Merkava III MBT
Primary Armament: Rheinmetall 120mm Smoothbore Canon
Secondary Armament: 3 x HMG / 1 x 60mm Mortar
Top Speed: 65km/h
Combat Weight: 65,000 kg
Crew: 4
Primary Armament: 1 x Fork
Secondary Armanent: 1 x Wooden Pallet, stacked with millet and dried milk
Top Speed: 30km/h
Combat Weight: 2,500 kg
Crew: 1 (dead)
Latest IDF combat patch
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23 comments:
Sad but true.
next they will be bombing the forklift training grounds at the Co-op and Somerfields.
the justifications will now start moving from the 'they're firing from schools and hospitals, using children as human shields' to a Jean Charles de Menezes style excuse for shooting civvies...
i.e. "this is a regretful accidental loss of innocent life but the people responsible are the terrorists who started this. They killed those poor innocent children/ aid workers/ forklift drivers as surely as if they'd pulled the trigger themselves"
which basically means, if people are daft enough to swallow it, that you can blow away whoever the fuck you like
Here is an interesting analysis of the Europe gas cuts.
Russian Gas Cuts: US-Afghanistan Connection?
what do you think Stef.Something in that story/analysis?
This site has its finger on the pulse(fastly fading) of Gaza.
grim images.
Holocaust Denied The lying silence of those who know John Pilger
Having worked in the vicinity of some "fully trained" fork lift truck divers with their brand new NVQ's I would pitch some of them against the IDF anyday.
Compassion is sadly lacking in todays world
Compassion is sadly lacking in todays world
I hardly think so, its just not got anywhere to go
I was looking for the "empire acquired in a fit of absent mindedness" quote that Parenti uses to bash the stochastic school of analysis when I found this article about the book "THE ACCIDENTAL EMPIRE
Israel and the Birth of the Settlements":
Now Gershom Gorenberg, an American-born Israeli journalist, has produced a remarkably insightful third account. In "The Accidental Empire," he portrays the first two decades after '67 as a melancholy story of inadvertant colonialism. It's a groundbreaking revision that deserves to reframe the entire debate.
According to Gorenberg, the Israelis did not quite acquire their colonies as the British were said to, in a fit of absent-mindedness — but just about. In 1967, Israel won an unexpected victory in a war it didn't seek and found itself sitting on new territory three times its original size.
...
And here the Israeli government made a tragic mistake: it acquiesced. The guns of '67 had barely cooled when settlers began to stake wildcat claims throughout the captured land. At first the army was sent in to remove them, sometimes repeatedly. But the pioneers kept coming back, and Jerusalem, leery of confronting its own citizens, eventually gave in.
Funny: No mentioning of the displaced Palestinians of '48 or '67.
And of course not within the scope of the book would be how Israel tried to grab as much of Lebanon, then in its darkest hour, as it could get - incidentally Lebanon being THE missing piece to complete the "Land of Hammath". I have a vivid imagination of an Israeli politician saying: "You say that Lebanon is part of the Holy Land as promised to Moses and Ezekiel? What a bloody surprise, I did not know that. And you say we have troops there? What a bloody coincidence!"
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Why did I looked for this phrase?
If you take a look at the most prominent scumbag dictators that were cut down, it was Hitler who rolled over benelux into France and announced to take the "Lebensraum" in the east and Saddam after he tried (re)integrate Kuwait into Iraq. (One) of their errors was that have stated what they wanted to conquer. If they would created a "security pretext" and only occupied a part of their neighboring countries at a time, like all the other scumbags before and after, they would have lived far longer.
(Yes, I'm oversimplifying)
It's worth remembering that AH put troops into the Sudetenland, Austria and Czechoslovakia before he started being a little more honest about his objectives. Even when he invaded Poland false flag operations were arranged and liberation of Danzig Germans was used as an excuse for invasion
It's also worth remembering that both of the two powers which defeated Germany only went to war with Germany after Germany declared war on them. History would be very different if Hitler has stuck to attacking equal or lesser powers
One of the reasons why we can be damn sure that the Americans knew Iraq had no serious WMD was because the US actually attacked it. North Korea actually does and won't be
This is a lesson which can't be lost on people in the Middle East.
Britain, of course, was the Master of acquiring Empire accidentally and even set up huge joint stock companies to manage the accidental acquisition process on commercial lines, for example...
"East India Company traded mainly in cotton, silk, indigo dye, saltpetre, tea, and opium. However, it also came to rule large swathes of India, exercising military power and assuming administrative functions, to the exclusion, gradually, of its commercial pursuits."
that line above, taken from Wikipedia, is typical of the language used then and still used today.
People are subliminally programmed to believe that it is a passive, as well as accidental, process
'...came to rule'
'...assuming military functions'
all accidental, never the result of intentional policy
Golda Meir's Autobiography is well worth reading about the post 67 settler land grabs which she did not agree with.
The right wing of her party, led by the dashing piratical one eyed Defense Minister and popular war hero Moshe Dayan, wanted Israel to colonize and then incorporate them.
Moderates, who were represented by by deputy prime minister Yigal Allon, were willing, as part of a peace settlement, to return the Sinai to Egypt and the Golan Heights to Syria and to permit the west bank of the Jordan to become an autonomous part of the kingdom of Jordan.
Meir had to keep dayan on side as he was so popular although she kept the support of moderates.
However, in 1973 and 1974 disputes over the blame for Israel's unpreparedness for the Yom Kippur War there were demands for new leadership and divisions developed in the Labor Party.
Meir managed to form a government after the December 1973 elections , she could not get her cabinet to agree on policies she resigned in April 1974.(she was then 76) She died in Jerusalem on Dec. 8, 1978.
The settler movement since the early 70's has been relentless and unyielding. One can only imagine that in that wonderful War Fog which prevails currently, that there is a lot of land grabbing going on today (literally).
Air Power? Fredwitz (more direct but less cynical than the war nerd, it seems) writes about the US Air Force, shortly before the latest Gaza mess.
http://www.fredoneverything.net/Air%20Power.shtml
what do you think Stef.Something in that story/analysis?
the biggest something in that analysis is another dollop of Western chauvinism which assumes, yet again, that the Russian leadership are fuckwits who don't know what they're doing
is America using the Ukrainian prank monkey to cause mischief for the Russians?
probably
are the Russians aware of that probability?
definitely
the Russian response to Georgian aggression was faultless. They clearly knew exactly when it was coming, they waited for the Georgians to commit a few and atrocities and then moved in with decisive force with fixed, achievable objectives five seconds afterwards
and yet it has been consistently portrayed an an example of the Russians falling into some kind of trap
ditto for the recent fall in commodity prices and the ruble 'crisis' - a short term problem maybe, but commodity prices are ultimately only going up and the recent price falls presented an excellent opportunity to finish up some unfinished business and dispossess a few oligarchs of their ill gotten gains
afaic, any analysis which doesn't credit the Russians with at least equal intelligence and foresight to the Americans is going to have serious flaws
Air Power? Fredwitz (more direct but less cynical than the war nerd, it seems) writes about the US Air Force, shortly before the latest Gaza mess.
attempting to use conventional air power to fight insurgent warfare seems positively sane and cost effective when you look at what the US Nuclear Submarine lobby has been up to
Stuck with a few too many $5,000,000,000+ Trident submarines now that the Cold War is over?
No problem, spend another $1,000,000,000 on each, pack them with $200,000,000 worth of cruise missiles and use them as glorified taxis for a handful of soldiers - because a 20,000 ton submersible is a nigh on perfect delivery system for covert beach landings in restricted waters
it's bonkers, it's ineffective but it's damn good business
kerrrrrrching!!
Israel spokespychopath duels with big Paxo
UN School Bombing: BBC to Israeli Spokesman, "You knew what you were doing didn't you?"
direct linky to above
Well, Stef, you are right, as always. I was thinking about the Phoney War, but the US didn't care much about it at this time... Yeah, the US leadership wanted its war, but they would have taken any country as enemy foolish enough to take US-bait.
Anyway, I would like to order a dozen "stealthy affordable capsule system" for my sub. And can I have them on the go?
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Oh Stef, we are all humped, big time. The game is rigged. The entire fucking game is rigged. I am just reading "To kill a nation" by Parenti and what do I have to read: There is quite a friendly connection between Bernard Kouchner (co-founder Doctors Without Borders) and Hashim Thaci (of UCK/KLA kill-order fame). And Wesley Clark seems to be part of that little threesome... Here you can see them all smiling, friends for life.
And when I hear Kosovo, I always have to think about the connection between Ole von Beust (same party as Angela Merkel) and the Osmanis (Kosovo Mafia). Remember how Germany pushed Kosovo's independence? It certainly wasn't altruistic on part of the German government. I don't know what's in it for the German leadership, but I am getting a strong "deep state" feeling here. I can almost touch it. Germany-Kosovo, that is were I can see the fog taking shape.
And damn, it frightens me. It really frightens me. Almost everyday I try to learn more of the world and what keeps it spinning. I'm going through the bushes of misinformation, cutting down the shrubs with my bushwacker - by reading. And every once in a while when I cut down a bush, a cobra rears up and stares me right in the eyes. Asks me: Do you really want to continue here?
On some days, I think I should move to some small island and mind my own business...
Médecins sans Frontières? WWF? Who else? Give us money and we save the world. Oh we are all suckers to believe any of the daily shit we are being fed. By now, I think every "known" organization (one that e.g. appears on TV at least every now and then), plus is portrayed positively in the media, is suspect for me. Not that the once that are portrayed negatively are any hope - these orgs, I fear, are a kind of hedging the risks, to catch those who don't think they are no sheeples.
Oh my. Down the conspiracy hole with me... Let's see how deep it goes.
Well, Stef, you are right, as always
lol, not at all
50.1% of the time is my target
and, yes, moving to a small island to mind one's own business does have a certain appeal
Oh my. Down the conspiracy hole with me... Let's see how deep it goes.
a lot of people I've corresponded with over the last couple of years have fallen victim to conspiracy hole fatigue over the years
It is very easy to lose sight of the decent things and decent people in this life. They exist in abundance and shouldn't be forgotten
Having said that, the thought of the sheer number of crooked, wicked bastards out there can fuck with anyone's head, however well adjusted that head might be
And, lest I forget: Kouchner, once a communist/socialist, is now the French foreign minister...
Which reminds me:
The BND [the German foreign intelligence agency] has traditionally been very active in Afghanistan, up to the limit what is tolerable. When in November 2001 38 Afghan politicians and tribal representatives, led by the United Nations, came together at the Petersberg near Bonn, "many of us were quite sluggish in the stomach [had a bad feeling, as in when you realize that you shouldn't be doing something, and now hope that nobody will spot you]," recalls a agent: The number of undercover agents working at the meeting went into the double digits, several of the ministers from Hamid Karzai's transitional government were payed agents of the BND. In Pullach [seat of the BND] a debate inflamed whether the BND had too many agents "and if we do not have to turn off individual sources." That's what happened.
(Edited the translation slightly from the partly machine gibberish and added some context)
Here you go. Germany does absent mindedness. "Gosh, when I think about it, it seems like we control the Afghani government. Maybe we went a bit over the top there, don't you think? We better do something 'bout it, or somebody might get the impression we did this intentionally."
The problem Israel's population in decline, oops!
Gaza
Median age:17.2 years
Birth rate:
37.75 births/1,000 population
Death rate:
3.53 deaths/1,000 population
Population: 1,500,202
Muslim (predominantly Sunni) 99.3%, Christian 0.7%
West Bank
Median age: 20.2 years
Population growth rate: 2.225%
Birth rate: 25.95 births/1,000 population
Death rate: 3.7 deaths/1,000 population
Population: 2,407,681
Muslim 75% (predominantly Sunni), Jewish 17%, Christian and other 8%
Israel
Median age: 28.9 years
Population growth rate: 1.713%
Birth rate: 20.02 births/1,000 population
Death rate: 5.41 deaths/1,000 population
Population: 7,112,359
Jewish 76.4% (of which Israel-born 67.1%, Europe/America-born 22.6%, Africa-born 5.9%, Asia-born 4.2%), non-Jewish 23.6% (mostly Arab)
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