The mutually incompatible universes of Ukraine war pundits

"The first casualty of war is truth."

– Hiram W. Johnson

Popular political pundits are pushing mutually incompatible narratives on the Ukraine war, making it difficult to understand what is really going on. Further complicating matters are active (dis)information operations being conducted by all sides in the conflict, which may feed into, pay for, or undermine pundit commentary.  

 

On one side of the pundit debate is Offensive Realism heavyweight John Mearsheimer and retired US Colonel MacGregor. On the other is… well, pretty much everyone else, including: ISW, former Finnish Prime Minister Alexander Stubb, Timothy Snyder, Peter Zeihan, Ben Hodges, David Petraeus, and Sir Richard Shirreff.

 

Let’s look at MacGregor’s universe first, because it’s the simplest: 

 

MACGREGOR’S UNIVERSE:

• Russia is victorious on all fronts, Ukraine is on the verge of defeat having suffered catastrophic casualties, and will collapse in a matter of days. MacGregor has been saying this since the first week of the war. If he is ever right, it won’t be with any more foresight than a broken clock.

 

MEARSHEIMER’S UNIVERSE

Mearsheimer is a well regarded academic who’s most famous for his book, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. I read this when it first came out and have a good deal of respect for Professor Mearsheimer. Every society has gadflies who go against popular wisdom and the collective narrative. Mearsheimer is one such (albeit quite affable) gadfly. 

In Mearsheimer’s universe:

 

• Spheres of influence are exerted by regional hegemonic powers, and Ukraine, the Baltic States, Finland, and even Poland fall within Russia’s, just as Canada, Mexico, and Cuba fall within the USA’s. If rival powers want to avoid conflict, they should avoid impinging upon a hegemon’s influence sphere. 

 

• The United States should normalize relations with Russia and form an alliance against China; Russia is not a peer competitor to the United States, while China is. 

 

• Alliances with both Ukraine and Israel are political albatrosses which do not advance the geopolitical interests of the USA.

 

• The USA floated accepting Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, which crossed a red line with Russia.

 

• The USA has led Ukraine down the primrose path, holding out membership in NATO and the EU. The USA knew this was unacceptable to Russia and would lead to military conflict and occupation, but did it anyway. 

 

• The CIA orchestrated a coup in Ukraine in 2014 (popularly known as the Maidan Revolution), overthrowing the legitimately elected (Russian puppet) leader Yanukovych, and driving him out of the country. CIA interference directly resulted in the Russian annexation of Crimea and separatists. 

 

• Russia is doing everything it can to avoid civilian casualties, and Western media are misrepresenting what is happening. This is an extraordinary claim, but he offers no support. 

 

• Western media are lying about Ukrainian and Russian military casualties. Russia has up to a 10:1 advantage in artillery, and in a war of attrition, artillery accounts for the vast proportion of battlefield casualties; therefore, Ukraine must be suffering significantly more. This is a good point. 

 

• The USA is using Ukraine to exhaust and bog down the Russian army in an ongoing conflict, but Ukraine is doomed and this will be a serious defeat for The West and damage the USA’s international credibility.

 

• Vladimir Putin is a savvy and well informed leader.

 

• Colonel MacGregor is right; Mearsheimer has also praised Tucker Carlson’s interview with Putin.

 

• Ukraine cannot win a war of attrition against Russia, which has almost four times the population. 

 

• There is a substantial Neo-Nazi presence in Ukraine.

 

• Russian minorities see themselves as Russian and therefore there is no risk of civil unrest or secessionist insurgencies.

 

• There is no risk of Russia attacking the Baltic States, Finland or Moldova and any such warnings are delusional.

 

• Ideally, Ukraine should come to an immediate settlement with Russia and cede territory in order to avoid further destruction.

 

• A settlement is unlikely as neither side is willing to back down.

 

• There is no evidence that Putin wishes to restore the Soviet Union or a Greater Russia, nor any evidence it seeks to occupy all of Ukraine.

 

• Putin was forced into the Ukraine war and did everything possible to avoid it.

 

On the other side is The Institute for Study of War. Let’s take a look at their reality:

 

ISW’S UNIVERSE:

In recent posts, ISW addressed Russian disinformation campaigns, which address several of Mearsheimer’s points. These operations are based on Soviet mathematician Vladimir Lefebvre theory of ‘Reflexive Control’, which uses information operations to frame geopolitical situations, leading enemies to pre-determined decisions in Russia’s favour: 

 

A key example: Putin takes the false assertion that discussions of Ukraine’s NATO accession posed a clear and imminent danger to Russia along with the false assertion that Ukraine is not a real country and builds them into a false conclusion that he was justified in launching a war of conquest.

 

Another assertion: Russia has the right to a self-defined sphere of influence, and, therefore, a right to do whatever it wants to those within this sphere – including invading, killing, raping, and ethnic cleansing – with no repercussions.

 

Further assertions: a) Ukraine cannot win this war; supporting Ukraine is a distraction from ‘real’ US problems; Ukraine will be forced to settle; the United States is at risk of being stuck in another “forever” war; and b) the risks in helping Ukraine defend itself, let alone win, are higher than the risks of failure in Ukraine for the United States - it is too costly, too risky, and that Ukraine is not worth it. 

 

The degree to which Western discourse includes serious consideration of these falsehoods marks the success of long-running Russian information operations.

 

In the ISW universe:

 

• Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is an unprovoked war of aggression. 

 

• Russia deliberately targets civilian homes and infrastructure, hoping to freeze Ukrainians en masse during winters. 

 

• Russia has engaged in widespread rape, torture, and atrocities against civilians. 

 

• Russia has kidnapped and deported Ukrainian children and deported them to Russia.

 

• Russia has conducted sham referendums in occupied territories at gun point and formally annexed Ukrainian oblasts. 

 

• The Maidan Revolution was a Ukrainian led movement to overthrow a Russian imposed puppet government. 

 

• The Ukrainian military with Western support has destroyed nearly 90% of the Russian army that invaded in February 2022 according to US intelligence sources.

 

• A victorious Russian army at the end of this war will be combat experienced and considerably larger than the pre-2022 Russian land forces. 

 

• NATO would be unable to defend against an attack by an experienced post-Ukraine war Russian army with the forces currently in Europe.

 

• “Freezing” the conflict is worse than continuing to help Ukraine fight—that would simply give Russia time and space to prepare for a renewed war to conquer Ukraine and confront NATO.

 

• The current war in Ukraine is not attritional, but ‘positional’: “Positional war is characterized by relatively static frontlines and regular combat that produces little movement, but the aim of such combat is generally either to create forward progress through steady if small advances or to create conditions to restore maneuver to the battlefield.” This was put forward by Former Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief General Valerii Zaluzhnyi in an article in The Economist.

 

• “Several Russian financial, economic, and military indicators suggest that Russia is preparing for a large-scale conventional conflict with NATO, not imminently but likely on a shorter timeline than what some Western analysts have initially posited.”

 

• "Polish President Andrzej Duda emphasized in a March 20 interview with CNBC that Putin is intensifying efforts to shift Russia to a war economy with the intention of being able to attack NATO as early as 2026 or 2027, citing unspecified German research."

 

• “Danish Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen stated on February 9 that new intelligence indicates that Russia may attempt to attack a NATO country within three to five years, an accelerated timeline from NATO’s reported assessment in 2023."

 

• The timeline for the reconstitution of a significant Russian conventional military threat depends heavily on the financial resources Putin is willing to put against military efforts. In the absence of other explanations for Putin’s apparent preparations to risk damaging his relationship with wealthy Russian clients and in the context of continuing announcements of plans to expand the Russian military considered below, Putin’s attempts to set conditions to stabilize Russia’s economy and finances are most likely part of Russian financial and domestic preparations for a potential future large-scale conflict with NATO and not just for a protracted war in Ukraine."

 

Mearsheimer, according to The Institute, is echoing Kremlin propaganda. Or is it The Institute framing things? Oh, pesky questions!

 

Let’s move on to Zeihan. Peter Zeihan’s made a name for himself, particularly within corporate circles, as The Prophet of Doom, predicting the imminent collapse of the existing globalized world order. His focus is on the intersection of geopolitics, natural resources and demographics.

 

PETER ZEIHAN’S UNIVERSE:

• China is currently undergoing catastrophic demographic collapse and will break apart within ten years.

 

• Russia, which is also experiencing demographic collapse, is trying to plug the gaps around the Great Eurasian Plains in order to secure its periphery with a smaller army.

 

• Russian minorities are out reproducing ethnic Russians, which will give rise to further secessionist movements.

 

• The war in Ukraine will escalate, Russia WILL attack the Baltic States, and a nuclear exchange is practically inevitable.

 

• Globalization was a bribe to bring the world on-side of the United States against the Soviet Empire during The Cold War. Manufacturing went overseas as nations were allowed to trade freely within the US led system. With The Cold War over, the US no longer needs it.

 

• Contrary to popular belief, the US economy is not globalized; much of what is exported abroad goes to Canada and Mexico and exists within the NAFTA system. 

 

• The USA is a net exporter of oil, and is not dependent on the Middle East, but China is. Europe, particularly Germany, was dependent on cheap Russian oil and gas.

 

• The US navy made sealines safe for international just-in-time manufacturing for decades, but it is now contracting around aircraft carrier battlegroups. The USA can no longer field the number of destroyers necessary to keep the oceans safe for commerce. The Houthi attacks in the Red Sea disrupting Suez Canal shipping are just the beginning. 

 

With the possible exception of MacGregor, these are all smart and savvy people. 

 

Who is right, who is wrong?

 

It is important to remember that Russia does not view war as binary: it views war on a spectrum, from disinformation operations to sow chaos and division at one end, and combined arms operations and nuclear weapons at the other. Shoigu and Gerasimov are key figures behind modern Russian low intensity warfare, of viewing Russia as in an ongoing state of war with all her enemies. It's just a question of intensity. 

 

As Sun Tzu once said, the best victory is won without having to fight the battle. Undermine and confuse your enemies instead. 

 

For example, the FSB funded the German green movement in order to turn the population against nuclear power and make German industry dependent on cheap Russian oil and gas; that has put German industry is in a very difficult position. The Germans are bringing horribly inefficient lignite plants back online to meet power demands. Lignite is a form of dirty coal, and far from environmentally friendly.

 

More recently, Medvedev, Putin's frothing-at-the-mouth attack dog, has been threatening to nuke the UK; he also claims that Russia owns the Baltic States and that Poland is merely currently 'occupied' by foreign powers. Naturally, Ukraine also belongs to Russia. His extremism makes Putin look statesmanlike.

 

Russian media have been blaming the UK for the recent terrorist attack outside Moscow. This helps set the information space, portraying NATO as an active belligerent and stoking public outrage, tying into ISW’s assertion that Russia wants to set conditions for an attack on NATO territories in the near future.

 

The Russian state funds faux opposition parties, the better to control them. It seeds the information space with competing narratives, paralyzing populations into confusion and indecision. If you can't tell what the truth is, if it takes a great deal of effort to understand what is really going on, fewer people are going to resist. After all, what are you resisting? Who knows?  

 

Putin is 71, the average Russian male lifespan. He doesn't drink, does judo, and runs around with his shirt off, Captain Kirk style. He can likely last several more years, maybe even a decade. But that's not a lot of time to secure a legacy. 

 

As a big history buff (which I get), he often cites Peter the Great. He also invites comparisons to ole Petey (which I don't get so much). Putin dreams BIG.

 

My bet? Putin wants to take a big swing for history books by retaking not just Ukraine, but the Baltic States.

 

When Russia initially invaded Ukraine, Putin's Belarussian lackey Lukashenko mentioned Russian plans for occupying Moldova. That hasn't come to pass, but it shows that Russian plans were never limited to Ukraine. 

 

Issues that derailed Russia's overly ambitious initial invasion are being addressed, and Russia is getting militarily stronger, not weaker. Their tech isn't as advanced as that in The West, but it doesn't need to be: quantity has a quality of its own.

Dune II review: epically awesome and awesomely epic

"Hey you guys, I found my knife!"

This is one of those rare films that simply must be seen in IMAX.

It's a breathtaking, epic spectacle. 

The art direction alone is worth the price of admission, IMHO.

Visually on par with Lawrence of Arabia and other classics, this is a hyper-serious take on the ttale of a messiah created by a bunch of space nuns, trapped in a neo-feudal nightmare galaxy of murder, intrigue, betrayal and fanaticism. 

If anyone was going to make gigantic mile long sand worms believable, it's Denis Villeneuve. 

Run away!

Dune II is faster paced and more of a roller coaster than the first installment (which proceeded at a rather stately pace) and it kept me hooked from beginning to end, despite being familiar with the books. 

It's a stunning triumph, a visual feast, and the most impressive film I think I've seen in a very long time. In terms of visual impact, it's up there with the original Star Wars, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Matrix, or The Lord of the Rings. It's a little less emotionally affecting than the modern classic LOTR, but still highly enjoyable, immersive, and easily the visual equal. 

Herbert was concerned with how people can be manipulated to believe collective myths (such as ideologies). Ideologies are enormously powerful, capable of uniting millions of separate individuals into a gestalt organism that can accomplish great, or terrible, things. Nation states, empires, religions, political ideologies are essentially collective organisms, and human history is littered with their deeds. 

Dune I and II effectively convey the wastefulness and paranoia of a feudal universe, where every royal is constantly on guard, wary of assassins, while the masses are little more than cannon fodder. Chaff for the gestalt grinders. 

Tinfoil is back in, boys!

The Bene Gesserit genetic experiment to create the ultimate human leader is a crucible through which the Atreides, Harkonen and Corrino must pass. These machinations drive the entire plot, and most of the foreground players are merely pawns of it, causing untold bloodshed and suffering while they play their parts. Why exactly are they trying to create this ultimate ruler? I don’t remember the book providing an answer, but it might be to escape the feudal trap. 

Paul is initially sympathetic, but as he grows in power he finds his actions constrained by the role he must play. The film also states flat out that horrible crimes lie in his future, and the death of billions. 

The script is smart and faithfully brings to screen Frank Herbert's sci-fi classic. There are a few on the nose lines, which might have been mandated (it's a complicated scenario Denis Villeneuve has to set up, executives might have insisted on more clarification); the only other quibble I have is that there were some changes to the story, additions and omissions, that I didn't really understand the reason for, and after awhile the sheer weight and scale of the film can feel a little crushing. Everything here is BIG; even door openings are epic. 

"I hate sand. It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets in everything!"

The acting is top notch. It's not a character film, it's an epic, and it doesn't delve as much into Paul's inner world (for example) as it might, but you'd need 9 hours to bring all the inner life from the books to film. As it is, you get all the information and character context you need to understand what's going on. 

The music is immersive, powerful and compelling; as usual from Hans Zimmer, it also made me wonder if I came out with hearing damage. 

Dave Bautista gets to yell a lot in Dune. And I mean A LOT.

Denis Villeneuve has crafted an epic sci-fi art film in a class of its own. He has an undeniable eye for scale, like Gareth Edwards, and he merges that with top tier material; the production design here–the ships, the costumes, the sets—are as close to perfect as fallible humanity is likely to get. I can't find anything to criticize. They're unique, unlike anything else in sci-fi. 

I can't recommend this film highly enough. Don't wait for it on streaming, see this in the theatre, in IMAX if possible. Take ear plugs as a precaution, it will be LOUD.

Read my face

I can't wait for Dune: Messiah. 

Oh yes: the movie is too long. But all movies these days feel too long to me. 

(Sort of) Russian literature review: Day of the Oprichnik & War with Russia: An Urgent Warning

Day of the Oprichnik 

by Vladimir Sorokin

This was sold to me as a kvass soaked satire of Putin's Russia. I can see some parallels, in the mixture of religion and fascism with an Imperial Czarist face. But it's really more of a parody of General Pyotr Nikolayevich Krasnov (ataman of the Don Cossack Host) 1927 utopian novel Behind the Thistle, in which he posits the return of the Czar.

Everything positive that Krasnov posits is revealed as dysfunctional by Sorokin. The infallible, imperious leader is a petty Machiavellian tyrant. The Oporichniks (based on Ivan the Terrible's secret police) are brutal thugs who rape and murder in the name of both Czar and God. They observe religious rituals and trifles while committing horrific crimes with a clean if twisted conscience. They engage in extensive drug use and sodomy that the church would imprison others for. The book is a litany of hypocrisy, of entitled elites exploiting and oppressing the people in the most amoral fashion while marinating in their own self-aggrandizing piety. 

Technology in this nightmare state is skewed and warped to serve the system, with some extreme high tech and the rest... not so much. Only what is of use to the regime, what keeps it in power, is leveraged. 

It's a good dystopian book, but it's an ugly read, despite the poetic leanings of Sorokin. The florid prose is like dressing on roadkill. 

War with Russia: An Urgent Warning from Senior Military Command 

by General Sir Richard Shirreff 

I picked this book up in the wake of all the articles and hand-wringing about a possible Russian attack on the Baltic States after Russia defeats Ukraine. The author, Sir Richard, is a former Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NATO and showed up on a news video I saw which touched on his book, and its prediction of a Russian invasion of Ukraine (followed by an attack on the Baltics). 

Given the current state of the world, that peaked my interest. The Baltics are NATO members, so Article Five would presumably be invoked should the Russians attack, setting off WWIII. 

Surely an insane scenario, yet one being seriously considered now by people in the know. I wanted to understand why.

War with Russia is filled with more military jargon and acronyms than you can shake a stick at. Yes, the author knows his stuff. No, I did not need to know the calibre and specifications of every weapon. 

This sort of thing is to be expected of a book in the Tom Clancy vein (military gear porn!), with loosely sketched characters, mostly out of central military casting. It does include a variety of political figures, and pointed behind-the-scenes machinations, some of which are no doubt culled from the author's personal experiences. Impractical defense spends, budget cuts, fickle leaders in pursuit of approval ratings, and military decisions driven by photo op opportunity all get a spill of ink. 

The plot unfolds briskly, the action scenes have verisimilitude, and the story is disturbingly believable.

And that's the real point: the narrative trappings are just the sugar coating on the policy paper pill. 

An attack on the Baltic states actually is possible. It is unlikely and would be a huge gamble, but then, Putin looks like more of a poker player, than a chess player, by the day.

Shirreff's posits a lightning strike by Russian combined arms into the Baltics, with paratroopers being dropped in from Narva and supported by armoured columns. The Russian plan is to  present the West with a fait accompli: occupy the Baltics, formally annex them, and declare any attack on Russian territory will result in a nuclear response.

The Baltics are small and their armed forces are tiny; they don't have the ability to stop a determined Russian attack. They can make the occupation unpleasant, but by then it will be too late. 

As the Ukrainians have discovered, it's extremely difficult to root out entrenched Russian troops. The US would not have total air superiority here, unlike in Desert Storm. Invading the Baltics would be enormously costly, and Western European governments might not want to spend lives on a (seemingly) lost cause against a foe that thinks nothing of its own combat casualties.

NATO also requires members unanimously agree to activate Article Five; with Hungary practically a Russian vassal, that's not likely. The larger NATO has gotten, the more unwieldy, slow and bureaucratic it has become. Worse, anything they discuss winds up on Putin's desk within a few hours. 

Putin also ascribes to something called 'Nuclear De-escalation'. The term is not what it seems: if NATO were to launch a major ground attack on the Baltics, or Kaliningrad, Putin would drop a nuke on Warsaw or Berlin. This would so shock Western governments that they would completely back off, and the conflict would turn to negotiated settlement on Russian terms. That's the idea, at any rate. 

Peachy.

Only an inveterate gambler would dare to pull a stunt like this. 

Is Putin that guy?

I'm not sure, and neither it seems are the pundits. Some assert this attack is inevitable, others insist it's delusional nonsense. 

Either way, the doomsday clock is closer to striking than ever before: we're now 90 seconds away, 'at a moment of historic danger'. 

Rather sobering.

World War Three inbound?

Aw, c'mon!!! I was just starting to relax...

The last few weeks have seen an unsettling tsunami of warnings about a coming land war with Russia, from think tanks, defence ministers, retired generals, pundits, and badly dressed people on street corners wielding bullhorns. 

Fear mongering? I certainly hope so! 

The last thing I thought we'd have to worry about post-Covid lockdown was World War III. It's so outlandish, so outrageous, it can't possibly be true. Like Russia's newest favourite pastime (threatening to nuke the UK), it's probably hot air. Or a bit of undigested mutton? 

And yet...

The United States and Europe have been unable to provide enough ammunition to Ukraine. Everyone has been surprised by the incredible consumption rate of munitions. That has raised the fear that Western stockpiles are horribly inadequate were Russia to stumble into the Baltic States and accidentally annex a few countries.

The West has no ongoing ammunition production; it's all finite, discrete orders. The US had to provide Ukraine with controversial cluster munitions because they had nothing else. 

In October, the US started dividing its dwindling munitions stocks between Ukraine and Israel. Israeli generals have said that if the US were to cut off the supply of weapons, the incursion into Gaza would grind to a halt. 

Now the US and the UK are lobbing missiles at Houthi positions in Yemen. The Houthis have plenty of missiles and drones provided by the IRGC to attack international shipping, causing insurance to skyrocket and most ships to detour around Africa, driving up costs for, well, all of us. 

Prior to the Hamas attack, senior Iranian leadership visited Russia. Hamas and the Houthis are Iranian proxies. Iran is supplying Russia with drones and other weapons. 

The Russians bombed Syria to contribute to the refugee crisis; they are now trying to flood Finland with migrants, causing Finland to close several border crossings.

Russia has funded extremist organizations and splinter parties across the EU and in the US, in an effort to foment chaos and social strife; Russian social media troll-bot farms and willing (or compromised) media idiots intensify this. 

Undersea cables to islands off Scotland and Denmark have recently been cut by powers unknown. The Nord Stream pipelines were cut a few years ago, also by powers unknown.  

Estonia just started building 600 bunkers along its border with Russia. Poland is doubling the number of personnel in its armed forces and is raising its defence spending to 3% of GDP.

Japan is preparing for war.

Navalny died in a prison in the far north; his spouse has alleged he was poisoned by the Russian government (wouldn't be the first time). 

Meanwhile, Russia is dedicating 42% of its GDP to the military, along with large scale ammunition production. 

It's possible it is all connected. 

This Unherd video tries to make sense of it for us neophytes:

The news is so much better when it's boring.

UPDATE: John Mearsheimer doesn't think there's anything to this. He has a sober article on his Substack here. Naturally, the Estonian intelligence chief disagrees. 

Midnight Mass mini-review

Midnight Mass is dark, brooding, contemplative and fabulous. It's a slow burn show that dives deep into how people see what they want to see; how we are all in peril of grafting our desperate wants and desires onto pre-existing moral structures to justify them. 

More specifically, it's about how faith and God can be twisted into thought-pretzels and then used to justify heinous crimes. As the perpetrators descend into darkness, they don't even realize their moral compass has been inverted. They cling to a warped version of faith like a drowning person to a straw until the illusion can no longer be maintained.

Want and need are incredibly powerful perception filters, ones that can lead even the well meaning astray.

Midnight Mass builds well, laying out clues as it goes; you can see the twists coming, but they are so expertly built up, the reveals still have impact, like when we see the roller coaster drop coming: it builds anticipation, rather than being anti-climactic. 

It's not easily bucketed as a horror genre flick: those elements exist primarily to explore larger, weightier themes. More of a horror-drama-mood piece.

Unlike The Boy and the Heron, this limited series spoke to me, and the performances are absolutely top notch across the board. The journey of the priest was particularly fascinating, and Hamish Linklater puts in a superlative performance as Father Paul Hill. It's wonderful, full of nuance and pathos. 

When the show concluded, I still had questions about what the priest believed at various points during the series, or if he knew from the very beginning. 

I suspect the good reverend knew from the start.

He just wanted what he wanted so, so much, he couldn't be honest, not even to himself. 

Highly recommended. 

Watch knowing as little as possible. 

The Boy and the Heron

A new Miyazaki film! 

I was looking forward to this. 

Like Godzilla Minus One, The Boy and the Heron is set during the waning days of WWII, and follows the story of a young boy in the aftermath of his mother's death during an Allied air raid. He then slips away into an alternate universe dominated by giant militaristic budgies, passes through various Narnia-style gateways, runs into a younger version of one of his 'nannies' (one of the house keeping staff? A relative? I wasn't sure), and is guided about by an obnoxious Heron with a big warty-nosed dwarf inside it. 

Ultimately, he must take on the role as Supreme Storyteller from Loki to save the universe from destruction.

Or something. 

Honestly, this one didn't engage me.

I usually find a metaphor or theme that resonates, that I can connect to, in a Miyazaki film, but not this time. A boy dealing with the death of his mother is understandable, yet that storyline didn't play out in any intelligible way for me, nor was I inspired to analyze it over a piece of pie afterward, as Quentin Tarantino might.

I'll just leave this one for brighter souls than I. 

Like The Creator, though, it does look fabulous!

Genocide in Gaza(?)

I don't always agree with John Mearsheimer, but he's well informed, smart, and always thought provoking.

On January 4th, he put up an article on his substack about the South African application with the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza: 

“The application is a superb description of what Israel is doing in Gaza. It is comprehensive, well-written, well-argued, and thoroughly documented...

“...the application provides a substantial body of evidence showing that Israeli leaders have genocidal intent toward the Palestinians. (59-69) Indeed, the comments of Israeli leaders – all scrupulously documented – are shocking. One is reminded of how the Nazis talked about dealing with Jews when reading how Israelis in “positions of the highest responsibility” talk about dealing with the Palestinians. (59) In essence, the document argues that Israel’s actions in Gaza, combined with its leaders’ statements of intent, make it clear that Israeli policy is “calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza.”

“...there is little doubt that the Biden administration is complicitous in Israel’s genocide, which is also a punishable act according to the Genocide Convention... I never imagined I would see the day when Israel, a country filled with Holocaust survivors and their descendants, would face a serious charge of genocide.”

Deeply disturbing stuff.

Back to D&D

Classic

I haven't played Dungeons & Dragons in decades, but after reading my new book, a friend recommended I give Dungeon Mastering a go. Why? Dragon Garage follows a group of RPG players who open up a portal into their fantasy game world. Fun, drinking, and adventure ensue. 

Seemed like a good fit.

The main focus for Dragon Garage, for me, was the contrast between the modern and the medieval. Thanks at least in part to fairy tales, the Middle Ages is viewed through an idealized lens. We tend to think of princesses and knights, rather than dysentery, famine and bed bugs. 

I wanted to mix up the focus and smash them all together: ideal and real, medieval and modern, the fantastical and grounded. 

A generic fantasy role playing game was a device through which I could explore that. 

I remember (fondly) playing Dungeons & Dragons in public school, but wasn't particularly good at it (to be fair, I don't think many of us were.. there was a lot of open the door, kill the monster, and take their stuff). The rules were dense and extensive, so taking it up again could be a time consuming challenge which I might not be up to.

So I deferred and, at first, declined.

So good!!!

Ultimately, it was The Expanse that changed my mind: Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck created the book series based on role playing game sessions. It's a brilliant idea: run your plot through interactive sessions, and test the logic. A great way to spot holes in a fantasy or sci-fi series: test it! \\

Soon as I mentioned this to a few other friends, they put me on to Critical Roll, which features a phenomenally talented gang of voice actors running through Dungeons and Dragons adventures. There's an entire media empire around it now, including a TV show and comic books. 

So I'm late to the party, but undeterred. Running a D&D (or other RPG) game could help work out scenarios for future books, as well as generate 'happy accident' material that was truly authentic. 

With that in mind, I set about building out the world of Dragon Garage for player characters. At first I thought I'd build everything, the whole world; very quickly I discovered this is a crap ton of work, far more than the amount of world building you'd need for a novel.

I was also determined to make a Megadungeon, because when I was a kid, it was all about the Megadungeon. Every DM had their own. Gary Gygax had the platonic ideal in Castle Greyhawk (not that I ever saw it), and so I resolved to have my own: Castle Druidun!

Seemed a good idea at the time. 

Of course, a megadungeon is a stupid amount of work. No one sane is going to try and do this right off the bat. Fortunately, I laugh at sanity barriers: I've tackled full on prose novels, even screenplays! In fact, making a megadungeon is rather similar to writing a novel, just more compartmentalized and interactive, like an enhanced version of Choose Your Own Adventure. 

Over the years, I've tried my hand at comic books, graphic novels, prose novels, short stories, comedy skits, joke strips, and improv, so why not this?

Epic adventure!

Intially, I filled the dungeon with my own creations, but before long I turned to decades worth of fantasy trope D&D material to flesh it out. It's just too big a job for one person, especially when you have hundreds of dungeon rooms to fill. I can edit out stuff later, should this path prove fruitful and I have the opportunity to do a sequel to Dragon Garage. 

Fingers crossed; there's so much more to explore and play with in that world. 

I thought I'd put up the material from the world of Dragon Garage here, for fun, as the experiment progresses. We'll see what happens, and how far I get with it.

One big change from the book: I had the players roll up characters native to the fantasy world, rather than playing their real selves. It'd be too complicated for me to pull off initially, not until I'm more seasoned at this. 

A megadungeon is a nice, 'simple' realm for adventuring, with built in guard rails. There are rooms and tunnels and all the choices reside within that framework. It's much harder to mess up than, say, an open world space opera mixed with horror (which is what I originally wanted to do). 

There's a reason why many shooter video games occur within finite structures.

What is an imaginary world? Where is it? Same place as Santa Claus, the United States, and Narnia: in our minds. Think about it. Nations only exist through agreement in, and enforcement of, the collective imagination.

Welcome to the World of Arthea...

Check out the Dragon Garage blog here. 

Godzilla Minus One review: rock the kaiju!

Urban redevelopment, Kaiju style

First, Godzilla Minus One is awesome.

Second, they made it for under $15 million USD.

SERIOUSLY?!?

Godzilla Minus One looks as good or better than many $200 million dollar blockbusters. 

Even better, it has a solid emotional core (in a Godzillla film!) and has something to say about Japanese history, society, and the value of human life. It's not an empty, zombie franchise lumbering about devouring money, bereft of soul. 

The human side of the film is centred around a Kamikaze pilot who claims a mechanical problem with his plane in order to skip out on blowing himself up. He comes into contact with other survivors of the war, all of them badly scarred and traumatized by the experience. 

Inevitably, their paths cross with our favourite gargantuan bipedal lizard, Godzilla. 

One of the most striking sequences in the film is a chase at sea: it's absolutely riveting, and reminiscent ofJaws, but better, because it's a gigantic radioactive monster with atomic heat ray breath. Did Jaws have that? I think not!

Throw him a stick, you fools!

This Godzilla is not cute or cuddly, doesn't mug for the camera, doesn't dance, and takes his urban redevelopment VERY seriously. He's one scary 20,000 ton dude. Personally, I think he's lying about his weight and doesn't weigh a pound less than 40,000 tons. 

The ending has fun schemes from a delightful egghead, and a thematically relevant twist. Thankfully it does not involve giant breath mints. 

The whole movie comes together in a very satisfying way, unlike the vast majority of recent Marvel escapades. 

Frankly, franchise fatigue abounds. Old IP are being resurrected, rebooted, retooled and trotted out for fresh generations constantly. Or maybe time just flies by faster now that I'm old. I've witnessed reboots of reboots. Godzilla Minus One qualifies as (I think) the fourth retelling of the original Godzilla story, but somehow, incredibly, remains fresh and fun, making this entry all the more insanely remarkable. 

The last time a reboot really impressed me was with Ron Moore's Battlestar Galactica. 

And while this film can't compare to my childhood memories of Monster Zero, for my money, it's nevertheless the best Godzilla film ever made, and the most surprising and delightful cinematic experience of the year.*

I never, ever thought I'd say that about a Godzilla flick. 

Will wonders never cease?

Highly recommended. See it in IMAX, even. It's worth it! 

*To be fair, I haven't actually been to the theatre much this year...

Max Zing interior cover

His adventures aren't really that sedentary. 

Check them out over on Amazon!

Portfolio stress

I can identify with this...

From Voyager to For All Mankind: Ronald D. Moore's fabulous forays into the cosmos

For All Mankind season one is superb TV. 

It's one of the best sci-fi shows out there. Maybe one of the best shows on TV currently, period, and for a number of reasons. 

They say with good writing, you:

1) Create characters people love.

2) Put those characters through sheer hell.

FAM does exactly that. 

The cast of characters is nuanced, diverse and easy to root for. Rather than engaging in easy breezy cynicism, it displays the resilience, courage and adaptability of humanity. And yet, these are no idealized supermen: they struggle with their own flaws and weaknesses, often being forced to acknowledge their own imperfections in order to better collaborate with others.

This is the latest foray into the cosmos by the extraordinary show runner Ronald D. Moore. Every time he gets both more brilliant, and closer and closer to reality. 

He started his career submitting spec scripts to Star Trek (his favourite show), and on the strength of those, got into the writer's room of The Next Generation. That is no easy feat. From there, he went to the more serialized Deep Space Nine; where he wrote some of its best and most memorable episodes.

He followed that up with a very brief stint on Voyager. Unfortunately, he hated it, and quickly bounced. In an interview, he didn't hold any punches: Voyager failed to fulfill the promise of the premise.

Not this Voyager, the other one

"I just don't understand why it doesn't even believe in itself. Examine the fundamental premise of VOYAGER: A starship chases a bunch of renegades. Both ships are flung to the opposite side of the galaxy. The renegades are forced to come aboard Voyager. They all have to live together on their way home, which is going to take a century or whatever they set up in the beginning. 

I thought, This is a good premise. That's interesting. Get them away from all the familiar STAR TREK aliens, throw them out into a whole new section of space where anything can happen. Lots of situations for conflict among the crew. The premise has a lot of possibilities. 

...This ship was going to have problems. It wasn't going to have unlimited sources of energy. It wasn't going to have all the doodads of the Enterprise. It was going to be rougher, fending for themselves more, having to trade to get supplies that they want. 

That didn't happen. 

It doesn't happen at all, and it's a lie to the audience. I think the audience intuitively knows when something is true and something is not true. VOYAGER is not true. If it were true, the ship would not look spick-and-span every week, after all these battles it goes through. How many times has the bridge been destroyed? How many shuttlecrafts have vanished, and another one just comes out of the oven? 

That kind of bullshitting the audience takes its toll. At some point, the audience stops taking it seriously, because they know that this is not really the way this would happen. These people wouldn't act like this.”

I can't argue with that: Moore makes very good points. Sadly, he couldn't make any headway against the executives running the show.

That fruitless creative collision led Moore to jump ship and reboot Battlestar Galactica instead, turning it into the best sci-fi show on TV in the early 2000s. It was innovative, gritty and far more adult than anything Star Trek had done to date. The fleeing survivors of Caprica dealt with all kinds of shortages, unlike the pampered TNG crew who could just replicate anything they wanted with the push of a button (or 'Tea. Earl Grey. Hot'). Ships flew in a more realistic manner, and they even toyed with removing all the sound from space scenes. 

Storylines were daring, dark and tied back to The War on Terror, making it must-see TV.

At least, it was for the first two seasons. 

BSG: So good it can get away with a pic like this

One of the main themes of the show (That everyone never agrees on anything, making compromise and negotiation necessary for civilization to function) got jettisoned out the airlock in the finale. The survivors put their ships on automatic pilot and sent them soaring into the sun, along with all their tech, universally adopting a hunter-gatherer subsistence existence on earth. 

Okay, sure.

Yuval Harrari would be proud. 

Thanks to the hive mind, BSG wrapped up with a neat if perplexing bow. Maybe I just didn't understand the premise of the show. Moore would know. I can't help but imagine a postscript where, once everyone else is frolicking in hippie-time meadow, criminal gangs reveal squirrelled away tech & weapons and take over.

But for the first two seasons, it was breathtaking, genre defining sci-fi. BSG pushed the sci-fi envelope and then some. 

Now, Moore is back with some of his best work yet: an alternate history show centred around the space program. The central conceit is that the Soviets landed on the moon first. Like the flapping of the wings of a butterfly, this causes a cascade of further changes. As the show progresses through the decades, the more it diverges from what we know as reality. 

Moore wisely avoids rehashing The Right Stuff, Apollo 13, and the like. Instead, the space program is the supporting scaffolding upon which human drama can be hung. For All Mankind is as much about culture, prejudice, social change, organizational and individual fallibility, and the human experience as it is about space shuttles and moon bases.

Each season covers a decade, starting with the sixties. The period details are wonderful, and the evolution of the cast's fashions fun to digest. 

Thanks to the Soviets landing a woman on the moon, the Americans are forced to include women in the space program. Propaganda posturing propels them to become more inclusive, the better to win hearts and minds. Yet the social improvements that cascade out of these calculated, reptilian motives winds up improving society as a whole. 

Allowing everyone to contribute to a society to the best of their ability maximizes human capital, making society stronger and healthier.

The show tackles everything from panic attacks, alcoholism, egotism, to geopolitics and space hazards, yet remains hopeful and positive throughout. 

It's a virtuoso performance: For All Mankind sees all the warts, yet loves humanity anyway.

Give it a watch on Apple+. 

It's too good to miss.

Astronauts heading out to watch For All Mankind

Invincible is Awesome

And also Mark Grayson. 

No, seriously, the show is fabulous. 

Great premise, great execution, great voice talent, and plenty of twists and turns to keep you engaged. Alternates between action and intimate character moments, comedy and gore, yada yada. 

It's right up there with Guardians of the Galaxy (are those REALLY super hero movies?) and The Boys.

Of the three, only Guardians is really fully family friendly. Different brands, different audiences.

Invincible is every bit as dark, cynical and gory as The Boys, just in animated form. And while the gore is a lot cleaner looking, I don't think I'd recommend this to children. 

Superfriends it is not. 

Highly recommended. 

The Creator: beautiful sci-fi trope purée

The Creator, written and directed by Gareth Edwards, is visually spectacular. It conveys an impressive sense of scale, and the sci-fi elements are seamlessly integrated. 

Edwards is very good at conveying verisimilitude, of making the fantastical seem believable, and loves distant shots of characters in sweeping landscapes. Visually, it reminds me of David Lean epics like Doctor Zhivago and Lawrence of Arabia. 

Story wise, not so much.

The actors are excellent, making the most of the material they've been given. 

There are many impressive scenes which, in isolation, suggest a great film. 

Unfortunately, the whole is less than the sum of its parts. 

I really wanted to like this film. I admire Edward's innovative film making. He's a visionary. At least, he is when it comes to visuals and production process. 

His background is in VFX, and that's where he truly excels. 

But while the design of this futuristic reality was slick and polished, it felt just a little... generic. That wouldn't be a problem if the rest of the film were compelling. Unfortunately, there's not much underlying the gleaming VFX facade here in terms of world building. The conflict here has no depth. It's like they put a great big bucket of sci-fi tropes into a blender and this purée was the result. 

Even that can be fun, but story wise it did not work for me. 

It was one of the most frustrating viewing experiences I've had in recent memory. 

Edwards has oodles of talent, it's obvious from the visuals and his production process. And he loves sci-fi. I have no doubt that Edwards, powered by right script, could produce a cinematic sci-fi masterpiece. 

One day.

Sadly, this isn't it.

GenV: sharp witted social commentary

Sharp witted social commentary wrapped in spandex and capes. Just... without capes or spandex. Yet. I think Homelander is wearing some other kind of synthetic fabric... 

GenV is crass, graphically violent, irreverent, and cynical. It's also riotously funny and incisive, if you're in the right mood.

I can totally understand why some people don't like the show. I get it. It pushes the envelope of what's acceptable on television. 

The violence is over the top grisly and the camera does not shy away. At all. Fists are covered in bits of brain, bloody body parts are scattered about, arms are ripped off and ragged flesh hangs from the stump. It's awful and gruesome. 

And yet, the violence here is more impactful and horrific than in the sanitized and equally violent Marvel or Star Wars franchises. People get shot, decapitated, vaporized, disemboweled, and worse in those shows, and we don't even blink. 

With GenV and The Boys, the violence makes me never want to actually engage in real violence, it's that ugly. 

It has an impact.

GenV also delights in skewering vacuous marketing platitudes, showing the unvarnished truth beneath the palatable lies. There are a few lines that made me laugh out loud.

The show pits bright eyed and bushy tailed student idealists, full of hope and credulity, getting slammed face first into the brick wall of adult realism. Their trust is taken advantage of and ultimately completely betrayed, ripping out the underpinnings of their world. 

The character work is solid; everyone has a tragic backstory, and a closet full of skeletons. Guilt undergirds many. They're nuanced, rather than black or white, and sympathies can shift about as the program progresses. Some character pivots don't work quite as well as others, but they all are driven by their circumstances and history. 

Those on a quest for redemption, looking to conform with proper societal expectations, realize they aren't as uniquely horrific as they had assumed: this entire world is drenched in debauchery, hypocrisy, cruelty and exploitation. Those they look to for validation turn out to be infinitely worse.

GenV depicts this as unflinchingly as in the flagship The Boys, and several characters (natch) cross over into the spinoff. Nothing like a surprise guest appearance to boost interest.

As a bonus, they lay waste to UofT's Erindale campus. What fun!

The ending has a twist and leaves the main characters in limbo, awaiting season two. 

I'll be tuning in. 

Apple TV's Invasion review

This show is the definition of the slow burn. 

There’s a saying about the military: it’s 99% boredom and routine, and 1% sheer terror. 

Invasion gets the first part right. 

That statement is hyperbole (and framed the way a teacher I had would). Nevertheless, a maxim in modern Hollywood is that you have to get to the Promise of the Premise FAST. Streaming presents us with a bajillion shows to pick from, so if you don’t catch the audience quick, they’ll click. 

Admittedly I sometimes don’t bother with a show that doesn’t grab me until/unless someone (or several someones) recommends it. And if something doesn’t intrigue me, if I don’t feel trust in the show runners right away, I will click away. That’s far from fair, and all on my deteriorating attention span. 

In light of that, Invasion’s somnambulant pacing is defiantly radical. Movies today are faster paced and include more cuts than in the 1980s, partly because they had to splice physical film back then, and now it can be done digitally; Fury Road had ten times as many cuts as The Road Warrior, for example. It can be too much, yet here the more lackadaisical pacing just didn’t work for me.

It follows 4-5 different character journeys, switching between storylines that (mostly) intersect towards the end. Some are far more engaging than others. Sam Neil leads one stream (which got me to tune in), but it's a Sean Bean fake out.

There one minute, gone the next

It doesn’t help that the show is dark. It’s shot with naturalistic lighting, and the aliens (when they finally appear) are only seen at night or in dim interiors. This accentuates the menace of the unknown, but also frustrates. 

Maybe they did it because their FX budget couldn’t withstand daylight. Honestly, that’s fair, you have to work within the production limits you’ve got. The show looks very good, at least what you can see of it. 

With the exception of one character thread that follows a Japanese aerospace prodigy (all in Japanese with subtitles, which was frustrating because I wanted to also draw while watching), everything is viewed from a plebeian POV. We see people trying to manage their day to day lives in the midst of (somewhat vague) chaos. There is no rah-rah 'Ride of the F16’s'. This isn’t Tom Cruise or Will Smith type alien butt-kicking fare, it’s far more naturalistic, following ordinary people. It’s more brooding and moody than explosive and energetic, which can be wonderful when done right.

By far our most capable cast member

The leads are far from paragons of virtue; they’re warty and flawed. Great to have nuance. Unfortunately, they’re not likeable or compelling, and they make some painfully dumb decisions, all to amp up tension (admittedly very common in horror films). That came at the cost of empathy: I started rooting for the alien monsters. 

The climax smacks of both Independence Day and War of the Worlds, the grand daddy of all alien invasions. 

I suspect Invasion succeeds or fails based on whether or not you like the characters. It’s well produced and well acted. The dialogue is naturalistic and worked well enough for me that it wasn’t distracting. 

Unfortunately, while it has many of the elements I like, the slow pace and unlikeable characters made it a swing and a miss.