Saturday, March 22, 2025
M88 Recovery Vehicle. National Museum of Military Vehicles.
Still in use, the M88 Recovery Vehicle is a tank retriever based on the M48 chassis.
Very heavily armored, it's outlasted the phasing out of the M48 and M60, and continues on in service.
Last edition:
Labels: 1950s, 1959, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2020s, Armor, National Museum of Military Vehicles, The Cold War, Wyoming (Dubois)
Thursday, March 22, 1945. Operation Plunder.
Operation Plunder commanded by Field Marshall Montgomery was launched which saw the 21st Army Group cross the Rhine.The Rhine was crossed was at Rees, Wesel, and south of the river Lippe by the British Second Army under Lieutenant General Miles Dempsey, and the United States Ninth Army under Lieutenant General William H. Simpson.
89th Infantry Division crossing the Rhine in Operation Plunder. Note the soldier equipped with a Thompson submachine gun on the deck of the landing craft.
The U.S. 5th Infantry Division of the 3d Army crossed the Rhine near Nierstein.
Don Juan, pretender to the Spanish Crown, demanded Franco's resignation.
Kamikazes make significant strikes on Task Force 58, including with the new Yokosuka MXYZ Ohka suicide rocket plane.
The Arab League was established.
Last edition:
Wednesday, March 21, 1945. Ohka.
Monday, March 22, 1915. The Imperial Russian Army captured Przemyśl
Imperial Russian Army captured Przemyśl ending the longest siege of the Great War. They took over 117,000 Austro-Hungarian POWs which included nine generals, 93 senior staff officers, and 2,500 other officers.
Last edition:
Friday, March 19, 1915. The Defense of India Act.
Labels: 1910s, 1915, British Empire, India, It was because of World War One, law, Outer space, World War One
Wednesday, March 22, 1775. Speech on Conciliation with America
To restore order and repose to an empire so great and so distracted as ours is, merely in the attempt, an undertaking that would ennoble the flights of the highest genius, and obtain pardon for the efforts of the meanest understanding. Struggling a good while with these thoughts, by degrees I felt myself more firm. I derived, at length, some confidence from what in other circumstances usually produces timidity. I grew less anxious, even from the idea of my own insignificance. For, judging of what you are by what you ought to be, I persuaded myself that you would not reject a reasonable proposition because it had nothing but its reason to recommend it.
The proposition is peace. Not peace through the medium of war; not peace to be hunted through the labyrinth of intricate and endless negotiations; not peace to arise out of universal discord, fomented from principle, in all parts of the empire; not peace to depend on the juridical determination of perplexing questions, or the precise marking the shadowy boundaries of a complex government. It is simple peace, sought in its natural course and in its ordinary haunts.
Let the colonies always keep the idea of their civil rights associated with your government-they will cling and grapple to you, and no force under heaven will be of power to tear them from their allegiance. But let it be once understood that your government may be one thing and their privileges another, that these two things may exist without any mutual relation – the cement is gone, the cohesion is loosened, and everything hastens to decay and dissolution. As long as you have the wisdom to keep the sovereign authority of this country as the sanctuary of liberty, the sacred temple consecrated to our common faith, wherever the chosen race and sons of England worship freedom, they will turn their faces towards you. The more they multiply, the more friends you will have, the more ardently they love liberty, the more perfect will be their obedience. Slavery they can have anywhere. It is a weed that grows in every soil. They may have it from Spain, they may have it from Prussia. But until you become lost to all feeling of your true interest and your natural dignity, freedom they can have from none but you. This is the commodity of price, of which you have the monopoly. This is the true Act of Navigation, which binds to you the commerce of the -colonies, and through them secures to you the wealth of the world. Deny them this participation of freedom, and you break that sole bond which originally made, and must still preserve, the unity of the empire. Do not entertain so weak an imagination as that your registers and your bonds, your affidavits and your sufferances, your cockets and your clearances, are what form the great securities of your commerce. Do not dream that your Letters of office, and your instructions, and your suspending clauses are the things that hold together the great contexture of this mysterious whole. These things do not make your government. Dead instruments, passive tools as they are, it is the spirit of the English communion that gives all their life and efficacy to them. It is the spirit of the English constitution which, infused through the mighty mass, pervades, feeds, unites, invigorates, vivffles every part of the empire, even down to the minutest member.
Is it not the same virtue which does every thing for us here in England? Do you imagine, then, that-it is the Land-Tax Act which raises your revenue? that it is the annual vote in the Committee of Supply, which gives you your army? or that it is the Mutiny Bill which inspires it with bravery and discipline? No! surely, no! It is the love of the people; it is their attachment to their government, from the sense of the deep stake they have in such a glorious institution, which gives you your army and your navy, and infuses into both that liberal obedience without which your army would be a base rabble and your navy nothing but rotten timber.
All this, I know well enough, will sound wild and chimerical to the profane herd of those vulgar and mechanical politicians who have no place among us: a sort of people who think that nothing exists but what is gross and material, and who, therefore, far from being qualified to be directors of the great movement of empire, are not fit to turn a wheel in the machine. But to men truly initiated and rightly taught, these ruling and master principles, which in the opinion of such men as I have mentioned have no substantial existence, are in truth everything, and all in all. Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together. If we are conscious of our situation, and glow with zeal to fill our places as becomes our station and ourselves, we ought to auspicate all our public proceedings on America with the old warning of the Church, Sursum corda! We ought to elevate our minds to the greatness of that trust to which the order of Providence has called us. By adverting to the dignity of this high calling, our ancestors have turned a savage wilderness into a glorious empire, and have made the most extensive and the only honorable conquests, not by destroying, but by promoting the wealth, the number, the happiness of the human race. Let us get an American revenue as we have got an American empire. English privileges have made it all that it is; English privileges alone will make it all it can be.
Edmund Burke
Friday, March 21, 2025
Socialism is okay as long as its your own special socialism. . .
apparently.
Lummis Wants To Pull $7.5B From Biden’s EV Mandates For Improving Highways
Let's be honest. Socialized highways are socialist. EV mandates aren't.
We like highways, so in our view, socialized highways, which benefit us disproportionally, and which stiff railroads and regular motorists for the benefit of the trucking industry, are okay.
There's really no arguing this at all. Under the MAGA view of the economy, states should pay for their own freaking highways, and certainly an industry, like the trucking industry, should not be subsidized.
But we don't see building highways for the trucking industry as bad or socialist, because we like them. And we only saw a requirement to buy EV cars as bad because the Biden Administration believed in climate science and we don't like that as it hurts our wallets, although now that King Donald likes Tesla and Elon, this is getting confusing.
Socialism is when the government does stuff. And it's more socialism the more stuff it does.
Richard D. Wolff.
Why does Donald Trump give the left wing fist salute?
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Republican orphans, Spanish Civil War.
Is he so darned ignorant to not realize its a left wing symbol?
What message do his followers think this conveys?
But then again, in the US, where red is the color of populism (not conservatism) and blue is the symbol of the slightly left of center. . .
Friday, March 21, 1975. End of Empire.
The revolutionary Dergue of Ethiopia announced that it was abolishing the Ethiopian Empire, which had existed since 950.
The Inkatha Freedom Party was founded in South Africa to fight against white minority rule.
Last edition:
Thursday, March 20, 1975. Electrical attack.
M60. National Museum of Military Vehicles.
The M60 was the great U.S. tank of the Cold War, and continues to be a great tank to this day.
Effectively an improved variant of the M48, so much so that in some armies it would be regarded as a variant of the prior tank, the M60 took all of the improvements to the M26 line of tanks over the decades and more or less perfected them. Indeed, some of the improvements, such as the 105mm gun, were retrofitted to the prior M48.
M60s remain in use around the world in upgraded versions.
Wednesday, March 21, 1945. Ohka.
The first attempted use of the the Yokosuka MXYZ Ohka suicide jet failed when the flight of Betty bombers carrying them towards their target, the US fleet off of Okinawa, was intercepted and all the bombers shot down.
The RAF hit Gestapo headquarters in Copenhagen, which also resulted in 125 civilian deaths.
The Royal Air Force hit Venice harbor from the air.
Last edition:
Tuesday, March 20, 1945. Hitler's last appearance in public.
Thursday, March 20, 2025
Crowd jeers Hageman at tense Laramie town hall. She calls them ‘hysterical.’
Crowd jeers Hageman at tense Laramie town hall. She calls them ‘hysterical.’: Wyoming’s lone congresswoman faced tough questions and angry constituents Wednesday night.
This has been happening a lot, although it sounds like it was particularly the case in Laramie.
World Happiness Report 2025
Read it and weep MAGA. Mexico is a happier country than the dumpster fire the US has become, and the anger and discontent of a delusional populist far right has a lot to do with that, imho.
The US makes the top 25, sort of:
World Happiness Report 2025
Read the Report
- Chapter 1Executive Summary
- Chapter 2Caring and sharing: Global analysis of happiness and kindness
- Chapter 3Sharing meals with others: How sharing meals supports happiness and social connections
- Chapter 4Living with others: How household size and family bonds relate to happiness
- Chapter 5Connecting with others: How social connections improve the happiness of young adults
- Chapter 6Supporting others: How prosocial behaviour reduces deaths of despair
- Chapter 7Trusting others: How unhappiness and social distrust explain populism
- Chapter 8Giving to others: How to convert your money into greater happiness for others
Oh, you'll note we're behind Canada. Maybe we should ask Canada to become a province.
There's a lot of things that go into this, we'll note, but right now there's no sign that we're becoming a happy country, let alone a "great" one, "again".
Courthouses of the West: For more than two centuries, it has been establish...
Courthouses of the West: For more than two centuries, it has been establish...:
For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. . . The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.
For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. . . The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.
Chief Justice John Roberts reacting to putative chief executive Donald Trump demanding impeachment of a judge who disagreed with him, as they often due due to his contempt of the law.
Thursday, March 20, 1975. Electrical attack.
The New World Liberation Front bombed PG&E transmission towers in Oakland and San Mateo, demanding that PG&E cut utility rates in half for the poor.
M48 Patton. National Museum of Military Vehicles.
The fourth tank to descend from the M26 Pershing, including the Pershing, the M48 was a long serving and very successful U.S. tank. It entered service in the mid 1952 in the U.S. Army, and it is still in service with various nations, including South Korea and Taiwan.
The M48 was the second of the US Cold War tanks to actually see action in a Cold War war, the M46 being the first in Korea, with the M48 seeing extensive use by the U.S. Army and Marine Corps in Vietnam. The tank was already a second class tank in the US military by that time, the M60 having come on, but it was a perfectly modern tank and more than able to take on anything in theater. The tank was later upgraded to near M60 capabilities with the change from a 90mm gun to a 105.
The M48 entered US service in 1952, and was last used in the National Guard in 1987.
Related Threads:
Last edition:
Tuesday, March 20, 1945. Hitler's last appearance in public.
Hitler visited Hitler Youth members mobilized for combat in Berlin. The child whom he was famously photographed with, with Hitler pinching his cheek, would survive the Battle of Berlin and keep a framed copy of the scene in his house for the rest of his life.
This was Hitler's last public appearance.
The U.S. Seventh Army captured Saarbrücken.
German defensive specialist Gotthard Heinrici replaced Heinrich Himmler as commander of Army Group Vistula.
The Germans began to massacre forced workers in the Arnsberg Forest Massacre.
The Australian Army carried out Operation Platypus, in which troops from Z Special Unit were inserted into the Balikpapan area of Borneo to gather information and organize resistance against the Japanese.
France signed an economic pact with Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg.
The Navy endured heavy kamikaze attacks off of Okinawa.
The USS Midway was launched.
This Day in History: Staff Sgt Ysmael Villegas charges six enemy foxholes
Last edition:
Monday, March 19, 1945. The Nero Decree.
Wednesday, March 19, 2025
Wars and Rumors of War, 2025. Part 2. The world is not a development opportunity edition.
You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.
Matthew, Chapter 24.
We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.
Winston Churchill
Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.
Donald Trump on skipping the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery.
March 2, 2025
Turkey v. Kurds
Following an opening from Turkey's strongman ruler Erdogan, the PKK is suspending armed operations.
US Mexican Border
The US is deploying an additional 3,000 troops to the Mexican border.
March 3, 2025
Russo Ukrainian War
Hegseth Orders Pentagon to Stop Offensive Cyberoperations Against Russia
Absolutely stupid.
US v. Al Qaeda
On Feb. 23, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) forces conducted a precision airstrike in Northwest Syria, targeting and killing Muhammed Yusuf Ziya Talay, the senior military leader of the terrorist organization Hurras al-Din (HaD), an Al-Qaeda affiliate.
US Central Command.
March 4, 2025
Russo Ukrainian War
The US suspended military aid to Ukraine. Europe began immediately to fill in and J. D. Vance warned, based on nothing at all, that only Trump could negotiate peace.
More likely, this accelerates the eclipse of the United States.
March 6, 2025
Russo Ukrainian War
The Trump Cabal cut off intelligence access to Ukraine. Shortly after this, Russia hit Kyiv with ballistic missiles.
March 8, 2025
Russo Ukrainian War
When his country called, Donald Trump called up his doctor who found that he ineligible to go into harms way due to shin splints.
Like a lot of the 1960s "not me" crowd, to include Dick Cheney and Joe Biden, this hasn't meant, in the case of Donald Trump, that he doesn't mind ordering killing done. Trump's taken into almost new territory, however, by withdrawing intelligence from an ally dependent up on us while his political party, which once stalwartly opposed foreign aggression by countries like Russia and North Korea, largely stands by.
The United States now has blood on its hands, and through betrayal:
US intel ban leads to heavy Ukrainian losses
A lot of people who admire Trump believe he has a big business head and that he's bring this to politics. Why this is a good thing is never actually mentioned. Government isn't a business. Beyond that, is Trump really a good businessman? We have very little evidence that the is. What we have evidence that he was born very wealthy and its well known that those born into great wealth are highly unlikely to lose it all. Very wealthy families that do lose everything usually do so in the course of a couple of generations. It takes that long to dissipate the wealth. My guess is that this is happening to the Trump fortune right now. Big fortunes are lost through classic means, spending on largess and women usually. My guess is that for those who are looking at the trump's fifty to seventy five years hence, you'll find that they're still rich, but not vastly so, and probably working mundane rich people's jobs.
Anyhow, one of the big myths about Trump is that he's a great negotiator . What he is, is a bully. Since returning to the Oval Office he's applied his bully skills to numerous things and its really start to fail. The tariffs are a good example. Canada has now reached the complete "fuck you" stage with Trump and he can't do one single thing about it. Probably by summer the Mid West will have rolling blackouts due to an electrical blackout. The dimwit Trump has promised to get the XL pipeline rolling again and build one extending all the way to Alaska. My prediction is that the XL if completed under Trump will be filled with air as it was supposed to transport Canadian crude. Donny probably doesn't know that. The Canadians are never going to allow the US to build a pipeline on their soil.
On the war, Ukrainian President Zylensky was brought to the US to surrender title to his country's minerals as an extorted payment for ongoing support. The meeting went famously wrong as J. D. Vance, now with in a hairsbreadth of being President, showed himself way out of his element and engaged in an argument with the embattled Ukrainian leader. Trump, coming to Vance's rescue, once again showed his intellect is really lacking and his verbal skills are that of a child. Since that time, using tactics that he learned as a real estate magnate, he's attempted to bully Ukraine into submission by withholding arms and intelligence to the country.
In blunt terms, he figures that getting Ukrainians killed will make them pliant.
It's monstrously wrong.
And its not even artful.
There's pretty good evidence at this point that the bloom is really off the rose of this administration and that even within the administration itself things are beginning to breakdown. Marco Rubio got into a yelling match with weirdo Elon Musk and actually prevailed. Another cabinet member had to take babbling Trump off the phone and negotiate a deal with Trudeau himself. Trump is slowly on his way out, but how much damage he does on the way out is yet to be seen.
At any rate, somewhere on the far side of things thousands of Ukrainian soldiers are joining the souls of those of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam to lament being betrayed by the United States. But at the same time, the departed spirits of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger can take solace that their betrayal of an ally wasn't the work of a demented toddler.
Here in the US, the hardcore MAGA's are all saying it'll work out, or coming up with reason why betrayal is okay. It won't, and it isn't.
March 13, 2025
Russo Ukrainian War
Russia rejected lil Don's suggestion of a cease fire.
March 16, 2025
Middle Eastern War
The US struck the Houthis yesterday, who vowed retaliation.
March 17, 2025
Middle Eastern War
|
Hegseth Says Campaign Against Houthis Will be
'Unrelenting' Until Hostilities Cease March 17,
2025 | By Matthew Olay During
a media interview yesterday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the U.S.
military will continue to tactically engage Iranian-backed Houthis until they
stop acting aggressively against U.S. ships in the region. Hegseth
commented on the topic following President Donald J. Trump's order for U.S.
Central Command to launch multiple airstrikes against Houthis in Yemen, March
15, 2025. "Freedom
of navigation is basic; it's a core national interest," Hegseth said,
adding that the current campaign is about restoring deterrents in the region
in addition to freedom of navigation. "The
minute the Houthis say, 'We'll stop shooting at your ships [and] we'll stop
shooting at your drones,' this campaign will end but, until then, it will be
unrelenting," he continued. Hegseth
also said the airstrikes were meant to draw Iran's attention. "The
message is clear to Iran … Your support of the Houthis needs to end
immediately. We will hold you accountable as the sponsor of this proxy, and I
echo [the president's] statement [that] we will not be nice about it,"
Hegseth said. The
Houthis have been acting aggressively in the Red Sea region since October
2023, when a U.S. Navy destroyer had to intercept three land-attack cruise
missiles fired by the Houthis toward Israel. Since
then, the Houthis have launched over 100 drone and missile attacks targeting
American and allied ships in the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea, resulting in
many commercial ships having to alter their routes to avoid the region at a
tremendous commercial cost. Hegseth
likened the severe economic impact of the Houthi aggression in the region to
"being held hostage by a terrorist organization" and then pointed
out that the Trump administration has indeed labeled the Houthis as
such. "To
the Houthis: [the airstrikes weren't] a one-night thing … This is about
stopping the shooting at assets in that critical waterway to reopen the
freedom of navigation, which is a core national interest of the United
States," Hegseth said, before again reemphasizing that Iran needs to
"back off" from enabling the Houthis. Hegseth
said Iran and its additional military proxies — including Hamas and Hezbollah
— are in a "weakened state." "But
it doesn't mean they still don't have the desire [for aggression]," he
said, adding that Iran will never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. "Iran
must get that clear message and negotiate the end of their pursuit for
nuclear weapons because … President Trump has said clearly that they will not
get a bomb," Hegseth said. |
March 19, 2025
Middle Eastern War
Israel is back to bombarding Gaza, so the cease fire did not hold.
Russo Ukrainian War
Putin agreed to an infrastructure ceasefire, which it turned around and immediately violated.
cont:
Israel has launched a new ground invasion into Gaza after breaking ceasefire
Last edition:
Wars and Rumors of War, 2025. Part 1. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.
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