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Southern parts of Boston not being invaded; it just sounds like it

UHub Copter Recon Unit

From West Roxbury to Mattapan to Dorchester, people were reporting helicopters tonight, and not just your basic news copters, but big-ass, low-flying behemoths that rattled windows and annoyed the more skittish pets.

Turns out the military has, once again, decided the Boston area is just right for urban helicopter training and so is having its pilots roam our skies through the 23rd.

Many Bothans died to bring us this video:

There was also a plane, with a rather unusual flight path.

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Comments

Those helicopters were loud. And there was a C-130 going up to BED. The IRONS12 plane circling over the harbor looks like a little surveillance plane.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild_C-26_Metroliner

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One went right over our house

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Except I thought it was a plane crashing like happened on Lorna Road in 1990.

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Slash the military budget by 75% and the world becomes a much better place.

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If you already speak Mandarin

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The US military budget is between 3 and 4 times that of China. If it was reduced by 75% it would be slightly less than China's, and we would be in the embarrassing situation of having the world's second largest military. I doubt, however, that this would be sufficient to entice China to invade the USA. Unless you count border disputes, China hasn't invaded anyone for a very long time.

I don't agree with Kinopio (any policy favored by Kinopio should be viewed with suspicion, including breathing, if he is in favor of it), but it really isn't outrageous to say that our military is much larger than it needs to be, and, consequently, so is our military budget.

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But as the United States is not only cast by itself but by others as the defender or democracy, it would only be a matter of time until areas when the US has been a stabilizing force would be hot zones. Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania would be a bit worried if the US decided that it's NATO capacity would mean having a military akin to our neighbor to the north. As for China, what can be described as Bizarro China would quickly be overrun by larger neighbor which has a slightly different view on things like democracy and human rights.

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Our military expenditures are not four times those of our neighbor to the north, they are over thirty times. They are also about twelve times those of Russia, the only country that is a threat to the Baltic republics. We could shrink that a lot and still be able to defend them, even without assistance from our NATO allies, three of whom have expenditures close to those of Russia. Of course, Russia has its own strengths, such as its own criminal empire, and the support of the US Republican Party. Our military can't help much against those.

If by Bizarro China you mean Taiwan, I certainly agree that the subjugation of Taiwan by the PRC would be a catastrophe and a tragedy. I spent four years of my childhood in Taiwan, and the idea of that wonderful, not-bizzare place falling under the rule of the brutal, stupid, and corrupt Chinese Communist Party is monstrous to me. Nevertheless I don't think that massive military expenditures by the USA are the primary thing preventing an invasion. The People's Liberation Army is enormous, wealthy, and powerful, but it does not have a history of recklessness; it hasn't engaged in any serious conflicts since it fought a low-level war against Vietnam in the '80s (unless you count the Tianamen Square massacres). China prefers to use the threat of its military to impose its will, without actually using it.

I said that the CCP is stupid, but it now has a large client base of wealthy capitalists who are capable of counting the cost of such an invasion, which would be enormous even if no one came to the aid of Taiwan. The greatest danger that I see is a power struggle in which the leaders of the PLA attempt to maintain preeminence by pushing the country into a military adventure. I don't think our military expenditures would enter very much into their calculations in such a case.

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Thanks for reporting this. I have been hearing helicopters overhead at around 5:00 AM every morning for weeks. I've been asking neighbors if they've heard it too but no one else had.

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