Category: Current Events

22JUN2023 – Update on Ukraine

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Information on the Ukraine War is both ubiquitous and dubious.  Probably the best policy is to wait until information from both Russian and Ukrainian sources intersect.  Well, I couldn’t get that yet but at least both sides agree that the Ukrainians are finding the Russian defenses daunting.

“But as for Putin’s video, the amount of losses he quotes are interesting: ~250 tanks and almost 700 other armor/vehicles. I outlined recently how even at the highest Western estimates, Ukraine is said to have 600-800 total tanks remaining (as per Pentagon leaks, etc.). If Putin’s numbers are even remotely true, it would mean the Not-Offensive has potentially wiped out upwards of 30-45% of Ukraine’s remaining heavy armor which would put them in dire straits. Recall, that even remaining armor is misleading as much of it is older tanks with 105mm or 115mm cannons that are no match for Russian MBTs, and the majority of remaining 125mm’ers are likely T-64s, which likewise is not promising.”

So that’s by a Russian partisan.  Now here is an article from the Institute for the Study of War, neo-con think-tank.

“Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged that the progress of Ukrainian counteroffensives has been slower than expected, likely due to effective Russian defenses. Zelensky stated that Ukrainian counteroffensive progress has been “slower than desired” and will take time.[6] Zelensky noted that Ukrainian advances are not easy because Russian forces have mined 200,000 square kilometers of frontline territory.[7] Russian President Vladimir Putin also addressed ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensives and preposterously claimed that Russian forces have destroyed 244 tanks and 679 armored vehicles since these operations began on June 4.[8] Russian forces’ doctrinally sound defense in western Zaporizhia Oblast and prepared defensive positions throughout southern Ukraine are likely slowing Ukrainian advances, as ISW has previously assessed.[9] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian defensive positions in southern Ukraine, dubbed the “Surovikin Line” after former overall theater commander Army General Sergei Surovikin, consist of several defensive zones between lines along dominant elevated positions up to 30km into Russian held territory.[10] The milblogger claimed that the “Surovikin Line” consists of a forward line of defense with several dozen platoon and company strongholds, and a main defensive line roughly 25km back with minefields, anti-tank ditches, and other defensive structures in between, though the extent of these defenses along the entire front line is unclear.[11] These Russian defensive lines are likely arrayed to enable a first echelon of Russian forces, deployed to the forward defensive line, to slow advancing Ukrainian forces while a second echelon of forces deployed closer to the main defensive line launch counterattacks against any Ukrainian breakthroughs, as well as providing prepared fallback positions for frontline Russian units.[12] Localized Ukrainian territorial gains are unlikely to immediately disrupt these Russian defensive lines and localized Ukrainian attempts at rapid breakthroughs are less likely to degrade these lines than a wider concerted operational effort, one which may be focused on degrading Russian defenders and fixing reserves rather than the immediate liberation of territory.”

Notice this article scoffs at the Russian numbers of Ukrainian tanks and armored vehicles destroyed, but agrees that the offensive has been “slower than desired.”

But what were they expecting?  Driving tanks across heavily mined fields into flat steppe-land where hand-held anti-tank weapons and aircraft missiles are waiting for them doesn’t sound like a cake walk to me.  And that’s before they get within twenty miles of the reinforced entrenchment lines and anti-tank emplacements.

I can’t make up my mind whether the Ukrainians will commit to the full offensive or not.  Without air superiority or overwhelming numerical advantage what they are attempting is very likely to cost them tens of thousands of casualties and still come up short of their objective.  If they lose forty or fifty thousand men and don’t even reach the coast it will be a disaster of enormous magnitude.  That will probably cost them the war.

I suspect they will continue on with the probing attacks for a month or two more and then declare victory somehow or other.  Maybe they capture a few towns or smaller cities and wait for the F-16’s to save the day.  But I’m not sure.

The Ukrainians have fought very bravely but modern war is very tough on the underdog.  The Russians have a big advantage in population size, quantity of artillery and aerial offense and defense.  They are waging a war of attrition where they stand back and bombard the Ukrainians from a distance.  It’s slow and wasteful of munitions but it conserves lives.

Lately even Washington insiders are starting to talk about the necessity of negotiations with the Russians.  And the terms they mention are more or less what the Russians proposed in Turkey.  But I don’t think they’re likely to agree to those terms any longer.  They’ve been forced to put their country on a war footing and and it’s unlikely they’ll be satisfied until they obtain most of what they currently want.  They want the four regions they’ve officially annexed, they probably want further territorial gains that include Odessa and the rest of Black Sea coastline.  They may also demand a buffer zone between Russia and Ukraine to avoid guerilla warfare after the war.  And they want Ukraine disarmed and neutral.

So this may be a long war because it may be a very slow one.  If the Ukrainians hold off on their big offensive then the Russian counter-offensive will be more of what we saw in Bakhmut; a long slow war of attrition that pounds the Ukrainians down inch by slow inch.  In other words, hell on earth.

Summer Solstice 2023

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Today is the longest day of the year and the first official day of summer.  Regular readers know that I have an inordinate attachment to summer.  This probably developed when I was a child and despised school as a form of imprisonment.  This week has been unpleasantly crowded with commitments that have kept me from writing and performing my other blog duties.  Well, it can’t be helped.

Most of the news today has to do with the submarine that has disappeared during a trip to the Titanic wreck site on the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean.  From what I’ve read, the guy who runs the company that brings sight-seers to the Titanic was piloting the sub.  Opinions about whether the trip was a senseless death trap or a brave adventure seems about evenly split.  As someone very familiar with pressure vessel design, I wonder if carbon fiber as a structural material is well understood.  Materials like stainless steel and other alloys have been tested for decades to understand their reaction to pressure, temperature, corrosion and other factors.  I guess this situation will probably bring to light the details of this company’s policies with respect to design and risk.

Elsewhere in the news, Hunter Biden and Donald Trump and their comparative treatment at the hands of the Justice Department is providing supplementary examples of what a two-tier justice system means in practical terms.  We’re all going to learn over the course of the next year and a half whether the awakening of the American public to the realities of who runs this country makes any difference at all in how those in charge behave.  We may find that they now have nothing to fear from us at all.

On the Ukraine front, the summer offensive by the Ukrainians has been ongoing for about three weeks.  It’s not completely clear whether the operations are probing attacks or some kind of multiple axis maneuvering.  At this point, the Ukrainians have lost about 20 – 30% of the tanks and armored vehicles that the West provided them since December.  This is due to the extensive minefields that the Russians have laid out in front of the defensive lines that they built.  Maybe there will be a successful penetration of those Russian lines in the near future but so far it doesn’t look promising.  There’s a NATO meeting coming up in Vilnius, Lithuania on July 11th.  Speculation is that the Ukrainians have until that meeting to show that they can use the equipment and training that the West has given them to make significant progress against the Russians on the battle front.  We’ll see how that turns out.

As far as the economy, prices continue to soar on just about everything and companies report lower earnings.  Of course, “no recession in sight.”  But that may be just the new way the economy is reported.  Basically, see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.  Well, we’ll see how that goes in the fall when the election is in high gear.  Once again, maybe our masters no longer care what we think or say.

On the home front, Camera Girl continues to stuff me with splendiferous foods whenever I return from the various annoying errands, I’ve been assigned this week.  Tonight, is eggplant stuffed with sausage and rice.  I guess I shouldn’t complain about living in bondage if it includes good food.  But of course, in Biden’s America the sausage will be replaced with crickets.  So, there is that.

Too Much Truth

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“In 2020, five psychologists asked the editors of PNAS to retract their study of racial bias in police shootings. PNAS, which stands for the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, is one of the most prestigious multidisciplinary journals in the world. Retraction is an outcome no scholar wishes to experience because it signifies a serious research error and, as such, entails considerable reputational damage.”

Was it because of they made up data or because their calculations were wrong.  Nope.

“Some observers have suggested that the retraction was politically motivated. The study, which showed no evidence of racial bias in police shootings, had been used in political debates in ways that challenged calls for radical police reform; calls that had grown louder in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd. Heather Mac Donald, a research fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, claimed the article was retracted because she had cited it in a congressional hearing and in essays published in the Wall Street Journal and other right-leaning media outlets. Others denied this claim. Most importantly, Dr. Joseph Cesario, the senior author of the retracted article wrote, in response to Ms. Mac Donald, “We retracted the paper because we overstepped with the inferences we made from our data.” In other words, he maintained the reason was not political but motivated by purely scientific considerations.”

The narrative must be maintained at all costs, even if it means loss of credibility of some of the hive workers.

The truth?  What is truth?  Is your truth my truth?

Hah!

Father’s Day 2023

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Ah, Father’s Day, that most inexplicable holiday in the calendar.  Children, wives and the fathers themselves walk around that day with confused expressions on their faces.  What are they all supposed to be doing, or feeling or even pretending to be feeling?

Everyone understands Mother’s Day.  The bond between mothers and their children is self-explanatory.  Even the act of becoming a mother to a child is one of self-sacrifice and love.  Even husbands are unable to be completely selfish on Mother’s Day.  We’re forced to acknowledge that our role in the circle of life is the easier side.  And we do.  Every man in a good marriage honors his wife on Mother’s Day and tries to show some class on that day.  And so, he encourages his children to gather around his wife and celebrate the nurturing nature of mothers.

But Father’s Day?  I mean, we try to be good fathers.  We spend time with our kids and teach them things and show affection.  But do we want to be applauded and be fussed over about our role in the family?

Honestly?  No.

What we’d prefer is to get up late, have a nice big breakfast, watch some really bad movie or go fishing or read a book then have a steak dinner and then watch another bad movie and go to bed.  Of course, this leaves room for variation.  Maybe instead of fishing you’d rather work on restoring an old car or head to the gun range or have a catch with your grandson or something.  And I even know some fathers who aren’t happy unless they’re doing home repair projects on their day off.  There’s a natural range.

One of my favorite fatherhood memories was taking my son to the north shore of Lake Champlain to fish for pike and bass.  It was a long trip and we didn’t know any of the local details for fishing so we tried a row boat which turned out to be a dicey thing on a lake with a particularly strong current.  But we caught some fish and ate some bad food and spent a memorable weekend together as father and son.

I guess it’s natural for us to think of our own fathers and try to figure out how we stack up.  My own father had six sons and he spent most of his time with us trying to stop us from hitting each other quite so much.  He was one of the most aggravated individuals I can remember.  He was just outnumbered was his problem.  But deep down I think he liked us most of the time.  And since I feel that about him, I would conclude that he was a successful father.

So really none of us get to decide if we were successful at fatherhood.  It’s the kids who get the last word (although the wives probably would like to add a footnote or two as usual).  So, if after they’re grown, they’re still talking to you and if from time to time they still talk about any of the things you did together, then a case can be made for you as a good father.  Anyway, that’s my take.

If This Goes On … Then What? – Part 5 (Last)

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As the final trend that I want to examine let’s look at the mindset of the American people.  The graph above, for what it’s worth, provides a measure of the well-being of the American people.  Notice that only for short periods does it ever crack the 60% level.  The average in the time before 2008 looks like it’s somewhere around 40%.  But since 2008 it has only cracked 40% once and that was right before the COVID debacle.  Now the average looks like it’s closer to 25%.

I won’t claim that we can read any deep meaning into this graph.  But what it seems to indicate for the post-2008 period is that only about 20% of the population are satisfied with the way the country is run.  I’ll assume that 20% is the affluent part of the population.  So, 66 million people are happy and 260 million are angry.  How is that going to work out?

When Donald Trump was elected in 2016 it was attributed to populist anger.  If you look at the graph you can see the satisfaction index increasing pretty steadily from 2016 to 2020 and then there’s a step down after 2020.  Unless there is an increase in material prosperity between now and the 2024 election the same populist anger will be present in the electorate to an even higher degree than in 20216.  The only difference is that the voter fraud that characterized the 2020 elections will be even more pronounced.  There is every indication that the outcome in 2024 will once again thwart the will of these populist voters.

What will be the result of this frustration?

One possibility is that the have-nots will just give up.  They’ll retreat to their parents’ basements, play video games, watch porn and die.  Their parents will live off their social security checks, 401K accounts and wait for death.  And the managerial state will rearrange society around the 20% that serve the interests of the elites who control all of the money and resources.

Another possibility is that regional leaders will organize a separate economy with a populist agenda.  This will run up against the dictates of the federal government.  And this spawns two separate possibilities.

In one case the populist entity will defy the federal government and continue on with its agenda and the federal government will acquiesce to its actions rather than attempt to subdue it by force.  In that case it would seem that the greater dynamism of the populist entity would tend to undermine the popularity of the federal government and might cause a moderation of the elite agenda.

In the second case, the federal government would attempt to coerce the populist entity by force.  And in this scenario the populist entity would be forced to fight a war to free itself from the federal government’s authority.  We’ll assume that the war is successful because the case where the war is unsuccessful is included in the first possibility where the populists give up.

So, these are the paths forward that I see.  There are other variants.  For instance, even with voter fraud if the economic situation in the United States continues to deteriorate, it’s very possible that the Democrats could be voted out in a landslide.  I’ll throw that case into the second scenario because it ends up with a populist government that does not have to fight a war with the feds.

My guess is something like the second scenario.  I think that autonomy will grow in populist areas of the country.  And that will allow for dissatisfaction with the federal government to be addressed.

What do you think?

What Will Happen to the Populist Revolt

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