It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Sunday, March 05, 2023
Conservatives finally overturned Roe. They aren’t talking about it at CPAC
Eric Garcia Sat, March 4, 2023
The last time that the Conservative Political Action Conference convened just outside of Washington DC in 2020, conservatives still had only a 5-4 majority on the Supreme Court. Just months later, Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death created an opening on the high court, which led to Donald Trump nominating Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
Then in June 2022, the new 6-3 Supreme Court majority announced Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, which overturned the right to seek an abortion enshrined in Roe v Wade. Indeed, the prospect of conservative Supreme Court nominations helped galvanise Republicans to line up behind Mr Trump in 2016.
“It was the reason the judiciary was on the ballot in ‘16,” Hogan Gidley, who served as deputy press secretary in the Trump administration, told The Independent. “We had lost so many of these rulings.
But at the most recent CPAC gathering at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in Oxon Hill, few people mentioned the Dobbs decision. The ruling ended up backfiring to some extent for the GOP.
As the first day of the conference got underway earlier this week, CPAC head Matt Schlapp and House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan agreed that the demise of Roe was a positive development but quickly moved past it to discuss other topics.
In fact, only one CPAC panel – entitled “Some Tuff Mutha...” – discussed abortion at length. It featured anti-abortion activist Abby Johnson, who once worked at a Planned Parenthood clinic and now runs And Then There Were None, which aims to move women away from working at the organisation; Kimberly Fletcher, founder of the conservative Moms for America; and Penny Nance, president of Concerned Women for America. During that panel, they discussed medication abortion and Ms Johnson said how the Dobbs decision didn’t have an effect in many states like California, where abortion is legal.
Many conservative activists and elected officials, including Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, instead focused more on LGBT+ issues and accused activists of targeting and even “grooming” children.
The groups featured on the panel still had some booths on the lower level, along with various conservative organisations.
Ms Fletcher told The Independent that she wished more people talked about abortion at the conference.
“Because if our future is our children, then I think that we should be talking a lot more about the solutions on how we take back the future,” she said. “It's kind of like a big, you know, pep rally.”
“We would love there to be more talks about the pro-life ... because now that it has gone to the states, it's a big fight,” Ms Fletcher told The Independent. “And quite honestly, it's not done on the national level either.”
The more tepid celebration of the end of Roe came after Republicans underperformed in the 2020 midterm elections, months after the Supreme Court’s ruling. The conservative movement’s overturning of Roe served as a major motivator for young liberal voters, who turned out in droves and delivered Democrats a Senate seat in Pennsylvania as well as staving off a “red wave” in the House of Representatives.
“Unfortunately, a lot of politicians are scared to talk about it, because in this last election cycle, we did not see good results on the abortion issue,” said Kelly Lester, who was working the And Then There Were None booth.
But not everyone is avoiding the issue. Mr Gidley said that when he travelled the country, Mr Trump’s mention’s of abortion attracted the most applause at his rallies.
“It may not be top of mind right now because we won it,” he said. “Now it’s a feather in your cap.”
On the last day, commentator Michael Knowles said that “there can be no middle way with transgenderism” and called for “eradicating transgendering from public life” and connected the issue to Republican efforts to restrict abortion.
A Florida man found a massive clam on the beach and was going to turn it into chowder. It turned out to be more than 200 years old.
Cheryl Teh Fri, March 3, 2023 A clam pulled out of Mission Creek, California (left), and a bowl of clam chowder soup.
Carlos Avila Gonzalez/The San Francisco Chronicle Blaine Parker found a big clam on the Florida coast and wanted to turn it into clam chowder.
But Parker found out from a marine lab that it was more than 214 years old.
He named his new friend "Aber-clam Lincoln," after the president who was also born in 1809.
A Florida man and his family found a gigantic clam at Alligator Point, Florida. They were planning to cook it but realized it was more than 200 years old.
Blaine Parker told the Tallahassee Democrat that when he found the clam over Presidents' Day weekend, he thought it was just big enough for two servings of chowder.
"We were just going to eat it, but we thought about it a while and figured it was probably pretty special. So, we didn't want to kill it," Parker told the Tallahassee Democrat.
Parker, a member of the volunteer group AmeriCorps, ended up bringing the clam to the Gulf Specimen Marine Lab in Panacea, Florida. Parker is also a specimen collector for the lab, the Tallahassee Democrat reported.
The lab realized Parker's find was a six-inch, 2.6-pound clam, estimated to be more than 214 years old.
Realizing how old it was, Parker named the clam "Aber-clam Lincoln".
"Age can be calculated by the number of layers on the shell, with each layer representing a year; with this, Blaine counted 214 layers on Aber-clam Lincoln's shell, meaning this clam was born in 1809, the same year as Abraham Lincoln, hence its name!" the lab wrote in a February 21 post on Facebook.
The lab added that most ocean quahog clams weigh around half a pound. This makes Aber-clam Lincoln five times the weight of an average clam.
In 2006, scientists found a 507-year-old Quahog clam that they nicknamed "Ming" — after estimating that it was alive in 1499, during the Ming Dynasty in China.
The Tallahassee Democrat separately reported on February 28 that Parker had sent Aber-clam Lincoln back to his home under the sea. Parker released the clam back into the Gulf of Mexico about a week after he found it at Alligator Point, Florida.
The Gulf Specimen Marine Lab did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
High-speed train from Las Vegas to Los Angeles in the works after Brightline reaches agreement with unions on $10 billion project
Aaron McDade Sat, March 4, 2023 Brightline announced a deal with a group of rail unions to build its Brightline West project connecting Las Vegas to Southern California.
Joe Raedle/Getty Images Brightline announced a deal with rail unions to build a 218-mile, high-speed line from Las Vegas to Los Angeles.
The company plans to connect Las Vegas to Southern California via rail capable of traveling 200 mph.
Brightline hopes to break ground this year, and finish the system by the end of 2027.
Rail company Brightline announced an agreement last week with a group of rail worker unions to build a $10 billion, high-speed train connecting Las Vegas to Los Angeles.
Brightline's agreement — made with the High Speed Rail Labor Coalition, a collective of 13 rail unions that represent over 160,000 railroad workers across freight and passenger rail — greenlit the development of a 218-mile rail line between the two cities, according to the company's announcement.
"Our nation's first high-speed rail system will be operated and maintained by union labor, a statement of the strength of the American workforce," Mike Reininger, CEO of Brightline Holdings, said in a statement.
Reininger continued: "As the most shovel-ready high-speed rail project in the United States, we are one step closer to leveling the playing field against transit and infrastructure projects around the world, and we are proud to be using America's most skilled workers to get there."
Brightline estimates the "Brightline West" project will have an economic impact of about $10 billion on the area, creating about 35,000 construction jobs, as well as 1,000 permanent jobs at stops along the line in Southern California.
The company also estimates the Brightline West project could attract about 12 million of the 50 million one-way trips taken annually between Las Vegas and Los Angeles annually, 85% of which are taken by bus or car.
Brightline said it believes the draw away from car and bus trips will result in about 400,000 fewer tons of carbon dioxide, the most common greenhouse gas, from being put into the atmosphere per year.
A Brightline executive told SFGate the company expects to break ground this year, and hopes to finish construction in 2027.
The train will eventually be capable of traveling around 200 miles per hour, meaning a trip across the whole 218-mile line would take a little over an hour. A Las Vegas tourism website estimates that a trip from Los Angeles to Las Vegas by car takes an average of four hours, depending on traffic conditions.
The rail line is set to run from Las Vegas to Los Angeles, according to the company's website. The press release said the rail line will have stops in Rancho Cucamonga, Apple Valley, and Hesperia, California.
Brightline currently operates a rail service that has several stations throughout Florida, and is also set to open an extension this year connecting Disney World in Orlando with its existing stations in Miami and Fort Lauderdale, among others.
Abortion may be legal in Argentina but women still face major obstacles
Agustina Latourrette - BBC World Service Sat, March 4, 202 An illustration shows a woman in tears at a health centre
María was 23 when she decided to have an abortion.
At the health centre where she had gone for treatment, she says she overheard one doctor saying to a colleague: "When will these girls learn to keep their legs closed?"
María lives in Salta, a religiously conservative province in north-west Argentina, where many healthcare workers are still against abortion.
She was eventually given a pill to end her pregnancy, but she says the nurses were reluctant to treat her and wanted to make her feel guilty: "After I expelled the pregnancy tissue, I could see the foetus."
"The nurses put it in a jar to make sure I saw it and they told me, 'This could have been your child.'"
Argentina relaxed its law on abortion in 2020, allowing a woman to choose to terminate her pregnancy in the first 14 weeks, Previously, it was only allowed in the case of rape or if the woman's life or health was at risk.
Abortion is a highly contentious issue in Argentina, where more than 60% of people are Catholic and 15% are evangelical Christians, with the leadership of both groups opposing the practice. Maria says she was shown the foetus and told: "This could have been your child."
The new law allows health workers in Argentina to abstain from performing abortions.
"As soon as the law was passed, I declared myself a conscientious objector," says Dr Carlos Franco, a paediatrician from the same area as María, who estimates that 90% of health workers in the province's main public hospital have done the same.
He says his years studying embryology left him with the belief that life begins at fertilisation.
"My duty, as a doctor, is to take care and protect the human life from the embryonic stage," he adds.
This helps explain why women like María are having so much trouble accessing legal abortions.
María had initially spent two days at the health centre just waiting to be seen by a doctor.
Eventually, when none came, she turned to social media for help and found Mónica Rodriguez, a local activist, who helped her file a complaint at the hospital and secure an appointment.
Ms Rodriguez says she gets about 100 phone calls a month from women in Salta who are having similar difficulty getting access to safe abortions.
She tells the BBC her main job is simply to listen: "While I don't recommend abortion, I don't romanticise motherhood either."
The campaign to expand abortion rights in Argentina has taken decades, but Valeria Isla, director of sexual and reproductive health at the national health ministry, says that significant progress has been made.
She cites official figures showing that the number of mothers dying from abortions has dropped by 40% since the law was enacted in 2021.
The number of public health centres that provide abortions has gone up by more than a half over the same period, and the drug misoprostol, which chemically induces abortions, is now being manufactured in the country, making it more widely available.
Long waits for treatment and the social stigma surrounding abortions can make women vulnerable to corrupt practices.
There have been cases reported of women being forced to pay hundreds of dollars for treatment that should be free in public health facilities.
"There is a mafia," says Dr María Laura Lerma, a psychologist based in a remote mountain community in Jujuy in the country's north-west. "In many rural areas of Argentina, some doctors who work in the public hospital take patients to their private clinics."
The government has urged women to report allegations of corruption, but many women in rural areas are too scared to do so. Anti-abortion activists are trying to block the law allowing the procedure
Doctors who do agree to perform abortions have been targeted with spurious legal complaints.
In September 2021, one doctor in Salta was briefly detained following an accusation by the aunt of a 21-year-old patient that she had performed an "illegal abortion".
The accusation was untrue, but it took a year for a court to dismiss the case.
"Anti-abortion organisations have historical connections with judges and people in power and they use them to generate fear and endanger the freedom of doctors who provide abortions," says Rocío García Garro, a lawyer for pro-choice campaign group Catholics for the Right to Decide.
Anti-abortion campaigners are also using the courts to try and get the abortion law declared unconstitutional.
Cristina Fiore, a local parliament representative in Salta, is one of them.
"We believe human life starts at conception and we are against this throwaway culture," she says.
So far, all legal challenges have failed.
María is clear why she made the choice not to continue with her pregnancy: "I had never wanted to be a mum… My parents abandoned me and that's a trauma which has taken me years to overcome."
She says she wants training to be improved for nurses and gynaecologists to prevent others suffering like her.
"There are many women, especially in the small rural towns, who are discriminated against like me and not all of them dare to speak."
*Names of some contributors have been changed to protect their privacy.
THEY DIDN'T READ JFC FULLER Putin's army can't figure out how to use tanks, and the battlefield in Ukraine is littered with burnt wrecks
Jake Epstein Sat, March 4, 2023 The Ukrainian army fires a captured Russian tank T-80 at the Russian position in Donetsk region, Ukraine, Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2022.
AP Photo/LIBKOS
Russia's tank force — once seen as formidable — is being ripped apart by the Ukrainian military.
Western officials say Russia has likely lost up to half of its tanks on the battlefield, if not more.
Military experts told Insider that this is because Russia doesn't know how to use them properly.
Russia's tanks were once seen as fearsome, formidable threats, but the war in Ukraine shows it doesn't know how to use them.
The Russian tank force has taken a beating. US officials have said on more than oneoccasion that Russia has likely lost as many as half its main battle tanks while fighting in Ukraine, if not more. According to an open-source intelligence analysis by Oryx, more than 1,780 Russian tanks have been destroyed, damaged, captured, or abandoned since Moscow launched its invasion in February 2022.
Russia's staggering tank losses — which include the T-72, T-64, T-80, and T-90 tanks — can be attributed to its failure to provide adequate fire support in combat, military experts told Insider. The Russian tank force has also shown extremely little adaptability and common sense.
These problems were underscored during a recent tank battle near the eastern Ukrainian town of Vuhledar, where Russia lost scores of tanks and armored vehicles. Moscow repeated detrimental mistakes it made during its assault on Kyiv in the early days of the war: it sent columns of tanks straight into Ukrainian ambushes.
This image provided by the Ukrainian Armed Forces and taken in February 2023 shows damaged Russian tanks in a field after an attack on Vuhledar, Ukraine
Just like like last spring — where the long columns were assaulted by the defending Ukrainians — this tactic proved unsuccessful for the Russians in Vuhledar, where it lost over 100 armored vehicles. Moscow's troops appear to have botched the use of their tanks on the battlefield in other instances as well.
Russian tanks have fallen prey to Ukrainian soldiers using anti-tank Javelin missiles because they're hanging out aimless in open fields, with little to no support or protection. At the same time, they've been seen driving straight through minefields and exploding. Due to the design of many of Russia's tanks, a hit can cause the ammunition to detonate, killing the crew as the overpressure blows the top off. Russia can't seem to integrate its tanks
One serious misstep by Russia's military has been its failure to protect its tanks with a combined-arms approach that provides additional support and integrate its armor with other units.
"There's the structural problem of not having enough dismounted infantry to provide security for tanks," Jeffrey Edmonds, a Russia expert at the Center for Naval Analyses and former US Army armor officer, told Insider. "I'm just not seeing units do what you expect military units to do."
Russia is mostly relying on artillery but would likely benefit from having more air superiority so it can avoid carrying out complicated maneuvers on the battlefield, Marina Miron, a postdoctoral researcher at King's College London's Department of War Studies, told Insider. And it's "questionable" how well Russia's tanks are integrated into its overall operations.
Ukrainian troops fire a Javelin anti-tank missile during drills in Ukraine, February 2022.Ukrainian military/Handout via REUTERS
"I think that they are kind of fighting a war that they were not prepared for, in tactical and operational terms," Miron said. "They have lost a lot of tanks. A lot of them — probably most of them — just because of negligence. And the tanks they are using are in no way superior to what the Ukrainians are using."
Russia and Ukraine have often squared off against each other using the same Soviet-era military equipment, encompassing everything from tanks and infantry fighting vehicles to aircraft. Ukraine has lost less than 500 tanks throughout the conflict, according to an Oryx tally. Russia started off with a larger tank force and thus had more to lose. A destroyed Russian tank covered by snow stands in the village of Kamyanka, Kharkiv region, Ukraine, Saturday, Jan. 14, 2023.
AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka
At the moment, Ukraine is waiting for a wave of advanced Western tanks, including German-made Leopards and British Challenger 2 tanks. These modern systems are better equipped than those that have largely dominated the battlefield so far. 'It seems like they just don't care'
Even without these advanced systems, Kyiv's military has still been able to inflict significant damage on some of Russia's elite tank forces. One prestigious unit, the 1st Guards Tank Army, has suffered heavy losses on multiple occasions while battling against Ukrainian troops.
"The Russians are not very good at using the tanks, and they're not very good at integrating the tanks," Miron said. "They could have used mechanized infantry to protect tanks, but it seems like they just don't care."
Another issue plaguing Russia's tank force has been its lack of creativity or maneuverability. For example, Edmonds explained, Russia has a problem with minefields, as was seen recently in Vuhledar.
Ukrainian servicemen of the 3rd Separate Tank Iron Brigade take part in a drill, not far from the frontlines, in the Kharkiv area, Ukraine, Thursday, Feb. 23, 2023.
AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda, File
Clearing a minefield is a slow, complicated, and deliberate process that involves several steps, but Russian tanks appear to drive right through them. Some of the tanks blow up, some retreat, and some are hit with anti-tank guided missiles like the Javelin, and the process just repeats itself when the Ukrainians lay more mines.
"It's just dumb," Edmonds said. "And you just see them do this over and over again."
"I'm not seeing any tactical-level adaptability," he continued. On one hand, there's no display of basic levels of training, like knowing how to react to contact. Additionally, there's no development or innovation from the Russians, which he attributes in part to Russia's style of warfare — a top-down type of leadership as opposed to something like the ground-level "upwelling" of initiative seen in Western militaries.
"You would think at this point maybe you would see the better application of maneuver and combined arms," Edmonds said of the Russian tactics. "But I'm not seeing it."
Footage shows how Russian tanks and armored vehicles keep driving to their death at an infamous mine-filled crossroads
Alia Shoaib Sat, March 4, 2023 An aerial view of Vuhledar, the site of heavy battles with the Russian troops in the Donetsk region, Ukraine, on February 10, 2023
AP Photo/Libkos
Russian troops keep driving to their death at an infamous crossroads in eastern Ukraine.
Videos show Russian armor being blown up by mines and anti-tank missiles at the intersection.
Russia lost 130 tanks during three weeks of fighting near Vuhledar, per Ukrainian officials.
An infamous crossing point near Vuhledar in Ukraine has become a deadly trap where Russian soldiers keep driving to their death.
The Ukrainian army has planted mines at the intersection, which is just outside of the town of Mykilske in the Donbas region, and Ukrainian forces wait nearby to strike with anti-tank guided missiles, according to Forbes.
Despite more than a dozen tanks and fighting vehicles lying destroyed in the area, Russian forces are apparently continuing to try and drive into it.
Drone footage from Ukraine's military has circulated on social media, appearing to show Russian vehicles being destroyed at the crossing point.
The most recent video claims to show a Russian BMP-2 IFV being destroyed at the crossroads after running over a mine and being hit by an anti-tank-guided missile.
Another video shows a Russian T-72B3 tank and BMP-2 being destroyed by a mine and anti-tank-guided missile.
TIn their bloody winter offensive, the Ukrainian-held mining town of Vuhledar has been a target for Russian forces.
Fighting has raged in the eastern Ukrainian town, and its neighboring villages as Russia has made several failed attempts to capture it.
Ukraine's unexpected use of mines appears to be helping give it the upper hand in fighting in eastern Ukraine.
Along with traditional Soviet mines, Ukraine has also been using US-supplied remote anti-armor mines, which involve firing a shell over an open area that scatters tiny mines widely.
Ukraine's military has claimed that Russia lost at least 130 tanks and armored personnel carriers in a three-week battle in Vuhledar, which Ukrainian officials have described as the biggest tank battle of the war so far. Insider could not independently verify those figures.
J. F. C. Fuller: Heretic, Mystic, and War Scientist
“Fuller is not an easy writer to read or an easy thinker to follow; like all prophets he is often obscure, not seldom inconsequent, too often biased. But what would you? We have only one military prophet; and in as much as the time has not yet come to build his sepulcher, it is perhaps ungracious to cast too many stones at him.”
—Army Quarterly, quoted in Boney Fuller
“In a small way I am trying to do for war what Copernicus did for astronomy, Newton for physics, and Darwin for natural history.”
Crisis is fertile ground for creative thinkers. As the science historian Thomas Kuhn has explained, development of scientific knowledge is characterized by brief moments of explosive questioning, competition of ideas, high levels of collaboration, and a “shift in professional commitments.” These debates are not unique to purely scientific communities; in the early 20th century, a period marked by various military, political, economic, and cultural crises, military thinkers debated the fundamental assumptions of their own craft. John Frederick Charles Fuller stands above the rest in his zeal to change the way war was studied.
Science became authoritative in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods, just when Fuller was engaging in the debates. It shouldn’t be surprising that military professionals would look to the language and method of science to guide their study of warfare; soldiers have a long tradition of attempting to impose a systematic approach to their craft. Three things make Fuller somewhat unique, though: a) he set about to making the study of war a scientific endeavor with a tenacity unmatched by anyone before or since; b) his theories have had lasting impact, particularly on the US military; and c) he drew heavily from mystic works. It is the last of these that might surprise students of miltary science.
Mysticism’s incursion into the sciences has been well-chronicled. In second half of the 20th century, scholars began pointing out the parallels between Eastern mystic traditions and modern physics. Drawing on thinkers like Sal Restivo, Sean Lawson has described how that mode of thought found its way into US military doctrine via an influential American soldier and military thinker, John Boyd. Boyd (incidentally a disciple of Fuller), drew on mysticism in his own work.
Theorists, planners, and fighters of war have long appropriated elements of science, including its language, to improve their profession. And although Fuller was largely responsible for that phenomenon among western militaries in the 20th century, his ideas about and prescriptions for modern war, articulated in the second and third decades of the 20th century, were themselves based partly on ideas he enlisted from mystic traditions and the occult.
Mysticism, according to Restivo, is an example of “exploration of states of consciousness.” Those who see a connection between science and mysticism find a liberating mode of thought. Fuller, too viewed science as “liberating” and attempted to employ it in his quest to improve the practice of war. He employed concepts inherent in mystic traditions to answer questions even as he labeled his task a scientific undertaking. Fuller didn’t himself advance the argument that mysticism ought to inform a scientific approach, but there was a creeping influence of mysticism on Fuller’s military thinking, regardless of whether Fuller recognized that influence or not.
Fuller was a prolific writer. Less known among his collected works are three books that summarize his interests in mysticism and the occult: The Star in the West (1907), Yoga (1925), and The Secret Wisdom of the Qabalah (1937). These complement his main treatises on “scientific warfare:” Reformation of War (1923), and The Foundations of the Science of War (1926). Though he wrote many more volumes (Anthony Trythall’s bibliography lists 45 books; in addition to the reams of journal articles, military tracts, and popular press pieces). In those writings, he laid out his philosophy of idealism, the concept of cycles, creation, and equilibrium, and the imposition of numbers on problems, including a three-fold order to the universe— all ideas borrowed from his mystic influences.
Fuller saw himself as unconventional. Like all would-be reformers, he had a rebellious streak that he somewhat proudly described as heretical, others more condemningly as insubordinate. By his own account, he began thinking about a scientific application to war in 1911, during which time he was commander of a Territorial Army battalion. He soon became an instructor at the Staff College at Camberley and in 1915 was sent to France as a wartime operations officer. During the war he honed his ideas about how to make war more scientific in study and in practice.
His quest was marked by departures from conventional thinking. At the end of 1915, for example, he wrote an article for the Journal of the Royal United Services Institute that criticized the British Field Service Regulations in its opening paragraph. Noting that the FSR referred to “the fundamental principles of war,” he then declared:
…to publish a revised edition of Euclid and forget the definitions, is to be guilty of somewhat serious omissions; nevertheless, throughout the 434 pages of this text-book on the science and the art of war…no further mention is made as to what these principles are.
It was a justified criticism that laid the groundwork for his later, and more complete, elucidations on the scientific method of studying war. Not only did it demonstrate Fuller’s systematic thinking, but the article introduced the notion that Allied victory depended on penetrating the German line. British military strategy had been, whether ideal or designed in the face of sad reality, to wear down the enemy front. To pierce it was heresy.
During the war, Fuller served in a number of positions at home and in France. While on the continent, he became convinced that the tank represented a future of armored warfare, one that was well-suited to application of the principles he was discovering. Despite three books to his name and several military journal articles (in addition to various occult pieces and a book dedicated to Britain’s most famous occultist, Aleister Crowley) his 1923 book, Reformation of War, was the most complete outline of his view that “all forms of warfare are founded on a common science.” He was convinced that “the jar of science has been fished up from out the deep, and its seal has been broken, and no English contempt for others will coax the Jinn back into his bottle.” Fuller analogized war with any other human endeavor, expressing the positivist view that it would improve but never disappear. Reformation became a best seller.
Long after the British Army had returned home and begun preparing for peace, Fuller was still at work articulating the principles of war, which he believed could be studied in a scientific way. In 1926 he published The Foundations of the Science of War, in which he added to and elaborated on the principles outlined in his previous work. Foundations represented a highly systematic approach to war, but Fuller characteristically managed to offend many of his contemporaries and superiors, exposing the “prevailing ignorance” of the British Army.
In response to his critics’ view that war could never be other than an art, Fuller replied, “poetry, painting, and music may be arts, but they are based on the sciences of language, of optics, and of acoustics.” Foundations, which Fuller considered his magnum opus, was a mammoth attempt to classify his principles and derive some universal laws from their application that could serve to guide planners of the next war. “Though the scientific method has never as yet been applied to the history of war, truth always exists either openly or hidden.” Fuller was devoted to revealing that truth.
He found truth in a variety of sources. Yoga, qabalah, and the occult all uncovered mysteries and revealed patterns of thinking that translated into a deeper understanding of the battlefield. In Yoga he identifies the law in force and explains the dual nature of fallen man.
The duality found in Fuller’s mysticism is a key to his scientific study of war. In Reformation, he introduces his idea that man’s becoming an active force is a precondition of his freedom (p. 277). In Foundations, he elaborates on the concept, taking as his “archetypical organization” the human body itself, possessed of a control system to exert forces, which come in a pair. In war, it is up to the commander to employ these forces, an active one to exert pressure, or a stable one to resist it (p. 83). Force was at the heart of his conception of war, which was nothing more than the application of force as a political instrument (1926, p. 78). His willingness to divide force into two types emanates from his mystic persuasion.
Even more obvious to students of Fuller than his application of duality, and probably any other aspect of mysticism for that matter, was his tendency to see things in patterns of three, which often invited ridicule from his contemporaries. In The Star in the West, for instance, he tells his reader of the three great commandments: “Know Thyself, Be Thyself, Honour Thyself,” and he divides all of human understanding into three spheres: mysticism, idealism, and realism.
In his treatments of yoga and qabalah, Fuller frequently refers to trinities, both of spiritual and philosophical things. This proclivity is evident in his war theorizing, as well. In Reformation, he mentions three types of war, and three categories of conquest , but he isn’t wedded to the number three, nor does he attribute anything significant or universal to it.
It was in Foundations that he really found his attraction to trinities for all manner of understanding war, dedicating an entire chapter to it. Chapter 3, “The Threefold Order,” opens thusly:
I can establish a foundation [to the study of war] so universal that it may be considered axiomatic to knowledge in all its forms… I shall be able to bring the study of war into the closest relationship with the study of all other subjects.
Important elements often occured in threes as Fuller saw them. War was fought, for example, on land, in the air, and by sea. Ground forces were organized into infantry, cavalry, and artillery. But Fuller also offered a more esoteric, and thus more foundational, explanation:
A does not exist apart from B, neither does B exist apart from A, nor can their relationships exist apart from either, since all three exist as a trinity in unity, and it is this triunity which enables us to know. Knowledge is, in fact, based on the universal inference of a threefold order — this is my cogito ergo sum.
Fuller also found mystic concepts like the Unknowable and anti-materialism useful in describing war in a scientific way. Among those that have survived are the disorganization as a weapon, and “creative destruction,” popularized among Americans in the 1980s by Boyd.
War was an important part of the creation cycle, according to Fuller, who wrote in Reformation that “the true purpose of war is to create and not to destroy” and described war as “the god of creative destruction, that grim synthetic iconoclast.” It is interesting to note here that one of John Boyd’s most well-known essays is titled, “Destruction and Creation,” and draws on similar mystic concepts.
Fuller lived during a time of remarkable paradigm shift. After his military career he cited the Theory of Relativity as being responsible for an “extraordinary change between the scientific outlook of the present century and that of the last.” In the old order, “the struggle with the rationalist conception of the world was how to find a place for freedom in a world where all things were determined by law.” In the new scientific order, men would “struggle…to find a place for authority and order in a world of pure chance or pure accident.” He saw himself as a scientific pioneer, one who both recognized the shift and was intellectually equipped to find the order lost in the chaos of war.
There can be no doubt that J. F. C. Fuller was an intellectual giant in the realm of military theory. Lawson calls him “the world’s leading theorist of mechanized warfare” and “Britain’s foremost military thinker.” Historians generally agree that Fuller had a profound impact on German doctrine and tactics in World War II , on the tactics displayed in the Arab-Israeli War of 1973, and on US Maneuver Warfare doctrine that emerged as a result of Boyd’s work, which culminated in the 1991 Gulf War. His works and their derivatives are still to be found in the curricula of the major US war colleges. Trythall insists that Fuller “will have a lasting relevance principally because he was above all else a brilliant and critical student of war.”
Fuller earned his reputation as a superb scholar of war because he has been proven right more than wrong. He was unconventional, a self-described heretic, who sought new ways to think about war and execute it. His theories of warfare were forged amid the chaos and calamity of World War I, which caused him and others to “[partake] of strategically black masses and tactical witches’ Sabbaths.” He made it his goal to move beyond alchemy and superstitions to devise a science of war.
Ironically, the preeminent war scientist was deeply committed to Eastern mystic traditions, and its elements crept in to his work on the task. Yet it isn’t entirely contradictory, since, for Fuller, all systems are but roads to one goal, which was a better understanding of the universe. War was merely Fuller’s experience in that universe.
The mystic systems Fuller studied — qabalah, yoga, and early in his career Aleister Crowley’s occult versions of them — influenced him in very apparent ways. They infused his outlook with elements of idealism, including notions of the Unknowable and immaterialism; they shaped his belief in cycles of chaos, and of the power of organization; and they instilled in him a predilection to see things in sets of twos and threes.
Writing of the genealogy of modern law, David Faigman has pointed out, “however reputable science might be today, its roots lie deep in the mystical practices and superstitions of the past.”
The Generalship Of Alexander The Great J.F.C. Fuller Hachette Books, 1960 - Biography & Autobiography - 336 pages 1 Review A brief and meteoric life (356-323 B.C.) Alexander was the greatest of all conquerors in the course of world history. He had a small army--seldom exceeding 40,000 men--but a constellation of bold, revolutionary ideas about the conduct of war and the nature of government. J. F. C. Fuller, one of the foremost military historians of the twentieth-century, was the first to analyze Alexander in terms of his leadership as a general. He has divided his study into two parts. The first, entitled The Record, describes the background of the era, Alexander's character and training, the structure of the Macedonian army, and the geography of the world that determined the strategy of conquest. The second part, The Analysis, takes apart the great battles, from Granicus to Hydaspes, and concludes with two chapters on Alexander's statesmanship. In a style both clear and witty, Fuller imparts the many sides to Alexander's genius and the full extent of his empire, which stretched from India to Egypt.
The Military Papers and Correspondence of Major General J.F.C. Fuller 19-16 -1933, £20.00 to members. Army Records Society, 394 pp. footnotes, bibliog. index. ISBN 978 0 7509-8365 5
Professor Alaric Searle
The Army Records Society has been publishing an annual volume for its members every year since 1985 on a wide range of topics from the Napoleonic Wars to events in Kenya 1953 – 1955.
‘Boney’ Fuller’s papers and correspondence is the fourth book on aspects of the Great War published by the since 2014. (Others comprise: Military Intelligence from Germany, 1906 – 1914, The Diary of Corporal Vince Schurliffe 1914 – 1918, and Liaison: General Pierre Vallieres at British Headquarters 1916-1917).
Both in this work and previous biographies, Fuller emerges here as a thinking and questioning soldier and student on military matters. His drive, cocky intemperance, made him a difficult subordinate. What also emerges is that like Henry Wilson and others similarly self-assured he was a gossip.
One cannot fail to recognise the length and breadth of the editor’s research in locating Fuller’s widely, internationally, spread papers. Nor ignore Searle’s insight in the introductions to each chapter. That said, I would have welcomed far greater editorial input into contextualising his correspondence and his thinking and real importance as a thinker and theorist on military matters and science. His ideas, his concepts, frequently spelled out in letters to Liddell Hart, are often complex. The pair shared thinking one with another, in discussion, disagreeing and correcting praising and criticising each other’s work.
Of the two, LH - initially the student military thinker - and Fuller the true professional - finally both emerge from their collaborative correspondence with little credit and as and hugely egotistical.
As their relationship deteriorates, Fuller advises LH that his book on Sherman is “… big. But not so good as his your ‘Scipio’, and “… in my opinion the book wants to be condensed”. He also notes, “I believe anyone can write history if they collect sufficient facts …” Fullers concluding sentence rings perceptive bells; “… take the present official history. Facts are all correct but the atmosphere of reality is completely wanting, as a matter of fact one gets a far better psychological picture of the last war from novels than from Edmunds”
The work of an editor on his subject’s letters and papers is far from easy. However, I judge that, frequently, understanding the thinking Fuller outlined his papers and correspondence demands considerably greater editorial input and contextualisation. Matters of strategy, tactics and forward looking military thinking are complex and this book have benefited from greater editorial input about these areas than is provided by Professor Searle.
Fuller was a man of many parts and, perhaps understandably, the book concludes in 1933, when he left the army. Ahead lay membership of the British Union of Fascists and related bodies, admiration, if not for Hitler, then for his pre-war implementation of Fuller’s concepts. Indeed, he was considered fortunate not to have been interned during World War 2. Unlike Henry Williamson, Fuller seems fortunate to be remembered for his writing and influential thinking, rather than other aspects of his nature and what many, including contemporaries, judged somewhat more than a flirtation with the dark side.
BRITISH FASCIST MOSLEY SAID THAT Trump at CPAC Pitches Sending Military to Cities 'Until Law and Order Is Restored'
IN THE 1930'S
Brian Bennett Sat, March 4, 2023
Former President Donald Trump promised attendees at an ultra-conservative gathering Saturday night that he would use a second term in the White House to implement an authoritarian vision for policing crime that would include deploying the National Guard into US cities with high crime rates.
“I will send in the National Guard until law and order is restored. You know we’re not supposed to do that,” Trump said in his address closing out the annual Conservative Political Action Conference conference in Oxon Hill, Md., where he easily won a presidential straw poll of attendees.
Trump used his diatribe against cities to zero in on nearby Washington, D.C., whose federal prohibition on fully governing itself has drawn increased attention in recent days, as President Joe Biden and Congress appear poised to block the district’s divisive crime bill from becoming law.
The CPAC crowd, made up largely of right-wing political supporters and various officials from his former administration, stood and applauded when Trump called for full federal control of the city that is also the nation’s capital. “Frankly the federal government should take over control and management of Washington, D.C.,” Trump said, adding at one point, “I wouldn’t even call the mayor.”
Washington, DC, is run by an elected city council and a mayor, but its laws can be overridden by Congress. The 700,000 residents of Washington, DC, who are 47% Black,. aren’t allowed to vote for members of Congress or the Senate, and the city’s license plates read: “Taxation Without Representation.”
Trump’s comments came a day after President Joe Biden when he announced he would not veto a bill overriding changes to DC’s crime laws passed by the DC city council. The move amounted to a flip-flop from Biden’s long-standing position that DC should become a state and be allowed to govern itself, and came just weeks after Biden had signaled he would back the DC council’s autonomy. The President’s decision seemed to show that he considers the public’s perceptions of crime rates, and Republican claims that Democrats are soft on crime, to be a political vulnerability going into the 2024 elections. Biden has said he intends to run for a second term, but hasn’t formally announced his candidacy.
Without evidence, Trump claimed that, as President, he ordered the clearing out of homeless encampments in Washington, DC. He also bemoaned how his chairman of the joint chiefs of staff Gen. Mark Milley objected to Trump’s June 2020 order for National Guard forces to use tear gas and rubber bullets to push out racial justice protestors from Lafayette Park in front of the White House so Trump could stage a photo op with a bible in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church. “He didn’t like me holding up a bible in front of a church,” Trump said about Milley.
Trump handily won the annual CPAC straw poll, with 62% support of attendees picking him to be the party’s nominee, followed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at 20%, according to the Associated Press. Trump did not directly mention DeSantis or any of his other current or likely opponents for the 2024 GOP nomination by name.
In an hour and 45 minute speech to a receptive audience, Trump repeatedly praised the use of force to address the nation’s problems. He also praised those who continue to defend the rioters who broke through police lines at the Capitol Building on Jan. 6, 2021, and said that if he is elected back into the White House, he would be “your warrior” and “your retribution.”
“The sinister forces trying to kill America have done everything they can to stop me, to silence you, and to turn this nation into a socialist dumping ground for criminals, junkies, Marxists, thugs, radicals and dangerous refugees that no other country wants,” Trump said.
Trump also echoed the pledges of his first White House run, vowing to beef up immigration enforcement and pitching policies that at times seemed to equate immigrants with criminals.
Along with pushing to pass a funding bill that would deliver a “massive increase in border patrol and colossal increase in the number of ICE deportation officers,” Trump said he would ask every state and federal agency to identify every known or suspected gang member in America that is in the country illegally.
“We will pick them up and we will throw them out of our country,” Trump said. “And there will be no questions asked.”
CRYPTO CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
FTX has a massive $9.5 billion shortfall in top crypto and cash needed to repay customers, the bankrupt exchange's new bosses say
Ryan Hogg Fri, March 3, 2023 Sam Bankman-Fried.AP Photo/Seth Wenig
FTX has a $9.5 billion shortfall in top crypto and cash to repay customers, bankruptcy lawyers say.
Just $694 million in assets of $2.2 billion recovered are easy to cash in.
The group said it also lent $9.3 billion to Sam Bankman-Fried's Alameda Research.
FTX has identified a $9.5 billion shortfall in top crypto and cash needed to repay customers, its new bosses have said, with just $694 million in currency that's easy to cash in.
In a press release on Thursday, FTX shared the extent of the company's deficit as bankruptcy lawyers scramble to unravel a mess that led to billions of dollars' worth of customer funds getting lost.
The bankrupt crypto exchange's new executives have so far identified $2.2 billion in assets in the company's wallets, of which only $694 million were in the most liquid currencies, like fiat, stablecoins, bitcoin, or ethereum.
Lawyers have also identified $385 million of customer receivables, and substantial claims against Bankman-Fried's Alameda Research, the company at the center of FTX's controversial collapse. FTX lent $9.3 billion to Alameda, they said.
"It has taken a huge effort to get this far. The exchanges' assets were highly commingled, and their books and records are incomplete and, in many cases, totally absent," CEO John Ray wrote.
"For these reasons, it is important to emphasize that this information is still preliminary and subject to change."
FTX US also has a shortfall, with $191 million in assets versus $335 million of customer claims and $283 million of related party claims payable.
In January, bankruptcy lawyers said they had recovered $5.5 billion in liquid assets from FTX.
But lawyers still don't know the extent of losses to customer funds, which burned famous faces like Tom Brady and Kevin O'Leary. The Commodities and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has estimated that $8 billion of client money had been lost by the exchange.
Its latest presentation suggested there is a $9.5 billion deficit across its most liquid assets, and a $733 million surplus in category B assets — those which are harder to retrieve — including through the FTX native coin FTT.
Canary Media’s chart of the week translates crucial data about the clean energy transition into a visual format.
The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, a nonprofit research organization, has a green score for your vehicle — and you may not love the news.
The ACEEE distills a constellation of fuel economy, pollution and emissions data into one green score to rule them all. This life-cycle analysis aims to estimate the vehicle’s environmental impacts and costs to human health from “cradle to grave,” taking into account greenhouse gas emissions and other kinds of pollutants from vehicle manufacturing, from the production and distribution of fuel, and from vehicle tailpipes, as well as the end-of-life impacts of disposal and recycling.
So is your big electric pickup truck greener than a gas-powered economy car? Maybe not
“Not all electric vehicles are created equal. Inefficient and heavy EVs have lower environmental impacts than similarly sized gasoline-fueled cars, but they underperform more efficient EVs,” said Peter Huether, senior transportation research analyst with ACEEE, in a press release. And large electric trucks can even underperform efficient gas-powered cars.
As the chart shows, ACEEE compared three vehicles that are available in both electric and gasoline-fueled versions: the Mini Cooper Hardtop, the Volvo XC40 Recharge Twin and the Ford F-150 truck.
While the electric versions cause significantly less environmental damage than their gasoline-burning counterparts, heavier and less efficient vehicles cause more environmental damage, regardless of power source. The all-electric Ford F-150 Lightning still has a higher environmental impact than the gas-powered Mini Cooper Hardtop despite being powered by batteries and not fossil fuels.
(ACEEE)
“To reduce pollution from automobiles, we need policies that both support more electric vehicles and encourage automakers to improve efficiency among all types of vehicles through a variety of strategies, including reducing vehicle weight,” said Huether.
