День Воздушно-десантных войск – has come and gone.

Nobody reminded me of the date and frankly, the few Russians I know, who I consulted for this blog piece, said it was a muted celebration. I’m writing (of course) of National Paratrooper’s Day in Russia. It’s the day when the VDV is allowed to roam free, drink to excess, rape the local shop girls, pick unprovoked fights with civilians and urinate in public fountains. Almost every excess is forgiven in the name of a military holiday.

There were about half of the paratroopers available last August 2 that there were the year before because they sustained a solid 50% casualties in Ukraine. Many units were simply folded into other units to keep parachute infantry formations viable in the Russian order of battle. It’s bad enough to be destroyed by front-line troops, but the VDV lost most of their strength at the hands of Ukraine’s reservists (potato farmers) fighting for hearth and home.

Case Study: The 331st Guards Parachute Regiment was cut to pieces on the ground spearheading a column out of Belarus. Its commanding officer, Col Sergei Sukharev, was killed in Ukraine on 13 March, and was posthumously awarded the Hero of the Russian Federation medal. The 331st was also a showcase for Russia’s policy of replacing national service soldiers with contraktniki – professionals under contract. BBC Newsnight’s Mark Urban reported on 29 June 2022 that the actual figure of dead was likely to be far higher than the 80 reported, estimating that the total dead, missing in action, and seriously wounded likely totaled 500; half the pre-war strength of the regiment.

Nobody told the Russians that getting drunk, screaming, and public urination (which the VDV excels at) might not lead to battlefield success. It’s not their granddad’s Russian Army.

Pavel Shares his experiences (h/t Claudio) early in the war.

 

Have the Ukrainians tried this?

 

On Oil

Since my youth, all sources have taught me that oil is a biologically produced fossil residue in short supply, that we currently live at a time of peak oil, and the resource must diminish and vanish in the near future.

Here is one who doubted that:

If so, oil is a mineral, created by geological processes, and not a fossil relict, hence is in no more danger of being exhausted than any other mineral resource. The term “fossil fuel” is a misnomer.

Col. L. Fletcher Prouty spent 9 of his 23-year military career in the Pentagon (1955-1964): 2 years with the Secretary of Defense, 2 years with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and 5 years with Headquarters, U.S. Air Force. In 1955 he was appointed the first “Focal Point” officer between the CIA and the Air Force for Clandestine Operations per National Security Council Directive 5412. He was Briefing Officer for the Secretary of Defense (1960-1961), and for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Prouty was the inspiration for the character “Mr. X” in Oliver Stone’s film JFK

As a critic of the CIA, Prouty pointed out its influence in global matters, outside the realm of U.S. congressional and government oversight. His works detailed the formation and development of the CIA, the origins of the Cold War, the U-2 incident, the Vietnam War, and the John F. Kennedy assassination. Prouty wrote that he believed Kennedy’s assassination was a coup d’état, and that there is a secret, global “power elite,” which operates covertly to protect its interests—and in doing so has frequently subverted democracy around the world.

He passed away in 2001 at aged 84.

You can utilize the VM search engine above by typing in “abiotic oil.” Google announces that it’s a discredited theory. Consider the source.

Prouty’s book The Secret Team, available and in print, is worth reading. He spent a piece of his life in the conspiracy business and was smarter than the average bear.

 

Thought of the Day

 

An Arizona Billboard

Senator Mark Kelly (husband of former congressperson Gabby Giffords) is a particularly odious cur, running for re-election with a BIG democrat war chest behind him. Kelly, a Biden democrat, needs to be removed from office and replaced with somebody who reflects the values of Arizona.

 

Meme-of-the-Day

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

25 COMMENTS

  1. They’ve been screeching about “peak oil” since the ’20s (the other ’20s) at least. Still finding more oil all the time.

    Of course, now they’re all screeching about “unsustainable” and “exhausting the Earth’s resources”… friggin’ planet’s 8,000 miles thick, we’ve gone maybe 5 miles deep at best. running out or resources, my ass.

    -Kle.

    • It’s time to stop referring to petroleum as ‘fossil fuel’. For the record, I’m still in favor of moving to a nuclear-powered electrical grid, but there is no getting away from the ongoing need for petroleum to sustain society for at least the next hundred years.

      • Small Modular Reactors are approved for use in the US. In fact, NuScale is ready to build as soon as they get a buyer. The fuel cartridge is supposed to be tamper proof. Nuclear power plants have improved significantly over the years.

      • Several years ago, I saw a science show (Nova when they were good? maybe) that talked about abiotic oil. One of the requirements of thinking oil is a fossil fuel is that it would be found in sedimentary rocks. So if you want to demonstrate it isn’t old plants or dinosaurs, demonstrate oil in other sorts of rocks.

        So they went to a granite monolith (IIRC) and drilled it out. It’s much harder on tools than sedimentary rocks and the going was slow. They found oil there. As usual, I tend to think when questions like “abiotic or fossils” come up, I tend to think, “why not both?” If there are understandable, repeatable mechanisms for both, why wouldn’t they both happen?

        I sure wish I had the reference for that. I’m pretty sure the show was in the days before the internet.

        Since then, I’ve read an expert who said it’s best to consider the Permian basin as an infinite resource. We’ll never get the last drop of oil out of there.
        https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidblackmon/2017/08/17/gilmer-we-should-view-the-permian-basin-as-a-permanent-resource/?sh=586fda0756ff
        There’s hundreds of years of oil products in there even allowing for increasing populations. The basin’s annual production continues to go up as long as the market is there.

      • I believe Saudi Arabia claims 268 billion barrels of oil reserves, the same number they’ve calmed for a couple decades now, unchanged from all that pumping. Where’s it all coming from?

    • Yes, “famous last words.”

      I’m reminded of George Armstrong Custer, “We must not let the hostiles escape!”

  3. “Na Zdorovie!!” I like the look of that Ruskie, clearly enjoying himself, and typical of a man who cares little what others think of the Speedo. Talk about owning it. Might be the copious Wod-Ka operating.

    The Dem’s are loathsome people who somehow manage to smarm their way into office, only to wreak havoc on everyone. When someone wanting your vote speaks warm and fuzzy while offering all sorts of goodies…RUN!. When someone speaks with simple terms, even “mean tweets”, vote for them.

    The bear is in clear and present danger…altho he did cop a feel just in case things went south.

  4. There are fossil-type imprints of plant leaves in coal. How come there aren’t fossils in oil, even microscopic fossils of pollen like are found everywhere?

    “Power elite analysis” claims that in the US, there are about 5,000 members of the loose confederation of the social class which is actually in control, to the extent anyone is. It’s a big club, and you aren’t in it. But if they were all that competent they wouldn’t hyperinflate the dollar, rather their families would supply Pharaohs and Popes forever. 1984 claims that periodically the upper-middle class splinters off to displace the elites who go soft. The founding of America fits that pattern, where the founding lawyers stole the title to the tax cattle from the British aristocracy, becoming a new American aristocracy. The ultimate big government program, war, is designed to prevent this by forcing the most competent action-oriented types to kill each other.

    Obviously, prior to the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Narcotics_Tax_Act of 1915, America was completely worthless and achieved nothing, because drugs were legal and therefore everyone was a lazy addict.

  5. Off topic.
    For some reason this clip popped up on my feed and I’m sharing the pain: Piers Morgan is talking with some “climate activist” called Kai Bartlett, who defends pouring human excrement on a monument to Captain Sir Tom Moore.

    Just look at this loathsome little manlet with the furtive mannerisms of a rodent. Yet this sort of petulant capon is the sort of “man” that Our Elite favor and promote. (The world wars were GREAT for killing off actual men and eliminating their genes from the population, especially WWI that decimated the Germanic peoples — English count as at least half Germanic. Sorry if anyone doesn’t like that assessment, but them’s the facts. That was “revenge” on the Germanics. Now RUS/UKR is for taking out the Slavs. Taking out again I should say, because decades of Bolshevism, not to mention the Holodomor, failed to do in those stubborn, vodka-soaked, Adidas-tracksuited, squatting bastards. O! When will the lust for “revenge” of our “elites” ever be slaked? Never, duh.)

    I couldn’t even bear to watch the whole thing with Bartlett. But pencil-necked, resentment filled weirdos like that are influential far, far beyond their worth or wisdom when it comes to public policy in these degenerate times.
    Wei-merica (meet the new degenerate overlords, same as the old degenerate overlords): enjoy the decline.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYVnBfDHE4A

    PS I could be hopped up on caffeine. Went for a large store-bought coffee (which I almost never indulge in) 30 minutes ago, to be sociable. Oops.

    • When I worked in Italy, the Italians would drink a triple shot in the morning, usually one at lunch and another booster (triple of course) mid-afternoon. I’m surprised that they all didn’t die of heart attacks.

      • Was doing a ‘thin for its time’ laptop design for a local self-made true entrepreneur, who loved Italy. He comes into a design meeting with his triple shot, then proceeds to dump in 3 packets of sugar and swig away.

        Let’s just say I watched the amp meter immediately jump then continue to rise. I thought he was going to blow a gasket. Whoever says engineering is boring wasn’t dealing with the right visionaries.

  6. A long time ago, I saw a photo in a science magazine (Popular Mechanics or some such). The photo was of a cube of ceramic material, about 2 inches on a side, taken in low light. The core was still glowing just enough dull orange light for the photo. The sides and edges were cool enough that the cube was being held in someone’s bare palm. That there is some heat dissipation.

    Got me to thinking about internal combustion engines running on natural gas. What if we could make engine blocks from ceramic material? What if they could be air cooled?

    • The space shuttle thermal tiles were like that. Some sort of “foam glass” that could be literally glowing from heat on the center of cube faces, but simultaneously cool enough to touch on the edges.

      Or so I was told by an astronomer who said he witnessed this at a NASA presentation for “space educators”.

  7. Um… petroleum is the second-most-common liquid on Earth. Only water is more abundant. It was the oil barons that got rock-oil rebranded as fossil fuel, as rocks are everywhere and fossils aren’t.

    Funny how there’s more oil reserves today than 50 years ago, yet we’re running out. Hmmm.

    As to the Russian parapoopers, well, yeah, gee, hahahahahaha snort. Now list all the other units that suffered 50% or more casualties since stepping into the deep cacky of Ukraine. Armor, aviation, naval forces, all have been seriously reduced.

    And how soon before Red China turns on the Bear? Seriously, in personnel and equipment, Russia is a hollow shell full of maskrova and Potemkin-level fakery. The only thing they have going for them is a supposedly-large supply of nukes, and if they are anything like the supposedly-large supply of launch vehicles (which, come to find out, aren’t in large supply, at least the functional ones) then really, how many functional nukes do they really have?

  8. Since the majority of my relatives earn their keep directly or indirectly from petroleum or mineral extraction, my view is biased. Between Xiden and Emperor Polis, the patch has been hard hit.

    I’m reminded of a great uncle who owned a worthless sagebrush acreage with one producing oil well. He tormented the oil company to the point they capped the well. Told him that oil had been there millions of years and would still be there after his miserable ass died. Then, they would talk to his heirs. At some point the current idiots will die, hopefully to be replaced by realists.

    Alert for future danger! Emperor Polis is now being groomed by the MSM as a “libertarian” with an eye on the next Presidential election. Laugh if you will but I remember how an obscure Chicago politician became 44.

    • They want to split vote on Trump and there is no level that they won’t stoop to… but Polis? Is America ready for the first queer president? Or two-spirit or whatever abomination he claims. Would his husband be referred to as the first lady? I guess it all depends on how he’s plumbed at the time of the coronation – if there is to be one.

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