A couple of worthwhile calls on your time today. Let's take the lighter one first.
From the mercurial AEP, whose regular output on energy-related issue is Pollyanna-ish net zero bilge, a lengthy take-down of the deep impracticalities of the putative AI boom as it is currently envisaged. The energy aspect is of course one major strand; cooling-water is another, and the emptiness of "OK, well we'll just build our own gas-fired power plants instead". And then the financial implications! Somewhere in there (or maybe it was BTL), though, there is a hint of how things may progress in subtler ways. If AEP is correct on the brick wall of physical limitations to AI's currently-planned trajectory, it'll need to be a subtler approach. Otherwise ... bubble is bubble.
From Zelenskyy; an open letter to Putin, suggesting face-to-face negotiations - which is worth reading in full, not just some newspaper summary.
At the very least, this is a useful and pretty comprehensive tour d'horizon from the Kyiv perspective, and a summary of just how many cards Mr Z holds right now. Interestingly, though, whether by design or accident it's also pretty insulting to Putin. Maybe Z has inadvertently overdone the projection of the (current) strength of the Ukrainian position - which you might argue he was always going to do at the start of a putative negotiation. Well, but better done in the proposed face-to-face meeting, hmm?
Or maybe (since, at his best, Z is pretty sharp) the intended audience is Trump and the ROW anyway, if he knows Putin has no intention of negotiating with Ukraine anyway. Remind the Donald that Z does actually hold several cards right now.
Or maybe, like the "permission" graciously given to Putin for his 2026 Victory Day parade (another sharp slap from Z), it's purposefully intended to humiliate Putin on the eve of today's big St Petersburg address to the SPIEF - if indeed he deigns to turn up in person after the impressive warning shots fired in that direction earlier in the week.
Or maybe it's to bring to Putin's attention the long list of things he doesn't seem to know - cat among the pigeons. Putin's people say he "is being briefed" on the Z letter. Yeah, they'll be dead keen not to let him read the original in full - they lie to him consistently about the true situation on many fronts, and wouldn't want him firing off the obvious supplementary questions. And they may well succeed, since by repute he never so much as touches the keys of a laptop, still less knows how to log in or access the www for himself. Old-fashioned red telephones for L'il Volodya ...
ND
6 comments:
"Putin's people say he "is being briefed" on the Z letter. Yeah, they'll be dead keen not to let him read the original in full - they lie to him consistently about the true situation on many fronts, and wouldn't want him firing off the obvious supplementary questions."
How do you know this? ISW/Chatham House? Because our official Foreign Office statements are just bare faced lies - for example the repeated statements that Russia are targeting civilians - after an attack with 600 drones and 100 missiles kills 11 people. Meanwhile 3,500 deaths in 62 days in Lebanon ... crickets.
During the hot days when I couldn't garden I read Edward Rutherfurd's "Russka" - a giant multigenerational epic that ran from AD 180 to AD 1980, in the style of his first book Sarum.
Rutherfurd is obviously an intelligent guy and does a lot of research, has visited Russia many times, and in his book he declares the Russian heartland to lie "north of the Black Sea, between the Dneipr and the Don". He also identified the beginnings of Russia as in the Kievan Rus where Viking traders from Novgorod sailed the rivers.
Totally unexceptional on publication date in 1991. Now, official UK government policy is that most of the the land between the Dneipr and the Don is Ukrainian, has always been Ukrainian, and any suggestion of it being the Russian heartland is Putinist propaganda and the rewriting of history.
@anon - continuing to lie about Russia targeting civilians doesn't do a great deal for your credibility.
As for the difference in death rates compared to Lebanon:
The IDF can fly around Lebanon pretty much at will, if the RuAF tried that in Ukraine they'd be down to hang gliders inside a week.
Ukraine has better air defences against missiles and drones, many get through, but not most.
Israel has a competent, well-drilled, military, Russia hasn't.
Lying consistently about the true situation may keep you in post with all related goodies in peace, I'd have thought it could be positively dangerous in war..
Does even less for yours CH. If over 1000 drones and missiles kill 10 people that's a remarkably low body count per missile. Surely of, as you say, Israel can fly at will over Lebanon, are the 56 people a day they kill, more than half of them women and children, all Hezbollah?
@anon - it certainly can. Ask the good people of St Petersburg.
As to the letter, very nicely crafted with some uncomfortable truths for Putin, and designed for a wider audience.
I don't know if Trump can be distracted from his misadventures in the ME though, Iran has no interest in giving him in a win, and he's discovering Netanyahu has no comprehension of gratitude, just a desire to stay in power and out of the prison, and Trump finding out that he can't just deploy the US military and win must be really niggling his ego.
Europe is useless, as are we at the moment, so not seeing an end until any of those changes. So, it sinking into Putin that killing Russians en masse and mortgaging it's future to Beijing probably isn't going to make him the historical hero he so sorely desires is probably the best outcome we can hope for, forlorn as that may be.
@anon 11:49 - decide what you're asking, instead of kneejerk responding to anything not positive about Russia's totally-not-a-war-just-a-special-operation-honest-guv.
If you're asking about the disparity between kill rates, you've been answered. If you don't like the answer, that's a you problem, take it up with a therapist.
If you're asking about targeting the public, then yes, both Russia and Israel are doing just that, and neither are winning popularity contests over it, and from a Western perspective, both are pretty abhorrent for it, especially as both are doing double/triple taps.
Israel has burned through all the latitude given it after the Hamas attacks, Russia had none to start off with, other than that from the trolls and Putin stans.
I'm sure you'll have some wonderful retort, but it doesn't really matter, given the amount of times you and your ilk have told us Russia is winning it's a surprise they've not actually won yet.
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