It is indeed gratifying to see Dutch police beating, tear gassing, and even shooting at farmers (including 16 year olds) protesting the Fourth Reich’s righteous diktats on nitrogen. Serves them right!
Actually, the EU and its Dutch gauleiters are targeting nitrous oxide, another malign greenhouse gas, like carbon dioxide and dihydrogen monoxide (i.e, water, in vapor form). And of course sulfur dioxide is another horrible pollutant.
Do you see the problem here, ladies and gentlemen, ladygentlemen, and [insert your narcissistic self-identification here]? The common element–literally?
Of course you do. Oxygen! Oxygen is at the root of our existential climate crisis. Why should we attack the greenhouse gasses individually? Why not attack the root of the problem? Target its schwerpunkt? Yes, cut off well, the oxygen to the oxides. Problem solved!
We must therefore wage total war against this horrible gateway gas.
It’s up to you to do your part: don’t hold your breath waiting for politicians or polizei to do it for you.
Well, actually, holding your breath is your part: your turning oxygen into carbon dioxide is part of the problem. So save the planet: stop breathing. This will also solve the Dutch farmer problem: if you don’t breathe, you don’t eat–hence, no farmers and their nasty nitrogen!
Seeing as Friday-Sunday were the 159th anniversary of the three days of the Battle of Gettysburg, I decided to watch the eponymous movie again. It’s long, so I broke up the watching in parts to match the three days, saving the Pickett-Pettigrew-Trimble charge climax for yesterday, 3 July.
I still rate the film as one of the best Civil War movies. Now admittedly, that’s a low bar. There aren’t a lot of great ones. Unlike WWII, Korea or Vietnam movies which can focus on a squad or other small group of men and build on the interpersonal dynamics of men under mortal threat, in the Civil War pretty much the smallest group was the company, which in turn was usually part of a regiment that operated as a unit. That doesn’t lend itself to the same cinematic treatment as say Sands of Iwo Jima or Band of Brothers or Saving Private Ryan. Even WWII movies that focus on big battles, like The Longest Day or A Bridge Too Far, tell the story through the actions of small groups of men.
This is why some of the better Civil War movies involve guerrilla warfare, which involves smaller groups, and which can also utilize tropes from Westerns: Confederate guerrilla bands in Missouri, for example, were the proto-outlaw gangs of the post-Civil War West.
So Gettysburg spends little time focused on the enlisted men: the one main enlisted character, Buster Kilrain, is an everyman foil to the intellectual Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. Instead, most of the film’s main characters are generals–Buford, and especially Lee and Longstreet, with Hancock, Hood, Trimble and Stuart also getting attention. The private soldiers are parts of masses of men, sweeping forward across open fields or firing volleys from behind stone walls, not individuals.
Like the book on which it is based, The Killer Angels, the movie does a pretty good job of depicting Lee’s decision making, and the tension with Longstreet. It doesn’t take a Jubal Early Longstreet is the Devil approach, nor does it condemn Lee for fighting, and fighting the way he did on those three days. Yes, I would say that a viewer will lean towards sympathizing with Longstreet and questioning Lee’s judgment, but there is considerable basis in the historical record for that interpretation so I don’t take the depiction as unfair to Lee. And it gives Lee plenty of opportunity to explain himself and his objections to Longstreet’s contrary views. Both sides are presented fairly, and it’s really up to you to decide.
The main thing that struck me upon rewatching in 2022 is that the movie could not have been made today. Not a prayer in hell. And that does not speak well of us.
For one thing, the focus is on the Confederacy. John Buford is lionized in the first 45 minutes or so, and Chamberlain of course gets a lot of play, but the emphasis is clearly on the Confederate command and Lee’s decision making: Meade barely makes a cameo. The tragic figures are mainly Confederates, especially Lewis Armistead and Richard B. Garnett. During the remarkable Pickett’s charge scene, the Confederate advance is clearly the dramatic focus.
Nowadays, of course, the Confederacy and Confederates are synonymous with evil. Lee has been knocked off his pedestal–literally. In fact he has literally been knocked off of several pedestals in Richmond and Charlottesville and elsewhere. Monuments to Confederate enlisted men are under threat all over the South. The thought of treating Confederates at all sympathetically is an anathema.
The film and Killer Angels let the characters from both sides speak about their reasons for fighting. Confederate brigadier James L. Kemper expresses the Southern justification for secession to visiting Englishman Arthur James Lyon Fremantle, who has considerable sympathy for it. No doubt you will disagree with Kemper, but the movie presents the Southern view honestly, thereby allowing you to judge it on its merits without having to deal with an ideologically twisted, tendentious presentation of it: the only hint of directorial/authorial judgment is George Pickett’s clownish summary of the Southern cause. Similarly, when Thomas Chamberlain, Lawrence’s brother, converses with a captured private, the Southerner disclaims any racial motivation for his taking up arms, and Chamberlain takes him at his word: no way that would be allowed today.
Even a Northern view, expressed by Kilrain, would be verbotten 29 years after the film was released. Kilrain expresses what at the time was a conventional view among conservatives, and which many old school liberals held as well:
Chamberlain: What do you think of Negroes?
Kilrain: Well, if you mean the race… I don’t really know. This is not a thing to be ashamed of. The thing is, you cannot judge a race. Any man who judges by the group is a pea-wit. You take men one at a time. To me, there was never any difference.
In this identitarian age, this is wrongthink that if expressed, puts one at risk of cancelation, loss of job, loss of friends, and perhaps even social death.
For in 2022 (Woke Year 7, at least), in contrast to 1993 (Clinton Year 1), judging by the group is a moral imperative. Judging individuals “one at a time” on their merits, independent of their racial/gender group is considered a sure sign of cis patriarchal white supremacism, and hence evil.
So watching the movie in 2022 made me sad. Not because watching Lewis Armistead’s torment at raising his hand against his best friend and getting shot down by his best friend’s men is sad, but because in 2022 America you are not allowed to find that sad and tragic and human, because Confederacy, and you are prohibited from sympathizing with Armistead as a man irrespective of the nature of the cause for which he perished. Because today a movie that reflects Lincoln’s Second Inaugural (“With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right”–which implicitly acknowledges that we might be wrong), as Gettysburg does, is currently outside the bounds of accepted civil discourse. Now charity is a fugitive, and malice is regnant.
And that is precisely why a second Civil War is not inconceivable today. Which is the saddest thing of all.
Senators have released a draft gun control bill produced as the result of a “bipartisan compromise.” Let me translate: “bipartisan compromise” means a cabal of the uniparty has conspired to screw you. That’s not a conspiracy theory: that’s an empirical regularity.
Some of the bill is unobjectionable. But that conceals its diseased heart: a provision to bribe states to adopt “red flag” laws.
Red flag laws are patently unconstitutional. Fourth Amendment. Fifth Amendment. Second Amendment. Binding on the states by the Fifteenth Amendment. Other than that, great!
It is highly unlikely that these laws can or will prevent lunatics like the Uvalde shooter or the Parkland shooter (whom I will not give any notoriety by writing their names), but they will impose substantial costs on innocent individuals, especially those afflicted with a vengeful spouse or disputatious neighbor.
The “Republican” leader in these negotiations, my own state’s John Cornyn, had the audacity to preen over the bill:
Today we released text of our bill to make attacks like the one in Uvalde less likely, while protecting the Second Amendment.
I am proud that this mental health and school safety bill places NO NEW RESTRICTIONS on law-abiding gun owners. ?https://t.co/JhkJtMBJyu
The red flag provision will not reduce the risk of Uvaldes, but it will trounce the Second Amendment. The last sentence is particularly mendacious. “Mental health and school safety bill.” Yeah, right, John. Only nuts will get snared by red flag laws, right? In fact, it’s more likely that nuts will use them against their enemies than it is to disarm murderous nuts.
And “NO NEW RESTRICTIONS”? Please. In fact, I think the all caps are a clear case of thou protest too much. Further, it is an outright lie. Outsourcing unconstitutional and anti-liberty measures to the states (and paying them to take these measures) is cynically dishonest beyond belief. Even for you.
And spare me any of your pompous, pious crap about “due process.” The process is the punishment. It pits the individual against a predatory state. Anyone knows that getting enmeshed in a legal dispute is financially costly and emotionally tortuous: that is especially true in the circumstances that give rise to red flag actions. Even if at the end of the day you “win”–that is, you get your guns back–you lose. And there is no guarantee that you will win. The odds are stacked against you.
If Cornyn were an actual Republican, rather than a member of the uniparty (AKA the government party, the swamp party) he would realize that this is politically idiotic. The Democrats are reeling. They face a disaster in November. Their addled “leader” has, by the last poll, a 32 percent favorable rating. Why give them a victory? Why throw them a line? Just stand there and watch them drown. Or better yet–throw them an anvil.
But no. So by revealed preference Cornyn demonstrates that he is just another uniparty apparatchik.
And indeed, Cornyn has said as much. He was booed at the Texas GOP convention in Houston last week. His stand is highly unpopular among the base. But he said that he doesn’t care what his constituents think.
So also spare me any laments over our dying democracy. It’s people like John Cornyn who are killing it, and who are stoking populism, by betraying those who elected them.
Cornyn is in line to replace Mitch McConnell, and become majority leader in the event of the Republicans regaining control of the Senate. So Tweedledee will replace Tweedledum. Oh Joy! McConnell’s only positive contribution to the Republic is preventing Merrick Garland from ascending to the Supreme Court. Other than that, he’s just another apparatchik for whom Cornyn would be a worthy replacement.
This title of this song is an apt description of our current age. And John–the chorus is all about you.
I’ve often written that every big move in commodity prices leads to a reprise of Casablanca: “Round up the usual suspects!”
The usual suspects, of course, being speculators.
And here we have a case of the usual suspects calling for a roundup of the usual suspects. People like Michael Greenberger and Tyler Slocum. I would be more than glad to move on. Them apparently not so much.
Now they feel especially energized because they can blame speculators not just for a rise in the price of this or the price of that, but the price of everything. Yes, boys and girls, speculators cause INFLATION!!!!! THEY ARE DRIVING UP THE PRICE OF EVERYTHING!!!!
A handful of congressional Democrats are turning their attention to an arcane loophole that, as TYT previously reported, is driving high prices for gas and food. Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., told TYT that he wants the Biden administration to close the loophole, which lets Wall Street speculators gamble on commodity prices, driving inflation.
I’ll get back to “Ruh Ro” Khanna in a moment.
What Greenberger and others are serving up is the same-old, same-old that was discredited long ago. It’s too tedious to reprise the arguments: go back and look at my posts from 2006-2009 or so. The BS hasn’t changed, so the response to the BS hasn’t changed.
The quickest counterpoint: If–and even Paul Krugman and I agree on this, people, so the apocalypse must be nigh–speculators are driving prices above the competitive level determined by supply and demand fundamentals, (a) inventories increase, and (b) speculators hold the inventories.
Well, inventories are dropping to rock bottom levels in everything from oil, to diesel, to industrial metals. So (a) isn’t happening. And if (a) isn’t happening, (b) can’t happen.
QED.
But this would require Greenberger et al to have a modicum of understanding of economics. In fact, I once forced him to admit he has no such understanding.
We were witnesses at a House Ag Committee hearing on speculation and oil prices in July, 2008. Right about the time WTI hit its all time high. (I published a WSJ oped about the same time.). Greenberger and I were on a panel. He tried to make an argument that prices were irrational because they hadn’t gone down when the Saudis announced an increase in output. I pointed out that the real shortage was in low-sulfur crude (like WTI), driven in large part by Europe’s new low sulfur diesel rules. The Saudi oil was high in sulfur and didn’t address this issue at all, so it didn’t impact the prices of WTI and Brent (which are low sulfur).
In reply, Greenberger stuttered: “Well, I’m not an economist . . .” I interrupted: “That’s the first thing you’ve ever said that I agree with.” (Yeah. I know I’m bad. I can never pass up an easy shot.)
That still holds true. He ain’t an economist. He knows no economics. And anybody who listens to him bloviate about economics is wasting time and killing brain cells. (Though looking at his audience–Salon AKA Daily Dipshit readers, congressional Democrats–that latter is pretty much impossible.)
These geniuses think they’ve uncovered some damning new evidence. In footnotes:
But thanks to an obscure CFTC passage — Footnote 563, in regulatory guidance — buyers and sellers of oil and other commodities are outnumbered something like 10 to one by Wall Street traders, none of whom have a genuine buyer’s incentive to keep prices low, because few of them ever actually buy it; they mostly bet on it.
Uhm, that factoid, or a variant thereon, has been tossed around every time this tiresome debate has occurred. It was irrelevant every one of those times. It’s irrelevant now. It means nothing.
But some geniuses in Congress are going to flog this dead horse yet again. FFS.
But this is not the only idiocy that is being resurrected. Ron Wyden D-But you knew that-OR is proposing a revival of the windfall profit tax.
Yeah that worked so well under Carter. Hey! Here’s an idea! Let’s reduce the incentive to invest by reducing payoffs when the investments are most valuable! What could go wrong?
Another hardy perennial: Our ranting senile narcissist in chief is demanding refiners cut prices and increase output. Er, look at the EIA capacity utilization numbers, dude. Refineries are operating flat out.
Apparently they did that, because today they mooted restricting exports instead. Another dumb idea.
And then there’s Ruh Ro Khanna:
Thanks for the heads up on "Ruh Roh" Khanna's insanity. I'll do a little more research and then bring the lumber to him. pic.twitter.com/WOn6Ls9l8X
Khanna’s brainstorm is–get this–to have the government “buy the dips” and then sell commodities to consumers at low prices.
WHY HASN’T ANYBODY THOUGHT OF THIS BEFORE????
Well, because it’s so stupid only a California Democrat could come up with it.
Of the top of my head, Family Feud fashion, the top 4 reasons why this is stupid:
The best traders can’t time the market consistently. Why would anyone possibly believe government GS-13s or whatever could?
The government wouldn’t be a price taker–it would be driving prices.
Every trader in the world would be trying to front run the government. Talk about creating speculative opportunities! Speculate on what the government is going to do!
A California Democrat came up with it.
Bad economic times bring out bad economic ideas. Stupid never goes out of style in politics, and bad ideas never die. And that’s our reality today.
So today inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index checked in at 8.6 percent annualized. Which is an uptick in the rate rather than the promised easing.
Sic transit transitory.
The Queen of Transitory, Janet Yellen (Jerome Powell being the King) acknowledged as much earlier this week in Congressional testimony, admitting that her prediction had been wrong. Whoopsie!
One wonders about her (and Powell’s and the rest of the herd’s) mental model of inflation, especially under current circumstances. The usual explanation is some version of the Phillips Curve inflation-unemployment tradeoff. Which is stupid because it is just a correlation, and a worthless one at that since it is about as stable as Amber Heard.
But even that idiocy obviously won’t fly here, so Yellen mumbled about COVID and supply chains and Putin and blah blah blah (as well as holding forth on gun control and abortion, which are OBVIOUSLY primary responsibilities of the Treasury Secretary). These explanations are also inadequate.
Insofar as COVID is concerned, arguably the policy response to it (not COVID itself) shifted back supply curves as stores were closed and people stayed home from work. But those restrictions peaked in early-2021 and have been easing then, so can’t explain by themselves accelerating inflation in the subsequent months.
Yes, COVID has had lingering effects on certain sectors that have constrained supply while demand has rebounded. For example, a lot of truckers that left the industry in 2020-2021 haven’t come back. Interestingly, trucking schools shut down during the pandemic, which has constrained the flow of new labor to the market. In industries such as lumber and oil refining, the largely policy-driven collapse in demand in 2020 led to actual disinvestment and a loss of capacity. We saw the impacts of that in the lumber market a year ago, and are seeing it in the markets for refined products now.
But those factors alone cannot explain the recent spikes: demand has to be part of the equation as well.
Also, supply constraints (and supply chain bottlenecks) cannot explain increases in the general price level, especially as measured by broader measures such as the Producer Price Index and the GDP Deflator. Here’s a straightforward example.
Consider computer chips, inadequate supplies of which hit the auto industry hard, and which are blamed as a major culprit for inflation. Yes, the chip supply constraint limited the production of new automobiles, raising the prices of both new and used cars (which are substitutes for new ones). But, the limitation on the output of automobiles reduced the derived demand for other automobile inputs, such as aluminum, steel, rubber, labor, and capital goods. Ceteris paribus, that should have put downward pressure on the prices of those inputs.
Put differently, bottlenecks increase prices on one side of the bottleneck relative to the prices on the other side. One cannot attribute a rise in the price level (in which the prices of most if not all goods and services are rising, albeit some more than others) to bottlenecks, at least not directly. Bottlenecks can cause prices to fall too. You can’t just look at the impact on the downstream side.
A more indirect story is that by limiting output (and therefore income) bottlenecks cause real income to be lower, thereby reducing the demand for real money balances. Given the nominal supply of money, the only way to equilibrate the now lower demand for real balances with a given nominal supply is to reduce the real value of the money stock by increasing the price level.
Color me skeptical that this can explain the magnitude of the inflation we’ve seen. (The Fed juicing base money by almost 50 percent in 2021 could have added to this impact.)
I therefore am deeply skeptical that supply constraints, attributable to COVID or otherwise, explain the broad rise in prices that has been accelerating over the past year plus.
What about Putin, Biden’s favorite scapegoat? Well, the Ukraine War doesn’t really explain the timing. Consider diesel prices.
There was a spike in the crack spread right at the time of the invasion in late-February, but that subsided quickly. The subsequent runup, especially the ramp-up in mid-April, is harder to ascribe to the war and almost certainly reflects some demand side factors.
Furthermore, it usually takes some time for upstream shocks to translate into higher prices at the consumer level (e.g., a wheat price shock impacting retail food prices). Meaning that a lot of the impact of a disruption first occurring in March is yet to have been fully felt. Good news all around, eh?
No, I think that the stock explanations that the likes of Yellen, Biden and the media fall back on to explain the accelerating inflation are woefully inadequate. Supply chain (and the effects of COVID thereon) in particular.
The most plausible explanation to me is the fiscal theory of the price level, developed formally some years ago by Thomas Sargent and recently studied deeply by John Cochrane. In a nutshell, the theory posits that the price level adjusts to equate the real value of government debt to the discounted real value of government primary surplus. Holding primary surplus constant, an increase in government obligations requires a price level rise to reduce the real value of outstanding debt by the amount of the new debt. Similarly, given the level of government debt, any reduction in expected future surpluses requires a rise in the price level. (The theory is obviously a lot more complicated: that’s a Cliffs’ Notes version of the Cliffs’ Notes of John’s book.)
The massive COVID-driven fiscal stimuluses of both Trump and Biden dramatically increased the nominal value of US government debt. Moreover, the clear preference of this administration and Congress is to expand government spending (and debt) further (e.g., student debt forgiveness, among other things). (It will be interesting to see what happens to inflation if there is a big shift in Congress in 2022.)
I would also suggest that the big regulation plus big “green” agenda pursued by this administration and Congress are also inimical to growth, and expectations about growth. (I put “green” in quotes because as I’ve written before, a monomaniacal focus on CO2 is not a balanced environmental policy, and is indeed inimical to the environment in many ways.)
The green agenda is particularly pernicious. BIden and others (not just in the US) keep yammering away about the wonderful transition to green energy that will occur. What this really means is a transition to more expensive energy and lower incomes. Sic transit transition? I wish.
Less growth means lower future GDP means less future government revenue means smaller primary surpluses.
Meaning that both from the debt side and the growth/surplus side the COVID and post-COVID years are, according to the fiscal theory of the price level, a recipe for large increases in the price level. We’ve seen just such an increase. The timing works out. The fact that the increase in prices is broad works out.
This administration–of which Yellen is unfortunately an accurate avatar–not only does not believe in the fiscal theory, but finds it an anathema because its implications regarding the need to restrain government spending and to jettison onerous regulations and its cherished CO2 agenda require it to become, well, Reaganites. So what is likely the right model of the current inflation will never be their mental model.
Which means we will not be able to say sic transit inflation anytime soon.
One of the few compensations of COVID was that the World Economic Federation meeting in Davos was canceled for two years. But all good things come to an end, and Davos is back, more malign than ever.
Of course the opening address was given by Klaus Schwab. (Aside: how come poor Appalachian whites are blamed for the evils of slavery, and the son of a for real hardcore Nazi gets a pass?)
And finally. When it comes to business and economic activities, Davos is not a place for narrow self-interest. It is instead a place for the implementation of the notion of stakeholder capitalism, a concept I’m fighting for since 50 years. (Emphasis in original.)
A Forum partner is asked to value the contributions not just of shareholders, but of all those other stakeholders who are essential for business to succeed. As I wrote in my book Stakeholder Capitalism, Davos stands for a global economy that works for prosperity, people, and the planet.
“Stakeholder capitalism” is an oxymoron, and it is a synonym for fascism.
It is an oxymoron, because capitalism means that the owners of capital make the decisions on how it is used. Marxists have never liked the way that capitalists used it, which is why they wanted to expropriate it. At least they were honest, and didn’t say they were advocating “socialized capitalism.” “Stakeholder capitalism” means that those who don’t own something can nonetheless dictate how to use it, because they have some self-asserted “stake” in it. Using the word “capitalism” is a clever trick to seduce non-Marxists into believing that what Schwab et al are advocating is just a kinder, gentler version of a free market economy, when in fact their agenda is profoundly anti-capitalism and anti-freedom.
“Stakeholder capitalism” has no limiting principle. It can be used to claim control over anything anywhere anytime based on some Six Degrees From Kevin Bacon theory of somebody having a “stake” in it.
Though I would not recommend claiming that you have a stake in a fancy dinner at Davos. The WEF police (yes, they exist) will arrest you for sure.
It is a synonym for fascism because it is a variant on corporatism, which is the essence of the fascist economic model (as I’ve written before). Note the “cooperation” in the title of Herr Schwab’s speech: cooperation among stakeholders (namely, the state, corporations, and labor unions) was touted as the main virtue of fascist economics and governance. The stakeholders may be a little different (labor, for example, is barely even an afterthought at Davos), but the idea is functionally identical.
Now, Fascism 2.0 does have some differences with Fascism 1.0. The latter was avowedly nationalist, something which the former detests: it is avowedly anti-nationalist, and indeed globalist. “WEF” is more accurately an acronym for “World-Extensive Fascism.” It is the bastard child of world government types and economic fascists.
The WEF is also fascist in its utter antipathy for individual liberty and freedom. The most anti-freedom threat on the horizon–central bank digital currencies–was praised to the skies. And free speech? Well, you know, that needs to be “recalibrated.” (Inman is basically a less crazy-eyed version of Nina Jankowicz.) And you all just need to change the way you eat, got it?
I could go on.
The main moving force behind the WEF agenda is “climate change.” It is the existential threat that “stakeholders” need to “cooperate” on to fight. It is the primary reason why “stakeholder capitalism” has no limiting principle, because everything–I mean everything–supposedly affects climate, so everybody has a stake in it, so our enlightened WEF leaders acting benevolently on our behalf can reorder everything because climate change.
All of the nostrums that are being pushed will make energy and food more expensive. A lot more expensive.
Not that this lot cares. After all, energy and food expenditures represent a trivial fraction of their incomes. So they won’t feel a thing!
You, not so much. And the poorer you are, the more you will feel it.
Of course, these . . . people . . . claim to be acting on behalf of the poor. Because, of course, climate change hurts the poor most we’re told. Except that all of these assertions are highly speculative (at best), and the purported evidence supporting them is based on junk science.
Just like WEF-endorsed COVID policies (e.g., lockdowns), the cost of WEF-endorsed climate change policies will exceed the cost of climate change itself. And the cost difference will be greater, the poorer you are.
These people are your enemies. And the less well off you are, the bigger enemy they are.
You might think that the title of this post is hyperbole. You might want to think again.
Ten days ago Vladimir Putin gave his much anticipated “Victory Day” speech, and said . . . well, not much at all.
There was much anticipation and speculation in advance. He would declare war and full mobilization. He would declare victory, or announce some criteria for victory that even his shambolic military could achieve.
Instead, he basically affirmed the status quo. Russia would keep grinding away. It would not escalate. Nor would it de-escalate.
In other words, Putin tacitly admitted what I had asserted weeks ago: Putin/Russia are in Zugzwang: any move makes things worse, so Putin has basically chosen to do nothing, or at least to change nothing.
There has been much conjecture what the Z on Russian equipment means. Now you know. It means “Zugzwang.”
Things have gotten even worse for Russia since 9 May. Ukraine has mounted a modest counteroffensive (a real counteroffensive, not a local counterattack) north of Kharkiv, and pushed the Russian army back across its border in places. The Russian offensive in Donetsk and Luhansk is essentially stalled. Indeed, the Russians suffered a humiliating reverse in an attempt to mount a river crossing: an entire battalion tactical group and its equipment were destroyed, as was the bridging equipment.
Overall, Russian losses continue to mount, with nothing to show for it. The only simulacrum of an achievement is the surrender of the besieged and battered defenders of the Azovstal plant after weeks of relentless Russian assault and bombardment. But on net Ukraine gained far more from that battle by delaying and attriting Russian forces than Russia has by its ultimate capture of the facility.
And now the Russians appear to view their “triumph” as an excuse to commit a massive war crime by trying the captives as war criminals and threatening to execute the surrendered Ukrainians.
But of course they have to do that to justify their war propaganda that they are fighting Nazis. You know, act like Nazis to pretend they are fighting Nazis. But the Russian military and state are already so far down the war crimes road they won’t stop now, especially if this one provides something that they can use to sell this fiasco to the Russian public.
Now the battle resembles World War I far more than World War II. It is an artillery war being fought on a relatively static front. Even if Russia gains some local objectives, “the big push” and “breakthrough” are clearly beyond their capabilities.
Ukraine is clearly encouraged that it can win, with victory defined as pushing out Russians from all of Ukrainian territory. I think this is too optimistic, and even if it is realistic, the cost to Ukraine, let alone the world, is not worth it.
I understand the risk of leaving Putin/Russia with a rump of Ukrainian territory from which they can spin up a future justification for resuming hostilities once they’ve licked their wounds and convinced themselves that they have really fixed their military this time. But the pretext will exist, and in fact be even stronger, if Ukraine retakes the Donbas. For no doubt the Russians will claim that Ukraine is Nazifiing the recaptured Donbas if it retakes control, and this will be a future casus belli. Retaking it would alter the tactical situation somewhat in Ukraine’s favor for the next time, but not enough to change materially the probability of another Russian attempt. The war exists because Ukraine exists. Redrawing the lines of effective control in Ukraine won’t remove the Russian rationale for war. It is not worth it.
So the war will grind on, because Zugzwang Putin can’t admit he’s lost, and Ukraine believes it can win. Nothing good will come of that.
In the latest episode of Condescending Lectures From Our Betters: Shut Up, Proles!, Samantha Power (the Lioness of Libya) recently “informed” us that the drastic decline in the supply of chemical fertilizers is actually a good thing, as it will wean farmers off these horrible concoctions, and induce them to use natural alternatives like manure and compost instead:
Biden official Samantha Power celebrates fertilizer shortages that will force farmers to “hasten transitions” to “natural solutions, like manure and compost.”
And, where, pray tell, is the manure to come from, if we follow another ukase of the ruling class, namely the war on meat and livestock? After all, livestock belch and fart, producing methane–and we can’t have THAT, can we? For example, Ireland is supposed to cull 1.3 million animals, and Northern Ireland another 1 million, to meet GHG emission standards.
No animals, no shit. No shit!
So we are supposed to become vegans, eating gruel produced from plants fertilized by livestock that don’t exist–smart! What would we do without smart people telling us how to live?
And even if meat survives, if you haven’t noticed: (a) collecting the manure of pasturing animals would cost rather a lot, and (b) pastureland and small grains farmland tend to be located rather far apart (because the former is not suited to be the latter), transporting the manure of pasturing animals to the fields would cost rather a lot (not to mention involve the release of massive GHGs–or did I forget that it would be transported in electric vehicles powered from wind and solar generators?)
In other words, Samantha Power is completely full of shit. As if you should have needed me to tell you that.
This is just another example–an egregious one, admittedly–of the utter insanity of those who presume not just to tell us how to live–but who presume to force us to live according to their obsessions. The utter unreality of the “energy transition” is another example.
You could get the idea that these people want to kill us. And in fact, you may be right. Based on the evidence, you cannot reject the hypothesis.
Its unexpected success on the battlefield has convinced Ukraine that it can achieve victory. And by “victory,” I mean driving Russia out of Ukraine altogether, including Donetsk, Luhansk, and yes, Crimea.
This is very disturbing. Defending against a shambolic attacking army with horrible logistics and a pathetic operational plan is one thing. Attacking–even against a shambolic army–is another. This is particularly true given that the Russian army was designed and trained to stop a Nato offensive (as ludicrous as that idea is), and has massive amounts of artillery that would make any attack a nightmare: if it was doctrinally unsuited for offense, and adopted a terrible offensive plan, that does not imply that it cannot defend (and against an army that has itself taken serious casualties in personnel and materiel). And all of the tactics that allowed the Ukrainians to blunt the Russian attack, notably ATGM ambushes and attacks on lengthening supply lines, could be turned against them. Ukraine would be giving up all the factors that have worked to its advantage, and would be courting all of the factors that contributed to Russia’s disaster.
The last time the Ukrainian army got the bit between its teeth, in Debaltseve in 2014, it did not turn out well. Yes, the Ukrainian army is far better now, but fools rush in.
Worse, the US appears to be encouraging this. And in an unbelievable and inexcusable error, the administration–SecDef Austin in particular–have publicly announced that the US objective is to weaken Russia. Even if this is the objective, and that would be defensible, it is not defensible at all to make it public. It only validates the Russian narrative that it is at war with the West, thereby bolstering Russian popular support for the war, but it encourages Ukraine to run risks that it should not.
What is the alternative? Alternatives have to be evaluated in terms of the ugly facts.
The war is exacting a horrific toll on Ukraine. Its people, its infrastructure, and its economy. Tens of thousands dead. Millions of refugees. Devastated cities. A ruined countryside.
Given this reality, a less than ideal, and likely temporary, resolution is preferable. Something that gives Putin (or whoever is really in charge) a pretext to cease hostilities, and leaves Ukraine not in control of all the territory within its official boundaries. Edward Luttwak suggests legitimate (emphasis on legitimate) plebiscites in various Ukrainian regions.
The downsides are apparent. Putin/Russia could come back for more in time: maybe “will” is the better word, because no deal with Putin/Russia can be considered binding. Such a deal would represent major concessions on fundamental principles.
But it would stop the slaughter and mayhem for a time. It would allow time to build up Ukraine, and to permit a development of a longer term strategy to deal with the Russia Problem. And it is a big problem.
Remember. There are no ideal “solutions” in foreign policy. There are only shitty options. Statesmanship is the ability to choose the least shitty, and make it reality. Neither Ukraine nor the US (nor Russia) is demonstrating such statesmanship.
One can understand, on a human level, the Ukrainian reaction. The US does not have the same excuse. It is a time for realism, realistically pursued with cold eyes. It is not the time for Wilsonian impulsiveness. That has never turned out well.
MacArthur said “there is no substitute for victory.” This was an absolutist statement that violated fundamental principles of choice. Substitutibility depends on relative costs. Victory–e.g., expelling Russia from all of Ukraine–would be very costly, if is achievable at all. Given such cost, there are substitutes, MacArthur notwithstanding.
The awful head of the Department of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkos, set off a firestorm last week when he revealed that the DHS was setting up a “Disinformation Governance Board,” tasked with fighting disinformation. It has also been announced that a real head case, and a hyper-partisan one to boot, Nina Jankowicz will head the Board.
Left unanswered was how this new entity will combat disinformation. Here is my surmise. It will identify certain stories as disinformation, giving official imprimatur to this designation: it will not take any direct action against anyone disseminating this information. Instead, social media companies will then censor or suppress these stories, claiming that they have been identified as disinformation by the government–and who can argue with that, right? They always have our best interest at heart, right? Mommy is just protecting us from bad things!
This is the way that social media shut down COVID stories it didn’t like. If something contradicted CDC or WHO, Facebook and Twitter would label it disinformation and take efforts to suppress it.
In essence, with COVID, social media companies became the enforcers of bans on speech the government didn’t like. In an effort to circumvent First Amendment issues, the government essentially outsourced censorship to private entities. The private entities were happy to go along, because they were on board with the agenda.
The model worked so well that the government is now looking to expand this privatized censorship model to embrace all speech.
This transparent end run around the First Amendment cannot be allowed to stand. The first time Twitter or Facebook or anyone uses the Ministry of Truth’s guidance to remove or throttle or prevent the posting of content, there should be a 1A lawsuit.
Hell, there should have been such suits already over social media COVID censorship.
The real possibility that an Elon Musk-owned Twitter will not play this game is precisely why there has been such a hysterical reaction to his purchase.
This is the biggest threat to our 1A rights in our lifetime, and possibly ever. It cannot stand. It must be fought, and the battle must be won.
