Monthly Archives: March 2022

03/31/22

Bayraktar TB-2 — Technology, Drones, and Music Go To War and WIN

Technology can be a powerful force for good, but when used to create advanced killing machines, technology is a force for evil and death. How does the world combat this?

One answer is more technology such as the Turkish made Bayraktar TB-2 MALE UCAV (medium-altitude, long-endurance, unmanned, combat aerial vehicle) that the Ukrainians are using to kill Russian tanks, armored personnel carriers, trucks, missile launchers, command & control vehicles, artillery, and fuel trains.

One reason why those interminable convoys are stalled is because the Ukrainians are destroying fuel trains.

Continue reading →

03/29/22

The Moscow Exchange Head Fake

Russia got caught off guard by the severity of the western economic sanctions imposed in response to their unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

Foreign Minister Lavrov (in place as Foreign Minister for 14 years and a member of the permanent mission to the UN before that for 10 years) said as much this week, a very surprising admission by the Empire Builders.

Putin and his puffer coat crowd thought they were pretty clever hiding lots of foreign currency reserves overseas — there is really no place to hold foreign currency that is safe inside Russia. Apparently, based on their foreign currency reserve hoarding, they’d been planning their move on Ukraine for almost two years.

No surprise there as Russia began to press against the Ukrainian border with troops almost a year ago.

So, when the west unshackled many of the Russian banks from the SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications) system with 11,000 member institutions and 42,000,000 messages a day in more than 200 countries, they were caught unable to access those reserves because the conduit — the SWIFT system — was blocked.

SWIFT also threw Iran out of the system in 2012 – 2016.

One of the things Russia did immediately on Invasion Ukraine Day, 2-24-2022, was to close down its Moscow Exchange, their biggest stock market and the place where Russians and foreigners owned Russian stocks.

In London where many of these stocks also trade, the Russian stocks were down as much as 98%, so the prospect of a gargantuan sell off was very real. Continue reading →

03/23/22

Extraordinary Men

There are really no extraordinary men; there are ordinary men who rise to the challenge in extraordinary times and standout from the rest of mankind because they can function when the world is crippled by fear.

George Washington

George Washington was the Father of Our Country. Without him as our Commander-in-Chief and our President for two terms, the American Revolution would have been a footnote in English history wherein the King had crushed another rebellion and the British Empire had moved on.

Instead, he improbably beat the toughest and largest army on the planet and formed a country from scratch. Continue reading →

03/14/22

The Sticky Math Of Crude Oil Imports v Pipelines

The United States was once upon a time energy independent and then Joe Biden was elected.

Since then, it has become apparent that we need to find some new sources of crude oil particularly since we finally stopped funding the crude Putin War Machine by buying more than 600,000 barrels a day of his nasty Russian crude.

The Biden administration is reportedly looking in Venezuela and Iran to replace that crude which entails the reality that it will be shipped in oil tankers.

Maybe they should look in the United States since we sit on a gigantic reservoir of oil and gas ourselves? Maybe we should re-invigorate the Keystone XL pipeline deal? Using domestic sources would preclude shipping costs and environmental impacts.

What is the environmental cost of importing oil via ship?

There is no alternative when importing oil than ships. Well, except for pipelines, trains, and trucks from Canada.

 

Continue reading →

03/13/22

Who Exactly Is The West?

In the current events we are constantly bombarded by the bad acts of Putin and Russia who is being opposed by the WEST?

Who exactly is the WEST?

The other day a pal of mine was cataloging all the countries that make up the WEST. I told him the WEST is not a list of countries.

Ahhh, my dear reader (I said in a particularly obnoxious, condescending voice fueled by cheap Keurig coffee), allow me to explain.

 1. It is an idea, not a specific list of countries. It is not a place one can identify or find using an atlas or on a map. Continue reading →

03/12/22

The Structural Disconnection Of Russia From The Civilized World

We are now in the third week of the Russo – Ukrainian War and the west has retaliated against the invading Russians with economic sanctions that are slowly, but surely, disconnecting the nation of Russia from the rest of the civilized world.

Russian tank fire hitting threatening apartment building in Mariupol. Who shoots at apartment buildings? War criminals.

Countries that make war on apartment buildings, kill babies, kill children, kill women and old folks are not civilized. This is medieval, Dark Ages siege behavior and we are cowards for tolerating it.

Continue reading →