Nuclear War: Humanity Gone in 72 Hours

"Nuclear war is a topic few care to think about. We sometimes call it unthinkable. But we need to think carefully, and to talk—particularly with high-ranking foreign officials whose motives we may have reason to distrust, just as they distrust ours—about how we can collectively avoid launching a weapon that would end our civilization.

"Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen’s timely new book, Nuclear War: A Scenario, is a lightning-fast read intended to put the nuclear threat squarely back on everyone’s radar. Her narrative thread, as the title suggests, is a fact-based (though thankfully fictional) scenario that shows how a nuclear launch can escalate into World War III at dizzying speed.

"Jacobsen tees up her cinematic approach with chapters describing how we got here, including a discussion of America’s Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP) for General Nuclear War—which was devised in the 1960s and, as Jacobsen details in this book excerpt published today by Mother Jones, was more or less a recipe for the end of the world.

"Because that’s nuclear war: One bad assumption, one shot, one retaliation, and it’s unstoppable."

Click on this link, and this link for more. Every organization on the planet that has nuclear weapons has to understand completely that any nuclear war WILL escalate to the destruction of humanity.

Imagine A World Without Religion

"There has seldom been a war that religion did not support.

"Scholars say that before the rise of patriarchal religions, human beings lived fairly peaceably in kinship-based communities under matriarchs who established a more tolerant morality than the later, father-worshiping kind.

"Pre-patriarchal cultures were very indulgent of their children, giving them much physical affection and little punishment. They also tended to be permissive about physical pleasures and sexuality. There were no homosexuality taboos, no concubinage, no prostitution. The sexes had equal status although the families were matrilocal and matrilineal. Most property was owned by the women, whose life-giving magic was considered essential to fertility in general. Descent was reckoned only through mothers, among people who had not yet understood biological fatherhood. There was no caste system and no full-time military. Religion was some variant of nature worship with no strict codes, a Mother Goddess being primary and her consorts secondary. Such cultures were generally nonviolent and valued spontaneity, humor, and sensual enjoyments."

Click on the link below for more information that you probably were not aware of:

https://freethoughtnow.org/religion-has-always-supported-war/

Are College Campus Protests Effective?

The current college campus protests are bringing back reminders of when I was in college and the protests against the war in Vietnam were at their peak. As was the case then, there is much discussion about whether such activities help or hinder the resolution of the problem being addressed. Unfortunately, it's difficult to tell whether what happens after protests is a cause-effect or a correlation. Below are the results of some studies to shed some light on this controversial activity:

The impact of anti-Vietnam demonstrations upon national public opinion and military indicators

"In an attempt to assess the national impact of anti-war protest, 15 major anti-Vietnam demonstrations occurring in the United States from 1965 through 1971 were analyzed for their effects upon Gallup public opinion survey data, American troop strength, and American munitions expenditures. While weak and short-term counterproductive effects appeared for two opinion indicators, an equally likely conclusion is that the demonstrations had little or no lasting impact. The possible reasons for this finding, and its social implications, are discussed."

REFLECTIONS ON THE VIETNAM ANTIWAR MOVEMENT AND ON THE CURIOUS CALM AT THE WAR'S END

"Some years ago I did a study comparing public opinion on the war in Vietnam with public opinion on the Korean War. Using various tests I found that, although television supposedly made Vietnam somehow unique, the wars actually affected public opinion quite similarly. Both wars were supported by the same demographic groups: the young and the well-educated, in particular. Sentiment for withdrawal and escalation was about the same and mostly came from the same groups. Moreover, the wars were about equally popular during the periods in which they were comparable; that is, while the war in Vietnam eventually became more unpopular than the Korean War, it became so only after American casualties there had substantially surpassed those of the earlier war. Trends in support for the wars followed the same course: basic support declined as U.S. casualties increased, and it did so according to the same mathematical relationship. (2)

"This similarity seems surprising because, while the two wars had many things in common, the Korean War inspired no organized public protest remotely comparable to the one generated during the Vietnam War. If one paid attention to vocal protest and to media reports about that protest during the two wars, it would certainly seem the later war was far more unpopular.

"It seems to me these findings suggest two cautions about assessing vocal protest. The first is fairly obvious: One should be careful about assuming vocal agitators necessarily represent the masses they purport to speak for. Labor union leaders may not speak for workers, active feminists may not accurately represent women, and the Moral Majority may, as the bumper sticker suggests, be neither.

"Second, and perhaps more interestingly, it may be that the Vietnam protest movement, at least through 1968, actually was somewhat counter-productive in its efforts to influence public opinion--that is, the war might have been somewhat more unpopular had the protest not existed."

Why Taking Sides In The Israel-Palestine Conflict Is Not Wise

"Violence and oppression are destructive and corrosive to both the victim and perpetrator and this goes a long way toward explaining many of the dynamics at play in the holy land between Israelis and Palestinians."

I have posted several times on the Israel-Palestine Conflict (link). Click on the links below for examples summarizing the point made in the title of this blog post:

Israel and Palestine are less complicated than you think: Standing for international law while condemning crimes against humanity, war crimes, antisemitism, and apartheid.

John Oliver's summation is similar

A human rights lawyer, a Jewish resident of Israel, gets it

Broken News: Understanding traditional media and social media reporting on the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza

The Militarization Of Space

"David Ignatius is the longtime foreign affairs columnist at The Washington Post. He’s also the author of 11 spy thriller novels that draw on decades of experience reporting on espionage and spying. He joins Preet to discuss the escalating race between the US and China to control space, how artificial intelligence could influence the future of warfare, and his latest four-part novella published in the Washington Post."

Click on the link below for a podcast discussing space as a significant future location for international conflict:

The Geopolitics of Spying & Space

Benjamin Franklin: History As He Experienced & Made It

Ken Burns' 4-hour documentary explores the revolutionary life of one of the 18th century's most consequential figures. If you are interested in history in general, and US history in particular, I guarantee that this will give you greater insight into the events surrounding the Revolutionary War, what led to the Civil War, and how such dynamics can be seen today in the Ukraine/Russia conflict. Oh, and you will better appreciate Franklin's scientific and general brilliance. Click on the link below for the video stream:

Benjamin Franklin: A Film By Ken Burns

Can The USA Learn From Its Mistakes Leading Up To The Vietnam War?

The John Batchelor Show's podcasts recently had a rebroadcast of a 40 minute interview with Fredrik Logevall, the author of a 2014 book entitled "Embers of War:  The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam."