“Bird Strike”

There seems to be a lot of shrapnel damage for a bird strike.

My guess is that the Russians ordered the airliner to divert across the Caspian Sea in the hope that it would crash into the sea, and the evidence of what they did would be lost forever.

"Bird Strike"

An Azerbaijani airliner with 67 people onboard crashed Wednesday near the Kazakhstani city of Aktau, killing 38 people and leaving 29 survivors, a Kazakh official said.
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Russia’s civil aviation authority, Rosaviatsia, said that preliminary information showed that the pilots diverted to Aktau after a bird strike led to an emergency on board.
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Mobile phone footage circulating online appeared to show the aircraft making a steep descent before smashing into the ground in a fireball. Other footage showed part of its fuselage ripped away from the wings and the rest of the aircraft, lying upside in the grass.

RUMINT is that the "bird" that hit the airliner was a surface-to-air missile. Which makes sense, as birds typically don't blow part of the wing off airliners. And the Russians are known to be somewhat trigger-happy.

But not only the Russians, it seems.

What Do You Do When Your Neighboring Country is Run by an Imperialist With Dreams of Empire

In Poland, you teach all of your kids to shoot.

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In Finland, you expand your firing ranges.

Unsettled by Russia’s expansionism and emboldened by its recent accession to NATO, Finland is rallying to strengthen its national self-defense beyond its traditional military capabilities.

The popularity of weapons training in the Nordic country has soared in recent months. Few places tell the story of the rise in Finnish affinity for self-defense more than shooting ranges that are riding a boom of interest.
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Earlier this year, the coalition government announced plans to open more than 300 new ranges — a big jump from the 670 in operation today.

Authorities are encouraging citizens to take up interest in national defense in the country with a 1,340-kilometer (830-mile) border with Russia, where firing shots in ice hockey has been more of a pastime than shooting bullets.

The COFF, CouchBoy and the rest of their ilk may say that Russia is a peaceful nation, but Russia's neighbors know that's not the truth.

Shorter Russia: "Sorry for Having Bombed and Gassed You Relentlessly For Fourteen Years, May We Please Keep the Bases We Did That From?"

Moscow is seeking to secure the future of its key military bases in Syria while making inroads with the country’s new rebel leadership, after the dramatic collapse of the Assad regime threatened to erode Russia’s influence in the Middle East.

Russia has kept a sizeable airbase in north-west Syria and a naval facility at the Mediterranean port of Tartus since Moscow’s military intervention helped President Bashar al-Assad reclaim most of the country after nationwide protests that began in 2011.

After the collapse of Assad, the Kremlin’s staunchest ally in the Middle East who has fled to Moscow, Russia appears to be turning to diplomacy to preserve its influence in Syria, engaging in a flurry of activity with the rebels it had labelled as terrorists only days earlier.

What is Arabic for "GTFO"?

But we shall see. And maybe this is why Putin's Boy in D.C. said that he wants to take a hands-off approach to the new government in Syria.

Tulsi's Buddy is Losing

Assad may or may not have fled Damascus. The Russians have reportedly abandoned Tartus, their sole naval base in the Med.

The Third World War Continues to Creep Along

>Germany has said it has to assume that damage to two undersea fibre-optic communication cables in the Baltic Sea since Sunday was an act of sabotage.

Two cables – one between Finland and Germany, the other between Sweden and Lithuania – were severed on Sunday and Monday, raising suspicions of a malicious attack, though authorities initially declined to speculate.

“No one believes that the cables were accidentally damaged. I also don’t want to believe that the ships’ anchors caused the damage by accident,” the German defence minister, Boris Pistorius, said in Brussels on Tuesday. “We have to assume, without certain information, that the damage is caused by sabotage.”

The West is at war with Russia, as I've said before. It may be a covert war, for the moment, and a bit of a Sitzkreig, but war it is. Any Western company that does business with Russia is a company that is owned and run by quislings and traitors. Guys like these, if found guilty, should be shot. the corporate assets should be confiscated and the buildings razed.

American Muslims Are Among the Stupidest People on Earth-- New Entry Into the Toljaso Files

U.S. Muslim leaders who supported Republican Donald Trump to protest against the Biden administration's support for Israel's war on Gaza and attacks on Lebanon have been deeply disappointed by his cabinet picks, they tell Reuters.

"Trump won because of us and we're not happy with his secretary of state pick and others," said Rabiul Chowdhury, a Philadelphia investor who chaired the Abandon Harris campaign in Pennsylvania and co-founded Muslims for Trump.

We told you so. We told you that the FOFF would buttfuck you as soon as he got in. We told you that he didn't give a cold shit about the people of Gaza or Lebanon. We told you the kind of people that Felon^34 would appoint and that both he and his appointees hate you. We told you that he would exercise zero restaint of Netanyahu.

But did you listen? No. You let your anger towards Biden blind you to what was plain as day to even the most casual observer. Maybe your votes for Trump or Stein or your sitting on your hands didn't seem stupid to you at the time, but you get the prize nonetheless.

Toyota, assholes! (You asked for it, you got it.)

Veterans Day

The guns of the Great War fell silent at 11AM local time, on November 11th, 1918, 116 years ago. The Armistice had been agreed to about six hours before it went into efect. About three thousand men died between the agreement to stop fighting and the cessation of hostilities. In a war marked by extreme callousness to the wastage of human life on both sides, those deaths may have been the most futile.

Armistice Day was first marked a year later. The Brits later renamed it Rememberance Day. It is still Armistice Day in France. For the Americans, Armistice Day became Veterans Day in 1954. For about eight years, in the 1970s, Veterans Day was jerked around to always be on the fourth Monday in October. But sanity finally prevailed and the day was restored to its intended day: November 11th.

America's last doughboy, Frank Buckles, who drove ambulances at the front, died in 2011.

This is the day to honor all those who have served in the Armed Forces.

If you have served, thank you. If a close family member served, thank you for supporting their service.

Please take a moment to remember those who have served.

And, if you wouldn't mind, please do not patronize an establishment that is running a "Veterans Day Sale". Fuck all of those assholes who seek to make a buck off the holiday.

And yes, I write these lines with a tinge of sadness. The voters of this country six days ago took a massive dump on the graves of all those men and women who have fought for freedom over the last 250-odd years, as well as those who fought against fascism eighty years ago. Our incoming president has derided those who fought and died for this country as suckers and losers and has used a previous Veterans Day's to rant on his personal grievances. I fear that we have traded our freedoms away for the promise of cheaper gasoline.

Our ancestors would be so proud of us.

The Two Faces of Donald Trump; Arab-Israeli Ed.

He's telling Bibi to "do what you need to" and telling Arab-Americans that he opposes the war.

If you vote for the SOFF because you oppose the wars in Gaza, Lebanon (and possibly Iran), then you have hummus for brains.

World War III is Underway

British counterterrorism police are investigating whether Russian spies planted a bomb in a parcel that caught fire at a delivery warehouse after arriving on a plane to the United Kingdom.

Fire crews and staff tackled the blaze on July 22 at the DHL warehouse in Minworth, near Birmingham.

No-one is thought to have been injured in the incident first reported by The Guardian and German broadcasters.

The package – said to contain an incendiary device – is believed to have arrived at the DHL warehouse by air but further details about the plane and its flight path are unknown.

A similar incident reportedly took place in Germany in the same month and investigators are looking at links between the two.

The Russians have been hinting for awhile that they are at war with the West. We should take them at their word.

In this war, we have the New Axis of Evil: Russia, Iran and North Korea. The only reason that China hasn't formally joined the Axis is because of the risk to their economy. North Korea, besides sending old military stock, is now sending troops. They are the equivalent of the "little green men" that Russia sent to fight in Ukraine in 2014.

This is important because the Republicans are running a candidate who seeks to join the Axis. Neville Chamberlain may not have been eager to go to war, but he knew, at least, who the enemy was. But, as in the late 1930s and early 1940s, we have a good amount of a political party which identifies with our enemies. They seek, as do the Russians and the Chinese, to make the world safe for another global conflict.

Oh, they say different, but anyone with six functioning brain cells recognizes that not doing everything possible to stop Russia now risks a wider war. Just as it did when the Western Europeans and, yes, the Americans, failed to do what could have been done in 1936 to stop Nazi Germany from igniting another world war.

Russia is not going to stop with Ukraine. Anyone who has paid a smidgen's worth of attention to Putin's rhetoric knows that.

Failing to stop the Russians in Ukraine will effectively greenlight a PRC invasion of Taiwan.

If we don't outlast and stop the Russians now, then by the end of this decade, if not sooner, we will be fighting Russia and possibly China. If you have kids who are between the ages of ten and twenty, now, they will be drafted into the Army to fight the Third World War.

And we will be damned lucky if it doesn't end with the flight of a few thousand ICBMs and SLBMs.

Save the planet. Save civilization. Stop Russia. Whatever it takes.

And, for all that is holy, do not vote for a Republican in this election.

And Here We Go....

The Israeli military said Tuesday that Iran has fired missiles and it ordered residents to remain close to bomb shelters as air raid sirens sounded across the country.

I'm sure that it will be great comfort to the Iranian people that their leaders dragged them into a war that few of the population want to see happening. Because it's probably a good bet that you couldn't fill a stadium with the numer of Iranians that want to go to war because Hezbollah is getting their asses kicked.

Meanwhile, in Lebanon:

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees said a top Hamas commander killed in Lebanon Monday was one of its employees but had been suspended since allegations of his ties to the militant group emerged in March.

So which was the side hustle, being a terrorist or a teacher?

The HMFIC of the First Church of Child Molestation Has an Opinion About Morality

Pope Francis suggested Sunday that Israel’s attacks in Gaza and Lebanon have been “immoral” and disproportionate, saying its military domination has gone beyond the rules of war.

Francis was asked en route home from Belgium about Israel’s targeted killing of one of Hezbollah’s founding members, Hassan Nasrallah. Friday’s strike in Beirut targeted an area greater than a city block and reduced several residential buildings to rubble, and at least six other deaths have been confirmed.

Francis didn’t mention Israel by name and said he was speaking in general terms. But he said that “the defense must always be proportionate to the attack.”

Right, as if that's a philosophy that we have followed. Ever. A philosophy of warfighting, American style, is "anything worth killing is worth overkilling."

If an enemy hides military assets under/behind civilian infrastructure and people, well, that's just how the cookie crumbles. Hezbollah's HQ was a legitimate military target, as was their now-dead commander, and they hid the HQ under civilian apartment buildings. Israel is in a region of the world that operates under Hama Rules and, when an enemy's clear goal is genocide, the gloves come off.

Did Vladdie Just Realize That He Has a Potemkin Army?

In a strong, new warning to the West, Putin said Wednesday that any nation’s conventional attack on Russia that is supported by a nuclear power will be considered a joint attack on his country.

The threat, outlined in a revision of Moscow’s nuclear doctrine, was clearly aimed at discouraging the West from allowing Ukraine to strike Russia with longer-range weapons and appears to significantly lower the threshold for the possible use of Russia’s nuclear arsenal.

That's what they say, but I see something else. I think that the TOFF's boss may have finally realized that his much-vaunted military has been hollowed out by many decades of corruption and stagnant leadership. Even their self-proclaimed deterrents may not work. Russia has never adapted to more modern ways of fighting and that is why the Ukrainians, who did adapt, stopped Putin's three-day campaign to conquer Ukraine and have continued to do so. The only way the Russians have been able to make any progress is by their ancient tactic of throwing soldiers into do-or-die assaults. It may be leading to high levels of casualties unseen since the Korean war.

It is a hollow threat. The Russians have to know that a nuclear attack on a NATO nation would be answered in kind in very short order.

And then it would be game over for us all in a matter of hours. Even the über-rich wouldn't have time to flee to their bunkers. The aftermath would make Fallout look like a garden party.

Probably Time for American Civilians to Bug Out of Lebanon

The U.S. is sending a small number of additional troops to the Middle East in response to a sharp spike in violence between Israel and Hezbollah forces in Lebanon that has raised the risk of a greater regional war, the Pentagon said Monday.

Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, Pentagon press secretary, would not say how many more forces would be deployed or what they would be tasked to do.
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The State Department is warning Americans to leave Lebanon as the risk of a regional war increases.

“Due to the unpredictable nature of ongoing conflict between Hezbollah and Israel and recent explosions throughout Lebanon, including Beirut, the U.S. Embassy urges U.S. citizens to depart Lebanon while commercial options still remain available,” the State Department cautioned Saturday.

Ryder would not say if the additional forces might support the evacuation of American citizens if needed.

I hope they are drafting contingency plans to evacuate people, because doing it on the fly is a heavy lift.

Just Fucking Brilliant

Pagers used by hundreds of members of the militant group Hezbollah exploded near simultaneously in Lebanon and Syria on Tuesday, killing at least nine people – including an 8-year-old girl -- and wounding several thousand, officials said. They blamed Israel in what appeared to be a sophisticated, remote attack.

Among those wounded was Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon. The mysterious incident came amid rising tensions between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah, which have exchanged fire across the Israel-Lebanon border since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas that sparked the war in Gaza.

The pagers that exploded had been newly acquired by Hezbollah after the group’s leader ordered members to stop using cell phones, warning they could be tracked by Israeli intelligence. A Hezbollah official told The Associated Press the pagers were a new brand the group had not used before.

That's the sort of spy/sabotage operation of spy thrillers. The Iranian ambassador in lebanon had a Hezbollah exploding pager, which tells something about how tight the Iranians and Hezbollah are. It's going to be fun when Hezbollah hands out new pagers and tries to convince everyone that the new ones are safe.

The Lebanese are squawking about this being a violation of their sovereignity. Seems to me that if your country has a militant group that is run by a foreign power partially occupying your territory, you don't have much ground to complain about sovereignity.

War

War is always going to be with us, because some asshole will always have enough greed or butthurt to want to fight over something stupid.

Exhibit 1: Russia and Putin.

The only two ways to avoid war are to either be so poor and so weak that nobody wants to conquer your country, or be strong enough by yourself or with allies that nobody wants to take the risk.

Anybody who thinks that a war will be quick and over soon has mush for brains.

Exhibit 2: The leaders of European powers in August of 1914.

Exhibit 3: George W. Bush, 2003.

Exhibit 4: Vladimir Putin.

Human civilization would be a wonderful idea. Instead, we are little more than primates who fling more and more lethal kinds of shit at each other.

If there is a galactic civilization, they probably marked space within a light-year of Sol as being off limits because the third planet is inhabited by rabid animals.

Thou Shalt Get Sidetracked by Bullshit, Every Goddamned Time; Mideast Ed.

Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah on Sunday launched their heaviest exchange of fire after months of strikes and counterstrikes that have raised fears of an all-out war.

By mid-morning, the exchange of fire had ended, with both sides saying they had only aimed at military targets. The Israeli strikes killed three militants in Lebanon, and Israel’s military said a soldier was killed by either an interceptor of incoming fire or shrapnel from one. But the situation remained tense.

No matter what the chance is for any tenuous peace, some aggrieved asshole will try to sidetrack, if not derail, the chances of stopping the shooting.

A Professional Military

When the Russians aren't engaging in terrorism by targeting children's hospitals, they're shooting up their own military columns.

it's a pretty slick, move to kill your own troops and then post it on social media, as if it is something to be proud of. when that video spreads throughout Russia, as it most certainly will, it will, no doubt, be of comfort to the family who have lost their men in Putin's war of aggression.

A Perilous Time to Be in the Surface Navy

Not from submarines, mind you. Subs are expensive to buy, expensive to maintain and expensive to operate, given the cost of having well-trained crews. Badly-trained crews can be deadly for the boats. That cost is why one can probably count the navies that can run subs well on two hands and not use all your fingers.

No, I am referring to a development of the Russo-Ukrainian War: The unmanned surface vehicle (USV). Oh, they were around before as experimental stuff, but the Ukrainians rammed that technology to fruition at the sort of development speed unseen since the Second World War. Like the GIs who came up with things like Rhino tank, the Ukrainians are not being constrained by a ossified bureaucracy and their development cycle (idea->design->prototype->test->manufacture) is far quicker than that of the Russians.

The Ukrainian USVs have effectively denied much of the Black Sea to the Russian navy. The Russians can't get close enough to maintain a sea blockade, so Ukrainian grain exports have been continuing. Russian warships have been pushed back to bases far from the fighting.

What makes the USVs so deadly is their construction. They have very low to no freeboard, so their radar cross-section is very low. I would not be at all surprised if the top half of them are made of fiberglass, wood or carbon fiber, all of which are not radar reflective. They are propelled by electric motors and, by normally operating at relatively slow speeds, they would not have loud propeller cavitation, like a torpedo. They are likely undetectable by passive sonar at any meaningful range and, being small, they're not going to show up well on active sonar. There may be an optic mast/antenna that is about as thick as a broomstick and would be made of carbon fiber, again, hard to see on radar.

And they can pack a hell of a punch. A few hundred pounds of explosive, detonating at very close range, will blow a hole in the hull that will sink most ships that do not have good damage control equipment and crews trained for that. Which means that one good hit will kill most merchant ships or Russian navy warships.

It would not be terribly difficult to run enough of them to deny sea access to an area that is somewhat constrained by geography, such as the Red Sea. USVs may be able to loiter for extended periods. The drones could be programmed to know when to return to a designated point for recharging.

The defenses would be the same against torpedoes: Booms and nets. Which means that the ships so protected can't go to sea. The other defense is an alert topside watch, but maintaining the sharpness to look for a broomstick moving through the water on a 24/7 basis is almost impossible. The best time to run such an attack would be at night, which means that the ships have to be well-illuminated to look for a USV at close range.

And the answer to that would be a USV that has a pop-up short-range missile, such as a barrage of RPGs or something similar. Fire those off, discombobulate the crew and then hit with a few contact-USVs.

What does this mean for surface operations? Dangerous waters would be anywhere within several hundred miles of the coastline of an adversary. And if a freighter was converted to be a mothership to launch a swarm of one-way attack drones, the danger radius could be very large.

If the Taiwanese are not going all in on USV drone technology, I would be astonished. Which also means that the PRC's window to mount a successful invasion of Taiwan may be closing for a long time.

Forty Years

Forty years ago today was the last day that someone could commence a six-year enlistment in the military and serve every day in peacetime.

"This country has a lot of wars." -- Patrick Fujita in First Frost by Craig Johnson