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random-thought-depository · 2 months

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One of the thoughts I had while writing that post on Barbara Ehrenreich's Blood Rites, anti-predator defense, and the origins of the male gender role is if that model is correct it implies Larry Niven got the relationship between a sapient species's diet and culture/values pegged wrong, at least as far as the Kzin are concerned. Courage is the virtue of a prey species that engages in collective defense; a smart predator attacks the weak, avoids fights against strong opponents, and is quick to retreat from any fight in which it loses the advantage; a sapient species with a long evolutionary history of being big game hunting carnivore apex predators would probably value/honor courage less than we do, so Kzin biology and implied evolutionary history is actually kind of an awkward fit with the kind of assholes the Kzin are. Asshole aliens with a long evolutionary history of being big game hunting carnivore apex predators might be sneaky raiders with an unapologetic "if they outgun us, trade, avoid, or appease, if we outgun them, raid and pillage!" mindset, or something like that; they probably wouldn't have the prideful machismo, hotheaded aggression, and disdain for restraint of the Kzin (you could argue calling it machismo is an anthropomorphism because Kzintosh aren't men but lbr human machismo is very obviously what the Kzin attitude is modeled on).

I wouldn't go so far as to say it's unrealistic for the Kzin to be the way they are, cause Kzin values could plausibly arise from intra-species competition and my rationalization for why the Kzin are as they are is a mix of that and "the Kzin are like that because their right-wing authoritarians won their history and got to shape their culture." But, as I said, I think the kind of assholes the Kzin are wouldn't logically flow directly from their ancestral subsistence strategy/ecological niche.

Which makes me wonder: if as a spec-bio exercise I tried to make a species which's biology would predispose them toward becoming approximately the kind of asshole Proud Warrior Race the Kzin are, what traits would they have?

Here's what I came up with:

First obvious thing is to give them a "harem" social system like gorillas, elephant seals, certain ungulates, etc.. This lends itself well to a species with a highly competitive male hierarchy in which male social and reproductive success is contingent on being able to make credible costly signals of being strong and badass.

One major obstacle to a species like that becoming a threat on the interstellar scale is control by a single dominant male is a pretty hard cap on group size. I propose that this species has overcome that by developing a social system with dominant bull coalitions, so instead of being limited to groups of one to three dozen individuals controlled by a single dominant male, they can have e.g. groups of a few thousand individuals controlled by a few hundred dominant bulls and so on; this eventually scaled up to an interstellar empire with billions of subjects and probably at least a few hundred million dominant bulls in loose coalition (that big dominant bull coalition is the empire's warrior-aristocrat class).

Unlike the Kzin, in this species the females will definitely be sapient and have lots of soft power; all the internal male social competition and external war and imperialism is largely about impressing them.

Another major point of difference from the Kzin: this species definitely should not have much evolutionary history of cooperative big game hunting. Pack hunting strongly incentivizes and rewards cooperation and solidarity (I suspect this plus the smaller group sizes of carnivores is why you see "harem" social organization more in herbivores), whereas I think to get aliens that are assholes in approximately the way the Kzin are we want a social system that's highly internally competitive. This probably implies a mostly herbivorous diet, though there might be some supplementation with small game; the important thing is this species has had basically no selection pressure for being effective predators of animals strong enough to require cooperation to take down.

Related and important point: the evolution of sapience in this species was more-or-less entirely driven by social competition and sexual selection, and they got too big to be tempting targets for the predators of their ancestral environment long before they developed sapience. So this is a species with no recent evolutionary history of being a prey species.

I guess we're maybe looking at something like a mix of gorillas and elephants here; maybe ancestrally browsers of the savanna and open woodland (though they'd gradually switch toward eating more richer food such as fruit, tubers, young shoots, meat, etc. as they developed more efficient food production). If we're doing the Mass Effect "more alien-looking than Star Trek forehead aliens but still implausibly humanoid" thing some kind of big beefy horned minotaur-looking humanoids would be a pretty appropriate look for the dominant bulls (with the subordinate males being more slender and the females being more slender and substantially smaller - this would be a species with way more sexual dimorphism than humans), not sure what I'd make them look like if I went the route of making them more realistically alien-looking.

Organized violence (i.e. war) developed in this species partly as a mating ritual. Large-scale battles gave males the same kind of opportunities to demonstrate strength and courage that fitness signalling duels did, but the much more complex tactical environment of a large-scale battle also offered opportunities for males to conspicuously demonstrate intelligence and cooperation. The switch from duels to battles as the primary arena of fitness signalling was a major selection pressure driving the evolution of sapience in this species. Originally the ultimate aim of war in this species was group fusion in which the dominant bull coalition of one group would defeat the dominant bull coalition of another group and the two groups would merge with the victorious dominant bull coalition being the dominant bull coalition of the combined group and the males in the defeated dominant bull coalition being either killed or demoted to subordinate status with their new lower rank being rubbed in by bullying and humiliation rituals. As the species developed bigger and more sedentary social groups this developed into territorial conquest with conquered communities remaining in their old homes under the rule of viceroys. But the thing where wars were partly giant mating rituals meant often neither side was particularly in a hurry to finish off their enemies as no more enemies to fight would mean diminished opportunities for social mobility and impressing females; there tended to be a "we have always been at war with Eurasia/Eastasia" dynamic where the conflict itself was effectively treated as having social value and actively maintained and subject to various forms of ritualization that limited its destructiveness so it could be kept going longer.

So, this is a species that's gotten lots of selection pressure from intra-species competition and violence, but has no recent evolutionary history as cooperative predators of animals with comparable size and strength to themselves and has no recent evolutionary history as a prey species. This species will have instincts and intuitions about violence totally optimized for intra-species violence that's mostly a mix of coalition politics propaganda of the deed and male fitness signalling rituals (and, of course, their culture will build on those instincts and intuitions and the dynamics that selected for them). I think this would lead plausibly to people who share one of the defining traits of the Kzin: being aggressive imperialist warmongering swaggering bullies who endlessly congratulate themselves on their ferocious warrior spirit and supposed mighty warrior prowess and supposed right to rule derived from that but are not actually all that good at war compared to a species like us that has been shaped by hunting and being hunted.

The thing about intra-species violence that's mostly a mix of coalition politics propaganda of the deed and male fitness signalling is it simultaneously incentivizes restraint more than inter-species predator/prey violence and incentivizes aggression more consistently than inter-species predator/prey violence.

On the restraint side, intra-species violence means potentially violence against relatives or potential mates, and in a social species violence against potential helpers. This obviously creates an incentive for restraint. Violent intra-species competition is where you get natural weapons and combat set up to probably not do too much damage (bighorn sheep knocking each other on their hard blunt horns instead of stabbing each other in the fleshy flank or face with sharp horns), notions of fair and honorable fights, "why don't you pick on someone your own size?," chivalry, rules of war, boxing gloves and rules against hitting below the belt, etc.. This post touches on some of the dynamics I'm talking about here.

I think plausible cultural development of this species might enhance this. A highly competitive "harem" social system means at least the males of this species are likely to be less cooperative than humans, and a less cooperative species will have a harder time forming effective equalizing coalitions. This species never got our probable evolutionarily significant period of living in mostly relatively egalitarian societies; compared to us their males at least are likely to be less wired for cooperative coalition-building and more wired for trying to individualistically climb their way up viciously competitive hierarchies; again, it seems likely this would make the formation of effective equalizing coalitions harder. The females are a bit of a wild card here, not sure what'd be going on with them, but considering they find aggressive, violent, domineering males sexy, I can see them not having instincts terribly promising for forming effective society-wide equalizing coalitions either. A species that's not very good at forming effective equalizing coalitions is likely to be not very good at coming up with ideologies of equality; equivalents of liberalism, democracy, socialism, anarchism, etc. may not exist at all in their philosophical tradition, or if they exist are likely to be obscure and marginal. The implication may be the political landscape of this species was a pretty dismal picture of oppressive oligarchies everywhere for pretty much the entire existence of their species. Like I said, I expect this species would develop a lot of practices to limit the destructiveness of war and focus its destructiveness on direct combatants. Defeat of a community in war would likely mean little change in the social or material conditions of most of the community's members; one oligarchic dominant bull coalition would replace another, and the only real change for most people would be a change in the names and faces (or scents or whatever they primarily recognize each other by) of their masters. Plausibly, the females of a conquered community would even approve of the change, seeing their community's new ruling dominant bull coalition as having proven themselves more desirable breeding material by winning. All of this would tend to encourage a sensibility that wars are basically social games between males and the only thing important at stake in them is the personal social and reproductive success of the direct combatants.

On the aggression side... Violent coalition politics involves lots of costly signalling, bluff, and martyrdom. The kind of violence a species like the one I'm describing here engages in is probably going to include a lot of violence that's basically an implicit statement of "I am exceptionally strong and brave and badass and would be an exceptionally good subordinate or ally, please give me a promotion!" And when it comes to male violence done as male fitness signalling to females, well, sperm is cheap and ova and wombs are expensive; in a "harem" social system demonstrating your mere viability will probably not be enough to impress females into mating with you, they are likely to require a costly signal of exceptional excellence before perceiving you as a desirable breeding partner, and if you die trying to make that costly signal, well, rolling the dice on a 65% chance of getting killed while young and a 35% chance of getting to breed might easily be selected for over contenting oneself with dying childless at a ripe old age.

Basically, I think you might plausibly end up with a species with bone-deep intuitions that:

- Violence is a performance, it is primarily communicative, using it to send a message to your opponent and/or to witnesses is at least an important secondary consideration and may even be more important than the actual concrete outcome of the fight. It is not enough to simply defeat your enemy, you must do so in a way that effectively communicates what you want to communicate.

- The most consistent purposes of violence are to show off your own strength, bravery, and fighting prowess and to terrorize and humiliate your opponent into submission.

- War is basically a game played among males. It's not a trivial game, it's literally deadly serious for the males involved in it and your society is largely organized around it, but it's fundamentally a game; the only people who have really big stakes in it are the direct combatants, and having fun and displaying good sportsmanship and putting on a cool performance are important secondary considerations and may even be more important than the actual concrete outcome. If you've ever read Ian Banks's Player Of Games, Azad (the game and the institutions and culture around it) in that book is the best analogy I can think of for what war would be to these people.

- Your enemies will be basically following the same rule book you have.

When these people develop interstellar travel and meet other sapient species, they'll apply the instincts and cultural institutions they developed for intra-species competition to those other sapients. I.e. they'll turn into nasty imperialists. Conquered aliens would get incorporated into their society in about the same social position as weak males. In their society weak males with little hope of rising to dominant bull status are kept around for labor and to assist with the care and education of the offspring of their female relatives and have a social status roughly equivalent to serfs; this would be the obvious niche to put conquered aliens in, with some modifications, e.g. conquered aliens would be expected to keep reproducing with each other.

Combine what I said in the previous paragraph with how much these people's social instincts would revolve around volatile male hierarchies reinforced by bullying and humiliation rituals, and I expect being a conquered subject of them would tend to be unpleasant to horrific. Being a primarily herbivorous species, these people wouldn't occasionally eat their slaves like the Kzin, but I could totally see the dominant bulls occasionally casually caving some poor slave's skull in out of a combination of some petty irritation and wanting to remind everyone who's boss.

Let's say we want these people to get approximately the same nasty surprise when they attack humans that the Kzin did. Model favorable to that:

In this setting, the most common pathway to sapience is through social and sexual selection. Sapient species usually evolve in environments without big predators, e.g. isolated islands, because serious predation pressure tends to prevent the very strong commitment to a long-lived slow-breeding very K-selected life strategy that leads to sapience. Sapient species usually do not have recent evolutionary history as big game hunters (the typical sapient is a physically not very strong omnivore, often primarily an eater of fruit, tubers, seeds, insects, and small animals, though also a lot of sapient species started with an ecological niche roughly equivalent of fish-eating birds that nest in large rookeries). Species that evolve sapience through this pathway usually have strong social and artistic intelligence, but lack instincts and institutions of organized violence (they aren't always peaceful, but if they do have significant intra-species violence it's murder, done by individuals or very small groups, not war).

When the warmonger aliens I've spent most of this post describing meet species like this it usually goes similarly to what happened when the Maori met the Moriori, or at least like that event as described in a book I read once. The warmonger aliens will roll up and be like "Yo, what's up, losers! You are now our slaves! We're awfully fond of presents called 'tribute' which you'll be giving us regularly from now on, and you'll be obeying our orders from now on! You can start by performing these humiliating submission rituals to acknowledge our superiority!" and this will be kind of an OCP to their victims, who will usually either basically surrender immediately or try to resist but fold pretty quickly cause they aren't well-equipped for war psychologically, culturally, institutionally, or materially. The warmonger dominant bulls honestly find it kind of boring, to the point that they fight a lot of highly ritualized flower war style conflicts among themselves as a mix of oligarch class dispute resolution, bloody enrichment, and live fire training to keep their warrior skills sharp.

Basically, the galaxy is full of weedy theater kid nerds, and these warmonger aliens are the meathead jock bullies of the galaxy going around shoving those nerds into lockers and stealing their lunch money.

The exceptions to this pattern the warmonger aliens met before us were a mix of 1) other species like themselves, 2) sapient species with a long evolutionary history of being big game hunting carnivore more-or-less apex predators (who are basically sneaky raiders). The warmonger alien dominant bulls tend to hate the latter and bitch endlessly about how they "have no honor," but savor tangling with the former in a "finally, worthy opponents!" way.

Then they met humans.

Humans have a long enough evolutionary history of big game hunting that this may have subjected us to significant selection pressure for increased cooperativeness that the warmonger aliens didn't get. But that isn't special in this context, the warmonger aliens have tangled with sapients descended from big game hunting carnivores before.

The thing that makes humans relevantly special is our relatively recent evolutionary history of being a prey species that engaged in collective defense, and the instincts we have that formed in that context but can be activated in other kinds of conflict.

Going back to that "real fights" thing earlier:

"but how often are you ever going to be in a fight where you’re willing to rip the other guy’s cheek out, gouge out his eyes and so forth?"

A fight against a predator that wants to eat your child looks like that.

If you're fighting a member of your own species, the entity you're fighting might be a relative, potential mate, or potential helper, so there's an incentive for restraint.

If you're a predator hunting, well, a carnivore species needs their prey species, that's their food source; smart lions wouldn't want to wipe out their prey species, they need their prey species, they would prefer their prey species thrive and be abundant and healthy; again there is an incentive for restraint; very plausibly one of the first lessons a sapient carnivore species would have to collectively learn after becoming sapient is restraint, learning that it would be all too easy to use their new, better weapons to kill too many of their prey and that they need to consciously avoid doing that.

Prey defending themselves from predators are the ones who'd have more-or-less zero incentive for restraint. If you can hurt or kill the lioness that's trying to eat your child, there is basically no reason to not go for it except self-preservation. Predators need their prey, but that's not symmetrical; prey don't need their predators, and sapient prey smart enough to do birth control and cull any dumber competitor species would probably be unambiguously much better off if all their predators dropped dead (Pleistocene humans could have done semi-reliable birth control by abstinence, outercourse, and lactational amenorrhea).

Humans are a slow-breeding species. A pride of lions could easily gradually eat a small early human band into extinction, and would have little incentive to avoid doing so cause humans aren't even their primary prey so when they ran out of humans they could just eat more of the antelope and so on that are already most of what they're eating anyway. The warmonger aliens have no evolutionary history of conflicts so existential.

The warmonger aliens have an idea of self-sacrificial heroism, but their version is entirely oriented (in an "adaptation executor, not fitness maximizer" way) toward burnishing the reputation of surviving close male relatives by association and thus increasing their reproductive success. They would have nothing in their recent evolutionary history like the experience of standing between a child and a hungry lioness. They would not grok "get away from her you bitch!" (that essay talks about the role of males in anti-predator defense but, yeah, women would have this too, who do you think would be the last line of defense for the children if a predator got past the male defensive ring?).

(The warmonger aliens definitely think it's a bit weird that we have mixed gender armies, not so much in a conventionally sexist way - they're inclined to see the size and strength differences between human men and women as obviously trivial compared to the much bigger sexual dimorphism of their species - but in that the idea of females caring enough about the outcome of a war to fight in it is alien to them. It's not that weird to them though, the big game hunter ancestry carnivore sapients they've encountered have mixed-sex armies and unwarlike sapients that try to resist conquest usually form them when they scramble to put a military together so it's got precedent in their experience.)

Like, yeah, the warmonger aliens are exactly the kind of people where some human commander would draw some of them into a clever trap they wouldn't anticipate cause prioritizing actually winning over looking heroic is alien behavior to them and then the comrades of the ones who died getting punked would bitch about how "dishonorable" it was of us to fight to win instead of obediently lining up to get slaughtered like cattle in some set-piece battle because that'd be the "honorable" thing by their definitions.

But also, something a lot like Londo Mollari's little speech about how brave the humans were in the Earth-Minbari war but it's some warmonger alien dominant bull describing the resistance we're putting up against his people and instead of admiration it's spoken with a tone of queasy puzzlement tinged with fear, irritation with our "irrational" resistance mixed with fear of the possible implications for what might happen if we start winning, it's alien behavior to him and he's admitting that it scares him.

Also, turns out species that have been strongly selected for solidarity (that's us!) are good at building equalizing coalitions and creating memes to coordinate them around, so not only are human ideologies of equality such as liberalism and communism effective at supercharging our resistance against imperialist conquest in a way that's an OCP to the warmonger aliens, they also turn out to be really disruptive to the warmonger aliens' shitty empire when some human chaos agents have fun spreading them around in it.

#writing ideas #warning: long

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the-garbanzo-annex-jr · 27 days

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by Dion J. Pierre

Vanderbilt University in Tennessee has suspended and expelled several anti-Zionist students who participated in occupying an administrative building last month, according a statement issued by school provost C. Cybele Raver on Friday.

On March 26, the group “Divest Coalition” amassed inside Kirkland Hall, where its members clamored for administrators to reverse its cancellation of a referendum that, if passed, would have allowed the Vanderbilt Student Government to boycott companies linked to Israel.

At the time, Vanderbilt University commented on the matter to The Vanderbilt Hustler, explaining that several students “assaulted a Community Service Officer to gain entrance” into Kirkland Hall and “pushed” officials who suggested having a meeting to discuss their concerns. The school paper also reported other disturbing conduct that took place inside the building, including that students relieved themselves in plastic bottles and a young woman removed a sanitary product from her undergarments.

“After a thorough review of the incident, including examination of evidence and interviews with students, the Student Accountability, Community Standards, and Academic Integrity staff issued a range of findings and sanctions that took the individual circumstances of each student’s conduct into account,” Raver explained. “The sanctions included disciplinary probation as well as suspension and expulsion. Students have ten days to appeal their case to the university’s Appellate Review Board, a body consisting of faculty and students.”

She added, “The gravity of this situation and these outcomes weighs heavily on those of us charged with carrying out our responsibility as leaders; we fully understand that student choices and decisions can lead to seriously and costly consequences.”

#vanderbilt university #kirkland hall

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catdotjpeg · 3 months

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Vice President Kamala Harris’ push to rally voters in San José around support for reproductive rights ran headlong into protests Monday, demanding an immediate cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas War in Gaza.

At times, protest chants of “cease-fire now” broke out during the rally, interrupting Harris’ speech at least four times. Outside, dozens of protesters lined up along King Road and Alum Rock Avenue, waving signs outside Mexican Heritage Plaza.

[...]

The colliding forces at the Harris rally exposed a key election year challenge for Democrats: many of the younger, progressive voters who the party hopes to win over with a platform of protecting abortion rights are deeply dissatisfied with the Biden administration’s support of Israel.

Holding signs and banners bearing “Free Palestine” and “End U.S. Aid to Israel,” members from the Council on American-Islamic Relations joined a coalition of multi-faith, multiracial organizations with other supporters to demand a permanent cease-fire in Gaza. Allie Felker said she was invited to the Harris event for her work advocating for prenatal care to prevent stillbirths.

But less than three minutes into Harris’ on-stage conversation with actress and activist Sophia Bush, Felker stood up and joined in calls for a cease-fire. Felker told KQED she was motivated by the risks to pregnant women caused by the Israeli invasion. “I can’t come here and advocate for reproductive justice without also standing with Palestine, standing with the women and children of Gaza and saying that the reproductive justice we’re seeking in this country needs to also be equated with what’s happening in Gaza,” Felker told KQED.

[...]

...The ongoing war in Gaza has proven costly to the Biden administration among young voters. A Gallup poll from December found that 50% of Americans under 35 believe the U.S. is giving “too much” support to Israel — compared to 21% who believe the country is lending “too little” support to Israel. “So long as President Biden and Vice President Harris ignore that call [for a cease-fire], they are complicit in genocide, but they are also demonstrating their disconnect with the electorate,” said Zahra Billoo, executive director of CAIR’s San Francisco Bay Area office.

-- From "Protesters Demand Permanent Cease-Fire, Interrupting VP Harris' Stop in San José" by Guy Marzorati, 29 Jan 2024

#palestine #san jose #california

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cock-holliday · 1 month

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I get what people mean when they say things like “you should care about x whether it has to do with you or not, that’s just being a decent person” but sympathy only gets you so far! Coalition building REQUIRES people seeing their struggle in the struggle for others. It’s lovely for short-term work to say “oh I care for others so I’m doing this” but inevitably, actual engaged solidarity will come with a cost! And when that toll becomes too heavy, no matter how well-intentioned you begin, if you can think, “it’s not about me” you will cave!

No, every issue does not have to directly relate to you but if you cannot see where the systems overlap you will always be at the mercy of seeing yourself as separate from the struggle you support, and a wedge will be driven either through repeated “us vs them” conditioning (even seemingly polite allyship like ‘cis people don’t come to this trans rally’) OR when it becomes so costly to support as an ally, you will stop “sticking your neck out” for something that “doesn’t concern” you.

Movements die when people outside the affected group stop caring, but one group’s injury is an injury to your movement too. We are not all facing unique enemies but the many-headed monster that attacks us all. And focusing on revealing where our fights meet is infinitely more important to me, and to genuine solidarity, than separating out who is supporting a cause for “””selfish””” reasons.

#LJsm #the short term guilt trip shit is how you get people burning out so bad #cause they are overwhelmed caring about 62 ‘unrelated’ fights #and feeling like without giving time to all of them they are ‘bad allies’#‘that guy only shows up to anti-cop rallies cause he hates cops for classism reasons and not xyz reasons’#1. do we know that? can it not be both?#2. who do you think is gonna buy us time to escape a cop riot—that guy #or the liberal here terrified of looking racist/transphobic/homophobic/classist/ableist if he DIDNT come?#one of them says this is their fight (whether it’s for the ‘right’ reasons)#the other says ‘this has nothing to do with me—I’m just here to support (until it’s too risky)’

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mariacallous · 1 month

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The end of Sweden’s drawn-out accession to NATO signifies the completion of the Baltic region’s political transformation and strategic reconfiguration. Both processes were accelerated by Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, which has recently crossed the two-year mark, and in both transitions, Russia loses. The value of Russia’s longstanding economic ties and political influence in the region is lost entirely, and its capacity to project military power there is reduced to an unprecedented minimum. An informal coalition of Northern European and Baltic states committed to countering any and all Russian aggression is in the making, and the Russian army’s offensive capabilities continue to be diminished on the Ukrainian battlefields.

These shifts in European security may appear to make the Northern European political and military leaders’ persistent warnings regarding the need to invest in deterring the Russian threat seem over-cautious and even alarmist. President Vladimir Putin found it opportune to assert that invading Poland or Latvia is “out of the question … because we have no interest in Poland, Latvia or anywhere else.” Putin’s reassurances are anything but convincing, and Western leaders confirmed the urgency of building up defense capabilities at the 2024 Munich Security Conference. Their message is, nevertheless, contradicted by the European public’s diminishing concerns about the Russian threat, and commentators in Moscow are quick to point out this discrepancy. Even deeper disagreements have flared up regarding the possibility of sending combat forces from some NATO states to Ukraine. The question of the real military threat that Russia poses to its neighbors, and its potential timeline, deserves more scrutiny.

Scandinavia’s Zeitenwende: Prudent preparations or undue panicking?

Describing the war in Ukraine as a “stalemate” poorly captures the fast-evolving, high-intensity, multi-domain battles that are occurring, and belies the dire situation the Ukrainian army was facing at the start of 2024, which prompted a stream of strong warnings from Northern Europe’s usually reserved political leaders. Swedish Minister for Civil Defense Carl-Oskar Bohlin first sounded the alarm when he warned at his country’s main annual conference that war could come to Sweden. Swedes and Europeans largely reacted with disbelief and criticism, and Russian propaganda added more scorn, but more official statements and intelligence assessments, including a firm endorsement from NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, lent credence to Bohlin’s comment. The large-scale Nordic Response 2024 exercise, which constitutes a part of NATO’s Steadfast Defender 2024 strategic exercise, demonstrated that Scandinavia is indeed going through its own Zeitenwende moment.

One particular aspect of this debate that invariably attracts concern is the proposition that Russia could attack a NATO country within three to five years, as suggested, inter alia, by Danish Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen. This timeframe might appear unnecessarily short given the Russian army’s huge casualties and the deepening degradation of Russia’s defense-industrial complex. However, what underpins this disturbing Nordic estimate is the supposition that Ukraine might be forced to accept a compromise and sign an unfair peace deal with a victorious Russia, an option advocated by quite a few Western experts. Their arguments emphasize Russia’s “victory” at Avdiivka—costly as it was—and exaggerate Ukraine’s war exhaustion, evidenced by the political quarrels over the new legislation on mobilization and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s decision to reshuffle the military leadership.

The “bad peace” option loomed large in early January when the balance of war was tilted heavily in Moscow’s favor, primarily because Western support for Ukraine was paused while the Russian military-industrial complex was operating at peak performance. Since then, however, three significant developments raised Ukraine from the nadir, and two more are in the making. The first was the organization of an “artillery coalition” on the initiative of French President Emmanuel Macron, who correctly recognized the crucial importance of denying Russian superiority in tube and missile artillery. This focus was strengthened by Czech President Petr Pavel’s announcement of a program for purchasing 800,000 artillery shells for Ukraine. The second shift was the European Council’s unanimous approval of a 50-billion-euro (approximately $54.6 billion) aid package to Ukraine for 2024-2027. The third development started with the agreement between Turkey, Bulgaria, and Romania for a joint naval mine-clearing operation securing the maritime corridor to Odesa and continued with a series of Ukrainian hits on the Russian Black Sea Fleet that have effectively denied it access to its bases in Crimea. Ukraine is also set to gain by the end of spring from the combat deployment of several squadrons of F-16 fighters supplied by a coalition of European states led by Denmark and the Netherlands.

Yet important as all these developments are, the major breakthrough would be the U.S. Congress’ long-delayed approval of the $60-billion aid package to Ukraine, which will secure the delivery of urgently needed military hardware, including artillery shells and surface-to-air missiles. This approval cannot be taken for granted, but the effective majority in the House of Representatives remains solid despite the populist recourse with isolationism and so may yet surmount the frustrating technicalities. No amount of European support can compare with this boost to Ukrainian combat capabilities, and no amount of Russian effort at sustaining their offensive after the capture of Avdiivka can prevent U.S. reengagement from turning the tide of the war.

Russia rethinks its Arctic-Baltic geostrategy

Moscow’s decision to maximally concentrate Russia’s military capabilities and economic resources on waging war against Ukraine has left it at a stark disadvantage vis-à-vis the reenergized NATO alliance along the North-Western interface. Moscow used to have superiority of such scale in the Baltic theater that authoritative Western military experts presumed forward positions in Estonia and Latvia to be indefensible and expected a Russian attack across the Suwalki Gap to make a decisive breakthrough. All these forebodings of inevitable defeat have presently become irrelevant, and NATO can confidently plan for defending every inch of Estonian or Lithuanian territory against any offensive grouping that Russia may put together in the immediate future. Expert debates about the effectiveness of the Kaliningrad region’s presumed anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) posture have been resolved by the repeatedly proven inability of the maximum-strength Russian air defenses to protect “Fortress Crimea” from Ukrainian missile and drone strikes.

The Russian high command has recognized that the Baltic theater’s military balance has swung from Russia’s habitual superiority to a deep disadvantage. Already in December 2022, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced a plan to build a new army corps in Karelia, the region on the Finnish border between St. Petersburg and Murmansk. More deployments of troops were supposed to be planned, but the execution of Moscow’s announced response to NATO enlargement has been thwarted by the continual necessity to send every minimally combat-capable unit to the Ukrainian front. In December 2023, Putin decreed an increase of the total strength of the Russian Armed Forces to 1,320,000 troops, but his claims of a steady inflow of volunteers are refuted by the fact that Russia is illegally recruiting in such exotic places as Nepal. Intelligence assessments in such exposed countries as Estonia correctly point to the Russian plans for deploying new units in key strategic directions along the border with NATO, but the implementation of these plans has been postponed until a cease-fire with Ukraine is realized.

One change in the Russian Armed Forces’ organizational structure that reveals a profound change in strategic thinking is Putin’s decree on reconstituting the Moscow and Leningrad (notably not St. Petersburg) military districts. The previous strategic design developed in 2014-2021 was to build an Arctic strategic command on the basis of the Northern Fleet, which was elevated to a separate military district. The underlying assessment in the Russian General Staff was that the Arctic, with the key transport corridor of the Northern Sea Route, constituted an interface with NATO that was significantly different from the Baltic theater. The key difference is that while the Northern Fleet comprises a major part of Russia’s strategic arsenal, the grouping of conventional forces that was supposed to dominate the Baltic region had little need for nuclear weapons. That separation between the Arctic and the Baltic theaters was underpinned by the assumption that Helsinki would remain neutral in any possible conflict—and was proven false by Finland’s shockingly swift accession to NATO.

The newly-restored Leningrad military district is intended to integrate the operations of Russia’s Northern and Baltic Fleets and the ground force groupings along the continuous North-Western interface with NATO, but commanding diverse units in the vast area from the Arctic archipelago of Novaya Zemlya to the Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad will be highly demanding. No new strength can actually be gained from merging the many weaknesses in Russia’s military posture as even the designated Arctic brigade has been repeatedly decimated by fighting in the Donbas.

Russia used to counter every NATO exercise with a show of force, but it has nothing to respond to the ongoing Steadfast Defender 2024 series of exercises, in which the newest U.K. aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales is taking part, while the unlucky Russian carrier Admiral Kuznetsov is stuck with long repairs. The Russian Baltic Fleet is experimenting with redeploying its Karakurt-class missile corvettes to Lake Ladoga, east of St. Petersburg, in order to give them a better chance of survival. It has only one old submarine in its combat order, while the Swedish Navy alone has four and two A26 Blekinge-class submarines are under construction. Russian experts abhor the notion of the Baltic Sea as a “NATO lake,” but the extended sea line of communication between St. Petersburg and Kaliningrad cannot be effectively protected, and Estonia’s deployment of Blue Spear anti-ship missiles increases this vulnerability.

Risks inherent to NATO’s new position of strength in the Baltic theater

Russia is acutely uncomfortable with its political isolation and military weakness in the Baltic theater and is actively seeking asymmetric and “hybrid” measures in order to compensate for its disadvantages. The crude hit on the Balticconnector gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia on October 8, 2023, by the anchor of a Chinese-owned container ship could have been a test run for a strategy of sabotaging underwater infrastructure. Many pipelines and cables in the Baltic and North Seas are hard-to-protect targets, while Russia—ruing the loss of the Nord Stream gas pipeline—does not have similar assets anymore. Unfortunately for Moscow, the European Center of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats (known as Hybrid CoE) is located in Helsinki, and its research is a step ahead of most mischief prepared by the Russian special services.

The main issue with NATO’s present-day position of strength in the Baltics is that it may unravel quickly—and this is what underpins the emphasis added in allied political planning on a looming kinetic war. Three conditions need to converge for this worst-case scenario to become a certainty. The first is a severe curtailing or even complete interruption of U.S. military aid to Ukraine; the second is a negotiated cessation of hostilities consolidating Russian territorial gains in Ukraine; and the third condition is the sustained expansion of Russia’s defense-industrial complex. NATO’s European member states have little influence on the first and the third of these three developments, so they have to prioritize strengthening Ukraine’s resilience.

This imperative prompted Macron to convene a high-level conference in Paris, just two weeks after the Munich gathering, where he heavily hinted at the possibility of deploying allied forces to Ukraine. Macron’s motives are open to interpretation, but his logic is straightforward: In order to prevent Ukraine’s defeat in the absence of U.S. material support, Europeans have to prepare to potentially send combat forces into the war zone. The alternative is to prepare for a Russian large-scale offensive operation in the Baltic region, which even in the “optimistic” German assessment could come within five to eight years. Most European politicians prefer to be “shocked” by Macron’s provocation. It is noteworthy, however, that China has warned not only against sending French troops to Ukraine but also against “ill-considered plans” for preparing to defend against a probable Russian attack in the near future.

Timing works differently in a long war of attrition rather than in fluid maneuver warfare, but it remains crucial. The deadlock in the U.S. Congress has already cost the Ukrainian forces the loss of fortifications around Avdiivka and may make some further retreats inevitable. Providing that the European “artillery coalition” becomes operational and augments the “F-16 coalition,” which is scheduled to deliver in a couple of months, further Russian offensive operations can be checked. It will, however, take another year for the increased European investments in military industries to yield tangible results. After that, the balance of military hardware will be shifting against Russia’s overworked defense-industrial complex, which has been degraded by tightening sanctions.

This prospect demands huge sacrifices from Ukraine, and Kyiv’s determination to stay in the fight might indeed need to be reinforced by a limited deployment of French, British, or combined European forces performing particular air defense and logistical tasks. Ensuring Russia’s defeat is a long-term goal that requires many increases in the quality of European resolve and solidarity, but the war leaves diminishing space for political choices. Fortunately for Europe, investments in upgrading its own capacity for deterring Russian aggression and expanding military support for Ukraine are essentially the same thing.

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mitigatedchaos · 3 months

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Re: Smoke-Filled Rooms

(~1,000 words, 4 mins)

I'm not going to morally criticize @eightyonekilograms for wanting the "smoke-filled rooms" back. I suspect there are two big justifications, which must have circulated through a number of books to reach him. I'll briefly describe those likely justifications, and then provide a potential alternative.

Justifying the Smoke-Filled Room

1 - The interests of each group in the coalition are inherently somewhat in conflict. For example, one faction wants to build a school, and another faction wants to build a library, and there is only $X available to do either. The representative of each faction needs to be seen, publicly, to be fighting hard to get solely their result, and if they compromise, that may be seen as a betrayal.

1A - In the smoke-filled room, the representatives don't have to put on the tough act that they do in public, and can privately make clear what they're willing to trade in negotiations.

1B - When representatives leave the smoke-filled room, they can blame the smoke-filled room for their voters not getting what they want, when actually what the voters want might be impossible, or the voters themselves might not be powerful enough to get much. (Voters distrust this as the representative could just be lying.)

2 - Without the smoke-filled room, no one really owns the party, so no one is really responsible for it and trying to line up the party's long-term strategy is much more a matter of personal moral character - it has a higher price.

What Could Go Wrong with Transparency?

Thus, the coordination on what's good for the party has to happen in the open, indirectly, where the organizational linkages are weaker, and the incentives on each agent are less favorable. At the better end, you get Matt Yglesias appointing himself de facto in charge of the party, but at the worse end, your broader constellation of party-aligned organizations may decide to screw over the party's electability in favor of their own pet issues or personal profit.

For instance, they might uselessly antagonize huge groups of voters for no practical gain because hey, free outrage clicks to keep an organization that's running low on revenue in business this week! (Or out of emotional reasons. Or petty infighting laundered through ideology.)

Pre-Musk Twitter allowed the constellation to rapidly coordinate public messaging, but that's not the same thing as policy, and that's not the same thing as ownership. So they could coordinate very well on bad excuses, but have much more difficulty actually fixing anything.

81kg doesn't seem to think the smoke-filled rooms can come back, probably because of 1B - in order to use the smoke-filled room to discharge blame, the smoke-filled room has to take the blame, so voters think "the smoke-filled room" is the reason they can't get what they want, instead of whatever the actual reason is.

Politicians have a bit of a market-for-lemons related problem - every politician could benefit from lying at least a little bit, in order to broaden their coalition. So most politicians lie. Figuring out which politicians are lying is costly for voters, so they just assume that all politicians are lying. The public statements and unrealistic proposals then become signs of directional loyalty - who are you willing to lie on behalf of? But an honest politician is at a disadvantage.

What is the alternative? We can't just have a committee to fact check all politicians, because then political operatives will just take over the committee.

But there is a way we might be able to move in the direction of increased transparency.

Campaign Promise Bonds

The longpost TIMAC - Alternative Voting Systems proposes a system of "campaign promise bonds." This is a way to get a head start on fundraising for the next election cycle.

The candidate makes a series of explicitly-specified campaign promises which are fixed at the start of the campaign period. Each campaign promise is allocated a specific percentage of the funding pool, which communicates its priority. For example, 25% of campaign promise funds for "Build highway X, if we get a majority in congress."

Donors can put money into the campaign or directly into the campaign promise fund. The candidate can take the campaign funds and put them into the campaign promise fund, including leftover funds at the end of the campaign.

If the candidate loses the election, the donor funds in the campaign promise fund pool are refunded.

If the candidate wins the election, then at the end of their term in office, they may claim the campaign promise bonds as the starting funds for their next election campaign. Donors may contest whether the bond was completely successfully, to be resolved in court. If a bond is marked non-complete, then the donors receive a refund.

A politician can choose to violate the bond conditions at any time during their term - it just means they don't get the money afterwards, and will have to do more fundraising work.

Politicians get two rounds - an initial primary election round, and a general election round.

Obviously, there's a strong incentive to load each bond with conditionals like "assuming my party reach majority in both houses," or to pick actions like "I will put Bill X forward," where the bond doesn't require that Bill X actually passes, but of course primary voters can evaluate the offerings from competing candidates.

What's very interesting about this system is that 1) politicians of opposing parties now have something to trade with each other, and 2) what's available to trade, what they could easily compromise on or give up, is made more legible.

Areas where it's basically impossible to get anything will involve big allocations of "Not X," with relatively little qualifying fine print. Areas where it's possible to get agreement will involve smaller allocations that can be more easily given up, or bond conditions with more fine print (so that the bond isn't invalidated by a compromise).

They could even agree to mutual destruction - "I'll invalidate $X of my bonds if you're willing to invalidate $X of your bonds."

Where could this go wrong? Well, if maintaining people's rights is a minority position in general, this could reveal that by making the relative power of each group in the coalition more legible through their share of the winning candidate's promise pool.

#politics #metapolitics #quick post

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alaskanexile · 3 months

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Stelyuzia is best known of it's army, and rightfully so, while nowhere near undefeated in the way it's propaganda portrays, the Stelyuzian Ground Forces have long been rightfully feared by any peer adversary. This is primarily thanks too an extremely effective combined arms doctrine that places heavy emphasis on overwhelming fire superiority, working in tandem with a cohesive and well organized military structure.

Stelyuzian offensive campaigns typically work in stages, but in simplest terms air forces provide support to heavy artillery barrage, followed up by armored assaults being closely followed behind by infantry. There's a great deal more complexity to it than that but historically, this has been what has won Stelyuzia the day in peer conflicts. Guerilla warfare and COIN operations are another matter, but that's not our focus today.

By comparison, Stelyuzias primary historical peers have all lacked something. The White League of Pharose, technically a military coalition of the various Pharosian national military's, has come the closest to outright trouncing the Stelyuzian military in open war. Lessons learned from the Pharosian War make up the basis of even modern Stelyuzian military theory. The White Leagues strategy was sound, their tactics excellent, and their manpower ample and committed. The difference was, unfortunately, technology and political infighting as the war dragged on. Pharose had worked hard to close the technological gap after opening it's borders and entering the interstellar stage, but was still lacking in even things as basic as modern small arms.

The Grand Armée of the Republique of Tov is a competent fighting force that more than matches, and often surpasses, Stelyuzian technology! But it is hampered by it's haphazard and disorganized structure that breeds infighting among leadership and disorder on the field and creates total chaos in the logistics system with incompatible parts and munitions between it's constituent organizations. That's without touching chronically poor morale among enlisted troops and conscripts and the rampant corruption among senior ranks.

The Enduran Independence Coalition had uncontested technological superiority in it's day. By it's height, it even fielded fully sealed combat helmets with Heads Up Displays alongside basic exosuits to even it's most basic infantry! But it was never able to match the sheer manpower or material resources of Stelyuzia, leading too an over reliance on it's special forces that simply could not make up the difference. That's without going into the high cost and over-engineered nature of it's vehicles and gear making repairs costly and downtime lengthy.

I lay all this out, because it makes an interesting contrast to the Stelyuzian Navy. While the Ground Forces adapted and learned from the Pharosian War, the Navy has managed to maintain such a strict adherence to tradition that it is effectively unchanged from it's initial formation.

Stelyuzian Naval Doctrine is fundamentally that the Navy's sole function is to support the Ground War. Everything it does is in support of this, all it's offensive tools and defenses exist only too allow it to continue providing supplies and reinforcements to the ground side. This has lead to an extremely static and long range battle order, with a heavy over reliance on Battleships and Siegeships. Every other variant of ship in a fleet is either purely logistics or only exists to protect the battleships and Siegeships. Even Carriers, the heart of basically every other navy, are small and only launch their Void fighters to intercept hostile fighters moving in range of the fleet.

It is not to say that the Stelyuzian Navy is in anyway useless, far from it, but historically even it's proudest victories were pyrrhic. The famed Winter Offensive that ended the Pharosian War decisively had an attrition rate of 3 Stelyuzian ships for every 1 Pharosian ship. Some particularly brave historians even suggest that the Winter Offensive only succeeded because of the direct support of the Tovi navy to make up for the Stelyuzians inflexibility.

In many ways, had the Winter Offensive failed, it's likely that both the war would have ended in a peace treaty instead of the glassing of Pharose and that the Stelyuzian Navy would have been forced to reform. Though, given the history of post war Stelyuzia under the Immortal Council, the latter may be wishful thinking.

Interestingly, the Navy of the Republique has always existed in stark contrast to the Grand Armée. Where the Army is essentially a collection of six competing paramilitaries in a trench coat, the navy is and always has been a single organization. With no battleships and only one Siegeship to a fleet, the Republique navy instead focuses on a highly mobile order of battle centered around its' massive carriers. Republique Void Fighters are critical to any engagement and most other ships utilize speed or stealth to get in range to deliver devastating missile barrages.

#setting: følslava #world building #this is sorta rambly but i wanted to type it out #barely proof read

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griseldagimpel · 2 months

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Everything's Crapshoot; Here's What We Can Do

I'm thinking about a comment I made recently, about Joe Biden being a shoe-in for the Democratic nomination. And, well, there are a lot of posts about how Joe Biden losing in November won't stop the U.S.'s support of Israel's genocide in Palestine because Trump will be president. And that's true.

But it's also true that a different Democrat being president in November probably wouldn't stop the U.S.'s support of Israel's genocide in Palestine.

A candidate from a third party winning might, but only in as much that in order for a third party candidate to win, so much would have to be different that the U.S. would be a very different place. But the third party candidate winning is a correlated effect, not the cause.

This is because [some of] the macro-forces at play for why Israel is committing genocide and the U.S. is backing it are:

It politically benefits the ruling party of Israel for Israel to be "at war".

It benefits Israel to steal land and resources from Palestine.

It benefits the U.S.'s shitty interfering in the Middle East to have Israel as an ally.

The U.S.'s military industrial complex profits from selling weapons to Israel.

And those remain true regardless of who the U.S. president is, so making things better isn't as simple as "have a different president" because any president is still going to have those same macro-forces pressuring them. And something like "stop the military industrial complex" isn't easy.

Yes, the U.S. is a broken mess. It has always been a broken mess. It's less of a broken mess than it was when it started, but it's still very much a broken mess. Our task is to fix it as much as we are able.

This isn't a "despair and give up" post. There are still things we can do. Just because Biden's a shoe-in for the nomination doesn't mean we're in General Election Time. We're still in the primaries, and there are still things we can do now.

So, [some of] the macro-forces that are or could be in our favor are:

International condemnation of Israel's genocide and the U.S.'s support of it.

support of the genocide being politically costly to U.S. politicians.

Congress being prone to quagmire

Keep on protesting and contacting elected officials and everything else that's contributing to that international condemnation.

If you can vote in the U.S. Democratic primaries, please do so. Vote again Joe Biden in your state's presidential primary or caucus.

And when it comes time for the primaries for the Congressional seats up for election (which, as is always the case every two years, is all of the House and a third of the Senate), please look at your the Democrats running (either to upset a Republican or to defend their seat) and their support or opposition to the U.S.'s backing of Israel's genocide. Then either vote against or for them as applicable.

I know there have been headlines about Biden doing a run around of Congress in support of Israel, but those are misleading. The president of the United States does not control finances unless Congress specifically cedes specific control to them.

If we can get a big enough anti-genocide coalition, we can stop the U.S.'s material support for Israel's genocide. We don't even need a majority of Congress. We just need a big enough faction to quagmire the funding bills when they come through.

#israel palestinine conflict #politics #primary elections #joe biden #long post

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playitagin · 10 months

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1809-Battle of Wagram

France defeats the Austrian army in the largest battle to date of the Napoleonic Wars.

The Battle of Wagram ([ˈvaɡram]; 5–6 July 1809) was a military engagement of the Napoleonic Wars that ended in a costly but decisive victory for EmperorNapoleon's French and allied army against the Austrian army under the command of Archduke Charles of Austria-Teschen. The battle led to the breakup of the Fifth Coalition, the Austrian and British-led alliance against France. Wagram was the largest battle in European history up to its time.

With 74,000 casualties, the two-day battle of Wagram was particularly bloody, mainly due to the use of 1,000 artillery pieces and the expenditure of 200,000 rounds of artillery ammunition on a flat battlefield packed with some 300,000 men. Although Napoleon was the uncontested winner, he failed to secure an overwhelming victory and the Austrian casualties were only slightly greater than those of the French and allies. Nonetheless, the defeat was serious enough to shatter the morale of the Austrians, who could no longer find the will to continue the struggle. The resulting Treaty of Schönbrunn meant the loss of one sixth of the Austrian Empire's subjects, along with some territories, rendering it landlocked until the German Campaign of 1813.

#Jul.6.1809 #Battle of Wagram #Napoleonic Wars #history today

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onecornerface · 2 months

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Should we avoid talking about race? Some ideas

I recently saw a comment which basically said drug reformists shouldn’t talk about race and racism too much, since this topic is so divisive. I’ve long had mixed feelings toward this sort of view. There is a real problem in a lot of race discourse. However, I think the solution is to develop knowledge and skills of why and when to talk about race (and why and when not to), and to become good at how we talk about race.

(I’ll be using “race” and “racism” roughly interchangeably in this post. I assume race will typically be significant (when it is) because racism is significant. And I assume that racism is, in some important sense, conceptually prior to race.)

(My concern here is mainly the idea of avoiding race in drug policy discourse. However, some aspects of my post will apply more generally as well. Also, by "taboo" I mean basically avoiding a topic, and encouraging other people to avoid a topic. This can come in different kinds and degrees, which I haven't much delved into here.)

There are a few ways to interpret the “race is divisive” claim. On one construal, the problem is that there are a lot of racists who will be alienated by any talk of race (for racist reasons), and that we should try not to alienate them. I actually think effective coalitions do need some degree of tolerance toward some amount of bad ideas or prejudice among its members, or prospective members—but there is the question of how much is too much. How much tolerance should we express toward bad ideas and attitudes, and how bad do they need to be? If we’re supposed to simply maximize recruitment of explicit racists into the drug reform movement, and never challenge their racism, then that’s a recipe for a serious rise in racism within the movement—a disaster that would probably sabotage the movement, as well as render it unworthy of victory.

A healthy movement needs to appeal to and recruit people who are imperfect—but also aim to make them better. If we’re being divisive by excluding unrepentant white supremacists from the movement, then that’s a point in favor of being divisive.

Some responses to the “race discourse is too divisive” line seem to stop there. However, I think there are more reasonable and nuanced versions of the “race discourse is too divisive” position which need more careful attention.

I think race is a topic that often is divisive in bad ways, and it is often discussed poorly—even when all participants are more-or-less progressive and opposed to anything they’d recognize as white supremacism. When race is brought up, many people are quick to weigh in on it—often with views and arguments that are poorly thought out, and even more poorly expressed. Race is a magnet for poor-quality discourse. This is likely especially the case for white people, but is also often the case for people of all races. (For analysis of some of the poor ways white people often talk about race, see Liam Bright’s “White Psychodrama.”) People can easily misunderstand one another, get angry at one another, and weaken coalitions which can’t survive the ensuing disagreements. One way to avert this problem may be to avoid talking much about race.

Sometimes this avoidance may not be very costly, compared to the poor-quality race-discourse that would otherwise happen. Race-discourse can be poor-quality in many ways. For one, race-discourse is often hostage to empirically questionable theories, such as popular oversimplistic interpretations of implicit bias. Sometimes high-quality race-discourse may require sophisticated theories and frameworks and arguments, which very few people have access to.

Applying the concern to drug policy, another problem is when people are oversimplistic in their normative analysis of what’s wrong with the drug war. Some progressives appear to talk as if racism is the only or main problem with drug prohibition. For instance, some arguments for decriminalization emphasize the racial disparities in arrest above all else. But this can’t be correct. Drug prohibition would still be terrible even if it were able to target drug users of all races equally. If the police drastically escalated how many white people they arrested for drug crimes, then some of the popular concerns about the drug war’s racial disparities would go out the window—but this would be worse, not better.

Progressives also sometimes criticize the history of the drug war in oversimplistic ways—such as by mistakenly believing the 1980s anti-crack laws were only motivated by racist white politicians, and failing to recognize the complex role of black anti-drug advocates among political leaders and the black general public.

If we talk about race in drug policy discourse, it needs to be done in a better way, and in light of more normatively and empirically adequate analysis. But this can only be done by talking about race—not by avoiding talk of race.

I’m also not necessarily averse to the idea that there are some topics which we should avoid talking about much in some political advocacy contexts, in order to maintain coalitions and good discursive environments and efficient activism, even when these topics are somewhat important in themselves. Not every topic, and not even every important topic, can be discussed at all times. There is reason to self-consciously maintain and promote some priorities of topics, and sometimes the “divisiveness” of a given topic can be a legitimate reason to discourage bringing it up or emphasizing it.

However, any such principle needs to be calibrated to the importance of the topic, and the costs of tabooing the topic. Race is objectively very important, including to drug policy analysis and reform, and there needs to be high-quality integration of race-discourse and drug policy discourse to recognize this importance. Racism is a major component of drug prohibition, in at least three ways—its causes (e.g. why drugs were criminalized), its structure (e.g. which drugs are illegal and in what ways), and its outcomes (e.g. how people of color are far more criminalized than white people, even for the same actions). If we taboo talking about race, we put many aspects of drug policy off-limits to discussion. This is very costly to the quality of the resulting analysis.

There are other costs as well. A taboo on race-discourse, in effect, creates racial discrimination within the movement—concerning whose testimony and experience will be considered legitimate to discuss, respect, support, and learn from. Many nonwhite drug users have long been targeted by the drug war in overtly or subtly racist ways, and have a lot to say about what they’ve been through. Surely they should be permitted to discuss their experiences every bit as much as a white drug user. Making race off-limits would prohibit many nonwhite testimonies while allowing white testimonies—thus making nonwhite drug users a second-class group, even in what is supposed to be a movement of liberation for them. This is perverse and unjust.

The notion that “We shouldn’t talk about race, because it’s too divisive” also seems self-defeating. Yes, talking about race is often divisive. But then, the view that we shouldn’t talk about race is also divisive! Many people, rightly or wrongly, think we should talk about race. Why should the people who will be alienated by race-discourse get a veto over the interests of people who will be alienated by tabooing race-discourse?

Relatedly, once people have started talking about race (for better or for worse), then you can no longer get people to stop talking about race by saying “Talking about race is too divisive.” Such a statement, if you make one, will then just be one more divisive statement about race. And it will likely incite people to start a hostile debate—the very thing which the race-discourse taboo was supposed to prevent. A taboo on race-discourse may only be effective in conditions where not much race-discourse has started already.

Also, there may be some antiracism advocates who want to taboo talking about drugs, on the grounds that drugs-discourse is too divisive. I haven’t seen this, but it seems plausible that there are some people who hold this view. (I speculate, even if this used to be common, it may be rare today. Michelle Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow” and a few other popular antiracism-oriented critiques of the drug war probably helped normalize drugs-discourse among antiracism advocates.) Yet surely, at least by the lights of drug reformists, such a view should be rejected.

There may also be a collective action problem of discourse ethics and strategy, in this vicinity. Liam Bright argues that there are problems with trying to enforce “message discipline.” See his post “There Will Be No Message Discipline.” A taboo on race discourse may be a problematic form of message discipline, and thus suffer from the problems Bright raises.

There is another weird irony in the notion that we shouldn’t talk about race because it’s too “divisive.” This seems quite close to the stereotypical woke leftwinger who insists we shouldn’t talk about XYZ (even though XYZ is important) on the grounds that XYZ is too “offensive.”

I thought left-wing political correctness was bad, on the grounds that it bars people from making true and epistemically-justified assertions about important topics, for the sake of merely not-offending some potential audience of oversensitive people? I actually agree that some left-wing political correctness is bad in this way. But then, this also means that tabooing an important topic such as race, in order to avoid offending oversensitive people, may be bad for similar reasons.

I note that there are at least two possible views which can lead someone to oppose talking about race. One view is the notion that race/racism is objectively not very important. The other view is the notion that race/racism IS objectively very important, but that we shouldn’t discuss it anyway, since discussing it is too divisive.

In addition to the anti-nonwhite discriminatory element I noted earlier, the race-discourse taboo has another potentially pernicious element. It can easily be used by someone who really holds the “racism is not important” view, so as to pretend to hold the “racism is important but too divisive” view. This seems costly as well.

So, what should we do? Maybe we should be cautious not to talk about race unless we have good reasons to talk about it, and have something worthwhile to say about it. This seems a reasonable presumption. However, this presumption would also apply to many sensitive topics, not only race. Moreover, it is defeasible, when someone has valuable things to say on the topic, or has a good enough chance of saying something valuable. Placing too much weight on a presumption against race-discourse may also prevent many important contributions from making their way into the conversation—which in turn will impoverish our common knowledge about race, at potentially severe cost. On the epistemic benefits of norms favoring speech on potentially upsetting topics, see Hrishikesh Joshi’s book Why It’s OK to Speak Your Mind.

There may be room for good-faith disagreements on the role of racism in drug policy injustice. Some libertarians think government overreach and authoritarianism are more the core problems of drug prohibition, and that the racism element is more secondary. Some leftists may make reasonable “class-first” arguments that a lot of what we construe as racism, or even a lot of the badness of drug prohibition more broadly, is more an aspect of class oppression. Arguably, we should discuss class more and discuss racism less (or even drug policy less), simply because class has more explanatory value and/or class-based interventions may have more promise in activism. I’m not convinced this is true, but it is at least a more defensible notion than saying either that racism isn't important, or that racism is important but that we shouldn’t talk about it.

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feudalismoffire · 11 months

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Feudalism of Fire Queendoms

At the year of 5011 AS, the situation of Pyrrhia is the following:

Scarletian Empire:

Capital: Carmine Palace

Queen: Scarlet

Since Scarlet’s brutal takeover from her mother, Her majesty, reincarnation of Carmine herself, forever shall lead the skywings, the immortal queen shall defend their ways in face of the savagery of the other civilizations.

Empress Scarlet reigns varies between benevolence and tyranny, festivities are constant, gladiator fights enjoyed by thousands every month, descending from the skies to the earth, let her control your soul.

Second Sea Empire:

Capital: Deep Palace

Queen: Orca

Ambition corrupts... And created from the ambition of a single dragon, the second sea empire, built from the ashes of the sea queendom with the fall of Coral, Orca leads now one of the most tyrannical and monstrous rules, the animus queen is liked by nobody, but approached by even less.

Her daughter, Tsunami, has escaped captivity, and now the future of the empire lays into uncertainty. Without heir, nor trusting anybody, Orca’s paranoia increases, may the gods be angry at her?

Oases Queendom:

Capital: Savannah Palace

Queen: Burn (de facto); Blister; Blaze

Upon the death of Oasis, Burn became the de facto queen of the sandwings. Her rule is chaotic, mass mobilizations trigger famines, hundreds die in battle, but everyone knows at its at stake, for the skywing hordes are never far from their homes, their duties are sacred, the eye of Onyx watches upon them.

Many however, do not seek the rule of Burn, outlaws flee her lands to whatever den they can fit in their businesses, Burn’s armies are now on the offensive.

Diamond Empire:

Capital: Diamond Palace

Queen: Glacier

Glacier for so long ruled over the frozen lands of the tundra, but the war has become costly, once on the defensive, Burn’s forces are now more competent and organized than ever, they are besieging Blaze’s fortress, the first circle commanders demand immediate retaliation, even though Glacier knows the cost of lives would not bring them victory.

Some within the second circle though, are less than pleased, and an ambitious and reckless princess Icicle may rally them around her.

Mud Queendom:

Capital: Mud Palace

Queen: Moorhen

Queen Moorhen once led an unstable coalition of mudwing warlords and clans, that may have caused the very downfall of blister’s coalition, but Moorhen has managed to overcome doubts by allying with Burn, the mudwings will never be slaves again, they all will die before slavery.

More united than ever, Moorhen now rules one of the most stable nations of Pyrrhia, a nation torn by war, but united by fire.

United Rainforest Queendoms:

Capital: Canopy Pavilion

Queen: Grandeur

Once a conqueror like Anaconda herself, Grandeur now becomes one of the oldest queens of Pyrrhia and the rainforest, for 3 generations, she rules over the united queendoms, the agreement upon the conquered tribes to remain united under one authority, but remaining in control of their own state affairs.

Princess Glory however, the main one in the line of succession after her mother tragically died of illness, highly condemns this decentralized approach, and pushes towards centralization and the entrance of the rainwings into the war.

Night Queendom:

Capital: Nightsky Palace

Queen: Battlewinner

The great night queendom, once upon a time great traders and inventors, has fallen stagnant in the past centuries, queens without meaning to their names have eroded their pride, Battlewinner was simply the latest of the discontented.

With her daughter Valiant, and her granddaughter Greatness increasingly uniterested in their future role of queens, growing ever more soft upon state affairs, Battlewinner fears that if their society doesn’t gear up towards the war, the victorious Burn’s armies will be at their gates.

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gageblackwood · 4 months

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So I can't get a direct link to the piece, but as I was looking for NYT coverage of the UN genocide trial I found a piece titled: "At a rally near Gaza, far-right Israelis promote plans to resettle the territory."

It reads:

"With international alarm high over the wartime plight of Gaza’s people and concern rising about their future, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said this week that Israel would not permanently occupy Gaza after the war there ends. But some far-right Israelis insist otherwise.

On Thursday afternoon, more than 100 settlers from the Israeli-occupied West Bank drove in a convoy toward the Gaza border. Many of them carried placards bearing a simple slogan: “Returning to Gaza.”

They did not cross the border this time, but they hope to in the near future — and permanently so. Even before the war ends, the settler movement — a powerful and well-organized lobby that includes several prominent lawmakers — wants to re-establish the Jewish settlements in Gaza that were dismantled in 2005, when Israel withdrew its troops from the territory.

“We pray to return,” said Avishay Bar Yehuda, 67, an activist at the rally who said he lived on a Gaza settlement until the 2005 withdrawal.

For most of the world, the settlements were considered illegal under international law, and an obstacle to Palestinian autonomy, the same judgment that still applies to those in the West Bank.

But settlers believe that the Gaza withdrawal was a mistake, for religious reasons — they believe that Gaza was part of the land given to Jews by God — but also for security ones. They say that a significant Israeli civilian presence in Gaza, protected by Israeli soldiers, would have made it far harder for Hamas to seize control of Gaza, which it did within a few years of the Israeli withdrawal, and also far more difficult for the group to attack Israel with the same brutality as it did on Oct. 7.

“Annex it to the state of Israel, and demolish all the houses,” Zvi Sukkot, a hardline lawmaker attending the event, said of northern Gaza. “We need a huge Jewish settlement in Gaza.”

Polling since Oct. 7 consistently suggests that a majority of Israelis remain wary of reintroducing settlements to Gaza, even as Israeli attitudes to Palestinians have otherwise hardened since the attack. Many Israelis say that protecting Jewish towns in such hostile territory would be costly in both military and economic terms.

But powerful forces are nevertheless trying to popularize the idea.

Lawmakers from Mr. Netanyahu’s party proposed legislation in November that would let civilians return to Gaza. Two far-right ministers in his coalition, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, have said they support resettlement.

Settler activists have circulated blueprints for suggested settlement projects in Gaza. Soldiers in Gaza have filmed themselves promoting resettlement while on duty. Pop stars have spoken in favor of the idea while holding motivational concerts for soldiers waiting to enter Gaza, to loud cheers from the soldiers.

“A Jewish settlement must be built in the territory of the Gaza Strip,” Mr. Smotrich said in a televised interview on Sunday.

And, for now, the settler movement does not necessarily need the government’s support: Since 1967, settler activists often built unauthorized settlements in the West Bank that successive governments ultimately agreed to back."

Gotta say, I have a feeling these people aren't taking the accusation seriously, especially with:

“Annex it to the state of Israel, and demolish all the houses,” Zvi Sukkot, a hardline lawmaker attending the event, said of northern Gaza. “We need a huge Jewish settlement in Gaza.”

#Israel #Palestine #Edit: seems I managed a link after all - didn't think it would work #Don't have a non-paywalled link sadly

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libertariantaoist · 4 months

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News Roundup 12/29/2023 | The Libertarian Institute

Here is your daily roundup of today's news:

News Roundup 12/29/2023

by Kyle Anzalone

Venezuela

Venezuela Responds to UK Warship Deployment to Guyana By Conducting War Games AP

Ukraine

Russia Says US Demands Prevent Hostage Swap El Pais

US Announces $250 Million Arms Package for Ukraine AWC

Ukraine Beginning to Lose Gains Made During Costly Counter-Offensive NYT

Report: US Is Shifting Strategy on Ukraine AWC

Ukrainian Government Workers Will Face Salary and Pension Delays If US and EU Don’t Approve More Aid AWC

China

Chinese Military Says Pentagon Spending Bill Exaggerates China Threat AWC

Israel

Witnesses Say Israeli Forces Executing Civilians in Gaza MEE

WashPo: Israeli Destruction of Gaza More Significant than Destruction of Aleppo WashPo

Israel Requesting Apache Attack Helicopters from US YnetThe Institute

Israel’s Security Agency Ignored Warning from Gaza Source About October 7 Attack AWC

Over 500 Israeli Soldiers Killed Since October 7 The Institute

Netanyahu Refuses to Discuss Post-War Plans for Gaza With Security Chiefs AWC

Turkey’s Erdogan Says Netanyahu Is No Different Than Hitler AWC

Biden Asks Netanyahu to Release Palestinian Tax Revenue Collected by Israel Axios

Iran

Sen. Lindsey Graham Calls for US to Blow Parts of Iran ‘Off the Map’ AWC

Iran Atomic Chief: Claims of Escalated Enrichment Untrue, Nothing New in Nuclear Work AWC

Iraq

Israel Warns Time for Diplomacy with Hezbollah Is Running Out The Institute

Biden Tells Congress He Launched Airstrikes in Iraq to ‘Deter’ Future Attacks AWC

Iraqi PM Says Baghdad Is ‘Heading Towards’ Ending the US Military Presence in the Country AWC

Yemen

US Issues Sanctions on Aledged Network Funding Houthi Red Sea Attacks Press Release

US Allies Reluctant to Join Anti-Houthi Red Sea Naval Coalition AWC

US Says It Shot Down 12 Houthi Drones, 5 missiles in Red Sea AWC

Pentagon Says US Downed Drone and Missile Fired By Houthis CENTCOM

#kyle anzalone #libertarian institute #news roundup

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weavercobra · 9 months

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Hello everyone, ArachCobra here. I've recently been convinced that I should start putting more of my original writing online. I've also written fanfiction and you should be easily able to find that if interested, as I go by the same name on fanfiction.net

So I figured before anything else, I'd do a short introduction to the tabletop setting I currently preside over. A lot of the stories I've written take place in them and go by the assumption that the reader is at least somewhat familiar with the setting, since it was originally meant for my players. Since an outsider would lack that knowledge, decorum dictates that I clarify.

And besides, I love rambling about my settings.

Pathfinder

Based on the setting of the same name, though also diverging heavily in many ways. Characters or species have been tweaked or changed depending on our personal tastes and preferences.

One of the most major changes is the general tech level of the setting. When me and my players got interested in using the setting, we've just come of a streak of medieval fantasy settings.

How long a streak? A fifteen year one, give or take, in between playing Fighting Fantasy, Dungeons & Dragons and 13th Age. So everyone was a bit done with that. So for funsies, the tech level was in general raised to 20th century.

Another major change is all the stuff we've added. We've been stealing with arms and legs from everything we like and you can assume anything statted by @thecreaturecodex is canon and exists somewhere in the world.

In any case, the story focus is on the adventurer's guild called the Mystical Peacekeeping Society(My players decision), a band of eclectic do-gooders who over the year has become synonymous with chaos and upheaval. Most rulers start tugging their collars when they show up, since it doesn't seem to matter how benign or peaceful their purpose is, things will start exploding soon.

Spheres

Created in the wake of a necessary break from Pathfinder. It was heavily inspired by Pathfinder, being a sort of kitchen sink setting where you could run across a number of adventures. The titular spheres are the different worlds, separated by the arcane Mist, which must be navigated to get from sphere to sphere. Technology is generally at late 19th century level.

One of the goals with spheres was to solve a problem I discovered in Pathfinder, that being that things were mapped out. That may seem peculiar, but what I found was that when my players characters involved conjuring up new nations or kingdoms, even small ones, it was very difficult to slot them in anywhere. And the Stolen Lands could only hold so much. So while individual regions in the spheres setting would be mapped, no sphere would ever have a complete map. That way, if my players invented a new nation or something similar, it would be easy to say they were just over those mountains all along.

Shattered Age

This came about from a simple question, how would an open world tabletop look? This setting was designed to maximise the players freedom in what they could do and where they could go.

The settings backstory is that a great, calamitous war happened between the powers of the worlds, one so great and costly that just about everyone agreed that it should never be repeated.

Then two more happened.

This was known as the Age of War, it lasted about four-hundred years and exhausted civilization to the point that all the old kingdoms, coalitions and empires collapsed in on themselves. Civilization is now a number of points of light spread across the world, now slowly piecing things together. I was very much inspired by the idea of a Ghibli apocalypse, a dread event for sure, but one that life can move on from.

Technology is all over the place, as while the previous era was pretty advanced, the collapse meant that many places only has the capacity to sustain things at a medieval or older level. Others have scavenged and restored enough that they can be more advanced, though not producing as much as a modern industrialized society.

Anyway, I gave my players a number of options for where they could start and then basically just let them do what they wanted. Running Shattered Age has been quite educational for me as a gamemaster and has tough me some valuable lessons about how to help players invest in a setting.

Then we have the settings that I'm working on, but haven't run yet.

Panepithumia

The NSFW setting. Started as a running joke whenever someone in the other settings got frisky or thirsty, but over the years my players have gotten both more liberal and more open(The fact that I'm sleeping with three of them probably also helped), so the idea of an actual setting like this began seeming more plausible. And when I finally asked if I should give it a shot, I was told to go ahead.

So the basic idea is to take your typical fantasy medieval setting and just flip the amount of times encounters ends in fighting versus fucking. The different regions of the world appeal to different kinks and interests, with the players being an adventure's guild owning an airship, allowing them to travel around and get themselves involved wherever they want.

Varangian Project

The Varangian Project started out as my own take on urban fantasy, with a focus on solving crimes. However, the project eventually grew far beyond its original scope. A key part of this was the decision to not only include as much mythology as possible, but also canonize as many sources of urban fantasy as possible. Of course, that meant some pruning and adjustments were necessary to make everything work together, but the end result was a strange, bizarre and fascinating world.

It has now become the alternative earth urban fantasy setting, with opportunities to play games set in wildly different periods of times with vastly different themes.

Wild Lands

What if tabletop was also a civilization game? Inspired by various games and tabletop campaigns like Pathfinder: Kingmaker. This campaign not only sees the players doing the usual adventuring stuff but also being responsible for a burgeoning civilization, its management and military.

Gameplay thus exists on two layers, one which is personal and will focus on roleplay, dungeon crawling and battles between small groups, and the other, which focuses on resource management, research and military movements. We refer to those layers as the Strategic and Tactical Layers.

The setting is all over the place, to be frank. You can see knights battling mechs battling zombies battling WW1 tanks. This is because the titular Wild Lands, an endless expanse of land, can have anything and operates by this simple rule.

Everything is true, even if it is contradictory.

I'll update this list as new settings, and there will be more, get added in the future.

#story #tabletop #pathfinder #spheres #shattered age

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