What a delightful discussion, as long as there are no females yakking around that is.

Have to add some interesting on topic vids:
President John F Kennedy Secret Society Speech

Some more quotes from “Crazy People”

And my favorite, especially the last 2 minutes on the funding of woman´s lib: Aaron Russo
Great man, sadly cancered.

Karma is a bitch. Also you hopefully understand the Victorian era, and if the only profit you gain from religion is anti feminism, says much about the deep recesses of your ’superior’ mind. Thankfully I can honestly find this philosophy laughable, as I mentioned it is like saying men are evil because unnatural weapons tend to be shaped like a penis.

Oldone said:

I must say Wolfe, as always I find your points masterfully written. I do agree with you, especially about “individual self defense.”

@Oldone, I’m honored by your praise and wisdom, as always.

I invite you to visit my blog and comment there. Tell me what you’d like to see me write about.

Engines care not at all where or in what you plant them and put them to work.

@Sony, you clearly have never designed an engine or an airframe. I have done the former, and participated in the latter. With respect, you are dead wrong.

While I readily admit my engine design has never been produced (and never should be), I’ve seen the avionic and airframe component tweaks I’ve made literally fly.

-wolfe

There’s the semblance of an old pattern emerging here. Utopists trying to forcefully do purported good unto others by enforcing their putative utopia on them.

Don’t people ever learn? The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Then again, you simply can’t accuse the armaments industries and gun runners of harboring good intentions.

- Djuma Soundsystem - Les Djinns (Trentemoller Remix)

How do we arm the other eleven?

- Myslovitz - Sound of Solitude

I must say Wolfe, as always I find your points masterfully written. I do aree with you, especially about “individual self defense.” Then again though I did not write the UN I still may be considered one of those “NRA saps” I suppose. I offer no additional points to this debate but rather bits of wisdom from the past, as given by those far, far wiser than I.

“I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.” -James Madison

“He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from opposition; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach himself.” - Thomas Paine

- Oldone

The pathways of the air intakes as well as the auxiliary intake slits are airframe design, not powerplant design, albeit courteous to the powerplant engineers and at their behest, most likely. The design team comprises engineers specialising in different types of aircraft systems but they all work in unison and cohesively to make the sum of the systems coming together a perfomance aircraft.

The engines are supplied by subcontractor, usually Tumansky. Engines care not at all where or in what you plant them and put them to work.

Such a feature is simple yet efficient and thus an elegant design solution on the part of the airframe designers to counteract to problem of debris on the runway.

You may view this as meaningless semantics but I am adamant that the auxiliary intakes have nothing to do with engine design per se. As I said, it’s purely airframe design.

You’re the one playing womanly games. I simply state whatever is on my mind at the respective moment. The problem is you often mistakenly read an ad hominem attack aimed at you in these. Or you purposefully indicate such as a shaming tactic.

The crux of the matter remains. Why did the US oppose the resolution? Does it infringe on the right to self defence of American citizens? How so? It’s beyond me how this could be.

I apologise for the inadequate tone but you’ve drawn me into a defensive posture.

Regards.

- System Of A Down - Sugar

Would it hurt you so much to say “Everything else you write is true” — or do you just simply like to play the womanly game of passive aggression?

You never acknowledge a point. I acknowledge when SoTS makes a good point — or you. You do not seem to extend the same courtesy to your interlocutors.

Russian aircraft, specifically fighter and fighter bombers, don’t necessarily have cruder engines… They mostly have intake slits appropriately placed

Shrug. Again, this is sophistry. If you look at the overall engine design, including the pathways into it, placing of the intake slits is a part of such design.

Fine, you wish to pretend air intake has nothing to do with engine design.

I don’t think you’re an engineer or have ever remotely studied such subjects if you genuinely assert that.

But again, you take a single paragraph out a lengthy post responding to your concerns and you ignore every argument that’s knocked you down. And you’ll no doubt ignore these counter arguments.

Fine, fine. But that’s not the world I — or most men — live in.
-wolfe

As far as I know, Russian aircraft, specifically fighter and fighter bombers, don’t necessarily have cruder engines to spare the need for cleaning the airfield before use.

They mostly have intake slits appropriately placed on the topside of the fuselage that can be toggled as required and deflectors that go into effect when taxying, taking off or landing. I’ll leave it to you to decide which approach is superior, though I’m already firmly convinced.

This is not to say that Russian modern jet engines aren’t also more reliable or resilient, though they probably are, or of significantly less performance, which they arguably aren’t.

It’s still beyond me how willingly curbing exports to problem areas by the signing nations would impact on personal self-defence of their own citizens against, say, a tyrannical gov., little green men, liberals or some such stuff. All the more so if their existent and foreseeable clients don’t in the slightest fall into the category of frowned upon clients. Also considering the common practice of proxy purchases which would conveniently excuse or disguise sells to restricted end clients.

- Sistem - Speranţe.

sonyad said:
Nevermind what weapons you sell. Your argument is that ‘bad guys’ can’t afford the expensive weapons the US produces.

No, though there’s some truth to that argument, it’s a fairly weak one, since unfortunately the bad guys are pretty rich.

My argument is a) the fact that US weapons are extremely expensive makes the US seem a larger arms exporter in terms of numbers of weapons shipped than she is. b) the US sells disproportionately high technology weapons to (these days) relatively solid members of the international community. (On that, even back in the 80’s It wasn’t the US that was the #1 supplier — or even 2,3,or 4 to Iraq. It was people like Russia, China, France, Czechoslovakia, etc.)

Say the US sells Britain a new generation of SLBM’s that aren’t nuclear tipped for a cool £10bn. Meanwhile, Russia and China puts onto the market SA-7’s and HN-5’s… a million a piece for the sake of argument. Well, the US is exporting nearly two times what Russia and China are combined.

But the British having the ability to hit targets anywhere in the world on an hours notice with conventional explosives vs. a_random_terrorist_00 having access to 2 million cheap MANPADS? (Man Portable Air Defense System).

Which is the greater threat to world peace and public safety?

That’s why, given your obvious intelligence, I view your statements about the world’s #1 arms exporter and that being morally detrimental as being simply trolling. It’s not clear how a rational person who thinks about the situation for 60s or so could come to a different conclusion.

That the stingers sent to the Afghans were somehow fitted to quickly decay left unused.

Not quite, but close enough. All stingers need maintenance, and all decay. I’m not going to comment as to whether the ones sent to Afghanistan were ’special’ in some way; that would obviously be grossly irresponsible, even in the surely unlikely event of me knowing anything. I’m going to be quite careful to not talk about things that are classified.

American weapons are famous — or infamous — for being very good when they work, but, like an attractive woman, being very high maintenance.

The US approach to FOD (Foreign Object Damage) in jet engines is to attempt to maintain airfields that are free of debris; the Russian approach is to design very robust engines, that may give up fuel efficiency, range, longevity, but can take a greater hit.

American weapons are also, like some Microsoft products, not that great on the first version (see Patriot Missile).

This reads as hyperbole and so far fetched and it seems like blatant misinformation you unwittingly reiterate from your, you presume, trustworthy sources.

It’s unfortunate if the truth reads that way to you.

The publicly known facts are that we shipped ‘copies’ (I choose that word advisedly) of FIM92-A’s, aka Stinger Basics. These lack a lot of capabilities but were “good enough” against relatively poorly trained and equipped Soviet helo pilots.

Stingers deploy an eject motor, a flight motor, using propellant, a warhead, and a nav system comprised primarily of powered electronics.

If one of these fails to deploy, the missile doesn’t work. It’s well known that batteries require appropriate recharging, and propellants and explosives decay chemically. Unclassified sources have put this in the range of well under 5 years for some components. Unclassified sources note that even electronics can be… configured to do interesting things based on the passage of time.

Replace the battery? Explosives? Propellant? Sure… just make sure you can take the thing properly apart, and put in something that’s chemically identical and exactly the same weight distribution. Oh… the stingers used advanced manufacturing techniques for the 80’s that Iran still doesn’t have? Oh… Well, maybe North Korea can help, true.

I’m likely wrong though, fair enough then. Those stingers were all duds by the time the second Gulf war started, right?

Mostly, yeah. Briefings in Earnest Will (discussion seen on the web) suggested that Iran had possibly managed to obtain/store/maintain some stingers, but few, if any were used.

Iran’s subsequent deployment and shipping of MANPADS
( http://www.janes.com/defence/news/jdw/jdw060807_1_n.shtml )
has been entirely Soviet/Chinese/Native in nature.

This certainly suggests that even Iran’s industrial capacity is unable to refurbish large numbers of stingers. At this stage, it’s likely you’d have to rebuild the missile, unless extraordinary care was taken in unusual storage circumstances.

Why vote against it if you’re as squeaky clean as your customers, then? It’s barely related to those stingers you brought up. What, if anything, have they to do with this particular proposition.

What does this have to do with anything? Vote against what? The immoral UN resolution that denies the right to self-defense? And I never said US customers were squeaky clean — the Monroe doctrine in particular lead to some nasty lapses as did the cold war, and the struggle for oil, though I’ll stack up America’s post-cold War morality on sales against any other Veto Power — China, Russia, France in particular would be interesting.

The proposition only states self imposed, voluntary prohibition of exports by member nations to conflagration areas known to harbour terrorists or areas known for human rights abuses. Why nay? Why oppose it

Because America tends to obey most laws and France, Russia, and China obey very few. See ‘Oil-for-Food’ and all the corruption associated with that.

, even more so when you say America is an angelic arms exported that does no wrong?

Please don’t put words in my mouth.

BTW, did you read about the 10000 form letters/(e-mails?) forwarded to the UN by incensed, paranoid NRA constituents on account of this? I mean, how much of a bloody simpleton do you have to be to fear the UN, which is nothing more than America’s lapdog

hahahahhahahaha… The UN is America’s lapdog. Oh my that is funny. You should tour with Borat.

I would have written the UN, but I knew it would be useless. My objection is the denial of the right to individual self defense. That is something fundamentally totalitarian, evil, and immoral.

the lion’s share over there - , is “comin’ to teik yer guns away” with that resolution? You would need to be not only dimwitted, to put it mildly, but thoroughly ignorant of highly conspicuous present and historical aspects of the world we live in and international legislation.

Hmmm…. or dimwitted not to grasp that metaphorical slippery slopes exist and metaphorical thin end of the wedges are real. To be sure, no one would come to take guns away today… but give it a century or so and the ‘boiling the frog’ technique would work. (Turn up the heat very slowly so the frog never notices).

I want my great grandchildren — if they’re reasonably sane and decent members of the community — to have the option of arming themselves for protection against both tyranny and common thugs. I want your great grandchildren to have the same option. You want neither to have choice, nor does the UN.

blah blah about Wayne Lapierre

No opinion (other than that you’re probably wrong and silly. I’m not an NRA member as I’ve said a number of times.

I highly doubt he himself is that much of an dimwitted ignorant buffoon to think those letters matter in the slightest towards protecting or jeopardising the pet industry’s export rights. I mean, my contention is the man’s an insidious, malefically brilliant bastard, not a bloody moron.

You do like that word malefic. Malign, malignant, or malicious would be more common English uses. Not that I mind, but just so you know.

sonyad said:
Oh, and what about that DHL plane that barely made it down from over Iraq. Was that an American Stinger or some Russian Strela 3?

Probably neither. The flight profile, explosive damage, and evidence found at the scene overwhelmingly suggest the Strela-2 (or SA-7 Grail as we westerners like to call it).

For all their exporting woes, the Russians have been somewhat more careful with the Strela-3 (SA-14 Gremlin) and Igla’s (SA-16 and SA-18).

-wolfe

Oh, and what about that DHL plane that barely made it down from over Iraq. Was that an American Stinger or some Russian Strela 3?

Nevermind what weapons you sell. Your argument is that ‘bad guys’ can’t afford the expensive weapons the US produces. That the stingers sent to the Afghans were somehow fitted to quickly decay left unused. This reads as hyperbole and so far fetched and it seems like blatant misinformation you unwittingly reiterate from your, you presume, trustworthy sources.

I’m likely wrong though, fair enough then. Those stingers were all duds by the time the second Gulf war started, right?

Why vote against it if you’re as squeaky clean as your customers, then? It’s barely related to those stingers you brought up. What, if anything, have they to do with this particular proposition.

The proposition only states self imposed, voluntary prohibition of exports by member nations to conflagration areas known to harbour terrorists or areas known for human rights abuses. Why nay? Why oppose it, even more so when you say America is an angelic arms exported that does no wrong? For the positive publicity? Is this also some sort of slippery slope, the kind which you slide up on?

BTW, did you read about the 10000 form letters/(e-mails?) forwarded to the UN by incensed, paranoid NRA constituents on account of this? I mean, how much of a bloody simpleton do you have to be to fear the UN, which is nothing more than America’s lapdog - just read about the contributions to their annual budget and who’s paying the lion’s share over there - , is “comin’ to teik yer guns away” with that resolution? You would need to be not only dimwitted, to put it mildly, but thoroughly ignorant of highly conspicuous present and historical aspects of the world we live in and international legislation.

Seems the little NRA worshiping saps buy into anything their god, LaPierre, tells them. And writing a letter without the form would have been such cognitively labour intensive work… I’d have laughed my ass off would I have been on the receiving end of that confetti. At least they something to burn and keep warm should the US be stingy with the money this year, nu?

Can you fathom just to what extent of unflattering an image of Americans that stunt projects?

Of course, monsieur LaPierre’s actual intent was to garner extra donations from the petrified saps, which would have likely have spat out the dough along with the letters.

I highly doubt he himself is that much of an dimwitted ignorant buffoon to think those letters matter in the slightest towards protecting or jeopardising the pet industry’s export rights. I mean, my contention is the man’s an insidious, malefically brilliant bastard, not a bloody moron.

- Supermode - Tell Me Why (Axwell & Steve Angello Remix)

The more times someone comes here as a result of using the Google search engine to arrive at this site or times that Google, which continually indexes and summarises data from the internet into some sort of database, encounters a link somewhere on the internet that leads to this site the higher the page rank will be, the closer at the top of the page the site will appear when you google for it.

Dick Masterson said:

I could always use more web links.

-Dick

?

son of the suns said:
[Sony suggests Empires mop the Floor with Republics; wolfe differs, pointing out Greece/Persia and the Roman decline into Empire, US/Germany]
SoTS cleverly responds:]

Didn’t Persia have Greece doing what what it wanted before Philip and Alexander? Fighting amongst themselves, holding Persia back from conquering Greece but the Persians did have their hands in Greek poltics and sack DID sack a major city. Alexander grew up in this environment of Persia the great far off power interfering in the affairs of Greeks. His goals from childhood were to keep the Greek city-states united and conquer all of Asia. Which is why when Philip was killed, he was so harsh on Greek cities that rebelled to test his leadership, He thought the Persians so dangerous that he was willing to slaughter his own countrymen brutally to keep them in line to destroy Persia.

No arguement with the Nazi 11 year reich.

Did the Roman Empire not become more powerful after Caesar killed the republic? Certainly not less, atleast until Christiandom overtook their souls.

An interesting and intelligent argument.

On Rome. Narrowly, yes. Rome did indeed grow briefly in power after converting to Empire, however this was quite short-lived.

The Roman Republic grew for 500 years to become a mighty force. The Roman Empire? It grew (somewhat) geographically, for roughly 140 years (I date the establishment of Empire to the Senate’s awarding the title Augustus to Octavian, and the peak of Empire to circa 115 AD.) Nevertheless, the principal conquests of what defined the Roman Empire occurred under the Republic.

The Empire consolidated. A worthy thing in a secretary, or gofer, but surely not something to emulate as a form of government?

As a Republic, Rome refused to be beaten — or, more accurately, to stay beaten. Consider the First Punic War. Faced with a loss of 70% of the fleet, the Romans simply rebuilt it… in two months.

Consider Taras, the Spartan colony, called Tarentum by the Romans. The Hellenes were super-powers for their time, and Pyrrhus was viewed by some as the greatest military leader since Alexander. Pyrrhus came to Taras’ aid in an attempt to preserve the Greek colonies in Italy. He won battle after battle, but lost the war for he could not keep up with the recruiting power of the Roman legions.

The Romans won by having a superior form of government, and by having conquered peoples invested in the success of the Republic.

Harder to do — perhaps impossible — with an Empire. The British tried.

Imperial Rome never, in my view, demonstrated the resilience and broad-based resolve of the Republic. It came to depend on one man. And when that man was good, well, very good. When that man was bad? Well, very bad.

As for Persia/Greece, true, but they didn’t conquer Greece or rule her. And look at what 300 Spartans did at Thermopylae… and what the Athenian Navy did.

Consider the scientific, cultural, technological, political and military achievements of Athens at her peak as compared to Sparta — certainly a great military power, but little else. All this gained as a Republic.

It’s probably fair to say that the Peleponnesian wars had little to do with Athens as Republic, and everything to do with Athens being greedy and guilty of overreach — and alliances with Empire. An early form of ‘taxation without representation’, plague, the Sicilian campaign, and, yes, the intervention of Persia on Sparta’s side.

You are right, Persia did succeed in keeping the Greeks off-balance for 50+ years, and hung on to her possessions for longer than she might have done otherwise.

I still maintain: Athens (for example) was far, far more effective as a Republic in influence and power than she would have been in attempting to be an Empire. Indeed, an almost imperial style of tax colonization proved to be her undoing!

Finally, you mention Alexander being harsh on rebels when Philip was killed. A minor correction. Actually, he was quite tolerant… on the occasion of the first rebellion, right after Philip’s death. Then Thebes and Athens rebelled again, the following year. He razed Thebes to the ground, leaving one house standing, and selling nearly all of the citizens into slavery.

-wolfe

A head Wolfe, ramming speed!!!

What is entropy to society, abaddon_fff?

I could always use more web links.

-Dick

What could I possibly do besides post here and have false hope?

I’m too dark to be a public figure for this movement. I’m just a jaded veteran who has had horrible experiences with the true nature of women from birth to my ex-fiance. When she betrayed me my fate was sealed as a negative force in this world once and for all.

Even if we win, many years from now.. I’ll still be holding grudges till death disgustipated of the generations backstabbed, betrayed and lost.

son of the suns said:

I agree fully that something needs to be done to make more masculine traits the cornerstone of society again, if that’s what you’re saying. How can it be done?

-This is the discussion I was trying to initiate sots. What can be done? I think a major goal of Men in a politcal arena should be to get funding cut from the bulk of feminism. Feminism exists largely through either A. Donations or B. Federal funding. Cut the head off of the snake and it will die. Recently in Canada, some of the politicians there have gotten pretty sick of feminisms lies and half-truths, and cut the funding for the SOW (no pun intended it means Status of Women) office. They will be SHUT DOWN. No funding equals no feminism.

-If that cannot or will not be done, then more funding should be aqquired for Mens issues. Health, legal aid, housing, ect ect. This should be done by a proper represention of the actual facts. -

The media is 70-80% liberal(feminine) dominated and every time I watch CNN I sense fully that they’re holding back their glee when troops get killed in Iraq and they have a chance to bash the president and anything American. Especially around this election season, they’re so obviously bias it’s repugnant. I’d bash Fox News but as a conservative I find it a relief that atleast there’s a small minority of media under our control.

-Indeed however adversity is nothing to fear simply something to conquer. If you disagree with society, why not try to change it, instead of either regressing backwards in time, or either destroying it or allowing it to be destroyed. what do you think upon the subject?-

Sometimes I think we’ve gone so far towards a socialist nanny-state that it can’t be fixed through constitutional means, which means that short of a civil war, it will be the end of the American republic and the beginning of a EU-type social progressive coward state too weak to fight a long war with a destiny of demographic death.

-As I have said before we as humans live in an inherently entropic system, we call this system Nature, however Men constantly fight entrophy, and women embrace it, simply because they lack the understanding of what entropy brings. Maybe you are right sots, however what is stopping you from trying?-

-Strength and Honor-