Wars Update: Empires Versus The Rest Of Us

The Forever War

StrategyPage has a summary of the current state of wars worldwide. Here is the opening paragraph:

January 2, 2020: This is our annual (formerly twice-a-year) summary of current war zones and an overview of where it is all heading. Doing this once a year rather than twice is a reflection of the decline in the number and severity of wars since the 1990s. After the overview, there is the alphabetical list of the war zones and a quick summary of how the local mayhem has been proceeding. Since we have been covering this sort of thing for twenty years now there are some war zones that have gone quiet. We left most of those in summary, with a note that those wars had gone dormant, and maybe extinct. History shows that dormant is more common than extinct. Forever (at least multi-century) wars are an ancient tradition.

Me thinks Joe Haldeman knows more about history than I do.

Via daily timewaster

Criminals

Finished doing my bookkeeping, minimized the browser, and a browser window with this image appears. I don't know what triggered it, but I certainly didn't ask for it. How do I know? Because the URL is for hiphollywood. Any kind of celebrity bullshit is like a big red warning flag. Have to give them credit for creative fishing.

Conspiracies Я Us, Japanese Edition

Former Nissan Chairman Carlos Ghosn escaped house arrest in Tokyo

Carlos Ghosn, big shot Nissan executive, arrested and charged with crimes, has escaped from Japan. At first glance, it sounds like another self-important jackass was caught with his hand in the cookie jar and snuck out his bedroom window to avoid getting his hand slapped. Well, that's the way I read it. To my mind, ridiculously rich people are all criminals. Japan was just going to apply some well deserved justice. Then I read this follow up story, which reminded me of this video I watched:


Why Every Japanese Criminal is Guilty
Mix all this with the story of high level corruption in the TV series The K2 (yes, that one is set in Korea, not Japan, but all them thar Asian countries suffer from culturally ingrained deference to authority) makes me think that it is entirely possible that there was a power struggle going on in Nissan and the anti-Ghosn faction ginned up enough 'evidence' to get him booted out. I doubt we will ever know the truth of the matter, but we should get a decent movie or two out of the deal.

All this reminds me of the local woman who was arrested in Japan a few years ago for carrying a prescribed botttle of ADHD medication.

Pic of the Day

A monster pile of tumbleweeds forced a 10-hour closure of State Route 240 in Eastern Washington, trapping several drivers before they could be freed by WSDOT workers. Trooper Chris Thorson shared this photo from the scene on Twitter.

Via The Oregonian

Hal

Hal

Via Tam. One gigglebox kick deserves another.

The K2

20092016 [HD] Yoona The K2 5 Minutes Trailer (林允儿The K2五分钟预告)
OnlyYoona123
The K2 is a pretty terrible political thriller / action / drama. In Korean with English subtitles, 16 episodes on Netflix. I mean, it's not bad as these sort of things go. We have a big fight scene in every episode, we have a large assortment of bad guys, a bit of comedy, a touch of romance and a selection of really nasty villains. There are a couple of instances of slick technology being employed, but mostly we have drama alternating with action. Occasionally we get an emotional scene with some syrupy singing. They don't translate the singing, but you don't really need it. It's probably the same emotional drivel as we get in our own syrupy songs, and the translation would probably come out sounding like nonsense.

Our hero, after having been on the lamb for a while, returns to the warm embracing fold of a security service where he is given the code name K2. There is a campaign for the presidency going on, and our hero has discovered that one of the candidates is a vile, murdering scumbag. Fortunately, his security service is employed by the opposing candidate, who is also a creep, but the enemy of my enemy is my friend, so he goes along with their campaign, until he finds out that 'madam', who is the power behind the throne is just as vile as the opposition. That puts him in kind of a bind.

Reminds me of our own presidential campaign here in the USA. I have no doubt that people operating at that level are perfectly capable of being vile, underhanded, backstabbing, scumbags.

Update March 2022 replaced missing video.

Murder & Mayhem

Apache gangsters fight police. Paris, 1904

The murder rate seems to be escalating in a number of big cities like Chicago, Baltimore and St. Louis. Pundits on the left blame guns and enact laws to make them more difficult to obtain. Pundits on the right blame the Democrats for their restrictive gun laws. I think all that is just noise in a pickle barrel.

I suspect that what is fueling the ramping up of homicides in big cities is a war between the traditional drug distribution gangs and new gangs backed by Mexican drug cartels. The Mexicans have made enough money getting drugs into the United States and now, like any good businessmen, they want to expand their reach. Being as the lion's share of the profits from dealing drugs is on the retail end, that is where they want to be. The old line drug distributors aren't going to give up without a fight, and given that there is no law to arbitrate this dispute, they are settling it the old fashioned way. All the arguing about gun laws is just noise. If you are involved in a war, which this surely is, you are going to get the weapons you need come hell or high water.