ABigGuy4U
5mo ago
Nuclear weapons would be extremely useful on the battlefield. The only reason they aren’t used is because of the taboo, the threat of escalation, and squeamishness over civilian casualties. If nuclear weapons had been used in Korea, Vietnam or the present Ukraine conflict, those wars would have lasted between a day and three weeks.
ABigGuy4U
5mo ago
How does your interpretation of the Prequels change as a result of the Sequel Trilogy?
You are mistaken, comrade. There was no sequel trilogy.
I definitely remember lampshades made of human skin being presented as uncontroversial truth in the 1990s. And in the 2000s I remember it being presented as “this was something one psychopathic commandant at one camp was doing, but not a widespread official policy.” In fact, I remember it being listed as an uncontroversial fact on Karl Otto-Koch’s Wikipedia page in the early 2010s. Until I saw this thread today I didn’t realize it was now considered a myth.
ABigGuy4U
5mo ago
although some would definitely clarify that they don't know how you'd weed out Muslims pretending to be Christian for nefarious purposes.
I would say “you don’t have to tell me what happened, but you do have to drink this” as I hand them a bowl of vodka.
ABigGuy4U
5mo ago
The problem with a no-fly zone in Ukraine specifically is the parts with the actual fighting are within the range of Russian air defense. So not only would you have American aircraft engaging Russian ones, you would have to fly into Russian airspace and attack Russian SAM bases. I don’t know what exactly that would lead to but it’s a lot heavier than MIG alley in Korea.
I don’t think Russia would lob any nuclear weapons at NATO initially. I think the first thing they would do is a large scale tactical nuclear strike against the Ukrainian military to collapse it, then wait and see what the response is.
ABigGuy4U
5mo ago
My favorite South African security quirk was that some tricked out sports cars have an undercarriage mounted flame-thrower to deter carjackers. It’s like something out of Mad Max film.
ABigGuy4U
5mo ago
some people think democrats are too far to the right- fascinating specimens
Democrats genuinely are much, much further to the right in some areas compared to where they were in the mid-2000s:
-Reflexivly carrying water for corporations and big pharmaceutical companies
-Strong support for foreign interventions and war
-Much more pro-Israel in the mainstream media and legislative parts of the party (I remember them having a week long panic attack during the Intafada when an Israeli helicopter strike killed six people)
ABigGuy4U
5mo ago
But notice that Turkey and Saudi Arabia are also both US allies. One is a NATO member state. So nothing that they do is ever a violation of the “rules based international order”
ABigGuy4U
5mo ago
Until just recently there was no need for this kind of hard discussion between pragmatists and true believers because both were winning. It didn’t really start to conflict in a big way until after the October 7 attack. Even during the first Trump administration the strategies to resist it were still more or less in sync.
ABigGuy4U
5mo ago
Well the Brexit referendum actually winning was a pretty unlikely outcome at the time Cameron approved it, so it seemed like a rather small bone to throw to the base.
ABigGuy4U
5mo ago
I think part of it is that they are looking at data that shows that young women are increasingly the primary spenders on consumer goods and entertainment, and they’re trying to grab that new market share whether the intellectual property is fit for purpose or not.
ABigGuy4U
5mo ago
(also, you fight a literal war on drugs and shoot tweakers)
That’s another thing that makes me think it’s about radical Islam. Trafficking narcotics for funds and using them to hype up soldiers before an attack are something that the Taliban and other groups have been accused of doing.
Compare Far Cry 5 (that understood how to do a conservative-coded villain group correctly).
I have been meaning to make a post about this on the Friday Fun Thread for a while, but I will just make it here. I don’t think Far Cry 5 meant to make a commentary about America or American politics, I think that was something it accidentally stumbled into by virtue of releasing around the time Trump started to become a controversial figure. Video games have long development cycles of around three to five years.
I think Far Cry 5 was about Syria and ISIS, and attempting to put the conflict in terms and visuals Americans can understand. It’s about a radical group with a bespoke, radical eschatological interpretation of an already existing religion that seizes an area by force and tries to impose that vision.
There are a lot of parallels between Eden’s Gate and the events of Far Cry 5 that parallel ISIS and Syria. Notice:
-Eden’s Gate’s black flag with white lettering, like the ISIS battle flag
-The white Toyota technicals they both use as their primary combat vehicle
-The bizarre inhuman torture and execution methods that seem weirdly sadistic and lurid for a group claiming to be faith based
-The mandatory politically correct disclaimer by the developers that this group does not represent the religion as a whole: the multiple scenes where the Catholic priest is obviously disgusted by Eden’s Gate, and the scene where the cult members literally knock a Bible out of his hands and force him to hold the cult leader’s manifesto instead. Odd for a game made by liberals that is supposed to be dunking on conservative Christians but perfect sense for a game that is supposed to an allegory for ISIS and it’s questionable relation with mainline Islam.
-The government’s complete lack of interest in dealing with the cult despite its violent insurgent behavior, with government intervention limited to a few special forces troops dropped in by helicopter and one CIA agent to assist. The lack of ATF involvement or the national guard showing up in force makes no sense for a game that’s supposed to be set in America but it makes perfect sense as a commentary about Western governments initially giving very little help in fighting ISIS. The CIA officer even specifically says the American government isn’t interested in helping much because it’s too busy with domestic political squabbles like verifying the authenticity of Trump’s alleged pee tape.
-The uniforms and Soviet era weaponry of the friendly militia that helps you fight the cult look strikingly like the Kurdish paramilitary units that were holding back ISIS in Northern Syria. The fact that there even is a “friendly paramilitary militia” that’s unambiguously played as good guys would seem extremely odd for a liberal critique of rural America.
-SPOILERS: The fact that this cult in the middle of some Montana county is somehow (at least metaphorically) destabilizing world geopolitics to the point of a potential world ending nuclear war.
You’re right though, Far Cry 6 is just politically and narrative schizophrenic garbage.
ABigGuy4U
5mo ago
I can sort of understand doing that in politics. The current crop of Democrats may be doing it badly, but morally browbeating people into supporting you has been an element of politics forever. But it absolutely boggles my mind that they are trying to do that for consumer products and media. Imagine if the Cocoa Cola company had responded to the New Coke debacle with a bunch of attack ads implying their customers were just idiots with bad taste. Or if Johnson & Johnson had responded to the Chicago Tylenol killings with a series of bus ads that read “Tylenol: It’s perfectly safe, you’re just a fucking pussy”
ABigGuy4U
5mo ago
I think that one in Germany was some kind of failed false flag. There were explosive devices in his car that were supposed to render his body unidentifiable, after which any number of identities, ethnicities and motives could have been ascribed to him. But the devices failed, allowing civilian authorities to quickly identify his body and his real Twitter account, and the media and government had to run with whatever awkward non-motive that could be found in his posts.
ABigGuy4U
5mo ago
But what happens when all the infrastructure for that gets hypersonic missile striked on the first day of the war?
ABigGuy4U
5mo ago
I mean, those were horrible, horrible events, but all the Muslim terror attacks in Europe have killed maybe 400 people in 20 years. That’s a totally different ballpark from “Our entire expeditionary force of 80,000 people is dead, we need to draft 250,000 people this year and when they’re all dead we’ll need 400,000 more for next year”
ABigGuy4U
5mo ago
If they did that the refugees would just leave. They like being in the west because it’s comfortable and safer than their home countries.
Quadcopter drones aren’t actually killing that many people comparatively, it just seems like it because those are the only ones that have clear videos of the attack. When an artillery strike takes out a whole trench line killing two entire companies, there’s no video of that. Artillery is still the king of the battlefield, and artillery is still responsible for 80 percent of the casualties in the war, like it has been in every industrial war since 1914. In fact, the primary use of quadcopter drones in this war has been for artillery spotting, not as FPV kill drones.
Additionally, the only reason quadcopter drones are effective right now is that they are new and there haven’t been any good countermeasures developed. It would be pretty easy to design a motion tracking automated gun to take these out. And there are many many electronic warfare countermeasures to jam FPV drones (Human or AI controlled) that just haven’t been implemented in large scale yet. Like it or not, the main effect of all the new warfare technology has been to reduce us to WWI-style mass artillery barrages and trench warfare.
ABigGuy4U
5mo ago
The Ukrainian soldiers and the Scandinavian mercenaries in the blocking detachment didn’t speak the same native languages so they were talking to each other in English.
ABigGuy4U
5mo ago
it's the Ukrainians at the front making the decision to fight or not
The videos I’ve seen of Ukrainian troops shooting their foreign blocking detachments so they can withdraw from the front, and the last few literal suicide bombings of Ukrainian draft offices by bereaved parents would seem to suggest that it is not, in fact, their decision whether to continue fighting.
ABigGuy4U
5mo ago
Which air-defense munitions particularly useful against China do you believe were being squandered, given that the Ukrainians weren't exactly being given from the US Navy or indo-pacific stockpiles?
Ukraine has burned through 10 percent of all the Patriot batteries that exist in the entire world. Part of the reason they need those Patriot batteries so much is to protect their very vulnerable power infrastructure. That vulnerable power infrastructure was supposed to be protected by heavy concrete bunker complexes, but unfortunately they just stole all the money the United States gave them to build those bunker complexes and funneled it into some Swiss bank account somewhere.
I don’t think a nuclear conflict is necessarily likely, but a conventional engagement over Taiwan has a much much higher chance at spiraling out of control than the Ukraine War does for a few reasons.
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Any invasion of Taiwan is going to start with a massive blockade of the island. The US can’t just sit back and ship over ammo and weapons systems. If the US decides to intervene it would require directly engaging the Chinese fleet in a way that ensures thousands of deaths on both sides in a very short period of time. Keep in mind one aircraft carrier going down with all hands would cause more deaths than 9/11.
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The time scale here is brutally fast compared to Ukraine. Everyone knows where everyone else’s ships and bases are. This isn’t like Midway where the fleets are going to take weeks to find each other. Both sides have extremely long range weapons and could start hitting fleets and bases within minutes of a conflict starting. One side could find itself effectively losing the conflict in a matter of hours. This vastly increases the risk of panic and the use of tactical nuclear weapons to try and even things out.
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Using a tactical nuclear weapon on a fleet in the middle of the ocean has effectively zero risk of civilian casualties, so there is a much better psychological excuse for the early launches than you would have for a land war.
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There’s a hell of a lot more money on the table. Between the chip fabs in Taiwan and control of the South China Sea, one side is coming out of this economically ruined. Adding to the pressure, both the American and Chinese stock markets are going to immediately get heemed the minute the conflict starts, creating an intense pressure to get this over with fast.
Also both Russia and Germany had recently (in the last few years before the conflict) been in unfortunate situations that made them look like they had sold out their Slavic and Austrio-Hungarian allies, respectively. So when 1914 came around both had to act a lot tougher to compensate for their recent failures, leading to Russia’s maximalist demands and Germany’s “blank check” to Austria-Hungary.
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