An Americanised Flanker developed as an alternative to Super Hornet would’ve been superior in the air defence role, in the strike role, in the growler role, in the tanker role …. and would have served as a better complement to F-35C over the next two decades to boot.

Of course American pride made this impossible, but let us not pretend that the Flanker had nothing to offer.

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ
Moves on; not all your Poetry nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your tears blot out a word of it.
– Winston Churchill

The only hypocrisy here is your constant association of Argentina with the Spanish Empire when it comes to making a claim, followed by immediate dissociation of the two when it comes to the evils of that empire. And then there’s the whole issue of ignoring the fact that British settlers remained on the island, even after British government had withdrew, meaning they not only got there before Argentina, but have been there for the long haul. And early Argentinian attempts to declare control of the island resulted in a mutiny.

And when it comes to a dispute between two colonial powers, neither of which has the moral high ground, then yes, ro-sham-bo is the way such matters are usually resolved.

Except that I’ve never said a word about who I think has the better claim over and/or should rule the Falklands/Malvinas.

Spoken like someone who knows nothing of which he speaks and who has issues with the entire concept of democracy

Ah, so the American revolution wasn’t a revolt by white male property owners against those who threatened their material interests and whose conceptions of freedom and democracy were limited, entirely by coincidence, to white male owners of property, and who wrote a constitution designed to protect their interests and to hell with the Indians and the Blacks and the Women and the Poor. You learn something every day. :eagerness:

It isn’t often that a people get to vote to improve their chance for liberty and prosperity as a sovereign nation. I hope Britain make the right choice.

It would be nice to imagine that the energies behind Brexit would continue to campaign for democratic reform at home — at least to the extent of abolishing the first-past-the-post system that has produced a political class so ouch of touch with the electorate, although frankly I would prefer more radical reforms that acknowledge that we live in the 21st century and not the 18th — but of course that is unlikely to happen. As with the American revolution and indeed most other times and places, the rallying cries of “freedom” and “democracy” have served largely to disguise a simple power struggle between one set of interests and another. Once the battle is won, the utility of such concepts is at an end and can be quietly forgotten.

Magnifying your ignorance with obtuse rhetoric, BRILLIANT!
You boys keep making the same ignorant statements I am done with this, but if making those statements floats your boats, build a flotilla.

Which statement of fact do you object to, exactly? Trekbuster has already handled the prison thing.

The murder rate in the United States is four times that of Australia.

US police killed 1145 people in 2015, Australian police kill an average of 4 people each year, and Australian police kill more people than do English police and those of most European nations. Of course the US population is somewhat larger than Australia’s: when adjusted for population we find that US police kill 21 people for every person killed by an Australian police officer. Nope, not a cultural issue there at all. :rolleyes:

That’s the “freedom” that the rest of the civilised world sees when it looks as your country: the freedom to kill or be killed, the freedom to be locked up in corporate, for-profit prisons.

I still think the F-15 is a superior weapons system, whilst the Su-27 family is a superior aircraft.

In one sense this is an entirely sensible and legitimate distinction, and I agree with your conclusion.

On the other hand it is also a discussion that buries much that is interesting and worthy of discussion, for the simple reason that when you assess something as a “weapons system” the American platform is always going to come out on top, for entirely uninteresting reasons. Lockheed Martin could poop on a stick and so long as it could plug into the rest of the US MIC it would be a “superior weapons system” to even the most brilliant work conducted elsewhere.