It Is Friday...

... a day of appreciation for Russian  KGB agents, LOL)) 

I wonder in what discipline Liz Truss got her Master of Sports of USSR title (the left-most pendant)? Boxing? Track and Field? Yes, track and field, most likely sprint--because she finished her distance with an amazing result--45 days, best ever in British history. My congratulations to KGB Colonel Elizaveta Trasova, a humble girl from Altai region, on her amazing accomplishments. And now--discotheque. 

We were supposed to see Marc in 2020 at Mount Vernon, WA. But then COVID-19 happened and we refunded out tickets. Marc is more than just (possibly Freddy's unknown son--Freddy was bisexual, actually) an amazing living tribute to late Freddy--that is why I do not follow Queen with Adam Lambert, despite his amazing vocal abilities--but Marc Martel is a monster of a singer in his own right. But as one guy stated--Freddy's voice was a miracle, and miracles do happen again:

But I want to re-post again this masterpiece, re-imagining...

 

This is a golden standard... and I cannot wait to see Marc in our neck of the woods...

  

Update: Ah, hell with it, since I introduced KGB Colonel Mary Elizabeth Truss, why don't we remember American liberal and, actually, movie star Dean Reed who projected everything it was great about American man in 1960s and 1970s, when he moved to USSR and, later, GDR. Most Soviet women were desperately in love with him. 

Let's face it, he was projecting America. Unlike it is today when RuPaul types dominate US culture.

Not That It Matters...

... but UK long ago turned into political, economic and military circus and the fact that Liz Truss lasted only 44 days changes absolutely nothing because reserves of clowns in UK are, obviously, limitless. By far the more important news than Liz Truss' tenure was this:

Former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has now emerged as the Conservative Party's most popular potential replacement for the current head of government, Liz Truss, a new YouGov poll has shown. The survey, which was conducted on October 17-18, revealed that 32% of respondents would like Johnson to return as prime minister, despite a series of scandals and cabinet resignations that precipitated his eventual departure. “Those who voted for Truss to take over are particularly keen on a Boris Johnson return if she left: 44% put him top of their list of potential successors,” the pollsters noted.

You cannot cure terminal illness, the only thing possible is a palliative therapy, meaning shooting copious amounts of hard drugs into the patient to relieve pain and suffering before death. I am, in general, not very optimistic about Europe and Larry's posting yesterday the "travel report" from Phil Giraldi reinforced my position. The crisis is systemic and affects every single facet of modern combined West no matter what actions completely cornered Western "elites" take to save themselves. 

My friend Mike Krupa sent me the link to today's excellent piece by Douglas Macgregor in TAC.  He notes:

Of the Vietnam War, Henry Kissinger, former national security advisor and secretary of State under Presidents Nixon and Ford, said, “We should never have been there.” Before long, Americans, even the politicians inside the Beltway, will reach the same conclusion about Washington’s Ukrainian proxy war against Russia. No one in the White House, the Senate, or the House consciously set out to turn the proxy Ukrainian war with Moscow into a contest of “competitive societal collapse” between Russia and NATO. But here we are. No one imagined that the Biden administration and the bipartisan war party would drive Americans and Europeans into a political, military, and economic valley of death, from which there is no easy escape. Yet that is precisely what is happening.

What Macgregor describes here is incompetence. It is not a bug but a feature of which I write non-stop for a decade, at least. They ARE that ignorant, they ARE that stupid, and, yes, they ARE that incompetent and a massive body of empirical evidence supports these assertions. But that is what defines a systemic crisis. Read the whole piece, it is worth it, not to mention the fact that I applaud Macgregor's description of Kissinger's "strategy" in Vietnam--a recurring story for Washington. And Macgregor concludes it with what I warned for 8 years now, when stated in late 2014-early 2015 that the US has sustained a massive defeat. 

As long as Washington delivers cash, military assistance, and equipment to Ukraine, Kiev will fight its unwinnable war, and Washington’s ruling political class will profit from the transfer of cash to the Pentagon and the U.S. Defense Industrial Base. But Washington, its NATO allies, and Ukrainians will gain nothing of strategic value, while Russia is likely to grow stronger. That is a development Washington will regret.

Well, Russia is growing stronger every day and no volume of tactical minutiae can hide anymore the fact of West's collapse and it being written off. Even this little detail tells us something:

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has denied “ordering” the bombing of the Crimean Bridge, earlier this month. The president made the remarks during an interview with the Canadian broadcaster CTV, aired on Wednesday. Asked to comment on the “spectacular attack” on the bridge, as the broadcaster put it, Zelensky said Kiev was not involved. “We definitely did not order that, as far as I know,” he told the reporters.

He is right, in a larger sense, because it was ordered by British and this is the extent of modern British military "power"--sabotage, false flags, propaganda and things of this nature. Saying that, I do not offer my personal opinion--it is a recurring theme in Russian media based on high-positioned sources in Russian government that Crimean Bridge sabotage had all hallmarks of British involvement. In the same time--what's new? Zelensky is panicking. So, when London cries that:

A Russian Su-27 fighter jet fired a missile near a British Boeing RC-135 reconnaissance plane over international waters in the Black Sea, Defense Minister Ben Wallace told the UK's Parliament on Thursday. According to Wallace, the incident was accidental and Moscow blamed it on a technical malfunction. He added that London had accepted this explanation. The run-in between the spy plane and the fighter jet occurred on September 29. Following the incident, London temporarily suspended patrols and expressed concerns to Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu, Wallace noted. “A reply by the Russian Minister of Defense on the 10th of October, stated that they have conducted an investigation into the circumstances of the incident and stated it was a technical malfunction of the Su-27 fighter,” he revealed, adding that Moscow “acknowledged that the incident took place in international airspace.”

They should remember that the next time some S-400 AD complex in Crimea may have also some technical malfunction and some missiles may accidentally shoot down RAF planes "patrolling" over the Black Sea, which is about 1,700 miles from Albion. 

In related news, the pain dial is being turned closer and closer to 11. 

For the first time since Russia invaded, Ukraine is facing large-scale nationwide disruptions to electricity and rolling blackouts from extensive damage to the country’s power infrastructure from Russian missile attacks this month. Ukrainian officials have sought to restrict supply to allow energy companies to repair power facilities that have been pounded by Russian air strikes. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has urged people to use as little electricity as possible from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. and prepare for temporary blackouts if this was not done. Russian attacks have knocked out 30% of the country's power plants, causing massive blackouts. The new development comes just weeks after Russia and Belarus announced the formation of a new joint force, with the Ukrainian army seeing rising military threats from the north. 

Nah, nothing to see here, Russia is losing and VSU is about to take Moscow. Any British Prime-minister will tell you that. Ah, wait...

Somebody, Stop Medvedev, LOL))

But he is right, that is why it is so funny--he minces no words and calls it as it is. 

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has said the new UK prime minister, Liz Truss, will continue the “tradition” started by her predecessor Boris Johnson by finishing her tenure “in disgrace.” Truss, formerly the foreign secretary in Johnson’s Conservative government, officially became prime minister on Tuesday. Taking to Telegram on Wednesday, Medvedev, who currently serves as deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, commented on the succession of governments in the UK: “Out goes the freak guy, in comes the freak lady.” He described the new PM as “an incompetent and mediocre thermonuclear Russophobe who has no elementary ideas about politics, history, geography, but wants to defeat Russia in everything.”

Western "elites" are a freak show. Wherever you look nowadays you see only one human pathology after another both in moral and even physical terms. With the exception of Bearbock, who compensates acceptable physical appearance with being an ignorant fanatic, and, to a certain degree Ursula von Der Lugen, most what we see nowadays is down right repulsive. Western women in politics are now nothing more than holographic projections of the third wave feminism which is a euphemism for turning modern woman into a bizarre male units with vaginas. But then again, after this:

No comments. After BoJo, however, one should not be surprised with anything or anyone getting on top of British political Parnassus, because it will be a guarantee of having ignorant, and, frankly, very unattractive person. 

But then again, at least Buckingham Palace has an antidote now with definitely a truly beautiful woman. 

And I am sure that Duchess of Cambridge is aware of this obvious disparity, precisely because she projects a true femininity, motherhood and being a wife, gorgeous at that. Only Royal Status prevents her from being "cancelled" in the times when being a freak is viewed as an achievement.

On Wunderwaffe Thinking, Again. And Some Other Items.

As I was pretty much from the git go on record--the time frame of SMO was only a secondary consideration relative to political objectives of SMO, which are a destruction of the present Ukrainian terrorist state with as much saving of human life as possible. Generally that is why it is called SMO (Special Military Operation), because should it have been a real war we would see Kiev's center pretty much flattened, political "elite" of 404 exterminated and we would see much higher civilian casualties. This is not the case at all. As Shoigu today stated, again, the slowing of the offensive operations is a deliberate measure aimed at minimization of civilian casualties (in Russian). Many armchair generals wouldn't like the numbers of allowed civilian casualties in case of a real war, especially when taking such cities as Mariupol or Nikolaev, which is coming next.

Sadly, not all political observers understood this and other operational realities of SMO, with some of them going even as far as suggesting that Russia has to wrap SMO up as fast as possible in order not to leave combined West any opportunity to "escalate" and provide enough armaments to VSU to counter SMO. As life has shown, as it is almost always the case--Russian General Staff knew better. I also warned, since 2014 actually, that combined West doesn't have material and technological means of fighting Russia in Eastern Europe without losing catastrophically. Western weapons turned out to be nothing more than commercial items not designed to fight the modern war, plus--no Western economy, including the United States has the capability to produce them in needed quantities anyway. Not even close. 

So, in a bizarre twist of a geopolitical roller-coaster, it is almost expedient for Russia to drag it as long as possible, because the longer SMO continues now, the deeper and more desperate combined West becomes because of the realities of its largely fictional economy. Not to mention the fact that no Western weapon system can do anything to change outcome of SMO which is obvious to anyone with a half-brain. In another Wunderwaffe news, the US now sends Ukraine some NASAMS air defense complexes (in Russian), and as you have guessed already, these complexes traditionally, as everything before them, be that Holy Javelins, Stingers, M777, HIMARS etc., are also described as "game-changers", wundetwaffe and equalizers of chances. It is expected from the Western "experts", who, obviously, are stuck in the propaganda reels of the First Gulf War, that not only those complexes are DOA, but they are nothing more than AIM-120 AMRAAM missile stuck into the ground based container, tied into the "distributed" radar network and... well, that's about it. 

The latest version of the NASAMS based on the AMRAAM ER (Extended Range) missile allegedly has a 50 kilometer range, while previous version has 30 kilometer range and in general, this is a system designed primarily for fighting backward air forces and low "weight" missile salvos. You can read the booklet here. What version is being delivered to Ukraine I don't know, but I don't think that the US will be too happy to see AMRAAM ER ending up in one of the research institutes in Russia and that will happen with 100% certainty, as was the case with all other "super-pooper" weapons the US sent to Ukraine, including this vaunted (rather, unimpressive against serious AD) HIMARS which is now being studied by Russia. And then, of course, there is this issue of ECM and no Western system with radar homing ever encountered a serious jamming. Not to mention the fact, that modern tactical and operational manuals on Air Defense are being rewritten by Russia and the US has no access to that data arrays, only superficially observing SMO from the afar. But that is a separate topic altogether. 

Meanwhile the boy from Paris, warns:

France is headed toward the “end of abundance” and “sacrifices” have to be made during what is a time of great upheaval, President Emmanuel Macron told his cabinet on Wednesday upon returning from summer break. The country has faced multiple challenges lately, ranging from the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine to the unprecedented drought that has battered the whole European continent this summer. Yet, Macron believes that the crisis is actually of a much bigger scale and that structural changes are imminent. “Some could see our destiny as being to constantly manage crises or emergencies. I believe that we are living through a tipping point or great upheaval. Firstly, because we are living through... what could seem like the end of abundance,” he said. The country and its citizens must be ready to make “sacrifices” to meet and overcome the challenges they are facing, he continued. “Our system based on freedom in which we have become used to living, when we need to defend it sometimes that can entail making sacrifices,” Macron added. 

Hey, he got that right. Obviously, it will not be him who will be making "sacrifices", but French voted for that, and, frankly, I am getting a little bit tired from listening to these constant excuses that, no, we didn't vote for him (her), or the elections "were stolen", etc. Can we stop this charade? You vote the way you fight the war--you win, by a landslide. If people didn't vote for Biden (OK, let's assume that some voter fraud did take place), Macron or BoJo, how come they run their respective countries? Even considering some voting irregularities and incessant propaganda of the respective partizan media. No, by mere law of large numbers, Biden had a support of a huge portion of the US electorate. Macron was re-elected by French. So, can we stop this whining? It is, in the end, not just corruption of the whole election process, but of the population which continues to vote for own demise. Sorry, friends, but that's how to cookie crumbles. Russians elected Yeltsin, twice, even considering the obvious manipulation of election results in 1996. Russians paid the price. In the end, it is all about national unity in seeing problems. 

How about this "unity"?  

Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor-Greene awoke on Wednesday morning to armed police outside her Georgia house. The individual who called the police to Greene’s home claimed to be upset about her opposition to child sex changes and admitted to wanting to “swat” her, a term referring to the practice of summoning the police against a target under false pretense. According to a report by police in the town of Rome, Georgia, officers received a call shortly after 1am by an individual who told them that a man had been shot in a bathtub at the congresswoman’s address. The caller added that there was a woman and potentially children inside the home.

This is not the issue of elections, it is the issue of serious mental illness of the combined West as a whole, and the signs of it are everywhere. I loved PJW's great eye for detail. You say, do not use the broad brush? I say, nothing wrong with using it now. 

And here is the issue--that sets the US a little bit apart from, in this particular case, UK. US still retains its guns and a culture of a manliness. 

Report: Armed Citizen Foils Mass Shooting, Kills Indiana Mall Attacker

That is why I am always on record: while the United States itself faces a huge upheaval and even disintegration, a strong undercurrent of a classic, meaning normal, human values exists here. This may play its crucial role down the road. And yes, we have our guns to defend our homes in case the law and order breaks down. Europe, meanwhile, is encapsulated in this single photo of a father using own daughter to protect himself--this is the level of instincts, my friends, and the instincts are appalling, as is a society which promotes such "values". Defending a child is more than just matter of love, it is biological, deep inside our DNA. No wonder those types of people are the ones who vote for human trash, cowards, narcissists and psychopaths. 

Or, look at the Beltway.  And yes, they still live in the alternative universe:

India will seek broader consensus before it supports US-led efforts to cap the price of Russian oil, which American officials are expected to push for this week when they travel to Mumbai and New Delhi. The South Asian nation, which has emerged as one of the biggest buyers of Russian oil since the invasion of Ukraine, is hesitant to join the plan unless a consensus is reached with all buyers, according to people familiar with the matter, asking not to be identified because the deliberations aren’t public. 

Just read the whole thing, in order to, yet again, discover, that India didn't say a word on that and that the whole India's "position" is a fully made-up shit by creeps from Bloomberg. Why, down in the text, we read:

Kikukawa didn’t comment on how Indian officials view the price cap. An Indian finance ministry spokesperson didn’t respond to calls seeking comments.

Get it? Western "journalism" at its "best". And yes, Russia is about to run out of ammo and VSU is about to mount a massive counter-offensive on Kherson and soon will end up at the gates of Moscow. Here is your primer for Wednesday.      

What Can Be better Than Stealing?

More stealing! LOL, Germany wants to expropriate Russia-owned refineries in Germany. Now, Poland wants the piece of the action too. 

As Poland desperately attempts to restore the flow of Russian gas to the country, its government has ordered Russian Novatek to hand over pipeline infrastructure or face legal action amounting to infrastructure expropriation.  On Friday, a Polish government spokesman told the Associated Press that Russian Novatek Green Energy had been ordered to make its pipelines available to Polish companies and that failure to comply would mean legal action. Invoking crisis management laws, AP cited government spokesperson Piotr Mueller as saying that the fate of Novatek, Russia’s second-largest natural gas producer, “depends on whether this Russian firm, linked to Russia, will cooperate in the proper way …. whether the employees, acting on some instructions, will not be trying to block this process in some way”.

But, wait a minute, it was Poland, if my memory doesn't fail me, who wanted spot-pricing initially, which drove prices through the stratosphere,  and then Poland underscored at every opportunity her independence from Russian totalitarian gas. And now she is desperate. Oh my, such a Polish thing to do. Sure, let Poland cease the pipe-line, see what happens. Polish political top brass should recall a fundamental principle of any war, bet that hot, cold or merely economic. It reads like that: war is a very democratic affair--the enemy also has a say. 

Understanding this fundamental principle seems to escape the minds of EU "elites" and as the result each time they get slapped in the face by Russia they get hysterical and forget, in addition to other forgotten things, that normal governance, same as normal war-fighting, is done based on contingency planning. Russians do contingency planning 24/7 and the results are showing in the last 8 years. Here is another demonstration of spoiled children running Europe into he ground.

Members of the European Union are expected to agree on an embargo of Russian crude oil imports as early as next week, according to officials, in a move that would lay to rest a point of contention among its members. Such a measure has been discussed for weeks—with the United States adding pressure on the group to do its part to stop funding Russia with its payments for oil and gas supplies.The EU will continue to discuss the matter over the weekend, according to the New York Times, with the European Commission set to draft the finalized proposal to submit it to EU ambassadors for approval. Those ambassadors are scheduled to meet on Wednesday of next week, with final approval set to be delivered by the end of the week, anonymous EU officials told the New York Times.

Bloviation on the matters of "if Russia finds alternative buyers" is nothing more than verbal self-medication and PR. PR is the only thing Western "elites" are good at. Real governing and competent foreign policy--not so much. It is hard, one has to study hard, learn a lot and be incorruptible--a very tall order for both D.C. and Brussels. Plus, the news from the fronts in 404 are bad, really bad for NATO.  In fact, it is so bad, that great British mind, a strategist the likes of which world hasn't seen before to rise out of London, and who makes Winston Churchill and Disraeli look like amateurs, UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss called upon creation of "global NATO" and concluded with this:

The war in Ukraine is our war – it is everyone’s war because Ukraine’s victory is a strategic imperative for all of us.

So, quoting Harry Dunne from Dumb and Dumber (love this movie) in relation to this woman: "You know, Liz, just when I think you couldn't possibly be any dumber, you go and do something like this...and totally redeem yourself!" Indeed, what other peaks of sheer idiocy will those people summit before they succeed in creating a wonderful mix of Orwellian horror and Idiocracy slap-stick comedy.  Especially UK, who really provides as of lately a bulk of stupefying geopolitical cretinism, while being the nation in precipitous decline on all fronts and being noting more than America's chihuahua who is allowed to bark at guests at the party from master's lap. 

To demonstrate how bad are things for Kiev regime propped up by NATO? Here is Sladkov talking to Hero of Ukraine Evgeny Bova (In Russian).

Bova, a devout Nazi, Commander of the First Battalion of Marines of VSU, finds himself in an unfamiliar territory, that is being taken POW and that is why he still cannot completely grasp the fact that he is now merely an object and possibly some sort of exchange material for Medvedchuk. May be not. Here is yet another American freedom fighter, a former US marine, who went to 404 to fight those nasty Roosskies.

But evidently misunderstood a little bit the meaning of a real war, not some safari of shooting those "sand niggers", because Russian "snow niggers" (as The Saker loves to use such a taxonomy) are a bit different. The name of this guy is Joseph Cancel. A handsome guy, young, with wife and child left behind. What a waste. Can anybody explain to those guys that those Russian subhumans are not Iraqis or Afghan dehkans. Those primitive Rooskies have at their disposal excellent ISR complex and a lot of (and I mean a lot) high precision stand-off weapons, plus excellent artillery, including SMART munitions and other things which the US Armed Forces thought only they have. There is nothing romantic in being blown up by Iskander or be on the receiving end of X-101. I don't even speak about getting acquainted with Krasnopol munitions or being torn apart by Kornet's ATGM. So, now Western mercenaries begin to be killed and captured in wholesale numbers.

But one thing really caught my attention today. It is really disturbing to read because the rate of suicides, even considering a repair mode of any ship, is downright bizarre. 

As her one-year anniversary with the Navy approached last May, Hannah Crisostomo swallowed 196 pain relievers. Her organs shut down. Her brain swelled during multiple seizures and she stopped breathing. She was on life support for eight days, during which time doctors had warned her family that she may never regain normal brain functions. When Crisostomo woke up, she immediately wondered why she was still alive. Her thoughts grew more despairing during the next few weeks in the hospital and then in the Navy’s psychiatric ward. “If they keep me in the Navy, and they put me back in the same situation, I’m going to kill myself,” she recalled thinking, “and I’m going to be successful the next time.” That spring, Crisostomo, an aviation boatswain’s mate handler on the aircraft carrier USS George Washington, had been moved to night-shift repair duties. Amid disorganization on the ship during an extensive overhaul, Crisostomo said she was constantly berated for things out of her control.

Read the whole thing, it is both disturbing and stunning. The rate of suicides is atrocious and why? Because they have been forced to do duties on the aircraft carrier which is undergoing overhaul? Yes, these are also military duties, I am sure written in many manuals and many of those duties are not glamorous and involve often physical effort. They also involve dealing with noise, dirt, boredom and repetitiveness. The article, actually, makes a good point:

Smith disagreed when a sailor said living standards on the ship were not “necessarily up to par.” He said that the sailors get to go home most nights and that they were not “sleeping in a foxhole like a Marine might be doing.”

Excellent point. You have a cot, you have three hot square meals a day, snacks and, apart from traditional overhaul work-place risks of trauma, nobody shoots at you, let alone you are not under fire from artillery in some basement without water, heat and food. Try that for a change and see how the attitude will change. Could it be the case of a generation of Americans becoming absolutely soft mentally, entitled and unable to cope with even minor difficulties? This is military service, people, not a summer resort. I think that is precisely the case here, notwithstanding some legitimate complains about improving the department of "reasonable accommodation". So, this is your primer for Friday.

Liz Truss Makes Lavrov And Whole Russia Do This.

You know, this: 

Oh, boy. Now, of course, UK media which never had any class, which is expected from orgs staffed with the UK's higher "education" products, invented this non-story. I think they feel that Liz Truss' visit was an embarrassment for UK and as any uncultured brutes they decided to go on the attack.

The report that the meeting between Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his British counterpart Liz Truss in Moscow on Thursday ended with the Russian official unceremoniously walking away from their joint press conference is fake news, Russia’s UK embassy said, responding to reporting by a British broadcaster. Truss “received an icy reception from her Russian counterpart before he walked out of the press conference, leaving her behind at the podium,” the British outlet ITN reported on Thursday. ITN’s news editor Emma Burrows – formerly a CNN producer based in Russia – tweeted that Lavrov “just briskly walked off, leaving [Truss] on her own at the podium.” With Burrows's tweet raking up hundreds of likes, the Russian Embassy in London intervened, accusing the journalist of spreading fake news. “Lavrov did not ‘just briskly walk off’. The conference ended, both ministers got their things and walked to the doors, Lavrov was simply closer to them. In fact, he opened the doors to Mrs Truss and welcomed her in,” the embassy tweeted, urging Burrows to “please don't spread still frame fakes, not worth it.”

If you see British or US main-stream media "reporting", beware, in 9 cases out of 10 what they report will be a lie or its "finest" form--a completely made up shit. In related news, anyone who comes through these media are not journalists but whores both figuratively and directly speaking. Plus, being whores they do not understand what both human and professional class is, of which Sergei Lavrov has plenty. He is a consummate diplomat and a real gentleman--a concept which ceased to exist in the West long time ago. So, I had to talk about it a little bit today. 

Yes, this all would have been hilarious if it wouldn't have been so sad. Sadly, there is no such very loaded term as Habalka in English, but this is exactly the term which describes contemporary Western elites of both (or is it 125?) genders. Relatively new English term Karen does not quite do the job describing Western "elites" and media. Especially media. And, of course, UK is against Russia's sovereignty over Rostov-on-Don and Voronezh. How dare those Russians lay claims to these cities. Next thing you know, they will say that Moscow belongs to Russia. There are no limits to Russia's perfidy. 

Yes, folks, these are you Western "elites". They can not calculate, they do not know geography, they have no clue about real history of the world and, come to think about it, they do not know outside world itself. But they are entitled. I had a chance to communicate and interact with people of a fairly high status and who would otherwise be called intellectuals in the West in 1990s and early 2000s. Many of them were genuine articles, well-educated, with class oozing from them, intelligent, some with a great sense of humor. 22 years passed by--we are in a presence of zombies. It took only 20+ years for this precipitous decline. I have some ideas how it did happen. In related news, I will probably make a case for Dark Eagle weapon system and why I do not believe it is a viable weapon system yet (it will become at some point of time) and why this whole noise around it is primarily (at this stage) propaganda.