Kiev Is Burning

[ink]

8 hours ago, Josh said:

Ugh, can we get a new thread for the tank with the biggest dick discussion? I know this is TANKnet but I feel we are not covering any new ground.

Sorry Josh, I'm with Stuart on this one. The tank discussion beats 99% of the other crap posted in this thread hands down.

Edited October 9, 2024 by ink

[Markus Becker]

14 hours ago, bojan said:

It is not just question of armoring hull ammo rack, hull would have to be heavily redesign to include blow-out panels for hull ammo storage. At which point you practically have new hull, so it is no-go.

Presumably that's one of the things the new Panther adresses?

[Stuart Galbraith]

41 minutes ago, ink said:

Always fun when you catch a Brit complaining that other countries have German royalty!

Ours arent German! They are... Windsorians! There, that taught you!

 

[urbanoid]

Just now, Stuart Galbraith said:

Ours arent German! They are... Windsorians! There, that taught you!

 

That's right, totally not Saxe, not Coburg either and definitely not Gotha!

[Stuart Galbraith]

Yes, its a filthy lie. Charles III is about as German as  JRR Tolkien.

 

[sunday]

10 minutes ago, urbanoid said:

That's right, totally not Saxe, not Coburg either and definitely not Gotha!

And not Hannover, of course!

[Mike1158]

Odd fact, the Regiment that my Regiment became, still wear the colours of Albert (Prince of Wales) husband of Queen Victoria.

 

I wonder where he came from?

 

Royals and intermarriage etc, you could not set it in the east end of London and call it a television program.  Oops, they did while being parodied.

 

Not a serious point, just a break from the Norman.

 

Actually............

[bojan]

58 minutes ago, Markus Becker said:

Presumably that's one of the things the new Panther addresses?

It is claimed that all ammo is supposed to be isolated. Is that done on demonstrator is a hard thing to say.

[ink]

1 hour ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Ours arent German! They are... Windsorians! There, that taught you!

 

Right you are, though it does remind me of that Blackadder Goes Forth episode in the hospital. You know the one I mean:

"I'm as British as Queen Victoria!"

"So, your father's German, you're half-German, and you married a German!"

Edited October 9, 2024 by ink

[Stuart Galbraith]

I was thinking about that one with Prinny says to Blackadder says 'dammit all, we're British arent we?' And Blackadder mutters under his breath 'We are, you're German.'

 

 

[old_goat]

8 hours ago, Mighty_Zuk said:

Two examples of highly active MBTs are Abrams and Merkava. Former with full isolation, latter with partial. Both tanks exhibit exceptional survivability in comparison to Russian tanks. 

For Abrams, yes this is true. But for Merkava? Any data to prove that? If not, then sorry, this is only wishful thinking. And btw, Merkava had no isolation at all in Mk1-3, only the Mk4 has 10 rounds in the turret in full isolation. This is far inferior to the Abrams. 

8 hours ago, Mighty_Zuk said:

And certainly outperforms anything deployed in Ukraine. In a year of combat only 2-3 were lost.

Deployed vs. basically civilians, with no swarms of FPV drones, no artillery, and with only a few outdated/low quality homemade AT weapons... Send them to ukraine, and lets see how they perform... Until then, wishful thinking again. 

 

[Mighty_Zuk]

6 minutes ago, old_goat said:

For Abrams, yes this is true. But for Merkava? Any data to prove that?

 

8 minutes ago, old_goat said:

Deployed vs. basically civilians

All Israeli military personnel are civilians. But that is also true in Ukraine. The vast majority of Ukrainian servicemen are also civilians. 

9 minutes ago, old_goat said:

with no swarms of FPV drones

False.

9 minutes ago, old_goat said:

no artillery

False.

9 minutes ago, old_goat said:

and with only a few outdated/low quality homemade AT weapons

False.

9 minutes ago, old_goat said:

Send them to ukraine

False.

10 minutes ago, old_goat said:

see how they perform

True.

10 minutes ago, old_goat said:

Until then, wishful thinking again.

This is no time and place for wishful thinking. Application of critical thinking, logic, and research is necessary.

[seahawk]

3 hours ago, bojan said:

It is claimed that all ammo is supposed to be isolated. Is that done on demonstrator is a hard thing to say.

At the price of a much reduced ammo load.

[ink]

1 hour ago, Mighty_Zuk said:

 

All Israeli military personnel are civilians. But that is also true in Ukraine. The vast majority of Ukrainian servicemen are also civilians. 

This surely has to be a couple of very obvious oxymorons, by any standards of language and meaning.

[JWB]

Is there nothing Russians won't steal?

 

[Mighty_Zuk]

4 hours ago, ink said:

This surely has to be a couple of very obvious oxymorons, by any standards of language and meaning.

Such are the ways of a goat man. Conflating civilians and military personnel. I do not understand why he referred to Israeli troops as civilians. I took it as a statement of criticism against the concept of citizenship.

[mandeb48]

I think you misunderstood. By civilians he does not mean Israeli troops. He was referring to the enemies that the Merkava has faced.

[bojan]

8 hours ago, seahawk said:

At the price of a much reduced ammo load.

M1 could isolate 40 rounds, why it would result in less in a German clean sheet design?

[seahawk]

7 hours ago, bojan said:

M1 could isolate 40 rounds, why it would result in less in a German clean sheet design?

Because it has 2 auto loaders.

[Stuart Galbraith]

Dear God, please let this be true.

 

[ink]

1 hour ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Dear God, please let this be true.

 

What a weird life arc some people have. You could spend your days hanging out with the blond girl from Baywatch, or move to Russia and devote yourself entirely to its autocratic ruler like a latter-day ronin who finally found a master.

Edited October 11, 2024 by ink

[sunday]

After so many that only talk the talk, it is surprising to see someone willing to walk the walk.

If only more WWIII mongers did the same...

[sunday]

Another Fascist

Google translation from Italian follows.

Quote

Anthropologist Emmanuel Todd and his controversial book: «I am not pro-Russian, but if Ukraine loses the war, Europe will win»

The Italian edition of the book The Defeat of the West by Emmanuel Todd, published in France by Gallimard, is coming out for Fazi. The book has unleashed a hornet's nest of criticism towards the French anthropologist, accused for a decade of holding pro-Putin positions. Todd will be at Librerie.coop Ambasciatori on Tuesday, to present the book in dialogue with Carlo Galli.

Professor Todd, in France it has been written that you want to «pass off your dreams as reality» and that what you say has no scientific basis. What is your response?
«The question is not knowing what the French press writes about me, but knowing the facts that current history reveals. The fact is that the United States has not been able to produce the military equipment that the Ukrainians need, because it is a fact that the power of their industry has been drained by financialization. It is a fact that the Ukrainian army is in retreat and it is a fact that it is struggling to recruit soldiers. It is a fact that Western economic sanctions have done more damage to the European economy than to the Russian one and it is also a fact that the political stability of France is today more threatened than that of Russia. The restructuring of the Russian economy was made possible by the fact that this country produces more engineers than the United States and by the fact that countries that are not allies or subjects of the United States have continued to trade with Russia. The comments of a good part of the French press about my dreams — “Le Monde”, “Libération”, “L’Express” etc. — suggest that it is you who are living in a dream. The success of my book in France also suggests that this press is not always taken seriously by the French».

However, the book is based on your theories on nihilism and religious decadence in Europe. Can you explain their meaning?
«The last traces of the social and moral system of religious origin have disappeared. The zero state of religion has been reached. The absence of beliefs, norms and habits of a religious nature or origin, however, leaves the anguish of being a man, mortal, and who does not know what he is doing on earth. The most banal reaction to this void is the divinization of the void: nihilism, which leads to the impulse to destroy things, people and reality. A central symptom of this for me is the transgender ideology that leads our middle and upper classes to want to believe that a man can become a woman and a woman a man. This is a false statement. The biology of the genetic code tells us that this is impossible. I speak here as an anthropologist, as a scholar, and not as a moralist. We must protect individuals who think they belong to a gender other than their own. As for the LGB part of the LGBT ideology (lesbianism, male homosexuality and bisexuality), these are sexual preferences that have my blessing. It is also surprising but significant that, accepting the inflexibility of the genetic code, science and the Church are today on the same side. Against the nihilistic affirmation of the false».

You argue that Europe has delegated the representation of the West to the United States and is now paying the consequences. How do you think this trend can be changed?
«At the moment we can do nothing else. A war has begun. It is the outcome of this war that will decide the fate of Europe. If Russia is defeated in Ukraine, European submission to the Americans will last for a century. If, as I believe, the United States is defeated, NATO will disintegrate and Europe will be left free. Even more important than a Russian victory will be the Russian army's halt on the Dnieper and the Putin regime's lack of will to militarily attack Western Europe. With 144 million inhabitants, a declining population and 17 million square kilometers, the Russian state is already struggling to occupy its territory. Russia will have neither the means nor the desire to expand once the borders of pre-communist Russia are reconstituted. The Russophobic hysteria of the West, which fantasizes about the desire for Russian expansion in Europe, is simply ridiculous for a serious historian. The psychological shock that awaits Europeans will be to understand that NATO does not exist to protect us but to control us.

Do you think that Europe took the final step towards this subordination during the conflicts in the Balkans, and especially with the issue of Kosovo?
« No, it all started in Ukraine. During the war in Iraq, after Kosovo, Putin, Schröder and Chirac held joint press conferences. This terrified Washington. It seemed that America could be expelled from the European continent. The separation of Russia from Germany therefore became a priority for American strategists. Making the situation in Ukraine worse served this purpose. Forcing the Russians to go to war to prevent the de facto integration of Ukraine into NATO was, initially, a great diplomatic success for Washington. The shock of the war paralyzed Germany and allowed the Americans, in the general confusion, to blow up the Nordstream gas pipeline, a symbol of the economic understanding between Germany and Russia. Obviously, in a second phase, that of the American defeat, American control over Europe will be pulverized. Germany and Russia will meet again. This conflict is in a certain sense artificial. The natural thing, in a Europe with low fertility, with its aging population, is the complementarity between German industry and Russian energy and mineral resources".

Why do you take a pro-Russian position on the war in Ukraine and see this conflict as an example of the end of the West?
"I am an objective historian. I want to understand why we Westerners provoked this war and lost it, and with this defeat we also lost our grip on the world. I am not pro-Russian. But I read the texts of Putin and Lavrov and I think I understand their goals and their logic. If our leaders had taken researchers like me and some others more seriously, they would not have led us to such a disaster. An intelligent Putinophobe could use my book to fight Russia. On the other hand, when a newspaper like Le Monde hides from its readers – the French elites – Russia’s economic and social recovery, as it has done, it misinforms our leaders about Russian stability and power and serves Putin.”

You introduce the concepts of “liberal oligarchy” for many European states and “authoritarian democracy” for Russia. In which system would you prefer to live?
“Liberal oligarchy is not a practical problem for me. Don’t forget that I was born into the French intellectual establishment. My grandfather Paul Nizan published with Gallimard before the war and had Raymond Aron as best man. His wife, my grandmother Henriette, was a cousin of Claude Lévi-Strauss. My father Olivier Todd was a great journalist for the “Nouvel Observateur”. Basically, I am just a dissident member of the intellectual oligarchy. Furthermore, I passionately love my country, France, and I will live there as long as the regime is not fascist or racist, and I do not have to become a political refugee. If I were to become a political refugee, I would not go to the United States as was the tradition in my family, because they are descending into something worse than liberal oligarchy, nihilism. I have no taste for barbarism, I am too culturally conformist, too polite as they say in French. I think I would go to Italy, because everything is beautiful there, or to Switzerland because part of the country speaks French. What would I do in Russia?"

 

[Pavel Novak]

2 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Dear God, please let this be true.

 

Moscow Steven trying to trump Hanoi Jane?

[Mike1158]

Someone must have irradiated his ---------, fill in the blanks with a relevant term.