In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

Winston Churchill said, "In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies." We've had a couple of stories lately that are hinky enough that I keep thinking of Churchill. Let's take the unfortunate Russian frigate Admiral Makarov , which last Friday was briefly reported to have been hit and disabled by a Ukrainian missile. Then there were new posts asserting that the video being circulated of the burning ship was maybe sorta kinda almost certainly fake, the product of a video war game simulation. However, in response to questions about just which war game could have produced this video, the answer was it doesn't matter, they've all gotten real, real good. For whatever reason, nobody then went to Ultra Real Super War Game Blaster 7.0 and recreated the video in question to prove it could be done just that way. We're just hearing it's "almost certainly fake", case closed. Pentagon spokesman John Kir...

I continue to be both fascinated and inspired by the performance of Ukraine President Zelensky as a wartime leader. But since the reemergence of Israel as a nation-state after World War II, we've had a succession of Jewish wartime leaders comparable to Joshua, King David, and the Maccabees. Now we have a Jewish politician in Ukraine who's performing comparably, and he's going so far as to assert Jewish identity as a full component of Ukraine's emerging national identity. This is a major theme in his May 8 address (or addresses) commemorating V-E day, of which a YouTube version with English subtitles is linked above. An English version is available in text here . However, he says things in the YouTube version that aren't in the official text, and they may in fact be entirely separate addresses. Near the start of the YouTube at 1:05 but not in the text is this important statement: [W]e had no idea that our generation would witness the desecration of the word...

Let's start with that strange word. I don't believe it was commnon in the language before the 1980s. and certainly by the time I reached aduldhood in the late 1960s, more Freudian terms like "neurotic" were in use. I don't recall the word appearing in Jules Feiffer cartoons of that time, for instance, and his characters were typically riddled with uncertainty and self-doubt (or should have been), anything but the conventional image of a "narcissist". On the other hand, narcissists are at least identifiable in modern literature, maybe most recognizably as Wickham in Pride and Prejudice . though Austen doesn't use the term, which didn't exist. On the other hand, if you search YouTube for "narcissists" now, it's certainly possible to conclude "narcissists" are the dominant problem of our time. Typical subjects are "Understanding the Narcissist: Wny Do They Treat You This Way?"; "10 Signs You're D...

Over the past few days, a consensus has begun to emerge that the Russian attempt to encircle the Ukrainian army in Donbas has stalled. For whatever reason, nobody is using the Clausewitzian term they'd been using around Kyiv, "culimination", but it seems pretty clear from the discussion that Clausewitz would say the Russian attack has culminated without reaching its objective. For instance, the BBC reports, Russian forces are not making "the sort of strategic breakthrough" they have been looking for in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region, Justin Bronk - a research fellow from UK security think tank Rusi - tells BBC Radio 4's Today programme. He says Russia continues to gain a few kilometres in some areas but their forces are taking "very heavy losses" and "may be out of momentum". The 1945 site, which I'd linked just the other day for its pessimistic appraisal of Ukraine's chances in Donbas, has changed its tune: When Russ...

Via the UK Independent, Russia’s Admiral Makarov warship has been hit by Ukrainian missiles and burst into flames, according to Ukrainian officials. The frigate would be Russia’s latest high-profile naval loss in a troubled campaign, coming after reports that US intelligence helped Ukraine locate and sink the Russian warship Moskva weeks ago. The Makarov was said to have been sailing close to Snake Island in the Black Sea south of Odesa. Ukrainian presidential adviser Anton Gerashchenko reported on his Telegram page that the Admiral Makarov was hit by a Ukrainian “Neptune” anti-ship missile. He cited Russian sources. According to the UK Daily Mail, Ukraine may have shot another Russian warship overnight with an MP saying one of Putin's state-of-the-art frigates is 'in trouble' in the Black Sea. Oleksiy Goncharenko, head of the council of Odesa which houses Ukraine's largest naval base, identified the vessel on his Telegram channel this morning as the A...

On April 12, I commented on the conventional wisdom of the time that there would be an upcoming battle in Donbas that would be, in one opinion, the "biggest tank battle in Europe since 1943 Battle of Kursk". It would be a "knife fight", a grand contest of maneuver in which the Russians would try to cut off the Ukrainian army in pockets. . . . After their recent defeat in the north, Russia has made some significant changes. . . . . the Russians will have a single command staff to co-ordinate and attempt to achieve a single focused and ostensibly realistic operational objective[.] . . . the force the Russians will amass will be formidable, and with shorter and better established supply lines into Russia they may be able to avoid some of the appalling foul ups which have characterised their war so far. As of mid-April, this decisive battle of maneuver was going to take place "within the next two weeks". It didn't happen. Instead, the daily assessm...

Amid everything else in yesterday's news, my main interest was in finding whether the CDC would extend its rule requiring masks on aircraft and public transportation yet again after the latest extension expired on May 3. Indeed, they did . U.S. health officials on Tuesday restated their recommendation that Americans wear masks on planes, trains and buses, despite a court ruling last month that struck down a national mask mandate on public transportation. Americans age 2 and older should wear a well-fitting masks while on public transportation, including in airports and train stations, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended, citing the current spread of coronavirus and projections of future COVID-19 trends. For months, the Transportation Security Administration had been enforcing a requirement that passengers and workers wear masks. The government had repeatedly extended the mandate, and the latest one had been set to expire May 3. But a federal judge in F...