Showing posts with label putin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label putin. Show all posts

Friday, April 07, 2023

7: Putin

Putin’s Second Front The War in Ukraine Has Become a Battle for the Russian Psyche .......... Conforming to the regime and showing support for the “special operation” have now become almost essential to good citizenship. ....... a significant stratum of society—teachers, for example—are forced to participate in public acts of support, such as the patriotic lessons that are now mandatory in schools on Mondays. ........ the infamous case of the teacher who denounced a 13-year-old girl for drawing an antiwar picture: the girl’s father was arrested, and she was placed in an orphanage ........ the Kremlin has been fighting a second war in Russia itself, and this war is unlikely to go away even if the conflict in Ukraine becomes frozen. ....... The regime understands that by creating an atmosphere of hatred and mutual distrust, it can make part of society itself more intolerant of those who oppose Putin and the war. Whereas former Soviet heroes were people like Yuri Gagarin, who was the first to conquer space, now the examples of “heroic” behavior are by members of separatist formations or pro-war bloggers with a criminal past—such as the recently murdered blogger with the pseudonym Vladlen Tatarsky. The war has vaulted these people to the top and turned them into “heroes.” ........... Over the past decade, as his hyperauthoritarian model of government matured, Putin was able to awaken in the Russian public a demand for imperial greatness that had long lain dormant. ........ a qualitative leap in public sentiment came with Putin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. “That's it. We have become great again!” many thought. ......... An increasingly arbitrary justice system now hands down hefty prison sentences to dissenters, and a public culture of extrajudicial violence is being normalized by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of Wagner, the paramilitary contractor with close ties to the Kremlin. .......... the regime has proved adept at exporting goods to the east and importing contraband through, for instance, Turkey or some Central Asian countries. .......... Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin ...... when Russians are asked which politician they trust the most, Mishustin is now named more often than Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and is second only to Putin. ............. Sure, everyone understands that victory is the goal. But that goal has been pushed so far into the future that it has become as symbolic and distant as the final stage of communism was for several generations of Soviet people. ........ many feel the compulsion to stay in the social mainstream and go with the flow: this is what twentieth-century psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, writing about the social conditions that contributed to fascism, famously called “escape from freedom.” No one wants to be branded an outcast or enemy of the people. .... the ability of ordinary people to accept radically changed circumstances—as long as some elements of normal life can be maintained ........ ordinary Russians continue to show declining interest in events in Ukraine ........... 47 percent admitting that they were paying little or no attention to the war. .......... The Kremlin has conjured a pantheon of true defenders of the motherland, in which the medieval prince Alexander Nevsky, the sixteenth-century despot Ivan the Terrible, and Joseph Stalin sit side by side with the tenth-century Prince Vladimir, the seventeenth-century tsar Peter the Great, and Vladimir Putin. ..........

another path: inner emigration—opting out of the political process—is still an option for many people, as is actual exile.

.......... There appears to be no end to that status either—at least not before the end of Putinism. ........... He has mobilized a lot of people to support the war—in both the social and the military sense. No wonder he considers himself omnipotent. ........... Putin has managed to concentrate enormous power in his hands. But the more power he accumulates, the harder it will be for him to relax and hand over the reins. He cannot afford to liberalize the system or decrease his dictatorial authority. There is only one way left open to him: to cling to power until the bitter end. Putin is in the same position in which Stalin found himself at the start of the 1950s. It was in those late years that the Soviet dictator had to resort to absurd and irrational measures to shore up his power, from paranoid threats to his own closest companions to combating “rootless cosmopolitans” and supporting obscurantist theories in science. For this reason, Putin needs a permanent war with those he deems “foreign agents” and national enemies—his own “rootless cosmopolitans.” It is a war that has to be carried out at home and abroad, whether hot or cold, direct or hybrid. And Putin has to keep moving all the time: stopping is a luxury he cannot afford. ............... when a train has no brakes, it may crash into a wall. It might also simply run out of fuel and grind to a halt. For now, it is full steam ahead—to nowhere, because no one knows where it is going. That includes the driver. .



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Wednesday, April 05, 2023

5: Putin

Woke the plank! Were pirate ships actually beacons of diversity and democracy? In September 1695, the Plymouth-born “king of pirates”, Henry Avery, seized treasure worth £600,000 (in today’s terms, nearly £100m) from the Grand Mughal fleet in the Red Sea. ........ Avery sailed for Madagascar where he established a pirate republic with his henchmen called Libertalia, a proto-communist utopia where all goods were held common. ........ the so-called golden age of piracy between 1650 and 1730 in the Atlantic and Indian oceans. ........ 1881, when Robert Louis Stevenson wrote the first half of Treasure Island. ....... there is a chasm deeper than the Mariana Trench between piratical reality and fiction. ........ Somali pirates plying the same waters as Avery did centuries earlier ........ “Pirates existed in the shadows, in the margins of society – overthrowing societal conventions and creating their own counterculture.” ......... “The toothless or peg-legged buccaneer hoisting a flag of defiance against the world … is, perhaps, as much a figure of the Enlightenment as Adam Smith or Voltaire, but he also represents a profoundly proletarian liberation, necessarily violent and ephemeral.” ......... pirates lasted on average two years at their illegal trade before being hanged, drowned or sensibly retiring. ........ “It wasn’t as hierarchical as the Royal Navy,” says Slade. “Captains were elected. And they lived according to a code.” The exhibition sets out the code that prevailed on Black Bart’s ship. According to article one: “Every man has a vote in affairs of moment; has equal title to the fresh provisions, or strong liquors, at any time seized, and may use them at pleasure.” ......... Stevenson, whose Treasure Island created many of the enduring emblems of the pirate genre: the one-legged rogue, the cabin boy hiding in an apple barrel, the map to the buried treasure marked by an X ......... The golden age of piracy came to a bloody end in the 1730s as governments decided pirates were too much of a liability to trade and stamped them out.

Russian defector sheds light on Putin paranoia and his secret train network Former security officer tells of president’s strict quarantine and says he has ‘lost touch with the world’ .......... a secret train network, identical offices in different cities, a strict personal quarantine and escalating security protocols. ............ “pathologically afraid for his life” ....... the train was used because it “cannot be tracked on any information resource .......... a secret railway network including parallel lines and stations near Putin’s residences in the Valdai national park in Novo-Ogaryovo, and near his Bocharov Ruchei residence in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. ........ “Our president has lost touch with the world,” he said. “He has been living in an information cocoon for the past couple of years, spending most of his time in his residences, which the media very fittingly call bunkers. He is pathologically afraid for his life. He surrounds himself with an impenetrable barrier of quarantines and an information vacuum. He only values his own life and the lives of his family and friends.” ......... a virtual state within a state that includes firefighters, food testers and other engineers who travel with Putin on his trips abroad, providing a rare first-hand insight into the levels of paranoia and sheltered lifestyle of the Russian president. “They call him the Boss, worship him in every way and only ever talk of him in those terms” ......... Putin relies heavily for information on reports provided by his security services. Putin did not use a mobile phone or the internet .......... and did not even bring an internet specialist with him on foreign trips. “He only receives information from his closest circle, which means that he lives in an information vacuum” ......... Putin is still in quarantine and requires all staff working in the same room as him to also undergo a two-week quarantine, severely limiting the number of people who have personal contact with him. ............ Putin used identical offices in St Petersburg, Sochi and Novo-Ogaryovo, and that the secret services used fake motorcades and decoy planes to pretend he was leaving. “This is a ruse to confuse foreign intelligence, in the first place, and secondly, to prevent any attempts on his life” ........... “He has shut himself off from the world,” Karakulov said. “His take on reality has become distorted.” .......... until nearly the end of the trip, when Karakulov told his fellow officers he was feeling unwell and then fled with his family to the airport

No phone, no internet, no power, no money – it was like being sent back to the Victorian era After five unplugged hours, my dog and the house were pristine. I needed distraction

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Tuesday, February 21, 2023

21: Putin

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21: Putin, Biden

Two Supreme Court cases this week could upend the entire internet An expansion of apps and websites’ legal risk for hosting or promoting content could lead to major changes at sites, including Facebook, Wikipedia and YouTube, to name a few....... Many Republican officials allege that Section 230 gives social media platforms a license to censor conservative viewpoints. Prominent Democrats, including President Joe Biden, have argued Section 230 prevents tech giants from being held accountable for spreading misinformation and hate speech. ........ Rulings in the cases are expected by the end of June. ........ The case involving Google zeroes in on whether it can be sued because of its subsidiary YouTube’s algorithmic promotion of terrorist videos on its platform. ........ Google and other tech companies have said that that interpretation of Section 230 would increase the legal risks associated with ranking, sorting and curating online content, a basic feature of the modern internet. Google has claimed that in such a scenario, websites would seek to play it safe by either removing far more content than is necessary, or by giving up on content moderation altogether and allowing even more harmful material on their platforms. ......... Friend-of-the-court filings by Craigslist, Microsoft, Yelp and others have suggested that the stakes are not limited to algorithms and could also end up affecting virtually anything on the web that might be construed as making a recommendation. That might mean even average internet users who volunteer as moderators on various sites could face legal risks, according to a filing by Reddit and several volunteer Reddit moderators. Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden and former California Republican Rep. Chris Cox, the original co-authors of Section 230, argued to the Court that Congress’ intent in passing the law was to give websites broad discretion to moderate content as they saw fit. .......... In recent years, however, several Supreme Court justices have shown an active interest in Section 230, and have appeared to invite opportunities to hear cases related to the law. Last year, Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch wrote that new state laws, such as Texas’s that would force social media platforms to host content they would rather remove, raise questions of “great importance” about “the power of dominant social media corporations to shape public discussion of the important issues of the day.”

The housing market correction just took a new turn Brutal. That’s the best way to describe KB Home’s fourth quarter, which saw its buyer cancellation rate spike to 68%. That figure dwarfed the publicly traded homebuilder’s 13% cancellation rate from the previous year’s period. It also surpassed the industry’s peak cancellation rate of 47% during the darkest days of the 2008-era crash.

‘Treason!’ Wagner boss slams Russia’s military leaders They want to ‘destroy’ Wagner, says Yevgeny Prigozhin about Russia’s defense minister and army chief........ Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the private Wagner Group, has claimed that the Russian defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, and the chief of the general staff, Valery Gerasimov, are trying to “destroy” Wagner — marking an escalation in hostilities between the influential paramilitary boss and Russia’s military establishment. ......... Prigozhin’s remarks are another sign of infighting in the Russian military. Ultranationalist figures such as Prigozhin and Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov have long pushed for a restructuring of the top echelons of the military command. ....... The Wagner boss has been continuously increasing power in the shrinking inner circle of Russian President Vladimir Putin

How Vladimir Putin sells his war against ‘the West’ Unable to explain setbacks in Ukraine, the Kremlin appeals to past victories. ....... “It’s unbelievable but true: we are again being threatened by German Leopard tanks,” said Russian President Vladimir Putin, who traveled to Volgograd to deliver a speech on February 2. “Again and again, we have to repel the aggression of the collective West.” ........ Putin’s statement was full of factual inaccuracies: Russia is fighting not the West but Ukraine, because it invaded the country; the German Leopards being delivered to Kyiv date back only to the 1960s; there’s no plan for them to enter Russian territory. ......... But the Russian president’s evocation of former victories was telling — it was a distillation of his approach to justifying an invasion that hasn’t gone to plan. These days in Russia, if the present is hard to explain, appeal to the past. ........... “The language of history has replaced the language of politics,” said Ivan Kurilla, a historian at the European University at St. Petersburg. “It is used to explain what is happening in a simple way that Russians understand.” ........ Putin has long harkened back to World War II — known in the country as The Great Patriotic War, in which more than 20 million Soviet citizens are estimated to have died. ............. On the streets, however, Russians seemed confused. ........ The term “special military operation” at least was somewhat clearer. It suggested a speedy, professional, targeted offensive. ...... As the special military operation turned into a protracted conflict, and the facts on the ground refused to bend to Putin’s narrative, the Kremlin has gradually been forced to change its story. ......... by spring the terms “demilitarization” and “denazification” had practically disappeared from the public sphere .......... In October, Putin declared that one of the main goals of the war had been to provide Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014, with a stable water supply. .........

But the appeal to history has remained central to Putin’s communication effort.

......... In June, he referenced Peter the Great’s campaign to “return what was Russia’s.” And during an October ceremony to lay claim to four regions in Ukraine, it was Catherine the Great who got a mention. ......... “Especially in spring and early summer, there was an attempt to Sovietize the war, with people waving red flags, trying to make sense of it through that lens.” ........ Throughout, the Kremlin has sought to depict the conflict as a battle against powerful Western interests bent on using Ukraine to undermine Russia — a narrative that has become increasingly important as the Kremlin demands bigger sacrifices from the Russian population ......... “What we observe today is the culmination of that feeling of resentment, of unrealized illusions, especially among those over 50” ......... “We are moving away from a special military operation towards a holy war … against 50 countries united by Satanism,” the veteran propagandist Vladimir Solovyov said on his program in January. .............. Russians are now expecting the war to last another six months or longer. “The majority keep to the sidelines, and passively support the war, as long as it doesn’t affect them directly” ........... reports of Western weapons deliveries have been used to reinforce the argument that Russia is battling the West under the umbrella of NATO — no longer in an ideological sense, but in a literal one. ........... “What started out as a historic metaphor is being fueled by actual spilled blood.” .......... In newspaper stands, Russians will find magazines such as “The Historian,” full of detailed spreads arguing that the Soviet Union’s Western allies in World War II were, in fact, Nazi sympathizers all along — another recycled trope from Russian history. ......... “This level of hatred and aggressive nationalism has not been seen since the late Stalin period”



Zelenskyy: Macron is ‘wasting his time’ with Putin ‘It’s a useless dialogue,’ Ukraine’s president says. ........ Macron added that although he wished for the Kremlin to lose, the war would end not on the battlefield but with peace talks — and that France would “never” support “crushing Russia.” ........ “He likes vodka? If that’s the case, we have some of the finest quality in Ukraine — we can offer him some,” Zelenskyy said. ........ The Ukrainian president also commented on recent reports from the U.S. that China was ready to send weapons to Russia, saying he hoped Beijing would keep a “pragmatic approach,” to avoid a “Third World War.”



Biden’s Military-First Posture in the East Is a Problem A singular focus on countering the threat of Chinese aggression made America neglect economic ties in the Indo-Pacific. ........ Changi Naval Base, which sits on the east coast of Singapore near the busy shipping lanes of the Singapore Strait, has in the first months of 2023 been welcoming well-armed American visitors. Less than two weeks into the new year came a visit from the USS Makin Island, an amphibious assault ship. Days later, the USS Nimitz, an aircraft carrier with a small city’s worth of crew members, made a port call—accompanied by three destroyers. ........ U.S. troops have access to five military bases in the Philippines, which is a former U.S. colony and America’s oldest treaty ally in Asia. Earlier this month, the two countries reached an agreement that gives U.S. forces access to four more. That announcement followed a decision by American and Japanese officials to enhance their military cooperation. ........

The aim—sometimes spoken, other times left unsaid—of such developments is to counter China’s more assertive presence in the region.

Washington now views Beijing as a growing threat to America and its partners and allies there. These concerns have only intensified since a spy balloon launched by China was shot down two weeks ago. Hence the Biden administration’s focus on defense and security in the Indo-Pacific.

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Tuesday, February 14, 2023

14: Ukraine

प्रधानमन्त्री मोदीले गरे अडानीसँगको सम्बन्धको बचाउ



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Wednesday, January 25, 2023

25: Putin

ChatGPT Wrote (Most of) This Letter, but Its Editors Are Human A chatbot comes to its own defense, saying the idea that it is a threat to democracy is “fear-based speculation.” .......... While it is true that ChatGPT can generate text that is often indistinguishable from human writing, it is important to note that this technology is not capable of understanding the nuances and subtleties of political networks and systems. ....... ChatGPT and similar technologies have the potential to be powerful tools for businesses, researchers and educators. They can be used to automate repetitive tasks, improve efficiency and generate new insights

The U.S. Has Made a Coldly Logical Decision in Ukraine. So Has Russia. Kyiv wants as many weapons as the West can send, it wants to reclaim every inch of territory, and it doesn’t want to entertain terms that would concede anything to the invading Russians. ......... shared by many hawkish voices in Europe and America, who continue to plan for Ukraine’s triumph and Vladimir Putin’s overthrow. .......... the White House’s proximate goal is a favorable armistice, not complete Russian defeat. ......... the Russians seem to be not just digging in but also girding for their own renewed offensive. ....... From the assumed Russian perspective, Ukrainian gains in the fall and European resilience in the winter have made military success only more urgent. There’s no point in elaborating peace proposals so long as the Ukrainians are convinced that they can win a total victory, and they’re more convinced of that than ever. ......... escalation is embraced as a coldly logical decision, as the only reasonable course. ....... And out of such rationality, you get closer to the irrationality of fighting for years in a war that neither side can fully hope to win.

Putin Has No Red Lines The Taliban’s return to Kabul in August 2021 — an outcome the West had spent two decades and trillions of dollars preventing — was the brightest of red lines, until, in the face of changing priorities and a different view of costs and benefits, it suddenly wasn’t. ........... preoccupation with red lines invites deception. A state will seek to manipulate an adversary’s desire to restrain itself by enlarging the range of interests it claims are fundamental and actions it considers unacceptable. Fear of escalation thus encourages an escalation of bluff. ........ communicating the certainty of severe consequences should Russia use nuclear weapons. ........ Russia has no red lines: It has only, at each moment, a range of options and perceptions of their relative risks and benefits. ........ a long war threatens his regime — whose preservation seems to be the only thing he values more highly than a subordinated Ukraine — by fatally weakening domestic cohesion or by escalating out of control. ........ To signal unilateral restraint is to make an unforced concession. ....... An orderly withdrawal is unlikely to lead to regime change, let alone the breakup of Russia. ......... if Russia’s elites conclude that it is as dangerous for Russia to leave Ukraine as to stay, they have no incentive to press for an end to the war.

Are We in the West Weaker Than Ukrainians? I worry that we in the West are made of weaker stuff. ........ almost half of Americans want the United States to push Ukraine “to settle for peace as soon as possible,” even if it loses territory .......... We are holding Ukraine’s coat as it is sacrificing lives and infrastructure in ways that benefit us, by degrading Russia’s military threat to NATO and Western Europe — and thus to us. ......... “They’re doing us a favor; they’re fighting our fight” ........ “If Ukraine falls, there will certainly be a wave of nuclear proliferation” ....... If the West falters and allows Putin to win in Ukraine, Xi will feel greater confidence that he can win in Taiwan. ........ Putin has been a destabilizing and brutal bully for many years — from Chechnya to Syria, Georgia to Moldova — partly because the world has been unwilling to stand up to him and partly because he possesses a powerful military force that Ukraine is now dismantling. Aside from energy, Russia’s economy is not substantial. ........... “Russia is a poor country, an oil appendage to the world, a gas station.” ......... bowing to nuclear blackmail and rewarding an invasion would create their own risks for many years to come, and on balance those dangers seem greater than those of maintaining the present course. .......... The world could use a spinal transplant from brave Ukrainians.

I Went to Ukraine, and I Saw a Resolve That We Should Learn From

How ChatGPT Hijacks Democracy It could mimic the work that the Russian Internet Research Agency did in its attempt to influence our 2016 elections, but without the agency’s reported multimillion-dollar budget and hundreds of employees. ......... When we humans do these things, we call it lobbying. Successful agents in this sphere pair precision message writing with smart targeting strategies. Right now, the only thing stopping a ChatGPT-equipped lobbyist from executing something resembling a rhetorical drone warfare campaign is a lack of precision targeting. A.I. could provide techniques for that as well. ......... What makes the threat of A.I.-powered lobbyists greater than the threat already posed by the high-priced lobbying firms on K Street is their potential for acceleration. Human lobbyists rely on decades of experience to find strategic solutions to achieve a policy outcome. That expertise is limited, and therefore expensive. ......... A.I. could, theoretically, do the same thing much more quickly and cheaply. ......... Just as teachers will have to change how they give students exams and essay assignments in light of ChatGPT, governments will have to change how they relate to lobbyists. ........ Not everyone can afford an experienced lobbyist, but a software interface to an A.I. system could be made available to anyone. If we’re lucky, maybe this kind of strategy-generating A.I. could revitalize the democratization of democracy by giving this kind of lobbying power to the powerless.

What Will Russia Without Putin Look Like? Maybe This. Russia’s current condition — militarized, isolated, corrupt, dominated by the security services and hemorrhaging talent as hundreds of thousands flee abroad to escape service in a horrific war — is bleak. ........ To change the country, however, it is not enough for Mr. Putin to die or step down. Russia’s future leaders must dismantle and transform the structures over which he has presided for more than two decades. .......... an “act on peace” that would demobilize the army and end the occupation of Ukrainian territory, including Crimea; create a joint group for the investigation of war crimes; pay reparations for damaged infrastructure and the families of the dead; and reject future “wars of conquest.” ......... The officials responsible for the devastation will need to be rooted out, too — something that never happened after the collapse of the Soviet Union. ........ The congress would bar from working in state and educational institutions those who belonged to “criminal” organizations — such as the Federal Security Services or state television channels — or publicly supported the war ........ The Russian Federation is highly centralized, with a patchwork of over 80 republics and regions that are strongly subordinate to the president, enabling the accumulation of enormous power. .......... dissolve the Russian Federation and replace it with a new parliamentary democracy. .......... “self-determination,” the future Russian state should be “joined on the basis of free choice by the peoples who populate it.” ............ From Vladimir Lenin to Boris Yeltsin, modern Russian leaders have a history of offering decentralization to win support and then reneging once they consolidate power. ........ the disproportionate deployment and death of ethnic minorities from poorer republics like Dagestan and Buryatia in the war in Ukraine. .......... Mr. Khodorkovsky and Aleksei Navalny, the country’s most well-known dissident, who is currently languishing in a penal colony, have also issued calls to turn Russia into a parliamentary democracy with more power devolved to the local and regional levels. .......... history shows that radical developments are often incubated abroad or underground. ....... In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, political émigrés in bickering communities around Europe plotted the downfall of the Russian empire. Among them was Vladimir Lenin, who was living in Poland at the outbreak of World War I. ......... In early 1917, a pessimistic Lenin lamented that he probably wouldn’t live to see the revolution; a few weeks later, the czar was overthrown.

Where is Physics Headed (and How Soon Do We Get There)? she now uses quantum computers to investigate the properties of wormholes......... things have never been more exciting in particle physics, in terms of the opportunities to understand space and time, matter and energy, and the fundamental particles — if they are even particles. .......... I was so excited in 1980 about the idea of grand unification, and that now looks small compared to the possibilities ahead. .......... the basic building blocks of matter are quarks and leptons; the rules that govern them are described by the quantum field theory called the Standard Model. .......... Why two different kinds of building blocks? Why so many “elementary” particles? Why four forces? How do dark matter, dark energy, gravity and space-time fit in? Answering these questions is the work of elementary particle physics. ......... for 20 years I’ve been chasing the supersymmetrical particles. So we’re like deer in the headlights: We didn’t find supersymmetry, we didn’t find dark matter as a particle. ........ Discussing what space and time are and where they came from is now within the realm of particle physics. ......... does the universe have an end? Is there a multiverse? How many spaces and times are there? Does that question even make sense? ........... At high enough energies, the fundamental forces — gravity, electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces — seem to become equal. ............ the ultimate law remains a persistent puzzle, and the way we solve it is going to be through new thinking. .......... it looks like the four different forces we see are just different facets of a unified force. ........... the hallmark of great science: You ask a question, and often it turns out to be the wrong question, but you have to ask a question just to find out it’s the wrong one. If it is, you ask a new one. .......... String theory — the vaunted “theory of everything” — describes the basic particles and forces in nature as vibrating strings of energy. ............ Some scientists criticize string theory as being outside science. ....... Mathematics is the language of science, and the more our language is enriched, the more fully we can describe nature. We will have to wait and see what comes from string theory, but I think it will be big. ......... Among the many features of string theory is that the equations seem to have 10⁵⁰⁰ solutions — describing 10⁵⁰⁰ different possible universes or even more. Do we live in a multiverse? .......... the multiverse gives me a headache; not being testable, at least not yet, it isn’t science ......... But it may be the most important idea of our time. ........ the standard model of cosmology doesn’t say what 95 percent of the universe is .......... space can bend and time can warp ........ Particle physics invented big, global science, and national and now global facilities. ........ science has allowed humankind to do big things — Covid vaccines, the Large Hadron Collider, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, the Webb telescope — that extend our vision and our power to shape our future. ....... If we continue to dream big and work together, even more amazing things lie ahead.

A New View of the Most Explosive Moon in the Solar System Recent strange activity around Jupiter’s volcanic moon, Io, confused and excited scientists........ Because Io is far from the sun and has a very thin atmosphere, its surface, on average, sits at around minus 200 degrees Fahrenheit, and it is coated in a frosty layer of sulfuric compounds. ........ Volcanic eruptions there, which come in many different forms and intensities, can reach temperatures up to 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit. When super hot meets super cold, molecules like sulfur dioxide and sodium can be shot into space. ..... Some of the most explosive eruptions come from fissures in the surface and throw fountains of lava half a mile into space. The charged molecules create what is known as a “plasma torus” in Io’s wake: a doughnut-shaped cloud of ionized gas that collects in Jupiter’s magnetic field. ....... “You can think of it like looking at different parts of an elephant”

A Brutal New Phase of Putin’s Terrible War in Ukraine The war in Ukraine has entered a new, more deadly and fateful phase, and the one man who can stop it, Vladimir Putin, has shown no signs that he will do so. ........ After 11 months during which Ukraine has won repeated and decisive victories against Russian forces, clawed back some of its lands and cities and withstood lethal assaults on its infrastructure, the war is at a stalemate. ........ Both sides are now said to be bracing for a fierce new round of offensives in the late winter or spring. Russia has mobilized 300,000 new men to throw into the fray, and some arms factories are working around the clock. ........ the broad, muddy fields of Ukraine will soon again witness full-scale tank-and-trench warfare, this time pitting Western arms against a desperate Russia. This was never supposed to happen again in Europe after the last world war. ......... But as Mr. Putin digs himself ever deeper into pursuing his delusions, it is also critical that the Russian people be aware of what is being done in their name, and how it is destroying their own future. ....... their lives are being mortgaged for generations to come in a state distrusted and disliked in many parts of the world. ......... The Kremlin’s propaganda machinery has been working full time churning out false narratives about a heroic Russian struggle against forces of fascism and debauchery, in which the Western arms are but more proof that Ukraine is a proxy war by the West to strip Russia of its destiny and greatness. Mr. Putin has concocted an elaborate mythology in which Ukraine is an indelible part of a Russkiy mir, a greater Russian world. .......... The start of the war stunned Russians, but Mr. Putin seemed convinced that a West wasted by decadence and decline would squawk but take no action. He and his commanders were apparently unprepared for the extraordinary resistance they met in Ukraine, or for the speed with which the United States and its allies, horrified by the crude violation of the postwar order, came together in Ukraine’s defense. .......... what he insists on calling his “limited military offensive” into an existential struggle between a spiritually ordained Great Russia and a corrupt and debauched West. ........ until Mr. Putin began trying to change Ukraine’s borders by force in 2014, they were finally enjoying what those in other industrialized countries had long considered normal — the opportunity to earn decent salaries, buy consumer goods and enjoy vastly expanded freedoms to travel abroad and speak their mind. ........ Like the last great European war, this one is mostly one man’s madness. .......... Russia faces decades of economic stagnation and regression even if the war ends soon ......... Many Western companies have left, trade with the West has dwindled, and financing the war is draining the budget. Numerous foreign airlines have ceased service to Russia. Add to that the millions of Russia’s best and brightest who have fled, and the future is bleak. ......... Moscow’s casualties were “well over 100,000 Russian soldiers killed and wounded.” About 300,000 men have been pressed into cannon-fodder duty in the army and many more may follow. ........... on Jan. 11, in his first televised meeting with government ministers in the new year, when he tore into Denis Manturov, deputy prime minister, over aircraft production figures Mr. Putin insisted were wrong and Mr. Manturov defended. Mr. Putin finally exploded, “What are you doing, really, playing the fool?” “Yest’,” Mr. Manturov finally said, the Russian equivalent of “Yes, sir.”

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Thursday, October 20, 2022

Contours Of A Possible Peace In Ukraine: India Has A Role To Play

Contours Of A Possible Peace In Ukraine: India Has A Role To Play

The choice is not between the military option and the political option. The only choice is the political option. Every war concludes with peace negotations. You can take that option early, or you can take that option late. You can negotiate peace when there has been little damage, a lot of damage, or total damage. It is smart to move early.

Russia has had grievances. It fancies itself the only country being able to stand up to the United States, the supposed sole superpower.

This is a multi-polar world. The US ceased being the sole superpower a long time ago.

Putin fishes in conspiracy theories. You read zany brainy ideas on the internet and think it is not possible anybody believes these. But Putin has been waging an entire war with QAnon type material. You don’t wage war because some people seem to be working for transgender rights in the United States! Are you not secure in your masculinity, Mr. Putin?

Russia is a smaller economy than Italy. Italy is no challenge to the United States. The nuclear weapons Russia and the US have are only good for mutually assured destruction. That is not challenge. That is suicide.

The US is a challenge to itself. When a large power starts printing money recklessly, it is on its way out. World history attests to that trend.

I think standing up to the US is important. That is why India has kept buying Russian oil. The Indian government answers to the Indian voters. Those Indian voters can not survive substantially higher oil prices.

Ethnic Russian minorities in countries like Ukraine must have their grievances. But they must also pale in comparison to the grievances of the ethnic minorities inside the Russian Federation. Putin’s so-called mobilization has been calls for genocide on several ethnic groups inside Russia. Dress up, pick up that rifle and go die, all of you.

If Putin is allowed to change borders at will, half the borders in Africa might come into question. Political forest fires might crop up in many parts of the globe. The US-Canada border might be the only settled border on the planet. There is no arguing a line of latitude.

Putin is a dictator. If you can not speak freely, if you can not peacefully assemble and protest, you live in a dictatorship. Russians live in a dictatorship. And they know it.

Putin’s military misadventure in Ukraine is how dictatorships work. The supposed strongman has to keep making the moves of strength or his regime will collapse. Putin going into Ukraine is Putin wanting 20 more years of power inside Russia.

Threatening nuclear strikes is enough offense. Putin does not need to drop a nuclear bomb somewhere for the world to impose much tougher sanctions on the regime. Putin should not be allowed to issue threats.

The moment that threat might become credible, Putin will put himself under tremendous pressure. Somebody in his inner circles might come to conclude getting rid of Putin is the only way to survive. Why die with the madman? But that can not be the world’s plan. The world needs to intervene and make peace.

You don’t make peace with friends. By definition you make peace with enemies.

Putin might prefer China, because China is not neutral. China is a Russia waiting to happen. Look at what just happened in Taiwan. Putin might prefer Turkey, because Turkey is a small power.

But the best candidate to make peace is India, and more specifically the Indian trio Modi, Jaishankar, and Doval. You don’t make peace by asking for permission from the US, or Russia, or Ukraine. You proactively make peace. You go in because you don’t want your people to pay more for oil, because you don’t want Africa to pay more for wheat, because you want to take the atom bomb out of the equation for the world. A country that aspires for a veto power in the UN Security Council should actively engage with all parties and force peace upon them, against their will if necessary. You can always name and shame. Heck, you could shame the military-industrial complex in the United States. To a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Defense contractors get to make money, but not by taking the world to the brink of nuclear catastrophe.

Peace means to demilitarize all contested areas. Russia needs to agree to get its troops out of all areas that it did not have in 2013. Ukraine also has to agree to do the same. UN peacekeeping troops will have to step in to maintain law and order in the said regions.

If Russia does not agree to this withdrawal, then there will be no peace. The Ukrainian army is on schedule to hand over an Afghanistan to Putin possibly by winter, or perhaps Spring. That could lead to a collapse of the Russian Federation. Russia could become the size of Ukraine.

Then the contested areas have to be demarcated. The contested areas are not Crimea plus the four regions. The contested areas are only Crimea and the original two contested regions. Ukraine has to be willing to hold Scotland style referendums. I think Ukraine stands to win them. It can rejig its constitution to institute full-fledged federalism and great autonomy to those regions.

Of course there will be campaigning. And Ukraine gets to convince people that they will be better off as part of the European Union.

Ukraine could agree to not join NATO for a 10-year period with guarantees from the major powers that its borders after the referendums will not be violated. In 10 years NATO will likely have become irrelevant with no help from Putin.

There will be no peace unless war crimes are investigated. A neutral committee could look into that. There will be no peace unless Russia pays for the rebuilding of the damage it has done. Putin has plenty of money in the western banks.

There are those who want Putin to go. Russian troops moving back to Russia brings back all those Russian men who have fled the motherland to avoid getting drafted. I think they will take to the streets when they are back. But that is not the business of the peace process. That is a separate topic. Whether Putin goes or stays is for the global Russian population to decide.



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Thursday, October 06, 2022

6: Putin

What Does Sustainable Living Look Like? Maybe Like Uruguay No greater challenge faces humanity than reducing emissions without backsliding into preindustrial poverty. One tiny country is leading the way. ......... your carbon bill is world-historically anomalous but normal among your neighbors: 17 tons for transportation, 14 tons for housing, eight tons for food, six tons for services, five tons for goods. ........ A majority of emissions come from just 100 or so corporations, activists argue .......... By any standard, American lives have become excessive and indulgent, full of large homes, long trips, aisles of choices and app-delivered convenience. ........ Among those with the largest footprints are wealthy oil-producing microstates with small populations, like Qatar or Trinidad and Tobago, where the per-capita footprint pushes 60 tons. In the next tier, with the United States, are other sprawling, continent-size countries that use a lot of heating or cooling and where people tend to drive long distances, such as Canada and Australia (around 20 tons). By dint of their density and reliance on mass transit, nations in Western Europe (as well as Japan and South Korea) make up most of the next tier, which cleaves roughly into two groups: places like Germany, Norway and the Netherlands that rely more on fossil fuels (around 15 tons), and places like the United Kingdom, Denmark and France that use a higher percentage of nuclear and renewable power. Though it’s half the size of an American’s, the footprint of someone in the typical French household still remains unsustainably high: around nine tons. ........... those with a footprint close to zero (Afghanistan, the Central African Republic) and into those around two tons: India, the Philippines. ........ the problem of the future is how to create a 19th-century carbon footprint without backsliding into a 19th-century standard of living ........ two tons per capita — the estimated amount needed to limit the world to 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming .

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Tuesday, October 04, 2022

Possibility For Peace

If Russia were to withdraw all its forces from Ukrainian territories - and yes, that includes Crimea - then peace moves can be made. But is there anyone on earth who is capable of homing in that point to Putin? The four recently "annexed" regions and Crimea could be demilitarized and referendums held in each territory under international supervision. This is Scotland style democracy, and if Ukraine is a democracy it should not be afraid of this proppsal.

The missing piece is that noone seems to be attempting this. Xi Jinping, Modi, Erdogan, Macron, Olaf should all be pushing for this. If you push this proposal hard, and Putin does not accept, then he still loses politically.

The talk of nuclear armageddon is adults on both sides having turned this into a video game. The political conversation is missing. War hardware is ruling the day on both sides. If you do this, I will do that. If I do that, I think you might do this.

There is no such thing called a limited nuclear strike. Right now there is time to think, ponder, discuss, elaborate, communicate. The very first nuclear strike puts the world on a one way escalator.

There is a slim chance that as Putin escalates his rhetoric, some on his side might depose him. But that talk is no strategy. It is more like fantasy. A legitimate strategy is one where all possible global players actively weigh in on the situation.

If all Russian forces were to withdraw and get out of Ukrainian territory, that would deal a body blow to the Putin regime inside Russia. A Saddam regime necessarily needs to enter Kuwait to maintain internal cohesion.

Using every possible channel, private and public, to make the offer of globally supervised referendums should the Russian forces withdraw will not require a cessation of Ukrainian military efforts. If Putin does not accept, that will legitimize Ukrainian military efforts. But the effort for peace has to be ceaselessly made. Right now there is time. After the first nuclear strike, which would be a suicidal move for Putin, there will be much less time. But a suicidal maniac could do much damage before dying. Hoping for a breakdown in the Russian chain of command and orders for nuclear strike being disobeyed is not a sound strategy.

For all the decades that the planet has had nucler weapons, this is as close to an all out nuclear war as the world has ever been. Compared to this threat, a rise in food and oil prices or even a cold winter are small potatoes. For much of its existence, Europe has not had heating oil and gas. Nuclear radiation is another matter.

Xi Jinping, Modi, Erdogan, Macron, Olaf, Merkel, Blair, Clinton, Obama should not wait for inviations from either side. They should all actively engage both sides.

Europe is not neutral. China is not. Turkey is too small a country. The Russian-Indian friendship has a long history. Bollywood is big in Russia. Putin and Modi have a genuine rapport. Modi is best positioned to take the lead. If you want veto power, make peace happen. Earn it. Actively wage peace. You have to have a concrete proposal before you talk to either party.

Deescalation is an acute need of the hour.

It is possible minority Russians living inside Ukraine face discrimination, but that political problem has only a peaceful political solution. Minorities inside Russia face the same problem. Nuclear war is no solution.

Even if the referendum results might go in Ukraine's favor, Kyiv should at the outset guarantee political safety nets to protect the rights of Russian minorities.

If hate had a nuclear button solution, then hate would be as easy to solve as the energy crisis. But that is not so. You don't add super hate to hate. Don't try to douse a campfire with a forest fire. Tone it down.

The peace proposal would involve Putin paying for a rebuilding of the damage done. And an impartial look into war crimes allegations.



India's Modi says ready to contribute to peace efforts in Ukraine India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that his country is ready to contribute to peace efforts in the ongoing conflict with Russia that has raged for seven months. "He expressed his firm conviction that there can be no military solution to the conflict and conveyed India's readiness to contribute to any peace efforts," the Indian prime minister's office said in a statement after a telephone conversation between Modi and Zelenskiy.

Kremlin welcomes Elon Musk proposal for Ukraine settlement denounced by Kyiv The Kremlin praised Tesla boss Elon Musk on Tuesday for suggesting a possible peace deal to end the war in Ukraine, after Kyiv rebuked Musk for proposing terms it views as rewarding Russia. ........ "It is very positive that somebody like Elon Musk is looking for a peaceful way out of this situation," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in a conference call. "Compared to many professional diplomats, Musk is still searching for ways to achieve peace. And achieving peace without fulfilling Russia's conditions is absolutely impossible," he added. ........ In a Twitter poll posted on Monday, the Tesla boss proposed Ukraine permanently cede Crimea to Russia, that new referendums be held under U.N. auspices to determine the fate of Russian-controlled territory, and that Ukraine agree to neutrality. Kyiv says it will never agree to cede land taken by force, and lawful referendums cannot be held in occupied territory where many people have been killed or driven out. After Vladimir Putin announced the annexation of four Ukrainian provinces last week, Kyiv said it was applying to join NATO, and would not negotiate with Russia as long as Putin is president.

Will Russia use nuclear weapons? Putin's warnings explained By claiming 18% of Ukraine as part of Russia, the room for nuclear threats increases as Putin could cast any attack on these territories as an attack on Russia itself. ....... Russia's nuclear doctrine allows for a nuclear strike after "aggression against the Russian Federation with conventional weapons when the very existence of the state is threatened". ....... "He is bluffing right now," said Yuri Fyodorov, a military analyst based in Prague. "But what will happen in a week or a month from now is difficult to say - when he understands the war is lost." ....... Burns, though, said U.S. intelligence had no "practical evidence" that Putin was moving towards using tactical nuclear weapons imminently. ........ Although Russia has specialised nuclear forces trained to fight in such an apocalyptic battlefield, it is unclear how its army of regular troops, mercenaries, drafted reservists and local militias would cope. ...... U.S. President Joe Biden's option would include a non-military response, responding with another nuclear strike that would risk escalation, and responding with a conventional attack that could involve Washington in a direct war with Moscow. ........ Retired General and former CIA chief David Petraeus said that if Moscow used nuclear weapons, then the United States and its NATO allies would destroy Russian troops and equipment in Ukraine - and sink its entire Black Sea fleet. ........

both Moscow and Washington have enough firepower to destroy the world many times over.

........ The U.S. tactical nuclear weapons have adjustable yields of 0.3 to 170 kilotons (the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima was equivalent to about 15 kilotons of dynamite).

Switzerland has 'systemic' racism issues, UN experts say Switzerland has a serious systemic problem with racism against people of African descent, according to a report presented to the U.N. Human Rights Council on Monday, giving a broad range of examples from police brutality to a children's game. ......... "The ubiquity and impunity of this misconduct indicates a serious systemic problem exists," it said. ....... Switzerland's ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva broadly accepted the findings in comments to the council, although questioned the experts' use of a limited number of examples to draw wider conclusions. Landlocked Switzerland was never a colonial power but its banks, traders and municipalities invested heavily and benefited from the transatlantic triangular trade, the report said. ........ It noted efforts to raise public awareness about aspects of Swiss history, such as a petition and debate around the removal of the statue of a banker whose fortune relied on exploitation of enslaved Africans, in the canton of Neuchatel. However, others remained valorised such as Louis Agassiz, an advocate of scientific racism, who has an Alpine peak named after him.

Swiss playground games persist such as "Who is afraid of the Black man?", which have a racially discriminatory effect, the experts said.



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