... in a larger sense. By far not everything is bad in American culture as we used to know it. In the end, for century New York's skyline was the envy of the world. Not anymore. NYC today is a shithole and high culture barely survives, and so does a remainder of clear understanding of one national self. You can take the girl out of the village, you cannot take the village out of the girl. The best America can offer today compares in terms of high culture as a Wanker county fair muppet show to Bolshoy Ballet. Even Washington's National Gallery of Art has its roots in Russia. American elites, however, ooze provincialism (not to speak of low intelligence) non-stop. So, Condi Rice decided to raise her opinion on Russia while having zero grasp of what she is looking at. County fair, all along. Nothing is wrong with county fairs, though, per se. Unless, of course, it is State Department and Pentagon.
Sunday, October 1, 2023
On Culture...
Saturday, September 30, 2023
Meanwhile RT Continues...
... to provide the tribune to some obviously shady amateurs--running along the front-line and calling oneself a military correspondent--does not make one a military planner and military professional. Vladislav Ugolny is represented as a Russian journalist born in Donetsk. You will find precious little about this guy, except that he is not military and he was... the head of Russian department of BBC called "Svet", he himself confirms it (in Russian). In other words, yet another creep similar to Rybar, Cassad, Edda et al. Look what he writes and rudderless RT (Simonyan is too busy parading herself a fool that she is at Russian TV) publishes this crap:
To illustrate what kind of creature this BSer is, here is him:
Meanwhile, the victory of either side can only be ensured by means of a land operation – eventually, either the Russian flag will return to Odessa or the Ukrainian flag will fly over Sevastopol. Otherwise, the region will only face further escalation and constant threats, including terrorist attacks (c).
Yes, and then they will take Moscow. It is impossible to explain to RT and Simonyan, who is utterly unqualified to run anything, except into the ground, and who has zero serious background in anything, that most (not all, exceptions like Scott Ritter are far and between) of RT's "military experts" are full of shit ignoramuses, even when they have former military ranks. So, something is wrong at RT, not with Ugolny who merely desperately tries to talk about things he has no clue about. My suggestion to RT is to "hire" military "experts" from high schools. And no, I have no intentions to offer myself as such, I simply see no reason of continuing to appear at RT.
Friday, September 29, 2023
Remember Your Name.
I know it is Friday and it should be fun. But it is difficult to do it each Friday. Here is the movie which will not be shown in the West. Even in Poland which participated in shooting this movie in 1974 and it was titled in Polish Zapamiętaj Imię Swoje, Remember Your Name in Russian. It is very loosely based on the real story of Russian child being, among many hundreds of thousands, shipped to Auschwitz. Yes, it wasn't just Jewish death camp. Here is one of the Slavic girls who would have been lost in posterity if not for Nazis documenting every single prisoner in their camps.
She was a Polish girl, Czeslawa Kwoka. One of the 139,000 Poles removed from their villages in 1939 and later in 1942 deported to Auschwitz.
I disagree with otherwise brilliantly eloquent George Galloway, Western public will not react in any way to what have happened last weekend in Ottawa. It is pure statistics, the sample size--Allies lost fewer KIAs combined in WW II than Leningrad lost civilians and military during the Siege. It is just the matter of quantitative impact which is in the foundation of historic memory. Modern Western establishment doesn't have any, together with morality. No Canadian, American or British suffered slavery, torture, inhumane treatment and death in numbers which ensure proper societal reaction to an absolute evil which Nazism represents. Some voices of consciousness from the West are very few. But then again, in the US military history of WW II has been written by defeated German generals and SS with Abwehr officers. Make your own conclusions this Friday evening.
Oh, Please!
The US Army studied armored warfare based on Patton's "advances" against virtually non-existent Wehrmacht's armor in Lorraine, and from the fairy tales by Manstein and Guderian, who had to confabulate in order to explain how, in the end, they got beaten by Katukov and Rotmistrov tank armies. The turkey shoot in the Gulf added very little, in fact--detracted, from the combined arms, and all attempts by honorable David Glantz and Jonathan House to change the perspective on the Red Army and WW II made a huge splash, but still failed. This was inevitable, when one operated on correlates of war, this ever valuable war statistics, lifted directly from Nazi sources. GIGO--Garbage In, Garbage Out.
Now, as RT notices, they want to train based on... drum roll--"lessons from Ukraine".
Ah, poor-poor lads, tactics is important and all--surely one needs to conceal oneself but tactical, let alone operational, manuals--the level at which outcomes of wars are decided--are written very differently than a collection of anecdotal evidence from grunts on the ground, however important those are. In order for one to understand, as the original from Defense One piece describes:
While EMCON is just a teeny-weeny part of a much larger picture of massive scale combined arms and multi-domain operations one needs what the US never got from her wars starting from Korea, because one cannot interrogate the enemy which is not a loser but quite the opposite--has beaten the US. That means an extremely limited access to viable combat statistics, especially in terms of crucial correlates between combat effectiveness of formations and weapons' arsenal they use. Now, add here a complete caricature 404 provides in terms of combat data to NATO and you will get the idea. No number of the US Army officers on the ground in 404 will change the paradigm, even with 24/7 work of US ISR complex. One still NEEDS those huge arrays of combat information for systematization and generalization in order to develop operational and strategic models for victory on the battlefield. And bar some SIGINT and localized data at the locations of already utterly demolished VSU, US Army and Intel is not getting access to the most important data sets.
And then, of course, there is the issue of hardware, or, speaking in more learned language--procurement policies. It is as simple as 2 x 4 piece of lumber:
1. If you don't have AD which even remotely is as capable as that of Russia--you are left only to despair (or salivate) at the element of war which you cannot change, because the impact of your air forces and long range fires is diminished dramatically. Suddenly, it becomes the issue of strategy and even politics.
2. If you don't have hypersonic weapons, let alone integrate them into your TOE, what is that you gonna do? Train for what? Right, just conceal yourself and your HQ which still is NOT going to help since HQs and Comm. Posts by definition are C4 units and will be detected and annihilated. So, how are you going "to train" for that. Surely, the Parameters prescription is dubious at best:
You can minimize, you cannot eliminate it.
3. You CANNOT train the US Army for 3,600 casualties a day. Most importantly, you CANNOT train American public to accept such a price, especially being paid fighting who knows where for who knows what objectives, unless one turns the US into Orwellian prison-state, which is in progress as I type this. But even then...
At this stage the VSU lost half-a-million KIAs and at least twice this number of wounded. And this is the lower-end estimates. These numbers are much higher than US Army's all KIAs in WW II and Vietnam combined.
But in the end, you cannot turn expeditionary colonial army into continental juggernaut--you simply cannot. Sheer economics and weapons enter the set of considerations here, which cannot be properly discussed within one short post. So, they can train whatever they want, but no training, however important on human-professional level, can substitute tools of 21st century war. But then again, I repeat ad nauseam--the West lost the arms race. To demonstrate, here is one such butt-hurt imbecile:
The guy is full of shit, with "degree" in... international relations and is completely lost in his pseudo-expertise, but he is REPRESENTATIVE of the "intellectual" level of current US military-political top which is NOT trainable or is capable of learning, and this is a grim reality of the defeat of the combined West. You cannot win when the only thing you know is how to operate in GIGO mode.
Thursday, September 28, 2023
Finally!
The presidential candidate I can vote for. Terry is incomparable in this role, from one of the greatest movies of the century.
A Few Importnat Points From My Friends.
First, Larry makes an astute observation. It is a classic intel analyst observation.
Russia’s Lavrov rubbishes Ukraine peace plan and warns conflict will be resolved on battlefield
For those who do not understand, let me translate--Lavrov didn't talk about 404 and the remnants of its army. No, Lavrov was talking about combined forces of NATO. Read Marat's piece in full, he also gives a very good insight into Lavrov's statement. It always was about NATO and now ALL Russian political top speaks about it openly--either the remnants of 404, which is a euphemism for NATO, follow Russian conditions or 404 ceases to exist, together with NATO whose military defeat, should it decide to commit a suicide, is not in doubt. It takes Lavrov and his nonchalant attitude to deliver the message.
Wednesday, September 27, 2023
Tuesday, September 26, 2023
Nobody Gives A...
... shit who they are in Canada's Parliament. The fact that one gal had a (half)courage to call it, aw, please.
Caitlin Nails It...
In rock'n'roll style.
P.S. Ringo wrote, actually, some awesome music. Yes, I mean Octopus's Garden and Devil Woman (not Cliff Richard's one) among others.
Scott's Excellent Talk...
... at Judge's.
I reiterate, we still do NOT know the number of KIAs in the rear of 404. This number is huge due to relentless Russia's salvos of stand-off weapons at locations, assembly areas of VSU and 404's military-industrial infrastructure. We are easily looking at least at half-a-million KIAs for VSU... so far. More is coming. Shoigu's estimate of SMO continuing through 2025 is a good estimate, once one considers that 404 is NOT even the main target, NATO is. Or, broadly speaking, as follows from Patrushev's program article--Pax Americana, a euphemism for "rules-based order". It is unsustainable, especially when sheer incompetence of Western "elites" and military-industrial weakness have been exposed dramatically.
And?
404 lies 99% of the time, Western press whores do the same. So what's the news?
And since when, all of a sudden, they decided to debunk 404 propaganda? White House, State Department and Pentagon, obviously, still use it? What happened, wink, wink...
Monday, September 25, 2023
Marat On Losses...
... for both sides. In Russian. But Marat gives excellent spread, including operationally. He also confirms what I speak about for months now--Russia gives primarily KIA numbers for VSU. So read it--it is extremely important.
Eva's Sacred Rage.
She published op-ed at RT.
I fully agree with Eva--this was NOT a coincidence. It is also not a coincidence that US Congress is "blind" to the fact that they support Nazi regime in Kiev.
Judge And Larry.
Have a great discussion.
Gaius Baltar wrote an excellent piece on what is wrong with the Western political class.
Correct: they are unhinged and incompetent. As I already stated--a shocking discovery of sheer incompetence of the US media military "expertise" from the US top brass is shocking because those people, even if they have been paid, have to maintain at least some believability to the nonsense they spew. But here is the problem--real military professional would have been able at least to frame the BS into some consumable form in order to have some ways to retreat and explain things away once the BS was exposed. Not the case with US generals--they went all in and, evidently, many of them sincerely believe the BS they spew. That is shocking and, in some bizarre sense, inevitable against the background of the US Army losing one war after another, raises the question among Russian military professionals if those people are competent at all, even considering an acute case of professional envy and jealousy they experience.
This is the new paradigm for Russia. Russians knew all along that most about NATO military was pure PR, but now--the only hope remains that some people in Pentagon are competent enough to see a disaster they helped to unleash and they can see where it all leads to. They are, as I am on record for years, the last vestiges of some remaining competence and connection to the reality in the West. After Canada's Parliament and some high ranking Canadian officer enthusiastically cheering on the veteran of 14th Waffen SS Division during this weekend, one has to assume that many of them are simply in the process of unbecoming the officers.
Now, we get to the next act of the "drama" and a whole new wave of desperation, denial and hatred in D.C. because of that:
These are older versions, wouldn't matter if they have been the latest ones--the outcome is going to be the same, burning Abrams tanks will be gladly paraded by Russians for everyone to see and that marks, with the exception of those F-16s, the limit the US reached in terms of what she can supply to 404. The conclusion is not only merited but irresistible--the combined West failed at war. And here is the punchline--Russians did plan for that, they just couldn't anticipate that the West would self-annihilate that fast. After today's Volodin's statement things get even clearer.
Ukraine to either surrender on Moscow’s terms or cease to exist — top Russian lawmaker.
You see? After that--it is NATO's turn. Very simple.
Back To Rostov-on-Don.
And I don't mean the city. I mean submarine of the project 636 which sustained damage a few days ago during attack of 404 on Sevastopol. Remember my retort to American submarine "experts" 6 days ago, when they suggested that the sub will be written off? I will remind you, when even observing obviously doctored photo:
Well, guess what? Right, I was correct and those sub "experts" had no clue what they have been talking about. And why am I not surprised?
Translation: MOSCOW, September 25. /TASS/. The damage received on September 13 by the Rostov-on-Don submarine of the Black Sea Fleet (BSF) is not critical and will not lead to a significant increase in the time it spends under scheduled repairs. A source in the military-industrial complex reported this to TASS. “The submarine has minor damage that did not affect its robust (hard--my note) hull. Eliminating them can only slightly increase the time the submarine is undergoing scheduled repairs,” he said. On September 13, Ukraine launched a cruise missile attack on the Sevastopol Marine Plant, where two ships were being repaired. As the Russian Ministry of Defense reported on the same day, two naval ships damaged as a result of the strike “will be fully restored and will continue to serve in combat as part of their fleets.” As the agency's interlocutor clarified, the planned repair of the Rostov-on-Don submarine at Sevmorzavod was supposed to last several months.
As you can see, and I stressed it many times, it is difficult to compare education of cadre naval officers in USSR/Russia and the US. First, US Naval Academy course of study is much-much shorter (only 4 academic years against 6--5 calendar--years in USSR/Russia), and guess what? Right from the get go the major course exhausted, sleepy and hungry Russian Plebes of the first year began to study is... drum roll... a major course called ТУЖК (Теория Устроиства и Живучести Корабля, Theory of Design and Survivability of the Ship) and in my time the basic design was good ol' submarine of project 613 (NATO Whiskey) with eventual progression to other projects including nuclear-powered subs and, of course, surface ships. So, here we are today, at 25 September 2023. I am taking my bow and my curtain call, you brought me fame and fortune and everything that goes, and I thank you all(c). I am going to sleep, have fun;))
Sunday, September 24, 2023
Thank You, George.
Great term: infamy!
Oh, Please!
Yes, ass-hole, you "didn't know". In related news, I am Pope.
The "Unexpected" (Not Really) Problem.
Russian troops report all along the line of contact. Obviously such a video is not available on YT. The problem is with the smell of rotting corpses of VSU cannon fodder--most of them lay in the field and are not evacuated. As you may expect the putrid smell is unbearable. Which brings us to the issue of KIAs--the number is growing. So much so, that even creeps from WaPo quote:
Which brings us to 404 BS about Klescheevka, which, in accordance to Western propaganda, is under "control" of VSU. First, there is literally nothing left of it, and secondly, as Akhmat guys laugh: yes, khokhol CAN enter Klescheevka, the problem for them is that by far not all of them can exit it afterwards. They played the video of how VSU cannon fodder "conducts operations" around there--basically they get personnel there, after that it gets slaughtered by Akhmat, then they wait for another batch and the process repeats itself over and over again. So, everything you need to know about NATO "tactics".
Now, even sewer of Business Insider cannot bypass this "news".
Well, correct, he just forgot to make a distinction that these are Western "hi-tech" systems which cannot do that--all major Russian air defense complexes, however, have heavy bombs as their standard targets. E.g. for Buk AD system, JDAM munitions in all of their "modifications" is a standard target, not to mention the fact that that AD system is much more than just kinetic means. But what can you say? Real war is not studied in Western military academies, evidently. But then again, you cannot teach military science to cretins who work as "experts" in US media.
As Larry penned the excellent piece on Ben Hodges:
Exactly, and what I highlighted is even more important--Russian operational level officers are dumbfounded by sheer idiocy and manifest military incompetence of Western generals the likes of Petraeus, Ben Hodges, Keane et al, not to mention clowns from British Army who "consult" already retarded British media. The question is: what did they study in their service life? Evidently not much. So, when I say that such people like Petraeus or Ben Hodges wouldn't be allowed to command even the regiment in Russian Armed Forces I do not exaggerate much.
Saturday, September 23, 2023
Aw, So Cute.
98 year old 14 Waffen SS Division veteran got emotional and cried while Ze received standing ovation in Canadian parliament during his speech. He (the veteran) fought Russians in WW II. Canadians, enjoy, you lost any claim to victory in WW II, you are collaborators to Auschwitz and Belsen, to massacre of tens of millions of innocent civilians. You wanted it, you got it--the land of escaped Nazis. The US is not far behind, though. Throw away your worthless WW II awards--a logical conclusion for your country which has no honor or decency.
No Drugs, Sex (MayBe) and Rock'n'Roll.
Shaman Sings the Anthem with 70, 000 people.
Something For The Weekend...
... those morsels of the West which are still there, but the world moved on. My favorite Canadian girls do what they do best:
Friday, September 22, 2023
In Related News.
ZKP.
About a hit on the building of Staff of Black Sea Fleet. Immediately for people who may have questions: NOBODY IS in this building except for maintenance and guard crew. During war time all C4 departments of the Staff operate out of ZKP (Запасной Командный Пункт--ЗКП)--a Reserve Command Post, which is underground and is very difficult to identify and attack. So, the attack is primarily for PR reasons, militarily it has a very low value, plus disruption of the civilian traffic in the area of Lenin's Street, Nakhimov's Square, Nakhimov's Ave and on the hill where the Staff and Rear Service of the Fleet are located.
Per US P-8 Poseidon in the vicinity in the international air space--this is US MO--fight through proxy, hide behind them. Poseidon was scanning electromagnetic picture of Sevastopol's Air Defense during attack for "library" reasons and transfer of data to VSU for the next attack. In real war, there would have been no US assets anywhere above the Black Sea because they would have been all shot down. Pentagon knows this, but, as was pointed out many times--they see for the first time the real war, so they want "to take part". Expect some response from Russia, Misters Kalibr, Iskander and Geran will be very busy in the next few days.
Thursday, September 21, 2023
Europe, Its Head.
This is everything you need to know.
Larry On Jake Sullivan.
Jake Sullivan is definitely something else altogether. The US knew many National Security Advisers who have been less than qualified, to put it politely, for advising anything on matters of real national security, but Sullivan tops them all.
Read the whole thing at Larry's blog. But Larry also is correct that Biden Admin will continue with "support" for 404. Russia is fine with it, she will continue to wipe this "support" out until nothing is left, Wall Street GDP numbers notwithstanding, if you know what I mean.
Ah, Sure!
I wanted also to become a billionaire (not really, being a millionaire is good enough) and own an airline (not really) but here I am--none of those things. I guess because I am not Mr. Yuri Ignat, my imagination is too... timid.
Translation: MOSCOW, September 21. /TASS/. In the future, Ukraine would like to receive fifth-generation F-35 fighters from the United States, and new-generation fighters from Sweden, which are currently under development. This was stated by the representative of the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Yuriy Ignat. “We also need to think about the future, not just the F-16. There are F-35 aircraft, there will also be a new model Gripen,” he said at a briefing at the Ukraine media center, which was broadcast on YouTube.
As you might expect, the reaction of Russian MoD was:
Incomparable Michael Brenner...
... writes a superb piece: US Can't Deal With Defeat. In which he deconstructs the whole, so called, "strategy":
Read the whole thing, it is superb and is one of those flames of academic and human brilliance which manifests itself not unlike a separate piece of charcoal which continues to burn bright in the pile of spent ashes after the steaks have been grilled and guests left the backyard to continue the conversation and eating in the dining room inside the house.
And This Is News Exactly How?
You do not achieve the breakthrough in first three days, max five-six, let's stretch it for a good measure to fifteen--it is over. Your "offensive" is done, you lost operationally. In 404 case--you lost the war because without NATO's support 404 doesn't exist as a country anymore. Sy Hersh breaks the news, which are not really the news for anyone with half a brain:
For those operationally challenged in Biden's Admin, imbeciles from corporate media and Institute For (Not) Study of War, here is the explanation for the middle school kids:
Translation: Predpolye (forward defense line, forefield) - a fortified zone in front of the main defense line or in front of a fortified area, a separate element of modern defense. The purpose of the forefield is to delay the advancing enemy in order to gain time and exhaust him during the period of approach to the defensive zone. Terrain and situational conditions can lead to a wide variety of decisions by the defending side to organize the forefield. The depth of the forefield can vary significantly.
Everything what third iteration of VSU does is confined to forefield, a grey zone of several kilometers deep, where Pentagon generals for months are trying to approach Russian first line of defense and report about "capturing" some raised to the ground hamlets which have no tactical, let alone operational significance and serve merely to attract masses of VSU troops to be annihilated by long-range fires.
Now comes this sensitive moment, but do the mental forensic experiment, ask yourself a question--which army will be better at strategic defense, the one which never fought one, namely the US Army, or the one which fought it since hell knows when, including such recent classics as Defense of Moscow, Defense of Leningrad, Rostov-on-Don, Stalingrad and few others, Kursk included? There you go! Anyone who ever studied REAL war and not the BS which is taught in West's military academies, should know that real wars are fought for political objectives other than PR BS on CNN or in NYT.
So, when Sy's "source" states this:
“The truth is if the Ukrainian army is ordered to continue the offensive, the army would mutiny. The soldiers aren’t willing to die any more, but this doesn’t fit the B.S. that is being authored by the Biden White House,” the source concluded.
This is not news. Russia can do this as long as it takes, while observing West imploding and the whole thing going to hell in a handbasket. That's the political objective, but try to explain this to Petraeus, Keane or any of the Kagans that in the 21st century war with high-precision and precision-guided munitions produced in massive numbers and their ranges varying anywhere between 4 to 8,500 kilometers, the "captured" territory in and of itself indicates nothing. The term "long range fires", meanwhile, takes on an ominous meaning. But hey, the modern US deserved such generals and strategists like Petraeus and Zelensky. Yep, times of Ike and Bradley are over. At least for now. Send in the clowns.
Or may be, show must go on? If you know what I mean.