How To Kill An Abrams Tank

The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here.

The original version of this video is here.

The much-vaunted US Abrams tank is said to be the best tank in the world. US forces brag that they cannot even kill one with US anti-tank weapons. Indeed, the Abrams may be the best tank in the world. However, that does not make it indestructible, as this video shows.

The weapons used here were probably large anti-tank mines (up to 1000 pounds), anti-tank missiles, RPG's and roadside bombs. The Abrams seen in 2:35 in the video was killed north of Baghdad near Duluiyah a couple of years ago; 2 US soldiers were killed and 1 more was terribly wounded.

The weapon was three 150-pound anti-tank mines laid on top of each other and all detonated at once. Despite the seemingly terrible toll on the tanks in this video, it is probable that few crew members were killed in these attacks.

The notation at one point in the video about the "Sabot" round is probably incorrect - that is quite possibly NOT a Sabot round in that photo. A sabot round is fired from a gun or possibly another tank. It travels at about 1 mile/second and often uses a depleted uranium tip to penetrate the tank.

It is a truly nasty round that once it gets inside tends to spray shrapnel everywhere and scramble most material inside the tank, including the tank's most sensitive inner workings. It is dubious that the Iraqi guerrillas have any DU rounds.

A sabot round in action. It doesn't appear to be much but the thing in the center is a depleted uranium round that is capable of causing an awful lot of damage. Believe it or not, that round probably sounds like a freight train going by if it's fired anywhere in your direction.

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The bottom and top of the Abrams are not nearly as armored as the sides. The rear is also vulnerable as this is where the engine is. The engine can be taken out with a good shot to the rear, even with a lowly RPG-7. A few of the photos appear to show Abrams that have fallen off the road into ditches or sunk in the mud. See 1:52 in the video.

Despite its excellence, the Abrams has been around for some time now. Work on it began in the 1970's and the first one came online in 1980. It has been upgraded several times since then. Each Abrams costs $2.3-4.3 million. The latest is the M1A2, with a 120mm smooth-bore turret that fires its own sabot rounds.

A 500-1000 pound "gravity bomb" will blow an Abrams to smithereens. The US has been dropping a lot of bombs on Iraq these days and surely not all of them are exploding. The Iraqi guerrillas may be finding these bombs on the ground and fashioning them into anti-tank devices.

The things on the sides of the tank at 1:23 in the video that look like tiles are reactive armor. Reactive armor actually explodes much weaponry that attacks it. That is, the weapon hits the reactive armor, and the reactive armor detonates the weapon on the armor, so the weapon cannot penetrate inside the tank.

Reactive armor on a tank. The panels above the tank are panels of reactive armor. Reactive armor is capable of defeating a shaped charge. A shaped charge sends out a warhead of molten magma that is not really a formed object. This magma can usually get only partway through the reactive armor before the reactive armor detonates, reducing much of the impact of the shaped charge.

The explosive force penetrator described below is more worrisome because it is an actual metal object that become warped into a shaped charge. This object is somehow able to make its way through the reactive armor without the reactive armor detonating it.

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However, a 2-stage device can defeat reactive armor. The device initially detonates on the armor, and then a secondary shaped charge detonates that is capable of penetrating the armor. The newer anti-tank weapons, especially the Russian weapons used by Hezbollah in the Lebanon War, can definitely defeat reactive armor. Such weapons include the Russian AT-7 Saxhorn, the Italian MILAN and the Russian RPG-29.

The reactive armor on the Abrams may be up to one foot thick. The reactive armor itself is made of U-235, or depleted uranium. When an Abrams tank starts burning, it will give off DU in its smoke, which is very toxic. Also, the Abrams itself fires DU in its rounds.

The US media is making much of the supposedly Iranian explosive force penetrator bombs that according to the US military itself can destroy an Abrams tank. It's similar to a shaped charge.

In general, the Abrams, like the similar Israeli tank called the Merkava, is best suited to the plains of Europe or open deserts in set piece battles with other tanks and armor. In close quarters fighting, such as Israel was doing in Lebanon and the US is doing in Iraq, tanks do not work so well.

In particular, in such situations it is necessary to support the tanks with a lot of infantry, something that Israel was not doing in the Lebanon war, probably because they wished to minimize losses to their infantry. And the infantry should be with the tanks - having tanks moving in front of infantry makes tanks vulnerable.

In short, in today's urban guerrilla conflicts against foes hiding in populated, built-up areas with plenty of cover to conceal themselves, and without proper support for the tanks, tanks are a diminishing military asset, even the best tank in the world, the Abrams tank.

Especially regarding the Lebanon War, it seems that we are back to World War 2, where tanks must be supported by infantry teams and other arms in order to take out anti-tank squads. Tanks are simply not meant to be used in close quarters fighting against infantry, and this is how Israel used them in the Lebanon War. In part this is due to their limited visibility, a real problem in urban combat.

Dug-in/underground/camouflaged anti-tank teams need to be taken out with infantry, not the tanks that they are attacking. One possibly way to defeat this would be for anti-tank teams to hide while they are overrun and then attack the second-wave armor from behind. However, it is possible that the teams may die with such near-suicidal tactics. Remote-controlled anti-tank mines will always be a danger for any tank.

We should note, though, that the Merkava has significantly inferior armor compared to the Abrams, though the Merkava is also a superb tank. The armor on the Abrams is referred to as Chobham armor. The original US Chobham armor has been upgraded to where the new Chobham armor is significantly better than the original Chobham armor.

The Merkava was probably based on the US M60 design. During the 1973 war, against strong Congressional opposition, the US, namely Henry Kissinger, rushed replacement M60 US tanks to the Israelis. The Israelis probably up-engineer a number of M60's until they eventually developed the Merkava.

The Merkava is not an M60 knockoff, however, since it differs in some important ways, in particular, in having a troop-carrying compartment at the back of the vehicle.

In the Lebanon War, Hezbollah used a variety of anti-tank weapons, in particular the Russian-made 9M113 Konkurs. This weapon has the US military very worried. An excellent overview of the Spandrel is here. The Spandrel is the equivalent of the US TOW missile (linked below), considered to be one of the best anti-tank guns around. It can hit a target at an incredible 2 1/2 miles.

Hezbollah may have also used some of the newer Kornets or others in the AT-series, including Chinese variants.

An AT-3 Sagger would probably need to hit a Merkava right on top to take it out. The newer anti-tank weapons such as the AT-14 Kornet (reportedly re-engineered by the Iranians), the TOW-3 and the Javelin are designed for top attack. Hezbollah may also have used the Milan anti-tank weapon, an excellent weapon that Croatia used to great effect during the Balkan Wars.

Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.

Interview With Andrew Winkler of Ziopedia

The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here.

Updated January 19, 2008:

The website Ziopedia and its owner, Andrew Winkler, leaped into the news lately due to the association of the website with a recent incident involving Holocaust survivor and author Elie Wiesel and a Holocaust Denier in a hotel in San Francisco.
On February 1, a man who later identified himself as Eric Hunt in a net posting approached Wiesel in an elevator in the hotel where Wiesel was appearing at a conference on conflict resolution and asked for an interview. Wiesel agreed to do the interview in the Lobby. Hunt asked instead that they do the interview in Hunt's hotel room.

Wiesel insisted on doing it in the Lobby. As the elevator got to the 6th floor, Hunt stopped the elevator. When the door opened, he pushed Wiesel out, grabbed him, and tried to push him into his hotel room. Wiesel, age 79, started screaming and resisted. At that point Hunt ran away.

Hunt, a Holocaust Denier, anti-Semite, White Supremacist and neo-Nazi, submitted an article to Ziopedia on February 2 describing the incident, in which he said that he merely wanted to interview Wiesel and get him to confess that he made up lies in his book Night.

Hunt said that he did not intend to harm Wiesel. As Winkler makes clear below, he did not know that the article was about a real incident but instead thought that it was a spoof.

On February 7, the post appeared again, on Honest Media Today, an anti-Semitic and Holocaust Denial site which often isn't all that honest, under the rather humorous title, Interrogating a Weasel.

Personally, I intensely dislike Elie "The Weasel" Wiesel for a variety of reasons, namely his militant Zionism, and I understand than a number of hip Jews share my disdain for him. I'd say Eric Hunt is more of a creep than The Weasel, but it's a close call. Racist Nazi creep attacks racist Jewish creep, news at 11.

Around the same time, the same article, with the same appropriate headline, appeared on The Civic Forum, another anti-Semitic and Holocaust Denial site.

Strangely, a week later, the incident was finally reported in an article in the San Francisco Examiner, quickly followed by a story on Fox News. The story was later picked up by the Associated Press and several other major US papers wrote it up, as did a number of websites and blogs, Jewish papers and some papers in Israel.

Initially, it appeared that the reporting of the incident was fairly hysterical, implying a threat of violence when Wiesel in fact was not injured and there was initially no evidence that the accoster intended any harm to Wiesel.

I managed to dig up the obscure blog of "Eric Hunt", the fellow who committed the offense.

A look at his blog - ANSWP - which has the charming url of killjewsdotcom.blogspot.com - reveals an out and out flaming American Nazi, a member of the American National Socialist Workers Party (ANSWP - webpage here ), a spin off of a larger group headed up by well-known Roanoke, Virginia Nazi Bill White. Looking at Hunt's profile on his blog reveals this:

I am a soldier of ANSWP. I have the authority of our leader to confront Jew Liars and fake Aryans such as Alex Linder. I will see that they tell the truth, even if I have to beat it out of them. I will soon be visiting the heads of CAH, One Peoples Project, and The South Poverty Law Center. We need to have a nice "chat."

Hence, it appears that this "mission" to accost Wiesel had the approval of and was possibly commissioned by Bill White, and that it may have involved more overtones of menace and even possibly violence than was initially suggested. If I were the police looking into solving this crime, I would look in the direction of Bill White, commander of the ANSWP.

White's blog is here and his well-known and misleading webpage Overthrow is here. Commentary on the interesting and repellent Mr. White goes beyond the scope of this post, but a good overview can be found here.

The always-charming Mr. White bases his existence on threatening anyone who "disses" him, so it's possible I may get on his list by writing this. So it goes. He specializes in publishing the phone numbers and addresses of anyone who dares to confront him.

As far as why it happened, well, these Nazis are always looking to pull off publicity stunts of various types. They don't care if it's good publicity or bad; all publicity is good publicity to them. They don't have much support for their wicked little movement, so they are always trying to drum up more.

See this history of George Lincoln Rockwell, the most famous US Nazi, for a rundown on US Nazis' penchant for pulling off any stunt they can to get a few lines in the paper.

The police were said to be looking for Eric Hunt and felt that he had fled the West Coast to the East Coast, where it was thought that he resided. Police found a drivers' license in a car in the hotel lobby belonging to a man named Harry Hunt, who is a known member of a Holocaust Denial group but that has turned out to be a false lead.

A San Francisco Anti-Defamation League ADL spokesman said the post echoed writings by the famous French Holocaust Denier Robert Faurisson. As February 13, police were reportedly questioning a man back East regarding the incident.

Update February 17: Police have issued a $500,000 warrant for Eric Hunt, 22, of Sussex County, New Jersey. Hunt is charged with attempted kidnapping, false imprisonment, elder abuse, stalking, battery, and committing a hate crime. Wow, they are really throwing the book at him. Oh well, he should have known better. At the moment, San Fransisco police say they they expect to arrest Hunt in the case very soon.

As a result of the incident, traffic to Ziopedia went through the roof, and so did the hate mail and threats. Much media attention focused on the previously little-known Ziopedia site and its equally obscure owner Winkler.

This interview has also been published on the Ziopedia site here. This blog has already received one hate mail in response to this interview from militant Zionist Jew Ron Yogman. You may contact him at his e-mail here to let him know what you think of his hate mails.

Yogman is "working the Ziopedia case" for his Jewish bosses. He has already gotten Ziopedia kicked off their Paypal account, then when they switched to StormPay, he got them kicked off that too. What's next Ronny? Yogman informed Ziopedia that "Paypal is a Jewish company". What's next, Ronny? Baseball bats? Midnight phone calls?

As part of "working the Ziopedia case", Yogman then apparently falsely flagged this blog as a "racist hate speech" blog, which is humorous, considering that one of the policies of this blog is anti-racism. I assume this is just the beginning of the usual militant Jewish Brownshirt campaign so many of us have come to expect.

I wonder if Jews like Yogman have any idea how much anti-Semitism they create and how much they intensify anti-Semitic feelings already existent in some folks by their thuggish behavior? Or is that the idea? Jews like Yogman are to Jews what Eric Hunt is to Whites. Jewish fascists and Mighty Whitey fascists deserve each other.

Ghetto Jew Ronald H. Yogman runs an public relations and advertising agency in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. His business phone number is (727) 343-3700. His business address is 5511 Central Avenue, Fort Lauderdale. Here is a detailed map of his address if anyone wants to pay him a visit. Don't do anything illegal. He may actually reside in Dunedin, Florida, which is a bit to the north of St. Petersburg.

Ron is also Executive President of the Hillsborough Animal Health Foundation in Tampa, Florida. His number there is (813) 221-4804. He is also active in something called Tikva, Tampa Jewish Family Services. He's involved in that because one of his children, who will be nameless for the time being, is mentally retarded.

Ron worked as the former Business Editor of the St. Petersburg Evening Independent way back in the 1970's. He's also a supporter of the Florida Holocaust Museum.

He and his wife Claire E. Yogman, an early childhood consultant who until recently also sold real estate at Realty Executives in St. Petersburg, are members of the Michigan State University President's Club, which costs $25,000 a year to join. Ron graduated from Michigan University in 1964.

Ron's father, Harry L. Yogman of St. Petersburg, recently died on January 17, 2007 at age 90. That's only a month ago and Ron's still probably grieving about that so make sure not to mention it if you contact him. Ron is the author of a book called M.J.R. Profiles in Perseverance, which was published by the Great Outdoors Publishing Company. The book is seriously out of print and can't be found anywhere.

He has a long history of harassing any website that publishes anything he considers to be remotely anti-Semitic. Since is a deeply disturbed, paranoid and combative Jew with a chip on his shoulder as wide as the grand canyon is deep, he probably hallucinates four times the anti-Semitism that really exists.

But our sicko Judeophiliac (yes, it's a paraphilia) society rewards the Jewish fascists by giving them cushy jobs with fat salaries at the pinnacles of society and a blond shiksa on each arm, while the Mighty Whiteys are properly reviled. But why aren't Jewish fascists like Yogman treated with the same utter contempt and hatred that we treat a guy with a swastika armband? Instead, they rule America.

In response to various insipid accusations by reactionaries, let me say that, as a journalist, this blog will interview most anyone. Winkler approached us with an interview request and it was granted.

This blog has some serious differences with Winkler, which he acknowledges. To me, those differences are in the areas of German nationalism, Holocaust Denial, anti-Semitism, and obsession with conspiracy.

I'm not going to elaborate those differences, but if you spend some time on each site and you aren't a twisted or neurotic Jew, a PC-addled liberal or a morally neutered conservative, you should be able to glean them.

On the other hand, we are both anti-Zionists.



Preface: Can you give us some information about your background?

Andrew Winkler: I’m a baby boomer, born in Australia, grown up in France and Germany. Hence, I am fluent in English, French and German, and also speak a bit of Spanish, Italian, Portuguese. Foreign languages, history and culture have always been a passion of mine.

Both sides of my family are from Central Europe, with a mixed ethnic background: German, Austrian, Czech, Polish. Before, during and after WW2, they experienced racial discrimination and ethnic cleansing from both sides of the conflict.

My background is that of a post-graduate in computer science and business administration, including an MBA from one of the world’s leading business schools. I gave up a successful career as an IT executive to follow my vocation as a dissident activist.


Intro (vanity): I like to think that I inspired the name of the site Ziopedia. My article, Wikipedia, Ziopedia or Judeopedia, came out a few weeks before Ziopedia went online. I've always suspected that my article inspired the title. Did it, or am I just being narcissistic?

Andrew Winkler: (Laughs), to some extent. I first came up with the idea of calling the site Zioclopedia, and even registered a domain name for it. But the more I thought about it, the less I liked it. I then stumbled across your article and changed the name to ZioPedia.


Do you know who Eric Hunt is? What is your opinion about his post? Why did you accept it? When you accepted it, did you realize you were publishing a criminal's confession and description of his crime?

Andrew Winkler: I wouldn’t have a clue. When I first saw the article submission, I couldn’t stop laughing, because I thought it was a spoof written by some witty revisionist. When the massive and concerted media reporting hit us, I realized that it was more likely a Zionist plant, designed to discredit the revisionist community.


Have the police questioned you or asked to see Internet logs in any investigation of this case? Have police threatened to charge you with any sort of crime re: this case in any way? Have any authorities threatened to shut down your site as a result of this case?

Andrew Winkler: The police haven’t approached me, and quite frankly I don’t expect them to do so. They haven’t even spoken to Elie Wiesel himself. One of the many fishy things about this story is that he hasn’t jumped at the opportunity to talk to the media about it, which is totally out of character for him.


What is your opinion of "Eric Hunt" and the views he expressed in his piece?

Andrew Winkler: It’s a well known fact in the dissident community, both on the left and the right of the political spectrum, that Elie Wiesel’s supposedly non-fictional autobiography is in fact mostly fictional.

For example, he goes on and on in his book Night on how the Nazis slowly burned their victims to death in crematories, when all the other witnesses claim they were killed in gas chambers, not exactly a minor detail. But such is the power of the mainstream media, that hardly anybody outside of the dissident scene knows anything about it.


What is your opinion of the incident itself? Do you think a crime was committed? Do you think Mr. Hunt is a stalker? Do you think Hunt merely wanted to interview Wiesel, or that he had darker intentions? Do you think he assaulted Wiesel or merely accosted him? Do you regard Hunt's actions as appropriate and reasonable or bizarre and creepy?

Andrew Winkler: Coercing someone to a confession is a crime, regardless of the motives and whether it’s done by the Bush government or a Holocaust revisionist.


What is your opinion of Wiesel and his works? Do you think he is a representative of Norman Finkelstein's Holocaust Industry? What do you think of Wiesel attending a conference on conflict resolution?

Andrew Winkler: Finkelstein, one of the most outspoken critics of the ‘Holocaust industry’, calls him a clown. That’s one of the nicer ways of putting it. In my opinion, he is a fraud. He has done an incredible amount of damage to the Palestinian and German people.


What do you think of the way that this incident is being portrayed in the media? Do you regard it as a tempest in a teapot? Many Jews, judging from reactions on the blogs and the Jewish and Israeli press, responded to this incident with panicked reactions that "the Nazis are coming back", "Nazism is right around the corner" and "now we need Israel more than ever".

Do you think these Jewish reactions are reasonable, or are they examples of paranoia and victim addiction? Do you think that Organized Jewry works overtime to keep the Jews in a state of "pogrom panic" to prevent the assimilation of the Jews and to support Zionism?

Andrew Winkler: The media thrive on stories like that. Don’t forget that most of Western media are owned and controlled by Jews blindly supportive of the racist Zionist entity. They need stories about the Holocaust and anti-Semitism as a means of controlling Western public opinion.

Many Internet sites and some papers called Ziopedia an anti-Semitic site, a hate site, etc. How do you respond to such charges? This blog's position is that there is maybe 20% anti-Semitic content on Ziopedia but the rest cannot be characterized that way, and some of it is even overtly Zionist.

In your position statement, you say you oppose "trailer trash racism" against Jews. What is that? White Supremacism and neo-Nazism? The notion that Jews are genetically and racially corrupt? If you oppose racial anti-Semitism, why do you run articles by racial anti-Semites on your site - to give one example, the article by Mr. Hunt?

Andrew Winkler: In the olden days, an anti-Semite was someone who hates Jews. These days it’s someone the Jews hate. All you need to do is criticize Israel or the Israel lobby and a lot of people call you an anti-Semite.

Some of that is deliberate, politically motivated libel, and some of it is Skinner box-like reflexes due to 60 years of Zionist brainwashing. Personally, I hate nothing more than bullies and racists. They push my buttons. That’s exactly why I’m so opposed to the Zionist entity.

Most of the articles written on the ZioPedia site are written by Jews, some in favor, some opposed to Apartheid Israel. Every article that comes in is treated equally. As long as it is somewhat related to the topic of Zionism and - by my standards - isn't racist, I'll post it.

I consider racism to be the discrimination against someone solely because of his or her race. I don't consider saying anything critical about Jews or Israel as a form of racism, unless the criticism is based on racial grounds.


What's your position on Israel? Do you want to dissolve it? Do all the Jews have to leave or can they stay and live with Arabs?

Andrew Winkler: I consider Israel to be the most racist and violent political entity on the planet. It must be a replaced with a free, united and egalitarian Palestine. At the end of the day, it’s up to the Palestinians to decide whether they can live day to day with those racists, after 60 years of violent oppression. I couldn’t.


You have been called a German nationalist. Is that an accurate portrayal? How is German nationalism different from other forms of nationalism such as Zionism?

Andrew Winkler: Having pride in your nationality, your ethnic background, and your heritage is healthy, as long as it doesn’t lead to supremacism and discrimination against others. I feel strong sympathy for the German people, as I do for the Palestinians, but given the fact that I was born in Australia and have lived here most of my adult life, I am first and foremost an Australian.


How many visitors a day do you get? A week? A month? How many death threats and hate mails do you get? Are they mostly or all from Jews? Are you willing to discuss financial matters? Advertising income? Donations income?

Andrew Winkler: ZioPedia.org became very popular in only the second month of its existence, thanks to a Howard Schultz spoof letter I wrote, drawing the attention to the little known fact that the Starbucks chairman supports Apartheid Israel’s propaganda efforts with hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

That letter, A Thankyou to all Starbucks customers, got read by more than 100,000 readers on the ZioPedia site alone in the first month of its publication, and was republished on hundreds of other sites all over the world. From then on, we kept growing, with over 100,000 new readers each month discovering our site.

These days, I measure our performance not so much in how many people visit our site each month, but how much hate mail and many death threats we receive each week. Less than three is poor, three to nine medium, and ten or more excellent. Most of the writers don’t elaborate whether they are Jewish or not. Of those who do, about half are Jewish.

Most of our income is from one-off donations from our readers, Given the fact that we had to go through three server upgrades so far in the nine months of our existence, we rarely break even. But then again, ZioPedia is not about making money. It’s about fighting evil.


Who works on the site? Just you? Anyone else?

Andrew Winkler: I am the only person working full time on the site. Apart from that, there are dozens of part-time volunteers from all over the world helping me – an hour here and there - with editing and publishing.

Is there now a campaign to shut you down? Why did Google pull its Google ads off your site? Did you violate some policy of theirs? Is it true that Paypal is threatening to cancel your site for a disingenuous reason? Are you aware that they shut down Joe Vialls' conspiracy site for similar reasons? Who is behind this campaign, do you have any idea?

Andrew Winkler: There is definitely something going on. Most likely, the ADL or CAMERA have someone on our case. We have increasing problems with hackers, denial of service attacks and viruses.

Numerous Internet security software vendors have blacklisted us under categories such as hate, violence, racism and political extremism, with the result that more and more of our readers have difficulties visiting our site from work or public libraries. And yes, Google ads have been disabled for our site, without notice, and we have been advised that PayPal is going to disable our online payment account.


Have any of the people who send you hate mails and death threats gone to the next level? Have you received such calls at home? In one of the hate mails to you, the Jewish author said that there were militant Jews following you and watching you. Do you have any evidence that these folks are watching you? Have any of them ever accosted you in person in any way?

Andrew Winkler: I refuse to let those threats get to me. I am very passionate about my work and prepared to pay any price for it, and I mean any.


Update: This interview has been linked to a couple of rightwing blogs, Randy Shackleford's famous Jawa Report and by a deranged person named Rob Taylor who runs a blog called Red Alerts. Jawa's "Dread Pundit Bluto" was upset that this was a "softball" interview, despite the fact that I generally do not conduct confrontational interviews, especially with someone I know.

Taylor hallucinated passages in this interview whereby I show my sympathy for Nazi National Socialism. If any careful readers want to read this interview and see where I am sympathizing with Nazism, please send me an email or point it out in the comments page.

Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.