Weekend Data Dump

Qatar had purchased a more substantial navy that goes beyond coastal patrol craft. Although it might be more accurate to say Qatar purchased foreign protection from Saudi and Iranian pressure.

If you can delay inspections long enough, you can pass any inspection. Which is one reason the 2015 Iran nuclear deal is so horrible on the enforcement issue.

I've been assured that everyone supports the troops.

Personally, I think the solution to the Swedish violence problem is stricter hand grenade control. Sweden has opted for a public relations campaign to deny there is a problem.

Has the Chinese collapse theory collapsed? Funny that an article saying China won't collapse lists so many Chinese problems. I don't predict collapse. But I think it is one possibility considering that the collapse of the center is not unknown in China's long history. Why would that record be invalid now? Is the creation of Dystopian State 1.0 a game-changer on keeping the center strong? Or perhaps the collapse of the collapse theory means that China's rulers should worry!

I'm lucky I sleep just fine. And enough. Without devices, medication, or a ridiculously expensive pillow and mattress.

Just a reminder of how much the liberal media wanted Trump to run for president. I believe I noted this in the context of commenting that the media would list all their pro-Trump stories during the primaries and all their anti-Trump stories during the general election, and conclude that they were completely balanced in 2016. Along with a bonus Norm McDonald quote. I don't remember that one, but it is glorious. Don't forget that Hillary Clinton lost to the candidate who she desperately wanted to face. Be careful what you wish for, as the cautionary wisdom advises.

Is it a long journey from thinking a person is "deplorable" or a "truly indefensible human being" for being part of large category of people to thinking of such a person as "subhuman" who should be eliminated for the good of society from political, social, or actual life?

So who exactly are the marginalized voices in our society?

An interesting discussion of the division between north and south Korea that goes back thousands of years. One might say that it took several decades of communism in the north and freedom and capitalism in the south to finally and decisively reverse the historical dominance of northern Korea.

An inconvenient truth. Suppressing science was a good thing, I guess. Tip to Instapundit.

"Perhaps most tragically, the students who preach the loudest against intolerance are themselves the most closed-minded." As I've long said, it is a tragedy of language that "liberal-minded" is used as a synonym for "open-minded." Although to be fair, those loud students aren't so much liberals as much as they are proto-fascists.

A discussion of how air strikes are guided by persistent drone surveillance and ROVER, which allows a shared view from the air by ground forces and air crews. The ROVER gear went from being mounted in a Humvee to being hand held. I'd forgotten about this equipment that was rapidly created in 2002.

It is interesting that Japan wants a fighter plane that combines the technology of the F-22 and F-35. Japan has found that pursuing the technology on their own is rather expensive. The F-35 is a good fighter but is not optimized for that role the way the F-22 is. It is fascinating that the old F-22 still has technology too sensitive (and not stolen) for export in contrast to the new F-35.

Strategypage takes a tour of Thailand, which is edging away from China despite being more friendly to authoritarian government than America which has been the big factor in post-World War II economic growth.

Is it just me, or is President Trump mellowing out on Twitter which used to send the Resistance into rage on a daily basis? Trump hasn't made me like him any better as a person. But his enemies on the left sure work overtime to make sure that I despise them more than I dislike Trump. Good enough for government work, I say.

One reason I don't like government regulation is fairness. Big companies have the armies of lawyers and subject specialists to find ways around the regulations while individuals or groups without those resources get caught in the gears of the enforcement machine.  And that is before we get to the concept of regulatory capture with the revolving door of government regulators who go into the regulated industry; and industry officials who because of their expertise on the industry go into the regulatory agencies.

If the Navy's view of cross-domain integration is about achieving within the Navy what the Army would think of as combined arms capabilities among different branches, then the concept isn't "gobbledygook." But if the concept turns out to be how to get the Army to focus on helping the Navy shoot down planes and sink ships at the expense of the Army's core competency of large-scale ground warfare, then it is worse than gobbledygook. If the naval missions are that difficult to achieve, I'd rather see the Navy get the budget money directly than force the Army to be a naval auxiliary.

I wouldn't mind professors spouting off on their Revolutionary and violent beliefs so much--freedom of speech, and all--if colleges didn't pay those hard left professors like they're capitalist pig overlords.

Yeah, given reports that I've read in the past that North Korea basically cracked apart their nuclear test site with past tests, I suspected the North Korean offer to suspend nuclear tests is making basic reality seem like a concession. But our intelligence people say it is a real--if easily reversible--concession. The missile test suspension is another question and depends on whether they need to test missiles more in the next several months or whether this is a natural lull.

The Iranians say that American credibility will be damaged in regard to a North Korea deal if America abandons the Iran deal and shows the deal won't last a change of administrations. To that I say that the Obama State Department admitted the deal isn't legally binding. I say if people want American commitment that extends past the administration that negotiates a deal that the deal should be submitted to the Senate as a treaty to gain the approval of America rather than a single American president who will pass from the scene. As for American credibility, right now the Iran deal teaches North Korea that America will negotiate a bad deal that allows Iran to go nuclear and continue to sow chaos in their region. That's what we want North Korea to learn from Iran? Isn't it better for North Korea to learn that they can't take advantage of America and count on us to look the other way and pretend a bad deal is great?

In 15 months, President Trump has done nothing to harm democracy and rule of law. The same can't be said of the Resistance.

When victimhood is celebrated and sought after, anybody can claim to be a victim. Will women start a "why do they hate us?" inquiry the way the left did after 9/11 for jihadi killers to explain why the West deserved that hate and violence? What a shock that men who appear to really hate women can't attract women. Although I dare say that murderous Canadian loser will attract a lot of female fans once he is in prison. The world is big and weird, people.

Are people fleeing high-tax jurisdictions refugees looking for better policies or just locusts moving on to destroy a fresh field of crops?

Just as Russia and China hire people to push the state propaganda in online comments, merchants pay people to write glowing online reviews of their products. I don't trust the positive reviews like I did when the review system first came out. Tip to Instapundit.

Is there actually anything unique about dish soap, body wash, liquid soap, and shampoo that make them required for their specific purposes rather than being a general purpose liquid cleaner separated only by branding and scent? How would liquid detergents fit in that other than being more concentrated? Just wondering.

It isn't people forgetting the Holocaust that is alarming, but that some people may think the Jews deserved it.

Look, you idiot, they aren't suicide drones--they're loitering missiles. Don't confuse them with actual suicide bombers when no human operator has to be sacrificed to guide the weapon in and detonate it.

Marine F-35s experienced maintenance and supply chain problems in the initial deployment in the Pacific--and the report is classified limiting sharing with the other services. I'm not sure what to make of that. That doesn't sound good. But every new weapon has problems when introduced. I'm old enough to remember reports that the Stinger anti-aircraft missiles was too complicated for American soldiers; and that the Abrams tank would have trouble operating in the Middle East because of the dust. I've read good things about how the plane works--but it has to be in the air to work.

The Army is getting the M109A7, which will be its primary self-propelled artillery to mid-century.

Hillary Clinton doesn't even like the people who support her. I'm still amazed she managed to lose the 2016 election. This will be material for a generation of political science PhD students.

The Turks really don't have broad agreement with Russia or Iran over Syria: "The Turkish foreign minister accused the Assad government of having killed over a million Syrians since 2011 and that it had no legitimate claim on being the government of Syria." It's an odd and unstable alliance between Russia, Iran, and Turkey that serves to protect Assad at the moment.

US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley is proving popular across the spectrum. With the experience of being a former governor, I firmly believe that Haley's stint at the United Nations is rounding out her experience portfolio to prepare her to run for president. I have long believed--notwithstanding early reelection moves--Trump would, if he gets the economy moving and has some foreign success to point to, will want to exit on a high note after one term claiming he "fixed" Washington, D.C. What better antidote to the harm the Republican brand  has experienced outside of core Trump supporters (unfairly, considering what Bill Clinton did to women with no repercussions on the Democratic party) would a Haley presidency provide? I've long considered her worthy of support for presidential ambitions. I suspect we'll see her sooner than we think enter that stage.

So basically the Russians are admitting that our old cruise missiles are better than their missiles.

There appears to be a "color revolution" going on in Armenia. There is darned little awareness in the media, if so. Russia has troops based there. This is the first I've heard of it. Will the Russian help the government put down the protests and allow their government to slide to authoritarian form? Will Russia try to leverage the unrest to pull Armenia back into the empire? Or will the protests just dissipate after a couple weeks? But this doesn't sound like dissipation.

The TOW missile lives on. It is interesting that the wire-guided feature isn't really a problem in combat and with advances in electronic counter-measures, being guided by physical wires is an advantage.

I don't believe Putin considered joining NATO in 2000. And if he did think about it, there is no way NATO states would have pledged common defense along Russia's Amur River facing China. Perhaps that 2000 period was part of Russia getting leverage for a better deal with China that resulted in a 2001 treaty that made territorial disputes (China's claims on Russian territory) dormant for 20 years.

If the Iran nuclear deal has provisions for the inspection of Iranian facilities that are actually "robust," why aren't there any of these "robust" inspections to point to in defense of the deal? I read the public portion of the deal and it doesn't seem robust to me.

Iran's economy is having problems just from not having Hillary Clinton defending the Obama "legacy" by helping Iran "reset" via the 2015 nuclear deal. Well, that and Iranian insistence on firm state control of the economy.

I don't understand why people get so upset about "spoilers" before seeing a movie. Doesn't that outlook imply that these people never view a movie more than once?

It's nice to see Daniel Ortega and his ilk experience a setback in Nicaragua. May it stick.

Google's new capabilities to erase old emails and otherwise limit the ability to retain the information in emails received have raised issues of data retention if government offices use gmail-based email or simply use something similar. The article mentions two methods of getting around it that occurred to me--screen prints and just taking a picture of the message. There will be other ways figured out to get around it, however. I recall years ago my former IT department made emails expire 3 months after they were read. I liked saving my emails as a resource. When I mentioned to one IT staff that I just forwarded my read emails to myself and then just didn't open them (to avoid triggering the deletion countdown) here eyes went wide. But for good or ill, Google's initiative will reduce information retention by making it harder.

Israel kept some of its warplanes out of a big exercise in case they are needed at home.

This is interesting.

It proposes abandoning the idea that we could fight more than one war in the main domains of ground, sea, and air at one time to build forces capable of winning the most challenging war in each domain. There are problems with that but problems in trying to pursue the multi-war per domain force structure if it harms the ability to create capabilities to defeat the toughest job in each. And I appreciate the statement of what I've long argued about a Taiwan scenario: to win a war over Taiwan, China doesn't have to defeat America. China has to delay America long enough to defeat Taiwan.

I'll give you my masculinity when you can pry it from my cold, dead hands. Erm, perhaps a better expression should be used, I suppose. If a Texas university does that, how much worse must it be in California? Of course, and man who submits to that treatment is never in any danger of being a man.

It is sad that Ronny Jackson was ridden out of town on a fake rail, but I'm  kind of disappointed that a rear admiral couldn't take that kind of fire and emerge victorious.