Tim Barker

Sunset Park

Writer at Origins of Our Time

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Articles

Weapons of the Week: Like Joe McCarthy, I enjoy a good dossier.

1 month ago | ourtime.substack.com | Tim Barker

On Sunday, Israeli journalist Ben Caspit reported that “the secret and close advisor to Adam Buhler,” Trump’s Gaza hostage envoy, is Palestinian businessman Bashar al-Masri. Citing high-level US and Israeli sources, Caspit says that Buhler “has been flying in the region on al-Masri's plane for several months. Even before Trump took office, but also after.” Buhler’s spokesman did not comment. Al-Masri is a billionaire; he also holds US citizenship.
Until the depression comes, which it always does

1 month ago | ourtime.substack.com | Tim Barker

During the repression of last year’s campus protests, this newsletter brought you an exclusive piece by Barack Obama on the difficulties of resisting the war machine on campuses like Columbia’s. Today, we are have the privilege of sharing an original poem by Donald Trump, reproduced (and lightly edited) without permission from Playboy, March 1990. Origins of Our Time is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Weapons of the Week: Prattle and Hum

1 month ago | ourtime.substack.com | Tim Barker

Just over a month ago, Jake Sullivan sat down with the Financial Times for a glass of Valpolicella Ripasso (“‘Day drinking,’ he laughs”) and a few bites of food (“‘I’m a light eater,’ he says.”) The former National Security Advisor was “proud to have helped create a situation where the ‘core engines of American power are humming.’” Elections come and go.
Weapons of the Week #8: The Biggest Gun Show in the World

2 months ago | ourtime.substack.com | Tim Barker

[This edition of Weapons of the Week is coming to you late, which I regret. Rest assured I will see to it that, in the end, you get the number of dispatches promised by a weekly newsletter.]From June 17-21, 60,000 people from 150 countries, including 96 countries which sent official delegation, gathered in a convention center near the airport in Paris. The occasion was Eurosatory 2024, the latest and biggest edition of the largest military-industrial trade show in Europe.
Weapons of the Week #10: Half-Awake

2 months ago | ourtime.substack.com | Tim Barker

This is the tenth edition of this newsletter! Since launching on May 6th, Weapons of the Week has come out on average every six days, with an average of around 3,200 words of original content in each dispatch. If you’re a paying subscriber, sincere thanks for making it worth my while to put in the hours every week. If you’re not, consider joining for just $5/month, or just over a dollar for each newsletter.
Weapons of the Week #12: Nihilistic Regional Murder Spree

2 months ago | ourtime.substack.com | Tim Barker

The title of this post sounds like something you might find in the underground press of the later New Left, perhaps as an accurate but febrile description of Richard Nixon’s “incursions” into various corners of Southeast Asia. But the quote is recent - it’s from yesterday, September 30 - and it comes from inside the house, i.e. the US government.
Noah Smith Watch: Double Counting Fracking Jobs

2 months ago | ourtime.substack.com | Tim Barker

In the course of arguing that Kamala Harris “needs to be Pennsylvania fracking's biggest champion,” Noah Smith writes:Usually, both politicians and pundits think about the economic importance of something like the Marcellus Shale in terms of how many jobs it directly supports. No one knows exactly what this number is for the state of Pennsylvania, but industry estimates are around 123,000.
The Geometry of Mass Graves

2 months ago | ourtime.substack.com | Tim Barker

Most people have to go to a museum to seek out a spiritual encounter with Mark Rothko. But Antony Blinken grew up surrounded by the gauzy masterpieces. His father, Warburg-Pincus cofounder Donald Blinken, bought five canvases directly from the artist, whom he considered a friend. Rothko himself hung the paintings. Besides money, the relationship was built on shared experience. Rothko, like Donald Blinken’s father, was born in the Russian empire around the time of the Kishinev pogroms.
US Labor and the Gaza War (1)

2 months ago | ourtime.substack.com | Tim Barker

In March 2024, an editor at a New York-based journal asked me to write a piece for him about the labor movement and the US-Israeli war in Gaza. We spoke twice on the phone about how I would approach the piece. We agreed on a framework: given that the issue is urgent, but also acknowledging that US labor cannot stop the war by electoral pressure or workplace actions, what is to be done? We also agreed that I would offer historical background drawing on my work on the Cold War.
Us Labor and the Gaza War (3): What Is To Be Done?

2 months ago | ourtime.substack.com | Tim Barker

This is the third and final part of an essay that I tried and failed to publish in the first half of 2024. For the first part of the essay, and the backstory, see here. For the second part, see here. What Can We Do? If it would be silly to pretend like labor has more power than it does.