Author Archive: Stephen Green
January 25, 2024
CHANGE: Sweden verges on NATO membership after Turkey vote, Hungary signal. “Sweden applied for NATO membership in May of 2022, just months after Russia invaded Ukraine. The decision was a sharp turn in Swedish foreign policy, which had previously favored a non-aligned status.”
DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: San Francisco Was Going to Spend HOW MUCH on a Toilet? “You don’t have to be a scientist with a fancy doctorate from Stanford in Human Poop Displacement to know that the whole thing is criminally stupid from top to, uh, bottom.”
COLD WAR II: With an assist from Russia, China’s plutonium reactors fuel strategic arms buildup.
The two fast neutron reactors under construction are located on an island off the coast of China’s Fujian Province opposite Taiwan. One reactor under construction since 2017 reportedly was set to begin producing electricity late last year and the second is set to go online in 2026, the analysis said.
Both reactors will produce plutonium that “could be used to produce weapon-grade plutonium for China’s rapidly expanding nuclear arsenal,” the report by the Air Force’s China Aerospace Studies Institute states.
Suspicions that the reactors are part of China’s rapidly expanding nuclear weapons program were raised the same year that construction on the first reactor began. In 2017, China stopped reporting its plutonium stockpiles to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. watchdog agency.
Russia’s Rosatom nuclear agency delivered 6.5 tons of uranium to the China National Nuclear Corp. for the Fujian reactor, Bloomberg News reported in February.
Background: China Is Engaged in a Massive Nuclear Missile Buildup. “The addition of 230 nuclear use-them-or-lose-them ground-based missiles will fundamentally alter the nuclear calculus between the U.S. and China/Russia.”
KEVIN DOWNEY JR: Five New Hampshire Takeaways the Media Hopes You Won’t Read About.
SHOT: Boeing only lets planes fly when ‘100% confident’ of safety, embattled CEO says. “Concern over the reliability of Boeing jets has strained the group’s relations with key airlines. Ben Minicucci, the chief executive of Alaska, said it had found ‘some loose bolts on many’ Max 9 jets in its fleet.”
Maybe Boeing should consider recalibrating its confidence level.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: This Year in Creative Fiction — ‘The Bidenomics Success Story.’ “Frequent readers of mine know that I often refer to the media spin for Biden in 2020 as the largest ongoing creative fiction writing exercise in history. Well, it’s time to fire up the storytelling machine again.”
CHANGE (IT BACK): With Oregon facing rampant public drug use, lawmakers backpedal on pioneering decriminalization law. “The bill would recriminalize the possession of small amounts of drugs as a low-level misdemeanor, enabling police to confiscate them and crack down on their use on sidewalks and in parks, its authors said. It also aims to make it easier to prosecute dealers, to access addiction treatment medication, and to obtain and keep housing without facing discrimination for using that medication.”
CHANGE: Ariz. GOP Chair Jeff DeWit Resigns Over Leaked Kari Lake Audio. “Jeff DeWit is a businessman and politician who previously served as the Arizona state treasurer. He also served as chair for Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign in Arizona.”
VIDEO: Scrambling For Eggs: Russia Asks Kazakhstan To Increase Exports. “Russia has been facing a deficit of eggs since last fall and has reached out to Kazakhstan to increase its exports. However, the price of eggs has also risen in the Central Asian country.”
More:
There are long lines across Russia due to a shortage of eggs. This essential food item symbolizes the changes that have affected ordinary citizens since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. Putin apologized in December for the crisis and the frequent lack of goods.
Putin quickly found scapegoats and ordered their punishment, assuring viewers that things would get better. However, he seems to have been mistaken. Despite Russian authorities recently asking Kazakhstan for help with a purchase of 1.2 billion eggs, Russia is once again experiencing a crisis. Eggs are in short supply and expensive, and extensive queues exist throughout the country.
This is due to sanctions, poor planning, and emerging issues within the Russian economy.
Post-Soviet Russia looks more and more like Soviet Russia.
January 24, 2024
MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT [VIP]: You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet As the Long Knives REALLY Come Out for Trump.
I LIKE THE CUT OF HIS JIB: Toyota Chair: Don’t Force People to Buy EVs.
HMM: China’s rapidly dwindling future will shape the world for decades to come.
The clearest sign of this diminishment is China’s worsening deflation problem. While Americans are worried about inflation, or prices rising too fast, policymakers in Beijing are fretting because prices are falling. The consumer price index has declined for the past three months, the longest deflationary streak since 2009. In the race for global economic supremacy, deflation is an albatross around Beijing’s neck. It’s a sign that the Chinese economic model has well and truly run out of juice and that a painful restructuring is required. But beyond the financial problems, the sinking prices are a sign of a deeper malaise gripping the Chinese people.
“China’s deflation is the deflation of hope, the deflation of optimism. It’s a psychological funk,” Minxin Pei, a professor of political science at Claremont McKenna College, told me.
The fallout won’t be contained to China’s shores. Because the country’s growth sent money stampeding around the globe over the past few decades, its contractions are creating a seesaw effect in global markets. The foreign investors who helped to power China’s rise are running to avoid catching the funk on their balance sheets, and governments the world over are starting to question the narrative of China, the dauphin. What Beijing does — or fails to do — to fight this malaise will determine the course of humanity for decades to come.
Deflation traps are difficult to get out of, and doubly painful for a country with as much indebtedness as China has.
CHRIS QUEEN: Seeking a Christian Civilization — Not ‘Christian Nationalism.’ “While a minority of voices are calling for actual “Christian nationalism,” most Christians understand that it’s an impractical idea. Christians can’t agree on theology (beyond the basics), worship style, and other non-essential tenets of the faith, so how can we expect Christians to govern an American theocracy?”
I GOT IT LOOSE FOR THEM, I SWEAR: NASA finally opens OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample canister after freeing stuck lid. “After months of anticipation, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission has achieved a significant milestone by successfully accessing the treasure trove of asteroid material that the probe collected during its billion-mile journey.”
HAVE YOU TRIED JUST ONCE NOT VOTING FOR DEMOCRATS? Black Chicago Democrats in Open Revolt Against the Party Over Migrant Crisis.
(MOSTLY) ON TIME AND (LARGELY) ON BUDGET: Pentagon OKs B-21 for low-rate production after successful tests.
The Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office is in charge of the B-21′s acquisition program, and set an unusual strategy that includes building those test aircraft as close to a production model as possible. This means that the test B-21s are built using the same manufacturing processes and tooling as production bombers. A defense official said in the Pentagon’s statement this approach, which differs from the usual method of flight prototyping, allowed production to start more quickly than usual.
The defense official said the Air Force has worked with Northrop Grumman to create a “digital ecosystem” for the B-21 throughout its lifecycle.
“The engineering and manufacturing data used on the production line will be delivered with the aircraft and combined with modern collaboration and maintenance tools to make the B-21 affordable to buy, fly and sustain at scale,” the official said.
Always take those operating cost projections with an entire salt lick, but before the lockdowns and Bidenflation, Northrop and the Air Force were on track to deliver the first B-21s on time and on budget.
HERE WE GO AGAIN? ‘Bidenflation II: Fiscal Boogaloo’ Another Sequel Nobody Asked For. “Just when wages were finally starting to catch up with Biden’s first round of inflation, too.”
THE NEW SPACE RACE: NASA bounces laser off ‘Oreo-sized’ mirror on the moon for 1st time, paving the way for high-precision lunar landings. “The long-awaited success is an important proof-of-concept for NASA, which is planning to use more retroreflectors in future missions to the moon, including the upcoming Artemis missions.”
OUR ELITES AREN’T WORTHY OF THE WORD: Hunter’s ‘Sugar Bro’ Evasive Testimony Gets Him Into a Different Kind of Trouble.
TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE: Army Reveals It Fired Female Commander in Troubled Brigade After Claims of Sexual Assaults on Male Soldiers.
Col. Meghann Sullivan served as commander of the 5th Brigade Engineer Battalion, 5th Security Force Assistance Brigade, at the base in Washington state. She was relieved of command Oct. 13, but this is the first time her firing has been reported.
Military.com first reported on her suspension and the subsequent investigation into her conduct in April. That reporting was part of the publication’s investigation into the 5th SFAB, which uncovered potentially systemic issues with counterproductive leadership and performance and morale struggles among its rank and file.
The investigation into the 5th SFAB included reviewing an unredacted command climate survey in addition to hundreds of internal Army emails, voice recordings, videos and text messages.
At least she wasn’t able to hide behind her sex and keep her command.