Author: Ian Welsh Page 16 of 400

Just eyeballing it, but it seems that more missiles are getting thru than are intercepted.

Videos show dozens of missiles flying over Tel Aviv, with some of them landing. The Israeli military says the missiles were fired by Iran and that a “large number” had been intercepted. pic.twitter.com/NUYX5bOa29

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) October 1, 2024

Iran has said this is punishment for the Israeli assassinations. It has also said that it will defend Lebanon. And, as Nate pointed out, the missile attack is widespread:

All of Israel is covered by air alerts

Seems Israel isn’t going to have everything its own way.

Meanwhile the US has sent thousands of troops to Israel to “defend.” The US has been an active participant, for a while, as have been Germany, Britain and others, but this is a step beyond.

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Let’s make this really simple. If you’re trying to stop a genocide, you’re a hero. If you’re enabling a genocide, you’re a villain. Hezbollah and Iran have been trying to put pressure on Israel to stop their mass murder, and most of the West, with a few honorable exceptions like Ireland, have been helping them.

But what’s clear now is that if there’s a real war, it isn’t going to be one-sided. In the past the Israelis would bomb the shit out of their enemies, and be almost entirely safe. No longer. Israel’s not a large country, and Iran has plenty of missiles.

The main thing I’d want to see now (though I doubt it will happen) is for Russia to put Iran under their nuclear window: announce that use of nukes against Iran will be considered use of nukes against Russia.

This conflict, which threatens to become general war, is far from over.

Edit: initial reports of Mossad HQ being taken out appear to have been wrong. My apologies.

Bikes, Cars, Pedestrians and Local Business

By Ian Welsh

On September 30, 2024

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Alright, enough of the doom and gloom. Stumbled across a study on the impact of changing a four lane road in a retail area down to two lanes plus bike lanes. This sort of change is usually resisted by local businesses, who are scared of losing customers, but someone did a study:

I would have liked to see a study showing what happened to businesses nearby for comparison, but this study is still suggestive. And it’s not just that business was up, it’s that people who walk and cycle spend more:

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Which is to say, if you want to make more business you want more non-drivers and less drivers.

Besides, to point out the obvious, most drivers are going somewhere else. Most people who are walking or cycling live nearby, and people taking public transit have chosen to come to your area specifically.

Cities built for cars are inefficient, ugly and increase pollution massively. Cities built for pedestrians, cyclists and rapid transit are far, far more pleasant, as well as healthier and better for the environment. Part of the problem is the same as trains v.s. roads. When you add in all the costs, trains are cheaper and more efficient, but railroads are expected to pay all their own costs, while road users aren’t.

The other problem is that there are powerful pro-road and car lobbies. It’s well documented that the old streetcar systems in America were dismantled largely because GM engaged in a massive political influence campaign to have them dismantled.

In any case, mass use of cars is something else that will be going away over the next fifty years as civilization collapse and climate change hit, and hit hard. We aren’t going to be able to afford such nonsense. There will still be cars, for sure, but the idea that every family should have one will end.

And like many of the things that are going to go away, this will be good for us, it’s just that like any bad-for-you addiction the ideal is to slowly titrate off, not cold-turkey.

Those cities and states which get ahead of this and make changes now and over the next decade or two will be far better off than those who pretend it will never happen.

The Future Of Hezbollah and Israel’s Conflict

By Ian Welsh

On September 28, 2024

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Nasrallah is dead, assassinated by the Israelis. There have been significant bombings in Beiruit, and escalation between Hezbollah and Israel are clear.

First, let’s state the obvious. Israel’s intelligence has seriously comprised Hezbollah, much more than they ever did to Hamas. I suspect this is a result of not taking Hamas particularly seriously and the differing nature of Lebanon and Gaza. Gaza, by all accounts, was a fairly tight knit community, united in their opposition to Israel. Lebanon is not, it’s a sectarian state with a great deal of internal divisions.

There was a lot of anger in Iran and Hezbollah that Hamas did not forewarn them of October 7th, but it’s clear they were right not to. If they had, Israel would very likely have found out, and this is especially true if Hezbollah had been told.

As for the assassination, it’s much less important than people make out: decapitation strategies don’t significantly degrade strong ideological organizations like Hezbollah. The real question is how much knowledge Israel has of the actual military infrastructure. Nasrallah was a well loved leader, but he was a very cautious man and much less interested in fighting Israel than many make out. The new leadership, and given Israel’s success at assassination, it is almost all new, will be far more willing to fight.

Intelligence, airpower and its alliances with American and other Western nations are Israel’s strengths, and they are not small matters.

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That said, those who are panicking, often hysterically, are premature. Hezbollah defeated Israel militarily in 2006, and before that when it won a guerilla war against Israel’s occupation and forced them out. They are much stronger now than they were then. They have more missiles, more men, who are well seasoned fighters, and they have dug in to a far greater degree than Hamas ever could.

Israeli intelligence and the airforce are impressive, but the actual ground forces Israel have are weak: not in equipment, but in morale and competence. To accomplish Israel’s goal of pushing Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon they will have to go in on the ground, and when they do I very much doubt their ability to win.

Unlike Hamas, Hezbollah’s supply lines cannot be cut: the posturing about Beiruit’s airport is ludicrous, the supplies come in by land and there is no possibility of interdicting most of them.

If Hezbollah does need reinforcements, they will have them, from Iraq’s militias and from Iranian “volunteers.” Manpower will not be an issue, though Hezbollah is unlikely to ask for many men at first, since they are not trained to operate in the Hezbollah manner.

Nasrallah was a cautious man, and Hezbollah has been holding back. Their missile force can output far more and better missiles than they have been using in the past, and the end of the old leadership almost certainly means the gloves will come off.

Further, Hezbollah has done great damage to Israel already. The reason Israel is turning to Lebanon is that Hezbollah has displaced hundreds of thousand of settlers, causing an internal refugee problem, and combined with Yemen’s naval blockade, has massively damaged the Israeli economy. And this is with them holding back, because they did not want a general war.

But the only way to truly defeat Israel is to defeat their military, and the best way to do that is for them to attack into Lebanon. Hezbollah, hopefully, will ramp up its attacks to force Israel to do just that, if it isn’t intending to already (which they almost certainly are), and if it is already intending to, to make it happen sooner.

The war, then, is still in its early stages. Do not fall to doom and gloom (if you support the resistance), nor optimism (if you’re pro-genocide). Wait, and see. The real battles, which will determine the outcome of the war, have not yet happened.

Open Thread

By Ian Welsh

On September 28, 2024

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Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.

Culture Creation

By Ian Welsh

On September 27, 2024

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In my article on the rise and fall of credential systems and the Medieval University System, I mentioned that universities create culture. Standardized culture, as a rule. There was a fair bit of confusion around what culture creation is, so let’s talk about that.

To start, note that what you’re reading right now is culture creation: ideas about how the world works, or should work. I’m amplifying, as it happens, an academic, Randall Collins, though a lot of my work isn’t primarily based on academic literature, this is. But if I’m writing about Israel, say, and the Gaza genocide, that’s culture production: that’s me amplifying and on rare occasions expanding on all those in the past who have said “genocide is bad” or “Zionism is based on ethnic cleansing, terrorism and apartheid.”

When I write about the ideology, or about surveillance is bad or climate change, it’s all culture production. It’s intended to explain how the world is or ought to be.

Schools and the especially the first parts of higher education, like BAs and Bachelors of science or engineering produce pretty standardized culture: there aren’t that many different standard textbooks for each field and virtually all academic disciplines have a consensus worldview of how things are and how they should be, and that’s what they teach. At higher levels, some disciplines let some doubt in, but at lower levels what you’re getting is pretty much the same as everyone else.

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Over time that consensus changes, of course, but it is a matter of “over time” and major paradigm breaks aren’t all that common.

It may seem weird to include science and engineering, but they also have consensus ways of thinking and organizing the world and those ways, too, change over time.

The Medieval Universities produced lawyers, doctors, theologians and administators. People who had a common view of the world. Of course there were some disputes, but they were much more similar to each other than to, say, the humanists who later replaced them.

The great ideologues produce new cultural projects: new understandings. Confucius produced administrators: he knew that’s what he was doing, that was his intention. He wanted to change China, and the way he chose was to try and make the best ministers. He built on top of a view of society as family. The Legalists, his main opposition, did much the same but with the idea of a ruthless state and complete obedience to the ruler, and the Mohists, though more revolutionary in mind, also trained administrators, but wanted far more equality

Islam is famed for its legalism, and what is law but “how things should be?”

The Philosophes were, likewise, engaged in a project of creating an understanding of “what should be.”

So was Jesus, so was Marx and so was Adam Smith.

But those are the high points, for every great ideologue there are millions of small ones. And yeah, a lot of podcasts fall under the rubric of culture creation, including some of the biggest ones. Joe Rogan qualifies, for sure. Talk radio usually qualifies, and Rush Limbaugh was one of the most important ideologues of the past forty years.

Technology (which is part of culture); natural constraints like geography, climate and biology; and ideology in the sense, again of “what we believe is and should be” are the most important parts of what creates human reality. Culture creation matters and it’s dirt common. Without all the little creators taking up their work, the big ones wouldn’t be big.

2024 Annual Fundraiser

By Ian Welsh

On September 25, 2024

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As blogs go this one has been around for a long time. It started a political/economic/financial blog back in 2009, but over the years I’ve written less and less about finance and politics and turned to topics I consider more important. As the amount of “red meat” has gone down, the readership hasn’t, and I’m grateful.

When I hear from readers, they usually give one of two reasons for liking the blog:

It makes them feel less alone. Less like the crazy one. The Mississippi sized torrent of BS pouring thru most media will have you believing right is wrong, black is white, Covid is non airborne, Israel is humane and Russia is losing. The centrists are reasonable, the right is misguided, but the left is the true evil. Finding a place where the information stream isn’t full of shit and there are others who who seek the truth is a relief.
They learn from it. Quite a few people have written to express their gratitude in having their world views and their expectations of what’s going to happen in the future change to something more realistic, and hopefully more humane.

As for myself, I try to write articles that interest me and which are at least one of interesting to readers, important for understanding the world, or useful to my readership.

Every year (except once when I forgot because I was in the hospital), I do an annual fundraiser. The money raised supports me so I can keep writing. You can subscribe or donate. If you value my writing and want to see more of it, I hope you will.

This year we’ve got four goals. Each unlocks a writing project. Subscriptions count as three times their nominal value.

At $4,000 I’ll do three book reviews. Barring serious illness, one in November, December and January. The first will be “India is Broken”, because no, Virginia, India is not going to be the next China. The second will be “The Invention of Capitalism,” about primitive accumulation: or how people were forced into factories, had their land stolen and so on. The third will be “Wealth and Democracy” by Kevin Phillips, one of the most important books I ever read.

At $7,000 I’ll do three more book reviews based on what I’m interested in at the time, again one a month. If you have nominees you’d like to see reviewed, feel free to suggest in comments.

At $10,000 I’ll write an article on the fundamental process which keeps society together, how it fails and renews and under what conditions it fails to renew.

At $13,000 I’ll write an article on the weaknesses of North American style police, and how a determined and ruthless opponent could take advantage of those weaknesses to rip them a new one.

Every dollar you give helps me. If you like my writing and you can afford to give (please don’t if you’re short yourself) I’d appreciate if you did.

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Consequences of the Israeli Pager Explosions Attack

By Ian Welsh

On September 24, 2024

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Last weeks pagers exploded all over Lebanon. They were pagers bought by Hezbolah, but most of them were not used by military personnel or even by Hezbollah members, though many were.

The attacks were set up to be particularly nasty. Small ball bearings were embedded in the pagers. First the pager would buzz. The person would grab it, bring it up to their face so they could look at the screen, where they would see an error message.

Then the pager would explode. The most common injuries were maiming (the hand), terrible facial wounds, and eye-injuries. I don’t know what percentage caused permanent vision loss but I saw one interview with a surgeon who said he’d removed more eyes in the last day than he had in a career of over twenty years.

Civilians, women and children were hurt.

This attack had been set up a long time ago. Israel had, apparently, received reports that someone was suspicious and that it was a “use it or lose it” situation. They chose to use it. Presumably they had been saving it to use during the next ground war, but that was no longer an option.

There are obvious and in-obvious consequences to this. Hezbollah will retaliate, of course. They say that the current increased attacks, which are hitting as far South as Haifa and appear designed to blow a corridor to Tel Aviv so that becomes a viable target are not that retaliation, but are instead a reaction to Israeli attacks on Beirut. That’s a pretty serious escalation, especially if repeatedly hitting Tel Aviv is part of the plan. An even more serious escalation because of the pager attacks risks all-out war, though that’s not say it isn’t justified.

(To state the obvious, if the pager attacks weren’t terrorism, nothing is.)

But beyond the possibility of a serious war, there are downstream effects. The pagers were branded as made by Taiwan’s Gold Apollo, but were actually manufactured by Hungary’s BAC. Either BAC modified the pagers, or Israel intercepted them during shipment and made the necessary changes.

Hezbollah has reported ordered new pagers (they’re part of how they avoid electronic surveillance) with instructions that all manufacturing takes place in China. If I were them I’d have those pagers guarded from the second they leave the factory to the point of delivery in Lebanon.

But this is a real Pandora’s Box situation. There’s no reason this couldn’t be done to anyone’s devices and almost everyone carries a phone these days. Most of them can’t be fully opened and inspected. You have no way of knowing whether or not there’s a bomb. (Correction–hacking alone is not enough. My apologies.)

It is noticeable that the US and most European countries refused to condemn the attacks. If they won’t even say that this sort of thing is off the table, who will trust that they wouldn’t do this themselves?

There are a lot of countries, and a lot of people (dissidents and so on) which have good reason to know that the West is willing to engage in assassination, violence and coups against them. This isn’t remotely in question: the West and especially the US, France and Britain, have a record. And other Western countries usually cooperate or at least do what they’re told.

So consequence one is going to be a lot of people and organizations a lot less willing to buy Western equipment. Maybe Gold Apollo wasn’t involved. Maybe Hungary’s BAC wasn’t involved. I’m inclined to believe them, actually, especially Gold Apollo, because this is the sort of thing which destroys companies.

But maybe they were, and how can a company really stand up to and refuse strong governmental pressure? It can’t, not if the government is really serious and it’s a domestic firm. Even foreign governments can have a lot of clout if you do business in their country.

Another likely effect is the rise of transparent electronics, similar to technology used in prisons or the transparent phones of the early 2000s (which was just for aesthetic effect.)

In a lot of secure areas I would expect that people won’t be allowed to bring in their own phones. This is already the case in some very secure areas, but I expect it to spread. It may also change policies about phones and other small electric devices on planes.

This is another case of Israel and the West screwing themselves. It’s going to hurt economically and it’s going to lead to copycat attacks by others, including on the West.

And, of course, it was a monstrous action. Very on-brand for Israel and very normal for the US to fail to condemn it.

Even more than before I just don’t want to hear American officials condemning terrorism. Ever. If the word still means anything, they don’t what it is.

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