to get them released. Sarotte is the Kravis professor of historical studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and she’s a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She’s also the author of an earlier book about the collapse of the Berlin Wall.

Knows her stuff.

Putin could move on a Baltic state next, and that would get NATO involved, and that would be…scary.

NATO came into existence in 1949 as an alliance of 12 countries against the Soviet Union. Basically, its job was to prevent Soviet tanks from rolling into Western Europe, and it tried to do that through a combination of nuclear deterrence and conventional forces on the ground, including in West Berlin, which was an island inside East Germany, where I was studying in 1989 as a student abroad, which is where my interest in this topic comes from. And that alliance is, in essence, a Cold War alliance. And Article 5 came out of that construct. But Article 5 endures to this day. NATO persisted through the end of the Cold War into the post-Cold War era. And the new member states all enjoy that very same guarantee. There were critics at the time that Naito was expanding to the Baltics. Of course, the decision to expand NATO in the post-Cold War world was a very controversial decision. And there were critics who said, among other things, we should not give Article 5 to countries on the assumption we’ll never have to live up to it.

But now we have given Article 5 to the United States, and NATO members collectively have extended it to 30 countries. And so we are bound by this article to defend the Baltics. And this is no small challenge. There was a war game conducted by the American think tank Rand in 2016. The goal of the war game was to estimate how long it would take Russia to conquer the Baltics, and the answer was measured in hours. So given, you know, that kind of challenge, if NATO really were to face a Russian, shall we say, incursion in Article 5 territory, this could swiftly become very difficult and be a very serious issue.

Let’s not do that. Let’s Putin not do that so that we don’t have to do that. Let’s not any of this.

We’ve had proxy wars with Russia, in Vietnam and Afghanistan, but not the in your face kind.

So the Cold War was, in many places, also a hot war, but there was no direct military conflict between, to put it bluntly, Americans and Russians. And so this is a new situation where we’re looking at Americans and their European allies directly fighting with Russians. That is something that has – did not happen in any serious extent. There might have been isolated incidents but not to any serious extent during the Cold War.

But then Bush 2 came along.

SAROTTE: Well, NATO actually stated Ukraine will become a NATO member at its Bucharest summit in 2008. By 2008, many countries had already joined NATO, and Ukraine and Georgia were showing interest as well. There was a NATO summit in the Romanian city of Bucharest, and at that summit, there was a fight essentially between President George W. Bush and his advisers, such as Condoleezza Rice, and Europeans who thought it would be a bridge too far, because of the friction with Moscow, to put Ukraine and Georgia into NATO. And so what resulted was a compromise, which was unfortunately the worst of all possible worlds.

NATO did not take any practical steps to make Georgia or Ukraine members. In other words, if a country is really going to become a member, once that’s clear, there’s a series of practical steps that immediately kick in. None of those happened. But as a compromise, the alliance issued a summit declaration with the words, Georgia and Ukraine will become members of NATO. The idea was on some distant day in the future, and we’re not actually going to take any steps to implement it. And so that was a compromise to make President George W. Bush and the Americans happy.

Except some of the Americans, such as Rice, opposed the idea.

The problem was that when President Vladimir Putin of Russia saw that, he took it at face value and said, Georgia and Ukraine will become members of NATO over my dead body, and immediately found an excuse to take military action in Georgia in 2008. And that de facto put an end to Georgian hopes of membership because the NATO alliance is loathe to take on a new ally that already has a preexisting conflict on its territory. And that makes sense because as we discussed before, if you take on a new country and you extend Article 5 guarantees to it, you’ve immediately made yourself party to that conflict. So in 2008, Putin took violent action in Georgia, and that, I think, is a clear precursor to then what followed in Ukraine.

So, perhaps, if Bush 2 hadn’t been all gung-ho in 2008 we wouldn’t be watching Ukraine being bombed into rubble today. Nice work, Dubya.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Noticeably quiet.

Here’s an idea.

A whole group of people should go to each of Thomas’s meets dressed as Napoleon, all demanding to be addressed as “Your Majesty” and that they all be seated in the Emperor’s Box for the event. They could, each and all, identify themselves as Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of the French. A special press representative could accompany the Band of Bonapartes, explaining how each of them identifies as the Emperor, and that this true, sincere identification clearly overrides trivial material details such as the fact that the supposedly “real” Napoleon is dead. (Without an identity, that first guy’s just a corpse anyhow.) It can be explained how each Emperor has a deep-seated understanding and lived experience as Napoleon, and that to to deny them their rights was a hateful, Anglo-inspired, Francophobic plot. At the end of each swim, they go to Thomas en mass and congratulate him on the fine work he’s doing for everyone who “identifies as”. They could have photos taken together. It would be so warm and touching. I’m fighting back tears just thinking about it.

Finding a pair of Furries who identify as the Emperor’s horse Marengo would be a nice touch. (They could wear a saddle blanket, stitched in thread of gold with the slogan “Panto Horses are Real Horses.”)

Of course the whole “Lia” Thomas situation is a scandal, travesty and tragedy all rolled into one. It is causing real harm to women. I think Thomas himself is pretty much a lost cause. He’s come so far already that it’s unlikely that he’s going to see suddenly that he is in the wrong. Women aren’t going to back down: they’re becoming more vocal and organized. More of the unaware public are being peaked by this ongoing, unfolding conspiracy to steal opportunities and awards from women. I think more hope lies in shaming and embarrassing the institutions and authorities which have allowed this to happen, and those which are going along with it. The question is how far will they go to protect the obvious lying and cheating? How obviously dishonest and complicit do they want to be seen to be? How much stomach for this do they really have? I say we should put them to the test and find out.

What about the human rights of child abusers? Like the right to keep abusing the child? What about that, huh?

A major Boise hospital went on lockdown for about an hour Tuesday after far-right activist Ammon Bundy urged supporters to go the facility in protest of a child protection case involving one of his family friends.

Ammon Bundy isn’t just an “activist.” He’s a violent intruder and occupier and vandal and intimidator.

Earlier in the day, Bundy released a statement on YouTube warning that if an acquaintance’s young child was not returned to the family after a hearing Tuesday afternoon, that “Patriot groups” would take action.

Bundy later released another video telling people that child protection workers were poised to move the baby from the hospital to a foster home, and telling them to show up at the facility immediately.

And why was the baby at the hospital or with child protection workers instead of the parents?

The baby was temporarily removed from from family custody last Friday after officials determined the 10-month-old was “suffering from severe malnourishment” and at risk of injury or death, according to a statement from police in the city of Meridian near Boise.

The baby’s parents had refused to let officers check on the child’s welfare after the family canceled a medical appointment, the police statement said.

So Ammon Bundy’s “cause” here is the freedom of parents to starve their babies to death.

H/t Holms

Oh that rape.

A hospital has finally admitted a woman may have been raped by a transgender patient after denying the possibility of an attack for almost a year, the House of Lords has heard. 

When police were called to the unnamed hospital in England, they were allegedly told by staff that ‘there was no male’ on the single-sex ward, ‘therefore the rape could not have happened’. 

And that was a lie.

Now they’re admitting one of the patients was trans, i.e. a man.

The details of the case were shared by Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne during a debate on single-sex wards in the Upper Chamber yesterday. 

She claimed: ‘They forgot that there was CCTV, nurses and observers.

‘None the less, it has taken nearly a year for the hospital to agree that there was a male on the ward and, yes, this rape happened.

‘During that year she has almost come to the edge of a nervous breakdown, because being disbelieved about being raped in hospital has been such an appalling shock. 

Disbelieved and lied to. That would push me to the edge too, I must say.

Lady Nicholson believes the incident stemmed directly from the NHS’s Annex B policy, which allows patients to be placed on single-sex wards depending on the gender they identify with. 

The policy states that trans people should be accommodated ‘according to their presentation: the way they dress, and the name and pronouns they currently use’, rather than their biological sex at birth.

…

Lady Nicholson added: ‘The result of Annex B is that hospital trusts inform ward sisters and nurses that if there is a male, as a trans person, in a female ward, and a female patient or anyone complains, they must be told that it is not true – there is no male there.

‘I think it is completely wrong that the National Health Service should be instructing or allowing staff to mislead patients -to tell a straightforward lie. It is not acceptable.’

It’s gaslighting. It’s outrageous.

Arty on the New Yorker’s embarrassing collapse:

The New Yorker has finally chimed in on the Lia Thomas debacle, and it’s a disgrace. The cult-like language used throughout is a stain on its reputation. Remember, The New Yorker is renowned for having the most prestigious and respected fact-checking department in the world.

Exactly. They’re famously, even notoriously picky. FACTS.

They make a blunder on the fact front.

The N.C.A.A. allowed a path for people like her to join the women’s team, but it was not quick or easy. In general, élite male athletes have considerable physical advantages over élite female athletes.

Whoops, you’ve just acknowledged that “people like her [sic]” are, in fact, “élite male athletes” who “have considerable physical advantages over élite female athletes.” That should put an end to this article, that fact right there.

Oopsy.

What should it say instead? Maybe…In general, women with the bodies of élite male athletes have considerable physical advantages over élite female athletes. No, make that: In general, women with the bodies of élite male athletes have considerable physical advantages over women with the bodies of élite female athletes. Ok?

A nice little aphorism:

If a few months without testosterone literally rearranged a man’s pelvic bones, we’d have heard about it by now. 

Read the whole thing – it’s admirably furious and thorough.

ESPN reports on Lia Thomas’s “win”:

Thomas, who is a transgender woman, touched the wall in 4 minutes, 33.24 seconds in the 500-yard freestyle on Thursday night to become the first known transgender athlete to win a Division I national championship in any sport.

Yes but the issue isn’t “transgender” but man playing in women’s sport. We weren’t waiting eagerly for the first male athlete to win a woman’s national championship. We don’t see that as a breakthrough, or as a good thing in any way. We see it as cheating. We see it as brazen theft of a woman’s win and a woman’s spot in the race. We’re not impressed, we’re disgusted.

Thomas finished 1.75 seconds ahead of second-place Emma Weyant, of Virginia. Her time was a career best and a little more than 9 seconds off of Katie Ledecky’s 4:24.06 record.

The race began with the crowd cheering for each of the swimmers, but fans were noticeably quiet for Thomas’ introduction. Save Women’s Sports founder Beth Stelzer draped a vinyl banner with the organization’s phrase over the railing.

…

As she stood on the podium with her trophy, she flashed a peace sign, just as she did for her four Ivy League championships. And once again, the crowd was noticeably quiet as she was announced as the champion.

Probably because the crowd wasn’t impressed by such obvious cheating. They could see his shoulders.

“It’s a symbol of Lia’s resilience,” Schuyler Bailar, the first known transgender man to compete on a Division I men’s team while at Harvard, told ESPN. “The fact that she’s able to show up here, despite protesters outside, people shouting and booing her, I think it’s a testament to her resiliency. And it’s also a symbol that we can both be who we are and do what we love.”

No, it’s a testament to his brazen determination to cheat. He could still do what he loves, he could go right on swimming, he doesn’t have to swim against women.

There were some observers on the scene.

They got support.

Why is it fine to exclude Tylor Mathieu in order to include Lia Thomas? Why does Lia Thomas matter more than Tylor Mathieu – so much more that he’s allowed to race against a team of women in order to steal a place from one of them?

Lia Thomas stole a woman’s place today. Brave stunning Lia living the dream.

He really took control of the race.

Even the New Yorker…which is famous for having a rigorous fact-checking department. Even the New Yorker tells us these stupid lies.

Lia Thomas has been swimming since she was five years old. As a high schooler, she was one of the top swimmers in Texas, an All-American. She followed her older brother onto the men’s team at the University of Pennsylvania, and established herself as a strong competitor in distance races; in her sophomore season, at the Ivy League championships, she finished second in three events.

Six factual errors (actually lies) in that one paragraph, because William “Lia” Thomas is not a she but a he.

We get the unconvincing story of how he felt unaligned with his body and finally “came out” to his coaches, who were all supportive surprise surprise. (What would have happened to them if they hadn’t been? Nothing good, we can be sure.)

The N.C.A.A. allowed a path for people like her to join the women’s team, but it was not quick or easy. In general, élite male athletes have considerable physical advantages over élite female athletes. 

You don’t say. Louisa Thomas (no relation, I trust) goes through some facts in a bored sort of way, knowing we’re going to end up with “but never mind all that.”

As trans women have fought for inclusion in women’s sports, various governing bodies have implemented rules for mitigating any physical advantages that they might have. But just what those advantages are and how to counteract them—and whether that is necessary or even possible—has been fiercely debated.

Which it shouldn’t be, nor should trans women have fought for inclusion in women’s sports. None of this should ever have been on the table. Men with their male bodies should never have forced their way into women’s sports, and the people responsible should have said a firm no from the outset.

[I]n early December, at the Zippy Invitational, in Akron, Ohio, Thomas dropped another second off her time in the five-hundred-yard freestyle, and nearly a second and a half off her time in the two-hundred-yard race. She won the sixteen-hundred-and-fifty-yard freestyle by thirty-eight seconds. On the same day, a group of parents of Penn swimmers anonymously sent a letter to the N.C.A.A. arguing that Thomas should not be allowed to compete in women’s competitions. “At stake here is the integrity of women’s sports,” the parents’ letter, which was also sent to Penn and the Ivy League, declared. “The precedent being set—one in which women do not have a protected and equitable space to compete—is a direct threat to female athletes in every sport. What are the boundaries?”

The letter was leaked to the Daily Mail, and conservative outlets gleefully reported on rifts between Thomas and her teammates. 

Blah blah blah. It’s crap for many hundreds more words, which I can’t bring myself to share.

H/t Arty

Ok I made it back to yesterday morning at the tribunal without interrupting myself again. They started with a discussion of company policy on social media – it was quite common for employees to be Outspoken on Twitter.

Senior researchers get to be robust and humorous on social media so policing Maya would be…odd. They talk about that at some length.

BC=Ben Cooper QC, Maya’s lawyer. AG=Angela Glassman a GDC executive.

Lordy. How can she “not understand that”? How can anyone? Of course it’s “offensive” to try to force women to call ourselves “cis” women. It assumes there’s another kind, and it assumes we’re a subset of our own category. Imagine CGD is full of people who “identify as” Angela Glassman, so she is told to refer to herself as “cis Amanda Glassman” while the others are “trans Amanda Glassman.” I doubt she would find that entirely innocuous.

Applies across the board, doesn’t it. There’s no way any of us can talk about this without team trans finding it offensive.

Hahahaha exactly.

They go back and forth on workplace v social media. She can say it, but she can’t say it, but she can, but it’s on social media, but the workplace, but she can, but she can’t.

Sigh. AG says she doesn’t understand the distinction between reality and feelings. Sigh.

Compare for instance that item just today, about the trans woman suing an assisted living facility for women for rejecting his application. If he wins the women at that facility will lose their safety, dignity, and security.

I didn’t get to the tribunal yesterday so I need to catch up. Here’s one segment from today which explains how and why the whole issue of what “trans woman” means is relevant to the think tank Maya was working for:

“ever” there has to be a typo for “aver.” (No aspersions here – I’m awestruck by how much the collective manages to capture for us.)

This clarifies a lot, at least for me. All this time I had thought the subject was extracurricular, but it wasn’t – which of course makes perfect sense when I think about it. Does global development include women and girls? Why, erm, yes, it does…duh.

Now to try to get back to the beginning of yesterday so as not to be out of sequence.

Listen don’t even think about it, ok? Everybody is trans. Move on!

Hate to tell you, but in a way, everyone is trans. As writer T Cooper observed, all of us in life’s competitive arena are on the way to becoming someone profoundly different than we were, and keeping score is just a way to track the arc of a person from youth to prime to past it. If you subtract the aim of becomingness from competition just because you’re afraid of a Lia Thomas and make it strictly about the chance to win a prize, then you might as well go to an amusement park and shoot a squirt gun at a clown face because it will have about as much meaning.

Wut?

I’d expect a jumble of nonsense and pretension like that from a very relaxed blogger (much more relaxed than I am, you understand), but not from a Washington Post columnist. Deep insight: people aren’t exactly the same from one minute to the next therefore men can be women. Yes, I can be grumpy one minute and even more grumpy a minute later, therefore daffodils are the Greenland ice sheet. The logic is impeccable.

And then there’s the profundity about athletic contests and how they should be about a guy’s aim of becomingness as opposed to the women’s aspirations to win – the trouble with that is that competition is the whole point of competitions. That’s why we use the same word for both. It’s entirely possible to swim for the sheer joy of swimming and nothing else, but competitions are what they say they are. Lia Thomas could go do his becomingness thing in the water to his heart’s content without messing up anyone else’s life, but by doing it on the women’s team he is necessarily ruining it for all the women, and by the way ruining their becomingness into the bargain.

And that’s just the first paragraph.

We look to facts to rescue us when a subject becomes heated, but here, the science remains unsettled. No one arguing the issue really wants to admit it — when is the last time you heard a doctor or any other expert say the words, “I don’t know”? But we don’t know. Therefore, to exclude trans athletes from elite competition, out of our own constricting fears and uncertainty, is wrong, harmfully so.

We don’t know? We don’t know that Thomas has a huge advantage over his teammates?

Yes we do. We do know. Of course we do. Look at him. Look at his shoulders. Look at his scores. Of course we know.

What is the real aim and value of NCAA competition? Is it not to grow people? Surely, it’s about more than just vaulting a small subset of young talents on to a podium for the sake of name-image-and-likeness deals and spots in the Olympics.

No, it really isn’t. This is one reason I’m not interested in school sports in general – I think they are in tension with the goals of education. But given their existence, I think they should at least be fair in the sense of not cheating the girls and women who participate out of their chances.

It’s supposed to be about exploring who you are, whether on the pool deck or starting block or basketball floor, and the truth is that “every person has multitudes in them,” as Cooper’s wife, journalist Allison Glock, observed in her own work. That’s the real worthwhile inquiry of college sports.

No, it isn’t. It’s not about multitudes. It’s very focused. Yes it can teach a lot of useful and even valuable skills and habits, but it’s not about “exploring who you are.” If what you are is a dreamy poet with no interest in physical discipline, you won’t enjoy the swim team and it won’t enjoy you.

Using this as a starting point in the Thomas debate seems a much smarter approach than the uncivil fearmongering over bone density and hand size. And it allows you to ask without insult: Is Thomas’s presence preventing other swimmers from finding out who they are?

Irrelevant. It’s not about “who they are.” It’s about how fast they can swim.

H/t What a Maroon

More on that Herstory Festival thingy.

“Celebrating the unique experiences of womanhood”…by celebrating a man. Women women women, celebrate celebrate celebrate, begin with a man and end with a man, hooray hooray hooray.

Updating to add [h/t Mike]

His Twitter is locked.

The news media just lie to us about this.

A 79-year-old woman has reasonable grounds to claim that a Maine assisted-living facility discriminated against her for being transgender when it rejected her as a potential resident, the Maine Human Rights Commission found. 

In other words a 79-year-old man wants to force himself on a women-only assisted living facility.

The commission’s 3-2 vote on Monday sets in motion a process that could result in a lawsuit being filed against Sunrise Assisted Living in the town of Jonesport on a claim of violating state nondiscrimination law by denying Marie King’s application for residency.

King’s attorneys say the case has already made legal history as the nation’s first known discrimination complaint filed by a transgender person against a long-term care facility.

Fun for the lawyers then. A first! Fame! Glory! Not so fun for the woman who has to share a room with King.

“This kind of discrimination against transgender people needing long-term care is far from an isolated incident, but it is also plainly illegal,” said Karen L. Loewy, senior counsel at Lambda Legal, which is not involved in the case. 

Quisling. What about the discrimination against women who don’t want to share living spaces with random men?

Nearly half of U.S. states, including Maine, have laws explicitly forbidding discrimination based on gender identity in both housing and public accommodation, legal categories that apply to homes caring for the elderly. 

But how are we defining discrimination here? Women are allowed to have spaces away from men, so in what sense is it “discrimination” for women to want spaces away from men including men who call themselves women? Women who need spaces away from men don’t care what the men call themselves, they care what the men are, which is men. Why does this law “forbidding discrimination” ignore the reality in favor of the saying? Just saying usually is not enough as a matter of law.

In July 2021, a California appellate court struck down a portion of a 2017 state law that made it a misdemeanor for nursing home staff to deliberately and repeatedly misgender residents or use their former name — known in the trans community as “deadnaming.” The court found that this part of the law violated staff members’ right to free speech under the First Amendment. The California Supreme Court is reviewing the decision and may ultimately reverse it.

The California law has stood at the vanguard of a nascent movement in Democratic-controlled states to establish explicit legal protections against discrimination for LGBTQ seniors in nursing homes.

Which sounds nice if you don’t pause to think about it, but in reality what it means is that women will be forced to have men around whether they want to or not.

“Long-term care facilities need to understand that they’re going to have lesbian, gay and transgender residents or applicants,” said Chris Erchull, a staff attorney at GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders in Boston, the nonprofit firm representing King. 

But those are not the same thing. Lesbian and gay, no problem, but transgender means forcing women to share bedrooms with men. This is not as progressive as they’re pretending it is.

The human rights commission’s decision, Erchull said, “is a reminder to all assisted-living homes and other long-term care facilities that they have to treat people with respect, compassion and understanding.” 

Where’s the respect, compassion and understanding for women who don’t want to share bedrooms with men?

I’m listening to BBC Radio 4 live and they just interrupted themselves to say the plane has touched down.

Just thought you’d like to know.

No you are.

US President Joe Biden has labelled Russian leader Vladimir Putin a “war criminal” in a move likely to escalate diplomatic tensions even further.

Ya think? Putin won’t agree? Sharp analysis there.

The Kremlin, however, said it was “unforgiveable rhetoric”.

“We believe such rhetoric to be unacceptable and unforgivable on the part of the head of a state, whose bombs have killed hundreds of thousands of people around the world,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian state news agency Tass.

It’s true about the bombs, it’s true that we haven’t always done it in self-defense or the defense of others, it’s true that we’ve done a lot of bad shit since WW2, but it’s also true that Putin is a war criminal.

What’s wrong with this headline.

Too easy, I know. BZZZZZZZZZZT. Lia Thomas is not a female athlete. Lia Thomas is a male athlete systematically, and laughing all the way, cheating female athletes out of the prizes and rewards they’ve earned.

After that we get a row of three photos: woman, Thomas, woman. Thomas’s photo is bigger and, all too obviously, so is Thomas. Those shoulders.

We’re told about Olympic runner Helen Stephens, who was framed as not girly enough in the 1930s. Definitely interesting, but nothing to do with Lia Thomas – the opposite of Lia Thomas.

While much has changed for female athletes since Stephens’ day, suspicion surrounding their gender and sexuality — from offensive remarks to sex verification tests — remains. Several historians argue that the heated debate surrounding transgender college swimmer Lia Thomas, whose record-breaking season has thrust her unwillingly into the national spotlight, is a continuation of that century-old legacy.

But it isn’t, because he’s a guy.

Decades after Richards became the first, only a handful of trans athletes have managed to break sports barriers. In 2019, track star CeCé Telfer became the first openly trans person to win an NCAA title. And last year, New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard became the first out trans woman to compete in the Olympics, where she did not win any medals. Fewer than 30 trans athletes have competed openly in the NCAA, according to the LGBTQ sports publication Out Sports, and few have made headlines. 

But men aren’t “breaking barriers” by transing their way into women’s sports, not even if they’re genuinely dysphoric and have “transitioned.” It’s not a barrier in the sense of arbitrary and unreasonable for women’s sports to exclude men, including men who are trans. Women need their own sports because of sexual dimorphism, which puts women at a huge disadvantage. It’s not a good thing or an unjust barrier falling that CeCé Telfer won an NCAA title or that Laurel Hubbard cheated Samoan women out of the Olympics.

She’s on the plane and the plane is in the air.