wretchardthecat Profile picture
Information consultant, web developer. Author of the Belmont Club. Alternate site: https://t.co/Z3nQ3PQk0D
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Mar 12 4 tweets 1 min read
In assessing the danger of an attack on the Gaza port, you should always figure on capability. Don't assume intent. Image In fairness to Joe once he made the decision to stick his presence, into Gaza, absent active protection, he had no choice but to hope no one takes a shot at it. He is defended by "luck".
Jan 19 5 tweets 1 min read
Nine months into his first term in 2021 Joe Biden told the UN: “as I stand here today, for the first time in 20 years the United States is not at war. We’ve turned the page.”

theguardian.com/us-news/2021/s… All Joe thought he had left to fix was Climate Emergency, the challenge of the age, to which he pledged $11B. The road ahead was bright. But somehow bad luck intervened. Future historians will try to understand the misfortune. But at the inflection point it was all rosy.
Jan 3 4 tweets 1 min read
I have often argued that the Greatest Generation deserves the name, not because they won the war (which they did) but because they won the peace which was in many ways the harder trick. The key to their success was that they did not try to restore the pre-WW2 system. They let the British and European colonial empires die. The world was rebuilt on first principles. Subsequent generations have done the opposite. They've focused on preserving the World Order.
Dec 30, 2023 5 tweets 1 min read
Sam Bankman Fried will not face second trial on campaign finance charges. In public interest not to dredge up "campaign finance violations, conspiracy to commit bribery".

bbc.com/news/world-us-… It would avoid raising such painful questions as "who did you suborn? Who did you bribe?" Since he's already convicted of money laundering the prosecution will only make the rubble bounce, right?
Dec 29, 2023 7 tweets 2 min read
Words you should learn.

De-risking, also known as de-banking "is the closure of people's or organizations' bank accounts by banks who perceive the account holders to pose a financial, legal, regulatory, or reputational risk to the bank."

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De-banking In a way you could think of keeping certain riff-raff off the ballot as a kind of political de-risking. The Coutts bank in the UK closed Nigel Farage's account "in part as Coutts felt that his beliefs and values did not align with theirs."

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigel_Far…
Dec 23, 2023 4 tweets 1 min read
Obama is now reported to be the one behind Gay. Long thought to be the power behind the Biden throne and promoter of the Iran reconciliation policy, the ex president is the closest thing to the unofficial supremo of the Democratic party. Obama has a charismatic hold over the party's ideologues that Biden can never hope to match, so great that Biden even after 3 years is still in his shadow. Obama is the soul of the party where Biden can only be its dentures.
Dec 22, 2023 5 tweets 1 min read
The allied navies must hit the Houthis ashore, says former captain. 'It is a sobering thought that a relatively minor terrorist militia group can threaten global trade in this manner'

telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/12/2… First of all the threat isn't a "minor terrorist militia group", who by themselves could never manufacture the antiship weapons. The threat is a major regional power, Iran. It is this unfortunate fact that paralyzes Joe Biden.
Dec 22, 2023 4 tweets 1 min read
The latest take on the Gaza tunnels. 'OK, they exist. Even sometimes under schools and hospitals, but there is no immediate evidence of military use by Hamas.' Very few militaries can operate under rules of engagement requiring such fine distinctions. The IDF is one of the more capable armed forces, but most are much blunter instruments. The Houthis can't even accurately identify the nationality of the ships they attack.
Dec 7, 2023 5 tweets 1 min read
The left is celebrating the birthday of Chomsky. How well would you have fared in a world where he was making the choices? Why didn't he better his own circumstances by moving to places shaped by those choices? This is a very common puzzle. Many to figure out for example why people seeking to abolish fossil fuels frequently fly private jets.

The usual answer is that they're self sacrificing for our sake.
Nov 30, 2023 4 tweets 1 min read
This could undermine the prestige of the United Nations. "Released hostage says he was held by UNRWA teacher in Gaza."

jpost.com/middle-east/ar… Everyone is free to be a combatant. Those who sincerely sympathize with Hamas can take up its cause. But to be a noncombatant means just that. Some may think feeling sincere means you are not taking part in the ugliness, even if you are, but that is not how it works.
Nov 27, 2023 4 tweets 1 min read
Highway robbery, piracy etc was a common feature of the ancient world to which we are returning at the edges of Western civilization.

When you hear "from the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli", it's a reference to the Battle of Derna and the Barbary pirates, people who felt it was their right to rob you.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Bar…
Nov 12, 2023 5 tweets 2 min read
Some pundits now believe Hamas never calculated strategy beyond its Oct 7 raid. For instance Edward Luttwak says: "Muslims even Columbia U profs exploded in sheer joy -finally a victory. But no Day 2 plan."

But way back in 2012 Gur Laish, a former head of the IAF Warfare Planning Department believed Hamas did have a grand strategy, which he called "a stable situation of ongoing limited confrontation" deliberately avoiding the Amorite Iniquity Effect.

militarystrategymagazine.com/article/the-am…
Nov 1, 2023 6 tweets 1 min read
One of the most poorly informed debates in the media coverage of war, is the concept of 'proportionality'. The average person understands it as a kind of transaction. If X kills N citizens of Y, then Y can fairly retaliate by killing N*(1+i) citizens of X, i being a penalty. But what it really means as per Red Cross is it prohibits attacks against military objectives which are “expected to cause incidental loss of ... civilian objects ... which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated”.
Oct 18, 2023 4 tweets 1 min read
The open source analysis of the Gaza bombing story could never have happened without a relatively unhampered discussion on social media and other Internet venues. The public figured it out for themselves. Instead of being trapped in the problem of who to believe, the public had access to enough imagery, geolocation and explosive characteristic data to reach a reasonably accurate assessment.
Oct 15, 2023 10 tweets 2 min read
Many Jews felt guilty about containing Gaza. Some, like the magnate who built R&D centres in the Gaza Strip to employ Palestinian developers to better relationns had both his daughter and hopes murdered at the music festival by Hamas. The explanation, if there is one, lies in military theory idea of the "eternal enemy". As Huba Wass de Czege put it: “It is the loser who decides that he has lost." If you don't surrender you never lose. In MENA nobody gives up. So the war goes on forever.
Aug 21, 2023 6 tweets 1 min read
We live in a time of extraordinary uncertainty yet paradoxically most of the world's critical systems keep running despite major blunders by politicians as if stabilized by momentum. There's a lot of ruin in a world, more than one might think. The end of our prevision is not the same as the end.
Aug 11, 2023 8 tweets 2 min read
Strange traffic.

Biden is accused of 'LGBT imperialism' in Africa while US conservatives are simultaneously accused of exporting anti-gay hatred. Convergence is over. Divergence is in.

nytimes.com/2022/04/08/opi…
Jun 10, 2023 7 tweets 2 min read
The problem is that the attraction to Trump is for many another name for "hating the establishment" and following the principle 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend'. The establishment cannot imagine why so much of the public should hate with such passion.

theatlantic.com/magazine/archi… "History will judge the complicit" is a dangerous precept to live by unless you know how history will turn out. But then there's always revisionism.
Jun 9, 2023 4 tweets 1 min read
The American political division now seems permanent. It got worse with time and the odds of now avoiding conflict of some sort are low. Some institutions, like the justice system, education, media are sure to be challenged. How much farther it will extend remains to be seen.
May 30, 2023 4 tweets 1 min read
21st century familiarity with memes has made it possible for the popular mind to understand the idea of 'angels and demons' in ways the 20th century could not; perhaps not go so far as say we're living in a simulation, but readily admit malware can exist.

instapundit.substack.com/p/is-this-the-… Memes and ideas are not "nothing", to be dismissed as mere epiphenomenon of matter. Our daily experience with software demonstrates that what a system thinks -- and a society is a system -- can be very important indeed.
May 29, 2023 4 tweets 1 min read
Claudia Rosett has passed. She was very kind to me.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudia_R… A former editorial board member of The Wall Street Journal, she was the only print journalist to witness the Tiananmen Square massacre and later broke the United Nations’ Oil for Food scandal, the largest public fraud in history.