To OP.2, I have been planning a date with an acquaintance I have a lot of respect-at-a-distance for, but I have now had to reschedule 3 times total, all due to infections on her part (different one the first time, then the same one recurring twice). I assume this is related to her being a mother of two; I don't think it's a pretext.
On actual current events, I've got my fingers crossed on the Ukraine aid vote; it looks so fucking bleak for them otherwise. It does look like as a standalone bill, it will likely pass with all Democrats & a minority of Republicans. Of course then it's a shanda what they'll probably bestow on Israel around the same time.
Agreed about Ukraine. It is truly incomprehensible to me that people here don't see that many R's work for Russia's interests. MTG added an amendment to this bill about language rights for Hungarians in Transcarpathia, where did the language come from hmm. Even for the amoral among us (not here in particular, thinking of the whole US), arming Ukraine is cost-effective-- modest spending from the US and Russia has fewer bombers, let alone tanks. Neither of these points require subtle reasoning or specialized knowledge.
In local current events, the BART cars Nixon rode on (since refurbished) are finally being formally retired with a 4/20 ceremony and final ride.
Yeah, crazy how Republicans all stanning for Putin is somehow not considered a big deal.
4: After which, they will be dropped on Cambodia.
(Disclaimers: 1) the dams thread wasn't up when I asked for a news thread, which may not have been clear to people catching up later; 2) I am still really pressed for time and can't comment much.)
On Russian influence, Julia Ioffe's April 2 interview with McCaul is here (gift link), and here is a WaPo article on Russian influence. I know many/most of you hate access journalism, but I'm occasionally fascinated to see what people will say, and won't say, about their thought process on the record. (Asked about specific Republicans repeating Russian talking points. McCaul says only, "I mean, it's pretty obvious.")
Oh yes, there's sober print reporting pointing things out (and Julia Ioffe is very good), but even a little bit of this should be as disqualifying as gold bars with serial numbers. Russian financial support for right-wing parties is documented in France, Austria, and Germany, this is an established playbook for them. It would make great television news bits.
3 also the best way to deter the CCP vis a vis Taiwan so it's a two for one deal.
Apparently, someone set themselves on fire outside of Trump's trial. Obviously it would be irresponsible not to speculate, so I'm guessing it's the pillow-guy.
All I really want to know is if the orange one will go to jail, or not. I would not wish such a level of stress on the jurors, also.
Julie Berman, 56, a Manhattan resident who came to the plaza near the courthouse to photograph protesters, saw the man set himself on fire. He had a sign saying something about Trump and Biden working together to orchestrate a "coup," she said, and another one alleging some kind of "Ponzi scheme."
My twitter feed is full of reports that Trump apparently keeps passing gas, loudly and smellily, while falling asleep in the courtroom. Why would anyone want or need to read about that. This may be the final sign that I need to get off of twitter altogether.
On the Trump trial, even one Trumpie is enough to make a hung jury. The cops who explained things to Rodney King were found innocent, people who had seen the video before the trial and made up their minds as a consequence were not seated. I hope not, but....
Also, feel better, heebie! I've never had strep, but it sounds godawful.
13: Somebody put that on Reddit now too. You can't avoid it, though I deleted my twitter back when Musk said the guy who attacked Pelosi's husband was his lover.
10 this is bizarre (Toler is a reliable source) https://x.com/arictoler/status/1781403264237633931?s=46&t=nbIfRG4OrIZbaPkDOwkgxQ
13 I think that's hilarious and I'd much rather we all knew stuff like that from reporters rather than the identity of jurors which serves no possible public purpose.
Laura Dern is great, but that sounds a bit creepy.
Speaking of, Duolingo pissed me off because it asked to me translate "Laura is doing well" and I did "Laura esta bien", but they wanted "Laura estas bien".
19: Sounds like a very effective language-learning tool.
How the fuck am I supposed to know how well I know an imaginary Laura?
"Estas" is wrong regardless of how well you know her.
I messed up. It probably "Laura, are you doing well?"
Anyway, Duolingo said I should use "estas." I'm just more comfortable using the usted forms.
I mean you are evidently on a first-name basis...
I guess. But I still don't like it.
Does ozempic make your fart powerfully?
I just typed "is flatulence a side effect of" into Google and "ozempic" was the third autocomplete response.
25: I think the clue was that you're calling her Laura rather than Señora Pacheco.
Oh, never mind, Unfoggetarian got there first.
30: That makes sense, but I was taught not to use tu unless it was a close friend, a child, or a I had explicit permission.
I'm going to be silently upset until Duolingo gets to the vosotros form.
I'm having a passing thought of the form: I was brought up to be a good, self-respecting liberal with mild activist tendencies, because it's part of being a good person.
But there are lots of activists and people trying to make the world better who are doing so because they are hyper-aware at every moment of the pain felt by each homeless person/person in prison/displaced person/etc for the specific cause. That's a different kind of activism, and it's like "the house is on fire, how can you be doing anything besides putting the fire out?!"
It just occurs to me how much safety and complacency is built into my "I'm a good person!" model of liberalism, and how much anguish and panic is built into theirs.
I'm sure there are other models! This brought to you after a single conversation with a single person and then overgeneralizing.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/4/16/solomon-islands-prepares-for-most-important-election-since-independence
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/counting-underway-solomon-islands-national-election-watched-by-us-china-2024-04-18/
https://www.barrons.com/news/pro-china-local-leader-ousted-in-solomon-islands-election-early-results-2729cc3a
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/solomon-islands-election-count-underway-china-critic-suidani-regains-seat-2024-04-18/
pro-China Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare has retained his seat in the national election, local media reported late on Friday but it won't be known for days if his party has won enough support to form the next government.
https://www.dw.com/en/congo-sadc-soldier-deaths-underline-concerns-over-mission/a-68781238
https://www.modernghana.com/news/1305533/burundi-rwanda-rivalry-red-tabara-rebel-attacks.html
https://www.barrons.com/news/soldiers-and-militia-turn-on-civilians-in-encircled-dr-congo-s-goma-city-c8a6d3fe
https://www.voanews.com/a/hospitals-in-eastern-drc-face-vaccine-shortages/7574227.html
This is the critical question: What's the elevation of Laura's house?
The old white men who watch network TV and who buy mainline newspapers don't want to hear that the faction in Congress fighting back against all those uppity women and minorities are on the take. They don't care, because Putin's money is going for a good cause.
The real question is whether these people are really being paid by Putin, or whether they're doing it for free. Why should Vlad buy the cow, after all . . .
To braid threads:
https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/ecuador-rations-electricity-drought-persists-northern-andes-109326367
3: ai don't want to hold up Reagan as sane exactly, but MT Greene actually called for the US to resign from NATO. I would think he's rolling over in his grave.
Oh wow, I know the guy who set himself on fire at the Trump trial. He's been posting increasingly deranged conspiracy stuff on FB for a couple years. Sad.
It's a small, increasingly strange, world.
High-profile self-immolations are not the trend I was most hoping for in the 2020s, I confess. Similarly:
Sudan's horrific war is being fueled by weapons from foreign supporters of rival generals, UN says
...Neither DiCarlo nor Chambas named any of the foreign supporters.
But Burhan, who led a military takeover of Sudan in 2021, is a close ally of neighboring Egypt and its president, former army chief Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi. In February, Sudan's foreign minister held talks in Tehran with his Iranian counterpart amid unconfirmed reports of drone purchases for government forces.
The Rapid Support Forces' leader, Dagalo, has reportedly received support from Russia's Wagner mercenary group. U.N. experts said in a recent report [this one? seems like not] that the RSF has also received support from Arab allied communities and new military supply lines running through Chad, Libya and South Sudan.
What are "Arab allied communities"?
Some of the Arabs in Sudan, presumably; and perhaps their kin in neigboring countries. IIRC RSF's core is Darfuri Arabs, who also live in Chad.
35 is at least to some extent based on personality differences as well as rational calculation. For many people, the anguish and empathy is pretty intense, but it's possible to channel it into coordinated actions. For others, those emotions are more paralyzing, or just aversive. There's a corresponding dyad of people who are more temperamentally sanguine, but use that stability to serve the common good (maybe a lot of religious people in this group?), and people who are just detached from feeling or thinking (or doing) all that much about human suffering.
My mom, the social worker, is somewhere between channeling anguish and benefiting from sanguinity. I alternate between channeling and paralysis. (I also have legit psychiatric disorders that make the whole thing hard, but whatever. Hey, no self-immolation yet! The bar gets lower every year.)
Obviously everything in 49 is more spectrum/cloud/general vagueness than my schematic sketch makes it seem, but that's the cartoon version.
48: got it. In the context of "foreign supporters" I guess I was thinking outside kinship, but yeah, it's probably Chad.
The U.N. humanitarian campaign needs some $2.7 billion this year to get food, heath care and other supplies to 24 million people in Sudan - nearly half its population of 51 million. So far, funders have given only $145 million, about 5%, according to the humanitarian office, known as OCHA.
The "level of international neglect is shocking," Christos Christou, president of the medical charity Doctors Without Borders, or MSF, said in a recent statement.
Not much to say beyond the obvious.
"High-profile self-immolations are not the trend I was most hoping for in the 2020s, I confess."
It'll be a trend, though - the air force guy made aot of news, especially online. There were bound to be copycats.
47.last a botched translation of "United Arab Emirates" would be my guess. UAE is the RSF's biggest supporter.
Belatedly, Polish has a nice in-between form where you match the honorific Pan or Pani with the first name. Pan Moby or Pani Heebie. (Hmm, I wonder how Polish is coping with non-binary people.) It's kinda the business casual of formal/informal-you. I think you kept the formal form of the verb, but using their first name with the title kept it from sounding stuffy.
48: IIRC this describes the ethnic dynamics, but I'm metered out now.
In El Geneina in West Darfur, rights monitors say at least 1,300 people were killed this month as the RSF and allied militias advanced. The RSF said it had ordered an investigation. Such ethnically targeted violence will likely persist, said Jonas Horner, an independent Sudan analyst, as Arab tribes that fought alongside the RSF are allowed to settle scores.
The RSF and its allied Arab militias then intensified their attacks on civilians living in a camp for internally displaced people in Ardamata and in surrounding neighborhoods, launching an assault on many of the tens of thousands of people living there, most from the darker-skinned Masalit tribe. [...] the RSF, a paramilitary force drawn mainly from Arab tribes, and allied Arab militia forces earlier this year drove hundreds of thousands of El Geneina's former Masalit majority out of the city.
You could write your critters. Even the British and European yous.
Despite denials from Kigali, the international reaction was swift. In July 2012, just two and a half months after the [first M23] rebellion had started, the United States cancelled a small military aid package to Rwanda and exerted significant diplomatic pressure. Subsequently, the European Union and various member states (which then included the UK) announced the suspension of planned budgetary support to Rwanda, which was - and still is - highly reliant on these contributions [...] Rwanda caved and dropped support for the M23. Within a few days the group was defeated
[...]
December 2022, a week after the United Nations handed the Security Council a detailed report which found that Kigali had provided the M23 with weapons and ammunition, the European Union announced that it would be providing the Rwandan Defence Forces with 20 million Euros ($22 million). The money was for Kigali's military operations in northern Mozambique's Cabo Delgado province, where it is helping Maputo battle Islamists from the Ansar al-Sunna group. Research suggests that Paris played a key role in pushing for the EU decision, despite publicly criticising Rwandan support for the M23 later that same December. Analysts say this is likely to protect a multi-billion dollar liquified natural gas project in northern Mozambique, where French conglomerate TotalEnergies owns a major stake. Since then, the M23 has seized towns and villages across North Kivu, displacing over a million people
[...]
The military packages are in addition to the unprecedented sums that Europe and the UK are providing to Kigali. Since April 2022, the United Kingdom Home Office has handed the Rwandan government £240 million ($303 million) as part of the ruling Conservative Party's embattled plan to send asylum seekers [...] December 2023, the EU announced that it would invest more than 900 million euros ($977 million) in Rwanda under the EU's Global Gateway strategy for 2021-2027. Investment areas include "health, critical raw materials [...] This prompted outrage from Kinshasa, which accuses Rwanda of illegally benefiting from its raw materials. Many scholars agree: "Rwanda's economy is dependent on exports to [the DRC], and also on smuggling of minerals from the eastern Congo"
Is it being adequately reported, oh you denizens of the American Media Hellscape, that the Iranians attacked Israel after Israel BOMBED THEIR FUCKING EMBASSY?*
My interpretation since Oct 7 has been that the war would stay local because no-one had any interest in expanding it. No-one except, apparently, the Israeli war cabinet.** Israel bombs an embassy, and America bends over backwards to keep the Iranian response limited and neutralized?*** Israeli interceptors permitted in Jordanian airspace? How much capital did State have to burn to make that happen, for the sake of a US Israel policy most of the department thinks is disastrous?
This is a rare case where the American Solipsist school of international relations has a point: Biden's blank check has a lot to answer for here.
*Precision bombing of IRGC assholes who deserved it, yes. Makes no difference. An embassy is an embassy.
**Unless Bibi bypassed the cabinet. Either way, bad.****
***Which might have been the right thing to do, if preventing Israeli casualties kept a lid on further escalation. Except that Israel went ahead and bombed Iran anyway. From Iraqi airspace, to throw a little extra sand in the gears of US-Iraqi relations.
****Also, remarkably bad strategy. The Israelis are in a long war in Gaza which they aren't really winning, don't really have a plan to win, and can't really afford, economically or diplomatically. At least they only have the one front to deal with, though, as Iran and Hezbollah are very eager not to get involved. So what are they doing? Bombing Iran and maybe planning an invasion of Lebanon.
More constructively, the IAFUSAFRAF counter-missile effort makes me wonder if Ukraine could benefit from air-to-air air defence. Apparently they're handling the Shaheds ok with technicals, but maybe for the cruise missiles? At least in the more westerly regions? Or are they doing this already and I missed it? If it's doable, Western stocks for the aircraft and missiles would presumably be much less stretched than those for GBAD.
Israeli interceptors permitted in Jordanian airspace?
No, the Jordanians shot down a bunch of Iranian drones themselves and the Israeli retaliation was done from Syria.
58.last plus, you know, the genocide.
I just want to say that antibiotics are godly and amazing and I am so grateful to be on penicillin. Amazing stuff.
58: yeah, absolute insanity reigns in Israel right now, from what I can tell. I think it was true to a decent degree before Oct 7, but... I can't even think of any comparable situation in the U.S. They're making Russia look stable and prudent, ffs.
It's weird to see Iran acting like the only adults in the room too. They indicated that they would not retaliate for it if it were roundly condemned in the UNSC, as well it should have being a serious violation of a founding principle of international law, but that was blocked by the US, the UK, and I believe France (wtf France?)
60.1: I stand corrected.
60.2: The booster stages fell in the middle of Iraq. In Mesopotamia, not desert. Maybe they launched from Syrian airspace, but I think the point stands.
Yeah Jordan was excellent explicit in denying their airspace to hostile incursions from either side and has the military and diplomatic means to prevent same, Syria and Iraq not so much.
58.1: here the NYT has "an Iranian diplomatic compound in Syria", an unusual phrase perhaps worth searching for in the archives?
But among Israelis, there is less suspicion about Mr. Netanyahu's approach to Iran. Though some foreigners accuse him of stoking a war with Iran for his own personal benefit, in Israel he is often seen as cautiously threading the needle between keeping Iran at bay while avoiding an outright war.
In Israel, "People look at him and they say, 'OK, we trust him because he doesn't take big risks,'" Ms. Mualem said.
So apparently you can find one (1) person who will say that.
teo, I'm sorry. Hope you're not too rattled.
From 54 (published 18 May 2023):
The RSF is now a private transnational mercenary enterprise which has rented its services to Gulf monarchs to fight in Yemen and has dealings with the Wagner Group and with Khalifa Haftar, commander of the Libyan National Army. It's a gold-mining and gold-trading operation and the enforcement arm of Hemedti's ever expanding commercial empire. If in the months ahead Hemedti and the RSF prevail in the battle for Khartoum, the Sudanese state will become a subsidiary of this transnational venture. Hemedti isn't from the well-mannered Khartoum 'community of the state'. And we shouldn't be misled by his identity as an 'Arab' - there's a vast social divide between the metropolitan Sudanese elites whose Arabism looks to Egypt and the Bedouin communities of the Sahara. He and his men are feared and ridiculed as illiterate, ill-spoken hoodlums. True, the top RSF commanders are from Hemedti's own Mahariya Arab clan, but the rank and file are from a range of tribes, united in their conviction that they have been deprived of the spoils of state. Like the southern Sudanese who voted to secede, they are enraged subjects of the Sudanese imperium.
68: it's just wrong to say they bombed the embassy. The embassy is next door and is fine. They hit "a building annexed to the consulate" which was being used by IRGC commanders. People say "they bombed the embassy" because there's a rule that you can lie about bad people and get away with it, because anyone who points out that you're lying immediately gets condemned as "oh i see you like the bad people now, you must be their best mate, I bet you want to marry the bad people".
https://www.chathamhouse.org/2024/04/strike-irans-consulate-syria-could-be-spark-ignites-middle-east
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/20/us-house-approves-61bn-aid-ukraine
Excellent news!!
71 is splitting hairs, most reporting I've seen said they hit their consulate. In any event they hit a building on the grounds of their diplomatic mission which is a clear violation of the Vienna Convention and evidently the international community agrees (barring those 3 votes in the UNSC).
72 Johnson showing just a little something here. Still pretty much irredeemable in my view, but not a Putinist cartoon character.
Good news, but also depressing that the Putinist wing of the Republican party is now a majority of the house delegation.
To be completely honest, I think the time that I will get worked up about someone violating the sanctity of an Iranian diplomatic anything is never.
Ok, if the rule of the clerics is ever changed, I might reconsider. Otherwise, no.
Bad precedent that puts American lives in danger (yeah yeah 45 years ago and those Iranian students and all that but still)
In shitty news the 26 billion USD bill for military aid to Israel passed with no preconditions as to its use. After the events of the last few weeks including the triple strike on the WCK and much else besides just an incredible moral failure.
79 By overwhelming majorities of each caucus. The comfort this must give Netanyahu is truly regrettable.
My rep voted no on both Israel and Ukraine. I don't think he's really a Putinist, but he is totally an Opportunist.
Oh! "I just submitted an amendment to the Israel aid bill stripping Gaza aid from it. I've been to a lot of battles in my lifetime but never had the president of the United States send aid to my enemy while I'm taking fire," Zinke said in a social media statement.
teo, I'm sorry. Hope you're not too rattled.
Thanks, lurid. We weren't particularly close; we went to grad school together and were part of the same general social group at that point. I'm seeing other friends from that period post remembrances on FB and one of them is quoted in the NYT article about him. I don't think I'm too rattled but it is odd to be reading about this sort of thing in the news.
Walking home just now, a woman walking out of the nail shop had a "Mossad" t-shirt.
Sorry teo. Someone I follow on twitter also knew him from undergrad and is going through a rough time as they'd kept in touch afterwards for awhile but then grew apart and is now wishing they'd still been in contact. It was surreal watching them gradually realize it was him on my TL.
One of the guys in my grad school was a 9/11 denier - like, he was apparently pulling a small salary off it and everything. I avoided him (he was a year below anyway) and fortunately I forgot his name so I can't look him up.
Hopefully it was craven rather than a mental issue.
Following up to 78, I don't think it's a coincidence that less than a week later Ecuadorian police raided the Mexican embassy to arrest the former VP who had been given asylum there since December.
Also, belatedly, to the duolingo formal vs informal, I live in, and very imperfectly navigate, a society and language with a formal/informal distinction. Here, a first name basis is not a perfect guide to when to move to informal - even when introduced on a first name basis you might still use the formal until invited to do otherwise. My general impression is that the formal is getting a bit less common, but one would still wield it as a means of showing respect to someone you don't know well.
I generally use the zone of permission of being foreign and old to default to the informal. Though in my usual haze the other night I blew by a teenager's apartment when dropping him off after football practice. I blurted out, "scusi!" in the formal. Afterwards, my son told me it sounded weird to say scusi to a kid. It's also probably a little weird to say excuse me, but there's no good equivalent for "sorry!"
35: Sorry to double up, but this issue of "the house is on fire" approach to suffering is super interesting.
The psych literature seems to be dividing responses to suffering into empathy and compassion. Empathy is necessary to social functioning, but relying exclusively on empathy can lead to empathic distress and burnout. Compassion, which is a general desire to alleviate others' suffering, is associated with more positive emotions, different brain areas, and more active engagement.
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/pdf/S0960-9822(14)00770-2.pdf
On the other hand, the woman who led a lot of this research was demoted from her position at Max Planck institute for bullying and otherwise mistreating a pregnant employee.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tania_Singer
77: The outrage isn't on behalf of Iran, it's on behalf of, (1) diplomacy in general, and (2) the people of the US, whose leaders are conducting a truly perverse policy in their name.
90: It would be interesting to see, if it ever emerges, whether that actually featured in Noboa's thinking. I suspect though that Ecuador's crisis is severe enough to be sufficient explanation on its own.
89: Pashinyan is buying time, which is probably good in and of itself. Whenever conflict comes again, that highway is probably not tenable anyway, and it would not be prudent to rely on it. I wonder if the EU monitors will be on the lookout for "borderization" in that area in the near-ish future. I hope that Armenia is doing things out of the public eye to boost their security, but at a strategic level, I dunno. The Russians don't care, the US is probably too busy for a major effort, and that leaves, what, Iran? They're in a tough position.
Speaking of Iran, I didn't say that 77 was rational or generalizable because it isn't really either of those. If I were in a publicly responsible role, I would probably deplore it or whatever, but I'm not. There's plenty to be outraged about in the world, and the sanctity of Iranian diplomatic missions is just way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way down on my personal list. It might be above my concerns about whether Kim Jong Un got indigestion, but then again it might not.
Manipur CM N Biren Singh's 'political ambition' inflamed ethnic clashes, reveals Assam Rifles report
Kuki leaders have accused the two groups of spearheading Meitei-led assaults against their people. The relatively new Meitei Leepun group is reportedly influenced by the ideology of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and has repeatedly professed support for the government led by N Biren Singh (also a Meitei). Meanwhile, Arambai Tenggol has also been accused of targeting members of the Naga community. The group was suspected of involvement in a gunfight with the Assam Rifles ahead of Home Minister Amit Shah's visit to the region in June 2023.Timely intervention by Centre saved Manipur: PM Modi
79: my rep voted for it even though 2 from the MA delegation and Raskin of MD whom I admire a lot - did not. My rep seems to be pretty good at delivering money to the district but tweets mostly about abortion rights and women's basketball. My town is quite liberal, but this is Nikki Tsongas's old district.
||
This is probably not going to get much uptake, but: how many of you have switched mostly or entirely to reading ebooks and acquiring new books digitally? We still have thousands of paper books, and I have boxes of books that Elke is done with, and it's increasingly clear to me that 80% of them are just going to get recycled.
|>
98 cont'd.: but i guess if I know I'm going to be the final owner of most of these books, I can accept it, and not worry that, for economic reasons, I should be cycling them out of the house at a semi-regular rate as in years past.
"In any event they hit a building on the grounds of their diplomatic mission which is a clear violation of the Vienna Convention "
No, it isn't. Vienna Convention article 22 only protects the Iranian embassy in Syria from attack by Syria. The embassy has no protection from third party states under international law other than that which results from its status (if applicable) as a civilian building.
If senior military officers of Iran (a country at war with Israel) are using an Iranian consulate in Syria (a country also at war with Israel) for military purposes, that is a legitimate target. The only other considerations are the normal LOAC ones of discrimination, proportionality and military necessity.
98: I don't have any for sentimental reasons, although I hope to save my mother's 3 ring binder of recipes. But I've grown to hate cooking from a recipe on a screen, so the kitchen is full of oily, stained printouts of recipes from websites.
Why did I think 98 was about cookbooks?!
As for regular books, yes I'm basically strictly ebooks at this point.
However, I'm really working hard at reading books whatsoever because I've lost the ability to get absorbed in books. So I'm trying to reread old books that I liked but it's been awhile, which does make the absorption happen more easily.
What I really want is to recover the feeling of getting absorbed easily. If paper books would do it, I'd switch back, but I don't think it would.
100: Interesting, that distinction makes sense and not one I've though about. But this article, for example, would argue for the conventional understanding of the spirit of the law protecting embassies: https://theconversation.com/are-embassies-off-limits-ecuadorian-and-israeli-actions-suggest-otherwise-and-that-sets-a-dangerous-diplomatic-precedent-227398
I agree with ajay about the literal language of the Vienna Convention. I'm not that comfortable with "at war" used in these contexts, because I think that's an excuse that really prone to abuse. We're at war with North Korea, I think, and, I don't know, China too? We're still at war with Al Qaeda, which apparently lets us support AQ's allies in a war against entities that are AQ's opponents. William Bligh used the excuse of ongoing hostilities with France (right?) to impose unwarranted discipline on a naval trip to Tahiti to collect breadfruit.
I don't think the use of the Iranian compound would be an excuse if, say, Syria attacked it, and so I think invocation of this is misdirection.
What I wonder is what the real strategic goal is here. There are particular senior military figures one can profitably eliminate -- maybe Admiral Yamamoto qualifies -- but as a general matter, aren't you just moving the number 3 guy up to number 2, without changing the policy at all? In a dynamic situation, maybe the hours/days it takes for a new chain of command to form could be material, but at a distance that doesn't seem to be what was happening here at all. Why do it, then? To provoke Iran? Are there people within the Israeli decision-making structure who think a direct Iranian attack would be valuable (a) in Israel's domestic politics and/or (b) in Israel's fraying relations with Europe?
104: the other interpretation makes no sense at all. Note that all the other examples he lists are countries attacking embassies in their own capitals. The Uruguayan government hitting an embassy in Montevideo, for example. That is definitely forbidden under the Vienna Convention.
There have been plenty of third party attacks on embassies - ie the Country B embassy in Country A gets attacked by Country C, an enemy of Country B. Generally it's to take civilian hostages, which definitely is a war crime, of course, or just to kill civilians, which is also a war crime. And it's mainly Arabs doing it, of course.
That doesn't even look to be true https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_attacks_on_diplomatic_missions
98: Overwhelming majority are still paper. Last year I read 58 books, and three of them were electronic. In years that I read as a Hugo voter, I will read more e-books because that's the form that the voter pack comes in. So in 2022, for example, I read 70 books, and 13 of those were electronic. I did not finish A Desolation Called Peace, but I read enough of it to put it on my list. And six were novellas, so that does make the reading go faster.
At any rate, I don't really like reading on my phone, and my kindle device is from 2011, so I don't think I can even put new books on it anymore. Its form factor is great, and it doesn't have any of the distractions that my phone does, so it would be good for heebie's absorption.
I've bought a couple of e-books recently because the printed versions cost like 5x the price of the electronic version. So an economist (assume a spherical etc.) would be able to tell how much more I like print compared to e-books.
108 AIMHMHB, my mom's grandfather was a US Army officer in Beijing during the Boxer Rebellion. He was awarded the order to the double dragon. https://www.identifymedals.com/database/medals-by-country/china/the-order-of-the-double-dragon/#google_vignette I suppose my uncle has it, along with his grandfather's diaries from that time. I understand that these include some casual racism, towards Chinese people and Filipinos (he'd been there for the war) which I think is why I've not been given copies.
I've been buying and reading more ebooks lately because I've been doing most of my extended reading on the treadmill and I'm at a pace where I can't read a physical book though I do prefer them.
On a treadmill, you could just get a scroll and have gears drive it at a pace you can read.
98: I read fiction these days only as ebooks and have given away roughly 90% of my print novels. Academic stuff I read on paper (including printing out PDFs of articles).
99: I can't remember where you live these days (California?), but if by some chance you're near Baltimore, the Book Thing has regular donation days.
Oh wow, the Book Thing is still around. I used to go there on the regular, like 15 years ago.
Any way you cut it, it was an act of war by Israel on Iran, and Iran was absolutely within their rights to respond - and did so appropriately.
Israel can cry about disproportionality or whatever, but disproportionate responses are basically Israel's brand.
98: All electronic.
113: Why the academic /fiction (=work/play?) distinction?
I am still 100% paper because I am old and also have no device whose form factor I like other than several antique Kindles. What I have done is switch nearly 100% to reading library books* or previously purchased ones not yet read. Will occasionally buy one after the initial read.
*Countywide access, and a quite responsive interlibrary loan have generally proven quite adequate to meet my desires.
Still mostly paper. Electronic ones don't connect to either memory or anticipation for me. It's not rational, takes space, but I haven't changed it.
On the Ukraine aid bill, does this mean the Hastert rule is dead? Is this the first thing to pass against it?
Wikipedia lists 6 occasions of John Boehner breaking the Hastert Rule. Then Ryan hewed to it, but Johnson broke it last month. Don't know about McCarthy.
McCarthy didn't actually do much in the way of setting up votes on things.
Hastert's Anti-Democratic Policy -- not going to use the R word -- should die a quiet death.
It is exactly as reprehensible as McConnell not having a vote on Garland.
"What I wonder is what the real strategic goal is here. There are particular senior military figures one can profitably eliminate -- maybe Admiral Yamamoto qualifies -- but as a general matter, aren't you just moving the number 3 guy up to number 2, without changing the policy at all?"
The logical end point of this argument is that it I'd strategically pointless ever to kill any enemy soldiers at all, which is heartening but possibly not quite what you meant.
Probably about 75% ebook but I am trying to reduce that because I want to support my local bookshop. Too many shops are closing round here.
"Iran was absolutely within their rights to respond - and did so appropriately."
Iran's response was to bomb an Arab village and injure a seven-year-old girl, Spike.
Why the academic /fiction (=work/play?) distinction?
I do this too - I think it's just easier to read things closely if they're in hard copy. Light reading can be online because you just zip through it, but if you want to be able to read carefully and keep flipping back and forth, hard copy is best.
Academic stuff I read on paper (including printing out PDFs of articles).
An ipad mini with the Notability app has solved this for me. I finally can review articles without printing them out. My work flow remains - I jot notes all over them. It's still worse with pdf's to flip between text and tables, but I now find it manageable. Of course, I'm not sure that manufacturing + charging my ipad is actually net better for carbon than printing a lot of long pdf's.
I divide my fiction between pulp sci fi - all kindle - and other, which I enjoy more with a physical book.
The other factor is that e-readers, or at least my e-reader, don't seem to handle illustrations very well - photos are muddy and of course monochrome, maps and diagrams are difficult to read and difficult to zoom in on.
125 No it isn't. Enemy soldiers are actually doing something. Convoys are moving stuff. Communications nodes are critical infrastructure. If any of our senior commanders during the Iraq occupation had been killed in one-off attacks, it would obviously be a tragedy for their family and friends, and a brag-worthy achievement for the resistance, but no material change on the ground. I doubt the killing of those two senior guys in Iraq a few years back (a senior Iranian and a senior Iraqi) improved our fortunes.
131: Officers are doing stuff too. Killing the enemy is always worth it, pretty much by definition. Also, the embassy strike wasn't a one-off, it's part of a campaign of hundreds (thousands, by now?) of Israeli strikes against Iranian/Iranian-aligned targets in Syria since 2011.
125 last: the Iranian, Soleimani, was actually a significant loss for Iran. His role was actually diplomacy and coalition management more than anything else, and apparently his successor (though he was indeed just moved up from number 2) isn't remotely as good. (Though I repeat, as I said at the time, that the time, place and manner of his assassination was counterproductive; though much less counterproductive than I initially expected.)
131: so, your view is that above a certain rank, military officers have merely ceremonial importance? Like, they aren't actually doing anything, and there is an endless supply of replacements for them? And this view is based on...?
You're actually arguing that it is harder to replace a lance-corporal than it is to replace a major-general.
I can't even begin to sing the lyrics fast enough to be a modern major general.
135: Never send a statistician to do a mathematician's job:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcS3NOQnsQM
Hastert's Anti-Democratic Policy
The words probably don't actually matter but the "rule" and most discussion of it drive me bonkers. Call it the Republican Pedophile House Speaker Dictum (or yours), but don't normalize it or grant it cover. It leads to lazy coverage like "xyz" doesn't have the votes* when that is only true if the convicted pedophile's wishes are respected. I think one of the most significant victims of this was immigration under Boehner which was an easy bipartisan pass but he never let it come to a vote.
*Similar to things in the Senate "losing" 56-42. (Unlike, for instance, Robert Bork actually losing by about that margin.)
They could have gotten their guy outside of the diplomatic compound, it was a stupid needless escalation that succeeded in changing the ground rules of this proxy war in Iran's favor but that's par for the course from a government and military which seems incapable of thinking strategically.
That's assuming of course that it wasn't done in hopes of dragging the US into a war with Iran which has been one of Likud's long term goals. Great fucking ally we've tied ourselves to here.
it was a stupid needless escalation that succeeded in changing the ground rules of this proxy war in Iran's favor
God, you're right, now that the "ground rules" say it's OK to bomb diplomatic premises, Iran might bomb the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires and kill 29 people.
There is literally a wiki list page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_attacks_against_Israeli_embassies_and_diplomats
134 If someone was setting out an expensive planned strike to kill one specific lance corporal, it'd be pretty dumb. Not that there aren't some really good lance corporals out there.
140 is more or less what I was expecting them to do, instead Israel can expect more direct missile attacks like we witnessed last week, probably on a much larger scale and coordinated with Hezbollah. Not really a good outcome from Israel's (or the region's or our) POV now isn't it?
Yes indeed, the next massive Iranian direct missile attack might injure *two* small Arab girls. Thus will the mighty Zionist war machine be humbled.
The entire country was on near lockdown for several days in anticipation of the last attack, this doesn't look like a win to me.
But bad guy dead - good is what passes for thinking strategically in those parts these days.
In other news, that Biden's uncle eaten by cannibals story in Papua New Guinea in WWII is crazy and going on past improbable sounding Biden stories (hello Corn Pop) is likely to be true.
147: I'm pretty sure we saw the same tweet and all the linked source says is the plane went down off the north coast of PNG and one of four occupants was rescued before it sank. It seems more "not inconceivable" than "likely".
Downed US aircrew did get eaten by cannibals - it almost happened to George I Bush.
(Jap cannibals rather than Papuan, in his case.)
That's different. Everyone has heard of Bush meat.
150: That word is a slur in the US, in case it's a delightful retroism in the UK.
Yeah, wiki has some details. I've only ever known it as an offensive term to be avoided.
Do people think the student protests over Israel/Gaza are going to harm Biden's election prospects, allowing Trump to. E the candidate of law and order. Mostly, my response is: this generation is so much more serious than mine. The young people are alright. But ai don't want another 1968 either.
I doubt they'll have much impact electorally.
I actually have several current events questions!
1. Explain the campus ceasefire protesters to me as though I live a million miles away. Campuses are shutting down? 100 protesters arrested at Columbia?
2. Would the Supreme Court really allow cities to ban homeless people?!
3. I forget the third.
157.3: You need to boil the potatoes before you fry them.
I haven't been following the university stuff that closely but:
1. There's protests and an encampment (not new for this round Israel/Palestine, surely) and Columbia decided to call the NYPD to arrest 108 people, already fairly unusual, but moving on to suspending at least from school altogether. Columbia suspended students can stay in their housing, but not be in any common spaces besides dining, and some Barnard students seem to have been fully kicked out of their housing as part of similar treatment. Maybe admin trying to curry favor with the trolls in political party form who brought down Pres. Gay, which if so would not succeed. Endless back-and-forth on whether / how much anti-Semites are involved in the protests or at the perimeter, what is being yelled by whom, etc.
2. Seems like there was a lot of skepticism expressed from the dais and the outcome is anyone's guess, but given the current justices, I bet it ends up some fig leaf where the city can offer unacceptable shelter and arrest or expel people for refusing it.
My vague understanding is that:
1. There was some normal student activist stuff happening at Columbia with some kind of camping out for Palestine situation.
2. For some reason (possibly related to donor pressure?) Columbia's administration wildly over-reacted and called NYPD on their own students.
3. The Streisand effect kicked in and the subsequent media backlash made Columbia a flash-point for totally crazy activists from all over to show up and escalate things.
Now lots of people are still mad about 2 (that's why there was a big faculty walk-out today), and lots of other people are really mad about 3 (in particular, a bunch of the outside activists seem to be violently anti-semitic). Everything is spiraling out of control.
Meanwhile all Columbia's administration had to do was wait like two weeks for the semester to end and all the students camping out would have left anyway.
Vox has a good writeup of the Grants Pass case at the Supreme Court.
The bottom line is that it's not clear what they're going to do. There are several plausible reasons they could punt on it entirely.
It's your "Pal"-estine. I don't know why everyone is so tense about pals.
"You need to boil the potatoes before you fry them."
Also before you mash them, as a friend of mine at university found out the hard way while attempting to make mashed potatoes from first principles. Forty minutes of hard work produced two mashed raw potatoes, which he then boiled, producing a sort of slurry or glue.
163: Pals are pretty controversial, actually.
Mootness sounds pretty plausible.
49 arrested at Yale as well.
MIT students also want to protest. No antisemitism expressed at Yale
I had a boss who was a graduate of Yale and who was raised by Minnesota parents. He could really nail the "I yust got out of Yale" joke.
2. For some reason (possibly related to donor pressure?) Columbia's administration wildly over-reacted
Donor pressure I'm sure was there, but the proximate event was the previous day's Congressional hearing, at which the Republicans reminded the college president that she was in violation of Genesis 12:3 commanding everyone to bless Israel, and was therefor making it so the school would be cursed by god.
147: this is really a story about WW2 sliding from memory into history. The Southwest Pacific campaign was a huge deal! A lot of Americans served in it, quite a few didn't make it, and a remarkable amount of ships and aircraft ended up littering islands all over the region. Biden, of course, is generationally that bit closer.
170: the sheer scale of it is extraordinary - I was listening to a podcast about the invasion of Luzon and the battle of Manila. More US troops landed on Luzon than landed on D-Day. The Battle of Manila destroyed virtually the entire city. And it's just not present in most people's mental picture of the war.
My uncle flew PBYs (antisubmarine patrols) all over the area.
My other uncle flew B-24s, which was more dangerous.
Artifacts found in the bush daily.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=forgotten+weapons+guadalcanal&atb=v344-1&iar=videos&iax=videos&ia=videos&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DPzKEQoKQtvI
Bluesky back last fall or so: "every Pacific naval encounter from late 1943 onward is like the IJN Golden Kirin, Glorious Harbinger of Eternal Imperial Dawn versus six identical copies of the USS We Built This Yesterday supplied by a ship that does nothing but make birthday cakes for the other ships"
USA, the original new and improved giant economy-sized economy.
Just six months from Pearl Harbor to Midway is also pretty amazing.
I think that post included a picture of a supply ship whose job was actually just making ice cream:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_cream_barge
10 gallons every 7 minutes!
And even better the ship was made out of concrete.
My uncle talked about taking the plane up with beer strapped to the outside to cool it. Having lots of fuel is nice.
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Harvard is telling me to vote for the board of overseers. Is that actually important this year given all the dumbfuckery of late?
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You should vote for them to oversee Columbia.
181: I don't think so? That asshole tried to get a write-in slate on the ballot (in which case it would have mattered), but failed so it doesn't seem to matter. The only endorsements I could find was the Crimson Editorial board, and as a normie Democrat I expect I largely agree with their editorial line, but also those candidates will probably win without your vote.
That said if anyone has a good reason to vote, let me know and I'll vote!
Just six months from Pearl Harbor to Midway is also pretty amazing
Things still went pretty badly after Midway - the USN was tremendously bad at carrier operations at Midway (see the excellent Parshall & Tully, "Shattered Sword") and in the six months after Midway they lost Enterprise badly damaged in the Eastern Solomons in August, Saratoga badly damaged the month after by a torpedo, Hornet sunk the month after that at Santa Cruz, and Enterprise badly damaged again at the same battle. By the end of 1942, with Saratoga still in dock and Enterprise withdrawn for training and repair, the US Navy had no operational carriers left in the Pacific and had to borrow HMS Victorious.
It's really only by the second half of '43 that you start to get the full-on "USS We Built This Yesterday" experience.
181, 183: I always ignore these emails, but it's funny that I get them at all -- I'm an "alumnus" due to the very old and absurd policy that full professors at Har/vard must have a Har/vard degree, and the school's workaround is not to change the policy but to award a meaningless master's degree to every full professor.
175: I started reading various volumes of the official US military history of WWII for operations that various ancestors/relatives. But then got my head turned by various volumes about Strategy, Planning and Logistics (see at this link: https://history.army.mil/html/bookshelves/collect/ww2-wardept.html )
Neither light nor surficially interesting reading, they really tell an incredible story. And just chock full of the kind of managerial reshuffling and reorganization that we all (including me, Joseph Heller, the Dilbert fuckwad, and most everyone else) have fun mocking. Surely massively wasteful and counterproductive, yet crushingly effective in the end. I found the development of the west coast as an effective support and production center for the Pacific war to be particularly fascinating.
Now that's what I call logistics: https://twitter.com/NavalInstitute/status/1777095762926616880
NAM Rodger fans will remember that the main limit to the endurance of the Channel Fleet at sea was not fuel (the ships moved by sail), or food (dried and salted food is pretty compact), or even fresh water (which was brought out to the ships by water hoy and pumped aboard), but beer, which was bulky and heavy, couldn't be pumped through hoses and therefore had to be loaded in barrels from lighters in harbour, and was consumed in huge quantities.
Consumption of beer in the 18th century navy was estimated at one wine gallon (3.78 litres) per man per day and accounted for about 20% of total calorie intake. It will be easily deduced that the crew of the Temeraire consumed 2.8 metric tonnes of beer every day.
187 is hilarious.
Are University Professors still allowed to graze cattle on Harvard Yard or did they close that loophole? They did change the part of the constitution that barred you from holding another state office. The amount of the Massachusetts constitution that's about Harvard is kind of hilarious.
Like I keep telling you.: America isn't a modern republic. It's a late-medieval coposite monarchy.
the very old and absurd policy that full professors at Har/vard must have a Har/vard degree, and the school's workaround is not to change the policy but to award a meaningless master's degree to every full professor.
The academic version of the Jones Act!
The shipping equivalent would presumably be a ceremony in which a ship built in South Korea sails into a US shipyard and has one rivet carefully removed and replaced by an American riveter, thus making the ship US-built for legal purposes.
I feel I should not be too scoffing since I attended a university which awards meaningless master's degrees to every graduate.
You have to pay a fee, according to "Gaudy Night."
I remember being very amused by the following, where meaningless masters played a key role in voting eligibility:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_University_of_Cambridge_Chancellor_election
I'm delighted to learn there is a Lord Sainsbury and I'm waiting for the Earl of Waitrose to happen.
I like that one of the candidates was a random local grocer upset about grocery-related issues, and another was a famous actor. And they were running to replace Prince Philip!
Thanks! We had a small but nice family Seder last night.
You can buy a whole lamb at Costco here, if you ever want to go old school.
Philip was Chancellor at so many universities!
My favorite Chancellor name was Baroness Young of Old Scone, but she seems to have stepped down. Annie Lennox is still Chancellor of Glasgow Caledonian University.
TIL Hillary Rodham Clinton is Chancellor of Queen's University Belfast!?
Do these Chancellors, like, do anything, or is it a purely ceremonial role?
Chancellors provide provide supplies and equipment for ships.
Purely ceremonial, the university run by the Vice Chancellor, naturally.
(I got interested in all of this when a family friend became a Vice Chancellor.)
"Chancellors provide provide supplies and equipment for ships."
COULD I BE ANY MORE NAUTICAL?
198: Waitrose is a workers' co-operative, but the founder of Tesco did get a knighthood: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Cohen_(businessman) and one of its CEOs got to the Lords: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_MacLaurin,_Baron_MacLaurin_of_Knebworth
98
This is probably not going to get much uptake, but: how many of you have switched mostly or entirely to reading ebooks and acquiring new books digitally?
For a while (let's say 2014-2022?) I had mainly switched to using an ereader, mainly to avoid clutter, but since then I've stopped due to a lot of little un-user-friendly things about ereaders compared to paper books. (Hard to use bookmarks, casually flip 10 or 20 pages back, limited to one publisher's infrastructure or messy PDFs, etc.) These days I have two strategies to avoid book-related clutter.
1. Frequent purges. I've taken more than one banker's box full of books (let's say at least 20 individual books) to Little Free Libraries over the past ~8 months and already have some more earmarked for the next round.
2. The library. It's not so great for getting specific books quickly, but if I just want a way to pass the time, I can usually find something that looks interesting.
I was going to make the obvious John Wesley Hardin joke, but decided against it.
Not that I have any information to speculate from, but I hope the police are looking at what the grandfather knew before he pawned the gun.
Two missing bullets and a recent murder in the neighborhood might make me suspicious.
Our House member won a contested primary and I'm very happy.
For me, having books on my phone helps me get a lot more books read (because a lot of time on trains), albeit at the expense of news reading (although that's probably a good thing, withness this thread). I find it's doable for everything but the fugliest PDFs, and the form factor infinitely preferable to paper. If I want to read closely and take notes I've the laptop acceptable.
If I had a train, I'd probably read more.
If I had a boat, I'd go out on the ocean
Waitrose is a workers' co-operative, but the founder of Tesco did get a knighthood
The son of one of the founders of Marks & Spencer became Baron Marks of Broughton - and, I learn, called the store's "St Michael" clothing brand after his dad, which is nice but a little odd given that Michael Marks was Jewish. Spencer, alas, did not lift his family to the peerage.
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The seed of self-destruction among the more intellectual members of the University was even more evident. Despising the middle-class society to which they owed their education and position, they attacked it, not with vigour but with an adolescent petulance. They were encouraged in this by their literary idols... with them they affected a dilettante leaning to the left. Thus, while refusing to be confined by the limited outlook of their own class, they were regarded with suspicion by the practical exponents of labour as bourgeois, idealistic, pink in their politics and pale-grey in their effectiveness. They balanced precariously and with irritability between a despised world they had come out of and a despising world they couldn't get into. The result, in both their behaviour and their writing, was an inevitable concentration on self, a turning-in of themselves, a breaking-down and not a building-up.
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Very dispppointed that Ryan Bizzarro lost for PA state treasurer. We need more Bizzarro's in government.
2024 PA. DEM PRIMARY
TREASURER
97% of votes counted
Erin McClelland wins.
CANDIDATE VOTES PCT.
Erin McClelland 534,361 54.3%
DEM
Ryan Bizzarro 450,082 45.7%
DEM
Very dispppointed that Ryan Bizzarro lost for PA state treasurer. We need more Bizzarro's in government.
2024 PA. DEM PRIMARY
TREASURER
97% of votes counted
Erin McClelland wins.
CANDIDATE VOTES PCT.
Erin McClelland 534,361 54.3%
DEM
Ryan Bizzarro 450,082 45.7%
DEM
I'm still very happy because of the big margin of Rep. Lee's win and how many people went to the polls to vote against Trump in the Republican primary.
https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/congo-republic-declares-mpox-epidemic-2024-04-24/
I understand wanting the rename it, but they really should put some work into the renaming and come up with something catchy.
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I just realized something. I've been on an awards committee for this DEI award for the past two years. Fine.
This year I'm not on it. Independently, I did this (awful) outreach conference thing with the math club.
We got an email a few days ago that said, "CONGRATULATION!! YOU WON the DEI award for this awful outreach conference thing, and you'll get your award at the ceremony on such and such a date."
I just now was thinking about how odd it was that they told us we won, rather than telling us we were nominees. Then I realized: We must be the only nominee, so they're skirting the embarrassment of "reading off the list of exactly one nominee...suspense...hand me the envelope please...and the winner is...!!!"
So kudos to us, for being the sole nominee for this award that I already thought was dumb and hamfisted and just a fig leaf of phony-progress instead of meaningful DEI work.
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Ted Cruz will now show up at the next club meeting to denounce your use of Arabic numbers.
WE NOT NEED MORE BIZARROS IN GOVERNMENT. ME DISCOURAGE YOU TO VOTE FOR BIZARRO.
Coming back to 189, a bit more beer logistics info: http://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/2021/05/military-brewing-in-ww-ii.html
As well as the brew ship there was also road-mobile field brewing.
Credible second-round draught capability is indispensable for any major power.