Bulletins and News Discussion from December 2nd to December 8th, 2024 - May A Hundred Hazel Flowers Bloom - COTW: Russia
Image is of one of the six salvos of the Oreshnik missile striking Ukraine.
The Oreshnik is an intermediate-range ballistic missile that appears to split into six groups of six submunitions as it strikes its target, giving it the appearance of a hazel flower. It can travel at ten times the speed of sound, and cannot be intercepted by any known Western air defense system, and thus Russia can strike and conventionally destroy any target anywhere in Europe within 20 minutes. Two weeks ago, Russia used the Oreshnik to strike the Yuzhmash factory in Ukraine, particularly its underground facilities, in which ballistic missiles are produced.
Despite the destruction caused by the missile, and its demonstration of Russian missile supremacy over the imperial core, various warmongering Western countries have advocated for further reprisals against Russia, with Ukraine authorized by the US to continue strikes. Additionally, the recent upsurge of the fighting in Syria is no doubt connected to trying to stretch Russia thin, as well as attempting to isolate Hezbollah and Palestine from Iran; how successful this will have ended up being will depend on the outcome of the Russia and Syrian counteroffensive. Looking at recent military history, it will take many months for the Russians and Syrians to retake a city that was lost in about 48 hours.
Even in the worst case scenario for Hezbollah, it's notable that Ansarallah has had major success despite being physically cut off from the rest of the Resistance and under a blockade, and it has defeated the US Navy in its attempts to open up the strait. Israel has confirmed now that their army cannot even make significant territorial gains versus a post-Nasrallah, post-pager terrorist attack Hezbollah holding back its missile strike capabilities. In 2006, it also could not defeat a much less well-armed Hezbollah and was forced to retreat from Lebanon.
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful. Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section. Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war. Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis. Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language. https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one. https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts. https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel. https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator. https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps. https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language. https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language. https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses. https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Just want to point out that whoever the person is that killed the healthcare CEOscum absolutely knew what they were doing. Today is the tree lighting in Rockefeller Center, so there's a fuck ton of tourists out. They knew that the best way to get around the city is on bike, which they used to flee the scene right into Central Park. You can get there way faster on bike than anything else. And they knew that in Central Park, specifically in the forested area of the Ramble, there are few cameras and many places to hide where they could change clothes and then blend back in with the massive crowds hitting the city today. Also apparently used a suppressed pistol, and knew exactly which door the CEO would be coming out of/when to be there. Impressive. I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility that this assassin gets away with this. Trump assassins take notes.
It looks like they had one of these. Normal people don't know that slide lock pistols exist. This is serious right wing prepper gun nut shit or outright spy shit. A gun set up like this is legitimately movie silent, it doesn't produce anything that sounds like a gunshot.
A gun set up like this is legitimately movie silent, it doesn't produce anything that sounds like a gunshot
Yeah if it uses subsonic ammunition, which I'm guessing the assassin did. Either in .45 ACP which is inherently subsonic, or subsonic non standard 9Γ19mm ammunition, depending on the gun used. Yeah, it removes all the sound from the action and turns it single shot. Then when you unlock the slide, you can catch the cartridge case with your other hand, to leave even less evidence behind and make less noise, if you want to take another shot and load another bullet into the chamber.
A video of what I described in action at the end. The shooter demonstrating the pistol doesn't catch the casing at the end when he manually cycles the weapon, but he very well could have, hence his "retaining the brass" comment. The casing also stays inside the gun until it's manually cycled.
In the video of the assassination posted here, it certainly appears that the assassin is catching the bullet casings in his left hand as he manually cycles the pistol.
Looking at the video again, I'm not sure if the assassin has managed to catch the casings. He certainly tries to, but they could have slipped out given that he has multiple goes at cycling the weapon.
I am entirely convinced that it's a semi-auto .22LR and not some fancy or unusual gun. There's people on reddit imagining it's one of the modern welrod repros, and I don't buy that either. The way he's handing the gun it doesn't seem like he was expecting it to jam, and then when he's manually cycling the bolt he actually has to slap it closed once. To me that just screams typical .22LR pistol being shot by someone who doesn't know what ammunition feeds the best, so they're having to cycle it and even slap the bolt closed because the rounds are jamming on the feed ramp.
Just want to point out that whoever this person is, allegedly, no they didnβt do it. We were hanging out putting down brewskies at that exact moment.
Well the issue I can think of is that apparently he used an electric citibike and those things are gps-tracked. Hopefully he had multiple dummy accounts and switched bikes a few times
Well that is certainly an oversight. I guess the ebike is good in the sense that they could zoom to Central Park real quick, then dump the bike and disappear into the forest? Not much info the cops can get out of that once you dump the bike. I probably wouldn't have done that but we'll see if it works out.
Hopefully he scoped out crowded areas with camera blind spots so he could quickly change outfits in a packed bathroom and disappear back into a crowd. Meticulous casing and timing is everything here
Thereβs not doubt even if he does everything correct theyβre going to get more footage of him during his escape as they sift through the enormous amount of footage from public/private cameras but if he can disguise himself appropriately in a short amount of time it could be almost impossible for them narrow down who he is.
Realistically heβs probably still going to get caught today but every minute he doesnβt is very awesome. The fact heβs made it this far in the most surveilled city in the US is pretty poggers
Yeah and you have to unlock them with a citibike app, wonder how they went about that. If they stole someoneβs phone to do it, that person is about to have a bad day lol
Yeah you either have to use a phone, use a physical citibike key(attached to an account) or some of the docks have little kiosks where you can pay with a card for non member prices. I'm assuming/hoping they already had the bike unlocked by the time they did the shooting so hopefully due diligence was done. If this was done in a smart way it may even be better than using your personal bike because you don't really have to worry about disposing it? I imagine forensics would be useless with the number of people that sit on those things everyday
So they could probably figure out where he jumped off the bike, but it's not like they would've been live tracking him at the time. He probably only ride it for a few minutes.
Yeah looking at the map the hotel was on 54th street. From there directly up 6th Ave to Central Park is only like 7 blocks, you could cover that on an ebike in 3/4 minutes easy.