Russians stupidly and stubbornly persisting with World War II Blitzkreig in the Ukraine

They attempted a blitzkrieg to surround and cut off the “city” of Severodonetsk

A tiny insignificant city about twenty five blocks by fifteen blocks.

The city center consists of a supermarket, a couple of gas stations, a couple of auto repair shops, a car accessory store, a food takeaway shop, a bank, a nail salon, a hotel cafe, a pub, and a remarkably large number of government offices. The town appears to exist to service government employees and people’s cars.

They had a go, lost of bunch of military vehicles. OK, you try these things, sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t.

And then they had another go, same result. And another. And another. And another. All up they lost seventy five military vehicles.

That is not OK. When it does not work, you stop and try to do something different.

This is reminiscent of the early days of World War I, where they repeatedly tried bayonet charges. Each and every bayonet charge was wiped out with enormous casualties. Not one bayonet charge inflicted any damage at all. Not one bayonet reached one enemy. And they just kept on doing it because they just did not know what else to do.

Russia is also finally starting to do some Information Epoch warfare, and getting results. But rather piddling results so far because their network penetration is crap. They have had a few goes at nailing more important people, but as yet, no successful hits.

The first thing Putin needs to do is ask his spy IT organization what computer networks in Russia they are unable to penetrate. And then demote his spy IT people and put the people who created impenetrable networks in charge of state IT, officially in charge of making state computer networks secure, and secretly in charge of penetrating other people’s computer networks. NSA is a long, long, long way, ahead of him, but the NSA have recently made Shaniqua tech lead, and are starting to lose ground fast.

The next thing he needs to do is to do what the Polygon has long been doing. Insert undercover entryists into enemy human social networks. He has a long way to go.

But an entryist organization needs a faith. What faith would that be?

Well, handily, the Ukrainian regime is terrorizing, imprisoning, and murdering, old type Christians. And there are a pile of Ukrainian Christians in Russia and Russian controlled territories that have fled this. So …

In the Information Epoch tanks are irrelevant. Manned warplanes are irrelevant. Artillery is only relevant if your enemy is dumb enough to refight World War II. When Trump defeated ISIS, did he use tanks, artillery, and bombers? Learn how to fight wars in the in the Information Epoch from those who have successfully done so.

Trump destroyed ISIS.

And in Afghanistan?

The US was suffering endless and terrible casualties in Afghanistan. Trump cut a deal with the Taliban whereby US forces continued to control key cities and key roads in Afghanistan, and suffer no further casualties. The Taliban accepted a deal that was a severe defeat, because they figured they could wait Trump out. US casualties completely ended in Afghanistan. Taliban casualties did not end. This does not sound like a very good deal at all. Why did they agree?

Well, during the negotiations:

Taliban negotiator:

Why are you sending me a picture of my house?

Trump:

Think about it.

That is how you fight an Information Epoch war. The side that has the best human network and computer network penetration wins. Battleships, tanks and artillery are one with bayonet charges. Observe that artillery and tanks failed take a couple of thousand surrounded Azov brigade holed up in a bunch of reinforced concrete buildings. Russians now have to starve them out.

The Information Epoch solution for that kind of problem has been tested and demonstrated, though no one has deployed it yet to my knowledge. You send a swarm of pigeon sized drones, with line of sight communications with each other, one end of the swarm out in the open with line of sight communication to base, and the other end swarming through narrow the twisty spaces where your enemy is holed up and destroying your artillery and tanks, and find the exact location of your enemy. Having found them, destroying them becomes trivial. Drone capability to swarm through narrow twist spaces using time based spread spectrum communication has been demonstrated, but as yet not applied. You need a communication technology that gives each drone the exact distance from every drone that it is in communication with, enough drones in line of sight with each other than they can exactly locate each drone with respect to the position of all of the others, and drone ai that can recognize walls, floors, ceilings, and mobile objects. And then you follow them up by destroying the mobile objects.

But killing a whole lot of grunts inherently takes a lot whole lot of time, effort, and money, and grunts are rather easily replaceable. Far better to take out the central vertices of the organization that funds and commands them. And for that, you need, not drone swarms, but human and computer network penetration. Thinking too much about killing grunts is a distraction.

In the Information Epoch, the surviving statelike groups with military capability will be those that not only have good computer and human network penetration, (hackers and entryists) but have good resistance to hacking and entryism (good encryption and an inquisition) and high tolerance of damage to key vertices (capability to swiftly rotate decision making roles while continuing to act cohesively, and brave and loyal men in those decision making roles.) Hordes of grunts will not matter very much, and columns of tanks no longer matter at all. Just as the winning organizations of seventh to seventeenth century relied on brave men in elite positions and were willing and able to take substantial casualties and keep on going, the winning organizations of the Information Epoch will rely on brave men in elite positions and will be willing and able to take substantial casualties and keep on going. Another aristocratic era is coming up.

249 Responses to “Russians stupidly and stubbornly persisting with World War II Blitzkreig in the Ukraine”

  1. Truckinbroke says:

    Sad

  2. Truckinbroke says:

    Great sad

  3. Mister Grumpus says:

    It’s been a couple weeks since time of writing.

    The narrative is shifting to the Russians managing to muddle through anyway, and the blue-and-yellow Ukraine flags have all but vanished from Twitter.

    What do you make of this?

    Has the steady grind of Russian artillery fire and Ukrainian logistical disappointment undermined their Info Epoch Warfare? Pulled the plug on it somehow?

    What I no longer see is video of tanks driving around. That must still be way too dangerous with all those man-portable missiles out there.

    Maybe Info Epoch Warfare is still the winning ticket, unless your opponent (Russia) is happy to just shoot many thousand artillery shells and advance X yards per day, and can safely resupply themselves via a fully protected highway.

    Maybe the Bayraktar drones really can find and disable artillery pieces all day long, but Uncle Sam refuses to buy more because Turkish Man Bad. Heck if I know.

    • Pooch says:

      Maybe the Bayraktar drones really can find and disable artillery pieces all day long, but Uncle Sam refuses to buy more because Turkish Man Bad. Heck if I know.

      The Bayraktar drones get blown up easily when flown behind enemy lines as strike craft. They are being used just as recon now for artillery which is proving to be incredibly effective against armor columns.

      • Red says:

        In world war 1 is took something like 10,000 shells to kill one man. WW2 was in the 1,000-5,000 range. I watched a Russian artillery strike against trenches take out each widely separate man in the trench 1 by 1 thanks to the artillery spotter drone flying overhead. A massive game changer.

        • jim says:

          When the Ukrainians use spotter drones to coordinate artillery, they walk the shells in. Either the Russians are very skilled, or, more likely, they have some tech aiming mechanism.

          • Red says:

            Tech seemed likely. I think the Russians had some pretty advanced drone systems in development and rushed them for field use after things went pear shaped in the Ukraine. Someone was paying attention to what happened in Armenia and was preparing for the future even if the Russian brass where not all that interested.

            • jim says:

              World War II weapons and tactics were suicidal in the face of man carried autonomous smart anti tank missiles, and the Russians kept trying that over and over again and kept failing catastrophically over and over again, reminiscent of the repeated bayonet charges in World War I.

              And then things went to World War I weapons and tactics, and the Ukrainians were winning that also because of artillery spotter drones.

              And then, rather suddenly, the Russians gained the capability to very effectively target enemy positions, one explosion, one enemy. But at the moment it looks like they can only do it effectively on rather small battlefront at a time, as if they have a limited supply of extremely mobile systems that can provide very good integration with old type weapons.

              Continuing World War I tactics is resulting in massive and rapid attrition of Ukrainian forces.

              I expect that soon we will be in a world where no one uses World War II nor World War I tactics, but we are still in bloody and terrible transition to that world.

              It looks like the Russians have a very limited supply of damned good Information Epoch battlefield weaponry, but have suddenly realized the crucial importance of Information Epoch weapons.

              Which have not yet led to effective Information Epoch warfare, where the battlefield is everywhere. But Information Epoch warfare comes.

              • Karl says:

                Ukraine is using World War I tactics. Infantry in trenches and some artillery behind the trenches.

                Russia does not dig in to hold territory. They have often retreated from ground they had just taken. Russia is not using World War I tactics.

                • Red says:

                  Russia does not dig in to hold territory. They have often retreated from ground they had just taken. Russia is not using World War I tactics.

                  You’re thinking of Allied WW1 tactics. Russia’s practicing German WW1 tactics where the goal is to bleed the enemy white with repeated attacks and retreats funneling their foes into killing grounds for the artillery.

                • Pseudo-Chrysostom says:

                  To be more precise, Entente tactics was largely a contradiction in terms; the leadership alternated between indifference to casualties, to abject glee over the thought of their neighbors getting killed en mass.

                  Which is why against all reasonable expectation, the kaiserreich genuinely had a chance of coming out of WW1 ahead.

    • jim says:

      Promoted my reply to this to a post.

  4. Kunning Drueger says:

    Based on things I’ve read at Isegoria as well as the comments of St. John and Basil, I’m trying to figure out what happened, and changed so dramatically, between the Russian federation forces of 2014 and the forces of 2022?

    I think this is an important question because it has ramifications in the tactical, strategic, social, and spiritual realms. I also think it might be helpful in figuring out where and to what degree the Russian federation and its constituent parts have been converged, or are in the process of being converged.

    Does anyone have thoughts or opinions on this, or maybe just suggestions on how to go about researching the question?

    • Pax Imperialis says:

      8 years is a long time for military forces, even on the civilian side. You can lose a lot of experience in that time period and with Russian demographics they are losing far more expertise at the top level than they can replace. Same thing is happening to DoD.

      DoD acquisitions median age 4 years ago was 56… They are fast tracking the highly limited number of recent graduates they get from GS07 (entry level) to GS09 in under 2 years… and fast tracking GS09s to GS13s in just another 2 years with noncompetitive promotions because there simply isn’t enough people and GS13s and up are retiring in mass. It use to take nearly a decade to go from GS10 to GS13. It use to be that GS14 to GS15 positions were held for 10+ years if you could get them, now those positions are nearly a 3 year rotation as GS14 positions are being used for the last 3 years salary for retirement purposes.

      What we are seeing with the failures in Russian military performance should be a very large warning about US military performance in the future as the US is having similar demographic problems with the people who matter.

  5. Neurotoxin says:

    Jim has often expressed skepticism about how many of the US’s nukes actually work. Here’s one read on Putin’s behavior vis-a-vis the US’s participation in the war: He’s acting like a guy who is not certain about how many of his own nukes actually work.

    • Globalist Power Terminated 2 says:

      Wow. 😳

      But if that’s true, why no response to the latest NATO shenanigans? The gas is still flowing to Finland/Sweden right?

      • Neurotoxin says:

        “But if that’s true, why no response to the latest NATO shenanigans? The gas is still flowing to Finland/Sweden right?”

        I don’t know. As S says below, “The natural gas is still flowing. I didn’t think I’d ever see a farcical existential war, but here we are.”

        Maybe Putin wants to hold that threat in reserve so European nations have a reason not to get too fresh with Russia – which is smart, up to a point. Chess players have a saying: “The threat is stronger than the execution.”

        The thing is, for there to be an actual threat, the other side has to believe that you’ll actually use it eventually. Which requires that sometimes, you actually use it.

        • S says:

          I meant the pipeline through Ukraine. The gas has stopped flowing to Finland… because they refuse to pay in rubles- Poland and Bulgaria were cut off for the same reason.

          The only way I can possibly make sense of this is both sides think after this is over everything will return to normal and this will be a short victorious war.

          • Neurotoxin says:

            Whoops, I need to catch up. I read news stories about how the EU is trying to get all member states to agree to an embargo on Russian gas and I assume that means it’s still flowing everywhere. Meanwhile, when Russia threatens to stop sending them the stuff, or actually stops it – the very stuff that that they are trying to embargo – they screech that Putin’s being unreasonable.

            “We demand a halt to imports of Russian gas!”
            “Okay, I’ll halt it.”
            “HOW DARE YOU!”

            • Pseudo-Chrysostom says:

              It’s just classic narc behavior, on a civilizational scale.

              Responding to heinous aggression is heinous aggression; castigating vile manipulation is vile manipulation; and on it goes.

              • Neurotoxin says:

                The sheer psychotic unreasonableness of these people…

                • Kunning Drueger says:

                  I mean, they did beat the Nazi Confederates in the 200 years war. An enemy that resists is an affront to their very existence. Like Lot’s neighbors, they expect you to submit and render as a matter of course.

  6. Severian says:

    Ukr defenses are collapsing badly all around Popasnaya. Biggest breakthrough since Izyum so far for RF.

    • jim says:

      More importantly, Russia has been making vigorous efforts to assassinate leadership.

      Hard to say if they are hitting anyone. The leadership is making vigorous efforts to conceal their location, and it seems that when the Russians score a hit, the Ukrainians conceal it, probably to avoid revealing what network penetration efforts have been effective. But, concealing their position may well hamper their capability to organize war.

    • jim says:

      Source?

      • Severian says:

        For Popasnaya?
        Many pro-Russian sources reporting it.

        https://twitter.com/Suriyakmaps/status/1527371601666363392

        • Severian says:

          This is a good overview of the Donbas as of today.
          https://twitter.com/War_Mapper/status/1527439793214349321/photo/1

          The takewaya is that Ukr force are going to be practically isolated in Severodonetsk and Lysychansk soon.

        • jim says:

          This map is so close up that it was hard for me to put in the broad strategic picture.

          I always look for the big picture, of which particular events are a straw in the wind.

          Placing this map on top of the google earth satellite map, looks like a substantial advance on the (hastily downsized) Russian goal of bringing Russian speaking areas where Russian speakers and old type Christians are subject to harassment and persecution into Russian control.

          This a substantial reversal of the GAE goal of expanding persecution of old type Christians, straights, and patriarchy, to the entire world, which goal has been causing war and not-war-not-peace for decades, and is now causing war.

          The plan was that forever war in the Uraine would eventually result in the Russians falling back, and eventually falling back all the way to Moscow, whereupon the Global American Empire would hold a gay pride victory parade in Red Square, vandalize the recently built Great Russian Cathedral, and turn it into a museum celebrating Gaea worship.

          They would tear down Russian statues of the great men of their past, as they have torn down our statues of the great men of our past, and devalorize old Russian architecture in favor of the Soviet style architecture we see going up in New York. Cathedrals would become Gaea and Gay Pride, as British Cathedrals have become Gaea and Gay Pride, reversing the ancient Christian operation where we reconsecrated pagan temples as Christian Churches and cathedrals.

          Well, so far, forever war in the Ukraine is having the reverse outcome.

  7. Kunning Drueger says:

    Two fascinating, off topic essays by Tree of Woe (pretty sure he is one of “our” memetic transfer nodes, BTW):

    https://treeofwoe.substack.com/p/when-orcs-were-real?s=r

    https://treeofwoe.substack.com/p/when-magic-was-real?s=r

    The first, When Orcs Were Real, is an interesting foray into the role of Neanderthal in the Homo Sapiens collective consciousness.

    The second, When Magic Was Real, is a likewise exploration into “magical thinking” and how belief is required of both the magician and the crowd for “psi” to have an effect.

    ToW is treading dangerously close to WQ thoughtcrime in the first piece. He talks about the penchant for Neanderthals for that sweet, sweet Homo Sapiens pussy. This doesn’t seem to be a passing fascination or bestiality. Neanderthals made a point of rapine, and early Homo Sapiens had to have some form of custom or collective approach to mixed race babies. The essay asserts that Homo Sapiens was a hair’s breadth away from extinction before something turned the tide. ToW, and the author of the book he was reviewing, posit that ranged weaponry and advanced tactics and/or wave assaults were likely causal factors. I’m not saying they’re wrong, but I wonder if it could also have been the rapespawn of countless Neanderthals nocturnal incursions becoming a kind of neolithic special forces for Team Homo Sapiens. This also has interesting implications for why human females are the way they are in terms of sexual proclivity. It’s not hard to envision early human females inviting Neanderthals into Sapiens territory; the way they’re described, they are gigachad night warriors that could bodily heave a modern era NFL player many meters as well having massive teeth and bite with a diet of predominantly meat (animals, Sapiens, and Neanderthals were all on the menu). Besides stone age shit testing, female Sapiens could also have developed a more primal taste in master as a survival tactic.

    In addition to mixed race warriors and ranged weaponry, perhaps the development of enforced cooperate/cooperate equilibrium played a role in the development of organization in Homo Sapiens social groups. They marshalled their forces, locked down their women, formed up behind a strongman, and defeated the greatest single threat to human ascendency. It’s an interesting puzzle piece that appears to fit well with a lot of Jimian analysis.

    • AiasLives says:

      This is hoopla. The real problem (which this substack guy hasn’t even formulated) was solved back in ’10 on a blog that was taken down for wrongthink four years ago.

      The key to this is to realize that it’s not a two-player system, but a three-player system. There’s the people in charge (melonheads), then the neanderthals (geniuses) and then homo sapiens (crotch-grabbing spear-chucking monkeys).

      If you think that analysis on that blog is in any way plausible then you need to educate yourself on the various frauds in the field of anthropology. You also need to ask yourself how the “brutish” neanderthals survived in the biting cold, when the earth had frozen over. And how the sape just appeared in Africa. And how human blood works. It’s a genetic war that spans centuries and even the boom-bust cycle of civilization is a byproduct of the same.

      They mixed like paint and water. The unholy genetic combination still leads to many autoimmune diseases. I suppose Jim knows about this already, seeing how this had some traction 5-10 years ago.

      This is not everything, but it’s a step towards the truth.
      https://www.rdos.net/eng/asperger.htm

        • AiasLives says:

          I always thought Jim’s Blog was one of the big ones on the Right. Surprising that you’d call a three-tier genetic system “nuts”, when it’s the dudes at the top of the pyramid that you profess to be against.

          • Aidan says:

            Nuts.

            There’s the people in charge (melonheads), then the neanderthals (geniuses) and then homo sapiens (crotch-grabbing spear-chucking monkeys).

            You imperfectly ascertain human natural caste, but make the fatal error of attributing violence to the lower-class and low-status. Pure nonsense. For thousands of years, we were ruled by extremely intelligent men who were also extremely good at shoving spears into guts. You have some utopian faggoty nonviolence ideology where all the geniuses have sex in a great big friendly pile, like some Bay Area BDSM club. Violence is an integral part of the human experience.

            • Wulfgar Thundercock III says:

              Smarter men are, all other considerations being equal, more capable of violence. The same aristocratic elite that produced such insane bravery as Lord Cardigan is also largely responsible for the greatest scientific discoveries in history. To succeed at large scale violence, you have to be smart, and even at an individual level, a faster mind means lower reaction times and better planning.

              • AiasLives says:

                Yes. A higher thal % often is responsible for those attributes, and Genius (not the way the mainstream describes it) is also represented by a very high similarity to a neanderthal genetic make-up.

            • AiasLives says:

              And you have no idea what I’m talking about. I don’t have some stupid concept about “noble savages” in my head. The Neanderthals were well-trained and often very advanced in hunting and violence. The difference from Sapiens is that the thals denounce in-group violence, and any male who tried it for the wrong reasons (often determined by the women, because their consel controlled who would mate) would be booted off. Selective breeding and uncertain parentage helmed by very high-quality women bred very high-quality men. The sapes were (and are) niggers, good at spear-chucking and bonga sex parties, the kind that you think the neanderthals had.

              It’s the imperfect mix of the neanderthal and the sapiens that leads to the civilizational cycle.

              • Doom says:

                “JIM U DON’T GET IT WHEN U LET WOMEN CONTROL EVERYTHING U GET LESS VIOLENCE THATS WHY NEANDERTHALS WAY BETTER”

                Dude, pay attention. When women control everything you get peacocks and lions.

                Runaway sexual selection.

                Lions denounce in-group violence too unless a new alpha comes along and then you get infanticide.

                BTW, what are western abortion stats like?

              • Doom says:

                Also
                >uncertain parentage helmed by very high-quality women bred very high-quality men.

                High quality, as in, good at violence, but in short supply.

                You may well be right, that neanderthals had female selected mating, but this would be the reason they were outcompeted.

                Because you have to do *something* with all the surplus males, and they aren’t very willing to fight just because. See : Lions, again.

                Or any modern culture with polygamy.

      • Doom says:

        I got this far and bailed

        “Their way of living provided advanced social adaptations… With those roles, came male alliances and warfare. It was more of a rule to find one’s partner within the tribe than in another tribe. This lead to evolution of the modern status concept and hierarchies. It also lead to aggression between males, and provided the basis for ethnocentric ideas and racism. The offspring developed fast, and they could reproduce fast. Hss is a patriarchal species and behaves like chimps in many respects.”

        And then..
        “Neanderthals had pro-social bonds and individuals with severe disabilities seemed to have survived 21. Neanderthal’s were patrilocal 22. Related males stayed in the area where they had been born, while females dispersed to new areas, and possibly also moved between births. The stationary role of males and the mobility of females can create matriarchal cultures.”

        Come on man. This is Jim’s blog, we have a little better understanding of biology than this trash.

        • Aidan says:

          “Females dispersed to new areas”

          Yeah it’s called wife raiding lol. The absolute brain damage on display from this dude.

        • AiasLives says:

          Try swapping the names on the concepts “Neanderthal” and “Homo Sapiens” in your head. You’ll find the text easier to understand.

          Neanderthals were K, and women married into other Neanderthal tribes, if any were nearby.

          It isn’t “trash”, you haven’t spent even a minute thinking it though.

      • Kunning Drueger says:

        Lol, get lost koanic.

      • Aidan says:

        Holy shit it’s the autism/neanderthal supremacy guy.

        Autism is an anticoncept anyway lol

        • AiasLives says:

          Autism and Aspergers are two different “conditions”, on opposite ends of the “spectrum”, and it’s a “spectrum” that shouldn’t exist in the first place. Aspergers was removed from the DSM-V mostly so all the brain-damaged autistes could be labeled smaht.

          • Mayflower Sperg says:

            We’re a social species, highly attuned to to the expectations of our fellow humans, but sperg genes hang around. Conformance to social norms is usually a good thing, but sometimes society degenerates into a herd of lemmings stampeding off a cliff, leaving the spergs behind to repopulate.

            • Adam says:

              How would that work exactly? Population goes up in male dominated social orders, down when females dominate. Asperger’s does not lead to social dominance. Seems more likely the females would attract the attention of other males, migratory or lower class males who were socially dominant.

              • The Cominator says:

                Spergs in functional rising societies are put to some use with their interest and talents..

                Spergs in rapidly declining purity spiraling societies are extremely isolated for nonconformity…

                Post collapse… petty social rituals don’t mean so much. Far worse for spergs is a general lack of fine motor skills/ability to work with hands.

                • AiasLives says:

                  People with Aspergers don’t lack fine motor control skills, or the ability to work with their hands. You’re completely wrong. They are MUCH better than the average on both of those things, and often are very well-built, gain muscle much more easily and have higher bone densities. They also invent many things. Gentle Giant.

              • Frank Matters says:

                It seems likely to me that a touch of the ’tism brings talent, a dash perhaps too much talent, and a heap will leave you disabled. You can find similar in families prone to schizophrenia, where those untouched by the disease tend to be extremely talented. A genetic gamble with linearly additive polygenic traits, trying to find thst sweet spot between most talent and unable to function.

                • jim says:

                  Autism, like psychopathy and pedophilia, is anticoncept, which assocates unlike things that do not naturally cluster together, in order to demonize one of those things.

                  Since an anticoncept has a lie at its core, one can never use it in accordance with its official meaning, nor ever use it to speak a truth, nor ever use it to convey anything except the lie and the demonization.

            • AiasLives says:

              And have you ever thought deeply about *why* the spergs never participate? Why they have an affinity for others like themselves while keeping everyone else at arm’s length?

          • Aidan says:

            Autism is a sensory processing disorder, and only the sensory processing disorder, that tends to cluster with other markers of genetic load, thus is often found together with mental retardation or other defects. “Aspergers” does not exist. “Spergs” do not exist. It was lumped together with autism to attack white male genius and engineering skills. The word you are looking for is “eccentric”. Smart men tend to be eccentric, and smart men who are not socialized properly tend to be antisocial.

            • AiasLives says:

              Yes, yes, thank you for you scienmajistic explanation, I’m sure those classifications totally negate the existence of people with aspergers. You said it, must be true.

            • X says:

              The autism spectrum, including high-functioning or language-and-intelligence-unimpaired cases (previously called Asperger’s), is almost exclusively caused by mercury intoxication, and the very mildest forms of this can be so subtle and pervasive as to be mistaken for inherent personality traits, including eccentricity. Maternal mercury body-burden is reliably passed to her fetuses and the change caused by this often results in a peculiar emotional disposition that makes those with this affect attracted to each other, which is why most people assume—with no evidence—that autism characteristics are hereditary, when they’re actually merely congenital.

              This is a good introduction to the large corpus on the topic:

              https://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/environmental-toxins/mercurys-poisonous-persistence-in-the-medical-armamentarium/

              https://www.westonaprice.org/environmental-toxins/mercury/

      • Yul Bornhold says:

        Cleve!

        Is that you, Anonymous Fake?

      • Pseudo-Chrysostom says:

        Neanderthalic ancestry is a common element in many higher orders of humanoid species, more specifically europoid ones.

        It seems to me that squid inkings like this are preemptive poison pills, contaminating broad truths with specific sewage, for turning people off from pursuing such lines of enquiry. A classic tradition in the CIA playbook.

  8. Cloudswrest says:

    Some Musk related news.

    Kyle Becker@kylenabecker
    Breaking: S&P Dow Jones Indices has just canceled Elon Musk’s Tesla from the S&P 500 ESG index, citing accusations of racial discrimination.

    • Mister Grumpus says:

      “Citing accusations.” The process is the punishment. Post law.

    • Pooch says:

      Is it me or is Musk going from 0 to hardcore neo-reactionary at break neck speed?

      https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1526975113597489154?s=20&t=CEu1bug2ZU_VVLkWO96NMw

      • Wulfgar Thundercock III says:

        The Star Prophet may see no air between us and himself. If Star Prophet rules, Musk goes to Mars. If we rule, Musk goes to Mars. The end state of either of our faiths results in the same end for him, so it would make sense to make common cause. Plus we have to think that if NRx was moving around intellectual spaces prior to the Trump presidency, Musk could well have come across it. He might have read Moldbug or Jim. He is certainly smart enough to process and analyze it, and to know that he could not share it openly.

        • Mike Thalassitis says:

          A few months ago I saw that people had found what appears to be Grimes’ throwaway reddit account. If you google it, its not hard to find on celeb gossip sites. On the reddit account, she complained about issues with her husband (Elon) and how he was emotionally abusive. Apparently he had recently started browsing MRA forums lol. This was around mid 2020.

          I’m not sure if there is any truth to this. But if so, its likely he’s started down the manosphere pipeline relatively recently. If he hasn’t read Moldbug or Jim yet, it may happen soon.

      • Yul Bornhold says:

        This is from Moldbug. Whether directly or indirectly, we don’t know, but that Musk is willing to throw out hardcore reaction is interesting.

        Hasn’t women-poasted yet but we’ll see. There’s Moldbug and then there’s Jim.

        • Doom says:

          I’ll be interested if JBP’s calling of a plain woman plain results in his actual cancellation. Certainly the reeeeeeing has begun.

          That’s a litmus test, for sure.

          • Kunning Drueger says:

            Dangerous ground for Them, because it boils down to “white man can’t have an opinion,” just as they’re attempting to ramp up a nuclear war.

            • Doom says:

              Logical inconsistencies don’t mean anything to goodthink positions.

              JBP is also evil since he’s anti trans, he wont respect Zelenskyys pronouns so he may as well be an ebil russian

  9. Neofugue says:

    According to a recent article published by The Hill, the United States government intends to authorize Starship with no opposition from regulators, despite Elon Musk having done much to anger them as of late.

    The linked article implies that the United States intends to start a war with Russia and China. To that end, as insane as it sounds, the American armed forces plan on using recently developed laser technology to implement Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” program in an attempt to neutralize Russian nuclear deterrence.

    https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/3480009-why-is-faa-approval-for-spacex-starship-orbital-launches-taking-so-long/

    • Red says:

      Musk is playing very high stakes poker. Russia’s starting to get drone warfare straightened out the US military knows that Musk is their only hope to keep superiority. They’re going to either cancel and crucify Musk or part of the US government is going to point guns at the other parts and tell them to leave him alone.

      • The Cominator says:

        Well I think they had to threaten Biden/Blinken over the open NATO plane transfer issue to kill it already…

        I just wish they coup and get it over with…

        • Pooch says:

          Coups happen in times of crisis when pre-coup conditions are ripe. I could see it being on the table for 2024. “We must take control of the government to save the republic from racist Hitler Trump.”

  10. Cloudswrest says:

    Watched “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” for the first time last night (for cultural literacy purposes). As a dad, the Jennifer Jason Leigh’s teenage girl character makes me cringe. Conforms perfectly with Jim’s red pill on women and girls statements.

    • Cloudswrest says:

      Also regarding the Judge Reinhold jerking off scene, it must be degrading for an actor to do a jerkoff scene. Can you imagine John Wayne, Kirk Douglas or Henry Fonda doing a jerkoff scene? No, and neither can I. I imagine comedy actors like Ben Stiller can pull it off (heh) in Something about Mary, but in general, no. I guess they want to be labelled as “character actors”.

    • The Cominator says:

      You gotta love her theme song though (Jackson Brown, somebody’s baby)…

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xk2NHZukTYg

      Its funny I mentioned a much better redpill on woman character involving Jennifer Jason Leigh yesterday, her “Agnes” character in Flesh and Blood. Literally gets raped (and I mean like real rape she gets found by angry mercs) and likes it (but only on condition that Rutger Hauer their leader take ownership of her and not turn her over to the rest of the company for turns).

  11. Basil says:

    Why does the Philippines, being a country under direct management of the United States, and not Muslim country under the direct management of the United States, manage to maintain a healthy level of fertility?

    • The Cominator says:

      If Scandanavians are the biologically great simps of all the races South Asians are the opposite.

    • Doom says:

      This has an easy answer.

      Western sexual morality, but they can’t afford birth control.

      Check my work 😀

  12. Wulfgar Thundercock III says:

    The shills are out in force today. They really do not like the idea of targeting leadership.

    • Anonymous Fake says:

      Because it’s perverse. [*payload being that the Cathedral wins by rational debate, and Harvard and Yale are where rational debate reaches its highest and most excellent forms*]

      • jim says:

        Unless you start engaging in rational debate, I am going put your id in the banned list so that I don’t have to read this nonsense.

        • Anonymous Fake says:

          [*deleted*]

          • jim says:

            You know full well what happened to the people that tried to hold reactionary events at the Ivy League.

            The payload you are pushing is that our masters are willing to engage in rational debate. Been tried many years ago, answered with deadly violence.

        • Kunning Drueger says:

          Imagine if all the words, effort, and time you’ve invested in this cretin had been put into standalone blogposts, or responses to good faith posters.

        • Doom says:

          I agree with how you’re managing this, but I also find myself curious as to what these people actually say.

          Since you’re cutting the text.. could you paste it into a separate section of the site “shill comments”?

          It’s helpful to read bad faith arguments, I think; bolsters your position – like a “show your work” type of scenario.

          Instead, also, of summarising the post in the censorship you could just leave a placeholder -> Sent to garbage dump.

          Or something like that.

          • jim says:

            Everything he has to say, I have let through once or twice, sometimes many times, and responded to it. There is nothing new in the stuff I delete, just endless repetition of the same payloads with minor variations in the “hail fellow peasant” costume

            • Doom says:

              You don’t need to respond repeatedly, I agree this is a waste of your time, but theres a degree of shorthand used that is lost on me.

              eg
              “payload being that the Cathedral wins by rational debate, and Harvard and Yale are where rational debate reaches its highest and most excellent forms”

              I can guesstimate what he said but I don’t really know.

              I of course don’t want for a greater burden of effort on you however I do like to see all the data.

              • jim says:

                OK, I will let him through next time, but the trouble is he never says what he is saying. Instead he presents arguments that presuppose his payload as shared consensus accepted by his audience and all reasonable sensible people, so if I let him through I have to fisk him, which is a lot of work.

                Argument by false consensus is not allowed, because it takes far too much time and effort to understand that you are being gaslighted.

                Needs fisking, and fisking is too much work. Occupies space and time that could be used for evidence and rational argument.

                • Pseudo-Chrysostom says:

                  I think a read-only ‘garbage dump’ subsection where you can toss select posts you screen out would be a great idea, give the curious a look into the vibe of the latest shill scrips, and how they’ve morphed past and present.

                • Doom says:

                  Oh no. Don’t let him through. You have your rules and I pretty much agree with them.

                  I just want to better understand your reasoning and the reasoning of people who argue from a bad position.

                  I agree with the the garbage dump idea below, that’s pretty much what I was getting at.

          • yewotm8 says:

            Could there be a way to add spoiler tags to the comments? So that his stuff is hidden by default when you load the page but it can be viewed if one clicks on it.

            • Arakawa says:

              One theory is that the paid shills get paid if their comments get through moderation and/or draw a response. Spoiler tags would allow that outcome.

  13. there you go again says:

    “Just as the winning organizations of seventh to seventeenth century relied on brave men in elite positions and were willing and able to take substantial casualties and keep on going, the winning organizations of the Information Epoch will rely on brave men in elite positions and will be willing and able to take substantial casualties and keep on going. Another aristocratic era is coming up.”

    You are an idiot. You are assuming things already disproven by events.

    From a recent interview of a Ukrainian Mig pilot:

    “On his portion of the front line, he said the Ukrainians have ‘dozens’ of units, ‘which are absolutely autonomous in the search, selection and destruction of targets. This keeps the opponent on his toes and demoralizes him.’ ”

    They HAVE no vertices to hit.

    They have no elites, either. They have six years’ worth of one-year conscripts who each served in the Donbass for a year and therefore know the basics of what’s what and which end of the gun to point, which serves as a framework for military common sense in which to fill out the rest of the million-man mobilization, while establishing some common patterns of behavior right at the outset to have all the new guys started off on the right foot. Before Donbass/Crimea, the Ukrainian army was just like the Russian one, except way more half-assed.

    If Zelensky was taken out today, it would make absolutely zero difference (leaving aside the fact that Putin tried that half a dozen times in the first week and failed on all of them). If the defense minister or this or that general or colonel were taken out, it would make no difference. The Russians are not getting their asses kicked by masterminds in Kiev, they are getting their asses kicked by countless small teams operating semi-independently under general guidelines but free of overly restrictive specifics. That’s how the advance on Kiev was stopped – not by any genius military maneuvers emanating from some Top Commander, but by a bunch of people doing their own thing – making homemade molotov cocktails, among other things, when everyone still thought it would be over in a week or two and before there was any prospect of meaningful western aid – and throwing sand in the gears bit by bit. That’s how that fuel depot in Bryansk got hit; some helicopter pilots saw a chance and took it. Kiev didn’t tell them to do it. Taking out Kiev wouldn’t have stopped them. That’s how the pontoon crossing on the Severo-Donetsk got hit; some guys on the spot used common sense, told each other what to watch for, and and some other guys nearby with artillery were there to help them out when needed. There wasn’t any general staff meeting decreeing the initialization of Operation Steel Rain or anything like that. That’s how the Moskva went down: the guys on the spot saw an opportunity and went for it. You can’t make long-range plans around baiting the Russian flagship into being deliberately stupid.

    This is the essential nature of the American doctrine of “mission command”, which the Ukrainians have applied with resounding success while the Russians doubled down on authoritativeness and bravely enduring heavy casualties.

    To the extent the Ukrainians are a network with vertices, there is not enough precision firepower on the planet to take out enough of the vertices to make a difference. You’d do it faster just nuking everything. (Which of course would provoke the response of which Putin is – judging by his actions – deathly afraid. Did you know Murmansk is where nearly all the Russian boomer subs are based? And the wilderness just to the south and east is where lots of the strategic bombers and other nuke forces are? And that there’s two full Russian divisions facing the border with Norway since that is/WAS the only possible NATO assault route? And that there’s exactly one, count it, highway and one, count it, railroad connecting all that with the rest of Russia? And that Finland now has about a thousand miles of pineland border along which to do whatever to those arteries? Vlad: SOOPER GENIUS)

    Drones, man-portable weapon platforms, and “mission command” principles devolve initiative and autonomy to the individual. Power of necessity devolves as well. This is the opposite of an aristocratic trend: it maximizes the number of people with options and some sort of decisive power on the battlefield. The side that enables the largest possible number of people to have these sort of options and power and initiative will be the side with the most opportunities to improve its position, therefore the side that will win. This is as democratic as one can get. Any resurgent sanity civilization must take this into account rather than attempting to ignore it out of existence.

    Your entire premise in this matter is false, but you are so emotionally latched on to it you can’t allow yourself to see it.

    • jim says:

      > If Zelensky was taken out today, it would make absolutely zero difference

      If you take out the men who decline to agree to satisfactory peace, the men who replace them, anticipating the fate of their predecessors, are likely to agree to the deal that you seek.

      Fighting a war is an immensely complex coordination problem. Those conscripts have to be conscripted, trained, disciplined, fed, armed, organized, and sent into battle.

      If you take out the people doing that, a horde of troops is just a mob, and mobs do not matter.

      When Darius fled the battle of Issus, Alexander was able to slaughter is vast army as though they were a flock of sheep. The equivalent today is impossible, because they could resist successfully as individuals and in very small groups. But, today, he could simply ignore and bypass them.

      If you take out Biden, and more importantly, the small group around him, similarly.

      > Drones, man-portable weapon platforms, and “mission command” principles devolve initiative and autonomy to the individual.

      They do indeed. Which makes war of maneuver impossible, because maneuver happens at the individual level. A column of tanks charging into enemy held territory gets slaughted by individuals acting at their own initiative. But the individuals still have to be conscripted, sent to a certain place at a certain time, fed, and supplied with those man portable weapons. Taxes have to be collected, and dispersed to their intended purpose. When they get hungry, they will wander off from their posts. When the man who sent them there gets killed, the next man will decline to send anyone anywhere.

      The reason you need to be able to target generals as known individuals, to kill one general and not another, is that you don’t want to take out a mere military headquarters, you want the enemy general you have a secret deal with to be in command, and the enemy loyalist to not be in command. Entryism and network penetration. Killing individuals randomly does not give you power. Killing one individual and sparing another on the basis of his individual actions does give you power.

    • Javier says:

      https://rumble.com/embed/v11bmpc/

      “Abandoned by Kiev”
      “Surrendered by the thousands”
      “Ran away an let us get flanked.”
      “Left us to die”
      “We have to negotiate.”

      Come on. These guys aren’t winning shit. It’s all NATO forces doing the effective fighting and that’s all air power.

      • The Cominator says:

        Yeah at least 80% of Russia’s problems are Ukraine has gotten most of the West arsenal of smart anti tank and anti APC drones and munitions…

        • Javier says:

          Right, which again makes me surprised Putin is putting up with it. Maybe he really thought the US wouldn’t engage directly, but as long as we hastily scrub the USA markings off the drones and there’s no pilot to interrogate, I guess it doesn’t count?

          Every country in the world knows exactly what were are doing. The question is if they are going to keep allowing us to do it.

          • Doom says:

            Putin surely knows that if he reacts the way he should – lets not forget they have bombers that can fire a missile that cannot be intercepted that have the range to hit the US – that he will lose the propaganda war even harder.

            Imagine this as a video message (He could even deliver it in English to shock the world!)

            “I have in front of me 6 drones that have killed my men and destroyed my equipment. I know that you, the US, supplied these. This is unacceptable to me. Therefore, I will be sending this missile to this location at this time. Unlike you barbarians, I do not wish to harm your people, but you must understand the meaning of this message I will be sending you”.

            He’d still be Hitler. “PUTLER SENDS MISSILE TO US MAINLAND UNPROVOKED” lol.

            Read his speeches. The man is so liberal minded, he’s like a Yale class of 1982 graduate. He puts up with it because he genuinely believes the US will negotiate and be his friend and ally if he just proves that he’s a good guy.

            • Kunning Drueger says:

              The US military throughout the Cold War maintained this delusion of a Soviet Russia that was a cold blooded, fully evil enemy, incapable of experiencing the normal range of experience or emotion. This helped them justify their increasingly insane strategy and ignore the fact that the clear and present danger was Harvard and the State Department. Kind of funny, mostly sad.

              The Russians seem to believe that somewhere, there’s a cabal of sober and powerful American men, patiently waiting before they step in and set things right. This is the preferred fantasy to distract them from the terrible reality: the psyop mission undertaken by the KGB starting in the 1930s and culminating in the 1970s was a complete success. The communist entry agents using Gramsci and the Frankfurt School successfully converged the education and entertainment establishments via unions and student groups, nearly perfectly, and the generational subversion has occurred. The Russia of today is in danger of being destroyed by the America shaped by their communist predecessors. It would be funny if it were funny.

              • Doom says:

                >The Russians seem to believe that somewhere, there’s a cabal of sober and powerful American men, patiently waiting before they step in and set things right.

                I mean, that was their assumption when they started the psyop mission. It only worked because the assumption was incredibly incorrect.

                > It would be funny if it were funny.
                It’s objectively funny but subjectively terrifying.

                That damn Dunning-Krueger effect keeps fucking us over!

              • Mr.P says:

                “the psyop mission undertaken by the KGB starting in the 1930s and culminating in the 1970s was a complete success…. The Russia of today is in danger of being destroyed by the America shaped by their communist predecessors.”

                There it is. Beautifully stated.

              • Neurotoxin says:

                “The Russia of today is in danger of being destroyed by the America shaped by their communist predecessors.”

                I’ve had the same thought. It’s an example of this more general proposition:

                The left is brilliant at achieving its goals, but catastrophically bad at choosing those goals in the first place.

              • Pseudo-Chrysostom says:

                Subversion always comes home to roost.

                Every player of the ‘great game’ in the 19th century has discovered this principle, and ultimately payed the price.

            • Pseudo-Chrysostom says:

              >Putin surely knows that if he reacts the way he should[…]that he will lose the propaganda war even harder.

              Which is the trick the emotional vampire uses to manipulate you into doing what he wants.

              He’s going to smear you anyways regardless, but if they can get you to castrate yourself at the same time, it’s all extra gravy.

            • Neurotoxin says:

              “Putin surely knows that if he reacts the way he should… he will lose the propaganda war even harder.”

              Irrelevant. If he doesn’t react the way he should his nation will be destroyed.

              (Also, there is a certain truth to strong horse/the winners write the history books/get ’em by the balls and their hearts and minds will follow idea.)

      • jim says:

        The underlying story here is that those guys were holding a defensible position, and on either side of them were Azov brigade in less defensible positions. The Azov brigade wisely decided to withdraw to more defensible positions, but, their position being defensible, they had orders to stay put. And found themselves isolated and surrounded.

        Isolated and surrounded, they decided to make a breakout, to rejoin the main concentration of their allies, the Azov brigade. This turned out to be a very bad idea. If Russia is finding it hard to penetrate Ukrainian troops, Ukrainian troops are also finding it hard to penetrate Russian troops.

        It is likely that if they had not unwisely decided on movement and maneuver, they would still be sitting tight. They were declared heroes on the basis that they were sitting tight. In Information Epoch warfare, sitting tight is easy, maneuver is hard except at the level of individuals and quite small groups.

        But, sitting tight only works if food, equipment, and supplies, comes to you. They decided to move because food, equipment, and supplies were no longer likely to come to them. So, to defeat your enemies, have to deal with their organizational apparatus that collects taxes, conscripts grunts, dispenses funds, and moves equipment and grunts around.

        And if you are dealing directly with that organizational apparatus, the grunts cease to matter much.

        • i says:

          “So, to defeat your enemies, have to deal with their organizational apparatus that collects taxes, conscripts grunts, dispenses funds, and moves equipment and grunts around.

          And if you are dealing directly with that organizational apparatus, the grunts cease to matter much.”

          Destroying the enemy bureaucracy?

    • Skippy says:

      Self-directing men are rare even in industries that can attract them. They are aristocrats. To believe that every man who is conscripted can become a self-directing officer-artilleryman-reconnaissanceman-specfor is to commit the democratic error.

      • Adam says:

        Requires conviction, requires faith. Requires courage. I have know many competent men, but not many willing to lead the charge, and to live and die by their decisions. Have to want power and authority, have to believe that you are worthy and it is your right to take it.

        It is on all of our shoulders to become that man.

    • Aidan says:

      Go step out into the street at look at the men around you. A man who can make proactive and offensive decisions in the heat of combat, with leadership of a small squad, is vanishingly rare even among members of the military, which can be seen from combat footage of the Iraq/Afghan war, with US soldiers cowering behind cover until a JAG gives the air force authorization to strike.

      A man who can do that is called an aristocrat.

  14. Pseudo-Chrysostom says:

    >Russians now have to starve them out.

    Not that there’s anything wrong with that; but it would have been copacetic to have started with the blowing up every truck, power substation, telecom node and waterworks this side of the border, in the first place.

  15. Richard W. Comerford says:

    This whole “war” is nothing but a distraction. It was engineered (like the covid plague) to put the public eye anywhere but on those who are finishing off what was left of society.

    • Dave says:

      What’s worse is how few seem to grasp that basic point.

    • The Cominator says:

      Its not clear whether Putin is the servant of the enemy the way all Western leaders are…

      • The Ducking Man says:

        I’m very intrigued about putin’s early life in KGB.

        If you look at classic conspiracy theories like illuminati and grand masonic lodge, all involved intelligence agencies (MI6, CIA, etc.) and not to discount KGB. God knows what putin did to survive as KGB agent and whether he was recruited as agent of conspiracy.

        And I find it hard to believe that Putin didn’t engage in info epoch war considering he was KGB agent and still follow KGB’s rulebook by the letter (look at how he walk).

  16. Richard W. Comerford says:

    Who cares about Russia and Ukraine? We are at war with China. China is destroying western civilization and we need to bomb them back into the rice paddy age. We also need to round up all of the western politicians and businessmen who are already owned by China, and have a big public execution.

    Russia is not relevant.

    • Kunning Drueger says:

      How many times does this idiot get to fedpost before he’s put on moderation?

      • The Cominator says:

        “Wants to execute everyone on the Chinese payroll which is most of DC”

        Hey c’mon his heart is in the right place.

    • Aidan says:

      Sorry man, I just can’t take the meow-meow autogenocide race seriously, especially once they open their mouths and start squawking their hilarious language. How many lockdowns have they had now over the fake virus? Not a threat.

      • The Ducking Man says:

        These lockdowns in Beijing and basically everywhere in China now are most likely 3 of these:

        A. Blunder by Xi by declaring zero covid policy.

        B. Xi had internal enemy that needs to be hurt indirectly (i.e. most of CCP executives in Beijing are not Xi’s friend).

        C. (least likely) China had actually dangerous outbreak that they don’t want to admit and tried the hardest to cover up.

        either way, once that CCP party congress (somewhen in October 2022) is over expect the lockdowns in China to be also over.

        • Kunning Drueger says:

          D. Xi is using Covid0 policy to wage hybrid war on the GAE.

          This may be farfetched, but it is possible that, once China reopens, the deluge of goods will gridlock many ports, further ratcheting up pressure in the domestic sphere.

          • The Ducking Man says:

            China recent lockdowns put nails on MNCs to get out of China and move to somewhere else like Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia.

            For a party whose entire existence is justified by stability and economic prosperity I don’t think CCP went this far just for waging war. But then again Mao’s CCP was also pretty insane.

    • jim says:

      China is the world’s biggest economy (US hegemony statistics are fake and gay, and are rapidly approaching Soviet levels of mendacity) The US does not have the capacity to defeat China.

      China is a land power, the US is an airsea power. Airsea power is irrelevant in the age of smart missiles against planes and hypersonic missiles against carriers.

      • Pooch says:

        China is a land power, the US is an airsea power. Airsea power is irrelevant in the age of smart missiles against planes and hypersonic missiles against carriers.

        It’s hard to see how a war between the GAE and China would play out because their economies are so intertwined. If the US banned all Chinese imports, things would be bad in America but the Chinese economy would instantly crash and millions of Chinese would starve in short order.

        • The Cominator says:

          China could rejigger their currency policy to not be so export oriented…

          Whereas the US would be able to feed itself but would find itself with an almost instant shortage of spare parts… nothing that broke could easily be replaced.

          • Pooch says:

            They would both be pretty fucked, but I actually think the US would be in better shape economically. But given the dependance, it makes war between them that much more unlikely.

        • Contaminated NEET says:

          Yeah, the financial system is a nonsensical house of cards, but really what is the USA’s contribution to China’s economy? They ship us a bunch of stuff in exchange for IOU’s that will obviously never be paid. I would think they could find something else to do with all the stuff they make if they suddenly stop being able to send it to us while getting nothing real in returnl.

          • The Cominator says:

            Yes they obviously could retool their manufacturing for local clients though there would be some painful adjustment…

            China’s big problem is that Xi is a crazy dumbass commie (though not woke) who really believes he can make real communism work right…

        • jim says:

          It would crash? Why?

          Current system is that they supply us with finished goods, we supply them with bits of paper, they then exchange those bits of paper for raw materials.

          At some point people are going to get tired of those bits of paper, and the Chinese will exchange finished good for raw materials without the US printing press inserting itself in the middle.

          We import stuff that is actually useful and export paper stained with ink. They export finished goods. Who then has more power to crash the other’s economy?

          The “supply chain crisis” is that there is too much paper chasing too few goods.

          • Pooch says:

            At some point people are going to get tired of those bits of paper, and the Chinese will exchange finished good for raw materials without the US printing press inserting itself in the middle.

            China needs oil and no one is giving them oil for their cheap Amazon Chinese made decadent Late-empire crap except the GAE. Everything they make is late empire crap that no one wants except the degenerate GAE.

            Oil producers want dollars (except Russia), and without exports to the GAE the Chinese would eventually run out of dollar reserves.

            When they run out dollars, they run out of oil. When they run out of oil, their economy collapses. When their economy collapses, their currency collapses. When their currency collapses, millions of Chinese starve.

            • Pooch says:

              China needs oil and no one is giving them anything for their cheap Amazon Chinese made decadent Late-empire crap except the GAE.*

              • jim says:

                You are long out of date.

                These days it is American made that tends to be crap. We are losing the knowledge and skills needed to make good stuff. Chinese stuff used to be crap, but it has been steadily and rapidly improving as they acquire knowledge and skills. All my stuff is made in China components, apart from the chips, and when and if they produce a decent ARM64 processor (which they have been promising real soon now for quite some time, but it has not arrived) I am going to go with it.

                They think they can do it. If the party butts out and gives their Korean engineers authority and free hand, they can do it. Which is a big if.

              • Ghost says:

                I still have a complete set of mechanic’s tools left to me. All American made, pre 1980s. You can still find decent knives made in America. American made firearms are going downhill. Pre 1980 they spent more time on the finish and blueing.

                Electronics from China is top notch. All my gear is in good working order. I can remember American made Zenith and Curtis Mathis sets that didn’t work as well.

                Guitars, I would stick with an American made Finder or Gibson. Stays in tune better and quality is nicer.

                Some automobiles are being made in Mexico. I’ve got an older one made in America and a newer one made in Mexico. Mexicans are good mechanics.

                Would you rather have a car made in Detroit by Shaniqua or one made in Saltio by Jose?

                • Kunning Drueger says:

                  The guns category is weird. The big companies are converged and silly, but there’s been a blossoming of small companies, particularly in the “tactical” space, be it ARs or AR style shotguns. I don’t have the funds or time to test everything, but guns are interesting tech in that they continue to perform “forever,” assuming they are treated and stored properly. If there’s a boog, I bet many museum piece cannons will find new life as ad hoc mortars in Minecraft.

                  Somewhat related, does anyone else besides me think that antitank rifles (12.5mm to 30mm ish) will have a resurgence? Antimaterial weapons are actually pretty alluring in this day and age. Not necessarily in pitched battles or urban environments, but can you imagine the shock and dismay when 20mm rounds start slamming into your national guard OP from heaven knows where?

                • Pseudo-Chrysostom says:

                  Close range networking for multiple platforms to act as one, whether foot mobiles, bike dragoons, or larger vehicles, is something to look forwards too. Frequencies like V band, in around the 50-70 gigahertz range, where there is an atmospheric oxygen absorption peak at around 60ghz, are useful for these purposes, as they are normally not used in many applications to date on account of such properties, but in this use-case limiting propagation to 100 yards or less is a great advantage.

                  A smart device mounted on the soldier’s long-arm or other weapon can act all as sight, heads-up display, and networking node; which when operating together can allow for stereoscopic and or interferometric range-finding from the distributed perspectives, while sensing how the weapon is being oriented, plotting out firing solutions on the screen for the designated targets; which can also be tied in with use of lasers for active ranging, and direction of PGMs like pike (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pike_%28munition%29), as either illuminators, or beam-riding datalinks, or blinding electro-optical sensors, or more besides, for engagement of targets like enemy drones, long range munitions, or other valuable equipment.

                  That same targeting data can also be used for pinging larger ordnance assets in the area to hit sighted targets; as well, the distributed operation of each squad member’s smart platform can allow them to act as a single synthetic array for triangulating enemy emissions, pointing the way for investigation, or immediate targeting. Larger portable RF equipment like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aistyonok can be used for directional comms, to extend range while minimizing exposure, and also counter-battery applications, and jamming applications.

                  The same principles can be used for vehicular platforms using larger equipment as well; eg, standard 4×4 trucks with equipment modules loaded on the flatbeds, and themographic cameras, IR lasers, and AESA panels mounted as needed on the body, which can all be used in much the same ways as described above; except of course with longer reaches, harder hits, and greater precisions possible.

                  One particular use-case of interest is detection of low-observable platforms, which usually requires more powerful radar sets operating at lower frequencies to detect at useful ranges, where the wavelengths are large enough to interact with structures on a given target through resonance or scattering (eg, http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-Rus-Low-Band-Radars.html http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-Nebo-SVU-Analysis.html).

                  The need for greater power usually means a concomitant need for greater size, however; and single large pieces of equipment can be a points of strategic fragility. One solution to this difficulty, taking advantage of local networking capabilities, is instead of having one large flashlight, you can have many smaller flashlights trained to all shine on the same spot, which affords greater robustness along multiple axes, from production, to deployment, to tactical engagements. As well, the inherently multistatic nature of such setups also affords the capability of real-time SAR imaging of targets, which allows for more accurate fire-control using lower frequencies, along with reducing the effectiveness of geometric deflection of RF returns in LO designs, signals deflected from one vector, being picked up by the other units in other positions.

                • Aidan says:

                  Far better to have a car made by Hans in Berlin or Takao in Hiroshima than either, but the cars made in Detroit even today are better than the cars made by Wang in Guangzhou. And somehow, American cars took a huge hit in reliability when they moved manufacturing to Mexico.

                  America still manufactures nice things, but mostly out of smaller shops that can keep Tyrone away and that the regulators can’t meddle with. Similar situation to Italy in the 70s.

                  Same with guns; American gunmakers have been going downhill, but I’d still rather be slinging a Colt than a Norinco.

                  Antitank rifles might be good depending on their effectiveness against unarmored vehicles. (Pretty sure all armor can take a hit from a 20mm bullet) If a shot to the engine block disables, or a shot to the passenger compartment produces enough frag to take out the occupants, might be worth a look.

                • jim says:

                  > And somehow, American cars took a huge hit in reliability when they moved manufacturing to Mexico.

                  American cars took a huge hit reliability and safety when they introduced a pile of laws to make them consume less gas and be “safer”

                • Kunning Drueger says:

                  In the words of Dr Steve Brule, “Check it out.:”

                  https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9e3UCcU00TQ6eRYCBYWJuxsoHsJ-H5l-

                  (Forgotten Weapons: antitank rifles)

                • jim says:

                  Anti tank rifles are obsolete. Hugely impressive guns if you want to take down a vehicle or a dinosaur with a gun. Not very useful for anti personnel, because too damned big and heavy. No one today uses them against vehicles. Because of the disparity between the vehicle and the shooter, autonomous weapons are just enormously more effective than guns.

                • Kunning Drueger says:

                  I will be mighty thankful for the prevalence of antitank guns in private collections, should Minecraft get universally switched to Survival mode, but you are correct.

                • jim says:

                  For personal defense, the primary thing that influences the effectiveness of a gun is how fast you can bring it to bear on target and how fast you can get bullets into the target. At which small guns are superior. An anti tank gun is at the very limits of what a man can carry, and cannot be aimed easily.

                • Wulfgar Thundercock III says:

                  If you are fighting a tank, you fucked up. Get an AR-15 or Scorpion, and use that. The false confidence of having an anti-tank weapon is probably more dangerous than a tank would be

                • Aidan says:

                  Jim, cars have indeed been getting worse across the board for those reasons. But American cars were hardest hit, coinciding with moving manufacture to Mexico.

                • Pseudo-Chrysostom says:

                  Not so much AT rifles, more so much minengeschoss rifles.

            • Aidan says:

              I could not buy a Chinese car for dollars if I wanted to, because they don’t work. If I cannot buy a Chinese car for dollars, who would buy a Chinese car for oil?

              • jim says:

                Take a look at flows. Everyone is buying Chinese goods, no one is buying US goods, and US capability to produce goods is falling apart.

                All my equipment is based on components built in China, except that the most important component of the components, the chips from which the components were built, were built in Taiwan and Korea.

                The US lacks the capability to defend Taiwan and Korea, meaning that they are going to slide into the Chinese hegemony sooner or later, one way or another way. Meanwhile China is industriously luring Korean semiconductor engineers to China. If it will be a while before Korea and Taiwan are in the Chinese hegemony, a whole lot of very smart people are moving there and and many have already moved there.

                • Aidan says:

                  I find it eminently likely that the Party will piss in the stewpot, making competent Korean and Taiwanese engineers incapable of producing good chips. But I can’t say that for sure.

                  America’s manufacturing remnants could be scaled back up very quickly under one condition, that the boot of environmental regulation is taken off the factory owner’s neck.

                  The secondary problem is that Tyrone on the factory floor imposes QC issues, but I can still get some very nice things that are made here.

                • jim says:

                  > I find it eminently likely that the Party will piss in the stewpot, making competent Korean and Taiwanese engineers incapable of producing good chips

                  I suspect so also. Indeed I can see piss in the stewpot, though how much piss and how big the stewpot is, is hard to tell. When papers come out about what they are doing, a large amount of party piss is distinctly visible.

                  > America’s manufacturing remnants could be scaled back up very quickly under one condition, that the boot of environmental regulation is taken off the factory owner’s neck.

                  Insufficient. Also need to get HR and SoX accountants of the owner’s neck. You will notice that all new technology from American companies comes from companies organized as private companies, whose accounts are not SoX compliant, and therefore have no EGS problems.

                  The basic problem is that through HR and SoX, the uniparty is far more vigorously imposing its faith on private businesses in America, than the communist party is imposing its faith on private companies in China.

                • Wulfgar Thundercock III says:

                  Another difficulty with ramping up manufacturing is the loss of institutional knowledge and competence. Once you pull all of the boots off of necks, you have to contend with the lack of manufacturers to do the manufacturing. It will take years, possibly even a generation to get back what was lost. On a historical scale, not that long, but on a personal scale? That is a pretty long time.

                • Pooch says:

                  If America was really in a state of war with China, and needed to manufacture goods to fight the war, Starman’s “military supremacy” theory could be in play, if he’s correct.

                  The Pentagon could step in and say remove all that regulatory bullshit, we have a war to fight.

                • jim says:

                  There are Pentagon voices saying this in relation to Musk and rockets, but their voices are furtive and muted.

                • Pseudo-Chrysostom says:

                  Not even war really stops socialists from trying to impose socialism – indeed, they will use it as an excuse also.

                  Only physically removing personnel that exist to promote bureaucratization and dissolving organizations that interpose bureaucratization stops bureaucratization.

                • Pseudo-Chrysostom says:

                  > Only physically removing personnel that exist to promote bureaucratization and dissolving organizations that interpose bureaucratization stops bureaucratization.

                  Which is to say, either the sovereign’s forces do this, or the enemy sovereign’s forces do it.

                • Kunning Drueger says:

                  Bureaucrats are also capable of removing other bureaucrats. Some of FDR’s men were very good at streamlining their fiefs during WW002.

                • Pseudo-Chrysostom says:

                  To the extent they are less bureaucrats and more nobles with freehold.

              • Kunning Drueger says:

                You say potato, I say starch heavy repository. Wolves are wolf to wolves.

            • jim says:

              > China needs oil and no one is giving them oil

              And the US has lost the capability to sell them oil.

              Russia is selling them oil. Africa is selling them oil. The middle east is selling them oil. The US only gets into this picture by providing the paper that manages the counterflows of finished goods for oil.

              Which paper is rapidly becoming obsolete.

              China gets paper from the US, and the paper moves back and forth between China and the people who supply it with oil, as finished goods move in one direction and oil moves in the other direction.

              The paper is in the process of being replaced.

              • Pooch says:

                China gets paper from the US, and the paper moves back and forth between China and the people who supply it with oil, as finished goods move in one direction and oil moves in the other direction.

                The paper is in the process of being replaced.

                Correct, but replaced with what? What is there to replace it with? Gold? It’s not a process that can be done overnight.

                The process to move the world off of the Petrodollar to something like gold is a massive undertaking.

                It would be in China’s interest to start moving in that direction, off the dollar, but the fact they are still buying US treasuries hand over fist, implies they are not doing that all that quickly.

      • Pooch says:

        China is the world’s biggest economy (US hegemony statistics are fake and gay, and are rapidly approaching Soviet levels of mendacity) The US does not have the capacity to defeat China.

        And that economy is completely and utterly dependent on the decadent GAE buying their cheap shit. If the entire GAE cut Chinese imports, what remains of the Chinese economy would be a fraction.

        • Varna says:

          18% of China’s exports to to the US.
          https://tradingeconomics.com/china/exports-by-country
          If the countries sanctioning Russia today turn on China, she will lose about 40% of her export markets.
          After that it will be a struggle for China to expand trade with the remaining 60%, and globohomo trying to bully the remaining 60% to also cut ties.

          19% of US imports come from China.
          https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/imports-by-country

          Almost everything imported from China can be imported from Mexico.
          https://tradingeconomics.com/mexico/exports-by-category
          But first the US will have to either bribe the cartels or help the govt bring them to heel, to secure the manufacturing base.

          And, of course, everything imported from Mexico can be produced in the US, but that’s white supremacist gibberish which no adult goldstein would take seriously.

          • Pooch says:

            I read this as the American Empire sitting in a better position economically than China.

            • jim says:

              The man who can makes stuff is in the better position than the man who cannot make stuff.

              It is that simple.

              • Pooch says:

                The GAE has not lost the ability to make the cheap low-tech crap China exports, at least yet. It is willingly choosing to import it because cheaper.

              • Adam says:

                For what it’s worth, the best machine tools are still made in Europe. Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Italy all manufacturer quality commercial and industrial machine tools and automation in my industry. And there is a lot of good tool manufacturers in the US, though much of it is no doubt made elsewhere.

                • Varna says:

                  Some suspect globohomo is at this very moment crashing the EU economy to make it into a “new China” for the Anglosphere.

                • Aidan says:

                  It is interesting to me that despite Europe being happy to let Mahmad in and shower him in gibs, it is not yet insane enough to give him a position as floor boss at a factory, let alone as engineering head.

                • jim says:

                  And some of the key machines for making semiconductors are purchased by Taiwanese and Koreans from Europe, which has not yet made Shaniqua tech lead.

                  They will. ESG is being enforced world wide.

                • Adam says:

                  I’ve worked with a lot of techs from Europe that have flown here to service our machines. There is a huge difference in those guys from your average American tech.

                  Average American tech fits the boomer meme, loud, arrogant, not particularly competent. Highly emotional.

                  The guys from Europe are all pretty based. All business, competent, methodical etc. Very little emotion. What you would expect from a professional.

                  Seems the feminization is more thorough in the US, but I have never been to Europe.

      • Albert says:

        One of Zeihan’s points is that two frigates positioned anywhere between the Persian Gulf and the Straits of Malacca could cut off 80% of China’s oil imports. India, Japan, or the U. S. could do that. Probably Australia, Thailand, and Indonesia could do it. China’s navy could not counter that. Being an airsea power still has some advantages.

        • jim says:

          It has advantages so long as nobody tries to deny you power over the air and sky. If the sea powers cut off China’s oil, China is going to start sinking them. Which probably will not allow resumption of oil transport, but will deny the sea powers the capability to transport stuff over sea and air, on which they are considerably more dependent than China is. Everyone will be hurt, as always happens in war, but the airsea powers are going to get a world more hurt.

          China could not deny them air sea power over the persian gulf and vicinity, but there is a whole lot of ocean where it could deny them airsea capability, on which oceans they depend more than China does.

          If they cut off oil to China, China can cut off chips to the US and Europe.

          • Pooch says:

            If they cut off oil to China, China can cut off chips to the US and Europe.

            If they cut off oil to China, millions of Chinese starve. If China cuts off chips to the US and Europe, people will have to use old laptops.

            • jim says:

              China has considerably advanced coal to liquid fuel technology. Which it is not using, which nobody is using, because it is polluting and not really cost competitive with oil. You might wonder why they put effort into that project.

              And the US might have trouble building drones from old laptops.

              If people start cutting trade routes, everyone hurts, but a land power is less dependent on sea routes than a sea power. China has land access to most of the world’s land surface. Including most of the world’s oil, though it is considerably cheaper and more practical to transport oil over sea.

              As with sanctions, an attack on sea trade would be the west pissing in its own bed.

              All your arguments are predicated on an American technological and economic supremacy that no longer exists.

      • The Ducking Man says:

        US does not have to do anything to defeat China.

        China (CCP) will trip on it’s own feet once the domino (china’s real estate market) is falling. Evergrande scandal should open our eyes that the domino has started falling.

        • jim says:

          I interpreted the Evergrande events as evidence for China’s claim to be “Democracy that works”. Compare and contrast with the Gamestop scandal. The Evergrande “scandal” is that China followed the letter and spirit of the law and backed ordinary Chinese trying to purchase their own homes against Globohomo international finance, whose claim against Evergrande assets was legally secondary to that of people who had put money down on physical goods.

          Which shocking exercise of legality in favor of private property rights deeply shocked, horrified, and outraged the international finance community.

          International financiers loaned money to Evergrande figuring that home purchasers were being scammed, that they would be good, while home purchasers would get a haircut. They were mistaken. While everyone is going to get a haircut, they find themselves at the back of the line for Evergrande assets.

          This exercise of legality and propriety is good for the housing market, in that bad financial activities get punished, and private individuals get homes.

          The financiers lent money on assets that had already been promised to someone else. They deserved to get a haircut, because those loans show that they expected the law to be perverted in their favor, or they expected a bailout.

          When financiers lend money to troubled businesses, it is because they expect that in the event of the highly probable bankruptcy, their pull will jump them to the head of the line of creditors or ensure a bailout. This expectation needs to be quelled. China just quelled it.

          China’s housing development needs to be driven by private individuals saving money to buy homes, putting deposits on homes, and paying off those homes. And for the most part, that is what is driving it. To the extent that it is driven by international finance, the international financiers will have to learn to play by the rules.

          What is screwing up China is the insertion of party members in business governance. And that is screwing up American business (in the form of HR and SoX accounting) a whole lot worse than China’s.

          • The Ducking Man says:

            China always had preferential treatment for domestic as it was the case with it’s IP court so I was not surprised CCP backed it’s citizen against international financiers.

            Evergrande is not one-off event, other real estate developer will follow. And recent lockdown just put the nail into their coffin.

            People will only pay so much to afford homes. I myself will not save up 5 years to afford down payment for starter homes, but apparently that’s the case for most of china.

            We just need to wait for the balloon to pop and see that we do need to do anything.

            Its’ not CCP against GAE, it’s always just Xi against GAE.

            • jim says:

              What drives the housing boom in China is that individuals are putting a whole lot of their money and effort into owning houses to live in. That is no bubble.

              People want houses and are prepared to put down money. Hence plenty of bread and butter for real estate developers. There is lots of speculation, and speculation has bubbles and busts, but mostly it is just bread and butter.

              Evergrande was not the start of big wildfire, rather it was a firebreak, a backburn. Speculation and borrowing was getting out of hand. The lesson of Evergrande is “don’t do that” So they won’t. It will take away a little bit of the froth from on top of the big pile of bread and butter.

  17. Javier says:

    It’s obvious the west is keeping ukraine alive and if putin did not anticipate that and have a plan to deal with it then he deserves to lose. I did assume that when it became apparent the US was conducting operations on the ground as we are now (as ‘advisors’) things would escalate with other countries moving against us, and perhaps they are. Putin hit some transports sent over the border but if he cannot lock it down entirely, or otherwise punish us for aiding his enemies he may as well call it quits.

    Russia could make a valid argument that Nato is illegally aiding the war and start launching missiles into Poland, but that would still provoke an insane retaliation from the west. But if he is not prepared to do that, what hope does he have? Perhaps China was supposed to join, or go after Taiwan to divide our attention? Who knows. Maybe they’re right and he does have terminal cancer so he launched the war as a last hurrah before he is gone.

    • jim says:

      > that would still provoke an insane retaliation from the west.

      What can the west do, short of nukes, that it is not already doing?

      The big beneficial impact of this war for Russia is that the west has done its worst, cannot do much more, so Russia now has a free hand.

      • Pooch says:

        What can the west do, short of nukes, that it is not already doing?

        Airstrikes by the US Air Force.

        • jim says:

          Russian anti air capability can deny the air to people four hundred kilometers away. Which is why the later airstrikes against Syria were drone missiles launched from a considerable distance out to sea.

          The color revolution formula is that you have proxy forces on the ground, nominally local but in fact imported from all over the world, and give them direct air to ground support. This formula came unstuck in Syria, because of Russian ground to air anti air capability.

          • Pooch says:

            Is Russian anti air capability sufficient to neutralize the US Reaper drones (which can fly higher, for longer, and carry more payload than Turkish drones) that killed General Soleimani?

            • jim says:

              You are reading enemy propaganda, spouted to hide technological decline.

              Reaper drones are massively inferior to Turkish drones, because bigger, and their targeting less precise. The reaper drones can put a lot of high explosive in the general area of the target. The Turkish drones can land a kilo of explosive on someone’s head. The smaller the drone, the better, because harder to spot and stop. The bigger the drone, the worse. The more precise the targeting, the more the damage to a small high value target.

              A huge drone that can deliver a lot of explosive close enough does similar damage to the target you actually care about as small drone that delivers a handful of explosive precisely on the target you care about, and the smaller drone will make it through when the bigger drone will not.

              In the early days of smart phones, they tended to be physically big. Big was not better. It was an external sign of technological incapacity.

              Militarily important technology is the last to decline in a dark age, and the first to recover, with recovery coming first from locations that were at the outer periphery of empires when those empires fell. Drone technology will continue to improve. Eventually drones the size of pigeons will deliver smaller drones the size of mosquitoes, which will inject their targets with a genetically engineered lethal and incurable, but not particularly infectious, disease. Drones the size of beetles will enter computers, and make some small adjustments.

              • Pooch says:

                A huge drone that can deliver a lot of explosive close enough does similar damage to the target you actually care about as small drone that delivers a handful of explosive precisely on the target you care about, and the smaller drone will make it through when the bigger drone will not.

                You may be right, but the Reaper strike that took out General Soleimani seemed awfully precise.

              • Pseudo-Chrysostom says:

                With regards to altitude in particular, there are certain transformative advantages there, which is the effect of gravity and ‘high ground’. Something large enough to make an interception on high flying platforms can itself be intercepted by something a fraction of the size going down. And those same somethings can also be used in strike missions, as well, because gravity is again on your side.

              • Javier says:

                I agree that a real shooting war with Russia would go badly for us, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. Everyone in the military who understands this has either retired or been purged.

          • Pooch says:

            This formula came unstuck in Syria, because of Russian anti air capability.

            Not true. Trump pulled out.

            • jim says:

              When Russia went in 2015, before Trump became president, direct air support for thinly relabeled ISIS forces immediately ended, which was the major impact of Russian forces on the civil war. Russian forces engaged in very little direct combat. Their primary role was to deter American airstrikes.

              Thereafter, America only attacked Syria with drones launched from a considerable distance away.

      • Javier says:

        We haven’t even fully mobilized yet. Right now we’re still doing the proxy war thing; we send guns and ammo, we also send ‘advisors’ with the guns and ammo (special forces and mercs) but not officially and not wearing American uniforms. We maintain that we are technically not part of the war while we are obviously and in all practical matters part of the war.

        But if Russia gave us any hint of a Pearl Harbor excuse–they launch a missile at a US warship, if they even drop a frag grenade five inches across the polish border–tomorrow morning there would be a special session of congress, thunderous outrage from all sectors of the government, and a unanimous vote for “Authorization of use of force in Russia”. AKA WW3.

        • Varna says:

          Russia BTW has also not officially mobilized, perhaps playing up the “this is not a war” narrative.

          There govt has not declared war powers, there is no mobilization of citizens, the economy is not on war footing (aside from dealing with the sanctions), and about 10% of the army are rotated in and out of the Ukraine. Much if not most of the low-effort generic ‘infantry’ stuff has been relegated to state National Guard units (Rosgvardia).

          The army proper moves the frontline and engages the enemy, the national guard moves in for mop ups and setting up new govt structures. About 80 states making up the Russian Federation, each has its national guard. The “Chechen corps” in the Ukraine is in fact the national guard of Chechnya.

          The city of Kherson, being managed by the Rus National Guard.
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzGMnClhJBo

          The only fully mobilized player currently is the Ukraine. Aside from some minor sabotage, there are no strikes from the Ukraine on Russia thus far, because in spite of all the “monstrous hordes are genociding us” rhetoric, they understand that Russia is playing with kid gloves and pulling punches.

          They are literally a “smaller Russia” made up of the same genetic soup, and standing on the same historical and cultural basis. It’s two Russias (Kiev Rus and Muskovy Rus) duking it out. They understand each other like brothers do.

          If however Ukrainian rockets or shells start landing regularly on Russian towns, then the kid gloves come off and the “special operation” becomes “real war”. The Russian army proper becomes 500K strong, and not with national guard tech.

          • Varna says:

            I meant about 10% of the Russian army proper are inside the Ukraine at any given moment.

          • Pooch says:

            I tend to think if Russia needs to declare “real war”, it necessarily means total war and nukes become very much in play.

            • Varna says:

              December 2013 China and the Ukraine (then still Yanukovich as prez, the Ukraine seems to be about to choose Russia over the west, the Chinese one belt thing seems about to blossom with the Ukraine as a highly important node, everything is sunny etc) signed a friendship treaty.
              https://tass.ru/mezhdunarodnaya-panorama/813052

              Unimportant at the time little caveat is that China becomes a guarantor of Ukraine’s non-nuke status by promising to help defend it from external nuclear threats.

              If Russia uses nukes on the Ukraine, China loses face hard. It has to be anything else but not nukes.

              • jim says:

                That treaty was abandoned in the color revolution that installed Zelensky. It no longer applies, due to massive defection from it by Zelensky. Smashing that treaty was a major purpose in imposing color revolution.

  18. John Carter says:

    Regarding the likely societal impact of drone warfare, I’ve had similar thoughts but reached possibly somewhat different conclusions based on consideration of how weapons technology affects the optimal social order.

    I agree that the ability to precisely target military personnel, including decision makers, will mean that there’s a strong selection pressure to maximize network redundancy and agility by pushing decision making to the edges of the network. Dumb order-following grunts are of little utility; independently thinking violence entrepreneurs are the order of the day.

    Combined with the fact that drones are also cheap and easy to use, to me that implies that the most successful societal forms will be those that cultivate independence of thought, quick wits, and martial virtue in the largest possible number of men. If the descriptor of aristocratic is to be applied, that seems to be more in line with Hellenic or Roman ideals, rather than e.g. the hereditary nobility of the middle ages.

    My own analysis here:

    https://barsoom.substack.com/p/how-weaponry-organises-society

    • jim says:

      > that seems to be more in line with Hellenic or Roman ideals, rather than e.g. the hereditary nobility of the middle ages

      The apple does not fall far from the tree.

      The aristocracy of the middle ages was not all that hereditary. Rather it reflected the fact that men of martial virtue tended to have sons of martial virtue, and that the son of a man of martial virtue was apt to be trained from birth in the use of expensive weapons, and equipped with expensive weapons.

      William the Marshall was the penniless son of a defeated lord. No horse, no home. He took someone else’s horse at swordpoint, performed sevice to the King in war to get tolerance to take greater things, and then took a heiress and her castle at swordpoint. (The King granted him a land that the King did not at that time possess in the midst of the Kings enemies, and he took a different land.) One man by himself acquired lands and a castle, and soon had large group of retainers and became one of the greatest men in England.

      It is said that the Kings of those times paid in land. Not exactly true. Rather they coordinated collective action to protect loyalists who possessed land from having their lands usurped, and declined to organize collective action to protect troublesome lords from having their lands usurped. William the Marshal, acting as one individual with one sword, acquired a horse, then wife and lands.

      Loyalty tended to be believed on the basis of family connections – you were presumed loyal on the basis of the deeds of older loyal kin, thus assumptions of loyalty, like valor and competence in warfare, tended to be hereditary.

      William the Marshal was mighty, and his father was mighty, not because of a social system that declared in mighty on the basis of the deeds of distant ancestors, but because he personally and individually was mighty. His father was mighty, but far from loyal, and as a result William found himself with no lands, no home, and no horse. He acquired a horse, and some new armor by similar methods. Having acquired a horse, the King cheerfully accepted his profession of loyalty, and pointed him the direction of the King’s enemies. After taking care of the Kings enemies, he then wandered off to a location where there were safer lands and a prettier girl, and the King was quite relaxed about that, for he had helped take care of the King’s enemies.

      • The Cominator says:

        LOL you ever see the Movie Flesh and Blood…

        Speaking of a small band of Ruffians taking over a castle (I would assume William the Marshal had a couple of other guys with him when he took this castle).

        • jim says:

          Probably he did, but the denouement was an awesome single combat between William the Marshal and his intended’s uncle. One awesome warrior with full equipment and training from birth counted for more than a bunch of (other) ruffians. Equipment and training made a huge difference, and personal awesome ability made a huge difference. The equipment being expensive, you needed the best people wielding it, and somehow the feudal system generally did result in the best people wielding it.

          Any knight could make another man a knight, and at this fundamental level, there was nothing hereditary about feudalism. But of course, he did so on the basis of friendship, loyalty, ability, family connections, training, and the huge expense of knightly equipment. And the funding, the training, and the ability tended to run in families and through family connections.

          William the Marshal had the ability and the training, but, due to fortunes of war, found himself mighty short of funding, equipment, and useful family connections. Ability and training remedied that deficiency. Having acquired equipment, he acquired land and connections by methods not very different from those methods he had employed to acquire equipment. His newly acquired wife had the connections. and her people reluctantly acquiesced in his acquisition of her. (Well, her uncle did not acquiesce, but that matter being decisively settled, no one else raised any objections. What his wife’s opinions on the matter were is not recorded because nobody cared.)

          She was seventeen. She bore him ten children, and everyone was fine with having new kin with the blood of awesome warrior running in their veins, and also, through their mother, the blood of a very competent estate administrator. The purpose of women being to produce new warriors, and to administer the estate while their husband was away making sure that the estate remained in the hands of his family and kin.

          • The Cominator says:

            I would recommend that movie to you Jim… Paul Verhoeven, great director imho. Its early Renaissance not Middle Ages but i think you’d like it…

            Also features Jennifer Jason Leigh getting raped and enjoying it (on condition Roger Hauer take ownership of her and not turning her over to the whole mercenary band for a turn).

  19. Pax Imperialis says:

    The Russians have been stupidly persistent with their tactics since the first Chechen war when they drove a massive armor column into Grozny without an infantry screen or air support. They got cut off and some units were nearly butchered to the last man.

    That is not so dissimilar to the failed Kyiv push, and yes I’m calling it Kyiv, because the Russians are highly unlikely to change their tactics anytime soon and so the only way they can get a win now is to start indiscriminate leveling of that city and demanding unconditional surrender.

    To do that to Kiev, the mythological heart of Kievan Rus, would be heretical. To do that to fake Kyiv is holy. Start off with thermobarics before escalating to tactical nukes.
    Putingrad can always be built on the ashes of Kyiv.

    Ceterum censeo Kyiy esse delendam.

    • jim says:

      > the only way they can get a win now is to start indiscriminate leveling of that city and demanding unconditional surrender.

      Indiscriminately leveling cities is no longer feasible if the area is held by an enemy with modern smart autonomous weapons. Right now a couple of thousand militants are holed up in a small part of Mariupol, all civilians have left that area, the area is completely surrounded by a pile of Russian tanks and artillery, the Russians have total air superiority, and it still stands.

      All that World War II stuff is obsolete, one with the cavalry charge. They are starving them out.

      The face of war in the Information Epoch is radically different.

      • Kunning Drueger says:

        Are the politicians and generals of the early 21st century more or less capable of realizing and exploiting the Change than the politicians and generals of the early 20th century?

      • Pax Imperialis says:

        Russia has a history of using obsolete tactics and technology since the Crimean war. They have paid for it with a very high disproportionate body count. I’m not arguing that the WW2 stuff is obsolete, I’m pointing out that WW2 stuff is all the Russians have right now, and will likely only use for the rest of this conflict. They are going to have to try to win with obsolete methods, not impossible provided enough bodies.

        As you’ve pointed out the Russians are capable of establishing total air superiority. As such nothing is stopping them from dropping some large bombs. I doubt the Russians can precisely locate Ukrainian leadership to kill them, but they can certainly bomb the general area they might be, and use a large enough bomb you probably vaporized them anyways even if it wasn’t exactly on target.

        There are still 10s of millions of Ukrainian civilians left in Ukraine. Leveling Kyiv would still send a very potent message to either submit, flee, or die.

        • jim says:

          > Russia has a history of using obsolete tactics and technology since the Crimean war. They have paid for it with a very high disproportionate body count. I’m not arguing that the WW2 stuff is obsolete, I’m pointing out that WW2 stuff is all the Russians have right now, and will likely only use for the rest of this conflict.

          You assume the conflict will end in a reasonable time. I don’t expect it to end until Russia wins or Russia is destroyed. And since globohomo wants to take Russia in small bites at a time, for fear of nukes, ending Russia would take quite a while.

          The conflict has been going for eight years. Chances are that by the time it ends, the world political map is going to look radically different.

          • Pax Imperialis says:

            Yes, I’m assuming that the Russians don’t want to bleed out over Ukraine when they still need to get to Moldova in good time. For that they need a quick decisive victory symbol. A mushroom cloud over Kyiv would do that.

            In the case that the conflict drags on for multiple years, you are likely correct on your assessment, but I reject the notion that the Russians will continue to tolerate a long drawn out conflict. This isn’t the Chechen wars where they could afford to deal with the problem over the period of a decade. Every day that passes more NATO assets move into the areas they need to conquer meaning future expansion becomes increasingly costly. The Russians know they have a demographic problem and that time is not on their side.

            Or they might not know… Putin has not called for general mobilization which is evidence that they are not fighting the war they need to be fighting.

            • Kunning Drueger says:

              It could also be that Putin knows this isn’t the war they will soon be fighting.

  20. Leon says:

    What if Russia loses the war? What if the GAE wins? Supposedly Finland and Sweden are joining NATO so the GAE appears to be expanding.

    Also, on an unrelated note, the daily stormer is down again.

    • Pax Imperialis says:

      NATO goes back to fragmenting even harder

    • Mister Grumpus says:

      Rome reached a maximum size too, far after the middle of it’s story.

    • jim says:

      Russia will certainly lose the war if they stubbornly persist in World War II tactics and weapons, but war is a great teacher.

      • Karl says:

        Why do you think that Russia will certainly lose the war if they persist in World War II tactics?

        The number of Ukrainian grunts and foreign volunteers is rather limited. Even fighting with World War I tactis and killing them all by artillery shelling might be expensive and slow, but why sould Russia not be able to afford it?

        If it gets too expensive, escalation to nukes is still an option. Russia might simply conquer the east and nuke the rest of Ukraine.

        • Pooch says:

          Russia has not mobilized for total war and has not shown a will to do so, still insisting they are only conducting a “special operation”. Ukraine has mobilized for total war.

    • Aidan says:

      What do you count as losing? It seems very unlikely now that Russia will be able to compel the leadership of Kiev to demilitarize and politically distance itself from the West. On the other hand, very unlikely that Kiev will be able to retake the L/DPR, for the same reason that Russia cannot take territory. As far as I’m currently aware, Russia controls most of the L/DPR’s claimed territory. Russia did not achieve its objectives, but UKR lost territory and sanctions put serious cracks in the petrodollar.

      But now, Putin needs to invade Finland and Sweden, or at least drop a big spicy explosive on the people organizing their NATO memberships. Being stalled in UKR, and having NATO creep up to its borders, make Russia look like the weak horse. Not good for a counter-GAE coalition.

      • alf says:

        But now, Putin needs to invade Finland and Sweden, or at least drop a big spicy explosive on the people organizing their NATO memberships. Being stalled in UKR, and having NATO creep up to its borders, make Russia look like the weak horse.

        I think Putin needs to slow things down, think about what went wrong in UKR and not make any rash decisions. He is the weak horse. Opening up a second front is dangerous regardless of the situation, especially so if your position is not as strong as you initially thought.

        • i says:

          Humility is important in War. It doesn’t allow you to overestimate your own capabilities and lose.

  21. Mister Grumpus says:

    I think I’ve found the good news in this:

    Information Epoch Warfare, done right, means that Russia can finally have defensible borders.

    Back to that facefag Peter Zeihan. Part of his act is showing the nine flat and easy routes through which one can drive 1000 tanks into Russia. Tanks. These paths were all inside the USSR, but most of them today are outside the Russian Federation. Therefore Russia is constantly trying to secure them via warfare and notwarfare, which is essentially impossible.

    Well. If Information Epoch Warfare makes tanks irrelevant, then that’s great news, because Russia can switch tracks to something it actually can do to protect itself.

    Win-win, people.

  22. Gedeon says:

    I think this style of warfare is another tell that Putin is in the WEF bag. He came up hitting enemies and earned a reputation for organizing and executing hard targets.

    Are we to believe that Lavrov and Hildabeast coincidentally punched a reset button and that we have TGR scheme also? The most incredible thing of the past few years is that, aside from General Soleimani and maybe Epstein, no one of any consequence has been knocked off. My baseline definition for rich is someone who has their own team of seasoned and hardened warfare operators. At least 5-6 of them on lifetime contracts would have to set you back $2.5mm+ travel and expenses. Even with those guys, any serious government could summon the resources to get to you if your home government didn’t also align with you.

    Something does not add up because most of these bad guys have no real security detail, much less retired Delta operators doing daily overwatch.

  23. Anonymous Fake says:

    [*official reality deleted. We have heard it all before, and it sounds even sillier and even less believable when you tell it*]

    #2. Very obvious infiltration asymmetry makes information epoch war implausible. Christian churches always have to worry about [*deleted for the use of sex neutral language and language that fails to distinguish between sex and perversion. I would love to discuss this one with you, it is absolutely vital and centrally important, but no point in discussing the matter with someone who dare not call a faggot a faggot*]

    [*official reality deleted.*]

    • jim says:

      The solution to the gay mafia problem is specifically given in the New Testament. (And yes, every church ignores it, and a result has huge faggot entryist problem.) In the near future, failure to apply the New Testament solution for the faggot entrist problem is likely to have lethal consequences.

      • RMIV says:

        Jim, could we please hear more on this New Testament solution that is in the New Testament? perhaps my own church might thereby benefit in this time of entryists.

        • Pooch says:

          Clergy must have one wife and well behaved children.

        • jim says:

          1 Timothy Chapter 3

          2 A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach;

          4 One that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity;

          5 (For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?)

          7 Moreover he must have a good report of them which are without; lest he fall into reproach and the snare of the devil.

          8 Likewise must the deacons be grave, not doubletongued, not given to much wine, not greedy of filthy lucre;

          11 Even so must their wives be grave, not slanderers, sober, faithful in all things.

          12 Let the deacons be the husbands of one wife, ruling their children and their own houses well.

          Titus Chapter 1

          4 To Titus, mine own son after the common faith: Grace, mercy, and peace, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ our Saviour.

          5 For this cause left I thee in Crete, that thou shouldest set in order the things that are wanting, and ordain elders in every city, as I had appointed thee:

          6 If any be blameless, the husband of one wife, having faithful children not accused of riot or unruly.

          8 But a lover of hospitality, a lover of good men, sober, just, holy, temperate;

          10 For there are many unruly and vain talkers and deceivers, specially they of the circumcision:

          11 Whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole houses, teaching things which they ought not, for filthy lucre’s sake.

          14 Not giving heed to Jewish fables, and commandments of men, that turn from the truth.

  24. JustSomeOldGuy says:

    Your blog is spot on so often. Maybe not this one time. For instance here is a photo analysis by a skeptical Russian
    https://greatwarchannel.medium.com/%D0%BF%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B2%D0%B0-%D0%BF%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B2%D0%B0-922630a9ab71

    That URL is like that because of Cyrillic. Probably works. if it doesn’t, just the first part will get there indirectly. Basically some of those vehicles are probably Ukrainian, who have many older Soviet vehicles.

    via a comment from
    https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/05/ukraine-open-thread-2022-64.html?cid=6a00d8341c640e53ef0282e1555180200b#comment-6a00d8341c640e53ef0282e1555180200b

    Also I don’t think the Russians can target specific generals. They are not at home; they are in bunkers in the various areas under dispute.

    As far as political targets, yes – Russia easily could target Ukraine govt buildings in Kiev and so on (or even the NATO phantom HQ in Lvov) but Russia is playing a different game, more like chess. If they have to, they will later. How many Kinzhals have they used, 2, during the whole operation?. that’s their best missile. one at a depot, last week at Odessa.

    The region NE of Kharkov is fairly close to the border of Russia, hence the Russian reaction. The Ukies knew this, that’s why they tried counterattack. I imagine both sides know the counterattack in that direction had no strategic / hard power significance in this war. That’s why the Russian did not care at first. apparently the Ukies got a little too close. Not that I am a military expert, though I read them (the ‘western’ ones are phonies) I imagine this was the first recent use of pontoon bridges and not an indication of anything in the future.

    Overall, I do not believe Russia needs military advice.

    As far the deep strategies, this story goes back maybe 25 years. At a party in Moscow. Alexander Dugin asked truly nasty Z Brzezinski ‘Don’t you realize that chess has two players?’ (about a famous ‘grand chessboard’ remark) and Brzezinski replied ‘not any more’.. something like that.. And Dugin said nothing. But he has told that story many times since.

    The Russians are playing hearts & minds/consider fellow Slavs brothers (take your pick), and trying to avoid a ‘phase 3’, is my guess. Just that prescribed goal, which would leave a rump Ukraine. The Russians are learners not cocksure fools like their opposition are.

    • jim says:

      South Front says they were AFU units, but why would AFU units be trying to cross the river?

      Under the circumstances, who would be be attempting a river crossing and on what date would they attempt it?

      Ukrainians are telling the truth this time. The Russians wanted to encircle the “city”, and needed to cross the river. Obviously somebody failed a river crossing.

      > Also I don’t think the Russians can target specific generals.

      They cannot. But if they want to win wars in the Information Epoch, they are going to need to be able to target one general and specifically avoid hitting another.

      From 2016 onwards, that is going to be how wars are won.

  25. Adam says:

    If I were Putin I would be looking at western elites that have reason to defect, with Elon at the top of the list. Start offering things they cannot get elsewhere. Or roll the dice and nuke Kiev.

    If he keeps on acting this incompetent, you have to start wondering if the whole thing isn’t a psyop and he’s in on the reset.

    • S says:

      The natural gas is still flowing. I didn’t think I’d ever see a farcical existential war, but here we are.

  26. The Cominator says:

    I think the problem with targeting the leaders is they are nearly all in other countries that are theoretically neutral.

    • Karl says:

      Not much of a problem. Just target the men taking orders from those leaders in other countries.

  27. Kunning Drueger says:

    So I was wrong initially; I thought the soft touch was a good strategy. I followed it up by being wrong about RF’s ability to adapt. Then I was less than correct about Info Epoch, though this post kinda validates my position that it won’t be an overnight transition, it will take time and repeated efforts by change agents to shift the paradigm.

    Let’s say Russia goes full speed ahead into Info Epoch tactics. How does this help in UKR, given that, conservatively, half the vertices they need to target are not in Ukraine?

    Does the correct Info Epoch strategy necessitate a correct state religion, or could GAE pull it off, even with LCDR Shanikwa Malikwa running the shmashional shmeconnaissance shmoffice? Further still, can a faction use Info Epoch tactics without all the tools and toys available to GAE members? I can take a picture of my enemy’s house, but without a Druegger Team Six, my threat doesn’t carry much weight. What are the necessary components for successful Info Epoch tactics?

    • Pooch says:

      Let’s say Russia goes full speed ahead into Info Epoch tactics. How does this help in UKR, given that, conservatively, half the vertices they need to target are not in Ukraine?

      Congress critters, of both parties, are waltzing in and out of Kiev regularly like they own place. This is equivalent to General waltzing into Iraq from Iran without a care in the world.

      Hit one of those Congressional welcome parties like that en route from the airport, preferably leadership.

    • Wulfgar Thundercock III says:

      As you point out, threats matter very little without boots on the ground to enforce them. If Putin drops a bomb on every member of the Ukrainian parliament and any officer above the O3 equivalent, what is America going to do about it? Not much, unless they want to invade. Intelligence does not much matter without the ability to act on it. If Russia decapitates the Ukrainian elite, then there is no real ability to resist.

      I do not think there is one true state religion that will make Info Epoch War(IEW) possible, but there are some that it will make unworkable. Totalitarianism is not going to work in an era where network penetration is the defining capability of a successful military. If you make all of your subordinate networks penetrable, it is going to let everyone else find you and kill you. If you can read everyone’s email, your enemies can, too, and they will know just who to bomb. The only way to have an unsecured system in IEW is to run it as an intranet or have it so unimportant that no one bothers breaking in. I think extremely defined hierarchies may be advantageous, counterintuitively, because when your leaders start getting picked off, you maintain chain of command.

  28. Kunning Drueger says:

    Paragraph 10: “Polyfon” should be “Polygon.”

  29. Pooch says:

    Some pics of what Jim is referring to here I believe: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/18542403/photos-show-russian-z-tank-graveyard-ukraine/

    The article mentions drones put eyes on the Russian battalion and then hit it with artillery with “aviation” chipping in, whatever that means.

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