Rubbery figures

Yesterday's story about Top Glove in Malaysia making lots of money from the heightened demand for medical rubber gloves made me realise that I didn't really know where most of the world's rubber now comes from.   The perfect question for the internet!

World Atlas has this table:

I wouldn't have guessed that China now produces more rubber than Malaysia. 

Actually, those figures are just for 2013, and I see that other sites say that the top three are Thailand, Indonesia, then Malaysia (and the amount produced by countries 3 to 6 in the table above are pretty close - so maybe 2013 was just a bad year for Malaysian rubber plantations for some reason?)

Anyway, not sure I knew this bit of rubber trivia:

Although the Hevea tree is native to South America, cultivation there is limited due to the high prevalence of leaf blight diseases and other natural predators.

 See - globalisation is good.

I might have guessed that the rubber glove industry doing well would mean that the price of natural rubber would be holding up.   But I guess it only uses a tiny amount in the big picture.  Hence The Association of Natural Rubber Producing Countries has this bit of not so great news:

The key factor behind the abnormal fall in the prices of natural rubber (NR) since mid-January is the huge drop in the world demand caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The world consumption of NR dropped by 15.7% during H1 2020 (Jan-Jun 2020) as per the revised estimates. In China, the country accounting 40% of the world demand, the consumption fell by 20.1% during H1 2020.

It is relieving to observe that the worst is almost over as far as the world consumption of NR is concerned. The world consumption is now set to enter positive territory by increasing 1.4%, year-on-year, during Q3 2020 (Jul-Sep).  The consumption in China, in particular, is expected to increase by 0.8%, year-on-year, during the same quarter. Although the International Monitory Fund a week ago has further scaled down the global economic outlook for 2020, to -4.9% growth from -3.0% projected in April, the consumption sector of NR has almost returned to normal with the exception of a few countries. 

Now that I am on a rubber bender, so to speak, reading up on the history of the product, I see that Brazil was the victim of, well, if not industrial espionage, certainly undercover dirty business (there are a lot of similar examples from other products, over the centuries):  

From 1850 to 1920, businessmen were pushing entrepreneurs and traders to increase the amount of rubber extracted from Amazonian trees. During this period, the Brazilian Amazon was the only source of rubber and they controlled the price, making rubber expensive. At the same time, as more and more industry was developing in Europe and USA, more uses for rubber were being found [4]. Rubber was such an important material for Brazilians that they prohibited the export of rubber seeds or seedlings. However, in 1876, H. A. Wickham managed to smuggle 70,000 rubber seeds, hidden in banana leaves, and brought them to England. From those seeds, only 1,900 seedlings survived and were sent to Malaysia to start the first rubber plantations in Asia. This marked the beginning of the end for Brazil as the world’s main rubber producer. 

Monday, kind of depressing, stuff

*  So even the most corrupt Attorney General we've seen in a lifetime thought Trump's commutation of Stone would be corrupt?   Mitt Romney's reaction makes me like him, and Mormons, all the more.  There is just no debating this as corruption of historic proportions. 

*  Saw a tweet indicating the thickness of Arctic ice at the moment is pointing to a very low figure for ice extent by September.   Really looks like it may break the 2012 record - which in a way is not a bad thing, in terms of focussing the public's attention on global warming:

*  Remember I posted recently how I had started watching some off beat travel vlogs on Youtube by middle aged English guy "Bald and Bankrupt"?   On the weekend, he posted a short video explaining that he had, foolishly by his own admission, travelled to Serbia after the start of COVID 19 and caught it there.   Became very ill, was hospitalised, got to watch other patients dying around him, still feels very weak, and remarked how it seems to have even affected the, um, normal operation of his penis (!).   The guy is, I think, 45, so it's a cautionary tale of how ill it can make even the relatively young.   Oh - I see it seems he took down the video?  Or is it back up?  Dunno what's going on.  Also, it seems he has been popular for a long time - he seems very well known on Reddit.

*  If you want one, sort of, good thing that has come out of COVID-19:  if you had shares in the Malaysian company Top Glove, the biggest medical glove manufacturer in the world, you would be doing very well:



I'm sort of happy to see a Malaysian company doing well - at the political level, on the other hand, they're still jerks:

Six journalists including five Australians are being interrogated by Malaysian authorities who have accused them of sedition and defamation after the broadcast of a documentary about migrant workers in Kuala Lumpur during Covid-19.

Debating debates

So, Jazz Shaw at Hot Air thinks that it's Democrats who are fearful of Biden debating Trump:

It’s a highly uncomfortable subject for Democrats and their media allies, but it’s also a glaringly obvious truth. Nobody supporting Joe Biden wants to see him go into a debate with Donald Trump. Biden can barely manage reading a teleprompter in front of a camera in his own basement these days, even if he has multiple chances to get the words right. And his “aw, shucks” Uncle Joe routine probably won’t look very impressive when he has to answer a barbed attack. The fact is that Trump is just 100% Trump every minute he’s on camera. This has many liberals frightened of the prospect of a presidential debate between these two.

I think this is delusional.

As I have said before, in 2016 Trump got away with mouthing general motherhood statements about America and playing up to the Right's decades long vilification of Hillary Clinton.

He cannot take the same approach against Biden, a white male for whom polling is indicating Republican thrown mud is not sticking.  Trump has been showing increasing emotional fragility in his tweets, and there is a wealth of broken promises and lies made while in the job that can be listed against him.  Yes, he can and will say black is white, and his cult followers may believe him, but it will not likely work with those that he needs to swing back to him to win another election.

And, of course, people are exaggerating the significance of verbal stumbles make by Biden.

I had read that the Trump team had been asking for more debates, not fewer; and that this is normally a tactic taken by the underdog.   I think that this is just a sign of bravado on the part of team Trump, and that there will be people who are thinking the same way I am - that Trump's at risk of falling apart in debates against Biden, and they should be looking at a way of getting out of them.

Update:   someone wrote this in WAPO about Trump and debates on 26 June -

History also gives him reason to be wary. Sitting presidents — among them, Jimmy Carter in 1980, Ronald Reagan in 1984 and Barack Obama in 2012 — often stumble in their first debates because they arrived both overconfident and out of practice.

This year, the stakes for Trump could hardly be higher. His poll numbers are dropping, and there are signs that even Trump’s bluster-loving base is starting to have its doubts about him, now that it is seeing how he handles himself in a real crisis.

So as he looks ahead to the debates, the embattled president might want to focus on winning the old-fashioned way: by studying the issues, showing up prepared and commanding the facts.

That last paragraph is hilariously improbable.

A very obvious point

And surely their [White House press secretaries] salary is not high enough for this kind of credibility debasement?:

American failure

A good detailed piece in New York Magazine on the American failure to control COVID 19.

The only bit I am annoyed with is this:

With the exception, perhaps, of New Zealand, practically speaking, across the entire west, nobody has managed to properly and preemptively prepare for this pandemic.

I think Australia deserves some credit.

I more or less agree with this, though:

The first failure is one of hubris: Western nations looking on a disease outbreak in Asia and feeling protected by a sense of cultural superiority and wealth, and disregarding the emergency response in China and other nations as a reflection not of the seriousness of the disease but of an imagined, innate conformist authoritarianism. The second is a bit harder to name, but it does seem peculiarly American — a pattern of failure following failure, with each successive failure normalized by the last, which should have shaken us out of complacency.

Update:  more on the American problem.  Or should we just be calling it - the American problem caused by the American Right?: 

Ohio state Rep. Nino Vitale is urging his constituents not to get tested for the coronavirus, flouting advice from health officials — and from another Republican lawmaker, Gov. Mike DeWine.

"This is what happens when people go crazy and get tested," Vitale wrote on Facebook this week. "STOP GETTING TESTED!"

Vitale was evidently incensed by an order from DeWine and state health officials that people in seven Ohio counties with severe outbreaks must wear face coverings when out in public. That order took effect Wednesday.

Vitale shared an altered graphic about the order — in that version, there is an extra message at the bottom:

"!! NEVER GET TESTED !!"

About those Shellenberger claims

Michael Tobis, who has always been worth reading on climate change, has a detailed assessment at Real Climate of the highly dubious "facts few people know" by Shellenberger.  

Good stuff.

May help explain the 21st century becoming the Asian century

Over in Korea:

But in the USA:

Update:  the hypothesis - Americans' love of individualism and liberty to believe anything is ill-equipped to deal with the paranoid conspiracy and disinformation spreading effect of the communication-system-on-steroids that is the internet;  so Asian communitarianism just has to sit it out while the USA weakens itself with self-seeded stupidity.  

What a surprise...

Such a complicated virus

Of course, I can safely predict this will not influence Adam Creighton or Sky News at all:

Doctors may be missing signs of serious and potentially fatal brain disorders triggered by coronavirus, as they emerge in mildly affected or recovering patients, scientists have warned.

Neurologists are on Wednesday publishing details of more than 40 UK Covid-19 patients whose complications ranged from brain inflammation and delirium to nerve damage and stroke. In some cases, the neurological problem was the patient’s first and main symptom.

The cases, published in the journal Brain, revealed a rise in a life-threatening condition called acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (Adem), as the first wave of infections swept through Britain. At UCL’s Institute of Neurology, Adem cases rose from one a month before the pandemic to two or three per week in April and May. One woman, who was 59, died of the complication.

A dozen patients had inflammation of the central nervous system, 10 had brain disease with delirium or psychosis, eight had strokes and a further eight had peripheral nerve problems, mostly diagnosed as Guillain-Barré syndrome, an immune reaction that attacks the nerves and causes paralysis. It is fatal in 5% of cases.

“We’re seeing things in the way Covid-19 affects the brain that we haven’t seen before with other viruses,” said Michael Zandi, a senior author on the study and a consultant at the institute and University College London Hospitals NHS foundation trust.

“What we’ve seen with some of these Adem patients, and in other patients, is you can have severe neurology, you can be quite sick, but actually have trivial lung disease,” he added.

 Update:  yes, here's Adam:

He's talking a UK report that the number of total deaths in the last couple of weeks there are below the 5 year average for the time of year - almost certainly because COVID "brought forward" the deaths of a lot of elderly people.   Has he ever read anything about the uncertainty of ongoing ill health for a number of people who didn't die from it? 

If anyone is interested...

....in comments in moderation which I won't release, Graeme is really going off like (as they say) a frog in a sock about criticism of Joe McCarthy, because (of course) Jews. 

Praising Rosehaven

Yeah, I watched the first episode of the fourth season last night and thought it was still really good.  It felt very psychologically true - the way Daniel does not feel bad about his "mutual decoupling" from his girlfriend until he finds out she is moving onto to a likely new boyfriend.   I don't find Luke McGregor all that funny when doing "bits" on The Weekly, but as a comedic actor, he's fine.  [Also, was it just my TV, but last night he seemed paler than ever.  I almost feel the need to put sunglasses on, he is so white.]  Celia Pacquola is just perfect in her role.

I see that Luke Buckmaster at the Guardian likes the show too, and he has written a lengthy explanation of why it works which I think is about right.   It's funny to see in comments following that there are people who cannot stand it - including one guy who says it's terrible because its paints a false good picture of Tasmanians!  

COVID 19 infections and deaths

An article at Vox looks at the question of why American infection rate is way up, but deaths are down.   Seems a good explanation.

Just too stupid and paranoid to engage with

I see the latest polemic sweetheart over at Catallaxy is Tucker Carlson - they swoon over his editorials which are encouraging the paranoid view of the Left (with barely concealed racism) at a close to McCarthy-ite level.

In fact, I had cause recently to look again at the famous 1964 essay "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" and it quotes Joe McCarthy talking in 1951:

How can we account for our present situation unless we believe that men high in this government are concerting to deliver us to disaster? This must be the product of a great conspiracy on a scale so immense as to dwarf any previous such venture in the history of man. A conspiracy of infamy so black that, which it is finally exposed, its principals shall be forever deserving of the maledictions of all honest men. . . . What can be made of this unbroken series of decisions and acts contributing to the strategy of defeat? They cannot be attributed to incompetence.

And let's compare that to a post by crackpot wannabe historian CL at Catallaxy today, wherein he compares efforts to remove Thomas Beckett's name from some manuscript:

I know. Comparing Donald Trump to St Thomas Becket might be a stretch comparable to that asked of one of the portly President’s Mar-a-Lago polos but the parallel that interests me is Henry II’s quartet of assassins and Barack Obama’s equally say-no-more-savvy knights. “Make sure you look over things and have the right people on it.” They knew what he meant. It was remarkable enough that a pandemic came along to cover up the biggest political scandal in US history. The Russia Hoax is now even more hazy following a nationwide race war incited by the media on behalf of the Democrats. Will the swordsmen get away with it? Ignore the distractions – riots and virus – because that is still the real test of whether the United States goes on as originally constituted.

Actually, defending Joe McCarthy is another favourite past time at Catallaxy.  Steve Kates had a whole post about that recently, but CL has done it too.  

 As with all of the Trump endorsing Right, they prefer to believe luminaries such as Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and a bunch of self serving Republican politicians over the actual multiple intelligence services knowledge that Russia did interfere in the last election, and the public knowledge that Trump and his minions were rushing to them hoping to get their help.  

Interestingly, I don't think I have seen a single reference at Catallaxy to the intelligence services reporting that they believe Putin's minions are paying Afghanis to kill US troops.   If it's Russia, and if it hurts Trump, they have no interest at all.

They are too dumb, and too far into the culture war conspiracy rabbit hole, to bother engaging with.  

Update:  over at NPR, some interesting bits by the author of a new biography of McCarthy:

His crusade was launched one night in February 1950, in an out-of-the-way community, Wheeling, W.Va., and Joe McCarthy was there to deliver the famous Republican speech on the night of Abraham Lincoln's birthday. ... Joe McCarthy went there that night with the briefcase that contained two speeches and he wasn't sure which one to give until the last minute. One was a snoozer of a speech on national housing policy, and had he delivered that speech that night, you and I wouldn't be here 70 years talking about him.

Instead, he pulled the other speech out of his briefcase and it was a barn burner on anti-communism and it was the speech that launched his crusade. ... I think it was a matter of opportunism when he started out this crusade. He was looking for any issue that would give him the limelight. He wasn't sure until the last second which issue that might be, only when he got the response that he did that night, which was within two days, every newspaper in America put Joe McCarthy and his charges of 205 spies in the State Department, they put those stories on Page 1. Joe McCarthy was off and running and he never turned back....

At the beginning McCarthy ... clearly didn't believe what he was saying. And he had fun with it, waving around the sheets, saying he had this list in his hand when he knew he didn't have a list in his hand. Calling up everybody from J. Edgar Hoover to friends in the media after he created this firestorm, saying, "You've got to help me come up with some evidence to prove the things that I've said." He was the cynic. He was an opportunist, and he knew that he was embellishing, if not outright lying. But by the end, I am convinced that Joe McCarthy actually believed his own rhetoric. If you say often enough that there are spies in the State Department or that refugees coming across the border are ruining America, if you say it often enough, you might actually begin to believe it. And I'm convinced by the end Joe McCarthy was a true believer in his own opportunistically created cause.

Yeah, someone really deserving of being a Right wing hero...

The problem with herd immunity

A safe prediction:  this will have no effect on Adam Creighton, Andrew Bolt, David Leyonhjelm or any other number of "no lockdown" advocates:

A Spanish study has cast doubt on the feasibility of herd immunity as a way of tackling the coronavirus pandemic.

The study of more than 60,000 people estimates that around just 5% of the Spanish population has developed antibodies, the medical journal the Lancet reported.

Herd immunity is achieved when enough people become immune to a virus to stop its spread.

Around 70% to 90% of a population needs to be immune to protect the uninfected.

And it would seem that the reason why herd immunity may be such a problem for this weird virus:

Herd immunity can be reached either by widespread vaccination or if enough of the population is exposed to an infection and recovers. If enough people are immune to a disease, it is unlikely to keep spreading from person to person. Letting the coronavirus infection run and risking lots of people getting very sick with it is not an option - it would put too many lives in danger.

And currently, there is no vaccine for coronavirus - even though hundreds are in development. The challenge is to make a jab that provides enough protection. It needs to train the body's immune system to learn and remember how to make antibodies that can fight off coronavirus.

Scientists are concerned that this "memory" might be too short-lived though, given the nature of the disease. While some people who catch coronavirus develop protective antibodies, experts do not yet know how long these last.

Common colds are caused by similar viruses and the body's immune response fades quickly to those.

The "too stupid to brief" President

If you can get to it, have a read of this WAPO piece:  Donald Trump, the unbriefable President.

Some parts:

But Trump does not read the PDB. Or much of anything else, a former senior White House official told me. As his presidency began, it was an open question: Would Trump even bother to sit for CIA briefings? He didn’t, at first, and did so only after Mike Pompeo, then his CIA director, agreed to be there. Trump’s distrust of the intelligence services was stoked by their conclusion that Russia had intervened in the election on his behalf. Given his hostility toward the intelligence community, and his Twitter-sized attention span, Trump would be a challenge for any briefer.

Trump’s first briefer was Ted Gistaro, a widely respected career CIA officer on loan to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), where he oversaw the PDB. Gistaro, who has a calm demeanor and a healthy sense of humor, got almost nowhere — so the briefing team devised a show and tell. Pictures of New York City landmarks, agency briefers thought, might help Trump grasp threats. In an effort to explain the scale of North Korea’s nuclear program, the CIA built a model of the Hermit Kingdom’s underground weapons facility and put a miniature Statue of Liberty inside it.

But Trump preferred his own sources. In July 2017, he batted away the CIA’s conclusion that the North Koreans had developed an intercontinental missile that might soon be capable of reaching U.S. soil. How could the president be certain the agency was wrong? Because, he said, Vladimir Putin told him so.

And this:

Trump’s current briefer, Beth Sanner, a highly regarded, 30-year CIA veteran, has endured a bumpier ride than Gistaro. When news broke that the alleged Russian bounties were included in the PDB, the Trump administration issued its usual denials and obfuscations. First, the president claimed the so-called reports were fake news. Then, he told Fox News that the intelligence was not credible enough to be in the PDB. Then the story changed again: If the intelligence was in the PDB, the White House said, his briefer didn’t bring it to Trump’s attention. 

It wasn’t the first time the White House had thrown Sanner under the bus. (In an early May tweet, Trump blamed his briefer for not sounding alarmed when she first spoke to him about the novel coronavirus in January.) But if Sanner had been routinely derelict in her duties, why hadn’t Haspel removed or replaced her? And why hadn’t national security adviser Robert O’Brien — who, along with other top aides, receives the PDB daily and presumably reads it — gone into the Oval Office, shut the door and briefed the president himself?

The answer is simple. The president is unbriefable. He will not listen to anything he does not want to hear.

Huawei out

The SMH reports:

Huawei has lost the anglosphere. The telecommunications giant that came to symbolise China's economic rise and the risks of its unique brand of state-linked corporations will no longer have a role in building Britain's 5G network or that of any Five Eyes partner.

The sudden backflip by Britain's security services on Monday over national security concerns is part of a much broader geopolitical play involving the US and Australia. Canada has effectively locked out the Shenzen-based company through its major carriers signing contracts with Nordic firms Ericsson and Nokia. New Zealand's former national carrier, now known as Spark, opted for Samsung over Huawei for critical components in March.

I didn't know this:

The cost of the British decision is likely to surge into the billions. 5G sits on top of 4G, rather than replaces it. Huawei was a key builder of its 4G network and no two providers are compatible. Excluding them from 5G will mean replacing the old technology with the product of another company.

I suppose China only has itself to blame, given its treatment of Hong Kong. 

But, you know, I still wonder if 5G  in its entirety is an upgrade that does not really have a market.    

Approaching peak Guardian

I am pretty sure there would be many amusing, derisive comments about this article at The Guardian with a very click-baity title:

'Upward-thrusting buildings ejaculating into the sky' – do cities have to be so sexist?

 if comments were allowed.  But they don't seem to be.  Pity.   (By the way, I can imagine Coalition politicians, with some justification, using this as an example of why the government is justified in increasing the cost of Humanities courses.) 

Author war

This article in The Atlantic about why "Millennials" are upset with JK Rowling not slavishly sharing their endorsement of transsexual activism is pretty good, actually. 

I think it fair to say that it suggests that Harry Potter fandom into adulthood is a bit immature, as is being horrified that a member of an older generation does not share your outlook on an issue with complete affinity. 

It is clear that many transsexuals upset with her do not do nuance.   It's full of hyperbolic "why does she want to hurt me so much?  This is devastating."    They have a huge tendency to generalise from their own experience in ways which allow for (being generous here!) little in the way of contradiction, or the consideration of other evidence.   For example,  comments on Twitter along the lines "I knew I was a man/woman at age X, how dare she suggest some trans teens seem to 'suddenly' realise they are trans. They probably knew for years, like me, but just never told anyone."

At least I see that there is considerable push back on Twitter now about this in support of Rowling.    

Oh look - record rainfall causes death and destruction in Japan - again

For the last 5 years or so, during the Japanese summer, I've been posting news about record rainfall there, the resultant floods, landslides and deaths.  (My search bar will find the posts for you.)   Here's the latest entry:

Luckily, Michael Shellenberger has written that book which can reassure the victims that natural disasters like this are not increasing.   This must all be in the imagination of Japanese residents:

An average of almost 1,500 landslides rocked Japan every year during the past decade, marking an increase of almost 50 percent on the previous 10 years, according to a government report endorsed by the Cabinet on Friday.

The trend reflected the rise in torrential rainfall due to global warming, said the white paper on land, infrastructure and transport, which called for restrictions on the use of at-risk land and relocating residents to safer areas.

The average number of landslides per year was 1,006 between 2000 and 2009, but jumped 46.7 percent to 1,476 between 2010 and 2019. This compares with 1,027 between 1990 and 1999.

Downpours of 50 millimeters or more per hour in the past decade were recorded 1.4 times more frequently than between 1976 and 1985.

I never really did trust Shellenberger, and his turn to the Lomborg/Pielke style of environmental half truth advocacy, all stoked by a "if you don't agree with me as to what should be done, I'd prefer to create political doubt that anything need be done at all" attitude, has given me some retrospective justification for never taking him very seriously.

His reaction to the questions posed to him by The Guardian really does seem a bit nutty, if you ask me.  Ketan Joshi's post about his odd behaviour is good.

She could be right

Uh-oh for universities

At The Conversation:

Only 40% of students in China who previously intended to study overseas still plan to, while just under 50% of those who had studied overseas plan to return to their study after the borders reopen.

These are results from our unpublished survey of 1,012 students we conducted in China between June 5 and 15. We asked them whether they would continue with their plan to study abroad post COVID-19.

These findings are not surprising. Due to growing tensions between China and the West – even before COVID-19 – middle-class parents in China had become increasingly concerned about the safety of, and possible discrimination against, their children abroad, including in the US and Australia.

Doesn't everyone reasonable have conflicted feelings about this?:  while big fee paying Chinese students in our tertiary system helps keep Universities pumping (and I do like healthy universities), it is obviously potentially(/actually?) corrupting of academic standards.  But in the longer term, one would hope that their exposure to democratic countries and the relative freedoms within them is in our interest, if it makes our system look more appealing - and less worthy of being the target of drastic geo-political conflict.

And I really don't get Scott Morrison's bout of sabre rattling, just as I didn't get his wannabe Trumpism about blaming China for COVID-19.   Why go out of your way to annoy China right at this time - it's hardly going to help kickstart the economic recovery that he'll be desperate to show before the next election. It was always on the cards that the USA would have a harder time containing COVID 19 compared to Australia, and Trump and his cult followers should be of much greater discrimination concern to parents of students than what could happen in the streets of Australia.   Hence, I would have thought, Morrison could have made his angle "China - see how good we are at containing illness and providing a safe space for both students and trade".

Instead we get "look at me, mini-Trump of the South Pacific".

Wagner and Tolkien and the Ring connection

Given that I care little for Tolkien, and gave even less thought to Wagner until his Cycle was coming to my city and I was convinced by someone on the radio that to see it is "a life changing experience", I never really pondered the question of how derivative one Ring was of the other.

So, I am happy to have just read a discussion of this from The New Yorker in 2003.   Some quotes, but you should go read the whole thing:

Tolkien refused to admit that his ring had anything to do with Wagner’s. “Both rings were round, and there the resemblance ceased,” he said. But he certainly knew his Wagner, and made an informal study of “Die Walküre” not long before writing the novels. The idea of the omnipotent ring must have come directly from Wagner; nothing quite like it appears in the old sagas. True, the Volsunga Saga features a ring from a cursed hoard, but it possesses no executive powers. In the “Nibelungenlied” saga, there is a magic rod that could be used to rule all, but it just sits around. Wagner combined these two objects into the awful amulet that is forged by Alberich from the gold of the Rhine. When Wotan steals the ring for his own godly purposes, Alberich places a curse upon it, and in so doing he speaks of “the lord of the ring as the slave of the ring.” Such details make it hard to believe Tolkien’s disavowals. Admit it, J.R.R., you used to run around brandishing a walking stick and singing “Nothung! Nothung!” like every other besotted Oxford lad.

It is surely no accident that the notion of a Ring of Power surfaced in the late nineteenth century, when technologies of mass destruction were appearing on the horizon. Pre-modern storytellers had no frame of reference for such things. Power, for them, was not a baton that could be passed from one person to another; those with power were born with power, and those without, without. By Wagner’s time, it was clear that a marginal individual would soon be able to unleash terror with the flick of a wrist. Oscar Wilde issued a memorable prediction of the war of the future: “A chemist on each side will approach the frontier with a bottle.” Nor did the ring have to be understood only in terms of military science. Mass media now allowed for the worldwide destruction of an idea, a reputation, a belief system, a culture. In a hundred ways, men were forging things over which they had no control, and which ended up controlling them. 

 Now here is a crucial take on what I might now take to calling "the real Ring" to annoy Tolkien fans:

There is a widespread conception of Wagner’s cycle as a bombastic nationalistic saga in which blond-haired heroes triumph over dwarfish, vaguely Jewish enemies. Wagner unquestionably left himself open to this interpretation, but the “Ring” is not at all what it seems. It is in fact a prolonged assault on the very idea of worldly power, the cult of the monumental—everything that we think of as “Wagnerian.” At the beginning, the god Wotan is looking to expand his realm. But every step he takes to assert himself over the affairs of others, to make his will reality, leads inexorably to his downfall. He is marked from the outset, and the ring becomes a symbol of the corruption of his authority. Tolkien believes in the forces of good, in might for right. Wagner dismisses all that—he had an anarchist streak early on—and sees redemption only in love.

When Tolkien stole Wagner’s ring, he discarded its most significant property—that it can be forged only by one who has forsworn love. (Presumably, Sauron gave up carnal pleasures when he became an all-seeing eye at the top of a tower, but it’s hard to say for certain. Maybe he gets a kick out of the all-seeing bit.) The sexual opacity of Tolkien’s saga has often been noted, and the films faithfully replicate it. Desirable people appear onscreen, and one is given to understand that at some point they have had or will have had relations, but their entanglements are incidental to the plot. It is the little ring that brings out the lust in men and in hobbits. And what, honestly, do people want in it? Are they envious of Sauron’s bling-bling life style up on top of Barad-dûr? Tolkien mutes the romance of medieval stories and puts us out in self-abnegating, Anglican-modernist, T. S. Eliot territory. The ring is a never-ending nightmare to which people are drawn for no obvious reason. It generates lust and yet gives no satisfaction.

This is fantastic!  It's giving me a whole new explanation as to why I didn't respond to Lord of the Rings - because it makes no, um, meta-emotional sense, to coin a phrase.  Back to what the real Ring - heh - is about:

Wagner, by contrast, uses the ring to shine a light on various intense, confused, all-too-human relationships. Alberich forges the ring only after the Rhine maidens turn away his advances. Wotan becomes obsessed with it as a consequence of his loveless marriage; he buries himself in his work. Even after he sees through his delusions, and achieves a quasi-Buddhist acceptance of his powerlessness, he has nothing else to lean on, not even his Gandalfian staff, and wanders off into the night. Siegfried and Brünnhilde, lost in their love for each other, succeed in remaking the ring as an ordinary trinket, a symbol of their devotion. They assert their earthbound passion against Wotan’s godly world, and thus bring it down. The apparatus of myth itself—the belief in higher and lower powers, hierarchies, orders—crumbles with the walls of Valhalla. Perhaps what angered Tolkien most was that Wagner wrote a sixteen-hour mythic opera and then, at the end, blew up the foundations of myth.

Cool.

Studying up on the Ring

Well, seeing I am on my way to 15 odd hours of Wagnerian opera in a few months time, I should probably start getting a better idea of what its about and how it's been interpreted over the years, and why it seems particularly appealing (according to this very interesting article) to politicians (and not just Nazi ones.)   I didn't know GBS was a fan, for example:

...the first point to make is that Wagner’s music has inspired political interpretation since it was first performed. The 35-year-old anarchist who befriended Bakunin and took part in the Dresden Uprising of 1849 was 63 when the Ring cycle was first performed. By then, Marx felt able to mock the former firebrand as a “musician of state”, a court composer remote from the social realities of the age; deaf to the first whispers of modernity. Yet the notion that the Ring is essentially a critique of capitalism has always had its adherents – most obviously George Bernard Shaw, whose The Perfect Wagnerite (1898) declares the Ring to be a dramatised allegory of “shareholders, tall hats, white-lead factories and industrial and political questions looked at from the socialistic and humanitarian points of view”. In this scheme of equivalence, Alberich is the wicked capitalist and Nibelheim his industrial Hades. Siegfried shimmers into being as an avatar of Bakunin, the great rebel whose struggle for freedom ends in defeat.

Well, given it went on to become a Nazi favourite, it's a wonder they haven't been duels in the street over conflicting interpretations.  (Actually, I suspect there may have been.)

On the perhaps more mundane matter of staging, the production I am (hopefully) going to see is said to be a "digital" production:  

Towering, moving digital panels create an immersive virtual world. Astonishing costumes and props imagine an unknown future.  

Given that the QPAC performance space is not the largest on the planet, perhaps that will work well, but I would be curious to see a more traditional production, too.  This article goes into detail about the history of its staging, with this amusing bit:

From 1896 on (when Bayreuth finally mounted its second Ring ), critics took issue with the fixed, semaphoric style of acting Cosima imposed there, which many thought more forced and unnatural than what her late husband's actors had done twenty years before. In 1889 Shaw wrote, "Bayreuth has chosen the law of death. Its boast is that it alone knows what was done last time, therefore it alone has the pure and complete tradition, or, as I prefer to put it, that it alone is in a position to strangle Wagner's lyric dramas note by note, bar by bar, nuance by nuance ." In 1896, he judged the Bayreuth style of acting to be an amateurish display of tableau-vivant attitudes, the striking of stupid poses by singers who were often little more than "animated beer casks." (From earliest days, Ring tourists mocked the girth of "youthful" Siegfrieds and "enchanting" Brünnhildes. Romain Rolland, at Bayreuth in 1896, described "the vast padded bulk" of a Sieglinde: "From bust to backside she is as wide as a city wall.")

Forget your downtrodden Humanities degrees

Instead, Australia should introduce something like this:

Japan university awards first-ever ninja studies degree 

Japan has produced its first ninja studies graduate after Genichi Mitsuhashi spent two years honing his martial arts skills and absorbing the finer traditions of the feudal martial arts agents.

The 45-year-old completed the master’s course at Mie University in central Japan, the region considered the home of the ninja.

In addition to researching historical documents, Mitsuhashi said he took the practical aspect of being a ninja to heart.

“I read that ninjas worked as farmers in the morning and trained in martial arts in the afternoon,” he said.

So Mitsuhashi grew vegetables and worked on his martial arts techniques, in addition to copious ninja study in the classroom.

As far as our government's policy to fiddle with the cost of going to University, I was surprised to see that the two most cost reduced courses are maths and agriculture.  I can understand the need for more maths teachers, but there is a problem with not enough tertiary qualified farmers?

As for the other changes:  I am not really bothered by the fee increase for some areas of oversupply (we could do with a lot less law graduates who have little hope of finding a job - not to mention every university under the sun setting up a law school because it is relatively cheap to do), but I am bit annoyed at the way all possible Humanities studies have been lumped together. 

Why pro-mask now?

I would still bet money on the reason Fox News has started to promote mask wearing is because of concern about being the target of litigation.

This article argues that such litigation has low chance of success - but I would not put it past litigious America to try it, and still it would risk costing the network in legal fees and embarrassing publicity.

Republicans on the coming dis-aster

Paul Waldman at WAPO looks again at the stupid Republican/conservative rhetoric about how Democrat control of government would be a communistic disaster:

Republicans are getting very worried about what might happen if Democrats win big this November. The polls look bad for President Trump, Democrats enjoy a lead in the battle for the House as big as the one just before the 2018 blowout, and the GOP’s Senate majority looks increasingly imperiled.

Faced with that kind of situation, some are spending less time arguing that their policy preferences are superior to Democrats’ policy preferences, and have instead gone to apocalyptic predictions of catastrophe should the Democrats take control. Here’s a striking one from conservative writer Rod Dreher:

You can smell the panic. And he’s not alone.

If your memory stretches all the way back to 2009, that kind of thing may sound familiar. When Barack Obama — a center-left president who spent years trying to win Republican support for his agenda — took office, many on the right absolutely lost their minds with fantasies of oppression and dictatorship.

Republicans said over and over again that Obama was a “tyrant,” when all that was happening was that he was enacting the policies he ran on. As Jon Stewart said in April 2009 after running through a litany of conservatives decrying Obama’s tyranny, “I think you might be confusing tyranny with losing."

“When the guy that you disagree with gets elected, he’s probably going to do things you disagree with,” Stewart continued. “Now you’re in the minority. It’s supposed to taste like a s--t taco.”

But Republicans never seemed to get their minds around that idea. It was never enough to say “This is a very bad thing Obama is doing.” He had to be a tyrant who was moments away from rounding us up, imposing martial law, and putting us in FEMA concentration camps.

How on Earth do we get the American Right to stop this catastrophising BS?    Where are the Republican who will decry paranoia and put national unity and goodwill over political scaremongering?   (OK, there are some -  look at those campaigning that they will vote for Biden.)  But how can they overcome the sick feedback loop between Right wing media making money from encouraging paranoid conspiracy amongst the grass roots, and the politicians who see their endorsement as essential? 

Update:  what a sick worry this is -

GOP Candidates Open To QAnon Conspiracy Theory Advance In Congressional Races

As predicted, Trump takes the worst possible line on the Russia story

This response by Trump makes  no political sense whatsoever:

Congressional Republicans who blew a two year fuse trying to prove that Obama and Hillary did not have American soldiers' interests at heart in Benghazi now have a President who is openly saying that the briefings they are getting directly from intelligence sources about the danger American troops are in is a hoax.

I reckon that the low regard most of them already hold (in private) for Trump as their useful idiot will plummet to new levels.

I said the other day that the worst outcome would be for Trump to say he spoke to Putin who denied it, and that's the end of the matter as far as he is concerned.   But this apparent attempt to even pre-empt that he would even need to talk to Putin about it is arguably worse.   It shows that if he doesn't like the way he found out about something because it makes him look bad, he will simply go into complete denial instead of doing anything responsible.  

What line are his Fox News puppet masters taking on this?   Because this is going to be next to impossible to spin.

Greg Sargent's piece in WAPO explains in more detail:

Trump is now defending himself not just by claiming he wasn’t briefed on that intelligence, or just by contesting the significance of that intelligence. Instead, he’s declaring that the entire story simply doesn’t exist — that is, he’s suggesting no intelligence ever actually indicated anything like this.

Yet this defense is itself deeply self-incriminating. It only underscores what critics are saying — that at minimum, Trump should be taking this intelligence seriously and trying to get to the bottom of what it actually does indicate, even if the worst interpretation proves wrong....

There is a great deal we don’t know about the Russian bounties, and we should be exceptionally cautious. But one thing we can state right now is that the president of the United States should be taking a lot more of an interest in this and should be saying publicly that he is doing so....

Even the most charitable interpretation here is incriminating. If you stipulate that Trump is merely demonstrating an instinct to protect himself politically — and is just lashing out at the “deep state” or whatever — then this instinct is itself preventing him from seeking a full accounting. Such a narcissistic reflex itself ensures that Trump won’t act for the good of the country.

 Update:

Jordan and the Nazis

A long article criticising how (and why) conservative hero Jordan Peterson has played loose with the facts about Hitler and his party has appeared in Haaretz.   Found via Bernard Keane on Twitter.

It's funny how the conservative Catholics and Jews who comment at Catallaxy have been Peterson admirers.   They are the ones who most need to read it:  I already thought Peterson was an unreliable flake.

It is done

I explained back in August that I was tempted to leap into opera not by dipping my toe into just any kid's pool of the genre, but by taking a running leap off a Germanic mountain and into the depths of the Rhine via the Ring Cycle.

I thought the production would be cancelled - the director is Chinese, but maybe he is already in Australia?   I would have guessed that some of the performers live overseas and their presence would be in doubt too.

Yet, they are still selling tickets, and in fact there are very few of the cheapest left.   (No, I am not spending $2000 plus dollars on this experiment in how much cultural enrichment I can endure over 4 nights.)

So, it is done.  I have bought a ticket, and can now start considering an appropriate horned costume, if I become an instant fan and want to come in cosplay for the last one.

As it happens, there is still a seat available next to me, if anyone is going to be in Brisbane in November, virus free, and offers to nudge me awake if my head is drooping. 

Hoyotoho!

Irony alert

Sinclair Davidson defending Facebook today:

Facebook does not amplify hate etc. Those people being ‘hateful’ on your Facebook page are the people you have chosen to ‘friend’ – by definition they are your friends, your family, your associates.

A few posts later, by his former RMIT buddy Steve Kates, referencing Democrats:

These lice will do anything to win the election, but what will be left of America if they do?

OK, I didn't have to "friend" Kates at all to read that bit of Nazi level dehumanisation of his political enemies (ironically, from a person I have been told in comments - by Sinclair? - is Jewish).   So am I allowed to think that Catallaxy amplifies hate by friends of Sinclair?   Yes, yes I am. 

Update:  Sinclair continues to host racist Mick Gold Coast, I see.  

Insult the host or his besties who he jokes around with, and you're banned from commenting there.  Post clearly racist comments repeatedly and they'll be quietly deleted, but (unless it's about Jews) never face a ban.   That's how Sinclair rolls. 
 

Things watched

*  I haven't finished it yet, but gee, the second series of Korean zombie, old timey fashion, and palace intrigue series Kingdom has been really good - really well made action, plot surprises (not always welcome ones, actually) and (for its kind of show) well acted.   My only criticism is that it should come with a map - the geography of where the zombie hoards are chasing the heroes to gets very unclear.  

* Have started watching the Belgium made (yes, another foreign show) slightly science fiction-y present day apocalypse show Into the Night, and I'm enjoying it so far.   It has a pleasing narrative push to it which comes inherently from the scenario - the sun has gone rogue and started shooting out gamma rays which kills life at sunrise, and one passenger plane - an Airbus 320 I think (it is Europe, after all) -  has to keep flying West to avoid the sun catching up with it.   Not entirely plausible, in more than one respect, but I hope it keeps up the quality of the first couple of episodes.   Here's a positive review that seems accurate to me.

* Also just started watching Tiger King.  Yeah, it's good, the first episode, but I do get the feeling that the story to be told shouldn't take 8 episodes.   I am anticipating tiring of it.

* On Youtube, recently discovered the idiosyncratic travel vlogger Bald and Bankrupt.  He's a very unusual character, naturally good at the narration to camera on a selfie stick that is his thing (no beautiful drone footage on this channel, that's for sure), and I see that he is pretty well known.   It's odd to see a more mature age character who seems to want to experience somewhat dangerous situations for the fun of it.  And who is the woman he is with sometimes?  Why would she follow him into some of the crappiest countries around?   This video was one of the most remarkable ones I have seen:

I'm calling it

Unless there are some major errors going on in today's reporting about Trump and the Russia activities in Afghanistan, I reckon it's extremely likely that this is the scandal that is the nail in the coffin of the Trump presidency:

Top officials in the White House were aware in early 2019 of classified intelligence indicating Russia was secretly offering bounties to the Taliban for the deaths of Americans, a full year earlier than has been previously reported, according to U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the intelligence. 

The assessment was included in at least one of President Donald Trump’s written daily intelligence briefings at the time, according to the officials. Then-national security adviser John Bolton also told colleagues he briefed Trump on the intelligence assessment in March 2019.

Update:

Yes, I think this is right, even though I have already seen some Republicans saying that you can't expect a President to read what's in the briefing book every day.  

Still, if, as some predict, this ends up with Trump saying "I've spoken to Putin and he denies it, and you know, that's good enough for me",  that example (on top of others) of Trump disbelieving his own intelligence services over what an autocrat tells him may be the straw that breaks Republican support.

Hell revised

Oh, back to a favourite topic - how reliably Christian is the idea of a never ending Hell, as discussed by that Eastern Orthodox theologian I have mentioned before, David Bentley Hart.  This is from a review of a book of his on the topic:

A member of the Democratic Socialists of America, hardly a radical leftist, Hart is nevertheless on the side of the angels. In recent years, he has thrown the traditionally minded into a tizzy, principally via two arguments: that hell is not eternal—that all shall be saved—and that an honest adherence to the Gospel of Jesus Christ would require Christians to be “communists,” in the strict sense given by the Acts of the Apostles (“omnia sunt communia”—a favorite verse of Müntzer’s).

 As Hart expounds in That All Shall Be Saved, it is impossible to wrest a coherent doctrine of hell from Jesus’s and Paul’s scattered and figurative references to a final judgment, or from Revelation’s fevered phantasmagoria. As the biblically literate know, since the Wycliffe Bible, which appeared in the fourteenth century, the words that English translators of the New Testament have rendered as “hell” are “Hades,” the familiar realm of the dead, and “Gehenna.” This last is the Greek form of “Ge-Hinnom,” the Valley of Hinnom, which is a real place near Jerusalem. This valley had long been associated with child sacrifice and evil gods and perhaps served as a charnel pit for burning carrion. Readers of the New Testament wishing to extrapolate the conventional picture of hell have very little to go on:

Certainly no one now can say with confidence precisely what Jesus’s understanding of the Gehenna’s fire was . . . what duration he might have assigned to those subjected to it, or even how metaphorically he intended such imagery to be taken. It is obvious that metaphor was his natural idiom as a teacher, and that he employed the prophetic and apocalyptic tropes of his time in a manner more poetic than precise.

Hart traverses this ground in order to construct a daedal and extremely learned defense of the doctrine of apocatastasis (the word means “restoration”), which is as old as Christianity itself, though it has always been a minority position. It is the belief that all souls—even Old Scratch himself—will ultimately be reconciled to God through Christ. Its proponents in the early church include Origen and Gregory of Nyssa, two of the subtlest minds in the history of Christian thought. Though they arrive at universalism by very different routes, a touchstone for both is 1 Corinthians 15, in which Paul writes that at the end of days God will be “all in all.” For these early Christians, as for Hart, the first preachers of universal salvation in the Christian tradition were Jesus and Paul. On this view, there is no eternal perdition. If hell exists, it is a state of temporary purgation. Gregory insisted that this would not be “a harsh means of correction,” as the “thoughtless” speak of it, but “a healing remedy provided by God, to restore his own creation to its original grace.”

I will skip some paragraphs then get to this:

And predestination, that pillar of Reformed theology, doesn’t enter the picture. Hart reserves his most damning rhetoric for Reformed arguments about humanity’s exposure to destruction. Would that every Christian might read Hart’s elegant exegesis of Paul’s notoriously complex language of election in Romans 9–11, often read as justifying a division of humanity into called and rejected. Unlike the Augustinian tradition’s tortured interpretations of this epistle, Hart’s reading allows Paul’s promise that God will “have mercy on all” to mean what it plainly says. Hart is similarly attentive to 1 Timothy 4, where Paul (more likely a later author writing in Paul’s name) calls Jesus “the Savior of all human beings, especially those who have faith”—all human beings, and what could that “especially” mean if only believers are saved?

I lack space to address all of Hart’s arguments for universal salvation. For me, and I suspect for many of this magazine’s readers, his book is hardly of pressing doctrinal concern anyway. But a lot of folks sure do like them some hellfire. The editors of First Things, an influential conservative Christian journal, ran no fewer than three attacks on That All Shall Be Saved, the last one accusing Hart of having committed “theological fraud.” It would be unchristian to suggest that this enthusiastic response might be related to Hart’s having broken with the journal, to which he used to contribute a frequently delectable column, because he “could not remain on good terms with a collection of editors who had embraced the politics of the alt-right.”

Unsuprising

Carl Bernstein writes at CNN:

In hundreds of highly classified phone calls with foreign heads of state, President Donald Trump was so consistently unprepared for discussion of serious issues, so often outplayed in his conversations with powerful leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Erdogan, and so abusive to leaders of America's principal allies, that the calls helped convince some senior US officials -- including his former secretaries of state and defense, two national security advisers and his longest-serving chief of staff -- that the President himself posed a danger to the national security of the United States, according to White House and intelligence officials intimately familiar with the contents of the conversations.

The calls caused former top Trump deputies -- including national security advisers H.R. McMaster and John Bolton, Defense Secretary James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and White House chief of staff John Kelly, as well as intelligence officials -- to conclude that the President was often "delusional," as two sources put it, in his dealings with foreign leaders. The sources said there was little evidence that the President became more skillful or competent in his telephone conversations with most heads of state over time. Rather, he continued to believe that he could either charm, jawbone or bully almost any foreign leader into capitulating to his will, and often pursued goals more attuned to his own agenda than what many of his senior advisers considered the national interest.

As I have said for a long time, if White House insiders have been so willing to talk now about how terrible Trump is in the job, can you imagine how much more will come out when he is no longer there? 

They really need to stop doing that

This report is from the Jerusalem Post, so it's not an anti-Semitic source:

A three-weeks-old baby is currently in serious condition at the Bnei Zion Medical Center in Haifa due to a herpetic infection, which began in the genital area and has spread to the brain, leading to convulsions and seizures.

Laboratory tests found that the infant likely contracted the Type 1 herpes virus during his brit, directly from the mohel, who performed the ceremony using the controversial Orthodox method of blood cleaning known as "Metzitzah B'Peh," or oral suction....

 

The professor explained that "evidence of newborn herpes infections accompanied by brain infections, and their connection to the oral suction in circumcisions, have been widely described in medical history for the past 200 years.

 

"The herpes virus can cause a skin infection, which can spread to the brain and cause severe inflammation of the brain and even death," Sarugo said.

Do you think Graeme might make a comment about this?  He (along with everyone else) is in comment moderation, so I'll let you know...

Too stupid to be told

This may well be the explanation:

Are cult members always this stupid?

I love it when Trump cult member Steve Kates goes on about how everyone else is wrong (climate scientists, economists, anyone who doesn't support Donald Trump) about everything, and that's because they're like cult members:

It is like dealing with members of a cult, except they are now the mainstream.

He's at it again today.  He's citing an article from American right wing, pro market think tank sort of place I have never heard of before.

Seems that the idea that the mainstream might be mainstream because they are not the ones analysing everything with intense bias has never occurred to him.

More details

The Washington Post writes now:

Russian bounties offered to Taliban-linked militants to kill coalition forces in Afghanistan are believed to have resulted in the deaths of several U.S. service members, according to intelligence gleaned from U.S. military interrogations of captured militants in recent months.

Several people familiar with the matter said it was unclear exactly how many Americans or coalition troops from other countries may have been killed or targeted under the program. U.S. forces in Afghanistan suffered a total of 10 deaths from hostile gunfire or improvised bombs in 2018, and 16 in 2019. Two have been killed this year. In each of those years, several service members were also killed by what are known as “green on blue” hostile incidents by Afghan security forces sometimes believed to have been infiltrated by the Taliban.

The intelligence was passed up from the U.S. Special Operations forces based in Afghanistan and led to a restricted high-level White House meeting in late March, the people said.

The meeting led to broader discussions about possible responses to the Russian action, ranging from diplomatic expressions of disapproval and warnings, to sanctions, according to two of the people. These people and others who discussed the matter spoke on the condition of anonymity because of its sensitivity.

The disturbing intelligence — which the CIA was tasked with reviewing, and later confirmed — generated disagreement about the appropriate path forward, a senior U.S. official said. The administration’s special envoy for Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, preferred confronting the Russians directly about the matter, while some National Security Council officials in charge of Russia were more dismissive of taking immediate action, the official said.

It remained unclear where those discussions have led to date. Verifying such intelligence is a process that can take weeks, typically involving the CIA and the National Security Agency, which captures foreign cellphone and radio communications. Final drafting of any policy options in response would be the responsibility of national security adviser Robert C. O’Brien.

So, it seems no one from within the administration or military is yet directly fingering Trump as lying  when he says he was not briefed on it - so maybe he wasn't?

But as lots of people are saying - how could this possibly be the subject of a meeting at the White House and then not have the issue briefed to the President (or Vice President)?  Even if they were still "formulating policy options", surely such a sensitive issue would be notified to him.

There are two ways it still hurts Trump - first, makes him look the head of an incompetent administration, and secondly, when he does (apparently) find out about it via the media, his first reaction is to suggest it might be all "fake news", showing how un-serious he is in the job.  I mean, look at this:

As this guy writes:

Administration in trouble (or, more trouble than usual)

This story is very surprising:

A Russian military spy unit offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants to attack coalition forces in Afghanistan, including U.S. and British troops, in a striking escalation of the Kremlin’s hostility toward the United States, American intelligence has found.

The Russian operation, first reported by the New York Times, has generated an intense debate within the Trump administration about how best to respond to a troubling new tactic by a nation that most U.S. officials regard as a potential foe but that President Trump has frequently embraced as a friend, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive intelligence matter.

That terrible White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany had said that the President and VP were not briefed on this, and lots of people on Twitter think she (or the administration) is lying.

But the Washington Post story (from which I am quoting above) says:

In a statement late Saturday Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said he had “confirmed that neither the President nor the Vice President were ever briefed on any intelligence” related to a Russian bounty, and that all news reports “about an alleged briefing are inaccurate.”

Ratcliffe’s statement, and an earlier statement by White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, did not address the accuracy of the reported intelligence information.

But remember, this guy has just been appointed amidst lots of warning like this:

John Ratcliffe is the least-qualified director of national intelligence in history—and a staunch partisan as well.

Yet surely he would not outright lie about something like this, when whistleblowers would be ready to contradict him?
 
 So, if Trump and Pence did not know, that leads to an alternative scandal:  how the hell can the intelligence community not get them briefed on this?   That would reek of scandalous maladministration.

So, whichever way it goes, it's a pretty popcorn worthy bit of news.

Too many satellites for too little benefit

I posted earlier this week about the increasing number of satellites and the increasing number of systems that all do the same thing.   It seems even worse than I realised, if this article is anything to go by:

The UK government’s plan to invest hundreds of millions of pounds in a satellite broadband company has been described as “nonsensical” by experts, who say the company doesn’t even make the right type of satellite the country needs after Brexit.

The investment in OneWeb, first reported on Thursday night, is intended to mitigate against the UK losing access to the EU’s Galileo satellite navigation system.

As I said in my last post, I don't understand how this civilian access to competing GPS systems works - given that most mobile phones specs say they can use two or three of the current systems.   How does the EU stop phones accessing their signal?

Anyway, back to the story of too many satellites:

But OneWeb – in which the UK will own a 20% stake following the investment – currently operates a completely different type of satellite network from that typically used to run such navigation systems.

“The fundamental starting point is, yes, we’ve bought the wrong satellites,” said Dr Bleddyn Bowen, a space policy expert at the University of Leicester. “OneWeb is working on basically the same idea as Elon Musk’s Starlink: a mega-constellation of satellites in low Earth orbit, which are used to connect people on the ground to the internet.

“What’s happened is that the very talented lobbyists at OneWeb have convinced the government that we can completely redesign some of the satellites to piggyback a navigation payload on it. It’s bolting an unproven technology on to a mega-constellation that’s designed to do something else. It’s a tech and business gamble.”

Giles Thorne, a research analyst at Jeffries, agreed. “This situation is nonsensical to me,” he said. “This situation looks like nationalism trumping solid industrial policy.”

Every major positioning system currently in use – America’s GPS, Russia’s Glonass, China’s BeiDou, and Galileo, the EU project that the UK helped design before losing access to due to Brexit – is in a medium Earth orbit, Thorne said, approximately 20,000km from Earth. OneWeb’s satellites, 74 of which have already been launched, are in a low Earth orbit, just 1,200km up.

Bowen said: “If you want to replace GPS for military-grade systems, where you need encrypted, secure signals that are precise to centimetres, I’m not sure you can do that on satellites as small as OneWeb’s.”

Rather than being selected for the quality of the offering, Thorne suggested the investment was made to suit “a nationalist agenda”. OneWeb is nominally a UK business, with a UK HQ and spectrum rights registered in the UK through Ofcom.

OK, I just realised - maybe the UK loss of access to Galileo is more to do with military access rather than civilian access?  Yes, that seems right, according to this UK government page:

In the event of the UK leaving the EU without a negotiated agreement, the majority of position, navigation and timing services provided by Galileo and European Geostationary Navigation Overlay will continue to be freely available to all UK based users. The Prime Minister has made clear the UK will not use Galileo (including the Public Regulated Service) for defence or critical national infrastructure.

The UK will no longer play any part in the development of Galileo or European Geostationary Navigation Overlay programmes. This means that UK-based businesses, academics and researchers will be unable to bid for future EU Global Navigation Satellite System contracts and may face difficulty carrying out and completing existing contracts. For example, it may not be possible for businesses or organisations which currently host Galileo and European Geostationary Navigation Overlay ground infrastructure to continue to do so.

To prepare for this scenario the UK is exploring alternatives to fulfil its needs for secure and resilient position, navigation and timing information. These contingency options are made possible by the expertise of the UK space sector and will be assessed on their own merits. The government will invest £92 million from the Brexit readiness fund on an 18-month programme to design a UK Global Navigation Satellite System. This will inform the decision to create an independent system as an alternative to Galileo.

Still, this loss of access to Galileo's more sophisticated services sound like one of those issues that would have been completely glossed over when the populists were running their pro-Brexit campaign, and it sounds like it will cost a lot to replicate.

Intelligence that makes me do that Homer Simpson drool

My God.  I am watching Planet America Fireside Chat on ABC News, and once again it's such exquisitely intelligent commentary it makes me want to do that Homer Simpson drool when he thinks of pork chops.

"Smart, witty people being reasonable....gaaaaaah!"