Category Archives: Germ Warfare

Every day innocent people are randomly exposed to germ warfare being waged by the germs themselves. Bacterial, viral and prion diseases are a clear and present danger to at-risk populations. The universal benefits of herd immunity can break down when the vaccination rate in a group goes below 85 to 90 percent. That is happening in some places in Minnesota and at that point, contagious diseases can become epidemic.

Up until now, our county public health departments have been aggressively involved in the "prevention of" and "preparation for" an infectious outbreak. Their task has been compounded by the antibiotic resistance emerging in some of mankind's oldest threats. Resistant strains of tuberculosis and much anticipated measles, for example, are a sleepless nightmare for our public health professionals.

Recent proposals from Washington to cut funding for public health agencies and programs to help pay for defense spending may cost us our defense against the preventable germ warfare that causes pandemics.

The HIV/AIDS epidemic was the last full blown threat to our public health. Ebola was another. Syphilis, gonorrhea, and especially the swine flu and the bird flu can mutate if we let down our national guard: public health agencies and professionals.

By the way, SCHSAC stands for the "State Community Health Services Advisory Committee." It also stands for the health of all Minnesotans.

Paul Drotos, Red Wing

Paul Drotos is a Goodhue County commissioner

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Letter: Protect the public health officials who protect us - Republican Eagle

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North Korea conducted two nuclear tests, 24 missile tests and a ground jet test of a newly developed high-thrust missile engine in 2016. Such flurry of launches indicates new advancements in the rogue nations missile and nuclear weapons program.

Last years unprecedented level of missile tests included a launch of three submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM) and a test-fire of eight intermediate-range Musudan ballistic missiles. Once deployed for combat use, Pyongyangs SLBMs may incapacitate Seouls preemptive strike (i.e. the Kill Chain) and defense (i.e. KAMD and THAAD) systems that are being developed by the US-ROK forces. Quite a few of the Norths missiles launched last year were fired at a steep angle. For example, the Hermit Kingdom intentionally reduced the range of the Rodong to just 600 km by shooting it higher into the air on July 19, 2016 and announced the next day that the drill was conducted to test missiles for possible strikes against Pohang and Busan, if preemptive U.S. military reinforcements were to arrive in those port cities.

Pyongyang, by testing medium-range projectiles within a limited range by launching them at a sharp angle, showed off its capability to deal a heavy blow to U.S. augmentation forces at South Korean ports in time of emergency. North Koreas march toward a much larger nuclear arsenal with more sophisticated missiles to deliver them is highly likely to continue in 2017. Indeed, this year is off to the races, with three missiles launched and a new inter-continental ballistic missile engine tested to date. Also, there are ominous signs of further nuclear tests.

Unfortunately, nuclear weapons are not the only type of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Pyongyang possesses. On February 13, 2017, Kim Jong-nam, the half-brother of North Koreas absolute leader, was assassinated with VX, one of the most lethal chemical weapons, at Kuala Lumpur airport. This heartless and depraved murder shed new light on North Koreas chemical warfare capabilities, a point familiar to experts in the South.

In fact, the DPRKs pursuit of chemical weapons dates to the 1960s when the regime pushed ahead with its chemical weapons policy, producing and stockpiling various chemical warfare agents (CWA). The North, based on the Soviet Unions technical assistance and agricultural chemicals imported from Japan, has built a strong foundation for chemical weapons production and created a broad range of chemical weapons such as nerve, blister, choking, riot control and blood agents. As of now, nearly all countries around the world have either abolished chemical weapons or been in the process of doing so according to the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC); however, North Korea has refused to either sign or accede to the treaty.

Pyongyang has more than 10 chemical weapons production facilities that are disguised as fertilizer, chemical and vinalon plants all across the country. Also, the DPRKs each army corps has a chemical defense battalion, and each division and regiment comes with a chemical defense company and platoon respectively. Leon J. Laporte, Former Commander of the U.S. Forces Korea, during his term, warned that in case the two Koreas engage in an all-out war, one third of the shells initially fired by the North will be chemical-filled ones.

The communist regime, on top of its chemical warfare capabilities, is equipped with world-class biological weapons. At the beginning of the 1960s, the DPRK embarked on a major development program of bacteriological weapons according to Kim Il-sungs order to carry out systematic germ warfare, and today there are well over ten biological weapons production and test facilities covered as hospitals, medical schools, biology and disease control research centers in various cities such as Pyongyang, Jungju and Hamcheon.

The North, without a doubt, has developed a few dozens of biological agents and toxins in the aforementioned facilities, and it is highly likely that Pyongyang has already weaponized anthrax, cholera, plague, smallpox bacilli and botulinum toxins. Biological weapons are banned worldwide by the 1975 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), but ten or so countries including Iraq and Libya attempted to create biological weapons, exploiting the loophole of the BWC: in a development process of bio-agents, it is difficult to determine whether they are weaponized anti-personnel agents or those used for protective purposes. The DPRK has run active biological warfare programs through exploiting the ambiguity of the BWC, the only measure the regime joined to prevent terrorists from acquiring WMD.

Today, North Korea is suspected to be one of the most dangerous bio-chemical weapons states in the world, possessing 2,500 to 5,000 tons of chemical and biological agents. Unlike sophisticated weapons, bio-chemical weapons are relatively cheap to produce, and any trained operatives could utilize them to carry out terror attacks. Also, most importantly, the delayed effect of bio-chemical weapons allows for undetected release and ease of escape by those perpetrating such attacks. Therefore, bio-chemical terrors wreak havoc on many and create uncontrollable chaos. In short, Pyongyang has become the worlds ninth nuclear power, the sixth leading country in terms of missile capability and the deadliest bio-chemical state, making it a grave threat to not only the Korean peninsula and Northeast Asia but also the entire planet. Could the global community co-exist in peace with this rogue nation?

If the answer is no, the international community should change its response to the DPRKs WMD threat. In this vein, it is very encouraging that President Trump declared an end to Americas policy of strategic patience toward North Korea. Also, it is a welcoming sign that the United States mobilized a special forces unit for large-scale decapitation operation training targeting the leadership in Pyongyang during the recent US-ROK joint Key Resolve/Foal Eagle exercises from March 13 to 23.

In addition, the United States Congress should be applauded for tightening the sanctions against North Korea by building bipartisan support for the following bills: H.R.1644 Korean Interdiction and Modernization of Sanctions Act; H.R.479 North Korea State Sponsor of Terrorism Designation Act of 2017; H.Res.92 Condemning North Koreas development of multiple intercontinental ballistic missiles, and for other purposes; H.Res.223 Calling on the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) to cease its retaliatory measures against the Republic of Korea in response to the deployment of the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) to U.S. Forces Korea (USFK), and for other purposes. Against this backdrop, Beijing should join in Washingtons effort to rein in Pyongyang. China, so far, has aided and abetted the Norths nuclear development while sanctioning the wrong Korea over the deployment of THAAD. Beijing must come to its senses and put an end to its paradoxical Seoul bashing.

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Could The Global Community Coexist With A Nuclear Pyongyang? - Daily Caller

New York Post

If Assad doesn't suffer for using chems, the whole world pays New York Post Worse, if the ban on chemical weapons is allowed to crumble, the taboos on biological weapons (germ warfare) and nuclear use will be the next to dissolve. Those agonized deaths in Syria weren't far away. They happened next door. In the brutal world ... Syria chemical weapon attack shows Bashar al-Assad free to act with impunityGlobalnews.ca EU urges diplomacy in Syria as ex-weapons inspector says US acted without proofDeutsche Welle Less Than Three Years After Obama Declared Syria Chemical Weapons Free, Assad Once Again Gases His Own PeopleWestern Journalism all 10,401 news articles »

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If Assad doesn't suffer for using chems, the whole world pays - New York Post

After officially dumping their unofficial mascot last year, Amherst College announced the schools first official mascot Monday. And it turns out that Russian scientists arent the only ones who want to bring back woolly giants from the Ice Age.

Thats correct after more than 9,000 votes from alumni, students, and faculty, Amherst Colleges new mascot is the Mammoths.

School officialsannouncedthey would be solicitingsuggestions for a mascot last October. In January 2016, thecollege decided to stop referencing their longtime unofficial moniker, Lord Jeff, amid student protests over the eponymous 18th-century British generalsadvocacy of using of smallpox as germ warfare against Native Americans.

Amherst College finds itself in a position where a mascotwhich, when you think about it, has only one real job, which is to unifyis driving people apart because of what it symbolizes to many in our community, Cullen Murphy, the chair of the schools board of trustees, said at the time.

Following more than 2,000 mascot submissions last fall (includingstrong pushes for Moose and Hamster, the latter of which is an anagram of Amherst), aselect group of alumni and students eventually narrowed it down to five finalists: the Fighting Poets, the Mammoths, Purple and White, the Valley Hawks, and the Wolves.

Over 11 days in late March, the Mammothswon out with4,356 of 9,295 total votes.

You thought they were extinct? Think again, the school said in an announcement video Monday.

In a statement announcing the decision Monday, the school cited submissions that characterizedthe prehistoric creatureas an impressive, stupendous and monumental and near mythic mascot optionthat would speak to Amherst as fierce competitors but also highly social, herbivorous animals suggesting gentleness.

They also noted that Amherst CollegesBeneski Museum of Natural History houses a Colombian mammoth skeleton (pictured in the above video) that was discovered by one of the schools professors.

Affection for Amherst and belief in what our College represents motivated our committee during this entire process and we welcome the mammoths as the new mascot for Amherst College, the schools mascot selection committee wrotein a statement.

According to the school, the new mascot will debut this upcoming fall.

Itll be quite the matchup if Amherst ever travels out to compete against Indiana UniversityPurdue University Fort Wayne.

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Amherst College announces the Mammoths as first official mascot ... - Boston.com

Requisitioned from farmers, blitzed with anthrax-laden bombs in the 1940s, and made inhospitable to human and animal life for decades, the tiny Scottish island of Gruinard now serves as home to a flock of healthy sheep and a disreputable monument to the birth of biological warfare. The research conducted at Gruinard during the second World War was the very first of its kind, providing proof of concept of a natural microorganism that could be massively weaponized to inflict environmental damage and human fatalities.

A still from declassified footage of the anthrax trials conducted on Gruinard island in the 1940s. Here a man leads sheep recently exposed to anthrax to a staked line for observation. Footage courtesy of the Imperial War Museum. Click for source.

In the mid-1930s, a British journalist alleged that Germany had been secretly testing biological agents in the London Underground and the Paris Metro.(1) It caused an international sensation. Given Germanys success at developing mustard gas in the first World War and their subsequent discoveries of deadly nerve agents in the 1930s, British intelligence feared that Germany was more than capable of developing biological weapons to be used in future conflicts. In response, the British War Office tasked the chemical warfare team located at Porton Down in the 1940s to quickly assemble a new team to explore the potentials and limitations of biological weapons for the purposes of both defense and attack.(2) Anthrax, a hardy soil-dwelling bacteria that can cause fatal infections, would be the test weapon of choice.

Long known to infect sheep and cattle, Bacillus anthracis most commonly causes infections in agricultural communities among shepherds and goatherds and is notable for an array of different disease presentations depending on its point of entry into the body. The most benign presentation, cutaneous anthrax, is caused by spores infecting small lesions on the face, neck, or extremities and is characterized by black painless ulcers. When inhaled, anthrax spores causes a rapidly progressive pneumonia resulting in hemorrhaging lungs and a swift death. This presentation has long been known as wool sorters disease, as workers sorting wool and hair would inadvertently rustle up and inhale airborne spores. Not content with these already impressive methods of infection, infection can also occur when meat contaminated with anthrax spores is ingested, and sepsis may result as the bacteria are carried to the lymph nodes are thence distributed widely into the blood.

Though we have long recognized anthrax as a highly infectious organism capable of causing a devastating and often fatal infection, whether it could be weaponized or not was unknown. Could an organism of the soil be molded into an implement of war? Could the spores be incorporated into a bomb, survive the detonation, be appropriately aerosolized, and subsequently infect humans? A test of proof was needed. And a safe site for experimentation.

Gruinard is a blip of an island, a mere 0.76 square miles, located in the northwest of Scotland just over half a mile from the shoreline. It was once sparsely inhabited in the late 1880s a census counted six residents but since the 1920s it largely served as an empty pasture for shepherds who would ferry their flock over via a ten-minute boat ride for some pastoral grazing.(3) Small, uninhabited, and conveniently located near the Allied military base at Loch Ewe, it appeared to be the perfect location for lethal experiments with explosives and deadly pathogens. In 1942, the island was commandeered and christened with a new name: Base X.(4) Flocks of sheep would be the biological targets of the anthrax trials.

A cloud visualized after a detonation from declassified footage of the anthrax trials. Footage courtesy of the Imperial War Museum. Click for source.

For two years, Gruinard and its flocks of sheep were bombed with anthrax. Mustard gas containers were filled with a brown slurry consisting of billions of anthrax spores and detonated from elevated platforms and, in one trial, dropped from an aircraft.(5) Downwind of the explosions, sheep were individually enclosed in exposure crates, clothed in fabric to keep spores off the fleece and prevent cutaneous infection, and, following the detonation, tethered on lines separated from one another to prevent further transmission and ensure that subsequent anthrax infection was caused only by direct inhalation of the spores released in the explosions.(6)

The experiments were a resounding success. Within three days of the first experiment in which a bomb had been detonated from an elevated platform, all 60 sheep exposed perished from inhalational anthrax. This pattern was commonly repeated over the course of two years, and the trials determined that large numbers of anthrax spores could be effectively dispersed in aerosolized clouds, remaining both viable and virulent. A summary report at the end of the experiments concluded that similar anthrax weapons would make cities inhospitable for generations of humans, a triumph of weapons more potent than any of a like size.(2)(7)

At the conclusion of the trials, an estimated 4 x 10^14 spores had been detonated at the island, and Gruinard was so thoroughly drenched in anthrax that it remained forbidden to the public for nearly half a century.(8) Annually from 1948 to 1968, the government dispatched scientists to the island to sample the soil, persistently finding that it was heavily contaminated and would likely remain that way until at least 2050.(9) For decades, warning signs posted along the coast cautioned both man and beast against venturing to an island that remained under experiment.(1)

Two bioterrorism stunts seem to have prompted the British Ministry of Defence to reconsider the status quo of Gruinard island. In 1981, a package was discovered on the property of the Chemical Defense Establishment at Porton Down filled with soil reportedly sourced from the island.(10) A group calling themselves Dark Harvest released a press statement declaring that two microbiologists had retrieved 300 pounds of Gruinard soil, a portion of which had been packaged and delivered to Portion Down in an attempt to return the seeds of death in protest of the experiments and the islands uninhabitable state. Testing of the packaged soil found that it did indeed contain anthrax and that the soil appeared similar to samples from Gruinard. Four days later, a second package of apparent Gruinard soil was discovered at a meeting of the ruling Conservative Party, though the sample did not contain any anthrax.

Sheep began dying from inhalational anthrax within three days of exposure. In this still from declassified footage, a line of tethered sheep can be seen with a few carcasses. Footage courtesy of the Imperial War Museum. Click for source.

A subsequent investigation by the government into the extent of anthrax contamination at Gruinard found that the spores were circumscribed to a hot spot of about 7.4 acres in the southern part of the island.(9) In 1986, the government proceeded with decontaminating the spit of land. Foliage was hosed with a weed killer solution and then burnt. A toxic solution of 280 tons of formaldehyde diluted in 2000 tons of seawater was concocted and then drenched over the islands soil using 30 miles of drip hoses.(7) The topsoil was then extracted and sealed away in containers, dispatched to a still-unknown location. A year later, the soil was seeded with grass and a flock of 40 sheep were dispatched to graze the entire island for five months without any incident or ovine infection.(5) In a show of good faith, a junior Defense Minister, Michael Neubert, ventured to Gruinard on April 24th, 1990 to remove its warning signs and publicly declare the island safe.(7) (The government may have been hedging their bets by delegating a junior staff member as the face of this chancy mission.)

Today, Gruinard is visited by shepherds and hunters, no longer an incipient experiment in the potentials of biological warfare. Anthrax was once an organism of unlucky accident, a bug that randomly killed herding animals or unlucky men and women working in the livestock industry. The experiments at Gruinard transformed this organism of incidental death into an organism of war, the first time a bacteriological weapon had been tried out on the full scale.(11) It also radically changed the natural environment of an island, delineating an area unsafe for human visitation much like the sites of other weapon testing, such as the Manhattan projects nuclear testing in New Mexico only a few years later. The tiny Scottish island represents one of the earliest chapters in the history of mass biological warfare, of mankinds deliberate tinkering with natures well-stocked armory.

Resources

You can watch declassified footage of the Gruinard anthrax trialson Youtube courtesy of the Imperial War Museum Film and Video Archive.

Check out Blood & Fog: The Militarys Germ Warfare Tests in San Franciscoto find out more about the United Stages govenrment testing biological weapons in the San Francisco bay.

References

1) FM Szasz. (1995) The Impact of World War II on the Land: Gruinard Island, Scotland, and Trinity Site, New Mexico as Case Studies. Environmental History Review.19(4):15-30

2) EA Willis (2009) Landscape with Dead Sheep: What They Did to Gruinard Island. Medicine, Conflict and Survival.25(4):320-331

3) H Haswell-Smith (2004). The Scottish Islands. Edinburgh: Canongate.

4) CBS Staff (10/29/2001)Tourist Temptation: Anthrax Island. CBS News.Accessed onlineon 03/03/2017 at http://www.cbsnews.com/news/tourist-temptation-anthrax-island/ 03/03/2017

5) RJ Manchee et al.(1994)Formaldehyde Solution Effectively Inactivates Spores of Bacillus anthracis on the Scottish Island of Gruinard.Applied and Environmental Microbiology.60(11):4167-71

6) experimentsrus(02/09/2014) Gruinard island X-base anthrax trials 1942-43 [Video file]. Accessed online on 03/18/2017at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Mykjxkwwe0

7) BBC News Staff (7/25/2001)Britains Anthrax Island. BBC News. Accessed online on 03/02/2017at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/1457035.stm

8)FM LaForce. (1994) Anthrax. Clinical Infectious Diseases.19(6):1009-1013

9) BMJ Staff. (1990) For Anthrax Isle The Chemical War Is Finally Over. British Medical Journal,300(6729: 895

10) WS Carus (2002) Bioterrorism and Biocrimes: The Illicit Use of Biological Agents Since 1900. Fredonia, NY: Fredonia Books

11) DH Avery (2013) Pathogens for War: Biological Weapons, Canadian Life Scientists, and North American Biodefence.Toronto, Canada:University of Toronto Press

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Base X: The Isle of Anthrax - Discover Magazine (blog)

AMHERST Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost and other famed artists who lived and worked in town could represent the athletic program at Amherst College as the fighting poets.

Its also possible the next mascot for the college will be represented not by pugilistic imagery or writers, but rather by animals that inhabit the regions woods and skies, such as Wolves or Valley Hawks. Perhaps an extinct species that once roamed the Earth, like the Mammoth, whose skeleton is on display in a campus museum.

Or maybe the college will stick with the name recently applied to its athletics program: The Purple & White.

On Thursday, college officials unveiled the final five mascot choices, selected by the mascot committee, that will be the subject of a vote by students, alumni, faculty, staff and friends of the college. An online vote will run from Monday through March 31.

The process to pick a new mascot follows the removal of the controversial Lord Jeff as Amhersts unofficial mascot early in 2016.

Lord Jeff was cut from the team following a student demonstration for increased equity at the school in November 2015. Many students, faculty and alumni objected to the long-used mascot because of historical evidence that Lord Jeffery Amherst advocated employing germ warfare to wipe out American Indian tribes.

The colleges mascot committee received more than 2,000 suggestions, amounting to nearly 600 unique ideas. After soliciting the input of 441 student and alumni delegates, officials revealed the 30 semi-finalists in January.

Two of the top vote getters in that earlier round, Hamsters and Moose, failed to make the final cut.

The vote will feature an instant run off, or rank choice voting, where voters will be asked to put the finalists in order from favorite to least favorite. If one of the five wins a majority, it will be the next mascot. If none get this majority initially, then the votes will be dispersed until one achieves a majority.

The colleges website provides background information about why each mascot choice is appropriate.

The Fighting Poets doesnt signify any specific artist, even though Dickinson lived in Amherst and Frost taught at the college. Rather, it celebrates multiple poets who have taught, studied or written poetry in association with the college or town of Amherst.

Mammoths has a college connection, with the Beneski Museum of Natural History displaying the skeleton of a Proboscidea, unearthed by Professor Frederick Brewster Loomis and brought to town in 1925.

Purple & White have been the colleges colors since April 30, 1868. Its served as the unofficial nickname of sports teams for the past several months.

The Valley Hawks mascot, according to the college website, would reflect pride in the campus bird sanctuary and the colleges other connections to avian studies.

Finally, the website notes: Known for their keen senses, intelligence and power, wolves collaborate and care for one another in packs, but they can also represent individuality and independence.

Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.

Excerpt from:

Valley Hawks, Fighting Poets, others who will replace Lord Jeff? - Amherst Bulletin

War preparations come as Nordic country reintroduces military conscription

NUCLEAR war shelters are being readied in Sweden to prepare for a surprise Russian attack, according to reports.

The Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB) has reportedly been ordered to carry out a review this year of bunkers the coming weeks as the Scandinavian country also reintroduces military service.

Alamy

A system of 65,000 bunkers was established in the Cold War to protect the population from nuclear war with the Soviet Union.

According to MSB, the bunkers currently protect against blast and radiation as well as chemical or germ warfare.

With a distinctive logo, they can easily belocated by civilians seeking shelter.

But with fears growing over threat posed by Vladimir Putin and his resurgent Russia they are being reviewedto make sure they are ready.

Russian military drills in the region have raised fears among neighbouring nations that an attack could happen in the coming months.

Civil defence measures are therefore being stepped up, especially in the Island of Gotland where Sweden has already re-opened a garrison.

Swedish broadcaster Sveriges Radio reported that Mats Berglund had ordered a review of the islands 350 civilian bunkers.

Flickr / Arvid Rudling

Flickr / Staffan Vilcans

Getty Images

Reuters

About a third of the 13,000Swedish youngsters born in 1999 will be subject to military conscription next January.

It also comes as Japan prepares for a North Korean missile attack.

The country has begun staging mass evacuation drills after Kim Jong-un test fired missiles and conducted rocket engine tests on intercontinental missiles.

The first exercise of its kind saw civilians young and old scrambling for cover as air-raid sirens wailed away.

Meanwhile in Texas more than 1,000 people fearing an impending apocalypse are signed up to a waiting list for an extraordinary subterranean doomsday village.

We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368

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Sweden preparing nuclear fallout bunkers across the country amid fear of Russian war - The Sun

Asked once toward the end of his life about what he was proudest of, liberal activist and actor Paul Newman cited his appearance on Nixons enemies list. The flip side to this occurred with conservative actor John Wayne making it onto Stalins enemies list, with much more lethal consequences than anything Nixon had at his disposal.

According to those close to Wayne, Stalin ordered Wayne liquidated after learning of the outspoken conservative actors popularity and anticommunist beliefs from a Russian film-maker who visited New York in 1949.

Wayne was informed of these plots by the FBI in the early 1950s. Told by the Bureau that KGB assassins were in Hollywood tasked by Stalin with killing him, Wayne, true to cinematic form, informed the FBI to let him handle it.

According to his screen writer Jimmy Grant, Wayne plotted to capture the assassins and stage a mock-execution on the beach to scare them. Rumors held that this did not take place and that the would-be assassins were turned by the FBI.

More plots were hatched, and Wayne continued to shun FBI protection. Instead, he ran his own intelligence unit composed of his stuntmen who worked undercover in communist groups to learn of Soviet plots to kill the actor.

After a failed attempt while Wayne was on location in Mexico in 1953, Nikita Kruschev, who became Soviet premiere after Stalins death, canceled the operations.

Other communist dictators, however, took up Stalins baton. Wayne told a journalist that Chinese communist dictator Mao Tse Tung put a bounty on him and that an enemy sniper tried to earn it by trying to kill the actor on Waynes visit to American troops in Vietnam.

Wayne earned Stalins wrath, both on-screen and in real life. In Big Jim McClain (1951), Wayne busted up an anticommunist cell intent on releasing germ warfare into the United States, and championed Americas melting pot as the best defense against a communist invasion; by contrast, it was the communist spies who were racist (Wayne decked one of them for using a racial slur against blacks).

In Hollywood, Wayne took it upon himself to fight industry communists who were engaging in their own blacklist against anticommunist screenwriters. A chairman of the Hollywood anticommunist group, The Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, Wayne helped expose industry Stalinists.

Wayne fervently supported U.S efforts in Korea and Vietnam, advocating with the latter, the bombing of Hanoi.

As with Newman, whose anti-Vietnam activism brought him to theattention of the paranoid Richard Nixon, Wayne also not only earned the wrath of Stalin but when the time came to deal with it, he wanted to fight them on his own.

Originally posted here:

John Wayne: Stalin's Target - The Liberty Conservative

During the early years of the Cold War, the Pentagon heavily prepared to useand defend againstnew and improved poison and germ weapons.

Now we have detailed look at those plans from a newly declassified 1952 U.S. Navy training film. Earlier in October 2015, the independent website GovernmentAttic.org posted an electronic copy of the footage. A private individual had requested the footage 15 years ago via the Freedom of Information Act.

Biological and chemical warfare have two principle objectives, the films narrator says, to reduce food by destroying his crops and his food-producing farm animals and to incapacitate the enemys armed forces and that portion of his human population that directly supports them.

This clinical and disturbing description of wreaking chemical and biological death on an opponent is accompanied by images of fields, pigs and marching Soviet troops.

The U.S. Naval Photographic Center produced the film to explain how the military planned to deliver deadly chemicals and diseases, and protect its own sailors from similar attacks. The narrator describes the results of experiments thatif they had involved real chemical weaponswould have resulted in the deaths of thousands of people. The film also details equipment designed to spray toxic particles from airplanes, ships, submarines and more.

The Pentagon put the U.S. Army in charge of cooking up the specific agents and producing them in sufficient quantities, the narrator notes. Originally formed as the Chemical Warfare Service in 1918 during World War I, the Armys Chemical Corps researched dozens of possible payloads.

The ground combat branch already had decades of experience with gases like mustard and phosgene that burn the skin and attack the lungs. The United States and the Soviet Unionas well as other allied powers on both sidesappropriated work Nazi Germany had done on organophosphates that strike the central nervous system and prevent a persons brain from communicating properly with their vital organs.

The same year the Navy produced the film, scientists in the United Kingdom invented a new nerve agent codenamed Purple Possum. After learning of the weapon, the U.S. Army started producing the substance with its own moniker, VX. On top of that, the Chemical Corps explored the possibility of weaponizing various bacteria, viruses and toxins. Pentagon experiments included work on anthrax, bubonic plague, smallpox and ricin, among others.

Lastly, as alluded to in the Navy films introduction, the Army considered various chemical and biological agents that could specifically kill crops and livestock. As a result, the Pentagon had an advanced defoliation program well before it sprayed gallons of Agent Orange over Vietnamese jungles.

With the Army in charge of these terrifying chemicals, the Navy focused its efforts on the delivery systems. The film describes weapons dispersed from ships, dropped or sprayed from airplanes or released by submarines.

According to the narrator, the Navy conducted its first ship-borne tests two years earlier in 1950. A rather crude spraying system was installed on a mine layer, which secretly cruised off California and sprayed some 50 gallons of biological stimulant along a track two-to-five miles off shore, the narrator says.

The Pentagon regularly used non-threatening bacteria or spores to secretly test how far a real germ weapon would spread. In this experiment, as in the case with chemical and biological weapons in general, weather patterns and the terrain largely dictated where the particles went.

During the California test, technicians used special collectors to determine that the spray covered some 48 square miles of total area. Had an infectious agent been used in the spray, there might have been 210,000 casualties, the narrator says.

In April 1952, the minesweeper USS Tercel sprayed more simulated toxins along the coasts of North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. The rather flat terrain would be favorable to wide dispersion of wind-borne particles, the narrator says in the film.

Tercel sprayed 250 pounds of zinc cadmium sulfide during an eight-hour voyage along some 100 miles of coastline. Evaluators later found evidence of the fluorescent material across 20,000 square miles spread over all three states.

But surface ships such as the Tercel would be vulnerable to attack during an actual war. Recognizing this vulnerability, the Navy planned to mount sprayers on submarines for actual operations.

After reaching periscope depth, the submarines wouldas the concept wentvent their deadly payloads into the atmosphere. If everything went according to plan, the vessels would then submerge and escape without anyone on land knowing the attack had even happened until it was too late.

The Navy also worked on underwater chemical and biological mines. A sub would lay these devices along the ocean floor and then leave the area. After a predetermined time had passed, the mine would float to the surface. A tube would then pop out of the top and release its gas or germs. Aircraft could carry the same weapons and drop them into lakes and rivers further inland.

Alternatively, an airplane with a giant spray tank could do the job. At the time, bombs loaded with noxious chemicals were hardly new, but spray tanks would be more effective and accurate for seeding large amounts of toxic agents.

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US Navy Film Reveals Crazy Cold War Chemical Weapons Plans - The National Interest Online (blog)

Alex Nicol reminisces about his first time in a club

To prink (verb): The art of pre-drinking at a friend's house in order to save money on a night out.

Got it. Definitely a better idea to look that up on Urban Dictionary than out myself as that one guy in college whod never been clubbing before. Coming from a rural backwater where the average (usually retired) resident takes walks in muddy fields for excitement, the closest Id ever got to a club was an overcrowded pub. But come my second night at Cambridge, I was determined to give it a go. I felt Id kind of be failing Freshers Week if I didnt. I was going to be a normal teenager with a vengeance.

So I zeroed in on the hyperactive hum of human voices leaking through the walls of one of the rooms just down the corridor from mine. This was it, then: the prinking arena. And I was its biggest lightweight. As I sipped timidly on my tame 3.5 per cent beer, the professionals were steadily downing their vodka shots, stoically seeing off anything that came before them. For a few brief moments, their facial muscles would squirm, wriggle and ripple in what could have been a guilty betrayal of pain. Then they settled, gracefully recovering their composure. These were the hardened veterans of the big cities, reflecting only the slightest glint of weakness before they reached towards the next shot with a steely resolution that, I have to admit, was kind of impressive. Maybe Urban Dictionary was right this was a weird kind of art form in its own way.

I was confronted with something that looked like a nuclear bunker and smelt like a germ warfare experiment.

They were really nice people, I soon learned. One of them even offered me one of the Frankenstein cocktails he had concocted for himself. If it wasnt for the way each individual droplet grated the inside of my throat like a molecular razor, it probably would have tasted decent. Did I want another? My tongue would only clumsily splutter a few garbled syllables before it let me choke out what I hoped was a polite refusal. Fair enough, no problem. We were all about to make a move towards the actual club in a minute anyway.

Soon enough, we were lined up outside this so-called Life. Well, sort of lined up. Whoever said that the British were good at queuing had clearly only visited Waterstones in daytime. But wed stood our ground in the scrum for a good three quarters of an hour, so whatever was in there had to be good, surely.

It was actually a bit of an anti-climax. I was confronted with something that looked like a nuclear bunker and smelt like a germ warfare experiment. As I got knocked around the room like a human pinball, I couldnt help wondering whether Id basically just paid 4 to spend the night in the London underground, stuck in some kind of time loop of the rush hour. As for the music, the only other place Id heard that kind of electronic diarrhoea was probably in one of those old-fashioned arcades you still sometimes get outside bowling alleys. It was like someone had taken all the sound effects from Mario Kart and mashed them all together as a joke. Then the Lion King theme started playing, which I decided actually had to be a joke. That was genuinely quite funny. What I wasnt so amused by was some random, sweaty six-footer deciding to use my collarbone as a pivot to pump himself up and down to the beat like a piston. That was when it clicked. You dont go to the party to get smashed, you get smashed because youre at the party.

Even the margarita maestro whod offered me one of his cocktails earlier was flagging. Im so not drunk enough for this, mate, he informed me. What, like not having enough anaesthetic before an operation? For anyone as luridly lucid as I was, this was getting a bit much. It certainly was for at least one of the other freshers, her gaze surreptitiously flickering towards the exit. We skulked towards it and, with a few others in our wake, slipped out into the open air.

How to make sense of (almost) everything: why is Cambridge clubbing so expensive, sweaty and beloved?

A colourful cast of characters emerged: a surfer apparently suffering from Tourettes syndrome with the word dude, a self-proclaimed magician and a Polish Anglophile who was fascinated to know exactly what I thought about Radio 4, for some reason. Chatting, laughing, and joking as we drifted back home, the fact that we would have had nothing to do with each other in any normal situation didnt matter. The very fact that it wasnt normal was, I began to feel, what made it special.

So that was it: the rite of passage. I had finally been initiated into that teenage twilight: floating between freedom and responsibility, opportunities and commitments, childhood and adulthood. Its a psychological limbo which doesnt offer its travellers much to hold on to save each other. Maybe thats why, when I eventually returned home, I found myself missing that soothing buzz of chattering voices filtering through to my room. There was that reassurance that, just a few paces away from you, there was a hive of human activity where anyone, even someone as classically uncool as me, was always welcome. I think Ill miss it more when weve all finally grown up for good.

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A human pinball in a germ warfare experiment - Varsity Online