patrick.net

It appears that the Ministry of Propaganda has grown tired of 'reporting' on the Ukraine/Russian war.

It appears that the Ministry of Propaganda has grown tired of 'reporting' on the Ukraine/Russian war.

I don't seem to see any more of those Ukraine flags flying everywhere,

I don't seem to see any more of those Ukraine flags flying everywhere, but maybe that's just in my area. What about where you live?

RayAmerica says

I don't seem to see any more of those Ukraine flags flying everywhere, but maybe that's just in my area. What about where you live?

RayAmerica I don't see them in my area either, except maybe on a random house that still has its BLM decorations up too.

The Economist ran a screamer today - claiming, two years in, that the Russians are going to run out of artillery gun barrels any day now because of tube wear, because some idiot told them they only produce one new barrel per week - so let's run the numbers.

Artillery barrel wear is measured in "Effective Full Charges" - basically the amount of wear on the barrel that you can expect if you fire a standard round at full charge. Firing at a reduced charge would decrease it, while firing at a "super" charge will increase it. Cannon barrels are generally good for around 2000 EFCs before they wear out of spec.

Assuming that all rounds fired in theater are fired at full charge, and that the Russians fire 20,000 rounds per day on average, this breaks down to a requirement for ten new gun barrels daily. According to, uh... the Economist's own article, the Russians have at least two artillery barrel foundries, so meeting this requirement would seem to me to be trivial - although I know it might surprise some of my readers in the West to learn that a Soviet gigafactory can in fact produce multiple pieces of a given steel product daily.

Except the Economist's case actually gets worse because artillery barrels often don't need to be replaced completely, they just need to be bored out and relined - a process that's considerably less resource-intensive than manufacturing a new barrel.

There's this ridiculous analytical cottage industry of taking some production figure for Russian war materiel gleaned at the bottom of the 1990s, assuming it's unchanged under wartime conditions in 2024, and using it to say This Is How Ukraine Can Still Win.

For lack of a better term, it's cope.

Russia have detained the terrorists.

They are singing like canaries. They claim they were recruited on Telegram to commit the attack in exchange for money.

Putin himself claims that Ukraine tried to assist the terrorists into Ukraine after the attack.

It’s clear some organized entity used patsies as proxy to carry out the attack. Textbook CIA behavior. Combined with Ukraine trying to assist the terrorist in their escape… the evidence would strongly suggest this attack was organized by Western Intelligence.

Whether that be Ukraine, CIA, MI6, Mossad, or some other Western entity, they all serve the same globalist masters, and share the same goal of defeating Russia by any means necessary.

Regardless of what the truth is, Putin is going to have a response. He claims Ukraine, and all those who assisted, will pay a heavy price.

The Economist ran a screamer today

Regardless of what the truth is, Putin is going to have a response. He claims Ukraine, and all those who assisted, will pay a heavy price.

Patrick seems to be wobbling between believing that radical Islam is a fundamentalist retrograde force facing humanity that needs to be countered - then slides back to its all the work of the Jews and the CIA!

Why do you think this is a dichotomy, that it has to be one or the other?

I do also think there is a lot of Jewish hatred for Russia, and this goes back a long way. For example, Jacob Schiff financed Japan in the Russo-Japanese war.

Jacob Schiff financed Japan in the Russo-Japanese war.

Whatever else you think about the Russians, they are not dumb bunnies. You can be sure they are carefully putting together the puzzle pieces, having already been careful to take the suspects alive. They were, incidentally, all in one car driving toward the Ukraine border when apprehended by Russian police. That is being considered “a clue” as to who their handlers are. But then, who is Ukraine’s handler? (Cue: thinking music.)

At least one of them — Fariduni — confessed that his gang received all their instructions over a Telegram social media channel. The gang, by the way, were all natives of Tajikistan, a former Soviet republic. Its population is 98 percent Muslim, around 97 percent of them Sunni and 3 percent Shia. Neighboring Iran is militantly Shia, for what it’s worth. The four Crocus perps were living as immigrant workers in Russia. How hard would it be to track who was the proprietor of the alleged Telegram messaging site that offered payment and sent orders to the perps? I’m guessing that would not be so difficult.

Russia Retaliation Strike Sends Hypersonic Missiles Into Kiev

Building Used by Security Service of Ukraine SBU Is Leveled

The initial collision triggered a chain reaction as adjacent parts of the bridge quickly collapsed in sequence, running right down the line, dropping straight down like giant steel dominos.

As you know or could easily imagine, the hot takes are off the chain. And I’m talking about the official hot takes. Even before the crew was interviewed, the federal agencies and top federal officials like Biden and Buttigieg insisted the collision was one hundred percent accidental and it was not any kind of terrorist cyberattack, no way, no how, don’t even think that.

But the feds’ early, shrill, and repetitive denials of any outside agency just made doubters that much more suspicious. ...

So far what we know is that, as the Dali approached the bridge, its electrical system suddenly shut down. In other words, right at the worst possible time, it lost its engine power, electrical power, and steering and was adrift in a complete blackout.

Some videos seem to show the ship’s power going out twice, as though the crew tried to restart or reboot the power, but then it quickly shuts off again (0:56). It also looks like the ship cleared the bridge, but then the power went out (the second time) and it drifted back into the key pylon. ...

Why would anyone ever suspect a sudden, unexplained power outage at a critical moment could possibly be a cyberattack? I mean, come on people. Quit talking nonsense.

Miraculously, the crew sent out a “mayday” moments before the collision, and heroic Baltimore police frantically cleared the bridge, minimizing casualties. No recordings or transcripts of the mayday have been published that I could find. As of this morning, the only casualties were from a pothole repair crew that were plunged into the icy waters when the bridge collapsed.

It could have been much, much worse.

Believe it or not, the Francis Scott Key bridge is a critical part of the entire nation’s supply chain. Its catastrophic collapse cannot possibly be repaired for years. Officials are already talking about significant damage to our country’s supply chain, increased costs for consumer goods and energy, and so forth. It is not just an inconvenience. For a cascade of interrelated reasons, the destruction of this particular bridge was incalculably injurious to our economy.

One wild, random fact reported in CNN’s article was that thirteen vaguely-described shipping containers marked as unidentified CDC bio-hazmat were somehow damaged in the collision and are being “secured.” I’ll just leave that one right there.

USA Today reported, without explanation, that no Maersk personnel were on board at the time of the collision. Here’s where things really start to get weird. Something strange is going on with the reporting over the identity of the captain and crew: the media refuses to report their identity or even hint at it. The USA Today article even named a local, Andrew Middleton, who took the captain and crew shopping the day before. They named Andrew — the only guy who wasn’t on the boat — but none of the crew. Not one. Not even by first name. ...

If I were a betting man, I’d bet the feds invoked some kind of emergency media authority and told reporters not to talk about the crew. Otherwise I can’t explain why all the stories won’t say one way or the other whether the crew’s names are known. ...

It hasn’t even been a full day and for some reason Joe Biden is awake, medicated, and has already pledged to pay for the full cost of rebuilding the bridge. Why? Why did they wake up Joe? Why shouldn’t Maersk and the various insurers pay for the bridge that their boat crashed into?

Maybe the feds want to quiet the whole thing down, and the last thing they need is a bunch of lawsuits with cross-discovery and depositions and subpoenas and experts and inspections trying to figure out exactly what happened and who is to blame. I’m just saying. ...

Federal authorities were either crazy or lying when they ruled out a cyberattack. And corporate media is obviously collaborating to hide or obscure certain facts — like the crew’s identity — creating reason to be suspicious.

What else are they hiding?

Personally, these days I am automatically suspicious of any infrastructure disaster. We’ve seen the tit-for-tat strikes on our refineries and manufacturing plants. And just a few days ago, Moscow suffered a dreadful and tragic terrorist attack. Putin hinted that the US was involved. And then within a few days, a major bridge goes down. I also find it fascinating that the Russians are already mad at us for repeatedly trying to help Ukraine blow up the Russians’ key Kerch Bridge in Crimea.