It is hardly contentious now to argue that, for many years, one of the prime strategic goals of the US has been the deliberate creation of chaos on the borders of enemies or potential enemies. It is therefore not accurate to argue that the US doesn't know what it is doing when chaos is what results. One example is the situation in Ukraine. In the twisted mind of Zbigniew Brzezinski (and that of his neocon descendants) there was a definite rationale in the infiltration of former Soviet republics such as Georgia, Ukraine and Armenia, and the attempt to do the same in the Central Asian 'stans' and Belarus (which have failed). In forcing Russia into fighting a war with fellow Slavs, the end result mattered less than the frustration of unity in the core of the Eurasian heartland, and the death of as many Slavs as possible. Your analysis assumes far too much good faith and maturity on the part of US strategists, who have always taken a scorched earth approach to the maintenance of hegemony.
"The US has invested massively in the stability of Lebanon in recent years, and is not to going to put that investment in jeopardy now."
I think you underestimate the stupidity of Joe Biden.
About Russia, it is baffling that most people don't understand tha Putin, actually, was the Pro-West guy in Russian politics. That bridge has be burn however.
It is hilarious, a stronger, united Russia is going to emerge from the stupid attempts to weaken it with the ukraine.
The claim that there is no long-term strategic political goal, nor a flexible means of achieving it, in the Zionist Project seems to me to be willfully blind. On too many occasions to count, the leaders of the state of Israel have explicitly stated that their long-term goal is the expulsion of all non-Jews, specifically Arab Muslims, from the historic lands of Biblical Israel (or Judea and Samaria, if you like).
The government has agreed to a UN partition, it has negotiated a Palestinian Authority, it has promised no longer to allow settlers on Palestinian lands, in every case failing to fulfill the promises, in service of the longterm goal, as articulated -- exclusive control of historic Israel.
You could call it, in fact, a striking example of just what Aurelian is asking for in terms of the use of military force toward a political endpoint.
thank you for this article and of course for all the previous ones. The combination of thoughtful analysis and irony that does not degenerate into sarcasm makes reading your articles a pleasure and sometimes an enlightenment. Reading them, one can experience the useful function of humour in helping to deal with challenging situations. If I may use this expression "a challenging situation" to describe a geopolitical crisis and an "on the brink of World War III" feeling. I would like to share a quote from this novel with you in the context of this "before the war" feeling translated from German.
...When the war begins, you can know that, but when does the pre-war begin? If there were rules about that, you'd have to pass them on. In clay, buried in stone, handed down. What would it say? It would say, among other things: "Do not be deceived by your own."
Can I ask you for reading recommendations? You keep mentioning Derrida and Foucault. Perhaps you could share with your readers a list of five or ten books or articles that you found particularly enlightening? A bit The Economist slightly primitive style of top ten or top five lists of all sorts, a simplification of over-complex reality. Still, with all the limitations, I think many readers would be very grateful for such a recommendation from you. May be in your next article.
The wanton slaughter of Jews by Hamas and the celebration of that slaughter by the people of Gaza leaves me in no doubt that the Palestinians want to exterminate the Jews in their midst. Israel responds harshly to terrorist attacks and to invaders. In 1948, Arab armies invaded the nascent Jewish state. They lost. They also lost in 1956, 1967, and 1973. The 1982 and 2006 Lebanon wars, precipitated by terrorist attacks on Israel, were inconclusive. The Arab countries expelled their Jewish populations in 1948 so they became Judenrein. I use the term to remind people that those who want to exterminate Jews are following in the footsteps of the Nazis. Hamas' charter quotes the prophet in its call to Jihad against the Zionists.
"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews." (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem).
Since Muslims believe the Koran is the word of God revealed to Muhammed then everything in it is true. Some also believe the Hadith have the same status although there is dispute as to which Hadith are authentic (i.e. an actual report of the words or actions of Muhammed), good (i.e likely to be true) or weak. That being said, the Muslim Brotherhood and its ilk, evidently take the exhortations in their holy texts to kill Jews quite literally.
Israel, the West Bank and Gaza was not owned by the so-called Palestinian people. They were part of the Ottoman empire for centuries and ceded to the British when Turkey lost WW1. Gaza was ruled by Egypt from 1948 to 1967. Israel occupied it after the 1967 war and withdrew in 2007. Arafat himself was born in Egypt. He founded Fatah which aimed to remove Israel and replace it with a Palestinian state.
Israel has taken land since 1948, but only after all-out war was declared against it. The losers in WW1 and WW2 all lost territory, That's what happens in war. Ukraine is going to lose a lot of territory to Russia and it will never be returned, at least while NATO exists.
I referred to Mann's hocky stick since you repeated the main claim of its creators; that the warming during the industrial era is rapid and unprecedented. Interestingly, Mark Steyn called the hocky stick fraudulent and Mann sued him for libel. After a decade, the case has finally come to trial before a DC jury. Which means, since DC juries are 90% Democrats, Mann will probably win and the case will be appealed to SCOTUS.
The IPCC, in its third review said "The increase in temperature in the 20th century is likely to have been the largest of any century during the past 1,000 years. It is also likely that, in the Northern Hemisphere, the 1990s was the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year." That statement was based solely on Mann's hocky stick.
Mark Steyn wrote a book that has chapters written by eminent scientists that all debunk Mann's hocky stick.
1. Combining temperature records derived from proxy records (tree rings) with actual temperature data.
2. Using dubious statistical methods that always yield a hocky stick shape.
3. Using an incredibly small cherry-picked set of trees as his dataset.
Steyn reports:
"I wonder how many of those who regard it as an authoritative graph of global climate across the centuries are aware that its hockey-stick shape for the entire hemisphere depends on two clumps of trees: some California bristlecones, and some cedars from the Gaspé Peninsula - or rather, for the years up to 1421, just one cedar from the Gaspé Peninsula."
Did you know that? Those few trees were all it took for Mann to eliminate the MWP and LIA from the climate record.
Mann did release his code and data in 2006, long after the damage had been done.
The placement of weather stations by urban heat sinks has an impact on the temperatures being recorded, This was verified experimentally.
I checked your links supporting Mann. When I see "New Scientist", "Forbes", "BBC", "Reuters" etc in the URL I know I'm going to a hard-left source. I'd rather listen to actual scientists, including those who contributed essays to Steyn's book. For example,
PROFESSOR WILLIAM HAPPER, PHD Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics at Princeton University and a member of the US Government’s group of independent scientific advisors JASON, for whom he pioneered the development of adaptive optics. Recipient of the Davisson-Germer Prize in Atomic or Surface Physics, the Herbert P Broida Prize, and a Thomas Alva Edison patent award. Fellow of the American Physical Society and of the American Association
PROFESSOR DAVID R LEGATES, PHD Professor of Geography and former Director of the Center for Climatic Research at the University of Delaware. Former Delaware State Climatologist, Coordinator of the Delaware Geographic Alliance and Associate Director of the Delaware Space Grant Consortium. Author of peer-reviewed papers published in The International Journal of Climatology, The Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society and other journals.
PROFESSOR IVAR GIAEVER, PHD Winner of the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physics, with Leo Esaki and Brian Josephson, “for their discoveries regarding tunnelling phenomena in solids”. Professor-at-large at the University of Oslo, and Professor Emeritus at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Recipient of the Oliver E Buckley Condensed Matter Prize from the American Physical Society and the Zworykin Award from the National Academy of Engineering. Member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.
PROFESSOR RICHARD MULLER, PHD Professor Emeritus in the Department of Physics at the University of California at Berkeley, and Faculty Senior Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Institute for Nuclear and Particle Astrophysics. Founder of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project. Co-creator of accelerator mass spectrometry and one of the first scientists to measure anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background. Proponent of the Nemesis hypothesis, which argues that the Sun could have a so far undetected dwarf star. Recipient of the Alan T Waterman Award from the National Science Foundation.
Even Mann's former allies are sick of him and his hocky stick. They include:
PROFESSOR KEITH BRIFFA, PHD Emeritus Professor and former Deputy Director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. Lead author of Chapter Six (Paleoclimatology) of Working Group I of the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report (2007) Former associate editor of Boreas, Dendrochronologia and Holocene.
PROFESSOR PHIL JONES, PHD Director of the Climatic Research Unit and Professor in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia. Fellow of the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union. Member of the editorial board of Climatic Change and formerly of The International Journal of Climatology. Recipient of the Royal Meteorological Scociety’s Mill Prize, the World Meteorological Organization’s Norbert Gerbier-MUMM International Award, and the European Geosciences Union’s Oeschger Medal.
Thank you, very thought-provoking. War is a ghastly thing, but seems humans drift into it - or are drifted - the famous Göring point of "Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”
So, here we are, facing wars, and as usual, attackers are unjust (terrorists to boot!), and peacemakers are Putin-lovers or antisemites. Earlier Aurelien reviewed styles of war, and the current illusion about the rules of war. Ultimately war is about survival for those who have the bad fortune to end up in it. And obviously, being told we are being attacked is as good as the real thing, so modern war has the football-fan aspect to it in addition to actual war. Fear-reflexes are definitely the deepest programming of all living creatures, so some really effective de- or re-programming is required. Religions have been maybe partly attempts to re-program, but have ended up being just more fodder for the fear-hate-war cycle. It is maybe one of the core questions we are here for: can we live together, as couples, families, tribes, races, nations, religions, parties etc? Can there be a we even when there is difference? A we without the demand of sameness? What would it take, to be able to live as different as we are, without collapsing into demands of sameness?
IMO, FWIW, this is excellent, accurate sitrep. I have the feeling, as always, that our host pulls a punch or three right at the end, rather as a diplomat's habit. However, the political-military analysis of both Ukraine and Israel is, IMO, FWIW, on target.
One low-importance quibble: Russia is not in war condition in Ukraine, only SMO condition. War condition would look very differently from what we see today. I would expect Russian war condition to include Zircon / Kinzhal / Sarmat salvos visiting the US Capitol, the UK Parliament, and the DE Bundestag, for starters, since those are the "decision-making centers" of The USofA, The UK, and Germany. (They write the checks.) In addition, Russia forms her border against the western peninsula of Eurasia on the line of The Elbe.
I submit that the punch pulled by our host is that it's over for Israel as a nation state and for The USofA as dominant in the community of nations. "Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." We're in that territory now, with both feet walking forward.
I so enjoy these pieces, Aurelien - thank you! I have the sense of peering over the shoulder of one who has worked through the endless nitty gritty of all these fine-sounding rhetorical flourishes by politicians, pointing out the endless flaws and gaps and inconsistencies that are so obvious as soon as actual thought and experience are applied. For those of us upon whom the rhetoric has been poured without respite, with little access to reality, your pieces are a revelation and a great satisfaction.
Thank you for articulating a justification for my feeling of hopelessness over U.S. foreign policy.
Is the U.S. goal to drive Gaza's medical services back to the Middle Ages? Inflicting cholera is the point?
Then Ukraine, what was the wet dream that motivated both burning money and depleting military stockpiles? The AFU marching on Moscow? Was there really belief that NATO's ISR would knuckle under Russia? Because if there was a remote chance that could occur, then those NATO AWAC planes are gonners, along with the surveillance satellites.
We have leaders who discount the simple constraint of logistics much less have any consideration of those of us who must suffer their ill considered plans. We are ruled by fools!
<<...This applies equally to the speculation about mediation. OK, between who and whom? What would the purpose of the mediation be? >>
Mediation between the elected representative bodies of the people of Gaza/occupied territories and the Israeli government
The purpose of the mediation is to 1) stop Israel from mass murdering civilians via bombing 2) stop Israel from murdering civilians when they're not actively bombing 3) force Israel to open border crossings for FUEL, FOOD and WATER, 3) decide via mediation whether Israel may continue as a country at all, and if yes, that its nukes be removed and its military severely reduced or eliminated, 4) that the people of Gaza and the occupied territories are given back a significant portion of the land that was stolen from them by Israel, and THEY decide whether it would be better to allow Israel to remain (if it then had to play by normal rules) or to evict them completely. I can't imagine many Israelis remaining once their enormous security blanket is removed.
I must admit, the fact that you are not harping about morality and rights is refreshing.
I probably need to think much more about your comments but it seems that you are ignoring the elephant in the room. Does the theory of “Umm Al Qura” mean anything to you? Can you see Iran's role, not only in the current conflict with Hamas but also in an attempt to dominate the whole area by gaining control of weakened populations (Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen), and if they are not weak at the moment Iran has time and money to infiltrate and weaken then from within. So Israel's (and the US) problem is not with Hamas in Gaza, but how to stop that project from erasing it from the map.
The real fight is in the north (both Lebanon and Syria and Iraqis crossing the border to Syria), and the big question is when it will erupt: now, in spite of the US substantial military presence, or later, in a couple of years. I don't think Israel planned any of those conflicts and now it is just fighting to survive, literally. Though a fight for survival doesn't mean just staving the enemy from your border. It could mean delivering a very painful blow that will buy you many years of quiet. Remember that in the case of Lebanon, Israel got a relatively quiet border for 17 years.
* There are a few good and informative video presentations about the theory of “Umm Al Qura” on this channel https://www.youtube.com/@AlwataniaTV
The only rational long-term goal for both sides -- both of which want ALL of Palestine, from the river to the sea -- is to make life so unpleasant for the population of the other side that most of them emigrate, leaving too few people behind to sustain the struggle. The Israelis are somewhat more restrained by their culture from the more overt methods of terror, but in partial compentation, have more force at their disposal when they can use it.
Another detailed and pretty extensive write up posing many questions that almost no one in the media is asking. I am continually dismayed at the way our major Western public facing media trivialize almost everything. I subscribe to a number of geopolitical advisory services and most are posing similar questions about what the Israelis are "saying" they will do and what may be going on behind the scenes. Current split is 50% seeing an Israeli Gaza incursion with the other half seeing no incursion and / or an attack on Hezbollah. All see this as a lost cause for everyone involved, especially Hamas. I can only assume Hamas leadership are lacking in intelligence (brain wise) and compassion for the individuals in Gaza who are bearing the brunt of this response OR they are so religiously indoctrinated with hatred, that neither their own lives, nor that of their fellow Gazans, matter one jot.
I also notice how the Ukraine conflict has (almost) slipped to page 3 behind Gaza and the ongoing Republican "farce" in the House. Yet Russian attacks / probing seem to be occurring all along the entire line of control (... er sorry, different part of the world) in the Donbas region. This feels like a last fling there before something bigger, but we shall soon find out. Finally I await with interest the outcome of the Biden Administration $100 billion to Ukraine / Israel. Without that support both Ukraine and Israel are in deep trouble.....
It is interesting to read this now the fighting has continued well over 120 days. I think tactically the Israeli military is overachieving compared to this and other commentators though of at the time. Their ability to identify and dismantle Hamas' tunnel network and kill/capture their operatives without maximal Israeli casualties has been very impressive. Strategically though people are now acknowledging that there is a no "Day After" plan because the Israeli government is so divided and many of the strategic problems existing pre-October 7 still exist and have been exacerbated. The linking of Saudi recognition of Israel, Arab-funded reconstruction of Gaza, and a Palestinian State all seem the most sensible steps. However the devil will be in the details specifically who owns Jerusalem.
It is hardly contentious now to argue that, for many years, one of the prime strategic goals of the US has been the deliberate creation of chaos on the borders of enemies or potential enemies. It is therefore not accurate to argue that the US doesn't know what it is doing when chaos is what results. One example is the situation in Ukraine. In the twisted mind of Zbigniew Brzezinski (and that of his neocon descendants) there was a definite rationale in the infiltration of former Soviet republics such as Georgia, Ukraine and Armenia, and the attempt to do the same in the Central Asian 'stans' and Belarus (which have failed). In forcing Russia into fighting a war with fellow Slavs, the end result mattered less than the frustration of unity in the core of the Eurasian heartland, and the death of as many Slavs as possible. Your analysis assumes far too much good faith and maturity on the part of US strategists, who have always taken a scorched earth approach to the maintenance of hegemony.
"The US has invested massively in the stability of Lebanon in recent years, and is not to going to put that investment in jeopardy now."
I think you underestimate the stupidity of Joe Biden.
About Russia, it is baffling that most people don't understand tha Putin, actually, was the Pro-West guy in Russian politics. That bridge has be burn however.
It is hilarious, a stronger, united Russia is going to emerge from the stupid attempts to weaken it with the ukraine.
The claim that there is no long-term strategic political goal, nor a flexible means of achieving it, in the Zionist Project seems to me to be willfully blind. On too many occasions to count, the leaders of the state of Israel have explicitly stated that their long-term goal is the expulsion of all non-Jews, specifically Arab Muslims, from the historic lands of Biblical Israel (or Judea and Samaria, if you like).
The government has agreed to a UN partition, it has negotiated a Palestinian Authority, it has promised no longer to allow settlers on Palestinian lands, in every case failing to fulfill the promises, in service of the longterm goal, as articulated -- exclusive control of historic Israel.
You could call it, in fact, a striking example of just what Aurelian is asking for in terms of the use of military force toward a political endpoint.
Oh, there is a strategy, all right.
Just that the West (less so, Israel) cannot say it out loud.
Outstanding piece. Well done.
Dear Aurelien,
thank you for this article and of course for all the previous ones. The combination of thoughtful analysis and irony that does not degenerate into sarcasm makes reading your articles a pleasure and sometimes an enlightenment. Reading them, one can experience the useful function of humour in helping to deal with challenging situations. If I may use this expression "a challenging situation" to describe a geopolitical crisis and an "on the brink of World War III" feeling. I would like to share a quote from this novel with you in the context of this "before the war" feeling translated from German.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassandra_(novel)
...When the war begins, you can know that, but when does the pre-war begin? If there were rules about that, you'd have to pass them on. In clay, buried in stone, handed down. What would it say? It would say, among other things: "Do not be deceived by your own."
Can I ask you for reading recommendations? You keep mentioning Derrida and Foucault. Perhaps you could share with your readers a list of five or ten books or articles that you found particularly enlightening? A bit The Economist slightly primitive style of top ten or top five lists of all sorts, a simplification of over-complex reality. Still, with all the limitations, I think many readers would be very grateful for such a recommendation from you. May be in your next article.
The wanton slaughter of Jews by Hamas and the celebration of that slaughter by the people of Gaza leaves me in no doubt that the Palestinians want to exterminate the Jews in their midst. Israel responds harshly to terrorist attacks and to invaders. In 1948, Arab armies invaded the nascent Jewish state. They lost. They also lost in 1956, 1967, and 1973. The 1982 and 2006 Lebanon wars, precipitated by terrorist attacks on Israel, were inconclusive. The Arab countries expelled their Jewish populations in 1948 so they became Judenrein. I use the term to remind people that those who want to exterminate Jews are following in the footsteps of the Nazis. Hamas' charter quotes the prophet in its call to Jihad against the Zionists.
"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews." (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem).
Since Muslims believe the Koran is the word of God revealed to Muhammed then everything in it is true. Some also believe the Hadith have the same status although there is dispute as to which Hadith are authentic (i.e. an actual report of the words or actions of Muhammed), good (i.e likely to be true) or weak. That being said, the Muslim Brotherhood and its ilk, evidently take the exhortations in their holy texts to kill Jews quite literally.
Israel, the West Bank and Gaza was not owned by the so-called Palestinian people. They were part of the Ottoman empire for centuries and ceded to the British when Turkey lost WW1. Gaza was ruled by Egypt from 1948 to 1967. Israel occupied it after the 1967 war and withdrew in 2007. Arafat himself was born in Egypt. He founded Fatah which aimed to remove Israel and replace it with a Palestinian state.
Israel has taken land since 1948, but only after all-out war was declared against it. The losers in WW1 and WW2 all lost territory, That's what happens in war. Ukraine is going to lose a lot of territory to Russia and it will never be returned, at least while NATO exists.
I referred to Mann's hocky stick since you repeated the main claim of its creators; that the warming during the industrial era is rapid and unprecedented. Interestingly, Mark Steyn called the hocky stick fraudulent and Mann sued him for libel. After a decade, the case has finally come to trial before a DC jury. Which means, since DC juries are 90% Democrats, Mann will probably win and the case will be appealed to SCOTUS.
The IPCC, in its third review said "The increase in temperature in the 20th century is likely to have been the largest of any century during the past 1,000 years. It is also likely that, in the Northern Hemisphere, the 1990s was the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year." That statement was based solely on Mann's hocky stick.
Mark Steyn wrote a book that has chapters written by eminent scientists that all debunk Mann's hocky stick.
https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0986398330/amazon0156-20/
Mann's sins include:
1. Combining temperature records derived from proxy records (tree rings) with actual temperature data.
2. Using dubious statistical methods that always yield a hocky stick shape.
3. Using an incredibly small cherry-picked set of trees as his dataset.
Steyn reports:
"I wonder how many of those who regard it as an authoritative graph of global climate across the centuries are aware that its hockey-stick shape for the entire hemisphere depends on two clumps of trees: some California bristlecones, and some cedars from the Gaspé Peninsula - or rather, for the years up to 1421, just one cedar from the Gaspé Peninsula."
Did you know that? Those few trees were all it took for Mann to eliminate the MWP and LIA from the climate record.
Mann did release his code and data in 2006, long after the damage had been done.
The placement of weather stations by urban heat sinks has an impact on the temperatures being recorded, This was verified experimentally.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/05/03/big-news-verified-by-noaa-poor-weather-station-siting-leads-to-artificial-long-term-warming/
I checked your links supporting Mann. When I see "New Scientist", "Forbes", "BBC", "Reuters" etc in the URL I know I'm going to a hard-left source. I'd rather listen to actual scientists, including those who contributed essays to Steyn's book. For example,
PROFESSOR WILLIAM HAPPER, PHD Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics at Princeton University and a member of the US Government’s group of independent scientific advisors JASON, for whom he pioneered the development of adaptive optics. Recipient of the Davisson-Germer Prize in Atomic or Surface Physics, the Herbert P Broida Prize, and a Thomas Alva Edison patent award. Fellow of the American Physical Society and of the American Association
PROFESSOR DAVID R LEGATES, PHD Professor of Geography and former Director of the Center for Climatic Research at the University of Delaware. Former Delaware State Climatologist, Coordinator of the Delaware Geographic Alliance and Associate Director of the Delaware Space Grant Consortium. Author of peer-reviewed papers published in The International Journal of Climatology, The Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society and other journals.
PROFESSOR IVAR GIAEVER, PHD Winner of the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physics, with Leo Esaki and Brian Josephson, “for their discoveries regarding tunnelling phenomena in solids”. Professor-at-large at the University of Oslo, and Professor Emeritus at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Recipient of the Oliver E Buckley Condensed Matter Prize from the American Physical Society and the Zworykin Award from the National Academy of Engineering. Member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.
PROFESSOR RICHARD MULLER, PHD Professor Emeritus in the Department of Physics at the University of California at Berkeley, and Faculty Senior Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Institute for Nuclear and Particle Astrophysics. Founder of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project. Co-creator of accelerator mass spectrometry and one of the first scientists to measure anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background. Proponent of the Nemesis hypothesis, which argues that the Sun could have a so far undetected dwarf star. Recipient of the Alan T Waterman Award from the National Science Foundation.
Even Mann's former allies are sick of him and his hocky stick. They include:
PROFESSOR KEITH BRIFFA, PHD Emeritus Professor and former Deputy Director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. Lead author of Chapter Six (Paleoclimatology) of Working Group I of the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report (2007) Former associate editor of Boreas, Dendrochronologia and Holocene.
PROFESSOR PHIL JONES, PHD Director of the Climatic Research Unit and Professor in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia. Fellow of the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union. Member of the editorial board of Climatic Change and formerly of The International Journal of Climatology. Recipient of the Royal Meteorological Scociety’s Mill Prize, the World Meteorological Organization’s Norbert Gerbier-MUMM International Award, and the European Geosciences Union’s Oeschger Medal.
Cheers.
Thank you, very thought-provoking. War is a ghastly thing, but seems humans drift into it - or are drifted - the famous Göring point of "Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”
So, here we are, facing wars, and as usual, attackers are unjust (terrorists to boot!), and peacemakers are Putin-lovers or antisemites. Earlier Aurelien reviewed styles of war, and the current illusion about the rules of war. Ultimately war is about survival for those who have the bad fortune to end up in it. And obviously, being told we are being attacked is as good as the real thing, so modern war has the football-fan aspect to it in addition to actual war. Fear-reflexes are definitely the deepest programming of all living creatures, so some really effective de- or re-programming is required. Religions have been maybe partly attempts to re-program, but have ended up being just more fodder for the fear-hate-war cycle. It is maybe one of the core questions we are here for: can we live together, as couples, families, tribes, races, nations, religions, parties etc? Can there be a we even when there is difference? A we without the demand of sameness? What would it take, to be able to live as different as we are, without collapsing into demands of sameness?
IMO, FWIW, this is excellent, accurate sitrep. I have the feeling, as always, that our host pulls a punch or three right at the end, rather as a diplomat's habit. However, the political-military analysis of both Ukraine and Israel is, IMO, FWIW, on target.
One low-importance quibble: Russia is not in war condition in Ukraine, only SMO condition. War condition would look very differently from what we see today. I would expect Russian war condition to include Zircon / Kinzhal / Sarmat salvos visiting the US Capitol, the UK Parliament, and the DE Bundestag, for starters, since those are the "decision-making centers" of The USofA, The UK, and Germany. (They write the checks.) In addition, Russia forms her border against the western peninsula of Eurasia on the line of The Elbe.
I submit that the punch pulled by our host is that it's over for Israel as a nation state and for The USofA as dominant in the community of nations. "Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." We're in that territory now, with both feet walking forward.
I so enjoy these pieces, Aurelien - thank you! I have the sense of peering over the shoulder of one who has worked through the endless nitty gritty of all these fine-sounding rhetorical flourishes by politicians, pointing out the endless flaws and gaps and inconsistencies that are so obvious as soon as actual thought and experience are applied. For those of us upon whom the rhetoric has been poured without respite, with little access to reality, your pieces are a revelation and a great satisfaction.
Thank you for articulating a justification for my feeling of hopelessness over U.S. foreign policy.
Is the U.S. goal to drive Gaza's medical services back to the Middle Ages? Inflicting cholera is the point?
Then Ukraine, what was the wet dream that motivated both burning money and depleting military stockpiles? The AFU marching on Moscow? Was there really belief that NATO's ISR would knuckle under Russia? Because if there was a remote chance that could occur, then those NATO AWAC planes are gonners, along with the surveillance satellites.
We have leaders who discount the simple constraint of logistics much less have any consideration of those of us who must suffer their ill considered plans. We are ruled by fools!
<<...This applies equally to the speculation about mediation. OK, between who and whom? What would the purpose of the mediation be? >>
Mediation between the elected representative bodies of the people of Gaza/occupied territories and the Israeli government
The purpose of the mediation is to 1) stop Israel from mass murdering civilians via bombing 2) stop Israel from murdering civilians when they're not actively bombing 3) force Israel to open border crossings for FUEL, FOOD and WATER, 3) decide via mediation whether Israel may continue as a country at all, and if yes, that its nukes be removed and its military severely reduced or eliminated, 4) that the people of Gaza and the occupied territories are given back a significant portion of the land that was stolen from them by Israel, and THEY decide whether it would be better to allow Israel to remain (if it then had to play by normal rules) or to evict them completely. I can't imagine many Israelis remaining once their enormous security blanket is removed.
I must admit, the fact that you are not harping about morality and rights is refreshing.
I probably need to think much more about your comments but it seems that you are ignoring the elephant in the room. Does the theory of “Umm Al Qura” mean anything to you? Can you see Iran's role, not only in the current conflict with Hamas but also in an attempt to dominate the whole area by gaining control of weakened populations (Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen), and if they are not weak at the moment Iran has time and money to infiltrate and weaken then from within. So Israel's (and the US) problem is not with Hamas in Gaza, but how to stop that project from erasing it from the map.
The real fight is in the north (both Lebanon and Syria and Iraqis crossing the border to Syria), and the big question is when it will erupt: now, in spite of the US substantial military presence, or later, in a couple of years. I don't think Israel planned any of those conflicts and now it is just fighting to survive, literally. Though a fight for survival doesn't mean just staving the enemy from your border. It could mean delivering a very painful blow that will buy you many years of quiet. Remember that in the case of Lebanon, Israel got a relatively quiet border for 17 years.
* There are a few good and informative video presentations about the theory of “Umm Al Qura” on this channel https://www.youtube.com/@AlwataniaTV
The only rational long-term goal for both sides -- both of which want ALL of Palestine, from the river to the sea -- is to make life so unpleasant for the population of the other side that most of them emigrate, leaving too few people behind to sustain the struggle. The Israelis are somewhat more restrained by their culture from the more overt methods of terror, but in partial compentation, have more force at their disposal when they can use it.
Another detailed and pretty extensive write up posing many questions that almost no one in the media is asking. I am continually dismayed at the way our major Western public facing media trivialize almost everything. I subscribe to a number of geopolitical advisory services and most are posing similar questions about what the Israelis are "saying" they will do and what may be going on behind the scenes. Current split is 50% seeing an Israeli Gaza incursion with the other half seeing no incursion and / or an attack on Hezbollah. All see this as a lost cause for everyone involved, especially Hamas. I can only assume Hamas leadership are lacking in intelligence (brain wise) and compassion for the individuals in Gaza who are bearing the brunt of this response OR they are so religiously indoctrinated with hatred, that neither their own lives, nor that of their fellow Gazans, matter one jot.
I also notice how the Ukraine conflict has (almost) slipped to page 3 behind Gaza and the ongoing Republican "farce" in the House. Yet Russian attacks / probing seem to be occurring all along the entire line of control (... er sorry, different part of the world) in the Donbas region. This feels like a last fling there before something bigger, but we shall soon find out. Finally I await with interest the outcome of the Biden Administration $100 billion to Ukraine / Israel. Without that support both Ukraine and Israel are in deep trouble.....
It is interesting to read this now the fighting has continued well over 120 days. I think tactically the Israeli military is overachieving compared to this and other commentators though of at the time. Their ability to identify and dismantle Hamas' tunnel network and kill/capture their operatives without maximal Israeli casualties has been very impressive. Strategically though people are now acknowledging that there is a no "Day After" plan because the Israeli government is so divided and many of the strategic problems existing pre-October 7 still exist and have been exacerbated. The linking of Saudi recognition of Israel, Arab-funded reconstruction of Gaza, and a Palestinian State all seem the most sensible steps. However the devil will be in the details specifically who owns Jerusalem.