While everyone is searching their 2020 bingo cards for President Catches COVID, there were some other things that came up.

  1. The ILOH highlighted a Reason article with the title “The Conservative Trans Woman Who Went Undercover With Antifa in Portland”. You really need to RTWT. A few of the key takeaways. First, as the author describes, violence is fun! Or at least violence in groups can be exhilarating. I think that’s something we know intellectually anytime we watch riots following a sports victory/loss, but I don’t think we’ve internalized that when it comes to political violence. Second, Antifa/Black Bloc is very much a decentralized, distributed insurgency organization. There may be some influencers, but there’s no central commintern handing out orders. Even with that, Point Three is that the black bloc is very united in their MO to keep the violence at the simmer level to make the police and private citizens “overreact” to their provocations. Just in time for sympathetic journalists to capture images for Antifa agitprop. Very “heads we win, tails you lose.”

  2. Speaking of the 2020 bingo card, who had Azerbaijan and Armenia go to war? I heard about the tensions in the region about a year ago from the Popular Front podcast, but I was still caught a bit off-guard to see it explode like this. I’m a little concerned that this conflict could widen. From the Reuters article: “Ignoring a French attempt to mediate, the opposing sides pounded each other with rockets and missiles for a seventh day in the newest flare-up of a decades-old conflict that threatens to draw in Russia and Turkey.” (Emphasis mine).

  3. Speaking of France and Turkey, a little over a month ago, France sent some of its navy down to exercise with the Greeks, Italians, Cypriots. Why is this significant? From the article, “Tensions between Turkey and Greece escalated after Ankara sent its Oruc Reis survey vessel to disputed eastern Mediterranean waters this month, a move Athens has called illegal.” I’m checking my bingo card for either Greco-Turkish War or Turkey Leaves NATO.