Nork Nukes Non

By now you've all seen this:

We cannot say what is in Kim's heart, it is beyond even our powers of deduction. But the smiles, the handshake the warmth between the two leaders all seem genuine. 

We're serious. Here's another genuinely warm moment between two adversarial leaders:

Here's Begin and Sadat after their nations fought four wars in 25 years:

By way of contrast here's Yitzak Rabin being made to shake Yassir Arafat's* hand:

Everything about Rabin's demeanor says, 'Let's get this over with.'

So we think something genuine is afoot.

*Gay leader of the Palestinians who died of AIDs.

Alt History War Game

Here is a review of a new war game, Nato Nukes and Nazis:

It’s 1990, and the Third Reich lives. Ever since World War II ended with a compromise peace between Germany and the Allies, the Cold War has been waged between the Nazis and NATO.

The game is designed by Ty Bomba and Joe Miranda of Decision Games, Modern Conflict Simulations and few other assorted outfits. I know both pretty well, having written for Decision Games for years.

As it happens I had almost the exact same idea. This was spawned of course by Robert Harris' excellent novel, Fatherland, which portrays an American-Nazi Cold War in 1964. I was going to do the a NATO-Nazi conflict in 1980. Gerald Ford is president, Enoch Powell is the British PM. I toyed with it and even wrote 10,000 words or so, but it never really went anywhere.

I was mostly interested in what America in 1980 was like. There's no WWII, no Vietnam. So we see none of the social change that happened as a result. We're closer to France than Britain. Speaking of which the Empire is thriving. India is a dominion, Africa is similar to India in say, 1900, the Jewell so to speak.  Nazi Germany is a broken down Socialist basket case, over extended and in decline.

Heck, I may still do it.

But not anytime soon.