Even Antifa Realizes It Screwed Up

September 22nd, 2025

For a long time, far left domestic terror group Antifa seemed to operate with impunity. Teaming up with #BlackLivesMatter at an operational level temporarily gave them a fake halo of social approval. Soros-backed DAs in the deep blue locales that make up their homebases constantly let them bail out and walk without felony charges, preferring to prosecute law-abiding citizens exercising their right of self-defense like Kyle Rittenhouse, Daniel Penny or Daniel Perry instead.

But in the wake of the Charlie Kirk assassination, that unearned immunity finally seems to be coming to an end. Not only has President Trump designated Antifa a terrorist organization, but according to Andy Ngo, the scumbags making up Antifa now realize they screwed up.

On Sept. 17, I joined Newsmax to discuss how Antifa are stunned by the unity of outrage on the right after the assassination of Charlie Kirk last week. A Corvallis, Ore. Antifa cell — based in the same city as Oregon State University — has now published an after-action report detailing their concerns about the fallout after the murder.

In their own words, they admit fearing the loss of their long-standing ability to mark conservatives for death without much resistance. They point out that for the first time, even apolitical groups, institutions, and businesses feel safe expressing sympathy to Kirk’s family and supporters. Compounding their panic, numerous people have already been fired after celebrating the assassination online. Meanwhile, Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show has been pulled off the air by Nexstar after he attempted to mislead the public by falsely suggesting the assassin was “MAGA.”

The report also acknowledges that Antifa’s recent attacks on Sean Feucht’s Christian worship events have backfired badly. Cameras captured masked militants assaulting families and children — images that damaged Antifa’s carefully crafted narrative. The group admits these events, combined with the Kirk assassination, risk “galvanizing otherwise politically inactive conservatives.” They are desperate to prevent that.

Waking the normies from their slumbers is the last thing the left wanted to do, but now Kirk’s assassination, and more crucially, the horrifying open celebration of it on the left, has done precisely that.

The backlash against the sick, ugly-souled left only continues to build. And the real-time disintegration of the money-losing legacy media outlets that use to cover for them has fatally undermined the systemic preference falsification by which they used to maintain the facade of historical inevitability. All the old tricks are losing their power, and the ugliness of Antifa and their numerous enablers and apologists stands revealed for all to see.

They have no idea what’s coming for them.

DOJ Investigates Austin For Racism

September 21st, 2025

This could get spicy.

he U.S. Department of Justice has opened an investigation into whether the City of Austin is violating federal law by engaging in discriminatory employment practices tied to its diversity, equity, and inclusion agenda.

In a notice sent Thursday to Mayor Kirk Watson, the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division said it is examining whether Austin is involved in a “pattern or practice of discrimination” based on race, color, sex, or national origin in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Title VII is the section that prohibits discrimination based on an “individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.”

“The Department of Justice will not tolerate discriminatory race-based employment practices and DEI policies, in Austin or other cities,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon. “Such practices are illegal and un-American, and we will vigorously protect equal opportunity and hold accountable those who seek to perpetuate vestiges of outlawed discrimination.”

At the center of the probe is the City of Austin’s Office of Equity and Inclusion. On its website, the office describes its mission as working “across all City departments … to build capacity and leadership in working from a racial equity lens.”

The office promotes citywide guidance that instructs managers to set racial equity expectations in hiring, urges stronger racial equity criteria in executive-level searches, and directs departments to collect demographic data on employees in order to identify gaps and set targets for eliminating them.

The office also encourages the use of “racial equity tools” designed to inject race into city decision-making on policies, programs, and budgets.

According to the DOJ, these directives raise legal concerns that Austin is discriminating against job applicants, employees, and even participants in training programs. Officials stressed that no conclusions have yet been reached but confirmed that a full investigation has been authorized.

Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General Eric Sell has been assigned to lead the probe.

This is likely to put Austin Mayor Kirk Watson in a bind. Watson is a Democrat, but he campaigned on being a moderate Democrat, someone who was going to reverse the far-left excesses of the Steve Alder era. While Watson did tack closer to the center on a few key issues (like reinstating the homeless “camping” ban), he has done very little to dismantle various other hard left policies enacted by the Austin City Council and the city bureaucracy.

Numerous federal laws ban discrimination based on race, but the whole point of “equity” is that it allows social justice democrats to discriminate based on race to hand out jobs and goodies to favored groups (blacks, Hispanics, gays, transsexuals, Muslims, women) while denying the same to disfavored groups (whites, Asians, Jews, straights, Christians, men). Favoring group rights over individual merit is one of the “features” of social justice, and is the theoretical glue that binds together the Democratic Party’s increasing fractious coalition. A DOJ investigation has the potential to uncover all sorts of illegal discriminatory policies, including graft grants to favored victim group NGOs.

It could discover a whole lot of things the Watson Administration and Austin leftists don’t want dragged out into the sunlight.

I’m hoping for fireworks.

Shoe0nHead Horrified At The Left Celebrating Charlie Kirk’s Murder

September 20th, 2025

Another ostensibly liberal YouTuber comes to the conclusion that lefties celebrating the murder of Charlie Kirk are actively evil “atomized bug people” that can’t be reasoned with.

  • “Charlie Kirk had many bad takes over the years. Like for example, the two most popular quotes I see people posting are the one where he advocated for stoning gays and black women are too stupid to be pilots. But guess what? Both those things, the two most popular quotes people are posting to justify this guy being murdered, are out of context. But idiots like Stephen King ran with it, then later had to apologize for spreading misinformation about a dead man.”
  • “These people will build a straw man of you in their minds. They get so fucking mad about it that they celebrate the real you dying. Horrifying.”
  • “But more importantly, even if everything was in context, who cares? Oh, he said this. Oh, he said this. I don’t care. There are many things he said that I disagree with. There are many things he said that I think are bad. Who cares? It is just a fact that nothing he said warranted his life being taken away. This is America. We have freedom of speech here.”
  • “One person may have pulled the trigger, but then we saw the reaction of many.” She then plays a sampler of clips of lefties ecstatically celebrating Kirk’s murder, including one who argued that his wife and children should also be murdered.
  • “There were thousands of videos like that. Some of these people posting with their full names and faces with hundreds and thousands of likes, thousands of tweets celebrating it with half a million likes. And it’s important to remember that all of those likes are a real person. Millions of people in this country apparently believe the acceptable response to speech they don’t like is murder.”
  • “They were teachers, professors, doctors, HR workers, healthcare workers, nurses, pediatricians, people who work with kids, people’s classmates, roommates. They are teachers showing our children the gory, horrifying video of Charlie’s murder on repeat. The hippie-dippy in this house we believe shitlib mask was ripped off and underneath was nothing but psychopathic bloodlust.”
  • She says the only time she ever saw anyone on “the right” celebrate a death was a dozen Stormfront losers, who were immediately condemned by the entirety of the Internet.
  • “This is different. It’s never been like this before. It’s never been this much. It’s never been this brazen. Normal people have to log into like an alternate Twitter account where they can post their more ‘unorthodox’ opinions. And these people are out here full face, full name, like ‘Hell yeah! Murder!”
  • “The smug, unearned confidence these people have to be openly sociopathic with their full name and face because they live under the pathetic delusion of being on the right side of history needs to end.”
  • “They will blame you for your death because words are violence.”
  • “So them killing you is just self-defense. That’s why they are using Kyle Rittenhouse as some kind of gotcha. ‘Oh, if you don’t condone political violence, why do you support Kyle Rittenhouse?’ They fundamentally don’t see the difference between killing someone over speech and killing someone over self-defense because these are the same things to them.”
  • “Why are most of them women? Most of the people celebrating are women. Like, it’s a good like 80/20 ratio all over the internet. What is going on, ladies?”
  • “Basically, the whole country is shook because last year they realized how many people would celebrate the murder of a president, and this year they realized how many people would celebrate the murder of them.”
  • “This is all the inevitable conclusion of the punch a Nazi thing from like 2017. Do you guys remember that? We always knew it was a slippery slope. That’s why we were against it. And they always say this dumb shit. Like, if you don’t want to be called a Nazi, stop being a Nazi. Even a congressman from my state, New York, was like, ‘Oh, if you want to stop being called a fascist, you should stop being a fascist.’ Yeah, that’s great. Except you’ve called everyone and their mother a fascist and a Nazi for the past like 15 years.”
  • She then reads a long, long list of all the things she’s personally being a called a Nazi or fascist over, including “making fun of Joe Biden eating ice cream.”
  • Quoting Blair White: “They don’t kill you because you’re a Nazi. They call you a Nazi so they can kill you.”
  • “I’ve been to the TPUSA AmericaFest in 2021. I actually went there planning to make a video making fun of it, but I had so much fun and met so many friends that I’m still friends with to this day.”
  • After Kirk was killed “I kept going to every single like lefty, liberal, left-wing person I know and like checking out what they have been saying about this. And besides maybe like four or five, every single one was being an unhinged psychopath about this, or saying some backhanded shit like ‘This is why we need gun control,’ which, first of all, we were just watching a whole bunch of people celebrate killing someone over political differences. You are never taking our guns now. That that is not happening.”
  • “I felt like I was in the middle of the ocean. I was trying to, like, grasp onto a flotation device, checking all of these accounts for their take. Like ‘Be normal, be normal.’ Nothing. Nobody. I’m just drowning in a sea of evil, apparently. Maybe I was just blind up until now.” So basically it’s as bad as conservatives have been saying for the last decade.
  • “This is how they would react to me, my family, my friends, you, your family, your friends that have ever stepped out of line from the nebulous, ever-changing definition of progressive.”
  • “These are people I thought were levelheaded. They were left-wing, but you know, like they were one of the good ones. Like you can joke with them. You know, they weren’t those like woke SJWs. Like they were cool. We can disagree and still be friends.”
  • “You know, your friend wouldn’t celebrate you being murdered, of course. But if they would celebrate an exact clone of you that wasn’t you, that had all the same opinions, or some of the opinions that you have, if they would celebrate that clone being murdered, they’re not your friend.”
  • “It’s just sick.”
  • “I would rather live in a world full of Charlie Kirks who would sit down and debate than a world full of people who agree with me, but would murder people who don’t.”
  • “You can’t say, ‘What if that was your dad or your brother getting killed for their opinions?’ Because they’ve already cut those people off. They’ve already cut those people off out of their lives. And posting videos and pictures of Charlie’s wife and young kids will not move these people at all because they hate their lives. They hate their families. They are atomized bug people.”
  • “From a political standpoint, not even a personal human standpoint, why are you celebrating the most popular college Gen Z political pundit dying? Like, why are you celebrating him becoming a martyr? Say goodbye to that young male vote. All the liberal Joe Rogans in the world are not fixing this.”
  • She ends with a Trumpism: “Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
  • Previously.

    Finally: Antifa Declared Terrorist Org (And A Walk Down Memory Lane)

    September 18th, 2025

    In an action that’s many years overdue, President Trump is finally declaring Antifa a terrorist organization.

    The man arrested for Charlie Kirk’s murder thought he was stopping hate. In actuality, he united the country against his own leftwing hate … and gave the president the standing to arrest all his associates as terrorists.

    I’m hope this will give the Trump Administration the tools to subpoena, back-trace and freeze terrorist funding coming from various NGOs, including a wide variety of Soros, Singham, MacArthur and Rockefeller hydra heads.

    Let’s take a trip down memory lane to cover the myriad violent felonies the commie losers of Antifa have committed over the years:

  • They attacked journalist Andy Ngo in Berkeley and Portland.
  • They helped escalate the violence in Charlottesville back in 2017 by fighting with the LARP Nazis there.
  • They assaulted police officers in a number of cities.
  • Portland seems to have especially enjoyed a number of Antifa riots over the years.
  • They declared an an “autonomous zone” in Seattle, where they shook down local businesses for protection money.
  • They had a major hand in the #BlackLivesMatter/George Floyd Rioting that swept much of the country in 2020, including looting a Target here in Austin.
  • Remember the Kenosha riots.
  • And remember that the (white) attackers Kyle Rittenhouse shot there were sex offenders.
  • A good description of how Antifa tactics work at the street level.
  • Speaking of Andy Ngo, he went on Joe Rogan to discuss Antifa.
  • Remember that Antifa isn’t only an American problem: In Austria, they protested Muslim rapists being deported.
  • Don’t forget the Antifa schoolteacher who bragged about trying to turn his students into Communist revolutionaries.
  • Don’t forget their penchant for attempting to murder law enforcement officers.
  • This is just a Greatest Hits package of Antifa scumbaggery. This post could easily be ten times as long…

    (Note: While doing this roundup, I noticed that a lot of the sources I linked to prior to 2020 are no longer good. With linkrot, the stability of online digital data seems several orders of magnitude less permanent than ink printed on paper…)

    Homeless Org Kicked Off Austin Gravy Train For Lying

    September 17th, 2025

    There’s been a shakeup in the Austin Homeless Industrial Complex hierarchy.

    The City of Austin’s Homeless Strategy Office (HSO) will end its contract with homelessness resources nonprofit Urban Alchemy at the end of September. According to a city memo, some Urban Alchemy staff “misrepresented Homeless Management Information System exit dates and records.”

    Urban Alchemy operated the Austin Resource Center for the Homeless (ARCH) and the Eighth Street Women’s Shelter in downtown Austin.

    For those unfamiliar with Austin geography, ARCH is the city’s big downtown homeless shelter on Eighth Street, just two blocks north of the booze and nightclub district on Sixth Street, and two blocks east of the APD headquarters; sort of one-stop shopping. Before the Austin City Council decided to invite every drug-addicted transient in Texas to move to the city in 2019, ARCH constantly showed up as the epicenter of crime. Since that calamity, and the lunacy of police defunding, crime seems to have spread to the rest of downtown as well.

    Urban Alchemy is a West Coast Homeless Industrial Complex outfit that runs shelters in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland, etc.

    A spokesperson for the nonprofit said that staff had “misreported” those exit dates and records. Homeless Strategy Director, David Gray said there was no financial impact and that the records have been fixed.

    “We notified the City after our internal controls discovered the issue and terminated the employees that we identified as responsible,” the spokesperson said. “We hold our entire team to the highest possible standards, and will never hesitate to take appropriate action when we fall short of those standards.”

    KXAN was told five Urban Alchemy employees were fired.

    Gray sent the memo to Austin City Council on Tuesday, notifying members that the contract with Urban Alchemy will end Sept. 30. According to Gray, the records that were changed, make it harder to know how shelters are actually operating.

    “When a record is incorrect or it’s incorrectly altered, it makes it more challenging for us to know whether or not a client truly is successfully housed or not, and where they’re at in their journey,” Gray said. “It could make outcomes look better than what they are, or make a shelter look more efficient than what it actually is.”

    Though the records have been corrected, Gray told council members, ending the contract with Urban Alchemy is about accountability.

    “Ending this contract reflects HSO’s commitment to upholding the integrity of its operations,” Gray said in the memo.

    Gray told members that in order to keep downtown homeless shelters in operation, HSO will enter into an emergency contract with Endeavors. Endeavors is currently responsible for operating HSO’s Marshalling Yard Temporary Emergency Shelter and Northbridge Shelter.

    The Marshalling Yard Homeless Shelter (yes, the city spells it with two Ls) is basically a big metal warehouse at the edge of Montopolis, near the 183/71 interchange, they just plopped some beds down into. Montopolis is one of the last remnants of Austin’s traditionally poor, traditional black neighborhoods (lots of little houses) that’s being transformed by both an increasing Hispanic population and the terrible slow sword of gentrification. Either way, the land is too close to downtown to keep letting poor black people live there, so apartment complexes and $500,000 home subdivisions are popping up like mushrooms.

    The Northbridge site is a former hotel near the I-35/183 interchange that the City of Austin bought in 2020 and it’s now reportedly strewn with drugs and trash.

    Endeavors is a San Antonio-based Homeless Industrial Complex outfit.

    HSO plans to place an emergency contract on city council’s Oct. 9 agenda, according to Gray. That emergency contract would authorize an agreement with Endeavors until Sept. 30, 2026.

    Gray told KXAN, Endeavors will need to hire roughly 150 employees within the next three weeks, in order to take over for Urban Alchemy.

    “HSO selected Endeavors for this emergency contract based on the organization’s demonstrated ability to rapidly hire and train staff for large-scale operations, its familiarity with HSO’s contracting requirements, and its strong track record in delivering quality services,” Gray said in the memo.

    Urban Alchemy will continue its operations until the emergency contract is approved. The nonprofit also said it was “grateful for [its] years of partnership” with the city.

    Maybe it is as simple as Urban Alchemy lying about results and getting replaced. Or maybe they simply didn’t do a good enough job of getting the graft wheels greased, and Endeavors will keep better keep the kickbacks and graft flowing to the right people…

    (Hat tip: Dwight.)

    The Ugly Left Faces Charlie Kirk Consequences

    September 16th, 2025

    I started this post to roundup reactions to the Charlie Kirk assassination, and it’s grown to enormous size due to the large number of ugly-souled leftists celebrating his murder. So let’s wade into the filth, and the reactions (and consequences) therefore.

  • Larry Correia probably stated it most succinctly:

    These poor fools are missing the big picture.

    When there’s a killing the left always tries to assign the killer to the right. We’re used to it. And the vast majority of the right always overwhelmingly condemns the killer.

    Only this time all the moderate normie republicans out there saw MILLIONS of liberals celebrate and justify the brutal murder of a man… all because that man held beliefs similar to theirs. Beliefs that regular Americans consider completely normal and common sense.

    These normal folks were going about their day, then they saw some shocking brutality, and before they could even process it all their liberal friends were dancing in the blood and gleefully justifying it. “He deserved it for believing X and Y.” And that normal person realized that they also believe X and Y, so them getting murdered would be just as celebrated too. At best they saw a “Murder is bad, BUT… he deserved it for believing X and Y.”

    And the lights go on.

    It doesn’t matter how hard the left scrambles to put the shooter in some particular ideological bucket to cover their asses and take no blame (as usual), because regular America saw how fucking gleeful libs were when somebody just like them dies horribly, and they realized that the left wants them dead. Not metaphorically. They want you to die. Some of us have known this for a long time because we pissed off the left somehow previously, but for the regular folks coming to that understanding is a life changing moment.

  • “Turning Point has received 18,000 inquiries about new chapters since Erika Kirk’s speech Friday night.”
  • Democratic representative and “Squad” member Ilhan Omar reminds, yet again, that she’s simply a horrible person. “Kirk was a reprehensible human being.”
  • “Texas Education Agency to Investigate ‘Reprehensible’ Educator Comments Regarding Charlie Kirk Killing.”

    The TEA will be referring all posts that contain the “vile content” to its Educator Investigations Division, as the posts could be in violation of the Educators’ Code of Ethics and potentially result in a reprimand, suspension, or permanent dismissal.

    One standard in the code of ethics includes that the educator “shall be of good moral character and be worthy to instruct or supervise the youth of this state.”

    “While the exercise of free speech is a fundamental right we are all blessed to share,” the letter states, “it does not give carte blanche authority to celebrate or sow violence against those that share differing beliefs and perspectives.”

    The letter directs Texas school superintendents to share potential violations and “inappropriate content” with the TEA’s Misconduct Reporting Portal.

    A number of recorded such incidents involving Texas educators have circulated online, showing disparaging comments about Kirk’s assassination.

  • Washington Post writer Karen Attiah fired over her Charlie Kirk comments. She also just made up quotes, which seems a serious defect in a reporter.
  • “A Middle Tennessee State University employee has been fired after commenting about conservative speaker and influencer Charlie Kirk’s death on social media, the university confirmed….University spokesman Jimmy Hart said Sept. 11 that the fired employee is Assistant Dean of Students Laura Sosh-Lightsy.”
  • Asmongold gathers several examples of brain-dead leftists celebrating Charlie Kirk’s murder, including employees of Blizzard, Bungie, Sucker Punch Productions and Wizards of the Coast, some of whom have already been fired:

  • FA: Texas Tech student Camryn Giselle Booker celebrated Kirk’s death, interrupted a vigil, and actually assaulted other students. FO: “Texas Tech confirmed to Texas Scorecard that Booker is no longer enrolled.”
  • There was a video of a nose-ringed girl who literally mimed to the “He had it coming” part of “Cell Block Tango” from the musical Chicago, and then starting bawling out because every one of her close friends said she was a shitty, horrible person for doing so. Did this make her stop in a moment of self-reflection to consider that she was, in fact, a shitty person? No. She was bawling because she now had to cut ties with all her friends. She seems incapable of self-reflection.

    (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • The hate orgy on BlueSky was so bad that the management of that infamous hive of scum and villainy had to step in and tell them to cut that shit out, that it violated their terms of service.

    Plus Tranny developer/comic creator Gretchen Felker Martin (that’s the ugly in the thumbnail) got canned over celebrating the murder.

  • Despite that, some lunatics on BlueSky are now calling for J. K. Rowling to be murdered as well.

  • Others on the list include “podcaster Joe Rogan, Harry Potter author JK Rowling, conservative political commentators Ben Shapiro and Matt Walsh, among others.”
  • Ugly-souled rappers Bob Vylan celebrate the murder:

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • And the consequences: “Bob Vylan Gig Canceled After Front Man Celebrated Charlie Kirk’s Death On Stage.”
  • More consequences: “State Department Revokes Visa for Rapper Who Mocked Assassination of Charlie Kirk.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • LA teacher Erik Travis is another ugly-souled leftist who should be fired for celebrating murder.

    (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

  • “A grieving Colorado family put up a memorial to Charlie Kirk in their backyard. It wasn’t long before deranged leftists set it on fire and vandalized the cars parked in their driveway.”
  • We’re not the same:

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • “Cancel Culture: Leftist Fired Simply For Having A Different Opinion On Whether Conservatives Should Be Murdered.”
  • This post easily could have been ten times longer than it is…

    Reform UK Leader Nigel Farage Is Latest “Everyone Will Be Hitler For 15 Minutes” Winner

    September 15th, 2025

    It’s not just America where an increasingly desperate left throws charges of “Nazi” and “Hitler” against anyone who dares to dissent from the discredited social justice dogma. Over in the UK, former Labour Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer John McDonnell was busy comparing Farage to the Evil Toothbrush Mustached Austrian Man.

    John McDonnell has likened Nigel Farage to Adolf Hitler and called Reform UK a “fascist organisation”.

    The former shadow chancellor appeared to compare the Nazis’ attitude towards Jews to Reform’s view of asylum seekers, and labelled Mr Farage a “demagogue”.

    Speaking at a fringe event at the Trades Union Congress (TUC) conference on Tuesday, the MP said: “Reform are a proto-fascist organisation. We’ve seen it in the ‘30s.

    “What they do, they have a demagogue speaking for them, they target a particular group, in the thirties in Germany it would have been the Jews, here it is asylum seekers.

    Why yes, there’s absolutely no difference between stripping native German Jews of their rights and then murdering them, and deporting hordes of unassimilated Muslim rape gangs (which had been imported against the wishes of citizens to help boost Labour’s electoral chances and kept in subsidized housing in preference over the natives) back to their own home countries. Clearly they’re absolutely the same thing.

    But given that I have some familiarity with German politics in the 20s and 30s, and don’t remember the Weimer Republic importing unassimilated Muslim rape gangs into Germany, I can’t see any parallel with Farage wanting to deport unassimilated Muslim rape gangs back to their home countries and German National Socialist policy. Indeed, Germany was the home country of many Jews. And deportation was not the final solution Germany’s National Socialists had for German Jews.

    Just as on this side of the pond, claiming someone is a “Nazi” for having the same beliefs as 85% of the population would seem to be self-defeating. No wonder Reform is polling 35%, making it far and away the most popular party in the UK.

    Maybe Labour’s leaders are hoping that if they call Farage a Nazi enough, one unhinged member of their ever-dwindling pool of crazed social justice voters will find a way to assassinate Farage just like Charlie Kirk was assassinated. It being the UK, they’ll probably have to do it with a knife. At which point Labour will call for more knife control…

    A Glimpse Of Combat On Ukraine’s Frontlines

    September 14th, 2025

    Here’s another glimpse into what combat is like on the front lines in Ukraine. To my mind, the main takeaway seems to be that combat already seemed atomized and drone-heavy has become even more atomized and drone-heavy.

  • “What you’re watching right now is the most lethal weapon on the battlefield of Ukraine. 75% of casualties are produced by this. But because it’s not GoPro footage of the zero line, people don’t want to watch it or learn about it. Well, this is a Mavic 3T.” The Mavic 3T is a commercial-grade Chinese drone with thermal imaging that looks to run in the $6,000—7,000 range, depending on options. And the 75% figure is for both drone attacks and drone-enabled artillery fire.
  • “We’re watching Ivanivske…That’s right outside of Bakhmut and there’s one road that connects Ivanivske with Bakhmut.”
  • “So the enemy comes from Bakhmut, and they flood the area with infantry, but it’s slowly by two man teams, and then when they finally amount enough forces over a couple months with enough artillery preparation on a target, they move in to gain the ground.”
  • “Most of the time though they’re killed on routes and that is our main job as a Mavic pilot, to support the infantry holding the line by attritting the Russian reinforcements making the long trek to the zero line.”
  • “This is the background behind keeping the front line stable against a much larger adversary.”
  • “Usually right when they kick it off coming from Bakhmut to Ivanivske along that road, we catch them with flashlights on. We catch them carrying diesel to go and power the jammers, and that’s when we start eliminating them.”
  • “Most of the time they are killed on route and even run away. But other times they succeed despite tremendous casualties. We’re talking about 50%. Now they like to move during nighttime, mostly, but usually dawn and dusk. That’s when us drone operators switch to a different type of drone or we’re done with our 12-hour shift. So they like to move during that time. And at night time, of course, the drones, like us, can still find them with thermal imaging.”
  • “One of the problems is that they don’t have night vision equipped the normal infantry, so they struggle to conduct large-scale assaults. And the infantry in Ukraine on both sides are mostly just placekeepers, as a scared man in the way of any assault that might happen. Most of the killing is done by artillery and drones.”
  • “And if the infantry survives that back and forth bombardment until there’s a squad level at least to make an assault, they can finally move up and take what’s left of the position ahead of them. Oftentimes, those infantry men are there for a month or two, too far forward to safely move back, injured, starving, eating rats, and drinking their own piss, or a large enough force comes in and pushes with you.” Just sounds like a swell life in the Russian army, doesn’t it?

  • Sometimes the Ukrainian drone operator’s job is basic recon. “It begins with us setting up the drone with a new battery about two km dead reckoning to the area just outside of their jammer zone, which is in the middle of Ivanivske. And then we’ll hold a place to survey one sector of the battlefield as the commander gives us his intent. But other times we’ll have us rozvidka, which means reconnaissance, and we’ll be zooming in on different MSRs [probably Mission Support Request], different buildings that we know that are occupied. We’ll zoom in through roofs. We’ll try and find the enemy actively. But it all depends on the tasking.”
  • “Most of the night the movement by the Russians is limited to the very front line, the very zero line, or the very rear entering rozvidka. So if the AO [Area of Operations] is clear, we’ll be told to rozvidka, like I said, which will scan for targets rather than have a perfect view of the battlefield with overlapping surveillance, showing the commanders in the talk, the layout of the front line.”
  • “Once we’re given that rozvidka command, we’ll start testing the waters. We scan from MSR to MSR. We’ll scan areas with that we know that they’re hiding in the buildings and the basements underneath.”
  • “And we’ll even push up further into the village to see if their jammers are working. And often times, most of the time, they’re not, because they ran out of batteries and gasoline long ago. But other times, the Russians will surprise us by turning on the jammer randomly right when we’re over, even possibly for a movement, or just random, and we’ll get caught in the middle of that jamming bubble, and we’ll lose connections for minutes.”
  • “Sometimes we’ll lose the drone, it’ll crash into the field to the right of us. Or other times we’ll regain connection two minutes later and we’ll have to find our way back because our battery’s almost dead.”
  • “But it’s almost always worth the risk to look straight down on the buildings to find movement through the holes in the ceilings. This is a very typical frontline village in Ukraine…Nothing but the steel structures and a couple bricks cemented to them standing.”
  • “The Russians don’t move out from the basement until a plan is set. A maximum two minute run into some shelter ahead of them is what they’ll do. They’re not going to be doing large assaults two hours in the open. You’re going to die.”
  • You can’t just bomb every structure due to the cost and logistics. “Large drone teams like the Baba Yagas come over and bomb targets, but it’s mostly done at the very zero line where there’s a lot of action. And whenever that zero line Russian position is eliminated, a couple more from the second line, which we are watching as Mavic pilots, usually come in and replace them to keep the pressure on. It’s all about pressure and momentum. The only way to finish the war is to push. So both sides still need infantry.”
  • “And also the jammers do work. They they’ll work usually and they can take out very expensive large drones, which are not handed out like candy like a lot of people think.”
  • “You have to remember: This is one section of the front line out of thousands. And this is one night out of thousands of nights that the Ukrainian war has been going on. We have to have enough equipment and logistics to keep us going the next day. So we can’t be sacrificing everything for a couple kills.”
  • “So use cheap FVs, sure, but FPV teams are one of the most cumbersome units that you can have on the front line. They need like 10 bags, at least, full of batteries and drones and munitions and their own personal kit and water and food. And most of that stuff is only used once. And if you’re not careful, you can go through half of your supplies of FPVs in a single night when you’re supposed to be out there for five.”
  • Getting closer to the front lines for higher hit percentage is too dangerous for the drone teams. “We’re we’re 2 km away from the Russians and we survey and bomb them. Now it is separated by 10 km. The Mavic teams are pushed back 6-7 km. FPV teams similar or even 10 km. If you get closer, you’re going to be stuck there for a month or two without drones. So although it might be more effective for your hits, it’s only for a couple days and then you can lose a couple FPV operators along the way.”
  • “The most lethal weapon on the battlefield [is] a Chinese Mavic drone. Still today, that is the most lethal. FPV teams cannot operate without this Mavic. Artillery cannot operate without a Mavic. We do not use binoculars anymore. We have TRPs [Target Reference Point?] and the surveillance drones seen by the commanders will tell them where the enemy is at the specific moment so they can lob a couple more rounds that way.”
  • “Or sometimes those Mavic teams are dropping VOGs [probably VOG-17 or VOG-30 grenades] and they’ll they’ll drop one or two at a time and get multiple kills a night, and that adds up very quickly in one single deployment.”
  • “One of our guys had over 80 confirmed killed or wounded in just that section of the front line alone during one single deployment. And that is one team, one dude who’s the pilot. It’s insane.”
  • So Russia is sending two man teams in dribbles and dabs to hold positions in the front line, in the process of which getting most of them killed by drones and artillery, so they can gather enough men in one spot to take another building two minutes distance deeper into Ukraine. It seems like a slow motion strategy designed to produce maximum casualties for the most minimal territorial gains possible.

    Hell of a war.

    World War II In The Pacific: Logistics 1, Spirit 0

    September 13th, 2025

    The Pacific campaign of World War II is often presented as uniquely tough for the Americans that fought there. But it was absolutely deadly for Imperial Japanese Navy seaman and aviators. Here are a couple of videos that say why.

    First up: 91% casualty rates.

  • “91%. That’s how many Japanese carrier crew members were dead by August 1945. Not casualties, dead. For every 100 men who served on Japanese carriers, nine survived the war.”
  • “The Imperial Navy started with 10 fleet carriers. They ended with zero.”
  • “The Japanese started war with the best carrier pilots in the world. Each one had over 800 hours of flight training. By 1944, new pilots got less than 50 hours. Why? Because Japan made a fatal decision. They never rotated experienced pilots home to train replacements. Every veteran stayed in combat until they died. And they all died.”
  • “Here’s the brutal arithmetic. At Midway, Japan lost four carriers and 322 aircraft. But here’s what destroyed them. They lost 110 veteran pilots. Each one had over two years of training. Japan produced 200 new pilots per month. America produced 2,500.”
  • “The carriers themselves were death traps by design. Japanese damage control doctrine was offensive spirit overcomes material weakness. They literally didn’t train damage control.”
  • “American carriers had firefighting schools. Japanese carriers had buckets.”
  • “When the Taiho was hit by one torpedo, the crew didn’t know to turn off ventilation. Aviation fuel vapors spread through the ship. Six hours later, one spark turned the entire carrier into a 27,000 ton bomb.”
  • “A survivor from the Shokaku described it. ‘The American dive bombers came from the sun. Three bombs. That’s all. Three bombs and 20 minutes later, our carrier was gone. 1,360 men. The water was on fire. Those who escaped the ship burned in the ocean.'”
  • “Japanese carriers packed aircraft everywhere. In the hangers, on deck, in the passages. The Akagi carried 91 planes in space designed for 60. When one bomb penetrated to the hanger, it didn’t destroy one plane. It destroyed 20. The chain reaction of exploding aircraft turned carriers into crematoriums.”
  • “The real killer was Japanese carrier doctrine. They armed and fueled aircraft in enclosed hangers. Americans did it on deck. One bomb in a Japanese hanger meant every plane exploded in a confined space. At Midway, the Kaga took four bombs. 711 dead in 9 minutes. The survivors said the hangar deck turned into a blast furnace fed by aviation fuel.”
  • “Japanese carriers had no radar-directed anti-aircraft guns until 1944. They aimed manually at 400 mph aircraft. Hit probability: 2%. American carriers with radar directed guns 18%. That’s not combat, that’s mathematical suicide.”
  • “After losing four carriers at Midway, Japan had six fleet carriers left. In the next two years, they built seven more. America built 90.”
  • “Japan launched one new carrier in 1944. America launched 19.”
  • “The Japanese were fighting industrial capacity with human spirit. Spirit lost.”
  • “The pilot training collapse was even worse. By 1944, American pilots got 300 hours of training, including 100 hours in operational aircraft. Japanese pilots got 30 hours total, mostly in gliders to save fuel. They couldn’t land on carriers in calm seas, much less combat.”
  • “At the Philippine Sea, the Great Mariana’s Turkey shoot, Japan lost three carriers and 400 aircraft. But here’s the devastating part. They lost 450 pilots. Only 43 were rescued. America lost 29 aircraft. The kill ratio was 13 to 1. That’s not a battle. It’s an execution.”
  • “A captured Japanese naval officer admitted, ‘We knew after Midway. We knew we couldn’t replace the pilots. Every carrier operation after that was a suicide mission. We just didn’t call them that yet.'”
  • “The Shinano tells the whole story. The largest carrier ever built, 72,000 tons, sunk on her maiden voyage by four torpedoes from one submarine. 1,435 dead. The crew didn’t know how to use damage control equipment. They had watertight doors that they didn’t close. The pride of the Japanese Navy sank because nobody taught the crew basic damage control.”
  • “By 1945, Japan was using converted battleships and cruise ships as carriers. The pilots couldn’t actually land on them. They were one-way launch platforms for kamikaze attacks. The crew’s job was to sail to launching range and die. Survival wasn’t part of the mission profile.”
  • “The last operational Japanese carrier, the Amagi, was destroyed at anchor by American aircraft. The crew was still aboard, waiting for aircraft that would never come. Pilots who didn’t exist for a war already lost.”
  • “Japan started with 3,500 trained carrier pilots. By war’s end, 112 were alive. The carriers that revolutionized naval warfare became steel coffins for 25,000 sailors who believed offensive spirit could overcome mathematical reality.”
  • “The Japanese carrier fleet didn’t lose the war. It committed industrial sepukuku, taking 91% of its men with it.”
  • Second: The power of ice cream. Japanese POWs saw what Japan was up against. Instead of being tortured to death as their commanders had led them to believe, their captors provided them with more food than Japanese officers ate.

  • “He held a tray loaded with more food than his entire squadron had shared in three days. Fried chicken, mashed potatoes swimming in butter, green beans, white bread, apple pie, and a glass of cold milk.”
  • “The American sailor behind the serving line, irritated by the delay, gestured impatiently at the ice cream station. You want chocolate or vanilla? The question made no sense. Ice cream didn’t exist on warships. Ice cream required refrigeration that combat vessels couldn’t spare. Yet here, on America’s most battle hardened carrier, enemy prisoners were being offered a choice of frozen desserts.”
  • “That moment his understanding of the war, of America, of everything began to crumble. Across the Pacific War, approximately 35,000 Japanese military personnel would experience American naval captivity and witness abundance that shattered everything they believed about their enemy’s weakness.”
  • “They discovered carriers where enlisted sailors ate better than Japanese admirals, where machinery produced fresh water from seawater in unlimited quantities.”
  • “These encounters with American naval logistics would demolish the spiritual foundations of Japanese military ideology more thoroughly than any defeat in battle.”
  • “While Japanese sailors subsisted on rice balls and pickled vegetables, American crews consumed 4,100 calories daily of varied fresh foods.
  • “While Japanese carriers hand-pumped aviation fuel, American ships automated everything.”
  • “Commander Mitsuo Fuchida, mastermind of Pearl Harbor, who later became a Christian minister in America, documented his 1945 rescue experience aboard the USS Missouri.” They gave him coffee with cream and sugar and apologized for being out of donuts “while Japanese forces were eating leather belts.”
  • “The Imperial Japanese Navy’s own reports captured after the war showed that by 1944, enlisted sailors received approximately 1,400 calories daily.”
  • “Vitamin deficiency was endemic. Beri beri, scurvy, and night blindness plagued crews.”
  • “Japanese prisoners watched American damage control parties, exhausted from fighting fires and flooding, receive ice cream sundaes as battle rations. The cognitive dissonance was overwhelming. Their nation, fighting for its existence, couldn’t provide basic nutrition to forces. The enemy, supposedly decadent and weak, gave ice cream to sailors during combat.”
  • “The laundry facilities stunned Japanese prisoners accustomed to washing clothes in seawater. American carriers had industrial washing machines, dryers, and pressing equipment. Enlisted sailors received clean uniforms twice weekly.”
  • “The evaporators on USS Enterprise could produce 140,000 gallons of fresh water daily. More than the entire Japanese carrier force could produce combined.”
  • “Japanese naval medicine focused on returning wounded to duty regardless of condition. American sick bays treated enemies with the same advanced care as their own sailors. Operating theaters on carriers had X-ray machines, blood banks, surgical equipment matching shore hospitals. Antibiotics, particularly penicillin seemed like magic to Japanese medical personnel who watched infected wounds heal in days instead of killing in weeks.”
  • “Japanese ships limped back to homeland ports for any significant repair. American vessels fixed themselves while underway. Floating dry docks, repair ships, and carrier machine shops could manufacture replacement parts, rebuild engines, and fabricate entirely new equipment. USS Enterprises machine shop could produce any part smaller than an airplane engine.
  • “The welding shop operated continuously.The electrical shop rewired systems while the ship fought.”
  • “When kamikaze attacks intensified in 1945, Japanese pilots who survived crashes witnessed American damage control superiority firsthand. Ryuji Nagatsuka, rescued after his damaged Zero ditched near USS Randolph, watched the carrier’s crew repair kamikaze damage while conducting flight operations. They had foam that stopped fires instantly. Pumps that removed water faster than it entered. Metal plates that sealed holes while we watched. Teams worked with choreographed precision. No shouting, no confusion.They fixed in hours what would have sunk Japanese carriers.”
  • But always they get back to the food: “Bakeries produced 15,000 loaves of bread daily. Butcher shops processed whole beef carcasses stored in freezers larger than Japanese submarines. Ice machines produced tons of ice daily for food preservation and drinks. The galley on USS Enterprise used more electricity than entire Japanese destroyers.”
  • “Seaman First Class Hiroshi Nakamura, imprisoned aboard USS Saratoga, wrote in a hidden diary, ‘The Americans celebrated their Christmas while we attacked them. Every sailor received presents from organizations at home. Cigarettes, candy, books, razors. The mess hall was decorated with paper and lights. They sang songs and played music. They were happy. We were starving and dying for the emperor while our enemies celebrated with abundance. This was when I knew Japan had already lost.”
  • The takeaway: Logistics wins wars.

    Also: Never underestimate the power of ice cream…