Two important speeches (from President Trump and Secretary of State Rubio) on leftwing threats to America, more welfare state fraud uncovered by Nick Shirley, Ukraine continues to hit Russian ships at will, multiple marine drone attacks, TSMC has a good week (and pledges to invest more money in America), Apple sues OpenAI, and Bruce Sterling compares AI to jazz.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Trump announced a massive declassification of documents showing how exposed our election system is to hacking and foreign interference. Top White House aides and intelligence agency chiefs have all reviewed and authenticated the documents.
The documents highlight major areas of concern. Starting in 2020, Beijing carried out the largest-ever compromise of election data. Some 220 million American voters’ files were meddled with by Chinese intelligence services. China signed a data exploitation unit for this project.
Members of the Deep State within the IC worked to suppress and downplay the scope and impact of China’s election interference. U.S. spy agencies discovered that the voter data breach in 18 states was bought, stolen, or hacked by China. That breach was kept hidden; Trump, who was still president at the time, was not informed, nor was Congress. The line was that the 2020 election was the most secure in history.
CIA reported in mid-2018 that the Chinese Communist Party’s strategy was to leverage all domestic and foreign elements opposed to Trump. In mid-2019, China’s approach was to undermine domestic confidence during the first Trump presidency. The Chinese government aimed to identify anti-Trump reporters and pay them large sums of money to produce stories that cast Trump in a negative light.
The FBI obtained raw intelligence indicating that China’s activities included efforts to produce illegal ballots for Joe Biden. These were kept out of the presidential briefing. One analyst admitted to intentionally downplaying Chinese election activities. Another official stated she was running a shadow government to keep intelligence on China’s election interference away from the media and the White House. Numerous burn bags have been found.
Americans were lied to about the security of our election systems, including voting machines. They’re highly susceptible to attack. Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and non-state actors have the ability to compromise our election infrastructure.
Michigan police raided a Democrat GOTV organization and were so concerned they contacted the FBI in Detroit. The documents state that canvassers signed voter registration forms in other people’s names, registered nonexistent individuals, and got paid based on the number of applications they produced. The FBI believed crimes were committed, but the Biden DOJ slow-walked and suppressed the case.
Of course they did.
Today at 9:40 p.m. ET, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) completed its latest major wave of strikes against Iran.
U.S. forces, including fighter jets, aerial drones, and warships, launched precision munitions that hit dozens of Iranian military targets such as coastal surveillance and air defense sites, military logistics infrastructure, and maritime capabilities. This was the sixth consecutive night of U.S. strikes against Iran.
At the Commander in Chief’s direction, CENTCOM is further degrading Iranian military capabilities and holding Iran accountable for recent attacks on commercial shipping.
More than 50,000 U.S. service members are operating across the Middle East and remain vigilant, lethal, and ready.
“U.S. forces resumed the naval blockade against vessels transiting to and from Iranian ports and coastal areas today [July 14] at 4 p.m. ET,” the command posted to social media on Tuesday.
“There are currently more than 20 U.S. Navy warships and hundreds of military aircraft operating across the Middle East. American forces remain vigilant, lethal, and ready,” the statement continued.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has requested that senior officials from more than 60 countries convene in Washington next Thursday to discuss the alarming rise of transnational far-left terrorism, according to a Washington Post report.
Snip.
The initiative is intended to expand intelligence sharing, law-enforcement cooperation and potential terrorist designations targeting militant groups with alleged ties to Antifa.
Administration officials have discussed whether foreign-terrorism links could unlock broader investigative and surveillance powers against US-based far-left revolutionaries that are a part of subversion networks.
The problem is that countries have been addressing far-left revolutionaries as a domestic threat, but in fact it’s transnational.
State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said the upcoming event is in response to the rise of the radical left. He said far-left terrorism is “an old threat re-emerging with strong transnational links and new convergences.”
“Because this threat has not been adequately addressed in the past, each engagement, designation, or security assistance program creates a compounding effect supporting countermeasures at home and abroad,” Pigott said in a statement.
In November, the State Department designated four European far-left groups as foreign terrorist organizations and directed agencies to investigate networks accused of fomenting political violence. One of the militant groups in Germany is called Antifa Ost. Two more were in Greece and one in Italy.
During the Antifa roundtable at the White House last October, Seamus Bruner, Director of Research at the Government Accountability Institute, briefed the president and his cabinet on a complex network of dark-money NGOs and activist groups fueling unrest nationwide via the permanent protest-industrial complex.
“We have identified dozens of radical organizations, not just the decentralized Antifa organizations, but dozens of radical organizations that have received more than $100 million from the Riot Inc investors,” Bruner told Trump.
Jihadists attacks and plots in the United States are down by two-thirds since ISIS’s peak. The number of people killed by jihadist terrorism in Europe dropped by roughly 97 percent from the year 2015 to the year 2024. In other words, to a very great extent, our counterterrorism strategy has worked. The threat has not disappeared, of course. It will continue to exist, particularly so long as we tolerate immigration systems that imports these threats directly into our respective homelands. But this threat has been severely diminished. The world looks very different today because of it.
For far too long, however, our counterterrorism doctrine has had a blind spot – a blind spot when it comes to extremist violence from the political left. Even today, the very idea that far-left terrorism could be a serious threat is treated as a right-wing fever dream, or worse, as a dangerous fascist conspiracy. It’s treated this way by many in the press, by many in academia and our universities, and by many of our legacy institutions. You will no doubt see the dogma rear its head in the coverage of this very conference. In spite of the clear and the undeniable reality, in spite of the objective numbers and statistics, in spite of the fact that in this room today there are representatives from across the political spectrum, we will hear this organized – that this kind of organized violence and terror will be dismissed. It will be dismissed as a partisan fiction.
A whole industry grew up in our countries around the study of extremism. We have think tanks and fellowships and journals and consultancies, with the unspoken understanding among them that the only kind of political violence that was a true threat to our system – I’m sorry – that only one kind of political violence was a true threat to the system. A bomb planted by a neo-Nazi group was a nefarious and murderous act of evil. It is. But a bomb planted by a Marxist revolutionary – well, that’s just merely a tragic excess of idealism. Perhaps its means were misplaced or overzealous, but its ends were virtuous and just. That’s the implication of how they treat it.
For years, this extraordinary ideological prejudice was embedded in the way we talked about political violence and extremism. It was repeated again and again, until it was accepted as the neutral and objective baseline, so entrenched – so entrenched in the mainstream conventional wisdom that it came to be regarded as an apolitical fact. It is the reason why, here in my country, so many people in positions of power have repeatedly dismissed acts of violence and even terrorism as legitimate forms of political expression so long as they served a left-wing cause.
It is why during those George Floyd – so-called George Floyd – riots in the summer of 2020, as criminals and extremists burned and looted their way through American great – America’s great cities and nearly brought the country to its knees, city governments all across the country simply refused to prosecute the people conducting these acts of violence and terror. It is the reason for the now infamous image – and you all recall this – of a news anchor from a very prominent agency – a news anchor standing in a neighborhood consumed in flames; meanwhile the chyron on the bottom read that the protests were mostly peaceful. This was something worse than a double standard. Left-wing violence was not just excused; it was treated as sacrosanct, a protected class unto itself. That era has to end.
How worried should Democrats be about the Democratic Socialists of America? In the wake of a series of DSA victories in New York City, Jonathan Chait raised the alarm in The Atlantic, writing that as the group has risen in power, it has also grown “more hostile to the [Democratic] party, more illiberal, and more dogmatic.” Long-time DSA members, including former staff member and thought leader David Duhalde and socialist magazine publisher Nathan J. Robinson, pushed back, dismissing Chait as someone who doesn’t know or understand the DSA.
Well, I know the DSA, and as someone who was a member and served in local leadership, I can say that Chait has it right: today’s DSA is not a harmless organization. It includes disciplined, radicalized networks that have methodically expanded their power over the last decade in pursuit of extremist goals.
As the Democratic Party grapples with the DSA’s growing influence and extremism, it would do well to recognize that the same dynamic underway now—first accommodation, then capture, then surrender to insurgent radicals—already played out on a smaller scale within the DSA itself. The only defense is to out-organize it.
For decades, the DSA was mostly composed of a cohort of aging Boomers left over from its founding in 1982. It prioritized open debate and political tolerance. Following in the tradition of founder Michael Harrington, members viewed the DSA not as a revolutionary vanguard but as a reformist bridge to mainstream labor-liberalism, and they prioritized parliamentary process and pluralism.
But in the mid-2010s, the character of the organization began to change. I was in Boston at the time and witnessed the last days of the “old” DSA. New, younger members began to enter the organization, while Senator Bernie Sanders and the socialist magazine Jacobin grew their followings.
As the DSA’s cultural power expanded and it began to amass electoral victories, more leftists of varying extremist commitments were drawn in. This was an explicit strategy called “the big tent,” advanced by the then-DSA Jacobin Left. In August 2025, DSA delegates voted to remove a constitutional provision barring Leninists from entry. The provision was already a dead letter.
The old DSA’s high-mindedness became its fatal weakness. Veteran members assumed the younger generation played by the same rules of persuasion, but the newcomers’ goal was not to win arguments—it was to transform the institution and its politics.
As the organization grew, it began to profess more extreme ideas—and demand that its members do the same. First there were the purity tests of Black Lives Matter and BDS, then apologia for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and support for Hamas and its atrocities.
The new DSA—with the help of hype-man Hasan Piker—advanced these agendas with what American labor leader Walter Reuther called “the Communists’ highly developed technique of name-calling and character assassination.” The Harringtonites fought back, but their efforts came far too late, and many prominent members of the older generation eventually left.
In a sense Jake Altman is wrong. The Democrat Party has largely already been captured by allied forces under the guise of “social justice” at the same time the commies were taking over the DSA, and were able to do it for much the same reasons: “no enemies on the left”, along with a heaping bowlful of white guilt.
A coalition of state financial officers said it uncovered roughly $225 million in alleged fraud across America’s schools over the past six years, identifying nearly 90 cases involving embezzlement, fake invoices, inflated enrollment, bid-rigging and kickbacks.
In a new report obtained exclusively by Fox News Digital, the State Financial Officers Foundation (SFOF) and Open the Books analyzed every Education Department Office of Inspector General (OIG) Semiannual Report to Congress issued between Oct. 1, 2019, and March 31, 2026, revealing alleged fraud across 24 states and Puerto Rico.
Some other examples snipped.
In Texas, former Houston Independent School District Chief Operating Officer Brian Busby and contractor Anthony Hutchison allegedly orchestrated a fraud scheme of more than $6 million, involving school construction and grounds maintenance contracts in exchange for cash bribes and hundreds of thousands of dollars in home renovations.
A federal jury found Busby and Hutchison guilty of conspiracy, bribery, filing false tax returns, and witness tampering, with Hutchison also convicted on seven wire fraud counts, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas.
“Bureaucratic bloat, insider dealing, and poor oversight prompted Governor Abbott and the Texas Education Agency to intervene in HISD and appoint new leadership,” HISD Superintendent Mike Miles told Fox News Digital. “School funding was being squandered, the quality of schools had deteriorated, and the majority of students’ education was being neglected. That is no longer the case. Since June 2023, we have made it a priority to eliminate waste and most importantly, now every decision we make is focused on closing student achievement gaps, preparing students for the future, and supporting teachers.”
(Previously.) (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)
Arizona Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego, a potential 2028 presidential candidate, engaged in sexual relationships with at least two House staffers and his “very flirtatious” habits with others may come back to haunt him, The Post has learned.
The 46-year-old lawmaker admitted to the two relationships — both with aides to Texas Democrats — to one source while a second person said they had recently learned of the romantic entanglements.
A third source confirmed one of the dalliances, both of which are said to have been consensual and occurred during Gallego’s decade representing Phoenix in the House.
So he’s just an adulterer, not a rapist (as far as we know). Does this put him in the top half of senate Democrats for morality? (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Austin-based defense technology company Saronic, known for building autonomous watercraft, announced plans to invest more than $3.2 billion in a new shipyard at the Port of Brownsville that is expected to create 10,000 jobs.
Gov. Greg Abbott joined Saronic CEO Dino Mavrookas Thursday at the company’s Austin headquarters to announce the project, known as Port Alpha.
The shipyard’s initial phase will occupy more than 800 acres, with the potential to expand to more than 4,000 acres. Saronic plans to break ground this year and begin producing ships in 2028.
“The initial phase of Port Alpha will more than double America’s shipbuilding capacity today and will make it the largest shipyard in the country,” said Mavrookas.
Port Alpha will be designed for advanced manufacturing, software-based production, and autonomous vessels.
Mavrookas framed the project as a response to the decline of American shipbuilding and the increasing maritime capabilities of China.
“Today, China is now outbuilding the United States in shipbuilding capacity 230 to one,” he said.
“A nation that cannot build ships cannot project power, cannot protect its supply chains, and cannot defend its interests,” Mavrookas added. “We are at that moment right now. Port Alpha is our answer.”
Saronic designs and manufactures autonomous vessels for the U.S. military, including the Corsair, Mirage, and Marauder.
This is good news for American drone manufacturing (and shipbuilding). However, on a personal level, I note that Saronic has had the same technical writing position open for most of this year. Indeed, I’ve applied for it multiple times when listed, but gotten no contacts save form replies. Maybe with all their new activity they’ll finally be hiring…
Former Obama staffer accused of stealing from colleagues to fund drug habit.
Adam Fetcher, 42, was let go from his role as Chief Communications Officer for the City of Minneapolis last week amid a police probe, The Minnesota Star Tribune reported.
According to the outlet, Fetcher, who earned $186,495 a year in his role, is accused of stealing cash and credit cards from three of his colleagues and racking up fraudulent charges in smoke shops.
Fetcher’s drug of choice was Kratom, “a substance which is used to manage opioid withdrawal.”
U.S. Rep. Chip Roy wants the Trump administration to crack down on legal immigration after last week’s U.S. Supreme Court decision thwarting a presidential executive order to address birthright citizenship.
In a letter to the Trump administration, Roy (R–Austin) said that while the administration works to secure the nation from illegal immigration, the current level of legal immigration should be reassessed to ensure that the “economic opportunities, cultural and social cohesion, or security” of American citizens is not negatively impacted.
Expressing concern about increasing pressure on housing, schools, and healthcare services, Roy wrote that the “American people deserve transparency so we can ensure our immigration system puts American workers, taxpayers, and communities first.”
According to the congressman, the U.S. takes in approximately one million legal immigrants each year because of the Immigration Act of 1990. This accounts for roughly 34 million immigrants over the last 35 years. He also explained that more than 10 million nonimmigrant visas are issued to visitors such as guest workers, foreign students, and tourists.
Roy went on to cite an analysis of last year’s Current Population Survey (CPS) by the Center for Immigration Studies, which highlighted legal and illegal immigrant totals of “53.3 million and 15.8 percent of the total U.S. population in January 2025.”
Ashrafuzzaman Khan, a former top official of the Islamic Circle of North America in Queens, New York, personally slaughtered seven university professors as the chief executioner of Jamaat-e-Islami’s Al Badr death squads during the 1971 Bangladesh massacre. Despite being convicted in absentia of war crimes, he helped build one of America’s largest Muslim organizations and continues to live freely in the United States.
You may previously remember Jamaat-e-Islami from them stabbing a science fiction writer in the head back in 2018. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
A Lavaca County justice of the peace who was arrested earlier this month on felony charges committed suicide on Thursday as law enforcement agents attempted to arrest him a second time.
Precinct 2 Justice of the Peace Travis Mitchell Hill was arrested July 11 on first- degree felony charges of compelling prostitution, second-degree sexual assault, and solicitation of prostitution, but reportedly had been released on bond.
Usually, compelling prostitution is upgraded to a first-degree felony when the victim is a minor.
The Lavaca County Sheriff’s Office was made aware of allegations against Hill six weeks ago, but since Hill was an elected official and a practicing criminal defense attorney, Lavaca County Attorney James Reeves recused himself and referred the case to the Texas Office of the Attorney General (OAG). The Texas Rangers were leading the investigation.
Hill did not appear for a pre-trial appointment Monday, when he was supposed to receive an ankle monitor. The U.S. Marshal’s Office was assisting local law enforcement with locating him on Thursday.
According to a statement issued by Reeves, Hill was located Thursday evening “at a remote location in Gonzales County, Texas. During law enforcement’s encounter with Mr. Hill, he committed suicide.” No other details were provided.
“Hill was appointed as justice of the peace in 2011 by the Lavaca County Commissioners Court. He had reportedly previously run as a Democrat for Lavaca County district clerk in the March 2011 primary, but switched to the Republican Party sometime later.” There are no more details about the charges against him online that I can find.
As Flock cameras are installed across the nation, citizens are growing more concerned about the potential privacy violations posed by automatic license plate readers.
On Friday, U.S. Rep. Keith Self wrote on X that “[i]f transparency is now considered a threat, we’ve already drifted too far from the principles of a free Republic,” responding to an article about Flock’s CEO, who said that it is “terroristic” for the public to want to know where the company’s automatic license plate readers are being installed.
Flock cameras do not act like traditional license plate readers. Powered by AI, they capture details such as the make and model of a passing vehicle, as well as any unique or identifying features such as dents, scratches, stickers, and aftermarket parts.
The ALPRs also capture data on vehicles, regardless of whether they have been implicated in a crime. Police departments do not need a search warrant to access Flock data, heightening concerns about Fourth Amendment violations.
We’re living in an Age of AI. Why was there a “Jazz Age”? Why did jazz create an “Age”? Why was there this period between the Great War and the Great Depression, where a new form of music was very important, and people around the world cared about it?
You can theorize about jazz. You can say that there were social reasons: that jazz was fun and new and sexy, and women wanted to wear short skirts and dance the Charleston.
Or you could say that jazz was infrastructural — that music from the town of New Orleans could be recorded, and exported, and transmitted on the radio. There were new forms of mass media, so it was easier to spread a viral fad, around the world. So, that somehow explains jazz.
Or you could say that jazz was political — that there was an oppressed class of black people living under apartheid, and jazz musicians and composers were making their voices heard.
Or you could say that the Great War had just ended, and it was followed by a plague of flu that killed even more people than the worst war in history. You might say that jazz was a method for musicians to rescue mankind by changing the subject. Jazz was strange and extreme, because it was denying and avoiding the trauma of a lost generation. With more trauma — depression and war — well on the way.
It’s pretty clear to me that the generation of AI — and it’s been going on for ten years, it’s a generation — has a lot of that unspoken Jazz Age anguish. It’s a vivid displacement activity for a lost and troubled era.
I’m a novelist, so I notice the peculiar emotional expressions here. I notice things like AI burnout, AI psychosis, unhealthy relations with imaginary boyfriends and girlfriends, AI fakes, stock market bubbles, and the fear of missing out. That stark fear. So much fear. The fear of missing that golden chance. Also, the fear that AI is real this time, and is really happening. The apocalyptic terror that AI will lead to the destruction of the world.
This is not the cyberpunk dystopian dark side of AI. This is the propulsive force of AI. It’s the restless and itchy drive that forces you to leave your apartment and rush downtown to the jazz club.
Why do you go? The jazz club is not a place for the angels. You might drink bootleg liquor there and become an alcoholic. Or you might get in a fight, or catch a venereal disease. There’s cocaine and marijuana there. Someone might mug you and take your purse or wallet. But also, in New York, Duke Ellington is playing! In Paris, Django Reinhart is playing! It may be a wild scene, but you’re crazy not to go!
This is the high summer of AI. The scene is red hot. I’ve been aware of AI for my entire, extensive lifetime, and it’s never been this technically intense and this deeply felt. Rational people, with education and money and power and experience, are cracking up in public. They’re losing their heads over it. Billionaires, captains of industry, politicians, military, spies. Worldwide. Old and young, men and women.
It’s a craze.
I’m very interested in it. I follow its every little up and down. It is so far out and science fictional that it might have been built just to entertain elderly cyberpunk writers. I do not invest in it. I’m not selling any of it to you. I don’t use it much personally. It isn’t changing my life — not much as yet. I’m not afraid of it. I don’t even think it will last. It’s defining an era, an era which is ten years old and counting, but something else will show up. AI is not a fraud, or pretense, or a fake. It’s a real and powerful technology and we’re never going back to the way things were. I recognize all that, but also, I take consolation in continuity.
The dog has his own motorcycle.. 😎 pic.twitter.com/XQxWms259r
— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) July 16, 2026
(Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
I’m still between jobs. Feel free to hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.
Tags: 2020 Presidential Race, Adam Fetcher, AI, Ana Kasparian, Ann Widdecombe, antifa, Apple, Arizona, Ashrafuzzaman Khan, Austin, Azov Sea, Babylon Bee, Bandar Abbas, Bangladesh, Billy Joel, Brian Busby, Brownsville, Bruce Sterling, Cenk Uygur, Central Command (CENTCOM), Chill Dude Explains, China, Chip Roy, Chipotle, Communism, Copilot, Corsair drone, Crime, data security, Debra McClure, Democratic Party, Democratic Socialists of America, Democrats, dogs, drones, drugs, education, Elections, Engels Airbase, FBI, Flock AI cameras, flooding, Foreign Policy, Fourth Amendment, Gelendzhik, Government Accountability Institute, Grant Halk, Greg Abbott, Guns, Hill Country, history, Holly Hansen, human sacrifice, Illegal Aliens, immigration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Iran, Jake Altman, Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh, James Reeves, jazz, Jihad, Keith Self, Kratom, Lavaca County, Lindsey Graham, LinkSwarm, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, Los Angeles, Magyar Birds [414th Unmanned Strike Aviation Brigade], Marco Rubio, Marvel, Media Watch, Mehmet Oz, meth, Mexico, Microsoft, Military, Mitchell Hill, music, New York, New York City, Nick Shirley, Obama Scandals, OpenAI, Regulation, Rick Beato, riot, Ruben Gallego, Russia, Russo-Ukrainian War, Sam Altman, Saronic, Seamus Bruner, Semiconductors, sex scandal, Social Justice Warriors, submarine, Suchomimus, Syzran, Taco Bell, Texas Rangers, TSMC, Ukraine, vegans, voting fraud, war crimes, YakB-12.7
Thank you.
Somehow you failed to mention that the Russian Armed Forces carried out strikes on four Ukrainian ports this week: Odessa, Chornomorsk, Yuzhny, and the Dnieper-Bug Seaport (Mykolaiv) are all now closed.
The Russian Armed Forces also hit 24 Ukrainian vessels with missiles and kamikaze drones. These included 14 dry cargo ships, three sea ferries, two container ships, one tanker, one mooring vessel, a floating dock, and two boats.
The losers in this new escalation are the hungry of the Third World, who depend upon cheap Russian and Ukrainian grain. Expect a famine this fall, intensified by El Nino. Cue the Sally Struthers commercials.
A special detachment from 155th Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces (‘Anne of Kiev’) brutally machine gunned two children of a deceased Ukrainian war hero in the village of Kalinovka because they played loud music in the presence of 155th Commander Stanislav Luchanov’s wife. Then this Einsatzgruppe buried the kids half dead in Poltava.
Luchanov is famous for beating an Orthodox chaplain dissatisfied with his command of 155th senseless, breaking his jaw. The 155th is famous for 1,700 troops deserting during training in Poland and France in 2025. Luchanov is a pretty typical UkroNazi; the kind of heroic liberator you folks endorse.
The new GD-OTS artillery shell factory the government set up in Mesquite, TX has failed to produce a single 155mm shell parts set. Not one. The plant received close to $ 500 million from the U.S. Army supplemental spending bills during Fiscal Years 2022 and 2023. You can be assured of the success of the GD-OTS DEI program, however.
At present, the Army is only producing 36,000 155mm rounds per month, a pale shadow of the 100,000 rounds promised for this time two years ago. Have no fear, the Army now promises the 100,000 rounds per month some time in 2028, Why the Ukrainians have only drones, no artillery.
Russia and Ukraine concluded the July exchange of dead servicemen’s bodies. Moscow handed over to Kyiv the remains of 501 Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers, receiving in return 31 bodies of Russian Armed Forces servicemen. For the mathematically challenged, this is a 16:1 kill ratio in favor of the Russians. Why the Russians will not grant any ceasefire and refuse to yield in negotiations. They are winning on the ground.
Ukrainian drone pilots are attacking the collectors of the Ukrainian dead. The Russians use Ukrainian POW work details to collect Ukrainian corpses, but Ukrainian drone operators are targeting these details as a priority. So a lot of dead Ukrainian servicemen’s corpses are rotting in the FEBA and will probably only be recovered by some version of our Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) in the distant future. The Russians now believe they are collecting only about a quarter of the Ukrainian corpses.
Keep in mind that “democratic socialism” is just an attempt to rebrand “communism.” After the total collapse of all communist regimes across eastern Europe (back in the 1990s), many of the old communist parties renamed themselves that way – e.g., the old communist party in East Germany renamed itself the “party of democratic socialism”… but for some reason that didn’t make them more popular.
“You must be this tall to fire the YakB-12.7 anti-drone gatling gun!”
Not only is the instructor deafened from having a 12.7 mm round touched off next to his head, he reaches out to steady the swinging barrel of the gun, only to realize that the metal surface is scorching hot.
No matter, though. Instructor and trainee alike will quaff a few more glasses of vodka and soldier on to the glory of Mother Russia.
“At present, the Army is only producing 36,000 155mm rounds per month, a pale shadow of the 100,000 rounds promised for this time two years ago.”
95% of Russian casualties are from drones. Ukraine is expected to produce 10 million this year and twice that number in 2027. I’m sure this will make the shortfall of artillery rounds bearable for now.
We patiently await the next installment of “just so” stories from your seemingly inexhaustible supply of drunken vatnik lore.
“The losers in this new escalation are the hungry of the Third World, who depend upon cheap Russian and Ukrainian grain. Expect a famine this fall,..”
As Russians sit in unheated tenements this winter, eating rats and drinking their own piss, they will yearn to gnaw the bark from trees in North Korea and nuture dreams of the fortunate Cuban, enjoying his six ounce daily ration of rice and beans.
“You must be this tall to fire the YakB-12.7 anti-drone gatling gun!”
Yakushev-Borzov 12.7x108mm gun is unique among production Gatling guns in that it is self powered by powder gas. This makes it tough to safe the system when it veers off course. There is no electric motor circuit to kill. The searing is mechanical.
The Yakushev-Borzov gun was developed for the Mil-24 helicopter and never intended for flexible mounting. The runaway gun mounting was some kind of homemade affair which neglected to intersect the firing barrel axis with the pedestal axis. Amateurs tend to mount Gatlings with their pedestal axis intersecting the barrel rotation axis and the guns then torque the operator. Especially a gun with a 5,000 round per minute cyclic rate.
This said, on a proper mounting the Yakushev-Borzov 12.7x108mm gun should be far superior to the 12.7x99mm GAU-19/A (GECAL 50) as an anti drone weapon.
“95% of Russian casualties are from drones. Ukraine is expected to produce 10 million this year and twice that number in 2027. I’m sure this will make the shortfall of artillery rounds bearable for now.”
The Ukrainians produce almost no drones in country. Their drones all come from NATO countries, which is why most NATO countries are starting to get very concerned about Russian retaliation. The Russians have very long memories and will spend decades getting even. Most front line NATO country ministers figure they will have a hot, nuclear war with Russia raging by 2030.
“As Russians sit in unheated tenements this winter, eating rats and drinking their own piss, they will yearn to gnaw the bark from trees in North Korea and nuture dreams of the fortunate Cuban, enjoying his six ounce daily ration of rice and beans.”
The Russians are really incensed by Brovdi’s double tap drone attacks yesterday on Wildberry warehouses in Tambov and Electrostal. The Wildberry warehouses are essentially the Russian version of Amazon warehouses. Eight civilian workers were deliberately killed.
Brovdi himself wrote:
“This is not about a 100 billion fire. It’s about destroying the illusion of a well—fed peaceful life in a second.
“Poppy summer is at its zenith — the time of ripening of the berries of disloyalty up to the riot in the heads of the zombie mass works in unison with the Loving Ukrainian Bird.”
This completely derails any attempt to end the conflict. The Russians are inflicting at least a 50:1 loss ratio on the Ukrainians and the Ukrainians don’t have the funds to replace their fallen with Columbian mercenaries anymore. So the Russians will persist [their national slogan has become “work, brothers”] and eventually wipe out the Ukrainians demographically.
I guess “in the future” every fire team will have a dedicated shot-gunner.
The cyclospora test result which accused Taylor Farms lettuce grown in Mexico and sold by Sysco (a major restaurant and institutional food distributor) or served by Taco Bell was a false positive.
No one actually knows the source of the cyclospora causing this cyclosporias outbreak.
Another tour de force performance by the idiot DEI hires in CDC’s laboratories.