The story starts here – pages 5-7 in particular. And yes, you need to read that article to appreciate the rest below.
I was asked to provide comments, this was my response:
The scenario reads like a rejected plot treatise from the TV show 24.
Is this now proposed to be a doctrinal infantry battalion operation? Or is the “battalion sized raid” really an over-grown Special Ops activity? The scenario posits that stealthiness and surprise are essential – which argues that some 800 soldiers in uniform aren’t the right force, no matter how they infil/exfil. The scenario then assumes that this large of a physical operation is critically dependent on cyber (in a country with a dysfunctional government but a “sprawling mega-city”); and that a greater threat to the operation is presented by social media than either Attican military or Sogali police force or the armed criminal gang with a bio-toxin. There are two distinct air assaults (initial and follow-on), and these proceed undetected and undisturbed by Attican civil and military personnel (presumably deterred but not killed by “ground protection robots”).
As a proof of the concept, let alone of the operational capability (test or field exercise), in what CONUS location will cyber teams deploy and clandestinely establish access to cellular (e.g. Verizon), landline/internet (e.g. AT&T and TimeWarner) as described? This will all be accomplished while evading detection and counter-measures of course.
Does the author of the scenario actually have a notion of what a “quantum gravity sensor” is – or is that just a collection of cool sounding words? Is a microbot really the size (and appearance) of a rodent, or is it smaller – say the size of a cockroach?
The rehearsal of the raid is conducted while the raid is already underway, i.e. the force is in country potentially drawing hostile attention? And it is all virtual (simulation)? While rehearsal of [small] special operation missions is a key component of McRaven’s case studies in SpecOps, they are not done as part of the mission itself. They are done well in advance to drill and debug the mission plan. One can imagine a game designer philosophy in the virtual rehearsal – nope, we need to reset, again.
Direct neural interface? Is the author of this scenario going to be involved (as a subject) in the testing of those?
XT “combatants” are neutralized non-lethally, but the armed UAVs are eliminating threats on rooftops via more conventional means? And that draws no attention/reaction from any Sogali or Attican officials?
The crowds gathering in the streets receive the PSA ‘burst’ transmitted to them, which they ignore and develop into a threat to the mission. Now what? Social media detects anxiety and hostility (I suspect the soldiers on the ground are sensing that too), but no ameliorative action is suggested let alone taken.
Friendly casualties (hey, there’s a touch of reality after all) are treated while wounded hostiles and neutrals are left to fend for themselves. No repercussions there. All withdraw, including captured hostiles (and the biotoxin – presumably all to be destroyed at our convenience) without so much as a scolding from any actor of the government who’s sovereignty we just stomped all over.
Heck, if we’ve got direct neural interfaces – why don’t we just slip a few operatives into the XT compound and de-neuralize the bad guys (to borrow from another Hollywood plot)? That way they won’t even remember that they could produce a lethal substance.
The scenario is so broken as to make any contemplation of possible technology capabilities within the forecast timeframe too immature and fantastical to warrant the amount of time spent in producing and reviewing this document.
Now, remind yourself – this is a document on a U.S. Army website that all of the officials in charge of public affairs deemed suitable.
Comments
206 responses to “On Shaping the Army Network…”
Am I going to regret having that file on my mobile?
No, but you will regret using the term ‘Mobile’ for that purpose.
I remember when it was “handy” in Europe….i giggled from ES to DE that year.
Okay…..hereforth I will refer to it solely as She Guevara.
Henceforth, I will……
In certain corners of the world, a 5 1/4″ was a “floppy”, and a 3 1/2″ was a “stiffy.” 7-year old me found that very funny. (Still do, actually.)
So what were the 8″?
Liars.
Black.
So I guess the shorthand is “BBD”?
We didn’t have 3-1/2″ disks when I was 7.
*herewith
Heretofore, I have the wherewithall to make up lawyer words too.
When whatever German-language authority was soliciting German words for the then new idea of a cell phone, one of the suggestions was Protzy, from the German word protzen, which means “to show off”.
But, but, but how can we get more money, more conferences, more travel, if we don’t don’t use those techie sounding words?
“One of the serious problems in planning the fight against American doctrine, is that the Americans do not read their manuals, nor do they feel any obligation to follow their doctrine…”
– Russian Officer
This is why – they write in a way that makes enlisted lose interest almost instantaneously.
It’s to keep the (low-class) enlisted from wanting to become officers.
So the authors of this memo were cashiered out of the service and booted onto the street, right?
/wishful thinking.
Relax.
They asked an NCO to write up some idea of what the future could look like.
It isn’t and FM or an AR, FFS.
I could swear this read like a political appointee’s nephew.
Then I suggest you stay well away form all unclassified DoD “future” stuff. See Comment #14 below.
My hope is that this is a complex Psyop aimed at getting the Chinese and Russians to overspend on “quantum gravity sensors” and other pieces of science fiction, while also making small irregular forces think we routinely do battalion-sized airborne drops into random countries for 20 or 30 people.
This reads like Grenada II, this time we really fucking mean it.
Just wait until the ChiComs realize that we’re readying the Omega 13 for operational deployment.
Is that anything like Red Matter?
Thanks for reminding me how much I hate the wordy retarded language staff smucks use in their book reports.
I see the Army has finally made it to the level of the average mid-90s corporation.
Speaking of miltary fiction… Meathead’s new movie was a terrible flop.
Never heard of it.
They were shilling it on NPR. It might (might) have helped if that had done the shilling BEFORE it opened. But that would be icky capitalist-thinking and thus inappropriate.
Apparently it’s on DirecTV pay-per view, because I’ve seen the promos constantly.
Love me some karma.
“Wow, he even walks like he has a Bronze Star!”
SMDH.
There’s already a movie about journalists in Iraq covering the war. And it’s a lot less preachy than I imagine this film is.
YES! I’ve mentioned this several times before as a major source of annoyance.
Remember Barbara Boxer tearing into someone who called her “ma’am” instead of “Senator”?
And of course, if you don’t want to spend your days in jail, don’t call a judge “Mr.” or “Ms.” They have a title of nobility which must be respected because they’re wearing a black dress and sitting in a chair above you..
Indeed I do.
I like Cooke’s comments. In theory he is absolutely correct but some people love having nobility above them.
It was worse than that. She was totally ignorant that under military ettiquette, you call superiors either “sir” or “maam” depending on their cisgender.
So the guy was literally addressing her the way he would address anyone above him in rank, up to and including the President, and she had a melt-down.
Maybe if she accomplished something of value, she might be less insecure.
Negative value is a kind of value.
Pet peeve of mine.
“Former” officials, OMWC. Sitting judges get called judge in the courtroom, and I have no problem with that. Although if they insist on it outside the courtroom they have self-identified as an asshole. I’ve known several former judges (they often semi-retire as mediators). Not one went by “judge”.
“In the courtroom” is not an exception to titles of nobility except in the invisible ink portion. I had a judge get pissed at me for calling him “Judge.” No, it must be, “Your Honor,” sort of like “Your Majesty.”
BTW, I have a buddy who’s a retired judge, and I couldn’t imagine him expecting to be addressed by anything other than his name or “mister.” I wish there were more like him.
You’re right, its “Your Honor” in the courtroom, not “Judge”. I dunno, just doesn’t bother me in that setting. Being pissy about it is always uncalled for, of course.
Or “Mr President”.
In my ideal world: “Dude, you’re the hired help. Get over it.”
And of course, if you don’t want to spend your days in jail, don’t call a judge “Mr.” or “Ms.”
*Flashes back to law school, watching in horror as a sitting federal judge reams a poor hardly-fluent-in-English Chinese student because he used “ma’am” during a mock Markman hearing*
Burke is a little off-putting when he waxes laconic on the pragmatism and moral necessity of a ruling nobility, until I realized we cashiered aristocracy in favor of much more contemptible nobles.
Wasn’t it Aquinas who was pro-monarchy because the monarchy will always be a “them”, but elected representatives are often seen as “us”?
IOW, it’s much easier to overthrow a tyrant monarchy than a tyrant democracy.
That’s excellent. I have no king to blame for my miseries……I’m left muttering “I didn’t vote for this”
Couldn’t find the exact quote. The entire essay De Regno is a recommended read. I did stumble across this paragraph, which is prescient:
always apropos
https://www.popehat.com/2013/12/23/burn-the-fucking-system-to-the-ground/
Yet look at how many people do it here with Mr. Napolitano.
With a title? How many?
Somewhat related, I finally threw my ruck in the trash over the weekend. It had migrated its way from the house to the garage to outside and now to the landfill.
I opened it up to see if there was anything worthwhile inside. Nothing but memories and rotting TA50 & clothing. Farewell old friend.
https://imgur.com/cLoKszU
They let you keep yours? No kidding.
The only thing I still have other than uniforms (kept one of each, not really sure why but I did) is my desert cammie Camelback. Haven’t used it in probably a decade but don’t want to toss it either.
I turned in a complete set of TA50 when I ETSed.
It’s easier to do inspections when you have stuff thats never been to the field. Picked up a bunch of stuff cheap from surplus stores, just like when you lose shit but in advance. Also, my field ruck was modded.
Oh, and I bought the canteens new from the MCS store. I saw way too many disgusting things with other’s canteens.
MCS=military clothing sales store
Completely unrelated but the morning links are dead. And they wonder why no one trusts them.
https://mobile.twitter.com/huffpost/status/1018290098503340033
I heard Trump and Putin had a private meeting because they were taking turns blowing each other for two hours. There’s no evidence that was the case but prove me wrong.
Blowing each other? Surely it was Trump servicing Putin because he’s the latter’s cockholster (which is an acceptable and not at all homophobic remark to make so long as you’re a woke lefty and not some conservative faggot).
That was Colbert wasn’t it? I bet they’d even let him say The Word That Must Not be Said if he was saying it about the right person.
I hope Trump, just within earshot of a microphone, leans over and tells Putin he’ll have more flexibility after the next election.
I think the media would flip first and realize they’ve been trolled only much later.
From the old days:
Well, there was this king, and he ruled over his kingdom.
Right in the middle of the kingdom there was a well.
That’s where everybody drank.
One night, this witch came along…
and she poisoned the well.
And the next day, everybody drank from it except the king…
and they all went crazy.
They got together in the street and they said…
”We got to get rid of the king,
’cause the king is mad.”
And then that night, he went down
and he drank from the well.
And the next day
all the people rejoiced…
because their king had regained his reason.
I was amused by the idea that you could do two air drops, totalling a whole battalion, on/near a major city, with no one the wiser.
You see, they’re using cloaked aircraft that are silent and invisible. With chameleonic camouflage that does the same for the troops. People will go shopping and commute right through the invasion and never notice!
That purveyor of Truth John Brennan calls Trump’s press conference with Putin treasonous and grounds for impeachment:
https://news.grabien.com/story-john-brennan-trumps-press-conference-impeachable-offense-tre
Beat me to it. Brennan has gone completely mental. His remarks:
Christ, what an asshole.
And how dare Trump point out that it was Hillary’s people who had the security failure, and the Obama administration that did nothing when it knew about Russian activity around the election. Haven’t seen the press conference yet, but I can’t imagine anything more “treasonous” than Obama’s quip about being more flexible after the election.
Why am I being lectured by an authoritarian piece of shit who was a voter for CPUSA?
To be honest, I expect the Russians to meddle in our affairs when the opportunity presents itself and it’s nothing we wouldn’t do/haven’t done to other nations. I just can’t get too outraged about it even if the supposed meddling is true. It’s certainly not worth remaining on a near war footing with the world’s only other nuclear superpower.
I’m sick of people throwing around extreme language like “literally Hitler” and “treason”.
Especially when actual treason (read: Hillary passing top secret SAP information to foreign nationals) is greeted with a collective yawn from the DemOp Media Complex.
So, would a direct post accusing a failed presidential candidate of actual treason get enough attention to draw a libel suit?
Would throwing in a wood chipper comment bring on a federal investigation?
What can one actually post these days on a fringe libertarian site without worry of a subsequent display of “the process is the punishment”?
Just asking. Hypothetically.
*narrows gaze*
/hypothetically
Yeah um…..still waiting to hear how exactly the Russians hacked the election.
Contrary to what the Democrats and the media think, the Democratic National Committee is not an arm of the American government.
One of the more disquieting things about the whole ROSSIYAN CUOLLUSION is that they keep acting as though an attack on The Party is an attack on The People.
Democrats are the party of the people. We know that because the plutocrats in the Republican party have to stoop to underhanded tactics to win, like campaigning in Wisconsin.
Nobody has denied that any of the leaked DNC information was real. So “hacking the election”, in this sense, means releasing the truth about a political party. The public knowing the truth = hacking an election. That is very disturbing when you think about it.
Oh yeah that too.
“The peasants aren’t supposed to know what we say about them in private.”
“Secretary” Clinton?
Go fuck yourself.
Take a memo…
In defense of this ‘white paper’, it in no way should be construed as doctrine or even approved.
These things are just thought exercises where a whole bunch of horse-shit is flung at the wall to get young officers to start thinking about the use of emerging technologies and possible political developments.
20 years ago I worked some on ‘AAN 2025’, the ‘Army After Next’ scenarios were basically wild ass guesses by individuals and small groups to come up with 2nd and 3rd order outcomes to the newly developing events and to guess at how Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures might react those potential outcomes. Nothing I saw was anywhere near to reality, but they can be used as a framework to generate future discussion.
As thought exercises, they can be good for getting conversations going and ideas flowing.
For developing doctrine, they’re next to useless.
The white paper could almost be an exercise in “If you think we can do X, think again. Look at all the highly implausible assumptions and fantasy technology we would need to do it.”
Almost.
The other piece on this… If someone believed this was remotely feasible or practical, it would likely say something besides ‘UNCLASSIFIED’ on it.
Some Nimrod linked OMWC’s article to Popehat. There may be incoming morons.
We have a secret weapon. And I’m married to her.
I have fond memories of the day that the commentariat moved from TOS to Popehat and took it over. That was fun.
Wasn’t that because of the subpeonas and the Popehat signal?
The best part was when Mary Stack’s white-knight “Todd Gakk” showed up to get his licks in.
It was a happy time.
Ken Schulz makes a concise and cogent point……..therein.
Which article?
I’m guessing the LA Times/1A one
His article on grooming gangs.
Coincidentally, Grooming Gang is the name of his cover band.
It’s a cover for his grooming gang.
“A libertarian fringe site linked to an archived version of the article, if you’re still interested”
We’re fringe!
That made my day.
Well, a splinter group from Reason that has people who think Cato and Niskanen aren’t libertarian enough. Surely that’s fringe!
Wait – You guys are Libertarians?
I like Anna Torv.
Would with extreme prejudice.
I was going to respond to that, but decided not.
Now, the question is – who is Argentina Orange?
Tulpa.
Fringe!
What article? (looks)
you mean this?
https://glibertarians.com/2018/07/hot-take-la-judge-defies-first-amendment/
its 2 paragraphs. im not sure why that would rub anyone the wrong way.
Its when they start coming back because they think that’s our usual level of quality and get confused the first time a Hat & Hair runs.
oh.
(thinks)
GOOD THING I DONT KNOW ANY OF YOU PEOPLE AND JUST HAPPEN TO BE PASSING BY.
Never forget this great little nugget:
“Reason commenters…often sound like drunk teenage boys trying to one-up each other. They tend to forget that their online pals aren’t the only ones reading what they say….Puerile they undoubtedly are, but Reason commenters are also harmless (unless you care about reasoned political discourse or the image of libertarians).”
-Virginia Postrel
I’m happy I can still manage to sound like a drunk teenage boy this many years later.
Here you go Virginia:
https://thechive.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/tumblr_oc2ie19hom1tt5umso2_1280.jpg?quality=85&strip=info&w=600
Ginny, I never knew ye, but I shitpost on the internet for fun, not the image of some group (especially not one I belong to).
I still like John Ringo’s breakout in “The Last Centurion” (keeping in mind that it’s now 10 years old). Particularly the retaking of Detroit. It’s basically taking the best lessons learned from Fallujah, etc and rethinking it in a logical scenario. Mosul and Fallujah, etc and the current battlefield combined with the underground facilities (UGFs) of a megacity – ie. subways, sewers, etc – is what we need to be looking at in the short term (and which is being considered very intelligently in light of Korea, etc).
As noted above, a white paper is very theoretical generally and probably at the 20-25 year forecast timeframe vs anything in the next 5 years.
“we cashiered aristocracy”
I got into it with my best friend, a reasonable gun laws Reagan Democrat type, Saturday because he thinks when in London Americans should adopt the postures and “manners” required around “royals.”
I’ve known him as a well-meaning moderate for three decades and have always thought his manners over principles thinking exactly the sort of emptyheadedness that will destroy the U.S. from within. I still love him, but all I could muster as “I didn’t know that about you. ”
I am still at war with all aristocrats…..forever, amen.
You who else doesn’t care about manners?
Eh? I’m worried I may have been misunderstood
One of the great things about being an American is that even the lowliest, most pig ignorant, jizz mopper need not bend his knee to any man.
But all must bow to The Queen!
Fuck that old bint.
He SHOULD have given her an iPod with a copy of The Art of the Deal already loaded.
The battle scenario reads like it was written by someone who has a very shallow familiarity with predictive analytics and blended that superficial knowledge with a little bit of current military strategy and a heaping dose of sci-fi. It’s impossible to judge the plausibility of such a scenario because it relies so heavily on speculative technology that doesn’t exist.
No argument here.
For my money, give me a military that kills people and breaks things, and give me a Congress that only declares war if they are planning to bomb the enemy back into a Clausewitzische wasteland. Total war or fuck off, whichever makes more sense.
I don’t need a DOD sub department of parks and recreation restoration, zillion dollar budget assumed.
Probably the correct scenario for this problem:
1. Tell host country that toxin is being made in this 10 block region.
2. Give host country ultimatum. You do it or we do it for you.
3. Blow up 10 block region. or watch host country blow up smaller portion of 10 block region.
Yes sir
Pretty much.
The left is shitting their pants over this right now on social media.
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2018/07/16/putin-told-trump-russia-never-meddled-in-us-election.html
But he would say that, the dirty Ruskie.
What do they expect Putin to say regardless of what the truth is?
It’s just further proof that Trump colluded with Putin and Stalin’s reanimated corpse to use Psi energy rays to reprogram Pennsylvania’s Diebold machines!
/DU
Russian flag; Red, White, and Blue
American flag: Red, White and Blue
What else do you need?!!? Connect the dots, it’s so easy.
But we have proof…! just can’t recall what it is off the top of my head.
The howler monkeys are all wound up. Fox is even jumping on the bandwagon.
Fox is staffed by a bunch of warmongering neocons so no surprise there.
Kind of an all purpose intro to just about any link to CNBC or any other DemOp Media operation.
“Taking a joke,” from her perspective, is a nonphysical equivalent of taking a punch. The object of the joke is proving that she can withstand pain by laughing. This in turn reassures the joke-teller that it’s okay to say something that’s wounding, that punches down, that reminds particular groups of what society has decided is “their place.”
Vulture.com is New York Magazine’s website.. and it’s trying to ruin standup comedy.
If you look at what both performers have served up as examples of their personal best, it’s hard not to be embarrassed for Maher, as well as anyone else in comedy who feels more kinship with him than with somebody like Gadsby. The Tasmanian comic’s Nanette, which shifts from a typical, joke-driven stand-up special into an explanation of why she’s quitting comedy, delves into her personal biography as a lesbian woman struggling to express her authentic self, and as a student of visual art history who scrutinized Western art painted mainly by straight white men that she unquestioningly accepted as masters because of their “reputation.”
http://www.vulture.com/2018/07/bill-maher-hannah-gadsby-stand-up-comedy.html
I’ve seen some clips from Gadsby’s act on YouTube. It’s precisely the goddamn opposite of comedy. She makes Adam Sandler seem funny.
My reaction to the clips was “Why didn’t the crowd murder her for stealing their money?”
If you turn off the TV when she tells you the comedy is over, it’s not bad.
Quite polite actually.
Real comedy usually involves mocking thinthings considered taboo by society. Not lecturing us on the bullshit we are supposed to believe because our betters say so.
There are some comedians who see that their profession is being threatened. Not enough of them, though.
When I think of good comedy, the first thing that comes to mind is white lesbian lecturing me on why I’m the cause of all problems in the world.
I got maybe three paragraphs into that long trail of drivel before I wondered why the hell I was reading it, and stopped. Comedy is very simple – does it make me laugh? Yes or no?
Just for fun, though, I scrolled down to see just how long it was. Dude is obviously being paid by the word.
I mean, I couldn’t help but hear Denis Leary’s Gus from The Ref – “What are we, girlfriends? Do I give a shit about any of this?” – when I read the following section:
There are no masters anymore. Art deserted the skill requirements well over a century ago and substituted statements of philosophy.
My point is, I watch comedians to laugh and be entertained, not to listen to a bunch of navel-gazing bullshit.
If a certain amount of vulnerability and self-deprecation is employed, almost anyone can be a successful comedian, politician, salesman, or preacher.
Exactly. Anyone who attacks the artistic masters of antiquity on the basis of their race and/or sex is very thinly disguising envy at their own lack of artistic talent.
Why is “authenticity” always larded up with artificiality? Who are you trying to convince, me or the mouse in your pocket?
I mean, why is the “authentic self” something only realizable through Marxist dialectic and defining oneself in opposition to an oppressor? Could you imagine defining chairs as a class of furniture which only makes sense, are only authentically true, in relation to tables, which lord over them? And why does authenticity require a vocabulary tarted up with impenetrable jargon? And effectively unfalsifiable claims on reality?
Marxism is the pinnacle of pseudointellectualism. It ham-fistedly attempts a grand unified theory of human endeavor but can only do so by appealing to superficial characteristics and group identity, never acknowledging the complexity and diversity of the individual. To cover up this lack of philosophical sophistication, it created its own dictionary of nonsense to try and sound more convincing.
To me, the authentic self is what is, regardless of your environment.
If you define yourself in opposition to something else, you are basing your self-image on a negative, an absence, on what you are not. Now, any definition is both inclusive and exclusive, but one that is only exclusive is flawed; it has a hole in the middle of it.
Assumes facts not in evidence.
Spare me.
In watching the trailer for her show, the audience cheers when she goes into how she can’t do comedy anymore because it is self-degrading. If they truly feel that way, then why are they there? They’re actively cheering their own “guilt” in the matter. It’s bizarre. I think I’d rather watch the typical Philadelphia response to inadequate performers, at least it’s honest.
The Progressive Social Justice movement is a suicide pact; it’s just that the suicide part is in slow motion.
I’d cheer if somebody unfunny said she were quitting comedy.
Hell, I’ll cheer when John McCain finally drops dead.
So she’s going to get her own late night comedy/variety show on CBS then?
And bombard us with hectoring ads that remind us to never watch that show.
At a previous job, there was a consultant who wrote up a few of these scenarios in relation to the system that we were developing. They were pretty much along these lines, but, (BUT!), complete with soap opera-level character development, scene transitions, and character names. Example:
“Major Link gazed off into the distance, confident that his unit had accomplished its mission with the help of the I.N.T.E.L.L.I.G.E.N.C.E. system.”
Was the consultant Spottswood?
Spottswood?
Spottswood!
Great job, team! Head back to the base for debriefing and cocktails.
as a joke, right?
I never saw him make a joke or even smile in person, so, I don’t think so.
OT – RE: MUH ROOSKEES!
Putin is most certainly a ruthless tyrant; however, I agree with Trump in that, as long as we’re not losing our shirts in the process (see: Iran Deal), we stand to lose nothing by improving our relationship with Russia. That definitely doesn’t mean we’re best buddies or allies. I would just much rather see a productive and civil relationship based on mutually beneficial trade and cooling of military proxy hostility. Conversely, I think we stand to lose a lot by relations continuing to deteriorate. Continuing conflict with Russia not only distracts us from China (IMO a much bigger threat), it pushes Russia further into alliances with unsavory actors and sets up the geopolitical landscape into some kind of neo-Eastern-Bloc in opposition to the US. Since Western Europe can no longer be relied upon to do anything useful (if they ever could), we’re stuck facing that alone (along with a few Eastern European countries).
I’d rather deal with Russia at this point. Russian leadership can be predicted – they will act in the best interests of Russia. The western Euro leadership won’t act in the best interests of their nations. That makes them unreliable at best.
western Euro leadership won’t act in the best interests of their nations
Unless those nations happen to be Germany or, to a lesser extent, France.
Even then.
Their management of the migrant siutation has not been to the advantage of the nations. It has been actively detrimental, with sheer stubbornness in persisting in bad policy after the evidence of such has become apparent.
“sheer stubbornness in persisting in bad policy after the evidence of such has become apparent”
I couldn’t agree more. Merkel can’t be relied upon even by her own constituency, how they hell are we supposed to rely on her?
They have aging populations. The pension system doesn’t deal well with parity between retirees and workers.
This was all predicted 20+ years ago by… someone… (some econo-politco-social scientist, don’t remember who). The argument was summed up by: either Western Europe is going to have to curtail its welfare state, start having way more babies or start importing millions of immigrants. They chose the third option. Unfortunately, not only are those immigrants accelerating the economic decline due to their eagerness to exploit the welfare state’s benefits and unwillingness to work, but they are actively hostile to Western values of liberty and freedom.
TL;DR – Western Europe is fucked sideways no matter what and unable to engage on the global stage because of their own demographic problems.
You know who else solved the failed German economy problem?
The German porn industry? Wait no, that was their waste management problem…
The German porn industry? Wait no, that was their waste management problem…
I know Science Fiction writer Tom Kratman has been saying that for a long time at least 10 years that I know of. And that the end point is going to be camps, ovens and showers again or a caliphate in Europe.
Mark Steyn’s been talking (and writing) about that for a while, too.
They have aging populations. The pension system doesn’t deal well with parity between retirees and workers.
Which would be a defensible position had they not decided to give welfare to their immigrants. It’s a classic case of bureaucratic efficiency: they realize they need more workers to fund the welfare state, decide the easiest way to get more workers is to import more people, and then decide the only humane thing to do is provide welfare to their new people – which of course requires more workers.
The pension system is going to be even unhappier when it has to share the revenue from the same pool of taxpaying workers with an ever-expanding pool of migrant welfare beneficiaries. If the goal of mass migration was to save the pension system, I would say Germany has managed to thoroughly fuck that up, too.
Germany is demonstrably not acting in the best interest of its citizens in two major areas:
(1) Immigration
(2) Energy policy. For extra creamy irony, German energy policy (closing nukes, spending on renewables) drives them directly into the arms of Russia as their main source of reliable energy, natural gas.
The EU acts in the best interests of the Brussels Class, the European equivalent of the Beltway Class and the “deep state”. If that’s not the same as the interests of the European people, tough patooties for the people of Europe.
Putin is a Tyrant who has invaded two countries and oppresses his own people. However, an antagonistic war footing is not the way to deal with a country unless you want to go to war with them.
Speaking of meddling in elections; the US government supported the unconstitutional overthrow of an elected leader in Ukraine, antagonizing Russia who then invaded. That’s back when we had real leaders using Smart Power to bring peace and unity to the globe under a Nobel Peace Prize winning President. The good old days.
I forget the timeline – after the magic rest button and before we sold them all our uranium?
Putin is a sort of autocrat but he’s not nearly as bad as many leaders we deal with on a daily basis. As bad as the Saudis, Erdogan, Duerte, or Xi? I don’t think so.
Let me know when Trump sidesteps Congress and unilaterally promises to end sanctions and hand-deliver palettes of cash to the Putin regime.
Hell, call me when he walks back his remarks to Merkel about Germans subsidizing Russia’s oilgopoly.
“his remarks to Merkel about Germans subsidizing Russia’s oligopoly”
This is why people like Trump; maybe not specifically Trump himself, but Trump-like leaders. They tell the truths that everyone is already thinking but refuse to acknowledge because of “propriety” or some such bullshit.
Especially after a president who made appeasement his central motif. *Now* you expect us to take the office super serial and shit?
Social Justice…umm…Gym Class
WTF is ‘motor elitism’?
Disdain for anything that isn’t a V-8?
I can respect that.
Does a supercharged V-6 make the grade?
Motor skills?
If you can walk without tripping over your own feet you are motor privileged. And that isn’t fair.
two legs, two arms.
Four legs good, no legs better!
‘motor elitism’
Something about throwing like a girl?
Hey that sport based on a game indigenous North American people played is racist because at this certain point in time the majority of people who enjoy it are white!
Badminton is white oriented? That would be news to Indonesia and SE Asia…
I was going to say, badminton is as Asian as ping-pong.
Why not soccer? That is pretty white-oriented has plenty of racial stereotypes…
Don’t forget “other racially stereotyped,” that allows them to 86 badminton and basketball.
So will Brian Doherty be proclaiming Gadsby’s libertarianism?
Guess the president?
Obama?
Johnny, tell him what he’s won!
Nothing! Just what I suspected.
I feel shame
Something a lot better than sasquatch lovin’.
Johnny died of colorectal cancer.
That was Rod Roddy. Johnny Olson died of a cerebral hemmorhage (in the parking lot at LAX, if memory serves).
Ack, and I misspelled hemorrhage.