Fire From Above

Which, If It Happens

Will be genuine fire, from above, not from below, which would make it magma, or molten rock instead of faerie flagration.

     OKAY!  I am going to try and combine the events of over 80 years ago above the contested skies of Occupied France, and what is happening in Occupied Ukraine, and blend the two together.  Art!

     Lest ye be unaware, the Teutons from June 1940 were holding Continental Europe in their scrofulous grip, which inspired the Brylcreem Boys of the RAF to mount what they bizarrely called 'Rhubarb' missions.  These were aggressive low-level attacks on anything they happened across that might possess benefit for the Teutons.  As time went on these raids got bigger and reached further into Occupied France.  Art!

     By mid-1944 these raids had grown so much in size and intensity that they had become part of the roundup to D-Day, becoming essential in shaping the battlefield before the invasion occurred.  .  There was a laundry list of targets that needed to be whammed - excuse the deep technical terms - in order to grant the invasion forces the greatest possible chance of success.  Art!

South Canadians amending Teuton rail schedules

     Flippant I might be, accurate I am also.  Choke points such as rail marshalling yards, bridges, viaducts, cuttings and tunnels were attacked, leading to a collapse of Teuton railway transport from 70,000 available wagons to 10,000.  In practical terms this meant that Teuton divisions, that would have been sent in by rail to Normandy, had to march there on foot, and all their heavy equipment such as tanks, artillery pieces and trucks, went by road.  Which took far longer and made them horribly vulnerable to air attack.  Art!

     The French Resistance also struck Teutons with lethal force, but its most effective role was in providing information to the Allies, thanks to having a hundred thousand eyes and ears in occupied territory, no single one of which was vital, but which overall gave an enormous nuanced picture.  The Teuton's attitude and behaviour in the occupied territories, being of utter medieval barbarism, meant that there was no shortage of Resistance volunteers, a paradox they never managed to solve.  A kind of 'Beatings will continue until morale improves' mindset, if you will.  Art!

     Operating under an aerial umbrella does apply advantages, being that you do not labour under the problems that your neighbour has.  During the campaign in Normandy one of the Allied generals went for a joyride - excuse me, a 'battlefield reconnaissance' - over the Teuton lines, where he was unable to see any viable targets; when he flew back over Allied lines, there were innumerable depots and supply dumps and parks, all plainly visible.  When he commented, he was told that this was how air superiority worked - the Teutons had no choice but to camouflage everything up the wazoo, whereas their own kit feared nought from enemy air observation or attack.  Teuton convoys usually had a 'Luki-Luki' man scanning the skies on at least every other vehicle.  They couldn't prevent an Allied air attack but could mitigate by sounding the alarm.  Art!

     What you see here as a headline is the Ukrainian equivalent of what was called 'Big Week' in the lead up to D-Day, where the Allied air forces deliberately cleared the skies by wiping out the Luftwaffe, which was outnumbered, outclassed and outdated.  It never recovered and was a broken reed during the Normandy campaign.

     What the USF are doing is deliberately targetting Ruffian air defence systems and destroying them, meaning follow-up drones experience no interference or interception.  The 'Atesh' resistance movement in occupied Ukraine will be feeding details about what the Ruffians have located where and when, all the information being funnelled to the USF.  Art!

     I should point out that the Ruffians were only able to produce a handful of these systems per month, and that they cost on the order of $10 million each at least.  Given Ukraine's destroying the Kreminy El microelectronics plant in Bryansk  - akin to the Allied strategic bombing of Nazi Germany - they may have lost the ability to replace these systems at all.  Art!

     Ruffian fuel train.  Art!

     Ruffian fuel train on fire.  Once again, Atesh may have been involved in passing on information about the train's route and cargo.

     This is actually worse than it seems, because fuel tanker fires like this destroy the track beneath them thanks to the high temperatures and long duration of the fire.  For your information, the single track railway in Zaporizhzhia that was blocked by a burned-out fuel train is still blocked - and that dates from AUGUST 2025.  Art!

     This graphic ought to make pro-Kremlin warbloggers wince and change the subject.  It shows how the 'kill zone' for Ukrainian drones has increased by a factor of three, meaning only part of Crimea and a fragment of the Donbass is out of range.  If you want another Allied Normandy analogy, look to the creation of airfields on liberated territory as soon as possible after D-Day, which by default increased the range of the fighter-bombers stationed there.  Art!

     Check back in on April 1st, when Telegram is shut off for good in Mordorvia and the occupied territories.

     Conrad could probably wring a few more long paragraphs out of this subject but is feeling merciful and will pass on.

I Hope You Have Already Eaten And Quite A While Ago

For Lo! we have another horrid photograph of King Piggy, as I take great delight in defaming and ridiculing the ugly fat biffer.  Art!

     You can see the delicious contrast between his sepia-toned face, his baggy saggy eyes - more like sacks than bags if we're honest - and his delicate pink ears, and a No Man's Land of hair in between that isn't either pink or orange, more a greyish fuzz.  His fringe also seems to be exhibiting signs of becoming an independent sentient creature.

In The Land Of Mordorvia Where Shadows Lie

 - and so do the state authorities.  Apologies for banging on about Ruffia in another item after defaming them in the Intro, but the 'Jake Broe' vlog that I pinched a couple of pictures from had an interesting update about Starlink.  Art!

     This is dated February 2024.  So for at least two years the orcs were using Starlink illegally for comms on the battlefield and behind it.  Then Elong Tusk woke up one morning and decided this made him look bad, so - Ruffian Starlink usage ended, immediately.

     Cue shrieks of panicked indignation from the orcs, who then tried to blackmail and bribe Ukrainians to register Starlink, a measure of how badly they were affected.  

     Cue also a response from the military authorities, probably trying to cover their bottoms and prevent Peter The Average from finding out  how badly things were going.  Art!

     A right pair of Pinnochios.  Allow me - Art!

     You can see the drop off in Starlink activity across Ukraine, showing that 75% of usage in Ukraine was by the orcses*.  Art!

     Conrad wondered who this 'Doug Madory' chap is, and if he speaks with any technical background.  Well, yes, rather - 

"Doug Madory is an American Internet routing infrastructure expert, who specializes in analyzing Internet Border Gateway Protocol routing data to diagnose Internet routing disruptions, such as those caused by communications fiber cable cuts, routing equipment failures, and governmental censorship"

     More credible than the Pinnochio Pair.

The Universe Is Stranger Than We Can Imagine

This has been proven since the discovery of exoplanets thirty years ago.  With the introduction of Hubble and then the James Webb Space Telescope, we have been able to conduct image searches of planets that have been discovered by either occlusion or gravitational influences on their parent star.  Art!

     Meet L 98-58 d, a planet 35 light years from Earth that is markedly different from what scientists had been led to think about small rocky planets.  Prior to L, they would have been classified as either a 'gas dwarf', which is a planet having a rocky constitution and a hydrogen atmosphere, or a 'waterworld' having an ice surface and deep liquid oceans.

     Not Ol' L 98-58 d!  No, this planet has a crust of lava, on top of an ocean of magma that extends down to the core, and which is rich in hydrogen sulphide.

     So if you were to walk on the surface, the overwhelming smell would be of rotten eggs.

Finally -

Going out with a Biercism again.

"Self-Esteem, n: An erroneous appraisement."

Chin chin!

*  Variant spelling they hate hate hate.  Tee hee!