Upcoming Partial Solar Eclipse

 My plans for Saturday are to get "Road Tripping" out in the world, but Partial Solar Eclipse Community Block Party tempts me.

It is raining and chilly this morning. (Is there anything more likely to disappoint than a rainy Fall day?)

Priorities, priorities, and the Protestant work ethic: Muncie woman steals car from dealership to drive to exotic dancer interview in Indianapolis, court docs reveal. I am thinking John Calvin must be scratching his head.

I find it hard to find any analogies for the terrible, for the melancholy, for the disgusting after Hamas's attack on Israel. Well, there is one thing that may exceed that: those who want to play moral equivalence games. When Israeli soldiers rampage through Gaza killing and beheading babies, then you can play those games.

The American right-wingers and the hard left seem to be vying for this year's award for Moral Blindness:  Blood on Biden’s Hands? The sick, twisted attempt to blame the killings in Israel on the U.S. president.. Although, this puts Tim Scott and his ilk ahead by a nose: NYC DSA apologizes for promoting pro-Palestinian rally — but doesn’t condemn Hamas.

Read and think on this, we do need to have longer attention spans and less tunnel vision: Hannibal’s legacy: always find the flank,

Not all flanks need to be physically engaged. In Joseph Chamberlain’s words, Britain in 1902 was “the weary Titan staggering under the too vast orb of its fate”. Joe Biden probably knows the feeling. The millstone of a trillion-dollar public debt to be serviced in a hostile bond market would circumscribe the strategic ambitions of even the most energetic of US presidents, let alone old Joe. Xi Jinping has his own problems, but he can, with little effort, demonstrate against Taiwan – short of war but with the clearly implied threat of one — in a way that might stretch even the strategic inventory of the United States. America could become committed simultaneously in the eastern Mediterranean and the western Pacific. If Ukraine then becomes the victim of a three-way fight for resources, so much the better for Xi. Without a single shot necessarily being fired, an elegant and global strategic effect might be achieved by simply an implied threat to an exposed flank.

So, Hannibal’s legacy lives on and it’s not difficult to find any number of contemporary examples of single envelopment. There is even a case to be made that the historic party trick of double envelopment is occurring right in front of our eyes. The examples cited above have focussed on the variable geometry of inter-state relationships, but there is clear evidence that a separate envelopment is taking place within societies as well as between states. When fireworks are set off on London’s Edgware Road to celebrate an act of mass murder in Israel, then it is clear that another flank is being opened and engaged, this time within the social fabric of the United Kingdom. And we’re not alone. With the highly politicised banlieues surrounding its major cities, plus both the largest Jewish and Muslim populations in Europe, France is probably even more polarised, while other European countries will face their own dilemmas.

Without seeking to offer any comfort to the Iranian theocracy, Tehran seems to have pulled the strings that have simultaneously engaged a physical flank in the close enemy, Israel, and a cultural flank in the deep enemy, western social cohesion. Moscow is trying the same stunt between the battlefields of Ukraine and the chancelleries of western Europe, while Beijing simply has to bide its time and choose its moment. It’s a long distance from screaming Gauls and gouging legionaries, but the principle of double envelopment, adapted for our times, is there in plain sight.

Biden was admirable yesterday when speaking to the Jewish conference. Doddering? Yeah, right. We need a Joe Biden action figure.

Meanwhile, The Donald does what he can to make friends and influence people: Trump Slams Israel Days After Hamas Attacks: 'I'll Never Forget Bibi Let Us Down'.  The Trump action figure is a whining toddler.

Enough of this post. Today, I need to get hold of the doctor and CPAP supplies. Not much action here. I hate the autumn damp.

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