Where Do Things End With Vlad? (h/t romad1)

[pfife]

Evidence that you don't bomb something?   What the hell is that, a picture of that something not bombed?  C'mon.

[Biff Mayhem]

20 minutes ago, romad1 said:

Yeah, US news reporting has really ossified around this "issue"

I'm not happy with high gas prices but, don't people know there is a war on? 

Me: My steak is a tad undercooked.

Debbie Downer: THERE'S STARVING PEOPLE IN KOREA!!!!

[pfife]

Gas price increases tend to impact the folks that are already struggling the most.   I think it's tough to ask them to not be concerned about it, but there is definitely also a class that is driving way less and can absorb it temporarily and maybe they could chillax a tad.

[pfife]

I also think it's fair for the media to report on the high gas prices, they're pretty damn high.   

[romad1]

29 minutes ago, romad1 said:

Oh, nice. Marina Butina landed where Anna Chapman ended up.   Red sparrows have a nice post-operation future.

That thread.  For some reason representative Thomas Massie is very concerned with Marina Butina landing on her feet.  Oh, those feet. Those well-manicured feet.   

[Archie]

Zelinsky continues to ask the US and NATO for a no fly zone.  Get ready for this folks....the Biden administration  is doing right by turning his request down.  Ukraine is not a member of NATO and there is no reason for the us to get involved.

As soon as a NFZ is implemented we are going to be involved in a full scale war with Russia that has a good probability it would go nuclear.  Then at what point will China get involved?  When they do they've already made it clear they side with Putin.  Biden admin is correct by aiding Ukraine where they can but staying out of the war.

 

[Tigerbomb13]

3 minutes ago, Archie said:

Zelinsky continues to ask the US and NATO for a no fly zone.  Get ready for this folks....the Biden administration  is doing right by turning his request down.  Ukraine is not a member of NATO and there is no reason for the us to get involved.

As soon as a NFZ is implemented we are going to be involved in a full scale war with Russia that has a good probability it would go nuclear.  Then at what point will China get involved?  When they do they've already made it clear they side with Putin.  Biden admin is correct by aiding Ukraine where they can but staying out of the war.

 

Holy crap we agree! It’s heartbreaking that we can’t help them more with boots on the ground or a NFZ. But it could be catastrophic for the west if we did. 

[CMRivdogs]

romad1, quick (hopefully) question. Are you familiar with the Soviet RADAR system OTH-B that was used during the cold war? Shortwave buffs have noticed a "woodpeckering" effect similar to the scanning that was used. The system has been offline since 1989. It seems to have come back to life in recent weeks on the 11 MHz band.

I'm not a shortwave buff but spent enough time in radio stations to know enough to be dangerous. 

Anyway, a friend reposted a FB post by a Bruce Linder, who among other things is a HAM operator. He noticed the woodpecker effect about the time of the Russian invasion.

He's also referenced the proximities of the OTH-B transmitters to both Chernobyl and Zaphorizhahia nuclear complexes. 

Interesting and scary stuff if you are into conspiracy theories.

https://www.facebook.com/macbruce

[romad1]

10 minutes ago, CMRivdogs said:

romad1, quick (hopefully) question. Are you familiar with the Soviet RADAR system OTH-B that was used during the cold war? Shortwave buffs have noticed a "woodpeckering" effect similar to the scanning that was used. The system has been offline since 1989. It seems to have come back to life in recent weeks on the 11 MHz band.

I'm not a shortwave buff but spent enough time in radio stations to know enough to be dangerous. 

Anyway, a friend reposted a FB post by a Bruce Linder, who among other things is a HAM operator. He noticed the woodpecker effect about the time of the Russian invasion.

He's also referenced the proximities of the OTH-B transmitters to both Chernobyl and Zaphorizhahia nuclear complexes. 

Interesting and scary stuff if you are into conspiracy theories.

https://www.facebook.com/macbruce

Over the horizon radar is believed to be an "effective" method of detecting stealth aircraft.   

[CMRivdogs]

7 minutes ago, romad1 said:

Over the horizon radar is believed to be an "effective" method of detecting stealth aircraft.   

Donning my tinfoil Tom Terrific hat, I find the timing (within a week of the invasion) and who did the work necessary to put it back on line?   

[romad1]

1 minute ago, CMRivdogs said:

Donning my tinfoil Tom Terrific hat, I find the timing (within a week of the invasion) and who did the work necessary to put it back on line?   

Dunno and probably couldn't tell you if i did.  I don't think this is the Havana syndrome thing or anything too nefarious but I lack data to make that guess.

Unrelated: China is heavily engaged in developing these radars to oppose our significant advantages with stealth.   The F-22 will clean all the clocks when it actually enters combat. 

[Archie]

29 minutes ago, Tigerbomb13 said:

Holy crap we agree! It’s heartbreaking that we can’t help them more with boots on the ground or a NFZ. But it could be catastrophic for the west if we did. 

I wish we could go in. I have no doubt we would kick the Russians ass in no time in a ground war.  It would force Putins hand on the nukes and Xi backing him up that would be catastrophic for the US.

[romad1]

Say what you like,  Lavrov's daughter leads a nice life.  It appears to agree with her being a vacuous lay about. 

 

[gehringer_2]

24 minutes ago, romad1 said:

Dunno and probably couldn't tell you if i did.  I don't think this is the Havana syndrome thing or anything too nefarious but I lack data to make that guess.

Unrelated: China is heavily engaged in developing these radars to oppose our significant advantages with stealth.   The F-22 will clean all the clocks when it actually enters combat. 

I've always been a little sceptical of over-reliance on stealth as the physics tells you that transparency is always a matter of frequency. Now of course there are good reasons that tactical radar runs at the freqs it does, but that doesn't mean there are not engineering compromises available to increase the visibility of stealthy targets. Stealth advocates argue that these compromises cost so much in the ability to localize the target that stealthy still wins the day, but I'm not so sure someone won't get clever and figure a way to reduce it's value even if not defeat it completely. So I would keep making sure the birds we build are still good at all the non-stealthy stuff!

Edited March 10, 2022 by gehringer_2

[romad1]

1 minute ago, gehringer_2 said:

I've always been a little sceptical of over-reliance on stealth as the physics tells you that transparency is always a matter of frequency. Now of course there are good reasons that tactical radar runs at the freqs it does, but that doesn't mean there are not engineering compromises available to increase the visibility of stealthy targets. Stealth advocates argue that these compromises cost so much in the ability to localize the target that stealthy still wins the day, but I'm not so sure someone won't get clever and figure a way to reduce it's value even if not defeat it completely. So I would keep making sure the birds we build are still good at all the non-stealthy stuff!

Submarines aren't invulnerable either.   Triremes were the best technology ever at one point.  Eventually technology adapts to the revolutionary capabilities.   Non-linear warfare as espoused by the digital futurists was hard pressed to deal with IEDs along main supply routes.   You'd still rather be the military with the revolutionary capabilities.   The Javelin missile is an IED for rich people.  

[chasfh]

1 hour ago, Tigerbomb13 said:

Holy crap we agree! It’s heartbreaking that we can’t help them more with boots on the ground or a NFZ. But it could be catastrophic for the west if we did. 

As much of a dilemma as there is regarding the no-fly zone, with no good clear option either way, remember that Russia's best interests are being served by our rejecting a no-fly zone, so really, no holy crap surprise there.

[chasfh]

26 minutes ago, romad1 said:

Say what you like,  Lavrov's daughter leads a nice life.  It appears to agree with her being a vacuous lay about. 

 

"She was born with a face ... that would let her get her way ..."

[romad1]

Emotionally, I want to no-fly/no-go zone to the point where my USAF and the USN and its NATO allies are knocking the shit out of the Moscow invaders.   

Rationally, its beyond what we should be doing at this point.  

I think a series of red lines that are clearly elaborated should be discussed among the American people though.  

• NATO territory is sacrosanct and any attack on it or members will result in a vigorous and violent response.  [fairly easy. already policy]
• use of WMDs will result in...[what are you willing to support?]
• attacks on NATO member cyber networks
• economic support for Russia from non-NATO members

 

[mtutiger]

 

How Vladimir Putin Lost Interest in the Present

Quote

Thanks to Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine, Russia is now more isolated than it has ever been. The economy is under sanctions and international businesses are withdrawing. The news media has been even further restricted; what remains spouts paranoia, nationalism and falsehoods. The people will have increasingly less communication with others beyond their borders. And in all of this, I fear, Russia increasingly resembles its president.

I have been talking to high-level businessmen and Kremlin insiders for years. In 2016 I published a book, “All the Kremlin’s Men,” about Mr. Putin’s inner circle. Since then I’ve been gathering reporting for a potential sequel. While the goings on around the president are opaque — Mr. Putin, a former K.G.B. officer, has always been secretive and conspiratorial — my sources, who speak to me on condition of anonymity, have regularly been correct. What I have heard about the president’s behavior over the past two years is alarming. His seclusion and inaccessibility, his deep belief that Russian domination over Ukraine must be restored and his decision to surround himself with ideologues and sycophants have all helped to bring Europe to its most dangerous moment since World War II.

Mr. Putin spent the spring and summer of 2020 quarantining at his residence in Valdai, approximately halfway between Moscow and St. Petersburg. According to sources in the administration, he was accompanied there by Yuri Kovalchuk. Mr. Kovalchuk, who is the largest shareholder in Rossiya Bank and controls several state-approved media outlets, has been Mr. Putin’s close friend and trusted adviser since the 1990s. But by 2020, according to my sources, he had established himself as the de facto second man in Russia, the most influential among the president’s entourage.

Mr. Kovalchuk has a doctorate in physics and was once employed by an institute headed by the Nobel laureate Zhores Alferov. But he isn’t just a man of science. He is also an ideologue, subscribing to a worldview that combines Orthodox Christian mysticism, anti-American conspiracy theories and hedonism. This appears to be Mr. Putin’s worldview, too. Since the summer of 2020, Mr. Putin and Mr. Kovalchuk have been almost inseparable, and the two of them have been making plans together to restore Russia’s greatness.

According to people with knowledge of Mr. Putin’s conversations with his aides over the past two years, the president has completely lost interest in the present: The economy, social issues, the coronavirus pandemic, these all annoy him. Instead, he and Mr. Kovalchuk obsess over the past. A French diplomat told me that President Emmanuel Macron of France was astonished when Mr. Putin gave him a lengthy history lecture during one of their talks last month. He shouldn’t have been surprised.

In his mind, Mr. Putin finds himself in a unique historical situation in which he can finally recover for the previous years of humiliation. In the 1990s, when Mr. Putin and Mr. Kovalchuk first met, they were both struggling to find their footing after the fall of the Soviet Union, and so was the country. The West, they believe, took advantage of Russia’s weakness to push NATO as close as possible to the country’s borders. In Mr. Putin’s view, the situation today is the opposite: It is the West that’s weak. The only Western leader that Mr. Putin took seriously was Germany’s previous chancellor, Angela Merkel. Now she is gone and it’s time for Russia to avenge the humiliations of the 1990s.

It seems that there is no one around to tell him otherwise. Mr. Putin no longer meets with his buddies for drinks and barbecues, according to people who know him. In recent years — and especially since the start of the pandemic — he has cut off most contacts with advisers and friends. While he used to look like an emperor who enjoyed playing on the controversies of his subjects, listening to them denounce one another and pitting them against one another, he is now isolated and distant, even from most of his old entourage.

His guards have imposed a strict protocol: No one can see the president without a week’s quarantine — not even Igor Sechin, once his personal secretary, now head of the state-owned oil company Rosneft. Mr. Sechin is said to quarantine for two or three weeks a month, all for the sake of occasional meetings with the president.

In “All the Kremlin’s Men” I described the phenomenon of the “collective Putin” — the way his entourage always tried to eagerly anticipate what the president would want. These cronies would tell Mr. Putin exactly what he wanted to hear. The “collective Putin” still exists: The whole world saw it on the eve of the invasion when he summoned top officials, one by one, and asked them their views on the coming war. All of them understood their task and submissively tried to describe the president’s thoughts in their own words.

This ritual session, which was broadcast by all Russian TV channels, was supposed to smear all of the country’s top officials with blood. But it also showed that Mr. Putin is completely fed up with his old guard: His contempt for them was clear. He seemed to relish their sniveling, as when he publicly humiliated Sergey Naryshkin, the head of the Foreign Intelligence Service, who started mumbling and tried to quickly correct himself, agreeing with whatever Mr. Putin was saying. These are nothing but yes men, the president seemed to say.

As I have reported for years, some members of Mr. Putin’s entourage have long worked to convince him that he is the only person who can save Russia, that every other potential leader would only fail the country. This was the message that the president heard going back to 2003, when he contemplated stepping down, only to be told by his advisers — many of whom also had backgrounds in the K.G.B. — that he should stay on. A few years later, Mr. Putin and his entourage were discussing “Operation Successor” and Dmitri Medvedev was made president. But after four years, Mr. Putin returned to replace him. Now he has really and truly come to believe that only he can save Russia. In fact, he believes it so much that he thinks the people around him are likely to foil his plans. He can’t trust them, either.

And now here we are. Isolated and under sanctions, alone against the world, Russia looks as though it is being remade in its president’s image. Mr. Putin’s already very tight inner circle will only draw in closer. As the casualties mount in Ukraine, the president appears to be digging in his heels; he says that the sanctions on his country are a “declaration of war.”

Yet at the same time he seems to believe that complete isolation will make a large part of the most unreliable elements leave Russia: During the past two weeks, the protesting intelligentsia — executives, actors, artists, journalists — have hurriedly fled the country; some abandoned their possessions just to get out. I fear that from the point of view of Mr. Putin and Mr. Kovalchuk, this will only make Russia stronger.

 

[chasfh]

12 minutes ago, romad1 said:

Emotionally, I want to no-fly/no-go zone to the point where my USAF and the USN and its NATO allies are knocking the shit out of the Moscow invaders.   

Rationally, its beyond what we should be doing at this point.  

I think a series of red lines that are clearly elaborated should be discussed among the American people though.  

• NATO territory is sacrosanct and any attack on it or members will result in a vigorous and violent response.  [fairly easy. already policy]
• use of WMDs will result in...[what are you willing to support?]
• attacks on NATO member cyber networks
• economic support for Russia from non-NATO members

 

One bright red line is "anything that happens here in the USA". I thinking ATM networks goes down, other payment systems upended, electrical grid goes out, water treatment plants are breached and compromised.

Of course there will be the inevitable claim of false flag, but we can't let that paralyze us at the moment of truth.

[Tigerbomb13]

How does Twitter allow this disinformation to go unchecked?

[romad1]

12 minutes ago, Tigerbomb13 said:

How does Twitter allow this disinformation to go unchecked?

The tweet violated twitter rules.  So, its been dealt with

[romad1]

Be sure to stay there Schroeder you scum. 

[Tigerbomb13]

24 minutes ago, romad1 said:

The tweet violated twitter rules.  So, its been dealt with

Good. I reported it just a bit ago. 

[romad1]

Ugh...Mitt.  

BUT WAIT

didn't know this.