Guest Contributor – War Pig – 26APR2023 – Ranking the World

(Editorial Note:

This post is in reaction to this linked post: We’re Better Than That

that stated that determining whether America was still the “best” place to live based on available freedom was a worthwhile exercise.

photog )

 

Problem is, the ones who say that other places are worse are pretty much right. Singapore is wealthy but they’ll cane you for chewing gum. Australia, NZ, Canada and the UK are all serfs to their mega-parliament. Disarmed, cowed

In Scotland it is an arrestable offense if you walk too closely behind another at night. In England, carrying a Gerber or Leatherman multitool is fairly serious arrestable offense. In the UK you can be arrested, held without council, interrogated, have your kids dragged off to social services, then released without charge (in other words, political terrorism) for owning or distributing pamphlets supporting a legal political party, UKIP. And they’ll do it a couple times a month until you are sufficiently subdued.

Look at what Trudeau has been up to the past couple of years. Japan and South Korea are xenophobic. Mexico is now a failed narcostate. Argentina is normally ok but they have coups and other issues on a regular basis. The entire continent of Africa is screwed. Western Europe is woke as hell.

Eastern Europe is attractive but too close to Russia who will not be satisfied with Ukraine. The Caribbean is as rife with crime as when the pirates ran the place. Ecuador isn’t bad if you can handle the climate and altitude. Costa Rica is okay but its crime is rising. Most of the rest of South and Central America is second world.

Brazil is becoming quite crazy. Great beaches and attractive women, though, but I doubt Camera Girl is going to go for that. Israel is the only sane place in the Middle East but of course they are embattled. If I had to move I believe I’d choose either Argentina or Romania/Czech Republic despite their issues

Then again, you and me both have cherished family in the States. I would not want to remove myself from their proximity. My last act of love may be to die defending them if things go bat-crap here. If so, I will sing my death song and die like a warrior going home.

Guest Contributor – War Pig – 19MAR2023 – Human Diversity

Having been around the world a few times, courtesy of Uncle Sugar, I can say all humans are UNequal. Therein lies one of our greatest strengths. I would stand no chance against LeBron on the court, but he would be little more than a bullet magnet on the battlefield. I’m not going to trade punches with Mike Tysoj, but give us each a rifle and let us enter a forest at opposite ends and I’ll hang his scalp on my wigwam. I am not a military hero like Chesty Puller but i am a sneaky, conniving bastard who can knife you in the back to prevent you attacking my nation.

Our inequalities have allowed us as a species to thrive. The Pygmies can exploit their environment in the ways the Tutsi cannot, while the Tutsi’s altitude advantage allows them to see lions a long way off and protect their livestock. The native tribes of the Amazon would quickly expire in the Himalayas while Himalayans would melt and choke in the dense, super humid air of the Amazonian basin. We are the one adaptable species that can either find a way or make one. So thank God he did not create us all equal.

Guest Contributor – War Pig – 03FEB2023 – Bioweapons Security

Actually, all US bioweapon defense research is supposed to happen in US secure labs, and the really hairy stuff is supposed to be contained on an island (there are more than gets in the press) with very strictly limited access (use of deadly force authorized level security). Think S4 or Area 51, except these guys are faster on the trigger. Imagine trying to walk up on the loading of nuclear weapons on a B-52 holding a protest sign and waving a hammer. Hope you have your life insurance paid up.

Of course, allied nations do such research as well and discuss it over VERY highly secured means of communications. Sort of like a one-off cipher but digital. Think the US president and the UK prime minister discussing nuclear weapons policy in an emergency. If they have to actually share pathogens you can imagine the security involved. Supposedly (and this is rumor) there is Andromeda Strain contingency to destroy the lab and all pathogens in case of a major leak. Nukes? Possibly but more likely large incendiary charges to reduce all to ashes using temperatures in the thousands of degrees Fahrenheit.

When I retired, I had to swear a blood oath not to reveal operational details, even to medical personnel or clergy, for 80 years. So, I will be 114 before I can talk about them in detail. It took me almost 30 years to get the Department of Energy and the DoD to allow me to tell doctors that I was irradiated and how much, but all other details are classified such as where, when, one or multiple doses, specific kinds of radiation, etc. Drives the Dr’s crazy but that is tango sierra.

 

 

Guest Contributor – War Pig – 19DEC2022 – Natural Rights

War Pig

It’s true, we have no natural rights. A right cannot be taken from you. We have given ourselves rights under our Constitution but they are constructs of human minds. People say you have a right to life. Try walking through South Chicago almost any balmy night, or else try living in Kiev under Russian missile attacks targeting hospitals and civilian housing areas. I am sure the so-called grizzly man protested to the bear as it was attacking and eating him.

Your right to liberty can be curtailed by government quite easily. Think of anything you would call a right and somewhere on this earth it is being violated by governments, gangs, individuals and the cosmos itself if an asteroid lands on your county. Tornados and hurricanes, earthquakes and wildfires will not listen to your protests. Other humans have proven to be just as indifferent. The holocaust, the Rwandan genocides, what Russia is doing in Ukraine, what the British did when they invented the concentration camp, slavery of all sorts for millennia.

No, the only “rights” we possess is what we as individuals or groups can defend. Which is why our Second Amendment is so important. It protects all the other rights we have claimed for ourselves here in the USA. It protects them from strangers, gangs, other groups and governments; including our own.

Guest Contributor – War Pig – War, Up Close & Personal

A lot of real action with elite units is up close and personal. You have to be able to look them in the eye and kill them. You can smell and almosr taste their adrenaline, their fear, their natural body odor. You have to become almost animalistic in your fury. Killing up close is killing well when done correctly. They gift you with their lives and you can almost see the other side in their eyes but they glaze over too soon. One thing, if you ever kill up close as with a knife, you, yourself will never fear death again and that is the greatest gift.

Guest Contributor – War Pig – Memorial Day

My Memorial Day weekend will be spent visiting various cemeteries. I have veteran relatives to honor, such as mom, dad and several uncles and cousins. I will also remember comrades who died in action or later after retirement. My Vietnam generation is fast aging. Most of us who were privates then are in our 70s now, and those who were officers and NCOs are even older. Many of us served well into the War on Terror and against Iraq and even Afghanistan, as well as many places that never made it in the news.

For me and many others Memorial Day is bittersweet and rather melancholy. Families with a strong military tradition likely feel the same. Since the Civil War there have been men and women in our family who have served and fought in each war and “police action”. So I will stand and salute as the Anthem or Taps is played or the colors pass at various cemeteries and Memorial services, and I will shed the odd tear in memory of those braver than I who went before.

 

Guest Contributor – War Pig – Ulfberht Steel

And we still don’t know who by or where the Ulfberht swords were made. The steel was centuries ahead of its time.

Ulfberht steel was crucible steel. It was remarkably fine grained and had very few inpuruties. Likely imported from south Asia. Europe did not work out crucible steel for centuries after the Ulfberht swords were made. You can learn a great deal in the NOVA special on PBS.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6ciave

Also MAN AT ATMS REFORGED did a short on making an Ulfberht sword from scratch. They made their own steel from ore and all.

The flexibility and strength in sword steels today we rather take for granted. Ulfberht steel would have seemed to be magic to the smiths if the age. An Ulfberht sword would be equal in value to a small castle back then. Of course, where there is quality there were counterfeits. Humans haven’t changed much in the last thousand years or so that way. The NOVA special references fakes. Just like fake Rolex qatches today, there were fake Ulfberht swords.

Guest Contributor – War Pig – 03MAR2022 – On War

(In reply to comments on the review of the 1965 movie “The Battle of the Bulge”) – photog

I’ve never heard what Eisenhower had to say about it. I get my lean on it from my uncle, an enlisted man. Battles are seen quite differently if you’re one of the dogfaces in the ranks than by staff generals and politicians and people who write about it later.

Having been in a couple or so battles myself I can say the troops fight a battle intimately, not cooly and detached like they do at headquarters. You fight what is in front of you and you do not fight for king or country. You fight for the dogfaces to your right and left, your brothers. Your own world in battle is quite small, really. Your brothers on your right and left, and what you can see to your front. Usually about 400 yards or so. Modern thermal sights changes that for tank xrews and the like, and better optics on rifles extends that range a little bit but the soldier with the rifle in the ranks can only worry about what he sees and what can see him.

I generally don’t watch war movies that involve ground action. They are so fake overall. I’ll watch Battle of Brirain or In Harms Way about planes and ships, but I usually don’t watch ground war movies. I saw Bulge before I went to Vietnam. After that I gave up on ground war movies. I especially never watch movies about conflicts or operations in which I took part. They remind me of things I’d rather not remember and they are so wrong I get angry.