The State of Western "Intelligence"

 Anybody can tell that Russia is winning the war. However, those with access to the "intelligence" (i.e. politicians and mainstream media) learn the opposite. Thus we have Lindsey Graham in May:

"It was reported last week that fearful of leaks, Ukraine has shared their offensive plans with only a tiny handful of people in the West. Apparently Lindsay Graham was one of them, as a new Politico piece reports with joy that Graham has been given a very thorough ‘deep-dive’ of the full offensive plans, which he calls very ‘impressive’. He further says that the Russians are in for a big surprise and ‘rude awakening’."

"Intelligence" apparently consists of convincing politicians and the media that things are not as they seem.

Newspeak in the West

Putin's war, unprovoked! Debunked claims of Biden corruption.  I could go on and on.  Our society is sick.

Moral & Pragmatic Bankruptcy of the West

Seeing this headline today in the NY Times reminds me of the West's utter depravity.: Biden Urges Unity as Nations Gather in Shadow of Russia’s War.  Of course, the NYTimes calls it "Russia's War", as if the West has had nothing to do with it.  (See also, Lindsay Graham, Friend of Ukraine / #unprovoked.)  At least the NY Times has the good sense to move on from calling it "Putin's War".

• Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal: "US Getting Money's Worth In Ukraine Because American Troops Aren't Dying"
• Mitt Romney: "We’re diminishing and devastating the Russian military for a very small amount of money"

Moreover, these U.S. Senators are not only morally mistaken, but also 180° wrong about weakening Russia.  See From Strategic Dilemma to Strategic Disaster, by Gordon Hahn:

Russian military personnel strength has been increased five-fold... Russian military gains invaluable combat experience in advanced war-fighting... Russia is increasing massively the resources it devotes to military and intelligence development...  the government also plans to increase the number of Russian design centers by over 400 percent from 70 to 300 by 2030 and spend 2.7 trillion rubles to develop the electronics industry... Russia’s enhanced, more powerful military is, moreover, being more forward-deployed to the detriment of NATO countries’ national security... Russia’s territorial gains in southern Ukraine open up the possibility of forming a land bridge to Moldova’s breakaway region of Transdnistria... The war also is threatening to put to an end strategic nuclear arms control between the world’s two greatest nuclear powers... Russia announced that it would be deploying short-range tactical weapons in Belarus, and by July deployment had begun and continues as you read... economic losses in Russia have been limited and manageable, while consequences of is own sanctions and Russian counter-sanctions have driven many of the West’s economies towards recession...   Indeed, the global ripples from the war are reconfiguring global politics, economics, and finances... The most damaging result of the NATO-Russia Ukrainian war for Western interests is the solidification of the Sino-Russian ‘near alliance’ and that alliance’s invigoration of efforts to build an alternative global system to the Western-dominated one... Western sanctions have pushed Russia’s military-industrial complex to sell new technology to the People’s Liberation Army, and Moscow’s reliance on rapidly developing Chinese technology accelerated nascent joint technology developmen and implementation of projects with military applications...  Western pressure on other states to join its sanctions regime further energized the South’s search for an alternative order, which married simultaneous efforts by Russia and China to build a network of anti-Western trade, finance, transport, and even semi-military international blocs. Most notably are the two powers’ stepped-up efforts to construct an alternative non-Western, if not anti-Western global structures for circumventing the American world... It appears that Russia is more popular now among Latin American governments than is the U.S... The same appears to be true in Africa and Asia, with numerous countries seeking cooperation with both Russia and China, despite the latter countries’ tensions with the West, which is demanding implementation of draconian sanctions... Moscow and Beijing have succeeded in drawing oil giant Saudi Arabia away from the West and into the ‘eastern’ orbit. Russia along with friendly Algeria control natural gas prices.

Ukraine has been destroyed with enormous loss of life, but the West considers this a bargain price for the weakening of Russia.  Our attitude seems to be: This is Russia's war. We're just innocent, and fortunate, bystanders.

Review of "The Lab-Leak Illusion"

 I recently read the Lab-Leak Illusion, a 13,500 word article by Jamie Palmer in Quillette Magazine.  Some comments and observations:

1. The main meta issue seems to be related to Martin Gurri and The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis Authority (in the Internet Age).  Jamie Palmer's (the Quillette author) take seems to be as follows:

All (lab-leak sympathizers) allowed themselves to be seduced by a heroic narrative in which humble internet gumshoes, armed only with a laptop and a commitment to the truth, humiliated arrogant elites and exposed a cover-up that reached all the way to the top of the US medical establishment.

2. A related issue is that of conspiracy theories. My take (see also here, here, and here) is that the government had something of a monopoly on conventional wisdom until the Internet made it possible for many more people, working from home, to do their own research.  It's quite obvious that governments are capable of engaging in conspiracies, and that they are more likely to get away with hiding the truth due to classification, censorship, monetary incentives, and the general power of the status quo.  In general, it is quite illogical to generalize with regard to conspiracy theories.  Conspiracies do occur, including conspiracies to spread false conspiracy theories.  Each needs to be evaluated on its own merits.  
3. My personal exposure to the lab-leak hypothesis was just the opposite of Palmer's characterization.  I read an article which was meticulously documented with dozens of scientific references, many going back before the issue became politicized in the mainstream (i.e. before covid-19). The research in question has a long history and context which was not addressed by Palmer.
4. Aristotle and Nathan Robinson point out the importance of logic, emotion, and character in discourse.  In particular, I want to stress character and reputation.  Palmer takes the side of the medical establishment in his polemic, while diminishing critics such as myself as being seduced by "Internet gumshoes" and being overly influenced by perceived conflicts of interest. To question the oppositions' motivation and analytical capability is valid, but his particular evaluation of character is not convincing, in my opinion.

For example, Palmer says:

Part of the appeal of conspiracy theories is that they allow a person to feel more intelligent than the drones who passively drift along on the current of received consensus. This is why the February 2020 Lancet statement organised by EcoHealth Alliance president Peter Daszak was such an unfortunate error… The EcoHealthAlliance’s connection to WIV research was hardly a secret, but in the minds of Daszak’s critics, that only made the declaration of “no competing interests” more brazen and galling.

Palmer treats this as a one time lapse. But the Lancet paper stating "We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin" was signed by 26 other scientists, many of whom had conflicts of interests, and was published in a leading scientific journal. Then, 11 months later, Daszak led a team of scientists from the World Health Organization who "agreed (the evidence) most likely pointed to an animal origin".  So the conflict of interest represented by Daszak in the Lancet paper was not just one person or one time.  It continued well after the issue had been highly politicized.

Palmer also dismisses the revelation, by U.S. House of Representatives investigators, that the scientists behind Nature’s seminal paper from March 17, 2020, The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2, had themselves considered a lab origin likely. Citing Kevin Drum, Palmer claims "the flagrant misrepresentations of those Slack discussions are emblematic of lab-leak theorists’ approach to scientific inquiry:".  But here Palmer is once again confounding the science and the politics.

5. How did the political situation get out of hand?  
1. The fundamental research at issue was a legitimate political issue long before covid-19 emerged.  Palmer does not discuss this, yet it is critical to the logic, emotion, and ethos surrounding the debate.  Again, this paper seems to be a fairly objective description of the history leading up to the possible involvement of the Wuhan Lab(s) being related to the emergence of covid-19 in Wuhan.  For example:

Zheng-Li Shi’s group at the WIV has already performed experiments very similar to those he describes, using those collected viruses. In 2013 the Shi lab reported isolating an infectious clone of a bat coronavirus that they called WIV-1 (Ge et al., 2013). WIV-1 was obtained by introducing a bat coronavirus into monkey cells, passaging it, and then testing its infectivity in human (HeLa) cell lines engineered to express the human ACE2 receptor (Ge et al., 2013).  In 2014, just before the US GOF research ban went into effect, Zheng-Li Shi of WIV co-authored a paper with the lab of Ralph Baric in North Carolina that performed GOF research on bat coronaviruses (Menachery et al., 2015).

2. In the aforementioned chats, dismissed by Palmer via Kevin Drum, the discussion was political as well as scientific:  

It’s in the context of all of this that Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton gets a handful of bizarre mentions. On February 16th, 2020, Dr. Garry shared a Washington Post article by Paula Firozi titled, “Tom Cotton keeps repeating a coronavirus fringe theory that scientists have disputed.” Garry’s comment: “Important to get this out.” The Post piece blasted Cotton for repeating “a fringe theory suggesting that the ongoing spread of a coronavirus is connected to research in the disease-ravaged epicenter of Wuhan, China.” … The ironic thing about this is that Cotton in early 2020 was not saying anything remotely controversial, at least not about this topic... But the early 2020 comments on Covid-19 that earned him years of excoriating headlines were simple, true, even boring. But because Cotton was perceived to have bad or anti-Chinese motives in even bringing up the possibility of lab escape, Andersen did what “anti-disinformation” experts now frequently do on whole ranges of issues involving factual-but-unpleasant matters like vaccine side effects, declaring him not-wrong-but-obviously-wrong, or narratively wrong.

Andersen’s comments were made in private, but he was soon joined in spirit by a stampede of furious pundits…

Humorously, the worst offender was probably Nature, which wrote that “US senator Tom Cotton appeared on Fox News to share his fervent belief that the virus was a biological weapon.” Again, he did nothing of the sort. The Daily Beast might now want to reconsider its own February 16th, 2020 headline, “Sen. Tom Cotton Flogs Coronavirus Conspiracy Theory Dismissed by Actual Scientists,” it being incorrect on two fronts. Not only were actual scientists not dismissing the lab-leak theory, as Andersen’s remark shows, but Cotton wasn’t “flogging” such a theory, unless “considering it as one of the less likely of four possibilities” means “flogging” in Beast-ese.

Of course the worst take of all, in retrospect, was that of Atlantic writer Anne Applebaum, who decried the “suggestion that Coronavirus originated at a super-lab in Wuhan,” tweeting, “Wow. Just like the Soviet propagandists who tried to convince the world that the CIA invented AIDS.”

...

However, even the New York Times framed Cotton’s frankly dull remarks as “echoing the anti-Communist thinking of the Cold War.” All this because Cotton had the temerity to note that the door wasn’t actually closed on lab release, a belief we now know was shared by all of the “actual scientists” who wrote the Proximal Origin paper.

6. Concluding Thoughts on the Meta Narrative

I disagree strongly with Jamie Palmer's assertion that the lab-leak consensus has "capsized".  My impression is that the foundation of my disagreement is with regard to who we trust to be expert on the matter.  Logic is important with regard to the science and the politics of the matter.  But on a highly technical matter such as this, reliability of sources seems to be the fulcrum of disagreement.  

My opinion is that the national security state is something that has been spreading throughout society, often in ways which restrict or slant public discourse.  With regard to cooperative US-China biolab ventures, I am certain that national security is a major and legitimate concern.  When a global pandemic breaks out in close proximity to such a biolab, we have to consider the possibility that national security concerns play a role on how the outbreak is reported.  This is confirmed by the fact that the Chinese government destroyed much of the data from the biolabs (something Palmer doesn't mention), and by the fact that many of the relevant U.S. documents have been classified or released with redaction. 

There is money to be made, directly and indirectly, by supporting the status quo.  This is not good or bad, per se, but is a legitimate perspective in evaluating the credibility of the various scientists and journalists participating in the discourse.  Daszak, Anderson, Fauci, and company need not recuse themselves from the discourse, but should be more transparent about their conflicts of interest.  The scale of the politicization of the events and the history of their involvement would make this extremely uncomfortable, so it is understandable.  But the rest of us in a healthy democracy should be more open to discussion of issues of character and credibility.

Crimea

Crimea as a Focal Point for the Ukraine War

Summary

The current events in Ukraine make sense (to me) if the West is seen as the aggressor with a primary goal being the (re)conquest of Crimea. Thus, the summer 2023 Ukrainian offensive (in the direction of Crimea) is a last gasp attempt to fulfill the initial objectives of the war.

The main inspiration for this idea is an article from April 2023 which made sense to me at the time and has improved in my estimation with age and additional data points: 
The Planning Of The Ukraine Invasion From The Russian Point Of View, by Gaius Baltar

Western Objectives

1. To tie down the Russian Army in the Donbass

2. To carry out a surprise attack on the Crimean peninsula

3. To bog down and bleed the Russian Army in the Donbass with the goal of engineering a regime change in Russia

Russian Objectives

Objective 1 (main objective): To capture Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts to create a buffer zone between Crimea and the rest of Ukraine. 

Objective 2 (secondary objective): Advance on Kiev in an extremely threatening manner. The Ukrainians would have no choice but to take the threat seriously and move forces toward Kiev, including the forces intended for the Crimean operation.

Objective 3 (secondary objective): To force Ukraine to negotiate peace on Russian terms. The Russians most likely assumed that if the Kherson/ Zaporizhzhia buffer operation was successful the Ukrainians might want to negotiate. They would want to negotiate not only because Kiev was threatened, but primarily because their main objective, the capture of Crimea, had been thwarted. This part of the plan was partly successful because the Ukrainians were ready to sign a treaty before the Americans and the British intervened.

Some Data Points

I won't try to list all the data points which support (or contradict) his hypothesis here. Rather, this is more of a notepad.

• March 16, 2014: In a rejection of the coup and the unconstitutional installation of an anti-Russian government in Kiev, Crimeans vote by 97 percent to join Russia in a referendum with 89 percent turn out. The Wagner private military organization is created to support Crimea. Virtually no shots are fired and no one was killed in what Western media wrongly portrays as a “Russian invasion of Crimea.” (from Ukraine Timeline Tells the Story)

• March 24, 2021: On that day, Volodymyr Zelensky issued a decree for the recapture of the Crimea, and began to deploy his forces to the south of the country. At the same time, several NATO exercises were conducted between the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea, accompanied by a significant increase in reconnaissance flights along the Russian border.

• March 26, 2022: Biden admits in a speech in Warsaw that the U.S. is seeking through its proxy war against Russia to overthrow the Putin government. (from Ukraine Timeline Tells the Story)

• June 5, 2023: Shunning diplomacy, Ukraine plans to take Crimea 'hostage'

According to the Washington Post, a key component of the Ukrainian government’s strategy is to surround Crimea with heavy weaponry, thereby “holding hostage the peninsula that is home to Russia’s prized Black Sea Fleet.”  The plan was previewed four months ago by senior US official Victoria Nuland, who declared that “Ukraine is not going to be safe unless Crimea is at a minimum, at a minimum, demilitarized,” and that “we are supporting that.” 

• July 17, 2023:  Ukraine attacked for a second time one of Russian President Vladimir’s proudest achievements: the 11.25-mile Kerch Bridge linking Crimea to Russia.  Ukraine initially attacked the bridge last October. The Biden administration’s role in both attacks was vital. [Seymour Hersh]

• July 26, 2023: Ukraine has launched the main thrust of its counteroffensive, throwing in thousands of troops held in reserve, many of them Western-trained and equipped, two Pentagon officials said on Wednesday, hours after Russian officials reported major Ukrainian attacks in the southern Zaporizhzhia region. [NYTimes] 

• August 5, 2023:  Early this year, Ukraine began to outfit two separate ‘army corps’ of maneuver brigades specifically for the coming ‘counter-offensive’. These were the 9th Corps and the 10th Corps. The 9th Corps was meant to be the—mostly—NATO-armed and trained one which was famously revealed in the Pentagon leaks.  The 9th experienced catastrophic losses from the start of the offensive on June 4th onward.  So the 9th Corps was not able to reach Russia’s first line of defense and the brigades had appeared to be too degraded to go on any further, many of them withdrawn to refit/reconstitute in the rear. The 10th Corps was then injected prematurely to take over, which is what this new ‘second phase’ has been all about since the end of July. In the first two weeks of the counteroffensive, as much as 20 percent of the weaponry Ukraine sent to the battlefield was damaged or destroyed, according to U.S. and European officials. “The counteroffensive itself hasn’t failed; it will drag on for several months into the fall,” said Michael Kofman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who recently visited the front lines. But analysts question whether this second wave, relying on attacks by smaller units, will generate enough combat power and momentum to allow Ukrainian troops to push through Russian defenses. Gian Luca Capovin and Alexander Stronell, analysts with the British security intelligence firm Janes, said that the small-unit attack strategy “is extremely likely to result in mass casualties, equipment loss and minimal territorial gains” for Ukraine. [Simplicius76, NYTimes]

I've been trying to figure out why Ukraine and the West have been going all out in this offensive in the direction of Crimea.  They have been taking massive losses of soldiers and equipment with no significant gains.  This makes sense if the war was originally offensive in nature for the West -- i.e. they planned and expected to take Crimea all along.  The current offensive is a belated follow through of the original plan which was initialled derailed by Russia's offensive in the south. The West doesn't have any other plans consistent with their original objective.

Ruble is Mightier than the Sword

 The West apparently expected to win the war against Russia economically.  After all, that is how the West "won" the Cold War.  However, it has not worked out as expected.  Russia's economy is doing well and the sanctions are failing.  Moreover, the sanctions are boomeranging against the West as the rest of the world is now intensifying efforts to avoid dependence upon the U.S. led empire.

In my opinion, the West has vastly underestimated Russia in this regard. The "gas station masquerading as a country" has turned out to be much more in terms of technology, manufacturing, and diplomacy.

The Russian Color Revolution

White, blue, and red -- the colors of the Russian flag.  Apparently there's been a tremendous outburst of patriotism: Patrick Lancaster  Also:  Scarlet Sails Graduation.  Incredible patriotism, and no mean-spritedness to be seen.

mmm

Realism, Morality, and the Leviathan

I believe in the concept of the Leviathan, and that it's immoral to encourage people to physically attack when death and destruction at the hands of the Leviathon are certain. But there are many instances where there is no clear Leviathan. The correct moral choice may indeed depend upon the correct assessment of military / police strength.

Reassessing Western Democracy, Part 2

 Clash of Civilizations

A month ago I wrote Reassesing Western Democracy, Part 1.  Since then, I've read a couple of books which shed further light on the subject:

• The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, 1996 by Samuel P. Huntington

• The Declassification Engine, What History Reveals About America's Top Secrets, 2023 by Matthew Connelly

These two books help immensely in consolidating my world view. Basically, I believe Western democracy has become dysfunctional and is ripe for extensive revision.

The Clash of Civilizations clarifies the nature of our world. There are approximately 10 major civilizations.  Absent the apocalypse, these civilizations will endure and develop independently.  Technology will spread, but the cultures and institutions will remain distinct for the foreseeable future.  Civilizational leaders would be wise to respect the other civilizations to preserve order in the world.

The Ukraine War shows what happens when there is a lack of respect for other civilizations. Russia (historically Orthodox Slavic Christianity) is one of the world's major civilizations. Prominent leaders in the West (Lindsay Graham and John McCain) have dismissed Russia as "a gas station masquerading as a country". This has been a bipartisan affair in the West, with Democrat Adam Schiff calling for us to fight Russia in Ukraine so we don't have to fight them here.  President Trump was impeached for hesitating in supplying weapons to Ukraine.  The mainstream media in the West has been united with the political and cultural leadership in denigrating Russia and encouraging military confrontation on its historical territory.

Other civilizations are siding with Russia against the West.  

Assessing the Alternatives

If Western civilization is failing, what about the alternatives? What do we know about Russia, China and east Asia, the Islamic World, Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa?  I have been impressed with Putin.  Russia under his leadership is providing a much needed intervention with regard to the dysfunctional West.  China under Xi also seems like a credible alternative.  

Thanks to Russia, in my view, no country need feel ashamed of its leadership.  Almost every non-Western country has traditionally been seen, at least in the West, as being inferior to the Western democracies.  Francis Fukuyama even posited the end-point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.  The 21st century has not been kind to this world view.  From the Iraq War in 2003, to the great financial crisis of 2008, to the Trump presidency in 2016, to the Ukraine proxy war in 2022, Western democracy now appears weak.  No one could admit this until Russia took on the West militarily.  

The list of countries that have broken from the grip of the Western empire since Russia stood up to them, with the support of China, is impressive: Turkey, Saudi Arabia, India, Brazil, South Africa, and Pakistan have joined pariah nations such as Iran and Venezuela in asserting their independence and refusing to join the West in sanctioning Russia.  Modi, Erdogan, bin Salman, Ramaphosa, and their brethren are no longer second class world leaders, shamed by the West as imperfect democracies.  Rather it is the Western "democracies" that, in my view, stand out as unpopular and hypocritical.  The Western intelligence agencies (chiefly U.S. and Britain) have longed subverted democracy at home and abroad.  Nowhere is this clearer than in Ukraine, and suddenly people recognize that this has been happening around the world since WWII, including in their own countries.

So every country is now a potential alternative to our broken system of government.  But I'm a believer in Huntington's view of civilizations and the legitimacy of different approaches to national / civilizational leadership. Obviously, the Saudi or Iranian styles would not work in the U.S. Likewise the Chinese or Russian systems.  We need to go our own way, while recognizing the limitations of our current ideology.  

1. The deep (permanent) state is powerful for a reason. No country can survive a complete set of policy turnovers every 4 years.  Perhaps we shouldn't be so quick to dismiss the Russian and Chinese models where leaders lead for 20 years or more.  

2. The dark (secret) state is powerful for a reason. No leader can lead effectively without a certain degree of control over the press.

Without a revolution, we can come terms with the limitations of our current system.  The 2-party charade is just that.  We have an establishment and it's not really up for election every 4 years, for better or worse.  The First Amendment is one of our great strengths, but our system of manufacturing consent is no longer working (if it was ever a net positive). We need to tone down our bluster, while addressing our free speech deficiencies, in my opinion.  In other words, we need to focus on what our real problems are and stop trying to scapegoat China, Russia, and other civilizations or factions within the West.

Constructive Ideas 

Arms Control

Scott Ritter is my inspiration for this. See Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika: Arms Control and the End of the Soviet Union.  It seems obvious to me that humankind will destroy itself if we don't learn to control our weaponry.  The major powers would only benefit by a return to the days of arms control treaties.  These worked well for decades, but seem (in my view and elsewhere) to have been undermined by the hegemonic impulses of the U.S.  We the people should make this our number one priority.  

The renewed Cold War and escalating arms race is abhorrent.  The U.S. is driving this, in my view.   Of course, Russia and China have their own deep, dark states and propaganda operations along with soaring military budgets. But the U.S. led West outspends these competitors by an order of magnitude (10 times).  We are the leader in the arms race and are in the best position to bring it under control.

Multipolar United Nations

The United Nations has always been a Europe-centric institution.  Of late, it has been compromised by the West and consequently unable to fulfill its mission. Its archaic and corrupt.  

No institution is perfect, but a better United Nations can help with many of the world's problems -- from arms control to climate degradation.  Jeffrey Sachs has a lot of good ideas in this regard.  

Xi and Putin talk about this all the time. Perhaps we can engage constructively on this issue.

History Lab

One of the great things about the West is that freedom of speech is a core value.  As discussed above, this right is not as absolute as we pretend.  Classification of documents for national security purposes is pervasive, and selective leaks and enforcement of secrecy laws has been weaponized for imperial and partisan purposes.  To some extent, this is unavoidable as there are tradeoffs between government efficiency and freedom.  

But we can work to strengthen this great value of our culture.  Leadership may need to come from the private sector, given the practical constraints our politicians face.  The History Lab is a team of scholars, designers, scientists, and engineers building tools to preserve the fabric of the past and provide lessons for the future. 

Election Reform 

Approval Voting

Approval voting is a single-winner voting method that allows voters to choose any number of candidates. The candidate chosen the most wins.  Benefits include:

• Tends to elect more consensus winners.  there will be incentives for candidates to cooperate in the sense of not bad mouthing other candidates.  This is "gaming" the system in a positive sense.

• Alternate candidates get a more accurate measure of support.

• Simplicity: 

• Ballots look the same, except the rules indicate that you may vote for any number of candidates

• Results are still easy to understand: a simple list of the candidates along with how many votes they received

Steve Randy Waldman is someone who has given specific changes a lot of thought and proposed constructive incremental changes.  You can find his ideas at interfluidity.com and drafts.interfluidity.com.

Conclusion

Obviously, these constructive ideas just scratch the surface of what we can do if we stop fighting one another and cooperate to improve the world. 

 

Thoughts of the Deep, Dark State

The Deep Dark State - definition. The state is a set of governing institutions. The deep state is the set of permanent institutions and employees, i,e, those not subject to change due to elections. The dark state is the set of governing people and institutions who have access to classified documents.

The deep and dark states need not be monolithic, just as the state itself can have various factions. 

However, the monetary incentives for the deep and dark states have a clear bias in supporting the status quo, and against competing civilizations.  The amount of money involved goes beyond the military-industrial complex to the overwhelming bulk of the economy. Thus, for example, people and institutions supporting Putin in the Ukraine War would not get far with the deep and dark states. Similarly, Bernie Sanders was for the most part opposed by the deep and dark states.

Good, patriotic intentions may be influenced by the need to earn a living and the desire to have greater agency.  There is something of a continuum on a line from patriotism to corruption.  This is true in every country.

The quesion, then, is: To what extent is one's worldview and culture based upon the more corrupt (or dysfunctional) end of the spectrum? How does this vary among countries and civilizations?

One possible conclusion is that all countries are equally corrupt and delusional.  Therefore, no war is justified.  Alternatively, one might argue that one should always support one's own country if it is impossible to judge who is right and who is wrong.  My personal opinion is that the details matter.  Some wars may be justified and others folly.  To the extent I still believe in democracy, I believe it is important to discuss the details.

Mother of all Losers

 The Biden Admininistration's foreign policy, in cooperation with NATO, is the worst ever.  

GOAL: Weaken Putin

RAND Corporation released a concerned report that Russia is learning how to fight NATO while modernizing its own army, and NATO is not getting any real, on the ground, hands-on experience themselves, at least nothing comparable to what Russian soldiers are getting through this conflict

In May 2023, over 80 percent of Russians approved of activities of the Russian President Vladimir Putin. The popularity level was five percent higher than in September 2022, when it stood at 77 percent.

Mercouris video on deplomatic relations (excerpts begin at 56:42):

At the G7 meeting Modi did say a lot of other things. He talked again about international law. He says Global Peace stability and prosperity is a common objective. In today's interconnected world, crisis in any one region affects all the countries and the developing countries which have limited resources are the worst affected.  These countries are facing the maximum and most profound impact of the food, fuel, and fertilizer crisis, and that's a clear rebuke to the Western powers. It raises the question as to why we are facing the need to discuss matters of peace and stability in distinct forums (such as G7) and not the United Nations which was established with the very purpose of establishing peace? Why does it often fail to prevent conflicts today? Why even the definition of terrorism has not been accepted in the United Nations? If introspection is done then one thing is clear -- The institutions created in the last century are not in line with the system of the 21st century. They do not reflect the realities of the present -- that is why it is necessary that reform should be given concrete shape in big institutions like the UN. The UN will also have to become the voice of the global South. Otherwise we will just keep talking and the U.N Security Council will become just a talk shop. Why is the United Nations dominated still by the victorious powers of the second World War? Why in effect do the Western Powers -- the United States, Britain, and France -- still have three permanent seats on the United Nations Security Council whereas the global South does not have a permanent representative?

Another leader who was also at the G7 and who was apparently extremely unhappy by the way that he was treated there and that was President of Brazil Lula de Silva.  So what does Lula de Silva do as soon as he gets back to Brazil -- he telephones President Putin...  The president of Brazil shared his impressions of participating in the recent G7 Summit and also outlined his vision of possible mediation efforts to find ways of resolving the conflict in Ukraine.  It's almost as if Lula were reporting to Putin about the G7. I wonder whether that means by the way that Lula in future might not receive invitations. It's been pointed out recently that South Africa, which is very much in the uh West's bad country list at the moment, was not invited to the G7....

We have an interesting contrast in diplomatic styles with Biden and Putin and their respective approaches to Erdogan.  

Putin telephones Erdogan and tells him: 

"We're delighted to see you reelected. You have our warm congratulations. We look forward to working with you on every conceivable issue in our relations." 

It's a warm and friendly call between Putin and Erdogan. 

By contrast, it is a lot more tense call from Biden. The call is purportedly to congratulate Erdogan over his re-election, but in practice is to put pressure on him, bully him perhaps might not be too strong a word, to remind him pointedly that he's a member of NATO and that comes with certain obligations. Turkey should in other words distance itself from the Russians and support the Western position over Ukraine.   The terseness of the Turkish readout confirms that relations between Russia and Turkey have steadily improved over the last couple of years, while relations between Turkey and the United States have steadily deteriorated.

In sum, Russian factories are running all out producing war goods, its military engineers are enhancing its weapons and related technologies, its military commanders are honing their battlefield tactics and practicing against the combined efforts of 31 NATO countries and 10 or more additional Western allies, Putin is more popular than any Western leader in his/her wildest dreams, Russia's economy is strong in the light of closer ties with countries such as China, India, Kazakhstan, Turkey, Iran, Brazil, South Africa, Saudi Arabian, etc, and Putin and Russia enjoy improved diplomatic relations with many of the world's most powerful nations.

This is failure on an epic scale. Time to double down! 

It was reported last week that fearful of leaks, Ukraine has shared their offensive plans with only a tiny handful of people in the West. Apparently Lindsay Graham was one of them, as a new Politico piece reports with joy that Graham has been given a very thorough ‘deep-dive’ of the full offensive plans, which he calls very ‘impressive’. He further says that the Russians are in for a big surprise and ‘rude awakening’.

Lindsay Graham, Friend of Ukraine

Lindsay Graham is one of the good (non-Trump) Republicans:

"It was reported last week that fearful of leaks, Ukraine has shared their offensive plans with only a tiny handful of people in the West. Apparently Lindsay Graham was one of them, as a new Politico piece reports with joy that Graham has been given a very thorough ‘deep-dive’ of the full offensive plans, which he calls very ‘impressive’. He further says that the Russians are in for a big surprise and ‘rude awakening’."

But Graham has already done so much for Ukraine:

"In 2016, the United States committed to arming Ukraine to fight and win a war against Russia. A video, filmed during John McCain’s visit to Ukraine in 2016, has resurfaced. It shows the senator accompanied by his colleague and friend, Senator Lindsey Graham, and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. In this video, Senators Graham and McCain assure that the U.S. will give all the weapons necessary for them to succeed in defeating Russia." 

#unprovoked 

Update from the Far East

 It's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon.  Actually, nothing could be further from the truth, but this afternoon finds me comfortably back in my home office.  Where's Waldo?

I get to watch and hear all the events in the neighborhood, including the continuing march of the ants back and forth along the telephone (internet) wire).  The ants go marching one by one, hurrah!

https://photos.app.goo.gl/xa7YN9AgG4GxLGqw6 (Click the play button on the previous link to get the full experience.) 

Before getting into the bad news, and in light of my recent Debbie Downer email, I'd like to share a short video clip which is like water to a thirsty soul, restoring one's faith in humanity:  Click the link below and turn on the volume....

https://twitter.com/rolandgarros/status/1663674562859417600?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1663674562859417600%7Ctwgr%5Eed4c13631ff6498419d86efd8657da87a4de4dd5%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fd-10730925632232892875.ampproject.net%2F2303151529000%2Fframe.html 

If you don't get Twitter, you can get the idea on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7__ptFjYhV8 

On the more traumatic news.  

• First, I've come through the last week as a committed Asia-phile.  The people in Singapore were some of the friendliest I've ever encountered.  And the Philippines is not only much more more modern than before, but even more friendly in my experience
• Technology is a big nothing burger in both countries, in a good (Buddhist) way.  .  When it works, and it usually does with some patience, the end result is nothing.   Your bureaucratic problems are solved because of the technology, and all you notice is that you can get on with enjoying the people and environment around you.
• Speaking of technology, our travel arrangements to Singapore, handled completely from Detroit over the Internet, worked out perfectly.  Cebu Pacific Air was a delight, as was the Swissôtel Stamford Singapore
• I've never spent so much on a hotel before, but with Lily's difficulty walking, I wanted to be right in the center of the action.  I was able to save significant money by not buying any travel insurance on the flight and hotel.
• The first 4 days were a challenge but went as I'd hoped.   We toured Gardens by the  Bay, Little India, Kampong Glam, the British colonial district, home of the SIngapore Sling, dazzling technological, floral, and botanical displays, subways, taxis, buses, underground malls, incredibly diverse linguistic and cultural society with apparently thriving markets, harbors, historical treasures, ...
  a few photos

I'm a great believer in the miracles of neoliberal capitalism!  Ok, I'm partly kidding here.  I think technology along with greatly increased trade and "development" are generally good things, but also lead to hardships on the lower classes whose ways of life become endangered prices (e.g. energy) soar). Great for tourists however!

Seriously, though, I've been knocked off my feet by the friendliness of the locals in Singapore and Philippines.  Something serious and cross-cultural is going on.  I had been tipped off by a friend to look for signs of Lee Kuan Yew and his Asian Values movement.  I did look for signs, saw them, and as usual enjoyed an ego boost through confirmation bias.  Hooray for the Lees! (Lee Kuan Yew's eldest son Lee Hsien Loong is current prime minister of Singapore, and BongBong Marcos (son of old favorite dictator Ferdinand) is current president of the Philippines. I've been listening (via Audibile books). to a 1990s   non-fiction classic - The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, by Samuel P. Huntington.  He seems to have pretty much nailed, 25 years before the fact, the Ukraine War and the ongoing crises of civilizations.  

 

Back to the personal saga::  On day 5 of our 8 day pilgrimage in Singapore,  we woke up with what I can only describe as an acute respiratory illness of some sort.  That was pretty much the end of our Singapore vacation, with the main excitement then being getting out of the hotel amidst a non-stop barrage of phlegm and nose running and coughing. and embarking upon the 12 your excursion back here to Home Sweet Home!!!! (Be it ever so humble and all that.) We left the air-conditioned hotel, took a air-conditioned taxi ride to the air-conditioned airport, I lost my cool swearing at the technological obstacles to check-in, we sat on the plane, packed like sardines, wearing n95 masks while continually coughing sneezing and blowing my nose, were picked up at the airport in air-conditioned van by Lily'y neice and additional relatives, drove several hours to the port city of Batangas (southern Luzon), waited several hours on the van which was in turn on a roll-on-roll-off (ferry) boat headed for Lily's hometown of Calapan.  Another relative met us at the Calapan pier, after the 2 hour RoRoRide (say that five times real fast) and took us the last five minutes to Lily's abode here in barangay Libis in Calapan.  I proceeded to have the best night's sleep of my life as a massive storm swept through town in the wake of Typhoon Betty.  

Parts of Western Visayas and Mimaropa see heavy rain from 

the southwest monsoon, which is being enhanced by Typhoon Betty 

(Mawar), on Tuesday evening, May 30

Okay -- Back to watching the ants!