Debt Rattle September 23 2022
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boscohorowitz said
mostly unawaredly, I’m sure; it’s the standard MO
Forgive them for they know not what they do? The final resort of scoundrels is to assume that the other side should be ignored because they are inferior in some way. In this case, they have not seen the light like the author has? What bull.
‘I reject this statement from AFKTT’
Sure, you can reject it.
Rejecting a statement does not mean the statement is not true.
Indeed, you sound a lot like the fake politicians who ‘reject’ all reality and truth because they are paid to do so, and drive us into a bigger and bigger multifaceted crisis.
The real point is this: can you prove, using scientific evidence, that the statement you ‘reject’ is untrue?
And we already know the answer to that. You cannot.
I’ve spent the past 20 years begging people to prove me wrong. They never do! They just keep churning out corporate-generated garbage that they have been carefully trained to believe and to parrot.
Here’s the rub: The Precautionary Principle; do not do anything unless you know it is safe.
Well, we know exactly how the fake governments we endure and most of their ignorant slave behave: they carry out no proper scientific analysis, do no risk analysis whatsoever, and charge ahead with lunacy because ‘someone thought it would be a good idea’. And because they are required by the system to ignore scientific evidence; “It’s the economy, stupid!”
I won’t bore you with a complete list of ‘official policies’ and ‘authorised products’ that failed spectacularly or have lead to dire consequences for the victims of the frauds and deceits and short-term convenience, but here is a very short selection:
radium for luminous watch faces
DDT
Paraquat
phthalidomide
asbestos
2,4, D
2,4,5 T
tetra-ethyl lead petrol additive
nuclear power
fluorocarbons
wind turbines
plastic fishing nets
plastic cups
mirror arrays to concentrate heat and generate electricity
covid jabs….The Earth really could not give a shit what you believe or what you reject or what your aspirations are; the Earth has complied with the laws of mathematics, laws of chemistry and laws of physics since it formed, approximately 4.5 billion years ago. and will continue to do so long after industrial humans have killed themselves and most other life forms. vi overheating a d poillution.
By the way, I believe I need to make a correction. Air is 78% nitrogen, not 79% nitrogen. 20.8% oxygen. Other gases. most notable argon, make up the other 1%
There was never a problem with nitrogen until industrial humans began applying synthetic nitrogen fertilisers -most notable ammonium nitrate and urea- to force plants to grow faster… and facilitate massive population overshoot.
All that will come to a fairly rapid end, now that so much of the globalised system is on its knees as a direct consequence of legalised fraud, and of trying to circumvent the laws of mathematics, chemistry and physics for short-term gain.
Some people describe it as karrma. 🙂
I once worked as a seating host in a restaurant.
Some old wag entering, said, winking, “Are you our lovely young hostess?”
“Depends on what you’re looking for in a man.” (I’ve used that line many times since then.)
Same with me looking for a few good men. Everyone has a different criteria and mine is rather precisely delineated. (Y’all have seen a few heated examinations of that delineation between me and a few of TAE’s older regulars.) But that’s just me and my little slice of reality. One thing I can say, however, is that a “man” “good” enough for my purposes wouldn’t blink an eye at my remark. The person I would deem “good enough” wouldn’t much care what I thought of him or others, knowing that it takes all kinds and that a consensus definition of what a “good man” is fails upon close definition, especially in terms of, er, applied human engineering (action) versus abstract valuations (talk).
As Groucho Marx said, “Any exclusive club that would admit me isn’t exclusive enough.”
One might also ask: Good enough for what? Good enough for me to trust them to keep their head while shit falls apart around them. (Also note that I have no clue if I would be good enough for someone good enough for me to trust my back to during seriously harsh times.) I’ve stopped looking, as I mentioned, and now hope that maybe a few good men will find me and deem me good enough.
We’re all pretty good humen. Again, it depends on what you’re looking for in a humen. Me, I got kinda severe tastes born of an oddly severe life and perspective.
I believe we’re all good enough humen when there’s something/someone (especially someone) we deem good enough to submit ourselves to in fealty or even raw unabashed love, that most dangerous and delightful of all conditions where the ego briefly disappears long enough to give us some blessed rest and, if I dare so, a taste of God’s Own private stash.
I’m Gonna Be That Man If I Can
I am blessed for over 30 years to enjoy the company of a woman who deems me good enough. But so far, I’ve only found at least one “man” good enough for a mighty jungle king like me, and that “man” is a female dog named Junebug. Boy, is she good enough. Toughest truest “man” I know.
boscohorowitz said
We’re currently experiencing a climate crisis
There is no climate “crisis”, there is just climate and yes it continues to change, get used to it as it has been happening for a very long time and is the way our planet works. Humans do not control climate, they create “crises” and use them to steal money from the tax payer, all supported by the looney left.
@UpstateNYer: “CO2 and climate change. Doesn’t matter what humans do with the damned oil, resources [ie, that all important item called food] will collapse before “climate change” (is that the current approved term?) has a chance to, idk, kill all of us.”
I’m with you on this one. Human effects on the climate are small enough that resource depletion will get us far sooner. The world is past peak oil, and as the burning of it drops off, so will the follow-on effect on the environment.
The whole Climate Change narrative is something that was decided on in a conference room years ago as the theme that would be used to create the proper sense of crisis for the public. Which seems a bit strange, BTW. I’m confident that human civilization can adapt to a changing climate (and has, numerous times in the past). Resource depletion in contexts like the one presented in Limits to Growth is, to me, a far scarier prospect, and one there seems to be no good answer to.
Kinda corny but that’s it’s charm? Seems like we could use a good old-fashioned Woodstock Era future global war revolution fantasy about now. Oh, those early Boomers. They thought they had power. And they did, but ultimately had no idea how to use it other than to get high and make babies.
Still, let’s sing a war chantey as we load the depleted uranium shells like so many sandbags along a floodline human chain:
I mean, lyrics like this give sophomorism a freshly dulled edge:
In nineteen hundred and seventy-five all the
People rose from the countryside to move against
You government man d’you understand locked
Together hand in hand all through this unsteady land–
Gonna roll roll roll the rock around roll roll roll the rock
Around lift the rock out of the ground
at the Battle of Forever Plains all my people hand
In hand in hand in the rain the laser way won the day
Without one single living soul going down the government
Troops were circled in the sun gun found themselves on the
Run… from our nation the rock is raised no need to hide from
The other side now… transformation
call high to the constellation headquarters call high to the
Most high directors send out the transporting systems and
Send out the sun finders
Thirteen battalion of mind raiders three hundred master
Computer killers from great platforms in the mountains
Twenty mile lasersBut it’s like cheap porn: you know you wanna…
Moving on from the topic of CO2 and human-induced climate change, which none of us on this forum can control because I’m fairly certain none of us are flying around in private jets for the day to shoe shop in Paris …
Interesting interview with Dr McCullough (USA Watchdog). Around 27 minutes in, when asked about the long rubbery blood clots found by morticians, McCullough says, “We’re seeing them clinically when patients are alive by ultrasound and they’re not going away.” He goes on to describe what they (drs) think is happening.
I’ve waffled on this particular fibrous clot phenom, but McCullough is a highly regarded and published dr. If he is stating in an interview they’re seeing the clots, they exist. We here on the forum have set the vaxx topic aside, for the most part, but the boosters are rolling out. Some people are heading into their 4th and 5th shot. And the vaxx is still skulking about in the background hoping no one notices it’s there. NYC still has mandates for city employees. 🙁
No, aspnaz, we’re currently experiencing a climate crisis. Last ten years have been major icky and hammered a lot of shit. You may want to quibble about ‘weather’ vs ‘climate’ or, for that matter, ‘crisis’ but quibbles are the junk food of discourse.
The Dust Bowl of the 30s was a climate crisis. It wasn’t just a bad year, i.e., bad weather. It was devastating pattern albeit just a brief eddy in the larger climate picture.
Also, because you enjoy the word so much, let’s say it again: No. No no no… (bosco wonders away saying ‘no’ to himself repeatedly like a 5-year old first discovering the power and majesty of that mystery word, ‘Fuck’, delighted by his discovery.)
I’ma start every post I make with ‘No’ from here on out just so I haven’t missed disagreeing with anyone I even *might* disagree with. I’ma practice now:
‘No, you’re wrong. My TAE handle isn’t boscohorowitz, it’s boscohorowitz. Uh, the z is silent.’
“I’m fairly certain none of us are flying around in private jets for the day to shoe shop in Paris …”
Speak for yourself. 😉
“sham referendums”
All those experts for sham democracy know a sham, when they see one.
For your interest: The declaration of independence of Kosovo wasn’t backed by a (sham) referendum but a manoeuvre of indirect (guided) democracy. From Wikipedia: The 2008 Kosovo declaration of independence, which proclaimed the Republic of Kosovo to be a state independent from Serbia, was adopted at a meeting held on 17 February 2008 by 109 out of the 120 members of the Assembly of Kosovo (The turnout at the [its] election was particularly low. Most members of the Serb minority refused to vote.)Thank you, willem (#116669). Agree with you. Let the cards fall as they may. Do what you can with what’s in front of you as best you can. (or die, I suppose, but then … you’re dead so what difference)
Good summary, “The whole Climate Change narrative is something that was decided on in a conference room years ago as the theme that would be used to create the proper sense of crisis for the public.”
And so the debates rage on … even on this forum … I’d love one commenter here to state just what the flip their endless debate will impact in the long run. Seriously. It’s like being at a company meeting.
Old, old pathetic George Friedman of Stratfor fame on Russia’s SMO in Ukraine:
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– What Russia’s most likely to do next– Would Putin really use tactical nuclear weapons?
– How Russia’s historically poor logistics could affect the war
– Why Putin’s partial mobilization could backfire…
– Why the West should fear the potential disintegration of the Russian Federation
F.S.
I see the cross dressing misanthrope is back try to “groom” TAE for grotesque, pornographic & otherwise pseudo-intellectual OCD blather…
Even skimming minuscule bits of the toxic EGO prattle is nauseating 😐
And yes, some of us are still focusing on the bio-weapon genocide(s), not RUSSIA! RUSSIA! RUSSIA!
Isn’t it interesting how quickly the collective EGO feels the need to herd into the obvious carrot/stick tactics/choices of TPTB/TBTF…
Has anyone else here noticed that AFKTT has shifted the conversation on this forum to a climate change debate?
Aren’t there other forums dedicated to that particular discussion that AFKTT can join? Why drag climate change into 80% of the discussion here?
It also seems like some long-term commenters have somewhat bagged it and stopped posting very often. I miss the variety of topics we used to enjoy on this forum.
Just asking. Maybe I’m the only one who noticed.
No, you’re wrong. (Don’t everybody thank me at once.)
A crisis is a relative thing. Weather that 600 years ago would impact a global population of “only 500-600 million, maybe a few hundred at most, like the infamous Little Ice Age, would now impact a global pop of 8 billion, 16 times as many people.
It only takes a decade of really wicked weather to crumble a global food/essentials economy like ours. But let’s ignore that and focus instead on how evil so-and-so is. Bad bad men! Let’s make him go to jail with Donald Trump! Orange IS the new black!
Often, the only problem we discussants really have is that someone disagrees with us.
Oh, go fuck yourself with a diseased orangutan, VP, you phony old pedantic charlatan afraid to look his own ego in the mirror so he projects it onto everyone who doesn’t fawn on him.
You’re hilarious, but I dislike sick humor.
P.S. You forgot to call me a black man who of course prefers anal sex. Not that I mind a little racism: we’re all racist under the skin. But I prefer it be done with a least a smidgeon of class, or that lacking, an ability to enter a room without tripping over your shoelaces. It’s as if God invented the eye roll for you:
COVID UPDATE: What is the truth?
No, you’re wrong.
And, as always, I reach a point where I’ve had my fill of yez and you’ve had your fill of me.
I am proud to say that this is definitely not true of me:
Not that y’all aren’t decent enough people, as people go on the average, but that if you’ve seen one clique, you’ve seen ’em all, and I don’t like what I see. Primates in groups are devil’s daycare. Online, it’s like Lord of the Flies but with humanity’s vain folly and ultimate downfall: words. To cite VP’s favorite line: one big throbbing collective ego.
Which is by no means to say that everyone here is in the clique. Clique is not about membership in a group; it’s about one’s perception of oneself in that group. Brave New World, Animal Farm, both dealt with the concept. Many people here participate without engaging in clique behavior. But those whose egos (oops, there’s that word again!) find validation in being a member of a group (like TAE) will inevitably form hierarchies, unannounced, subtle, often invisible to its members, and from there a certain kind of tree fort chauvinism kicks in.
As for cross-dresing, I confess:
Be kind to yourselves, individuals. It not only feels good but helps you be kind to others. I can’t cite university studies, only anecdotal evidence. But I’m right. No no no no no no no no…..
@boscohorowitz publicly confessed (or was that a brag?) that, “One thing I can say, however, is that a “man” “good” enough for my purposes wouldn’t blink an eye at my remark. The person I would deem “good enough” wouldn’t much care what I thought of him or others, knowing that it takes all kinds and that a consensus definition of what a “good man” is fails upon close definition . . .”
Aw, Jeez, Bosco. Just about the time I accept that you really are for, all practical purposes, irredeemable you go and say something that makes me fall in love with you all over again.
Regarding “The Precautionary Principle; do not do anything unless you know it is safe”,
are you kidding? Being alive is constantly risking death.However it would be helpful to minimize the poisoning, yet we have found a new way of poisoning, genetic poisoning.
Humans are destroying the world. But it is not climate that is the issue. The poisoning and physical destruction that is the problem.
A parting gift:
A Former US Marine Corps Officer’s Analysis of the Ukraine War William Schryver Aug 18 Lt. General (retired) Paul K. Van Riper Important Update: The identity of Marinus has now been publicly disclosed in the September 2022 issue of the Marine Corps Gazette. Marinus is a collaborative undertaking of the following individuals: John F. Schmitt, Bruce I. Gudmundsson, Lt. Gen. (ret) Paul K. Van Riper, Col. James K. Van Riper, and Col. Eric M. Walters. Preface This article originally appeared in the Marine Corps Gazette August 2022 issue. Authored by an apparently frequent anonymous contributor (“Marinus”) to the Gazette, it has since raised quite a ruckus among the United States military community in various online debates. There has been much speculation – by no means definitively confirmed – that “Marinus” is none other that USMC Lt. Gen. (ret) Paul K. Van Riper, a long-revered champion of many Marines, and a prominent proponent of the so-called “Maneuverists” – a school of military thought strongly influenced by the work of the incomparable military strategist John R. Boyd. Van Riper was also the iconoclastic Red team commander for the infamous 2002 Millennium Challenge war games, during which his forces (patterned after Iranian capabilities of the time) sunk the entire US naval fleet in the Persian Gulf by employing methods and capabilities the war game planners failed to consider in their rigid calculations. (I wrote about the Millennium Challenge 2002 debacle here: Lessons Never Learned.) Whether Marinus is Van Riper, or a collaboration of Van Riper with his son (as some have conjectured, given that General Van Riper is now 84-years-old), or simply some other insightful former Marine officer is, in the final analysis, probably not all that important. What is important is that his observations and perceptions of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine are lucid, enlightening, and unsullied by the rampant anti-Russian prejudice that has blinded most in the west to both the underlying causes and now the prosecution of the war in Ukraine. I highly recommend it, partly because it so strongly parallels my own analysis as originally posted in a Twitter thread on July 3, 2022, and subsequently expanded upon in a formal blog post on July 8, 2022: Destroying the Mother of All Proxy Armies in Ukraine. I freely confess that I am posting the Gazette article without permission, and therefore it may not remain long if one of their representatives requests me to take it down. After all, they have it behind a paywall, and it only appears here because I just spent most of this morning carefully transcribing it in its entirety from a series of images widely circulating online. In any case, I am strongly persuaded that the observations of Marinus contained therein ought to be shared far and wide. They serve the public interest in this unprecedented era of oppressive state-controlled social media and imperial propaganda. If the anonymous author(s) or representatives of the Gazette desire to request that I take it down, I encourage them to contact me via my Twitter account: @imetatronink – William Schryver, August 18, 2022 The Russian Invasion of Ukraine Maneuverist Paper No. 22: Part II: The mental and moral realms by Marinus When considered as purely physical phenomena, the operations conducted by Russian ground forces in Ukraine in 2022 present a puzzling picture. In the north of Ukraine, Russian battalion tactical groups overran a great deal of territory but made no attempts to convert temporary occupation into permanent possession. Indeed, after spending five weeks in that region, they left as rapidly as they had arrived. In the south, the similarly rapid entry of Russian ground forces led to the establishment of Russian garrisons and the planting of Russian political, economic, and cultural institutions. In the third theater of the war, rapid movements of the type that characterized Russian operations on the northern and southern fronts rarely occurred. Instead, Russian formations in eastern Ukraine conducted artillery-intensive assaults to capture relatively small pieces of ground. One way to shed a little light upon this conundrum is to treat Russian operations on each of the three major fronts of the war as a distinct campaign. Further illumination is provided by the realization that each of these campaigns followed a model that had been part of the Russian operational repertoire for a very long time. Such a scheme, however, fails to explain why the Russian leadership applied particular models to particular sets of operations. Resolving that question requires an examination of the mental and moral purposes served by each of these three campaigns. Raids in the North American Marines have long used the term “raid” to describe an enterprise in which a small force moves swiftly to a particular location, completes a discrete mission, and withdraws as quickly as it can. [1] To Russian soldiers, however, the linguistic cousin of that word (reyd) carries a somewhat different meaning. Where the travel performed by the team conducting a raid is nothing more than a means of reaching particular points on the map, the movement of the frequently larger forces conducting a reyd creates significant operational effects. That is, in the course of moving along various highways and byways, they confuse enemy commanders, disrupt enemy logistics, and deprive enemy governments of the legitimacy that comes from uncontested control of their own territory. Similarly, where each phase of a present-day American raid necessarily follows a detailed script, a reyd is a more open-ended enterprise that can be adjusted to exploit new opportunities, avoid new dangers, or serve new purposes. The term reyd found its way into the Russian military lexicon in the late 19th century by theorists who noted the similarities between the independent cavalry operations of the American Civil War and the already well-established Russian practice of sending mobile columns, often composed of Cossacks, on extended excursions through enemy territory. [2] An early example of such excursions is provided by the exploits of the column led by Alexander Chernyshev during the Napoleonic Wars. In September of 1813, this force of some 2,300 horsemen and two light field guns made a 400-mile circuit through enemy territory. At the middle point of this bold enterprise, this column occupied, for two days, the city of Kassel, then serving as the capital of one of the satellite states of the French Empire. Fear of a repetition of this embarrassment convinced Napoleon to detail two army corps to garrison Dresden, then the seat of government of another one of his dependencies. [3] As a result, when Napoleon encountered the combined forces of his enemies at the Battle of Leipzig, his already outnumbered Grande Armée was much smaller than it would otherwise have been. In 2022, the many battalion tactical groups that moved deeply into northern Ukraine during the first few days of the Russian invasion made no attempt to re-enact the occupation of Leipzig. Rather, they bypassed all of the larger cities in their path and, on the rare occasions when they found themselves in a smaller city, occupation rarely lasted for more than a few hours. Nonetheless, the fast-moving Russian columns created, on a much a larger scale, an effect similar to the one that resulted from Chernyshev’s raid of 1813. That is, they convinced the Ukrainians to weaken their main field army, then fighting in the Donbass region, to bolster the defenses of distant cities. Rapid Occupation in the South In terms of speed and distance traveled, Russian operations in the area between the southern seacoast of Ukraine and the Dnipro River resembled the raids conducted in the north. They differed, however, in the handling of cities. Where Russian columns on either side of Kyiv avoided large urban areas whenever they could, their counterparts in the south took permanent possession of comparable cities. In some instances, such as the ship-to-objective maneuver that began in the Sea of Azov and ended in Melitopol, the conquest of cities took place during the first few days of the Russian invasion. In others, such as the town of Skadovsk, the Russians waited several weeks before seizing areas and engaging local defense forces they had ignored during their initial advance. In the immediate aftermath of their arrival, the Russian commanders who took charge of urban areas in the south followed the same policy as their counterparts in the north. That is, they allowed the local representatives of the Ukrainian state to perform their duties and, in many instances, to continue to fly the flag of their country on public buildings. [4] It was not long, however, before Russian civil servants took control of the local government, replaced the flags on buildings, and set in motion the replacement of Ukrainian institutions, whether banks or cell phone companies, with Russian ones. [5] Like the model of the reyd, the paradigm of campaigns that combined rapid military occupation with thoroughgoing political transformation, had been part of the Russian military culture for quite some time. Thus, when explaining the concept for operations on the southern front, Russian commanders were able to point to any one of a number of similar enterprises conducted by the Soviet state in the four decades that followed Soviet occupation of eastern Poland in 1939. (These included the conquest of the countries of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in 1940; the suppression of reformist governments in Hungary and Czechoslovakia during the Cold War, and the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.) [6] While some Russian formations in the south consolidated control over conquered territory, others conducted raids in the vicinity of the city of Mykolaiv. Like their larger counter-parts on the northern front, these encouraged the Ukrainian leadership to devote to the defense of cities forces that might otherwise have been used in the fight for the Donbass region. (In this instance, the cities in question included the ports of Mykolaiv and Odessa.) At the same time, the raids in the northern portion of the southern front created a broad “no man’s land” between areas that had been occupied by Russian forces and those entirely under the control of the Ukrainian government. Stalingrad in the East Russian operations in the north and south of Ukraine made very little use of field artillery. This was partially a matter of logistics. (Whether raiding in the north or rapidly occupying in the south, the Russian columns lacked the means to bring up large numbers of shells and rockets.) The absence of cannonades in those campaigns, however, had more to do with ends than means. In the north, Russian reluctance to conduct bombardments stemmed from a desire to avoid antagonizing the local people, nearly all of whom, for reasons of language and ethnicity, tended to support the Ukrainian state. In the south, the Russian policy of avoiding the use of field artillery served a similarly political purpose of preserving the lives and property of communities in which many people identified as “Russian” and many more spoke Russian as their native language. In the east, however, the Russians conducted bombardments that, in terms of both duration and intensity, rivaled those of the great artillery contests of the world wars of the twentieth century. Made possible by short, secure, and extraordinarily redundant supply lines, these bombardments served three purposes. First, they confined Ukrainian troops into their fortifications, depriving them of the ability to do anything other than remain in place. Second, they inflicted a large number of casualties, whether physical or caused by the psychological effects of imprisonment, impotence, and proximity to large numbers of earth-shaking explosions. Third, when conducted for a sufficient period of time, which was often measured in weeks, the bombardment of a given fortification invariably resulted in either the withdrawal of its defenders or their surrender. We can glean some sense of the scale of the Russian bombardments in the east of Ukraine by comparing the struggle for the town of Popasna (18 March – 7 May 2022) with the battle of Iwo Jima (19 February – 26 March 1945.) At Iwo Jima, American Marines fought for five weeks to annihilate the defenders of eight square miles of skillfully fortified ground. At Popasna, Russian gunners bombarded trench systems built into the ridges and ravines of a comparable area for eight weeks before the Ukrainian leadership decided to withdraw its forces from the town. The capture of real estate by artillery, in turn, contributed to the creation of the encirclements that Russians call “cauldrons” (kotly). Like so much in Russian military theory, this concept builds upon an idea borrowed from the German tradition of maneuver warfare: the “battle cauldron” (Schlachtkessel). However, where the Germans sought to create and exploit their cauldrons as quickly as possible, Russian cauldrons could be either rapid and surprising or slow and seemingly inevitable. Indeed, the successful Soviet offensives of the Second World War, such as the one that resulted in the destruction of the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad, made extensive use of cauldrons of both types. Freedom from the desire to create cauldrons as quickly as possible relieved the Russians fighting in eastern Ukraine from the need to hold any particular piece of ground. Thus, when faced with a determined Ukrainian attack, the Russians often withdrew their tank and infantry units from the contested terrain. In this way, they both reduced danger to their own troops and created situations, however brief, in which the Ukrainian attackers faced Russian shells and rockets without the benefit of shelter. To put things another way, the Russians viewed such “encore bombardments” not merely as an acceptable use of ordnance but also as opportunities to inflict additional casualties while engaging in “conspicuous consumption” of artillery ammunition. In the spring of 1917, German forces on the Western Front used comparable tactics to create situations in which French troops advancing down the rear slopes of recently captured ridges were caught in the open by the fire of field artillery and machine guns. The effect of this experience on French morale was such that infantrymen in fifty French divisions engaged in acts of “collective indiscipline,” the motto for which was, “we will hold, but we refuse to attack.” [7] (In May of 2022, several videos appeared on the internet in which people claiming to be Ukrainian soldiers fighting in the Donbass region explained that, while they were willing to defend their positions, they had resolved to disobey any orders that called for them to advance.) Resolving the Paradox In the early days of the maneuver warfare debate, maneuverists often presented their preferred philosophy as the logical opposite of “firepower/attrition warfare.” Indeed, as late as 2013, the anonymous authors of the “Attritionist Letters” used this dichotomy as a framework for their critique of practices at odds with the spirit of maneuver warfare. In the Russian campaigns in Ukraine, however, a set of operations made mostly of movement complemented one composed chiefly of cannonades. One way to resolve this apparent paradox is to characterize the raids of the first five weeks of the war as a grand deception that, while working little in the way of direct destruction, made possible the subsequent attrition of the Ukrainian armed forces. In particular, the threat posed by the raids delayed the movement of Ukrainian forces in the main theater of the war until the Russians had deployed the artillery units, secured the transporting network, and accumulated the stocks of ammunition needed to conduct a long series of big bombardments. This delay also ensured that, when the Ukrainians did deploy additional formations to the Donbass region, the movement of such forces, and the supplies needed to sustain them, had been rendered much more difficult by the ruin wrought upon the Ukrainian rail network by long-range guided missiles. In other words, the Russians conducted a brief campaign of maneuver in the north in order to set the stage for a longer, and, ultimately, more important campaign of attrition in the east. The stark contrast between the types of warfare waged by Russian forces in different parts of Ukraine reinforced the message at the heart of Russian information operations. From the start, Russian propaganda insisted that the “special military operation” in Ukraine served three purposes: the protection of the two pro-Russian proto-states, “demilitarization,” and “denazification.” All three of these goals required the infliction of heavy losses upon Ukrainian formations fighting in the Donbass. None, however, depended upon the occupation of parts of Ukraine where the vast majority of people spoke the Ukrainian language, embraced a Ukrainian ethnic identity, and supported the Ukrainian state. Indeed, the sustained occupation of such places by Russian forces would have supported the proposition that Russia was trying to conquer all of Ukraine. The Russian campaign in the south served direct political aims. That is, it served to incorporate territories inhabited by a large number of ethnic Russians into the “Russian World.” At the same time, the rapid occupation of cities like Kherson and Melitopol enhanced the deceptive power of operations conducted in the north by suggesting the possibility that the columns on either side of Kyiv might attempt to do the same to cities like Chernihiv and Zhytomyr. Similarly, the raids conducted north of Kherson raised the possibility that the Russians might attempt the occupation of additional cities, the most important of which was Odessa. [8] Guided Missiles The Russian program of guided missile strikes, conducted in parallel to the three ground campaigns, created a number of moral effects favorable to the Russian war effort. The most important of these resulted from the avoidance of collateral damage that resulted, not only from the extraordinary precision of the weapons used, but also from the judicious choice of targets. Thus, Russia’s enemies found it hard to characterize strikes against fuel and ammunition depots, which were necessarily located at some distance from places where civilians lived and worked, as anything other than attacks on military installations. Likewise, the Russian effort to disrupt traffic on the Ukrainian rail system could have included attacks against the power generating stations that provide electricity to both civilian communities and trains. Such attacks, however, would have resulted in much loss of life among the people working in those plants as well as a great deal of suffering in places deprived of power. Instead, the Russians chose to direct their missiles at traction substations, the remotely located transformers that converted electricity from the general grid into forms used to move trains. [9] There were times, however, when missile strikes against “dual use” facilities gave the impression that the Russians had, in fact, targeted purely civilian facilities. The most egregious example of such a mistake was the attack, carried out on 1 March 2022, upon the main television tower in Kyiv. Whether or not there was any truth in the Russian claim that the tower had been used for military purposes, the attack on an iconic structure that had long been associated with a purely civilian purpose did much to reduce the advantages achieved by the overall Russian policy of limiting missile strikes to obvious military targets. The Challenge The three ground campaigns conducted by the Russians in Ukraine in 2022 owed much to traditional models. At the same time, the program of missile strikes exploited a capability that was nothing short of revolutionary. Whether new or old, however, these component efforts were conducted in a way that demonstrated profound appreciation of all three realms in which wars are waged. That is, the Russians rarely forgot that, in addition to being a physical struggle, war is both a mental contest and a moral argument. The Russian invasion of Ukraine may mark the start of a new cold war, a “long twilight struggle” comparable to the one that ended with the collapse of the Soviet Empire more than three decades ago. If that is the case, then we will face an adversary who, while drawing much of value from the Soviet military tradition, has been liberated from both the brutality inherent in the legacy of Lenin and the blinders imposed by Marxism. What would be even worse, we may find ourselves fighting disciples of John R. Boyd. Notes [1] Headquarters Marine Corps, MCWP 3-43.1, Raid Operations (Washington, DC: 1993). [2] For the adoption of the concept of the “raid” by the Russian Army of the late nineteenth century, see Karl Kraft von Hohenlobe-Ingelfingem (Neville Lloyd Walford, translator), Letters on Cavalry, (London: E. Stanford, 1893); and Frederick Chenevix Trench, Cavalry in Modern Wars, (London: Keegan, Paul, Trench, and Company, 1884). [3] For a brief account of the reyd, which was led by Alexander Chernyshev, see Michael Adams, Napoleon and Russia, (London: Bloomsbury, 2006). [4] John Reed and Polina Ivanova, “Residents of Ukraine’s Fallen Cities Regroup under Russian Occupation,” The Financial Times, (March 2022), available at https://www.ft.com. [5] David M. Glantz, “Excerpts on Soviet 1938-40 Operations from The History of Warfare, Military Art, and Military Science, a 1977 Textbook of the Military Academy of the General Staff of the USSR Armed Forces,” The Journal of Slavic Military Studies, (Milton Park: Routledge, March 1993). [6] The classic work on the French mutinies of 1917 is Richard M. Watt, Dare Call It Treason, (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1963). [7] Michael Schwirtz, “Anxiety Grows in Odessa as Russians Advance in Southern Ukraine,” The New York Times, (March 2022), available at https://www.nytimes.com. [8] Staff, “Russia Bombs Five Railway Stations in Central and Western Ukraine,” The Guardian, (April 2022), available at https://www.the-guardian.com. [9] For an example of the many stories that characterized the 1 March 2022 television tower strike as an attack on civilian infrastructure, see Abraham Mashie, ”US Air Force Discusses Tactics with Ukrainian Air Force as Russian Advance Stalls,” Air Force Magazine, (March 2022), available at https://www.airforcemag.com.
Everything is fake. Buying stocks is just gambling – buying oil stock doesn’t create oil, it just is someone making money. The 1% are just moving the money around that they bleed out of the people via money printing and inflation. They’re shearing us sheep and will hide in their protected communities when it all collapses – one better understands the French Revolution when you look at what the elites do.
‘Has anyone else here noticed that AFKTT has shifted the conversation on this forum to a climate change debate?
Aren’t there other forums dedicated to that particular discussion that AFKTT can join? Why drag climate change into 80% of the discussion here?’
Here we go again: ad hominem attack based on a false nraarative!
If you were to actually look at what I have commented on and provided links to over many weeks, you might have noticed that 80% of it has been economic and financial, plus fair amount of energy and environmental data.
I mention climate as a component of the egregious lying that our so-called leaders engage in continuously, insofar as their so-called solutions made the climate predicament worse faster.
And I respond to misinformation posted on TAE by non-scientists who donlt kniow what they are talking about but love to have their say.
‘Tell us in what condition O2 becomes the drive’
i take that last word to be driver; we all make minor errors, myself included, of course.
The answer is never. oxygen molecules are not spectrally active in the significant frequency range.
UV can split O2 into 2 O, and that mechanism is important in the generation of ozone .. you know, the stuff that protects the biosphere from excess UV radiation that would otherwise kill most life on the surface of the Earth.
ODS -yet another case of unintended consequences of industrialism and consumerism- began to massively mess up that natural system in the 1980s but the Montreal Protocol significantly reduced the manufacture of ODS, so we had a short reprieve form self-obliteration.
As for oxygen being a driver, well you have to go back to Ordovician times for that one -a never-to-be-repeated era that has no lessons for any of our present-day predicaments.
Read ‘The Ends of the World’ for details
September 24, 2022 at 1:14 am#116684
Michael Reid
Thanks for that great link…long and thorough…best I’ve read to date…
Received an email that linked to this today:
Is it safe to get the new Omicron booster?The FDA and the CDC believe in the safety of these bivalent vaccine boosters.
According to a statement by the CDC Director, “The updated COVID-19 boosters are formulated to better protect against the most recently circulating COVID-19 variant. They can help restore protection that has waned since previous vaccination and were designed to provide broader protection against newer variants. This recommendation followed a comprehensive scientific evaluation and robust scientific discussion.”
Peter Marks, MD, PHD, the Director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research indicated, “We have worked closely with the vaccine manufacturers to ensure the development of these updated boosters was done safely and efficiently. The FDA has extensive experience with strain changes for annual influenza vaccines. We are confident in the evidence supporting these authorizations.”
He added, “The public can be assured that a great deal of care has been taken by the FDA to ensure that these bivalent COVID-19 vaccines meet our rigorous safety, effectiveness and manufacturing quality standards for emergency use authorization.”
Is it safe?
Yes, according to the well known logical fallacy called “an appeal to authority.”
AKA “just trust us.”(Wait a minute…there ARE NO manufacturing standards for emergency use medications/vaccines.)
When my son has an endoscopy the doctor does not say: “He’ll be fine, just trust me.” There are risks, and the doctor is up front about those risks. I sign a document that acknowledges that I know the risks.
But—bivalent Covid vaccines? The officials say they are carefully studied, so trust them. Don’t think…just trust. Be children.
Grrr…
If any of TTATT (The Turds At The Top) are reading the petty arguments about the role of CO2 in climate systems, they must be ROTFLTHO (Rolling On The Floor Laughing Their Heads Off) because all the petty arguing diverts attention away from the real issues, which are:
1. the fake financial system -creating money out of thin air and charging interest on it
2. the fake economic system -measuring negative aspects and negative outcomes as positive and rewarding the movement of fake money from one place to another
3. the fake political system -one party systems wherever you live in the Empire of Lies (the banksters’ own all the parties) that pretend to be diverse and inclusive, and pretend to consider the wellbeing of the populace whilst screwing practically everyone as hard and as fast as they can manage.
boscohorowitz said
Often, the only problem we discussants really have is that someone disagrees with us.
No. You, like AFKTT, declare assumptions that are plain wrong and refuse to actually discuss your assumptions – your arrogant line is that only an idiot would challenge my assumptions. You then debate some nonsense on the basis of flawed, untouchable assumptions, sending some of us to sleep. So you can add that to your problems, if your assumptions allow.
In COPD, O2 as in hypoxia becomes the drive to breath rather than hypercapnia/increased CO2.
Supplement a COPDers oxygen too much and the drive to breath is diminishedThanx for the info, Dr. D. Rich. I love clarification the way I love the smell of coffee at dawn. And thanx for your many useful analyses (my memory’s spotty sometimes but I seem to recall you did a lot of number-crunching for us during the early confusing days of covid).
And, since he thinks I’m so special, a very special extra-parting gift for VP{
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