* This is an archive of my own online blog and notes, with weekly entries collected by month.
* THE WEEK THAT WAS: The fighting in Gaza has spilled over to the rest of the Middle East, with Yemen's Houthis launching drones and missiles at international shipping in the Red Sea. Counterstrikes from US and allied forces have inevitably followed.
Iranian-backed militias, supported by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Quds force -- more or less the special operations command of Iran -- have similarly been attacking US forces based in the region. The militias got lucky on 28 January, when they hit a US base in northeast Jordan, near the border with Syria, killing three American soldiers and wounding many more. Counterstrikes were of course expected, with the US government remaining generally mum on what was going to happen.
After US President Joe Biden stood on ceremony as the caskets of the three slain soldiers were brought home, around midnight on 3 February at least 85 targets in Iraq and Syria were attacked, the strikes spearheaded by Air Force B-1 bombers. Post-strike imagery shows some of the targets were flattened. Joe Biden issued a statement: "Our response began today. It will continue at times and places of our choosing."
The strikes were restrained; the US is engaged in continuous diplomacy to try to defuze the violence in the MidEast. There were complaints that the Biden Administration was timid in not attacking Iran directly -- but though the White House did announce that targets in Iran were not off-limits, that was clearly just to promote "strategic ambiguity". A direct attack on Iran would have been a disproportionate response. Besides, Iran is poised to build the Bomb any time the leadership wants to, being deterred primarily by the certainty that Saudi Arabia would get the Bomb, too. A direct attack on Iran might well push the leadership over the nuclear threshold.
* In news of the Ukraine War, on the night of 31 January / 1 February, five Ukrainian drone boats of the HUR intelligence service attacked the Russian Black Sea Fleet (RBSF) missile corvette IVANOVETS. Videos showed the vessel being hit with powerful explosions and sinking. Although the war may appear to be stagnant, the Ukrainians have clearly thrown the RBSF on the defensive, with estimates that it has lost at least a fifth of its strength. The Russians are no longer able to effectively interfere with shipping to and from Ukraine across the Black Sea, and it doesn't appear they are poised to regain the initiative.
In more startling news a Russian Air Force pilot, Major Oleg Stegachev, was gunned down in the city of Engels in Russia. He was the commander of a Tupolev Tu-95 "Bear" bomber, flying out of the air base in Engels, that had been launching cruise missile strikes against Ukraine. A Ukrainian HUR announcement elaborated:
QUOTE:
What is important to understand is that [Stegachev] is directly involved in launching rocket attacks on civilian objects in Ukraine and killing our people.
We remind you that retribution awaits all war criminals -- we know your names, addresses, car numbers, usual routes and habits. Justice is inevitable! Slava Ukrainy!
END_QUOTE
European backing of Ukraine continues to be strong. The EU has approved a 50 billion-euro support package, despite a threat by Hungary's Viktor Orban to veto it. He had to back off in the face of an effort to cancel Hungary's EU voting rights. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, inclined to the dry and droll, commented: "There is no problem with the so-called Ukraine fatigue issue. We have Orban fatigue now in Brussels."
In the USA, MAGA insurgents in the House of Representatives are still trying to hold Ukraine assistance hostage. It is unlikely they will succeed, because they don't have the votes and they're under extreme political pressure, with their behavior becoming increasingly erratic -- when it was erratic to start with. How long it's going to take to deal with them remains to be seen.
* In other tales of political obstruction, in 2023 MAGA senators in the Oregon state legislature staged a six-week walkout to deny a quorum for voting, the idea being to stall bills on abortion, transgender health care, and gun safety. However, in November 2022 Oregon voters had passed "Measure 113", which stipulated that legislators who had more than ten unexcused absences could not run for re-election.
A lawsuit challenging Measure 113 has been dismissed by the Oregon Supreme Court; ten MAGA legislators are now been barred from running for state office again. I had been wondering what was going to happen after the walkout. This seems like a tidy solution: what goes out does come back around.
BACK_TO_TOP* THE WEEK THAT WAS: The big news in the Ukraine War this last week was the retirement of General Valeriy Zaluzhnyy, from the outset of the war the commander of Armed Forces Ukraine. That was a bit of a shock to those of us who follow the war, but retired US Army General Mark Hertling provided some perspective:
QUOTE:
Many US media outlets proclaiming: "Zelenskyy sacks Zaluzhnyy!" -- or: "Zaluzhnyy fired!" I don't see it that way. Allow me to provide some context.
General Zaluzhnyy is 51 years old, extremely young for a commander of any nation's armed Forces. Most 4-star generals are in their 60s and have much more experience. Since February 2022, he's been the tactical, operational, & strategic head of the toughest fight we've seen in the 21st century -- with "tactical", "operational", and "strategic" defined in this way:
Add to that:
He's dealt with various personalities and unique nationalities as NATO and the US came together to help him, some offering things he needed, some holding back on things he desperately wanted. It is true that he came into this invasion as an inexperienced and untrained senior level commander, but he then carried himself as a leader of a great army and an emerging nation.
However, he likely is physically, emotionally, and intellectually exhausted. Commanders of operational forces get a few hours sleep each night, and continuously face problems with no solutions. Nonetheless, he has been masterful in his performance over the last 2+ years, and he'll be studied as a great military leader who excelled during a time of crisis.
God bless you, General. It's time for a new commander to take the reins. It's a good call to get some new blood into this next phase of the campaign.
END_QUOTE
Zaluzhnyy is being replaced by Colonel-General Oleksandr Syrskyy, an officer with extensive combat service. He is Russian-born, incidentally, having come to Ukraine as a teenager, to serve with Soviet forces there. When Ukraine became independent, he elected to stay there, and has been with the Ukrainian Army from its inception.
Reading between the lines, the fall of Zaluzhnyy appears to have been driven by his insistence that the AFU needed hundreds of thousands of new troops. Zelenskyy could only reply that was politically and practically impossible: massively widening the net for conscription would have been very unpopular, and it would have also looted Ukraine of people who were needed to keep society running. Since Zaluzhnyy made it clear he could not win the war without the additional troops, Zelenskyy had no alternative but to find someone who felt he could win without them.
The key appears to be "asymmetric warfare": instead of fighting the Russians head-on in brutal shoot-outs, use tactics that require fewer resources and the Russians find it hard to counter:
Ukrainian asymmetric strategy is heavily dependent on drones, to compensate for Ukraine's lack of manpower -- including tactical reconnaissance and attack aerial drones, long-range attack drones, sea drones, and emerging ground drones. General Kyrylo Budanov of the Ukrainian HUR military intelligence service has demonstrated the capabilities of asymmetric warfare. He isn't really in a position to run the whole show, but it is likely he will have significant contributions to overall strategy as the AFU re-invents itself once again.
Incidentally, both Zaluzhnyy and Budanov were awarded the Hero of Ukraine medal. Zaluzhnyy received it gratefully, with some appearance of feeling a great burden had been lifted from his shoulders. Budanov was, as always, deadpan -- possibly excited, but nobody could tell.
* In the meantime, the push to drive Ukraine War funding through Congress is moving along ... slowly, as things generally do in Congress. A bill's going through the Senate, and then will go to the House.
Will Speaker Mike Johnson refuse to put the bill up to a vote? Given that's there's only about 70 hard-core pro-MAGA representatives in the House, they don't have the votes to win. Stay tuned.
* The slow fadeout of Xitter has been driving my push into other social media. I've been upping my game on Spoutible, which is much like X/Twitter, but not nearly as popular. I've never concerned myself with followers before, but I think I should start building up a list. That will work well, giving me the opportunity to promote my ebooks. Another thing I've started to do is block hostiles there; getting into fights with people works against my purposes for being on Spout, so I get rid of the hostiles without hesitation. It's less an issue of me not seeing them any more than them not seeing me: I have no trouble with them, we're all happy.
Spoutible allows me to cross-post to the Bluesky and Mastodon social-media platforms; I post an article on Spoutible, it's automatically posted to them as well. Bluesky, however, is rinky-dink, being kinda braindead: I ship it a posting with an article link, it won't follow the link. There's not much interesting activity on it, either. However, I splashed into Mastodon like a duck into water -- it's a surprisingly rich environment -- and have been quickly expanding my footprint there.
Mastodon, not really incidentally, isn't a single social-media platform, but a set of different mastodons, each on its own server. I'm on the currently biggest one, "mastodon.social", but it doesn't matter which one I'm on, because they're all part of the same network. I was wondering what would replace Xitter, but now I doubt it will be any one social-media platform, instead a pile of interlinked social-media platforms. I'm getting in on the ground floor.
BACK_TO_TOPWED 14 FEB 24: An article from REUTERS.com was titled: "Do Not Read Too Much Into Biden, Trump Verbal Stumbles, Experts Caution". With the proper response being: "Sensible people don't. They do, however, pay attention to Trump's fascistic rhetoric."
Donald Trump is pushing for his daughter-in-law Lara to become co-chair of the GOP, with Lara saying that if she is elected, "every single penny" of party funding will be spent toward Donald Trump. Never-Trumper Ron Filipkowski replied on Xwitter: "I just want to make sure as many Republican candidates around the country can see this as possible. Suckers."
* There was actually an election yesterday, in New York's 3rd Congressional District, to replace disgraced Congressman George Santos. Democrat Tom Suozzi trounced Republican Mazi Melesa Pilip by roughly 54% to 46%, in a district that leans Right. The polls had been saying the race was "too close to call", but it was not close. A hint about how the November elections will go? [ED: False hint, as it turned out.]
* In Ukraine War news, the AFU hit the landing ship CESAR KUNIKOV of the Black Sea Fleet with five kamikaze drone boats, sending it to the bottom -- to join the BSF corvette IVANOVETS, sunk by six k-drone boats about a week earlier. It appears the Ukrainian offensive against the Black Sea Fleet is picking up pace, and the prospect of the Black Sea becoming a Ukrainian lake is getting closer. The AFU showed off a small drone submarine, nicknamed the MARICHKA, a few months ago, but has said nothing about it since. [ED: Nothing much was later said about the drone submarines. It appears the surface k-drone boats were effective and not as costly.]
THU 15 FEB 24: The US Department of Justice has indicted one Alexander Smirnoff for "false statement & obstruction crimes" -- specifically related to the tales Smirnoff told about alleged corrupt activities of President Joe Biden. Federal investigators do not like being lied to.
The driving force behind the indictment was Special Counsel David Weiss, who has been conducting an investigation of Hunter Biden, the president's son. Originally, Weiss had proposed to let HB off easy on charges of tax evasion and illegal ownership of a firearm, but the courts didn't accept that. With nothing else to do, Weiss then threw the book at HB. Smirnoff has been a key figure in the House MAGA's efforts to impeach Joe Biden; could Smirnoff's indictment be a shot in their direction?
* Less significantly, there was a LINCOLN PROJECT video on YouTube that mocked Trump's mental decline, with an online commenter saying: "I'd rather have a president with 80 years of experience behind him, than one with 91 felony charges ahead of him."
FRI 16 FEB 24: The death of Russian dissident Aleksey Navalnyy in prison from an ailment was announced today. He was 47 years old. With his death, it would seem that all protest against Russian President Vladimir Putin's regime have been snuffed out. The only glimmer of resistance that persists is in the form of the campaign of sabotage being conducted to undermine the Russia war effort against Ukraine. Nobody really knows what's going on there, however, so I tend to attribute such events to poltergeists.
Of more direct concern to Americans is the judgement passed down by New York Justice Arthur Engoron to assess penalties for Donald Trump in his fraud case. It came to $355 million USD -- $450 million USD after interest charges were factored in -- and Trump can't do business in New York State for three years.
I was wondering before the trial was announced: "Whatever happened to NY AG Tish James' civil fraud suit against Trump?" I asked, and now I have been answered. This is a big deal: it's hard to see how Trump's bogus business empire can survive it. It isn't enough to just lock him up: he needs to be ruined so he has no more capability to do harm. That almost feels vindictive, but he deserves every bit of it. I commented online: "Trump's fallen from the top of the loser tree, and is hitting every branch on the way down."
* Today was something of a landmark: I finally bailed out of Xitter, it was just too much of a trashpit to put up with any more. I probably wasn't alone: groups that track trollbot activity say that it reached 75% of traffic on Xitter on Super Bowl weekend. 50% is seen as very bad. Reminded me of seeing PCs back in the 1990s that were infected by malware and reduced to uselessness. I thought that I would retain my Xitter account, just in case, but I later decided enough was enough, and deleted it. It was a relief. [ED: They didn't actually delete it. I later forced them to suspend it, but it still took some time to go away.]
SAT 17 FEB 24: Ukrainian officials have now announced that the city of Avdiivka, near Donetsk City, has fallen to Russian forces. The Russians will crow, but they paid in buckets of blood to take a wrecked city, no doubt strewn with booby-traps. In the meantime, the AFU fell back to a pre-prepared line of defense. Rinse & repeat.
AND SO ON: German TV channel ZDF interviewed General Oleksandr Syrskyy, the new head of Armed Forces Ukraine, who had a number of interesting comments about the asymmetric tactics being used by the AFU:
QUOTE:
We have transitioned from offensive actions to conducting a defensive operation. The goal of our operation is to exhaust the enemy, inflict maximum losses on them, using our fortifications, our technical advantages, unmanned aerial vehicles, electronic warfare systems, and maintaining prepared defense lines.
... This war emphasizes the importance of technological progress in the armed forces and the progress of armed combat itself. We already see -- and for us, it's not news -- the use of ground-based robotic platforms, units that are remotely controlled, which make it possible to save the lives of military personnel. ... the war is entering a new stage.
... Everything is based on the fact that we must end the war by reaching our borders. Other options are not considered because we simply have no other way out.
... If there is no external assistance, we need to establish production here in Ukraine. This process has been launched, but production needs to be increased. We need to rely on our own strength. It is also necessary to improve tactics. The main value is the life of our soldier.
... When the aggression started, I felt like I was going into some abyss with no clear time frames. At that moment, it was unclear when it would end, but I understood that it would be long and difficult.
END_QUOTE
Unsurprisingly, the general made no mention of escalation of the special-operations war in the Russian rear, nor of the strengthening drone war against Russia's military assets and oil infrastructure. The AFU may remain on the defense on the battlefield, but a purely passive defense won't win the war.
BACK_TO_TOP* SUN 18 FEB 24: It appears that Palestinian-American Representative Rashida Tlaib of Wisconsin is telling Arab-American citizens of that state not to vote for Joe Biden. I can only marvel at how deluded she must be. In similar news, it appears some truck drivers are declaring they won't deliver cargoes to New York State, after the state hit Donald Trump with a $350 million fine. They're not really thinking, either.
* MON 19 FEB 24: Reports are that the "Pineapple Express" -- the wet "atmospheric river" from the Pacific Ocean -- is dumping water on California at an alarming rate. Will the Central Valley get flooded out? The Great Flood of 1862 turned it into a lake, at a time when the population density was far lower. I got an email from a contact in San Diego who said: "We haven't floated away yet."
Of course, the irony is that California has been suffering from prolonged drought. Does this mean the end of the drought? Possibly, but it turns out that it takes a lot of rain for a long time to restore depleted groundwater reservoirs, so California may not have escaped the drought just yet. At least, California isn't having a winter fire season.
* In Ukraine War news, a Russian helicopter pilot named Maksim Kuzminov made a splash in August 2023 by defecting to Ukraine with a Mil Mi-8 transport helicopter. He got his family out as well, with Ukraine promising him security -- but Kuzminov decided he didn't want to live in a war zone, so he went to Spain. Spanish authorities have now found his body in an underground parking lot; he had been shot at least five times. Putin has a long memory and a long reach.
* TUE 20 FEB 24: Australian "hacktivist" Julian Assange, who founded Wikileaks and achieved notoriety by using it as a weapon to help defeat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 US election, ended up in a British prison, with the Americans pushing for his extradition. His advocates say he is being persecuted for exercising free speech, but the US charges against him are derived from the Espionage Act, targeting his efforts to illegally obtain secret US documents -- spying, in a word.
The British government approved his extradition. Now Assange's lawyers are down to their last appeal in British courts to stop it, saying his health is poor and he might not survive a stay in an American prison. He is not getting much sympathy these days; while he does have a fan club on the Redlined Left, more Americans remember with displeasure how he helped Donald Trump get elected. However, even that disdain is muted these days, because Assange is simply irrelevant: few care what happens to him.
* WED 21 FEB 24: Regarding comments above on Julian Assange, a reader tipped me off to a 2013 movie titled THE FIFTH ESTATE on Assange, played by Benedict Cumberbatch. I didn't watch it, but I did go through IMDB reviews. Many reviewers were indignant at the rough handling Assange got in the movie, but those less invested in him suggested it was the true story -- of a person who started out with what looked like high ideals, which were then corrupted by hubris and a cavalier attitude towards ethics.
I failed to point out in yesterday's posting three significant facts about Assange:
Many publications are saying that Assange shouldn't be extradited, since it would have a chilling effect on journalists around the world. Then again, it might make them more cautious about crossing lines they shouldn't cross.
* THU 22 FEB 24: Climate change is upon us, and inevitably has led to climate-change trolling. As discussed in an article from CNN.com ("Climate Scientist Awarded More Than $1 Million" by David Goldman and Paradise Afshar, 9 February 2024), prominent climate scientist Michael Mann has pushed back on the trolls.
In 2012 Rand Simberg, then a writer for the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), and Mark Steyn, a TV and radio personality who wrote for the NATIONAL REVIEW, generated blog posts ridiculing Mann's climate-change warnings and comparing him to Jerry Sandusky, the former Pennsylvania State football coach who was convicted of child molestation. The two wrote: "Mann could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except that instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science that could have dire economic consequences for the nation and planet,"
They also ridiculed Mann's research on the "Hockey Stick" chart that shows the dramatic rise in average global temperature since pre-industrial times. Mann sued them, and also sued the NATIONAL REVIEW and CEI. A 2021 court decision dismissed the suit against the NATIONAL REVIEW and CEI, but allowed the suit against Simberg and Steyn to proceed. A jury in the Washington DC Superior Court awarded Mann $1 million USD in punitive damages, and a dollar from each defendant in compensatory damages. Mann intends to appeal the decision that he can't sue the NATIONAL REVIEW and CEI.
In the USA, defamation suits are difficult to win, but as of late plaintiffs have been scoring big hits -- against conspiracy troll Alex Jones, FOX News, and Donald Trump. They got too fond of trolling and went way beyond the limits.
AND SO ON: The weather's getting nicer, and I'm starting to take a ride on my Razor A6 kick scooter after lunch. From early on, I had problems with rear view: the scooter is too unstable to allow me to turn around and look back. I bought a helmet-mounted mirror from Amazon, but it didn't work out -- one problem being that I'm nearsighted in my left eye (farsighted in the right) and it had to be mounted on the left to work. I don't think it would have worked well even if my left eye was better, since the mirror was too tall and unstable.
That failing, I bought some handlebar-mounted mirrors -- but they arrived broken, and on examining them I didn't think they would work very well mechanically. I returned them. I was at a loss, until I ran across Amazon listings for aviator-style sunglasses with outside mirrored segments. I figured they were worth a try, so I ordered them.
On getting them and examining them, they looked like conventional aviator's shades, except they were flat across, no curvature. The outboard mirror segments can't be seen from the front, and they're partly transparent from the back. They turned out to work very well, except that they had a learning curve, being something like having four eyes, two forward and two back, and not something I was at all used to.
First problem was learning how to aim my head so I could target the mirror segment, viewing through my right eye. The next, bigger problem was visually making sense of the world behind me. When we're driving about the town and seeing things, we have a map of sorts in the mind to make sense of where things are, but it was hard at first to register the rear view with the map. It takes a lot of practice to make sense of the rear view. Finally, I have the forward and back view in sight at the same time, and switching between them can be confusing. The confusion is enhanced by the partial silvering of the mirror paneling, since I have to screen out forward visual signals leaking through. I'm learning, but it takes time.
Incidentally, the kick scooter gives me a fair workout. I'm too old to run any more, my legs won't stand it, but the kick scooter gives me a nice substitute. I've actually put on a bit of muscle weight, enhanced by upping my calisthenics as well. I'm a little surprised that I can put on muscle weight, now that I'm in my 70s.
BACK_TO_TOP