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First some good news; I have blog posts done and scheduled till end of August, so there should be no Defence and Freedom blackout Saturdays for a while.
And now to the assorted links and bits of the month:
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This is the explainer for it:
So basically, this is highly ritualized warfare, on exactly the same level as ritualized Hoplite warfare. Except that the ancient Greeks fought over arable land, not useless rocks and ice-cold water.
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The French amphibious vehicle / pontoon bridging solution (there are few suppliers in NATO, I think only three):
cnim.com/en/businesses/defense-security-and-digital-intelligence/motorized-floating-bridge-pfm
(see video at bottom there)
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www.oryxspioenkop.com/2020/08/belly-of-beast-ypg-monsters.html
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twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1406692241956118533
Shit
WTF!?
Out of the EU and still causing trouble in Europe.
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The video is almost a year old and shows little but that they integrated their 130 mm design into a tank turret and test fired it. This flew totally under my radar for nearly 11 months. I suppose this means I'm officially no tank nerd.
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Finally. Now get the fuck out of Mali and all the other non-NATO and non-EU areas as well and focus on actual deterrence and defence!
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[German] www.kontextwochenzeitung.de/wirtschaft/533/trumpscher-wahlkampf-7556.html
[German] www.merkur-zeitschrift.de/2021/06/14/gegen-die-luegen/
Conservatives and right wingers all over the world have little to nothing to offer in terms of policies that actually improve the most voters' lives. They hardly talk about policies; they talk how evil and dangerous their enemies are; hatemongering and fearmongering. The actual conservatives also talk about how there is supposedly no alternative to their inaction.
They have to run smear campaigns based on fear and hate because that's all they got besides making the rich richer and enriching themselves. The difference is merely the intensity.
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[German] www.dwdl.de/magazin/83296/wie_kritische_medien_in_oesterreich_unter_druck_geraten/
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S O
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Afghanistan was the first case a member state called in NATO, so Germany was obliged to follow. Most deployments abroad serve diplomatic solutions to problems that would otherwise affect us and for diplomacy to work, it seems sometimes necessary to have larger deployments such as Mali. Overall, there should be less activity abroad, but once again I think you go a bit too far in the totality of your criticism. Of course, the results of the major deployments abroad have been underwhelming. This might show that modern war is taking a development for which our traditional structures are ill adapted.
ReplyDeleteAfghanistan did not attack NATO, and the group that had granted hospitality to the attack-linked guy had already lost power by the time the Germans arrived.
DeleteThe alliance obligation was about collective defence, not about a 20-year collective occupation of a country that never attacked NATO.
Let's agree on the stupidity of the whole thing. But as far as I know, Germany and others arrived to occupy for 20 years, because the US had made it the first time an alliance case was declared for NATO. Not doing this little stupid thing would have endangered a far bigger vital thing in Europe.
DeleteWrong, the European idiot politicians asked the Americans to use article 5 and make it a NATO thing so they could participate in the military adventure with an excuse.
DeleteThe Americans went in without NATO, without waiting and without asking. They were out for revenge, and in a hurry.
"Afghanistan was the first case a member state called in NATO, so Germany was obliged to follow."
ReplyDeleteThat is nonsense. Germany did not follow first, as did not France. And Afghanistan was of course not an NATO issue.
Only later Germany provided occupation forces (a mistake IMHO).
In 2003 an occupation without 400.000 soldiers, many of them from muslim armies, was a stupid idea, based on ideology, not on military experience.