Ukraine Situation Report: U.S. To Rush Delivery Of NASAMS Air Defense Systems

Could Long-Range Iranian Missiles Be Next For Russia?

U.S. Army Eyes Buying More New APCs After M113 Transfers To Ukraine

U.N. publicly rejects Russia’s call for secret vote on Ukraine (Reuters)

Jamie Dimon: Oil crisis should be treated ‘almost as a matter of war at this point’

Exclusive: KLA to stop sales and service to China to comply with U.S. export curbs (Reuters)

Explainer: What makes a nuclear weapon ‘tactical’? (Reuters)

Iran’s Illicit Oil Sales Help Fuel Mass Military Buildup

US arms sales rebound back to $50B in fiscal 2022

Better fighting vehicles and trucks are in the Army’s future

U.S. sensors unable to track Chinese, Russian hypersonic missiles: report

CCP Runs Police Outpost In New York City, Part Of Global Network Of Transnational Repression: Report

Dark Days Ahead For Europe As Lack Of Russian Oil Could Spark ‘Worst Energy Crisis In Decades’

AIR DEFENSE: Delivering New Systems To Ukraine

Ukraine Recaptures 5 Settlements in Kherson Region

Major Russia-Germany Oil Pipeline Partially Shut After Leak

German Government Fears Millions of Furnaces Going Off…Children Now Being Handed Blankets at School  Off with the nose! Take that, face!

How Close Is Vladimir Putin to Using a Nuclear Bomb? (The New Yorker)

Read it.

Modified off-the-shelf drones have been found carrying wireless network-intrusion kit in a very unlikely place.

The idea of using consumer-oriented drones for hacking has been explored over the past decade at security conferences like Black Hat 2016, in both the US and in Europe. Naomi Wu, a DIY tech enthusiast, demonstrated a related project called Screaming Fist in 2017. And in 2013, security researcher Samy Kamkar demonstrated his SkyJack drone, which used a Raspberry Pi to take over other drones via Wi-Fi.

Now these sort of attacks are actually taking place.

Greg Linares, a security researcher, recently recounted an incident that he said occurred over the summer at a US East Coast financial firm focused on private investment. He told The Register that he was not involved directly with the investigation but interacted with those involved as part of his work in the finance sector.

Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your drains!

Read it.

I’ll bet you didn’t know that.

Read it.

It’s been just over a century since Ireland was divided into two political entities, and an increasing number of people in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland think it’s time to join together as one nation.

Read it.

The lacustrine landscape of Mexico Valley was covered with five big lakes: Texcoco, Xaltocan, Zumpango, Chalco and Xochimilco, and very small boggy islands.

To solve their land crisis, archaeological evidence as well as narratives of Spanish colonial writers tell us that the Aztecs came up with a genius plan: the chinampas. They artificially constructed these long, narrow strips of land over shallow lakes by piling earth on reeds and sedges and raising them to the required height. The islands were then anchored to the lake floor by a fence of ahuejote, a native willow tree.

While the Aztecs built Tenochtitlan’s city centre by connecting existing islands via bridges and boardwalks, in areas further from the city centre, such as the Xochimilco lake basin, they used chinampas to create floating gardens that could be used for agriculture, animal rearing, hunting and foraging. The ingenious technique of farming on water allowed the Aztecs to sustain their growing empire.

Joel Kotkin reveals that he is a socialist after all.

The implications of the current land grab are profound, threatening the future of democratic institutions and the middle class. These trends are distressingly common across the higher income countries. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reported in Under Pressure: The Squeezed Middle-Class that the future of the middle-class is threatened by house prices that have been growing “three times faster than household median income over the last two decades.” The pandemic drove prices even further, and, in the U.S., housing affordability is at the lowest level since 1989.

The use of the smear ‘land grab’ is illuminating. Apparently, buying land that you can afford and that other people are willing to sell you (without coercion) is a ‘grab’. Purer class-warfare sentiments are hard to imagine.

There is nothing about rich people owning land that ‘threatens the future of democratic institutions’; the right to vote, last time I looked, did not depend on land ownership. Whether or not the ‘middle class’ it threatened by it is an assertion for which neither evidence nor argument is presented–he just says it as if it were an Obviously Bad Thing, a traditional progressive practice. (Ask Dave Ramsay some time about the typical ‘middle class’ 30-year mortgage … and Stand Back.)

Ukraine live updates Strikes across Ukraine, including heart of Kyiv; Putin convenes his Security Council (Washington Post)

Russian strikes kill 17 in Ukraine following bridge attack (CNBC)

Russian missiles strike Ukraine after bridge bombing (CBS)

Explosions rock multiple Ukrainian cities, including Kyiv (The Hill)

Several loud explosions heard in Ukrainian capital Kyiv (Al Jezeera)

Why Zelensky’s World War III Gambit Will Fail

Russia Strikes Kyiv, Multiple Ukrainian Cities; Many Dead

Kyiv, Other Cities Hit as Putin Orders ‘Harsh Response’ to Crimea Bridge Attack

Live Updates: Putin’s ‘Mass Strike’ on Ukraine Draws Furious Condemnation (N.Y.Times)

Two Wars, Two Visions

Professor Sachs: “Ukraine Needs To Stop Bombing Nuclear Power Plant And Blaming It On Russia”

Joe Rogan & Dave Smith Break Down The Real Reasons Russia Invaded Ukraine In Viral Clip

Read it.

The stock of Christopher Columbus has fallen in recent years as a result of the general campaign on the part of the left by figures such as Howard Zinn to emphasize the bad in American history and to elevate native Americans as uniformly good in comparison, as well as specific campaigns to make people more aware of the bad things white people of yore such as Columbus actually did. There was a Marxian slant because Columbus was also considered the man who brought capitalistic greed to this hemisphere.

The Columbus Day battle is also—although most people may not realize this—a struggle between two ethnic identity groups: native Americans and Italians, the latter being the people who spearheaded so much of the recognition of Columbus in this country in the first place. And the Ku Klux Klan had a role, as well.

Axios.

Nearly four out of 10 Republicans and one in four Democrats say they’ll blame election fraud if their party doesn’t win control of Congress in November, in the latest wave of the Axios-Ipsos Two Americas Index.

My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

So young, and already an insurrectionist.

Read it.

Central to Vladimir Putin’s claim that Ukraine is historically part of some greater Russia, and the staged plebiscites recently in the Russian-occupied territory, it is worth looking back on the actual votes cast in Ukraine back in 1991 when it had a referendum on the question of independence from the post-Soviet Union. Only in Crimea was there any serious sentiment in favor of remaining with Russia, and even there not a majority. I suspect most Ukrainians still have long memories of their treatment at the hands of Russia over the centuries.

Read it.

Markets, we are told, are rebelling against the government’s irresponsible fiscal policy, not least the now-abandoned plan to abolish the 45p tax rate. If that is what they are doing, it marks a sharp change in their behaviour. For most of the past decade they have whooped with delight whenever a fantastically expensive stimulus package has been announced and gone into a sulk whenever there have been rumours that the punch bowl is about to be withdrawn.

In this Alice in Wonderland world, good news became bad and bad news became good. Why? Because bad news means greater likelihood of a stimulus package; good news means stimulus is likely to be withdrawn. And of course, the extra billions pumped into the economy through stimulus – whether it be quantitative-easing or Joe Biden’s blatant helicopter money – had a tendency to be sucked into inflated asset prices.

Maybe like a reformed gambler, global markets have finally come to the realisation that this really can’t go on. You can’t go on creating money out of thin air forever after and expect it not to end up with serious inflation. They are giving the global bookmakers – i.e. central banks – a message: save us, before we all end up broke. If markets have told us anything over the past month it is: governments and central banks, get your fiscal and monetary houses in order.

Avoid the red areas. Don’t go there. Don’t eat their food. Don’t buy their products. Don’t adopt their politics. Just … don’t. THERE’S A REASON PEOPLE ARE LEAVING. THEY KNOW SOMETHING YOU DON’T.

Read it.

In just the last few weeks, Liz Truss, Britain’s new prime minister, has been denounced by critics as a “fascist.” So has Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s newly elected prime minister. Along with all Republicans in Congress, Texas and Florida GOP Govs. Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis and, of course, former President Donald Trump. Every one of the tens of thousands of “MAGA Republicans” who attend Trump rallies, too.

Dangerous fascists, for that matter, all of whom critics say need to be shut up.

Joel Kotkin.

The great core cities don’t die — but only if they are willing to change. Today the world’s great cities, such as New York or London, face dramatically changed conditions, notably the rise of remote work, fears from the pandemic, and rising crime.

In many ways they are experiencing an acceleration of already deep-seated trends. The percentage of Americans living in suburbs rose from 13 percent of the metropolitan population in 1940 to 86 percent in 2017, a gradual increase of 2 percent a year. And since 2012, suburbs and exurbs have accounted for about 90 percent of all metropolitan growth. This dispersion has occurred not only in the United States but in the old cities of Europe, too, including London and Paris.

Read it.

You could see this one coming a mile away, and many of us did. When the Supreme Court declared that there is no rational reason to deny the right of two people of the same sex to marry–love is love!–it eliminated the teleological foundation of marriage and the family. If marriage is no longer grounded in the biology of reproduction–it takes two, a man and a woman, to make a child–then the number two is likewise irrational. If George and Ken can be in love, and therefore entitled to marry, then why can’t George, Ken and Susan?

Mormons will be pleased.

Muslims will be pleased.

Turd World countries will be pleased.

Saudi Arabia and Russia plan deep oil cuts in defiance of US (Financial Times)

White House launches last ditch effort to dissuade OPEC from cutting oil production to avoid a ‘total disaster’ (CNN)

Russia-Ukraine news (CNN)

Biden speaks with Zelensky, unveils $625 million weapons package to Ukraine (The Hill)

It’s Time to Brace for Putin’s Greatest Meltdown Yet (Daily Beast)

What happens if Putin decides to cut his losses in Ukraine? (NPR)

US-China Space Wars & Moon-Mining

Kiev Offers White House Targeting Control For Longer Range Weapons

COUNTER-TERRORISM: The Growing Use of Sanctuaries

AFGHANISTAN: Shunned, Sanctioned And Starving

Europe’s Energy Crisis Forces Factories to Go Dark

Russia’s “Nuclear Train” Is Not Necessarily What The Media Is Portraying It To Be

Ukraine Situation Report: Breakthrough In Kherson

Turkey Launches 326-Foot Warship For Ukraine, Won’t Arrive Until 2024

Swedish Submarine Rescue Ship Heads To Investigate Pipeline Sabotage

Russia Fails Five Separate Times to Advance in Donetsk in Single Day (Newsweek)

Putin’s Allies Are Divided Over When To Use Nuclear Weapons in Ukraine War (Newsweek)

Update on the war in Ukraine  (The New Neo)

Russia Replaces Key Commander After Losses in Ukraine’s Kharkiv Region

Japan Warns Residents to Take Shelter After North Korean Missile Launch

Putin deploys world’s largest submarine with ‘apocalypse’ drone capabilities (N.Y. Post)

Europe is more bark than bite on Ukraine

From HIMARS to helos: What the US has given Ukraine

Germans Panic-Buy Electric Heaters As Authorities Warn Of Winter Gas Shortage

When conspiracy theorists run countries (Financial Times)

Russian Losses Evident in Key Liberated Ukrainian City

Former Pentagon Advisor Says US Likely Attacked Nord Stream Pipelines To Isolate Germany

WEAPONS: Restocking The Arsenal Of Democracy

IRAQ: Epic Stalemate Continues

The Draining of Ukraine (ZMan)

Europe: How to Become Poor Peasants Again

Watch: Bloomberg Hosts Scramble As Top UN Adviser Shreds Ukraine Narrative In Live Interview

Hurricane Ravaged Florida Town Raises Ukraine Flag So Congress Will Send Aid  (Babylon Bee)

Why Russia could use nuclear weapons in Ukraine

Read it.

And are you willing to bet your heat on the dependability of the electrical grid in a winter storm?

Read it.

Web forms routinely reject or distort names with apostrophes, hyphens, umlauts and other accents; Ireland’s Aer Lingus flummoxed by O’Brien.

Joel Kotkin.

Reading the mainstream media, one would be forgiven for believing that the upcoming midterms are part of a Manichaean struggle for the soul of democracy, pitting righteous progressives against the authoritarian “ultra-MAGA” hordes. The truth is nothing of the sort. Even today, the vast majority of Americans are moderate and pragmatic, with fewer than 20% combined for those identifying as either “very conservative” or “very liberal”. The apocalyptic ideological struggle envisioned by the country’s elites has little to do with how most Americans actually live and think. For most people, it is not ideology but the powerful forces of class, race, and geography that determine their political allegiances — and how they will vote come November.

Read it.

Ewww. Just … ewww.

Well, that’s one way to force ‘vaccines’ on people. I guess.

New York Times.

Violent political speech has increasingly crossed into the realm of in-person confrontation for members of Congress in both parties, raising the prospect of a disastrous event.

Well, perhaps if they did the jobs they were elected to do rather than being total whores and tools, they might not have this problem.

Biden administration unveils Russia sanctions in response to annexations (The Hill)

US imposing ‘swift and severe costs’ on Russia following Putin’s Ukraine annexation (CNN)

Zelensky Asks Ben Stiller If He Can Put Him Down As A Reference On His NATO Application (Babylon Bee)

WARPLANES: Ukraine Builds Its Own

Read it.

Companies haven’t yet internationally outsourced many jobs that require higher education, Stansbury tells Fortune, adding that many call center-type jobs, or remote-first jobs like software design or back-end engineering have already been offshored.

But if high-paying white collar jobs can be done remotely, outsourcing them to cheaper areas could “pretty clearly” offer huge savings. The potential for change “would be seismic if all of these well-paid white collar jobs were suddenly outsourced to less rich countries,” she adds.

“If people that code for Google and Facebook were able to live wherever in the U.S. they wanted and [work] for a year and a half without ever going to the office, it seems very, very likely that a lot of companies will be rethinking this longer-term and outsourcing those kinds of jobs that didn’t used to be outsourced,” Stansbury adds.

Read it.

Uh, no….

Read it.

It’s tempting to interpret the Italian electoral results this past Sunday as voters merrily hurling a bowl of lush papardelle with wild boar ragu over the collective bland faces of the toxic unelected Euro-oligarchy sitting in Brussels.

Well, it’s complicated.

Read it.

Republican senators are growing concerned by colleague Mitt Romney’s refusal to help fellow Utah Republican Mike Lee decisively win his re-election campaign — a posture that could potentially keep their party from gaining a majority in the November elections. Unlike every other Republican senator, the 2012 failed Republican presidential candidate is declining to express a preference in Republican Lee’s re-election effort against Democrat-endorsed Evan McMullin.

“I respect [Romney], and I understand that each state has its own dynamics, but I do not understand why he is remaining neutral,” said one Republican senator who asked not to be identified. “Whatever our differences, we all try to support each other around election time.”

…

Even so, the poll suggests the strategy McMullin shared with left-wing allies at The Washington Post and other corporate media — building a coalition of Democrats, independents, and Romney and his supporters — is working at least somewhat according to plan.

Romney needs to be primary’d and replaced with a real Republican.

Read it.

‘Clean’, like ‘smart’, has become the prerequisite for all technology. Both are myths.

Smart technology is surveillance technology. It is not smarter because of its inherent qualities, but because it sends and receives data that allows it to be ‘smarter’ in manipulating users. The smart part of smart technology comes from human beings. So does the stupid part when people sacrifice their privacy and independence for the benefits of technology being shaped to them.

Clean energy is even more of a myth. The Inflation Increase Act doles out another stream of billions toward the inefficient forms of energy generation that the government has been subsidizing for over 50 years because some Madison Avenue ad agency branded them ‘clean’.

Energy is inherently clean and dirty. Making the inherent forces of the universe useful requires mining metal, cutting down trees, and turning fossil fuels into plastic to assemble machines. Once those machines are running, they will shed heat because ‘clean’ or ‘dirty’, that is how the second law of thermodynamics works. Not even Al Gore can evade entropy and not even the shiniest solar panel, sleekest wind turbines or smoothly humming Tesla will prevent energy from being wasted as it is transferred, stored or used to do one thing or another locally or nationally.

ZMan looks ahead.

The first step in surviving a nuclear war is to avoid a direct hit. Washington DC will get several direct hits and the initial flash will vaporize most of the population. The shock wave will level most of the city. By now, the Russians and Chinese know to target Northern Virginia, so it will be a saturation bombing. The five percent that survive the initial blast will be radiated and die soon thereafter. Therefore, the first rule of nuke club is to be outside the target zone.

The safe bet is to be away from the coasts. The Rockies or Appalachia are the best bet for making it through the first stage. Denver will be nuked, for sure, but the damage will be contained to that plateau. People in the mountains will escape the flash and the blast, even if Denver takes multiple strikes. The Green Briar will get hit, for old times sake, but most of West Virginia will be spared. There are lots of places to escape the flash and the blast in the mountains.

Once things settle after the final missile strikes, there will be four key things to surviving the aftermath. You will need water, shelter, food and a way to defend yourself from the people who were not prepared. Imagine a land ravaged by mask wearing Covidians and you get the picture. You will have to be prepared to kill a lot of people in order to avoid ending up like them. This means you need to pick a spot that has access to water, a food source and is defendable.

Smith & Wesson are your friends.

Read it.

Despite what you’ve been told, the American left is not composed of people who hate the country and want to see its institutions burned to the ground in an orgy of rage. Oh, sure, those people exist — but they’re not the whole left. Not even most of the left. Nor are they, on their own, all that dangerous, since burn-it-down-style radicalism inevitably runs up against the natural human desire for peace and order. (Even in Seattle, CHAZ could last only so long.) No, the great majority of Americans who identify with the left belong to a different faction: the whigs.

When I say “whig,” I’m not talking about powdered faux hair or the Democratic Party’s long-lost rival or British parliamentary politics. I’m talking about those Americans — and there are many of them — who take a whiggish view of the country’s history. Such people consider themselves patriotic. They hang red, white, and blue flags from their porches. They watch fireworks shows and march in July 4 parades. They swoon at the sight of military regalia. They flock to old battlefields and can rattle off facts about Benjamin Franklin and the Constitutional Convention. They also believe that Elizabeth Warren is the fullest expression of the Lincolnian spirit and that gas-powered cars must be abolished, lest life on Earth end.

If the whig left had a creed, it might be this: Social change is America’s genius. Resistance to social change is illegitimate and un-American. The Democratic Party, as the progressive party, is the natural steward for the best parts of American history — a history that consists of a series of virtuous struggles against oppression: the oppression of the British crown, the oppression of slavery, the oppression of the patriarchy, the oppression of unbridled capitalism, the oppression of the Jim Crow regime, the oppression of homophobia, the oppression of immigration restriction, and so on.

Whigs were Progressives before they came up with a cool new name.

Putin raises stakes in the war in Ukraine (Fox)

Top Russian lawmakers slam ‘excesses’ of Putin’s war mobilization (The Hill)

Russians arrested in thousands while protesting Putin’s mobilization, human rights group says (Fox)

Tehran Summons Western Ambassadors For “Meddling” As Protest Death Toll Climbs To Over 40

Orbán Calls For Sanctions On Russia To Be Lifted By End Of Year

Procurement: The Russian Gift

The View Russia Will Lose War In Ukraine May Be “Naive”

Russia Gunman Detained After Shooting at Siberian Draft Office

US Official Says Oil Price Cap On Russia Crude Exports To Include Products

Missile-launching quadcopter could be headed to Ukraine

Putin Grants Russian Citizenship to Edward Snowden

Ukrainian Territories To Be Absorbed Into Russia By Week’s End: Lawmaker

Congress Signs Up For $40 Billion Per Month Ukraine+ Subscription (Babylon Bee)

Read it.

Not as efficiently as journalists can stiff out white supremacists….

Joel Kotkin.

The conflict between the material economy and the economy based in ephemera – such as the creative industries, tech and financial services – is likely to define the coming political conflicts both within countries and between them. The laptop elites, led by Silicon Valley, the City of London and Wall Street, generally favour constraining producers of fuel, food and manufactured goods. In contrast, the masses, who produce and transport those goods, are now starting to realise that they still have the power to demand better futures for themselves and their families. Like railway workers, they can threaten to shut things down and win much higher pay.

Ukraine Situation Report: Multiple Russian Aircraft Shot Down In A Day

World opinion shifts against Russia as Ukraine worries grow (Associated Press)

China says US sending ‘dangerous signals’ on Taiwan (The Guardian)

Nuclear War Is “Possible” For 1st Time Since Cold War: US Commander

China Using Civilian Ships to Enhance Navy Capability, Reach

Finland Shuts Borders With Russia As Military Age Men Flee  Welcome to the quagmire.

Drowning Of Russian Executive Latest In A String Of Mysterious Deaths  Dunh dunh DUNHHHHH.