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They can't keep conventional munitions in supply, how do they think they will do on high-tech.?

Taking aim: Army leaders ponder mix of precision munitions vs conventional
Three four-star US Army generals this week weighed in with their opinions about finding the right balance between conventional and high-tech munitions - but the answers aren't easy.
By   ASHLEY ROQUE
on May 10, 2024 at 1:10 PM
 

WASHINGTON — This week, US Army Europe and Africa Commander Gen. Darryl Williams kicked off the annual Fires Symposium in Lawton, Okla. with, appropriately, a bit of a bombshell.

“Traditional cannon-based mass fires,” he told the audience, “are still the best solution in an EW environment.”

Williams, a veteran field artillery officer, has had a front row seat for nearly two years assessing some of those challenges and seeing how US provided weapons are working on the Ukrainian battlefield against an adversary with electronic warfare (EW) capabilities. Following decades of investments across the US military in precision capabilities, the claim that simpler weapons may be the best for the modern battlefield raises larger questions about whether the Army has been putting billions over billions of dollars down the wrong hole.

https://breakingdefense.com/2024/05/taking-aim-army-leaders-ponder-mix-of-precision-munitions-vs-conventional/

The Land That Doesn’t Need Ozempic
By Johann Hari
May 9, 2024 7:00 AM EDT
TIME

In March 2023, the Japanese medical authorities announced that the new weight loss drug Wegovy—which was in staggering demand across the world, causing shortages everywhere—had been approved to treat obesity in their country. It sounded, at first glance, like great news for Novo Nordisk, the company that makes Ozempic and Wegovy. But industry outlet the Pharma Letter explained that this would not in fact turn out to be much of a boost. They predicted that these drugs would dominate the market in Japan, but that won’t mean much, for a simple reason: there is almost no obesity there. Some 42% of Americans are obese, compared with just 4.5% of Japanese people. Japan, it seems, is the land that doesn’t need Ozempic.

I wondered how this could be, and if the answer might offer me a way out of a dilemma that was obsessing me. Several months before, I had started taking Ozempic, and I was traveling all over the world to interview the leading experts on these drugs to research my new book, Magic Pill: The Extraordinary Benefits and Disturbing Risks of the New Weight-Loss Drugs. The more I discovered, the more torn I became. I had learned there are massive health benefits to reversing obesity with these drugs: for example, Novo Nordisk ran a trial that found weekly injections reduced the risk of heart attack or stroke by 20% for participants with a BMI over 27 and a history of cardiac events. But I also saw there are significant risks. I interviewed prestigious French scientists who worry the drugs could cause an increase in thyroid cancer, and eating disorders experts who worry it will cause a rise in this problem. Other experts fear it may cause depression or suicidal thoughts. These claims are all fiercely disputed and debated. I felt trapped between two risky choices—ongoing obesity, or drugs with lots of unknowns.  ...

I glimpsed part of the explanation when I went to the Tokyo College of Sushi & Washoku, to interview the president Masaru Watanabe, who I also spoke with on Zoom on another occasion. He had agreed to cook a meal for me with some of his trainees, and to explain the principles behind it. He told me: “The Japanese cuisine’s [core] feature is simplicity. For us, the simpler, the better.”  ...

In Japan, you are taught from a very early age to only eat until you feel you are 80% full. It takes time for your body to sense you’ve had enough, and if you hit a sense of fullness while you are still eating, then you’ve definitely had too much.   ...

Up until this point, I had seen aspects of Japan’s approach toward health that seemed totally admirable. But next, I saw something that left me with mixed feelings. In 2008, the Japanese government noticed that obesity was slightly rising. So they introduced the “Metabo Law,” which was designed to reduce the negative consequences of a large waistline. The law contained a simple rule. Once a year, every workplace and local government in Japan has to bring in a team of nurses and doctors to measure the waistline of adults between ages 40 and 74. If the measurements are above a certain level, the person is referred to counseling, and workplaces draw up health plans with employees to lose weight. Companies with fattening work forces can face fines. ...

https://time.com/6974579/japan-food-culture-low-obesity/

May 11, 2024
Smells Like ‘68: Foreboding Parallels for Democrats in 2024
By William Sullivan

This election season, there are many parallels to the election year of 1968 on display, and none of it bodes well for Democrats’ chances in November.

It didn’t work out for Democrats back then, certainly, with Republican Richard Nixon handily defeating Hubert Humphrey, and Republicans picking up a net five seats in both the Senate and the House, along with a net gain of five governorships.

Here are a few of these observed similarities.

Radical leftists are again eating their own

The first parallel, which many have already noted, is that the Democratic National Convention (DNC) will be again held in Chicago in August of this year, as it was in a politically contentious 1968.  Recent events signify that the city may again be witness to mass protests outside the DNC, just as when “tens of thousands of protestors swarmed the streets to rally against the Vietnam War and the political status quo” in 1968. 

Pacifying those radicals without alienating the political center will be difficult.  But this is the Faustian bargain that Democrats chose, then and now.

By 1968, there had been an explosion of outrage over American military defense of South Vietnam against the aggression of the communist North Vietnam.  Escalation in this Cold War conflict had occurred over many presidencies, and as such, the communist-sympathizing activists on college campuses viewed this as a systemic result of the American political status quo. 

Sen. Bernie Sanders recently argued that the Israel-Hamas conflict might become “Biden’s Vietnam.”  Politically, he may be right.  America is divided today on the conflict in the Middle East, and in a way that presents something of a catch-22 for Biden’s administration as it did for Democrats in 1968.

In December of 1967, 34% of polled Americans wanted to “get out” of Vietnam.  33% wanted a negotiated peace, while 26% wanted a total victory.  This signifies a slight edge to public support for “full withdrawal” over “total victory” among the public, but that middle ground covers an awful lot of potential dispositions about that war.

more
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/05/smells_like_68_foreboding_parallels_for_democrats_in_2024.html