RANT: AUGUST 6, 1945

 

YESTERDAY, AUGUST 6, was the 81^st anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. August 9 will be the 81^st anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. Both cities received widespread destruction with total deaths estimated at around 210,000 civilians.* The Hiroshima bomb, nicknamed “Little Boy”, used Uranium-235 as its explosive core, while the Nagasaki bomb used Plutonium-239, with yields of 15 kilotons of TNT and 21 kilotons of TNT¹ respectively.

  

THE PHOTOGRAPHS BELOW are of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the days after the bombings. One should note that while the Nagasaki bomb was more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, the damage to the city was less and the death toll lower. This is because the bomb was dropped slightly off target, whereas the earlier Hiroshima bomb was dropped on the city centre, not far from city hall, where the building’s skeletal remains at ground zero can be seen in the distance on the left bank of the Ota River. Hiroshima is on a flat river plain where there are few natural obstacles to deflect the blast and fire. The city of Nagasaki, by contrast, sits in “an amphitheater of steep coastal slopes and peaks”, which absorbed and deflected some of the 21 kT blast. Both cities were destroyed and tens of thousands died in an instant with many more succuming to injuries and radiation poisoning in the days, weeks and months after the bombs fell. 

 

HIROSHIMA

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NAGASAKI

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

THE DRAWING BELOW is from the book Unforgettable Fire—Pictures Drawn by Atomic Bomb Survivors, published by Pantheon Books, 1977. 

 

"The girl was injured on the chest and covered with blood. She had no shoes on her feet. Still able to think clearly she avoided the many splintered things on the road and trudged towards her home where her family was waiting for her.

Passing through Matoba section, the girl and I came to the area called Kojin-machi Akebono-cho. On both sides of the road there were temples. Everywhere was a sea of fire. No road was open for us anymore except for a narrow path and that was barely passable. The clothes which we earlier had dipped in water had already dried so much that they were almost to the point of burning. There was no time to lose. We dipped our clothes in the water that was stored in an air-raid shelter and dashed through the fires desperately.

‘Awfully hot! Is this the end of my life?...Oh God!...Help me!’ I murmured and prayed.

When we managed to come to a safer place, we looked back at the path we had dashed through. It was the most frightful scene I had ever witnessed in my life. Yet even at this safer place, I found many dead bodies lying in the air-raid shelter, under fallen trees, and everywhere. When we final arrived at the girl’s home at Nakayama section, the darkness of the summer’s night was already falling upon us.”

CHEERS, JAKE. ____________________________________

 

* Figures include immediate deaths from the explosions and those later succumbing to radiation burns and radiation sickness by the end of 1945.

 

1. “TNT” stands for “trinitrotoluene”, a compound that has a chemical “punch” less than dynamite but is more stable with a longer burn rate, making it useful as a propellant in firearms, bombs and artillery shells. Dynamite’s higher shattering effect (“brisance”) and shorter burn rate is aided by the addition of nitroglycerin, a relatively unstable substance, which gives dynamite a “higher detonation velocity, a sharper shattering effect, and more chemical energy per kilogram than TNT.” Dynamite is a “high explosive” useful in mining, excavation, and blowing shit up.

TNT is used as the “benchmark” from which to gauge the relative power of various explosives including nuclear weapons. For comparison, the explosive potential of today’s nuclear weapons are orders of magnitude greater than those early bombs at the end of WWII. For example, 1 megaton=1000 kilotons=1,000,000 tons. Recall that the Hiroshima detonation was roughly 15 kilotons or 15,000 tons of TNT. Just a burp by today’s standards!

 

👉The largest nuclear weapon ever detonated was in 1961 over the Novaya Zemlya archipelago in Russia’s far north. Dropped from a high-altitude bomber, the explosion registered as 50 megatons or 50,000,000 tons of TNT. The Nagasaki bomb (“Fat Man”) yielded 21 kilotons or 21,000 tons of TNT.

 

💥DID YOU KNOW that a Plutonium-239 sister to the Nagasaki bomb, was the one they tested at the Alamogordo (nicknamed "Trinity") test site in New Mexico on July 16, 1945? The bomb's builders didn't bother testing a Uranium-235 bomb because they knew it would work with its relatively simple firing mechanism. The bomb with the Plutonium core was triggered by explosive charges surrounding it, forcing the core to implode and in doing so releasing a tremendous burst of light, heat and blast. The scientists at the Trinity test site weren't sure if it would work. But it did. And here we are.💥

 

👉WE CAN REST EASY, HOWEVER, with the assurance that modern nuclear arsenals rarely keep in stock warheads with over one or two megatons of explosive power (something about overkill, I should think). And, should anyone want to get an understanding of what it would be like to live in a city when a 1 Mt nuclear device is detonated they should read Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear War. [A word of caution for those who like to read in bed: Be prepared or you’ll shit the sheets for sure! Ed.] 

 

 

    

 

RANT: I'LL SEE YOUR DRONE AND RAISE YOU A BABY NUKE.

    

WITH THE COCK-UP in West Asia (Middle East) threatening to ignite into something larger and more dangerous these past few months, we’ve been neglecting that other war, the one in eastern Europe, namely NATO versus Russia. Of course it’s really the collective West—Europe, America and cucks like Canada—who are in the fray supplying weapons and money to Kiev. So, it’s not just Ukraine fighting Russia, though it's Ukrainian soldiers who are the ones doing the dying, saving us the distress of seeing coffins draped with Canadian flags arriving home. So, there’s that.

But after four-plus years of war, the end game is closer than we imagine. To be clear: Russia is winning the war. It will succed in defeating Ukraine and its Western backers. All along the nearly 1300km front line, Russia is advancing at a relentless pace, if a slow one, because its main war aim is to attrit the Ukrainian army until it is a spent force. The capture of territory is secondary to the Kremlin’s goal of destroying Ukraine’s NATO trained, supplied and armed military that, in addition to the possibility of "defensive" nuclear-capable cruise missile installations along its border, it considers the force and its NATO backers as an existential threat to the Russian nation. Naturally, the Americans would feel similarly threatened if China, say, were to build missile installations at Windsor, Ontario aimed at Washington. Of course, the Americans would take action to eliminate such a threat along its border. [see: "radioactive ashtray". Ed.]

IN UKRAINE'S NORTH, the city of Kharkiv may once more be in Russian hands by summer’s end. Next is Sumy, a city of 250,000 and the last metropolitan region standing between Russian forces and Kiev. Russia will probably encircle and lay siege to the city, as it has done to other Ukrainian cities, cutting off supplies and weaponry. But the big question is: Will the Russians move on Kiev? Or will they move south on Odessa where, in recent weeks, it has been bombing port facilities and infrastructure in a bid to cut off weapons shipments and eliminate naval drone launching sites. When Russia finally takes the historic port city, Ukraine will be cut off from the Black Sea, becoming a land-locked rump state.

 

THERE IS SOME TALK about Russia finally taking the gloves off and winding up the war, taking all of what it calls Novo Rossiya (“New Russia”) that includes much of eastern Ukraine where most of the population is ethnically Russian and whose first language is Russian. It’s tragic to think that Ukraine could have saved so much blood and treasure and remained whole [except for Crimea] had it signed off on the “Istanbul Accords” in 2022 during the early months of the conflict. But pressure from the West, notoriously through the efforts of then-British PM Boris Johnson acting as Western point-man, put the kibosh to the peace treaty by guaranteeing NATO’s full support (save for troops) if Zelensky would tear up the deal. He did and here we are today.

OF LATE there has been an increase in Russian drone and missile attacks on Kiev and on energy and weapons manufacturing facilities elsewhere in Ukraine, and these may portend a change in the pace of the war.

 

👉THERE HAS ALSO BEEN A CHANGE in rhetoric as the NATO-Russia conflict grinds on, namely the use (or more accurately the lack of use) of the term “deterrence”. During the Cold War, the word was always present when analyzing the threat levels of proxy conflicts between the world’s two nuclear super-powers, the USSR and America. Each, with vast arrays of nuclear weapons between them, took deterrence very seriously, as they struggled for dominance in proxy wars and regime change operations over the decades. The intensity of these proxy campaigns was tempered by how far they could push the other before a threat became existential, where the survival of the nation was perceived to be at stake, and where the use of nuclear weapons was seen as a last resort. 1962’s “Cuban Missile Crisis” is a case in point, where the USSR, in response to the United States installing Titan nuclear-armed missiles in Türkiye, some months later installed similar weapons in Cuba, in a dangerous game of ‘tit-for-tat’. With both sides seeing the other’s actions as an existential threat, the world came within a hair’s breadth of nuclear war. What ultimately stopped this horrific escalation was the deterrence factor embedded in the M.A.D. principle (“Mutually Assured Destruction”). In this scheme, each side realizes that regardless of who strikes first, that country would be destroyed by a deadly counterstrike, leaving both, along with much of the northern hemisphere, a smoldering, radioactive ash-heap. It also helped that both President Kennedy and the USSR’s Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s served during WWII where they saw first hand (particularly in Kennedy’s experience) how modern, industrialized, conventional warfare could devastate whole regions of the globe, a factor, surely, in their assessments of how apocalyptic—by orders of magnitude greater—the use of nuclear weapons would be. Each calculated the mega-deaths and devastation that would follow if their armies unleashed the deadly force of their nuclear arsenals. Thakfully, in the end, each was deterred from attacking the other.

 

TODAY, WE SEEM TO BE BLITHELY IGNORANT of nuclear weapons and their destructive power or else we foolishly assume we can survive a nuclear war with minimal damage and even emerge victorious.* For decades, Russia has said the expansion of NATO into eastern Europe following the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1992 was threatening existentially to it, with Ukraine in NATO being an absolute red line. In the 1990s and early 2000s, Ukraine was a neutral state with a pledge of neutrality written in its constitution. Subsequent pro-Western administrations in Kiev eventually changed this status and NATO came courting with armaments and money, until 2022 when Zelensky prepared to launch an attack into the Donbass region to quell dissent and silence calls for separation from Ukraine by the two oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk whose populations voted to join the Russian Federation. In late February of 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine in defence of the ethnically Russian people of the Donbass and to make it clear it would no longer tolerate a pro-Western government in Kiev that was armed and equipped with the latest NATO weapons, tech and training.

 

FOUR YEARS ON and Ukraine has been emboldened, using long-range drones and missiles to attack deep into Russian territory, and while these assaults do not threaten or degrade Russia’s war-making capacity or change the inevitable Russian victory to come, nevertheless they indicate Ukraine and the West, particularly the Europeans, no longer are deterred by Russia’s array of nuclear weapons. Recall the incremental goading of Russia by NATO through its proxy, Ukraine, as the “defensive” military alliance introduced various weapons, weapon systems, munitions, tanks, missiles, drones, etc. into the conflict, gauging Russia’s response to each escalatory move by NATO and the West. Recall in June of last year how Ukraine attacked Russian heavy lift bombers—part of Russia’s strategic (read: nuclear) defence force. On what planet [Apparently, this one. Ed.] is it a good idea to attack bombers tasked with the delivery of nuclear-armed cruise missiles and gravity bombs? Recall also in May of 2024 how Ukraine used drones to attack Russia’s early warning radars used to monitor American ICBM launches, should that fearful day ever come. During the Cold War such provocations would have been unthinkable.

YET TODAY, European leaders issue bellicose statements demonizing Russia as they gin up their respective populations to prepare for war with the Slavic giant by decade’s end.

👉WTF, Charlie Brown! What are these bloodless pricks trying to do?! Instead of diplomacy and crafting a security architecture for Europe that includes Russia in a treaty everyone can (mostly) live with, it’s warwarwar! with most NATO-allied nations singing from the same hymn book. [Canada, America’s brown-nosed rent-boy, is in on this clusterfuck, don’t forget, and balls-deep as they say. Since 2022 the Liberal government in Ottawa has sent war materiel and armaments to Ukraine and committed 25 billion dollars to the notoriously corrupt Ukrainian government under Huckster-in-Chief, Zelensky. [Cha-ching! Ed.]

 

THE POLITICAL ELITES in Europe and the Collective West that have gotten us into this mess have to go the way of the dodo. And soon. There are stirrings in Germany, Spain and Poland, for example, but Europeans need to take these little Napoleans out to the collective woodshed and give them a good hiding! There is hope (and danger as well) as populations in Western nations are increasingly at odds with their governing elites. We all see the emperor has no clothes.

 

👉TODAY, we stand at an inflection point where change and violence walk side by side to that inevitable fork in the road, and which path we’ll be on is yet to be decided.  Let’s hope the drones and long-range cruise missiles we are currently firing into Russia don’t trigger the use of a tactical nuke or two by Moscow. Can’t say we haven’t been warned.😱 Isn’t that enough to deter us to seek a diplomatic solution to the conflict instead? Stay tuned!     

 

 

CHEERS, JAKE. _____________________________________

 

*Hence Trump’s recent musings around creating a “golden dome” over North America (or just the U.S. if Carney refuses to pony up billions of dollars for the scam project).  And, as it was with Regan’s pie-in-the-sky “Star Wars” missile shield of the 1980’s that proved to be unworkable so, too, will Trump’s version of the same boondoggle which will prove even more unworkable in this age of hyper-sonic ballistic missiles armed with multiple nuclear warheads that can travel thousands of miles per hour. It should be noted that if guardian missile arrays could protect the United States, say, from incoming ICBMs (“Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles”), this would be a destabilizing factor in the M.A.D. deterrence architecture. If one side believes it can launch a pre-emptive strike on its foe and not be devastated by a retaliatory response or, more importantly perhaps, if the foe thought such a defensive umbrella would work blunting its own retaliatory attack, then the options to launch before such a system could be put in place becomes all too real.

RECALL that during the Cold War, both Russia and the United States had one or two defensive missile batteries ‘guarding’ their capitals. That’s all. In other words, the installations were symbolic as part of the ABM “Anti-Ballistic Missile”) treaty of 1972 between Russia and the United States that limited each side’s ABM missile arrays to one site each, thus ensuring both sides had a healthy respect for the other side’s nuclear arsenals—i.e., the M.A.D. deterrence formulation that kept in check the establishment of ABM systems on a continental scale. [Regan’s Star Wars ballistic missile shield scheme didn’t get off the drawing board, and Trump’s “Golden Dome” missile defence proposal will prove equally unworkable.

 

IN 2002, the ABM treaty was foolishly walked away from by George Bush Jr. during whose tenure additional anti-ballistic missile sites were established in the U.S. That a working ABM defensive shield has not been developed to date speaks to the physical impossibility of stopping an all-out attack with hundreds, even thousands of missiles raining down death and destruction by the mega-tonnage. Same goes for Russia. Any ABM system on the drawing board that’s been ‘gamed-out’ has been assessed as unworkable and a non-starter. [See Professor Ted Postol’s explainer (here.)] Thus, for thirty years both countries were deliberately left vulnerable, with no ABM shield capable of stopping more than a handful of incoming ICBMs, thus ensuring each side would mind their p’s and q’s and respect each other’s “red lines”. Or else. That’s deterrence, folks. Something we need to remember.

 

 

RANT: WHAT'S A LITTLE OIL AMONG FRIENDS?

  

Get the New! and Improved! housewife-helper, K-Tell’s Trump-O-Manic!*

 

FRIENDS, watch how easily its blades shred any and all laws, rules of decorum and engagement, standards of statesmanship, international treaties, probity and diplomacy of all sorts. Its ergonomic design makes quick work of slicing and dicing those pesky treaties, agreements and contracts old and new. A must have for every authoritarian’s kitchen. On sale wherever fascism is on the march! Buy two and get the second one for half price! Going fast! Deal is good until Armageddon envelops the globe in a nuclear fireball. No refunds.

 

👉WELL, I GUESS most of us were relieved that TACO¹ Trump came through with his usual climb down from launching further missile and jet sorties against Iran on April 8/26. The two-week ceasefire is barely holding though. Israel, for its part, has redirected its war machine against Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza² but particularly Lebanon, where its kill rate, some days, is comparable to last year’s genocidal onslaught against the Palestinian population of Gaza. In Lebanon, over 2,000 have been killed, (including 166 children) and 6,800 wounded, since the start of March, with Israel giving Lebanon the ‘Gaza treatment’, levelling entire villages and ethnically cleansing the Lebanese ever northward with the goal of creating a DMZ south of the Litani River. Israeli bombardments of the Lebanese capital, Beirut, are meant to destabilize the country and compel the government to disarm the Hezbollah militias, something, if attempted, would probably lead to civil war, which would be just fine with the Israelis; a dysfunctional Lebanon is one less competitor in the Levant and they get to hover up Lebanon’s offshore oil and gas reserves, as well.👍 

 

TRUMP claims to have phoned Israeli PM Netanyahu asking him to scale back his attacks on Lebanon. Bibi apparently said ceasing IDF attacks on Lebanon was not part of the ceasefire deal. So, bombs away! Yada yada yada…😉 Israel has said it is currently holding talks with Lebanon on “disarming Hezbollah”. [Hezbollah militias, like Iran’s missilery, are the only defences strong enough to stand against Israel aggression. Ed.] We’ll see how that goes, but is there anyone who believes a single word uttered by these fucks?🙎 

 

IN THE MEANWHILE, US VP Vance went to Pakistan last weekend to hold talks with the Iranians. He brought along Trump’s son of a bitch-in-law Jared Kushner and Trump golfing buddy Steve Witkoff, both of whom shouldn’t be anywhere near a negotiating table—and were specifically not invited by Iran given their duplicitousness in previous negotiations that were performative and a cover to launch surprise attacks on Iran (last June and February 28, this year). After a marathon bargaining session, Vance left Islamabad having failed to reach an agreement with Tehran.  

 

WITH THINGS SHIFTING so swiftly, I thought I would wait until Armageddon to file a final report, but my better angel convinced me to note a few of the twists and turns in this increasing shit-show brought to you by the Washington Inepts (a.k.a. “the Epstein Class”) and their entourage:

 

👉RECALL THAT IRAN Iran closed the Straits of Hormuz following the February 28 surprise attack by Israel and the United States, allowing only friendly countries or countries that pay a ‘transit fee’ safe passage through the Strait. Obviously, America and its allies (including most of the Gulf Arab states that host American military bases, most of which have closed BTW, perhaps permanently, following Iranian bombardments) are mostly excluded from the Hormuz unless they make some sort of arrangement with the Iranians. 

Iran’s action in the Hormuz Strait interdicts approximately 20% of the world’s petroleum shipments causing oil prices to rise and stock markets to fall. The United States responded, after last weekend’s ceasefire talks failed, by ‘blockading the blockade’😂 saying it will stop all ships passing through the Hormuz, including ships paying their way, so as to further squeeze the Iranians. 

Question: Will the U.S. board and capture Chinese or Russian ships, or French or British vessels as they enter and emerge from the Strait? Are they that foolish? And do they plan to stop Iranian registered ships? NOTE: Iranian oil added to world oil supplies and is crucial in keeping oil prices down. Most of Iran’s oil infrastructure remains intact for this reason. And Trump initially allowed Iranian oil to be shipped throughout the war so there would be no oil shortages globally affecting gasoline prices, and anger voters at home. 

👉Will Trump target oil refineries and fields in Iran if the conflict erupts again? This would initiate Iranian bombardments of the Gulf States’ infrastructure in those countries that continue to host American military bases and allow their air space to be used by American and Israeli warplanes. If Gulf oil is cut off altogether, a global depression by the fall would be inevitable, perhaps one worse than the Great Depression of the 1930s. 

IRAN HAD FOUR demands going into the the ceasefire between Iran and Israel/United States that went in force on April 8, wobbling like a bowlful of Jello on a train. Iran complained that Israel’s continued bombing of Lebanon was a violation of the ceasefire agreement. Israel said “Nah-uh” and Trump TACO-ed and did his usual nothing to restrain the Israelis. The Iranians brought up this issue up a major concern during the ceasefire talks with Vance.

 

Islamabad talks: Iran's major agenda items: 1. It has a right to enrich uranium to levels commensurate with use in a civilian nuclear industry. 2. Downsizing Iran’s missile force is unacceptable as Iran considers it a critical deterrent against attacks from Israel, a state that has (undeclared) nuclear weapons (between 90-200 warheads). 3. Return of Iranian frozen assets and removal of all sanctions that have for so long immiserated the Iranian population. 4. Accepting Iran’s sovereignty over the Hormuz Strait. These are Iran’s top four agenda items. There are others, including a cease-and-desist order stopping further Israeli aggression against Iran, but also their violence against Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank.

HOWEVER, THE FACT THAT Trump sent diplomatic lightweights instead of a professional negotiating team to Islamabad suggests the U.S. president didn’t expect any breakthroughs last weekend and never really wanted any. Instead, the Americans are spinning the narrative that Iran was uncooperative during the talks, in order to justify their own, illegal war against Iran. 

👉The Iranians came to the talks with few expectations and left with no illusions.

 

THE BLOCKADE is only days old and already economies around the world are shaky. A prolonged blockade of the Strait, along with the American ‘counter’ blockade—if that is even feasible—may lead to a global recession, even a depression if vital supplies of Gulf oil, natural gas, fertilizers, urea, helium³ etc., are not reestablished.😰

 

The ceasefire is set to end next week, and the Iran War will probably reignite. More fun for West Asia, and for us too. So, drop your cocks and grab your socks! Hold onto your hats, too!

 

 

CHEERS, JAKE. _______________________________________________________

 

* Keep away from pets and children.

 1. “Trump Always Chickens Out.”

 2. “Since the ‘ceasefire’ in Gaza took effect six months ago, Israeli attacks have killed at least 738 people and injured more than 2,000. In total, since launching its genocidal war on Gaza, Israel has killed or injured at least 10 percent of the enclave’s population, killing more than 72,000 people, the majority of them women and children, and injuring at least 172,000 others, with thousands more buried under the rubble and presumed dead.” (Al Jazeera) And lest we forget: Israel has bombed Gaza thirty-six out of the last forty-days.

3. Helium is rare on earth. It is created by the natural radioactive decay of heavy elements like thorium and uranium. The world’s largest deposits are found in the South Pars and North Dome gas fields in the Persian Gulf seabed. It is used to make semi-conductors, and for high-tech, medical, and aerospace applications. 

 

p.s. There are some hardliners who seek to revoke Israel’s membership in various international organizations, athletic events or things like EuroVision. I disagree. I think Israeli athletes, entertainers, etc., should be allowed to attend all venues. However, their participation should be limited to silently hanging their heads in shame.

 

"Egads! What have we done!"