What was your opinion of Steel Rising? As a fellow connoisseur of mid-budget soulslikes, I really enjoyed it. The writing was goofy bordering on camp, the combat felt slightly janky but?? In a good way??? And I loved the accessibility options they built in.

I was seriously disappointed by Steel Rising. The writing only gets worse the more you know about French revolutionary history. Seriously some of the writing choices are baffling, especially from a French studio.

I think the best part of the writing for me was how they accidentally autism-coded Aegis. Having these real ass French historical figures talking about republicanism and the robot uprising is already goofy, but then they they cut to Aegis like

[LONG UNBLINKING SILENCE]

"...YES..."

[STARES AT YOU WITH MY FRENCH TBH ROBOT EYES]

it's downright hilarious. She's just like me fr.

If anything kills a good soulsalike, it's a lack of enemy variety, and man they ran out of enemies FAST. And it's only compounded by the lack of weapon variety. It seems like most of the weapons in the game are just reskins of the same five basic types.

Which is a shame, because the combat really shone in the boss fights. Even Aegis's basic mobility had you leaping and pirouetting around shit. It complimented Aegis's whole backstory as a ballerina robot, because at its best, combat was quite literally a dance.

Like, I wish they had seriously scaled the game back, and polished what they already had, because man, those later levels were a real slog.

I would play a sequel out of curiosity, rather than excitement. Barely a 20$ experience for me.

The ARMOR in the game was crazy gorgeous though. You could make Aegis serve some weapons grade cunt.

Republicans will be all like "save the children" but then turn a blind eye to the horrific abuse of children in ICE custody and throw their own LGBT children to the wolves by kicking them out to the Streets. 🐸☕

(content warning for discussion of child sexual abuse)

If right-wingers were actually concerned about saving children from sexual abuse, they'd be focusing their efforts on where most children are being sexually abused. The trouble for them is that the same institutions they actively participate in and/or support (e.g. their fellow right-wing extremists, the Southern Baptist Convention, CPB/ICE, the Catholic Church, Donald Trump, etc.) are regularly accused of the worst examples of systematic child sexual abuse, with the accusations coming from actual people making credible allegations, usually backed by substantive evidence. There are media reports from well-respected outlets; publicly-accessible court documents and hearing transcripts; and public statement made by some of the victims that anyone could find to verify the claims with just a little effort. But right-wingers don't actually care about child sexual abuse. They don't raise money for counselling and therapy for survivors of child sexual abuse (and as politicians they often block access or prevent funding for therapy for survivors). They don't support NGOs that do credible work fighting human trafficking. They actively work against providing the kinds of supports that are the most effective at preventing children from being sexually exploited to begin with. What they do instead is use terms like "groomers" and "paedophiles" to tar-and-feather any outgroup they want to portray as "the baddies" in an effort to rally their troops to attack a scapegoat - both to distract people from the actual problem and what could be done about it and to build their followings and encourage violence against those outgroups. Currently it's trans people that are being subjected to this abuse; previously it was Muslims, then LGBTQ+ people before them, and so on. We're not saying that child sexual abuse is not horrific and that the problem does not have to be addressed, obviously. But the way the right accuses any group they're currently scapegoating as "groomers" allows the institutions the right supports that are currently and have historically engaged in the systemic sexual abuse of children to get away with it and even continue the abuse and shelter abusers without accountability. It also does real harm to legitimate organizations doing legitimate work combatting child sex trafficking because it takes resources away from them and diminishes the credibility of the movement as a whole. It's a cynical weaponization of child sexual abuse to gain political points against the perceived "enemy du jour" for the far right. It is especially ironic that people holding this viewpoint would then use it to justify ostracizing and rendering their own LGBTQ+ children homeless, since doing so makes their own children extremely vulnerable to sexual exploitation and abuse. That's a long way to say that the right-wingers are disgusting hypocrites, but there you go!

I wonder what the left expected Israel to do in response to the attack. They talk about 'reciprocity' and how Israel's response isn't reciprocal but, like, what were they supposed to do? Deliberately count how many people were dead and then kill exactly that many enemy combatants? Should they have divided by civilians versus active military and made sure they had the same proportional deaths? Should they have 'only' raped so many women and then 'only' taken so many hostages? What's *reciprocal defense* and how does it help when you're telling the enemy you'll only do so much to them, and *only* in response to their attack at first? Or is this the way they view personal self-defense, where you aren't allowed to use excessive force relative to what your attacker actually accomplishes? Like yeah you THOUGHT he was going to stab you in the lungs but you have to WAIT until you're bleeding out before you try and stop him, it's only fair; you have an obligation to die before you're allowed to use lethal force. Does Israel have the same obligation? Are they supposed to wait until they've been wiped off the map before they defend themselves?

The left expects every Jew who doesn't live in New York and dutifully vote Democrat to die. That's it. That's the reason.

The left is massively anti-Semitic, and they always have been. Every left wing ideology has hate for Jews baked into it. They'll post their "if you have 10 people at a table and a Nazi sits down, you have 11 Nazis" and their "never again means right now" when there's a milquetoast, run of the mill Republican they want to smear, but the moment actual Jews in Israel are being raped and murdered suddenly it's all "gas the Jews" and "globalize the Intifada" and "from the river to the sea". Just like the presence of a conservative black man is all the excuse they need to say t he most vile, racist shit you've ever heard.

Leftism is an ideology of hate. Its entire purpose it to make different groups hate each other. So it's really no surprise that there are a larger than usual number of anti-Semites in their ranks.

great info on the mayors / political leaders of New York - on the anti side, how about the absolute worst and most destructive , regressive, or otherwise harmful in its history?

This one is mostly covered by my first post about NYC mayors, where I discussed the mayors from Lindsay to the present. However, I can talk about earlier mayors, even though most of them were bland non-entities. One major exception to this rule was Fernando Wood.

If there was one consistent theme of Wood's career - other than fraud (Wood stole from his bank and his own brother-in-law) and corruption - it was racism and violence.

From the very beginning of Wood's political career, he distinguished himself as the most pro-slavery man in New York Democratic politics, seeking the patronage of figures like John C. Calhoun and James Buchanan. When he shifted from Congress to mayoral politics, Wood went back and forth on what variety of pro-slavery politics he preferred (variously backing Douglas' popular sovereignty position and Buchanan's anti-Douglas position), but was a consistent enemy of John Van Buren's Free Soil Democrats, "Black Republicans," and abolitionism as a concept. Nevertheless, he managed to win election in 1854 with a bare third of the total vote.

Unlike more pliable Tammany mayors, Wood believed in "one-man rule" rather than collective pursuit of power, particularly when it came to direct mayoral control of the police force. While claiming to stand for home rule, democratic accountability, and efficiency, in reality Fernando sought to remove any commissioners on the police board who stood between him and turning the Municipal Police into his personal army. In the 1856 election, Wood gave the police the day off so that the Dead Rabbits gang could engage in street violence, physical intimidation of voters and poll workers, and theft of ballot boxes. Evidently Wood needed the help, because he won with a tiny plurality of the vote and ran well behind the Democratic ticket.

Wood managed to skate from any indictment from Election Day violence, but he had gone too far politically. Tammany broke with Wood, barring him from the building and promoting his political opponents to Federal patronage positions. The Republican-controlled state legislature enacted a new Municipal Charter that ordered a new election for 1857 and transferred control over public works to state commissioners appointed by the governor, and then a Metropolitan Police Act that abolished Wood's Municipal Police and replaced them with a new force under state commissioners.

Wood refused to accept the Metropolitan Police Act or the Municipal Charter as law, ordered his Municipal Police to physically remove state commissioners from government buildings, and when the new Metropolitan Police attempted to arrest him for selling the office of Street Commissioner for $50,000, Wood mobilized the Municipal Police against the "Black Republicans," leading to the "Great Police Riot" in which the two police forces met in open combat on the steps of City Hall. 53 people were injured, the state militia had to be called out to disperse the Municipal Police, and Wood was arrested (and then promptly released by a friendly judge).

New York City's gangs, with Wood's allies the Dead Rabbits very much in the lead, realized that with the city's two police forces at war (Wood had directed the Municipal Police to stop the Metropolitan Police from carrying out arrests, leading to frequent skirmishes), there was no state monopoly on violence to restrain them.

Amid a rising crime wave, the Dead Rabbits Riot broke out on July 4th - in which the Five Points gangs under the leadership of the Dead Rabbits invaded the Bowery and went to war with both the Bowery gangs and the Metropolitan Police. At its height, the riot involved 800-1,000 armed men and women who responded to police charges by building barrricades. Once again, the state militia had to be called out to quell the violence (at least 8 people killed and about 100 injured), although fighting would continue for another week. Ultimately, the courts ruled against Wood and the Municipal Police were disbanded.

In the election that year, Wood ran on a pro-slavery platform that praised the Dred Scott decision and Buchanan's pro-slavery policy in Bleeding Kansas, while attacking Republican efforts to expand voting rights to black New Yorkers. This race-baiting failed to distract voters from the violence and corruption of the Wood Administration, to say nothing of the Panic of 1857 which had sent unemployment in the city skyrocketing. To get rid of Wood, Tammany formed a fusion ticket with the Republicans and Know-Nothings that narrowly defeated the incumbent mayor.

Learning nothing from his defeat, Wood blamed the loss on a shadowy cabal of "Black Republicans" who had supposedly infiltrated Tammany Hall and formed his own rival Democratic machine out of Mozart Hall. In 1859, Wood once again used armed violence, this time to try to seize control of the State Democratic Convention from Tammany delegates. When this didn't work, Wood once again turned to racism in his campaign to get back into the mayoralty, running on a pro-slavery, anti-John Brown, and anti-abolition platform. He just barely managed to pull out another tiny plurality victory with only 38% of the total vote.

In his next term, Wood crossed the line from mere bigotry to open treason, calling for New York City to secede from both New York state and the United States (both controlled by "Black Republican" abolitionists, according to Wood) so that it could trade freely with the Confederacy. In 1861, Wood came in third place for re-election, finishing only a thousand votes behind both the Republican and the Tammany Democrat.

Despite (or arguably because of) his vocal pro-Confederacy stance and his supporters having caused the 1863 Draft Riots, Wood became the leader of the so-called "Peace" Democratic faction against the War Democrats. Lest you think that Wood was motivated by his abbhorence of war, Wood made the reasons for his opposition clear when he pushed for constitutional amendments to protect slavery, attacked War Democrats as "a white man's face on the body of a negro," and led the Congressional opposition to the passage of the 13th Amendment. In 1868, Wood was censured by Congress for his verbal attacks on the Reconstruction Acts. This censure accomplished nothing, and Wood continued his Congressional career unabated, which culminated in becoming Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee following the end of Reconstruction.

Wood had the reverse Midas touch of turning everything he touched to shit, such that even the few good things he supported - like home rule for New York City and public works jobs for the unemployed - became tainted by association with his violence and corruption. As far as I'm concerned, they should have done him like they did Vallandigham.

Compared to Wood, the faults of every other NYC mayor seem like the most minor of venal sins.

"Gentleman" Jimmy Walker was corrupt as fuck - supporting his lavish lifestyle by taking bribes from anyone with a pulse, selling the services of the NYPD to the mob, getting in bed with Arnold Rothstein, and perhaps having been connected to the murder of a whistleblower on police corruption and the disappearance of a New York Supreme Court judge - but he was also part of the progressive wing of Tammany Hall and a talented administrator (albeit one who only worked from 3-5 so as not to interfere with his more important time with showgirls, nightclubs, speakeasies, and boxing matches). He supported social welfare policies, opposed the KKK, built municipal waterworks and subway lines (albeit through corrupt contracts), and created the Sanitation and Hospitals Departments.

Similarly, William O'Dwyer was a typical Tammany politician who oversaw a massive police corruption scandal in Brooklyn, and ultimately had to flee to Mexico to avoid investigations from the Justice Department and the Brooklyn DA into his ties with organized crime, but he was in most other respects a typical if unremarkable mid-century NYC Mayor.

Shouldn't have raised the subway fare to ten cents, tho.

"Theorist Grégoire Chamayou has described the contemporary paradigm of drone warfare as having instigated a “crisis in military ethos,” transforming the terms and terrain of engagement altogether as it proposes an unstable approach to acceptable targets. In an era of the global war against terror, Chamayou writes:

Armed violence has lost its traditional limits: indefinite in time, it is also indefinite in space. The whole world, it is said, is a battlefield. But it would probably be more accurate to call it a hunting ground. For if the scope of armed violence has now become global, it is because the imperatives of hunting demand it.

In this description, the remote killing characteristic of drone warfare is not just a safe or expedient means of carrying out war as before—this technical innovation corresponds to a new and rapidly shifting geographical model, where violence is no longer limited to demarcated combat zones but simply licensed by the presence of an enemy prey, “who carries with it its own little mobile zone of hostility.” State sovereignty and territorial integrity are contingent features of this model of warfare, and can be violated at will by an imperial hunter whose technical power and jurisdiction operates vertically.

The geopolitical layers of this methodology are many and complex: for example, the MQ-9 Reaper drone that killed Soleimani was likely launched from Qatar, but operated from Clark County, Nevada, where self-proclaimed “hunter” pilots proceeded to attack a diplomatically protected target visiting a third country with whom they were not at war—at least nominally. At the very least, this is novel; but the legal ramifications must be known.

As noted, Israel’s assassination of Arouri strikingly coincides with the anniversary of the Trump administration’s killing of Soleimani, which was justified in turn with reference to Bush Jr.’s extralegal innovations. But these Republican presidencies flank the drastic expansion of jurisdictionally ambiguous drone warfare under President Obama, whose office presumed authority to use lethal force outside of legally defined combat zones on an unprecedented scale during a “global” war on terror. These policies drew heavy criticism from international legal observers, as the Obama administration authorized more than 500 drone strikes in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, and beyond—locations where the situation, however grave, could hardly be described as one of armed conflict between organized groups. Lacking such criteria, the years of drone attacks around the world appear not only deadly, but illegal.

Even so, lawyers love an ignoble cause; and this remote assassin’s paradigm keeps many of them entertained. Legal scholar Michael W. Lewis argues that the application of international humanitarian law to the transnational deployment of drones constitutes an unacceptable constraint, where “it would effectively grant sanctuary to and confer an important strategic advantage upon unprivileged belligerents,” themselves apparently excepted from the protections of the Geneva Convention.

These are the sticking points of any legal theory of the drone, and the cause for which apologists must seek a portable state of exception, adhering to individual targets as they move about the world. Jonathan Horowitz and Naz Modirzadeh describe the seemingly contradictory situation of a “transnational non-international armed conflict,” where the law of armed conflict is analogized to a cloud, hovering above the head of an itinerant prey."

– cam scott, "israel's drone age"

I really need for people to start connecting some dots.

Russia, a nation guilty of horrid human rights abuses for decades, continues indiscriminate bombings of residential areas in Syria and is engaging in a war of wholesale destruction against Ukraine, and by extension a proxy war with NATO (which includes the US), for the expansion and reassertion of its empire and dominance against allied western Europe.

China, a nation guilty of horrid human rights abuses for decades, is engaging in a war of interference and aggression with the political apparatus of several sovereign nations (including the US) and has announced its intention to forcibly retake Taiwan, for the expansion and reassertion of its dominance in the Pacific.

Iran, a nation guilty of horrid human rights abuses for decades, is engaged in a proxy game of chicken with Israel (and by extension the US as its main ally) via the combatant groups it funds and arms: Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, Houthi Rebels, with a very real threat of becoming a full scale regional war with the stakes being nothing less than the destruction of Israel and expansion and reassertion of Islamist dominance in the entire SWANA.

Russia, China and Iran are formally allied to one another.

That is why the US is not going to stop supporting or funding Israel, even if we might institute limitations on how that funding is used (or more realistically, changing what military equipment we send them), and even if Biden is grey rocking Netanyahu in every communication.

We know (as do all nations) that the abandonment of an ally at a time of conflict sends horrible messages to other allies (will we abandon them if things get dicey? Will we use our size and resources to force our will on them rather than respecting their sovereignty? Is our alliance for them or for our imperial interests?) and sends a signal to the enemies of the (ex) ally that they can do what they please without the threat of the nation with the largest military watching.

In the current global climate, the US is the bulwark against Russia, China and Iran doing whatever they want, to whomever they want, wherever they want. We aren’t going to do anything that messes with that precarious balance.

It’s also why the Biden administration and Democrats are so adamant about continuing support to Ukraine, and why it is so alarming that Republicans are disinclined to do so, at best, and outright opposed at the baffling worst.

The world is complex, brutal and in many saddening ways an ongoing game of 4D chess that cannot be reduced down to slogans and sentence fragment imperatives. It’s necessary to look at things from both the micro and macro perspectives.

Today is the anniversary of Murat’s death; instead of something sad and gloomy, here is a compilation of Murat’s contemporaries saying nice things about him.

***

Murat was a good man. He was dashingly brave, and possessed military talents together with a great desire to please and to be admired. He sought to have good manners and overdid them. One saw by his exaggerated dress and his attentions to the ladies that he wished to resemble the Villarceaux and Sévignés of the days of Louis XIV. These famous courtiers were the models he had chosen, but the rough hearty republican could not be completely hidden, and the mixture of the two opposite types of character would have been ridiculous at times if one had not been conscious of the honest, frank soldier in the background who reconciled the puppets one to the other. Consequently, in spite of his male and martial beauty he was a far less dangerous person than he imagined.

-Hortense de Beauharnais, The Memoirs of Queen Hortense, Vol. 2.

***

Much has been said of this truly extraordinary prince; but only those who saw him personally could form a correct idea of him, and even they never knew him perfectly until they had seen him on a field of battle. There he seemed like those great actors who produce a complete illusion amid the fascination of the stage, but in whom we no longer find the hero when we encounter them in private life.... What, so to speak, idealized him was his truly chivalrous bravery, often carried to the point of recklessness, as if danger had no existence for him.

-Recollections of the Private Life of Napoleon, by Constant, Premier Valet de Chambre, Vol. III, 1900, pgs 207-208.

***

The beauty of his person, the charm of his smile, the natural urbanity of his manner--to which, however, he was inclined to add more importance than was consistent with his proper dignity--and the richness of his dress, pleased the multitude and the army, although self-reputed sages laughed at this last display, and pronounced it ridiculous. The affability and gentleness of his manners, which were such as could not have been anticipated from a man of low birth, endeared him to the Court.... Murat was a Charles XII in the field, but a Francis I in his Court. He would have regarded the refusal of a favour to any lady of the Court, even though she were not his mistress, as an indignity.... Unfortunately for him as well as for our poor country, Murat fancied himself extremely sagacious in the art of kingcraft, and above all, that he alone could manage his affairs in the then intricate political state of the times. I do not mean to imply by this that the King was deficient in a certain sagacity; on the contrary, he could at times reason very aptly, and according to the opinion of his minister, Giuseppe Gurlo, who was a man of no ordinary stamp of mind, the King when in council often reasoned in a manner far superior to any of his ministers.

-General Guglielmo Pépé, Memoirs of General Pépé, Vol I [Pépé served under Murat in Naples]

***

In this supreme elevation, he appeared neither astonished nor dazzled; no alteration manifested itself in his naturally generous and easy character; he remained for his parents, his friends, his old comrades, what he had been in his village, or on the benches of the school, or in the lines of a regiment, and yet the greats, the princes, the sovereigns themselves admired in him the noble urbanity befitting the courts, with the imposing grandeur befitting the throne. I have seen this prince in the midst of the armies; his presence alone electrified warriors’ hearts; leaders and soldiers, friends and enemies, he drove them all. The Cossacks, in the background of a Russia in flames, suspended combat to lower their pikes before him, as a sign of homage to this model of valor; they called him their Hetman, as in Egypt the Arabs called him the French Murat-Bey, each one thus signaling by the designation who in their minds commanded the most admiration and respect.

-Jean-Michel Agar, the Count of Mosbourg, from Murat: Lieutenant de l’Empereur en Espagne, 1808, published by Murat’s grandnephew, Joachim Joseph André, in 1897. Agar was Murat’s childhood friend and later served as his finance minister.

***

Posterity will certainly blame King Joachim for some political errors, which in the end were the cause of his own ruin; but his goodness of heart, his frankness and generosity, command an affectionate remembrace. As a warrior, he became an object of veneration to all nations, from the Arab of the desert to the Cossack of the Don. He was loved even by his enemies, and would have been adored throughout the kingdom of Naples, without any exceptions, had not his officers and functionaries sometimes acted at variance with his intentions, and disgusted some classes of the people by vexatious stretches of authority. One of his foibles was, an incapacity to punish; and this, like an analogous failing in parents towards their children, engenders laxity and disobedience.... His desires were those of a King, but his mind was too much that of a soldier; his heart was that of a warm friend to mankind, and was, as said of the gigantic Sir William Jones, "even bigger than his body."

-Memoirs of the Life and Adventures of Colonel Maceroni, Vol II, 1838, pages 348-9. [Maceroni was one of Murat’s aides-de-camp during his reign in Naples]

***

I remember how he envied my position. One day when we were walking together he tried to prove to me that on the staff I had a hundred opportunities and means of bringing myself into notice–that is, of getting on; whereas a regiment was a blind alley where one was confounded with the mass, and that, if you did distinguish yourself, jealousy restrained everyone from speaking of you. Captain as I was, I should be a general before he, a major, was colonel. This statement was the only one not correct, for it was as Bonaparte’s aide-de-camp, a staff-officer that is, that he gained his success. How often did I recall this conversation when I saw him dash like a whirlwind up all the steps of rank and arrive, borne by Caesar’s eagle, with one swoop at the summit of human greatness! I must say, however, that he lost none of the amenity and good-nature which so well blended with his open soul, and with the chivalrous ardour which made him the bravest of the brave.

-The Memoirs of Baron Thiébault (late Lieutenant-general in the French Army) Vol 1; New York (Macmillan Company), 1896, pg 255

***

Who is there who doesn’t know of Murat’s wild courage, and who would not believe that a warrior like that has a soul of steel, an indomitable character? Well, there is not a softer, more gentle creature in private life, even more weak at times. If in camp he receives a letter from his wife, he cries like a child. But at the sound of cannon his head is up, he rushes out and throws himself into the fray–on the battlefield that Achilles has twenty elbows.

-Napoleon to Molé, as recorded by the Count of Mosbourg in Murat: Lieutenant de L'Empereur en Espagne 1808, page 73.

“Just like in the First World War, we have reached the level of technology that puts us into a stalemate,” Ukrainian general Valerii Zaluzhnyi admitted late last year. “There will most likely be no deep and beautiful breakthrough.”

That blunt assessment from the Ukrainian commander in chief, made in a November interview with The Economist, prompted waves of enormous pessimism. Headlines around the world seized on the idea that the war had essentially ended. Ukraine had fought valiantly—and lost.

Politicians in the West, particularly Republicans in the United States Congress, declared that it was time to stop supplying Kyiv and push for major concessions to Moscow.

The general’s actual point, however, wasn’t quite so fatalistic. In an accompanying nine-page essay, published in the British magazine, Zaluzhnyi doesn’t use the word “stalemate.” Instead, he called the war “positional,” with both sides trading just tiny slivers of land. Critically, however, he said Ukraine can still win. But it will mean, he wrote, “searching for new and non-trivial approaches to break military parity with the enemy.”

Technological innovation, more modern equipment, and changes in strategy could still turn the tide of this war, Zaluzhnyi argued. He laid out five areas where progress could mean overcoming their Russian opponent: achieving air superiority, improving mine clearing, expanding counterbattery, recruiting more soldiers, and advancing electronic warfare.

To achieve those goals, he wrote, Ukraine needs a once-in-a-century technological breakthrough.

“The simple fact is that we see everything the enemy is doing and they see everything we are doing,” Zaluzhnyi writes. “In order for us to break this deadlock we need something new, like the gunpowder, which the Chinese invented and which we are still using to kill each other.”

In recent months, WIRED has spoken to a host of NATO leaders and military analysts, as well as Ukrainian officials, regarding the future of the war. The consensus is clear: There is no silver bullet Ukraine can develop that will win this war. But there is agreement that Ukraine can and must innovate if it hopes to overcome its better-resourced and dug-in enemy.

“The thing that will break the logjam will be the right combination of new ideas, new organizations, and new technologies,” Mick Ryan, a 35-year veteran of the Australian Army who writes extensively on the future of war, tells WIRED. “It's really about how you combine that trinity of ideas, technology, and organizations into something new.”

Ukraine has already changed the future of warfare. Its use of aerial drones has revolutionized combat. It has developed and deployed the world’s first tactical naval drone. It jury-rigged a remarkably effective air defense system. It is leveraging artificial intelligence to conduct high-precision missile and drone strikes. It has consistently bested Moscow in the cyber and information spaces. If it can scale any of these technologies, or come up with new ones, it has a fighting chance to actually win.

Zaluzhnyi has sketched out the breakthroughs Ukraine will need to win this war. If it can do that, it may also change the future of conflict forever.

Embracing Positional Warfare

In November 2022, just nine months after Russia’s full-scale invasion, Zaluzhnyi triumphantly declared that Ukraine had liberated a huge swath of territory in Ukraine’s southeast. Months prior, Kyiv had liberated Kharkiv, its second-largest city, and was continuing to push the Russian invaders back. Now, in a surprise move, it was on track to liberate Kherson.

The speedy attacks caught Russia by surprise and prompted its extraordinary withdrawal across huge swaths of Ukrainian territory.

That run of victories, made possible by new weapon systems delivered by Ukraine’s NATO allies and its own creative use of technology, drove sky-high expectations ahead of Kyiv’s 2023 summer counteroffensive. Western media anticipated that Ukraine would break through Russian lines with similar ease and speed.

Ukraine’s drive to regain more territory, however, crashed into dense and well-fortified Russian defensive lines, descending into the positional warfare that Zaluzhnyi describes. Ukraine inched forward in some areas and retreated elsewhere. Moscow had, apparently, learned from its mistakes.

“The Russian military is often underestimated in terms of its propensity to learn and apply lessons on the battlefield,” Karolina Hird, an analyst for the Institute for the Study of War and the deputy team lead for their Russia desk, tells WIRED. Russia had swapped in new, rested units; fortified complex layers of trench lines; and laid 15 to 20 kilometers of minefields through Ukrainian territory. They named this formidable defensive network for the since-ousted commander of the war effort: the Surovikin Line.

This new “active defense,” as Hird describes it, is a fairly traditional set of defensive tactics. Even with advanced Western artillery and counterbattery, and advanced tank systems, Ukrainian soldiers simply couldn’t advance without facing constant shelling and dense minefields.

“The Ukrainians didn't necessarily have the equipment or the type of trained brigades to break through that incredibly soundly arrayed defense and overcome Russians—that were defending in a doctrinally consistent and, actually, quite sound way,” Hird says.

The failure to advance has prompted a tactical shift from Kyiv. During one of his nightly addresses in early December, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said it was imperative that Ukraine beef up its own defensive lines. It was a recognition that the front lines had, for the time being, frozen.

While some interpreted this development as a sign that the war is all but over, Ryan, the Australian Army veteran, says it’s a prime opportunity for Ukraine to refresh its strategy.

“Maybe Ukraine should embrace positional warfare for the time being,” he says. “Maybe that is the way it reconstitutes, regains its strength, and thinks through the problems that it has—from the tactical through to the strategic level.”

It’s a strategy that has already shown some dividends, Hird says. “Ukraine is very much preparing defensive positions, letting Russians run themselves against those defensive positions.” Ukraine estimates that Russia has lost more than 400 tanks, 500 artillery systems, and 30,000 soldiers in December alone.

“Whenever Ukraine feels that they have the equipment they need, the support they need … and the initiative shifts to their side, they can use those defensive positions as springboards,” Hird adds.

While a slowdown in fighting may benefit Ukraine, it helps Russia as well. It is now a race against the clock to plan how Ukraine may launch another counteroffensive that can breach the Surovikin Line.

Enough to Win

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in late February 2022, Kyiv has received tens of billions of dollars in military aid, including a raft of advanced equipment. But Ukraine’s position has also been, as Zelensky put it recently, that the aid was “not enough to win.” (But, he added, “we are thankful it was enough to defend.”)

Fearful of Russia’s “red lines,” the United States has consistently slow-rolled or withheld key technology that could help Ukraine’s advance. Meanwhile, Zaluzhnyi wrote in The Economist, Russia “retains and is able to maintain a superiority in weapons and equipment, missiles and ammunition.” What’s more, Moscow’s defense industry is ramping up production of the ammunition and gear necessary for its continued assault on Ukraine.

“We know that with continued US support, continued Western support, that likely would be the final push that Ukraine needs to liberate its own territories,” Hird says. “But political considerations, financial considerations, defense and industrial base blocks, that sort of thing, really inhibit our ability to bring that to bear. And that's very much what Russians are counting on.”

A particular problem has been Russian artillery.

Ahead of Ukraine’s 2022 counteroffensive, the country received shipments of the American-made High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS). Those systems, particularly when fitted with medium-range missiles and aided by counterbattery radar, were able to quickly move and target advanced Russian systems well behind the front lines, clearing the way for Ukrainian forces to advance freely across the battlefield. But novel technology became routine fairly quickly in battle. “Russians have very much learned how to target HIMARS,” Hird says. “So Ukrainians can’t use them to the same effect.”

“Now, at each step of the way, the Russians are interfering with you, right?” Ryan says. “They're doing camouflage for their locations. They move things more frequently, now, than they used to. They attack counterbattery radars and other detection systems with loitering drones. And they are denying the use of precision munitions, in large parts of the battlefield, through the use of electronic warfare.”

To overcome this problem, Ryan says, Ukraine needs to close the “detection to destruction gap.” Ukrainian forces need to be able to avoid detection and to be mobile enough to evacuate in a matter of minutes if they are picked up by Russian radar or drone surveillance—while, at the same time, detecting Russian positions and attacking before they can escape. The gap, he says, has shortened from about 10 minutes from detection to destruction to just two or three minutes.

“It’s a complex set of problems, but it’s a known set of problems,” Ryan says. He believes it will require some heavy lifting from NATO’s research capabilities to solve them.

There’s also a question of scale. Since Ukraine managed to destroy some of Russia’s advanced and expensive artillery system, Moscow has deployed a huge number of its older systems, opting for brute force instead of nimble targeting. Russia has achieved parity not through technology, but through volume.

According to leaked Pentagon documents, as of early 2023, Russia owned nearly 5,000 artillery systems—of which only about 20 percent had been destroyed. Ukraine, by contrast, has received, at most, a few dozen HIMARS systems. Even if the missile system is less effective than it was in 2022, a greater quantity would undoubtedly give Ukraine an edge. That’s also true for the Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS, which Ukraine began receiving late last year. A group of pro-Ukrainian Republican lawmakers decried that weapon transfer as a “job half-done,” as they arrived in small quantities and equipped for only some of their intended capabilities.

“All these innovations—at the end of the day, it’s about scale,” Hanno Pevkur, Estonia’s minister of defense, tells WIRED. “If you don’t have the innovations which can be produced in such quantities that will change the course of the war, it means that they still have to rely on the existing methods and existing weapons systems.”

There is some optimism that new weapons deliveries could tilt the balance more in Ukraine’s favor, particularly the Dutch-supplied, American-made F-16 fighter jets and the Abrams M1 tank. Ukrainian soldiers are training on both platforms now.

“Mr. Putin is going to find out that there’s a whole lot of weapons systems coming on board that he is not going to be able to respond to,” US senator Mike Rounds, who sits on the Senate Committee on Armed Services, tells WIRED. “And it’s going to give Ukraine the opportunity to continue to advance and take back the land that is theirs.”

Throughout the war, more and more advanced missiles and launchers have enabled Ukraine to strike deeper and deeper into Russian-held territory. Now, Ukraine has successfully managed to attack supply routes as far as the Kerch Bridge, which connects Crimea to Russia, and Belgorod within Russia proper.

But Kyiv wants to reach even further into Russian territory, stepping up its tactical strike campaign to attack Russian ships, airfields, supply depots, and command centers that are currently out of reach. If Ukraine can destroy Russian warehouses and stockpiles near the front lines, and increase the distance its trucks must travel to resupply its positions, it could negate the effect of Russia’s overwhelming artillery.

But Ukraine still lacks several types of those longer-range missiles and has relatively low quantities of the munitions it has received. “We’re probably not going as fast as a lot of us would like,” Rounds told reporters at the Halifax Security Forum in November.

More HIMARS and long-range munitions are critical in overcoming that parity, but they will be meaningless if Ukraine runs out of more basic ammunition. “It's not just a matter of providing some of the new technologies,” Rounds said. “It's a matter of making sure that they actually have the other resources that they need to make it through the winter time.”

In recent weeks, Ukraine has had to ration its 155-mm caliber artillery shells due to shortages. Various NATO countries have tapped into their stockpiles to provide those shells over the past year, and are now scrambling to boost domestic production. Bill Blair, Canada’s defense minister, admitted in November that there are “shortfalls” in that production capacity. “We need to see the same type of investment and progress in increasing production here in North America and in Europe,” Blair said.

Ramping up that production in NATO countries could take a year or more. Zaluzhnyi wrote that Ukraine needs to produce this equipment, and even more advanced weaponry, itself.

Some of this is already happening. Ukraine’s defense industry is being “overhauled for innovation,” Hird says. A prime example is Kyiv’s Seababy naval drones, which were developed inside Ukraine and have managed to deliver devastating damage to Russia’s Black Sea fleet. But the volume of output will need to increase drastically.

So as Ukraine tries to boost production at home, it is fighting a three-front war: one on the front lines; another deep inside its occupied territory and even in Russia itself, where warehouses and stockpiles sit; and a third in the information space, worldwide, in trying to convince its allies to continue and boost their support.

Fortifying its defenses will buy Ukraine time to come up with new strategies and test out new technologies—but it should also be an invitation to rethink its “strategic influence narratives,” Ryan says. That is, convincing NATO to not just maintain its support, but increase it.

That also means fighting back against Russian propaganda. Last month, the BBC and the Digital Forensic Research Lab at the Atlantic Council, a nonpartisan think tank, uncovered a massive Russian disinformation campaign on TikTok, designed to discredit Ukrainian officials using narratives tailor-made for Western audiences. It is just one skirmish in a broader information war, where Ukraine is losing ground.

While Kyiv has its supporters, like Rounds, Blair, and Pevkur, it also has new opponents. Mike Johnson, the recently elected speaker of the US House of Representatives, has held up billions in military aid. Viktor Orbán, prime minister of Hungary, has similarly frustrated support from within the European Union. Big wins for pro-Russian politicians, from Geert Wilders in the Netherlands to Robert Fico in Slovakia, could threaten future aid packages.

Information Superiority

An “essential” part of breaking out of this position warfare, Zaluzhnyi wrote, is obtaining “information superiority.” Understanding the battlefield better than the enemy.

It may seem counterintuitive. This is a conflict where, as Hird puts it, “everyone knows what everyone’s doing at all times.” The war in Ukraine is probably the most visible conflict in human history: Both sides have employed a suite of drones, radar, aircraft, and satellite to chart every inch of the conflict. But, as Ryan explains, an aerial view is only a piece of the picture.

“We confuse increased transparency with increased wisdom,” he says. “And they’re two very different things.”

Military planners often talk about ISR: intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. (Sometimes the acronym is expanded to include target acquisition.) Certainly, Ukraine has managed to do incredible reconnaissance, particularly thanks to its fleet of drones, which it has integrated tightly into its ground operations. But it can do more, Ryan says. Russia’s ability to quickly move and deploy its reserve units has previously caught Ukraine by surprise, he notes.

Figuring out how to not just improve its intelligence collection, but make it more accessible, will also be key.

Last fall, Luxembourg and Estonia launched a new IT coalition, with an eye to connect the private sector to the Ukrainian military. “The coalition, of course, will not change the course of the war immediately,” Pevkur says. “But it’s just one piece of the puzzle to find the solutions.”

“We’ve sent some software to them to help shape the battlefield,” Pevkur says. He says they’ve already received “good feedback.”

One such piece of software is SensusQ, an Estonian AI-powered platform that mixes real-time footage with a variety of other inputs, from social media updates to human intelligence. The company says its platform is already in use in multiple places across Ukraine.

Kyiv has also used software developed by tech giant Palantir to conduct target acquisition, deploying AI and facial recognition technology to identify Russian positions. While Palantir has not revealed exactly which capabilities it is providing to Ukraine, the company recently unveiled “a ChatGPT-style digital assistant that enables operators to efficiently deploy reconnaissance drones, devise tactical responses, and orchestrate enemy communication jamming,” as the US House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology described it last June.

Shyam Sankar, Palantir’s chief technology officer, told a US Senate committee last year that Ukraine’s ability to integrate new technology into its military, particularly AI, has seen the timeline from procurement to implementation trimmed “from years and months to weeks and days.”

What makes this innovation particularly remarkable is how widespread it has already become.

“I think the Ukrainians are well down this path to what I call the democratization of digital command and control,” Ryan says. “They have pushed down digital command and control, the access to information, on smart devices in a way no other military has really done.”

Decentralizing intelligence collection and distribution means units are armed with much more information on the front lines, and are more equipped to make decisions on the fly instead of being reliant on senior commanders. Ryan says it will be crucial to push that information further down, and more quickly—but it will also be necessary to improve the flow of information upward.

“The Ukrainians are pretty good at bottom-up adaptation,” Ryan says. But they need to be able to apply battlefield lessons quickly, in a systematic way. “It’s been improving, certainly, since my first visit—and I’ve had some pretty long conversations about it on my last one, about six weeks ago. But I think that systemic learning culture is something that they need to continue improving because the Russians aren’t very good with bottom-up innovation.”

Given the speed at which Ukraine is learning and adapting, it will also require that its NATO partners be willing to adapt at the same speed. Pevkur insists they are already well on their way. “So that means that when they have the weapon system and they use it, we will get some feedback, we will change it,” he says.

Prior to last summer’s counteroffensive, American military planners held a series of tabletop exercises with their Ukrainian counterparts to game out how the fighting could play out. Ryan says that kind of collaboration needs to be broader and deeper, geared to win the war, not just individual battles.

“We can be their strap-on brain,” Ryan says. “We can work through the theories that might help with more effective offensive operations in this scenario. I mean, NATO has hundreds of people who are military planners and can help do this.”

What Comes Next

In the coming months, Ukraine and Russia are likely to opt for missile and drone strikes instead of big ground operations, as winter sets in and they work to refresh their ground forces.

If last year was any indication, Moscow will spend early 2024 expanding its defensive lines and deploying a huge amount of hardware to the battlefield, new and old—mines, artillery systems, fighter jets, and missile launchers.

If Ukraine hopes to advance this year, it will likely need to discover its own equivalent of gunpowder. That may come in the form of uncrewed land vehicles, which could crash through Russian lines and clear the dense minefields in its way. Or, perhaps, Ukraine will finally find a way to network its drone fleets and attain air superiority over its skies. Maybe it will achieve a breakthrough in electronic warfare, devising a way to jam Russia’s systems and neutralize its missiles and loitering munitions. Kyiv may receive the long-range missiles it has been requesting or begin producing its own. Perhaps it will be all of the above, or something else entirely.

But as Kyiv and its allies work feverishly to find that breakthrough, it will need to continue perfecting the tactics that have made it such a worthy adversary thus far. That will mean holding its international coalition together, making the most of its existing weapon systems, and figuring out how to adapt on the fly.

The Battle of Marengo

… as described by one Eugène de Beauharnais in his memoirs. For context: Eugène, aide-de-camp to general Bonaparte, had left Egypt with his stepfather, in Paris had helped to reconcile his mother with general Bonaparte and assisted (according to his memoirs, without completely understanding what was going on) at the coup d’état of 19th Brumaire. However, once Bonaparte had become First Consul, Eugène gave up his post as ADC, as soon as it dawned on him that this job from now on would mostly consist of hanging out in an antechamber and politely introducing guests to the head-of-state of France. Having decided that this was totally uncool, he had gone back to the military. At the time of the second Italian campaign, he was an 18-year-old capitaine de la Garde des Consuls, commanding a compagnie of chasseurs à cheval.

We’re starting the relation a bit before Marengo, with the entry into Milan, as Eugène claims to have met Desaix there one last time.

I assisted at the combat of Buffalore, commanded by general Murat, who showed great vigour in this crossing of the Tésin [Ticino]; the enemy was pushed briskly up into Milan, where we entered in a jumble with his light troops. I made with my company a rather fine charge to force the enemy, who still held the field, to return to the citadel of Milan.

We remained three days in Milan, where the First Consul was occupied in reorganising the republican government; after which we proceeded to Pavia. General Lannes had made the crossing of the Po, about a league below this city. General Desaix had just arrived from Egypt and joined the army at Pavia, at the very moment when the First Consul left; as the troops of the guard were not to cross the Po until the night, I had time to go and see him. As a companion in arms from Egypt, we were delighted to meet again, and general Desaix treated me very well. He spoke to me much about the campaign which was opening and the command which he hoped to obtain; it seemed, moreover, that he foresaw his imminent end, for he uttered this singular statement : "Formerly, the Austrian bullets knew me, I am afraid that they may not recognize me any more." We crossed the Po during the night, and the next day I was sent with my company, by Stradella, in the direction of Piacenza, to establish communication with general Murat, who had crossed the Po at this point and had effectively seized this city. The next day the affair of Montebello took place, which did so much honour to General Lannes; but I arrived too late to take part in it. The following evening, we pushed in the direction of Alexandria as far as Marengo, where there was a small combat to force the enemy to pass again the Bormida and to abandon this line. The day was very stormy and we had much difficulty in passing the Scrivia whose waters had become very rough. I witnessed the reports which several officers came to make, in the evening, to the first consul, at his bivouac. All agreed in saying that the enemy was withdrawing in haste and that he had broken all his bridges on the Bormida. The first consul had it repeated several times to be more sure, and it was in consequence of these false reports that he directed on Genoa the corps of troops of which he had just given the command to general Desaix in order to lift the siege of this important place, if there was still time. But, the next morning, when a heavy cannonade was heard on the side of Alexandria, we were quickly drawn out of our error. Soon the first consul learned that the enemy was emerging in force on the plain of Alexandria, and that a great battle was inevitable. One can estimate the anxiety of the general in chief and the anger which he felt at the false reports which had been made to him the day before. Orders were dispatched in all haste to recall general Desaix, who was found near Novi, and who, in spite of this distance, still arrived in time to take part in the action and to decide the winning of the battle. I mentioned this circumstance because it exonerates the first consul from the reproach of improvidence which was made to him in several reports of the battle of Marengo. Those who have had great military commands know what the fate of battles depends on, and how an unforeseeable accident can disturb the best and most skilful combinations. Our movement of retreat began towards midday and continued until four o'clock; it is during this time that the guard began to take a more active part in the affair. The troops of the line were tired and discouraged; the first consul sent us to support them; we carried ourselves sometimes on the left, sometimes on the right, according to the need; general Lannes, pressed a little sharply by the enemy, wanted to have us make a charge which did not succeed; he had in front of him two battalions and two pieces of artillery behind which was a mass of cavalry in close columns; his troops withdrew in disorder, so that, to give them time to breathe and to rally them, he ordered colonel Bessières, who commanded us, to charge on the enemy column. The terrain was not very favourable, because it was necessary to cross vineyards; nevertheless we passed and arrived within rifle range of these two battalions, which awaited us arms in hand and in the best of spirits. Colonel Bessières, having drawn us up, was preparing to command the charge, when he realised that the enemy cavalry was deploying on our left and was going to turn us. Consequently, he made us turn back to the left, and we crossed the vineyard under the fire of grapeshot and musketry; but, having arrived on the other side, we held our ground well enough to impose on the enemy cavalry. General Lannes was very dissatisfied with this operation and complained bitterly about it. However it is probable that, if we had carried out his orders, few of us would have returned. During the retreat, my chasseurs were charged with destroying the ammunition which we were forced to abandon, and performed this mission with great intrepidity, often waiting until they were joined by the enemy to set fire to the caissons and then jump on horseback. Finally, towards five o'clock, General Desaix joined us, and the First Consul was able to resume the offensive. The troops of General Lannes, encouraged by this reinforcement, reformed, and soon the offensive began as well as the retrograde march of the enemy. The cavalry of General Kellermann made a very beautiful charge on our left, and, towards the evening, the cavalry of the guard made one not less brilliant. Although the ground did not favour us, since we had two ditches to cross, we rushed with vigour on a column of cavalry much more numerous than us, at the moment when it was deploying; we pushed it up to the first bridges over the waters of the Bormida, always sabering. The melee lasted ten minutes: I was happy enough to get away with two sabre blows on my chabraque. The following day, the first consul, on the account which was given to him of this affair, appointed me squadron leader. My company had suffered quite a bit, because, of one hundred and fifteen horses which I had in the morning, I had only forty-five left in the evening; it is true that a piquet of fifteen chasseurs had remained near the first consul, and that many chasseurs, dismounted or slightly wounded, returned successively.

The day after this battle (June 15, 1800), an armistice was concluded as well as an agreement for the evacuation of Italy; the first consul returned on the 16th to Milan, from where we were at a distance of forty Italian miles; I was charged to escort him from the battlefield to Milan, by following the post. This race, of more than twelve leagues always at the trot and without unbridling, was so tiring, that I arrived at Milan with only seven men.

I hope this is helpful to anyone who’s interested.

Marfilita reclaimed! The Empire takes yet another step to restoring justice, order, and progress to the island of Puerto Caballo! A great victory has been achieved!

As the might of the Lunar Empire grew and as more of its enemies were crushed beneath its hooves, the Equestrian Provisional Government in Puerto Caballo remained a thorn in its side.

It was bad enough for the Empire that Puerto Caballo was protected by the fleet of the Kingdom of Aquileia, it was even worse when Aquileian and Arisian forces were providing training and supplies to the Puerto Caballans, and made downright humiliating as Arisian intelligence were transporting Puerto Caballan operatives around the world to strike at Lunar power wherever it sought to impose itself.

Yet this would not last. Quietly, the Lunar Empire had a sophisticated plan of its own to reclaim the islands. Through extensive reconnaissance and planning, an invasion force capable of seizing the islands within months was constructed and put into place. The threat of Aquileian intervention was thwarted as the Empire supported the growing revolutionary republican movement in Aquileia itself by providing funds and intelligence to its organisers and giving them shelter in New Mareland. This culminated in the 2 January overthrow of the Kingdom of Aquileia in a coup/uprising by the local republicans, and a new democratic pro-Lunar government was established. At last, the way was clear.

Operation Hurricane was launched on 11 January, the initial landings involving 120,000 soldiers and the overall operation involving nearly 400,000 troops with support from dozens of ships, thousands of aircraft and tanks, and the Empire's most elite combat mages. The defenders, even with all their weapons and training, didn't stand a chance. Just three nights into the invasion, the symbolic village of Marfiltia was taken by Lunar marines. To celebrate their victory, several of the marines involved in the attack had a picture taken of them posing with the Imperial flag over a Loyalist flag, mimicking a famous piece of Loyalist iconography (seen here).

Victory was declared on 26 March with the total collapse of the EPG. Thousands of Loyalists were killed, many more were captured, and those who avoided capture had been scattered to the wind. Or so the Empire thought.

Even though the EPG itself has fallen, resistance remained strong. Deep in the jungles and high in the mountains, a guerrilla insurgency raged on in defiance of the Lunar occupiers. The question was then a matter of who would break first, the vengeful Empire with all its terrifying might or the tenacious rebels with nothing to lose but each other?

https://derpibooru.org/images/3136802

I thought I'd heard just about every bizarre far right conspiracy theory.

The goofiest was probably the one about Obama storing 30,000 guillotines in Montana and Georgia to be used in FEMA concentration camps after Sharia Law is introduced in the US.

The recent unfortunate incident regarding Titanic tourism brought to the surface a wacko contention about the Federal Reserve System.

Far-right conspiracy theorist Stew Peters is pushing a conspiracy theory that the OceanGate submarine was purposely sunk “to keep people from visiting the Titanic wreckage” because doing so would supposedly reveal that the Titanic “was sunk by a newly created” Rothschilds-connected Federal Reserve and not an iceberg. Numerous Republican politicians and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have appeared on Peters’ program.   Peters is a white nationalist who frequently encourages violence against his perceived enemies. He has pushed a multitude of conspiracy theories, including those related to QAnon, COVID-19, Pizzagate, flat Earth, the moon landing, and the Uvalde and Sandy Hook mass shootings.  Despite his toxic history, numerous politicians have appeared on his program, including Reps. Paul Gosar, Bob Good, Pete Sessions, and Andy Biggs; and Kennedy.  Peters is now pushing the bizarre conspiracy theory that the Titanic was actually sunk by the Rothschilds-connected Federal Reserve — not an iceberg — and the OceanGate submarine was sunk to discourage people from ever visiting the Titanic to find out the truth.

Yep, the Fed will stop at nothing to hide its diabolical secrets! 😂😱

There is a major chronological problem with this particular conspiracy theory. The RMS Titanic sunk on 15 April 1912 while the Federal Reserve System wasn't founded until 23 December 1913. But conspiracy theorists never let the facts get in the way of their derangement.

Conspiracy theories have been around for ages. But the internet makes them easier to circulate and to draw unlikely connections between totally unrelated events.

And the conspiracy nuts are seldom content believing in just one. Stew Peters is all over the genre with QAnon, vaccines, the Apollo moon landings, and topically the Fed/Titanic. He's a waterfall of far right fabulism. And his racism and antisemitism don't prevent extremist Republicans and RFK Jr. from kissing up to him.

People like that are often close to the psychological spot where deep gullibility and paranoia intersect. Though some know it's all a load of bullshit but continue to spew it for personal or political gain.

People like Stew Peters give us a good reason why nobody should get a high school diploma without first passing a course in baloney detection.

Use Carl Sagan's "Baloney Detection Kit" to Combat Fake News

Georgia base tapped to host F-35 fighters as A-10 fleet retires

Rachel S. CohenJun 27 at 04:15 PM

Moody Air Force Base, Georgia, is the service’s top pick to become the next active duty home of the F-35A Lightning II fighter.

The Air Force said Monday it plans to bring two F-35 squadrons to the Valdosta base starting in fiscal 2029, when it hopes to complete phasing out its fleet of A-10C Thunderbolt II attack planes.

The service must first study the proposed move’s environmental impact on the surrounding area before formally green-lighting the project. That review is slated to finish in fall 2025.

Switching missions at Moody isn’t expected to create any new jobs on base, the Air Force said, although it had previously announced that the U.S.’s most advanced fighter jet would bring in another 500 or so workers.

It’s unclear what other bases were considered as part of the process.

Winding down much of America’s combat operations overseas has prompted a significant shift in Moody’s missions at home. For almost two decades, the base’s A-10s watched over ground troops and strafed enemy forces with the Warthog’s iconic, armor-piercing 30mm gun.

Moody airmen also flew search-and-rescue missions in Afghanistan since the early days of the U.S. invasion and trained Afghan pilots on the A-29 Super Tucano ground attack aircraft to build the country’s fledgling air force.

The Air Force’s plan to swap A-10s for F-35s at Moody is emblematic of the Pentagon’s pivot from its longtime War on Terror to instead focus on military competition with China.

The service argues that the Warthog fleet must be retired because it is ill-equipped to face off against advanced air defenses, stealth jets and the vast distances of the Pacific. Critics say the A-10 can perform the close air support mission far better than the F-35, which was designed as the high-tech “quarterback” of the battlefield rather than to hunt convoys.

Georgia lawmakers hailed the decision as a long-term investment in the region’s military community as the country’s priorities change.

“This is a major step forward in our ongoing effort to strengthen and sustain Moody Air Force Base for decades to come,” Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Georgia, said in a release Monday. “I will continue to champion Moody AFB and its future as a home for U.S. Air Force tactical aviation.”

“For decades Moody AFB has been key for our nation’s defense,” Republican Rep. Austin Scott, who represents the base’s district, said on Twitter. “I am pleased that Secretary Kendall has selected Moody as the preferred location for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Moody is proud to maintain a fighter mission, carrying its strong legacy long into the 21st century.”

Active duty F-35 units already handle test, training and combat operations from Edwards Air Force Base in California, Nellis AFB in Nevada, Luke AFB in Arizona, Hill AFB in Utah, Eglin AFB in Florida, Eielson AFB in Alaska and RAF Lakenheath in England. Three more squadrons will start arriving at Tyndall AFB, Florida, this summer.

In May, the service announced that the Oregon National Guard will likely host the Air Force’s third F-35A training squadron at Kingsley Field, pending an environmental study. The decision would bring 20 jets but no new jobs to the installation.

“The Air Force needs F-35 squadrons available and fully mission-capable to prevail against peer adversaries,” the Oregon Air National Guard’s 173rd Fighter Wing said in a release. “That means they require more F-35 pilots. Team Kingsley’s adaptability and excellence allows us to fill this Air Force need.”

The U.S. plans to purchase 2,470 F-35s overall, more than 1,700 of which will be flown by the Air Force. The jets remain the Pentagon’s most expensive weapons program, at more than $1.7 trillion to buy, operate and maintain, the Government Accountability Office said last year.

Rachel Cohen joined Air Force Times as senior reporter in March 2021. Her work has appeared in Air Force Magazine, Inside Defense, Inside Health Policy, the Frederick News-Post (Md.), the Washington Post, and others.

Nobody in society is relying on celebs to be some moral person that an individual thing the average joe is not thinking about z when it comes to plastic bottles all we see is overpriced water she advertising do seeing black girls in high fashion bother me no i have a bone to pick with my shit Mayor who I do hold responsible or my state representative or the president for the the extremely high gas prices and I would take public transportation if it was available but it not

Umm… ok. I have no clue where that came from or how that’s relevant.

And for the record you can’t hold anyone in government responsible for extremely high gas prices. Who you have a bone to pick with is the oil execs and the unregulated capitalism that allowed their profits to double in the past year because they could. The current barrel price of oil does not align with the prices being charged. But they know people are economically illiterate and will blame the government so they get no push back.

Actually I take that back a bill was introduced to combat gas hikes but the republicans in the senate are using the filibuster to stop any semblance of progress. (Also almost every Republican in the house voted against it)

As for transportation yeah the us is way behind other nations especially if you don’t live in a major city. But again that’s more a federal government (I’ll give you a guess as to who seems to be the enemy of progress when it comes to updating and expanding our transportation capabilities.)

Saturday, March 23, 2024

Micro-apartments are back after nearly a century, as need for affordable housing soars (AP) Every part of Barbara Peraza-Garcia and her family’s single-room apartment in Seattle has a double or even triple purpose. The 180-square-foot (17-square-meter) room is filled with an air mattress where she, her partner and their children, ages 2 and 4, sleep. It’s also where they play or watch TV. At mealtimes, it becomes their dining room. It’s a tight squeeze for the family of asylum seekers from Venezuela. But at $900 a month—more than $550 less than the average studio in Seattle—the micro-apartment with a bare-bones bathroom and shared kitchen was just within their budget and gave them a quick exit from their previous arrangement sleeping on the floor of a church. Boarding houses that rented single rooms to low-income, blue-collar or temporary workers were prevalent across the U.S. in the early 1900s. Known as single room occupancy units, or SROs, they started to disappear in the postwar years amid urban renewal efforts and a focus on suburban single-family housing. Now the concept is reappearing—with the trendy name of “micro-apartment” and aimed at a much broader array of residents.

California Democratic lawmakers seek ways to combat retail theft while keeping progressive policy (AP) Facing mounting pressure to crack down on a retail theft crisis, California lawmakers are split on how best to tackle the problem that some say has caused major store closures and products like deodorants to be locked behind plexiglass. Top Democratic leaders have already ruled out reforming progressive policies like Proposition 47, a ballot measure approved by 60% of state voters in 2014 that reduced certain theft and drug possession offenses from felonies to misdemeanors to address overcrowding jails. But a growing number of law enforcement officials, along with Republican and moderate Democratic lawmakers, said California needs to consider all options, including rolling back the measure. While shoplifting has been a growing problem, large-scale thefts, in which groups of individuals brazenly rush into stores and take goods in plain sight, have become a crisis in California and elsewhere in recent years.

Ghost Army members given Congressional Gold Medal (AP) With inflatable tanks, radio trickery, costume uniforms and acting, the American military units that became known as the Ghost Army outwitted the enemy during World War II. Their mission was kept secret for decades, but on Thursday the group stepped out of the shadows as they were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal at a ceremony in Washington. Three of the seven known surviving members attended the ceremony. The Ghost Army included about 1,100 soldiers in the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, which carried out about 20 battlefield deceptions in France, Luxembourg, Belgium and Germany, and around 200 soldiers in the 3133rd Signal Company Special, which carried out two deceptions in Italy. One of the biggest missions, called Operation Viersen, came in March 1945 when the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops’ deception drew German units away from the point on the Rhine River where the 9th Army was actually crossing. “They had hundreds of inflatables set up,” author Rick Beyer said in an interview before the ceremony. “They had their sound trucks operating for multiple nights. They had other units attached to them. They had set up multiple phony headquarters and staffed them with officers who were pretending to be colonels.” “This was an all-hands-on-deck affair and it was completely successful,” Beyer said. “It fooled the Germans. They moved their troops to the river opposite where the deception was.”

A Mexican Drug Cartel’s New Target? Seniors and Their Timeshares (NYT) First the cartel cut its teeth with drug trafficking. Then avocados, real estate and construction companies. Now, a Mexican criminal group known for its brutality is moving in on seniors and their timeshares. The operation is relatively simple. Cartel employees posing as sales representatives call up timeshare owners, offering to buy their investments back for generous sums. They then demand upfront fees for anything from listing advertisements to paying government fines. The representatives persuade their victims to wire large amounts of money to Mexico—sometimes as much as hundreds of thousands of dollars—and then they disappear. The scheme has netted the cartel, Jalisco New Generation, hundreds of millions of dollars over the past decade, according to U.S. officials who were not authorized to speak publicly, via dozens of call centers in Mexico that relentlessly target American and Canadian timeshare owners. With little more than a phone and a convincing script, cartel employees are victimizing people across multiple countries.

U.S. evacuating Americans from Haiti as humanitarian crisis worsens (Washington Post) The U.S. government on Thursday airlifted more than 30 stranded Americans out of the Haitian capital, as the gang violence racking this city showed no signs of abating and an already dire humanitarian crisis worsened. The government-organized helicopter flights out of Port-au-Prince began Wednesday, carrying more than 15 U.S. citizens, a State Department spokesperson said, and an estimated 30 Americans will be able to leave on the flights each day that they operate. They’re being taken to the neighboring Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti. Officials said those who are airlifted out will be responsible for organizing their onward travel from the Dominican capital of Santo Domingo to the United States. The U.S. government on Thursday also flew more than 60 U.S. citizens from Cap-Haïtien, a city on Haiti’s northern coast, to Miami International Airport.

Far Right’s Success Is a Measure of a Changing Portugal (NYT) The sun-soaked Algarve region on Portugal’s Southern coast is a place where guitar-strumming backpackers gather by fragrant orange trees and digital nomads hunt for laid-back vibes. It is not exactly what comes to mind when one envisions a stronghold of far-right political sentiment. But it is in the Algarve region where the anti-establishment Chega party finished first in national elections this month, both unsettling Portuguese politics and injecting new anxiety throughout the European establishment. Nationwide, Chega received 18 percent of the vote. Chega, which means “enough” in Portuguese, is the first hard-right party to gain ground in the political scene in Portugal since 1974 and the end of the nationalist dictatorship of António de Oliveira Salazar. Its formula for success mixed promises of greater law and order with tougher immigration measures and an appeal to economic resentments.

Europe explores using profits from Russian assets to arm Ukraine (Washington Post) Two years after Moscow’s full-scale invasion, Europe may have finally found a way to tap the more than $300 billion of Russian assets that allies froze—but only a bit of it. E.U. leaders are discussing a proposal to use profits generated by immobilized assets to help Kyiv—a plan that could offer about $3 billion a year over several years, mostly for weapons. Top E.U. diplomat Josep Borrell said $3 billion a year is “not extraordinary” but also “not negligible.”

Terrorist attack in Moscow (Foreign Policy) At least three people in combat fatigues fired shots at a concert venue in Moscow on Friday, Russian state media reported. Videos posted online show the building engulfed in flames. At least 93 people were killed in the attack, according to federal authorities, who are investigating the incident as a terrorist attack. The Islamic State claimed responsibility. Earlier, some members of Russia’s legislature were quick to accuse Ukraine and called for more strikes on that country. This is a “great tragedy,” Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said.

Russia attacks Ukrainian electrical power facilities, including major hydroelectric plant (AP) Russia attacked electrical power facilities in much of Ukraine, including the country’s largest hydroelectric plant, causing blackouts for more than a million Ukrainians and killing at least three people, officials said Friday. Energy Minister German Galushchenko said the nighttime drone and rocket attacks were “the largest attack on the Ukrainian energy sector in recent times. The goal is not just to damage, but to try again, like last year, to cause a large-scale disruption of the country’s energy system.”

India arrests Delhi chief minister as crackdown on opposition spreads (Washington Post) Indian law enforcement officials on Thursday arrested Arvind Kejriwal, the chief minister of Delhi and an up-and-coming opposition leader, in an alleged money-laundering case that his supporters say has been trumped up by the country’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. Kejriwal, leader of the Aam Aadmi Party, which rules the Indian capital and the state of Punjab, is the second opposition party chief to be arrested in recent weeks after Hemant Soren, the leader of Jharkhand state, was taken into custody in January over an alleged land scam. Since 2022, Kejriwal and his allies have been accused by the BJP of selling liquor licenses and receiving kickbacks from vendors in the capital. India’s Enforcement Directorate, which investigates money laundering, has alleged it has evidence that Kejriwal’s party received millions of dollars from a liquor group. Opposition parties in recent months have increasingly accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP of unfairly using federal investigative agencies to systematically pressure political rivals—or jail them outright ahead of crucial national elections that begin April 19.

In Jerusalem and the West Bank, Ramadan is marred by violence and loss (Washington Post) The war in Gaza has cast a pall over the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, a time of fasting and reflection, charity and community. For Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the occasion is always bittersweet—marked by moments of joy and constant reminders of the Israeli occupation that shapes their lives. Celebrations are circumscribed by Israeli restrictions. Families navigate checkpoints to gather for meals. Violence can interrupt prayer or play at any moment. Since the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel, restrictions have been tightened, Israeli military raids have intensified, and settler attacks have driven families from their homes. The combustible atmosphere sparked concerns that Ramadan—which began on March 10 this year—might bring unrest across Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Russia and China strike deal with Houthis to ensure ship safety (Bloomberg) Russia and China have reached an agreement with Yemen’s Houthi rebels, the Iran-backed militant group that has been attacking ships moving through the Red Sea since the conflict in Gaza broke out. The Houthis, who control the vast majority of Yemen’s population centers, have agreed to let Russian and Chinese ships pass through the area—in return, Moscow and Beijing have promised some “political support.” The deal is an interesting piece of diplomacy because it pits the two countries (and the Houthis) against much of the West. The U.N. Security Council passed a resolution condemning the Houthis for their attacks in January (with Russia and China abstaining), and the U.S. and U.K. have orchestrated multiple strikes against the group in an attempt to re-establish their shipping routes.

Dispatches from the combat zone.

March 4, 2024

The Arizona Theater of Operations in the Republican war on free and fair elections has seen the worst fighting mostly confined to courtrooms, with right-wing attackers lobbing lawsuit after lawsuit against democracy's defenses.

There was, for example, the suit filed by the Mohave County GOP before the November 2022 election, which asked a judge to throw out the state's 31-year-old system of mail-in voting. About which KPNX 12News explains:

Up to 90% of all Arizona voters vote with early ballots. Most mail in their ballot, others drop off the ballot at a polling place. Arizonans have been casting early ballots via mail since 1991 when the Legislature allowed absentee voting that didn't require an excuse. The practice took off in the mid-2000s, with the creation of the permanent early voter list, which automatically sent an election ballot to voters who were on the list.

The county's Superior Court fortunately sided with the state:

There is nothing in the Arizona Constitution which expressly prohibits the legislature from authoring new voting laws, including "no-excuse" mail-in ballots.

Undaunted, Republicans have now launched a frontal assault on Arizona's recently approved Elections Procedures Manual, which lays out the rules for the state's elections, such as voter registration, voting methods and certification of results. Within hours of each other, two lawsuits were filed by Republican organizations challenging an array of policies in the EPM, including those relating to proof of citizenship verification, public access to voter signatures, Arizona's early voting list (which they really hate), and more.

One of the lawsuits specifically singles out a provision of the EPM that protects voters from intimidation. This is especially relevant since masked MAGA vigilantes carrying guns launched an aggressively menacing drop box “monitoring” campaign during the 2022 midterms.

Plus, as Democracy Docket reports, Republican legislators filed yet another lawsuit against the EPM at the end of January. And last week, Stephen Miller’s America First Legal Foundation filed a complaint challenging a slew of election policies in Yavapai County.

All these legal onslaughts are in addition to the barrage launched by Arizona's sorehead election losers Kari Lake (for governor), Mark Finchem (for secretary of state) and Abe Hamadeh (for attorney general). So far, none of these lawsuits has come within a country kilometer of being successful. Lake's doomed complaint failed all the way up to the state Supreme Court, and one judge ordered sanctions against Finchem.

But even though Arizona GOPers have lost every single battle, they continue to believe they will ultimately win the war and defeat their enemy — American democracy.

Make All Go Away

Crack would be healthier.  Hunter Biden is finally useful.  A ceaseless addiction to Donald Trump is destroying the minds of those hooked.  Acting like the atrocious hobby is enjoyable represents the worst of many parts.  As always, unfortunate souls who find themselves around dirtbags are harmed the most.

The compulsion to make every last topic about a guy who I’d like to remind all has been out of that one office for a couple years now is worse than traditional drugs.  Sure, you’ll miss your teeth, but you can drink smoothies.  Both his most zealous adherents and ardent resisters need him around to feel important, which causes more damage than having to smile with one’s mouth closed for photos.

Grating participants are unwilling to kick the worst habit.  They’re not unable: it’s just that quitting would take fortitude.  Blame addiction for the unwillingness to divorce someone who specializes in it.

Second marriages don’t work out for those repeating errors that doomed the first ones.  Ask someone who decided multiple times that a lifetime commitment came with an asterisk.  Even Trump hasn’t been foolish enough to marry the same person twice.  Display absolute loyalty to someone who shows none of it.

Flaccid goons remain blinded by gold.  That’s the color and not the rather valuable metal.  This era is helpful if creating an example of devotion to delusion is useful. The ultimate in phoniness conned suckers so thoroughly that there’s either no resistance to begin with or an unwillingness to back down after this much commitment.  Anyone who could actually endure his presidency and proclaim they want to double down will buy any real estate you can sell.

It’s not just his cultists but their alleged worst enemies who crave ceaseless conflict.  Alleged foes wouldn’t know what to do with themselves if he were finally banished to obscurity like they claim is their utmost desire.  The need for a foil reflects a fear of Holmes without Moriarity, only with affected outrage replacing cleverness.

Each faction awaits not-so-secret orders.  It’s not like they’ll refuse to obey.  Rugged individualists wouldn’t know what to do with themselves without respective gangs issuing preprogrammed responses.  LARPers were already without purpose before getting too deeply into character.

Political hooligan firms would find themselves with nothing to do if Emmanuel Extra Goldstein disappeared.  Superheroes are relegated to picking up litter.  Also, their powers are limited to kvetching about the results of their policies and noticing Trump is an orangish hue.  Tiresome resisters think they’re battling Lex Luthor while sitting in bedrooms reading comics while lounging on Superman sheets.

The chief side effect of getting hooked on the outrage is constant exhaustion.  Those not indulging are stricken, as well.  The similarly warped either think constant moaning defines robust manly awesomeness or serves as evidence Satan can possess pompous nitwits.  They’re still suckered into playing his game either way.  Marks can walk away just like gamblers did to his impossibly gaudy Atlantic City casinos.

The secret that they seek the same goal is the only way for those sick of watching combatants shriek at each other enjoy the match.  Fervent faux combat participants don’t heed anything as trifling as policy results.  Fans of ticking off libs ignore his adoration of tariffs, enthusiasm for lockdowns, and lust for debt.  You may have noticed that the embodiment of egomaniacs pursued an unnerving quantity of liberal policies, but only if you noticed results and not claims.  Melodrama is exactly what both sides want in nostalgia for the worst moments.

Haven’t you ever hated both Super Bowl participants?  Cheer for Buffalo chicken dip instead.  The playoffs are still going in the contemptible sport of politics.  These are not the only sides despite the binary nature assured to us by both regrettable sides.  Republicans who just want a few cabinet agencies banished to Siberia remain uninterested in a shady religion based on a pyramid scheme.

The need for a central figure to genuflect to or flip off creates bipartisanship of the wrong kind.  The only thing worse than obsessing over one person is when it’s this person.  Normal humans were beyond over this shtick two election cycles ago.  Heck, Trump’s been boring since it became clear he was lousy at business in direct inversive proportion to his boasting around the time he boasted of taking on the NFL while losing to it.  The biggest faker we’ve ever encountered keeps announcing who he is if some people would like to learn one of these decades.

Worshiping a horse’s ass is exactly what this nation was founded to oppose.  The worst sort of royalty is selected by subjects.  Feeling entitled without earning.  Charles III has made more honest dollars.

Vowing to move past the most deliberately unpleasant human is the best way into the future.  Acting as if the only antidote to Biden is a second poisonous dose.  We can get back to arguing about why Democrats screw up everything rather than focusing on a longtime Democrat’s proclamations.

It’s tough to connect with anyone who’s not sick of the bickering.  Falling for obnoxiousness’s primary example is as dull as getting outraged by it.  It should take nearly this long to learn that tantrums stop upon ignoring them.  Trump won’t learn before he’s 80.  The last holdouts on both sides of a tiresome slap fight should finally learn now.