Tag Archives: freedom

Red Flag Laws

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Some thoughts on necessary criteria for them, particularly as they’re intended to apply to the mentally unstable.

  1. Define “mentally unstable”
  2. Identify which “mentally unstable” are dangerous and which are not
  3. Identify how the “dangerous mentally unstable” are to be disarmed without disarming—leaving defenseless—those around him
  4. Specify how quickly—including appeals—a court case must be finally decided and the “dangerous mentally unstable” gets his weapons back after successfully defending himself
  5. Specify how the “dangerous mentally unstable” will be made financially whole after winning his court case
  6. Specify how an accusation will be separated into a frivolous one and one made in good faith
  7. Specify the sanctions to be brought against the accuser if the “dangerous mentally unstable” wins his court case
  8. Identify how the “dangerous mentally unstable” gets his reputation and his life back after winning his court case, whether it was brought in good faith or bad

That’s just a start on the idiocy and intrinsically virtue-signaling nature of red flag laws.

Prove It, Mr Biden

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President Joe Biden (D) said Monday (Tokyo time) that the US would intervene militarily if the People’s Republic of China attempted to invade and conquer the Republic of China (though Biden referred to the nation as “Taiwan”).

The president was asked if the US would get involved militarily in response to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan after declining to send American troops to Ukraine to fight Russia’s invasion.
“Yes. That’s the commitment we made,” he said.

Then prove it, Mr Biden. Get out of the way of arms sales to the RoC, stop slow-walking them. Do more, in fact—accelerate both the sales and their delivery.

As an aside, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin promptly came out and said Biden didn’t really mean what he said. Such public undercutting should get Austin summarily fired. But it won’t.

Ooh—Count ‘Em

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Germany has agreed to supply the Ukrainian army with self-propelled howitzers, the Panzerhaubitze 2000, which can fire a 155mm round 25-40 miles, depending on the round selected.

All seven of the howitzers.

And, in keeping with the German government’s practice of slow-walking all aid to Ukraine in the latter’s struggle to defend itself against the Russian barbarian invasion, Germany’s Defense Ministry

did not give a time frame for the delivery of the howitzers….

The weapons aren’t even operational; they’re being taken from a “pool” that has been set aside by the Defense Ministry for repairs. The weapons will be repaired over the next few weeks. Here’s an indication of the quality of German maintenance, too, via Deutsche Welle:

Germany has more than 100 of these howitzers, of which only 40 are currently ready for deployment[.]

A 40% combat ready rate is…suboptimal…except that Germany has been satisfied with that for some time.

For comparison purposes, a modern Russian Army self-propelled 152mm howitzer battery consists of 6 guns, and a modern US Army self-propelled 155mm howitzer battery also consists of 6 guns.

Seven howitzers. Chancellor Olaf Schulz shouldn’t strain his defense establishment so much just to make an insultingly puny contribution to Ukraine’s fight for its survival.

A Clear Difference

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Assume, for a moment, that the series of attacks inside Russian territory and unexplained explosions at Russian targets near the border with Ukraine have been carried out by Ukrainian forces and are not just examples of shoddy Russian maintenance or done by disgruntled Russian protestors.

Compare, then, that damage with the damage done by Russian attacks inside Ukraine. “Ukraine’s attacks” have been carefully limited to facilities supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Russia’s continued prosecution of its unprovoked attack.

  • a fuel depot in Russia’s Belgorod region directly opposite Kharkiv
  • an explosion sparked a blaze at an ammunition depot near the city of Belgorod
  • blasts have been reported inside the city
  • fires erupted at other oil depots, including one at a Russian military base
  • explosions have damaged rail lines in Kursk and Bryansk oblasts

Russian attacks, on the other hand, have been deliberately targeted at residential neighborhoods of Ukrainian cities, and have been aimed at deliberately razing whole cities to the ground (and of simply making the rubble bounce)—Kharkiv, Kherson, Izyum, Lyman, Bucha, Mariupol, to suggest a few—and nakedly, without regard for much of anything, attacking nuclear facilities at Zaporizhzhia or firing on “targets” very close to or having cruise missiles overfly the Yuzhnoukrainsk nuclear power plant near Kostyantynivka in southern Ukraine and the Khmelnytskyi Nuclear Power Plant near Netishyn in the northeast enroute to other targets, and blithely kicking up the potentially still lethal radioactive dirt around Chornobyl.

German Duplicity

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It continues. Recall then-Chancellor Angela Merkel’s promise to boost German spending on NATO to 2% of GDP. She welched on that promise with her very next budget submittal to her Bundestag.

Now there’s current Chancellor Olaf Scholz. He opened Germany’s response to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s naked invasion of Ukraine by blocking transfer of German-originated arms from all of the Baltic States to Ukraine and by not allowing British aerial transfer of weapons to overfly German territory.

Scholz later pretended to alter his position, promising to step up German defense spending and sending—count ’em—5,000 helmets to the Ukrainian army while promising more robust arms transfers.

Now he’s welched on that promise. And in a most despicable way. He opened his latest betrayal by promising Germany would reimburse Ukraine for any arms purchases it might make from German manufacturers.

However, Bild reported that Scholz’s office had crossed all heavy weapons off the list submitted by Ukraine. The combined value of the items on the inventory eventually approved by Scholz’s office was €307 million, less than a third of the €1 billion of equipment that the chancellor had previously promised. After the chancellery was finished “consolidating” the list, the document had shrunk from 48 pages to 24, the paper said.

Worse [emphasis added],

Ukrainian officials had sent a list of 15 types of urgently needed equipment to the German Ministry of Defense, which included tanks and artillery. Scholz’s government only agreed to three of these, including a radar system. Andrij Melnyk, Ukraine’s Ambassador to Germany, told the German public broadcaster ZDF that “the weapons we need aren’t on the list.”

Because…?

[M]embers of the [German] government argued that it would not be easy for Ukrainian forces to learn to use this western equipment.

Dumb Slavs just aren’t capable of understanding serious weaponry. Never mind that even the Americans think the Ukrainians are fully capable of learning—quickly—how to use American arms, and that training is going on pursuant to the US’ latest transfer of American howitzers.

This is not NATO ally anyone can rely on.