Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Via email from Michael Bravo:

I'd like to propose a mental experiment - take <hexayurt>'s
four-point problem list from <217> and replace "nuclear" with
"airplanes" early enough. These heavier-than-air contraptions are
super suspect, very expensive, dangerous as hell, can be used to
make weapons (what can NOT, by the way?), and burn fossil fuels
aplenty.

That is not a list of problems [with nuclear]. That's a list of
excuses, quite similar to a long list of technologies "corrupting
youth" - from books to telegraph to newspapers to radio to
television to smartphones to virtual worlds.
  

    
*The great-and-the-good in NATO-land won't do much about Kazakhstan
-- not even for the sake of the copious oil, gas, coal and nuclear.
Ukraine they'll give guns to, Belarus they'll make noise about,
Kazakhstan is somebody else's problem.

*Also, even if the Kazakh rebels win, nobody wants to be seen in
retrospect as having kissed ISIS on the lips.  If the Mujihadeen
Lafayette Escadrille isn't in Kazakhstan already, they'll be there
as soon as they can get safe-houses.

*The Kazakh foreign ministry -- (whoever's left of it after the
palace purges) -- has come up with a narrative:

"The foreign ministry of Kazakhstan blamed 'certain foreign media'
for portraying the police violence as aimed against the peaceful
protesters, who took the streets because of the hike of gas fuel
prices.

“'Peaceful rallies were held in Mangystau region and in all major
cities of the country. The protesters’ demands were fully met.
However, the peaceful protests were hijacked by terrorist, extremist
and criminal groups to escalate tensions and violence. In this
respect, a state of emergency was declared in the country', the
foreign ministry says in a statement circulated on Sunday.

"The Kazakh authorities blame for the unrest terrorists trained
abroad, although they don’t says who they are, from where they have
come and who is financing them."  (((That's true, but that's kind of
a high standard of proof -- nobody asks that about the USA's January
6 insurrectionists, either, and they were doing all that in broad
daylight, with iPhones and credit cards.)))

“'Kazakhstan has been subjected to armed aggression by
well-coordinated terrorist groups trained abroad. According to
preliminary data, the attackers include individuals who have
military combat zone experience in the ranks of radical Islamist
groups. Currently, the law enforcement agencies and armed forces of
Kazakhstan are confronting terrorists, not 'peaceful protesters' as
some foreign media misrepresent it', the ministry states. 
(((Somebody was decapitating the police, which is kind of a
signature move when you want a mujihadeen-friendly atmosphere of
polarization.)))

"Reportedly, the Kazakh law enforcement agencies have been
instructed to conduct a large-scale investigation of the causes of
the current situation. It is said that their results would be
presented to the international community.  (((They're kicking the
football into next week and hoping everybody forgets about it. 
Which is, in fact, pretty likely, unless somebody doubles-down with
coordinated car-bombs.  Except for the mujihadeen factions, no power
player actually WANTS any trouble in Kazakhstan, it's bad for
business all around.  Also, the Kazakhs lack spiteful enemies.  If
anything, people admire the Kazakhs. they're like the upbeat, Dubai
version of Central Asians.)))

"Kazakhstan also stresses that it is in control of the situation and
the troops form the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty
Organization (CSTO) are on its territory on a temporary basis." 
(((If they leave, it'll be more remarkable than if they stay.)))
  

    
What's the source of that piece? So far I think I've seen reports
that this is a feud between rival oligarchs, that the country's most
prominent gangster has been arrested, and that a high official in
the security service has been arrested.
  

    
Michael Bravo:

Aeroplanes kill a few people here and there. Nuclear proliferation
is a *dramatically* worse problem than people think it is.
Everybody's taken their eyes off that ball because nobody's dropped
a nuke on humans in almost living memory.

It's going to bite us hard the next time somebody uses a nuke.
  

    
This is the apparent source of <227>:
<https://www.euractiv.com/section/central-asia/news/eu-ministers-to-consider-me
asures-over-kazakh-crackdown/>
  

    
Via email from Gyrgir:

Thanks for the Avalanche link, Vinay. It conforms with my 'now,
today' requirements, I concede the point. Orthogonally, I'm not
happy with carbon accounting in this way because it depends on all
kinds of data that aren't there, blockchain or not. It also follows
a near identical hype curve with Internet of Things and for good
reason. As nothing large-scale beneficial happened through/with IoT
in the last 10 years, I don't expect anything from carbon accounting
either.

Incidentally, there is no urgency in my "now, today", as in: "bring
the Future faster to Today". Rather it's a very Zen thing, as in
"your future doesn't exist".

So I found myself agreeing with both Brian Slesinsky's #211 and
Patrick Lichty's #212. Telling people to urge/panic without a plan
would be Bad (TM). Governments though? I'm not so sure, but here we
are, in this broken timeline's 2022 of mass inability to act in
scale. We've all seen the GOP26 show.

I don't want to sit and wait though, afraid to tell people to act.
That would be BAD > Bad (TM), for all of us.

But I don't rush: I live in the here-now, and I'm a survivor of 2020
and 2021, so I know to pick my battles. This is one of them.

I think Marlinspike's urgency was more along the lines of "all
intermediate steps must make sense, not only the (mythical/intended)
last", and what he saw didn't make sense to him today.

I guess he meant it in the agile way of "let's iterate, on what the
customer wants" but I find it works in general. When everything
around you accelerates, in Paul Virilio's sense, the only course of
action is to act in a way that makes sense in the here-now. The
better informed you are, the more it will make sense in the
here-tomorrow's-now, but then again information is not what it used
to be. It's a numbers game now.

And I didn't even wrote anything about the unintended consequences
aspect. Who should clean our mess?
  

    
Via email from "r.u.a.cyberpunk" - a link to a Bruce Sterling video
archive:

I've been collecting bruce sterling talks for a while--

So after spending some time locked in my house for "some unspecified
reason", I decided to scrap the web looking for all the <bruces>
talks that could be out there, floating in the ether.

Then I thought "maybe I should classify all those videos in order to
make sense of the thing", and then "after all that work, maybe
somebody else is interested in it"...

long story short:
<https://r-u-a-cyberpunk.github.io/bruces/videos.html>


btw have fun with the state of the world chat
  

    
The President of Kazakhstan says there was an attempted coup, which
is the way he's characterizing the protests:
<https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/president-kazakhstan-says-he-has-we
athered-attempted-coup-detat-2022-01-10/>

"Tokayev defended his decision to invite Russian-led troops into the
country and said that doubts over the legitimacy of that mission
stemmed from a lack of information.

"Kazakhstan would soon provide proof to the international community
about what had happened, he said.Sixteen members of the security
forces were killed, while the number of civilian casualties is still
being checked, he said."
  

    
So he cut off communication with the outside world and blamed his
critics for working with inadequate information. And now he'll tell
us the real story. Uh huh.
  

    
>Aeroplanes kill a few people here and there

Mostly there: drone warfare.
  

    
Building new nuclear reactors with fuel cycles that don't produce
materials usable in bombs does not significantly increase the risk
of proliferation of weapons. Denying the reality that Iran is
responding rationally to the threat to them from Israel's nuclear
arsenal is a driver of proliferation.
  

    

>  Aeroplanes kill a few people here and there.

"Taking a long-haul flight generates more carbon emissions than the average
person in dozens of countries around the world produces in a whole year."



https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2019/jul/19/carbon-calc
ulator-how-taking-one-flight-emits-as-much-as-many-people-do-in-a-year

2019, The Guardian
  

    
Yes, but the really heavy emissions national are from things like
millions of people commuting 60 miles a day and eating beef - or
just living in a very cold climate and keeping warm.
  

    
>the really heavy emissions

Are generated by extractive economics at corporate scale.
  

    
It's disingenuous to blame personal habits in a society that's
structured so they're hard to change. People can't choose whether to
commute long distances by car unless they can afford to live close
to where they work or close to efficient public transit.
  

    
Via email from Mark Kraft:

"I'm not sure what Russia could do at this point in regards to
Ukraine... that would prompt the USA or EU nations to send more than
stern messages and sanctions to its defense."

I wouldn't trivialize sanctions. In 2008, the GDP for Russia fell
over 25%, with long term impacts lasting several years. If Russia
invades, expect an economic/military slog match lasting at least
months, with stubborn resistance from the Ukrainians that gives way
east of the Dnieper, but solidifies near Kyiv.

The US would likely see it as another Afghanistan-like opportunity
to back 42 million Ukrainians with a flood of "cheap" weapons meant
to knock out expensive tanks, helicopters, transports, etc. Ukraine
has a large reserve force, and even if the cities are surrounded by
tank spearheads, expect them to make occupying and supplying
frontline troops difficult, with the potential for bloody,
Grozny-like urban fighting and sustained insurgent attacks. Flat
land ideal for tanks could suddenly become swamps, if decisions are
made to destroy dams. 

If any of this happens, expect Russia to lie about the numbers of
the dead, with grieving women once more becoming Russia's
destabilizing truth tellers.

Short of a dubious complete Russian military victory, where they
rapidly push into Kyiv and occupy Ukraine before resistance
solidifies, the real battle has already been lost. Soviet
infrastructure was largely designed to extract raw materials from
its territories and turn them into more expensive finished goods,
locking them into an unfavorable state of dependence.Ukraine
responded to Russian invasion by shifting much of their Russian
exports to EU and Turkey. Meanwhile, despite Russian efforts to
topple Ukraine, in the two years prior to Covid, the Ukrainian
economy grew ~50% faster than that of Russia, with a large growth in
exports.

People talk about Russia being afraid of democracy, but perhaps more
than that, they are afraid of its neighbors realizing they'd be much
better served bringing their trade - and money, and talent -
elsewhere.

Russia's economy is already facing Covid job losses, reduced
exports, and inflation. Can they really afford protracted sanctions
and their neighbors using the opportunity to reduce trade too? I
don't expect Putin to invade, unless it's limited in nature,
designed to bring parts of Eastern Ukraine fully into Russia,
followed by a quick declaration of victory. Rather, I expect Putin
to let Biden try to appease him.

The intended message will be that crossing Putin and establishing
closer western ties comes at a price, possibly spooking some
would-be investors.

It's one thing to pressure - or occupy - your neighbors, so they
stay in your sphere. It's something else entirely to peacefully,
affordably keep them there, or convince their best and brightest to
study in Moscow and help revitalize an increasingly moribund nation.
The Soviets failed to keep 30 million Afghanis down, even with
direct borders. Why should we believe that Russia by itself can do
better versus 45M Ukrainians?

Ultimately, though, what Putin is doing won't reverse Russia's long
term problems. They are a huge, inefficient nation with a rapidly
shrinking, aging population and a crumbling, expensive-to-maintain
infrastructure, much of it built on melting permafrost.  Meanwhile,
their economy is dependent on significantly useless weapons and dead
dinosaurs, keeping the LONG, LONG recession that's coming at bay,
for now.

""Russia's fate and its historic prospects depend on how many of us
there are." - V. Putin

Those few nations that are brave enough to resist nationalists and
open their doors to young immigrants now will be in a much better
situation in the future. In truth, Russia should be tempting
immigrants throughout Asia with free land now, before snow packs
decrease, rivers start to dry up, and populations migrate out of
necessity.
  

    
Here's a quote from Barbara Walter, whose book _How Civil Wars
Start_ will be published soon. The book is about "about the factors
that increase the likelihood that countries will turn to violence,
and their growing presence in American life. Walter, a leading
authority on international security and civil wars who helps run the
award-winning blog Political Violence At a Glance
<https://politicalviolenceataglance.org/>, is a professor of
political science at UC San Diego and a research affiliate at IGCC."

She tweets at <https://twitter.com/bfwalter>, and her site is
<https://www.barbarafwalter.com/>.

"The US government’s Political Instability Task Force, which I
joined 2017, has identified two factors that best predict where
political instability and civil war is likely to break out around
the world. The first and most important is whether a country is what
we call an anocracy—neither fully democratic nor fully autocratic.
Countries most at risk of civil wars are those that are
transitioning rapidly from one end of the political spectrum to the
other. Think about Iraq in 2003, when the United States went in,
toppled Saddam Hussein, and wanted to set up a democracy. It didn’t
take long for Iraq to spiral into civil war. But it can also happen
in the other direction, when a country is rapidly moving from
democracy to something less democratic. Think about Ukraine just a
few years ago.

"The second thing is whether “ethnic entrepreneurs” emerge in these
countries who mobilize citizens around ethnic, religious, or racial
lines. Those countries are most at risk of civil war.

"So I’m sitting on this task force and we’re studying countries
around the world. And I start to realize that these two factors are
emerging in the United States at a surprisingly rapid rate. The
United States, for most of its history, has been considered fully
democratic. Starting in 2016, one of the datasets that measures the
level of democracy began to downgrade the United States. And in
January of this year, for the very first time since the late 1700s,
the United States was classified as an anocracy. We are now in that
middle zone where the risk of political instability and violence
increases. Then, in 2020, the United States was classified as
factionalized, because our political system is increasingly
polarized around identity."

<https://igcc.ucsd.edu/news-events/news/is-the-us-header-toward-civil-war.html>
  

    
Here's a Vox piece by Zack Beauchamp that quotes Barbara Walter:
<https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22814025/democracy-trump-january-6-cap
itol-riot-election-violence>

"Walter doesn’t think that a rerun of the American Civil War is in
the cards. What she does worry about, and believes to be in the
realm of the possible, is a different kind of conflict. 'The next
war is going to be more decentralized, fought by small groups and
individuals using terrorism and guerrilla warfare to destabilize the
country,' Walter tells me. 'We are closer to that type of civil war
than most people realize.'

"How close is hard to say. There are important differences not only
between the United States of today and 1861, but also between
contemporary America and Northern Ireland in 1972. Perhaps most
significantly, the war on terror and the rise of the internet have
given law enforcement agencies unparalleled capacities to disrupt
organized terrorist plots and would-be domestic insurgent groups.

"But violence can still spiral absent a nationwide bombing campaign
or a full-blown war — think lone-wolf terrorism, mob assaults on
government buildings, rioting, street brawling."
  

    
In terms of American civil war 2.0 stuff I think the most likely
flashpoint is Texas secessionism. Lots of people with extremist
views are moving in to Texas and lots of (sensible) moderates are
moving out. If there's a Democratic victor in 2022 and the Texans
refuse to accept the results of the election and split from the
union many neighbouring states will follow them - could rip as far
as Alberta, Canada and south into Texas. 

In fact one likely first move is to mount a lightweight invasion of
Texas - grab and garrison one small town - to make it into an
international incident. Try to get the UN involved to massively
muddy the waters and slow down US Federal reprisals.

It's one messy conflict: 10 million Americans hunt deer. US has
about 250,000 infantry. Lot of troops refuse to fight - at least to
do things like bomb cities. Some mutiny. Scramble to secure nukes.

It can all be avoided: hand

* drug law
* abortion law
* gun law
* LGBT law

to the States. Require freedom of movement between the States as an
absolute right, and have a Federal fund to relocate people whose
civil liberties are infringed by the new regime.

Culture war evaporates, everybody moves to a place they can deal
with, and America moves forwards again as a people united by their
diversity.
  

    
Correction: could rip as far as Alberta, Canada and south into
**MEXICO**. 

Most of the middle strip in America would go with an independent
Greater Texas. The Canadians coming along is a wild card.
  

    
>Lots of people with extremist
views are moving in to Texas and lots of (sensible) moderates are
moving out.

Texas has added 9 Hispanic residents for every new white resident in
the last year. The real show in Texas is the minoritization of
non-Hispanic whites, already down to 42% as contrasted to 39%
Hispanics. White Texans will be overshadowed by Hispanics in short
order. This is a microcosm of what is driving increasingly volatile
behavior on the part of conservatives nationwide; they can see the
end of the runway from here. Their privilege of pallor is about to
evaporate, and they're loathe to surrender it.
  

    
I did not know that about immigration to Texas. That's an amazing
statistic.
  

    
> Texas has added 9 Hispanic residents for every new white resident 
> in the last year.

That was 2018. I haven't seen stats for 2021.
  

    <scribbled by jonl Mon 10 Jan 22 18:48>
  

    <scribbled by jonl Mon 10 Jan 22 18:49>