Thank you for finding that. Most TED talks are ultimately just PR but this is something fundamental. Etymology has always been an interest of mine and, like these signs, has been an almost invisible undercurrent in the stories I write.
I’ve tagged that video and I’ma gonna keep tabs on her research.
Again, many thanks. You’re a jewel.
They portend that Epstein Didn’t Kill Himself.
The media word for the week: escalation. Especially regarding NATO tanks (Main Battle Tanks) finally being sent to Ukraine. Every Harry, Tom, and Dick will now be an expert in mechanized warfare:
It was particularly interesting to learn how the Soviet designs (optimized to be as small a target as possible) are just as good as western designs. Unfortunately they tend to cook off when hit. Design choices have consequences.
Time will tell.
Interesting video. Remarks on youtube also interesting.
Plato’s cave word of the day: zaftig
My experience with Soviet tanks was that they were very hard on gunners, especially the 3-man tanks (no loader). You have to be less than 5′ 5″ to not be folded in half trying to man one. The autoloader has a tendency to try and load the gunner into the breech. And those shells aren’t light, but you have to load the breech left-handed. The hydraulic fluid was also flammable, so they burn quite easily. Other than that, they were almost as good as western tanks.
It seems to me that the American tanks won’t be there in time for the Russian spring offensive, but the German ones, via Poland, may be; and it is said that the Poles have been providing training for some Ukrainian personnel already, before the tanks go over the border.
That video was very interesting. I knew about the animal (and other) drawings in the caves, but not about the prevalence of graphic symbols.
So…we’re now just having a full-on proxy war against a nuclear-armed Russia. I mean, I’m pretty sure neither the Ukrainians nor Europeans can supply and maintain Abrams tanks, let alone train new operators.
Oh, well. Joe Biden (or the people behind him) has done such a marvelous job managing everything else, this SURELY won’t be a problem.
Now you’ll have to excuse me while I get back to digging my fallout shelter.
Mike
Dig deep Bunge. Lots (enough) of Leopards are what the Ukrainians will have, much to Vlad’s dismay.
Roosia wants, Roosia threatens, Roosia invades;its what they do. Then Roosia threatens some more. Some roll over.
Proxie, Moxie, and Cottontail the brave Bunge bunnies.
Soviet tanks have been beaten by Western tanks everyplace they have met.
Well, regarding even more weapons to Ukraine…to quote one of my favorite youtubers, Jimmy’s World (very funny guy who takes beat up airplanes and gets them flying again)… “What Could Possibly Go Wrong?!!”
Sawe Mike Pompeo on Fox this morning. He answered most of the questions I have had about this war effort.
When should we have sent more and better equipment? Answer: In September of 2021 when Putin first signaled he might Invade.
Should we have a special envoy keeping track of the money and arms being sent to Ukraione? Answer: Absolutely.
How will this war end? Answer: When Putin realizes that he has more to lose than to gain by continuing.
Is this move to send more tanks to Ukraine a good decision? Answer: Yes, but much too late.
I like Pompeo. He’s easy to understand and doesn’t dance around on the issues. I think he’s going to run for president. We could do worse.
Speaking of Putin, he’s now working a deal to buy the military equipment we left behind in Afghanistan.
“Billions of dollars’ worth of U.S. weapons are on the negotiating table between Russian strongman Vladimir Putin and Afghanistan’s Taliban government, according to at least one insider.”
And there’s this:
“Communist China’s rise and Russia’s reckless invasion of Ukraine — and the West’s response to both — have effectively blunted globalization. The world is bifurcating once more, with China and Russia on one side, and NATO plus the westernized Pacific Rim nations (Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand) on the other. The rest of the world will be pressured to take sides in Cold War II.” https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2023/01/25/report-putin-wants-to-buy-u-s-weapons-biden-left-in-afghanistan-but-theres-even-more-n1664501
I like Pompeo as well, JJ. He was head and shoulders above Clinton, Kerry, or Blinken as Secretary of State.
” Proxie, Moxie, and Cottontail the brave Bunge bunnies.”
Heh, heh!
Just from a humor standpoint, that line is pretty funny! 🙂
China russia india and brazil only 3 billion people carry on.
I’m in California. Maybe will post something tonight.
Not the first proxy war with Russia.
Regarding the Abrams tanks. There is going to be quite a learning curve teaching their mechanics how to work on those. I got pretty good at pulling the engines and transmission assembly out of Abrams for the real tank mechanics to work on. My initial MOS was in Bradleys , not Abrams, but was part of a unit that had Abrams. Pulling the engine and transmission system is pretty straight forward and easier than pulling a car engine out. But then understanding the controls and diagnosing problems on that jet engine driven system is a whole nother thing. And the turret system is loaded up with electronics.
The Russian government has found a new group, to blame all of it’s problems on.
Here’s the article, titled: ” ‘Putin has to find a new scapegoat – LGBT people’ “. :
“…proxy war….”?
Ah, but by whom? And against whom…?
“Enough with the ‘Hostage-Taking’ Nonsense”— https://www.commentary.org/noah-rothman/enough-with-the-hostage-taking-nonsense/
Once again the Democrats have the GOP firmly targeted in the latest chapter of ongoing duplicity, demonization and hate…
Their goal? The utter, corruption, perversion and destruction of America.
Ukraine? Merely JUST ANOTHER major distraction….
The deputy defense minister was one of those charged this week where did the weapons he handled or the chief of staff or the heads of local civil defense end up
Ah Noah, you just don’t get it, these people who were all in with Brezhnev maybe Chernenko gave them pause, he got gorbasms, in Limbaugh’s unique turn of phrase, regard the institutions they have not totally corrupted, and the people who don’t buy their malarkey, as the enemy,
some recognize the clarity of the zients regime at home, yet they trust what they doing abroad, how does that compute, every tool of soft and hard power that we would need if god forbid he had a shooting war with Russian and China, is being torn down, heck the sinews of our body politic, are what they resolutely target,
you mean like this regime, targets veterans, christians and pta members,
I think second generation soviet tool jamie raskin spelled out the goals when he talked of ‘world war trans’
it appears the tear gas employed recklessly by the Capitol Police was responsible for some of the non civilian casualties, but the dc procurator says full steam ahead, with the collaboration of russian hoax judge contreras,
I liked the video, interesting the animals drawn often are not the reason being there.
On tanks, namely M-1, I predict the Russians will have one not to long after they get there. Can be as easy as stop running and get captured.
Very interesting. I don’t know where you come up with this stuff, but thank you Neo.
Neo–
Glad to know you’ve arrived safely on the Left Coast without any complications caused by NOTAM system outages, UFOs, or the Secretary of Transportation. (Removes tongue from cheek). Seriously, please rest and take care of yourself, as you must be very tired– don’t feel obliged to put up new posts tonight. And give Gerard and Olive warmest greetings from all of us here.
Our troops would probably be too busy with CRT briefings to maintain our Abrams’ anyway.
Re: Ukraine
The latest Peter Zeihan podcast on Ukraine is quite grim. Worse if one knows how chilling the 1st Holodomor was:
Zeihan fully acknowledges how valiant and smart the Ukrainians have been and how vicious and incompetent the Russians.
Nonetheless, the Russians have a huge population advantage over Ukraine. Putin is moving another 500,000 troops into Ukraine, so Ukraine will have to kill Russians 5:1 for every Ukrainian.
In the long run Zeihan remains pessimistic on Ukraine’s chances. This winter Zeihan sees the Russians focusing on attacking Ukraine’s energy infrastructure to demoralize/kill with cold. Then in the spring/summer they will attack Ukraine’s agriculture infrastructure so people will starve.
This will have repercussions on those countries in Africa and the Middle East which depend on Ukraine for food, primarily wheat and corn. Z. sees Egypt as being particularly vulnerable.
This could be a very, very bad year for Ukraine.
___________________________
The Holodomor, also known as the Terror-Famine or the Great Famine, was a man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 that killed millions of Ukrainians.
the holomodor the times has not yet apologized for covering up, now the examples of petlura and bandera, suggest what happens when you give up, once under stalin another under kruschev
kind of goodwinning, at this point, now xi is arch enemy, and he proved if from 2020-2022, yet we seem to be making it much easier for him to defeat us,
The second Holodomor would require a total information blackout and control of all Ukrainian borders I would think. Not likely.
There are Roosians (not the same as Russians) who are all in on a second Holodomor. They would not stop with Ukraine; the glory and restoration of Roosia requires such actions.
Vlad’s little gambit has already caused 180,000 killed, wounded, missing Russian soldiers. Pyrrhic but without a victory as yet.
I find that the comments on these videos are often just as profound and thought-provoking as what the presenter is saying.
I don’t know if any Western news agencies are covering this but Jack Posobiec mentioned it on social media.
You know, I’m starting to think that people like om are MAYBE not taking this whole situation quite as seriously as they should.
Mike
MBunge:
Not to start a disagreement, but if you could summarize your overall point about Ukraine, I’d appreciate it.
When I read your comments, it’s like walking onto an ongoing battlefield minus any larger context.
Bunge doesn’t know that depleted uranium (DU) used for armor and armor piercing rounds is essentially all U-238.
U-238 is non-fissile and of such low radioactivity that its half life is 4.5 billion years. It is toxic, to the kidneys for example, like totally non-radioactive lead, or totally non-radioactive tungsten. It is of such low radioactivity that it is used as a shielding material for, wait for it, radioactivity. It is denser than lead, Bunge.
Heavy metals are often toxic Bunge. See lead posioning for example.
Roosian propaganda and information warfare claims more Bunge brain cells.
Stuart Varney says: it is possible for Ukraine, + its allies, to win the War in Ukraine:
His worries about the infrastructure are valid. Which brings this question to mind. Russia is violating international norms and treaties by invading Ukraine. In addition to providing lethal aid to Ukraine, why can’t the U.S. use the UN (at least those nations that don’t align with China/Russia) to stage a major campaign to broker a cease fire and eventual peace? If Ukraine ceases to exist as a viable ag producer or economic entity, and other countries suffer hunger as a result, isn’t that reason enough to press for peace?
Another major piece that is missing from our quiver is our fossil fuel industry. Putin would have less leverage and money if we turned our oil and gas industry loose. Biden and company have been three steps behind and remain so.
There in a nutshell is the psychological distinction between the RINO and populist wings of the Republican Party. Populists lump RINOs and Democrats into a uniparty that hoards power to itself and denies it to the general public. Some of the populace are fine with that exclusive arrangement, but it irks the rest of us.
huxley —
I have lately become a bit of a Peter Zeihan stan, but I think he’s wrong on a couple of points.
First, Russia may *say* they’re conscripting 500k more troops, and they may actually *try* to conscript 500k more troops, but whether those 500k actually show up at training centers, whether they actually get equipped with anything, and whether they can actually be deployed to Ukraine remains to be seen. Ukraine still has the “not enough bullets to kill them all” problem, but I don’t think it’s nearly as bad as Zeihan does.
Second, pre-war Ukraine was such a colossally ginormous *exporter* of food that Russia would have to nearly burn the entire country to ash to get Ukraine itself to starve. The actual Holodomor was only accomplished by Russians physically going to every place in Ukraine and stealing the crops at gunpoint. They can’t do that today, unless by some satanic miracle they win the war and occupy all of Ukraine *first*.
Bryan Lovely:
Good to hear from you again, it seems you’ve been scarce lately.
Bryan Lovely:
Reasonable arguments. I don’t claim to know.
I find Zeihan persuasive, but I am watching to see how his predictions turn out. He is at least talking at a practical level which I find missing in much discussion of Ukraine.
You assume details that are not in evidence. Your point that Vlad’s talking heads are possibly huffing and puffing are fine; your assumption that repeating someone else’s talking point confers agreement with that point, rather than pointing out a possible indication of the original speaker’s future actions, less so.
The Russians also seem to be assuming that APFSDSDU rounds are on the schedule, which they may not be, especially since the Ukrainians have been getting hand-me-downs. Which means they’re more likely to get the tungsten-cored APFSDS (that’s Armor Piercing, Fin-Stabilized, Discarding Sabot (Depleted Uranium)) rounds instead. They’ll mostly be firing high-explosive either way, assuming things go forwards.
It’s worth pointing out that the Bradleys previously promised are also capable of firing DU rounds, so it’s not a new threshold in that respect; it’s my understanding that the US has even tested rounds as small as .50″/12.7mm with uranium penetrators, suitable for the bigger sniper rifles and machine guns.
om —
Thanks. It’s been a number of factors together.
1. As a student of military history, I’ve been obsessively following war news on Twitter (yeah, I know, but I have 15-20 accounts who actually know what they’re talking about and aren’t particularly political).
2. I tore my kitchen/dining room down to the studs and found out I was going to have to tear out a bunch of the studs and rebuild a floor and an exterior wall as well, and then one of my one-car-garage-sized sheds decided to collapse on New Year’s Eve, so I’ve been physically worn out a lot.
3. Work got interesting and time-consuming with new projects instead of boring maintenance, so I haven’t had as much time during the day.
4. I’ve started dating someone. 🙂
I have bandwidth for war news, Instapundit, a little of Sarah Hoyt’s blog, and that’s about it.
huxley —
It will be interesting to see if his predictions on China pan out. Mass famine and concomitant political upheavals don’t look like they’re in the cards, but it’s possible that the last year has been one of using up the design margin and *next* year the crunch will come.
Overall his observations on demography and North American reindustrialization are the most trenchant and plausible. Other than that he’s a bit of a catastrophist. But so was Cassandra, so we’ll see. He does consistently say that even if the rest of the world goes to hell the US will still be sitting pretty, so we have that going for us, which is nice.
So Bunge, if DU rounds in Leopards or Bradleys are ‘dirty bombs’ to Roosia, what are they to you? Are tungsten penetrators ‘toxic bombs’?
Are lead bullets, ‘toxic killers’ to Roosia? Lead never becomes non-toxic, and DU after 4.5 billion years, becomes, lead. Roosia forever?
@ Bryan Lovely > “even if the rest of the world goes to hell the US will still be sitting pretty,”
And if the USA goes down, the rest is gonna be in a world of hurt.
Glad to hear from you, and hoping the good news eventually outweighs the bad news.
Tangent:
A recurring theme here at Neo’s place is the apparent inability of our friends and family on the Left to put any credence in arguments against their Narrative.
One reason is that they don’t ever see or hear about any of the real-world events that Conservatives who follow politics are generally conversant with.
Literally.
They never see the other side of the coin.
This is a recent example; they can be multiplied endlessly.
Hunter Biden’s laptop comes to mind.
Actually, Kevin McCarthy kicks butt would be more like it. Yesterday Speaker McCarthy “officially booted Reps. ADAM SCHIFF and ERIC SWALWELL from the House Intelligence Committee.” McCarthy set forth his decision in a letter to Hakeem Jeffries posted on Twitter. The lady and gentlemen of Politico Playbook find the letter “short on details about the two California Democrats’ sins[.]” You can grok that the press wants to pick up its cudgels on behalf of Schiff and Swalwell, whose malefactions have not been featured in its coverage of the Democrats.
…
McCarthy took the opportunity to explain in terms that any moron should understand. It’s not clear to me that the lady and gentlemen of Politico Playbook have grokked his explanation. They do not go so far as to quote or paraphrase his comments on Schiff and Swalwell, but they do link to the C-SPAN video. This is magnificent.
I’m assuming that the Politico staff assumes that their readers won’t click over to the video, having already been told all they need to know or they would not have linked it.
I did watch it, and I’m actually starting to think McCarthy may not be as squishy as conservatives feared, at least in some aspects.
And the letter to Jeffries was also awesome.
Second tangent (it takes two to tang-o): https://www.thefp.com/p/the-epidemic-of-diedsuddenly
The Epidemic of #DiedSuddenly
Why is the public turning to a single, ominous explanation for tragedies like Damar Hamlin’s collapse? Two doctors explain.
By Vinay Prasad, John Mandrola
January 25, 2023
Not a lot of new news to engaged conservative readers (see Tangent the First), but a very well presented analysis by credible sources.
Tangent in the third degree – just because it made me laugh.
Sophocles’ mosaic phrase of the day: HYUUUUUGE Trrrracts of Land!
AF: That vid of McCarthy is great!
In the spirit of the goldfish scammer saga, we present the latest round in the dog-bites-man/man-bites-dog “dialectic”…. https://nypost.com/2023/01/24/kansas-man-shot-by-dog-in-hunting-accident-ided/
– – – – – – – – – –
And now for something a tad different…but if ye think about it a bit, not by all that much…
(Um, for this one, you’d better take a seat…put down that drink….)
‘ “Directed Evolution”? Pfizer R&D Exec Says Covid-19 Created In Wuhan, Is ‘Cash Cow’ For Company ‘ https://www.zerohedge.com/political/directed-evolution-pfizer-rd-exec-says-covid-19-created-wuhan-cash-cow-company
Key grafs:
‘Jordon Trishton Walker, Pfizer’s Director of R&D, Strategic Operations – and an mRNA Scientific Planner, said that the company is exploring a way to “mutate” COVID via “Directed Evolution” in order to anticipate new strains for their Covid-19 vaccine.
‘ “One of the things we [Pfizer] are exploring is like, why don’t we just mutate it [COVID] ourselves so we could create — preemptively develop new vaccines, right?…. If we’re gonna do that though, there’s a risk of like, as you could imagine — no one wants to be having a pharma company mutating f**king viruses…”…[adding] that he believes Pfizer scientists are going about it slowly “because you obviously don’t want to advertise that you are figuring out future mutations.”
‘ “Don’t tell anyone. Promise you won’t tell anyone. The way it [the experiment] would work is that we put the virus in monkeys, and we successively cause them to keep infecting each other, and we collect serial samples from them,” he said, before saying calling the Covid-19 natural origins theory bullshit….’
REMEMBER now, “Don’t tell ANYONE”!!
…Gosh, looks like after this, Pfizer may well be toast.
(Well, they had a nice run, I guess…)
OTOH, this can’t be for real, nossir. It’s gotta be parody. The guy’s not serious. he’s gotta be joking, right?…Right…?
File under: The writing’s on the wall…as Klaus might say to…his holy acolytes…at the WTF “convention”….
The way of Russias war is zachista cleansing thats how they did in berlin to afghanistan its what they taught the algerians and the syrians what matters is what this proxy conflict us doing to our readiness it is ruinous in ways one cannot grok
Watching CNBC after trading close yesterday. Analysts asked about the social media platforms allowing Trump back on. An analyst says this may be a problem because when he was banned from Twitter misinformation immediately declined by 40%.
I can’t even imagine a person being this stupid.
Not even before the TWTR files releases. After?!
Liberals no longer inhabit the same world with the rest of us. They see 1984 as a guide. They are sick. Seriously sick.
This isn’t about a disagreement over tax rates or environmental regulation or union rules or welfare policy or normal political disagreements. This is about one group of people who genuinely believe that other people do not deserve to have rights.
This is an active denial of the humanity of others. What word could we use to describe these deniers?
Back in the day–fifty-plus years ago–it took eight weeks of Basic and nine weeks of infantry Advanced Individual Training to get a reasonably competent replacement to a unit. After which, given sufficient time, or as much as was available, he leaned unit SOP.
Anything short of that or its equivalent is going to show up on the battlefield, even if the equipment is up to spec. Which, it appears is not the case.
Hence massive casualties which will have an effect on troop morale and the folks at home. For, at least on the map, little gain.
Happened to read, some time ago, about The Great Escape (not the movie). An historian picked a date in the sixteenth century. Prior to that, a “prince” who came into some money was advised to use it to invade and conquer a neighbor. Also applied to a baron. Best ROI. Subsequent to that date, what with the increased benefits of technology, transport, and increasing cost of war, best ROI was for internal development. Wish Putin had read that.
Except for santelli and kernan i believe they would say that sam bankman fraud was one of their top gets mary meacher henry blodgett all the subprime frauds
(I keep wondering about the whys and the wherefores of this rogue administration’s mega-destructive modus operandi…which leads me to further wonder whether there’s a sick, bizarro connection between Hunter’s enormous drug “issues” and Dear Old Dad’s vengeful, vindictive campaign to flood the country he “leads” not only with Fentanyl but with crime…violence, anxiety and despair….not that he’d need Hunter as an excuse, mind you; but still…)
H/T Instapundit.
Miguel:
If you can’t use grammar or sentences don’t expect anyone to “groc” what you are saying.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I read Stranger in a Strange Land by RAH back in the ’60s so I know what “groc” means.
Richard Aubrey,
Good stuff on ROI of war.
Matt Ridley in his Ted Talk “When Ideas have Sex” notes that today the average Englishman works half a second to earn enough to pay for an hour of light (with inflation and brain dead energy policy not sure how much that has increased). In 1800 a candle that lasted an hour cost 6 hours at the average wage.
For most of human history all but the 1% lived in abject poverty. To the fodder which served as potential soldiers, the attraction of raiding other people and taking their stuff must have been strong indeed.
The folks who study genetics say that we have twice as many female ancestors as males. About 80% of females over history produced offspring. Only 40% of males. For all but the most recent tiny stretch of time, the average male had very little to offer a female in the way of provision and protection. Easy to see why a teenage woman would rather be the third or fourth wife of a man of means who could provide and protect her and her kids than the only mate of a dirt-poor teenage boy.
I’m convinced that this explains a lot of war over the ages. Your prince or some aspiring tribal chief had a ready supply of extremely frustrated young men who had no prospects for their urges to procreate or any normal way to acquire property to attract a woman. War must have been attractive.
“That tribe across the valley has women and stuff. Let’s go invade and take both! Follow me!”
The zero sum game is a dangerous one.
stan
Happened to read some fiction about the Picts and the motivations of the guys who went up the scaling ladders. Same thing. Might get to sack a town….otherwise…not much lost. Meat that’s gone off, no firewood to stay warm, the big shots are drinking whiskey and planning the assault, you have doubtful water.
Having said that, the harem-like arrangements in some parts of the MENA might put some guys in the same position.
@Robert Sendler
Robert Sendler
I wouldn’t go that far. Soviet tanks inflicted heavy losses on the Israelis at various points before the Israelis could get their acts together (everyone knows Yom Kippur but not so many people know about the rampage Egyptian Armor did in the Southwest during 1948), the Cubans had significant success in Africa – mostly against Somalia and other African rebels but sometimes against the SAD F – while the Indians have regularly defeated Pakistani armor regardless of what either side was using.
I think the moral of the story for this is – outside of South Africa where the cases where the SADF lost owed more to numbers and serious firepower/armor imbalance – so much relies upon the quality of the crews and how they manage the hardware.
Design choices lead to certain outcomes. Putting your propellant in with your crew and releying on an autoloader to minimize hull volume has proved to be a risky choice in Ukraine. But bad doctrine and a poor plan was much wirse than marginal equipment.
@MBunge
Victor Hugo claimed that the Bourbons had Forgotten Nothing and Learned Nothing. It seems like you are fanatical about going one better, Learning Nothing but also Forgetting Plenty.
So…we’re now just having a full-on proxy war against a nuclear-armed Russia.
You write this as if this sort of thing hasn’t happened about a dozen times in our modern history since the Soviets got the nuke.
Moreover, you ALSO ignore the fact that Putin started this war and particularly the latest upsurge of violence in February of last year, and that he had done similar before such as in Georgia in 2008. Which might indicate that he bears chief responsibility for this.
I mean, I’m pretty sure neither the Ukrainians nor Europeans can supply and maintain Abrams tanks, let alone train new operators.
Half-true. Training new operators is “relatively” easy since you need the tank, trainable personnel, and a modest amount of logistical supplies. Which is also why you can train entire units on one or two craft if you have enough. The big issue with the Abrams is long term operational logistics, which almost nowhere in Europe can sustain.
But this also makes sense given how this was prompted by Germany claiming it would not send the Leopard 2 or even approve other operator nations sending theirs to Ukraine until the US sent Abrams. So the Brandon Regime and Congress called their bluff and pledged to send them in order to humiliate the Germans into action so that Ukraine would get Leopards far before they will get Abrams. Especially given the time to set up logistics for the Abrams (which to be honest have been overdue).
But apparently all of this goes over your head.
Oh, well. Joe Biden (or the people behind him) has done such a marvelous job managing everything else, this SURELY won’t be a problem.
Of course it will be, and it is a problem that stronger and more competent leadership under Trump would have avoided or at least minimized. But it is also a problem Putin foisted upon us, in large part because he recognized a useful idiot in a bad situation when he saw them. He apparently gravely miscalculated how slight the resistance is.
Now you’ll have to excuse me while I get back to digging my fallout shelter.
For your sake I sure as hell hope you research your fallout shelter more carefully than you do Saddam’s supposedly nonexistent ties to Al Qaeda and nonexistent WMD.
I don’t know if any Western news agencies are covering this but Jack Posobiec mentioned it on social media.
An unfortunate swing and a miss from Posobiec, primarily because he commits the cardinal sin of taking the Kremlin’s word both seriously and uncritically.
At no point do either you or he consider the many, many, MANY times Russia has lied and bluffed in this war before, going back to Putin’s insistence that he did not send Spetznaz into Crimea in 2014 and that you could get equipment like the Guards Spetznaz playing Little Green Men in Russia were using from any MilSurp store.
It also doesn’t seem to occur to you that while Putin has danced around threatening a nuclear response in veiled terms, he has consistently pushed back from the bring in large part because he realizes he would lose.
And that while Russian diplomats may think they can obtain benefit from trying to make THIRD PARTIES THINK that they will respond to the deployment of Leopard 2s as a Dirty Bomb, they have very little to gain from ACTUALLY treating such as a Dirty Bomb. Especially given the Kremlin equipment cycle Perun has noted of making maximum threats when discussions to send equipment are ongoing and then shifting gears to downplaying the importance of said equipment when it becomes reasonably clear the threats are ringing hollow and they cannot hope to actually prevent the transfer.
But apparently we’re supposed to uncritically believe that this time they really, really mean it guize?
In spite of how self-evidently ludicrous the claim is and how actually doing this would destroy most of their relations with neutral players like Russia and Saudi Arabia?
I’ll note that Russia certainly did not respond to the use of depleted uranium ammunition in Yugoslavia and Iraq as if dirty bombs were used. Nor did anybody else. Because regardless of what Putin’s paid liar said this time, it’s been established record that whatever the negative effects of depleted uranium ammo are (which are by most accounts seriously overstated by Kremlin sources) they are NOTHING comparable to a dirty bomb, and the Kremlin reacting to their deployment as such would not only be stupid and apocalyptical, but also unprecedented overkill.
You know, I’m starting to think that people like om are MAYBE not taking this whole situation quite as seriously as they should.
It’s interesting you conflate taking fundamentally unserious threats from the Kremlin at face value with taking the situation seriously. A lot of us have taken the situation very seriously. We’ve just come to very different conclusions than you have. And most of the time we’ve been proven to be correct.
@Miguel cervantes
China russia india and brazil only 3 billion people carry on.
Except putting India and even Brazil in that grouping is rather unlikely. India hates China and vice versa far more than it likes any other group, so the idea that India will be obligingly playing third wheel in the Shanghai Cooperation Org does not gel with the barely-frozen border war China and India have. Had you put in Pakistan you would have not had to decrease the number by that much and you’d be more accurate.
While Brazil is a true wild card shifting between pro-American and anti-American sentiments, with the latter on the rise due to Lula. But it is also isolated and vulnerable in the Western Hemisphere like Vargas was in WWII, and we know how that ended up.
@huxley
I’m nowhere near as fond of Zeihan as you and Bryan Lovely are – he has always struck me as a Biden lavishing Globalist Prog who gets the narrative, though he has had his moments – but he has usually had some decent points in his videos. But this I think his points towards the end of the video were good but the start was a clear swing and a miss.
Firstly: I’d echo what Bryan said about the problems with taking Putin’s claims that Russia will mobilize 500,000 more people at face value and double down with them. It’s certainly true that Russia has a resource and population advantage overall vis a vis Ukraine, but this absolutely does not mean that they will have no problem throwing human bodies in “almost limitless numbers” into the war. As we’ve seen by the acute head count shortages the Russian military has had throughout this war and its reliance on auxiliaries and unofficial support.
This part of what Zeihan says seems to be rehashing an old cliche of another generation of Eastern Front History. The truth is that even in the conflicts where we’d associate “Russia” or the Soviet Union as throwing soldiers in “almost limitless numbers” (whether it’s in WWII, WWI, Lenin’s wars in the interbellum, the Napoleonic Wars, the Russo-Swedish and Russo-Turkish wars, 1848, Livonian War, or the like), Russia HAS struggled with the fact that its manpower supply is QUITE limited. Indeed, one reason why WW3 never really manifested in a serious way beyond the Elbe River Crisis is the fact that by 1944 the Soviets were running on next to empty in terms of manpower reserves and were resorting to massive conscription of hundreds of thousands of people in reoccupied territories like the Baltics, Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and so forth.
And that was in an almost uniquely favorable conflict in terms of getting people motivated to go out and join the war effort. Usually Russia starts running into problems getting troops to the front long before it starts running into its overall manpower running low. WWI is pretty much the archtypical example because while the bayonet/head count strength of the Russian military remained pretty consistently high throughout, that did not mean that the troops replacing annihilated units with sub par or nonexistent equipment were any happier and eventually they turned on the government(s) continuing the war (ironically just as the Central Powers were on the verge of collapse).
The habitual problems the Kremlin has had coaxing recruitment – even unofficially and with massive benefits – as well as the consistently understrength nature of the Russian troops in Ukraine I think underline this problem. Putin certainly isn’t acting like he can mobilize troops in almost limitless numbers, because he can’t. And draft riots and arson attacks are already playing out (albeit on a limited scale). And even if Putin can somehow square the circle and get the full intake of troops in that doesn’t mean they will be committed to attacking or as able to fill out both the front and rear areas from units like the thoroughly devastated “separatist republic” units.
He also ignores the tooth to tail ratio. While Russia’s military has usually been more tooth than ours has (usually to their detriment) that doesn’t mean they will want to send forth the logistics officers with Kalashnikovs to the front. Especially since their existing support units have ALREADY been hollowed out due to sending troops to the front to make up infantry strength and suffering the usual casualties that entails. The Ukrainians have had a similar problem but nowhere near on this scale due to their ability to rely on volunteers and territorial militia (or even scummier units like Gaidar) while the West has been helping them streamline training.
So it’s quite likely that at the actual points of conflict the Russians will struggle to match Ukrainian numbers. Especially given the size of this front. This also means that to a very large degree Ukraine CAN afford to trade body for body with Russia because Russian manpower is a lot more limited than just popping up the two nations’ census numbers on spreadsheet and saying “Yup Russia has a lot more than Ukarine*” shows.
(And even then we’re talking about a little less than 44 million Ukrainians compared to a little over 143 million Russians. So even if we magically removed all foreign fighters and somehow got everybody from comatose patients to infants to fight, the Ukrainians would still “only” need to kill a little less than 4 Russians for every one they lose in order to depopulate Russia. And realistically speaking the numbers are a lot narrower due to how neither side can recruit infants or the comatose and the number of foreign volunteers on both sides, especially Ukrainian).
Ironically one of the closer parallels to this war is probably one few people would think. The Livonian War of Ivan the Terrible in the middle of the 16h century. Which is of course kind of ludicrous given how vastly different things are, from the technology to the tactics to the terrain (the wide fields – if often muddy and shelled – of Ukraine versus the dense forested areas and defiles of the Baltics). But I think it is useful for a number of reasons. It was a brutal invasion of a fractured and disordered region with the intent of overthrowing its government and installing a “Russian”/Muscovite puppet government to rule over the united territory, dependent on the core of professional troops and politicians in the Muscovite Army roughly analogous to the standing troops of the Russian Military and assorted Contractniki and Mercenaries today.
It also very quickly ran into united opposition (for a change) from the countries on Moscow’s borders while Muscovite occupation policies undermined their puppet ruler’s authority and their own good will. So eventually the Allies (who almost don’t deserve the term due to how fractious and often directly divided they were) gradually ground down the Muscovite positions on the area while repeatedly defeating the Russian armies in the field when they tried to progress.
Eventually public sentiment turned against the war and Ivan at home, especially due to the staggering losses his professional units had suffered and the problems trying to get levies to fill the gaps (to say nothing of the political problems) and while Ivan survived in power he had to cut his losses and withdraw.
Obviously we need to be cautious about reading into history and looking for the parallels we want, especially for a conflict that seems so applicable. But I do think that it does show that the idea that we should be cautious about assuming Russia can field unlimited troops for an offensive war, especially in terms of professional or specialist units like engineers or the like.
Moreover, I’m not sure I agree with Zeihan that a mostly mobile war would help Ukraine, especially at this stage. Russia has far more mobile equipment at this stage than Ukraine does, so the ability to build strong defenses along the front and buy time to help prepare is probably better (especially given the threat of Russia widening the war through Belarus).
Odds and ends…
“resorting to massive conscription of hundreds of thousands of people in reoccupied territories like the Baltics, Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and so forth”
Romania shouldn’t be on the list. Instead of an occupation, it switched sides. The Soviet-imposed agreement reduced the size of the Romanian army by about half (which ironically finally brought the unit TOEs for things like artillery up to the numbers that they were supposed to be at :P), but kept it in the field (which makes sense given that the Romanian army had over 1.2 million men under arms when they switched sides) and under Romanian control (though overall command of the front was handled by the Soviets, of course) with Romanian equipment (the Soviets even confiscated any and all former Soviet equipment that was in Romanian service). Of course, this finally gave the Romanians a chance to fight the “real” enemy – i.e. the Hungarians – and retake the disputed territory that Romania had been forced to hand over to Hungary a few years earlier.
Russian logistics is awful. I read an article that was published in the December before the current war started, and it emphasized that Russia relies heavily on railheads and trucks. Trains move the supplies to railheads near the border, and the trucks are supposed to take them the rest of the way. The problem is that Russia doesn’t have nearly enough trucks. And the further the front lines get from the railheads, the more the problem is compounded as the trucks have to spend more time transporting each individual load of supplies. Probably not so much of an issue at the moment given that the war has been a long, slow grind for quite some time now. But something to keep in mind.
Additionally, there’s awful corruption in Russia. I remember reading that shortly after the big conscription call-up was announced, it was discovered that the uniforms for a large number of the troops didn’t exist. The paperwork said that the uniforms existed. But in reality… I would be shocked if uniforms were the only military supply with that problem.
Finally, while I would be cautious about drawing too many comparisons, it’s worth remembering that if the Finns had only been outnumbered 3.5 to 1, modern Finland’s borders with Russia would probably be identical to the country’s borders in 1938 instead of where they are now. The odds certainly seem to be stacked against the Ukrainians. But mass in warfare is only a benefit, and never a certain guarantor of victory.
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Thank you for finding that. Most TED talks are ultimately just PR but this is something fundamental. Etymology has always been an interest of mine and, like these signs, has been an almost invisible undercurrent in the stories I write.
I’ve tagged that video and I’ma gonna keep tabs on her research.
Again, many thanks. You’re a jewel.
They portend that Epstein Didn’t Kill Himself.
The media word for the week: escalation. Especially regarding NATO tanks (Main Battle Tanks) finally being sent to Ukraine. Every Harry, Tom, and Dick will now be an expert in mechanized warfare:
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2023/01/25/germany-and-the-u-s-agree-to-send-advanced-battle-tanks-to-ukraine-n1664862
It was particularly interesting to learn how the Soviet designs (optimized to be as small a target as possible) are just as good as western designs. Unfortunately they tend to cook off when hit. Design choices have consequences.
Time will tell.
Interesting video. Remarks on youtube also interesting.
Plato’s cave word of the day: zaftig
My experience with Soviet tanks was that they were very hard on gunners, especially the 3-man tanks (no loader). You have to be less than 5′ 5″ to not be folded in half trying to man one. The autoloader has a tendency to try and load the gunner into the breech. And those shells aren’t light, but you have to load the breech left-handed. The hydraulic fluid was also flammable, so they burn quite easily. Other than that, they were almost as good as western tanks.
It seems to me that the American tanks won’t be there in time for the Russian spring offensive, but the German ones, via Poland, may be; and it is said that the Poles have been providing training for some Ukrainian personnel already, before the tanks go over the border.
That video was very interesting. I knew about the animal (and other) drawings in the caves, but not about the prevalence of graphic symbols.
So…we’re now just having a full-on proxy war against a nuclear-armed Russia. I mean, I’m pretty sure neither the Ukrainians nor Europeans can supply and maintain Abrams tanks, let alone train new operators.
Oh, well. Joe Biden (or the people behind him) has done such a marvelous job managing everything else, this SURELY won’t be a problem.
Now you’ll have to excuse me while I get back to digging my fallout shelter.
Mike
Dig deep Bunge. Lots (enough) of Leopards are what the Ukrainians will have, much to Vlad’s dismay.
Roosia wants, Roosia threatens, Roosia invades;its what they do. Then Roosia threatens some more. Some roll over.
Proxie, Moxie, and Cottontail the brave Bunge bunnies.
Soviet tanks have been beaten by Western tanks everyplace they have met.
Well, regarding even more weapons to Ukraine…to quote one of my favorite youtubers, Jimmy’s World (very funny guy who takes beat up airplanes and gets them flying again)… “What Could Possibly Go Wrong?!!”
Sawe Mike Pompeo on Fox this morning. He answered most of the questions I have had about this war effort.
When should we have sent more and better equipment? Answer: In September of 2021 when Putin first signaled he might Invade.
Should we have a special envoy keeping track of the money and arms being sent to Ukraione? Answer: Absolutely.
How will this war end? Answer: When Putin realizes that he has more to lose than to gain by continuing.
Is this move to send more tanks to Ukraine a good decision? Answer: Yes, but much too late.
I like Pompeo. He’s easy to understand and doesn’t dance around on the issues. I think he’s going to run for president. We could do worse.
Speaking of Putin, he’s now working a deal to buy the military equipment we left behind in Afghanistan.
“Billions of dollars’ worth of U.S. weapons are on the negotiating table between Russian strongman Vladimir Putin and Afghanistan’s Taliban government, according to at least one insider.”
And there’s this:
“Communist China’s rise and Russia’s reckless invasion of Ukraine — and the West’s response to both — have effectively blunted globalization. The world is bifurcating once more, with China and Russia on one side, and NATO plus the westernized Pacific Rim nations (Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand) on the other. The rest of the world will be pressured to take sides in Cold War II.”
https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2023/01/25/report-putin-wants-to-buy-u-s-weapons-biden-left-in-afghanistan-but-theres-even-more-n1664501
I like Pompeo as well, JJ. He was head and shoulders above Clinton, Kerry, or Blinken as Secretary of State.
” Proxie, Moxie, and Cottontail the brave Bunge bunnies.”
Heh, heh!
Just from a humor standpoint, that line is pretty funny! 🙂
China russia india and brazil only 3 billion people carry on.
I’m in California. Maybe will post something tonight.
Not the first proxy war with Russia.
Regarding the Abrams tanks. There is going to be quite a learning curve teaching their mechanics how to work on those. I got pretty good at pulling the engines and transmission assembly out of Abrams for the real tank mechanics to work on. My initial MOS was in Bradleys , not Abrams, but was part of a unit that had Abrams. Pulling the engine and transmission system is pretty straight forward and easier than pulling a car engine out. But then understanding the controls and diagnosing problems on that jet engine driven system is a whole nother thing. And the turret system is loaded up with electronics.
The Russian government has found a new group, to blame all of it’s problems on.
Here’s the article, titled: ” ‘Putin has to find a new scapegoat – LGBT people’ “. :
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/putin-has-to-find-a-new-scapegoat-lgbt-people/ar-AA16Dppb
“…proxy war….”?
Ah, but by whom? And against whom…?
“Enough with the ‘Hostage-Taking’ Nonsense”—
https://www.commentary.org/noah-rothman/enough-with-the-hostage-taking-nonsense/
Once again the Democrats have the GOP firmly targeted in the latest chapter of ongoing duplicity, demonization and hate…
Their goal? The utter, corruption, perversion and destruction of America.
Ukraine? Merely JUST ANOTHER major distraction….
Ok then
https://twitter.com/realDSteinberg/status/1618298634713587713?cxt=HHwWgoDT6ZeCrfUsAAAA
The deputy defense minister was one of those charged this week where did the weapons he handled or the chief of staff or the heads of local civil defense end up
Ah Noah, you just don’t get it, these people who were all in with Brezhnev maybe Chernenko gave them pause, he got gorbasms, in Limbaugh’s unique turn of phrase, regard the institutions they have not totally corrupted, and the people who don’t buy their malarkey, as the enemy,
some recognize the clarity of the zients regime at home, yet they trust what they doing abroad, how does that compute, every tool of soft and hard power that we would need if god forbid he had a shooting war with Russian and China, is being torn down, heck the sinews of our body politic, are what they resolutely target,
you mean like this regime, targets veterans, christians and pta members,
I think second generation soviet tool jamie raskin spelled out the goals when he talked of ‘world war trans’
it appears the tear gas employed recklessly by the Capitol Police was responsible for some of the non civilian casualties, but the dc procurator says full steam ahead, with the collaboration of russian hoax judge contreras,
I liked the video, interesting the animals drawn often are not the reason being there.
On tanks, namely M-1, I predict the Russians will have one not to long after they get there. Can be as easy as stop running and get captured.
Very interesting. I don’t know where you come up with this stuff, but thank you Neo.
Neo–
Glad to know you’ve arrived safely on the Left Coast without any complications caused by NOTAM system outages, UFOs, or the Secretary of Transportation. (Removes tongue from cheek). Seriously, please rest and take care of yourself, as you must be very tired– don’t feel obliged to put up new posts tonight. And give Gerard and Olive warmest greetings from all of us here.
Our troops would probably be too busy with CRT briefings to maintain our Abrams’ anyway.
Re: Ukraine
The latest Peter Zeihan podcast on Ukraine is quite grim. Worse if one knows how chilling the 1st Holodomor was:
–Peter Zeihan, “The 2nd Holodomor: A Pending Genocide”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDVH_JJIRWI
Zeihan fully acknowledges how valiant and smart the Ukrainians have been and how vicious and incompetent the Russians.
Nonetheless, the Russians have a huge population advantage over Ukraine. Putin is moving another 500,000 troops into Ukraine, so Ukraine will have to kill Russians 5:1 for every Ukrainian.
In the long run Zeihan remains pessimistic on Ukraine’s chances. This winter Zeihan sees the Russians focusing on attacking Ukraine’s energy infrastructure to demoralize/kill with cold. Then in the spring/summer they will attack Ukraine’s agriculture infrastructure so people will starve.
This will have repercussions on those countries in Africa and the Middle East which depend on Ukraine for food, primarily wheat and corn. Z. sees Egypt as being particularly vulnerable.
This could be a very, very bad year for Ukraine.
___________________________
The Holodomor, also known as the Terror-Famine or the Great Famine, was a man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 that killed millions of Ukrainians.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
the holomodor the times has not yet apologized for covering up, now the examples of petlura and bandera, suggest what happens when you give up, once under stalin another under kruschev
kind of goodwinning, at this point, now xi is arch enemy, and he proved if from 2020-2022, yet we seem to be making it much easier for him to defeat us,
The second Holodomor would require a total information blackout and control of all Ukrainian borders I would think. Not likely.
There are Roosians (not the same as Russians) who are all in on a second Holodomor. They would not stop with Ukraine; the glory and restoration of Roosia requires such actions.
Vlad’s little gambit has already caused 180,000 killed, wounded, missing Russian soldiers. Pyrrhic but without a victory as yet.
I find that the comments on these videos are often just as profound and thought-provoking as what the presenter is saying.
I don’t know if any Western news agencies are covering this but Jack Posobiec mentioned it on social media.
https://bulgarianmilitary.com/2023/01/25/moscow-sees-leopards-uranium-cores-munitions-as-dirty-nuclear-bomb/
You know, I’m starting to think that people like om are MAYBE not taking this whole situation quite as seriously as they should.
Mike
MBunge:
Not to start a disagreement, but if you could summarize your overall point about Ukraine, I’d appreciate it.
When I read your comments, it’s like walking onto an ongoing battlefield minus any larger context.
Bunge doesn’t know that depleted uranium (DU) used for armor and armor piercing rounds is essentially all U-238.
U-238 is non-fissile and of such low radioactivity that its half life is 4.5 billion years. It is toxic, to the kidneys for example, like totally non-radioactive lead, or totally non-radioactive tungsten. It is of such low radioactivity that it is used as a shielding material for, wait for it, radioactivity. It is denser than lead, Bunge.
Heavy metals are often toxic Bunge. See lead posioning for example.
Roosian propaganda and information warfare claims more Bunge brain cells.
Stuart Varney says: it is possible for Ukraine, + its allies, to win the War in Ukraine:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/stuart-varney-ukraine-could-win-its-war-with-russia-if-the-west-makes-the-right-moves/ar-AA16ugJl
Huxley, thanks for the Zeihan video.
His worries about the infrastructure are valid. Which brings this question to mind. Russia is violating international norms and treaties by invading Ukraine. In addition to providing lethal aid to Ukraine, why can’t the U.S. use the UN (at least those nations that don’t align with China/Russia) to stage a major campaign to broker a cease fire and eventual peace? If Ukraine ceases to exist as a viable ag producer or economic entity, and other countries suffer hunger as a result, isn’t that reason enough to press for peace?
Another major piece that is missing from our quiver is our fossil fuel industry. Putin would have less leverage and money if we turned our oil and gas industry loose. Biden and company have been three steps behind and remain so.
I wish it wasn’t so.
Speaking of Epstein not killing himself, Tucker Carlson opened tonight with an observation on Bill Barr’s recollection of the master pedo’s demise. It seems that Barr’s initial concern was not with the security lapse, but a worry that the public might jump to unapproved conclusions about what happened.
There in a nutshell is the psychological distinction between the RINO and populist wings of the Republican Party. Populists lump RINOs and Democrats into a uniparty that hoards power to itself and denies it to the general public. Some of the populace are fine with that exclusive arrangement, but it irks the rest of us.
huxley —
I have lately become a bit of a Peter Zeihan stan, but I think he’s wrong on a couple of points.
First, Russia may *say* they’re conscripting 500k more troops, and they may actually *try* to conscript 500k more troops, but whether those 500k actually show up at training centers, whether they actually get equipped with anything, and whether they can actually be deployed to Ukraine remains to be seen. Ukraine still has the “not enough bullets to kill them all” problem, but I don’t think it’s nearly as bad as Zeihan does.
Second, pre-war Ukraine was such a colossally ginormous *exporter* of food that Russia would have to nearly burn the entire country to ash to get Ukraine itself to starve. The actual Holodomor was only accomplished by Russians physically going to every place in Ukraine and stealing the crops at gunpoint. They can’t do that today, unless by some satanic miracle they win the war and occupy all of Ukraine *first*.
Bryan Lovely:
Good to hear from you again, it seems you’ve been scarce lately.
Bryan Lovely:
Reasonable arguments. I don’t claim to know.
I find Zeihan persuasive, but I am watching to see how his predictions turn out. He is at least talking at a practical level which I find missing in much discussion of Ukraine.
You assume details that are not in evidence. Your point that Vlad’s talking heads are possibly huffing and puffing are fine; your assumption that repeating someone else’s talking point confers agreement with that point, rather than pointing out a possible indication of the original speaker’s future actions, less so.
The Russians also seem to be assuming that APFSDSDU rounds are on the schedule, which they may not be, especially since the Ukrainians have been getting hand-me-downs. Which means they’re more likely to get the tungsten-cored APFSDS (that’s Armor Piercing, Fin-Stabilized, Discarding Sabot (Depleted Uranium)) rounds instead. They’ll mostly be firing high-explosive either way, assuming things go forwards.
It’s worth pointing out that the Bradleys previously promised are also capable of firing DU rounds, so it’s not a new threshold in that respect; it’s my understanding that the US has even tested rounds as small as .50″/12.7mm with uranium penetrators, suitable for the bigger sniper rifles and machine guns.
om —
Thanks. It’s been a number of factors together.
1. As a student of military history, I’ve been obsessively following war news on Twitter (yeah, I know, but I have 15-20 accounts who actually know what they’re talking about and aren’t particularly political).
2. I tore my kitchen/dining room down to the studs and found out I was going to have to tear out a bunch of the studs and rebuild a floor and an exterior wall as well, and then one of my one-car-garage-sized sheds decided to collapse on New Year’s Eve, so I’ve been physically worn out a lot.
3. Work got interesting and time-consuming with new projects instead of boring maintenance, so I haven’t had as much time during the day.
4. I’ve started dating someone. 🙂
I have bandwidth for war news, Instapundit, a little of Sarah Hoyt’s blog, and that’s about it.
huxley —
It will be interesting to see if his predictions on China pan out. Mass famine and concomitant political upheavals don’t look like they’re in the cards, but it’s possible that the last year has been one of using up the design margin and *next* year the crunch will come.
Overall his observations on demography and North American reindustrialization are the most trenchant and plausible. Other than that he’s a bit of a catastrophist. But so was Cassandra, so we’ll see. He does consistently say that even if the rest of the world goes to hell the US will still be sitting pretty, so we have that going for us, which is nice.
So Bunge, if DU rounds in Leopards or Bradleys are ‘dirty bombs’ to Roosia, what are they to you? Are tungsten penetrators ‘toxic bombs’?
Are lead bullets, ‘toxic killers’ to Roosia? Lead never becomes non-toxic, and DU after 4.5 billion years, becomes, lead. Roosia forever?
@ Bryan Lovely > “even if the rest of the world goes to hell the US will still be sitting pretty,”
And if the USA goes down, the rest is gonna be in a world of hurt.
Glad to hear from you, and hoping the good news eventually outweighs the bad news.
Tangent:
A recurring theme here at Neo’s place is the apparent inability of our friends and family on the Left to put any credence in arguments against their Narrative.
One reason is that they don’t ever see or hear about any of the real-world events that Conservatives who follow politics are generally conversant with.
Literally.
They never see the other side of the coin.
This is a recent example; they can be multiplied endlessly.
Hunter Biden’s laptop comes to mind.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/01/kevin-mccarthy-explains.php
I’m assuming that the Politico staff assumes that their readers won’t click over to the video, having already been told all they need to know or they would not have linked it.
I did watch it, and I’m actually starting to think McCarthy may not be as squishy as conservatives feared, at least in some aspects.
And the letter to Jeffries was also awesome.
Second tangent (it takes two to tang-o):
https://www.thefp.com/p/the-epidemic-of-diedsuddenly
The Epidemic of #DiedSuddenly
Why is the public turning to a single, ominous explanation for tragedies like Damar Hamlin’s collapse? Two doctors explain.
By Vinay Prasad, John Mandrola
January 25, 2023
Not a lot of new news to engaged conservative readers (see Tangent the First), but a very well presented analysis by credible sources.
Tangent in the third degree – just because it made me laugh.
https://notthebee.com/article/pet-fish-use-their-owners-credit-card-without-his-knowledge-to-add-funds-to-a-nintendo-eshop-account-heres-how-they-did-it
}}} Plato’s cave word of the day: zaftig
Sophocles’ mosaic phrase of the day:
HYUUUUUGE Trrrracts of Land!
AF: That vid of McCarthy is great!
In the spirit of the goldfish scammer saga, we present the latest round in the dog-bites-man/man-bites-dog “dialectic”….
https://nypost.com/2023/01/24/kansas-man-shot-by-dog-in-hunting-accident-ided/
– – – – – – – – – –
And now for something a tad different…but if ye think about it a bit, not by all that much…
(Um, for this one, you’d better take a seat…put down that drink….)
‘ “Directed Evolution”? Pfizer R&D Exec Says Covid-19 Created In Wuhan, Is ‘Cash Cow’ For Company ‘
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/directed-evolution-pfizer-rd-exec-says-covid-19-created-wuhan-cash-cow-company
Key grafs:
‘Jordon Trishton Walker, Pfizer’s Director of R&D, Strategic Operations – and an mRNA Scientific Planner, said that the company is exploring a way to “mutate” COVID via “Directed Evolution” in order to anticipate new strains for their Covid-19 vaccine.
‘ “One of the things we [Pfizer] are exploring is like, why don’t we just mutate it [COVID] ourselves so we could create — preemptively develop new vaccines, right?…. If we’re gonna do that though, there’s a risk of like, as you could imagine — no one wants to be having a pharma company mutating f**king viruses…”…[adding] that he believes Pfizer scientists are going about it slowly “because you obviously don’t want to advertise that you are figuring out future mutations.”
‘ “Don’t tell anyone. Promise you won’t tell anyone. The way it [the experiment] would work is that we put the virus in monkeys, and we successively cause them to keep infecting each other, and we collect serial samples from them,” he said, before saying calling the Covid-19 natural origins theory bullshit….’
REMEMBER now, “Don’t tell ANYONE”!!
…Gosh, looks like after this, Pfizer may well be toast.
(Well, they had a nice run, I guess…)
OTOH, this can’t be for real, nossir. It’s gotta be parody. The guy’s not serious. he’s gotta be joking, right?…Right…?
File under: The writing’s on the wall…as Klaus might say to…his holy acolytes…at the WTF “convention”….
The way of Russias war is zachista cleansing thats how they did in berlin to afghanistan its what they taught the algerians and the syrians what matters is what this proxy conflict us doing to our readiness it is ruinous in ways one cannot grok
Watching CNBC after trading close yesterday. Analysts asked about the social media platforms allowing Trump back on. An analyst says this may be a problem because when he was banned from Twitter misinformation immediately declined by 40%.
I can’t even imagine a person being this stupid.
Not even before the TWTR files releases. After?!
Liberals no longer inhabit the same world with the rest of us. They see 1984 as a guide. They are sick. Seriously sick.
This isn’t about a disagreement over tax rates or environmental regulation or union rules or welfare policy or normal political disagreements. This is about one group of people who genuinely believe that other people do not deserve to have rights.
This is an active denial of the humanity of others. What word could we use to describe these deniers?
Back in the day–fifty-plus years ago–it took eight weeks of Basic and nine weeks of infantry Advanced Individual Training to get a reasonably competent replacement to a unit. After which, given sufficient time, or as much as was available, he leaned unit SOP.
Anything short of that or its equivalent is going to show up on the battlefield, even if the equipment is up to spec. Which, it appears is not the case.
Hence massive casualties which will have an effect on troop morale and the folks at home. For, at least on the map, little gain.
Happened to read, some time ago, about The Great Escape (not the movie). An historian picked a date in the sixteenth century. Prior to that, a “prince” who came into some money was advised to use it to invade and conquer a neighbor. Also applied to a baron. Best ROI. Subsequent to that date, what with the increased benefits of technology, transport, and increasing cost of war, best ROI was for internal development. Wish Putin had read that.
Except for santelli and kernan i believe they would say that sam bankman fraud was one of their top gets mary meacher henry blodgett all the subprime frauds
Ok then
https://dailycaller.com/2023/01/26/nasa-asteroid-2023-bu-science-satellites/
And once again, from the “Smartest Guy I Know” Files:
Homing in on the GUT (Biden edition)….
” ‘Incredibly Suspicious’: Detailed Hunter Biden Email Raises Questions Amid Classified Docs Scandal”—
https://nypost.com/2023/01/25/suspicious-hunter-biden-email-may-be-based-on-classified-info-gop-senator/
Key phrase:
“…to feed his drug habit…”
(I keep wondering about the whys and the wherefores of this rogue administration’s mega-destructive modus operandi…which leads me to further wonder whether there’s a sick, bizarro connection between Hunter’s enormous drug “issues” and Dear Old Dad’s vengeful, vindictive campaign to flood the country he “leads” not only with Fentanyl but with crime…violence, anxiety and despair….not that he’d need Hunter as an excuse, mind you; but still…)
H/T Instapundit.
Miguel:
If you can’t use grammar or sentences don’t expect anyone to “groc” what you are saying.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I read Stranger in a Strange Land by RAH back in the ’60s so I know what “groc” means.
Richard Aubrey,
Good stuff on ROI of war.
Matt Ridley in his Ted Talk “When Ideas have Sex” notes that today the average Englishman works half a second to earn enough to pay for an hour of light (with inflation and brain dead energy policy not sure how much that has increased). In 1800 a candle that lasted an hour cost 6 hours at the average wage.
For most of human history all but the 1% lived in abject poverty. To the fodder which served as potential soldiers, the attraction of raiding other people and taking their stuff must have been strong indeed.
The folks who study genetics say that we have twice as many female ancestors as males. About 80% of females over history produced offspring. Only 40% of males. For all but the most recent tiny stretch of time, the average male had very little to offer a female in the way of provision and protection. Easy to see why a teenage woman would rather be the third or fourth wife of a man of means who could provide and protect her and her kids than the only mate of a dirt-poor teenage boy.
I’m convinced that this explains a lot of war over the ages. Your prince or some aspiring tribal chief had a ready supply of extremely frustrated young men who had no prospects for their urges to procreate or any normal way to acquire property to attract a woman. War must have been attractive.
“That tribe across the valley has women and stuff. Let’s go invade and take both! Follow me!”
The zero sum game is a dangerous one.
stan
Happened to read some fiction about the Picts and the motivations of the guys who went up the scaling ladders. Same thing. Might get to sack a town….otherwise…not much lost. Meat that’s gone off, no firewood to stay warm, the big shots are drinking whiskey and planning the assault, you have doubtful water.
Having said that, the harem-like arrangements in some parts of the MENA might put some guys in the same position.
@Robert Sendler
I wouldn’t go that far. Soviet tanks inflicted heavy losses on the Israelis at various points before the Israelis could get their acts together (everyone knows Yom Kippur but not so many people know about the rampage Egyptian Armor did in the Southwest during 1948), the Cubans had significant success in Africa – mostly against Somalia and other African rebels but sometimes against the SAD F – while the Indians have regularly defeated Pakistani armor regardless of what either side was using.
I think the moral of the story for this is – outside of South Africa where the cases where the SADF lost owed more to numbers and serious firepower/armor imbalance – so much relies upon the quality of the crews and how they manage the hardware.
Design choices lead to certain outcomes. Putting your propellant in with your crew and releying on an autoloader to minimize hull volume has proved to be a risky choice in Ukraine. But bad doctrine and a poor plan was much wirse than marginal equipment.
@MBunge
Victor Hugo claimed that the Bourbons had Forgotten Nothing and Learned Nothing. It seems like you are fanatical about going one better, Learning Nothing but also Forgetting Plenty.
You write this as if this sort of thing hasn’t happened about a dozen times in our modern history since the Soviets got the nuke.
Moreover, you ALSO ignore the fact that Putin started this war and particularly the latest upsurge of violence in February of last year, and that he had done similar before such as in Georgia in 2008. Which might indicate that he bears chief responsibility for this.
Half-true. Training new operators is “relatively” easy since you need the tank, trainable personnel, and a modest amount of logistical supplies. Which is also why you can train entire units on one or two craft if you have enough. The big issue with the Abrams is long term operational logistics, which almost nowhere in Europe can sustain.
But this also makes sense given how this was prompted by Germany claiming it would not send the Leopard 2 or even approve other operator nations sending theirs to Ukraine until the US sent Abrams. So the Brandon Regime and Congress called their bluff and pledged to send them in order to humiliate the Germans into action so that Ukraine would get Leopards far before they will get Abrams. Especially given the time to set up logistics for the Abrams (which to be honest have been overdue).
But apparently all of this goes over your head.
Of course it will be, and it is a problem that stronger and more competent leadership under Trump would have avoided or at least minimized. But it is also a problem Putin foisted upon us, in large part because he recognized a useful idiot in a bad situation when he saw them. He apparently gravely miscalculated how slight the resistance is.
For your sake I sure as hell hope you research your fallout shelter more carefully than you do Saddam’s supposedly nonexistent ties to Al Qaeda and nonexistent WMD.
An unfortunate swing and a miss from Posobiec, primarily because he commits the cardinal sin of taking the Kremlin’s word both seriously and uncritically.
At no point do either you or he consider the many, many, MANY times Russia has lied and bluffed in this war before, going back to Putin’s insistence that he did not send Spetznaz into Crimea in 2014 and that you could get equipment like the Guards Spetznaz playing Little Green Men in Russia were using from any MilSurp store.
It also doesn’t seem to occur to you that while Putin has danced around threatening a nuclear response in veiled terms, he has consistently pushed back from the bring in large part because he realizes he would lose.
And that while Russian diplomats may think they can obtain benefit from trying to make THIRD PARTIES THINK that they will respond to the deployment of Leopard 2s as a Dirty Bomb, they have very little to gain from ACTUALLY treating such as a Dirty Bomb. Especially given the Kremlin equipment cycle Perun has noted of making maximum threats when discussions to send equipment are ongoing and then shifting gears to downplaying the importance of said equipment when it becomes reasonably clear the threats are ringing hollow and they cannot hope to actually prevent the transfer.
But apparently we’re supposed to uncritically believe that this time they really, really mean it guize?
In spite of how self-evidently ludicrous the claim is and how actually doing this would destroy most of their relations with neutral players like Russia and Saudi Arabia?
I’ll note that Russia certainly did not respond to the use of depleted uranium ammunition in Yugoslavia and Iraq as if dirty bombs were used. Nor did anybody else. Because regardless of what Putin’s paid liar said this time, it’s been established record that whatever the negative effects of depleted uranium ammo are (which are by most accounts seriously overstated by Kremlin sources) they are NOTHING comparable to a dirty bomb, and the Kremlin reacting to their deployment as such would not only be stupid and apocalyptical, but also unprecedented overkill.
It’s interesting you conflate taking fundamentally unserious threats from the Kremlin at face value with taking the situation seriously. A lot of us have taken the situation very seriously. We’ve just come to very different conclusions than you have. And most of the time we’ve been proven to be correct.
@Miguel cervantes
Except putting India and even Brazil in that grouping is rather unlikely. India hates China and vice versa far more than it likes any other group, so the idea that India will be obligingly playing third wheel in the Shanghai Cooperation Org does not gel with the barely-frozen border war China and India have. Had you put in Pakistan you would have not had to decrease the number by that much and you’d be more accurate.
While Brazil is a true wild card shifting between pro-American and anti-American sentiments, with the latter on the rise due to Lula. But it is also isolated and vulnerable in the Western Hemisphere like Vargas was in WWII, and we know how that ended up.
@huxley
I’m nowhere near as fond of Zeihan as you and Bryan Lovely are – he has always struck me as a Biden lavishing Globalist Prog who gets the narrative, though he has had his moments – but he has usually had some decent points in his videos. But this I think his points towards the end of the video were good but the start was a clear swing and a miss.
Firstly: I’d echo what Bryan said about the problems with taking Putin’s claims that Russia will mobilize 500,000 more people at face value and double down with them. It’s certainly true that Russia has a resource and population advantage overall vis a vis Ukraine, but this absolutely does not mean that they will have no problem throwing human bodies in “almost limitless numbers” into the war. As we’ve seen by the acute head count shortages the Russian military has had throughout this war and its reliance on auxiliaries and unofficial support.
This part of what Zeihan says seems to be rehashing an old cliche of another generation of Eastern Front History. The truth is that even in the conflicts where we’d associate “Russia” or the Soviet Union as throwing soldiers in “almost limitless numbers” (whether it’s in WWII, WWI, Lenin’s wars in the interbellum, the Napoleonic Wars, the Russo-Swedish and Russo-Turkish wars, 1848, Livonian War, or the like), Russia HAS struggled with the fact that its manpower supply is QUITE limited. Indeed, one reason why WW3 never really manifested in a serious way beyond the Elbe River Crisis is the fact that by 1944 the Soviets were running on next to empty in terms of manpower reserves and were resorting to massive conscription of hundreds of thousands of people in reoccupied territories like the Baltics, Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and so forth.
And that was in an almost uniquely favorable conflict in terms of getting people motivated to go out and join the war effort. Usually Russia starts running into problems getting troops to the front long before it starts running into its overall manpower running low. WWI is pretty much the archtypical example because while the bayonet/head count strength of the Russian military remained pretty consistently high throughout, that did not mean that the troops replacing annihilated units with sub par or nonexistent equipment were any happier and eventually they turned on the government(s) continuing the war (ironically just as the Central Powers were on the verge of collapse).
The habitual problems the Kremlin has had coaxing recruitment – even unofficially and with massive benefits – as well as the consistently understrength nature of the Russian troops in Ukraine I think underline this problem. Putin certainly isn’t acting like he can mobilize troops in almost limitless numbers, because he can’t. And draft riots and arson attacks are already playing out (albeit on a limited scale). And even if Putin can somehow square the circle and get the full intake of troops in that doesn’t mean they will be committed to attacking or as able to fill out both the front and rear areas from units like the thoroughly devastated “separatist republic” units.
He also ignores the tooth to tail ratio. While Russia’s military has usually been more tooth than ours has (usually to their detriment) that doesn’t mean they will want to send forth the logistics officers with Kalashnikovs to the front. Especially since their existing support units have ALREADY been hollowed out due to sending troops to the front to make up infantry strength and suffering the usual casualties that entails. The Ukrainians have had a similar problem but nowhere near on this scale due to their ability to rely on volunteers and territorial militia (or even scummier units like Gaidar) while the West has been helping them streamline training.
So it’s quite likely that at the actual points of conflict the Russians will struggle to match Ukrainian numbers. Especially given the size of this front. This also means that to a very large degree Ukraine CAN afford to trade body for body with Russia because Russian manpower is a lot more limited than just popping up the two nations’ census numbers on spreadsheet and saying “Yup Russia has a lot more than Ukarine*” shows.
(And even then we’re talking about a little less than 44 million Ukrainians compared to a little over 143 million Russians. So even if we magically removed all foreign fighters and somehow got everybody from comatose patients to infants to fight, the Ukrainians would still “only” need to kill a little less than 4 Russians for every one they lose in order to depopulate Russia. And realistically speaking the numbers are a lot narrower due to how neither side can recruit infants or the comatose and the number of foreign volunteers on both sides, especially Ukrainian).
Ironically one of the closer parallels to this war is probably one few people would think. The Livonian War of Ivan the Terrible in the middle of the 16h century. Which is of course kind of ludicrous given how vastly different things are, from the technology to the tactics to the terrain (the wide fields – if often muddy and shelled – of Ukraine versus the dense forested areas and defiles of the Baltics). But I think it is useful for a number of reasons. It was a brutal invasion of a fractured and disordered region with the intent of overthrowing its government and installing a “Russian”/Muscovite puppet government to rule over the united territory, dependent on the core of professional troops and politicians in the Muscovite Army roughly analogous to the standing troops of the Russian Military and assorted Contractniki and Mercenaries today.
It also very quickly ran into united opposition (for a change) from the countries on Moscow’s borders while Muscovite occupation policies undermined their puppet ruler’s authority and their own good will. So eventually the Allies (who almost don’t deserve the term due to how fractious and often directly divided they were) gradually ground down the Muscovite positions on the area while repeatedly defeating the Russian armies in the field when they tried to progress.
Eventually public sentiment turned against the war and Ivan at home, especially due to the staggering losses his professional units had suffered and the problems trying to get levies to fill the gaps (to say nothing of the political problems) and while Ivan survived in power he had to cut his losses and withdraw.
Obviously we need to be cautious about reading into history and looking for the parallels we want, especially for a conflict that seems so applicable. But I do think that it does show that the idea that we should be cautious about assuming Russia can field unlimited troops for an offensive war, especially in terms of professional or specialist units like engineers or the like.
Moreover, I’m not sure I agree with Zeihan that a mostly mobile war would help Ukraine, especially at this stage. Russia has far more mobile equipment at this stage than Ukraine does, so the ability to build strong defenses along the front and buy time to help prepare is probably better (especially given the threat of Russia widening the war through Belarus).
Odds and ends…
“resorting to massive conscription of hundreds of thousands of people in reoccupied territories like the Baltics, Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and so forth”
Romania shouldn’t be on the list. Instead of an occupation, it switched sides. The Soviet-imposed agreement reduced the size of the Romanian army by about half (which ironically finally brought the unit TOEs for things like artillery up to the numbers that they were supposed to be at :P), but kept it in the field (which makes sense given that the Romanian army had over 1.2 million men under arms when they switched sides) and under Romanian control (though overall command of the front was handled by the Soviets, of course) with Romanian equipment (the Soviets even confiscated any and all former Soviet equipment that was in Romanian service). Of course, this finally gave the Romanians a chance to fight the “real” enemy – i.e. the Hungarians – and retake the disputed territory that Romania had been forced to hand over to Hungary a few years earlier.
Russian logistics is awful. I read an article that was published in the December before the current war started, and it emphasized that Russia relies heavily on railheads and trucks. Trains move the supplies to railheads near the border, and the trucks are supposed to take them the rest of the way. The problem is that Russia doesn’t have nearly enough trucks. And the further the front lines get from the railheads, the more the problem is compounded as the trucks have to spend more time transporting each individual load of supplies. Probably not so much of an issue at the moment given that the war has been a long, slow grind for quite some time now. But something to keep in mind.
Additionally, there’s awful corruption in Russia. I remember reading that shortly after the big conscription call-up was announced, it was discovered that the uniforms for a large number of the troops didn’t exist. The paperwork said that the uniforms existed. But in reality… I would be shocked if uniforms were the only military supply with that problem.
Finally, while I would be cautious about drawing too many comparisons, it’s worth remembering that if the Finns had only been outnumbered 3.5 to 1, modern Finland’s borders with Russia would probably be identical to the country’s borders in 1938 instead of where they are now. The odds certainly seem to be stacked against the Ukrainians. But mass in warfare is only a benefit, and never a certain guarantor of victory.