Apparently there’s a fifty year old woman begging in the NY Times for men to be men again: Men, Where Have You Gone? Please Come Back. Happily, I never stopped being one. I was lucky to live my life in years of relatively positive relations between the sexes in Canada (up until 1990) and the rest of my life in places where they still are. I am somewhat intrigued by the idea that men have checked out. YouTube videos document the current Tinder, promiscuity, cupidity chaos well. Rachel Drucker’s a bit late to the party. Or she’s been living the party and only waking up now, amid the empty bottles and broken promises.

Forty-something Brandon Smith (about half a generation younger than me) decided to take on Rachel’s arguments head-on.

I can still explain for the NYT why men are walking away if they’re willing to listen.

Continue reading Men, Where Have You Gone? – What it would take to bring them back at uncoy.

In the comments to the same article, Harry D. advocated for the new US imperial strategy.

“We should not count on friends or neutrals to save our civilization.” Hear that Taiwan, Japan and South Korea? You must build your own nuclear deterrent immediately.

USA must restart or civil defense program to teach the population how to survive nuclear attack. Many lives can be saved with some basic knowledge, reinforced in the schools, like we did in the 1950s. See: The Good News About Nuclear Destruction (goodnewsnuke.com)

This madman unmasks what is a diabolical gambit, the new US paradigm of war:

Arm all its satrapies around the world with nuclear weapons and encourage “local” nuclear wars.

Clean hands USA avoids the action. Its enemies and its competitors (even friendly) are eliminated.

Continue reading Imperial Strategy: Nuclear Proliferation and Regional Conflict at uncoy.

While reading Apple News today, I ran across a peculiar story in The Washington Post (owned by Elon Musk’s largest competitor for space activities, Jeff Bezos): Musk cut internet to Ukraine’s military as it was attacking Russian fleet.

Musk’s position is

“How am I in this war? Musk asked,” according to Isaacson. “Starlink was not meant to be involved in wars. It was so people can watch Netflix and chill and get online for school and do peaceful things, not drone strikes.”

In February, Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s president and chief operating officer, told reporters something very similar.

“We were really pleased to be able to provide Ukraine connectivity and help them in their fight for freedom,” she said. “It was never intended to be weaponized, but the Ukrainians have leveraged it in ways that were unintentional and not part of any agreement.”

No kidding.

Continue reading Elon Musk blackmailed into participating in Ukraine-Russia War at uncoy.

There’s a rather poor propaganda puff piece, doing the rounds about heroic Ukrainian drone operators:

A Russian tank is on the move — changing direction and wheeling around. The men inside this room are trying to destroy it. Their constant banter — about girls and weapons — doesn’t seem to affect the focus with which they pursue the tank. One man shouts into the radio; Bereza growls into his phone…

A screen flashes with light. Then billowing smoke. The men whoop and cheer. I have just seen a successful strike. Dima grins. The atmosphere is electric but also strangely banal. The exclusively male cohort, the puerile jokes, the screens, the repeated invocation to “Get Ready!”. It’s like they are all playing a video game.

Great – war has become a video game for frat boys in cellars.

Continue reading Drone Warfare is only in Infancy: What’s next? at uncoy.

Another of NATO’s bright ideas for world peace.

At Bloomberg a curious article has been published: The West is getting in too deep in Ukraine. PANKAJ MISHRA asks the obvious question. Who has thought through what it means to rearm Germany and Japan?

There are too many signs that the search for allies in what is effectively now the West’s war against Russia is affecting political and moral judgment. Thus, India is routinely presented in the West as a counterweight to Chinese and Russian autocrats even as its Hindu supremacist government intensifies its assault on democracy and the country ramps up its purchases of Russian oil. A bizarre forgetfulness about two world wars prevails as, to wide cheers in the West, Germany rearms and dispatches military hardware to its old killing fields.

Among the simple historical lessons being neglected is that governments everywhere are prone to grow more reckless as military escalation begins to seem the only route to peace.

Continue reading Re-arming Germany and Japan at uncoy.

In the comments to Size Matters – On A U.S. Ground Intervention In Ukraine, Outraged who took part in Operation Desert Storm explains the time line:

Desert Storm by the way was preceded by Op Desert Shield.

The Iraqi Airforce aircraft that survived the initial start of the war were flown by raw ferry pilots to Iran, to be interned then seized. It promptly ceased to exist.

We spent almost six months battlefield preparation & shaping, destroying with impunity every piece of Iraqi Arms materiel identifiable, every bridge, every power station/transformer, ground attack on any vehicle that moved. MBTs, IFVs & Artillery, Grads, mortars were relentlessly targeted day in day out.

Multiple rotating CAP & ground attack patrol flights, free roam, on rotating station all across Iraq.

HQs units were identified & destroyed many times over.

Continue reading Time to run Operation Desert Storm in the Ukraine? at uncoy.

gregga777 quite sensibly notes there are neither the numbers nor the motivation necessary for a wide war.

These are the comparative total troop strengths of NATO’s armed forces “juggernauts” between 1990 and 2021 that are now passing out “the check’s in the mail” promises to Ukraine:

Country      1990      2021      Change
Germany      545k     189k       -65%
Italy        493k     174k       -65%
France       548k     208k       -62%
Spain        263k     124k       -53%
UK           308k     156k       -49%
Turkey       769k     445k       -42%
USA        2,181k   1,352k       -38%

Similar declines occurred in their available stocks of artillery, tanks, armored personnel carriers, aircraft, ships, etc.

In fairness, the Russian numbers of men under arms are much lower than in Soviet times. Heck the Ukrainians would be listed as Soviet forces.

Still judging by the enthusiasm of the Europeans surrounding me to give up their world of hedonism-lite to march to war, it’s extremely unlikely that most of those countries outside of Turkey and the US would be able to successfully implement a draft.

Continue reading How ready is Western Europe for war? at uncoy.

On Dances With Bears, John Helmer compares 2022 Russian war methods with those of the UK and USA in the last seventy-two years:

JH: Siege warfare is as ancient and as moral as the Israelites around the walls of Jericho, the Masada defence of the Judaeans against the Romans, or the European Crusaders around Jerusalem. The objective is to persuade the targeted civilian population and military forces, no matter how hostile they may be, to give up their capacity to wage war. The lesson of the history is that the longer the city walls or the citadel barbicans hold out, the more destructive the result for the civilians – unless they are relieved or rescued by a force superior to the siege force….

The British and Americans introduced innovations like the Dam Busters attack on German dams in May 1943 and the firebombing of Dresden in February 1945.

Continue reading Russian and USA War Methods Compared at uncoy.

In the comments to The Thin Red Line – NATO Can’t Afford To Lose Kabul & Kiev TBT or not TBT repeats the specious claim that China benefits from the Russian-NATO war in Ukraine:

Everybody leaves out China, the biggest consumer of what Russia has to offer, who is very pleased to see

Europe cut off from Russia and vice versa,

European industrial competitors starved of cheap energy,

Russia split off from the rest of the West, the better to dominate

Nonsense, the Chinese would like to turn Russia into a giant railway corridor, shipping Chinese goods to Europe one-way and Russian raw materials to China. Chinese would come en masse to Europe as tourists, somewhat evening the balance of trade. This was happening right before the Covid nonsense. I live in a European capital and the city was absolutely full with Chinese middle-class walking tours six months/year.

Continue reading Who wins and who loses in the Ukrainian end game? at uncoy.

Scott Ritter’s analysis is short and sweet:

It is clear here that this attack was carried out by the US. Just the day before, the streets of German cities were full of protesters who were speaking out against their government’s policy, the policy of strangling Germany. With industry shutting down, energy prices skyrocketing and a long and cold winter ahead. And the citizens of Germany said: “Stop this nonsense! Turn on Nord Stream 2.”

These rallies would go on and one of two things would happen. Either the German government would have turned on Nord Stream 2, or it would have been overthrown and replaced by people who would have turned on the pipeline. And from an American point of view, this is very dangerous. Germany is a key ally in exercising American hegemony. The US has chosen to abandon gas pipelines.

Continue reading Why the US helped Poland blow up NordStream 1 and 2 pipelines at uncoy.