Plan B From Outer Space

I'm always fascinated by the continuing attempts to circumvent Fermi's Paradox, the problem that no matter how probable we calculate the existence of space aliens, they never quite show up. The latest, which is something that's actually turned up on the Science Channel in recent years, is that they're probably hiding in oceans of warm water under ammonia ice on [name a moon of Jupiter or Saturn, or maybe Pluto.] Via Instapundit, which is fond of this sort of thing, I found this:

Forget Mars—Jupiter’s moon Europa is one of the most promising worlds in the solar system to look for alien life, in large part because it boasts a huge liquid ocean sitting below a sheet of ice. Although Europa is just one-fourth the diameter of Earth, its ocean may have twice as much water as our planet’s oceans combined. And where there is water, there is the chance for life as we know it to settle down.

In fact, that's the whole argument. I used to admire that talent. My father, checking my homework assignments like "write a 250 word essay on ____", would complain that I'd fallen short with only 150 words. I'd answer that was all I had to say. "No," he'd reply. "You have to expand. You have to take what you've said and expand on it, keep expanding on it", as he made a gesture like the guy who expands on the size of the fish he's caught. That was one of the lessons I learned in my childhood, that I needed to be the kind of guy who could expand on things.

They sent me to an Ivy League school and wound up immensely disappointed that I never learned to expand on things. They thought that was the kind of thing you were supposed to learn there. They were probably right. I guess they could have consoled themselves that at least when they sent me there, learning how to do that was a lot cheaper than it is now.

But I always admired people who could do that. The author of the piece in the link has that ability that I never could master. He explains,

However, it might not be as daunting as we think. A new study published in Nature Communications on Tuesday reveals that the icy shell itself might be much more porous than previously thought. In fact, the ice might be home to multiple pockets of water that could be habitable to life as well.

The key to these new findings? Greenland. New data collected with ice-penetrating radar shows the formation of “double ridge” features in the Greenland ice sheet—features that are present on Europa as well. The researchers behind the new paper believe that the mechanism for how these double ridges formed in Greenland ought to apply to Europa—which would suggest that liquid water is more present on the Jovian moon than we could have ever dreamed of.

And all you need to create life is water, right? Just get some plain ol' H2O and let it sit in a pot for about 18 gazillion years, and voilà, life! Which runs up against Fermi's Paradox, that if it's so probable, why aren't we seeing it?

Actually, I've run into a fair number of articles lately that say there's little to say on the subject, like this one:

PERTH, Australia — The quest to find alien life in the cosmos has come up empty in one of the biggest searches to date. Researchers in Australia say their latest project scanned billions of stars and 144 known exoplanets for signs of alien broadcasts — but ultimately found nothing.

Or this one:

NASA has discovered more than 5,000 planets outside of our solar system – but so far, Earth is the only one that appears to have the right conditions for human life.

NASA said it has confirmed 5,005 exoplanets – or planets outside of our solar system. Most are in a very small region outside of our galaxy, the Milky Way. And by "small," NASA means within thousands of light-years. One light year is 5.88 trillion miles.

The closest known exoplanet to Earth, Proxima Centauri b, is about four light-years away.

Here's the conundrum. NASA doesn't come right out and say that a core objective is to find alien life, but it implies it strongly in the wording of its mission statement:

NASA vision statement is “to discover and expand knowledge for the benefit of humanity."

. . . Evidence shows that NASA has been successful in satisfaction of the first component in this vision statement. The company prides of pioneering a wide range of discoveries such as the feasibility of life in other planets. Although this is futuristic, the most impactful discoveries comprise the ones that have an immediate and direct impact on the lives of people in the contemporary era.

How has NASA demonsrated "the feasibility of life in other planets?" Its own studies like the one linked just above suggest that gosh darn it, no matter how hard we look, we can't seem to find any. And how has this non-discovery had any "immediate and direct impact on the lives of people"? Well, I guess if you look at NASA's payroll, and the university payrolls supported by NASA grants, I guess you could say so. NASA's brought up generations of people who are able to expand on things.

Heck, some of them have gotten rich.

Potemkin Government And The Crisis Of Competence

I note a piece by Joy Pullmann in The Federalist, It’s Not Just Joe Biden. The United States Has A Potemkin Government:

Joe Biden’s shameful performance at the White House Easter egg roll Sunday was another strong visual indicator that he is not really governing this country. And he’s not the only sham authority in this country — our nation is replete with them.

The term “Potemkin village” arose in Russia to describe empty buildings set up as propaganda, to give a false impression of industry and life. The fake villages were intended to hide the regime’s mass mismanagement and infliction of suffering upon its own people.

Ms Pullmann opens things up to an obvious parallel with her reference to Potemkin -- but she holds back! I did a search for "Putin" anywhere in the piece, and no such word was to be found. Yet the single point that every analyst of the Russia-Ukraine War (which I think is only a theater of the worldwide Plebe War) will agree about is that the entire Russian invasion can be characterized as incompetent, driven as far as anyone can see by an incompetent despot at the top, surrounded by incompetent yes-men.

If the US has a Potemkin government, what about the Russian Federation, whose predecessor invented the term? But the problem isn't just government. What about CNN?

Warner Bros. Discovery laid off CNN’s chief financial officer Brad Ferrer with Discovery’s current chief financial officer Neil Chugani as the media giant attempts to restructure the finance team, Axios reported Tuesday, citing five unidentified sources.

. . . While Warner Bros. Discovery moves to make CNN+, which has approximately just 150,000 subscribers, more profitable, executives within CNN see the streaming service as a possible lifeline for the network in years ahead, according to Axios. Had CNN+ been profitable, CNN’s long-term revenue would’ve increased given the boom around digital media, but things don’t seem to be turning out according to plan.

Hot Air has fujrther analysis:

There’s also a question of why CNN insisted on launching an expensive, dubious new platform so soon before the merger with Discovery. Axios claims that Discovery didn’t want to communicate internally with Warner Bros. before the deal for fear of attracting government interest, so they opted instead to say some discouraging things about CNN+ publicly in hopes that CNN would take the hint and postpone the launch. But they didn’t.

. . . The fact that WBD has now slashed marketing spending raises the possibility that they’re going to shutter it anyway, which would make this a “New Coke”-scale debacle.

But there’s another possibility, per Axios. WBD may try to bundle CNN+ with other streaming services it owns to sweeten the pot for consumers by broadening the variety of content available.

. . . HBO Max and Discovery+ alone include a lot of archived programming. Package them with a news service like CNN+ for an extra buck or two a month and cordcutters may find that hard to say no to, especially if CNN+ eventually includes CNN’s live newscast. That’s another key takeaway from Axios’s report today — WBD wants CNN to get back to hard news programming, to the point where they’re even toying with doing a traditional newscast in the 9 p.m. hour instead of bringing in a new opinion-ish host to replace Chris Cuomo. If CNN+ is already headed to the trash bin, I assume that’s where Chris Wallace will end up. But WBD may already have so much money sunk into the platform that they have to at least try to bundle it in order to recoup some of those expenses. CNN+ likely can’t survive independently, but maybe it can if it’s hooked up to HBO/Discovery life support.

In other words, the traditional corporate media and news model is falling apart. It almost sounds like Putin withdrawing from Kyiv to regroup and win the war in Donbas. But this fits with other developments in the COVID theater of the Plebe War:

Just days after President Joe Biden’s Centers for Disease Control ordered yet another extension of the federal mask mandate, a Florida judge ruled that the agency had no authority to impose it in the first place, saying that “our system does not permit agencies to act unlawfully even in pursuit of desirable ends.”

To public cheers, the TSA, Amtrak, the Washington Metro system, and other public transportation systems immediately ditched their mask requirements, even though the Biden administration is appealing the ruling in hopes overturning it. No one, it seems, trusts the CDC anymore.

But all of this comes as COVID cases appear to be on the upswing.

. . . So, Biden now faces a dilemma. Does he relent on mandates and get blamed for another spike in COVID cases? Or does he invite an intense hostility from a public that is sick and tired of being bossed around by the likes of Anthony Fauci?

. . . Biden and the rest of the left have been drunk on power ever since COVID hit the scene. They needlessly rushed in sweeping and destructive lockdowns, closed churches, hampered businesses, tried – illegally – to turn employers into vaccine enforcers, upended election laws at the last minute to help their friends get elected, shuttered schools, and made kids wear masks, despite the widely known harm those last two have inflicted.

And the left has given every indication that it won’t give up its newfound power willingly. Thus, the CDC announced on April 13 it was extending its federal mask mandate for another two weeks because … well, presumably because it wanted the mandate in place forever.

We may feel certain that whatever option Biden chooses, it will be about as effective as CNN or Putin. The problem is bigger than any of them individually.

If you think about it, the story abut a federal judge striking down the mask mandate for airlines and other transit yesterday was pure dog-bites-man. Federal and state courts have been doing this throughout the course of the pandemic, with at best mixed results. In September 2020, Pennsylvania federal judge William S Stickman IV struck down state COVID restrictions on businesses and assembly, but an appeals court promptly stayed the order.

This has been the story throughout the panic. The various measures imposed by governments, from lockdowns to business closures to social distancing to masking to vaccinations have all proved ineffective in curing COVID, but attempts to mitigate them via the courts have been inconclusive. The man-bites-dog in the story is that now nobody's going to try to stay Judge Kimball's ruling. It appears that the public is finally willing to accept that the pandemic is over, more or less. The airlines, which had been petitioning the CDC to drop the mask mandate, have announced they will no longer enforce it, and the TSA has followed suit at airports.

Amtrak as of today has announced,

While Amtrak passengers and employees are no longer required to wear masks while on board trains or in stations, masks are welcome and remain an important preventive measure against COVID-19. Anyone needing or choosing to wear one is encouraged to do so.

Metrolink, the Los Angeles-area rail transit agency, has announced it will no longer enforce a mask requirement, but I'd learned from a Facebook friend who took a selfie on a train without his mask last week that staff had not been enforcing the requirement for some weeks. However, most other California transit agencies say they're "waiting for guidance". In fact, this seems to be the case nationally. The impression I have, though, is that the administration won't pursue this:

An official with President Joe Biden’s administration said Monday evening that, given the ruling, the TSA would no longer enforce the mandate, which had applied to commercial aircraft, buses, trains, ferries and subway systems, as well as transportation hubs.

I noted as well last week that Philadelphia reinstituted an indoor mask requirement, but so far, no other local authority has followed suit. This is a contrast from 202l, when local agencies were quick to tighten their own restrictions in response to similar moves elsewhere but reluctant to loosen them when the variouis waves peaked.

Individual choices are lagging behind official relaxations. Although outdoor masking rules in Los Angeles have been gone for many months, ordinary people wearing masks on the street are still common, and although indoor masking hasn't been required since February, I would estimate that roughly half those attending Easter mass wore masks. On the other hand, we're at least back to shaking hands with our friends at the peace.

It looks, though, like we're in the final stages of the 2020 moral panic.

The Trans Conundrum

Here's what I can't figure out. President Biden, facing some of the lowest poll numbers of any president ever at this point in his term, has made transsexualism a signature issue, notwithstanding it's deeply unpopular even with people who are same-sex attracted:

“There is a large body of silent opinion among gay men and many lesbians that deeply believes in [biological] sex differences, cherishes and celebrates the male and female bodies, and does not see gayness as connected to transgender experience,” gay rights author Andrew Sullivan wrote. “Gay happiness depends on our owning our own [male or female biological] sex, not denying it.”

. . . The transgender ideology insists that government should deny the importance of biology in shaping people’s politics and personal lives.

Instead, transgenderism asserts that government should champion each person’s chosen sense of “gender” — which is defined as their sense of feeling male or female.

. . . The focus on feelings also gives status-seeking K-12 teachers a righteous excuse to groom an effeminate young boy or an insecure girl (who may or may not grow up to be gay or lesbian) towards a transgender identity, complete with a lifetime of sterilizing drugs, surgeries, loneliness, and poor health.

The transgender view also creates a lucrative opportunity for drug companies, doctors, and surgeons to feel virtuous about reshaping children’s or teenagers’ bodies to mimic the appearance of the opposite sex, regardless of the trauma and damage being done to children.

This suggests the actual voters and financial support for transgender aren't young teens who may be struggling with identity -- after all, they're too young to vote -- but a growing culture of elites who profit from a problem they themselves create, indeed by telling the children and young teens what their problem is. By the same token, the movement to conceal from the parents of the children and young teens that they're being counseled to transition, and indeed may be receiving medical treatment for a perceived condition without the parents' consent, is an indication that there is nothing spontaneous or voluntary about transsexualism. It's programmed by people with a hidden agenda.

What's the underlying agenda? It probably isn't actually related to pedophilia or same-sex atrraction; the point being made by gay and lesbian activists is that they happen to be attracted to members of their own sex for sexual reasons, however disordered that may be from the standpoint of natural law. Gender dysphoria is being sold as an entirely different problem with an entirely different solution.

In fact, the solutions appear to be different based on the age of the patient. Post-pubescent men, even if they undergo hormone treatments, almost always retain their full sexual equipment and frequently appear to continue to have sexual relations with women; witness the trans men who sue to be incarcerated in women's prisons and then get the women inmates pregnant.

On the other hand, a prepubescent boy who is convinced by his teachers and counselors that he's trans is a candidate for puberty blockers and further treatment, including castration. Why?

Clearly the motivation behind this isn't being fully examined given the current state of the public dialogue. I would imagine that some part of the agenda is depopulation, but this would require a significant number of young males to be sterilized, and it's far from clear that even the most enthusiastic campaign of mass grooming can accomplish this.

But if the object is vastly to increase the number of castrated men, this could also have implications simply for keeping the overall population docile.

Another motive couid be antifeminism, to erase any idea of a separate female identity by in effect making females a version of males and perhaps eventually wiping them out once a more controllable means of reproduction can be devised -- recall that in the TV series Fringe, the Observers, technologically enhanced humanoids from the future, are an all-male race that is able to reproduce in an unspecified way. The fantasy, if nothing else, is out there.

The most we can say is that one of the least popular presidents in US history has made transsexualism a signature issue and claimed transsexuals are made in God's image. As battles in the Plebe War go, this is going to turn out about as well as the encirclement of Kyiv.

Defeat In Detail

I'm scratching my head. Throughout the Ukraine war, the phrase "defeat in detail" has been more or less entering my random thoughts before I fall asleep at night, proobably because I've always assumed it was generally recognized as a key to Ukraine's strategy in the current war. A quick and easy definition is at Encyclopedia.com:

DEFEAT IN DETAIL. In the correct military sense—in the twenty-first as well as in the eighteenth century—this term means "the defeat in turn of the separated parts of a force." To avoid "defeat in detail," a commander keeps all his units within "supporting distance" of each other.

The standard examples (as the one in the video above) include Napoleon's Piedmont campaign and the 1914 Battle of Tannenberg. Another less-cited example, which might be better from my point of view, would be Washington's overall strategy in the Revolution (which I believe Cornwallis himself conceded was a success using that term). But one that fits the definition in Encyclopedia.com even more closely is the current Ukraine strategy in the war with Russia.

The conventional wisdom so far has been that Ukraine's victory in the Battle of Kyiv is an entirely different matter from the putative upcoming battle in Donbas, in which the Russians will be (and this is never completely clear) either Gen Manstein or Gen Zhukhov and smash Ukraine with overwhelming numbers of tanks. Whichever, it's gonna be a big Russian victory or something.

This is in spite of what strikes me as the completely uncontroversial conclusion by the Institute for the Study of War that the forces Russia is trying to recommit to eastern Ukraine "remain degraded, and Russian forces will face challenges integrating units from several military districts into a cohesive fighting force".

In addition, the separate assessments at the Militaryland.com site contain remarks like, "The convoy of Russian army have been moving towards Izium for the third day, and it’s kinda a déjà vu to the Kyiv one." In general, the Russian strategy, insofar as a coherent one even exists, hasn't changed since Kyiv, and in fact, what we're actually seeing on YouTube videos and other press reports is a steady stream of small battles in both the Donetsk and Kherson regions like this one:

Military personnel of the Joint Forces successfully repulsed 6 attacks by the Russians and terminated 15 units of military hardware belonging to the aggressors on the Donetsk and Luhansk fronts on 14 April.

"On 14 April, Ukrainian defenders destroyed 4 tanks, 6 armoured personnel carriers, 4 infantry fighting vehicles and one artillery system belonging to the enemy."

Footage from what may be either this encounter or any number of similar ones on YouTube indicates that this sort of action, taken against a single column of Russian vehicles, amounts to destroying the combat effectivenss of an individual battalion tactical group, apparently dispatched independently and without supoport from others. Estimates of the number of BTGs in eastern Ukraine are from 35 to 50, and as the ISW keeps pointing out, these are already understrength and degraded. The Oryx site continues to catalog the destruction, abandonment, and capture of dozens of tanks, armored vehicles, and weapons each day. As of this morning, its number of such on the Russian side is 2899, and there's apparently a backlog in counting. The Russians are repeating the same failures but expecting a different result.

What we're actually seeing in eastern Ukraine and Kherson is simply a continuation of the Ukrainian strategy we saw in Kyiv, which is misreported as a "stalemate" punctuated by minor skirmishes -- until, unexpectedly, the Russians collapse and retreat in disorder.

Ukraine has so far been able tactically to push back the Russian invasion in detail, in effect a battalion tactical group at a time. Strategically, it's generally acknowledged that the Russian invasion relied on multiple separated parts of a force that were in fact not in supporting distance of each other, which so far has enabled the Ukraine resistance on both small scale and large.

I did a web search on "Ukraine" and "defeat in detail" and came up with only 534,000 hits, most of which date from before the current war. They threw me out of ROTC.

The Sinking Of The Moskva

News reports confirm that the Russian missile cruiser Moskva in the Black Sea was hit by Ukrainian anti-ship missiles and heavily damaged; other reports on Twitter say that it has sunk. Meanwhile,

Rumors are swirling in Russia about Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu having suffered a massive heart attack.

Leonid Nevzlin, a former co-head of the oil giant Yukos, claims that Shoigu is in critical condition.

He also says that 20 top generals have been arrested. pic.twitter.com/9kOJ1Ba0dx

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) April 14, 2022

The Institute for the Study of War site has made no mention of the damage or sinking of the Moskva, nor has the Militaryland site, although I first saw references to this in the middle of yesterday afternoon. The Oryx site, however, has already confirmed the damage, though not the subsequent sinking. It's hard to imagine that this is not a significant blow to Russian prestige: in response to Sweden and Finland moving to NATO, the Russian response was to threaten them with naval forces:

#Russia will strengthen its borders in case of #Sweden and #Finland join #NATO and will deploy "significant naval forces" in the waters of the Gulf of Finland.

This was stated by Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev. pic.twitter.com/nEQaZU3l1K

— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) April 14, 2022

The most complete coverage is at the Red State blog, which itself is a surprise, as US independent media hasn't had much interest in Ukraine. I think the story there has made a correct call:

The politics of the sinking of the Moskva will be seismic. The Moskva is the ship that called upon Ukrainian troops on Snake Island to surrender during the early days of the war and received the memorable response “Russian warship…go f*** yourself” and had a Ukrainian postage stamp designed in honor of the event.

I'm inclined to wait for other developments.

So, Are The Neocons Back?

I've been more closely following retired Gen Jack Keane, a frequent Fox talking head, since I discoverd he's the Chairman of the Institute for the Study of War, which I've been discussing lately. The ISW is pretty clearly a neoconservative think tank, and while its assessments of the Russo-Ukraine War have been remarkably obtuse, there can be little question that it's in frequent contact with generals who are in the Pentagon policy loop. But now Gen Keane in the video above is suggesting the Pentagon policy loop isn't necessarily the White House policy loop. In response to sound bites from Pentagon spokesman John Kirby saying, "We want the Ukrainians to win this war". Keane says,

... really the first time we've heard that from the administration, I'm actually convinced, I mean that's where the Pentagon leaders actually feel, but Secretary Blinken avoids the subject, the national security adviser does the same, and certainly the President of the United States does the same. I was very encouraged by the prime minister of the UK going to Kyiv this weekend . . .

Oddly, this is echoed by a story on Summit News:

A French journalist who returned from Ukraine after arriving with volunteer fighters told broadcaster CNews that Americans are directly “in charge” of the war on the ground.

The assertion was made by Le Figaro senior international correspondent Georges Malbrunot.

Malbrunot said he had accompanied French volunteer fighters, two of whom had previously fought against ISIS.

“I had the surprise, and so did they, to discover that to be able to enter the Ukrainian army, well it’s the Americans who are in charge,” said Malbrunot.

Adding that he and the volunteers “almost got arrested” by the Americans, who asserted they were in charge, the journalist then revealed that they were forced to sign a contract “until the end of the war.”

“And who is in charge? It’s the Americans, I saw it with my own eyes,” said Malbrunot, adding, “I thought I was with the international brigades, and I found myself facing the Pentagon.”

Citing a French intelligence source, Malbrunot also tweeted that British SAS units “have been present in Ukraine since the beginning of the war, as did the American Deltas.”

Russia is apparently well aware of the “secret war” being waged in Ukraine by foreign commandos who have been in the region since February.

Both the United States and the UK have publicly asserted that there won’t be “boots on the ground” in Ukraine, but apparently there has been a US-UK military presence since the start of the war.

Certainly we've seen a resurgence of neocon opinion recently, with the ISW the most prestigious source of Russo-Ukraine war analysis, however obtuse, opaque, and noncommittal it may be; Eliot Cohen a marquee writer at The Atlantic; and even Francis Fukuyama, 30 years after declaring history ended, inexplicably giving it and his career a jump start. Let's step back to Wikipedia's discussion of neoconservatism:

Neoconservatism is a political movement that was born in the United States during the 1960s among liberal hawks who became disenchanted with the increasingly pacifist foreign policy of the Democratic Party and with the growing New Left and counterculture of the 1960s, particularly the Vietnam protests. Some also began to question their liberal beliefs regarding domestic policies such as the Great Society. Neoconservatives typically advocate the promotion of democracy and interventionism in international affairs, including peace through strength, and are known for espousing disdain for communism and political radicalism.

. . . Many of its adherents became politically influential during the Republican presidential administrations of the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, peaking in influence during the administration of George W. Bush, when they played a major role in promoting and planning the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

. . . The Bush Doctrine was greeted with accolades by many neoconservatives. When asked whether he agreed with the Bush Doctrine, Max Boot said he did and that "I think [Bush is] exactly right to say we can't sit back and wait for the next terrorist strike on Manhattan. We have to go out and stop the terrorists overseas. We have to play the role of the global policeman. ... But I also argue that we ought to go further". Discussing the significance of the Bush Doctrine, neoconservative writer Bill Kristol claimed: "The world is a mess. And, I think, it's very much to Bush's credit that he's gotten serious about dealing with it. ... The danger is not that we're going to do too much. The danger is that we're going to do too little.

. . . Barack Obama campaigned for the Democratic nomination during 2008 by attacking his opponents, especially Hillary Clinton, for originally endorsing Bush's Iraq-war policies. Obama maintained a selection of prominent military officials from the Bush Administration including Robert Gates (Bush's Defense Secretary) and David Petraeus (Bush's ranking general in Iraq).

. . . Several neoconservatives played a major role in the Stop Trump movement in 2016, in opposition to the Republican presidential candidacy of Donald Trump, due to his criticism of interventionist foreign policies, as well as their perception of him as an "authoritarian" figure. Since Trump took office, some neoconservatives have joined his administration, such as Elliott Abrams. Neoconservatives have supported the Trump administration's hawkish approach towards Iran and Venezuela, while opposing the administration's withdrawal of troops from Syria and diplomatic outreach to North Korea. Although neoconservatives have served in the Trump administration, they have been observed to have been slowly overtaken by the nascent populist and national conservative movements, and to have struggled to adapt to a changing geopolitical atmosphere.

Biden's precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan must certainly be seen as a final rejection of Bush-era neoconservative and interventionist policies -- except that it's not hard to conclude that Biden's implicit rejection of those policies encouraged Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

So is the Pentagon reverting to neoconservatism? Are the lizard people running the country reverting to a containment consensus more like Kennedy, LBJ, Nixon, Reagan, and the Bushes, sponsoring proxy wars against the successor to the Soviet Union? They and the Pentagon are likely running an implicit version of the 1980s Reagan-Thatcher alliance in Ukraine, with the Thatcher surrogate in the UK, but so far without Biden playing Reagan. Biden, though, is preoccupied at best.

My bet is Gen Keane is in the loop, but President Brandon is not.