Here’s what it looks like when a large military convoy is bombed. In 1991 the U.S. had clear air superiority over an opponent without weapons of mass destruction (unlike in 2003, Iraq did have an active nuclear program at the time but I think that by this point it was clear they did not have weapons that they were willing or able to use.)
Category Archives: Web Article Review
other diseases to think about
Are you sick and tired of worrying about Covid-19? You may feel better if you take a step back and realize it is just one of many horrible and exotic (not to mention horrible and common) diseases you can be terrified of.
A couple of hantavirus cases have popped up, spread by rats in Washington D.C. The article mentions Baltimore as another rat capital. Luckily it doesn’t mention Philadelphia so there is nothing to worry about, although I see them frequently around my neighborhood due to the completely inept trash pickup practices in our city. I also see them frequently around construction sites and occasionally in parks. I have never seen one indoors but we see plenty of their less terrifying cousins the mice, which also can spread hantavirus. The article describes one person who contracted hantavirus, is a plumber’s assistant, and does not believe he could have been exposed through his work. Well, have a look behind the walls in an old house in any of the cities mentioned above and you will see plenty of evidence of rodent activity. Apparently he is okay and I wish him well.
This is also concerning:
According to DLD Director-General Sorawit Thanito, the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) recorded outbreaks of avian influenza at 5,213 locations in 61 countries for 2021. A recent OIE article published on February 25, 2022, reported outbreaks of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) H5N1 H5N6 H5N2 H5N5, and H5N8 viruses in more than 30 countries across Africa, America, Europe and Asia. The World Health Organization (WHO) has meanwhile reported human infection cases and fatalities of H5N6 avian influenza in China.
Pattaya Mail
Nothing to worry about. The infected birds may be all over the world, and the 1918 flu may have been a bird flu, but only some unknown number of human beings has been infected and killed so far. These people were far away, not U.S. citizens, and I can’t think of any recent cases of exotic fatal diseases that started in China and spread to the rest of the world, can you? At least we have had a bit of a dress rehearsal for a really bad flu outbreak.
the war in Ukraine
I keep saying I don’t want to analyze fast moving current events, but I can’t help it. Here are a few things I want to say. It’s March 5, 2022 as I write this.
First, Putin’s actions are deplorable and inexcusable in terms of the human suffering they are causing and in terms of the very real risk of nuclear war they entail. Nothing I say below changes this. To say any of the points below excuse Putin’s actions would be like Hitler saying “Stalin did it first”. (Stalin slaughtered millions of Ukrainians before Hitler slaughtered millions of Ukrainians and Poles, among many others. Tens of millions of wrongs obviously don’t make a right. They add up to pure and unfathomable evil. Putin is putting himself in this category although he is only slaughtering human beings by the hundreds or thousands so far. But we are one nuclear exchange away from a body count even Hitler and Stalin might not have been able to fathom.)
There is a lot of obvious propaganda coming from the Russian side. There are a lot of lies (many so obvious they are just dumb) posted on social media by random people for random reasons. But there is also obvious spin coming from the U.S. government, and our media and public is buying into it without question. You don’t have to support Putin to just be a little skeptical about what you are hearing and ask who you are hearing it from and what their motivations might be. We are hearing that the war is going unexpectedly badly for the Russians. We are hearing that Russian morale is low. We are hearing and seeing videos of ordinary people stopping tanks and standing up to soldiers. We are hearing that Russia has not established air superiority. We are hearing that Putin is irrational or mentally ill. There may be kernels of truth to any and all of this, but it is all coming from U.S. government/military/intelligence sources and being parroted uncritically by our media. Government officials at all levels are giving interviews with very similar talking points, suggesting to me that it is a coordinated intelligence effort. Major newsrooms are either in on the propaganda effort (as it is clear to me they were on the Iraq weapons of mass destruction debacle), or they just don’t have other sources of news so all they can do is repeat what they are hearing from the government and each other.
Take any article on the situation and replace Russia or Putin with the United States, then replace Ukraine with Iraq. The world could have justified imposing “crippling sanctions” on the U.S. for that illegal “war of choice”. They don’t do that because they don’t have the political, military, or financial power to get on the wrong side of the United States, and we abuse that power.
Russia clearly felt threatened by that U.S. war, and by the NATO wars on Libya and even going back to the 1990s NATO war on Serbia.. The Afghanistan war seemed like a justified defensive action at the time even though it seems pointless in retrospect, but it was in Russia’s backyard and they could easily feel threatened. The U.S. has intervened in Syria, brought former Soviet countries into NATO, and almost certainly interfered in Ukrainian elections. Again, try to put ourselves in their shoes and we would be outraged to find that Russia had interfered with a Canadian or Mexican election let alone formed a military alliance with those countries. And remember when they formed a military alliance with Cuba and a nuclear war almost happened? Even the 1991 Gulf War must have been threatening to Russia as it seemed so overwhelming and came at a time of Russian weakness. Looked at another way, that war seemed at the time like a case where a sovereign UN member state was invaded by its neighbor, and the world came together to make it clear that would not be tolerated. Maybe this should have been the principle ever since then, rather than expansion of a (perceived) aggressive alliance in Eastern Europe. (Sorry Taiwan, this doesn’t help you.)
Now add U.S. politicians openly calling for Putin’s assassination, and imagine how outraged we would be if that rhetoric were reversed. Add the CIA openly salivating over the idea of a prolonged insurgency. Don’t think about a repeat of the death squads that caused so many civilians in Iraq and throughout Latin America to be tortured and disappeared, as the U.S. embraced right-wing elements and looked the other way in an enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend mentality.
I won’t second guess our political and military leadership in their response to this acute crisis, although the idea of NATO countries openly leaving guns and tanks on the border of Ukraine and Poland seems like a serious escalation to me. I assume the U.S. and NATO are openly sharing intelligence and advising the Ukrainian military on maneuvers. What are the chances there are really no CIA paramilitary or U.S. special forces in Ukraine? At least no tactical nuclear weapons have been deployed that we know of, and no naval confrontations have occurred.
Once this crisis passes and the dust settles, assuming it eventually does, maybe a group of courageous politicians could get together and make a serious renewed effort at arms control and risk reduction. That would be the absolute best outcome we can hope for from this crisis.
If you are experiencing a nuclear explosion press 1
As I was doom scrolling yet again to check if the nuclear missiles are incoming, I came across this helpful website from ready.gov.
If you are experiencing a nuclear explosion and are still able to walk, first you should go to your basement and stay there for at least 24 hours. That makes sense to me. Second, and this is a little weird, you should take a shower if you can. I guess some people have showers in their basements. Third, and this is where it gets really weird, you should stock your basement with a vintage hand-cranked videocassette player and a VHS copy of the 1983 made-for-TV movie The Day After, starring 1983 John Lithgow, who was already not young, playing a plucky ham radio operator who will tell you what is going on. Finally, and this is where it gets unbelievable, you should call your health care provider.
Hello, this is your United States health care provider. Listen carefully as menu options keep changing. If you do not have insurance, press 1 and a recorded voice will tell you to go fuck yourself. If you have insurance, press 2.
Congratulations, you have pressed 2 indicating you have some type of health insurance. If you have a pain in the ass or balls, this may require specialist attention. If your health insurance does not cover this, press 1. Otherwise press 3.
Congratulations, you have pressed 3, indicating you have half decent health insurance. If you are experiencing A NUCLEAR EXPLOSION right now, press 4.
You have pressed 4, indicating you are experiencing or have experienced A NUCLEAR EXPLOSION. If your flesh has not melted from your bones and your bones turned to ash and blown away on the blast wave like in the opening scene of Terminator 2, please press 5 or stay on the line and a scheduling specialist may assist you.
Congratulations, you have pressed 5 indicating that you have experienced A NUCLEAR EXPLOSION but are somehow still alive and in urgent need of medical attention. We’re sorry, all our scheduling specialists are currently assisting other callers. Your call is important to us. The next appointment with your health care provider is in 6 months. But your health care provider’s schedule is only posted for the next 3 months, whatever that means. No, we won’t call you. You can try to call us in 3 months. Or you can try to call us every day and check if we have a cancellation. No, we won’t call you about that either. If you have a problem with that, you can just go ahead and press 1.
“not an inch to the East”
Here is some more historical background on the promises made by NATO at the end of the cold war. One lesson Trump taught me is that U.S. Presidents don’t feel bound by promises made by their predecessors to foreign parties (examples: Trump pulling out of climate change and nuclear arms control agreements, the W. Bush overthrow of Iraq and Obama of Libya). And the U.S. Congress does not feel bound by promises made by Presidents (examples: the original Kyoto climate change pledge). But this has been going on for a lot longer than the Obama/Trump era, since at least the end of the cold war. And you could go back in history and look at promises made to Native Americans and Mexico among others and conclude that talk has always been cheap. It’s not just the U.S. of course – here is an article about promises made by Russia and others to Ukraine in exchange for giving up the nuclear arsenal it inherited at the end of the cold war. And of course you could go back to promises made by Hitler and Stalin that most likely neither ever intended to keep.
I guess a lesson that could be learned by the political class is that you don’t make deals in exchange for a promise of some future action beyond the political lifetime of the party you are making a deal with. You need something tangible in return in the short term in exchange for whatever you are giving up. It seems like a sad, cynical world sometimes.
Europe, the Baltics, the Caucasus, and NATO geography quiz
There are lots of point-and-click geography quizzes online. I tried this one and did horribly at 57%. If I manage to find the time, I might take it once a day until I actually know where some of the places I am hearing in the news are. That still won’t help me much when the media uses terms like “the Baltic States” and “the Caucases” (being “Caucasian” doesn’t help me with that last one. I also looked up the map of who is in NATO at this point and what surprised both at some countries that are and some that aren’t.
According to Wikipedia:
The Baltic states is a modern unofficial geopolitical term, typically used to group three so-called Baltic countries: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. All three countries are members of NATO, the European Union, the eurozone, and the OECD. The three sovereign states on the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea are sometimes referred to as the “Baltic nations”, less often and in historical circumstances also as the “Baltic republics”, the “Baltic lands”, or simply the Baltics.
Wikipedia
The Caucasus (/ˈkɔːkəsəs/), or Caucasia[3][4] (/kɔːˈkeɪʒə/), is a region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, mainly occupied by Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and parts of Southern Russia. The Caucasus Mountains, including the Greater Caucasus range, have historically been considered a natural barrier between Eastern Europe and Western Asia.[5]
Wikipedia
The NATO members are:
- ALBANIA (2009)
- BELGIUM (1949)
- BULGARIA (2004)
- CANADA (1949)
- CROATIA (2009)
- CZECH REPUBLIC (1999)
- DENMARK (1949)
- ESTONIA (2004)
- FRANCE (1949)
- GERMANY (1955)
- GREECE (1952)
- HUNGARY (1999)
- ICELAND (1949)
- ITALY (1949)
- LATVIA (2004)
- LITHUANIA (2004)
- LUXEMBOURG (1949)
- MONTENEGRO (2017)
- NETHERLANDS (1949)
- NORTH MACEDONIA (2020)
- NORWAY (1949)
- POLAND (1999)
- PORTUGAL (1949)
- ROMANIA (2004)
- SLOVAKIA (2004)
- SLOVENIA (2004)
- SPAIN (1982)
- TURKEY (1952)
- THE UNITED KINGDOM (1949)
- THE UNITED STATES (1949)
heat makes us crazy
Friday, February 25, 2022: resisting…urge…to…comment…on…current…events…I know…nothing…about… (just to pick a random example, the ongoing war in Ukraine)
Extreme heat not only affects our bodies, which we knew, but it exacerbates mental illness too, according to this study in JAMA.
Everybody knows shooting deaths go up when it is hot. I always assumed that people tended to be outside interacting more, especially if they don’t have air conditioning, and that young men in particular just have less to do in the summer months. But maybe there is more to it than that.
flu and Parkinson’s
This article makes a link between flu infection and increased risk of developing Parkinson’s disease later in life. It makes me wonder if a person’s history with viruses and other infections has a more significant effect on the brain than the average person things. There has been so much talk and worry about the effects of Covid-19 on the brain, but I wonder if a lot of viruses have these effects and Covid-19 is just the one we happen to have studied incredibly intensively over the past 2 years. It’s a disturbing thought, but also suggests that vaccines for certain viruses earlier in life could reduce risk of developing dementia later in life.
Chomsky on the U.S., Russia, and Ukraine
People are wondering why Russia is manufacturing an acute crisis where one does not seem to be necessary. It seems to me that Vladimir Putin has chosen to bring a simmering 30-year issue to a head. There may be no particular reason for the timing, other than Putin getting older and a largely hostile U.S. administration in place. I think there is also the case of a poor, weak but historically powerful country pouring a lot of money into its military to look tough to a domestic audience. Noam Chomsky explains some of the history:
For obvious reasons, German reunification within a hostile military alliance is no small matter for Russia. Nevertheless, Gorbachev agreed to it, with a quid pro quo: No expansion to the East. President George H.W. Bush and Secretary of State James Baker agreed. In their words to Gorbachev: “Not only for the Soviet Union but for other European countries as well, it is important to have guarantees that if the United States keeps its presence in Germany within the framework of NATO, not an inch of NATO’s present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction…”
President H.W. Bush pretty much lived up to these commitments. So did President Bill Clinton at first, until 1999, the 50th anniversary of NATO; with an eye on the Polish vote in the upcoming election, some have speculated. He admitted Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic to NATO. President George W. Bush — the lovable goofy grandpa who was celebrated in the press on the 20th anniversary of his invasion of Afghanistan — let down all the bars. He brought in the Baltic states and others. In 2008, he invited Ukraine to join NATO, poking the bear in the eye. Ukraine is Russia’s geostrategic heartland, apart from intimate historic relations and a large Russia-oriented population. Germany and France vetoed Bush’s reckless invitation, but it’s still on the table. No Russian leader would accept that, surely not Gorbachev, as he made clear.
As in the case of deployment of offensive weapons on the Russian border, there is a straightforward answer. Ukraine can have the same status as Austria and two Nordic countries throughout the whole Cold War: neutral, but tightly linked to the West and quite secure, part of the European Union to the extent they chose to be.
truthout.org
The U.S. has effectively told Russia it will not defend Ukraine militarily unless there is an attack on a neighboring NATO country, and saying there will be “severe consequences” in the form of economic sanctions only. It’s hard for the U.S. to back off any further in the midst of the acute crisis. After the crisis passes however, we could slowly back off and just choose to be less threatening. Move troops and weapons away, pull “trainers” and covert operatives out of Ukraine, and eventually make an announcement that NATO expansion is definitively over. Putin won’t live forever, neither will the Clintobushobamabiden dynasty, and if we are lucky maybe the stars will align at some point with leadership on both sides willing to make peace.
Is the U.S. Supreme Court Corrupt? (alternate title considered: Clarence Thomas, You Stink!)
There has been a lot of focus on voting rights lately, but maybe our democracy is already gone if the Supreme Court has become corrupt. Consider:
- Bush v. Gore. After 22 years, I still don’t know what to make of Bush v. Gore. The decision ultimately turned on arcane legal arguments that ordinary people are unable to follow, and that is obviously not a case of the people of our nation selecting a leader democratically. I still mostly blame the state of Florida for not having effective procedures in place for people to vote, then to count the vote, then to recount the vote if needed. And I thought at the time that even if the Supreme Court flipped a coin, it was best for them to have the last word on a question of the utmost and obvious national importance. However, Al Gore would have won that election if the votes had been counted accurately, and we would be living in a different world today.
In 2001, the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago, sponsored by a consortium of major United States news organizations, conducted the Florida Ballot Project, a comprehensive review of 175,010 ballots that vote-counting machines had rejected from the entire state, not just the disputed counties that were recounted.[3] The project’s goal was to determine the reliability and accuracy of the systems used in the voting process, including how different systems correlated with voter mistakes. The study was conducted over a period of 10 months. Based on the review, the media group concluded that if the disputes over the validity of all the ballots in question had been consistently resolved and any uniform standard applied, the electoral result would have been reversed and Gore would have won by 60 to 171 votes.
Wikipedia
So blame Florida. Yet, also according to Wikipedia, a majority of legal scholars who have studied the case disagree with the Supreme Court decision. So why did these five particular people (it was a 5-4 vote) have the right to decide our country’s future?
- Citizens United. This is the worst. The single biggest reason the United States is not a true democracy is not our imperfect voting system. It’s the capture of our government by big business interests, so that money ends up deciding elections rather than votes. This is legalized corruption, and the Supreme Court legalized it. We tend to think they did this for ideological reasons, but what if big business lobbyists are getting to them? It would be hard to say we live in a democracy in that case. I had not considered this possibility until recently.
- Pollution and Climate Change. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren make this case fairly well in a brief filed in advance of a case where the Supreme Court may throw away our nation’s air quality to line the pockets of the fossil fuel industry.
The industry-funded and industry-promoted arguments made here have been repeatedly rejected by the Court, and would empower and enrich polluting corporations at the expense of public health, welfare, and the environment. The Court should refuse to participate in this industry-driven project. Reversals of precedent that reek of politics, and are advanced by thinly-disguised but highly motivated industry front groups, create a “stench” that is likely to undermine the public’s remaining faith in the Court.
Brief of U.S. Senators Sheldon Whitehouse, Richard Blumenthal, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren as Amici Curiae in Support of Respondents
- Which brings me to Clarence Thomas. There have been a number of news stories recently suggesting that his wife is acting as an unpaid lobbyist for various industry groups, and that he is in regular contact with conservative governors representing special interests. If this is what is determining the outcome of court cases, the court is corrupt and the United States is not a democracy.
There is no higher legal authority in the judicial system that can accuse and find a justice guilty of a crime. That would have to be done by Congress. Impeaching a justice every once in a while might be a good idea to keep the court on notice that there are checks and balances in our country, and Clarence Thomas would be an outstanding candidate. Of course, it is almost impossible to imagine our even more corrupt Congress actually doing this.
Term limits for justices would also obviously be a good idea. The proposal for an 18-year term limit, so that each 4-year presidential term would come with two retirements and two new appointments, seems completely reasonable.
I’m going to agree with Bernie Sanders, as I often do. There is a reek and a stench wafting from the direction of the U.S. Supreme Court, and it is undermining the public’s remaining faith in the institution. If Bush v. Gore happened today, I personally would not be able to accept their decision as having any legitimacy, as I grudgingly did in 2000 even though I hated the outcome.