Good Morning CDR and my Substack friends who appreciate my comments!
I have a shout out to my friend Professor Russell Lee Otway in Moscow Russia Oblast … a “Micro-District”. Oh, you are so very wrong CDR, Russia’s friends are growing! The business class who can afford a fully furnished penthouse apartment with a fireplace. Cost in U.S. dollars only about $661K. Lovely Ms Irene is the person to contact about any residential or commercial Real - Estate in Russia. Traveling with Russell on free YouTube will happily connect you! Compare what I saw yesterday in his live Video, including the very rare footage of underground parking “Construction”for this Micro-District with anything hrrr in the Metro D.C. area and you will immediately see how organized, clean, neat, well-built with full immensities such as concierge level bathroom for you the human…and a separate concierge level mud room shower snd toilet area for both you and your big dog!! Marvelous! I said’ Russia’s friends are growing, especially those class folks who can afford to rent, buy or spend a few nights in a micro-district either other people of the same economic class (meaning earning the same amount of money). A school construction is underway as well as parks. Sitting areas, mini grocery stores with fresh meats, fish, who will happily cook for you, including coffee. That’s the beauty of todays’s Russia, Special Military Operation into its fourth year. God bless both America and Russia! Oh, and my USAF Pilot son fighting in this Israeli conflict. Shipmates, let’s talk about the Piracy of Ships with Oil not belonging to the USA! Yes, flying flags of dubious origins, still human guide those ships! These are not American ships and they are going to other sovereign countries who asked and or contracted for that oil. Does America have the right to Pirate Ships? Let me know what you think. Respectfully yours, Nurse Jane
You say Russia's friends are only growing, but leaving aside the significant differences between friends of Russia and friends of the regime, I'm not sure the supply of Ayatollahs that have supported the Kremlin logistically and diplomatically through the conflict are growing. And one side benefit of things going on this long (perverse as that is) is it has pushed a lot of the Euros to come closer to living up to their overheated rhetoric on sanctions.
As for the business class that have been able to afford a fully kitted out penthouse, that goes directly against what I've been hearing from some of my Russian friends (including those agnostic towards or supportive of the "Special Military Operation"). They argue that if anything while the man or woman on the street that has been able to avoid getting scooped up has had their real wages increase (due to some serious increases in the money supply plus demand for work), the "business class" has been getting soaked hard as the Kremlin leans hard on them for contributions ("voluntary" or otherwise) in the name of loyalty and has implemented price and movement controls to help keep the Ruble afloat, meaning the people with significant amounts of pre-existing capital or savings have been hit the hardest due to having what to lose, and finding it harder to convert their Rubles or existing assets to either other currency (including RMB) or other assets. I'm sure there is something of a "New Money" rising due to the wage warring for on the ground people and the money printer going Brrrt (as well as death benefits), so it isn't like everyone is losing, but you're seeing an overheated, inflating economy with less goods to chase and a deep manpower overstretching. I'd guess for most of the urbanites in European Russia that's offset by things like the wartime wages, but that isn't terribly sustainable.
And I say urbanites of European Russia because the people outside there are probably suffering even worse. Granted I didn't spend much time in the Russian countryside and never went outside of Europe so I won't claim there, but the consensus seems to be that the Russian countryside has never really recovered and makes Dead Moose Junction look prosperous and well developed, and with the Kremlin focusing on keeping urban populaces happy-ish, especially in the big two of Moscow and St. Petersburg, and generally having a very urban view there, that means the secondary cities and the countryside get shafted even harder than before.
"Shipmates, let’s talk about the Piracy of Ships with Oil not belonging to the USA!"
That's not piracy. That's actually anti-piracy.
"Yes, flying flags of dubious origins, still human guide those ships!"
What do you think pirates are? Aliens from Tau Ceti?
The truth is, by admitting "flying flags of dubious origins", you're admitting that these ships are actually, legally far closer to pirates than anything the US is doing. They are essentially violating international maritime law and committing fraud upon the wider community, while generally sponsoring terrorism and a host of other things to boot.
As such, not only do they have absolutely zero legal right to not be seized by the US, the US and other countries have a duty to seize them both for practical reasons and moral ones, both for events abroad and also for the benefit of law abiding American oilmen and sailors removing illegal competition.
And it's telling that when push came to shove even the Russian Navy backed off from pushing the issue, because not only do they understand that we do not
Sal and others can probably give a better overview of what this is, but essentially we aren't seizing law abiding Russian ships, we are seizing piratical smugglers operating illegal vessels under false flags, meant to do things that the Russian dictatorship and its criminal cronies in places like the PRC, North Korea, Iran, and so on can't openly do such as sponsoring terrorists or sanctioned dictatorships like Venezuela. Any sailor who knowingly got onboard those things knowing what they were doing is either desperate enough that taking them into custody is probably doing them a favor, or scum of the earth little better than the pirates plaguing the Red Sea.
And any sailor who UNKnowingly got on them has at best displayed a very poor judgement due to how organized shipping in current year is.
We allowed these things to operate for years as part of the general fecklessness of appeasement by the US and others, but Trump and others have indicated that is no longer there.
"These are not American ships"
Correct. However, legally they are not Russian ships. Legally they are no ships, because they are illegally stateless ships that have committed fraud upon the registering nations and the wider world and are legally not much different from Somali Pirate dinghy's. That they are being used to break American sanctions and assorted other laws means it is lawful for the US or any other nation to seize them and take all those involved in their operation into custody along with the cargoes.
"and they are going to other sovereign countries who asked and or contracted for that oil."
Firstly: That's dubious especially if you believe Venezuela under what amounted to Cuban occupation was "sovereign" in any real case, but that's a pedantic distinction.
Secondly: If such countries wished to get such oil, they should do so legally through actual, lawful ships that obey the laws of the sea, not pirate vessels.
Oh, what's that? You mean some of these countries like Venezuela cannot legally contract to ship oil because they have committed egregious violations of the law such as invading other countries or pseudo-legal theft of other people or nations property such as criminal "nationalizations", resulting in them getting sanctioned up the wazoo by the offended nations and convincing even those that aren't that they are criminal scofflaws who are not trustworthy to get into business with? Oh ho hum. If it isn't the consequences of actions.
But I don't see why that is a problem for the US Navy or its friends. Indeed, in many cases these scumbag pirates are actually smuggling oil that lawfully belongs to the US or US businesses that were stolen by goons like Maduro and Chavez by unlawful nationalizations or other thuggery, so what we are doing is not piracy, it is reclaiming stolen property from smugglers.
"Does America have the right to Pirate Ships? "
In a word officially no but practically yes, though not in these circumstances. That's complicated and usually involves a congressional declaration of war or authorization for force, and gets into the finer details of 'pirate" but isn't really applicable here.
What's more relevant in these cases is we're not actually engaged in piracy. We are engaging in anti-piracy by intercepting false flagged ships defrauding other businesses on behalf of a host of terrorist organizations and sanctioned dictatorships. These ships have violated essentially every law of the sea there is by operating with no legal registry conducting sanctions busting operations on behalf of the scum of the earth, thus engaging in things like sponsoring terrorism, theft from lawful owners of property, and so on.
As such they are outlaws in the literal sense of the term, in being outside the law and against it, and are liable to be seized by anyone and everyone for their crimes and punished.
That is what the United States is doing, and is doing properly in coordination with others, including usually the nation these countries were officially registered to (of particular note was the decision by some of these scum to use Guyanese flags, which falls rather firmly into "The Lion, the Witch, and the Audacity of This Bi--ch" territory, given how the PSUV dictatorship in Venezuela has threatened to and in terms of illegal squatters and poaching actually has invaded Guyanese territory, meaning Guyana has no interest in registering ships helping with them and making them roughly comparable to a Nazi German smuggler flying a Polish ensign in 1940 or so on).
And the Russian dictatorship KNOWS this and that we are not pirating. Because for whatever bullshit they spout in terms of posturing, they have not and will never lodge legal charges against us in the avenue used to indict pirates, and often the same venues that had charges against the shadow fleet ships int he first place. Because they know the shadow fleet by its very nature is a criminal enterprise violating the laws of the sea and subject to lawful confiscation by any power able to do so, and that any attempt to pretend otherwise would get laughed out of court and probably see them slapped with punitive sanctions making their situation worse precisely to punish the kind of brazen contempt for international law that both the shadow fleet itself represents, and that trying to pretend it could in some way be legitimized by state level lawfare would represent.
It's sort of like asking why ICE is taking people into custody and trying to minimize people like Senor Abrego-Garcia by saying they are "using documents of dubious origin" but still asking whyyy, since he is still a human bean. Which of course isn't the issue, the issue is he's a criminal in the country illegally on a fraudulent basis.
Whatever our differences, good luck to you and your son.
Time 10:23 AM Sunday 15 Mar 2026; three (3) choppers flying East to South West over my little house, seen by me laying in my Hospital bed! Any guess who might be on board. Let me know…
Joint Base Andrews or Annacostia - DIA may be their destination! His Bless America! NJ
Slavic peoples have been fighting each other for control of slavic territories for centuries. It's who they are. Sometimes they take a break to fight off non-slavic invaders from the south and from the west. Once that job is accomplished, they return to business as usual, more or less.
In other words, the problem with today's Russia isn't just Vladimir Putin and his leadership cabal. It's that Russia is chock full of millions of Russians who have no problem with imposing their will on other Slavic peoples, and also on those non-slavic peoples who were once subjects of the Russian Empire.
Putin and his leadership cabal will be gone at some point. But the problem of Russia being chock full of millions of nationalistic Russians will remain.
Decades into the future, every currently independent nation which was once a part of the Russian Empire will be feeling the pressure of a nationalistic-minded Russian leadership to return to the fold. Those nations which choose to resist that pressure will do so at their own peril.
Is it in America's long-term national interest to prevent the Russians from re-establishing their former empire? An empire which a majority of the Russian population appears to be in favor of re-establishing?
"Is it in America's long-term national interest to prevent the Russians from re-establishing their former empire? An empire which a majority of the Russian population appears to be in favor of re-establishing?"
In a word yes, so long as said empire is being established at the direct expense of US Allies or co-belligerents by criminal means. And I'm one of those that is a relative moderate in that I have no actual principled objection to the IN THEORY unification of Crimea or parts of the Donbas into Russia, provided they were done legally and freely. With my big issue being that what was done was very much not legal, not free, and conducted by thugs with guns going about torturing and murdering opponents.
If Russia's millions of people are so incapable of behaving decently to their neighbors that they cannot follow the practical and lawful steps to try and re-negotiate things like the Budapest 1994 settlement (by say asking to delineate the Ukraine-Russia Border and allow Crimea to vote to return, in exchange maybe for financial or nuclear compensation), then they will remain a problem we will have to deal with.
But in practice I think this is mostly theoretical. While millions of Russians may support the recreation of the Russian Empire in theory or abstract, that does not mean they are willing or able to absorb the kinds of losses needed to do so by force of arms, or to engage in the kind of endeavors that re hostile to US interests, international law (such as it is), or both. They sure as heck have no real reason to support the creation of what is essentially a Diet Daesh Wahhabi terror state in Chechnya that Putin has allowed to grow because so long as Chechnya remains officially a part of Russia he doesn't have to try and reconquer it again. They definitely don't support the colonization of vast parts of Siberia by Han Chinese and North Korean settlers, and especially not the PRC using these to claim large scale territorial claims.
Putin and his cabal of Deep State "Organs' goons are rather distinct because not just of their power and resources but how knee jerk anti-Western they are (like the BS claims that a NATO sub collided with the Kursk and caused that disaster), and so are a lot of the groups they tend to "caucus" with like the Kadyrovites, Duginites, and Communists. What comes to the fore after them in Russia is probably not going to be a constitutional utopia, but it's probably going to be significantly less hostile or toxic to us than what has been around for the last quarter century or so. And in any case will definitely be far less capable of fighting a protracted war given the demographic pyramid and loss of so much material.
Good Morning CDR and my Substack friends who appreciate my comments!
I have a shout out to my friend Professor Russell Lee Otway in Moscow Russia Oblast … a “Micro-District”. Oh, you are so very wrong CDR, Russia’s friends are growing! The business class who can afford a fully furnished penthouse apartment with a fireplace. Cost in U.S. dollars only about $661K. Lovely Ms Irene is the person to contact about any residential or commercial Real - Estate in Russia. Traveling with Russell on free YouTube will happily connect you! Compare what I saw yesterday in his live Video, including the very rare footage of underground parking “Construction”for this Micro-District with anything hrrr in the Metro D.C. area and you will immediately see how organized, clean, neat, well-built with full immensities such as concierge level bathroom for you the human…and a separate concierge level mud room shower snd toilet area for both you and your big dog!! Marvelous! I said’ Russia’s friends are growing, especially those class folks who can afford to rent, buy or spend a few nights in a micro-district either other people of the same economic class (meaning earning the same amount of money). A school construction is underway as well as parks. Sitting areas, mini grocery stores with fresh meats, fish, who will happily cook for you, including coffee. That’s the beauty of todays’s Russia, Special Military Operation into its fourth year. God bless both America and Russia! Oh, and my USAF Pilot son fighting in this Israeli conflict. Shipmates, let’s talk about the Piracy of Ships with Oil not belonging to the USA! Yes, flying flags of dubious origins, still human guide those ships! These are not American ships and they are going to other sovereign countries who asked and or contracted for that oil. Does America have the right to Pirate Ships? Let me know what you think. Respectfully yours, Nurse Jane
You say Russia's friends are only growing, but leaving aside the significant differences between friends of Russia and friends of the regime, I'm not sure the supply of Ayatollahs that have supported the Kremlin logistically and diplomatically through the conflict are growing. And one side benefit of things going on this long (perverse as that is) is it has pushed a lot of the Euros to come closer to living up to their overheated rhetoric on sanctions.
As for the business class that have been able to afford a fully kitted out penthouse, that goes directly against what I've been hearing from some of my Russian friends (including those agnostic towards or supportive of the "Special Military Operation"). They argue that if anything while the man or woman on the street that has been able to avoid getting scooped up has had their real wages increase (due to some serious increases in the money supply plus demand for work), the "business class" has been getting soaked hard as the Kremlin leans hard on them for contributions ("voluntary" or otherwise) in the name of loyalty and has implemented price and movement controls to help keep the Ruble afloat, meaning the people with significant amounts of pre-existing capital or savings have been hit the hardest due to having what to lose, and finding it harder to convert their Rubles or existing assets to either other currency (including RMB) or other assets. I'm sure there is something of a "New Money" rising due to the wage warring for on the ground people and the money printer going Brrrt (as well as death benefits), so it isn't like everyone is losing, but you're seeing an overheated, inflating economy with less goods to chase and a deep manpower overstretching. I'd guess for most of the urbanites in European Russia that's offset by things like the wartime wages, but that isn't terribly sustainable.
And I say urbanites of European Russia because the people outside there are probably suffering even worse. Granted I didn't spend much time in the Russian countryside and never went outside of Europe so I won't claim there, but the consensus seems to be that the Russian countryside has never really recovered and makes Dead Moose Junction look prosperous and well developed, and with the Kremlin focusing on keeping urban populaces happy-ish, especially in the big two of Moscow and St. Petersburg, and generally having a very urban view there, that means the secondary cities and the countryside get shafted even harder than before.
"Shipmates, let’s talk about the Piracy of Ships with Oil not belonging to the USA!"
That's not piracy. That's actually anti-piracy.
"Yes, flying flags of dubious origins, still human guide those ships!"
What do you think pirates are? Aliens from Tau Ceti?
The truth is, by admitting "flying flags of dubious origins", you're admitting that these ships are actually, legally far closer to pirates than anything the US is doing. They are essentially violating international maritime law and committing fraud upon the wider community, while generally sponsoring terrorism and a host of other things to boot.
As such, not only do they have absolutely zero legal right to not be seized by the US, the US and other countries have a duty to seize them both for practical reasons and moral ones, both for events abroad and also for the benefit of law abiding American oilmen and sailors removing illegal competition.
And it's telling that when push came to shove even the Russian Navy backed off from pushing the issue, because not only do they understand that we do not
Sal and others can probably give a better overview of what this is, but essentially we aren't seizing law abiding Russian ships, we are seizing piratical smugglers operating illegal vessels under false flags, meant to do things that the Russian dictatorship and its criminal cronies in places like the PRC, North Korea, Iran, and so on can't openly do such as sponsoring terrorists or sanctioned dictatorships like Venezuela. Any sailor who knowingly got onboard those things knowing what they were doing is either desperate enough that taking them into custody is probably doing them a favor, or scum of the earth little better than the pirates plaguing the Red Sea.
And any sailor who UNKnowingly got on them has at best displayed a very poor judgement due to how organized shipping in current year is.
We allowed these things to operate for years as part of the general fecklessness of appeasement by the US and others, but Trump and others have indicated that is no longer there.
"These are not American ships"
Correct. However, legally they are not Russian ships. Legally they are no ships, because they are illegally stateless ships that have committed fraud upon the registering nations and the wider world and are legally not much different from Somali Pirate dinghy's. That they are being used to break American sanctions and assorted other laws means it is lawful for the US or any other nation to seize them and take all those involved in their operation into custody along with the cargoes.
"and they are going to other sovereign countries who asked and or contracted for that oil."
Firstly: That's dubious especially if you believe Venezuela under what amounted to Cuban occupation was "sovereign" in any real case, but that's a pedantic distinction.
Secondly: If such countries wished to get such oil, they should do so legally through actual, lawful ships that obey the laws of the sea, not pirate vessels.
Oh, what's that? You mean some of these countries like Venezuela cannot legally contract to ship oil because they have committed egregious violations of the law such as invading other countries or pseudo-legal theft of other people or nations property such as criminal "nationalizations", resulting in them getting sanctioned up the wazoo by the offended nations and convincing even those that aren't that they are criminal scofflaws who are not trustworthy to get into business with? Oh ho hum. If it isn't the consequences of actions.
But I don't see why that is a problem for the US Navy or its friends. Indeed, in many cases these scumbag pirates are actually smuggling oil that lawfully belongs to the US or US businesses that were stolen by goons like Maduro and Chavez by unlawful nationalizations or other thuggery, so what we are doing is not piracy, it is reclaiming stolen property from smugglers.
"Does America have the right to Pirate Ships? "
In a word officially no but practically yes, though not in these circumstances. That's complicated and usually involves a congressional declaration of war or authorization for force, and gets into the finer details of 'pirate" but isn't really applicable here.
What's more relevant in these cases is we're not actually engaged in piracy. We are engaging in anti-piracy by intercepting false flagged ships defrauding other businesses on behalf of a host of terrorist organizations and sanctioned dictatorships. These ships have violated essentially every law of the sea there is by operating with no legal registry conducting sanctions busting operations on behalf of the scum of the earth, thus engaging in things like sponsoring terrorism, theft from lawful owners of property, and so on.
As such they are outlaws in the literal sense of the term, in being outside the law and against it, and are liable to be seized by anyone and everyone for their crimes and punished.
That is what the United States is doing, and is doing properly in coordination with others, including usually the nation these countries were officially registered to (of particular note was the decision by some of these scum to use Guyanese flags, which falls rather firmly into "The Lion, the Witch, and the Audacity of This Bi--ch" territory, given how the PSUV dictatorship in Venezuela has threatened to and in terms of illegal squatters and poaching actually has invaded Guyanese territory, meaning Guyana has no interest in registering ships helping with them and making them roughly comparable to a Nazi German smuggler flying a Polish ensign in 1940 or so on).
And the Russian dictatorship KNOWS this and that we are not pirating. Because for whatever bullshit they spout in terms of posturing, they have not and will never lodge legal charges against us in the avenue used to indict pirates, and often the same venues that had charges against the shadow fleet ships int he first place. Because they know the shadow fleet by its very nature is a criminal enterprise violating the laws of the sea and subject to lawful confiscation by any power able to do so, and that any attempt to pretend otherwise would get laughed out of court and probably see them slapped with punitive sanctions making their situation worse precisely to punish the kind of brazen contempt for international law that both the shadow fleet itself represents, and that trying to pretend it could in some way be legitimized by state level lawfare would represent.
It's sort of like asking why ICE is taking people into custody and trying to minimize people like Senor Abrego-Garcia by saying they are "using documents of dubious origin" but still asking whyyy, since he is still a human bean. Which of course isn't the issue, the issue is he's a criminal in the country illegally on a fraudulent basis.
Whatever our differences, good luck to you and your son.
Time 10:23 AM Sunday 15 Mar 2026; three (3) choppers flying East to South West over my little house, seen by me laying in my Hospital bed! Any guess who might be on board. Let me know…
Joint Base Andrews or Annacostia - DIA may be their destination! His Bless America! NJ
Slavic peoples have been fighting each other for control of slavic territories for centuries. It's who they are. Sometimes they take a break to fight off non-slavic invaders from the south and from the west. Once that job is accomplished, they return to business as usual, more or less.
In other words, the problem with today's Russia isn't just Vladimir Putin and his leadership cabal. It's that Russia is chock full of millions of Russians who have no problem with imposing their will on other Slavic peoples, and also on those non-slavic peoples who were once subjects of the Russian Empire.
Putin and his leadership cabal will be gone at some point. But the problem of Russia being chock full of millions of nationalistic Russians will remain.
Decades into the future, every currently independent nation which was once a part of the Russian Empire will be feeling the pressure of a nationalistic-minded Russian leadership to return to the fold. Those nations which choose to resist that pressure will do so at their own peril.
Is it in America's long-term national interest to prevent the Russians from re-establishing their former empire? An empire which a majority of the Russian population appears to be in favor of re-establishing?
"Is it in America's long-term national interest to prevent the Russians from re-establishing their former empire? An empire which a majority of the Russian population appears to be in favor of re-establishing?"
In a word yes, so long as said empire is being established at the direct expense of US Allies or co-belligerents by criminal means. And I'm one of those that is a relative moderate in that I have no actual principled objection to the IN THEORY unification of Crimea or parts of the Donbas into Russia, provided they were done legally and freely. With my big issue being that what was done was very much not legal, not free, and conducted by thugs with guns going about torturing and murdering opponents.
If Russia's millions of people are so incapable of behaving decently to their neighbors that they cannot follow the practical and lawful steps to try and re-negotiate things like the Budapest 1994 settlement (by say asking to delineate the Ukraine-Russia Border and allow Crimea to vote to return, in exchange maybe for financial or nuclear compensation), then they will remain a problem we will have to deal with.
But in practice I think this is mostly theoretical. While millions of Russians may support the recreation of the Russian Empire in theory or abstract, that does not mean they are willing or able to absorb the kinds of losses needed to do so by force of arms, or to engage in the kind of endeavors that re hostile to US interests, international law (such as it is), or both. They sure as heck have no real reason to support the creation of what is essentially a Diet Daesh Wahhabi terror state in Chechnya that Putin has allowed to grow because so long as Chechnya remains officially a part of Russia he doesn't have to try and reconquer it again. They definitely don't support the colonization of vast parts of Siberia by Han Chinese and North Korean settlers, and especially not the PRC using these to claim large scale territorial claims.
Putin and his cabal of Deep State "Organs' goons are rather distinct because not just of their power and resources but how knee jerk anti-Western they are (like the BS claims that a NATO sub collided with the Kursk and caused that disaster), and so are a lot of the groups they tend to "caucus" with like the Kadyrovites, Duginites, and Communists. What comes to the fore after them in Russia is probably not going to be a constitutional utopia, but it's probably going to be significantly less hostile or toxic to us than what has been around for the last quarter century or so. And in any case will definitely be far less capable of fighting a protracted war given the demographic pyramid and loss of so much material.
Alaska.