History, Security

Russia’s “Masculine” Military Destroyed by a Thoughtful Ukraine

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Analysts have shifted to asking how far Ukraine might go in liberating people from the brutality of Russia’s “masculine” rhetoric and occupation.

“Ukraine has the initiative and momentum and is dictating to the Russians where and when the next fight will be,” said Philip Ingram, a former senior British military intelligence officer. […] Mile after mile of abandoned trenches along the road to the southern port city of Kherson spoke of the miserable living conditions some Russian forces had to endure on the right bank of Kherson before their retreat.

The same article shows how the American government is laying sound political and military sentiment on the heels of such retreat.

“This whole notion, I think, in the Western press of ‘When is Ukraine going to negotiate?’ misses the underlying fundamentals, which is that Russia continues … to make these outlandish claims about annexed Russian territory,” [White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan] said.

The key to asking when it might end, is when Russia may finally admit its occupation will end.

After all, it’s led to a situation where Russian men run are on the run from their own country.

Fighting-age men in Russia are still hiding in fear of being sent to war

It’s clear Putin doesn’t care for Russian men, while telling them they should jump forward and die for him in a foreign country. Does anyone really believe if Putin can’t even care for the welfare of Russians that he somehow cares for the people in Crimea being forcibly occupied by Putin’s conscripts?

You have to really marvel at such a serious disconnect. Perhaps later I’ll write about how this fits a pattern of Putin since the 1980s, as he’s tried for decades to cultivate thoughtless brutality as strategy. Ultimately, just like when Putin was running KGB operations in East Germany to breed neo-Nazi cells, his toxic “masculinity” strategy has resulted in men being afraid of coming out of hiding.

It couldn’t have been any clearer than when Putin just attempted to mobilize 300,000 in Russia, and instead saw nearly that many immediately exit its borders in protest.

Why should they lose their lives for him? I’ve pointed out this failure of Putin before and warned his day of reckoning was coming, although I admit I had no idea it would be in Ukraine. In fact, I told people Putin couldn’t be so stupid as to roll into Ukraine (even on the day before) because it seemed so obvious how Russia’s military would fail. Whoops. I guess that was only partially right.

The dictator’s obsession with promoting himself over everything completely backfired. Loyalty to him is more empty than ever and because he allowed no other loyalty to grow, not even “motherland” rhetoric, that country is rudderless.

It’s something of a similar fate for toxic “masculine” leaders in America, who aligned themselves with Putin (e.g. many in the GOP) and peddled constant nonsense about fear and being scared. It’s worse in Ukraine of course as Russian men pressed into Putin’s “meat-grinder” have basically been armed only with rusty shovels (not an exaggeration) to dig their own graves and then fall into them dead.

That’s some Hitler-level stupidity and a predictable outcome of fear-based bogus “masculine” propaganda.

The German Nazis (especially children drafted into battle) were literally convinced they would be killed if they surrendered, so they hid in trenches and bunkers.

British soldiers in WWII recount finding Nazi teenagers scared, hiding and sobbing in tears — poor kids had been brainwashed to think everyone was out to kill them. Proper care once under the command of Allied liberators blew their minds, allowing them to be thoughtful once again.

Thus we’re watching as a whole generation of Russian men may be lost at this point in Putin’s tragic folly, unless they hide and surrender to Ukraine.

It even has led to widespread protest by the people who actually show some sense of care for Russian men: women.

Russian women march to Ukrainian frontline to demand husbands be sent home

In conclusion it begs a tough question whether Russian women should decide when, where and how to negotiate with Ukraine. Maybe set that as a goal for Putin: what woman will you appoint to lead any negotiation?

Women in Russia seem to be the only ones being thoughtful right now. They show much better ideas about Russia’s best interests… versus Putin’s toxic masculine clown show.

I’m somewhat reminded of Henry Ford getting a medal from Adolf Hitler in 1939 then losing more and more authority at work while refusing to admit being wrong; all 50,000 autoworkers walked off the job in 1941 asking why their CEO was on the side of Nazis. Henry was stumped completely until an end of his crisis eventually was negotiated by his wife.

And I don’t just mention the connection to Ford idly here. The emasculation of men, due to industrialization causing massive cultural shifts through the early 1900s, was one of the driving forces behind the rise of fascism in the 1930s. People wanted to orient around “masculine” safety, but instead attached themselves to toxic charlatans.

Italian dictator Mussolini and his mistress hang before they could be tried for war crimes. His soldiers claimed to be victims yet committed atrocities that for 60 years have gone unpunished.

Bogus promises by notorious “strong men” who promised they would lead through times of uncertainty, doubt and hyperbolic fear turned out to be mostly snake-oil and disinformation (breeding hate) to unjustly rise into power yet avoid accountability for mass harms.

Security

New study: “being able to find a mate and reproduce is more important than not being eaten”

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Evolutionary biologists studied nearly 2,000 land vertebrates to assess why colors are used for different purposes in the wild.

They found a repetitive pattern that explains simply when and how the colors and hues appear.

“It’s interesting to see that for some colors like red, orange, and yellow, they’re used with similar frequency as both a way to avoid predators and as a way for mate attraction,” says Emberts.

“On the flip side, blue coloration was more frequently associated with mating as opposed to predator avoidance.”

The diurnal animals’ coloration makes sense: a flashy animal, in the light of day, is going to be seen by other animals, including potential mates. That may make them bigger targets for predators, too, but it seems like being able to find a mate and reproduce is more important than not being eaten. The females of these species are often drab in comparison, and therefore better able to hide from predators and survive to rear offspring.

But nocturnal animals slither and snoop about in the dark. A male nocturnal snake doesn’t have much use for a bright color for sexual signaling if the females can’t see it.

“Warning colors have evolved even in species with no eyes,” Wiens says. “It’s questionable whether most snakes or amphibians can see colors, so their bright colors are generally used for signaling to predators rather than to members of the same species.”

It’s after science reports like this that things never really appear the same to me again.

Poetry, Security

Black Snowflakes: “Where was your wedding? When? Any airstrikes?”

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A first book of poetry by U.S. Army veteran Ryan Stoval is titled “Black Snowflakes Smothering a Torch: How to Talk to Your Veteran – A Primer”.

In order to facilitate dialogue, between those who have experienced the crushing arms of war and those who have not, at its foundation Black Snowflakes presupposes that many issues veterans face when reintegrating originate not from war trauma but from the hypocrisies inherent to American civilian culture itself.

Source: https://ryanstovall.com/

It’s a quick read and I’ve found many pithy and moving pieces about a struggle to make sense of life-changing moments when forced into sharp contrast. The pages are often processing polarity or managing binary/dichotomous survival decisions, which should resonate deeply with anyone who thinks deeply about the grey scales of risk.

If nothing else, it’s a philosophical journey through some of the pain and remorse of being forced into high-stakes high-speed context switching.

For example I allowed myself time to pause to think about a “Cheerios” reference in a poem titled “American Weddings”, which only amplified the clarion call that comes next through his vision.

Were was your wedding? When? Any airstrikes?

That’s a great example to me of how directly and quickly he will deliver contrast, repaint a picture.

Perhaps an even better example of such polarity and switching is a piece called “But By The Grace of Poor Weapons Maintenance”.

It opens with a narrative like “I hesitate, thinking here is surely one of ours” and then, in “an instant” flips the narrative to…

Well, you can probably guess the “horrified” inverse when the inevitable battlefield identity switch is flipped into someone NOT being “one of ours”.

Related:

Soldatenlieder Der Einsame Posten of 1865, classic poem with a battlefield identity switch.

Also, the anti-war poetry of War Pigs

SPIN: For some reason in “War Pigs,” it always bothered me that you rhymed “generals in their masses” with “just like witches at black masses.” Why use “masses” twice? Did you try to think of a different word?

Butler: I just couldn’t think of anything else to rhyme with it. And a lot of the old Victorian poets used to do stuff like that — rhyming the same word together. It didn’t really bother me. It wasn’t a lesson in poetry or anything.

Security

Elon Musk’s “Crash Faster” Management of Twitter is Killing Trust in All His Dumb Brands

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The CEO abusing staff at Twitter is in a toxic tryst with his other companies.

It’s not just that he seems to be ignoring them, he’s not even protecting them from his own dumb mistakes.

A huge spike in misinformation is now being spread by Twitter’s CEO to his other brands.

Here is one of his newly “verified” accounts spitting all over him:

Source: Twitter

And if that’s not clear enough, here’s another of his newly “verified” accounts also spitting all over him:

Source: Twitter

The complete failure of his best idea for verification systems was easily avoidable. An $8 “verification” system with no authority mechanism is as ethically bankrupt as it looks at first glance. Some of the worst consequences from such mistakes however are unfortunately permanent.

Putting a car on the road, let alone sending a rocket into space, means strict government-led safety requirements for a very simple reason: a market often doesn’t solve properly on its own regarding catastrophic harms. Outside, inherited, oversight is necessary.

As I warned in my 2016 presentations Josh Brown was decapitated in a Tesla because of such dumb “crash faster” thinking that falsely described primitive lane assist as “collision avoidance”. There’s no “do over” for Josh after CEO’s disinformation led to his death, and the world is worse off because of it.

To put it another way, the CEO of Twitter is openly saying he encourages dumb ideas to be put into practice quickly by engineers without any real oversight or sense of social or moral obligations.

He even rushed into firing half the company without knowing how it runs and then a few days later was wasting money and time to hire back the people he had just fired.

Such lust for “permanent improvisation” is disgusting and sad to witness; those who know even basic history are condemned to watch other people repeat its worst mistakes.

Are all his engineers being told everything is just fine when people die in their rockets or cars? Do those engineers just expect they will go on and kill more people later (unless they’re fired and replaced with someone more willing to ignore safety; as disposable as their dead customers)?

That’s not even an exaggeration. Musk literally described his far-off vision for an optimal “mission to Mars” as “a bunch of people will probably die“.

Imagine a CEO writing “your tragic loss of life, caused by our dumb ideas being thrown into production without care, is because… uncaring works out better for me”.

Musk is demonstrating yet again his willful rejection of science, based in an inability to grasp basic engineering principles (e.g. an ethical requirement for social good).

Although the Twitter disaster helps illustrate why Tesla delivered worse products over time compared with other cars on the road, and why its value depreciates faster than market averages, it doesn’t explain why this man is allowed to be a CEO in America.