Ray retweeted
The British press tells the world that high tech drones are being made in the U.K. and being supplied to Ukraine from where they are fired into Russia. Some of these new drones are getting through Russian air defences and striking targets inside Russia. Russia says that this must stop or there will be consequences. Our new PM says that Russia can get lost and that the drone supply to Ukraine will continue. Given the lamentable state of the British armed forces - to say nothing of our bankrupt economy - this policy of provoking Russia into war with the U.K. is nothing short of lunacy. There is no public foreign policy debate. There are no dissenting voices in the House of Commons. Unless we open proper diplomatic relations with Moscow which will involve a change of the current U.K. policy, this will end badly for the U.K. I am 76. I do not care for myself but I care for my children and grandchildren.
Ray retweeted
Conservatives cheered censorship when the target was the Left.
Liberals cheered censorship when the target was the Right.
Both somehow believe they’ll control the machinery forever.
Rothbardian rule:
Never give government a power you fear your enemy using.
Ray retweeted
The United States has not won a decisive major war against a peer competitor since 1945.
Yet it continues to sell its weapons as the finest on earth.
The paradox is only confusing if you think the product is victory.
It isn’t.
American weapons are optimized for a different outcome!
These are designed for controlled protracted politically manageable conflict ensuring the buyer’s permanent dependency.
Software locks, proprietary munitions, satellite feeds, maintenance contracts, and political alignment are not bugs.
They are the core features.
A system that could win a total war independently would emancipate the customer.
A system that requires continuous American involvement turns every buyer into a subscriber.
The absence of clear peer victories is therefore not an embarrassment.
It is proof the model works.
These weapons keep wars in the realm of attrition and messaging rather than existential risk.
They generate revenue, sustain the domestic industrial base, and expand influence without forcing the seller into a fight it might actually lose.
“Best in the world” is not a combat claim.
It is a business model.
The strangeness disappears once you stop confusing the brochure with the balance sheet.
Ray retweeted
Iran was not sending terrorists to the U.S. & they were not developing a nuclear weapon. The idea that Iran was or is on the cusp of developing a nuke to attack us is George Bush Iraq war level propaganda.
The point is you don't know what you're talking about.
Joe Kent - "The Shias don’t use suicide bombers."
The demonstrably do
If we follow your advice to cut & run, we cede the region to them and a path to nuclear weapons. The Atlantic Ocean can't protect us from a nuclear weapon on a cargo ship.
They play a long game because we do knee jerk reactions like you are now. 50 years of trouble from the Mullahs is too much. Free Trade and Freedom from nuclear-armed nuttahs is what we need.
Ray retweeted
The Saudi-Pakistan-Turkey Agreement is a direct result of the historic failures of the U.S./Iran War.
Time and time again, we have seen Gulf energy infrastructure, Gulf desalination, and American military bases be struck almost at will by Iran.
Multiple times now, we have seen reporting that indicates the Gulf countries have pressured Trump not to return to war out of their FEAR for Iran.
The Gulf countries don’t trust the American security guarantee anymore.
They’re making new arrangements now.
The Fall of U.S. Hegemony.
Ray retweeted
Important analysis. Ukraine’s heavily PR’d deep strikes on Russia are unsustainably expensive, roughly $1 billion/month, for no tangible strategic benefit to show for it, aside from the PR that generates money flows from the West into Zelensky Clan-aligned drone manufacturing.
A record number of Ukrainian drones attacked Russia in July — 9,800. This, at least, is the number of drones the Russian ministry of defense reported intercepting. Though record numbers of Ukrainian drones may sound like Kyiv’s capabilities are developing, the truth is less clear.
It is a popular refrain that drone strikes are far cheaper than missiles. However, Ukraine is currently unable to intercept any of Russia’s ballistic missiles. Even if the cost of each drone is much lower, the total cost can become quite onerous if the drones are easily shot down, requiring massive numbers to be launched.
This is precisely the problem faced by Ukraine’s relatively slow, large drones and cruise missiles. Keeping in mind the 9,800 interceptions in July, Ukrainian media triumphantly displays about 5-10 successful hits daily, implying an interception rate of 97-98%. Similarly, the Ukrainian military blogger Bohdan Myroshnykov today gave an average long-range drone success rate of 1.5-2%.
A few hours ago Ukrainian military telegrams sadly posted, for instance, this video of an intercepted unmanned sea vehicle near the Russian city of Novorossirsk.
On July 31, Ukrainian sources glumly shared photos of a missile intercepted over the Rostov region (pictured)
Pro-Ukrainian military analysts reported that over the course of May and June, six of the 39 Flamingo cruise missiles launched actually hit their target. This is just based on open source data, and I suspect that Fire Point is less keen to share videos of Flamingos it unsuccessfully launches than it is of successful hits. The Flamingo has a maximum speed of 900 kilometers per hour, about 10 times slower than Russian ballistic missiles.
Just a few hours ago, all 5 of the latest Flamingo flight towards Russia were shot down, despite flying at very low altitudes along rivers to avoid detection. Perhaps all the rumours about the massive state privileges and graft characterizing Fire Point were true.
The Flamingo is a large and relatively slow target📷
I recently reported on the claims in the Ukrainian media that defense minister Mikhailo Fedorov was dismissed in July precisely because he wanted to reduce the share of Fire Point drones in long-range strikes from 80% to 25%. Not that this stopped European companies from investing billions into the enterprise, with le Figaro reporting in early July that Flamingo missiles feature French automatic guiding systems. But while automatic guiding is useful to overcoming electronic warfare, it is irrelevant if the drone is so slow and large that it can be easily shot down with other means.
Anyway, strana.ua recently calculated that Ukraine’s air campaign against Russia costs around a billion dollars a month. The main drones that Ukraine uses are the Liutyi ($200,000 per unit), the Beaver ($100,000), and the FP-1 ($60,000). These costs are estimates, all around the cost of Russia’s Geran drones (though generally much less advanced than the new Geran models when it comes to evasion and speed).
Assuming an average cost of $100,000 to $120,000 (depending on how many Flamingos are used), the 9,800 drones shot down in July would have cost Ukraine $980 million to $1.18 billion USD. Annually, that’s $12 billion, more than 12% of the entire defense budget. It’s also necessary to factor in spending on intelligence, operational planning, and other infrastructure on the ground needed for these operations.
This also probably accounts for why Ukraine has been rather illogically changing the target of its operations. If the goal is to destroy the economy of the opponent, one would not take switch from target to target. Instead, Ukraine spent March and April focusing on Russian oil and gas port infrastructure, then shifted to oil refineries for a few months, and now, since July 18, has been targeting the warehouses of online marketplaces.
Recent strike on a Russian Wildberries e-shopping warehouse📷
There have been some more strikes on oil refineries in the past few weeks, but this changing focus allows Russia to repair damaged facilities. Following the spring strikes, Russia’s Baltic ports fully restored shipping operations. During the pause on oil refineries, most of the damaged plants were either fully or partially restored. According to the Financial Times, only 7 of the 26 refineries that suspended production remained completely idle as of July 27. Eight had returned to full capacity and another eleven had partially resumed operations.
As a result, Russia’s fuel shortages have been easing, with restrictions removed or relaxed in much of the country, apart from Crimea and other territories close to the frontlines. Even Kuban, a region close to Crimea, has lifted fuel restrictions for vehicles. Contrary to Ukrainian hopes, there have been no mass anti-government uprisings due to the shortages, even at their peak.
The conclusion is that Ukraine keeps on changing targets because it lacks sufficient drones to overcome the Russian air defenses that are developed once one set of targets is struck. This also indicates Ukraine will also eventually run out of unprotected targets.
All this was hinted at recently by former commander-in-chief Valery Zaluzhny, who wrote that Ukraine’s long-range strikes, despite all the hype, ‘are expensive, technologically complex, and ultimately provoke countermeasures’.
Ray retweeted
The U.S. and other NATO countries have basically funded and fought a proxy war with Russia and Ukrainian men get kidnapped, sent to the front lines, and butchered.
This war must end. Everyone is responsible for this.
🇺🇦 This is the reality of conscription in Ukraine
A woman screaming for her boyfriend as he's brutally dragged out of the car to be sent to the front line meat grinder
Meanwhile, the politicians who send people to die on both sides gleefully claim they're winning, but they never have to pay this price
Writers: Mhedi, Ian
Ray retweeted
Once again, Fetterman explicitly declares that his red line is not economic policies or issues that affect Americans. Instead, his key issue is ... Israel.
Jon Stewart is one of the few to express how bizarre and even scandalous it is for an "American politician" to admit this.
Jon is joined by U.S. Senator John Fetterman (@SenFettermanPA) for discussion on the Democratic Party, Israel, and the issues that continue to shape his politics. New podcast out tomorrow!
Ray retweeted
81 years ago today, the atom bomb was needlessly dropped on Hiroshima.
The standard narrative says that Japan refused to surrender and that an invasion of the mainland would have cost millions of lives. The bombs, we're told, prevented that.
In reality, Japan had made overtures to surrender as early as May 1945, asking only for basic legal protections for Emperor Hirohito. The US oil embargo had starved the country of fuel, and by late July its navy had ceased major operations.
America's top military leaders knew it. Eisenhower pleaded with Secretary of War Stimson to reconsider, believing "Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary." Admiral Leahy, the highest-ranking officer on active duty, called it a "barbarous weapon" that provided "no material assistance" against an enemy already ready to surrender. MacArthur, Nimitz, and Halsey all agreed.
And Oppenheimer regretted his role, feeling that "I have blood on my hands."
Some 225,000+ innocent civilians died, likely so American "leaders" could flex to the Soviets. The result was a new arms race, the military industrial complex (God help us…), and the Cold War.
Targeting civilians for mass death is never moral. As one religious leader, J. Reuben Clark, said in 1946, "the worst of this atomic bomb tragedy is not that not only did the people of the United States not rise up in protest against this savagery, not only did it not shock us to read of this wholesale destruction of men, women, and children, and cripples, but that it actually drew from the nation at large a general approval of this fiendish butchery."
For all its complaints about certain other countries gaining access to weapons of this nature, the United States of America is the only one to use one—twice—against another country.
Ray retweeted
This is a preview of the neocons & Israel lobby’s new talking points to merge the Iran war with the Ukraine war.
This is being done to maximize the amount of resources they can steal from the American people to fund these destructive & pointless wars.
Reject the propaganda.
Put 🇺🇸1st
🚨Bookmark this five-alarm warning: America is confronting a red-green-brown alliance of communists, Islamists, and fascists. They converge on one objective: eroding the principles, institutions, and ideals that made the American Republic the freest, strongest, and most prosperous nation on earth.
If decent, common-sense Americans don’t defeat this movement, our country could be unrecognizable within a decade.
Mamdani, Sanders, AOC, El-Sayed, Carlson, Fuentes, and their fellow ideologues seek a weaker, poorer, more divided, more hateful and intolerant America: a betrayal of the Republic that generations of brave Americans built, defended, and handed to us.
The regimes in China, Russia, Iran, Qatar, and Turkey feed this red-green-brown alliance. And they are waiting for the right opportunity to move in for the kill shot.
Ray retweeted
To see if I got this right: 40 days of a massive air and missile campaign does not force Iran to capitulate.
Next, we try a two month naval blockade, that does not force Iran to capitulate.
Then we try signing a memorandum of understanding, and that collapses in days, and Iran does not surrender nor open up the SOH.
Then we try 13 consecutive days of airstrikes, and that does not force Iran to capitulate or open the SOH.
And what is the brilliant answer for our magnificent and amazingly strategic Pentagon planners and commanders to try next?
Repeat the same thing again, another two week air campaign, and expect a different outcome.
What could go wrong?
Cooper has prepared an option for a punishing air campaign against Iran that could take up to two weeks, people familiar with the matter said.
Now, as Trump vows to strike back after Iran’s surprise missile attack Tuesday, the president will decide how far to go. W @mgordonwsj wsj.com/politics/policy/the-…
Ray retweeted
Everything they told us about Russia Ukraine is a lie and the biggest one isn’t even about who fired first.
The real fraud was the claim that this was a war Ukraine could “win.”
Attrition math was obvious from month three…
Russia could replace shells, men, and industry at scale.
The West could not.
Every “game-changing” weapon was fed into a meat grinder that favored the side with deeper stocks and shorter supply lines.
The victory narrative was a fundraising and cohesion tool, not a military assessment.
They sold you a morality play so you wouldn’t notice the balance sheet.
Ukrainian territory became the testing range for depleting Russian capacity while Western arms makers booked record orders and energy markets were forcibly re-wired.
The human cost was treated as an acceptable input.
“As long as it takes” always meant “as long as Ukrainian demographics hold out.”
The most effective lie was emotional….
That questioning any of this made you pro-Putin.
Curiosity itself was framed as treason.
That is how you keep a failing strategy alive long after the numbers have spoken.
Ray retweeted
Corruption isn’t hidden any more.
They proudly parade it on TV in front of you, because nothing will happen.
No arrests, no jail time.
It’s a humiliation ritual of you; a reminder to stay divided in your little left vs right bubbles so you never organize to stop it.
You are being ruled, not represented, and you have no one to blame but yourselves.
Ray retweeted
Doesn't say much for your "democracy" if it can be destabilized so easily by a Russian woman.
Ray retweeted
Artifical Scarcity IP laws compelled this physical book destruction. If it weren't for the censorship of copyright, we would already have a big online library everyone could browse & copy from legally while original hardcopies were preserved. Copying isn't theft.
btw anthropic's internal document on this literally said "we don't want it to be known that we are working on this.”
it was called project panama.
here's exactly what happened:
1: anthropic concluded that books were the cheapest way to build a world-class model because they gave claude curated facts, structured arguments, compelling stories, and writing “an editor would approve of.”
2: once anthropic decided it needed books at enormous scale, its first solution was piracy.
it downloaded 7m+ books from online libraries including libgen. the judge later wrote that although anthropic had legal ways to buy them, it chose piracy to avoid what dario amodei called the “legal/practice/business slog.”
3: that piracy created a massive legal risk.
so in february 2024, anthropic hired tom turvey, the former head of partnerships for google books, to find a legally safer way of obtaining “all the books in the world.”
4: turvey first contacted major publishers about licensing their catalogs.
those attempts didn’t produce agreements, so anthropic chose a route that required no publisher permission: buying millions of physical books through distributors and used-book retailers.
5: within about a year, anthropic spent tens of millions acquiring and scanning millions of books, including many rare and 1/1 titles. one vendor proposal targeted 500,000 to 2 million books in six months.
6: to scan that many books within months, the vendors physically dismantled them.
a hydraulic cutter removed each spine. the pages were trimmed to size, fed as loose sheets through high-speed industrial scanners, and converted into searchable PDFs. the paper remains were then sent for recycling.
7: these PDFs were fed into claude as training data.
the complete collection became a private, searchable anthropic library that the company planned to “store forever.” the scans aren’t available to the public and were never open-sourced.
Ray retweeted
Is France at war with Russia? If not, she is entitled to express views that you find abhorrent. If France is at war with Russia, then you people should start leveling with the French people as to what that might mean for them.
What's unacceptable is this cutesy, "we're at war/we're not at war" game that the EU has been playing for years.
🇫🇷🇷🇺L'expulsion de @xfedorova ne fait pas reculer la liberté d'expression pour les soutiens de la Russie. La preuve : vous vous exprimez, @dupontaignan s'exprime... @MLP_officiel apporte son soutien à Orban... Ce qui pose problème, c'est qu’elle est une citoyenne russe qui a table ouverte pour déverser les narratifs du Kremlin. Imagine-t-on, dans les années 30, Otto Abetz avoir une émission à la radio française ?
Ray retweeted
Time is Russia’s ally in Ukraine. It is America’s enemy in Iran.
Moscow can grind for years. Industrial depth, manpower, and strategic patience let Russia outlast a Western-backed proxy.
Every month of attrition depletes NATO stocks and Ukrainian forces faster than it weakens the Russian army.
The Iran war runs in reverse.
Prolonged fighting drains finite U.S. precision munitions that cannot be replaced at the required rate.
Gulf bases remain within easy range of Iranian missiles and drones and fundamentally indefensible over time.
Political tolerance for losses, energy shocks, and regional escalation collapses far faster in Washington and Tel Aviv than in Tehran.
Iran’s geography, massed asymmetric firepower, and ability to threaten oil chokepoints give it the long game.
The longer the war continues, the emptier American magazines become, the higher the domestic cost rises, and the clearer the strategic failure grows.
In Ukraine, delay favors the side with greater staying power.
In West Asia, every additional week shifts the balance further against the United States and Israel.
And remember that is not theory.
It is the purest scoreboard ever written on US hegemony!