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Moral Ambiguity Undermines Military Operations

Source: Some Israeli soldiers refuse to keep fighting in Gaza

There is little doubt that the incoming American president’s threats to unleash hell motivated Hamas to accept wholesale Israel’s ceasefire terms, but the revelation of dissent within the ranks of the Israeli military documented in this AP article cannot be dismissed. The moral ambiguity of the military intervention in Gaza has very nearly torn Israeli society apart, and now it is now introducing cracks into the historically cohesive and unshakably united Israeli military. The Israeli prime minister is always quick to cast aspersions on foreign politicians who oppose his military escapade in Gaza, but dissent in the IDF, no matter how small, is a staggering measure of the degree to which the Israeli prime minister has degraded the cohesiveness of the Israeli fighting forces. No leader, foreign or domestic, has ever evoked open dissent in the ranks of the Israeli military. This fact renders moot the opposition of other soldier to this dissent:

“They are harming our ability to defend ourselves,” said Gilad Segal, a 42-year-old paratrooper who spent two months in Gaza at the end of 2023. He said everything the army did was necessary, including the flattening of houses used as Hamas hideouts. It’s not a soldier’s place to agree or disagree with the government, he argued.

The axiom that moral uncertainty weakens the morale of the fighting force that was manifest in Vietnam holds true in Israel. It is the moral ambiguity of the cause that harms the ability of the Israeli military to defend the nation. The dissenters correctly report the futility of much of the violence they are perpetrating in Gaza. As such, it is difficult to blame soldiers who are acting according to a clear understanding of the teachings of Judaism rather than on the deliberately ambiguous orders of a prime minister who is on trial and is more desperate than a cornered rat to retain power and avoid serving a prison sentence in his 70s.

A growing number of Israeli soldiers are speaking out against the Israel-Hamas war. They say they did or saw things that crossed ethical lines.

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Knowledge Trumps Faith, always

Source: Trump’s pro-Israel cabinet picks upset Muslims who voted for him | Reuters

The Muslim community’s disappointment in the exceptionally pro-Israel cabinet candidates that Donald Trump has thus far named is the ultimate proof that bargaining in good faith with a known bad actor guarantees one’s loss. Given the president elect’s history of instituting Muslim immigration bans, denigrating Muslims and embracing Benjamin Netanyahu, it is unfathomable how anyone could have had faith that he would approach the Gaza military conflict any more favorably toward Palestinians than Joe Biden. Knowledge of his past attitudes and actions provided absolute certainty of his intentions. Why did these leaders blink?

These Muslim leaders are not young men. They range in age from their 40s into their 70s. It is unfathomable that men in leadership positions can retain such naïveté into such old ages. Anyone endowed with good memory learns by his or her early 40s that bargaining in good faith while one fully knows the other party’s ill intentions is a terrible idea, a nonstarter. Even men of faith should have realized that one places faith in God, not in men. Faith in God is a tool with which one places accountability on men. The absence of accountability in this scenario casts unbounded doubt on the faith of the Muslim leaders.

Muslim leaders backed Donald Trump to protest against the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza and attacks on Lebanon. His choices are staunch supporters of their foe.

 

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BBC’s Not So Subtle Antisemitism Resurfaces

BBC News is not the sole outlet guilty of misleading headlines and ledes, but it bears the distinction of generating the disproportionate number of ledes that pin blame on Israel even though the story itself explicitly states a lack of evidence for claims made in the lede. This story is another perfect such example. The title of the story is “Five Gaza journalists killed in Israeli strike targeting armed group”, yet the text emphatically states

The BBC has not been able to verify claims made by either side, with international media being prevented by Israel from entering and freely working on the ground in Gaza.

There is absolutely no justification, therefore, in having a title that claims that Israel targeted journalists because no such event was verified. Furthermore, the BBC didn’t even verify that the credentials of journalists who were supposedly targeted.

There are so many lapses in editorial judgment in this piece that it is hard to see it as anything other than a deliberate smear against the Israeli military and the Israeli government. Given the British government’s unqualified support for Israel in the aftermath of the October 7th massacre, this is clearly a hatchet piece designed to denigrate a people, not a government. As such, it is clearly a piece born of antisemitism, and one that will ultimately stand as lie that will detract from whatever human rights case is ultimately brought against Israel.

Casting aspersions is a futile endeavor unbecoming of a legitimate news service. BBC News needs a new editorial board.

A Palestinian TV channel says they were in a marked media van in the central Gaza Strip.

Source: Five Gaza journalists killed in Israeli strike targeting armed group

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Great Actor Stands Up for Great Art

It is not a mystery why the ratings for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Awards Ceremony, better known as the Academy Awards or The Oscars, have seen rapidly declining ratings over the past decade: they are nominating and rewarding every shittier movies. Gone are the times when the awards committee would go to extraordinary lengths to promote movies that told worthwhile, original stories with breathtaking skill in direction and cinematography. Now, The Oscars are little more than auxiliary marketing campaigns for the vapid blockbuster movies that earn billions solely by virtue of outsized marketing campaigns and dominant distribution deals that leave movie fans with little choice of what to see.

Naturally, it falls to the old, established and accomplished actor to give The Academy the criticism it deserves. It is a tired cliché that the masses want pablum. Hollywood could make money by making good movies. Now, they are suffering the consequences of the commodification of their products: people can only eat so much pablum. Overfed on the tasteless stuff, movie fans can scarcely stand three-hour telecasts praising the stuff they have been force fed far beyond the point of satiety.

If anyone had any backbone in Hollywood, then they would heed Penn’s criticism, but much like a dictatorship, they have become prisoners in the system they created.

Sean Penn has blasted the organizers of the Oscars of being cowards who, in effect, limit the kind of films that can be funded and made. Source: Sean Penn accuses Academy Awards of cowardice at Marrakech Film Festival

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“Humanitarian” Among Dictators

Reuters reports that

Syria’s former President Bashar al-Assad is in Moscow with his family after Russia granted them asylum on humanitarian grounds, a Kremlin source told Russian news agencies on Sunday, and a deal has been done to ensure the safety of Russian military bases.

The two claims made in this short paragraph are staggeringly inaccurate and infinitely ironic. First, only a ruthless dictator who has killed a million of his own soldiers and about as many civilians and soldiers in Ukraine could ever offer asylum on “humanitarian” grounds to a dictator who, with the aid of Russia and Iran, killed a million of his own people and caused 8 million of his own population to flee the country, creating the largest refugee crisis since WWII. The notion of “honor among thieves” absolutely pales in comparison with “honor among dictators”.

Second, it is hard to imagine that Russia actually believes that the rebels who have taken over Syria will follow through on their promise to protect the Russian port in Tartus, Syria. It is hard to imagine that the rebel armies who were laid to waste indiscriminately by the Russian forces on those bases will grant these ruthless murderers forbearance as a practical consideration for building power in the state they now control. Keeping the Russian foothold in Syria will, after all, pose a risk to the new regime that he rebels form in the future.

Exhausted financially and militarily, Russia will, apparently, spin any story to pretend that its disastrous defeat in Syria is a graceful exit. No one will shed a tear if the Russians in the Tartus military base are laid to waste.

Syria’s former President Bashar al-Assad is in Moscow with his family after Russia granted them asylum on humanitarian grounds, a Kremlin source told Russian news agencies on Sunday, and a deal has been done to ensure the safety of Russian military bases.

Source: Syria’s Assad is in Moscow after deal on military bases: Russian state media | Reuters

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Why the US Green Party are Bona Fide Losers

The Green Party in the United States has been nothing but a joke. Measured by the goals it has set for itself, it is an unmitigated disaster and an absolute, complete, pathetic and unqualified loser because it has successfully helped elect administrations that forcefully realized the exact opposite of all of the party’s goals: George W Bush in 2000 and Donald Trump in 2016.

In contrast, faced with the prospect of a racist regime, fringe French political parties have the good sense to bow out in order to ensure the racist party’s loss. These French parties will sacrifice their own victory in order to assure a greater victory for the greater good. The US Green Party (and Robert F Kennedy, Jr.) has so little sense that when faced with the prospect of electing a tyrant, it elects to jump in order to siphon off enough votes from democrats and to elect the party it opposes. The Green Party has never won a race. It has never elected anyone to the US Congress, it has never garnered a majority in any district, and it has never formed any meaningful alliance with another party toward accomplishing a single policy objective. French parties will sacrifice actual parliamentary presence for the greater good, but the US Green Party works diligently to expand its losing ways to the national scene. Sacrifice and compromise are neither realities nor ideals in the American political system. They are concepts aped by infantile egomaniacs who will never mature enough to grasp either concept.

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Too Much Press for the Craven and Cowardly

If one is not comfortable with employment in a company whose CEO is fawning over the chief competitor’s CEO, then why would one vote for a politician who fawns over the nation’s mortal enemy? Nigel Farage’s unalloyed admiration for Vladimir Putin makes him nothing short of a traitor to his nation and to humanity. Were the UK dominated by a sensible government like that of Winston Churchill’s, Farage would have been isolated as Oswald Mosely was. Instead, Farage is granted every courtesy of a normal politician, rather than jail time. Prison is the only appropriate dwelling for craven reprobates who worship despots. The United Kingdom is another bastion of freedom dangerously close to losing its way and its privileges.

The Reform UK leader told the BBC that “of course” the war was President Vladimir Putin’s fault.

Source: West provoked Ukraine war, Nigel Farage says

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“I’m with Stupid”: OpenAI’s Naked Desperation and Cynicism

Given that OpenAI’s ChatGPT is only slightly less prone than other artificial “intelligence” engines to hallucination, outright deceit and manifest stupidity, the only reason that one can surmise for their decision to train their engines on the output of a media company that is proudly committed to deception, propaganda and ideological and racial biases is that the ostensible newspaper of record is suing them in court. The decline of the New York Times is not a matter of debate, but it has, thus far, not plunged to the depths of irrelevance and rank incompetence as the NewsCorp properties. It is the manifestation of Sam Altman’s mania and ruthlessness. Though he is running a business that hinges entirely on whether his “intelligent” algorithms return correct answers, he is willing to sacrifice the entire endeavor to avenge the New York Times. Sam Altman is committing himself to the ugliest legacy in Silicon Valley: Musk’s.

Sam Altman-led OpenAI has signed a deal that will give it access to content from some of the biggest news publications owned by media conglomerate News Corp , the companies said on Wednesday. Source: Sam Altman’s OpenAI signs content agreement with News Corp | Reuters

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Lenny Rome Continues to Innovate with Vaults

I am thrilled to have contributed a minor detail to the lore of vaults under the tutelage of Lenny Rome at UCLA (https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.0500929102), and I am even more excited to read about the phenomenal science that Lenny’s lab continues produce in exploiting vaults for therapies, even if the purpose of vaults remains beyond his reach. Lenny is a one of a kind trifecta that one could ever want as a colleague and mentor: the hardest working, the most rigorous and the most pleasant scientist. He is also so humble that he happily accepts the title of “the vaults guy” with supreme humor.

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Machine Learning Finds a Higher Purpose

I have ranted at length in previous posts on the fact that “predictive” patterns discovered by machine learning cannot add up to, cannot imitate and cannot constitute good taste, but the beer barons at KU Leuven (Louvain) may have arrived at the first counterargument by correlating the chemical signatures of good taste with potentially representative assessments of the same beers by people ostensibly possessed with good taste in matters of beer. Thus, this is the first attempt at correlating the chemistry of the taste of beer with the perceived taste and quality of beer. Sadly, even this attempt seems to have fallen short because the machine learning algorithms failed to identify unique chemical signatures that identified each beer type’s flavor and quality profile.

For now, one should continue to trust human experts more than “expert” algorithms.

Algorithm correlates online reviews with chemical profiles of hundreds of beers, providing a roadmap to enhance taste

Source: Machine learning improves beer flavor