George Rebane
Probability is the measure of possibility.
H&I fires. The Russians are using an unusually insidious, deadly, and dastardly artillery tactic to kill fleeing civilians on negotiated evacuation routes. The tactic is called Harassment and Interdiction fires, and are designed to deny the enemy free use of designated areas over extended periods. H&I fires are conducted randomly with high explosive shells fired from one or two tubes, and set to denote at 50-150 feet above ground level. This results in an anti-personnel ‘kill circle’ of at least 200-300 feet radius depending on shell size. Historically artillery is the biggest killer on the battlefield, spraying shrapnel (extremely jagged and irregularly shaped pieces of steel ranging from bullet to tennis ball sizes) at extreme velocities around the detonation point. And whereas small arms military bullets travel at around 3,000 ft/sec, shrapnel comes at you at over 20,000 ft/sec. Targeting H&I fires on escape routes that are used only once by escapees is like shooting fish in a barrel – they never know whether or when its incoming, and they’re always out in the open. I wonder what a Russian battery commander feels when ordered to schedule H&I fires that he knows will kill/maim only civilians? Talk about war crimes.
Minds that never will meet. We have yet one more example of the Great Divide in progress. In my recent ‘Pentagon teaches socialism’ post’s comment stream we have one of our longtime leftwing readers deny acceptance of this important piece of anti-American news, why? because he considers the cited Newsmax “hardly a credible news source”. This reader is an established representative of this kind of progressive mentality – if the messenger is unfavorable, summarily reject the message. He never even bothered to examine the further referenced links which would have taken him to the DoD website where the conference was announced, described, and additional links provided. Instead, he and his consider CNN, MSNBC, NYT, WaPo, … and other lamestream news media as reliable, no matter that they don’t report news that doesn’t comport with the DNC narrative, and are unrepentant and uncontrite about most items they falsely report and/or spin. People of the Right have no problem consuming leftwing news and progressive literature – we demand to know it. However, those of the Left never lift the blinders they had carefully installed during their K-12 years. Such news consumption practices of the Left and Right are but one of many asymmetries that have made meaningful communication between the sides a rapidly fading episode in our country’s history.
[10mar22 update] Re the restraining order on my daughter. Nearly everything that has been admitted as evidence from the plaintiff at the hearing is a lie as corroborated by the available videos and the physics of the possible (e.g. see 1032am comment below). The judgement was a preordained political act.
[12mar22 update] Putin’s Rasputin bubble? Perhaps a little play on words, but a friend and reader sent me a link and asked whether I had ever heard of Aleksandr Gelyevich Dugin. It turns out that Dugin has been the political philosopher and intellectual ideologue of Putin’s inner circle for some time now, dishing out his esoteric views on neo-fascist ‘Eurasianism’. (more here) Now I have never heard of Dugin or even that Putin has had an ‘inner circle’ of confidants. From what has been reported it appears that Putin has used the Machiavellian structure of alternating advisor circles whose members are political enemies of adjacent circles, thereby making it hard for a court conspiracy to mature sufficiently to topple the prince. But according to the referenced article, it appears that Putin’s Rasputin may have successfully implanted his ideas about the historical resurgence of a post-czarist Russia extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific. “Gestated in anti-communist right-wing activism during the waning days of the Soviet Union, indebted to a specifically anti-liberal and anti-Enlightenment philosophical embrace of authoritarianism, irrationalism, and hyper-nationalism, Dugin dreams of a reborn Orthodox Tsarist state surpassing the borders and spheres of influence as they existed before 1989, of a Novorossiya (New Russia) built not on socialist principles, but fascist ones.”
The mentality of a Russian soldier has always been a puzzle to westerners since at least the 1905 Russo-Japanese War. (Recall that my grandfather was a czarist conscript in that war, transported to and from Pacific rim battles on the trans-Siberian railroad in cattle cars which served as troop trains for Russian soldiers.) The Russian soldier has been distinguished by his overall and abysmal ignorance of his mission, especially as it fits into the geo-strategic situation du jour, and his lack of what the western soldier knows as patriotism. The Russian soldier always has found himself poorly led and poorly outfitted – his main goal is just to stay alive and go back home. To achieve this, he will follow any orders and do anything that lets him survive the day. Questioning authority is an unknown concept as long as it doesn’t put his life in immediate danger. However, he has been known to sabotage his own equipment, and even his own body, in order to avoid being thrown into the next maelstrom from which retreat often means summary execution. In this light one can understand Russia’s wanton shelling of Ukrainian civilians, be they in their apartments or fleeing on an open road.
rebanesruminations.com 
Leave a comment