Random Thoughts

International Law

* International law should recognize a duty to give up and acknowledge that you have been defeated in a claim to territory at some point.

* The twelve mile exclusive zone in the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea was probably based upon the range of naval guns on warships, allowing countries to exclude warships from the range at which they could strike their shores. But in an era where missiles have much longer ranges, no country can keep itself safe from missile attacks with distance alone. Does the existence of the ability to strike at long ranges call for reduced military sovereignty?

* International law should recognize some basis making it easier for third-party nations to depose international bad actors like the current leaders of Russia and North Korea.

Iran

* Islam isn't doing so well in Iran at the grass roots. "Barely 1/3 identify as Shia Muslims. There are now more Zoroastrian and Atheists than Sunnis. Conversions to Christianity are skyrocketing. Mosque attendance is in the gutter. Muslim baby names have dropped massively. Of course the IRI is panicking." Only 40.4% of Iranians self-identify as Muslim and more than 20% of them identify as non-Shiite, which is pretty pathetic for a Shiite Islamic theocracy. About 46.6% are some manner of "none". Apparently, about 5.4% are adherents of non-Muslim religions.

Via Twitter.

* Politically, Iran has gone from being an absolute theocracy to a flawed democracy in which voters make genuine choices about the country's secular leaders, albeit subject to significant interference by theocratic institutions. It is not a one party state, or a dictatorship/quasi-monarchy on the secular side with no prospect of replacing political leaders who have real political power. Taken together with creeping, covert secularization, and significant religious diversity, and an economy which isn't dominated entirely by oil wealth, the prospects of flipping Iran into a more democratic, less theocratic, less internationally aggressive country are real.

* This said, Iran is responsible for a lot of global mischief. It is behind the military capabilities of the Houthis in Southern Yemen, Hamas in Israel, and Hezbollah in Lebanon. It is a leading military exporter to Russia. It has close military ties to North Korea. 

* Iran's homegrown defense industry capabilities are, like those of Israel and South Africa, and to a less extent, Turkey, a product of international sanctions that made buying arms from third-parties harder than making its own.

Rescuing People And Mobile EMS

* The Army plans buy of about a thousand Armored Multipurpose Vehicles for medical evacuation and field hospital use. Surface combatant warships are vulnerable multiple threats and have limited ability to protect themselves from them. War games show that in a Chinese attempted amphibious invasion of Taiwan that virtually every Chinese, American, Japanese, and South Korean ship involved in the fight would be sunk in fairly short order and that many warplanes involved in the fight would also go down. This would leave the Taiwan strait full of sailors and airmen, many of whom do not have fatal injuries but wouldn't have the ability to swim to shore before drowning and would be in an area of active or imminent armed conflict. The U.S. has few capabilities dedicated to this purpose (it has one or two submarine deep sea rescue units and puts life boats on ships) and does not even seem to have given much thought to it. Some ideas that come to mind are a quasi-artillery or quasi-missile that delivers to life boats/life vests to some point in the sea, a life boat that can be transmitted by drone to specific coordinates, a submersible or semi-submersible search and rescue (SAR) ship/boat, an unarmed SAR helicopter (possibly also able to drop life vests and/or life boats), or small manned rescue boats.

* The U.S. Navy is overdue for new hospital ships. But, perhaps they should be assigned to the Coast Guard instead in peacetime.

* Motorcycle based paramedics/car accident responders still make great sense. So does drone based emergency equipment delivery (e.g. jaws of life, medicines, medical equipment).

Politics

* Objectively, the Republican Party is the stupid party. People who are aware of basic indisputable facts, like knowing what legal issues Trump is facing, knowing some medical basic facts about pregnancy, knowing that the 2020 election was legitimate, knowing the state of the economy and crime rates, knowing that immigration doesn't increase crime, etc. almost invariably is associated with non-MAGA political views. Horrible MAGA political views are tied to a significant extent to a view of what the facts about society are that is at odds with reality.

* The MAGA movement is the terrifying intersection of demagogues and natural stupidity, a problem that the Founders were well aware of and feared all of the way back to the Federalist papers, but didn't have a solution for other than virtuous voters. On one hand, this would offer hope that getting masses of people to know basic facts would save us. On the other hand, we know that lots of people and especially MAGA types with less education and high levels of distrust of reliable sources of information, are fact resistant and that just presenting information to people doesn't change their views on issues with partisan or ideological or theological relevance. People can change views to stay in line for their own leaders, at least temporarily (see, temporary GOP support for Russia and Putin), but the process is a social one not a logical-rational one.

* Republicans are also much more open to political and private violence, outright defiance of the constitution and political structures, cheating in both political and private matters, crime, and corruption. They have a herder mentality in a post-herder society.

* The U.S. is at a very vulnerable point and could get much worse. The abortion bans in half the states following the Dobbs decision is one example (although state initiatives and state courts applying state constitutions are rolling this back in some states) and efforts to punish people for crossing state lines to access abortion and gender care services is worse yet. Outright secessionism and nullification talk is another, exemplified by legislation in Utah to allow nullification and blatant disregard of the law in Texas with the border situation. Xenophobia and isolationism are back. We're seeing rolling back of child labor laws. Transgender people are actively being officially scapegoated and attacked in Red State America. The pro-racism movement is alive and well in the anti-woke, anti-diversity, equality, and inclusion movement, and more. Red state hostility to higher education generally is ramping up as illustrated by the hard right takeover of New College of Florida which is basically dead now. The red state opposition to zero state budget cost Medicaid assistance is a crazy, self-inflicted way to make people sicker with no legitimate policy justifications and is driven by nothing more than anti-Democrat spite. The stubborn refusal to regulate guns and to make gun violence worse with laws like Stand Your Ground laws is appalling. Yet, frighteningly, this extremism doesn't seem to be doing much to shift political polls. The intense hate of Biden and the support of absolutely repugnant Trump mystifies me, even though Biden was not anywhere near the top of my list for Presidential nominees and seems to be running a very weak Presidential campaign.