2018/07/07

Link drop and comments July 2018


This link drop and commentary is much bigger than usual, don't get used to it! ;-)

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"According to a growing number of scientific studies, the kind of man who stockpiles weapons or applies for a concealed-carry license meets a very specific profile.
These are men who are anxious about their ability to protect their families, insecure about their place in the job market, and beset by racial fears. They tend to be less educated. For the most part, they don’t appear to be religious—and, suggests one study, faith seems to reduce their attachment to guns. In fact, stockpiling guns seems to be a symptom of a much deeper crisis in meaning and purpose in their lives. Taken together, these studies describe a population that is struggling to find a new story—one in which they are once again the heroes."

By Jeremy Adam Smith on March 14, 2018

I like the "heroes" angle in the article (it mentioned lots of correlations as well) as an explanation, for it explains how much at heart the issue seems to be for many people. I would like to add a specific observation of mine about conspiracy theorists:
Conspiracy theorists are in my opinion people who lack the intelligence or inquisitiveness to acquire a real information advantage relative to peers. They compensate this by making up or adopting conspiracy theories. Once a believer, they feel that they know something that the peers lack the intelligence or inquisitiveness to know or understand. Every rejection only reinforces their belief in their superior information status, for the others just 'don't get it'. And then many of them go on making up derogatory terms about 'those who don't get it', to feel even more superior.

I think this is quite similar to the "hero" angle of the article, for conspiracy theorists do create this narrative in which they are better and more responsible than the peers want to acknowledge, just as the gun nuts who discuss whether a 45cal has good-enough stopping power against a home invader or if it needs a 12 gauge pump action.
In their own narrative, they are the better people. Reality must not apply.

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(no comment)

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 http://iswresearch.blogspot.com/2018/07/putin-poised-for-easy-victory-ahead-of.html

Let's take the list of the authors and check after the 16th what gifts the self-proclaimed master negotiator handed over - and what he got for it (if anything).

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"The Washington Post's Fact-Checker blog has been keeping a strict count of President Donald Trump's many misstatements, untruths and outright lies. And, over the weekend at a rally in Michigan, Trump hit a(nother) milestone: He topped 3,000 untrue or misleading statements in 466 days in office.
That means that, on average, Trump says 6.5 things that aren't true a day. Every. Single. Day. (Trump is actually picking up the pace when it comes to not telling the truth; he has averaged nine untruths or misleading statements a day over the past two months, according to the Post's count.)
The problem with Trump's penchant for prevarication is that it's hard to contextualize it. We've never had a president with such a casual relationship to the truth. We have no count of how many lies Barack Obama or George W. Bush told per day because, well, they weren't as committed to saying and then repeating falsehoods as Trump quite clearly is."

Frankly, this makes meaningful big topic diplomacy with the U.S. almost entirely impossible. Nothing he says can be trusted to have any meaning, and he even lies to the face of foreign heads of government  when he ought to know that they know better. He's moronic enough to even admit it (though maybe that was an even more moronic lie). The foreign policy influence of the U.S. is now likely lower than at any time in the past 120 years. Even threats of aggression have a 'throw a coin' quality now.
He's a moron, and the U.S. is a security liability now, not an ally. The U.S. military spending does not matter, at least not as benefit to the allies-by-treaty of the U.S..

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related: Qatar has apparently understood how useless it is to host a U.S. military base. I called those who trust in U.S. military presence as security guarantee "fools" long ago already.

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 for those who can read German:
http://blog.fefe.de/?ts=a5c60853
I made such an observation in 2009.

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https://defence-blog.com/aviation/belarus-developed-drone-kit-anti-tank-rocket-launcher.html
I remember a Western much more ambitious project/proposal (from years ago) for an aerial sniper drone, including a semi-auto sniper rifle. It was fixed wing instead of multicopter, IIRC.

Small kamikaze drones with ~50 mm HEDP just ring more practical to me. They could target vulnerable surface*angle combinations of MBTs, penetrate all other IFVs and devastate individual infantrymen. Active protection systems and roof-mounted machineguns would be saturated by a swarm of such drones unless there's a suitable counter-drone hardware mounted at high readiness. Infantry would probably protect itself in bivouac and in buildings with the use of Dyneema nets, which might lead to a net-cutting counter-countermeasure (akin to barrage balloon-countering bomber in WW2) and so on.

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 http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/21723/darpas-amazing-reconfigurable-wheel-tracks-go-from-wheel-to-track-in-two-seconds-flat

It's competing with established the central tire inflation system + run flat tire approach. RWT seems much heavier, likely limited in speed, has much more (moving!) parts and thus more opportunities to fail and higher maintenance requirements.
I suppose a non-pneumatic tire with a narrow contact surface for roads and a wider one that comes into play on soft soils is the way to go, especially if the elastomer has additives for reduced flammability and the sides are walled off to keep mud out.

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www.aspistrategist.org.au/senate-estimates-submarine-escalates/
I totally get that Taiwan wants conventional AIP submarines (they're the underdog and submarines are the only major naval units that would be survivable and or might escape to friendly ports in the event of a PRC attack), but it's a very weird choice for Australia. Even SSNs could hardly do much for Australia's deterrence and defence unless they were armed with nuclear-tipped missiles. The Australian submarine cost estimates were terribly high from the start, cost growth should easily kill off the whole program if it was about deterrence & defence, not shipyard subsidising.

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Does anyone else wonder what fighter (combat) aircraft the Chinese are planning for their carriers?
The J-20 is extremely large, and almost certainly uneconomically large if not dimensionally unsuitable for the naval fighter job. The Chinese clearly appreciate having at least some low RF observable fighters, so it's plausible that they would want a naval LO fighter on their carriers in the 2020's. Their domestic alternative (J-10 series) is not LO.
It might be that the FC-31 (rumoured J-31) is the naval strike fighter option, or there's yet another project that the public doesn't know about (but then it's unlikely to yield operational carrier air wings until the late 2020's).
Whatever the Chinese are cooking up, it might end up in the hands of users in the European periphery or at the very least Pakistan.

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 https://defenceindepth.co/2018/06/20/the-twenty-first-century-general-from-individual-to-collective-command/

I disagree; in my opinion the current (Western?) command system is a result of poor incentives, poor disincentives, lacking oversight and poor self-discipline. The complexity that the author seems to identify as driver for the growth of command staffs could be addressed by the subsidiarity principle (this is similar to mission command in spirit, but more general). 

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theintercept.com/2018/06/18/donald-trump-angela-merkel-germany-refugees-immigration/
I looked at the crime stats a while ago and considered writing about it. The supposed crime wave post-2015 is non-existent.

Some excerpts
Homicides in 2015-2017: Lower than in 2009, slightly above 2014. Really high figures for '93-'97 instead.

Rape-murder: 8...13 in 2015-2017, compare that with 26 in 2011 and more than 20 in every year 2000-2006 (33 in 1999!). 2016 and 2017 were two of the three years with the least rape-murders since the reunification!

Then there's a category 'felonies against sexual self-determination' - rape, sexual harassment.
Minimal increase 2015-2016, bigger increase 2016-2017. That is, back to what was normal in 1997-2008. One has to keep in mind that this includes false allegations (rape-murder on the other hand should have about zero false allegations).

Another statistic is quite interesting, and shows why there was a jump from 2016 to 2017; change of laws and thus statistic. "Vergewaltigung und sexuelle Nötigung §§ 177 Abs. 2, 3 und 4, 178 StGB" was stagnant 2005-2016 (in the 7,022...8,133 range up and down), but for 2017 the statistic instead shows "Vergewaltigung und sexuelle Nötigung/Übergriffe §§ 177 Abs. 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8 und 9, 178 StGB" and boom! figure is up to 11,282 in 2017 from 7,919 in 2016. So that's mostly due to the enlarged definition.

One statistic is weird; rape by groups. It's up from 254 in 2015 to 524 in 2016. Now I suppose xenophobes and islamophobes cheer that finally one real world statistic validates their beliefs, but the same statistic went back to normal in 2017; 258 (without change of definition). The 2016 figure may be a typo.

You wouldn't get the idea that something drastic happened in 2015 by looking at German crime stats. Instead, you'd get convinced that crime was MUCH worse during the 90's, and also worse during the 2000's than during the 2010's so far.

That doesn't matter to the 'real world must not apply' faction, which prefers its own made-up stats a.k.a. fantasyland over reality.They even 'justify' their fantasy by claiming that the official statistics are rigged and they themselves know the real ones, even though they have zero statistics-gathering capability of their own.


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"114 candidates in Mexico's upcoming elections have been murdered, so far"
https://boingboing.net/2018/06/17/alejandro-chavez-zavala.html

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www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/06/25/ric-grenell-berlin-trump-218890
"An ambassador’s primary function is to serve as a go-between, German politicians and diplomats say—to explain and relay messages between the two countries.
Grenell, however, clearly views his role as a much more active one. Multiple sources from across Germany’s political, diplomatic and policy corps who have met him or been present for his meetings with high-level German officials say Grenell has made it clear he doesn’t want to be a messenger. Instead, these sources say, he sees himself as a “player” who has a role in influencing policy decisions—and a portfolio extending beyond just Germany to Europe more broadly. In return, Berlin sees Grenell first and foremost as someone who is here to sell Trump and Trumpism on this side of the Atlantic.
“He does not understand what the role of an ambassador should be,” says Nils Schmid, foreign policy spokesman for the center-left Social Democrats in parliament. “An ambassador is a bridge-builder who explains how American politics works, how the American government works, and at the same time explains to America how Germany sees things.” But Grenell, Schmid says, has “defined his role for himself, and it is not the traditional role of an ambassador. … He will work as a propagandist.”"

Chancellor Merkel and foreign minister Maas deserve to be ridiculed as weaklings if that Moron doesn't get kicked out soon. The current immigration debate is the perfect opportunity to kick him out. The wannabe fascists are going to count any change of course on immigration as their victory anyway, so inflict on them a defeat in parallel!

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gapm.io/test18
I got 11/13 right (guessed a few, though), was a little too pessimistic on #5 and #9, though I still doubt #5. I suppose it's a translation issue and they probably didn't ask for school time, but education time. It was evident from the first question that their German translation isn't perfect.

Feel free to do the test before you watch this kinda weird dude's video.

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china-defense.blogspot.com/2018/05/cold-war-artifacts-of-day-7-chinese.html

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https://mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2018/06/could-us-become-democratic-dictatorship.html

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The really good news about this is that once it's clear (if ever) that POTUS is a puppet we will know that this was an amazing natural experiment. The military of the United States was next to irrelevant to European Security and nothing terrible happened yet, not even a finishing campaign in the non-allied Ukraine.
This should kill (for rational, thoughtful people) the nonsensical myth that the U.S. subsidises Europe's security in the post Cold War world.
Remember that the non-American NATO partners outnumber the Russian military almost 2:1 in personnel and have two nuclear powers either of which is capable of killing 20% of Russians in 30 minutes!
 
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I intend to write about infantry doctrines for specific scenarios (especially the Baltic countries) soon. Feel free to give me hints about existing publications and doctrinal ideas that might be of interest for this. So far I took inspirations from Raumverteidigung, Jagdkampf, LRDG - but it doesn't quite satisfy, specifically for wintertime.

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Now you may call me "anti-American" if you want, but that's no derogatory term where I live any more, and an argumentum ad hominem is little short of a surrender on the issues.


S O
defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

22 comments:

  1. Any idea on the Trump Putin meeting?

    Climb down from the nuke delivery platforms that were never going to be built anyway?
    Promise to go in to new START?
    Trade of Donbass for sanction relief?
    Talks for Russia to enter NATO?
    Cyber version of the Geneva convention, that was hanging around 5+ years ago?

    Or is he just going to sit there with his arms folded and declare it was "the best. The best meeting. Very good. Lots of progress. Lots and lots?"

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    1. "best"?
      It was certainly the greatest meeting in history, Putin is a great guy and a very smart man who loves his people!

      I suppose Trump would trade the Russia sanctions for nothing if he could, he wouldn't even try to achieve a Russian withdrawal from Donbass.

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    2. Im feeling quite a bit of despair at the moment. Russia is undermining EU and European unity, the UK, GCC, Israel and the US are doing the same.

      New political party in the UK "For Britain". Tiny, will have no power, but their mission statement is interesting. Brexit wasnt enough, the EU will continue to undermine UK democracy by its proximity alone, it therefore must be destroyed. The Russian line was different during brexit, but France, Netherlands and German elections didnt go their way. So now the attack is more naked.

      Im unsure whether or not China sees a Europe united under the EU is useful or not. I have noticed the policy wonk output from China is united in the belief that Trump will win a second term. Obvious question, is that because they believe the US people will not turn against him, or does that suggest they would join in the influence campaign to keep him there.

      Divide and rule. Italy could be coaxed away with the promise of financial support. Austria, Poland, Hungary, are what they are. Are what they always have been.

      It seems obvious to me what the EU and European unity offer (especially given the current state of the other global power blocks) but that kind of complacency leads to Brexit and Trump.

      I dont think there is any permutation of actions the EU could have taken over the last 5 years to avoid the attacks. The effectiveness of the information war attacks. The external players see the EU as an obstacle and as such would always attack under every condition. It is a failure of some to think they can avoid being attacked by modifying their actions, or by making less 'mistakes'. Any attempt to engage in that thinking appears as weakness which only enhances the incoming attack.

      De Gaulle and his open anti americanism would be useful about now. Someone to counter the chaotic status quo with something other than professional detatchment and 'politeness'.

      If Europe and the EU can tread water for another 3-4 years they will emerge in a far stronger position. I wonder if that is possible.

      If 'we' (Im scottish so thats a conditional 'we') can be divided from each other and tossed into the global tumult, the near future is going to look incredibly bleak. The hawks of global capital swooping in to destroy and deregulate before signing up what remains of Europe as the US poodle for the fight against China.

      If everything stays on the same course, I see that as the future. Maybe there will be another financial collapse? Seems a strange thing to hope for.

      I'll be out this Friday the 13th in Glasgow. Big march against Trump. The next week should give us some foreshadowing.

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    3. I don't think that the Russians are that terribly influential in Europe or the U.S. - they try, but I suppose they don't achieve more than a bit nudging.

      The real problem is that the established parties and their policy style have disappointed in many countries because neoliberalism has disappointed (the lower income 90%). Additionally, governments have shied away from decisively dealing with some obvious and also some mostly imagined problems.

      This kind of calls into question the conventional wisdom of those parties even in foreign policy and grand strategy.

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  2. Perhaps we Europeans have a misconception of the US, because we consider us special for the US as NATO allies with all this Cold War history decades ago. I doubt Afghanistan plays much of a role for the US perception. The US is involved in multiple alliances that include more than just NATO. From an economic perspective, the relationships and control in the Indo-Pacific region might matter more for them than the old continent which they want to divide into reluctant old Europe and eager new Europe, lest some kind of challenge arises there.

    One could see the current Trump administration as a disentanglement from a web of contracts and promises the US has made in the past. In a way this policy started earlier with the "Coalition of the Willing". The general tone from US foreign policy is moving to a new international structure that gives the US more benefits and reduces other states into visible vassal structures. You could rhyme it with the development of the Delian League, especially regarding NATO. It might be only a question of time until there's a new Melian Dialogue.

    I'm not certain what to make out of the signs of an increasingly closer knit circle of power in the US that has a few families repeatedly holding high offices or at least running for these as endorsed candidates. It would need more of an investment to track down the connections between belonging to certain family groups and power in the history of Murica. As a development it tends towards what would be classified as an oligarchic republic, similar to aristocratic republics. Entrepreneurship beyond a certain success level can threaten any group's hold on power, making it likely that this development enacts legal and other barriers against such a threat. I'm not certain of these, but there seem to be some indicators for the existance of scaleability brakes for businesses in the US. Trump is faking his entrepreneurial credentials quite well, which is a reasonable behaviour to obfuscate the agglomeration of access, wealth and power in one family for now.
    My guess is that US foreign policy and the observeable open appearance of several dynasties is an expression of diminishing returns on investment across most economic sectors with increasingly bitter fights about the distribution of existing and newly obtained resources. The study "Why the West Rules -- For Now" is in part led by current wishful thinking in the US, but it does a good job at chainsaw carving development ceilings of some regions throughout human history. A breakthrough from one technocomplex to another was in the past also a profound change of societal organisation and habits. The integration of multiple aspects in such a transfer is so difficult that all civilizations on earth failed in the past repeatedly and independently to realize such opportunities. It's presumed that developments with each technocomplex hit a limit of diminishing returns at a metastable pinnacle. A less organized and specialized system follows that sometimes enables to realize attempted transformations to surpass the previous peak in a new socio-economic organization and technocomplex integration. The doom perception about our way of life could create a self-fulfilling prophecy of a missed breakthrough.

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  3. I agree that the criminality has not increased in germany through the illegal migration but you should mention the fact from the same statistics, that foreigner or germans with foreign origins are highly overrepresented and are responsible for much more crimes percental. And to rectify this information also: this was also the case before 2015 and also earlier, it has therefore nothing to do with the illegal migration.

    For example, in 2014 around 30 % of all crimes were commited by foreigners but their percentage of the population was only 10 %. And this numbers not include the germans with foreign origins. Today over 40% of prisonsers in prisons in bavaria are for example foreigners. But the percentage of foreigners in bavaria is only around 12 %.

    But as said, this has nothing to do with the migration crisis since 2015 and was some years in the 90s even more worse. The problem is imo that to many foreigners failed with the integration in germany. The danger of the migration of refugees now is therefore not that they commit crimes now, but that their integration will fail too and this will lead to a high rise of criminality in the future through this group.

    The solution could only be to invest as much as possible into the integration and also to restrict further migration or to be more selective with it.

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    1. I'm not motivated to look up your "30%" claim, certainly you will back that up? Can you?

      Don't bother. There are nowhere near "10% foreigners" in Germany (by any definition).

      I wouldn't be surprised if for example the Turkish speakers in Germany had an above-average crime rate in the age group of 14-30, though. The normal job market clearly discriminates against them, so their share of unemployed, underemployed and low wage earners is way above normal.

      Personally, I don't think we should integrate Syrian refugees at all. We should help Jordan caring for them in refugee camps/cities. I suppose Jordan could be convinced to accept deportations of Syrians in return.

      The African migrants are an altogether different issue. I suppose they should be dissuaded / deterred. It makes no sense to incentivise African villages to fund the dangerous migration to Europe when they should instead invest at home. Moreover, one year's expenses for a single migrant in Europe would suffice to make a substantial economic difference in a small African village. The current scheme is plain inefficient.

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    2. To clarify: I don't claim that your figures were either too high or too low - I just don't like gut-based figures being used in this particular topic instead of official statistics.
      Too many people walk around using made-up stats to divide and incite hate and fear.

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  4. For the question how many foreigners live in germany:

    https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/14271/umfrage/deutschland-anteil-auslaender-an-bevoelkerung/

    So we have actualy around 11 %. This around 11 % do not have the german citizenship, so one have to add germans with migration background, which is not done in the police statistics, which only divide between german citizen and non german citizens.

    But the truth is, that ethnic germans without migration background are overall much fewer criminal than germans witht a migration background. This has several reasons, for example the discrimination at the job market, relative poverty but there are also cultural reasons for that because of the structures of the families, the clan culture etc

    The most criminal groups are turks, kurds and arabs which are born here or has come here as youths. Many of them are german citizens or have both citizenships. Interestingly, if one turk has the turkish and the german citizenship, in the criminal statistics he is counted only as german.

    The main point is, that criminality through ethnic germans has dropped heavily since the 90s. As the criminality stays more or less the same in the last decade this means that more and more crimes are commited by forgeigners. For this are again several reasons responsible: the demographic change amongst the ethnic germans for exampel or the immense increase of wealth amongst this group in comparison to the wealth of migrants etc

    Refugees are now in germany around 2 % of the population, but responsible for around 8,5 % of all crimes.

    https://www.zeit.de/gesellschaft/zeitgeschehen/2018-04/polizeiliche-kriminalstatistik-2017-straftaten-verdaechtige-zuwanderer-opfer

    But ! i have to add here, that most of this crimes are not serious ones, and that other foreigners which live long here in germany and young german man of low income background are very similar, they commit the same amount of crimes procentual.

    This all said, the real problem is not criminality through refugess, but criminality of turks, arabs and kurds, born here or migrated here as youths. Several reasons for that as mentioned but amongst them are also cultural reasons (arab/kurdish clans dominate for example the organised crime scene mainly because of their clan culture etc)

    As the criminality from ethnic germans has dropped heavily this means a steady increase of criminality from this group.

    If germany now fails to integrate the refugees, they will become the same and will add to this problematic group. Which is until now not the case.

    To the question of the integration of the syrians: it is simply an illlusion to think, that this people will go home. Most of them will stay here forever. That is the simple truth. They are permanent migrants, not temporarly refugees. And Jordan, which has closed its borders actually and is deporting syrians with force back to syria will not accept deportations. Moreover also the majority of the german people will not accept such a thing, it is politically impossible.

    I agree with you completly about the african migrants, but this is also politically much more difficult as one would think.

    The simple truth is: a majority of the refugees will stay forever in germany. They will bring their families to this country too (this is only a question of time) and this will have serious consequences and very heavy changes in the german society. The AFD for example is only a beginning of this changes. They will include social changes, economical changes, cultural changes, political changes and also a change in criminality if we fail to integrate the refugees (which is most likely).

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    Replies
    1. Arab/Kurdish clans don't dominate the organised crime scene other than for petty crimes.
      We had organised crime hysteria in the 90's and very early 2000's (before the authorities found that terrorists and pedophiles are better bogeymen) and the solution to the then Russian, Kosovar, Italian and supposedly even Chinese triad organised crime was to apply asymmetric pressure to tilt the playing field and restructure the organised crime:
      Much police pressure on foreign OC, largely looking the other way with indigenous OC ("motorcycle club"/"Rocker" gangs) as long as the latter stayed 'civilised' and below the radar of the public.

      Regarding the percentage of foreigners; I checked the stats before I wrote that, and your figures are wrong. I do not see why you use a private commercial statistics service when very recent official figures are available:
      https://www.destatis.de/DE/ZahlenFakten/GesellschaftStaat/Bevoelkerung/MigrationIntegration/AuslaendischeBevolkerung/Tabellen/Bundeslaender.html

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    2. ?? I cannot understand your position for the question how many foreigners live in germany ? You wrote the following - i citate:

      >>There are nowhere near "10% foreigners" in >>Germany (by any definition).

      On your site with the official figures is stated, that actually 128,4 foreigners live in germany per 1000 inhabitants. Are this not 12,8 % ?

      https://www.destatis.de/DE/ZahlenFakten/GesellschaftStaat/Bevoelkerung/MigrationIntegration/AuslaendischeBevolkerung/Tabellen/Bundeslaender.html

      So it is even more than i wrote because i wrote only about 11 %.

      The Süddeutsche Zeitung (as an leftist newspaper) also wrote in april 2018 that there are 12,5 % foreigners in germany.

      http://www.sueddeutsche.de/news/politik/migration-zahl-der-auslaender-in-deutschland-gewachsen-dpa.urn-newsml-dpa-com-20090101-180412-99-860028

      One had to add here of cause that many of them are from other european countries, especially from eastern europe and from the balkans etc

      More interestingly:

      Amongst the children with 5 years or fewer not fewer than 38 % has a migration background.

      Because of the mathematics of the accelerated growth this part will fastly increase in the next generation.

      For the question of the OC: today for example the whole drug smuggling, trafficking of women and sex-slavery, and weapon smuggling is dominated by turkish and arab families and albanians. Also Rocker gangs are today highly dominated by the same groups, and this is true for "indigenous" ones as same as for special foreigner motorcycle groups.

      Turks, Arabs, Bosnians and Albanians etc dominate not only the Osmanen Germany which have been forbidden this weak, but also the Bandidios, the Hells, the Black Jackets, the United Tribunes etc

      IMO the OC is one of the most underestimated security problems today and this has nothing to do with hysteria. We have failed in thee 90s and also in the 2000s to elimiate or even only to weaken the OC and because everthing was then shifted for a new schwerpunkt islamist terrorism it has become much more worse today than it was ever before. The legalization of the prostitution was also a immense failure in this sector.

      Today the OC is imo more a (security) danger for germany than russia, or islamic terrorists or anything else, but despite this it is highly ignored.

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    3. Don't be fooled by the point of view. 12.8 looks close to 10, but it's actually 28% off the mark, so nowhere near 10. Most other ways of counting foreigners deviate much more anyway. I do draw the line at citizenship (and don't like dual citizenship for adults), though.

      I don't think that foreigners are much trouble, but at the same time I do not deny that some foreigner groups have above average crime rates. It's just that the environment and their social status largely explains this, so it's nothing that should lead to aversions.
      Lots of foreigner-hating shittalkers bring up utter ridiculous fantasies when talking about foreigners and crime, so I push back or call for cautious accuracy.

      I'm in favour of enforcing the law and not tolerating the system getting gamed.

      I have no aversion against migrants, but I don't see virtue in providing for them here. We should set the incentives and disincentives right so they develop their home country.

      The only migration that I like to have other than short-term exchange of academics is the immigration of highly qualified foreigners (and their small families) who (and this is important) CANNOT get a decent employment in their home country.
      I want no immigration of highly qualified people whom their home country is missing after investing in their education. To intend to attract such people is unethical IMO.

      "Because of the mathematics of the accelerated growth this part will fastly increase in the next generation."

      This is a slippery slope. Such lines make people believe bullshit. Migration abckground" includes Germans from Russia, it ioncludes Austrians etc etc - while many people think "Muslims" when they read such lines.
      Furthermore, even immigrants from high fertility rate countries change their fertility rates towards the German average. Lots of simple minds also think that Muslims multiply like rabbits without looking up the actual fertility rate of Turkey (which is only slightly above 2).
      -----------
      So in short; I'm not simple. Me arguing against some xenophobic position doesn't mean that I follow the multicuturalism ideology.

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    4. >>>I do not deny that some foreigner groups have >>>>above average crime rates. It's just that >>the environment and their social status >>>largely explains this

      Because of my job i have much work with this kind of people and therefore in my opinion thee social status and the enviroment are not sufficient to explain it. IMO the (social/traditional) culture is one main reason for it. With culture i do not realy mean "the islam" but parts of the cultures of the countries this people come from. Especially the value of the familiy and the clan. This clan structures are much more part of the problem than the social status.

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    5. In the Western migration-debate I have a few simple Questions, which most people -except Right-wingers- like to answer:

      1st: Who are you? Low-income; working-class; middle-class; Upper-middle-class?

      2nd: What is the percentage of non-European & low-income migrants in a circle of 500m around your residence?

      3rd: What is the distance between your residence and the nearest refugee-shelter?

      4th: Do the women, who are close to you, have their own private cars?

      These four Question are often enough to silence everyone from the Far Left to the moderate conservative.

      If not I follow up with These ones:

      5th: Why do the Vietnamese migrants' children in Germany, Poland and Czechia have a college-graduation-rates higher than the natives, while Arab-African-Latino Children struggle even in third Generation?

      6th: Japan, South-Korea, Taiwan have the nearly the same Problems like the Western countries. (Ageing; Public debt etc.) But they don't have Islamic terrorism and extremely low crime-rates Why?

      7th: How long did took the Tiger economies to bring down their birthrate to (sub-)replacement-rate? Why can't the Arabs and African massively accerlerate the closing of the demographic-window?

      8th: As part of Fighting against the root-causes of Migration, famine, civil-wars: Do you support liberal abortion-shemes and are you willing to donate for abortion-clinics in developing countries?

      It would be a very nice surprise if my comment is unlocked and the blog-owner would answer the first 4 questions and Maybe even the follow-up ones.

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    6. 1) Economically comfortable now, though I wasn't always.
      2) Unknown, but maybe 10%. It used to be higher until I moved for a new job.
      3) No idea, but during the early 90's asylum crisis it was about 2 km. AFAIK the refugees are in regular apartments here (many are vacant), not in some camp.
      4) At about the same rate as men.

      No idea why you brought "Latino" into the context of Europe. We don't use this category in Europe.

      5-7; For the greater question why some countries don't get their shit together I recommend the book "Why Nations fail", which offers a pretty good explanation IMO. You can get the idea by reading the free blog (instead of the book) from the beginning, too.
      http://whynationsfail.com/
      also this
      http://www.who.int/nutrition/healthygrowthproj_stunted_videos/en/

      7: https://www.prb.org/menafertilitydecline/

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  5. To clarify: i do not want to divide or to incite fear and hate, but the truth is, that division, fear and hate will be results of the mass migration to germany. It is a dialectic developement. The simple presence of "them" will increase fear and hate of an "us". The result of the mass migration will therefore not be an colourful peaceful "together", but seperation, violence and apartheid.

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    Replies
    1. Accepted, except the "apartheid" nonsense. You could have written "discrimination".

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    2. The tried and tested strategy of the left: Allow immigration that they could have known people would not like. Blame any problems on the natives, blame growing right wing support on them being stupid, bad people ("Pack", "Deplorables"), badly informed ("need to explain our policies better"), whatever. Be surprised when the right wing takes over the government. Already happened in Austria, Italy and arguably the US. It would be in their own interest to compromise before even more countries go that way.

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    3. That's not really "the left". The only German left wing party Die Linke is in an internal war about whether immigrants are good for German employees or not. Part of the says it's no good, part of them is more close to the greens and their almost perfectly consistently pro-minority stance.

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  6. If your thinking about doing a write-up on the Baltic states the RAND Corporation did a report on them a while ago that concluded Russia could overrun them in 60 hours, might be worth taking a look at. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1253.html

    Also, have you read the leaked German military plan that deals with the collapse of the EU?

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    Replies
    1. I wrote about that plan, it was visibly designed by committee and intellectually lazy.

      The RAND study was covered here a while ago.
      http://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2016/02/reinforcing-deterrence-on-natos-eastern.html

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  7. „It's competing with established the central tire inflation system + run flat tire approach. RWT seems much heavier, likely limited in speed, has much more (moving!) parts and thus more opportunities to fail and higher maintenance requirements.“

    In additon it lacks the springness, isolation and flexibility of a simple pneumatic tire, far more so if the latter has CITS where air pressure can be adjusted to fit the various circumstances. I suspect that even a very well engineered RWT will have high loadings on it's own components and the chassis. I would like to see some footage over rough ground.

    „I suppose a non-pneumatic tire with a narrow contact surface for roads and a wider one that comes into play on soft soils is the way to go, especially if the elastomer has additives for reduced flammability and the sides are walled off to keep mud out.“

    Tweels like Michelin have indeed very interesting properties. The hub is suspended by flexible spokes while the track is preloaded, allowing for deformation but returning to it's form without to much bounce. Compared to pneumatics the footprint can be much longer and in a military context with they should suffer far less from a perforation.

    I suppose that there are tradeoffs between offroad capabilities and onroad speed and safety and those can not be reduced as with CITS by adjusting the air pressure. Perhaps in this context wider tyres with wider spokes allow for more lateral stability.

    A combination between a non-pneumatic tyre and CITS might be possible. A fairly flexible sidewall as seen in pneumatics might encase the non-pneumatic enabling higher pressure and less flex for quick long-distance travel. Of course the air has to circulate throughout the tyre. For offroad application pressure would be reduced as low as suitable with the spokes taking up more and more of the load. Such tyres could also fit into the normal tyre rules for non-military vehicles.

    'Heat might be harder to shed just like sand and mud when damaged tough. But those seem to be very small cons compared to the big pros.

    Firn

    P.S: I see still some use for bolt-on track systems for soft wet ground and snow in particular, giving far more ground clearance, lots of gearing reduction and a very long footprint. However they are a niche applicaton while tweels could be rolled out for almost any.

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