…and then he beats up a policeman, gets send to prison, does the prison secretary and has to train a football team of inmates to play against the wardens…

I kinda liked Mean Machine.

Re: }}}—–>>> Feb2004 QUIZ <<<—–{{{

Cool… and a tough one too.

Haven’t got too much time for now, so without any searching i’ll try to at least come up with some answers.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Distiller
2. — The first USN unit equipped with F/A-18E/F to be permanently forward deployed. Name the unit, its homebase and the CV it is assigned to for the time being.
VFA-154, NAF Atsugi Japan, CVW-5.

6. — Name at least five current helicopters with nicknames that were used on conventional planes before. (Like the Eurocopter Tiger and the Grumman F9F Tiger)
AH-1 Cobra (previously the YF-17 and technically speaking the P-38/63 series too)
Eurocopter Cougar (Grumman F9F)
Westland Whirlwind (was both a conventional plane and a helo)
HAL Cheetah (the Lama-license, also the Atlas Cheetah)
Mi-24 Hind (the Hawker Hind was a 1920/1930s biplane fighter)
Mi-28 Havoc (the Douglas A-20 Havoc)
Kaman H-2 Tomahawk (US Army variant of the Sea Sprite, compare with some P-40 variant)
Hughes Defender (Flying Egg, there is also a fixed-wing Defender which is a militarised BN-2 Islander)
MH-90 Enforcer (MD900 in US Coast Guard service, the Enforcer also being the Piper Enforcer super-P-51, and the Fokker F.27 Enforcer armed patrol variant).

8. — What aircraft did the USCG contribute to the second Persian Gulf War 1990/91?
At least their Gulfstream, the VC-11A i think. Also, although i would have to check, some HU-25s might have been deployed to monitor oil spills.

11. — Name six or more side-by-side twinseater aircraft with jet engines flown from the deck of an aircraft carrier.
F-111B
Sea Venom NF Mk something (20 i believe)
Sea Vixen
Sea Vampire T.22
Aquilon
F3D Skyknight
A3D (if you leave out the third guy)
A2J Savage (had both jet engines and pistons, but i’m not sure if it was a two- or more seater)

Bonus Question — How did it come that the U.S. Air Force lost a radar station to high water in 1961?
It was one of the Texas Towers early warning stations off the coast of New England. These were rigs similar to the ones used for drilling oil out in the sea, but these Texas Towers (i believe there were six) had radars and were part of the NORAD radar network. In 1961, one of the Texas Towers was first damaged badly and later destroyed by two heavy storms.

Comrades,

Your revolutionary zeal, and compassion for the Proletarians of All Nations will recieve a tremendous morale boost if you click Pete’s banner.

Partiya Lenina – Sila Narodnaya!

In Weert (Netherlands, Limburg province) the McDonalds is legally obliged to sell vlaai (as expained before, the flat Limburgian pies) because of the historical significance of the building as a vlaai-house.

So i guess Hamburger will be able to enjoy himself. Besides, that particular McD is only 150metres away from the local coffeeshop (of the pot-kind) which was conveniently built inside the Town Hall building 😀

Hey, i only did a TV report once, and at the crucial bit my dear rent-a-cameraman didn’t have a tape loaded… The annoyance works both ways.

I did enjoy experimenting around with mpeg-interviews with an absolotely terrible Sony cybershot being both reporter + cameraman, but somehow even that’s too expensive for certain newspapers. As was I.

It is absolutely not a Pakistani F-16B, so the rest of the claim is even more dubious. :rolleyes:

Hi Oren,

It’s been a long time i’ve had a good debate on this issue, i’m really glad you took up the handkerchief 😉

Israel did not annex the West Bank and Gaza Strip because as far back as 1967 it recognized that these territories (with possible border alterations, as recognized in UN resolution 242) would be the price it would have to pay in future negotiations with Arab States. In 1967 it offered them back in return for peace but was rejected in the Arab summit in Khartoum.

Then on what ground do Israeli citizens have the right to build settlements on non-Israeli territories, how can it happen that Israel controls the supply of fresh water on non-Israeli territory, and how can Israel carve up the pieces of land not taken over by building corridors between the settlers, building security walls? If Israel acknowledges that those territories aren’t hers, i fail to understand how it can support not only Israeli citizens moving into those territories, but even more so: why protect them?

No one recognizes Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights, no one has ever been willing to accept such an annexation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and yet you’re criticizing us for not doing something we are supposedly forbidden to do?

International disagreement with Israel annexing the Golans didn’t stop Israel from annexing it. An annexation which, conveniently fitting in my theory that Israel thrives on the current instability, makes any serious peace process between Syria and Israel impossible BTW.
My theorem that Israel should annex the Palestinian territories and give the Palestinians the same rights as Israeli citizens (including reparations for all the property the state of Israel -in hindsight- ‘bought’ from them) would probably be the fairest solution of all, and IMHO also the one with the best chance for a long lasting peace. I do agree that it’s a highly improbable solution, especially since both sides would reject it vigorously. But perhaps just that makes it a fair solution. But yes, it would be the end of Israel as a Jewish state. It would also be the end of the Palestinian ‘state’ as a dictatorship.

The West Bank and Gaza Strip are disputed territories, whose final status is yet to be determined.

Back in 1967 the territories were acknowledged to be mere negotiation chips as you state above, but nowadays they are suddenly disputed? That does indicate a sliding scale towards annexation, if you ask me. I do think that the current ‘disputed’ status has more to to with the invasion of Israeli settlers since the mid-1970s (and please tell me what other reason they had to go there but dogmatic Living Space) than anything else. Just move in enough of ‘your’ people and the territories become disputed? Fair enough, by that logic i think Mexico can start disputing California and Texas too.

Israel is under no obligation to give it’s inhabitants Israeli citizenship, on the contrary, it is prohibited from doing so.
Neither is there anything wrong with Israel wishing to maintain its Jewish identity.

Any state can do as it pleases to maintain it’s national integrity, after all it’s a matter of domestic politics. Denying rights to people subjugated under a country’s rule for the simple reason that their offspring/ethnicity/religion isn’t considered good enough by that country’s ruling people, does not make me think of that country as a fair democracy. Deliberately maintaining a segregated society with haves vs. have-nots based on ethnicity/religion/offspring? Serbia was attacked for less. And you know i can suggest an even nastier parrallel when it comes to the whole theory behind such behaviour.

[b]There does not exist a single nation state on the face of this planet that does not wish to maintain its national identity through curbing both immigration and naturalization.

[/b]
The Palestinians didn’t go to Israel, Israel came to the Palestinians. Big difference.

To expect Israel to commit national suicide to satisfy someone’s warped sense of morality is pure hypocricy.

I can’t disagree with this, if you can explain me where my sense of morality is warped. I personally can’t see where it is namely.

Not a big follower of politics around here, I gather?
Israel does not wish to maintain control of the Palestinian population, all but the extreme right have accepted this long ago. That was why it entered the Oslo Process, hoping that some responsible Palestinian leadership would emerge, thus allowing for a process that would have culminated in a Palestinian state. No such luck, the current state is unilateral separation to Israeli defined borders. This will probably not satisfy the Palestinians, but they’ll have the state they want. The point is that it’s not black and white. It’s not as if there are only two solutions, and neither is viable.

Israel does not wish to maintain control of the Palestinian territories, yet it keeps extending that control even when the Oslo peace process was still active. Saying one thing while doing the other is not convincing, and somehow it does give some credence to the Palestinian frustration and actions born out of that frustration. Unfortunately, Palestinian idiocy gives Israel even more excuses to have it’s way with the occupied territories, a nice example being your “unilateral separation to Israeli defined borders“. If you think such behaviour leads to peace and stability, i can assure you it does not.

(I’ll ignore the Lebensraum comment. How appropiate that it should appear in the same post that suggests maybe Jews would be better off without their own country.)

I couldn’t care less if the Jews would be better off without their own country or not, i suggested the people in the areas controlled by Israel to be better off without their own separate countries. A very big difference – as i think my interpretation gives better chances for a long-term peace.

“Bullying the Palestinians out”? Plain slander, we could have kicked them out after the victory in 1967, after a very destructive war in 1973, like the Kuwaitis did in 1991, but no, they’re still here.

Kicking the Palestinians out would have been ethnic cleansing and would probably not remain unanswered in any way. After all, Israel always claims it’s a better state than those nasty Hama-destroying Syrians or Black September Jordanians.
But bullying the Palestinians out? It’s a perfect explanation for Israel’s current behaviour in the territories. Destroying the social/economical structure by denying farmers to go to their lands, separating families, cutting off water supplies, denying people to go to work… All in territories admitted to be not a part of Israel.

[b]It was we who withdrew from Palestinian regions…

[/b]
It was Israel who entered Palestinian regions in the first place, and acknowledged those regions weren’t Israeli. You make it sound like the withdrawal was a favour.

…we who helped them form their security services (one of which officers today blew up on a Jerusalem bus, killing ten), and yet we’re “Bullying” them out? Do you really think our elected government is so cynical, so evil, as to wish a continuation of terrorism just for some diabolical purpose?

I am suggesting it, and personally i am playing with the thought. Your current elected priminister had his men’s guns locked and loaded when he had to dismantle the Jewish settlements in the Sinai to make peace with Egypt, so he does seem pretty able to put Israeli lives at risk (non-Israeli lives are obviously of no concern as he proved in Nabi Samuel). Also, if he was willing to completely withdraw from the Sinai, then why are the Palestinian territories so much different? One explanation could be that the West Bank and Gaza strip make nice land-grab, now only to find a way of getting rid of those people. A little subtle, please.

More than enything else, the above just shows how widespread the demonization of Israel is. No matter the facts, people would just believe anything.

You can’t deny the facts are open to various interpretations, one of which i’m offering. I won’t take this comment as a subtle hint for me being an anti-semitic Jewish-conspiracy-fearmongering idiot, but i sure hope other people reading this won’t do that either.
You might also wonder why it has happened that my country, where there used to be a massive public support for the state of Israel, has suddenly become such a staunch believer in the ‘demonisation of Israel.’ I happen to think Israel is at least in part responsible for that.

Of all nuclear armed nations today, we are the sole one whose neighbors refuse to even recognize it’s right to exist, let alone that of the Jewish people to an indepedent homeland.

Egypt and Jordan have accepted and acknowledged the state of Israel, negotiations with Syria are impossible because one of the parties refuses to discuss the status of the Golan heights, and the fourth neighbour is still recovering from being an anarcho-state which was in no small part thanks to Israel’s invasion and subsequent partial occupation of that very same country.
Also, the last time Israel was convincingly attacked by a foreign agressor (or at least a country) was in 1973, and since that the only foreign attacks on Israeli soil were the Iraqi Scuds. On the other hand, since 1973 Israel attacked Lebanon, Iraq, Tunesia and Syria. While there is a justification for all those attacks (some really good ones, some absolutely pathetic), it does suggest to me that the Arabs aren’t the only agressive ones.

We do not have to justify why we need nuclear weapons. We do what we can in order to ensure our continued security. Unlike the nations of Europe, we don’t have an pact with the US that assures their assistance in times of war.

With the nuclear weapons, you don’t need such a pact.

US-Israel relations are very extensive, on so many different layers, many of which do not contradict the interests of the United States, while others also inhibit Israeli interests.

Poor rhetorics Oren! Suggesting a juxtaposition where there is none, without any sort of quantification of words like ‘very extensive’ and ‘many different layers’. You know it’s fluffy phrases like this which leads the true numbnuts to go conspiracy-all-the-way…
Allow me to disassemble:
“Many of which do not contradict the interests of the United States”
So you agree that at least part of the “very extensive multi-layered” US-Israeli relations actually do contradict the interests of the United States?
“…while others also inhibit Israeli interests.”
A meager quantification suggesting a few minor points of the “very extensive multi-layered” relations do inhibit Israel, hence suggesting the bulk does not?
If anything, this hasn’t proven one point against the Puppet Master-theory. Which was not something i suggested at all, i only stated that the Israeli nuclear weapons are a very thick bargaining chip for Israel to get US military aid.

Plus, both for you and SOC : Israel supposedly considered using nuclear weapons on the first two days of the 73 war, when the situation was considered most dire : October 6th and 7th. By the 11th Israeli forces were already advancing within Syria, making any use of nuclear weapons against Damascus impracticle. When did the US airlift begin? On October 13 (the Soviet one to the Arabs had already begun on October 9). The airlift had a lot more to do with saving face versus the Russians than anything to do with nuclear weapons, or it would have begun a week earlier.

Syria was hardly the threat during the 1973 war, Egypt was. The use of nuclear weapons against Egypt would have been far more likely (especially if Israel hadn’t been able to cross the Suez Canal itself), and far more harmful for the US – Suez Canal and such. I might be wrong on the actual dates of the war though.