I Apologise A Little For The Jargon
In this intro to the Intro, I shall explicate about a few jargon terms and what they mean in plain English THE MOTHER OF LANGUAGES to avoid obfuscation*. Okay, take it away.
SIGINT: 'Signals Intelligence' meaning information gained by intercepting or eavesdropping on your opponent's electronic communications, principally radio telecoms. This classification didn't really exist before radios came into common use as it's verrrry difficult to eavesdrop telephones; not impossible, just difficult. Art!
British WW1 telephone intercept kit
HUMINT: 'Human intelligence'. Or what your spies glean, or informers pass on, or other members of Hom. Sap. tell you. Potentially the least reliable means of obtaining data. Philip Ingram of 'Frontline's Youtube channel, ex-MI6, said that HUMINT is classified as A, B or C and rated 1, 2 or 3, in descending order of reliability and accuracy. A1, he said, with feeling, is rare. Art!
OSINT: 'Open Source Intelligence'. Or, whatever information you can gather from sources that are freely available to the general public. Back in the Second Unpleasantness, British embassy staff in Dublin would subscribe to all the Teuton newspapers, which were freely available thanks to Eire being (nominally) neutral. They would scour these for information that Nazi censors had either not noticed or insufficiently gutted. Art!
This type of INT is peculiarly relevant to Mordorvia. Back in June 2024 they suddenly stopped publishing economic data, which had been heavily redacted yet still available for vloggers like 'Joe Blogs', who used it to create graphs and charts of how badly the Ruffian economy was doing, which is why they stopped publishing it. Art!
This headline is more of the same from only one day ago. The Ruffian 'Unified Interdepartmental Information and Statistics System' has just deleted 168 data tables that it used to publish, because - that phrase again - "of how badly the Ruffian economy was doing". Putinpot doesn't want anyone, including Ruffians, knowing how badly he has shredded the economy of Mordorvia.
Which segues nicely into a whole slew of annotations I made on Jonathan Fink's 'Silicon Bites' vlog from yesteryon. Art!
The long-form vlog he also has
The title of his most recent vlog was 'Russia Is Closed For Business' and consists of a series of OSINT reports from various publications, which I will detail below, with the sources.
Vladimir Milov: Vlad is an ex-Energy Minister of Ruffia, politician and economist, now an opposition member in exile, who was interviewed by the 'Kyiv Post'. Art!
As reported by JF, Vlad describes the primary economic function of the Ruffian state as 'State War Spending'. The old parameters which applied to a market economy no longer exist as Mordorvia moves to a 'Permanent Wartime Command Economy'. In other words, guns not butter. Or, insanely expensive butter than has to be kept in security boxes. Art!
Milov also stated that the apparent stability of the Mordorvian economy was an illusion, as the state did not exhibit any real growth; any temporary increase in the GDP during 2024 and into 2025 was the result of budget reserves being burned through to prop things up. With reserves expended, the true state of the economy is becoming readily visible. For more details read on.
PISM: The Polish Institute Of International Affairs, in case you were wondering. They pointed out that the cost of borrowing in Ruffia is still high, at 15.5%, which is needed to combat inflation. This stifles any prospects for businesses, who simply cannot afford to take out loans at this rate or pay back what they took out earlier. An 'Ooops' moment. Art!
The Wilson Centre: Which describes itself as a 'non-partisan think-tank' and if Art will do the honours -
They pick up on the theme of high interest rates, and point out that they crater investment, drive down the available labour force, and cause very high uncertainty in markets that depend on predictability. Not only that, the Mordorvian economy is now a '2-speed' variety, where investment in the military-industrial complex is ever-increasing from the state, whilst the civilian economy shrinks and there is nil private investment.
Moscow Times: Just to be clear, this is a publication from outside Ruffia, staffed by exiles. Their take on the Ruffian economy is that financial reserves have been run down, corporate profits have tumbled, investment has tanked and there are warning signs of stagflation leading to a recession. Art!
Not strictly relevant but I couldn't resist
Reuters: They approach the problem as one of Ruffia becoming 'demodernised' thanks to a triple whammy of economic problems. Number One is Expensive Credit, for which see above. Number Two are Rising Taxes - not just an increase in tax but a dropping of the threshold tax becomes liable. Number Three is the Vanishing Workforce, again. One feels that the bad old days of the Nineties are returning, with a vengeance and a bullet.
Ol' Jon has his own thoughts on the crisis, describing the Special Idiotic Operation as a 'Political and economic Ponzi scheme', where the promised infinite returns have proven to be illusory. These economic mirages will collapse utterly if the war stops, since state investment will also vanish. Art!
At the stroke of midnight -
From Ugly Duckling To Phoenicopteri
Conrad has held off commenting on the Ukrainian Fire Point 'Flamingo' missile, which was rolled out into serial production in 2025 with a whole lot of fanfare. It's a monster of a missile, 30 feet long with a warhead massing over a metric ton. Art!
With puny humans for scale
It's had a lot of teething troubles, most especially as regards accuracy, and a Ukrainian spokesman explained late last year that they needed to make detailed TERCOM** maps for it over Ruffian terrain. Otherwise it had to fly dangerously high to navigate to a target, meaning the chances of interception were greatly increased.
Now, however - Art!
Before During After
The target is the Votkinsk missile production facility deep in Ruffia, where they assemble Iskander missiles amongst others. This is 1,400 kilometres inside Mordorvia, yet at least one missile got there successfully, evading any air defences en route - if there were any. 2026 just got worse for the orcs.
ENOUGH! ENOUGH I SAY!
There I was, scrolling through the news feed, looking for a relevant picture, and seeing that half of the content was about Pumpkinhead and his whinging and boasting for 107 minutes live on television.
Then - what do I see? Art!
I DO NOT CARE! STOP PIMPING OSCILLOSCOPES!
Sheesh, it makes me nostalgic for the days of Log Counting Software.
Here's One Conrad Can Get Behind
A news item from the 'Manchester Evening News', which, if Art can put down his lignite gruel
The image there is of the 'Warner Bros' store in the Arndale Centre. It followed in the footsteps of Disney stores in selling overpriced plastic tat, meaning it didn't last and is now long gone. In fact it's been gone for 25 years when it was only around for ten. Point and laugh.
ANYWAY what I wanted to mention was another opportunity lost to time. Art!
Catch a bus from under the Arndale
Yes, there was a troglodyte bus station within and underneath the Arndale Centre, which was horrid for passengers and I know because I was one of them. It had no natural light, merely dimly ineffective fluorescents, and always reeked of diesel fumes, because - buses, lots of them, and insufficient ventilation. It was so dark one had trouble reading whilst waiting for the PSV to exit the gloom. Not missed one bit, and you can note it's design has not been repeated elsewhere. Art!
Airy and bright in Babylon-Lite
Finally -
A quote from Ernest Hemingway and my 'QI Book Of Banter'
"Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.!
Quite!
* No, I'm not going to go into this word's Latin roots. Too much <hack spit> too early in the day.
** TERrain COntour Matching
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