…ok…so…I am no fan of your boy ross douthat…but he threw “rhetoric lacunas” into a thing bitching about how biden’s focus on ukraine & israel in that funding proposal demonstrates a lack of appropriate concern about china…&…it’s almost a neat phrase?

These absences are not particularly surprising. It’s normal for American presidents to say chest-pounding things like “There is nothing, nothing beyond our capacity” rather than to talk about possible limits on our strength. And since we don’t actually want to be at war with China, it makes a certain sense to avoid lumping Beijing in with Moscow and Tehran.

…&…sure…there’s an argument to be made that china isn’t a thing to ignore or discount…but…to suggest that in the current climate it should be approached as though it is a concern that achieves parity with live fire zones is…characteristically disingenuous…though I assume “rhetoric lacunas” intends the “rhetoric” bit to mean the same as in the phrase “rhetorical questions” so…the missing -al made it land like a typo he wasn’t aware of…which did rather leave me with an over-riding takeaway that, as ever, he’s trying to pretend to be smarter than he is

Start with the geopolitical background. It makes sense to talk about China, Iran and Russia as a loose alliance trying to undermine American power, but it is not a trio of equals. Only China is an arguable peer of the United States, only China’s technological and industrial might can hope to match our own, and only China has the capacity to project power globally as well as regionally.

Moreover, China offers a somewhat coherent ideological alternative to the liberal-democratic order. The Putin regime is a parody of Western democracy, and Iran’s mixture of theocracy and pseudodemocracy holds little broad appeal. But China’s one-party meritocracy can advertise itself — maybe less effectively since Xi Jinping’s consolidation of power but still with some degree of plausibility — as a successor to democratic capitalism, an alternative model for the developing world.

These general strategic realities obviously aren’t as threatening as actual aggression. But the threat China poses to Taiwan, in particular, has different implications for American power from the threat Russia poses to Ukraine or Hamas poses to Israel. Whatever happens in the Ukrainian conflict, America was never formally committed to Ukraine’s defense, and Russia cannot realistically defeat NATO. Whatever misery Iran and its proxies may inflict upon the Middle East, they are not going to conquer Israel or drive American power out of the Levant.

But America is more committed (with whatever public ambiguity) to the defense of Taiwan, and that expectation has always been in the background of our larger alliance system in East Asia. And while six experts may give six different opinions, there are good reasons to think that China is open to invading Taiwan in the near future and that America could join such a war and lose outright.

Why We Should Fear China More Than Middle Eastern War [NYT]

…”it makes sense” to consider the anti-american common interest of geopolitical adversaries to be push factors in various senses…but…it surely makes just as much sense not to speedrun the indications that the US would like to go toe to toe over taiwan by doing the equivalent of filling the torpedo tubes & actively pinging the other guys’ submarine when you have a carrier group in a storm on the surface…or to consider ross & his columnist chums to be engaged in something that, were joe to follow their lead…would lead us into a swiftly escalating doom loop of “fuck it, let’s throw WWIII”…which someone would probably call a “morally impossible situation”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/20/opinion/israel-gaza-war-friedman.html

…& I’m not trying to suggest anyone spend 45mins of their day of rest listening to ross talk to the tommyknocker or anything…but

It Is Impossible to Know What to Believe in This Hideous War [NYT]

…& that one manages to get “epistemological catastrophe” in…which actually isn’t a bad description of ross when you think about it…which obviously he’d very much prefer you didn’t since it makes it that much harder for you to swallow the part where he’d like to tell you how to think…but…among the things I think…along with the idea that maybe people should learn to be less uncomfortable admitting they don’t know what to think about things they don’t know enough about…is that if I were being held hostage…I wouldn’t want ross in charge of setting the agenda or negotiating my release

Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier, had been a hostage for five years before Israel and Hamas were seriously willing to work toward his release. That was 2011. I had been pursuing secret back-channel communications with Hamas since a week after he was captured in a cross-border raid and dragged into Gaza. My partner in these secret negotiations was Ghazi Hamad, Hamas’s spokesman who was then also a political adviser to its prime minister.

Mr. Hamad showed compassion for Mr. Shalit and his family many times. In the end, the price of Mr. Shalit’s freedom was steep: 1,027 Palestinian prisoners. On Oct. 18, 2011, he returned to his home in northern Israel. When I talked to Mr. Hamad on the phone early that morning, he blurted out in a moment of spontaneous joy, “Next time we will negotiate peace!”

On the first night of Israel’s bombing, I have learned, Mr. Hamad’s home in Gaza City was destroyed in an airstrike. I saw it as a clear signal from Israel: Everyone affiliated with Hamas is a target. The time for talk is over.

Today, there are again hostages in Gaza — more than 200, according to the Israeli government. On Friday, Hamas released two of them — an American mother and daughter — but the fate of the others remains unclear. As deadly airstrikes on Gaza continue and Israel amasses troops at the border in preparation for a ground invasion, their safety grows more precarious each day. Should Israel negotiate to get their civilian hostages out of Gaza as quickly as possible? Should it sacrifice them to achieve its goal going into this war — to eliminate Hamas? Should it exchange them for prisoners, as it has done in the past?

These considerations present a stark dilemma for all Israelis but perhaps none more so than Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was once the staunchest opponent of negotiating with terrorists of any kind but who also came to realize that the ethos of leaving no soldier behind did sometimes require that kind of engagement.

…but…it’s easy to forget that…for example…the modern nation of israel is younger than joe biden…so there are people still alive who remember when it used to be their home…& for those people…it can be hard to tell when they talk about “the occupation” whether they mean the creep of israeli settlements beyond their recognized borders the way they do in the west bank…or the whole enchilada…which is but one strand of nuance that risks morphing as dialogue is translated back & forth between different mindsets in different languages

‘What’s our common language?’ Jewish and Palestinian thinkers on where the left goes from here [Guardian]

…& nobody agrees on where the lines are drawn but everyone agrees the other guy is the wrong side of it

Killing hostages is not what I would previously have expected from Hamas. But the killing spree of Oct. 7, including the butchering of whole families, the burning of homes, the destruction of whole communities, changed that. On Monday, it released a video of a 21-year-old hostage who appeared to have been wounded and was being treated on camera. There were no signs that she had been tortured but it was clear that she was under duress.

Negotiating for the release of hostages may also be less popular this time around. The Shalit deal was very difficult for Israel to accept. More than 300 of the Palestinians who were released from prison had been serving life sentences for violent acts, including killing Israelis. It was hard for me, too: My wife’s first cousin, Sasson Nuriel, was kidnapped and killed by Hamas in September 2005. Four of the people responsible for murdering him were released as part of the agreement that I negotiated. Still, in the end, nearly 80 percent of the public, according to one poll, along with 26 government ministers and the entire national security establishment, supported the deal. Prime Minister Netanyahu signed off on the agreement.

Today, Israel holds about 7,000 Palestinian prisoners, of whom 559 are serving life sentences for killing Israelis, according to Addameer, a Palestinian prisoners’ rights group. Will Israelis, still reeling from the atrocities of Oct. 7, be willing to accept this kind of bargain again? Is it safe to do so? One of the men who killed my wife’s cousin, who was released in exchange for Mr. Shalit, was among the leaders of the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks, according to Israel’s report of his recent killing.

I have no official authorization as a negotiator, but as far as I know, I’m the only Israeli citizen who has contacts both with the leadership of Hamas and the leadership of Israel, so I have been in continual touch with both sides in hopes of advancing some long-term agreement. The release of those first two hostages is a positive development, but overall, prospects remain dim. Hamas continues to demand an end to “Israel’s aggression against Gaza,” and Israel says it has no intention of ending this war “until the job is done.” Mr. Hamad has not backed down from Hamas’s brutal attacks.

I Negotiated Israel’s Hardest Hostage Deal. Here’s What’s Next in Gaza. [NYT]

…I guess I like to think there could be better days ahead…& therefore tend to be less persuaded of the wisdom of things that look likely to push those further into the future instead of maybe in sight of the present

Maps: Tracking the Attacks in Israel and Gaza [NYT]

…because presently…the scope of the thing…so to speak

What you need to understand about a sniper mission is that from the minute it begins to the minute it ends, everything you do is in service of killing another human being.

But almost no one says that. So it was a little startling when — standing in the stairwell of a half-destroyed building in southern Ukraine, in the midst of a mission with a team of Ukrainian snipers — one soldier decided to explain to me his moral calculations when killing Russian troops.

He was saying the quiet part out loud.

…in the movies…more often than not you’re cheering for the sniper…but…like so very many things about the theater of war…it ain’t like the movies

Thirteen years earlier, as a U.S. Marine corporal, I had led a sniper team of seven Marines and a Navy corpsman in southern Afghanistan.

That was probably the only reason the Ukrainian snipers agreed to take me with them. They trusted that I had done the thing, and that even with a language barrier, I understood what was happening around me: orders of work, setting up a hide, the quiet monotony and flurry of activity that comes with watching the same spot for hours or days with a rifle purpose-built to kill at long range.

The soldier in the stairwell, a Ukrainian sniper who chose to go by his call sign, Raptor, seemed especially weary as he explained himself. He had shot competitively before the war and had become adept at shooting paper and steel targets.

Now it was different: He was shooting people. At such long distances, it took several seconds for the bullet to find its way through air to cloth, then flesh. Long enough for the rifle’s recoil to dissipate and for his watchful eye to readjust in the scope, framing the show of his own violence.

“I’m not proud of this,” Raptor began in deliberate English.
[…]
Violence in any conflict is processed differently by those involved and those not. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has been characterized by its sheer brutality — including cities leveled by bombardment and mass graves — and by how accepting much of the world has become of wholesale death and destruction.

Casualty numbers — inflated, closely guarded and impossible to verify — are traded like sports scores between Kyiv and Moscow. Snuff videos of combatants being killed by drones, gunfire and artillery circulate like some digital token of battlefield action.

None of that changes the reality that entire generations in Ukraine and Russia are being thinned death by death.

As in any war, to cushion the effects of their own violence, those fighting fall back on the hierarchical imperatives of modern military service. Ukrainian soldiers also realize that to lose the war is to lose their country to an invader.

“We kill not because we are vicious, but because it’s our order, our duty,” Raptor said.

His reflection had a level of clarity that had taken me years to find myself. How could he talk about pride and duty in the middle of the act? There was no time for that here, in the middle of a war.

But Raptor stood in front of me, wrestling with something we dared not talk about in Afghanistan. He was breaking the fourth wall.

“I think of people on the other side,” he said. “They might not want to be here, but they are here.”

…speaking of movies…for a lot of people the first time they ran into this was during memphis belle

I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

William Butler Yeats – An Irish Airman Foresees His Death

It would take years for me to realize how indoctrinated we all were. Raptor already understood — at least enough to articulate his findings to a stranger in a stairwell amid the thud of distant artillery strikes — that he was killing a human being, and trying to explain why.

“I don’t want to kill, but I have to — I’ve seen what they’ve done,” Raptor went on, his own moral and martial purpose linked to the atrocities Russian forces had committed throughout the war. For Raptor, the reason for pulling the trigger was clear. For me and my comrades, all these years later, the reason we chose to kill can continue to elude us.

We found ourselves in the middle of some poorly thought-out counterinsurgency strategy, propping up a corrupt government that collapsed almost as soon as the United States left. We were protecting each other. That became a binding ideology, all the clarity we could summon in the puzzle our politicians in Washington handed us. We stumbled through exhausted, mouthing our lines, until our tours ended and we were discharged.

Now we’re discomforted by our own killings, aware of the details and the violence we committed under the bright banners of “nation-building” or “winning hearts and minds,” or whatever our officers told us as the seasons changed. In the shadow of our failures, our silence hangs over it all.

It was hard not to be jealous of Raptor and his team, especially in the wake of my lost war. Therein was the trap, the dizzying seduction of the “good kill.”

Ukraine, a Sniper Mission and the Myth of the ‘Good Kill’ [NYT]

…the immediacy of the thing can be…misleading…in several ways given that it does in a sort of comprehensibly insane way actually resemble a battlefield in a number of meaningful senses…but…it’s a far cry from raptor’s perspective when the sights are being lined up from behind a keyboard or in front of a screen

The guests all had large followings or successful podcasts and were already fans of the governor. But Mr. DeSantis’s team wanted to turn them into a battalion of on-message surrogates who could tangle with Donald J. Trump and his supporters online.

…&…in it’s own way…as the people getting death threats over not voting jordan for speaker might be having a dawning realisation or two about…it’s got some bottom lines potentially in common IRL…but the point of the thing for these people is all about it not being the real world but getting to stand in for it for a lot of voters

For some, however, the gathering had the opposite effect, according to three attendees who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to damage their relationships with the governor or other Republican leaders.

…the political reality is that agreeing to attend a function with the intention of discussing ways to counter the online MAGA project’s dominance of the landscape is a slope slippery enough that nobody wants to stand up & be counted because they don’t want to torpedo their career prospects

Four months later, those worries seem more than justified. Mr. DeSantis’s hyper-online strategy, once viewed as a potential strength, quickly became a glaring weakness on the presidential trail, with a series of gaffes, unforced errors and blown opportunities, according to former staff members, influencers with ties to the campaign and right-wing commentators.

Even after a recent concerted effort to reboot, the campaign has had trouble shaking off a reputation for being thin-skinned and meanspirited online, repeatedly insulting Trump supporters and alienating potential allies. Some of its most visible efforts — including videos employing a Nazi symbol and homoerotic images — have turned off donors and drawn much-needed attention away from the candidate. And, despite positioning itself as a social media-first campaign, it has been unable to halt the cascade of internet memes that belittle and ridicule Mr. DeSantis.

These missteps are hardly the only source of trouble for Mr. DeSantis, who is polling in a distant second place. Like the rest of its rivals, the DeSantis campaign has often failed to land meaningful blows on Mr. Trump, who somehow only gains more support when under fire.

But as surely as past presidential campaigns — such as Bernie Sanders’s and Mr. Trump’s — have become textbook cases on the power of online buzz, Mr. DeSantis’s bid now highlights a different lesson for future presidential contenders: Losing the virtual race can drag down an in-real-life campaign.

How Ron DeSantis Lost the Internet [NYT]

…meanwhile

Spy vs. spy: How Israelis tried to stop Russia’s information war in Africa [WaPo]

Russia, shifting tactics, fans doubt in election integrity, U.S. says [WaPo]

Russian tycoon claims he is behind Forbes purchase, audiotapes show [WaPo]

…some things aren’t obvious but might be important…like the ratio of aid implied by headlines about 20 truckloads when under what pass for normal circumstances there’d been upwards of 400…per day…where that number maybe wouldn’t even include the triple digit figure for truckloads of the fuel that they still won’t allow any supply of…that runs the basic infrastructure on which the drinking water supply depends…in sheer logistical & infrastructure terms this stuff is literally medieval…though…I’m guessing in medieval times…only one side at a time generally considered themselves to be besieged…which…arguably…could even be seen as a symptom of a near total lack of the necessary political infrastructure to support a non-violent path forward

As Chachra explains in her essential book “How Infrastructure Works: Inside the Systems That Shape Our World,” you are living in the lap of luxury without realizing it. All the difficult work of collecting fuel and water is taken care of invisibly, and you can traverse great distances — on the road or online — in very little time. The great gift of our infrastructure is that it gives us agency over our lives, liberating us from everyday drudgery. Chachra argues that access to the grid has become a political right; indeed, many local governments will not allow heat and water to be shut off, even when customers can’t pay.

The problem is that when our infrastructure works, we never think about it. We don’t vote on our infrastructure every two years, and we don’t honor our utility workers as guardians of our lives, the way we do first responders. We forget the importance of maintaining and caring for it, leading to disasters like bridge collapses, blackouts and floods from overtopped dams. With climate change threatening many of our cities and towns, this needs to change, and fast.

Written in an engaging, personal style, “How Infrastructure Works” combines engineering history and science with Chachra’s witty anecdotes about traveling to power plants and cities across the world. Reading it is like taking a stroll with a friend who knows exactly what every obscure marking on the street means: underground sewage pipes, century-old markers left by U.S. Geological Survey workers or buried electrical cables. But this book isn’t a “how it works” manual to your city. Instead, it’s a passionate argument for the political necessity of functioning infrastructure.
[…]
We primarily perceive infrastructure in the form of what Chachra calls charismatic megastructures, monumental projects like the Hoover Dam or Niagara Falls and their hydroelectric plants. She writes about her favorite example, a pumped-storage hydroelectric power station in Wales nicknamed Electric Mountain. Built inside a hollowed-out mountain, it generates power when workers open a valve below a lake high on the peak. Draining through a vertical shaft, water falls on turbines to generate power and then flows out into a lake below. At night, when the community’s power needs are low, the turbines flow backward, slurping the water back up to the top again. It’s basically a giant self-renewing battery, and it’s built to look beautiful, hidden as it is beneath the grassy slopes of a public park.

Electric Mountain is a perfect example of what energy generation might look like in a more sustainable world built on renewable energy. According to Chachra, however, moving away from fossil fuels is just one step. She contrasts Electric Mountain with Niagara Falls, whose beauty hides a disturbing history. To build the power plant reservoir there, the U.S. government used eminent domain to seize, and then flood, a third of the lands it had given to the Tuscarora Nation in a treaty. Though infrastructure is a public good, not everyone always benefits from it equally, and it often arrives at the expense of marginalized groups.

…sounds pretty good…but…from where I’m sitting…this might be one of the more important aspects of infrastructure that leaves me…conflicted

As we consider how to renew our nation’s ailing water systems, Chachra warns, we must build to serve the broadest possible public. We can’t set up systems that supply wealthy cities by destroying or polluting the regions where our least-powerful neighbors live. Along similar lines, she suggests that future electrical grids should be highly localized, able to federate or defederate from a larger national grid, so that there are no central failure points. Every community should have its own scaled-down version of Electric Mountain, designed to harvest whatever renewable energy works best for it: wind, solar, water or geothermal.

…because…well…you can say the same in a lot of ways about political infrastructures…& for all the flaws in the ones we’ve got…& they’ve got plenty…& despite how absurd the long-playing farce of the barrage of court cases mango unchained is dragging his hopelessly entangled feet about undeniably is…it’s also a testament to the part where the trappings of pomp & ceremony in the US really was (& hopefully is) more redoubtable than in the kinds of places where the play they persuaded littlefingers to call could have worked…inertia is your friend when lunatics & despots are trying to snatch the reins

…but

…I worry that same inertia…compounded with an acknowledgement of it…might yet kill us all & very possibly most of everything else in the process of not making the kind of swift & sweeping scale of change it so successfully resists possible in regards to our effect on the only home we have

Chachra emphasizes that we cannot make these changes to our infrastructure as individuals. This will be a collective project, spearheaded by governments and community organizations that are working for the public, not for profit. We have all the tools we need to survive the coming climate and energy crises. It’s time to work together to use them.

A passionate argument for the necessity of functioning infrastructure [WaPo]

Man captures ‘weird anomaly’ of Storm Babet lifting forest floor in Scotland [Guardian]

How plants communicate with each other when in danger [WaPo]

The advanced silicon chips on which the future depends are all made in Taiwan – here’s why that matters [Guardian]

Climate change is the catastrophe to end all other catastrophes [WaPo]

Children at ‘existential risk’ from climate crisis, UK’s top paediatrician says [Guardian]

…not that we aren’t doing our collective best to see to it it gets a run for its money

If you doubt there are Palestinians who oppose the terrorist regime that Hamas has created, visit a project called “Whispered in Gaza” online. You’ll hear 25 powerful narratives that were recorded over the past 18 months. The Gazans’ names are changed and their faces drawn by animators, but their message has the unmistakable power of truth.

Listen to the Gazans who are seeking a path away from Hamas [WaPo]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/21/un-finds-further-evidence-of-russian-war-crimes-in-ukraine

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/21/the-most-successful-land-grab-strategy-since-1967-as-settlers-push-bedouins-off-west-bank-territory

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/21/israel-hamas-war-where-do-surrounding-countries-stand

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/21/about-100000-turn-out-in-london-for-pro-palestine-rally

…we all want to eat & prefer that it’s tasty

Nutritional psychiatrist Felice Jacka: ‘The global food system is the leading cause of early death’ [Guardian]

…but…we produce a lot of indigestible stuff…&…well…it sure would help a lot if we found things that would happily eat that shit

‘We are just getting started’: the plastic-eating bacteria that could change the world [Guardian]

…but…some people’s appetite for bullshit…is hard to swallow

We Don’t Talk About Leonard: The Man Behind the Right’s Supreme Court Supermajority [ProPublica]

…it’s enough to make you hit the bottle…if you can afford to?

World’s most expensive dram: bottle of 1926 Macallan whisky could fetch £1.2m [Guardian]

…yeah…me neither…good thing lemmy knows the score or where would I be?

…hmm…you know what…maybe don’t answer that