@Cassiodorus through the US's puppet PM Boris Johnson, just made it clear to Z that Ukr would enjoy considerable US financial and military assistance if it walked away from those negotiations, but not to expect any such aid or support of any kind if Ukr went ahead and made a deal w Russia.

Aaron Maté tells us:

New evidence emerges that the Biden administration blocked a Russia-Ukraine peace deal in April 2022, and shunned more Kremlin overtures in the period since.

Now, I'm still not clear about how Joe Biden could have "blocked" a Russia-Ukraine peace deal, since he's ruler neither of Russia nor of Ukraine. Certainly it's possible, but what actually happened is something to ask about. And the post is paywalled, and I'm not going to get the 7-day free trial. There's a discussion on RT with the same title as the Mate piece but, you know, it's RT. So I'm not going to make any great claims here about Joe Biden's past behavior with Ukraine.

A present-day assessment can be found in this interview with Larry Johnson, mixed in with a lot of garbage attitudes about the culture of the West. "The Israelis basically own Washington DC." And Johnson's notion that the US is pressuring Israel to put the conflicts to an end? I would like to know whether the US is -- for real -- doing anything more than virtue signaling. A lot of what Larry Johnson says is what a fair number of other people have said: more wars are coming because the hubris of Team Biden is infinite and its trustworthiness is zero.

Simplicius has finally gotten around to discussing Russia's main weakness. Apparently Ukraine has some ability to cause Russia a lot of pain in battles involving drone warfare in which the Ukrainians play a defensive role. In his extended discussion, Simplicius likes to use the acronym FPV, so here's a website link. At any rate, here's a key quote from the Simplicius diary:

Furthermore, it’s now being written that a simple ability to steer a drone isn’t enough. True drone ops need to be experts in demolitions and engineering so as to be able to handle the explosives with which their drones operate, knowing the nuances and all the ins and outs.

This is a major reason why Russia may slow-roll their campaign, and be content with simply attritioning the AFU with their huge artillery disparity from a safe distance, with only moderate, stepwise advancement in secure areas. Until Russia can roll out provably functional jammers en masse, it’s nearly pointless to conduct large-scale assaults. The combination of mines and FPVs is nearly insurmountable: the mines disable your vehicles, then the FPVs descend like a flock of vultures to finish off the crouching survivors.

So yeah, we're going to see a lot of fast-forwarding of technological development in the art of death-dealing over the next few years. One would like to say that what we are seeing now with Ukraine and Gaza is actually the World War Three of which I was warned back in the last century. It's happening now.

@Cassiodorus It's so proximate to the battlefield it's hard to separate ground forces from the air threat as a separate conceptual realm.

I'm a dinosaur but I will hazard a countertactic anyway. My first instinct is go around it. So ballistic missile attacks on logistic hubs, bridges, hqs, fuel depots, ammo dumps, truck parks, can completely go around this threat. Starve the people at the opposing front line cut them off. One can develop cheap countermeasures favoring the defender at the front, but the cost to defend against the longer range threat is much greater. Ignore the maginot line. I'm treating this as a tactical puzzle. I'm not really cheering for this war or any other for that matter. I'm over the my team has gotta win mentality. Nothing to cheer about here. My preference is that the armed conflict be stopped now. These wars are beyond my worst nightmare.

Aaron Maté tells us:

New evidence emerges that the Biden administration blocked a Russia-Ukraine peace deal in April 2022, and shunned more Kremlin overtures in the period since.

Now, I'm still not clear about how Joe Biden could have "blocked" a Russia-Ukraine peace deal, since he's ruler neither of Russia nor of Ukraine. Certainly it's possible, but what actually happened is something to ask about. And the post is paywalled, and I'm not going to get the 7-day free trial. There's a discussion on RT with the same title as the Mate piece but, you know, it's RT. So I'm not going to make any great claims here about Joe Biden's past behavior with Ukraine.

A present-day assessment can be found in this interview with Larry Johnson, mixed in with a lot of garbage attitudes about the culture of the West. "The Israelis basically own Washington DC." And Johnson's notion that the US is pressuring Israel to put the conflicts to an end? I would like to know whether the US is -- for real -- doing anything more than virtue signaling. A lot of what Larry Johnson says is what a fair number of other people have said: more wars are coming because the hubris of Team Biden is infinite and its trustworthiness is zero.

Simplicius has finally gotten around to discussing Russia's main weakness. Apparently Ukraine has some ability to cause Russia a lot of pain in battles involving drone warfare in which the Ukrainians play a defensive role. In his extended discussion, Simplicius likes to use the acronym FPV, so here's a website link. At any rate, here's a key quote from the Simplicius diary:

Furthermore, it’s now being written that a simple ability to steer a drone isn’t enough. True drone ops need to be experts in demolitions and engineering so as to be able to handle the explosives with which their drones operate, knowing the nuances and all the ins and outs.

This is a major reason why Russia may slow-roll their campaign, and be content with simply attritioning the AFU with their huge artillery disparity from a safe distance, with only moderate, stepwise advancement in secure areas. Until Russia can roll out provably functional jammers en masse, it’s nearly pointless to conduct large-scale assaults. The combination of mines and FPVs is nearly insurmountable: the mines disable your vehicles, then the FPVs descend like a flock of vultures to finish off the crouching survivors.

So yeah, we're going to see a lot of fast-forwarding of technological development in the art of death-dealing over the next few years. One would like to say that what we are seeing now with Ukraine and Gaza is actually the World War Three of which I was warned back in the last century. It's happening now.

@ovals49

It now is clear that the US has long since abandoned all but the pretense of Democracy. By the time Bush v. Gore arrived, our ‘representatives’ were already frontmen for the permanent shadow government, spawn of the WWII OSS under Alan Dulles, and the international banking cabal. This only with the benefit of Janus’s hindsight on my part.

Perhaps ‘Democracy’ was always a dream, an artificial notion created by erstwhile feudal lords and monarchists as a tool to extend their control over the masses. Be that as it may, any reckoning from the bottom up will be messy and chaotic. Who will pick up the pieces when the dust settles? Will the rabble morph itself into a coherent and benevolent whole?

Is this human experiment on Planet Earth going somewhere, or just going around in circles, ad infinitum?

Fool that I am, my hope for the future for us all still remains, battered, but not yet dead.

Happy New Year, 2024!

@Cassiodorus

I was listening to KSKQ radio in my car, and I tuned in to a regular syndicated Sunday show called "Philosophy Talk." The hosts discussed "American Futures," speculating about the political future of America. The "optimistic" future they had, one which saw a return to "normal politics," was one in which:

1) Joe Biden is re-elected

2) Donald Trump is reined in by the Republicans as a "transgressor of norms"

The "pessimistic" future was envisioned as one in which the US became something like, say, "Russia." The hosts then struggled "forward" along this line of "reasoning" to try to avoid saying anything specific about the real world.

I thought their schtick was hilarious. Who pays these people?