Originally Posted by Pointer19:
Anybody seen "Leave the World Behind" yet? It's popping up on a bunch of social media and such. Kind of a believable doomsday scenario.
I thought it was okay; kept waiting for something to happen or some explanation as to what or who was causing it. Probably a lot more realistic than what most end of the world movies are like. Slow descent into chaos. [Reply]
Wow. I learned so much last night. I had a basic understanding of the Cuban Missile Crisis but not how complicated it became and how truly dangerous it was.
We really came incredibly close to nuclear war. The Kennedys and especially Adlai Stevenson are American heroes for being the coolest heads in the White House. The scene with Stevenson in the Security Council is almost verbatim what happened IRL.
The Costner character is complete bullshit unfortunately but a fine enough analogy for White House Counsel Ted Sorensen.
Allow me to shed a little different historical light on the Cuban Missile Crisis. The whole fiasco began as a major US intelligence failure in that the missiles were already there and ready before the US had a clue. Those missiles could take out everything from Texas to DC quicker than the US could mount any kind of response, if only the Soviets decided to pull the trigger and blow us away.
Kennedy's first response was to dither for a week and not tell the media or even the military that a quarter of the country's population had a big unstoppable nuclear bullseye on it. After diddling for a week, JFK announced the situation to the world, threatened to respond to missiles from Cuba with bombers over Moscow (without being clear as to who would be sending them with the whole US government drifting downwind in an ash cloud), and to enforce a naval blockade of Cuba, which in itself was technically an act of war. When the Russians agreed to pull the missiles out of Cuba, JFK was advertised as a strong young hero who saved his country. What got left out of the media hype was how JFK almost got the USA vaporized and wound up making the country weaker.
First, the Russian freighters hauling more missiles to Cuba which turned around and went home were escorted by a half dozen Soviet diesel subs. As part of the blockade enforcement, former naval officer JFK ordered those subs persecuted mercilessly by our ASW assets. Those subs were constantly harassed by subs, ships, and aircraft until they gave up trying to hide and just proceeded to Cuba or back home on the surface. What the Americans did not know (again, intelligence failure) was that each of those boats carried among other armaments two nuclear torpedoes, and that the Soviet command/control protocol for nuclear release bore no semblance of similarity to ours. Those young submarine commanders had complete autonomy to initiate nuclear warfare on their own against the USA if they felt threatened by an act of war. Our harassment of their subs in international waters to enforce an illegal blockade was an act of war, but fortunately for us all six Russian sub commanders acted prudently and held their fire when the POTUS acted foolishly. I see this as roughly parallel to recent threats to launch airstrikes on Russian manned air defenses as if there would be nothing to worry about from the Russian nuclear arsenal afterwards.
Second, the negotiating chip which convinced Kruschev to remove his missiles from Cuba was Kennedy's promise to remove the US missiles from Turkey, from whence the USA had a nuclear advantage similar to negotiating with a gun to Kruschev's head. The missiles in Turkey predated the arrival of Soviet missiles in Cuba. By withdrawing missiles from Cuba in return for a parallel US withdrawal from Turkey, Kruschev removed the Turkish threat to his country at no real cost. Kruschev was the shrewd negotiator, not JFK. I see this as parallel to the victory claim by POTUS that he forced Assad to hand over his WMDs to Russia while ignoring the new flood of Russian military hardware into Syria to enable more effective killing of rebels and civilians with explosives instead of fickle chemicals.
Third, while the USA did withdraw missiles from Turkey, no provision was made to ensure that the Soviet missiles in Cuba actually went anywhere other than out of the view of our spy planes. I see this as the equivalent as declaring victory based on a handover of chemical weapons that no US observer witnessed, or may happen in the form of swapping out older and less effective chems for new and better ones. With the new influx of Russian arms, and quietly keeping the chems or even upgrading them would retain what little strategic deterrent Syria has against Israeli nuclear weapons.
Fourth, the USA fundamentally misunderstood Soviet combat doctrine. Even up through the mid-1980s, the Americans clung to the fantasy that nuclear warfare would be a gradually developing thing, beginning with limited use of tactical weapons by one side out of desperation, responded to with theater range weapons of larger scale before progressing to ICBMs after a breakdown of political negotiations. The American belief in this fantasy was so strong that the limited attempts at an anti-ICBM system were deployed to protect our missile silos against a surprise first strike. The Russians deployed their anti-ICBM attempts to protect cities, not silos, because they intended their silos to be empty from the moment a war started. We thought their MiG-25 which defected to Japan was laughably inept because its electronics were built around old school vacuum tubes, but the Russians built it that way on purpose because tubes are impervious to EMP effects, and they intended to battlefield to be nuclear from the very beginning. The US superiority in delicate electronic sensors did little to impress the Soviets because they focused on superiority in things that would withstand all but a nearby nuclear detonation - infantry, armor, artillery, aircraft dedicated to ground attack or visual dogfighting, unguided rockets, and simple transport vehicles containing no sensitive electronics at all. That "nuke 'em first then conquer then with what you've got left" mentality was misunderstood and underestimated by a POTUS who cavalierly committed acts of war.
Apologize for pissing on this movie recommendation, but the parallels from that era's crises to the ones we face today are obvious. So much misunderstanding or outright ignorance of Russian/Soviet doctrine by an administration that refuses to think ahead and act clearly. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Hammock Parties:
Wow. Oliver Stone's JFK was ****ing amazing. Amazingly well shot, too, and great score. Costner squoze some tears out of me at the end.
No doubt that the CIA took out Kennedy. Back and to the left. That shot could only have come from the fence.
Gonna have to watch Nixon and W. now.
I love JFK. It has one of the best casts and some of the best editing you'll ever see in a movie, but keep in mind that much of that movie is fiction, by Oliver Stone's own admission. The Donald Sutherland character, for example, didn't exist in real life. [Reply]
Originally Posted by :
What the Americans did not know (again, intelligence failure) was that each of those boats carried among other armaments two nuclear torpedoes, and that the Soviet command/control protocol for nuclear release bore no semblance of similarity to ours. Those young submarine commanders had complete autonomy to initiate nuclear warfare on their own against the USA if they felt threatened by an act of war. Our harassment of their subs in international waters to enforce an illegal blockade was an act of war, but fortunately for us all six Russian sub commanders acted prudently and held their fire when the POTUS acted foolishly
Yes, this part was fascinating, too. They definitely glossed this over in the movie.
Originally Posted by :
Running out of air, the Soviet submarine was surrounded by American warships and desperately needed to surface. An argument broke out among three officers aboard B-59, including submarine captain Valentin Savitsky, political officer Ivan Semyonovich Maslennikov, and Deputy brigade commander Captain 2nd rank (US Navy Commander rank equivalent) Vasily Arkhipov.
An exhausted Savitsky became furious and ordered that the nuclear torpedo on board be made combat ready. Accounts differ about whether Arkhipov convinced Savitsky not to make the attack or whether Savitsky himself finally concluded that the only reasonable choice left open to him was to come to the surface.
During the conference, McNamara stated that nuclear war had come much closer than people had thought. Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, said, "A guy called Vasily Arkhipov saved the world."
Originally Posted by Hammock Parties:
Wow. I learned so much last night. I had a basic understanding of the Cuban Missile Crisis but not how complicated it became and how truly dangerous it was.
We really came incredibly close to nuclear war. The Kennedys and especially Adlai Stevenson are American heroes for being the coolest heads in the White House. The scene with Stevenson in the Security Council is almost verbatim what happened IRL.
The Costner character is complete bullshit unfortunately but a fine enough analogy for White House Counsel Ted Sorensen.
Learning alot about history....from movies. [Reply]
We need more American heroes today like JFK and RFK and Adlai Stevenson. Were they perfect? No. But someone out there thought they were worthy of being lionized.
Instead we're stuck with Bidens, Schiffs and AOCs. [Reply]
No Way Out with Kevin Costner! Awesome movie, great twist! The movie that made Costner a star! And Sean Young's TITS!
I'm on a Roger Donaldson kick after watching Thirteen Days. His films definitely have a certain something that keeps you glued to the screen. Almost a subdued visceralism, like a diet Paul Verhoeven.
Next I'll be watching The Bounty, I know the score is legendary. [Reply]
Saw Wanka. Decent movie with original plot. It adopts the songs from the first movie. The Loompa Loompa was restored back to the original one as well. [Reply]
Such an amazing story. I knew it was a famous story about a mutiny. I didn't know the fucking descendants of the mutineers are alive today on Pitcairn Island, or that the dudes they kicked off the boat ate one bite of bread a day for weeks until they reached civilization almost dead.
Command performances by Sir Anthony Hopkins, Mel Gibson and native tits.
The Butler - 2015
Interesting "true" story about a black butler in the white house, who used to pick cotton in the 1920s and saw his daddy shot dead by slavers in the fields.
A lot of it was made up garbage, but it was interesting seeing the different perspectives on race wars between older generations of blacks and newer ones.
Also everyone who played a President was fun to watch. Alan Rickman as Reagan was cast against type and wonderful to watch. [Reply]
Originally Posted by AdolfOliverBush:
I love JFK. It has one of the best casts and some of the best editing you'll ever see in a movie, but keep in mind that much of that movie is fiction, by Oliver Stone's own admission. The Donald Sutherland character, for example, didn't exist in real life.
That is completely false.
“Mr X” was/is Fletcher Prouty.
And link to stone saying it’s mostly fiction? [Reply]
