Quotulatiousness

June 25, 2020

USA Starts the Atomic Arms Race | The Cuban Missile Crisis I Prelude 1

Filed under: Europe, Germany, History, Military, Russia, USA, Weapons — Tags: , , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

TimeGhost History
Published 24 Jun 2020

When WW2 ends the former Allies find themselves at odds with each other over ideological and economic world domination. In an atmosphere of increasing escalation, the US pulls ahead in the nuclear arms race. While the Soviet Union tries to catch up, they are far behind, and yet humanity soon faces potential destruction many times over.

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From the comments:

TimeGhost History
1 day ago
This is the first of two preludes before we will cover the Cuban Missile Crisis day-by-day in 13 episodes. Our hardcore fans might recognise this series, as these are a remake of the very first series that we ever did on this YouTube channel. Not only did we improve the set and the audio and video quality, also did we gain access to a lot more unique archive material. These episodes were also edited by dedicated editors (back then Spartacus had to edit them) and we have the help of Ryan who makes graphics and our coloriziation squad who bring history to life. We have come a long way since the old version of this was first published. We thank everyone for sticking around but especially those who joined the TimeGhost Army at www.patreon.com/timeghosthistory or https://timeghost.tv. We wouldn’t be here without them!
Cheers,
Joram

January 24, 2020

“Sorry, Boomers. Just because you’ve been told your entire lives that you’re killing the planet, that doesn’t mean it’s true”

Filed under: History, Media, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Talk about a golden oldie! Does anyone else remember the portentious “Doomsday Clock”? It was devised shortly after WW2 as a handy visual and rhetorical prop for various unilateral disarmament, Soviet agitprop, and general anti-Western civilization groups to use. It’s apparently still being used to pretend we’re facing yet another potentially world-ending crisis:

Remember the Doomsday Clock? It’s a symbolic clock created by a group of scientists in the 1940s, supposedly indicating how close the human race is getting to Armageddon. Originally the clock was set to seven minutes to midnight, and when the clock strikes 12, we’re all dead. That’s the idea, anyway. This corny propaganda tool reached its pop-culture zenith in the ’80s, when everybody from Midnight Oil and Iron Maiden and Sting to DC Comics’ Watchmen were predicting catastrophe by referencing the Doomsday Clock. People love to be scared about the end of the world, and a lot of artists made a lot of money by exploiting that. Nobody ever lost a buck fearmongering.

But you’re reading this right now, which means we’re all still here. Doomsday hasn’t come. So of course, that must mean … it’s just that much closer!

[…]

And this means as much as it’s meant for the past 70-odd years: nothing. Real clocks are instruments of science; the Doomsday Clock is an instrument of the arbitrary whims of some scientists. It might as well be the Doomsday Dartboard. Do you really think we’re any closer to planetary doom than we were during the Cuban Missile Crisis, or the Chernobyl disaster, or the premiere of MTV’s The Real World? You’ve got all those brainiacs gathered in one place, and not one of them has read “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.”

We scoff at Jim Jones and Marshall Applewhite and other doomsday cult leaders, but at least they had the courage of their convictions. If these scientists really believe we’re all doomed, why are they sticking around? If Al Gore actually believes all hope is lost, why is he still living in huge mansions and jetting off to Davos? As the great Glenn Reynolds says: “I’ll believe it’s a crisis when the people who say it’s a crisis start acting like it’s a crisis.”

October 16, 2019

QotD: Childhood fears of nuclear armageddon

Filed under: History, Humour, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

When I was a kid I was terrified of the End of the World. Kids heard things; older kids who’d read that ridiculous end-times tract, The Late Great Planet Earth said it foretold a struggle between the “bear” and the “eagle” and we all knew what that meant. One summer at Bible Camp I asked one of the pastors if this bear-eagle end-of-the-world stuff was true, and he said “we know not the day or the time.” You know, I thought, but you just won’t tell us.

It was 1968. On the night before the last day of camp, a counselor named Charlie Brown interrupted our sunset meeting by the shores of White Bear Lake to tell us the news: Russia had launched their missiles and they would destroy America before the night was out. It was time to get right with God.

Silence; crickets; small sobs. I’m sure no one thought much about Jesus right then. We thought about Mom and Dad and Spot and our room, where we really, really wanted to be right now, with the familiar smell of the goldfish bowl, and —

Charlie Brown guided us through some prayers. We all said Amen, and I’m sure for some it was the least heartfelt Amen we’d ever said. Then Charlie Brown said he had made up the story. Russia hadn’t launched the missiles. But what if they had? Were we right with Jesus?

Back at the barracks we were quiet and unnerved. No one wanted to go to sleep. No one wanted to talk, either. Finally John Larson, the bunkhouse bully, broke the silence. He was the mean kid. He was the one who tormented me at home, and had bothered me at camp. Nelson Muntz without the charm. John Larson expressed his simple wish to stab Charlie Brown in the stomach.

A dozen little Lutheran campers nodded in the dark: ya sure, you betcha.

James Lileks, The Bleat, 2003-09-11.

July 17, 2019

V Bombers – Vulcan, Victor & Valiant – The Last British Bombers

Filed under: Britain, History, Military, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Curious Droid
Published on 28 Nov 2017

It took just 11 years to go from the first flight of the Lancaster Bomber in 1941 to the first flight of the VX770, the prototype Vulcan bomber in 1952. Yet the difference between them could hardly be greater, the Vulcan along with the Victor and Valiant were a new generation of the new planes known as the “V” bombers, planes for a new era and a newly, nuclear-armed Britain.

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July 4, 2019

Assorted green scams

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Business, Environment, Food, Health, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

David Warren briefly returns to the current day (away from his normal 13th-century preferences) to look at a few of the many green scams being run by various government and industry scam artists:

Speaking with a gentleman who vends in a neighbourhood farmers’ market, I learnt something interesting, and probably true. Surviving family farms usually lack “organic” credentials. This is because getting them, from the bureaucracies that dispense them, is an immensely time-consuming process, and involves costs that would erase most of the little farmer’s profits. You have to be a big, faceless, industrial operation to afford the official “organic” labels that sucker big city consumers into paying double for essentially the same goods. That the whole system is massively corrupt, can almost go without saying. It was designed to be.

Organic scams are far from new, but perhaps more insidious because corporations love to add that “organic” label on stuff to jack up the prices on all sorts of things, like spices, wine, and many, many other items. Restaurants do the same trick on their menus, frequently assuming nobody will ever check up on them. That said, it’s mostly the well-off who get fooled because, well, they’re eager to be fooled on that score. The US government even admitted that organic certification is not about food safety or nutrition: it’s all marketing.

By coincidence, the same day my eye caught, by accident on the Internet, the announcement of a Green Award to a big car assembly “park.” They had changed all the light bulbs in their factory buildings, thus saving themselves a few thousand dollars on their multi-million electric bill, and seem to have installed new toilets, too. This sprawling high-tech carriage works remains three hundred acres of unspeakable aesthetic horror, in which human beings are enslaved to machines. But now it is “Green.”

The greenwashing of modern industrial and commercial buildings is a long-running scam, with the much-desired “LEED Platinum” certification usually, if not always, awarded to those who game the system most successfully. “What LEED designers deliver is what most LEED building owners want – namely, green publicity, not energy savings“

The environmental business — currently buoyed by unprovable, often fatuous claims of anthropogenic global warming — is perhaps the most cynical. It has spawned vested interests on a global scale, that will not be overturned by occasional exposure. At its heart is the manipulation of statistics, and scare-mongering through compliant mass media. The general public are hypnotized by repetition. I have noticed in desultory dips into the news that e.g. anomalous weather will invariably be attributed to “climate change,” when more plausible explanations are easily at hand.

This zombification extends to most other areas of reportage: invisible bogeys blamed for imaginary trends. Solutions to “environmental problems” are proposed that will not make the slightest dent in them.

Of course, the constant demands for “clean energy” almost always explicitly reject the use of nuclear power because reasons.

Darlington Nuclear Generating Station in Clarington, Ontario.
Photo by Óðinn via Wikimedia Commons.

But nuclear power, most easily in the form of molten salt reactors (on which research was killed fifty years ago), could replace most uses of coal, oil, and gas within a decade, through much smaller facilities eliminating huge transmission costs. It would be the cheaper because the fuels are readily available to start in the form of recycled nuclear waste, and the raw materials would be abundantly available thereafter.

On the question of safety, the death toll from mining, drilling, hydro dams, &c, is quite considerable — in the tens of thousands at least, post-War. Except for Chernobyl (one of many Soviet-era environmental disasters), the death toll from nuclear accidents remains about nil. No one died at Three Mile Island. Not one death was caused by the flooded Fukushima reactors (though well over twenty thousand were killed by the tsunami that caused the difficulty there).

In short, “clean energy” is not a problem. It had to be made into one by the fright campaigns of the environmentalcases, whose own power and income depends on sustaining the problem, and preventing the most obvious solutions.

June 11, 2019

“[I]t may suddenly occur to you that Mazin has turned a deadly epochal disaster into … a buddy-cop movie”

Filed under: Environment, Health, History, Media, Russia — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

I haven’t watched Chernobyl, but a lot of sensible people, including Colby Cosh, insist that it’s well-worth the watching:

It looks as though HBO’s miniseries Chernobyl will take the title as the prestige TV event of the first half of 2019. This is pretty remarkable, all things considered. The writer of the series, Craig Mazin, is still described on Wikipedia as “an American screenwriter and film director best known for writing Identity Thief, The Hangover Part II, The Hangover Part III, and The Huntsman: Winter’s War.” The director, Johan Renck, is a Swede who got his start as a Eurodance performer with the nom de guerre “Stakka Bo.” For the zillionth time, HBO has spread its patented secret sauce over unpromising ingredients and delivered superb television.

I am being something of a jerk about these people, of course. Screenwriters don’t have much control over which of their scripts get made and what happens to those scripts on the set, and Mazin is admired as a critic and teacher. (Unusual respect for writers is an obvious component of that HBO magic.) As for Renck, he got from trashy music to HBO through an apprenticeship in music video — the same kind of apprenticeship that brought us David Fincher, Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry. He may, in this regard, be the last gasp of a noble tradition.

It is not that the Chernobyl series doesn’t have elements of hackiness. After spending a couple of hours watching Jared Harris’s austere scientist and Stellan Skarsgård’s smarter-than-he-looks apparatchik warm to each other while trying to save Eastern Europe from obliteration, it may suddenly occur to you that Mazin has turned a deadly epochal disaster into … a buddy-cop movie. Set aside the wonderful visual poetry, the period detail and the fine soundtrack, and the spine you’re left holding is a whodunit. It’s the Case of the Exploding Reactor.

I think Mazin would probably admit this, if he hasn’t already, but if it’s not clear enough, the whole thing winds up in the last episode with a contrived courtroom drama, one which does not quite resemble anything that ever happened in connection with Chernobyl.

Here is the funny and admirable thing: the solution that Mazin’s “cops” work out is highly technical and involved, is explained in careful detail, and is more or less the real solution to the mystery of Chernobyl. Mazin, who is my age and was therefore a teenager when the reactor went kablooie, is not some Jordan Peterson-esque Soviet-history nerd or someone who wanted to turn Chernobyl into a metaphor. It just seems to have occurred to him one day, quite recently, that he knew the word “Chernobyl,” and remembered that Chernobyl was very bad, but wasn’t sure what exactly had happened. When he found out he realized there was a movie in it.

Between the accidents at Chernobyl and Three-Mile Island (in 1979), the nuclear power industry was set back literally decades … despite being one of the best — and safest — answers to the problem of generating enough electricity to keep modern industrial countries humming along while also reducing production of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Maybe someone will produce a TV mini-series to de-mystify the American nuclear accident soon, and debunk the half-truths, quarter-truths, and outright lies that still bedevil any discussion of nuclear power in the western world.

May 26, 2019

Our nuclear epoch

Filed under: History, Science — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In Quillette, Michael Shellenberger outlines the discussion about the advent of nuclear energy marking a new age:

Atomic cloud over Hiroshima, taken from “Enola Gay” flying over Matsuyama, Shikoku, 6 August, 1945.
US Army Air Force photo via Wikimedia Commons.

The age of humans may soon be known as the age of nuclear.

For two decades, scientists have debated whether we are living in a new geological epoch. They appear to have decided that we are and that the invention of nuclear energy should mark its beginning.

Twenty-nine of the 34 members of the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) voted this week to declare the invention and testing of nuclear weapons as the beginning of the Anthropocene or geological age of humans. The two other main contenders for demarcating the start of the epoch were the rise of agriculture, which radically altered landscapes, and the birth of the industrial revolution, which has accelerated climate change.

The 1945 explosion of nuclear weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the radioactive fallout from outdoor nuclear weapons testing, which continued until 1963, is physically embedded in glacial ice and earth sedimentation. Advocates for the invention of nuclear as the best way to mark the beginning of the human age note that, unlike anything done by hunter-gatherers, agriculturalists, or industrialists, nuclear activity leaves a human trace in the geology of Earth. “It is distinguishable,” argues Zalasiewicz. “It is distinctive.”

In their decision, the AWG scientists are implicitly recognizing that nuclear energy is a permanent feature of human civilization, like fire, agriculture, and gunpowder. As such, the decision by scientists to recognize nuclear as a revolutionary technology could help humankind to finally accept the technology along with its potential to lift all humans out of poverty, protect the natural environment, and end war as we know it.

April 30, 2019

You Will Never Do Anything Remarkable

Filed under: Health, History, Humour, Space — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

exurb1a
Published on 28 Apr 2019

Illegitimi non carborundum, yo.

So.
The original line was, “If they give you ruled paper, write the other way.” As far as I can tell it’s Juan Ramón Jiménez’s.

I am also now painfully aware I’ve written a half as ‘2/1’. Sorry maths.

Please note that this wasn’t intended to be a diatribe against critics or experts. They obviously play an important role. It was more directed at the recreational cynicism one comes across in daily life from time to time, generally pointed at young artists. I have had the privilege to meet plenty of people 1000x more talented than me, who are simultaneously doubting their abilities because of some stupid comment made by an unpleasant teacher or jaded family member.

If you are that artist, I really just wanted to say: You’re in good company; the Greats doubted themselves too. Don’t let the bastards get you down and I hope you make all manner of interesting and fantastic things.

The music is the 3rd movement of Big Baus Brahms’ Violin Concerto in D Major: https://youtu.be/Ev45Knhdlp8

I like that piece lots. I hope you do too.

Again, all the very best of luck in your projects.

April 19, 2019

“Saboteurs” – Norwegian Heavy Water Sabotage – Sabaton History 011

Filed under: Europe, History, Media, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Sabaton History
Published on 18 Apr 2019

As the scientific masterminds of the early 1940’s discover the destructive capabilities of splitting atoms, some of them try to weaponise it. One special product is important in the creation of such a weapon: heavy water. The Norwegians have a plant that produces heavy water at Vemork. The Allies, desperate to slow down the German progress towards the development of a nuclear weapon, decide to sabotage it. The Sabaton song “Saboteurs” from the Coat Of Arms album is about the dangerous mission that is conducted by the British and Norwegians in the winter of 1940 to sabotage the Norwegian Heavy Water production for the Nazis.

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March 31, 2019

Allies Plan to Hit the Nazis Where it Hurts – WW2 – 031 – March 30 1940

Filed under: Britain, China, Europe, France, History, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published on 30 Mar 2019

Newly appointed French Prime Minister Paul Reynaud and his British counterpart Neville Chamberlain spend the week looking for ways to harm the Germans. Not just by targeting their direct opponent directly, but also by exploring the idea of expanding the war into much bigger territory. In the meantime, the French prepare for the expected invasion and the Allies are laying the foundations of what might one time become a weapon of mass destruction.

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A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

From the comments:

World War Two
9 hours ago (edited)
If the Allies and the Germans follow through with all their plans, the phoney war will surely soon come to a close. But who knows what will happen. If one thing is certain, it is that they all have made plans before that never made it into reality.

A community member of ours set up a new Discord Channel. Come over to discuss the war, say hi to the community or share some memes. You can join right here: https://discord.gg/D6D2aYN

January 29, 2019

history of japan

Filed under: History, Humour, Japan, WW1, WW2 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

bill wurtz
Published on 2 Feb 2016

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January 13, 2019

Canada’s role in India’s nuclear weapons development program

Filed under: Books, Cancon, China, History, India, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Canadian nuclear technology was critical to India for helping them develop their first nuclear weapons (although the Canadian reactor was supposed to be used only for civilian purposes):

Maybe you have heard the story of how India got the Bomb with Canada’s inadvertent help. We sold India a nuclear reactor called CIRUS in 1954 on an explicit promise that the facility would only be used for peaceful purposes. When India astonished the world with its first nuke test in May 1974, having upgraded the fuel output from CIRUS, it duly announced that it had successfully created a Peaceful Nuclear Explosive. The permanent consequence was, for better or worse, a nuclear-armed Subcontinent.

This is old news to enthusiasts of Cold War history. Here’s the new news: it almost happened twice. Canadian technology was almost used by another country to break into the nuclear club.

In November, historians David Albright and Andrea Stricker published a new book called Taiwan’s Former Nuclear Weapons Program: Nuclear Weapons On-Demand. The book pulls together the previously sketchy story of Nationalist China’s covert nuclear research, which had its roots in the postwar exodus of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang party (KMT). Albright and Stricker describe decades of effort by the offshore Republic of China on Taiwan to play a double game with nuclear weapons.

At first Taiwan engaged in sneaky nuclear research — it turns out that if you research nuclear safety you learn a lot about nuclear explosions — and it tried to create a plutonium stockpile on the sly. But their scientists left too many clues: a plutonium-based nuke requires processed plutonium metal, and that is hard to make without raising suspicions. The Indian test of 1974 was an important wake-up call to the world, and the nonproliferation establishment and the U.S. Department of State started to get nervous about Taiwan.

After a 1977 confrontation with American officials, who could hardly be ignored by the vulnerable Republic of China, the KMT deep state tried subtler methods to create the “on-demand” weapon described in the title. Taiwan committed formally to nonproliferation and full U.S. inspections of their facilities, but sought to be able to make low-yield nukes within three to six months in the event of a Communist invasion from the mainland.

December 3, 2018

Eric Swalwell’s Kinsley gaffe

Filed under: Government, Liberty, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

If you haven’t encountered it, a “Kinsley gaffe” is where a politician accidentally tells the truth (Wikipedia). Newly elected US member of the House of Representatives Eric Swalwell committed a classic Kinsley gaffe in an online discussion on social media, as Jeff Fullerton explains:

Democratic representative Eric Swalwell made a really provocative statement this week according to an article from Hot Air. Pretty much serving notice that: If we confiscate your guns and you fight back, we will nuke you.

Representative Swalwell sort of gives a disclaimer that he he was not actually advocating nuking Texas or some other disobedient red state or region — but merely trying to make a point in the fashion of the Borg from Star Trek; that resistance is futile and it is the lot of us all to be assimilated — against our will if necessary. The author of the article from Hot Air points out something that my friend and mentor Bruce the Historian pointed out long ago; that there are an awful lot weapons in the hands of private citizens capable of making it hell on earth for any federal troops deployed to disarm the population or engage in the collectivization of property and resources in a martial law scenario. Or forced relocation of people. That’s the real reason they want everyone disarmed. They know from experiences in Vietnam and the “Forever War” in the Middle East; that cracking down with overwhelming force has its limits and once they put off a nuke to burn a town in Texas they might have to burn every square mile of the nation to put an end to the uprising.

Talk about excessive force!

That they’d even talk at all about using a nuclear weapon to put down an internal insurrection proves beyond the shadow of doubt that power hungry politicians are a far deadlier existential threat to us all than any crazed mass shooter or terrorist could ever hope to be!

This congress creature bases his argument on a fallacy which is common assumption among the political class: that because the federal government is capable of mustering overwhelming force — the Second Amendment is obsolete anyway. He already contradicts himself for if we the people are impotent against the overwhelming fire and manpower of the Army and the bombs and missiles of the Air Force — then why are people like him so adamant about disarming the average Joe? I think I already answered that one. […]

There is also the issue of the military itself that the political class ought to take into consideration. It may be less monolithic than assumed. Many of them still believe in the validity of the Constitution and would side with the resistance while others among the loyalist factions would have problems of conscience when it comes to mass slaughter of fellow Americans. Still others might be fearful of the consequences of being held accountable for atrocities or even treason if they end up on the losing side of things. To attack and kill your own people who you swore to serve and protect is a grievous betrayal. It is treason of the highest order and the punishment for that is death. So if you choose such a course of action and loose the fight; you go down in historic infamy to be remembered like the Nazi war criminals who stood before the Nuremberg tribunals. And you will probably [be] shot or hanged in a public execution!

November 3, 2018

Freedom’s Fighters with Tim Worstall

Filed under: Economics, Liberty, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Adam Smith
Published on 1 Nov 2018

Every month the Adam Smith Institute hails one of those who have fought the good fight for freedom over the decades. In this month’s Dr Madsen Pirie interviewed our blog maestro Tim Worstall, who visited the UK from his rather sunnier climes in Portugal.

April 28, 2018

QotD: Nixon’s final days in the White House

Filed under: History, Military, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

The sudden, hellish reality of a nuclear war with either Russia or China or both was probably the only thing that could have salvaged Nixon’s presidency after the Supreme Court ruled that he had to yield up the incriminating tapes that he knew would finish him off. Would the action-starved generals at the Strategic Air Command Headquarters have ignored an emergency order from their commander-in-chief? And how long would it have taken Pat Buchanan or General Haig to realize that “The Boss” had finally flipped? Nixon spent so much time alone that nobody else in the White House would have given his absence a second thought until he failed to show up for dinner, and by that time he could have made enough phone calls to start wars all over the world.

A four-star general commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps with three wars and 35 years of fanatical devotion to duty, honor and country in his system would hack off his own feet and eat them rather than refuse to obey a direct order from the president of the United States – even if he thought the president was crazy.

The key to all military thinking is a concept that nobody who ever wore a uniform with even one stripe on it will ever forget: “You don’t salute the man, you salute the uniform.” Once you’ve learned that, you’re a soldier – and soldiers don’t disobey orders from people they have to salute. If Nixon’s tortured mind had bent far enough to let him think he could save himself by ordering a full-bore Marine/Airborne invasion of Cuba, he would not have given the Boom-Boom order to some closet-pacifist general who might be inclined to delay the invasion long enough to call Henry Kissinger for official reassurance that the president was not insane.

No West Pointer with four stars on his hat would take that kind of risk anyway. By the time word got back to the White House, or to Kissinger, that Nixon had given the order to invade Cuba, the whole Caribbean would be a sea of fire; Fidel Castro would be in a submarine on his way to Russia, and the sky above the Atlantic would be streaked from one horizon to the other with the vapor trails of a hundred panic-launched missiles.

***

Right. But it was mainly a matter of luck that Nixon’s mental disintegration was so obvious and so crippling that by the time he came face to face with his final option, he was no longer able to even recognize it. When the going got tough, the politician who worshiped toughness above all else turned into a whimpering, gin-soaked vegetable……. But it is still worth wondering how long it would have taken Haig and Kissinger to convince all those SAC generals out in Omaha to disregard a Doomsday phone call from the president of the United States because a handful of civilians in the White House said he was crazy.

Hunter S. Thompson, “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’76: Third-rate romance, low-rent rendezvous — hanging with Ted Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, and a bottle of Wild Turkey”, Rolling Stone, 1976-06-03.

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