Tag: war

Bombs in Brussels

Brussels Zaventem airport explosions: At least 11 dead as third bomb ‘found on runway’. Third bomb found on runway, reports of more explosions at three metro stations, including one close to EU buildings.

BREAKING NEWS: At least 11 13 23 28 34 people dead and 50 150 187 wounded after two explosions rock Brussels Airport in ‘suicide bombing’ – as SECOND ‘terror attack’ hits Metro station near EU headquarters SECOND ‘terror attack’ hits Metro station in city centre.

  • Shouts ‘in Arabic’ heard before two explosions went off near the American Airlines check-in desk at 8am (7am GMT)
  • Terrified passengers covered in blood ran for their lives after explosion sent ‘shockwaves’ through terminal building
  • Reports of another explosion at a Metro station near the EU headquarters in the Maelbeek area of central Brussels
  • Evacuated passengers are being ferried onto buses and are being driven to a ‘crisis centre’ away from the airport
  • Comes a day after Belgium minister warned of revenge attacks after arrest of Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam 
 Immigrants are why you can’t have nice things.

    One would think this will tend to speed up Reconquesta 2.0 in Europe, but we’ll see. Regardless, don’t get too complacent. This sort of attack is coming the USA soon thanks to the millions of Islamic immigrants who have been permitted to enter the country. I would not be at all surprised if it started in Minnesota, most likely at the Megamall.

    It belatedly occurs to me that there is an important Republican primary today. These immigrant attacks mean that Donald Trump will win Arizona handily, which means that he is virtually guaranteed the delegates he needs.

    UPDATE: “Brussels Fire rep. tells NBC that there have been at least 4 explosions at different metro stations.” 

    Migration, war, and the military historian

    Those who doubt my observations on the subject, and fail to credit Martin van Creveld’s similar warnings, would do well to heed popular military historian Max Hasting’s similar warnings on the subject of war and the mass migration crisis:

    Could this lead to WAR in Europe?

    Last week in Washington, I met an old friend who is one of the smartest strategy wonks I know. His business is crystal ball-gazing. During our conversation, he offered some speculations about what could happen to our world over the next decade or two which made my hair stand on end.

    He predicts that the seismic turbulence in the Middle East will continue, and indeed worsen, unless or until the West is willing to commit stabilisation forces to the region. He calculates that an army of the order of magnitude of 450,000 men would be necessary, to have any chance of success.

    In the absence of such an effort — for which he admits the political will does not exist on either side of the Atlantic, and is unlikely to do so in the future — he believes that the tidal wave of migration to Europe from the Middle East and Africa will continue, with consequences much greater and graver than any national leader has yet acknowledged.

    He suggested that war within our continent is not impossible before the middle of the century, as southern European nations are swamped by incomers, and Greece stands first in line to become a failed state.

    We can defer for a moment the question of whether my friend’s most frightening scenarios are likely to be fulfilled.

    What was sobering about our conversation is that here was an uncommonly well-informed man who believes that the earthquakes shaking the Middle East, together with the scale of economic migration from Africa, could undo all our comfortable assumptions about the stability of the society in which we live, including our confidence that Europe has turned its back on war for ever.

    The most obvious lesson of history is that events and threats always take us by surprise.

    We already know the West will not stabilize the Middle East, for the obvious reason that it is the West, specifically, the USA, that has intentionally destabilized it.

    This means there will be war in Europe, sooner or later, although the question is still out if it will be between the ultranationalists and the EU elite or between the nationalists and the immigrants. In either case, the European nationalists will win easily because they vastly outnumber their opponents and the European militaries are insignificant. At the present, the prospect of the EU collapsing, the nationalists taking power in the various nations, and mass repatriations taking place is preventing the public from turning to the more extreme ultras.

    The more serious problem, as I have been pointing out for decades now, is in the USA itself, where US attempts to destabilize the Middle East, combined with the 1965 Immigration Act, have resulted in the destabilization of the USA. At the present, the optimism that surrounds the Trumpening is tending to relieve the pressures created by the largest invasion in human history, but the jury is very far from out whether Trump will win the White House and if he will actually fulfill his supporters’ hopes and expectations should he take office.

    It is telling, is it not, that while conventional historians have virtually nothing to say on the subject, the military historians all know what is coming as a result of the mass immigration into the West.

    The past as prediction

    For those of you who are disappointed by Ben Shapiro’s recent behavior vis-a-vis Breitbart and Donald Trump, don’t be. That’s always who he has been. Notice the date on this WND column, published on August 29, 2005.

    The Chickenhawk Clucks

    It is entirely possible that my WND colleague has a perfectly good
    reason for not serving his country in its moment of need. For all I
    know, he may have a weak heart, a wooden leg, a predilection for San
    Francisco bathhouse sex, or some other condition that prevents him from
    joining the military. But devoting two columns to criticizing a single word strikes me as a lady protesting a bit too much.

    Mr. Shapiro’s first argument against the appellation is that it
    is nothing more than a leftist attempt to silence debate. This is
    partially true, but the argument is deceptive because it is incomplete.
    It is not leftists, but the military, who have long despised the civilians
    who clamor for war from the safety of their homes. In 1879, Gen.
    William Sherman said: “It is only those who have neither fired a shot
    nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood,
    more vengeance, more desolation.”

    His second and third arguments are that the insult is dishonest
    and “explicitly rejects the Constitution.” But there is nothing
    dishonest about calling into question the credibility of one who does
    not practice what he preaches. If a CNBC analyst urges viewers to buy a
    stock he is secretly shorting, he will rightly be dismissed as a
    hypocrite unworthy of further regard. The unconstitutional argument is
    spectacularly silly, since no one in Congress has proposed a federal law
    barring such hypocrites from office. One can only assume that Mr.
    Shapiro’s first Constitutional Law class lies ahead of him.

    His fourth argument, which asserts that use of the term is
    somehow “un-American,” reveals a similar failure to understand the First
    Amendment and American history. Mr. Shapiro might wish the Constitution
    prevented people from calling him names, but it actually protects their
    right to do so and American political history is littered with an
    abundance of inventive insults. As for the reference to the Bush
    daughters, hiding behind the skirts of young women is no way to prove
    you’re not a coward.

    His fifth and final argument – that use of the term “chickenhawk”
    is an attempt to avoid substantive debate – is easily disproved. I
    have repeatedly criticized numerous aspects of this global struggle,
    have openly opposed both the Iraqi and Afghani occupations, and am quite
    willing to debate Mr. Shapiro or anyone else on the issue in the forum
    of their preference. Yet I – like 62 percent of the soldiers and
    veterans who frequent Vox Popoli and Blackfive
    – am in accord with the notion that “chickenhawk” is an appropriate
    label for a warmongering young columnist who urges others to make
    sacrifices he has no intention of making himself.

    Most of us realize that during wartime, sacrifices must be made
    … But taking such a stand requires common sense and the knowledge that
    we are in the midst of the great battle of our time.

    – Benjamin Shapiro, WorldNetDaily, July 28, 2005

    I would be remiss if I did not note that many of these military men
    and women favored a different 11-letter word that also begins with
    “chicken.”

    The genuine flaw in the use of the “chickenhawk” label is that in
    most cases it is being applied years, even decades, after the fact, and
    inherently attempts to equate two different historical situations.
    However, due to Mr. Shapiro’s precocious position in the national media,
    this common flaw does not apply. While his peers are dodging sniper
    bullets and IEDs in Afghanistan and Iraq, Mr. Shapiro is bravely urging
    them to invade five more countries in the establishment of global empire
    from the safety of his Harvard dorm room.

    Did Iraq pose an immediate threat to our nation? Perhaps not. But
    toppling Saddam Hussein and democratizing Iraq prevent his future
    ascendance and end his material support for future threats globally. The
    same principle holds true for Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt,
    Pakistan and others: Pre-emption is the chief weapon of a global empire.
    No one said empire was easy, but it is right and good, both for
    Americans and for the world.

    – Benjamin Shapiro, WorldNetDaily, Aug. 11, 2005

    The America Bar Association already boasts more than 896,000 lawyers,
    America has no desperate need for another one. The U.S. Army, on the
    other hand, is currently 8,000 men short of its 2005 recruiting goals. I
    am only one of many non-pacifist, non-leftist Americans who believe
    that Mr. Shapiro would do well to heed his own words of Aug. 26, 2004.
    “Now’s the time: Either put up, or shut the hell up.”

    Queens at war

    A historical study of European queens produces some unexpected results:

    After sifting through historical data on queenly reigns across six centuries, two political scientists have found that it’s more complicated than that. In a recent working paper, New York University scholars Oeindrila Dube and S.P. Harish analyzed 28 European queenly reigns from 1480 to 1913 and found a 27 percent increase in wars when a queen was in power, as compared to the reign of a king. “People have this preconceived idea that states that are led by women engage in less conflict,” Dube told Pacific Standard, but her analysis of the data on European queens suggests another story.

    Interestingly, Dube and Harish think the reason why queens were able to take part in more military policy can be explained by the division of labor that tended to happen when a queen — particularly a married queen — ruled. Queens managed foreign policy and war policies, which were often important to bring in cash, while their husbands managed the state (think taxes, crime, judicial issues, etc.). As the authors theorize, “greater division of labor under queenly reigns could have enabled queens to pursue more aggressive war policies.” Kings, on the other hand, didn’t tend to engage in division of labor like ruling queens — or, more specifically, they may have shared military and state duties with some close adviser, but not with the queen. And, Dube and Harish argue, it may be this “asymmetry in how queens relied on male spouses and kings relied on female spouses [that] strengthened the relative capacity of queenly reigns, facilitating their greater participation in warfare.”

    The queens’ marital status made a difference here; as the authors write,
    “among married monarchs, queens were more likely to participate as
    attackers than kings.” If a queen were single — which was the case with
    13 of those they studied — she was more likely to be attacked compared
    to the times when a king was in power, perhaps because her country was
    seen in the outside world as being more vulnerable and thus easier to attack.

    Ironically, as Nate pointed out, this means that female leaders are more strongly correlated with warfare than religion. And it would be hard to argue that this relationship is not causal, given the fact that the queens were responsible for the decision to go to war.

    Another opportunity for Trump

    If Donald Trump wants to finish off his Republican rivals, the Pentagon just handed him a brilliant opportunity:

    The Pentagon has deployed drones to spy over U.S. territory for non-military missions over the past decade, but the flights have been rare and lawful, according to a new report.

    The report by a Pentagon inspector general, made public under a Freedom of Information Act request, said spy drones on non-military missions have occurred fewer than 20 times between 2006 and 2015 and always in compliance with existing law.

    The report, which did not provide details on any of the domestic spying missions,  said the Pentagon takes the issue of military drones used on American soil “very seriously.”

    Leaving the borders wide open while spying on Americans with drones? Americans would be better off cutting the military budget to zero. What exactly good is it for besides making things worse in the Middle East, especially when the Russians have demonstrated that their military could do in Syria what the US military couldn’t.

    And this news probably isn’t going to hurt his prospects with the common man either:

    Billionaires, tech CEOs and top members of the Republican establishment flew to a private island resort off the coast of Georgia this weekend for the American Enterprise Institute’s annual World Forum, according to sources familiar with the secretive gathering.

    The main topic at the closed-to-the-press confab? How to stop Republican front-runner Donald Trump.

    Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google co-founder Larry Page, Napster creator and Facebook investor Sean Parker, and Tesla Motors and SpaceX honcho Elon Musk all attended. So did Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), political guru Karl Rove, House Speaker Paul Ryan, GOP Sens. Tom Cotton (Ark.), Cory Gardner (Colo.), Tim Scott (S.C.), Rob Portman (Ohio) and Ben Sasse (Neb.), who recently made news by saying he “cannot support Donald Trump.”

    Along with Ryan, the House was represented by Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Fred Upton (Mich.), Rep. Kevin Brady (Texas) and almost-Speaker Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), sources said, along with leadership figure Cathy McMorris Rodgers (Wash.), Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price (R-Ga.), Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (Texas) and Diane Black (Tenn.).

    Philip Anschutz, the billionaire GOP donor whose company owns a stake in Sea Island, was also there, along with Democratic Rep. John Delaney, who represents Maryland. Arthur Sulzberger, the publisher of The New York Times, was there, too, a Times spokeswoman confirmed. 

    If the globalist elite is so desperate to stop him, clearly the man has something positive to offer the American people they have been financially raping for decades.

    “Five generations deep”

    If only he’d been fortunate enough to be born American in Portugal, he’d have assimilated five generations ago.

    Speaking outside a Donald Trump rally in Fort Worth, Texas on Friday, a Hispanic demonstrator warned the GOP candidate’s white supporters that there would be consequences if Trump manages to make it all the way to the White House.

    “If these people get what they want, Trump in there, I guarantee you — you think the Mexicans are going to lay down that easily? We don’t ever say nothing,” Ronald Gonzales, of Dallas, said.

    After explaining that he isn’t an advocate for open borders, he argued that many of the illegal immigrants living in the U.S. “already got families and kids that are here” — and they wouldn’t allow a Trump administration to break up their families.

    “It ain’t gonna happen,” Gonzales said. “You really want the Mexicans to really, really stir, really get mad? Y’all don’t understand — we aren’t the minority anymore. We own Texas. Texas is Mexican-made. I’m five generations deep right here.”

    And that, right there, is why Jerry Pournelle correctly predicted that “There Will Be War”. And by war, I mean war on the North American continent of the sort that hasn’t been seen in 150 years.

    Once the flow of government money stops, and once there is nowhere else to run for the white people that every Mexican, South American, African, Asian, Arab, and Jew is chasing in order to improve his life, the ethnic wars will begin. Who, then, will be the real American?

    Presumably the survivors. Homogeneous nations are born from heterogeneous countries.

    It occurs to me that the American Indians are about the only people in American history who don’t insist on living in white neighborhoods. Every other race and ethnic group vociferously protests how those racist whites discriminate against them and want to keep them at a distance and out of their country clubs, while we fought to keep them off our lands and out of our reservations.

    Immigration is invasion

    As Martin van Creveld observed, immigration is war.

    A crowd of migrants has burst through a barbed-wire fence on the Macedonia-Greece border using a steel pole as a battering ram.

    TV footage showed migrants pushing against the fence at Idomeni, ripping away barbed wire, as Macedonian police let off tear gas to force them away.

    A section of fence was smashed open with the battering ram. It is not clear how many migrants got through. Many of those trying to reach northern Europe are Syrian and Iraqi refugees.

    They are resorting to violence in order to force their way past the borders. How is that not war? And why is the West refusing to defend its borders with its very expensive militaries?

    If the USA is not going to defend its borders anyhow, then let’s simply shut down the military, lay off all the soldiers, stop buying tanks and planes and bombs, and cut everyone’s taxes by 20 percent.

    The Trumpening

    It’s fascinating to see the medias, both mainstream and conservative, scurrying around to find some explanation, any explanation, for Trump’s rise that does not address the obvious: America has been the victim of the single largest invasion in human history. But Invade America Happy Time is over.

    France for the French. England for the English. America for Americans. Germany for the Germans. Scandinavia for the Scandinavians. Israel for the Jews. The Dar al-Islam for the Muslims.

    Nationalism is peaceful, for the most part. It is the intermingling of peoples, the expansions of territories, and the subsequent clash of cultures that results which reliably produces war.

    As military historian Martin van Creveld so aptly demonstrated in There Will Be War Vol. X, immigration is a form of war in which the violence is delayed.

    A lesson in combined arms

    Ender and I haven’t been able to get back to Fifth Frontier War lately, but we did find the time to break out a short Advanced Squad Leader: Starter Kit scenario, S23: Monty’s Gamble. Ender is just learning how to use vehicles, and in this scenario, he learned a rather painful lesson concerning why tank commanders always insist on having an infantry screen when engaging enemy infantry.

    The scenario is set in 1944 Holland, with a German Kampfgruppe counterattacking the British 1st Airbourne Division after the seizure of the city of Arnhem as part of Operation Market Garden. The British were attempting to hold out long enough to permit 30 Corps to reach Arnhem and reinforce them, while the Germans were hoping to cut them off from the Rhine and capture the entire division.

    Interestingly enough, this scenario played out rather similarly to the historical event, where the Staffordshire regiment managed to hold off the Germans long enough to let the greater part of the 1st Airbourne to extricate itself and retreat. The Germans are attacking from the east and their objective is to exit a sufficient number of victory points (two tanks and two infantry units are enough) off the west side of the map. The British units are all set up hidden, and I’d chosen to present a false forward defense in the north while putting all of my anti-tank defenses in the middle and south. I figured that if a tank went the north route, I’d have time to turn my rear anti-tank gun and take a shot at its weak side armor before it exited.

    However, Ender took me off-guard by deciding to race his first tank straight past the town using the north road. There was nothing I could do about that, so he had 7 of the 17 VP required right there. I thought that might have been a scouting move, but then he tried to run his second tank through the middle; I held my fire with the first anti-tank gun and blew it up with the second one when it came adjacent.

    That made him a little more cautious, but not enough. The last tank was already following the previous one on the middle road and it managed to avoid being brewed up by the first gun, but when it turned up the road to avoid the second one, it took a PIAT up the tailpipe. Then, to make matters considerably worse for the Germans, thinking the northern route was clear, Ender moved an entire platoon, led by his best leader, adjacent to my single squad in forward defense. The paratroopers popped up, killed the leader, and broke the entire platoon.

    That essentially ended the game on the first turn; although it is theoretically possible for his second platoon to fight its way past my guns and other infantry units, they can’t do that and go north to relieve the pressure my one squad will keep on the broken platoon to prevent them from rallying at the same time. We’ll play one more turn, just in case, but I’ll be very surprised if the second platoon even manages to cross the road, let alone the map.

    Ender was more rueful than chagrined; now that he understands the concept of an infantry screen, I very much doubt he’ll ever make that particular mistake again. And now that I’ve taken full advantage of that specific gap in his knowledge, I can let him watch the Band of Brothers episode where the British tank commander makes the spectacularly unwise decision to ignore the advice given by the American infantry screening his tanks.

    Thunder of the North

    As students of military history know, large-scale military exercises are often used to mask the mobilizations that precede an invasion. That is why many observers are more than a little bit nervous about the implications of the joint Saudi-Turkish exercises called Thunder in the North, as they believe it to be an invasion of Syria meant to stop the Russian-Syrian alliance from defeating the anti-Assad rebels in Aleppo.

    Saudi military spokesman Brigadier-General Ahmed al-Asiri said his country is prepared for a land war in Syria, the Saudi-backed Asharq al-Awsat reported on Tuesday.

    Asiri’s statement to the London- based paper comes after his country announced last week its willing to send ground troops as part of the international coalition to fight Islamic State.

    The Senior Saudi defense official said that his country wants to defeat Islamic State.

    He also announced Saudi Arabia would hold a large-scale military exercise called “Thunder of the North” with the participation of 21 Arab and Muslim countries. The exercise would enhance coordination and information sharing between the countries, Asiri said.

    He added, according to the report, that “when participating countries feel that there are coordinated and interdependent efforts, the results of the exercise will be positive.

    There is talk of “350,000 troops, 2,540 warplanes,
    20,000 tanks and 460 helicopters”, which frankly sounds completely absurd to me in light of the fact that the Saudis have had to rely upon Colombian mercenaries in their largely unsuccessful effort to fight the Yemeni rebels. So, too, is the idea that the Russians would resort to tactical nukes in order to stop them. However, the Saker, who is considerably more credible than a Saudi military spokesman, has indicated that there may indeed be reason for concern, and not just because of the 18,000 troops that Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan has stationed near the border:

    The problem for the USA is that it has no good option to achieve its overriding goal in Syria: to “prevent Russia from winning”. In the delusional minds of the AngloZionist rulers, Russia is just a “regional power” which cannot be allowed to defy the “indispensable nation”. And yet, Russia is doing exactly that both in Syria and in the Ukraine and Obama’s entire Russia policy is in shambles. Can he afford to appear so weak in an election year? Can the US “deep state” let the Empire be humiliated and its weakness exposed?

    The latest news strongly suggests to me that the White House has taken the decision to let Turkey and Saudi Arabia invade Syria. Turkish officials are openly saying that an invasion is imminent and that the goal of such an invasion would be to reverse the Syrian army gains along the boder and near Aleppo. The latest reports are also suggesting that the Turks have begun shelling Aleppo. None of that could be happening without the full support of CENTCOM and the White House.

    The Empire has apparently concluded that Daesh is not strong enough to overthrow Assad, at least not when the Russian AeroSpace forces are supporting him, so it will now unleash the Turks and the Saudis in the hope of changing the outcome of this war or, if that is not possible, to carve up Syria into ‘zones of responsibility” – all under the pretext of fighting Daesh, of course.

    The Russian task force in Syria is about to be very seriously challenged and I don’t see how it could deal with this new threat by itself. I very much hope that I am wrong here, but I have do admit that a *real* Russian intervention in Syria might happen after all, with MiG-31s and all. In fact, in the next few days, we are probably going to witness a dramatic escalation of the conflict in Syria.

    Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems that President Obama has been very, very quiet of late. That, combined with the massive jump in the price of gold recently, seems to indicate that something non-trivial is in the works, although I can’t seem to find any information on when the exercises are scheduled to begin.