RUNNING LOW ON AMMO, RUSSKIES IN UKRAINE LAUNCHING ‘EVERYTHING BUT KITCHEN SINK’ — NO KIDDING
HOW DOES TRUMP LEGACY GET ANY WEIRDER? FORMER INSIDERS OFFER PERFECT EXAMPLE OF NO. 45’S LUNACY
UK LEADERS REVISIT 30-YEAR-OLD PROPOSED SOLUTION TO ‘IRISH PROBLEM’ — AND THIS TIME THEY MEAN IT
May 14, 2022
By Andrew Squibley and Arthur Bushwhacker, Think Alito Meant to Hit ‘Delete’
“Democracy Dies in Darkness…and in a McCarthy Speakership”
GENEVA, Switzerland (Rueters) – Switzerland’s government, jumping ahead of Finnish and Swedish leaders, shockingly has applied for NATO membership, ending centuries of its “Nothing to do with me, mate” policy of neutrality and plugging a vital hole in the defense alliance’s middle.
NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg announced the surprise move in a joint press conference Saturday with Swiss Confederation President Ignazio Cassis who told news media the Alpine country has already begun investing 2 percent — NATO’s minimum — of its annual budget on military hardware.
“We’ve been quietly shopping for some of the best maritime technology available around the world,” said Cassis (no relation to the liqueur). We decided after the Russians told us they were justified attacking a peaceful nation that we could no longer stand by and take no action. We took that approach with Hitler last century and look how that turned out.”
Cassis said the country would initially spend $10 billion in 2022 to build its navy and already had struck deals with Sweden and the Philippines for small fleets of their storied vessels. One Philippines boat manufacturer, meanwhile, is testing functionality of a small aircraft carrier for the traditionally non-aligned nation best known for its secretive banking practices.
“We plan to boost defense of our lakes and be ready to assist our NATO partners on land or sea even though we’re not sure at this point how to get the boats in or out of the country. No coastline, you understand,” the Swiss president explained.
In addition to its ambitious plan for launching a NATO-qualified navy, Switzerland intends to redeploy from the Vatican its 135-man strong company of battle-hardened Swiss Guards whose colorful uniforms harken back to the Renaissance. “Not sure how well they fight, but at the very least,” said one Swiss army veteran, “they’ll distract the enemy and probably cause convulsions of laughter on the battlefield.”
Swiss Guards are a corps of Swiss soldiers responsible for the safety of the pope. Often called “the world’s smallest army,” they serve as personal escorts to the pontiff and as watchmen for Vatican City and the pontifical villa of Castel Gandolfo.
The guardsmen began serving the papal states in the late 14th and 15th centuries. On January 22, 1506, the first contingent of 150 Swiss guardsmen arrived at the Vatican. They soon earned a reputation for self-sacrifice and bravery, as demonstrated during the sack of Rome in 1527, when all but 42 of the 189 guardsmen died defending Pope Clement VII.
The Swiss Guards prepared for similar self-sacrifice during World War II when the vastly outnumbered guardsmen took up defensive positions as German forces rolled into Rome in 1943. Hitler, however, chose not to attack the Vatican.
“NATO armies would love to have these bad-asses,” Stoltenberg said at the press conference. When questioned about the redeployment by Rueters, a Vatican spokesman said, “We’re going to miss their adorable uniforms.”
Running Low on Computer Chips, Russians Cannibalize Home Appliances — Then a Lightbulb Goes On
KYIV, Ukraine (Rueters) – U.S.-led sanctions are forcing Russia to use computer chips from dishwashers and refrigerators in some military equipment, government officials have told Congress. But undeterred, Russians, in the press of battle, have dreamed up a new application for useless home appliances.
“We have reports from Ukrainians that when they find Russian military equipment on the ground, it’s filled with semiconductors that they took out of dishwashers and refrigerators,” a Commerce Department official told a Senate hearing last week.
U.S. technology exports to Russia have fallen by nearly 70 percent since sanctions began in late February, according to the Commerce official, while some three dozen other countries have adopted similar export bans, which also apply to Belarus.
A Pentagon spokesman, replying to questions from Rueters, said while supplies of semiconductors in Russia are running low, the Russian army is quietly building a stockpile of appliance-missiles which they’ve begun test-firing at Ukrainian cities.
Once Russian army technicians cannibalized computer chips from hundreds of refrigerators and other home appliances, the disabled machinery began piling up, an army spokesman in Moscow told Rueters. “We thought, hey, we’ve got the catapults, why don’t we lob of few of these bad boys at the Jewish Nazis.”
The long-armed catapults, known as trebuchets, are loaded primarily with GE Profile appliances, including a refrigerator, washing machine, and microwave. “These things weren’t worth a damn even with their chips. Their owners were happy to dump them,” the spokesman added.
Ukrainian civilian leaders have received reports from residents who claimed to see flying fridges and other home appliances headed in their direction but no damage was reported, Rueters has learned. “We’ve got plenty of semiconductors, thanks to the US and EU,” the mayor of one small town near Kharkiv said. “Pretty sure we can get them running again. Just wish they were Samsung or LG.”
Nuking a Hurricane? Sure, Why Not, Mr. President? Makes Perfect Sense to Us
WASHINGTON (Rueters) – Former President Donald Trump repeatedly asked aides if China could manufacture hurricanes and send them to damage the United States, three unnamed former senior officials told Rueters this week.
Trump also reportedly wanted to know if using such a “hurricane gun” would constitute an act of war, and if so, whether the US could retaliate militarily against the Chinese.
“It was almost too stupid for words,” one source told Rueters, who also said he was “intimately familiar with the then-sitting president’s inquiry.”
In August 2019, reports surfaced out of the White House that in a briefing on climate change and the increasingly destructive power of Pacific typhoons and Atlantic hurricanes, Trump told top officials: “I got it. I got it. Why don’t we nuke them?”
Another former official told Rueters, “I was present once when he asked if China ‘made’ hurricanes to send to us. This was a regular topic of discussion. Trump wanted to know if the technology existed. One guy in the room responded, ‘Not to the best of my knowledge, sir,’ then retreated to his office and burst out laughing. Scary, right?”
Trump was reportedly told that aides would “look into” the notion of destroying large storms with nuclear weapons, much like the one he is seen here riding in this archived photo from the Library of Congress. Still think 2024 can’t come soon enough, “Brandon” fans?
Prime Minister John Major Seriously Considered Plan 30 Years Ago, Now Boris Johnson Has Dusted It Off Once Again
LONDON (Rueters) – Frustrated by Northern Ireland leaders who can’t seem to agree how to work together to govern the province of two million, UK leaders are once again looking at a radical solution generally favored by the English in the early 1990s — towing Ulster into the middle of the Atlantic and letting it sink.
“I think if you put it to a vote, the English would favor the ‘let-it-sink’ solution by a wide margin,” a retired engineer from Watford, who claimed to represent the majority view of 56 million English, told Rueters. “Maybe not as wide a margin as in 1992, when the IRA was still bombing London, but the English and probably the Scots and Welsh, too, are just tired of the troubles the Irish always seem to be causing.”
This latest “trouble,” a UK government spokesman said, emerged when Sinn Fein, the political branch of the now-inactive Irish Republican Army, recently came out on top in provincial elections, capturing more seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly than the Protestant Democratic Unionist Party, marking a near-seismic change in Ulster’s governance.
But now, much to the frustration of UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the DUP is refusing to work with Sinn Fein, preventing the formation of a government as outlined and signed by both parties in the 1998 Good Friday agreements.
Seems the Unionists have got their knickers in a twist about how the UK government solved its “Irish Problem” resulting from Brexit. Instead of setting up customs and border controls between the Republic of Ireland, which remains in the European Union, and Northern Ireland, the English-dominated national government instead decided to create customs controls between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
This hurt the Unionists’ feeling and made them feel less British, reportedly. “It’s one damn thing after another with the Northern Irish,” the former Watford engineer told Rueters. “Take the place out to sea and let it sink. Let them make friends with Atlantis.”
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