[Posted as a public service. If you don’t like to be publically served you might want to skip this one.]
WARNING: This Item Will Not Relax You. As my old pal The Sailor sez: “This is why I reserve the right to retreat into a thick miasma of alcohol-drenched bong hits.”
Here’s how it was done in 1959, the stone age of nuclear weapons.
Celebrated (celebrated?) as “A motion picture milestone”
Then again in 1968:
My head knocks against the stars.
My feet are on the hilltops.
My finger-tips are in the valleys and shores of
universal life.
Down in the sounding foam of primal things I
reach my hands and play with pebbles of
destiny.
I have been to hell and back many times.
I know all about heaven, for I have talked with God.
I dabble in the blood and guts of the terrible.
I know the passionate seizure of beauty
And the marvelous rebellion of man at all signs
reading “Keep Off.”
My name is Truth and I am the most elusive captive
in the universe.
Gerard Van der Leun
Comments on this entry are closed.
And so, I bought more pellets. Yes, I have the good calibers, but I’m in a city. Pellets for the squirrels, the rabbits, the birds. Pellets for the food. The bigger guns for the others.
I bought three bangsticks yesterday. My governor made me do it.
I don’t know much, but I don’t feel closer to a nuclear annihilation today versus 5 days ago. Forgive the use of logic, but One could say that if Pooty Tin’s armed forces are in this state of disarray (it’s obvious), then possibly his nukes are also unready or in a state of degradation. It’d be good if Gen Austin thought about checking on that, instead of checking vax records.
The Russian military is doing quite nicely, advancing more rapidly and with far fewer casualties than the US caused in her Iraq Wars and faster than Israel did in her Six Day War. Take it or leave it.
https://voxday.net/2022/03/01/ukraine-invasion-a-comparative-analysis/
Very few really know the state of the Russian nuclear forces. Perhaps a great many will soon find out.
You said the Six Day War. ahem. We are on day 12 in Ukraine.
Over half of the Uke-Ru War has been a big, fat pause. It’s not an administrative regrouping – it’s a command failure.
No. It’s the Russians trying to get Zelenskyy to negotiate while the Russians try to avoid mass civilian casualties. Every army that I have ever heard of has used a cessation of hostilities for one reason or another. It is simply another tactic of war. To think that such a pause always equals a command failure is something not at all borne out by the historical evidence. Even as I write these words, the “cessation of hostilities” allows Putin to slowly encircle Kiev like a python slowly strangling its prey.
With respect, I disagree. You don’t pause the pointy end of a pincer. This results in a loss of momentum, and then a loss of initiative.
Does Zelinsky look ready to negotiate? You can say it’s propaganda, but I saw a battalion of Russian artillery decimated in the open on the live update page. Yesterday, I saw T-90, T-80 and T-76s abandoned and geolocated on the live map.
No, sir. Putin’s army is developing and executing this battle poorly, and you can piece it together with enough data (although I have seen a few really badly falsified images and stories, some of those are just lazy journalism). Every day Putin fails to close the pincers, his shit gets weaker and weaker. Politically and militarily.
I don’t want to be an ass whose always got to be right, but the Russian army is meeting and exceeding my low expectations of them. Putin is not in a position to dictate terms, and he is failing to seize Kiev and most cities, for that matter. He also is not destroying the Ukraine army appreciably, and finally, his goals of scaring the weaker countries of Middle Europe, and weakening NATO, are actually going the other direction.
I don’t know what happens next but if I see Putin succeeding, I”l let you know.
And if I see Zelenskyy succeeding, I’ll let you know.
“What if We Nuke a City?” was entertaining enough, but like all anti-nuke propaganda it had a childish summation. “Gee, let’s just ban all nuclear weapons!” Yep. That’ll work. The English Long Bow, the cross bow and the machine gun were all once thought of as being able to end civilization. Various groups tried to get them banned. But I forgot! We have already rid ourselves of war in the Kellogg–Briand Pact (1928).
“The Kellogg–Briand Pact or Pact of Paris—officially the General Treaty for Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy—is a 1928 international agreement on peace in which signatory states promised not to use war to resolve “disputes or conflicts of whatever nature or of whatever origin they may be, which may arise among them”. The pact was signed by Germany, France, and the United States on 27 August 1928, and by most other states soon after.”
Don’t you just love treaties and the paper upon which they are signed?
So will Ukraine drag the world into nuclear war? Will NATO? Will the US? Russia? No to all of these. What causes wars are men, and not very many of them. In the capitals of Europe, in Moscow, in Washington DC and in Beijing are small groups of men in gray suits sitting across from computers and computing cost / benefit analyses of a nuclear war. Understand that there has always been men who have believed that such a war is survivable and that there can actually be a winner. Look up the name Herman Kahn and his “Thinking the Unthinkable”.
World War I was not caused by alliances or colonialism or armaments; it was caused by 5 men in Moscow, Paris, Berlin, Vienna and London. And so will this next war be decided by a small group of men. They will not ask your opinion by the way.
And since we are on so cheery a note, here is the ending of “The Bedford Incident”. Of course the USA against the Russians—who else?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBu3JBLWsXE
And lest we forget, “Fail Safe”. Yeah, those Russians again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUZUGTcMRpE
Enjoy what is left of your time.
This is a good comment, and informative.
My personal opinion is don’t let any of the bastards start a nuclear war. I don’t know how to do that, but perhaps we can call on that same army of hippies whose California vans have bumper stickers saying : “Free Tibet”. They seem to have answers.
Pride of Man
I re-read “A Canticle for Leibowitz” every few years.