The 737 could have other issues, since it was obviously rushed into production. That much you can tell from the fact that they didn’t even care for basic safety considerations. There might be other issues. E.g. perhaps the jackscrew is used more heavily than on other models, so it will physically wear out earlier; this could be a safety or just a maintenance and depreciation issue. The turbofan engine might be too heavy for the wings; again, this could be later a maintenance and depreciation issue, or a more serious safety issue. But there’s more likely a problem I don’t think of now.

It’s pretty stupid to buy such a plane and lock yourself into such a technology for a decade or more.

And Hungary’s plane production is – 0?

How is that relevant? Hungary hasn’t had an aviation industry since 1945 (or November 1944, when the few still functioning factories were evacuated to Germany), and it’d be horribly expensive to start a new one out of scratch. (That’s not the case in Russia, which has an aviation industry which is often competitive internationally.) Hungary is too small for this anyway, both geographically (very little domestic aviation) and in terms of population (so we have fifteen times fewer engineers, fewer taxpayers to shoulder the investment, etc.), but anyway Hungary is of course trying to revive some domestic industry at taxpayer expense.

government pays billions of dollars, into the domestic aviation production

To get some returns on the investment, the government needs to create a market. It’s not very smart to create an industry but then keep importing inferior products.

I can give you an example of stupid subsidies. Hungary keeps subsidizing its national railway. It also keeps subsidizing its national postal service. Hungary also spends a lot of money on road maintenance (which still are full of potholes anyway). Until 2004 mail in Hungary was delivered between cities by rail. Usually late at night there was always the last train, which stopped everywhere, the mail train. It was used by too few people to make it worth it, but it was very useful for those people, and the train was paid for by the postal service anyway. So quite naturally under the Socialist and Free Democrat government they built a new logistical center which could no longer be serviced by rail, and instead they had to buy more delivery vans and trucks. So they stopped the mail trains, they offloaded extra traffic on the roads, which altogether was slightly cheaper for the postal service (but mail delivery actually got slower!), while it made it necessary to increase subsidies to the railway.

This is a stupid way to subsidize something.

hundreds of millions of dollars of state owned aircraft money which went to Sergei Pugachev’s bank account

You think these moneys wouldn’t be stolen if the government spent it on something else?

The 1660 ti seems to be the one you want given the requirements. It’s still a pretty expensive board at 280 bucks. The 1660 is about 220 bucks. Maybe monitor the sales figures and go with the best seller…again probably the 1660 ti. If none of these more expensive cards get a large user base…maybe try the Asus rx-570 4gb at 150 bucks or the MSI rx-570 mk2 8gb at 190 bucks….see how it works and wait until you upgrade your system.

The problem here is a safety issue of 737 Max 8, which is already on a criminal level.

Ural airlines begins receiving 14 of the 737 8 Max planes from October this year. S7 was already flying two of the planes before the accident.

In total, 74 of the 737 8 Max planes are being delivered in Russia from the next year to different airlines – so the safety issue is very relevant for any of us who go, or have family who travel on these airlines.

Consolation is all over the world will fly thousands of the same model. So at least the plane is beta tested across so many different airlines, that the crashes and problems will happen and be resolved more likely overseas.

Russia is not serious about supporting its aviation industry.

And Hungary’s plane production is – 0?

Currently, the government pays billions of dollars, into the domestic aviation production – so I’m not sure how this can be described as “not serious about supporting its aviation industry”.

When I was reading about it, I only had the personal feeling that there is too much money in the industry (e.g. I was reading about hundreds of millions of dollars of state owned aircraft money which went to Sergei Pugachev’s bank account some years ago, and which they are trying to recover with legal actions abroad).

I wonder if the early 30s surge is related to Japan taking over Manchuria in 1931?

The situation with so many 737 MAX orders is to worry about, because of its safety problems.

However, Boeing company itself is a massive investor in Sverdlovsk region (where important 787 parts are produced).

Here was Ural Boeing quietly opening second production in Sverdlovsk region a few months ago.

–

About titanium valley, where Ural Boeing are the most important investor.

Thought I should bring this here

Thorfinnsson posted this chart in a thread elsewhere on Unz.com, one dedicated to Roosevelt’s role in World War Two.

That Soviet data is fascinating

A massive spike beginning in 1932, for some reason

A staggering drop off in the middle of 1934

A gradual return to a stasis in 1936

Then another large spike timed perfectly with Stalin’s great purge of the army brass.

Very, very interesting

Let’s get some Russian historians in here to tell us what this data means in relation to Soviet policies and history of that period

imaging for obvious reasons offers much less coverage than radar

They might have to wait for nice weather to sink a carrier. The missile itself does have a radar anyway, so it’s enough to have a somewhat accurate location for the carrier. If I were them, I’d launch several missiles to make sure.

Of course it’s difficult to say if it’d work. AEGIS is also pretty sophisticated and has been upgraded for decades anyway. So maybe the US Navy is correct. But they definitely shouldn’t be so confident based on information we have now.

I think his point was not that it’d be difficult for the Chinese to develop it, but that they haven’t yet developed it for some reason. (Most likely budget shortfalls?)

Anyway, it’s pretty likely that they have something – either they actually do have these satellites, or they have something which obviates the need for it.

I believe these satellite are powered by nuclear thermo electric generators i.e there is Pu241 which decays and produces heat and there is a thermo couple which produces electricity not miniaturized nuclear reactors(as in ones used in nuclear submarines).

This I guess is used to power a hall effect ion engine to maintain orbit.

This is pretty much standard on all space probes which need to travel beyond Mars where solar power doesn’t work well and is relatively simple 50 year old technology.

The most difficult part is producing Pu 241 which any country with nuclear fuel reprocessing capability can produce.

Why do you imply it will be so difficult for the Chinese to develop such satellites?

The shortest book: Karlin Posts in April 2019.

Yes, though in fairness to the USN that’s probably true of most armed forces.

Worth noting that imaging for obvious reasons offers much less coverage than radar.

In other words, the US Navy’s trust in its ability to protect its assets in case of war with China seems a bit overconfident.

Unlike Iran I suspect Russia could manufacture its own spares for Western aircraft without too much difficulty if required.

The US-A satellites had nuclear reactors so they could operate at very low orbit. The ordinary method of powering satellites, solar panels, would cause satellites in such an orbit to fall to Earth too quickly to be useful.

And yes, solid fuel is desired for a rapid launch capability. This is why ballistic missiles are ordinarily solid fuel. It’s also why Japan’s “space program” launches solid fuel rockets.

The issue here isn’t that China lacks solid fuel rockets, it’s that they lack nuclear powered satellites intended for extremely low orbit operation.

There are possibly other things they could launch than radar however. Optical and infrared imaging for instance has improved tremendously in the past generation, and unlike radar doesn’t require a lot of power. So perhaps China has developed battery-powered (or RTG) imaging satellites for this purpose.

Such satellites could be quite small and launched with glorified sounding rockets.

There are already orders for 175 MC-21s.
If Pobeda would order them now, they would have to wait at least half a decade because others like Red Wings which scrapped their plans to get new Airbus airliners would get them first.

In other words, there’s not enough capacity. OK, that makes sense.

Short term solution for whom?
There are already orders for 175 MC-21s.
If Pobeda would order them now, they would have to wait at least half a decade because others like Red Wings which scrapped their plans to get new Airbus airliners would get them first.

Except for a large number of horrible accidents these old airplanes patched with duct-tape suffer every once in a while.

Not enough to ground their fleets for good.

That might have been a factor. Sounds like a better argument. The Russian aviation industry probably benefits from the presence of the Boeing and Airbus R&D centers, though the patents go to the parent companies only, so the benefits are not that large.

Boeing has a big R&D centre in Moscow, or did when Biden visited when I was there in 2011.

No, I meant that it only needed a short term solution (the few years until the start of the MC-21 deliveries), if the Russian government was serious about supporting its aviation industry. And that assuming that 737 MAX will be re-certified quickly. There are growing demands of a full re-certification, because apparently it wasn’t adequately tested at all, and so fixing the MCAS only means that this particular issue won’t come up again. There might be other issues. Boeing has just found an unrelated problem.

As such, the 737 MAX is not even more advanced than the MC-21. If anything, it’s the other way around. So they are now locking themselves into an obsolete technology because… well, to be able to fly them three years earlier. That’s what I meant: they need a short term solution for those three years.

But, as I wrote, Russia is not serious about supporting its aviation industry.

The Iranians can maintain their aging fleets in the short-term

Except for a large number of horrible accidents these old airplanes patched with duct-tape suffer every once in a while. These Iranian planes are probably worse than old Soviet planes are.

That is currently much less of an issue for the Russian air fleets whose Western planes are much less old.

So Russia shouldn’t worry about what would happen in a decade, because… hey, look, a squirrel!

You mean a mid/long term solution.

The Iranians can maintain their aging fleets in the short-term, the real problem is what happens in the long-term to their already decades old air fleets.

That is currently much less of an issue for the Russian air fleets whose Western planes are much less old.

Putin’s S-400 deal with Erdogan seems to be successful, so far.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-08/erdogan-and-putin-pledge-deepened-military-ties-meeting-despite-us-threats

And buying American planes makes even less sense than buying Airbus. The Americans usually have tougher sanctions, introduced at shorter notice, while the Europeans often include grandfathering provisions and they usually take longer to implement. Their sanctions are usually less stringent, or at most exactly as tough as the American sanctions. In 2014 the American sanctions might not have been tougher than the EU sanctions, because it was under Obama, and probably EU and US officials coordinated a lot about it. But then the Americans could and did quickly and unilaterally snap further sanctions, which the Europeans basically never do, so on average, you always end up with tougher American than European sanctions, especially when averaged out for longer time periods.

Therefore, buying complicated maintenance-heavy equipment like airliners from the US makes less sense than buying from the EU.

China doesn’t yet have all satellites needed in orbit.

Though it’d still make sense for them to keep some satellites in storage, because the ones in space might be destroyed in the first hours of war, so having a few in storage would make a lot of sense. But maybe they don’t have any in storage.

https://www.businessinsider.com/china-wants-satellites-watching-every-ship-in-south-china-sea-2018-8?r=US&IR=T

satellites that can be launched on demand

What is the difference between a normal satellite and one which could be launched on demand? I guess the launcher, which needs to be preferably solid fuel for a rapid operation. So, do they have a modified ICBM which could be used to launch a satellite to low orbit? Do they need to separately test such ability?

Anyway, they have a low cost solid fuel satellite launch capability, I’m not sure if such rockets could be carried around and launched from transporter erectors, but since they were developed from military missiles, and are explicitly called “quick reaction” launchers, I guess that’s the case.

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/science/china-launches-satellite-on-low-cost-solid-fuel-rocket/articleshow/66007959.cms

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuaizhou

EDIT:

Yes, that’s definitely the case.

“the launch can be conducted on rough terrain”

“Satellites can be installed on a Kuaizhou rocket and stored in a maintenance facility. Once needed, the rocket is deployed by a transporter-erector-launcher vehicle (TEL) to a secure location. Launch readiness time can be as short as several hours.[13][14]”

So there’s no way to tell how many naval satellites they have in storage, nor how many launchers they have. Though the numbers currently are probably small.

I know a liberal guy in Hungary, he’s an attorney, high income, erudite guy, in his early thirties, who runs a liberal Facebook page (now with a couple thousand readers, which includes a few lurking right wingers like yours truly), and it regularly ran all Russiagate hoaxes whenever they emerged, with zero retraction if and when they proved to be baseless. I don’t think it’s because he’s dishonest, but mostly because he believes all the accusations, and then doesn’t read or believe the retractions or thinks the retractions are just mere technicalities (“the evidence was slightly weaker than believed originally”). I’m sure this propaganda is very effective for all liberals or leftists (keeping them in the fold), though might be ineffective with nationalists already skeptical of the narrative.

Russiagate: German edition

Just as fake as the original.

Mainly it concerns the AfD Bundestag delegate Markus Frohnmaier. According to SPIEGEL history, someone from the Duma, i.e. the Russian parliament (there are no more specific information), sent a paper about him to the Russian presidential administration in 2017 before the federal elections, saying about him, Frohnmaier: “He will be a member of the Bundestag under absolute control. And: “So far there has been no evidence that such considerations actually exist high up in the Russian state apparatus”.

They are still missing, at least in the cover story of SPIEGEL. There is neither evidence that the letter from the Duma was included in any considerations, nor for a concrete support of Frohnmaier from the Kremlin. Frohnmaier actually said about the Russian annexed Crimea: “The Crimea won’t come back any more, and I think you just have to accept that now, too”.

This view can be considered right or wrong, at least it is more or less the same as the FDP politician and deputy Bundestag president Wolfgang Kubicki said some time ago about the Crimea

.
Translated with http://www.DeepL.com/Translator
https://www.publicomag.com/2019/04/wochenrueckblick-ein-sozialismus-mit-dem-antlitz-von-robert-habeck/

It’s an interesting culture shock to see Hollywood would just film a play in 1958, without even varying the house scenery for two hours.

Nowadays, since Avatar, even the camera has to constantly move and change place every 5 seconds, like an audience is expected to have so much attention deficit they need constant movement not to leave the cinema in boredom.

Oblomov was the 1981 Best Foreign Film award winner of the American National Board of Review.

China falls to the forces of Homintern

Access is denied, can you summarise the article?

Thank you, you are as always informative.

It’s needs a short term solution. Buying Western planes exposes Aeroflot to a possible future Western sanctions regime, like how Iran cannot maintain its fleet of airliners because of the US sanctions.

So either they should reduce the number of flights, or they should find a short-term solution like a short-term (three years) leasing agreement.

Buying Western airliners makes little sense, given the current geopolitical situation.

A rough idea of where the target is, well, rough. And in just one hour’s time a carrier group could be anywhere within a 3,000 nautical mile area.

The missile could cover the 2,000 km range in roughly fifteen or twenty minutes. So if you exactly knew exactly where the target is at the time you launched your missile, it might be at most 20 km (but probably less) away from that point. Of course, the less exact location you have, the farther away it will be. But the rougher the original idea, the larger the area to be searched through.

I’m not an expert on radars, the DF-21D has a diameter of 1.4 m (4.6 ft), probably it’s not large enough for a good radar searching such a large area. And you’re probably correct, increasing the diameter would result in a host of engineering problems, lower speed, higher requirement for an energy shield, etc. Anyway, for what it’s worth, at Mach 10, half the energy of the impact comes from kinetic energy, so even replacing all the explosives with sophisticated radar and other electronics would only cut the destructive power in half, so as long as you can increase your chances of hitting the target by 100% or more, it’s worth it.

A “very small drone” would not have useful endurance.

I thought about one without propulsion, only sailing or parachuting (or using a balloon to keep itself high until shot down), giving a useful snapshot of the battlefield. Any minute it’d spend after sending the initial snapshot (which could be gathered in a very short time, maybe a few minutes or less? a visual snapshot would obviously need just a few seconds, and in good weather, you could just launch flying cameras above the target area) would just be a bonus.

But maybe it’s still just a fantasy, impossible to implement. Or maybe not too useful.

Such art films still exist – another excellent example of a film with almost all of the action taking place in a single set is Reservoir Dogs. I suspect its another example of “corruption” of art, if you would, by successful hyperfocus on a specific kind of spending audience. The Pareto Principle successfully applied maximizes profits, but not necessarily artistic marvels.

https://www.thebeijinger.com/blog/2019/04/01/chinas-acceptance-un-lgbt–cautious-optimism

China falls to the forces of Homintern

I think I could understand all of the language .

It’s an interesting culture shock to see Hollywood would just film a play in 1958, without even varying the house scenery for two hours.

Nowadays, since Avatar, even the camera has to constantly move and change place every 5 seconds, like an audience is expected to have so much attention deficit they need constant movement not to leave the cinema in boredom.

I thought the opposite. The film seems relatively old for 1958 (this is the same year a very modernist film of Alfred Hitchcock, was released – Vertigo).

The story could also be written in the late 19th century, and it would not be different (except one scene where their father arrives in a plane).

These themes of unhappy family, which is arguing for inheritance from the dying oligarch, and of an ambiguously impotent or possibly homosexual husband preventing them from having children to inherit the fortune of the father – seem more from the 19th century.

Also it seems like the play is influenced by Henry James’ view of Americans? They have a histrionic family argument. Eventually they go to the cellar under the house, which is full of objects they have bought in Europe, without understanding them.

–

I thought the most modern aspect of the film was choice of actors who look like fashion models for the main roles, and then filming them like they are just posing for a 1950s fashion catalogue?

737 MAX deliveries will begin in Autumn 2019.

I just thought about the Chinese anti-ship ballistic missile.

Basically, if they have a rough idea where the target is, they launch it up, and once it starts dropping, theoretically it can use its own sensors to choose the exact path, acting as its own naval tracking satellite.

The difficulty is that it’s dropping at a speed of 10 Mach, which might not be enough to overcome AEGIS BMD defenses. But perhaps many of these could overwhelm those defenses. (Ideally they’d be able to communicate with each other, or to broadcast their info to the ground.)

A rough idea of where the target is, well, rough. And in just one hour’s time a carrier group could be anywhere within a 3,000 nautical mile area.

Furthermore for obvious reasons ballistic missile warheads don’t have room for large sensors.

Honestly China’s best break here might be indiscipline on the part of American naval forces. Perhaps a female-captained destroyer would break radio silence to complain about a shortage of pizza MREs.

I’m not even sure these need to be satellites. It depends on how precisely you know or need to know the position of the enemy vessels. (Or troops. It should work over a continent, too.) So you’d shoot a very small drone above the area, and it’d look down to check if there’s anything, and broadcast to the launch station (or another station) what it sees. It could be very high (satellite), or lower, maybe only 50 km or or 30 km or less above ground. (If you know roughly where the enemy vessel is, you just need a precise info.)

But yeah, we’d probably know something about them.

A “very small drone” would not have useful endurance.

I just thought about the Chinese anti-ship ballistic missile.

Basically, if they have a rough idea where the target is, they launch it up, and once it starts dropping, theoretically it can use its own sensors to choose the exact path, acting as its own naval tracking satellite.

The difficulty is that it’s dropping at a speed of 10 Mach, which might not be enough to overcome AEGIS BMD defenses. But perhaps many of these could overwhelm those defenses. (Ideally they’d be able to communicate with each other, or to broadcast their info to the ground.)

naval tracking polar satellites that can be launched on demand

I’m not even sure these need to be satellites. It depends on how precisely you know or need to know the position of the enemy vessels. (Or troops. It should work over a continent, too.) So you’d shoot a very small drone above the area, and it’d look down to check if there’s anything, and broadcast to the launch station (or another station) what it sees. It could be very high (satellite), or lower, maybe only 50 km or or 30 km or less above ground. (If you know roughly where the enemy vessel is, you just need a precise info.)

But yeah, we’d probably know something about them.

This movie I would consider early modern, based on the subject matter: unhappy marriage, and homosexuality. I’m actually a bit surprised it came out as early as 1958. It is interesting how they started pushing some of these things out in the late ’50s, despite the Hays Code. One infamous example, is “Ben Hur” (1959) in which Gore Vidal inserted a homosexual subtext.

I’m generally not too big on theatrical adaptations. I feel they are overacted. And generally, I think that the political compass of theater is even worse than Hollywood. I recall seeing “The Merchant of Venice” in a theater when I was a kid – two men French kissed. The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, is really exceptionally gay – of course a lot of that is based of musicals, which is probably even worse than theater.

No, but I am aware of him and he is on my list.

The largest value would likely be actionable intelligence for use at the very outset of the war, as obviously the ships would scatter after the outbreak of war and inter themselves in neutral ports. Some might try to return to China depending on what coalition America assembled for war.

The value of these ships once war broke out would of course be low. Some of the ships might be camouflaged as vessels belonging to neutral merchant marines which would allow for wartime intelligence until boarded by American warships.

I’m not aware of the PLAN having developed naval tracking polar satellites that can be launched on demand. This capability of the Soviet Navy was known during the Cold War. That said, obviously China has the capability to develop such systems and could have done so in secret. But I doubt it would keep such a system secret unless it actually wants war with America. Another problem with such secret satellites is that they cannot have been tested, as otherwise their existence immediately becomes known to the US and Japan.

Soviet satellites: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US-A

China does have its Huanjing disaster monitoring satellites, but these are intended for a higher orbit than the US-A. Additionally they only have about a dozen of them.

American confidence is due to the usual wishful thinking and our successful history of naval warfare. The Pacific War is to the US Navy what Trafalgar is to the Royal Navy.

I agree that this confidence is unwarranted, especially going forward. I am not in favor of war with China, but there’s a certain logic to Steve Bannon’s desire for war with China in the next five years.

Have you ever read Corelli Barnett’s books? He is very good on the subject of the failures of British industrial strategy after the war (amongst other things)

They have to wait years for the 737 MAX deliveries anyway. If there was any delay, they could just temporarily lease a few planes in the meantime until serial production of the MC-21 starts.

You can see the map of their “Northern Civilization” if you open the second or third page of the program (click on the green book at the top).

They are a splinter group of Jobbik. Jobbik has been moving to the left, and those are people who got fed up with it after a point. They theoretically criticize both the leftist opposition and Orbán, but in the National Assembly they have so far mostly supported Orbán.

I now read a little bit of their program (for the EU elections), and their idea is a “Northern Civilization” (as opposed to Western Civilization), which includes all European countries (and Cyprus) except Turkey, so Russia is included, too. I would have expected them to stupidly include Kazakhstan based on our common nomadic roots or something, but at least on the map they didn’t – while in the text they say that they include or countries of Europe and Eurasia with Christian roots (the map interestingly excludes Georgia or Armenia, though), it’s even wider in their idea (so, Kazakhstan should be included). They also say in the first paragraph that they are equally proud of the history of the thousand years of Western and Christian culture and the previous “wild” (the exact word they use is often used to describe wild, unbroken horses; so I guess it means nomadic) heritage of our nation, so they cannot really bring themselves to exclude Central Asian nomads.

Their criticism of the EU is the following:

– they criticize the New Cold War as a way of breaking up the unity of this perceived Northern Civilization

– the EU is trying to politically centralize Europe, destroying national sovereignty and leading to a centralized mega-state, so overly unifying politically its turf

– while at the same time, recreating the economic disunity with an economic core in Western Europe and colonial periphery in countries like Poland and Hungary

The solution is a European Union which would protect the traditional national communities and traditional values in Europe, and strengthen European families and increasing the birthrates among Europeans, instead of using immigration to avert the demographic catastrophe.

In Hungary, they want to reopen the treaty to join the EU, and unless the EU gives us concessions, they would want a new plebiscite on whether to stay in the EU. (This is the kind of thing which leads to nowhere. The EU won’t give us concessions, and then your bluff will be called anyway.) They also want to strengthen and enlarge the Visegrárd group.

Their motto is: Hungary belongs to Hungarians, and Europe to Europeans!

Of course, as all nationalist splinter groups, it attracts the usual number of tinfoil hat people and all kinds of crackpot fantasists. But maybe it could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship, who knows?

The Israelis detest Erdogan, hence the neocon dislike. Pompeii and Bolton do not inhabit the real world so think they can kick Turkey about without consequences.

https://indianpunchline.com/us-israel-punish-turkeys-erdogan/

Reiner Tor, as our resident Hungarian, could you perhaps give a description of Mi Hazánk and what their political position in relation to Jobbik and Fidesz is?

Whilst the Viscount, Comet and VC 10 were all innovative ultimately only the Viscount racked up significant sales, with the others being flawed in some way deterring international buyers. BOAC had to compete internationally and couldn’t carry the British commercial airliner industry on its own. There was a good documentary on this recently.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/9507019/Jet-When-Britain-Ruled-the-Skies-BBC-Four-review.html

China has cultivated other forms of naval intelligence deriving from its huge oceanic commerce

Could they use it in a war? I seriously doubt it. I think in a war zone, all commercial vessels would be told to leave on short notice, and probably they’d be sunk by patrolling American aircraft and naval vessels immediately (and if there’s an international scandal, they’d blame the Chinese for it).

You can use small fishing or commercial vessels for this purpose in a smaller war, but I doubt in a serious war with China (which is basically a world war already, or almost a world war) they would run that risk.

But I still don’t get the US Navy’s confidence here. I’d guess the Chinese have prepared spy satellites with their launchers (shouldn’t be bigger than an ICBM, in fact smaller), which could then be used to launch such satellites very quickly and dispatch the information to the ASM sites. Unless the low flying satellites could be destroyed immediately the Chinese can already easily target. And even if they manage to take it down within a few minutes of the launch (by that time the important information could easily be dispatched to the ASM sites), the Chinese can launch another one shortly before the anti-ship missile arrives within a few minutes of the target area and dispatch the updated position of the naval vessels in question.

PAC3 and THAAD are optimized for BMD work and have inferior performance against combat aircraft.

I think PAC1 was already fairly good against combat aircraft. Yes, THAAD is mostly for anti-missile defense.

Tennessee Williams is not somebody I’d be recommending for an intermediate English learner; his stuff is too heavy in colloquialisms and metaphors and figures of speech. And he’s even harder to parse in film than in written form. Most modern Americans wouldn’t really understand what his characters are saying.

Some people asked for more sources.

We should not fear ‘editing’ embryos to enhance human intelligence, says leading geneticist George Church

isn’t that cute, its always about “fear”

if i dont get my way its because all of you are cowards

The accents in the film are decidedly Southern ones, hence the ‘difference from modern English’. Whenever I think I have it bad as a single man, I just need to revisit this film and remember the ‘bliss of married life’. Thorfinnsson, no doubt would enjoy watching it too, as Elizabeth Taylor gives a great performance (and her rack looks quite nice too!) 🙂

I saw this old Hollywood film last month, Mr Hack recommended: “Cat on a hot tin roof”.

The grammar of how they speak sometimes was different to modern English.

I thought it is more informal, missing some words, sometimes not saying the subject of the sentence, and more difficult to understand for parts. There is a section here:

Very few had blacks in them. What would be mundane today was considered exotic back then

In “Cat on a hot tin roof”, blacks are there only as servants.

I would call that lack of government support if the MC-21 serial production was already reality
But it is not.

The MC-21, Russia’s advanced narrow-body airliner programme being developed by the United Aircraft Corporation (UAC), which is now part of Rostec, remains under the close supervision of the country’s government, which is also continuing to contribute sponsorship funds directly from the federal budget.

The latest allocation of state funds authorised by government decree and which came into effect today (February 6), is in line with the government’s aim to support Russia’s emerging aerospace industry in the period between 2013 and 2025. It provides for a total of 10.5 billion roubles (US$160 million) of state subsidies within the next three years for the MC-21.

This year’s injection of 1.6 billion roubles, plus a further 4.11 billion in 2020 and 4.81 billion in 2021, will cover up to 90 per cent of the manufacturer’s production, sales and after-sales support costs, as well as 90 per cent of interest payments on loans associated with the programme. Also eligible are the costs of flight simulators, ground-handling equipment and spare parts inventories.

http://www.rusaviainsider.com/russian-government-allocates-additional-10-5-billion-roubles-mc-21-project/

Why did he share that? That is just TASS quoting the RBC article.

I’m reminded of the failure of Britain’s postwar industrial strategy for airliners.

For some strange reason the government refused to compel BOAC to purchase British aircraft. BOAC purchased Lockheed Connies, Boeing Stratocruisers, Douglas DC-4s and DC-7s, and finally of course Boeing 707s.

This was done despite a chronic shortage of Dollars, the existence of suitable British types (or types with development potential), and the existence of a government industrial strategy to compete in the world airliner market (the Brabazon Committee).

The acquisition of large, pressurized American airliners immediately after the end of the war was perhaps justifiable as British equivalents did not yet exist (the Avro Tudor was much smaller than the Connie). Continuing to purchase American aircraft in the ’50s was absurd. Even the Bristol Brabazon, supposedly a white elephant, probably could’ve succeeded with a high capacity cabin layout (instead of only carrying 2/3rd more passengers than a Connie in a plane the size of a modern wide body).

In light of the fact that BOAC was owned by the crown and that Sterling was not freely convertible in this era, it would’ve been exceedingly simple to force BOAC to purchase British aircraft.

In the end only the Vickers Viscount became a major success.

Japan is a paranuclear state as it is. It possesses ample stocks of weapons-grade material, a complete nuclear-industrial base, and even the appropriate delivery systems (Japan has solid-fuel ballistic missiles and reentry vehicles). This is well known to everyone, and in fact Iran has stated that its strategic goal is to be like Japan.

As Reiner Tor stated, actually encouraging the overthrow of the NPT is likely to have dubious global consequences. Admittedly this might be inevitable, but not a good idea to give it a push.

The solution to Korea is a denuclearized, neutralized, and unified federal Korean state with security guaranteed by China, Russia, Japan, and the United States. This country will be a de facto Chinese vassal, but that’s better than the destabilizing presence of American forces on the Korean peninsula.

I think the Japanese alliance is worth maintaining provided that the Japanese respect our commercial interests. Historically they have not done so, but this was done with the connivance of American policymakers and in the absence of a substantial Chinese threat.

Taiwan is unwilling to even defend itself and as such should simply be sold to China. Chinese aeronaval forces on Taiwan are undesirable, but the present situation is inherently unstable and likely to lead to war.

Taiwan is undergoing ethnogenesis and pozzing at the same time. This has the potential to lead to a Catalonian-style FUCK YOU DAD independence movement which would lead the PRC to declare war. Today Taiwan still has some possibility of winning that war (seriously), but that won’t be true much longer. As you hinted at earlier, going to war to protect a bunch of faggots isn’t a bright idea even if we win.

The deterioration of the geographic situation can be dealt with by (further) militarizing the island chains of the Central Pacific. Potentially the Philippines can be drawn once again into the American orbit.

A Chinese annexation of Taiwan is also likely to cause internal problems with digestion and a further deterioration of its relations with neighboring states.

I suppose one downside of selling Taiwan to China is how other Asian countries would perceive America in the aftermath. Will the FAKE AND GAY argument be accepted by policymakers in other countries?

It’d be possible if there was a political will. It’s like saying that the mugger cannot legally take your possessions. Mkay.

The guy also shared this:

https://tass.ru/ekonomika/6303731

So apparently there is a serious drop in production. What is going on? It’s interesting that Putin does very little to support the local aviation industry.

I found this on the Russian civilian aviation industry and the lack of government support for it.

https://southfront.org/mc-21-project-and-strange-logic-of-russian-government/

I don’t think there is a way to kick them out of NATO.
They will only leave if they want to.

give the Japs nukes

Scrapping the NPT has lots of drawbacks. The larger the number of nuclear powers (and nukes), the larger the probability of a nuclear war. Even if it wouldn’t end the world, it’d be pretty horrible. A local nuclear conflict would lower the nuclear threshold among other nuclear powers as well.

It’s probably not possible to allow Japan to build nukes, but keep the NPT for others.

I’m not sure small satellites cannot be found and destroyed one by one. A lot of it is just a question of electronics, which is way better now than it was during the Cold War.

I’m very cautious declaring things about military technology, because in the past I have made statements and predictions which turned out to be less sure to be true later on.

Even the American strike against Syria last April. A lot of us here (including me) then concluded that the Russians or Syrians might have downed a large number of Tomahawks. I think it’s pretty unlikely at this point that the Russian version was true. We have not seen any signs of downed missiles, except two of them. I think it’s likely that the vast majority of the missiles or bombs hit their intended targets. (Even if those targets were stupid things like empty warehouses.)

Good point about the MIC.

My preferred strategy would be to give the Japs nukes, and the Koreans an 8-year notice that we a pulling out. Savings would accrue to taxpayers, or else be invested in more realistic problems, like declining white fertility. (of course, the Cathedral would not admit this problem exists, so difficult to turn into US policy.)

The Chinese, of course, have a serious fertility problem. I think this makes them unlikely to be expansive, but as a general naval strategy, I think I would prefer more hulls for the same cost as a carrier.

Good point about GPS.

Not sure on battery size. They have little solar arrays, so technically they are larger. But they are quite small, possible to produce on an assembly line, mostly from existing components, so they are relatively cheap (<$150,000 in the US, minus launch costs, but you can launch dozens on one medium-sized rocket, though it would take a while to deploy all for blanket coverage).

One drawback is they have limited lifespan (maybe, 2-3 years) because they need to be deployed low, and there's atmospheric drag even in space. Still, I think they make it a lot more practical to track fleets. IMO, only real countermeasure would be nukes. The radiation gets trapped in the Earth's magnetic field and cycles for a while, frying electronics. Makes me wonder about countermeasures, whether the big sats would be safe from that.

A nuke in space would probably destroy billions of dollars of assets owned by dozens of countries, as well as cause large scale economic disruption, so it may only be a scenario in WW3. But I suppose that's what it would be, if they were carrier-hunting. But then again, it might be like shooting yourself in the foot – taking out your own satellites. And it would possibly create a lot of trash, since existing sats might not be able to deorbit. I guess that is the danger of war in space – Kessler syndrome.

A number of years ago – perhaps during Bush 43 – there was a Turkish bestseller in the fashion of a Tom Clancy novel, where a foreign enemy invaded Turkey and was driven out by patriotic Turks. The foreign enemy was the USA.

Makes sense to me. I mean, some of Tom Clancy’s scenarios were even more fantastical. But, still, I’d like see Turkey dropped as an ally. They are really just the successor to the Ottomans, more civilizationally at odds with us than the Russians ever were. Besides, I think having them in NATO encourages the people who want to incorporate them into Europe.

I’m sure the Turks wanted to buy the Patriot PAC3, I’m not sure about the THAAD, I only mentioned it, because without it the Patriot doesn’t provide equivalent capabilities.

Because one of the carriers is in overhaul/repairs/whatever anyway.

That’s true, but there used to be a carrier air wing for every carrier. This was considered useful for replacing losses at sea in war, and it also allowed for more differential combat training time at Top Gun.

The air wings have also gotten a lot smaller.

In addition to the legally-mandated 11 carriers, the Navy makes an effort to maximize capital ship hull numbers in order to maximize the number of flag rank officers.

Owing to the numerous costly procurement disasters in this century (LCS, Gerald Ford class, Zumwalt class), the Navy has made cuts elsewhere (air wings, mine warfare, weapons, etc.) in order to preserve its hull numbers.

Don’t you know by any chance what the Forbes article talks about as the Chinese “targeting complex,” which would be immediately destroyed in a war?

No, since he doesn’t give specifics. I assume he means China’s space-based assets because China doesn’t yet have substantial maritime ISR assets like patrol aircraft, undersea sensors, ELINT vessels, etc.

So in a war China’s space-based assets (which in any case have limited capability) would be destroyed by anti-satellite weapons, and its land and sea based ISR assets would be unable to venture far beyond the coast without being destroyed.

https://www.globalsecurity.org/space/world/china/space-surveillance.htm

The Soviet Navy had vast numbers of maritime patrol aircraft and even the capability to launch on demand polar-orbit reconnaissance satellites to track NATO fleets.

In a conflict with the US China would quickly be unable to find American fleets except with its nuclear submarines, which would be outnumbered by American ones.

The PLAN is of course aware of these deficiencies and working to correct them.

I also assume China has cultivated other forms of naval intelligence deriving from its huge oceanic commerce.

It’s simple. They kept asking for a Patriot and maybe other stuff like THAAD, but the Americans kept throwing up hurdles.

One possible reason is Israel: the Americans have a more or less stated official policy of not letting any country in the Middle East be stronger than Israel, so they never sell the Muslims the latest military technologies. With Erdogan’s moderate (?) Islamism and general unreliability, they probably wanted to avoid a situation where Israel would face Turkish Patriot PAC3 and THAAD in Syria.

If this is true then it goes to show just how much America’s relationship with this very special country harms us.

No American interests whatsoever are served by ensuring that Israeli forces are superior to Turkish ones.

In fact the reverse is true. Israel is a destabilizing, expansionist force in the Middle East which consistently harms America’s relations with Islamic states that are more important to both America and especially our European allies.

I suppose the calculus has changed somewhat recently thanks to the new Israeli-KSA axis and Erdogan’s own expansionism. But it hasn’t changed enough to justify denying arms exports to Turkey, especially defensive systems.

Actually selling BMD systems to Turkey would be in line with American policy to create an assured nuclear first strike capability against Russian strategic forces. Admittedly this is an exceptionally stupid policy, but it’s worth pointing out that selling BMD systems to Turkey would facilitate this policy.

Probably the biggest bang for the buck, though I think the Patriot PAC3 plus a THAAD provide better capabilities – albeit for something like five times the money. Except for the 400 km range, which is probably not very useful for the Americans. (Due to the shape of the Earth it only works against very high flying targets, and probably the Americans are correct to assume air superiority anyway.)

PAC3 and THAAD are optimized for BMD work and have inferior performance against combat aircraft. The S-400 also claims excellent BMD capabilities, though these claims are even less tested than America’s questionable BMD claims.

No one will really know how well these systems will perform until the shooting starts, and it’s unlikely that the contractors selling the systems would permit honest performance tests by foreign customers.

The long range of the S-400 is principally useful in area denial of supporting assets like tankers and AEWR aircraft. This is definitely useful against Americans, though presumably in a conflict with America our airpower would have access to Greek and British Cypriot basing reducing the reliance on tankers.

Even if Turkey didn’t provide the most high tech components for the F-35 program, it still has some details and specifications. Its pilots are already receiving training, so presumably they have a lot of interesting things to tell about its vulnerabilities or as simple things as American tactics.

This is true. Particularly useful information to Russians would be the performance of the aircraft’s purportedly advanced avionics (especially sensor fusion) and also maintenance/overhaul requirements (which limit sortie generation).

That said the USAF itself doesn’t believe the F-35 can compete against modern Russian fighters and has complained bitterly about this for the past decade.

There is something to it (I also read about East German air-to-air missiles and MiG-29 fighters which fell into the hands of the Bundeswehr: Soviet missiles worked better against Western fighters, and vice versa, presumably because both sides developed and tested their own defenses and countermeasures against their own weapons), but I don’t think there’s a silver bullet against any weapons system. The Russians had to fight Soviet (often Russian) weapons the hard way in Georgia and Ukraine, and presumably it’d be the same with the Turkish S-400. Similar to the issues Iranian F-14s posed to the US.

The more technologically complex a weapon is the more useful inside information is in fighting it. You have more of an inside edge fighting against your own SAMs than you do against, say, your own artillery.

But that’d defeat the purpose of the whole policy against Turkey: the policy intended to starve the Russian MIC of orders would end up providing it with a new customer as well as accelerating the Su-57 development. The Turks might even provide a few ideas or technologies from the F-35, though I already wrote that.

It’d also be great marketing for Russian military technology (or at least the S-400) if Turkey broke with the West merely to be able to buy it. If I were an American policy maker, I’d probably try to avoid such an outcome.

We’ll see. I don’t endorse this policy for a variety of reasons, but America has had considerable “success” lately with its weaponized sanctions. This probably leads American policymakers to believe they can successfully achieve their aims through bullying. If Turkey does go on to purchase Su-57s then this policy must be considered a failure.

I generally support a more commercially oriented foreign policy, and while denying competitors access to markets is part of that, the main plank should be promotion of our own export goods. If what you say about Patriot and THAAD sales to Turkey is correct, then we never should’ve come to this point to begin with.

I find it quaint that there was a time in post-war Northern Europe when the weirdest ethnics people could imagine were Greeks, Italians or Yugoslav guest workers

Apropos:

we only have nine carrier air wings anyway

Because one of the carriers is in overhaul/repairs/whatever anyway.

Don’t you know by any chance what the Forbes article talks about as the Chinese “targeting complex,” which would be immediately destroyed in a war?

spy sats can be the size of brick cellphones

Don’t they need bigger batteries? But for example destroying GPS/GLONASS/etc. systems is probably still doable.

The fact that Turkey wants the S-400 in itself is interesting.

It’s simple. They kept asking for a Patriot and maybe other stuff like THAAD, but the Americans kept throwing up hurdles.

One possible reason is Israel: the Americans have a more or less stated official policy of not letting any country in the Middle East be stronger than Israel, so they never sell the Muslims the latest military technologies. With Erdogan’s moderate (?) Islamism and general unreliability, they probably wanted to avoid a situation where Israel would face Turkish Patriot PAC3 and THAAD in Syria.

Another possible reason is simply the Turkish requirement for sharing technology and indigenous production.

Or they simply didn’t trust Erdogan or even Turkey in general (especially in light of the Turkish refusal to grant airspace for the invasion of Iraq in 2003), regardless of Israel.

Now, the Turks probably threatened that they would then buy from the Russians, and finally made good on their threats.

it’s the premier long range surface to air missile system

Probably the biggest bang for the buck, though I think the Patriot PAC3 plus a THAAD provide better capabilities – albeit for something like five times the money. Except for the 400 km range, which is probably not very useful for the Americans. (Due to the shape of the Earth it only works against very high flying targets, and probably the Americans are correct to assume air superiority anyway.)

As for sharing American technology with Russia,

Even if Turkey didn’t provide the most high tech components for the F-35 program, it still has some details and specifications. Its pilots are already receiving training, so presumably they have a lot of interesting things to tell about its vulnerabilities or as simple things as American tactics.

the Russians are better aware of how to defeat it than Western forces are

There is something to it (I also read about East German air-to-air missiles and MiG-29 fighters which fell into the hands of the Bundeswehr: Soviet missiles worked better against Western fighters, and vice versa, presumably because both sides developed and tested their own defenses and countermeasures against their own weapons), but I don’t think there’s a silver bullet against any weapons system. The Russians had to fight Soviet (often Russian) weapons the hard way in Georgia and Ukraine, and presumably it’d be the same with the Turkish S-400. Similar to the issues Iranian F-14s posed to the US.

From that angle they might as well go ahead and make things official. I’ve heard that Su-57 sales to Turkey are being discussed.

But that’d defeat the purpose of the whole policy against Turkey: the policy intended to starve the Russian MIC of orders would end up providing it with a new customer as well as accelerating the Su-57 development. The Turks might even provide a few ideas or technologies from the F-35, though I already wrote that.

It’d also be great marketing for Russian military technology (or at least the S-400) if Turkey broke with the West merely to be able to buy it. If I were an American policy maker, I’d probably try to avoid such an outcome.

To what extent does Erdogan’s strategic thinking reflect Turkish popular opinion?

This suggests that Turkey doesn’t see Russia as being a threat and is actually defending itself from Western powers like Greece, Israel, the USA, France, and the UK.

The rational point of confronting China is that if China succeeds in driving US forces out of the Western Pacific and vassalizing America’s client states in the region it will then be in a position to project naval power into the Western hemisphere. The oldest constant of American strategy is to exclude rival powers from the Western hemisphere, and since the late 1930s it has been American policy to dominate the axial ends of Eurasia to prevent even the possibility of this.

The vassalization of American client states in the Western Pacific would also put them in a position to transfer extremely advanced technology to the PRC which is currently not permitted. I’m skeptical of how useful these technology export restrictions are (Japan and South Korea barely honor them and China is increasingly advanced on its own), but they’re taken seriously by US policymakers.

Less rationally (from a POV of national strategy) the China threat provides many benefits such as:

• Maintaining the status quo (change is hard and scary)
• Fat military procurement contracts
• Substantial career opportunities for officers, including many flag officer ranks
• Lucrative industry funded sinecures for policymakers and academics
• Empire by itself is fun and satisfies deep human desires

I’m receptive to the view that containing China within the Western Pacific increases American security, but the costs and risks of this need to be seriously assessed in light of possible alternatives. In a way this a very old argument. Charles Lindbergh always maintained that armed neutrality would be cheaper in blood and treasure for hemispheric defense.

As far as carriers go, maybe. It has never actually been demonstrated that carriers are obsolete, only suggested. The same weapons which threaten carriers are themselves employed by carriers for both offense and defense, so in a way nothing has changed. That said US carrier battle groups are inappropriately designed, particularly their air wings.

The alternative to carriers would be Doenitz’s vision. More submarines and land-based aircraft, which also means more bases, tankers, etc. The Navy would probably point out that tankers and long-range bombers are a lot more vulnerable than CVBGs when operating far from allied basing.

The US Navy is required by law to maintain eleven carriers in operation. The Navy pulled this exact same stunt in 2016. The purpose of this stunt is to get Congress to increase its budget.

It’s kind of a moot point anyway since we only have nine carrier air wings anyway, and these air wings have considerably shrunk in size and capability in the past generation.

Elements of the USN are concerned about Chinese “A2AD” weapons, but their official position is that CVBGs remain very difficult targets.

The Virginia-class submarine is one of the few major procurement successes in this century, and Electric Boat has successfully reduced both the time and cost it takes to deliver a new one. This industrial success is one of the reasons for increased procurement. SSNs are also viewed as useful in hunting down adversary submarine forces, enforcing blockades, and participating in SOCOM operations (important to stay “relevant”).

Overall the Navy’s force structure and doctrine is dictated by path dependency, domestic politics, and careerism. It is highly resistant to change. If pressed to explain its unsuitability for fighting China the Navy would probably blame Congress and the DoD for killing the A-12 and N-ATF programs in the 1990s.

The fact that Turkey wants the S-400 in itself is interesting.

One has to ask what threat the S-400 is intended to defend against.

While it’s the premier long range surface to air missile system, presumably the Russians are better aware of how to defeat it than Western forces are.

This suggests that Turkey doesn’t see Russia as being a threat and is actually defending itself from Western powers like Greece, Israel, the USA, France, and the UK.

From that angle they might as well go ahead and make things official. I’ve heard that Su-57 sales to Turkey are being discussed.

They also have an indigenous stealth fighter development program (though they are seeking foreign partnerships).

As for sharing American technology with Russia, I doubt they have anything valuable to share. Not like they can provide the source code of the Aegis BMD.

The real danger to American policy is what the general trend of aggression towards allies (sanctions, asset seizures, tariffs, etc.) will ultimately lead to. Sooner or later a more important country will decide to retaliate in unpleasant ways. Impossible to predict when or how this will occur.

America is a very powerful country but has a number of strategic vulnerabilities that could be exploited by angry allies.

India conducted an anti-satellite missile test a few days ago.

I’m scratching my head, but I really don’t see the point. Might have made sense when the US and the Soviet Union developed the capability, but now spy sats can be the size of brick cellphones – I guess the detail is limited (no license plates), but it is definitely enough to track a carrier or any shipping.

I guess you could take out large communication satellites, depriving the Middle East of their soaps, but creating a debris field up there would piss a lot of people off. In theory, detonating a nuke in space would be pretty effective, but would piss even more people off.

It would be relatively easy to destroy rocket infrastructure – the factories, the launching facilities, the brainpower. But then you are probably in a nuclear scenario. Truth be told, I really don’t see the point of war with China. To protect Taiwan’s right to become super-pozzed and Africanized? To protect the offshore mineral rights of countries with more rational claims?

IMO, carriers are white elephants, only good for bombing the Third World, which at least for the US and Russia (or anyone with energy reserves) has questionable utility. They were already made obsolete by MAD. They should be replaced with much smaller, drone-launching ships.

On the other hand, here this guy says it’s stupid and won’t be done anyway. He also says that the navy has been planning for war against China and they know how to protect their assets, for example by destroying the Chinese “targeting complex,” which would be destroyed in the first hours of the war. Does anyone by any chance know what the “targeting complex” is, and how it is going to be destroyed? Is it the Chinese satellites?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/lorenthompson/2019/03/15/plan-to-retire-uss-truman-early-makes-no-sense-which-is-why-the-navy-doesnt-really-want-to-do-it/

I see. Then did civilian production drop further in the first quarter of 2019?

The claim that “production is collapsing due to the significant decrease of defense procurement” is false.

For instance, the SSJ production significantly declined from 33 to 24, but that was not related to defense procurement.

Production of Su-30SM and Su-35 declined, but that was to be expected because state orders are mostly fulfilled and the focus is now shifting to the Su-57 whose serial production starts in 2019.

Maybe Karlin plans to send us a million $ each after each post he posted in April so far.

So is it factually false? The rbc.ru seems to be a mainstream Russian outlet.

I missed it. Apparently the American DoD plans to retire the USS Harry S. Truman decades early. This is pretty interesting. A similar proposal – blocked by Congress – was made for another carrier a few years ago.

This could be because carriers appear to be increasingly useless against near peer targets – their aircraft are relatively short range and thus either useless or the carrier needs to move within the enemy’s range. Apparently they are ramping up submarine production at the same time, which means they are truly worried about Chinese anti-ship missiles.

https://breakingdefense.com/2019/02/pentagon-to-retire-uss-truman-early-shrinking-carrier-fleet-to-10/

This won’t work with Erdogan, but it will probably achieve its intended result by dissuading others from purchasing Russian weapons.

Let me restate it: it has already achieved its intended results with others (so no reason to continue, time to give the Turks the same exemption the Indians received), and it probably already achieved that Turkey won’t by anything more from Russia, but it certainly won’t achieve the cancellation of this one business.

By pushing it further they might actually achieve the exact opposite: Turkey might resort to importing further Russian technologies to fill the gaps resulting from the coming American embargo, and they will probably in exchange share with the Russians the American (or indigenous) technologies that they already have.

In real life Mexicans I’ve talked with, always seem more civilized and educated than Americans I’ve talked with, and start saying how they read Dostoevsky and Tolstoy.

Typical of educated Latin Americans. Educated people from Puerto Rico read those authors too.

What would be mundane today was considered exotic back then – a Quebecois seeing a monster flying towards the US in an American film, a British film set in Cornwall, which was considered a place of magic and superstition.

Although I was born long after that, I find it quaint that there was a time in post-war Northern Europe when the weirdest ethnics people could imagine were Greeks, Italians or Yugoslav guest workers, what with their oh-so-crazy food, religion and manners.

America’s strategy appears to be to degrade Russia’s military-industrial complex by starving it of export revenues.

This won’t work with Erdogan, but it will probably achieve its intended result by dissuading others from purchasing Russian weapons.

Either Pompeo and Bolton don’t care about America’s relationship with Turkey (my impression) or no they don’t believe Turkey will break with the West.

Not really buying that.

Combat jet production for MoD did not change much between 2017 and 2018: https://sdelanounas.ru/blogs/116155/

This was shared in a Facebook group. The Russian aerospace industry’s production is collapsing, due to the significant decrease of defense procurement.

https://www.rbc.ru/economics/06/04/2019/5ca72bfa9a7947fcb5c578f2

Forgot to mention the AfD arrow which serendipitously shows the direction of the curse.

Speaking of the AfD, I support their efforts to prevent the German language from being increasingly modified, but not their plans to spread it among the migrants. The good thing about parallel societies is that they ease the deportation process. Of course, I am a hardliner.

IMO, politics will increasingly have a malign influence on language, and English on other languages. Shorter words will be chosen by the Left as their political weapons, longer ones as their shields. That is why I advocate a full flight from the word “white” in the US and its replacement with the word “European.”

I like old British and American films too. Very few had blacks in them. What would be mundane today was considered exotic back then – a Quebecois seeing a monster flying towards the US in an American film, a British film set in Cornwall, which was considered a place of magic and superstition.

It is sad that they shot a lot in studio and did not capture more places on film.

I also appreciate the accents, though there was a tendency in America to make them up, and Britain had a definite preference for upper class ones.

The strange thing is, it doesn’t really sound like standard German usage to me…I’d rather expect Putins Marionetten (puppet state is Marionettenstaat in German).
It’s probably still possible, and maybe they’re just going for the alliteration, but I suppose to some degree it shows their dependence on the narratives provided by American liberals.

In Scandinavia, generally speaking in all parts of society but especially at higher discursive levels, it is becoming more and more common for people to speak a slightly peculiar form of their own languages due to the dominance of English (I myself suffer from this problem, but I see this also in my relatives, the everyday speech patterns of academics, the people who write for Danish state propaganda, etc.)

I find it enjoyable to view old films, the actors speak without much foreign influences and with authentic accents.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/03/turkeys-erdogan-must-choose-us-f-35-fighter-jet-or-russian-s-400-missile-system.html

I still don’t understand it. They don’t simply want to block the S-400 deal, but also humiliate Erdogan. I also think that it’s a bit over the top. After all, I’m pretty sure that there are lots of opportunities in this for the Americans (they could observe the S-400 up close), and the official argument (that the Russians could learn the secrets of the F-35) is obviously bullcrap. I thought that now they made it perfectly clear that they won’t tolerate such purchases in the future, from the Turks or anyone else. But now they are risking their entire relationship with Turkey, which is probably Putin’s pipe dream. So why are they doing it?

On the other hand, I think this entails considerable risks for Russia, in that its sensitive military secrets could now fall into NATO hands. Which is still the most likely outcome. So maybe they should also let the Turks out of the deal? Maybe by requiring them to purchase Russian civilian airliners? So the money would still go to the Russian military-industrial complex.

You have the word “Puppen” which evokes voodoo dolls, besides having some amount of alliteration

The strange thing is, it doesn’t really sound like standard German usage to me…I’d rather expect Putins Marionetten (puppet state is Marionettenstaat in German).
It’s probably still possible, and maybe they’re just going for the alliteration, but I suppose to some degree it shows their dependence on the narratives provided by American liberals.

Seven days…

Okay, just six.