Defence and Freedom: Blog

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2026/08/31

How to fix the Belgian Armed Forces revisited

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8 1/2 years ago I wrote about a kind of proposal how to get lean yet purposeful Belgian armed forces.

Here's what I would do differently now if I could travel back to 2018 to improve the blog post:

about nothing

Reason:

The old reasoning holds. The F-35 purchase was wasteful. Belgium is too small (and indebted) to fund the development of equipment that solved pressing problems, such as a Patriot version with a mast-mounted 360° radar and a missile to intercept cruise missiles at 100 ft altitude (such as IRIS-T SLM). Or an affordable C-UAS RCWS for anything ranging from 4x4 car to MBT as I already called for in 2017.

The small army I devised (one 1st and one 2nd rate active mechanised brigade, territorial forces) would hold up well today. Oriented against Russia, not daesh or Taleban, it would be considered about right today, save for lack of drone focus. I should have mentioned a drone component in the brigades' description, that's it. In my defence; I was thinking more of a PGM/drone company added than an entire drone battalion.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

2026/03/13

A look back: My theses as of 2014

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I had a summary of Defence & Freedom (my) theses back in (and up to) 2014:

/2014/05/blog-defence-and-freedom-theses.html

Let's use that to see how good or bad that list looks today.

2007 looks fine to me, save for the fortifications thing. Field fortifications wouldn't work against Westerners, but Russians are incapable enough that they work against them.

2008 I suppose opinions vary about the counter-piracy thing.

2009 I suppose my take on IFVs is still an outlier, despite the failures of BMPs in Ukraine.

2010 looks fine.

2011 The low force density thing is very debatable in light of how the Russo-Ukraine War went down, though I was rather thinking of a different scenario.

2012 The remarks on deconfliction, navies, army aviation and air force combat aviation are still outlier opinions.

2013 I know the opinion on submarines is still an outlier.

2014 They actually began getting ACV six years later, albeit I'll say those are underwhelming.

So 57 theses, only three of them were kinda (though not clearly) refuted by events and six are still very much outlier opinions (even though somewhat supported by events, but events did not change majority opinions).

I actually expected the list to have fared worse.

Maybe I should write a bit about the many "I told you so" theses.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

2025/08/17

My critique of Israel

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I did a search in the blog archive to see how much I criticised Israel after all.

January 2009 Called Israel a source of alienation between NATO members and Arab countries

April 2009 Claimed that Israel alienated Western nations with its behaviour for decades

December 2008 Expressed doubts that Israel's self-defence against Hamas/Gaza was proportionate / implying it was excessive.

July 2009 Called Israel's behaviour unacceptable, singling out the bombing of other countries

July 2010 'tail wags the dog' graphic symbolising Israel-U.S. relationship

May 2011 Called Israel a "regional troublemaker"

September 2011 Claimed that Israel has a "usual" disrespect against Muslim nations

November 2011 "Expect a revolt if you run the largest prison on earth." [Gaza]

December 2012 Insisted that Israel is no ally to the U.S., using the concept of an "ally" that's dependent on a signed & ratified two-way alliance, not mere good relations. I repeated this briefly in April 2018.

July 2014 A blog post mentioning the lopsided casualty figures in a Israel-Gaza/Hamas conflict at the time. I also supposed that Israel&Egypt could be pressured into peace with Gaza becoming Egyptian.

July 2014 Criticism of Israel's grand strategy as stupid, drawing parallel to the Crusader states that were dependent on outside support, too.

May 2015 Israel as #5 threat future threat to Germany, but rated "utterly unrealistic"

July 2015 "Israel has earned a reputation for not necessarily letting refugees return"

April 2017 "Israel's attempt to hold on to occupied territories since 1967 in spite of repeated UN resolutions demanding its withdrawal"

August 2018 Claimed that Israel deviated from Western norms and "Apartheid light, routine disregard of international norms"

May 2019 Indirectly called Netanyahu corrupt

October 2020 Called Israel an illegal occupier of the West Bank

June 2021 Linked without comment to an article of HRW and another from The Intercept that were criticising Israel

October 2021 Mentioned Israel hacking, assassination and subversive actions without elaborating

January 2022 Mentioned without elaboration habitual Israeli occupation and bombing of foreign lands

February 2022 Linked to an article about allegations that Israeli police illegally wiretapped Israeli citizens

February 2022 Called Israel an aggressor and occupier since 1967

February 2022 One post that is all about Israel's offences and I called it "unacceptable behaviour"

July 2022 Called Israel 5th most important threat to Germany due to the range of its nuclear-tipped missiles (later quoted this part in July 2024)

October 2023 I wrote that peace in Near East should be pursued by forcing a solution on the regional countries, not by negotiating with them.

November 2023 I wrote "Israel has to leave the occupied territories and go back to its pre-1967 borders. The state of Israel is only legitimate within the pre-1967 borders." and that the naval (longtime) blockade of Gaza by Israel was illegitimate

April 2023 Mentioned that Israel habitually commits wars of aggression

January 2024 Mentioned that Israel demolitions buildings in Gaza outside of combat.Also claimed that Israel "played the victim card too brazenly" (overplayed it).

I did NOT count my comments in the comment sections for economy of effort reason.

Now put these 28 instances in perspective; about 2,500 blog posts were written in total!

Looking back, I think not one of those statements is indefensible.

The "habitual", the #5 threat ranking, the opinion that Near East parties should be dictated/forced into peace rather than negotiation partners are unusual opinions, for sure. Definitely outside of mainstream. Still, in hindsight I still think of them as reasonable.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

2025/07/11

A track record that needs no hiding

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I searched for an old blog post to quote and instead found a blog post-sized comment of mine (colouration added):

I covered Russia previously
http://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2007/08/no-major-war-in-europe-in-next-ten.html
and as much as I like low military spending, it's a bit more complex than what you suggest.
I don't expect them to turn on us militarily in a few years (rather on Ukraine), but don't exclude it as a possibility.

First problem: Lags (a.k.a. initiative)
The reacting powers would react with a lag of about three years due to imperfect information collection, processing and distribution.

Second problem: Aggressor's timing advantage
An aggressor can plan ahead to be ready for war in year x (Hitler planned 1940 for basic readiness, 1944 for full readiness against Russia and 1947 for naval readiness against the UK).
He can ensure that his forces are fit at that time. A reacting power - no matter whether low or high expenditures in peacetime - is at a disadvantage.
High peacetime expenditures can even be a disadvantage, as the equipment will be older on average than the aggressor's (example France 1940 - it still had many WWI guns).

My conclusion (I wrote several blog posts around it) is that we need to be aware that conventional warfare is the only truly threatening one (besides genocidal nuclear warfare). Militias at the end of our world will never touch us much, they cannot invade us or cut our sea lanes. Conventional warfare deserves our attention.

Our policy as well as our armed services need to be fit to react quickly.
We need good education for the relevant politicians, a good cultivation of military competence (including a reserve of trained soldiers; basic infantry training suffices to save 6+ months of lag) and we need always competitive hardware designs.
That's more easily done by many incremental steps instead of 35-year- development and replacement cycles as usual for much of our hardware.

Finally, we need to prevent that these precautions take effect - we should prevent WW3. Reduce reasons for war, don't create new ones - and avoid wasteful arms races and wars.

Published in February of 2009. The typical contents of military blogs and military news were still dominated by the occupation war in Iraq at that time.

I can proudly state that I'm still 100% behind those statements and feel pretty good compared to most people who actually got paid in the 2009...2021 period for commentary or studies on military affairs.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

2024/11/03

Blog posts about American fascism (summary)

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https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2016/11/leaving-nato.html (edited in 2025, initially I forgot about this blog post)

https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2019/12/lets-open-our-eyes-to-ugly-reality-as.html

https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2022/07/threat-country-ranking-for-germany-top.html

https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2022/08/it-security-for-real.html

https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2024/07/free-europes-security-challenge-if.html

https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2024/07/free-europes-security-challenge-if_8.html

https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2024/07/free-europes-security-challenge-if_19.html

https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2024/07/free-europes-security-challenge-if_29.html

The sitting POTUS is a weakling in foreign policy and too undisciplined in regard to domestic spending. His predecessor and potential successor is a lying demented moron who is a caricature of a Fascist. A village idiot on the grandest stage because of filthy rich daddy, corrupted media and an already rotten political party.

The European politicians are almost all useless, weak minded people with insular competence at getting into power. None of them prepared properly against the threat of a Fascist America that we may face very soon. I don't mean preparing for facing Russia alone; anyone who pretends that Free Europe couldn't stop Russian military might without American help is a fool. The Russians can't even defeat the Ukrainians who receive a little help. Their Soviet heritage arms and munitions stocks are almost exhausted. No, the issue is that we are not prepared to at least mitigate what harm a Fascist POTUS would want to inflict on us, much less deter any such aggression.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

2024/08/02

I got some things right, too

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I could be so proud of the blogging since 2007 - so much has been confirmed by the Russo-Ukrainian War.

importance of small drones
importance of defences against small drones
importance of small unit electronic warfare / jamming
Russia as main threat in Europe, small wars of occupation as stupid distraction
unimportance of surface navies in European waters
importance of port security
importance of airbase security against missiles and drones
importance of quantity of artillery munitions
questionable effectiveness of anti-radar missiles in DEAD (destruction enemy air defences) role
waging air war with missiles instead of strike packages
low value of attack helicopters in face of air defences and fighters with look down radars
importance of sub zero temperature readiness (though I focused more on electronics than boots)
importance of having much infantry
importance of artillery
lethality of dumb HE shells on AFVs
importance of readiness for conventional warfare in Europe
judgement that Russia isn't terribly powerful conventionally (and we did thus overspend, while having a huge efficiency problem)
importance of area air defences
the non-usability of nuclear munitions
the utter, devastating mental incapability of Western politicians to think about and execute a strategy that deserves to be called a strategy
great importance of fragmentation protection, small importance of bullet protection (in body armour)
dismissing 8x8 offroad combat/assault capabilities
dismissing the 'frontal APFSDS duel' dogma in Western MBT design
dismissing IFVs as being a combination of insufficient survivability and giving too few dismount seats for the buck
importance of camouflage
CAS unlikely to be commonplace in large conventional warfare

(The links are examples.)

I did also some things wrong, but I wrote about that before, and repeatedly so.

S O
defence_and_freedom@gmx.de
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2022/05/07

[temporary] Blog

No smartassery from me today, I've been too busy the last days, and too distracted.

There's plenty to write about due to the Ukraine War, but many things were easily condensed into such short texts that I wrote on Twitter about it.

https://twitter.com/DefenceFreedom

I hope Putin doesn't pull a Goebbels on 9th May Parade.

The most peaceful scenario is he gets a Mariupol/Azov National Guard formation surrender in time and declares a success of his special military operation and seeks a UN-backed ceasefire that freezes the conflict for years to come.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

2022/01/28

Twitter account

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I've set up a twitter account with the intent to first describe the blog a bit and then 'tweet' a mix of new (Saturdays) and old (when I feel it) blog posts as an additional gateway to the blog.

Feel free to follow and do whatever people do on twitter. Just pretty please make mommy proud of your manners in the replies there.

twitter: @DefenceFreedom

S O
defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

2022/01/22

(temporary) no blog post today

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There's no blog post prepared for today. Don't worry, I'm fine.

Feel free to discuss something in the comments.

S O
defence_and_freedom@gmx.de
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2020/12/12

Opinions are worthless

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There are four major content categories in my opinion; information, entertainment, opinion and scientific contributions.

I have never attempted to provide scientific contributions with this blog, and I have largely ignored news. It was always about some information and some opinion, and rather more of the latter.

Now I'm a bit in a crisis as an author, for I have concluded a while ago that I'm at an age where I simply don't give a shit about the opinions of people any more. More about that later, but the immediate issue is that someone who doesn't give a shit about anyone's opinions any more maybe shouldn't write a blog that's more opinion than plain information. And the entertainment factor is limited to a few images in the link dump blog posts on each first Saturday of the month.

So why don't I give a shit about opinions any more? Well, there's a simple reason why opinions so often do clash: Humans are incredibly bad at forming conclusions/opinions. This isn't even about the availability of information, about experiences or about attention. Humans are outright terrible at the entire process of forming an opinion. It happened way too often that I write or say one thing, and the other person reads/hears something completely different. It's commonly "Trip to Jerusalem", just with two people and the result isn't funny. Most people can be confronted by a most solid fact and completely fail to appreciate or accept it. I've observed over and over again that people also fail at basic logic, such as theory of sets. Logical fallacies and psychological self-defence mechanisms reign supreme.

The opinions of individuals are crap, for individuals are crappy at forming an opinion. Our hope lies in the hopefully functioning decisionmaking of crowds and in getting lucky with picking the people for positions of great power [sarcastic laughter].

The concept that there are people whose opinions should be heard is bollocks. Information (facts) should be disseminated, but opinions? Why care? The opinions of individuals are but a detour between information and collective actions.

What a depressing thought; so much that's getting written or recorded is probably worse than even the most stupid forms of entertainment.

And the most depressing thing is that my opinion-forming is probably compromised by the same problems.

So sometime around Christmas time I'll take the time to re-think this. Maybe I'll shift my blogging style, maybe the subconsciousness will insist on doing things as usual. A switch to scientific discourse style would cause a horrible workload. I would suddenly be compelled to look up all that info and link to/quote it instead of simply recalling and using it.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de
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2020/05/09

[temporary] this week no content

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One text is incomplete, the other cancelled. No content for today.

S O
defence_and_freedom@gmx.de
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2020/02/08

Musings about why I dare to voice dissent (so regularly)

I wrote something along these lines before: It would be a phenomenal achievement if I was 51% of the time correct whenever I criticize and bring forward a very unconventional proposal. Even 20% would be quite a feat and make the blog a super worthwhile read.

Why do I dare to publicly dissent on topics where I am (and have been for a long time at least) an outsider, without (much) confidential info at hand?

I can hardly ever point to a comprehensive operational research, wargame or other conventional means of justifying conclusions on military matters. I cannot claim to have superior yet secret information.

Why do I dare to dissent?

My justification is about parallels and systemic issues.

They show at least that I could be correct.

Parallels:

Military history shows that military insiders (professional experts) are wrong much of the time, and even in disagreement (which by logic means not all of them can be correct). Many wars have been fought with every single party entering the war with wrong ideas, and we even know of armed bureaucracies drawing wrong conclusions from years-long wars they participated in.

The fallibility of the insider experts and the armed bureaucracy's leadership can be considered proven by overwhelming indirect evidence historical analogies if nothing else.

Outsiders on the other hand have occasionally proved to have superior insights. Jan Gotlib Bloch was a spectacular example; he got early 20th century warfare between industrialised nations more right than some European armies a year into the actual First World War (then "Great War").

Systemic issues:
I am using established theories to argue that systemic bias leads the armed bureaucracies astray from the optimum. Examples are:

Niskanen's budget-optimising bureaucrat
principal-agent problem
path dependencies

These three actually quite simple ideas are extremely versatile, pervasive, powerful. You can apply them almost everywhere. Sadly, the real world phenomena described by these models lead to inefficiencies everywhere.

______________

And then there's my experience that most officers are actually not terribly bright, not really creative (especially not the senior ranks), usually terribly impaired by group think, some of them aren't all that much interested in or passionate about their job and most of all, they are rarely very knowledgeable on military affairs beyond what they were taught or experienced themselves.

I estimate no more than 50...100 German active duty officers exceed my military history knowledge*, and probably none of them also exceeds my military technology knowledge* or my foreign army doctrine knowledge*. I may be utterly wrong about this, but how likely is it that anyone who actually exceeds me on both counts is also extremely effective at shaping the structure and doctrine of the Heer or Luftwaffe?

There are people who are better-suited to blog about the issues I am covering, but I don't see them doing it.

It's imaginable that I am about correct in a worthwhile amount of blog posts.
So that's why I dare to dissent.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

*: A subjective statement, for we don't know how to quantify and thus compare such knowledge. I suppose my point is still understandable.

2019/06/01

Link dump June 2019

So this is a thing in South Asia.

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www.independent.co.uk/voices/douma-syria-opcw-chemical-weapons-chlorine-gas-video-conspiracy-theory-russia-a8927116.html

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"China's facial recognition at work"
9gag.com/gag/a83Xr31

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theintercept.com/2019/05/28/bernie-sanders-asked-bill-kristol-to-apologize-for-pushing-the-iraq-war-guess-what-happened-next/

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www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/22/uk-suffers-crushing-defeat-un-vote-chagos-islands

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This reminded me of him:

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Another one from Jeffries:

(She's one of those people who famously seem to cheat time, like Kate Beckinsale, Patrick Stewart, Monica Bellucci, Paul Rudd, Suzanna Hoffs, Avril Lavigne, Jim Parsons, Allyson Hannigan, Christie Brinkley, Lori Loughlin, Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock.)

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theintercept.com/2019/05/17/us-media-journalists-iran-coverage/

There's an easy solution to end the warmongering against Iran and stabilise the Persian Gulf region's northern side for good: Iran needs to enter an alliance with a nuclear power. It could enter an alliance with Russia, with China, with India or major EU powers.

The media makes it look as if Europe couldn't decisively interfere against the warmongering. That's wrong. Europe's power and influence is limited by its own will more than by anything else.

Admittedly, the cooperation-focused policies in Europe have created a political class ill-suited to deal with sociopaths effectively.

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Hat tip to "An economic sense", an underrated economics blog.
He clearly should have made it into this list, but then again, the very well-known Mankiw didn't either.

My background as economist sometimes lets me write about economics and military affairs issues myself once in a while:

/2017/01/human-sacrifice-and-military-spending.html

/2015/11/preferences.html

/2014/11/labour-unions.html

/2013/11/sunk-costs-principal-agent-problem-how.html

/2013/11/german-grand-strategy-and-economics.html

/2013/10/opportunity-costs-and-decision-making.html

/2013/09/musings-about-hard-shells-and-soft.html

/2013/08/niskanens-bureaucrats.html

/2013/07/national-vitality-growth-military-power.html

/2013/07/economics-wonkish-we-systematically.html

/2012/01/euro-crisis-and-defence.html

/2009/01/update-on-stimulus-packages-military.html

/2009/02/defense-stimulus-topic-and-this-blog.html

/2008/10/public-debt-military-expenditures.html

This might be considered really wrong, but I still think the basic issue is a real one because I have this childish-naive notion that things better be sustainable:

https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2008/10/excursion-economic-crisis-in-usa.html

https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2009/02/extent-of-economical-problem-because.html

"I'm curious how well this economic opinion will stand the test of time."
So far I'm not too enthusiastic.

Looking back, I must say I did not fully resist the fashionable public debt craze of 2009-2012. I did largely resist the then fashionable calls for austerity (except for the Greek military budget IIRC, but that's a special case as much of the spending goes to imports), though. Another saving grace is that I called for at least some counter-cyclical spending (hastened military procurement and IIRC also infrastructure projects to have some expansionary effect without much influence on long-term public debt).

As a conclusion, I must say my previous (anti-Keynesian) professor for public finance lectures probably still had me influenced with the crowding-out thing that turned out to not matter under the specific circumstances (zero lower bound issue) of 2008-2013.

I like to cultivate an outside-the-box, non-mainstream attitude and way of thinking, but some of my macroeconomics postings from 2008-mid 2013 weren't nearly as timeless as I hoped my blog posts would prove to be. I still don't think I was wrong, but history didn't exactly prove me correct on the trade balance and public debt alarmism issues, either.

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https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/05/30/after-neoliberalism

What must be said; nothing in there is contrary to economic science. To the contrary, it's exactly what economic research suggests will or does work well. Neoliberalism on the other hand is only partially reconcilable with economic theory and empirical observations. Neoliberalism is based on first order effects in the better cases and utter nonsense in some other cases (the latter category is largely confined to the anglophone world). Stiglitz is no proponent of some radical left wing ideology; he's proposing to make use of what we know about real world economics as opposed to fantasyland economics.
Neoliberalism isn't the origin of all economic evils in the West, though. A couple metrics began a trend for the worse in the 1973-1980 period already. Neoliberalism was probably less harmful with its pursuit of its agenda than by not doing anything about those bad trends.

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www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/new-congressional-study-finds-little-economic-benefit-2017-tax-cuts

Don't fall the anarchists' voodoo economics,

which end up eroding the strength of the nation.

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My pageviews from an arbitrary recent 7-day period (monthly is about 25k):

I have no explanation for why the German share kept dwindling over time. The Russian share is even more confusing - it wasn't nearly this large before and I haven't written anything of special interest to Russians since the Shilka article in February.

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tankarchives.blogspot.com/2019/05/t-34-85-review.html

"The present T-34 ammunition capacity is 55 rounds: 5 APCR, 20 armour piercing, 30 HE. This is not enough and only lasts for 1.5-2 hours of battle."

This is a common theme from combat reports and memoirs about tank warfare (which is mostly combat against opposition other than tanks). 30 rds HE and thousands of machinegun rounds lasted for less than 2 hrs in this report. We should expect that 10+ of today's 120 mm HE rounds would be expended in an hour of combat. Resupply of munitions should be considered a most important aspect of tactical combat and operational-level efforts unless it's about pursuit (pursuit is much more about fuel supply and POW handling than about munitions supply).

I'm not informed about the inventories of dedicated 120 mm HE tank rounds such as DM11*, but I have a hunch they would be expended real quick, and then most Western tankers would use the less efficient HEAT supposed multi-purpose rounds against "soft" targets, expending them really quick to get the desired effects. Western MBTs might be downgraded to coaxial 7.62NATO machinegun fires against all soft targets well before the campaign ends.

This old topic did hit a similar spot.

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Sometimes, armed bureaucracy public relations people should better just admit they're clueless, useless and stupid. It would be less disastrous than them trying to do their job.

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tankarchives.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-myth-of-disposable-t-34.html

I have argued against this myth myself as well. Claims that the durability of a T-34's was a few days does not square with the quantities produced and the inventories in service (thousands) over a span of years.

About 80,000 T-34s were produced during WW2, and the average inventory was somewhere around 3,000 to 4,000 That would lead to them lasting for 1/20th to about 1/30th of the war duration (June 1941 to August 1945 for the USSR) in a first approximation estimate. This leads to a likely average T-34 life of more than two months during WW2 (much of it in storage, transit or training, though). It certainly wasn't a few days, for then they couldn't have trained the tank crews.

My suspicion is that the myth rests on the rumour that T-34s produced in Leningrad during the siege had very short lifespans (some of them were supposedly manned by workers, not tank-trained soldiers). An average durability of few days at the front may have been correct there in 1942. Most T-34s in use were likely used for months, though.

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Vote shares among first-time voters
in the election for the European Parliament in Germany

The radical right wingers largely failed in the recent election in Germany; they got more votes than previously (back when their party wasn't overtly xenophobic and nationalistic yet), but less than polls indicated for them if there had been federal elections instead. They got a mere 11% and frankly, I don't see them ever getting past 18% (but then again I didn't expect the FDP strawfire a couple years ago or the recent greens boom past 20% either). There are only so many right wingnuts and protest voters in this country.

The young voters clearly don't see their future in the radical right, and now don't seem to like the formerly huge and dominating conservative and social-democratic parties either.

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[German video]

I may have been too nice to the CDU last time when I diagnosed them to not be radical right wingers on the same slippery slope towards overt authoritarianism. Their chairwoman and designated future chancellor reacted to electoral defeat and Rezo's video with a public statement that can only be interpreted as the wish for censorship against such disagreeable non-traditional media. The previous CDU call for censorship was von der Leyen's anti-constitutional call for internet censorship (with pedophiles as excuse for the entrance into censorship).
The CDU may not seem so undemocratic as some radical right wing parties because so far it did not feel threatened in its power. Anyway, that chairwoman just disqualified herself from all high offices in my opinion.

I don't think she or the other CDU politicians who got in trouble this week really want censorship. It's less simple, but even more dangerous than that. They think of themselves as the 'good guys', and 'good guys' don't commit atrocities. So by definition they cannot want censorship, as censorship is bad. They just want some etiquette (I wonder why they didn't find this word themselves) that shuts up critics or at least moderates them to the level of harmlessness (taming) that the CDU is used to from newspapers and TV shows.
See? That's not 'censorship'. Just as Americans were the good guys and of course did not torture. They waterboarded, but since Americans are the good guys this meant that waterboarding must not be torture (when Americans do it). It's a slippery slope that unhinges the taboo of being evil. That's even more dangerous than overt agitation in favour of censorship.

"ich wusste nicht dass 70 Jahre Grundgesetz ne Abschiedsfeier war"

("I didn't know that 70 years German constitution was a farewell party)

A youtube comment

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The inability of the CDU to cope with the Youtuber criticism should not surprise**. The other parties would probably not be much better at it.

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[for German speakers] Und nun noch mal in inhaltlich anderer Langform:

Wenn man sich dieses Wahlergebnis und diesen Link hier

https://blog.fefe.de/?ts=a215a302

(= leider nur ein Beweis von Anekdotenqualität)

ansieht, dann stellt sich hier in der Tat die Frage, ob das jetzt ein tipping point war, also ein Ereignis, bei dem ein scheinbar stabiles System an seiner Unzulänglichkeit kollabiert.

Könnte es wirklich sein, dass die Generation U30 oder gar Generation U40 aufsteht und gegen den Status Quo vorgeht? Es ist kaum ein Geheimnis, dass die Politik sich kaum um Langfristthemen und Jugendinteressen kümmert. Ebenso ist es kein Geheimnis, dass nach ca. 70 bzw. 30 Jahren Bundesrepublik in Politik und Verwaltung alles festgesetzt und kaum noch zu entschiedener Reform fähig zu sein scheint.

Falls das wirklich ein tipping point ist - und bei sowas verschätzt man sich sehr, sehr leicht -, dann wäre eine mögliche Konsequenz, dass wir von einer (abnehmend) programmatisch links-rechts orientierten Politik zu einer jung-alt Orientierung übergehen könnten.
Die alte links-rechts Orientierung der Politik funktioniert ohnehin nicht mehr, seit die SPD in den 90ern nach Lafontaines Wahlniederlage auf Bundesebene neoliberal wurde.

Eine jung-alt Orientierung würde allerdings auch eine urban-rural Spaltung bedeuten. Die bemerkt man in Ostdeutschland (wo Großstädte die einzigen Inseln des Wohlstandes und vorteilhafter Entwicklungen zu sein scheinen) jetzt schon in extremer Form.
Wir würden vielleicht in einer krassen Weise die Entwicklung zur Polarisierung nachholen, die die Amis vollzogen haben. Jetzt muss man wohl hoffen, dass es Russen und Springer Verlag nicht gelingt, hier sowas wie Fox News, rechtsradikales talk radio und Breitbart zu etablieren. Dann stünden uns nämlich einige Jahrzehnte der gesellschaftlichen Selbstvergiftung und dysfunktionaler Politik bevor.

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[for Germans] www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Bundesdatenschuetzer-Kritik-an-Darknet-Gesetz-will-Sicherheitsgesetz-Pause-4425762.html

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[for Germans] https://bildblog.de/110891/cdu-und-faz-widersprechen-rezo-mit-falschen-fakten/

[for Germans] https://twitter.com/ralfheimann/status/1131565727780098048

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

*: The initial order for DM11 was 5,000, which would barely be enough for a single sensible munitions mix combat load per in-use Leopard 2 of the German army. I don't think there was a 2nd order yet.
**: The link shows the average age of party members (not voters) at the end of 2017.

2018/04/06

[Blog] Unpopular things, the big picture and blog (in)activity

I have habit of telling unpopular things, such as telling warship fans that most warships are unnecessary, telling combat aviation fans that ground/ground missiles should be used more and air/ground attack is unreliable, or telling army fans that we actually have plenty land forces compared to the few threats, and the issue is rather in quality than in quantity or budgeting. I tell military-loving folks that all small and offensive wars are bollocks, war doesn't work and military spending should rather be slashed than increased.

It appears that I sought and found a niche that guarantees a failure in any attempt to reach a large audience; "unconventional" conclusions and opinions that hardly anyone shares among those people who frequent military blogs.

On top of that I mastered the skill of alienating many longtime readers by offering contradictions in comments or private correspondence.

Well, this isn't a commercial blog, so I got that one excuse at least.

Still, the obvious and seemingly unavoidable failure to bring much of a message across for want of a large audience is having an impact on my motivation. I've had my very motivating military theory-heavy times at the blog years ago, and hardware-centric writing was never particularly motivating.

Right now I don't have a single topic to write about on my mind that I didn't think of months or years ago already (and thus obviously delayed and avoided again and again).

The grand picture is one of government establishments and public opinion finally shifting back to collective defence from stupid wars of de facto occupation. This pivot won't be done in any economically or time-efficient way, but it's happening and I suppose it will suffice to deter any great power attack on NATO and EU members for at least a decade to come.

Turkey - a geostrategically very important country - is drifting away from the West and the Russians are back in the stupid great power game of messing up the Mid East, but this won't really change the daily lives of Europeans.

Comically inept and other psychologically compromised or simply authoritarian politicians pop up and disappear after a couple years or decades. We've seen that before as well.

Germany will sometime in my lifetime return to a government with an intention to reform the country to reduce well-known problems instead of being ruled by a coalition intent on almost nothing but maintaining its power and most other aspects of the status quo.

NATO thought of itself as some liberal / free world alliance in the 90's, but now it's back to being a partially dirty and uncomfortable bloc as it already was in the 60's and 70's.

We Europeans shouldn't pay much attention to what happens in the Far East, except that all involved parties should think of us as readily available honest brokers should the need for one arise. The British appear to be somewhat tainted by the idea that they need to think of the PR China as a threat due to lacking a language barrier with the Americans and having strong links to the Australians,

Maybe sometime in a few decades I will be a grumpy old man who annoys people by pointing out that I was correct on certain conclusions all along (I would certainly not point out my mistakes - hardly anyone does, so why would I?).

So lange Rede, kurzer Sinn (long talk, little meaning):

I intend to keep blogging, but I will likely write much less ever since 2009. I expect maybe 100-150 posts for this year, and lots of those will be low effort blog posts.

You have my promise that if I ever end blogging I will write a farewell if I still can, and not simply disappear as did all-too many mil bloggers that I more or less followed in the past decade.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

2018/02/23

Modern warships (VIII) - links to previous naval-themed blog posts at D&F

I'd have stopped here if the Mayans had been correct.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

2018/01/22

[temporary] Update on the warship series

The article series on warships is about 80-90% done, most of the remaining delay will be the wait time for previews. I let some people look at the articles in order to avoid substantial errors in the released version. The series stands at 18 k words so far, which is equivalent to 45 book pages text.

The 'wrap it up' conclusions part still has to be written.

edit: I wrote that one, too. It's not planned to be previewed, unlike most other parts of the series.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

2018/01/14

[temporary] low ops

I'm writing on a series of mostly long posts that summarize info, thoughts and conclusions on warships. This takes a lot of time (finding all those pictures and links is the worst about it), so there won't be much other writing in a while.

The good news is I finally repaired the spellchecker on my browser, so there will be fewer embarrassing typos in the future.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

2018/01/04

quick note on retracted articles

I retracted a few articles over the last ten years. Today I pulled one titled "Interceptors vs. wonder weapon fighters" from 2009. I have felt for a long time that I didn't properly take into account the kinetic and potential energy difficulties and effects of datalink networks on the tactic I mentioned.

I also pulled (long time ago) one about a RAND study (the study was widely criticised), one about downsides of high speed in ships (faulty data), a couple blog posts that were meant to be temporary all along and a few that were about the blog itself. I have a couple drafts of which I don't know if they were never published or rather reverted from published to draft.

It happens once in a while that I pull articles, but if you ever miss a blog post of mine there's still the Wayback Machine at the Internet Archive. I can't do anything about its long term memory.

edit 3/2018: I also just pulled an old article on small naval combatants that's too easily misunderstood in light of the recent warship series.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

2017/09/17

Blog layout

Bear with me - I'm trying to renovate this place.

I will create a proper title banner later.
Maybe this year. Maybe not.

four days later: Done. It's an embarrassing display of my lack of artistic creativity.

For comparison: The old background tile

and the old header. I recreated it with new images, ended up with the appropriate width and nothing really new.

I'm no artist.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

2017/08/29

Weird marketing pushes for American right wing blogs

There's a marketing technique in which a service loads certain blogs a couple times to let certain URLs appear in the traffic source of said blog. The blogger is then enticed to look why suddenly dozens if not hundreds of visitors came from that place.

The technique is no issue for bloggers with a huge audience, but it skewers the stats and annoys bloggers who have but hundreds of real visitors a day, like me.

Now I can see these things in my stats of the week's referring URLs.

What I can observe is a weird shift; usually the URLs that got pushed like that were assorted, often scammers or companies that offer services to bloggers.

This changed rapidly, and suddenly; now mostly American right wing blogs get promoted this way, and with substantial "visitor" counts (around 40-120 a week). It's not all political blogs, though; there are also two couple (non-commercial) law-related blogs and one medical-related blog involved. Not a single political non-right wing blog was promoted, though.

The shift was so sudden that a decentralised motivation is utterly improbable. I suspect somebody with enough money decided to promote a certain portfolio of American right wing blogs in a fairly invisible way (invisible compared to fake followers on twitter etc.). An alternative explanation would be that somebody promoted this way of promotion, but it's quite implausible that bloggers with very few posts per month would pay for such a promotion. Their inclusion makes rather sense as providers of plausible denial or as part of a third possible (unlikely) explanation; a bug inside the statistics software of blogger.com.

And yes, I checked. These right wing blogs did not suddenly begin to link to me. These are no real referrals. I know a couple right wing bloggers who did link to me occasionally, and they are not among the ones who now benefited from that promotion.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de