sansampersamp
No bio...
User ID: 751
sansampersamp
2yr ago
I saw some screenshots complaining that it had been used as a honeypot for Jan 6 attendees, which while hilarious if so, strikes me as a bit 'too good to fact-check'.
As a mod there -- some would? I think most would reject the dichotomy. Being against a corporate tax and for a land tax or carbon dividend, against most land use regulation, for some form of distribution and universal healthcare, against student loan forgiveness -- you'd lose a bit too much information to sum it up that pithily.
(referring here to the ideological core of the sub, i.e. the flaired DT regs -- the drift-in commenters commenting on random posts are obviously more diverse)
Pinochet support was a bannable offense on day 3 of the sub going live, if I recall correctly. To the extent the subreddit polarised against republicans since 2016 (which is true, and justifiable), that particular stance fell outside the sub's overton window from the start.
Two options you're potentially underweighting:
-
Germany did it. After tense negotiations with the US, Germany agreed to cancel NS2 in the event Russia invaded, in exchange for a carveout of sanctions to complete construction. Germany's commitments may have exceeded what was disclosed.
-
West-aligned non-state actor. This was within the capabilities of anyone with a dozen oil drums of ANFO and recreational diving gear. I've heard too many idle musings from people wishing to do essentially this to discount the option out of hand -- particularly because the frustration usually comes from domestic ambivalence, believing that the state's hands are tied by corrupt commercial interests, etc.
I don't think I'd weight any individual option here >50% though which makes for an interesting scenario all round (though the hydrate plug theory is probably closest to that, with simultaneity explained by them suddenly wanting to fix things).
Wildcard: Russian saboteurs, but they intended to blow up the Baltic pipe instead.
sansampersamp
2yr ago
Easy to confuse them, but no, Tamara is a PET (passive ESM tracker) while the systems using second-hand sources like TV broadcasts are PCL (passive coherent location). PET does rely on you having your radar turned on.
sansampersamp
2yr ago
The web service equivalent of not backing up your database, or having an open backdoor hidden somewhere in leaked source code.
To twist the analogy slightly, imagine getting an email from someone saying they have such a backdoor and want to be paid. Do you pay them? What if they just ask for more and more? Where's the SOAR playbook for that?
sansampersamp
2yr ago
Despite being the perfect candidate for corrupt neglect, I don't think I've seen anyone pin their nuclear strategy arguments on the potential state of Russia's nukes. This seems like a massive strawman in that regard.
The argument for why they won't use nukes is based on an inability to construct any kind of payoff diagram for the Russian chain of command in which the nukes square looks preferable to the alternative (given mutually acknowledged tail risks).
The penalty for emboldening dictators is not worse than the penalty for encouraging nuclear war
Permitting nuclear weapons to be used coercively (i.e. folding to nuclear threats) does both in this instance. This is an iterated game.
sansampersamp
2yr ago
The US joins the war conventionally is about the minimum I've seen communicated. Since a non-strategic nuclear first strike by Russia in Eastern Europe or the Baltics is probably the single most examined scenario by the US post-ww2, I'd be surprised if the playbooks don't have the timings down to the minute and statements prepped like a newspaper's obit drawer.
sansampersamp
2yr ago
Some real work has to be done to flesh out exactly why Putin ordering the use of nuclear weapons makes that preference cascade less likely, not more.
sansampersamp
2yr ago
Unconventional assets (stealth) are rather scarce and whether they're truly stealthy to a peer adversary is a rather open question.
Have to admit I was expecting a link to some Russian wunderwaffen instead of a 1980s tracker that can be completely foiled by turning your radar off (like anti-radiation missiles haven't been a thing for decades).
The strategic air defense network they have is expected to require weeks to months of reducing till bombing can proceed in earnest with conventional assets.
This RUSI link from January is a fun throwback too, I imagine the assessments of Russian IADS have changed somewhat since then. Note that it doesn't say it would take months to carry out effective SEAD, but: "The question is not whether the Russian IADS could eventually be degraded and rolled back, but whether NATO forces could do so quickly enough to avoid defeat on the ground while deprived of regular close air support in the meantime."
Not a particularly relevant concern re: Ukraine.
sansampersamp
2yr ago
Why is the assumption that Germany was taken by surprise, conditional on the US being responsible?
Funnily enough I was thinking how once again Australia was passing through with a much more mild economic cold than the rest of the West (inflation has consistently been a few points lower than the US). A falling currency is also not necessarily a bad thing for a net exporter.
sansampersamp
2yr ago
If we're talking predictions, I'd say with 80% confidence that nothing of political consequence (leadership changes, notable policy backflips) will happen in Germany as a result of energy-related popular unrest that remains salient or has otherwise lasting effects into the following summer. Similar 80% prediction that winter protests or riots don't noticeably exceed the impotency of the covid ones.
I'm fairly confident it was someone in Nato or aligned with them, just pointing out that there's a bit of 'worst argument in the world' going on calling it an attack on state infrastructure when that infrastructure was not in use and the government had standing political commitments to not use it again.
The practical function of "covert" means state actors can let norm violations slide without undermining the norms. Sometimes it is in your interest to pretend not to see something. Ukraine equivocating as to whether it directed the helicopters that bombed Belgorod is another example: everyone knows they did it, but Russia and the US can pretend otherwise if a frank accounting of the facts would trigger responses they actually don't want to or can't follow through with (e.g. US constricting arms shipments, Russia escalating).
A military would sometimes burn their boats after landing on enemy shores to impress upon all soldiers that the only way back is through (Cortés, famously). Everyone may vocally say they'll cooperate at the outset, a good way to get them to commit to that is to just burn the defect button.
sansampersamp
2yr ago
Very unconvincing to me, not least because Putin has been incredibly risk-adverse and reticent to do anything that could be construed as escalatory as far as Nato is concerned.
sansampersamp
2yr ago
While true in a technical sense, this is softened a great deal by:
-
Germany already rhetorically committing to wean themselves off Russian Gas within a couple of years
-
The pipelines currently being turned off by Russian shenanigans (so the official projections for the winter are unimpacted)
-
A difficult political problem (see: protests to open NS2) no longer is theirs to make and defend
Messy enough to demand something covert, but no military could get away with literally burning their boats now, even if it was actually the right thing to do
sansampersamp
2yr ago
Euro gas futures markets have been chilling out for a bit, ironically.
The reason why it doesn't make much sense as Russian bluff/escalation is that the only important costs borne by Germany are political costs -- the cost of making difficult, painful, but ultimately strategically correct decisions. Taking that decision out of German hands is a gift. Blowing the pipeline ends the game, no more concessions to be extracted or cracks to leverage. However much Germans suffer this winter is of vastly less strategic import to Russia than the unified front of sanctions against it. That suffering is only a chip to be traded for relief on the latter, and is near useless on its own.
ENTSOG map, for reference, with the breach occuring around Bornholm Island. Also to note, gas hasn't been flowing through either pipeline anyway: NS2 approval got spiked with the invasion, and NS1 has been shut off since the first of September, with the official excuse being a Russian turbine needing to be replaced and not being able to due to sanctions (though this is isn't true -- Canada, the repairer of such turbines, carved this out of their sanctions). Volumes have been flatlined since then, per the Nord Stream site. Accordingly, any recent projections of European gas scarcity (whether optimistic or pessimistic) shouldn't have been dependent on flow through Nord Stream. One such recent model has the biggest short term salve being energy generation substitution to coal, for example.
It's also very unlikely that Russia is responsible in this light -- the pipelines were already not being used via their equivocations over the turbines with Canada. Throwing Germany's steering wheel out of the window for them is not likely to yield them any concessions in the gas standoff, or poke at any weak points to unravel European solidarity over sanctions. This was likely West-aligned, but beyond that, who can say? These pipelines are notoriously vulnerable, I'd only be moderately surprised if it turned out to be a non-state actor (if only because overland pipelines are much easier targets, even if they don't have as much symbolic mindshare as Nord Stream).
One thing I do wonder is if they even get repaired now? NS1 potentially -- with its fate so uncertain whose to know -- but there isn't even a legally functioning entity on the European side to take responsibility for NS2. Who's justifying that expense?
sansampersamp
2yr ago
The costs for using nuclear weapons (pariah status worse than the DPRK at best, utter annihilation at worst) make them rarely a positive square on the reward matrix, unless the alternative is equally grim. This makes them particularly bad at anything that isn't critical deterrence. See Nuclear Weapons and Coercive Diplomacy by Sechser and Fuhrmann, chapter here.
sansampersamp
2yr ago
Every war in history has ended in a negotiated settlement in which the winner keeps the territory and prizes they took.
The UCDP Conflict Termination dataset (link, paper) has this data:
Between 1946 and 2005, only 39 of 288 conflicts, or 13.5%, ended in a negotiated peace treaty
Most wars fizzle into low-level unresolved stalemates without formal concessions or recognitions. Only half or so of interstate conflicts end in a ceasefire or peace agreements (typically the former).
In suggesting a negotiated solution, one should also be aware of the statistics and factors regardings the durability of peace agreements, and particularly the tensions over incompatible interpretations of Minsk II that failed to be resolved in the Normandy format talks that initiated this conflict.
I'm not sure the pause is particularly well-rationalised as Ukraine suddenly hitting on a well-defended position so much as logistics needing to catch up and forces recuperate while the crossings are better supported. I'd expect a push to the Luhansk Oblast border within a couple of weeks.
In the interest of not over-indexing on Hitler's downfall, what are some other slow but inexorable military defeats that failed to pierce the epistemic closure of leadership until the very end?
I think partially complicating the narrative is that the Russian fantasy of a well-equipped and organised military, of a fractured and compromised Ukraine that would welcome them as liberators and turn against Zelenskyy, and of a weak Western alliance, has already been incontrovertibly destroyed. There are certainly bad ways to react to that which would retain a kind of disconnect -- and the purges of the Siloviki may well result in more fear than more clarity -- but the knowledge that you have already got it very wrong once still remains. What would really be that different about Ukraine liberating Kherson or Lysychansk or Donetsk compared to that first disastrous collision with reality?
I'm not convinced Putin does have a particularly sunny outlook, accordingly, though I'm sure significant issues with carrying bad news accurately and objectively up the C2 chain remain. Instead of one big epistemic collapse, where eschatological hopes pinned on a coup de main get transferred to gradual territory gains, to hopes of European collapse of resolve in the winter (while weaning off looks more and more realistic) until no more transference is possible, an alternative and perhaps more likely view is that however bleak the coming year is for Russia, leaving humiliated with nothing is a far bleaker alternative to Putin. The looming collapse of CSTO as a bloc orbiting Russia shows how dire Russia's credibility is. Hence the current moves to consolidate notional gains -- not militarily, but within his own domestic political sphere. It's unlikely to work, but sometimes there are just no better options.
sansampersamp
2yr ago
I think the worst attempts to 'write to the fans' with these resurrections assume that the in-universe attitudes about the characters need to sync up with the idolatrous attitudes of the worst elements of the fan culture. Cobra Kai did a good job of running against this, where the plucky kid who overcame the odds to win the Karate competition grows up to be a card dealer that won some high-school karate competitions and still kind of runs off that high. Have the courage to let beloved characters be a bit pathetic.
sansampersamp
2yr ago
Honestly thinking you can opt out of status games, or that obstinate refusal to 'play' doesn't impact how you and your arguments are perceived, is just cope. There's an autistic tendency to conflate a social illiteracy with the kind of practiced sprezzatura that seems effortless on the surface level, or writing off deviations from the norm (a real and valuable thing -- see the 'basic' sneer) as essentially the same.
sansampersamp
2yr ago
It's difficult for me to think of a lower status take than consternation about, say, the casting decisions in the Little Mermaid remake. There's a few layers to that -- the content is for children, and these live action remakes are kind of shameful to have any investment in even before getting to the politics that is easily read as a kind of adolescent, race-fragile myopia.
With low-status, I mean something a little more subtle than just oppositional to the general social mores that might define my own social circle (or how I might ascribe that to a kind of cosmopolitan hegemony writ large). There are plenty of subcultures which define themselves oppositional to the dominant culture without degrading themselves in the process. There are orthogonal axes here that signal a kind of noble worthwhileness outside simple questions of alignment, and these takes seem to me to naturally occupy whatever the distal pole of magnanimity and taste is.
The ensuing conversations can accordingly be less of a debate and more of a slightly embarrassing condescension as if one is explaining social niceties to a child -- not a particularly productive frame for bringing others to one's worldview. What can be read as conciliation or reluctance to gore sacred cows, from one side, may simply be efforts to find tactful ways to bring an embarrassing conversation back to a kind of civility.
I think there's two main types, the first being ideological MLs, and the second basically being conspiracy theorists. Both types can be similar to online fascists, in that the appeal is mostly aesthetic and deeply contrarian -- imagine investing your time in vehemently defending the DPRK of all things. I think there's more of them than Noah surmises, unfortunately. There's little in the way of a firewall between leftist (as distinct from liberal) commentators/politicians/journalists and these conspiratorial elements, and it takes something like Ukraine to lay these bare. The Corbyns and Chomskys of the world are all too willing to break bread with Aaron Mate and the like, and as far as the former is concerned at least, pay a political price among normies accordingly.
Here's a rough list that might illustrate a more useful cluster than strict doctrinaire tankyism:
Aaron Mate
Max Blumenthal
Tulsi Gabbard
Caitlin Johnstone
Greenwald
Michael Tracey
Jimmy Dore
Kevin Gosztola
Richard Medhurst
Peter Coffin
Caleb Maupin
Katie Halper
Ryan Knight
Scott Ritter
Richard Sakwa
Unsurprisingly a lot of overlap with RT America, when that used to be a thing.
More options
Context Copy link