I spent the better part of 1986 guarding either W33 or W79 or W48 artillery shells (or decoys, to quote Lazlo Hollyfeld “Boy, these military people are so untrusting.”) and training for World War III as part of NATO’s “nuclear sharing is caring” programme.
No idea what the CEP for the howitzers that would have been used would have been, but as this was before GPS and given that the task was “stop 1000+ T-72 from rolling into Hamburg”, my guess that they would have used the high end of the dial-a-yield setting. Possibly the neutron bomb option on the W79.
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I spent a good chunk of my time around Friedberg in the Mid - '90’s.
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Actually kinda terrifying, given the election coming up. Start a war to shore up votes, sure, why not? I would not put it past him for a second.
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These are the same folks that wanted to train pigeons to guide bombs in WW2. So yeah, they’re frickin’ ghouls.
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Border area is getting hot.
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Was just coming to post something about that… Here some more information:
Also, this…
And let’s not forget…
More on that:
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2020 has given us locusts, plague, revolution and famine, so war seems pretty on point. Can I get a new year? This one is busted.
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Don’t forget Murder Wasps.
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Apparently, 20 Indian soldiers plus an estimated 40 Chinese soldiers, beat each other to death with fists and clubs in a disputed border region in the Himalayas:
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More commonly known as penis envy.
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China’s top legislative body has voted to join a global treaty to regulate conventional arms sales that US President Donald Trump vowed to leave, in a sign Beijing is keen to position itself as a responsible player on the world stage.
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This string of posts is utterly terrifying. And given the other multitude of crises currently eating up all the oxygen, they will get no attention whatsoever. 2020’s “Hold my beer” game is going to get us all killed, man.
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Gonna put this here, because I’m not sure where else is should go… Kosovo had an election last year, the leftwing Self-Determination Party, led by Albin Kurti:
They only managed to form a government with the center right party in Feb., so he’s only been in office for a couple of months or so. One of his key issues was refusing to change the borders, as he does not see that as a solution to the problem of tensions with Serbia (rightly so, I’d argue, either way someone would be unhappy and belligerent about it). He also refuses to lift tariffs on Serbia, until they reciprocate. Serbia has also been working to undermine Kosovar sovereignty behind the scenes (I imagine our current president would be entirely receptive to rescinding our support for an independent Kosovar state). But Self-Determination seems to be the only game in town that is actively trying to root out neo-liberal structures… so this should come as no surprise:
He opposed President Thaci taking on emergency powers and wanted to deal with the pandemic from parliament and the LDK supported giving the president greater powers.
And then the president appointed the next prime minister, from the party that got the second most votes last year, LDK and Self-Determiniation is threatening to go back to the streets over it…
But finally, yesterday, this was announced:
I was pretty excited about Self-Determination getting into power. I thought that signaled a real positive development, but the mainstream parties have a vested interest in keeping the tensions with Serbia grinding just below the surface, and in keeping up the neo-liberal economy. It’s a damn shame.
[ETA] One more link on this… Trump was/is indeed trying to broker a deal between Serbia and Kosovo, with both presidents supposed to have met him at the White House:
Grennell was actively pushing for the no-confidence vote against Kurti.
I suspect that Thaci appointing Hoti over Kurti recently as the new PM was directly related to him probably being aware that he was going to have charges handed down against him. Hoti (head of LDK) seemed far more in line with Thaci than Kurti…
Anyway, Trump even managed to make a place known for being a mess an even bigger mess.
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Note the dedication date. Not that it matters.
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Paying Afghan terrorists to kill your enemies? I wonder where they got that idea from.
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A possible resource war, over one of the most basic of resources… water:
This is the future. And it should not be surprising that much of this is going to be played out in the global south, either, which has been a location of the pillaging of resources for a long time now by the global north.
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