March 28, 2022: Reader Tips

Reader Tips 60 Comments

This evening we present the 1967 film, Deadlier Than the Male.

Your soft & fuzzy tips are much appreciated!

Bonus: Canadian Veteran James Topp has passed 900km of his planned 4,300km march from Vancouver to Ottawa.  You can follow his amazing journey at CanadaMarches.ca.  We will periodically post items from his website here in Reader Tips.

With supporters in Fernie … Posing beside a mileage sign … Another long format interview

60 Replies to “March 28, 2022: Reader Tips”

      1. Nothing!! Why do you think he’s turning himself in?? He wants to keep his record clean so can run in the next election.

          1. He did indeed, much to my disappointment, but I can understand why, and I can’t say that I blame him.

          1. Publicity stunt to get people to pay attention.

            Think of how many will tune in next year. It will be like the NHL soon.

          3. Oh, darn! The only time in recent years that it would have been worth watching the Oscars and I was doing something else….

    1. Nobody hates Canada? Did Prinz Dummkopf bribe him with our tax money as well?

      1. It’s not that nobody hate’s Canada, it’s that nobody gives two figs about Canada. We simply did not attract that much attention… that is, until February of this year.

  5. Mongol gotta Mongol
    https://www.the-sun.com/news/4989459/russians-slave-labour-ukrainains/
    “Up to 40,000 Ukrainians have been snatched from besieged cities and forced into Russian slave labour.

    …

    hundreds of children are now lost and alone in the clutches of ruthless Russian troops after being forced away from their families.”

    https://rsf.org/en/news/russians-use-abduction-hostage-taking-threaten-ukrainian-journalists-occupied-zones
    “Russians use abduction, hostage-taking to threaten Ukrainian journalists in occupied zones”

      1. Yes, exactly that, yet some here are declaring that Captain Alzheimer is about to start WWIII.

        1. I love how people are piling on Biden for saying out loud what everyone is thinking, but don’t seem to have an issue with Putin starting an unjustified war.

          1. I’m going to point out that anyone standing with Ukraine right now, is confirmed as standing with actual Nazis who are torturing Russian prisoners.
            I will also point out that no one else in the world other than those in NATO, are throwing their support behind the penis pianist.
            But here you are….

          2. It is russians not Ukrainians that are using mass rape as a weapon of war, again.
            It is russians not Ukrainians who are who are sending tens of thousands of civilians to gulags, again.
            It is russians not Ukrainians who are kidnaping thousands of Ukrainians children, again.

            But here you are….

      2. P.H.: watching BNN-Bloomberg business TV this morning, and the show (remarkably enough) is slamming Biden hard for his amazingly mindless remark. The guy is in every sense of the word a jerk.

        1. David, I don’t think Biden is competent enough to be a jerk. As OJ posted this morning, GBN in the UK noted “Joe Biden couldn’t change his underpants, let alone a foreign government”.
          As Colonialista noted, GBN agrees that Biden is trying to start WW 3.

    2. There’s now plenty of pictures of makeshift infantry fighting vehicles. Pickup trucks with machine guns mounted on them. They look like jihadmobiles.

      Of course they have a big Z on them

      Second greatest military, in Ukraine.

      1. Funny enough, from first days of war a new cottage industry mushroomed in Poland, people are donating their used pick ups and SUVs, an army of mechanics are pro bono refurbishing them and handing them over to Ukrainian security forces. Same with cargo trucks and apparently a few ambulances. https://www.facebook.com/MotoBieda/posts/3208049672813011
        They see to have cleared the market thanks to donations, it is now next to impossible to find an affordable used off roader in Poland. Every little bit helps.

  6. Since I’m at my house in B. C., I’ll have to watch the movie when I get back.

    1. Always with the negative waves Moriarty.
      Definitely one of my 10 ten movies of all time.

  9. Apparently this BNN-Bloomberg story says a $325-millio heist in Ether coin took place:
    http://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/inside-jump-trading-s-response-to-a-325-million-wormhole-heist-1.1743288

    I have difficulty understanding the article (and I am a retired economics professor), but it bodes ill for the future, one would think. In our academic department we used to speculate about end-of-the-world scenarios involving the utter, final collapse of financial markets. My view is that important matters should never be left to computer geeks.

  10. Nigel, my favourite film. Have seen it dozens of times since it was released in 1970. SERIOUSLY disappointed to find out that the “Mark 6 and we got it by the ass” were T34’s covered in plywood.

    1. I think that film, for me, anyway, was the start of a long reflection on free markets and libertarianism. After all, if you can have it in the middle of a war, why not in peace?
      There are some really good youtube video’s of a Tiger in long term restoration at the military museum in Switzerland. They are doing it with typical Swiss attention to detail and thoroughness. There is one clip where the project chief is talking about the fuel system. He says something like, ‘ it was not very good, so we have had to do a little redesign’. Brings to mind the argument in the turret hatches at the end of the film as Oddball is being berated for trading for the tank and Moriarty says, ‘there is fuel all over, the system leaks!!

    2. “were T34’s covered in plywood”

      – Well, there’s only one working Tiger 1 out there, and it’s rather expensive to rent (though I’m aware of two others being brought to running status). You can read the Bovington Tank Museum’s piece on Tiger 131; it was the commander’s tank of the first company, third platoon of the 504th Heavy Tank Battalion, so its number was 1 Company, 3rd Battalion, #1 tank – messengers would look for the #1 tank to speak to the unit’s commander. Several other Tigers wore the 131# during the war: https://blog.tiger-tank.com/tiger-131/why-tiger-131/

      Word is that surviving members of the 504th know who the crew was who bailed-out of 131 that day without setting any demolition charges – and to this day, refuse to speak their names…

        1. Yep – and I didn’t watch the movie but I did watch that bit. Would you have charged the Shermans, or would you sit in the treeline and pick ’em off? “One little, two little, three little Shermans…” Good thing they rented 131, it was the only real thing in that scene. Oh and – they didn’t fire on the move…

          I talked with a German tanker who was in Normandie. He told me their doctrine against Canadian tankers, who were brand-new to the game and whose tactics were infantile. “Knock out the first – traverse 15 degrees left and knock out the second – traverse 30 degrees right and knock out the third – then back to original bearing and knock out the fourth.”

          1. That scene was analyzed to death by every armor historian. Here are my two cents.
            1. The Tiger is emerging from the fog. It is perfectly possible that he is trying to move up to get a clearer shot.
            2. First and third Sherman have long barrel 76mm guns (note the third Sherman is an M4A1 with a 76mm gun and cast armor, the earliest variant of M4 with the long gun), the second M4 has a short barrel 75 gun. The 76 with regular AP would at that range punch through Tiger’s front plate more often than it would not. ROF on 76 was much higher than on 88, it is fight that a Tiger would lose. The 75mm Sherman should be firing WP with a hope of blinding the German and starting fire.
            3. A commander like Wardaddy, would at this stage of the war be able to scrounge some HVAP for his 76mm tanks. HVAP would pen Tiger like knife through butter.
            4. Ground is hard, so the common criticism that the Tiger would have fired on the lead tank to block the whole column isn’t obvious. This isn’t a narrow road with swamps on both sides like pictured in famous scene in One Bridge too Far.
            5. By that stage of the war, finding a Tiger I operating on the Western Front is extremally unlikely. Tiger I was already being replaced by Tiger II (aka King Tiger, aka Bengal Tiger) at the time of Normandy landings. As best as I can tell, there were only six Tiger Is available for Ardennes Offensive, this scene takes place after Ardennes. I believe, there are only three recorded instances of US M4s facing Tigers in Northern France (note I said M4s vs Tiger Is in Northern France, not elsewhere, not Tiger IIs, not other US or allied vehicles).
            6. Sherman could fire on the move unless they removed the stabilizer that some crews did. Tiger could not fire on the move.

          2. So, 1) stay in the treeline. If you must advance through smoke, advance until your gunner can find targets – and be ready, nay eager, to back into the smoke once it starts to dissipate. 2) Do to the 76mm-armed Sherman what the Germans already did to the Fireflies – shoot it first; you can’t miss it, it’s the one with the muzzle brake. If you’re angled (which this crew weren’t), you still have a decent chance against it.

            The two sad ( – happy, actually; I have to keep reminding myself that we WANT the Tiger to lose…) aspects to this plan being, by then in the war 1) the Tiger’s crew was fresh out of basic and their training was pretty rudimentary – as you noted, the Tiger was unstabilized; he rolled forward, shortening the Shermans’ range, and how many shots did he miss? And 2) the poor inexperienced driver will likely strip-out the final drives trying to do ANYTHING in a hurry. Otto Carius commanded a section of Jagdtigers during the Allies’ advance to the Ruhr; his reminiscences in “Tigers in the Mud” make clear that he was not happy, and he laments their bulky clumsiness, their drives’ fragility and their crews’ inexperience.

    3. T-34: a mass produced Soviet medium tank.
      T34: a prototype US super heavy tank with a 120mm gun weighting about 65 tons.

      Sorry, couldn’t resist.

  11. Speaking of economists … they did not say what the MSM always says they said.

    “There is widespread consensus among economists that carbon taxation is one of the most effective policies to reduce carbon emissions.”

    https://theconversation.com/the-economic-case-for-the-mining-industry-to-support-carbon-taxation-176452

    To paraphrase the economists they said something like “if money is the solution to climate change then the most effective way to raise money is through a global carbon tax because it taps the most pockets”.

    Big difference.

  16. Politics in AB is increasingly chaotic. You don’t know from one day to the next what bazaaro move is coming next. I can’t name all the conservative parties that exist here.

    I looks now like Danielle Smith is on the cusp of announcing a return to provincial politics. I might be wrong but I think she has made her peace with the Wildroser’s who blame her for the fiasco that was created between herself and Jim Prentice. A failed amateur attempt at amalgamating the Wildrose and Conservatives.

    Where this will lead or how it will play out is anybody’s guess. The ndp support is solid at 40%. Any split in the vote and it’s wretched rachael one more time. Alberta is becoming Ontario.

    1. “…I think she has made her peace with the Wildroser’s…”

      Well, she may have made her peace but I haven’t made mine. Dumb Biker’s, like elephants, have a long memory. Fuck Danielle Smith.

      1. She must figure that all Albertans are completely stupid. Sadly, she’s probably right.

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