Robot Jazz

  [The following is satire. Blame a rainy day, an irresponsible amount of gin, and a stack of WARNO screenshots begging to be misused. What follows is a chowderpot of farce, presented without a wink to realism. You’ve been warned.] Day 1 Today, the Trump administration announced a "1000% tariff" on all Soviet products sent to the US. At a press conference, President Trump said, "I love Yuri...I call him 'Yuri'. Not many people get to call him that. I love...uh, Yuri...but we can't have Russia taking advantage of Americans by dumping their vodka on our shores. We love their vodka, but we can’t let them cheat. Nobody cheats America except me — legally, legally."  The Soviet Ambassador, Ivan Ivanovich, released a terse statement that "The Soviet Union will not be abused by America, nor its NATO allies.  We will be forced to act." Andropov reportedly told aides, "I survived kidney failure, the KGB, and Brezhnev’s funeral circuit. I will surviv...

  As I think about this unmitigated disaster that is Donald Trump’s illegal war of choice with Iran, one thing above all others keeps stunning me: the administration’s complete unpreparedness for Iran’s obvious, long‑telegraphed strategy of shutting down a large portion of the world’s petroleum supply by closing the Strait of Hormuz. There have been many theories as to why this administration of self‑styled ubermensch failed to anticipate such a basic countermove — a failure that doomed Operation: Epic Fury from the start — but the most convincing explanation is what chess grandmaster Siegbert Tarrasch once termed amaurosis scacchistica , i.e., chess blindness. The administration was so supremely confident in its own strategy that it simply could not perceive the threat directly in front of it. In the June 2 New Zork Times  article entitled War Games and Warnings on Strait of Hormuz Went Unheeded by Trump , Michael Crowley wrote: One simple explanation is that Mr. Trump may ...

June 28,1942 In the summer of 1942, the German army, stalemated on the Russian front after the failure of Operation Barbarossa  the previous year, attempted a second massive offensive, this time entitled Case Blue . This offensive would be aimed at one of the economic hearts of Russia: the Caucasus oil fields. Hitler believed that if the Wehrmacht could capture those fields, Stalin's war machine, starved of fuel, would crawl to a halt. While he did appreciate that the Soviets would fight to the last to stop this from happening, Hitler understood that this reaction provided a second opportunity for the German army: to crush Soviet reserve units, thereby militarily weakening, perhaps fatally, the Soviet army.  Lastly, Case Blue  also sought to cut the Volga River, thereby cutting off essential Lend-Lease supplies from Stalin's allies.  The initial stage of Case Blue  was a smashing success with vast amounts of territory gained, including the city of Rostov. Even t...