You probably remember Scott of Kentucky Ballistics’ little oopsie (as he calls it), when a spicy round blew up his 50 cal and almost killed him. Since that brush with death he’s deliberately blown other firearms under more controlled conditions and filmed the results to show the failure modes.
This time, however, he’s teamed up with The Slow-Mo Guys to blow up some guns at exceptionally high frame rates.
They blow up both an AR-15 and a .300 Winchester Mangnum rifle. The most interesting part for me was seeing that the explosion rips through the bottom of the AR’s magazine before the top of the gun starts flying.
But wait! There’s more! Here’s Scott and the Slow-Mo Guys playing Kentucky Roulette for some close up demolition.
“AK Guy” Brandon just dropped the fourth installment of his “Weird Guns Being Used in Ukraine Right Now” on YouTube, showing some of the funky, modified, and just plain ancient weapons be used in active combat there. The first installment is age limited and non-embeddable, but the other three are below.
Highlights:
Both sides are using he original Maxim belt-fed machine guns, a World War I mainstay “patented in 1883. Timeline-wise this weapon was designed closer to the beginning of the American revolution in 1776 than it was to the current Ukrainian conflict.”
PKM machine guns taken off armored vehicles and converted for individual use. Which is more difficult than it sounds, since the firing mechanism is triggered by an electric solenoid. “They had to rig up an entirely new firing system to rig up to these things, and quickly, and frankly I’m impressed. Ghetto gunsmith to ghetto gunsmith, crisp internet high five.”
Chechen soldiers (assuming there are any of them still around) are better equipped than Russian soldiers.
“You’re seeing all sorts of modern munitions, anti-armor stuff, aircraft drones. But then in the exact same confrontation, you’re also having guys that are carrying around weapons that are so old that their great grandfathers could have easily carried in the Great War to end all wars. And while the reality of war is obviously very tragic, the significance of some of the stuff being used in the field is extremely interesting.”
Highlights:
“Modified mortar RPG rounds…in guerrilla warfare, it’s always useful to have a couple of rednecks around.”
That ridiculous “six antipersonnel grenades attached to an RPG” thing.
“Some poor Ivan got handed a squirrel killer (a Chinese QB-57 single shot air rifle) and was thrown into the middle of 21st century combat with drones and tanks and was told good luck, have fun. It’s no wonder a lot of young Russian men are leaving the country rather than being conscripted…nothing says the government cares about your well-being quite like being tossed into fucking combat with a Red Ryder from A Christmas Story.”
Russia is also using World War II era DPM or DP-28 Degtyarev machine guns. “It’s basically like a PKM, if a PKM wasn’t belt fed and was instead fed by a pizza dish. It’s the closest thing to a full dinner plate most Soviets ever got to see.”
Other World War II era machine guns seeing combat: MP40s, Sturmgewehr (STG) 44s and MG 42s.
“There’s a lot of Russians now rolling around with
[American Thompson] .45 ACP submachine gun, AKA of course the Tommy Gun.” A legacy of Lend-Lease.
Plus: Anti-tank rifles! Including a PTRS-51 chamber in 14.5mm. “I guarantee you that shit will buttfuck the engine of any vehicle ever, as well as probably penetrate some of the light armor on some of the lightly armored armored personnel carriers.”
A suppressed Barrett M107, which is every bit as monstrously long (and no doubt heavy) as you would suspect.
Ukraine is also using everyone’s favorite space-alien looking FPS gun, the FN FS-2000.
Lots of ghetto gunsmithing.
A really funky glider with an RPG-7 on top. It actually looks slightly funkier than the flying yeet of death. Which comes next in the video.
Russians using old-fashioned sporting break action shotguns against drones.
More Maxims, including in duel, triple, and quad mounts. “We’re starting to get in the territory of like those mech things from Matrix Revolutions. [Now] we have something that is basically just a ghetto-rigged Minigun.”
If you’re interested in vintage, weird and improvised weapons, all the videos are worth taking a look at.
A couple of weeks ago, I posted a piece on how Russia was pulling ancient T-55s out of storage to send to Ukraine. In the interest of balance and fairness (to my readers, not to Russia), here’s a video on how Ukraine fielding their own upgraded T-55s.
“Ukraine has also had to look to the past, the distant past, for compatible tanks. The Ukrainians are fielding, since last autumn, a design of tank dating from over 70 years ago, the venerable T-55.”
“The 28 vehicles that the Ukrainians brought into service last autumn are a radically improved version of this model of tank called the M-55S obtained from Slovenia.”
“Taking standard T-55s into battle in 2023 would not be advisable. The 40-ton tank has a semi-stabilized 100mm d10 gun, a 500 horsepower diesel engine, and steel armor of a maximum thickness of just 200mm, meaning even old RPGs can knock them out. The gun site requires a semi-infrared spotlight that betrays the tank’s position, instant death on the modern battlefield.”
“The type also soldiers on in many armies around the world, particularly in the Third World, where T-55s saw action recently in the 2014-20 Libyan Civil War, the Yemeni Civil War from 2015 to present…and the Tigray War in Ethiopia, which ended last year.”
“Via Israel, [Slovenia] was able to heavily modernize its existing T-55s into something that is still fairly capable in 2023.”
“The old Soviet gun was replaced with the British Royal Ordnance L7 105mm rifled gun…Although the L7 is getting on in years it is still highly effective, and plenty of ammunition abounds for them.”
The tanks also received new fire control systems, incorporating a laser rangefinder and second generation night vision, a digital ballistic computer, new rubber metal tracks, an upgraded diesel engine increasing horsepower from 500 to 800, giving a maximum speed of 50 kph, and of course the tank is covered in reactive armor bricks, changing the entire look of the old tank and drastically increasing its ability to survive on the modern battlefield.
Even without knowing exactly what upgrades Russia is performing on its own T-55s, I feel safe in assuming that Israeli tech > Russian tech.
“No one is sensibly suggesting that the upgraded T-55s could deal with modern tanks deployed by Russia, but they will be lethal against all other non-tank armored vehicles the Russians deploy. And of course they can also fire high explosive rounds, which would be excellent support for Ukrainian infantry.”
As the plucky underdog in the fight, it’s no surprise that Ukraine is fielding older, upgraded tank designs as a stopgap (or supplement) until more modern western tanks can be fielded. The surprise is that Russia, with it’s reputed 12,500 or so tanks when the conflict began, having to resort to pulling out T-55s to send to Ukraine. So much of Russia’s equipment has been so poorly maintained that it’s difficult to tell how much might remain operational. And day by day, poor Russian tactic and Ukrainian precision weapons continue to whittle that number down…
One quarter of the year gone! Career criminals coddled by Soros Stooges, crazy woman who thinks she’s a man murders children, lots of Flu Manchu fraud, and Botox makes you crazy(er). It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Everyone and their dog is covering the ham sandwich Trump indictment, so I’ll leave that to others. I will note that Alan Dershowitz is not impressed. “Based on what we know about this case, it may be one of the weakest cases in my six years of experience.”
On the morning of Election Day last November, William French went to his local polling place in Freeland, Pennsylvania, to cast his vote. But the qualified and registered voter wasn’t allowed to. The disabled U.S. Army veteran was told that the precinct had run out of paper for ballots and he had to come back later in the afternoon.
So that’s what he did, returning at 3:30 p.m. But the precinct still didn’t have ballots. Election workers told him to return yet again. But by nightfall, it was too difficult. French has endured 17 surgeries on his destroyed leg and uses a cane to walk. But the sidewalks are a mess, and he was worried about the risk of falling and further injury.
That same morning, Melynda Reese and her husband went to their polling location in Shickshinny, Pennsylvania. But only Reese’s husband was allowed to vote, and for the same reason: The precinct had run out of paper. They came back at 4:00 p.m. and were told there would be a lengthy wait.
Reese is a corrections officer and her husband’s primary caregiver. He had recently suffered two cardiac arrests and a stroke. He required regular medication and attention and couldn’t be left alone. Long waits were also too much to bear. The couple returned at 6:30 p.m., and saw a line that stretched so long that they knew they couldn’t wait. Around 9:15 p.m., an election official called Reese and told her that ballots were finally available and she could vote. But her husband had just taken his sleeping pills and she couldn’t leave him unattended.
French and Reese are just two of the thousands of voters affected by poor election administration in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. The two just sued Luzerne County, its Board of Elections and Registration, and its Bureau of Elections in federal court for violations of their constitutional right to vote.
“Voters in Luzerne County through no fault of their own, were disenfranchised and denied the fundamental right to vote. William French and Melynda Reese are two of those voters. They bring suit to vindicate the denial of their sacred right to vote, to make sure voters are not disenfranchised in the future, and to bring integrity back to elections in Luzerne County,” said Wally Zimolong, lawyer for French and Reese.
The House Oversight Committee is investigating the explosive claims by Dr. Gal Luft, a former Israel Defense Forces lieutenant colonel with deep intelligence ties in Washington and Beijing, who says he was arrested to stop him from revealing what he knows about the Biden family and FBI corruption — details he told the Department of Justice in 2019, which he says it ignored.
Luft, 56, first made the claims on Feb. 18 on Twitter, after being detained at a Cyprus airport as he prepared to board a plane to Israel.
“I’ve been arrested in Cyprus on a politically motivated extradition request by the U.S. The U.S., claiming I’m an arms dealer. It would be funny if it weren’t tragic. I’ve never been an arms dealer.
“DOJ is trying to bury me to protect Joe, Jim, and Hunter Biden.
“Shall I name names?”
Luft remains in jail awaiting extradition to the US over what he says are trumped-up charges of arms trafficking to China and Libya, and violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
Luft claimed that he tried to reach out to the DOJ about the Chinese energy company CEFC paying Hunter $100,000 and James Biden, Joe’s brother, $65,000 “in exchange for their FBI connections and use of the Biden name to promote China’s Belt and Road Initiative around the world.”
James O’Keefe has not allowed his forced exit from Project Veritas to stop him. His new journalism outfit, O’Keefe Media Group (OMG), just released a video uncovering evidence of what O’Keefe calls a possible “money-laundering scheme” for the Democrats. Some individuals reportedly appear to have donated thousands of times over a relatively short period to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars to ActBlue and Biden for President, based on Federal Election Commission records.
“FEC data shows that some senior citizens across the U.S. have been donating thousands of times per year,” O’Keefe began. “Some of these individuals’ names and addresses are attached to over $200,000 in contributions. We went and knocked on a few of their doors to corroborate the data that we received from a group of citizen journalists called Election Watch in Maryland.” The video then showed O’Keefe visiting someone who is listed as donating over $217,000, through 12,000 separate contributions. This money was earmarked for various entities through leftist platform ActBlue over three years’ time. Some of the donations were made with variations of the person’s name and address, O’Keefe stated.
The data he obtained was state and FEC data, O’Keefe said. “We’re wondering if these donors are victims of what appears to be a money-laundering scheme, or [if] these residents actually participated in the scheme. We’re making phone calls, we’re knocking on doors, these are things that you can do, we hope you do that.” There are “bizarre amounts of data” on homes and individuals making many thousands of dollars of donations, O’Keefe said, urging others to help him investigate.
The first person shown opening the door to O’Keefe, a Marylander listed as donating $32,000 in 3,000 different contributions, said he was unaware of the donations but advised O’Keefe as a solution to hit Donald Trump “with a bat.” The man added, “I want to see a scar on his f**king head. Now stop f**king with me,” and slammed the door.
Another donor, Cindy, according to O’Keefe, supposedly donated over $18,000 in 1,000+ donations to ActBlue in 2022, which would necessitate donating “three times a day, every day, for the whole year.” When asked if she’d donated over $18,000, Cindy responded with a quick laugh, “I doubt that. No, I don’t think so… I wish I could have donated $18,000 to Biden’s presidency.”
Meanwhile Carolyn Lenz, in Tucson, Ariz., told OMG that she “absolutely [did] not” donate over 18,000 times for $170,000+ to ActBlue. She looked at the data showing “she” donated multiple times a day, often in $5 to $15 increments, and insisted that the donations were not hers. “They must be” fraudulent, Lenz said.
After rejecting her in 2018, the voters of Alameda County, California selected Pamela Price as their new District Attorney last year. Price had taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from George Soros for her two campaigns. That probably tells you most of what you need to know, since Soros only funds candidates who are soft on crime and willing to empty the jails as much as possible. Price quickly proved herself no exception, seeking to cut a plea deal with a killer who had been arrested for one triple murder for hire, was accused in the murder of a court witness, and several other violent crimes. Rather than the 75 years to life sentence that Delonzo Logwood was eligible for, Price wanted to cut him loose after fifteen years. Thankfully, a County District Judge stepped in and rejected the deal out of hand. (Free Beacon)
A California judge this week blocked a newly-elected progressive prosecutor’s effort to slash a triple murderer’s sentence.
Alameda County district judge Mark McCannon rejected District Attorney Pamela Price’s plea deal for a 31-year-old man jailed for a 2008 triple murder-for-hire, among other crimes. Price, who took office in November and has taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from the progressive billionaire George Soros, attempted to sentence Delonzo Logwood to just 15 years in prison, though he was eligible for a sentence of 75 years to life.
You can’t keep a bad man down. Keith Chastain, 38, is a one-thug crime spree.
Chastain racked up an impressive array of arrests in Fresno County, California, (of course). Between Feb. 19 and March 21, he was arrested 10 times for a menagerie of crimes encompassing 15 misdemeanors and 18 felonies, including:
six stolen cars
fraud
DUI (duh)
drugs (duh)
vandalism
Chastain was hit with three additional charges — DUI, trespassing, and auto theft — but those were dropped when cops failed to file the charges in time.
Snip.
“Unfortunately, this is not as unique of a situation as it seems,” Tony Botti, spokesman for the Fresno County Sherriff’s office, stated. “California has watered down the laws so much over the years for property criminals and repeat offenders that they are not held accountable like they should be. Sadly, it is our community members who suffer due to these soft-on-crime policies.”
According to court documents, Edwin Maldonado spent many months thumbing his nose at what he was ordered by the court to do.
His punishment for that is more like a prize.
“You’ve got someone who was rewarded for being a failure, and this guy was a failure over 1,000 and some odd times,” said Andy Kahan with Crime Stoppers.
First, Maldonado gets a felony charge for drug possession. A few weeks later, he’s charged with aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon. He makes his $30,000 bond and walks out of jail.
“I’ve certainly had clients hauled back into court on violations, maybe two or three times that have been alleged,” said criminal defense attorney Emily Detoto.
Associate Judge Tiffany Hill presided over a bond revocation hearing for Maldonado.
“For obvious reasons, you are not abiding by your rules and conditions period, and God knows what he was doing when he wasn’t where he was supposed to be,” Kahan said.
According to court documents, Maldonado failed to comply with any of his bond conditions for eight months.
According to his GPS monitor, he left his curfew zone 847 times, was called 453 times about his whereabouts, and had more than 1,000 GPS monitor violations.
A suspect arrested and charged in a recent brutal “jugging” robbery in Houston that left a woman paralyzed was out on a $100 bond for a weapons-related charge.
On the morning of February 13, Nung Truong, 44, withdrew money from a bank ATM but was followed for approximately 24 miles by two suspects. Surveillance video released by the Houston Police Department shows a black male bumping into Truong and causing her to drop her belongings. The suspect initially fled with an envelope but returned seconds later to body-slam Truong to the ground before taking $4,300 in cash.
A mother to three children aged 13, 15, and 20, Truong is now paralyzed and unable to walk or care for herself.
Last Friday, Houston Police arrested Joseph Harrell, 17, and Zy’Nika Ayesha Woods, 19, for the attack and charged both suspects with Aggravated Robbery with Serious Bodily Injury.
According to court records, on January 26, 2023, Harrell had been granted a General Order bond of $100 for Unlawful Possession of a Weapon. He also faces charges of Aggravated Assault with a Deadly Weapon related to an incident in February in which he threatened another victim with a gun. Harrell is currently being held in the Harris County jail on bonds totaling $240,000.
Snip.
Although Harrell’s Unlawful Possession of a Weapon charge was assigned to Harris County Court 2 under Judge Paula Goodhart, his bond was signed by Judge David Singer.
Elected to Harris County Criminal Court 14 in 2018, Singer lost in the March 2022 Democratic primary election and his term ended December 31, 2022. As a one-term judge, Singer is not eligible under state code to serve as a visiting judge.
The 11th Administrative Judicial Region confirmed to The Texan that Singer is not listed as a visiting judge.
The Harris County Office of Court Management emailed the following statements to The Texan:
“David Singer was appointed as associate judge pursuant to Section 54A.002 of the Texas Government Code and the Local Rules for Harris County Criminal Courts at Law. His start date was Jan. 1, 2023.”
Finland gets the green light to join NATO, with Turkey and Hungary approving their membership. Sweden’s application is still under negotiation. As I noted previously, tangling with the Finns has not been a source of happiness for Russia.
Poor priorities. “European Ammo Maker’s Growth Stymied By TikTok Data Center Sucking Up Electricity.”
LA City Council member Mark Ridley-Thomas convicted of taking bribes. “He was convicted of one count of bribery, one of conspiracy, one count of honest services mail fraud, and four counts of honest services wire fraud. The jury acquitted him on 12 other counts.”
Veterans Affairs assistant secretary Kurt DelBene is married to Rep. Suzan DelBene (Wash.), chairwoman of the DCCC. It’s a big club, and you’re not in it. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Federal prosecutors announced a 58-year-old Plainview man is facing 102 years in prison after pleading guilty to stealing $4 million in federal relief funds passed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
On Friday, Andrew Johnson pleaded guilty in the Northern District of Texas to three counts of bank fraud, one count of aggravated identity theft, and one count of engaging in monetary transactions in property derived from unlawful activity, according to a news release published by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).
Johnson swindled millions from the Paycheck Protection Program passed in the early weeks of the pandemic to help stave off the economic effects of business closures, government restrictions, and shelter-in-place mandates. As part of the fraud, Johnson applied for and received forgiveness for 27 bogus loans.
He spent more than $3.5 million of the stolen funds on “home renovations, vacations, clothing, cosmetic surgery, college tuition, cars, wedding expenses, and equipment for an unrelated business venture,” according to the DOJ.
After an investigation that took longer than a year, the Office of the City Auditor in Austin said it found Central Texas Allied Health Institute (CTAHI), a nonprofit City of Austin contractor, committed fraud against Austin Public Health and falsified health records.
According to the investigative report, CTAHI misrepresented over $1.1 million in financial transactions across three contracts with Austin Public Health and was incorrectly paid roughly $417,000 between December 2020 and September 2021 because of fraudulent contract claims. The report also claimed CTAHI falsified its COVID-19 vaccine contract performance by overstating vaccination totals and fabricating patient data.
“This is up there with some of the biggest cases we’ve investigated on my team,” said Brian Molloy, chief of investigations at the Chief of the City Auditor.
CTAHI, President Todd Hamilton, and Dr. Jereka Thomas-Hockaday — both of whom were named in the report — denied the claims made in the report in a statement Thursday.
Snip.
CTAHI’s three contracts with Austin Public Health were for COVID-19 testing, workforce development, and COVID-19 vaccines, according to the city. Between December 2020 and September 2021, the city said CTAHI submitted 23 claims for reimbursement to APH under the workforce development and COVID-19 vaccine contracts.
Flu Manchu is the fraud fount that just keeps giving… (Hat tip: Dwight.)
NHL might stop pushing gay pride after backlash from players and fans. “Philadelphia Flyer’s player Ivan Provorov didn’t want to participate in a ‘Pride’ event during warmups…Soon, other players also refused to participate after Povorov showed it could be done, and some entire team organizations dropped their planned LGBT pride events. And thanks to this one man’s stand, the NHL is considering dropping the whole ‘Pride’ push.”
Gordon Moore, one of the founders of Intel and coiner of Moore’s Law, is dead at age 94. Semiconductors have radically changed just about every facet of the world.
The term of Austin Mayor Steve Adler was so disasterous that it’s wrecking havoc on Austin even after he’s out of office. The massive scores of drug-addicted transients still plague Austin, and the defunding attempt that, at heart, was a massive cash grab for far leftwing activists. All that, and the election of Soros-backed leftwing DA Jose Garza, has brought about a crisis in Austin policing.
Severely understaffed, defunded Austin PD on verge of retirement wave after city council ‘pulls rug out’ again
Police sources told Fox News Digital that 150 officers have made appointments inquiring about their retirement options
Austin police facing staffing shortages as 911 wait times soar…
Austin police officers past and present are warning Fox News Digital that the Texas capital’s police force critically depleted as a result of defunding in 2020 is on the verge of losing another wave of officers in response to a breakdown between the city and the police on a new contract.
An Austin Police Department source told Fox News Digital this week that 40 officers have filed their retirement papers following a 9-2 city council vote a few weeks ago to scrap a four-year contract that the city had previously agreed to in principle and instead pursue a 1-year contract that the police union’s board has rejected.
That move is believed by many to be due to intense pressure from anti-police activists in the city who look to hold off a long term deal until after voters decide on competing ballot initiatives dealing with “police oversight” that go before voters in May.
“It’s my opinion that the radicals and activists in the city have such a grip on our elected officials that at some point in time over the last year or so their plans changed,” the source, who is an Austin Police Department officer, said. “They said O.K. now we’re going to get signatures for this ballot initiative in May and switch gears and put pressure on city leadership to move away from a four-year deal to a one-year deal because the four-year is detrimental to what we are trying to accomplish.”
Dennis Farris, president of the Austin Police Retired Officers Association, told Fox News Digital he knows of 35 officers from the department that have filed retirement papers and at least six of them are “high ranking officers.”
“I fear we’re going to see a mass exodus of the senior people with longevity to where you’re going to have a department where maybe the average service time was in the high teens now and I think it’s going to drop into the low teens,” Farris said, explaining that departments without strong senior leadership often experience more problems due to “inexperience.”
Farris said that two waves of retirements, officers who have already filed and officers who will file when the contract officially expires at the end of March, could result in as many as 100 retirements. Two police sources told Fox News Digital that 150 officers have reached out to the retirement board in the last few days to discuss options.
Is there hope on the horizon? Some. Newly installed mayor Kirk Watson, though a Democrat, rejects Adler’s Social Justice Warrior “police defunding” policies. And Watson has helped forge a stopgap solution to the immediate crisis: Having DPS troopers assist with Austin policing.
The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) will supplement troopers to Austin Police Department (APD) shifts for assistance with the city’s staffing crisis.
The City of Austin announced the partnership with DPS on Monday, with Mayor Kirk Watson saying, “During my run for mayor, I promised we would make city government work better in providing basic services.”
“This is an example of that. It’s a common-sense, practical response to a serious need and arose out of a positive working relationship between the Capital City and the Capitol of Texas. I want to thank Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, and DPS Director Steven McCraw for being willing to step in and work with us to ensure the safety of our shared constituents.”
DPS officers’ primary focus in conjunction with the agreement will be on traffic response, but may provide backup to city police during emergencies.
APD Chief Joseph Chacon added, “This is a wonderful resource and partnership that will provide relief to our APD officers and detectives who want nothing more than to focus on keeping Austin safe — whether that’s responding to domestic violence incidents, combatting DWI, or investigating criminal activity.”
Similar agreements have been implemented in Dallas and San Antonio, and Austin says it will come at no cost to the city. DPS has assisted APD before, including during last month’s breakout of street takeovers.
This is only a stopgap. The real solution is to immediately start recruiting and training more APD officers, and voting out Garza and all the pro-defunding, anti-police Austin City Council members who helped Adler get the city into this mess.
In all the other various weapons being shipped to Ukraine to fight off Russia’s illegal war of territorial aggression, I missed that the U.S. has shipped 18 M109A6 Paladins.
The United States has announced a new military aid package for Ukraine, which includes the provision of 18 M109A6 Paladin 155mm tracked self-propelled howitzers.
The M109A6 Paladin is a modern version of an older unit that has been used in various conflicts worldwide, including Iraq and Afghanistan. Its 155mm gun has a maximum firing range of 14.9 miles (24 kilometers) with standard artillery ammunition and 18.6 miles (30 kilometers) with assisted rounds. This range makes it a valuable asset for the Ukrainian army, allowing them to strike enemy positions from a safe distance.
One notable feature of the M109A6 Paladin is its ability to fire M982 Excalibur extended-range precision guided projectiles. These projectiles have a range of up to 40 kilometers and are capable of hitting targets with a high degree of accuracy. This capability can be particularly useful when targeting enemy artillery positions or other high-value targets.
The M109A6 Paladin is also equipped with a secondary armament consisting of a roof-mounted 12.7 mm heavy machine gun. Some vehicles were fitted with a 40 mm automatic grenade launcher in place of the machine gun. This additional firepower can be used to defend the howitzer against enemy infantry or light armored vehicles.
To support the M109A6 Paladin, the US is also providing the Ukrainian army with the M992 ammunition supply vehicle. This vehicle can carry up to 93 rounds of ammunition and transfer them to the self-propelled howitzer via conveyor. This ensures that the howitzer has a steady supply of ammunition and can continue firing for extended periods without needing to reposition or resupply.
These are not the first M109s sent to Ukraine, as they’ve already received older variants from Italy, Norway, Latvia and the UK. Plus the Polish Krab, the French CAESAR, the UK AS-90, and the German PzH 2000, all of which are self-propelled 155mm howitzers. Plus Sweden has announced they’re sending their Archer system.
Russia doesn’t lack self-propelled artillery of its own, but last I checked they hadn’t fielded any smart artillery shells, and when (or if) they do, I would bet good money they won’t be nearly as capable as Excalibur.
Recently Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping announced a “strategic partnership.” Here’s Peter Zeihan explaining exactly what “strategic partnership” means.
“Vladimir Putin of Russia entertained president or chairman Xi Jinping of China, and they had one of the big hoity-toity summits where they pledged their unending support for each other. The reality, of course, is nothing of the sort.”
Putin used the magic phrase strategic partnership, which, for the uninitiated, sounds really important and like an alliance. But this is the phraseology that the Russians have been using for centuries, where they [want] a partnership with the country that they don’t trust, and they expect the other country to pay for everything, and they expect to stab that other country in the back at the earliest opportunity.
Unless, you know, the other country is just cold and brutal enough to stab them in the back first.
“That’s the magic phrase that you know that they really, really, really, truly despise each other. And that this is only an alliance of convenience. It has to do with getting out from under some of the sanctions that had to do with Ukraine war. So let’s put that in a box.”
“Within hours of leaving Russia, Xi Jinping of China invited the leaders of Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan and Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to a summit with just him, not the Russians.”
“This is the Chinese making a naked power play for control of Russia’s backyard.”
Zeihan reiterates his theory that Russian rational for the war is plugging historical gaps through which they’ve been invaded. “There are other access points that the Russians are really paranoid about…one of them is the Altai Gap that leads straight to China.” AKA the Dzungarian Gate.
When the Russians see the Chinese making this sort of naked power play to get on the other side of that gap and position themselves politically, economically, maybe militarily with countries that are on the wrong side of that line while the Russians are occupied in Ukraine, the Russian mind immediately falls into kind of this revanchist position where they realize that they are now under assault from all possible angles. And this is like the worst case scenario for the Russians, and there’s not a damn thing they can do about it, because they have completely committed their entire conventional forces to their Western periphery in the war with Ukraine.
“Now that the Chinese are actually nibbling on the eastern periphery, we know that this relationship is now in its dying years, because the Russians know the Chinese absolutely cannot be trusted. I can’t say, for the rest of it, that’s really realization.”
It’s no secret that one of the motives behind Xi Jinping’s various actions on Hong Kong, Taiwan, etc., is China reasserting control over “historical lands,” and China lost a lot of land in Outer Mongolia and the Far East/Siberia to Russia in the 19th century that it had previously controlled. (See the treaties of Aigun (1858) and Peking (1860) for details.) And all that land is a lot closer to Beijing than Moscow.
Like Hitler and Stalin, Xi and Putin deserve each other.
The Biden Administration has shown a clear preference for rewarding far left political leanings than technical competence in its nominees for top posts (I’m looking at you, Pete Buttigieg). Texas Senator Ted Cruz took a strong stand against this trend by opposing the nomination of Phil Washington to head the FAA.
From an editorial by Cruz and North Carolina Senator (and pilot) Ted Budd:
Last week, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) held an emergency safety summit after a series of disturbing near collisions of planes at airports across the country. These close-call incidents, which could have been disastrous, followed the January malfunction of the FAA’s NOTAM safety system that led to the first nationwide grounding of aircraft since the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks.
These serious safety challenges at the FAA are stark reminders of why it’s so important for the head of the agency to have extensive aviation experience, especially in aviation safety. The FAA, on an average day, is responsible for ensuring safe air travel for more than 45,000 flights and nearly 3 million airline passengers. With the stakes so high, it’s irresponsible to entrust the role of protecting millions of Americans who fly with a person who needs on-the-job training. Yet, that’s exactly what we have with President Joe Biden’s nominee to serve as FAA administrator, Phil Washington.
Little of Washington’s career has touched aviation. After serving in the military, Washington worked as a transit executive in Denver and Los Angeles , dealing with train and bus systems. Less than two years ago, he became CEO of Denver International Airport, a job that primarily involves overseeing the airport’s shopping, dining, parking, and buildings — not aviation matters. Notably, in this role, he has neither significant involvement with the airport’s flight operations nor does he oversee air traffic controllers, pilots, and aircraft.
Washington’s recent hearing before the Senate Commerce Committee confirmed what’s abundantly clear from his resume: he lacks the extensive aviation experience needed to lead the FAA. At his hearing, he was unable to answer basic aviation questions we asked him, including safety questions about aircraft certification, pilot licensing, and airports.
It’s no mystery why.
Unlike other FAA administrators, he does not have decades of aviation experience. Washington has never flown a plane, never worked for an airline, and never worked for a company that manufactures or maintains aircraft. But what he does have are political connections. He donated to the Biden campaign, co-chaired its policy committee on infrastructure, and led the Biden administration’s transition team for the Department of Transportation. It’s unacceptable that Biden is playing politics with the flying public’s safety by treating the head of the FAA as a patronage job.
Washington’s lack of extensive aviation experience has caused widespread concern about his nomination. At his Senate hearing, multiple Democratic senators questioned his qualifications to lead the FAA. State and local aviation groups all over the country, including pilot groups, oppose his nomination. One of them, the Montana Pilots Association, has said that he is “singularly unqualified to serve as FAA Administrator.” Last week, a bicameral group of members of Congress who are pilots, including former military pilots, urged Biden to withdraw Washington’s nomination because he is “woefully unqualified to fill this role.”
Not only is Washington unqualified, but he’s also apparently under investigation. He is embroiled in an ongoing criminal public corruption probe that is being led by the Democratic attorney general of California. The probe concerns a politically-connected contracting scheme from Washington’s time leading the Los Angeles Metro. Washington has been named in not one but two search warrants in the probe, with the most recent having been issued just last September. It’s inexplicable that President Joe Biden has picked an FAA nominee who is materially involved in an ongoing criminal investigation.
The safety challenges and responsibilities of the FAA are far too important to have anyone other than a highly experienced aviation expert at the helm.
President Joe Biden’s pick to lead the Federal Aviation Administration withdrew his nomination on Saturday evening, following nine months in limbo and amid concerns from senators in both parties over his background and relative lack of aviation experience.
DOT Secretary Pete Buttigieg tweeted late Saturday that Phil Washington, the CEO of Denver International Airport, has decided to take himself out of the running.
“The FAA needs a confirmed Administrator, and Phil Washington’s transportation & military experience made him an excellent nominee,” Buttigieg tweeted. “The partisan attacks and procedural obstruction he has faced are undeserved, but I respect his decision to withdraw and am grateful for his service.”
If only Buttigieg would follow Phil Washington’s lead.
If you want to fight the Biden Administrations attempts to drag America to the far left, it helps if you have someone who know how to play the game.
I have rarely heard it mentioned in the mainstream media, but, according to reports, during the 1990s in communist China, thirty thousand members of Falun Gong were rounded up and executed. The founder of Falun Gong, Li Hongzhi, fled China and now lives in the U.S., while in China members of the order went underground. According to Freedom House, “Falun Gong practitioners across China have since [July 1999] been subjected to widespread surveillance, arbitrary detention, horrific torture, and extrajudicial killing — abuses which continue today.” Nonetheless, there are still some 100 million practitioners worldwide, and the movement continues to grow.
Information concerning the repression of Falun Gong is a Chinese state secret, with severe penalties for anyone attempting to obtain data. As the Falun Data Infocenter puts it: “The CCP has also used political and financial influence around the world to either keep journalists silent, or drive false narratives about Falun Gong.” With total control inside China and compliance by foreign journalists, the Chinese Communist Party has driven a false narrative that minimizes the number of Falun Gong practitioners and hides data on the number of those abducted, tortured, killed, and killed for their organs, thus totally obscuring the record.
Not exactly new, but worth mentioned that, yes, communists are still oppressive scumbags who murder people who essentially practice Tai Chi for their organs because they dared to object to being repressed.
So i went looking for a good, recent video on the subject, only to find him again.
Yes, it’s bald, bearded, bespeckled British bloke again. (Actually, his accent is a bit posh to be a proper “bloke,” but, you know, alliteration.) If you watch YouTube videos about technology, history, etc., pretty soon he’s going to show up. And it’s not like he has just one channel, he has multiple channels on different subjects.
Bald, bearded, bespeckled British bloke is Simon Whistler.
Media personality Simon Whistler was brought up in the south-east of England. After completing his university education (undergrad business BA, postgrad law diploma PGDL), he worked abroad for one year where he met his now wife and eventually ended up permanently moving to her home country, the Czech Republic.
After working as a freelance voice over artist and podcast host, at the age of 28 he started working on his first YouTube channel, a collaboration with the popular website TopTenz.net. From there he launched another channel in collaboration with another website TodayIFoundOut.com.
Soon enough both those channels had over a million subscribers, and Simon expanded his content to cover biographies on his Biographics channel and geography on his Geographics channel.
From there is was a move into comedic business content with Business Blaze and later to covering humanities greatest achievements with his channel Megaprojects.
Simon also runs a number of podcasts, merchandise lines, and has had his work featured on television and in print.
Oh, multiple channels with over a million subscribers. Nuthin to it.
That page lists seven channels Whistler has:
Business Blaze (which is now Brain Blaze) (posted three days ago)
So that’s, what, twelve videos in four days? And I’m not sure I’ve found all his channels. There are also some sister channels to Today I Found Out (Higher Learning, Origins, Fact Quickie, etc.) where Whistler doesn’t seem to be in front of the camera but may still be involved in.
This brings up a few questions:
When does this man sleep? Even assuming he has a staff of writers, editors, etc., that still seems like a grueling production schedule.
I’ve only clicked on a few of his videos before today, so why does he show up with such frequency in my feed? Why is he so beloved to the all-powerful algorithm?
How do we know that Simon Whistler isn’t, in fact, an AI host generated deep within the bowels of YouTube’s server farm?
Assuming he is but flesh and blood, I have to think he makes a somewhat handsome living from all this content. But in an era of rising interest rates, how long will the likes of Raid: Shadow Legends, Ridge wallets and Nord VPN continue to underwrite the YouTube economy?
None of this particularly sinister, but it is curious…
For several weeks, I’ve been running out of time to post every link I’ve gathered, so I’ve been bumping some links (generally ones that seemed less time-sensitive or required more commentary than others) to the next week’s LinkSwarm, whereupon I may use one or two, but otherwise the process repeats.
Well, I’m just going to post all those today to clear the decks.
California’s leftwing Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom is using his position as governor subsidize his wife’s own leftwing business empire.
In the summer of 2022, Governor Gavin Newsom convinced the state legislature to provide $4.7 billion for K-12 mental health services, which, among other things, funded 10,000 new school counselors.
Gavin Newsom convinced the legislature because Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the wife of the governor, convinced him. The biggest advocate for mental health funding within the K-12 California public schools in the Newsom administration was Mrs. Newsom, according to published accounts.
In fact, Gavin Newsom created The Office of First Partner so his wife could promote her policy agenda using taxpayer money. Since 2019, Siebel Newsom’s been armed with nearly $5 million and nine staffers within her subdivision of the governor’s office.
Snip.
Siebel Newsom spent years laying the ideological groundwork and political infrastructure to support her policy ambitions.
In 2012, Siebel Newsom founded a nonprofit, The Representation Project, that licenses “gender justice” films and curricula to 5,000 schools in all 50 states. The year Gavin Newsom became governor, the California Board of Education adopted guidance that recommended her films and curriculum be licensed and used in classrooms.
Policy making in California isn’t magic. Turns out, it’s a carefully thought through process to maximize political power and personal return from public investments.
Last week, we investigated the sophisticated scheme through which Siebel Newsom’s film and curricula “gender justice” nonprofit, The Representation Project, leverages taxpayer dollars to promote radical ideologies, personally profit, and push the political ambitions of her husband. She brags that 2.6 million students have seen the films nationwide.
The Representation Project contracts with her for-profit film-production company, Girls Club Entertainment. Since 2012, Siebel Newsom received $1.5 million in salary from the nonprofit. Furthermore, since 2012, the Siebel’s nonprofit paid her for-profit Girls Club $1.6 million to produce films.
Last month, our investigation broke the story that The Representation Project was not in compliance with the California Charitable Solicitation Act. The organization was not permitted to operate or solicit donations in California most of 2022 – yet spent all last year in operation and fundraising.
Now, we dig deeper, investigating the $4.8 million “Office of the First Partner” Gavin Newsom established for his wife’s policy work, and how Jennifer Siebel Newsom used her position to impact social and political processes, cashing checks along the way.
n 2019, Gov. Newsom created an office for his wife as a division within the governor’s executive team. According to a press release “the First Partner and her team will focus on lifting up women and their families, breaking down barriers for our youth, and furthering the cause of gender equity in California.”
Since inception, Siebel Newsom’s office has received nearly $4.8 million in directed taxpayer funding. The Office of First Partner has grown from seven employees with a budget of $791,000, to nine employees with a budget of $1,166,000 proposed for 2023-2024.
Snip.
Parents have complained about the pornographic content in Newsom’s films shown to 11-year-olds (such as an animated, upside-down stripper with tape over breasts) and 15-year-olds (nearly naked women being slapped, handcuffed, and brutalized in images taken from porn sites) — to view images, viewer discretion is advised.
Editorials have criticized the activities in Newsom’s film The Great American Lie as “emotionally abusive.” The activities ask students to publicly reveal personal information and force commentary on their relative “privilege” and “oppression.”
So Jennifer Siebel Newsom is using California taxpayer money to propagandize children for radical social justice and transexism.
An Australian comedian, YouTuber and Journalist, made videos making fun of Australian politicians and covering their oppressive Flu Manchu lockdown policies. That’s when they started trying to use the state machinery to shut him up. Then they firebombed him.
Jordan Shanks is an Australian comedian, also know as freindlyjordies, who fell in to doing YouTube videos about Australian politicians and powerful companies over the past few years. Along the way he became a journalist, the only journalist covering some of the things being done by the government and the corporations. Then in November of 2022 his house was firebombed. It was only by chance that he wasn’t in the house at the time.
And hey, if that sounds too dry, well you kids like Knives Out or whatever. Stick around. It’s a pretty interesting whodunit.
Most of the Australian press is even more in the bag for the powers-that-be than the US national media is for the Democrats. There were numerous stories, all but ignored by the mainstream. One example, the Premiere of New South Wales was under investigation. That was all but ignored by the press until she resigned. Then there were the antics of her Deputy Premiere, John Barilaro.
That is the most entertaining — or damaging to powers that be — story friendlyjordies covered.
As a result of that coverage, the Australian anti-terrorism machinery was directed at Shanks and his employees. Of course that turned out to be a group of Keystone cops, which got their own exposure on freindlyjordies. Along the way he exposed the abuse of the anti-terrorism squad, the relationship between some of the politicians and large corporations and perhaps organized crime. Then in November of the last year, after the lawsuits failed, the anti-terrorism actions failed, and the intimidation failed, someone moved to direct action, and tried to kill him.
On all key technical measures, the Next Generation Squad Weapons program is imploding before Army’s very eyes. The program is on mechanical life support, with its progenitors at the Joint Chiefs obstinately now ramming the program through despite spectacularly failing multiple civilian-sector peer reviews almost immediately upon commercial release.
Indeed the rifle seems cursed from birth. Even the naming has failed. Army recently allowed a third-party company to scare it off the military designation M5. The re-naming will certainly also help scupper bad public relations growing around ‘XM-5′ search results.
Civilian testing problems have, or should have, sunk the program already. The XM-5/7 as it turns out fails a single round into a mud test. Given the platform is a piston-driven rifle it now lacks gas, as the M-16 was originally designed, to blow away debris from the eject port. Possibly aiming to avoid long-term health and safety issues associated with rifle gas, Army has selected an operating system less hardy in battlefield environments. A choice understandable in certain respects, however, in the larger scheme the decision presents potentially war-losing cost/benefit analysis.
Civilian testing, testing Army either never did or is hiding, also only recently demonstrated that the rifle seemingly fails, at point-blank ranges, to meet its base criteria of penetrating Level 4 body armor (unassisted). True, the Army never explicitly set this goal, but it has nonetheless insinuated at every level, from media to Congress, that the rifle will penetrate said armor unassisted. Indeed, that was the entire point of the program. Of course, the rounds can penetrate body armor with Armor Piercing rounds, but so can 7.62x51mm NATO, even 5.56x45mm NATO.
The fundamental problem with the program is there remains not enough tungsten available from China, as Army knows, to make the goal of making every round armor piercing even remotely feasible. The plan also assumes that the world’s by far largest supplier will have zero problems selling tungsten to America only for it to be shot back at its troops during World War III. Even making steel core penetrators would be exceedingly difficult when the time came, adding layers of complexity and time to the most time-contingent of human endeavors. In any case, most large bullet manufacturers and even Army pre-program have moved to tungsten penetrators for a reason, despite the fact it increases the cost by an order of magnitude and supply seems troubled. Perhaps Army has a solution, perhaps.
The slight increase in ballistic coefficiency between the 6.8x51mm and 7.62x51mm cartridges neither justified the money pumped into the program nor does the slight increase in kinetic energy dumped on target. Itself a simple function of case pressurization within the bastardized 7.62mm case. Thus the net mechanical results of the program design-wise is a rifle still chambered in a 7.62×51 mm NATO base case (as the M-14), enjoying now two ways to charge the weapon and a folding stock. This is the limit of the touted generational design ‘leap’ under the program. And while the increased case pressure technology is very welcome the problem is, in terms of ballistics, the round is in no way a leap ahead compared to existing off-the-shelf options as those Army nearly went with under the now disavowed Interim Combat Service Rifle program, or it in fact did purchase schizophrenically just before the NGSW program began with the HK M110A1.
I can’t tell you whether the criticisms are true or not unless Sig Saur sends me a example to shoot. While that would be cool, I suspect it’s pretty unlikely, and I fear many test ranges have picayune policies against using military grade automatic weapons…
For questioning Covid restrictions, Georgetown Law suspended me from campus, forced me to undergo a psychiatric evaluation, required me to waive my right to medical confidentiality, and threatened to report me to state bar associations.
The Dean of Students claimed that I posed a “risk to the public health” of the University, but I quickly learned that my crime had been heretical, not medical.
Just before I entered Georgetown Law in August 2019, I watched The Paper Chase, a 1973 film about a first-year Harvard Law student and his experiences with a demanding professor, Charles Kingsfield.
The movie has the standard themes of law school: teaching students how to think, challenging the premises of an argument, differentiating fact patterns to support precedent. Kingsfield’s demands represent the difficulty of law school, and the most important skill is articulate, logic-based communication. “Nobody inhibits you from expressing yourself,” he scolds one student.
“Nobody inhibits you from expressing yourself.”
Two years later, I realized that Georgetown Law had inverted that script. The school fired a professor for commenting on differences in achievement between racial groups, slandered faculty members for deviating from university group-think, and threatened to destroy dissidents. Students banished cabinet officials from campus and demanded censorship of a tenured professor for her work defending women’s rights in Muslim-majority countries.
Unaware of the paradigm shift, I thought it was proper to ask questions about Georgetown’s Covid policies.
In August 2021, Georgetown Law returned to in-person learning after 17 months of virtual learning. The school announced a series of new policies for the school year: there was a vaccine requirement (later to be supplemented with booster mandates), students were required to wear masks on campus, and drinking water was banned in the classroom.
Dean Bill Treanor announced a new anonymous hotline called “Law Compliance” for community members to report dissidents who dared to quench their thirst or free their vaccinated nostrils.
Meanwhile, faculty members were exempt from the requirement, though the school never explained what factors caused their heightened powers of immunity.
Shortly thereafter, I received a notification from “Law Compliance” that I had been “identified as non-compliant” for “letting the mask fall beneath [my] nose.” I had a meeting with Dean of Students Mitch Bailin to discuss my insubordination, and I tried to voice my concerns about the irrationality of the school’s policies.
He had no answers to my simple questions but assured me that he “understood my frustration.” Then, he encouraged me to “get involved in the conversation,” telling me there was a Student Bar Association meeting set to take place the following Wednesday.
I arrived at the meeting with curiosity. I had no interest in banging my fists and causing a commotion; I just wanted to know the reasoning – the “rational basis” that law schools so often discuss – behind our school’s policies. There were four simple questions:
What was the goal of the school’s Covid policy? (Zero Covid? Flatten the curve?)
What was the limiting principle to that goal? (What were the tradeoffs?)
What metrics would the community need to reach for the school to remove its mask mandate?
How can you explain the contradictions in your policies? For example, how could the virus be so dangerous that we could not take a sip of water but safe enough that we were required to be present? Why are faculty exempt from masking requirements?
I feared there were simple answers to my questions that I had overlooked: these administrators made hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, surely they must have had some reasoning behind their draconian measures. Right? The contradictions appeared obvious to me. The data seemed to be clear, but maybe there was an explanation.
I delivered the brief speech without a mask, standing fifteen feet away from the nearest person. I awaited a response to my questions, but I realized this wasn’t about facts or data, premises or conclusions. This was about power and image.
Arbitrary. Irrational. Capricious. Students learn in their first days of their legal education to invoke these words to challenge unfavored laws and policies. I figured that I was doing the same, and I thought the school would welcome a calm, albeit defiant, student asking the questions rather than loud and angry crowds.
But this assumption turned out to be an incorrect premise. Nobody cared about my points regarding rationality – they cared that I had been reading from the wrong script. Even worse, not wearing a mask had been a more objectionable wardrobe malfunction than Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl performance.
Moscow’s ability to develop its own resource-based economy, expand the Northern Sea Route, cement ties with China and support Vladimir Putin’s ambitions to project power into the Arctic depends on the development of land-based infrastructure in the northern regions of the Russian Federation…
Yet, that ability has now been called into question, as the Russian government has canceled, despite Putin’s repeated orders to the contrary, a program to complete the broad-gauge Northern Broad-Gauge Railway. The route was intended to link settlements that support the Northern Sea Route, military bases and the locations of key sources of raw materials across the Russian North with the rest of the country…
Snip.
What appears to be this project’s death knell, at least for the time being, is instructive in its own right. It occurred not with some dramatic single action by the Kremlin but in a rolling fashion as has often been the case with the backtracking of decisions under Putin. In April 2021, to much acclaim, the Russian president called for construction of the Northern Broad-Gauge Railway to begin, with the goal of completing the project in the next few years. Yet, despite Putin’s words, nothing happened, at least in part because of the COVID-19 pandemic, increased spending for his war against Ukraine and the impact of Western sanctions. Then, in 2022, Putin issued a new order for the project to go ahead. Again, nothing happened. Instead, less than a month later, Marat Khusnullin, a Russian deputy prime minister, quietly stopped all work on the project without giving anyone reason to think it would be resumed. Indeed, many Russian experts and commentators concerned with infrastructure issues believe that this railway plan has come to the end of its line, and one has even suggested that the cancellation of this project puts “a cross on the future of Russia.
Russia was broke before it launched its illegal war of territorial aggression against the Ukraine. Now it’s even more broke.
