trade wars are good, and easy to win

Last invoked in 1996 and causing the US to withdraw its threat of imposing secondary sanctions on Cuba, the European Union has adopted a blocking statue that provides a measure of protection to member state corporations that continue doing business with Iran and license to ignore the hectoring bluster emanating from the White House.
Though continued trade could be frustrated in practise, EU companies that are negatively impacted by the US unilateral departure from the terms of the deal with Iran and restoration of punitive tariffs can seek recovery through the courts and refuse to recognise jurisdictions that enforce the sanctions, which are backed only by the US (making good on a pandering promise made to mobilised, useful idiots) and few regional powers that stand benefit from a weaker Iran.

8x8

home-grown: a design studio in Brooklyn grows gourds in moulds to create an alternative to disposable cups

hidden in plain sight: Greenwich’s secret nuclear reactor

mea culpa: social media turns to television advertising in an attempt to win back users’ trust—we’ve seen these on German prime-time too

the colour of pomegranates: rediscovering the suppressed films of director Sergei Parajanov

quiet skies: the US Transportation Security Agency directs air marshals to arbitrarily monitor frequent flyers

an der schönen blauen donau: a time-lapse of a bean germinating into a plant, accompanied by the waltz

king cotton: an art exhibit, referencing the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary, disabuses notions of American exceptionalism

clickbait: a shop sells tee-shirts that purposefully enrage pedants by getting movie quotes and titles slightly wrong, invoking Cunningham’s Law

it takes one to know one

We’ll see how much history is determined by the historic meeting between the leadership of the US and North Korea but it does already strike me as a little hollow and quite asymmetrical with the regime of Kim Jung-un being accorded the legitimatising recognition that it’s sought for some time and preternaturally under the same terms and conditions that Trump bewailed his predecessor as concessions to Iran, making America look weak and dopey.
Much in the same way that the Manchurian Candidate’s revolting behaviour has markedly improved the image of loveable, old war-criminal Bush II, not only does his eagerness to meet with Kim deflect attention from the hermit kingdom’s atrocious human rights standards (zero freedom of movement, zero freedom of speech and mandatory, universal adoration—not to give Dear Leader any more ideas) with the optics, this plum bargain asks little in concrete terms from North Korea while having US military presence on the peninsula characterised as “provocative” (after so much mutual sabre-rattling) and pledges to suspend large-scale training exercises with the South and Japan.

dear jong letter

minutemen

Rummaging through the archives of the intrepid explorers at Amusing Planet, we came across a rather singular decommission of a former US defensive installation that effectively was only in service for a period of one day before being officially mothballed.
The remaining ensemble of buildings, including the pyramid-like housing of the Missile Site Radar and underground silos that held anti-ballistic missiles (rockets designed to disable in-coming weapons), of the Stanley R Mickelsen Safeguard Complex outside of the Grand Forks Air Base in the state of North Dakota were eventually purchased by a local Hutterite Colony (one of the Plain peoples) at an auction for half a million dollars in 2012 and was built in order to defend the arsenal of Minuteman missiles kept at the Air Base. Provisions of the 1972 Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT I treaty) with the Soviet Union allowed signatories to equip themselves with a limited number of such anti-ballistic defences and the base in North Dakota was to be the first component of a large shielding, network. The base came on-line in April 1975 but would not achieve full operational capacity until 1 October 1975; the following day, the US legislature voted to deactivate the programme, recognising that militarily, it had little merit and could not justify the costs. After nearly a decade of development, Congress became convinced that the system devised by Bell Labs was a folly that would not deliver under actual assault and Safeguard was defunded. The new owners—who are attested pacifists—are charged with preserving the historic character of the site but I suppose otherwise are allowed to use it as they see fit. Be sure to visit Amusing Planet at the link up top to learn more and see a whole gallery of pictures of the base.

administratively embargoed

The newly-minted ambassador, officially credentialed and assuming the role just hours prior to Trump’s announcement to withdraw from the Iranian nuclear deal, to the US mission in Berlin sent out his first missive, suggesting that “German companies doing business in Iran should wind down operations immediately.”
It seems like everyone in that crooked cadre does not see words as a mode of communication to be exchanged, but rather as projectiles to fire out demands. Though Trump did not have the nerve (happily) to careen the world economy into chaos with a full-fledged trade war with his promised tariffs on steel exports but a trade war may yet materialise over this threat, given that America reserves the right to impose secondary sanctions on businesses that have dealings with Iran, in any capacity and any company sizable enough to do business with Iran would most likely have an American presence to subject to punishment. Though the US withdrawal from the deal, which was one of Trump’s campaign promises, was not surprising—the extent of punitive second- and third-degree repercussions is, determined to drive a wedge between the US and Europe that will result in greater consensus among those still party to the agreement (were it a treaty, Trump could not withdraw unilaterally): the EU, China and Russia.

manufactured crisis or the art of the repeal

Either out of boredom or malice, Trump again brings the world to the brink of disaster for no good reason, despite a vigourous round of entreaties from world leaders not to and vow for continued commitment to the cause, in breaking away from the robust and effective treaty with Iran that ensured that its rocketry and nuclear programmes were directed towards peaceful, civil aims and not weaponised.
Sowing discontent and mistrust geopolitically serves abjectly no purpose as Iran economically does little trade with the US and the pressure of further economic sanction would only manifest as hostile tensions, not to mention alienating and sidelining America’s allies and major trade partners. This sham of a world leader who is no negotiator, has been influenced by a few equally corrupt governments and advisors with an agenda and stand to profit off of this conflict—through oil and weapon sales. In response to Trump’s cache of adjectives deriding the deal, Iran’s president stated Trump was a “troublesome creature” and would attempt to continue to uphold its terms of the treaty with other parties but there was no guarantee that this move would not set off an arms race. This also signals to other countries, like North Korea that US commitment to peace and stability is rather disingenuous. President Obama, who helped broker the arrangement back in 2015 and who usually refrains from commenting on the bumbling of his predecessor, issued a statement shortly after the announcement that the US would not renew the treaty, “In a democracy, there will always be changes in policies and priorities from one administration to the next. But the consistent flouting of agreements that our country is party to risks eroding America’s credibility, and puts us at odds with the world’s major powers. Debates in our country should be informed by facts—especially debates that have proven to be divisive.”

de la démocratie en amérique

Yesterday, before a joint session of Congress, the US legislature and executive got the address that it needs to heed but probably didn’t deserve in the parting words of French President Emmanuel Macron, who laid bare a world-view in sharp contrast to what the disengaged, raging nationalist policies of the Trump regime, bromance aside.
There being no “Planet B,” Macron urged America to rejoin the Paris Accords and not to withdraw from the Iran nuclear settlement. The spread of fake news (fausses nouvelles) and the atmosphere of distrust it sews is also getting to be a bit much.  Macron’s speech happened to fall of the same day in 1960 when Général Charles de Gaulle had the opportunity to convey the same message of friendship and unity to the same audience, and of course follows quite a long tradition of French thinkers mediating on democracy in America—beginning with Alexis de Tocqueville’s travels in the newly-minted republic.

moratoria

The announcement that Kim Jong-un will immediately cease nuclear and ballistics tests and dismantle at least one testing range (because North Korea is confident that it has perfected its tactical capabilities) is of course welcome news that we’ll even tolerate the gloating and the smug smog of trumpster fires taking credit for it in exchange for what looks to be at least one less thing to agonise about in this dystopian world.
Perhaps going a notch counter-clockwise with the whole countdown to Doomsday.  One cannot call it progress, however, when a crisis escalated by one’s own stubborn, sabre-rattling remedied itself without and in spite of the other party, restoring the uneasy status quo after much posteuring. North Korea retains its arsenal, whose size one can only guess and whose disarmament was the stated goal of the US, but pledges not to proliferate its nuclear technologies to others and the people of the country will possibly benefit and afforded the chance to prosper with less resources diverted to maintain the testing-programme seem like positive developments.

antipodal

Amusing Planet brings us the story of the planet’s loneliest tree, a stunted Sitka spruce, and how this transplant is the perfect candidate to mark the separation of the Anthropocene geological epoch. While on a survey expedition, Uchter Knox, Earl of Ranfurly and Governor of New Zealand, visited the remote Campbell Island and was possessed for to plant a tree on this otherwise treeless piece of land, whose climate is hostile to anything growing above ground level.
The specimen that Knox choose, however, is indigenous to a strip of coast in British Columbia—from the opposite ends of the Earth almost—and while not exactly qualifying as an invasive species, the spruce having taken root but never matured to produce cones, it does demonstrate the effect that humans have on the environment. Moreover, the tree is a contender for a “golden spike,” a symbolic milestone like the ceremonial final spike driven that marked the completion of the North American transcontinental railroad that arraign other epochal transitions like the asteroid strike that ended the Paleocene and age of the dinosaurs sixty-six million years hence, as the tree is also a living record of humanity’s attempt to harness and weaponise nuclear fission and fusion. In order to demonstrate that the impact of nuclear testing was truly pervasive and global—that no one was out of range, no matter how isolated or removed—researchers took core samples of the Sitka spruce and found traces of the radioactive carbon isotope that is the signature sign of atomic explosions especially concentrated in the growth rings that corresponded to the mid-1960s when testing was at its peak.

operation chrome dome

Fifty years ago today, a nuclear-armed B-52 stratofortress bomber was flying an alert mission over Greenland (well after America’s overtures to purchase the world’s largest island) and experienced a cabin fire that prompted six out of seven crew members to safely jettison and abandon the aircraft and its payload of four hydrogen bombs before it could reach the landing field at Thule.
The craft went down in the icy North Star Bay and the ensuing explosion of the fuselage and the conventional munitions on board caused the nuclear shells to rupture and contaminate the wider Bay of Baffin. The US and Denmark launched a massive containment and recovery effort that cost the equivalent of a billion dollars and one warhead was never recovered and the country’s tacit support of the deterrence exercises that kept twelve of such bombers aloft at all times (the US Strategic Air Command’s Chrome Dome) on the periphery of Soviet airspace was in direct violation of Denmark’s official anti-nuclear stance. Responders worked quickly to remove radioactive ice before the summer thaw that would have caused an even larger area to be impacted and hauled away tonnes of ice and debris during the extreme arctic winter in what was deemed officially Project Crested Ice (our faithful chronicler Doctor Caligari links to some news reel footage) but referred to by workers—many of whom later suffered radiation sickness—as Dr Freezelove in homage to the 1964 Stanley Kubrick release.

duck and cover

Despite the status accorded them as nostalgic, pervasive cultural anchors, the fallout shelter it seems has been magnified by the popular imagination and just over one percent of US households (as opposed to civil and governmental constructions) in the early 1960s had such emergency accommodations.
Paleofuture presents a rather interesting survey that polled people’s attitudes at the height of the Cold War, speaking to collected fears and wafts of the toxic masculinity and the paternalistic patriotism that not a statistically insignificant amount of respondents invoked as reasons to not construct a bunker or otherwise prepare for a nuclear disaster. Contrary arguments included what the neighbours might think of their architectural folly, that only a coward would try to hide from an atomic blast or perhaps most disturbingly that to do so would somehow contravene the will of God and Country, undermining faith in the nation and that it was not within man’s power to destroy himself or the world. The majority took a more philosophic tact, questioning the ability to withstand an attack or whether they would want to be heir to the aftermath.  Imagine there was a time when only the dissolute polluters and climate-change deniers needed to be disabused and the preppers weren’t playing the long game.

dance for me, tartar woman

Previously we’ve learned that Spaghetti Westerns were often filmed in exotic, far-flung locations and now, via Super Punch, we discover that the desert of Utah has at least once been a stand-in for the steppe of Mongolia in the 1956 Howard Hughes production, The Conqueror, starring John Wayne as Temujin (nom de guerre, Genghis Khan), Susan Hayward as his first wife, Börte Üjin, and Agnes Moorehead as his mother, Hunlun.
The film was critically panned and a financial flop (Hughes’ last cinematic venture) and never attained a cult following due to a weak plot and what was recognised as gross miscasting (plus general unavailability—more to follow), but there’s a dark and unexpected footnote in the movie’s production, which spanned three years and leaves a greater legacy of questions. Weeks were spent on location shooting outdoors and establishing scenes and once the cast was ready to return to the studio, Howard Hughes shipped sixty tonnes of native dirt back to Hollywood in order to make sure that the terrain’s appearance matched and ensure continuity. Cast, filmmakers and residents knew that the filming site (and imported soil) was directly downwind from the Nevada proving grounds where the military had tested eleven surface nuclear bombs and munitions a couple of years previously but any concerns that they had were placated by assurances from the government that there was no risk to public health. Nearly half of the two hundred member crew, however, developed cancer, which a quarter succumbed to. Wayne and Moorehead both died of cancer in the 1970s and were heavy smokers (Wayne’s habit was six packs a day) but the actual cause remains a mystery. In the aftermath, anguishing over his decision to shoot in a dangerous and radioactive site, Hughes bought every copy of the film and kept it out of circulation for several years—until the studio re-acquired it from Hughes’ estate after his death. Reportedly, it was one movie that Hughes watched endlessly during his final years.

dawn’s early light or up and atom

Over a decade ago a cadre of staunch Cold Warriors including Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn publicly reversed their stance on classical nuclear deterrence and disavowed the strategy that arms race made the world a safer place but rather was making it a far more dangerous one—propelling another round of decommissioning.
Reaching back further to 1981, Harvard Law Professor Roger D Fisher, a specialist in negotiations and conflict management, suggested unflinchingly in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, that should the President of the United States of America want to active his or her nuclear arsenal—rather than having the codes kept at arm’s length in the nuclear football which the president could access whenever the impulse possesses him or her (Reagan preferred to keep the codes in his jacket pocket)—the Commander-in-Chief ought to be made fully aware of the gravity of the decision, which would result in the death of millions of innocent civilians if not the whole of humanity. The launch codes rather ought to be implanted in the heart of a volunteer attaché that accompanies the president at all times with a large knife. To retrieve the launch codes means that the president must personally kill and butcher one person that represents all those faceless millions that chauvinism and phoney patriotism make into abstractions. I wonder if such a theoretical volunteer would be a willing martyr or if Trump would even be dissuaded by such measures.

mmxvii

january: Millions march across the globe in protest to the inauguration of Dear Leader, followed immediately by a federal hiring-freeze and a controversial travel ban. Artificial intelligence surpasses humans at the ancient game of Go. Sadly, we had to say goodbye to Mary Tyler Moore.  

february: North Korea invites international censure for testing a ballistic missile over the Sea of Japan and for the very public assassination of the country’s leader’s half-brother. Astronomers discover a solar system comprised of seven Earth-sized exoplanets in our Goldilocks zone.

march: Millions face the prospect of starvation in northern Africa. Elon Musk successfully recovers and reuses the booster stage of an orbital class rocket.  The United Kingdom invokes Article Fifty of the European Union Treaty, triggering its exit from the bloc.

april: US retaliatory action in Syria significantly damages the country’s relationship with Russia, then America drops the largest conventional bomb in Afghanistan. Coral bleaching threatens the world’s reefs. A passenger was violently removed from a commercial airliner prior to take-off, setting off a trend of customer abuse.  We had to bid farewell to comedian Don Rickles and actor Jonathan Demme.

may: A terrorist bombing at a concert in Manchester tragically killed twenty-two people and injured hundreds. A ransomware virus holds computer systems around the world hostage. French presidential elections put a stay on the spread of conservatism. Sadly, actor Roger Moore, musician Greg Allman and statesman Zbigniew Brzezinski passed away.

june: Amid resounding international criticism and pledges by others to redouble their commitment, the US withdraws from the Paris Climate Agreement. A dread inferno engulfed an apartment block in West London, killing seven-one and displacing hundreds.  Terror attacks perpetrated by the Cosplay Caliphate ravage Tehran. Former West- and reunified German chancellor Helmut Kohl passed away, as did actor Adam West.

july: North Korea continues to test more and more sophisticated, longer-range missiles. The Syrian city of Mosul is taken back from ISIL. Huge ice bergs break away from the Antarctic ice shelf. Researchers believe early human migrated out of Africa seventy thousand years sooner than previously thought. We bid farewell to actors Sam Shepard and Jeanne Moreau.

august: The detection of gravitational waves is becoming a common occurrence. North America experienced a total solar eclipse. Hurricane Harvey struck the Gulf Coast. The Burmese military carry out ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya people. The Eagles’ Glen Campbell passed away as did Dick Gregory and Jerry Lewis.

september: Russia expels hundreds of American diplomats over new sanctions. Hurricane Irma devastates the Caribbean and Puerto Rico, followed closely by Hurricane Maria. An earthquake strikes Mexico City. Actor Harry Dean Stanton, Monty Hall and playboy Hugh Hefner pass away.

october: A gunman opens fire on an audience gathered for a concert in Las Vegas, Nevada from high atop a casino resort hotel and killed fifty-eight and injured hundreds, surpassing last year’s deadliest shooting at an Orlando, Florida nightclub, failing again to make Americans more willing to discuss gun-control. The US withdraws in protest from UNESCO, with Israel following immediately after. Austria elects a far-right coalition.  Our Solar System gets an interstellar visitor.  German researchers discover that there has been a seventy-five percent drop in insect biomass over the past twenty-five years. Catalonia declares independence from Spain. Tom Petty dies.

november: A German newspaper publishes a tranche of documents leaked by an offshore law firm as an encore to the Panama Papers. A work attributed to Da Vinci fetches the highest price ever paid at an auction for a piece of fine art. Many brave women come forward and confront their sexual harassers.  Parliament will be given a final vote on the divorce deal before the UK leaves the EU. Actors David Cassidy and Jim Nabors pass away.

december: More wildfires ravage California. The Trump regime provocatively recognises Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and moves to eviscerate net neutrality and other consumer protections. Russia is barred from the Olympics due to its sanctioned, systemic doping practises.  Narrowly, Alabama elects a senator from Democratic party rather than a sexual predator, though there is still one in the White House. Entertainer Rose Marie and French rockstar Johnny Halliday pass away.

heat-exchange or household atomics

Via a regular Slashdot contributor, we learn that China will expend a great deal of time and effort researching into the potential revival of a Cold War era source of harnessing nuclear power using molten salt as a coolant rather than water.
The molten salt fission reactors were abandoned in the 1970s due to technical hurdles which today seem like far less of an obstacle and now it seems like an attainable, highly efficient fuel source. The higher melting point of salt allows for the accumulation of a vastly greater reservoir of heat to power turbines and the resulting nuclear waste is calculated to be only a sliver of that of conventional plants. There’s also a great interest in minimisation this sort of reactor for use in powering unmanned aerial vehicles, lift-off modules and eventually passenger aircraft that could circle the Earth multiple times at super-sonic speeds. Salt-based fission is likely safer and the public might be less risk-averse since there is the radioactivity involved is less energetic and an accident, especially for a drone, is more like dropping a hot-water bottle rather than a burning log.

arc of narrative

Our faithful chronicler, Doctor Caligari, informs that among many other notable events, on this day in 1983 an audience of over one hundred million Americans tuned in to watch the made-for-television movie, “The Day After.”
Suppressing a potential military coup in East Germany, Soviet forces blockade West Berlin—an act that NATO forces interpret as an act of war and responds in kind. Things escalate rather quickly with Russia pushing towards the Rhein and nuclear bombs used on the US Army bastions of Wiesbaden and Frankfurt. As the war expands beyond the German frontier, a nuclear exchange takes place, culminating with a high-altitude burst that results in an electro-magnetic pulse that disables the remaining technologies that the survivors of the first strike can avail themselves of. The director, Nicolas Meyer (also known for his cinematic Star Trek adaptations), reported suffered influenza-like symptoms during production, and when doctors could find no somatic cause, they determined Meyer was suffering under a bout of severe depression due to having to contemplate the horrors of war.

army surplus

Cause certainly for alarm but no cause for surprise and not the first time that geopolitics have been used to leverage flagging economies, but just in case you we were unaware carnival barker Trump is exploiting regional and global tensions in order to bully allies into buying expensive American weapons systems.
This pitch is unoriginal, naturally, with all modern wars have been about expanding markets and fighting saturation, also known as peak missile defence shield. This arms race, however, comes at a very different time from when we were convinced of the last existential threat with data having replaced spycraft and elbow-grease and alteration far from the hallmarks of ingenuity but rather something that will violate the terms and conditions of one’s warranty, and of course statecraft a casualty of nativism and naïvism. As a collective civilisation, I think that the world cannot be put back in the mould of a military-industrial model and trying to compel others to return to this mind set and take up arms is nearly as dangerous as the incendiary posturing and unacceptable.

thirty-eighth parallel

While menacing Asia next week, Dear Leader will visit South Korea, and while the agenda has not yet been released, I do hope his security detail and handlers can dissuade him from going to the Demilitarized Zone in person because I don’t think the dotard has the restraint to keep from petulantly dangling a foot over the border, like a tourist posed straddling at the Four Corners Monument, the quadripoint in the US southwest where four of the boxy states touch and is surprisingly under the administration of the Navajo Nation and Ute Tribe who probably found such a demarcation unwelcome and untoward, possibly like many on different sides of the peninsula. Perhaps he can be taken to a film-set or a holodeck instead—at least as a trial-run. I wonder if any of this stuff is rehearsed ahead of time.

rocket man or unga chunga

The imbecile Dear Leader was given a platform at the United Nations general assembly which to the consternation and alarm of not only those US allies in the region but I’d venture every soul departed, on Earth and yet to come pledged to “totally destroy” North Korea and its twenty-five million residence should it continue to menace its neighbours and America.
Despite his past criticism for the international body for inaction and inefficiency (and cheap emerald marble backsplash), he flinched, thankfully, in his pugilistic rhetoric by heaping the onus on the UN by saying that hopefully a military response wouldn’t be necessary: “We’ll see—that’s what the UN is there for.” Such bluster is not only a grave embarrassment that strips America of all credibility—and although Americans might distance themselves from their leadership, the rest of the world is losing patience fast with those apologies and pretenses—it carries consequences and responsibilities that Dear Leader has proven himself incapable of assuming.