Otto Von Bismark, Please Call Your Office

Back when the Russians first started gobbling up the Ukraine, I recall Secretary of State Botox and his cronies flapping their gums about how this wasn't the 19th Century any more and that modern* nations no longer engaged in war with guns and bombs. It was all very gauche and got in the way of eating gluten-free, sustainable arugula. No, leaders of modern nations sat down together and talked.

And talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked.

Or maybe not.

U.S. surveillance imagery shows China has positioned weaponry on one of the artificial islands it is developing in the South China Sea, American officials said, supporting their suspicions that Beijing has been building up reefs for military purposes.

The U.S. imagery detected two Chinese motorized artillery pieces on one of the artificial islands built by China about one month ago. While the artillery wouldn’t pose a threat to U.S. planes or ships, U.S. officials said it could reach neighboring islands and that its presence was at odds with China’s public statements that the reclaimed islands are mainly** for civilian use.

For those graduates of Harvard and Columbia who need trigger warnings when they read children's stories about Roman gods, here's what artillery looks like when it's doing those things artillery was meant to do.


* - Read: Nations ruled by people who graduated from Ivy League universities.

** - Why is this a problem? The weasel word "mainly" gives it away. You'd think that this crowd with their "living" Constitution as a weasel word for seizing dictatorial powers for El Presidente would have figured this out.