War Clouds

A war is a conflict between two or more groups that involve large numbers of individuals. Wars may be prosecuted simultaneously in one or more theatres of war. Within each theatre, there may be one or more consecutive military campaigns. Individual actions of war within a specific campaign are traditionally called battles, although this terminology is not always applied to contentions in modernity involving aircraft, missiles or bombs alone in the absence of ground troops or naval forces.

The factors leading to war are often complicated and due to a range of issues. Where disputes arise over issues such as sovereignty, territory, resources, religion, or ideology and a peaceable resolution is not sought, fails, or is thwarted, then war often results.

A war may begin following an official declaration of war in the case of international war, although this has not always been observed either historically or currently. A declaration of war is not normally made in internal wars.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org

On the murderous road to "racial purity" Hitler encountered unexpected detours, largely due to his own crazed views and inconsistent policies regarding Jewish identity. After centuries of Jewish assimilation and intermarriage in German society, he discovered that eliminating Jews from the rest of the population was more difficult than he'd anticipated. As Bryan Mark Rigg shows in this provocative new study, nowhere was that heinous process more fraught with contradiction and confusion than in the German military.

Contrary to conventional views, Rigg reveals that a startlingly large number of German military men were classified by the Nazis as Jews or "partial-Jews" (Mischlinge), in the wake of racial laws first enacted in the mid-1930s. Rigg demonstrates that the actual number was much higher than previously thought--perhaps as many as 150,000 men, including decorated veterans and high-ranking officers, even generals and admirals.

As Rigg fully documents for the first time, a great many of these men did not even consider themselves Jewish and had embraced the military as a way of life and as devoted patriots eager to serve a revived German nation. In turn, they had been embraced by the Wehrmacht, which prior to Hitler had given little thought to the "race" of these men but which was now forced to look deeply into the ancestry of its soldiers.

The process of investigation and removal, however, was marred by a highly inconsistent application of Nazi law. Numerous "exemptions" were made in order to allow a soldier to stay within the ranks or to spare a soldier's parent, spouse, or other relative from incarceration or far worse. (Hitler's own signature can be found on many of these "exemption" orders.) But as the war dragged on, Nazi politics came to trump military logic, even in the face of the Wehrmacht's growing manpower needs, closing legal loopholes and making it virtually impossible for these soldiers to escape the fate of millions of other victims of the Third Reich.

Based on a deep and wide-ranging research in archival and secondary sources, as well as extensive interviews with more than four hundred Mischlinge and their relatives, Rigg's study breaks truly new ground in a crowded field and shows from yet another angle the extremely flawed, dishonest, demeaning, and tragic essence of Hitler's rule.

source: http://www.kansaspress.ku.edu

A nuclear weapon is a weapon which derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions of either nuclear fission or the more powerful fusion. As a result, even a nuclear weapon with a relatively small yield is significantly more powerful than the largest conventional explosives, and a single weapon can destroy or seriously disable an entire city.
In the history of warfare, nuclear weapons have been used only twice, both during the closing days of World War II. The first event occurred on the morning of 6 August 1945, when the United States dropped a uranium gun-type device code-named "Little Boy" on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The second event occurred three days later when a plutonium implosion-type device code-named "Fat Man" was dropped on the city of Nagasaki.
The use of the weapons, which resulted in the immediate deaths of at least 200,000 individuals (mostly civilians) and about twice that number over time, was and remains controversial — critics charged that they were unnecessary acts of mass killing, while others claimed that they ultimately reduced casualties on both sides by hastening the end of the war.(See Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for a full discussion.)

Since that time, nuclear weapons have been detonated on over two thousand occasions for testing and demonstration purposes, chiefly by the United States, Soviet Union, United Kingdom, France, People's Republic of China, India, and Pakistan.

The history of nuclear weapons chronicles the development of nuclear weapons—devices of enormous destructive potential which derive their energy from nuclear fission or nuclear fusion reactions—starting with the scientific breakthroughs of the 1930s which made their development possible, continuing through the nuclear arms race and nuclear testing of the Cold War, and finally with the questions of proliferation and possible use for terrorism in the early 21st century.

The first fission weapons ("atomic bombs") were developed in the United States during World War II in what was called the Manhattan Project, at which point two were dropped on Japan. The Soviet Union started development shortly thereafter with their own atomic bomb project, and not long after that both countries developed even more powerful fusion weapons ("hydrogen bombs"). During the Cold War, these two countries each acquired nuclear weapons arsenals numbering in the thousands, placing many of them onto rockets which could hit targets anywhere in the world. Currently there are at least seven countries with functional nuclear weapons. A considerable amount of international negotiating has focused on the threat of nuclear warfare and the proliferation of nuclear weapons to new nations or groups.

The declared nuclear powers are United States, Russia, United Kingdom, France, People's Republic of China, India, and Pakistan. Various other countries may hold nuclear weapons, but they have never publicly admitted possession, or their claims to possession have not been verified. For example, Israel has modern airborne delivery systems and appears to have an extensive nuclear program with hundreds of warheads (see Israel and weapons of mass destruction); North Korea has recently stated that it has nuclear capabilities (although it has made several changing statements about the abandonment of its nuclear weapons programs, often dependent on the political climate at the time) but has never detonated a weapon and its weapons status remains unclear; and Iran was accused by a number of governments of attempting to develop nuclear capabilities, though its government claims that its acknowledged nuclear activities, such as uranium enrichment, are for peaceful purposes.

source: http://www.shundahai.org

War Cloud (1915-1923) was an British-bred Thoroughbred racehorse who was the first horse to compete in all three U.S.Triple Crown races.

Bred by Jack B. Joel, one of Britain's most prominent Thoroughbred owner/breeders, War Cloud was sold as a yearling and brought to race in the United States. Successful racing at age two, War Cloud was the heavy favorite going into the 1918 Kentucky Derby after the U.S. Two-yr-Old Champion Colt Sun Briar was sidelined with ringbone disease. Ridden by Johnny Loftus, War Cloud however finished a disappointing fourth to longshot Exterminator. The Preakness Stakes attracted a very large field and as such had to be run in two divisions. War Cloud won one while Jack Hare Jr. won the other. In the final leg of the Triple Crown races, the Belmont Stakes, War Cloud finished second to Harry Payne Whitney's colt, Johren.

After racing successfully at age four, War Cloud was shipped to France to race in his five-year-old season but did not perform well. He was brought back to stand at stud at Claiborne Farm in Paris, Kentucky but broke a leg in 1923 and had to be euthanized. He is buried in Claiborne's equine cemetery.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org