L'Ombre de l'Olivier

The Shadow of the Olive Tree
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  • Francis Turner

Tsar Wars – Attack of the Drones May 16, 2022

Back in 1898 Hilaire Belloc could quip, regarding European explorers and Africans Whatever happens, we have got The Maxim gun, and they have not. The machine gun was revolutionary (and not just in a Gatling gun sense) by massively improving the capability of defensive fire power against mass attacks. It killed off the cavalry (and infantry) charge and produced a significant change in tactics both defensively and offensively. It was in many ways the culmination of 19th century industrial progress. A 2000 era Belloc might have said something similar regarding dones, perhaps Whatever happens, we have got Predator Drones, and...

By Francis Turner Vote14 0

Taiwan – The Map Is Not The Territory May 3, 2022

I recently read a guest post by Jonathan La Force on the difficulties the PRC would face if it invaded Taiwan. This blog post is an extension of the comment I made to that excellent post. To invade, the PRC has to get an army across the ~200km (100 nautical miles /125 miles) separating Taiwan from the mainland (see map above) and defeat the government and military once it has done so. Mr La Force concentrates on the journey, which is challenging - and seasonally limited (see below) - I'm going to talk more about the destination. I'm also assuming...

By Francis Turner Vote11 0

Ukraine and the Logistics War Apr 18, 2022

Note: Much of this post based on tweets by Trent Telenko, particularly this thread and replies, links etc. I think the Russian attack from their border south around Izyum may be in trouble. Big trouble. And the reason, if I'm right, is that they are now overextended with respect to supply lines because while they did better than the Kiev invaders to secure their supply lines, the supply base - Belgorod in Russia - is suffering a series of mysterious fires that are damaging the railways, burning fuel dumps etc. That means that even if the supply chains from Belgorod...

By Francis Turner Vote4 0

Ukraine Can Win This War Apr 6, 2022

The title to this post is inspired by this Unherd article where Yanis Varoufakis explains why he thinks Ukraine cannot win (and is an expansion of a comment I made there). The key segment IMHO is where Varoufakis claims: There is no way that the Ukrainian army is going to defeat the panoply of the Russian army in Mariupol, in the areas between Crimea, and Donbas. All power to them if they can do it. I don’t believe that Zelenskyy believes it. I don’t believe that anybody actually believes it. Yes, it is wonderful that Putin did not walk into...

By Francis Turner Vote5 0

Are Russian Generals Amateurs? Mar 7, 2022

Everyone knows that old quote that "amateur generals study tactics, professional ones study logistics" Well, apparently that does not apply to the Russian high command, who seem to have failed to study logistics. I admit I didn't see this coming, but then, as I said in my last post I am not a military expert and I kind of assumed that, while Russia might have a day or two of confusion as the initial "go in fast and topple the leadership" strategy is replaced by "go slower and more methodically", it would adjust and continue to press forward. I appear...

By Francis Turner Vote6 0

Putin, Trudeau, Ukraine and Truckers Mar 1, 2022

I'm not a Russia expert, or a warfare expert, but it seems to me that President for life-ish Putin has gambled everything on his invasion. If it works and Ukraine collapses PDQ then he'll be in good shape for a while. But if Ukraine fails to collapse and in fact continues to offer resistance for months or years (whether in terms of armies or just Afghanistan-like insurgencies) then he's got a problem. There really isn't a good way for him to de-escalate things now and that's bad. If he tries to say "oops, my bad" then I suspect some generals...

By Francis Turner Vote3 0

Matt Yglesias – Strategic Genius Feb 14, 2022

Matt Yglesias is one of those people who just ooze smug condescension. As an example there's this recent tweet: If I understand the news out of Canada correctly, Ukraine could simply park a bunch of trucks along the key border routes and it would be impossible to clear them and invade. Which is, IMHO, particularly stupid because there are just a few differences between the dispute in Canada and the Russia/Ukraine one. First, as eny fule kno, Russia is lining up tanks and other tracked vehicles on the border. They are also, presumably, not intending to pass through the Ukrainian...

By Francis Turner Vote0 0

Harvard Genius to the Rescue Feb 13, 2022

As we all know the Truck Frudeau protests in Canada Truckistan are causing significant disruption. Justine Castro aka the Duplicitous Ken Doll has emerged blinking into the sunshine to project massively and complain that the protestors are REEEEE (Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein have a hilarious tiktok video in their podcast which dubs that audio onto video of the actual protestors - starts about 8:15) Since that's not causing the protests to stop, obviously the Canadian authorities need advice. Apparently they disagree with the Occasional Cortex about the point of protesting: (It is likely that the Occasional Coretex disagrees with...

By Francis Turner Vote3 0

Expensify Says Vote For Crook Not Fascist Oct 23, 2020

David Barrett CEO (and founder) of Expensify - and, I'm guessing, no relation by marriage to a certain Judge Amy - sent an email out to all users of his company's product imploring them to vote for the crook not the fascist. Well he doesn't exactly mention the F-word, and he totally glosses over why Hiden Joe and his sidekick and heir Commie La Whoreish are terrible choices for supreme executive power, but that's the gist. He starts very simply: I know you don’t want to hear this from me.  And I guarantee I don’t want to say it.  But...

By Francis Turner Vote4 0

Censoring (Mis)information Oct 21, 2020

A couple of weeks ago, I was handed an automatic 24 hour ban on the Fecesbork for posting "misinformation". This was somewhat ironic as what I was posting was an image of twitter censoring a tweet from President Trump and complaining about the idiocy. Even more ironically Twitter did not censor the tweet where I said almost the exact same thing and posted the identical before and after images (also below) This was really just the start of Feces Borg (and Twatter) going all out on the censorship front for October. It was notable in part for demonstrating just how...

By Francis Turner Vote1 0

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