Political cartoon of the day: Towing the Party Line

 

Towing the Party Line

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/cartoons-slideshow

 

Throwback Thursday: Chocolate mousse

Light, airy, fluffy – these words are always associated with chocolate mousse. You do get denser versions, depending on whether you choose egg whites or cream to fold into the basic mousse. Either way, it’s all about the chocolate.eyondWords

Here’s a recipe you might want to make for Valentine’s Day. It uses cream, because I was seeking richness, and plenty of it. Lighter versions favour beaten egg whites, which will give you the airy, fluffy finish that is so sought-after in a chocolate mousse. But there’s a certain lightness to a creamy version too, as long as you remove it from the refrigerator for an hour or so before tucking in while gazing deeply into each other’s eyes, somewhat annoyingly for everyone else.

There is no exact picture of who invented chocolate mousse or exactly where and when, though the French artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec is often credited with having invented the recipe which came to be named Mousse au Chocolat. That recipe consisted of cocoa, beaten egg white and butter; today that would be seen as a cheat version, but is easy enough to achieve. Toulouse-Lautrec was a noted cook when he wasn’t hanging around brothels or deep into the bottle, or both, and he called his recipe mayonnaise de chocolat. The only thing mayonnaise and chocolate mousse really have in common is that they contain eggs, but the lack of oil in the latter mocks his choice of a title.

Wikipedia claims that it was the invention of the Swiss chef Charles Fazi who cooked for Louis XVI, the last king of France, who lived from August 1754 until his execution by guillotine in 1793. The French culinary author Joseph Menon, who lived in the latter half of the 18th century, is credited with having first described a version of the dish as a chocolate mousse in 1755. Given that Louis XVI was only born in August of the previous year, we must presume that it was not invented for the doomed prince. The Sydney Morning Herald described “Louis XV’s favourite chocolate drink as a mixture of melted chocolate, boiling water and beaten egg (white or yolk)”. But, didn’t they mean Louis XVI and, if they did, was he even one year old yet? Perhaps they were influenced by Alain Ducasse’s famous recipe for a Louis XV, a layered mousse cake served at his Monte Carlo restaurant.

A recipe for chocolate mousse appeared in print in 1820 in Cuisinier Royal by André Viard, which Wikipedia tells us helped to create the fame that has remained to this day.

Key, at the core, to a chocolate mousse are egg yolks and chocolate. It can exist without either egg whites or cream, though there are experts who would insist that without whipped egg whites, it’s just not light enough and consequently not a mousse. Some recipes include butter, many don’t. Some are enhanced with a liqueur or Cognac, while other aficionados regard any alcohol in a chocolate mousse as an imposter that spoils the essential chocolatiness of it. (I use a dash of brandy in my recipe and there’s no loss of chocolateness whatsoever.)

The word mousse means foam, so those who argue that it absolutely must contain egg whites do have a fair point. In Champagne, the “mousse” refers to the fine bubble and its quality; the finer, the tinier, the better the product. But mousse au chocolat is far from being the first edible mousse. Or foam, in French cuisine. Many mousses, some made of fruit and a host of them savoury, preceded its invention.

My recipe uses whipped cream, not egg whites, but if you like you can swop out the cup of cream for two egg whites, whipped until soft peak stage, and fold those in instead, at the same point. I do however like the texture that the combination of egg yolks and cream give. It’s super-rich, and isn’t that the other thing, apart from its light and airy quality, that a chocolate mousse deserves?

Ingredients

1 cup of cream, chilled

2 large egg yolks

1 ½ Tbsp sugar

1 tsp brandy

100 g 70% dark chocolate

100 g Lindt Intense (orange and almond) chocolate

Method

First make a chocolate custard. Heat ½ cup cream in a heavy saucepan but do not boil. Whisk the egg yolks, sugar and a pinch of salt in a bowl, and add the heated cream very slowly, while whisking briskly. Transfer this to a saucepan and simmer on a lowish heat, stirring constantly, until it thickens. It shouldn’t take long at all, 3 to 5 minutes. Pour the mixture through a fine sieve into a bowl and stir in the brandy.

Melt chocolate in a metal bowl over a pot of barely simmering water while stirring. Whisk the first mixture into the melted chocolate until well incorporated, then allow it to cool.

Whisk the remaining cream in a bowl until it forms stiff peaks. Whisk a quarter of this into the chocolate mixture, then fold in the rest. (Or do the same with egg whites.)

Spoon into glasses and chill, covered with cling film, for several hours. Remove from the fridge an hour before serving, to lighten the mousse a little. This quantity made two glasses, so multiply to suit your needs. DM/TGIFood

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2022-02-10-throwback-thursday-chocolate-mousse/

 

No, Russia will not invade Ukraine

A large-scale military operation does not fit into Moscow’s cost-benefit calculus.

• 
  Dr. Harun Yilmaz 9 Feb 2022

A convoy of Russian armoured vehicles moves along a highway in Crimea on January 18, 2022 [AP]

Over the past year, as Russia amassed troops along its border with Ukraine, there have been growing fears of an imminent invasion. A number of Western leaders have repeatedly warned of this possibility.

Moscow has denied that it is making such plans, although it has not withdrawn its troops. Some observers have interpreted these Russian statements as untruthful and even accused the Russian authorities of preparing a false-flag operation.

end of list

A closer examination of Russia’s geopolitical behaviour in the past two decades, however, demonstrates that its officials might not necessarily be trying to deceive the international community. A full-scale war in Ukraine does not really fit into how the Kremlin has used hard power in its geopolitical games. The examples of Georgia, Syria, Libya, and (so far) Ukraine, show that it pursues a cost-efficient policy.

In each case, the Russian government has had a clear understanding of the risks on the ground. It has made a careful cost-benefit analysis and established clear and limited goals for the use of hard power. The cost-effective policy is a conscious choice because the Russian decision-makers know well that they do not have the means to maintain a large-scale war.

From Georgia to Syria and Libya

Russia, undoubtedly, made these cost calculations before the 2008 Georgia war, in which it intervened on the side of separatist forces in the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia against the Georgian government.

Back then, the Russian forces did not really face a formidable adversary and were able to easily defeat the Georgian forces in South Ossetia in days. The Russian troops then crossed into Georgia proper, ransacked the city of Gori and halted. Once the limited goal of pushing back Georgian forces from South Ossetia and Abkhazia was achieved, Moscow was open to European mediation.

The Russian troops could have completely cut Georgia in two, gained control of the precious transit oil and gas pipelines from Azerbaijan to Turkey, and paralysed the economy and political system. All these gains would have been valuable bargaining chips to force the Georgian government to recognise the independence of the separatist regions. Yet, the regional and global costs of these advancements would have been too high for Russia, so it stopped at a limited military operation.

A similar calculation was made before the intervention in Syria to prop up Bashar al-Assad’s regime in 2015. Moscow did not deploy a massive land force – as, for example, the US did in Afghanistan and Iraq – and instead limited its hard power to fighter jets, special forces, mercenaries, military advisers, and navy ships. In order to lower the risk further, the Russian diplomats engaged with various stakeholders, such as the US, Israel, and Turkey at different stages of the war. This engagement ensured that rebel forces were not supplied with anti-aircraft weapons, which guaranteed the air supremacy of Russian and Syrian forces.

Russia’s extensive bombardment of areas under rebel control provided effective air cover for Syrian regime forces and enabled them to shift from defence to offence. In a matter of months, Damascus, backed by Russian and Iranian forces, was able to regain control of large swaths of territory and, in the following three years, forced rebels out of several strongholds and limited their presence to the northwest of the country. Russia achieved its goal – preserving al-Assad’s regime – with minimal costs, both in terms of casualties and funding, and even made diplomatic gains against Western powers on the international scene.

When it was invited to intervene in the Libyan conflict, Moscow made an even smaller commitment and still achieved a lot. The Russian involvement was limited to the deployment of Russian mercenaries and the supply of weapons to renegade General Khalifa Haftar, who controls the eastern part of the country. Although his offensive on the capital Tripoli eventually failed, Russia did not find itself on the losing side. In fact, it managed to position itself as a mediator between the Libyan government and Haftar and gained a prominent place on the negotiating table, along with other stakeholders, both Western and regional.

Moscow’s calculations in Ukraine

When Russia intervened in Ukraine in 2014, following the pro-democracy Maidan revolution against Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, it took a similar cost-effective approach. It did not launch a massive invasion of its much weaker neighbour. Instead, it deployed forces without insignia, while denying doing so, to the Crimean Peninsula, where the strategic military assets it wanted to secure were located – namely the headquarters and facilities of its Black Sea Fleet.

It then undertook a relatively bloodless takeover of this Ukrainian territory by setting up a referendum and presenting the annexation of Crimea as fulfilling the “will of the people”. It did not go any further in trying to conquer Ukrainian territory. A full-scale war was not the method and the occupation of Kyiv was not the goal.

Instead, to punish and subdue the new government in Kyiv, it set up separatist forces in the eastern part of the country, funded and armed them and sent some troops for support. It relied heavily on mercenaries and Russian soldiers not wearing insignia in order to deny its involvement and present the events on the ground as a spontaneous uprising. Thus, Moscow earned leverage over Ukraine at a minimum cost.

Today, eight years after the start of the conflict, Russia is amassing a large number of troops along the border. Has it changed its approach? That is unlikely. Despite Western predictions of an imminent invasion, it is questionable that the intended target of the Russian military mobilisation is Ukraine.

Moscow has not lost its leverage over Kyiv in the Donbas region, as it is nearly impossible for the Ukrainian army to end the separatist movement there while it enjoys Russian support. If the Kremlin wants to pressure the Ukrainian government, it could simply do so by escalating the conflict in the east, which does not necessitate a large deployment of Russian troops.

In fact, just the large military presence along the border is already doing enough damage to Ukraine: severely undermining its economy. Furthermore, the Russian authorities do not see a threat emanating from a “democratic Ukraine”, as the Maidan by now has lost its appeal within Russian pro-democracy circles.

Therefore, the amassing of troops along the Russia-Ukraine border is not targeting Kyiv, but the West. Moscow wants to force Western countries to finally sit down for negotiations on issues of European security. And this strategy seems to be working. Since 1991, this is the first time the West has engaged seriously with Russia to discuss European security.

Russian officials undoubtedly understand that Ukraine will not enter NATO, as there is no enthusiasm for it within the military organisation right now. What the Kremlin worries about is whether the US will deploy missiles or missile defence elements on Ukrainian soil.

Moscow wants arrangements to be made on several issues, including halting the deployment of intermediate-range ballistic missiles in Europe and limiting military exercises in close proximity to Russian borders. On December 17, it put out a proposal outlining its demands to both NATO and the United States.

So what happens next?

Until the Kremlin feels that it has received the necessary security guarantees, it will likely continue to keep military pressure on the Ukraine border. It might deploy intermediate-range ballistic missiles in Belarus or even escalate in other hotspots in its immediate neighbourhood, such as Georgia. It may organise war games closer to Western Europe, as it did with recent naval exercises near Ireland. It could even show off military capabilities closer to US borders, by deploying hypersonic missiles on its submarines or setting up long-range missiles in Venezuela, for example.

All these measures, however, will fall within Russia’s cost-effective calculations. That means that a large-scale invasion or war is highly unlikely.

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/2/9/no-russia-will-not-invade-ukraine

 

The Dark Origins Of Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day is a time to celebrate romance and love and kissy-face fealty. But the origins of this festival of candy and cupids are actually dark, bloody — and a bit muddled.

A drawing depicts the death of St. Valentine — one of them, anyway. The Romans executed two men by that name on Feb. 14 of different years in the 3rd century A.D.

Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Though no one has pinpointed the exact origin of the holiday, one good place to start is ancient Rome, where men hit on women by, well, hitting them.

Those Wild And Crazy Romans

The Roman romantics "were drunk. They were naked," says Noel Lenski, a historian at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Young women would actually line up for the men to hit them, Lenski says. They believed this would make them fertile.From Feb. 13 to 15, the Romans celebrated the feast of Lupercalia. The men sacrificed a goat and a dog, then whipped women with the hides of the animals they had just slain.

The brutal fete included a matchmaking lottery, in which young men drew the names of women from a jar. The couple would then be, um, coupled up for the duration of the festival — or longer, if the match was right.

The ancient Romans may also be responsible for the name of our modern day of love. Emperor Claudius II executed two men — both named Valentine — on Feb. 14 of different years in the 3rd century A.D. Their martyrdom was honored by the Catholic Church with the celebration of St. Valentine's Day.

Around the same time, the Normans celebrated Galatin's Day. Galatin meant "lover of women." That was likely confused with St. Valentine's Day at some point, in part because they sound alike.Later, Pope Gelasius I muddled things in the 5th century by combining St. Valentine's Day with Lupercalia to expel the pagan rituals. But the festival was more of a theatrical interpretation of what it had once been. Lenski adds, "It was a little more of a drunken revel, but the Christians put clothes back on it. That didn't stop it from being a day of fertility and love."

William Shakespeare helped romanticize Valentine's Day in his work, and it gained popularity throughout Britain and the rest of Europe.

Perry-Castañeda Library, University of Texas

Shakespeare In Love

As the years went on, the holiday grew sweeter. Chaucer and Shakespeare romanticized it in their work, and it gained popularity throughout Britain and the rest of Europe. Handmade paper cards became the tokens-du-jour in the Middle Ages.

Today, the holiday is big business: According to market research firm IBIS World, Valentine's Day sales reached $17.6 billion last year; this year's sales are expected to total $18.6 billion.Eventually, the tradition made its way to the New World. The industrial revolution ushered in factory-made cards in the 19th century. And in 1913, Hallmark Cards of Kansas City, Mo., began mass producing valentines. February has not been the same since.

But that commercialization has spoiled the day for many. Helen Fisher, a sociologist at Rutgers University, says we have only ourselves to blame.

"This isn't a command performance," she says. "If people didn't want to buy Hallmark cards, they would not be bought, and Hallmark would go out of business."

And so the celebration of Valentine's Day goes on, in varied ways. Many will break the bank buying jewelry and flowers for their beloveds. Others will celebrate in a SAD (that's Single Awareness Day) way, dining alone and binging on self-gifted chocolates. A few may even be spending this day the same way the early Romans did. But let's not go there.

https://www.npr.org/2011/02/14/133693152/the-dark-origins-of-valentines-day

National Institute of Health Science Experiment: Injecting Puppies With Cocaine

Congress Investigating Claims of NIH Funding Cruel Experiments Injecting Puppies with Cocaine

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Getty Images/ undefined undefined

HANNAH BLEAU

7 Feb 2022790

4:47

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is facing a congressional probe after reports emerged alleging the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) spent millions of taxpayer dollars on a cruel experiment, injecting beagle puppies with cocaine.

The non-profit watchdog organization White Coat Waste Project (WCW) reported on another cruel experiment allegedly funded by taxpayers. According to WCW’s findings, via a Freedom of Information Act [FOIA] request, “seven 6-month-old beagle puppies were trained to wear a jacket” which “served a cruel purpose: to inject the animal wearing it with drugs.” Puppies were then dosed with cocaine repeatedly “for months” with what WCW described as an “‘experimental compound,’ to see how the two drugs interacted”:

The experiment, which ran from September 2020 to September 2021 (with a report due May 2022), was filmed, so experimenters could see if the puppies had any “adverse reactions” to the drugs. Prior to being drugged, the dogs were also forced to undergo surgery, where they were implanted with a “telemetry unit” to monitor their vital signs throughout the experiment.

That was not the only experiment, either:

A second experiment, which ran from March 2020 until March 2021, also used special jackets to inject beagles with cocaine. Six puppies were used in these experiments.

Why do the same experiment twice? Why even do it once? We don’t know — but what we do know is that you’re footing the bill. These two experiments cost taxpayers over $2.3 million dollars.

According to WCW, researchers either killed the “coke hounds” after the experiment or shipped them away to be used for other experiments:

A bipartisan group of lawmakers is now leading the investigation into these allegations, sending a letter to Nora D. Volkow, director of NIDA, informing her of their concerns.

“The documents state that the supposed purpose of these cocaine experiments on puppies was to generate a report that ‘may be submitted by NIDA to the FDA [U.S. Food and Drug Administration].’ However, the FDA itself has recently indicated that it ‘does not mandate that human drugs be studied in dogs,'” they wrote, citing the reporting from WCW as well as the revelations made by the FOIA requests.

“Nevertheless, despite the FDA’s assertion, these NIDA documents state that, ‘this study is required by a relevant government regulatory agency,'” the lawmakers, led by Reps. Nancy Mace (R-SC) and Brendan Boyle (D-PA), continued.

“We are concerned that NIDA is spending tax dollars on dog testing that is cruel, costly, outdated and that the FDA has claimed is unnecessary,” they wrote, requesting her answers to the following questions by February 16, 2022:

• How much taxpayer money has been spent on dog testing under contract number HHSN271201800019I to date?
• Has all dog testing being conducted under contract HHSN271201800019I been completed? If so, on what date? If not, what dog tests are still ongoing or scheduled?
• Since the FDA has stated that it does not require dog testing for new drugs, why did NIDA commission testing on puppies specifically?
• What, if anything, did NIDA do to work with the FDA to explore non-animal alternatives to meet data requirements? Please describe in detail.

This is far from the first time the NIH has come under scrutiny for cruel puppy experiments. In October, reports surfaced accusing Dr. Anthony Fauci’s division of the NIH, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), of partially funding an experiment allowing hungry, diseased sandflies to eat beagle puppies alive. However, the Washington Post later stated that researchers “mistakenly listed NIAID as a funder when they published a paper in a scientific journal in late July,” prompting the journal to issue a correction October 26. WCW spokesman Justin Goodman, however, referred to the explanation as all “too convenient.”

WCW also obtained FOIA documents which found the NIAID funding an experiment “which involved injecting puppies with a mutant bacteria and allowing hundreds of ticks to feast upon them,” as Breitbart News detailed.

World News: Low-flying threats challenge NATO’s deterrence in the East

 

Low-flying threats challenge NATO’s deterrence in the East

By Maximilian K. Bremer & Kelly A. Grieco, Defense News, Feb 7, 2022

https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2022/02/07/low-flying-threats-challenge-natos-deterrence-in-the-east/

With new cell phone jammers, these Orlan-10 drones can interference with communications over a 135 miles away from where they're launched. (Vadim Savitsky, Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation )

According to U.S. Air Force Gen. Jeffrey Harrigian, the commander of U.S. Air Forces in Europe and Air Forces Africa, the service has found “opportunities to go train, largely with our partners across Europe,” on close air support. He confidently asserted that he was “very comfortable that we…[can] operate with their joint terminal air controllers, their entities on the ground, from the Baltics down into the Med and even into Romania,” pointing out the “continued interaction with them that has allowed us to keep our close air support capabilities at the right level and continue to improve our readiness.”

But such confidence is misplaced.

In the event of a conflict with Russia, U.S. and NATO air forces will confront a contested air littoral — that is, the airspace between ground forces and high-end fighters and bombers. Russia’s integration of small tactical drones, low-flying missiles, electronic warfare systems, and loitering munitions will vie for control of the air from below the altitudes of conventional air superiority.

With a contested boundary standing between the air and ground, NATO ground forces cannot count on fighting under a protective aerial umbrella or effective close air support.

Russian Chief of the General Staff Gen. Valery Gerasimov noted in 2018 that modern combat is “… unthinkable without drones – they are used by gunners, scouts, pilots – everyone.” Large numbers of Russian combat drones and radar-guided anti-aircraft artillery, as well as short-range surface-to-air missile (SAM) and man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS) like the SA-24 Igla-S and SA-25 Verba series will make the air littoral both more dangerous and more deadly. In eastern Ukraine, since 2014, Russia and its proxies have used multiple small drones, flying at different altitudes, to acquire targets and spot artillery strikes. Russian artillery fires were deadly accurate as a result. In the future, Russia plans to use swarms of loitering munitions — also known as “kamikaze drones”—to create a kind of “aerial minefield.”

With Russia disputing control of the air littoral, NATO will struggle to deliver effective close air support. High-end aircraft are simply too expensive and few in number to put at risk in a contested air littoral. With these aircraft pushed further back from the ground fight, they will be less effective in a close-air-support role. Although the F-35 can deliver ground fires from safer altitudes, the standoff distance required by advanced SAMs will lengthen the window for Russian ground units to shoot and scoot; by the time the munition arrives there may be no target.

A critical challenge for NATO is that this close-air-support mission shortfall cannot be offset by land-based fire systems, given NATO’s deficit in heavy artillery. Whereas Russia relies on artillery for 65 percent of its firepower, NATO depends on airpower for approximately 80 percent of its total fires. The end of the Cold War, and three decades of counterinsurgency and counterterrorism operations, which favored precision airstrikes often from high altitudes, have left U.S. and European armies with critical shortages in heavy artillery.

At the start of military conflict with Russia, NATO ground troops would be seriously outgunned and at risk of defeat in detail.

Although NATO militaries awakened to this danger after the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, they remain unprepared to fend off swarms of drones and short-range missiles. Such systems, operating at a range of frequencies and close to the ground, will be resistant to jamming and offer an unfavorable economic exchange rate.

Adding to the challenge, these small and low-flying platforms are also harder to detect and engage than traditional air combatants.

 The Pentagon has invested billions of dollars in counter-drone systems in recent years, but it still fails to detect 60% of drones in tests, according to reports.

Effective air defense is inherently difficult.

Most dangerous of all, it might give the Russians the idea that they could win a quick victory at a relatively low cost, leading to deterrence failure.

What practical steps can NATO take to meet this new threat? The alliance must first close the capabilities gap. NATO militaries could upgrade or acquire more heavy artillery and ground-based air defense systems, but correcting this shortfall would take considerable time and investments. The better option is to effectively contest the air littoral from above and below. Allied forces should acquire and integrate large numbers of small, cheap aerial drones with other high-end air assets and ground-based fires into NATO’s scheme of maneuver to gain localized air superiority and added firepower delivery, as well as blunt Russian advantages.

It might just be enough to help turn the Russian advance into a tough and costly slog, buying time for NATO reinforcements to arrive in theater.

But technological solutions alone will be insufficient. NATO must also close the conceptual gap. NATO’s Joint Air Power Strategy, published in 2018, fails to address emerging threats to lower-altitude airspace. Addressing these threats requires a reconceptualization of air control, which NATO currently defines as “the required degree of freedom in the air domain necessary for the exploitation of the air.” As control of the air littoral rapidly decouples from that above, NATO’s doctrinal concepts must adapt accordingly, with air control understood in three dimensions, as a function of time, distance, and altitude.

Above all, NATO must prepare to control the air littoral, even if it may not be the easiest—or most appealing — mission to U.S. and NATO air forces. The glory days of fighter planes and swirling dog fights may or may not have passed, but they are no longer the only or most important fights in the sky.

Maximilian K. Bremer is a United States Air Force colonel and the Director of the Special Programs Division at Air Mobility Command. The opinions expressed here are his own and do not reflect the views of the Department of Defense and/or the United States Air Force.

Kelly A. Grieco (@ka_grieco) is a resident Senior Fellow with the New American Engagement Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and formerly taught at the Air Command and Staff College.

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