HMS Lion seen from a destroyer, art by Paul Wright. (above)
On 9 December 1904, the Japanese seized several of the heights surrounding Port Arthur from where their artillery observers could see the harbour. A barrage of 280 mm shells rains down on the Russian fleet—painting by Lukasz Kasperczyk.
In the background is the armoured cruiser Bayan, which, hit by five shells, lies at the bottom. In the foreground is the battleship Sevastopol, which also takes five shells on board but manages to leave the western bay and take refuge beyond the range of Japanese artillery. Protected by an anti-torpedo net, it withstands numerous attacks from enemy destroyers, sinking two of them, but it is hit by a torpedo in one of its propellers, preventing it from reaching Vladivostok when the city surrenders. Its commander, therefore, decides to scuttle it in deep water at the entrance to the bay, making it the only Russian ship sunk in Port Arthur that Japan could not refloat.
REEs, the New Gold
(h/t several sources, including Claudio) President Donald Trump’s administration is sponsoring talks for a US company to access one of the world’s largest untapped deposits of tungsten, a metal used to make ammunition, projectiles, and other weaponry (among other things). Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has facilitated negotiations between Cove Kaz Capital Group LLC and Kazakhstan’s sovereign wealth fund about a bid to develop two of the central Asian country’s largest deposits of the metal, according to people familiar with the matter.
The tungsten deal puts the US in direct competition with China for the site, as the economic superpowers engage in a bidding war to acquire a mine in a former Soviet republic.
The Trump administration strengthened ties with Kazakhstan earlier this year when the Commerce Department helped broker a $4.2 billion rail deal, in which Pennsylvania-based locomotive parts maker Wabtec Corp. agreed to sell to Kazakhstan’s national railway.
The tungsten deposits are valued in the billions of dollars, according to people familiar with the matter. Kazakhstan’s wealth fund lists the two deposit locations on its website — Upper Kairaktinskoye and North Katpar — which the group has said will “make Kazakhstan one of the main participants of the world tungsten market.”
Talks have involved creating a joint venture between Cove Kaz Capital and the Kazakhstan wealth fund, with the company operating the mine while building out production and processing within the Central Asian nation. The tungsten would then be shipped to the US for defense and commercial purposes
. Kazakhstan would share in the profits, but Cove Kaz Capital would become the project’s majority owner. Currently, China accounts for some 80% of global production of tungsten concentrate, according to the US Geological Survey.
Bullet Points:
** CDRSAL on the new Singapore frigate. The US-licensed knock-off of the FREMM remains significantly behind schedule and over budget. Singapore shows the US how it’s done downtown.
** Words for Chuck Schumer.
** In Harm’s Way.
** Funding mechanisms supporting communist organizations – who should you boycott?
** It would be an appropriate protest if the sexually confused stopped eating – now and forever. BOYCOTT FOOD! Most farmers are heterosexual, and it would show them who has the power.
** Love is a battlefield – in Harm’s Way…
** In news that will secretly terrify Democratic Party leaders, the Trump Administration has reached a settlement with the American Federation of Teachers to provide student loan debt cancellation and tax relief for borrowers who’ve been making payments for decades. In my opinion, if you’ve been out of college for decades and still haven’t earned enough to pay off your student loans, your college should provide a full refund.
** The greatest Englishman who ever lived. So much for sainthood.
** Do you feel a little off at times? Is your marriage struggling? Do your co-workers dismiss you? Do you want to change your trajectory? This might be for you.
** The Kremlin is attempting to falsely portray Russian forces as having established a bridgehead on the west (right) bank of Kherson Oblast – a new Russian cognitive warfare effort against Ukraine and its partners. Available evidence continues to indicate that Russian forces have not established a bridgehead or begun an offensive in the west bank of Kherson Oblast. Russian forces continue to increase the frequency of mechanized assaults in eastern and southern Ukraine, likely to take advantage of rainy and foggy weather conditions that complicate Ukrainian drone operations. Ukraine’s partners continue to support Ukraine through the Prioritized Ukrainian Requirements List (PURL) initiative to purchase US military equipment for Ukraine.
** Are you ready to sign up and pick up your new work supplies?
** Ukes vs Russians in the new world of drones.
** HEZBOLLAH – U.S. Marshall Billingslea said Venezuela has issued thousands of passports to suspected Hezbollah and Hamas operatives, enabling them to travel freely across the region and enter the U.S. -Billingslea cited reports suggesting that roughly 400 Hezbollah commanders have been deployed from Lebanon to South America—primarily Venezuela—since early 2025, as the group seeks to protect its operations amid growing instability in the Middle East.
The former Treasury official also claimed that Venezuela allowed Hezbollah to establish a paramilitary training center on Margarita Island and awarded contracts to front companies connected to the group as early as 2001. He warned that this collaboration has intensified since Maduro took power.
According to documentation presented at the hearing, more than 10,000 Venezuelan passports were issued between 2010 and 2019 to citizens from Syria, Lebanon, and Iran.
** Ben pisses women off.
** Professional protesters – it’s a dirty job.
** Hit my smoke!
** The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced that Israeli forces began to conduct a five-day, division-level military exercise along the Israel-Lebanon border to prepare for “different scenarios.” Hezbollah has reportedly decided that it will directly respond to any Israeli ground operations and is expecting an imminent Israeli escalation. Hezbollah may have deterred the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) from disarming the group. Hezbollah’s threats may have exacerbated Lebanese government officials’ and security forces’ concerns about internal conflict. The Lebanese government has made progress on several other elements of the US proposal, but has undertaken only tepid steps to disarm Hezbollah.
** Life is tough even for Big Foot.
** (NY Times) Zhi Dong Zhang, who escaped house arrest in Mexico this summer, was arrested in Cuba after an international manhunt. He is accused of supplying cartels with fentanyl from China, smuggling, and money laundering millions under the alias “Brother Wang.” If he’s extradited to the US, he should be executed.
Instead of sending final fentanyl shipments – in pills, tablets, and powder – directly to the US, profiles like Zhi found a safer intermediary: the Mexican cartels of Jalisco and Sinaloa. Essential chemical precursors for manufacturing fentanyl now leave China for Mexico.
In Argentina (point/counterpoint)
Version One – A group of investors and politicians who attempted to undermine Melei’s reforms of Argentina’s financial system and rig their elections is upset because they have wasted billions on a scam that could enrich them by hundreds of billions. Trump and Bessent stepped in to help save Argentina from the scoundrels. In further news, Trump and Bessent are forcing some of the scoundrels to loan Argentina $20 billion to fix the mess they created, and suddenly, they are struggling to come up with the funds. They would prefer the IMF takeover, which would put a stranglehold on Argentina’s economy, preventing further reform and undoing decades of work by money bundlers who have paid off and colluded with Argentina’s elites to create self-enriching policies.
Version Two – The $20 billion package isn’t being “forced” out of a villain. It’s a strategic U.S. credit backstop to prevent Argentina from slipping into another currency collapse right before its elections. It’s not a private-sector shakedown; it’s a government-to-government stabilization move managed through Treasury and the Fed’s swap lines, precisely because the IMF process is too slow and politically toxic in Buenos Aires right now.
The critics aren’t “scoundrels who lost a scam.” They’re fiscal conservatives, farm-state exporters, and even MAGA senators worried about moral hazard, about Washington underwriting a wildly volatile experiment without clear accountability.
Milei’s reforms are bold, yes, but they’ve also triggered 60 percent inflation and deep recessionary pain at home. The rescue isn’t about enriching elites, it’s about buying time for an ally who’s burning political capital at a record rate. This isn’t a morality play of heroes and villains (which is the cardboard cutout you apply to all events)
It’s high-risk economic triage—part principle, part geopolitics—and Trump’s team is betting they can stabilize Argentina faster than history usually allows. Whether that gamble pays off is an open question.
The Wings and the New Ballroom
The first time I saw the East Wing of the White House, I said the same thing as the first time I walked through the West Wing – damn, it’s small. There are basements, adjacent executive offices, and so forth, but it’s a very small footprint for a corporate headquarters that runs much of the planet directly or indirectly. The same is true of the other secretariats and departments. The only reason that people are complaining about the new ballroom is that they hate Pres. Trump. If Bathhouse Barry and his tranny husband built it, the leftists would be rolling on the ground in their dung – with tranny/homo/rainbow pride.
I’ve attended meetings and luncheons in the East Wing about four or five times. Everyone is crowded in there. It’s time for an improvement.
Here’s your CCP Purge Chart
CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping has expanded his military purges, expelling nine of the seniormost generals from the CCP and referring them to criminal prosecution. The most recent purges appear to target a distinct human network and are part of Xi’s continued efforts to assert his personal control over the People’s Liberation Army.
In late-breaking news, Zhang Shengmin was elevated to Vice Chair of the Central Military Commission; and 2) the addition of a 10th PLA General under investigation: Zhang Fengzhong (张凤中), Director of Political Work Department of the PLA Rocket Force, was also purged.
Are they really ready to invade Eastern China (Taiwan) or Russia to seize its petroleum resources?
In New York City (The Big Apple)
I spoke to someone who knows @CurtisSliwa, and now I understand why he is staying in the race. The City has an 8:1 matching program for NYC donors. Sliwa got ~$5m of matching funds from the city for his campaign. According to my source, Sliwa’s wife, friends, and others are on the campaign payroll, and he and they are enjoying living off city taxpayers who fund his race/lifestyle. He doesn’t want to end his campaign and return the funds.
Follow the money.
When I asked why he doesn’t care about NYC, my source said: ‘He doesn’t give a sh-t.’ Clearly, this is hearsay, but my source is extremely credible and highly respected, and he knows Sliwa well. Curtis, please correct the record if I got anything wrong. What personal or other related expenses is your campaign paying for? Is your wife and/or other family or friends on the campaign payroll or receiving any funding?
Identify the Ship
1
Identify the Aircraft
2
Only one built.
3
Four built
4
600+ built
Parting Shot
End
1?
2 is Convair YB-60
3 is Ilyushin Il-80 is a Russian airborne command and control.
4 is Diamond DA42 Twin Star
Good!
Dims and the White House – they didn’t seem to have a problem with that basketball court.
It’s an inner city sport: woke
Identify the Ship:
1. French frigate Amiral Ronarc’h
Identify the Aircraft:
2. Convair YB-60
3. Ilyushin Il-80 Maxdome
4. Diamond DA42 Twin Star
Excellent
The Democrats hate the idea of adding on the the White House without finding a way to slush off the 300 million and passing legislation to fund the future slush fund for completing the project. All that money and it’s spent on honest contractors instead of Senators. It’s just not the American way.
👍
X2…exactly.
Yes!!
Schumer, like far too many, especially lawyers and politicians (often the same thing), have no anchor so are swayed by anything and everything as long as it gains them some advantage…or cash. Eph 4:14- …”so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.”
KJB- Honestly, amazes me that one has a college diploma let alone a law degree (assuming she does, read somewhere that some judgeships don’t require being a member of the bar). I figure the Dem’s and their Handlers were planning the SCOTUS court packing [to 15] but never got it done, and likely pack it with the same galactically stupid activists who have little to no Constitutional scholarship, as do Scalia and Thomas. And here we thought RGB was bad. Here’s a thought: No more emotive females who can’t define what a woman is, no more affirmative action hires, add to that the feckless ones, which show their true colors beforehand so no one should be surprised when they flip and flop like a dying trout on the bank. Only thing that matters for this ‘lifetime” (dumb rule) is whether they understand their job and The Constitution, no weak or twisted minds allowed, too easily bought and swayed.
Remember let’s see became a Justice after she was asked if she knew what a woman was.
And she said no truth
That she, not let’s see. I saw the “auto-incorrect” right after I hit post.
I wish this blog had an edit or delete function for comments.
I have no idea how that previous comment ended in the word “truth”.
I’ve got PaulM-itis.
LL wants ti that way so we slow down before hitting the submit button (hahahahah).
My lousy self-editing function is not an upgrade from factory settings but seems to be getting more downgraded now I’m a [forced] Medicare recipient…all depends if I’m using the iPad or computer w/ the large monitor…do one cut and paste on the iPad and it gets me every time. Dad would admonish, “Think before you act” (aka ‘hit send’).
Ps…notice the intentional misspelling? Be it right or wrong, consistency matters.
“my source is extremely credible and highly respected, and he knows Sliwa well.”
But does he dislike him.?
It’s possible that Sliwa is staying in the game out of principle and still taking advantage of the system to live to fight another day, even if only as a protest vote.
He is the only opposition to the left in NYC.
Was the “Give a shit” directly attributable to Sliwa, or merely an opinion?
Sliwa is in it for Sliwa. True New Yorker. The place is completely rotten.
As a post script, I’m on a six hour flight. Full Starlink bandwidth. Surly and his buddies at SkyNet are doing a bang up job.
The unitiated will say you’re going to crash the plane using your laptop. Nice to be connected, get to pick your own movie to watch…may I suggest ‘F1’.
I was sure you’d want me to rewatch Sisu!
F1 has a similar theme, but with fewer dead bodies.
Does that mean a private flight?
I was on a 6-h flight yesterday, very commercial. And in the cattle class. My seatmate was a friendly Chinaman wearing a baseball cap with the “hologram” label still attached. (Apparently leaving the “tag” on is A Thing now. Kids these days.) Or at least I thought he was a kid, and I tried to not interact. Then it turned out that he was 42, and an interventional cardiologist back in the PRC, so I felt obligated to talk. He’d just finished 3 years in the US as a research fellow on a J1. Dunno what pittance he was paid, but his job was basically taking care of lab animals. Not a single publication to show for 3y at a pretty decent US university. He was a tad bitter. But quite intent on taking the “Steps” (USMLE exams needed to do US residency training and to practice).
—
“You’re 42. Say a year to study for and pass Step 1. Then you’ve got 3 years of Internal Medicine residency, three years of General Cardiology fellowship, and maybe another year of interventional or structural fellowship. You’ll be 50 when get back to where you were “guo neh” (literally “[the] nation within”, meaning “in China”). Why do you even want this?”
—
“China is collapsing economically. Officially they say different of course, but it’s “hollow”. When a country is collapsing, sometimes dumb choices are made by the people in charge. I don’t want to be caught in that. But the US is booming.” This led to talk about Trump, and Pritzker (we were over Chicago at the time), Leftism, and the US political scene overall. Seatmate had an interesting observation: “In China you cannot curse the Leader. Things will happen to you. In the US you can curse the leader all you want. But you cannot say bad things about negroes or homosexuals.”
—
As to the Russo-Japanese War in the opening: thank you Kuhn and Loeb. And Schiff. And the British Rothschilds. Was Nicholas II a good leader? Hell no. Did the Rodina suffer more under the Bolsheviks than they would have suffered under continued Romanov rule? Would Manchukuo and the conquest of Korea, and “comfort women” (qv) and The Rape of Nanking, and Bataan, etc etc etc have happened without “American” banker support to modernize the IJN and thus embolden the expansionist aspirations of Japan? Who knows.
I’m still in the air, and having decided to work in the next book in the Civil War seriew ‘Choices” instead of streaming Prime, I’m being boring. MRSLL is seated next to me, sleeping. The big question will be where to have dinner when I land in Phoenix/Sky Harbor. That decision will be delayed because MRSLL is not responsive.
When in Hawaii, seated at a long table at lunch, another couple was casting about for a place to sit and I offered them the other end of our table. Pleasant, well dressed couple, white, speaking softly in a foreign language. I detected Spanish, but it sounded odd to my polyphonic ear. Maybe they were speaking Brazilian (some dialects are closer to Spanish. I engaged them in Spanish all the same and they were Catalonians, on vacation. Ah, so I wasn’t going mad. I explained that we’re saturated with Mexicans who speak a strange sort of Spanish. They agreed with me saying that most of the Mexicans they’ve met on their travels have spoken a mongrel version of Spanish. (apologies to Mexicans on this blog who think their Spanish is pure Castilian. I don’t know how my Spanish sounded to them. We understood each other. Their English may have been better than my Spanish. They were TRUMP supporters, hoping that he’d support Catalonian separation from Espania. (Make Barcelona Great Again – something like that).
Wife took a number of Spanish classes during her high school and college years, including a year in Spain when Franco was in charge. The noble class vs peon class Spanish was going strong back then.
Catalan: sure I mentioned this before, but I was with a Euro contingent in Barcelona, having lunch in probably the local equivalent of a BigBoy chain restaurant. The menu was trilingual: English, Castilian, Catalan. The Swedish guy asked loudly to the rest of us, “Why is Spanish on here twice?” The Swiss guy and I both flinched. The Germans and other Americans didn’t seem to notice. The surrounding tables (full of locals) got quiet. “What?” said Swedish Guy. “I think you just ordered everything for us ‘con saliva’.” He still didn’t get it.
—
Just back from dinner in SF. Walked my friend back to her hotel. I was head-tilt or chin-pointing out various people asleep or otherwise crouched in the shadows. (This is near Moscone. Prime tourist area.) She didn’t notice a single one. Makes me wonder what I’m missing that someone such as, say Mike W or our host would notice that I’m oblivious to. Walking back to my own place, made eye contact with, and subsequently was vaguely threatened with an ass kicking by some young (looked 30s, might be much younger — street life is tough) afrohispanic male 90% prob drugged up. Had a pleasant interaction with a fat American black dude with a sleeping toddler in a stroller, asking “you got any money so my little one can eat?” (No, I didn’t give him anything. I acknowledged him politely and he was polite back.)
—
This used to be a great city…
Regarding St. George and the Dragon, the Dragon, of course, was The Devil. Allegorical? Or reality? In the story, the Devil assumes the shape of The Dragon after a long long story where The Devil assumes the shape of a woman to tempt George and then a King to tempt George and then when George finally stopped being tempted and became full of faith, then and only then did The Devil assume the shape of The Dragon in order to destroy George. George, of course, wins, so The Devil loses, sucks to be The Devil.
–
Of course there are no actual 4 legged, 2 winged dragons, or even 2 legged, 2 winged wyverns in reality, even if one assumes large flying dinosaurs fit the description of ‘wyvern’ except for the whole breathing-fire thingy. But that doesn’t stop The Devil from assuming any form he wishes.
–
I know, it’s a Cunk thingy, but there are a lot of supposed Christians who don’t accept the whole St. George story because ‘dragons don’t and didn’t exist.’
–
Which, of course, shows a real lack of faith in said Christians.
Regarding the size of rooms in the White House and both Wings, well, duh. That’s the days before central heat and air. Small rooms are easier to keep warm.
–
The White House, of course, got rebuilt in a relatively decent way and then further rebuilds to the glory that it is now. The Wings are shit and have been for decades. People would honestly be shocked at how trashy some sections are. The furthest part of the East Wing has been known to be a rodent-infested poop hole, though a nice looking poop hole, for decades.
–
The whole complex is a conglomeration of bad building, good building, periodic spates of decent reconstruction followed by decades of neglect. And, of course, Congress not wanting to fund any fixes, repairs, additions, subtractions and so forth. And, of course, you can’t touch anything Jacky Kennedy, that frigid humorless fashionless unsexy woman, did because. Just look at the poop-fest over a new paint scheme for AF1. (I finally, finally got my mother to accept the fact that Jacky was a classless unbeauty, and Melania beats her hands-down for class and beauty.)
–
Like any good hotel, the whole thing needs to be rebuilt from ground up every 20 years or so. Not just new paint, whole walls, plumbing, rooms rebuilt and reset. And Trump is doing this, not on The People’s Dime, but on voluntary donations. If a dem (or many repubs) had done this, maybe 10% of the collected moneys would actually find its way into the designated projects. But Trump is doing the impossible, 100% going to the new ballroom and fixing up the rest of the East Wing.