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On the Scent
Author: VD
I Stand With Castor Fiber
Apparently Russia doesn’t pose a sufficient challenge, as Poland declares war on our beaver friends:
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has called for decisive action against beavers, suggesting the industrious rodents are partly responsible for the severe flooding across the country. The prime minister made the remarks on Saturday during a meeting with cabinet members and local officials at a crisis headquarters managing the flood response in the southwestern city of Glogow. Tusk called for quick action to tackle the disaster, urging municipalities to swiftly report their needs as well as to closely monitor the condition of dams still standing. A sizable part of his speech, however, was dedicated to beavers, with Tusk suggesting the critters were partly to blame for the disaster and that action against their presence at man-made earthworks was needed. “Sometimes, we must choose between our love for animals and the safety of cities, villages, and the integrity of dams,” Tusk stated, invoking the catastrophic 2010 floods and the alleged role beavers played in them. At the time, the Polish government accused the animals of causing great damage to levees.
I don’t have anything against the Poles, but honestly, I’m down with the beavers every single time. And so, I suspect, is President Putin.
Why Invade Now?
This three-month-old report on Hezbollah’s methodical degradation of the Israeli air defense system may explain why the Netanyahu regime is hell-bent on invading Lebanon and engaging in the sort of ground war that the IDF has been assiduously avoiding for the last decade. Obviously, I can’t verify its accuracy, and it is of a strongly anti-Israel bent, but it does help put the puzzle together.
‘Israel’ has completely lost the north of occupied Palestine. It’s under fire and on fire every day now. Hezbollah has methodically eye-poked ‘Israel’s’ intelligence outposts and is literally blasting them in the nuts every day, on camera. The map above shows the new line of control for occupied Palestine, as reported by the thinking man’s Der Stürmer, Haaretz. ‘Israel’ has lost it.
It’s fascinatingly boring how Hezbollah did this. For months their videos have been methodically mundane, blowing up this communication tower, that building, that listening station. It seemed like a bunch of nothing, but it adds up. Hezbollah had a list of ‘Israel’s’ eyes and ears in the north and has spent months methodically eye poking them, like Odysseus and the Cyclops. Now—however big the IOF might be—they’re effectively blinded.
As Hezbollah opens bigger and bigger gaps in ‘Israel’s’ air defenses, they can send bigger and more missiles in, with better and better penetration. For ‘Israel’, this attrition is a compounding problem. Their air defenses are a connected system and the network is increasingly returning 404… Hezbollah has fire control over the north, while ‘Israel’ is retreating further and further.
Pager bombings and air strikes are insufficient to change the attritional equation here. And Israel doesn’t have the room to retreat much further than it already has, which means that in order to restore its air defense systems to full functionality, it has no choice but to go in on the ground and provide Hezbollah with the invasion that it apparently has been seeking to provoke regardless of what is happening in Gaza, the West Bank, Iran, or Ukraine.
Which, presumably, is why the USA now has more than 40,000 troops, the 101st Airborne, and several carrier groups in position to reinforce what would appear to be an incipient Israeli invasion of Lebanon. If the report of the systematic degradation of the Iron Dome system and the removal of 60,000 settlers is correct – and I’m confident that the latter, at least, is, on the basis of similar Israeli reports – then I don’t see any way that another war in Lebanon can reasonably be avoided short of a long-term ceasefire that would give the Israelis the time to reconstruct its air defense systems.
UPDATE: The report and the logic that follows from it would appear to be sound.
Israel’s army chief has told his forces to prepare for a ground invasion of Lebanon as the Middle East spirals towards a seemingly inevitable wider war. Herzi Halevi told soldiers during a drill near the Lebanese border in northern Israel: ‘We are attacking all day, both to prepare the ground for the possibility of your entry [into Lebanon], but also to continue striking Hezbollah.’ He added: ‘Hezbollah today expanded its [range] of fire. Later today, it will receive a very strong response. Prepare yourselves.’
UPDATE: An Israeli general says Israel can’t even hope to last as long as Ukraine has in a war of attrition.
The country really is galloping towards the edge of an abyss. If the war of attrition against Hamas and Hezbollah continues, Israel will collapse within no more than a year.
That would certainly explain why Clown World is apparently going to risk rolling the dice, despite the fact that it’s possible neither Israel nor the USA will survive the consequences. The problem is that the whole strategy for both Ukraine and Israel relies upon somehow getting the US military to fight with and for them, but neither regime fully comprehends that thanks to decades of self-serving foreign rule, the US military is no longer capable of defeating either Russia or Iran, much less both of them at once.
Fighting Without Fuel
US Navy oiler USNS Big Horn ran aground yesterday, leaving the Abraham Lincoln Carrier Group without it’s primary fuel source. The Navy doesn’t have a spare oiler to deploy and is now scrambling to find a commercial tanker.
Karl Denninger comments on the naval foul-up:
We have only one oiler — vessels that carry fuel for things like, oh, aircraft — available where that ship is. ONE, and it just went hard aground and apparently, from that video, ripped up the rudder post mount quite nicely, shearing off several bolts.
How much damage was done to the underwater gear? I don’t think anyone knows yet but it clearly is leaking so the answer isn’t “none.” Whether that damage impacts its mobility (e.g. rudder jammed or the screw damaged) is an open question, but its not going anywhere while hard aground — that much I can assure you.
How “capable” is our allegedly “great” military of doing its job right now? You know, actual fighting in a lethal combat situation where the other side can shoot back?
How many of our “officers” running said vessels and other assets are not competent to do the job under pressure when they ground ships (or, as we’ve previously seen, run them into other vessels) when nobody is shooting at them?
How many of said “officers” were promoted because of their blue hair, what they have between their legs and/or pronouns rather than because they were the person who was most competent to take that command irrespective of any of that horseshit?
You better pray we don’t find out the hard way; not only may thousands of our troops die but you may glow in the dark.
This is totally disastrous, as in addition to making it more difficult to refuel the carrier group, it clearly demonstrates to the opposition how vulnerable the US naval forces are, and how to most efficiently cripple them by targeting their logistics, which at present are not very sound even in the United States itself.
The net stores of military jet fuel immediately available from US refiners above the global contingency supplies managed by the Defense Logistics Agency at any time represents about 375 net flight hours for one carrier and one air wing…less than 16 days of high intensity air operations by far fewer assets than the US would throw into an all-out theater conflict in the Pacific Rim.
This is the danger of being led to war by foreign lawyers and bankers. They’re so accustomed to using words and money to accomplish their goals that they have no significant understanding of what actually goes into fighting an actual war, let alone the planning required to win one.
UPDATE: In case you don’t understand how vital fleet oilers are to the operations of a wartime navy, going into WWII, the US Navy possessed 30 fleet oilers. By the end of 1945, it had 169 commissioned and at its disposal.
Eggs Do Not Raise Cholesterol
The link between eating eggs and high cholesterol is just another case of malscientific nonsense:
Dr Norwitz said: ‘I hypothesized that eating 720 eggs in one month, which alone amounts to 133,200mg of cholesterol, would not increase my cholesterol. Specifically, it would not increase my LDL cholesterol.
‘And, indeed, it didn’t, not a smidge.’
He added: ‘Even though my dietary intake of cholesterol more than quintupled, my LDL cholesterol actually dropped.’
He had to eat 24 eggs a day during the experiment, the equivalent of about one every hour if he didn’t leave any time to sleep.
Modern science is best regarded with a LOT of skepticism. Virtually nothing they say is good for your health is genuinely good for you. And remember, the majority of all published, peer-reviewed scientific studies are non-replicable junk.
So go ahead. Fry that egg. Fry it in butter!
An Interesting Order
The spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry confirms that Chinese citizens have been instructed to leave Israel.
Anadolu Agency: It’s been reported by Israeli media that Chinese Embassy in Israel has asked its citizens to leave the country and return to China in a Sunday night statement. The embassy added that Chinese citizens should not travel to Israel for the time being. What’s the reason for the travel advice and the leave advice?
Lin Jian: We indeed released relevant consular notice. It is our unshirkable duty to protect the safety of overseas Chinese nationals.
The USA, the UK, and numerous European countries are advising their citizens to leave Lebanon, not Israel. Which does tend to raise the question: what does China know that Israel’s allies do not?
One thing that is definitely not a good sign:
Fighter jets of the Israeli Air Force are now landing at a reportedly BRITISH base on the island of Cyprus in the Mediterranean Sea, after bombing attacks upon Lebanon. Hezbollah made clear months ago, that if the Israelis use base(s) on Cyprus, to attack them in Lebanon, that Hezbollah will attack Cyprus with long range missiles.
Kamala Still Isn’t Black
I don’t know why anyone ever pretended that Kamala Harris was black. I suppose it’s because people assume that everyone from Jamaica is, but as it happens, her father isn’t black. And neither is her mother. As Janet Jackson clearly knows:
Pop star Janet Jackson was blasted by left-wing critics last week for saying that Kamala Harris isn’t black. Then it was reported that she apologized saying she was “misinformed.” Now, Jackson is saying that apology was issued without authorization…
Once Jackson’s words got into print, Mo Elmasri apologized for her comments in a statement on Sunday in a report at Buzzfeed. Elmasri told Buzzfeed he was Jackson’s manager.
“Janet apologizes for any confusion caused and acknowledges the importance of accurate representation in public discourse” Elmasri said. “We appreciate the opportunity to address this and will remain committed to promoting unity … She deeply respects Vice President Kamala Harris and her accomplishments as a Black and Indian woman.”
But now Jackson’s team is disavowing Mo Elmasri’s statement.
Indeed, there seems to be confusion over Elmasri’s actual role with Jackson. According to sources, her brother, Randy Jackson, is actually Janet’s manager. And now the Jackson team is insisting that Elmasri had no right or authorization to issue any apologies, according to USA Today.
Perhaps Neal Gaiman’s team should take a page from Mr. Elmasri’s book and have some random individual who has no actual connection to Team Gaiman apologize for Mr. Gaiman’s alleged actions. They could even have Mr. Elmasri do it. Apparently the press will accept that these days.
No Coalition of the Willing 2
The US is sending more troops, specifically, the 101st Airborne Division if the rumors are correct, to the Middle East:
The US is deploying a “small number” of additional troops to the Middle East after Israel launched a large-scale military operation against Lebanon, The Pentagon has announced. Spokesperson Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder announced the move on Monday but declined to provide further details on the number or mission of the American troops.
”In light of increased tension in the Middle East and out of an abundance of caution, we are sending a small number of additional US military personnel forward to augment our forces already in the region,” Ryder said. “But for operational security reasons, I’m not going to comment on or provide specifics.”
The US currently has around 40,000 troops stationed in the Middle East, along with several Navy warships and aircraft carriers, including the USS Harry S. Truman and the USS Abraham Lincoln. The assets are positioned in multiple locations to respond to potential attacks against Israel or American interests.
It appears that the USA and its Greatest Ally are not going to wait much longer for Hezbollah and Iran to break discipline and give them an excuse to claim that they had no choice but to go to war. Which means another false flag is almost certainly in the works, presumably one in the United States.
However, Spain clearly doesn’t want any part of it. There is noticeably less enthusiasm in Europe for war on behalf of Israel than there has been for war on behalf of the Kiev regime.
“The Spanish government expresses its deep dismay and condemnation of the Israeli bombardment of southern and eastern Lebanon today, which has left hundreds dead, in response to Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel over the weekend. The spiral of violence must stop.” – the Spanish Foreign Ministry
UPDATE: 101st Airborne confirmed.
The War That Wouldn’t Start
Ron Unz suspects that the pager attack was supposed to be a preemptive first strike to disrupt a Hezbollah attack that never came:
Mossad certainly achieved a brilliant tactical victory, one that its members and pro-Israel partisans surely intend to boast about for years. But many aspects of the attack seemed very puzzling to me, and experienced military analysts wondered whether any long-term gains had been achieved.
After Israel invaded Gaza in retaliation for the Hamas raid last October, Hezbollah and its Israeli enemies soon began trading cross-border fire, bombarding each other with missiles, rockets, drones, and artillery shells, and those exchanges have now continued for nearly a year. As a result, some 160,000 civilians on both sides of the border have fled their homes, with perhaps 60,000 of these being Israelis.
With so many tens of thousands of Israelis having become internal refugees, displaced from their communities in the north of the country and spending the last year living in temporary accommodations, the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been under enormous political pressure to attack and invade Lebanon in order to drive the Hezbollah forces away from the border, thereby allowing those Israelis to return home. In addition, the most extreme religious elements among his supporters regard portions of southern Lebanon as part of Israel’s God-given lands and wish to see them conquered and annexed, with their local Lebanese residents expelled and replaced by Jewish settlers.
However, the last time the Israelis launched a ground invasion of Lebanon in 2006, their forces suffered a severe defeat at Hezbollah’s hands, and during the last eighteen years that organization has become far more powerful, with many of its troops having gained a great deal of military experience during their successful intervention in the Syrian civil war. Meanwhile, a year of fighting against Hamas in Gaza has left the IDF exhausted, so despite Israel’s command of the air, it’s not at all clear how well such a ground assault would go. Moreover, Hezbollah has reportedly amassed an enormous arsenal of some 150,000 rockets and missiles, and these could be used to inflict devastating damage upon most of Israel’s cities and towns if it chose to do so.
The combination of these two conflicting factors has led to repeated indecision on Israel’s part. For months, media leaks have reported that Israel had made the decision to invade Lebanon and that the attack was imminent. But nothing has ever happened, presumably because the military risks of such an operation were considered too great.
Those booby-trapped pagers and other devices might have played an absolutely crucial role in an Israeli ground invasion. If they had all been detonated at the beginning of such an attack, Hezbollah’s forces would have been left dazed and confused, with their entire communications network knocked out, thereby preventing them from mounting an effective defense or retaliatory measures. This would probably have allowed the IDF to win a major initial victory on the ground.
But instead those explosions occurred alone, with no invasion taking place. So Hezbollah has merely licked its wounds and is surely now putting in place a replacement communications network, presumably based upon a large shipment of carefully vetted pagers received from Iran or China or Russia. Israel thus lost the element of surprise, with little to show for it except wounding a large number of Hezbollah members. Thus, the exploding pagers merely produced a tactical victory instead of a potentially strategic one.
This raises the obvious question of why the Israelis chose to shoot their bolt when they did instead of waiting until the pagers could be detonated in conjunction with a major invasion.
It is becoming increasingly obvious that it is Israel that desperately wants a war while Hezbollah and Iran understand that time is on their side. Now that the technological attack has failed to spur either of the latter into action, Israel has proceeded to engage in another round of air strikes against Lebanon.
Israeli missiles slammed into the Lebanese capital of Beirut in a strike said to be targeting a senior Hezbollah commander this afternoon, after the southern suburbs were buffeted with hundreds of missiles. Hezbollah commander Ali Karaki was the target of strikes late Monday as Israeli attacks edge deeper into Lebanon, according to a security source speaking to Reuters.
Attrition warfare always favors the more numerous side. It appears that China isn’t the only one learning from watching how the Russians execute their strategies.
The Dangers of Selling Out
Football Outsiders went from a high-quality and influential site to extinction in barely 12 months thanks to selling out to some Canadian financial pirates:
Football Outsiders was founded in 2003 by Aaron Schatz. What began as his passion project grew into a fully fledged website for advanced football analytics and statistics such as DVOA (Defense-adjusted Value Over Average). Football Outsiders went on to strike partnerships with ESPN and became a popular source for hardcore football nerds and casual fans alike. In 2018, Schatz sold Football Outsiders to a company called EdjSports. He stayed on as editor-in-chief, and, according to longtime Football Outsiders writer Mike Tanier, the site continued to operate as normal.
Then, in September 2021, Champion Gaming, co-founded by Simmonds and Hershman, entered the picture. It acquired EdjSports, and Football Outsiders along with it, in late 2021 as part of a “reverse takeover,” a way for private companies to go public quickly without having to go through an Initial Public Offering. As part of the deal, Champion Gaming merged with a shell company called Prime City One Capital. According to a news report from the time, “the group closed a funding round of $3.65 million (CAD $4.62 million), giving it a roughly $12.3 million post-money valuation, and it is on track to begin trading in a few weeks.”
Champion Gaming had ambitions to expand beyond NFL coverage. It struck a licensing deal with Inpredictable, an NBA analytics website run by Mike Beuoy, and partnered with SharpRank, a sports betting resource. The terms and status of these partnerships are unclear; Beuoy and SharpRank did not respond to queries. Champion Gaming also brought on Chris Spagnuolo to oversee content (for a particular microgeneration of sports media consumers, Spagnuolo is best known as the guy who left Barstool Sports after writing a blog calling Rihanna fat), and hired ESPN’s Katie George to be a brand ambassador and create video content. Spagnuolo declined to comment. Defector was not able to reach George for comment.
By the summer after the takeover, changes at the top of the company were underway. In June 2022, Simmonds took over from Hershman as CEO; Wickham took over as CFO; and the company’s president, Chief Innovation Officer, and director all resigned. The company framed the changes as an exciting new chapter. Of Simmonds’s ascent to CEO, Hershman said in a press release, “Given his previous experience as a public markets CEO and his extensive background in online gambling, the board of directors and I determined that his leadership of the Company would be both ideal and appropriate to steer us going forward as we build a leading sports content and data intelligence business.”
But by the fall there were signs that the company was floundering. According to financial documents filed in November 2022, which are publicly available through Sedar, Canada’s securities filing system, the company had little cash flow and was carrying significant debt, especially relative to its revenues. In the first nine months of 2022, Champion Gaming reported $969,789 in revenue and $5,619,803 in losses. (All monetary figures cited in the filings are in CAD.) As of Sept. 30, 2022, the entire company had only $55,776 in cash, with even less coming in. As of the same date, the accounts receivable, meaning revenue the company accrued, but which they still needed to be paid, was only $13,911. On page six of the same filing, the company wrote: “These material uncertainties cast significant doubt as to the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern.”
We were never going to sell out, but rest assured we have learned our lesson about the importance of staying in your lane and focusing relentlessly on what you do best. My answer now to the people both within and without the community who tell me “you know, you should do X” is very short and unmistakably negative.
No short cuts. No outside assistance. No wild ambitions. Just the slow and organic growth that comes from steadily improving quality and value. Castalia History is the only sort of growth we want; it’s now very nearly as large as the Library subscription and all four of the first books have sold out whereas none of our competitors can say the same of most of their recent books with similar print runs.