‘On March 17, Ambassador of Great Britain to Russia Laurie Bristow was summoned to the Foreign Ministry, where he was handed a note stating that in response to the provocative actions of the British side and groundless accusations against the Russian Federation with regard to the incident in Salisbury, UK on March 4, 2018, the Russian side has taken the following decisions in response.
‘Twenty-three diplomatic staff of the UK Embassy in Moscow are declared persona non grata and are to be expelled from Russia within a week.
‘Taking into account the disparity in the number of the two countries’ consular missions, the Russian Federation recalls its agreement on the opening and operation of the Consulate General of the United Kingdom in St Petersburg.
‘Respective procedures will be followed in accordance with international legal practice.
‘Due to the unregulated status of the British Council in the Russian Federation, its activities are terminated.
‘The British side is warned that in case of further unfriendly actions against Russia, the Russian side reserves the right to take further retaliatory measures.’
If the British are smart, they will declare victory and leave it at that. But I don’t think Theresa May is smart. The neocons want war with Russia and they are pressuring her to give it to them.
I fail to see the point of Britain’s posturing here, unless the neocons are going to try to get their Russian war in an indirect fashion:
Theresa May vowed to expel 23 Russian spies today as she laid out Britain’s retaliation over the Salisbury nerve gas outrage. In the biggest diplomatic swipe for decades, the Prime Minister gave the ‘undeclared intelligence agents’ a week to leave the country and suspended ‘all high level contact’ with the country.
Mrs May also paved the way for a crackdown on Russian oligarch money in London and urged the international community to join sanctions.
As tensions with Moscow reached new lows, the premier also suggested that covert reprisals would be undertaken – in an apparent hint at cyber attacks.
Mrs May said she was determined that the package would ‘fundamentally degrade Russian intelligence’ capability in the UK.
Theresa May won’t stand up to the European Union and she can’t protect British girls from being raped and murdered by third-world invaders, but she’s going to stand up to Vladimir Putin and Russia. Sure she is.
At least she’s been able to defend the British Isles from Brittany Pettibone!
What a global embarrassment May has turned out to be. Even Red Jeremy wouldn’t have been so haplessly incompetent.
UPDATE: Yes, that is what it is. The neocons know they can’t get Trump to start a war with Russia over Ukraine or Syria, so they’re using May to start it, then rely upon the NATO treaty to force the US to go to war with Russia.
May argued that the incident can be characterized as a state-directed chemical weapon attack that occurred on British territory — in other words, an act of war. She mentioned invoking NATO Article 5 as a response to incident. NATO Article 5 — also called The Three Musketeers Clause — commits the alliance to defend an ally when its territory is attacked.
Of course, the God-Emperor is far too canny to be manipulated in this obvious way. In fact, the situation may present a golden opportunity for him to tear up the NATO treaty altogether.
With the threats of British Prime Minister Theresa May
Shot:May threatens MILITARY RESPONSE against Putin after Russian spy ‘poisoning’. Theresa May is reportedly drawing up a battle plan against Vladimir Putin after a Russian spy was believed to be targeted on British soil.
Chaser:Russian exile who was close friends with the late oligarch Boris Berezovsky has been found dead in his London home, according to friends. Nikolai Glushkov, 68, was discovered by his family and friends late on Monday night. The cause of death is not yet clear.
It sounds like someone is sending Mrs. May a message. And given the way that May observably can’t even manage to stand up to the bureaucrats of the European Union, how on Earth can she imagine that her empty words will impress the popular Russian president?
I have to say that considering how the British government detained and deported three American, Canadian, and Austrian citizens this week, I’d be pretty well pleased to see the God-Emperor publicly tell the British Home Office that they’re on their own with regards to any hostilities with Russia.
As a student of Japanese history, I have always been totally mystified by the common American misconception that there is anything peaceful about Buddhism in general, or Buddhist monks in particular. I suspect it is simply the result of non-Christians in the West desperately casting about for something, anything, in which they can believe is superior to Christianity. Nevertheless, the media is belatedly beginning to notice that perhaps Buddhism is not quite as gentle as they have generally portrayed it to be.
Buddhism may be touted in the West as an inherently peaceful philosophy, but a surge in violent rhetoric from small but increasingly influential groups of hardline monks in parts of Asia is upending the religion’s tolerant image.
Buddhist mobs in Sri Lanka last week led anti-Muslim riots that left at least three dead and more than 200 Muslim-owned establishments in ruins, just the latest bout of communal violence there stoked by Buddhist nationalists.
In Myanmar, ultra-nationalist monks led by firebrand preacher Wirathu have poured vitriol on the country’s small Muslim population, cheering a military crackdown forcing nearly 700,000 Rohingya into Bangladesh.
And in neighbouring Thailand, a prominent monk found himself in hot water for calling on followers to burn down mosques.
What has prompted this surge in aggressive rhetoric from followers of a faith that is so often equated, rightly or wrongly, with non-violence?
What has prompted it is the resurgence of Islam, of course. Buddhists in Asia have considerably more, and considerably more recent experience with Islamic violence than Christians do, and so they are naturally less tolerant of Muslims in their midst. As for the peaceful nature of Buddhism, The Tale of Genji, written in the eighth century by Murasaki Shikibu, is rife with incidents of the much-feared Buddhist monks descending from their mountain monasteries to raid and pillage the villages below. And The Tale of the Heike, compiled some 400 years later, tells of a massive battle between the imperial army and an army of Buddhist warrior monks.
The Heike split their forty thousand horsemen into two parties and swooped down on the fortifications at the two roads, uttering mighty war whoops. The monks were all unmounted men with forged weapons, but the court’s warriors were horsemen with bows and arrows, and they galloped after the monks in all directions, hitting every one of them with fast and furious barrages of arrow’s. The battle began with an arrow exchange during the hour of the hare and raged all day long. After nightfall, the positions on the two roads both went down in defeat. One of the routed monks was Saka no Shiro Yokaku, a brave warrior who surpassed everyone in the seven great temples and fifteen great temples in swordsmanship, archery, and physical strength. He wore armor with black lacing over a corselet with green lacing, and his five-plated helmet was fitted over a metal cap. Holding in one hand a long, unlacquered spear, curved like cogon grass, and in the other a great sword with a lacquered hilt, he slashed his way out of the Tegai Gate at the Todaiji, surrounded by a dozen monks from his cloister. He held his ground for a time, scything horses’ legs and felling many opponents. But the waves of attacks from the court’s huge army cut down all his companions, leaving him alone with his back unprotected, and he fled toward the south, brave though he was.
Now the battle was being fought in the dark. “Make a fire!” Shigchira ordered, standing in front of the gate at the Hannyaji Temple. One of the Heike warriors was a man named Tomokata, a functionary from the Fukui estate in Harima Province. This Tomokata promptly set a commoner’s house on fire, using a torch made from a broken shield. There was a strong wind blowing, as was usual enough for the season—it was late in the twelfth month, the night of the twenty-eighth—and the gusts spread the fire from the initial location to many different buildings in the temple precincts. The battles at the Narazaka and Hannya roads had claimed the life of every monk who had feared disgrace and prized honor; and the others who could walk had fled toward Yoshino and Totsukawa. Aged monks unable to walk, eminent scholar-monks, pages, women, and children had fled helter-skelter into the Kofukuji, and also into the Great Buddha Hall, where more than a thousand had sought refuge on the second floor, with the ladders removed to save them from the pursuing enemy. When the raging flames bore down on them, they uttered shrieks that seemingly could not have been surpassed by the sinners in the flames of the Tapana, Paritapana, and Avici hells…. When the scribes made a careful record of those who had burned to death in the flames, the total amounted to more than three thousand five hundred people: more than seventeen hundred on the second floor of the Great Buddha Hall, more than eight hundred at the Kofukuji, more than five hundred in this temple building, more than three hundred in that. More than a thousand monks had been killed in battle. The victors hung a few heads in front of the gate at the Hannyaji and carried a few others back to the capital. On the twenty-ninth, Shigehira returned to the capital, leaving Nara in ruins. Kiyomori greeted the outcome of the expedition with vindictive glee, but the empress, the two retired emperors, the regent, and everyone else lamented. “It might have been all right to get rid of the soldier-monks, but it was a terrible mistake to destroy the temples,” people said. The original plan had been to parade the monks’ heads through the avenues, and to hang them on the trees in front of the jail, but the court refused to issue the necessary orders, appalled by the destruction of the Todaiji and the Kofu-kuji. The heads were discarded in gutters and ditches.
Harris took the side of states’ rights when it comes to immigration. and threatened that “California’s going to fight” because the state “represents the future.” She also claimed the Trump administration and Sessions “in particular” have “clearly put a target on the back of California.”
“This Administration and Jeff Sessions in particular have clearly put a target on the back of California and California’s going to fight,” Harris proclaimed. “And, I think that these folks are really mired in rolling back the clock in time and that’s not going to happen. California represents the future. And — and they don’t like it, but there you go.”
“There’s a distraction in that they are trying to suggest that this is about the Constitution when in fact what they’re doing is they’re playing politics. They’re playing politics and they’re playing politics with California. This attorney general is doing that and he’s going to lose,” Harris said.
Harris said she supported the mayor of Oakland to warn illegal immigrants of an impending ICE race because she is making a decision based on her “estimation of what’s in the best interest of their constituents.”
It strikes me that the last time states’ rights Democrats wanted a war, they lost. It’s interesting that California politicians haven’t figured out what the Chinese and North Korean politicians clearly understand, which is that it is a mistake to directly challenge the God-Emperor.
Anyhow, a war over immigration makes considerably more sense than a war over slavery. Because, as we know, immigration and war amount to the same thing in the end.
Then again, whenever a TV show claims “a major character” will be killed off, it’s always some tertiary character you barely realized was even on the show. We’ll see.
President Donald Trump told reporters Thursday that South Korea will make a “major announcement” concerning North Korea at 7 p.m. ET.
It was not immediately clear what the South Korean announcement would entail, but it came after a South Korean delegation came to the White House to brief officials on its most recent talks with North Korea — the most significant talks between the two countries in more than a decade.
The South Korean officials visiting the White House on Thursday talked to Trump, a person familiar with the matter said. They delivered a letter from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to Trump, according to a foreign diplomatic source. A senior US official confirmed a message from the North Korean leader had been delivered.
But we’re still not tired of winning, so it should be interesting to see what’s shaking. It will certainly be amusing if the media is forced to admit, through gritted teeth, that the God-Emperor’s “bluster” has proved to be conclusively effective.
The actual announcement was more a prelude to a possible future major announcement, but I suppose in diplomatic terms this sort of thing is a massive deal. No actual change yet, but the prospects for positive change in the future are good.
President Trump will meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un by May for high-level talks toward a nuclear-free Korean peninsula, a South Korean official said outside the White House Thursday.
The extraordinary and unexpected opening came through shuttle diplomacy by a South Korean delegation arriving in Washington Thursday. Trump heralded the development as a “major announcement” after speaking with the South Korean president.
“I told President Trump that in our meeting, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said he’s committed to denuclearization. He pledged that North Korea will refrain from any further nuclear or missile tests,” South Korean national security adviser Chung Eui-yong told reporters after meeting with Trump at the White House.
UPDATE: Q says Iran is next, and by the end of this year.
Iran next.
A tougher nut to crack, Q-Team. I hope your negotiations with Mahmoud are going well.
Resolved by 11-11. Q
What we are witnessing may – MAY – indeed be greatness in the White House. But let us not forget that the two priorities are still BUILD THE WALL and DRAIN THE SWAMP.
Is there evidence that the bad guys are getting better at basic tactics? Yes. Consider Boko Haram. Having only launched its military campaign in 2009, it has already mastered the use of coordinated fire and maneuver elements at the tactical level to execute complex raids, ambushes, assaults, and even withdrawing by echelon when on the defensive. It even staged an amphibious assault that overran a Nigerien Army garrison on an island in Lake Chad. Another example is from much closer to the U.S. homeland. Utilizing tactics diffused through U.S. military training, drug cartels such as the infamous “Zetas” and “Jalisco New Generation” have institutionalized combat training that allows them to regularly wreak havoc on Mexican security forces. In the wake of a recent downing of a Mexican military helicopter through the employment of rocket-propelled grenades, the disturbing discovery was made of tactical gear emblazoned with “CJNG – High Command Special Forces” (Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion).
Further evidence comes from the Iraqi campaign to defeat ISIL. Conventional forces struggled mightily to eject ISIL from Iraq’s territory, and only succeeded due to the heavy use of Iraqi special operations forces and liberal American airpower. The battle of Mosul, for example, lasted for nine months despite significant material U.S. support and a 20:1 force ratio against the ISIL defenders. Afghan conventional military forces are often defeated by an increasingly competent Taliban. On the other side of the world, Filipino forces had to destroy much of the town of Marawi to liberate it from jihadist insurgents during a five-month siege last year. Furthermore, these enemies seem to be gravitating towards operations in urban areas. These environments hinder the United States and its partners from utilizing their high-tech advantages, resulting in a playing field that could get ever more level. Finally, given the ease with which such groups can infiltrate poorly vetted partner forces, the U.S. military has probably provided tactical instruction to the enemy directly and indirectly for a long time. As one U.S. military advisor in Afghanistan told one of us: “Sometimes a trainee just doesn’t show up right before graduation, and then – sure enough – you are fighting him on the next objective.”
In summary, rather than celebrating the (shockingly slow) destruction of the ISIL caliphate, the U.S. military should realize that one of its enemies just learned a whole lot about combat: basic infantry tactics, urban operations, and the clever blending of emerging technologies. These lessons will spread globally, and faster than many expect.
This points out two more very good reasons not to engage in unnecessary foreign wars. First, you’re implicitly training your enemy. The longer you fight him, the more he will learn. Second, if you compound your error by engaging in “nation-building”, you will usually find yourself literally and explicitly training your enemy.
Over time, opposing forces tend to become more and more symmetrical. This is the process that we are beginning to see, both in terms of tactics and the demographics of the militaries themselves. US military supremacy was always bound to erode, because no military, not even the Roman legions have ever remained permanently superior. But this increasingly observed tactical symmetry is a clear indication that the erosion is picking up speed.
A few of the comments on YouTube, before they get disappeared like those on the first one.
First the production was excellent, better than the first. Second, what a great lesson from history, wake-up America & European Nations!
Unbelievable! I’ve never heard so much said in under 3 minutes.
Excellent follow up, even better than Voxiversity #1!
We will be holding the first Voxiversity Q&A tomorrow at 7 PM Eastern. Check your email if you’re a backer. If you are a backer and you didn’t receive one, please email me for the URL. And if you’re not yet, but you want to support Voxiversity and attend, you can do so here.
I’m very pleased to announce the release of the first Voxiversity video, Episode One: Immigration and War. Thank you to all the backers for your support and for your patience; a transcript will be provided soon and I will be hosting a Q&A session about Episode One for all the subscribers next week. I will also send out a poll for the March Video of the Month as soon as I hear back from all of those with nominating rights. Please keep in mind that this is our first effort and we expect to gradually improve the overall quality as we get more practice.
I’m also intrigued to observe that the video is apparently right over the target. It took all of 25 minutes for YouTube to officially deem it crimethink. Banned in Latvia!
Your video Immigration and War was flagged to us by the YouTube community. Upon review, we have placed restrictions on how the video will be shown. Please note that your video will continue to be available on YouTube.
Video content restrictions
We believe in the principles of free speech, even when that speech is unpopular or potentially offensive to some viewers. However, YouTube doesn’t allow hate speech or content that promotes or incites violence. In some cases, flagged videos that do not clearly breach the Community Guidelines but whose content is potentially controversial or offensive may remain up, but with some features disabled.
Your video will be shown after a warning message. In addition, certain features such as comments, sharing, thumbs up, and suggested videos have been disabled. Your video is also ineligible for monetization.
After review, the following video: Immigration and War has been blocked from view on the following YouTube country site(s): Austria, Bulgaria, Switzerland, Czechia, Germany, Estonia, France, United Kingdom, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Croatia, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Lithuania, Latvia, Martinique, New Caledonia, French Polynesia, Poland, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Reunion, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia, French Southern Territories, Wallis and Futuna, Mayotte
If you would like to support Voxiversity, you can do so here. Doing so will send a powerful message to the SJWs that they cannot erase history and they cannot evade the truth. But if you’d like to comment on the video, I’m afraid you’re going to have to do so here. And please feel free to download the video and spread it around. That’s exactly what it’s there for. You can do so by using Clipgrab.
Certain features have been disabled for this video
In response to user reports, we have disabled some features, such as comments, sharing, and suggested videos, because this video contains content that may be inappropriate or offensive to some audiences.
Featuring a foreword by the brilliant Israeli military theorist Martin van Creveld, On War is a fascinating book that is a must-listen for every military professional, wargamer, and amateur student of the art of war.
On War is a seven-year collection of columns written by the father of 4th Generation War theory while observing the US invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq. It is an intriguing account of a war in progress, as seen through the eyes of a military theorist able to anticipate events with an almost prophetic degree of accuracy. Throughout the book, 4GW theory is defined, described, and refined as events in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other places demonstrate the theory’s utility in making sense of current events and predicting future ones. The inevitable failure of the New Iraqi Army and the US-installed al-Maliki government is explained years in advance, as is the rise of the Islamic State and other 4th Generation forces presently battling for power in post-occupation Iraq.
Lind also makes an ominous, but compelling case for the gradual spread of 4th Generation chaos and the decline of the state throughout the world, including in the United States of America. In one of the key passages of the book, Lind writes: “4th Generation war is the greatest change since the Peace of Westphalia, because it marks the end of the state’s monopoly on war. All over the world, state militaries are fighting non-state opponents, and almost always, the state is losing.”
William S. Lind is one of the most significant and influential military theorists on the planet. The author of the Maneuver Warfare Handbook and a founder of 4th Generation War theory, Mr. Lind is known and respected by military personnel around the world.
How NOT to Use Light Armored Vehicles August 13, 2003
One day in the late 1970’s, when I was a defense staffer for Senator Gary Hart, I got a call from an Armed Services Committee staffer asking if I knew anything about Light Armored Vehicles (LAVs), which are what we used to call armored cars. A bit, I replied. What did I think of them, he asked? I said I liked them for operational maneuver, because they are wheeled, and most operational (as opposed to tactical) movement is on roads.
That was the beginning of the Marine Corps’ LAV program. We soon roped in a one-star at Quantico named Al Gray, and within a few years the Corps had acquired some LAVs. The concept for which they were purchased was very clear: to form Soviet-style Operational Maneuver Groups for use against Third World countries. We all knew that LAVs are tactically fragile, and must be used in ways that avoid heavy combat. We also knew that the tank the U.S. armed forces were then buying, the M-1, was too heavy and used too much fuel to be able to maneuver rapidly over operational distances. The LAVs could fill the gap.
As one of the Ur-Vaters of the Marines’ LAV program, I was pleased to hear a couple years ago that the Army was now also planning to buy LAVs. Good, I thought; they too have recognized that the M-1 is more a Sturmgeschuetz or a Jagdpanzer than a real tank, and they need something else for operational maneuver. These are also known as “tank destroyers”, Jagdpanzer literally translates as “tank hunter”. I should have known better, given that we are talking about the U.S. Army. Nonetheless, it was with unbelief, then horror, that I learned what the Army was really buying Strykers for: urban combat. And now, the first Stryker units are to be sent to Iraq.
The magnitude of the idiocy involved in using Light Armored Vehicles in urban fighting, where they are grapes for RPGs, is so vast that analogies are difficult. Maybe one could compare it to planning a fireworks display on board the Hindenburg. Urban combat is extremely dangerous for any armored vehicle, including the heaviest tanks, as the Israelis can testify after losing several Merkavas in the Gaza strip to some very big mines. Why? Because for opposing fighters, regular infantry or guerillas, the old sequence from the German “men against tanks” is easy. The sequence is, “blind ’em, stop ’em, kill ’em.” Armored vehicles are already blind in cities because distances are short; the safest place near a hostile tank is as close to it as you can get since then it can’t see you. Stopping tanks is also easy, because streets are often narrow enough to prevent vehicles from turning around.
And with LAVs, once they are blinded and stopped, killing them is very easy because the armor is, well, light. That’s why they are called Light Armored Vehicles.
In the first phase of the war in Iraq, the jousting contest, the Marine Corps lost M-1 tanks and it lost Amtracks, its amphibious personnel carrier. But it lost no LAVs. That is a testament, not to the vehicles, but to how they were employed.
But in the second phase of the Iraq war, and in future phases as well, there will be no role for operational maneuver. And there will be no role for LAVs or Strykers. If the Army insists on sending them into Iraqi towns and cities, they should first equip them with coffin handles, because all they will be is coffins for their crews.
When I first came to Washington in 1973, I was quickly introduced to an old saying about the American armed forces: the Air Force is deceptive, the Navy is dishonest, and the Army is dumb. It seems some things never change.
