I hadn't thought about this song in years. Had hoped it became passé about 30 years ago. "I hope the Russians love their children too"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHylQRVN2Qs
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I hadn't thought about this song in years. Had hoped it became passé about 30 years ago. "I hope the Russians love their children too"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHylQRVN2Qs
When did we leave that scenario? I think we permanently entered that scenario when nuclear weapons were developed. And, unfortunately, it’s only a matter of time until someone has the power and stupidity to issue the directive. IMO, the world was very lucky Hitler didn’t have that power.
Agreed. The nuclear menace is a constant of the modern world, but there are flashpoints that ramp up the concern levels significantly. The apparent sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline may be just such a flashpoint. Of course the finger pointing started immediately, but regardless of who was responsible for the destruction it gives Putin pretense for whatever escalation he may have in mind. His Chechen contract fighters are already urging him to use tactical nukes, which seems bonkers for someone who would be on that potentially irradiated battlefield to say.
One of the smallest nuclear weapons ever developed was the Davy Crockett, a battlefield weapon with a yield of 20 tons of TNT.
Attachment 15016
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:DavyCrockettBomb.jpg
According to this convenient site, if such a weapon were aimed at the White House the radiation radius would barely escape the White House grounds.
According to David Petraeus, there’s no way out for Putin:
As to a U.S. likely response if Putin were to use nuclear weapons:Quote:
“The battlefield reality he faces is, I think, irreversible,” he said. “No amount of shambolic mobilization, which is the only way to describe it; no amount of annexation; no amount of even veiled nuclear threats can actually get him out of this particular situation."
Quote:
“Well, again, I have deliberately not talked to Jake about this. I mean, just to give you a hypothetical, we would respond by leading a NATO, a collective effort, that would take out every Russian conventional force that we can see and identify on the battlefield in Ukraine and also in Crimea and every ship in the Black Sea,” Petraeus replied.
Not to worry folks - Elon has solved it. Apparently Donbas and Crimea just need a fair election in each region to decide which country they wish to belong to. Also he's figured out that Crimea was part of Russia for a long time so Putin has a good point.
I'm not going to link to the tweet - don't want to give him the extra hits.
I think Texas’ right of secession was more of widely held belief than something grounded in reality. It was perpetuated by some of my teachers in my rural school. Lots of reasons are given including the fact that Texas was briefly an independent nation (~1836) and the fact that the Resolution for Annexation of Texas included language permitting it to split up into up to four states. And some still argue it has that right:
https://texassecede.com/faq.php
But most reputable sources say that the results of the Civil War and Supreme Court rulings make Texas succession illegal:
https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/texas/2022/06/21/427421/texas-cant-legally-secede-from-the-u-s-despite-popular-myth/amp/
Simple, yet powerful and moving. And a great video, too. I was a teen when “Russians” came out and it had a profound effect on me.
I graduated high school early and moved to West Germany in 1986 to attend the University of Munich. I remember well the day I got off the Straßenbahn (a streetcar) and ran to campus in the pouring rain and for some reason neglected to take a shower after arriving at my dorm, only to find out later that radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster had drifted over Munich on that day. It had been strongly recommended to scrub your entire body thoroughly with soap and water if you had been in the rain when the contaminated cloud of radioactive fallout was hanging over the region of Bavaria (where Munich is located). But of course information traveled very slowly back then and I had no idea what had happened until it was too late to do anything about it. I’ve worried about the possible negative implications to my health ever since.
And now there is increasing talk of Russia using tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine. The radiation dangers from small nuclear arms would likely be less than those involving large reactors, like those at Chernobyl. Its radioactive fallout poisoned the land for many miles around and turned villages into ghost towns. Eventually the radiation caused thousands of cases of cancer, with more more likely still to come.
Last week, the Institute for the Study of War concluded that Russian tactical nuclear use would be a massive gamble for limited gains that would not achieve Putin’s stated war aim of capturing the entirety of Ukraine.
Let’s hope he (Putin) has been informed of this. 🤞