Momentous Times, &c.

On Iran, Israel, and the U.S.; a death in Costa Rica; a late, great pianist, and a late, great scientist; and more

After an Israeli attack on the Shahran oil depot in Tehran, June 15, 2025 (RFE/RL)

There are momentous issues to talk about where Iran is concerned. (I noted some of the basics in a column last Sunday.) But I would like to open today with a side issue—an issue that is nonetheless important. It concerns the “information war,” a “war” that is always important, not least when a real one is raging.

Shortly after being sworn in, the second Trump administration moved to shut down the U.S. “radios”: the Voice of America; RFE/RL (our combination of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty); Radio Free Asia; Radio Martí (which broadcasts to Cuba); and so on. I wrote about this matter in a piece called “Radios and Lifelines.”

An Associated Press report published yesterday says, “VOA’s Persian staff, ordered to go on administrative leave in March, was suddenly ordered back to work Friday afternoon.” The details, the issues, are interesting.

You know the expression “bang for the buck.” Over the years, our country—and by extension the Free World—has gotten impressive bang for the buck out of our radios.

***

From RFE/RL, I learned this:

When Israel issued a warning to residents of one of Tehran’s most upscale and densely populated areas, District 3, to evacuate, saying it intended to carry out air strikes in the area, already heightened anxiety rose even further.

(For that article in full, go here.)

I wonder: How many powers have issued such warnings, in all history? Perhaps there are papers on the subject.

***

A great many Nicaraguans have fled from their country into Costa Rica: some 300,000 of them. These include many opposition leaders. I have met several of them. When I saw a headline yesterday, I first thought, “I wonder whether I know him.”

That headline reads, “Outspoken Nicaraguan opposition figure shot to death at his home in Costa Rica.” (Article here.) The victim was Roberto Samcam. I did not know him.

I do know this: Many dictatorships hunt down their critics wherever those critics are. The dictatorships are not content to hound and murder people within their own borders. They go beyond.

These dictatorships include Russia, China, Iran, Cuba, and, of course, Nicaragua.

***

This news was somewhat surprising: “Britain’s MI6 spy agency gets its first female chief.” (Article here.) Why surprising? Well, because many of us are used to seeing Judi Dench play the spy chief in James Bond movies—seven of them. But Blaise Metreweli is the first “IRL,” which is to say, in real life.

The CIA first got a female chief in 2018. That was Gina Haspel.

By the way, isn’t “Blaise Metreweli” a flavorful and novelistic name?

***

In the NBA, LeBron James has kicked up a fuss. He has criticized “ring culture.” When a team wins a championship, its members get rings. Often, a player is not considered great until he gets a ring. A player is judged by the number of rings he has. (James has four, by the way.)

But does that make sense in a team sport? Partial sense, no doubt. Great players should help their teams win championships. But complete sense, no. There are great players who never wind up on the right team.

I’m glad that James has kicked up this fuss. I have been kicking it up myself, in my minor way, for years.

***

Alfred Brendel, the famed pianist, has died at 94. For his obit in the New York Times, go here. Just about his favorite piece of music was a Mozart concerto: the Piano Concerto No. 9 in E flat, K. 271. To hear Brendel play this piece, with Neville Marriner and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, go here.

There are many things to say about Brendel—a musician, an intellectual, and his own man. But let me just say one more: He retired from concertizing in 2008, when he was 77. But thereafter, I saw him at the Salzburg Festival, just in attendance. Going to concerts.

I thought that was kind of neat.

***

A friend of mine from Texas was visiting Detroit earlier this week. He figured I knew Detroit a bit, being from Michigan. He said, “Anything I should do besides the obvious, such as drink Vernor’s?” Drinking Vernor’s is a good idea. It is our local ginger ale, concocted by James Vernor, a pharmacist, in 1866.

Tell you a story, from a few generations back (a true story). A couple in Michigan got married and honeymooned in Pittsburgh. At a restaurant, the new bride asked for a Vernor’s. The waitress—who must have had some acquaintance with Michigan—said, “You ain’t in Detroit, honey.”

(By the way, I see by the Internet that Vernor’s is now spelled “Vernors.” But I don’t think I can ever drop the apostrophe.)

***

Edward Anders has died at 98. He was a big scientific brain, an analyst of the cosmos. He was born Edward Alperovitch in Liepaja, Latvia, in 1926. Let me quote from the New York Times’s obit:

Throughout his career as a cosmochemist, Professor Anders rarely, if ever, spoke about his childhood. “You file it away in the proper place,” he said. “You know where to find it when you need it. The file drawers don’t pop open spontaneously.”

But after retiring, he began to revisit his memories in greater detail. He wrote a memoir, “Amidst Latvians During the Holocaust” (2011), and created a database of the more than 7,000 Jews who were alive in Liepaja when the Germans rolled in.

I thought of Richard Pipes, the late historian of Russia. I was fortunate to know him. He was born in Poland in 1923. I wrote an appreciation of him when he passed away in 2018. Let me quote from it:

Not until he was almost 80, when he wrote his memoirs, did he speak personally about what happened to his family and his community after September 1, 1939.

I will now quote Pipes himself:

The main effect of the Holocaust on my psyche was to make me delight in every day of life that has been granted to me, for I was saved from certain death. I felt and feel to this day that I have been spared not to waste my life on self-­indulgence or self-aggrandizement but to spread a moral message by showing, using examples from history, how evil ideas lead to evil consequences.

***

End on a few pictures? I think of a line from Oscar Hammerstein: “June is bustin’ out all over.”