Short thread. Watching EMPIRE STRIKES BACK now. Palpatine tells Vader Luke is his kid and Vader immediately goes into Sith counterintelligence mode: “If he could be turned...” Not even a 4th-degree-burnt eyelid’s flutter to reflect, “Oh wait, I have a son!”
The wife he thought he killed right away in a fit of jealousy—the wife whose life he turned to the Dark Side to save—bore him an heir he never knew about and he doesn’t even hesitate to think how it might benefit his boss. And then...
When he “reads” Luke’s feelings in JEDI, during the throne room battle scene, and realizes he also has a daughter, Vader again doesn’t flinch or hesitate. He sticks to his duty and keeps fighting. To try to flip or kill his estranged son.
As @SonnyBunch would no doubt agree, that is true leadership. And this was a man physically tortured all the time in a technologically retrograde, Iron Maiden-style life support suit meant for him to suffer and constrain his Force power. Evil? Perhaps. Banal? No.
Even Vader’s own transformation isn’t schmaltzy or cringe. Maimed by his own offspring, who goes Jedi Quaker when it comes time to fight the boss. Now the kid’s electrocuted by geriatric King Lear about to be blown up *anyway* and Vader just thinks, “Right, we’re done here.”
He picks exactly the right time to defect, in other words. Any sooner and he and Luke would both be dead. The redemption is the least interesting aspect of his character. Just confirms his genius as a Machiavellian strategist.
The Skywalker family is the Tatooine Buddenbrooks.
It all goes downhill from the patriarch’s apogee and culminates in — what? An emo crybaby who can’t even finish the job and a wannabe brand hijacker with a piss-colored laser sword. For shame.
Yes, “dupes.” The ODNI not doesn’t suggest the Americans were witting Russian agents and there’s an entire category devoted to those who are manipulated by Russian spies without those spies ever acknowledging who they work for. See the above piece.
Yes, and their methods slightly more elaborate than creating bogus Twitter personalities or buying Facebook ads. The reliance on *American* agents of influence and confidential contacts was arguably greater in 2020 than in 2016.
One need only look at how Prigozhin, for instance, evolved from remote online influence and mercenary activities to creating consultancy-style organizations and NGOs from Libya to Germany. There was zero chance this wouldn't affect the strategy toward the US, too.
They hooked the former mayor of New York City and the president's personal attorney -- a much bigger fish than all the minnows reeled in five years ago (Papadopoulos, Prince, Page, et al).
1. "People linked to Russian intelligence," although unnamed here, laundered influence narratives by getting them covered in U.S. outlets and regurgitated by "prominent US individuals," including Trump affiliates.
2. The election infrastructure targeting was on a much smaller scale than in 2016 and appears to have been intent on data-harvesting, not rigging results (a hard thing to do).
3. This is awkwardly worded because it can be read that Kilimnik is "connected" to the FSB; he's almost certainly GRU given his background.
1. The term "cyberstrike" could be interpreted as "cyberattack," which wouldn't be reciprocal given that SolarWinds was an espionage operation (so far as we know!). It didn't shut down computer systems the way NotPetya did. So the WH wants to clarify it's not "striking."
This title is still in print and the buying frenzy of all Dr. Seuss books only benefits the company that decided to discontinue (or “cancel”) the more controversial ones. One side in this kulturkampf is enriching the other side it accuses of being totalitarian.
I’m old enough (just barely) to remember the first iteration of this madness; perhaps it’s my generational bias, but I found the reaction to “PC” in the 90s more entertaining and edifying. Hughes. O’Rourke. Amis. Hitchens. This era is dumber than a box of dirt.
Two of my favorite essays are about the same thing: the attempt to reassess or abnegate Philip Larkin as a poet because of what was revealed about his scabrous, racist and misogynistic tendencies when Motion’s biography and Larkin’s letters came out.
"The intrusion campaign started in late 2017 and lasted until 2020, ANSSI said." In other words, from Macron's celebrated denunciation of Putin's election interference campaign in France and straight on through to Macron's failed reset with Moscow.
Also note Sandworm isn’t quite the SVR’s more traditional espionage-only hacker group, responsible for the SolarWinds intrusion. These guys did the Macron hack-and-leak operation and built the NotPetya malware, which did exactly what @JohnHultquist said it would do.