Kai Maristed

Fraternité in Action According to a certain (immigrant) American billionaire oligarch, empathy is a sloppy weakness, fatal to any country that aspires to world dominance.

A new Point de Vue! post. Go to Paris, have a look...
kaimaristed.substack.com/p/fraternite...

Gangsters at the Gates The sun-soaked, Phoenician-founded port of Marseilles has long been famous for its succulent bouillabaise, formidable soccer talents, and, in long-ago decades, blood-thirsty gang vs gang subculture. But while the cocaine trade of the ‘sixties and ‘seventies, as dramatized in the iconic film The French Connection, has faded from public awareness, it never went away. What goes underground eventually will surface. This year, from mid-April into May, prisons all over France holding drug kingpins have been battered by a blitzkrieg of attacks—Molotov cocktails, AK-47s, drones, torching of officials’ cars, and death-threats and rape-threats to guards, particularly those in charge of the…

A new post from Kai's Paris letter, Point de Vue. 'Gangsters at the Gates.'

Love rats. We had two when my kids were little. They (rats not kids) were box-trained and had the run of the house along with dog, cats, conure, a five-foot iguana and temporary rescue cases. Bliss.

My new review of a long-admired writer, for LARB--

Try raisins. My cat will sit, stay and 'up' (because cats don't beg) for raisins.

Here a letter I received as a member of Democrats Abroad. The scope of the SAVE Act is horrifying. Anyone can and should write in, from home or abroad, asap.

Agree. Thanks for stating this so clearly for so many. Gives me more courage. We all need every drop of courage we can get.

If not for the source, nhpr.org, I'd have thought this story a plant. Too outlandish. Anyone else hear the cadence of goose-stepping boots?

Time for a radical Spring Cleaning. Corporations, not 'bad' per se, aren't people. And the very rich? A few might squeak through the needle's eye. But let's get them the hell out of the electoral process. We need strict contribution limits, as in other first world countries.

like, they must think their voters are rubes who don’t understand what is happening

As sent this morning: Mr. Schumer, America needs a Watch Dog, not a Dead Dog. Your decision was a chance for the Democrats to finally draw a desperately overdue line. You blew it. This life-long Democrat and millions of others won't be contributing one cent to the party of Roll Over and Play Dead.

As sent to Schumer: America needs a Watch Dog, not a Dead Dog. Thursday's decision was a chance for the Democrats to finally draw a desperately overdue line. You blew it. This life-long Democrat and millions of others won't be contributing one cent to the party of Roll Over and Play Dead.

With thanks to Robert Reich, handy numbers to share liberally: White House: 1-202-456-1414 (switchboard). 1-202-456-1111 (comments). 'Jam it.'
Senators and representatives. The Capitol switchboard is 202-224-3121. The operator will connect you directly with the Senate or House office you request.

Musk also suffers from psychotropic abuse disorder.

Read a Times Reader's Comment on: Donald Trump Is Backed by the Business Elite Behind closed doors, many top executives voice support for the new administration.

My 2 cents on Rattner's Opinion piece: www.nytimes.com/shared/comme...

STAND UP FOR SCIENCE March 7, 2025. Washington DC and nationwide. Because science is for everyone.

IMPORTANT EVENT, please pass it on:
standupforscience2025.org

Great resource. Thanks for the research.

Today President Macron in a press conference said that if Putin is not stopped he will take Romania and Moldavia next.

To be clear, Canada has held a special immigration door open for high net worth applicants. So I doubt strict illegality. Morally this pales compared to stripping off the protected status of Haitians and Venezuelans, sending them to torture, death, or condemning kids to disease, or--fill in here.

I deplore Schadenfreude. Normally. But this makes me want to do CARTWHEELS!!!

Be still my heart. And LISTEN.

Right now, quick dives into past writers are as necessary to me as a plunge into ice-water when the sauna gets too hot. My current voice of choice: the eternally contemporary Heinrich Heine. How he would lampoon this American Schlamassel, sparing no one!

Not to mention a waste of time and money. Where is the E in DOGE?

‘Make them pay’: Canada puts Trump’s ‘first friend’ Elon Musk’s Tesla in the crosshairs of tariff war Canada’s EV adoption rate is outpacing that of the U.S., with nearly 17% of new cars sold in the third quarter of 2024 being fully electric, compared to just 8% in the US.

this is what we want to see. tariff the shit out of elon’s companies www.businesstoday.in/world/canada...

Great work. The mess around how to teach reading is a literal scandal. (Tip: if it ain't broke, don't fix it.) But to cut funding for and generally dumbing down public education has been the Republican program since Reagan. Sowing increasing crops of deplorables, and now the GOP harvests the reward.

Command Performance by Jean Echenoz Trans. Mark Polizzotti. NRYB Classics. 2025. 162 pages.

NBCC member @kaimaristed.bsky.social reviewed "Command Performance," written by Jean Echenoz and translated by Mark Polizzotti, for World Literature Today:

Hear, hear.

"[Trump] also reiterated claims about the need to engage in the herculean task of raking dry leaves out of forests — claims irrelevant to fires that have destroyed packed residential areas." WaPo. Call up the immigrants, Donald! Nowadays I take my laughs (read, coffee snorts) where I can get'em.

On the other hand... Darwin award.

Excellent point. Living partially in France for over twenty years, I have yet to bother with the red tape and possible rejection of submitting medical expenditures to my US BCBS, since the out-of-pocket costs are so reasonable. (A calamity might be a different story.)