RANT: TOMORROW

 

TOMORROW (August 6) is the eightieth anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing by the United States, the first time a nuclear weapon was used in war. (The bombing of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, was the last time such a weapon was used. So far.) Much has been written about these two Japanese cities, destroyed by America’s atom bombs, because they represent the ultimate of cautionary tales. If we treat nuclear weapons, of whatever size, as somehow ‘useable’ in a conflict, as tactical weapons that can draw a line in the sand to make your opponent stop and reconsider their actions, and if we assume such weapons can be contained on a battlefield and not spread to a broader, even a global, conflagration, then we are kidding ourselves. Escalation is almost guaranteed following a nuclear detonation, particularly if the other side is also a nuclear power. 

 

The BBC recently published an interesting article on a subset of victims of the Hiroshima bombing, namely Koreans living in the city at the time. Of Hiroshima's 420,000 people, 120,000 were Korean (IIUC the population statistics from the article). In addition, of the immediate dead following the detonation, which was some seventy-thousand people, 20% were Korean. 

Korean nationals were in Hiroshima as part of a conscripted work force or else they had come there to escape poverty in their homeland. Note: Korea had been a colony of Imperial Japan for some thirty years prior to WWII and tens of thousands of its citizens were dragooned into supporting Japan's war effort, in its factories and other sectors needing manpower. Following the bombing, the conscripts were given tasks like retrieving and burning the dead. This exposed them, disproportionately, to dangerous levels of radiation.

 

Granted, the dangers of radiation poisoning were not well known at the time, still the Koreans were treated as essentially slave labour before, during, and for a time, after the war. Many of the survivors returned home and many suffered the aftereffects of radiation exposure with higher rates of cancer, heart and kidney disease, etc. According to one survivor, a Mr. Shim:

 

“Koreans were second-class citizens – often given the hardest, dirtiest and most dangerous jobs… In the aftermath of the bomb, this distribution of labour translated into dangerous and often fatal work for Koreans in Hiroshima. Korean workers had to clean up the dead… At first, they used stretchers, but there were too many bodies. Eventually, they used dustpans to gather corpses and burned them in schoolyards. It was mostly Koreans who did this. Most of the post-war clean-up and munitions work was done by us." (BBC)

 

SCORES of returnees, including Mr. Shim, settled in Hapcheon, a small county in South Korea, dubbed “Korea’s Hiroshima” because so many survivors chose to live there. Long term studies of the survivors suggest higher than normal mortality rates when compared to Japanese survivors, and higher rates of disease and genetic disorders affecting their second and third generation descendants. Eighty years on and the peoples of two countries live with life altering effects stemming from the detonation of a single atomic bomb. Imagine the effects today’s nuclear arsenals would have on our cities should they ever be used.

👉Let’s hope that never happens.🙏

 

Cheers, Jake.

   

[The Day After and Threads are a couple of movies that should scare the pants off any viewer. Both depict life in a city following a nuclear attack. Hang on to yer knickers!]

 

 

 

RANT: RUB-A-SUB-SUB: THEM’S FIGHTIN’ WORDS!

  

 

WE ALL KNOW how hurtful name calling can be. It makes the recipient cry, or it can fire them up to punch back with words or fists. And mean tweets? We’ve all had them (well, I haven’t, but no matter). They’re like digital gauntlets thrown down or, better yet, smacked across the kisser of the addressee for all to read. Like a red flag to a bull, they've launched flame wars across the internet ever since ARPANET was born in the early 1970s.

Today, of course, name calling and mean tweets are the daily slings and arrows we all face online if we engage in anything other than posting cute kitten pics on our personal blogs. If we get a mean tweet or a half-star rating on whatever it is we post for review, then it’s BAMB! We come back with a zinger of our own. Folks, it’s one thing for losers those who have lots of time on their hands to wield sharp words like Ninja warriors brandishing ninjatō swords in battle. But, after a while, if you're like most people it's ho-hum. Time to scroll on. Except, if you’re the notoriously thin-skinned President of the United States that mean tweet is another matter altogether. 

 

SO, LAST WEEK, there was a flame war on social media between President Trump and Dimitry Medvedev, the former Russian president and current Deputy Chair of the Russian Security Council. Medvedev, who loves to troll Western elites, got a rise out of Donald Trump when he mocked Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on Indian goods into the US as a penalty for India continuing to import Russian oil. Trump responded (on Truth Social), calling the economies of Russia and India “dead” and that his tarriff warnings should be taken seriously. Medvedev responded by saying that Russia and India were far from dead and reminded the American president that Russia has a "dead hand" and that Trump should not forget about it. The Russian was referring to the “dead hand” strategic defence system first activated in the 1980s. It ensures a launch of Russia’s ICBM missile force should there be a decapitation strike on Moscow. [BOAKYAG time. Ed.] It’s definitely provocative trolling but just that--trolling. Just words in the ether. Nothing more.

 

👉EXCEPT TRUMP,* called Medvedev’s X-post a “threat” and announced last Friday that he was repositioning two “nuclear submarines” closer to Russian shores (presumably one in the North Atlantic, the other in the Pacific). Whether they are nuclear “armed” or merely nuclear “powered” is unknown. Instead of an angry reply to Medvedev’s comment, Trump decides to threaten Russia with nukes.¹

👉WHAT THE FUCK?!! Moving subs closer to Russian shores and shortening the time SLBMs (Submarine Launched Ballistic Missiles) take to reach their targets, how is this a good thing? If you think Russia is treating this as a joke, you’re either kidding yourself or you’re an ostrich with your head in a hole and your feathery ass in the air! Think about it: WWIII because of a mean tweet! Perhaps we don’t deserve to exist as a species if this is the best and brightest we have leading us. Sometimes I feel like I'm living in an idiocracy. Or at least next door to one. Just sayin'.

 

 

 Cheers, Jake. ____________________________________ 

 

* I think we should consider the possibility that Trump is losing his marbles. Such a dangerous, pig-headed decision suggests to me that the American president is increasingly non compos mentis. Is America so  lacking in leadership that they must pick candidates from nursing homes? This is crazy! Thank our lucky stars there’s someone with a normal brain in the Kremlin! 

 

1. Recall that Trump recently okayed the transfer of nuclear bombs from America to an American base in Great Britain, the first time in nearly twenty years that B61-12 gravity bombs have been deployed there. Provocative? Yes. A threatening gesture? You bet. And you can rest assured that's how the Russians view such a move. And an American four-star general commented last week how NATO could overrun the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad lickety-split. These are not signals of diplomacy, tolerance and good will. Earlier, in June, there was Ukraine's "Operation Spiderweb" and those drone attacks on Russia's strategic bomber fleet. Also that month, NATO member states (including Canada) agreed to increase defence spending to 5% of GDP by 2035. 😆  What message is Russia to take from all this? Our 'betters' are playing with fire. And all of us are liable to get burned.☮

 

[For a discussion on this serious matter, watch the short interview George Galloway has with Scott Ritter, former  United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) weapons inspector, author and commentator, here at the 1:07:57 mark of Galloway’s YouTube show. If Scott is worried, all of us should be worried.]

 

 

RANT: NUKES AND NUTTS PART ONE

 

  

NEXT WEEK MARKS the eightieth anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9 respectively, the only time nuclear weapons were used in wartime. Today, our planet hosts nine nations who have nuclear weapons in their arsenals. Five of those nations (Britain, China, France, Russia, United States) are signatories to the 1970 NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty), along with 191 non-nuclear weapon states (NNWS). The four nuclear weapon possessing states (NWS) that are NOT signatories to the Cold War treaty are: India, Pakistan, North Korea (it left the NPT in 2003 to develop nuclear weapons) and Israel (undeclared). South Sudan is a NNWS that has also NOT signed the treaty.

Under the NPT, only the above five NWS are allowed to possess nuclear weapons since their stockpiles accrued prior to 1970 when the terms of the NPT came into force; the rest must comply with treaty obligations and pledge they will only develop technologies and facilities dedicated to the peaceful use of nuclear energy, eschewing the acquisition of nuclear weapons.* Signatories also agree NOT to share nuclear weapons technology with other states, nor transfer nuclear weapons outside their territories. Signatories to the treaty that violate its terms are subject to sanctions and political pressure from the UNSC (United Nations Security Council). To tamp down the spread of nuclear weapons, the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) provides a clearing house for technical information and support for countries that develop civilian nuclear programs. The NPT also requires that treaty members open their nuclear facilities to inspection by the IAEA to ensure no nuclear material is diverted toward weapons production.

 

[On June 12, 1982, the largest protest in American history converged in New York, as an estimated one million protestors marched from Central Park to the United Nations to demand an end to nuclear weapons.]  

 

IN GENERAL, this system has kept in check the “horizontal” spread of nuclear weapons by offering assistance through commercial and financial organizations, and through the IAEA’s nuclear technology training programs. However, the  “vertical” spread of the ‘Big Five’ NWS in creating large stockpiles of warheads and bombs, leaves the NPT open to charges of hypocrisy and unfair treatment, where the ‘Big Five’ have capitalized on their early adoption of nuclear weapons to ‘corner the market’ on nuclear weapons technology, with the IAEA there to ensure certain technologies in nuclear energy production are withheld from signatory nations that might lead them to, for example, enrich uranium to weapons-grade purity. India objected to the closed nuclear ‘club’ and went ahead with its own program in the mid-1970s. Pakistan followed India, developing its nuclear weapons, also outside the NPT. It should be noted that nuclear weapons states are required to adopt policies that would decrease their stockpiles over time. During the 1960s, 70s and early 80s, the USSR and American caches of nuclear weapons were in the tens of thousands. The early SALT1 and SALT2 (Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty) treaties and the more comprehensive START and NewSTART (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) between the United States and the USSR (later Russia) brought nuclear armories of both countries down to roughly 5,200 warheads apiece, either deployed, in storage, or in the process of decommissioning.

 

FUN FACT: The NewSTART treaty was renewed during the Obama presidency in 2010, but is set to expire next year, unless Trump and his band of sad-sack clowns are foolish enough NOT to negotiate with the Russians for an extension to NewSTART. Without this treaty, there could very well begin a new arms race, and China—not a signatory to the treaty—may grow its own inventory of nuclear weapons to add to the mix. This is a very disturbing scenario, and one would think there would be growing public concern. But it is not on most people's radar. "Meep-meep!"

 

IN THE POST-WWII YEARS, the ‘Big Five’ nations¹ (Britain, China, France, Russia, United States) had economies large enough to establish both civilian and military nuclear programs.² They had emerged victorious from the war and called the shots from their position on the UN Security Council. Between themselves they established nuclear protocols and agreements. Imperfect treaties though all these were, nevertheless, they acted as a brake on a runaway arms race and promoted saner nuclear weapons arrangements. But times have changed, nine nations have nuclear weapons now and more may follow. We face the possibility that loose cannons in one or more governments may open the proverbial barn door, and we may not be able to close it, this time.

 

I SAW BY OPEN WINDOW

I saw by open window.

I saw a sky so blue.

I saw there in the distance

The line the bomber drew.

I heard the earth still breathing.

And then I heard it sigh.

I heard its heart stop beating,

Beneath an azure sky.

 

  

Cheers, Jake.  ____________________________________

 

* INTERESTINGLY, South Africa is the only country to have developed an indigenous nuclear weapons program and then given it up in 1990 to join the NPT. In the 1980s, apartheid SA developed several nuclear bombs (probably with help from Israel) to ward off the USSR which supported liberation movements inside South Africa like the ANC (African National Congress). Today, both countries are partners and founding members of the BRICS coalition. [How times change! Ed.]

 

1. The ‘Big five’ nations also happen to be the five permanent members of the powerful United Nations Security Council. Go figure.

 

2. Eighty years on from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the ‘secrets’ of building nuclear bombs and reactors is pretty much an open secret. There are some tricks-of-the-trade around enrichment processes and configuring nuclear warheads onto missiles that will fly, and so on. But many nations that have mature nuclear programs, like Canada for instance, could enrich U-235 to weapons-grade Pu but choose not to because of cost (it’s expensive to build nuclear weapons that have only one use (hopefully!) and that’s to sit in their silos. Whereas nuclear power stations can contribute to the economy by providing cheap³ electricity to run industries, etc. There are also treaty obligations as in the NPT, for instance, which come with penalties should the terms of the treaty be breached, not to mention complaints and diplomatic rows from concerned neighbours.

WHEN you enter the ‘club’, the rules of the game change, your international relationships change, and not necessarily for the better. For example, Israel has nuclear weapons—an open secret—but hasn’t formally declared itself a NWS. If it did NOT have nukes, it would have had to behave like a normal and relatively sane country, knitting together relations with its neighbours and coming to workable solutions internally on how to govern itself. I see nuclear weapons as a distorting factor in Israeli society and politics. Thus, Israel becomes a threat to its neighbours and moves like a wrecking ball through international law. It gets away with too many things it wouldn’t be able to, under normal circumstances. And that’s not good for anyone, including Israel.

 

FUN FACT: Following the June bombings of its nuclear facilities, Iran, suspicious that the IAEA leaked information to the Israelis about their nuclear program and the names of some of their scientists,  ordered the agency to leave. However, it remains a member of the NPT. Should it be attacked again, it will probably withdraw from the treaty and secretly work on a Bomb. It may then declare itself a Nuclear Weapons State or it may keep its status a secret, like Israel. MIT professor Ted Postol says for all intents and purposes Iran is ALREADY a NWS and should be treated as such, like all NWS are treated—with kid gloves. What a bizarro world we have!

 

3. I’m not so sure how ‘cheap’ nuclear power is when you factor in the humongous construction and maintenance costs, not to mention disposal of the highly radioactive waste, something NO ONE has yet found an answer. (Ship it to Mars, perhaps? Elon, what say ye?) There are approximately 440 reactors in 31 countries operating today. 

 

 

QUOTES: BOB DYLAN

 

 

Bob Dylan: "A Hard Rain's A-gonna Fall" 1963

 

RANT: TRINITY 2.0?

 

ON JULY 16/25 an anniversary passed by that most people ignored or were unaware of. It was the eightieth anniversary of the world’s first atomic explosion at Alamogordo, New Mexico, the famous (or infamous, take your pick) “Trinity Test”. At 5:29 a.m., in a tower above “ground zero”, the world’s first atomic bomb, called by all who worked on it, “the gadget”, was detonated, and a second sun briefly lit up the Tularosa Basin of the Chihuahuan Desert. The test came three-years after University of Chicago scientists, led by physicist Enrico Fermi, succeeded in developing the first sustained, nuclear chain reaction in 1942, which was a crucial step toward developing an atomic bomb.

Debates around the use of such a powerful, new weapon divided the scientific community built around the “Manhattan Project”—the secret, war-time effort to develop an atomic bomb before Germany did.* But after Germany’s defeat, in May 1945, the raison d’etre for developing such a weapon seemed misplaced. Some scientists resigned from the project and debate among the scientists at Los Alamos  (where research for the bomb was done) centred around whether such a destructive device was necessary to defeat Japan, which by the spring of 1945 seemed on its last legs. Nevertheless, work went ahead; the bombs were built and, scant months later, one was tested on July 16.

 

THE BOMB tested in the early morning New Mexican desert was the twin of the “Fat Man” bomb that would later be dropped on Nagasaki. Both had cores made of plutonium (Pu)  instead of uranium (U), the fissile material comprising the core of the "Little Boy" bomb dropped on Hiroshima on August 6. Plutonium does not exist in nature but is created within nuclear reactors from the intense flow of neutrons that almost “magically” transmutes ²³⁵U into ²³⁹Pu. This new element was then harvested and shipped¹ to Los Alamos to be used in the Trinity test, and later in the bomb dropped on Nagasaki on August 9.

The Trinity test of the plutonium bomb, the world’s first detonation of a nuclear weapon, was necessary because the fissile isotope required a complex ‘firing’ mechanism to achieve the necessary criticality, and so a test was made to ensure it would work. By contrast, the scientists at Los Alamos  did not need to test the uranium-cored Hiroshima bomb because the firing mechanism was relatively simple—essentially shooting a hunk of ²³⁵U into another hunk of ²³⁵U, with a high level of confidence it would work as designed. There was another reason to use plutonium cores for the Trinity test and Nagasaki atom bombs: it was because there was such a limited supply of enriched ²³⁵U. [“Enriched” means that 90% of the bomb’s core was composed of ²³⁵U. Ed.] During those early days of nuclear technology development, processing uranium ore into weapons’ grade fissile material was a slow, laborious process. 

 

AT THE OAK RIDGE laboratories in Tennessee, where uranium ore processing for the war effort was based, they used “electromagnetic and gaseous diffusion” methods (instead of the gas centrifuge cascades used today). By the summer of 1945 the United States had only enough processed uranium for a single uranium bomb. And it had only enough plutonium for 2-3 plutonium bombs (one for testing, one for deployment) with a third bomb under construction should they decide to attack another Japanese city.

 

FUN FACT: The raw uranium ore for the Hiroshima bomb came from Canada, notably from the Port Radium mines in the Northwest Territories. Go Canada!

 

I GUESS I HAVE fissile material and atom bombs on the brain these days, in part because of the bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities during the “Twelve Day War” in June, but also because of the provocative July 16 redeployment of American nuclear weapons [twenty to thirty B61-12 gravity bombs kitted out with glide tech upgrades. Ed.] to  RAF Lakenheath, a US Air Force base in Suffolk, England, after a nearly twenty year hiatus. Why now? How is this in any way helpful in tamping down the flame wars between Western governments and Russia? America’s second-in-a-row geriatric president, Donald Trump, has given another of his ultimatums to Russia to make a "deal" with Ukraine. Or else! In a recent interview, Trump said he was “tired” of talking to Putin. If he’s that tired, he should move back to Mar-a-lago and let someone else pick up the damn phone with Putin. One suspects the 'or else' means further sanctions against Russia: Since 2022, there have been eighteen sanction packages between the EU and U.S. which have been totally useless wet squibs, and more harmful to European economies than  to Russia.

There is worry he will authorize the deployment of long-range American “Tomahawk” missiles to Ukraine with the dangerous possibility of strikes deep inside Russia, perhaps targeting its critical infrastructure or—saints preserve us!—another swipe at Russia’s strategic defence installations. Such an action could provoke a significant response from Moscow that will only add to the tensions. 

 

GRAVITY BOMB WITH WING ATTACHMENT

UNDERLYING the conventional armed conflict is the nightmare scenario of nuclear weapons of one sort or another being used. During his first term in office, in 2019, Trump foolishly walked away from the INF Treaty (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces) which opened the door to medium range nukes being stationed once more in Europe pointed towards Moscow. [Currently Poland and Romania host American Aegis missile arrays, ostensibly to prevent ballistic missile attacks from Iran. Bollocks! Russia rightly claims such missiles could be configured for offensive measures and pointed towards Moscow.]

Russia, since America’s 2002 walk-away from the critical, Cold War ABM treaty (Anti-Ballistic Missile), began work on a system to counter the possibility of nuclear-capable missile arrays being stationed in various NATO countries which could reach Russian targets in a matter of minutes. The system they developed was a family of hypersonic missiles that could act as deterrents against such attacks. Russia built them but did not deploy them, or even announce they had such weapons, until 2019 when Trump walked away from the INF Treaty which is seen in Moscow as a ploy to station medium/long-range missiles once more in Europe. So, there’s that.

Oh, and Germany’s PM Mertz wants to create the largest army in Europe (again); next year he may host American long-range missiles, including a newly developed (?) hypersonic missile, the “Dark Eagle”. And he’s recently opined that Germany should develop its own cache of nuclear weapons. What could possibly go wrong?

FINALLY, on July 17, the U.S. Army Europe and Africa commander General Chris Donahue (who should know better), bloviated publicly how NATO could overrun the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad in no time at all.  [If you don’t know where that is, get out a map. Ed.] WTF! Doesn’t the fucktard know Russia has nuclear weapons stationed there? This fool should be relieved of his command, but he’ll probably get another star. Poke the bear once too often and you will be mauled.

 

POINT BEING that underlying all these surface clusterfucks the Ukraine conflict has wrought (and there are others) is the spectre of the nuclear genie ready to pop its cork and explode upon the world. To tamp down such a possibility, treaties (nuclear and otherwise), dialogue, diplomacy (appointing a permanent American ambassador to Russia, for example); gestures of friendship or at least mutual tolerance; respectful relations in trade, sports, the arts, science etc., anything to deescalate tensions and make bridges should be of primary concern in any diplomacy or negotiations going forward. And acknowledging Russia’s legitimate security concerns and working to allay them must have the highest of diplomatic priorities. And that includes the EU and its increasingly fractious member states who are as bellicose in their dialogue and ‘diplomacy’ with Russia as they were with the USSR during the height of the Cold War. Even more so. At least back then people had a healthy respect for nuclear weapons and their destructive capabilities. It is time for the Europeans to cool their jets. 

It seems we've forgotten how to talk with one another in this shiny, new century of ours. 

 

FUN FACT: The Doomsday Clock is now set at eighty-nine seconds to midnight. For those unfamiliar with analogue timepieces, this is not a good thing.  The clock measures the global threat risks and how near we are to a nuclear war. Since the Clock's inception in 1947 as an annual insert in the "Bulletin of Atomic Scientists", it is set the closest it's ever been to midnight. Should the clock hands ever strike midnight, then its bend over and kiss your ass goodbye.

 

Nuke ‘em here.

Nuke ‘em there.

Soon they’re nuking

everywhere.

 

Have I mentioned Israel and Iran, nuke-wise? Well, ‘nough said, for now.

 

Cheers, Jake. ____________________________________ 

* Historians tell us that Nazi Germany’s quest for an atomic bomb was no where near as advanced as the Americans. The American project’s overseer, General Groves, and his ‘all-hands-on-deck’, crash program (the “Manhattan Project”) to develop the bomb got the Americans across the finish line first.

 

1. In 1943, the Army Corps of Engineers carved out roughly 600 square miles of rural Washington state, centered around the town of Hanford, and built the first large-scale “critical” reactor. At the Hanford-B reactor plant, Uranium-235 was processed into Plutonium-239 which was then secretly shipped to the Los Alamos labs to be fashioned into the core of “Fat Man”. A second plutonium bomb was prepared in the event a third bombing of a Japanese city would be deemed necessary before Japan would capitulate.