I'm Making This Up As I Go Along
As I frequently do. I have a vague central concept for the Intro, and half a page of scribbled lines, and we'll see how far Conrad can get before reality catches up with him.
Okay! First of all, NO! that is not a typo. I am referring to Xi Jin Ping, dictator-in-chief of The Populous Dictatorship, also known cruelly to his critics as 'Winnie The Pooh' because of his rotund shape. Stick a pin in this, we shall return to it. Art!
People can be so cruel. And accurate.
Now, you may recall the Red Tsar, Josef Stalin, who would quite happily send a million people to their deaths if it meant a single guilty party also copped it. He was born Ioseb Dzhugashvili, a Georgian name if ever there was one, and apparently didn't think it was hard enough, so he adopted the pseudonym 'Stalin', meaning 'Man of Steel' and he did it in 1912 - Art!
A well-deserved name as he had all the humanity of an ingot.
There was, subsequently, another 'Man Of Steel', whose moral compass caused him to be diametrically opposed to any 'Man Of Steal', and because he was bulletproof, brawny and browsed on braised bacon flew, people paid attention to him. Art!
I'm sure you must be wondering which came first, the Archaeopteryx or the egg, so bear in mind that Supes didn't hit the news-stands until 1938, so Ol' Joey had 26 years on him.
Here an aside. There was also 'Iron Man', whom I don't think hit the news-stands until the Fifties, as Tony Stark's alter-ego. Iron, to be honest, is not the best metal for armour, as it's heavy and brittle and if Tony goes punching people in the patella, he may very well find himself reduced to wearing a pile of iron filings. However - my very favouritest word - calling him "Steel Man" might lead to copyright issues, since he's a Marvel creation and Supes hails from DC. Art!
Personally I think the correct word is 'Created', because human anatomy. "Titanium Man" would also be unacceptable, thanks to comic dialogue frequently shortening long names into short, punchy nicknames. "Aluminium Man" is also a non-starter due to that same trend with names. I mean - Art!
How very embarrassing.
ANYWAY let us now revert back to Winnie The Pooh and how China is not Ruffia's friend, not one bit. Yesteryon I did tell you about the ever-escalating problems Ruffia is having with Chinese trade, because the Chinese can easily dump all their trade with Ruffia and barely notice it, whereas Ruffia desperately needs Winnie's agreement to trade in order to survive, let alone prosper. Art!
Welcome to the wonderful world of galvanised steel. GS is steel that's been treated with a coating of zinc carbonate, in order to improve it's resistance to weather, erosion and rusting. There are innumerable uses for GS, including construction, street furniture, catering equipment, plant machinery and one manufacturer also added outdoor planters.
Versatile stuff. It also used to be a major export market for Ruffia, and note the past tense there. You see, China has now stepped in and poached 70% of Modern-day Mordor's GS markets in Europe and Asia; stolen their trade, you might say, which is where our title for today hails. This is not only a humiliation for Putin, it directly affects revenues and taxes in a major way, just when the hapless orcs need all the money they can get. They are now imposing tariffs on Chinese GS to try and defend what market share they have. Ooopsie.
"I knew that broken-glass sandwich was a bad idea"
"The War Illustrated Edition 195 8th December 1944"
Don't forget, gentle reader, that this edition is reporting the news from mid- to late-November, thanks to how the print media functioned at that time and because they didn't want to give the wily Hun any viable information. Art!
If you can't render that prose, allow me to inform that this sturdy matelot is one of those steering into the teeth of Teuton fire as the Allies - principally Brits and Canadians - assaulted the island of Walcheren. Art!
As you can clearly see, Walcheren functioned like the stopper in a bottle. While it was being held by the Teutons, the port of Antwerp could not be used, a bit of a sickener for the Allies as it was such an enormous port that could effortlessly handle huge amounts of supplies. Said supplies were still being sent all the way from Normandy.
So - Walcheren must fall!
A Couple Of Malicious Metrics For You
Things are getting pretty bad in the Ruffian economy - which is not news. However - that word again! - the ruble is being allowed to slide and keeps depreciating in a manner that suggests the Ruffian Ministry of Finance has been told not to try and prop it up. Their money needs to be directed elsewhere, because 8% of the Ruffian federal budget is being spent on the salaries of orcs in Ukraine. Art!
So, overall it's slid by ₽1.50 in the past month.
Another interesting tangent is that, were Conrad to wish to use the dollar $ or pound £ symbol in an item, there they are on the keyboard. For the ruble ₽ I have to go into the Symbols menu, then track down more Symbols, and then look up Currency. It's just not in demand. Art!
Also not in demand. Okay, bear in mind that I'm typing this at 18:17, and over in South Canada it's 13:17 on the stock exchanges, so there are still a good few hours to go before Monday's final trading figure is reached. It's not looking good for Donold, who is being forced to flog over-priced tat to keep up with the Jones. Art!
Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before -
Another Ruffian ammunition Ooopsie. Thanks to 'Suchomimus' for bringing this to my attention as it's a little hard to keep track of all the Ruffian kit going BANG at the moment.
This is another, intermediate level, ammunition depot in the Tver oblast, smaller than Toropets. Let's have a 'Before', shall we? Art!
What's absent from this site is the presence of any hardened - excuse me - supposedly hardened bunkers, this is all warehouses and open storage stands. Art!
The icon says "Radio Svoboda" - "Radio Freedom". As you can clearly see, the site now closely resembles the surface of the Moon. Give it a day or two and we'll have estimates of how much ordnance was destroyed here, to go with the (upper bound) 40,000 tons already smitten in September.
Ukraine is keeping pretty quiet about what kind of drone did this damage, and how many there were, which leads the suspicious-minded of us to wonder if it's not the 'Palanitsia' turbo-jet drone in action.
Imagine being the hapless minion being sent to Putin to inform him about this, for the third time in a weekend!
Finally -
That's all, pilgrims. Ta ta!
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