The simple point is that as soon as we realized the capability of the Zero we easily and quickly designed a plane(s) capable of combating it.

The Yak-3 didn't enter the war until 1944, at which point the war had massively turned in Western Theatre. For the bulk of the conflict, they were using the Yak-1.

The Mig 25 and Mig 31 are both interceptors, they are designed to fire from distance and evade. The Su 35 is designed for Air Superiority. We have held the edge in our capabilities for years compared to them.

Every expert I know of is skeptical of China's claimed Railgun weapon. As to why they would bother mounting it and making claims, why not? It is brinkmanship, making us think they have more capabilities than they do.

The laser rifle is a crowd deterrent weapon. It would serve almost no purpose in infantry combat because it cannot kill. Yes, it can burn things and cause pain, but that is all. Again, this was claimed to be far more effective than experts think during our diplomatic arguments over China's use of blinding lasers on aircraft. We have no hard evidence of it's capability.

Yes, Russia could sell such a missile to our enemies versus using it directly against us. The problem is that as soon as they do so, the genie is out of the bottle. It will be reverse engineered quickly and could be USED AGAINST THEM. No country gives or sells away it's absolute top level weaponry except to it's most trusted allies. Allies which, for all intents and purposes, know that using such a weapon against another nation state risks full out retaliation against not only them but the country that sold it to them.

Our carriers are excellent mobile platforms, but they are not our only way of mounting air strikes. If we were somehow in a conventional war situation, we could easily fly over and base our aircraft in allied countries for combat. Most of our nuclear capable aircraft are not carrier launched anyway. Even if somehow all of our carriers were taken out and somehow our SAC bombers were destroyed as well, we would still have more than enough land launched and submarine launched nuclear warheads to easily blanket our enemies.

My points remain:

1. It is in the greatest interest of our enemies to boast about weapon capabilities even if they are not effective yet.

2. Most well regarded experts consider many of these weapons to either be still in the research stage, early production stage (IE not available for years), or they are wildly over hyped.

3. There is no logical reason for our enemies to use these weapons or proliferate them to their closest allies unless the weapons can prevent a nuclear response. Merely mentioning a weapon that would have such a capability creates a situation that could lead to nuclear war, like SDI did. I don't know if you recall, but I do clearly, how massively freaked out the Soviets got over our SDI claims. For two years they started threatening nuclear war as being inevitable if we continued on the path we were, all the while aggressively trying to destabilize our relations with our allies. 1983 to 1985 was pretty fucking tense, not Cuban missile crisis level maybe, but damn scary. Putin has acted similarly over our attempts to set up a missile barrier in former satellite states of Russia, although we still haven't got to the SHTF level of the early 80's.

History Lesson:

In 1949, when only the United States had nuclear weapons, everybody was asking when the Russians would have the capability.

President Harry Truman answered the question with "I know...never"

He never clarified what he meant by those words, and those in that meeting declined to ask, but the topic would be rehashed again and again.

I really recommend Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast. Episode 59 (Blitz) the Destroyer of Worlds. A nearly 6 hour fascinating look into the period starting with the Trinity test and ending with the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Your video, The history of the Cuban Missile Crisis - Matthew A. Jordan, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

In most cases, absolutely not, but in a few, yes.
For instance, there was nothing besides nuclear war in either '42 or '62 to compare with climate change as a danger to the planet, and while we still have the threat of nuclear war (although it's certainly not as great a threat today as during the missile crisis, but if we have Trump's finger on the button, that threat level changes), we now also have the out of control issue of the climate destabilizing that threatens civilization itself.
Over population comes to mind as another issue that's far worse.

But I do agree, for the most part, we are in a far less precarious position than we have been in the past on most issues, and so many minor issues are blown out of proportion by the media looking for ratings and money instead of looking to inform.

Very, very interesting -- thanks for the sift!

I'd love to see more, specifically about the US / Cuba talks and the Pope's involvement. As an atheist, I tend to think of Catholicism / the Pope / organized religion in general as generally having a primarily negative influence on world affairs (Crusades, Inquisition, birth control, anti-condoms, molestation, homophobia, etc.), but negotiating peace and better relations between the US and Cuba is a pretty undeniably positive thing.

I knew Latin American countries were highly Catholic, but I kinda figured that some of the USSR anti-religious stance would have rubbed off on Cuba. I guess maybe it did, but the missile crisis and fall of the Berlin wall / end of the cold war was long enough ago that Cuba has greater freedom to make up their own minds on this sort of thing.

Enough so that perhaps the Pope's involvement was necessary, or at least very helpful, to act as a mediator between the two sides. Props where props are due.

Anyway, all quite interesting.

I think these so-called unstoppable warlords that siphon off our aid is an even bigger myth. The United States of America defeated the British Empire, invaded Nazi Europe, dropped a nuclear fucking bomb on Axis Japan, sacrificed thousands of lives in Vietnam, stood head to head against the USSR during the Cuban Missile Crisis, landed on the moon, funded Nicaraguan revolutionaries using money from arms sales to Iran, assassinated Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, lied about weapons of mass destruction and invaded Iraq, fight the Taliban in Afghanistan, and yet we can't deal with warlords and civil wars in Africa where (at least with Rwandan civil war) weaponry is in the form of crate after crate of machetes made in China?

If all of those things are possible for the biggest super power in the world, how is it not possible to stop these warlords from siphoning our aid?

Lies.

We don't care so nothing of real consequence happens. All of those above events have one thing in common: our own goddamn self interest.

Everything sucks. May god have mercy on everyone's soul.

The alternative, as far as I am familiar with the counterargument to this viewpoint, would have been to loosen the requirement of "unconditional surrender" of Japan, and possibly to demonstrate the bomb by dropping it on an unpopulated area. Inviting Japanese scientists to a staging ground for a controlled demonstration was also on the books.

Now, assuming the US top brass were convinced Japan was not going to surrender, the argument presented here is quite valid. Bombing a live target certainly had the most shock value, and the bombs were likely in quite limited supply. (I confess, I don't know how many there were at the time.) A continued conventional war would have been horrendous.

But... Were the Japanese really unwilling to surrender, and if so, why? According to what I've read... Well, let me just quote the story, I've seen this in a number of texts:

"At the conclusion of the conference, Roosevelt and Churchill held a press conference. Roosevelt said that he and Churchill…

…were determined to accept nothing less than the unconditional surrender of Germany, Japan, and Italy…

Churchill said later that he was surprised by this statement. Churchill adds that he was told by Harry Hopkins that the President said to him:

…then suddenly the Press Conference was on, and Winston and I had had no time to prepare for it; and the thought popped into my mind that they had called Grant “Old Unconditional Surrender,” and the next thing I knew I had said it."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/2012/04/jonathan-goodwin/roosevelt-demands-unconditionalsurrender/

It was Jonathan Glover who I first read giving this account of events, but I don't remember what his source was. The argument he and others make, though, is that the Japanese did signal their willingness to surrender, but were not willing to do so unconditionally. This is because they feared the emperor might have been deposed and put to trial, which was simply unthinkable to them. If this is true, then dropping the bombs may have been unnecessary and even before the bombs, the war effort in the Pacific could have been ended through diplomatic means.

All this does leave one with some disconcerting questions. Would Allied leaders really have refused to reconsider their demands of Japan simply due to prestige and the need to show resolve? Was there no diplomatic backchannel? Certainly the fog of war must have played a part in the decisions made. I haven't been able to find a source beyond hearsay for what, exactly, the Japanese diplomatic position on surrender was. Considering this debate still goes on, no such source is likely to surface.

What stands out here, to me, as the saddest thing is: it seems countless lives were lost for lack of solid information and communication between enemies. Had Japan and the Allies been able to negotiate further, had the allies dared show their nuclear hand, had they made it possible for the emperor (while not a nice guy by any means) to be protected, how many lives could have been saved? Unfortunately, no-one has the benefit of hindsight when it's most needed.

I can't help but think of the Cuban missile crisis - what would have happened, had a similar failure to communicate occurred at that time? It was very close...

No, No no no no no. You are not going to sit there and tell me that Kennedy was a good guy. That murderous mother fucker who waged a Terrorist War on Cuba before the Cuban missile crisis. And is responsible for the genocidal chemical war against South Vietnam.

Not gonna happen, that man was a piece of shit, and he doesn't get any credit for saying anything progressive.

I was thinking the same thing. If this had happened during the Cuban missile crisis we'd all be dead.

The only First Lady I'd even consider would be talking about a whole other missile crisis, if you know what I mean.

I bet this is what the Cuban missile crisis may have looked like on either of the receivers end.

I remember reading a few articles a couple years ago about how in the past decade we've been minutes from annihilation. The reason is because Russia has a lot of missiles on ready alert but the computers are out of date and they have been reacting and almost firing missiles and our missile systems detect this and get antsy as well. Imagine destroying all of human civilization because of a computer error.

Also I hope they go into the Cuban Missile Crisis story, when we were literally one word away from total nuclear wasteland. We'd basically have no northern hemisphere after that. The story is roughly a Russian nuclear submarine was off Cuba and having depth chargers dropped on it from above. The captain said fire the missiles because it's probably already WW3 up there. Another person the Officer of the whatever stopped him and calmed him down from making this mistake. This one man is responsible for probably billions of peoples lives, he should've received dozens of Peace Medals or Peace hookers or something.

Also Russia is now investing more heavily in it's nuclear program which is states unequivocally is a response to the United States and it's militarism. Also a direct response to the missile defense shield placed in Europe which Russia correctly sees as a first strike weapon.

Those troublesome Jews

Charles Krauthammer

Friday, June 4, 2010

The world is outraged at Israel's blockade of Gaza. Turkey denounces its illegality, inhumanity, barbarity, etc. The usual U.N. suspects, Third World and European, join in. The Obama administration dithers.
This Story

But as Leslie Gelb, former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, writes, the blockade is not just perfectly rational, it is perfectly legal. Gaza under Hamas is a self-declared enemy of Israel -- a declaration backed up by more than 4,000 rockets fired at Israeli civilian territory. Yet having pledged itself to unceasing belligerency, Hamas claims victimhood when Israel imposes a blockade to prevent Hamas from arming itself with still more rockets.

In World War II, with full international legality, the United States blockaded Germany and Japan. And during the October 1962 missile crisis, we blockaded ("quarantined") Cuba. Arms-bearing Russian ships headed to Cuba turned back because the Soviets knew that the U.S. Navy would either board them or sink them. Yet Israel is accused of international criminality for doing precisely what John Kennedy did: impose a naval blockade to prevent a hostile state from acquiring lethal weaponry.

Oh, but weren't the Gaza-bound ships on a mission of humanitarian relief? No. Otherwise they would have accepted Israel's offer to bring their supplies to an Israeli port, be inspected for military materiel and have the rest trucked by Israel into Gaza -- as every week 10,000 tons of food, medicine and other humanitarian supplies are sent by Israel to Gaza.

Why was the offer refused? Because, as organizer Greta Berlin admitted, the flotilla was not about humanitarian relief but about breaking the blockade, i.e., ending Israel's inspection regime, which would mean unlimited shipping into Gaza and thus the unlimited arming of Hamas.
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Israel has already twice intercepted ships laden with Iranian arms destined for Hezbollah and Gaza. What country would allow that?

But even more important, why did Israel even have to resort to blockade? Because, blockade is Israel's fallback as the world systematically de-legitimizes its traditional ways of defending itself -- forward and active defense.

(1) Forward defense: As a small, densely populated country surrounded by hostile states, Israel had, for its first half-century, adopted forward defense -- fighting wars on enemy territory (such as the Sinai and Golan Heights) rather than its own.

Where possible (Sinai, for example) Israel has traded territory for peace. But where peace offers were refused, Israel retained the territory as a protective buffer zone. Thus Israel retained a small strip of southern Lebanon to protect the villages of northern Israel. And it took many losses in Gaza, rather than expose Israeli border towns to Palestinian terror attacks. It is for the same reason America wages a grinding war in Afghanistan: You fight them there, so you don't have to fight them here.

But under overwhelming outside pressure, Israel gave it up. The Israelis were told the occupations were not just illegal but at the root of the anti-Israel insurgencies -- and therefore withdrawal, by removing the cause, would bring peace.

Land for peace. Remember? Well, during the past decade, Israel gave the land -- evacuating South Lebanon in 2000 and Gaza in 2005. What did it get? An intensification of belligerency, heavy militarization of the enemy side, multiple kidnappings, cross-border attacks and, from Gaza, years of unrelenting rocket attack.

(2) Active defense: Israel then had to switch to active defense -- military action to disrupt, dismantle and defeat (to borrow President Obama's description of our campaign against the Taliban and al-Qaeda) the newly armed terrorist mini-states established in southern Lebanon and Gaza after Israel withdrew.

The result? The Lebanon war of 2006 and Gaza operation of 2008-09. They were met with yet another avalanche of opprobrium and calumny by the same international community that had demanded the land-for-peace Israeli withdrawals in the first place. Worse, the U.N. Goldstone report, which essentially criminalized Israel's defensive operation in Gaza while whitewashing the casus belli -- the preceding and unprovoked Hamas rocket war -- effectively de-legitimized any active Israeli defense against its self-declared terror enemies.

(3) Passive defense: Without forward or active defense, Israel is left with but the most passive and benign of all defenses -- a blockade to simply prevent enemy rearmament. Yet, as we speak, this too is headed for international de-legitimation. Even the United States is now moving toward having it abolished.

But, if none of these is permissible, what's left?

Ah, but that's the point. It's the point understood by the blockade-busting flotilla of useful idiots and terror sympathizers, by the Turkish front organization that funded it, by the automatic anti-Israel Third World chorus at the United Nations, and by the supine Europeans who've had quite enough of the Jewish problem.

What's left? Nothing. The whole point of this relentless international campaign is to deprive Israel of any legitimate form of self-defense. Why, just last week, the Obama administration joined the jackals, and reversed four decades of U.S. practice, by signing onto a consensus document that singles out Israel's possession of nuclear weapons -- thus de-legitimizing Israel's very last line of defense: deterrence.

The world is tired of these troublesome Jews, 6 million -- that number again -- hard by the Mediterranean, refusing every invitation to national suicide. For which they are relentlessly demonized, ghettoized and constrained from defending themselves, even as the more committed anti-Zionists -- Iranian in particular -- openly prepare a more final solution.

Well... were you in character?

In reply to this comment by Drax:
editing out overly caffeinated fail attempt at a funny reply..

edit-
You go with that!

In reply to this comment by gwiz665:
Heh, this is like the greatest excuse ever. Whenever I do something stupid from now on, I'm just "in character"

In reply to this comment by Drax:
>> ^Psychologic:
So if the sun turns off then everyone freezes instantly? I'm sure he's seen a solar eclipse at some point, or at the very least that time between dusk and dawn. =)
I demand this video make sense!




He feigns that he's not very book smart.. like in the Phantom Menace review he starts making references to the Cuban missile crisis and ends up saying, "Oh I don't know.. maybe you've heard of it... a little something called WORLD WAR 1?!!" (which had me rolling out of my seat almost).

The instant freeze gag caused me to double take too, then I remembered he was in character. This guy's awesome.

editing out overly caffeinated fail attempt at a funny reply..

edit-
You go with that!

In reply to this comment by gwiz665:
Heh, this is like the greatest excuse ever. Whenever I do something stupid from now on, I'm just "in character"

In reply to this comment by Drax:
>> ^Psychologic:
So if the sun turns off then everyone freezes instantly? I'm sure he's seen a solar eclipse at some point, or at the very least that time between dusk and dawn. =)
I demand this video make sense!




He feigns that he's not very book smart.. like in the Phantom Menace review he starts making references to the Cuban missile crisis and ends up saying, "Oh I don't know.. maybe you've heard of it... a little something called WORLD WAR 1?!!" (which had me rolling out of my seat almost).

The instant freeze gag caused me to double take too, then I remembered he was in character. This guy's awesome.