It’s interesting how last week Israel had no idea what Hamas was up to, and yet this week they know every mosque, school and hospital that Hamas is hiding in. It seems that the entire northern half of Gaza is included in that.

Learning about The Bridge

A few weeks ago I read an article, entitled 'The Bridge', by Scott Ritter about the experiences of his father-in-law (and others, including himself and his wife) in the Abkhazian war of 1992-93. The what? Well, that was my first reaction to the first mention of the war in the article. So I researched it. Wikipedia has the usual, sometimes boring, informative, coming from 'approved' history, article. It gives background and information and taught me a bit about the war. The BBC also has a short profile of Abkhazia which is informative. The region (much of the rest of the world does not recognize it as a country), whatever, is on the east coast of the Black Sea, and was/is part of Georgia once. Both were part of the USSR.

Map of the Region, from the BBC article linked above.

The Abkhazian war erupted in 1992 as tensions following the fall of the USSR grew. Ethnic Abkhazians, supported by Russians and Armenians, fought to regain the region from Georgian government control. In doing so, they massacred thousands of ethnic Georgians (and vice versa) and internally displaced or made into refugees something like 250,000 ethnic Georgians (see Wikipedia article linked above). The capital city is Sukhumi (founded by the Greeks in 6th C BCE) and was/is a place Russians go to vacation. The region/country's economy is greatly dependent upon tourism from Russia (see BBC article linked above). Time magazine did a photo essay of Abkhazia 20 years after the war (10 years ago), it's worth looking at and reading to learn more about the region.

With that little bit of learning I was able to place Ritter's article, 'The Bridge', in context, so to speak. And after reading it, all I have to say is...

This diary is about virtue-signaling.

Virtue-signaling is empty because it doesn't do anything about the situation supposedly connected to the virtue-signaling. It therefore has no consequences. No Black lives were saved because Nancy Pelosi dressed up in kente cloth.

The data is in, and warfare is what we do. Ignoring all the other forms, like economic, and focusing only on "Military Interventions", it is what we do and really what we have always done to the tune of 400 such military escapades between 1776 and 2019

These are my cut-and-paste notes from the site noted, which I need to get off of my clipboard, read them and weep:

While shopping my favorite farm store (Wilco), I took a glance at a Farmers Almanac they had on display and noted the weather outlook for my little corner of the universe.
It advised that this winter would be cool and dry, and next summer would be cool and wet.