INDIA ONCE AGAIN REBUFFS CHINA’S BELT AND ROAD INITIATIVE – India is proving to be a growing competitor to China across more than just physical borders. The nation was notably absent from a list of nations that issued a joint communique confirming the BRI. That list includes Russia and Pakistan. India continues to reject China’s BRI. Xi’s decision to seek to create closer relations with Pakistan is adding to the friction between the two nations.
By 2017, India had sharpened its critique of the BRI and rejected an invitation to the first BRI Forum in Beijing. In a statement issued hours before the forum was scheduled to open, the MEA issued a comprehensive statement on its objections which were threefold.
First, that the corridor included projects in territory belonging to India. Second that it could push smaller nations on the road to a debt crisis and be ecologically destructive and disruptive to local communities. And third, that China’s agenda was unclear, implying that this was more about extending Beijing’s political influence than in creating public goods.
In response to the Indian criticism, China did signal that it was willing to discuss the issues and possibly even rename CPEC to assuage Indian concerns. Wang Yi indicated that China was willing to work in the language of its 1963 agreement with Pakistan, that all agreements relating to Kashmir would be subject to re-negotiation after the “settlement of the…
AMERICA IS SO BAD, AMERICANS ARE NOW FLEEING TO MEXICO – An Interior Ministry migration report reveals that the rise in requests for temporary resident visas to Mexico has risen by 85 percent compared to the pre-pandemic period of 2019, The number of approved visas increased by 48 percent compared to the same pre-pandemic period of 2019.
….Data published in an Interior Ministry migration report shows that 8,412 U.S. citizens were issued temporary resident visas in the first nine months of the year, an 85% increase compared to the same period of 2019 – when the coronavirus pandemic hadn’t yet had an impact on people’s life and work choices and options. The figure is the highest since comparable data became available in 2010, the news agency Bloomberg reported…..
The number of U.S. citizens who were granted permanent residency in the first nine months of 2022 also increased significantly, rising 48% from 2019 levels to 5,418. There are a range of ways foreigners can qualify for residency in Mexico, including by meeting income requirements, having an employer who sponsors their visa and having family ties.
BRAZIL FALLS TO THE COMMUNISTS – The most contentious election in recent Brazilian history has ended with a narrow victory for the leftist challenger and former convicted felon and political grifter Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
He has vowed through his narrow, possibly fraudulent victory, to “reconstruct the very soul of this nation,” something the DNC platform has long promised to do to America. The phrase is a dog whistle for leftist authoritarianism, aimed at destroying any institution that honors the sacredness of the individual, an ideal leftists are violently opposed to, be they Brazilian or “American.”
The top electoral authority in Brazil announced on Sunday evening that 77-year-old hardline socialist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, once convicted and sentenced to over two decades in prison for alleged corruption, had won this year’s presidential election against incumbent conservative Jair Bolsonaro.
In his first words as president-elect for a third term, Lula vowed to “reconstruct the very soul of this nation” away from the small government, pro-freedom ideals of the Bolsonaro administration.
Little more than a percentage point separated Lula, who served as president previously from 2003 to 2011, from Bolsonaro, as of 10 p.m. ET, representing about 2 million votes in a nation of 214 million people. National newspaper of record O Globodescribed the results as the closest election since 1989, when Lula narrowly lost to Fernando Collor de Mello, who was impeached and ousted from office over corruption allegations in 1992. Collor later supported the impeachment ouster of…
SEOUL HALLOWEEN CELEBRATIONS LEAD TO 153 DEAD – A Halloween celebration in the streets of Seoul went terribly wrong when a crowd surge led to a stampede. 153 people, mostly young students, are dead, including 2 Americans and 17 other foreign nationals. More than 100,000 people were participating in the event. No cause for the crowd surge was given.
At least 153 people are dead and 82 are injured after being crushed in a crowd during Halloween festivities in Seoul, officials in South Korea said, as the death toll in the tragedy continues to rise.
The victims are largely in their 20s, according to the National Fire Agency. Two Americans were among the 19 foreign nationals who died, ABC News confirmed.
ISRAEL ELECTION A QUESTION OF NETANYAHU’S COALITION WINS – The coming Israel election might produce another unstable government, if it forms one at all. The leading candidate to be able to potentially form a majority coalition, Benjamin Netanyahu, might come within one seat of claiming a majority coalition.
Polls on Friday predicted Israel’s former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would come within a single seat of an outright majority in his quest to return to power in next week’s election, the fifth in less than four years.
Netanyahu, on trial for corruption charges he denies, has been vying for a comeback, aided by an alliance between his Likud party and far-right party Religious Zionism – a pact that could test Israel’s foreign relations if it wins the ballot.
Two polls – one released late Thursday by Israel’s Kan public broadcaster and another published on Friday by the Maariv newspaper – both showed the Netanyahu bloc of four parties winning 60 of parliament’s 120 seats in Tuesday’s vote.
PUTIN SPEECH USES AMERICAN DIVIDE TO SEARCH FOR U.S. SUPPORT – “There are at least two Wests, One is a West of “traditional, mainly Christian values” for which Russians feel kinship. But, there’s another West — aggressive, cosmopolitan, neocolonial, acting as the weapon of the neoliberal elite,” said Vladimir Putin in a speech aimed at exploiting the real divide in America between the “left” and the “right”.
President Vladimir Putin declared Thursday that Russia’s battle was with “Western elites,” not with the West itself, in a speech seemingly aimed more at winning over political conservatives abroad than his own citizens….
Putin, as he often does, portrayed Russia as threatened by the possible expansion of NATO — and the values of its liberal democracies — to countries like Ukraine that were once part of the Soviet Union.
FOREIGN INVESTORS FLEE CHINA AFTER XI’S NEW POLITBURO SELECTED – After Chairman Xi was awarded de facto chairmanship for life in the manner of Chairman Mao, he selected a new politburo. Afterwards, foreign investors immediately started to pull out of China, as seen in Chinese brands on foreign exchanges tanking, including Alibaba on Nasdaq, which fell by 20 percent.
On october 23rd China’s ruler, Xi Jinping, asked the Central Committee of the Communist Party to endorse him and his team of loyalists to run the country for the next five years. He had no trouble securing their support. But the next day, he had a lot more difficulty with the highly decentralised committee that is the global financial market.
Foreign investors dumped China’s shares and its currency in spectacular fashion. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng stockmarket index, dominated by mainland firms, fell by over 6%. The sell-off was even worse in New York. The Golden Dragon index of Chinese companies listed on the tech-heavy Nasdaq, which includes giants like Alibaba and Baidu, fell at one point by 20%, reaching levels last seen before Mr Xi took power ten years ago. The offshore yuan, which fluctuates more freely than its onshore counterpart, weakened to its lowest value against the dollar since the market began in 2010 (see chart).
No matter how you consume your news, whether from the “mainstream” or from more “alternative” sources, recent months have been all abuzz about the “mighty HIMARS“; and the HIMARS is, indeed, a very capable system…for those who either have friends, or who can afford it. But — what about us? What about the “poor’s“? Every weapon has a development cycle, and HIMARS is no exception. In this article, we will take a (very) brief look at the history of rocket artillery, and a singular weapon that is everything the HIMARS is not: cheap, simple, flexible, and readily available for anyone or any group with even a modest mount of cash.
Rocket artillery is far from ‘new.’ In fact, rockets were arguably the first practical use for gunpowder when it was invented in China, in the 9th Century AD. As gunpowder migrated westward, however, the idea of rocketry largely disappeared, until the late 18th-early 19th century, when rocketry began to reappear, most famously in the form of the Congreve Rocket. These early attempts were wildly unreliable, including having a nasty habit of exploding on their own, or returning to their owners in the most unpleasant of manners. Thus, it should not be surprising that rockets mostly disappeared from European-style warfare after about 1850 or so.
Fireships firing rockets and details of storage and launch. Colonel Congreve, 1814. Public Domain.
As a result, it would take until World War 2 to resurrect rocket artillery in a meaningful way, with the German introduction of the “Nebelwerfer” (or, ‘smoke mortar’) multiple rocket launcher (MRL) system. The system fired a variety of rockets, normally 5 – 7 at a time, depending on their exact size and weight. While initially intended to deliver chemical weapons, the distaste – and fear – from all sides outside of Asia about using such weapons caused the Germans to quickly develop high-explosive rounds for the various calibers. These were used to devastating effect by the Germans, initially…not so much for their raw destructive power, but for their terrifying psychological effects on troops who had never imagined the sound the rockets produced.
Nebelwerfer crew in action, Soviet Union, 1944. German Federal Archives.
All of the major Allies quickly copied the concept, and by the end of the war, were deploying far larger and more capable designs. However, the love affair with short-range multiple rocket systems wouldn’t last. By the mid-1950’s, most “First World” nations had largely begun to abandon the battlefield MRL; the notable exception was the Soviet Army and it’s subject armies, who maintained the devastating BM-21 ‘Grad’ into the present day. The reason for this abandonment of MRL’s was that, despite the MRL’s decided advantages (they were cheap and lightweight, compared conventional artillery, and were capable of firing truly impressive amounts of rounds in a time far shorter than regular artillery when grouped into batteries), they had significant disadvantages: their range tended to be shorter; they took far longer to reload; they were nearly impossible to use in “direct fire”, a feature of conventional artillery; and their rockets’ velocity was far too low to actually penetrate dug-in shelters or tank armor.
Nebelwerfer crew moving into action, France, 1944. German Federal Archives.
The reason the Soviet Bloc hung on the BM-21, was that while it had all of the disadvantages cited above, it had a very powerful warhead, a long range, was simple and easy to maintain, and was far cheaper and easier to build than conventional artillery. The Soviets accepted the downsides of the MRL idea, and found a way to incorporate it into their artillery fighting doctrine.
BM-21 Grad on display at the Karen Demirchyan Complex, Armenia. CCA/4.0
The Chinese Communists, following their disastrous – if effective – intervention in the Korean War (1950-1953), had a terribly disorganized arsenal. As China had spent the previous fifty years alternating between civil wars and hellish foreign invasions (WW2 actually begins in 1937, in China, instead of Poland in 1939), the PLA was stuck with a hodge-podge of weapons from at least six or more sources, they were badly in need of a complete rearmament strategy, literally from the top, down.
The immediate problems for the CCP was that their manufacturing base had to be completely rebuilt – which, being fair, was a problem for most of the active participants of the war, although Mao Tse Tung’s “Great Leap Forward” almost destroyed the country wholesale – but, more cripplingly, they had very little money to buy foreign equipment. Unable to pay even the Soviet Union for enough field artillery, the PLA went looking for an alternative.
And, in 1963, they created one of the most important, but least-known, pieces of artillery in modern history: the 107mm Type-63 MRL.
Type-63 107mm MRL. 2016. CCA/4.0
A 12-shot launcher mounted on a 2-wheeled trailer, the system weighed in at about 1,300lbs/602kg, and only needed a crew of five. It was capable of firing a wide variety of ammunition (albeit limited to HE-types, as well as incendiary and smoke rounds) to (initially) c.5mi/8km; ranges were quickly improved. Some models could be broken into 2-tube loads for transport through rough terrain, by either people or mules. Eventually, a variety of single-tube launchers were developed for the rocket ammunition. The PLA realized that they had a good thing, and eventually equipped each infantry division with 18 units.
It was also quickly realized that the unit’s light weight made it easy to mount on small vehicles, giving the launcher the ability to quickly fire its rockets, and quickly relocate to avoid counter-battery fires.
IRGC Ground Force Commandos loading a Type-63 type MRL. 2017. CCA/4.0
As word got around, and the units began to be used by Communist guerrillas and regular armies, the system became a source of hard currency through exports and licensing; at least seven countries would eventually obtain legal production licenses for both the launchers and their ammunition.
Naturally, the advantages of the Type-63 became apparent to every rebel, guerrilla and terrorist group in the world, and those entities quickly began competing with small armies to buy, steal or beg units on both the legal and black markets.
The Type-63 has proved itself to be a significant game-changer in “low intensity conflicts” because it allows small forces operating on a shoe-string budget to seriously threaten adversaries who cannot afford the advanced systems, like battlefield radars or C-RAM (which are fantastic to have, if you can afford or get them, somehow), to counter the fast-moving artillery. As a result, lightweight, highly mobile “technical” units can add a significant punch to their operations.
While susceptible to well (and expensively) equipped Western armies, the Type-63 remains a significant threat to anyone without powerful “friends” willing to commit to their aid.
The Type-63 has been reshaping battles for nearly 65 years, at this writing. There seems to be no end in sight for this venerable weapon…not least, because it is now being deployed on high-speed inshore craft…Newer may often be better, but old weapons will still harm you.
AUSTRALIA REJECTS ISRAEL BY REJECTING JERUSALEM – The Leftist government of Australia has decided to end the former “conservative” government’s policy of recognizing Jerusalem (specifically “West Jerusalem”) as the capital of Israel, a decision that was made after then-US-President Donald Trump decided to do so first.
Australia said Tuesday it would no longer recognize West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, reversing a contentious decision by the previous conservative government.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong said the city’s status should be decided through peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians, and not through unilateral decisions.
“We will not support an approach that undermines” a two-state solution, she said, adding: “Australia’s embassy has always been, and remains, in Tel Aviv”.
XI ANNOUNCES PURGE OF PARTY AFTER BEING APPOINTED DICTATOR FOR LIFE – The Chinese Communist Party has released a statement on an ongoing investigation that has led to nearly 5 million of its 96 million party members being accused of corruption in the last decade. 553 party members are facing immediate criminal prosecution as a result of the investigation, with more arrests anticipated.
China’s ruling Communist Party says it has investigated almost 5 million members for possible corruption over the last decade, with formal criminal cases brought against 553.
Whether that will curb a widening economic slowdown and restore faith in the authoritarian system remains unclear.
The party has 96 million members and has long run its own internal system of keeping cadres in line through a mix of offering privileges and threatening severe punishment for taking bribes, selling offices or otherwise abusing authority.
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