Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Let there be snark.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

We still have time to mess this up!

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

T R E 4 5 O N

Innocent people don’t delay justice.

Republicans in disarray!

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Ah, the different things are different argument.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

Bad news for Ron DeSantis is great news for America.

Glad to see john eastman going through some things.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

Trump’s legal defense is going to be a dumpster fire inside a clown car on a derailing train.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Ron DeSantis, the grand wizard, oops, governor of FL

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

After roe, women are no longer free.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Overconfidence Man: Ukraine Edition

Overconfidence Man: Ukraine Edition

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There’s been a ton of analysis of Russia’s military failure in Ukraine — including in the nightly reports of our own Mr. Silverman. But an in-depth WaPo article published this morning suggests Russia’s intelligence failure was possibly even more catastrophic, or at least it set the stage for the fail-parade that followed and continues to this day. A few excerpts:

So certain were FSB operatives that they would soon control the levers of power in Kyiv, according to Ukrainian and Western security officials, that they spent the waning days before the war arranging safe houses or accommodations in informants’ apartments and other locations for the planned influx of personnel…

An agency whose domain includes internal security in Russia as well as espionage in the former Soviet states, the FSB has spent decades spying on Ukraine, attempting to co-opt its institutions, paying off officials and working to impede any perceived drift toward the West. No aspect of the FSB’s intelligence mission outside Russia was more important than burrowing into all levels of Ukrainian society.

And yet, the agency failed to incapacitate Ukraine’s government, foment any semblance of a pro-Russian groundswell or interrupt President Volodymyr Zelensky’s hold on power. Its analysts either did not fathom how forcefully Ukraine would respond, Ukrainian and Western officials said, or did understand but couldn’t or wouldn’t convey such sober assessments to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Just massive hubris all around, it sounds like. The whole thing is worth a read.

Open thread.

 

Reader Interactions

153Comments

  1. 1.

    Kropacetic

    It’ll be a cake walk. They’ll thank us for foisting this on them liberating them. There will be parades and flowers in the streets.

    Also, foist.

  2. 2.

    geg6

    Dang.  Putin sounds almost as stupid and incompetent as Cheetolini.

    And now they’ve lost half the Black Sea aviation fleet and the Black Sea military HQ was hit.  It is to laugh.

    ETA: OT, but my streaming radio station is playing that idiotic “Running Up That Hill” song.  I hate, hate, hate, hate it.

  4. 4.

    Omnes Omnibus

    Why would we expect any more competence from their intel folk than their military has shown?

  5. 5.

    Elizabelle

    It’s all such a tragedy.  So many people dead, so many of them young, and cheated of their lives.

  6. 6.

    Jerry

    We just finished Paper Girls on Amazon and it was really good. Highly recommended.

    This Fool on Hulu is pretty funny. The second episode still has me laughing. Plus, bonus Wee Bay from The Wire!

  7. 7.

    trollhattan

    The now daily LONG range strikes on Crimea are having quite the effect on Russian summer vacationers, in addition to yet more…uh…military reassignments.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62608526

    The fact that explosions in Crimea – a place previously considered to be well beyond the reach of any Ukrainian attack – were watched by thousands of Russian tourists, many of whom have since fled Crimea back into Russia, has had a psychological effect in Moscow, officials told the media.

    The Western officials, who spoke unattributably on background, meaning they cannot be named, said that Russia’s Black Sea fleet has been reduced to little more than a coastal flotilla that is now having to adopt a cautious attitude due to Ukrainian attacks.

    They added that Russia’s ability to launch an assault on the port of Odesa in western Ukraine is highly unlikely in the short term.

    On Wednesday, Russian state media reported that the fleet’s commander, Igor Osipov, had been replaced in light of the attacks. The RIA news agency said the fleet’s new chief, Viktor Sokolov, has been introduced to military leaders at the port of Sevastopol.

    Moscow also seems to be trying to re-arm its beleaguered fleet. State media reported that Admiral Sokolov told a group of young officers that they will receive 12 new vessels, alongside additional aviation and land-based vehicles later this year.

    Admiral Igor Osipov simply must have been lifted from a Bond character.

  9. 9.

    MattF

    Saw that this morning. One might imagine that intelligence agencies would do better, but our recent experiences with Trumpism offers some contrary insight, IMO. I think the Russian intel agencies have gotten so deeply into dishonesty that they can’t find their way out.

  11. 11.

    Cameron

    @trollhattan: They’re gonna get 12 new vessels?  How?  Truck them in?  I thought Turkey was restricting military vessels trying to enter the Black Sea.

  12. 12.

    Almost Retired

    Couldn’t have happened to a nicer deranged despot.  I’m sure intelligence just told him what he wanted to hear.  And that always turns out well….

  13. 13.

    Jinchi

    @zhena gogolia: ​
      Are the Russians who can travel to Crimea on vacation likely to be from the elite or government circles, or is it the type of place an average Russian could afford to get to?

  14. 14.

    Steeplejack

    I don’t remember if it was covered in Silverman’s posts (probably was), but in the first few days of the war there was a series of posts linked from Twitter that purported to be the inside dope from an anonymous (and disgruntled) FSB analyst. Basically: “The big bosses were living in an echo chamber. We had to revise, revise, revise whenever we reported anything they didn’t like. So we reported what they liked.” Possible ass-covering, sure, but the posts generated a lot of commentary. I can’t run it down right now. Maybe later.

  15. 15.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kropacetic: Yep. I had many flashbacks to Bush II hubris while reading the piece. But in a way, this seems like an even more egregious fuckup than the Bush clowns’ fiasco.

    For one thing, Russia is a neighboring country that was already occupying a portion of Ukraine before it tried to swallow the whole thing, which it had done in the past. There are cultural ties, etc. At least Americans had the “excuse” of being far away from and utterly ignorant about Iraq.

  17. 17.

    zhena gogolia

    @Jinchi: I really don’t know. I haven’t been there since the beginning of the Putin era, so my sociological sense is outdated. The crying woman in the back of her SUV looked pretty privileged to me. I have a feeling you’d be living in one of the big cities, and fairly well off, if this was something you’d even think about doing. That doesn’t mean you’d have to be connected to the government.

  21. 21.

    craigie

    This was my favorite line from the article:

    The FSB did not respond to requests for comment.

  24. 24.

    Kropacetic

    @Betty Cracker: But in a way, this seems like an even more egregious fuckup than the Bush clowns’ fiasco.

    “Greatness,” by jingoistic standards…

    For one thing, Russia is a neighboring country that was already occupying a portion of Ukraine before it tried to swallow the whole thing, which it had done in the past. There are cultural ties, etc. At least Americans had the “excuse” of being far away from and utterly ignorant about Iraq.

    All true.  Though when we invaded Iraq, we didn’t have to deal with the other wealthy nations of the world supporting and arming them.

  26. 26.

    rikyrah

    I have always believed that Putin thought that this would go the way of Afghanistan….how their Army collapsed to the Taliban without a fight. Nothing else makes sense to me.

    He was just too unprepared.

  27. 27.

    Mallard Filmore

    @Cameron:

    They’re gonna get 12 new vessels? How? Truck them in? I thought Turkey was restricting military vessels trying to enter the Black Sea.

    I’m rather sure Russia has ship building and drydock facilities on the Black Sea, so these would be “local” boats.

  30. 30.

    Ken

    @rikyrah: I have always believed that Putin thought that this would go the way of Afghanistan

    Well, he got that right.

    Oh wait, you didn’t mean the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, which worked out about as well for Russia as — well, as for every other power which has invaded Afghanistan.

  32. 32.

    Jinchi

    @Steeplejack: “The big bosses were living in an echo chamber. We had to revise, revise, revise whenever we reported anything they didn’t like. So we reported what they liked.”

    Sounds like the CIA under Cheney. Some people want intelligence, others just want justification for what they’ve already decided to do. Putin definitely seems like the type of guy who’d shoot the messenger if he didn’t like the facts.

  34. 34.

    counterfactual

    @Cameron: All I can think of is the Caspian Flotilla. Wikipedia says there were 33 boats there in 2021, and they can travel by canal to the Sea of Azov. But I think the Russians have already sent part of the flotilla to the Black Sea fleet, and most of the Caspian Flotilla is small minesweepers.

  39. 39.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kropacetic: Trump crammed so much fuckery into four interminable years that the Bush lunacy recedes in my memory. Didn’t some bozo float a 90-day plan for pacifying Iraq? I think the “this blog will pay for itself” tagline might have been adapted from the boast of another occupant of the Bush clown car. Sweet Jeebus, how is the Republican Party even a thing anymore?

  40. 40.

    Kropacetic

    @Betty Cracker: Didn’t some bozo float a 90-day plan for pacifying Iraq? I think the “this blog will pay for itself” tagline might have been adapted from the boast of another occupant of the Bush clown car.

    I don’t know about a 90 day thing specifically, but all the supporting claims were that it would be over quickly (a decade, merely a trifle).

    The “pay for itself” bit, I believe was a Republican Congressman or Senator supporting the war I believe*.  Oil revenues and whatnot.

    ETA: Those were my earliest formative political years. Ah, memories.

    *Look at Tommy Two-Time over here.  Excuse me while I get the paper get the paper.

  42. 42.

    Geminid

    @Jinchi: From a look at the jammed outgoing traffic on the Kerch Strait bridge, it seems like a lot of middle class Russians were vacationing in Crimea.

    I think the wealthier Russians go further. Antalya, on Turkiye’s southern Mediterranean coast, is said to be a big destination for rich Russians. That’s fitting; while it is now known as the “Turquoise Coast,” this part of Turkiye was home to a lot of pirates in the 1st century BCE.

  44. 44.

    geg6

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Never heard her before and, based on this song, I never will.  It’s awful.  I had heard of her many times but never had the inclination to listen to any of her stuff.  Am now glad I was lazy about that.

    To each their own.  I am not a fan.

  45. 45.

    Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)

    New servants in the household of Peter the Great were told “NEVER lie to the Tsar. IF you tell a truth he dislikes, he will be angry but not for long. If you tell him a pleasing lie, and he finds you you lied, God help you!”

    This rule was not passed down in Russian history.

  46. 46.

    kalakal

    @HumboldtBlue: I like this chap.

     

    @Kropacetic:  Heh, like those clowns in the ‘People’s Convoy’ convinced they’d be greeted with open arms as liberators in DC. One’s tragedy, one’s farce and there’s no equivalence in damage done but they’re both the result of pure delusion

  48. 48.

    cain

    @Jinchi: That’s pretty much how the South is going to rise! And then fall apart. But they’ll go into hiding thinking they won…

  51. 51.

    Kropacetic

    @geg6: Never heard her before and, based on this song, I never will.  It’s awful.  I had heard of her many times but never had the inclination to listen to any of her stuff.  Am now glad I was lazy about that.

    I vaguely remember the song, but more the music video, from childhood.  I always thought it was weird.  My sister has been a fan for a long time.

    It was the connection to a character I love in a strong scene in one of my favorite current shows that got me into that song and the rest of her work.  I like her, pretty avant garde.

  52. 52.

    cain

    @Jinchi: That’s pretty much how the South is going to rise! And then fall apart. But they’ll go into hiding thinking they won…

  53. 53.

    Kropacetic

    @kalakal: One’s tragedy, one’s farce and there’s no equivalence in damage done but they’re both the result of pure delusion

    Everyone I talk to agrees with me on X so I must be right. /selectionBias

  54. 54.

    Fake Irishman

    @counterfactual:

    I believe the Russians do have a navy yard or two on the Black Sea and they have had some vessels under construction there for a while, mostly smaller frigates and corvettes, but with powerful anti surface armament.

  56. 56.

    Old School

    @Betty Cracker:

    Didn’t some bozo float a 90-day plan for pacifying Iraq? I think the “this blog will pay for itself” tagline might have been adapted from the boast of another occupant of the Bush clown car.

    …

    November 14, 2002 – “The Gulf War in the 1990s lasted five days on the ground. I can’t tell you if the use of force in Iraq today would last five days, or five weeks or five months. But it certainly isn’t going to last any longer than that.” – Then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

    …

    “Iraq is a very wealthy country. Enormous oil reserves. They can finance, largely finance the reconstruction of their own country. And I have no doubt that they will.”

    Richard Perle, chair
    The Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board
    July 11, 2002

    “The likely economic effects [of a war in Iraq] would be relatively small…. Under every plausible scenario, the negative effect will be quite small relative to the economic benefits.”

    Lawrence Lindsey
    White House economic adviser
    September 16, 2002

    “It is unimaginable that the United States would have to contribute hundreds of billions of dollars and highly unlikely that we would have to contribute even tens of billions of dollars.”

    Kenneth Pollack
    former director for Persian Gulf affairs
    National Security Council
    September 2002

  60. 60.

    Will

    Anyone else catch Manchin throwing Sinema under the boss at the West Virginia round table about prescription pricing?

    “We had a Senator from Arizona who basically didn’t let us go as far as we needed to go with our negotiations and made us wait two years”

    https://youtu.be/2NUwdv_s6Fk

  62. 62.

    Geminid

    @Old School: The book Cobra II (2004), by Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor is the best one I’ve found on the planning and execution of the 2003 Iraq invasion. According to Gordon and Trainor, top political leadership really did believe that the war would be finished in a few months. But then the insurgency that began during the invasion really kicked in.

  64. 64.

    kalakal

     

    @Kropacetic:  I was a fan back in the late 70s, 80s when she started out. Still have a couple of her albums, Lionheart and The Kick Inside. She certainly had an effect on an impressionable young lad. I saw her live once, it was a really good show. I like the stuff she did with Peter Gabriel as well. It was impossible to avoid Wuthering Heights in the UK in 1978, it was everywhere for months.

    I get that she’s a bit marmite*, espescially as it’s hard to avoid RUTH.

    * British spread, you either love it or hate it, no middle ground

  67. 67.

    Kropacetic

    @Omnes Omnibus: Rare sincerity….

    Haha, sorry.  I just thought about it as you said it and realized I could point to a lot of what I would consider unorthodox music from the time; a good thing, by the way.

    Not having lived it, though, I figured maybe my characterization was off.

    @kalakal: It was impossible to avoid Wuthering Heights in the UK in 1978, it was everywhere for months.

    I was just listening to that.

  68. 68.

    randy khan

    One huge problem with intelligence analysis is that there’s a ton of confirmation bias in it, and always has been.  In the U.S., forget about Iraq – think about how often the CIA got things wrong about the U.S.S.R. and its capabilities, specifically including its economy, over decades of the Cold War.  And much of that was because the people in charge believed that the Soviets were a big threat, so telling them otherwise was a no go.

  69. 69.

    bbleh

    IIRC the FSB was heavily favored by Putin, who saw them as feeling like the neglected child among the various military-intelligence-political organizations and figured that by promoting them he would make them personally loyal to him to a significant degree.

    Oops …

  71. 71.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @kalakal: A straight lad in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s could easily have become a fan without listening to a note of her music.

  72. 72.

    Laertes

    @Kropacetic: I find Kate Bush to be very much an acquired taste. The over-the-top weirdness of her vocalizations (maybe never weirder than on the studio version of Violin) sound, to my American ear, like the sonic equivalent of those hats that British ladies wear at royal weddings. I think it’s a British thing that I’ll never really get.

  73. 73.

    Geminid

    @Omnes Omnibus: From what Gordon and Trainor say, Donald Rumsfeld was a maniac and a bully. He’d also been a fighter pilot, and thought that precision guided munitions had transformed warfare.

  75. 75.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    He also kept both a piranha and a tarantula as pets.

    I would like to see a remake of Toy Story, Pet Story, starting with that premise

    ETA: that made me think of Tim Burton, and I looked at his IMDB page, and apparently he’s doing a series based on Wednesday Addams, so maybe it’s been done

  80. 80.

    Kropacetic

    @Omnes Omnibus: A straight lad in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s could easily have become a fan without listening to a note of her music.

    I see it.

    Just listened to Hounds of Love, both versions.  Enjoyed it, thank you.  The cover has a way different energy.

  81. 81.

    Benw

    Someone has put stickers of Vlad’s face on all the dog crap trash cans around the park where I’m walking Hudson this week. The text on the stickers reads:

    POO TIN

  82. 82.

    bbleh

    @Betty Cracker: @Kropacetic: @Old School: @Geminid:  Maybe check out PNAC, the Project for the New American Century.  Those guys had a seriously imperial vision, oil was a big part of it, and Iraq was (still is? I dunno) #2 behind Saudi for (I think) estimated reserves.

    There’s a reason they manipulated poor dry-drunk W into the Iraq fiasco, and the sweets-and-flowers and the aluminum tubes (not to mention the daddy issues) were just window-dressing.

  83. 83.

    Kropacetic

    @Benw: POO TIN

    Vulgar brilliance.

    @bbleh:  Maybe check out PNAC, the Project for the New American Century.

    Now, there’s a name I was happy I’d forgotten.

  87. 87.

    Bill Arnold

    That WaPo piece is very good. Learned many details that I had only known the shape of. (Had been looking at much more limited open source info prior to the war, and similarly noticing (like the Ukrainians) that the preparations for full scale war did not seem to be serious. E.g. lack of fuel tankers anywhere near the border.)
    Here’s a full link, mainly to put the bylines (deservedly) into google:
    Russia’s spies misread Ukraine and misled Kremlin as war loomed (Greg Miller and Catherine Belton, Aug. 19, 2022)

    (Was able to read in Chrome with javascript blocked, FWIW.)

  89. 89.

    Kropacetic

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Or knows something we don’t.  He was the first to publicly announce support for a deal.  A few times, in fact.

    Sinema was more tight-lipped about how she could be brought into the fold.  Maybe he thinks she drew it out too long or held out after concessions were made.  Maybe he really wanted better price controls and didn’t get them.

    Still, the distinctions are so slight.  Maybe he’s trying to cover his ass.  Who knows?

  90. 90.

    Frankensteinbeck

    Put me in on the “Nobody was allowed to tell Putin the truth” train.  The people on the ground probably did know it was all bullshit, but Putin was very clear about what he wanted to hear, so they cleaned things up a little for their bosses, who cleaned things up a little for their bosses, and Putin is still hearing that they’re winning slowly and Latest General has a plan to speed things up.

  94. 94.

    Immanentize

    @kalakal: of course, we in the US never got to see her live, because she is completely air travel phobic. She could a been a contender….

  95. 95.

    NotMax

    OT. Query for air travelers.

    Planning on masking inside the airport next week (wait times on Maui TSA lines reportedly running 2+ hours!*) and also wearing it on the plane until it is aloft and the ventilation is on enough that I can adjust the overhead nozzle to full blast. Thoughts yea or nay?

    *Lines so long they’re snaking outside the airport building, under the sun in mid-90s degree heat; airport staff handing out water. Confirmed by acquaintance who is a taxi driver. My flight departure on Tuesday is well past peak hours, so fingers and toes crossed.

  99. 99.

    Frankensteinbeck

    Seriously, the bizarre incompetence of the Russian invasion doesn’t surprise me. It’s what you get when the whole government is designed to keep Putin in power rather than getting anything done. What I wonder now is how much Putin is still being lied to. He’s naturally inclined to be paranoid of foreign reporting anyway, and his yes-men just have to convince him bad news is foreign propaganda. His media is all propaganda, so I bet that’s not hard to do.

  103. 103.

    Immanentize

    @Layer8Problem: I did not remember that! And I used to watch SNL religiously back then — for the music. Do you remember Elvis Costello’s SNL gig? So fuckin good.

  105. 105.

    NotMax

    @Immanentize

    ~13 hours total flight time (if all goes without a hitch), which is a helluva long stretch to wear one. Only reason I’m contemplating removing it on board once the ventilation kicks in.

    One relatively short layover, during which I definitely plan to put the mask back on.

  107. 107.

    Dan B

    @Geminid: A couple gardeners on a big residential project had been stationed on the southern coast of Turkey.  Their description was, “hot, 115 °”.

  108. 108.

    Kropacetic

    @Omnes Omnibus: The air power changed everything people drive me crazy.

    It gave us enormous confidence and a tendency to stretch ourselves out.  It changed things, not for the better.

    @OzarkHillbilly: Air power has always been overrated.

    Tell it to the designers of Halo Wars 2.

  109. 109.

    Eunicecycle

    @NotMax: I flew recently and wore a mask all the time, unless taking a drink or eating, both on the planes and in the airports. Very few people were wearing masks.

    ETA you are in the air much longer than I was so I do understand not wanting to wear it all the time. But I was going to see a brand new granddaughter so didn’t want to take any nasty germs with me!

  112. 112.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Omnes Omnibus: My old man flew B-29s in WWII and Korea. He was my hero, crash landed shot up planes twice. Well, one of my heroes anyway (most of my uncles were in the Pacific or Europe) Imagine my disappointment when I read that most of the afteraction reports were a wash.

  113. 113.

    Jinchi

    @Eunicecycle: Interesting I wonder if it has to do with destination.  Flying back to California last week the only people not wearing masks were the crew.

  119. 119.

    CarolPW

    @NotMax: From what I have read, your mask should stay on until you are in the air, because on the ground they mostly recirculate the air already there. Once aloft, most of the air is from outside. If you had to unmask, waiting a bit after takeoff to allow clearance of the old air would seem a good idea.

    On the other hand, I mask even at the outdoor farmers market, so would never unmask during a flight.

  122. 122.

    Feathers

    I was deeply opposed to the Iraq War, because I knew damn well that they had nothing to do with 9/11 and it was all trumped up bullshit over old grievances.

    However, when I learned that Baghdad is about the same size and density as Los Angeles, I realized we were well and truly fucked.

  125. 125.

    trollhattan

    @NotMax: I’d keep masked the entire flight. Those planes are PACKED.

    We did the five hours last December and man, it seemed endless when you add the airports at either end.

    Are they even requiring vaccines to board now?

  128. 128.

    patrick II

    Confidential reports by a think tank with close ties to the FSB, the Moscow based “Institute of CIS Countries” prodded Moscow to reassert control over its neighbor”.

    It seems Russia has its own Heritage Foundation, and perhaps even more harmful.

  132. 132.

    ian

    @Baud: Baghdad was a pretty serious problem, although perhaps not as bad as Tikrit or Fallujah in regards of American casualties.  My memory of the time was that a lot of the violence was between Shia and Sunni in that city, so much so that entire neighborhoods depopulated and segregated by religion.  They had to construct blast walls between most segments of the city, further divided and polarizing the population.  Much of the violence in Baghdad was in the early 2004-2007 period, overshadowed by the later period of conflict with ISIS that occurred in the Northern areas and the Anwar province.

  133. 133.

    Mike S (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!)

    @NotMax: I like the Air Queen Nano masks that I learned about here at BJ long ago at the beginning of Covid Large surface area allows for easy breathing! I do clip the ear loops behind my head if wearing for a long time instead of putting them behind the ears.

    Amazon link for Queen nano masks

    I find the black KF-94 one uncomfortable for me though.

  135. 135.

    Ohio Mom

    @NotMax: If I were taking such a long flight (such a good son you are!) I would take a variety of types and brands of masks. Just so the parts of my face that get irritated could take turns being abraded in slightly different spots.

    I might even switch to a cloth mask when up in the air, under the gusting air nozzle, because I find them more comfortable and a couple of layers of cotton is better than nothing.

    The wish, “Safe travels,” seems extra appropriate. Hope we get to see photos of the meet-up.

  136. 136.

    eachother

    Disqualifying mistake this morning. Squashes my credentials.
    I thought I was cutting a zucchini this morning. It was big and boaty and I committed to eating it. However, it was a winter squash in summer clothing.

  139. 139.

    eddie blake

    @patrick II:  agreed

    i just figure gps and laser guided bombs fulfill billy mitchell’s promise made a hundred and one years ago. there really isn’t anything you can’t kill from the air anymore if you have accurate target data, and you can do it with a fraction of the planes and crews that would have to have sortied in the past.

  140. 140.

    Carlo Graziani

    @NotMax: Unless you’ve had COVID-19 within the last 6 weeks or so, and hence can be sure to have BA.5 -specific antibodies, I would suggest masking the entire way. SARS-CoV-2 is now as contagious as measles, and while it is clearly less of a serious threat for most (not all) people than it was until Omicron kicked Delta off the planet last January, it would still suck if it ruined your trip.

    Extra masks, as others have suggested, are a good idea.

  141. 141.

    ema

    @NotMax:

    KN95 + goggles for the entire flight = best protection

    (From a literature review: 1) probability of contracting a COVID-19 disease was 7% for mask wearers and 52% for non-mask wearers, and 2) in community settings … 6% of mask wearers and 83% of non-maks wearers tested SARS-CoV-2 positive.

  143. 143.

    Elizabelle

    @NotMax:   Join the others on “Team Mask, for the whole journey.”

    Quite aside from Covid, there is some kind of throat/chest cold circulating now.  Had it for about 10 days and hacked throughout.  A friend had it settle into her sinuses, and she is on antibiotics and still not better.

    Curious what the flight attendants are doing; whether they still mask.

    Wondering what inflight staff from Air France and Lufthansa and Singapore and the sensible countries are doing re personal masks

    Early in the pandemic, KLM wanted passengers to have one clean mask for each 3 hours of flight time, and wear them sequentially.  Couldn’t hurt.

  145. 145.

    Carlo Graziani

    Just saw a report in the Moscow Times: Apparently there’s an agreement to allow an IAEA team to inspect the Zaporizhzhia nuclear reactor facility from Ukrainian territory. We’ll see if it holds.

  146. 146.

    delphinium

    @Immanentize: ​
     

    Yeah, when I think of unique female voices, she comes to mind first. I loved her and Pieter Bourke’s work on The Insider soundtrack, amongst other things.

  151. 151.

    Thor Heyerdahl

    @NotMax: I masked on a flight 2.5 weeks ago on the 11.5 flight from Cape Town to Frankfurt – taking it off only to eat and drink

  152. 152.

    SW

    Its the autocrat’s Achilles heel.  Their sycophants will only tell them what they want to hear.  Putin, Trump DeSantis, Orban, Erdogen, Mr. Bone Saw.  The Chinese dude.  Nothing but ass kissers ever talk to them.

  153. 153.

    Another Scott

    @The Pale Scot: :-)

    In the late ’70s-early ’80s, the US Air Force was working on mapping the entire Earth so they could download maps to all their warheads and have them end up where they wanted them to be on End Times day.

    “But what about landmarks changing, trees growing, etc.??”

    “We don’t talk about that.”

    GPS, based on Navy research on atomic clocks In Spaaaace, made that obsolete.

    Air Power and Artillery address different problems.  Artillery has survival issues without control over the airspace above them.  Air Power has survival issues if artillery can get close enough to their bases.  Enough Bootsonaground are necessary if you want to actually pacify an area and the population (“enough” probably being effectively impossible in these times).

    GO NAVY!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

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