Thanks Baker
It's a great day to be anon.
Studying Ukraine war, China's military minds fret over US missiles, Starlink
https://www.reuters.com/world/studying-ukraine-war-chinas-military-minds-fret-over-us-missiles-starlink-2023-03-08/
China needs the capability to shoot down low-earth-orbit Starlink satellites and defend tanks and helicopters against shoulder-fired Javelin missiles, according to Chinese military researchers who are studying Russia's struggles in Ukraine in planning for possible conflict with U.S.-led forces in Asia. A Reuters review of almost 100 articles in more than 20 defence journals reveals an effort across China's military-industrial complex to scrutinise the impact of U.S. weapons and technology that could be deployed against Chinese forces in a war over Taiwan. The Chinese-language journals, which also examine Ukrainian sabotage operations, reflect the work of hundreds of researchers across a network of People's Liberation Army (PLA)-linked universities, state-owned weapons manufacturers and military intelligence think-tanks. While Chinese officials have avoided any openly critical comments about Moscow's actions or battlefield performance as they call for peace and dialogue, the publicly available journal articles are more candid in their assessments of Russian shortcomings. China's defence ministry did not respond to a request for comment about the researchers' findings. Reuters could not determine how closely the conclusions reflect the thinking among China's military leaders.
STARLINK GAZING
Half a dozen papers by PLA researchers highlight Chinese concern at the role of Starlink, a satellite network developed by Elon Musk's U.S.-based space exploration company SpaceX, in securing the communications of Ukraine's military amid Russian missile attacks on the country's power grid. "The excellent performance of 'Starlink' satellites in this Russian-Ukrainian conflict will certainly prompt the U.S. and Western countries to use 'Starlink' extensively" in possible hostilities in Asia, said a September article co-written by researchers at the Army Engineering University of the PLA. The authors deemed it "urgent" for China - which aims to develop its own similar satellite network – to find ways to shoot down or disable Starlink. SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment.
TAIWAN, AND BEYOND
Some of the Chinese articles stress Ukraine's relevance given the risk of a regional conflict pitting China against the United States and its allies, possibly over Taiwan. The U.S. has a policy of "strategic ambiguity" over whether it would intervene militarily to defend the island, but is bound by law to provide Taiwan with the means to defend itself. U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns has said that Xi has ordered his military to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027, while noting that the Chinese leader was probably unsettled by Russia's experience in Ukraine. One article, published in October by two researchers at the PLA's National Defence University, analysed the effect of U.S. deliveries of high-mobility artillery rocket systems (HIMARS) to Ukraine, and whether China's military should be concerned. "If HIMARS dares to intervene in Taiwan in the future, what was once known as an 'explosion-causing tool' will suffer another fate in front of different opponents," it concluded. The article highlighted China's own advanced rocket system, supported by reconnaissance drones, and noted that Ukraine's success with HIMARS had relied on U.S. sharing of target information and intelligence via Starlink.
Beyond the battlefield, the work has covered the information war, which the researchers conclude was won by Ukraine and its allies. One February article by researchers at the PLA Information Engineering University calls on China to preemptively prepare for a global public opinion backlash similar to that experienced by Russia. China should "promote the construction of cognitive confrontation platforms" and tighten control of social media to prevent Western information campaigns from influencing its people during a conflict, it said.
From 'The New Statesman'
https://www.newstatesman.com/
We have lost Russell Brand - This once-sexy communist has become an American culture wars pundit
https://archive.fo/PFMZT#selection-1119.0-1123.68
Russell Brand can’t make up his mind. Speaking on the comedian Bill Maher’s talk show last weekend, Brand launched into a tinny rant that encompassed every right-wing signaling trope: the ghoulish mainstream media, the dishonest and untrustworthy pharmaceutical industry, the West’s shameful treatment of Julian Assange and “American hero” Edward Snowden, and the Covid drug Ivermectin. He then pivoted leftwards, and rounded off his angry sermon with an endorsement for Bernie Sanders. Until this appearance, Brand had been self-evolving away from the spotlight for a few years. Once, he was just a BBC Newsnight regular, a Hollywood comic actor, the stand-up who endorsed Ed Miliband, and the man who guest-edited an issue of this magazine in 2013. Now, over on his YouTube channel (with 6.2 million subscribers) the comedian preaches – messianically – about the Great Reset, the profiteering military-industrial complex, and all the politicians that are Lying To You. It’s easy enough to dismiss this as a once-venerated left-wing populist taking things too far. It’s true that he hasn’t ditched his trad-socialist values. His lionization of Sanders is evidence enough that the old version of Brand – the one who ran rings around Jeremy Paxman in 2013, telling the astonished presenter that a socialist revolution was on the horizon – is still there. But he has married these long-held beliefs with all the suspicions and anxieties of the new American right: America First, Drain The Swamp, distrust the MSM (mainstream media). Just last week he was pictured grinning with Donald Trump Jr – cutting a rather different figure to the man who used to lead anti-austerity marches in Parliament Square. What happened to the freewheeling entertainer praised by Mark Fisher for espousing a communism that was “cool, sexy and proletarian”? It seems that Russell Brand has been America-brained. In spite of the transformation, he still drips with charisma. Even when Brand shouts down a camera lens he is a rhythmic performer, where the cadence of slam poetry meets the content of Spiked. And his YouTube channel is not devoid of self-awareness – Brand jokes that his viewers are “tin foil hat-wearing lunatics”. But he has outgrown the lightly heterodox and idiosyncratic manner that once characterized him. The benign – if abrasive – hippy is long gone. In his place? An American culture warrior with a cockney accent. As for any self-styled alternative media guru, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a central theme of inquiry. Brand quotes long passages of text from Substacks about the true intentions of Tony Blair and Hillary Clinton; he suggests it is a proxy war fought with the ultimate ambition of privatizing Ukraine. When he shouts about the military-industrial complex intentionally generating a state of perpetual crisis, he means it. Brand is not just paranoid about intervention, he’s actively conspiratorial about it.
The anti-war contingent in Britain traditionally hails from the left, Brand’s former political home. But when Brand warns his listeners about the Western war machine he sounds more like Tucker Carlson – the Fox News right-wing political firebrand – than Jeremy Corbyn. Both of the latter two are dovish on intervention. But where Corbyn’s caution emerges from a long tradition of pacifism and anti-imperialism, Carlson finds his energy elsewhere: the resurgence of America First, a generalised distrust of the so-called establishment beneficiaries of conflict, and a fear of undermining America’s global pre-eminence. “The world needs a strong America,” Brand concluded on Maher, precisely mirroring the anxieties of Carlson, exactly contradicting the disposition of Corbyn. Of course the anti-war movement in America has not always looked like this. Instead it owes its vitality to Donald Trump and the Republican Party’s return, after decades of neoconservative interventionism, towards isolationism. Part of Trump’s self-styling as an insurgent was his self-appointment as the only anti-war candidate in the game. It sank in. Meanwhile, this just isn’t a facet of the British right. Conservatives in the UK are hawkish. It’s not hard, then, to see the draw of the American new right for Brand. He is lewd and distrustful, ever the transgressive entertainer. The impoliteness of the movement – the acme of which is Donald Trump’s crassness and, yes, humor – seems to move Brand.
Editorial
Joanna Williams - In defense of Isabel Oakeshott
Other journalists don’t like being confronted by their failure to hold the government to account
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/in-defence-of-isabel-oakeshott/
What shocks me most about Matt Hancock’s WhatsApp messages is the flippancy surrounding decisions to scare, manipulate and control the British public. We were told, repeatedly, that government ministers were ‘following the science’. But thanks to Isabel Oakeshott we now know that schools were closed, children masked, families and friends separated, visitors kept out of care homes and quarantine periods prolonged, less because of ‘science’ and more, it seems, for political convenience. So where is the outrage? People lost lives and livelihoods. Children missed out on education and exercise. Physical and mental health suffered. Lengthy NHS waiting lists and economic problems will be with us for many years to come. Yet, incredibly, the response to this scandal of unimaginable, incalculable scale, from most news outlets, is oddly subdued. Non-existent, even. Far from leading every major television and radio news bulletin, the Daily Telegraph‘s lockdown files revelations are pushed down to item three or four. They’re an aside to the main events of the day. Deserving only of a brief mention, each new revelation is caveated with the same defensive statement from Hancock himself.
More astonishing still, where journalists do manage to summon up a scintilla of outrage, it is not directed at Matt Hancock, or the advisers who egged him on, but at Isabel Oakeshott. Radio 4’s Nick Robinson led the way, taking Oakeshott to task for breaking a non-disclosure agreement. Then Cathy Newman demanded to know how much Oakeshott was being paid by the Daily Telegraph for contributing to the lockdown files. Others have followed suit, arguing that Oakeshott has breached journalistic ethics by exposing a ‘source’ and is pursuing her own anti-lockdown agenda. What is wrong with these people? How skewed must your moral compass be to read about the arbitrary imposition of rules that devastated the lives of care home residents, children, small business-owners and many, many more, and conclude that it’s not Matt Hancock, nor any of the senior civil servants, special advisers and government ministers who need to be held to account, but Isabel Oakeshott? In what moral universe is Oakeshott the problem and Hancock the victim? Talk about shooting the messenger. Various suggestions for this warped judgement have been put forward. One is that journalists are annoyed with Oakeshott for taking her cache of messages to the Daily Telegraph, rather than a News UK outlet. Another is that journalists feel compelled to defend the integrity of the national Covid inquiry. But I think a better explanation is stated boldly within Hancock’s messages. They show that the then health secretary was rarely acting alone in his determination to ‘frighten the pants off everyone’. Those who encouraged him lay far beyond Whitehall. The then Health Secretary was rarely acting alone in his determination to ‘frighten the pants off everyone’.
Time and again journalists fought to berate government ministers for not locking down sooner, longer and harder. The only game in town was fear one-upmanship. Positive news was met with cynicism, bad news with glee. To transgress from this narrative was to be an irresponsible fool who denies science. These useful idiots were so blinded by their own unwavering belief in lockdown they failed to ask the most basic questions about the impact such restrictions were having on children, those most clinically vulnerable, the economy and the very fabric of society. Rather than exercising even minimal intellectual curiosity about the consequences of Hancock’s announcements, they only ever encouraged him to go further. Journalists are now being confronted by their failure to hold the government to account.
So it is hardly surprising that, just like Matt Hancock, they want a scapegoat to cover up their own shortcomings. But the rest of us have good reason to thank Isabel Oakeshott. Without the Daily Telegraph’s coverage, we might have been waiting decades for the truth about lockdown to emerge.
Ridicule works well in being the catalyst for social change.
Can other anon put doughnut finger into pic?
That's insane guud. Kek.