Can Current US-Israeli Relationship Survive?, Russia's "Surprisingly" Re-constituted Army, AI Computing Power Scramble, California's Racial Justice Act, Outlaw Chemists
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You won't get any vandalism from me. I appreciate your clear-eyed and sober analysis of the evolution of the Israeli/U.S. relationship. Thanks for the food for thought.
P.S. There are 2 of us named Red on Substack, for reasons un-known. I would have thought Substack would prevent this. But I'm the other one who rarely weighs in here.
You're right to go after those dorks and their dork leader. Normies and liberal Jews are finally, FINALLY starting to come to their senses and realize what the Left really is, and here comes the wiener brigade doing it's best to scare them away from the Right.
Really, what needs to happen is a coordinated, strategic effort by the entire online Right to lampoon them, to point out that they are dorks, how they are stupid know-nothings, to troll them into revealing their idiocy, and done in a way that doesn't give them any oxygen. These retards are a liability.
This was great per usual. The “racial justice act” is insane and will be overturned by a federal court after a white prisoner sues for disparate treatment. That being said, that case will probably have to go to SCOTUS, and the lower courts will invent all sorts of destructive precedent on “disparate impact” that will be used in malign ways by race hustlers and self hating white pols
The racial justice act itself is anything but insane. The inevitable effects will be catastrophic for non-elite Californians but those who drafted the legislation and those who support it are anything but insane. They are applying a strategy of tension by creating conditions for maximal levels of ambient violence and criminality. The idealistic posturing comes across as insane to us because it is counter-factual, counter-logical and counter-intuitive. But it makes perfect sense: fostering destabilisation and ethnic rivalry is the whole point.
nah. I anticipate that the legal system will soon restore sanity, hopefully speedily and without much complication.
The only way performative nonsense like that legislation can be considered a conspiracy is if the proponents are, in actuality, stealth right-wingers bent on inciting a backlash. But it's practically certain that the proponents are all too sincere. Bliss ninnies, insulated by privilege from violent crime; newly ordained liberal proteges tipsy on their first taste of Power.
Fine. Bring it on. Have it out. Settle the question, explicitly and in detail..
The nonsense is calling out for a detailed unpacking and refutation, in scrupulously elaborated outline. If the idiots demand it, they deserve whatever happens to their reputations after they lose. And, presumably, the crucial difference between individual culpability for antisocial, malum in se decisions and conduct vs. incidental categorical correlations of group membership will be defined through legal reasoning. Since ordinary good sense no longer seems to be sufficient in this case.
I have some scepticism about military 'experts' in think tanks and this idea of a protracted war "degrading Russia's military capabilities" reinforces my scepticism. I'm no expert but common sense suggests to me that perhaps the best way to UPGRADE a nation's ability to fight a war and find out what tactics and latest weaponry actually work best .....is to have the benefit of the experience of actually having fought a recent one. Just thinking.
I agree! But they first had to admit that they'd been defeated. My comment (needlessly oblique, and I apologize) was that unlike Russia, which both won and lost wars, the US has never admitted to losing... although it has, and recently, too.
The red army was stronger in 1945 then 1941, and it took a heck of a lot more casualties then Russia is taking today.
Assuming conflict with Russia was inevitable (big if) I would have preferred to face a Russia that was trying to recreate huge tank battles rather then the one that one that now understands drone warfare and small squad tactics.
In some ways yes - but they also had stretched supply lines of 1000s of miles (from the east and north where lead-lease arrived, and production in the Urals), a heavy reliance on US-made trucks to bridge this gap, and were running on fumes with regards to manpower, handing grizzled POWs a PPSh and set to run amok on the German populace.
Read about Operation Unthinkable and some of Patton's commentary before his 'accidental' death and you'll see a grimmer picture of Soviet capability in 1945.
Well worn ground has gone over the tactical and strategic ineptitude that faced the Soviets in '41, whether owing to the preceding purges, Commissar-driven rigidity or the lack of defense-in-depth betraying the Soviet forces were actually preparing their own attack, if Suvorov's book Icebreaker is to be believed, but to say that the army in '41 was weaker is in my view simplistic.
There's a balance to strike from improving through lessons learned the hard way and a force pre-degradation. I don't think you can look at the Soviet Union in WW2 and say yep they got that right. The country has never recovered demographically from the casualties they accrued, similar to how Ukraine today is finished through both battlefield loss and emigration. I would contend that's been Putin's real goal.
In present day, I think it's important to remember the outcome for Ukraine itself is irrelevant for Western powers. A independent pro-west Ukraine is a nice-to-have: their blood for our outcomes, weapons sales and lessons learned. Tactical insights from this conflict around drones and small squad tactics will prepare Russia well until the next evolution of warfare counters these - information gathered without one's own bloodshed is preferable. Don't think it's possible to reach the 'end of war' - best to have the proxy do the leg work.
It's easy to think there's some gotcha here with regards to the western approach, but as this blog attests - it can be big winner US, small winner Russia, biggest loser Ukraine.
WWII Russia suffered enormous demographic casualties with long run implications. This had massive implications for the Cold War and the health of their society, but didn't really change the fact that they were stronger than '41 in a purely military sense.
In general, Russia starts wars very badly. As a corrupt society they have a hard time gathering accurate information in peacetime, they need war to sharpen themselves.
The demographic hit in Ukraine is pretty small beans for Russia to learn this stuff, nothing on the scale of WWII.
It's hard to see the US as a winner. They took a state that wasn't really an enemy and made them an enemy. They claimed it weakened them but that doesn't hold water. Make a new enemy and make them stronger doesn't seem like a win. I think this was just short term politics and current thing moral panic and now they can't get out of it but hey the Ukranians don't really have a choice (conscription, no elections) and they are doing the dying.
The decision of the US security apparatus to continue treating Russia as enemy #1 was made in the 90s. Ukraine is just a culmination of that (more accurately, no decisions were made to stop treating them as enemy #1 post Soviet dissolution)
Great work as always, good sir! SCR enriches my weekends.
Quoting: “US policy planners must be taking a long, hard look at how their sanctions strategy completely failed them this time around.” Probably not! They probably think they just haven’t done it good, long, and hard enough yet. We can no longer distinguish between failure and success in this country. That US barge in Palestine is a great example—as of this writing, it was found on a beach in Israel, and most the accompanying aid to date not reached the civilian population. I expect to see a second barge soon.
Not in this case. Contrary to the narrative I'm hearing in some quarters, the US government has minimal leverage over Netanyahu and his War Cabinet. (The impact of overseas protests is almost entirely about the possible domestic fallout. in those countries. Not pressure on either Israel or Hamas.) Simply in terms of military aid, ammunition stockpiles like the one Israel has accumulated don't dwindle that quickly. Not that Biden has actually taken any action to actually impede that supply, other than rhetorical "delays."
Matters like these are NEVER ABOUT THE RHETORIC. They're about what actually happens. Especially about what happens after the headline-making rhetoric gets lost in the backwash of the news cycle (most often, within less than one week.)
What actually happened: Congressional Republicans finally stopped holding their breath and threatening to turn blue unless they got their way on linking a domestic policy issue to $19 billion dollars already requested for Israel by President Biden.
The question of "American boots on the ground" in crises like these is always worth considering. But in this case, the reality is that the Israelis DO NOT WANT direct US military involvement- precisely because that level of commitment really would cede an unacceptable amount of leverage to a US government. The leaders of the nation of Israel insist on their prerogative on matters related to their military and national defense. They've turned down US offers of treaty partnership before; giving up autonomous agency isn't worth it to the Israelis.
That isn't to say that Israeli governments- including the one led by Netanyahu- are completely impervious to outside pressure to moderate their actions in Gaza. But most of the heat that they're feeling is from "world opinion", including a nearly unanimous 180-2 censure in the UN.
The reality of physical geography has also slowed success in combat against Hamas. Tunnall access turns combat into whack-a-mole against defenders, especially in an urban combat setting. The Gaza tunnels are estimated to be four times the length of the Cu Chi tunnels of Vietnam. The US never did manage to eradicate the Cu Chi network. Try as they might, including using airstrikes using 60,000 lb. bomb loads. The Gaza tunnels are much bigger- some of the galleries are 30 ft. high, and some of the tunnel mileage is large enough to drive automobiles through.
Delivering aid was largely public relations. Getting US troops involved and preparing for a wave of further deployments is what it is all about.
Remember Samantha Power's 'responsibility to protect'? This is likely to be rolled out as cover for US intervention designed to protect Hamas from Israel.
From which the West learnt nothing. Had Washington gained effective control over Arafat it would have been able to retrieve something. Foreign/defence policy should not be sentimental, but there is a case for holding some grudges. The deaths of the marines, the deaths of the TWA hostages and the torture and murder of the CIA station chief deserve to be remembered and understood. The political rehabilitation of the killers and hostage takers has not made anyone safer.
Military to military contacts are probably the only sane American contribution to the region. The Arab militaries are not as sound or as practical as the monarchies but they are a vast improvement on the politicians or the religious crowd. Hope lies with the pragmatists not the pamphleteers or, God help us all, the diplomats or the NGOs.
"Many of the people who produced and sold this material remained idealists, or at least pragmatic idealists, with a taste for beautiful craft and an outlaw humour..."
Reading this in California, which is always on the cutting edge of Utopia and always birthing new dreamers and schemers hoping to bring it about, this quote about the LSD acolytes could easily apply to the Racial Justice Act and its crafters.
The priests of Critical Whitness (aka Race Marxists) are also "idealists, or at least pragmatic idealists," in the sense that they remain deeply committed to their sacred ideal—that the only reason people of different races have different cultures and values and behaviors is Power and Oppression—but they've been pragmatic enough to work from the inside, become profs, lawyers, journalists and politicians who will pragmatically install their reverse upside-down Jim Crow (where the White Man bears all the stigma) one guilt trip and one ambiguous paragraph slipped into legislation at a time.
And they certainly have a skill for "beautiful craft" as they can can be presented with any fact or idea that contradicts their sacred narrative and craft a beautiful Chinese finger trap where anyone who opposes them is always and forever a bigot, with no way to counter or erase the slur except to bow down and repent and obey. Sophistry may be the most beautiful craft of them all!
And of course what could be a better description of the future consequences of the Racial Justice Act than "outlaw humor" as it will be a hilarious when the bill comes due for this latest manifestation of California idealism, when all the outlaws who are sprung from prison murder and assault other black people, who this is supposedly designed to save. Talk about black humor!
Just as prior crusaders for "Turn on, tune in, drop out" never imagined the social wreckage that mass drug usage would entail, and never lived to see our tent cities filled with junkies (or can't see them from their homes up in the hills), these Racial Justice crusaders won't be the ones clipped in a drive-by or whose neighborhoods aren't safe after dark.
But that's the beauty of California idealism, nothing matters but those first big hits and the amazing high that comes from being a crusader for Utopia—and whatever may go wrong is just a problem for another time and for other people.
I cannot remember who said/wrote (or, where I read) this, but the junkie spends the rest of his/her life trying to recreate "those first big hits and the amazing high"... and never succeeds, no matter how hard s/he tries, or the lengths to which s/he will go.
California surpasses itself. It models Dystopian Chic and by the time Prince Archie of Saxe-Coburg-Montecito is old enough for his first tattoo (a portrait of Bob Marley or George Floyd) it will market itself as the ultimate Third World/Cyberpunk tourist trap. Just as English lords and ladies (and, later, the middle classes) once toured Naples to watch the lazzaroni in their element we can expect cashed-up types from more stable societies to seek out the sights of the Bay Area or Los Angeles. The squalor will be confused with authenticity and vitality, the violence with high spirits. The multiracial global oligarchy will envy their Californian peers the mastery they wield over Silicon Latifundia and the endless suburbs. Earnest academics from overseas will study the paler elements of the underclass for signs of white supremacist leanings and entertainment executives will pay for the rights to broadcast from CCTV located in high schools and prisons.
Can’t take the credit. If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a generation or two of political expertise to create hell on earth.
Seriously…I remember watching ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK when it was first released. Ditto BLADERUNNER. They both struck a nerve and remain favourites of mine, but I never imagined at the time that cinematic dystopias would prove a reliable guide to real world experience. I thank God that our political elites have forgotten about LOGAN’S RUN.
Philip...you've never lived in California. You only know about California from occasional news media reports, of the sort that get recycled for the purpose of unending axe-grinding.
"ust as prior crusaders for "Turn on, tune in, drop out" never imagined the social wreckage that mass drug usage would entail, and never lived to see our tent cities filled with junkies (or can't see them from their homes up in the hills), these Racial Justice crusaders won't be the ones clipped in a drive-by or whose neighborhoods aren't safe after dark."
Not a good analogy. Yes, some of the illegalized drugs have the potential to lead to severe problems as a direct result of reckless indulgence. But the vast majority of the impacts to public health and civic order that we're seeing nowadays are Iatrogenic Problems of the War on Drugs.
That said, there's definitely a valid analogy to be made between the oblivious pretensions of the Racial Justice Act and the half-measures of temporizing law enforcement and "Drug Decriminalization" moves, which leave the supply of forbidden substances in the hands of career criminals who suddenly benefit both from their traditional monopoly status/Prohibition Profit Premium AND what amounts to a de facto instant disappearance of criminal penalties against the street retail business in illicit drugs (thereby leaving the risk of criminal violence from robberies, home invasions, and local gang wars as the sole major practical deterrent to getting into the business.) That neither-cold-nor-hot response to the street drug market upsets the balance of basic social values.
I remain skeptical AI will be as transformative as some claim. There’s only so much that can be accomplished in the information economy relative to the physical and each info tech advance brings diminishing marginal returns.
My friend, look no further than Nvidias mkt cap, which has quadrupled in 2years from from 250B to 1T. And this is despite them reporting a chip supply constraint. For sure there is hype, as with there internet, telecom buildup, and every tech cycle, but it's being girded by a strong fundamentals. Also, look at chatGpt user growth charts, even if you account for user attrition, that is quite literally the straightest shooting upward adoption trajectory of any product, ever. Like magnitudes (2 orders. ?) Faster than Facebook, which ushered in the age of social media 2.0
Yes there’s definitely economic value to it, but the article cited here described it as commanding the heights of the global economy, a matter of pressing national security concern. Lots of very valuable companies and technologies don’t rise to that level.
I don't think the present AI Large Language model has much space to grow. It is at its core a stupid model that just looks what word comes most likely after a previous word.
Real intelligence takes some things as a fact. 1+1=2. LLM doesn't offer an opportunity to integrate such knowledge. Google's recent failure that included glue in a recent recipe for food was a good illustration. Useful intelligence knows that you cannot eat glue.
AI moves with shocks. It is hard to predict when the next step will be made.
That sounds like the sort of confusion that did it. AI is an information vacuum that continually accumulates new data. But ultimately, it doesn't sort so well. Increasingly intricate detail alone is not sufficient. AI has no autonomous purpose. AI would just as soon do nothing.
From seeing what's been happening to my keyword searches and email forms, it looks like we're regressing.
Seriously. I would not be surprised to find that a massive latent potential market for computers that simply reset Windows back to, say, version 7, or even 2003. And maybe someone can cannibalize enough of the original Google search engine to reconstitute to what it looked like in 2001. Seriously. I feel like every search inquiry I make is being pre-processed with some pattern-matching Normal Collective Mind Homogenizer in advance of the results. And I'm only referring to searches with a low possibility of "ad keyword" hits.
Somebody, invent something that does what Google 2001 used to do for me.
I love Croatia. We visited Split and Dubrovnik and it seems like a fairy tale setting. The coast is beautiful too, just riding the bus I was impressed.
Niccolo and readers....So, I just saw the article below in New York Times, "Even as Violent Crime Drops, Lawlessness Rises as an Election Issue"
To its great credit, the NYTimes moderates its comments, unlike the Wash Post and the WSJ, which have crap comment sections.
Go to the reader commments to that article and choose "Reader Picks" and then just read down comments. Do you think this can be a political barometer and does the Biden team even look at such things? Thoughts? Comments? Prayers from the all of you readers?
Many online law enforcement commentators say what has fallen is the REPORTING of violent crime by the police as reporting requirements have become more onerous and time consuming. That seems to be a fair assessment as to why the stats do not match public opinion.
Yes, I have read that.... and btw, those new bureaucratic hurdles are not by chance. They are the equivalent of lobbyists making bill super complicated so nobody can easily understand what they really are up to.
Once you start using statistical evidence to determine whether bias played a role in the conviction, you begin corrupting the collection of evidence/reporting even more so than it is today. That is the point I think. To re-constitute reality and make it morally impermissible to talk about reality. See crime states and transgenderism.
Hold up hold up. Any lawyers in chat that could speculate on the implications of the RJA ruling? So I understand correctly, then racial bias no longer need to be demonstrated in the individual and only to be applied towards the court/police in judicial/arrests outcomes, then doesnt that imply a single decision that implicates a court in racial bias provide the basis for the overturn of all it's past convictions? Aka., if any one of those 30 life imprisonment convicts proves racial bias in the court, then all 30 get overturned? How does this work, if say, convict 1-15 gets overruled, then convict 16 successfully proves bias, then does 17-30 auto get their resentencing pleas passed through? And then does that retroactively affect the 1-15?
W.e the results, it just sounds like more costs to the already overburdened criminal justice system in Cali, which the Dems DAs can and will use as an excuse for further decriminlizations, to alleviate the said burden, and on and on...
Perhaps the Chinese solution is preferable here, 2 week execution processing time, cost of bullet sent to the family of the convict. JS
Great collection, as always. The acid essay was fascinating, if a little abstruse. I wonder if the outlaw chemists of today have the same pragmatic idealism or if it's been replaced with ruthless efficiency as in many other cases.
One comment on AI bottlenecks: last I heard, chips are not the only constraining factor, and future training runs may require obscene amounts of electricity. Sam Altman mentioned that fission or some other energy breakthrough will be necessary; IIRC he had some talks with the Saudis on that topic. Take it with a grain of salt though: it's extremely hard to keep up with the developments in AI even if you filter out the scams and marketing noise. I can advise anyone really interested in AI to follow Zvi Mowshowitz's Substack (https://thezvi.substack.com). His posts on any topic are very informative and levelheaded, but on AI he writes faster than I can read.
There was a great VICE article years and years and years ago about how a group of chemists were living in an abandoned underground nuclear silo and were producing the vast majority of the LSD being consumed in the USA.
I'll repost this: here is a link to a recent talk by Mearsheimer about the current Gaza war. In sum, he says Israel big loser, US loser, Iran winner. Mentions apartheid state, open air prison, ICC, public opinion, Amnesty and HRW. I have a lot of respect for his Russia-Ukraine analysis but here I find him unconvincing, closer to a Bremmer style analysis. It's worth watching. Let us know what you think. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAfIYtpcBxo
I would argue the Israel-US relationship is not just about "values" or the basic geopolitical dynamics of the Middle East. Mike Benz makes a very interesting case for a more disaggregated approach by breaking down the broad "USA" and "Washington" into factions such as "Houston" and "Atlantic Council" on the one hand and "Israel" and "Likud/Netanyahu" on the other (the former hating the latter for obstructing the opening of Iran). The key links to oil and gas reserves in Iran, connections to Burisma and China (Biden family, Houston and Atlantic Council, DOD, CIA), worth trillions of dollars, create many incentives and lots of maneuvering below the tip of the iceberg.
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I was very patient Niccolo
I'm expecting a bunch of vandalism in the comments section...so please ignore it if you do see it.
Jew haters descend in 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1....
You won't get any vandalism from me. I appreciate your clear-eyed and sober analysis of the evolution of the Israeli/U.S. relationship. Thanks for the food for thought.
P.S. There are 2 of us named Red on Substack, for reasons un-known. I would have thought Substack would prevent this. But I'm the other one who rarely weighs in here.
You're right to go after those dorks and their dork leader. Normies and liberal Jews are finally, FINALLY starting to come to their senses and realize what the Left really is, and here comes the wiener brigade doing it's best to scare them away from the Right.
Really, what needs to happen is a coordinated, strategic effort by the entire online Right to lampoon them, to point out that they are dorks, how they are stupid know-nothings, to troll them into revealing their idiocy, and done in a way that doesn't give them any oxygen. These retards are a liability.
Not sure what you were hoping to achieve, arguing with the groypers?
This was great per usual. The “racial justice act” is insane and will be overturned by a federal court after a white prisoner sues for disparate treatment. That being said, that case will probably have to go to SCOTUS, and the lower courts will invent all sorts of destructive precedent on “disparate impact” that will be used in malign ways by race hustlers and self hating white pols
The racial justice act itself is anything but insane. The inevitable effects will be catastrophic for non-elite Californians but those who drafted the legislation and those who support it are anything but insane. They are applying a strategy of tension by creating conditions for maximal levels of ambient violence and criminality. The idealistic posturing comes across as insane to us because it is counter-factual, counter-logical and counter-intuitive. But it makes perfect sense: fostering destabilisation and ethnic rivalry is the whole point.
nah. I anticipate that the legal system will soon restore sanity, hopefully speedily and without much complication.
The only way performative nonsense like that legislation can be considered a conspiracy is if the proponents are, in actuality, stealth right-wingers bent on inciting a backlash. But it's practically certain that the proponents are all too sincere. Bliss ninnies, insulated by privilege from violent crime; newly ordained liberal proteges tipsy on their first taste of Power.
Fine. Bring it on. Have it out. Settle the question, explicitly and in detail..
The nonsense is calling out for a detailed unpacking and refutation, in scrupulously elaborated outline. If the idiots demand it, they deserve whatever happens to their reputations after they lose. And, presumably, the crucial difference between individual culpability for antisocial, malum in se decisions and conduct vs. incidental categorical correlations of group membership will be defined through legal reasoning. Since ordinary good sense no longer seems to be sufficient in this case.
I have some scepticism about military 'experts' in think tanks and this idea of a protracted war "degrading Russia's military capabilities" reinforces my scepticism. I'm no expert but common sense suggests to me that perhaps the best way to UPGRADE a nation's ability to fight a war and find out what tactics and latest weaponry actually work best .....is to have the benefit of the experience of actually having fought a recent one. Just thinking.
"fought"... and won (to have fought-and-lost only shows what didn't/doesn't work).
It is possible to learn from defeat(s). History says so.
I agree! But they first had to admit that they'd been defeated. My comment (needlessly oblique, and I apologize) was that unlike Russia, which both won and lost wars, the US has never admitted to losing... although it has, and recently, too.
The red army was stronger in 1945 then 1941, and it took a heck of a lot more casualties then Russia is taking today.
Assuming conflict with Russia was inevitable (big if) I would have preferred to face a Russia that was trying to recreate huge tank battles rather then the one that one that now understands drone warfare and small squad tactics.
Good point, but you left out Russia's strengths: hypersonic missiles, satellites and heavy artillery.
EW
My point exactly!
In some ways yes - but they also had stretched supply lines of 1000s of miles (from the east and north where lead-lease arrived, and production in the Urals), a heavy reliance on US-made trucks to bridge this gap, and were running on fumes with regards to manpower, handing grizzled POWs a PPSh and set to run amok on the German populace.
Read about Operation Unthinkable and some of Patton's commentary before his 'accidental' death and you'll see a grimmer picture of Soviet capability in 1945.
Well worn ground has gone over the tactical and strategic ineptitude that faced the Soviets in '41, whether owing to the preceding purges, Commissar-driven rigidity or the lack of defense-in-depth betraying the Soviet forces were actually preparing their own attack, if Suvorov's book Icebreaker is to be believed, but to say that the army in '41 was weaker is in my view simplistic.
There's a balance to strike from improving through lessons learned the hard way and a force pre-degradation. I don't think you can look at the Soviet Union in WW2 and say yep they got that right. The country has never recovered demographically from the casualties they accrued, similar to how Ukraine today is finished through both battlefield loss and emigration. I would contend that's been Putin's real goal.
In present day, I think it's important to remember the outcome for Ukraine itself is irrelevant for Western powers. A independent pro-west Ukraine is a nice-to-have: their blood for our outcomes, weapons sales and lessons learned. Tactical insights from this conflict around drones and small squad tactics will prepare Russia well until the next evolution of warfare counters these - information gathered without one's own bloodshed is preferable. Don't think it's possible to reach the 'end of war' - best to have the proxy do the leg work.
It's easy to think there's some gotcha here with regards to the western approach, but as this blog attests - it can be big winner US, small winner Russia, biggest loser Ukraine.
WWII Russia suffered enormous demographic casualties with long run implications. This had massive implications for the Cold War and the health of their society, but didn't really change the fact that they were stronger than '41 in a purely military sense.
In general, Russia starts wars very badly. As a corrupt society they have a hard time gathering accurate information in peacetime, they need war to sharpen themselves.
The demographic hit in Ukraine is pretty small beans for Russia to learn this stuff, nothing on the scale of WWII.
It's hard to see the US as a winner. They took a state that wasn't really an enemy and made them an enemy. They claimed it weakened them but that doesn't hold water. Make a new enemy and make them stronger doesn't seem like a win. I think this was just short term politics and current thing moral panic and now they can't get out of it but hey the Ukranians don't really have a choice (conscription, no elections) and they are doing the dying.
The decision of the US security apparatus to continue treating Russia as enemy #1 was made in the 90s. Ukraine is just a culmination of that (more accurately, no decisions were made to stop treating them as enemy #1 post Soviet dissolution)
"no decisions were made"
That certainly sums of the US security apparatus.
It's amazing how "I've got a degree in Russian and a mortgage to pay in NOVA" can accomplish so much.
Great work as always, good sir! SCR enriches my weekends.
Quoting: “US policy planners must be taking a long, hard look at how their sanctions strategy completely failed them this time around.” Probably not! They probably think they just haven’t done it good, long, and hard enough yet. We can no longer distinguish between failure and success in this country. That US barge in Palestine is a great example—as of this writing, it was found on a beach in Israel, and most the accompanying aid to date not reached the civilian population. I expect to see a second barge soon.
There were several barges that washed-up on Israeli shores. Not a few of us view it as an American "beachhead", and Phase II of "boots on the ground".
Thank you for this information.
Some horrific engineering
Not in this case. Contrary to the narrative I'm hearing in some quarters, the US government has minimal leverage over Netanyahu and his War Cabinet. (The impact of overseas protests is almost entirely about the possible domestic fallout. in those countries. Not pressure on either Israel or Hamas.) Simply in terms of military aid, ammunition stockpiles like the one Israel has accumulated don't dwindle that quickly. Not that Biden has actually taken any action to actually impede that supply, other than rhetorical "delays."
Matters like these are NEVER ABOUT THE RHETORIC. They're about what actually happens. Especially about what happens after the headline-making rhetoric gets lost in the backwash of the news cycle (most often, within less than one week.)
What actually happened: Congressional Republicans finally stopped holding their breath and threatening to turn blue unless they got their way on linking a domestic policy issue to $19 billion dollars already requested for Israel by President Biden.
The question of "American boots on the ground" in crises like these is always worth considering. But in this case, the reality is that the Israelis DO NOT WANT direct US military involvement- precisely because that level of commitment really would cede an unacceptable amount of leverage to a US government. The leaders of the nation of Israel insist on their prerogative on matters related to their military and national defense. They've turned down US offers of treaty partnership before; giving up autonomous agency isn't worth it to the Israelis.
That isn't to say that Israeli governments- including the one led by Netanyahu- are completely impervious to outside pressure to moderate their actions in Gaza. But most of the heat that they're feeling is from "world opinion", including a nearly unanimous 180-2 censure in the UN.
The reality of physical geography has also slowed success in combat against Hamas. Tunnall access turns combat into whack-a-mole against defenders, especially in an urban combat setting. The Gaza tunnels are estimated to be four times the length of the Cu Chi tunnels of Vietnam. The US never did manage to eradicate the Cu Chi network. Try as they might, including using airstrikes using 60,000 lb. bomb loads. The Gaza tunnels are much bigger- some of the galleries are 30 ft. high, and some of the tunnel mileage is large enough to drive automobiles through.
Delivering aid was largely public relations. Getting US troops involved and preparing for a wave of further deployments is what it is all about.
Remember Samantha Power's 'responsibility to protect'? This is likely to be rolled out as cover for US intervention designed to protect Hamas from Israel.
Good points, sir.
US combat troops on the ground in Gaza will not happen. Mark my words.
The notion that the Biden Doctrine on this issue has been crafted "to protect Hamas from Israel" is insane.
HAMAS is a client. It’s complicated.
No Boots is correct.
That’s the Lebanon intervention in 1982.
From which the West learnt nothing. Had Washington gained effective control over Arafat it would have been able to retrieve something. Foreign/defence policy should not be sentimental, but there is a case for holding some grudges. The deaths of the marines, the deaths of the TWA hostages and the torture and murder of the CIA station chief deserve to be remembered and understood. The political rehabilitation of the killers and hostage takers has not made anyone safer.
Rehab? Those are vendors now.
DOD has been training the PA for years.
Which isn’t the worst idea.
We’re inside at least.
Military to military contacts are probably the only sane American contribution to the region. The Arab militaries are not as sound or as practical as the monarchies but they are a vast improvement on the politicians or the religious crowd. Hope lies with the pragmatists not the pamphleteers or, God help us all, the diplomats or the NGOs.
USA Decoder;
Diplomacy=Warmongering
NGOS = Aren’t
Democracy = Authoritarian
Freedom = Chaos
Am I alone in thinking that that calamity of a barge/pier is a perfect metaphor for the declining American empire?
"Many of the people who produced and sold this material remained idealists, or at least pragmatic idealists, with a taste for beautiful craft and an outlaw humour..."
Reading this in California, which is always on the cutting edge of Utopia and always birthing new dreamers and schemers hoping to bring it about, this quote about the LSD acolytes could easily apply to the Racial Justice Act and its crafters.
The priests of Critical Whitness (aka Race Marxists) are also "idealists, or at least pragmatic idealists," in the sense that they remain deeply committed to their sacred ideal—that the only reason people of different races have different cultures and values and behaviors is Power and Oppression—but they've been pragmatic enough to work from the inside, become profs, lawyers, journalists and politicians who will pragmatically install their reverse upside-down Jim Crow (where the White Man bears all the stigma) one guilt trip and one ambiguous paragraph slipped into legislation at a time.
And they certainly have a skill for "beautiful craft" as they can can be presented with any fact or idea that contradicts their sacred narrative and craft a beautiful Chinese finger trap where anyone who opposes them is always and forever a bigot, with no way to counter or erase the slur except to bow down and repent and obey. Sophistry may be the most beautiful craft of them all!
And of course what could be a better description of the future consequences of the Racial Justice Act than "outlaw humor" as it will be a hilarious when the bill comes due for this latest manifestation of California idealism, when all the outlaws who are sprung from prison murder and assault other black people, who this is supposedly designed to save. Talk about black humor!
Just as prior crusaders for "Turn on, tune in, drop out" never imagined the social wreckage that mass drug usage would entail, and never lived to see our tent cities filled with junkies (or can't see them from their homes up in the hills), these Racial Justice crusaders won't be the ones clipped in a drive-by or whose neighborhoods aren't safe after dark.
But that's the beauty of California idealism, nothing matters but those first big hits and the amazing high that comes from being a crusader for Utopia—and whatever may go wrong is just a problem for another time and for other people.
I cannot remember who said/wrote (or, where I read) this, but the junkie spends the rest of his/her life trying to recreate "those first big hits and the amazing high"... and never succeeds, no matter how hard s/he tries, or the lengths to which s/he will go.
chasin the dragon!
is like trying to be a virgin again :)
California surpasses itself. It models Dystopian Chic and by the time Prince Archie of Saxe-Coburg-Montecito is old enough for his first tattoo (a portrait of Bob Marley or George Floyd) it will market itself as the ultimate Third World/Cyberpunk tourist trap. Just as English lords and ladies (and, later, the middle classes) once toured Naples to watch the lazzaroni in their element we can expect cashed-up types from more stable societies to seek out the sights of the Bay Area or Los Angeles. The squalor will be confused with authenticity and vitality, the violence with high spirits. The multiracial global oligarchy will envy their Californian peers the mastery they wield over Silicon Latifundia and the endless suburbs. Earnest academics from overseas will study the paler elements of the underclass for signs of white supremacist leanings and entertainment executives will pay for the rights to broadcast from CCTV located in high schools and prisons.
wow Escape from NY with some dashes of Bladrunner, Terminator and Idiocracy.
you've made dystopia great again ;)
Can’t take the credit. If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a generation or two of political expertise to create hell on earth.
Seriously…I remember watching ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK when it was first released. Ditto BLADERUNNER. They both struck a nerve and remain favourites of mine, but I never imagined at the time that cinematic dystopias would prove a reliable guide to real world experience. I thank God that our political elites have forgotten about LOGAN’S RUN.
Philip...you've never lived in California. You only know about California from occasional news media reports, of the sort that get recycled for the purpose of unending axe-grinding.
"ust as prior crusaders for "Turn on, tune in, drop out" never imagined the social wreckage that mass drug usage would entail, and never lived to see our tent cities filled with junkies (or can't see them from their homes up in the hills), these Racial Justice crusaders won't be the ones clipped in a drive-by or whose neighborhoods aren't safe after dark."
Not a good analogy. Yes, some of the illegalized drugs have the potential to lead to severe problems as a direct result of reckless indulgence. But the vast majority of the impacts to public health and civic order that we're seeing nowadays are Iatrogenic Problems of the War on Drugs.
That said, there's definitely a valid analogy to be made between the oblivious pretensions of the Racial Justice Act and the half-measures of temporizing law enforcement and "Drug Decriminalization" moves, which leave the supply of forbidden substances in the hands of career criminals who suddenly benefit both from their traditional monopoly status/Prohibition Profit Premium AND what amounts to a de facto instant disappearance of criminal penalties against the street retail business in illicit drugs (thereby leaving the risk of criminal violence from robberies, home invasions, and local gang wars as the sole major practical deterrent to getting into the business.) That neither-cold-nor-hot response to the street drug market upsets the balance of basic social values.
I remain skeptical AI will be as transformative as some claim. There’s only so much that can be accomplished in the information economy relative to the physical and each info tech advance brings diminishing marginal returns.
I guess we’ll see!
My friend, look no further than Nvidias mkt cap, which has quadrupled in 2years from from 250B to 1T. And this is despite them reporting a chip supply constraint. For sure there is hype, as with there internet, telecom buildup, and every tech cycle, but it's being girded by a strong fundamentals. Also, look at chatGpt user growth charts, even if you account for user attrition, that is quite literally the straightest shooting upward adoption trajectory of any product, ever. Like magnitudes (2 orders. ?) Faster than Facebook, which ushered in the age of social media 2.0
Yes there’s definitely economic value to it, but the article cited here described it as commanding the heights of the global economy, a matter of pressing national security concern. Lots of very valuable companies and technologies don’t rise to that level.
I don't think the present AI Large Language model has much space to grow. It is at its core a stupid model that just looks what word comes most likely after a previous word.
Real intelligence takes some things as a fact. 1+1=2. LLM doesn't offer an opportunity to integrate such knowledge. Google's recent failure that included glue in a recent recipe for food was a good illustration. Useful intelligence knows that you cannot eat glue.
AI moves with shocks. It is hard to predict when the next step will be made.
"Google's recent failure that included glue in a recent recipe for food was a good illustration. Useful intelligence knows that you cannot eat glue."
Google "Transglutaminase" (aka Meat Glue): A natural enzyme that has the ability to glue protein-containing foods together.
That sounds like the sort of confusion that did it. AI is an information vacuum that continually accumulates new data. But ultimately, it doesn't sort so well. Increasingly intricate detail alone is not sufficient. AI has no autonomous purpose. AI would just as soon do nothing.
From seeing what's been happening to my keyword searches and email forms, it looks like we're regressing.
Seriously. I would not be surprised to find that a massive latent potential market for computers that simply reset Windows back to, say, version 7, or even 2003. And maybe someone can cannibalize enough of the original Google search engine to reconstitute to what it looked like in 2001. Seriously. I feel like every search inquiry I make is being pre-processed with some pattern-matching Normal Collective Mind Homogenizer in advance of the results. And I'm only referring to searches with a low possibility of "ad keyword" hits.
Somebody, invent something that does what Google 2001 used to do for me.
Interesting posts!
Does anyone here believe that $211 Billion number from Austin? I don't.
Winning the race to AGI is the wrong analogy because races finish. The goal of the sanctions is to permanently prevent China from catching up.
AGI isn’t the valuable national security technology to prioritize.
Would a random Croatian emigre know who you are? Are you read by Croatian expats?
? and ??
A kid on my son’s soccer team’s dad is Croatian. I wondered if he would know who Nico is if I mentioned it. I think he’s a pretty recent transplant.
Some read my stuff and my family is pretty well known in parts of North America among the diaspora.
I love Croatia. We visited Split and Dubrovnik and it seems like a fairy tale setting. The coast is beautiful too, just riding the bus I was impressed.
Niccolo and readers....So, I just saw the article below in New York Times, "Even as Violent Crime Drops, Lawlessness Rises as an Election Issue"
To its great credit, the NYTimes moderates its comments, unlike the Wash Post and the WSJ, which have crap comment sections.
Go to the reader commments to that article and choose "Reader Picks" and then just read down comments. Do you think this can be a political barometer and does the Biden team even look at such things? Thoughts? Comments? Prayers from the all of you readers?
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/26/us/politics/crime-biden-trump.html#commentsContainer
Many online law enforcement commentators say what has fallen is the REPORTING of violent crime by the police as reporting requirements have become more onerous and time consuming. That seems to be a fair assessment as to why the stats do not match public opinion.
Yes, I have read that.... and btw, those new bureaucratic hurdles are not by chance. They are the equivalent of lobbyists making bill super complicated so nobody can easily understand what they really are up to.
Once you start using statistical evidence to determine whether bias played a role in the conviction, you begin corrupting the collection of evidence/reporting even more so than it is today. That is the point I think. To re-constitute reality and make it morally impermissible to talk about reality. See crime states and transgenderism.
Hold up hold up. Any lawyers in chat that could speculate on the implications of the RJA ruling? So I understand correctly, then racial bias no longer need to be demonstrated in the individual and only to be applied towards the court/police in judicial/arrests outcomes, then doesnt that imply a single decision that implicates a court in racial bias provide the basis for the overturn of all it's past convictions? Aka., if any one of those 30 life imprisonment convicts proves racial bias in the court, then all 30 get overturned? How does this work, if say, convict 1-15 gets overruled, then convict 16 successfully proves bias, then does 17-30 auto get their resentencing pleas passed through? And then does that retroactively affect the 1-15?
W.e the results, it just sounds like more costs to the already overburdened criminal justice system in Cali, which the Dems DAs can and will use as an excuse for further decriminlizations, to alleviate the said burden, and on and on...
Perhaps the Chinese solution is preferable here, 2 week execution processing time, cost of bullet sent to the family of the convict. JS
Great collection, as always. The acid essay was fascinating, if a little abstruse. I wonder if the outlaw chemists of today have the same pragmatic idealism or if it's been replaced with ruthless efficiency as in many other cases.
One comment on AI bottlenecks: last I heard, chips are not the only constraining factor, and future training runs may require obscene amounts of electricity. Sam Altman mentioned that fission or some other energy breakthrough will be necessary; IIRC he had some talks with the Saudis on that topic. Take it with a grain of salt though: it's extremely hard to keep up with the developments in AI even if you filter out the scams and marketing noise. I can advise anyone really interested in AI to follow Zvi Mowshowitz's Substack (https://thezvi.substack.com). His posts on any topic are very informative and levelheaded, but on AI he writes faster than I can read.
There was a great VICE article years and years and years ago about how a group of chemists were living in an abandoned underground nuclear silo and were producing the vast majority of the LSD being consumed in the USA.
I haven't read the LSD article yet, but the story of major LSD manufacturer William Pickard is something else https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Leonard_Pickard
I'll repost this: here is a link to a recent talk by Mearsheimer about the current Gaza war. In sum, he says Israel big loser, US loser, Iran winner. Mentions apartheid state, open air prison, ICC, public opinion, Amnesty and HRW. I have a lot of respect for his Russia-Ukraine analysis but here I find him unconvincing, closer to a Bremmer style analysis. It's worth watching. Let us know what you think. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAfIYtpcBxo
I would argue the Israel-US relationship is not just about "values" or the basic geopolitical dynamics of the Middle East. Mike Benz makes a very interesting case for a more disaggregated approach by breaking down the broad "USA" and "Washington" into factions such as "Houston" and "Atlantic Council" on the one hand and "Israel" and "Likud/Netanyahu" on the other (the former hating the latter for obstructing the opening of Iran). The key links to oil and gas reserves in Iran, connections to Burisma and China (Biden family, Houston and Atlantic Council, DOD, CIA), worth trillions of dollars, create many incentives and lots of maneuvering below the tip of the iceberg.