Mandela, Bronfman, Kalashnikov, Rizzuto; 'tis the season to bury giants

All these guys were way larger than life, whatever the fuck that means.

Out of the four of them I suspect all the others were acquainted with the work of Kalashnikov.

I also suspect that all of them had at one time or another sampled the wares of Mr. Bronfman.

Mandela is of course a global icon. Enough said.

That leaves Rizzuto. An old-school Mafia boss, he lived by a code that those other guys would intuitively understand.

I'm not sure that can be said of the new guys coming up.

And that's a loss for all of us.

Why the US Navy ships Russian ammo

Here's a link to documentation from the US Navy Surface Warfare Center at Crane, Indiana, summarizing the testing the Navy did on the shipping containers used for moving ammunition for the ubiquitous AK-47.

The AK-47 and its many variations are not issued to the fighting forces of the US or any of her NATO allies.

So why would the US need to ship this ammunition?

Here's one reason.

And it's not the only reason by any stretch of the imagination. But Elliot Higgins unwittingly draws a few loose ends together for us. The ammo for those Croatian AK-47s that Higgins correctly spots in his Syrian action videos obviously comes from somewhere.

My guess is it's coming in shipping containers painstakingly tested and approved by Kerry Libbert and his team twenty years ago, and it's coming in US Navy ships docking in Bahrain and Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

So the question posed here well over a year ago has at least a partial answer.

Why an AK-47 is better than a Platinum Card

Seems one of our NATO rebels got into a bit of a spat over his unpaid bill in Libya's finest hotel yesterday. Apparently he and a few of his homies have been enjoying the hospitality at the Turkish-owned hotel for free.

Since September!

Now, most places I go to these days you can't even get into without a credit card that works, never mind leaving without paying. Shows what I know.

So instead of some humble excuse-making about how there must be a mix-up at American Express, NATO-boy decided the best defense would be a good offence.

He and his posse shot the place up and kidnapped the hotel manager.

Within hours NATO and the government of Turkey were involved and an embarrassing international incident was narrowly averted.

No word on who paid the bill.

Why does US Navy ship Russian ammo?

Curious about just how many bullets you'd get in a 60 ton shipment, (see previous story) I did a little rooting around on the internet, and found this:

PERFORMANCE  ORIENTED  PACKAGING  TESTING
                    OF
PPP-B-621  WOOD  BOX  FOR
7.62  X  39MM  AK47  BALL  CARTRIDGE
FOR  PACKING  GROUP  II SOLID  HAZARDOUS  MATERIAL


That's the title of an eight page test report authored by Kerry J. Libbert, Mechanical Engineer, at the Naval Surface Warfare Center at Crane, Indiana, in August of 1993.

Very informative document.

Found out that the standard wooden crate that the US Navy uses to ship AK-47 ammo weighs 81.5 pounds and holds a thousand rounds - in fifty boxes of 20 cartridges each. That would give you about 25 boxes per ton, and a million and a half rounds in that 60 ton shipment the Russians just delivered to Syria.

Assuming of course that when the Russians are shipping AK-47 bullets they're using the same packaging as the US Navy!