Largest Non-Nuclear Bomb in world dropped on Afghanistan

josip

PREG1967 wrote: »

but the swiss national redoubt plan has been largely decommissioned

Yes, because the threat of invasion is lower than any time in the last 150 years.
But the Swiss mindset remains the same.
https://www.ft.com/content/abb3de84-832c-11e6-8897-2359a58ac7a5

nacho libre

Gatling wrote: »

Why would russia be negotiating with the Taliban when they are not involved in Afghanistan , surely​ it's Afghanistan should be negotiating with America and Pakistan ,
Been it's Pakistan who supports,supplies and is training​ Taliban fighters through the intelligence services

That's because they are considered a useful asset against India. The Afghanistan conflict is essentially a proxy war between India and Pakistan for influence in Afghanistan
I recall a time where it was stated you couldn't negotiate with the blood thirsty Taliban. That was said back when the thinking was the Taliban could be defeated militarily.
The Americans and Afghanis were a while back negotiating indirectly with the Taliban through Qatar. The Taliban has some sort of quasi status in Qatar. This is the same Qatar that by the way funds Fatah al sham/ al qaeda/al nusra in Syria. You might keep that in mind next time you are selectively condemning state terrorism.

stefanovich

Autonomous Cowherd wrote: »

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/us-drops-largest-nonnuclear-bomb-on-afghanistan-21000lb-moab-used-for-first-time-35621197.html

This world is a crazy place. Do they even give a damn for the innocent people who happen to live in that area

Yes, they care, that's why they killed all the ISIS fighters with a big bomb.

nacho libre

Gatling wrote: »

The stupid part is people blame Obama for Afghanistan

As usual you don't apportion blame evenly. The Americans ignored repeated warnings at the time that it was a bad mistake for America to disengage after the Russian had been defeated. They were warned it could have repercussions/ cause blowback later. It's a recurring theme.

Gatling

At this rate I wouldn't be at all surprised if an official Taliban office opened in Moscow

Samaris

One issue is that there tends to be a gung-ho attitude promoted towards 'Murica going and dealing with the bad guys, but when the war drags on and it becomes clear it won't be all over in a couple of months, with a new bastion of democracy and freedom in X region, people start agitating against the war and demanding a full pull-out ASAP. A war ends up being fought with little support, demands for disengaging preferably last week, and in the meantime, America's involvement means that if they pull out "now", things will probably degenerate (even more) rapidly in a destabilised region.

The mad thing is that it just keeps happening. "We will go liberate these people and they will be so happy!"

Six months later: "Why aren't they cheering? We only bombed a few towns and there were bad guys in them.."

Annoyingly, intervention -is- needed sometimes. And that intervention will lead to consequences, both long-term probably good and short/medium-term horrific. Since people can't avoid seeing the short-term consequences though, even a popularly-supported intervention becomes an unpopular war pretty quickly.

josip

What was the last "successful" intervention by a foreign power in a domestic conflict in another country that didn't result in disfunction when they left/ceased operations?

PREG1967

josip wrote: »

Yes, because the threat of invasion is lower than any time in the last 150 years.
But the Swiss mindset remains the same.
https://www.ft.com/content/abb3de84-832c-11e6-8897-2359a58ac7a5

can you send me your username and password?

josip

PREG1967 wrote: »

can you send me your username and password?

I don't have an account but if you google Ticino vote
it will be the 5th link.
This url will work if you haven't access too many FT articles already.
https://tinyurl.com/kgbowfp
If you have, try clearing cookies or accessing from a browser that you don't normally use.

Failing all of that, here's the raw text (ugh)

The Swiss canton of Ticino, which borders northern Italy, has voted decisively in favour of tougher controls on foreign workers in the latest example of Switzerland’s voters defying agreements with the EU over the free movement of people.

A campaign initiated by the ultra-conservative Swiss People’s Party (SVP) won 58 per cent of votes in a referendum on Sunday, creating a challenge for the local cantonal government and highlighting popular support for curbs on EU immigration. Since the UK Brexit vote in June, Brussels has taken an increasingly hard line in insisting that Switzerland — which is not part of the EU — sticks to its bilateral agreements, fearing any concessions to the small-but-wealthy Alpine state would set a precedent for negotiations with London. Italian-speaking Ticino, which has a population of 350,000, is arguably the most exposed of Switzerland’s 26 cantons to foreign workers, with more than 62,000 crossing the border daily to work locally. Sunday’s result, backing measures to boost the employment of local residents over foreigners, is likely to be seized on by the SVP, led by veteran nationalist Christoph Blocher, as showing voters want Swiss politicians to stand firm in talks with Brussels.However, Ticino’s location and economic structure reduced the relevance of the vote to the rest of the country, analysts said. “Ticino is special — it has a long history of tensions with Italy, especially on labour issues, and it is an area which suffers particularly from low wage competition,†said Patrick Emmenegger, politics professor at the University of St Gallen.Sunday’s referendum had also not presented voters with a choice between controlling foreign workers or protecting the bilateral agreements with the EU, Prof Emmenegger added. “They want to have their cake and eat it — and in Ticino that problem is particularly severe.†Switzerland relies on a web of more than 120 bilateral contracts for access to European markets. Relations with Brussels were thrown into confusion in February 2014 when Swiss voters nationally backed limits on EU immigration from European neighbours — a clear violation of the agreement on the free movement of people. Among Swiss cantons, the strongest vote for limits on EU immigration in February 2014 was in Ticino, where 68.2 per cent of voters were in favour — compared with 50.3 per cent across Switzerland.Paolo Beltraminelli, president of the Ticino government, pointed out that support for Sunday’s proposal was 10 percentage points lower than for the 2014 proposals, which he attributed to the local government being “united in opposing this initiativeâ€. But he admitted the vote “shows the people still expect solutions to the pressures experienced by Ticino in the labour market.

Although referendums in Switzerland are meant to be binding, Sunday’s vote is likely to prove merely symbolic as the cantonal government almost certainly lacks the powers to implement the proposals. Last week, Swiss parliamentarians indicated the country would yield first in its stand-off with Brussels, proposing that legislation implementing the 2014 result should simply include measures encouraging companies to employ domestic workers — for instance, by requiring them to notify vacancies to local job centres. The compromise will be debated in the Swiss upper house of parliament in December.Despite Switzerland showing signs of backing down, Jean-Claude Juncker, European Commission president, made clear on a visit to Switzerland that he wanted to put Swiss-EU relations on a new footing with an “institutional framework†by which Swiss laws would change automatically as EU rules evolved, and which would require Switzerland to follow the rulings of the European Court of Justice. Such a step would almost certainly be rejected by Swiss voters.

ilkhanid

josip wrote: »

What was the last "successful" intervention by a foreign power in a domestic conflict in another country that didn't result in disfunction when they left/ceased operations?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_military_intervention_in_the_Sierra_Leone_Civil_War

The Tanzanian invasion Uganda to unseat Idi Amin. It took a long time for Uganda to achieve any degree of stability, so it may be accounted a partial success.

Capt'n Midnight

josip wrote: »

What was the last "successful" intervention by a foreign power in a domestic conflict in another country that didn't result in disfunction when they left/ceased operations?

When Vietnam invaded Cambodia in 1978 they left behind the People's Republic of Kampuchea. A puppet government with lot of problems. We continued to recognise the previous regime instead.


http://oireachtasdebates.oireachtas.ie/Debates%20Authoring/DebatesWebPack.nsf/takes/seanad1989111600005

I am ashamed to be Irish, ashamed that our Government have allowed the Khmer Rouge to sit in the United Nations; horrified that our Government have allowed these mass murderers to return to power in Kampuchea so that they can begin another holocaust. I cannot understand why we never helped the innocent people of Kampuchea. They received no United Nations development aid, no World Health Organisation aid; nothing at all. It is a disgrace. These poor people are caught up in a political game between America and China. I am lost for words to describe the horror and revulsion that I feel.

MysticMonk

Apparantly the Ruskies have a bigger bomb..hopefully they will also use them to destroy Daesh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2FGA3Z-oYM

Gatling

MysticMonk wrote: »

Apparantly the Ruskies have a bigger bomb..hopefully they will also use them to destroy Daesh.

Old news but i doubt that even putin would drop the biggest bomb on highly populated areas in Syria ,
But i could be wrong

MysticMonk

Noddyholder wrote: »

The only new thing here is that there actually using/testing them out on real people in real country's.

Yes,because in previous wars they only used them on pretend countries and imitation people .

4068ac1elhodqr

Interesting article here, say's they've another, better big stick for sweeping up, called the MOP.

extract: "MOP was ready in 2011. Each of the Air Force's x20 B2's (stealth) can carry x2 of the 21-foot-longers. So, forget carriers, fighters, troops. These are, at present, US's only non-N options for destroying the best-protected sites."

But it also says that NK has '8,000' various underground sites, say whaaaaa?

Capt'n Midnight

Braylen Rapping Skinhead wrote: »

But it also says that NK has '8,000' various underground sites, say whaaaaa?

That's because the US sent the B29's there in 1950 and flattened every thing above ground.

The only factories the North Koreans could use during the Korean war were those they set up deep underground in mines. So they've been using and extending them ever since.

North Korea are great miners.

4068ac1elhodqr

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

So they've been using and extending them ever since.
North Korea are great miners.

Maybe they've tunneled towards the center of the Earth like an ant colony, which could explain their (ever so slightly) over zealous confidence. Could be they read about today's big asteroid pass, 2014-JO25 at just 1.1m miles away.

They've also built up a few skyscrapers recently, guess there's not much on daytime TV to distract them.

They could have paraded their spades or shovel range the other day, instead of making many of their poor lads and lassies parade around holding balloons.

Capt'n Midnight

Braylen Rapping Skinhead wrote: »

Maybe they've tunneled towards the center of the Earth like an ant colony, which could explain their (ever so slightly) over zealous confidence.

I saw a documentary on that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dVu2KLtEYA

Arnold Kramer: You fool! They're twenty years ahead of us! They've got tunneling machines! They're coming in under us and you sit there like an idiot!

Cmdr. Jonathan Shaw: Easy...

Arnold Kramer: Don't you understand they're after us? They're going to wipe us out!

Beyondgone

Braylen Rapping Skinhead wrote: »

Interesting article here, say's they've another, better big stick for sweeping up, called the MOP.

extract: "MOP was ready in 2011. Each of the Air Force's x20 B2's (stealth) can carry x2 of the 21-foot-longers. So, forget carriers, fighters, troops. These are, at present, US's only non-N options for destroying the best-protected sites."

But it also says that NK has '8,000' various underground sites, say whaaaaa?

Shades of Vietnam. The US has had bad experience with small, determined enemies working out of tunnels.

Atoms for Peace

Underground Korea is best korea. Looks like HG Wells wasn't too far off the mark when he wrote the time machine: "...the human race has evolved into two species: the leisured classes have become the ineffectual Eloi, and the downtrodden working classes have become the brutal light-fearing Morlocks".

Biggest lickspittle on boardz

And the pics are in from the bomb site, I thought there would be more destruction tbh:





More here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4437524/Few-clues-casualties-site-huge-US-bomb-Afghanistan.html

Gatling

Biggest lickspittle on boardz wrote: »

And the pics are in from the bomb site, I thought there would be more destruction tbh:

It's a thermobaric weapon it's not a high explosive bomb designed for mass destruction ,it sucks the oxygen out of certain area like a cave complex or bunker without blowing it to hell ,