Ukraine is forced to haul its fleet of $10million US Abrams tanks back from the frontline after losing five of its stock of 31 with Russia ramping up hunter-killer drone attacks in latest battlefield blow to Kyiv
This would appear to be further evidence that the day of the tank is over amid the availability of modern weapons systems, particularly drones. But drones are slow so are a danger only when fired from a short distance away, before they can be acquired as a target by an air-defence system. As Iran showed recently in their attack on Israel, over a long range, drones are a piece of cake. Any modern fighter can acquire them on its radar and have plenty of time to shoot them down. Britain was shooting down jet-powered long-distance drones (the V1s) in WWII. So anti-drone capability in tanks might make them important again.
It should be noted however that in the Iraq war, Saddam's T72s were wiped out en masse by U.S. Bradley Fighting Vehicles using missiles. So it may be that nothing will save the tank as a war machine. Drones will be the key in future wars
It might be noted however that Abrams tanks have previously been shown as vulnerable when used by non-US forces. That was at the time attributed to two things: That the USA does not export fully-featured Abrams tanks and that the tanks are designed to be used as only one part of combined operations
Ukraine has been forced to sideline US-provide Abrams tanks for now in its fight against Russia, in part because Russian drone warfare has made it too difficult for them to operate without detection or coming under attack.
The US agreed to send 31 Abrams to Ukraine in January 2023 after an aggressive months-long campaign by Kyiv arguing that the tanks, which cost about $10 million apiece, were vital to its ability to breach Russian lines.
But the battlefield has changed substantially since then, notably by the ubiquitous use of Russian surveillance drones and hunter-killer drones - tactics also used to great effect by Ukraine's armed forces.
Those weapons have made it more difficult for Ukraine to protect their American made tanks, which are considered high priority targets by Russian units.
Russian troops claimed to have destroyed the first Abrams tank in Ukraine in February, with several Russian military bloggers sharing a clip of the armour on fire following a drone strike.
Since then, Moscow's forces have honed their approach to tackling Western armour.
Five of the 31 Abrams tanks in Ukraine have been destroyed in the past three months.
The proliferation of drones on the Ukrainian battlefield means 'there isn't open ground that you can just drive across without fear of detection,' a senior US defence official told reporters Thursday.
The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide an update on US weapons support for Ukraine before Friday's Ukraine Defence Contact Group meeting.
For now, the tanks have been moved from the front lines, and the US will work with the Ukrainians to reset tactics, said Joint Chiefs of Staff Vice Chairman Adm. Christopher Grady and a third defence official who confirmed the move on the condition of anonymity.
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Study found gender-diverse adults were 3 to 6 times more likely to be autistic
I don't question these findings but note that the link is far from universal or automatic. I am pretty disrespectful of social norms but with 4 thoroughly heterosexual marriages under my belt I am certainly not gender dysphoric!
The disorder of gender dysphoria has puzzled scientists for decades: why is it that some people feel they are born in the wrong body, while others don't?
Now, experts speaking to DailyMail.com believe one common characteristic among this group, estimated to be in the region of 1.4million Americans, may offer some explanation.
Research has shown those who do not identify with the sex they were assigned at birth are up to six times more likely to be autistic than people without gender dysphoria.
The developmental disorder, which affects how people communicate, socialize and behave, is thought to overlap with gender dysphoria for a variety of reasons.
Several studies have suggested exposure to certain hormones in the womb could increase the likelihood of both problems, while some experts say the link could lie in a shared refrain from conforming to societal norms.
One of the largest studies ever to examine a potential link between ASD and GD involved data from more than 641,000 people.
The study, published in Nature Communications in 2020, found people who do not identify with the sex they were assigned at birth are three to six times more likely to be autistic than people without gender divergence.
Dr Amethysta Herrick, a chemist and trans-education activist, who is a transwoman, told DailyMail.com believes this could be because people on the autism spectrum 'have the freedom to explore their identities and express themselves the way they would choose because social norms matter less.'
The 2020 study showed transgender and gender-diverse people scored higher on self-reporting measures of autistic traits, including sensory sensitivity, which is often a characteristic of autism.
Following the study and based on his own observations, Dr Michael Craig, a professor of psychiatry, psychology and neuroscience at Kings College London in the UK, concluded there is an inherent link between gender dysphoria and autism.
Dr Craig, who was also the lead for the NHS National Autism Unit, told The Times: 'There were certainly some days where I was fairly convinced 40 to 50 percent of the patients I was seeing were autistic.
'I was trying to find out what it is that might explain this overlap, but it’s a difficult area to research for all sorts of reasons.'
Overall, he estimated about 20 percent of patients he observed at the Tavistock gender clinic in London might have qualified for an autism diagnosis.
While no definitive connection has been discovered, the authors of the 2020 study proposed several possible links between autism and gender-diversity.
They wrote that autistic individuals may conform less to societal norms compared to people not diagnosed with the condition, 'which may partly explain why a greater number of autistic individuals identify outside the stereotypical gender binary.'
Second, prenatal hormones involved in shaping brain development have been shown to contribute to both autism and gender role behaviors.
Previous studies have examined the link between prenatal hormones and autism. A 2019 study found a link between elevated levels of the female sex hormone estrogen in pregnant women and autism in their children.
Separate studies in both 2015 and 2018 found pregnant women with high levels of certain sex hormones, including testosterone and progesterone, had an increased risk of having a child with autism.
Previous research has also examined whether prenatal hormones play a role in gender dysphoria, with one study suggesting high levels of prenatal testosterone in females and low levels in males may contribute to gender dysphoria.
As the study found that gender-diverse individuals have higher rates of neurodevelopmental conditions, Dr Aaron Reuben, a neuropsychologist, told DailyMail.com: 'It is plausible that these conditions could be linked, or that there could be overlap among autism and gender dysphoria.
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Iran’s Nightmares
Details of Israel’s recent limited retaliatory strike against Iran‘s antiaircraft missile batteries at Isfahan are still sketchy. But nonetheless, we can draw some conclusions.
Israel’s small volley of missiles hit their intended targets, to the point of zeroing in on the very launchers designed to stop such incoming ordnance. The target was near the Natanz enrichment facility. That proximity was by design.
Israel showed Iran it could take out the very antimissile battery designed to thwart an attack on its nearby nuclear facility.
The larger message sent to the world was that Israel could send a retaliatory barrage at Iranian nuclear sites with reasonable assurances that the incoming attacks could not be stopped.
By comparison, Iran’s earlier attack on Israel was much greater and more indiscriminate. It was also a huge flop, with an estimated 99% of the more than 320 drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles failing to hit their planned targets.
Moreover, it was reported that more than 50% of Iran’s roughly 115 to 120 ballistic missiles failed at launch or malfunctioned in flight.
Collate these facts, and it presents a disturbing corrective to Iran’s nonstop boasts of soon possessing a nuclear arsenal that will obliterate the Jewish state.
Consider further the following nightmarish scenarios: Were Iranian nuclear-tipped missiles ever launched at Israel, they could pass over, in addition to Syria and Iraq, either Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the West Bank, Gaza, or all four. In the cases of Jordan and Saudi Arabia, such trajectories would constitute an act of war, especially considering that some of Iran’s recent aerial barrages were intercepted and destroyed over Arab territory well before they reached Israel.
Iran’s strike prompted Arab nations, the U.S., the U.K., and France to work in concert to destroy almost all of Iran’s drones. For Iran, that is a premonition of the sort of sophisticated aerial opposition it might face if it ever decided to stage a nuclear version.
Even if half of Iran’s ballistic missiles did launch successfully, only a handful apparently neared their intended targets—in sharp contrast to Israel’s successful attack on Iranian missile batteries. Is it thus conceivable that any Iranian nuclear-tipped missile launched toward Israel might pose as great a threat to Iran itself or its neighbors as to Israel?
And even if such missiles made it into the air and even if they successfully traversed Arab airspace, there is still an overwhelming chance they would be neutralized before detonating above Israel.
Any such launch would warrant an immediate Israeli response. And the incoming bombs and missiles would likely have a 100% certainty of evading Iran’s countermeasures and hitting their targets.
Now that the soil of both Iran and Israel is no longer sacred and immune from attack, the mystique of the Iranian nuclear threat has dissipated.
It should be harder for the theocracy in Tehran to shake down Western governments for hostage bribes, sanctions relief, and Iran-deal giveaways on the implied threat of Iran’s successfully nuking the Jewish state.
The new reality is that Iran has goaded an Israel that has numerous nuclear weapons and dozens of nuclear-tipped missiles in hardened silos and on submarines. Tehran has zero ability to stop any of these missiles or sophisticated fifth-generation Israeli aircraft armed with nuclear bombs and missiles.
Iran must now fear that if it launched two or three nuclear missiles, there would be overwhelming odds that they would either fail at launch, go awry in the air, implode inside Iran, be taken down over Arab territory by Israel’s allies, or be knocked down by Israel’s tripartite antimissile defense system.
Add it all up and Iran’s attack on Israel seems a historic blunder. It showed the world the impotence of an Iranian aerial assault at the very time Iran threatens to go nuclear. It revealed that an incompetent Iran may be as much a threat to itself as to its enemies. It opened up a new chapter in which Iran’s own soil, thanks to its attack on Israel, is no longer off limits to any Western power.
Its failure to stop a much smaller Israel response, coupled with the overwhelming success of Israel and its allies in stopping a much larger Iranian attack, reminds the Iranian autocracy that its shrill rhetoric is designed to mask its impotence and to hide its own vulnerabilities from its enemies.
And the long-suffering Iranian people?
The truth will come out that Iran’s own theocracy hit the Israeli homeland with negligible results and earned a successful, though merely demonstrative, Israeli response in return.
So Iranians will learn their homeland is now vulnerable and, for the future, no longer off-limits.
And Iranians will conclude that Israel has more effective allies than Iran and that their own ballistic missiles may be more suicidal than homicidal.
As a result, they may conclude that the real enemies of the Iranian nation are not the Jewish people of Israel after all, but their own unhinged Islamist theocrats.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/04/26/irans-nightmares/
**********************************************Australia: Do Fact-checkers Check The Facts?
Government should never have the power to determine what is or is not the truth, let alone silence dissenting views. However, what would be even worse is if unelected, unaccountable activists had this power instead.
But that is what the federal government is contemplating under its proposed internet censorship laws.
In private correspondence, released under a Freedom of Information request last year, Federal Communications Minister Michelle Rowland let slip to the Prime Minister how the government’s proposed ‘misinformation’ Bill would operate. The proposed law would empower the Australian Communications and Media Authority to impose huge fines on social media companies that do not censor ‘misinformation’ to the federal government’s satisfaction.
Minister Rowland confirmed that ‘fact-checking’ organisations are expected to play a central role in this new regime, so much so that Acma will be given the power to request information from ‘other persons such as fact-checkers and third-party platform contractors to monitor compliance with misinformation codes, standards and digital platform rules’. Rowland informed the Prime Minister that ‘the draft bill would give effect to this suggested change’.
The Minister has given the game away. It won’t be the social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube or X charged with the censoring. It won’t even be the faceless public servants at Acma. No, it will be these so-called ‘fact-checkers’.
Today, there are three main, self-appointed organisations in Australia claiming ‘fact-checker’ status; RMIT FactLab, AAP FactCheck, and RMIT ABC Fact Check. These organisations already have arrangements with social media companies in which they investigate ‘misinformation’ and if they render a ‘false’ verdict, the social media platforms will censor that content.
But based on Minister Rowland’s comments, ‘fact-checkers’ will in the future play an even more prominent role, as the enforcers of the government’s internet censorship laws. They, in effect, will be given the power of law to be the official arbiters of truth.
These ‘fact-checkers’ are signatories to a code of principles requiring them to be fair and neutral. This includes that they ‘not concentrate their fact-checking unduly on any one side’ of a debate. Last year, the Institute of Public Affairs investigated how well they complied with this requirement during the Voice referendum campaign. Not surprisingly, they failed miserably.
The IPA reviewed 187 fact-checking investigations which related to the Voice referendum, an enormous 91 per cent (i.e. 170) of which concerned the No campaign. 99 per cent of these were deemed ‘false’. Barely half of the other 17 investigations (concerning the Yes campaign) were deemed ‘false’. RMIT FactLab was the standout, worst offender with every one of its 41 investigations concerning the No campaign.
The IPA expanded its research to other policy areas, which revealed the Voice was not some aberration but, rather, confirmed the left-wing bias of these organisations is systemic and entrenched.
In respect to fact-checks about Australian politicians, there have been 249 investigations conducted over the past five years. 65 per cent of these investigations could be seen as favourable to the political left. Only 35 per cent could be seen as favourable to the political right. A 30 per cent margin of difference, in political terms, is enormous.
The research also looked at ‘fact checks’ into Covid-19, and climate change and energy policy. Of the 534 investigations into claims about Covid-19, a staggering 94 per cent targeted critics of official government responses, with just 6 per cent targeting advocates of the official line. So much for holding government to account!
Climate change and energy were no better. Of 153 investigations, 81 per cent were targeted against critics of the official climate change and energy agenda (that is, man-made carbon emissions are harming the planet, and we need to abolish fossil fuels and mandate alternatives in response). Every single one of these were deemed ‘false’, misleading, or missing context. Yet, remarkably, of the 20 investigations conducted by AAP FactCheck into advocates of the climate change agenda, 76 per cent were deemed ‘true’.
Again, RMIT FactLab was the worst. All of its Covid-19 and climate change investigations – 100 per cent – were targeted at critics. A level of consensus any North Korean dictator could be proud of!
It is clear Australia’s so-called, and self-appointed, fact-checkers have no interest in shining a spotlight on official government policies. Rather, they aim to attack critics and amplify official narratives.
This is not journalism. These are some of the most hotly debated and controversial areas of public policy, yet apparently to ‘fact-checkers’ only one side is worthy of investigation.
Predictably, the left-wing media have leapt to the defence of the ‘fact checkers’. An article that appeared in Crikey on 9 April claims that debunking a conspiracy theory doesn’t favour the political left or right but benefits the whole community. Miraculously, the enrichment of society so graciously offered by the ‘fact-checkers’ just so happens to involve targeting politicians on the political right, compared to the left, to the tune of two to one.
It is no surprise that left-wing journalists will attack any criticisms of ‘fact-checkers’. The utopia of the elite class – one that celebrates the modern media, academia and politics – is a world run by experts. Whether dictating where you can move during the Covid-19 pandemic, or deciding what can be said on the internet, the experts know best. With zero self-awareness, the same Crikey article claims, ‘Everything is a team sport to the outlets and politicians waging a war on fact-checkers in which “truth” becomes a trophy to be awarded rather than a fact to be established’.
But hang on, isn’t it the political left which is advocating for a system in which a select group decides on what is, or is not, ‘misinformation’ for the purpose of censoring alternative viewpoints?
Of course, the defenders of ‘fact checking’ would feel differently if these organisations were populated by conservatives. But, proving yet again the modern left is beyond parody, the author of the Crikey article once worked for AAP Fact Check!
These will be the people who determine what is true or false, and what you can or cannot say on social media.
It will, of course, be mainstream Australians who are silenced online if the federal government gets its way.
https://ipa.org.au/research/rights-and-freedoms/do-fact-checkers-check-the-facts
****************************************My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See 
1 comment:
The "Fact Checker" companies have already proven that they do NOT check facts if those facts are in any way inconvenient to their unacknowledged ideology. They are therefore only "Ideology Checkers" and thus not only not needed but are making themselves a barrier to honest discourse.
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