Right Truth

Crazy Kim and the Tippy Twos

By Steve Russell at Roll Call, short excerpt below:

Kim Jong Un certainly seems crazy. But sound mind isn’t a requirement for predictable action. Tyrants often mask steady goals with wild behavior. One need only think of world pests like Fidel Castro and Saddam Hussein to realize entire regions can be thrust into unwanted global crises.

Like Castro and Saddam, Kim Jong Un has made clear he’s dedicated to expanding his ability to harm America and her allies. The difference is, he has a nuclear capability, not a borrowed or boasted one. North Korea has a proven record of long-range missile development that could ultimately hit the American mainland.

North Korea can already hit our bases abroad, our trading partners and our allies. Worse still, it’s exporting this technology to other friendly loons in the Middle East.

Not to respond is dangerous. Not to understand the growing threat is disastrous. Regarding the current danger with North Korea, it comes as no surprise that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel chose to deploy the “Army Navy Transportable Radar Surveillance” (AN/TPY-2) radar to the Japanese mainland.

Also known as the “Tippy Two,” this radar outpost is part of a broader strategy to better protect against the growing missile threat posed by Kim Jong Un.

The Tippy Two is the most advanced mobile radar system on the planet. Numerous simulations have proven its ability to identify and track a wide variety of missiles with great precision. Tippy Two radars can also conduct “real-time discrimination” — tech speak for being able to look at a complex radar picture and determine what is a real and what isn’t. But right now, there aren’t enough Tippy Twos — a point that I and many others have been making for a while.

(continue reading at Roll Call)

 

 

Smell-o-vision Television Is Here

Not an April Fool's Day joke, but a terrible idea:

Real smell-o-vision TV unveiled by Japanese team

Smell-o-vision has been a staple of bad sci-fi for decades, but could finally be edging closer to the average living room thanks to a super-accurate Japanese system.

A team from Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology in Japan have invented a 'smelling screen' that makes smells waft from the spot on a display that their corresponding objects appear. (image via PC Authority)

The development promises to make adverts for fried chicken or fresh coffee even more appealing - or alternatively add an as yet undreamed of realism to documentary programmes like Life of Grime

Smell-o-vision is nothing new, having been on the entertainment technology radar for over five decades. [snip]

The invention is 'a new olfactory display that can generate a localised odour distribution on a two-dimensional display screen,' the researchers say.

'The generated odour distribution is as if an odour source had been placed on the screen, and leads the user to perceive the odour as emanating from a specific region of the screen.'  (continue at the Daily Mail UK)

War and Rumors of War - UPDATES

(UPDATES)

WAR DRUMS: US MOVES GUIDED-MISSILE DESTROYER ON NKOREA.

Kim Jong-un targets American soldiers in latest video...

**end updates**

 U.S. Moves Stealth Jets to SKorea...

The United States sent F-22 stealth fighter jets to South Korea on Sunday to join military drills aimed at underscoring the U.S. commitment to defend Seoul in the face of an intensifying campaign of threats from North Korea.

The advanced, radar-evading F-22 Raptors were deployed to Osan Air Base, the main U.S. Air Force base in South Korea, from Japan to support ongoing bilateral exercises, the U.S. military command in South Korea said in a statement that urged North Korea to restrain itself. (Reuters)

NKorea vows to strengthen nukes...

On Saturday the North declared it was in a "state of war" with the South and warned Seoul and Washington that any provocation would swiftly escalate into an all-out nuclear conflict.

A meeting Sunday of the central committee of the ruling Workers' Party, guided by leader Kim Jong-Un, decided that the country's possession of nuclear weapons "should be fixed by law", the official KCNA news agency reported without elaborating.

The nuclear armed forces "should be expanded and beefed up qualitatively and quantitatively until the denuclearisation of the world is realised", it added.  (Fance 24)

South vows strong response...

"If there is any provocation against South Korea and its people, there should be a strong response in initial combat without any political considerations," President Park Geun-hye told the defense minister and senior officials at a meeting on Monday.

The South has changed its rules of engagement to allow local units to respond immediately to attacks, rather than waiting for permission from Seoul.

Stung by criticism that its response to the shelling of a South Korean island in 2010 was tardy and weak, Seoul has also threatened to target North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and to destroy statues of the ruling Kim dynasty in the event of any new attack, a plan that has outraged Pyongyang.   (Reuters)

 

US and South Korea Should Back Off?

Scott Snyder, a senior fellow for Korea studies with the Council on Foreign Relations, suggested that the United States, having delivered its message loud and clear, should now provide Kim with a way out.

"There is a need for the United States and South Korea to offer some clear diplomatic gestures of reassurance toward the North that can help the North Koreans climb down, calm down, and change course," Snyder said. (France 24)

 

The Next 3 AM Phone Call.

[snip]

Normally based at Langley AFB, VA, the Raptors arrived in January at Kadena AB, Okinawa, as part of a routine, four-month rotation.  While F-22s from Langley (and other installations) have been deploying to the Far East for the past four years, the decision to send them on to Korea is yet another reflection of the current crisis on the peninsula.  Moving the F-22s to South Korea clearly sends a signal to Pyongyang, but it's unclear if other military moves will follow.  When the DPRK captured the USS Pueblo in 1968, the United States deployed scores of aircraft to South Korea (along with other military forces) and many of those assets remained in place until the ship's crew was released.  
***
 
It would be easy to dismiss the latest threat from North Korea's Kim Jong-un as an exercise in propaganda, if not downright absurdity.  [snip]

In a move dutifully reported by Pyongyang's "official" news service (and picked up by media outlets around the world), the North Korean leader signed a directive placing his missile forces on standby, ready to strike U.S. targets on short notice.  The order was approved at the end of an "emergency" meeting of Kim's senior advisers, and photographs of the event featured a large maps of the United States as a backdrop, with Los Angeles, Washington, DC and Austin, Texas featured as apparent targets.

Never mind that no serious military power would engage in such a clumsy public display.  Or that Kim Jong-un looked like someone signing his first auto loan instead of a strike order.  Or the serious doubts that exist regarding the DPRK's ability to actually launch a missile that could actually reach targets as distant as Austin, or  nation's capital.  Indeed, Austin's appearance on the purported strike graphic caused a few chuckles among some analysts.  [snip]

Mr. Obama ignores North Korea at his own peril, and that of 32,000 American military personnel stationed on the personnel, along with millions of ROK civilians.  Kim Jong-un feels emboldened and he's about to give our commander-in-chief a three am phone call.  According to his propaganda bureau, the North Korean leader is ready to "settle accounts" with the U.S. and he believes they will be settled on his terms.  And so far, Mr. Obama has given him no reason to think otherwise.          (continue at In From The Cold)

 

 

Strong Leadership?

We need strong leadership in the region, but Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of President John F. Kennedy, will be nominated to be the next ambassador to Japan, the Washington Post reports.  Really?  Caroline Kennedy will most likely be the next ambassador to Japan?  Remember when she ran for policital office a few years ago?  She could hardly string  two intelligent sentences together.

 

 

Emperor

As the Japanese surrender at the end of WWII, Gen. Bonnor Fellers is tasked with deciding if Emperor Hirohito will be hanged as a war criminal.  This is the premise of the movie Emperor (video below).  Tommy Lee Jones stars as General Douglas McArthur;  Matthew Fox is Gen. Bonnor Fellers;  directed by Peter Webber.  Hubby and I saw this movie yesterday and I highy recommend it.  Based on real events, using some actual WWII film footage, images, documents, the cast does a great job.

... to bring to life the American occupation of Japan in the perilous and unpredictable days just after Emperor Hirohito's World War II surrender. As General Douglas MacArthur (Jones) suddenly finds himself the de facto ruler of a foreign nation, he assigns an expert in Japanese culture - and psychological warfare - General Bonner Fellers (Fox), to covertly investigate the looming question hanging over the country: should the Japanese Emperor, worshiped by his people but accused of war crimes, be punished or saved? Caught between the high-wire political intrigue of his urgent mission and his own impassioned search for the mysterious school teacher (Hatsune) who first drew him to Japan, Fellers can be certain only that the tricky subterfuge about to play out will forever change the history of two nations and his heart. (c) Roadside Attractions  (Rotten Tomatoes)

Video (you can skip the advertistement).

..

 

From a review of Emperor at the A.V. Club:

The idea that nobody would care about momentous world events without some sappy romantic angle to add “heart” speaks to everything that’s woefully mediocre about mainstream American filmmaking these days. Even as an investigative procedural, though, Emperor is pretty dry stuff—the kind of movie in which one character delivers a lengthy monologue on European colonialism (vis-à-vis Japan’s invasion of Manchuria) and another testily replies “I don’t need a history lesson, your excellency.” Maybe not, but somebody evidently thought the audience did. Unlike The Sun, however, Emperor does at least have a credible MacArthur, even though Jones’ job description doesn’t include transforming himself into a well-known historical figure. (It might as well be Agent K in charge of the occupation.) Showing up about once per reel to deliver some homespun sarcasm, he provides a much-needed jolt of energy in what’s otherwise too often a beautifully lit, impressively mounted textbook chapter

 

Emperor is showing in select theaters, it may not be in your local area, but it's worth a drive to see.

See sample reviews of Emperor here, here.

 

The US response to North Korea

North Korea has proven it is a nuclear threat not only to South Korea, Japan, and China, but a serious threat to the United States - and what response do we offer -  a vow of tough action from the United Nations Security Council in the form of a resolution.  A resolution!  North Korea is so scared I'm betting they will dismantle their program tomorrow (not).  Bring in the clowns!

North Korea's third nuclear test  was "strongly condemned" by the United States.  Not just condemned, but strongly condemned.  Pyongyang said "even stronger" action might follow, saying its test was a response to US "hostility".

Nuclear test monitors in Vienna say the underground explosion had double the force of the last test, in 2009, despite the use of a device said by the North to be smaller.

If a smaller device was indeed tested, analysts said this could take Pyongyang closer to building a warhead small enough to arm a missile.

UN sanctions on North Korea were expanded after the secretive communist state launched a rocket in December, in a move condemned by the UN as a banned test of missile technology.

'Stern' message

North Korea's latest nuclear test comes as senators in Washington prepare for the first votes on whether to confirm Chuck Hagel as successor to current Defence Secretary Leon Panetta.  (continue at BBC)

Via Drudge:

TEST #3: 'Miniaturized, lighter'...
Japan's PM Calls Urgent Security Meeting...
Pyongyang orders troops to prepare for combat...
2008: Obama Promised to 'Eliminate' NKorea Nukes...
Test A Response to 'Outrageous' US Hostility...
On Eve Of Obama Speech...
World shaken...
Will boost Iran...
Savage envisions China threat in 'Time for War'...
Obama's Asia team has no Korea experts...

.

 

An Answer to the Muslim Problem

By Susan North

 

A friend in Florida sent me another exciting email that provides solutions to a serious  problem.  Now before anyone comments that this is biased or hateful, or whatever, I would just like to point out that Islam and allegiance to America are incompatible.  That’s it, because  I could go on (and on) about how nearly every war on the planet involves Muslims, that they are the only group today that routinely cuts off heads, etc., etc.

   

The email below seems to have been published on an assortment of websites and blogs in the last year, and I could not pin down the origin.  However, I did find a very reliable source, one that informs me that there is some fear  and prejudice against Islam in Japan  and that most Japanese are uninterested in religion.  It seems the main problem for Muslims in Japan is that they are foreigners,but that would be true of any foreigner.

 

As to the government and other institutions, there are no barriers to Islam  and, in fact,  Japan does not even ask for religious affiliation in their national census. There are mosques in Japan and Muslims are free to pray and recruit.

All the Emperor's Men: Kurosawa's Pearl Harbor

All the Emperor's Men: Kurosawa's Pearl Harbor , by Hiroshi Tasogawa

Author Hiroshi Tasogawa was the translator for film director Akira Kurosawa during the making of the Pearl Harbor movie Tora! Tora! Tora!, a movie that, as producer Elmo Williams put it, "will show how tragic misunderstandings can grow between two nations, and how misunderstandings can combine with an unpredictable chain of coincidence to produce disaster....No attempt will be made to place blame on individuals of either side." 

Unfortunately for Kurosawa, he was expelled from the film before his vision could be realized, and the production went on without him.

Now, the "film that could have been" lives on in Hiroshi Tasogawa's new book, All the Emperor's Men: Kurosawa's Pearl Harbor, which is our rare window into the version of Tora! Tora! Tora! the masterful director never got to make, Kurosawa's cultural insight on the historical event of the attack on Pearl Harbor, and what he was trying to communicate through his medium of choice.

The tragic miscommunications between the American film studios and Japanese production team produced disaster, echoing the misunderstandings and conflicts between the same two cultures that the film was trying to depict. The book is more than a chronicle of movie-making mishaps: it probes deep into personalities, philosophies, and cultural differences.

When 20th Century Fox planned its blockbuster portrayal of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, it looked to Akira Kurosawa – a man whose mastery of the cinema led to his nickname “the Emperor” – to direct the Japanese sequences. Yet a matter of three weeks after he began shooting the film in December 1968, Kurosawa was summarily dismissed and expelled from the studio. The tabloids trumpeted scandal: Kurosawa had himself gone mad; his associates had betrayed him; Hollywood was engaged in a conspiracy.

Now, for the first time, the truth behind the downfall and humiliation of one of cinema's greatest perfectionists is revealed in All the Emperor's Men. Journalist Hiroshi Tasogawa probes the most sensitive questions about Kurosawa's thwarted ambition and the demons that drove him. His is a tale of a great clash of personalities, of differences in the ways of making movies, and ultimately of a clash between Japanese and American cultures.

$29.99 (US)
Inventory #HL 00314945
ISBN: 9781557838506
UPC: 884088635770
Width: 6.0"
Length: 9.0"
337 pages

..

Purchase at Amazon.com $19.79.

From Movie Maker:  [snip]

Tora! Tora! Tora! was one of a wave of big-budget World War II combat movies produced in the 1960s and ‘70s that emphasized the re-creation of historical battles—films like The Longest Day (1962), Battle of the Bulge (1965), the great In Harm’s Way (1965), and Midway (1976). These pictures combine narrative and docudrama storytelling to varying degrees, but all are primarily concerned with feeling “realistic.” Darryl F. Zanuck had resuscitated his career by producing The Longest Day, an account of D-Day told from multiple perspectives and by multiple directors, and a film whose success allowed Zanuck to regain control of the Twentieth Century-Fox studio. Five years later Zanuck decided he wanted to produce a Pacific version of The Longest Day, focusing on the events leading up to the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor.

With his son Richard Zanuck (head of production for Fox) and producer Elmo Williams, Zanuck set about putting together the massive production. The idea was for the two perspectives on Pearl Harbor to be written separately in Japan and Hollywood, then combined into one massive screenplay. The title, “Tora! Tora! Tora!,” was the Japanese code to signal their surprise attack had been achieved. ("Tora" means “tiger.") Richard Fleischer would direct the American side of the story, while Akira Kurosawa would write and direct the Japanese side. Elmo Williams in particular figured that an artist of Kurosawa’s prominence would lend the picture instant stature and importance.

The problems started right away, however. Fox wanted a film of riveting movement and spectacle, and a factual account of what led to Dec. 7 told from both sides; Kurosawa saw a chance to tell an epic tragedy primarily of one man, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, who engineered the Pearl Harbor attack. He wanted to explore “the tale of one human being who, in his brief moment in the spotlight of history, acted contrary to his own aspirations and ideals brought about a fatal collision between two countries, one that brought his own country to the brink of ruin and resulted in his own death.” This was not the movie that Elmo Williams and Fox were trying to make.

Kurosawa also wanted to write the entire film, and his first draft ran to 1000 handwritten Japanese pages (400 typed English pages). Williams found the draft bloated and at times incoherent, though it had its moments of Kurosawa magic—such as a scene of a fisherman on the Japanese coast seeing a massive battleship silently gliding through the dark, misty, predawn sea: like a monster in a nightmare.

It’s descriptions like that which allow one to understand why Fox stuck with Kurosawa as long as they did, for despite all the erratic behavior that was to follow, the man was undeniably a cinematic genius whose vision for this film, if somehow allowed to be realized, might have resulted in a masterpiece. But the reality of the situation meant this was an impossibility. This was Fox’s film, and Fox’s vision, and there was never any thought to Kurosawa creating the entire movie. The studio simply decided to try and compromise enough with him to keep everyone happy.

(continue reading at Movie Maker)

Hono­lulu after Pearl Harbor: A report published for the first time, 71 years later

Via the Washinton Post:

On Dec. 7, 1941, when Japanese planes attacked Pearl Harbor, I was working as a reporter for the Hono­lulu Star-Bulletin. After a week of war, I wrote a story directed at Hawaii’s women; I thought it would be useful for them to know what I had seen. It might help prepare them for what lay ahead. But my editors thought the graphic content would be too upsetting for readers and decided not to run my article. It appears here for the first time.

For seven ghastly, confused days, we have been at war. To the women of Hawaii, it has meant a total disruption of home life, a sudden acclimation to blackout nights, terrifying rumors, fear of the unknown as planes drone overhead and lorries shriek through the streets.

The seven days may stretch to seven years, and the women of Hawaii will have to accept a new routine of living. It is time, now, after the initial confusion and terror have subsided, to sum up the events of the past week, to make plans for the future.

It would be well, perhaps, to review the events of the past seven days and not minimize the horror, to better prepare for what may come again.

Betty McIntosh was assigned to cover the emergency room at the hospital.  Her account of what she saw will not soon leave your thoughts.  Her reporting expands to the Red Cross centers, to the streets, local businesses, and more.  She reports on how women and children stepped up to do whatever the situation required of them.

  Continue reading at the Washington Post, watch the video (hat tip Marcus Wilder)

Also see:

Is Pearl Harbor Ancient History?  Alan Caruba: What I fear most is that the children and grandchildren of those baby boomers may not even know what occurred on that Sunday morning 71 years ago.

 

Jimmy Doolittle leads the raid on Japan

By Karen Holt, The Historic Examiner

December 7, 1941 was referred to by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as ‘a day which will live in infamy.’  After being caught off guard by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor, the American forces immediately set about planning a retaliatory attack. 

Following the attack, typical service rivalries were set aside while retaliation plans were created.  The evaluation process began with Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Ernest J. King.  He turned to General Henry H. ‘Hap’ Arnold, the commander of the Army Air Forces.  General Arnold ‘passed-the-buck’ to Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle, who was assigned the task of coordinating the details with the Navy.

As heads knocked during the planning stage for the payback, the most plausible solution was an air strike from a carrier, an idea President Roosevelt offered four months earlier.  Doolittle looked upon the raid as bold and aggressive.  Normally the idea of a bomber taking off from an aircraft carrier was considered an insane move; however, it as the best way to give the American planes a fighting chance. (B-52 Mitchell Bomber Photo credit:  deroeck.co.uk)

One of the first decisions to be made was which aircraft would be used for the mission.  The B-25 Mitchell bomber was chosen.  A medium weight aircraft, the bomber was manufactured by North American Aviation.  These planes saw service in every theatre during WWII. With room for a crew of six, they could carry 6,000 pounds of bombs.  At the time, eighteen of these planes were housed in Oregon.  They were flown to Indiana where modifications began to prepare them for the task they would undertake. 

Speech-jamming gun that silences people mid-sentence

Invented by the Japanese, the device could be used to hush noisy speakers in public libraries or to silence people in group discussions who interrupt other people's speeches.  Can I please have one to point at the loony far Left?  (Just kidding, I'm for free speech, but you've got to love the idea of this gadget.)  As Sweetness and Light notices,  it cannot stop people making meaningless sounds, such as "ahhh," that are uttered over a long time period ... which means Mr. Obama and most Democrats are safe.

Kazutaka Kurihara of the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, and Koji Tsukada of Ochanomizu University, developed a portable "SpeechJammer" gun that can silence people more than 30 meters away.

The device works by recording its target's speech then firing their words back at them with a 0.2-second delay, which affects the brain's cognitive processes and causes speakers to stutter before silencing them completely.

Describing the device in a research paper published Feb. 28 at arXiv.org, Kurihara and Tsukada wrote, "In general, human speech is jammed by giving back to the speakers their own utterances at a delay of a few hundred milliseconds. This effect can disturb people without any physical discomfort, and disappears immediately by stopping speaking."  (Fox News)

Hee hee.